La Blog de Annie

Friday, September 26, 2008

My beautiful habitation!

Here is the dining room...

and living room...

These last two are of my bedroom, upstairs...

...here is my beautiful plant and adorable heater!

Isn't it fantastic? It's nearly one hundred years old! So historic. And all three of the upstairs windows go to my very own bedroom. Pretty much the polar opposite of my basement home of last year in terms of size and light :-)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Beauty of the Desert

It is difficult to find words to describe the clash between the amazing beauty of the desert and the unspeakable suffering that occurs there. It was hard to really make sense of, like many things this summer...

Every single sunrise and sunset was breathtaking. I took this one from the best sunrise-watching spot of all, the camp toilet :-)

In the ghost town of Ruby, one and a half million bats live inside an empty mountain; they leave every night to hunt insects.

A barrel cactus bloom. During the monsoon season, which begins in July, everything turns green and flowers... the desert is transformed.

This peak, called Baboquivari, is on the Tohono O'odham nation, to the west of Arivaca and of our camp. It is sacred in their tradition.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Yosemite!

It doesn't matter how many times I go to Yosemite, each time I am completely blown away again. I think it is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

While we were there we saw a bobcat, a mother bear with a cub, and a meteor shower! It was amazing.

Can You Believe Your Eyes?

Is Marie stuck in that rock?

Are Annie and Marie really pulling that rock apart?

Who is that long person?

Monday, August 18, 2008

I Love my Sisters!

I don't have any of Emily or Kate, but I love them, too!! Doesn't Lia look funny in this one - she seems to be slipping out of the picture and very skeptical about it.

My favorite picture of the summer

Pensamientos

We must hope against hope. We are called to do so especially within a hopeless humanity that is more and more paralyzed by fear… fear is useless, and instead we must look for love far and wide.
- Oscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez

La calle es un espejo de
las formas de dominacion
y poder donde los mas
grandes y rapidos
intentan aplastar a los
mas pequenos y lentos.
El uso de la bicicleta,
como medio autonomo de
transporte, es una forma
de insurrection al
capitalismo. No
queremos ser grandes y
veloces como las autos,
ni mucho menos
poderosos, solo ser
libres...

As long as there is a United States of America, there will be territorial and social boundaries between it and the rest of the world. What is not given is the nature of those boundaries. Whether they are walls or bridges, or boundaries of death or of life, whether we perceive and treat those on the other side of those boundaries as inferior and less worthy of lives of multifaceted security, or as fully human and thus deserving of the same rights and privileges as us, is, as always, a matter up for grabs.
- Joseph Nevins

If I had any hatred, I wouldn’t have lasted at all.
Hatred is self-destructive… you have to have Love for a cause.
- Emma Tenayuca, labor organizer

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect every-thing. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love. Stay in love. And it will decide everything.
- Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

To the question "Who do you say that I am?" we cannot give a merely theoretical or theological answer. What answers it, in the final analysis, is our life, our personal history, our manner of living the gospel.
- Gustavo Gutierrez

Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause - the cause of liberation.
- Paulo Freire

The average American consumes as much as 50 Haitians... What would happen if the fifty Haitians consumed as many cars, as many televisions, as many refrigerators or as many luxury goods as the one American? Nothing. Nothing would ever happen again. We would have to change planets. Ours, which is already close to catastrophe, couldn't take it.
The precarious equilibrium of the world depends on the perpetuation of injustice. So that some can consume more, people must continue to consume less. To keep people in their place, the system produces armaments. Incapable of fighting poverty, the system fights the poor.
-Eduardo Galeano

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, but we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Solidarity is another name for the kind of love that moves feet, hands, hearts, material goods, assistance, and sacrifice toward the pain, danger, misfortune, disaster, repression or death of other persons or a whole people.
- Jon Sobrino, SJ