Zenzoa : The strange worlds of Sarah Gould

2012 02 19 Philosophy Comments (0) Permalink

The Good Elites

Having discovered the excellent n+1 magazine, I haven’t been able to put it down. Among provocative essays about unschooling and prison abolishment, I found this revelatory quote from Ortega y Gasset’s 1929 The Revolt of the Masses:

“Doubtless the most radical division of humanity that can be made is that between two classes of creatures: those who demand much of themselves and assume a burden of tasks and difficulties, and those who require nothing special of themselves, but rather for whom to live is to be in every instant only what they already are.” (issue no. 10, p 16)

This comes in the context of an article entitled “Revolt of the Elites,” which speaks to the revulsion that many conservative politicians and business leaders have for the “cultural elite,” despite having plenty of money, power, and college degrees themselves. This alternative definition of “elite” (“the only kind of elite worth having”) clicks with me, helps me make sense of dud-heads who refuse to budge from a status quo that is destroying the world quite literally. I want to make humanity better, and be a better person myself, and the idea that I’m just sublimating some baser or more sinister purpose is laughable. This is the sort of elite that one might actually aspire to. Its paragon is The West Wing’s President Bartlett, who says scathingly to his everyman-wannabe Republican competition, “‘Crime. Boy, I don’t know’ is when I decided to kick your ass.”

But an elite class is antithetical to an equal society: “If everybody’s special, nobody’s special.” Perhaps if everyone were experiencing the excitement of human progress? If Ortega’s classification of humanity is innate, then those who are never satisfied with the world as it is are going to be forever trying to pull it (in several directions at once, I imagine) away from those who are happy with it in the present. Each thinks they are better than the other, but is one class truly superior? It would be nice if everyone were self-motivated to learn, to experiment, to explore… but what does a society built around such autodidacts do about those who aren’t? Smug superiority, pitying condescension… these seem attitudes just as cruel to have here as in a monetary-based class division.

Well then, I will chew over this new point of view, and let the digestive enzymes of my brain do a number on it. Some days I feel like a robot, trying bemusedly (or desperately) to understand humanity. Today is one of those days!

2012 02 14 Essays Comments (1) Permalink

Chocolate and Gender

Why is chocolate so often seen as women’s food? Chocolate is marketed to women as an indulgence, a break from mundane reality, an escape to a sensuous world of silk. There always seems to be some red-lipped model melting in the embrace of the latest chocolate bar. Women are portrayed as craving chocolate constantly, so much so that an ad for Axe Body Spray portrays a man made of chocolate running down the street chased by ravenous hordes of women to indicate how irresistible it’s supposed to make men who wear it. But how did chocolate get so wrapped up in gender identity? It turns out chocolate has a long and mixed relationship with gender which has less to do with chemicals and biology than with the changing cultures and politics in the world chocolate has inhabited over the centuries

The word “chocolate” probably originated with the ancient Mayans, who used chocolate in their wedding ceremonies. The Chol Mayan bride and groom exchanged five grains of cacao and said, “These I give thee as a sign that I accept thee as my husband” (or wife, as the case may be). Another wedding tradition of the Maya and Mixtec peoples was to “chokola’j,” or to drink chocolate together, which may be where the Spanish colonists got their word for the stuff. (Coe 61) The chocolate they drank, however, was far different from the hot cocoa of modern times: it was a savory corn gruel flavored with vanilla, chili, and other spices. (59) One of the reasons it was kept for special occasions was its rarity, so rare that cacao beans were used as currency by the Mayans and the Aztecs. (58, 99)

The Aztecs had a love-hate relationship with chocolate, though. They viewed the Mayans as a decadent people, and since they were the ones exporting cacao, chocolate gained the connotations of exoticism and extravagance. The Aztecs, who considered themselves austere and hard-core, worried that their love of chocolate made them weak. In one myth, an Aztec convoy is sent to bring gifts to a goddess at the top of a mountain, but the young men struggle behind the old native guide. He tells them, “You have become old, you have become tired because of the chocolate you drink and because of the foods you eat. They have harmed and weakened you.” (78) The nobility still indulged in chocolate, as a cold, foamy, water-based beverage, without sugar but with much guilt. Yet the only other class of people allowed by law to consume chocolate was the military, who were in fact issued pressed wafers of ground cacao as rations because of their high energy content. (99) The calorie density that makes chocolate such a boon to the active may have been why it was viewed as a guilty pleasure for the sedentary rich.

The Spanish colonialists were not initially impressed with chocolate. Spanish men noted its ability to give energy to the natives, but didn’t acquire a taste for the bitter beverage themselves. It wasn’t until the men brought their wives and settled into houses attended by Aztec servants that Europeans started to pick up the habit. They started adding sugar to make it more palatable, and Spanish women got addicted to the stuff. (114) Thomas Gage wrote in 1648 that some upper-class white ladies in Chiapa Real could not get through Mass without some chocolate to fortify their weak stomachs. When the bishop threatened to excommunicate them for interrupting the service, they simply boycotted the cathedral. The bishop soon died… of poisoned chocolate. (183)

The Spanish colonists adopted the pressed wafer form to ship chocolate back to Spain, where it quickly caught on in Europe. But soon chocolate found itself with a rather lascivious reputation. It was supposed to excite the sexual appetite, and women were said to use chocolate to poison their enemies and bewitch men into submission. (Grivetti & Shapiro 117) Spain was seen by the rest of Europe as a sensual and decadent country, not unlike the Aztec’s view of the Mayan civilization. The French despised everything Spanish on principle. When Louis XIV married the Spanish Infanta, she had to indulge her chocolate habit in secret. By the following decade it was popular with the aristocratic women of France, however, in spite or because of recurring rumors about chocolate’s unhealthfulness and depravity. In 1671, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal complained that “everyone who spoke well of it now tells me bad things about it.” (Coe 156) Not that such rumors kept people away from the stuff, as we hear from Marie de Villars, a French woman who visited Spain in 1680: “Remember that I am in Spain, and taking it is almost my only pleasure.” (136)

Chocolate, with its rarity and richness marking it as an extravagant treat, was eschewed by those who wanted to appear strong and willful. Mostly that meant image-conscious men in the upper classes of both Aztec and Spanish societies. But women, who were not expected to maintain Spartan-like discipline, could love chocolate with relative impunity. Another trajectory of chocolate was its use as medicine. Cacao was used generally to treat headaches, fevers, and digestive issues, and it was often specifically said to promote vitality and, in women, increase milk and menstrual flow. (Grivetti & Shapiro 71) Since women were considered to have weak constitutions, it became all the more acceptable for women to be heavy chocolate users.

The popularity of chocolate, and its ambiguity in terms of food status, led the Catholic Church to allow chocolate-drinking during fasts. (Grivetti & Shapiro 71) It also promised an alternative to alcohol, both to the Aztecs for whom drunkenness was punishable by death (Coe 76), and to the Quakers who saw it as more virtuous. In the 17th century, slave labor enabled the cheap cultivation of cacao (though of poor quality and often adulterated), allowing it to reach beyond the aristocracy for the first time (187).* In England it was a mainstay of coffee-houses, institutions of “social and political importance” where chocolate was prepared unspiced, suitable for “men of business,” according to Philippe Dufour. (169) But by the 18th century, chocolate‘s image was tied too closely to the French elites and the Catholic clergy, so the British turned to tea and the French turned to coffee as drinks of civilization, liberty, and the Common Man. (203)

Sweetened chocolate maintained its holier-than-thou aristocratic pretensions, as well as quite a few health concerns. In 1698, Martine Lister asked why Parisian women were so fat, and essentially blamed chocolate’s empty calories. Henry Stubbes, however, thought that additives like sugar, and not cacao itself, was to blame for the obesity, diabetes, and gout observed in excess consumption. (172) Unsweetened chocolate never lost its life-promoting medicinal sheen, especially during a time when undernourishment was a more common problem. In the 19th century, women were the guardians of household health, and cookbooks often contained medicinal recipes involving cocoa. Chocolate was something for women to administer, not to make for themselves, and the cookbooks suggested that adding sugar to make it enjoyable turned it into something “decadent, sinful, and feminine.” (Grivetti & Shapiro 119) Cocoa powder was marketed to women as mothers and care-givers, using pictures of children and happy families and text suggesting its healthfulness. (187)

The Industrial Revolution allowed for processing beyond the pressed cacao wafers of the Aztecs, making chocolate cheaper and more accessible. In 1815, Van Houten invented the process of separating cocoa powder from the fat of the bean (cocoa butter) making a substance much easier to dissolve in water. Eating chocolate was first invented in 1849 by a Quaker family named Fry who re-combined these component parts with the addition sugar and poured it into molds. (Coe 241) Another Quaker family, the Cadburys, opened a tea and coffee shop in 1824 and quickly moved into the cocoa business. They invented the first heart-shaped box of Valentine’s chocolates. (243) The Swiss pushed chocolate technology even farther, with Henry Nestle and Daniel Peter inventing milk chocolate in 1879, and Rudolphe Lindt inventing the conching process in the same year, turning chocolate into the perfectly smooth confection we know today. (248) Finally, it was the American entrepreneur Milton Hershey who automated milk chocolate manufacturing, becoming the “Henry Ford of Chocolate Makers” in 1893. (251)

So for the Victorians, at the cusp of the age of advertising and mass-produced goods, sweet chocolate confections became popular. They were sold with romantic, even sexualized packaging, which targeted not the supposedly demure Victorian ladies, but the men who wished to court them. (Grivetti & Shapiro 119) Chocolate advertising promised as surely as modern beer ads do to fill women with lusty thoughts. It was appropriate for men to buy chocolate for women, but for women to buy chocolate for themselves was considered “promiscuous.” (120) If chocolate was a stand-in for sex, then buying yourself a box of bon-bons was akin to masturbation. Like Eve, Victorian women were considered to be innately weak and immoral, easily swayed by the temptations of self-indulgence; the good woman held fast to temperance and chastity. Walter Baker, of Baker’s Chocolate, appealed to this domestic side of women with his company’s logo, the Chocolate Girl. This mythical waitress won the heart of a nobleman by serving him chocolate, transforming chocolate from an aristocratic luxury into an everyday food item through adherence to traditional gender roles. (354)

For men, chocolate was marketed as a source of power. It could buy the love of women, and it could provide energy for manly endeavors like war. Used to treat sick soldiers who fell sick from malnutrition during the Civil War, Northern physician E. Donnelly promoted the inclusion of chocolate in soldier’s rations to prevent such ailments in the first place. (353) By the middle of the 18th century, soldiers of all ranks purchased chocolate almost as much as they did alcohol. (403) It was so essential during the Seven Year’s War that a raid on a British supply train was called the “Chocolate Massacre,” and as the blood mingled with the chocolate, you can imagine it was a most macabre scene. (399) In the military context, chocolate was a symbol of strength and vitality, and this carried over to civilian advertising directed at men. In one ad for cocoa, firemen drinking hot mugs of it stand under the copy: “Makes Strong Men Stronger.” (Coe) Perhaps Victorian society was afraid that women lacked the will to control the power it gave men, so they had to censure their own enjoyment in order to dispense it to their husbands and children.

In modern times, chocolate is still a guilty pleasure for women, something they are supposed to crave but equally not supposed to give into without compensatory gym time. The cravings themselves are almost certainly psychological rather than physiological: Willa Michener and Paul Rozin compared eating chocolate to eating merely capsules of cocoa powder, and found only the full experience and ritual of eating the bar satisfied cravings. (Michener) Psychologist Debra Zellner argues that the very fact that chocolate is a nutritional taboo makes it alluring, harkening back to the French noblewomen of the 17th century. What’s more, treating yourself to anything when you feel bad, such as during pre-menstrual mood swings, is bound to make you feel better regardless of what the treat’s chemical composition is. (Rauch) Throughout history, the benefits and detriments of chocolate seem most tied to its high calorie and fat content, able to sustain warriors, soldiers, and the malnourished, while exacerbating health problems in the over-consuming wealthy elite. It has been tied to women through the marginilization of both, and the association has evolved into contradictory ideals for both women and chocolate consumption during an age of advertisements. When we hear that “women’s bodies scream for chocolate,” we should recall that chocolate has played an essential role for men as well, and that marketing — and culture in general — can construct and mold our desires beyond their objects’ mere utility or pleasure.

* Before the Civil War, Walter Baker promoted Free Labor chocolate to a New England population increasingly sympathetic with the abolitionist viewpoint, while at the same time selling poor-quality, adulterated cocoa to the slaves themselves. (Grivetti & Shapiro 352) Today slaves are still used in cacao production, especially in Africa, but the marketing of Fair Trade chocolate has increased the awareness of the true cost of cheap chocolate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_cocoa_production

Coe, Sophie and Michael Coe. The True History of Chocolate. Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Grivetti, Louis and Howard-Yana Shapiro. Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage. Wiley, 2009.

Michener, Willa and Paul Rozin. “Pharmacological versus sensory factors in the satiation of chocolate craving.” Physiology & Behavior, Vol 56, Sep 1994. pp 419-422.

Rauch, Catherine Ann. “Chocolate: A heart-healthy confection?” CNN.com, 2 Feb 2000. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/diet.fitness/02/02/chocolate.wmd/

2012 01 28 Travel Comments (0) Permalink

A RISD Trip to Costa Rica

Herein lies my journal for my RISD winter session class in Costa Rica, which was in partnership with EARTH University to work on replicable, sustainable ways to reuse waste products.

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH

With so many people working for good, fighting as hard as they can in some cases, can the collective power of impersonal corporate greed and the apathy of the rest of us really prevent positive change? I would shout from the rooftops about this stuff, but I am simply not connected with those whose minds need changing. And somehow even my preaching to choir gets confronted with devil’s advocate libertarianism at times. So today I am thankful for those who do effect change, and for the landscape architects and my classmates and teachers who inspire me daily with their serious, sincere desire to change the world and their willingness to learn how to do it well. With the world so messed up, there’s all the more opportunity to make a positive mark. And no reason not to.

Though I was supposedly working with Ari, I went to print out my own research summary when he failed to send me his. I wound up talking to Mickey, who was also working on his summary without his undergrad partner, but mostly about how biodigesters could fit into a larger system and how simple pit outhouses probably just leach uncomposted waste into the soil. Oh Salanna! We came up with an idea for dealing with the half-composted sludge from the biodigesters, though: put it in ponds, from which you could skim the scum for fertilizer, until they get filled up. By then the microorganisms should have done their jobs, and you’ll have wonderfully rich soil to plant trees in. Meanwhile you can start another pond to put your waste in. I wonder if there is a better word than waste? Or maybe it just gets a bad rap. After all, in natural systems, wastefulness is actually good because it sets up niches for other organisms to make use of the different kinds of material. The trick in our case is to make human (artificial) waste bio-available.

PINEAPPLE JUICE

The cicadas are chirping outside, ready to lull me asleep again after all these years. Costa Rica! But let me back up to yesterday, when I left off. Our 9am class meeting to present our research went well, except Ari showed up half an hour late. The other groups’ stuff was generally interesting, though. I spent yesterday afternoon doing last minute errands, namely buying moleskin and doing laundry. I noodled about until 7:45 or so, and then went to sleep early. My dad offered to give me a wakeup call, but I just set two alarms… for 1:45am! I got up no problem, a little cotton-headed, but a quick run down to the BEB helped. Thus began the epic day of travel.

A shuttle to the airport, a quick flight to New York, an adventure of discovering the wonders of the New York airport — Muji and a salad bar! — before a long 5 hours of flying, mostly spent watching television and playing Tiny Wings, and landing in Liberia. Customs, no sweat, and we ate at a nearby restaurant with an amazing plate of black beans, sauteed vegetables, and a fried plantain. Plus fresh pineapple juice. I will eat like a king!

But we weren’t out of the bushes yet. Heck, we hadn’t even reached them. We stopped briefly at the grocery store, where I discovered that here lemons are green on the outside and orange on the inside, and that my middle school Spanish is surprisingly unforgotten, and then we got on our blue bus for another few hours. The landscape went from flat and grassy to lush ravines of banana and mango trees, with occasional horse pastures and clusters of colorful houses. Finally we climbed into the mountains, meeting a crest lined with wind turbines, and down to lake Arenal right as the sun was setting. With only bathroom break at a real German bakery, we trucked right around the lake to the opposite side, and now we are at a bunkhouse at a little eco-resort farm called Rancho Margo. In the dark all I really got to see were the leaf-cutter ants our driver Johnny pointed out with his flashlight. But tomorrow, I will see the entire fabulous rainforest world!

TRUTH OR DARE

There is no sound dampening in the bunk house, so I woke up to everyone else waking up. This turned out to be okay, because I got to go watch the cows being milked before breakfast. Apparently the calves get to finish up the milk after the humans are done, and it was cute to watch them in the pen next to the feeding and milking building. Even cuter were the piglets: as we approached their muddy enclosure, the wee ones ran over all at once to see if we had brought them something to eat. Quickly disappointed, they returned to playing around, digging up dirt, and bugging the adults. It was disturbing to know that these pigs would be dinner soon enough, and more-so to see the same people cooing at the piglets in the morning and praising the taste of pork in the evening. During breakfast we ended up talking about why I’m vegan and how agriculture would work if everyone was vegetarian. I think it must be possible to farm plants sustainably for everyone, and the fact that animals are part of many traditional systems does not does not mean we should develop our modern systems with the same elements. And it’s not our duty to give animals a better life than in the wild, and if it were we shouldn’t be killing them for that privilege. I still want to include animals in our systems, but there must be a better way to do it! In the meantime I have to figure out how to live in an evil world, and here in paradise the flaws are all the more visible.

After breakfast we did a tour of Rancho Margo. They have a cacao tree! With a cacao pod! I learned that the whole banana stalk needs to be cut down after it produces one crop of bananas, but fortunately there are stands of them constantly producing more stalks. This whole place is populated with banana stands, with a groundcover of grass and what I think is ginger. There are hibiscus, lemons, coconut palms, tropical almonds, and countless other species. A concrete-paver path winds throughout the green carpet and broad-leaf canopy, leading to bungalows and the various farm outbuildings and fields. All the roofs are colonized by bryophytes and other plants, creating dripping green roofs in only two years. The hot water is heated by going through the compost heap, though when I tried to enjoy this particular fruit of the earth apparently I got fiddly bits of the shower wrong and had to take it cold. The animal agriculture parts of the system were pretty well integrated, but while the farm imports very little, the gardening methods seem standard organic. Nothing permaculture, everything in neat little tilled single-crop rows.

The afternoon was devoted to sketching, and then Mickey, Lissy, Angela, Mykel and I went on a brief hike “up the road”. This road was pretty muddy going through the fields. And then it turned into a trail cutting through the jungle… and several rivulets. By the end we all had muddy shoes and calves, and I almost lost my shoes to the muck. We returned just in time for Johnny the bus driver to take us to a geothermally heated stream. It was amazing! Heated to perfect bath temperature, with a strong current bubbling at my back like a jacuzzi. Surrounded by lush vegetation, in a hidden locals-only (and probably Lonely Planeters) hot spring spot, it soaked my anxieties and bug bites away.

Now I’m listening to my comrades play a truth-or-dare drinking game, with Mickey being the most open and giggling I’ve seen him. I’m almost falling asleep despite the excitement. So today I am grateful for the freshly picked food cooked with locally produced energy, and for Arenal being tame enough to warm the hot springs without exploding.

THE SLEEPY VOLCANO

People are so loud in the late hours of the night and the early hours in the morning that it’s difficult to get a good night’s sleep! But up by 7 to be out on the bus to Arenal by 8:30 we were, ready for a sunny day adventure at the volcano. Our guide was knowledgable and told us all about the sequence of Arenal’s recent activity. It only became active again in 1968 after centuries of dormancy, and after the Chilean earthquake a couple of years back, it stopped being as active. I’m glad I made it here back in middle school, when you could see it spewing lava every night.

I had been worried my five-finger shoes wouldn’t like the lava fields much, but most of the hike was through second growth forests and cane fields with soft sandy trails. We learned about the sloth’s favorite tree, cecropia, whose leaves make them high, and about the various epiphytic bromeliads and lianas. When we finally made it to the rocky bit, I climbed with ease to the vantage point, where we had an excellent view of Arenal Lake and the “brown” side of the volcano, with ash clouds rolling down the slopes.

We got back and ate lunch — man can I stuff myself here, I feel like I will gain many pounds, all made of beans — and Mickey pushed us to go right back out again to climb the local Mirador trail. Mickey and Lissy actually went ahead and went much farther, but Justin led the rest of us gamely up the steep muddish trail to some breathtaking vistas from a little hill between two inlets of the lake. There was also a trail cut by the leafcutter ants, and we watched them and chatted for a while before heading back to the ranch.

German dignitaries were visiting the ranch this evening, so all the farm hands took over our common space at the bunkhouse and we took refuge from their rowdy loudness in the bar. There we played chess and rummy interspersed with dinner, eventually surrounded by Germans in suits milling about and enjoying the Spanish music that I couldn’t help swaying to.

There is a lightning bug in my bed, and a moment ago in my hair — the second I have ever seen besides that one time when I was three years old. Good luck for me, I hope, and I wish it good luck find its light-mate!

JOHNNY’S NIGHT TOUR

Armadillos, baby. Two of ‘em! After dinner Johnny, Caitrin, Beth, and I went on a night tour of La Flor, and in the process caught in our flashlight beams a deer, a frog, a huge moth, the aforementioned armadillos, and Johnny battled a small scorpion. The stars, when we turned our flashlights off and I put my glasses on, were crisp and jewel-like in the sky, more numerous than I have seen since Hawaii.

We arrived at La Flor after hours of driving and a pit stop at the German Bakery. Oh, and some howler monkeys hanging out on the electrical wires! I miss the lush jungle, and the farm here is much less integrated. In fact, they export their mangos, and their rice is milled elsewhere! The food suffers as a result, and for dinner they didn’t even have frijoles (beans). But see how quickly we get spoiled?

We got a tour from the assistant director, Christina, and an introduction to La Flor’s mission by the director, Carlos. Lots of warnings about snakes and falling coconuts. My main issue seems to be these little biting bugs that leave bloody pinpricks on my legs, though, leading me to wonder if I should go for the poisonous DEET or at least see what the symptoms of Lyme disease are!

Caitrin found a friend in a little lizard traveled calmly on her sleeve for an hour and a half, and we found some monstrous spiders in our bunkhouse besides. This place is crawling with critters. Fortunately there is plenty of shade from the campus trees and surrounding dry tropical forest, because the rest of the region is open agricultural fields. It is hot, but the breeze makes it pleasant. The campus here is set up like a village, similar to Rancho Margo, except all the out-buildings are Spanish style instead of treehouse hippie style. It is a bit eerie since no faculty are around, only a few service workers and Christina besides us. I’m not sure what I think about it, as a school or as a place I’m living, but it feels a little like a beach place, and the flatness makes it much more accessible to exploration. As long as they take my tip that they should feed me beans every meal, I think it will be an enjoyable place and a good environment to work on my ideas for alternative agriculture.

I just played one game of gin rummy, but I busted out after I won. It’s an early day tomorrow, made earlier because Lissy and I are going to try making a habit of running. Apparently the showers are cold, so I’ll have to be hot to compensate. Now a bird is making silly noises outside… I think today I am most thankful for the wildlife, and for getting to experience so many parts of Costa Rica, and for learning Spanish as I go. Maybe I will try to get an internship on the Caribbean side for next summer!

POVERTY SAFARI

I seem to remember the howler monkeys being active at night, but I woke up to them this morning, foraging in the trees right across the field from the bunkhouse. I watched them, mamas with babies and young ones and regular adults, and they watched me, too. Not scared though — they soon made their way to the trees right outside our sleep space! Caitrin was also up, and we spotted some green parrots, too. They make almost human noises, and can learn to speak if you catch one illegally. Lissy, Ari, and I went for a run after that — it felt so good to just cut loose, and I was proud to make it a full half hour after months only running in place and doing hundred-ups. Before breakfast, too.

We toured Liberia today, getting a history lesson and a rundown on local life in Guanacaste. It’s supposedly a major city for the region, but it barely feels like a city with its colonial era buildings and nothing really beyond three stories, if any are even that tall. Still, it was vibrant and commercial, and had that well-used feel of a place that never even thought about urban renewal.

The afternoon was spent at a squatter community outside of Liberia called Martina Bustos. People live in similar houses as the neighborhoods closer to the city, except made of scrap metal and plywood. The land is hard volcanic ash mixed with silica, covered in shrub grass and scraggly oaks. The wind was spectacular, though! We visited the community center that RISD kids worked with last year, where women and children who normally go through garbage for food to eat and recyclables to sell can learn how to make handicrafts and sell hydroponic vegetables. Then we went to one of their homes, which actually seemed pleasant enough with a fridge, television, papaya tree, smiling healthy kids, and clean water from a communal tap down the street. Not much, but a good start — a house, basic amenities, and a good community. We all of course had a million ideas of how to improve things ten minutes in, but it feels a little presumptuous to think that they haven’t thought of a lot of them already and have reasons why they aren’t yet a reality. An outsider’s view is good, but I think it’s probably better to help people take a step back from their own lives and see what they really need and generate solutions. This self-reflection is a privilege, but one that should be granted more often since it allows for long-term planning.

Anyway, it felt weird to be there just watching, like we were on poverty safari. I wonder what the locals thought about us? I hope they’re proud of what they built, which is a 3500 person town from scratch and other people’s trash.

A bunch of folks spent the afternoon tracking down a cake for Mickey’s birthday, and before long Johnny came in to say the La Flor security guy had seen coyotes. Off we all trekked, through the dark and under the stars. I couldn’t help notice that Justin and Saja were arm in arm, and I have to say I’m a little jealous. And I’m not sure of whom. Interesting! But people were chatting, and a horde of people can’t really sneak up on a coyote, so in the end all we spotted was a little rattle snake. Makes me worry that they won’t actually stay out of my way at night.

THE CLARK KENT OF COSTA RICA

I have a new favorite place in the world: Finco la Anita. It’s a farm up in the rain forest just over the mountains, where they grow ornamental ginger, palms for flower arrangements, heart of palm, and many food species for their kitchen including papaya, oranges, bananas, passionfruit, starfruit, pineapples, and avocados. All my favorites! Plus they have started growing cacao, but not for chocolate: they want to market it as something you grind and brew like coffee. We got to try their roasted beans, whole, and though they were bitter, I was excited about the idea of drinking brewed hot chocolate. Alas! When the time came, it was made with milk! But the cacao was not even the best part. Pablo is the owner, and he gave the tour, starting with a demonstration of making heart of palm ceviche that would marinate while we took a tractor ride into the fields. He spoke about composting in place around the plants, interplanting species to support each other, and the need to support the local community. All this without having heard of permaculture! He also has a strong aesthetic sense, and he tries to plant his crops in attractive arrangements because he believes evolution makes things beautiful as well as functional. A man after my own heart.

Then he showed us the cabins of his growing tourism business, which he meticulously designed with details like a visiting porch, built-in reading lights, and screened bathroom made private by the positions of the cabins. Everything was so well crafted and well thought out, and Pablo always talked about how what he did could enrich the lives of locals by teaching them woodworking skills and providing examples of sustainable systems. Okay, plus he named the farm after his wife, Anna, and built A’s into the main ranch building. I am going to try my darnedest to get a summer internship here, and I will be very sad if I have to choose between La Anita and GGN.

In the early morning a bunch of us went for a walk in La Flor, through agricultural trails the color and consistency of cocoa powder. Undutched. The best part was checking another animal off the Costa Rica bingo card: coatis! A whole troupe crossed the trail in front of us, including a couple babies. Then we had to hustle back for breakfast, where I was sad to see a lack of gallo pinto. Faced with a long day and only some corn flakes and fruit to get me going, I asked if they had any, and then felt totally awkward and awful when they actually went and got me some. So nice of them, but I felt embarrassed for a long time after. Johnny asked me how I slept, and I said “asi asi” — my back was actually sore because the springs were digging into my back. Then when we returned in the evening, there was a new mattress! I’m a bit worried that people will think me a high-maintenance whiny girl, and that’s on top of my normal anxieties about being socially inept.

One last thing about today, though, to keep me from dwelling: we saw a sloth! I don’t know how Johnny keeps spotting these things, but he saw it eating cecropia leaves at he edge of he forest at a fork in the road. Caitrin and I were practically tripping out of the bus, we couldn’t wait to see it closer! And later he spotted two toucans. Finally he pointed out the window excitedly exclaiming something in Spanish and we all looked out to see… Christina translated him as saying “ant”. Yeah, I don’t think his wildlife spotting powers are that good. And the tracks we saw last night for coyotes and a “snake”? Mickey had been giggling so much because he had been there in the morning and the tracks were already there — except for the snake track, which was just him dragging a stick on the ground. I thought something was fishy when we were walking the opposite direction as the coyote sounds were coming from!

DWARF MANGOS

The morning was spent getting a tour of the farm, most of it checking out the biodigester and watching our guide burn methane. We also got to see some mango growing experiments involving dwarfing the trees by pruning their roots like bonsais, and got a quick jaunt down to where the two rivers crossing La Flor meet.

I keep looking at my legs and being disturbed by the awful red spots that are my bug bites. Maybe I should have been giving in to the DEET after all, but even some of those using it have as many bites as me. At least they don’t itch, but one is actually swollen and tender, and I worry that I’ll get some disease or infection. Michael said I could use her natural bug repellant, so I will try that and wear long pants when I can. Which might be a good idea anyway since my pale legs show off the welts extra well.

GRASS-EATING MACHINES

Yesterday was pretty low key. I went running with Lissy in the morning, went swimming in the pool in the afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day working on our class’s definition of sustainability. Caitrin, Mykel, and I worked well together as a group, but when all the groups came together, there was so much talking over each other I almost gave up trying to be heard. Yet miraculously, I was asked to write something on the board near our deadline, and suddenly we all agreed on that one sentence. As our entire definition. And you know what? I think it’s a good one!

Today we got up at 6:15 to leave by 7:00. We took the bus all over Guanacaste, from the Pacific Coast at La Cruz to channels carrying Lake Arenal water across the province, to the town of Tilaran for lunch, to Carlos’s family’s cattle farms. Carlos, if you recall, is the head hancho at La Flor. One of his brothers runs a dairy business in the rain forest, the other a grass-fed beef ranch on the windswept hills at the continental divide. The idea was to look at the “life zones” so we can draw a transect tomorrow, but I was captivated by trying to think of ways to replace dairy farms with non-dairy milk production that would allow he forest to return to the pasture lands.

It’s funny, because these are the sorts of prime examples of family-run, eco-conscious, small-scale farms that proponents of animal agriculture hold up as ethical alternatives to industrial, concentrated feeding lots. Yet Mykel and Lissy were both expressing their interest in giving up meat and dairy by the end of the day. Seeing the cows stuck in an endless loop of being impregnated only to be discarded when they stop being productive, and the calves forced to eat grain and separated in small metal pens because they will try to suckle each other since they aren’t allowed to be with their mothers; and even the free-ranging bulls are described as merely “grass-eating machines” and graze on the graves of tropical forests; such is the best-case scenario.

Pablo got back to me to say there aren’t any internship opportunities this summer because they’re too busy getting the cacao thing off the ground. But there’s still hope for something in Costa Rica! It seems that the flaws here are almost like scars on a beautiful face, only reminding you how beautiful the face really is, because the problems here are things like “the pasture land we put in reserves isn’t regenerating into forest fast enough!” The US wishes we had problems like that. I wonder if things are actually getting better fast enough to counteract the things getting worse, and I hope what I work on will make some sort of impact, however small.

MARKET DAY

Transect day! After a morning run and breakfast, we all got together to draw a transect through the route across Guanacaste we took yesterday. Unfortunately it was hot even for me, and since we stayed up late playing rummy and bananagrams and Monopoly Deal last night, I was sleepy. But I got to work with Saja, which was a pleasure, and we were all motivated by the promise of going to the market in the afternoon. And indeed our sections and sketches turned out beautifully, and it was worth doing to get a better understanding of the lay of the land.

After lunch and a brief crit, we took the bus to see prefab government starter homes, and the garbage dump. The dump was strangely beautiful, with all the trees wearing garbage bags like prayer flags. The wind drove white dust into our eyes and mouths, but the place was surprisingly alive. Flies, swooping birds, mutts poking around, and people picking through the trash to look for recyclables and anything valuable. They remind me of the dump dwellers in The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm.

But we were able to leave, able to go to the outdoor farmers’ market in Liberia. Plantains, bananas, pineapples, coconuts, oranges (that were green), and tomatoes seemed to dominate, but there were also breadfruits, guavas, passionfruits, chayotes, cassavas, and more. I got a fresh pipa, young coconut water straight from the nut, and a single bananita for free, and we all decided to get fresh ingredients to make guacamole and palm ceviche. This turned out to be a good idea for me, as dinner was just fries and the insides of a veggie burger. Saja and I made the ceviche while Lissy and Mickey, thick as thieves, made the guacamole, and then we all talked and played card games at Colgate’s little cabin. I also managed a long conversation with Johnny in broken Spanish. Excellente!

PSYCHEDELIC WAVES

Tonight we sat under the stars of the milky way and watched electric waves made psychedelic by the fluorescing algae as we waited for a glimpse of a sea turtle. We saw one emerging from the waves, but faced with a bunch of gawkers with red tinted flashlights, she headed back in. Later we saw one digging her nest, perhaps the same one, but Saja pointed out how awkward and stressful this must be for the turtle. And you know? She might be right. Many others in our group stood back, expressing doubts.

We spent the morning driving to the coast, and after lunch we got an introduction to the Osional reserve and picked up trash from the beach. Then we went to another, less protected beach for a couple of hours, where I started to read The Hunger Games, sketched the waves crashing on the rocks, and hunted for colorful shells amongst the white knobs of coral.

Back to wildlife: today Johnny spotted a giant toad on our way back from the beach! It was maybe ten inches in diameter, and Johnny says it spits poison. Today I am not thankful for sand, but I am thankful the only thing that attacks us successfully are the biting gnats. And for being stuck in this swirling universe, with the faculties to look out into the night sky and know it.

A RASTAFARIAN DRAGON

Today was fruit day! I woke up all too early to music from a local surf festival, and went for a walk with Angela, before eating a breakfast of papaya, pineapple, banana, and a bit of gallo pinto and a spoonful of granola. Then we drove to Tamarindo, a tourist town on a much more crowded beach, stopping only for a flat tire. At that point I had one of Cathy’s green oranges from the market, which I basically peeled a hole in and sucked out the delicious vanilla-tinged juice. We did some initial tourist shopping, and then I got a smoothie for lunch. Blackberry (mora), mango, and orange, whole fruit and ice blended and served in a big cup for only 1000 colones: two dollars! I thought I would be hungry soon, but that thing filled me up for hours. I spent much too much time trying to find the perfect mango wood bowl, but ended up getting only a two-dollar coconut wood spoon and spending the rest of my time playing frisbee in the water and getting sunburned. I then grabbed another smoothie for the bus home: melon, passionfruit, and watermelon (sandia). Only another flat tire, some gas station snacks, and a conversation about music bands lay between us and La Flor, where we ate chips and salsa while Ari regaled us with a ridiculous and hilarious story about a Scottish rum runner, a Rastafarian dragon, and a high OCD kraken, all inspired by my knee scar. This has redeemed him from a day where he stomped on my foot, almost elbowed me in the face through the window, and kept creepily staring past me out my window from across the bus. Okay, so maybe not completely redeemed. We then tried once again to put on a movie night, but that fizzled out, so I read Hunger Games instead!

MICKEY AND I TEAM UP

Yesterday was not a very eventful day, as we just went to another beach where all the Ticos hang out that had burning hot sand and calm waters. I simply sat under a scrubby tree and devoured The Hunger Games, and after a late lunch and wandering around another tourist town, I spent the evening reading as well. In fact, I was able to finish the book before breakfast this morning.

In the morning we did research and development for our projects, and my cashew milk farm started to develop in a different direction as I talked with Colgate and inevitably Mickey. The two of us decided to team up, which will honestly be much more fun. Plus we work well together. By three in the afternoon we had pages of diagrams and a few key questions to ask Carlos tomorrow — if he doesn’t get called away to another meeting,

Basically we are looking at developing a community core for Martina Bustos around the leaky communal water faucets. You create a food forest for sustenance, and feed it with waste water from an adjacent shower and sink, and composted scraps from the kitchen, a composting toilet, and even the dump. Then we can take those systems and develop a pre-fab development community based around a central courtyard edible garden and park, the sustainable version of the Levitt Town of Costa Rica. We called this urban reforestation.

The afternoon I was completely beat, so mostly I just read and waited for dinner. This meal was oddly spartan, just vegan vegetable pasta for all and some buttered bread for everyone besides me. It was good nonetheless, especially with that brown sauce they call Lizano Salsa. Afterwards we met to share our ideas, every one of which was fascinating and potentially we could integrate them all together. One thing, though: Colgate has this bad habit of only ever talking to Mickey, even if it’s about what someone else had just presented. Earlier when he was talking to just Mickey and myself, he stood next to me but didn’t let me get a word in edgewise, talking about what he wanted to regardless of the direction I might try to turn the conversation. Apparently he does this with everyone.

Two more things before I forget: last night we played one-sentence stories over dinner, and it was wonderfully good fun. I even managed to save some from becoming totally skeevy by adding a fairy tale twist!

MANCHA VERSUS SPEED

My butt hurts. This morning we went off on a horseback tour of the mango, rice, and sugarcane fields at La Flor, and of course I got the slow horse. Mancha. He had two speeds, a leisurely walk and a bouncy trot that wasn’t much faster, and he tripped a lot. At one point I let him lag too far behind the group, and as soon as the last horse rounded the corner and out of view, Mancha took off. Now, my stirrups were too long, so my feet had been free for most of the ride, so now it was all I could do to hold on with my thighs. Actually, it was really fun. And the only time my pelvis wasn’t being crushed against the mortar of the saddle. On the ride we also saw a white owl swoop right in front of us, and we munched on tamarind beans. Perfect because I seem to be hungry no matter how much I eat today!

After lunch Mickey and I worked as best we could with heat-addled and sleep-deprived brains for several hours, and then because Carlos was stuck in traffic, we went for a walk with Lissy and saw a cara cara eagle. Following a simple dinner of salad and french fries, we presented to Carlos and discussed our ideas with him for hours into the evening. Good, but now my butt hurts, my hands are sunburned, and I’m tired again — hopefully Colgate gives us the morning off!

Today I am thankful that I didn’t fall off my horse, that I have a nice body that I don’t mind showing off a bit at the pool, and for getting to work with Mickey, who is alway ready to brainstorm and who put up with my inability to concentrate today.

THE BIG GRILL

Once again I combine two days in one! The first involved working in the morning, and meeting the Earth University students in the afternoon. They only come to campus one day a week, and otherwise volunteer and work on their sustainability projects. They seemed genuinely interested in our ideas, until we gradually dispersed into siesta. Mickey, Lissy, and I were going to go for a walk, but we ended up talking about our childhoods for an hour, laughing our heads off most of the time. For dinner we went back to the bar with the beer towers and the projectors running music videos from the 80s and 90s on the walls. Entertaining enough to be sure, but the party really got going when everyone but me had had several rounds of shots and god knows how many beers and margaritas and we started salsa dancing. Move those hips! When we finally got back, the fiesta continued as we made jokes on the bus and in the bunkhouse as Mickey tried to tell Lissy a story, about Lissea the fairy, Mitchkin the moth, and Sassafras the lizard (or maybe a fox), in the softest voice imaginable. Ari took over with some more nonsense in a Scottish accent plus a horse named Sugar Cane with deep baritone. Everyone found it hilarious, and I admit to laughing to all this until my abs hurt, but I think I liked the first kraken story more because we were all adding to it.

Today no one could be bothered to wake up early, so I went for a walk by myself. Justin, who drank by far the most last night, slept past breakfast. But Colgate got the worst of it by coming down with food poisoning so bad he was moaning in pain all night. Our party went off without him, back to Martina Bustos and to the prefab neighborhood. We met an old man in the barrio who lived right next to the water spigot and grew ornamental plants in his yard instead of food, and his two tiny grandchildren who ran around playing in a box and on some swings and looking adorable in our photos. We got our sixth flat tire before lunch, though, but afterwards we continued to a recycling center. Run by one woman and her dozen employees, they just had a giant pile of recyclables that they had to hustle to sort before the next bunch got dumped on top. Ripe for a new system to put in place, which is exactly what two Earth students were there to work out. Ari managed to overstay our welcome by asking a bajillion questions, slow as molasses — at some point he actually said, “Now I’m just trying to think of random questions.”

Anyway, before we came back to La Flor we stopped by the market again to pick up things to grill. This evening we had our cook out, and the staff put out candle votives around and even floating in the pool. They had a bunch of food too, so by the time we grilled everything, we had a true feast: palm ceviche, sweet pan-caramelized plantains, grilled pineapple, sweet peppers, chayote, and spring onions, sliced cantaloupe and watermelon and some unknown fruit that tastes like cooked sweet potato, plus salad, chips with salsa, guacamole, and pureed frijoles, yuca (aka cassava aka manioc), and meat of several varieties. We get the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and we won’t finish it all then, either!

ONE MORE DAY AT THE BEACH

Colgate made an appearance at breakfast, apparently stabilized but checking in with the doctor anyway. He surprised us by suggesting we go to the beach after working in the morning, which made everyone excited. Beth and I exchanged ideas, with Mickey and Caitrin joining in soon after, and then I did plant research until lunch. Now I know everything about growing papayas. Then it was off to Playas del Cocos! Wait, where’s Ari? We made it five minutes out before realizing he wasn’t on the bus. Gosh darn it, Ari. But we all made it, and I spent a relaxing couple hours finishing the second Hunger Games book and fending off the ants that kept exploring me under the shade of irrigated palms while others played frisbee or swam or suntanned. We also got in a few rounds of Monopoly Deal, which Caitrin can’t stop playing.

With the blessing of the absent Colgate, we stayed late, wandering around shops as the sun set, drinking margaritas and pina coladas (or in my case, tap water), and finally gathering for dinner at a place called “Beach Bums” named appropriately for its beach-front location and the slow, sloppy service. They kept messing up and bringing things we hadn’t ordered, and it took an hour and a half to get our food. At this point everyone but a select few, namely myself, Johnny, and Justin (who Colgate said ahead of time was only allowed two drinks), were pretty well on their way to drunk. The giant fishbowl margarita certainly didn’t help. I had a small sip, and not having eaten since before noon (at this point nine hours ago), I could feel my head start to buzz unpleasantly as soon as it hit my bloodstream. I can’t imagine how Mickey, Lissy, and Caitrin could down half the one-liter glass and be conscious!

It was fun, though, and the place next door had some live music that kept me dancing in my seat. The bill was a small hell to work out, but Beth had sobered up enough by then to help me sort it out, and finally we were on the road again. Ending our last night in Costa Rica. Only after getting on the bus did this fact hit me: then I knew why everyone was dragging the evening out as long as possible. No fear of inconveniencing Johnny or angering Colgate would overcome our reluctance to leave. The only reason I didn’t feel the same was that beaches and bars bore me in and of themselves, but there is a sadness when I think that we won’t have this same dynamic back in Providence. Living and traveling and going through stress together forms a tight but not always long-lasting bond, and the dynamic will change when we disperse back into our own lives.

2012 01 07 Life Comments (0) Permalink

I Want to Go There

I will be off in a few days to go to Costa Rica, for RISD–EARTH University mashup. Three glorious weeks in a wonderful place, learning new things and making cool stuff! And to inspire you while I am gone, this glimpse of Burning Man through Dr Suess:

2012 01 01 Life Comments (0) Permalink

The Busy Days of Christmas

Ah, the holidays! After two years I finally get to be home for Christmas (and, incidentally, New Year’s). That’s right: two years away from home, which is an awfully long time. I even started missing the grey and the drizzle.

The first days home were just packed: the evening I arrived, vegan dinner at Plum with cousin and fashion-blogger Dana and her husband Don, both foodies with the sort of young-professional lifestyle people dream about. Family Christmas party the next afternoon, preceded by a tour of the secret hobbit house (intricately and faithfully reproduced, yet so lonely without hordes of fans to fawn over and admire it… lonely or safe, anyway). The next morning, a super awesome interview with GGN, a landscape architecture firm run by three fabulous women with a design philosophy completely in line with my own — if only they could short-cut their internship hiring process just for me! I met with Jennifer Guthrie, one of the partners and friends with Uncle Kim, who complimented some of my work. You could see my ego grow three sizes that day. This heady experience was followed immediately by lunch with Mickey, my classmate, and Laura and Tom from Haddad-Drugan, who taught wintersession last year, plus a tour of their office — custom solar cells imbedded in skylights in a pixelated pattern have me dreaming, let me tell you. And lunch was at a great vegetarian dive-bar in Georgetown whose sandwiches bore such names as “Tycho”, “Picard”, and the “Darth Reuben”. I know, you want to eat there too, now. Don’t fill up, though, because on my itinerary there’s a Theo chocolate factory tour in the afternoon. So. Many. Samples.

The next few days were spent alternately relaxing and cooking up a storm. My mom discovered Spork-Fed and we quickly set about organizing menus for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. For the Eve, we brought some pineapple and red pepper pizza, a lentil-pecan pate with crudites, a tofu satay, and various cookies and sweets to Grammy’s place to enjoy while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. Beforehand Sandy likes to watch the football game, so my dad and I split and went walking around the lake instead. What a crisp and beautiful day!

Christmas morning Grammy and Sandy came over to our place instead, and we had squash-leek soup, fig-pear puff pastry tarts with garlic aioli (these win best in show), and more cookies to accompany our gift-opening. Supposedly we were just doing stocking stuffers, but some of these were too big to fit in the actual stockings, so they got wrapped and put under the tree like regular ol’ presents. I guess what makes them stocking stuffers is the fact that they were procured from Goodwill, and so didn’t break anybody’s bank. My loot was lots of chocolate from Theo!

And for my part, I donated to various non-profits in people’s names as part of my 10% tithing endeavor, since I actually earned some money this year as TA extraordinaire and summer database developer. Penny-pincher and minimalist that I am, I find money to be stressful thing to possess, a reminder of my own privilege yet needing to be invested wisely to actually help me out in my imagined future. Building my own house will not be cheap. But being able to pick out organizations to give money to makes me feel generous and happy, and setting aside some of my income for this purpose allows me to spend it without feeling guilty. Also, giving in people’s names makes an excellent gift that won’t get returned or fill up closet space! That, and I can devote my time to making a holiday smorgasbord that spreads the vegan cheer. Win-win-win.

Most of my time at home was spent being cold, drinking copious amounts of tea, playing sudoku or video games (oh man am I late to game on the joy of video games), dancing around the house, going to coffee shops with my parents, watching movies and Star Trek episodes in the evenings, and going through my life as it has been stuffed into the boxes in the closet. I got another internship interview at Berger Partnership, fell in love with Luna sandals at the barefoot store (and man am I jealous that my dad got to take a running class from Barefoot Ted), visited Grandmom (where I got a glimpse of cousin Emily) and Jim and Parker Shipton, and I sewed a tiny giraffe.

I’m about done with the grey, drizzly days for now. It’s been only two weeks, but it feels like a month — mostly in a good way, though! For my next adventure, I’m off to Costa Rica for wintersession. Going back to school is a lot more pleasant when it means temperatures in the 80′s for three weeks. But I know I’m going to spend all of them with my fingers crossed about getting a summer internship in Seattle. Wish me luck!

2011 12 27 Life Comments (0) Permalink

Studio Swallowed Me Whole

It’s funny that the last thing I posted was about still being alive… because then I didn’t post anything for months. In all that time, I had maybe half a day off every week, on average. Partially this was my fault, for insisting on getting back home by seven every night, and spending any free time getting a head start on semester-long projects like my New England in Autumn plant key and my Theory paper on imaginary landscapes. Surprisingly, Studio was not the time sink this semester: it was Tech and Materials, which required almost as much work as Studio but with half the credit value. We got to build a bench and we had a cool design details project, but mostly it entailed hours of perfecting my grading and AutoCAD skills. Which is honestly pretty boring compared to the exciting design work for my Studio project that had to be put on the back burner most of the time.

Studio also suffered because our class had 13 people and only one teacher, leaving us with only twenty-minute desk crits. It’s hard to cover all the aspects of a large project in such a short period of time, and I often found myself adrift, without a clear idea of how to proceed. I’ve found that I have difficulty seeing the holes and inconsistencies in my own work, so I rely on the fresh pairs of eyes provided by classmates and teachers and the guest critics in pin-ups and reviews to push my designs forward. Most of the time simply having to explain my ideas out loud to someone else is enough to spot the weaknesses and missed opportunities. I think I could have benefited from another iteration or two, but in the end I’m proud of my concept, and especially proud of the high-quality, well-made models I hunkered down to make for the final review. I even won the approval of some of the best model-makers in the class!

The best part about Studio this semester, though, was our site: the parking lots behind Central Square’s YMCA, in Cambridge. That meant class site visits could be extended to include hanging out at the Dorr household with Rachael, Thomas, Henry, Kyle, and all the other wonderful Cambridge folks! Especially nice considering how rainy the weather ended up being for those visits — I could hunker down with some tea and company before marching back to my monk-like existence in Providence. My plants and tech classes also had field trips, though the weather was often better for those. I’m really learning to appreciate the intricacies of planting and construction details, so when an old building on my street got demolished and slowly transformed into a little park, I eagerly watched the concrete getting poured and the bricks being set as I walked to studio each day. On the down side, this means more details to complain about when they’re badly done…

I did manage to fit some other downtime in there, too. I’ve been avidly watching Supernatural, a show that I would never guessed I would like due to its horror-movie aesthetic. But like The Dunwich Horror, the fact that the evil things get it in the end keeps me from being scared of the dark. Plus the two demon-hunting brothers, Sam and Dean, have such a great dynamic going, and they manage to infuse humor into some of the darkest situations.

Nothing beats telling your own story, though, and as nerdy as it is, live-action role-playing has been my social activity of choice for the past year and a half. Two or three games a semester, and now only two left — stuff, ahem, is about to hit the fan. My character, Dalal, has become something of a hard-boiled detective, seeking out the truth about the mysterious Nulls and getting stuck in the middle of a dangerous political conspiracy. Last session, she almost got assassinated, and her best friend and fool-hardy partner-in-crime, Hiro, managed to get himself blown to smithereens in his own investigations. Don’t worry! He got put back together by one of the many gods running around. Wacky you say? Well, another god has been sleeping for hundreds of years in a closet at the local inn, the Berserk Unicorn. It’s no wonder Dalal prefers not to speculate about the ultimate meaning of the cosmos.

I will leave you now with some pretty pictures from my Studio project, and return shortly with a report of my holiday adventures!

2011 09 14 Life Comments (1) Permalink

Twenty-Five and Still Alive

Hey, everybody! Guess what? I’m a quarter of a century old! Can you believe it? No? Well… no one else does either. Yet I am still in grad school. Poo poo, you doubters, I will probably still look 15 when I am 30! My secret to looking young: act like a kid. Someone recently said I take after my dad, meaning apparently that he also looks like a younger man, and I think the giant grins we both carry around all the time help everyone take us seriously.

I love that my parents are both huge geeks. They met in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and now they’re getting into that again. Frederick the Red and Delane the Forgotten, Back in… Wool! I also want to thank my parents for raising me without benefit of patriarchal sky gods or even a stray horoscope reading. All my values were instilled in me by Star Trek (The Next Generation, you guys, don’t worry!) and not by church sermons. Honestly, the only thing I regret is that they never took me to a sci-fi convention! I got my nerdery from them, and also my design sense. I miss taking long walks critiquing every house on the street and stealing the good ideas for our own future (and often imaginary) dwellings. It’s like an inverse fashion runway, where the models stand very still. And have very wide shoulders.

Alas, I am trapped on the East Coast for many more months due to grad school. Classes have begun again, and we finally get to learn about plants! I also got a sweet teaching assistantship working for Nick DePace teaching all four (four?!) members of the new Landscape Architecture class how to draw perspectives. I already have this feeling like, “You guys have it so easy! Back in our day, we had to draw twice that much in half the time!” (Which is basically true.)

So yeah. I’m hard-core and super-cool.

Autophotography

2011 09 07 Blog Comments (0) Permalink

Moby-Dick the Superhero

There are so many classics that have reputations as profound Great Works that, when you finally read them, turn out to be just hilarious. Voltaire’s Candide, Hesiod’s Works and Days, Herodotus, Lysistrata… okay, so mostly I’ve read the Ancient Greeks. But then I read Moby-Dick!

I was so struck by some of the passages that I had to read them out loud to my friends. Their response? “That’s so gay.” Because… it is: “Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.” Ishmael, the narrator, meets Queequeg the tattooed cannibal at the Spouter Inn, and they proceed to have a romance of sorts. Initial misunderstandings give way to cuddling in bed and Queequeg pronouncing them married. “Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg — a cosy, loving pair.”

Once on the Pequod, however, their relationship is hardly mentioned. But there’s another quote that also shows Ishmael’s sensual feelings for men:

“Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally.”

It is surprising to read such unabashedly intimate relationships between men, but this is probably not homosexuality in the way we think of it today. I suspect in the mid-19th century homosexuality was more about specific acts then about a mode of being, allowing men to express affection for one another without the threat of being perceived as gay. This was certainly true of women, who were very romantic in their expressions of friendship. The fact that men tended to associate exclusively with other men, especially when they’re trapped on a whaling vessel for years at a time, meant that men were their only source of close friendships. Yet, even if all these homoromantic relationships were between exclusively straight men, the sexual frustration they likely experienced on such voyages could very well lend to them some erotic and sensual undertones. And it certainly is fun to imagine Ishmael and Queequeg as a couple!

The story is not all about touchy-feely stuff, however. There is a whole lot of bad-assery going on, of the sort normally found in comic books. The Pequod is decked out in the bones of slain whales, Captain Ahab forges a harpoon with lightning, Fedallah is a smuggled-aboard Persian fire-worshipper who doesn’t sleep or cast a shadow, Queequeg shaves with his harpoon and weaves with his sword, and the White Whale goes around with old harpoons and even the bodies of old harpooners attached to his back. Half the crew is made up of “savages,” but Melville depicts them as competent and talented — they aren’t half as excitable or superstitious as the captain and his mates. I’d say this is a little of the Noble Savage trope at work, but it’s put in there to critique ideas of civilization and Christianity.

There are other reasons I think Moby-Dicks should be read humorously. Ahab keeps making awkward attempts to joke with his crew, and everyone stares at him blankly. There are those ridiculous whale-info passages wherein Melville declares whales to be fish. And there’s crazy Father Mapple who gives his sermon from a pulpit shaped like a ship’s prow: “The architect… finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea… Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. ‘Starboard gangway, there! side away to larboard — larboard gangway to startboard! Midships! Midships!’” Monomaniacal Ahab is not the only character in the book who is completely nuts!

The depictions of hunting and slaughtering whales are disturbing, perhaps especially because Ishmael often seems sympathetic to their plight. Yet the world ran on whale oil (and other whale parts) before we ever dug up petroleum: it fueled and greased the early factories of the industrial revolution. Melville talks about whales more often than it talks about the Pequod crew, and towards the end Starbuck, the first mate, points out that Moby-Dick is not actually obsessed with Ahab. The infamous White Whale doesn’t have personal vendetta against just one man. Perhaps Moby-Dick is so angry because all humans are killing all whales, everywhere, all the time. And he’s out to kick butt and take names! Where all the other whales run away in fear, Moby-Dick fights back.

What’s that on the horizon?

It’s a duck!

It’s a ship!

It’s Moby-Dick!

2011 08 23 Life Comments (0) Permalink

First Hand Projects, Second Hand Teaching

I suppose I should summarize my adventures at First Hand Projects, that is, the teen design-build summer program that one of my RISD professors, Daniel Hewett, roped me into. I was ostensibly going to be doing mostly organizational work, setting up FHP’s curriculum so that it could expand and not rely entirely on Daniel’s expertise. That may be tricky considering it was Daniel’s perseverance and improvisation that allowed this year’s two three-week sessions to appear as a coherent project, tying in his ad-hoc solutions along to way so that it all seemed planned and coordinated. Let me explain.

Every year the kids have a particular project, and this year’s (the third in FHP’s young history) was to create infrastructure that would tie Boston food trucks into the neighborhoods they visit in a less transient way. Boston is just introducing food trucks to their streets, and they have thirty trial sites in different communities. The idea was that we would have one of these sites as our main one, where we would install a prototype that could then be adapted to other sites if the city liked it. Unfortunately, the people from the city kept giving us sites without contacting those locally in charge, who were usually still trying to figure out if they liked the whole idea of food trucks in the first place. Daniel spent many hours on the phone trying to get us a site, using his charisma and negotiating skills to the hilt, to no avail… until we actually got a real live site, a mere week before the end of the program, at which point we had moved on to working with food trucks directly to develop a portable prototype that they could set up anywhere. Guerilla style.

We used digital fabrication technologies like the laser cutter for models and the CNC router for the full-scale mockups. We were partnered with MIT’s Larry Sacks, who specializes in this sort of thing, so we got study space in the heart of campus. Being able to go to work at MIT and spend time in the shop right next door to the Solar Electric Car group is pretty close to fulfilling my childhood dream of meeting Alan Alda at the Media Lab.

However, since the machines did all the work, we ended up with a lot of teenagers with only abstract design tasks instead of hammers and nails. At the end of the first session, they did get to build things with their own hands, and that was when the smart phones and summer reading were nowhere in sight!

One thing Daniel has down pat is the Socratic method. He can ask just the right questions to lead you to the answer he has already thought of. It’s almost like he’s implanting his ideas in your brain… except you learn a lot in the process because you work through the logic yourself. And ultimately it pushes your design much farther, if it is truly just your design at the end. The method is not perfect, though — the questioner can become impatient and pushy. That’s when the kids push back by producing bland designs that no longer interest them because “Daniel told us to do it this way.” “No,” I’d say to them, “you should only take advice you think it makes your project better.” This is a hard lesson to learn: even ponies get it wrong sometimes. Aaron, my co-worker, seemed to be getting the hang of it by the end, while I floundered to suppress saying my ideas out loud. My main method of getting the kids to work with me was by distracting them with improv games. Waa!

In the end, what I did was to keep the Facebook page up-to-date with photos and videos, take notes like an anthropologist on a strange island of immature designers, and whip together presentations. The kids, meanwhile, had the epic feat of creating two awesome modular systems: one hooks onto fences and telephone poles with two pieces to create a place for condiments, eating, and trash, and the other is a free-standing system for seating and signage. Clover, the most wonderful vegetarian food truck and restaurant in Cambridge, loved them (I’m sure it had nothing to do with the custom modules we made with their logo on them), and tomorrow we’re to have a small reunion to present them to City of Boston. Then I expect there is all sorts of messy wrap-up work to be done… and far from ruining the taste of hard-won victory, that’s where I my skills can be put to good use — far from shepherding teens*!

* They are all great kids, really! Well-behaved, highly skilled, and decent human beings. I just fail to exude that aura of authority or effortless camaraderie that inspire them to follow instructions.

2011 08 13 Life Comments (0) Permalink

Ghost of Summers Past

I feel so much more grown up right now. Is it having a job? A summer romance? Yet all this growing up just makes me homesick. I recall bittersweetly those moments that seem to make up childhood: they seem to repeat themselves, become habitual in your memory, and it’s so confusing when someone else points out that it was much shorter and more infrequent in reality.

There was that one weekend at Salanna when we all made little cities out of beach things, each one a unique culture, and they formed elaborate trade relations and traditions.

When I was very small and I had a clearing in the woods behind the house that was full of fairies.

Singing and laughing on the bus with middle school friends in Costa Rica, where one of the tour guides called me “Anita Bonita” and the other told us tall tales to make us wear shoes.

Lying on the hammock with my dad, staring at the clouds while he read aloud to me and brother.

Walking into my room with a warm afternoon light shining through the curtains and dappling over the LEGO robotics on the floor.

Mostly the present doesn’t work like that. You have to tend your experience so that you end up with those kinds of expansive memories later on, and live in them all you want. I can tell when I’m going to have those kinds of memories because everything feels sort of slowed down, sleepy and golden, like I just picked up some key item in a video game.

But then, the last days of summer always feel like that. When the exciting prospect of change and future just don’t quite measure up to the fleeting bliss of a sunny afternoon and a lazy weekend. When it feels like the eye of a storm and you cannot quite imagine what adulthood or cruelty or suffering really look like… So maybe it’s not grown-up that I feel. It’s just contentment with who I am and who I may be and who I was before.