For the next couple of weeks, I am re-releasing some old comics from a few years ago at the rate of one-a-day until July 1st.

1. Kansas. In 2008, I went to Kansas to visit my husband’s family.
2. The Sunflower State. I didn’t know what to expect. It was everything I had expected and more– including a tornado! Stay tuned.
3. What’s in Kansas? Kansas was a complete unknown to me.
4. Tornado Alley. I knew Kansas was famous for tornados, I just didn’t really expect to be in one.
5. Cawker City: Home to the World’s Largest Ball of Sisal Twine. The day started out, um, normally…
6. Rain Tornado. A rain tornado is one you can’t see, because of rain and darkness, until it hits you.
7. Tornado Shelter. The more doors you can put between yourself and the tornado, the better.
8. Tornado in Manhattan Kansas. It destroyed the True Value Hardware store. The K-State campus nuclear reactor wasn’t damaged.
9. Tornado in Chapman, Kansas. Everything you know can change in a matter of minutes.
10. Kansas Flip-flops. I found people from Kansas to be generous, practical and unpretentious.
11. Prairie Cathedrals. Parts of Kansas are so featureless that one often uses non-geographic landmarks for navigation.
12. Toilet Alley. Everyday life can sometimes seem rather dull.
13. Deja Vu. Everyday life can sometimes seem rather dull, without surprises.
14. Driving and Sex. This is my friend Dani’s favorite Encore Seraphine comic.
15. The Pretty Girl. Losing one’s confidence is a horrible feeling.
16. Trickle Down Theory. Ultimately, everything trickles down whether we like it or not.

A whistleblower is one who exposes wrongdoing in their workplace. Things don’t usually go well for whistleblowers. They get branded as “troublemakers” by their employers, or worse. Canadian Duncan Edwards reported a strip club breach of security by his Defence Minister employer and was fired for his diligence. Iranian doctor Ramin Pourandarjani died of “salad poisoning” shortly after reporting the use of torture against political prisoners by his government. Christoph Meili, the bank guard who reported the destruction of Holocaust victim’s savings records by UBS bank, had to be given political asylum in the United States after Swiss authorities attempted to arrest him. Being a whistleblower is not an easy decision to make.

Even if I thought that our printers killed baby seals, I would not be a whistleblower. The Bernards, for generations, have silenced whistleblowers. It’s how we made all our money.
Quotation from television character Andy Bernard on The Office

It was a crisis of conscience. I had to be cognizant of what could happen to my family as well as to me. I was confident I wouldn’t be able to get a job in a corporation again, certainly not in the insurance industry.
Quotation from Wendell Potter, former executive at Cigna

P.S. My heart goes out to the people of Japan in the wake of this week’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt-down. Don’t give up!

Great news. My office isn’t going to be closed! I’ve suspected this for several months, especially after we got new computers in January. I’m going to continue taking classes though, because I don’t ever want to feel occupationally vulnerable again.

You with the sad eyes don’t be discouraged
I realize it’s hard to take courage
In a world full of people, you can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you can make you feel so small
But I see your true colors shining through
I see your true colors and that’s why I love you
Lyric from Cyndi Lauper, True Colors

Blueberries are still in season and I’m finished with finals.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.
Quotation from Buddha

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Quotation from Mother Teresa

I got my cast taken off last week. Actually, I took it off myself. I was tired of wearing it.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Quotation from Thomas Paine

The economy is stuck in an unvirtuous cycle.
Quotation from Mark Vitner, Wells Fargo Bank economist

I paid my car off in April. Do you know how nice it is not to have car payments? So the Universe blessed my good fortune by hurling a truck at me this week and destroying my little, completely-paid-for, all-mine car. My insurance company gave me a check and said I’m supposed to replace my Honda with a comparable one. The “catch” is nobody takes care of their cars as well as I do. There isn’t a Honda that is “just like mine” for sale anywhere. I bought a newer one that cost me an additional ten thousand dollars. Alas, I’m making car payments again. Thank you Universe– I’m at least blessed that nobody was injured in the wreck.

I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
Quotation from Jack Handey

Bart, with $10,000, we’d be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like… love!
Quotation from Homer Simpson

I can’t do it alone. The poor can’t, the rich can’t. What’s needed is universal agreement on basic needs such as education, healthcare, housing, justice, resource management, fairness and human rights. We can no longer afford the hatreds of war, racism, sexism, intolerance and other inequities. It has been 65 years since the formation of the United Nations to promote economic development, social progress and world peace. Nothing of cooperative substance has happened since. Perhaps it is time to move the United Nations from New York City to East Jerusalem, making Jerusalem an international city accessable to all. If we put our minds together, even the most vexxing world problems could be solved.

“Freedom from fear” could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.
Quotation from Dag Hammarskjold

They say the universe is endless. They say the universe is expanding. These are the same people that tell you “If you want to know how something works, follow the money.” I’m certain some genius has designed a spreadsheet to explain how this is possible.

Expressed in the usual variables of general relativity, it may appear that our usual space and time are disappearing. However, viewed with the proper variables, our usual space dimensions actually remain infinite and time runs continuously. The transition from big crunch to big bang is due, instead, to the collapse, bounce and re-expansion of one of the extra dimensions.
Quotation from Paul J. Steinhardt, The Endless Universe: Introduction to the Cyclic Universe

School is going well. Casual observation, however, suggests the universe is neither endless nor expanding. The universe is a box and I am trapped inside. In Excel, the spreadsheet software from Microsoft, this is called absolute cell referencing. It is the reason why Encore Seraphine updates have become as rare as refracted rings around a summer moon.

The tragic oil “spill” in the Gulf of Mexico continues. BP CEO Tony Hayward’s congressional hearing this week was a disappointment. I wanted him to tell Congress that BP takes every precaution to prevent accidents like this. I wanted to hear that safety and protecting the environment is as important to him as profits. After all, Mr. Hayward was appointed in 2007 to “clean up” BP after the Texas City refinery fire of 2005 and the Prudhoe Bay pipeline spills that occured the following year. But instead of changing the penny-pinching corporate culture of BP, he cut expenses and eliminated 7,500 jobs.

Does America’s rightous indignation make you feel uncomfortable? It does me. Two months ago, we were angry at Goldman Sachs. BP is just the villain du jour. The underlying problem is we– as a society– tolerate expediency over having to make difficult choices. Too many of us think it’s ok to use torture as a tool in the war against terrorism. Why do Republicans and Democrats point fingers at each other rather than fix the health care system or Social Security? Where is the indignation over having 300,000 homeless children in California?
Doing the right thing proactively is always less costly and painful than damage control after something bad happens.

Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old (The New York Times) “The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years.”

Be inspired by: The Excitement is Building (on Habitat for Humanity) “Everyone is pretty ordinary. No divas or superstars. But together we make a very big difference.”

“What’s in the cookie batter?” she wanted to know. “Lots of sugar,” he said. “Just remember I’m not responsible if you don’t like them.”

Goldman Sachs charged with fraud by SEC “These charges are far more severe than anyone had imagined,” and suggest Goldman teamed with “the leading short-seller in the industry to design a portfolio of securities that would crash,” said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York. (Reuters)

Abacus Allowed Goldman to Shuffle Mortgage Risk Like Beads “The SEC said that Goldman Sachs created and sold Abacus 2007-AC1 without disclosing that hedge fund Paulson & Co. helped pick the underlying securities and also bet the CDO would default. Paulson was proved correct, and his hedge fund eventually turned a $1 billion profit and CDO investors lost a similar amount, according to the SEC.” (Bloomberg)

The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party.
Quotation from SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami