Laptops, Lund, Swedish Santa, and a PS3

I just finished my last class of the year.  Yay.  But I will be conducting a field study and writing a really big paper over break.  Boo.  Fieldwork is fun, but big papers over vacation? Not as much.                                              My laptops a, enter, and apostrophe buttons all stopped working yesterday so excuse the grammar.  Why oh why they have to be such useful buttons?  Theres plenty of buttons on my keyboard that i never use.  Mats blames it on the fact that I type really hard when I get excited. I told him that was silly. I mean, its never happened to any of my computers before, and ive always been a passionate typer.  Then I thought again about the usefulness of these particular buttons.  They are all buttons I press a lot so  I probably did play a hand in breaking them intended.  Darn.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     It has really been snowing!                                                                                                                                                                          This is Lena and I after class (which is taught in a castle btw.) This is the Lund Cathedral, built almost 1000 years ago, when Skane was part of Denmark.another campus pic…. hanging out with Santa and the global studies gang in Malmö. This photo marks a big moment for Mats.  Playstation 3 was his (early) Christmas gift to himself.  He is very happy.  I tried playing Uncharted 2 yesterday and felt like all I kept doing was getting lost and trapped in places for long periods of time.  I guess Im just as bad a navigator in the digital world as I am in the reality. The good news is since I end up wandering everywhere BUT the direction Im supposed to go, I end up finding a lot of hidden treasures that speedy Mats leaves behind.

New Things

I’m back to the blog.  It’s been quite a while!

I moved to Lund, Sweden.  Into an awesome little ”penthouse style” apartment a short walk from town.

I started grad school at Lund University and met lots of cool people from more countries than I knew existed.

I started  ”Swedish for Immigrants” night classes, the only place in Sweden where I feel good at Swedish.

I auditioned and was cast in a Spex show (comedic musical theatre variety show, Swedish university tradition) as Condoleeza Rice. …haha, i know.

I joined a University choir

and a club.  and a nation and a union.

I realized in my eagerness to get involved, I had joined too many things. Not unusual for me.  The difference is that this time, I cut back a bit.

And despite the fact that it’s already cold and dark here, I’m really, really  enjoying it.

Now I was going to post some pics of the apartment, lund, new friends, etc. but they’re not on this computer.  Here is a picture I took of Mats on the way to Media Mart instead.  While we were walking, it began to snow first time this year.  See that little white speck on his shoulder?  SNOW FLAKE!!! Pretty exciting, if you’re from South Florida.  More pics to come!

 

 

The Floating Graduate

Things are changing and it feels sooo good.

I’m beginning to relax and recharge before a joyfully action packed summer.

I’ve been feeling an overwhelming desire to be out my element!  I’ve lived in Florida all of my life and can’t wait to try somewhere else.  I want to experience a whole year in seasons!  I want to build a snow man.  I want to order food off of menus with no english words and be surprised at what I’m served!  I want to live in a city where I can do all of my errands by foot or bike.  I want to learn to speak and think in a different language.  Learning foreign words is like learning a whole new way of perceiving the world, especially when the words have absolutely no english equivalent.  It’s so fun how a little thing like ordering pizza in Swedish over the phone can be so thrilling.  I want to make friends with people from everywhere!  It  reminds me of the feeling I’d get as a kid every time our family went some place new.  Whether we were at a hotel, a campsite in the woods, or visiting family friends, the first thing I’d ask my parents is “Can I go explore now?”.  So I guess you could say graduating and moving out of Gainesville is actually making feel sort of like a kid again.  Wide-eyed, curious, akwardly out of my element, and totally ready to explore.  

 

I’ve been taking pictures all week and will definitely post some soon!

Did hell freeze over?

(Brent, Xander, and Mats)

What?  Is that fully clothed Swedish guitar player jamming with two brief cladden American men?  Is this some kind of fluke incident or has this new era of change in America liberated us to the point that the Swedes are looking conservative?

Uncle Mats

Introducing Mats’s niece and nephew: Emil and Elvira.  Mats is a very proud “Morbror” (Uncle). 

Emil likes spiderman, the movie Cars, and being really wild and crazy.  Sometimes when he talks, he likes to through in some English words here and there, which I don’t mind at all!

Elvira enjoys blocks.  She is really smily. 

 

 

*FUN SWEDISH FACT:  In Sweden, uncles, aunts, and grandparents  are called different things depending on whether they’re relatives of the mother or father.  I think that’s pretty cool.  Then you never have to say “Grandpa Eldon and Grandpa Bob”….you just say “Morfar and Farfar”.  And you never have to ask someone :”Is that aunt your dad or mom’s sister?”  The name says it all!

Alcoholic Monkeys

Watch the whole thing. Some of the monkeys get totally hammered.

Cat toilet training CONTEST!!!

I am teaching Penny to use the toilet. 

If all goes as planned, no more little litter box.  YAY

Penny is the smartest, most adaptable cat in the world.  She skipped almost ALL of the traditional “cat potty-training” steps, accomplishing what takes many cats months to learn in GASP…. 2 DAYS!!!!   She is technically already using the toilet with the help of a little training apparatus I made…a  litterbox-toilet hyprid, if you will (there’s a picture of it below).  The cost  to make the kitty trainer-toilet was $1 (the bowl is actually a hanging planter from the doller store- ALL MY NEEDS..!).  Hopefully after this, no more scooping poop and no more buying cat litter.  Sounds awesome… right? 

I LOVE CONTESTS!!!!! (life is really just one big one, right?)   So I’m challenging ANY catowner/cat reading this post to a toilet training contest against me and Penny.  BE AFRAID!!!  (We are 2 days in counting…).  Ready?  On your mark, get set, GO!

  P.S.   I’d stop and think before you teach your cat to flush.  I’ve heard stories of people whose water bills skyrocketed once their cats learned to flush the toilet .  The cats tended to like flushing A LOT… just for the joy of the water spiral around.  (Isn’t that cute?:D)

I AM PENNY HEAR ME ROAR!!!

The Mats look-alike contest!

Since my back has left me bedridden, I thought it would be fun to make a list of every guy that someone has said my  boyfriend Mats looks like (note: there are are more than you think).  Now it’s your turn to be the judge!  You can say a combination of a few…. or you can say none!  Or, if you are really up for a challenge, you can find someone who looks more like Mats than ANY of these guys!  ARE YOU READY?!    LET’S  DO THIS!!

MATS TORGNY PETERSSON   

Here is a reminder of what Mats looks like.  You can refer to this or look at facebook photos.

 

Look-alike #1    Will Makar- American Idol Season 5 contestant  (I believe this was Carrie or Jamie who once alerted my to  this Mats look-alike.)

Look-alike #2    Prince Carl Philip-  The Prince of Sweden.  Maybe it’s their Swedish genes, but I can definitely see a resemblance here.  I’ve actually witnessed a drunk guy in a grocery store in Oskshamn, Sweden get on his knees before Mats and start bowing to him…NO JOKE.  He really thought that Mats was the Prince. Granted he was totally wasted.  Like the Swedish prince would be shopping at an Oskarshamn Hemköp.

Look-alike # 3     Scott Weinger- better known as DJ’s boyfriend Steve on Full House.  One of my college friends told me Mats looks just like him! What do YOU think?

 

Look-alike # 4    Adam Brody-    Let me stop you right there! This one is not me.  This is, however,  the guy who Mats gets told he looks like ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  By girls, by guys, by Swedes, by Americans.  It’s died down after  the OC craziness ran it’s course, but there has been no one that Mats has been told more often that he looks like… and something tells me I don’t think he minds this one:P

 

 

Look-alike #5   Pete Doherty-   This one on the other hand….. I think Mats has mixed feelings about.  Yes, he’s a rockstar, yes he’s dated models…. but you’ve got to admit…he can look pretty strange.  When Mats was doing a photoshoot on Hollywood Beach, FL with his ex-band Debutaunts, a girl actually came up to him thinking he was Pete Doherty.  So Sorry, Mats…you can run from this one!

 

 

Look-alike #6   John Mayer-   Thanks to a comment by a few Lovewell Sweden-ites this summer, Mats has now received this ultimate of compliments.  Mats seriously has a man-crush on this guy. Personally, other than the hair and the fact that he plays guitar, I don’t see this one at all…. especially once Mr. Mayer got a buzz cut and started tanning.  

 

Look-alike #7    Randall Batinkoff-   He was the teenage guy who knocked up Molly Ringwald in “For Keeps”.  He’s also in “School Ties” with Brendan Fraser and Matt Damon.   To warn students of the dangers of premarital sex, my Catholic high school’s religion teacher would show all of his students “For Keeps”.  After seeing this movie, all of my high school girl friends told me that this guy looks exactly like Mats.  I skipped class that day, and believe it or not, have not seen this little gem.  Has anyone (besides the entire Cardinal Gibbons student body) seen this movie?

 

 

Look-alike #8   Kris Allen-  This season of American Idol.  What is it with American Idol these guys?  Maybe it’s a sign…too bad Mats isn’t American.

 

Look-alike # 9   Shane West-    I can see this one a little.  I think it’s the eyebrows and the nose.

 

Look-alike # 10    Bill Heder-    (SNL, Superbad, Pineapple Express, etc.)   This one is my personal favorite.  They don’t look THAT much alike,  but I really like Bill Heder, and my sister says he looks kind of Mats-ish too, so it’s not just me….phew.

 

That is all folks….there can only be so many Mats look-alikes…. or can there?   

A special shout out to the REAL Mats Torgny Petersson for not minding that I do this.    The challenge is still on to find the BEST Mats look-alike…so who do YOU think looks like Mats?

My week of pain. (Physical pain).

The lecture was good. Through the lispy French accent I did manage to learn some interesting things about why it has been easier for Muslims to be accepted in the US than it has in Europe.

But on to this week…..
SUNDAY: Wake up to pee, and on my way to the bathroom and I step on a sharp metal clipboard. It pierces my foot. I yelp. I run to the bathroom, leaving a bloody trail footprints behind me. I get to the bathroom, turn on a light, see the blood everywhere, and suddenly my hearing starts to fade and everything looks blurry. I think, “well great, I think I’m blacking out”. I call for Mats. He gets me paper towels. I wrap up my foot, run back to bed, and pass out. I don’t wake up until morning. Luckily, wonderful Mats cleaned all the blood off the carpet after I passed out.
MONDAY: I wake up to find my foot wrapped up in about 20 feet of paper towels and some scotch tape. I suddenly realize that I had passed out without ever washing my bloody foot. I run to wash my foot and try to remember the last time i had a tetanus shot (recently enough I think?).
TUESDAY: Difficult to walk to class and back because of my clipboard injury, but I make it through. I get home, work for several hours on a powerpoint presentation, attempt to get up for a snack break, and throw my back out. I can’t move an inch. I am bedridden. I yell for Mats.
WEDNESDAY: Wake up having hardly slept. Everytime my body tried to shift positions, I woke up in shocking pain. Like an idiot, I decide to try going to class anyway. I leave 20 minutes early for the bus because the foot/back combo now has me walking slower than Spanky the family dog (15yrs old, blind AND deaf). The bus ride is HORRIBLE; every bumb sends a sharp spasm through my back. I get to bio lab. I sit down like a 99 year old pregnant woman. As the TA speaks, my back slowly starts to stiffen and I slip into a weirdly bent position, as if I’m about to fart. I’m stuck there. Then we are all supposed to stand up and move to lab station 1. I can’t budge. I painfully force myself up. I start to feel woozy (like I did from the clipboard blood). I tell the TA I’m feeling well, call Mats, and pass out #2. Mats found my lying on a patch of grass. I finally get home.
THURSDAY (today): Foot much better, back still a mess. I email my professors telling them I won’t make it to class (not ready to relive yesterday’s nightmare). I lie on my back on the floor (which actually feels better than the bed) and, with my laptob on my stomach, I begin to check my email. Suddenly, I kid you not, a mirror (which is almost my height and hangs on our wall) falls on me. Mats wakes up startled by the crashing sound. Luckily the mirror hasn’t shattered on me. I cry out for Mats yet again. Poor, sweet Mats. He has already done so much for me this week- helped me dress, picked things up so I don’t have to bend, made me food, run errands for me, bought me medicine. Now, on the one day of the week that he actually gets to sleep in, he wakes up to his invalid girlfriend lying on the floor with a giant mirror on top of her.

Now: Thursday, 6:00pm. My back is starting to feel a tiny bit better. I’ve been walking around more. I still can’t believe I actually passed out…twice. I guess it’s the way my body reacted to the severe pain. Again, I have NEVER passed out/fainted from anything else before in my life other than breaking my arm.
The most annoying thing about it all is that for months I’ve been planning a special trip to epcott on Mats’s 24th birthday (this Saturday!!!). But have no fear because NOTHING is going to keep this from happening. I will NOT hurt myself anymore before Saturday, and I my back will be much better by then too.  It will.

Lecture.

I’m on the computer, waiting for a guest professor from Harvard to start her lecture on “Islam and European Secularism”. Her name is Dr. Jocelyne Cesari (yay women Harvard professors!). On the projector screen there’s a giant picture of Central Mosque in Oslo, Norway. I sadly haven’t been to too many guest lectures at UF. I usually only go if there’s extra credit involved. Some can be fascinating. Others can be. well. you can imagine.
I’ll let you know if this one resonates with me.

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

• Thanks to (all of) your encouraging comment(s) (Carrie) I have decided to blog again. OMG.

• Last night I worked a local crew tech load out for a Brad Paisley concert.  Apparently, I’m one of the experienced ones now, so they give me more “important” jobs.  I helped Paisley’s roadies load all of the instruments and equipment into their cases.  The first guitar I held was worth millions!  It was sort of an ugly mustard yellow color, and it had been on the cover of some big guitar magazine.  Eric Clapton used to play it.   I also got to watch the concert from right off stage. He’s a great performer.  Oh and also, roadies are crazy!

• Tonight I have a concert of my own.  I’m in two musical ensembles this semester, Jacare Brazil and Agbedidi Africa.  They will be performing back-to-back in downtown Gainesville tonight.  For Jacare Brazil I’ll be singing five songs in the styles of bossa nova, samba, samba-reggae.  There are only two of us in the group who do not speak Portuguese fluently. Then I’ll change into a traditional African outfit (pictures to come)  and drum ferosiously behind a slew dancers for a REALLY LONG TIME.  In any lineup, Agbedidi Africa always performs last because these African songs can go on forever, especially towards the end, when the entire audience is invited to join in the dancing.  People come up on stage and start having dance-offs, all the while the music keeps going and going and going.  The trick is that after playing for a while it starts to feel like a meditation, and your mind can go anywhere while your body keeps playing variations on the same intricate patterns.  My mind always feels very clear after playing like this.

• I will spend most of this weekend creating my third short film for my film production class and studying for a written exam in Italian Cinema. Reading and writing about films can sometimes feel like dancing about architecture, but this is a particularly hard film class.  My Italian cinema teacher believes we, her upper-level undergraduate students, are the products of a “dumb-down academic system” (…uh oh) and so she raises the bar high above what we believe we are capable (noo!!):  “Many of you may not make it over, but at least you’ll know that you’ve tried.  Not everyone should expect to be an A student.  Everyone can’t be doctors and lawyers.”  She went on to state simply that undergraduate studies are to prove your ability to retain knowledge, while graduate studies are to prove your ability to create knowledge.  She says in order for a good grade in her class, you must prove that you excel at both.  When she speaks, I constantly shift back and forth from understanding and admiring her to completely disagreeing with her.  I have friends who have graduated who say this class is the hardest class they took in college.  I knew all that when I registered for it.  So why, when I have met all of my requirements for my English minor, did I still decide to sign up for this class?  I’ll get back to you on that on that.

• As for the film I have to create this weekend, I have a few blurry ideas.  I’m going to try to do something really different this time.  I think I’m going to use Cassie for this film but I’m trying not to think about it until tomorrow.

• Finally, I am getting super excited to go to Fort Lauderdale in two weeks.  First of all I will be working with some of my favorite people I have in my life.  AWESOME!!!  Secondly, I’ll get to revisit a work of art (that I love so much), make it even better, and then share it with more awesome people! AHHH!! And to top it off I get to meet Obama the kitten!

Oh yeah! I’ve applied for a Swedish visa…..

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that about 2 months ago I applied for a swedish residency permit.  Because I’ve been officially cohabiting with a Swede for 2 years, I should theoretically be eligible for a permanent residency permit.  I’ve been trying not to think about it much because I won’t here back about it for so long.  The thought of being able to legally  move back and forth from Europe to the US as I please, and to accept work/school/ life opportunities both places more easily makes me really excited.  Especially after I read that in a law passed in Sweden to make college education in in Sweden no longer free to foreigners in 2010.  If I want to take advantage of Sweden’s literally priceless policy, I gotta get on that!  

The funny thing is that the decision about my permit could take anhywhere between 4 and 12 months (the average being 6).  Applications for most Swedish graduate programs are in April, BUT for those who will require a student visa (which I won’t if I get the residency permit) have a Febuary due date AND (here’s the catch) proof that you have enough money to live in Sweden for the extent of the degree program (they determine that as 7000 kronor/month).  I do not need to prove that if I’m a Swedish resident, because I could be legally employed there and would qualify for  Swedish loans, grants, etc..  So it all ends up in the hands of fate, whether I receive the residency visa with time to apply to be a student in Sweden.  In the meantime, I’ve been living in the moment, holding the philosophhy that if I’m meant to be a student in Sweden so soon, then the visa will come in time to apply.  If not, it’s because I’m better off, for the first time since I was 4, not being a fulltime student for at least a year after graduation.  Whether I’m in Sweden or the US, and my adventurous side is certainly leaning towards Sweden, I’m sure there’s other great things things I could be doing.  Even if I were working at a Swedish Mc Donalds (not as easy a job to get I hear as one might think) I feel like it would be worth it.  If I moved there, I would experience the changing of the the seasons for the first time in my life, meet so many new people, and (hopefully), learn to understand and speak a different language, and learn to feel at home in an entirely new culture.  Watching Mats do that here has been so amazing.  Hopefully I’d have the time and means to do some traveling around Europe too.  Just after graduating, it seems like the time in my life when I’ll feel the most rootless (for lack of a better word).  Although I don’t think it’s ever really too late, I also feel like the older you get the more and stronger ties you grow to certain people, places, jobs- and the harder it becomes to take the leap and do something different, not knowing the definite consequences.  And what’s so bad about not knowing?

I feel like if I choose to move to Sweden (assuming all goes well with my visa), even if I’m NOT immediately pursuing some sort of graduate degree, I’ll REALLY be learning. 

Summer Heights High is a FUNNY show.

A few days ago while flipping through channels I found Summer Heights High on HBO.  It’s so funny! It’s an Australian show in the mockumentary style of The Office.  It follows a preppy student named Ja’mie, Mr. G the drama teacher, and a troubled prankster Tongan student named Jonah through a semester.  All three are played by Chris Lilley who is also the writer of the show.  If you like Waiting for Guffman, you’ve got to check this out.  There are lots of clips on youtube.  Also check up We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Austrailian of the Year.  Ja’mie is a spin-off character from that show.  It’s definitely good for a few laughs.  Here’s clips of each of the characters.  If you like the one of Ja’mie, you’ve wouldn’t believe what “happens to her” the week before the Australian of the Year finals.

Catching Up.

Time to catch up a little….

KITTY PASSPORT UPDATE # 1     This week I took my cat Penny for her first trip to the vet!  Yes…I’ve had her for three years now.  Call me a bad catmom if you’d like, but she’s always seemed so healthy I’ve never seen a reason to put her through that traumatic vet experience…that is until it dawned on me that kittymight be relocating to Europe in a few months.  So we’ve now officially begun the process of applying for a pet passport (yes, she gets her own passport) .  Luckily a few years back they discontinued the required quarantine (I don’t know what I would do if we had to quarantine her for 6 months).  In order get her through customs, Penny needs a host of vaccinations, blood testing, a microchip inserted into her back, and precautionary deworming.  She’ll also need  two more vet visits before Mats takes her to Sweden the first week in June as well as a trip to the USDA building for the archbishop of vets to quadruple-authorize the paperwork.  That’s all in kitty passport news.

FALL SEMESTER REFLECTION     As of yesterday, I am officially done with first semester of my senior year at UF!  This semester I took some awesome classes, played some fun concerts, and had a film I made screened at at two film festivals downtown.  Next semester, I will be taking it easy with only 10 credits.  This is not my choice, but rather  the fact that I have taken so many classes the last 3 1/2 years that my bright futures scholarship will cut me off if I exceed 10 more.  I think when I graduate I will feel most proud of the fact that I have milked the state of Florida’s college scholarship fund for every penny that I possibly could.  Free education?  Yes, please!  3 of next semester’s 10 credits won’t be a class but independent study.  I’ll be  writing an ethnography about Lovewell’s cultural exchanges  for my honors anthropology thesis. 

MY HAIR     I cut my hair.  It’s short to me, but you can be the judge.

MY INTERVIEW AT THE SWEDISH CONSULATE     Mats and I had our interview at the Swedish Consulate.  As luck would have it, the woman interviewing us had been at a SWEA meeting which Mats and I attended to speak about Lovewell a year ago.  She remembered us and was very interested in Lovewell.  At the end of the interview she had even invited Mats and I to a Swedish Christmas event in ft. lauderdale.  Needless to say, I think we got this one in the bag.

CARRIE UNDERWOOD CONCERT    I’m a little soar from building the stage for Gainesville’s Carrie Underwood concert. She performed her last show of  her tour at the O’Dome on Sunday.  Mats worked the event too.  He said she was much tinier than he thought she would be.  The concert was awesome.  She seems really funny too.  After singing her last song, she came back stage and started doing the chicken dance.  

CHRISTMAS HOMECOMING     Cassie, Mats, and I are heading to Ft. Lauderdale on Friday and Mats is leaving for Sweden on Tuesday to spend Christmas with his family.  We had a blast shopping for Christmas gifts for Mats’s niece and nephew, Emil and baby Elvira.  I wish I could be at two Christmases at once!!!

FRIENDSHIP DOUGH     I went to a Christmas cookie party.  We were all super girlie… baking cookies, chatting, decorating cookies, exchanging cookies…  I was even given something called “friendship dough”.  I had never heard of this before, and to be honest, it seemed a little weird at first.  You’re given a ziplock bag of watery dough.  The yeast causes the stuff inside the bag to grow bigger and bigger.  You have to mush and burp the bag once a day (not kidding), and as it grows, you can put more of it into other bags and give them to your friends.  It shouldn’t be refrigerated because of the yeast.  Then, when you decide to make it into bread you mix it with pudding, flour, and whatever else you want in the bread, and you bake it.  After I received my bag of friendship dough and was told how to take care of it, I asked doughmaster/party host Robyn who had initialy created the dough. She said she had no idea, she only knew that it had  been shared by many friends for a long, long time. That is when it got weird to me.  I now have this dough that could be like.. a decade old… that I’m not supposed to refrigerate but rather mush, burb, grow, and pass on to my friends?  Sounds like something my mom may have heard of so I’m going to check it out with her before I take this any further. Until then I’ll keep mushing and burping my dough bag.

The running bug.

I’m settling into spring semester with work and new classes- I’ve semi-started my honors thesis and am surprised at how much I like my biological anthropology course and lab.   I feel an itch to start writing again, some new songs maybe, or perhaps finishing some old ones, but just haven’t brought myself do to it.  Not sure why, but oddly enough, the only thing I’ve been really motivated to everyday (or almost everyday)  is run!  It started during winter break, when it was too cold to swim.  I never liked running, but I started the couch to 5k program and now I run faster and longer than I ever thought I could!  And when I’m not running,  I’m looking up new stretches or comparing my speed on runners’ blogs.  ….Ummm, who am I?   The great thing about C to 5k is that it starts you off so slowly.  Now I think the only reason I hated running was because I would start by doing too much too fast.  If you’re thinking this is a new kick to get trimmer before the spring, think again.  My monstrous bi(sometimes tri)-weekly pizza/chocolate binges haven’t stopped, in fact, they may have gotten worse since catching the running bug. But what’s motivating me to run isn’t losing weight…. it’s getting better at running.  Maybe that’s another reason why this time, it’s actually working!

The art of science, and the science of art!

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week.”
> – Charles Darwin (as quoted by my biological anthropology professor and UF Anthropology department head Dr. Krigbaum).

One thing that has always irked me about artists, especially those in the performing arts, is the tendency to put down science, or worse, to aproach it as the opposite or art. Scientists I’ve met are sparked by a deep curiosity about the world around them and how it works. They search for truths, for deeper understanding. They share a thirst for originality, new discoveries, and for problem solving. They’re adventurous and creative. Their progressive thinking is often deemed crazy by mainstream society, only to later be praised as relevant, genius, and ahead of it’s time. Scientists are story tellers, constantly creating new, elaborate ideas based on thoughtful observation. Since beginning college, I’ve found my science professors to be no more or less boring, rigid, or close-minded than my music, literature, theatre, of film professors. Somewhat my surprise, one thing I have found is that my science professors generally demonstrate a profound respect for art and for artists during lectures, often blurring preconceived boundaries between what is art and what is science. A good number of my Arts teachers, on the other hand, focus their energy into putting down science and emphasizing the limitations of scientific research as if it were not a creative endeavor, while everything around them from podium, to projector screen, to periodic table, to solar powered pencil sharpener, are testaments to the creativity of people who are sooner be lumped into the category of scientist than artist.
When I see artists, real artists (not those whose sole drive is ego or a dream of making it big), I see a drive that is SO similar to that of a scientist! Natural philosopher, physiologist, inventor and poet Erasmus Darwin greatly influenced his son Charles’ thinking. Yet, unlike his grandson, Erasmus did not explore the far reaches of the globe in search of inspiration and evidence for his evolutionary theory, but rather sat at home, eloquently summing up his own ideas of evolution, biology, the origin of the cosmos, and the connections between scientific and social progress in a series of poems, that’s right, POEMS. I’m not advocating that today’s scientific research should all have structured rhythm and rhyme (although that would be a fun challenge). I just think that many of the same elements that make up a great artist also make a great scientist, and vice versa, and that by making science (or the elements of science such as objective or deductive reasoning) out to be some sort of enemy or antithesis of art is a narrow-minded and outdated view for any so-called artist to hold.

Now, can you believe that today, in 2009, we still have people fighting to keep science teachers from teaching evolution…. and this Erasmus guy had the right idea back in 1802 AND summed it all up in 8 little beautifully simple lines of poetry:

“Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.”

Erasmus Darwin. The Temple of Nature. 1802.

If only my senior thesis could be this short or smart……

My wierd skeleton phase/ Goodbye old friend.

I have a Bio Anthro exam on Thursday. I feel more like writing a song with Mats this week than studying ape dental formulas, but oh well…
I’ve been holding a lot of bones lately- bones of humans and other modern and ancient apes, and it reminded me of the time when I saw my own skeleton…..

When I was about 12 my parents took me to a chiropractor in Key West and she did a full x ray of me-  head to toe! I remember being so weirded out that the skeleton I was looking at was me. Then for a while afterwards, where ever I went I imagined everyone as just skeletons walking around!… like riding bikes or standing in line at the school cafeteria. I remember if a teacher was scolding our class I would just imagine her as a skeleton and then I didn’t really care as much, like “haha you’re just a skeleton”… I guess it worked kind of like the old “just imagine everyone naked” trick when you’re performing or giving a presentation or something. But the skeleton thing really worked for me.

 

some sad news…

The family cat Socks died this past week.  It was his time to go, and he waited until we were all home for spring break.  I’d known him longer than I’ve known my sisters Dorie and Sherie!  I helped my dad dig the grave next to Sock’s favorite tree, and he (dad) told me that I deal with loss a lot like him, by immediately wrapping myself up in some sort of physical activity.   My dad was especially close Socks.  I told dad that I read somewhere that the lifespan of a pet is like the death of an era, so people often grief not only for the pet, but also the loss of what feels the end of a period within their own life.  Dad that  it helped him understand how he was feeling.

Carpet

Carpet.

Itchy and gray.

Such a pain to clean.

Always feels dirty.

A rug that will not move.

Carpet.