A bizarre dream

Picture taken from site

I dreamt I was inside a large room of a very grand estate. The room was old and plush like one from the turn of the century, full of dark colors and antique furnishings. The sunlight was beaming through a large window, and the shadow of the window panes casted on the wooden floors. The house may have been English, or perhaps French; I am no expert to tell. I walked across the room and my footsteps echoed; it was a pleasant sound, brisk and commanding.

But as I walked I was aware of many restrictions on my movements. When I looked down I saw the spread of a heavy skirt. I felt the tightness on my waist held together by a clever corset, which also anchored the weight of the skirt. I wore an enormous hat, and the bottom of its broad brim shielded part of my vision. I did not know what the hat looked like, but I was sure it was an ornate one; perhaps covered in flamboyant plumes and elaborate fabric trims. The hat was held tight on my head cocked to one side, which was perfectly balanced by the coiffure of my hair.

I moved towards the window and I looked out. I saw a party of men and women sitting outside in a garden. There were rose bushes and willowy trees behind, and the people were dressed to the same style as me. They were beautiful like an impressionist painting. I stood there watching them laughing and chatting easily together; while my gloved finger stroked the face of a brooch high on my neck, the weight of it suspended at my collar. I felt its contours and decided it must be lovely too, though I did not make out what it was. A lady saw me and she called out for me to join them. The next thing I was transported outside.

"Come, come my dear sister. Do join us." She waved her arm wide to one side. The men stood up and smoothen their tailored jackets.

She called me her sister, but I did not recognized her. She was small and delicate. I was faintly aware that I was no longer myself, but there was no mirrors about to let me see my face. Yet I assumed this role easily enough and I waved back at them. There was a man opposite to the lady; he was the first to stand, but he did so very slowly. He was tall and handsome, and he smiled at me.

"Will you not join us?" The lady asked again, framing the choice as an ambiguous one. I saw the table in front of them was laden with food and drink served in exquisite China and the party was waiting for my answer. The beautiful man looked at me knowingly and inexplicably that settled the matter in my head.

"No, I believe I will go for a walk." I said.

"An excellent idea." The man said, suggesting he planned to join me. I took one good look at him, and I thought his handsomeness was only surpassed by his gentlemanly manners.

"Yes, a walk is a fine idea." My make-believe sister wished to join us as well.

The next scene the three of us were strolling on a narrow lane, flowers and trees all around us.  I did not know our direction but I determinedly pressed on. I didn't say very much, but I guided the other two. The lady mindlessly followed while talking nonstop, the gentleman kept very close behind me.

"What a beautiful day, it is so wonderful to be out." The lady said.

"It is always very fine this time of year." The gentleman answered.

"Do you think there are many birds around? It sounds like there are many." The lady continued.

"It certainly does." The gentleman replied.

Their silly conversation continued like this, his politeness never failed him. But I felt his interest was entirely feigned, which made me like him even more. So we walked on, and the lane began to widen. At first there were still trees about, then suddenly we were in an open field. The sky was clear and bright, but the sudden vastness was slightly disconcerting.

The next scene we were approaching some kind of farm. There was a decrepit split and rail fence and a sorry looking farm house in the field. We stopped to survey our surroundings. The lady again spoke.

"What a charming farm." She said.

"Beautiful country indeed." The gentleman replied.

"What are you talking about? This is covered in shit." I said, pointing out the obvious. The lady pursed her lips.

"You are correct, so it is." The gentleman said.

The muddy shit was thick and we were foot deep in it. I passed through the fence and I headed to the direction of the farm house. The gentleman again followed me close behind. The lady however stayed behind.

"We should have dinner." She said. That was the last time I saw her.

There were farm animals scattered about in the field, chickens, pigs, cows. Each one of the them was missing one limp, and they were covered and lying in shit. The animals were in such terrible shape I couldn't tell if the chickens were roosters or a hens, their feathers had completely fallen. I tried to reach out to them, but they tobogganed away on their stomaches, their remaining limps desperately propelling them in the thick shit. They were moving slow, but I moved slower in my binding dress, and eventually they were gone from my view.

The next scene I was inside the farm house observing the total chaos inside. The floor indoors was covered in shit as well. I looked down and my skirt was stained, and my footsteps were sticky to the floor. It was a more modern house, the kitchen was in front, and there were filthy furniture about, some fallen broken chairs here and there. The farmer and his woman were in the room, but they were not surprised to see me. At first I wanted to ask them about the animals, to see about improving their situation. But then I looked at the two people in front of me and I saw that they too were covered in shit, I didn't think they were in control anymore than the animals.

"Your neck is covered in shit sir." I said.

"No'm, I ain't." He said. His mouth opened wide and many of his teeth were missing.

"You and your lady, you two are covered in shit." I said, again pointing out the obvious.

They didn't answer. The farmer stared at my neck. His woman too, they were both looking intently at the direction of my brooch, my hand instinctively went there, again stroking the face of it.

"You have a lovely place." The gentleman said to the farmer. I had forgotten all about him.

"Would you like some food?" The farmer's woman asked.

"No." I answered bluntly.

"Perhaps another time." The gentleman politely answered, his manners remains impeccable in all this horror. I was shocked at him.

At this point it was near the end and I became very angry. I wanted to make a scene and protest against the state of this place. I tried to bend down and pick up some shit. I would like to throw it at the gentleman. But I was stuck, the dream would not allow me to do such a thing.

Jackie

This was my dream from last night. If there are any Freudian disciples out there who would like to analyze it for me, I would love to know the meaning. Feel free to comment and tell me I am nuts. :)

Yong Zheng Dynasty

I have developed a peculiar pattern with men. Whenever a guy attains a certain level of respect from me, I would offer to translate one bloody long Chinese TV series to him. This historical dramatic series is 32 hours in length/44 episodes and it is called Yong Zheng Dynasty. My reasons are somewhat convoluted:

- 2 parts because I want to impress him (BTW it really works)

- 2 parts because I love the series so much

- 1 part because I am proud of being Chinese and this is the best way to show them what being Chinese means

- 1 part because it is a great way to spend time with the guy

I have only done this twice in my life; but I assure you it is not from lack of offering, it is mostly because the guy freaks out the minute I suggest it. Forty four episodes?

But come on, how can anyone really enjoy short historical dramas? I love history but I generally HATE how they are shown on screen. A couple of hours is hardly enough to get to know the past and measure great deeds, and in the end, most of them resort to cheap titillation with stunning costumes, intrigues, and worse.... ridiculously gorgeous actors. I just can't take them seriously.

The Yong Zheng Dynasty is a gem on so many levels. It is classically Chinese: practical, soulful, sad. But it is none of that bouncing off water and I-am-so-deep faces Chinese movies are known for. Nor is it thousands of minions doing some pretty thing all at once, that just gets so boring. Instead this is a beautifully crafted story, slow and steady. It is about how one prince took upon himself to help his father to control the aftermath of a major flood, and from there he embarked on a long and tortured journey to become Emperor. It is about redeeming the reputation of an Emperor who worked himself to death by telling his story thoughtfully and truthfully through a modern art form. It is about telling a Chinese story, and I love it so much I will translate it to the world if I can.

Jackie

Sugar the Dachshund

Picture taken from site

Sugar is a dog. Sugar is a mother. Sugar was my purpose for one day.

Someone I know wisely observed how we often trade our time for money or experiences. This got me thinking and realizing that outside of making a living, I seriously got bored of all the shopping (the gratification is always too brief), sight seeing (which rarely leaves an impression on me) and TV watching. I thought I would take a chance and try something else entirely different for a change. So on one Saturday, I looked up a local Petsmart event for an adoption drive and signed up as a volunteer handler. I picked a dog event because I didn't have the heart to see cats suffer inside tiny cages all cured up and scared. I thought I had a better chance to come back in one piece with dogs.

So this is how it works. Foster parents and drivers bring homeless dogs from shelters and foster homes to the event, and volunteer handlers like myself would show them to potential adoption families. The strategy is to stand outside by the curb of the pet store giant and accost pedestrians for a chance to charm them. Each handler gets a dog and a bio sheet and then that was it, we go out there and hope for the best pretty much.

I stood in line among half a dozen or so volunteers and we waited to be matched with our dog. Big energetic pit bull mixes showed up one after another, but because I had no experience with dogs, they didn't think I could handle them. So I waited and waited, and just when I was beginning to think I was wasting my time because there was no more dogs to be had, one lady showed up with a Dachshund in the crook of her arm.

"This is Sugar. I need someone to take her, I have another dog to show." The driver lady said.

I personally do not love Dachshunds, I had my heart set on a bigger dog and so I hesitated in claiming Sugar, but I was next in line.

"She needs someone to hold her, she likes to be held." The driver lady added.

"Do you mind holding her for the day?" A very smily blond girl at the volunteer desk asked me. "She should be a breeze."

"Oh yeah, she is easy." The driver lady agreed.

So I stepped forward and took the dog into my arms. She had a surprisingly firm body, like she was entirely made of muscles. I briefly introduced myself to Sugar, she didn't seem to care and looked in the direction of the road.

"We'll be fine." I said to both the driver lady and the smily blond. They assured me Sugar was easy again, all I had to do was to keep holding her and they handed me her bio sheet.

With Sugar sitting awkwardly in my arm, I looked for a space to sit by the curb and found one between two pit bull mixes. Their handlers looked friendly enough and I squeezed myself between them.

"Oh what's this fellow's name? He is new. I had not seen him before." The handler to my right asked me. He looked young, maybe in his early twenties.

"Her name is Sugar. Let's see..." I was scanning through her bio sheet to get a good read on my new friend.

Sugar's blurry picture was at the top right corner of a 8 1/2 X 11 sheet. She was four years old it says, or so believed. Her personality profile was the usual: friendly, calm, good with kids, good with cats, loves cuddles, doesn't bark very much... But as I read on, something stood out in her history section.

"Looks like she was rescued from the puppy mills, she likely had dozens of puppies it says." I loudly declared.

The young man's face scrunched into a grimace, his pit bull mix did not look pleased hearing it either. Sugar however was not giving a damn, she looked like she had passed it all.

"Some people deserve to die." The young man says simply.

Right then the driver lady stopped by to check on us, and I asked her about Sugar's puppy mill background. "Oh yes, she escaped death over and over again this one. First she survived the puppy mill hell, then she was almost put down at the local shelter in South Carolina."

The next part she lowered her voice as if to avoid being heard by potential families. "She is not even toilet trained, she was likely locked inside a tiny wired cage her whole life. And the part about her not barking, I think it is because she was debarked."

"Debarked?" I asked. Then the young man told me it is a common practice in puppy mills, they jam a metal rod down the dog's throat to damage her vocal cords so she cannot bark.

"Some people deserve to die." This time it was from me.

Now, however horrible their pasts, the dogs all seemed to be in a jolly mood. All except my Sugar. She was perfectly calm in my arm, but she was listless, and voiceless. So I played the happy puppy part for her, I did my megawatt dimpled smile every time someone walked by. But no interest.

Some folks stopped and say cute things to the dogs, but most hurried inside the store like they wanted to avoid something awful. The dogs did their very best.  They looked forlornly at anyone who paid them the slightest attention and they were on their best behavior. I don't know much about dogs but I had expected more aggression between them. I mean, if this was a fight for life situation for us humans, we would likely claw our competitors' eyes out. I thought the dogs were very neighborly, I would even say they had a sense of solidarity.

Frankly I didn't expect any of it to work. I had good conversations with the other handlers, we were thrilled to be doing something good, but we steered clear from discussing the dogs' futures. The afternoon wore on and nothing. People passed by but neither the pit bulls or Sugar had any luck, and the handlers were growing a bit despondent. The dogs themselves had more hope, or wisdom, the pit bulls licked their handlers in perfect intervals, but my Sugar was spiritless. She didn't seem to care what happens to her.

A young attractive couple appeared looking around and they had a dog with them, a little black one not much bigger than Sugar. I seized the opportunity. I put her on the ground and led her to them. Sugar perked up and she sniffed the butt of the couple's dog.

"Oh she is pretty." The lady said.

I smiled mega huge, "Oh yes, she is so beautiful and calm. A lovely dog you can take anywhere under your arm."

"Yes and it seems she likes Ken." The lady said.

"Is that your dog's name? he is adorable." Sugar was trying to be nice to Ken, but Ken wouldn't have any.

"Oh Ken, be good now. She looks so much like you, she is the same color. She looks awesome with you doesn't she?" The lady asked Ken.

The driver lady came by and the two women talked. And I thought it was promising because at the end of their conversation the couple assured us they would come back before the event closes to get Sugar. Then they walked away with Ken still giving my dog the cold shoulder. Little mutt!

"That's a good sign." I said smilingly, feeling relieved. But the driver lady didn't look as pleased.

"Some people just want everything matchy matchy." She said with her eyes rolling. I suppose she understands dogs better than me, but then I realized it wasn't so, she reads people better than me, and she didn't like this family for Sugar. I went back to my space by the curb with her tucked in my arm again, not sure if I should be glad or not. The other handlers congratulated me, they said it was a good sign.

I should say that I was less anxious after the couple, or maybe I just didn't have the tenacity to grieve over someone else's life for a sustained period. When the event was drawing to a close and I saw no sign of the couple returning, I sort of resigned myself to an enlightened sense of failure, I adopted Sugar's devil-may-care air.

Twenty minutes before the event closes a woman showed up with three little girls and a little black dog.

"Oh my, look a long haired Dachshund! Wow look at that face, those eyes, she is a beauty!" The woman exclaimed. The girls petted Sugar.

"Casper, look how gorgeous she is." The woman said to her dog. Casper the dog went up to Sugar and licked her in the face. I swear I almost swooned from joy.

"Oh Casper is from this same adoption event, we got him a year ago in this same place." The woman explained to me while looking serenely at her happy family.

"You have a beautiful family, are the girls sisters?" I asked

"Oh they are triplets, not identical though." She said, then she asked her girls "You girls want a girl dog right? You will fight over where this dog sleeps won't you?"

So this was how Sugar found her new family with three little girls and a black dog name Casper. The woman was not fazed when we told her Sugar was a puppy mill mommy and she needed to be toilet trained.

"I am a doctor, I have handled much worst. Casper was not easy either but look at him now. Sugar will be spoiled for the rest of her life." was the woman's answer.

The girls were eager to buy something pink for Sugar, I offered to watch her until they were done with their shopping.

When all were settled, and we had a happy ending, and the other dogs went where destiny led them; I realized I hadn't bothered to get to know Sugar this entire day. I was so eager to find her a home and playing God with her future I forgot what an experience this was for the both of us. I was grateful I was given this little extra time, and I looked her in the eyes and I talked to her. I told her I was sorry for her life in the puppy mill, I was sorry for her lost babies, I said her life would change and I wished her the best. I thanked her for letting me be a part of her life, even if it was only for a little while. I spoke slowly and repeated the same sentences over and over, and in the end, for the first time, she looked at me and nuzzled up to my face. We said our goodbyes.

The woman and the girls came back with a pink collar with fake diamonds on it and a cart load of doggy things. Sugar looked smashing in her new attire.

"Pink bling, you weren't kidding!" I joked. The woman laughed and she puts Sugar in the shopping cart, then everybody seemed to be talking all at once, a family figuring out their new life together. I waved my goodbyes unnoticed and left with my husband.

Jackie

Borrowed Eyes

Photograph by Diego Ortiz Mugica

I stand in front of an image and I stare. It is black and white and I wonder why no color. But as I wonder I begin to fall in love. I am being transported to a destination unknown. I know little of the origin. I only know it is earth because of the moon. The rest looks alien. But once my feeling is known I start to think. This is not the earth I reason. It is but a vision through a pair of eyes. Eyes not my own. It is an image conjured.

Someone behind me says it is from his eyes. He says he is the artist. His eyes are borrowed he says. Someone dies and gives them to him. When he dies he gives them to someone else. He talks of passion. He talks of the years before the image. He talks of having no money. He talks of being in the dark room. He talks of his wife. Most of all he talks of Argentina his home. He insists I am seeing Argentina through his borrowed eyes. He insists I go there someday because I love the image.

I am in this alien land. He insists it is Argentina. I stay there to convince myself it is true. But I think the artist is wrong. I think he underestimates his borrowed eyes. I think he doesn't understand their power. He doesn't realize they are bigger than Argentina. Because I won't see the image standing in his homeland. Because I don't have his borrowed eyes.

Jackie

I saw this print in an exhibit in Foto Week 2010, Washington DC at the Embassy of Argentina. The picture was taken by Diego Ortiz Mugica of the National Parks of Argentina. Do check out his other images, they are breathtaking.

The things people say

I have noticed one interesting trend on Facebook: People like to put famous quotes on their status updates. Now I must admit I am a facebook addict. This is not just some carefree pastime for me, I take my social media experience rather seriously. I take good care of my Facebook persona, I make sure my pictures are perfect and I edit my albums like I am some magazine editor, and I am very choosy over what I 'like'. I care because I think people can and do get to know me through my comments, pictures, posted links and so on, and likewise I spend the time to know my friends through theirs. So I find quotes on status updates a bit unsettling because I don't entirely know what to make of them. It bothers me that I don't see a hint of the 'friend' in the quote. Take the following example:

Exhibit A from friend: -starts- "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." ~ William James. -ends-

This just leaves me completely nonplussed. I would like to know if this has affected his life, I want to know what he thought of it, I do not want to succumb to an impulse of cynicism and think him sappy.

I admit this is actually my problem, because words like these make me uncomfortable. For the longest time I thought they are nothing more than pretty words at best, some pithy lines by those otherworldly types. I suppose they are meant to be seeds of ideas, packaged and delivered like in that Inception movie, messages from the wise to jolt us out of ourselves. Still I cannot help being irritated when they are thrown around thoughtlessly and impersonally, even though I try to heed the message in the end. I seriously wonder, how many people out there actually listen and change their lives over hearing someone else's punch line anyway?

But then recently, after some bizarre happenings in my life, I sort of developed a taste for reading famous quotes and feel pleasantly surprised to discover that they actually DO apply to me. At least they do now.

So I hereby compiled a list of quotes I personally live by. I have selected them because they are true and tested by yours truly. I find these sayings powerful, universally applicable, logically defensible, teachable, uncompromising, not too grand but suitable for daily wear and tear if you know what I mean. So here it goes:

(The wording below may be inaccurate but this is how I know them)

1. "What do you mean you don't want to listen to someone because she is awkward and she is ugly and she has bad breath? I would learn from a three year old who poops in diapers if the lesson is good." ~ my father

2. "Don't do nothing because you can't do everything. Do something. Anything." ~ Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

3. "If a woman dress smart, they will notice the dress. If a woman dress impeccably, they will notice the woman." ~ Coco Channel

4. "The guy who says he can't do something and the guy who says he can are both profoundly right." ~ some Chinese guy via Will Smith

5. "First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win them" ~ Ghandi

If anyone out there is interested in knowing what I do with them, drop me a line and I will gladly discuss with you ad nauseam. But now comes the real punch line...something I have come up with myself:

"I do not find pieces of a corpse delicious anymore. Oh thank you for all that is holy!" ~ Jackie

(If you don't understand my line it is because you have not read Josie the Cat post yet)

One of these days I will put it on my Facebook page and let them unfriend me all they want.

Jackie

Moving Forward

Picture taken from site

The bend off a major roadway started off uneventfully, the rolling hills and splendid trees are not yet in view. My Harry and I are comfortably silent in the car, the radio playing a well-known tune at a soothing decibel. We've entered a single lane side road, and my Harry slowed our pace, an instinctive reaction brought on by lurking police vehicles all around the world. An elegant country house passes by rather inconspicuously despite standing in its lonesome in the middle of a vast grass field. Far away in a distance the hills are densely covered in trees and together they look like giant heads of cauliflowers, except in color. It is autumn, a season of contradictions I heard it once said, because it is both a time of plenty and decay.

More houses pass by in midst of many more vast fields when I notice we are moving alongside an uninterrupted stone fence marking some unknown territories, or perhaps to keep invisible cattle in. I look ahead to see where it ends and find that it doesn't, it stretches on with the road. I wonder where the stones came from, they are flat and jagged individually but somehow stacked perfectly together as if they were always meant to be placed this way.

Suddenly, a couple of trees standing side by side appear next to the road, their figures big and absurd. I lean my forehead against the window to take a good look and I notice their leaves have completely fallen as if the trees feel more imposing in their nakedness, bulging in their trunks, fierce branches jabbing every which way. Together they grow more menacing as we approach, determined to frighten people any way they can. I reckon perhaps their larger than life persona had spared them from the axe, or they have simply gone deranged from being the only survivors after many untold tragedies to their kind.

The sun shines from the back and our view lit up by a warm spread of light, and here and there emerged sparkles of gold. Reds and yellows and oranges intensified. The houses too are illuminated but they barely cast any shadows, or the glowing fields around them would not permit any. Yet the picture is all wrong, because the backdrop is not a clear sky blue, but instead an uneven dirty white and grey. The clouds are sinking, and they give the appearance of being draped in layers, like a velvety theater curtain impenetrable by the brightest lamps. I have read that the smallest baby cloud weighs more than a hundred elephants.

"These clouds weigh millions of elephants." I say, at once realizing it is an unintelligible remark, but my Harry answers knowingly, "That looks about right."

Another familiar song is on the radio, and the sunlight fades, and the colors again settle into a less contradictory palette. The world steadily rolls by, but it is no use. I am disappointed by the loss of a sudden brilliance, and a train of thought is forever halted. I feel my mind closing in, and again I am aware of my Harry's presence, the melody of a song, and the prospects of our destination.

Jackie

Continuing my education

I took a graduate level management course at Stanford a while back, and I have to say it did make quite an impact on me. The course's name is Decision Analysis, and as the name implies, it focuses on how to make decisions better. It is extraordinary that we don't actually spend much time figuring out how to make decisions big or small: we do not gather all the facts, we do not look for the appropriate facts, we do not interpret the facts correctly, we do not want to listen to facts....Why? Sometimes it is because we are lazy, but most times, it is because we want to do what we want to do.

Stanford's claim of fame in this area is their program in creating successful entrepreneurs. How on earth do you do that? How do you train a bunch of kids so they can actually compete with giant corporations steep in money and experience?... You make them think critically. Hmm...

So back to this course. It is taught in the Socratic method, which means the professor pretty much answers a question by asking a question back at ya. However effective this method is, and I admit it is, you'll invariably find the teacher a pompous ass. Anyhow, in the middle of this course, he did an experiment on us students. It was basically to see how we (Stanford's brilliant students) fared when we had to: 1. reason, 2. vote.

We were presented with a tricky question, tricky because the answer appears obvious based on what we know: there is 50-50 chance of getting head/tail when tossing a coin, we all learned that in high school yeah? Even though just slightly deeper thought would immediately suggests that in this particular problem, the answer is not so simple. The students had to vote several times, and between each vote, both sides (true/false answers) were made to defend their reasoning. So basically, we all had a chance to the hear the correct answer being deduced from our fellow classmates, and each time the wrong answer was defended based on an impression we got from something we learned in high school. The arguments happened over and over again, and we voted repeatedly. The result? 85% got the wrong answer in the beginning, and after several more reasoning/vote repetition, 80% STILL stuck with the wrong answer. WOW.

Was my class particularly stupid? At the end of the experiment, the professor told us he repeated this same exercise twice each year for upwards of 20 years, and the results are always the same. He tried it on a bunch of famous CEOs as well, and he got the same result. He said, many times over the years, there were occasions when the correct answer was reasoned so convincingly that he thought for sure the jig is up, but it never does; however smart and successful his audience, they tend to vote wrong because people want to believe something they are comfortable with.

Then he made the most provocative statement of all:

"Only when I, the professor, an authority figure says something is right, did the audience take as the correct answer. Most students do not believe his/her classmate, no matter how convincing his/her argument and logic is."

That is some serious flaw in the system man! And then he said his most controversial statement:

"I should teach this to primary school children."

I suppose he means children can better learn this lesson? That they would grasp the significance and adopt critical reasoning more readily? Or perhaps it would spare them decades of worthless conditioning? That it would do the most good to the world and human progress? He didn't say. I heard this is his punch line, something he proudly states each year: he should be teaching this to young kids instead. And I remembered the murmurs in my class, it offended the Stanford students to suggest they just spend some serious money to given a lesson that ought to be learned by seven year olds.

Now, from what I can gather, this professor did not attempt to teach young kids his great wisdom. I suppose Stanford faculty is more appealing. But a few months ago, I met someone who is. Her name is Zoe Weil.

I met Zoe in an animal rights conference. I need to seriously sit down and blog about that experience one day. At first sight, she seemed to me a small frail looking lady, but she had this Jane Goddall-esque aura about her. She is the co-founder of the Institute for Humane Education, and it is an organization that focuses on providing education on today's major social issues to children by teaching them how to think. I listened to her lecture and you know what? she is saying the same thing as that Stanford prof, except she is the bigger person in my mind because she is actually doing the most good by working with children. I took a course from this organization since then, and I loved every minute of it. I paid $80 for this course with the Humane Ed, and I assure you that is way less than what I had to pay for Stanford.

Jackie