Tapping… and stamping… and clapping.

I went to Weston help tap maple trees for syrup this morning.  My fingers and toes felt rather cold while we were out tramping around in the trees.  When I got home, I found out why:

I know it’s not Alaskan weather, but it’s still cold for me!

Goings-on at the beginning of the second semester

It’s 2:45 p.m., and I’m sitting in a sunny “quiet study area” of Tisch Library.  I should be reading law cases for my “Land Use Planning” class, but I feel, instead, the urge to write up some sort of entry for haskinphoto.  Partly it has to do with photos I’ve seen in my contacts’ photostreams on Flickr, where so many of them seem to have friends around for dinner and things like that.  Truth be told – and this is silly – I’m feeling lonely.  It’s silly, because I have at least one very good friend in Boston, with whom I live, Angus is on the other end of email frequently (though less frequently when he’s in Angola, as he is now), Mom and Graham are in frequent text contact, and I have several getting-better friends at Tufts who I see regularly.  But I am missing my Reedie friends.  I haven’t seen many of you in months or, in some cases, years, and all of the sudden it’s feeling like a very long time.  I miss you, all of you, even the ones that I haven’t spoken with since September or before.

Alright, enough moping.  What else am I up to, I hear you cry?  Well, I’m glad you asked!  I’m taking four classes this semester, and have now had each of them at least once.  It’s going to be an interesting semester, I think, and fairly well balanced between the left and right sides of my brain.  For the math\analytical side, I have Introduction to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and, horror of horrors, statistics (called “Quantitative Reasoning,” for some reason).  GIS is going to be really interesting, and not too taxing for my poor math-shy brain, but I’m terribly afraid that Quant is going to kick my rear.  Ah well – that’s why I went back to school, right?

For the more word-oriented side of my brain, I have the above-mentioned Land Use Planning II: Regulatory Approaches.  It’s taught by a lawyer, and, pleasingly, only has law cases for weekly readings.  I say “pleasingly” because I found last semester that I really enjoy reading cases.  The weirder, me.  This class will test that inclination, however – with six or more cases to read per week, we’ll see if I really do like it as much as I think I do!

Finally, for practical skills, I’m in Field Projects.  This is a required course, where teams of five and six people from the first-year UEP students work with real-live clients (in my group’s case, Groundworks Somerville) on specified projects.  My group is going to be looking into the demand for uber-local produce – i.e. produce from urban\backyard gardeners in Somerville – amongst local businesses, to see if we can’t facilitate the flow of excess produce from those gardeners to the businesses that want them.  I think the project is going to be very interesting, and certainly it’s good practice for me to work in a group, since I tend to prefer to work on my own (I work better that way, usually).

I will also continue to work for the Medford Chamber of Commerce this semester, although for only ten hours per week instead of the fourteen of last week.  That may not seem like a big change, but given that Field Projects, by most second-years’ accounts, takes as much work as one and a half to two classes, and given that I’m already taking a full courseload, even an extra four hours per week will be beneficial.  I like working at the MCC – Cheryl, the director, is a lot of fun to work with, and I have skills to offer that are very necessary, which makes me feel nice and appreciated.

I will also be spending a fair amount of time this semester applying for summer internships – I’ve already been rejected by one – and thinking about ideas for next year’s thesis.  And I’m going to try to get out at least once a week to do something non-brain-oriented, like swing dancing or, as is the case this week, ice skating.  At the end of February, there’s a UEP trip to the Loj, the Tufts cabin in VT (NH?), which I’m looking forward to.  Even if it is just another place to study!  :-)

So, yeah, I should get back to work.  I’ll be thinking of all of my friends in many of my spare moments, and hope to see some of you before too many more months pass by.  Good luck with all of your endeavors!

Wow.  This is going to change things.

Apparently, the Supreme Court, putting aside its tendency of adherence to precedent, has just ruled that corporations may fund political campaigning - apparently to unlimited amounts.  While I will probably go and read the opinion and dissent for myself, to see if I can understand what the hell the majority was thinking, if this be the case, well, let’s just say that I’m disappointed.  Corporations can already sell most of us on just about anything, good or bad.  If they turn their considerable marketing skills to political campaigning (to an even greater extent than they probably already do), how are we supposed to have any sort of informed voting?  I mean, I know that many people don’t vote informedly already, but this can’t help!

I’m a real Northerner now!

I just shoveled the snow off the front walk for the first time ever!  Go me!  (Granted, it was only about two inches deep, and not at all packed down, but still, it was a first!)

This makes me happy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnT7pT6zCcA&feature=player_embedded

::big grin::

Just finished watching “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (finally), and am currently listening to the equally-if-not-more-awesome “Commentary - The Musical!”  I have to admit that I suffer from severe “Wanna Be In Joss Whedon’s Circle”-itis.  If only to get the chance to watch Nathan Fillion ham it up while singing his “Barry White lite” solo.  Or the chance to snort water out my nose on a regular basis, when lyrics like “but when it’s time to cast the show, do they want somebody yellow\hell no” sneak up on me, as they just did.

... Or “seeing it through\makes each of you\a huge f**king nerd”...  Ah, that’s why Whedon fans keep coming back for more - the unconditional love and acceptance that unfailingly flow from Whedon productions…

And back to reading economics I go…  ::sigh::  I bet that environmentally-adjusted GDP would sound a lot more interesting if Nathan Fillion were reading it to me…  No takers?  Nate? ... Ah well…

“There’s a world in my cup.”

This essay was in an article I’m reading for my “Developing Sustainable Communities” class.  The article’s citation is: Carley, M and Spapens, P (1998) Sharing the World: Sustainable Living and Global Equity in the 21st Century. London. Earthscan.

The article:
————
My name is Alan and I’m a compulsive drinker.  Coffee is my brew.  I used to drink it daily, sometimes hourly.  I drank it by the pot… cappuccinos, frappacinos, even Folger’s drip.  Now I’m on the wagon, drinking locally grown herbal tea.  You see, this terrible thing happened.  A dream straight out of Scrooge.  I saw where my coffee comes from.

It started one morning in the kitchen.  As I poured the beans into the grinder, I suddenly found myself in a clouded forest on a mountain above the Cauca River in Colombia.  The lush vegetation was disappearing all around me as a coffee plantation grew.  Farm workers were spraying the trees with pesticides made int he valley of the RIver Rhine in Europe.  I began to choke on the poisonous fumes when I was transported… to New Orleans.  Burlap sacks of coffee beans were being unloaded from a freighter burning oil from the Orinoco River Valley of Venezuela.  It was like a spin on the house that Jack built: the freighter was made in Japan out of steel forged in Korea from iron mined in the lands of Australian aborigines.  Workers were pouring the beans into a roaster, which was fuelled with natural gas piped in from Oklahoma.  Out the other end, my beans poured into bags of nylon, polyester, and polyethylene - plastics from New Jersey - and aluminum foil from a smelter in Oregon.  That smelter was powered by electricity from dams that have nearly wiped out wild salmon in the Columbia River.

Suddenly, I was in my kitchen again, but hovering by the ceiling, looking down.  My beans, now disintegrating in the grinder, had come to my home inside a brown paper bag made from pines in the northern Rockies.  On the trip from the supermarket, my car had burned a sixth of a gallon of gasoline, spewing carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organics into the air.  The gas had come from Alaska’s North Slope by way of Prince William Sound and a refinery in northern Washington.

Hovering above myself in the kitchen, I watched as I took the first sip of the day.  But from the cup came pesticides, oil, molten steel.  My ecological wake.  And it wasn’t just the coffee.  My T-shirt.  My newspaper.  My radio.  The wake of it all washed over me.  I buckled under its weight.  Then, my bathroom scale appeared, flashing 115 pounds.  My daily consumption of natural resources.  I fell to the floor, crushed and bloated.  I can’t shake this dream.  I’ve gotta get off this consumption kick.  And I’m starting with java.  I don’t know how to do it but I gotta find a way of using less.  Can we make things better?  Figure out better ways of getting around?  Get stuff from closer to home?  I don’t know, but I do know this, my name is Alan, I’m a compulsive coffee drinker, and there’s a world in my cup.

(Alan Durning is Executive Director of Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle.  This commentary was first heard on the radio show ‘Living on Earth’ on KPLU, adapted from Alan’s This Place on Earth (Sasquatch Books).)
————-
Now, I know that there are difficulties with this essay.  But as a conversation- and thought-starter, it’s pretty darn good.  I think so, at least.

Really?

Am I the only one for whom the State Department having a Flickr page is news?

So very tired…

... and yet I can’t seem to fall asleep…  ::sigh::

Stuff of my dreams….

I so want to go hang-gliding.  I’ve been wanting to for years.  It’s literally the stuff of my dreams - I have semi-regular, vivid (to the point of feeling the G-forces) flying dreams - and I always wake up feeling bereft at being stuck on the ground again.

::daydreaming sigh::

Yippee!

Hooray!  I have a job!  I am now the Assistant to the Executive Director of the Medford Chamber of Commerce.  It should be good - I’m going to be doing events planning, community liaison, and all sorts of other interesting things.  Hooray for gainful employment!

Argh.

I’m frustrated and out of sorts.  First off, since classes have started, I’ve noticed that my critical thinking skills have gone to pot.  Not that the classes have made them dive-bomb, but that being required to think even slightly critically has just highlighted how much of a toll the last six years of “civilian” life have taken.  It scares me a little, too - I worked to keep my brain going by reading “non-fluffy” books, and still I find myself in this situation.  Is time spent out of academia necessarily going to atrophy my brain, no matter my attempts to maintain it?

This spills over into non-academic stuff, too.  For whatever reason, I feel like I can’t have the same kinds of “sparkling” conversation that I used to, and that bothers me, too.  I remember how much fun it was at Reed to sit around a table in the Common and banter with my friends, and I don’t really feel like that is much of a part of my life anymore.  I wouldn’t want that to be all the conversation I had (it’s wearing after a while), but to feel like I *can’t* have it anymore is… straitening.

On the social side, I’m also frustrated to notice developing - or, rather, re-developing - within myself the same kinds of self-doubt and desire to be universally liked that plagued - and in some ways ruined - my high school years and first couple of years at Reed.  I thought I had gotten over this!  For instance, it took a real effort (I’m not kidding) to stop myself from going to a party held last Friday by some second-years in my program - and I didn’t even want to go to the party!  I don’t particularly like parties; they aren’t the kind of social setting that I feel comfortable in.  But I was so worried that, if I didn’t go, I would be this social pariah… In the end, it took repeated reminders to myself that people will either like more or not for who I am, and that trying to be someone I’m not, when generally I’m pretty happy with who I am, is both nonsensical and counter-productive, to keep me from going.

All of this - the frustration, the anxiety, the mental molasses -  is producing a huge nostalgia and homesickness in me that I’m finding it hard to assuage.  Sometimes I feel like my life now is so different than it was then as to be irreconcilable, which is a depressing and scary thought. 

What I really want, I think, is to be around some of my close Reedie/PDX friends again.  I miss you, all of you, and I think some time spent in your company would help me… hmm, feel less blurred around the internal edges, perhaps.  And/or I need some time to myself, with no deadlines, external pressures, etc., to ponder myself.  Unfortunately, I am not likely to get much time for either in the short- to medium-term, as a.) those who I would most like to see live, at the closest, in Albany, and at the furthest in Portland, and b.) I’m a full-time grad student and don’t have time for any of that navel-gazing nonsense.  ::sigh::

Geez

Here is, and I quote, a footnote from my Environmental Law textbook:

“In doing so, those courts replicated the oversimplification of an Old English dictum: ‘Le utility del chose excusera le noisomeness del stink,’ roughly, ‘The usefulness of the thing will excuse the foulness of the pollution.’ The legal French appears to be a version of a line from Ranketts case in 1684: ‘Si home fait Candells deins un vill, per que il caufe un noyfom fent al Inhabitants, uncore ceo neft alcun Nusans, car le needfulnefs de eux difpenfera ove le noifomnefs del fmell.’ P. 3 Ja. B.R. Rolle’s Abridgement, Nusans, 139 (1684). As Boomer showed, this may be relevant to the grant or denial of injunctive relief, but it should not affect a finding on the issue of liability.”

Thank goodness I didn’t try to pursue law school.  Any course where the second class involves an “explanatory” footnote that includes a large portion of untranslated Old French/English is not really the kind of course that I want to pursue for three years.

Orienatation-ing, etc.

Hello everyone, from my surprisingly-green room in Boston!  Sorry that I haven’t updated before now - things have been quite busy, as you might expect.  I arrived into Boston last Monday afternoon, and was SO happy to be greeted by Jaime and another of my housemates, Justin, who had kindly offered to drive to the airport to pick me (and my luggage) up and take us home.  Not having to deal with my luggage on the T was just about the nicest thing I could have asked for in a welcome!

Tuesday started orientation-ing, with a maths refresher course.  I had been quite worried about this, because (as I’m sure you’re well aware) my maths skills generally suck.  But the course was really easy - I even found an error in the answer key for our problem set for the day, which was the first time in my life that my maths answer, upon not agreeing with the answer key, has been the correct one.  And the teacher assured us that the maths necessary for the econ course, at least, would be no more difficult than what we had done in class.

After the maths, it was time for Tufts’ graduate student orientation, which was, well, truthfully, not that interesting.  It was the usual “bigwigs of the school standing in front of a microphone telling all us grad students that we’re entering the best years of our lives” type of orientation.  Although one thing of note was mentioned, which is that those who participate in the Tufts President’s marathon team don’t have to pass the entrance time for the Boston Marathon.  As I haven’t a chance in hell of running a marathon in the time that the B.M. wants for entrance, I had kinda written it off, but now… it’s on the list of possibilities for next year.  (Doh!)

Graham arrived on Wednesday, and has been very kindly helping me paint my room for a number of hours over the last few days.  I chose a color that seemed like a nice, rich-but-soft greeny-blue off the color chips; there were no samples to be had, so I just went ahead and bit the bullet and bought enough to properly paint the room.  Sadly, when first being put on the walls, the color turned out to be something between electric shamrock and slightly-darker-than-oompa-loompa-hair.  ::sigh::  It has darkened and mellowed with a second coat and drying, but it’s still much more, um, vibrant than I had intended.  Ah well.  I’ll live with it. 

Thursday was the UEP (my program) orientation, which was much more to the point.  All us first-years had to go around and introduce ourselves, and it’s nice to be surrounded by people who seem passionate about generally the same topics as me, or, really, who are passionate, period.  I also got to meet Laurie, who is a professor in the program, a Reed alumna, and who, it turns out, was born in Mineral Wells, Texas.  (The ice-breaking activity was to organize ourselves in a big circle by increasing distance of birthplace from Tufts - I was the furthest away of the three Texans.)

On Friday, a few of the second-year UEP students also gave an orientation for the first years, which was actually more useful, in many ways, than the official orientation.  It also gave me an opportunity to catch up with Jeremy, another Reed alum who graduated the same year as me.  Reedies are everywhere - Jeremy, Laurie, and my advisor’s husband, all in or related to a small program! :-)

After the orientation on Thursday, first-years met with our advisors and signed up for classes.  My advisor, Rachel, suggested that I sign up for more than the standard four classes, then drop one before the five-week drop point.  So I have.  The two required courses for this semester are: Foundations in Public Policy and Planning, and Economics for Public Policy and Planning.  The other three courses for which I have registered are: Environmental Law; Cities in Space, Time and Place; and Developing Sustainable Communities.  I’m guessing that the second of the three will be the one that’s dropped, because it’s a required course and I will therefore be able to take it next year.  But we shall see.

This weekend, Graham and I went down to King Richard’s Fayre, specifically to try to find the vendor who had made the leather bracer that Graham bought there seven years ago and which, through constant wear, has become a bit… worn.  The vendor wasn’t there, but we found another leather worker who says that he can mend the straps on the one Graham has, which are the parts that are falling to bits, so overall the day was a success.  I’m glad that I won’t be driving on a regular basis in Boston/Massachusetts, though - it was nerve-wracking, and the traffic wasn’t even that bad.

Today, after a quick trip to the farmer’s market in Central Square, I’m going to start in on the required reading for my classes tomorrow.  This evening, our relatives out in Lexington are having us over for dinner, and to give me a chest of drawers and a desk lamp.  Now I just need a desk….

Back in Boston

Apart from an extremely rough patch coming into Boston yesterday, the flights were uneventful and blessedly un-full.  I arrived, and Jaime met me, along with another new housemate, Justin, who was kind enough to bring his car!  I nearly cried from relief - I had NOT been looking forward to lugging my luggage on the T, even with Jaime’s help.  Boston had put on its finest weather - 70-ish, breezy, sunny, perfect - and Jaime and I spent the evening wandering up to Harvard Square (where a guy at the Chipotle Grill thought I was British from my accent, which surprised both me and Jaime), and back down via Central Square, reacquainting me with the local area.  Then I went to Walgreens and got completely overwhelmed by the forty-choices-for-the-smallest-item situation; upon my eventual return, I took a much-needed and highly-refreshing shower, then flopped into bed at the respectable hour of 10 p.m.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning,but other than that, jet lag doesn’t seem to have bothered me too much yet.  And now I am going to get a few things together, have some breakfast, and then go off to the first event of my grad school career - a bloody maths refresher course.  I can’t TELL you how excited I am about this.  Ah well, though - it’s only a few hours of my life, and if it enables me to re-remember how to add, subtract, and reduce fractions, well, it will be good.  There’s an informal orientation later today, and this evening Uncle Denis has said he’ll come help me move a mattress from whichever store I buy it in to the apartment.  Jaime has offered to help me repaint the room I’ll be living in tomorrow morning, which is good, ‘cause it needs it.  And then tomorrow midday, Graham arrives!  Hooray!