Meb Keflezighi wins the NYC Marathon
Meb Keflezighi (right) around the 8th mile on Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn (Photo by Antonella Pavese)
This was my first time watching the NYC Marathon. It was an amazing experience. The entire neighborhood was in the street, cheering, making noise, dancing, and having fun, welcoming with the same enthusiastic support the first runners and the last runners, the fast and the slow, as people of all races and ages streamed through.
Go, John!
More picture of the NYC Marathon seen from Brooklyn »
Sponsor me, as I sit still.
Sit Down, Rise Up!
You might know that I am part of the Interdependence Project (IDP), a non-profit organization based in Manhattan blending meditation, art, and activism. On November 7, I will meditate for 4 hours as part of a 24-hour meditation marathon organized to support IDP’s annual fundraising.
Donations collected for the 24-hour marathon will be used to fund classes on Buddhist meditation and philosophy, to take actions on social issues, and to sponsor art projects. The IDP practices integral activism, an approach to progressive social transformation that connects personal experience with political work and our efforts to transform society.
Why am I asking you to give money to the Interdependence Project?
Because I care deeply about the IDP and I want this organization to thrive. I also want you to learn about IDP’s unique approach to personal and social activism. The IDP project survives Manhattan’s high rents (we are on the Bowery in the LES) and program expenses through donations and low-fee classes. Among the many IDP programs: college tutoring for people getting out of prison, a project to eliminate plastic bags from New York through a combination of public events, awareness raising, and legislative action; art workshops.
All this, combined with the informal, non-cultish, and smart community, makes the ID project one the best place to be mindful in NYC. Your donations will help a great cause and will be tax deductible.
How can you help?
I will be sitting for 4 hours during a 24 relay meditation event, and I’m asking to sponsor my effort with an hourly donation to our non-stop, group meditation marathon. For example, a $2/hour donation offers the IDP $48, but you can donate as much or little as you want.
I will be sitting between 11AM and 3PM on November 7th, in a window at the ABC Carpet and Home at the corner between Broadway and 19th street. Pass by to take a picture and make faces as I try to sit still. As you may expect, I will be sitting there no matter what. But 4 hours of meditation are hard stuff, and your donation will keep me motivated and warm and fuzzy.
To donate, please visit this page, select, your amount, and add my name in the “Name of sitter” field.
With gratitude,
Antonella
Well-behaved women seldom make history
I’ve been tagged by Nick Barrowman at Log base 2, with the historical figure meme. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to pick a historical figure and list 5 random/weird things about this person.
I had to think really hard to pick my favorite historical figure. I don’t think I can name my favorite ice-cream flavor, let alone a favorite historical figure. I thought about William James, because when he was at Harvard he was a buddy of Charles Pierce, which is the historical figure chosen by Nick.
But–sorry Bill–it ought to be a woman. A crowd of bad-behaved women came to mind:
- Emmeline Pankhurst (“Be militant each in your own way. I incite this meeting to rebellion.”)
- Rosa Parks (“When they stood up and I stayed where I was, he asked me if I was going to stand and I told him that ‘no, I wasn’t,’ and he told me if I did not stand up he was going to have me arrested. And I told him to go on and have me arrested.”)
- Anaïs Nin (“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy.”)
- Josephine Baker (“I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.”), and
- Rachel Carson (“The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.”)
I wonder why I thought of them. I suspect that it’s because women need to be good to the point of sanctitude or quite bad to become historically famous. And bad girls tend to be more interesting.
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So I picked the baddest woman on the block, Mary Jane West, know to the world as Mae West. I’m pretty sure she counts as an historical figure. She was born two centuries ago–exactly on August 17, 1893. And everybody who is still famous after so many years deserves her place in History, wouldn’t you say? [or shall I say Herstory?].
Technology is not good for my social life.
In a previous post, I mentioned how YouTube tried to undermine my sense of security about my social life. Now it’s Wordpress’s turn.
This morning I was reading Andrew Hinton’s blog. Andrew has just published a great article on personas on Boxes and Arrows where he quotes some of my thoughts on the subject. So, I read a few older posts, and I notice one on Wordpress comment notification fix, which talks about a bug in Wordpress that prevents new comment notifications to be sent.
I go back to my blog and check the comments tab in Wordpress and horror! There is a bunch of true comments stuck in the moderation queue together with the usual series of comment spam. (By the way, Andrew has a link to the fix, from Mark’s blog MeAndMyDrum. It worked for me.)
Dear commenters, forgive me for neglecting you. I just thought that people had stopped commenting on my blog, not that I was not receiving notifications for your comments. I apologize. I love your comments, really.
Towards an Ecology of Mind, Society, and Biosystems
Blog post for Blog Action Day
Ecology (from the greek oikos for house) is the study of living organisms in their environment and it’s all about dynamic balance. Nature survives and evolves because living systems can be stable and in continuous motion at the same time. It’s the dynamic balance between predators and preys, for example, that keeps each population in check and prevents the extinction of species.
Homo Sapiens broke away from the ecological balance a very long time ago. We have messed up with ecosystems as long as we can remember. We have been suffering from what Gregory Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, calls “hubris” (in Greek tragedies, hubris was the excessive pride and defiance that led characters to the inevitable defeat and ruin).
It pleases us to picture ourselves as the masters of Nature. It reassure us to believe that we are independent, unconstrained, and we can expand infinitely, even if we are stuck on a sphere of less than 4,000 miles in diameter. We feel omnipotent like little children. Yet we have not defeated death, or illness, or fear, or violence. We have transposed them: now it’s more likely that we will suffer by the hand of other humans than by the forces of Nature.
It’s not only the relationship with our environment that is unbalanced. We also have a hard time maintain balance in our own lives and societies. Those of us who can, work too much, eat too much, produce too much waste, consume too much energy. One would think that having so much would make us happy, but it doesn’t.
The ecological crisis is not just about breaking our biosphere’s stability beyond repair. It’s about the pervasive tendency towards imbalance that we bring to our lives and our societies. Global warming is just one of the symptoms of human societies’ inability to maintain harmony and equilibrium within and without.
Environmental activism is hard because it’s about changing our habits and life style. Anybody who has tried to quit smoking or lose wait can attest how hard changing habits and getting rid of our addiction is, even when our life is at stake.
We need a global ecological movement. We need a powerful, strong, interconnected grass-root movement that works at regaining balance in our environment, in our societies, and in ourselves. And, to paraphrase Al Gore, we need to act quickly and we need to act together.
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