Puggles and the Queen's handbag

What I do at Macalester College I (pamela yates-watson) have a great view of the Grand-Snelling corner and neighborhood from the third floor of Lampert. From this lofty position I work for the advancement division providing services that include sql programming and report writing for advancement and other departments from A to Z. I also provide training for staff in advancement, our permanent and student staff, as well as providing web development support for advancement, and online documentation of advancement policies and procedures.
What I do when I'm not at Macalester For a lot of my spare time I throw paint around and try to visually comprehend the scope of a human "being." All life is a kaleidoscope and I realize I am looking in one end of the tube and the light coming from the other end of the tube causes everything to look the way it does, an array of spectacular and wondrous creations, colors and objects. As an artist and a painter I am renewed and inspired by that light and that view in the tube. I like to do beading by hand with a  needle or using a small handmade loom (the old traditional kind - my friend Chuck cut one long narrow piece of wood and a small bridge from the pine tree) and work with hides to sew and decorate bags and pouches. My hubby is finishing up study to become a bodyworker-therapeutic massage therapist. He's really, really good at this.




Puggles
Echidna are my kind of people. 
"The echidna looks fearsome enough, but it is a shy animal and would rather retreat than fight if disturbed. When frightened it will curl into a ball, with its snout and legs tucked beneath it and its sharp spines sticking out. It will wedge itself beneath rocks, or burrow straight down into soft soil, to escape predators such as dogs, eagles and dingos" - NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Echidnas sure seem to have a simple no-nonsense approach to things. Anyone wanna spend a bit of quiet time wedged between rocks? Hmmm...I wonder if that comes with pizza delivery. A puggle is a baby echidna. More about echidnas at EarthWatch.
The Queen's handbag
  and other wonders


Handbag stolen while Queen sleeps. Read about it here, the full monty.
Tin God by Terese Svoboda. "God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, ... Tin God is a funny yet poignant story of the plains that transcends its... Quoted from.

    "This is God," the novel begins, helpfully spelling G-O-D for the reader, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines the middle of nowhere.

    Whispers plague a desperate conquistador lost in tall prairie grass. Four hundred years later, a male go-go dancer flings a bag of dope into the same field. God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, casts a jaundiced yet merciful eye over the unfolding chaos. Fire and a pair of judiciously applied pantyhose bring the two stories together. A contemplation of divinity and drugs on the ground, Tin God is a funny yet poignant story of the plains that transcends its interstate spine and exposes us to a whole new level of Svoboda's fiery prose. [read more]


Links to other sweet stuff  Women in the Arts

People in the Arts
Winona LaDuke
Joe Geshick
Kollwitz, Käthe
Kahlo, Frida
Sam English
Nevelson, Louise
O'Keeffe, Georgia

Other cool community links
Minnesota Drug Courts
Dispute Resolution Center

The Wakanheza Project in Ramsey County. The Wakanheza Project is a community-wide effort that provides tools and strategies to help us effectively respond in these every-day situations and prevent them from happening in the first place, by creating welcoming environments for our children, young people, and families.

Campaign for a US Department of Peace. Participate in an historic citizen lobbying effort to create a U.S. Department of Peace.

Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, is one of the leading institutions within medical research in the world. KI's social sciences resource web site maintains an interesting repository of documents about all kinds of social issues like handling teen violence, well, take a look yourself. 

The Nobel Prize
Mario R Capecchi (USA), Martin J Evans (United Kingdom) and Oliver Smithies (USA) are the 2007 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells"


Verbatim opening statement by Haudenosaunee Faithkeeper, Chief Oren Lyons addressing delegates to the United Nations Organization
opened "The Year of the Indigenous Peoples" (1993)
to the delegates to the United Nations Organization in the United Nations General Assembly Auditorium, United Nations Plaza, New York City, December 10, 1992.


No worries, that's it for now.