Qaud

Today on the quad I heard a girl yell “Eleanor, David”.  That’s odd.

 

Transfered from an Intrum Weblog

Sleep

Sep 30th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

You could sleep through almost everything at Pomona.  I’ve always known this, too, and freshman year I’d stay up really late, until three and four in the morning, chatting in Nina’s room, waiting to be present when something important happened.  I didn’t want to miss anything, and I always did miss things, everything important happened after I went to bed.

Still everything happens after you could go to bed.  You could go to bed at 11:00.  This is after the Fox 11 News at 10 would air at home, and it’s a legitimate time to sleep.  Of course these days work won’t let you, but just from a practical perspective, it could be done.  And you would miss everything, and it would be healthy.  All the things people do to be ridiculous happen after 11:00.  Everything hurtful people will do will happen after 11:00.  All the drama will happen at 12:00.  You’d be safe.  And you can see people during the day.  You can go to meals with them and chat with them and they’ll be around and about.  You’ll miss the deep conversations and pop-philosophy, but you’d be all the better for it, like as not, because the deep conversations are themselves a social ploy, a mode of imposing drama onto interaction that is, after all, unsubstantive.

This is not true in life.  In life you should go to bed when ever you want.  At Pomona, however, you’ll be far happier if you go to bed at 11:00.  Just get up early and finish your work and save yourself a lot of fuss.

Rememberence of things past…

Sep 27th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Time, Proust will tell you, is tricky.  I don’t have enough of it, and my head hurts because of it.  I don’t sleep enough (no one does; I’m no harder than anyone), and it’s making my head hurt.  These things are true:

I like running a lot, and I like the full moon.

I don’t mind my thesis.

I’ve got to finish the Cambridge application before it kills me (kills me).

I’ve got papers all over my room.

My head hurts and I want to sleep.

I love chatting.

Everything’s worrying me all the time.

I will be very much calmer by December 1st, when everything is due.

I wish you crazy peace.

To Be Fair…

Sep 24th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Oh I look forward to living in normal environments again.  It’s funny here.

So, Yom Kippur is tricky, right, because it makes you very aware of all the ways you to wrong by other people and wrong by the world, which is excellent good.  It’s good because all the social whatnot that kills me here is probably just as reflexive as anything.  I’m sure for all the times I’m snapped at I snap, and for all the insensitive things and hurtful things and things that are around are done as often by me as anyone, and so this is good and important to know.

Oh! Pomona’s ruined me! It really has.  I’m so nervous here in a way that I’m just not at home and wasn’t so much at Cambridge, and this is because people get angry here.  It’s too small, and there’s nothing else to do, and so people get angry.  And no one’s gotten angry yet, but it kills me, because it scares me, because I hate hate hate when people get angry, so I spend all of life trying not to make people angry.  And the thing is, this isn’t even being paranoid or unreasonable, because people are angry at each other here all the time! And it’s just too much to think about, it really is, and this year has been far better than most because, for whatever reason, I’ve been less worried about life in general (probably because I have work to beat the band and because I’ve been in England where people just arn’t mad at you and I’ve been at home where everything is fine, so it’s become clear that all the worry they put you through here is made up and ridiculous) but still it kills me because everything, everything, is followed in your mind by “I hope they took that well”, and “I hope that didn’t annoy them all to heck”, and “oh, I just didn’t mean to be so very ever-present, I hope they’re not tired of me”.  I hate thinking about how I hope people arn’t tired of me!  But of course it’s a reasonable thing to consider, because of course I am tired of people at times, so it’s all quite fine, but gosh gosh gosh! I can’t take it at all.

There are whole genres of life where you never do have to think about whether people are tired of you.  Because people don’t really get tired of you, because they shouldn’t, because what does that even mean, and people don’t even really get tired of you here, not if you’re quiet, but you have to worry, because they may well, and then they’ll be too mean.

It’s all a shame.  It’ll turn my hair white for sure.

Computer Virus

Sep 24th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

The poor computer’s got a virus, which is such a downer, but alright, because they’re fixing it as we speak.  When it is healthy, I believe it will be a ball of good luck.  I think it’s good luck in general, though it’s a replacement for the original, real, computer, and though it has had many many problems in the past.

Claremont

Sep 23rd, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Remember freshman year, when Nina and Fredio used to take napps together every afternoon and we used to stay up until 3:00 even though we had chemistry at nine and had to run before that because there wasn’t time after?  Remember Alex Cohen and how he used to know us, not to mention the rest of the boys, and how we didn’t know anyone outside of Harwood, really, because we where afraid of people who weren’t subfree, and we couldn’t tell who was subfree in other dorms?  It was odd.

So now this is a funny year.  It’s a lot of it a funny year because we don’t live on a hallway but instead on a balcony.  Our balcony is full of excellent people, to be sure, though they took the furniture from our outdoor living space.  All the people we’re nearby are friendly and social and it’s all quite good, though we hardly talk to anyone these days that we talked to freshman year.  That’s good though, because the people you know freshman year are just the people proximally located to you, they’re not necessarily the people you should know or would try to know, given other options.  I mean, we’d have still tried to know them; they were fine people, but we know just as good people now.

It’s a funny year because we’re all so tired and tired of being here and tired of the ridiculous liberal arts scene.  We’re quite fond of eachother but ready to quit Claremont, so we’re all working hard to get out.  Our focus on going our separate ways has made it sort of clear that we’re not to worried about eachother, exactly.  We’d like our friends to be happy and succeed in life and maybe even come to our weddings if we get married soon enough after school gets out for that to not be weird, but we’re also ready to make new friends and do new, real, things, and to be, again, as an individual rather than a member of the Pomona College community.  We’re all done caring about facebook.

It’s always noisy here and the noise always comes from a voice you know.  It’s never quiet, and it never will be, and you’ll always know everyone.  Knowing everyone is fine, as is noise, but it’s very odd and not like the rest of the world.  We’re ready for the rest of the world.

Traditionally everyone in Claremont is always lonely.  They’re lonely because they can’t find the people they’re supposed to spend time with, though this is a funny construction, because everyone’s around.  People here now are finally done being lonely.  They know, now, for the first time, that these aren’t the people they need anyway, and that spending time looking for them is spending time preparing for the past, rather than preparing for the future, which just doesn’t make any sort of sense.  Everyone has felt this in unison.

So it’s finally more normal here, but in an odd way.  The people who still make noise aren’t doing so because they found the friends they’ll have forever, but rather because they realize they never did do that, but they’ve spent such a long time trying that they’d better keep pretending.  These may be the best years of their lives.  Everyone always said so.  Still, most people here are forging forward quietly, unable or unwilling to keep fussing, and are pretty insistent that this isn’t the best time of their lives.  It better not be.  They look forward to retirement.

Thesis

Sep 9th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

I now have a thesis weblog, which is going to be amazing, though perhaps a bit dull if you’re not inspired to redefine the precepts of modern literary criticism, but this weblog is at www.hannahcrumme.wordpress.com.  You’re going to love it.

2007-2008

Sep 8th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

It looks like it’s going to be an a-typical year at Pomona, which is fine, and which has complex origins, and which might be quite nice but may take some adjustment.

Pomona is usually a desperate search for activity.  Though there’s always homework, the desire to replace this homework with manic social functions is always very present in our minds.  It makes us all very nervous, and fills us with the need to be out of our rooms, in public places, and engaged in meeting people.  It’s exhausting and it’s ridiculous.  It’s also institutionally supported, and so there are a million social things to do, all of which are similar to each other, none of which is super-fun but all of which are fine.

Two things have changed this year, or at least two, anyway.  We’ve been abroad and on our own and we have thesis which holds our genuine interest.  Work is finally less petty, may even be valid, because it really is some major and substantive project that might even hold our fascination, irreverent though we may be about it.  What is more, having lived alone or in far more varied social scenes from Pomona, we’ve all come to understand that the manic socializing is unnecessary and unproductive.  It’s finally clear that it’s silly to go out every night, even if out is just to our friends’ rooms, and that we  must stay in and work.  I’ve done well in the past socializing as much as we do; I hope to do excellently better this year, socializing in a more comfortable scale.

So work is finally interesting and life is finally less ridiculous (though listening to me you’d still say “my goodness, you’ve all got such a lot of drama”) and we’re all finally living for the lives that are to come, rather than the life at Pomona.  It should be good.  It should be intensely productive and very pleasant and really still quite social.  It might even be sustainable.

Brocolli

Sep 6th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Me:  Maddie, eat your brocolli.

Maddie:  I don’t want to.  I ate all my other broccoli.

Me:  All the more reason to eat this last broccoli.  It wonders why you ate all the other broccoli and not it.  It’s crying.

Maddie: Good.

Me:  I’m glad your not my mother.

Maddie:  If I where your mother, you’d never worry about broccoli crying in the first place.

Reel

Sep 5th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Me:  I’m reeling them in.

Maddie:  That was a movie camera motion.

Me:  Shut up.  Whatever, different kind of reel.

Cleaning and Packing

Aug 31st, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

I’m very good at cleaning but I’m no good at packing.  Dang nab it all!

I will see you all in Claremont bright and early (way early) tomorrow morning.

 

Talking Gates

Me:  …then we found this haunted gate which spoke to us.

David:  What did the gate say?

Me:  No trespassing.

David:  Oh.

Me:  Oh, sorry, no.  The gate we climbed over said “no trespassing”.   The haunted gate made whistling noises in the wind like “ooooooooo”.

 

Seamstress

I have an excellent dress that I’ve been wearing for about the last four years.  It’s disintegrating now, although it was the basis of the whole theme of my wardrobe, so much so that last summer I was called “Sundress Hannah” and the other Hannah was called “the other Hannah”.  If I could find a seamstress that would make this dress over again for me, I’d have her make it in about five different colors, and then I’d only wear that dress (or the dresses modeled on it) for life.  This is my current goal.

 

Ninty-nine

We’re 99 views away from 10000 visits to the weblog.  Yee-haw.  Get on visiting the weblog people, so we can get to a whole new digit.

 

English Accent

(David is from England; he has an English accent).

Me:  So you asked David about his prime minister?

My Mother:  Yes, and he answered very intelligently, but I couldn’t understand a word  he said.

Me:  Oh.

 

Diana Simpson

We’re pretty mad at our town’s sheriff, who allowed for the road to be closed and for this ridiculous publicity stunt.  Frankly, damn Hollywood Californians with their media.  We’re not amused.  The justification we’re always given for the road being closed is that the house their building is for the family of a girl with cancer.  Don’t you risk making it difficult for the girl to ever achieve anything better than her own illness?  If cancer is worth $500,000 in property value to her family, what more can she have to achieve?  Has ABC set a ridiculously high bar for this poor kid?

However, we’re all for giving a house to this family; no one begruges them it, and, frankly, it increases property values for the entire neighborhood, so we’re okay.  However, closing the road is ridiculous.  I mean, it’s ludicrously strange.  They allow you to drive on it during the day and have flaggers who wave traffic though.  Although the flaggers hold signs that say “slow” they look annoyed if you don’t drive faster than 35 miles an hour, although the road is a 25 mile an hour road under normal circumstances.  The place is crawling with police for this artificially-created emergency, although you can’t get a  cop out their if you call in a drunk driver or any other real danger.  You will be told “I don’t know if we can make it out there”, we know, we’ve tried.

We pretty much blame our Sheriff for this one.  She’s from California and she’s a show boat.  She’s for publicity.  She’s for jazz.  She’s for glamor.  Don’t give her convenience or actual public safety.

There was big issues about whether Home Depot should be allowed to build in Corvallis.  When they finally got their permit, look what our Sheriff allowed them to bring with them.  They’ve  made our otherwise quiet college town, that was looking forward to it’s ridiculous engineering-festival mid-summer (Da Vinci Days) into a single corporate commercial for a do-it-yourself store.  We’re not impressed.

 

Argument

My sister got in an argument with the security guard from ABC who was keeping the road closed.  Excerpts of it go like this:

My Sister:  Why’ve you closed the road?

Security Guard:  In case we need to put trucks in it.

My Sister:  There’s clearly nothing in the road, you could just let people go through it.

Security Guard:  We’re building a house.  What, do you live in this area?

My Sister:  Yes, and it takes me a lot longer to go home now, why don’t you just open the road?

Security Guard:  Don’t you care about kids with cancer?

My Sister:  No.  I had cancer.  It doesn’t mean you need to give them a house.  It certainly doesn’t mean you need to close the road.

Security Guard:  You can have a parking permit.

My Sister:  It looks like you have a tough job and you’re doing it cheerfully.  You’re standing out in the sun and it’s hot and it doesn’t look pleasant at all, and you’re cheerful anyway, and that’s very good of you.  You don’t need to close the road, though.

 

Bumper Sticker

Seen on a bumper sticker:

QUAKERS?  WHERE!

www.quakerfinder.com

(Does it seem like they put the exclamation points with the wrong words?)

 

Corner Groundhog

There’s a groundhog that sits on the corner (it’s a blind banked corner that is about 90 degrees), and there’s a groundhog that stands on the corner and watches everyone as they go around it at about 45 miles an hour, just to scare them a little bit more, because why not?

 

Los Angeles

It’s interesting how, after living somewhere where some of the people come from London and other people come from Ipswick and Elstree and Heathfield places like Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara sound forign.  It helps, of course, that they’re all Spanish-y, but doesn’t Chicago begin to sound far away, too (of course, it always did).  Isn’t it amazing that at this time, last year, I was leaving to live in Connecticut for a couple of months?  And doesn’t Oregon sound far away and let’s face it, mythic?

Yeah, I thought so too.

 

The Artist

The point at hand is what constitutes art and who is the artist.  This is an interesting question.  This is what Wilde says:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

 

On the two most recent chapters…

Obviously I don’t agree with everything the two previous chapters say about Oregon (we’re unable to shake that damn marajuana association, no matter how zarking sub-free we are). However, I feel like the hard-core spirit of the state comes through in both, and this is what’s important.

Also, and this is key, Oregon is really only interesting if you’ve left.  If you’re still there, you’ll probably think that that’s just how the world is, and it’s not funny, it’s normal.  This is true.

 

States

Freshman year we all looked up “you know you’re from XYZ when” facts about our states.  These are the facts for Oregon.  I consider them to be mostly true:

You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans in the trash.

You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.

You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.

You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal.

You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is not a real mountain.

You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima, and Willamette.

You are not fazed by “Today’s forecast: showers followed by rain,” and “Tomorrow’s forecast: rain followed by showers.”

You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of mind.

You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks on.

You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or people from California.

You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time.

You measure distance in hours.

You own more than 10 articles of clothing that have microbreweries and/or brewpubs printed on them. Bonus for embroidered stuff.

You live equidistant to a symphony hall, a winery, and a volcano.

You complain about Californians as you sell your house to one for twice as much as you originally paid.

You know a bride and groom that registered at REI.

If someone ran your car off the highway, you might drown.

Know at least eight people who work for Intel or Nike, or used to work for Tektronix.

You obey all traffic laws except “keep right unless passing.”

You think downtown is “scary” because you were panhandled there….once.

You’ve definitley used the five main freeways/highways: I-5, 217, 205, 26, and 84.

You know that Kindergarten Cop and The Goonies were filmed in Astoria and Cannon Beach, respectively.

You take pride in Lewis and Clark and know who Sacagawea is.

You were excited when the Crater lake, Oregon quarter came out.

You love The Shins… because they live here.

You love the Decemberists…. because they are from here…and live here.

You dress in layers (tank top, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, etc).

You remember Ramblin’ Rod –and you laugh because you used to watch it or because you were on it for your birthday.

You are sad during Christmas because it never snows in the valley.

You know where the valley is.

You go out of state and wait in your car for someone to pump your gas.

You are more concerned about packing a sweatshirt or a jacket when going to the beach than packing a bathing suit.

You are aware that “The Shining” was filmed at Timberline Lodge.

The red nose on the ‘made in oregon sign’ starts your holiday season

You’ve seen the elvis impersonator at saturday market

You smile at people you don’t know as you walk by them on the sidewalk.

You make subtle remarks about washington drivers, but save your real road rage for california drivers.

You’ve witnessed 300 nude bicyclists just cruising around downtown like its no big deal.

You were thrilled that Scott Thomason finally stop putting his face on the back of his cars.

You should know it is illegal to buy or sell marijuana, but it is legal to smoke it on your own property.

 

Tea

Maddie will tell you that I can’t say “no”; nope, I can’t say “no” at all.  It means I’ll never say I’m too busy to have tea, mostly because I like to see people and chat, and I will always do my work and I will always do it with quality, so there’s no need that it be done now, as such.  I’ll just stay up later.  This has never caused me any problems, except that sometimes I’ve had to much tea (and thereby caffine, which makes me feel ill if I have too much).

 

The East Coast

One of the most profound challenges of giving up the major in biology in favor of the English major was the framework of quiting to do someththing easier.  This is true.  Literature is easier than biology, and this is because I am decently skilled at it.  I write very quickly, and have writen a good 30 pages in a day before, and can usually come up with well-researched, well-read insight on very little apperant effort.  So it’s quiting, yes, but it’s quiting doing something I’m not really skilled at, in favor of doing something that I have profound skill in at a higher quality.  It’s okay.  It also didn’t mean I worked any less hard, it just mean’t that the work I did went towards real insights, rather than mastering material already mastered by countless students, let alone pioneering anything.

The funny thing about living in the east coast last summer was that they assumed we weren’t smart.  All the kids there with Californian accents got ridiculous run-around.  We where talked-down at like no body’s business; the degree to which the presumption is that, in the west coast, people are slow, don’t work, and may or may not be slightly affected is ridiculous.

One of the reasons I applied to Pomona early admission was because the name was modest.  You can’t say “I went to Harvard” without boasting.  It’s just a fact; there are airs present in the word “Harvard” that are not present in other words.  You can say it as lowly as you like, you can say “I went to Harvard on pure luck”, or “I went to Harvard, but I studied dance”, and regardless it’s bragging.  One of the good things about Pomona, before we even went there, was when people said “where are you going to school?” you could answer and they’d look at you quisically and ask “where’s that?”.  It never had to be said as an apology.  It’s fine, too, because Pomona has the best undergraduate acceptance rate to graduate schools of any liberal arts school in the country; people who should know what Pomona is and how we work there know.

So we resent the damn East Coast for thinking we’re silly, and we’re sorry we framed for ourselves the preception that science is more work.  We’re darned smart, and even if we’re not, we work hard enough to over come any latent silliness the East Coast might have been right about.

 

Yellow Dress

I have this lovely yellow dress, but the zipper is very long on it. This means I get stuck in it, which is tragic, because it seems to make me very nervous to be stuck in the dress, and I flail very unattractively until I figure out the zipper.  It took me a long time to figure out the zipper (which trickily zips up the side and which does not unzip all the way to the top, for the funciton of letting you get in the dress and pull it over your shoulders, then fit it so it’s tighter), and in the process of figuring it out I had to cut the top of the dress because I was just nervous I’d never  get out.  Having cut the dress (don’t worry, I’ll fix it) and still being stuck, I figured there must be another solution.  This is what let me figure out that the zipper was a lot longer than I had originally assumed.  Damn zipper.

 

2/3rds

My Father:  Do you feel like you’d equal 2/3rds of  Cambridge student?

Me: Oh, yeah, sure.

My Father:  Oh, well that’s something.  Wow.  2/3rds of a Cambridge student.

 

Cold

It’s been cold and rainy here (although it was sunny for a moment, and I went running during that moment, so it’s alright) and so I’ve been wearing tights.  Tights are alright, except that they’re made of nyoln and are as slippery as a parashute.  I fell down the stairs from about thhe top to about the bottom yesterday, hitting my elbows and the back of my head all the way down, and it’s left me in oh so sore and whiney a state.  The lesson is:  God doesn’t want you to wear tights at the end of June (that’s not really the lesson).

Also I don’t get any mail anymore.  That’s okay, except that there’s no longer a good excuse to walk out of doors, because I can’t be going to check my mail, because I don’t get any.  It makes you wonder all the California mail that is forwarded home, and how important corrisponance correctly directed from Hillel and the MLA and things are.  Oh well, at least 73 people read the weblog yesterday (a lot of htem searching for information about Chabad, interestingly enough).

 

When I Go Home

When I go home I’m going to try to run the seven mile loop (which is excellent and starts at the saddle) once a week. I’ll run more than three miles every other day, and I’ll try to adventure/ discover run frequently. It will be beautiful weather and hot and sticky as heck, because that’s how summer is in Oregon, and there will be blueberries on those bushes and figs on the fig tree, and I’ll watch the progress of the roses and the grapes over their respective arbors. I’ll have to start studying like heck for the GRE, and I’ll be in contact via e-mail with the Career Development Office to figure out what the heck to do with next year. When I get home skype won’t work, because our internet’s not fast enough for it, and I will only be able to check e-mail about twice a day. I’ll write that damn thesis, which will be good, and edit it, so taht during term I can focus on my other classes and on my graduate school applications and on getting grants to study overseas or getting jobs in publishing for when I don’t get into grad school. I’ll do as much as I can over the summer, from the deck, for the most part, and from my room (which is not the real room I lived in, but is rather the room I stay in now that my sister’s in the room I used to be in). When I go home I will have more sets of cloths, which will be nice, and will be able to drive to good runs, and will have a dog to wrestle. Sometimes I will go into town with my sister to meet my mother for lunch. Sometimes I’ll run with my father in the research forests. We’ll take my grandfather out to Chinese food all the time.

These things are true. They are facts. There is very little doubt about any of them.

 

Integral

Have you ever thought that driving up Highway 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) was integral to your education, and that driving along Big Sur and seeing Carmel and Santa Barbara and things where pivitol to your education?

Did you ever consider that Route 66 is totally key and way-accessable (by “way accessable I mean can be accessed in the world, unlike say Never Never Land, which cannot.

Consider John Stienbeck.  Consider the Beach Boys.  Consider the legend which is Hollywood and the alternative legend which is San Fransisco (“if you’re going to San Fransisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair”, I mean, that’s positive).  And it all really exists in California.

Then again, I can’t even begin to tell you how many books are set in England, but it’s a lot.

 

Rain

It’s been unseasonably cold and rainy in Britian.

This is so I can finish my work, guys.  I have six essays to finish (only about ten to twelve pages each) in the next couple of weeks.  As soon as I do that, it will stop raining and you can go outdoors and ride your bikes or do whatever it is my failure to write is holding you from.

It’s good, though, it’s so much easier to write when it rains.

 

Widows

My Mother: The Rhododendrens are good this year.

Me: The English are big on flowers.

My Mother: Yeah, they specalize in it. It’s all those widows they have. Instead of families they have flowers. It’s nice for the rest of us.

 

Pretender

It seems like it’s probably not a mistake that the Pretender found a way to escape and get back to where people are, because it’s probably lonely and wants to be around people.

(The pretender is a doll).

 

Your Day

Crazy Professor:  How was your week?

Jonathan and me:  Fine.

Jonathan:  How was yours?

Crazy Professor:  Horrific.  Absolutely awful.  Unfortnately, this has been one of the worst weeks in time.  This week in my college one of the most terrible scandles in the last 100 years of Cambridge history has occured.  It’s dreadful.  Dreadful, you know.  Horrible for college reputation.

Jonathan:  What was the scandel?

Crazy Professor:  I can’t tell you that darlings, I can’t tell you that.

 

Mythic Jungles of Old

Don’t you just want to go run in the rain forests of Oregon and the quaker retirement villiages of sunny Southern California?  Don’t you want to get back from running and fuss about with the grape arbor or chat-up Maddie?  Wouldn’t you like to wrestle the miniature lab with sport ears or try to get Devin to go to dinner at Harvey Mudd’s dining hall with you?  Yeah.  Me too.

It’s fine.  All the Oregon stuff in like six weeks and all the Pomona stuff in like 16.   Then you’ll miss England like heck.  This is how things go.  I still don’t really miss New Haven, although the town’s excellent.  Yes, of all places to live, New Haven’s one of them, but you may never miss it.

 

Feribot

English is a major part of Turkish, and this is obvious almost as soon as you reach Istanbul.  Although the majority of the signs are unintelligible to your English speaking crowd, a certain percentage are a picture of a boat with a car on board, called “Feribot” (Ferry boat).

 

Exam Term

Because all the Cambridge students take exams, and perhaps because they’re that kind of people coming in, they all plan around being high-strung in the spring.  This is not something that would happen in the U.S.  In the U.S. people don’t take kindly to the notion that everyone’s just going to be upset for eight weeks (or four weeks), rather there’s a generally accepted sense that you need to suck it up.  Work is work.  Work is life, and it’s what we do, and of course you’ve got to do it and worry about it or not do it and be a bad human being.  This is how it is.

Yesterday I went walking with about four people, all of whom were acting palbably annoyed with the universe, not even whining, but rather just being touchy, because they have exams coming up.  Is it worth this town’s time to be annoyed at the world for a month, just because everyone’s got exams?  Doesn’t it seem like, since they all have them, they might whine and commiserate, but not act touchy or alarmist or whatnot?  It’s confusing.  It’s also worrying for those of us who come from a land without anger.  It’s a whole society that has legitimized acting mildly angry all the time.  They don’t all act angry, but they don’t question the people who do.

Of course, who am I to question anybody.  I guess it’s good.  Everyone can be a little edgy, if they like, and those who don’t, who instead just work and  suck it up, good.

 

The End of Malcolm Street

The last four times I’ve passed the top of Malcolm Street (all of them were times I wasn’t turning to go home) I’ve seen adults with toy weapons.  The first time someone had a plastic gun, and then there was a toy base-ball bat, and then the next time there was a woman with a sort of double ended, spikey cudgle, which was really confusing, since she looked like a school teacher, and she had a double-ended, spikey cudgle, and now, most recently, I passed a seemingly normal man, except he was walking with real purpose (it looked like he was in a hurry and was late) walking with a long bow and stick on darts.

My money’s on the woman with the cudgle.

 

Flowers

The English know flowers better than anybody, and in the spring England seems to be nicer than all of the Mediterrannean.

 

Not Running

Since I went away and didn’t run for ten days (which is seven days longer than I’ve ever not-run in the last six years) it’s no good at all.  My back must have started to straighten while I wasn’t running, because it’s really against it now that I run again.  It’s okay, though, because by the time I’m back in Oregon I’ll have zened whole skelatal system back into sucking it up.

 

Talking

Me:  I found out that if you talk badly about people behind their back, you are reincarnated as a dog.

Maddie:  How did you figure that out?

Me:   David told me.

Maddie:  Oh, well if David told you, it must be true.

Me:  No, it is, I looked it up.

 

Princeton

Rachel:  This is Joe.  He’s from Princeton doing his M. Phil here.

Me:  Oh!  I met a very disillusioned student from Princeton on a train recently.

Joe:  What’s he got to be disillusioned by?  Jeesh.  Some people.  If I met him I’d just shoot him.

Me: Oh.

 

Orhan

We both took “The Novels of Orhan Pamuk” for our freshman ID course, and both where horrified and swore never to go to Turkey, just based on what we learned in that class.  Two years later we went to Istanbul togeather.

We arrived in Turkey and took a cab from the train station.  Our cabbie didn’t speak English, but he did ask us our names.  He then introduced himself as Orhan.

 

Blog Stats

I can (you can’t) see statistics about the weblog which I find really interesting.  The weblog has been visited over 6100 times.  The most it was ever visited in a day was 94 times, and today it’s been seen 38 times.  I know what stories were read today, and which were read most.  I also know what people who found it by searching google typed into the search function.  Usually it comes up when things are spelled wrong.  Today it came up for people who searched:

“ryan air” violins 2007	2
oxtoby	1
sarah raff	1
cayotes cats	1
my dad was a heartthrob	1
how cayotes live	1

A lot of people search Sarah Raff.  This comes up a great deal.  Cayotes come up a great deal too.  Recently Oxtoby has come up a lot.  Things about depression and people’s father’s come up, too.  Around New Years “Aude Lang Syne” came up, but this is becaues I’ve misspelled it.

 

Back to Greece

After takıng an overnıght express sleeper traın to Istanbul, and gettıng off ın the Turkısh fronteer ın the mıst of 5:00 am and beıng woken up at 3:00 by Greek authorıtıes to show our passports, and at 4:30 to get them back from Greek authorıtıes and 5:30 to get them back from Turkısh authorıtıes, and after watchıng all of the sheep heards of rural Turkey watch the traın go by, we lost our travel book ın the cabın, and dıdn’t get off the traın, whıch started to move back towards Greece.  I had to beg a guy ın a flat hat to let me through a pad-locked door, and beg men named Jonny and Acbar and Orhan wıth walkıe-talkıes to stop the traın untıl my frıend got off, whıch they dıd, or else she’d have gone back to Greece, whıch’d be a shame, sınce ıt was her call to go a day early to Istanbul anyway.

 

Glass Chıcken vs. Sılver Pıg

Last wınter I gave my mother an excellent sılver pıg.  She took ıt poorly and perhaps as a commentary on her eatıng habıts.  In Venıce I got her a glass chıcken, ıt’s very nıce and not a commentary on anythıng at all.

 

Glassmen

In Mırano, the ısland ın Venıce where glass ıs made, a glassman trıed to sell us chandelıers.  We saıd we dıdn’t have houses to put them ın.  He saıd ‘You know us glassmen, always tryıng to make money and do busıness’.  I thought he was clearly Jewısh, and nearly saıd ‘funny, that’s what we say about the Jews’, but refraıned, because ıt could have gone bad on so many levels.

 

Assurıng, but a lıttle dısconcertıng

Shobha says that ıt’s assurıng, but a lıttle dısconcertıng, that we can pack everythıng we need for two weeks ınto a suıtcase.  I don’t know.

 

Pınto Story

On a sıde note, thıs ıs a story my father always used to tell:

Once he met a guy at a party, and was tryıng to make conversatıon, so he went off on a monolog on how bad the 70’s car the Pınto was.  It was a bad car, too, but my dad dıdn’t really have all that much agaınst ıt.  At the end of the monolog the guy looked annoyed and saıd ‘what’s wrong wıth Pıntos?’.  He was mad because he owned two.

The moral of the story ıs, just be posıtıve about everythıng, especıally to strangers, because you’ll never know what someone happens to care a lot about.  It’s just true. 

 

Sheep Fences ın Corsıca

Sheep fences ın Corsıca are surrounded by about an eıght foot moat of really horrıble thıstles.  I got hıt by one of these thıstles, and I commend the strategy, they would keep the sheep ın.

 

Neapolean

Corsica is where Neapolean was born.  We saw Nepolean’s house in Milan.  We’re doing a Nepolean themed adventure.

 

Corsica

Corsica is a French-speaking island in the Mediterranean off the western coast of Italy. 

When we planned to go to Corsica, Shobha wanted to experiment with drunkeness.  She wanted to “drink a bottle of wine on the beach in Corsica” because she’s classy like that.  It’d be good for her to drink, she figured, for the first time with me about, because I’m sub-free-ish, and would be fine to watch her and make sure nothing bad happened to her and not drink.

By the time we got to Corsica we were way way to tired for Shobha to have any interest in drinking.  She’s been eating baby food, because she’s had a jaw injury and needs soft food, so she ended up eating baby food on the beach in Corsica, rather than drinking wine. This is how it goes. 

 

Tourism

Me:  I have way too many green beans.

My Father:  Eat them for breakfast, or put them in tupperwear and take them on the plane.  Do this to rise above the usual tourist activity.  Do otherthings, too.  Leave little rockes everywhere, you can…

Me:  That’s why I take pictures of the monkey.

My Father:  Good.

 

Letter from David Oxtoby

o: The Pomona College Community

From:  David Oxtoby,President

I am writing to let you know in advance about an article to appear on the Forbes.com Website later this week that will portray the College in a troubling and unfair light. Using the U.S. Department of Education campus crime statistics for the year 2005, a Forbes reporter is finalizing an article ranking American colleges according to the amount of crime reported on their campuses during that year. Depending upon how they parse the numbers, we may be listed in the top five for campuses with the most crime per capita — possibly even at number one.

 

Obviously, this runs counter our own experience — that this is an exceptionally safe campus. The main reasons for this unlikely ranking are twofold. First, the number of reported thefts at Pomona in 2005 was abnormally high — 71 as compared to 41 in 2004 and 33 in 2006. (A big part of this spike was due to one group of juveniles who were caught and

stopped.) Second, the number of reported “motor vehicle thefts” on our campus in 2005 was listed at 13. This misleading statistic includes 11 cases of unauthorized use of a golf cart.

 

Soco Ameretto Lime

So, when I was at New Haven we made the poor kids to a talent show ever term.  The councillors also did the show, to prove it was cool, and poor David Rosenbaum and I always danced.

 Two “teachers”, one of whom was extremely homosexual and the other of whom was married, and both of whom were heart-throbs for our poor 15-17 year old students, sang the following song both times we put on the talent show.  It’s funny, because it’s the angstiest song you’ll ever run into.  The students all identify with it strongly, and it’s fun to watch, from the somewhat embittered perspective that the job instills you with.  These are the lyrics.  Consider how it’d be funny to watch a bunch of 17 year olds at “summer enrichment” identify with them (when sung by their entirely statistically unattainable love-interests):

Passed out on the overpass
Sunday best and broken glass
Broken down from the bikes and bars
Suspended like spirits over speeding cars
You and me we’re kings over the parkway tonight
And tonight will go on forever while we
walk around this town like we own the streets
and stay awake through summer like we own the heat
Singing “everybody wake up (wake up) it’s time to get down”
(everybody, everybody wake up it’s time to get down)
And when I pass the bottle back to Pete
on the overpass tonight, I bet we laugh

I’m gonna stay eighteen forever (cut me open)
So we can stay like this forever (sun poisoned)
And we’ll never miss a party (this offer…)
cause we keep them going constantly (…stands forever)
And we’ll never have to listen (new haircut)
to anyone about anything (new bracelet)
cause it’s all been done and its all been said (eyeliner)
we’re the coolest kids and we take what we can get

The hell out of this town
Find some conversation
The low fuel lights been on for days
It doesn’t mean anything
I’ve got another 500, ‘nother 500 miles
before we shut this engine down,
(we shut it down)

I’m gonna stay eighteen forever (cut me open)
So we can stay like this forever (sun poisoned)
And we’ll never miss a party (this offer…)
cause we keep them going constantly (…stands forever)
And we’ll never have to listen (new haircut)
to anyone about anything (new bracelet)
cause its all been done and its all been said (eyeliner)
we’re the coolest kids and we take what we can get (wait forever)

(you’re just jealous cause I’m young and in love)
Eighteen forever (first kisses)
(your stomach’s filled up but you’re starved for conversation)
So we can stay like this forever (new stitches)
(you’re spending all your nights growing old in your bed)
And we’ll never miss a party (collar weekend)
(and your tearin up your photos cause you wanna forget… it’s over)
cause we keep them going constantly (appearance ticket)
(you’re just jealous cause we’re young and in love)
And we’ll never have to listen (November to…)
(your stomach’s filled up but you’re starved for conversation)
to anyone about anything cause it’s all been done (…remember)
(you’re spending all your nights growing old in your bed)
and it’s all been said (nightswimmers)
(and your tearin up your photos cause you wanna forget… it’s over)
we’re the coolest kids and we take what we can get

Just jealous cause we’re young and in love
You’re just jealous cause we’re young and in love
You’re just jealous cause we’re young and in love
You’re just jealous cause we’re young and in love
You’re just jealous cause we’re young and in love
You’re just jealous [turntable scratch]

 

n

So.

The “n” key on my keyboard fell off (a problem I am currently working on), making it difficult for me to type.  I figgured I could super-glue it (a persumption that seems risky, I know), and that I could get super-glue at Sainsbury’s.  The problem that then presented itself was that I was already in pajamas, and the English are just not groccery-store in pajamas type of people (unlike Americans, who definitely are, and while I wouldn’t go to the groccery store in pajamas personally, I do go to the student store at school in pajamas (with an overcoat over them) all the time).  My pajamas could pass for normal, albiet zany, pants, so I figgued I’d put on the overcoat and get the super-glue.  At the store I ran into the Rabbi (literally, because somehow we were both walking backwards), and, because he said there was something different about me, was very consious of having come to the store in pajamas under an overcoat.  However, as he walked away, I realized he was wearing not an over-coat but a short coat (like waist length coat) and clearly duck-patterned pajama pants (didn’t pass for normal pants at all).  Oh, the Rabbi…

 

Roman Architecture

There’s this big white building in the center of Rome, which everyone hates and so if you come you have to hate it too, and talk about how incongrous and offensive it is to its surroundings, and things like that, because otherwise you won’t fit in (no, really, you’d better hate it, otherwise there’s no hope for you) ( I like it, but I didn’t until I found out I had to hate it, so I’m clearly just being contrary in that opinion, before I liked it I was just struck by its size).  A shop keeper who was trying to give me directions to the old Jewish ghetto discribed it as the wedding cake building.  Like much of Rome, it’s covered in scaffolding, and unlike much of Rome (but like the Jewish ghetto) it has guys with guns standing just visible behind its pillars.  It has ridiculously large bronz statues, like the bride and groom at the top of a wedding cake, and is amazingly tall because the steps up to it start at the bottom of the hill that it sits on top of, so it appears to be the height of the building plus the height of the hill.

Zelig asked, at one point, “What do you think holds it all up?  It must be really heavy.”  And the Arielle-girl (who is genuine Manhattan-stuff) replied “Victory.  It’s heald up with Victory.”

 

English Department!

Oh man, next term seems to be a ridiculously bad term for the English Department.  I mean, ridiculously bad.  Oh man.  And I say this in the most positivie possible way; I think it’s pretty funny how absolutely un-good the department is going.  Wow.

I’ve taken way more English classes than I need for my major, but haven’t taken any in Victorian Lit, because I was waiting for Paul Saint Amour to get back, but that was a bad plan.  I’ve written to Kunin to ask if he’d please on please consider pulling a “Color Theory in Renaissance Literature” on the Victorian period (i.e. some interesting but completely random, Kunin’s imagination-based class), and with any luck that will pan out.

Don’t worry guys, it won’t matter, because one of our credits is taken up  by thesis anyway, so there’s only three more to fill, none of which need to be English, if you’ve played it right.  They’re offering History of Jazz, which should be good, and Modern Jewish Philosophy (although it’s with someone new becase Eisenstadt is on sebatical), and Ii’m sure lots of other good and fascinating things.  We’ll be fine.

 

Shirt Collars in Rome

In Rome actual priests walk around and you see them on the streets in collars.  Actual Fransiscan monks and nuns do too.  It’s interesting.  In Ireland you see some nuns, but you don’t see men in robes and rope belts like you do in Rome.

In Rome some teenagers think it’s cook to wear their shirts inside out and backwards.  This makes the manufacturer’s tag stick up, meaning they have black t-shirt collars with small white stripes down the middle.  It quickly becomes difficult to distinguish the clergy from the trendy youth.  This is just true.

There’s also a disperportionately high number of ice creme shops in Rome.

 

Hard-core Military Types

I was running in Cork, Ireland, and I found a military base at the top of a hill.  It was a meuseum, too, although this took me a long time to ascertain as most of the signs were in Irish.  As I passed the front gate, running down the side of the road that was not the military base but rather the convenience stores, I passed a group of about eight crew-cut types running in the other direction who I assumed to be reservists.  One guy was lagging significantly behind the others.  I realized his leg was bleeding horribally, and at first I was proud of him for running through his injury and thought the amount of blood totally legitimized his being so far behind.  I then realized it wasn’t blood at all, but instead some sort of demonstratively hard-core celtic-tribal tattoo, meant to signify his warrior like nature, and this was just a shame.   So the dude was not hard-core, rather he was the antithisis of hard-core, and had highlighted this with his warrior-tattoo.  The lesson is, if you’re going to highlight being weak by running slowly, don’t further highlight this quality with warrior-tattoos.  This is just true.

 

Free Wine

We were resolved to go to “Chinese food” tonight, and so went out onto the Irish cities of Cork to find a restaurant that would suit our needs.  After going to about a million places in search of reasonably priced, sit-in food, we decided to take out (the only reason I’m willing to write a story about food in this context is that it’s not actually a story about food).  We waited and they brought us our food, with the announcement that because we’d spent over 15 euros we got recieved a free bottle of wine with our order.  We were amazed and spent the rest of the evening talking about the strangeness of this sales strategy (especially since it wasn’t advertised and came entirely as a suprise).

 

Catholic Stores

In Ireland there are Catholic stores, that sell Saint’s pins and charms and rosaries and little feaux-leather cases that say “my rosary” on them.  They also sell cards that say “A Mass for X”, “x” being some event that you said a prayer for at mass.  These cards are given by the prayer sayer to the person who was prayed about, to let them know that God has been made aware of their situation in some formal format.  I’ve also been haunting Catholic stores in Ireland.

 

Free-Range Dogs

Akbar (the miniature lab with sport-ears)  would be alright with Ireland, but would eventually find his freedom alarming.  The Irish have conceptualized neither leashes nor back-yards, and instead leave their dogs to roam.  All the dogs (which are everywhere) wear collars and want you to stop and pet them.   You’d never know if a dog was lost, because it’d look just like all the other un-lost dogs that spend their days wandering the streets and alleys aimlessly.  It’s a really odd scene.  I’ve been taking pictures of dogs in Ireland.

 

Gypsies

Cork, Ireland, is heavily populated by gypsies, which is intersting, because they’ve got a strongly Eastern European quality, but are clearly out of place and in Ireland. 

 Yesterday I was doing errands, and wandering without too much aim, and eventually ran across two gypsies, one of whom was hiding behind a mailbox (they were both girls in long skirts and head scarves and the like, one of whom I’d given money to outside a Catholic church earlier in the day)(I had given money because it’s a decent version of tzedek and also because my grandfather always talks of how his mother and sister, who came from the old country and Bialystok, Russia, but who had grown up perhaps around the Black Sea, where so odd and so blond, and must have been the result of a marriage with gypsies from Norway).  I watched them and when they began to move I followed them, and they actually sturried around, hiding behind various things, which was very satisfying, and I felt I’d definitely found the right people to tail, as long as I wasn’t doing anything else, until I was distracted by the phone, which then led me to a mission to fix the zarking phone.

The point is, though, that the gypsies are everywhere.  The women beg by sitting with fastfood cups on the steps of the churches, and the men play accordians or guittars outside cell phone shops (I know this is true, because I’ve now been to every cell phone shop in Cork, even repeat shops, like I’ve been to every version of Vodaphone that is in Cork (there are two), as well as Carphone Warehouse and Metior).  They’re very colorful, like the houses in Ireland, and are an interesting version of long-skirt wearing people.  If my grandfather is decendent from gypsies (which seems unlikely), I’m fine with that (whereas I’m increasingly alarmed with being decended from the zarking Irish). 

 

Affirmation and Validation

Emily says I’m taking affirmation and validation from PC.  It’s true, too.  I approve of, at least in the capacity that I approve of for who ever I’m talking to, anything I affirm or validate.  I don’t say it in jest.  I suppose it is ironic, in that the things I affirm or validate don’t necessarily need to be affirmed or validated, but it’s true, I do.  I validate most life choices (not all, I don’t approve of Los Angeles as a life choice as all…that’s not true…I affirm it if it’s where you want to be, but I suppose it means I can’t understand you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t affirm you, or validate your life choices).

 

Mean Machine

Bar Flutest:  You Italian?  Italiano?

Me:  Nope.

Bar Flutest:  What then?

Me:  Way tougher than Italian.

Bar Flutest:  You’re mean.  You’re a mean machine.

Bar Flutest:  I do what I can.

 

Spring Break Itinerary

March 15th- Ireland

March22nd- England

March 25th- Italy

March 29th- England

April 7th- Italy

April 14th- Greece

April 19th- Turkey

April 21st- England

 

Lecture

Yesterday I went to the first Cambridge lecture I’ve ever been to (ever) and it ended in the professor passing out, the room being cleared, people racing up with thermuses (this is a country without Nalgene, which I affirm on so many levels)(remember when I was in Yosemite and made a big deal about being morally upposed to trends in water bottles?) of water and the paramedics coming.   Yeah, that was a weird first lecture, but genuinely interesting, actually, until the heart attack.

 

The time I had to walk down a mountain

There are mountains in Oregon, which are genuine mountains, too, not these zarking no-snow hills that pass for mountains in many areas of the U.S. and certainly in Europe.  Jeesh.  In the summer, though, the mountains of Oregon don’t have too much snow, and so the ski lifts go unsused.  That’s not true, though, the ski lifts still operate as rides that offer nice views, but you have to ride them up and down, because there’s not enough snow (at the low elevation where the lifts run) to ski down.

I’m afraid of heights in the capacity of ferris wheels.  Ferris wheels actually kill me, and we’re very aware of this.  Often I have gone on them with my family, and spend the entire ride shaking and holding on and whispering to let me off.  This is true.

One summer my mother wanted to ride up the ferris-wheel like (like in the principle of high and unstable) ski lift.  I said I shouldn’t, but I did, and spent the entire ride up the zarking thing actually crying.  It was pitiful.

When we got to the top I was mad, and horribally shaken, and so I took off walking down the mountian (how else would I get back down?  I sure as heck wasn’t getting back on the ski lift).  My family tried to have me get back on the lift, but this was clearly not an option.  My father and sister followed me all the way down, at a distance, although they stuck to the road when I started bush-wacking.  The road ultimately led to the wrong side of the mountain, and my mother (who had taken the ski lift) came and got us.  I hate ski lifts.  I really do.

 

Smiley 80’s

Voted the third best college party in the US by Playboy Magazine for three years running, Smiley 80’s is put on by CCLA’s annual events committee and is just a thematic party.  This is true.

Last year, kind of at random, I went with Char and Michael Claremont (who I see too rarely).  Before I went with Nina and Char ad Kristen Petrillo and of course Alex Cohen because, for some reason, Alex was very present as a life force.  How things change.  Freshman year I left relatively early with Nina and talked to her, and then went to see the Eastside boys (the kids (mostly boys) who lived on Eastside Harwood One).  Sophmore year I left relatively early with Michael Claremont and talked to him, to avoid the Eastside boys (the kids (mostly boys) who lived with us in Oldenborg that year).

It’s a fun event.  Go have fun at it, Claremont kids.  I’m not too worried about missing it, but I am fascinated that whole major, yearly events happen when I’m not there.  I mean, yes, of course they do, but how odd that they really do.  It’s like the first time you’re not home for your sister’s birthday, of course it happens when you’re not there, but how odd.

Smiley is the dorm I lived in this year, named after Willard J. Smiley; this is where I lived this year until I lived in England.

 

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Talk Like a Pirate Day, I believe, was invented by the West Albany XC team, and that Rob Schlegal and Tom Payne and those boys stole it from them, as did the two guys from the Albany Civit Theater who wrote to Dave Berry, who popularized it.  In any case, the guys from Albany wrote to Dave Berry, who popularized it.   They later wrote a book about talking like a pirate, which further popularized the concept.  The whole thing pre-dated the resurgance in interest in pirates of recent years, and I’m proud to say it orginiated in Oregon.  September 19th.  Mark your calender.

 

Winning and Logic

It turns out that, and for future generations its good I reveal this, who ever has the best attendence record in Professor Atlas’ Logic class will be give $50 by Atlas.  I know, it’s weak, and any real student would refuse it on principle.  Not the point at all.

In logic we had class on Sunday a couple of times, to make up for other Yom Kippur-type holidays we missed.  Very few of us showed up to these make-up classes, but they counted towards attendence.  I showed up at all of them (we didn’t know about monitary reward; we showed up out of academic dilligence).  I showed up pretty much at everything.

Once I was trying to be nice and chat with Atlas before class.  I said that the homework had been hard.  When class started Atlas asked how the homework had gone,  everyone sort of groaned, and he said “Yes, Hannah was just b-wording about it before class”.  I don’t swear.  I said “I don’t swear”, and Atlas looked confused and probably laughed, so I got up and walked out.  It was  a statement.  This is a story that is still told in Claremont, for which I am proud.

I later realized that this had been a bad move, and wrote a letter saying that my statement had been immature.  Atlas wrote a letter back saying yes, it had been immature.

 

Logic and Earrings

Once I staid up very late, and had to get up in the morning to run before logic, which was at nine thirty in the morning.  I woke up and felt really with it, and like I was going to win at logic (not that there’s anything to win (well, actually there is, but we didn’t know that at the time and I didn’t win it, so it’s not the story)) and was really togeather and with it and the whole thing was going to work out.  I went to class with all sorts of confidence.

I then touched my ear and realized I’d put in two different earings, and realized there was no hope.  What can you do.