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.