So Multiply has not be inspiring me to write much. I find the site clunky and its applications dated (by Internet standards). I suppose I shouldn’t be so unforgiving, but I guess I’m being honest.
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However, I have far too much content on this site to consider moving it all (yet). I also don’t have another site in mind. Multiply does do some things I still like. I do want to have blogs, photos, and videos all accessible from one site. But I do wish I had better control over the layout. I know Multiply uses CSS and that should I get “serious” about this I could dive in to it. But I don’t want to. I want a tool with some customizable themes. I don’t want to code.
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I am regularly updating Facebook, Twitter, and occasionally my game blog on blogspot. But this remains my “main” place for general family news and personal ramblings.
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I have also been busy resolving the issues mentioned in previous blogs and doing lots of planning for family to start arriving in June through August!
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The weather here as turned a bit cold early. For NZ this is full on winter weather. For you in Kansas/Nebraska you would recognize it as blustery Fall days--windy and often rainy. But we get a handful of sunny mild days in between. My step-dad says the weather in NZ is always a choice between “t-shirt or jacket”. Well it seems to always be a jacket day and often a scarf too. It is too windy for anything other than the stoutest and most aerodynamic of head gear. I wear sunglasses more as wind shields than sun screen.
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Theoretically, I am supposed to travel to Christchurch tomorrow. That’s about mid-way down on the South Island. While it would be cool to go, it is actually supposed be dumped on with snow and I just received a notice that our offices there have lost power—probably due to high winds. This is not promising. But I think it has been nearly 2 years since I last saw snow.—at least Dec 2007. I wouldn’t mind seeing NZ in the snow as long as I didn’t end up sleeping in an airport.
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New Zealand continues to be inspirationally beautiful every day. I sometimes pop on to Google News to check on the ol’ USA and nearly always I am so shocked and horrified that I stop and retreat back to kiwi-sized social problems. After 18 months away, I have lost my de-sensitivity to horrific tragedies. I actually find it painful to read sometimes—images I can not erase from my mind. Of course tragedies happen all over the world. But… not everywhere in the world to the same degree. I can mentally reconcile that Somalia (for example) has horrible things happening as it is poverty stricken, war torn, and perceived to be politically “unimportant”. Somalia in no way deserves these qualities and the violence there is not justified, but to read of tragedy in my home country where there is wealth, education, and relative security… it shakes my faith.
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The rest of the world must boggle at why such problems exist in America. Americans just assume “everybody has problems.” Well, of course, but what we fail to realize is that other countries of similar culture and education do *not* have mass high school shootings, torture, and millions of unprotected (healthcare) citizens. These are not the “costs of freedom.” If they were, then I say they are very poor trade.
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What are the solutions? Well, I can’t fix America from a blog. But I would start by suggesting we weep. That we really look and comprehend the depth of these problems—not to punish ourselves, but rather to humble ourselves. These are our problems. We are responsible for them. We can still be proud of the great things we’ve done while owning our flaws as well. Only by accepting and acknowledging these faults can we begin to address them. We have developed steel personalities that can look at death tolls causally with thoughts like “only 14 killed… that’s 20 less than last week…” We read stories of children dying from lack of healthcare and think, “well those parents should have had better insurance or better jobs.” How callus we have become. We needed to be. How could one live in the US and not? But we have to care again. We can not just become harder and harder. The answer is really the reverse. We need to be wounded and healed, not more impervious.
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I hope all of you are well. I hope tragedy stays far from you all. There is much to be hopeful for. I am greatly looking forward to our June/July/August visitors! Talk to y'all again soon!
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EDIT: Sorry for the weird "." between paragraphs... one of the "clunks" I was talking about on Multiply. Pasting from Word to a Post messes up the formats.
