Happy Birthday, Ed Abbey!

Check out Leah Flores' Ed Abbey stuff on RedBubble. I got my Nalgene sticker here.

It was my favorite author's birthday last week. January 29th, to be exact.

I first found Edward Abbey through my friend Ben, who is an artist incredibly interested in the preservation of natural resources. He's also super adventurous.

We hiked the Grand Canyon four years ago this May (amazing how quickly time flies) and I had forgotten to bring a book. Ben grabbed me and insisted I read The Monkey Wrench Gang, which is one of Abbey's most popular books.

It's about a gang of four activists who wreak total havoc on development and billboards and local law enforcement in the southwest in the name of preservation and keeping nature the way God intended it to be. I think it took me a grand total of three sentences to get hooked on the book.

During the past four years, I've read at least six of his books (The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke Lives, The Brave Cowboy, Good News, Earth Apples and Beyond the Wall are the ones I can remember) and have oogled and drooled and obsessed over the profile and video work my home newspaper, the Arizona Republic, published last year on Abbey's death in Tucson in 1989. I also named my cat after a character from The Monkey Wrench Gang because why not. She wreaks just as much havoc as George Hayduke.

Rain, greenery and a good book.

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Jan 29, 2015 at 2:55pm PST

Abbey does what many authors are unable to do--he addresses important topics with humor. I could just as easily have picked up a book about preservation and land ethics (re: Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac) and read it, but let me tell you--Sand County Almanac doesn't have the zest or spice of Edward Abbey's books.

His books build dynamic characters who are placed in otherworldly situations (especially Good News which is sort of set in a futuristic Phoenix). The characters are actual characters and do active things in the novels, which is more than I can say about a lot of other books that would be classified as environmental literature, probably because Abbey never set out to be an activist or a world-changer--he just wanted to be a novelist.

And he was a novelist. Abbey achieved that goal. He surpassed that goal. He has exceptional novels which address real issues in the world in a way that makes the reader want to make a change. I highly recommend his books to anyone with a passion for reversing apathy and a desire to see and enact revolution.

About my hair...

Shoutout to Caleb Thal Visual for all these photos

 So, I've got this minor problem.

I really really really love my hair.

Like, it may legitimately be a little bit too much love. You could almost call it vanity. I prefer to label it as self-appreciation.

I love how it looks when I let it air dry after I wash it. I love the curls. I love the natural ombre I have from spending all summer in the sun but then having my hair grow in naturally darker season by season. I love that I can get away with not washing it for three or four days (provided I don't work out or produce sweat or whatever).

But I also have another problem--I have horrible dead and split ends. You can't tell in these photos because they're a year old...and my last haircut was about a week after these photos.

That's right folks. I've committed the sin of not having my hair cut for a year, and now I need to pay my dues or serve penance or whatever.

I need a haircut, and I need a haircut bad. But I don't want to just get the dead ends chopped off. That's going to leave my hair at an awkward below the collar bone but above the armpit length, and I hate that length.

So I'm actually thinking about chopping most of it off.

A photo posted by A M A N D A 🌵 (@mandalyn93) on Jan 29, 2016 at 11:58am PST

After posting this photo on Instagram, one of my friends mentioned how cute she thinks I'd look with short hair.

grrr. how dare you say that. i love my long hair.

But that got me thinking--I can love my long hair and live without it. Right?

Hair is hair. It grows back, unless you die before it gets the chance to. If I die young, please buy me a wig for my funeral and it better look as damn good and natural as the top photo in this blog post, and then donate it to a young adult with cancer.

As I was saying...I've been thinking about cutting it short. The last time I had it short (shoulder length, or just a little bit above the shoulder) was three years ago, and I liked it a lot then.

I was also a very different person, then. And I feel like my long hair is more indicative of my current personality. But I also want to try something new, as this haircut is incredibly similar to the one I had at sixteen when I had my photo taken for my drivers license.

So, readers--I'm actually going to put this in your hands. I want your opinion. Should I cut my hair? Should I not? Why? Vote on twitter or comment below.

Should I cut my hair short, like shoulder length short?

— Amanda LaCasse (@Mandalyn93) January 29, 2016

UPDATE: I did it! I cut my hair super short and I love it so so much. It feels like me, like the grown up person I'm becoming and growing into.

"I hid behind my hair. And then, I just decided I was okay with myself. To have short hair and really show my face is even more revealing than anything." Pamela Anderson

A photo posted by A M A N D A (@mandalyn93) on Feb 11, 2016 at 6:15pm PST

Thoughts and Prayers

My current feelings.

When I returned from my lunch break on Wednesday, I saw news of the San Bernardino shooting all over Twitter. I took a second, took a breath, and let out a deeeeeep sigh.

Is anyone else tired of this?

Really. Stop. Look at the above question.

Is anybody else tired, weary, exhausted of seeing/hearing/reading about gun-caused massacres?

I am.

Not soon after first seeing the event on twitter, I looked up the LA Times article and prepared to share it on Facebook (because that's what I do--I like hammering home the shit when it happens. I like drawing attention to all that's bad in our world. My hope is that, by doing this, people will be led to create change.)

So I started drafting the post. I typed out "My thoughts and prayers" and stopped in my tracks.

My thoughts and prayers? Ugh. That phrase is growing overused, which is a problem in and of itself. There have been more mass shootings than there have been days in 2015. The positive sentiments behind "thoughts and prayers," didn't feel deep or meaningful enough to convey my attitude and intention. So I erased those words and simply went with something along the lines of "Not agaaaaaaaain." to caption the news article.

Apparently I'm not the only one who believes "thoughts and prayers" are not enough at this point. President Obama said so back when the Oregon shooting occurred two months ago. But the New York Daily News took it even farther today with a headline of "God Isn't Fixing This."

What? God isn't coming out of the sky to magically stop violence from occurring? Wow, that's a real shock.

Christian friends, before you start to argue about the truth/falsity behind this headline, I want to explain where I'm going with this.

Throughout the Bible, God worked through His people. God used Moses and Aaron to demonstrate His power and strength over Egypt. God used Paul, who was formerly a persecutor of Christians, to spread the story of Jesus across the continent.

And God is still at work in his people. There are missionaries across the world doing unspeakably wonderful things in the name of God (and if you don't believe this, I can point you to some people with some great stories--just ask me.)


My point is that God uses His people to do ahmaaaaazing things.

So while the world stands back and says "God isn't fixing this," why aren't we standing up and saying "We, the children of God, the believers in Christ, will do everything we can to fix this." 

What if we are the answer to the prayers?

Christians, I'm looking at you. I'm looking at us.

What if we are the answers to the prayers of mothers who have lost sons, sons who have lost fathers, and friends who have lost those who they hold dearly?

We could be the answer to the prayers that ring out as sobbing tears of heartbreak overpower the words one could utter; the prayers that desperately escape in wispy breaths as possible victims hide in closets, avoiding shooters.

And I understand, there are many Christians out there who are doing something about this. But why aren't all of us doing something about this? Let's be the image of Christ on earth and stop standing for senseless deaths. Let us offer our actions in tandem with our thoughts and prayers.

In doing so, perhaps change will finally occur.

Find and contact your congressional representative and ask for the gun massacres to stop.