farm life

i suppose the only way to start writing again is to write.

i've spent the past week at a sheep farm upstate in genoa, ny. a coworker and her husband own the place. it's also a woolen mill with pre-WWII equipment. this place is just loaded history and cool stuff. sheep, a goat, chickens that try to steal the dog food. a cat with brain damage that is as sweet as can be. oh and chicks! little baby chicks that have to be cared for and checked up on.

we go to diners for breakfast and drive around in a vegetable powered old benz. on memorial day the town of moravia had a parade that had more people following it than in it.

barn swallows with their forked tails are in the barn and lizzy, the dog who protects it all has killed at least two groundhogs and maybe a baby skunk while i've been here. every time she's awfully proud of herself.

one of the sheep is due to lamb any day now and her newborn will add to the boy triplets and a girl lamb named thistle.

i got the idea that i wanted to make ethiopian food and looked online for recipes. you be surprised how limited and awful some of the recipes are. when i looked for ethiopian cookbooks on amazon there was a total of one book. a book that is out of print. so i've pieced together some dishes and any day now the injera will be fully fermented and i'll attempt an ethiopian meal. if i don't fall over dead i'll post here about it.

things are pretty alright. still haven't found out if i'll be going to sea for the summer but hopefully i'll know soon enough. i'll either be spending six weeks in the middle of the pacific or i'll do some timesharing between berkeley and baja. i would love to be in new york for summer, with all its free cool outdoor activities but the heat, humidity and general stink make me miss berkeley all the more.

so we'll see. if my boss is fine with the telecommute then i'll put my stuff in storage, bow out of my month to month lease and live the rent-free life of home and baja.

i get to go to sea!

so i'll be flying out of jfk on wednesday and flying into houston! then we'll, i think, be spending the night in galveston before boarding a launch that will take us out to the langseth which is somewhere off shore. there are then two possibilities. one, on the ship doing 3d seismic stuff until the 17th or two, on the ship doing 3d seismic stuff until the 24th. either way, we'll be on the ship and doing 3d seismic stuff. also checking up on the multibeam bathymetry acquisition.

this should all be pretty cool. that is if i have sea legs and am not puking all over the place. supposedly there is internet aboard the ship (via satellite) and so if anything super cool happens i'll be sure to attempt to blog.

where to begin again

i've felt absolutely no guilt or remorse over dropping this blog that i've told no one about and am pretty sure no one reads. but i've been thinking of writing lately and what is better than the practice of a blog. daily ramblings. no editing. no filter. well, maybe not no filter.

just finished my first week at the new job. yes, a job was finally found months and months after the tortures of temping. working for the marine geology and geophysics department at columbia. helping with archiving and database management. the campus is beautiful, the people are interesting and knowledgeable. and there's a chance that i might go to sea on a research ship. or rather i'd like to go to sea on a research ship and if i can pick up the skills needed i might be able to stow away. at lunch i go on hikes and get too much sun. there is a rose garden where frogs fornicate and goldfish swim. i now know what dog tooth violet leaves look like. the only downside is the commute. about two hours each way it takes up a major portion of the day. on the upside i'm reading a lot more. i just finished running with scissors the other day. might even want to see the movie. those strange memoirs are all the rage these days. i read in the fall that pieces book, and watched as james frey was torn limb from limb. and then a few weeks ago i read the glass castle. very moving and even more so because i could find paralles with my own life. choices my parents made that put us in alternative situations that the mainstream society would look down upon. we chose to see things as freedoms of choice but them might've just been expressions poverty.

currently i'm reading three books, gravity's rainbow (for about five months now and i haven't picked it up in at least three); mansfield park (2nd time), and the memory keeper's daughter. this last one is about a doctor who delivers his twin children on a snowy night only to discover that the daughter has down syndrome. topic close to home the book was lent to me by emhavs who's brother has down's. the novel is set in the late 1960's where thoughts of institutionalization are the status quo and the ideas of equal medical treatment and education were a struggle. it is an interesting read because my mom, when alice was born in 1981, was told she should put her in and institution. when my mom refused they told her all she could do was take her home and love her because she wasn't going to get past the mental age of a two year old.

some of my favorite diane arbus photos are of the women with down syndrome. taken at a time when the developmentally delayed were locked behind closed doors and the women who birthed them were shamed into thinking it was their fault. here are two of her pictures of people with down syndrome. i know it's been said that diane arbus demeaned her subjects with the photographs she took but i truly think photographing what was never seen or locked away and shunned by society empowers. shines a light on what was dark. plus, the attention she paid to them during the photographing and the importance felt by having a picture taken outweighs the people who choose to see the photographs as demeaning.




this is my favorite, made me think of alice. i was just so happy to see them outside and laughing. i believe it was taken in the late 60's early 70's.