One decision I’ve been very glad I’ve made was signing up for a last.fm account a little over a year ago. If you aren’t familiar with the site it serves two main purposes: keep track of every song you listen to, recommend new music based your past listening record. By now, last.fm has a huge amount of information about my music listening habits (more than 13,000 plays) and with all that data available it’s only a mater of time before a programer has some fun with it. One of my favorite finds has been LastGraph, which generates some pretty nifty graph of my listening habits. For example, the graph at the top of this post shows every song I listened to in 2008, while at right you can see some details of my listening activity in late July when I was listening to a lot of bluegrass and a little Death Cab. If you’re interested, you can even download the full, year-long graph (1.6 MB). Looking at a full year in retrospect is always interesting & I love spotting the little shifts and trends in my life. For example, NPR dropps off of my chart in July when we moved to Philippi & I didn’t listen to the Story of the Day podcast on my walk to work, or the steady streams of Coldplay & Radiohead. Sometimes when I consider the fact that I track nearly every tune I listen to, every book I read, and every trip I take it seems obsessive, but I’m always grateful in retrospect.

I just wanted to pass along two blogs that I visit when I need a touch of humor in my life. First there’s FAIL Blog which documents failures both great and small. One of my favorite recent examples was this failed article:

Then there’s The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotes who’s title is fairly self-explanatory Hope you can get a few chuckles from these sites too.

Will spotted this at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and suggests that the quotation marks may be “the deliberate accident of some wry staff member” which, actually, kind of makes it better. Actually, what would be best if it was some ostensibly serious demonstration of “talent” like karaoke.

In case you don’t follow my every move, I’d like to offer links to all of the photos I’ve taken, documenting the past several months of my life:

Life + Love

WV SA Get Together

NYC

Service Adventure Miscellanea

Maggie & Beth recently send a great article my way about why Sarah Palin sends the wrong message about women’s rights. The article has a related discussion that is filled with hundreds of comments, a surprising number of which were along the same lines… as RogerCfromSD put it “[the author] reveals her supreme hypocrisy: only LIBERAL women who are accomplished mothers are to be celebrated.” Unfortunately, the thing that Roger (and countless other commenter) failed to notice was what I consider the crux of the article: “Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman.” I’m happy to call myself a feminist as long as you know what I mean. To me, feminism, like so many other human rights movements, is ultimately about equality. It is breaking down of stereotypical roles so that the person most interested in a job can do it (be it public office or child care). I believe equality should be beyond all divisions: race, gender, sex, religion, nationality, whatever. Human rights should be universal, and when it comes to employment, decisions should be made on experience and capability, not stereotypes. That is where McCain’s choice of Palin rubs me (and the author) wrong. Feminism is not about always choosing a woman because ultimately that is just a sexist as always picking a man. Where does that leave me? Well, it seems that many people (feminists included) agree strongly with Sarah Palin on issues she is very vocal about. Those people should definitely consider voting for Mr. McCain & Mrs. Palin, but her stance on the environment alone makes me shudder (not to mention energy sources & oil, the separation of church and state, the death penalty, or health care). Do some research on the issues, know where the candidates stand. We aren’t just voting for a female (or African-American) role model, we’re voting on the next four years of national policy!

Last night Beth & I watched Charlie Wilson’s War. It was an very well made movie about how a charismatic, well-connected congressman, Charlie Wilson, helped fund a covert war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Operation Cyclone was a deemed a huge success at the time, but in some ways set the stage for the current war in Afghanistan and the War on Terror in general. Watching movies like this one make me so conflicted about the war in Iraq. I would love nothing more than for the US to bring it’s troops home… at the same time I’m worried that if the US military leaves the country, aid to the area will dwindle quickly (because of security and short attention spans), leaving many Iraqis with more anti-American sentiment than ever. This is one of many reasons I don’t envy the next president of this country. I really hope there are some smart people out there that have a better plan in mind than any I can think up!

This past weekend Beth & I made a quick trek to Akron, PA to visit Emily before she heads to Uganda to work for a year with SALT. Along with lots of good time just to chat and an amazing waffle breakfast, Emily took us to downtown Lancaster, PA. To be honest, neither Beth nor I knew quite what to expect, but it turns out Lancaster is quite the happening place. We spent hour wandering through the farmer’s market, museum, local galleries and miscellaneous boutiques. The most quirky, and definitely the most fun to explore, was a shop called Zap & Co that was floor to ceiling with vintage clothes, books, photos, jewelery & so much more. Stuff from the 30s, 40s and 50s mostly. My favorite find was a book titled The Good Citizen’s Handbook. It’s a collection of advice and instructions found in government, civic, and scouting handbooks from the 1920s - 60s that was compiled and re-published in 2001. The owner of the store seemed to think the book was intended to be completely ironic, but I’m not so sure. You should definitely follow the link & browse through the sample pages yourself. Unfortunately the preview cut out the page that reads “A good citizen eats meat…and lots of it.” lol! I was also expecting irony when I started reading and so was a bit surprised that most of the advice seems fairly good and reasonable. However, I’m definitely glad that we, as a society, have started moving beyond some of the stereotypes and miss-understandings also promoted in parts of the book (e.g. eating meat). Thanks again to Emily for such a great Saturday on the town!

Just a quick update to let everyone know that we arrived, safely in Philippi this past Saturday evening. Also, while I will continue to write here at kuhnsfam.com, you should also check out the new Philippi Service Adventure Blog that Beth started. She’ll be keeping that blog up to date with news and info about life at the Philippi unit house. Thanks again for your prayers & support, and if you’re passing through (or want to stop by) this area we’d love to have you visit. We’ll even have a guest room once we get settled.

It’s an amazing thing how quickly a summer can get busy. It’s been a great one for Beth & I. Full of friends, family & lots of traveling. Since our trip to Chicago we’ve visited Philippi, WV, traveled to a wedding in KS, had reunions in OH & PA, and visited Beth’s family in California too. A whopping 6,000+ miles of travel! We’ve been in 9 states and will get things to a nice even 10 when we fly to Albuquerque for a week of Service Adventure orientation. If you’re interested in trying to keep track of where Beth & I happen to be you should check out my Dopplr page.

In case you haven’t heard for some reason, Beth & I will be the leaders of the Service Adventure unit in Philippi, WV for the next couple of years :-D  We leave Goshen on the 19th of this month which is sad in plenty of ways. Goshen really has been a wonderful place for us to spend our first year of marriage.

When I wasn’t traveling, I was working hard to release the latest & greatest feature for haiku… Embed the Web™. Simply put, it lets teachers use tools from virtually anywhere (Google Maps, TeacherTube videos, del.icio.us bookmars, you name it) right in their classes. Not only that, but we provide step by step instructions for a growing number of websites to help them get started. It has been a lot of fun to work on & has once again made me marvel at how incredably huge the internet is.

To finish up this long overdue post I suggest you read an article on the 37signals blog: Early retirement is a false idol. I really appreciate the authors point of view. I can only hope that I continue to be lucky, getting to do work that I hardly consider work. I know well and good that it’s a luxury & I pray that I never forget that. Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers over the past few weeks & I’ll be keeping you updated with how things are going in WV once we get settled in.

Ok, ok, I’m not actually a White Sox fan, but I figured it was an appropriate intro to our recent trip to Chicago. Jason & Joel (a friend of Jason’s from KC) flew in to Chicago for the Memorial Day weekend so Beth & I joined them Saturady & Sunday for some catching up and to explore the city. We had a great time! Even though I’ve been to Chicago numerous times before, almost every stop this trip was new to me: Taste of Peru (thanks Joel & Naomi for finding that place!), Navy Pier, the Threadless store, the Field Museum & a White Sox game (Sox won with a home run in the bottom of the 9th).

In un-related news, keep Beth & I in your thoughts & prayers, as today should be the day we find out if we’ve been affirmed as Service Adventure leaders. I’ll let you know what we find out.

Two special treats for Earth Day this year. A new blog post and new spring photos too! It’s been such beautiful weather this week. Yesterday we put a blanket outside & just sat around reading. What bliss! Hope all is well with you this Earth Day too.