im looking at anything between epidemiology, agriculture, infectious disease, and capacity building.
johns hopkins has MPH concentrations in sustainability & health and in infectious disease. they have certificates in community-based health research.
tufts has a dual MPH/MS in nutrition. one of the nutrition concentrations is a MS in agriculture, food, and environment. the MPH concentration could be in epidemiology or general public health or global public health.
ucdavis has a MS or MPH in epidemiology with concentrations in infectious disease and in wildlife epidemiology. they also have a MS in international agricultural development with a number of concentrations, in geography and in plant pathology of interest to me.
yale has a dual MPH/MEM, masters in environmental management.
id say those are the four im looking at right now, leaning towards the dual degrees in epidemiology and agriculture.
i emailed the TLS department @ Bard about ways i can contribute and participate in the community garden. theres also a farm near New Paltz that accepts volunteers and internships, and its only less than a hour away. i also have wednesdays and fridays off next sem, and gardening has always been good stress relief. and exercise.
maybe i should email allen wright about how he got involved in gardening. also, i heard paula kline's name come up at work yesterday. somebody mentioned her name in regards to a Quaker School coalition. funny huh?
im going through about 1-2 books a week depending. istanbul: memories and the city was really fantastic. i hope i can write something like that eventually. i didn't know Pamuk was originally in architecture school before he dropped out to become a writer. his family and friends in Turkey did not approve.
also finished fear of small numbers. and was suprised at how much i enjoyed it. Appadurai is one of the few anthropologists ive read who can actually write for an audience beyond scholars and students.
a bend in the river was also great. i dont read novels enough and i was pleased. took me the round-trip to NYC to finish it, but worth it. had a similar melancholic feel to it as did istanbul. i also picked up and read voices of marrakesh. to be honest, didn't like it. its very short, but thats not the problem. the author was in the city briefly, with literally no knowledge of arabic or berber dialects. as is such, he didnt understand anything that was said to him beyond hand motions, gestures, etc. which are important, but you miss out on a lot. he required on french translation, which must have annoyed people. youd think youd try to learn some of the language. but also, the book just didnt hold my attention. it was a short collection of sketches almost, which usually interests me and my writing style, but not this time. ive also started jaguar smile by rushdie, one of his few nonfiction works about nicaragua. but im getting the same feel for it as i did voices. rushdie at least understands spanish, but hes only in the country for three weeks. not that one shouldnt write about a place unless they go for long periods of time. i like the idea of offering solely a glimpse, but im not sure how well the idea works in practice. so far im getting frustrated with each chapter and feeling i havent really learned anything about nicaragua or the people's point of view, just glimpses of conversation and activity in the town square. its well written, thats for sure. but im having a hard time getting through it.
NYC was great and it was nice to see people again, or to have a social life in general, for that matter. i went to a Bulgarian bar/night club, which was hillarious and typically American-ized eastern european. also went to a nifty chocolate-bar down in St. Marks. also, very proud of myself, i did not get lost on the subway, as usually happens to me. i think im learning...
i also fixed my syllabus for diana & i's tutorial. renamed it to "Participatory democracy, health, and the environment". made three clusters instead of four. a month for each. removed a bunch of readings and added a bunch on participatory environmental management, especially in agriculture and food security/autonomy. i really need to write my participatory democracy essay, ive done all the readings. but diana is also in Brazil, so i don't think punctuality matters in this case.
last night i was tired after work so walked around looking for a calm bar to relax for a few minutes in. i went into one, which was on a roof, and it was busy and crowded and everybody was wearing suits. i left. i found another small sports bar and ordered a whiskey w ginger ale and watched whatever game was playing for a few minutes. then i got a pretentious salad at Cosi's. then it began to rain. so i got an ice cream cone and walked home in the rain. and then i researched plant pathology some more and realized that to get a degree in it, you have to have oodles of undergrad courses in biology. so, there goes that. i dont feel like taking chemistry, organic chemistry, calculus, statistics, biochemistry, genetics, botany, etc.
although i do already have a lot of biology courses: biodiversity, amazon resource management & human ecology, fundamentals in ecosystem ecology, ecology & evolution, biology of infectious disease, ecology of infectious disease, biostatistics. 7. for a minor. so take that, ptretentious graduate school admissions. besides, its not like Bard has the most wonderful depth of courses. expect for economics and literature...
im staying here for the 4th of july and am excited. a few friends will be in the area. were going to explore used bookstores, thrift stores, museums, and the zoo. i have a list printed out and folded in my pocket.
i sumbitted my resume for future whatevers to PATH, a Seattle and DC-based global health organization. they do community-based solutions to health issues such as emerging infectious disease transmission, accesible and easily-usable health technologies and sanitation measures, access to vaccines and basic medicine. their solutions are meant to be sustainable in the communities they work with, socially and culturally appropriate, and of course, empowering to the degree that the community can maintain the processes on their own and hence the NGO will no longer be needed -- ie, sustainable. they seem really cool and somewhat exactly what im looking to do, and they had an option to submit a resume for whenever jobs and internships open up. why not?
i emailed a few professors about coffee and my Watson idea. i got a few useful replies. jeff had some good suggestions about places to go. he works w/ Turkey so i hope that helps. he gave a name or two of people i should get in touch with to learn more and maybe get some contacts. i also emailed alice and she had some good critiques and questions for me to think about. im going to focus on Arabica coffee. you might not be able to see it on the map, but its the red areas and lines. jeff suggested i look into India for consumption -- a big coffe culture is emerging there. if i do Arabica, then i can integrate my desire to travel by boat and follow 16-18th century trade routes.
pre-1400 coffee was grown primarily in Ethiopia. around 1400-1500 traders took coffee plants to Yemen, and from Yemen to India. around 1600 coffee expanded from India to Indonesia, and
during the century the Dutch and Portuguese colonialists took coffee plants West around Africa to Western Europe. where coffee consumption skyrocketed and coffee houses became a big thing, not just as places to relax and get caffinated, but more to exchange ideas. they became mini-universities, in a sense, and were key areas where news, science, and literature grew and were exchanged between professionals. around the 1700s, Europeans began exporting Arabica coffee to be grown at their plantations in Latin America, namely in Costa Rica and Colombia.so, thats where the Watson will take me, it seems. if i get it, ill start in Ethiopia for production, then to India for consumption, then to Indonesia for production, then around Africa to the Netherlands for consumption, then into Turkey for consumption as well, and then to Costa Rica or Colombia for production. along the way, ill be looking at community-building and exchange of knowledge and ideas. as to a social agenda, i want to explore food security and fears of how climate change will impact the coffee enterprise. but only for farmers, but also for consumers as well. agricultural losses impact both local livelihoods of farmers and producers as well as cultures and community centers that in some way, rely on coffee as well. and i think the country choices work really well in a way that will let me link together historical pieces on trade in these areas and on coffee houses and on the inequality in production. maybe i can even get a book out of it. but it would teach me a lot about agriculture, community, food anthropology, food security, international trade, and, yes, let me be on a boat.
i havent shaved in over a week.
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