3-2-1 Contact

Things to be happy about:

1) Yesterday the security guard in the front lobby saw that I was about to venture out in the pouring rain without an umbrella, and chivalrously, unasked, hurried around his desk to proffer his. It was so nice of him, especially since it was unexpected - I say hello and goodbye to him every day, but usually don't get much of a response, so I thought he was just kind of unplugged from people (or from me). Half the niceness, I think, was just realizing that he does recognize that I exist.
2) Purple potatoes. Whole Foods has them - they have bluish skins and are a rich and glowing violet inside. I think they are divine. I can't decide if the flavor is actually better, or if I'm just so psyched about the color, and the coolness of plant diversity that allowed this particular strain to flourish, that they taste better to me.
3) My dad is planning a birthday party for me. He's the greatest. Whenever I feel like I got a raw deal over something, I should just remember how lucky I am to have a good friendship with him - more than many people can say about their parents.

Things to be sad about:

1) A conversation overheard at the museum last weekend, between a guy and his 18-month old child. He wheeled the stroller up to a case displaying historic money from colonial America, and said, "Now here's something you'll like - look at all this money." The child said immediately, "I wan' it." The father laughed and said, "Well, of COURSE you want it, but you can't have it, this belongs to the museum." I thought it was so sad that the child was locked in to the consumer culture already. At that age, barely walking, barely verbal, she couldn't possibly have had her own money yet, or participated in any transactions involving money - how does she know it has value? What would she do with it if she had it? Yet she wants it, and her father immediately reinforces her, saying, "Of course you do." I cherish fantasies that my kids will value other things besides money. But perhaps there's no way to keep them pure.
2) The plight of chickens in egg-laying barns. Their lives are full of such suffering, and it's all for the sake of efficiency, wringing the most value out of each poor bird before she's too worn out and exhausted to live any more. I wish more people knew about it. No one would buy eggs.
http://www.eggscam.com/cfi/photogallery/

Things to be perplexed about:

1) I read that men and women use different parts of their brains to interpret speech of different pitches. Women use the language center of their brains to interpret both male and female speech. But men use the language center to interpret male speech, and the part of the brain that registers music to interpret female speech. I'm torn between a kind of knee-jerk sarcasm - "Hah, no wonder they don't listen" and a kind of unwilling blushy pride - "My voice sounds like music to men?"