holiday eve

it is my last day in bridgewater and i'm really excited to get on that plane. not so much because it means i will be leaving, but because i will be coming home. and i know that having finally found an apartment for next semester in bridgewater will make living here again that much better. i'm happy because i'm sad to leave new friends behind...just as i go i am feeling incrementally more settled, and clear as to why i'm doing the things i'm doing.

introductions

this is my friend from canada. she says washroom instead of bathroom and pardon instead of what.

apathy

i'm going through a period of extreme frustration with a system that i feel is failing its people. i'm not exactly sure which system this is, but it's one that allows students to be unaware of important people, places, events, and once hearing of them, failing to care. it's a system that convinces us our happiness is derived from our accumulation of things, be they goods, vouchers, contacts, or raw dollars. it's a system that condones violence of all kinds, from domestic to political, and sanctions the exploitation of human beings for profit margins. this system teaches us not to ask questions, speaks to the lowest common denominator, and gives us quick outs and easy solutions to complex issues, sweeping the rest under the carpet. in this system our water is running out, our graduates can't identify "their" from "there", every item in the grocery store contains high fructose corn syrup, the weather is unpredictable, children and women are being bought and sold like commodities, religious celebrations have become commercialized gift-giving days, some waste energy screaming about inconveniences while those in true agony are muted, and we've totally lost the ability to relate to strangers on the level of humanity.
sigh...

december

it's snowing! and with a fresh white dusting over the world, i'm really really happy.

two weeks remain

i have been feeling intensely nostalgic the past day or so, for various things from various parts of my life. this is a hodgepodge of images to represent those people and places.

sisterly love and fuzzy dogs



old friends and silly summer fun



grandma and her house



new friends from kenya



and as i began to do this, i realized how many photos i am lacking to represent what i love and miss: family, mom's garden, glendon (and its lovely musical ensemble), sunday night coffee with aunts and uncles, high school and university friends, travels, afternoons exploring toronto, baking, long walks in thornhill, the toronto children's chorus (and its community), shad reunions, and the list could go on and on...

the island

i spent my second thanksgiving of the season on martha's vineyard with new friends and rather than write a lengthy post, i'll show you how gorgeous it was through photos.
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this is the story of how hannah the vegetarian went to a butcher's house for thanksgiving. luckily both had great senses of humour and some ate turkey while others ate beans.



they started out their tour of the island with a scenic drive along the water, stopping at south beach to sigh and take photographs.







they then drove on to gay head to see the clay cliffs, and again soaked in the salty sea air and marveled at the rugged authenticity of the scenery.







the sun, she was a-settin'...



and hannah, she was in heaven...



and as the moon came up and the sun went down over the water, the three gals headed back to south beach for more rapture





morning came and the warmth drained from the island, leaving everyone bundled and watching their frosty breath in the air on the walk through felix neck











there at the fall festival at the end of the trails, they came across some animals





and after a day of wandering oak bluffs, eating thai food, browsing a local record store, and bumping into neighbours, they drove home along the open road with the moon over the water on their left, the orange clouds on their right, and steaming mugs of herbal teas clutched tightly between mittened hands.





on friday night, after a lengthy round of watching movies while curled up next to the fireplace with the cats, there was an impulsive drive back to south beach at 10:00 to see the mostly full moon. although too dark for a quality photograph, it was so light outside that the headlights on the car were hardly necessary. having lived all her life in a suburb of a monstrous city, hannah had never experienced her own shadow under the moonlight, and stood marveling at it's clear outline on the sand. around the moon wrapped a ring of rainbow colours, and more stars appeared than she had ever seen before. the two women tramped down the beach, with all sand and water brightly illuminated, seeing kilometers and miles in all directions. they stopped every so often to gape at the night sky, so piercingly blue and sprinkled as it was with stars. as hannah walked, she forgot the cold, and glancing up, saw her first shooting star.

with the crack of dawn, the thanksgiving weekend rolled to a close and they packed, headed out of the driveway,



dropped by the butcher's on the way out for goodbyes and a package of lambchops,



and pulled out on the early boat back to the cape and toward a peaceful drive back to bridgewater



happy thanksgiving.

disposable

she’s grown melancholy, realizing that
we’ve forgotten how to mend things.

disposable society,
throw away relationships.

it’s ripped? Garbage.
it bothers you? Get rid of it.

but we rip things for fashion
and buy faded jeans.

rescued things are elegant
sometimes the patches are beautiful.

besides, new things
have no stories.

unwrap plastic layers to find no smell,
no dust, no fingerprints.

in this disposable life,
we are constantly cycling through things.

are we becoming toxic waste?
all the things we rip through bioaccumulate
in our own systems.

we don’t clean up, we move on.
all our pollution, mounds of trash,
heaps of pain, they can only be ignored for so long

we’re wired for consumption
and envy, some say.

but we lose touch that this is only
a part of our whole selves.

she's angry that we’re stainless,
fireproof, water-resistant,

spotless, immaculately clean
and devoid of evidence of humanity.

so she's searching.

for handprints in concrete sidewalks,
bookplates and dedications in second-hand novels.

100 year old postcards with the messages still on them,
a hair in your salad, the gunk stuck in the drain, an eyelash in the sink.

a fingernail in the clay,
the air inside of balloons, used tissues, hickeys.

the fluted edge of a homemade pie with clear outlines
of an individual – fingerprints that are unique.

muddy footprints on the floor,
warm chairs in a newly vacated classroom.

the smell of sweat, lipstick on the rim of a glass,
coffee stains on a term paper.

initials carved into a tree that swell over time,
scribblings on the top of a desk, gum stuck underneath.

these things are not all nice,
not romantic, and certainly not clean.

but they are how we tap out of individual worlds
and into a community.
they are us.

recharging for the home stretch

this past weekend i had the really good fortune of being able to go home and visit my family. we went to see the ballet...the colours were dazzling, the movements were stunning, the music was beautiful, and the ability to spend it with my family was relaxing. the national ballet performed west side story, phillip glass pieces, and chopin nocturnes. home food was a fantastic change from residence: we shared a delicious indian dinner before the performance, and on another evening my sister and i cooked a southwestern style meal for aunts and uncles (including adorable mini pumpkin corn muffins and blueberry rhubarb tartlets). we went for walks in the leaves, and spent a lot of time chatting - or maybe that was just me. i seem to talk endlessly whenever i get home :). it was exactly what i needed and it came at precisely the right moment. now i think i can find the oomph to see through this semester.

this week and last week a number of things made me smile:

1. there is a tent city outside of the commuter caf, run by the social justice league to bring awareness to the school about homelessness. a few students are braving the elements for a week to get the authentic experience

2. i feel like i am in relatively good contact with friends from home, and even though i am away, coming home is always easy and nice.

3. i am thinking about applying to the school for designing a society for the summer, although i'm tremendously excited about the possibility of applying to the UN Environmental Program for an internship or Foodshare or The Stop Community Centre in Toronto.

4. i sent an email to my environmental/consumer health class about a number of opportunities and interesting things and got a great response from a few folks.

5. a kind-hearted friend sent me an american cookbook :)

6. i had an epiphany in consumer psychology - i never liked doing the dishes because i mostly did them alone in the kitchen. it's all about affiliation and community!

7. had lunch with a new friend!

8. i received a nutrition assignment back with a spelling mistake...yoghurt. this was my first american/canadian difference noticed by a prof.

registration is going on here for next semester this week and as an exchange student i get last pickings. i go back and forth between wanting to register for many classes, and then wanting to register for none. i think i'll be forced to find a happy medium and perhaps register for a couple and think about an independent study. any suggestions?

red is for cranberries and bicycles

i'm not a superstitious person, but sometimes you have days where you feel like either everything is conspiring against you, or where the stars are all aligned. yesterday was one of both. because it will be more fun to tell you about the latter, i'll start my day after noon.

i got word through the bsc email system there was a package waiting for me at mail services! during the break in the choir rehearsal i skipped over to pick it up and was ambushed on my way back by a bearhug. inside the package was a book called 'get a grip' signed by the author, frances moore lappe. i have been in touch with her small planet institute in the hopes of supporting them in some way, and to inititate me i guess, they sent me the book they are promoting right now. (frances moore lappe is the author of 'diet for a small planet' and her daughter anna the author of 'grub')

also through the power of email i heard from a professor here that he had a bicycle waiting in his garage for me! i have been attending the unitarian universalist church sporadically on campus as there i have found a wonderful world-conscious group of people that i really enjoy, and one weekend had mentioned that i was on the hunt for a bicycle. lo and behold, someone found a second-hand red bike and thought of me...i was and still am completely overcome by the generosity and kindness that went into making this happen.


rewind a couple days:
this weekend i spent my days at colchester farm and with the wonderful family that runs it. in my search for ways to complement this formal education, i am seeking to get really hands on in my learning about food security and safety. what better way than to do so by pitching in on organic farm? we spent friday harvesting brussel sprouts, kale, chinese cabbage, arugula, and parsley, and saturday chopping, blanching, and freezing the harvest (as well as cooking lovely healthful meals in between) since it was blustery and stormy outside. we even lost power for a few hours! things that made me happy:

- chopping thawing cranberries (that came from a nearby cranberry bog) and seeing the tiny white seeds inside and the way they stained my fingers pink

- freeing little inchworms trapped inside brussel sprouts

- taking eggs out of the chicken coop

- scouring the family cookbook to find recipes for everything from grandma's ravioli to burnt toast

- dinner by candlelight that bounced off the wood walls and table and seemed to warm the room (while listening to NPR)

- the prickly feeling left under my fingernails from chopping mustard greens and hot peppers

- being taken into a house for the weekend; not to mention, a lovely house surrounded by trees with colourful leaves and filled with friendly people

les feuilles mortes

welcome to bridgewater state college in the fall!

maxwell library, which was built backwards and thus this front entrance faces a row of houses and all the students enter through the back and come up through the bowels of the building

beautiful boyden, and the requisite american flag

outside of the art building, where i take ceramics classes, some students chalked some famous artworks...



the path from boyden hall (the stately building where the choir rehearses) to the art building

the field between boyden and tillinghast, the nearest dining hall. on this field we ate a bbq welcome dinner on the first day of school. awfully empty now though...

tilly dining hall, where i had brunch this morning!

some of the lovely foliage around campus



on a walk near the campus, i met a very friendly feline who posed for me!


neighbourhood plants

moss on the trees - this is a new climate; wet and today, windy.

lovely colours; snap dragons and flower baskets

kabul and baseball

i've been learning much about american culture through talking to people, attending classes filled with all-american students, listening to professors lecture, and wandering bridgewater and boston. two very important things have been revealed to me recently.

1. kabul: since an anthropology class where the professor asked "who knows where kabul is?" and not a soul knew, i have made it my personal task to poll the general student body at bridgewater to find out if this is a fluke or a representative sample. and many questions later, i have to say that it is unfortunately the latter. of all the people i have questioned, only two knew where kabul was, and these two are both japanese transfer students. i was at first shocked to find that afghanistan has so faded from the news that students would be unaware of this city; however, the professor who posed the question theorizes that students have a lack of exposure to the news at all: in their home lives, in high school, and now here. i guess to be fair, i should ask people where baghdad is, since it is more prominently in the news these days, and hopefully more talked about in classrooms. i also have an urge to return to a glendon or york classroom or travel to harvard and ask the same question.

2. baseball: it is a big deal. for a city that has four strong sports teams (as i have yet heard), baseball rallies a huge amount of support. since the beginning of the school year, people walk about wearing red sox paraphernalia (a lot of people and a lot of paraphernalia), watch every game, and talk about the red sox possessively ("our team", "us", "when we sold so and so", "we don't like the yankees", etc). if you hadn't heard, the red sox won the world series this week, and this campus went crazy...or should i say, wicked crazy. as soon as it was over, students came flooding out of the dorms, whooping and hollering, and all headed toward miles and dinardo's quad, where a crowd chanted, threw each other up and down, and generally rocked out to sweet caroline until it was too late and too cold to stay out any longer. the huge celebration parade, the red sox rally, happened two days later on a tuesday, to the chagrin of many students with midterms (mind you, some professors rescheduled important tests and deadlines for the benefit of die-hard red sox fans).

patch adams and romeo dallaire

recently, as bridgewater's keynote canadian speaker, the canadian studies department hosted a lecture given by senator romeo dallaire, the man who refused to leave rwanda when most of the world pulled out during the 1994 genocide. he is a man who holds duty in the highest regard, and is well-respected by canadians. it came as quite a suprise to me to attend a lecture such as his, which in canada, would be given to a full auditorium of enthusiastic students, professors, staff, and any others who could manage to get in. here in bridgewater, a generous handful of people came out, sen. dallaire was notified that students would be coming in and out (class turnover, football practise, etc), and the after-lecture reception was sparsely populated and over in fifteen minutes. this meant, i had the honour and privilege of speaking with senator dallaire, being introduced as 'a canadian at bridgewater.' he joked with me that the canadian flag is the hitchhiker's flag, and indeed i wear it proudly on my backpack here, not so much because i want to distinguish myself as canadian, but because i never removed it after my sojourn in kenya this summer.

at the reception following his talk, i sat with a grad student here from quebec (une des deux canadiennes, selon romeo dallaire) and a professor of canadian history and the school's hockey coach, a man who got his phd at york university. there is something so very comforting about being among canadians. here am i, trying to understand american culture and to break stereotypes, and i can't help but think that there's so much about my own culture that i take for granted. we so often self-effacingly say that there is no such thing as canadian culture. but oh how there is! and would it were that i could explain what that is...but maybe once i get through a few more months going back and forth between here and home, i'll find a way to verbalize it.





at the end of my first month in bridgewater, i went to a talk given by the real patch adams, a brilliant human being (here i won't say doctor or clown or any of the other millions of labels he could have as he is truly what i would say is quintessentially human). it was so long ago now, that i'll sum up the lecture by copying some notes i took there. he was absolutely fabulous and i think every person in that room (this time a big auditorium full to the brim with bodies) left in a different mind state than when they came in.

- there has never been an academic (or other) paper written about the value of being serious

- no one ever falls asleep laughing, and the life of the party is the funny one

- he has never said 'laughter is the best medicine' because he knows that friendship is the best medicine

- at 62 years old, he grew up in a military family, a war orphan at 16 overseas

- segregation at US school was harder for him to handle than his father's death

- he was hospitalized 3 times at 17 and 18, but then realized, 'i don't want to kill myself. i want a revolution'

- 2 life decisions: to serve humanity through medicine (doctor) and to never have a bad day (clown)

- he never had luck in dating so he had a lot of free time to mess around and spent 2 years calling people to practise talking to them (pretended to be a sociology major and see how long he could keep them on the phone), spent 10 hours a week on an elevator, breaking the rules

- rules of an elevator: 1. turn to the front 2. be silent 3. keep hands to yourself

- he wears crazy pants (the crotch hangs to the ankles) which he manipulates into the 'five stages of the pants' in order to amuse people; these pants stop fights 100% of the time. he will ask hotel concierges where the violent bars are and go there with these pants on

- verbal comedy is normal sentence, normal sentence, normal sentence, surprise! ha ha ha. physical comedy is when you know what normal is and you don't do it.

- he hasn't been sick in 44 years!

- there's one thing that's funny in every culture: farting
he carries three whoopee cushions wherever he goes - one to use, one to give away, and one extra for emergency purposes
- he promised one person in the audience a whoopee cushion as long as he promised to use it one place he shouldn't, like meeting girlfriend's parents for the first time

- the gesundheit institute is a 6 bedroom house with 20 adult staff and their families, plus 5 - 50 patients per day
- he has never liked a patient enough to give them psychotropic drugs
- "everyone is allowed to be crazy in our house but not violent"
- everyone is just lonely, lonely, lonely - that is the major epidemic in our
society
- he wants to eliminate the idea of debt in the medical world
- refuses to carry malpractise insurance
- wants to recreate tribe, sense of community
- never thought of humour or love as therapy
- the health of the individual, family, community, and society are all related
- everyone makes the same amount of money, the cleaning ladies and the doctors
get $300/month and 1000s of doctors apply each year to be part of the institute

- "i was playing with the world and i fell in love with humanity"

- half of his apartment is books because "i've got to feed the nerditiy" and the other half is toys

- funny stories are social glue

- the day to day vitality of life is what makes good health, therefore you can have cancer or be old and still be healthy

- injustice is a medical issue

- the US rewards fame, not intelligence. we need to change society from one that worships money and power to one that worships kindness and generosity

- huge numbers of people want to serve humanity, but they just don't have a place to do it

- you have to start loving others before they start loving you

- if you put a person in a clown costume, they become a clown

- "when you don't know the language, always learn to say 'i love you,' 'friend,' and 'thank you'"

- in clowning "i'm not doing anything that takes any proficiency. i also have no idea what i'm doing"

- formula for never having a bad day (beware of having one that works!):
intention: i will love life
performance: take it off the stage into everyday life. you're either performing,
asleep, or dead
consequences: change performance, not the intention. ask, how did i do?
in buddhism, this is called 'mindfulness'
or this is the civil rights era notion of being present

- in every moment, create the self you want to be

- most people live 'because'..."i do this because..."
but the syntax needs to be changed to 'so that'..."i do this so that..."

- "i never had a religious thought in my life. i love humanity. i get disgustingly affectionate with people"

- as you grow up you discover that very few people have self-esteem, whereas most kids think that everyone has it

- there is a huge world of communication out there without language

- how to make change? become articulate and make sure it looks like you're having a ball

- if he were the president of the united states (in response to a question from the audience), he would
ask really smart people to be honest with and to serve the population
get rid of nuclear arsenals, tax corporations, and rich people
put left-leaning people into cabinet
build carless twentieth century cities with slides to use gravity
apologize to nations of the world for the last century's crap
quadruple teachers' salaries
shift paradigms to a women's approach
turn media over to the people
recapture the family farm
make compassion and generosity a value

- no one should want money, power, or fame except to help. money is not the problem. value systems are.

- "there is no country in the world that is safe for women. men should be crawling on their bellies in shame, begging for forgiveness"

- "spiritual is a term for love in action; my god is friends. when i'm with a christian, i'm hot with christ, when i'm with a buddha, i'm hot with buddha, when i'm with a musician, i'm hot with music, ..."

- "no pill will do the things a moment of humanity can"

weekends in boston

it's been a while since i've posted anything meaningful about what's going on here, so i will try to encapsulate what the last few weeks have been like in a bit of a nutshell. (think large nut...like a coconut)

i get the distinct feeling that a lot of my learning here is going to be happening outside of classrooms. while the subject matter of my classes is me to a tee, i am not feeling incredibly inspired by the atmosphere in which they are taught. as an example, the other day, the following question was posed: "who knows where kabul is?" ... not a soul in the room. i'm also rather taken aback by some of the methods, whereby i am reverting to answering questions out of textbooks and periodically handing in response papers, to the exclusion of any kind of analytic essays.

on the other hand, i am increasingly finding my niche within a slightly different community in bridgewater; those who make up the unitarian universalist church have welcomed me in (i am intrigued by their ideas of faith without doctrine, but have yet to figure out how i feel about joining anything that resembles organized religion. any thoughts???) and through this i have met an organic farmer who teaches on campus, one of the founders of the center for sustainability, some new amnesty international supporters, and countless other stimulating and interesting individuals. needless to say, these souls are not what you would call my 'peers' age-wise, but they are makers of wonderful conversation, and so i am feeling happy to have connected with them.

the weekends are the highlight of my existence this month, as i have been able to use them for wandering the town and making friends. two weekends ago i went into boston with a friend from my ceramics class, who has lived in this area for ages and attended boston university at one point. together we went to newbury street to visit the pucker gallery, where a collection of pottery was being displayed that had been donated by brother thomas, a monk who had just passed away. the glazes were magnificent and i had the striking feeling that colour is what has been missing from my life for a while. i still have an urge to go out and buy a box of crayons. newbury street is a frufru area of town, where there is no shortage of designer clothing stores or upscale restaurants, but also lovely galleries. we were drawn into one by the canvas in the front window, which was but one of many gorgeous portraits of women playing instruments, dressed in rich textures and lush fall colours. the artist is felix mas.



that afternoon we visited the society of arts and crafts where an exhilarated man was trying on rings that looked like cartoons (imagine a king in a disney movie) and inhaling rapturously after each one. after looking at a price, handed classily to him on a piece of folded up paper, he looked up and said loudly, "that's it?!" the curator coyly answered, "we could increase it for you."
i found a number of sweet blown glass bottles that were purposely aged by an artist/poet who carved things into them like "time [caution: evaporates quickly]" or "hope [powerful substance]", and "trust [fragile: easily broken]". i quite liked these!
for lunch, we had japanese food - a welcome change from the cafeteria - and i had fermented soybean sushi, which has a gooey texture that will take a few trials to understand i think. going our separate ways, i headed on to cambridge to pick up a book for one of my classes that can't be found anywhere in bridgewater: "having faith: an ecologist's journey to motherhood." i then snuggled down in a small warm cafe in harvard square with a mug of chai and a big oatmeal raisin cookie...the combination of books and tea are very good for the soul...and started in on my book about pregnancy next to a woman cooing and playing with her baby. i also discovered a magnificent poetry bookstore nestled behind the harvard bookstore - it is one room filled floor to ceiling with more poetry than you can imagine, albeit only one shelf of canadian stuff.

on this note, i get the distinct feeling that americans like canada, as much as canadians can be the butt of many jokes (in the way that newfoundlanders can bear the brunt of it in canada). some evidence for me that day was the discussion i had with the owner of the poetry shop about canadian literature - i was searching for a book by richard van kamp called "angel wing splash pattern" - as well as a chat with a volunteer selling 'sponsor a child' packages on the street. talking about montreal in the music lounge on campus (it's the rage here to bus up to quebec to go drinking), i had a group of people ask me about school fees and health care in canada and promptly decide they wanted to gain dual citizenship. a new friend from south africa announced that he has never met a canadian who wasn't wonderful and polite. perhaps it takes going away to become really proud of and attached to your home.

on sunday i went apple picking with the international culture club and wound up with too many fruits for my single self, yet managed to distribute them so that they were gone before any had the chance to turn to mush on me. i have a soft spot for honey crisps and granny smiths, and a penchant now for some different kinds of fruit!

this past weekend i went up to boston to visit a friend, who promptly departed for toronto an hour after i arrived! we arranged for me to stay over at her apartment in cambridge, which gave me what felt like a vacation from my normal life, and a chance to become a pseudo-harvard student for a day. i ate in the harvard caf and was inspired to conduct some sort of correlative research study into the quality of cafeteria foods and the resultant quality of students (athletics, academic, emotional stability, etc, etc).
on saturday i visited the boston vegetarian festival and was mildly surprised to find it packed, but mostly for the procurement of the legendary free samples. there were several great presentations; i went to one about different kinds of fats - did you know canola is so named because they didn't want to name it after its source, the rapeseed, so instead named it for its home, canada? - and another presentation on vegan baking. in the evening i was delighted to meet with a toronto friend who popped into boston on a roadtrip and experience boston's chinatown for supper. sunday was a relaxing day of reading among the leaves and sitting in on the bridgewater amnesty international meeting that takes place at the local yoga centre. it has been gorgeous weather out and the fall colours do wonders for this campus. i am going to attempt to take some pictures so that you can see what i mean!

ok, i couldn't help myself and this nutshell has turned into a snowball. what can i say? i like storytelling.

injustice or ingenious?

country-specific cell phone models

kill the buzz

did you know that cell phones are interrupting bees' frequencies and causing them to lose their direction back to the hive after collecting pollen, thus causing their mass destruction in certain parts of the world?

sounds like canada

i'm satisfying my craving for canada with bucketfuls of cbc radio. there's nothing like news from home, familiar speech patterns, gentle senses of humour.

thanks giving

it was a wonderful weekend in toronto, through the unseasonal fog and the sun showers, because i got to see my favourite people in the world. my family congregated in toronto; as we adopted the dining room table when grandma moved, we also adopted the first big family holiday, and three out of the four families made it to our house for turkey, leek and stilton soup, and aaron's apple pies.

i am really thankful for the people in my life; for all the friends that have entered and exited, for those that stay in touch, for everyone i meet that welcomes me into their circle, for the strangers on street corners and in bookstores that humour me by chatting back, and for my family who supports and forgives enduringly. i saw patch adams speak last week (which i will soon write more about) and he spoke at length about the sustaining qualities of friendships and about how the biggest epidemic in our society is really loneliness. laughter is not the best medicine, friends are, he said, and i quite agree.

i think that as we meet people throughout our lives, we are vicariously meeting all of the folks they have ever met, as you carry a bit of all of your acquaintances and interactions with you. in this way, the world becomes a smaller and much more homey place, where all is familiar. now, i am beginning to look at strangers and recognize old friends, or see resemblances in character to someone i have met at another point in time. it's not every day that i strike up the courage to tell people how 'home' they feel to me, but i do go out of my way to let people know that they mean a lot to me as often as i can. so, thanks for being a part of who i am.

autumn falling

once again, it's turning into my favourite season. the leaves are oranging and decorating the grass and the pavement. it has become necessary to carry a sweater or scarf most places. i have cravings for roasted root vegetables and an itch to start something new, while also feeling like dropping out of my daily life for a while to hibernate in a cafe with a stack of books, a roaring fire, a home-knit afgan, and the smells of ginger and cinnamon lingering on the doorstep. i want to go apple-picking and make pies with my cousins, to enjoy an earthy glass of red wine and discuss new things with old friends, and to bask in sunlight and moonlight, as they fight for sky space at dusk.

end of week wonders

this is the end of a long-anticipated weekend, and i am glad with how it has turned out. it has concluded with a home-cooked meal, fewer readings left to do than there were saturday morning, and a general sense of ease.

saturday

on saturday morning i took the commuter rail in to boston to visit a high school friend studying in cambridge, along with several transfer/international students she had met there. the plan was to visit the museum of fine arts or the gardiner museum, but by the time we had assembled, we decided the weather was too nice to ignore and abandoned our plans in favour of wandering outside. we started our meander at the boston commons and public gardens, two idyllic spaces with tourists and locals strolling through at various degrees of patience.

we followed the freedom trail (a red brick line that takes you past many old buildings and boston monuments) for a bit and then detoured toward quincy market for lunch. i had been expecting a farmer's market from the name - having never heard of the place before - but it ended up being a large building filled with lunch-type food vendors and upscale boutiques surrounding it. there were a number of buskers and street performers, and to add to the good cheer, a giant flock of college guys obviously pledging to a fraternity, who one by one would march up to pretty young women with a rose in hand and ask if they would like to go to a party that night. regardless of the response from the embarrassed woman, the whole group would suddenly burst into bleats of "give him a hug!" which made me laugh hysterically for some time...have you ever heard thirty guys yell the same thing before?

when we got tired of the market, we wandered around the back, hoping to find a place to sit down, and bumped into a real market, run by mostly hispanic bostonians, where all the fruit and vegetables were ridiculously inexpensive. i bought a giant eggplant, three boxes of strawberries, and a big bag of grapes for three dollars, while other possible one-dollar options included three pounds of tomatoes, or five nectarines, or a dozen ears of corn. amazing! we wondered why everything was so cheap, hoping the foods were not contaminated, but just too ripe to sell elsewhere. we had a giant fruit dinner on park benches, where we were approached by a man with a camera ('take my photo?') who talked to us about shooting a moose with a bow and arrow in montebello, quebec when he learned we were from canada. sketchy...

the evening ended with a jaunt into chinatown, a rummage through a beautiful used and rare bookstore, and a stroll toward the train station, from which i caught the train into bridgewater, my new (it's becoming) home.


sunday

this has been a quieter day of pondering and reading, catching up on loose ends, and doing odd chores. i left my room with the intent of going to the library, but again was distracted by the beautiful day and walked around the residential neighbourhood south of west campus until i got too warm, and then found a spot in the shade of a big old maple tree to do my readings. [let me add here that i procured a cup of fair trade coffee from the east campus commons caf!! it was blueberry scented...]

the rest of my afternoon was spent devouring books and articles, picking up odds and ends at the cvs, discovering that bridgewater has a second hand book store - i bought the bostonians as a lark - and learning that due to the override at the recent municipal election, bridgewater's one public library is due to close by october. what a shame!

i spoke with some very friendly people working in the cafeteria, learned that botswana has an aids rate of 38 percent while reading my anthropology textbook (and surprised myself by my visceral anger, coming quite close to tears), and cooked up a dinner that was much too salty. all in all, it has been a wholesome weekend and i'm looking forward to the next few days before i head back to ottawa for the weekend.

observation

this is a very academically-oriented place in the world. evidence? the ad sections of many of the newspapers are filled with requests for test subjects for various studies.

home sweet ottawa

this past weekend i went home to ottawa. not that ottawa is where i'm from, but there is an amazingly palpable difference between the united states and canada that i hadn't realized until we hit the tarmac of the ottawa airport and i breathed a giant sigh of 'ah, i'm back.'

i spent the weekend at the killam/fulbright orientation, which was an enlightening and professional three days of events together that allowed us to discuss everything from our upcoming years in each others' countries, to national identity, to hockey plays.

i found myself consistently counting my blessings throughout the proceedings, finding myself amid fascinating people, with diverse interests, talents, and immense knowledge. yet amid these wonderfully academic people (i hesitate to say academics because it seems to put unnecessary borders around personalities) i found a wonderful down-to-earth and level-headed outlook on life, not to mention some great senses of humour! on our last evening together, i sat amid a group of american fulbright scholars and students ranging in age from bushy-tailed to experienced, and listened as insightful and warm conversation washed over me. this was our way of unwinding after a very fun game of hockey had transpired earlier that evening, and we were the crowd eager to continue our conversations, but not inspired to do so at the local pub. several times i came very close to tears, overwhelmed as i was by the situation i found myself in. how privileged i have been throughout my life to end up where i am right now. what amazing people i have met through my travels. wonder where the next twenty years will take me?

boston arrival

when we first arrived in boston, en route to bridgewater, we as a family collectively took these photographs. each of them tells a different story.



interesting statement under the neon lights. it says "god bless america"




two kinds of oil at one rest stop.




canadian beer advertised in boston!




down at the wharves (who knew this was the plural of wharf?)




i was proud of this canadian-american connection, since this is the purpose of my visit here, even if it was just decor at a restaurant.




a beauteous flower outside of a small shop in cambridge.




the lovely scenery.




i was, and am still, impressed by the presence of american flags everywhere. on people's homes, outside of shops, on buildings, probably even tatooed in places i can't see. this was the giantest one i have seen so far.




finally, the stereotype of america in a photograph. i hope to discover that this is completely untrue, unfair, and unamerican. we shall see...