Roots and rocks...

During church today, the passage we were reading was from Isaiah 61: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lords favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion- to give them a garland instead of ashes, olive oil in exchange for tears...For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations."  Isn't that beautiful?  We often do lectio divino instead of a sermon, where the people reflect on verses that especially stand out to them from the scripture reading.  I reflected on the metaphor of "shoots" for the springing up of righteousness and praise.  Shoots are temporary.  They spring up, and then they die.  This was especially moving for me because I have been feeling down since around Thanksgiving.  It's like the steadfastness, and freedom inside me have withered and died.  My roots are in really shaky ground, so my sense of self collapses for no apparent reason.  While I am somewhat reassured in knowing that my shoots of righteousness and praise will no doubt spring up again in time, having my sense of rootedness dislodged is disconcerting.  When the pastor asked us all the Adventen question of what vision of God we hope will be born on Christmas morning, I responded, "God the rock."  I miss my groundedness.

We then paired up and discussed who God calls us to be.  The man I talked to responded immediately with "father, husband, teacher."  I was struck by how he found his sense of self and calling in his relationships to others.  My relationships are always changing, so I can't find anything more than an impermanent identity within them.  I always need to put down roots in a community (here come the horticultural metaphors again), and yet I struggle to identify myself by that community because it changes every year.  I shared these reflections with my dialogue partner, and he brought up willows and poplars.  The EPA is planting them in poisoned areas because they put down roots very quickly and are able to draw toxins out of the soil and metabolize them.  At the same time, they do not last very long.  I resonated with that image of the willow tree.  I am trying to put down roots and draw toxins out of this community for the short time that I am here.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to find a grounding that will endure past this year, or simply develop the ability to pull up roots and grow in new soil very quickly when this year ends.  Both seem very daunting to me. 

         

I wrote a poem. 

All right, computer's wonky.  Song's in the comments.

On Fridays at the drop-in youth tutoring program, we have the kids journal for 20 minutes.  The youth services supervisor advised us to find some bit of work that we need to do or list to make during the time, so we would be modeling the writing for the kids.  I usually use the time to write stories and poetry or whatever's on my mind, and I turned one of my stories into a song.  My first song ever!  Whoa.

My dad may be reading this! Yay! He's creating a blog, and you should go reading it. It will have lots of Buffy and politics stuff among other things.

Sometimes my own wangst overwhelms me.

So, here I am back in Oberlin. Whew. The rush of moving in and unpacking is over, but my room is still not neat. Unsurprisingly.

Before I left I went to Montreal with my mom & assorted, which was okay. We were going for a business conference of Drew's, and the convention was like a bad movie. Montreal was also stereotypical; everyone there was uber-fashionable and the night life was great. I hadn't realized how easy/fun it was to learn a language when you were actually exposed to it, and picked up some French while there, at least enough to understand ~20% of everything that was said to me. Of course, I wasn't doing any business or engaging in conversation, so I feel the language thrown at me was pretty common. I had a good time, and would be glad to go back, though next time not with my little, super-tense siblings.

After Montreal most of my time was spent on the final for my Financial Analysis class and moving everything out of the house, which is being sold. I thought it was going to be torn down, but apparently it's going to be sold and rented out. I would actually rather nobody else got to use it, but I suppose it's better than yet another condo in the neighborhood.

So. Yes. In Oberlin. Nothing much happening yet; so far I'm enjoying the house, as opposed to the dorms. The apartment is cheaper per person and we get a pretty sweet kitchen. Having a private bathroom is also cool. I took advantage of the privacy of the bathroom recently to take a shower, only to realize that I didn't actually have any anymore, having had to ditch them in the frantic scramble to vacate my room quickly enough. So I decided a nice casual walk down to my room sans clothing was probably the best way to get some stuff to dry off with (aka my dirty-but-not-too-dirty laundry). Ha. Danielle chose that moment to come up the stairs with two of her (male) Aikido friends. Apparently my modesty was preserved by my very quick escape to my room, but still. The dangers of thinking you can walk around naked in a shared apartment, I guess.

TTFN

Hi everyone,

I've started a new blog with the other Cap Corps folks.  The address is http://capcorps0809.blogspot.com. 

I'm not saying the Firecones! are going to have to have to cover this, or anything, but we'll have to have a multi-lingual chorus of it, sometime.

I just saw Mamma Mia! at the cinema and I absolutely loved it.  You should totally go see it (except for Liz, who would detest it).  It made me miss you guys a lot.  

So I'm getting more and more immersed in this whole "health care" thing. It's a little creepy how calloused everybody is, especially since I've frequently heard that to be a nurse you have to be super-empathic. It's chilling to contemplate how much constant exposure to human pain has dulled their emotions, and was even more chilling when I considered what would happen to a "normal" person. If the best, most compassionate of us can't handle this, who can? And what happens when someone not super-compassionate becomes a nurse? I know they must be out there, but I can only hope they all quit before they can do too much damage.

It's actually very calm in an emergency room - nurses move sedately about, even in a code blue (cardiac arrest). I guess because people have dealt with these issues so many times before, they become commonplace. When I was riding along in an ambulance the other day, we went to a nursing home to transport a person in a coma to her nursing home. She was lying there, arms flexed tightly to her chest, a stoma in her neck (so she was breathing through her throat, not her mouth and nose). Her head had a bulge, so it was obvious that she had suffered some serious brain damage, and the look on her face... she looked so young because of that, like a child of six or eight. Her eyes were open and constantly moving back and forth, like she was dreaming with her eyes open, and the only time she moved was when we had to stick a tube down her throat to clear her airway. I was applying suction, and had to put the tube down her throat until she spasmed (the tube started to enter the lungs).

The two guys I was with were pretty jaded, but you could tell they were affected by this call, probably because I was affected. It was just so sad. Nobody really knew her name - there were three different medical charts we encountered, and all of them had a different name. She was 22 years old, and had been in a car accident 3 (!) years ago and had suffered massive brain trauma. She was married too. That's just so strange and tragic. This chick got married young, and it was like... how must her husband feel? Why aren't they divorced so he can move on? Because it was obvious to me that this was one chick that was never coming back. And all she could feel was pain. That was the only sensation she showed any response to.

It was just like, why isn't she dead? Is she really going to have to live the rest of her life like this? At least 40 years of just lying there, sores all over her body and constantly needing suctioning, which hurts her. She's never coming back. She doesn't need life support, so there's no "plug" to pull, but she should be dead. No one should be forced to live like that, constantly in pain and with no way to be anywhere but outside your own head. That's enough to drive a person insane, and if you're trapped in your own head and insane, I'd be willing to bet that you'd enjoy death a great deal more than life. It was just so sickening. It was like, this woman should be dead. It is horrible that we haven't killed her, because what she's living is so... awful. I know that I can't see inside her head and tell what she's really like, but it was obvious that she was in pain, if nothing else, and if I were her I'd long for death. It just makes me so angry that we're forcing her to live in this limbo.

I just finished the last season of Angel, Joss Whedon's spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  While I didn't get as into Angel as much as I got into Buffy, I was sad that I no longer had any Joss Whedon works to devour.  My TV-related relaxation time was on the verge of dissolving into anarchy, lacking form, direction, or hope.

Two days ago, my little brother and I were driving down to Chicago to meet my mother, when I heard on NPR the words "horrible sing-along" and "Joss Whedon."  I got so excited my brother was afraid I was going to crash the van.  This would be unfortunate because we were nearing our destination after three and a half hours of following computer-generated directions that were at best unnecessarily and at worst sadistically complicated, taking us by the least sensible route it could conceive.  Anyway, it turns out Joss Whedon's created a new three-part musical called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," which is only available on the Internet.  Its arrival could not have been more timely.  It's about a scientist who's trying to become a super-villain, and it stars Neil Patrick Harris, whom I totally saw on Broadway in a revival of Assassins.  Nathan Fillion is in it, and it turns out he has a pretty respectable singing voice!  It's really, really good, and I think you all should watch it.           

Philosophical fragments...

Tonight I've been thinking about life and death and eternal life.  I'm not exactly sure why.  Part of it, I think, is because I'm in a transitional space, which makes me think of all the unknowns in my life, and death being just about the biggest one.  In any case, it's occurred to me lately that my body is a very complex world unto itself, in which cells are born and die every day.  They all serve the larger purpose of contributing to the complex functioning and the unique essence that is my body.  When that cell dies, I have always assumed, nothing about it in its particularity persists eternally.  So what if all of creation is like that? 

Catalyzing this stream of thought, this book I've been reading at one point discusses Einstein's philosophy of life, which the author describes as: "we can easily become imprisoned in and blinded by our own thoughts and feelings because they are concerned solely with the particulars of our lives and our desires as separate beings... we all come into and go out of this world as passing gatherings of structured energy... as eddies and waves, our lives do have a certain uniqueness, but they are also the stuff of a larger whole expressing itself in ways that ultimately surpass our comprehension."  If you add God into that equation, then all of creation becomes one large and dynamic force life evolving out of God's imagination.  The matter and energy that make up Steve Hammond says he believes in afterlife because God is a God of life.  But I don't think there needs to be an afterlife for me for God to still be God of life.  The story of creation is not about me.  It's about God.  I'm only a tiny part of that story.  And life endures.  Creation endures.  Global warming could ravage the earth and change what life exists on it, but I believe life would still remain.  It's plucky that way.  And the energy and matter that make up my body and my life will always be a part of that life.  I in my particular uniqueness (is that redundant) will cease to exist, but the matter and energy that make up my life will not.  In that regard, death is not really a loss of life, but a change of life from one form to another.    

So what if that is all there is to eternal life?  Right at this moment, I think I would be okay with that.  As D. Kamitsuka pointed out once, we will all still be remembered by God, and in that way our particular existence will never be lost.  On the other hand, I'm in pretty good shape right now.  I'm happy and healthy, with a roof over my head and adequate food.  I can afford to say that I would be content if this life is all I have as myself.  I don't know if it's enough for me when I am suffering.  Who says the particular, self-focused viewpoint afforded by suffering is a less accurate lens for understanding creation than the more meditative, emotionally-neutral broader view.  I'm not sure if the view of life as one unified and dynamic force gives adequate due to the power of evil in the world.  For my own justice work, I need to believe that evil is real and God opposes it.  What would evil even be in this schema?  Where is the justice?  I don't know if I could in good conscience tell a parent who had lost a child to try to look beyond their pain and at the bigger picture (which, evidently, is what Einstein did).  The nice thing about afterlife is that it offers justice of the true and divine kind, done by God who knows everything about everyone, rather than the imperfect and often narrow-minded justice that humans can mete out.

The view of life as unified is much easier for my sense of reason to wrap itself around than the idea of eternal life and divine judgment.  It goes much more neatly with what I perceive of myself and of the world.  But who really cares about reasonableness?  But even while reason is important for my evaluation of theology, I also agree with Kierkegaard that reason cannot fully tell us about God and the true nature of things, if it can tell us anything at all.  Because of that, a worldview that's internally cohesive, or one which causes no cognitive dissonance at all, may not necessarily be the best one.

At this point in my reflections, I have not yet come to any kind of conclusion about what I believe is the most adequate way to view death and afterlife.  Between my studies about conceptualizing life after death as bodily resurrection, and my new thoughts (at least, new to me) about no life after death, I am filled with an ever-deepening sense of awe and reverence for life.  There are so many beautiful ways to understand it, maybe it's better that no one has reached a definitive conclusion.  Knowing that is deeply joyful and God-ful for me.  In any case, I am dead set (originally, no pun intended) against having my body pumped full of chemicals and put inside a vault where I will turn into jelly instead of rotting.  As soon as I'm dead, please stick me in a pine box and dump me in the ground in the nearest state where that's still legal.  Soul or no soul, this body is going to compost.     

I preached in my home church today.  I talked about how listening and being open to dechurched people can be really hard but it's also really important, and I drew on reflections that I had reading Mary Hammond's book.

My family and I spent last weekend visiting cousins in rural Missouri.  It was pretty neat.  It's a really different cultural setting there, and everyone was always asking me if I was married or engaged and saying that they hoped I would be soon and stuff.  I didn't make any promises.  The family reunion separated into two conversation groups, one of women and one of men, with me and my little brother, who were the youngest by at least 25 years, flitting back and forth between the two.  At one point, some of the men were talking about their churches, and so I asked them what they thought "evangelical" means.  One of them, caught somewhat off-guard, said "Well, it's about being born again and accepting Jesus Christ.  That's very important."  Another one, who had been a pastor at one point, talked about how he'd visited St. Paul's Cathedral in London and it seemed cold and more museum than church, and evangelical was like the opposite of that.  It was about reaching out to show love to others, and reaching out to God by reaching out to others and showing God's love for them.  I felt like I couldn't have said it better myself, and it was really touching to find someone who had such a similar view of evangelicalism in this small, conservative community.

Later, when I was sitting with the women, I heard one woman proudly sharing stories of her daughters and her daughter-in-law.  She talked about how one of them insisted that the Southern Baptist missionary board accept her years of preaching children's sermons as fulfilling the preaching requirement for being a missionary, which they were not initially inclined to do.  She spoke of her other daughter, who refused to read any books in high school that went against her moral code.  And she talked about her Turkish daughter-in-law, a prosecuting attorney for ICE, who refused to let liberal judges be lenient with immigration laws for Mexican immigrants.  Now, I don't believe in refusing to read books that offer opinions I disagree with, and I tend to be more sympathetic to Mexican immigrants.  At the same time, I felt myself revelling in this cousin, strong woman that she was, and in her pride in her daughters' assertion of their opinions over and against authority figures.

This reunion was deeply affirming to my sense of myself and belonging to a community that is very different than the communities I engage on a daily basis.  We may have different cultural and political opinions, but we share a lot of the same spirit, which is very encouraging to me.  It again reminds me how complicated people and communities are, and how we transcend the labels which put barriers between us.  It's important not to let those labels govern the way I think about my family or anyone else, because it creates separations that just don't exist.

I devolved into preaching a bit there.  Sorry, I guess the preacher in me hasn't quite dissipated since this morning.  

Hello dear friends!

Today's adventure: a public bath! I'm continuing with the plan I've been using all along, which is not to really have expectations, so I don't end up really surprised.

Also today's adventure maybe: finishing the second front half of my cardigan. That means only sleeves and button bands and then finding buttons in St. Petersburg!

Tomorrow's adventure: the Hermitage!

Also, Anna, I don't know if you read this blog, but I hope you do and you should, and I thought of you last night. (I think of the F-cones every time I see them in the street, but this is different.) Because SPAIN (where you will be in the fall) and RUSSIA (where I am now) were competeing in the semifinals for the European Cup. So basically, I watched your study abroad country beat the pants off mine in football. 0-3. Ow. Well, good luck against Germany, anyway.

Also, to mimic Linden, I just want to make sure you all know about my other blog.

Now, off to search the internet to find a new monument in St. Petersburg that I can tell my conversation class about on Monday. (p.s. I just had to look up monument right now, because all I could think of was памятник. Whoa.)

Also, I think it is strange, upon reflection, that the main pic for this blog shows more of a sketchy, hilariously clad man visiting the dorm that it does of me. But perhaps it is appropriate, for I am rather sketchy myself. Much love!

So currently taking an EMT class and putting off various paperwork tasks I must accomplish. Eek. However, I have a tan/sunburn because I went to the doggy beach today with a German Shepherd puppy. He's so cute, and I have decided that if I had time, I would go German Shepherd instead of Rottweiler. However, seeing as I will be in med school soon, somehow it feels like I will not have the time for a German Shepherd, since they are high maintainence (though super-cool). FYI, I am still covered in sand from this trip, since I have not yet showered. So you know.

An advantage of this summer: I now know how to save lives. I'm literally like a super-hero, though not like Superman, since you have to be born that awesome. I'm still waiting for the radioactive spider, however. Until then, I will settle for administering oxygen and resetting bones and strapping people to backboards. *Le sigh.*

Starting my accounting class this Saturday, which is less heroic but still pretty damn cool when you get down to it. I mean, taxes should be a cinch next year. Right? Right?!?!

In my EMT class there is actually a girl who is my year, in Wellesley, who was on the swim team back in high school! (The grammar in that sentence made my teeth clench in angst, possibly because I am parsing sentences or something, but I care not. Gwahahahaha!) It was rather bizarre to walk in and see her. It's funny, because the first day it was weird and I didn't really enjoy conversation with her, mostly because she was acting pretty shallow and I was probably being pretty bitchy. I left the class saddened because we had actually been pretty good friends in high school. As time passed I realized that we had both just been shy, and though we had both changed, we had changed in ~the same direction. The wonders of a liberal arts education in America, I guess.

Finally, I have something to show y'all.




AHAHAHAHA! It was AWESOME! IT'S AWESOME! Despite the swelling and slight pain. Getting it was so zen and painful, but in a grounding way. You all should definitely get them. Though you should pay less than I did, because the tattoo was more painful for my bank account than for my back. ERG. My next one shall be a Superman symbol. I tingle in anticipation - but not in a creepy X-Filesy MOTW way.

My brother and his wife are having a baby in January! I'm going to be an aunt!!

I was just on IMDB looking up Robia LaMorte, the actress who plays Jenny Calendar on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I found out that she got her start as a backup dancer in Debbie Gibson's Shake Your Love video. Hot damn.

i'm in st. louis! missouri! state #4 of the trip! and i'm not dead yet!!

i'm biking! still!

crossed the mississippi yesterday (on a bridge, alas we did not ford by bike)

today is a rest day; we're staying at courtney merrell's house; that's kind of cool. i mean, it's pretty cool inside, rather warm outside.

basically, feeling like a hooligan nomad, and liking it a lot.

also biking, did i mention that?

i'm now also splitting myself between two blogs, which i think you all know, but just in case:
http://onebigbike.blogspot.com

also, have converted a few people to kate bush. quite excellent, was finally able to do the wuthering heights dance for the first time in a long time. SO GOOD. still.

less than two months till the new x-files movie! get pumped!!

love,
linden

As many of you know, (and the rest of you might be surprised to find out), I have never (before today) been outside of the Central and Eastern US time zones. My family and I spent about a week in Canada several years ago, but that hardly seems international.
So, the transatlantic flight was an adventure. Lufthansa is a very nice airline. The food was good (I have so much to compare it to, of course… but other well-traveled students said it’s really good for airport food). I had never even been on an airplane that served a meal, come to think of it. Anyway, it was pretty good. I sat between two people and didn’t realized you could adjust part of the headrest forward, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I knit a bunch, and by the time we got to St. Petersburg, I was halfway through Huck Finn (which I have so far found extremely enjoyable).
The airport in Frankfurt was nice; their airport police ride around on bikes, which is neat. On the way back I might try to bring a few Euros, since we were thirsty, but didn’t have the right currency to purchase anything.
St. Petersburg has been lovely. I am so happy I am here. We stayed in a hotel the first night (Morskoi Vokzal) on Vasilevskii Island, which is the island Smolny Institute is on. Between lunch at the hotel and dinner at a nearby restaurant the first night, we went on a bus tour of the city, narrated by the woman running the cultural portion of the program. The intention was to give us a basic idea of the layout of the city, to show us around so we could recognize things. It was really helpful, even though we were all tired and might have fallen asleep on the way to Smolny Cathedral, and it might have taken us the rest of the tour to figure out where that was on the map. I’m not naming names.
Today (I left Minnesota on Thursday and arrived in St. Petersburg on Friday because I’m 8-9 hours ahead of y’all, depending on which time zone you’re in, but I’ll let you figure that out for yourself) we had orientation in the morning, with breakfast and lunch at the hotel. They went over the main points in the handbook, and there wasn’t much that surprised me. The couple days before I left, I started to worry about safety-related things, but I realized here that it’s probably safer here than in Chicago (the main threat to me is petty theft), and the fact that it stays light so late helps, too. In the afternoon, they did a little bit of oral testing and then drove us to our host families. There’s four levels of teaching, and they were using the oral tests to decide between putting people in level three or four. I think I'm going to be in group three. The upper two levels get to take a class on either literature or politics. Guess which one I picked.

Whoa!

Russia!

Departure to Minneapolis/St. Paul airport commences in 3 hrs 45 min.

I seriously need to sleep right now.

G'night.

OH ALSO I made a reference to Star Trek TNG earlier tonight and felt quite accomplished in my ongoing pursuit of geekdom. (Kathryn - I was reflecting on the fact that you noticed Sci-Fi was playing little introductiony things at the beginning of a couple of the Firefly episodes during that marathon, and I realized that the TNG theme kind of serves as a basic introduction.) I have seen two (2) episodes, and have now referenced the show twice (2x) in my life. I doubt I can maintain that ratio, but we'll see...

I found something by Kierkegaard on my shelf at home that I haven't read yet! My life is a little bit brighter.

Adventures at home:

I got a guitar! It's very pretty, and I got into a conversation about religion with the guy at the guitar store while I was buying it. I named it Tara. She and Dulcinea are getting along quite well. I also got my hair chopped off. It's now chin-length, and sometimes it makes me feel like a two-year-old. I tried out the granola recipe in How It all Vegan. It's quite tasty. For my next adventure, I'm going to bike over to the bookstore and check out yoga videos so I can have an inexpensive way to work out that can adapt to different kinds of spaces. I suspect that will be useful in Milwaukee.


I got a guitar!

Hi all,
five days and counting until the bike trip departs! it's kind of unbelievable, but we're all putting finishing touches on our bikes, we've got our truck and tents, we're finding places to stay across the country and whittling down our possessions to suit a nomadic lifestyle. suffice to say, i'm really excited and still have no idea what i'm getting myself into.

I was just procrastinating by surfing the net for more funky images of Jesus, and I found a logo that said "What Wouldn't Jesus Do?" and had an image of a cartoon Jesus on a hang glider.

Bitchin'.

I was just settling down to write the stunning conclusion to my Job paper, and I was listening to "Two Kids" by Anais Mitchell, and I started to wonder what the heck she's saying in the Arabic section. So I searched Google looking for a translation, and ended up reading Anais Mitchell's blog, which as far as I can tell does not include a translation of the Arabic lyrics in Two Kids. It made me wonder how people can be so awesome and witty and insightful in blog format. I guess Anais Mitchell inspired me to be not-witty and insightful in blog format. So here I am. The other day, I was helping out at Sunday dinner crew and we started talking about if folk singers were illegal drugs, what kind of drug they would be and why. It started when I asked if Dar Williams was for-real famous or just folk-world famous. Someone said she's a little of both, and I said, "Oh, so she's like a gateway drug. The marijuana of folk, if you will." And then Ivy said, "I guess that makes Anais Mitchell the heroin of the folk world[as well as a heroine, I might add. Ha]." I decided that Odetta was like crack cocaine: enjoyed by all sorts of people, but Black people are busted for it in disproportionate numbers.

I've been wondering lately whether or not you all will write on the blog next year after I'm gone but you're still at Oberlin. I would be interested in staying apprised of your travails. If you all are able to keep each other apprised because you live together, please transcribe your conversations onto the blog so that I may partake of their richness.

Now to that stunning conclusion.

i have a drivers license!! egad!

my plane gets into cleveland at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.

so, let's have a dance party!!

sweet. see you guys there.

( in oHIo! )

((OBERLIN, OHIO!!))

<333333

please watch this right now.

wow.

I'm not sure how Linden does the thing where she posts a YouTube video directly onto the blog, so here's the link to a movie I shot at the Bar Cinzano in Valparaiso.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krGk-kJPvCg

news bulletin #2:
linden has booked a behind the wheel driving test for friday, february 1 at 10:20AM pacific time. prayers appreciated.

news bulletin:
i have now seen all episodes of firefly.

!

Hey all,

So, I've been like, pretty saddened by the dead state of campus for the last week, so I'm going to mom's house! Woohoo! Yeah, pretty excited. Also, going to see Avenue Q, which is also exciting. So yeah.

It's funny how when you have the expectation of something really cool happening, everything from now until that point seems that much better.

Also, you guys should watch the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Hilarious!

<3

what i've been doing:

-arts and crafts
especially: making earrings, still knitting a sweater for my mom, other things with beads.
- writing my story which is currently about 10.5 pages single spaced and doing illustrations for it in cheap acrylic paints and pastels.
- cooking vegan desserts: cupcakes, pumpkin-oatmeal-walnut cookies, maple-walnut-caramel blondies, very elastic and silly chocolate pudding (i let it cook too long; it wasn't supposed to be elastic)
- making dumplings with my mom
- buying dresses, mostly at goodwill
- buying cds at any independent music store i find myself in
- listening to cds: tegan and sara, jens lekman (new cd is SO excellent), jolie holland, avett brothers, ghost world soundtrack (which i found after a long absence)
- oh! i organized my cds. ridiculous.
- watching firefly and x-files while making arts and crafts.
- reading for fun, a little bit: so far on the road by jack kerouac and currently anansi boys by neil gaiman.
- bantering with my brother. who is dragging my chair away from the computer.
farewell.

So, I've been having a mostly unproductive and distressing winter term sojourn at Oberlin, because I'm having trouble getting in contact with all of my friends that are actually on campus.

On the bright side, I have actually begun to read the book Swann's Way. It is pretty good sometimes, but Proust is a whiney little baby and is so French I frequently want to slap him. Also, I got the Neuroanatomy coloring book and it is so fun. Other than that, nothing is happening. Nothing at all.

Courtesy of about.com

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #7 (Final)

I have returned home safely to Madison, after a red-eye flight out of Santiago that was supposed to live at 11:30 pm and ended up leaving at 2:00 am. I'm still a little loopy. But I came home to a joyous reunion with my tap shoes (and, you know, my family). Today my family and I helped someone from church move into her new apartment, and it was -9 with a windchill of -30 outside. That's about a 120 degree shift for me from about two days before. It was intense.

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #6

It´s been really interesting watching my mom work these past two weeks. I haven´t seen her work since I was little, and then I couldn´t appreciate how good she is at what she does. She works one on one with law students on teaching them effective legal writing, and she teaches law professors how to teach their students to write well. It´s downright eerie how similar her approach to coaching writing is to my approach to coaching writing as a Writing Associate. As a college student, I also have a new appreciation for her teaching style. To illustrate the difference between legal writing and literary writing, She told this true story to her seminar about a judge who retired from law after like 40 years in the field. He finally had time to read for fun instead of reading legal memos, so he started reading some classic novels. He opened up A Tale of Two Cities, and read

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

He thought to himself, 'WTF? It contradicts itself, it jumps from subject to subject with no apparent connection in between, it´s redundant, and it doesn´t tell me anything. This is crap!' And he throws the book away.

Five years ago, I would have thought, Oh, Mom, there you go again. But now I think that´s a pretty funny story and a pretty effective demonstration of the difference between the legal writing audience and the reading for pleasure audience.

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #5


On Sunday, Mom and I took a ski gondola-type thing up to the top of one of the cerros (they´re big hills) in Santiago to where there´s a statue of the Virgin Mary in the immaculate conception. It was put up to celebrate the date the dogma of Mary´s immaculate conception was made official by the Catholic Church. There´s a little chapel near the statue, and I discovered when I entered that they were playing Taize music. Later that day, we went to a cathedral in downtown, where a cantor was also singing Taize music. It was a very special moment for me. It´s really cool to think about how Taize has gotten all over the world into all different kinds of worship contexts. It has been a recurring theme in my college experience. During my first winter term, I went to the Taize monastery. During my third winter term, I went to a Taize service in Atlanta, GA, and then this winter term I hear Taize music in Chile. And then of course there´s the services in Oberlin and Madison, and the service at the FTE conference in Chicago. Taize renews my hope for the possibility of successful ecumenism.

On another note, today we went to the museum of precolumbian Latin American art. I don´t think I ever realized just how many different cultures and societies there were in Latin America before the genocide of European conquest. I knew about the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas, but there were dozens of others. Anyway, the museum had an exhibit up called 'Morir para gobernar: sexo y poder en la cultura Moche' or 'Dying in order to govern: sex and power in Moche culture.' It was about the Moche people of Peru´s rituals surrounding the death of a king. Sex, and especially non-procreative forms of sex like oral and anal intercourse were really important for ensuring that the king had a successful journey through the land of the dead, the land of the ancestors, and then back into the land of the living where he ruled in the form of his successor. All the ritual sex was heterosexual or masturbatory, because the association between penises, masculinity, domination, and life was very important. The exhibit largely consisted of exquisitely (and remarkably anatomically accurate) carved pots, water jugs, and figurines showing people engaging in oral sex, anal sex, and masturbation. Outside the exhibit was a sign that said 'Minors ought to be accompanied by their parents.' Boy, would that ever be an awkward parent-child conversation.

After lunch, we walked down a street that was occupied almost entirely by stores that sold knitting and crocheting tools and inexpensive yarns. We must have passed at least five or six yarn stores. I thought of you guys. I guess you'll have to visit Chile now.

I got asked for a third time today if I was Brazilian. Next time someone asks, I'm going to say yes.

i don't have much to say, but here are two cool things.

I found this really amazing website, called Lasagna Cat.

Live re-enactments of Garfield cartoons!

http://www.lasagnacat.com/

Hey everybody!

Well, after some brief agonizing, I'm about to rip out more knitting and redo it. The last part of this project (for Danielle) is SO going to go right the first time. If it doesn't, I will scream so loudly Liz will be able to hear me from Chicago.

Off the knitting front, things are going well. I got to see a really neat concert last night at the church where my mom works. These two performers, Jonathan Rundman and Beki Hemingway, led a 5:00 worship service and had a free concert at 7. Beki lives in Colorado, so I don't get to see her play that often, so that was cool, and Jonathan always puts on a really fun show. Also, he has two adorable children, Paavo and Svea, and Paavo was there. In a sweater his grandmother knit for him out of Homespun!

Jonathan is the guy that I've been trying to get to come play in Oberlin. I realized that when he comes, the Firecones! should open for him. It would be so great!

I was actually going to see Jonathan play twice this weekend, but the first opportunity (at a coffee shop) fell through. Why?, you ask. Because my mother was having surgery on her foot. It was a three hour surgery, scheduled to begin at noon, and she didn't get into the OR until 3. Since one of us needed to be around to pick her up, my dad and I didn't make the 7:00 show. Instead, I went out for pizza with my brother. I guess that was okay.

Musically, I'm off the obsessive Hairspray kick, sort of. Been listening to a lot of Daft Punk.

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #4

One more thing...

I bought the most amazing pair of pants at a craft market the other day. They're knit wool pants. It's like a sweater for my butt. Take that, Midwest winter!

Sorry for my extensive blog literature. I don't mean to be a blog-hog. I just want to remember this stuff, and I'm more inspired to write about it on the blog than in my journal. My hands cramp less.

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #3

Chilean accents are a bitch to understand. It makes me feel dumb sometimes when I have to ask people what they said two or three times.

Dafna told me another funny social encounter story. Evidently, her dad was at a party, and he saw a woman who looked really familiar, but he couldn't figure out how he knew her. It kept bothering him, so he went over and asked her, "Excuse me, you look very familiar. Do I know you from somewhere." The woman replied, "Well, I'm the First Lady."

Somebody else asked me if I was Brazilian the other day. I asked one of Mom's colleagues why everyone thinks I'm Brazilian (or at least two waitresses did), and she said it might be because of my wickedly curly hair. I found that affirming, because it makes me feel more like Inara (Morena Baccarin, the actress who plays her, is Brazilian).

I found out that one of the repercussions of America's antiterrorist policies is that it has become a model (or an excuse) for other countries to take a heavy hand with discontented minorities. Many Mapuche, or Natives who live in the south of Chile, have been held without trial and interrogated harshly in the name of anti-terrorism by the government in recent years as they struggle for rights to their land. Soledad, this really amazing woman who invited Mom to teach the workshop in Chile, is worried that it could escalate to genocide if there is not enough international publicity. After she said that, I poked around on the Internet, and I was surprised to find that Amnesty International had almost nothing on the Mapuche, and the Human Rights Watch has only one two-year-old report. I e-mailed Steve Volk to ask him if he knew anything else about international coverage of the Mapuche. He said there was very little, though he had seen international media coverage of a Mapuche university student who was killed by police while demonstrating for land rights.

So...that's pretty much what's up here. And I've discovered that I really love empanadas.
And I'm really going to miss the fruits when I leave. You buy raspberries by the pound here, and they're way cheaper than in the US. I've never pooped so well in my life.

guys, x-files is awesome.

just saying.

you know, i wanted to give you a little heads up.

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #2

Today we went downtown, and there were some amazing street shows going on, like puppets and mimes. One guy was giving another guy a haircut while lots of people watched. I didn't get why it was so fascinating, but it reminded me a little of Sweeney Todd so I felt a little creeped out.

Last night, one of Mom's colleagues, Patricia, her friend Ester, and Ester's daughter Dafna took us to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Often when you stop at stoplights there are people selling things and washing windows from car to car. In Valparaiso, a guy came out while we were at a stoplight and rode a unicycle and juggled in front of us in the street. It was one of the more amazing things I've seen.

We went to this little hole in the wall for dinner where these locals who are all at least 75 years old sing and play Chilean folk songs every night. It was pretty fantastic. I'm trying to upload a video of it onto Youtube so you can partake in the awesomeness, but have been thus far unsuccessful. In the meantime, my new Facebook photo is of me and Dafna (who's about my age) sitting on the lap of one of the singers after we asked him for his autograph.

At dinner, my mom's colleague's partner leaned over to us and told us that the man sitting at a table next to us used to be a judge. She was the court reporter on a case that he had presided over, of a rich man who had been accused of murdering his young mistress. All the evidence pointed to the rich man as the murderer. The judge was offered a bribe by the rich man's family, but he sent him to jail to await trial anyways. So the rich man's father went to him, upping the bribe, and the judge accepted it. But the father actually had something else in mind. He had tape recorded the conversation, which he then spread publicly, demanding a new trial for his son. The request was granted, and a new judge, whom the rich man's family already had in their back pocket, was assigned the case. The rich man was acquitted, and the original judge, who had been exposed, was disbarred. Meanwhile, a poor man in a local neighborhood was found hanged in his house with what was supposedly a suicide note, in which he "admitted" to killing the woman and felt so bad about it that he committed suicide.

Evidently that kind of thing happened all the time during Pinochet's regime, and it's really common to run into famous and infamous people in public places in Chile these days. Patricia said that she and Ester were out at dinner one night and Ester leaned over to her and said, "See that guy sitting next to you? He was one of Pinochet's primary torturers." The current president of the country was in an elevator where the door opened and the man who had tortured her stepped onto it next to her.

As you can see, this evening led to a whole mess of "when I ran into a famous person in Chile" stories by Patricia, Ester, and Dafna. Ester evidently had to interview Sr. Lagos, the last president before the current one, while he was Secretary of Education. She couldn't find a babysitter for little Dafna, so she brought her along with her. During the interview, Dafna announced "I hate politicians!"

So I hope you made it through my rather long blog entry, and I hope life is going well back in Los Estados!

KATHRYN IN CHILE, POST #1

Hi everyone! Chile is very warm and sunny. It's a little overwhelming sometimes. I keep thinking how much easier this trip is than my trip to Nicaragua. There's hot running and drinkable water, and lots of buildings and paved roads and wireless access. There are also self-appointed parking attendants who hang out near markets and stuff and they help you park. You then tip them on your way out. I wonder how people would react if I appointed myself a parking attendant and asked for a tip in Oberlin.

Yesterday I was on my own for the midday, and I had lunch at this little cafe. I ordered a quiche, and the waitress paused and looked at me and said "Es brasilena?" I still have trouble intuiting subjects when they are left out, and I thought she was asking if the quiche was Brazilian. I said, "Ummm...si." Then later she asked me which part of Brazil I was from, and I got all confused and realized that she had thought I was Brazilian. I explained to her that I had misunderstood; I thought she asked if my food was Brazilian, and when I don't understand a question properly I say "Yes" instead of "Huh?" She probably thought I was crazy.

Hi, guys! ...So I just checked my grades, and for the first time at Oberlin, I got all As and A minuses. I'm smiling so much my eyes are squinty. X-D

happy chile, kathryn!

we got a new kitty! we called her veronica, after ronnie spektor. like 'just like ronnie sang.' pictures included for comparison. we got her from the peninsula humane society. she is 11 months old and the best kitty in the world. she also looks kind of like muu muu. as my mom has said, 'isn't it amazing that we've had the best cat in the world three times in a row?' it IS pretty incredible, actually.

i uploaded a new album of pictures onto the facebook. there are silly pictures of all of you in it, i'm sure. so go comment, fools.

i started working on the kids book. it's gonna be pretty sweet. i just need to figure out how to sit still for that long and make stuff. when i get into it, it's awesome, but it's hard not to be distracted/unfocused. especially with a new cat. and a freaking comfortable bed. i end up sleeping too much.

it's also raining a lot, but our power hasn't gone out yet. we're going to go to berkeley tomorrow and get indian food anyway. i mean, and do other things too.

so the new year is starting well, if a little lazily. i think i'm going to try to get allie to play some intense cards with me. also, all of the pictures of the cupcakes are on her camera and she's not uploading them. maybe i'll steal it. then you could see more of what's been happening in my life, if you felt so inclined.

I'm going to Chile today. Yay Spanish-speaking countries! Did you guys know that Chile is way east of here? It's three hours ahead of Central Standard Time! I was like, "great googly-moogly, I didn't know that."

Happy New Year all! I've been watching so much Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading Philip Pullman's Dark Materials that my real life suddenly seems mundane and vapid. Who's up for averting an apocalypse over spring break?