Words of Inspiration: Favorite Quotes found Recently

Mark C. Taylor, Chairman of the religion department at Columbia University.

“Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.”

Love in the Time of Cholera ~ by Marquez

"Allow yourself to be carried along by curiosity."

Namaste: The Devine in me recognizes the Devine in you.

Respect.

A Wise Mother:

"If you have something to fall back on...you will."

Random Movie Whose Title I forget...

"Be in Love with the life you're living. It's gotta be glorious or else get off the ship."

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Philip Markoff Goes to My School

In reality, Philip Markoff was a med student at the Boston University Medical School, which is in a different location of the city from the undergraduate campus. However, the twenty-three year old Boston resident (labeled yesterday as the "Craig's List Killer" by the Boston Herald) still carries the "BU" titled tacked to his name. And that makes my skin crawl just a little bit...

Why? Because Markoff looks just like about every frat boy I know on campus. He's attractive, looks friendly (from the two pictures I have seen) , dresses preppy with polo shirts and khakis, and probably spends his share of time in the gym. He is also engaged to Megan McAllister and they were planning an August wedding at McLoone's Pier House in Long Branch, New Jersey. Sounds pretty normal to me. The cookie cutter American boy is pursuing a noteworthy career in medicine and he's marrying a beautiful girl in the perfect wedding ceremony--all reasons to make his parents proud.

So what went wrong? All of sudden, Markoff is now standing in Boston Municipal Court pleading "not guilty" to charges of murder, armed robbery, and kidnapping? Boston Police claim that they have had Markoff under surveillance for some time, since they found evidence that put him at the scene of two recent hotel attacks. On April 10th, Markoff is said to have robbed a masseuse at gunpoint and on the 14th, he allegedly killed a second masseuse, Julissa Brisman. Markoff supposedly arranged both meetings through Craig's List and scheduled them at hotels in Boston’s expensive Back Bay neighborhood. 

The New York Times reporters Abby Goodnough and Anahad O' Connor reported that Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley,said that “Philip Markoff is a man who is willing to take advantage of women, to hurt them, to beat them, to rob them. He thought he was going to get away with it; he thought he was too smart for us.”

Markoff's close friends and family are stunned; his peers and professors at the BU Medical campus are floored; the city of Boston is reeling. Why are we so shocked? Markoff is not your stereotypical (alleged) killer, which means that the manner in which we predetermine killers within society is not accurate. If this is the case, then there may be far more potential murders walking amongst us. Now that is a scary thought!

After filing this story away in my mind as "bizarre" and "tragic," my thoughts immediately jumped to the plight of Ms. McAllister--the fiancée. What could she be possibly thinking at this moment? How is she getting through the day? When did she find out that her soon to be hubby was living a dual life? Did she ever see any signs of his alter-ego? And finally, does she really think he's innocent? 

Utilizing modern technology that enables public access to the media, Ms. McAllister emailed ABC's Good Morning America show with a statement backing her fiancée and his plea of innocence. The New York Times reports that Ms. McAllister said in the email that Markoff is “a beautiful person inside and out” who “could not hurt a fly.” 

Well, she's being proactive and fighting for her man. But how far will that loyalty stretch? What sort of hard evidence does the jury need to see to convict Markoff? Will this same evidence convince Ms. McAllister as well? And what happens then, if Ms. McAllister realizes that her adorable Dr. Jekyll who studies the cure for disease is actually living the life of a killer on his Mr. Hyde, dark side?

Reference these articles to learn more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/22boston.html?scp=1&sq=Markoff&st=Search

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/22Hotel.html?scp=3&sq=Markoff&st=Search

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/04/sources_craigsl.html

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2009_04_23_Craigslist_suspect_allegedly_hoarded_panties__gun:_Cops_unearth_secret_stash/srvc=home&position=0

By Catherine Moore

camoore@bu.edu

Sponsor a Kid

My parents sponsor a kid: Adelson Peterson. His photograph sits on our side table in the living room next to the duck lamp. He wears a bright yellow gingham school shirt that buttons down the front. He stands in front of the dark green Haitian scenery and smiles a huge white, toothy grin. That's really all I know about him.

We started sending him money over eight years ago. My mother would probably correct me and say that she has been writing checks long before that, but I'm pretty sure we started around when I entered high school. The money we sent allowed him to go to school and to eat decent meals. He wrote us periodically in crayon letters penned in Creole, which were translated on the back by a teacher or worker at the mission base. They always said 

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moore, 

Thank you for all of your generous help, I am working hard in school...."

We tried to write him back, but we didn't try that hard. We more often forgot to return his greetings and on the rare occasion that one of us four kids did write our Haitian brother a letter, it sat on the dining room table, stamp-less until kingdom come. 

My mom always was good when it came time for Christmas or his birthday. She always had a care package for him, normally full of treats and a new soccer ball. But we didn't even really know if he liked soccer that much. 

It all makes me think. I am not the type of person to block out the world, selfishly absorbed in my own cocoon of American arrogance and success. Far from the latter. I actually spent two summers in high school traveling to Panama and Mexico on work trips. My senior year in high school I spent several weeks in Amman, Jordan on an exchange trip through the U.S. Department of State and the United Palestinian Appeal, trying to help mend relations with our Middle Eastern brothers and sisters. So why was I so negligent and uncaring when it came to the kid whose photo stared back at me everyday in my living room? 

I don't really have an answer to that...maybe I got too busy and he became associated with the normal monotony of everyday life--one more thing to do, one more person to keep in touch with. Or I was just selfish and insensitive to his needs as another human being. I wish I could say that I helped him in his development in some way; that we shared a bond growing up-- despite our thousands of miles of separation. But I cannot make these claims. 

I can say that Nicholas Kristof sure makes me think. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19kristof.html

By Catherine Moore

camoore@bu.edu

Cheer up!

It's not easy being a college student right now. The campus, although beginning to wake up after its winter hibernation, is not nearly as cheery as it normally is. 

This year, my third year in college as an undergraduate, is the dreariest yet. Now don't get me wrong- college students are always having fun- and they still are. Nightly romps to the local pub after hockey games, karaoke Tuesdays, and spontaneous drinking parties are not uncommon. Kids in general can turn the most mundane activities into adventures- and I include the vast majority of the campus population in the term "kids." However, this year with an economy that is bottoming out and a school that costs our parents almost 50,000 dollars, there's apt to be some affect on us. 

And I think it is apparent on the faces of every student walking down the street. It may not be that every student is severely depressed or dealing with the fact that they will not be able to afford to return to school the following term...that is the minority and the extreme. But everyone has it in the back of their mind...a lurking fear of the future of the country. Because that future becomes less and less of an abstract concept and more and more a reality: their parents' retirement, their grandparents' health care, and their future marketability in an almost impossible job market. There is a lot to be fearful of and the anxiety on campus has gone up a few notches. 

Every morning I wake up to headlines filled with words like  "struggle," "victims," "loss," and "bankruptcy." It started in September with the failure of Lehman Brothers and then Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. The federal government took control over troubled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and investors got pretty nervous. This didn't help the DOW Jones, if anything it sped up the inevitable. Then everything went to hell. How could these financial institutions ever come back from this recession turned depression?

The market's downward spiral didn't scare us students at first- we live in a nice college bubble that allows us to look at the world through a nice, neat microscope with an encouraging professor offering his or her perception over our shoulders. It might seem like we are being spoon fed, however, our food for thought is much more fiber filled than anything we have ingested prior to university. And to put it plainly: we are experiencing a little indigestion. 

But the news is getting more and more dreary and we have to leave our state of denial. At least I am not a senior, my egotistic self thinks. But then again, how can I be sure that we won't be in a worse position one year from now? I can't be. 

That's why you need moments like this (refer to attached YouTube URL). Moments to remember that we all have biases, we all prejudge, but the world is a better place when we refrain from these things. And when we let ourselves be open minded, we can experience little moments of joy that help us keep living. And keep watching the DOW. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

By Catherine Moore

camoore@bu.edu

It's time to show some results from this busy Semester

Update to come...