wall street role model

I love reading about people, especially individuals who I can look up to or admire because they are somehow relevant to me and my future. Maybe because I love receiving and giving advice and counsel...?

Anyway, Sallie Krawcheck is described by some as the most powerful woman on Wall Street, and being fortunate enough to hang out or chat with a few of my Wall Street friends this summer, I have a better idea of what goes on in this financial black hole many of my college friends (and apparently the world's money) disappear into. Working in the office until 4A.M.? Only social life is with office "pals", where it's neck to neck competition? And...A fully paid/furnished pad in the city center with a maid that cleans every week? A six-figure salary right out of college???

Sallie, in this culture, field, galaxy, whatever, has risen to the top and I came across this interesting

interview that was featured in the Wall Street Journal. Something that stuck out to me was this

inherent reason Sallie stated as an explanation why women did not typically raise to higher level positions.

Let's start with the basics, which is the hair and the makeup. Let's assume it's 15 minutes a day. I've gotten up earlier than my husband since the day we've been married; 15 minutes a day, 75 minutes a week, 3,900 minutes a year.

Now you can say, "Well, don't wear makeup." Give me a break. So you start with the hair and the makeup. You then have the fact that women do twice as much of the housework as the guys do. And we do three times the amount of child care.

I've had this great husband without whom I couldn't have done it. So it's learning to have a relationship that's a relationship of equals. My breakthrough moment was when I convinced my husband that when the toddler woke up in the middle of the night and screamed, "Mommy," he actually meant, "Parent of either sex."

And you have to recognize we just get less sleep. And you have to have the stamina to deal with it.

How am I supposed to think of this? Is it OK to be content with the fact that there will always be this inherent inequality (read: the number of hours we sleep), which will discourage women from reaching the top of industry?

Hmph.

Planning before acting

In Thomas Friedman's latest opinion piece, he raises some important points about this debt-ceiling crisis that is before us. First though, I do not agree with his comparison of the US government with a business- they are two different entities who function differently because one is based on the idea of efficiency and profits, whereas the other is fundamentally the opposite in that it is supposed to be a democracy, prioritizing the opinions of its participants versus productivity.

However, Friedman does bring up the important idea that we must have a plan of action before moving forward, regardless of what type of ideology any entity is operating under. He names the five pillars as such:

"Yes, we have developed such a formula over the course of American history, and it is built on five basic pillars: educating the work force up to and beyond whatever technology demands; building the world’s best infrastructure of ports, roads and telecommunications; attracting the world’s most dynamic and high-I.Q. immigrants to enrich our universities and start new businesses; putting together the best regulations to incentivize risk-taking while curbing recklessness (not always perfectly); and funding research to push out the boundaries of science and then let American innovators and venture capitalists pluck off the most promising new ideas for new business."

Something to consider, as we move forward with negotiations and talks about this debt situation, if we are serious about preserving American credibility and integrity in the eyes of the international community.

Role Model in faith

Selections from John Stott's obituary in Christianity Today:

"Stott believed in the mind as a gift from God. In an evangelical world tempted to rely on proof texts and emotive stories, Stott drilled down deep into Scripture to display its power. Many people, hearing Stott preach for the first time, said they had never heard the Bible expounded with such clarity and depth. His passion was to learn what God said, and to let it shape life. Stott's preaching and writing renewed faith in the inspiration of Scripture—not only because he defended it, but because he displayed it."

"Here then are two instructions, 'love your neighbor' and 'go and make disciples.' What is the relation between the two? Some of us behave as if we thought them identical, so that if we have shared the gospel with somebody, we consider we have completed our responsibility to love him. But no. The Great Commission neither explains, nor exhausts, nor supersedes the Great Commandment. What it does is to add to the command of neighbor-love and neighbor-service a new and urgent Christian dimension. If we truly love our neighbor, we shall without doubt tell him the Good News of Jesus. But equally, if we truly love our neighbor, we shall not stop there."

Stott's skill as a diplomat was never more in evidence, as he chaired potentially fractious meetings, getting people to listen to each others' views. He worked tirelessly behind the scenes to draft and redraft the covenant, finding wording that would capture various points of view without doing violence to any. In the end, the Lausanne Covenant spoke to the moment, expressing a common mission that most delegates could enthusiastically endorse; and it spoke to the future, providing a framework that evangelical groups could use as their basic statement.

"There have been mixed feelings about the West among our leaders," says Ajith Fernando, a Methodist church leader and head of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka. "Sometimes I feel an anger close to racism has arisen in the minds of Christian leaders, out of the sense that Western leaders do not understand the concerns of people in the rest of the world. There is a suspicion that what they want is to fulfill their agenda in our countries—another form of colonialism? With people like John Stott around it was impossible for me to nurture such feelings toward the West. Here was humility personified …. We are grateful that he gave so much time coming to the poorer nations not with some huge program which would impress the whole world, but simply to teach us the Bible."

An outsider's view on John Stott's legacy, another individual I have come to respect, Nicholas Kristof:

Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral.

Yet that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.

Mr. Stott didn’t preach fire and brimstone on a Christian television network. He was a humble scholar whose 50-odd books counseled Christians to emulate the life of Jesus — especially his concern for the poor and oppressed — and confront social ills like racial oppression and environmental pollution.

But in reporting on poverty, disease and oppression, I’ve seen so many others. Evangelicals are disproportionately likely to donate 10 percent of their incomes to charities, mostly church-related. More important, go to the front lines, at home or abroad, in the battles against hunger, malaria, prison rape, obstetric fistula, human trafficking or genocide, and some of the bravest people you meet are evangelical Christians (or conservative Catholics, similar in many ways) who truly live their faith.

Why does all this matter?

Because religious people and secular people alike do fantastic work on humanitarian issues — but they often don’t work together because of mutual suspicions. If we could bridge this “God gulf,” we would make far more progress on the world’s ills.

And that would be, well, a godsend.

Christianity today has lost a great, faithful, and true leader of our faith.

V for vintage

I'm absolutely in love with all things classic cars, prince of bel-air hairstyles, and love. Two music videos that I have become obsessed with transport me into vintage worlds I so wish I was a part of- the clothes, the dance-offs, the adolescence, the wind whipping through my hair...

not a care in the world.

that's where I want to be.

Katy Perry: Teenage Dream

Nelly Furtado: The Night is Young

disclaimer: just to clarify, I do not condone making out with someone you meet that night, having sex with your teenage crush, or any other racy elements these music videos (esp. katy perry's) have gained the reputation for. I am condoning more 80's styles, dance parties, and amazing times with friends.

just saying :)

Chicken Bruschetta Salad

I am at work, and I feel that this salad is good enough to distract me from making nametags and writing bios and describe this delicious salad. Basically, it is what it sounds like (surprise!). It's a bruschetta in a salad, with some chicken tossed into it. Who would have thought bruschetta without being plopped on a delicious piece of toasted french bread would be SO good??
In this case, good means fresh, light, and still filling. So so delicious.

Cosi, you've done it again.

Fall is here

Now when the time of fruit and grain is come,
When apples hang above the orchard wall,
And from a tangle by the roadside stream
A scent of wild grapes fills the racy air,
Comes Autumn with her sun-burnt caravan,
Like a long gypsy train with trappings gay
And tattered colors of the Orient,
Moving slow-footed through the dreamy hills.
The woods of Wilton, at her coming, wear
Tints of Bokhara and of Samarcand;
The maples glow with their Pompeian red,
The hickories with burnt Etruscan gold;
And while the crickets fife along her march,
Behind her banners burns the crimson sun.

"Autumn" by Bliss Carman first appear in the Atlantic in 1916

The DMT experience

A DMT (hallucinogen drug) lab was found in a freshman dorm.

Here is a description/account of what happens when one takes DMT:

What can be said of DMT as an experience and in relation to our own spiritual emptiness? Does it offer us answers? Do the short-acting tryptamines offer an analogy to the ecstasy of the partnership society before Eden became a memory? And if they do, then what can we say about it?

What has impressed me repeatedly during my many glimpses into the world of the hallucinogenic indoles, and what seems generally to have escaped comment, is the transformation of narrative and language. The experience that engulfs one's entire being as one slips beneath the surface of the DMT ecstasy feels like the penetration of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before one's eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged, as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the furnace of one's birth. Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data?

Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of one's own infancy, and of wonder, wonder and more wonder. It is an audience with the alien nuncio. In the midst of this experience, apparently at the end of human history, guarding gates that seem surely to open on the howling maelstrom of the unspeakable emptiness between the stars, is the Aeon.

The Aeon, as Heraclitus presciently observed, is a child at play with colored balls. Many diminutive beings are present there--the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago. The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language, they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in.

This is not the mercurial world of the UFO, to be invoked from lonely hilltops; this is not the siren song of lost Atlantis wailing through the trailer courts of crack-crazed America. DMT is not one of our irrational illusions. What we experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby dimension-- frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send fearless experts, whatever that may come to mean, to explore and to report on what they find.

What strikes me the most is the first sentence. This experience is a sort of spiritual one. And I guess speaks to those who are searching for this experience, this fulfillment. And maybe that's why religion, in this growing impersonalized world is becoming a popular pursuit and more potent force in all things international. Oh, and drugs, too.