Alpine Crawling

Skiing has always been mixed hat for me-- mostly because I've never picked up the hat to try it on. Few products of Georgia become ski stars, and probably fewer know the difference between sweats and snow pants are or what "good" snowball snow is (these distinctions became painfully aware to me in the collegiate tundra of South Bend).

But, relationships have a funny way of reminding you what you "love to do." Dating someone from Colorado, for instance, makes skiing less a luxury and more a prerequisite to participating in holiday traditions.

Before you judge my people as close-minded GRITS ("Girl Raised In The South," and probably the number two most popular southern bumper sticker to "Obama is a socialist"), I'd like to remind you that I have branched out into winter sports. Cross-country skiing has become one of my favorite any-weather sports, probably because you work so hard you forget it's actually cold outside.

No, it's not the snow that gets me about alpine skiing. It's the speed. I am not one for jumping off cliffs into rocky bodies of water (or any type of water unless it's a swimming pool), skydiving, thrill-seeking, starting my own business, or (sorry impatient passengers) driving over the speed limit. You might call me boring, and you'd be quite right. I take risks in my own way, just ways that prefer to remain anonymous.

So, in my slightly boring, safe world, I haven't exactly been pining to speed down a tree-covered mountain. My only ski updates as a kid were about how Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy died running into trees, and I would take my chances hiking slowly through them, thank you very much.

Going fast didn't kill me. I skied for the first time this weekend without hitting any trees. I hit my butt pretty hard and took a few hits in my pride, as well, but the trees remained painted on the tranquil backdrop as I whizzed by (okay, slid by).

If you ask me today, post-ski, if I "wanna go fast," I would tell you that I retain my (endearingly?) slow ways, a far cry from Ricky Bobby's drive that propelled him NASCAR fame. Hiking through the peaceful woods beats rushing down a mountain any day-- even if it's too cold for roses that I can stop and smell.

Warmth in the . . . where?

SUNY Albany's heat and hot water are out today-- for "minimum of four hours." Good thing I'm at home today, reading and treating myself to a balmy 60 degree apartment (please disregard freezing hands post below).

Distributism

While brushing up on early nineteenth-century Europe today (it's the class I TA for, so I hope the brushing up goes quickly), I read about Distributism for the first time.

Distributism is the idea that an "ism" exists somewhere on the spectrum between socialism and capitalism. The founders of the concept, two Catholic British thinkers named G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc (Belloc is also part French, for full disclosure), believed that too much capitalism concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. Not many people who have witnessed the past few decades of world history can argue that huge capitalist systems tend to make only a handful of people very wealthy.

Chesterton and Belloc believed that if everyone had access to property-- be it land, tools, or otherwise-- each individual would care for his or her property more diligently than if it belonged to someone else.

A great example is land; if someone owns their own farm and the family works the farm themselves, they will probably have higher crop yields than if migrant workers are underpaid to pick someone else's crop (environmentally, this idea of providing ownership to install responsibility foreshadows Garrett Hardin's 1968 "Tragedy of the Commons").

If a farmer owned just a few hectares, if a writer owned her own computer and printer, if a barber owned his own shop, if a teacher owned her own classroom, then perhaps they would take greater pride in their tools and in the product that came from them. The government wouldn't own everything as in socialism, which would (ideally) prevent corruption. Likewise, a few corperations wouldn't own everything, and ultra-wealthy capitalists wouldn't dominate the world's goings-on; there would be too many empowered stakeholders participating in politics and economics.

It's a philosophy of how society can function in the middle of the poltical spectrum, and one I would certainly like to learn more about.

For now, lest you think I want to do away with government, I'll leave you with this reminder that while ownership can be a partial solution, it's certainly not the be-all-end-all (courtesy The Distributist Review):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QDv4sYwjO0&

Neil Diamond Christmas

I grew up a passive music listener. My mom loved to socialize us into her music, so whatever was on her radar usually went for the rest of us. Like many other projects of hers, this one worked; I still prefer Chicago and the Beatles to most contemporary music.

When it came to Christmas music, I passively adhered to her musical preference just the same. And this has ruined the way I sing Christmas carols. Why? Two words, one man: Neil Diamond.

I don't even know what song Neil Diamond is most famous for. Sweet Caroline? Maybe. My mom loves his music in any form-- every drive to Pittsburgh (we drove up every summer to see family), we would put in out Neil Diamond cassette tape while driving through the tunnel (I have no idea which tunnel, and if you aren't familiar with Pittsburgh and would fault me for that, check out this and maybe you'll think differently). When we gloriously emerged from the tunnel, we'd raise our voices in unison with Mr. Diamond as we sang, "We comin' to America (today!)."

Seeing as my sisters grew up in Georgia, I'm not sure what this says about the status of the South within the U.S. in the 1990s. No matter our confusion of what constituted "America" and how long we had been in it, we loved Neil Diamond's song that welcomed us there in Pennsylvania.

If you are a fan of Neil Diamond, you know what I mean when I say his songs make you want to sing . . . differently. This urge isn't so much that he is an incredibly talented singer, but more that singing along to Neil requires pauses, syllabic intonations, and a strained drama that most singers find too cheesy to actually belt out. Not Mr. Diamond. Thank god, no.

Of course, he retains his trademark style in his Christmas album--another staple of my Mom's music collcetion. Just listen to some samples of his Christmas fare to get a taste of how none of your favorite songs will never sound the same again. The best part is, if you slow down your own singing and change it to a deep, slightly-talking singing voice, you, too, can sound like Neil Diamond!

After his impressive infiltration into my Christmas song repertoire, I learned that Neil Diamond is actually Jewish. He also does a lovely (diamond-esque, of course) version of Adam Sandler's Chanukah song.]

Despite my somewhat comical view of Mr. Compacted Coal, I really do like his singing. I just sometimes wish I could sing "Morning Has Broken" at church without wanting to do Neil's version, a version that makes me sound like I'm the actor in the emotional climax of a musical and don't realize the orchestra is going faster than me.

Unfortunately, my mother conditioned us strongly enough to her music that I have a hard time question my affinity for him. Thanks Neil. Good times never seemed so good . . . (so good! so good! so good!)

I can't feel this post

My hands have really bad circulation. As in, really, really, bad. When my body gets too cold, my hands protest by not sharing any blood with it; they lose color and feeling, and the lack of blood makes them very thin (note to self: use cold as strategy if I ever get a ring stuck on my finger). My boyfriend tells me I should wear gloves all the time, but I'm afraid someone might mistake me for someone from the Rent is Too Damn High Party.

The only reason I'm even typing this now is to see 1) whether the motion of typing would get the blood flowing, 2) what it feels like/what it doesn't feel like to type with numb fingers, and 3)whether I'd be able to hit the right keys. To answer number one, no; for number two, as if I were hitting the key with some part of my finger farther from the tip; and as for number three, thanks to the delete button, you can't tell. Mwah-ha-ha.

This might be a medical problem, but I'm guessing the doctor would tell me to wear gloves, and I think we're still too close to the Michael Jackson Era for me to pop out a glove for my one of my cold hands while indoors.

Well, like I said, cold finger was the only reason I wrote this entry, and the numbness is losing its luster. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go run some water over them-- anything to avoid the gloves.

Green beans, pecans, and Macy's: a Southern Thanksgiving

I've always woken up pretty early, even when I was a kid. For instance, the morning Princess Diana died in 1997, I woke up at about six a.m.(per usual). Being nine, I'd never heard of Diana, but I could at least surmise that she was pretty important. When my parents moseyed down the stairs after sunrise, I dutifully communicated the news to them as emotionally as I could manage, considering my actual confusion about the circumstances.

I always woke up early on Thanksgiving. It wasn't the only day-- for instance, the morning Princess Diana died in 1997, I coincidentally woke up at about six a.m., and felt like a badass when I was the bearer of information for my family (although I had no idea who she was, I could tell she was important). But on Thanksgiving, everyone seemed to sleep in, tired from games the night before and not quite ready to baste the bird and bake the pies. The slugabeds (real word, look it up) in my family left me to traipse down the stairs alone and plop myself in front of the boob tube for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

"Macy's Day Parade??" you might say, if you know me (or if you don't!). What I mean is, I have never been a fan of shopping, much to the chagrin of my sisters, friends, and clean-cut boyfriend (who tenderly suggests that perhaps eight year-old jeans could bear replacement). Shopping malls and department stores spend all of their advertisement budgets reminding their guests that they won't look okay until they have bought the latest jacket, shirt style, or wedge heel, and that even then, their bodies won't display the same tightness of a model-- especially the unyielding firmness of the plastic models department stores actually use. Environmental historians have written extensively about shopping malls as "palaces of consumption," but I'll spare you that tirade (even as I trickily allude to it now).

Despite my deep-seeded disgust of department stores, Macy's grabs my heart with their tacky, media-saturated parade every last Thursday of November. I love it. Watching the show tunes in front of Macy's, wondering whether the balloons will obediently stay between their skyscraper lane-markers, laughing at pop stars who can't quite get used to which roadside speakers their voice is emitting from; the list goes on.

Maybe the parade grabs me because of associations--- watching it inevitably makes me think of green beans and pecans. Every year, my mother knew I would be up before my sisters and bored (often I played Tiddlywinks with myself, but after you've won a certain number of times in a row, it's time to move on), so she would let me know what I could help with in the kitchen. I'd grab a colossal colander full of fresh green beans and snap off the ends while I attentively listened to the announcers, picking up the scoop on which Backstreet Boy had been demoted to the back of the float.

When the green beans where done, I jumped to pecan cracking and grinding. From an early age, I was nuts for these Georgian egg-shaped delights, a love that catapulted me to the status of pecan-pie-maker in the Mirandola Mullen family (I think my mother might have later regretted that decision, judging by her later attempts to remind friends it was actually her recipe, not mine).

I cracked, ground, chopped, and of course, ate my favorite snack. I watched the streets of New York City, a place that existed for me only within movies and the popular (but for me at the time, "age-inappropriate," my parents would remind me) show Friends; a city that served as a reminder that far away from my home in Lawrenceville, Georgia, people were gearing up for winter in their earmuffs and down jackets. I was so jealous of them. But, I did have pecans.

I still watch the Macy's Day Parade, no matter how infrequently I go to Macy's or listen to the pop singers they invite to their parade (which will remain true unless they figure out a way to bring Frank Sinatra back for it). It is part of Thanksgiving to me, regardless of how silly that sounds. This year, when my boyfriend joins my family for the holiday in Georgia, I'll probably wake up before him, sneak down the stairs, and watch the parade. Maybe Mom will even set aside some green beans for me to snap.

the red light

The light outside of my apartment turns red in the afternoon. Upstate New York has a lot of maple trees (yes, more places than Vermont and Canada can make maple syrup), and the red leaves have recently been catching rays as the sun descends. Light from the trees reflects onto the building and back, making the sidewalk glow with red light.

Transportation smells

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much smells matter in America. We're crazy about staying clean (and invent killer viruses as an excuse to perpetuate our goals. . .), which is great for the aroma of crowded subways, but does this hygiene hysteria hurt our anti-car culture?

I walk or bike to school, not a very long distance, but long enough to pump up my heart rate. When I get to school, I find I'm a little sweaty, whether it's hot out or not (the jacket always shifts from a good idea to a bad halfway through the trip). If I walk into my office sweaty or smelling like I just worked out, it's far less professional than were I to walk in with a low heart rate, pale-faced and composed-- the same as, say, had I just stepped out of a car.

When people move, they smell. Their hair might frizz or look messy. Maybe their face even turns a little red--these are all symptoms of the dangerous task of physical exertion. In American culture today, it seems that bodily exertion has a place and time, one that does not coincide with transportation to and from your place of work. Sweating at the gym might be great, but mixing the ideal of staying in shape with the necessity of transportation and you're either unbalanced or in financial straits.

We are so used to driving cars places that we have disconnected the energy required to travel somewhere from energy of our bodies. Because cars utilize petroleum energy that stays out of sight in the heated, fragrant, and oil-free automobile interior, transportation costs money rather than costing energy.

Even in this era, I still want to pay for my personal transportation with my bodily energy. Maybe this means I will smell; maybe my stomach will growl halfway through class, begging for a refill after the long trip; maybe I'll even look healthily flushed or have sweat stains under my armpits. Yet, despite the unprofessional air I may be drawing to myself, I won't stop. Until we realize the costs of transportation, we as Americans can't get in touch with our energy systems or even our bodily capabilities.

Only when we remember that our fuel stops are at the grocery store can we proudly smell the whole way back.

Apples in New York

Here's a fall story from a few weeks back:

This past Saturday, Kent and I decided to go to a "Farm Fest." It wasn't just one farm, but seven or so scattered in a five square mile radius north of the Mohwak River (I want to make an Indian/hair-do wordplay, but since the words are the same origin I guess that's not really a pun. . . ). We decided that since the terrain is rolling hills and all of the roads have only two lanes, we would ride our bikes between the farms (also a beautiful, sunny, 70 degree day).

Apparently, all of the bicyclists in upstate NY are not also apple eaters. The first man we approached told us we "could" ride up the dirt road, but to "be careful" (the road was (almost) one hundred yards long). At the next farm, the owners had placed a sign on the entry road reading "Cars Only: No Walkers Allowed." Kent and I decided since bikes are closer to cars than feet are, we should be allowed to go???. . . okay, we were really only justifying ourselves because we had already ridden so far to get there.

Well, no one yelled at us, but we had to wait in a line of cars to reach the first parking attendee, who gave us a map and told us we should probably wait in line so the next guy could tell us where to park (our bikes. . . ). We waited, feeling sort of silly that there there we were standing in the open air with our two bikes side-to-side and ten cars to either side of us. We didn't cut ahead though, figuring that we nobly displayed our civic duty by not assuming that, as bicyclists, we could cut to the front.

When we finally reached the parking lot, the first guy asked-- sort of slowly and with an inquisitive eye-- what we wanted. . . as if there weren't a MASSIVE apple orchard behind him full of ripe apples (what the hell else would we want???) The second person told us not to lock our bikes up to the fence, because it was pretty old (it was made of iron). When we left, the only way to pay for the apples we picked was by driving through little toll booths where someone stood to take your change. Needless to say, the girl we paid didn't seem too comfortable exchanging money without a car door separating us from her.

Moral of the story, apples and bicycles do not mix well in upstate New York. But the apples are delicious. . .

Why would I want to be that?

My PhD history program includes a one credit practicum in college teaching. The graduate director coordinates the class, but it functions as a parade of professors. Each has one class period (an hour in earth time but about 1 1/2 hours in professorial time) to discuss how they found themselves in the profession, their philosophy on teaching, and how they balance research with teaching. Relatively interesting stuff, because you are essentially getting the professional life story from each of these individuals.

Maybe in addition to "interesting" I should call this "stuff" they tell us demoralizing.

Today's professor has been teaching at the University at Albany, SUNY for 39 years-- he started in 1971 after grad school at Columbia (with some of America's leading historians at the time) and a two year fellowship in Rome. Sound impressive? He certainly thought it was.

He cemented the theme of the hour-and-then-some talk pretty early on. I wish I had kept a running total of the times I heard the words "idiots" and "mediocrity." He lamented undergraduates who know nothing--some of whom, he admitted, might even have potential, but unfortunately come from low-class backgrounds (not shitting you). Continuing on, he bemoaned scientists who are convinced that they seek ultimate truth and that their discoveries won't be reversed in a century, and then proceeded to tell us how he has, of course, succeeded in finding ultimate truths. His wafts of modesty came as he briefly referred to his former self as one of those "idiots," but carefully never left such a statement without returning to his older self's world-renowned expertise.

Probably the most insulting bit of the evening was his twenty minute tirade about the horrors of the SUNY system and the abysmal quality of students and teachers such mediocrity attracts. Need I remind you we are all first year graduate students at this very same school? I know it's not Harvard or Berkeley or even Wisconsin or Colorado, but it's an advanced degree. I'm not trying to be the world expert in my field--and even if I were, the place is probably already taken by a Columbia grad-- maybe someone who hates teaching undergraduates who grew up in steel towns.

If that's what being a professor is like, I like my place as an idiot very much, thank you.

I'm visiting my sister's place in Tampa, and just went outside to see if I could find a stick of butter at the local convenience store. Well, "convenience" is probably a stretch, as anyone paying more than $3 for one stick of butter might consider themselves inconvenienced, but the "store" part of its name still stood with its integrity intact.

Anyways, the goose-like honk of a cruise ship rang out when I exited her building. Hearing honks a bit (a big bit) louder than car horns occurs on a regular basis here next to the bay-- and unless you have consistently steel nerves, you are never ready for those blasts. As I looked up at the cruise ship, I couldn't help but wonder at two things: first, that the boat looked like it was heading straight for the island I stood on (ahhh!), and second, only the testosterone-saturated brain of a man must could have dreamed up something that big. The sheer size floored me ("roaded" me, I guess, as I was on asphalt), and seemed somehow. . . unnecessary.

I'll never understand that desire to make things huge, so the most I can guess is that some are born with it and I am not one of them. A standard kayak (a very adept boat style for boats, rivers, and oceans) rings in at 18 feet in length, 100 times shorter than the world's largest cruise ship. But, try to hang a chandelier or place an entry staircase in a kayak and the hassle will surely lead you to decide the bigger boat is worth the $1.4 billion dollar investment. Some creature comforts are worth a pretty penny, eh? And if that also could prove your dominance over the oceans and technology combined, think of how many territorial pees you could save.

Traveling is a funny thing. I spent a year abroad in Innsbruck, quite enjoying being in Austria and having most of Europe a train ride away. Yet, in all my travels, I couldn't help but feel guilty that my parents and I spent a year paying for ridiculously expensive college tuition so that I could tromp around taking goofy pictures in front of Roman ruins. We barely have the financial ability to send me to a good college, so am I not overextending our means by assuming the airs of a world traveler? Every trip I planned plagued me with these back-home realities. How could I justify this, when I did not even feel I learned that much in my classes, far less challenging than those at my home university?

Then I came home. At first I just basked in the familiarity of it all-- familiarity that bordered on alien (anyone who has been away from home for a long period of time knows this feeling). As time went on, I reacquainted myself with home, with friends and family, with American styles of life. As time continued even further, I forgot the parts of Europe that had been difficult for me, and instead increasingly remembered only the happy travels and dialect learned. The accepted reaction to "I studied abroad for a year" is always, "Wow, that must have been amazing."

And so it was. By default, I had a great experience in Austria. Did I act in the same fashion as debt-laden credit card enthusiasts? Yes. --or, at least I forced my parents into such an action. Did I spend time at bars when I could have sought out natives to learn the true culture? Of course. Did I have fun? Plenty. I also missed my love at home, often unbearably. Do I now sometimes want to go back, envious of the pictures of freedom that world traveling friends show me? Of course. Traveling is a funny thing.

My ceiling fan is overactive. Well, overactive or stagnant. Exhilarated or depressed, it knows no in-between. Switching it to medium speed leaves its blades so slow-moving that the air they encounter strolls with them, rather than run away with the force of the blade motion. But put it on high, and the metal stem rooting the fan to the ceiling shakes its rubber hips like Shakira singing a duel to death (those hips don't lie. . . ).

Sometimes I turn the fan speed down, respecting the fine line between an overactive fan and a potential guillotine. Yet, once the low speed and silent accompanying motion reassure my worries, I find I miss the comfort the fan provided. Dangerous, perhaps-- far too busy, no doubt. But it kept me comfortable; the fan did its job and soothed my pain (pain being here, of course, the heat of a Georgia summer). When the blades are inactive, I can't imagine what could go wrong with a high speed fan crowning my room. When they're begging to slow down, I wish I had seen sooner the struggle they experienced in their high speed chase right back to their beginnings.

When will the fan learn to relax? To alternate between speeds, but find contentment in the speed of each present moment? Perhaps I should buy a remote switch to acclimate the fan to a life of intervals. . . or simply learn to appreciate the contentment it already provides.