Transmitting at the Speed of Light!

Peter's Guide to Long Paper-Writing

2009-12-05T22:20:00.001-06:00

Assuming you're writing a 20-page paper, here are the necessary steps you need to take to never do any research, never do any critical thinking, and barely even use Google or Wikipedia.

First, start off with an introduction. The introduction doesn't contain any useful information, but it should give your reader a taste of what's to come. It's like a preview at a movie, or that first whiff of shit in an outhouse. A good introduction, though, will pass itself off with greatness without actually conveying any knowledge. Consider:

People have always debated the great questions of 'why' and 'how', and have supported their ideas with the 'what' and the 'where'. Overlooked, however, is the 'who' and the 'when', integral to such diverse studies as anthropology, engineering, jumping rope and gold-digging (in the Greek sense of the word). Never in human history have such questions been debated more intensely or with such interest than in the modern context, though this might change in the future.

Start out broad. If you specify too soon, you'll lose your audience. They don't care about the specifics, because they know they'll come later. Also, speak in broad generalizations. Use the rule of thumb that, if what you're saying can't be applied to at least a billion people, or one of the seven continents, then it doesn't bear mentioning. An introduction should also set up what is and what isn't, but the difference should be ambiguous enough that you could pilot an oil tanker through the gap without any difficulty. Your reader will think its airtight though, with the right wording. It's important also to bring context into it. Most things going on right now have either never happened before, or have never happened before in such a big or small way. The words 'globalization', 'modernity', 'imperative', 'paradigm' and/or 'deconstruct' are choice words to add substanceless gilt. If whatever the hell you're talking about has happened before, or you can't think of a covert way of saying nothing, quote Foucault . It'll serve the same purpose.

Next comes a summation of everything you're going to talk about in the paper - a kind of roadmap, so if your reader will know what's coming. This way, he or she can skip to the good parts, or, if there are no good parts, not waste their time and find a different paper to read. A good roadmap goes like this:

This paper will first discuss what people are doing. Next, this paper will analyze who these people are, and where they are doing these things. Following this will be a comparison of when people do things and how they do things. Finally, this paper will conclude with an overview of why people do things.

Standard fluff, but you know what's coming. It's like a table of contents, or that same bitchy rant your landlord gives you about how if you don't pay him he'll evict you. In other words, it's predictable. If you're not discussing specifics ever, consider 'a survey of the literature', which just means you're gonna summarize what other people have said. Another strategy is 'a critical analysis according to so-and-so's perspective', which is you taking what you've studying, putting it in your own crack-addled words and attributing the ideas behind it to someone much smarter and hopefully much more dead than yourself. This all should take about a page, maybe a page and a half. Next comes statistics.

Everyone loves statistics, because they signify things that only you can understand. No one looks at statistics, and if they do, they will hate themselves for having made the effort when THEY KNOW you will analyze the data for them. Make sure your statistics are especially convoluted in their display, and make the font really small so nobody can be sure of what they're reading. Summarize the statistics in broad sweeps, like '20% of people eat a stick of butter every hour' or '74% of Iowans are gay'. The actual statistics won't matter, but the analysis will, so the reader will gloss over your recapitulation. Your analysis will have to involve some thought, but don't put too much effort into it, or you might go blind. This is the appropriate moment to include a pie chart as well. For your analysis, be brief but profound, like 'and those people eating butter will all be on Oprah next year' or 'those gay Iowans correlate to a drop in oil futures in Dubai'. Be sure to mention that you'll discuss more later. It'll hook your reader better. In total, especially with graphs and figures, you've taken up another two to three pages.

Following your statistics should come something based off of a quote. The best kind of quotes are ones in foreign languages that have been translated into English. Include both the original and the translation - it's double the space, and double the fun! Remember, Japanese and Mandarin are written vertically, so they take up more room on the page. Include a photo of the person being quoted as well. If you can't find a photo of the person, attribute it to JFK. No one can resist JFK. Once you have your quote, you should mention how profound it is, like 'and we, as a society, can learn a lot from this message of hope and inspiration' or 'and the tragedies of the past ring true today in the suffering of unheard millions'. Include both if you really want to screw with your reader, but it might be a good idea to put one before the picture of JFK and one after. That way, your reader will have forgotten the first bit by the time they get to the second.

You should be on page six or eight by now. Now comes the 'so what' statement. Whatever you're talking about can usually be applied to poor people, women, unborn children, the future, or the environment. Bear in mind, all of these groups have strong positive associations tied to them, so don't say anything bad. If you say something like, 'and it should be kept in mind that because the environment is irrevocably ruined, poor people will all starve to death tomorrow', your reader will burst into tears and kill themselves. This is a light reaction compared to if you were to say, 'and because women murder unborn children by not submitting to baby quotas, the future has been irrevocably ruined'. This will likely get you dumped, castrated and lynched if you're a man, and dumped, castrated and lynched if you're a woman. So, be positive. Say something like, 'and because the environment is going to rebound, poor people will all become billionaires!' or 'all women were unborn children once, and now they are the future!'. You must be sure to include an exclamation point, or your statement will be misinterpreted, and you will be dumped, castrated and lynched.

If you're not at page 10-15 by now, it's time to employ creative methods in formatting that the human eye can't identify. These include making line spacing 2.1 instead of 2, or increasing all punctuation to size 13 instead of 12. Double-space your title as well, and reduce your margins by 1/8 of an inch on both sides. Leave gratuitous spaces between sections, and if you can, use those really fancy giant capital letters they have in Newsweek at the beginning of paragraphs.

Finally, your conclusion. Remember, it's always safe to blame political gridlock, white supremacists, the legacy of colonialism and carbon dioxide emissions. Some professors will give bonus points if you can blame all of the above in one swoop. Regardless, you should either blame - or congratulate - someone or something. Bear in mind, the aforementioned topics are safe to blame, but rarely congratulate. Certainly, if you find yourself in a position where you can honestly congratulate all four, you are going to Hell. Delete your paper and swallow some Draino. If you're not in that position, blame blame blame away! And remember, at this point, your reader wants to be done so he or she can eat, go home, have sex or go to sleep. 99% of the time, you want them to get done with your paper, disregard it, and give you a B-. For that 1% of the time though, you need something spectacular to catch their attention one last time. A diagram of a horse and a dolphin copulating, for instance, will work, or a proclamation that you have found Incan gold in Antarctica. The more absurd, the better, but be careful because since your reader is now interested once again, they will also be attentive to the plausibility of your final argument. You had better make sure that horse/dolphin porn is graphic enough to arouse them, or indicate that some of that Incan gold will find its way into your reader's wallet.

Finally, finish with a bibliography copied from any work in critical theory or the humanities. The papers in these fields are wealthy graveyards of citations that no one in their right mind would check up on, but will take for granted that the authors words are profound acts of intellectual masturbation. Your index, if needed, can similarly be copied from a telephone directory, or from the back of a mid-priced cookbook.

Once you're all done, return to the top, and craft yourself a title. Feel free to steal a headline from last week's British tabloids. They are usually provocative, and your reader will likely not have read them. Something like 'Sussex man drowns in lorry full of dog urine' or 'Local council declared corrupt beyond redemption; sentenced to deportation'. If you want to try your hand at originality, just think of something your racist great-grandparent would say if you told them you were marrying interethnically. Something like 'Jesus H. Christ on a Whale, the hell you are you bastard retard' or 'Say one more word and I'll belt you worse than I did your nana when she tried to vote'. For additional effect, remove every third word.

Your paper is now complete, and ready to be handed in to your professor. Be sure to wait until the last minute. You should be sweating when you hand it to them (in person), and be bleeding freely from some visible part of your body. If you can arrange for a destroyed bike to be placed in view nearby, all the better. Even more to your advantage is if you can get a friend to pretend to mug you moments before your professor leaves their office for their car. Hand it to them directly, then excuse yourself to get your wounds treated at the ER. See if they won't pity you and spring for cab fare as well.

The End.

N = R* x Fp x Ne x Fe x Fi x Fc x L

2009-11-19T00:54:00.005-06:00

This is my second post on topics of science (granted, the last post on Star Trek was more about science fiction than science). Above is the Drake Equation, which is the equation proposed to determine the number of intelligent, advanced civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.

N = the number of civilizations capable of surviving long enough to transmit intelligible radio signals into space that our civilization would detect (radio waves being among the widest length'd signals in the universe, and therefore the easiest - in terms of clarity - to transmit across stellar distances)

R* = the rate of star creation in our galaxy.
Fp = Fraction of stars with planets
Ne = Number of planets (and planets w/large enough satellites, like Titan) that can support life (i.e. are within the so-called "Goldilocks" zone of stellar heating/stellar windiness - because if the surface is always too hot/cold or the atmosphere is blown off by stellar wind, there is little chance of life)
Fe = Fraction of those planets that go on to develop life
Fi = Fraction of those planets that go on to develop intelligent life
Fc = Fraction of those planets that go on to develop intelligent life who develop civilizations like our own
L = Fraction of those civilizations that survive long enough to transmit the signals of their civilization into space

Carl Sagan postulated that the first six variables are relatively high. We have almost 400 billion stars in our galaxy, of which 1/4 will have planets. Based upon the estimates of the Solar system, of a stellar system with 10 planets (counting the major satellites, like Titan again), at least 2 will be able to support life. That leaves us with 200 billion life-capable planets. Because life developed 3.8 billion years ago (or 0.4 billion years after the formation of the Earth (4.2 billion years ago, because the impact of a proto-planet that created the moon occurred at that time, reliquefying the core and the crust)) the possible percentage of life-bearing planets becomes 1/2 (i.e., just the Earth - though life may have arisen on Mars, Titan, Venus or even the Moon, at some point in time). This gives us 100 billion planets. However, intelligence occurs in only a handful of species - metazoa, or animals. We (and our closest relatives) would account for only 1% of life. Still, that leaves 1 billion planets. Of those species, only Homo sapiens have developed communicable intelligence (as far as we know), but suppose we say that that translates into 1% again. We are left with 10 million planets on which intelligent life occurs which can communicate their intelligence into space. However, we then arrive at the great factor of time. Human civilization has only existed for ~12,000 years. In that time, we've only been able to project signs of our existence into the greater galaxy for at most, a century, and more likely, just for the past 50-40 years. Of all of Earth's history, this is a blip. Factoring that into the 10 million planets possibly able to communicate intelligence into space, that number reduces to anywhere from 50,000 to 10. 10 civilizations in a galaxy full of possibility.

Carl Sagan, who optimistically proposed our galaxy experienced the latter extrapolation of the formula, said that other civilizations would likely have overcome the challenges that we now face. Environmental collapse, poverty, disease, war; these are problems that kill not just countries but species. Should we not be shocked into action that we have not found life elsewhere? Our species is not made of Italians, Thais, Mexicans, Argentines or Cameroonians. We are all humans, and we share a single, fragile space. Sagan supposed that any civilization, whether it was one of 50,000 or one of 10 (the optimistic and pessimistic ranges), would have to be thousands and thousands of years old, and would have had to had endured the hardships of existing that long. Our civilization must learn to become a 10,000 year civilization.

The problems we face today are often thought of in human terms. We have a hard time understanding that the Earth is 138 billion human generations old. Humans have existed as Homo sapiens for only about 3,300 of those generations, or .0000024% of the history of the Earth. And that is still 100,000 years. If, in my lifetime, humanity destroys the ecosystem beyond repair, it will have occurred in a geological blink of an eye. Less than a blink even.

The current dominant mode of existence in human culture is capitalism. It is based on the principal of creative destruction, as theorized by Joseph Schumpeter. That means that in order for new innovations to arise, the old system must be removed, in a multitude of ways. Does this destruction damage our chances or survival, or increase it? I don't know. Capitalism has only existed for between 3,000 and 250 years, depending on who you talk to. Again, just a blink. Regardless, we've already seen our natural world begin to fundamentally change in just the last century. What challenges will we face next, and can we overcome them? I would like to think that something comes after capitalism, just as it succeeded mercantalism, and mercantalism succeeded tributary systems of economics. Maybe it will be something less destructive than our current way of life.

Robert Heinlein so eloquently summarized that "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". TANSTAAFL might well be applied to the risk we take in continuing our current way of life. Every day we live - and by extension everything we do - takes its toll on the planet. Human science has been good at fixing the problems we create for ourselves - the Green Revolution is a good example of this, solving issues of hunger in the developing world in the 1960s. However, it is risky to bank on technological fixes. What if Norman Borlaug had never hybridized dwarf wheat, and ensured its distribution throughout the developing world? Maybe the task would have been taken up by someone else, but maybe it would never have occurred.

In order to avoid betting on the risk of a technological fix, our entire civilization has to undertake drastic measures of reduction. How do we balance the desire to develop with the need to protect our common ecosystem? If we cannot achieve a technological fix, or if we cannot expend the necessary time to enact a technological fix, then I think what we need is not scare tactics but a popularization of the hard choice. In World War II, in Great Britain, much of the arable land was converted into "victory gardens" (this is hearsay, as I have not studied the issue to any extent, so I might well be wrong) which were gardens for food so Britain would not have to rely so heavily on dangerous-to-acquire foreign imports. I do not know what mentality possessed the British to set aside what had been done for what needed to be done, but perhaps a similar mentality is needed today.

I would like to travel to the stars before I die. I'd also like to live multiple centuries, so the feasibility of that desire might increase. In any case, I am curious to know how we might become a 10,000 year civilization. What, if anything, shall come after capitalism? What shall be the technological fixes to sustain our civilization until then? If no technological fix can be achieved in time, how shall we mitigate the collapse of our environment? Who shall popularize the necessary steps? I would rather think about these things, than the possibility of our failure. Between the optimistic and pessimistic ranges of galactic civilizations are 49,990 civilizations that won't survive, or 99.98%. I'd rather we not be among them.

Deploy the Red Matter!

2009-11-16T01:29:00.003-06:00

This past May, I was studying the night before my statistical geography exam. I was in the library around 8:30PM when I got a phone call from Martha. Sounding super excited, she invited me to come see the opening night of the new Star Trek movie at the Grand View. Naturally, being studious and diligent in my work, I declined her invitation. Naturally, Martha pressed me to come, despite my decline. Naturally, since I love Star Trek and Martha, I recanted and went to see Star Trek. Martha brought Dad and three of her friends, and even made me a little com-badge out of cardboard and tin foil.
This was the first of five times I saw Star Trek in theaters. Each time was interesting in different ways. The first time though, my mind was just blown. When I got home from the movie and went to sleep, I honestly couldn't. I stayed awake until 4AM processing what I had just seen. Unfortunately, this meant that I slept until fifteen minutes into my exam, and had to rush to class where the professor gave me a pitying laugh and said "you'll do fine." I am reminded of this incident now because I am, by pure chance, listening to the soundtrack of that movie on youtube for the first time since having seen it.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to spoil the plot of the movie in this entry. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I suggest you stop reading. It is well-worth seeing without knowing what will happen in the end, so if you have any interest at all in seeing it, stop reading. STOP READING! Hopefully, you've gotten the message by now, and I advise you to read on at your own risk.
While now I have seen the movie five times and have sufficiently deconstructed the plot and themes, when I first saw it I was simply amazed. J.J. Abrams, the movie's producer (director? I don't know - I'm too lazy to look at IMDB) who also came up with Lost and Alias, took the novel approach of revamping the series with the time-honored Trek theme of time-travel. To appeal to a wider audience, he brought in a fresh cast of good-looking and appealing actors to play the parts of the now-aged (and in the case of DeForest Kelly and James Doohan, deceased - may they rest in peace) original cast. I can understand the need to appeal to more than just Trekkies - the whole franchise has been on shakey ground forever, basically, because it appeals to a specific sort of person. This is not to say unmarried white men over 30 who are more likely to read Wired than Sports Illustrated. Rather, I think the average Trekkie is someone who reasonably expects that we - as humans - will outlast the doom-and-gloom of our modern era to enter a time when we can not only travel to the stars but flourish there, despite our species' hangups. I think it speaks volumes that there are so few of those wonderfully optimistic people in the world. Anyways, let me get to my first point, which is related to this topic. That is, that good movies don't necessarily translate into good sales, and good sales do not make for good movies necessarily. Let me compare movies to literature in this sense. Not many people read Shakespeare - and yes, I know anyone with a background in English literature will accost me for this, but I think it's true. Sure, we're all familiar with Shakespeare, but how many of us have actually read Romeo and Julius or Hamlet, much less Twelfth Night, Titus Andronicus or Henry V? Among the general public, not that many. Now consider how many have read a book by Dan Brown, or the Harry Potter series? Both are examples of well-crafted books, but books that are not exactly high literature. I would lay odds on that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wilde, Tolstoy, and Orwell would all have gladly taken Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling to task for making so much money on what is essentially literary pulp. Similarly, anyone who has ever been to an arthouse film (and while I admit I've only been to a few, I have found them to be generally boring) will recognize the differences between that genre and the typical Hollywood blockbuster. Capitalism doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the arts, after all, since what is good might not be popular, and what is popular might not be good, but what matters is what people will pay for, and that's what we get in bulk. I'm not saying there is a better system of promoting the arts, but that's just what I've noticed. So when J.J. Abrams decided to recast everyone in Star Trek (with the notable and well-played return of Leonard Nimoy as an older version of Spock, I think he was thinking of everyone who reads Sports Illustrated rather than anyone who reads Wired.
A good movie needs good actors, true, and I will admit that the cast of Star Trek was above par on the whole. Certainly, no one pissed me off (except possibly Chekov, who luckily only had a dozen or so lines and was put in largely so that they could say 'Hey, Chekov's here too!'). However, this is not what I want from a movie. That the actors will not piss me off should be a rule, and the exception should be that I should watch an actor (or actress, excuse me for being gendered) and say wow, that was a good performance. This didn't happen with Star Trek. This however, I chalk up to plot more than anything. Were the greatest actors and actresses of all time to have performed, there would only be so much that could be done to save the movie. This is a common problem in Hollywood, where big-name actors and actresses devote their name to a movie that really honestly truly sucks. Whose fault is it? Well, the screenwriter for one, the director two, and the actor three for not having enough sense to say 'send this to a B-lister'. Now, let me begin to analyze just what was wrong with Star Trek's plot.
First, time-travel. Time-travel is A-okay, so long as everything winds up fine in the end. Part way through Star Trek though, we witness the planet Vulcan being destroyed (the method in which it is destroyed I won't even begin to analyze - needless to say I suspect J.J. Abrams of badly copying George Lucas via the Death Star, but with less imagination and even less plausibility. The mechanical inaccuracies I shall leave to physicists). At the end of the movie, Vulcan stays destroyed. True, in an alternate universe, Vulcan still exists, but there, Romulus has been destroyed. Great! J.J. Abrams has just fucked up the entire stellar-political sphere of both the regular Star Trek universe and his own alternate one. Did he not realize that, without Vulcan, Star Fleet would surely collapse? It'd be like, if during the 19th century Europe had sunk into the ocean, and Western civilization had been represented only by the United States, Canada, Australia and the African and Asian colonies of Europe. We would be in a whole different boat. And of course, since Star Trek takes place before the events of any other canonical source (except Star Trek Enterprise), we are left without all of that to come in the future as well. How will Spock be reborn on Vulcan at the end of Star Trek III, or Lt. Valeris conspire against the Federation and Klingons in Star Trek VI? Without the Vulcans, the Federation is like a chair with only three legs - the Humans, the Andorians and the Tellerites, and since I bet none of you have ever heard of the last two, it goes to show that without the Vulcans, the Federation is pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. J.J. Abrams, you've killed the genre.
Of course, we can look to the regular universe, where Vulcan still exists, but here, Romulus doesn't exist (and by extension, Remus, since Romulus and Remus are twin planets and as their stellar system was destroyed in a cosmic event, both would have perished). Without the Romulan Star Empire (which, thanks to the events of Star Trek X, was just beginning to enter into detente with the Federation), the entire balance of stellar-political power shifts in the galaxy. Boo! It is disturbing. I am sure J.J. Abrams, though, can invent some novel, new universe where the Vulcan doesn't need to exist (or maybe he'll just say 'yes, Vulcan was destroyed, but enough Vulcans survived that it doesn't really matter), but that requires reinventing the wheel. It would've been easier just to pit James Kirk against an irascible and maniacal foe without the need to bring genocide into the equation. Which, by the way, was not particularly skillfully done. Nero, the baddy in Star Trek decides to destroy Vulcan because Spock didn't do enough to save Romulus in the original universe. However, is Nero the Emperor of the Romulan Star Empire, or the Praetor? Or even a powerful senator, an admiral or a commander of the Tal Shiar? No, he's the captain of a mining ship. And because Romulus gets blown to bits, he goes a bit gaga, falls through a black hole, and goes on a 25-year quest for vengeance against the entire Vulcan people. I can't even think of a good parallel for this situation. It just isn't plausible. It's like James Kirk fighting John Q. Postal Worker. Worse, John Q. Assistant to the Secretary of the Cousin of the Sister of the Postal Worker's Next Door Neighbor. Maybe J.J. Abrams was trying to tug at our heartstrings by having us 'relate' to Nero, but c'mon! No one can relate to genocide on that scale, and even if one could, the shock of it would be maddening. It'd be like if the Earth were destroyed, and the only people to survive were the four guys up in the International Space Station. They would envy the dead.
So, I've already confronted J.J. Abrams for his cast and his major plot hole. However, overall, the dialog must be addressed next. Good dialog can carry even the shittiest of plots. Look at Monty Python. Not to say they had shitty plots, but the plot was barely there. That's because it barely needed to be there. They were funny because the dialog was good (and because John Cleese is a master of funny walks). J.J. Abrams made the classic mistake of trying to integrate humor, action and emotion into a movie. Like Israel being a democratic, unified, Jewish state, you can only have two of the three. You can have emotion and action - Children of Men, for instance. You can have emotion and humor - Four Weddings and a Funeral. You can have action and humor - Hot Fuzz. You can't have all three, and when you put them all together, the movie collapses under the weight of it all. This is what happened in Star Trek. Arguably, Peter Jackson tried the same thing with the Lord of the Rings movies, but he had the advantage of having three movies over which to disperse these three elements, and he also used humor sparingly, and never in direct combination with action or emotion. J.J. Abrams didn't take this advice to heart. For instance, right after the destruction of Vulcan - which would probably have put everyone on the Enterprise into a state of shock ranging from upsetting to debilitating - Abrams has Spock making witty retorts to Kirk, and Kirk playing around like that the loveable class clown in high school. Not believable, and quite frankly sophomoric. Spock would probably have gone insane, killed Kirk in a single blow, forcing McCoy to euthanize him out of sympathy, and then Sulu would be running the ship, who himself would be traumatized at the events that had just transpired. That doesn't make for good theater, which again relates to the fact that J.J. Abrams shouldn't have blown up Vulcan. If you can't scale up the drama with the scaling up of the plot, DON'T DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!
It's late, and I have to sleep, so I'll just casually mention my disapproval in the way older Spock was introduced, my disapproval of a romance between Uhura and Spock, and my disapproval that Scotty, Chekov and Sulu were even in this movie (they were treated like supernumeraries when they should've been principals). To end, I too could dump several million dollars into a blender and get you a movie like Star Trek, but I could also have taken a bit of thought, a bit more appreciation for the past and future, and maybe wound up with something else. I certainly expected J.J. Abrams, a man whose choice of work centers around such creations, to have done so. Maybe next time. Until then, live long, prosper, and keep on hanging and banging.

These Wars We Got Going On

2009-11-11T22:05:00.002-06:00

We gotta get ourselves out of Afghanistan and Iraq. The US don't got the resources or the political will to keep losing slowly. Obama is a nice young man, and it would be a shame for him to have W's albatrosses hang around his neck as well.

Why do we seem to repeat the mistakes of European empires, some decades later? Cuba repeated Spain, Vietnam repeated France, Iraq and Afghanistan repeat the British. Do we have a historic copy-cat tendency for destructively bad ideas? The idea of stabilizing Central Asia & the Middle East is just that, an idea. Iraq is not Germany and Afghanistan is not Japan. We haven't "beaten" anyone, who is now sulking in the corner, and after a good cry, they and we will dance around the maypole of economic resuscitation. No, that just ain't gonna happen. It's getting old reading how XYZ Iraqis or Afghans were killed in A bombing, and B number of our (or NATO's) troops were killed in turn, and tomorrow we'll bomb group C in retaliation. C'mon guys. Let's all go home.

The world is plenty f'ed up in other places. They still have slaves in Mauritania, the Zimbabweans are plain starving, the Russians are becoming like the Nazis in the 1930s, and the North Koreans are a bad Orwellian farce. Shall we be dealing with them next? I don't relish the thought. We haven't the guns, we haven't the troops, we haven't the money, and quite frankly the shopping list of domestic problems is long enough without our "foreign interests". Isolationism is one thing - unproductive and outright ignorant - but there is something to be said about gathering our rosebuds while we may. Think about how easy universal healthcare would be to fund if we were literally blowing up that money half a world away. Think about how we could modernize our infrastructure if we were pouring billions on billions into the sieves that are the failed states we quagmire ourselves in. Think about the renovations to our domestic industrial sector we could work if we diverted comparative pocket change from the military/industrial complex. It boggles the mind.

I'd like our country to take a bit of proaction, rather than wait for more fireworks to go off. Do we really need bombs and bullets to wake us up? And even if, haven't we gotten the message already? Oy vey!

No One Remembers That Garret Morris Song, 'Gonna Get Me A Shotgun' (Except Dad)

2009-11-07T13:32:00.004-06:00

Alright, I realize my journal has been lacking for about... three months, so here's the scoop.

College is going. Today is November 7th. It is 61F outside, and sunny. The only thing letting me know that it is, in fact, November and not August, is that the sun doesn't quite rise over the buildings, so there are long shadows everywhere. It's a bit neat. Everyone is outside. Wow, ok, this is starting to sound insipid.

What's new? Midterms are done. I won't tell you my grades, other than that I am doing well enough not to be overly concerned. Midterms are like yellow lights at intersections - you either gun it and go, or you slow down and stop, but there's a chance you'll get screwed either way. Wait, how does that relate to midterms? I'm not sure anymore. But, it's a good analogy. Is that an analogy? What's a word for a pointless story?

Right now, my most interesting class is creative writing. We've composed three pieces so far - a work of fiction, a memoir, and a piece of literary journalism. My class has twelve people and Professor Dawes, who has told us to call him 'Jim'. Of those twelve, six (including myself) are seniors. There are no juniors (unless I'm being fooled), three sophomores, and three freshmen. Okay, now that I think of it, there are only eleven people, and only two freshmen - both girls, so I can't call them freshmen. First-years. Firsties. The point of this note is that, for whatever reason, the underclassmen just plain suck at writing. I don't mean to say this in a condescending way (although by nature, it is condescending), but they lack the depth of experience in collegiate writing to be able to pen a good read.

For me, even a work of fiction should still be set up like an academic paper. You have a theme, which should be strong throughout, unless you want to change your theme midway through (which, since we only write 10 page stories, is hard to do). There should be a thesis statement at the beginning, which can either be recapitulated at the end, or just established once and referenced in a loose way throughout. A piece should have supporting details which are congruent and easy to understand, and by the end you should walk away thinking, 'That was interesting'. Or, at the very least, 'That was not a waste of my time'. Not infrequently, when reading my peers' pieces, find myself walking away saying, 'That was a waste of my time', but with the caveat that hopefully they'll come to be better writers later on. Jim has told all of us that he doesn't like happy stories - where emotion is necessary - and he doesn't like pieces that sort of just go and go and go and never get anywhere - where emotion is not a big concern, such as in literary journalism. Specifically, there is one girl in my class who always seems to write about childish things. For her fiction piece, she wrote about a child's dream; for her memoir, she wrote about... I can't remember. Was that the one about growing up? Right, it was about her fascination with the fantastical as a child. And for her ding dong what did I call it, literary journalism, she wrote about... what was it. Um. Hmmmm... [Snapping fingers, trying to remember] Damnit. Uh... [Looks up paper on internet, remembers] Ah! Yes. The problem of anemia in vegetarians. It was in the vein of science writing, and I passed it off to Chelsea, my biology-major housemate, who got angry reading it. It was not accurate, to say the least. Why am I picking on this one girl in particular? Well, I think I, like Jim, don't like happy stories. They're boring.

The other day, I read a novel - it was pulp fantasy, 400 pages of predictability (wow I sound pretentious), but it was written in an epic style (like the Silmarillion, for example - which is one of my favorite books) and I figured it would be a good read. It was a good read, but the hero won, the bad guy was defeated (through deus ex machina, which honestly sucks as a plot device. It's a total cop-out) and there was some minor internal conflict on the part of the heroine who didn't want to lose the hero, but had to let him go for the greater good. It wasn't even Dan Brown good. But for some reason, I was compelled to read, in part because the premise was interesting (the book - God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe - was about the fallen angels in Hell trying to regain some of their former divinity, and the no no this causes the more disgruntled, truly demonic demons of Hell) but I was mostly compelled to read it because I kept hoping it would get better. It didn't. Sigh.

I mention this because this girl's writing is similar. It's too predictable, it is too flowery, and the only real pull to the reading is that you hope, at the end, it will be better than throughout the start. Jim has told us that if we need to spice our story up, sex is a foolproof method of getting people's interest. I've talked to my friend Harley, who was an English major (she graduated, thus the use of the past tense), about the mundaneness of my class. She says its normal for an intro class. This mundaneness is juxtaposed by the fairly interesting pieces that the seniors write. I have two hypotheses: 1) that the seniors write more interesting pieces because they the last vestige of the dying Macalester breed of 'neat people'. The student body has been diluted of their far-left radicalism that seeps into everything they do, and slowly our college is becoming another J. Crew U. It's unfortunate, because there are still a handful of students who still come here in the hopes of finding those glimmering, interesting and smart people whom society has no place for save at Macalester.

For my literary journalism piece, I wrote about the Trads. In our peer critique (where the author shuts up and the class critiques the work), it was well-liked, but one of the seniors, Andrew, said (paraphrasing) it was interesting because the Trads are this outlet of excitement and ludicrousness who really aren't exciting or ludicrous, but in the context of Macalester, they are. I was struck by this because, well, we've all gotten boring. Smoking pot is no longer the taboo, counter-cultural stick-it-to-the-man activity it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Being vegan isn't weird. Riding a bicycle and 'being green' is mainstream. Wearing second-hand clothes is practically haute-couture. I'm not sure if Mac got more mainstream or if mainstream got more like Mac, but in the end we've wound up like everybody else. Tired and bored, we've lost our spirit, ground down by a heightened sense of academic need that, after four years, leaves us burnt out, jobless and with vocabularies that can only be understood with the aid of a dictionary and a decent knowledge of postmodernist theory. We're Harvard, taking a nap.

My second hypothesis is: 2) that the firsties just haven't come into their own. Maybe Macalester is still alive and kicking somewhere, in the developing hearts and minds of six-hundred closet liberals. Maybe after these younger students have experienced what college can really do to your mind, they'll start to pen and think in a more elegant and eloquent way. Maybe somewhere in their time here they'll get hit by the truck of abnormality that characterized the college for much of its mid- to late-20th-century history. Maybe. I hope. But, on the whole, Macalester is losing some of its essence. Too many students think that the world is all written down, and that bold plans and big thoughts were things that happened fifty and a hundred and two hundred years ago. We have frantic discussions about 'what our image should be' and 'how the spaces around campus should fit the needs of students' rather than just making an image for ourselves and making the campus fit for us. We read the New York Times instead of the Worker's Daily. We drink Dunn Bros. instead of moonshine from a boot. We think 'diversity' means having Mexican food. Ugh.

I think the desire of the administration to make Macalester more presentable, more worldly, has left us fearing any deviation from the norm. Residential Life (the secret police of Macalester) is where life goes to die. I listen to the tours of prospective students that pass, and how the tour guides drone on and on about this construct that is Macalester. They tout our diversity, our multiculturalism, our internationalism, our civic engagement, when in fact these are shams. We're a withered daisy passing ourselves off as a rose, and the sad part is is that people believe the rouse. But, enough of this dreary diatribe.

I'm happy. If Macalester is truly rotting on the vine, I'm out of here shortly. I've had a fantastic run that gets better with each passing day. I worry sometimes about what comes next, but that is still many many weeks away. For now, I'm off to Goodwill to see if there's anything that catches my fancy.

Below is my piece on the Trads. There are a small number of grammatical and spelling mistakes, but I will edit those in the final draft. Feel free to point them out if you see them, or say what you think at the end. Love.

Peter Truax

10/22/09

ENGL 150

Literary Journalism

Plaid Madness: The Macalester Traditions

There is a list of 100 Things To Do Before You Graduate on the Macalester Admission website. The first thing to do is to listen to a world class speaker like Kofi Annan or Angela Davis. The second thing to do is to embrace the Plaid at a Trads Concert. This suggest that the Macalester Traditions, Macalester’s premier (and only) all-male a capella ensemble, ranks higher in the college experience than painting the Rock (9th), Springfest (26th), learning a second language (50th) or joining any other student organization on campus (75th). For a college that values at its core such lofty ideals as internationalism, multiculturalism and global citizenship, it might seem odd that this rowdy, musically-average and frequently drunk bunch of men is so highly valued by the college. Why then is the closest thing to a fraternity that exists at Mac considered such a draw for prospective students? What is it about the Plaid that students can’t leave Mac without embracing?

On the evening of October 24th an enormous crowd is gathered in the Campus Center. They are there to listen to Acapellooza, the annual gathering of different a capella groups hosted every fall at Macalester. Like a rock concert, there is the warm-up act - Off Kilter from Macalester and Basses Wild from the U of M - both new groups who are there to have their mettle tested. Following them are more established groups – the Knights and Knightengales from Carleton, Seven Days from the U of M, the Sirens from Macalester – all crowd pleasers and well-respected singers. However, the closing group, the unofficial headliner, is the Traditions. The moment the crowd has been waiting for finally arrives. At eleven o’clock, three hours after the start of the concert, the plaid-clad Trads are ready to rock.

The first part of the appeal surrounding the Trads is their entertainment value. Before every performance and usually with no more than a half-hour of preparation, the group gathers to prepare an introductory skit. Tonight, the theme is Super Mario Brothers. As the MCs thank the penultimate group off the stage and announce the Trads, a yellow star descends from the upper level, à la Super Mario Brothers. On to the stage runs Rob Desjarlais, the most convincing Mario impostor in the Trads. With a flourish, Desjarlais pulls down the star and the Trads stream on stage. All eleven of them are wearing plaid suitcoats straight out of the 1970s, chanting the theme of the game to the repeated word, ‘Trads!’ As Desjarlais comically knocks each member down in turn with the star, the crowd breaks out into laughter.

The humor is just an appetizer though – as one member of the Trads put it in the usual style of phallic references, "Slurping on the head before the real fellatio.” With the crowd eagerly aroused, the Trads burst into song. Musically, the Trads are not high quality. Vocal performance experience is not a requirement for admission to the group, although command of pitch and knowledge of music theory are advantageous. The popularity of the Trads in concert comes from the fact that when they perform, they just have a good time. If they sound good, that is an added bonus. This is the second part of the appeal of the Trads – their energy brings everyone into the music. It is akin to sitting in on a garage band jam session, only the experience is happening to an audience of two hundred people. There is an intimacy, even in public, to their performance; a way of drawing in every individual into the secret enjoyment that these men experience regularly.

The final song of the set is ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, by Kelly Clarkson. Christian Behrends, a freshman and the current Bitch steps up to the mic and the audience quiets themselves. As the song is recognized, the audience surges into a sudden cheer. Swelling through the notes, the Trads begin jumping up and down, stomping on the stage as sweat trickles off their faces. The cascading music rises to a final frenetic moment with Trads bouncing around the stage while Behrends wails high on the mic. Many in the audience are bobbing their heads and moving their bodies in a private dance while a few on the side are actively rocking out along with the Trads. The song comes to an abrupt end and it takes a moment for the crowd to recover. Finally sated and still reeling from the thrill of it all, the whole crowd rises in a standing ovation.

The reasons why people come to the Trads concerts are numerous. One alum who returned for the concert said, “I was friends with a lot of Trads when I was in school, and just the memory of my experiences with them is enough to get me back here.” Another student, a senior who admitted never having been to a concert before, said, “That was so much fun. I’m sorry I stayed away so long. I’m gonna come to all the rest of the concerts!” For the Trads, the accolades are a sign that they not only enjoyed themselves, but were enjoyed by the crowd in turn. Carl Skarbek, the Dildo of the Trads, said to the group afterwards,

“I just want to say that that was one of the most fun Trads concerts in recent memory. We completely owned. I had so many people come up to me and tell me that we were the best a capella act they had ever seen.” This performance, like every other, is the manifestation of the hard work and dedication of the group’s efforts to please an eager crowd. This latest concert is just another iteration of a legacy stretching back a quarter of a century.

The Traditions were founded in 1984 by six men who wanted an opportunity to sing music they liked for their own enjoyment. What began as an experiment in a capella fun continues today, though none of the original members ever thought that they would start a legacy. At the 2008 Alumni Reunion, a special dinner was held for former members of the Trads, stretching back all the way to the founding members. From among the fifty-odd participants, many shared memories of how, through the Trads, they found wives, jobs, and life-long friends. One of the founders of the Trads is even godfather to the son of the original leader. Today, while the music has changed, all the traditions of the Traditions stay alive.

One of the first traditions was the titling of the leadership of the group. Informally known as a 'dicktocracy', the Trads are lead by a chief officer, the Rod, named such with the usual phallic humor of the group. The second-in-command is called the Dildo, who as the Trads related to me, “takes the Rods place when the Rod is not there.” The secretarial position is called the Bitch, whose duties include the straight-forward (preparing sheet music copies and lyrics) and the ridiculous (when there are eleven chairs in a room and twelve Trads, the Bitch always sits on the floor). Laura Bartolomei-Hill, the Chair of the Financial Affair Committee for the Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) commented on these unusual titles when reviewing the charter for the Trads: “We spent about an hour just discussing what exactly the Bitch did, and quite frankly we were all still confused at the end.”

The Bitch might be confusing to some, but to the actual Bitch, it can be anything from a harrowing experience to a source of pride. Behrends described to me his initial impressions of being the Bitch. “I was really scared at first. I thought I was gonna be treated like shit, and I was also worried about having to be on the spot about the Bitch song. But then Charles [McClung – former Bitch] told me it was a position of honor, so I just relaxed about it and I was like ‘cool’!” As Behrends mentions, one of the roles of the Bitch is to sing the Bitch song, which is ‘I Want To Be Your Dominated Love Slave’, by Greenday. When it is sung, the Bitch selects a person out of the audience to serenade. In turn, that person gets the chance to whip the Bitch on the butt with a belt, generously donated by one or multiple other members of the Trads. This is the single most awkward event at a Trads concert, and most selected end up sitting humbly in embarrassment or shock. There are, however, a few notable exceptions. As Eric Anderson, a former Rod, recalled:

“One time, Josh Porte was singing the Bitch song and he brought Anne Sweet [of the Sirens]’s grandma on stage. So, here I am thinking ‘Oh my god, this woman is going to die of embarrassment and we are all going to be arrested’ and half of us are just turning away – we can’t bear the sight of it. But then when it comes time for her to whip Josh, she just gets this look in her eyes, this primal look like, ‘Yeah! Gimme! I want a piece of that meat!’ and she starts wailing on Josh. So now half of us are turning away because we can’t stop laughing at what’s happening. She came up to us afterwards and said that was the most fun she’d had in years – this little eighty-year-old woman. It was great!”

The other members, far from being unimportant, all contribute to the functioning of the group. Regardless of the role of any individual member, they are all selected in a highly competitive audition process. The auditions, held at the beginning of each semester, follow a night of ‘guerrilaing’, where the Trads storm into the freshmen dorms, banging on doors and singing songs for unsuspecting residents to spread awareness of the group. For incoming freshmen, the experience can either be riveting or frightening, but for the Trads it is another example of their chaotic, fun-filled nature. The day of auditions, the candidate pool (all male, unless a woman capable of singing in the male vocal range agrees to dress and act as a man for a year) gathers to see if they are up to par for the Trads.

The auditions consist of two sections, musical aptitude and potential group cohesion. The musical portion consists of singing notes on a scale to determine range, followed by prospective candidates repeating a song they learn during the audition – always the Trads standard, ‘You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me’, by Smokey Robinson. Once this is done and the candidate pool is narrowed down, the prospects are brought back in to the audition space. Next comes the examination of personality – the real test of a potential Trad.

“We basically try to see if they’ll fit with the group, so we ask them questions to try and see what sort of person they are. Are they funny, are they dorky, are they going to get all the dick jokes we tell? That’s the second half of auditions,” notes one Trad. The Trads always ask the same three questions: “Which do you fear most – a ten foot tall penis or a ten foot tall vagina, and why?”; “What would you do in your last moments of life if you were attacked by a million housecats?”; and “In the event of a nuclear holocaust where you and one Trad have to felate one another for food in the last safe bunker on Earth, which Trad would you choose?” Applicants are judged not on correctness of their answers (although fearing a vagina over a penis is a plus), but rather are considered for their creativity of answer and comfort with being questioned in this manner. Needless to say, it is not an experience for the unoriginal or prudish. New Trads are then selected in a secret election, and informed of their acceptance into the group with a Mountain Dew-filled condom, SPO’d to them with a letter saying ‘Urine!’ (You’re in). Thus begins the tenure of a Trad in the group.

The bulk of the Trads’ time is spent in rehearsal, three times a week in the evenings, and occasionally extra before important concerts. The Rod leads the rehearsal, or in his absence, the Dildo – as per stipulation of the rules. At rehearsals, songs that have been arranged previously are performed and worked upon, and business is discussed, but inevitably the rehearsal includes some period of time devoted to absurdity or drinking, and often both. The instigator of this ridiculousness is the G-spot, a senior whose position is named for their ability to find the elusive pleasure that the group needs to get through the hardship of rehearsals.

“Usually I get into fake shouting matches with Joe [Ptacek] or Will [Gordon], or I tell a long-winded story about my life to the group. Sure it sounds boring, but it’s how a million different inside stories get formed. That, and I have to bring the booze when and if we decide to drink. It’s a surprisingly demanding job, especially on my bank account and liver,” notes the current G-spot. “Oh, and not all the guys drink. Drinking is just one of many methods to our madness. My job is mostly to stir up madness and fun. If you’re not crazy when you join the group, you sure as hell will be when you leave it.”

All of this preparation comes to fruition during concerts, but even concerts are not how most people know the Trads. The event with the most exposure for the group is Valentine’s Day. The week before Valentine’s Day, the Trads take over a table in the basement of the Campus Center and harangue people into buying serenades. For a mere five dollars, you get a song. For ten dollars, you get a song delivered by members shirtless. To quote the G-Spot, “What says love more than a group of half-naked men singing together?” The group begins with wake-up serenades, where the Trads sing to and on occasion crawl into bed with unsuspecting dorm residents around eight in the morning. It is a sensuous experience, to say the least. For the Trads, Valentine's Day represents a time for showcasing not only the musical prowess of the group, but also every piece of ridiculousness that can be mustered. After the wake-up serenades comes the morning drinking break. One or two of the seniors will break off from the group, drive to Park Liquors and pick up an assortment of beverages, key among them being the alcoholic energy drink Sparks. It was disheartening to the group when this beverage of choice was discontinued last year.

"I really miss getting slightly drunk and very energized at 10AM from a couple of Sparks," commented former Trad Tim Campbell. While it might be easy to dismiss the Trads’ frequent drinking as fraternity-style boorishness, it has long been gospel truth among musical groups of all varieties that performing slightly drunk makes them sound better. For the Trads, it is no different. Beyond the ridiculousness and the music, Valentine's Day is a singular opportunity for the Trads to bond. Singing upwards of fifty songs over twelve hours is immensely tiring, and good humor is a requirement. Last year, one diversion was to answer the question: How many Trads can fit in a Carnegie bathroom stall at once? The answer was nine. I spoke to Desjarlais about the nature of this inquiry.

"It's important to know these things, man. How many Trads can fit in a Carnegie bathroom stall? What is the etymology of the word ‘blumpkin’? Which Trad would you most want to sleep with? The list is endless."

The Trads spend the rest of the day interrupting classes and lunch, to the varied enjoyment or shame of students. Receiving a serenade is a special occasion, sent from loved ones, prankish friends and secret admirers alike. Although most of the songs offered vary from year to year, one standard remains a popular favorite, not only for its musical quality but also for its embarrassment factor. This is the Trads original, ‘Masturbating Over You’. Former Rod Kyle W. recounts one particular performance of the song:

"It’s been sung for about fifteen years now. It's so popular, we actually have a Spanish version. One time, we sang it for a Spanish class, and at the end the professor stopped us and said 'No no no, you have conjugated 'masturbate' wrong. You want to say 'masturbatandos'. That is the correct conjugation.' The whole class cracked up."

The style of the Trads on Valentine's borders on the irreverent, much to the chagrin of some professors. For classes that have multiple Valentine's, or especially professors who are visited multiple times a day, the Trads tend to wane in interest. Professors lose valuable time to lecture and they will not hesitate to berate the Trads and send them out in a hurry. For the Trads though, they are mostly understanding.

"We know it's an interruption, but we always try and get a second or even third possible location for a person. As far as the professors go, we're understand we can be disruptive, and if they say to leave, we leave,” said Joe Ptacek, current Rod. Despite good intentions, the Trads have always risked offense. During the Family Fest concert earlier in October, an unintentional slip of the tongue led to drastic repercussions for the Trads. As a result of unexplained actions taken by the Trads during their performance, a slew of complaints from parents was received by Dean of Students Jim Hoppe. Upon consultation with Mark Mazullo, Chair of the Music Department, Hoppe decided that the long-running inappropriateness of the Trads – years in the making - could be tolerated no further. I spoke to Ptacek about the events in question.

"Well, we've been banned from the Music Building for the rest of the year. Essentially, we don't know exactly what we did wrong, but it is the straw that broke the camel's back more than anything."

"It's a little like being on double-secret probation without ever being on regular probation, then getting slapped in the dark. I mean, honestly, we weren't even drinking on stage. And we've done that lots of times before. Or so I've heard. From past Trads. No one currently in the group did that," commented another Trad. Continuing, I asked Ptacek if he felt the punishment matched the crime.

"Yes and no. I think what parents got most upset about was us saying 'dildo' and 'bitch', which are in our charter, and it's like 'Okay, are we not allowed to mention the specifics of our charter? Our charter that MCSG and Jim Hoppe approved?' But at the same time, I realize that the school is trying to keep its image up, and as representatives of the school, we have to be sensitive to that. Especially around parents of first-year students who aren't fully accustomed to the college yet."

At the present, uncertainty surrounds the future of the Trads. Without a permanent concert space, the group is now forced to look for other venues at which to perform. The impact of a seemingly innocuous event will now force the leadership of the group to seek alternative arrangements, possibly at the cost of sound quality or audience size or both. All the same, the Trads remain upbeat. It is in their nature to skirt controversy and to persevere through hardships. To be a part of the Trads is to be a part of a community of friends who will support you throughout college and beyond.

"We have a saying in the group: once a Trad, always a Trad," notes Ptacek. "Except if you get kicked out, but that's only happened once in our entire history. Fifteen years ago or so, there was one member who kept missing rehearsals, and the group voted him out in absentia and sent him a letter to that effect to his SPO. He never got it though, so one day a month later, he finally comes back and everyone just looks at him and says 'Wait, you didn’t know we kicked you out? You should check your SPO.' So now that's become the buzz word for any time we're angry at someone, pretend angry or serious. We just saying 'Check your fucking SPO' and then maybe throw something at them. But other than that, I love everyone here."

It is this sense of love and community that pervades the Trads, even more than the outward perception of churlishness, intoxication and a prepubescent obsession with penises. When I spoke to the Trads about how they felt about one another, there was nothing but good feeling.

“Sure, we lead different lives, but being part of the Trads is like being in a family. We’re all brothers. A bunch of misfit bastards, true, but we’re still brothers. Every year without fail, at least two of the Trads will be living together. Right now it’s me - I live with Joe and Ian [Noble – former Rod]. I’ve done all sorts of crazy shit with these guys. I can honestly say my life would be unimaginably different without the Trads,” adds the G-spot.

In the end, it makes sense that Mac students should experience the Plaid in some way. The group is emblematic of the kind of community fostered all over at Mac – lifelong friendship throughout troubles and celebrations. While the Trads may not always please everyone, it is hard to deny that they have added to the college experience through their antics and their quirkiness. Macalester would be an altogether different place without their Traditions.

Fears Assuaged

2009-09-12T01:21:00.002-05:00

College! Well, I've just become a senior. It's honestly a bit of a power trip. Going into Café Mac and having people mistake you for a freshman, then turning it against them and saying "No, I'm a senior" in a powerful tone of voice is an excellent experience. And through the magic of social interaction, I've discovered that all of my friends have formed a massive supergroup, so I can't go to a gathering of my peers without meeting at least two dozen people with whom I am familiar. It is most wonderful. Long gone are the sophomoric days of going to parties and knowing only one person. Long gone are the times when I'd actually have to introduce myself. Long gone are the heady days of youth when things like beerpong were a challenge to me. (Ok, disregard the last one, perhaps.) In any case, I am enjoying my senior year greatly.

My classes are going swimmingly. True, I have yet to break my mind of its firm hold on the idea that summer has yet to end, but luckily, I don't have a single paper due before October, and let's be fair, I've suffered a lot through the last three years. I am at my apogee, mentally, socially, and... I dunno what else. But what ever it is, it's apogeeing as well. Yes, I just invented that word. I rock like that. Being 21 is a delightful time. I've discovered that it is a transitory moment (a liminal moment, for the anthropologically-inclined) that encompasses the best of both worlds. I'm legally able to go to bars and hang out with a much "older crew" of people, but at the same time am socially accepted among my freshman and sophomore friends. It's wonderful. Plus, being a senior, I am gifted with the responsibility of age-induced madness. What would life be like if we were all staid and stoic? Boring, is the answer.

I am not doing an honors project, in part because my two years of frittering over ideas of what to research have never come to fruition, but that is alright. The workload would have been stressful, and even though I would have completely it with admirable kwality, I realize that if I'm not passionate about something (like the subject of my honors thesis) I should not be engaging in work related to that thing. That's fine. I will, however, endeavour to graduate at least cum laude if not magna cum laude (but don't hold your breath. That would require me to get straight A's for the next two semesters. And while I am capable of that, to quote the President of the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country, "Just because we can do a thing does not mean we must do that thing." Okay, so not exactly Cicero or Kennedy, but the point comes across.)

Speaking of which, I was deeply saddened by the death of Ted Kennedy. Since my high-school days, I have let go of politics as a fervent passion of mine. I am still interested in politics, but I'm not going to become the next Lee Atwater or *spit* Karl Rove. Good administration and good governance are skills not incumbent in good campaigning and good electioneering. Unfortunately, I might add. The Chinese, in their infinite discretion against the democratic model of governance, have in some ways stumbled across how to administer and govern oh, 1.3 billion people. Of course, I am certain that the 2010's will provide them adequate challenge in how to accommodate ethnic minorities within a Han-dominated state. These puzzles of how multi-ethnic (or multi-national) states exist in spite of internal differences is a pressing question for the future. All I'll say on subject is, let's hope Canada doesn't go bat-shit crazy. They seem to be the model of how to integrate diverse elements of society into a state-wide framework (and I use state in terms of the dominant and legitimate political authority of a particular geographic area.)

Anyways, my classes. Let's see. I'm taking The Post-Soviet Sphere, Biodiversity and Evolution, Population Geography and Medical Geography. The Post-Soviet Sphere, taught by a visiting professor of Georgian (Asian Georgia) and Armenian background, is an interesting class, but like all classes in the International Studies department, is intense and full of dense readings. I hope it will go well. I have a presentation on Monday about theories of nationalism. This weekend will be full of that stuff. Oy vey. My biggest fear is that the class will encompass the usual IS randos who are only in there because they weren't qualified enough to be Poli Sci or Econ majors (sorry, but it's true. I'm a geographer, so I've got that to back me up. No worries there.)

My next class is Biodiversity and Evolution, which is instructed by Kristi Curry Rogers, married to the chair of the geology department, and an expert on dinosaurs. Also, she is one of the most highly regarded professors at Macalester, and all of my friends are envious that I am taking this class. I am sad that I am only now getting around to taking a biology class, as I have always had a passion and fascination for biology. It is the only hard science which lacks scientific laws. This is, mostly, because in biology the scope of inquiry is isolated only to the planet Earth, and our means of comparison are slim. One day, with luck and no doubt tribulation, we will venture among the stars and discover whether or not we are unique or whether we are merely a portion of the plethora of forms of life in this wide, wide universe. After all, we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of our examination of life on this one little planet. I am looking forward to the class immensely. I will, however, probably take it pass/fail, just because I can, not because I am worried about poor grades. I've never taken a class pass/fail, but I believe it will be a relief more than a burden.

My third and fourth classes, both in the geography department, are population geography and medical geography. Thus far, I've only had one class - population geography - which met on Wednesday. The professor, Holly Barcus, was out of town Friday to go to a conference of Rural Geographers in Tuscon. She is an excellent professor, who instructed me for my Introduction to GIS course. That was a wonderful experience, and I am eagerly anticipating this course. Holly is very interested in population-related issues in geography, and it should be good fun. My other class, a Monday night class, is medical geography, taught by the perpetually-visiting professor Helen Hazen. Helen is also extremely well regarded by students, and medical geography is always full. I am not entirely sure what the class will entail, as we have yet to meet. I will go to it this Monday, and inform you all of what will lie ahead.

On the whole, I am anticipating an excellent semester. Long gone are the days when I had to worry about who I'd have dinner with or whether or not so and so would be my friend. Not having to deal with social vagaries is a tremendous burden lifted, and I feel that this whole year will only be rewarding. My biggest challenge will be in the next few days as I begin to transition out of my summer sloth into doing the whole college thing. Best of luck to me.

I would also like to give a shout out to Grandma Anne and Judy, the latter having recently undergone laproscopic surgery to remove her gallbladder. She is on the mend, and I spoke to her this afternoon and she and I laughed twice. I recall reading an article on the BBC website that as people age (mentally, at least) their faculties to comprehend humor diminish first. I am especially grateful that Grandma Anne has not lost her wonderful humor, and that she and I (and Judy and all my relatives) have had enjoyed many fruitful years of companionship with her. I think of how many of my friends did not have the opportunity to know their grandparents into their more mature years, and I consider myself quite lucky. Even if the worst were to come to pass, I am safe in knowing that every moment I have spent with my grandmothers will never be lost. It is a wonderful and comforting fact, for which I cannot possibly thank them enough.

Alright, I must be off to sleep. Goodnight all, and best wishes.

Aaaaaaaaand That's A Wrap!

2009-08-31T01:26:00.002-05:00

It's not quite officially but almost officially the last night of summer. Technically, since sunset was further away than dawn now is... well, I don't know what that makes tonight. All I know is that tomorrow morning, I have to wake up for Macalester-related responsibilities for which I will not be paid. True, most of the summer was spent getting up A LOT earlier than 8AM (when I'm choosing to get up to give myself a leisurely amount of time to eat breakfast and do other chores) to fulfill Macalester-related responsibilities, but damnit I was getting paid for that. Now, I'm just a glorified volunteer.

Tomorrow, I get to start training to be an orientation leader. Training to be an orientation leader. Training. To be an orientation leader. I suppose there is a purpose to it, somewhere back in the deep recesses of the filing cabinet along with the folders that contain "Meanings to Obscure Fortune Cookie Fortunes" and "Decoding Euphemisms Parents Use To Keep Children Innocent A Little While Longer". Bear in mind, that filing cabinet is located at the back of a room filled with ages upon ages of Freudian clutter, half-truths and Vietnam-era slang. Furthermore, that room is located in a sunken ship somewhere at the bottom of a trench that can only be reached by very complex submarines and fish that have evolved without ever seeing sunlight. Place this metaphor in the context of itself, see if any of it make sense, and then hit yourself firmly but not too hard in the head with a hammer, and that's approximately my point. Better just to ignore that last paragraph.

It's not that I don't want to go through this training - it will go by like everything else goes by. One minute, I'm thinking to myself "How long is this going to take" and the next, it's over and it's already the next day. Or the next week. Or the next year. Or four years later. I suppose the main reason I'm writing all of this is because time has a way of going by at speeds I'm not exactly comfortable with. Oh time, you pernicious little bastard. A year ago to the day, I moved in with my host family in France. Almost four years ago, I started college. I've been out of Europe for over six months. College will be done in less than a year. What do I have to show for it?

Well, I have a lot to show for it. The vast majority I keep inside of my head - memories, ideas, thoughts. Some are expressed in intangible terms, like friendship. Others are more tangible, but still out of the material realm, such as what I've learned in four years (and over the course of more than $100,000 in education). Time weighs upon me like only one other thing that I can think of - dread. They go hand in hand. Not "End of the world" dread, or anything like that, but "What am I going to take away from this" dread. I'm not worried that I will take nothing away from college. That would be... well, nonsense. I have learned a lot. The thing is, and the dread stems from, "Could I have done more?" Of course I could have. Could have. The only comfort in attempting to answer that question is to respond with another question, "Should I have done more?"

I am approaching many deadlines that have been looming over my head for months and years. Will I do an honors paper? Will I take the GRE's? If so, which graduate schools should I apply to? When should I go? All of these questions make up the much bigger picture of "What should I do with my life?" One thing I have learned as time goes by is that no single event determines what you'll do for the rest of your life. And rightly so. One other thing I've learned as time goes by is that, for better or for worse, I'm the only person that can make the choices that affect my life. True, outside actors have sway here and there, but there are always ways around them and their actions if I really choose to avoid them. The bitch of it is, that leaves the onus of choice upon my shoulders alone.

I am beginning to suspect that the biggest source of dread I'm experiencing right now is not that tomorrow I have to go off to orientation training, but rather that in a week, a group of students will be entrusted into my brief but largely ineffectual care (I don't remember a damn thing my orientation leaders told me, after all). What's more is that some of those students will be filled with more promise and potential than myself, and that they will do more with their time than I did with mine. In short, I will be overshadowed. Everyone - from Obama on down - gets overshadowed. It's part of life that someone else will likely be better at something than you are. That's not important though. Well, okay, it is important, but not THAT important. What's more important is that I do what is best for me. And y'know what, I'm not always going to be able to make that choice correctly. Maybe I did squander my time at Mac. Most likely I didn't. Happily, my list of regrets is shorter than my list of accomplishments.

More happily yet is that there is still one more year. And I'm beginning to realize that this upcoming year is less about worrying over all the things I've never done. It's more about finishing the things I've started, and beginning new ones. Tomorrow is just tomorrow. Or some other crazy crap like that.

Done With Work, Sadly Also Done With Summer

2009-08-15T13:54:00.003-05:00

For the entire summer, with the exception of a week in June, I've been working as a carpenter's assistant for Mac. This involves me working 7-4:30 Mondays through Thursdays. That has meant being up by at least 6:45 every morning. I don't EVER wake up that early. Even if the house was on fire, I'd carefully weigh my options to see if I could escape with an extra few minutes of sleep, even if it meant suffering minor burns. Ok, not really. But it'd be pretty easy to escape from my burning house.

I solemnly vow never again to work at a job that requires me to exert physical effort at hours of the day when I, by all rights, should still be asleep for at least another 2-5 hours. I've told myself that if I ever have to take even an 8:30 class - even if it were required for my major - I would drop the major, and not take the class. Rest is the most important part of being. That, and working for almost 10 hours a day takes up... a lot of time. I would get home from work, and the first hour would be spent pretty much trying to recuperate. If it was not a very difficult day, I would be able to do things - like the dishes, or my laundry. If I was worn out, or if I had been up late the night before, I basically didn't do anything for the rest of the day. Being a slave to money is, honestly, being a slave to money.

Now, however, I have the wonderful opportunity to blow that cash. I'm going to Cedar Point, Ohio for two days with friends from high school. It is the oldest and one of the largest amusement parks in the country, and boasts some of the largest and most fun roller coasters in the world. I am excited. Alas though, it is mid-August, and I will soon have to return to college. My wasteful days of summer will soon be replaced by my wasteful days of fall, and then winter. In the spring, I will graduate, and in the summer, I will once again have to search for and engage in gainful employment. Alas. As Jack Weatherford once told me, "95% of people work for someone else. Those people are probably less happy than they would be working for themselves. Working for someone else is a form of debt, and you should never be in debt. Never have a credit card, pay off your mortgage early, and buy on the cheap." I'm not sure if I believe his facts, but the statement is a sound one. How many songs have been written in the basic formula of work + more work = suck? Lots, is the answer.

So, I now pledge to you - whoever you are, and really it's just my family who reads this - that for the remaining days of summer I shall be productive, and interesting, and do neat and fun things! Provided the humidity stays down and the temperature doesn't exceed 90F. That will shut me down.

Cooking

2009-07-14T01:16:00.002-05:00

It's late and I have to go to bed soon, but I've found myself cooking a tremendous amount lately. The other night, I made a gallon of spaghetti sauce. It tasted exactly like how Dad makes it. Tomorrow, I'm making beans and oranges - a Latin American dish - with pork and rice along with it. The whole making food from scratch thing, while delicious, is both time consuming and expensive. The ingredients I needed for tonight? Something like $20. I will defray the costs through my housemates and all the others who eat the food, but still, that's like a weeks worth of groceries devoted to a single meal. A single dish even. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being too extravagant. I currently have the beans soaking in beer (a tip I got from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything (thank you Grandma Anne and Judy)) and the pork is marinading in a spicy sauce. The pork cut is the shoulder, so it is extraordinarily fatty. Apparently the recipe calls for that cut, but still, I wonder if it won't be too chewy and gristly. Esp. since I will be cooking it in a pan instead of roasting it or broiling it. Hmmmmm... The recipe for beans and oranges says it is best to use the fat from the pork to help cook the rest of the dish, including the beans and vegetables added to it. I'll be crossing my fingers, and probably crossing my eyes as well. I've spent soooo much time in the kitchen lately.

What's worse is that my housemates are not especially good cooks, so they wouldn't even dream of attempting the stuff I do. However, I refuse to eat spaghetti sauce out of a jar on principal, and the whole cooking in bulk is good because then you have lots of leftovers. I'm making 2 lbs of beans, on top of 2 lbs of pork, and about six cups of rice. This is to feed between 10 and 20, I think. I'm not completely insane. Y'know how in the Harry Potter books, Molly Weasley just magics her way around the kitchen? Why can't I do that? Or at the very least, get a staff of Ecuadorian prep cooks and dishwashers like Uncle Rick.

Machines Don't Cry...

2009-06-24T17:58:00.003-05:00

At least, they won't until we invent an emotion chip for them. And then they shall feel the pain of their wrathful creators! But, that's not the point. At work today (I am working as a carpenter's assistant at Macalester for this summer. Fun job) we were moving closet doors from Dupre Hall - a hellish, poorly designed furnace of a dormitory - to the shop to be cut up into boards. Each door weighs about 80 lbs. and there are some... I dunno, 300 doors we've moved. That's twelve tons of lumber. So, once we had gotten the doors into the shop, they were being cut into boards and loaded onto shelves nearby. The shelves were not necessarily designed to withstand that kind of weight, so as I was helping one of the carpenter's cut boards, I heard "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!" followed by a loud crash. I look over my shoulder and see the shelves no more, and the three football players who had been loading the shelves all doing their best to move through a concrete wall to get out of the way. It's a real life situation of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object - with people in the midst. Ordinarily in situations where you have that much anything moving in any direction, if you are in the way you are lucky to simply have broken bones, because you could well end up dead. These three guys apparently had guardian angels, or at least should be moved to the starting lineup of the football team because they all walked away with the worst injury being a small scratch on one of the guy's arm.
After laughing about their good fortune, they went on break for about an hour, probably to change underwear.

So, true that when God closes a door, he opens a window, this little accident has afforded me the opportunity to work in the shop for the next couple of days, which is fine with me because it is underground and quite, quite cool. The last couple of days in the dorms have been like working inside a sauna. Sleeping has been equally enjoyable. I've had my head parked in front of a fan, which has a double bonus of being loud enough to silence the sound of birdsong. Those bastards had been waking me up before dawn every day, and I was ready to gas the neighborhood. Other than that, I potted the Chicken and Hen's I got from Grandma Anne today, and I did dishes. I also have working internet again, so I no longer have to sit out on the curb to pirate the neighbors' signal. Hurray! And I'm off to see Star Trek for the fourth time tonight. Is it normal when one is able to quote a movie that is still in theaters? Tomorrow, I'm going grocery shopping. Domesticity has it's pluses, but when I only have six hours from when I get off work to when I ought to be asleep, it leaves me a large stack of chores in the inbox left to do. The plus is I get a three day weekend. I am looking forward to putting my feet up. Toodles.

Ugh, it's too hot today

2009-06-22T18:18:00.000-05:00

This Simpson's clip illustrates my present feelings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLUh-CLGiPw

OVERDUE!

2009-06-09T17:08:00.002-05:00

So......... I haven't been as diligent in updating the Internet as to my goings and ongoings as I was in Europe. This is in part because, despite my frequent activities there, I had access to the Internet a lot more often and, let's face it, I had a lot more time on my hands. Things that have happened since my last journalization:

-Finished my junior year of college
-Worked the Alumni Reunion
-Started work for Facilities as a Carpenter's Assistant
-Moved into a new house at 1290 Goodrich
-Watched the first 3 seasons of Lost
-Saved a group of blind, limbless orphans from a rabid pack of zombie bears

Ok, now for the details. My junior year is now over. I have successfully finished 3/4 of my college experience (barring any failure next year). I ended with an A, an A-, a B+ and a B (in Urban GIS, Paradigms of Global Leadership, Culture and Global Capitalism, and Disciplines and Methods of Geography, respectively). I was pleased. I can't recall anything major happening during that time except for the fact that I slept through my alarm the morning of my Methods final and didn't wake up until 20 minutes into the exam. Luckily, Professor Smith just smiled at me, handed me the test and said I ought to finish with plenty of time to spare. I did. The rest is so far behind me at this point and went so uneventfully smoothly the details are missing now. Next!

This last weekend was the Alumni Reunion at Macalester. It was the reunion for the classes of 2004; 1999; 1984, 1985, 1986; 1979; 1969; 1964; 1959 and all previous years before that. A friend of mine working it related to me the sad story of the only attending grad from the class of 1928 asking 'if any of her friends were there.' They weren't. Awwww. Maybe they just couldn't come that weekend. I did meet a lot of nice and interesting people - not just alumni but also international students. International students make up maybe 1/10 of the Mac student body, but they represent about 3/4 of all student workers at the reunion. They're really neat and a lot of fun to get to know, especially since they tend to stick to their own clique during the school year. Other fun memories: I got spoiled because this year I was invited, as a reunion worker, to attend the James Wallace Society dinner. That society is the high-end donors who have endowed Macalester in their wills as well as given something like $50,000 to the college. Most were old. I sat next to the Reverend Alan James (who incidentally lives about a mile from us in Withrow) grad of '56, who thought I was an American Studies major and so asked me a whole bunch of intriguing questions about 'what does it mean to be an American'. I had to think a lot about this, and we pondered the idea over the dinner. He talked about how, growing up in rural, Scandinavian-descended Minnesota, being an American meant something - you really celebrated civic holidays and tried to become an American, in part because many of your parents and neighbors weren't originally American. We also talked about multiculturalism, especially France and how they've dealt with multiculturalism, and freedom in the US and how it characterizes citizens of our country from people who live in places that aren't exactly free. He was, I like to believe, impressed with what I had to say. I was impressed with what he had to say, as every time I work reunion (i.e., this time and last year) I am stunned by the spriteliness of the alums, even those going into their 70s and 80s. Of course, this should be no surprise since my grandparents are quite sharp even in their mid-80s (although some of these alums were also quite physically active as well), but I suppose I've always thought of my family as exceptional and not the rule.

Also during reunion, I had to work for about 18 hours a day, so I'm still sleep deprived. I'm going to New Mexico for a week tomorrow, and I will be glad for the down time. I need a vacation. Ok, so maybe I had a vacation at the end of May when I vegged out and watched Lost for about 5 hours a day, but that was also tiring. So much suspense. It's a good show though. I look forward to finding out what happens next. DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING.

I've also started working as a carpenter's assistant for the Facilities department at Mac. It was my second day today, and so far I'm batting 1000 in terms of cutting my fingers. Yesterday, I nicked myself with a chisel and sliced the tip of my index finger, and today I banged it was a mallet so hard it bled. That was not fun. If I make any typing mistakes, chalk it up to those injuries. Since starting, I've been taking apart chairs and re-gluing them and re-upholstering them, and today I re-screened window screens. It's nice work, especially since my coworkers have all agreed the radio station of choice is the Current. I would have killed myself if I had had to sit through a summer of commercial radio. That truly is the bane of life. Thank you once again for coming to my rescue, MPR.

I've now moved into a new house at 1290 Goodrich Avenue. It is a nice place - I have three housemates, Ian Noble, Joe Ptacek and Chelsea Thibodeau. We get along well, but none of us have really had time to set the place up, so a week in it still looks like we just moved in. I unfortunately won't get to unpack for yet another week due to my trip. I'm not really complaining though. Okay, so that's the news in brief. I have more stories to tell, but I'm still exhausted and I don't have internet at my house so I'm bumming around on a computer at the campus center. Toodles.

Photos From Grandma Anne's Birthday

2009-05-07T15:23:00.008-05:00

Here are a bunch of photos from Grandma Anne's birthday photo-shoot. They are dark because I was using 100-speed film in a not-especially well-lit studio.

(Figures 1-8: The Milwaukee Railroad Station Clocktower; I don't know what buildings those are, but one is a condo tower and one was built by the same guy who designed the World Trade Center; Ah yes, Deja Vu - a Minneapolis landmark; the railroad yard; some intersection; 2nd Ave and Washington; more buildings; yet more buildings)

(Figures 9-13: Rick and Dad; Dad and Diana; Judy and Grandma Anne; Judy, Sylvia and Grandma Anne)

(Figures 14-21: Sylvia and Rebecca; Judy and Helen; Steve getting Martha; Sam and Dad; Jesse and Helen; Cedar and Martha; Helen, Cedar and Martha; Jesse and Helen)

The Peculiarities of Published Life

2009-05-05T00:06:00.004-05:00

While it would be untrue to say that I am unimportant, certainly untrue in regards to my family - the most frequent readers of this journal - I can almost certainly say I am unimportant on a large scale or over wide distances. At least, that was until this evening when I got an e-mail from a Mr. Peter Wood, of the National Association of Scholars. Grandma Anne informed me that this was a conservative academic policy think tank, and a quick reference corroborated this. So why should this Mr. Wood be e-mailing me? Well, as chance would have it, he was in the Twin Cities recently and by happenstance was reading the Mac Weekly, our local school paper. It is not known for cutting edge journalism nor for the engaged citizenship one might find in the op-ed section. Certainly, it's not the New York Times, not even the New York Post. Hell, it's not even the Minot Daily News. Still, an article I had written on 'global citizenship' attracted this man's attention. Not only did it attract his attention, he was so incensed by it that he decided to rebut the article on his organization's website. At first, when I read the e-mail he sent informing me he had written a reply to my story, I couldn't figure out who the hell this man was or where he came from. I thought at first he was from some obscure college I'd never heard of and was, like me, a student.

Nope, not only is this man not a student but he is the executive director of the NAS. So, let's look at the situation. Here we have me, 21-year-old college junior writing in the Mac Weekly, circulation 20 (good week), writing on a subject that perhaps twelve people in the US besides Mac students and faculty are aware exists; next, we have Mr. Peter Wood Executive Director writing about my article from the Mac Weekly, circulation 20 (good week), rebutting my piece on a subject that perhaps twelve people in the US besides Mac students and faculty are aware exists, citing my piece "surpassing any indictment against contemporary American higher education" his organization has ever made. Well golly.

I was also surprised to learn that I ought to start learning history, culture, philosophy and writing, and the J.S. Bach was born 135 years after his death. Have I fallen into a world where adult men must make a living attacking the 500-word op-ed pieces of college students, and where baroque composers outlive themselves by a full century? What strange happenings go on in the world these days. While the arguments he makes are broad enough to sail supertankers through - including being guilty of making broad generalizations, the same fault he cites is my failing in the piece - it would be not just demeaning to respond to criticism like his, but it'd quite simply waste my time. Ah, catharsis. Also, what the hell do I gain by telling him to fuck off? If some whackjob wants to act like a junior high kid and use me as a poster boy for his own ideological purposes, let him. I stopped pulling that sort of shit around the time I learned algebra in seventh-grade. Man, I hope this recession ends soon. This dude could use a real job.

Here's the link to his article

Here's my article in the Mac Weekly

Here's a picture of a small child flipping the bird

Exceeding My Wildest Expectations

2009-04-17T15:38:00.008-05:00

I wish the title could apply to my approaching term papers, but I can't say that for sure yet. What I am refering to are my very first photos from Europe. I shot them in black and white, so it has taken me a long time to get around to developing them. I finally decided to get them done at Proex this afternoon, and I've just finished scanning them. What handy technology Macalester places at my disposal. I am really really exceptionally pleased with how they have turned out. I have another three rolls that are being sent out for processing (since they are not C41, they have to be done in a lab) and those should be back by early May. After that, the chronicling of my European saga will be complete! ZOMG!

(Figures 1-10: A bridge in Zurich, Switzerland; a street in Zurich; the same; a clock tower dating from the 18th century; a view of the Limmat River; Zurich looking to the south over the Zurichsee; another view of the Limmat; swans on the banks of the Limmat; an ornate façade)

(Figures 11-14: Statue of Carlos III in Puerto del Sol, Madrid; the Tio Pepe sign in the same place; outside the Museo Prado; the interior garden of the Atocha Train Station)

(Figures 15-21: The Cathedral of Granada belltower; a doorway to the Alhambra built in the Moorish style; a view of the Palace of the Nasrids from the Generalife Garden; trees and flowers in the Generalife Garden; Martha and I in the Generalife Garden; the Alcazaba Fortress; another tower of the fortress, view from within)

(Figures 22-27: Woodwork on the ceiling inside the Palace of the Nasrids; Arabic calligraphy and geometric details; the same, with a pigeon; a tower in the Palace of the Nasrids, with reflecting pool; more geometric detail; a sun-porch inside the Palace of the Nasrids)

More Maps

2009-04-08T16:56:00.003-05:00

It's not procrastination if you're legitimately doing work for other classes. It's just shoveling the burden into a different pile. These last couple of days I've been working about 8 hours a day on my GIS project sorting data and putting it into meaningful form. So far, this has resulted in... well, two new maps. Of course, with minimal effort, these two maps (and the processes that went into producing them) will give rise to about four or five more maps. And then I can say "I'm done" for this class, and all I have to do is do a presentation at the end and hurray! one out of four finished.

Here are the maps I have so far. I won't describe them, because I want to see if they explain themselves well enough. Let me know if you have comments or questions.

Spring in Minnesota is a Marathon

2009-03-26T13:33:00.010-05:00

It is March 26th, and in Minnesota we have finally entered the part of winter when the snow has more or less melted and the weather has warmed up to more or less stay above freezing. However, unlike other, more normal parts of the world, spring won't actually begin until about... May. It is overcast and windy and after a very warm and enjoyable Spring Break last week, winter is now getting its second wind. This always happens. Ever since I was a child, winter comes in about three parts. The first comes in late September when the jet stream comes clambering down from northern Canada and sits on the state like a fat man sitting on comically on a small dog. We wimper and groan but realize we are powerless to do anything about the situation. We put on our heavy sweaters, soon to be replaced by heavy coats, hats, gloves, boots and scarves. Anywhere from early October to mid-December, snow begins to fall and continues consistently until about... well, May. The second part is the truly bitter fridigity of January and February when we are lucky to have temperatures breach zero farenheit. Going outside becomes a mix of extreme sport and deathwish. Eyelashes freeze shut, blinding people. On sunny days, the snow becomes a polished mirror, blinding people. Icicles dangle precariously from the eaves of houses, falling when they reach critical mass, blinding people. The ice on sidewalks compounds and compacts, making mobility a trecherous affair prone to skids and slips, blinding people. Roving bands of wolves and polar bears scavange the land for scraps of food, blinding people. Blindness is commonplace. The third part is what we are currently in. The fat man has realized he has sat on a small dog, and the small dog has begun to bite him in the butt. He rouses, but under his own weight collapses again and again as he starts to rise. It is a painful procedure, especially since so many of us are blind from the second part of winter. It will probably snow once or twice before winter can officially be declared over. Of course, some of the less optimistic members of society will simply say that winter is taking a breather. Summer is winter's half-time. The coach has called a timeout, but play will resume soon. I don't think anyone in Minnesota really, truly objects to global warming. Of course, the travails of winter are paralleled by the travails of summer, when the heat, humidity and mosquitos make us all pray for winter's quick return.

The weather aside, life continues much as it always does. Half of my classes are canceled this week because the Geography faculty are in Las Vegas for their annual conference. It's nice to have my mornings off, but it hasn't helped me to resume a normal schedule post-Spring Break. My normal bedtime is still around 2:30AM. Granted this is an improvement from the 5AM bedtime I had last week, I am still not able to operate until about noon. My evening classes this week were alright - I had a midterm on Monday that went so-so. The exam - in Paradigms of Global Leadership - was in the format that we were given ten terms (like "Action", "Patience", "Power", "Nobility") that we had to define, elaborate on the definition, and give their relevance to the theme of the class. It's always hit or miss, because there is no way to study for it except by being familiar with all the concepts and having luck and bullshitting on your side. I'll see how it pans out. Last night's class was a bit of a crapshoot as well. We were informed on Sunday evening by our professor that we had, as she put it, "sixteen short, but difficult" chapters to read. 305 pages of David Harvey's graduate-level text on Postmodernity. We were all confused.

Last week, it was my Grandma Anne's 84th birthday. She and Judy came up to Minnesota, along with my Uncle John and Aunt Diana, my father's cousins Sylvia and Nina and his cousin Jim. It was a very nice, multi-day affair with lots of picture taking and eating together. Since just about everyone who reads this journal was there, I won't elaborate on the details. I enjoyed it a lot, and I am very much looking forward to going to see Grandma Anne and Judy in New Mexico in June.

I have gotten still more photos developed from my sojourn in Europe. These are from Barcelona (when I was there in October with my friend Kristina), the Lunaret Zoo in Montpellier and the Cevennes mountains north of Montpellier. Enjoy!

(Figures 1-6: The Alain Achilles Table Tennis Gym; the Stade Phillipides Tram Stop, the stop for my house; an apartment building near my house; the view from my grammar classroom in Batiment B, looking west at the Mosson District; oryxes at the zoo; my friends (L-R) Javi, Meg, Ping, Hector and Mike - we were having a picnic in the zoo)

(Figures 7-11: A view of a pasture near the Cave of the Laughing Bull; from Montaigoual looking south towards the Mediterranean; the Montaigoual Weather Recording Station with (L-R) Jesse, Jade and Renee, my friends from the University of Pennsylvania; a view to the north; looking down the mountain)

(Figures 12-18: My faithful companion, Kristina; our faithless steed, the Eurolines bus from Montpellier to Barcelona; the base of the statue of Christopher Columbus; the Placa Real; the CaixaForum Museum, built inside of an art noveau factory; another view of the same; Kristina presents the interior architecture)

(Figures 19-23: La Boqueria, the big market on the Rambla in Barcelona; soooo many fruits and vegetables and spices; the fish market; a fruit vendor; a dried fruit and nuts vendor)

(Figures 24-29: The interior courtyard of La Pedrera; I can't remember what this building is, it might be a bank; the Placa Catalunya; on the Rambla (L-R) Matt, Renee, Kristina and Jesse; the super convenient escalator up the side of the hill to the Parc Guell; Barcelona from above and out to the sea)

Les Fools! Uhuhuhuhuh!

2009-03-13T12:56:00.003-05:00

Today, I got my grades back from France. Contrary to what I had expected (namely that I would fail several of my classes), I passed them all! My lowest grade was a B- in my Geography of Developed Countries class (which makes me slightly upset, because it lowers my Major GPA slightly) but I got 3 As, and 2 A-s. So the sorted affair of Peter goes to France is now more or less over. I am almost on Spring Break - I have a short paper to revise by 5, and then I'm done. Love to you all.

100 Posts!!!

2009-03-11T17:22:00.004-05:00

The content of this post shouldn't detract from the awesomeness that is the 100th post. Below is a finished draft of my map on foreclosures in North Minneapolis. Tomorrow, we are presenting to the representatives of the Federal Reserve Bank and various community leaders what we have so far, and will get feedback on how much more information is needed and in what direction for the project.

(Figure 1:Foreclosures in North Minneapolis, 2002, 2005-2008)

College Life Is Not Conducive To Journaling

2009-03-05T18:30:00.005-06:00

Today is what, March 5th? Yes. Tomorrow, I have my first midterm, in Disciplines and Methods of Geography, or Disco Meth for short. I feel adequately prepared for it, although I will be spending the next several hours reviewing my notes (paltry though they are - I've never been a fantastic note-taker, but I'd like to believe I'm getting better at remembering details and big ideas). Disco Meth isn't the most interesting class, as it is mostly just the application and analysis of statistics to geographic problems, but it's required for the major and Professor Smith is a nice woman and the TAs explain everything if you ask. I'd be doing better if I asked them. For instance, on my first two problem sets, which I completed on my own the nights before they were due, I got Cs. On the last two, for which I went in for help, I got As. I've still got another 8 problem sets due in the semester, and I intend on acing them all. The midterm is I think a quarter of my grade, so I hope I do well on it. Other than that, I only have one other midterm - for my IS seminar, Paradigms of Global Leadership, but that is after spring break. My days seem suspiciously easy, which will change during spring break when I'll begin work on the multiple final projects I have, one for each class.

On the IS end of things, my unofficial major, things are going smoothly. In Paradigms of Global Leadership, I gave a presentation on Monday on The Just Prince by Muhammad ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, a Sicilian Muslim writing in the 12th century about the exercise of power and good governance. It's an interesting book, especially reading it having recently read The Prince by Machiavelli. The Just Prince is a lot less Machiavellian than The Prince in that it heavily incorporates morality, religion and not always inducing fear amongst the populace to maintain control. It's also interesting that it was written 300 years before Machiavelli's book, and was probably unknown to the Florentine. I get to present on the 2nd half of the book next Monday. Professor Samatar also said on one of his many inspirational jeremiads that "students should be intimidated by their professors, but in the end ought to kill them." He quickly qualified that he didn't mean this literally, but rather that a professor ought to inspire a student to work hard enough to become smarter than the professor themself in the end. I think that might take a bit of effort on my part, but I'm working on it.

My other IS class, Culture and Global Capitalism, is progressing about as excitingly as hitting my hand with a hammer would be. Professor Ciafone is nice, but this is the first time she's taught this class and it lacks a lot of thematic structure, so we vacilate from neo-Marxist critical theory about "what are things" and "can or cannot all things be bought" to an economics perspective history of the corporation written by the editors of the Economist (and who are authors of The Right Nation: The Rise of Conservatism in America, a book I received as a joke present for my last birthday from Emilio). Today, we went to the Mill City museum, which was interesting because I'd never been before. We met with a retired miller, who has worked in various capacities as an international consultant and an engineer and was a wealth of knowledge. That was very neat, and I would've liked to have heard more from him had time permitted. I have to write up a 4 page discussion review by next Friday, which unless I forget about it until Friday morning, ought to be a sinch. Is that how you spell sinch?

Urban GIS is going well - I completed the data compilation for a map showing the spatial trends of foreclosures in North Minneapolis. I've attached a picture. It's a preliminary map, so it lacks a lot of the details and clarity that a finished product would have. It's also not fully overlayed, so the data compiled is still raw - in other words, I haven't finished tinkering with it. The yellow are properties that have been foreclosed at least once in the years of 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007, or 2008, while the orange represents twice, and red represents between three and four times. My goal is to make a map that presents where properties have been foreclosed upon more than once in multiple years - i.e., X property was foreclosed in 2002, 2005 and 2008, or something like that. I'll also be working on a second map that will show the value of foreclosed properties at their time of sale to the bank, but that is entirely theoretical at the moment.

(Figure 1: A map of foreclosed properties in North Minneapolis, 2002, 2005-2008)

Beyond school, nothing much is new. I booked myself a flight to go to New Mexico to visit Grandma Anne and Judy from June 10th to June 17th, and I am quite excited about that. I am also looking for a house for myself and my three future housemates, Ian, Chelsea and Joe, the latter of which I lived with my sophomore year. That is all.

Even More Important Photos

2009-02-20T11:58:00.004-06:00

Lisbon is facinating, but here are photos of my host family (some of the only ones I ever took) and of Montpellier in mid-December.

(Figures 1-8: Statue of Louis XIV and the Chateau d'Eau; Louis XIV, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eglise Saint Anne; the Arceaux aquaduct at night; my living room looking right with Tannhauser on the couch; my living room looking left; my walk to Paul Valery each day; (L-R) Arthur, me, Timothée, Luc-Amaury, Véronique - a silly pose; (L-R) Arthur, Timothée, Véronique, Luc-Amaury - a formal pose)

Fotos de Lisboa

2009-02-20T00:19:00.005-06:00

Over the course of six months, I managed to accumulate approximately 24 rolls of film, totaling around 500 photos. I am just now started to get those photos developed and uploaded into a digital format. Much to my chagrin, the scanners at Mac do not resolve colors as well as I would like, and so the prints of the photographs are a good deal more vibrant and clear than their digital counterparts. So, to put it quite simply, here's what you've all been waiting for.

(Figures 1-3: (L-R) Vilja, Vilma and Ricardo at Ricardo's Apartment, where I couchsurfed while in Lisbon; the highway that passes beside Ricardo's apartment; the walk to the metro station from Ricardo's)

(Figures 4-6: The Torre de Belém; the Monument to the Discovery; the Geronimite Monastery)

(Figures 7-11: A fountain in a square whose name I no longer remember; calçada portuguesa - Portuguese mosaic sidewalks; a view of the Castelo Sao Jorge from Chiado; some king of Portugal, again don't recall the name; the Baixa from Chiado)

(Figures 11-15: looking out over the Tagus River to the east from atop the Castelo hill; the Ponte de 25 Abril and the statue of Christo Rei from the Baixa; I know this has a name, but I'm not remembering it - right outside the Praça de Commercia; another view to the east from the Castelo hill)

(Figures 16-23: Flags at the Park of Nations - where the Worlds Fair was hosted recently (I forget when); the cable cars, same place; the Lisbon Oceanarium; the skyline of the Park of Nations development; the Vasco de Gama shopping center; a reflection of the Oriente station; the Ponte Vasco de Gama; me near the same)

(Figures 24-29: The Rossio Train Station; the Sintra Train Station, looking up at the Castle of the Moors; Sintra; looking west out over the hills of Sintra and to the Atlantic; Vilja and Vilma at the Castle of the Moors; the Castle of the Moors)

(Figures 30-36: One of the hills of Lisbon; looking at the Baixa, the Ponte de 25 Abril and Christo Rei from the Castello Sao Jorge; peacocks at the Castello; same; the flag of Portugal; a view down a street and up a hill; the Marquês de Pombal (Hah! I remember one!))

Okay, I most certainly need sleep now, and putting up all these pictures has been extremely annoying. I've gotta find a better way of uploading photos to this website.

Time Doldrums

2009-02-17T21:20:00.002-06:00

It is the fifth(?) week of school now. I am now getting into my rhythm of classes, work, and homework, now mixed in with cooking for myself and other chores. It has been a slow and arduous process. When I got back from Europe, I had no idea at how hard the transition back into serious academic life would be. It has been hard. For most of last week, I wasn't sleeping well so I ended up missing my morning classes - nothing terrible, but something distressing nonetheless. Today has been the first day in several weeks I haven't needed a nap halfway through the day. My semester is reading-heavy, with tests and final projects coming almost exclusively at the end. While I am looking forward to all of them, I certainly would be screwed right now if I had anything major to accomplish by say, Friday. Even my style of writing right now is somewhat chopped. My brain feels like it fell out of my head and got ran through the wash. Now, I bet a lot of you might say "Oh, you have to do your work, otherwise XYZ bad things." I know that, I know that. I find myself asking "Why, though?" a lot. Why am I studying geography? It seems like everyone I know is either better at it or far more knowledgeable or just plain more interested in it. I am still interested in it, but I don't know what. Urban planning? Well, that's interesting. So's cartography. So is regional geography. Everything is still interesting, but I'm just not feeling things right now. Dad and Grandma Anne and Judy have all been pushing me to ask about grad school. Well, what if I don't want to go to grad school? How can I answer the "why" of it all? Hmmmmm.

So that was last week. This Monday, having had the weekend to veg out and reach a point where I've now been wearing the same clothes for five days (still don't smell though - I am showering regularly and changing my underwear) I was woken up by my boss calling me to remind me not to forget to come in to work. She is 46 with kids of her own and of course knows the tendencies of college students to not care about anything at 8:30 in the morning, which for us is like an hour before sunrise. Woke up, rushed a breakfast, and drove to work (when I am late like that, it's just the most expedient thing to do), got everything done having found the office already in decay in my absence, and scrambled to class. It really sucks not having Microsoft Office on my computer as Excel is an integral part to this class - Disciplines and Methods. It makes everything a lot easier. So, I basically have to make sure to do all my homework on campus. Which I hadn't. It got turned in this morning instead, with an apologetic note attached. After class, went home and napped. Did I mention I had stayed up until 3AM on Sunday night, foolishly and for no apparent reason? Yup. Go figure. After the nap, it was time to go back to work (Mondays I work the morning and afternoon shift in the French Department). After work, it was time for... oh right, reading all of Machiavelli's The Prince for my evening class. Whoops! Did that with half an hour to spare, wolfed down a dinner during which we discussed the imminent extinction of bees, the banana and possibly human civilization. Not the most exciting stuff. After that, rush to class!

My Monday night class is the one class for which I am never unprepared. That would be even more terrifying that missing work, failing a test or burning my laundry. Professor Samatar's class has six people in it, myself included. He knows when you haven't done the work, and quite frankly he isn't happy. That happened once when I took his class last year for the introductory course to International Studies. He had a way of mixing disappointment with anger in a way that none of us misunderstood him. It was more like he drilled into your own head and yelled at you from your own point of view. Good teachers do this. Good parents do this, too. Then again, good parents are good teachers. So, luckily none of us have been unprepared for his class so far this year. In fact, I currently have an A- in his class (which is a sign of considerable favor, as there are only 100 points in the semester and we've only had one paper due, an 8-page essay on what leadership means to us. I got a 13.5 of 15). I like this class, and Professor Samatar usually has a way of inspiring me to do things that are completely unrelated to class. Like, y'know, get my life on track. As much as I'd like to say I immediately went home and got to work, I instead had to go to the library to finish my late geography homework. The problem with procrastinating is, ha ha, it catches up with you. And then beats you savagely. So, after getting all that done, I talked to a couple of people about necessary items of life - some of which had been contributing to my previous week's lackluster self - and then went to sleep.

Today, I woke up less tired - although still tired, as is my wont, went to class, and started to feel that familiar feeling of "Oh, your train completely derailed recently, and now you have to get it back on track so as not to be eaten by the wolves that are coming down from the hills." Luckily, Tuesday is my least busy day and I have the most ample opportunity to relax. I have a considerable amount of reading to do for my other IS class tomorrow evening, but I will have that well in hand by tomorrow afternoon. It's only various Marxist treatises on economic imperialism. The usual. Tomorrow, I also plan on going around to a couple of professors with a two-by-four to see which one of them can hit me in the head the hardest. In the effort of getting me jump-started. You see, Professor Samatar in class on Monday gave his roundabout way of saying "You're smart, but you're lazy - you all are. Go and do something with yourselves, come back next week and don't disappoint me." Not only do I not want to disappoint him - or by extension my family and friends - but hell, it sucks feeling like you're the dumb kid in the class. I need to get my act together. I may not have a Rolls-Royce engine of a mind, but it certainly isn't a two-stroke lawn mower engine either. I am not a Trabant! So, with that in mind, I have to run. But! Peter is on the upswing. And it seems to me each time this happens (and it's been happening since like 8th grade), the apogee gets further and further up there. Here's to seeing the tops of clouds from above.

Best Idea Ever!

2009-02-01T17:55:00.002-06:00

So I bet $1000 that the Steelers would beat the Cardinals, but only on the stipulation that Pittsburgh would win 49-0 (five touchdowns, each with two point conversions, plus two field goals) and that they would reach this score by the 3rd quarter. The Vegas bookies said they'd give me 10 to 1 odds too! I'm gonna get $1010 if I win! Yeahs!!!

Day Three, Seems like Day Twenty

2009-01-28T15:26:00.002-06:00

It is unusual for me to be awake for as much of day as I am, and especially to be awake and having things to do. I am presently at my job in the GIS Lab of the Geography Department (it is my first day, but since the labs for the classes haven't started yet, there is nothing to do and no one here). All I have to do is work through the first lab by two weeks from now to make sure if any of the students need help and if the lab instructor is not here, I can at least help them and show them how to do things. It is a fairly simple job, but pertinent to my major, and I get a couple of three hour time blocks in which to sit and work otherwise uninterupted. I plan on looking to it as a useful way of getting reading out of the way. I've found when employed in separate 1-hour time blocks versus a single multiple-hour time block, I am much less productive. Also, here at the GIS Lab, I get to listen to MPR without distraction.

My first couple of days have been long! I just finagled with my French Dept. boss, Theresa that in exchange for working the 8:30AM slot I can pick out the other hour I work there at my choosing. I also work there Monday from 2:20 to 3:20 and the same on Friday. Following work, I have Disciplines and Methods of Geography at 9:40. Then I have a three hour break for lunch - I'm considering getting the commuter meal plan, which will allow me a certain number of meals on campus so that I won't need to go home and cook for myself. However, it also allows me the flexibility to choose which meals I eat (bfast, lunch, dinner). I think I'll pick the 3:30 to 4:30 slot to work, just to round out my day. Following that, I have class again at 7PM with Professor Samatar. There are only seven people in the class, including myself, and I am one of two juniors (the other is my friend Soukeyna from Senegal). It is the sort of class that I like very much, because the professor is both engaging and well organized. He lectures in a way that lends itself very easily to taking notes. We are reading five books, three of which I've already gotten from the library, and the other two I plan to purchase off of Amazon. Ain't no way I'm going back to buying the godawfully expensive books at the Macalester Bookstore. What a ripoff! My Monday night class ends at 10PM, at which point I go home, relax, do what work needs to be done for Tuesday, and go to sleep.

On Tuesday, I wake up screaming in a cold sweat. Wait, no I don't. Scratch that. I am at the moment reading the November National Geographic, and I just read a snippet about how the Cavendish variety of the banana, the most ubiquitous variety of the popular fruit is being ravaged by a Malaysian fungus that threatens to wholly wipe out the plant. There is no cure to the fungus, which causes the leaves to wilt and die and subjects the rest of the plant to a lethal dose of sunlight. Since all Cavendish banana plants are genetically identical, there is nothing to stop the fungus, except through the efforts of scientific cross-breeding. So, eat your bananas before they're all gone! Okay, I have to finish this post before I leave, so here goes.

Tuesday, I have Urban GIS, which is a class of about 15 people. We don't have any texts for the class, and it is entirely practical. We are acting as a research firm for the Folwell Neighborhood of North Minneapolis and the Federal Reserve Bank to essentially study and put together in map- and related-data form whatever they want us to look at. Past classes have studied spatial mismatch (i.e. the distance between where someone works versus where someone lives), the foreclosure rate of homes in the Twin Cities, and even the density of Mac Alums in the immediate area around the college (it is shockingly high). It should be a neat class. Following that, I have nothing to do for the day until Trads at 10PM. We have three new members, two freshmen (Chaz and Rob) and a senior (Matt), and whilst I was away, the group received rave reviews. Yeah! After that, I fall asleep. Because I have such a wide gap in my day on Tuesday between class and my next obligation, I might be getting a radio show, like what I had last year, again with Carl and possibly with Ian Noble. Depends on what Ian says. No idea about themes yet. I am open to suggestions.

My Wednesday is still in progress, but I suspect it will be when I spend the most time on campus, as I have class from 9:40 to 10:40, then work at 2:30 til 5:30, and then class from 7:00 to 10:00. I think it might be best to eat dinner here on campus for Wednesdays. Thursday and Friday remain to be seen, and likewise the weekend. Other than that, nothing much new. Toodles.

Since I Know So Many of My Bibliophile Relatives Read This...

2009-01-26T23:11:00.003-06:00

I sat down tonight, thinking, "Oh, I've got some time, and nothing really to do, since I can't read my texts which I haven't bought, and I don't want to go to sleep yet," and I went to go get a book. I have a whole stack of books in a box I had with me this summer, and in looking them over, I realized just how boring my summer reading list must've been. Books I've found in my box:

1: The Bottom Billion - about the poorest 1 billion people in the world
2: Universal Universalism - a book from my International Studies class that is 80 pages long and Heart-of-Darkness dense. You could stick a spoon up in it.
3: The Patterns of Human Rights Violations Among Illegal Immigrants in European Cultures - I got this book from the 'Free' section they have at the Library from time to time.
4: Third World Crap on a Stick - Yay!
5: Page After Page Filled With Boring Proselytizing By That 93-Year-Old Professor Who Refuses To Die and Open Up Another Tenure-Track Position

And so on and so forth. I haven't wanted to read for the last six months, in part because I've been in places far too interesting to stay put for more than twenty minutes. Now that I finally do, I have nothing to read! Grrrrr... Books that I want to read, and wish were here on my bookshelf:

1: The Silmarillion - I've read this book like 3 times already, and I want to get a fourth time under my belt so I can finally start quoting Elvish epic history. Yes, I am a total dork.
2: The Amber Spyglass - I read this book last year in two days. They were the most awesome two days of the winter.
3: Robert Heinlein - not a book, but an author. I need/want to read more by him.
4: The Mars Trilogy - Kim Stanley Robinson's most famous works. Two of them won the Hugo Award, and they seem quite interesting.
5: Where's Waldo? - A classic of the interactive detection genre.

Of course, I will not have any time to read literature after like, Wednesday. But, I want the option to have things to read, should a rare spare minute fall into my lap. But, now it is sleep time. Zoom!

My First Day of School! (For the 36th Time)

2009-01-26T16:01:00.003-06:00

Hurray! School! Learning! Copious amounts of debt! Yay!

Today is the 26th of January, and I have officially begun my 6th semester here at Mac (I like to put it that way because it distracts me from the fact I'm almost a senior. Jeez.) My schedule is still in flux because I can't decide if I want to be an International Studies major (I've taken 2 of 5 required classes, along with all the required secondary classes - fulfilled by my Geography major and French minor (which I supposed have)). At the present, I am signed up to take:

Disciplines and Methods of Geography: Taught by Laura Smith, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 9:40-10:40. This is required for all Geography majors, and it is mostly about the mathematics behind geographical knowledge, like "What does it mean when 57% of the population has cholera?" or "How do you figure out if this housing development is, in fact, dilapidated and should be demolished for the good of humanity?"

Urban GIS: Taught also by Laura Smith, and Birgit Mülenhaus, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:40 to 11:10. Not required, but I like GIS, and it is an enormously useful skill to have. It's how geographers earn money. It teaches you things like how to make maps, and interpret them. It's much more difficult than it seems.

I have to digress at this moment. My housemates just read me a quote about Warren G. Harding, regarding his many cronyist scandals while in office:

"I have no trouble with my enemies. It's my friends that keep me up walking the floors at night."

He also popularized the word 'bloviate', and gambled away the White House china.

Culture & Global Capitalism - Past and Present: Taught by visiting professor Amanda Ciafone, Wednesday night from 7:00 to 10:00. I have no idea what this class will be like, but it sounded cool, and I need to cover my bases for the potential IS major.

Now, my other class is a choice between the extremely easy, but creatively engaging Intro to Creative Writing, or the extremely difficult, but intellectually rewarding Paradigms of Global Leadership. The former is taught by Steve Healey, a man I know nothing about, and by whom I was not super impressed. The latter is taught by Ahmed Samatar, a man that at once frightens and inspires me. He's the sort of professor with whom that if you don't do the work, not only do you fail, you lose his respect, and that's even worse. My dilemma is that I don't want to shovel too much work onto my plate. However, I don't want to find myself halfway through the semester saying "This is boring". And, Professor Samatar might be on sabbatical next spring when I would otherwise take this class. So, I'm planning on going to the class this evening, seeing how it goes, and asking the professor what I ought to do.

Other than that, I am getting settled into my house. I have so far unpacked my clothes. That's it. Oh, I also filled out a request to have my work study award increased by about $400 so that I can work for both the Geography Department (as a GIS Lab Assistant) and the French Department. We'll see if that flies. I've been told it ought to. Other than that, I am getting settled. My housemates are all nice people. There are seven of us - Nick, Kai, Jeremy, Peter, Andrew, Max and myself. It is a quite large house, and my bedroom is in the basement - fully finished and well-heated. So, that is all from my end of town. I'm off to go look for cheap furniture, like bookshelves.

In the Land of Barack Hussein Obama

2009-01-22T14:49:00.002-06:00

This morning, I woke up in my own bed! What a novel concept.

Today is January 22nd, and I have now been home for just over three days. I've had Mexican food, drank milk, and experienced the wonderful joy of having to help Dad dig the car out of the snow - he was backing it out of the driveway without realizing he was doing it crooked and managed to slide partially onto the lawn. The culture shock so far has been limited to saying to myself "Oh, the cars are big" and "Gas is so cheap!" Beyond that, it's mostly the little details, like having bars, restaurants and shops ad nauseam in a twenty foot stretch of road, and being able to walk everywhere. I guess I'll just have to hurry up, become an urban planner, demolish large sections of the Twin Cities, influence immigration policy so hundreds of thousands of Europeans can come here, and then rebuild everything in a more convenient fashion. That's for tomorrow.

I start classes on Monday. I am taking two geography courses, Urban GIS and Disciplines & Methods of Geography, as well an International Studies (IS) course on Capitalism, and either Creative Writing or an IS seminar on Paradigms of Global Leadership. They will all be exceedingly difficult, but I have made certain they are all instructed in English, and I'm sure I'll cope somehow. Also, tomorrow, I move into my spring housing. I will be living with a bunch of friends in a seven-bedroom house off of Ashland Avenue about three blocks away from campus. I've only been in the house once, in August, so I can't recall where I'll be living in the house or what the layout of the place is. I can only hope I will be comfortable and warm. Other than that, I've been sleeping well, eating well, and enjoying the sensation of not having to worry about catching a plane or a train or a bus. It's a quick vacation, but an enjoyable one all the same.

Montpellier me manque, but home is where the heart and college are.

Chapter 90: The End of Chapters 30 through 90

2009-01-18T05:44:00.004-06:00

(Figure 1: The City of London)

I am at yet another one of Europe's small, out-of-the-way airports, awaiting yet another budget flight to a destination half-way across the continent (Okay, actually I'm now in Madrid, several hours later, but let's play pretend for a moment.) I am far better rested and fed than for my overnight at Gatwick five days ago, but for anyone who has had to stay up for a night in an airport, they aren't exactly Hiltons. Heck, they aren't exactly Motel Sixes. Even so, it always gives me a chance to sit for a few minutes or hours and think, which is what I am doing here and now.

(Figures 2-5: Parliament at Night from the South Bank; The Tower Bridge; Trafalgar Square, looking towards the National Gallery; what is a Humped Pelican, and why does it need a crossing??)

This is the beginning of my last genuine day in Europe. It has been 167 days since I set out in early August, on a bright and sunny summer day in Minnesota. I will be returning to midwinter, a period of time whose length is matched only by its harrowing intensity. Seeing that the only people who read this are from Minnesota, or have lived in Minnesota at one point in their lives, they know what I mean. Every culture talks about the weather -it's only natural- but for Minnesotans, we speak of the weather as a mix of birthright, contact sport, and divine judgement. When I tell people from Europeans that in my home state, temperatures can stay below 0F (I just round it to minus 15C, which is the rough equivalent) for weeks at a time, they simply don't believe me. For them -many of them coming from places that have stopped seeing snowfall and freezing temperatures altogether except for the blusteriest of days- they just don't believe me. They can't. I'm finding myself looking forward to the experience with a sort of "Oh... yup. Bit chilly here," attitude. Even though it is sacrilege to admit, all Minnesotans feel the cold, and yes, we even shiver. The weather here, even in London, has been phenomenal. When I arrived, it was naturally cloudy, but it was no colder than it had been in Portugal. The temperature held for the next several days, and is still as warm. Today, it was even sunny! What luck! While it certainly has not been traditionally warm, like if I had been in Hawaii or Key West, the weather I've experienced all "winter" long is purely a joke compared to what awaits me. I shall savor my last moments of breathing air that doesn't sting in the lungs, or hurt the eyes, or render the face, hands and toes lifeless and numb. I will have to appreciate the color of a landscape not overwhelmingly white, a snow-free world. What a novel thought.

(Figures 6-9: The Clock Tower, aka Big Ben; the dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral; the Tate Modern from the Millennium Bridge; the Millennium Bridge and the Financial District)

While I refuse to call it the greatest city in the world -that title in my mind being held by New York City- I will begrudge that London is one of the greatest cities in the world, and no one can argue that it isn't an interesting and diverse place. I have spent the last five days here with my friend Chelsea from Macalester. As I believe I have elaborated, she is just beginning her trip around Europe, her grand adventure, while I am ending mine. It is a frightening thing, to go off on ones own, especially since she has never been outside of North America before this. I tried to do with Chelsea what Martha did with me, she inviting me to Spain to go through the kiddy pool of Europe, rather than jumping off the deep end. I only hope that Chelsea had a good time and that she is not frightened of what lies ahead. I believe she is prepared. She is leaving London tomorrow afternoon to go to Copenhagen. I told her she should visit the Tower of London, since that was perhaps the one thing we did not get the opportunity to see. What we did see was a spectacular and impressive list of sites and venues. London having no end of things to do or see, we went to... CoventGardenParliament(Watchedadebateeven)WestminsterAbbeyBuckinghamPalace(IcomposedanimprompturapaboutQueenElizabeth.Chelsealaughed)HarrodsWellington'sArchTrafalgarSquareTheBritishMuseum(Twice!)TheNationalGalleryTheNationalPortraitGalleryTheTateModern(I'dneverbeen.Itwasquiteneat)WalkedalongtheThamesTowerBridgeSaintPaul'sCathedralPicadillyCircusLeceisterSquareLondonCityHallTheImperialWarMusuemBoroughMarketTheLondonPhilharmonicPortobelloMarket(OnSaturdaywhenalltheantiquedealersarehawkingtheirwares)HydeParkSpeakersCornerMarbleArchandManyManyTubestations. Yow! We saw a lot, and while I did not eat fish and chips (I find it to be, well, awful) Chelsea did and liked it. We did eat Indian food, which was especially good, and I had a pasty from a street vendor. It was exceptional for street food. Okay, now the highlights.

The coolest thing was seeing the London Philharmonic, which we saw on Friday night under the direction of Marin Alsop (one of a handful of female conductors, but a highly acclaimed and extremely talented conductor nonetheless) for a program of Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel, Mozart's 22nd Piano Concerto, Ravel's Daphnes and Chloé, and Stravinsky's Firebird. We sat in the absolute last row of the concert hall (what do you expect for nine pound tickets?) but the acoustics were superb and the angle of the seats allows you to see all the way without obstruction. One day, I will have to go see the Minnesota Orchestra and get a seat in like the sixth row, supposedly the best seats in the house, and see how a concert sounds at close range. While all my life I've enjoyed and appreciated sitting in the back, it's kind of like watching Star Wars on a laptop that is across the room. At the concert, we were joined by my friend Marc from Montpellier, who is spending this semester studying history at the University of Colchester. His aunt lives in London, and I having informed him of my being in London sufficiently in advance, he was happy to join us. It was weird having, like, the two halves of my life that have never seen each other collide! Macalester! Montpellier! Wow! Yes, the universe did explode, but no one was watching, so here we all are.

(Figure 10: The London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall)

The second coolest thing was going to the British Museum. It is always cool to go there, and the first time, we only got through about a quarter of the place in the course of three hours. We saw the Elgin marbles, the Rosetta stone, various artifacts from ancient Greece, Babylon and Egypt, and also saw the North American collection. Here is a picture of Chelsea and I next to the Rosetta stone. Chelsea is sheepish about taking pictures, but I am indefatigable, and won out in the end. I thought about getting Dad a replacement shirt of the Rosetta stone, but decided against it, not being certain if he had worn out his old one. Aside from the great and notable things in the museum, they also had an extensive exhibit that was kinda the history of the museum itself. The museum was founded in 1757, which Chelsea exclaimed makes it older than the United States, almost entirely from the collection of one man, a British gentleman scholar and doctor, Sir Hans Sloane. Over the last two and a half centuries, the museum has acquired some seven million pieces from all continents and every era of humanity. The exhibit in question focused on the Enlightenment and the beginning of scientific discovery and the methodical analysis of the natural world. It is arranged in a setting filled with cabinets of artifacts and books and displays of centered around the various subjects of thought that began to be studied during the Enlightenment. All while looking at this, I kept thinking to myself how cool it would be to have a) my own collection of historical artifacts and b) in enough quantity to start a museum. Like Dad always taught us, never throw anything away. It might be useful later.

(Figures 11-14: Chelsea and I in front of the Rosetta Stone; a Rock Crystal Skull; Marc in front of the Benin Bronzes, part of which I wrote about in Shoot That Bird!!; an Egyptian sarcophagus)

The third coolest thing was going to the National Portrait Gallery. To the best of my recollection, I had never been before. While many of the portraits from before the 20th century were completely unfamiliar to me save a handful, it was neat to see a lot of the more modern figures - Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Di, Prince Charles, Gordon Brown, various British actors and actresses and scientists and businesspeople who I only know from reading the BBC daily. I was surprised there was no portrait of J.K. Rowling. The Gallery also had in exhibition the entrants and winners of the Something Prize for photography, the premier art award in Great Britain (it was either the Turner Prize or the Booker Prize). Those photos were really neat, including one rather fearsome one of Vladimir Putin. I am certain that there are more portraits than what I saw, because I have a deck of playing cards that are the faces of famous British writers from the National Portrait Gallery, and I could only find Lord Byron, Beatrix Potter and James Joyce (technically British during his lifetime). I will just have to go back to find the rest.

I find myself saying that a lot: "I will just have to go back." At the same time, I find myself saying: "This is the last time I'll ever see this place." I discussed this with Chelsea, and remarked that when I first went to Japan in 2006, I had the feeling that I wouldn't return possibly ever again. Less than two years later, I was back. The world is getting to be a smaller and smaller place in terms of difficulties. It is no longer a once-in-a-lifetime event to go to Europe. It doesn't take weeks or days to cross the ocean, but hours. Marc has been to London so frequently that I noticed him saying about the British Museum, "Every time I come here..." as casually as if it were his local grocery store. Grandma Anne told me that I am part of Generation something-or-other, but the point of my generation was that I and those my age are traveling great distances for long periods of time in profound numbers and numerous times. We've become like migrating birds, temporarily depopulating whole cities to fill up ones half-way across the world. Like the shift change on a global mill - one flock of young adventurers picks up and moves on while another comes in to fill up the gap. It is a big world, and there is too much to see. I will be dead before I get the chance to see even a fraction of all I'd like to see. Every day though we all find something new, even in repetition or habit. I am looking forward to rediscovering what I've always had and always seen. My friends and family await me, and I won't keep them waiting any longer.

(Figures 15 & 16: Chelsea and her fish and chips; Marc and Chelsea at the Portobello Road Market)

That, and my visa expires in two weeks and they'd kick me out anyway.

P.S., talk about coming full circle - the hostel I'm staying at in Madrid is about two blocks away from the one Martha and I were at in August, and I glance up at the maid, and she's the same one!

Turn Left At Madrid, Go West 5000 Miles, Get Off Plane, Hugs, Mexican Food, Then Sleep In Own Bed. Serves 4.

2009-01-17T16:01:00.001-06:00

I am on my way home.

News From Britain

2009-01-16T04:30:00.003-06:00

This is just a quick update, since I haven't had time to properly collect my thoughts and reflections - my threflectioughts if you will. I made it from Lisbon to London just fine, after an exhausting 24-hour period without sleep, and successfully rendezvoused with my friend Chelsea. This is the first time she's ever been out of North America, so I have the obligation of warning her of all the perils of European indecency, like driving small cars and closing stores on Sundays. Quite unusual. So far, we've seen the British Museum - part of it, but we're going back -, the Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Harrod's, and today we're off to the Imperial War Museum, maybe back to the British Museum, and then tonight, we're going to see the London Philharmonic! So, more details later. Tally-ho!

P.S., this we overheard on the street last night -

British Woman, arguing with some guy: "I don't care! My mink is worth more than her entire spandex wardrobe!"

Huh?

Yes, They Do Sound Like Drunk Russians.

2009-01-11T16:19:00.002-06:00

My semester of Brazilian Portuguese I took last year has almost entirely flooded out of my brain. However, the one impression that has been left in there is that indeed, the Portuguese language sounds a lot like drunk Russian. Even the Portuguese admit this. When Ricardo was doing a month-long trip around Europe, he told me he would often be asked 'Are you Russian? It sounds like you're Russian'. It's a bad rap. Anyways.

On the 7th, Vilja and Vilma and I headed to Sintra, which is a town in the hills outside Lisbon that was a retreat for the royal family (before they were deposed in 1910 by Republican forces). Vilja and Vilma didn't want to pay the entrance fee to the Palace, so we simply had a picnic outside the mountaintop redoubt built by the Moors some centuries ago. Martha tells me I am really missing out. Well, true, but I have seen some other neat things. The Lisbon metro for instance - all relatively new, the majority of the stops are a public museum, decorated in modern art, beautifully tiled, and architecturally pleasing to the eye. It has also been the most expedient way of getting around. Lisbon is a bit too big to walk everywhere, unlike say Montpellier or Geneva, and between the layout of the city along a sweeping bend of the river, and the numerous hills, it is quite difficult to get around on foot. This contributes to a considerable pollution problem in Lisbon - I can even tell it's polluted, though in the winter time it is not as bad as in the summer. On the whole though, the city is quite clean and modern-looking, with skyscrapers (European skyscrapers) towering over most boulevards. After Vilja and Vilma and I returned from Sintra, we went to have a snack at the Café Nicola, one of two famous Lisboan cafés. We discussed things like "I thought I would hate everyone from the US, but not anymore" and "Did you ever read the Finn Family Moomintroll?" and "Is it true that Finland has one of the world's highest suicide rates?". They got really excited when I told them I knew Finn Family Moomintroll. They didn't get as excited when I asked them about suicide rates. Indeed, Finland does have one of the highest rates of suicide in Europe. I also learned that Swedish is the second official language of Finland - a fact I had never known. Vilja is Swedish by birth, but has lived in Finland all her life. We also lamented about being liberal arts students and having brilliant educations that will pay off to pocket change by the time we are done.

One thing that I have discovered here in Europe that I couldn't have ever discovered through study has been the simple experience of knowing that people - especially my age - are more or less the same all over the world. We listen to the same music, shop at the same stores, think a lot of the same things, do a lot of the same things, worry about the same things, and so on and so forth. It is of considerable comfort to come to this realization. It makes the world - an enormous place, I have also come to learn - a much less mysterious and foreign place. Ricardo, for instance, pretty much learned English by watching American cartoons as a child. All of this has also made me realize even more the impact of globalization. Its detractors may be critical of it, citing things like a growing wealth gap, continued cultural exploitation and envelopment, outsourcing, human rights violations, etc., but I am an optimist in this regard. Globalization is as old as humanity - it's only recently we put a term to it - and without it, we have much more to fear. Knowledge from books and study and lecture is important, but experiential knowledge can be far more epiphanic. Just the simple realization of "Oh, this Portuguese teenager can quote the Simpsons as well as I can" or "This USAmerican read the same childhood books as I did in Finland" is truly a wondrous blessing.

On the 8th, while Vilja and Vilma were out shopping and Ricardo was off studying, I went to the Castelo Sao Jorge. If none of my pictures turn out (which will provoke no end of swearing and wrath on my part) except the ones from atop the castle, I will only be supremely pissed, and not... uber-supremely pissed. Okay, so that's not actually any consolation. But, I look forward to getting those pictures developed. Like any good castle, there is no easy way of getting there. Any castle that has a direct route to it, well, is just plain easy to conquer. So, we tourists, like ancient warriors, have to meander through countless side streets up a maze to the top of the hill. On the plus, I got a couple of neat postcards, further fueling my postcard collection. After the Castelo, I walked back down to the downtown area where I picked up a bit of lunch. Lisbon has a ton of little cafés where you just go, stand at the bar, and if you know enough Portuguese to be able to say "I want this, please" (which I do), you can get a tasty little something for no more than 1.50E. It's reverse-highway robbery! In France, you can't even look at food without paying at least two euros. Another plus for Portugal. For dinner, Vilja, Vilma, Ricardo and I met to go up to the Barrio Alto to go listen to Fado. Fado is a particular style of music native to Portugal, sung by a singer accompanied by three guitarists. Many fadista are legendary in Portugal, and it is a beloved tradition by the Portuguese. It being a Thursday when we went out, the place in question was completely dead. Even the three fadista were looking a bit overdue for the crypt. Still, they sang quite well, and it was a neat cultural experience. The salmon I ate had too many bones though, so I was not super pleased. Merely pleased.

On the 9th, Vilja and Vilma left to go back to Helsinki, and I went to the Oceanarium. Having already been to the Monterrey Aquarium in California, ocenaria are all below the bar. I mean c'mon, the Monterrey Aquarium has like more otters than people. Still, the Oceanarium and the neighborhood it is in - the Park of Nations, the site of the 1998 Lisbon Expo - is very cool. Formerly an industrial area that had been in disrepair, the site was revamped into a long boardwalk of parks and cultural centers. Going to the oceanarium was also cool because I like things like that - zoos, science museums, etc. all interest me because I've moved mostly off the scientific track, but still have great interest in science. I'm also fascinated by the ocean - having been to it so few times I can count them on my hands. It is also fascinating for me to experience salt water, coming from a strictly freshwater background. If the water in the lake is too salty, it means that too many people have been peeing nearby. It being nearly dark by the time I got out, I went and walked down towards the Vasco de Gama bridge, which makes landfall near the area. It is LONG! You can't even make out the buildings on the far side. When I was driving across it coming into Lisbon, it seemed to go on forever. Afterwards, I went back to Ricardos and we made a bit of dinner. Part of couchsurfing - and being a good guest - is that you offer a gift to your host, and offer to clean for them, or, in my case, cook. Since Ricardo is a starving college student, I decided to ease his plight. I mean, I'm not a good cook, but the kid was impressed I could boil rice. I think I'll have to leave him some recipes. I made some pasta with tomatoes that I actually learned from my couchsurf host in Milan. Easy and genuinely Italian! For some reason though, the linguini sticks to itself though, despite me adding olive oil. A conundrum for which I will have to seek counsel.

That evening, what did we do? Well, if I can't recall on a moments notice, it probably wasn't interesting. The 10th! The 10th, I went off to Cascais, the western-most point in Europe. That's about it. It has a nice beach and a lovely view of the coast, but, hey, it's sand and rocks and tourist shops. I quickly headed back to Lisbon. Following Cascais, I went to the Gulbenkian Museum. Founded by Calouste Gulbenkian, a Turkish oil magnate who came to Lisbon in 1942 to seek peace amongst the chaos of war, he was a prolific collector of art, especially from the Middle East and Far East. As an aside, isn't it strange that, for we in the US, the Far East is to the West, and the Middle East is further away than the Far East. We really should start calling Europe the Middle East. They'd love that. The museum houses an impressive collection of art from the 14th to 20th century, especially from Persia and Turkey. What cool stuff it is! While European art was spent trying to figure out how to make one Virgin Mary with child look different from all the others, the art of Islam - by sharia forbidden from featuring the face of God - flourished in beautiful color and extraordinary geometric patterns. Like at the Alhambra, the Gulbenkian museum was a real treat. The museum also has an impressive garden winding about the grounds, which was pleasant for a stroll in the early moonlight. The moon above Lisbon, currently in full, has been quite impressive. With luck, my pictures of it will turn out well.

Today, I spent the day more or less indoors. I am currently in the stages of planning my next leg of the journey. I am off to London tomorrow evening, and on Tuesday, I will be meeting up with my friend Chelsea to head around the city before she heads off for Denmark and I to Madrid and then home. While it has been a true joy to see so much of Europe, I will be grateful to be back in the US where I don't have to plan out where I will be sleeping, what I'll be seeing and doing, etc. to such a high degree every day. One week!

P.S. Has anyone heard of Bruno Aleixo? He is a Portuguese dog puppet, formerly an Ewok, that speaks with a Portuguese hick accent and interviews famous people while conversing with his friend, Busto, a bust of Napoleon. It is an amazing and strange show.

A Week in the Last Sunny Place in Europe

2009-01-11T12:58:00.000-06:00

No, I am not dead, nor have I gone missing. I apologize if my lack of journaling has been upsetting - I just haven't had a whole lot of free time. Today is my last full day in Lisbon, Portugal, and I have been here nearly a week now. I have been staying with a couchsurf host - again making me thankful for that website - named Ricardo in his apartment near the University of Lisbon. Like a number of couchsurfing places I've been to, it is a far nicer home than I would've ever expected. It's his parent's second flat, since they live in the Algarve region in the south of Portugal, and he gets it all to himself for university. Not a bad setup. Anyways, minor details.

First, a little bit of history of where I am. Lisbon (pronounced Lish-BO-a in Portuguese) is the capital of Portugal and is the south-westernmost capital city in Europe. It was founded over three thousand years ago by the Phoenicians who used it as a trading post, taking advantage of the natural harbor created by the Tagus River estuary. Over its history, it has been controlled by the Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Spanish, and today the city encompasses about three million people in an urban area stretching to the Atlantic. The most prominent geographical features about the city are the Tagus River (the Rio Tejo - in Portuguese unlike Spanish, J's are pronounced as J's) and the seven hills of Lisbon. The old city of Lisbon is situated between two of the hills (they don't have names), and is the area that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755. As a result, the layout of the streets is entirely rectilinear, a rarity in Europe. To the east of the downtown is the Castelo Sao Jorge, the old fortress built originally by the Moorish around a thousand years ago. As far as castles go, this one is extremely cool - it looks out over all of Lisbon and offers a stunning view, and you can climb all over its walls and such. It's rather neat. To the west of the downtown is the Barrio Alto, or High Neighborhood, because it's on a hill and some streets seem almost vertical at times. This is also where all the bars are, and on Friday and Saturday nights, the streets are thronged with people. Lisbon is only on the north side of the Tagus, because here at its mouth, it's narrowest point is still over a mile wide. Thus, there are only two bridges across the Tagus in the whole of Lisbon - the Ponte 25 de Abril, built in the style of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Ponte Vasco de Gama, the longest bridge in Europe at slightly over seven and a half miles in length. Having only two bridges for a major metropolitan area creates numerous traffic problems.

When I left Germany, it was freezing cold, cloudy and rather dismal, except seeing Anja and saying goodbye, which was as always, nice. Arriving in Faro in southern Portugal, it was almost 60F, sunny, and green! The leaves are still on most of the trees, and the grass is still quite alive. Lisbon, even in January, is quite lovely and warm enough that I don't need to shiver every instant I am out of doors. In sunlight, I don't even need my jacket! Hurray! So, now that the history lesson is out of the way, I shall describe what I've been doing...

I arrived on the 5th from Germany, which I describe in my last entry, and met Ricardo at the Lisbon bus station. He is a mechanical engineering student, and it is the middle of exam season for him. Our first night, we both more or less vegged out. I recuperated, and he studied linear algebra. The 6th, we both went into the downtown area to walk around. We had lunch - I had bacalhau, Portuguese cod. Despite my usual indifference towards white fish, I liked it. It came with rice and razor clams. After that, we went to go meet two other couchsurfers that Ricardo was hosting - Vilja and Vilma from... FINLAND! I've never met real, live Finns! Just imitation Finns, like Judy or my friend Chelsea. They decided they'd had enough of the cold, dark Finnish winter, and had come to Portugal for a brief respite. Once we got their bags back to Ricardo's apartment, we went to Belém, a neighborhood of Lisbon on the Tagus that before the 1755 earthquake used to be in the Tagus. The Torre de Belém, a fortress tower that once defended the city against pirates, once stood in the middle of the river, and is now firmly on the bank. There is also the monument to the Discovery - the period of time when Magellan and Vasco de Gama were taking off for parts unknown. Belém is also famous for its Pasteis, little pastries made of cream that are both affordable and tasty.

I forgot to mention, but Portugal is the most affordable nation in Europe. This is because until 1975, it was a fascist state under the control of the dictator Antonio Salazar. His rule, coinciding with the global end of colonialism, meant that the Portuguese were forced into defending their colonial holdings from pro-independence movements. The subsequent wars, especially in Angola, have left the legacy of Portuguese colonialism extremely tainted. It is interesting to note that Portuguese is, I think, the 6th most spoken language in the world. This is because of Brazil, that one-time holding of the Portuguese that I would like to travel to one day. The Colonial Wars that Portugal fought, along with being under fascist rule for nearly forty years left the national economy destitute, and while joining the EU and other investments in the public good have improved the standing of many Portuguese, it still means the standards of living are lower than say, France or Germany. This, coupled with warm weather, makes Portugal an extremely beautiful place for tourists.

I have to run get dinner now, and rather than suspend writing this even longer, I'll post this, and continue the rest later this evening, hopefully. Tchau!

Chapter 82: In Which Our Adventurer Is Spoiled Rotten

2009-01-05T12:40:00.004-06:00

Today is January 5th, and I am presently at the Frankfurt Hahn Airport somewhere supposedly near Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In fact, upon consulting a map, the airport is actually closer to France than it is to Frankfurt. It's a hub for budget airlines. Go figure. At least I have a power outlet and a full season of Babylon 5 to pass the time. (While staying here with Anja, she and I picked up watching Babylon 5, quite a good show the likes of which I couldn't appreciate when it was on the air because well, it was on cable and I was 6 when it began. For how old it is, it's an impressive work of science fiction). I have just concluded my visit to Germany, care of Anja. For those of you who do no know who Anja is, she is my third sister, being that in all but law and blood. I first met her as a German exchange student (her, not me) who came to live with my family when I was twelve. During the year she stayed with us and the subsequent seven, she has become as much a part of our family as anyone else.

Upon my completion of my studies in Montpellier, it had been my intention to spend Christmas and New Years with her, rather than come home or spend it by myself. To say that it has been a compromise on my plans would imply that something was lost. And that I had plans. No, I can say with little hesitation that I can think of no better way to have spent my time at a period that is normally filled with family, tradition and aspects of my life that are as deeply ingrained in me as who I am. Spending Christmas alone, I imagine, is difficult. I am extremely glad that that was not the case with me. Upon arriving in Germany, after the debacle at the Milan airport, I was rather pissed at myself and frustrated on a number of levels. I don't know whether it was karma or something else that I should have received the hospitality I was given. To spend Christmas with ones family is largely something taken for granted. To spend it with someone else's family is both a rare treat and something I consider to be one of the warmest gestures of kindness possible.

(Figure 1: Anja and me)

It began on Christmas Eve - Weinacht, in German - at her father's house in Lutherstadt-Wittenberg. Her father, his wife and two sons put me up for about a week, as well as feeding me, taking me around, and even offering to wake me up so I could better appreciate consciousness. Words don't do it justice. They even got me presents! Which made me feel quite bad, because I had not really gotten anything for them - although in the end Anja dropped me off at the local big box store and I picked up what I could on a few hours notice. For people I'd known for maybe two days, gift giving was rather generic. Details, though. On the 25th, we drove to Saxony to stay with her mother's sister (her 'aunt', you might say) for a few days. Prior to arrival, I merely had the vague notion that I would be "staying with Anja and her family until I left". What I got instead, was a royal treatment. Anja's aunt Elke and her family fed me scrumptiously - lots of chocolate and a full array of German cuisine, and I am a big fan of red cabbage now - as well as showing me around the cities of Meißen and Dresden. When I say showing me around, I mean that Elke had taken it upon herself to see that I received as much of a cultural education about the area as possible. There were tours, sightseeing, this that and the other thing, and I couldn't have asked for better. I am quite lucky.

(Figure 2: The Reichstag)

Dresden is the capital of Saxony and one of the major cities of Germany. Beginning on February 13th, 1945, the Allied Forces began an extensive firebombing campaign of the city that rivaled the destructive force of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands of people were killed and even more were left homeless. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. experienced the firebombing while a prisoner of war and wrote about it in his novel, Slaughter-House Five, a book which I quite enjoy. In my life, I have seen Hiroshima, the Normandy beaches, and now Dresden - some of the most horrific killing fields the world has ever known. I always feel remorse when I see places like that. I do not like war, and while I will not say it is unnecessary, it is always brutal, and true to the saying, no one wins. I digress. Dresden today is a beautiful city, returned to its baroque-era marvel. When I think of Europe, I imagine places like Dresden. Big, gothic spires, grand houses, and monuments dotting the landscape like trees. Another side note, the Germans have more trees in their cities than the French. I don't know why this is, but I like it. Reminds me of the Twin Cities. My words won't do the place justice, so lucky for you and for me I commandeered Anja's camera. Here are pictures!

(Figure 3: Dresden across the Elbe)

After Dresden, Anja and I returned back to Wittenberg, where her father showed us around the city for a little bit. Both Wittenberg and Dresden are on the Elbe River, which in 2003 experienced a hundred-year flood that caused billions of euros of damage and inundated miles of towns and countryside and generally did what floods do. On our tour, Anja's father pointed out just how much of the area had been flooded. Note the pictures. Lutherstadt Wittenberg is called what it is because it is the home of Martin Luther, the co-founder of the Protestant movement. I got to see the door where he nailed up his 95 theses. Originally, it had been 100, but the nail got in the way. That is why Protestants aren't required to ride ostriches, and why every time a Protestant sings "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" they no longer have to do the Maccarena to it.

On the 30th, Anja and I headed to Berlin for New Years. Again, I had simply had the vague notion that we were "going to Berlin for New Years", and I would let her take care of the details. Upon reflection, it's quite unusual for my neurotic, plan-obsessed self to leave so much to other people. I've found, traveling around these last five months, that when I go by myself, it's a lot easier. I only lose my things, I only get myself lost, and I only wind myself up in strange and possibly health-diminishing situations. Still, I've enjoyed a bit of company. The greatest challenge for this month alone by myself has been, well, being alone by myself. Not that one can be alone in any other sense. I mean, automatically, the presence of others negates being along, so you... I'm rambling. Then again, I've been rambling since I learned to talk. Probably earlier. We stayed with her friend Ines, whom Anja has met in Ushuaia in Tiera del Fuego, and her boyfriend Andreas. Anja and Ines were talking one night about Ushuaia, and told me that in German they had just called it "the ass of the world". Sometimes I wonder just how much I'm losing in translation. I am also extremely appreciative for Anja acting as my ears, and I can't imagine how much of a bugger it is to have someone latched on who is effectively deaf without you. Thank you for that, Anja. You're a good sport. Ines and Andreas live in Kreuzberg, the largely Turkish area of Berlin, one of those places the anti-Jane Jacobs of the world would call a slum. She and I would both disagree with this assessment, and I found it to be a very neat area. On New Years Eve, they were lighting off fireworks at a rate and in sizes that rivaled those being launched at the Brandenburg Gate. I didn't go down to the huge party there because it was a) a million people strong, and b) cold. Instead, we had a small party at the apartment. It was only mildly different than my usual New Years, the last three of which have been spent in Emilio's basement with all my high school friends. Which, don't get me wrong, is a most excellent time. However, I do that about once a week when I get the chance. Anyways, it's about 2AM, and my flight is at 6:50, and I should get some bit of sleep, so I'll wrap up.

(Figure 4: Me at the Fernsehturm)

Our New Years day was spent playing Wii (tennis really takes it out on your shoulders), which was a lot of fun. I perhaps didn't get to see as many of the big cultural sights of Berlin as I ought to have - no museums, didn't see the Philharmonic which I would've liked to have seen, but I did see a lot of the monuments like the Fernsehturm, the Memorial Church, the Reichstag, and so on. After that, we popped back to Wittenberg, and had a brief trip to Magdeburg so Anja's father could take her shopping (he had deemed the clothes she had got in Berlin unsuitable), and I got to see a bit of that city. In January, not that interesting. But, Elke has given me a standing invitation - almost an order - to come back some summer and she will show me around Saxony some more. Perhaps when I tackle Eastern Europe, a place that is on the roster for later in life. To wrap up, I've had an amazing time here. I was spoiled rotten, so much that I actually feel bad. Few people have ever gotten away with spoiling me, as Grandma Anne, Mom, Dad, and others can attest. The hospitality I have been shown here has left me marked in a way that I cannot easily repay. The kindness that has been done unto me, I shall work henceforth to give back to those who wish it. My next port of call is Lisbon. Upon extensive contemplation, I've decided to scratch Morocco from my voyage - it's just unfeasible to get there and see enough in the time that I have. Another day. After Lisbon comes London, and after a night in Madrid - home.

(Figure 5: Martin Luther's church - Anja and I in the foreground)

And now the daily quote from Ambassador Mollari:

"When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean "Oh I think it's a little chilly in here. Perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed." No, I said it was COLD. As in "Oh look, my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor."

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T16:57:00.002-06:00

Fröhe Weinacth, Buona Natale, Joyeux Noël and Feliz Navidad!

I have now met up with Anja and am staying with her family in Wittenberg. Everything is well. Her brothers, Oliver (8) and Felix (2) are delightful. It's been years since I've been around the larval specimens of pink apes, so it's a lot of fun. It's also a completely different experience, because little kids don't necessarily (okay, don't at all) operate on the same sleep schedule as adults. I got a brief glimpse of what I put my parents through when I was an infant when Felix started crying for his father sometime around 3AM last night. I swear I had just put my head to the pillow when he started, and I was praying that Norbert, his father, would come and see to it that he was alright. You see, for children, it would be a grave social faux pas if I were to react to them in the same way as I do my college-age compatriots if they wake me up from a sound sleep. Luckily, Norbert came up and rocked Felix back to sleep in short order. However, Oliver, being at that ambitious age when rising with the sun is normal (oh what nostalgia!) has taken it upon himself that around 8:30AM or so, I have slept long enough and that it is time to play. This he does in a manner-of-fact tone that only a child can do. In German. I imagine the conversations we have going like this.

Oliver (auf Deutsche): Peter.
Me: *No reaction*
Oliver: Peter.
Me: *I am awake now, but am not letting on*
Oliver: Peter, it's 8:30 in the morning. The sun has been up for two minutes!
Me: *I open my eyes. The game is lost*
Oliver: Ah, your eyes are open! How wonderful! That means it is time to play!
Me: *At this point, two conversations begin - one in my brain in English, and one out loud in German*
To myself: "Dear god, gods or whatever there is controlling the cosmos, please forgive all my many years of sinning. I take back every bad thing I've ever said, ever done, ever thought against my siblings, my parents, my pets, my friends, my teachers, the President, both political parties, Mother Nature, You, and everything else in the Universe. I will devote myself only to tending medicinal plants in a mountain-top garden for the rest of my life, in quiet and in peaceful repose, never again so much as brushing a mosquito from my body. I shall make even the Jains look like violent sociopaths, if you will only remove this sweet, irreproachable child which you have sent to damn me as I lay here unable to defend myself until at least 9. Please, oh higher powers that be, please!"
To Oliver: Ja. Okay.
Oliver: Peter, it's 8:31! A whole minute has gone by where we could be playing? Don't you realize we only have another sixteen hours to play? There is so much to do!
To myself: "Okay Peter, prayer didn't work. Okay... But can't get angry! That will ruin his life. What will he think if this crazy, slothful American suddenly jumps out of bed and starts yelling at him in some foreign language? He'll be scarred for life. Every time he hears English, watches anglophone movies or listens to anglophone music, thinks about the United States, irrepressible feelings of hatred will well up inside him. He'll go crazier than bin Laden, than Kaczynski, than Hitler! You will have created a force of evil out of a pure innocence. It'd be worse than Marius releasing Baal, worse than Qui-Gon taking Anakin as his padawan, worse than voting for Pat Buchanan. Oh what a thin line I tread! What precariousness I face!"
To Oliver: Ja, ich komme. Eine minuten.
Oliver: *Unwavering* Ah, Peter, you must not know what time it is! How simple a mistake! It's okay, it's still 8:31. And now it is 8:32! Hurray! Hurray! A minute has passed and now we can go and play! Come! Come now! You can't sleep when you're playing, just as you can't play when you're sleeping!
To myself: "Face it Peter, you are up against an implacable foe. There is no possibility for detente, for negotiation, only surrender. Unconditional capitulation. He will never cease in his efforts to harry and challenge you. He will win the battle and the war and you will have no choice but to meet his demands and submit! You, who've faced all-nighters, anxious dogs, loud parties downstairs, fire-alarms, even sleeping outdoors in the cold, have been defeated by a small child. Do not be so ashamed though. Like Master Yoda said, "Size matters not." He has been training every day of his life. His devotion to his art is unparalleled. He makes martial art masters, learned scholars, and virtuoso performers seem like errant amateurs. You had no hope. You had no defense. It is best to end your suffering quickly and with whatever is left of your honor and sanity!"
To Oliver: Okay, okay. Jetzt ich komme.
Oliver: Wonderful! Ah, I see that you have propped yourself up on one arm in an effort to stall for time! That is mildly clever of you! It has been tried on me many times though, not to fear. I applaud your efforts, futile though they may be. Now it is play time! Come and play! Yes, up on the other elbow! Good! Good! Soon we will play! And now you've gotten into a crouching position! I know you're thinking when I turn my back you'll go lay down again, but luckily I will instead come and crawl next to you and lock eyes so that you have no choice but to get up fully.
To myself: "I knew I should have gotten me a Duplicator like in Calvin and Hobbes. You know, sleep in hiding while my clone endures all this, then pull the switch around noon or so. Hell, I'd settle for 10 even. Well, at least I still have the Transmogrifier and the Flying Time Machine! Jokes on you kid!"
To Oliver: Okay, spiele zeit.
Oliver: Good! I found a cardboard box we can tear up and kick around!
To myself: *Crying softly* "I am bested."

All in all though, I am having quite a pleasant time, and am quite glad that I am able to celebrate Christmas with Anja. Since she reads this blog though, I obviously can only allude to the horrible cruelties that she is inflicting upon me, and can't mention them specifically. It's late now, and Anja and I are off to her aunt's near Dresden tomorrow, so I'll call it quits and get a bit of sleep before Oliver makes his judgment rounds. Tschüs!

A Deep Breath

2008-12-21T13:39:00.002-06:00

Alright, I recant my earlier disaffection. The rocks I collected during my time in France and elsewhere have literally been there for millions of years. I can replace the maps with a couple dollars and a few days on e-bay. And money does grow on trees, plus whatever the hell plant linen comes from. Flax? Does linen come from flax? What is flax anyways? Have any of you seen a flax plant? I vaguely recall hearing something about them growing in the Nile flood plain. Maybe I should go to Egypt.

Anyways, I feel a lot better now because I got some food in me, listened to Minnesota Public Radio (thank you Internet), and had a nice walk around Berlin. It is a big big city. Texas big though, not New York big. Very spread out. I saw the Russian Embassy, the Chancellery and the Parliament, looked at Tiergarten from a distance, walked through the Brandenburg Gate (smaller than I'd expected it to be), and saw the Fernsehturm from several different angles. And I meet Anja tomorrow! Plus, its almost Christmas, so I can't be upset. And I'm in Europe, so I really can't be upset!

Bella zio? Lei e' ubriaca. Spacca!

2008-12-21T08:59:00.000-06:00

or Hell isn't Other People, it's Budget Airlines

or Why I'm Never Leaving The US Again

This has been written piecemeal, starting on Saturday in Milan and continuing to the present moment in Berlin. If at any point I change tone, well, the events that have passed during that time should be an influencing factor. Needless to say, it has been interesting. Federico, my host from couchsurfing has been extremely hospitable and has shown me about Milan in a way in which I otherwise would never have had. My total lack of ability to speak Italian coupled with the languages difference from French and English would've made going around by myself nearly impossible. As it has turned out, I've eaten well, slept well, visited well, and met a number of quite interesting people.

First of all, there is Federico, my host. He lives with his parents near the Porta Genova station in southern Milan. His house is in an old smelting plant complex that has now been (beautifully) turned into private homes. His own home is enormous and wonderfully decorated; so much so that it is frequently used as a setting for advertisements, as it was the day I arrived. Apparently that day, it was the Barilla pasta company. Federico's mother, Barbara, sounds and looks like any Italian mother, smoky voice (because she smokes) with dark hair and a lovely expressive manner that indeed does use the hands a lot. All stereotypes, I've found, are based in some part in truth. Federico also informed me she's recently taken up smoking pot, as we discovered coming home the other night. His father, Roberto, I only briefly saw twice, is the editor of one of the daily papers in Milan. His brother, Francesco, is 12, and unlike my impression of most twelve-year-olds (or even seventeen-year-olds, as my host brother proved) he was not a little shit. Pardon the explitive. There were also a whole slew of Federico's friends, his girlfriend, and Diana, another couchsurfer from San Sebastien in the Basque Country of Spain.

Second, there are Federico's friends. I find Italian, like Spanish, to be a lovely language. French is lovely too, but in a subtle, soft sort of way. Italian and Spanish are languages that make you really feel like you're doing something with your mouth. Lots of zz's and rr's and ch's and ss's and tz's. French is muffled in that regard. Federico and his friends introduced me to little bits of Italian slang as well. Whereas the people of central and southern Italy speak dialects of Italian, the Italians of the North (like where Milan is) actually speak pure Italian. However, not content to be themselves, they have opted to mixing their Italian with a whole slew of slang particular only to the city. To say 'What's up?' in standard Italian would be 'como esti' - similar to French or Spanish - but in Milan, they say 'bella zio' - literally, beautiful uncle. Similarly, they have 'spacca' or 'it breaks' to say 'cool!' or 'that rocks!' and 'sbatti' or 'a scramble' for something that is stupid and a waste of time. I also learned the important phrase, 'lei e' ubriaca' or 'she is drunk'. Good to know! Despite my linguistic insight into the Italian language, any effort to speak the language would result in something like me reading a guide book. For questions like 'Where is the Duomo?' or 'How much does this cost?', I'm sure what I'd actually be saying would be 'Yes, the eels are patriotic, Gloria Estefani sneezes at them' or 'Twice now I have had carpal tunnel, once in May and once with your dog'. For more complex statements like 'I like Milan a lot. I'll have to come back one day', I can only assume I am saying 'Milan irritates my teeth like a wet airplane on crack. I have photographs of Silvio Berlusconi naked with the Pope, I will trade you five goats and your grandmother for them."

The events of my time here have been interesting. My bus ride from Montpellier - all 11 hours of it - was not the worst experience of my life, but would probably rate among the top five. Thank god there were no screaming children on board, or I might have just suffocated myself with my gloves. Perhaps that helped to realign my karmic balance, as the rest of my time up to this moment has been spectacular. I had no problem getting to where Federico had told me to meet him, even with my 40 kilos of luggage (88 lbs, more than half my weight) in three suitcases in tow - as well as a bag of groceries, my camera and the ridiculous red poster I got in Ireland (yes Anna, I still have it). After meeting him, he and I headed off on foot to check out the Duomo. Apparently I had had my monumental knowledge (literally, my knowledge of monuments) of Milan confused with that of Florence. Then again, my preformed ideas of Italy are a mix of Roman ruins, Tuscan vineyards, the Venetian canals, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, Mazerattis, and the mafia walking down the street while broad, old men sit gesticulating wildly outside shops, consuming enormous amounts of pasta, and admiring how beautiful all the women are. Like France, Italy is full of beautiful people. Europe is full of beautiful people. Except the English. The English on the whole have been homely to ugly. Maybe it's because I can understand what they are saying that I like them less.

While walking around the Duomo - a 14th-century gothic church that is probably the most impressive edifice to God I've ever been in - Federico pointed out the demonstrators for not just one but two of the official Fascist parties in Italy. Mussolini would be proud(?) to know that his legacy has continued to present day. However, for the millions of Italians and thousands of soldiers of the Allied armies who fought against him, I'm not so sure they'd enjoy this rejuvenation. It was also explained to me that despite the fact that fascism is officially banned in the Italian constitution, these two political parties represent a significant force in the government. These mad, mad Europeans. Still though, who am I to let a bit of right-wing extremism dampen my day. Federico told me he couldn't go into the Duomo because he'd burst into flames, so I went in while he and his friend visited the rock and roll exhibit that was set up in the plaza. (Note: one of the lesser known parts of Vatican II was to construct a giant orbital laser beam that would incinerate any non-practicing Roman Catholic trying to visit a church without returning to the faith. It's the #2 cause of death in Italy, after death-by-tortellini). I can't speak to the hsitory of the Duomo, as I only glanced at the wikipedia article. What I can say is is that it is huge. I could easily fit all my possessions, plus the possessions of my entire family, deconstruct our house, drain our lake, and then maybe excavate the acreage of our property and stow it within the walls of the cathedral with no problem. That, plus an ornately styled marble floor and a vaulted ceiling roughly one-hundred feet or so above my head made it all quite cool.

After the Duomo, we went around to the Via Montenapoleono, which is the major fashion street in Milan. It is subtler and less showy than the Champs Elysées in Paris or... those places where The Devil Wears Prada was shot. Okay, so I don't know much about fashion. Still, the stores there and the clothes and accessories inside were no less impressive. A pair of ruby slippers? 1,250 euro. A Bvlgari necklace? 49,000 euro. Armani shoelaces? 200 euro. Federico told me that even if it doesn't look like it, Milan has a greater concentration of fashion houses and designers than either Paris or New York. Even September, during the Milan Fashion Week, he works as a steward for various events, and basically is beside himself as a stream of beautiful women pass by where he lives. What a truly grueling job that must be. We then went to see the Castello Sfazia (I think it was called that) which is the ducal castle of the Visconti Dynasty of Milan. It was a lot different from other castles I've seen in Europe in that it was in the middle of a city, but was not palatial. It was very much a defensive castle. Sure it looked night, but it would be a practical place to hole up against say, a barbarian horde, or even your own revolting peasants. We wandered afterwards, but Federico explained that Milan is not really like Paris or Rome with a ton of monuments and famous buildings. It's possible to see the whole place in two days. Finally, we went home for lunch, which Federico cooked. We had penne in tomato sauce - simple but very tasty. He also confirmed in explaining how to make pasta and the sauce that my family has been doing it correctly all along.

Saturday afternoon, we walked around some more. I can't recall what we saw. My ever-growing collection of photos will no doubt remind me in six months time. Eventually though, Federico had to go drop something off for his mother, so he left Diana and I to have lunch at a mozzarella bar that he recommended. For all the delicious cheeses of France, they simply don't have an equivalent for the wet white cheese of Italian fame. Besides parmesan, it is perhaps the most famous of Italian cheeses, and not without reason. In Italy, it doesn't get better. My lunch of a big ball of mozzarella with strips of Tuscan prosciutto I can probably say ranks among my top five meals of my life. Magnifico. After lunch, Diana and I walked back to the Duomo and started to head back to Federico's. However, it being a Saturday, and Saturdays being big things in Italy, we were literally elbowing our way through waves of people coming in the opposite direction. It wasn't uncommon to see people just stop in the middle of the sidewalk, in groups of four of five, and start talking. Sometimes they'd try to monopolize the whole sidewalk, with half the party looking into shop windows while the other half behind them near the street pointed at what the others should look at. This, couple with the constant possibility that a car will drive half-way up the sidewalk to park, made getting back a long and tiring process.

We arrived home, picked up some takeout sushi (nothing will ever compare to the real stuff except more of the real stuff), and watched Young Frankenstein. Diana thought it would be a horror movie and so was reluctant to watch it. We convinced her otherwise, and she enjoyed it. After the movie though, more serious business needed tending. Federico's girlfriend Sarah had gotten wind that Diana was staying at his house. Despite the fact that the two have been dating for five years, Sarah decided to become irrationally jealous that there would be a woman sleeping in Federico's house (Diana was sleeping in the basement while I shared Federico's room on a cot). Rather than explain the situation to his girlfriend, Federico decided it would be better to come up with a complicated scheme whereby Diana would be presented as a friend of mine who had been in Milan staying at a hostel and who had not been able to book for a second night. Out of kindness, Federico had offered to put her up, and that was to be the scoop. Luckily, Sarah bought it all and Federico was out of the doghouse.

Saturday evening, Federico brought Diana and I out to a party. This party was a birthday party for one of Federico's friends. This guy - whose name if I picked up ever I have now forgotten - decided to throw himself and his girlfriend a birthday party via a Facebook e-mail, from 8PM to 11PM. In it, he also put a list of presents that he wanted and stated that the reason for this list was to avoid duplicates. As Federico pointed out to me, first of all, this guy is a dick. Second, who throws a party for themselves, demands presents, and then kicks the guests out at 11? So, as retaliation, Federico and his friends decided to select the cheapest, most useless present they could find, and get it for this guy in bulk. Federico also explained that this guy is sex-deprived by his prudish girlfriend, so I said Federico should get him a pregnancy test kit.

On the way to the party, Diana, myself, Federico and Federico's girlfriend Sarah are in the car. Federico explained to me that when he goes to California in the summer time, he is often made fun of because the subtleties of English pronounciation escape him. For example, the difference between 'three' and 'tree'. For further example, the difference between 'beach' and 'bitch'. For even further example, the difference between 'can't' and, well, guess. I suppose I too would be a bit shocked if I asked someone to do something and they replied 'sorry, can't' with slightly different articulation. After, we discussed more serious things, like racism in the United States, and our prison system. Federico was shocked to learn that the death penalty exists not exclusively in Texas as he had thought, but in 38 out of the 50 states in the Union. We also talked a bit about Obama, a subject that has earned my fellow citizens - regardless of their political pursuation - the returned amity and gratitude of millions of Europeans who'd been... less than overjoyed about the Bush presidency.

We arrived at the party after it had officially finished, but then again, so had everyone else, so no one minded. Maybe that's how Italians normally do things - in which case, I'd get along well. I find it normal for myself to be casually late anywhere between two and six hours after the fact. Being announced in introduction as an anglophone, I was thus used as practice for the Italians to spruce up their English, or to show off. When the Italians speak English, it is a lot more beautiful than when the French speak English. I don't like the French speaking English to me. It grates the ears. Anyways, this is the first conversation I have after sitting down:

"You like the dog?" says the birthday boy, whose house we are at. He points to the Golden Retreiver at my feet.
"Yes, she's beautiful," I reply and pet her.
"She is pregnant," he continues. "We know this because yesterday, she fuck."
'Okay. Well, spacca!' I think to myself. He goes on, "Yeah, she fuck yesterday. The male dog, he also a golden retriever. His owner, he want a thousand euro for to have sex."
"A thousand euro? Wow."
"Yeah, I tell him I would do it for five hundred." This statement, in perfect English, would leave me to believe that this guy I am talking to would be willing to impregnate his dog for five hundred euro. Well, maybe his girlfriend has just pushed him that far. The rest of the party wasn't especially interesting. There was free cake, which was tasty, and a couple of Federico's friends sang and dance to some pop songs from the US, which were amusingly bad, but other than that, nothing. We went home, I packed up my things, took an altogether too short nap, and began my journey out of Milan.

I feel that it is important to mention that all good things must come in moderation. As much as I have enjoyed being in Milan these last two days, I never adjust to the sense of abject fear and rage-enducing sense of delay that is inspired by having to get places. For my flight from Milan to Berlin, I woke up three hours after going to sleep, dressed in the dark, bid fairwell to Federico, dragged my suticases out the door, and began the slog to the metro. I don't think a word exists for the feeling of being burdened with the (dead) weight of a not-so-small child or a very big dog, distributed between two suitcases (which have the annoying habit of swinging apart from one another when you least desire them to) and a backpack, and having to make your way, terrified that you'll be irrevocably late, across a foreign city to a place you can only hope will be where you want it. Harried is what I come up with - a feeling of being perpetually attacked or harassed. The Milan Central station is a monument - in the truest sense of the word - to the legacy of Benito Mussolini and fascist Italy. It is enormous. It looks like what the Greeks would have built if they'd had steam power, an Art Deco bent, and money being thrown at them left and right. Luckily, I found the bus and got on, and everything was alright. Still, I very much miss my car and the flexibility it provides.

I will also remark on the irony of well made plans that go awry because of one critical error at the start. In Chemistry, in high school, my lab partner Brian and I would have grades that would be only slightly separate - mine being the lower one. The reason for this is because during the long mathematical calculations integral to chemistry, I would often make some small mistake at the start, and that would throw off everything. I'd come to almost the correct conclusion, having followed all the steps, but it's that one mistake at the start that screws you. This story I use as an analogy for my problem that upon arriving at the Milan airport. Having suffered hauling my bags across town, sweating with fear, repacking all my things carefully so my checked bag weighed only 15 kilos (and thus redistributing the remaining 25 either on my person or in the carryon; a true beach of a task) and finally striding over to the check-in counter, I am told that I have booked the flight for January 21st, and not December 21st. The feeling I felt there was similar to having someone jump out at you to scare you, only you feel it all in slow motion. In my brain the process was something like, "Oh." Followed by, "Well, this is interesting." Followed by, "Very interesting indeed." Followed by a pause. Followed by a chorus of wrathful oaths against God, my own shortsightedness, this horrible can't of an airline, and just for good measure Silvio Berlusconi who was no doubt behind it all. My brain is essentially thrown off track. Like anything that goes of track, whether a brain or a car or what have you, the immediate idea is to get back on track, regardless of what damage or consequences might follow. For a driver, the risk is overcorrecting and swerving into oncoming traffic or flipping the car. For my brain, it was not thinking about anything except getting another ticket, hang the cost. Luckily, there were still spots available. Unluckily, the cost was... not small. Sufficed to say that my Christmas present from all of you will be this short hop over the Alps. After that humiliation, I still had to trudge through security carrying fifty-five pounds of crap, straining to hold everything up, sweating like a heavy-weight boxer, and still in mental shock over my error in calculation. I am now onboard the plane to Berlin. Tomorrow, I will meet Anja and begin my two-week sojourn in Germany. I plan on getting to my hostel, sleeping for an inordinately long time, and then going to meet her. The moral of this story is to be careful to check and double-check your work, lest you make an error that compounds the end result. Besides these hellish disasters, I have enjoyed my brief glimpse of Italy a lot. It looks good, it sounds good, it tastes good, and what I had intended to be a check off the list of countries visited has only made me realize how much more there is and to want to come back and explore it more. Buon notte, gutten nacht, and good night!

P.S. (from Berlin) My friend Ping also tells me that the box of various things - including my rock and map collection - that she had offered to bring back to the US for me ended up being sent with our friend Paige, who was told she couldn't bring it in her carry-on. Yeah, I should have mailed it all. Yeah, I should've left explicit instructions in the case it couldn't be mailed. Perhaps I just shouldn't collect things. I think if I find an open fire somewhere, I'll go throw in my film and my camera too. Great. Fuck you, life. So, I guess the important lesson is never, ever leave home. Also, never, ever entrust things to other people. Also, just in general goddamnit all to hell.

I've now had a little bit more time to breathe deep and realize that, as Dad recently put it, I am still alright. I'm healthy (if a little disheveled), I'm not lost, nor am I freezing, and I am lucky to be where I am. I think I am just a bit too tired to express myself as best as I can.

Gone!

2008-12-18T11:38:00.002-06:00

I'm all packed, have said my goodbyes, am still wondering how I'll fool the RyanAir people into thinking my 40-odd kilos of baggage are actually 25 (needless to say, I'll be looking like a cold, cold hobo for about three hours on Sunday), and will soon miss this lovely place and all its lovely people.

For the next two weeks, I'll be in Berlin (or around Berlin). If you need to get a hold of me, call my US cellphone. It should be the surest way to reach me, but please save it for an emergency. It's expensive. If you just want to get a hold of me, e-mail or facebook will be checked on a semi-regular basis. Other than that, I will be out of normal communications until the end of January! Expect intermittent letters, postcards and the like. Au revoir! Je vous aime lots and lots.

Going, going...

2008-12-15T10:14:00.002-06:00

Today is Monday the 15th of December. In Montpellier, it is currently a full 50 degrees warmer than in Minnesota. And it's only 44F here. It's strange to be in a place where fall lasts until the winter solstice. Anyways, enough of the weather.

I finished my last paper, took my last exam, and now I am in the process of packing, weighing, throwing things out, picking things up, putting things down, picking them up again, looking things over, asking myself 'Why the hell do I still have this,' then taking the next half hour to come up with some excuse to keep it, bundling things, unbundling things, putting things in boxes one way, putting things in boxes another way, putting the boxes inside other boxes, putting the boxes in suitcases, putting myself in boxes, eating the boxes, wondering 'Why the hell did I just eat a box? Now I have to get a new box', getting a new box, slapping my wrist when I try to eat the new box, vomiting up the old box, wondering if I can still use it, deciding against it, fiddling with the new box, putting stuff in it, taking stuff out of it, throwing it out the window causing a car to swerve into the side of a building, taking out a load-bearing wall, leading to the collapse of half the building which then ruptures the gas line that conflagrates into a five-alarm fire, deciding I should just make do with the old box, piecing it together with duct tape, trying to fit things in it despite looking like and being a lump of wet cardboard, being screamed at by my host family that the neighborhood is on fire, ignoring them as I devise an ingenious plan to construct a new box out of an mismatched sock and three square meters of vinyl I found in the alleyway, and finally deciding to give up as the floor supporting all my things has just collapsed into the growing blaze, consuming them in a fireball and burning off my eyebrows.

In all seriousness though, I am almost done with being in France. Contrary to my last post, I'm not all that bothered by it anymore. A lot of people have already left, and I'll be leaving in a few days anyways. True, I will likely not see a lot of these people for a while, if ever, but c'mon, I can't worry about every little thing. I can barely summon the energy to finish this entry without giving up. It took me an hour to write this paragraph! Gah! More later. Maybe.

This Damn Country

2008-12-04T18:11:00.001-06:00

I distinctly remember my first day in Montpellier - I had just left my British-commune hostel in Carcassonne, I was fast running out of money (which I continue to do), and I was feeling aloof, mixed with homesick and arrogant. I had no interest in "mixing" with the other Americans when I finally arrived at our dorm housing - having hauled my 80-odd pounds of luggage up a hill for two hours in the rain. I had no interest in becoming friends with them. I was quite content to just do my own thing. Oh how silly I was back then.

I've spent four months in Europe. This is the longest I have been away from home. Through necessity as much as desire (read: desire as much as necessity) I've found myself transforming my surroundings into a second home. It is hard to live in a place and not invest yourself into it if you want to have a normal time. It is one thing to be traveling all the time and enjoy a city or not. It is a different thing altogether to make yourself at home in a new place. Much to my shock, I'm finding I will miss Montpellier, my life here, and my friends.

For months now, I've been hearing people say how much they miss me, and how they want me to come back home, and even - though I don't believe it - that life just isn't the same without me. It's touching to hear that, granted, but it was a temporary thing - I'd be back in a long time, but I'd be back. Something lately has been happening, a thing that I did not anticipate and for which I had not planned. I hear, now and again, my friends who will be staying or going elsewhere telling me how much they will miss me.

Well damnit, I will miss everyone I've had the privilege of knowing here too! It has been a long four months, but in many ways it's still been altogether too short. And the difficult thing is that while going back to my home and Macalester and all the people who are there will be returning to a fixed thing, I can never again return to the same Montpellier. The people who are here are here only for a finite time, and then they'll uproot like me and take off for the four corners. That makes it particularly sad, that I will never be at a bar or in class or even walking down the street and see someone I know (let's face it, I can count the number of French friends I have on my fingers, and none of them even live in Montpellier). Thirteen days from now, I'll be off to see the rest of Europe, and while I have to good fortune to have some wonderful friends waiting for me along the way, it will nonetheless be bittersweet to leave. Humph.

While I could say "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," I find that to be campy quite frankly. Instead, I'd rather say, oh, I don't know, "Here's to all of you, the fine memories, and everything in between!"

Chapter 75: In Which Our Intrepid Adventurer Sees Green

2008-11-28T16:30:00.031-06:00

Or, How I Typed So Much My Hands Nearly Fell Off

In consulting the map of Europe, I am fast finding myself crossing off more and more countries of which I had had no intention of visiting prior to arriving on this continent. Switzerland, Belgium, and now, Ireland. My motive for going to this island was two-fold. One, my good friend from high school, Anna Haugen, is studying there in Galway, and I'd not seen her for several months. Second, I was weary of the French language, French Catholicism, and French limestone formations. So, instead, I decided to hit up their Irish counterparts.

(Figure 1: Meg Young - without whom none of these pictures would be possible)

For reasons surpassing my knowledge, southern France has a number of small cities with even smaller airports that are perfect for budget airlines. The one in question is the ever-infamous RyanAir, which flies direct from Carcassonne, about 120 kilometers from Montpellier, to not one but several locations around Ireland, including Shannon - the closest airport to Galway (Okay, so Galway has its own airport, but I couldn't very well get there, now could I?) At Anna's request and my own desire, I decided to take a long weekend and go to visit her. Leaving Friday morning, I walked to the train to take a bus to take a plane to take a bus to walk to find Anna. It took about 10 hours, and since Anna doesn't have a cell phone, I was more or less going on faith that she would a) be waiting for me, and b) that I would be able to find her. After a few minor hiccups (I came in at a different bus station than she had anticipated), we met up, checked into our hostel, and since it was still relatively early, set out on the town.

(Figures 2 & 3: Christmas Decorations; The Arc de Triomphe de Montpellier)

Galway is a city on the Atlantic coast of Ireland - just about as close to the United States as you can get, although it's at the same latitude as Newfoundland - and has a population of about 70,000 people. It is distinctly small, but like Montpellier, is nonetheless lively and interesting. I suspect cities like Fargo or Cedar Rapids would have a far more interesting life in Europe. I'm afraid I can't tell you much about Galway, as I didn't see a whole lot of it myself. I was there for a three nights in total, but only about half a day. That first night, Anna showed me about and took me to get fish and chips. Fish and chips, for those who might not know, is essentially batter-fried fish and fries. The Irish love it. The English love it. I don't. I don't like white fish in the first place, and the addition of batter and a hefty 8.50 euro bill doesn't make it any more appetizing. They didn't even include tartar sauce. After that, we walked around, since fish and chips is a heavy meal and doesn't sit well for the uninitiated. We ended up walking the length of the main shopping street and then out to the pier that juts out into Galway Bay. At night, there is not much to see except a bunch of swans, but it was neat nonetheless. We walked back inland and went to a bar, where Anna introduced me to a real Guinness. Indeed, what we all think of as the classical Irish drink (aside from whiskey) is better in its homeland than abroad. In part, the Irish manufacturing techniques that allow Guinness to be brewed to its particular flavor (a bit like coffee, a bit like tea, not a lot like beer) are forbidden elsewhere in the world, and thus the stuff that is exported is not the same as in Ireland - similar, but noticeably different and inferior once you've tried them both. And, at 4.10 euros, it was one of the cheapest things in the country!

(Figure 4: my flight aboard RyanAir - perhaps the first flight in years I've been on that wasn't full!)

Ireland's joining the European Union was perhaps the greatest thing to have ever happened to the country - even more so than the departure of the snakes, the British, or U2 to the global music scene. Its economy in the 1990s and early 2000s saw unparalleled growth, one of the fastest and most profitable booms in all of Europe. This is partly due to its original misfortunes - the effects of the Great Potatoe Famine, coupled with four centuries of British oppression, left the Irish economy based almost entirely out of heavy manufacturing and industrial production. This turned into a boon when the rest of Europe and the United States began to experience mass deindustrialization in the 1970s and continuing to this day. What had been a crippling absence for Ireland now became an opportunity not to be burdened by a crashing market, and it quickly and smartly made its way towards transitioning its economy straight from primary economic production to tertiary and quaternary economic sectors. In other words, from farm to finance without the furnace in between. One problem has been Ireland's lack of population. The Republic of Ireland is a country of about 4 and a half million people - most of whom still live in a rural setting, a situation which is unheard of in almost every other country of Western Europe. Had it not suffered the mass emigration and population depletion following the famine, it would have anywhere from 20 to 40 million people - Dublin would be more like London in size, and much of the Emerald Isle would be blacktopped and urbanized. Regardless of whether or not having a low population has been good for the environment, it was never particularly beneficial for the economy, and so the Irish, once the economic pariahs of Europe, have begun to accept guest workers - mainly Polish - in record numbers. In Dublin, nearly one out of every five signs was in Polish, it seemed.

(Figures 5-11: Mr. O'Connell, with a gift from the pigeons on his head - and the Spire; Anna's friends outside a pub; the quays of the River Liffey; looking south on Gardiner Street; a sign in Gaellic (Irish) and English; The Bank of Sciretland)

The economic boom has given the Irish a lot of cash and their joining the eurozone has been good, too. However, the increase in wealth along with the only-too-true stereotypes of the Irish being abusive, dysfunctional alcoholics has lead the Irish government to raise taxes - especially Sin Taxes - markedly. Some say it goes a long way to cutting down the rates of alcoholism, traffic-related deaths, abuse, homelessness, and so on, others say it is crippling to the lower classes who are most affected by regressive taxes. Whatever might be said by whomever, the fact is - Ireland is expensive! I will not share with you how much money was lost traveling to this small, lovely and wallet-shrinking land, but needless to say that despite my penny-wise planning and actions, simply being there is in some ways pound-foolish. Thank you, as always, to my many benefactors in the Banks of Help Peter's Broke Self Out. Enough of that, though. I must also give a thank you to my friend Meg Young, who graciously agreed to lend me her digital camera for the trip - since she herself could not go to Amsterdam the weekend I went to Ireland, and thus had no pressing need for it. It is thanks to her that I am able to bring to you, in glorious technicolor, Ireland! Also, I've now single-handedly beat my own record for longest post by outdoing my trip to Geneva.

After returning to our hostel from the bar, Anna and I consulted that it would be best to leave for Dublin as early in the morning as possible so as to give us the most amount of time to get around, and because she had another group of friends from her college coming in to Dublin that morning. So, we went to sleep and woke up the next morning around 5:45 AM, got dressed, scrounged a bit of breakfast, went to the ATM, hopped on to the bus and conked out almost the whole rest of the way. Dublin and Galway are on opposite sides of the short axis of the island of Ireland, and are about 430 kilometers apart from each other (about 4 hours on the bus). We arrived in Dublin around 10 in the morning to a sky of broken clouds with just a bit of sun peaking in. Dublin, like Galway, is further north than any point in the continental US, and thus the sun rises around 8 AM and sets around 4 PM. Having two-thirds of the day in darkness is, even for me, disorienting. Montpellier is almost at the exact same latitude as Minnesota, and so the decrease of daylight here has, at some basic level, left me unfazed. Going north though was absolutely bizarre. Still, during those 8 hours, it was quite pleasant. I checked into my hostel, a small B&B run by a man from the Mauritius Islands who shook my hand when I told him I was an American, and Anna into hers. I had tried to find couchsurfing hosts, but alas, my efforts were for naught. We met up with her friends at her hostel, and then proceeded to wander aimlessly for a few hours, as groups of seven people are wont to do.

I do not like traveling with more than one or two other people for long periods of time. I've found that one person is excellent at making up his or her mind, two people compromise well, three people is a nice democratic assembly, four is where cracks start to form, and any group more than four should be rightly considered a mob and thus swiftly put to death. Still, I had a nice time. Anna's friends all go to Saint John's University or its sister school, Saint Benedict's College. They are both located about an hour and a half north of the Twin Cities and are home to perhaps the most stereotypical Midwesterners - polite, mild-mannered, good-natured people who smile like it were a sport and are overwhelmingly likely to be blonde, blue-eyed, and descended from Scandinavians. Even though I am on a program here in Montpellier based out of the University of Minnesota, the hard, gritty life of the city has blackened the hearts of many of my companions, and so it was almost shocking to be amongst people with whom I'd grown up and from whose stock I came.

First, we went to see Trinity College, a landmark in Dublin, mainly because it takes up like a fifth of the city and is the principal source of Irish intellectualism in, well, the world. It was cool. And, it houses the Book of Kells, which we declined to see. One of the College's most infamous Headmasters, Anna told me, had once said, regarding the admission of women to the school, that he would let women in over his dead body. Three weeks later, he was dead and buried under one of the principal entrances to the school, whereupon all the newly admitted women could fulfill his request to the letter. After seeing the college, the mob decided it was hungry, so we began to migrate towards the nearby shopping district, whose name escapes me and thus must not be important. After looking through a number of places to see if they could seat seven (there are no Denny's in Europe), and if their prices were acceptable (again, no Denny's), we finally settled on a place called Sheehan's. One thing I find particularly lovely about Ireland that you don't so much find in France - for obvious reasons - is that all of the shops, bars and restaurants are usually named after the Irish family that started it: Murray's, Murphy's, O'Connell's, O'Kinnan's, O'Donnell's, Skerrit, Finnegan, O'Leary, Hernandez (yes, it is a traditional Irish name), and so on and so forth. The French are not big on last names on businesses. I think this has to do with their socialist nature, and the fact that if they had their way, everyone would just be named after the town they were born in - or lorded over. Sheehan's was nice, but I was still trying to adhere to a budget, so I got the soup and sandwich, which while tasty, was not exactly traditional Irish cuisine. If we talked about anything, it has since exited from my mind like sand being washed from the beach. After lunch, we decided we needed to get some things, drop some things off, do this, do that, and so we more or less broke cohesion, and planned to meet at the Hugh Lane Contemporary Art Museum at about 4. Before completely splitting up though, we all went into Carroll's, a store whose sole existence is to sell Irish things. If you think it could have a relation to Ireland, and it can be manufactured in bulk in Vietnam, you can find it at Carroll's. It is not uncommon to find two Carroll's on the same block, and there are several throughout the city. I decided against getting anything. Or did I...?

(Figures 12-17: Anna Haugen, my American counterpart, in charge of the conquest of Ireland; an example of the 'modernization' of Dublin; Trinity College courtyard, looking east)

Meeting up near the Hugh Lane, a few of the girls traveling with us wanted to go see the Irish writers museu... wait! Now I remember what we did before! Crap! Rewind! We went to the Irish National Archeological Museum before hand. Which was cool! So cool! It's devoted to the archeological history of Ireland (in case you couldn't guess by the confusing and circumlocutory name) and doesn't suck, which I feared it would. Ireland's past is fascinating, improved in no small part because so much of it is preserved - literally. The peat bogs of Ireland have been the sources of some of the most revealing archeological discoveries in the world. The museum begins at the start with the Stone Age history of Ireland, and from display to display it is perfectly visible to see the evolution of humanity - from the use of stones to the production of tools and weapons to the I don't know what to call it materialization of religion beliefs, and then the similar evolution of civilization through the copper, bronze and iron ages. It culminates with the history of Viking Ireland and just up to the end of the 18th century. And my oh my the stuff they have. The ancient Celts were master metalworkers, especially with gold. And, you even get to see their contemporaries - the bogmen. The bogmen are literally men and women who had died in the bogs and as a result of the complete lack of air and light had become mummified within their own skin. Only three were on display, but one of them - of whom remained the torso, arms, and head - still had a full head of rust-colored hair, eyelids, and fingernails. He lived around the 6th century B.C. For over 2,500 years old, he was doing fairly well, in my opinion. The National Geographic did an exposé on them when they were first discovered, I believe in the late-90s or early 00's. All quite cool. (And the museums in Ireland are free! Yeah!)

(Figure 18: The Clonycavan Man - Photo from the National Geographic)

Back to the Hugh Lane. Outside the Hugh Lane, we were... attacked? Accosted, by a five-year-old girl who kept trying to push and shove Anna and her friend Kate. Her older sisters looked on, yelling at us to get out of here. Anna explained that they were most likely Travelers, or more stereotypically, Irish Gypsys (Pikeys - such as those seen in the film Snatch). Ireland, like most other countries in Western Europe, has a housing shortage, and unfortunately its economic boom has meant that the housing market is a sellers world. Marginalized groups like Travelers, homeless, or immigrants, have found it increasingly difficult to live in a country with a one-sided relationship with them - they need Ireland, but Ireland doesn't necessarily need them. It is an unfortunate but true state of affairs, and I hope the Irish are doing a better job of combating social inequality than are the French. Back yet again to the Hugh Lane. The Hugh Lane is a contemporary art museum, but unlike most contemporary art museums in the world, it is one of, if not THE oldest. It was opened in 1908 by Mr. Lane, who felt that artists deserved to be appreciated within their lifetimes and furthermore whose works did not need to wait until their producers had died to be enshrined in a museum setting. While we perhaps take for granted the notion of living artists - Damien Hurst or Lucien Freud for example - back then, only a century ago, if you weren't dead, your works were unworthy at best. Lane decided to consecrate the works of contemporary artists in his museum, starting with his own collection of Impressionist paintings by the likes of Monet, Degas and Manet. However, the general public was uproarious when his museum opened, and in a fit, he took his paintings from it and gave them to the National Gallery in London. After things quieted down, it was his intention to give them back to his gallery, but his untimely death in 1915 - he died on the Lusitania no less - and a signed, dated but not witnessed copy of his will decreeing the latter and the official version giving the paintings to the National Gallery left the whole enterprise in doubt. As a result of diplomatic actions between the two museums, they did something equally unprecedented, and decided to share the paintings on a rotating basis between the two - switching every two years. Despite that no doubt fascinating bit of historical trivia, a contemporary art museum that has been open for a hundred years thus has been collecting contemporary art for that time, and much of what we have come to consider as very mainstream was enshrined on their walls under the auspices of artistic radicalism. Like 99% of contemporary art, I found the stuff being produced by artists alive today to be contrived and stupid. Sorry, but I did.

(Figure 19: An installation outside the Hugh Lane - a walking woman. Neat!)

But, one of the artists had, as part of his exhibit, a couple hundred sheets of paper, 5'x3' or so, with a black border and a red center, free for the taking - encouraged even. So, I being the opportunistic American, took one with me. Anna told me I was being an idiot. Anna and I have a relationship based on one principal: Whenever one of us is right and the other is wrong, the other will stop at nothing to prove that this is not the case. 90% of the time, I am wrong and have to defend myself, which I do to the point of excessive stubbornness. It was in this model that I found myself for the next four days carting around a ridiculously large rolled up sheet of red and black paper, just to prove her wrong. In fact, so far did this argument escalate, that I bet her that if I could get it back to the United States without doing it harm, she would be forced to put it up in her dorm room once she got back to college. I will say this - I've managed to get it back to France without it suffering damage. After leaving the museum, the big roll of red paper in tow (awkward to handle, no less, as I had nothing to keep it from unrolling, and Anna absolutely refused to lend me two of her hair binders to keep it rolled up), we all set off to another Dublin landmark - the Jameson Whiskey Distillery. Let's face it, it is impossible to discuss Irish history without acknowledging the rich presence of alcohol in nearly every aspect of their culture. There hasn't been a famous Irish writer that wasn't at the bottom of a bottle six days out of seven, and if asked to describe the five adjectives most associated with Ireland, you'll probably get 'green, potatoes, catholicism, leprechauns, and whiskey'. Maybe I am biased, maybe I am a politically-incorrect dick. Still, I beg you to consider.

(Figures 20-24: Reuse of the distillery space as condos and restaurants on the ground floor; Anna and her friend Ashley; the Mash; the Stills; five examples of whiskey at different ages - bottom left to upper right, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 12 years, 18 years. Note the different quantities. This is due to evaporation over time from within the barrel, called the "Angel's Share")

In my own defense, I would rather be spending time in a museum than touring a distillery, and Dublin has quite a number of museums the likes of which I did not have the time to visit (Montpellier has one museum, and not a good one at that, so I haven't had much of a chance at cultural whatchamacallit here). While waiting for the tour to begin, I looked around the gift shop, which naturally sold a lot of whiskey, whiskey related products, and clothes bearing the company name. They even had a special display of their most expensive items - such as a set of every bottle of their Middleton Special 18-year-old Whiskey from 1976 to today, yours for only 50,000 euro. The tour started off with a video on the life of John Jameson, which made him look like a saint, when in fact I've since learned he was a domineering bastard who treated his employees like crap and of whose 16 children only 9 or so made it to adulthood. At the end of the video, the tour guide asked for volunteers for the whiskey tasting at the end of the tour. Perhaps because I had a giant red and black tube with me, I was selected, along with two of Anna's other friends. We went throughout the distillery - which has not been operational since the 1970s when production demands forced it to be moved to County Cork and thus the facility in Dublin now serves as a museum, restaurant and condo complex - seeing the various stages of how whiskey is made. About as complex as beer, slightly more complex than wine, and far more complex than moonshine, it's basically heating grain, soaking it, mashing it, boiling the alcohol off, distilling it, and then aging it. Jameson's claim to fame is that it is distilled three times, making it 160-proof and blinding for all except residents of Appalachia over the age of 80, perhaps named Ol' Buck or General Sherman. In order to meet legal requirements and, you know, not kill people, they water it down and then set it to age in matured oak barrels, which means the barrels they use have already held some other kind of alcohol - either port, sherry or brandy I think were the three. The earliest whiskey can be taken out is after three years, and it is rarely aged longer than 18. Of course, they tell you this, but then you notice the bottles with the priciest tags were usually made before my birth and then some. After this, the few of us selected for the tasting were to the bar along with everyone else - who got a free drink as part of the tour - and we were set down with a shot of scotch, Jameson and an American whiskey - the other two being Johnny Walker Black at 12 years old, and a similarly aged Jack Daniels. The difference between the three is that American whiskeys are distilled once and aged in new oak barrels but are otherwise the same to Irish whiskey, and the barley of the scotch is smoked and not roasted, and distilled twice, aged in similar barrels to the Irish whiskey. I relay all of this to you for the purposes of information, and nothing more.

We left the Distillery and made our way to a pub for dinner. I decided it was time to try Irish cooking, so I ordered the Irish stew, which is just lamb, potatoes, a few other vegetables, and a thick broth. It tasted good, however I suspect I could've had a better meal at different establishments. As the sun sets bizarrely early, we started eating around 7, and being Americans, finished at 7:30. The next three hours were spent reminding myself why I decided to go to Macalester and not any other school. After dinner, we all walked back to our hostels, and I bid Anna and her friends a good night. I wonder sometimes, in writing these long, long, looooooong posts, if any of you will ever travel again, or if you're just living vicariously through me. In either case, I'm happy to disgorge all this information on to the world. It keeps me from, you know, doing homework. I still get it done, of course! Never fear. I'd take up travel writing, but really all I'm doing is copying and pasting what I've heard and learned from reading signs, listening to guides, listening to friends, inferring for myself, remembering from books, articles or heresay, and occasionally, inventing. This, mashed with my own personal commentary, a dislike for socialism, and an irreverence towards the number of churches on this continent, and voila! Oh, speaking of that, Anna had told me before I came that, since she goes to a Catholic school, is on a program from said Catholic school, but is not herself a Catholic, she has seen just about every church in Ireland on their many, many excursions. She warned me that we would not, under any circumstances, be going to see churches, and if I wanted to, I would be doing so solo. Anna's description of her program made me grateful for everything that I have in Montpellier. She enjoys it, but as she put it, she is with 28 of the same people in a cabin complex that is part of a hotel in a small village about 20 minutes outside of Galway. Their professors come to them, three days a week, and they essentially spend every part of every day together. There is little privacy, and worst of all she shares her room. I think if I had to do that, I'd probably go bonkers after a few days. Living with Joe last year, despite our amicable friendship and us getting along swimmingly, saw moments when, hell, we just needed privacy. So, merci famille de Belair for leaving me in peace as I wish it. And merci my own family for, well, everything, as usual.

My second day in Dublin was just with Anna, since her friends all had to return to Cannes in France where they study abroad. I woke up, took a shower, and when I came back, the only other person in my hostel dorm room, a middle-aged black man from the Caribbean, said to me without opening his eyes, "Your breakfast is there." At first, I had no idea what he had said, and wasn't sure if he was talking in his sleep or not. It was a bit strange. Breakfast was nice - the Irish understand how to make breakfast, unlike the French, who kind of treat it as an afterthought that maybe one is hungry when one wakes up in the morning. After that, I went to meet Anna at her hostel and we set off for the National Museum of Art, which Anna was quite excited to see. The museum however, wouldn't open until noon, so we decided to walk through Saint Stephen's Green, a park to the south of the River Liffey. For all of you Minnesotans dealing with the snowbound Earth, or for Grandma Anne and Judy and just having an absence of the color green, Ireland is shockingly so. Even in late November, everything is still green - minus the most of the trees which've lost their leaves. Still though, all of the grass - and there is lots of it - is still green, and for reasons surpassing my understanding, there are still flowers in bloom. Now, where was I? Ah yes, so after walking through Saint Stephen's Green, we decided to get some coffee - or rather, she would drink coffee and I would get hot chocolate, as I've yet to develop a strong affinity to coffee. We go to a little coffee shop and sit down, and while we're there, a young man comes in, looks at the menu and leaves again. While doing so, he forgot to latch the door behind him, and this woman sitting by the door looks over her shoulder in disgust: "Bastard!" she exclaims loud enough for everyone in the small shop to hear, "What a stupid bastard!" And then goes back to her coffee. Anna and I snickered to ourselves.

(Figures 25-27: Saint Stephen's Green; flowers therein; the Office of the Taoiseach - essentially the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland)

The National Museum was neat. I checked my bright green umbrella I'd bought before leaving from the 2 euro store in Montpellier, and the kind Irish coat check man asked me where I was from, etc. and hoped I would have a nice visit. The paintings in the museum that pertain to Ireland are all from periods in time when it wasn't exactly proper to, you know, show that they were an impoverished nation under the heel of British rule, so a lot of the paintings look exactly the same as other European ones of similar eras - the 18th and 19th centuries. There were a few pieces from modern artists about Ireland, mainly portraits of contemporary Irish figures like Mary Robinson and others whose names I completely forget. Anna said that at this point that she'd been studying Irish history for the last three months, she was beginning to recognize the faces and histories of the people in the portraits. After the museum, Anna and I went wandering for a little bit, trying to find a place for lunch. Anna was getting grumpy about walking (Yeah, nice try. I've been walking about at minimum a kilometer a day since coming to France, on top of the several I usually walk when traveling) but wouldn't stop at any of the places we saw, deciding they were too pricey. Anna and I have had practice dealing with one another, so I simply let her vent and in exchange, I just walked quietly. She felt better after that. We ended up getting that traditional Irish meal - kebabs. After that, we went to our hostels and checked out. Anna had originally thought we'd be staying in Dublin for two nights, but changed her mind so that we would return to Galway that evening. Having already paid though for two nights, she did not believe that she could cancel her reservation, especially after this thought was confirmed by the night staff at her hostel who told her so the evening prior. Upon returning to her hostel and asking the desk clerk for the day shift, he informed her that, yes, it was possible to cancel for that evening... had she told them the night before. As it stood, the housekeeping staff had already finished and they were no longer able to refund her. She was quite pissed at this, and asked them if there was anything that could be done. The sympathetic clerk agreed to refund her half, and she thanked him appreciatively for this. We then high-tailed it to our bus to Galway, with moments to spare. If Anna thinks she is lucky, she's got nothing on Martha.

(Figures 28-32: The equivalent of the Irish Supreme Court Building, whose exact name I forget and can't find on Wikipedia; a nice brick building - France doesn't have brick buildings in the South; Christchurch Cathedral; From a different angle; Dublin Castle - not exactly Buckingham)

The bus ride to Galway was uneventful - the sun set about fifty minutes into the ride, and that was all I saw until we arrived back in Galway. Anna was still not in the mood to walk much, so after checking in to our hostel, decided we would have kebab again for dinner as well. I, decided that I'd rather not have whatever was left of my vote stripped from me, told her that yes, we could have kebab, but like hell were we going to sit any longer than necessary in a neon-lit dingy upstairs dining room of an Irish kebab shop. She seemed to accept these terms, and we went to a pub instead. Anna and I have had a running dialogue for all the time we have known each other, which primarily revolves around around discussions of each others families, our lives, and various (dys)functions, and so on and so forth. Anna and I also have rather similar personalities - we're self-assured almost to arrogance, are quite bright, interested in any and all things and thus indecisive in what we want to do with our lives, don't appreciate people who are, for lack of a better word, idiots, and have an often scathingly sarcastic reparté between one another. In some ways, it's nice that she and I only manage to see one another every six to eight months. I enjoy her company immensely, but, all good things in moderation. Thus, we spent most of the night talking about what had happened in our lives since we last saw one another - I think it was in the spring or possibly last winter. A fair bit of time. Around midnight, it being a sunday, the pub was closing, and we headed back to our hostel to sleep.

(Figure 33: Dusk over the landscape outside Dublin)

The next morning, I awoke, had a bit of breakfast with Anna, ran a quick errand with her, and bid her a fond farewell. It was extremely pleasant to see her, and I enjoyed her showing me around Ireland quite a bit. It wasn't that she was leaving at that moment, but rather that I was - I had booked myself onto a tour of the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher, which are two of the most prominent geological features in Western Ireland and in fact, Western Europe. The tour was sparsely peopled at first, but I did meet Ross, an Australian around my own age who'd been working in London for six months until September, and who was now waiting until the beginning of December, touring Europe before flying back to Sydney. He, like ALL the other Australians I've met (it's like six or seven now), works in outdoor activites - namely, instructing teens in stuff like that. Don't ask me to elaborate, I dunno myself. Still, the Australians seem to be a people who cannot survive without being outdoors, doing sports, extreme or otherwise, or traversing the outback, or mining in the outback, or showing people around the outback, and so on. Of all the people I've met, they seem to be the most well travelled. If you'll recall Camilo, the Australian-Colombian couchsurfer my friend Rachel hosted, he had been away from Adelaide for over a year and had started his journey in Thailand, traveling overland the whole length of the Eurasian landmass to France. Go figure.

(Figures 34 & 35: Anna and I on the edge of Eyre Square, Galway; The Skeffington Bar)

The Burren is a region just south of Galway about 250 kilometers squared and they are essentially limestone mountains. It is unique because the size of the landscape - all limestone - and the age has cracked the landscape, and into these fissures that have formed has flowed ages and ages worth of water. Imagine a waffle iron, or an ice cube tray. The landscape looks like that, and into their crisscrossing fissures - called grykes - accumulate dirt and sand over the years, and provide the perfect environment for plants to grow. Because the plants grow in spaces that are enclosed by rock - which is easily heated by the sun - they exist in a microclimate that is able to support plant types found nowhere else in Ireland. There are over 700 different types of plants in the Burren, which means nothing to me, but apparently it is a large number for such a small area. Even more interestingly is that the Burren is host to plants from the Mediterranean, the British Isles, and even the Arctic. Cool! I nearly climbed one of the mountains during the free time we had while the rest of the tour went and saw a cave (I've seen plenty of caves at this point) but I didn't have enough time to reach the summit. After touring the area, we went and had lunch at a little pub - it's true that Ireland is exceedingly rural, and thus all the more beautiful - and then went on to the Cliffs of Moher (don't pronounce the 'h' - almost like 'more') The cliffs themselves are the highest sea cliffs in Europe, at 700 feet high. Believe me, that's high. They look out over the ocean, and on a clear day, you can see Russia, especially if you're standing on Sarah Palin's roof. Okay, maybe not. It was extremely windy, and while there is a small section of the cliffs above which is paved and designed for tourists, it's small and sucks, and there is a well-worn path all along the five miles of the coast past which one must pass the sign below. All in all, it was very neat, and beautiful. And, for a change, I can show you what it was like!

(Figures 36-42: Ross, the Australian; a cow atop a Burren mountain; looking up at a Burren mountain; Irish countryside; looking out over Galway Bay; a castle whose name I forget; again looking up at a Burren mountain)

(Figures 43-47: looking down a Burren mountain; looking sideways across a Burren mountain; there are cows in these here hills; looking over the valley between the mountains; yours truly)

(Figures 48-60: along the Atlantic seacost near Fanore; the same; the Cliffs of Moher; YOUR PITIFUL SIGNS CANNOT STOP US, MWAHAHAHA!!!; looking south; looking inland towards Lahinch; another view towards the south; those people looks small for a reason; there was a real danger of me being blown off the cliff while this picture was being taken - 60-100 mph winds are not uncommon; looking north along the length of the cliffs; this is what 700 feet down looks like; and for my next act, when I turn around, these cliffs will disappear!; okay... I am not pleased that my magic trick didn't work)

After hopping back on the bus, we drove back inland to a neolithic dolmen burial site, which was a lot smaller than tourist fliers make it look. After that point, the sun had set and there was nothing else we could see. We drove back into Galway, I said goodbye to Ross, and then went to bed. Oh wait, no I didn't, because even though the sun had set, it was still only 5:30. With NOTHING else to do, I got on the internet, checked my e-mail, and tried to find a way to pass the next four hours until it would be appropriate to sleep. I decided to go to the creperie for which the hostel offers a discount, and of course got lost trying to look for it. When I finally did find it, I realized - as I swore to myself - that I had left the coupon for the discount back in my hostel room. Even paying full freight, it wasn't that expensive. Perhaps it was good that this sequence of events passed exactly as it had, because as I was waiting for my crepe, the LARGEST DOG I'VE EVER SEEN, came up to the door. Thus, I met Rover, the Irish Wolfhound. He was extremely gentle and owned by a pair of I don't want to assume anything but probably homeless people who'd let him to wander for a bit. He smelled food, and so I was his new best friend. As he followed me around and I fed him bits of chicken, EVERYONE on the main shopping street was stopping, looking at the dog in awe. I got so many people asking me 'can we pet your dog?', 'your dog is so beautiful!' and so on, and had to explain that he wasn't mine. After I'd finished and given him all I could, he went off, and so did I. As I was walking back up the street, I found him laying down with his owners. I told them he'd been following me, and what a nice and beautiful dog he was. His owner told me he was only seven months old, and already was about three feet high and five feet long. I suspect if he'd gotten on his hind legs, he would've been looking down at me. This little bit over with, it was still not late enough to sleep, so I decide to go write letters. In the bar Anna and I had been to the night before. Believe me, it was sad. Writing letters, by yourself, in a bar. Sometimes traveling solo does have its downs, but it was alright. I managed to get caught up on some correspondence, and it passed the time long enough for me to go to sleep.

(Figures 61-65: a megalith tomb; close-up; grykes; Rover, the Irish wolfhound - note the size in comparison to the chair; by his owners)

The next morning, I woke up, had an Irish breakfast - delicious! - , mailed my letter, saw the sea for the last time, and hopped on the bus to the Shannon airport. Ten hours later, I was back in Montpellier, a bit grimy, definitely tired, and quite hungry, but back in France. So, since it is now Thanksgiving, I would like to add that I am thankful for everyone in my family, especially my immediate family - Dad, Mom, Sam, Helen and Martha (and Grandma Anne and Judy, who deserve special mention for being as special and wonderful as they are), all of my friends, Barack Obama, the continent of Europe for being interesting, the United States for being home, and of course to the Frobozz Magic Company.

(Figures 66-69: the River Corrib as it flows into Galway Bay; the River Corrib and the Claddagh Bridge; Eyre Square; the fens near Shannon Airport)

P.S. Although now it isn't Thanksgiving anymore (it's the day after), I'm still thankful for all of the above, and while I am thankful for technology, I would be even more thankful to anyone who can speed up the process of putting pictures on this website, since seriously this took me like an hour and a half! Yikes!

Please Get Caught Up To Date

2008-11-26T17:33:00.002-06:00

Just as a general warning to the readers of my adventure journal - whomever you might be - my next post after this is going to be exceedingly long. I suggest doing stretches, and maybe taking a nap before starting.

Gah! So Much Luggage!

2008-11-26T07:51:00.002-06:00

I just got half-way through sorting my stuff. I have about two pounds of maps, tour pamphlets, subway tickets, mementos and other paper-based crap, several pounds of rocks (not the lightest hobby to have - rock collecting), all of my clothes I brought with originally, all the clothes I've had shipped, various presents of differing weights that will have to be sent off in the next few days for Christmas, my laptop, my shoes, various books (none of which I've read - I haven't been in much of a reading mood while here), papers and other assorted homeworks, letters and newspaper clippings, my cellphone charger, power adapter, a stale baguette, two wrought-iron balusters, a travel kennel for a marmot, a bathing house for two but deck chairs for three, and of course, the front half of a Trabant.

Gah! So Much Backblog!

2008-11-26T05:55:00.000-06:00

Alright, I'm like a month behind on this adventure journal now. So, I could craft a super-long entry that can only be finished by three people, starting before dawn and proceeding in four-hour shifts, producing condensed 300-or-so word summaries of what they've just read at the end of every shift to fill in the next person and continuing well into next Wednesday. Or, I could just write broadly, writing here there and everywhere like I were Jackson Pollock. Well, rather than tell you how I'm going to tell you everything I did, I'll just tell you. So, here's me, telling you.

November 1st: Wake up Brussels, early morning. Say goodbye and thank you to couchsurf host Damien, eat an apple muffin, get on the train to Bruges. Arrive in Bruges in the mid-morning. It will rain the entire day, and my umbrella will become mostly destroyed in the wind. Bruges is lovely - big towering... uh, towers. Most are churches, but not all. Picturesque, if, like, your pictures sucked. I mean, yeah it was cool, but it's not like it wasn't like EVERY OTHER MEDIEVAL CITY I'VE EVER SEEN. And it was raining. Check in at the hostel at 3. Nap. Meet a nice American girl from New York doing the Grand Tour, who is a floral design artist. We have dinner, sampling some beer, talk, and then call it quits around midnight thirty. Sleep.

November 2nd: Wake up Bruges. The sun! The sun! Finally the sun! I hadn't seen the sun in like three weeks at this point, 'cuz it'd been raining in Montpellier as well as in Belgium. Granted, the sun went away after like an hour, but I got some pretty pictures from a windmill on a hill by the edge of the city. Will have to wait for developing. Saw a church that is an exact replica of either the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Church of the Nativity. Definitely not supposed to be in Belgium, in any case. Wandered around, saw a Michelangelo, got some fries, got on the train to Gent.

Arrive Gent in the early afternoon. Cloudy again. Wander around, see a tree the map says "is the most beautiful tree in the world". It sucked. It was brownish gold and was mostly just big. I don't think Belgians have high standards. Or know what they're talking about. Saw the old Socialist Party HQ, also billed as "the most beautiful building". Not quite as sucky as the tree, but nothing to, you know, write home about, present description excluded. Went and saw the "three towers", the Cathedral, the Town Hall, and another Cathedral (which is not actually a cathedral, since it is only in really really big cities that you'd need two Cardinals - if ever). 'Twas cool. Ate lunch at a pannekoekenhuis. Tasty. Wandered around s'more. Met my host, Ramses. Very nice, very generous. Took me out for Bicky's, sort of the national Belgian fast food. Not bad. Worse than McDonalds, but once you're down at that level, it's really just scraping at the bedrock to get further. Get some beer with his friends. Bear in mind, any time I say 'got beer' or 'tried beer', I never had the same beer twice. They literally have a type of beer for every person in the country. Sleep.

November 3rd: Said goodbye to Ramses. Walked around. Saw s'more stuff. Got some interesting postcards that used to be instructional flashcards for Belgian schoolchildren in the 1950s. One of them has the skeletal structure of a pigeon in Dutch and French (the pigeon, remember, is the national bird of Belgium). Some others are quite cool. Went into the real cathedral - saw Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb. Or rather, saw a reproduction of it in the back, since the original is in a little boutique that costs 4 euros, and the repro is exactly the same and free. Got a postcard of the angels signing. They look seriously uncomfortable, or confused, or both. Left the cathedral. Wandered around. Realized that, light as I had packed, carrying around 15 lbs or so on my back for four days for about 14 hours a day is kinda rough. Sat for like an hour. Went to find some of the first houses built by Victor Horta. Sucked. I mean c'mon, it took me like half an hour to find them on the block, and when I did I was SO disappointed. Went to use the bathroom at the Design Museum, 'cuz it was free (not many public toilets in continental Europe). While I'm washing my hands, the janitor, who is cleaning up, turns to me and asks:

"Niederlander?" - meaning, am I from the Netherlands.

"No, American."

"Ah, the U S of A. [Pause] So, whose going to win?"

[Me, a little weirded out] "Obama(?)"

"I think so too. He's the real McCoy."

Let me take a moment to analyze what just happened. A Dutch-speaking janitor at the Gent Design Museum is first of all, versed enough in current affairs to know about the US elections (though, really, you'd have to be dead not to), but second of all, knows and is able to use correctly the phrase 'the real McCoy'. I was thoroughly impressed. In fact, I was laughing for like five minutes after that. After that, went to the Botanical Gardens. Neat. Called my host for the night to get the scoop. Can't remember his name anymore. I want to say it was like, Jeremy. That isn't right though. Maybe Sebastian. While I could take twenty seconds and look it up online, I won't, because I am obstinate, and let's face it, I can do a lot more with inventing names every time I need to mention Chuck over there, rather than getting the goods and confirming that he is, in fact, named Jamal. Call up Matongo, he says he'll meet me at the Town Hall around 7. Go there. Meet Cillian at 7. Yunis and I go back to his apartment, which is seriously an hour away on foot, and my back is hurting. I am not happy with you at this moment Joachim, I telepathically tell him. Hussein and I get to his place, where he lives with a young couple and their child. Apparently, lots of, whatchamacallit, roommating dealies in Belgium. While Akiro makes dinner, I take a shower, since I haven't bathed at this point in like five days. Mr. Kookaramanga and I eat dinner, he's an artist, I ask him what that's like, he tells me. I go to sleep.

November 4th: Rin Tin Tin and I take the tram to the station. I say goodbye to Benjamin, and continue on to Brussels. Floriean goes off to work. For reference, Gent is a city that can be seen in about two hours, not two days. Please leave after you find yourself saying, "Well, I could go see this other thing, or..." In fact, you've probably had a fulfilling experience if you leave the whole of Belgium at that point. Arrive Brussels - I think it's sunny. It probably was that day. It was sunny one of them days. Go see the Africa Museum first. SO COOL. First, it's like an hour outside Brussels, so you have to take the tram to get there. The tram goes through one of the only remaining forests in Belgium (sad, but true) - and when you get there, it's a neat place all about how King Leopold screwed the Congo. They have one painting in particular called 'Civilization', where a black boy is being whipped by the house slave while the white master looks on, idly. Yup, that was the 19th century for you. I have something in my teeth. I need to brush them. Also, I've been mistaken for a journalist a couple of times now by virtue of carrying a respectable-looking camera around my neck. Sweet! Took the tram back. Went to the Military Museum to finish up seeing what I hadn't. In other words, a hanger full of old airplanes. Also cool. Went up top the big Arc de Triomphe of Belgium to look out on the murky city of Brussels. Even on a clear day, you can't see more than five miles for whatever reason - pollution, smog, clouds, etc. Speaking of seeing things, did I mention seeing Atomium - the giant model of an iron atom built for the 1950-something World's Fair? It was... not as cool as I'd hoped. After that, I think I got lunch. I got moule-frites, which are mussels and fries, only the place I went to made you make them yourself, so... I don't think they were the genuine article. I ended up just fishing mussels out of a jar and eating them with fries. It wasn't bad, but I'm lucky I didn't end up hurling. Went to the Comic Book Museum. Sucked. Almost 8 euro for two floors dedicated to obscure, obscure Belgian comics and the Smurfs. Only like two panels on Tintin, which was the real reason I came. They will pay dearly for this insult. Near darkish - head to where my couchsurf host Yann lives. It's a fair way to the south of the city - not good since I gotta catch a train at 5:40AM.

Yann is nice, college student in communications - he makes dinner, we go out to meet some of his friends at a bar. On the bus, an old Congolese woman is sitting behind us wearing an Obama button. You rock, lady! Have more beer, meet his friends, all nice people, all Francophone Belgians - unlike Ramses and his friends, who spoke only Dutch and left me confused. Oh, I forgot to mention, I saw my friends Meg and Ping - from Montpellier - in Gent. That was nice. Also out with Yann and his friends was their Slovakian friend... I wanna say her name was Stephanie. She works as the representative for Slovakia for the European Commission's Youth Organization or something like that. Like a girl scout for bureaucrats. Only, she's like 30 (fooled me), and probably legitimately employed. Apparently Yann and his friends met her on vacation in Slovakia several years ago and have been friends since. She didn't speak French super well either, so it was nice that they were taking it easy for both of us. They asked me about the election, about my studies, etc. Nice people. Went back to Yann's place. Slept for four hours.

November 5th: Wake up 4:00AM. Take care of my luggage, etc. Yann walks me to the Avenue Louise, from which is a straight shot to the Boulevard Peripherique that wraps around downtown Brussels and where the train station is located. Say goodbye to him, thank him. Walk, then run for about an hour and a half to the train station. Make it with 10 minutes to spare. On my way in, I see a crowd of people standing under a TV monitor. Guess what they're looking at? Oh that's right, it's the real McCoy, who just became President-Elect the real McCoy. Collapse on the train - sleep groggily for a few hours until the customs agents come onboard and start ruffling through my stuff. Sleep more until the SNCF agent comes on to tell me I'm in the wrong seat, and ask me why I'm in the wrong seat, and scrutinize me to see if he should fine me or not. He does not. I get off at Valence, change trains, head back to Montpellier. Sleep.

So, that was my long overdue entry about my excursion to Belgium. Lovely place. If you have the chance to go, do so. Would I go back? Well, I'm not gonna say no, but I'm not gonna say 'in a heartbeat' either. Since then, what've I done? Well, aside from mundanity, not too much. Oh wait, I just got home from Ireland yesterday. So, lemme tell y'all all 'bout that!

Forgot To Mention

2008-11-16T17:35:00.001-06:00

I saw flamingos today in the saltwater swamps by the ocean. Quite neat.

My Perpetual Regret

2008-11-16T11:01:00.002-06:00

I want holes drilled into the sides of my head, right next to my eyes, facing in that same direction, and in these holes will be threaded fiber-optic video cameras that will be able to record the world as I perceive it in real time. The fact that I do not have these cameras in my head right now makes me ever disappointed that some of the things I see are merely burnt into my brain, and not into a central processing drive where I can easily retrieve them. Also, with these cameras, I could then share with you, the readers of this adventure journal, said pictures or videos. Alas. I guess I'll have to make do with my SRL and Grandma Anne's digital camera - for which, I found a repair place on Friday. The silica packets did not work, unfortunately. Hopefully, they can get it done cheaply and expediently as I would like to have it before I go to Ireland on Friday. Ah yes, I forgot to mention, I'm off to Ireland on Friday.

The Montpellier Plus

2008-11-14T12:12:00.003-06:00

The citizens of Montpellier are blessed, once a week, with the free paper "Montpellier Plus" which bills itself as the "Essential of Information" and is a compression of local news, national news, world news, and little human interest stories related to Montpellier. On my tram ride this morning, I was reading a story about two Montpellierains living in New York, and I decided it might be worthwhile to show you all a little bit of what I get every week. True, the Montpellier Plus is not Le Monde or even the more local Midi Libre, which is the French equivalent of USA Today, but... well, I'll comment afterwards. Anything in the article that was already in English, I'll asterix*. Here is the (mostly literal) English translation, care of moi:

Header: Expatriates - For these Montpellierains, France doesn't meet the standard anymore (literally, doesn't have the weight). Still, it has a standard. Touched by the myth of the American dream, from now on, their Comédie (the main plaza here), is Broadway and their scrubland, the forest of "terribly attaching" tentacular concrete and where, they say, "everything's possible"*.

New York, yes they can!*
Montpellierains in the city that never sleeps

They have made the choice to wake up every morning in a city that never sleeps more than to sleep themselves in this where on says, the sun never goes to bed (implying Montpellier). For these Montpellierains with reddened eyes - but not by the tears of the exile-, New York merits largely its statute of "must live in"* of cities of the possible. For some different reasons, he [Eric] "because I had enough of France and its skimpy mentality," and she [Muriel] "to follow my husband and because working for the UN is a privelege." He is an independent kitchen chef since 12 years, she is a translator of Russian and English for the Security Council since 2006. Eric Delalande and Muriel Robinson reside both in the Upper East Side situated between Central Park and the East River on the north of the isle of Manhattan, a quarter in which a square meter is one of the most expensive in the United States, reputed for its grand hotels, its prestigious schools, such as the French Institute and its celebrated habitants like Woody Allen.
Is it the cause of its mythic skyline and yellow taxis, for its outmoded clichés for which they have chosen the most coveted metropolis, erected in symbol of the American dream? Because all that you have heard on New York is true, we ate there a lot of hot dogs and hot pretzels (spelled bretzel - I can't tell if its a typo or not) on the corners of streets, the businesswomen striding Downtown with Prada and Nike on the feet, the mouths of the sewer smoking in the middle of avenues and there is a Starbucks Coffee for ten habitants. All here is in excessive size down to the rations on the plates. Very quickly one understands that it is a pride to live in Big Apple, it is "up to date"*, cultural New York, and above all it's "up to you"*, providential New York. New York has something of "up to" difficultly translated into common French.
Ducasse and Robuchon shined there for years, thus why not Eric Delalande. Because it is well "the dream american that on believes to attain on day but behind which one has yet to complete years later" which stimulates him and keeps him here since twelve years now with wife and child. And on this 3rd of November, where hte United States don't yet know what it will go to unclench a new era, Eric sense that he can touch it with a finger. "After eight years of Bush, eight years of shit, it has produces a fat revolution of lifestyle which surpasses politics. With the economic crisis, after Iraq, the people don't want to be brutalized anymore."
What seems evident for Eric is that France cruelly lacks this energy that there is here in spite of the hardness of life. "There is a grand liberty of enterprise, and more choice in careers." Muriel who considers above all the concrete value of things estimates that one makes above all the choice of New York "which is not the United States" for "to live here fully in liberalism" (which is to say that above all, one makes the choice of living in New York knowing you'll be living in full economic liberalism). Appearing less concerned by the perspective of better tomorrows, she tempers her proposal in adding she's "not being always in accordance with the government but tries to set it aside". To forge ahead, always. Even if the worm has long since been in the big apple and that the economic crisis poses major problems that one cannot possibly imagine here in France. "My husband works for an investment fund firm and has been subjected to the crisis in head-on collision. As for me, I work all day and neither he nor I have security like unemployment insurance." Leave, stay? It is an eventuality that she displays with a strange serenity. But struggle along, no.
Eric juggles with his charges like a tightrope walker on a wire held above his daily life. "Each month there is $10,000 of which $5,500 goes to rent, $1,500 in insurance, health insurance, social security, etc. and for the French school, $25,000 per year," he exclaims. But neither one nor the other will pronounce the terms of "precariousness" or "buying power". Too loose* (I have no idea why they used this word, it wasn't even in quotes or anything) when one cultivates the win as a New Yorkaise (yes, they call New Yorkers les New-Yorkaise). "I will always find a job and income cooking, one finds it everywhere here" underlines Eric. The worst of the country, they seem not to know. Muriel reminds herself always of the nostalgic scents of the scrubland and the Pic-Saint-Loup (the local mountain), declaring "an unalterable attachment to Montpellier." but never forgetting to thank in passing "the absence of strikes".
"After three days in France, I think of nothing but leaving again. France, it is good for the concept of social security," says Eric, who would not see hanging up the whisk "to return home" if Mc Cain makes off with the 270 grand electors of victory (yes, the verb rafler literally translates to 'swipe' or 'make off with'). But he doesn't yet think that a page in America is in the process of turning. And that he'll keep at it for four years... at least!

Intermittent Quotes -

"I don't think that in France we have an open enough mind to elect a president like Obama. There is hypocrisy in the air." - Eric

"Even my 11-year old daughter thinks Barack Obama is dreaming. OK, you guys need hope but you really need better social security coverage." - Muriel

END OF ARTICLE

There you have it. A glimpse into the minds of the 60-or-so million people by whom I am surrounded every days. Granted, its a glimpse into two of the minds of people surrounded themselves by 300 million of us, but still, Muriel is a good example of what French people are really like. They think its absurd that we don't have unemployment insurance (Ok, if you're laid off in France from a job you've been at for more than 3 years, you get 80% of your salary for the next 3 years. More than that, it's 5 years. And at minimum, you receive something like 1000 euros per month. You wonder why there is an unemployment problem here) and the French are perpetually amazed that Barack Obama is black. Also Eric, you're earning $120,000 a year as a cook, and you live on the Upper East Side. Move to Jersey if your rent is too high. And you Muriel, your husband is an investment banker. An investment banker. Yes, you bet he's going to be affected by a crash on Wall Street, but in France you'd still get unemployment insurance? In this country (which is to say the USA), you'd be publicly and savagely beaten if you asked for that. And when was the last time Woody Allen was mentioned as a celebrity resident of the Upper East Side? Did this article get caught in a time warp from the mid-80s? And also, when have Nikes been a classy shoe for businesswomen? Since when have Nikes been classy for anyone? Does it seem to you that the line about the sewer makes New York seem like a cesspool? I mean c'mon, it's one of the greenest cities in the country, perplexing as that may be. It looks carwash clean compared to Paris. And Muriel, what is this about about always forging ahead, but then you go on to say you're not going to struggle? Did you expect the streets to be paved with gold?

The Montpellier Plus. A standard of journalistic excellence, or an excellence of standard journalism? No, it's just a free rag they hand out at tram stops to give you something to distract yourself with while the panhandlers come by. What is with the French and their obsession with our lack of social security? - which, by the way is not the same thing we conceive of as social security. For them, it is every governmental aid program: retirement, unemployment, maternity leave, sick leave, disability, etc. And why are they complaining? They still retain their government benefits even while being expatriates! And Muriel, even when your daughter becomes the first black man elected president of France, you still won't have a right to criticize us. So, shut up or I'll report you to Homeland Security. In fact, just by typing the words 'Homeland Security', this blog has now been tagged and is being read by censors who will see your heresy and have a team of commandos come bag you off to Guantánamo. As for me, I expect to be awarded the Order of Conspicuous Merit any day! All Hail Big Brother!

Good night and good luck.

P.S., don't get me wrong - I love France. It's just, in the same sense I love a good Monty Python sketch. They're all crazy, and funny to watch, but I wouldn't want to live in one for too long.

Belgium, Land of the Fry, Home of the Rain

2008-11-12T08:33:00.000-06:00

I awoke on the morning of the 31st in a strange land - even stranger than the already strange land I have come to inhabit over the last three months. Belgium. Neither bellish nor gummy, but somewhere in between. My first order of business in the morning, after attending to my toiletries and such, was to meet my Montpellieraine friends who were in Brussels along with me. We were going to hang out for a bit in the morning, then split in different directions for the afternoon, and possibly meet up again in the evening.

Our first destination, I cannot remember, because it's now been about two weeks, and I failed to note it in my notebook-based travelogue. However, we eventually wound up at the daily flea market in Brussels, a collection much like the one in Montpellier, only with a far more visible bent on "All Things Congolese". The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, formerly the Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo, was just that - a colony of Belgium. It is quizzical that one of the smallest countries in Europe had one of the largest colonies in Africa, and one can only muse at what it means that Belgium's former colony is also perhaps the most problematic country in modern Africa. Even today, civil war and rebellion threaten the stability of an already terribly unstable state. It was, after all, King Leopold II's private playground, and he was not a share-and-care sort of kid. He is known for cutting off the hands of those who did not support him, plundered the region, and was laughing all the way to his grave. He is to the DRC as Cecil Rhodes is to Zimbabwe. However, to quote my tourist map, "Whatever history's verdict on Leopold's role in the Congo was, one thing is undeniable: he made Belgium look better." It's true. Belgium is itself a country barely able to stay together. Like Spain or Thailand, it relies on a symbolic but well-respected monarchy to sort of, hold everything together. A clandestine adjective for the Belgian's might just be, well, robber-baronesque. The grand boulevards, fine museums, and diverse architecture would hardly be possible for a country of its size were it not for the historic stuffing of the coffers by returning ivory merchants, mineral prospectors, and the aforementioned robber barons.

So, at the flea market, like I've found elsewhere in Europe, it's hard to actually get anything reflecting the fact that one is in Europe and not Africa. In fact, two of the items I got at the flea market were a wooden elephant and a green stone figurine. I also bought a handful of interesting coins, including a 2 Mark coin from East Germany, and a penny from the British Federation of Nigeria in 1959. I did have to opportunity to buy an ivory figurine, but... well, a) it's illegal to purchase ivory, and b) that would be ethically gray to say the least. I decided not to incur the wrath of the elephant spirits and leave it there. I have also learned to get better at bartering. For instance, feigning disinterest will usually get the seller very interested in getting you interested as well. And it never hurts to be like "What? What did you say? Did you say 4 euros?" when in fact they said fourteen or something like that. And of course, there is the tried and true method of underbidding. For instance, "I'll give you ten for it." "No, fifteen." "Okay, seven." "What?!" After the flea market, we saw one of the key attractions in Brussels - the Mannekin Pis. Yes, it even sounds like what you'd think it is. It's a little statue of a boy, peeing into a fountain. Along with the pigeon, Belgium's national bird, the Mannekin Pis is widely associated with Belgians, much as the Statue of Liberty is associated with us. Only... Lady Liberty is about a couple hundred feet tall, stands at the entrance of one of the greatest cities in the world and is a symbol of hope and freedom for all the world. A little boy peeing into a fountain... well... I'm not emigrating any time soon.

After lunch, I broke off from my compatriots and made my way down to the Park du Cinquantenaire, a big park designed in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Belgium's existence in 1880. It's crowning feature is an arch whose name I know not, but it is extremely imposing. Much like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, only not a circulatory nightmare, it is an imposing structure that looks out over the city and no doubt commemorates the victory of Belgium over... wait. Who? I'll have to get back to you on that. But, to the left of the arch is the enormous Military Museum, whose contents include a vast array of arms, suits of arms, and a zeppelin hanger filled with full-size planes. Big, jingoistic and not at all subtle about how war is glorified, it is nonetheless interesting and most importantly, free to the public. At this point, and because I was walking everywhere, it was nearly dark, and I had to start thinking of getting back. I decided to swing past the European Commission on my way - an ensemble of buildings that is to Europe what all those unknown bureaucratic and lobbying offices in Washington are to our own system of government. Only, at the end of it all, there is no imposing neo-Classical capitol building, just more office buildings. European officials have been famously quoted noting that many of them don't know what half of the people employed by the Commission even do, and it is little surprise that the barely-elected, heavily lobbied, and immensely bureaucratic European Commission makes almost no sense to me. If understanding how a bill gets through Congress is hard, at least it is all in English. The European Commission respects each of the 23 languages of its member states. I am certain that if they didn't have a word for 'red tape' before joining, they do now.

The evening saw me eat a very nice and hospitable meal care of my host, Damien, and enjoy the company of he and his French friend, whose name is now permanently lost to me. After dinner, I went to join my Montpellier friends at a bar, only to wind up in a series of debacles that kept me out for far too long and in far too noisy conditions, and the story of which is really only amusing to the three of us. That being said, and that I have class in 45 minutes, I shall leave you with the promise of more later!

They Get Paid For This?

2008-11-10T09:37:00.002-06:00

A while ago, I learned to roll with the punches that the French education system gives to me. Today though, was a real sideswipe. I decided, mostly on a whim and out of some potential, repressed feelings of guilt, to go to my Geography workshop, despite having a cold and having stayed up late the night before to finish a paper. I had not been to it before - granted it only started two weeks ago and it was never clarified where or when it met. Typical French. So, I arrive today, thinking perhaps I will be scolded by the professor or that I will simply be swamped by being so far behind.

Nope. That didn't happen. I arrive, the professor is not there. I wait five minutes, he arrives. He has an aura about him that is best described as "I don't know why you're here, I don't know why I'm here". The feeling was mutual among the other... 7 people in the class. He hands out a packet of maps and an article on economic activity in Africa. It's a class on the geography of developed countries. Even the most left-wing optimists would be hard-pressed to name a country in Africa that is, by comparison, developed. So, we get the packet, he reads three questions that we should focus on, and then leaves us in silence for the next 45 minutes. During this time, he is doing God knows what on his computer and looking as though he could have better spent this time being hungover, or possibly just passing Go, collecting the $200 and being outright dead. At the end of the 45 minutes, he asks us what we came up with for answers, and then essentially summarizes all the information given in the packet. He asks us if we have any questions. No one does. He thanks us, and we all leave.

I cannot get those 45 minutes back, no matter how much I try. Like so many car keys, earings, and pennies, I have lost those minutes irretrievably into a spiteful, pitiless vacuum. I muse thus on one of the great American credos, that all men are created equal. Well, men maybe - university courses, not hardly. I don't think I will be going back next week.