Elizabeth (the delinquent, ecumenical) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hermionesviolin) wrote2003-09-04 01:01 am
hermionesviolin) wrote2003-09-04 01:01 am
Wow, i've been busy.
Monday-Thursday i spent most of my time with Isabel and Gillian because everyone was in training all the time so one mostly only saw the people one was training with. I don’t usually get to spend that much time with them, so that was great. Now that i’m back in my house and everyone’s done training i’ve been spending lots of time with my peoples and with first years. I’ve barely even signed on to AIM because i’ve been spending very little time in my room unless i’m unpacking or decorating or something. (One of the few times i signed on, Josh from UMass Oxford IMed me and we had a really nice conversation. I may not have a Boo, but i do seem to have a healthy collection of people.)
I’m really glad to be happy again. Usually i’m very happy to be here, but until i moved back into Lamont all i had was temp housing, the new campus center, SAA training, and bitch sessions about them. Bitch sessions are fine, and can definitely be a bonding experience if nothing else, but i’d much rather be happy. I’ve been having a wonderful time with people in my house (and yes i do want to continue to spend time with the two of you, duh) and have actually gotten to be useful, mostly with SAA type stuff (and i’ve been learning just how useless our “training” was, but more about that later).
I hurt when the people i care about hurt. It’s fine for people to bitch about stuff here, but when people are actually really depressed about being here it makes me so sad. Because i love it here and because it’s a place that has so much ability to be a place where people love to be, and yet the PTBs manage to fuck that up, and that’s depressing in a cynical way as well as being upsetting that they’re making the lives of people i care about miserable. Similarly, when people are depressed i get frightened, and it makes me so sad when people are scared about money -- not just worried in that way that most everyone gets worried at least some of the time, but really worried. Doing the math for the loans (and thinking about how close we’re cutting it with the cash payments) i’ll graduate with from Smith makes me worried in a way i hadn’t been previously about life after Smith, especially because i want my own apartment soon after college, but i’m putting it out of my mind because there’s nothing i can do about it right now and i trust that everything will work out.
CONGRATULATIONS to Layna.
It’s so amazing watching us all grow into our lives. My mom talks about her boss’s daughter and how amazing it is watching her grow and develop and learn about the world because she’s a toddler and the rate of development at that age is just amazing. Seems like the post-high school/college age is a redux. We learn who we are and how we want our lives to be. We learn what it is that we love doing and where we love being and whom we love being around. And we figure out how to make that all happen. We rock.
If you actually like the new campus center, you probably want to skip down to the SAA training.
As i mentioned earlier, Isabel described the new campus center as “how the 70s imagined the space-age” and Gillian said it was more late 60s. Richard Lim called it “The Jetsons meets IKEA.”
The campus center “comes from a place worse than hell.”
“Yeah, HDTV.”
-Isabel and Gillian
It's...like a caffine syringe directly inserted into the vein, isn't it?
Won't be hard pulling an all-nighter at the Fuscia Discotech...
I'm curious as to what colorblind hippie architect thought of those...hues...
That said, it is peppy.
And it did make me grin. And I like kitch. So it's a success.
-Joan (another person who should have a LiveJournal), on the campus center
Later in this conversation i said, “The whole thing is like an acid trip.”
Isabel also pointed out that the heat/AC bills will be obscene as it is all glass. Some days it’s open until 2am, so all the lights (though not all at full capacity) are on until 2am. That should be a fun electricity bill. I really don’t think this campus center was a particularly bright idea, regardless of where the money came from. (Where will the money for the electricity bills come from, by the way?) Other people have pointed out how ugly it’s gonna be when the cloth (especially stuff like the lime green) gets dirty. Oh and all the shiny white (too sterile shiny for me)... floors in winter... oh yeah, it’ll be real attractive.
Unlike most everyone else, i didn’t mind the outside architecture. I’m starting to see why everyone disliked the white siding, though, and all the glass is starting to bother me. Within the building it’s distracting, and from the outside it’s bizarre being able to see into everything, like it’s a dollhouse displaycase or something. For all my overshare and nosy-ness, i am a big fan of solid walls as well.
Ria said that an alum left money specifically for the photo department and instead it got used for either the campus center or the art museum, she wasn’t sure which. My guess is that there was some vaguery in the wording of the bequeathal which allowed them to purchase some photography for the museum with it or something, but it’s still frustrating as she says the photography department has lots of broken equipment and stuff.
Ria is one of the many who actually likes the inside of the student center, but she did commiserate with me some, and said this is what happens when straight old men pick out furniture. Talked with Doug and indeed he’s not a fan. See! Maybe Spike could come visit? ;)
For all my griping, it’s slowly growing on me to toleration level. I learned this when we went after our first house meeting last Friday. I have a sick attraction to the purple rooms. They ruined the red room by adding orange stuff to it, though. And i find the couches (LOW backs) and the Star Trek chairs uncomfortable.
So basically i’m gonna be spending very minimal time there.
Writing a letter explaining how useless the SAA [Student Academic Advisor] training was and how it could be improved is seriously on my to-do list.
I don’t actually remember learning anything in SAA training. Cheating is wrong. Disability Services exists. As does the Jacobson Center. The Ada Office has been reorganized. Carol Christ thinks there’s too much hierarchy at Smith.
Since finishing my training i have been asked about credit transfer from non-Smith programs, the first-year orientation schedule, 5-College writing classes, placement tests and dance auditions, IB scores. These all sound like things which would have been useful to have been covered in Student Academic Advisor training, no? I remember touching on placement exams, but otherwise nothing.
I understand that part of the job is knowing who to send students to when you don’t have the answers, and we got that part fairly well (though, International Students for example, were they covered at all?) but i’d like to have some of the answers myself, ya know. I was mentally designing an SAA sign for my door recently and thinking about that and for the sign i thought something like “I know everything, but if i don’t know it i know who does” and i was reminded of how people think i would be a good reference librarian, because i’m all about knowing everything or being able to find it quickly and easily. Because really, everything in my life interrelates with everything else.
I would also like to register my annoyance with the failures to communicate on this campus. Training, housing, or how about meals? Friday, for example. Picnic out on a lawn, at some time. We were told 5, others 6, the real was 5:30 which some people must have known because that’s when they all descended. Or the time we went to Tyler at quarter of 12 (when lunch always starts) and were told that it was starting at 12. Or Saturday when instead of brunch from 11-1 it was lunch at 12.
Wednesday morning we had 2 hours set aside for the Honor Code (more time than any other activity or speaker including ResLife and the library). Bless Christine Johnson ‘04. She was done in 35 minutes. Dumb questions took up another 15 minutes, but still. We headed downtown but were set upon by Pat Skarda, whose abode one often passes when going downtown from center campus. We saw her garden. I think my friends were very tempted to run away, but it was cool. Thurston has a beard?
We heart the faculty of ‘69, because they’re the ones who did away with distribution requirements at Smith, making instead distribution requirements for Latin Honors eligibility (and thus dropping the eighth discipline of exercise and sports studies from the list of requirements).
I was so glad when we stopped having to listen to Tom Riddell talk - and talk, and talk. He’s boring and dumb and he also gives bad advice. His big theme seems to be “It’s not about the grades, it’s about the kind of person you become.” Now, i can get behind that sentiment to an extent, but grades are important. Things like grad school, and academic probation. Plus of course the fact that Smith is supposed to be primarily about the academics. (I was proud that some of my first-years remembered the second Harry Potter book on their own.)
I think it’s practically a rule of being an SAA that you have to put up “Seasons of a First Year” on your SAA board, but i was going to refuse to because i think it’s depressing and lame. However, Charlotte said she sympathized with it as a first-year, so it’s up. We did our board on Labor Day, when everything was closed, so Charlotte put up her notes as background. I thought it would be far too busy and everything would blend, but it actually grew on me (plus all the current notices are on colored paper). Now it’s super cool and colorful because we got construction paper.
“What I want to know is how many ecosystems had to perish so that we could have lime green paper.”
-Gillian
I thought i saw the following in Gillian or Isabel’s LJ the following, though it later vanished: “it’s a mood curve. on neon paper. it’ll go up again. but it’ll still be on neon paper.”
My favorite bumper sticker seen since i’ve returned to campus: “I’m pro-choice and I pray.”
When we had our session with the Registrar, we asked about the online directory. The registrar is dumb. The photos only show up on campus connections, but the library is a campus connection, and “Anyone can use the library. And anyone does.” (So says the lady who would know, having worked there all summer.) Registrar lady said it’s been good because it allows people to place a face with a name when they call and shit. I thought she said they were only available on campus? Or is that just student photos? Regardless, why should it matter what the administrator you talk to on the phone looks like? Yeah they had staff/faculty photos up last year and nothing creepy happened, but hello, college-age women, slightly more attractive to the unsavory element. Also, too much information is available from off-campus connection. You can have your info removed from the online directory, but if they can limit pictures can’t they have other parts of your info only available on campus? I understand how the library issue is sticky, but limiting some info to campus connections should be a non-issue. Someone needs to talk to SGA and make a petition or something. Because i need more to do this year, right? (One of my comrades-in-training already volunteered to contact SGA once everyone’s back on campus, so i’m off the hook.) Speaking of which...
JoJo said that Wellesley has a gender–neutral floor and a BDSM club. Who woulda thunk Wellesley would be more sexually progressive than Smith? The strainedly optimistic response is to point out that right now students can be involved in making changes and stuff, but yeah. We have “Trans-Friendly Environment” signs on the bathrooms on every floor (and all the signs Ria puts up are put up with her rainbow tape :) ) and at both meetings with the first-years people talked about how you should be careful not to assume things about other students, including assuming that they all identify as female or woman or want to be referred to by female pronouns or whatever. That made me happy. I don’t remember trans stuff being mentioned when i was a first-year two years ago. I remember Britta mentioning last semester how T-Committee does a great one-hour workshop and it should be part of ResLife diversity training or first-year orientation or both or something. I would also love if there were a class in the WST department since i would think there’d be a lot of interest on campus in something like that. (It’s bad that i’m jealous of UNH’s queer issue course offerings. And yes of course i understand that it is a huge university and all that entails yadda yadda. Also, what’s up with the Big/Petite Gay not being offered this Spring?)
I talked with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gorynna about a “fat can be beautiful” focus in Bodywise this year. Anyone have any ideas/suggestions about that?
Wow i’ve missed reading Eugene Volokh. When i revise my paper i absolutely have to include his argument about how Christians should extend the same toleration to homosexuals that they do to, say, Hindus.
Must remember to keep up with blogs. Am thinking of making a link-list for the righthand column of my layout. Blogs and comics as well, partly just to remind myself of what i read because i get so busy recently that i forget and have to play catch-up and i suspect this may continue.
InstaPundit reminded me of my magnum opus about affirmative action, same-sex institutions, and a plethora of other issues which interrelate.
offbalance reminded me of my vow to research Presidential candidates as i’m eligible to vote in the election (and because it’s generally what i do).
We had like 36 hours notice for the Back to School issue, so i didn’t get anything written for that which was fine. I’m working on my first real column, and i don’t have a deadline. Yup, this is fun. From the guidelines: "Is concise—300 words or less—yet feels well-developed." *cries* My academic papers are always too short, but synthesis like this is always quite lengthy, as most of you know.
I’m amused that the results of the poll for my column title go so contrary to my own personal preferences. It is of course my decision, so i suppose many people will just be disappointed - and only like 25% of the people reading this thing voted, so it’s not like a whole lotta people are particularly committed to it one way or another. (I’m probably gonna choose “Bursting Bubbles.” Feel free to argue for the title of your choice.)
I finally hooked up with the new Princeton Review college rankings. I disagree with a lot of it, but we still come out pretty well. It’s also interesting checking out the institutions of my other collegiate and post-collegiate friends. I want to get a copy of the book to read in more detail. Bruce insists that the fund for house libraries is enormous, so i wanna ask Charlotte to add the most recent Princeton Review book to our order form.
Oh, poor Neil Gaiman. Check out this and the entries above it.
Oh that reminds me. Must type up all the bad smut i wrote over the summer as some of it is probably beta-able. Oh, and my special hell fic. Also, this amuses me, which should surprise no one.
I read a debate about porn in TBQ’s journal a while back.psychodragon82’s icons? “I write/read NC-17 fic because I need to get laid.” Oh yeah. All those pictures... i really need to get laid now ;)
I want one of the t-shirts from Allie’s youth group that say “We’re here, we’re queer, our parents think we’re studying.”
Also, some of Smith’s official FAQ for entering first-years is dumb. An iron is on both the Do and Do Not Bring list, for example.
Wow, my first-year room is totally the house booty room.
At one of our house meetings with the first years, Ria said something like, “If you fuck with my friends, I will go down on you” and it took like 2 minutes for her to realize just what she had said. Yeah, i don’t think we’re ever letting that one go.
After Chicago (better than i’d expected at the beginning, then not so much keeping up with the expectations it had created -- also, i don’t do well when i dislike protagonists) a lot of us went out to the Athletic Fields to look at the stars and Charlotte, who took Astronomy last year, shared lots of information (and i also learned that Maria is a math&science dork as well as an English dork). She talked about how everything developed from the particles from the Big Bang, how they coalesced and stuff. So in a literal sense we are made of stardust (stardust makes Earth, Earth makes us). I thought of one of Britta’s away messages from back in April:
Marnie’s room is the new Layna’s room i have decided. Very busy and artsy and friendly.
A lot of our first years are very cool, and/or very sweet. Many are VERY enthusiastic, which is good. Some are just kinda there, which is fine. Some i am actively bothered by, but there aren’t many, and i remind myself of my mother’s words: “Remember to be generous -- not everyone can be a soul mate, but many can at least make the journey a bit more pleasant.” And just tonight one of the international students (Ana, Bulgaria) who reminded me of Jana came by my room, homesick and scared that at this college one has to stay in one’s room studying all the time to get good marks. I’m used to people stopping by since i’m at the head of the stairs, but being an SAA has increased this probably threefold. I’m now the person to ask about everything, which is fine, it just kinda amuses me, especially because i almost never talked to my SAAs (one seemed kinda weird and distant, and the other was my roommate’s girlfriend and i wanted her to be my friend so the rare times i had questions i felt weird asking her).
I have learned by now what kinds of narratives i don’t like. Some stuff (like Saving Grace just doesn’t grab me). But other stuff is almost painful to me. Like mistaken identity kinda stuff. That’s why so much of Atonement was painful to me to read. The second half felt like it wasn’t as good, but i actually enjoyed it more because there wasn’t all the painfulness of the first half and because there was lots of interesting overlap/slippage of reality and fantasy. The ideas about storytelling were interesting, because we tell stories all the time and some of the ways her head worked are definitely very similar to mine (i can’t honestly say they “resonated” because i had so much distance from Briony). This idea does resonate with my RPF: the idea that stories can be truer than reality -- that this story is true even if it isn’t factually accurate. At the house discussion, one of the firstyears, Allison (sp?), came up with a really good question for the panel:
What is the role of reality in ethics?
Another good question which came mostly from the professor: What obligations does the storyteller have? (This is mostly the teller’s obligation to the audience, but i think an interesting headache-inducing meta question is what obligations the storyteller has to the members of the story. And what about the storyteller’s obligation to the story?)
We also talked about how Briony never says flat out that the depressing alternative ending she outlines is how life actually happened.
The faculty panel discussion (usually we have the author speak, but McEwan’s in England working on another book) was not so great. They seemed to choose questions they could talk about for 5 minutes and then move on.
Michael Gorra did say one thing i really liked, that a novel “is never more artificial than when it seems most real.”
I can’t handle stupid people. Slapstick can be okay in small doses, and mocking things can be cool, but just dumb people i can’t handle. The Jerk, for instance. Such a bad movie. Watching it i understand why Marnie says Bernadette is cute more than she is hot. And really, Bernadette does nothing to redeem that movie.
The Lovely Bones wasn’t as good as it was hyped to be, but having read Lucky, which read to me as same old same old, having read a lot of perzines and stuff, i liked it much better than i expected to (though i can definitely see how the narrative style can be seen as practice for her memoir).
The ideas about heaven are interesting - everyone having an individual heaven, many of which overlap with other ones;anniesj’s latest.
I refuse to watch Boy Meets Boy just to hang out with people. Staring at a screen is not bonding. Yes i enjoyed the living room Buffy cult, but it really did not advance my relationships with those people very much. If i want to watch a television show and other people do too, sure i’ll watch in the same room as them. Maybe we’ll talk during the commercial breaks. But i’m not going to sit in a room with you watching a show i have no interest in just to share air with you (unless you’re going through a difficult time). And if lots of the people there are just there to spend time with people and don’t actually like the show, why don’t they just all go off and do something else?
Tuesday night one of the first years said something sarcastic to me and i started defending myself because even though i knew she was being sarcastic i never know how to respond to that except semi-defensively which always makes me people think i was taking them seriously even though usually i wasn’t. Anyway, she interrupted me touching my shoulder and saying “No it’s okay.” I sort of chilled when she touched my shoulder. I forget sometimes how much touch is like food for me. I tease Maria for being a hug-whore, but really i’m all about physical affection -- i hug people like Marnie from behind.
Some people in my house had really kickass costumes, though, and some people managed to be mad sexy, too, because skimpy clothing is a crucial part of the Convocation experience.
We have lame cheers, but the point is just to make a wall of noise, so it doesn’t really matter.
I really enjoyed being there, though.
“It’s not often that professors get to feel like rock stars.” -Carol Christ
They really should get to feel like rock stars more often, because so many of them are so awesome and amazing.
“I’m standing here in my regalia, looking at all of you in your regalia, and I feel ridiculously overdressed.” -Carol Christ
She also said that people recommend you picture your audience in their underwear... but what do you do when
Speaker Domenico Grasso talked about being hired as the director of Smith’s Engineering Program. “To plan is human, to implement divine. Then Carol Christ was hired.” It was silly to think the puns would end after a year, huh? (And honestly i don't really mind them much.)
Just as all the “she” references in SAA training made me twitch, all his talk about an all-female, all-women, group of engineers made me uncomfortable.
Someone dropped a uni ball Fusion pen on my head during Convocation. So now i have yet another pen.
It was weird, when we were cheering for all the different classes, trying to get it through my head that people like Betsy and Virada whom i think of as sophomores are now seniors, to realize that i'm a junior -- someone whose compatriots have mostly fled the country and who will be a senior next year.
Wednesday i kept reminding myself “You have to remember to actually go to class tomorrow” because i have been here a week and a half not going to classes and i’ve gotten very used to that. I’m scared about my classes, which i don’t think has ever happened. It’ll be okay, though. Am very excited about lots of extracurricular stuff, so in that sense i’m anxious for the semester to get underway so i can do stuff with them.
Nearly-obligatory schedule posting, partly because i’m still getting it settled in my brain.
In other news: anonymous survey for lesbians age 18-25 for a University of New Orleans research project.
More on the crap that is Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine.
Marnie’s looking for scholarships reminded me to do the same. Wow, lots more essay writing in my future.
Returned students have fairly well cleared out the trunk room. The lighting down there is horrible. The rugathene left me and which is too big for my room (anyone who wants it is welcome to it because i feel bad that it is getting no use) is still there, but i couldn’t find the lamp Rebecca left me (no loss as i almost never use it) or my trash bag with the wastebasket, white board, and white board markers also left to me by Rebecca. This is a bit of a bigger loss.
So i hearlilithchilde and sweetvalleyslut have been arguing about whether Smith or Mount Holyoke gets to claim Velma.
Doing a web search for "daphne velma smith holyoke" [without the quotes] the first two sites that come up say opposite things from each other. The consensus seems to be that Smith=Velma, but as most are personal sites and it’s an unofficial thing anyway, there’s really no way to know for sure. Every year my house sells t-shirts which have Daphne as Smith (all 5 characters on the back with the appropriate institutional name with each, then Daphne’s head in a circle on the front upper lefthand corner of the wearer), but i choose to live in denial about that.
MHC showed the Scooby Doo movie at its 2002 Family Weekend and said: Legend has it that the Scooby Doo characters are based on personalities of the Five Colleges: Scooby represents UMass, Fred depicts Amherst, Shaggy personifies Hampshire, Velma characterizes Smith, and Daphne symbolizes MHC. There's been controversy between Smith and MHC over Daphne; we'll leave it to you to decide for yourself.
Amherst College has an unofficial FAQ which says: If you go to Amherst, you've probably heard the rumor that the characters of Scooby Doo, Where Are You are based on the Five-College System. Preppy Fred is Amherst College, sexy Daphne is Mount Holyoke College, nerdy Velma is Smith College, Shaggy is Hampshire College, and Scooby Doo is the University of Massachusetts. Oddly, i never thought SD was based on the Valley. (And indeed the creator says that idea is false.) I always just thought 5-College students used Scooby Doo to describe their college system. It’s interesting to see how people word it, regardless of which lady they give my fine institution.
A sister of a friend wrote a while back:
Dear Newcomers,
This is an unusual Entry of Doom (tm?). My entries are not usually this bad. Please do not be frightened away.
Thank you and good night.
I’m really glad to be happy again. Usually i’m very happy to be here, but until i moved back into Lamont all i had was temp housing, the new campus center, SAA training, and bitch sessions about them. Bitch sessions are fine, and can definitely be a bonding experience if nothing else, but i’d much rather be happy. I’ve been having a wonderful time with people in my house (and yes i do want to continue to spend time with the two of you, duh) and have actually gotten to be useful, mostly with SAA type stuff (and i’ve been learning just how useless our “training” was, but more about that later).
I hurt when the people i care about hurt. It’s fine for people to bitch about stuff here, but when people are actually really depressed about being here it makes me so sad. Because i love it here and because it’s a place that has so much ability to be a place where people love to be, and yet the PTBs manage to fuck that up, and that’s depressing in a cynical way as well as being upsetting that they’re making the lives of people i care about miserable. Similarly, when people are depressed i get frightened, and it makes me so sad when people are scared about money -- not just worried in that way that most everyone gets worried at least some of the time, but really worried. Doing the math for the loans (and thinking about how close we’re cutting it with the cash payments) i’ll graduate with from Smith makes me worried in a way i hadn’t been previously about life after Smith, especially because i want my own apartment soon after college, but i’m putting it out of my mind because there’s nothing i can do about it right now and i trust that everything will work out.
CONGRATULATIONS to Layna.
It’s so amazing watching us all grow into our lives. My mom talks about her boss’s daughter and how amazing it is watching her grow and develop and learn about the world because she’s a toddler and the rate of development at that age is just amazing. Seems like the post-high school/college age is a redux. We learn who we are and how we want our lives to be. We learn what it is that we love doing and where we love being and whom we love being around. And we figure out how to make that all happen. We rock.
If you actually like the new campus center, you probably want to skip down to the SAA training.
As i mentioned earlier, Isabel described the new campus center as “how the 70s imagined the space-age” and Gillian said it was more late 60s. Richard Lim called it “The Jetsons meets IKEA.”
The campus center “comes from a place worse than hell.”
“Yeah, HDTV.”
-Isabel and Gillian
It's...like a caffine syringe directly inserted into the vein, isn't it?
Won't be hard pulling an all-nighter at the Fuscia Discotech...
I'm curious as to what colorblind hippie architect thought of those...hues...
That said, it is peppy.
And it did make me grin. And I like kitch. So it's a success.
-Joan (another person who should have a LiveJournal), on the campus center
Later in this conversation i said, “The whole thing is like an acid trip.”
Isabel also pointed out that the heat/AC bills will be obscene as it is all glass. Some days it’s open until 2am, so all the lights (though not all at full capacity) are on until 2am. That should be a fun electricity bill. I really don’t think this campus center was a particularly bright idea, regardless of where the money came from. (Where will the money for the electricity bills come from, by the way?) Other people have pointed out how ugly it’s gonna be when the cloth (especially stuff like the lime green) gets dirty. Oh and all the shiny white (too sterile shiny for me)... floors in winter... oh yeah, it’ll be real attractive.
Unlike most everyone else, i didn’t mind the outside architecture. I’m starting to see why everyone disliked the white siding, though, and all the glass is starting to bother me. Within the building it’s distracting, and from the outside it’s bizarre being able to see into everything, like it’s a dollhouse displaycase or something. For all my overshare and nosy-ness, i am a big fan of solid walls as well.
Ria said that an alum left money specifically for the photo department and instead it got used for either the campus center or the art museum, she wasn’t sure which. My guess is that there was some vaguery in the wording of the bequeathal which allowed them to purchase some photography for the museum with it or something, but it’s still frustrating as she says the photography department has lots of broken equipment and stuff.
Ria is one of the many who actually likes the inside of the student center, but she did commiserate with me some, and said this is what happens when straight old men pick out furniture. Talked with Doug and indeed he’s not a fan. See! Maybe Spike could come visit? ;)
For all my griping, it’s slowly growing on me to toleration level. I learned this when we went after our first house meeting last Friday. I have a sick attraction to the purple rooms. They ruined the red room by adding orange stuff to it, though. And i find the couches (LOW backs) and the Star Trek chairs uncomfortable.
So basically i’m gonna be spending very minimal time there.
Writing a letter explaining how useless the SAA [Student Academic Advisor] training was and how it could be improved is seriously on my to-do list.
I don’t actually remember learning anything in SAA training. Cheating is wrong. Disability Services exists. As does the Jacobson Center. The Ada Office has been reorganized. Carol Christ thinks there’s too much hierarchy at Smith.
Since finishing my training i have been asked about credit transfer from non-Smith programs, the first-year orientation schedule, 5-College writing classes, placement tests and dance auditions, IB scores. These all sound like things which would have been useful to have been covered in Student Academic Advisor training, no? I remember touching on placement exams, but otherwise nothing.
I understand that part of the job is knowing who to send students to when you don’t have the answers, and we got that part fairly well (though, International Students for example, were they covered at all?) but i’d like to have some of the answers myself, ya know. I was mentally designing an SAA sign for my door recently and thinking about that and for the sign i thought something like “I know everything, but if i don’t know it i know who does” and i was reminded of how people think i would be a good reference librarian, because i’m all about knowing everything or being able to find it quickly and easily. Because really, everything in my life interrelates with everything else.
I would also like to register my annoyance with the failures to communicate on this campus. Training, housing, or how about meals? Friday, for example. Picnic out on a lawn, at some time. We were told 5, others 6, the real was 5:30 which some people must have known because that’s when they all descended. Or the time we went to Tyler at quarter of 12 (when lunch always starts) and were told that it was starting at 12. Or Saturday when instead of brunch from 11-1 it was lunch at 12.
Wednesday morning we had 2 hours set aside for the Honor Code (more time than any other activity or speaker including ResLife and the library). Bless Christine Johnson ‘04. She was done in 35 minutes. Dumb questions took up another 15 minutes, but still. We headed downtown but were set upon by Pat Skarda, whose abode one often passes when going downtown from center campus. We saw her garden. I think my friends were very tempted to run away, but it was cool. Thurston has a beard?
We heart the faculty of ‘69, because they’re the ones who did away with distribution requirements at Smith, making instead distribution requirements for Latin Honors eligibility (and thus dropping the eighth discipline of exercise and sports studies from the list of requirements).
I was so glad when we stopped having to listen to Tom Riddell talk - and talk, and talk. He’s boring and dumb and he also gives bad advice. His big theme seems to be “It’s not about the grades, it’s about the kind of person you become.” Now, i can get behind that sentiment to an extent, but grades are important. Things like grad school, and academic probation. Plus of course the fact that Smith is supposed to be primarily about the academics. (I was proud that some of my first-years remembered the second Harry Potter book on their own.)
I think it’s practically a rule of being an SAA that you have to put up “Seasons of a First Year” on your SAA board, but i was going to refuse to because i think it’s depressing and lame. However, Charlotte said she sympathized with it as a first-year, so it’s up. We did our board on Labor Day, when everything was closed, so Charlotte put up her notes as background. I thought it would be far too busy and everything would blend, but it actually grew on me (plus all the current notices are on colored paper). Now it’s super cool and colorful because we got construction paper.
“What I want to know is how many ecosystems had to perish so that we could have lime green paper.”
-Gillian
I thought i saw the following in Gillian or Isabel’s LJ the following, though it later vanished: “it’s a mood curve. on neon paper. it’ll go up again. but it’ll still be on neon paper.”
My favorite bumper sticker seen since i’ve returned to campus: “I’m pro-choice and I pray.”
When we had our session with the Registrar, we asked about the online directory. The registrar is dumb. The photos only show up on campus connections, but the library is a campus connection, and “Anyone can use the library. And anyone does.” (So says the lady who would know, having worked there all summer.) Registrar lady said it’s been good because it allows people to place a face with a name when they call and shit. I thought she said they were only available on campus? Or is that just student photos? Regardless, why should it matter what the administrator you talk to on the phone looks like? Yeah they had staff/faculty photos up last year and nothing creepy happened, but hello, college-age women, slightly more attractive to the unsavory element. Also, too much information is available from off-campus connection. You can have your info removed from the online directory, but if they can limit pictures can’t they have other parts of your info only available on campus? I understand how the library issue is sticky, but limiting some info to campus connections should be a non-issue. Someone needs to talk to SGA and make a petition or something. Because i need more to do this year, right? (One of my comrades-in-training already volunteered to contact SGA once everyone’s back on campus, so i’m off the hook.) Speaking of which...
JoJo said that Wellesley has a gender–neutral floor and a BDSM club. Who woulda thunk Wellesley would be more sexually progressive than Smith? The strainedly optimistic response is to point out that right now students can be involved in making changes and stuff, but yeah. We have “Trans-Friendly Environment” signs on the bathrooms on every floor (and all the signs Ria puts up are put up with her rainbow tape :) ) and at both meetings with the first-years people talked about how you should be careful not to assume things about other students, including assuming that they all identify as female or woman or want to be referred to by female pronouns or whatever. That made me happy. I don’t remember trans stuff being mentioned when i was a first-year two years ago. I remember Britta mentioning last semester how T-Committee does a great one-hour workshop and it should be part of ResLife diversity training or first-year orientation or both or something. I would also love if there were a class in the WST department since i would think there’d be a lot of interest on campus in something like that. (It’s bad that i’m jealous of UNH’s queer issue course offerings. And yes of course i understand that it is a huge university and all that entails yadda yadda. Also, what’s up with the Big/Petite Gay not being offered this Spring?)
I talked with
gorynna about a “fat can be beautiful” focus in Bodywise this year. Anyone have any ideas/suggestions about that?Wow i’ve missed reading Eugene Volokh. When i revise my paper i absolutely have to include his argument about how Christians should extend the same toleration to homosexuals that they do to, say, Hindus.
Must remember to keep up with blogs. Am thinking of making a link-list for the righthand column of my layout. Blogs and comics as well, partly just to remind myself of what i read because i get so busy recently that i forget and have to play catch-up and i suspect this may continue.
InstaPundit reminded me of my magnum opus about affirmative action, same-sex institutions, and a plethora of other issues which interrelate.
offbalance reminded me of my vow to research Presidential candidates as i’m eligible to vote in the election (and because it’s generally what i do).We had like 36 hours notice for the Back to School issue, so i didn’t get anything written for that which was fine. I’m working on my first real column, and i don’t have a deadline. Yup, this is fun. From the guidelines: "Is concise—300 words or less—yet feels well-developed." *cries* My academic papers are always too short, but synthesis like this is always quite lengthy, as most of you know.
I’m amused that the results of the poll for my column title go so contrary to my own personal preferences. It is of course my decision, so i suppose many people will just be disappointed - and only like 25% of the people reading this thing voted, so it’s not like a whole lotta people are particularly committed to it one way or another. (I’m probably gonna choose “Bursting Bubbles.” Feel free to argue for the title of your choice.)
I finally hooked up with the new Princeton Review college rankings. I disagree with a lot of it, but we still come out pretty well. It’s also interesting checking out the institutions of my other collegiate and post-collegiate friends. I want to get a copy of the book to read in more detail. Bruce insists that the fund for house libraries is enormous, so i wanna ask Charlotte to add the most recent Princeton Review book to our order form.
Oh, poor Neil Gaiman. Check out this and the entries above it.
Oh that reminds me. Must type up all the bad smut i wrote over the summer as some of it is probably beta-able. Oh, and my special hell fic. Also, this amuses me, which should surprise no one.
I read a debate about porn in TBQ’s journal a while back.
psychodragon82’s icons? “I write/read NC-17 fic because I need to get laid.” Oh yeah. All those pictures... i really need to get laid now ;)I want one of the t-shirts from Allie’s youth group that say “We’re here, we’re queer, our parents think we’re studying.”
Also, some of Smith’s official FAQ for entering first-years is dumb. An iron is on both the Do and Do Not Bring list, for example.
Wow, my first-year room is totally the house booty room.
At one of our house meetings with the first years, Ria said something like, “If you fuck with my friends, I will go down on you” and it took like 2 minutes for her to realize just what she had said. Yeah, i don’t think we’re ever letting that one go.
After Chicago (better than i’d expected at the beginning, then not so much keeping up with the expectations it had created -- also, i don’t do well when i dislike protagonists) a lot of us went out to the Athletic Fields to look at the stars and Charlotte, who took Astronomy last year, shared lots of information (and i also learned that Maria is a math&science dork as well as an English dork). She talked about how everything developed from the particles from the Big Bang, how they coalesced and stuff. So in a literal sense we are made of stardust (stardust makes Earth, Earth makes us). I thought of one of Britta’s away messages from back in April:
We are wonderful and mysterious creatures made of stardust and sunlight and we can swim in water.The following day i played my mp3 of Christine Lavin’s song “Planet X” for them.
[Ellen Gilchrist]
Marnie’s room is the new Layna’s room i have decided. Very busy and artsy and friendly.
A lot of our first years are very cool, and/or very sweet. Many are VERY enthusiastic, which is good. Some are just kinda there, which is fine. Some i am actively bothered by, but there aren’t many, and i remind myself of my mother’s words: “Remember to be generous -- not everyone can be a soul mate, but many can at least make the journey a bit more pleasant.” And just tonight one of the international students (Ana, Bulgaria) who reminded me of Jana came by my room, homesick and scared that at this college one has to stay in one’s room studying all the time to get good marks. I’m used to people stopping by since i’m at the head of the stairs, but being an SAA has increased this probably threefold. I’m now the person to ask about everything, which is fine, it just kinda amuses me, especially because i almost never talked to my SAAs (one seemed kinda weird and distant, and the other was my roommate’s girlfriend and i wanted her to be my friend so the rare times i had questions i felt weird asking her).
I have learned by now what kinds of narratives i don’t like. Some stuff (like Saving Grace just doesn’t grab me). But other stuff is almost painful to me. Like mistaken identity kinda stuff. That’s why so much of Atonement was painful to me to read. The second half felt like it wasn’t as good, but i actually enjoyed it more because there wasn’t all the painfulness of the first half and because there was lots of interesting overlap/slippage of reality and fantasy. The ideas about storytelling were interesting, because we tell stories all the time and some of the ways her head worked are definitely very similar to mine (i can’t honestly say they “resonated” because i had so much distance from Briony). This idea does resonate with my RPF: the idea that stories can be truer than reality -- that this story is true even if it isn’t factually accurate. At the house discussion, one of the firstyears, Allison (sp?), came up with a really good question for the panel:
What is the role of reality in ethics?
Another good question which came mostly from the professor: What obligations does the storyteller have? (This is mostly the teller’s obligation to the audience, but i think an interesting headache-inducing meta question is what obligations the storyteller has to the members of the story. And what about the storyteller’s obligation to the story?)
We also talked about how Briony never says flat out that the depressing alternative ending she outlines is how life actually happened.
It’s only in this last version that my lovers end well, standing side by side on a South London pavement as I walk away. All the preceding drafts were pitiless. But now I can no longer think what purpose would be served if, say, I tried to persuade my reader, by direct or indirect means, that Robbie Turner died of septicemia at Bray Dunes on 1 June 1940, or that Cecilia was killed in September of the same year by bombs that destroyed Balham Underground station,. That I never saw them in that year. That my walk across London ended at the church on Clapham Common, and that a cowardly Briony limped back to the hospital, unable to confront her recently bereaved sister.This is just “a possibility in a world of possibilities.” Yes, she implies that the ending just described there is the factual truth of events, saying
-p. 370-371
Who would want to believe that they never met again, never fulfilled their love? Who would want to believe that, except in the service of the bleakest realism? I couldn’t do it to them. I’m too old, too frightened, too much in love with the shred of life I have remaining.But really, i maintain that they are both alternative endings and neither is necessarily the “true” ending.
-p. 371
When I am dead, and the Marshalls are dead, and the novel is finally published, we will only exist as my intentions. [...] No one will care what events and which individuals were misrepresented to make a novel. I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish. As long as there is a single copy, a solitary transcript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love.In the end it is, as it has always been, about her, and about her stories.
-p. 371
I like to think that it isn’t weakness of evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end. I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me.She does tell the reader even if it serves no purpose. What purpose does it serve for McEwan?
-p. 371-372
The faculty panel discussion (usually we have the author speak, but McEwan’s in England working on another book) was not so great. They seemed to choose questions they could talk about for 5 minutes and then move on.
Michael Gorra did say one thing i really liked, that a novel “is never more artificial than when it seems most real.”
I can’t handle stupid people. Slapstick can be okay in small doses, and mocking things can be cool, but just dumb people i can’t handle. The Jerk, for instance. Such a bad movie. Watching it i understand why Marnie says Bernadette is cute more than she is hot. And really, Bernadette does nothing to redeem that movie.
The Lovely Bones wasn’t as good as it was hyped to be, but having read Lucky, which read to me as same old same old, having read a lot of perzines and stuff, i liked it much better than i expected to (though i can definitely see how the narrative style can be seen as practice for her memoir).
The ideas about heaven are interesting - everyone having an individual heaven, many of which overlap with other ones;
I did begin to wonder what the word heaven meant. I thought, if this were heaven, truly heaven, it would be where my grandparents lived. Where my father’s father, my favorite of them all, would lift me up and dance with me. I would feel only joy and have no memory; no cornfield and no grave.“What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child” (p.131). Creeptastic. I think sometimes i need to be reminded to be afraid of the world, because i’m so unafraid -- walking after dark, not locking doors, etc. But then again, i do lock doors a lot when i think it’s appropriate, and i try to always be aware of my surroundings and have a plan for in case i get in trouble, and i try to listen to my intuition and ask for help if i need it. Tangential segue into a plug the remarkable beginning of for
“You can do that,” Franny said to me. “Plenty of people do.”
“How do you make the switch?” I asked.
“It’s not as easy as you might think,” she said. “You have to stop desiring certain answers.”
“I don’t get it.”
“If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth is feeling,” she said, “you can stop desiring certain answers.”
-p. 120
anniesj’s latest.My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized that I had been loved by people he didn’t even recognize.I really really loved that snippet.
-p. 209
I refuse to watch Boy Meets Boy just to hang out with people. Staring at a screen is not bonding. Yes i enjoyed the living room Buffy cult, but it really did not advance my relationships with those people very much. If i want to watch a television show and other people do too, sure i’ll watch in the same room as them. Maybe we’ll talk during the commercial breaks. But i’m not going to sit in a room with you watching a show i have no interest in just to share air with you (unless you’re going through a difficult time). And if lots of the people there are just there to spend time with people and don’t actually like the show, why don’t they just all go off and do something else?
Tuesday night one of the first years said something sarcastic to me and i started defending myself because even though i knew she was being sarcastic i never know how to respond to that except semi-defensively which always makes me people think i was taking them seriously even though usually i wasn’t. Anyway, she interrupted me touching my shoulder and saying “No it’s okay.” I sort of chilled when she touched my shoulder. I forget sometimes how much touch is like food for me. I tease Maria for being a hug-whore, but really i’m all about physical affection -- i hug people like Marnie from behind.
I really want to dress up for Convocation this year even though I have no house. So I'm thinking I'm going to do a half-assed Invisible Woman costume (with a bit Smith "S" instead of a "4" on the chest), and write "Off-Campus Invisible Girl" on the back in big letters.I wasn’t all that excited about Convocation -- lots of noise and boobies and crazy costumes, yeah yeah yeah. My house was Alice in Wonderland themed. I’m ghetto lazy, so i was the dormouse because i had brown clothes. Black gloves and shoes. Someone drew whiskers on me in eyeliner pen.
I think I'll always be somewhat snarky about the whole subject of housing. *shrug, smile*
-Allie
Some people in my house had really kickass costumes, though, and some people managed to be mad sexy, too, because skimpy clothing is a crucial part of the Convocation experience.
We have lame cheers, but the point is just to make a wall of noise, so it doesn’t really matter.
I really enjoyed being there, though.
“It’s not often that professors get to feel like rock stars.” -Carol Christ
They really should get to feel like rock stars more often, because so many of them are so awesome and amazing.
“I’m standing here in my regalia, looking at all of you in your regalia, and I feel ridiculously overdressed.” -Carol Christ
She also said that people recommend you picture your audience in their underwear... but what do you do when
Speaker Domenico Grasso talked about being hired as the director of Smith’s Engineering Program. “To plan is human, to implement divine. Then Carol Christ was hired.” It was silly to think the puns would end after a year, huh? (And honestly i don't really mind them much.)
Just as all the “she” references in SAA training made me twitch, all his talk about an all-female, all-women, group of engineers made me uncomfortable.
Someone dropped a uni ball Fusion pen on my head during Convocation. So now i have yet another pen.
It was weird, when we were cheering for all the different classes, trying to get it through my head that people like Betsy and Virada whom i think of as sophomores are now seniors, to realize that i'm a junior -- someone whose compatriots have mostly fled the country and who will be a senior next year.
Wednesday i kept reminding myself “You have to remember to actually go to class tomorrow” because i have been here a week and a half not going to classes and i’ve gotten very used to that. I’m scared about my classes, which i don’t think has ever happened. It’ll be okay, though. Am very excited about lots of extracurricular stuff, so in that sense i’m anxious for the semester to get underway so i can do stuff with them.
Nearly-obligatory schedule posting, partly because i’m still getting it settled in my brain.
MWF morning:At lunch one time Maria and Ria and them were asking me stuff and talking about how i know everything or have an answer for everything and all that and Ria asked “What is the meaning of life?” “42,” i said, without missing a beat. I mean, i try to have an answer for everything, but that one was just too easy. Brain the size of a planet.... ;)
ECO 150 [9-9:50am] Introductory Microeconomics w/ Lewis Davis
LOG 100 [11am-12:10pm] Valid and Invalid Reasoning: What Follows From What? w/ Jim Henle and Jay Garfield
TR afternoon:
AAS 245 [1-2:30pm] The Harlem Renaissance w/ Kevin Quashie
SPN 366 [3-4:50pm] 20th Century Poetry: Federico García Lorca w/ María Estela Harretche
Monday night:
ESS 955 [7:30-9:10pm] Self Defense w/ Nancy Rothenberg
In other news: anonymous survey for lesbians age 18-25 for a University of New Orleans research project.
More on the crap that is Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine.
In "Shakespeare, Co-Author" (Oxford University Press, 2002), Professor Vickers, 65, shows how numerous tests by many generations of scholars demonstrate substantial work by other playwrights in five Shakespeare plays. Examining factors like rhetorical devices, polysyllabic words and metrical habits, scholars have been able to identify reliably an author of a work or part of a work, even when the early editions did not give credit.I have to visit Chicago sometime, because i hear the Monet collection at the Institute may in fact be superior to that of the MFA.
The plays are not the top five in the Shakespeare canon. But the overwhelming evidence in the book shows that George Peele, not Shakespeare, wrote almost a third of "Titus Andronicus"; Thomas Middleton, about two-fifths of "Timon of Athens"; George Wilkins, two of the five acts of "Pericles"; and John Fletcher, more than half of "Henry VIII." "The Two Noble Kinsmen," originally published in 1634 as the work of Shakespeare and Fletcher, is shown to be about two-fifths Shakespeare's.
-"Seeing the Fingerprints of Other Hands in Shakespeare" by William S. Niederkorn (The New York Times - September 2, 2003)
Marnie’s looking for scholarships reminded me to do the same. Wow, lots more essay writing in my future.
Returned students have fairly well cleared out the trunk room. The lighting down there is horrible. The rug
athene left me and which is too big for my room (anyone who wants it is welcome to it because i feel bad that it is getting no use) is still there, but i couldn’t find the lamp Rebecca left me (no loss as i almost never use it) or my trash bag with the wastebasket, white board, and white board markers also left to me by Rebecca. This is a bit of a bigger loss.So i hear
lilithchilde and sweetvalleyslut have been arguing about whether Smith or Mount Holyoke gets to claim Velma.Doing a web search for "daphne velma smith holyoke" [without the quotes] the first two sites that come up say opposite things from each other. The consensus seems to be that Smith=Velma, but as most are personal sites and it’s an unofficial thing anyway, there’s really no way to know for sure. Every year my house sells t-shirts which have Daphne as Smith (all 5 characters on the back with the appropriate institutional name with each, then Daphne’s head in a circle on the front upper lefthand corner of the wearer), but i choose to live in denial about that.
MHC showed the Scooby Doo movie at its 2002 Family Weekend and said: Legend has it that the Scooby Doo characters are based on personalities of the Five Colleges: Scooby represents UMass, Fred depicts Amherst, Shaggy personifies Hampshire, Velma characterizes Smith, and Daphne symbolizes MHC. There's been controversy between Smith and MHC over Daphne; we'll leave it to you to decide for yourself.
Amherst College has an unofficial FAQ which says: If you go to Amherst, you've probably heard the rumor that the characters of Scooby Doo, Where Are You are based on the Five-College System. Preppy Fred is Amherst College, sexy Daphne is Mount Holyoke College, nerdy Velma is Smith College, Shaggy is Hampshire College, and Scooby Doo is the University of Massachusetts. Oddly, i never thought SD was based on the Valley. (And indeed the creator says that idea is false.) I always just thought 5-College students used Scooby Doo to describe their college system. It’s interesting to see how people word it, regardless of which lady they give my fine institution.
A sister of a friend wrote a while back:
Scooby (UMass...a big party school), Shaggy (Hampshire...an alternative hippie school), Daphne (Smith College...used to be a very preppy girl school...now the dynamic has changed somewhat...they are clearly the prettiest, smartest, and best (my sis goes there)...but Mt. Holyoke College tries to claim her), the boy in a suit, very obnoxious Fred (Amherst College, they don't like to cavort with the commonners like UMass students and they only marry each other), and the dorky girl in glasses Velma (Mt. Holyoke...a bunch of women on a pretty campus in the middle of nowhere...my experience with them is that they tend to be bitter...but whatever).Velma, the smart lesbian, is from Smith, Daphne the Ditz is from Mt. Holyoke
As an interesting note, I went to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. It is part of what is known as the Five College system. In the area the colleges of Umass, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Amherst College, and Hampshire kinda work together. The students can take classes at the other schools and such. Now each of these colleges has a sort of quirk that has lasted generations.
Rumor has it, each character in "Scooby-Doo" are based on these quirks. Freddy is obviously from Amherst College...hes a pretty boy. Daphne is obviously Mt. Holyoke...she's a rich girl. Thelma is QUITE obviously from Smith college...you just KNOW shes a lesbian. Shaggy of course is from Hampshire college...hippie. And Scooby is from Umass (aka ZOOmass)...no explanation neccassary if you understand how much of a party school Umass Amherst is.
http://www.eeggs.com/items/1653.html
Okay heres the story regarding drugs and Scooby Doo as I was told. The artists and writers from Scooby Doo went to school in western Mass. The gang was based on students that went to certain schools there.
Velma was based on Mt. Holyoke College -- all girls supposed to be lesbians.
Scooby was based on UMass-Amherst ---because of the mascot.
Shaggy is Dartmouth --- Hippy dippy and drug lovin.
Daphne is Smith College --- money and hoity toity with a dash of lesbianism.
Freddie is Amherst College -- money again and a little homosexual.
http://navisite.collegeclub.com/messageboards/board.jsp?communityid=4738
here's the deal: fred, the snotty, preppy, smart, strapping guy went to amherst. of course. that stereotype still holds. daphne, the cute, flirtatious red-head, went to mount holyoke--not smith--which may be a surprise to amherst students these days because smith clearly has a better rep as far as the quality of the looks of its students go. but, alas, back in the day, as old-timers will tell you, mt. holyoke was really the best place to go for nice girls. (in line with that, remember the saying, "smith girls to bed, mt. holyoke girls to wed, and amherst girls to talk to.") velma, then, went to smith, and though it's debatable how bed-able she was, smith was formerly known as a school for nerdy-types. then shaggy went to hampshire, the only school whose most favorite public past-time is smoking pot. then, as the legend tells it, scooby was the embodiment of the cartoon's creator who actually went to umass.
http://web.pitas.com/linbird/jan_feb01.html
Dear Newcomers,
This is an unusual Entry of Doom (tm?). My entries are not usually this bad. Please do not be frightened away.
Thank you and good night.
Welcome back to school...