Night 232: The Insult Remains With You

You do not need to be Buddhist to see the wisdom in this.

It is the thought for the day. Do not allow others to dictate your feelings, moods and thoughts. Once you realize you control these things you will find your days much less stressful.

One day, the Buddha was sitting upon some steps meditating when a group of boys came by and began insulting and taunting him, attempting to make him angry. After some time, one of the boys observed that the insults were having no affect upon the Buddha, who remained sitting quietly on the steps. The boy finally asked the Buddha how he could just sit there and not become enraged at the terrible treatment he was receiving. The Buddha answered the question with a question of his own, saying,

“If someone offers you a gift and you refuse to accept it, to whom does the gift belong?”

The boy thought for a moment and then replied, “Why, it continues to belong to the one offering the gift.”

The Buddha then told him, “Likewise, I am refusing to accept your insults, therefore they remain with you.”

Day 232: Doing Your Best

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey.  He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work as the ground was hard.  His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year.
I'm just getting too old to be  digging up a garden plot.  I know if you were here my troubles would be over.
I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop,

Don't dig up that garden.  That's where the bodies are buried.

Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies.  They apologized to the old man and left.  Later that same day the old man received a telegram from his son.

Dear Pop,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now.  That's the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love you, Vinnie

Day 211: Advice to Young Men from an Old Man

best of craigslist > SF bay area > Advice to Young Men from an Old Man

Originally Posted: Thu, 15 Feb 09:08 PST

Advice to Young Men from an Old Man

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Date: 2007-02-15, 9:08AM PST

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Advice to Young Men from an Old Man
1. Don�t pick on the weak. It�s immoral. Don�t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid.
2. Don�t hate women. It�s a waste of time
3. Invest in yourself. Material things come to those that have self actualized.
4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose.
5. As a former Marine, take it from me. Don�t join the military, unless you want to risk getting your balls blown off to secure other people�s economic or political interests.
6. If something has a direct benefit to an individual or a class of people, and a theoretical, abstract, or amorphous benefit to everybody else, realize that the proponent�s intentions are to benefit the former, not the latter, no matter what bullshit they try to feed you.
7. Don�t be a Republican. They are self-dealing crooks with no sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizens. If you must be a Republican, don�t be a �conservative.� They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded self-righteous idiots who think they�re perpetual victims. Listen to talk radio for a while, you�ll see what I mean.
8. Don�t take proffered advice without a critical analysis. 90% of all advice is intended to benefit the proponent, not the recipient. Actually, the number is probably closer to 97%, but I don�t want to come off as cynical.
9. You�ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them. You don�t owe the vast majority of people shit.
10. Don�t undermine your fellow young men. Mentor the young men that come after you. Society recognizes that you have the potential to be the most power force in society. It scares them. Society does not find young men sympathetic. They are afraid of you, both individually and collectively. Law enforcement�s primary purpose is to suppress you.
11. As a young man, you�re on your own. Society divides and conquers. Unlike women who have advocates looking out for them (NOW, Women�s Study Departments, government, non-profit organizations, political advocacy groups) almost no one is looking out for you.
12. Young men provide the genius and muscle by which our society thrives. Look at the Silicone Valley. By in large, it was not old men or women that created the revolution we live. Realize that society steals your contributions, secures it with our intellectual property laws, and then takes credit and the rewards where none is due.
13. Know that few people have your best interests at heart. Your mother does. Your father probably does (if he stuck around). Your siblings are on your side. Everybody else worries about themselves.
14. Don�t be afraid to tell people to �Fuck off� when need be. It is an important skill to acquire. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice shakes.
15. Acquire empathy, good interpersonal skills, and confidence. Learn to read body language and non-verbal communication. Don�t just concentrate on your vocational or technical skills, or you�ll find your wife fucking somebody else.
16. Keep fit.
17. Don�t speak ill of your wife/girlfriend. Back her up against the world, even if she�s wrong. She should know that you have her back. When she needs your help, give it. She should know that you�ll take her part.
18. Don�t cheat on your wife/girlfriend. If you must cheat, don�t humiliate her. Don�t risk having your transgressions come back to her or her friends. Don�t do it where you live. Don�t do it with people in your social circle. Don�t shit in your own back yard.
19. If your girlfriend doesn�t make you feel good about yourself and bring joy to your life, fire her. That�s what girlfriends are for.
20. Don�t bother with �emotional affairs.� They are just a vehicle for women to flirt and have someone make them feel good about themselves. That�s the part of a relationship they want. For you it is a lot of work and investment in time. If they are having an emotional affair with you, they�re probably fucking someone else.
21. Becoming a woman�s friend and confidant is not going to get you into an intimate relationship. If you haven�t gotten the girl within a reasonably short period of time, chances are you won�t ever get her. She�ll end up confiding to you about the sexual adventures she�s having with someone else.
22. Have and nurture friendships with women.
23. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You�re going to see some girl and feel like you�ll die if you don�t get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It�s her loss.
24. Don�t be an internet troll. Got out and live life. There is not a cadre of beautiful women advertising on Craigslist to have NSA sex with you. Beautiful women don�t need to advertise. The websites that advertise with attractive women�s photos and claims of loneliness are baloney. All they want is your money and your personal information so that they can market to you. The posts on Craigslist by young �women� seeking NSA sex, and asking for a picture are just a bunch of gay troll pic collectors. This is especially true if the post uses common gay lexicon like �hole� as in �fuck my hole� or seeks �masculine� men, or uses the word cock (except in the context of �Don�t send a cock shot.�) There are women on Craigslist. They are easily recognizable by their 2-5 paragraph postings. Most are in their 30's or older.
25. When you become a man in full, know that people will get in your way. People who are attracted to you will somehow manage to step in your path. Gay guys will give you �the look.� Old people will somehow stumble in front of you at the worst time. Don�t get frustrated. Just step aside and go about your business. Know that these are passive aggressive methods to get you to acknowledge their existence.
26. Don�t gay bash. Don�t mentally or physically abuse people because of who they are, or how they present themselves. It�s none of your business to try to intimidate people into conformity.
27. If your gay, admit it to yourself, your parents, your friends and society at large. Be prepared to get harassed. See rule 14. If someone threatens you or assaults you, call the cops. Have them arrested. You have no obligation to self sacrifice because of who you are. As a gay person, you�ll have more social freedom than straight men. Use it to protect yourself. Be prepared to get out of Dodge if your orientation makes your life unbearable. Move to San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, or New Orleans. You�ll find a welcoming community there.
28. Don�t be a poser. Avoid being one of those dudes who puts a surfboard on top of their car, but never surfs, or a dude with a powder coated fixed gear bike and a messenger bag, but was never a messenger. Live the life. Earn your bona fides.
29. Don�t believe the crap about the patriarchy. More women are accepted and attend college. More degrees are awarded to women than men. Women outlive men. More men commit suicide. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violence, including murder. If you consider sexual assaults in prisons, twice as many men are raped as women (society thinks prison rape is funny). The streets are littered with homeless men, sprinkled with a few homeless women. Statically, women are happier than men. The myth that girls are being cheated by are educational system is belied by the fact that schools are bastions of femininity, mostly run by and taught by women. Girls outperform boys in school. It is the boys in school getting fucked over, and prescribed ritalin for being boys. Real wages for men are falling, while real wages for women are rising. Just because someone says something enough times, doesn�t make it true. You have nothing to feel guilty about.
30. Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest. 

Night 189: At the Edge of This Mountain

Listening to Mango & Aqua Diva
Feeling like a happy, n00b swing dancer!

I saw your smile
When you first two met
Then all your troubles faded

You knew from the start
Where this all would fly
Falling down to nowhere
Yeah

But being careless,
You know you do not want to hear me
I know you truly want to stay here
Lingering in the clouds

And somewhere in the deepest part of your dreams
At the edge of this mountain
You close your eyes and weep

Oh somewhere in the deepest part of those clouds
Just close your eyes and dream

I heard you cry
For a distant love
Who will never come back

I saw your face
In a flood of tears
Your eyes so empty

But now hear me
You know I never want to hurt you
I know you can't resist it
In your dreams you taste their lips

Hear me, heal me
Sweetness, feelings, love and since so many blames and stories

And somewhere in the deepest part of your dreams
At the edge of this mountain
We just close our eyes and breathe

Oh somewhere in the deepest part of my dreams
At the edge of this mountain
We close our eyes and forget

Oh somewhere in the deepest part of our dreams
At the edge of this mountain
We close our eyes and repeat

Day 105.5: What You Can Do with Money

Feeling excited about my new job
Listening to Trance channel @ Di.Fm
It's 1:40 PM
A cozy 64' Fahrenheit

So, what can you do with money? There's bazillion possibilities, but here is one for you to try out. A good laugh.

...Reminds me of a woman I know. She was trying to reverse park her car when a young man zipped into the parking space she was in the process of getting into and yelled out of his window “This is what you can do when you can drive!”.

She reversed hard into his car and yelled back “This is what you can do when you have money!”. Her insurance had to pay for the damage, of course, but the man will probably think twice before pulling that trick again...

Day 96: Ultimate in Unfair

The Ultimate in Unfair

War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.

– Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher, author, 1950 Nobel Prize-winner in Literature

This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Kevin Carter lived from 1960 until 1994.

Kevin Carter, the South African photographer whose image of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture won him a Pulitzer Prize this year, was found dead on Wednesday night, apparently a suicide, police said yesterday. He was 33. The police said Mr Carter's body and several letters to friends and family were discovered in his pick-up truck, parked in a Johannesburg suburb. An inquest showed that he had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Mr Carter started as a sports photographer in 1983 but soon moved to the front lines of South African political strife, recording images of repression, anti-apartheid protest and fratricidal violence. A few davs after winning his Pulitzer Prize in April, Mr Carter was nearby when one of his closest friends and professional companions, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot dead photographing a gun battle in Tokoza township.

Friends said Mr Carter was a man of tumultuous emotions which brought passion to his work but also drove him to extremes of elation and depression. Last year, saying he needed a break from South Africa's turmoil, he paid his own way to the southern Sudan to photograph a civil war and famine that he felt the world was overlooking.

His picture of an emaciated girl collapsing on the way to a feeding centre, as a plump vulture lurked in the background, was published first in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly. The reaction to the picture was so strong that The New York Times published an unusual editor's note on the fate of the girl. Mr Carter said she resumed her trek to the feeding centre. He chased away the vulture.

Afterwards, he told an interviewer, he sat under a tree for a long time, "smoking cigarettes and crying". His father, Mr Jimmy Carter laid last night: "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did." - The New York Times

Source: Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 30 July 1994

What are the odds the little girl is alive today? Not very high, I'd say.

If she is alive, what quality of life is she likely to have? She almost certainly has permanent damage from her period of starvation during crucial development, both before and after birth. It is easy to criticise Kevin Carter.

Why? Because he took a photo of one starving child among thousands? Let those who send all their spare cash to the needy cast the first stone...

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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KEVIN CARTER

Visiting Sudan, a little-known photographer took a picture that made the world weep. What happened afterward is a tragedy of another sort.

The image presaged no celebration: a child barely alive, a vulture so eager for carrion. Yet the photograph that epitomized Sudan's famine would win Kevin Carter fame - and hopes for anchoring a career spent hounding the news, free-lancing in war zones, waiting anxiously for assignments amid dire finances, staying in the line of fire for that one great picture.

On May 23, 14 months after capturing that memorable scene, Carter walked up to the dais in the classical rotunda of Columbia University's Low Memorial Library and received the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.

The South African soaked up the attention. "I swear I got the most applause of anybody," Carter wrote back to his parents in Johannesburg. "I can't wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing, and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive."

Carter was feted at some of the most fashionable spots in New York City. Restaurant patrons, overhearing his claim to fame, would come up and ask for his autograph. Photo editors at the major magazines wanted to meet the new hotshot, dressed in his black jeans and T shirts, with the tribal bracelets and diamond-stud earring, with the war-weary eyes and tales from the front lines of Nelson Mandela's new South Africa.

Carter signed with Sygma, a prestigious picture agency representing 200 of the world's best photojournalists. "It can be a very glamorous business," says Sygma's U.S. director, Eliane Laffont. "It's very hard to make it, but Kevin is one of the few who really broke through. The pretty girls were falling for him, and everybody wanted to hear what he had to say."

There would be little time for that. Two months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, a suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child; a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside. "I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

How could a man who had moved so many people with his work end up a suicide so soon after his great triumph? The brief obituaries that appeared around the world suggested a morality tale about a person undone by the curse of fame. The details, however, show how fame was only the final, dramatic sting of a death foretold by Carter's personality, the pressure to be first where the action is, the fear that his pictures were never good enough, the existential lucidity that came to him from surviving violence again and again - and the drugs he used to banish that lucidity. If there is a paramount lesson to be drawn from Carter's meteoric rise and fall, it is that tragedy does not always have heroic dimensions. "I have always had it all at my feet," read the last words of his suicide note, "but being me just fit up anyway."

First, there was history. Kevin Carter was born in 1960, the year Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was outlawed. Descended from English immigrants, Carter was not part of the Afrikaner mainstream that ruled the country. Indeed, its ideology appalled him. Yet he was caught up in its historic misadventure.

His devoutly Roman Catholic parents, Jimmy and Roma, lived in Parkmore, a tree-lined Johannesburg suburb - and they accepted apartheid. Kevin, however, like many of his generation, soon began to question it openly. "The police used to go around arresting black people for not carrying their passes," his mother recalls. "They used to treat them very badly, and we felt unable to do anything about it. But Kevin got very angry about it. He used to have arguments with his father. "Why couldn't we do something about it? Why didn't we go shout at those police?' "

Though Carter insisted he loved his parents, he told his closest friends his childhood was unhappy. As a teenager, he found his thrills riding motorcycles and fantasized about becoming a race-car driver. After graduating from a Catholic boarding school in Pretoria in 1976, Carter studied pharmacy before dropping out with bad grades a year later. Without a student deferment, he was conscripted into the South African Defense Force, where he found upholding the apartheid regime loathsome. Once, after he took the side of a black mess-hall waiter, some Afrikaans-speaking soldiers called him a kaffir-boetie ("nigger lover") and beat him up. In 1980 Carter went absent without leave, rode a motorcycle to Durban and, calling himself David, became a disk jockey. He longed to see his family but felt too ashamed to return. One day after he lost his job, he swallowed scores of sleeping pills, pain-killers and rat poison. He survived. He returned to the S.A.D.F. to finish his service and was injured in 1983 while on guard duty at air force headquarters in Pretoria. A bomb attributed to the A.N.C. had exploded, killing 19 people. After leaving the service, Carter got a job at a camera supply shop and drifted into journalism, first as a weekend sports photographer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express. When riots began sweeping the black townships in 1984, Carter moved to the Johannesburg Star and aligned himself with the crop of young, white photojournalists who wanted to expose the brutality of apartheid - a mission that had once been the almost exclusive calling of South Africa's black photographers. "They put themselves in face of danger, were arrested numerous times, but never quit. They literally were willing to sacrifice themselves for what they believed in," says American photojournalist James Nachtwey, who frequently worked with Carter and his friends. By 1990, civil war was raging between Mandela's A.N.C. and the Zulu-supported Inkatha Freedom Party. For whites, it became potentially fatal to work the townships alone. To diminish the dangers, Carter hooked up with three friends - Ken Oosterbroek of the Star and free-lancers Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva - and they began moving through Soweto and Tokoza at dawn. If a murderous gang was going to shoot up a bus, throw someone off a train or cut up somebody on the street, it was most likely to happen as township dwellers began their journeys to work in the soft, shadowy light of an African morning. The four became so well known for capturing the violence that Living, a Johannesburg magazine, dubbed them "the Bang-Bang Club."

Even with the teamwork, however, cruising the townships was often a perilous affair. Well-armed government security forces used excessive firepower. The chaotic hand-to-hand street fighting between black factions involved AK-47s, spears and axes. "At a funeral some mourners caught one guy, hacked him, shot him, ran over him with a car and set him on fire," says Silva, describing a typical encounter. "My first photo showed this guy on the ground as the crowd told him they were going to kill him. We were lucky to get away."

Sometimes it took more than a camera and camaraderie to get through the work. Marijuana, known locally as dagga, is widely available in South Africa. Carter and many other photojournalists smoked it habitually in the townships, partly to relieve tension and partly to bond with gun-toting street warriors. Although he denied it, Carter, like many hard-core dagga users, moved on to something more dangerous: smoking the "white pipe," a mixture of dagga and Mandrax, a banned tranquilizer containing methaqualone. It provides an intense, immediate kick and then allows the user to mellow out for an hour or two.

By 1991, working on the dawn patrol had paid off for one of the Bang-Bang Club. Marinovich won a Pulitzer for his September 1990 photographs of a Zulu being stabbed to death by A.N.C. supporters. That prize raised the stakes for the rest of the club - especially Carter. And for Carter other comparisons cropped up. Though Oosterbroek was his best friend, they were, according to Nachtwey, "like the polarities of personality types. Ken was the successful photographer with the loving wife. His life was in order." Carter had bounced from romance to romance, fathering a daughter out of wedlock. In 1993 Carter headed north of the border with Silva to photograph the rebel movement in famine-stricken Sudan. To make the trip, Carter had taken a leave from the Weekly Mail and borrowed money for the air fare. Immediately after their plane touched down in the village of Ayod, Carter began snapping photos of famine victims. Seeking relief from the sight of masses of people starving to death, he wandered into the open bush. He heard a soft, high-pitched whimpering and saw a tiny girl trying to make her way to the feeding center. As he crouched to photograph her, a vulture landed in view. Careful not to disturb the bird, he positioned himself for the best possible image. He would later say he waited about 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would spread its wings. It did not, and after he took his photographs, he chased the bird away and watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. Afterward he sat under a tree, lit a cigarette, talked to God and cried. "He was depressed afterward," Silva recalls. "He kept saying he wanted to hug his daughter."

After another day in Sudan, Carter returned to Johannesburg. Coincidentally, the New York Times, which was looking for pictures of Sudan, bought his photograph and ran it on March 26, 1993. The picture immediately became an icon of Africa's anguish. Hundreds of people wrote and called the Times asking what had happened to the child (the paper reported that it was not known whether she reached the feeding center); and papers around the world reproduced the photo. Friends and colleagues complimented Carter on his feat. His self-confidence climbed.

Carter quit the Weekly Mail and became a free-lance photojournalist - an alluring but financially risky way of making a living, providing no job security, no health insurance and no death benefits. He eventually signed up with the Reuter news agency for a guarantee of roughly $2,000 a month and began to lay plans for covering his country's first multiracial elections in April. The next few weeks, however, would bring depression and self-doubt, only momentarily interrupted by triumph.

The troubles started on March 11. Carter was covering the unsuccessful invasion of Bophuthatswana by white right-wing vigilantes intent on propping up a black homeland, a showcase of apartheid. Carter found himself just feet away from the summary execution of right-wingers by a black "Bop" policeman. "Lying in the middle of the gunfight," he said, "I was wondering about which millisecond next I was going to die, about putting something on film they could use as my last picture."

His pictures would eventually be splashed across front pages around the world, but he came away from the scene in a funk. First, there was the horror of having witnessed murder. Perhaps as importantly, while a few colleagues had framed the scene perfectly, Carter was reloading his camera with film just as the executions took place. "I knew I had missed this f--- shot," he said subsequently. "I drank a bottle of bourbon that night."

At the same time, he seemed to be stepping up his drug habit, including smoking the white pipe. A week after the Bop executions, he was seen staggering around while on assignment at a Mandela rally in Johannesburg. Later he crashed his car into a suburban house and was thrown in jail for 10 hours on suspicion of drunken driving. His superior at Reuter was furious at having to go to the police station to recover Carter's film of the Mandela event. Carter's girlfriend, Kathy Davidson, a schoolteacher, was even more upset. Drugs had become a growing issue in their one-year relationship. Over Easter, she asked Carter to move out until he cleaned up his life.

With only weeks to go before the elections, Carter's job at Reuter was shaky, his love life was in jeopardy and he was scrambling to find a new place to live. And then, on April 12, 1994, the New York Times phoned to tell him he had won the Pulitzer. As jubilant Times foreign picture editor Nancy Buirski gave him the news, Carter found himself rambling on about his personal problems. "Kevin!" she interrupted, "You've just won a Pulitzer! These things aren't going to be that important now."

Early on Monday, April 18, the Bang-Bang Club headed out to Tokoza township, 10 miles from downtown Johannesburg, to cover an outbreak of violence. Shortly before noon, with the sun too bright for taking good pictures, Carter returned to the city. Then on the radio he heard that his best friend, Oosterbroek, had been killed in Tokoza. Marinovich had been gravely wounded. Oosterbroek's death devastated Carter, and he returned to work in Tokoza the next day, even though the violence had escalated. He later told friends that he and not Ken "should have taken the bullet."

New York was a respite. By all accounts, Carter made the most of his first visit to Manhattan. The Times flew him in and put him up at the Marriott Marquis just off Times Square. His spirits soaring, he took to calling New York "my town."

With the Pulitzer, however, he had to deal not only with acclaim but also with the critical focus that comes with fame. Some journalists in South Africa called his prize a "fluke," alleging that he had somehow set up the tableau. Others questioned his ethics. "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering," said the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, "might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Even some of Carter's friends wondered aloud why he had not helped the girl.

Carter was painfully aware of the photojournalist's dilemma. "I had to think visually," he said once, describing a shoot-out. "I am zooming in on a tight shot of the dead guy and a splash of red. Going into his khaki uniform in a pool of blood in the sand. The dead man's face is slightly gray. You are making a visual here. But inside something is screaming, "My God.' But it is time to work. Deal with the rest later. If you can't do it, get out of the game." Says Nachtwey, "Every photographer who has been involved in these stories has been affected. You become changed forever. Nobody does this kind of work to make themselves feel good. It is very hard to continue."

Carter did not look forward to going home. Summer was just beginning in New York, but late June was still winter in South Africa, and Carter became depressed almost as soon as he got off the plane. "Joburg is dry and brown and cold and dead, and so damn full of bad memories and absent friends," he wrote in a letter never mailed to a friend, Esquire picture editor Marianne Butler in New York.

Nevertheless, Carter carefully listed story ideas and faxed some of them off to Sygma. Work did not proceed smoothly. Though it was not his fault, Carter felt guilty when a bureaucratic foul-up caused the cancellation of an interview by a writer from Parade magazine, a Sygma client, with Mandela in Cape Town. Then came an even more unpleasant experience. Sygma told Carter to stay in Cape Town and cover French President Francois Mitterrand's state visit to South Africa. The story was spot news, but according to editors at Sygma's Paris office, Carter shipped his film too late to be of use. In any case, they complained, the quality of the photos was too poor to offer to Sygma's clients.

According to friends, Carter began talking openly about suicide. Part of his anxiety was over the Mitterrand assignment. But mostly he seemed worried about money and making ends meet. When an assignment in Mozambique for TIME came his way, he eagerly accepted. Despite setting three alarm clocks to make his early-morning flight on July 20, he missed the plane. Furthermore, after six days in Mozambique, he walked off his return flight to Johannesburg, leaving a package of undeveloped film on his seat. He realized his mistake when he arrived at a friend's house. He raced back to the airport but failed to turn up anything. Carter was distraught and returned to the friend's house in the morning, threatening to smoke a white pipe and gas himself to death.

Carter and a friend, Judith Matloff, 36, an American correspondent for Reuter, dined on Mozambican prawns he had brought back. He was apparently too ashamed to tell her about the lost film. Instead they discussed their futures. Carter proposed forming a writer-photographer free-lance team and traveling Africa together.

On the morning of Wednesday, July 27, the last day of his life, Carter appeared cheerful. He remained in bed until nearly noon and then went to drop off a picture that had been requested by the Weekly Mail. In the paper's newsroom, he poured out his anguish to former colleagues, one of whom gave him the number of a therapist and urged him to phone her.

The last person to see Carter alive, it seems, was Oosterbroek's widow, Monica. As night fell, Carter turned up unannounced at her home to vent his troubles. Still recovering from her husband's death three months earlier, she was in little condition to offer counsel. They parted at about 5:30 p.m.

The Braamfonteinspruit is a small river that cuts southward through Johannesburg's northern suburbs - and through Parkmore, where the Carters once lived. At around 9 p.m., Kevin Carter backed his red Nissan pickup truck against a blue gum tree at the Field and Study Center. He had played there often as a little boy. The Sandton Bird Club was having its monthly meeting there, but nobody saw Carter as he used silver gaffer tape to attach a garden hose to the exhaust pipe and run it to the passenger-side window. Wearing unwashed Lee jeans and an Esquire T shirt, he got in and switched on the engine. Then he put music on his Walkman and lay over on his side, using the knapsack as a pillow.

The suicide note he left behind is a litany of nightmares and dark visions, a clutching attempt at autobiography, self-analysis, explanation, excuse. After coming home from New York, he wrote, he was "depressed . . . without phone . . . money for rent . . . money for child support . . . money for debts . . . money!!! . . . I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain . . . of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners . . . " And then this: "I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

Day 72: The R-Word

Feeling extremely tired and full
It's 9:12 PM
I'm in the Main Library

I'm sure you've read the post about me using that dangerous R-word in my environmental science paper almost a month ago. A friend of mine (whose name I will not reveal) forwarded me a Middlebury e-mail about the R-word that made me laugh:

From: Cordelia Ross
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:47 PM
To: McLean, Ann
Subject: R*t@rd: the damaging effects of the R-word

Dear Ann,

Please pass along the below message from the Psychology Club to PSYC majors & minors. Thank you!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Psych students,

The Psychology Club has organized a presentation and discussion on 4/22/09 titled "R*t@rd: the damaging effects of the R-word", with members of Speak Up! Addison County. Speak Up! Addison County is a self-advocacy group developed and operated by adults in the community living with developmental disabilities. They will be covering topics such as: special education, self-advocacy, Special Olympics, the film Tropic Thunder (flagrant uses of the R-word), and the daily challenges of living with a disability. It should be a very interesting presentation/discussion and we hope to see you there!


Title: R*t@rd: the damaging effects of the R-word
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: MBH 219


Please see the attached poster for more information. We appreciate your support. Thank you!


Sincerely,

Cordelia Ross & Louisa Michl

But I still have to say that I used the term correctly!! I have done nothing wrong!

Day 55: A Note of Appreciation from the Rich

Feeling like a refugee
Listening to the running copy machines nearby
It's 1:46 PM
I'm in the Main Library

A Note of Appreciation from the Rich
Found by GdK
Author unknown

Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening — instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "Niggers," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.

So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" — without even knowing it.

Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod - Eugene Fields

Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod one night sailed off in a wooden shoe;
Sailed on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going and what do you wish?" the old moon asked the three.
"We've come to fish for the herring fish that live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we" said Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod.

The old moon laughed and he sang a song as they rocked in the wooden shoe.
And the wind that sped them all night long ruffled the waves of dew.
Now the little stars are the herring fish that live in that beautiful sea;
"Cast your nets wherever you wish never afeared are we!"
So cried the stars to the fishermen three - Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod.

So all night long their nets they threw to the stars in the twinkling foam.
Then downward came the wooden shoe bringing the fishermen home.
Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed as if it could not be.
And some folks say twas a dream they dreamed of sailing that misty sea.
But I shall name you the fishermen three - Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod.

Now Winkin' and Blinkin' are two little eyes and Nod is a little head.
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies is a wee ones trundle bed.
So close your eyes while mother sings of the wonderful sights that be.
And you shall see those beautiful things as you sail on the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three - Winkin' Blinkin' and Nod.

Day 54.9: If

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, she learns to fight.
If children live with fears, they learn to be apprehensive.
If a child lives with pity, she learns to feel sorry for herself.
If a child lives with jealousy, he learns to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn to be confident.
If a child learns with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with praise, she learns to be appreciative.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with recognition, she learns to have a goal.
If children live with fairness, they learn what justice is.
If a child lives with honesty, she learns what truth is.
If a child lives with security,
he learns to have faith in himself and in those about him.
If children live with friendliness,
they learn that the world is a great place in which to live.

-The Watchman-Examiner

Night 54: Anger and love have no limits...

A small narrative to inspire you...

While Dad was polishing his new car, his 4 yr old son picked up a stone & started scratching lines on the other side of it. In his anger, Dad took the child's hand & hit it many times, not realizing he was using a wrench. At the hospital, his child asked him "Dad when will my fingers grow back?"

Dad was so hurt, he didn't say anything. He went back to his car and kicked it a lot of times. Sitting back, he looked at the scratches; the child wrote "I LOVE YOU DAD"

Anger and love have no limits.
Pass on a blessing to someone you know.
Say hi, wave, and smile at a passer-by.

Use a Trust-O-Meter to Find Dependable People

By Martha Beck from O, The Oprah Magazine, March 2009

I'm writing this in the African bush, where I've just watched five lions dismantling a dead buffalo, a hungry leopard stalking impala, and several baboons snitching part of my own breakfast when my back was turned.

No matter how faulty your trust-o-meter, it's never too late to debug the system.

Out here, my safety depends on the knowledge, courage, and selflessness of just a few human beings. Some of these people I know well; others I've barely met.

We are of various colors and creeds, sharing only a conflict-riddled ancestral history. Yet I feel safer at this moment than I once felt in my suburban American bedroom.

It's not that I'm blind to life's fragility or the dangers around me. It's just that I possess a gift offered by many mistake-filled years: At my age, I have a pretty good idea what and whom to trust.

It's because I've learned to depend on a handy little inner mechanism -- you've got one too. Call it a "trust-o-meter," a bit of hardware preinstalled on your hard drive the day you arrived, tiny and vulnerable, from the stork factory.

Ever since, your trust-o-meter has been programmed up the wazoo, first by caregivers, then by you yourself. If your inner software is working well, your trust-o-meter is guiding you safely through life's many hazards. If it isn't, you smash into one disappointment or betrayal after another.

The good news is that no matter how faulty your trust-o-meter, it's never too late to debug the system. Trust me on that

Or not.

Read this -- then you make that call.

Step 1: Testing the system

"As soon as you trust yourself," wrote Goethe, "you will know how to live."

To discern between people who might save your life and those who might ruin it, you must be reliable, honest -- in a word, trustworthy -- toward yourself. And we do this far less often than most people realize.

I'm about to reveal one of my favorite life coaching tricks, which I've used on literally thousands of people. In the middle of a speech or coaching session, I'll suddenly say, "Are you comfortable?"

Most people look startled, squint at me as though I'm a few chocolates short of a full box, then assure me that yes, they're comfortable.

"Really?" I'll say, earnestly.

Yes, they insist, getting a bit annoyed, they're totally comfortable.

Then I ask this: "So, if you were alone in your bedroom right now, would you be sitting in the position you're in at this moment?"

It takes them all of 0.03 seconds to answer, "No." But it takes them much longer to come up with the answer to my next question:

"Why not?"

Some people will just sit there blinking, as if I've asked them to explain why they didn't invent spaghetti. It takes them much consternated thinking to come up with the answer -- which is, of course, that the positions in which people sit in public settings are generally much less loose than the positions they adopt when unobserved, in a room designed for rest and relaxation.

In short, they're a bit uncomfortable.

Now, the problem here isn't the discomfort itself -- people can handle a world of hurt if necessary. The problem is that they aren't conscious of their own discomfort, even though it's obvious. They lie to my face in clear daylight, believing they're telling the truth even though they know (and I know...and they know that I know) they're lying.

Do you find that last sentence confusing? Welcome to denial, which, oh, honey, it's true, ain't just a river in Egypt.

The baffling thing about denial is this: You have no idea you're in it. Rather than thinking, "I am now displaying unwarranted trust," you just fee... off. Confused. Maybe a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy. Something seems wrong, and over time, it feels wronger and wronger.

Those of us with badly calibrated trust-o-meters usually think the wrongness must be in us, that if we can somehow think or work or love better, our painful relationships with the alcoholic racist stalkers in our lives will somehow become perfect.

For those of us who want to know if we have defective trust-o-meters, the evidence is blessedly obvious: Our relationships and life situations don't work.

We're lying to ourselves, pretending we're at ease when we know we aren't, so, in the converse of Goethe's dictum, we don't have a clue how to live. We're often rudely awakened, bitterly disappointed, shockingly betrayed.

If this happens to you once, perhaps it's bad luck. If it happens repeatedly, there are bugs in your system. To check, take the Trust Test. If your score indicates that your trust-o-meter functions well, you can stop reading now. But if the quiz reveals a problem, it's time to recalibrate.

Step 2: The scientific method

All child-rearers -- myself among them -- are confused, mistaken, or ignorant about some things, so don't waste time insisting that your parents fix every glitch in your programming.

Just start using the scientific method to reboot your trust-o-meter. This involves three basic steps: making predictions about how the world works, looking for evidence to either support or disconfirm those predictions, and changing your hypotheses in light of what you see to be true.

Start by thinking of someone important to you, and rate your trust in that person on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = lowest possible trust, 5 = highest). Then, evaluate the person by recalling your observations of his or her behavior.

Here are a few obvious questions I've found very helpful in quantifying the trustworthiness of people in my own life. The first three are the "yes" questions; if Person X is completely trustworthy, you'll answer yes to all three. The second three are the "no" questions -- if Person X deserves your trust, the answer to all three will be negative.

The "yes" questions:

1. Does Person X usually show up on time?

2. When Person X says something is going to happen, does it usually happen?

3. When you hear Person X describing an event and then get more information about that event, does the new information usually match Person X's description?

The "no" questions:

4. Have you ever witnessed Person X lying to someone or assuming you'll help deceive a third person?

5. Does Person X sometimes withhold information in order to make things go more smoothly or to avoid conflict?

6. Have you ever witnessed Person X doing something (lying, cheating, being unkind) that he or she would condemn if another person did it?

These questions might seem trivial. They're not. As the saying goes, "the way we do anything is the way we do everything." I'm not saying we have the ultimate power or right to judge others. But if you trust someone whose behavior doesn't pass the six screening questions above, your trust-o-meter may well be misaligned. ...

By the way, if you're now rationalizing Person X's behavior with arguments like "But he means well" or "It's not her fault; she had a terrible childhood," your trust-o-meter is definitely on the fritz.

These are the small lies we use to tell ourselves we're comfortable when we aren't. It's not the end of the world if Person X lies to you. Lying to yourself, on the other hand, can make your life so miserable, the end of the world might be a relief.

Step 3: Learning to trust everyone and everything

So what does it mean to "trust people who aren't trustworthy"? I pondered this earlier today, as I watched the lions devour the buffalo, the leopard attack the impala, the baboons stealing breakfast.

I am very wary of these beasts, but that doesn't mean I don't trust them. I depend on them deeply -- to do what they usually do. Lions and leopards can be trusted to eat animals about my size. Baboons can be trusted to steal food whenever possible. Because I know this, I adapt my behavior to avoid getting eaten or pilfered.

By the same token, if someone in your life pulls in a dismal score on the Trust Test, perpetually failing to keep promises, tell the truth, quit drinking, or show compassion, this is exactly what you can depend on them to keep doing.

Addicts can be trusted to lie. Narcissists can be trusted to backstab. And people who reliably do their best, whose stories check out against your own observations, can be trusted to stay relatively honest and stable.

When you spot faulty programming in your trust-o-meter, you may experience some deep grief. You'll have to acknowledge what you already know, deep down: that your alcoholic dad may never be reliable, that you may have picked an irresponsible partner, that the friend who never supports you probably never will.

You may face some tough choices as your debugged trust-o-meter directs you away from familiar negative patterns and into new behaviors. But as you more accurately predict what will happen, you'll feel a new, growing confidence. Your life will begin to work.

This is why I feel so much safer today, in the bushveld, than I once did in my home. Yes, it's a jungle out here, but it's a jungle everywhere. Life, in fact, is just one big wilderness. But you were born for this wilderness, and you have the instruments to negotiate it safely.

Does that thought feel comfortable? Really, truly comfortable? As soon as it does, you've found your way to the first part of Goethe's promise: You can trust yourself. And because Goethe was a trustworthy person, you can rely on the second part of his promise following automatically. You really will know how to live.

That Dangerous Glee

That Dangerous Glee

We had both had to sacrifice two weeks of pocket money for the cherry bombs. It was our first investment together, and it would be our last.

We took turns throwing the little balls of gunpowder at passing cars. Hiding in the hedge row, we were hysterical little monsters, giggling maniacally every time our tiny bombs met a car wheel and induced a frightened face or honking horn from the bewildered drivers.

Soon, however, something more exciting caught my eye.

A swift dance of gray fur, a darting flash of blue black eyes.

I stretched out my hand. I could not help it, an instinct perhaps. I wanted the mouse to touch me.

But I was so astonished when Little One didn't run away. I had never touched such small, delicate creatures before. He was soft and lovely and had beady eyes and sharp claws that clung to th back of my hand like a friend in need. I couldn't understand why he didn't run away.

Sam hadn't noticed the mouse, but he had used up all the cherry bombs and was already looking for more mischief. He tugged at my sleeve, but I just wanted to stay with my newfound friend.

"Go prank call the Fowlers," I suggested, "I'll meet you at my house in a minute."

But he had already caught sight of my treasure. I tried to push him away, but even at seven, he was already stronger. After a futile struggle, he managed to grab the mouse from my hand as though it were a candy or a toy and not much more.

Sam's eyes were alight with that dangerous childhood glee that knows no bounds. He held the mouse tightly in between his two palms and slowly pressed them together.

I began to feel sick.

Suddenly, he let out a huge scream that made me jump right out of the hedge row and into the road. Sam's left hand was wet and ruby red and in the other hand held the friendly little mouse that was swinging by the tail.

I smiled.

Laughed.

Fell over in the road cackling, and his angry tears only made me happier.

Suddenly, I saw Sam's arm raised.

He wouldn't.

No.

No!

It came crashing down against a tree trunk, smashing the friendly mouse to pieces.

The air became heavy.

Everything was quiet.

We both looked at each other, both aware that something had happened.

That something had changed.

I didn't cry. I just looked at Sam. I knew it was time to go home, away from this monster.

Sam ran after me trying to get my attention but I wouldn't look at him again. I refused to. Behind me, he lay down in the road, promising not to move until I came back and made friends with him.

But I didn't care if he got run over today. I wouldn't. I would refuse to.

I just ran. Ran back through the woods. Ran home.