what to do?

this is post #699, which means the one after this is #700. i've written almost 700 posts (that's just on this blog, we're not even talkin' about all those others). i feel like #700 should be something special. a milestone of sorts (not to begin to seem obsessed with stones). but i feel a little paralyzed (that's been common this week) before the round number.

then it hit me, i have this fantastic resource right here, at my disposal. and that resource is all of you! so what should #700 be? i'm open to any and all suggestions (tho' i will pick my favorite in a most undemocratic perhaps even dictatorial fashion). and #700 will be the one that inspires me most.

so, put your thinking caps on and leave me a comment with your suggestions. perhaps a giveaway (and if so, what would you like me to give)? a dare? something you think i can wax philosophical on (not grammar, that's clear)? a list of questions you've always wanted to ask?

i wanna hear all your best and brightest ideas. because somehow these milestones matter, don't they?

what i've learned so far this week

what a week! i've been busy late into the night every night this week. and i thought i'd share a few things that i've learned along the way....

1. writing a whole 40+ page magazine more or less by yourself is not easy.
2. it's best if you never, ever let yourself think of it all at once (because it turns out that's quite breathtakingly paralyzing), but instead keep thinking of it in individual articles/items in a checklist. small, digestible chunks, in other words.
3. even if you think of it in individual pieces, it somehow does end up all fitting together, because it's all coming from your brain.
4. when you do a series of interviews on similar topics over several days, you should really type out everything from your notes after each interview. this will help you immeasurably later. (note to self: follow this advice in the future. for. sure.) if you don't, they can become jumbled up in your head and in your notes and take a whole lot longer to write into a coherent story.
5. a smooth stone, held in your hand occasionally for strength, helps your concentration.
6. chill/lounge music in the background is also good for concentration.
7. you will wake up in a cold sweat at 5:12 a.m., worried about whether you're ever going to get it all done.
8. you will get it all done.
9. you have to accept that some of it is good and some of it is dross. (dang, that is a seriously harsh word when i think about it.) but the fact is that there's only so much you can do to sex up propellers, hull coatings and propulsion systems. 
10. thrusters, on the other hand, are by their very nature, sexy as hell.
11. i thought briefly that i had lost my rock when i took sabin to the dentist, but after an only mildly panicked frantic search, i found it in the car. and felt very relieved. note to self: keep track of the damn rock.
12. a woman in england apparently kept the body of her mother in her freezer for 20 years. and i thought i was bad about cleaning out the freezer. i wonder if she had a special freezer dedicated to just that or if she kept food in there too.
13. jane fonda has been rendered unrecognizable by plastic surgery, but she's still sharp and funny (thanks david letterman (and TV2Zulu for broadcasting you when it's time to make lunch)).
14. there are people who are my age and who have children the age of my child who do not spend any time at all in cyberspace and yet they still think they exist. imagine that. i could not, however, verify their actual existence since i was unable to find them online.
15. those people who can't speak the language of blogging, facebook, twitter, flickr, linked-in, plaxo, tumblr, and social media in general are being sorely left behind and will undoubtedly soon divide off the human branch, like neanderthals. i mean, they can hardly even participate in a normal conversation.
16. in a fit of madness desire to inhabit a physical presence within my local community, i volunteered our house for a parents' party for all of the parents in sabin's class. sadly, we have nothing in common with them other than the fact that we managed to produce offspring at around the same time. and since the party is at our house, we won't be able to slip away. however, i did manage to make sure that the party will have an ABBA theme, so if i'm dressed as Agnete, eating a shrimp cocktail, and sipping a cold martini, i will no doubt care less.
17. i found my "U." it was in the basket with all of the DS games.
18. my light, bright dining room is a good place to work.
19. the pope has an iPhone. this means one of two things--either the iPhone is SO over or it's the only phone where you can get a direct line to god. if you were so inclined. which i suppose you are if you're the pope.
20. some people strongly fear being different or standing out or putting their 7-year-old on a trans-atlantic flight all by herself. i thought i feared those people, but i'm actually grateful for their existence, because it makes my existence more unique. and it always comes back to me. now would you please hand me my tiara?

what have you learned so far this week?

a sobering experience

a recent post by melissa of tiny happy of an embroidery depicting some of the details of her recent trip to auschwitz got me pondering my own visits to concentration camps--first to buchenwald in 1994 and last year a visit to dachau near munich.

any visit to a camp is a sobering experience. when i visited buchenwald, in former east germany, the wall hadn't been down that long and it still had a very east german feel. the exhibition there at that time had been set up by the occupying soviets and thus had a very russian slant to it, emphasizing the russians who died there, with very little about the jews. i remember at the time that it struck me as inappropriately funny. and i almost had a fit of lispl talking about it to the friend who went with me.

buchenwald was one of the smaller camps and although it had ovens, it was never the death factory that the big camps in poland were. holocaust survivor and winner of the 1986 nobel peace prize elie wiesel spent time there. but one of the most striking things about buchenwald for me was an enormous tree outside the gates, where goethe was said to have sat while he was writing. the contrast of the loftiest literary thoughts and the purest, darkest evil was a strong one.

i was most moved walking on a path in the forest outside the fence of the camp. it was a cloudy day, threatening rain and although the woods were green and lush, they somehow seemed spooky and dark and haunted with the souls of those who had been hastily buried there. strangely i had more of an emotional experience outside the gates than inside. i think because even tho' you're seeing it, you somehow can't take it in--all those rows of bunks and long, low buildings and large grounds where the poor people were lined up. even while you're looking at it, it's impossible to believe people could be so evil. by which i do not mean to say that i don't believe it--what i mean is that your brain can't really comprehend it.

last year around this time, sabin and i met some of my cousins in munich for a weekend. i went with two of the cousins to dachau, which is a short train journey from munich. i felt it was too much for sabin, so she stayed and fed swans and hung out in a cafe with my other cousin. dachau was the very first concentration camp, set up already in the early 30s to take care of any opposition political prisoners the nazis felt needed to be put out of the way. it served as the model for the building of other camps and it was enormous. when the americans arrived there in 1945, there were 32,000 prisoners there, crammed 1600 to a barracks (which were designed to hold 250). it must have been a truly shocking site for those troops to encounter.

today, the barracks are gone and are just rectangular foundations on a vast grounds, which again gives you a surreal feeling about the place--it's hard to imagine all of those people. the grounds are enormous and it's amazing how close the town is to the fences. my main thought was of the people of that town of dachau--how did they let such a thing go on right next door to them? did they know what it was? and what did they think? when the ovens were going full blast, the stench must have been terrific. what do you suppose they thought was going on? how could they avert their eyes for so long? i think that's the part that's hardest for me to understand.

since it was a place for political prisoners from the early days, people of all religions were imprisoned there. and there are several memorials on site representing the various religions of those who died there--russian orthodox, protestant, catholic, and of course, jewish.

the jewish memorial is powerful in its design--dark and cavelike, but with an opening at the top, where light pours in like hope. it's quite moving.

near the crematorium there was a little wooden russian orthodox memorial and there were benches to sit on, but we felt it was pretty distasteful to sit there, chatting and eating lunch like these girls did. we couldn't help but be a bit shocked by that. yet it was somehow representative of how the town must have lived with the horror in their midst, going about their lives.

there is a large, striking and disturbing sculpture near the main buildings which also house exhibition space--a tasteful exhibition with many photos and words, but few of the objects melissa talks about in her post. but disturbing nonetheless.

but the holocaust is a disturbing part of history to say the least. it feels important to have visited these places, even tho' i didn't actually have the reactions i expected to have when i expected to have them. i didn't cry on either visit--i think because of that feeling of remove you get even tho' you're standing right there. it somehow just seems too unreal to comprehend. and that unreality leaves you a little bit numb.

where are "u?"

my "u" is literally missing. the blocks blew over in the wind coming through the window the other night and i can't find it anywhere. it's a bit like me--i know you're all wondering where i am this week--"j, where are you?"--hence the missing "u." but work calls and as i said yesterday, my words are all being channeled elsewhere at the moment. i should be back to normal (whatever that is) by the end of the week...