<b>Dumbledore is Gay!<b>

After reading briefly from her mega-selling book, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows, on Friday night, Rowling took questions from an audience
of 1,600 students. A 19-year-old from Colorado asked about the avuncular
headmaster of Hogwarts School: 'Did Dumbledore, who believed in the
prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?'
The author replied: 'My truthful answer to you...I always thought of
Dumbledore as gay.' The audience reportedly fell silent - then erupted
into prolonged applause.

Rowling, 42, continued: 'Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [a bad
wizard he defeated long ago], and that added to his horror when
Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it
excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to
an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like
Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly,
terribly let down by him.'

She added: 'Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I
was in a script read-through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore
saying a line to Harry early in the script saying, "I knew a girl once,
whose hair..." I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it
along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!"'

http://stoopidamerikana.blogspot.com/

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2196147,00.html

Things that are new:

I have a home by myself. I like living alone and being totally in charge
of myself and my time. I am still sometimes amazed by the fact that I am
an adult. I don't know if other people wonder about this. The idea of
living my own life is just as exciting and mysterious now as it was when I
was 12.

I like the friends that I am getting to know. I love the way social
circles expand and change and the fact that I am always meeting new and
interesting people. There is nothing like the feeling of meeting a new
friend and hanging out together all night or all week, just to enjoy each
others company and conversation. The world can never be boring if there
are always new people to meet and know in all their complexity.

Growth. There are many things about myself that need to grow and change. I
prefer to ignore those things and live in the relm of things that are in
my control, but recently I think I have taken great steps toward making
myself a more healthy and complete person. I am thankful for this, and
also frightened about delving into these parts of myself.

My job. The job I have is not the perfect place I appeared to be from the
outside. I think I knew it would not be. However the people here are
really trying to do good and I have so much to learn from them. This is
the first time in a long time, maybe ever, that I have been in a place
where there was so much to learn. Such a long learning curve is hard for
my controlling personality, but it is good for me. I like it.

Ent Wife

This is one of the most beautiful and amazing pictures I have seen in a long time. (thanks Forest for letting me steal your work)

Excitement

I keep posting nostalgic and pessimistic things. I don't know why, because my life is awesome!

Starting Saturday we are going to have a HUGE teaching project! I find myself not even able to be excited enough because I have never done anything like this, so I don't know what to expect. I am really happy about it though... Children's classes every day.... the chance to meet all kinds of new people and make spiritual connections with them... :-)

This weekend my junior youth group is working together to make a movie. It's not really a project of the group, I think... the lines between Animator and just friends activities are seriously blurred in this group. I even feel weird calling it a youth group sometimes. These people are my friends and we do stuff we like, including study a book, service and art sometimes, but a lot of the times just talking.

In general, I am blown away by the effectiveness of the core activities in creating intimacy in groups. Study circles I have tutored and been in are still dear friends that I rely on in teaching activities and in life, children's classes I teach are creating bonds between not only me and the children, but also with me and the families of the children and most importantly right now, animating is creating bonds I would never have imagined. I think it will take some time to realize how important this is in our community. I think (and here the alternative education brainwash-ee is unleashed) that schools/society as it is structured are training us away from unity in our very infancy. The emphasis that is placed on children having the ability to interact with their peers (who consist mostly of classmate, grade lines being almost impossible social barriers) makes us think that our intimate connections should be only with people like ourselves. Not children, or youth or the middle aged or old. This is completely false and dangerous for our communities. The intimacy of core activities is helping us to break those are lines and interact, really and truly, like family.

Also, I have been looking at apartments this week and having a great time thinking about where I am going to live and the communities I want to be a part of. Aside from the fact that I keep finding places that I can't rent because I can't move until July, I am loving figuring out how this is all going to work.

Moving On

On Saturday, Earlham graduated the class of 2007. I remember last year when I was in the same place last year... Finals had taken forever, my thesis was over, family from everywhere had descended on my school home... I don't think I really had time to be sad.

It has hit me this year though. I think its because with the exodus of this class, I really don't know anyone at Earlham anymore. And most of them, I will never see again, even though they really did mean allot to me. If I go to visit now, my home that I loved so much will not be my home. It will be a series of strangers going through some of the first steps in figuring out who they are. I can't call Earlham anymore and expect someone I know to answer the phone. The community that I cherished, that we all cherished, is completely shattered for me.

everyone should see Avenue Q, it's a musical, it's pretty much rent, but done with muppets. I keep thinking of one of the songs.....




KATE MONSTER:
I wish I could go back to college.
Life was so simple back then.

NICKY:
What would I give to go back and live in a dorm with a meal plan again!

PRINCETON:
I wish I could go back to college.
In college you know who you are.
You sit in the quad, and think, "Oh my God!
I am totally gonna go far!"

ALL:
How do I go back to college?
I don't know who I am anymore!

PRINCETON:
I wanna go back to my room and find a message in dry-erase pen on the door!
Ohhh...
I wish I could just drop a class...

NICKY:
Or get into a play...

KATE MONSTER:
Or change my major...

PRINCETON:
Or fuck my T.A.

ALL:
I need an academic advisor to point the way!
We could be...
Sitting in the computer lab,
4 A.M. before the final paper is due,
Cursing the world 'cause I didn't start sooner,
And seeing the rest of the class there, too!

PRINCETON:
I wish I could go back to college!

ALL:
How do I go back to college?!
AHHHH...

PRINCETON:
I wish I had taken more pictures.

NICKY:
But if I were to go back to college,
Think what a loser I'd be-
I'd walk through the quad,
And think "Oh my God..."

ALL:
"These kids are so much younger than me."

Friendly World Empire

There are many corporations that I really think have too much power. The fact that Coca Cola is the worlds most known word is sad. There's nothing all that wrong with microsoft, but I just don't like them much. Superpower. Annoying.


However, I am coming to the conclusion that Google will take over the world and I will be fine with that. First of all, many of us have seen the google bombs that are so much fun. If you haven't, go type in right now French Military Victories and enjoy a laugh. Then for an even better joke, go look up directions from New York, New York to Paris, France on Google Maps. I really laughed out loud on that one.

Take a look at some of the excerpts from the company code:

e. Our Dog Policy
Google's respect and affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture.

We have nothing against cats, per se, but we're a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our campus would be fairly stressed out.

What's a Google?

"Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

Code of Conduct: Preface

Our informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil." We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users—as well we should. But being "a different kind of company" encompasses more than the products we make and the business we're building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees.

“Aren’t ‘X’ billion pages enough? Who needs more search results?” I hear questions like this often. The answer is, “We all do.” When you are looking for something specific, like a particular person or place, comprehensiveness is the difference between finding a long-lost relative or love, and not.

Company Overview

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

I still think all businesses should be a little more like non-profits and that no one business needs to have quarterly profits of over 3,500 Million dollars. I know it's still a business though, and that's the way they work right now. But overall, I just really like Google. My cousin wants to work there because they encourage individual projects from employees. Things like blogger and gmail have come from these Friday projects. Happy employees, happy us.

Music Education

When I was growing up, I had everything a nice middle class kid should: a few years of softball, one of basketball, three or four of soccer, ballet as a preschooler, summer camps in middle school, and music lessons. It was the music lessons I really liked, so I got to have them. Three years in a choir then 10 or so of private lessons in voice and 3 in piano. None of this includes college. In Highschool, I didn't have a lot of friends at times, but I always had that musical outlet. I would practice for hours a day in highschool and everyone was proud when I had my little recitals and such.

What do I carry of this education with me today? Well, I have gained a keen appriciation of music. I love the sound of the human voice and of beautiful melodies, but I was never taught to read music, so I cannot recreate music for others unless I learn with a teacher, by rote. I understand music theory and can tell you all kinds of things about how many flats and sharps there are in cord or the names of parts in italian, but I cannot create music of my own. I learned to imitate the music of masters and to do with my voice exactly what is asked by others, but along with 10 years of striving for perfection, I have lost faith in the beauty of my own voice as it is, without weeks of prep work on a piece.

In short, I have all the ability of a classically trained musician, but there was never a component of service in this education so I cannot write my own music or learn new songs without help or accompany myself or do any of the things that would make music alive for me now. So when the love of beauty my soul has developed arises in me, I have no outlet. I can sing songs I know or learn with a CD, but I have no ability to express myself, only to express the work of others. It's frustrating and stifling.

I see other youth go through this. Ballet dancers that cannot free themselves enough to try the electric slide, or who are unable to learn Salsa or Swing. And other singers, who know nothing but how to regurgitate the art of others.

I am just realizing this about myself and I think soon I will be ready to start unlearning some of the things I have been taught. I think I will find someone soon, a friend perhaps, who will teach me to play the guitar some and I will try to start again and practice the care free attitude we all should have about art and just learn to create. It's time for a re-learning, and this time, I will develop what I can share with others and what will allow me to help create the beauty in the world.