I’m just kidding, but reading this may change your response to ubiquitous sightings of bottled water.
What others say
Are you outside the box?
What a great parody of the ridiculousness of our words and ideas and the self-images we craft from them — and a “hint” of the energy behind it all.
Making emotional connections with people we love, and strangers
This is a really touching and sad story about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who ran away on his way home from school and lived for nine days in the New York subway system. He had previously run away for a few hours and spent the time riding trains, so the parents’ turned their attention that way from the start. It’s not clear how hard the police searched, but even when the missing persons unit stepped in and focused on the subway system, it still took another three days and a lucky glance from a subway worker to finally find him. He was just riding trains until the last station, then switching routes, with periodic stops at the Coney Island station to use the restroom.
He lost sense of time. He was prepared, he said, to remain in the subway system forever.
No one spoke to him. Asked if he saw any larger meaning in that, he said, “Nobody really cares about the world and about people.”
At first I thought about the sad commentary on society. Countless subway riders saw him, sat next to him, passed him in stations, and saw him living out of his backpack. Just another homeless 13 year old? Vendors sold him potato chips and snack food, which is mostly what he claims to have eaten.
Then I thought about his mother. Kids with Asperger’s have difficulty expressing their emotions, so it’s hard to connect with them. But it’s apparent in her words that she tries:
“I tell him: ‘Talk to me. Tell me what you need. If I ever make a mistake, tell me,’ ” she said. “I don’t know, as a mother, how to get to his heart, to find out what hurts.”
It’s a gift to share our emotions and burdens with each other and truly connect. But so many of us have a hard time making emotional connections with people we love (let alone really caring for a lost stranger). For those of us who can, who don’t have some faulty wire in our minds making it harder, may we connect now while we can — with our children, friends, parents, and innermost selves. May we have a love that looks to others, that flows, and sees the lost ones. I’m sure they’re around us almost every day. May God give us grace and prodding to do that.
Speaking of prodding, I read this today. God bless Jim for his journey and questions.
Curry wins a man his freedom (what can we learn here?)
A man wins his freedom by cooking a mean dish of Indian curry. Read the whole story here.
Mr Debnath said: ”I cooked hot, spicy Indian food for them the way we have it in the Sunderbans in India.
”They were very happy and told my interpreter that I seemed to be a safe guy.
Mr. Debnath was captured by the Taliban while attempting to travel across 33 countries on a bicycle to raise AIDS awareness.
I want the recipe for that curry.
The lonely international aid critic
William Easterley reflects on why critics of AIDS vaccine research are applauded for discovering a fraud, but critics of international aid are like unwelcome guests at a party. Easterley argues that those who say we can end poverty through “simple panaceas” unsupported by the facts are not unlike the researchers who faked their vaccine research.
So why does medicine welcome critics and aid hates them? Perhaps us aid critics are just not as good as the medical critics. Or perhaps it is because we care so much more whether medicine really works than whether aid or military intervention really works?
Drug companies sell cures. What is international aid selling, and to who?