Aaaaaaaaand That's A Wrap!

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

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

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...

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

This Simpson's clip illustrates my present feelings.

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

OVERDUE!

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

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

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