http://denver.yourhub.comThe latest blog posts in The Denver Newspaper Agency YourHub.comen-usnews@yourhub.com(c) 2009, YourHub.com5Lying awake at three am, I feel the worries creeping in. Into my head. Who read my blog? What if I gain fame someday and my old, old stuff gets drug up from the bowels of the blogosphere and someone uses it to embarrass me? What kind of person would do that? Well, I happen to know that sometim...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~677444.aspx10/26/2009 7:22:28 PMLisa Arata My quiz would first ask people what category they get lumped into: Republican or Democrat. They'd have to choose one or the other, just for the sake of a point. I'd ask people their views on the following things: New World Order : happening/not happening. Global warming : our fault/ not our...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Your-Voice/Blog~674548.aspx10/21/2009 4:36:04 PMLisa Arata There was a first-time production of a major broadway play that had also been a very popular movie by John Waters. For this first production, high school students from all over the United States had been selected. My family played host to a couple of these talented high school kids as they rehear...http://denver.yourhub.com/CastleRock/Blogs/Archive/Blog~657087.aspx9/17/2009 11:29:27 AMLisa Arata I told you. I said the President is just a kid, groomed by his people. The presidency is work for a man of substance, a man who has led people, a man who has tried things and failed, and tried again. Rahm Emanuel is not good for America. Our ancestors came here to get away from orthodoxi...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Politics/National-Politics/Blog~647888.aspx8/19/2009 10:44:10 AMLisa Arata My dad's birthday came around again and I decided to go home and see the family. I went by myself this time because with my family, some of us feel a little is enough. But I go back there because it helps me stay grounded, remember who I am, and see what it's like when people love me for coming t...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~644354.aspx8/6/2009 6:47:24 PMLisa Arata Just watched a video of Michael Jackson's 1984 accident, when sparks from a staged special effect started his hair on fire. It was the event that set him off on his painkiller addiction. It makes me sad to see the event that killed him twenty years later. That reminds me about my Gramma Nelli...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Literature/Nonfiction/Blog~636911.aspx7/16/2009 8:36:42 AMLisa Arata You know, I get accused of overthinking everything by my dear husband. He has sometimes gotten to the point where he tells me I need to go talk to my girlfriends if I want to analyze every little detail to death out loud. But I have a reason why I think so deeply. sometimes I come up with ans...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~634053.aspx7/7/2009 10:10:26 PMLisa Arata I'm like anyone else. I don't want to be preached to. I don't want to know about a religion I have no interest in joining. I'm irreverant and I like to think about anything I want. I make mistakes and I don't want them to be judged as sins. But listen. I have gotten to know some Muslims lately...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~633027.aspx7/3/2009 8:14:48 PMLisa Arata I'm diving right in without an introduction. First assertion : God made man in his and her image. In the Bible it says "Let us make man..." If you don't believe in God, I would try out my assertion that we, with our hands and our self-consciousness and symbolic minds, are like the la...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~631468.aspx6/30/2009 9:07:17 AMLisa Arata Oh, man. I've felt so lazy lately. Like I wanted to curl up like a roly poly and sleep under a rotten log where it would be warm and safe. Or, like, I wished I could have my mommy back. Only she'd be fifteen feet tall, weigh like 800 pounds, and she'd pick me up and put me on her lap and in her g...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~630941.aspx6/28/2009 3:35:14 PMLisa Arata It is said that before existence began, there was all potential and no definition. Then an empty space opened up to make a place for something to exist. It was like a big, empty vessel but it got a crack in it. So, as time and light and everything spiraled about on it, they couldn't procede unimp...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~625416.aspx6/10/2009 3:37:20 PMLisa Arata I heard a song on Prairie Home Companion today. (Didn't switch the station fast enough.) It was a beautiful song about Mother Earth and the singer's devotion to it. I was just on my way home from church and feeling reverent. I listened to the song with the same devotion I felt for God, and I ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~624213.aspx6/7/2009 12:36:05 PMLisa Arata Along with my New Testament reading I study the Qabalah. If I were to bring my study book to church, I don't think they'd look at it with the same reverence I do. They might even think it's evil because if truth be told, this book is about the occult , a word associated with devil worship and ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~618324.aspx5/21/2009 7:07:45 PMLisa Arata I changed my name to Leeyosha Harattar. I wrote a novel which got turned into a screenplay, which got turned into a broadway musical. It was my first novel, Leaving Goshen --something like Footloose, but from a Mormon girl's point of view. Next, I wrote Dogs, a rollicking musical along ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~616956.aspx5/19/2009 8:09:42 AMLisa Arata I am a nice person. I am able to communicate. I take others' considerations to heart. I am not above self-sacrifice. I am a good mother. A good enough mother. I do my best as a wife. I do have one matter in which I continually fail, and that is the desire to be good, loving, caring, k...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~616319.aspx5/17/2009 12:42:24 PMLisa Arata For several reasons I'm going to say that for me, the past is blowing away like the wind that is cooling a sunny May afternoon. First of all, the old political order is gone. Not many politicians, maybe no politicians, have any integrity. Maybe that guy from Maine, what'sisname, but I don't li...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~616013.aspx5/15/2009 2:48:45 PMLisa Arata It's been about a year now since I brought on one of the worst things that ever happened in my life. I took a fun trip with a friend, and then I came home and wrote about it...and about my friend...to disastrous consequences. I wanted to write an interesting piece, so I tried to add some ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~614351.aspx5/12/2009 8:56:43 AMLisa Arata So I'm studying the Book of Mark. I went out and bought a new copy of the New Testament, which the editorswrote out in a sequential retelling, keeping everything in but making it form into a coherent narrative. It may not be right in some people's eyes, but really it's the best way to get me to r...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~599603.aspx4/4/2009 12:18:35 PMLisa Arata Today the morning was too clear to just sit inside and read the Sunday paper. I needed to get out. So how did I do it? Me and my boy went to KFC for breakfast. I had one of those bowls with mashed potatoes, corn, popcorn chicken and gravy and shredded cheese. I just had the snack size, by the way...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~594516.aspx3/22/2009 4:05:04 PMLisa Arata Note: This is two weeks old. I forgot to hit the publish button and saved it instead. Should I drink and blog? I think I have conclusively decided, yes. I just saw The Watchmen and I thought it was a nice change from other movies that want to tell you what to think. This one lets you decid...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Pop-Culture/Blog~588220.aspx3/6/2009 9:07:58 PMLisa Arata Tonight I decided to have a glass of cabernet. We had it left over from Sunday night. Well, it had been sitting in the cabinet open for so long, it didn't taste so "nuancy" anymore. And there was one more glass, so, I picked up the bottle and I poured the last four ounces into my glass, which I d...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~584476.aspx2/25/2009 8:39:54 PMLisa Arata ...deep, dark depression. Excessive misery. These things are stressing me: Being trillions of dollars in debt as a nation and having the natural inclination to PAY when I OWE, but not having any control as the wonderful, fresh new president CHARGES more debts! Some chump or weasel bringing...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~582453.aspx2/20/2009 11:55:42 AMLisa Arata In the light of good intentions I signed on for tutoring English as a Second Language. There was one student who could not keep up with a regular group setting-an older woman, B. I just happen to like this kind of student the best. She is Somali. She is not literate in Arabic, Somali or of co...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~579442.aspx2/11/2009 4:57:08 PMLisa Arata It makes ill sense to say we are having a monetary crisis and that businesses are broke and people are going bankrupt and the economy is going to collapse... And then say let's put money into it. I thought we were in financial failure. How come we have the money to answer it? Shouldn't th...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Politics/National-Politics/Blog~577338.aspx2/6/2009 9:18:41 AMLisa Arata I'm sorry. I have a hard time if there's a bottle of wine in the cabinet passing it up and saying no sometimes. There was like a glass and a half in there and I drank it. I wish there were more but since there isn't I'll just...live. N'kay. What I wanted to say was, That The "stimulus pa...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~573392.aspx1/27/2009 8:44:29 PMLisa Arata Enrolling for an art class felt like a positive step forward in my life. I've always wanted to be an artist and yet I felt I couldn't, like it's frivolous and indulgent and probably a waste of time. And yet, the other things I've tried, truth be told, felt more like a waste of time when it ca...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~572979.aspx1/27/2009 7:44:24 AMLisa Arata Monday night I was walking the dogs, observing the sky as has become my hobby because the dogs love to sniff invisible smelly spots all over the ground. That day the winter clouds to the west raced across the sky-whispy white plumes on a plane of blue. To the south and east the atmosphere...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~570813.aspx1/21/2009 7:05:12 AMLisa Arata This has implications for world politics, in an arcane way. What if there were a people who did not believe they had any individual power of their own. What if they'd been taught that they were oppressed by conditions beyond their control, and that they needed help to get along? What if they w...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Politics/World-Politics/Blog~569745.aspx1/18/2009 10:31:17 AMLisa Arata Using the book, People in Relation by John Macmurray, as my guide: People are agents. Our minds don't define who we are, evidenced by the way minds change constantly and how they aren't capable of knowing the whole of anything. So, to know who we are it takes other people. How this ca...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~565941.aspx1/8/2009 10:20:49 AMLisa Arata Still can't quite shake the lonely feeling. When friends get busy and I retreat into my cozy cocoon of writing and painting and ignoring the housekeeping, I start to get comfortable there, but not really. Starting as of a couple of days ago my new view about this is, people need to do things ...http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Archive/Blog~564936.aspx1/6/2009 9:17:47 AMLisa Arata