This afternoon’s fun was reading the Code of Federal Regulations. Not all 200 volumes of it, thankfully. The CFR embodies all the administrative rules which were enacted by federal agencies and which have the force of law. Since my company is managing a federal grant, I needed to re-read the relevant parts in the much-loved Title 48, which deals … read more Reading the code
I lost $35,000 in two months. My life is exactly the same. Money is fiction. Live your soul. In December of 2008, after the U.S. financial meltdown, I wrote those words on a card. I stapled the card to the folder where I keep the receipts for the month, so that I would see it every time … read more Time isn’t money
I’m thirsty. But I can’t drink water, because then I’ll have to urinate. And there’s nowhere nearby to do that. I’m on my period. So I can’t go to school, because there’s no safe bathroom to go and change the pad. I went outside at night to urinate because there’s no toilet in our house. I … read more Day 70: Nowhere to go
When I moved to North Georgia, I noticed that there was a certain breeze that arrived every year around September 1. A breeze that was not fresh like the breezes of spring, or humid like the hot breezes of summer. A breeze that bites with ice. It’s distinct from the lovely breezes that start cooling off the … read more Day 55: The September 1st breeze
Time lapse photography is eerily like memory. Days get clipped into seconds, and all of it speeds by – making it hard to distinguish what the exact difference is as each image blends into the next. How is Day 43 different from Day 34? What happens when one day piles atop another? In my second round of … read more Day 45: The blur of time
Forty days. This will be my 40th blog post. Forty days: It evokes the image of wandering in the desert. My friend Sara, who is a photographer and artist, does wonderful montages with photos and figures. In one of them (partial version above), there is a man in a worker’s uniform with a push broom over his shoulder. He … read more Day 40: Wandering in the desert
After handling a lot of pennies, I feel vaguely ill. The Daily Mail claims a 1-Euro coin is dirtier than a toilet seat; and the Internet is filled with similar dire warnings about how dirty money is. But read the fine print and pay attention to the realities of risk. First of all, the amount of … read more Day 18: Dirty money
Until I started on this project, I was unaware of the myth that, when someone who is dead misses you, wants to make their presence known, or just wants to say Hi, they throw a penny in your path. But the saying “Pennies from heaven” is of unclear origin; it means money acquired without risk or … read more Day 16: Pennies from Heaven
