Good News!

So, the good news is a little dated, but I'm done with exams and home for break and free until February 5th.

The very good news is that I already know February is a long way away, and I don't plan to spend my Winter Term lolling around doing nothing. So I have hatched a Plan. It's called A Project a Day -- my, I've been fond of capital letters lately -- and it is exactly what it sounds like. I'm creating one thing per day until I go back to Oberlin.

The rules are simple: blog entries and food for myself don't count, but most everything else does. I can do two things to make up for missing a day. And I can count something on any day I work on it, from beginning it to the day I finish; but only one, no matter how big the project is.

So far, I've made two fleece hats, repaired my foam sword collection, and started a tool box made out of a book. (Don't worry -- it was a terrible book.) Tonight I'm making quill pens out of some goose feathers I found two summers ago. If that proves too difficult, I might make those tomorrow, and a Keep Best Practices sheet and spring KitchPoCo plan today. Choices, choices ...

I'll periodically post tidbits about my favorite projects. For now, here is a picture of the wolf hat:

The hat, against a stunning backdrop of my upstairs bathroom

I've always been exasperated with poorly-taken photos of handmade things, but I'm more sympathetic now ... this is take eight of ten. By the way, although you can't see them, there are earbuds sewn into the hat to allow for cold-weather rocking. Chyeah.

Anyway, now for the very, very good news: I got a job as an Oberlin blogger! You know what, that deserves two exclamation points, grammatical etiquette be ... darned. I got a job as an Oberlin blogger!! And I get to have one of my favorite people for a boss. (She reads this blog, but take me seriously anyway. If you want proof of her awesomeness, check out her blog.) There are also bonus perks like blogger socials and getting paid.

When the new blog is up, I'll post a link, but I'm going to keep posting here as well. Nobody in the wide and wonderful world of prospective students wants to hear about my escapades thrice weekly -- or, for that matter, needs to know about occasional bike theft or that only-slightly-illegal foray into the Arb. I'll probably post here twice a week, since I'm expected to post quality biweekly entries over at the Real Blog. Oh, the possibilities ...

With that, loyal readers, good night. I should get busy with those quill pens!

Merry Christmas to All ...

 ... and to all a good night!

Things have been crazy with Christmas and finals, but once things settle down, I have some good news, some very good news, and some very, very good news. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, please enjoy this adorable kitten! The picture isn't mine and I don't know who to credit, but it's awfully cute.



I hope you all have a very merry Christmas with your loved ones.

ODigenous

One of the many things I love about Oberlin is the Experimental College classes, or ExCos, offered by students, for students. I took two this semester: one on storytelling, one on indigenous plants of Ohio. (I only meant to take one. But they were both so good.) In lieu of a post today, here is a selection from the journal I keep for class:

There might be another page on Friday, since I'll still be up to my eyeballs in obligations. Or maybe I'll post a picture of the poem I've been stenciling onto my wall. Possibilities, possibilities ...

By the way, if you'd like to see a much larger version, there's one here.

Friday Night: Snow-Fueled Sophomoric Carousing

Finals are creeping up on us, lurking in the shadows, leaving tiny footprints in the snow. We are collectively terrified. Naturally, instead of doing anything to reduce next week's workload, we decided to eat, drink and be merry!

By eat I mean pizza, which was phenomenal as always. Elizabeth is really the best pizza cook a co-op could wish for and she is passing on her skills to my friend Peter, who will hopefully be our pizza cook next semester! During dinner, Truman and I struck up a halting dialogue in Spanish  and then (in English) talked about his gap year, which he spent working, traveling and volunteering in Latin America, and about my brief forays south. Truman said his Spanish was "horrible," but we both kept up our end of a simple conversation. Hopefully we'll get more chances to practice next semester.

We skipped the drinking bit, except for cider, and headed out to make merry. The plan was to make our (that is, the Usual Suspects') way down to the Arb and explore the inside of the utility building there, which -- rumor had it -- some careless worker had left open. The north entrance of the Arb is maybe a fifteen-minute walk from our back door. We took almost an hour to get there.

Do you remember the epic snowball fights of your childhood? Memory inflates them to heroic proportions, but the nostalgia is not unfounded. Sneak attacks, shifting alliances, mad chases recorded faithfully in the snow. Bold stand-offs at high noon, just us and the tumbleweed ...

Anyway: we began the night with an ambush. Whit, Peter and I biked down from Keep to meet Brenna and Sam at the library, and had a mini-fight of our own before our journey even began. Whitman slipped on the ice, but wasn't hurt. A few minutes later, I called to Peter to be careful, only to look around in time to see him windmill and hit the concrete. Parents, no fear: he was fine too. Anyway, we stockpiled snowballs to ambush Brenna and Sam, but were a shade too visible to pull it off. Next time.

At first it was everyone for themself. (Yes. I know. I'm not wrong, just a decade or two ahead of the linguistic curve.) Brenna, by mutual agreement, was more or less left alone; the rest of us darted around the field, zigzagging south. Eventually the typical alliances formed and Peter and I (with Brenna as an allied noncombatant) worked together to get Whit and Sam, who couldn't decide whether they were fighting us or each other. Eventually the war lost momentum as our hands grew numb. I had my warm gloves -- the ones we bought with snowball fights in mind, Mom -- but I was the only one. Anyway, we got tired of keeping five or ten feet between us and checking over both shoulders for lurking Obies. We walked on peacefully, with a minimum of squabbling, and Whitman apologized for accidentally making my face bleed. Unlike last time, this one was not my fault, and he didn't end up with a bruised face, so I think we're even.

The door to the utility building opened without effort. Brenna and I were each reasonably sure that, given the creepy-yet-believable setting and the quirky-yet-relatable cast, we'd get silently picked off from the back of the group and dragged somewhere to be eaten. So we stayed near the front.

We turned out not to need the flashlights we'd all forgotten to bring, since the light switches almost all worked. In fact, the whole experience was a little anticlimactic. There were pipes, parts of pipes, fifty-year-old Oberlin parking notices, and a second-floor door leading into thin air with a shipping hook over it. We knew it would, though, so nobody got startled and tumbled to their death. The one exciting part of the building was the back room on the first floor. The light switch didn't work and three of us picked our way carefully over an undulating floor to the next door. Whitman kept saying, "There's something weird about this floor ..." but in my boots I couldn't feel it. 

My cell phone light went dim for a second and when I pressed a button, it illuminated a huge hole in the floor. Turns out we'd been tramping on buckling plywood over a four-foot drop. But we stuck to the sturdy parts as we left, and we were fine.

We decided to go in a little farther into the Arb before heading back. The hill built up to hold the Arboretum pond turned out to be the perfect setting for a silly game of King of the Mountain. Our alliances more or less held, although Peter and I grappled once or twice, and Whit and Sam kept skidding down the slope, wrestling. Eventually we worked our way to where the snow at the bottom met a winding little creek. Don't worry. Nobody pushed anybody after that.

After more snowy wanderings and quiet contemplation, we went back to Keep for cider and warm baked bread. Also, arrowroot mixed with water and microwaved! It isn't terribly edible, but it amused us literally for hours. We wandered into the lounge in search of people to sit uncomfortably close to with our bizarre-looking gel. Nobody was there, so we sat uncomfortably close to each other instead, and played with the goo until it turned scaly and flaked off. 

To finish off the evening, Peter and I went to see OSteel, the Oberlin college steel drum band. We only caught a couple of songs, but they were ridiculously good. On the way back to Keep, Peter remembered that the three of us had left our bikes at the library. We didn't want to just leave Whitman's there, so we tried to ride back with his locked bike between us, to no avail. It was lucky we had to walk -- we met Whitman about halfway home going a way we wouldn't have biked. (The possibility of missing him had amused us enough to factor it into our decision to be nice and take it for him, but he hardly ever carries his cell phone, so it might not have been as funny as it seemed at first.)

I didn't want the night to be over yet. It was positively balmy, and the roads were clear. Merely biking to the library hadn't been nearly enough for me, and Peter and Whitman felt the same way. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to go at just before midnight that requires more than a two-minute bike ride from Tappan Square. So we struck due west, heading for nothing, simply because I hadn't been before. And yes, when I suggested it, both Peter and Whit said, "Go West, young man ..." and I finished, "and grow with the country!" 

We rode until Lorain met College Street about a mile away. Rather than continue on into the cornfields, however -- you can see on Google maps, there's nothing after that -- we turned onto W College and rode back, racing, just a little exultant. We reached our own front porch just as Finney's clock chimed midnight, which means it was 11:58. 

After more fun with arrow-gel (a rather weak pun of ours on aerogel) and some tasty granola, we headed upstairs. And then I wrote about half of this entry before turning in and sleeping a long, satisfying sleep.

I hope you enjoyed this update. Due to my imminent finals, I am not going to be updating this week, although I might upload pictures if I take any good ones. Expect funny faces, animals and icicles. 

Conceptual Poetics

Last night, a friend and I hauled a fifty-gallon bin out into the snow. We dumped little bits of wood with words on them into the water and arranged them there to freeze overnight. As a finishing touch, we used broken sticks to spell "Mix Me Up" in snow banked up against the side of the bin.

This is, apparently, a Poem.

Our partner, Rene, is putting more of the same wooden blocks on tables and windowsills in our library cafe. He is also including markers so that the audience, forced to interact with the blocks -- moving them aside, accidentally knocking them over, idly stacking them -- can also become a participant. 

This is also a Poem.

Today, we're setting up three aquaria in her basement with powerful little mag-lites in them. Every day we are going to collaborate on texts derived from my favorite phrase, "immanentize the eschaton," and scrawl a little more of them on the glass with dry-erase marker, creating linguistic shadow puppets.

You guessed it. I'm told it's a Poem.

Together, these three Poems make a Poetry Installation. Who knew?

For a more serious look at the Underlying Concept of the Poetry Installation, check here.

"Boy and Two Orange Bins:" A Milestone in Modern Photography

Thanks for the comments, everyone! No post today -- too much to do. Instead, here is a picture of Wilson preparing to make his Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, which were excellent.

I was also going to post a picture of my friends, but I couldn't find any in which we looked like normal human beings. Also, I would have to ask everyone's permission first, and I don't have time for that either. Anyway, I'm going to write a Spanish reflection and memorize a story now. Ciao!

Singing in the Snow. Also, a Note on Church. You Can Skip that Bit.

Well, it's not really winter yet. But music has been increasingly important as the days get shorter and the snow falls faster. Right now I'm listening to tracks off Josh Ritter's truly excellent So Runs the World Away. I might have mentioned that he gave a convocation concert in Finney way back in September. He was an Obie, one of our many "wandering sheep" -- he came to Oberlin to study neuroscience and left with a degree in American History through Folk Traditions. He said, with authority, that if you really have to tell your mom you're not going to be neuroscience major after all, it's better to do so from 3000 miles away.

Anyway, he's quite famous, whatever that means in folk rock, and I'm learning some of his earlier stuff on guitar. (Earlier, because these days most of his songs feature fingerpicking and F chords, neither of which I can handle.) I'm mostly studying chord changes and rhythm, so far, but I get to practice whenever I want to due to Sam's incredible generosity. She has lent me her guitar to keep in my room indefinitely, and I'm progressing ... well, not quickly, but at a pretty decent pace.

Oberlin, of course, is a great place to pick up an instrument if you're curious and not in a hurry to compare your own skill with anyone else's. If you'e apt to give up on something because you'll never be half as good as so-and-so, it might be the worst place in the world. No matter what, it's an incredible place to experience music.

Keep, in particular, has gained a reputation as the most musical co-op, for good reason. Brenna plays violin at the Con level, and Ari, my next door neighbor, practices flute in the laundry room. Peter is mad good on guitar, as I might have mentioned in my post about the jam session a few weeks ago; I can also name at least six other Keepers that play and play well. We also have at least four people who play keyboard regularly and probably a host of others who can bang out a song or five, two drummers, and a voice major, who usually sings while making bread and tasty things. We also have at least one banjo player, another flautist, and a jazz saxophonist.

All of which is to say, if we're snowed in -- which we might be one of these days -- I know exactly what we'll end up doing on cold winter nights.

Cold winter mornings are another matter. After several Sundays in a row spent huddled in a pew picking out favorite hymns, my friend Mia and I borrowed two copies of the hymnal from Father Brian, the rector at Christ Church. We agreed to meet between our MWF classes and sing a fortifying hymn or two -- at first our favorites, of course, but now many Advent and Christmas hymns that we would be singing in our home churches were we there. Serendipitously, another friend ran into us during our first meeting, and now the three of us meet in a silly little vestibule in Peters and sing!

Mia can sight read music, which is lucky, because beyond Hyfrydol and a few Christmas hymns I'm pretty much lost. I have found, however, that after a line or two I can easily follow along. The old hymns are so intuitive! They've had to be, of course, to remain singable centuries after their composition. I have also heard most of these at least once or twice before, and my voice knows them even if I don't. I like the idea that hymns are laid down in my subconscious, like quilt patches, or sleeping embers, waiting to be plucked by searching fingers or touched with living fire.

Many of my friends, even the religious ones, dislike the idea of forcing a child to go to church. On Sunday mornings, I probably did my fair share of moaning and groaning and sitting in the back seat scowling. I probably would have done much more if I hadn't had so many friends there. But now I am walking in the patterns laid down for me when I was baptized, and finding the roads sound. The words I repeated by rote as a child are now familiar and loved.

I should apologize for being sentimental, but I won't. I don't remember being surrounded by people who love me, singing united to God. But I know it was so, and I won't disguise how much that means to me now. I guess this is what they mean by "roots." Now Mia and Brenna and I are little lonely saplings, and it helps to step back and see the forest.

Hints of a White December

Today I woke up to the sound of joyful laughter, rising like music from the road below. I grunted irritably and buried my face in the covers. That early in the morning, laughter sounds about as melodious as a garbage truck.

Even through the covers, I caught the word snow. It was true -- lacy clumps of snowflakes spiraled past my window to melt on the wet asphalt. I called to Whitman with such vehemence that he thought at first that we had both slept in until noon. "Whitman! Wake up, wake up! It's snowing!"

We both tumbled out of bed and into our respective closets. (I love first-snow, but not enough to go out in it barefoot.) Shod, I ran down the stairs to find that it was already sticking, in drifts and clumps, chasing away last night's legacy of rain. I stood with my arms open and laughed as the flakes melted on my upturned face. Whitman joined me in a minute, camera in hand; I left him there, rejoicing, as I climbed back upstairs to get ready for class.

I met Peter on the stairs. "It's snowing!" we said, simultaneously, grinning hugely. I don't know why anyone from upstate New York would be excited for the first of so many snows -- he knows better than anyone what we're in for -- but there's something about the first good flurry that seems to make the world new.

Eastbound Shuttle

Well, I'll be heading home about one today, which means I'll be in New Haven by two or three in the morning. Before I leave sunny Oberlin, I've got a few loose ends to wrap up, as requested by my loyal readers.

One: the Aerialists. Knowing that the group was chartered last spring, Peter and I were't sure what to expect, and the setting -- an old gym with painted windows, just like the gym at Sliney -- wasn't promising. But the acts left me literally open-mouthed. Controlled falls were a central part of most of the acts, and the aerialists weren't so much defying gravity as putting it through its paces. They would wrap themselves in silk, or rope, or around a trapeze -- pose for a second, stretching their arms out as if in flight -- and let go, trusting themselves and their dancing partner. The official Source write-up (with more pictures) is here, but it doesn't say anything about the wonder and the beauty of it, the miracle of dancers supported in midair by silk and loving attention to gravity.

(The picture above belongs to Ma'ayan Plaut '10 -- I cropped it mostly for size.)

Two: My darling father's visit to Oberlin. As this is mostly an and-then-we entry, I've been putting it off. Without further ado:

We met at Keep in the morning after a quick tidying-up. I showed him the lounge, the several rooms that make up our kitchen, and upstairs to my room, where I was surprised to find Whitman -- apparently he's been living in my room lately. (Actually, I was merely surprised that he wasn't already at work, but that's neither here nor there.) At any rate, we did the this-is-my-roommate thing and talked for a second before heading out. It turns out Dad and Whitman have a fairly similar sense of humor, except that as far as I know Dad's repertoire doesn't include burying bodies in the Arb.

We left after a bit to go get lunch, and wandered down Main Street for a few minutes before ending up at Sprouts, the new raw-foods-vegan-smoothie-bar cafe near Slow Train. The sushi was pretty good, the gazpacho delicious, and we casually strolled over to the football game against Allegheny to see number 10 play.

We went to a Mail Art exhibit in the Allen annex. The pieces were intriguing, but we didn't stay for the talk. Walking across Tappan Square, Dad realized that we had forgotten to pay at Sprouts, but instead of shrugging it off, immediately turned back to rectify (in the oldest sense of the word) the mistake. I was proud to be with him as he admitted the error, paid up and left.

After that we went to a panel billed "From Hippies to Hipsters: Oberlin's History of Student Activism" which should have been billed "The Aftermath of the Architect: What Karl Rove's Visit and Student Dissent Means to Us as a Campus and What We Should Do About It." They are both interesting discussions and the latter definitely had to happen, but a room full of unsuspecting students and parents hoping to hear a colloquial treatment of Oberlin's history of dissent was not the right room.

The discourse was healthy, for the most part, and it was interesting, although not at all what we'd signed up for. Dad and I both kept our own counsel instead of adding one more voice to the clamor of people talking past each other. Anyway, I was very glad I'd gone, but not so glad that Dad had had to sit through it as well.

Dinner was indeed special: individual quiches and sides of beets and veggies. You know you have lived in a co-op too long when roasted beets are finger food. (They also make an excellent snack.) Dad even had a bite of quiche, despite the likely butter content in the pastry dough. They were quite good!

We got floor tickets for Fall Forward, the Fall Semester modern dance showcase; if you're interested, there's a thorough review here.

Sunday morning, we ate at Fresh Start Diner and I ordered an eighteen-inch rolled pancake filled with ice cream and blueberries. Yes, really. It was wonderful. I ate less than half, but I saved the rest in the freezer, and it came in handy Tuesday morning when our breakfast cook didn't wake up.

We went to church after that, and -- surprise! -- I found out just in time that I had to acolyte. It went fairly well. It becomes much easier to be an acolyte when you remember that nobody's looking at you, really. The focus is on God. The point is essentially to not mess up enough to distract from worship. If you look like you know what you're doing and focus on God, too, there's not a whole lot else that matters.

Anyway, after a quick brunch at Keep, we watched the Quidditch game in Wilder Bowl for a few minutes. It says a lot about Oberlin that our marching band plays for our Quidditch team instead of our football team ...

Dad's flight was early, so after a quick swing past the underwhelming Frank Lloyd Wright house, he dropped me off at Keep with the shoes I'm wearing right now and other useful gifts. It had been wonderful to see him and show him around campus. Thanks for stopping by, Dad!

Well, that just about wraps up this entry. I'll see some of you soon. To the others, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thanks for all the comments lately!

Okay, so It's Saturday. It's Friday in California.

So, y'all should comment more often. Just sayin'.

Tonight was pizza night! We had squash-and-onion pizza, so sweet and fruity I thought it contained apple; and then veggie pizza, with broccoli and other goodies, plus a generous helping of cheese; and doubtless many more, but I didn't stick around, preferring to spend my dinnertime conversing with two of the Usual Suspects on the porch rather than fighting over [delicious, perfectly risen, cheesy] carrion with all the other buzzards.

 -- I most likely forgot to mention that the Usual Suspects are Peter, Brenna, Sam and Whitman. It's just simpler to write that way. Anyway, four of us (Brenna went to go see the opera) played Scrabble for awhile; then Peter, Sam and I went for a walk, just to get out into the world. At eleven, Peter and I went to see OCircus, which was wonderful -- it wasn't as technically impressive as the Aerialists show, but it had a funny plot, engaging characters and some phenomenal performances. At midnight I went to temp the fridges and found myself in the midst of a food party, with fresh challah bread, egg-veggie scramble, and homefries.

Mmmm.

So, it doesn't have to be in comment form, but y'all should tell me what you want to hear more of. Weekend activities? Classwork? Food? Do you want teenage angst? Because I can so do teenage angst.

I am also happy to supply more and-then-we. It's easy, and if you are interested in reading it, I'm interested in writing it. That goes for everything, so let me know.

In the meantime, much love! Good night, fellow Californians.

Seek Ye First a Jam Session

I'm busy, but I wanted to share this with all of you:

I'm in the lounge right now, writing a rhythm story for my ExCo. I was drawn down from my room by the tendrils of a truly epic jam session. Peter, on guitar, Jackson, on keyboard, and Max, with a drumbox, are rocking out with a jazz-bluesy-alternative vibe. The music is sweet and aggressive by turns, skipping up and down the emotional spectrum, as the musicians riff off each other and respond to the music.

They just paused for a second, and Jackson said he'd been basing his melody on a favorite hymn. He sang a few bars, accompanying himself: "Alleluia ... alleluia -- allelu, alleluia." I picked the tune up and hummed it to myself. It was Seek ye First.

Yes, that's right. At Keep, we have killer impromptu jam sessions, inspired by classic and beloved hymns.

Perfect place to live? I think so.

Monday, Monday ...

Whew.

I don't know how much time I have exactly, and I don't want to start and get halfway through last Thursday, so bear with me as I cycle backwards through the last few days. If you like, you can imagine me walking, talking and cooking backwards. I hope the effect is amusing and not merely disorienting.

Half an hour ago I registered for my spring classes. This morning, I turned in a two-page paper for Spanish about what I want to be when I grow up. I didn't feel like getting terribly insecure and indecisive about it, so I just said I want to be a farmer. A simple idea, but it still took me from 11-2, and then editing from 8-9, to express ... if I'd been more awake when I'd done it, I probably wouldn't have kept passing out with my face on my keyboard.

Last night, I cleaned the kitchen for a couple of hours -- the theme was Lullaby Sleepytime Commando, and midway through the first hour, Erica's cinnamon sweet-bread came out and was incredibly delicious. We put Pandora on a lullaby station and tried not to fall asleep while eating warm bread, drinking tea, and incidentally scouring the kitchen from top to bottom. Mmm ...

Before that, I'd meant to leave ECO right away, but stayed to wash dishes instead. Earlier, Krissy and I had cooked: chunky potato soup and, for dessert, sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows. We also served salad and challah bread, both stolen from Stevie. (I figure if I only eat there about a third of the times I'm allowed to, I can take three times the food.) The soup was excellent -- it's a good thing Krissy knows how to cook! -- but the casserole is a favorite every time.

Sunday afternoon was the time I set aside for doing my Spanish redaccion, but it's a good thing I looked in my planner, because I had another (paragraph-long) assignment for my seminar due Sunday night. So I finished that instead. I had just seen off Dad, with whom I spent a lovely weekend. I think I have a bit of time so I'll tell that to you forwards.

Friday night was not busy, exactly -- Brenna and I went to a lecture by a Nobel-prize winning economist, but I was so sleepy that I had to ask Brenna afterwards how the lecture had been. We met Sam on the way back to Keep, then gathered up Whit and Peter, and got to the Observatory just a few minutes too late to go to the public viewing. It's a good thing I had winterproofed myself,* because we went to Arb instead, and lay down in the silence between the creek and the trees and looked at the sky.

Our collective reverie was interrupted by another, apparently less-sober group of students crashing about in the brush, so we amused ourselves by shouting about the body. As in, "Dig harder, it's only three feet deep!" and "But I don't want to keep digging, I'm coooooold. Let's just cover the body with rocks and go home."

 ... Anyway.

We went back to Keep and watched Fargo, which was horrible, and went to bed. 

The next morning I awoke earlier than I thought I would, so, logically, immediately went back to sleep and slept later than I had meant to. I called Dad as soon as I was up and found he was on his way. More about his visit in the next entry!

- -- - -- - -- - -- -

* winterproof: to swaddle oneself in the contents of one's Winter Box,** including (but not limited to) puffy coat, gigantic gloves, two layers of pants, snow-boots, and scarf.  

** Winter Box: a box containing materials necessary for winterproofing, sent from Connecticut just in time for the beginning of the winter chills.

It's Tuesday -- Update Day!

If you having been reading my blog lately, you are probably aware that Tuesday is not update day. But I didn't update Friday, and I didn't update Monday, and I have about fifteen minutes to spare in between getting more recycling bags from the OSCA Non-Food Coordinator and heading down to the Multifaith Center to embark on a trip to the George Jones farm, so I'm updating now.

My weekend was pretty great, though very chill. On Friday night I meant to work but we ended up playing a card game of Whitman's that is mostly in French and quite pleasant (although I still maintain that it would be more fun if we were allowed to give points to other people. Also, we're OSCAns, so it should be allowed in the name of realism). Saturday, I worked in the library all morning before stopping by the Local Foods Fest. On a whim, I accompanied Kelly to a showing of Dog, a student-written and directed play about ... well, I'm not sure exactly. That's not to say it was abstract - just too subtextual to squeeze into a blurb. It was good, except it had no ending, which are probably not allowed in Oberlin plays.

After an afternoon spent working and despairing, Peter and I went to see the first-ever showcase by the Oberlin Aerialists! I can't do it justice in five minutes so expect more later.

Sunday, of course, was All Saints' Day. More about that too, but most importantly, we sang the Wild Beast hymn - you know the one. (If you were wondering, that particular martyr was St. Ignatius.)

Anyway, I best be off. To be continued in about two hours, between the farm and dinner.

An Unremarkable Wednesday, Upon Which I Will Now Extensively Remark

So, yes, I am aware that I was going to update daily, and then on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Similarly, I am aware that I have not done so. I will resume today. Feel free to send me angry, hurt, neglected emails if Friday's entry fails to appear.

Today I got to lunch late because I was at the A Capella hymn-sing. It was really wonderful today, led by a little old lady who comfortably referenced and listed old hymns as support for her talk. We sang one to the tune of Hyfrydol and one to a tune whose name I don't remember. (I looked at it in the corner and immediately forgot. I might remember it later in a flash of brilliance, but I doubt it.)

Anyway, I got to the kitchen to find my saved plate all made up! Lunch was flatbread, chickpea salad, and a green-bean-and-seitan stir fry. This is only the second time we've had seitan, and the first ingredients list on which it was spelled correctly -- on Monday, we had Fried Satan and Satan Sauce.

This afternoon, I was restless and moody, but got a couple of hours of work done. Then I went to the Majors Fair and discovered that you can't do anything with a bachelor's degree anymore. Maybe I'll drop out and build straw-bale houses for a living, instead.

On that cheery and uplifting note, it's almost time for dinner! Tonight I have a meeting with my co-KitchPoCos and our Cleanliness and Maintenance Coordinator (our boss, advocate, and contactperson -- essentially a KitchPoCo Plus), just to check in after Fall Break and ensure that all is running smoothly. Then I have Taize and a quick study session with my friend Will from my Econ 101 section. The material has started to become a lot less self-explanatory ... wish me luck!

I better get down to dinner. Ciao, all.

A Few Notes About Blogger

I have received questions about a few of the less intuitive functions of Blogger, so for today's update, here is a quick how-to.

Commenting:

To post a comment on any blog entry, scroll to the bottom of the entry and click the link that says "[however many, typically 0] comments." It'll take you to a page with a text field and a drop-down menu. On the menu, the easiest thing to do is select "Name/URL" and simply fill in the name field -- it doesn't care if you supply a URL. Then click "Post Comment" (not Preview, which may have been the cause of some of the trouble people have been having). That should work! If it's still not behaving, please let me know.

That's all for now, actually, although I intended to cover Following as well. If anyone is interested, leave a comment, and I'll update with instructions.

Also, after some thought, daily entries might be a bit much -- especially if you're receiving my updates via email. Instead, I'll be updating on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after Fall Break is over. During break, however, I've been informed that I don't eat if I don't blog. (I think Mom was joking. But I can't tell.) So expect one a day until Sunday, when I take off for the open, wild West!

Home Again: the Weekend

Dear Readers,

I have been remiss. Midterm week, various papers and actually having friends have gotten in the way of updating my loyal public on the goings-on about Keep. I'm on Fall Break now, with a little more time on my hands, and I'll tell you at least a little more about daily life and work. Expect shorter entries from now on -- I think it better to update briefly and often than never really find the time.

I'm going to try and shoot for very short daily entries, which will include the menu from my favorite meal, best moment in class, and miscellanea. For now, I'll just tell you a bit about my first weekend home, and then backtrack to a better picture of how this whole cooperative thing works. (Spoiler alert: we do regularly have toilet paper.)

The ride home was long, but uneventful -- even pleasant. I had answered an ObieClassifieds ad for folks looking for a ride to NYC and was rewarded with $80 round trip transportation for Fall Break. (To compare, the shuttle service, also from Oberlin - NYC, is $150.) We ate up miles and completed the eight-hour trip to Summit, New Jersey in seven. Don't do the math.

At Summit, I debarked with my friend and hallmate Brenna, who had signed up for the same car before we knew each other -- how's that for serendipity? I had arranged to stay the night with her family, in case I wasn't able to reach Penn before the trains stopped running. Her parents were really lovely people and over the moon to have their daughter home. I also met the Dogs. Lucy, a labradoodle, had learned that Sit would get her more loving than jumping all over people, and was pretty well-behaved after the first ecstatic leaps. Milo, a bronze Goldie, was just as ridiculous. In the morning they drove me to the train station, where I caught the first of a series of trains home. The best part: because of her dad's new job, Brenna and her family are moving to Branford or Guilford! Serendipity indeed.

My first day home was pretty quiet. Everyone was out of the house and I spent the afternoon with Allie and Karlie, just hanging out. I also practiced guitar for about ten minutes, which was an improvement to my practice time over midterm week (zero). Saturday night was also quiet -- we played Mario and they slept over, then went to church with me in the morning.

Church was really excellent. I had looked forward to coming to my own home church since my first week in Oberlin, and everything I'd imagined was so. We sang How Firm a Foundation, which is one of my top three favorite hymns, and Sharon's Eucharistic singing made me tear up. But even better than the service was seeing some of my favorite people, irreplaceable in Branford or Oberlin or anywhere else. I was saying good morning to Nanci Henchcliffe when Miz Pat turned around and saw me and light just filled her face. She always shines, and of course she thinks I'm just flattering an old lady when I call her gorgeous, but I'll go ahead and be terribly un-Episcopalian and say that I see Spirit in her. I saw Steve Sharma, the Seibyls, and Liz Melvin. Kris was serving as chalice bearer, and there is something transcendent -- as well there should be! -- in receiving Christ's blood from someone you love. Pastor Sharon remembered me, which was both impressive and affirming, and we talked about the glorious suffusive energy in the church that day (but not in those words, I don't think). She makes me want to be a pastor. I suppose it's either too bad or just as well that Oberlin closed its divinity school in 1966.

Trinity makes me despair of ever finding a home like it again. I suppose it's not a terribly special or uniquely enlightened little church -- that is, it is special and filled with light, but no more so than any other person's little church. But it's mine, and wonderful. Maybe I'll just come back to Branford and go to church here and live in this silly old beautiful house.

Just kidding.

Anyway, we hung around Sunday afternoon, ate at the 'Non, and went for a walk on the Branford-East Haven trolley trail before I dropped Karlie off. Al and I made some dinner and talked -- it's so good to see them both! -- and I spent Sunday night trying to do homework but mostly messing around with iTunes instead. I went to bed at around midnight, maybe a little after, and that's exactly what I intend to do tonight.

So adieu, loyal readers, good night!

(P.S. I also finished an entry about Stone Soup that I had written ages ago, but I'll post it tomorrow so as not to hit you with too much text all at once. Look for it below this one by tomorrow night.)

Stone Soup

I've been asked to talk more about KEEP CO-OP and the scrumptious food we make and consume, so I'll start with Saturday's Special Meal, which I helped plan and cook.

First, a little backstory: Special Meals are special because there's no head cook on rotation, meaning co-op members can sign up to help cook the meal of their dreams. They usually involve expensive ingredients and lots of different dishes. One of my friends is planning a Southern Wedding special meal for later this semester. We're going to propose to Harkness and celebrate with grits, (veggie) hush puppies and other delights, including a wedding cake.

This special meal, however, was too early in the semester - only just out of interim, no one was sure of ingredients or plans and no one wanted to take responsibility for a not-very-special Special Meal. Only Tommy was signed up to cook and we had no head cook at all! Elizabeth and I stepped up and started exploring the options for a folk-tale based stew. (If you're not familiar with the story, click here.)

We walked down to the herb garden to find basil and parsley, but found only perennial herbs -thyme, rosemary, sage and mullein - which wouldn't do at all. I did gather a handful of onion grass for flavor and effect, seeing as Keep was out of onions; and when we went back to the walk-in that stores our produce, I found parsley and lots of hidden vegetables to use in the stew.

I spent the next hour or so gathering ingredients. I picked the last of the healthy leaves from my faithful basil plant, which, although a little bitter, would be good filler herbs for the pesto. I moved armfuls of zucchini and bags of little potatoes and spent the next hour chopping.

More or less, this is how kitchen shifts generally work: Generally, there are two KPs, who start chopping and preparing food three hours before the meal begins and works for an hour. Then the first hour cook and the two-hour cook arrive and take over from the KPs. The head cook is also expected to show up at about that time; they will assign tasks to the cooks, thank the KPs, and get going. An hour before the meal, the second hour cook arrives and the first hour cook leaves. The main dish is usually in the oven or on the stove by this point; salad has probably been chopped and is mixed. Dressings, sauces and side dishes like kale chips are usually prepared while the main dishes are cooking. By the time the meal is served, hungry OSCAns are already thronging the dining room, ready to descend on the delectable creation.

Head cooks are elected, while KPs and other cooks are assigned by preference and availability to weekly shifts. With some exceptions, such as co-opers with elected positions (like me!) or Time Aid, everyone does five hours of work in the kitchen. In addition, everyone must cook for one Special Meal each semester, and crew on either a Friday or Saturday night -- no one should have to clean up after a Pizza Night or Special Meal.

Anyway, Tommy and I were essentially KPing at this point. I went over to Harkness, using the Keep flag as a poncho, to borrow some sliced tomatoes and vegetable oil. By the time I got back Tommy was halfway through the chopping, and Elizabeth showed up soon after.

After that, the chopping and cooking is mostly a blur. However, unexpected angels descended upon us. Eli, who wasn't scheduled to work and might have just come into the kitchen with the munchies, ended up making very garlickly basil and parsley pesto to go with the soup. We used the last viable leaves from my basil on the porch. What a last hurrah!

Meryl, a friendly and sociable vocal/undecided Double Degree, also showed up. She was accompanied by the equally-affable Rebecca, who isn't even a Keeper! They made mint and ginger tea to help combat our collective fall sniffles. I hadn't known you could make tea in a pot, but it came out quite good. They also mde cookies, deemed "Woodland Spice Drops," which were a little like Snickerdoodles but not as sweet. They turned out to be a crowd favorite - the perfect desert after Stone Soup accompanied by our pesto and Annadamma bread.

Our Stone Soup, in the end, contained:

potatoes

carrots

diced tomatoes

black and pinto beans

celery

sweet potatoes

other various veggies

lasagna

onion grass

one sanitized stone

We went from an overwhelmed cook shift of two to a contentedly buzzing kitchen of six, cooperative in every sense of the word. Yes, the soup was a little late, and we were in despair until the last minute, but there was plenty to go around -- and plenty of praise for the chefs. I think our little village lived up to the fable of magic Stone Soup!

Three Cheers for the Weekend - Cheer Number One

I just had my first real Oberlin weekend - that is, a weekend that did not include at least one night spent sitting in my room with Whitman gazing at our respective screens. (Although it might yet. We'll see.)

I'll summarize it chronologically, rather than, say, alphabetically, which would be a lot of work and not very enlightening for any of us. Therefore, Friday night:

The curtains open on me, in a fairly comfortable chair reading Jared Diamond; Sam, on the couch, reading some other, indubitably less prestigious book; and Whitman, in one of the lopsided wing chairs, staring pensively at nothing. He and I began a game of chess, but were interrupted by Brenna 2*, Kelly and the glimmer of a plan. We'll fast forward to the four of us (sans Sam, still studying) climbing up the stairs to the astronomy tower to take advantage of public stargazing night. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. As well as the dome telescope, trained on a ring nebula, there were four smaller scopes set up to view other celestialities. Once we'd seen everything, we stood on the edge of the deck and talked about fall break, and home, and homesickness.

We next headed to Slow Train for a performance by Isabel Roth and Friends. The highlights included two songs she wrote as a freshman: "Fearless," a reaction to the then-new admissions campaign; and one whose name I didn't catch, but included the lyrics:

"You are wonderful all of the time / but I just don' t have all of the time. / And if I'm honest with myself, it's probably / better for my health / if you and I take some time for ourselves."

Her upbeat, catchy tunes are still stuck in my head. Less pat, though, was The Hurt Locker, which we decided to watch in our room. The experience was a study in contrasts: four college students, cozily wrapped in fleece, then thick walls, then campus security. We are protected from war by borders and oceans and parents who love us. We sat on my bed and watched men die, silently, horribly, and did not move or speak except to arrange the blankets.

And then it was midnight so we turned the movie off. We got granola from the kitchen. Whitman and Brenna went off to bed, and Kelly and I did Midnight Crew, and I went to sleep and forgot all my dreams in the morning.

I woke up in a wonderful mood! I ambled around the internet, then downstairs to sniff out breakfast. After a few lazy hours I biked to Wilder to get a package of mine.

Well, that was the plan.

I went around back to one of our bike racks and my bike, Jeffrey, was gone.

Now, I always have to qualify that "my" right there, because Jeffrey isn't actually mine. It belongs to the bike co-op, and was supposed to be my temporary bike before they opened. I was going to rent a bike that was a few inches taller, and could brake in the rain. However, they were a little short of rentals this year, and so Jeffrey has just stayed mine. I'm sure I owe them hours for compensation. We'll work it out.

Anyway, that doesn't change how I felt: Jeffrey was gone, and I was devastated. I knew I should have locked it up. But I never did, and now it was gone, and it was awful. Whit let me borrow his bike and I cruised North Campus, searching for any sign of my beloved. I made it down to Wilder, the Student Union here, before picking up that package at the mailroom and heading back.

The package contained Virginia salted and chocolate-covered peanuts, which brightened my mood considerably. (Thanks mom! Made my morning!) I went out for one more round before giving up for the afternoon and giving Whitman back his bike. And I found him! (I mean, found it.) Jeffrey was in front of the dining hall, about fifty yards from Keep's back door. The thief - borrower? - had left my water bottle in the holder and neglected to use a lock, so I ran home tugging Whit's bike with one hand and mine with the other. 

"I promise to lock you all the time from now on," I told Jeffrey, loudly. Some passing girls didn't even look up. This is Oberlin, after all.

In the Interim ...

I have a post about my weekend in the works, but while you're waiting, here are some cute animal pictures!

As I type, Beatrice is having a great time checking for treats in my hair. This next one, from the Ginko Gallery, is a little less current:

Hope you're all having a spectacular week! I'll check in soon.

All in a Day's Work

So my co-op is in its third week of interim, but almost all of our elections have been taken care of, and the chaos is generally sifting out into a kind of lopsided order. I have been elected to one position each in Keep Dining Co-op and Keep Housing Co-op (which are two separate entities, because we have dining members who do not live here, and also because the health department cares a lot more about our food than where we live). The first of these is KitchPoCo, and this is what we do:

The three of us help run Commando every Sunday, which has a lot more to do with this than this. Along with a rotating crew of co-op volunteers, we scour the kitchen from top to bottom; we sanitize the fridge, de-lime the Hobart, and empty the greasetraps (which actually only entails throwing out the old greasy tinfoil and putting in new tinfoil, but you can imagine a grislier scenario if you prefer). We have to do occasional walk-throughs to make sure we're pretty much up to health code, and check the fridge temperatures once a day to be sure they're not running hot and ruining our food. We also get emails from the All-OSCA Cleanliness and Maintenance Coordinators when they inspect Keep. (These are students like ourselves, so although it is possible to fail these inspections it is intended as a learning experience.) Finally, we go to the All-OSCA Non-Foods Coordinator with equipment requests: a metal spatula, for instance, or a squeegee to use on the Hobart tray. This last job would probably be easier if she held hours more than twice a week.

Cleanliness Coordinator is a housing job, and it's a lot more low-key. There are four of us, three of whom run cleaning shifts and one of whom inspects as necessary. Every Keeper - except those with other jobs, such as Non-Foods Buyer - has to do one cleaning shift a week. We scrub toilets, clean sinks, and sweep, vacuum, and mop, as well as make the lounge presentable and occasionally dust. ... Who am I kidding? We never dust. We do do a pretty great job though.

So, those are my jobs. I've also KP'd and crewed, since everyone has to help out during interim, but talking about cleaning things is almost as tiring as actually cleaning things. I'm going to go grab a snack and maybe see if Beatrice is out. Ciao.

Cockatiels!

This is Beatrice, and she is lovely.

Heather, the other human in the picture, is also quite lovely - she's a member of ECO and plays organ and piano for Taize. Heather, however, does not to the best of my knowledge live in the language lab, so I'll focus on Beatrice for now.

She is one of at the three cockatiels who live in the Cooper International Learning Center. (I am also fond of the other two, Iago and Flaubert, but Beatrice is my favorite.) She perches, nibbles, CAWrs and preens, all of which would be really weird for a human being but suit a cockatiel perfectly!

The language lab is my new favorite place, although the Ginkgo Gallery might give it a run when I finally get down there. (They have kittens.) CILC, however, has giant Macs, light, air, and cockatiels ... I can (and do!) read my ERes docs with Bea on my shoulder.

Of course, I do have a special bird shirt, which usually goes right in the laundry when I come "home." It's a small price to pay.

If y'all ever do visit Oberlin, come with me to the language lab. Meanwhile, enjoy this adorable picture of Heather and Flaubert:

I guess she goes for the mohawk.

(This is how the situation would have looked if I'd said that.)

Libraries!

I have been here just slightly less than two weeks and I am already in love with the library.

During orientaton, everbody said that we'd never again have the chance to study whatever we like, whenever we like, for credit. We'll also never have such resouces at our fingertips, which sounds a little sarcastic. I say it sincerely, however, having already spent hours in Mudd.

The first resource made available to me was a free library mug, which I haven't used, but looks just lovely on my shelf. The next day I went back and snuggled up with a childhood favorite, Dealing with Dragons. Of course it would have been a little embarrassing to be seen with a kids' book. (Around finals, there is apparently group fingerpainting and naptime for stress relief, but we haven't collectively regressed just yet.) So I found one of the famous Womb Chairs and read until I was done.

Then classes started, and I abandoned Mudd in favor of the bookstore, where I mulled over required books and tallied dollars in my head. Fresh from high school and aghast at the prices, I bought nothing. I knew it would eventually become a problem.

It hasn't - I remembered OHIOlink.

Those of you still in Connecticut (which is all of you so far) are probably familiar with LiON, which (less eponymously than OHIOlink) links all the participating libraries' collections in Connecticut. OHIOlink is like LiON on steroids. It had half of my required poetry books and all of the required books for my first year seminar. It didn't have my textbooks, but Oberlin does have those on reserve, so I might get away without buying a single book this semester - not including, of course, my Aplia card, which I bought directly from Aplia to avoid the book store's fairly weighty sales tax.

It should also be mentioned, before I close this post, that Mudd has 15 iPads which can be checked out for up to three days.

Cue the ooohs.

Writing Samples for Oberlin Blogger Application

Since one post (or even several) is a poor survey of anyone's writing skills, I have included for your convenience a sample of the last academic-personal writing I was called to do, in sophomore year of high school. (Purely academic writing is too dry, and purely personal writing is - well, personal.) It's a series of several vignettes about childhood, plus a reflection. The tone is very different from that of a blog but I'm flexible!

The writing is after this makeshift jump so I won't clutter up the blog.

A Capella at Fairkid Chapel

At noon today I left my seminar and remembered, just in time, about Noontime Sing in Fairchild Chapel. After ducking over to Student Health on my "borrowed" bicycle, I found an unobtrusive entrance to Bosworth Hall and crept - yes, really, crept - down the hall to the chapel. The orientation booklet has been known to get things wrong, and I didn't want to stroll into ... well, I'm not sure what I was afraid of, but I guess I didn't want to stroll into an extremely awkward situation.

Not to fear, however. There was already a cluster of people with Presbyterian hymnals in the first few pews. I recognized Steve and Heather from ECO, the Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin, and was, in fact, wearing a shirt I'd made at their tie-dye social - more on that later, because ECO is a really phenomenal group.

We opened with a hymn and Peter Slowik, the artistic director of Credo, introduced himself and read a brief passage from scripture. The hymns, it's worth mentioning, are not sung "a capella," which only means "in the chapel." Heather did a fabulous job as accompanist on the organ and piano.

The hymns were some of my childhood favorites - popular, joyful tunes, mostly in major - but even for non-church-goers, the melodies are intuitive and of course the notes are right there on the page. The people there are friendly, and it only lasts twenty minutes, from 12:10 to 12:30. Although it is a religious service, everyone is welcome, and it's a break from the inevitable class-study-class-lunch-study pattern our weekdays tend to take.

For a much more thorough treatment of the service and history, read Marsha Lynn Bragg's account of the inaugural A Capella service. But meanwhile, know that there is a great community here in godless Oberlin and I am getting along just fine!

Introductions All Around

So, I just started a blog, and I guess I'm supposed to do an introductory post. I think it's a rule.

My name is Griff, and you've presumably met me, although if you haven't, that's okay too. I go to school at Oberlin College, which is not yet important to my identity (seeing as I've only been here for a week and a half now) but is really very important to this blog. It exists because I am experiencing communication shock, my impromptu name for a syndrome that affects all first-years everywhere: I am communicating just one kind of information to other first-years (classes, how I like my dorm, what I ate for breakfast) and just one kind of information to my parents, girlfriend, and assorted friends (classes, how I like my dorm, what I ate for breakfast).

This is that blog, and if you all want to know how my first year seminar went or why I was late to econ and rode there on a bike with no seat, no brakes and a flat front tire, I expect you to read it.

If this is the third or fourth post by now, don't be perplexed. I probably imported some previous emails verbatim or decided all of you have to know how I spent last Sunday or something like that.

But for now I'll begin right now, on the second day of classes, which is not as suitably momentous as the first day of classes, but will have to do.