An Important Letter Via http://the-exponent.com/

Dear Esteemed Bloggers,

I am writing to inform you (assuming you have not already heard) that Brigham Young University is dissolving its Women’s Rearch Institute after 31 years. This news was made semi-public on October 29, 2009. The sorry excuse for a public press release was first sent via email to the faculty and students involved in the program.

The Institute has been a central location for all aspects of academia at Brigham Young University that related to women. Its main accomplishments have been:

1) educating female students regarding gender-related personal challenges,

2) providing women throughout the Church with opportunities to learn about and discuss women’s issues particularly as they pertain to spiritual development,

3) improving the professional life for female faculty members at Brigham Young University, and

4) promoting the scholarly study of women’s development and contributions to families, communities, and societies.

Within the last twenty years of record-keeping, no other university in the country has eliminated its center of research concerning women.

This is a BIG deal.

We, as students at Brigham Young University are speaking out for those who cannot or will not speak for themselves. This is our legacy. We have already begun speaking up and reaching out to those involved in the decision-making process. We want answers from the people responsible, and we would like you to help by spreading the word, as well.

We implore you to make this a topic on your blogs within the next few days- time is of the essence!

Please add the following links to the official press release, our Facebook group, the WRI blog, and MOST IMPORTANT, ask your readers to inform themselves and SIGN THE PETITION!!!! Or sign the petition yourself if you have not yet done so.

http://supportwri.blogspot.com/

This is the official website of our movement and has a copy of the petition to electronically sign.

It also includes addresses where people can send letters and links to other sites with more information.

WRI’s offical site–http://wri.byu.edu/index.php

BYU’s official press release–http://news.byu.edu/archive09-Oct-womens.aspx

A slightly different view of the whole thing–http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleWRIFarewell.html

our facebook group page–http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=169442383235&ref=ts

KEEP IN MIND: This is not an action AGAINST the LDS Church or its Leaders. This a human issue affecting those who are involved in the research of the WRI and those who would benefit from that research.

Thank you so much for your help! Your voice is an invaluable assett to the cause.

Kind Regards,

Cassandra Scheerer

Katie Vaggalis

Sara Vranes

Happy Halloween From Korea

I Am Partial To Autumn

I am partial to leaves that match my shoes

I am partial to canopies of orange almost red

I am partial to foliage, star shaped and blushing

I am partial to audacious bursts of ice creamy yellow

Meow

Of Closets That Hold You When You Cry

When I started this blog entry, I planned on writing something pithy and self-effacing. A light and flirtatious jab at my current state of not-so-happy. An if-you-can't-laugh-at-yourself-you-would-cry sort of entry. But I'm just sad enough to have dropped light and flirtatious off a few miles ago due to their incessant and high-pitched chattering in the backseat. I'm definitely not in the mood to turn the car around to pick them up.

Instead I will tell you how I dealt with my sadness this morning in the real and aching sort of way. I crawled inside the art room closet (My hiding place for daytime privacy. If any of you dare tell my students about the closet I will track you down, follow you home, and proceed to stuff handfuls of kimchi into every crevice I can find so that your environs will forever smell like fermented cabbage farts).

Once inside the closet, I squished my body down into the pile of little yellow smocks, stiff from dried paint, cracked and crusted over. I shut the door so that just a thin stream of light slipped through. I sat for a few minutes and watched my finger trace over the smooth wood of the closet wall, outlining a peeling, glittery Power Rangers sticker that had been stuck there by hands much smaller than mine. As I touched the tattered and forgotten sticker I began to cry. Big crying that fell into my knees, into the smocks, into my curled up toes. Big crying that shook my body so much so that grief tipped and teetered out of my eyes onto the floor. And through all of that big sadness, the closet remained quiet. It was stable. And it was still.

In that stillness I sat and I breathed and I traced the sticker again until I was ready to return to the light and day of my life.

Thank you for closets that hide you and hold you when you cry.

Plums

This morning I got on the #2 green village bus straight to work. Normally it smells like old man sweat and kimchi. Today it smelled like plums; sweet like plums. It made my day.

Stories of Jubilance and Vexation

Jubilance


Vexation