current events

Friday and today just started working for Althea Murphy Prince as her studio assistant.

today strung some hair balls on to some string. sounds boring but actually kinda nice. I listened to NPR, This American Life, a book on tape, Defiance Ohio and the Mountain Goats. It's nice to have a purpose, and a job, to have someone expecting you and needing your help and paying you for it.

Also started a book that is exactly the book I've always wanted that describes the current events and relations between countries, and the conflicts within the countries, the countries history, and relations with neighboring countries. Each country is described in about 5 pages, so obviously kinda simplistic, but actually, it seems like a lot of wars are simplistic? Maybe that is an ignorant thing to say... But it just seems that a lot of conflicts get blown up and last for generations and no one remembers what started it. Actually the trend seems to be people are manipulable when they don't have enough information. I was afraid this book would be too depressing,and it is... but it feels better to understand the crazy reasons behind all these wars, although frustrating. I think it would be good if instead of spending so much money on U.S military presence, and training armies in other countries ( and then abandoning them) it would solve a lot of unrest to create jobs with that money... even a stupid job like stringing hair balls onto hair strings makes a person feel OK. and if you were making more money doing that then being in a guerrilla army... or fund small businesses, right at the source... I'm not sure what to do about nuclear weapons. its so scary that one miss-step...scary because it seems inevitable.