Love,

Sarah

“The cause is peace.” The man said after he prayed over yet another lost life to the war in Iraq.   These words struck me most of all as I watched the H.B.O. show “Baghdad ER.”  Watching the death, the broken spirits, the terrified Iraqis, I completely forgot about peace. They all (or most of them at least) hope and pray and believe that this is the cause of their suffering.  I hope that peace is the cause too.  But I fear that the world has lost sight of this cause.   Especially in Iraq. Was peace ever the point? Maybe it was for some people, maybe not for others.  I feel it has become a government, oil, and money game of fear.   Now we are there fighting to stop the fighting, but peace seems to be the farthest thing from our grip, or often even our minds, now.  It’s such a risky business, violence for peace.  But is there any other way?

Some fifty years ago this country embarked on a somewhat catastrophic war in Vietnam.   But it didn’t take long for an American Revolution to begin within our streets.  People came together in a tapestry of anger and spirit and yes, drugs, to protest something they knew was wrong.  Unfortunately the war took until 1975 to end.  But America still rose up in that time.  What an exciting time to be alive; a time when there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of passion for life and humanity that I can’t seem to find in this era.   Of course I wasn’t there so I don’t really know, but I certainly don’t feel like this is that exciting of a time to be alive.  It feels so much more morose than that.  I could be exciting – we could rise up.  There are genocides going on and a war that seems be spiraling into the depths of hell and yet it is like pulling teeth for use to get even a few people gathered at STAND meetings or rallies.  Where is the passion? Why don’t people care anymore?

As humans, we are failing ourselves.  This country especially is breeding an amount of complacency and laziness that frightens me to my very core.  We have to rise up.  It has to be everyone.  I wish I knew how to make this happen.  How it is that we can rise up peacefully.  But I do know that there is an alarming lack of passion for life and humanity in the air that I have felt for some time now.  The spirit to see something that is wrong and want to change it.    We need to wake up.

The cause is peace.  The cause is life. We won’t be able to afford much longer to pretend that we live in a great world or a great society.

Oh de foof

Sarah

This is why being a vegetarian/vegan is so good

Also check out This video for an even more graphic understanding of what we vegetarians go through. Whichever kind of animal product you consume, it generally comes from a tortured animal. I now choose to take it upon myself to insist that any dairy product I eat comes from a free range place. We are all living beings on this earth put here by God or evolution or whatever you choose to think – it isn’t just a human’s planet. If we choose to believe that this earth was given to us as humans to be the center of, then with that privilege comes the responsibility to care of it, including the other beings we deem necessary for survival.

I’m not an idiot, I get that meat is good tasting that that it’s all part of the natural food chain. But that video has nothing to do with what is natural. Native Americans used to kill a bull and find some use for every part of it. Then after they would say a prayer thanking them for their feed. Sounds like they had it right. But for us, we are an over-consuming world that want everything good and easy. And it’s not like we are the ones doing the dirty work anyways, right?

I watch these videos and see people harming the suffering animals without conscience and I wonder how it is possible. Maybe they just don’t believe that the animals are suffering, maybe they really do care and just learn to block it out, whatever. Ultimately they are all just mindless money-sucking people like most of the rest of the world. Willing to do almost anything legal for money. But I hardly can see that form of torture as being “legal” in the eyes of God or the goddesses or mother earth. And it’s not like that money those people are making isn’t going to feeding their families. And the big head honchos will keep paying them and keep thriving because people keep consuming and it is too expensive for most of the smaller humane farmers to make a living. So there is the dilemma. Everyone needs to make a living, and people keep consuming. It’s all of our faults.

What’s going on reminds me of the same vicious system that’s causing the Darfur genocide right now. The government want to murder anyone that isn’t part of their ethnicity, so they’ll fund the militias to get it done. And China wants the oil reserves, so they’ll back the government. Everyone wins except those who are suffering. Ouch.

I’m not saying you all need to be vegan. It is clear that the benefits from a vegetarian lifestyle are numerous, but I understand how unrealistic that is. But maybe take the time to educate yourself on what it is you are eating and where it comes from. Take some time to understand what we are doing to our planet and how you can make a difference. I’ve found in this just one of many causes for me, and I sit down guilt-free with my vegetarian meal.

Check out the book “The Omnivores Dilemma.” I haven’t read it yet but from what i gather it’s another amazing, life-changing read…

Always love,
Sarah

Best text message ever.   

There is a certain amount of morbidity in this quote if you look at it in the wrong way, but all it means I think is that there is the unexpected tragedy of complacency once one reaches his or her goal and does not have any where to move forward. 

This is why I think that medicine has been my dream for so long.  I will not really ever reach my heart’s desire but I think that is a good thing…I do not like standing still and I do not like to be bored.  I think my bigger fear in life is that I will get stuck where I am at and cease to be challenged.  In medicine I see an endless road for me to travel.  It is almost the easy way out, like I don’t have to do all the searching on my own.  But I know that won’t be the case.  I just don’t know if I really do need to see the light at the end of the tunnel…as long as I have a shot at trying.  

Anyways, I thought about this today as I was running and trying to wrap my head around probably the best news I have heard in a VERY long time.  Kate, my older sister, has been accepted to Oregon State’s Veterinary School.  She also has achieved an interview at the Tufts University vet school in Boston.  For those of you that don’t know us Schoenhals, this has been something she has sweat and toiled over for the past four years, and has wanted for as long as I can remember.  She has a long road ahead of her, but just for a moment, she has reached her heart’s desire.  In a completely uncomplacent way.  It is so scary to think that we are growing up like this…she has an actual career facing her now.  She gets a shot at the “what I want to be when I grow up” now.  

I was elated when I heard this.  I am so proud of her, and it is such a well-earned achievement.  No one deserves it more than she does.  It just goes to show that your education is what you make it.  You don’t need an Ivy league school to get you where you want to go, you need dreams, drive, and to work your ass off.  Here is to turning my nose up at all the fancy schools that would turn their noses up at us in the little universities.  And here’s to Kate.  Maybe there is hope for me yet.  I guess I will find out in a few years!  

Love Always,Sarah 

p.s. the Queens registrar mailed the WRONG TRANSCRIPT to Oxford.   I got incredibly lucky and happened to get an extra copy of what they send so I caught the mistake.  But not before it had been mailed off with the rest of my application material.  I think they are taking care of it now…but I feel like I might be in Orange County! AH! 

She called it a “modern-day Trail of Tears.” Sitting in the backyard of the house we were building for Linda, her daughter and three grandchildren, in the St. Bernard Parish of Louisiana, I watched tears trickle down her cheek as she shared with us her account of Hurricane Katrina and all that followed it.  It has been over two years and it still hurts these people to their very core, many can hardly discuss it without weeping, and there is so much to be done.  But the thing to remember is that, beyond the tears, a smile is still cracked and life still carries on.  She said we were her “angels.” She brought us food and laughed with us while we worked.  She hugged every one of us and gave us her love.  She let me play with her dog that survived the storm with her. 

I gained so much more in this week spent outside New Orleans than I ever could have expected.  From day one I was shocked at how devastated the area still looked.  Some places where better than others, but there were still streets upon streets of abandoned houses, some not even gutted yet.  X’s on the outside walls marked different things, some houses had things like “one dead dog” written on them.  If you peaked inside some of the houses, you could see the remnants of their entire lives, torn apart and molded over, untouched since the storm.  In the parish (a.k.a. county) where we worked, there was between about ten to 28 feet of water there after the levies broke.  It soaked for almost three weeks.  It was mostly areas outside of New Orleans that were hit the hardest, and that still need the most recovery help.  Just down the street from where we stayed was the nursing home where 35 people were trapped and killed by the flooding.  A local described to us his friend whose wife was killed there, who took his own life shortly after the news.  He said this to us with a sigh as he went back to making the gumbo and continued to chat with us about ghosts and old legends that he still keeps alive in the aftermath.  

We stayed at “Camp Hope,” a volunteer camp where many groups come to stay while they work with habitat for humanity of other projects.  It is an abandoned middle school, and the deal Habitat has with the government is that it will fix of the school and get it running again (only 4 of 16 middle schools in the area are working).  Along with being a functioning home for many volunteers, some of whom live and work there year-round, it is a place for some of the locals with nothing else to do, many of whom still live in their FEMA trailers,  to hang out and work.  Some of them volunteer their time cooking and helping out as well.  They are all overwhelmingly friendly and do not hesitate to talk and share with us their stories, their heartbreaks.  It is some form of therapy they tell me.  I think people just want to know that they are heard, that they aren’t forgotten yet.

The thing I didn’t realize about all that went on that fall of 2005 was not just the detrimental effects of the broken levies but how poorly people were handled in the aftermath.  Linda waited with her daughter(who was at the time four months pregnant) in her attic for a few days before “rescue”, and was taken from place to place sleeping in dirty clothes with little food and no comfort at all.  The children had left for the weekend and they’d had no form of contact with them.  They’d wade through water and sleep on bags of sugar and the like. She described waiting for pick-up in this one place outside the city for four days, each day being assured food and rescue was coming, but never seeing it.  When they were on busses, one diabetic man died because he could not get his insulin.  Not long after another elderly woman passed away.  This was the trail of tears she described.  This tedious journey of survival, with day in and day out of squalor, or diminishing hopes.  But they made it through.  And despite the troubles she faced, Linda managed to bring along her bird, Matilda, and dog, Romeo.  

The media had portrayed the victims of the hurricane to be these untrustworthy people, like there were looters and rapists, like vermin.  They were hardly like that at all, they were mostly just displaced families looking desperately for hope and escape, but they were not treated accordingly.  The military called them “contaminated.” A deputy threatened her with a gun, she said.  But all they wanted to were answers, warmth, and most importantly to find their children.  I understand that in the urgency of thousands of people shouting from rooftops in dire need of help and no where to go things were bound to get out of hand, but it doesn’t seem to give much excuse.  It was like there was no better way, but it seems as if there couldn’t have been a worse way either. 

It took Linda and Kelly three weeks to be reunited with their two children. After that they lived in North Carolina for nine months before finally returning to Louisiana.  They currently stay in a trailer up the street from a house Kelly purchased.  The house that we are putting together for them.  It is an arduous process, putting up insulation and drywall.  But with every day I felt an amazing fulfillment.  I was helping hang the walls of a home for five people that need will appreciate this warmth more than any people I could imagine.  

When I get depressed thinking about the carnage and destruction that lies there, I try to keep in mind that there are still areas that have moved back on their feet.  Business are moving.  In a row of cold, empty houses you can sometimes find a warm household that has rebuilt itself.  Some streets are filled with people, all working towards a similar goal.  It is a meticulous process, and can be very heart-breaking for many.  In fact, statistics showed an increase in the suicide rate of people moving back in to their houses after the storm.  It seems like once they got back on their feet they didn’t know where to go from there.  It is scary for many, and depressing to move in to a house on a street of abandoned and broken houses, but slowly people have dared to do it. They have put life back in to a city that almost drowned two years ago.  There is a long, long, road ahead, and help is still needed immensely, but things are moving forward.  

I am certainly intending on going back there.  Maybe even for a summer.  It is worried that the nation has somewhat forgotten, but help now is needed just as much as it was two years ago.  Look up  going if you have any interest, it is cheap and reasonably easy, and so worth the time.  You know I go on and on about how one day I am going to save the world, but what I often forget to realize is that so many people are doing that every day.  I am joining a crowd of world-savers in my efforts, and I hardly fill the part.  But we do are best, don’t we.    

Love Always, Sarah  

Song of today: “Blackbird” 

That is pretty much what is fun in my life right now. What’s worth sharing. What can I say, I’m a soccer stud right now, if nothing else…

Love Always,
Sarah

song: the theme from the Boondock Saints. It’s my self-empowering battle song.

i love everyone i meet. i think it is important that this happen because who needs hate anymore. but does anyone really even care anymore? is anybody listening?

i have no more words.