Not me.  I just returned from Greenbuild, which was in Phoenix, and hopped off the plane at Portland.  I’m visiting Sasha, who’s got a new blog, but who’s been sick since she arrived here.  We had a lovely time last night eating lentil soup with Kyle, Adrienne and Sean, and a delicious breakfast this morning with Sean and Adrienne.  But, after walking around a bit, I have determined that Oregon has gone grey.

I’m ok with that, but I kind of wish it hadn’t happened while I was gone.  It seems too abrupt.

We stopped in to Bolt and Close Knit briefly, and I think we’ll see A Serious Man this afternoon.  It’s the kind of day that you want to watch movies and be surrounded by soft warm things.  I’ve always enjoyed getting away from the cold in December when I visit home – for me, being away from Florida is the only way I’ve learned to appreaciate it.  But, missing those few critical days, I am sad to come back and find myself in winter.

Although some things at the conference were, frankly, a waste of time, I think that overall it was quite worthwhile.  Despite the fact that I didn’t show my portfolio to anyone, I did get the sense that if I pursue a job with some intensity, there are jobs to be had, and also showed me again that the route I take might not be so straightforward.  I am very glad to have finished my portfolio and updated my resume in time for the conference, since it frees me up for time for other projects.  I’ll be working on a new skirt this week, and I’m also going to start learning a 3D modeling software.

We’re about to head out, but photos of Phoenix will be up soon!

I was walking down the street the other day, when my bike had a flat. It’s almost unheard of that I’d make the walk in to work, since the bike ride takes just about 10 minutes. However, at this time of year a morning walk can be really wonderful. There are puddles and sunshine and there’s that good old crisp fall air. In a poetic mood, I drafted this poem in my head:

The trees grow from golden pools
or red skirts dropped to their ankles
in lust last night

And immediately thought of posting it to my faceybook page, where just the night before I had posted:

The late night laundry/agitates in the basement/soap in a dark tub

and

warm from the dryer/knits, delicates, and denim/so many colors

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I generally believe that the poetry that I write mostly in my head doesn’t do so well once it’s written down, and even those verses that translate to physicality fairly well don’t always last for me. Almost as soon as I had written the little tree ditty down, I realized that what sounded lovely in my mind was really trite/derivative/uninteresting. Nice to think, but not so necessary to share. (I do realize the irony here.)

On that line of thought, and what with walking into work, where all I do all day is edit, I pondered for a moment the fact that much of our communication these days is unedited. I imagine that was always the case – kind of like buildings that were designed by architects, communiques that were edited must only make up a small portion of documents, and an even smaller portion of all communication. Kind of interesting to just ponder for a moment all the communication in the world. But, I digress. While this has always been the case, now we proudly share these mostly unedited thoughts in a public and fairly long-term manner. I don’t wish to make this another post about the problems of our modern world, but I couldn’t help but thinking that editing is sorely missing from our world. I am excited and interested by our vast new opportunities for self expression – I’m here, aren’t I – but I wonder what we loose when we don’t review, rewrite, and on occasion, censor ourselves. In particular, what are the political implications to this manner of comporting ourselves?

****

On a different note, I’ve failed recently. I intended to write something wonderful for Blog Action Day, and to participate in 350.org’s giant day of climate action. In fact, I begged off the first one and casually ignored the second to go watch a Ducks game. If I’m not taking climate action, who is?

I have succeeded, on the other hand, in enjoying life a good bit more than I was before. I’m sewing and making other projects. I am cooking delicious food, going out with friends, reading books, and actually finishing my portfolio. I’m trying to capture the lovely sunny moments before it all goes grey for months on end.

****

A final note on two recent Harper’s articles: this month’s Notebook and September’s article “Dehumanized.”

In this month’s notebook, entitled “The Cold we Caused,” Steven Stoll returns to the theme Mark Slouka wrote about in September. Stoll sums up Slouka’s position quite well, despite the fact that he’s applying his criticism to climate change rather than what happens “When math and science rule the school.” Stoll says, “By confirming the human role in climate change, and by declaring a warming world injurious to the public good, the EPA has swung a club against perhaps the grandest capitalist conceit of the twentieth century: that society forms part of the economy, not the other way around.”

On reading Dehumanized, I was certainly convinced by Slouka’s statement that we cannot forever argue for the humanities based on an economic basis, but that we must be able to find other values useful in our society. Slouka’s call for a return to the civic, the political, and the societal concern struck me as important, but difficult to undertake, as any paradigm shift is. Yet while reading Stoll’s article reinforced Slouka’s position, it also made me consider that this argument seems particularly applicable while our economy is in shambles. I wonder to what extent the downfall of the economy influenced this perspective, or revealed this truth, and to what extent that same downfall might allow us to approach these seemingly intractable problems in a different way. Could there be some sort of progress on these matters?

It’s blog action day, and I don’t have much to say. I know that I really should say something, especially since it’s about climate change this year, but I’m kind of drawing a blank. So, um, can I take a raincheck? Thanks.

I am now 27.

I just fell in love with the BurdaStyle website, and especially the Ellen pants, which, should I ever get to make them, will probably be disappointing since I’m not a stick thin/5′10.” Working my way up to that, and looking forward to sewing again.

First phase of the project is almost done, so work is coming along. Portfolio is coming along more slowly, but progressing. I have a new layout that’s a bit more clear, but I’m still working on how to get some of the spontaneity of the old one in there. The projects are developing into better stories the more I work on them.

Sasha’s visit was wonderful, and I’m looking forward to her moving up to Portland.

Many more plans and thoughts. Finished Howard’s End, reread The Diamond Age (again), and started Rebecca.

Also, I put up the last year’s photographic highlights on my Flickr account.

There’s a rumor going around that Eugene is going to lose a post office.  Not just any post office, but the one I go to, University Station.

No big deal, right?  There are other POs in town, even quite nearby.  In fact, I now live closer to the main station than to University Station.  No one is going to be prevented from sending and receiving their mail, in no small part because, as Obama recently reminded us, there are many private companies now willing to take part in that transaction who are “doing just fine.”  Yep, “it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

Be that as it may, I would be greatly saddened if University Station is closed.  Fundamentally, I think that every university should have a mail room.  In fact, it surprised me to find that the University of Oregon had a post office, not a mail room, when I arrived, but I guess there’s a matter of scale that makes the mail room at Oberlin viable, and that at Oregon a post office (Though perhaps the problem lies somewhere in that inequality).

The mail room of a university or college serves its students tirelessly, providing a stable address for those orbiting campus.  It is a place for paying first bills.  It’s where really good things happen when you’ve been away from home for a while – a care package arrives, or just a postcard, when you thought you had been forgotten.  It’s a portal to a place far away.

Amongst the little cubbies or up at the window, you have the sense of really being in a physical place.  You see the postman heft a box of letters dropped into the slot for the 1:45 pick up.  You’ve written on paper with pen, folded that paper, tucked it into an envelope, and licked the envelope closed.  Now you lean against the counter with the envelope in hand and ask for stamps.  You look in the folder proffered – you select from the objects at hand.  You’ll drop your letter in the empty box, they’ll wheel it out with the 5:30 mail.

Perhaps it’s a relic of things past, but I think that’s why it’s so valuable.  There’s no scrolling through options, imagining the shapes and sizes and weights of things.  Here, things are measured, they’re displayed in their corporeality.  Keys are turned and doors are opened, objects are filed and sorted.  That’s not to deny the electronic scale or scanner, but it is to say thanks for the man behind the counter, wearing his blue ringer polo shirt, affixing that label to that package.

I think students need to have a place so connected to objects, since many times they’re living a life so overstuffed with ideas.  They need a place that is neutral in the way that government places are; where freedom of speech is practiced in a dramatically different way than in their classrooms.  They are lucky to have a place devoted to their physical connection with those far away, and a place that so effortlessly combines responsibility and spontaneity.  When all of that is at the heart of campus, it becomes an important place for chance meetings or reality checks amongst the craze of finals; when it’s that convenient it doesn’t take away time from studying or socializing.

Against the realities of the federal budget, my fondness for and belief in the importance of University Station will probably weigh naught.  Yet, for that foreign student, or for the man in the blue polo, I’m hoping that my thoughts are worth more than their weight.

I’m going to write something because I’d really like to return to blogging, but I’m out of practice. At a point, life just got too complicated to tell about. It’s not that the plot was so convoluted, more that the characters all got a little out of hand. But, we’re beyond that now, and in fact, the plot has also straightened itself out quite a bit.

I am a Master now. Finishing grad school has been a bit anticlimactic. It was wonderful to have the celebration in June, and I do feel done, for real. However, I now feel the weight of the Internship Development Program (IDP) and licensure bearing down on me. I have a job, which I am very happy about both because the economy is bad enough that it’s rare for a recent grad to be offered a job, and because said job is actually interesting and closely related to what I want to do in the long run. However, I’m acutely aware that it’s not a job that can get me closer to actually being an architect, and it’s not a job of the type for which I have been preparing myself for the last three and a half years. So, despite enjoying it, I very much am continuing to wonder, and occasionally actually work towards figuring out, what I will do next.

So, it’s portfolio making time.  It’s time to organize a game plan for applications, to get recommendations in line, and to feel a little untethered from the future, which, as you know, I like to have some grasp on.  All of that is fine: the portfolio is taking shape and I like where it’s going.  The rest I can deal with, and may even enjoy.  But, there’s one thing I’m really struggling with – where to be.  Theoretically, I’m likely to move when I get a job in an architecture firm.  My current plan is to first apply to the set of firms at which I would most like to work, which are primarily in cities on the west coast and in the UK.  Here’s the issue, though.  Rent runs out on the 15th of next month, and I’m not sure what to do at that point.  I will almost certainly not have another job – fine, because my current job will still exist through January.  But, do I move somewhere else in Eugene?  I can, but I’m starting to feel like I want to move on sooner, rather than later, and not move all of my stuff just to move it again.  I can’t really afford to move to one of the big west coast cities on my current salary, though, and that might also end up meaning that I move just to move again.  I could see going home, but what about all of my stuff?  Do I lighten my load of worldly possessions – can I afford to sell everything just to buy more things wherever I do settle next?  And the same goes for moving back to Vermont, which I would love to do, but where I am unlikely to find a job, probably would have to pay some rent (unlike Florida), and where I would be split between friends in Burlington, Brattleboro, and Great Barrington, Mass.  The reality there, too, is that I don’t know if any of those friends have the same spaces in their lives for me as I would like to imagine they do.  Could any of them live with me on their couch/in their kitchen for any significant amount of time?

The likely answer – stay in Eugene.  I’ll move soon enough to a new place, and in the mean time, didn’t I promise myself that I’d spend my time Being Here?

It’s one of those decisions that I keep coming back to, though.  One of those unresolved questions that niggles me throughout the day, in part because it is unresolvable. Since it will be resolved in the next month, because someone else is taking over my house, I guess I just have to live through the uncertainty.  Would that the plot were still twisting, not just aiming straight into the murk.

***

On an entirely different note, played at Spawnfest this weekend, which was very good – both fun frisbee and fun time partying/hanging out with the teammates/laughing at Vern Fonk and Bawls and playing 20 questions.  Excited to get into better shape, although somehow I keep missing my running dates and workout times.  We went 6-1, but unfortunately the point differentials on Saturday put us into the B-bracket, so we only took 9th (out of 34? teams).  Read a lot of the Huddle last night in an exited frenzy to get back to being really useful on the field.

I’m almost done with this term of school, and moving in to the final stretch of my Masters.  Pretty amazing.

I just read Tim Eagan’s Typing Without a Clue and thought of all of the writers I knew at Oberlin, “trying to say one thing well and true.”  I wonder who will buy a book by Joe the Plumber, and what it says about our culture that his book can be published as a money maker.  To me, if you want to write something for other people to read, you write a blog.  If you have literary ability, if you write about something greater than your opinion and you write about it well, then you write a book.  I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Eagan that we should reward the latter with the cultural status of publication, and I appreciate his suggestion that merit should have everything to do with that decision.

I’m getting ready for Christmas – I just had a good idea for a present, and I’m thinking about my wish list soon.  I’ll hope to update it in the next few days.  I’m also going to look for a dress for Tina’s wedding, which is exciting!

Today I had the overwhelming feeling that despite being 26 years old, I am still firmly within a personal era of childhood.  Not a childhood of skipping around on the playground carefree, but one of being somewhat powerless over the circumstances of one’s life.

In this way, it seems that childhood extends throughout our lifetimes.  What does it mean to be an adult?  I have the wherewithal to cope effectively with this powerlessness, despite the fact that it is frustrating and sometimes painful to me.  Hopefully, I also am able to use the shifting ground of circumstance to my benefit, by taking opportunities as they come and seeing the potential in each situation.  Although that’s not the carefree life, maybe it allows me to lessen my cares as I remember that I’m not in charge, nor do I know the ultimate solutions or answers to each question.

In fact, the childhoods we experience transform over our lives, I think.  I have responsibilities now that go beyond keeping my room clean, but I still have this powerlessness, and oftentimes a feeling of vulnerability.  Powerlessness and vulnerability ebb and flow throughout our lives.  So too, I hope that I can say that sometimes I have moments of uncomplicated thought, moments of wonder and joy, moments when someone else takes care of me.  Those moments may come sporadically or infrequently, but they are a part of the ongoingness of childhood.  Now, with those moments, I have an adult appreciation of what I am experiencing.

I wonder, with the gaining of skill and the establishment of a pattern of living that’s not based around the paradigm of school, how the childhood that I inhabit will transform.  I know that in a new job there will be plenty of powerlessness and vulnerability, plenty of moments of discovery, and hopefully an encouraging amount of wonder and help from others.  Does the feeling of childhood eventually melt away altogether, as responsibility and the constant consciousness of thought expand, or does it always remain, even as the thinnest residual film?  Perhaps one day I will be able to answer my own questions, and at that point I will know I’m no longer a child – but it seems to me that day is illusory, and happily so, since the reliance on others we learn in childhood is one of the greatest gifts of that age.

Monday September 1

News today has come of a massacre in the apartment of Rachel Auerbach, a woman friends describe as “nice – you wouldn’t expect this of her.”  Worms in her “beloved” worm bin fled its environs last night in search of a better life, only to dry to their deaths on her kitchen floor.  As she knelt to tend the bin this morning, she wondered at their shapes on the linoleum, only to realize that she knelt in a field of death.

“I had no clue they were so unhappy” stated Rachel in a press conference this afternoon.  ”Those worms meant the world to me – literally, I thought that with them, I could do my part to help the planet regain some of its fertility and fecundity.  They worked tirelessly towards their goal, sacrificing every day.  But I guess I just didn’t see the signs.  Fewer mature worms, slower composting…I should have known.”

The remaining worms, of which there were few, had difficulty speaking about the horrendous events of the past week.  ”The bin has been drying out for a while now, and frankly, Rachel’s been pretty bad about giving us new bedding.  She’s violated our rights on multiple occasions, and if it were up to us, we would have gotten someone else to tend house a long time ago.  We can’t afford any more time with her in charge.”

The worms have steadily graded down Rachel’s performance on vermissues since arriving under her care in mid-April.  To begin with, they rated her highly, just shy of 100%, saying that “she still has some things to learn, but we trust that she’ll get better with some tough on the job training.”  Last month, they began to seriously organize for change, but they said that despite giving her a low approval rating of 54%, she didn’t listen to their pleas.

Rachel admits to turning away from the worms in their time of need.  ”It’s been busy around here.  My plants aren’t doing so well either, and I’ve had a lot of other things to take care of.  But, if only I had heard them, I would have done anything for those worms.  I just did’t really know what they needed.”

A service will be held this evening in honor of the worms.  Steps are being taken to amend for the mistreatment so that any remaining worms will not meet the same fate.

We picked a theme for HOPES 15!  It’s “Thinking Small,” and here are the bits I’ve been working on so far:

Solving our ecological problems will require massive change, as Bruce Mau has suggested.  Yet even as we must think big, we must also remember to think small.  Visions are accomplished incrementally; details are important; impacts must be studied and limited; the meek among us require protection.  Join us as we consider the meaning of “local” and “appropriate,” as we ponder the ripple effect.  Help us contemplate nanotechnology and microclimates.  Plant the tiny seeds to grow the revolutionary change.

 

Topics:

Scale – buildings, economies (Schumacher), “local” discussion

Nature – microclimates, invertebrate communities, guerilla gardening, agricultural questions

Activism – small change/massive change, beginner’s steps (Radical Simplicity)

Ethics – Nanotechnology, appropriate technology, design for the meek/forgotten, design for children

Other – Visioning: what’s the importance of thinking small and thinking big, what can we miss by doing too much of one/the other?; Finding focus in an interdisciplinary field

We’re already gathering ideas for speakers, too.  I’m very excited about this topic: I think that it’s amazingly open ended, yet gets to really important questions and still maintains a core idea that’s very strong.  I can imagine that when we share this idea with everyone (after we come up with a manifesto that’s a lot less cheesy and a lot more focused), people will immediately think about something interesting, and that’s pretty good.

Right after the HOPES meeting I headed to the fields for our last game of the season in the A-league.  Rumpus was holding even with Strike Force Seven when I got there.  We kept it pretty even, but they put up a couple of points on us as the game was coming to a close – 5 minutes left and we were down, but we came back even and finally won at universe point.  There was something amazing going on.  At one point, I laid out for a disc I knew I didn’t have, but that was the moment where I decided to go all in.  I think pretty much everyone else was there with me, too.  

So, Rumpus Room is spring A-league champions.  After the game, we headed back to my house.  I got to throw my first party in my very own house!  We had pizza and I made cookies as folks showed up.  A full-party game of Apples to Apples developed, and we just had a good time together (and with players from Kremlin, the other team that we hung out with all season).

This morning, I taught my last section for Architectural Context.  It’s pretty amazing to have two semesters of college-level instruction under my belt.  I can’t imagine how long it takes until you really feel like you’re in the right place, like you’re really the one who should be talking.  I feel like that at certain moments, but I think that’s just because I’ve never been afraid to give my opinion, not because I think my thoughts are so worthy of professorial consideration.  One way or the other, I’ll just have a little bit of grading left.  Summer is coming on quickly.

So, there are three bits of info.  Lots more going on – other productive meetings, work plans for the summer, obsessive checking of Facebook as if there were actual people there that I could see and talk to, hitting the upload limit for my Flickr account, excellent cooking, and productive errand running.  Hopefully, with such great things happening, and a full weekend coming up, this little sore throat and stuffy nose go away.  And, on that note, I shall get to bed now.