Web Robin

CNN Features Us on Privacy (Or Lack Thereof)

From CNN.com: The internet and the 'end of privacy':

"An average internet user can dig up all kinds of details -- both juicy and mundane -- about the life of Louis Gray, a 33-year-old from Sunnyvale, California. Like some tech early-adopters these days, Gray thinks privacy is a dying concept."

• Gray has three children: 2-and-a-half-year-old twins named Matthew and Sarah; and Braden, who is three months old and was born prematurely. The twins dressed up as Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, respectively, for Halloween this year -- and when they hear techno music, they jitter around like they're on nonexistent trampolines.

• Kristine Gray, Louis' history-loving, school-teaching wife, makes some interesting -- and potentially embarrassing -- purchases on their family credit card. Among them: $109.25 per month to rent a breast milk pump from El Camino Hospital Maternal Connections. The last time she made such a purchase was November 29.

More at the link. Enjoy!

Inspirational Dance

Turn your sound up and get your hankie out. This performance is incredible and touching.

Random Thoughts

Why I hate/love Salt Lake City airport: When you come down the escalator to baggage claim, the floor below is crowded by little clumps of people welcoming their missionaries home. There are balloons, banners, moms with faces aglow, dads holding the video cameras, shy girlfriends, and little brothers dashing from one side to the other. It's great to see them all, but terrible; it always makes me cry -- and I hate doing that. It reminds me of Jeremy's homecoming and also that none of the kids are home at all now... Well, you can see where those thoughts take me.
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Why is it harder to get internet access in a metropolitan US city than in a tiny, backward country like Belize? This hotel is supposed to have free wireless access, but it took a 30-minute call to tech support to actually get online. (Someone was hogging the bandwidth, apparently. The tech shut him down.)

One way of looking at the bailout

If you're "Proud to be an American" -- Tell us why

Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA is one of my favorite patriotic songs. (Click the link to see the lyrics so you can sing along.)

Since we're nearing the 4th of July -- always a big holiday in the Murray clan -- I thought I'd invite you to share what you like best about living in the USA.

Clara Barton -- through her own words

I wish my history classes at school had been based on people's stories instead of passionless facts and figures and broad overviews. (I probably would have retained more!)

I read this letter from Clara Barton this morning and thought I'd share it with you all before I get to work. She's writing on the evening before a Civil War battle. We all associate her name with "nurse," but I was unaware of her depth of thought and spirituality.

My dear Cousin Vira:

Five minutes time with you: and God only knows what those five minutes might be worth to the-- may be -- doomed thousands sleeping around me.

It is the night before a battle. The enemy, Fredericksburg, and its mighty entrenchments lie before us, the river between -- at tomorrow's dawn our troops will assay to cross, and the guns of the enemy will sweep those frail bridges at every breath.

Women in History -- Stronger than we are?

Chela gave me this book a couple of Christmases ago and I've read parts of it off and on.

Currently I'm reading letters from the Civil War era. One I read a couple of weeks ago was from a 60-year old missionary in Hawaii. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was told she'd have to have her breast removed. Unfortunately, this was before the development of anesthesia.  Many years earlier, she had been given chloroform -- the only "knock out" drug then available -- during childbirth and had developed paralysis, so her doctors felt it wasn't safe to use.

In other words, she had a radical mastectomy without any pain killers!  She sat in a chair, bracing her hands on the arms of the chair and her feet on its rungs and just asked to be told when the cuts would occur so she "would be able to bear it."

She writes (to one of her children), "Then came a gash long and deep, first on one side of my breast, then on the other. Deep sickness seized me, and deprived me of my breakfast.  This was followed by extreme faintness."

Her description of the entire operation is incredible. Even more incredible is that she survived and lived another 20 years!

Interview with FLDS members

I've created a new category: Perspectives, to share what others are thinking or doing. Often I read a tidbit of something that is a different way of looking at an issue, or provides insight to a way of living or working that is very different from ours. I'm posting this link simply as a way of sharing a different view of what's going on in Texas from what we usually get in the news.

Fieldnotes