tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68983432009-08-04T12:23:52.470-04:00A window also reflects...Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-33224073877903519482008-07-28T13:16:00.004-04:002008-07-28T13:21:52.980-04:00

I've decided that I get all the public exposure I want or need over at Suburban Guerrilla, where I post intermittently - sometimes more intermittently than others. As for my personal life, it's gone personal. If you are a friend or acquaintance and want an invitation to my private blog about my personal life or directions to other places I may be found online, please email me directly.Otherwise,

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-60742385495338710512008-04-23T16:05:00.003-04:002008-04-23T16:28:04.325-04:00

Wow, two in one day! (see you in six months).I'm posting here because there are two weeks left in the semester and it makes far more sense to be here procrastinating than it does to sit down and write all those papers.It does. Trust me.Writing here helps to...uh...warm up my writing muscles before diving into that paper all about the hell that was observing a 5th grade class for two days. And it

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-79669486398057730632008-04-23T15:59:00.002-04:002008-04-23T16:04:10.587-04:00

I was looking for one of those neat mats made from recycled plastic to use camping this summer, when I discovered this on ebay today: a rug crocheted from plastic bags. Hmm, more economical, less carbon shipping it around. Not as cool, but, well, it's to camp on. Guess it's time to crack open that "how to crochet" book collecting dust in the corner...

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-40912998215886771902007-11-15T14:42:00.000-05:002007-12-09T22:30:43.597-05:00

Ever since I read this article about the ubiquity of plastic molecules throughout the ocean, my entire relationship to consumption has changed. I cannot look at a piece of plastic without thinking of it winding up in the ocean killing creatures at every level on the food chain.In 2001, in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, we published the results of our survey and the analysis we had made of the

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-84990781235938029642007-07-20T10:09:00.000-04:002007-07-20T10:11:46.413-04:00

Dear Rep. Pelosi,I am writing to implore you to impeach.With his latest executive order, Bush has gone too far. Again. You are in a position where you can stop him. The only way I can stop him is to implore you and the other representatives to do so. In doing nothing, you are letting down not only every of us who worked so hard to elect democrats last November, but the entire American

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-8046583496061724032007-07-17T13:50:00.001-04:002007-07-17T14:06:05.563-04:00

Via Suburban Guerrilla, the horrible paradox of federally mandated HPV vaccination:Each vaccine shot will cost $120 through private insurance, or $96 through governmental programs buying at the federal rate. Those that have insurance may only need to pay a co-payment if it is offered by their provider and those on government assistance programs might not pay at all, but those without insurance

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-58249531252782247462007-07-13T10:19:00.001-04:002007-07-13T10:26:33.361-04:00

I went to Portland, OR a couple weeks ago & my best friend turned me onto the repurposing movement, in which you take something used and make something completely different out of it. She showed me clothing made out of multiple cut up t-shirts sewn together & restructured into something completely different. I never considered it as a movement - my parents built their hippie house in the woods

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-26872516009050461532007-03-16T13:53:00.000-04:002007-03-16T13:59:34.590-04:00

(cross-posted at Suburban Guerrilla)I have a soft spot for historic preservation.Our seventy-five year old house has pink and blue tiled kitchen walls that were drywalled over by some previous owner, presumably for the sake of sanity and the protection of household retina. But in the name of restoration, I ache to remove the drywall and restore the tiles no matter how nauseating a pastel pink and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-48596338235531484732007-03-16T11:29:00.000-04:002007-03-16T11:32:45.691-04:00

I've had it. I'm sick and tired of giving and giving with no sign of a return anytime in the near future. I feel used and discarded, and I've had enough - I'm leaving.My career, that is.I wanted to be a massage therapist from the moment I received my first massage, back when I was a twenty-three year old advertising assistant, scraping by on twelve thousand a year and copious employer abuse for

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1169750192733433952007-01-25T13:31:00.000-05:002007-01-25T13:36:32.746-05:00

I'm part of the bench-warming team for Susie at Suburban Guerrilla, which leaves me zero time for posting here. Come by and visit - there's lots more posting - mostly political, but with some personal stuff in case you're just trying to keep up with my life. Like, for example, I got engaged. The rest of the team is worth reading, too. There's a reason why SG is my daily can't miss news stop.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1165602089584193412006-12-08T13:14:00.000-05:002006-12-08T15:21:54.743-05:00

Last night I decided that I'm not really the sort of person who suffers for beauty. I wear minimal make-up, I don't pluck, heck I can't even be bothered to shave for months on end - why did I think that I would not mind tending to five bleeding holes in my head?The answer is simple: I didn’t know I would have five bleeding holes in my head.See, when I went to my initial consult with Dr.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1165516913354027112006-12-07T13:38:00.000-05:002006-12-07T13:41:53.400-05:00

It all started in October, as we were dressing for my boss' wedding. I was putting in my contacts, because my glasses aren't suitably styled for formal occasions, and touched the mole on my eyelid as I raised it to insert my right contact lens."Man, I hate that thing," I mutter to myself."You DO?" asks the S.O., intruding on my internal conversation. "I always thought it didn't bother you."It

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1156906065465316492006-08-29T22:16:00.000-04:002006-08-29T22:49:53.436-04:00

It's not that I have nothing better to do than sit around watching for dirt on Wal-Mart. Really. It's just that they make it so. darn. easy. I'd suggest they change their name to "Target" if there weren't trademark issues.So I'm checking my email one last time tonight, in hopes that someone at Burning Man has developed an email teleportation device and decided at random to try it out on me.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1144432784235282652006-04-07T13:29:00.000-04:002006-04-07T13:59:44.310-04:00

Sweet mother of reason. I know I should be used to this sort of thing by now, but...well, I'm not. I can't be. I need to wake up in the morning with the belief that human life does matter to other people. If I become used to this, I might become used to Bush in office, or wars based on lies, or some other mass-hypnosis. At least I can deal with soda.The FDA has decided that they're going

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1143127545653953942006-03-23T10:08:00.000-05:002006-03-23T10:25:45.683-05:00

Communion wafers suck more moisture from your mouth than sin from your soul. The wine is little better, a bitter vinegary solution whose aftertaste is almost worse than total oral dehydration. But all that is behind us, now that we have Chocolate Deities!The sacred heart of Jesus is available in dark, milk, and "white" chocolate (though it's a whole separate sin to call something without any

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1143044269514558962006-03-22T11:02:00.000-05:002006-03-22T11:17:49.573-05:00

See, this is why I always ask my daughter what ideas she has when we have a problem to solve. Kids don't care about politics or the bottom line, they just want to help. You want to keep kids from dying of water-borne diseases? You don't hire a committee, you just go door-to-door and teach them how to wash their hands.The teenagers tend to avoid politics and corporate agendas and focus on

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1142272295991952032006-03-13T12:41:00.000-05:002006-03-13T12:51:36.023-05:00

I don't know about you, but there will be no more soda in my family. I had allowed citrusy caffeine free soda on rare occasions, but it looks like they're the biggest benzene factories of all.I'm looking forward to the various denial responses about how "my uncle/sister/neighbor drank this stuff growing up and is fine". If other people want to play chemical Russian Roulette with their family's

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1141931707068849362006-03-09T13:51:00.000-05:002006-03-09T14:15:07.100-05:00

First there was Rush Limbaugh. Then John Ashcroft (though to be fair, he was governor before anyone had even heard of Rush). And that whole Assembly Of God Church thing. There's far, far more, but it would take too long to catalog. Rest assured, Missouri has a long and sordid history of closed minded psuedo-religious idiots with loud voices. This stunningly unconstitutional attempt to create

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1138389998790566992006-01-27T14:13:00.000-05:002006-01-27T14:27:06.040-05:00

So much better than some time-wasting slot machine that only gives you a hit every few hundred dollars and meanwhile assaults your ears with soul-shattering blingy sounds. Far better than any drug that might leave you feeling strung-out and broke and craving more to the point that your integrity dissolves like an aspirin in warm water. Better even than good food, which is over all too soon and

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1138207521208046632006-01-25T11:16:00.000-05:002006-01-25T11:45:21.240-05:00

Can you believe people are still saying there's no such thing as global warming?Nevermind that there's snow in Hawaii, rain is finally coming to Arizona after a record dry streak (snow in Flagstaff), my mom reports that Chicago has been bizarrely warm, and here in New Jersey we're having such a warm winter that the bulbs are coming up and the buds on some of the spring shrubs are starting to pop.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1135792460211848652005-12-28T12:49:00.000-05:002005-12-28T12:54:20.220-05:00

For Christmas, my 8-year-old asked to help other kids around the world who don't feel as safe and secure with their families as she does with hers. So based on a friend's recommendation I made a donation in her name to Plan USA, a really wonderful non-religious charitable organization that helps children around the world. I couldn't afford to sponsor a child, but I did donate to the Childrens'

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1134406289233103492005-12-12T11:35:00.000-05:002005-12-12T11:51:29.266-05:00

Ah, science. Brilliant and self-serving. Utterly useless and yet absolutely vital. Millions of dollars in research to confirm what we already knew: there is no magic antioxidant bullet. Eating a balanced diet of unprocessed foods really is your best defense against cancer.Want to be healthy? Along with regular exercise (another rant altogether), Eat Something Different Every Day. Preferably

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1132332159784199632005-11-18T10:32:00.000-05:002005-11-18T11:42:52.243-05:00

Shopping has been an unofficial religion since about the 80's, when we began to build massive temples to the gods of commerce, with large anchor shrines on the ends to the greater deities (with escalators!). I suppose it was only a matter of time, then, before Consumerism became an Official Religion, tying itself more obviously to psuedo-spirituality through the buzzword of the moment:

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1131468049119091622005-11-08T11:37:00.000-05:002005-11-08T11:40:49.126-05:00

A truly awesome art project in which people anonymously mail in their secrets on homemade postcards. I can tell that this will be a regular stop on my work-avoidance route.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6898343.post-1131383704981134572005-11-07T12:11:00.000-05:002005-11-07T12:15:04.993-05:00

Yeah, okay, so it's starting to look like a vendetta. But, you know, whatever. Just go find someplace to watch this movie about why to shop anywhere but Wal Mart. If nothing else, you can congratulate yourself for being all subversive by going to some stranger's house to sit and watch a movie.

Mayahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02747369628645712712maya.m.cook@gmail.com0