I refuse to allow the prophecy to be fulfilled...

Wow... it's been months since my last post - nearly four months to be more precise. I have longed to write and have unfortunately not had the time in the past months with the high demands of work and life in general. That being said - NEW FOUND COMMITTMENT!

Awww committment - I have also committed myself to a 10 km run. Me, the self-proclaimed hater of running. I must say that it is for a tremendous cause - cancers below the waist. Over the past few months, I have watched, worried, and tried my best to support people who are the same as family to me. My young 22 year old brother from another mother was diagnosed and endured three grueling rounds of chemotherapy for testicular cancer. After his last round, he was found clear of cancer - what a relief. But the effects of this toxic treatment on him and the emotional and physical anguish endured by himself and his family has inspired me and others to form a fundraising and running team to find a better way to treat and hopefully a cure for this terrible disease that often effects such young and otherwise healthy men.

The run will be fun! Participants are encouraged to dress up (or down so to speak) in their best underwear. The fun and creative aspect of this event is what made me suggest we put a team in. I have already started training and surprisingly, I have quite enjoyed jogging through the gorgeous River Valley in my beautiful city of Edmonton (which will be even better when the darn trees grow some green leaves). These types of family crises sure test not just the immediate family but also the community. My home town of St. Paul, Alberta has pulled together to show their support both emotionally and monetarily.

It makes me ponder...

• Why don't we more often turn to community; work together to achieve our goals
• How can people not see the power of community - local community... instead of turning to provincial or federal levels of government to solve our problems, why not look at home? We are perfectly capable of being innovative and finding solutions
• Imagine if instead of waiting for crisis, we worked together to establish networks in communities ready to deal with so much more (and more efficiently!)

I have often heard the phrase "think globally, act locally" and never have I felt the truthfulness of this idea until now. And the more I think about it, the more I see other situations where it applies. While I appreciate the importance of individualism, I get scared that maybe this philosophy of life has been taken too far; so far that community has disintegrated only to bind together in times of emergency (and sometimes not even then). I have made it my personal goal to realize and talk about the power and importance of community...

Tomorrow's Inauguration Day

Wow, tomorrow is the big day... the day that the first African American is sworn in as President of the United States of America. I didn't think that Obama's election campaign and eventual win would have such an effect on me...a truely emotional effect. He really managed to instill some real hope and inspiration in me personally. I only truely hope and pray that he makes some real change...

I feel that I can relate to Obama - because really he's "bi-racial"; whatever that really means. I too have one black parent and one white. I wonder if he's felt the same things that I have in the course of my relatively short life:

• How does HE identify himself?
• How much has he struggled explaining his ethnicity; often to strangers who feel that they have the right to ask simply because you look different (not quite black, obviously not white)?
• At what point in his life did he become truely comfortable with how he defines himself?

I wonder if things would have been different if his wife wasn't black and therefore his children weren't black... Would be still be described in the same way? I noticed a magazine cover, I think it may have been People, with a close up of the Obama family and thought to myself "he looks a lot darker than he actually is... and his wife and children also look darker..." Maybe he's happy to be identified by the majority as black - maybe it's eased some of his own identity issues.

I have often felt that I don't really belong anywhere - not really with my white German family, nor with my black Papua New Guinean family... I'm always looked at as different. But to tell you the truth, I feel more accepted by my black family...

I now answer the question, again often from strangers, about my "background" with one simple answer - I am Canadian, born, raised, and proud. Not that I forsake my roots nor ignore my cultural upbringings (both German and Mundugamore), but because it's easier and true! I think that as my generation ages and the next comes that this response will become more accepted...

My first blog

So I read somewhere that the vast majority of blogs die off...quickly. I'm going to give my best effort to not let mine die!!

I have come to realize that the passion underlying almost everything I have done is writing. I regularly have thoughts I know I need to get down on paper, or I guess in a blog, so I'm going to give it a go! Although I don't really have a main theme or set of themes at the moment, I'm sure that they will come through eventually...