Beltane: A Day of Decisions,College choices, a Fertile Season

Hello World family,
Falcon, here. Happy May Day, Beltane, or whatever you call it.

College D-Day

It’s the day high school seniors who have been accepted to colleges pay them the big matriculation fees to say “YES” to attending that particular college. It is a hard decision, but make one today. That way, you have a school to attend, even if it isn’t your First Choice School.

Wait-listed? Write a very nice letter letting them know that you really want to attend that school. Accept elsewhere and send the money in, but write the letter to your fav anyway. It may be just what you need to get in the door.

Remember: most colleges over-accept. That is, they have sent acceptance letters to more students than they can really handle. They assume about 20% will probably attend elsewhere (note: these are averages; if you are accepted to an Ivy, it’s more like 10% over).

Want to attend a really nice “new Ivy”? You know, CMU, Rice, Drexel…or a highly competitive art and design school…RISD, SCAD, Emerson, Columbia College…better accept. It is hard enough to get in, much less wait past May 1. If you aren’t sure if you can pay for it, send the fee, and tell them you may need more scholarship money (merit money). Many schools have lots of ways new students can qualify. Reality check: This will be a very hard year. Many scholarship organizations disappeared after the evil Bernie Madoff and other Ponzi schemers put the funds of many into a black hole of oblivion. Yet, colleges are sympathetic, and receptive. If they have accepted you, they want you. Let your admissions counselor work with you and your family to find a resolution to the gap in funding. You are not out of options. Say yes, and keep working to fill that gap.

They are plenty of scholarships available for summer, too. Go to:

www.fastweb.com

Check out what may be due right now that could take the fear out of the ‘payment due’ date.

Arlen Specter: Jedi

Okay, not quite. He clearly had a wake-up and dream experience, though. It was coming for awhile. Serving the Republican Party all these years and watching it become a mockery of itself was very painful for him. Eventually, he realized that he had to go with self-preservation. He had to go with the things that mattered. He had to see his legacy through…and that meant a change of party. So, now Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is a Democrat. He is a new man, and it’s a new day. That’s because he knows that now that he is in the latter years of his life, every day matters. He has stared death in the face with illness, and defeated it. Death will come to us all, but this is a new Arlen that recognizes that he has days numbered to make a difference that will crown his legacy. It wanted to make sure he could still make a real difference to Pennsylvanians. Thank you, Arlen. We appreciate that. Wow, I guess that does make you Jedi! Yes!

Oh, and to the Republican Party, this word of advice: grow up. This was once the party of the enfranchising everyman, who embraced the opportunity to move the country forward. Not any more: fear mongering, and xenophobia is the call of the day. This was once the party of less government and taxation and more American freedoms. Now, it is the party of inflated government, debt, and tax everyone but the rich guys. Freedoms? This is Big Brother on steroids, eroding the Constitution except where owning an automatic weapon is concerned, then it’s freedom for all! Whatever happened to real Republicans? Individuals who never feared that justice would prevail because a just and fair republic was the goal of the party? Now it is the party of misinformation and rumor-mill. Want to change things? Grow up, suck it up, and turn it up for real, and people will follow genuine leadership coupled with sensible science for the new frontiers. Stop looking for a new spin on the same old song: write a new song. See the world without boundaries and boxes; without an ‘us and them’. Come to the proverbial table like grown ups and see the wonder of cooperation and bipartisanship shine through.

The Pittsburgh Marathon is back! Fundraiser for the Homeless

Everyone in town from everywhere…WELCOME! We are glad to have you! The weather should be ideal, not too hot or cold. It may be a little rainy, but not awful. There will cheerleading squads from various Pittsburgh schools to cheer you all on, so have fun, be safe, and go for it! They had a huge waiting list for this race, and that is a wonderful sign for the future of the event.

Don’t forget the Concert for the Homeless on Saturday, May 2 from 1pm-11pm in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. There are a ton of great bands performing, including Falcon and Dove friend, Jack Knight.

Movies this weekend

The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is hysterical! Great, genuine acting by Jennifer Garner and Matthew Mc Conaughey make this film work well. The script is well written and well shot.

Wolverine is intense. Does it work? The action is so good, no one will care.

May 8, Star Trek for all those fans (go Pittsburgher Zack Quinto), Little Ashes for those into independent films who may want to see Robert Pattinson doing something besides Teen oriented material. He plays Salvador Dali…magnificently!

Have a great weekend!
Peace,
Falcon and Dove

CMU Special Event Thursday-Environmental Theatre

Hello World Family,
Falcon, here. I hope all of you where ever you are, are having an excellent week. For those in the Pittsburgh area, there is a special event at Carnegie Mellon University this Thursday I wanted to let you know about.

Thursday, March 26, 2009
4:30-6:30 PM
Breed Hall (Margaret Morrison Bldg, CMU)**************************************************

Greening the Future of Live Performance: Three Propositions

What are the ecological issues ripe for exploration in live performance?

What changes in approach, perspective, and form might be needed to create
performances that situate nature and the non-human world as an equal player
in the unfolding eco-drama, rather than as landscape or backdrop to human
crisis?

How can we use the powerful presentness of live performance to raise
audience awareness of ecological issues and inspire action and change?

The "Performance and Ecology" initiative at Carnegie Mellon University will
kick off with a panel exploring these questions on March 26, 2009, from 4:30
pm-6:30 pm in Breed Hall of the Margaret Morrison Building at CMU.Panelists will be:

Katie Gough, of the University of Glasgow: "Making Sense of the
Nature/Culture Divide in Performance Studies"

Theresa May, of the University of Oregon: "Growing an Ecodramaturgy; or
green questions to ask a play"

Tom Van Sant, creator of the Geosphere project: "As seen from above"

There will be a light reception preceding the panel at 4:00 pm in Room 107(CFA Dean's Conference Room) in the Margaret Morrison Building.

The Performance and Ecology initiative is one of two initiatives sponsored
by The Public Art Research Cluster within the CMU Center for the Arts in
Society. The Public Art Cluster involves an active constituency from the
College of Fine Arts, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the
Studio for Creative Inquiry, and faculty members from the University of
Pittsburgh and Duquesne University. For more information about the
Performance and Ecology initiative, contact the initiative director, Dr.
Wendy Arons (email: warons at andrew.cmu.edu)

Peace, Brothers and Sisters,
Falcon and Dove

Randy Pausch-The Last Lecture

Hey Brothers and Sister!
If any of you watched the ABC network tonight at 10pm, you saw a show on Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University professor facing the difficulty of pancreatic cancer with a Tigger smile, and the courage of Aragorn. His new book, The Last Lecture is out today. We hope you get a chance to pick up a copy, read it, and hopefully, find some wisdom to give your own life some extra sparkle.

If you don't know about Randy, please go to You Tube and put his name in the search. You will get one of his many interviews, but also his last lecture last fall at CMU. Please watch it, and you will understand what a special spirit he is. Not a flawless one, and that is really his greatest gift for us all: his honorable nature that is human, not super-human. Although, I think his courage is extraordinary.

We here at Falcon and Dove have our own Randy Pausch story. He created a program called Alice, (you can download it for free) that is designed to help girls with learning the basics of computer information technology, and get more of them in the computer fields as they go through school. Dove has the program (and an Alice tee-shirt), and loved it! It was great that CMU made the program available to Home School students. Now, everyone can get it, so if you have kids...go for it! It's a lot of fun: storytelling creative software.

Randy, we would like to say thanks. It is a simple word, but the most appropriate. Thanks for caring about students, thanks for sharing your journey, thanks for taking time away from your family to share that sacred time with all of us.

Our prayers are with you and your family.

Oh, and by the way...the cancer didn't win, you did. Rest assured, my Brother, you have won.

Peace,
Falcon and Dove