when life gives you lemons, make lists of all the things you could do with them.

WHAT I want to do

Learn how to plan and create sustainable communities that enhance human security after conflict and natural disasters and enable future crisis-resilience

Live in my wonderful apartment in my wonderful community

Sing in my vocal trio

Make some sort of money that allows me to survive in grad school

Get the most I can out of grad school without losing my mind

Play upright bass

Not go into horrific debt

Keep a pretty close eye on what life is actually about (read: NOT academia and stress and isolation)

WHERE I need to be to do these things

Boston

and

Southern Vermont

DISCUSS.

brilliant

Apparently the way out of the global food crisis is cultivation of potatoes. Yeah, didn't they try that in Ireland a while back? Worked great.

classic

Friend: "Monkeyhippy, why do you have a meat mallet on the floor of your car?"

Me: "Because it was rattling around too much in the glove compartment."

hopeful

Have you read the Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Barack Obama? Please do. It's rather awesome. And while it might seem obvious that they'd endorse him, it's actually pretty surprising. The Tribune has never, repeat never, endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for President.

Also, just for fun: http://taxcut.barackobama.com/. (Thanks, Dan.)

half-seceded already

I listened with interest last night to the opening of the debate on Vermont Public Radio between the candidates for Vermont's one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. "Huh," I thought, "I really don't know anything about that race; I should pay attention to this."

I did know that our current Democratic (it might seem like it goes without saying, but hey, our governor is Republican. We can be weird just like everyone else) Representative, Peter Welch, seems to have been doing a pretty good job, and that he's running for re-election. OK, so who's running against him? Just because he's a Democrat and pretty good doesn't mean another candidate isn't better.

See, I decided after the last Presidential election that I have to start voting for the candidate I truly prefer, not just the lesser-of-evils-and-maybe-actually-has-a-chance candidate (though I struggle a lot with this still - and the race for VT governor will put it to the test). I believe the only way multi-party options will become a reality in this country is if those of us who are not impressed with the main party candidates stop voting like lemmings jumping off a cliff and start supporting the people we really want in office (crazy talk, I know). And hey, who knows, maybe even a GOP candidate will be the more impressive. It hasn't happened yet, but I try to be open-minded, really I do.

As it turns out in this case, Peter Welch won not only the Democratic primary for U.S. House but received so many write-in votes in the GOP primary that he's also the Republican candidate.

Have I mentioned I love Vermont. "Wacky as the day is long" should totally be our state motto, except it probably wouldn't fit on license plates.

Now you may have the same logical question my mom asked when I describe this situation to her last night: "Does that mean he debated himself?" Actually, it doesn't, because we have this crazy thing in Vermont called "other parties." He was debating candidates from the Indepent, Progressive, and (widely-known and ever-popular) Liberty Union parties.

But I admit that I didn't listen. I'm all for considering the options, but I'm also all for writing personal statements that will hopefully get me into grad school, and the fact that Rep. Welch was nominated by both major parties is enough for me this time around.

P.S. There is all manner of sketchiness around straight-ticket voting, have you heard? If you live in one of the states where it's an option, DON'T DO IT. Vote for each candidate individually. Thank you.

still here

Between Wednesday and Monday I spent a total of approx. 36 hours in the car.

The rest of those days I was learning about domestic and sexual violence and child abuse (woohoo), dancing, (re)connecting with some great people, listening to live music, having wonderful conversations with trusted friends who are being excellently helpful on the question of what the heck I'm doing with my life, being freezing cold and totally sick, starting to collaboratively write my first contra dance, and laughing a whole lot. And having almost no internet or phone access. It was, as usual, life-affirming in many, many ways.

Now I'm back in the real world and drowning in my inbox at work and needing to be much more intensely focused on Rachel-getting-into-grad-school activities, and wishing for more time to focus on a few other things (and folks), not to mention wishing I needed much less sleep.

The good news is that I'm not planning to spend more than an hour in the car any day between now and November 5. Well... an hour at a time, anyway...

observations - bonus track

• The world is oh so small! Two of my very favorite people in the world found themselves at the same wedding in Atlanta last night, which wouldn't be so weird except that one of them is a dance community friend from western Mass. and the other is a former work friend from my time in New York, though he lives in Washington D.C. What are the odds that they'd have a mutual friend whose far-away wedding they'd both travel to, much less that they'd find themselves chatting enough to discover that not only do they both know me, but they'd actually met briefly once before, when Jacob (for whom I can't think of a nickname right now, darn it) came to visit me and we went contra dancing in Greenfield. I guess the odds are pretty good, actually. Because it keeps happening. I love it.
  

observations of the past few days

• Human communication is stunningly confusing sometimes. My belief is ever reaffirmed that a) it's healthy to maintain a certain skepticism about the idea that you understand a person or a situation, and b) it's really a marvel that human beings communicate successfully at all. And c) if you forget to second-guess yourself now and then, the universe will find ways to remind you.

• Global capitalist systems have us so twisted that I wonder if we really have to have a total meltdown to wake ourselves up (except I'm not optimistic about even that working, and of course it's easy for me to sit in my cozy apartment and suggest such things as if they're permissible). The Market rules us as if The Market is not made up of PEOPLE, damn it. People. You. Me. Millions of our friends. Does this disconnect not bother anyone else?

• My cousin and her partner, who have one adopted and three foster kids, one old arthritic and one young crazy yappy dog, 120 chickens and 18 goats on their farm that will soon house a commercial goat dairy, a full time synagogue rabbinical position, and a long list of community commitments and causes, are my total heroes. My life is so flippin' easy.

• Graduate school applications involve many, many steps and pieces and dominoes falling in the right order. My brain feels a little scrambled, and I've barely begun.

• We've had enough random tragedies here now. Basta.

• Vermont in autumn is actually better, somehow, than it appears in photographs.
  

• Corollary to that: few things are too stressful when you happen upon stunning beauty on a regular basis. Chalk it up to my ADD, maybe, but no matter the rut my brain is stuck in, "ohmygod look at that incredible tree/mountain/sunset" snaps me right out of it.

• Flying trapeze is somehow harder and easier the second time. I can't wait to see how it is the third time.
  

• I need more than five or six hours of sleep a night.

• My community is full of the most absurdly wonderful people imaginable. I know I've said this before; I just want to make sure the universe knows that I'm still grateful.
  

roads that don't exist on the map

I spent all day today canvassing in rural west-central New Hampshire. This is a very different experience from my previous canvassing stints in south Minneapolis four years ago, where we walked house to house in neighborhoods where the houses were quite a bit less than, say, a mile apart. Rural New Hampshire is a different story.

When we returned to the Obama office in downtown Claremont, NH and did our tally sheet, we discovered we'd actually knocked on 17 doors. (By "we" I mean myself and Zoning Man, a new friend from recent debate-watching festivities, whom I hereby introduce to you.)

Seventeen. In four and a half hours. And that might have been counting the house with the majorly mean-looking, snarly, barking, spike-collared, not-tied-up German Shepherd, on whose door we actually got nowhere near knocking. It definitely included the "house" that appeared to actually be a chicken coop with a lamp in the window - there were cedar shavings on the floor and everything!

So really we spent the afternoon driving around on back roads in rural New England looking at the beautiful fall leaves and gorgeous mountain views. And occasionally parking the car and walking up a driveway to knock on doors and chat about politics. And occasionally driving down a road until the asphalt turned to dirt, which gave way to dirt wheel tracks with grass growing in between, which then, at least once, just sort of petered out into the woods. Oops. Turn around (I think I did more three-point turns today than in the rest of my life up to this point).

I don't want to jinx anything, but I am feeling good about the direction New Hampshire's voters seem to be swinging. We were in an area with a demographic that you'd think would be unlikely Obama supporters. Yet, of the maybe ten people who actually answered their doors, we did not talk to a single person who was even leaning toward voting for McCain, much less anyone who was solidly in his camp. Granted, we drove past McCain yard signs (as well as Obama signs) and we were focusing on reaching out to voters who were registered as undecided.

But of those ten "undecided" voters, at least a few were so firmly for Obama that we didn't even stay to chat, because contrary to seemingly popular belief, preaching to your choir isn't a great use of time. Others were really leaning toward Obama. Only a couple were really undecided, and the hope there is that come Election Day they'll remember those pleasant young people who drove all the way out (and we're talking "out there") to their house to discuss the issues and their vote.

Apparently New Hampshire isn't the only swing state where people are feeling optimistic about Democratic progress. There's a good story today on my new favorite poll-watch website (thanks Tim!) about optimism in Indiana, a state Republicans have long counted on, and how perhaps the most heartening thing there is the great mix of people who are coming out to volunteer for Obama. It's not just college students, as is often the case, but all ages and backgrounds. The same appears true in New Hampshire. Zoning Man and I were probably the only 20-somethings in the Claremont office today. The rest of the room was quite mixed, some families with teenage kids, a great elderly couple who were rather dressed up for the occasion, and many people in between.

We care. That feels good. And we care in apparently large numbers in states that some had given up on. We can do this!

if you can't handle cryptic blog posts, turn away right now

It's 3:00a.m.

You know how last week the debate was on Friday night? Yeah, well this week it wasn't, oops, and that sucks ass for my rapidly-upcoming morning at work.

Granted, the debate ended, um, many many hours ago. But then, see, I needed to sit on my friend's couch and catch up on things and deconstruct structural injustice and try to find our places in the dismantling of White patriarchy, all while watching the Cubs utterly blow it.

And then I clearly needed to wash some dishes, because a) I helped dirty them, and b) another reason I'm not going to talk about. And then I even more clearly needed to stay and have another conversation for an hour and a half. It's part of a game I like to call Diving Head-first Into the Shallow End, or, I Suck At Emotional Self-Preservation, which is related to reason "b" above, and no, I'm not going to explain it now, either. I have faith in you. You're smart enough to guess.

And then I just had no interest in sleep, which quickly degenerates into helloooooo internet! I could do the dishes in my own sink, but those don't have quite the appeal, plus I think my dish-washing karma for the night is more than covered.

...

SIGH.

I'm so screwed.