am i speaking swahili or are you just not listening?

Of course, it might be fun to speak Swahili.  I just don't know anyone who understands it.

Every now and then I find an op-ed or an article that echoes what has been going through my mind:  the hypocrisy of conservatives, the misguided morality of both conservatives and liberals, etc.  But closer to home, it feels like I'm just some crazy Cassandra.   My refuge is the New York Times, which is admittedly a liberal paper, but I still see myself as a centrist.  Like Dan says, he's conservative in his heart but liberal in his head.  And I find that telling...for sometimes it seems like to be conservative is to ignore the logical thoughts in your own brain. 

I occasionally get my father's ear, and I remind him that the "us versus them" mentality gets nobody nowhere.  And he nods.  But then he continues to spout venom when it comes to animal rights activists and Muslims.  It's a vicious cycle...hate breeds hate, fiscal irresponsibility breeds more irresponsibility.  The latter is a reference to an article called the "Non-Profit Starvation Cycle" posted by a friend.  It's a pdf, or else I'd link to it somehow.  I'm just not feeling that html inclined today.  Anyway.  I think I'm feeling the words in that article all too well.  This job I have is afterall about to expire due to a lack of compassion and fiscal know-how.  What a sad situation we're in, us non-profit idealist art people, when our boards of trustees and executive directors cannot weather the recessional storm in a way that doesn't amputate all that is pure and good from the institution.  I've never understood how it could be deemed smart to fire good people in order to keep a museum open.  Those people are the museum!

But even as I type these words, I know they'll be misconstrued.  I know that no one will read every little paragraph and get exactly what I'm thinking and feeling.  That's the limit of language.  

It's like commenting on someone's post without reading the article they have cited.  That happens all the time...wall-posts are hijacked to get into some debate about what sort of non-profit (global or grassroots) better deserves support...something that is only indirectly related to the Starvation Cycle.  Ugh.  I got all mad about it and it wasn't even my wall!

I know there are just some people out there who will not see eye to eye with me.  It scares me, though, that a good portion of those people are in charge and capable of rendering me and my generation unemployable.