Minor Changes and a New Link

It was time to do a little house cleaning.  Seeing as how Janie and Solje hadn't updated their blog in a year or so, I finally decided to "delist" it from the friends sites list.  In the meantime another friend just started his blog "Roaming Oldies Fly Fishing" (Fly Fishing Bums with a Touch of Gray).

Ken and Diane just completed retiring, and are off on their post retirement adventure:

W e are embarking on a long awaited “Bucket List” trip later this week; dragging our camper, the “Tin Turtle”, and fly-fishing our way west. There is no particular schedule and no final destination…just a long series of adventures exploring new rivers and re-visiting old favorites. If all goes well, the trip will wind through Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, AZ and New Mexico…maybe.

I've known Ken and Diane for a number of years now, and we shared the harrowing experience on the Bay informally known as "Horkfest."  (IIRC, that's Ken and Diane in the yellow rainsuits). Ken is a talented, actually professional, photographer, and of course, a dyed in the wool, ascot-wearing fly fisherman.  Diane also fishes, and is the quiet one of the pair.

They promise:

Where we’ve fished and what flies worked

Best places for DIY fishing

Fly fishing tips

Explore favorite rivers and streams

Photography

Recommended accommodations based on our experiences

What to see off the beaten path and in the cool out of the way places (not the usual tourist stuff).

I'm jealous, and I wish them well, and look forward to following their exploits.

Now, I just have to find something to do with the background; I'm tired of the fireworks.

The Colorado Shootings

For my two or three regular readers, my apologies for the light blogging, and not commenting on this already.  However, one advantage of working is that stories often get a chance to take shape before I get an opportunity to comment on them, and this can lead to **gasp** almost having a few facts before it's time to put thoughts into electrons.  In this case, the lapse was even greater because of family obligations/privileges that came before blogging.

I suppose it's possible that someone, sometime, from somewhere odd reads this without knowing the facts as they've unfolded, so here's a brief summary of the facts:

Late Thursday night, at a first screening of the new Batman Movie "Dark Knight Rises", a man later identified as James Holmes, of Aurora, Colorado, sneaked out the backdoor of the theater, which he propped open, returned with a number of guns and tear gas, and proceeded to shoot as many people as possible. Twelve people are dead and 58 injured (at this point). He was apprehended in the alley behind the studio, apparently without much resistance, and admitted to the shootings, claiming to be "The Joker".  His hair was dyed red.  Upon entering his apartment, it was found booby trapped with explosives and chemical devices, and police have not fully cleared them at this time.

James Holmes is a graduate student in neurosciences at the University of Colorado, where he is/was in the process of withdrawing (I think we can consider this effectively complete). There seem to be no credible reports of any previous run ins with law enforcement, other than a speeding ticket, and no reports of violence or threats of violence to family, neighbors, fellow students or faculty. Neighbors report him as a pleasant person:

"He seemed to have a good demeanor," Parkman said. "The news reports you hear about him, it's as if people are talking about one person in San Diego and one in Colorado. Who he is now is not who he was in San Diego."

although one high-school friend reported that he had a penchant for rooting for the bad guy.

He was a good student as well:

Holmes graduated in the spring of 2010 with a degree in neuroscience from the University of California-Riverside, where he was remembered as an outstanding student who attended on a merit-based scholarship.

"He was at the top of the top," said Chancellor Timothy White at a hastily called news conference. "He really distinguished himself."

although, he was reportedly upset at being unable to find a job in his field.

He purchased his guns and ammunition legally, starting in May of this year, purchasing the four guns (an AR15, a Shotgun, and two Glock pistols) at two stores in Colorado, and had accumulated a large amount of ammunition, approximately 3,000 rounds, or two weeks of practice for Ted...

No specific motive has been offered for his deeds.  At some level you have to grant that mental illness is involved; people with normal brains simply don't do things like this.  Unemployment after a brilliant undergraduate career is certainly disappointing, but hardly sufficient grounds to shoot up a theater full of random and innocent people.  If it were, there would be thousands of such shootings annually, particularly in the current economic climate.  The Batman and Joker connection would seem to indicate that some seriously delusional behavior going on, but unlike say Jared Loughner, no one (with the possible exception of his mother) appears to have seen any previous signs of it.

At some point, you simply have to allow for the possibility of evil in addition to the apparent mental problems.  Is the evil a result of the mental problems, or is it an independent personality development.  Can the mental problems be relieved or at least lessened by treatment, and if so, will the evil go with them or remain behind?

Now, for the "other" things that happened after the shooting.

ABC news immediately covered itself in disgrace when long time correspondent Brian Ross breathlessly reported to George Stuffingevelopes on the Today Show that a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado had a page on a Tea Party Patriots website.  (Aurora has a population of about 300,000 and the statistic suggest up to 25 or more Jim or James Holmes).  Clearly, Ross had been fishing for evidence that the shooter was a right wing extremist of some sort, and had an orgasm when he discovered (or more likely was tipped) to this.  That Jim Holmes turned out to be a 52  year old Hispanic law enforcement officer completely innocent of any involvement.  Over the course of the day, however, he received death threats.  This earned Ross the Title of "America's Wrongest Reporter" by Gawker (I guess in the "it takes one to know one" sort of spirit).

ABC has admitted the error, and apologized (well sort of).

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect," ABC News said in a statement. "ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."

This is not Brian Ross's first brush with ignominious reporting.  He was involved in the affair in which NBC reporters arranged for GM trucks to be rigged with explosives to start fires at staged crash for Dateline NBC.  GM sued and NBC settled, and subsequently Ross and others lost their jobs. He was almost immediately picked up by ABC.

Keeping the car theme, a Brian Ross report on sudden acceleration by Toyotas was found to contain staged footage of a tachometer redlining (in a car parked in a garage). Ross was one of several journalist who linked the 2011 anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda (we know it to be the work of a lone researcher today).  He accused Republican Speaker of the House Denny Hastert of connections to the Jack Abramoff corruption scandals, which the Justice Departement (and Denny Hasteret of course) denied, and which were never pursued.  He is reported to have rushed Michelle Bachmann at a campaign event, ignoring requests to stay back and forcing her guards to man handle him.  He whined like a baby:

Ross said he'd only been treated like that before "mostly by Mafia people.

There is really no excuse for Brian Ross to be employed in the news business at this point.  One has to presume anything he reports on to be tainted.

The usual suspects, gun control advocates such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York Daily News, have seized on this news to push gun control.  Michael, you already have strict gun control in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  How's that working out?

In short, a bad day all around for truth, justice and the American Way.

Some Tough News From the Left Coast

My younger brother, Ted, sometimes co-blogger and gun blogger at "A Man, A Dog and A Gun" has some troubling news:

There is no nice or fancy way of saying this.

Thursday, July 12th, my wife received the results of the biopsy.

She has breast cancer.

It is very early. The first “Needle Biopsy” found “Abnormal” cells but her doctor and the specialist wanted to be sure so a biopsy was scheduled for last Friday and the results came back.

After talking with the specialist Monika has decided that with her age/lifestyle/etc she was going to go for a double mastectomy and reconstruction using her own fat (I did offer some of mine…. I may have mentioned something about Dolly Parton while doing so. Monika declined however.) Acording to the spcialist this should offer the best chance of it NEVER coming back as well as reducing or elimiating any need for long term follow up.

Trying to get it scheduled for 3 weeks from now.

We are wishing Ted and Monika and the rest of their family the best possible results. Your best wishes are appreciated as well.

The "Ring of Fire" Derecho

A lot of us just went through the effects of a Meteorological phenomenon called a derecho, defined as:

a widespread and long-lived, violent convectively induced straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms in the form of a squall line usually taking the form of a bow echo. Derechos blow in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to a gust front, except that the wind is sustained and generally increases in strength behind the "gust" front.

Over at Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts, a weatherman by profession, has a post up explaining derechos, with a couple of neat graphics.  First, a radar composite showing the June 29 derecho from its origin near Chicago, to its arrival at the Chesapeake Bay.

The traditional definition of a derecho is a thunderstorm complex that produces a damaging wind swath of at least 240 miles (about 400 km), featuring a concentrated area of convectively-induced wind gusts exceeding 50 kts (58 mi/h, or about 93 km/hr). Some studies add further criteria, such as a requirement that no more than 2-3 hours separate any two successive wind reports. Derechos typically possess a high or rapidly increasing forward speed. In addition, they have a distinctive appearance on radar (known as a bow echo) with several unique features, such as the rear inflow notch and bookend vortices, and usually manifest two or more downbursts.

He explains how, although you likely have not heard the term before, they are not an uncommon weather event, along with a history of some of the more damaging derechos in US history. I for one, am happy that me region is in the region expecting 1 derecho per 4 years as opposed to, say 4 in 3 years.

Major derechos get names, much like Hurricanes, and this one has been named the "Ring of Fire."

There is also an an excellent animated video of progressive radar images as it traveled across the country:

A Spin Around the Garden

I went out a little after lunch today to pick up some of the debris the "Super Derecho" (yes, it's new word for me too; I wonder how it's pronounced?)  left on our lawn, and brought the camera.  I was pleasantly surprised to find another Great Spangled Fritillary on the Purple Cone flowers.  They seem to attract a remarkable number of pollinators and nectar sippers.

I find it hard to get a good shot of the top of the wings; they seem to spend most of their time with their wings folded up, just to frustrate me.  But I did get this shot of it leaving the flower, that's sort of in focus, and shows most of the upper pattern.

These are Cleomes from the seeds I won in Laurence Meade's contest to identify the seed capsule over at the Althouse blog.  We have Cleomes that we allow to reseed from year to year (in fact, you would have to be ruthless to root them out entirely), but we were hoping these might be a little different.

And in fact, they are.  Our original Cleomes (on the right) are much farther along at this point, and much taller.  I guess in Wisconsin you want to be sure spring has really sprung before you put much effort into growing.  Meade's Cleomes are also a darker shade of purple than ours.

Another butterfly, the Red Admiral, on our deck.  Top view...

... and the undersides of the wings.  A very cooperative butterfly.

A Very Deceiving Night

A few months ago I received an E-mail from a reader who had seen one of my beach posts containing a mirage photo (at right):

The Beach, 2/27/11 Edition 

He asked if he could use the photo in a book he was writing about mirages, and offered to pay for it.  Of course, I was so flattered to have anyone read it and appreciate it, that I offered it to him for free, and even offered to send him the "original" unshrunken version if it would help.

Oh, and he told me that I had misidentified it when I changed my mind and called it an "inferior" type mirage.  Oh well...

A few days ago, he sent me a link to a free copy of the E-book "A Very Deceiving Night" by Tim Maltin.  Here is a link to the site to buy it (it wouldn't be very gracious to give away the free link he sent me, would it).

It is a book about the sinking of the Titanic, and the role that mirages and unusual atmospheric conditions at the site of the wreck may have helped cause the collision with the iceberg (a mirage like the one above may have concealed the iceberg until it was too late to change course), and made the tragedy worse by preventing the California, a nearby ship from recognizing the Titanic and coming to her aid.  I believe he has made a very convincing case that the mirages played a critical role in the events of that night.

The book draws extensively on the testimony of the survivors of the Titanic, and of the officers and crew of the rescue ships, as well as the ships records to show how the miraging conditions arose, and how they likely affected both the conditions that led to the collision with the iceberg and the rescue.  It also has many pictures of wild and wonderful mirages.

If you are at all interested in the Titanic, or mirages and similar phenomena, you should take a look at this.

Anyway, this was a very pleasant result of blogging.  Thanks Tim!

Good News for Health Nuts

A summary of recent research into the effect of life style on health:

High-fat diets are good for you.

Low-carbohydrate diets that require patients to fill up on fats won't lead to harder arteries, researchers say -- at least not in the short-term.

Those who lost 10 pounds after curbing their carb intake had no differences in arterial stiffness than those on a more traditional, low-fat diet, Dr. Kerry Stewart of Johns Hopkins and colleagues reported at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in Denver.

High-fat diets help you lose weight.
 

The Atkins diet may have proved itself after all: A low-carb diet and a Mediterranean-style regimen helped people lose more weight than a traditional low-fat diet in one of the longest and largest studies to compare the dueling weight-loss techniques.

A bigger surprise: The low-carb diet improved cholesterol more than the other two. Some critics had predicted the opposite.

Steak and lard and bacon are good eats.

Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified. If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, like olive oil, are relatively good for you: they tend to elevate your good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (H.D.L.), and lower your bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (L.D.L.), at least in comparison to the effect of carbohydrates. While higher L.D.L. raises your heart-disease risk, higher H.D.L. reduces it...

But it gets even weirder than that. Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it's true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.

Low salt diets increase the risk of death.

A new study found that low-salt diets increase the risk of death from heart attacks and strokes and do not prevent high blood pressure,...

The investigators found that the less salt people ate, the more likely they were to die of heart disease — 50 people in the lowest third of salt consumption (2.5 grams of sodium per day) died during the study as compared with 24 in the medium group (3.9 grams of sodium per day) and 10 in the highest salt consumption group (6.0 grams of sodium per day). And while those eating the most salt had, on average, a slight increase in systolic blood pressure — a 1.71-millimeter increase in pressure for each 2.5-gram increase in sodium per day — they were no more likely to develop hypertension.

Diet soda makes you fat.

For one study, researchers at the center followed 474 diet soda drinkers, 65 to 74 years of age, for almost 10 years. They found that diet soda drinkers' waists grew 70 percent more than non-drinkers. Specifically, drinking two or more diet sodas a day busted belt sizes five times more than people who avoided the stuff entirely...

"Artificial sweeteners could have the effect of triggering appetite but unlike regular sugars they don't deliver something that will squelch the appetite," Sharon Fowler, obesity researcher at UT Health Science Center at San Diego and a co-author on both of these studies, told the Daily Mail. She also said sweeteners could inhibit brain cells that make you feel full.

Salt helps your body get rid of bad cholesterol.

Danish researchers report in the American Journal of Hypertension that reducing sodium consumption led to a 1% drop in blood pressure in people who had normal pressure readings, and a 3.5% drop in those with hypertension. But other changes may offset those benefits: people who cut dietary salt also saw a 2.5% increase in cholesterol levels and a 7% boost in triglycerides. Like high blood pressure, elevated levels of cholesterol and triglycerides are risk factors for heart disease. Excessive triglycerides can also contribute to diabetes.

 And now, exercise may increase heart risk.

By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why.

The problem with studies of exercise and health, researchers point out, is that while they often measure things like blood pressure or insulin levels, they do not follow people long enough to see if improvements translate into fewer heart attacks or longer lives. Instead, researchers infer that such changes lead to better outcomes — something that may or may not be true.

Some critics have noted that there is no indication that those who had what Dr. Bouchard is calling an adverse response to exercise actually had more heart attacks or other bad health outcomes. But Dr. Bouchard said if people wanted to use changes in risk factors to infer that those who exercise are healthier, they could not then turn around and say there is no evidence of harm when the risk factor changes go in the wrong direction.

There you go, eat right, live well; die anyway. Tomorrow's menu, bacon wrapped fillet (heavily salted) chased by a double margarita, with salt.

Embellished from a post by rdbrewer at Aces.

All Zombie Apocalypse All the Time!

At least that's what the media is seeing.  First, we'll start with an outbreak closer to home:

Maryland zombie apocalypse: motive for cannibal murder hard to narrow down

The zombie apocalypse trend continues with a murder-cannibal incident in Harford, Maryland when a student killed another man who had lived with him and his family. The horrific incident happened sometime between last Friday -- when he was reported missing by the suspect's father -- and Tuesday night.

37-year-old Alexander Kinyua confessed to killing and eating the heart and a portion of the brains from 21-year-old Morgan State University student, Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie. He had been living with the Kinyua family for the last year.

Next, the CDC found it necessary to deny the existence of zombies

Over the years the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a couple of tongue-in-cheek "zombie warnings," which really are just disaster-preparedness stunts. But on Thursday, the agency made it official: Zombies don't exist.

"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms)," wrote agency spokesman David Daigle in an email to The Huffington Post.

Nevertheless, recent incidents in which humans reportedly ate human flesh have the Internet in a firestorm, with "zombie apocalypse" being Google's third most popular search term by Friday morning.

Then stray body parts started appearing in Canada

Authorities launched an international manhunt Thursday for a Canadian man suspected of dismembering an acquaintance and mailing body parts to political party headquarters.

Canadian police believe Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, who was born as Eric Clinton Newman and also uses the alias Vladimir Romanov, has fled the country, prompting Interpol, the global police agency, to add his name to its most wanted list. The self-described porn star posting a video of the killing and dismemberment online.

"We believe he filmed himself," said Montreal police Commander Ian Lafreniere. "It's gross." "This is a very deranged person," he said. "He is looking for attention and he got it but not in a positive way."

Magnotta knew the victim, whom Lafreniere said he could not identify. He said the headless body was too mutilated to make any immediate identification.

I don't know why the media would talk about zombies in reference to this episode; cutting people up and mailing the parts to political parties is hardly in the zombie behavior repertoire according to either the Original Haitian model or the Classic Hollywood George Romero model. Haitian zombies (not undead at all, but rather people enslaved by evil voodoo practitioners using drugs, were mostly farm workers, and George Romero zombies exist to eat humans (but never other zombies; apparently they taste bad) especially their brains, without any calculation whatever, and pass on the infection, but never mind, we have a meme to push, and by God, we will force every horror we can into that mold!

And finally legal blogger Ann Althouse blames us (and herself by extension) for the events:

In fact, I wonder if the people who delight in japing about a zombie uprising bear some responsibility for the crazy people who actually do try to eat brains?

I'm thinking back to the clumsy efforts to assign blame for the Tucson massacre. Some people are insane. But why do they act out their insanity in the particular way that they do? What signals do they pick up and distort? You can't really blame the sane people who talk and distort and lie about things as they operate more or less competently in this place called reality that most of us inhabit. And yet... why are we hearing so much about cannibals these days?

It's difficult to imagine that the people actually committing these acts are really in such a fine touch with reality that they're acting out any kind of "zombie fantasy".  In my opinion such events happen sporadically in society.  Since the events are probably largely independent (happening without reference to each other) any apparent clustering of the events is by chance, and once the meme is out there, almost anything that can be pulled into the storyline, will be.  And that will reinforce the perception that it's happening more often.

As always, thanks to Wombat-Socho for including this (and the others) in Rule 5 Sunday "Train in Vain" at The Other McCain.

If You Don't read Anything Else Today

Read This:

Convicted Bomber Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert, and Their Campaign of Political Terrorism

if that peaks your interest:

Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying

keep following links.

Friday, May 25th Is “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day”

500 K!

Sometime in the last couple of days the hit counter went past 500,000. While most of you came for the pretty girls, I hope some of the rest of you found something else interesting.

Hopefully I'll have something from Skagway before the ship gets out range of the cell towers this evening.

Lite Blogging Alert

Georgia and I are off on a trip.  Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pictures from the IPad along the way.  Maybe you can figure out where they're from.

Hostile Iguana, Baby!

The Power of the Internet

I've seen the video before, of course, but some of the back story here, and the outcome of the video is new to me:

Musician Dave Carroll had difficulty with United Airlines. United’s baggage handlers damaged his $3500 custom guitar, and he spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages.

During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, Dave stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for YouTube exposing United’s lack of cooperation. The manager responded: “Good luck with that one, pal.”

Dave shot and posted his video on YouTube. The video has since received over 11 million hits. (You’ll soon see why!)
United Airlines contacted Dave and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video.

Naturally Dave’s response was: “Good luck with that one, pal.”

The resulting video, made for $150.



From the book "United Breaks Guitars".

Four days after its launching, the first million people had watched “United Breaks Guitars.” United stock went down 10 percent, shedding $180 million in value; Dave appeared on outlets as diverse as CNN and The View. United relented. And throughout the business world, people began to realize that “efficient” but inhuman customer-service policies had an unseen cost—brand destruction by frustrated, creative, and socially connected customers.

 Seen at Volohk's Conspiracy.

Live Blogging the Commute

We signed the IPad up for wireless last night, and now I'm testing my abilities to blog away from the home network.

Oh look, a blurry picture from the backseat of a moving SUV!

Trying New IPad Blogging Software

Well, I tried BlogPress, but I wasn't very happy, so I just installed Blogsy, and I'm giving it a try.

A picture of a sparrow of some sort in the garden from last week. I figured out how to get that in, and mounted on the left, but it feels pretty clumsy. Damn Blogger for not supporting the IPad!



It's clearly more capable (you can even edit HTML), but it is not as good as the compose mode in Blogger. Hopefully, I'll get better at it.

Where Are My Thoughts?

Clearly, I've needed a break from thinking. Result: zero blogging.

I've been mega busy. Like whoa. It's what I needed- 3 jobs and 2 creative projects that I absolutely love. Any socializing happens within these activities, as I don't have time to do much else. The dishes and the messages and the to-do lists pile up, but who's around to notice?

So I haven't been "thinking" a whole lot. I needed the break. Enough analyzing situations for a while, enough jotting down every brilliant realization, enough waking up in the middle of the night to post something deep and meaningful.

Instead, I've been a far more active facebook status and twitter updater. The word count restriction and informality of the venues have actually liberated me from my busy brain. Just have a little fun, Larissa. I can't sit down and write a blog that would be acceptable to me (present example excluded), but 140 characters to tell the world about how amazing this vegan chocolate cake is (more on that to come)? Yes, I can do that.

I usually believe that slowing down is a good thing. But this time, speeding up has been the better thing. I needed less time to think about things. I needed to just go out and live.

So, if you've been wondering where I've been (and I hope you have!), I've been out and about, doing and living, creating and being. And for now, it's pretty great.

The Year of Healing and Blogging

I am back to the place where, a year ago, I began this blog. I came to Brazil at the end of last year to recover and heal. My heart had been broken, twice over, in that past year, and I was in pieces. I had just gone through my first semester out of school, ever, and it had been traumatically difficult to adjust. I had not acted in months, I did not have a job, and I did not see any future for my acting career. My soul was famished. I was sick of New York, sick of winter, sick of myself, and sick of pain. I came home to my parent's house in Sao Paulo and did not know if I would return to New York.

On the day that I arrived, I started going to an acting workshop. Even though the class was nothing extraordinary, I was thrilled to be among actors, and I felt life moving through me again. I was at my parent's home, eating fresh food and being taken care of. My mind, cluttered with negativity and sadness, had the space to calm down.

Being at home in such a vulnerable state led to an overflow of memories and nostalgia, which in turn gave me an appreciation for what I've been through, what I've survived, and who I am now. In an effort to work through the jumble of past joys and traumas, I started this blog. It seemed like a small thing to do, sharing some personal things in a public forum, but it provided me with an analytical narrative of my own life, which otherwise existed only in the pages of countless diaries. Sitting in my childhood room was a nest of inspiration and the blog posts seemed to happen involuntarily, almost effortlessly. I saw the time-line of my life, I wrote about it, and I started to heal.

Some people wrote to me to tell me they were reading my blog, and that they really appreciated it, which fueled me to keep it going. I made friends and reconnected with long lost friends because of the blog. I suddenly had pen-pals and a new connection to fellow bloggers. My world was growing.

Two months later, with a strengthened soul, body, and heart, I returned to New York. It greeted me with its brutal February winter and stubborn sameness. There was no acting career waiting for me when I walked into my apartment. The men who had hurt me still had the power to affect me. My surroundings were no different than I had left them, but I was changed. Things were not suddenly easier, but I carried with me the invaluable realization that I was not easily defeated.

This past year hasn't been easy either, but I have to acknowledge my achievements and growth. I acted in four plays. Although I hungered for more, those were all undeniably fulfilling experiences in their own way. One of them was my very own production, a first of its kind, and it was a big success. I discovered that in addition to acting, I also love directing and producing. I found a job where I got to write, and even though I was mostly miserable in it, I learned a lot about myself. My heart recovered, I started dating again, and I met someone really special. He has filled me with warmth, and I'm smiling again.

Here I am now, at the end of another year, and I am still recovering and healing. There are still reasons to doubt that dreams can come true and that love is always worth the risk. My body is still complaining, my heart hesitant, and my soul searching for its life force.

But that, I have started to accept, is life. Dreaming, wanting, hoping, falling, breaking, healing, standing, fighting, believing, doubting, knowing, searching, and, when I get chance, just being. That's the muck that makes the masterpiece.

I look at this blog, a year later, and I see it for what it is:

This is my life. These are my stories, and I am lucky to have them.

Thank you to all who follow, and happy holidays, from a grateful Little Larissa.