da Amazônia e mais

epiphanies that freeze in your mind

2010-02-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

E.M., my writing professor, just sat me down in her office after class. she told me i was brilliant, service-oriented, and a have a gift for writing. but that if i live to serve others, if i keep trying so hard to please other people and what they would like, i will wake up at age 45 and ask "what the fuck happened?"

to which i replied, ive been struggling with it for a while. and then mentioned these three quotes from the narrator of Baron in the Trees:

"This he understood: that association renders men stronger and brings out each person’s best gifts, and gives a joy which is rarely to be had by keeping to oneself, the joy of realizing how many honest decent capable people there are for whom it is worth giving one’s best (while living just for oneself very often the opposite happens, of seeing people’s other side, the side which makes one keep one’s hand always on the hilt of one’s sword)"

"There can be no love if one does not remain oneself with all one’s strength"

"I follow the news, read books, but they befuddle me. What he meant to say is not there, for he understood something else, something that was all embracing, and he could not say it in words but only by living as he did. Only by being so frankly himself as he was till his death could he give something to all men"

E.M. then told me that this division i have in my mind, between what i might really want and what others might want for me, is false, an illusion. and that if i look into my own Quaker faith, ill find that it is only by following my own desire and self that i can best serve the world.

as i read in an anonymous quote a while back in time, back in Amazonia, something along the lines of, "don't do what you think the world needs. do something that makes you come alive, because that's exactly what the world needs"

its now a year after i came back and grew from that trip, and i dont know how to snap out of this cycle of juggling desire. why is it so hard? do i think i wouldn't be good enough? is there just too much im interested in to narrow down?

i love my ethnographic fiction class (not so much my nature writing course). i dont think of myself as a fiction person, but maybe its traditional novels that i dont care for. but i loved invisible cities, i loved the emperor, things that play with structure and how a novel might read. hell, i really liked V.K.'s timothy, notes of an abject reptile, and i dont even know what genre you'd place it in. maybe that's part of it. not liking to be placed.

i think im afraid of settling somewhere, feeling tied and trapped.

2010-02-23T17:54:00.001-08:00

doing good things. im writing a collection of short vignettes, in the spirit of Ryszard Kapuscinksi's The Emperor, about Henry Walter Bates, a 19th century amateur entomologist who traveled on a four year expedition to Amazonia to collect insect specimens. im writing from his own notebook, published as Naturalist on the River Amazons, from the perspective of those around him, his assistants, residents of Para state, workers on his ship, etc. its fiction, but ethnographically based:

J. S. :

Took us a month to cross from Liverpool. I kept the stoves below deck going hot. Two of my mates down there got scurvy, but in a month we arrived in Pará state. Across the Atlantic, a long way from England, but the naturalists needed to come here, to get specimens. The Mischief needed more hands, and a job's a job, eh? Better than working the mines.

Our first stop was a small jesuit village off the coast. Too hot and humid, made the stoves and the mines seem fair. Those two, the scientists I mean, they began talking to the natives, using their translator, asking about insects. The next day we sailed up the river, finally arriving in that port city, Belém. We helped carry some of their things to the house, passing the merchants and shanty dwellings. I remember the one, the younger one, early twenties, the way he eyed those dark skinned women as we passed by. But then again, there were more than enough plants growing around the place to keep him occupied.

on another note, i was brainstorming and decided to list my top classes ive taken at Bard, in terms of how much ive taken out of them. it was surprisingly easy to generate a list.

ecology of infectious disease

photography, history & news

writing the world

ethnographic fiction

political ecology and poetics

the gift of literature

hooke's micrographia

history of technology of economics

biology of infectious disease

doing so gives a good idea of what interests me now, and the direction i am trying to create for myself right now. i once said to somebody that i wanted to write, and hemmingway said to write what you know, and that im never going to content with what i know in any given moment. always wanting more, learning more, expanding. and so i didnt become a writing major. and i dont immediately want to write. i want experience, outside of academy, outside of programs. i want to travel. i want to experience mundane detail. i want to work and toil for some time. i want something to torture me in the back of my mind so much that i know i need to follow it. i want to go back to brazil, i want to do work in global health, i want to keep interviewing about Lyme disease and organize support groups, i want to mediate conflicting opinions and stances. i want to learn poetics, i want to explore the microcosm. and extrapolate.

today my adviser made a point to remind me of the shift in ethnography: away from order and "making sense," and embracing the realism of chaos in form. i keep it in mind both for senior project (with which i feel a heavy obligation, in the motivational sense, for this group with which i am working) and for my fiction-nonfiction hybrid writing i hope to do.

if you took ryszard kapuscinksi's the emperor, italo calvino's invisible cities, and deniel defoe's journal of the plague year and combined them, i think it gives some image of what id like to do. its not fiction. but its playing with fact to accomplish something while still conjuring representation of some kind. one of the greatest lessons i've teased from anthropology and ethnography is that all writing is a fiction of sorts: all texts include and exclude, omit something, order information. there is no completely objective recording of reality. social scientists refer to this as the politics of representation, and throughout 4 years of anthropology and history classes, its the one thing that has held my interest. i think some fiction represents better than nonfiction. the hungry tide by amitav ghosh may be one example, the brothers by milton hatoum might be another.

im eager to see where next year takes me. each step forward i take better shows me what will or will not make me happy and grow.

2010-01-25T19:44:00.001-08:00

to begin, id like to renew this year by saying that the livejournal/personal bemoaning phase of this blog's life cycle is ready to come to a close.

i believe that every once in a while, we all need-no, deserve--to be told we are doing a good job. i think we look past, on a daily level, the strength it takes to live and be content. to be appreciated. and often, sadly, it takes a sad thing to force us to remember the credit we all deserve for living. i have been reading through my old posts in this blog--mostly self-absorbed, focused on advancement--and i stumbled back upon an old quote that inspired me in my last fall. of how the world doesnt need saving. doesnt need people to do what they think will help it. the world needs people who come alive. and we should all do that.

vonnegut had a similar one about writing, about how it confirms our existence. shows us that we are not alone. and too often, we feel alone. i dont think all the policies in the world can confirm the same sensation of an intimate connection. that when i read a certain passage in a prose piece, when i have a wonderful conversation on the train, when i sit in content silence with friends at night, i know my presence in appreciated, desired, and necessary to the better of the whole. and that the same is true for each person, each piece of art, each moment. and it is so easy--so very easy--to be blinded of this simple fact by the everyday pressures of our lives. of school, of our own desire to grow, of finance, of a future. but if we can just be shown through the smallest of daily gestures--the holding of a hand, a smile, a thank you, a thats right--then maybe we will be ok. sometimes i feel, we just need to be reminded.

reminding myself too. trying to rekindle memories like charcoal is of no use to anyone. the fragments contained in the past entries are frozen in time. too much has past since, and it would be silly to assume that they are still relatable to the contemporary. the best thing to do is to begin writing, details of not only my personal thoughts of the self, but of social observation. nature. what have you. the importance is in the don juan quote below. dwelling only on yourself becomes taxing and creates a fatigue that cannot be easily dismissed nor cured. the only remedy to the mental impass i have come across, the feeling of overflow and barriers, is to halt this obsession with me my feelings and my future and direct my attention to the places and people that inspire me. not to call myself selfish, because it isnt a case of that. but that there is so much of this world better to engage with than my own questions of what to make of my own life. a year ago i had complete confidence in that everything works out fine, one way or another. im not sure i buy it to the same extent i did then, but i remain steady in seeing it as a central tenant to who i am. i need to nurture my own soul, and that will not happen through dwelling, always dwelling. time for action instead, and i need to make clear that i better acknowledge those around me and improve my ability to record--for myself and my own expression--those things that make this all worth while.

this post is far more optimistic than it seems, only coming in at a moment of somber reflection and the feeling of reaching a mental limit.

goodnight

2009-07-15T20:21:00.001-07:00

"you are not used to this kind of life; therefore the indications bypass you. yet you are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. you dwell upon yourself too much. that's the trouble. and that produces a terrible fatigue."

"but what else can anyone do, don Juan?"

"seek and see the marvels all around you. you will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else"

-- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Carlos Castaneda

cant i just farm for a while?

2009-07-12T18:34:00.001-07:00

i went to do important things at the capitol too.

and this one because its funny. i really want this kind of leather jacket. but alas. fail.

Travels With Herodotus

2009-07-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

my own copy of Travels With Herodotus has a crease in the middle from ample time folded in my left back-pocket of my navy-blue skinny jeans. it is a book just large enough to fit in one such pocket. having been with me when I experienced one of Washington D.C.'s more dramatic storms this summer, it also bares the mark of water damage -- so much so that the blue of the jean material has rubbed off along the book's spine and page edges.

and yet, I feel that is how Ryszard Kapuscinksi, its author, would have preferred it to be. the polish journalist, who passed away in january of 2007, spent his working life writing reportage of the third world for the Polish Press Agency. his pieces tended to fall more towards the literary side of reportage rather than on the technical and objective edge. commentators often note how his pieces read more like novels than journalistic material. but Kapuscinski was always a writer of experience rather than the nitty gritty, finding ways to grab hold of something everyday and extrapolate it into its wider meanings.

which is what Travels most notably does. its 275 pages are an odd mix of reportage, autobiography, and ancient greek history -- something that would seem to not make sense. Travels is Kapuscinski's attempt, and his last piece at that, to draw out an overview of his years abroad, the people he met, the places he saw, but ultimately, how he felt and what drew him to each. above all, the book is a glimpse into why we travel, why we move. he sums it up best in the following lines, which alone were enough to keep me reading:

"I wondered what ones experiences when one crosses the border. What does one feel? What does one think? It must be a moment of great emotion, agitation, tension. What is it like, on the other side? It must certainly be -- different. But what does 'different' mean? What does it look like? What does it resemble? Maybe it resembles nothing that I know, and thus is inconcievable, unimaginable? And so my greatest desire, which gave me no peace, which tormented and tantalized me, was actually quite modest: I wanted one thing only -- the moment, the act, the simple fact of crossing the border."

mmhmm

2009-07-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

The District

2009-07-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

c

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/07/monkeys-verbal-skills.html
an excerpt...

"Cotton-top tamarin monkeys may look like little fluff balls, but these primates are not lightweights when it comes to learning at least one basic component of language. A new study found that these monkeys can tell the difference between prefixes and suffixes.

The discovery, reported in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters, suggests non-human primates, and possibly many other animals, share some skills associated with human language."

based on things i like reading, and what im doing in this internship, and how much i like reading Scientific American and Discovery News, im thinking maybe of going into science writing. not science journalism (although thats a part of it), but writing about public health, nature, and culture. that could be cool. MIT has a really good one year program.

2009-07-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

sometimes that feels like life.

im sick and dont know how that happened. im sitting here at work sneezing uncontrollably.
i woke up at 5 am today. dont know why either. i slept in my bed for the first time in weeks -- ive been sleeping on my couch usually because it reminds me of sleeping in a hammock and i like that.

i went to a hearing at Capitol Hill today on reinstating the Superfund tax. it was enjoyable. half of it was on background to Superfund and Love Canal so i was suprised how well informed i am. Lois spoke on the issue of hurricane and weather risks in relation to Superfund sites, something i hadnt put much thought into before.

her sister, who lives in Montana, gave a talk on mining in the region and the need to have a Superfund tax. a scientist from Portland's port authority gave his own pitch on the difficulties in reinstating Superfund when you dont have a single polluter and chemical to target -- such as, when, you have a port that has had 100 years of come-and-go industrial activity, with a wide range of toxic exposure.

but the speakers pointed to the need for the tax. Obama has outlined the importance of Superfund in his budget, but pushed it to the 2011 agenda. Gibbs and the others agreed that the time is now, more than ever, to push the bill forward. without the tax, it is impossible to clean up the thousands of thousands of sites across the country. Gibbs touted the "pizza" concept: for evert $10,000 of profit an industry makes, only $12 goes to Superfund cleanup if the bill is reinstated and financed through the federal government -- the price of a large pizza. also, without the legal tax, cleanup funds must come from taxpayers, all 100% of it. which is, unmistakably, unethical -- ask people suffering from cancer clusters, birth defects, and misscarriages to pay their own money to clean up an industry's pollutants = wrong.

port authority man made another good point -- for the EPA to do Superfund cleanup, they must take $s out of other environmental research agendas like global warming, infectious disease, etc. things that are important, in other words, get reduced funding for common-good issues because the government wont push polluters to pay.

in short, Superfund should be reinstated. Lois gave a quick memory from when Pres. Carter visited Love Canal to announce the evacuation of the 900 families there -- when Carter came, he told Lois that "there will never be another Love Canal." they were going to made a federal fund, a super fund, he told her, to make sure that people without financial resources wouldnt have to be ignored by the government. and yet thirty years later, sites still exist, now at more risk than ever due to climate change.

did i mention that all an industry has to do is declare bankrupcy to avoid Superfund taxes?

what else...

tomorrow i am voltar-ing to the Capitol Visitor Center once again with Stephen to go to a reception for the new director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. should be awesome. i get to shake hands and be known as "Dan the Intern". in fact, today I lent my laptop to the congressman's aide for his powerpoint presentation. only, my computer sucks and freaked out and didn't work, as usual. it wasn't too embarrasing. i managed to make my desktop pretty clear. except for a jpeg called "coffee", which is a map of coffee trade i posted earlier. which Lois and the port authority guys found hillarious. but then i helped out with technical difficulties the best i could, mad respect.

im incredibly exhausted but will be going into adams morgan tonight to relax with some people i met last week and went to fireworks with. i showed them Kramer's Books in Dupont Circle, where we had some pretty good veggie pizza and an awesome brownie sunday. i was tempted to buy an Irish Coffee because they are like crack and all, but $7 is pretty hefty.

oh and i went food shopping, if you can call it that at the 7/11, and bought mango, bread, milk, rasin bran, and 2 hard boiled eggs. the eggs come with a salt and pepper packet. which to me is exciting. this sunday i am going to the farmer's market in dupont circle and loading up on a weeks worth of actual produce. which is cheaper than the 7/11. and maybe find out if i can do some volunteer work at a farm nearby. i emailed Paul from the TLS department at Bard about working there or volunteering or i dont really care what next year, but, as the last time i emailed him, he didnt get back to me yet.

in Janurary Orion Magazine, this amazing collection of writings about place/nature/culture, accepts submissions on practically anything related to science, nature, agriculture, sustainability. my aim is to submitt a piece.

also thinking of starting doing something more productive on this blog than just writing about my life. seems somewhat egotistical. since all i do is read non-fiction now, im going to start posting book reviews. maybe ill also put them on Amazon.com, but ill start here and see what kind of feedback i get. that's a hint for leave feedback when i post a review.

within the week ill write one for John McPhee's Pine Barrens. im in the middle of Jan Morris's Trieste - and the meaning on nowhere, her reflection on her city, Trieste, which lies along the Adriatic coast to the very east in Italy. much like Pamuk's Istanbul, it seems to be about the legacy and experience of a city whose identity is very much now a memory, whose past is its only glory in the midst of empire, and who now, like its inhabitants, finds itself a liminal entity, betwixt and between, belonging-as Morris's title puts it-nowhere. although unlike the city of Istanbul, poised between East and West, Morris's Trieste "belongs" somewhere between the past glory of the Hapsburg Empire, the development of Western Europe, and the now diminished Eastern Europe. a place within Europe, but outside of it. its prose is slightly awkward at times, but of course i like the concept and its a good read.

one more.

2009-07-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

i find this crite-sheet to be hillarious.

"Solid student. Consistently high quality work. Good understanding of the material. Quiet in class, but did well engaging with his group."

im glad my biology professor had enough time to write full sentences. oh wait..

tomorrow for work i get to go to a Superfund hearing on Capitol Hill.

because im bored and falling asleep as i update this web site for work

2009-07-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

i frantically emailed my writing professor about career advice and such based on what he knows of my interests and my writing thus far.

meh!

legumes and risk assessment

2009-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

compiling epidemiologic studies on solid waste incinerators. waiting for my boss to give me feedback on my fact pack suggestions. slightly bored at work. so im researching graduate schools instead. figures.

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.

Strawberry Fields Forever (Take 1)

2009-06-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right.
That is I think it's not too bad.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Always no sometimes think it's me, but you know I know when it's a dream.
I think, er No, I mean, er Yes but it's all wrong.
That is I think I disagree.

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

i think or at least feel as if im coming into my own, somewhat. i think im falling for language and attempting to express myself constantly. ive taken a liking to memoirs and memory and recounting memory shaping it through a place.

i think i might ask my professor from my cultural technologies of memory class to do a tutorial in the spring on memoir and anthropology. how cool.

struggling. do you do what a part of you is passionate about but you have little actual experience with, or do you go with that burning in your heart? epidemiology and public health consulting seem wonderful and practical. but so does doing my all to become a writer. then again, one can do both, can't we?

i dont like long books and treatises. i like them pocket sized. whats the point of a book that wont fit in your back pocket? you cant exactly take it around with you if its not. i think books should be about moving and traveling. they should be mobile and portable. i dont like carrying a backpack around the city.

cities cities and cities. read invisible cities by calvino in a day. the metro system was made for book readers. in fact, i read the most when im moving, on the train, on the bus, on the boat. its when i sit in my room that i read the least.

why must i always be going somewhere? its as if im afraid to be still.

working through arjun appadurai's fear of small numbers. hes an anthropologist but one of the few whose writings flow rather easily. and ive liked his other writings. they always make me ponder.

today i picked up copies of orphan pamuk's istanbul: memories and the city and v. s. naipaul's a bend in the river. im reading pamuk's now. its excellent. memories are fascinating things, especially good reflections on them.

its funny how i dont write about my internship at all.

i like it enough, but when it comes down to it, i dont feel like explaining it. im updating fact packs on environmental health hazards & summarizing and synthesizing full cost accounting reports.

gross, those two words sound awful to say out loud.

maybe its just that activism can be a little frustrating? mind games and manipulation. mostly of images. maybe its just me. but why the obsession with children's faces as a tool to get support and donations?

chej is a strong organization. i like the organizing and technical assistance component and am proud to be a part of it. im looking forward to helping write summaries of successful environmental health struggles around the country for the "action line" component of our publication, everyone's backyard. but im not huge on most of the nation-wide campaigns we run. BE SAFE, the campaign for precautionary and prevention action around things like hazardous waste and improper use of toxins before they are released to the public (what i am doing the full cost accounting for) is useful and important, i think. but the green schools and pvc campaign i just can't really get into. i know its important, toxic shower curtains and children's toys and baby bottles and all. its just not my thing really. really.

im hoping that eventually i get to go to one or two or more of these conferences that stephen, my boss, goes to. thats what id really like to do. see how you explain the science and technical stuff and use it to organize public opinion. maybe soon. either way this will be a good experience. every day is at least somewhat different.

ive been thinking about the watson. im making a list of professors at bard to email this weekend. about their area of specialty. any good resources. potential contacts.

right now im thinking...

production:
colombia
indonesia
ethiopia/angola

consumption:
turkey
greece/italy
morocco/portugal

ive love to spend a year traveling by sea, train. playing checkers and chess. smoking hookah and talking politics & philosophy. working in fields of coffee beans. fair trade. local culture. feeling the breeze. moving.

all those things i never shut up about.

im in a good mood. you'd think a weekend with nothing to do or nobody to see might be dull. but its nice in its own way.

speaking off, im off for more coffee and reading. im wearing my jean shorts right now. love it.

2009-06-15T15:56:00.001-07:00

ive decided.

im going to be a damn good writer. im going through a new book every couple days it seems. today i was bored at work so i made a four page long reading list. public health will make a good profession-but writing nonfiction should always be in there. my friend Ups' sister works in the public health field and does international health consulting and workshops in mostly rural areas. ive decided consulting and assistance is really what i want to do. something botton up. my superviser does that, science and technical assistance. holds workshops and presentations to town hall meetings, consults via phone and email. helps interpret technical documents.

but he says that the organizing and the politics always comes above the science. the science can strengthen your argument and give some sharp evidence, but in the end its the organizing that matters.

im collecting narratives of health workers and of impacted bodies and impacted landscapes and will try and start shaping some narrative of a senior project. ive been researching dioxin through and ecosystem ecology lens in Alaska and Canada and Siberia. dioxin gets absorbed by plantkon and such, which, following the food webs and trophic interactions penetrates into the diet and collective body of fish, into seals, into whales, into birds. the ecosystem becomes saturated with dioxin. humans too, native communities that still rely on traditional food supplies of seal and whale blubber not only for diet but also for cultural legacy. and then dioxin penetrates too into their fatty tissue, into breasts, into breastmilk, contaminating the bodies of newborns and generations to come. its the landscape and the physical bodies that become toxic. its the fish, the birds, the water, the flora, the fauna, the social, tudo.

i have two classes on ecosystem ecology and too many on anthropology and so it seems to be a topic close enough to home. close indeed. studies warn not to drink non-organic milk or meat products due to the presence of dioxin. all this talk is making me think of becoming a vegetarian again. if not just for the reason Antonetta asks, "What does my body consist of?"

good question.

but so im trying to read more memoirs-that-present-themselves-in-context-of-the-landscapes-and-time. again, i have a list. its too long. but i cant get enough of it.

ok ok now enough. ive already read 1/2 of Invisible Cities by Calvino today. time to finish the rest on the porch downstairs.

2009-06-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

soon ill update this.

my internship is. i research environmental health problems for communities and groups that apply to CHEJ for assistance. i help gather information into fact packs, which we then distribute to help in the understanding of the problem. my job currently consists of finding new medical studies, articles of interest, or policy updates. but more on this later. theres much more ill be doing. such as GIS mapping.

gone to the zoo.

met some of Dana's friends from American U.

might start doing Krav Maga.

spend a lot of time at Tryst, an excellent bar/coffee shop/lounge where i go to grab a Guiness w/ expresso (a Dufrain) and read a book or work on my tutorial, which i am far behind on.

the bulk of my time is spend wandering to parks, getting something nice to eat and drink, and reading. ive read 3 books so far and am constantly hungry for more. im starting another Calvino tomorrow. i love reading on the Metro.

i feel torn between wanting to do grassroots/bottom-up public health work and desperately wanting to be a writer like Chatwin or Kapuscinski or Orwell and write about the human condition. anthropological and ethnographic, but not anthropology or ethnography. its funny. a whole discipline set up around writing on the human condition and everyday life, but by a group who, far and wide, are not good writers. for it takes a lot of talent to sucessfully portray the magic of daily life and the condition. The Road to Wigan Pier was so great.

so heres some more, adapted from my amazon.com wishlist. just to add to the others, just because.

Birds Without Wings
by Louis de Bernières

Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov

Desierto: Memories of the Future (Paperback)
by Charles Bowden

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
by James Agee

Stranger in the Village of the Sick: A Memoir of Cancer, Sorcery, and Healing
by Paul Stoller

A Field Guide to Getting Lost
by Rebecca Solnit

Lines: A Brief History
by Tim Ingold

My Life as an Explorer
by Sven Hedin

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
by Peter Godwin

The Great Railway Bazaar
by Paul Theroux

The Soul of the Rhino
by Hemanta Mishra

Spider's House: A Novel
by Paul Bowles

The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit
by Elias Canetti

i realize its ideas of the body, place, and memory that get to me, for the best writing i enjoy to read. the experience of remembering being, physically, in a space and place.

i think i will incorperate this into my senior project. Body Toxic was inspiring to read as a piece of literature but as social commentary and i think something like that...

the used bookstore in adams morgan will be a good place to start. all this reading makes me inspired, to be honest. its a nice break from everything else, even if it does lead to me being a bit anti social. but theres always the good conversations in parks with strangers.

hope for humanity.

on travel and time--and the invisible

2009-05-27T18:14:00.001-07:00

The Tree Where Man Was Born
by Peter Matthiessen

Dispatches
by Michael Herr

In Patagonia
by Bruce Chatwin

The Travels of Ibn Battutah
by Ibn Battutah

Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff
by Rosemary Mahoney

The Shadow of the Sun
by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Regarding the Pain of Others
by Susan Sontag

A Golden Age: A Novel
by Tahmima Anam

The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell

Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino

The Plague
by Albert Camus

Folding Paper Cranes: An Atomic Memoir
by Leonard Bird

over / done

2009-05-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

driving away from bard never felt so good.

im sunburnt, read The Gift again, ran, do pushups.

the semester is over and all the things along with it.

i want to be my own person again. put the pieces back together.

spend time knowing myself, being myself. being ok with fragments.

ill miss friends but know that starting next year afresh will be what is needed.

its about doing the best at what i do. what that is i dont know yet.

but its time to see people again, time to relax, time to pretend, time to be.

and i deserve it.

2009-05-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

lets re-do

i am almost finished my paper.

i am going to get a haircut.

go for a run outside.

go to the waterfall.

go out to dinner with friends one last time.

pack.

go to the tent party.

wake up and pack.

and maybe even just leave saturday.

i have to get out of here. this shitty awful semester just keeps going. not at all how i wanted it to turn out. things happened. it all pulled through. now is what it is. summer looms so close in the yet distance. i can't wait to just get away and be on my own again. im tired of sarcasm, cynicism, pessimism, and jadedness. the weathers great, i can't wait to be back with westtown kids for a week and just randomly go to a creek. or just drive somewhere. i miss the random play of it all. i miss things and people feeling real, not covered up by layers of jokes and weird acts. it'll feel good to just be me again in the process.

i don't know what the fucked happened this semester. but im glad its coming to an end.

putting the fragments and pieces back together

2009-05-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

Toni Morrison's Beloved.

"me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. we need some kind of tomorrow"

"she gather me, man. the pieces i am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."

powerful quotes.

fragments of memory

2009-05-12T08:44:00.001-07:00

life in Jau National Park

artisans outside of Manaus

Manaus Opera House

traditional pottery in Belem

fruit vendor in Belem

Eldorado do Carajs massacre memorial

made of local wood

river travel to mangrove forest

from Curuca

Praca da Republica

2009-05-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

when things like this happen, it makes and forces you to realize how precious life is, in an everyday sense. live for those you love, appreciate the moment, and protect what is important to you. ive forgotten that since being back here. i wont any more.

PA-150

2009-05-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Dan Becker

May 5 2009

PA-150 takes you from the start of the Tocantins River to the south of Pará, the second largest state in Brazil. The section of the Transamazon highway goes for thousands of kilometers, at least an eight-hour drive-and that's only to the expanding urban city of Marabá. Along the way south, you’ll note the gradual disappearance of forest, of familiar açaí palms, of the typical river traders so common in northern Amazonia. Squatter settlements, cattle ranches, and logging regimes replace these typical images, the contrast becoming more unavoidable as you travel red dirt roads. Each small town and roadside community along the route smells of rubber, fire, and churrascos, the Brazilian standard for a meal of various meats grilled on skewers. Pass through enough towns and eventually you'll reach a fork at PA-257. You’re almost at the very south of Pará state.

Right before you start on PA-257 you'll drive by a roadside memorial, a scar from Brazil's developmental project of the 1960's and 1970's-"land without people for people without land", that was the governmental slogan of the time. Fueled by paranoia over Western economic dominance, President Medici's regime initiated the construction of massive industrial projects throughout the southern Amazonia, converting lush forests into productive mechanical landscapes. The land had no people, after all. An influx of hydroelectric dams, railroads and highways, and immigrant labor settlements from the South of Brazil arrived to feed the demands of the development project that rhetoric stated to propel the country into greatness. Construction and their floods sacrificed agricultural fields and numerous small towns. Some populations were given warnings to evacuate, others were not, their legacies now faintly surviving in the dozens of social movements for justice in the region. The largest of these dams, Tucurui along the Tocantins, powers the Great Carajás Project, just west of PA-257 and the city of Paruapebas.

Carajás is the largest mining site in the world. In 1967, a United States Steel Company helicopter flew over the region and, low on fuel, made a forced landing-to their luck they found a mineral reserve containing concentrations of iron up to 66 percent. Not willing to allow a Western company control over such wealth and power, the Brazilian government pushed the majority of shares into the hands of the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, now known as VALE throughout Pará and its neighboring states. In 1985, VALE obtained complete control of the mineral deposit and began extraction of the 1.5 billion tons of iron ore within.

And like any other hole in the earth it sucks in and consumes. In this case, consumes labor and bodies. The Project pays low wages to the landless poor , the same workers who it's creation and production displaces and limits. It is not as if there have been no reactions though. The name of the roadside memorial you passed on the way to the collosus from PA-150 is known as Eldorado dos Carajás. On April 17th, 1996, the state military police murdered nineteen landless agricultural workers who engaged in the continual and daily struggle to obtain a better livelihood for their families. They were members of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, the Landless Workers Movement, the largest social movement in Latin America, to which its members fight for their right to productive land. Visitors stop and lay flowers at the base of the memorial, itself crafted out of nineteen wooden logs from fauna typical of the region.

According to Brazilian law, land must meet a "productive and adequate use" standard. The MST identifies unproductive rural land that is not meeting the ordained "social function" and occupies the tract. Through struggle, eventually some settlements become recognized for their land use, and the residents will begin to establish schools, plantations and agricultural fields, community centers, medical shops. Eventually, small towns are born. The process repeats itself until some justice comes into existence, but at the price of great suffering and loss-the South of the state is one of the most bloody and violent in the nation.

Upon our roadside stop I didn't have flowers for the memorial, only my eyes. To say I can honestly comprehend the struggle and the suffering would be offense and insult. Even for a Paranaense in the state's capital of Belém, the concept that lies at the memorial and the nineteen names it lists is foreign-for an outsider like myself, even more so. All the same, I wish I had had flowers, something at all besides silence to acknowledge what eyes recognize.

write

2009-05-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

INFP

While they are usually quietly adaptable, INFP's may dig in their heels when something threatens their important personal values and defend their values eloquently in writing. These warm, serious, insightful people love new ideas, especially if they can see the benefits for people. As such, they can do a great job on the company newsletter. INFP's are perfectionists in ideals. Their career path often takes them to the non-profit world because they work for more than tangible rewards.

Below are some of the advantages and challenges INFP's face when writing:

Strengths

Challenges

Often find wonderful, unique phrasing to paint a picture with words.

Excellent writers on themes with human interest.

Good at building bridges between different work groups.

Rewrites are no problem— often love to revise.

Writing tends to be lengthy and they fall in love with the words.

May assume readers know more than they do or agree with theses.

Because they empathize so strongly with others, may soften the message too much.

They can always find a more clever phrasing, so may have trouble letting go.

apparently i should be a writer and work for non-profits connecting different people, consulting, and helping bridge differences. thanks psychology for summing me up in a ten minute quiz.

no but really. it all makes a lot of sense. 1% of the population. makes sense i always feel pretty alone and selfless. i am.

this is facinating to read about

2009-05-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Characteristics of INFPs

Myers-Briggs description

According to Myers-Briggs,^[11] INFPs focus much of their energy on an inner world dominated by intense feeling and deeply held ethics. They seek an external life that is in keeping with these values. Loyal to the people and causes important to them, INFPs can quickly spot opportunities to implement their ideals. They are curious to understand those around them, and so are accepting and flexible except when their values are threatened.

Keirsey description

According to Keirsey,^[12] the tranquil and reserved exterior of the INFP masks a passionate inner life. Healers care deeply about causes that interest them and they often pursue those causes with selfless devotion.

Occurring in only about one percent of the population, Healers can easily feel isolated. They value harmony and integrity in human relationships, seeking unity of mind, body, and spirit but often find these values to be out of step with the more concrete pursuits of the rest of the world. Feeling "different," they may wonder whether something is wrong with them. But those differences—an ethical nature, a devotion to ideals, a commitment to harmonious interaction—are in fact some of their greatest strengths.

Other descriptions

The polite, reserved exterior of INFPs can at first make them difficult to get to know. They enjoy conversation, however, taking particular delight in the unusual. When INFPs are in a sociable mood, their humor and charm shine through. Disposed to like people and to avoid conflict, INFPs tend to make pleasant company.

Devoted to those in their inner circle, INFPs guard the emotional well-being of others, consoling those in distress. Guided by their desire for harmony, INFPs prefer to be flexible unless their ethics are violated. Then, they become passionate advocates for their beliefs. They are often able to sway the opinions of others through tact, diplomacy, and an ability to see varying sides of an issue.

INFPs develop these insights through reflection, and they require substantial time alone to ponder and process new information. While they can be quite patient with complex material, they are generally bored by routine. Though not always organized, INFPs are meticulous about things they value. Perfectionists, they may have trouble completing a task because it cannot meet their high standards. They may even go back to a completed project after the deadline so they can improve it.

INFPs are creative types and often have a gift for language. As introverts, they may prefer to express themselves through writing. Their dominant Feeling drives their desire to communicate, while their auxiliary intuition supplies the imagination. Having a talent for symbolism, they enjoy metaphors and similes. They continually seek new ideas and adapt well to change. They prefer working in an environment that values these gifts and allows them to make a positive difference in the world, according to their personal beliefs.^[13]

Cognitive functions

Drawing upon Jungian theory, Isabel Myers proposed that for each personality type, the cognitive functions—sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling—form a hierarchy. This hierarchy represents the person's "default" pattern of behavior.

The Dominant function is the personality type's preferred role, the one they feel most comfortable with. The secondary Auxiliary function serves to support and expand on the Dominant function. If the Dominant is an information gathering function (sensing or intuition), the Auxiliary is a decision making function (thinking or feeling), and vice versa. The Tertiary function is less developed than the Dominant and Auxiliary, but it matures over time, rounding out the person's abilities. The Inferior function is the personality type's Achilles' heel. This is the function they are least comfortable with. Like the Tertiary, the Inferior function strengthens with maturity.^[14]

Dominant Introverted Feeling (Fi): INFPs live primarily in a rich inner world of emotion.
Auxiliary Extraverted Intuition (Ne): INFPs engage the outside world primarily with intuition, adept at seeing the big picture, sensing patterns and the flow of existence from the past toward the future.
Tertiary Introverted Sensing (Si): This function gives INFPs a natural inclination toward absent-mindedness and makes them more easily distracted.
Inferior Extraverted Thinking (Te): This function helps INFPs focus on external details but, being the inferior function, requires the expenditure of greater energy and is not as reliable.^[15]

Later personality researchers (notably Linda V. Berens)^[16] added four additional functions to the descending hierarchy, the so-called "shadow" functions to which the individual is not naturally inclined but which can emerge when the person is under stress. For INFP these shadow functions are (in order):

Extraverted Feeling (Fe)
Introverted Intuition (Ni)
Extraverted Sensing (Se)
Introverted Thinking (Ti)

Correlation with Enneatype

According to Baron and Wagele, the most common Enneatypes for INFPs are Romantics and Peace Seekers.^[17]

2009-05-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

INFP: "Questor". These people are idealistic, self-sacrificing, and somewhat cool or reserved. They are very family and home oriented, but don't relax well. High capacity for caring. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 1% of the total population.

NFPs feel internal turmoil when they find themselves in situations in which there is conflict between their inner code of ethics and their relationships with others. They feel caught between pleasing others and maintaining their own integrity. Their natural tendency to identify with others, compounded with their self-sacrificial dispositions, tends to leave them confused as to who they really are. Their quiet personalities further feeds their feelings of depersonalization. The INFP's quest for self-identity then seems even more alluring — but increasingly impossible to attain

As with all NFs, the INFP will feel lost and perplexed at stressful times. As stress builds, INFPs become disconnected from their own personality and perceived place in life. They will lose sight of who they are in relation to time and place. They may not make basic observations, while instead they will focus on the more abstract and symbolic meanings of a particular interaction. This can sometimes baffle those who expect more direct communication and a fairly concrete relationship.

information-graphics...designer
college professor
researcher
legal mediator
social worker
holistic health...practitioner
occupational therapist
diversity manager
human resource...development specialist
employment development...specialist
minister/priest/rabbi
missionary
psychologist
writer: poet/novelist
journalist
editor/art director
organizational development...specialist

creepy facebook, creepy

2009-05-03T20:01:00.001-07:00

i took a personality quiz on facebook. 7 questions. this is what i got.

Your Result: You are a type 1C person

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

did facebook just sum me up in a few questions, getting more of me than some of my friends?

2009-04-29T21:24:00.001-07:00

i want spontaneity. i want dreams. i want random, even chaos will do.

and im not finding that here. bard was fine for two years, but after last semester, this is nothing. i find myself asking, almost weekly, "why bother?"

i think back to what my l&t professor told me-"you're the kind of person who will really succeed here." and i have. my grades are great. im quiet in class discussion, but contribute good points when i feel the need. im a strong writer and thinker. not overly critical, able to emphasize with authors, their plights, their imperfections. i listen, i consider, i give. i have a sense of seriousness. maybe sometimes i take things at face value, but thats because its too much to be critical all the time, and that misses the mark anyway.

and i know i will succeed. no worries there. i try to hard and am too determined to make something of myself and to prove myself to ever fail. and im too patient to just give up. and put too much faith in people to become self absorbed. but then i let dreams carry me away into thought. sometimes i would rather just isolate myself than to go interact with people and be false. at least im me alone. i guess that makes me a bit of an introvert. then again, thats what descartes did for a day. served him well.

but i cant deal with everything being the same day after day. i learn new things, but other than that it is routine. im glad spring is here and the weather makes me content and lively. i feel stiffled by my friends sometimes. some of them. i feel almost like im insane, or should feel like i am insane-everyone treats things i want to do as crazy. which might be true, but whats the fun of just sitting around watching youtube or going to kline? no, sorry, but id rather just go randomly drive somewhere, randomly do something. anything. last weekend a friend and i just randomly ordered a large pizza and played video games and then i passed out. kind of boring, but sponteneous and fun.

sometimes i do handstands on the grass. people think im weird. ive stopped caring.

if my job ends up being anything other than field-based, i think ill go crazy in a bad way. teaching wouldnt be as bad, im sure that it must be fun seeing peoples minds open up daily. who knows. i guess one could just say the same of learning as a student, and see how well that turns out...

i want to end up talking about gift theory randomly for an hour. i want to go down and swim by the waterfall. i want to walk to red hook. i want to read calvino out loud. i want to wrestle. i want to be taken seriously, because these arent just weird or crazy antics. theyre expressions of doing something rather than swimming along. im at this small hipster alternative indie school. why is it hard to find people who want to do random shit? everyone tells me im really chill. that i end up doing whatever, hanging out with whoever, etc. its more of a desperate search and throwing my arms out there for anything to fall into them. i dont care. really, i dont. i just want to feel alive, not dead stuck in traffick. today i had two two-hour lectures. i almost fell asleep in both.

write write write do.

2009-04-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

id like to have faith in people, really.

id like to think people are good and giving.

but the more time goes by, people just take advantage of you, dont listen, and dont reciprocate.

whats the point of being generous? seems like none.

"And don't criticize What you can't understand"

2009-04-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

Medical and Ecological Anthropology Research

This group provides focus for the diverse activities taking place in Oxford in this disciplinary area. The location of this group at the Institute of Human Sciences , School of Anthropology , acknowledges that study of human-environmental relationships is an interdisciplinary venture that requires comparative, archaeological and anthropological perspectives, and naturally falls within the multidisciplinary remit of this Institute.

The primary activity of this group is to provide a focus to the study of human ecology and evolution at Oxford through a seminar forum. The group comprises of research associates with primary affiliations across the University of Oxford . Members of the group are directly involved in multi-disciplinary research, using some combination of anthropological, ecological, historical and evolutionary frameworks in the understanding of human-environmental relationships. Using inter-disciplinary perspectives, the remit of the group is to pursue the study and understanding of ecology and culture; human evolutionary ecology; nutritional anthropology; disease ecology; and human reproductive ecology.

Interactions between under-nutrition and infection lead to patterns of growth faltering that begin from about the age of weaning. Growth faltering is common in developing countries and usually is associated with high mortality rates. It is largely due to the combined stresses of low nutrient intakes and exposure to infectious agents associated with the introduction of foods other than breast milk and the weaning process. While easy to describe generally, the combined influence of under-nutrition and infection on growth and development is complex, varying with disease ecology, age of the child, and the type and pattern of infant and young child feeding. In addition, the duration and severity of infection and repeated infections influences the extent to which disease plays a more dominant role in growth faltering than under-nutrition, while cultural patterns of infection management influence the duration and sometimes the severity of infection.

This project examines the importance of low-grade infections and breastfeeding patterns on growth faltering, in populations experiencing both early growth faltering and high infant mortality. This work has implications for understanding the diversity of disease and nutritional ecologies of both contemporary and past populations. The project has three foci: the impacts and interpretation of under-nutrition and infection on physical growth and development among poor rural communities in the contemporary world; the effects of emerging and changing infectious disease ecologies on human populations; and ecological interpretations of child growth patterns among past populations. This involves collaboration of Prof Stanley Ulijaszek with colleagues at the University of Cambridge.

MSc in Medical Anthropology: 1 year

Community-Based Public Health (CBPH)

Educational Objectives
To develop students’ skills and competencies for careers in both community-based public health practice and research, particularly for applications in underserved urban settings. By marrying training in these two areas, this certificate will prepare future community public health practitioners and researchers to collaborate.

The certificate will train recipients in the skills and knowledge necessary for community-based public health program development, management and evaluation, community-based participatory research (CPBR) and other research in community settings. It will also train students in the following key competencies for community-based public health practice and research, including:

Cultural Competency Skills and Attitudes
• Identify the role of cultural, social, and behavioral factors in determining the delivery of community-based public health
• Utilize appropriate methods for interacting sensitively, effectively, and professionally with persons from diverse cultural, socioeconomic, educational, racial, ethnic, and professional backgrounds, and persons of all ages and lifestyle preferences
• Develop and adapt approaches to problems that take into account cultural differences

Linking Social and Environmental Causes of Disease and Community Health
• Define, assess, and understand the health status of populations, determinants of health and illness, factors contributing to health promotion and disease prevention, and factors influencing the use of health services impacting communities
• Understand the historical development, structure, and interaction of national and local public health and health care systems
• Identify and apply research methods appropriate for community-based applications

Community Dimensions of Practice Skills and Attitudes
• Promote the utilization of leadership, team building, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills to build community partnerships and maintain key stakeholders
• Utilize best practices for engaging in effective community partnerships
• Identify community assets and available resources

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/290178/36
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45960
http://www.saudeealegria.org.br/portal/index.php
http://www.saudeealegria.org.br/portal/index.php/home/conteudo/10

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside

And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

give me a boat and a pen and a notebook and ill do whatever need be.
things come together.

rules

2009-04-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

flashbacks of memory to walking down sweat filled days in the streets of Sao Luis. sitting on the porch against the sounds across the bridge. days of awkward interviews, disappointments, challenges, sore legs and coconut water. listening to music within safe headphones with the moon and the starts. sweat-filled shit hangs on the clothesline from the earlier hours. certain songs trigger the time then.

not fun.

not happy.

but endearing.

working.

pushing.

i crave to learn more of participation. senior project will be on it.

http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/participation

capacity building. consultation. training & education. empowerment.

food security. animal vectors for disease. ecosystem approach to health. epidemiology

Biology of Infectious Disease
Ecology of Infectious Disease
Photography, History and News
Contemporary Cultural Theory
Senior Project

considering going back to Brazil and Projeto da Saude e Alegria. or find a similar project in USA.

and thats that. might be the bandana. or the clothing from Brazil. or the hot sweaty weather. comforting, regardless.

Orwell's five rules of writing:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

watched scences from Dark Knight. Joker discussing anarchy and chaos and equality never gets old.

2009-04-25T07:15:00.001-07:00

i was thinking of writing a frustrated post, but then went to the gym. and that helps. it doesnt help the continual feeling of wtf, but whatever.

its hot out, supposed to be 88 degrees. i have so much work to do, half my friends finish project on wednesday, and then next weekend is spring fling, which by no means can suck and must inherently be awesome and epic. that gives me less than a week to get my shit together and get stuff done. monday and tuesday this week are no classes. my writing class is cancelled. next week, after spring fling, is boards week, in which social studies classes are cancelled, and of course bio will still be in session, with lab report after lab report due. this gives me two weeks to write rough drafts of my anthropology and my history papers, because after that ill have biology exam, a GIS take home. blah. also, no job during commencement. dont know where ill stay. oh well. doesnt really matter. ill figure it out, as usual-thats the fun of it anyway.

other than that there isnt much to say. for bio we went down to tivoli bays and the waterfall to do some sampling. walking around in the water is always fun. went out on the roof yesterday and did some (some) work. sat in the conference room in robbins and did homework. went to smog, it sucked. bought a pizza. ate it. played video games. another boring friday night. room draw # 203. .. or is it 230? dont remember, its not that bad. maybe ill live in new robbins. or just stay here in my room i have now. i like the set-up.

god this is boring and pointless.

the summer needs to come around, soon. classes feel mundane as they have the whole semester. i guess im excited about the "course" im trying to put together for the summer. i am. im ready to get into something where respect and participation are involved. bard gets old.

this is just rediculous. im tired of plans and rules and scheming. the whole constraining thing just isnt ringing with me. this time last semester i wanted to honestly just do whatever. go with where life takes me. its something inescapable i know, its just the way things are nowadays right? i look at graduate school programs and get the feeling that i need to map everything out, plan plan plan. and planning is important, it helps you get to where you need to go. but it also constrains and makes me claustrophobic. and i have the tendency, or did, to plan, and try and make everything make sense in my head before it goes into action. think and write before i speak. wouldnt want to feel stupid, after all. but i believe that its the spontenous things that we learn the very most from. and since i love to learn, i should just be spontaneous and do things. which i did last semester, because i felt the environment and culture to welcome it instead of dismiss it as something childish, as seems the case here. i dont really want to know what im doing or where im going. truth reveals itself along the path. i dont feel like outlining for my paper. cant i just do it? i dont feel like outlining my future 5 years, cant i just do it? gah.

its why i just need to get away, a fullbright would be great but lets be serious here, its doubtful. i mean i would love to spend the next year of my life post college on a boat learning about riverside health or something. maybe it wouldnt be "anthropological enough", but thats getting old too. ive been a while since ive got to just let it out and rant. what is superstructure...who cares?

working out helps. i dont know where the spontenous people in my life have gone. i think my friends think im actually crazy. but nobody really does anything here. and im not quite crazy enough to be that person who initiates the weird stuff...well, sometimes. everyone feels so lifeless all the time, and im guilty of that as well. but its 88 degrees out and i want to go to blithwood and do homework. i want to go run around in the woods. i want to go fishing. i want to do cartwheels. i really dont care. just anything that makes the daily grind less boring. driving to dunkin donuts or hannafords or the case station doesnt really cut it. Brazil was so spontaneous and fun! there were so many "seriously guys what the fuck is going on" moments. and thats what i miss. so dont sit and tell me im nostagic. nostalgia implies some longing for stable place, security. there was nothing secure and stable about Brazil, only the opposite, nothing ever made sense. and it was great, liberating. all i want here, and i know college isnt quite made for that. experimental learning is more my thing. not lectures and discussions. let me do something, and ill learn that way. ill get dirty and hurt, and it will be awesome.

and thats what i miss and thats what ive always missed and thats what ive always wanted, and want now more than ever. almost in a painful way. just so you know.

2009-04-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

i made it down the coast in seventeen hours...

good music. turned in my fellowship application. handed in rough draft of my final History essay. working on bio lab assignment.

all thats left:
1 20 pg anthropology paper on memory, activism, and Love Canal
1 8-10 pg History final on early germ theory and infection theories in 17th century London
several biology lab reports (2-3 pgs with figures)
1 biology final exam
1 GIS final take home exam
3-4 more short writing pieces

to be honest, it doesn't look too bad. next week we get monday and tuesday off. the following week is boards week so im sure most of my classes (maybe not biology) will be canceled. some of the history paper is already written. i have all (95%) of my anthropology research done, now i just need to organize it and start writing. come tomorrow im going to force myself to start it. but really, finals might not be as terrible as it usually is this semester. right now my priorities are biology and this anthropology paper. im pretty sure i can pull off an A in History, and if I do this paper right ill secure an A in Anthropology too. Im going to try hard to keep a B+ in biology, and then im sure ill keep the A for GIS and boost the B+ in writing to at least an A-.

not too bad. got into my ecology of infectious disease seminar. my independent study proposal is finished. i went out to the bar last night with some friends and got a free tab. not too bad. i give my friends (the 21 year old ones) a lot of credit for coming out with me last night-its not easy when you need to finish senior projects in a week. overall my birthday was good. i was a little suprised at some people who didnt say anything, but in general i had a relaxing day. sushi with maisha and katelyn was good-i got hot sake. hung out with julia and logan and rachel and patrick. played video games with doug today. this thursday my old residents and i might throw a party. this weekend the only work ill have is anthro paper and biology, really. and picking out courses.

but so far seems like
Biology of Infectious Disease
Ecology of Infectious Disease (2)
Contamporary Cultural Theory
Photography, History, and News
Senior Project
maybe ill audit Plague

looks good. although im tempted to take Research Methods for Social Scientists or Writing Science.

im a dork. ive come to accept it. today Peter Fry, this famous Brazilian anthropologist, gave a lecture on Brazil, race, sickle-cell anemia, and affirmitive action. i liked his approach to advocacy a lot. "strategic essentialism", yeah, that was the term he used. a lot of anthropology is about critique, such as critiquing essentialism, attributing certain characteristics to groups of people, which happens in biomedical research a lot. but in the Brazil case, black NGOs and activists have taken up this whole racial-there is only black/white race in Brazil-as a mobilizing tool, in which genetics takes a role. after all, you can't have a "black population" to mobilize without some construction of there being one singular "black population". interesting stuff.

i feel like to be honest ive gotten a lot more anti-social lately. or maybe i just dont mind being alone anymore. its a trade off. if you take more time to be alone, and dont have one key group of friends or a click or something, then you find yourself lonely at times, not always having a reliable close crowd. but if you only have one real group, you end up depending on each other all the time, getting sick of each other, etc, etc etc. sometimes i feel like i have a balance. ive never had one group of friends, its always just kind of the way ive been. one of my buddies in Brazil commented it about me. it makes sense. i dont love being alone, but i like the pravacy and independence. or even just space to breathe. should probably start going to the gym.

back to work.

2009-04-18T15:28:00.000-07:00

just breathe in. close your eyes. let it out. smile at the sunset.

the waterfall crashes nearby. fish in the distance sing amongst rocks.

population biology depends on models. competition models depend on extinction. two species cannot occupy the same niche. if you freeze time and stop growth, you can make a graph. in one possibility, one species drives the other to death. in another, the two can live side by side, but only temporarily.

a man and his dog run by along the rocky trail. the dog is slightly ahead. the man is old, and looks tired. they brush ahead out of sight. bark in the distance.

2009-04-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Summer:
Environmental Expertise, Participatory Democracy, and Emerging Threats to Life

Fall:
Contemporary Cultural Theory
Photography, History, and News
Biology of Infectious Disease (2)
Ecology of Infectious Disease (2)
Senior Project

Spring:
Biostatistics
Topics in Infrastructure History
Writing Ethnographic Short Stories/Novels
Senior Project

human.political ecology of disease. community/collaboration. mutualism. reciprocity. ethics. documentation. ecosystem approaches. science and society. making people their own experts. empoderamento. juntos.

brilliant idea time

2009-04-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

Test "Title"PETITION FOR INDEPENDENT STUDY

Test "Title"

ANTH T300: Environmental Expertise, Participatory Democracy, and Threats to Life

An Independent Study Project by Dan Becker, Bard College

2 Credits

10 week Science and Technical Research Internship @ CHEJ

I will do responses to reading cluster every two weeks and email them to my advisor

This will compliment the community based environmental health worlk and capacity building internship with sound theory.

· gift theory, reciprocity, and ethics of collaboration (2 weeks)

o Peter Kropoptkin: Mutual Aid, a Factor in Evolution

o The Logic of the Gift

o Marcel Mauss: The Gift

o David Graeber: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

o Vimukt Shiksha: Reclaiming the Gift Culture

· participatory democracy (2 weeks)

o Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

o Carole Pateman: Participation and Democratic Theory / Chris Spannos: Real Utopia

o Michael Albert: Liberating Theory

o Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom

o Citizen Participation and Environmental Risk: A Survey of Institutional Mechanisms Author(s): Daniel J. Fiorino Source: Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 226-243

o Community Struggles and the Shaping of Democratic Consciousness Author(s): Celene Krauss Source: Sociological Forum, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 227-239

· popular epidemiology, environment, and justice (2 weeks)

o Frank Fischer: Citizens, Experts, and the Environment

o Kim Fortun: Advocacy After Bhopal

o David Harvey: Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference

o Popular Epidemiology and Toxic Waste Contamination: Lay and Professional Ways of Knowing Author(s): Phil Brown Source: Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 267-281

o Farmworkers and Pesticides: Community-Based Research Author(s): Thomas A. Arcury, Sara A. Quandt, Linda McCauley Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 108, No. 8 (Aug., 2000), pp. 787-792

o Qualitative Methods in Environmental Health Research Author(s): Phil Brown Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 111, No. 14 (Nov., 2003), pp. 1789-1798

o Combining Community-Based Research and Local Knowledge to Confront Asthma and Subsistence-Fishing Hazards in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York Author(s): Jason Corburn Source: Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 110, Supplement 2: Community, Research, and Environmental Justice (Apr., 2002), pp. 241-248

o Applying Anthropology to the Epidemiology of Cancer Author(s): Annie Hubert Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 6, No. 5 (Oct., 1990), pp. 16-18

· anthropological perspectives on emerging infectious disease and public health (2 weeks)

o Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspective 5^th Addition

o Health: An Ecosystem Approach

o Paul Farmer: Infections and Inequalities

o Medical Anthropology and Epidemiology Author(s): James A. Trostle and Johannes Sommerfeld Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 25 (1996), pp. 253-274

o Can There Be a "Cultural Epidemiology"? Author(s): Susan M. DiGiacomo Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1999), pp. 436-457

o Anthropology and the Control of Tropical Disease Author(s): Carol MacCormack Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jun., 1985), pp. 14-16

o Beyond the Ivory Tower: Critical Praxis in Medical Anthropology Author(s): Merrill Singer Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 80-106

o Security, Disease, Commerce: Ideologies of Postcolonial Global Health Author(s): Nicholas B. King Source: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 32, No. 5/6 (Oct. - Dec., 2002), pp. 763-789

o The Anthropology of Infectious Disease Author(s): Marcia C. Inhorn and Peter J. Brown Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 19 (1990), pp. 89-117

o Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases: The Third Epidemiologic Transition Author(s): Ronald Barrett, Christopher W. Kuzawa, Thomas McDade, George J. Armelagos Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 27 (1998), pp. 247-271

o Disasters, Donors, Magical Agencies Author(s): Jonathan Benthall Source:Anthropology Today, Vol. 7, No. 5 (Oct., 1991), p. 3

o Waltner-Toews, David. “An ecosystem approach to health and its applications to tropical and emerging diseases.” Cad. Saúde Pública, Rio de Janeiro 17 (2001): 7-36.

· gap between citizens & experts (2 weeks)

o Bruno Latour: Politics of Nature

o Ulrich Beck: Risk Society

o Local Actions, Global Visions: Remaking Environmental Expertise Author(s): Giovanna Di Chiro Source: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms and Environmentalisms (1997), pp. 203- 231

o The Reality of Experts and the Imagined Lay Person Author(s): Alessandro Maranta, Michael Guggenheim, Priska Gisler, Christian Pohl Source: Acta Sociologica, Vol. 46, No. 2, The Knowledge Society (Jun., 2003), pp. 150-165

o (Re)Defining Reproductive Health with and for the Community: An Example of Participatory Research from Mali Author(s): Sarah Castle, Sidy Traore, Lalla Cisse Source: African Journal of Reproductive Health / La Revue Africaine de la Santé Reproductive, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Apr., 2002), pp. 20-31

o Haraway, Donna, "Situated Knowledges" Feminist Studies 14(3), 1988 : 575-599.

i was going to do this as a tutorial next semester. but i think credit wise with senior project it would be a lot of work. but if i make up a proposal to do it alongside my internship and get credit this summer, then i get the best of both world. and by doing the readings an responses over the summer, by the time the semester comes i will have a sound idea and base to start senior project.

Potential Courses

2009-04-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

BIO 112 Biology of Infectious Disease
John Ferguson
. T . Th .
. T . . .
8:30 - 10:20 am
1:30 -4:30 pm
Cross-listed: GISP; STS Both morbidity and mortality due to infectious disease declined steadily during the 20th century in developed nations, but remain high in poorer nations. Students examine the reasons for this tenuous disparity as they study the agents of bacterial, viral, protozoan, and metazoan disease. Diseases covered include anthrax, typhoid fever, cholera, botulism, tetanus, bubonic plague, Lyme disease, leprosy, tuberculosis, influenza, smallpox, rabies, yellow fever, polio, AIDS, malaria, African sleeping sickness, and schistosomiasis, among others. Many of the readings are relatively nontechnical case histories, but the biology underlying each condition is thoroughly developed. This course is of interest to those aiming for a career in the health professions, but is also designed to provide liberal arts students with some degree of medical literacy in these health issues. The laboratory portion introduces students to bacteria and viruses that are relatively nonpathogenic for humans. Prerequisite: experience in high school biology and chemistry.

ANTH 350 Contemporary Cultural Theory
Laura Kunreuther
M . . . .
10:30 - 12:50 pm

OLIN 303
Cross-listed: Human Rights This course is intended as an introduction to advanced theories of culture in contemporary anthropology. Required of all anthropology majors, this course will also be of interest to students wishing to explore critical innovations in the study of local, national, and mass culture around the world. In contrast to early anthropological focus on seemingly isolated, holistic cultures, more recent studies have turned their attention to contest within societies and the intersection of local systems of meaning with global processes of politics, economics and history. The class will be designed around an influential social theorist, such as Bourdieu, Bakhtin, or Marx, and the application of their theories by anthropologists, such as Aihwa Ong, Judith Irvine, or Michael Taussig. The seminar will involve participation from all of the faculty in the anthropology department. It aims to inspire critical engagement with an eye towards developing theoretical tools and questions for a senior project that makes use of contemporary theories of culture. Required for all moderated Anthropology majors.

HIST 3112 PLAGUE!
Alice Stroup
M . . . .
1:30 -3:50 pm
OLIN 308
HIST
Cross-listed: Human Rights; Medieval Studies The cry “Plague!” has struck fear among people around the world, from antiquity to the present. What is plague? How has it changed history? Starting with Camus’ metaphorical evocation of plague in a modern North African city, we will examine the historical impact of plague on society. Our focus will be bubonic plague, which was epidemic throughout the Mediterranean and European worlds for four hundred years, and which remains a risk in many parts of the world (including the southwestern United States) to this day. Topics include: a natural history of plague; impact of plague on mortality and socio-economic structures; effects on art and literature; early epidemiology and public health; explanations and cures; the contemporary presence of bubonic plague and fears about “new plagues.” Readings include: literary works by Camus, Boccaccio, Manzoni, and Defoe; historical and philosophical analyses by ancients Thucydides and Lucretius; contemporary literature on history, biology, and public health. Upper College Seminar: open to fifteen moderated students.

SOC 205 Intro to Research Methods
Yuval Elmelech
. T . Th .
1:00 -2:20 pm
OLIN 101 &
HDRANX 106
MATC
Cross-listed: Environ. Studies, GIS, Human Rights, Social Policy The aim of this course is to enable students to understand and use the various research methods developed in the social sciences, with an emphasis on quantitative methods. The course will be concerned with the theory and rationale upon which social research is based, as well as the practical aspects of research and the problems the researcher is likely to encounter. The course is divided into two parts. In the first, we will learn how to formulate research questions and hypotheses, how to choose the appropriate research method for the problem, and how to maximize chances for valid and reliable findings. In the second part, we will learn how to perform simple data analysis and how to interpret and present findings in a written report. For a final paper, students use survey data on topics such as attitudes toward abortion, sexual attitudes, affirmative action, racism, sex roles, religiosity, and political affiliation. By the end of the semester, students will have the necessary skills for designing and conducting independent research for term papers and senior projects, as well as for non-academic enterprises. Admission by permission of the instructor.

PHOT/ ARTH 328 Photography, History
And News
Luc Sante
. . . Th .
1:30 -3:50 pm
OLIN 304
AART
Ever since the Civil War, photography has been recording great events, and at least since the 1890s it has been chronicling those smaller events we call news. Arguably, everything that has passed before the lens since the beginning can qualify as history of some sort. This course will consider war photography, tabloid photography, disaster coverage, photojournalism, and propaganda, as well as the role of photography in preserving evidence of changes in daily life over the past two centuries. Special attention will be given to objectivity, rhetoric, chance, and the ambiguity of the photographer's position in a crisis. Participation in classroom discussion is mandatory, as are one research paper or audiovisual presentation, and a take-home exam at semester's end.

LIT 2182 Nonfiction Workshop:
Writing Science
Elizabeth Frank
. . W Th .
10:30 - 11:50 am
OLIN 303
PART
This is a course for both science and humanities students who share a fundamental belief in the importance of science literacy. To laypersons, contemporary science is often impenetrable. They need clear, informative, and engaging explanations of contemporary work in science, particularly as these affect ethical and political decisions at every level of society. Students in the class will write about science in a number of formats: for example, essays, editorials, feature articles and book reviews, all of varying length and complexity. We will try to solve the problems that must inevitably arise when the search for voice confronts subject matter that is hard to simplify or explain. Limited to 15 students who have each passed a lab and/or quantitative science course at Bard. (Applicants submit email indicating that they have passed a lab and/or quantitative science course.)

2009-04-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

American eels are born in the Sargasso Sea. In the mid-Atlantic Ocean, thousands or millions of eels convene and copulate, only here. It is impossible to raise eels in aquatic farms, the way we harvest some species of fish and shrimp. Each spring, the sea spawns thousands of tiny pseudo-transparent bodies, "glass eels." Clear with the exception of a black spine and black eyes, the form adapts to life and predation in the ocean. From the Sargasso Sea, the bodies ride the currents of the Gulf Stream up into freshwater tributaries, into the Hudson River, into Tivoli Bays.

Along the way, over time, the eels of glass grow to be several inches long-too small to be earthworms, too large to be parasites. In the freshwater rivers of the east coast, the eels begin to consume aquatic insects and dead organic matter, sacrificing the previous diet of plankton. Growing, no longer needing the same innate protection, the skin of the eels loses its clear pigment and takes on a brownish hue. Their name changes from glass to elvers.

Eel populations have been in decline over the years, and nobody knows why. Some say global climate change and shifting ocean patterns. Others say overfishing and dam construction. Some compromise and say both. Aiming to study eel migration patterns, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation has a collaborative study between scientists, students, and community volunteers to collect data on glass eels along the Hudson River tributaries. Along the way, the study gives its members experience in science, rivers, ecosystems. It is both research and pedagogy.

Today I caught seventeen glass eels. Our hands reached into the black and green fyke net to rummage for a glimpse of crystalline white. The mesh net is large, and was placed south of the small waterfall leading into the Bay. It captures the tiny bodies that attempt to swim upstream as they migrate. It is one o'clock in the afternoon and the tide is still low. Our hands are covered in invertebrates-they look like small alien shrimp. In the net are hundreds of them, crawling upon one another. As we reach in, they envelop our hands, scuttling in an attempt to move and escape. From the yellow-brown pulsing mass comes brief flashes of white amongst the bland color palette.

Amongst these masses, our hands grasp the minute eels between our fingers. A bucket filled with a few inches of bay-water becomes a temporary home for the seventeen. Our hands thrust down into the low-tide water of the Bay to wash of the excess bodies that stubbornly cling. The glass eels spasm amongst one another. I can't decide which is stranger, the feeling of a dozen invertebrates in one's hand, or a living squirming eel, nearly invisible.

Throughout the day I feel the pinch and scuttle of invertebrates and eels. I am in class, typing in the lab, eating with a fork and knife. The creatures are not there anymore, now swimming upstream again along the waters of the Bay, visible in their absence.

i dont understand my need to update this three times in 1 day

2009-04-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etTX0TAz-5g

enjoy. its a really nice cover.

i havent done any work all day. its been good.

we are doing a biodiversity experiment in eco & evo with algae, aka protists. needless to say, i am very excited.

im such a dork...

books ive loved / influenced my thought

2009-04-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

in no order, of course

Marcel Mauss: The Gift
Michel Serres: The Parasite
Michael Taussig: Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man
Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Norton Juster: The Phantom Tollbooth
Ibn Tufayl: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan
Amitav Ghosh: In an Antique Land
William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Tobias Scheneebaum: Keep the River on Your Right
Herman Hess: Siddhartha
Milton Hatoum: The Brothers
George Bataille: Theory of Religion
Italo Calvio: The Baron in the Trees
Frank Fischer: Citizens, Experts, and the Environment
Susanne Antonetta: Body Toxic

2009-04-05T10:05:00.001-07:00

this was the first actually fun weekend i had in a while. completely uneventful, but i hung out with people i havent seen in a while, went to SMOG shows, and went out on some drives with people. uneventful, but i had a good time, and felt pretty happy.

ive been thinking, what do i need to simply be happy? its weird this year not really having "a group," but thats just something about me. put me around the same people for too long and ill go insane. i guess hopping groups is just the price then. but in Brazil i had the chance and opportunity to ask what i need to just be happy. nothing long term, just, for now. academics and school are important. and i think im doing pretty well in my classes it seems. but academics shouldn't be the top priority. being happy should. and maybe ive been looking to books and words and professors to legitmiate my intelligence and not just looking at the world around me to be happy. its spring. time to go on walks with people. actually go to other dorms and parties. call people up to get food, go outside, hang out. maybe even just meet some new people and see about that. working out, laughing with friends, having interesting and engaging conversations, reading for pleasure. because writing papers and underlining sentences is not going to make me happy. that seems obvious now, but it basically just hit me. which is funny.

im listening to a johnny cash cover of "bridge over troubled water." its great. today i need to write a rough draft of my junior fellowship proposal. i could work on my final anthropology paper, but thats in a few weeks.

seems set or something. dragonball evolution comes out on thursday. i may have to force my friends to see it with me.

2009-04-02T22:23:00.001-07:00

i just watched half of Annie Hall. really great movie. i think it might be a pivitol point for me. what was that line Vonnegut said? blah blah blah..."you are not alone?" now, im not at all comparing myself to Woody Allen. no way, no way at all. but...some of the things are there. actually it isnt his character at all, but just the idea of, hey, what are you looking for? i like intellectual engagement, but maybe right now isnt the time for that. sometimes i think, Dan, you should have majored in biology. its concrete. but then i listen to the anthropological half of my brain, "Dan, nothing is that concrete, you know that." truth? pure gift? nonesense, oh Marcel Mauss. i think im funny, i find it so much easier to write on this blog than to write any paper this semester. this is me, my voice. i feel a little (is that the right word?) dark, calm, mysterious, layered. i write for Nonfiction class and feel myself stifling myself. maybe out of fear of being judged. or that the class wont like it. its no way to live, really. but it would be nice to committ myself to something. im slowly learning that i am actually capable of doing work at the last minute and that it will work out all right. you know, i remember one of my thoughts on coming to Bard. through high school i knew i had this mostly quantitative brain. math was easy for me. calculations were easy for me. the whole creative, intellectual, opinionated part...not as much. certainly there, but not as much. i wanted to come to Bard so that i could unlock that part of my thoughts, or more so, that part of myself. now i find myself, having opinions, but still feeling torn. i just want to do something and its cliche and old by now, but to be honest thats the truth of it. i love writing. i also dont mind calculations. my one biggest gripe with anthropology? obsessive search for meaning. why do we have to analyze it and proclaim it there? it is there. obviously. humans do things with meaning. we face this struggle daily. without meaning its all so pointless. so we take the surroundings, some would say apriori, others not, some given, others constructed, and apply and imbue meaning to it all. i love metaphors from biology. so much so that they are forming my basis for a senior project on collaborative health projects. Darwin says compete, and thats how we evolve and interact. Margulis says collaborate, symbiosis and mutualism. who is right? was it Plato who said its always some of both, some of the cultural, some of the biological? then at the same time i yell at the me who wants to take a bunch of statistics and do social research off that. its not enough. staistics take away whatever information doesnt fit the model. thats what models do-they're exclusionary by their nature and function. to strip down, expose the raw-whatever that means-compile it together, and draw out their own meaning, in the form of p<0.05

but seriously. i love learning. thats why i find myself buying a new book here and there on Amazon.com, waking up at late hours of the night because of my insomnia-which i like-and searching JSTOR for some information. doing the Wiki search. but thats all there is here. the learning, no applying, no experience, no doing. and ive felt the other side and now this is just like Plato's forms to me. you know the story?

there are humans tied to a rock in a cave. behind them is a fire and a bunch of objects, shapes, animals, what have you. the humans chained to the rock dont see any of these things. because of the fire, they only see the shadows cast from the true objects. the shadows are their reality. one man frees himself and escapes the cave. he is overwhelemed by the superabundance of forms, real forms, and goes back inside the cave to explain it to his companions. they dont believe him, because the forms they see are the only reality they know. they refuse to leave. but the man cant. hes already seen what is real. and academia, isnt real, at all. it takes real life, analyzes and extracts what it needs from it, and publishes what it needs from it in a scholarly journal nobody but students and professors and high level experts will read. and so the cycle continues, unable to escape the cave. but thats why you go abroad or whatever, to escape your narrow cave. and ive seen the sorts of things i want to do. do. i grow tired and uninspired by abstract theory. how do they actually operate? or, what am i actually learning? "to think critically, to write, to speak," i am told. bah. i have my whole life to learn that. let me go out and experience the true forms of the world. let me actually touch the forms, not just their shadows. thats all theory and abstraction is-shadows. you go from A to B to C to D to E and finally have a conclusion. you proclaim your theory, and countless students are taught that theory the way you presented it, which is mostly from A to E. not the steps in between. and so we dont actually learn anything. we learn the ends, not the means. we dont learn how they came up with it, maybe the methods of their study, maybe their interests in the subject. but as a whole, we just continue to stumble in the dark searching for some meaning. but we refuse to acknowledge that the real meaning lies outside of the cave, in fact, in zero relationship to the cave. the cave is not at all relevant to anything we desire.

wouldn't that be nice? philosophy has its place; at least it doesnt try to capture reality perfectly. it leaves the abstractions in and makes you search through, just like the philosopher, to find your own truth. because everybody is inherently brilliant. just need to try and find whatever gets them thinking and talking, i suppose. i think i learned more from my host father Leo in four days than i probably learn in a weeks worth of extensive college class.

in sum: all i want is praxis.

2009-04-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

aced my GIS mid-term.
interviewed for commencement job.
had a productive conversation about gift theory and psychology at lunch.
wrote my 6 page discussion paper on truth commissions.
went to the gym.
potential go to clubs in the city soon.
wrote a crappy non-fiction piece.
switched advisers.
proposed tutorial idea.
received good comments on final paper proposal.
waiting for crit-sheets and mid-term grades.
have to read 100 pgs of Plato
start catching eels next week.
late night taco bell runs.

Testimony and Truth Commissions

2009-03-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

One of the main goals of the global human rights agenda has been multiculturalism, the notion of inclusion, and thus democratic ideals. In the past several decades, these ideals have manifested in what Bain Attwood calls “the age of testimony” (2008). The rise of memory and recording of experience as a form of truth has emerged prominently in the legal realm of truth commissions and the official documents they produce. While the human rights community has proclaimed these institutionalized official sites of memory to restore marginalized voices, redeem the violent past, and bring transitioning nation states into democracy, scholars have begun to question the limitations of testimony’s authority and the process by which it becomes an official history of and heals the new nation. Bain Attwood, Deborah Posel, Julie Taylor, and Lessie Jo Frazier explain the use and shortfalls of memory’s redemptive and healing function in the cases of South Africa, Argentina, and Chile. They ask what the limitations and possible harms are of testimony’s presumed ability to heal and the way it bring haunted pasts into present human rights discourse.

In “In the Age of Testimony: The Stolen Generations Narrative, “Distance,” and Public History”, Bain Attwood explains the rupture between traditional historicism and the new role given to testimony and experience. As he puts it, “history making has been democratized” (Attwood 2008, 75). Traditional history and historicism have centered on the notion of distantiation, “the process of putting the past at a distance from the present” (2008, 76). The distance of the historian also implies his or her separation from the object of study, between objective knower and the knowable subject; however, a series of radical social movements following the rise of the global human rights agenda in the 1960s and 1970s began to challenge this divide. These movements—involved in issues of race, gender, and class— advocated for history from below, the recovery of the marginalized and hidden pasts of “the poor, migrants, slaves and indigenous peoples, gay men, and lesbian women” (2008, 79). The status of history thus began to shift from studying what happened in the past to studying how its participants experienced the past, therefore calling for oral history. As Attwood explains, the most important element of this change was the “shift in the location of historical power and authority from the professional historian, the elite, and the oppressors to the oral interviewee or witness” (2008, 79). History became a democratic endeavor as the site of history and historical knowledge moved to the site of the witness.

Through bringing marginalized voices of the past to light, oral history and narrative entail a different relationship of past to present. Whereas historicism creates distance between the two, testimony and the rise of memory create “a connecting of past and present; “then” and “now” become entangled with one another,” bringing the historian and observer into “closer proximity with the past” (2008, 80). Nowhere has this been more evident than in the connections between traumatic memory, the public realm, and the legal sphere. Memories of trauma “resists historicism’s organization of time into a chronologically linear schema of before-and-after”. Attwood quotes Dominick LaCapra on the notion that “in traumatic memory the past is not simply history as over and done with. It lives on experientially and haunts and possesses the self of the community” (2008, 81). This haunting destroys the notion that past and present are separate entities, resisting closure and a clean break from the past. As these “histories of below” have centered on voices of suffering, the witness and the ever-present past has become a dominant way people experience the past in the public sphere. The traditional public task of history to explain the past has given way to make the viewer and citizen “experience the past” (2008, 84). Witnessing, testimony, and experience have become “much more that of the transmission of pasts to future generations…a link between the faces and voices of witness and those who listen to them” (2008, 86). This concept—the relation of witness, experience, and listening—is central to the role of testimony and its affiliation to healing.

The authority of experience, testimony, and its perceived ability to heal is most evident in the legal sphere of public life. Attwood points to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in Australia and its reliance on oral testimony by Aboriginals. The commission “encouraged those who had been removed to testify to their suffering…it was a way of obtaining knowledge about the past, but in addition, and most of all, it was a means of transmitting the past in such a way as to enable those who bore its burdens to be both heard and healed” (2008 87). As it becomes a dominant force in public life, testimony receives the authority of both obtaining and transmitting knowledge. As an act of hearing and healing, testimony performs what Attwood notes as the “politics of sentimental feeling”, the triggering of an emotional response to action by the audience (2008, 88). Deborah Posel and Julie Taylor elaborate on the redemptive function of testimony and the truth it seeks to capture and produce in their respective articles, “History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission” and “Body Memories: Aide-Memories and Collective Amnesia in the Wake of the Argentine Terror”.

The entity of the truth commission emerged into the human rights movements in 1973 as Argentina sought to transition from its violent military regime into a democratic nation, and has since been followed by 36 similar commissions, with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) being the most well known and prominent model. Utilized in stages of transition from chaos to order, truth commissions work to “unify and reconcile by exposing the horrors that past oppressors had denied or hidden and by then passing resolute and robust judgment on what had gone wrong” (Posel 2008, 121). Following the idea of “history from below”, truth commissions attempt to rebuild the new nation from its dark past by including the voices that the previous regime had silenced, oppressed, violated, and excluded. By exposing the past horrors of a military regime or apartheid through the testimonies and traumatic memory, truth commissions work to simultaneously “commission and commemorate the past” (2008 122). These testimonies of trauma become a form of truth and are “documented as the core of an official record of a troubled past” (2008 121). As Attwood earlier explains, the individual and his or her testimony has become a direct site of “the truth,” and therefore truth commissions assign a prominent place to victimhood and memories of trauma.

Truth, in this context, carries the potential and the function to heal, attending to “the damage done to individuals, interpersonal relationships, and the nation as a whole” (2008, 129). A period such as apartheid damaged all members of South African society, and thus the truth commission of the TRC, for example, was based on the premise that “Healing is speaking” (2008, 138). While the act of recognizing the humanity of the other, both victim and perpetrator, ubuntu, was central to the truth and healing project, the TRC struggled with the dilemma of how to produce an authoritative account of “the truth” when so many perspectives and voices were at stake. Moving away from a period of incredible exclusion, the TRC and the legal reports it produced grappled with how to include while creating a definite legal documentation and official memory record of apartheid:

…it has become impossible not to acknowledge a multiplicity of perspectives—as personal truths—which coexist with the official, impersonal, and authoritative truth produced by the commission’s rigorous investigations. (2008, 127)

Claims to an authoritative truth must be demonstrated while, as Posel states, “the idea of truth has never before been as widely and intensely discredited as it has been since the late 1970s” (2008, 124), due to the above recognition of the multiplicity of perspectives at stake. Here is the central paradox of the idea of the truth commission: it must restore truth as a possible and desired endeavor while facing the fact that the same claims to truth became the tools to the violent eras and suppression from which they seek to escape.

The act of writing testimonies into an official document of the past is central to this project of truth construction, inclusion, and the creation of an official memory of the new imagined community (Posel 2008, 121). In the documents produced by the truth commissions, there is the notion that truth itself is a means to an end, that by working the narrative truths of different subjunctives into legal documentation, the nation can be healed, a catharsis can take place, and the nation can move on. In the Argentina case of 1973, the National Commission on Disappeared People sought to record and remember the terror from the country’s military period in the form of the Never Again documents. These documents, Julie Taylor notes, “were one solution to remembering terror…to create an official memory of events that were never to be forgotten…for which no history yet existed” (1994, 194). Its purpose was, as would be the case of the future TRC, to diagnose and prevent future instances of human rights violation. Taylor quotes Lawrence Wescher on the notion that the establishment of an official truth is “a powerful, almost magical notion, because often everyone already knows the truth…Why, then, this need to risk everything to render that knowledge explicit?” (1994, 195). The official sanctioning of knowledge, of the past through testimony, is central here; however, it poses the notion that the desire of truth possibly is more pressing than the desire for justice, which Taylor finds so problematic. As she notes, despite the celebration of these documents as the answer to violence, in Brazil and Uruguay “not one torturer has gone to jail, nor even to court, on the basis of the Never Again documents” (1994, 193).

Taylor posits whether the “valorization of previously marginal voices” (Posel 2008, 123) and the legal mode of their obtainment and sanctioning is enough: “We might discover something profoundly important about the problem of memory and the perpetuation of terror by examining the notion that meticulous recording is a solution to violence” (1994, 193). Central to this dilemma is the fact that the members of the military period in Argentina have been returning to political life at the will of democracy. Taylor observes the 1973 tribunal and the Never Again documents it produced resorted “to forms…that impede dealing with the exclusionary political nature of the violence and even participates in it” (1994, 196). In the trials of the coup d’etat and the oral narratives that they obtained, the actors within this political event were stripped of their political affiliations and “collective political motivations were thus not recognized” (1994, 197). While law was used to bring about truth, the law itself acted as an exclusionary force, perpetuating the “atomization of collective identities into rights and motivations of the individuals whose testimony the court admitted” (1994, 197). Taylor points to this kind of inherent “violence” in official memory projects aimed at the truth. The project of the truth commission also employs hierarchy, ordering what is necessary to include in the documentation and what is not, forcing some voices or central information out of the image, out of the imagined community of the new nation.

These removed voices become forgotten as remembering becomes “a process of forgetting…a process of simultaneously constructing some subjective and doing violence to others” (1994, 200). Although the TRC came long after the Argentina case and therefore could improve upon its predecessor, Posel notes its capacity too to exclude in its attempt to heal the nation’s: “…the cases heard in these hearings had to function as an appropriately representative sample of the whole—but only symbolically, not statistically” (2008, 138). This symbolic representation fit into the new mix of race, gender, and political affiliation that comprised its new “rainbow nation” and thus followed its own hierarchy and exclusions of potential reality of apartheid (2008, 139). Therefore, as Taylor aptly states, “memory does not only salvage, construct, and invent. Memory as constituted is exclusionary: it omits what hierarchy does not recognize,” and as such might contain “capacities to trivialize and exclude experience” (1994, 202). The construction of the truth for legal ends, even for truth itself, is political in nature, and thus, enacts a violence of its own, demonstrating the exclusionary nature of any universal claim (Taylor 1994, 199).

By distorting reality through documentation, whether through Never Again or the TRC’s symbolic rather than statistical representation of the nation, we may allow these violations to reoccur. Lessie Jo Frazier’s study, ““Subverted Memories”: Countermourning as Political Action in Chile”, explores how this process of exclusion and forgetting can be fought in what she explains as countermourning, the refusal to “relinquish the past and grope[s] toward a politics that might allow their memories integrity with a vision for the future” (1999, 105). The Chilean case too demonstrates the story of moving the nation out of a violent and painful past into the neoliberal state and economy. As the military sought to implement its own official memory by banning civil society actions, veterans fought in public spaces in what Jo Frazier terms the subversion of memory (1999, 106). Crypts and funerals, as sites of traumatic memory, provided a space of not only commemoration and remembrance, but also the enabling of but also political action (1999, 110). While she notes the homogenizing nature of the law and the truth commissions for healing, she comments that the work of mourning itself may not be sufficient to heal a damaged society: “Memory raised in elegy cannot transform the conditions of life. Without plot there may be ethics but there can be not politics, no hope of bliss” (1999, 111).

Instead, Jo Frazier advocates to look at memory as “praxis rather than text” (1999, 116). In Chile, the regime transition occurred without any major restructuring of the state or military order. In Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America, the Never Again documents did not bring torturers to justice nor did it prevent dictators from being reelected to office. To the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Posel comments that the “process of truth telling, in turn, forms a mode of justice which is more reconciliatory than punitive, based on the admissions of wrongdoing and the moral catharsis this affords” (2008, 126). While the rise of testimony and the use of memory have worked to reclaim the identity of minority groups, helped to transmit the past, and sought to repair the exclusions of the past, it has obtained an authority that promises redemption, promises a healing truth (Attwood 2008, 90). Testimony may offer catharsis and a release from the burdens of the past, but as Taylor and Jo Frazier note, this does not assure a politics or even justice as the cases show. While searching for the truth that will heal the damaged nation, the truth commission and its written productions may in fact exclude subjects as it brings the past into the present through trauma. Furthermore, the desiring of closure through this truth might only add to the difficulty in challenging this exclusion in the new “transitioned” nation.

Works Cited
1. Attwood, Bain, "In the Age of Testimony: The Stolen Generations Narrative, 'Distance' and Public History" Public Culture: Transnational Cultural Studies 20, 2008 : 75-96.

2. Frazier, Lessie Jo, "Subverted memories: Countermourning as Political Action in Chile [8pgs]" in , Acts of Memory U. Press of New England, 1999: 105-119.

3. Posel, Deborah, "History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission" Public Culture: Transnational Cultural Studies 20, 2008 : 119-141.

4. Taylor, Julie, "Body Memories: Aide-Memoires and Collective Amnesia in the Wake of Argentine Terror [6 pgs]" in , Body Politics: Disease, Desire, and the Family West View Press, 1994: pp. 192-203.

something more, something to push

2009-03-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

its not that im not working hard...

i just would like something more. something that makes me better. i miss places, things, people, and ideas that make me want to be better, that push me to truly and really rethink myself and whats around me. to challenge me, my ideals, my theories, my thoughts. to question what i hold dear. im some ways, i want someone or something or someplace that respectfully and admirably questions the world we live in, rips it apart, but only enough so to see the glue and webs that hold the whole thing together. i miss and want that again here.

there was a game we would play on the van rides to the south of Para. you think of a person in the van, or the other van-you dont say their name. people ask questions: if they were a disney character, what would they be? if they were a natural disaster, what would they be? eventually, people guess who the person is. it was interesting, seeing what you embodied in characters, places, ideas. here its all more of a vacuum.

what im trying to say is, the title of this blog: people and places take you in, absorb you, make you relinquish control. its that letting go, that submission, that sets you free. it takes you apart and repieces you, you the way you feel it to be. it challenges you to see flaws, fix them, become better. thats what a vortex is to me. the kind of transformation that tears you apart but keeps you completely together. because when you become ripped apart, you see all the connections between the parts. finally visible, you can embrace them.

its not that im not looking-there just isnt quite that here. in the end, you cant throw yourself into classes. they arent the totalizing experience im looking for. i want something new everyday. when you walk into a classroom and everybody sits in the same seats, that isnt absorptive, its the grind. i suppose its more of a wake up call to mix things up, but mixing them up isnt enough. i want crazy, illogical, unknowable, weird, fucked up, messy. chaos, isnt that the word? i want chaos in people, in time, in books, in places. i dont want things to make sense, i dont want things to be clear to me. i dont even want to be in control. i just want to let go, relax, and take myself along and learn. along that path id like to be challenged by those im close to. id like to open up and talk, by doing so learning more about who i am, who others are. its hard here and i keep trying and keep feeling that it doesnt go anywhere. no progress, just a circle. at least vortexes get somewhere: the bottom of things. the core, the origin, call it what you like. life, the spark. what did the ancients think of the soul? a spark, the life force. i just want to know it.

here i am. i have a beta fish in my room. a box of oat cereal on the floor. its 2:02 am, i feel like a lost character in a book, not the positive learning kind of lost. not hero-wandering-in-the-desert-lost. not edmond dantes locked in prison for 13 years lost. its not quite a confront yourself lost. well, thats not true. its about confronting yourself, but not about testing those limitations, learning painfully what they are. maybe overcoming them here and there. but the failures push forward. i know this is all so abstract and thats fine. in some sense i want to be like eisely-i havent even finished his book-and reflect on the history of life. in the end isnt it all chaos? isnt that what every scientific discipline tells us in the end? social, humanities, natural-boom here we go.

some of me knows after college it would be best to work and then grad school it up. but thats too safe. brazil taught me the safe way is the useless way (its easy to say "the easy way"). i dont want safe, i dont want comfort. we dont really learn in college because its all so safe. and when its safe theres no need to test yourself and escape. theres no need not just to think outside but also to go outside. see it for yourself, you know? say no to comfort and dreams of a safe cozy future-i want to explore and get lost again. adventure. i want to sail on a boat and learn at the docks, at the ports, at the bars. have the most absurd, and therefore wonderful, of conversations. get lost in a language barrier. get lost in facing my limitations. man i harp on this. but its true, can't you see? then its not nostalgia, because its possible to feel this everywhere-just not here. im not yearning for brazil at all really, im yearning for that experience. experIEnce. into earth? reality? i want dirty hands, callused hands, rope burn, finger cuts, insomnia. i want nights listening to music far away, not from an iPod or stereo but from hands. something that reminds me of intimacy, existence?

http://microscopyu.com/moviegallery/pondscum/metopus/

if i can find it in a single cell, cant it be anywhere? there has to be some sort of philosophical treatise on this. theres absolute and sheet chaos in a drop of pond water.

2009-03-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

oh yeah!

ive gotten so much work done over break so far. and i enjoy the alone time. ive read Body Toxic, Advocacy After Bhopal, and Love Canal: The Story Continues. not to mention ~ 10 news articles. ive got it down. im also reading T-Zero by Calvino, Parasite by Serres, and want to start Animal's People by Sinha. pandora radio is playing, i have time to go to the gym, and it feels more than decent. is it weird that the last thing i really want is have everyone come back from break? all the space and emptiness here is nice.

2009-03-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

places and experiences dont die and end, they live on forever in us. with every moment and experience we change somewhat. the atoms of our bodies change through time. we are never fixed, never static. always in flux, always carrying particles from places, times, people.

right now i cant help but live in the past. mentally, i am still in brazil. i am still lying in a hammock on our boat, reading a copy of Citizens, Experts, and the Environment. i am still excited about capacity building, about popular epidemiology, about analogies of the social world to biological terms, about social movements and cultural autonomy, about participatory research, about the city as an ecosystem, about public health, about powerful writing that moves, about ghosh/calvino/murakami, about jujitsu, about friends who understand me. i am still alone in my host family house in paruapebas, palmares II, feeling uncomfortable, playing soduko. i am still standing at 3 am on the balcony of the apartment in Belem, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the music of far away clubs ringing through the soundscape. i am still catching tucunare with Leo.

i do need to move on and away, and when i get to a place where that passion and excitement can manifest itself again, i will. easily. when i went to powershift i felt teleported back to it all, or forward, or who i want to be, or whatever you might call it. i have total confidence that being at CHEJ this summer will afford me the same chance. it just so happens that i dont have that atmosphere here at bard. where time is randomly split between class and the world. between theory and practice. between active discussion and engagement to everything else. to where new york city attitude transports to a small rural middle of nowhere. and people say that places dont move...

right now, i am waiting. i find books here and there, moments in class that grab me. in ecology & evolution we get to go outside, collect data, find some meaningful or useless statistical analysis. in GIS we use real data from projects to make maps and find patterns, clusters. maybe im finding out that in reality, i am more of a go out and do it kind of guy, and all this theory and abstraction of reality is getting to me. im glad i was on the geography search comittee. the guy we picked was all about hands on stuff, community projects in NYC with urban ecology. im sure ill have a great time if i take one of his classes next year. it makes me wonder if i picked the wrong major, which is ironic, because in practice anthropology is so incredibly hands on. but of course, at bard, we dont do hands on. we do theoretics, with hands on sprinkled in.

in the end of the day, the best thing to do is just let your thoughts go on paper. ive been trying to write more in my free time. by no means am i happy here, but thats a product of where i am right now. if i hadnt gone to brazil, im sure id be having a great semester right now. id be very excited about the material. so in a way, not being happy shows me that i still care about the things that make me come alive. it comes in fragments, but it is there. and as soon as i start doing hands on things again, it will be there. passion doesnt leave, doesnt remove itself.

the hard part is come the end of the day, and who do you talk about it all to? i end up talking to my professors, knowing that they might actually get it, but more so, want to listen. in the end we just all want somebody to listen, but more importantly, to acknowledge that we are there and alive. some call it respect, curiosity for others, and interest in engagement.

and thats whats missing here at bard, what i know i need the most.

2009-03-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

what is there to say?

being here for break is boring and lonely, but maybe its constructive. the past few weeks have been so conflated, drama, pain, papers, mid terms. nows a good time to be able to just sit by the waterfall and figure things out. that sounds like a bad fortune cookie.

but sitting alone in the woods, writing, having my space, perhaps is all good. ive been able to be happy on my own this semester. its the work, lack of motivation, and lack of anyone i feel a truly strong connection with here at bard. sometimes it all just feels so meaningless, the things we do. i miss having people i care about to talk to, really talk to. beyond the nuts and bolts of the day, people to share thoughts with. to philosophize, theorize, speculate, observe, examine, explore, find everything beautiful. why do i feel so alone at wanting to have that connection? my therapist once told me a year and a half ago that i have high standards for people. that i so desire intimate and deep connections with people, that i just assume everyone else wants the same thing. that apparently that makes me ahead of my time/age. but in the end of the day, id rather have a small handful of good friends i can share the universe of my thoughts with than a million everyday friendships. not that i dont value those either, and theres a time and a place for all, but, if it came to push to shove...

i think the smiths's lyrics sum it up for me, or, something not quite like it, but good enough. ive forgotten how much a good book or two and good music can feed a starved soul. ive been consuming the worlds/words of italo calvino and murakami, how interesting that they write the way i think.

"Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Coyness is nice, and
Coyness can stop you
From saying all the things in
Life you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Spending warm Summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME

Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together

Nature is a language - can't you read ?
Nature is a language - can't you read ?

SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME

Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together

If it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together

SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
Oh, la ... "

warm summer days indeed. the other day i saw a few deer in the woods. i decided to follow them.

i found a giant book in the library about protists and the 17th century.

yes, i miss it. all. im reading "Love Canal: The Story Continues" by Lois Gibbs. Its her powerful recollection of how a normally shy woman, with no experience organizing or in health, when pressed with the harm of her children, started an enormous grassroots effort. the moral of her book, she more or less says, is the story of how, when pushed and faced with the harm of the things they care about, the small can rise and do anything.

times like these, i feel i can do anything too. i am working at CHEJ this summer. i have earned the respect of my professors. i did my own research in brazil. i can speak portugues pretty well. i am an incredibly chill guy. i am patient, and willing to see the best in people, sometimes too much. ive learned the dangers of giving people the benefit of the doubt all the time, but deep down hold that people will be good. i tend to believe things will work out, even though i have a hard time seeing this at first. i am getting good at jujitsu. i am willing to work incredibly hard for things and people if need be. i work hard and throw myself into everything i do, knowing that i will stumble across something sooner than later that i become passionate and interested in. it always happens. i am organized and know what i want. vamos agora.

2009-03-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

i learned and gained and grew so much over my time in brazil; maybe it was all for nothing if i lose her in the process.

i am not the same person i was last semester. i am not excited, i am not carefree and independent. i want that feeling of power in myself again. that feeling of pride. that feeling of knowing what i want. or maybe i do, but ive just screwed things up enough that it is too late right now, or just not the right time.

i guess all that can happen right now is wait. i dont like the feeling of just going with the grind. its not the same as when i felt like going with the flow; they are completely different. where did it all go? why? why am i such a fuck up?

i want everything to be better. its too much and i cant take it anymore. i cant take feelings dwelling up. i wish there was a way to release it all and become who i want to be/know to be again. i cant take all the loss, loss of self, loss of people i care about, loss of motivation.

what happened? wake up.

2009-03-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

yesterday i spent the day with me, and walked down to the waterfall with some juice and a notebook at sat and wrote for a while. then walked some more. i found some deer, and followed them into the woods. sat down near a creek and read a few of the new calvino stories i bought.

some people say that instead of just ignoring one's brokenheartedness, one should incorporate it into their life, make it a part of them, or something. i struggle with this and what to do with it all.

theres so much to ponder this break. but going off on walks again, something i miss, did it in brazil a lot, was so nice. ive forgotten the feeling of clearing my head and just listening to the world around me.

2009-03-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

listening to the smiths, i always get thinking. its the melancholy waving throughout the air, that kind of dark damp musty mood that i seem to come most alive at. im always looking for more, aren't i? something to push me further, never quite content in the current situation, simply because theres always so much more to see and do and feel and explore and find and embrace. i find myself constantly buying new books just to learn more and open the doors further. one day im sure ill push on through.

its funny, because sometimes as a person i feel i make no sense. but then every once in a while ill find somebody who also makes no sense and can be completely illogical and rational at the same time; its those contradictions that i think i strive to find most in people. not to open them up and expose them, but just to relish how fucked up we all are. im here at bard for the week, mostly alone, and i enjoy just accepting the loneliness and going with it.

this semester has felt like a feeble attempt to hold on and control life. attempting to hold on to the things i felt in brazil, only to realize that the circumstances and context at bard is completely different, and like all organisms, i need to adapt.

adapt. im my microscope history class, which im starting to love for no practical reason whatsoever, we've been talking about how, due to the complexity of the natural world when scientists (that word didnt exist until the mid 1800s!)began looking at it through the microscope, people turned to analogies of the human-built world to describe nature. even though to most of them, the human world was a flawed one that depended on sensory data, and of course, there is so much of the world that our senses cant show us. microorganisms are so fascinating. ive been trying to explore the opposite side of the coin. not so much how we relate nature back to our sensory world, which often translates into describing nature as a machine, but instead relating the obscure complexity of our world back to the microscopic world. ive begun to read Michel Serres' The Parasite. in French "parasite" means biological parasite, guest, and noise. hmm. Serres relates the way humans operate with one another, and with the rest of life on earth, as the relationship of parasite to host. how culture has seeped into the language of parasitology, how the parasite can really be nothing more than a predator, or an unwanted guest in hospitality.

"what does man give to the cow, to the tree, to the steer, who give him milk, warmth, shelter, work, and food? what does he give? death"

"the same one is the host; the same one takes and eats; there is no change of direction. this is true of all beings. of lice and men"

"let's retrace our steps for a moment, going from these habits back to those manners, reversing anthropomorphism. we have made the louse in our image; let us see ourselves in his"

always looking for something more. someone to talk to. something to light me up. something to do.

next week i get to talk with my advisor about epidemiology and public health graduate school.

2009-03-17T08:05:00.001-07:00

March 17th 2009

Thirty-one years ago, community members of Niagara, NY discovered that their schools and homes rested upon a dumping site for the chemicals of industry. That is to say, they had a feeling of its presence all along; it wasn’t until enough public pressure coerced the New York State Department of Health into performing and publishing a health study of the region. Several decades past, Hooker Chemical Co. had used the canal connecting the upper and lower Niagara river-Love Canal-for its waste. After the canal was filled, the Board of Education bought the land for one dollar and constructed an elementary school nearby. Neighborhoods grew around the school zone, and decades later residents began to speculate as to what caused the odors and surfacing liquids around their homes.

When the New York State Department of Health published its study in 1978, it found patterns of reproductive problems in women, toxic contamination in the air and water, PCBs, birth defects in children, all in proximity to the canal. With enough community pressure, the state evacuated and relocated the nearby 239 families. It built a fence around the region and marked the outside territory as hospitable. The community had done its own research, lived and empirical, and knew otherwise. Volunteer scientists helped the community assemble and present data and health survey results; the state government rejected it as “useless housewife data” (CHEJ). Discarding the information meant discarding the acknowledgement of common miscarriages, birth defects, urinary tract disorders, epilepsy. The disease clusters made sense, so much so that the public outside of Love Canal began to acknowledge the patterns too. Two years later, President Carter had to react, and the entire community was evacuated and relocated.

Love Canal became one of those images of environmental activism. Last year marked its thirtieth anniversary, the celebrated subject of many a magazine and newspaper. Many saw the disaster at Love Canal as the beginning of grassroots activism, America’s exposure to and fight against toxic contamination. This year marks its thirty-first anniversary; with another year past, what has the nation learned? In another nine years from now, newspapers will celebrate “40 years after Love Canal”-another decade, another lesson. But really, what was Love Canal? What did we gain?

The technical term today is community-based participatory research, heralded as the solution to environmental and health dilemmas. Involve the community in the process, they say, and the result is empowerment and democratic solutions. Teach a man to fish and he will eat forever. I find it hard to resist too. But Love Canal isn’t some artifact in the past, despite what authorities say. People continue to ask why their children are suspiciously getting cancer. Low-income neighborhoods are still predominantly located near industrial sites. Native communities in the American West still fight for basic control over water and resources.

Just because we mark an anniversary doesn’t mean we’ve actually learned a lesson.

At Love Canal, the community knew there was something wrong in their neighborhood. They didn’t have the official statistics, just the lived experience and concern for their families. Only once the state was pushed enough did they send in for a certified study. Today, thirty-one years later, the work and concerns of these communities continues to be rejected at the high levels of research and policy. Just “useless housewife data”, they reply.

2009-03-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

i dont understand why the outlets in the library on the second floor dont work. my computer battery is dying, and i could be working on my writing the world piece, but instead im procrastinating.

im very ready for spring break. i need to get away from everything and just be alone for a week. i have lots of work to do, lots of pleasure reading, and a few friends will be around. which is good, because i could use the social support but also know i could make good use of just time to be by myself without copious amounts of work to do. ive come to realize i havent had much time for myself lately, my homework takes up most of it. ive also found i dont really use this thing for my opinions anymore, i usually just rant, which says something. i look back to my entries from brazil or winter break to now and its a 180.

i feel lots of anger at small things and look forward to getting the time off to work on it. i got an A on my anthropology short paper which is a slight upper. meh, this is all silly.

what's there to write about in this thing anymore?

2009-03-15T19:53:00.001-07:00

wouldnt life be nice if it was like one of those tv shows? where the character just releases all of their anger, sadness, emotion, and it becomes some form of strength they can muster to overcome their odds?

but no, this is life. and instead they are just here, building up daily, with no way out. and i wish i knew what to say, what to think, what to know. and i feel ripped in half constantly, and i wish it would stop. and then when it does, i wish it kept tearing away.

maybe itl get better. but i doubt it. because all i find myself with is me, being frustrated at an inability to come to a decision and stable state of mind. maybe all i do want is to just read, and write here and there, do a little bit of good in the meantime. maybe id just like something meaningful, and its not here, no. i look at my bookshelf. maybe i just want go on and get an MPH and do something. maybe i just want to lie in my hammock and read novels. i dont know, how do you know what would really make you happy? i know its the little things at the end. comfort. but also change and constant excitement.

all i know is i need to get through this one week, get my shit together, get my shit together, start exercising daily, and read.

Life

2009-03-12T20:32:00.001-07:00

the annals of the laboratory state
"Leviathan" by thomas hobbes
microscopes and protozoa
love canal and lois gibbs
remembrance and activism
darwin's finches
rebelais
cartography
sweeps

i am dan.

i am to write about what drives me. not the fish in my room, not peeling clementines, not rolling beer cans down a roof. gifts water activism epidemiology community democracy autonomy. i long to be lost in something. being lost means you struggle to find something, anything, and you learn to go with your lead. im tired of confusing myself and being overwhelmed by life. im not looking for an answer, or direction, or purpose. not at all, just the sense of knowing that this kind of chaos is what id like. theres nothing at all wrong with disorder and mayhem, one just needs the right kind.

i wonder what the toxins are that i unknowingly have in my body. science tells us that our body is actually composed of billions of bacteria swarming around. our body is a symbiotic organism. bodies, are symbiotic organisms. bodies are composed of interweaving parts, different species, working together in one way or another. that way may be mutualism or competition, but it is a relationship, and thats what counts. so what if we take that idea and spread it further, beyond our body to the social body? what would we find? would we find pockets of collaboration? would we find fruitful exchange? would be find, in little corners and fragments, people who at the depths of their hearts are just trying to be good people to one another? would it even be that difficult of a search? or maybe, our assumption that the world is one competitive mess (no, Hobbes)tells us more than we might like about who we are as a culture. perhaps theres still some truth to marcel mauss. truth has a history too.

what did yahweh think when he killed leviathan and brought order? smugness, or just the work of the day?

2009-03-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

this week. arg. confusing. every day. im sitting reading through Hooke's Micrographia. i emailed CHEJ back about the internship and they haven't gotten back to me, and that makes me nervous. i have two lab reports due wednesday for my core biology class. i have a GIS mid term next week. anthro...is anthro.

all in all, school is school. im bored. somewhat lonely. the space is nice. the winter cold isnt. i keep telling myself to go to the gym and i make up excuses in my head. snap out of it. my fish is great, i need to clean its tank. i was actually happy with my writing piece this week, to be honest. a first. im excited for jujitsu and boxing this weekend. maybe even squash. hell, whatever gets my mind away. seriously, bard, what is it. too much to handle at times. i cant focus on my work, im having just the hardest time being motivated. its different than the past. i want to go do something. meaningful. i joined the environmental collective. ill do boxing and jujitsu. im on the geography search committee. im somewhat involved. i might start volunteering at the root cellar, who knows. like i said, the writing is alright. nice at times. this week has felt so heavy, so unsure, so pale in comparison. ive been listening to the oddest mix of music: demos of strawberry fields by the beatles, an acoustic version of rape me by nirvana, shine by alexi murdoch, the pixies.

im ready for spring break, but in reality i know im just ready to be doing my own thing and getting on with life. my classes are fine. but theyre not really what i want to do. im working hard to start putting together a tutorial next semester. i know that a prof is teaching a class called plague on history of public health epidemic interventions. biostatistics. cultural theory. maybe environmental chemistry, or subcellular biology. who knows. i just want to start working. im working on my senior project idea, since the paper i write for anthro this sem...

this is a rant. an unnecessary rant. i need to get out more. edit: i need to sleep more. less caffine. not going to happen

2009-03-03T07:56:00.001-08:00

liberation.

im looking for it, and now i know its here, somewhere. at first i thought maybe it was just left behind in the dust of brazil, in the dust of Paras dirt roads. over break it was somewhere inside me, or at least thats what i felt, and something began to sap it away. and it wasnt until this weekend, seeing people again from that time, seeing the same issues i cared so much about, and seeing a horde of people who care just as much, that i know i need to look harder here. or go to the place where it is. ive been fairly passive. reaching slightly out of reach, but not far enough. who was it, vonnegut? that we write so that we dont feel alone. i feel alone. and im writing to reach it all. this weekend i wandered on subways around DC, did cartwheels on the dirt, listened to testimonies from impacted community members. i cant think of anything i want more than this summer's opportunity. right now it seems an endeavor of a to b. it wasnt much, but it was invigorating. refreshing. rejuvinating. refinding it all. what was it exactly? the people, the company, my handy friend nostalgia. theres so much nostalgia.

there shouldnt be. it shouldnt get in the way, but it is omnnipresent. classes? in the end thats all they are. i was more excited in 24 hours than i have been all month. for multiple reasons. but whatever they are, thanks. i wish it wasnt a waiting game, on so many levels. who knows, maybe things will all work out.

i made a playlist last night. i need to feed my soul. i need to be myself, ive been finding that becoming harder and harder here. i find myself about people i dont quite care for, shrinking away, rather not dealing with it all. but that isnt the answer. do people understand me here? no, simply. maybe a small handful. this weekend i start boxing and get back to jujitsu. going to the gym on a regular basis is imperative. reading for pleasure is imperative. and back to the point of this all, getting more involved. she was right, i cant just sit and expect things like motivation and passion to fall in my lap, not here. i felt something again this weekend, a few things.

i need more liberation

2009-03-03T07:48:00.001-08:00

Dan Becker
March 2nd 2009

Dreadlocks follow corduroy following beanies. The streets fill around Chinatown as the morning session ends, as the crowds of thousands spill out of the convention center. Outside, it’s brisker than the night before. Spring teases us, licking its lips. People cluster at the nearest restaurants, green identification tags slung around their necks. Like swarms of locusts, they move from place to place, finding whatever they can take, taking whatever they can find. We veer off the main path, my friends and I. My friend Dana goes to American University; she knows her way around. Together we find chili, falafel, and cappuccinos.

The night before I did cartwheels in front of the Washington Monument. Our jackets, sweaters, cell phones, wallets, and keys laid in a pile on the patchy grass of the National Mall. The air was refreshingly warm, the wind mellow. The area was empty, spare a few other wanderers. The carousel near the Smithsonians had been locked. The atmosphere was calm, the vibe nice.

The energy is different, overwhelming, inside the conference center as the crowds return for the afternoon panels. Volunteers carry clipboards with petitions to sign, buttons to pass out. Old acquaintances bump into each other, awkwardly hugging. A drum circle begins in the corner. Vendors sell posters, shirts, “start a revolution” bumper stickers. One can sit against the pillars and breath it all in as the ten thousand people hustle by.

Upstairs and in the adjacent building, signs at the hundreds of doors to conference rooms title workshops and lectures. Some of the panelists discuss energy policy, biofuel, the history and use of direct action, indigenous peoples and climate change, and creative activism, to name few. The festering of ideas is active and alive. You see it, feel it, and hear it as students pass between rooms, talk over paninis and bowls of soup, and overhear each other as they brush shoulders in the halls.

The convention center brims with life-it is a Petri dish, a colony of bacteria. With proper nourishment the few multiply and expand until they reach carrying capacity. Scientists say a bacteria population can double in less than ten minutes. Politicians and activists speak, the Roots play a concert, and the thousands explode into the main lobby. The escalators and stairs pack with individuals-hippies, hipsters, activists. They all release chants, yells, hollers. The body of the building pulses. The energy is bursting through in its excess.

Finally it breaks. People flow into the streets. A man knocks into a trashcan out the corner of my eye; we disperse. Lines of people slow the traffic in the streets. The thousands part their ways, some to the capital building, some to the Mall, and others to the metro. The subway slows the chaos, dilutes it. But in a way, the disorder is refreshing, the energy and passion invigorating. The metro leaves you with your thoughts, to circulate once more with those nearby.

not about brazil

2009-02-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

I remember the image somewhat vividly. Like all memories, it is hazy and fragmented, but that was also the nature of the photograph. I’m not sure what on that day compelled me to open that one book amongst the others, having already spent hours outside the darkroom mesmerized in the works of Sebastão Salgado and other documentary artists. Perhaps I felt the urge to glimpse something different. Perhaps my photography teacher suggested it to me.

By now, I can’t recall the name of the artist or the title of the image. What I do remember is the method it used and the feeling it stimulated. The photograph was a typical glimpse into the car of a train: two rows of benches, one with three seats, one with two, where the photographer sits with the shutter focused. To his eleven o’clock, a man reads a book. In the seat behind the photographer, to his direct left, sits a woman with her cat. Outside the window is an array of tress. The image, the whole, is fragments. Elements of the wider picture fall together, imperfectly. The artist shot each individual image at a different shutter speed. Some are blurred, others are sharp; every shot has the date at the lower right hand corner. The lower half of the image of the man reading a book is still, the bench and area he sits at, still. His head, moving every so slightly as he turns a page and scans the text, is captured over a longer frame, a blur to the viewer. The multiple photographs fall uneasily over one another, overlapping one another. Some of the trees appear sharp and focused as the train passes by, others, a haze of springtime green. You can't understand the whole without looking at each photograph. Each photograph is irrelevant on its own. But it works.

My photography teacher told me that he began to see the world in black and white as his eye adjusted. Colors would vanish into grey, and that would transform into contrasts. Perhaps, I thought, my eye can do the same for shutter speed. Along the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie I grasp a sense of it. I don’t get the chance to travel by train too often. The winter makes it easier, simpler to focus; the distractions are less, both inside and outside the train car. Lines in the ice remain upon the river’s surface from a cargo ship, my view as I glance out the window on the other side of the train. To my ten o'clock in the three seat row a woman in a red dress reads Kafka on the Shore. In my lens of vision there are no cats, no spring trees to pass by, no vivid leaves to notice. Eventually, the eye sees the woman's hand turning the page as a blur, the cargo ship as still, the man walking by as frozen in space.

my professor will probably tell me this sucks, or is cliche, or has poor structure...ass

2009-02-22T19:41:00.000-08:00

The word hades was substituted for sheol when scribes translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. Hades was the realm of the dead where all mortals go. Tartarus was a section of it, the kind of Hell we would be accustomed to imagine. Here the Hell was a pit in the earth, a residence of suffering and pain. After death, souls of the mortal world would be judged, and those unworthy would exist in the pit for eternity. The original sheol happened closer to reality. Sheol, too, was known as a pit, a hole, an abode in the earth. The difference is in the judgment. Sheol became the destination for both the good and the bad, yet still inescapable. I think the Hebrews had it right.

PA-150 takes you from the beginning of the Tocantins river down to the Great Carajás Project. The section of the Transamazon highway goes on for kilometers, at least an eight hour drive, and that’s only until the expanding urban center of Marabá. Along the way, you’ll note a gradual disappearance of forest trees, of the familiar açaí palms, of the common river traders so typical in images of the Amazon; it is replaced by squatter settlements, livestock production, and logging regimes. Eventually, you reach a fork in the road at PA-257; you’re almost at the very south of Pará state. Here you’ll find the prelude, a roadside memorial called Eldorado dos Carajás-it has nothing to do with gold. A large wooden memorial was raised for the shooting of nineteen landless farmers-by the state military police-in 1996 for attempting to claim unused land for their displaced families. But you can go further still, there’s more.

Follow the Transamazon past Paraupebas and you’ll arrive at the Great Carajás Project. In 1967 a United States Steel Company helicopter flew over the Carajás site and, low on fuel, made a forced landing. They found below them a mineral reserve of 66% iron concentration. Not willing to allow a foreign company control over such wealth, the Brazilian government found a way for control to fall into the grip of the Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, now known as VALE. In 1985, VALE obtained complete control over the mineral deposit, over 1.5 billion tons of iron ore. A year later, the government helped construct the Carajás Rail, linking the site with export ports in the neighboring state of Maranhão, along the Atlantic. The highways linking the port cities of Belém and Sao Luís in the states connect with the dam up north, all part of the political and developmental climate of the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil. “Land without people for people without land”, that was the saying. Within a decade large hydroelectric dams sprouted from the black soil to feed the demands of the great industrial consumption in the south of the state.

The Great Carajás Project is the largest of those.

It is also the largest mine in the world. Like a vortex, it sucks in and consumes labor, offering pay to the poor, to the landless that it at the same time displaces. The cycle and pull of the machine never ends, and the foreign and domestic demand never falls. From space, from the map, you might think it was a canyon, something beautiful. Didn’t the Greeks have that understanding of the word beautiful, meant to portray the beauty and at the same time terror of an entity? But still, the Hebrews must have had it correct. Sheol drew in the worthy and the unworthy. And here, all seem unworthy for what lies within The Project. Debt labor, cardiovascular disease, and the other forms of death associated with strip mine projects. We in the United States are no stranger to it in our development past either. Do you remember the incident in Pennsylvania last year? Virginia?

Instead, we face not being able to imagine that kind of Hell, as foreign to us as the old Hebrew hell is to hades. Instead, there is the inability to process it from the scale I was let to see it, up against the railing of the view area. All I do is hear a few stories, interpreted to the group through a company translator. All I get to see is the portraits of a few web sites. And see the movement of rock from below. The scale from GoogleMaps only goes so far, but I can still see the detail of the red earth, a gash, a fissure, a pit, an abode from above

Center for Health, Environment, and Justice

2009-02-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

Today I had a phone interview with the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. It was great, and they described what I would do as an internship. If I chose to work with them this summer, which I am more and more learning towards, I will work with the Science Director to do applied research. Communities contact CHEJ when they suspect an environmental health related problem and want assistance. CHEJ helps them collect, analyze, interpret, organize, and use the data for political leverage to win environment/health struggles.

CHEJ's web site describes they community assistance program as the following:

"The core mission of CHEJ’s science and technical assistance is to demystify the scientific aspect of environmental health issues by evaluating technical reports and reviews, guiding communities through the maze of technical information, distinguishing good information from bad and translating jargon into plain language. Services include:

Serving as an on-call technical advisor to groups.
Reviewing and evaluating data and analyses from air, water and soil tests.
Reviewing and evaluating technical reports, health studies and site proposals.
Traveling to meet with groups to answer questions, educate the public about a local environmental health risk or evaluate scientific information or data.
Preparing specific guidebooks, written for the layperson, on how to use technical information to win a community victory."

I was told that they are doing a current program in conjunction with Tufts University to go into communities, talk to communitiy members, and help them in the fields of capacity building and interpretation of scientific data. Sounds perfect, and I would be working with this program, doing research, helping analyze and interpret data for communities once I adjust to the work, and helping to write up reports for CHEJ, communities, and the general public.

CHEJ is located in Falls Church, VA, 7 miles outside of DC. Depending if my friend stays around in her apartment in DC, I might already have a place to stay. CHEJ also gives a $150 stipend and pays for local travel expenses. Like I said, so far I am leaning towards this heavily. I was a little torn because the idea of doing an internship on emergign infectious diseases and climate/ecosystem change looked really interesting as well, but this seems to much more hands on and community based I just can't say no. Plus I'll be close to DC.

Additional benefit: close to DC. This means...Universities? I was browsing through George Washington University's summer course offerings and this has some potential. They do offer night classes...in public health. CHEJ usually works their interns 4 days a week, normal work hours, 9-5. For instance, they offer a 1 credit course in Community Based Participatory Research from 6:10-8:40 on Tuesdays. Same with Climate Change and Public Health, on Thursdays. Hmmm. From Mid-May to the end of June. Potentially awesome. And this would take care of the whole "interest in climate change and human health thing". But also would give me actual course experience in research methods. But it also runs in with Bard class time. Bummer, but the song remains the same. I'm sure I can find at least one summer class somewhere in DC that fits my interests. It would make for such a good summer. And although I'm still going to see what I hear from other organizations, so far this one looks really great and the "interview" left a really good impression. Who knows, maybe I will even be able to use some GIS.

number two for writing the world

2009-02-09T22:13:00.000-08:00

It is not at all the same. Back to the streets of Belém. It is known as the city of mangoes on the common tongue, and it rightfully lives to its name. They line the main street of the city, Nazaré, all the way from the grand Basilica in the center to the old Republican plaza, the name itself sounding alien in English. Walking from the cathedral and its stained glass windows, passing by cell phone vendors and the Cairo ice cream shop, it is possible every few minutes to pass a mango littered along the street, perhaps the way apples fall somewhere back home. Or at least, they used to. Just as common is to see one collected off the sidewalk bricks by a passer-by, eaten on the spot. The mangoes are smaller here, nothing like the colossuses grown in or imported to America.

It is the smells that get you the most, nothing at all like the mocha, the coffee, the fry grease, the Cinnabon of an upstate New York’s pit stop along the Taconic State Parkway. Here, a Starbucks sign tells me that by purchasing a special holiday peppermint mocha, five cents will be donated to a cause in Africa. Chairs are lined up alongside the burger stand like a conveyor belt, its members feeding and consuming during a pause in the drive. But Belém? There is a vitality to it all, a freshness and a decay. You can smell it and you can taste it. The open-aired sewers persistently remind you that the city is alive. Walking down Almirante Barroso, you take in the street vendors with their array and sales of mint gum, morning bread and cheese, roughly made fruit juices. They are part of the informal economy of the city, the kind that is starkly obvious during the unanimous daily walk to work, but vital to the daily grind.

It is noon, lunchtime, and the city indulges in açaí. On any given day, one can bet to find the frozen fruit pulp in a variety of houses throughout the city, regardless of income level. Along the Taconic road-side stop I see an advertisement exploring the berry’s elusive benefits. A superfood, it tells me. There is a false magical quality about it all. The man at the counter does not even recognize the name of the fruit when I order with its Portuguese pronunciation. Behind the counter the man pours a faint purple juice into a mix of grape, banana, and yogurt, amongst other things I am not able to distinguish. I am reminded of the five percent juice labels along most fruit juices I see in the grocery. Along Almirante Barroso, I see a real sign. It is not made of plastic, but wood, painted white. The red letters spelling out product and price have been applied in haste. There is an immediacy to it all, something one doesn't find elsewhere. Here the fruit is raw, sloppy, and thick. In the corner of the shed, the açaí berries pack full the medium sized bucket, continually sloshing in the water, seeds and bits sinking and floating, bumping into one another. The scene is not too different from a typical Brazilian bus ride from Almirante Barroso to the city’s main Praça.

Along this main road, my friends and I arrive at the window of the familiar shed, only four blocks from our office. Here they sell a bag of the fruity mush for five reals, close to three dollars. Taking a cup, the vendor scoops a host of berries from his bucket. A single açaí berry is no bigger than a dime, dark purple, with a tint of black. The man empties several scoops of the fruit into the machine, churning the berries, grinding them, removing the fruit’s pulp, spitting out the seeds into the bin below. He pours fresh water two, three times into the device. The process continues, the tart, bitter smell becoming more and more evident to our senses. We can both smell it and taste it revolving around the air of the vendor’s shack. Eventually, the thick, watery pulp begins to come out the machine. The man takes several small plastic bags and fills them each with the goo. His fingers covered in gritty purple, the vendor ties the tops into knots and hands one to Nigel, one to Lynn, and one to me. He asks if we would like tapioca too, only one real more, and we nod our heads in agreement, ruffling through our shorts pockets for a coin. We walk through the main street once more.

The purple paste is nothing like the pit-stop smoothie; it is thick, strong, bitter. It is raw, just fruit, water, and work. In the interior of the state, the heartland of the fruit, edible açaí is formed through a long process of mashing, labor, and the water of the river. There's a sense of pride and tradition in making and eating açaí that one finds here in the state of Pará. Elsewhere in Brazil, one finds families gorging on açaí with a mix of banana, honey, and granola, sometimes sweet avocado. In Pará, this would be tantamount to sacrilege. This principle applies even more strongly in the communities of Belém, who eat açaí with tapioca, sugar, farinha, or simply plain, savoring the bitter, gritty experience. My friends and I pour the mush of our bags into cups, adding spoonful after spoonful of sugar. Nigel and I use tapioca as well. We all sitting outside, taking in the heat and humidity of the afternoon Belém sun, only several degrees from the equator. It is 90 degrees Fahrenheit, normal for the city. Spoonful by spoonful the cup becomes empty, each mouthful turning our teeth a new shade of purple. It gets caught in the gums and between the teeth. The smell hits your nose, the bitterness hits your tongue, and the thickness of it all leads to a nap on the tiles outside, or in the hammock in one’s room, or a quick retreat on a couch, as I come home to find Maura my host mother doing. A few empty bowls sit in the sink.

Somehow, this transforms to that. It goes from there to here. Something is lost in the transition, translation, and production of the açaí. Ah-sigh-ee, not ah-kai. The man at the counter pronounced it the way it is here, just another health fad. A slight pour of an ingredient into some mess, not understood in the least. My Gmail account tells me it can cure cancer. Here, the fruit loses its magic, reduced now to a magical cure-all. Back in Belém, the berry is lunch and family; for many, it is what allows them to bring home other meals, textbooks, medicines, more. It is what families laugh about and enjoy together after a large afternoon fare of fried fish, fresh limes, rice, feijoada, spaghetti, and morning-made pineapple juice, leading to the communion of a household-wide late-day nap. It is something that an outsider like me learns within the first week of my time in the city, so much so that even we learn the daily route to the nearest açaí shed by heart. Family bonding and laughs over purple teeth at every afternoon transforms into solitarily consumed health drinks and weight control powder. All else seems to vanish away and I, faced with the cold and the hustle of New York, throw the half-drank fruit smoothie into the trash.

to make you see

2009-02-04T20:06:00.001-08:00

"my art is not without a purpose. physicians, when they wish to treat children with a nasty dose of wormwood, first smear the rim of the cup with a sweet yellow fluid of honey. the children, too young as yet for foresight are lured by the sweetness at their lips into swallowing the bitter draught. so they are tricked but not trapped, for the treatment restores them to health. in the same way our doctrine often seems unpalatable to those who have not handled it, and the masses shrink from it. that is why i have tried to administer my philosophy to you in the dulcet strains of poesy, to touch it with the sweet honey of the Muses. my object has been to engage your mind with my verses while you gain insight into the nature of the universe and the pattern of its architecture." - Lucretius (c. 100- c. 55 BCE)

or as Joseph Conrad said about the question, why write: "above all, to make you see". i really enjoy reading it, such a good change of seasons. reminds me of marcel mauss's "the gift", or loren eiseley's "the invisible pyramid". tomorrow we get to go over our pieces. i feel content with mine.

today i had GIS (geographic information systems). i think it is going to be one of those classes. GIS is a model of the world via visual layers of information. land use, socio-economic data, risk hot spots, environmental variables. GIS allows us to compile layers of this information about almost anything into a visual map form so that we can see where, for instance certain groups might be at risk, where the highest concentration of a certain population lives, and so on. interestingly enough, its not too far off from Conrad's statement. it helps us simply visualize a problem (and the way to its resolution) in a simpler fashion. a few examples:

which populations in a given space have proper access to public health services
mapping outbreaks of diseases tied to environmental phenomenon/degradations
natural disaster risk hotspots
urban planning
locating locations for a youth center that will be of optimal location based on demographics
locating which populations will be most affected by rising sea levels due to climate change
vulnerability of emerging infectious diseases
air pollution exposure

im excited. the schedule matches up. cultural technologies of memory works so well with writing the world. most theories on individual memory posit that our memory is broken into fragments, and is recalled via not only certain cues, but the contexts of those cues. memory does not act as an empty shell where we hold our memories. neither is it all memories buried into our subconscious to be awoken at points with the right trigger, as Freud believed. instead it is also a social process, where at times we depend on others to spur on our memories, to jog and image to life, to awaken triggers and memories that we hadn't thought about for years. memories of brazil seem to be in these fragments, and once in a while somebody will say something that opens the flood gates. by writing, maybe i can discover what there was there that awoke something in me, and through that writing, i can figure out how to apply the same tool here. liberation.

i met with diana the other day to talk about brazil and bard. she read through my isp and was impressed, had some critiques, and good things to say. it felt great to talk about my research with someone, but also to hear that she felt that this kind of work was the sort of thing she saw in me a lot in class. she had been the one to be..disappointed, not the right word, with me at moderation. my analysis of this text was based mostly in high-theory, instead of an analysis that was political and activist-ish in nature. going to my isp, on capacity building, the need for environmental education, and political participation, she said that this was a good direction for me to be going to. and was glad that i had seemed to flip-flop from theory to...the real world and the politics at stake in it all. she even said she would consider doing a tutorial on medical anthropology (applied) dealing with the environment, but also agreed on my presumption that the best thing to do would to get an internship in community (environmental) health this summer.

hmm.

starting over

2009-02-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

"we saw what would happen, and maybe it wasn't what we expected"

in sum. it feels weird and odd, but in a strange way, it feels like what should be the case. i said i didn't want anything upon coming back to the U.S, to Bard. and maybe it was fear of losing, but i think more, but i tried, but in the end, i think this is...right, in some sense? i feel like i haven't been the greatest person to the people i care about, and so i feel it is time to set things straight and move forward. i said long before that i didn't want something serious, and i meant it, and it hurt someone. and then returning back i realized that's what this was becoming into, and i've felt bad and odd about that. because i know it isnt what i need either. and im not really sure what this means for the rest of my life right now. i know i need to take care of myself. i know that i probably wont lose a friend, and can try to see what i can fix. besides, its felt more like that, a close friend, for the past weeks anyway. and im not really sure for what, or whats right or not any more, but i feel like i did the right thing. and am giving myself a fresh start, in a sense. new semester, new status, new me. i feel confused, weird, maybe bad, but also somewhat...ready. who knows. oh yeah, im crazy. why? because i still have to finish undoing string to make eel mops tomorrow. but i also read Book I of Lucretius, a Roman writing about the cosmos, atoms, and the nature of the universe. i think ive come to the conclusion that my life makes no sense, and it is better to just embrace the chaos. ive also found that writing, as my art medium of choice, it seems, feels so liberating. i dont know what to think about the piece below. but then again, i dont know what to think about my life in general. HA.

writing piece, #1

2009-02-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

He rips the hook from its mouth. The fish falls. It hits onto the floor of the canoe. The fish is brown. An orange tint speckles its sides. The boat is old. It is full of patches and leaks. The pool of water rocks the fish towards my feet. My sandals are on the opposite end of the canoe. The fish hits my bare feet. I feel scales. It flops against my left foot. More water slowly saturates through the cracks. Its my job to scoop it out. Leo passes me the half of a soda bottle. The fish flops again. My host father grabs a plank of wood. He beats the fish over the head. Tucunaré, he says. Leo hits it again. He hits the fish two more times. It flops no more. Its mouth hangs open. Some fish blood has landed next to my feet.

Twenty minutes pass. I hear the sound of the motor. I hear a few birds off in the distance. A dolphin breaks the surface of the water. Wood and leaves break the same surface. The varzea is a flooded forest. Its water is black. It is acidic. One cannot see anything underneath. Leo asks me about America. He asks about my family. He asks if we have farinha there. Language hinders my response. The canoe reaches the village. The dark Rio Negro runs up against the shore. My host father hands me a fish to hold. He takes the other one. He takes his knife and fish to the wooden dock. Minutes pass. It smells of fish guts.

The house is up the hill. Wet laundry hangs across the porch. We approach it. The chickens scuttle under the foundation of the home. Leo kicks off his sandals. I do the same. Him and I both hold the cleaned fish. We walk up the five wooden steps. A dog barks from underneath. The home has two rooms. Nubia is in the kitchen. Leo greets his wife. We bring the two fish into the room. I wait in my hammock. The others are tied up to the rafters. One is white. One is orange. One is green. Mine is blue.

The stove and oven run off the community generator. I hear the fish skin cackling. It cackles amongst lemon juice and butter. He adds salt. It cackles more. It is the most delicious fish in the world. Leo takes the head for himself. Manly, he tells me. Fish juice and skin are stuck to my fingers. Ana Paula and Neto come into the room. They have been outside. They watched the community play soccer. Futebol. They fight over who gets to eat the eyeballs. They are two and six years old. The later takes the fish eyes from his father. They pop in his mouth. Ana Paula begins to cry. Her mother fixes her a cup of coffee. It has tapioca and sugar in it. She stops and drinks. We continue to pick at the fish body. The head is now a skull.

making eels mops in my free time

2009-02-01T13:01:00.001-08:00

http://www.orionmagazine.org/

i think it would be a sort of dream job to do environmental health work and write for a magazine like that.

im feeling decent. school seems better, i just know i cant lose hold of those things i gained from brazil. its frustrating sometimes how different the atmosphere is, and im not quite used to it. does everything right now need to have a purpose? im not sure, and im conflicted about it. in the end, im pretty sure as long as you are reading things that challenge your mind and make you think then everything is ok. but at the same time, i have trouble applying how reading the original microscope manuscript has any bearing on the present. even if i do find it interesting....is that really enough? like...maybe its not right of me to say, but when i know there are so many people out there without a college education who deserve so badly to have one, shouldn't i make more out of what i have? not that i dont take full advantage of it or anything. i dont know, it confuses me and hurts my head. but i know i am studying the importance of community, and in the end thats what matters. or something.

yes. i like what i am studying and enjoy my classes this semester, so far they are off to a great start. im very excited about the writing class. our professor has a phd in english literature, and then realized he hated academic prose. so hes going to work with us on doing just that, and writing interesting and artistic things to a broader audience. which i think is so important.

i did brazilian ju jitsu yesterday, and am going to commit myself to it fully. it felt so good to be doing something like that again. and it gives me incentive to train. really train. sometimes i think its at times like those that i feel the most alive. i think between jujitsu and writing, spending time looking at stuff under microscopes, catching eels in the sawkill river and raising daphnia in the ecology lab, making maps, and understanding the importance of memory to social movements and social change and activism, i will get there.

and so ive been thinking about what else i need to do to feel independent, content, and free. and i know the answer to that, and it is hard to figure out what to do. but im pretty sure what i do need is to be on my own, and as in brazil, find my own path here. besides, im never very good at this sort of thing. plus, its time to make amends. i do wish all this was simpler, and that knowing what/how to do was easy. but, im also not afraid, in general. thank you brazil. its good to feel a sense of real strength again. and strength comes from doing the right thing. which ive been trying to slowly do in general. be a better friend, better son, better student. if i compare myself from last semester at bard to now, yes, i do feel better, improved, and in a lot of ways, new. even if bard does make me feel sucked back into the old at times, i know the me i know deep down is there, but not as hidden anymore.

for eco&evo we are making eel mops to catch eels in the sawkill. which entails ripping apart thick rope thread by thread.

memory, whales, dreams, microscopes

2009-01-28T20:39:00.000-08:00

i go to a good school. i am taking interesting classes this semester, on population ecology, on the ways groups use memories for political purposes, on the first microscopic images, on environmental mapping, and on improving my nonfiction writing style. and i like it, so far. i like what i learn. but i dont like having to make the connection on my own all the time. this isnt doing anything. thats a typical liberal arts kid complaint, but i cant help thinking about it. the greeks had a saying about knowledge. they believed it to be the most important thing in the world nearly, but if you have knowledge, you need to use it. or else it just sits there. and is pointless.

and i cant really help but think that i feel very pointless being back here. i like it. ive missed my friends. ive missed my professors. ive missed being around all these people that actually seem interested in what i did over the semester and what i want to do. i met with one professor today and we talked about brazil for a long time. and then the question, well, what do you want to do with all of this. good point diana, good point.

so much. public health, applied social research, disease ecology. i dont know. it would be nice to feel a purpose. and in brazil i felt like we were given the purpose to be witnesses. or something like that. and now im back here, afraid that i am just slipping back into normal bard mode, and i dont want to lose what ive gained. and need to find something to grab hold of and feel meaningful. im going to go to the meeting this week about bard's prison education program. im going to go to ju-jitsu this saturday. im going to be on the search committee for a geography professor. being in amazonia taught me that family and friends though, in the end, are what matter most. doing what you can to help where you are matters most. so what am i doing?

part of me feels ready to go off and be alone. i feel a disconnect with people here so far, a difficulty relating. i strive for the sense of open, wandering, liberating, freedom, purpose, and bonds i had in amazonia. perhaps i do need to move on with my life. i still feel a sense of difference. i dont feel any overwhelming sense of fear. i still feel more capable. still articulate. just...out in the open cold.

and i know i can make these connections and make these things relevant and useful. i always keep a section of my notebooks just for those moments when i feel like ive made a connection. and they are great moments. its the strangeness of being back, its overwhelming, to be honest.

i know it will work out, and i have hope. all the same, theres an emptiness to being back.

Op-Ed

2009-01-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

for my Policy and Communications Workshop we all wrote Op-Eds on something we were studying. so i did mine on something we visited in brazil. here it is, read it. let me know what you think about it. post a comment. suggestions and constructive criticism are encouraged and desired. thanks!

Rethinking Sustainability in the Amazon

Dan Becker, January 15, 2009

In 1999 ALCOA-the American Aluminum company based in Pittsburg, PA-purchased the rights to begin bauxite mining in Juruti, a township in Pará, the second largest state of the Brazilian Amazon. The world’s leading producer of aluminum, the eventual product of bauxite, ALCOA abides by a series of environmental impact studies, regulations on climate monitoring and wildlife conservation, and social service provisions. The company has recently been internationally recognized for their commitment to sustainability and the construction of the sustainable mining site in the region. However, how does this explain the disruption of ecosystems and near-unanimous social unrest in Juruti?

The communities of Juruti rest alongside tributaries of the Amazon, the largest and most biologically diverse river in the world, home to over 3,000 recognized species of fish. Inhabitants of Juruti have traditionally made their livelihoods based on agricultural subsistence and small-scale fishing to feed their villages and families. With the arrival of the mining project, these traditional-use areas became off-limits to Juruti’s communities, greatly restricting their access to all that the biodiverse forest and rivers provide. In addition to being cut away from traditional sources of income and basic amenities, residents fear that ALCOA’s rinsing of bauxite ore in the township’s waters will pour sediments into the main lake and drastically alter the water’s composition.

Pumping roughly 5,000 liters of water per hour for the mining operation, ALCOA is showing signs that the company does not understand nor give much credit to understanding the local ecology of the region. In Juruti, the primary water systems are composed of highly acidic black-water. Due to the decay of vegetation as it moves through the flooded forests, varzeas, the water takes on a dark-colored tint and is generally lower in nutrients than other water systems. Yet because of these conditions, black-water contains a unique array of flora and fauna. ALCOA’s bauxite extraction is in the process of extracting the water from this system and replacing it with white water from other sources made of an entirely different composition, drastically altering the environment and the community’s source of fish and drinking water.

While ALCOA has strutted a commitment to sustainability in their extraction sites, these areas remain just that, a source of profit. Social movements in Juruti stress the desire for a share in the monetary gain, inclusion in the project, and access to their traditional lands. The company’s record of their involvement and participation with the communities they extract from is dismal. Juruti is only one small area where communities’ ecosystems and connection with the resource management process are dictated by ALCOA. In 1963 ALCOA’s building of a dam in Suriname flooded nearly 600 meters squared of forest and displaced over 6,000 individuals, who received only $3 each in compensation. Since 1986, over 47 ALCOA facilities in the US have been fined for environmental violations, the most notable being a $3.75 million penalty for pollutant discharge into the St. Lawrence River.

Global demand for aluminum is steadily rising with the US being one of the largest consumers. Aluminum can be found in wrappers, cans, pots, and toasters, just to name a few. This demand is dependent upon bauxite importation from regions such as Juruti, which in turn depends on the exploitation of these local communities and environments. Companies like ALCOA are in part able to continue with these abuses under the guise of sustainability and sound environmental management; however, it is clear that not only is this a hollow illusion, but their impact on nature and communities has so far done more harm than good. Sustainability has become a big buzzword these days, but the international and environmental communities need to be more critical and thoughtful as to what it entails. As consumers with our inherent connection to the extraction and importation of raw materials, we can start by being cautious of where our everyday products-such as all things aluminum-come from, and especially at what cost, even if it does happen to be an ocean away.

YESSS

2009-01-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

we just had a lecture on disease ecology, and it was exactly what i was looking for. not in the research scientist way (although that too is appealing), but in a public health oriented way. it is so amazing. did you know that 2/3 to 3/4 of today's newly emerging infectious diseases in the world come from animal hosts or insect vectors? or that a recent study in belize...well..ill lay it out for you, so, spare me.

ok so. belize. certain types of vegetation that allow for a certain species of mosquito to flourish. it is a vector for a certain kind of human-risk malaria. fortunately for us humans, this mosquito isnt a great vector for the spread of malaria, so there isnt much human risk. now. runoff from agricultural fields upsteam flow into this marshy area. the runoff contains a strong deal of pesticides from the fields, which is high in phosphorus content. nitrogen and phosphorus are the two main ecosystem nutrients of importance, along with carbon. the influx of phosphorus accelerates certain plant growth in this area, and this type of vegetation becomes dominant, changing the ecosystem. this new vegetation makes a good habitat for another species of mosquito, which is in turn a great vector for malaria. and now human risk for malaria is suddenly high. and so, it demonstrates that by using these pesticides, human activity and behavior is, through an ecosystem approach to health, raising communities in belize's risk to malaria. and that through a combination of technical solutions (less harmful pesticides/reduced P content) and socio-cultural solutions (awareness and incentives to use alternative/organic agriculture) human risk to malaria can be reduced, and potentially restore the ecosystem back to a non-malaria filled habitat.

thats my quick primer on ecosystem ecology and my current excitement. im looking for internships that do exactly this right now, and hope to meet with some professors and the CDO at bard about it. but i was in this lecture and just loving every moment of it. i took 6 pages of notes. the lecturer was great, and made the connections between epidemiology and ecology that i want to know about. we even did a crash course in basic epidemiological foundations and models. very cool stuff.

still listening to the pixies.

we're chained

2009-01-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

i was going to post the lyrics to a song that ive been obsessing over, but you need to just hear it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIkWJZf33UY

this is the background to my laptop. my friend here commented that its a really great photo, great composition. i agree. for some reason, while listening to this song, it just seemed to sum up my brazil experience for myself. maybe between that, reading cosmicomics which is wonderful in every way, and learning about complex ecosystems, something seems quite right. eventually i want to read susan sontag's essay "regarding the pain of others", its the essay that my friend was telling me all about that prompted me thinking about photography again. sometimes i think about what it would have been like if i had stuck to my original plan of majoring in photography and human rights. the interest is still there. im considering planning out my last semester at bard to just be...documentary photography and senior project, more or less. maybe some more biology. we'll see when the time comes. for now, im getting pretty good at just living in the present. i come back from class, listen to some music, do some push ups, think about the things i enjoy right now, write a bit, read for a while. and that makes me pretty content. i made couscous and ate it for the first time in a while last night. i dont know why ive never liked couscous before, its amazingly delicious. sometimes i think about wanting to learn to make soup. good soup. with dark black coffee. maybe some fish. maybe seattle or baltimore. who knows.

all set to go

2009-01-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

Monday: 4-6:20 Cultural Technologies of Memory
Tuesday: 9-10:20 Hooke's Micrographia
Wednesday: 10:30-12:30 Ecology & Evolution; 3:15-5:45 Introduction to Global Information Systems
Thurs: 9-10:20 Hooke's Micrographia; 1:30-3:50 Writing the World
Friday: 9:30-12:30 Ecology & Evolution lab

not too shabby at all. it will be great having most of monday off. means i can get away for a weekend if necessary and not have to worry about the sunday rush back to school.

a little recap of what these classes are actually about:

BIO 202 Ecology & Evolution
This core course for biology majors is an introduction to the general principles of ecology and evolution that, with genetics, form the core of biological understanding. In addition to studying foundational ideas in both ecology and evolution, we will explore modern topics at the boundary between these two areas. We will consider, for example, how genetic variation among individual organisms can influence ecological interactions, and how these interactions can influence fitness. We will focus on a mechanistic understanding of processes, using model-building to inform that understanding.

ANTH 332 Cultural Technologiesof Memory
This course is organized around several practices and technologies that produce collective and personal memory. The class will explore a distinction commonly made between 'memory' and 'history', asking on what basis this distinction is made and how it maps on to our ideas about foreign places and people. The techniques and technologies of public memory we will examine may include ancient "memory palaces," historical writing, oral narrative, ritual, myth, monuments, museums and archives. We will also explore how radio and photography are used to produce national and familial representations of the past. The focus in each section will be on how the particular medium of remembering shapes the content of what is remembered. We will address who has access to memory practices, stressing the link between the production of particular memories and their political uses. The class will give students a theoretical base to write a final research paper that situates a contemporary memory practice in its specific cultural and historical context: the recent proliferation of family genealogies, Holocaust testimonies and/or museums, the truth commissions, local histories are among a few possible examples.

HIST 164 Hooke's Micrographia
A monument of natural philosophy and scientific illustration, Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) was the first laboratory manual in microscopy. A great experimentalist, Hooke developed his research as a Fellow of the newly founded Royal Society of London. Hooke and his colleagues intended the work to be a manifesto of experimental method and faith in progress. They also hoped Hooke's observations would lend credence to atomism, a notorious ancient philosophy that was being rehabilitated in the seventeenth century. The work's descriptive and experimental language suggests objectivity, as does the author's recourse to geometric principles. Yet Hooke's treatise is also permeated with a theological agenda. We will read the Micrographia, examining its philosophical antecedents and experimental foundations. We will also investigate Hooke's life and work, his association with the Royal Society and contemporary savants, as well as the links between science and society during the Scientific Revolution.

ES 308 Geographic Information Systems
2 credits This course is designed to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive review of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and remote sensing technologies as they are used in a variety of social and environmental science applications. Through a mixture of lectures, readings and hands-on exercises, students will acquire an understanding of the structure of spatial data and databases, basic cartographic principles and data visualization techniques, how to conduct spatial analysis and methods for developing sound GIS project design and management practices. Upon completing this class, students will:
* Understand the fundamental concepts of geographic information systems and their relationship with other information management systems.
* Gain familiarity with GIS software for conducting basic GIS analyses and producing cartographic products.
* Conduct studies typically carried out in GIS including site selection, analysis of spatial/temporal processes, assess environmental impacts, geocode data and conduct point pattern analysis.

LIT 124 Writing the World: Nonfiction Prose
This is a course in two skills: learning to make excellent nonfiction prose and learning to see the world around you. When it comes to the art of nonfiction prose, the emphasis nearly always falls on the personal, and especially on essay and memoir. In this course, I want to turn our gaze outward and to think about how we write from direct experience of events. Our models will be drawn from history and from the broad category of nonfiction writing often, and absurdly, called "current events." Our goal will be to become compelling witnesses and makers of acute prose—but our goal will also be art, not journalism. Students will be expected to write 4-5 pages every week.

it looks pretty, great, actually. i think it will be a really engaging semester. some bio, some practical environmental tools, some philosophy, some history, some human rights, some (lots) writing. and it ends up most of my friends are living in/very close to my dorm. excellent.

Cosmicomics so far is really great.

2009-01-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

"It is all so meaningless we might as well be extraordinary"
-Francis Bacon

lately i feel confused over a lot and am not quite sure what is going on and where i am going. perhaps ill figure it out but for now it seems like something in the distance that i cant quite grasp or figure out. but i wish i had an answer.

sometimes i feel like dissolving into a petri dish filled with all those microscopic things. life seems much more at ease. things just do what they do. the workings of everything around us, yet you never see it. its just a fact of life. just to get away from it all, but yet still be connected to everything else at the same time. some kind of bliss, perhaps.

2009-01-11T09:14:00.000-08:00

on the ride back to the poughkeepsie train station from chilling in kingston with some friends, a friend and i had a pretty great conversation. what began as talking about what exactly ecosystem ecology is fluxed into one on documentary photography and a long interesting explanation on susan sontag's "regarding the pain of others", a treatsie on documentary photography, witnessing human rights atrocity, the human reaction to extreme violence and suffering, etc. and sent my mind racing back to anthropology of violence and suffering, and made me feel very excited for taking cultural technologies of memory this semester. it is also making me consider taking a history of photography course seeing as i still havent heard back from the writing professor. but the conversation also looped into some of my thoughts on witnessing atrocity and suffering from my time in brazil, which then went into my own rant on gift theory and my feelings on, after having borne witness to something like america's aluminum involvement in Juruti and the suffering and social unrest it causes, my/our/american's responsibility to change the way that power is distributed. and the difficulty in being faced with someboy asking you, as americans, to tell their story so hopefully something will happen, and the social burden of that responsibility, but the need to act on it. as sontag said, many a times the human reaction when faced with an image of atrocity is to turn away, exclaiming that it is too much to look at and take in. but that this reaction, although understandable and near-universal, is a selfish one that we each on our own need to face and overcome. because the discomfort we feel upon the glimpse is nothing compared to the suffering of those within the frame.

at times i feel overwhelmed by the scope of it all. of having gone to brazil and seen these things with my own eyes, experienced them with my own senses. of coming to terms witht he dichotomy in my brain. do you pursue what makes you happy, or is there a larger signifigance? if i think about obligation to recipricate, if i think about my conversation with maura my host mother about the obligation to give back, a obligacao, what do i do? this whole conversation made me think about the things i know i feel interested in.

documenting, witnessing, representing
resource control and conflicts, and their health impacts
ecosystem change and human health
participatory appraoches to health and ecosystem management
gift theory, i give because you give, the obligation to reciprocate

i want to document. but i dont think that alone is enough. i know what studying human rights and violence did to me freshman year. it was too much. but looking back, a selfish reaction. like anthropology and i, i dont think that documentation and witnessing along might be enough. im not sure yet. ill find out. but i know i think public health is important, that a healthy ecosystem helps our health, whether through direct clean air and water, or whether it guarantees us resources to use, or if it gives us a host of ecosystem services. and then the whole political ecology and resource conflicts and resolution part also get to me. ive never given up my interest in human rights...it just shifted forms. but ethnography and documentary photography really arent all that different. different tools. but both are trying to accurately portray the world, hopefully the way that the people living it see it. both are interested in everyday life as having the most meaning in the end. both can give us glimpses. writing gives you stories, photography gives you the visual image. i like narrative better, i think. a picture tells you a thousand words, perhaps. but a narrative, a story, forces you to confront the atrocity. a story makes you relate it to your own experience and to see the human element. anthropology falters when it uses these stories just to legitimize a theory, because it still sees itself as a science. photography falters when it tries to make art instead of document and witness, and the photograph of suffering or violence turns into something you hang on your wall in a college dorm, no longer a glimpse of memory but an object. hence objectified, it loses the human face. i guess i imagine doing environmental health work while using my tools as pseudo-ethnographer to bear witness, but also to use my desire to do documentary photography as well.

i dont know if that would make me happy or not. im hoping that a few professors can do tutorials with me at bard, im sure it will work out. i want one on ecosystem change and health, one on witnessing and documenting, one on more resource conflicts and political ecology, and one on applying medical anthropology with an environmental perspective, hopefully with looking at participatory approaches. i dont think that should be too hard to arrange. either way, i took my taxi back thinking about all these things, decided to get dropped off at the main building, and took the 25 minute walk through the snow to keep thinking about these things. and then i went back to my room, and read an old article from anthropology of violence and suffering i had saved on my computer about genocide, witnessing, and social conditions that allow groups to massively kill off or separate from society whole groups they deem below human. and now im still laying here, thinking about it all. thinking thinking thinking. im glad i went to brazil. to see the human dimension i neededin order to be forced out of being jaded and feel the impulse to stop just learning theory and social critique to start thinking about how to apply it all and how to change what i can change. but then its also nice to come back to bard and know that there is still this place where it is ok for me to think about the philosophical issues at the heart of this all. and that in reality, i can do both. so far my experiences back with bard people have been nothing but good. i havent felt the sense that i am...reverting back, or anything, around them. but more like...all of what i wanted, the ability to talk about serious things but also be able to joke around, was always there, i was just too afraid and unsure of my own abilities to keep up in conversation to take the chance to engage. but it seems the more i get back there to some sense of where i belong, the more i do feel that maybe that is right, and i do feel more myself, just a myself that maybe i didnt quite feel i was ready to be. if that makes any sense. what im trying to say is, at least i think i feel somewhat at home. in a weird semi-quasi-pseudo-artsy-philosophy-way. it gives me the freedom and environment to think and be ok with that. general economy, right george bataille?

of course all of this makes writing my 2 pg essay for ecosystem ecology a little more difficult. but im also learning a great deal here, and am thankful for the opportunity. living alone more or less is also helpful, w/o internet in the building. lots of reflection, lots of being ok with being alone, and lots of time to read. and it just hit me with an obvious fact, but: one cant learn everything. one cant read everything. i will still read susan sontag because it interests me. but i also just had somebody tell me about what points stuck out the most to them. and i learned a lot, and it hit a chord in me. i cant and wont learn and read everything. i cant take all the classes i will ever want to take. but all i class is is just readings and talking about them. which i can do with whoever, whenever, for as long as i want. all i need to do is talk to people about things they read and learn about and care about. and i will learn so much more than i every could by myself.

oh my ramblings.

im not sure. theres a hunch. and its uncomfortable.

nitrogen rules the world (no but seriously)

2009-01-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

past 2 days have been pretty grand, much better now that im more used to the ebb and flow of the tide here at Cary. we had some pretty wonderful lectures about primary and secondary productivity (producers and consumers) and just had a great lecture on the nitrogen cycle, which seems a perfect place for me in terms of thinking about human affects on ecosystems and how that affects our health. humans more or less double the natural release of nitrogen through fossil fuel burning and agriculture fertilizers. not only that, but the release of nitrogen into the air poses air pollution problems, and the runoff of nitrogen in these terrestrial zones goes into the water, causing eutrification. many forests and riparian zones like marshes or wetlands act as buffers for this nitrogen runoff, so the preservation of these areas is actually very vital to our health. once the nitrogen release gets into water supply, it can have polluting effects on the drinking water, but also affects biodiversity rates, and thus, fish and other edible and vital organisms in the ecosystem, well, die. so, in an ecosystem approach to health, preserving wetlands and buffer zones helps to give us a steady aquatic food supply and filter our water supply. theres much more where that came from, but as you can see, im very excited about it all. it gets even more interesting once you get into urban ecology and how this process and preventative measure can be carried out in urban zones, which are rapidly increasing throughout the world. i forget what the statistic is, but its the majority of the world's population in something like 10-20 years. important stuff to think about, so thats what im trying to look into internships about.

but i did manage to put together a semi-resume last night, or at least lay out a bunch of points and traits blah blah blah. i guess i look pretty decent on paper so far. needless to say this course and brazil research helps a lot in the skills and experience department. not an internship per-say. but even here with Cary our workshop is going to put together a draft op-ed piece on a topic we are interested in, which i need to work on this weekend. maybe i should just write it about nitrogen? i need to get back to bard and talk to some professors about this, or, how to map out a good course of study for the senior year. right now i have one class slot free seeing as this writing professor never got back to me, and although i liked the idea of getting 1/3 of my remaining distribution reqs out of the way, it also feels appealing to take Introduction to Human Physiology or Biology on Non-Infectious Disease. maybe i'll just do non-infectious disease, because it covers basic human anatomy as well, and i think will talk about environmental pollutants. i could use more health classes on my resume anyway. but then theres the conundrum of taking 2 intense biology courses, and a 300 level anthropology seminar, and a 300 level 2 credit GIS class, and my 100 level history class that will still be a lot of work...all at the same time. i can handle 18 credits sure...but...2 biology might kill me. but i cant drop ecology & evolution, oh no. ill talk to my professors. maybe they can help. itll be great, and all work out.

but yes, nitrogen cycle. very interesting. just thought i would share. and in a pretty good mood. feeling capable and stuff. im so excited to get back to bard and get into all of this stuff again. read biology, anthropology, history, philosophy. sometimes i wonder about my education and wish i knew a little bit more about...for example...resource conflicts. one of my friends from SIT has all these classes at their school where you take an issue, lets say diamond conflict or oil conflicts, you learn about the geology/biology etc formation of the resource, how it comes into existence, its biological/physical/chemical properties, and how that in turn influences social structure, social decisions, etc etc. like, a class on the carribean about its geological formation and ecosystems and how that then in turn helps to influence culture? a little environmentally deterministic sure, but its still very interesting to think about the cause. at bard i have learned a lot about effect and to target that as my subject, but i think the cause is equally important to look and and learn about. after all, thats why i am so interested in ecology to the field of public health. because its the fundamental basis of what all of our life is structured upon. without the cycling of breathable air or drinkable water or the formation and regeneration of natural resources, we wouldn't exist in the first place.

SO MUCH COOL SHTUFF.

ecology ecology ecology ecol....

2009-01-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

what a weird experience. today is my third full day at the fundamentals in ecosystem ecology course at the cary institute for ecosystem studies in upstate ny. its incredibly interesting, incredibly intense, and incredibly over my head at times. im trying and working hard in lectures to grasp onto the material and have it click. unfortunately, my lack of biology and chemistry make it difficult. im able to get the basic ideas though, im pretty sure, and in the end, thats what matters. im not receiving credit for the course, so i can just do my best to learn. biogeochemisty, primary production, secondary production, nutrient cycling, energy budgets, carbon cycle, aquatic ecology...hopefully by the end of this course these things will mean more than just fancy words to me, and ill maybe even be able to explain in non-science jargon what they mean to you.

im in a workshop about policy and communications, where we spent 3 hours talking about and practicing how to make scientific research more accessible to the general public, how to convey these concepts easily and how to convey why something like a food web is, well, actually of importance. its very useful, and my public speaking skills always need more work, but its nice to have an outlet to talk about how to actually maybe make some use out of all this. whether its social science or natural science, so much of it is dominated by experts doing research on things for the reason of understanding, knowing. but never quite doing. the fact that there is a distinction of applied science is extremely frustrating. in social science it is a little different, since by working with groups of people via interviews and data collection, there intrinsically is some kind of relationship where your work should, ethically speaking, relate back to help the community you extracted information from. they gave you the material your new theory or book or etc is based upon, and so you are obliged to give back. basic marcel mauss sort of concept. in natural science its a little different at least, since as far as we currently know plants, animals, ecosystems, and other organisms aren't voluntarily giving information and data away, and since we can't sit down and interview them we just have to assume all the data collection is ok. maybe some day somebody will find out they have some sort of consciousness, and maybe that will warp everything. but my point is, with natural science there isnt as much of that obligation to give back to the community you are working with when your field is ecology, and so it skews the whole idea of responsibility in some regards. like if you work with co2 in a forest. but theres also fields and fields of ecology, like disease ecology or urban ecology, which we will study next week, that do include humans in the web of ecological interactions, and thus, perhaps their work, by nature, is more applied.

end rant.

its a little disconcerting being the only undergraduate. it makes you realize how much of a culture there is to science. im pretty out of the loop id say. i dont have any kind of ecology research since im not doing a graduate or doctoral thesis, so...i dont have much to relate to the gang here about. today in our policy and communication workshop we had to do a simulation of a telephone and television interview to talk about our research and why it is relevant, explain it to the public, reduce jargon, etc. so i wasn't able to really do what everybody else was doing, little frustrating things like that. i could go into more socially oriented things, but thats not what the course is about, so i wont.

other than that...feeling a little stressed out in general about life. i felt so fresh and rejuvenated upon my return from brazil, such a sense of being able to do anything, everything, capable. recently ive felt somewhat on the other end of that. maybe its been just being home. maybe its been culture shock depression. probably other things. being here feeling a sense of cluelessness, or not being able to connect well with the people here, doesn't help much. id like to think im generally an easy person to get along with, and would like to think i make myself pretty accessible and open. i am an open minded person, i know that much. maybe its also about wanting to make amends and fix things, but not being sure quite how. i want to feel that sense of happiness, capability, and rejuvenation that i felt in brazil. i dont know where it went off too, but im hoping i find it again back at bard, back in something of a comfort zone, or at least the nearest thing for me.

im realizing here that ecosystem ecology is not my thing; im ok with that. i dont think research scientist really has my name on it. im hoping i can find soon what it is that really makes me happy. i struggle. i know what i think is important, and i will apply for internships this summer based on that, hoping i can make some sort of difference. but what makes me happy? a brainstorm is in order.

finding people i dont feel strange being quiet around. i hate when i feel uncomfortable about being quiet.
i really loved the boat trip on the amazon, the whole experience of just living on one
looking at stars
engaging and slightly dark novels, being a writer isnt obscure in my mind, but i would probably be haunted by the question of all the things i wasnt doing to help the world
i like anthropology, and im good at it, but same problem. theres too much about it that i find irrelevant to solving actual problems for me to go too seriously into it. it focuses on community development, listening and taking people/cultures other than ones own/ones self seriously...so much good. but past the undergraduate level, it seems its mostly designed to go get a pHD and teach at a college. and i dont particularly love giving presentations so i dont know if that much public speaking is up my alley anytime soon
good cups of coffee
again, i love the idea of reciprocity and giving back. and you know it makes you happy to give a gift somebody really enjoys. or in a not so materialistic sense...it just feels good to know you are doing something that makes you a good person, to be a giving member of society, to contribute. although its dry and cynical, this one joke website i go to sometimes for a laugh had this one line...something like..."self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you've done something that make you likable." which is a little different, but still related, in a way. helping, being in a community, feels good. plain and simple. i miss being a part of a real community, which is something that i need to start as soon as i get back to bard
being in cities makes me surprisingly happy, on a social level. but being near water also leaves me content. answer: maybe end up living in a port city eventually.
and i actually do like writing. or really, learning that what i write might actually have an impact. even if that just means changing somebody's image of something, or shifting their opinion a little bit.

so what do we have? writing reading cities boats water giving back etc etc etc. a nice framework, but still...what just makes me happy? not feeling guilty, for one thing. i want to find this something so badly. my parents always told me to make sure i end up doing something that 1) i love and 2) i know helps people. in brazil the experience made me think thoroughly about the latter, but since i was already pretty happy i guess i didnt stop to think about how to tie that in with the former. i think back to high school and remember how happy wrestling and photography made me. more or less because they gave me an outlet for expression, a chance to be myself, and i know i harp on it a lot, but ive really missed that at my time at bard. one of my promises to myself was to give myself that again upon coming back. to exercise, get involved with a martial art, start writing more, to find, in short, something i love and care about and want to devote energy to. then again maybe i had that, and lost sight of it.

trying to figure yourself out, out of context (like in this random ecology course) is tough work. i told myself and this blog while in the amazon, in the south of para i think, that i knew the person i think is inside of me, that i have the potential to be, and now just need to find ways to...be him. find outlets. honestly i havent felt much at all like that person here at this course, and it bothers me a lot. maybe over parts of break in general, to certain people, ive seemed unlike myself and i want to correct that. i feel like here ive shelled up to some degree, partly out of not understanding the material, partly out of not feeling at all understood/accepted by the people here. point is, i want that to change as soon as possible. not to say i wont take everything i can out of this experience...but i want to feel more like myself. which maybe i should take more accountability for while im here. but its hard to be yourself when you just feel so...different. maybe im just crazy, with this post being blatant proof. but maybe, just maybe, i have a point?

sss

happy new years and off i am, again

2009-01-03T08:28:00.000-08:00

another new year.

tomorrow i leave for my ecosystem ecology course at cary. im excited, although a little bummed that the process to apply for credit was so burdensome. at least i can put it on my transcript. besides, im more excited about just learning about this stuff anyway.

break's been an interesting time. ive been feeling for sure whatever kind of culture shock depression there is. its more of missing the kind of life i had in brazil, that kind of go with the flow independence that one just doesnt quite have living in the suburbs . i also miss constant change, and back at home its all too easy to drift back into the daily grind and routine. which ive tried to mix up here and there, but i think ive been feeling some of what i gained slipping, so, its time to be on the move again and throw myself in to something random. a graduate level ecology course sounds just about right, and comes at a good time. although, the trade off is that i really havent seen much of some people from home, and thats not great. theres still so much to catch up on. and i want to tell people all about brazil and my experience but...one can't just do it all at once. ive tried...and i think it just loses a lot in translation. or at least, when i give the typical overview of my semester, to me at least it doesnt sound all that exciting. i think its like my friend maisha said, "dont tell me about it all at once. ill find out in little stories throughout next semester". and i think thats a good way to approach it. im pretty nostalgic for it though. as much as it was frustrating at times, it was good to get through to the other side. and i do feel different for it, it most atmospheres. when im surrounded by friends i can feel a different me. or just this feeling of warmth and strength inside that ive felt missing for a while.

right now i am starting to apply for internships and put together my resume. im giving myself a month to get applications and cover letters in. i do believe i have a general idea of what i want to work on. and i think i might know what lights me up. but im not sure. im sure being back at bard will rekindle that spark. my friend told me about this quote thats been haunting me:

"don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. and then go and do that. because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

i dont know who it is by. brazil made me think so much about one's obligation to one's community, and made me see what some communities really do need, what sorts of help really is important. but at the same time, who decides who to help whom? if i am in america, living in the suburbs of pennsylvania or the little town of red hook in new york, who is to say that i should or should not work with those communities or with some group that works with amazonian communities in the tapajos? where is my obligation to help, to give back? what if what really makes one come alive isnt in their home, but far away? or what if it isnt even what those communities need? but if it makes me come alive...im not making much sense, just trying to sort something out in my mind. i know what is important is grassroots bottom-up organizing, capacity building, environmental education. but i know the arts, culture, self expression, is also important. all things contribute to a holistic vision of health. making a healthy ecosystem is conducive to good health. but so is giving people the tools and power to address these problems in a political sense. but so is helping people express their thoughts, worries, fears, hopes, dreams, on a piece of paper, with words, with paint, with mediums. whether i work as a writer (vonnegut had a great quote about writing, "why bother? i feel and think as much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not. you are not alone"), somebody who works within capacity building, or somebody who works in the amazing new field of eco-epidemiology-ish, it all works towards the same end. which makes looking for internships so difficult.

Collegiate Leaders in Environmental Health
WE ACT
Center for Environment, Health, and Justice
Environmental Law Research Institute
Pesticide Action Network North America
Food and Water Watch

environmental health, resource management, corporate responsibility, pesticides, clean water, education and outreach. theres so many possibilities. i could also look into environmental education, environmental journalism, etc etc etc etc etc. i know i want to do something with advocacy research, for sure. but what brazil showed me, is that like i said, its all towards the same thing. so if im interested in health...im interested in everything?

i mean...
ecosystem services
community building
capacity building
grassroots organizing
toxic exposure
microbiology
looking at the city as ecosystem
community based participatory research
democratic decision making
...how to i try and throw that all into one summer internship experience? HA

oh and i have an intestinal parasite living inside of me. today i get to try and find out what kind of lovely parasite it is. fun fun fun fun. i also get to get a few pairs of new clothes for school. and then pack. and pack some more. dreamcast is coming with.

2008-12-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

a great christmas
family, too much time playing pokemon while eating muffins, watching stepbrothers, driving, laughing as a family together, holiday hellos from friends, and a new pile of books to read.

The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami
The Hungry Tide by Ghosh
Biography of a Germ by Karlen
Symbiotic Planet by Margulis
Cosmicomics by Calvino
Art Forms from Nature by Haekel

i also spent xmas eve looking up internships, like a freak
The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice
Environmental Law Institute
WE ACT
Ceres
Beyond Pesticides
Cary Institute REU

who knows? ill be doing apps for these in the meantime.

a merry holidays to all. this is quite nice.

2008-12-24T12:09:00.000-08:00

how different am i?
i dont know. tell me.
there's this overwhelming inner sense of capability and hope.
i actually listen to and trust myself in what i say and think.
challenges excite me.
overall, i feel a lack of the kind of fear to act that would have gripped me before brazil.
even my host mother thought i was quite different from the period she finally met me to my final days there.
brazil taught me that faith that the world works out is crucial.
nobody is the center of it, and everything works out, somehow.
which ive been trying to apply. to live in the moment. to stop trying to plan and control anything.
which leads to happiness and defeats, for sure.
i want motion. speed. change. nothing fixed. up in the air. friction.
fears are just barriers set up for us to push them down.
somebody can show us the way, but its our job to plow through them.
in a way im grateful to SIT for being so disorganized.
it made us do everything ourselves.
initiative.
and its helped me to find the independence i wanted. the strength i knew was in there.
for the first time in so long i feel i can do anything.
not everything. just, anything.
there's this wonderful little quote at the end of Italo Calvinho's Baron in the Trees:
"only by being so frankly himself as he was till his death could he give something to all"
its something i quarrel with on my return home.
ive always found myself, on return from such things as this, coming back refreshed, renewed.
and then slowly, it slips away as i find myself slipping to be the way people imagined i was.
i vowed after the last time to not let that happen.
and stubbornly, am sticking to myself, now actually having a sense of who/what that means and is.
how do you stay to yourself while still reaching out to the people you care about?
and what if that is too late?
i made wonderful friends in brazil. really wonderful. who i know i will keep in touch with,
and we will always share the connection of the giant rite of passage that was the semester.
but whats the worth if you end up losing the same connections with others?
or really, how do you reconcile the two worlds?

merry christmas and happy holidays.

2008-12-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

back in america. ate a cheesesteak the other night with hibby and keej. learned that everybody is also obsessed with mgmt and kids here. awesome. theres no acai, acerola, goiaba, etc here. depressed. its also very cold. it was 95 every day in belem. needless to say i now have a cold. been reading the invisible pyramid. if i could find my old copy of the phantom tollbooth i would read that too. next is the bookseller of kabul. i have a pile next to the massage chair. theres also a spot for my tea cup. been working out too. no ju jitsu, not enough time. leave jan 4th for ecosystem ecology. will bum around vassar and nyc until bard starts. need to buy a jump rope. going to get my hair trimmed today. i can drive. go grocery shopping. i hope this post is a good example of the state of my mind right now. talk about liminality.

thursday im heading up to bard with larkin's parents and will hang there for the night. it will be really good to see people.

its very weird to be home. both happy to be back, but also miserable not to still be there. but then again, it was mostly the people there who made it what it was. to be back in amazonia right now on my own would be a completely different experience.

2008-12-08T08:49:00.000-08:00

last day in Belem. but first, listen to this, and tell me it isnt the most beautiful thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qPvJ8FAEg4

im going to miss it here. despite times where ive hated it and been frustrated. deep down, i love it all. i want to come back here with you, whoever is reading. show you why buying a cup of acerola juice can make my day. to buy fresh coconut water. pass by salgado stands. do the gringo run across the street. get frustrated with the brazil whistle. today i got some avacate juice. great. last night was wonderful. getting fresh juice makes it even better. today maura was asking me if i feel like a different person than the one who arrived in Amazonia. she thinks so. i agree. com certeza. im about to go out with her and diego to buy last minute presents. dont talk to me about packing my suitcase tonight. i dont want to think about it. i dont know how successful it will be. ive bought too much. comprei de mais...

when will my next time to speak portuguese actually be? today is so bittersweet on so many levels. so many good things coming to an end. unless i can find a way to make them live on back home. i have a thing of guarana powder im excited about. dammit. im not ready to be home. i am, but im just not ready to leave. or, i just wish we had another free day here. theres too much to do. i might never see my host family ever again, more likely than not. i only have a few more hours with them, you know? damn you simon and garfunkel, and the random guy on youtube who sings it in the way i imagine it being sung. i will lay me down.

im going to go home, set up my hammock, pretend i am back on the boat trip aka the greatest week ever and read the phantom tollbooth. its moments like that from the trip i will miss so much. so much has happened in the past 4 months its insane to think about it. there is so much. and all of it has been helpful. wonderful. beautiful. empowering. and the harder its been, the more rewarding its been in the long run. because i overcame all of my obstacles and bumps in the road on my own. i have found my independence and inner strength to accomplish what i need to. and although its mildly dormant within me, i can feel the presence of somebody who knows they can handle whatever life throws at them. because thats what i did. and stepped up to the task.

im going to learn how to play the portuguese cover of bridge over troubled water on guitar, ive decided. i like my voice in portuguese better. i dont think nancy scheper-hughes was right. i dont think its about a desperate search to find meaning somewhere outside of your normal life. the contrast is part of the process and the beauty. i thought i would find everything i wanted, that comfort of a different culture that perhaps would get me better, here in brazil. i found something in brazil. but very diffierent. because what i found wasnt a feeling on finally belonging at all. but realizing the steps within myself. realizing what culture even really is. realizing that everything ive been looking for is right back home, but its also here, and its also everywhere else in the world i havent been. its no one place thats right for me or anyone. its about putting all those little pieces together and seeing what you can make out of it.

man. crazy stuff. i wish i didnt bring all these books to brazil. no point

Does this have to be the price of modernity: water pollution, community needs, and organizational support in Sao Luis

2008-12-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

“…even if our hopes are misplaced, however, and the specific disease control and health outcomes we seek are not achieved, fundamental requirements of the ecosystem approach for open and democratic communication, tolerance, negotiation, and ecological awareness will surely have made the effort worthwhile” –David Walter-Toews (2001, 21)

besides the shoddy powerpoint i just whipped together for tomorrow afternoon, i am officially done with ISP.

which is nice. im mildly content with that i ended up writing, which is more than most of the group is expressing. or at least, those who actually turned it in today...

this means my friday night, saturday, sunday, and monday are my last free days here. when the hell did that happen? sunday theres some last minute shopping to be done. but...gah.

will be in the philly airport in a week. how weird. wrestling tournament? philadelphia? west chester? fennarios? cheessteak? hot wings? some element of patience? people who say excuse me instead of "pstttt"?

no but i really will miss brazil. i miss it already, with the knowledge that i really dont have much free time left and most of what is left is ISP or group sitio time. but also, thinking back, there is so much i have seen and done in the past 3 months. its almost mind boggling. ive lived in5 major amazonian cities. traveled all over. the boat trip seems like months ago, but it wasnt at all. even the time in sao luis seems so far away. i ate a turtle! that was so long ago. and what i have are the greatest little fragments of memories.

on another note, i am officially in 2 of my classes. below are the course descriptions for them

Anth 322 Cultural Technologies of Memory
This course is organized around several practices and technologies that produce collective and personal memory. The class will explore a distinction commonly made between 'memory' and 'history', asking on what basis this distinction is made and how it maps on to our ideas about foreign places and people. The techniques and technologies of public memory we will examine may include ancient "memory palaces," historical writing, oral narrative, ritual, myth, monuments, museums and archives. We will also explore how radio and photography are used to produce national and familial representations of the past. The focus in each section will be on how the particular medium of remembering shapes the content of what is remembered. We will address who has access to memory practices, stressing the link between the production of particular memories and their political uses. The class will give students a theoretical base to write a final research paper that situates a contemporary memory practice in its specific cultural and historical context: the recent proliferation of family genealogies, Holocaust testimonies and/or museums, the truth commissions, local histories are among a few possible examples.

Hist 164 Hooke's Micrographia
A monument of natural philosophy and scientific illustration, Robert Hooke's Micrographia (1665) was the first laboratory manual in microscopy. A great experimentalist, Hooke developed his research as a Fellow of the newly founded Royal Society of London. Hooke and his colleagues intended the work to be a manifesto of experimental method and faith in progress. They also hoped Hooke's observations would lend credence to atomism, a notorious ancient philosophy that was being rehabilitated in the seventeenth century. The work's descriptive and experimental language suggests objectivity, as does the author's recourse to geometric principles. Yet Hooke's treatise is also permeated with a theological agenda. We will read the Micrographia, examining its philosophical antecedents and experimental foundations. We will also investigate Hooke's life and work, his association with the Royal Society and contemporary savants, as well as the links between science and society during the Scientific Revolution.

right now im just waiting on GIS, Ecology&Evolution, and Nonfiction writing. Considering auditing a class on...something.
today i ate country fried steak in brazil with my host family. ..

work work work

2008-11-29T03:46:00.000-08:00

being back in Belem is really nice. we had thanksgiving dinner here the other night and made turkey, mashed potatoes, apple crisp, mango apple pie, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce brazilia style (w/o cranberries, add acerola), amongst other things. all in all it was fun. i ate too much, felt sick (i didnt exactly eat a lot in sao luis), and for the first time here really felt really homesick/nostalgic. im excited to get home. i think all of us here feel that way at this point, as we just desperately try and get through the pain of writing our isps, present, and leave. theres really not much more to take out of the program at this point. and im honestly annoyed at gustavo's insistence we write an "objective scientific paper". i interviewed people and worked with organizations, in an applied sense, to try and see how these organizations, with limited funding but huge environment and health problems in the city, could best serve the peoples needs. theres no objectivity to that, shouldnt be, and it would be wrong to try and present the paper as a cold hard science document. i dont see how one can be objective in interviewing people anyway about problems. stupid.

anyway, here are a few pictures from my time in sao luis. i didnt take that many, to be honest. i didnt feel the safest walking around with my camerica, because, you know, its not like i didnt get enough strange looks as it is. but, heres what i have.

organizaing my paper is hard. i still dont really have anything written. i have until thursday, but i need to figure out how im going to put it all together and do the rest of the background research today, more or less.
i have a small outline

background

introduction
ecological public health (roots in 19th century, new risks)
epidemiological transition
water and the developing world
sao luis

development and health
funding cuts and state of affairs
caema and water

objective of the study
methods

location and sites
interview techniques, how many, etc

results

organize into several groups and give overview/summary of main consensus

by neighborhood

sao franscisco
monte castello
coroadinho
overall summary

by organization initiatives

asp
urban union
solar
overall

by organization personnel and personal opinion
comparative chart?

or do a bunch of small comparative sections? i dont know

either way i need more background on CAEMA and on water health in general.
back to work!

going even further beyond

2008-11-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

today i think i more or less finished my interviews. i took the bus to the barrio of Coroadinho, which lies close to the Bacanga river, a good 30 minutes ride from Centro. i was able to get 3 interviews done before lunchtime, when everything in Brazil shuts down. i currently have 6 interviews from Monte Castello, 5 from Sao Franscisco, and 5 from Coroadinho. Plus the 4 from organizations, and the 1 more with the environmental journalist tomorrow night. maybe i will go for one more in Sao Franscisco tomorrow, but i also have a lot of other work to do as well. right now i am sitting diligently in my room trying to translate the large Sao Luis development report Joao lent me. ill need to see if i can scan some maps and figures onto a computer or what not. it might be useful. my isp is also due, along with the powerpoint for the presentation, next thursday. damn. translating is a long process, but ive recently come to the conclusion that i actually really like the portuguese language. its fun to learn and i enjoy speaking it, most of the time. its hard to believe how much i can understand now. when i first arrived in Brazil i knew some basics, and my knowledge of spanish grammar was helpful for at least understanding what people were trying to tell me. but now, here i am, able to more or less comprehend an hour long interview about health. im considering maybe taking bards translation workshop class as an audit next sem if theres room just so i can work on that some more.

the whole experience here is really wrapping up. gustavo sent us the schedule for the last 1-2 weeks in Belem and the isp format.

im hoping one day ill return to Amazonia. i have this idea for this project id like to undertake. many years ago my grandparents came to the Amazon once their children were off at college. i have no idea where they went, what they did, and what they saw. i dont know if they kept a journal. all i have to really go off of is the fact they traveled there, a picture of my grandfather holding a parrot, and the flute i have back home that they bought along the way. my whole time here in Amazonia, since the first weekend in Belem, ive carried around a frog necklace with me, whose string broke in Santarem but ive still carried from place to place regardless. in Amazonian folklore and tradition, the frog symbol is one of good luck. i dont know the actual legend and myth, i need to find out. regardless, ive been carrying it around so that it holds the same amount of memories that the flute i have in my room holds, and so perhaps my grandparents can in some way from above see the same things ive seen. id like to start investigating, when i come home, if theres any trace of what they did while they were in this place, to wonder where our paths might have crossed. and then maybe, one day, come back to Amazonia and see whats changed between these three stories, mine now, mine then, and theirs then as well. perhaps also look into other historical accounts. this region is such a mixed place. rivers are like railroads, its been said. at one point in history, everything traveled along the rivers. in some places, they still do. im sure my grandparents' story and mine crossed at some point along O Rio Amazonas, or O Rio Negro, or O Rio Solimoes. just like both our paths for sure also cross with the host of colonial expeditions, scientific voyages, merchants lives, and travelers tales along the way. i want to try and find out what these connections are. i like anthropology. i like history. i like rivers. i like ecology. i like narratives and first hand accounts. i think this could be the start of something quite interesting. i finished "in an antique land" by amitav ghosh the other night. his story is somewhat similar, and something of an inspiration. he weaves three stories together. one, of his years spent doing fieldwork living in two egyptian villages and then his return years later once modernization began. two, of his semi-fictional account of an indian slave and his relation to his jewish-egyptian master. and three, of his own personal journey trying to trace the steps of these two medieval figures and his own connecting the stories together. and it works really well. and if he can find a way to connect modern egypt and medieval slave relations in the indian ocean, then i can find a way to connect history, the Amazonia ive experienced, and the Amazonia my grandparents saw. who knows, maybe i could make it my senior project?

well i digress. im grateful for what ive been given here in Amazonia. the people ive met and talked to, who let me into their lives knowing that i only understand 60% of what they say, and were patient with me. ive been frustrated here, but that is a good thing. ive learned a lot about what "culture" actually means, in the end. one of our program assistants, who works on the homestay experience, sent us an email that i think lays it out pretty clearly: "you’ve may noticed that there are some cultural differences between us, but in the essence we are all humans beings with the same kind of feelings". and i think thats true. the way people do things here, ie the culture here, is different, and there are all sorts of little things here and there that make that abundantly clear. but in the end, we're all human. i have all these ideas that i really just need to be able to talk out back home. with whoever is willing to listen, honestly. ranging to general thoughts on life to things bard can help me hone in on. itl be so interesting to see how different things that i always felt were normal/never noticed in the us are now that i have something to really compare it to.

tomorrow is my last full day here in sao luis. i would post pictures, but the internet isnt strong enough to let that happen. the two weeks have been an interesting ride, but it all turned out fine in the end, just like everything. today i bought a sweet pair of pants. ill wear them to the airport. also considering my jeans dont really fit anymore, which im hoping is more a product of brazilians not owning drying machines rather than me having lost that much weight. tomorrow i plan on spending lots of time on the beach in the morning reviewing my interviews and relaxing, and then taking the rest of the day to translate and finish research. then ill talk to joao and present what i think ive found and ask any last minute advice/questions. then wake up and get on the plane. im also weirdly excited to get to throw away the travel towel ive been using here in sao luis. its so disgusting.

eggs and beach

2008-11-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

today i sat on the beach and it was great. i left my phone in the seminary so i would lose track of time. for 5 hours i did nothing more than sit, admire the beach, have a few beers, and eat eggs. thats right. eggs. you pay 2 reais for this little bundle of 12 quail eggs, or something. hard boiled. and you sit there and peel them, dip them in salt, and devour. its very zen like. it was great.

i have three days of research to do left here, and quite a bit to accomplish before i go back to Belem, but once thats out of the way all i have to do is write it up. which honestly isnt that bad, and i already have most of the background research done.

it seems so strange how quick the whole thing is wrapping up. its suspenseful. but theres also a lot waiting to happen back home that i am excited about. i dont really know what exactly will happen with any of it, but by this point ive learned that thats the whole point anyway. its...nice, to just let go and stop trying to control everything. even if it means you get lost or such things along the way. you always end up finding your way again. and i feel pretty settled...in a non-settled completely up in the air sort of way.

i realize that makes no sense.

fragments, come together

2008-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

in the midst of doing random street interviews, of which my endurance for is few per day, i have abundant amounts of time to think, ponder, etc.

i am going to miss brasil, for both what it has given me as a whole, but mostly in terms of all these little fragments of things ive loved. ill only see the big picture once i am home in america and have something to compare to. for now its just a collection of thoughts, a collection of images, a little slide show of tastes, smells, moments.

goiaba ice cream with chunks of ice, avocado juice, pudim at 2 am, catching tucunare on the rio unini, eating tapiocinha stuffed with coconut, washing manioca in the farinha house, long van rides in the convee, purple teeth, a room full of church goers singing and then crying, looking out over a forest canopy 50 m in the air, lunch with friends and peixe-boi, pink amazon river dolphins surfacing for air, guarana smoothies, pit-bull acai, picking fresh limes and drinking cashaca, being rocked to sleep in a hammock, stars on the rio amazonas, "the most beautiful thing in the world", the most delicious/simple fish in curuca, paddling a canoe, rihanna forro remixes, agua de coco, hustle and bustle of the marketplaces, taxi rides from nazare, wind everywhere, the best bananas, leaf identification, poor renditions of "william it was really nothing", sugar coffee at the bow, homemade tucupi, meeting of the waters, catch-phrase, ver-o-peso, cupuacu yogurt, sorvete breaks at the office, knowing everything is going to be all right.

and theres more. always more. itl come to me later.

tomorrow i could try and do more interviews, but i am going to give myself a break and just go to the beach all day.

woo hoo my life doesnt suck right now

2008-11-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

finally. was able to talk to joao this morning, and get everything figured out. plan below:

Does this have to be the price of development: health and environment organizational assistance and in São Luís, Maranhão

To assess the operations, capacity, and difficulties of 2-3 health and environmentally related organizations in São Luís and how with limited resources they can best work to provide help to the community concerning the specific issue of water pollution and contamination.

to assess the similarities, differences, and areas of individual focus of these organization
to assess what members of the organizations think needs to improve, in their own organization and São Luís overall, to address the problem of water contamination
to assess how this coincides with popular opinion and community needs in three barrios of São Luís

yesterday i was able to interview somebody from the urban union and somebody who works here at ASP. today i got another ASP interview, along with 2 interviews in Monte Castello, and 2 in Sao Francisco. i need, up until wednesday evening, interview ~2 from the urban union, 1 more from ASP, an environmental journalist who works here, hopefully ~1-2 from CAEMA, the governmental water organization, and do ~5-7 interviews per barrio. which adds up to 4 more in Monte Castello, 4 more in Sao Francisco, and 6 in Coroadinha. in total, that means...19 interviews in...6 days? like...3 per day. very, very doable. the actual interviews are pretty easy. it takes about 5-10 minutes. the hard part is simply finding somebody around the street who is alone and able to talk, ie not working and not busy, which is hard to do unless you go deep off the main street, which id like to avoid doing for safety and not-getting-lost reasons. right now i am in ASP office typing up my interview notes for the day and will need to ask francesa to call the urban union for me and get an appointment to interview 2 people tomorrow. maybe call CAEMA too and get a meeting for next week. lucky me, Sao Francisco is the big beach place. so that will be my weekend. researching, if you want to call it that, on the beach. very cool.

so, i apologize for the last rant. i feel pretty good about my isp right now. it will be tough to do like, 6 interviews in a day, but its not impossible. i think once this weekend passes and i realize how little time i have left it will make the process a lot easier. today was good, i walked to Monte Costello, buying cheap (50 centavos...about 25 cents) cups of agua de coco and traditional amazonian guarana shakes. so good. tonight i need to type up my quiz that i still havent gotten from carlos/gustavo, and type up a revised copy of my 2nd tcr. maybe keep translating the history of sao luis's development book i have from ASP, or try and get some more info via the CAEMA web site. other than that, it looks like this might be a good way to top off brazil after all. and i think i know how i will write it up too, so, no worries. i get back to Belem on thanksgiving, and then that weekend, if i can get a lot of work done friday, i might take a bus to the nearest beach in Para for sat/sunday to relax and process the past two weeks. we'll see how the work goes, but id like to get that.

thats it for now. back to work.

round 2

2008-11-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

i consider myself to be a very patiet person, but i think ive reached my limit here.

this is a brief update on my past ~6 days in Sao Luis. i arrived at the airport here last tuesday night to find that joao, my advisor, had mistaken when i was coming in to the city and so was not there to talk with me. i took a taxi to the seminary where i met some of the guys, had dinner, and relaxed and got a good nights sleep. the next day i was told joao would be at ASP around 11-12. this seemed a little late for me seeing as by this point i had 2 weeks to do my research. i went to the office and ended up waiting for 3 and a half hours. when he did show up we had a very good talk, which involved him nicely telling me that actually, most of the organizations that i was talking about and thinking about doing a project on had lost a lot of their resources and funding since the late 90s and no longer did the same kind of work. they want to, but simply dont have the finances to do so. this threw me off, as did joao telling me that ASP did not work that much in Sao Luis any more. they ran preparation courses for health council members to help them with legislation, goal setting, finances, and motivation. this seemed pretty cool, as it still fit into my basic rubric of empowerment in a time of development. we ran through 3 basic ideas for a project: do a review of environmental health organizations in the city and what they are/are not able to do, survey several communities about environmental health problems and what they need done, or do a project about the councils and ASPs work. either of these sounded good with me. the next day i came back into the office to ask joao for more help and to read through a large study from two years ago about the state of Sao Luis, its development, and its problems. he gave me a contact with the urban union in the next barrio and suggested that i meet with them to discuss some of these issues. so far, helpful. that friday i went to talk to the union, which was very difficult. i have a hard time understanding the accent here, so i couldn't get a good grasp of what they did and how i could help. what i did get was that about 30% of the city has treated water, but that they, like ASP doesn't do much work in this area of the city. this left me feeling pretty lost and frantically trying to think up project ideas. joao was out of the office until monday as he said in an email, but he would be around monday afternoon to talk more. i spent the weekend at the beach and trying to get a few preliminary emails done about what the problems were in sao luis. i was able to find that some people talked about water problems and pollution, but that the major issue was a lack of help, mostly political in nature. with this in mind, i returned to the office monday afternoon around 11, to be told that joao wasnt coming in until 3:30. so i went back to the seminary feeling pretty let down, but was hoping that joao would be able to help me when he came back. i returned at 3:30 and ended up waiting 3 and a half hours, again, for him to show up. i waited a little so he would be able to check his email and so i wouldnt be a bother, and then went to ask him if, when he was done, if we could talk about my research because i really needed to start on a solid topic by tuesday. he told me no, he was too busy, and wouldnt be able to talk with me until thursday.

at this point i left the building, went back to my room in the seminary, and freaked out. the only reason i came to sao luis was because carlos and gustavo had assured me that joao would be able to help me construct a project, and that he was one of the best people to do so. joao had told carlos that he would be able to help me construct a good project from the tuesday i arrived until that following monday. a whole week to put a good project together. instead, i only got one day, and not much help at that. i got some background on ASP, Sao Luis, and its environmental health concerns, but thats about it. i feel really let down by brazil right now. it was rude enough when PSA emailed me the day before project began to tell me they had no room, but this is different. im an american student who obviously knows nothing about this city and already feels lost. joao knows he is my only contact here, and that he is the only reason i am here, because he told carlos he would be able to help me for a solid week. also, when you say you are going to be at work and able to talk to somebody at a certain time, hold to your word. because right now it is tuesday, i have a little over a week now to do research. that is very little time, and i still dont have a solid method for a project. i dont know this city. i was really counting on joao to help me identify a part of the city to work in, on a specific problem, how to properly interview/what questions to ask, and what the major health/environment organizations are here that i could interview. so far, ive been let down on all four of those counts. im trying to keep a clear head, but its very difficult. i also need to email gustavo my updated 2nd tcr, and apparently we have a take hom 4 page essay due friday that i never recieved the assignment for. i really liked brazil and SIT when the lack of organization contributed to the experience, but right now i honestly feel really fucked over. im praying that bard's credit transfer policy does not transfer grades as well, because it would really suck if my gpa went down because of this programs lack of organization. i mean, who gives 22 kids to gustavo, 1 AD, when SIT programs usually only have 13-15 kids? in 15 minutes i am going to give gustavo a call and beg him for help with this project. hes read my tcrs and is aware of my situation, so im hoping hell be sympathetic about this and really try and help me out. he knows my last plan fell through at the very last minute, i just cant believe the same thing has just happened again. i seriously have no reason whatsoever to be in sao luis if joao is unable to help me. im halfway convinced to just get my flight rescheduled and fly back to belem today just so i can at least have somebody semi-reliable i can talk to to help me put this isp together. because if i am just interviewing communities about what organizations can provide for environmental health problems, i can do that anywhere in amazonia. theres no point in staying here if i have absoletely no help. hopefully carlos and gustavo can help me put together some isp plan they think will be good, help me identify a few groups to talk to, and i can get done interviews today so i dont feel as screwed. i know its just a research project. but i feel personally embarrassed and betrayed by the whole thing. and if it affects my bard gpa, which ive worked so hard for, ill be really angry. i think bards policy is that as long as you get a c or above in a course, the credit will transfer. it never says anything about the grades.

i wish i could just relax right now, go to the beach, and calm myself down. i had such a good project idea earlier. i had everything together. it was something i was really excited about. everybody else has been able to get something together. and the thing is, i dont even have time to meet with somebody else to get a project together, i dont have time to reexplain myself and my situation here in sao luis to anybody else and have them, like the past two organizations here, tell me that they cant help me. its cant happen time wise, and i cant deal with another rejection for this project. i need an idea. and i need one fast. i can do interviews in 5 days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. thats 6-7 full week days. its pretty easy to find people to interview during the weekday here, impossible on the weekend. if i even just do 5 interviews a day, very doable (i was able to more or less do 3 in an hour yesterday), ill still be good. i just need to have a solid plan together asap. hopefully gustavo can help. i feel like he has had to rescue students during isp with much larger problems than me. lets hope this works. because if not i really dont have any idea what i can do. as i said, im a patient person, i try and give people the benefit of the doubt. but im tired of this. im tired of people being late here. i understand it is a cultural thing, its more laid back. but when you know you have a student who needs you to help him out, and you tell him you can help him, you dont just tell him that you cant talk to him until thursday. at least respond back to his email and try to help the poor guy out. im also just angry because i dont want to be angry. i dont want my last memory here in brazil to be a crappy one. overall, the program has been great. ive seen things and experienced things that have had a huge impact on me. its terrible that because of my anger and sadness right now im blinded to those experiences and what they have given me. yesterday, for example, i bought a can of maracuja juice and sat by the river drinking it. and it made me flash back to the manaus excursion and how wonderful the whole thing was, and of just sitting up on the dech eating creme-de-maracuja with a few friends with the amazonian stars above, without a single light to obscure the view. i dont want to lose sight of the things i have learned here. i dont want to be consumed with anger at sao luis, my potential falling gpa, and other trivial things. but its difficult right now.

otherwise, is sao luis nice? yeah, it can be beautiful. the beach was really nice, some really really beautiful whisps of sand flowing by. i feel bad that i will most likely associate this place with frustration. because it does seem like a very cool place to be

Course List is UP

2008-11-10T19:11:00.001-08:00

next semester, if all goes well and I get into everything:

Ecology and Evolution: W 10:30-12:30, F 9:30-12:30

Cultural Technologies of Memory: M 4-6:20

Writing the World Nonfiction Prose: Th 1:30-3:50

Geographic Information Systems: W 3:15-5:45 (2 creds)

Hooke’s Micrographia: T/Th 9-10:20