saturday, september 9

•••    I've been meaning to do this out of curiosity since I saw it: the class in america games say that, at heart I suppose, I'm middle middle class. the odd thing is that every time I played, I picked one old money answer and one trailer park answer. I'm not sure what that says about my subconscious. (maybe if it had known that corduroy recliners were trailer parkish it woulnd't have picked one!)

I am also not especially class conscious. I'm not sure if that's in spite of the dramatic upward social mobility that happened during my lifetime (yes, I was white trash by a lot of people's standards) or because of it. hmm. I definitely never had a typical perspective on class - salvaging furniture that had been taken to the sidewalk for the trash collectors was completely normal to me, but so was going to lincoln center. what's the name for the social class that is penniless but educated, or at least from an educated family? that was me. (but not anymore. my life has become decidedly upper class. how frightening!)

(via glossolalia, originally)
9:20 PM +

•••    actually, I tend to feel alienated from other activists too, but for the opposite reason. I'm too compassionate. (I think they think I'm not radical enough.)

I can't stand peta because I think they're cruel to carnivores. (unhappy meal anyone?) that has me sort of at odds with a large chunk of the school's animal rights contingent. I refuse to get in anyone's face about morality. I draw the line between raising awareness and harassing people significantly lower than most activists around here. there's a lot of medical research (especially cancer) that I just can't support because it involves lots and lots and lots of animal testing. (and yes, this is a very awkward position to be in when you have a chronic illness; there is plenty of arthritis therapy testing done on genetically engineered mice.) I won't interfere with other peoples' lives to make a point; what I consider nonviolent is not what most protesters consider nonviolent. the people who go to georgia to protest the school of the americas think I'm a wimp.

I'm too polite. I'm too passive. I'm too quiet. I'm too concerned with the possibility of offending people. I care too much about the perpetrators of violence and cruelty and destruction.

whatever. my underlying motivation for most of what I do (not including self-serving things like the acquisition of knowledge) is that I want the planet and everything on it to hurt less. everything. I won't hesitate to explain what I think and to try and do something to change what I believe needs changing. and I am not about to let anyone tell me that's not good enough.
5:02 PM +

•••    (I think I'm in delayed-response-time mode this week)

as a corollary to what brenda said about fruity (or not) college courses, I have to say that judging a course by its catalogue description is a little silly. some professers just like to write silly things; it's very hard to judge anything about the nature of a class just by reading a blurb about it in a catalogue.

I flipped through my bulletin for fun, and I found some classes with descriptions that I thought were a little ridiculous. excerpted:

art history 61: everyday things
historical and cross-cultural study of artifacts in our everyday visual and physical environment, from paper clips and nails to furniture and appliances, as well as machines and apparel items -- how they are conceived, made, seen, used and interpreted...
(paper clips are only art if you make sculptures out of them, I think)

english lit 71j: cherchez la femme: the "mystery" of women in the mystery genre
from eden on, our cultural narratives of deception and discovery have often centered on Woman, vulnerable, culpable, and duplicitous ... our investigation of of this "mystery" will involve male authorities ... and female private "I"s...
(private "I"s??)

physics 25: in search of reality
by investigating the assumptions, theories, and experiments associated with the study of reality in quantum physics, we will attempt to decide whether the question of the existence of an intelligible external reality has any meaning.
(remember this is a physics course! not philosophy, physics!)

religion 118: women and witchcraft
a cross-cultural examination of various social phenomena that have been labeled collective as "witchcraft." ... special attention will be given to the question why women have been ubiquitously the prime targets of witchcraft persecutions.
(because the males are warlocks, silly!)

all that aside, the value of a course, especially one that deals in somewhat subjective or abstract subject matter, depends a lot more on the professor and the students than it does on the questions that make up its focus.

this semester I am supposedly going to decide "what has made us the way we are" and "to what extent culture and technology have excused us from the rough-and-tumble of of natural selection," as fuzzily as possible of course, since it is a psychology class. it's good to get away from hard science every so often, you know?
4:31 PM +

•••    okay, I wasn't going to write about this caring thing. really I wasn't. but I kept thinking about it, and even though I wrote a lot of thoughts about it in my fat little blue notebook during class today, I can't quite escape it. so here we go.

I can't save the world, but I can change the world. and I can save little pieces of it. I'm sure there are some math purists who will want to have my head for this, but I have always thought of it as activism by integration -- you can't deal with anything all at once, but if you break it down into lots of tiny pieces, you can wrap your brain around them, visualize them, and take control of them.

that's why I'm a vegan, a pacifist, an environmentalist, an activist, and a volunteer. it's why I recycle and turn off my lights compulsively and commute by bicycle. I even attempt to take shortish showers even though I have three feet of hair that needs to be washed. it's why I teach science in a school district with no science curriculum in a county that has one of the highest crime and poverty rates in pennsylvania. it's why I write letters to congressmen and prisoners of conscience, and emails to people I've never met when I read their stories on the web. it's why I do an awful lot of things. it's why sometimes I sit down in the middle of everything and cry.

maybe you can't tell to look at me (my mother might have something to say about this), but I do care about every single human being in the world. every single one. I care about the people who are hurt and lost and lonely and sick and dying and dead. I care about all of humanity, I care about the people I've never met, I care about the people who hurt me, I care about the people I like, and I care about the people I love. macrocosm and microcosm and everything in between.

you know what though? I don't do it on purpose. I can't help it. for all my natural sciences and social detachments, I am, in the final analysis, incredibly emotion-driven. maybe I need to believe in my ability to change the world, and I need to believe that my caring about people matters, because that's what makes it manageable. suzanne is right; it's a lot to deal with. I don't always get to everyone -- I don't always write to all the people I want to, or sign all the petitions or read all the urgent actiongrams or whatever. there are six billion people on the planet and only twenty four hours in a calendar day, and I feel bad about that sometimes. still, even though I don't always do something, I do always feel something - whether or not I want to. most of the time I'm glad I do.

so. why? I don't know. I am so introverted and shy, especially when it comes to sharing my own life, that I generally don't tell anyone when I'm hurt or lonely or sick in any non-superficial way. I certainly don't tell you people who are reading this, here. I am the fight-my-battles-alone type, even though sometimes I would rather not be. so maybe because of that, I find something comforting in the idea that there are people like me -- I can't be the only one; I know I'm not -- contributing to some sort of universal caring and compassion pool.

one thing I am reasonably sure of is that we all go through more unpleasantness and feel more pain and carry more heartache than we deserve, and probably more than we care to understand. I do not believe in quantifying that. I do believe in acknowledging it, and in doing what I can to take some of it away, or at least try. if I try to save the world, I have to at least help a little bit, somewhere, right?

(can you see my bleeding heart dripping everywhere? gah.)
1:25 AM +

friday, september 8

•••    did you know...

I can stack ten sugar cubes in a tower...
on a slanted surface...
with my non-dominant hand (that would be the left)...
while wearing a blindfold?

I didn't either, until this afternoon. :)
8:27 PM +

•••    actually, I'm more concerned about my lack of dreams than my maleness in michael brown's dream. (though I must admit, I have not dreamed about anything related to the internet or bloggins lately. and yes I am a girl, in case you missed that revelation.)

chatterwaul is a damn cool domain name, isn't it?
7:59 PM +

•••    fridays, on the other hand, pretty much suck. I have essentially no downtime between 8:30 am and 10:00 pm. and I have so much junk to bring to campus with me that I can't even ride my bike!
8:23 AM +

thursday, september 7

•••    tonight in evolutionary psych we played with artificial life (very rudimentary life) and biomorphs. it was fun. we made things that looked like frogs and eiffel towers.

I've decided that thursday is my official favorite day of the school week. it's the day the phoenix and the daily news come out, so there are interesting things to read at breakfast and lunch. (yes, I eat in solitude.) then I have astro, which always makes me happy. in the afternoon I have rugby practice, and at night I have evolutionary psych with one of my friends. it's good having friends in your classes. I think today was a better than average thursday, because I got a package (yay! I love mail) and I played with my hair and my friend came back all the way from campus to visit me and my roommate (now I'm sad because she's gone, but sigh life and all that...)

anyway, yeah. thursdays. :)
11:34 PM +

•••    sometimes even I am surprised by my hair.

I promised a friend I would do it in heidi braids (wrapped over the head) tonight. so, post-shower, I double-braided my hair, one on each side, and wrapped them over the top of my head only to discover that the braids were a good eight inches too long. (I have very fine hair, so the braids are too skinny for the ends to be nicely tucked under; besides, that would have put the rubber bands right on the top of my head.) so I coiled the beginnings in buns behind my ears before I wrapped the ends over my head. I look sort of like I'm wearing earmuffs in the wrong place. (I have no idea what it looks like in the back, but I have a feeling it's messy.)

I can think of maybe two people who cared to hear about that. :)
6:24 PM +

•••    ugh. I don't understand why everyone keeps using nasa technology for surveiling people instead of space. nasa. national aeronautics and space administrations!

I suppose in principle I have no objections to finding new uses for space tech, and yeah, it's good to be able identify murderers. I do, however, feel a little queasy when scientists turn into security officers and law enforcers. (yes, I absolutely hate the satellite defense initiative.) I feel like pure science should transcend daily life, including crime and politics and war... but sigh, it doesn't.
3:58 PM +

•••    in this morning's astronomy class, we were talking about solid angles and my professor mentioned that he didn't know what the origin of the word "steradian" was. I said it was a radian on steroids (think what you will about my scientific integrity; I will never have any problems remembering the construction of a steradian).

we just got an email from the professor; he looked up "steradian" and found that the prefix ster- in this case comes from the greek word stereos, which means "solid." I looked up steroid in a few different dictionaries (including oxford english) but all I can find about its etymology is [ster(ol + -oid]. I know that -oid is a greek suffix meaning having the likeness of (or something to that effect), but I think that ster(ol) is a little ambiguous. if I remember any biochem (ha), sterol is short for steroid alcohol, and is taken from the suffix form -sterol in words like cholesterol. that seems much too self-referential, though; does anyone know if the ster- in steroid is the same as the ster- in stereos and steradian?

I really am curious. steroid sounds like it should be greek-rooted, but I can't find anything definitive. the dictionaries are too busy talking about seventeen carbon atoms.
12:53 PM +

•••    okay, now I'm getting nervous. please don't sue me! I'm a poor college student! I have no money! maybe you'd like to take my textbooks off my hands...? ;)
9:43 AM +

wednesday, september 6

•••    YAY. oh I have been waiting all week for that!
7:49 PM +

•••    the astro homework I am doing (well, at least thinking about) tonight deals with surface brightness. for some reason all I can think of is kitchen cleaning products - you know, for making shiny clean countertops. surface brightness. arglyarg.
7:45 PM +

•••    yes, that is the exact progression (backwards) by which electricity and magnetism becomes eeinem. ;)

I wish I liked physics more than I do. I like knowing how to describe the world in equations (since I can already describe it in words - both sides are important I think), but I don't so much like solving the equations unless they describe something really interesting. what I actually don't like is math, largely because I suck at it (compared to your average physicist at least), but as I'm sure you've all heard, physics is really math.
2:14 PM +

•••    things that make you happy? :)

sunshine (and yes, I rather like the john denver song as well). I get sunburned very quickly, even through spf 45, and I'm very photosensitive, so I can't exactly sit outside in the sun for a long time. but I love sunshine - I love what it does to the world in the early morning coming through leaves and grass and clouds; I love the way it feels on my closed eyelids; I love the way it turns a dusty room into a glowing slow-motion particle ballet; I love the way it brings out the auburn in my otherwise light brown hair. sometimes I sit outside in the sun even though it hurts, and that makes me happy too, in a funny roundabout way.

rugby. I don't think it is possible to understand or explain rugby without playing it. I have always been an athlete, and I have always enjoyed sports, but there is something really special about rugby. I can't pinpoint it. I just know I love it, and I know I'm good at it, which is a nice thing to have at a place like swat that twists your brain up and scrambles it around on a daily basis. also rugby requires such complete focus (because you're constantly throwing your body around, either on the pitch or into masses of people) that it makes it possible to forget all the icky stuff floating around in the back of your mind.

writing. I thought I wanted to be a writer until I was twelve (still more than half my life). writing is one of the most fulfilling parts of life, I think.

astronomy. poetry. humanity from a distance and certain people close up. children. animals. water. music. calvin and hobbes. coasting down a hill on my bike with my arms spread like wings. art. science fiction. clean laundry. thunderstorms. email. puppets. saving the planet. serendipity. infinity.

and other things. :)
1:55 PM +

•••    I should be reading div, grad, curl and all that (which I can no longer think of as anything but "dogcat" - look at the first letters), but I am already sick of eeinem. ugh. I wish I could just take astro all the time...

I'm sure I have stories to tell, but I can't think of any at the moment. help. what should I write about today?
10:16 AM +

tuesday, september 5

•••    I thought no one could write more annoying wind ensemble music than persichetti, but I was wrong. this semester we are playing a truly horrendous piece by vaclav nelhybel. it's too bad I hate it so much, because the guy really does have a cool name. nelhybel, nellybell, bellynell.
10:16 PM +

•••    new approach to thwarting inflammation. cool. maybe someday this will help fix me.

one of the ideas behind my current treatment regimen is that someday someone will come up with something better than what we have now. that's why I'm not on methotrexate (a steroid with nasty side effects), and why I put up with constant inflammation. as long as I'm not crippled (or in the process of becoming so), better to wait a few years and see what medicine comes up with than turn my life upside down with a big bad drug. this is one of the things I've been adamant about, and it's nice to see some progress, somewhere.
5:02 PM +

•••    I like that september.com was last updated in july.
4:38 PM +

•••    okay. I don't think I am all that picky about most things. all I wanted was a little planner book for keeping track of my life. the one I had last year was perfect, but I'm flexible. my only reqirements: small enough to fit in the front pocket of my backpack, dated day-in-week calendar, academic calendar. not so complicated, right?

I went to the college bookstore, the local ville drugstore, the mall, the grocery store, borders, and cvs without finding anything suitable. I finally had to come back and order one online. the shipping cost as much as the thing itself, which is a little ridiculous. I am a little embarassed that I actually ordered an everyday item from a website, but the local world wasn't cooperating with me. I suppose I could have gone to philly, but then I would have spent just as much on train fare as I did on shipping. factor in the necessary shopping time and I think the cost-benefit analysis works out in favor of the web.
4:32 PM +

•••    you know how some days are good only because there's nothing really wrong with them? today is not like that. today I am having a genuinely good day.

it finally stopped being so painfully hot - I'm actually wearing long sleeves, which would have been unthinkable twelve hours ago. the bike ride up to campus was nice and brisk, and it finished the wake-up job that started with my shower. on the way to class I had a nice conversation with an old dormmate about living in the present and enjoying the moment at hand, and at that particular moment it was absolutely something I could believe in.

class this morning was astro. I have been looking forward to this class since the middle of last spring. astronomy is not the reason I'm at school, but it is the most enduring reason why I love school. there are four people in my class this semester (plus one drop-in), and it's taught by my favorite professor here. so I am a happy astro chickie.

then I went to lunch and a completely unhealthy meal that consisted of a plateful of fries (I don't usually eat french fries, nor do I usually enjoy them, but I was in the mood to play with ketchup and eat finger food). now I'm here in the sun with my teeth freshly brushed and my wall newly decorated, and it is just a good day. whee. :)
12:25 PM +

monday, september 4

•••    one of my hallmates plays the bagpipes. he also knows someone who plays the accordian.
you do the math.
10:54 PM +

•••    I just love loony john. he has a lot to say and he doesn't hesitate to say all of it. even though a good fifty percent of the time, I don't understand or agree with the things he says, he always always always makes me laugh. he epitomizes dry wit in the best way possible, and he is a great cynic. I like cynics in the right doses. loony.org is a perfect dose.
7:18 PM +

•••    is "temporary destiny" an oxymoron?
6:41 PM +

•••    the world primordial always makes me think of goo or soup, and that just doesn't work when you're talking about meteorites. but it makes for an entertaining mental image when you picture a gooey primordial meteorite slamming into the earth... splat.
3:33 PM +

•••    today is labor day. it is also the first day of classes. we never get three day weekends, but I think it is just a little silly to actually start on a holiday. sigh. I don't think I am ready to learn math again. I'm still recovering from linear algebra.

by the way, it's the little things that pull an outfit together: the eyes of the three-toed tree frog on my tattoo bandaid match my shorts (red).
8:48 AM +

•••    three perspectives on one rainstorm:

it started to absolutely pour right before I left my room to go to dinner. I have to walk a little under a mile to get from here to the dining hall. I was annoyed. the ground outside the back door of my doorm was all squishy and muddy. the sides of the street were gushing parallel rivers (I live on the intersection of two hills). the parking lot behind the athletic fields where I shortcut through to campus was flooded under at least four inches of dirty rainwater. the rain was just too much for my umbrella, so my arms and soccer shorts were dripping wet, and my shirt was damp. I was cold. I was mad at the rain for getting me soaking wet, and mad at my dorm for being so far away, and mad at myself for waiting so long to go to dinner. I wanted it to stop.

as I was walking back from dinner I took my shoes off to go through the flooded parking lot. the rainwater felt good between my toes, much better than the clammy straps on my sandals. I turned up my walkman. I closed my umbrella and tucked it under my arm so I could turn my head up and let the rain fall on my face. I skipped in the puddles so the water splashed up around my knees. instead of walking on the sidewalk, I walked through the rushing water along the edge of the curb. it was going so fast that if I stood still, the water would shoot up my legs and spray out in a big fan shape. I ran and laughed and twirled against the current, and it made me happy.

I decided I wanted to play in the rain after I got back to my room. so I dropped off my umbrella, my sandals, and my student id, and ran back outside. the rain had abated some, so it was just lightly precipitating, but there was still a lot of water on the ground. I walked around the front of the building and down the hill. our dorm is across the street from this field-thing (I think it belongs to someone) with a garden, and I was walking along the side of it when a bunch of cars came by. I stepped on to the grass to get out of their way. the water was deeper than I expected, and rushing past me pretty quickly. one minute I was walking on mud and grass with water halfway up my calves. then I took a step and there were slippery rocks under me, water up to my knees, and a really strong pull against my feet. then it knocked me over. my legs were inside a drain culvert, I was on my side with water up to my chest, and I was getting sucked inside the drain under the street. for a split second I was amused at being surrounded by water, but then I realized I couldn't get my legs out. everything happened really fast after that, I think. I flipped over so I could pull myself up, but that made it easier for me to slip into the culvert. the water was stronger than I was. I thought my keys were going to get yanked off of their clipped perch on my waistband and get sucked down into a sewer. then I pulled and squirmed and somehow, through some adrenaline-fueled power surge, I got myself out of the tube and facedown onto the ground beside it.

I got up and looked back. there was no visible sign of the drain I had just escaped because of the massive volume of water flowing over it, except for a muddy brown crest of backwash where the water hit the wall of earth behind the culvert. I felt a little crazy and a little silly, and I laughed as I ran across the street. it wasn't until I was almost back up to my door that I realized my right hand was covered in blood and my left knee was completely purple. I guess I hurt them climbing out of the drain. I didn't feel anything. it took a while, until I was in the shower washing off the blood and the sewer grime from my legs, before the adrenaline high started to dissipate. then I flipped out. I've been a little high strung ever since.

I don't think this sort of thing happens to most people. I'm nineteen years old. what am I doing falling into drainpipes? still, I love the rain. today it made me annoyed, happy, and scared all within the course of an hour. sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective.
12:29 AM +

sunday, september 3

•••    today I finally decided to register to vote in pennsylvania, just for the presidential election. this will mean I have to re-register in massachusetts so I can vote in my local elections there, but after much contemplation I decided it was worth it.

it's easy to vote third party in a state that you know is going one way or another. massachusetts is going dem, no question. the only impact my vote will make there is as a tiny piece of the popular vote statistic. in some ways it feels too convenient.

pennsylvania is a swing state, and a big swing state at that. it's true that if I was going to vote for one of the major candidates, it would be gore, because I think bush is a flaming idiot, and because I disagree with republican politics more than I disagree with democratic politics. so, in some people's eyes, my vote for a third-party candidate is a vote against gore, which makes it a vote for bush. screw that. my vote is against all demreps, against the current media-controlled, upper-class-serving state of american politics, and for greater recognition of other options. because I care more about voting for something I actually believe in than I do about keeping bush out of office, and I am going to say as much on november seventh.

I'm not going to vote for the winner anyway. in massachusetts it wouldn't make any difference whether I vote for bush, gore, nader, mcreynolds, or rocky the flying squirrel. in pennsylvania it might. somehow that feels more meaningful to me.

(psa for today. democracy is not a spectator sport, dammit!)
4:52 PM +

•••    I am one of those people who really likes being awakened by the rising sun on my face (or my feet or whatever). this room is good for that. however, I am not thrilled about how ridiculously hot it gets. it's hot and humid in general, but this room is an oven. maybe I'll appreciate it when this jungle-like heatwave breaks on tuesday. at the moment the air is so full of moisture that the walkways on campus have been steaming. who would have thought suburban philadelphia could be so downright tropical?
10:01 AM +

•••    it's no big secret that I have been pretty miserable about living so far away from campus. tonight, though, with my roommate here and both of us decorating the walls, I feel much better about it. like maybe it will be ours and even if it doesn't feel like home now, at least it will be a nice place to stay.
1:38 AM +