I'm off balance, Indonesia told me so

So there I was, stumbling through a public park, my friends gently trying to assist me from getting from point A to point B. I was hardly able to take a step without losing balance. I know what you're thinking. I was drunk. Like stupid drunk. Like probably-should-go-to-meetings drunk. Well, you would think that, wouldn't you? And you would be wrong. You should be ashamed.

No, if helps the story, I might add that I was blind folded and there were dozens of other people there too.

It was Ollie's and my last night in Yogjakarta, my only night out in our 10-day whirlwild tour of the JRS projects in Indonesia (you guys rock, by the way). It was a brisk evening and the staff, God bless them, took us out on the town. We had dinner which was the best (and that is not an overstatement) duck i have ever eaten. Forget the forks, we just ravaged those birds like it was our last meal.

Then they took us to the town square.

If you can imagine dozens of golf carts covered in cartoon characters made of colorful rope lights, then I will not need to provide a picture. That's it. Golf carts and tandem bicylces all covered in rope lights for tourists to hire and ride around this tiny section of green space.

So we get there and Lars, a JRS guy, tells us that is tradition to blindfold oneself and to try to walk through these two enormous Banyan trees. Apparently people have been doing this for years but I don't exactly know how it got started. I imagine some enlightened Buddhist monk with a long beard first told some foreigner to do it to balance his chi or something. Or perhaps that's form a Karate Kid movie.

Anyway, we have a go. I'm up first because I stupidly am always game for everything. Walk in a straight line with my eyes closed, I thought. How hard can that be?

So JRS people blindfold me. I have the tree in my mind's eye. I can see myself walking through the two trees an making my wish. Ah yes, I forgot. Apparently you get a wish if you do this.

The first thing I notice is, not only can I not walk in a straight line with my eyes closed, I don't trust myself to walk at all. I am about to fall over with every step because I can't truly believe there is ground under my feet without seeing it.

But I keep going. And going. Until they just tell me to give up.

Now one might think that people would barely miss the trees. Or maybe run right into them. They are big honking trees, mind you.

But no, I walk straight for maybe a few steps and then somehow make a 90 degree angle and walk parallel to the trees toward the street.

And so does everybody else!

Now, I don't know the science or spirituality behind this, but something is off. Only one of the six of us made it through three trees. None of the rest of us came close. And some of those people were born and raised in Yogjakarta and have been trying for years.

So, in case I needed any sign from the heavens that my inner-balance is way off, I got it.

Thanks a lot, Indonesia.

Why Ricky Cheffer is the smartest person I know

From a Skype conversation Sept 14, 2011

Molly

I am saving my money. I need to live on $60 a week

Not eating anything over $1.

Ricky

umm

is that...feasible

Molly

yeah

in Bangkok it is, sort of.

Eating less, eating a lot of rice.

Ricky

ahh

rice is nice

it will suffice

meals thrice

mice with dice?

that's my advice

Molly Mullen in a nutshell

So I was perusing design websites the other day and I came across this award for best promotions. Usually corporations win it every year, but last year some guy won it for self promotion. He put together a really well designed packet for his resume and clips and whatnot.

I stole his idea and made the above PDF to go into my next job application, whenever that may be. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Alaska, in retrospect

I learned a lot in my few months in Alaska. Like, don't moon the whale-watching boats on the weekend when the neighbors could be watching... I think it takes a year or so removed to see how an experience changed you. So here you go, a brief retrospective on my time on Shelter Island.

Two cool things happened to me there. One, I met Rick and Karen, the folks who own the farm. Secondly, I got to know my best friend, really get to know him, for the first time in the 20 years I've been friends with him.

But from getting to know them, I got to know a lot about myself. I always joke that what I learned in Alaska was how truly bad I am at outdoorsy stuff (no one up there would disagree) but I got more out if than that simple realization.

Let me give you a little context. We'd wake up and have breakfast, the three of us WWOOFers and Rick and Karen. Then we'd work. Usually just splitting and stacking wood or wood chipping or whatever else they could find for us to do. Then lunch, more work, then quitting time.

That, of course, was my favorite time of day. After work and before our dinner feasts. It was quiet for the first time of the day. The sun would start going down behind the mountains. Rick would pick up his guitar and play. In between playing, I'd get to hear him talk. About music. About his book collection. About moving to Alaska. About life.

If you're ever up that-a-way, have Karen tell you about the first time she heard Frank Zappa's "Dinah Moe Hum." Or have Rick tell you how he came to write his own verse to "You Can't Always Get What You Want," if he'll tell it.

I always knew I wanted to be a reporter but I couldn't articulate why. Spending a summer in a place with no distractions, and no opportunity to report on anything, I figured out what I love so much. I love listening. And I have been blessed to meet so many people worth listening to.

Right before Ricky and I left the island, Rick said that we weren't great WWOOFers. We weren't bad, but "we didn't really experience the magic of the island." I don't think that's true. Sure, I didn't hike around or fish in my off hours. I am the world's worst kayaker. But I got at least a little magic while I was there. I think Ricky did too. Just our own kind of magic.

Sitting in the wood-fired hot tub, Alaskan pale ale in one hand next to my best friend, watching the sun set over the mountains and the whales swimming by, that was magic enough for me. It's the only time where I had nowhere to go and nothing to do and was happy as a clam in the moment.

This city is trying to kill me

Alternate title: How Doc Holliday is keeping me from quitting and moving home. Alternate alternate title: Fuck Bangkok.

So, I am writing this spiteful blog post from my bed, where I have been lying nonstop since Friday after work, except for two food runs and a quick trip to the hospital where they told me I have a throat infection.

I've had aches and a cough for the past day or so and my loathing for this city is growing with my fever.

But, I have made a significant dent in the new book I am reading, "They Call me Doc," a biography of Doc Holliday, who alongside Wyatt Earp and his brothers, fought the Cowboys at the O.K. Corral.

So when my throat got sore, and my temperature rose and I got all achey, my first thought was, "I have tuberculosis just like Doc!" followed by my second thought, "I have dust pneumonia!" It should become clear to you, the reader, with this insight to my thought process that I have pretty much been living in books for the past few weeks.

But reading these books is teaching me something. They are reminding me to tough it out. Don't let anything take me down. Nothing as measly as a polluted, superficial city 14-million strong can defeat Molly Mullen.

It's like the motto of the Last Man's Club, the men who signed an oath never to leave the panhandle of Oklahoma, no matter how bad the dust storms got. "Grab a root and growl." This was when they were eating mostly roots, beans and canned tumbleweed. Well, I too am grabbing a root and growling. If by root they mean chicken and rice and by growling they mean coughing.

Or as Doc Holliday supposedly said, "Die with your boots on. Die standing up. Die standing for something."

Well, I don't exactly stand for something at the moment. I'm not really standing at all (ahhh, I crack myself up). But these men and characters in these books have become my closest friends lately. And my other friend, Woody Guthrie has been playing on a loop with his "Dust Bowl Ballads," so I am taking their advice.

When I recover from this consumption, ok ok throat infection (sorry for the melodrama), I am heading back into work, I am going to continue to live my life here until my time is up. Because it can't defeat me. No matter how hard Bangkok tries, I ain't quitting.

Or as, the Last Man's Club would say, I am staying "until hell freezes over."

If anyone needs me, I will be in bed watching the commentaries on Jason Segel movies and listening to This American Life. Feel free to drop by. Room 104. It's unlocked.

You're invited...

I was going through the fonts on my computer and for some reason several of the fonts reminded me of The Shining. So, I made an invite to the Overlook Hotel using fonts that I could probably never use for anything else.

A little background on the invite. The picture is of the Stanley Hotel, where Steven King wrote some of the novel. The bottom part is pink and gold because those are the colors of the ballroom and Wendy's "favorite colors."

Thinking about FDR...

So I'm reading "The Worst Hard Time," A book about the Great American Dust Bowl, Yes. Carol, I was supposed to read it in your Advanced News Reporting class and didn't... I admit that. But I'm making up for it now.

Anywho, I'm getting to the part where Franklin Roosevelt brought the New Deal to the Great Plains. He saved our banking system, by backing up people's money with the Federal Reserve. More close to my heart, he plants trees throughout the Plains to try and keep our states from blowing away. His famous first 100 days were the kind of progressive action we were all hoping Obama could muster. I've seen those trees those trees that were planted. They have become part of our history.

So while I read this book, my close kinship with Nebraska is getting tied up with FDR for what he did for the Plains.

But while I read, I also remember going to a lecture by a historian who wrote the history of the American Civil Liberties Union. After taking us through a short history of breaches in civil liberties throughout the century, he stopped and asked us who was the single worst president for US civil liberties....

Well, he concluded, it would have to be Franklin Roosevelt. Some presidents suppressed freedom of the press. Others allowed Joseph McCarty to blacklist free thinkers. Nixon was just a (tricky) dick to anyone who spoke out against him.

But Roosevelt actually supported the Japanese Internment. More than 100,000 Japanese people, mostly US citizens were taken from their homes and put in camps during World War II.

Yeah, no duh, I know everyone knows this. But it's a weird quandary for me.

I mean, how much good can one president do in order to make up for that? How many jobs must you create or farms must you save in order for history to view you as a good president (seeing as how history only views presidencies in black and white)? Because in my mind, Roosevelt did the single worst thing a president has ever done (imprisoning tens of thousands of US citizens without cause based on race) but also did some of the best things in our history.

So that's what I'm struggling with while reading this book. I am trying to grapple with the idea of a man who was a savior to so many but at one point was ruthlessly un-America, whatever that means.

I guess at the end of the day, that's just it. He was a man. And we often expect our presidents to be something else. He was just a man. And this is just a book. And that was just a question.