Return and rejuvenation

For the last two years, I've been using this blog as a periodic dumping place for random news stories and causes I happen to come across. This past year I've been blogging about my experiences as a student missionary in Tanzania on another blog, Writing to Serve. The year before, my Creative Writing professor required his students to make a new blog specifically for creative writing. Throughout the school year, our assignment was to blog at least three sentences every day of the semester. I used that blog, Creative Endeavour, primarily to document my daily life throughout my senior year of university.

So for two years this blog as been put on the back burner. But now that I'm finished university and back from Tanzania I need to start using my original blog again. I'm sure the poor little thing has been feeling terribly lonely and I certainly don't want to continue ignoring it. So enjoy the new posts on here. I'll try to keep it more updated than it has been in a long, long time. Meanwhile, I'll do my best to post periodic creative pieces on Creative Endeavour whenever I have the chance, or the inspiration.

Running the Numbers

My coworker sent me a link to a startling gallery on chrisjordan.com. If you click artworks you can find the galleries Running the Numbers and Running the Numbers II.

All the artwork in these galleries is thought-provoking , especially when you realize clicking the pictures zooms in to see the smaller images that make up the whole picture. But the saddest two, for me, are Year of the Tiger and Shark Teeth.

Depicts 3,200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970.

Close-up of the tiger border

Depicts 270,000 fossilized shark teeth, equal to the estimated number of sharks of all species killed around the world every day for their fins.

Shark teeth close-up

Tigers and sharks are two of my favourite animals. What are we doing to this planet??

Tsunami forecast

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of northern Japan Thursday afternoon, triggering a massive tsunami watch.

tsunami forecast

I just can't get over that graphic. It's amazing - and terrifying - to see how widespread the destruction can be from such a huge earthquake.

Shuttle launch

I've always wanted to watch a shuttle launch and want to now even more after reading The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe last year in Literary Journalism class. Today the shuttle Discovery made it's last launch. My sister-in-law took her kids and drove down to Florida to watch. One of my Lit. Jour. classmates and her boyfriend went down to watch. Even some of Kezia's friends from Denmark flew over to the States to witness the launch. And I was stuck in a hot office in northern Tanzania. I consoled myself by watching this video that Jonathan found and sent me. It's pretty cool, but I'm sure it's nothing like witnessing the real thing.



There are only two more launches before NASA shuts down the program. One is April 19. I definitely won't be back by then. The other is June 28. I think I'll try to work on going to that one. I mean it'll be history so I deserve a chance to witness it, right?

A new 'ology'

Today, while visiting Dictionary.com for another reason, I noticed one of the features: cryptozoology. How intriguing! I had no idea such a thing as "the study of evidence tending to substantiate the existence of creatures whose reported existence is unproved" existed! (Apparently even Google Chrome doesn't know about cryptozoology...a 'misspelled' red line appears underneath it.)

Maybe someday somebody will actually prove there is a Loch Ness monster, Ogopogo or Sasquatch! That would be exciting.