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Once again, I found myself this week struggling to do something new with my posting. This time, though, instead of passively waiting at the water's edge, sitting to see what would come to me, i decided to be a little more proactive. Theoretically, one should be able to walk the circumferance of a pond. That's what a pond is, afterall- a circualr body of water contained in a small space. But as I attempted to do this I encountered several obstacles, many of which entranced me, making the struggle worthwhile. 

I showed up, and before beginning to walk to my predesignated spot, I realized I had an oppurtunity to view the water as I had never had before. The storm had pushed much of the surrouding palntlife out of the way, making the water much more visable. I started circling the pond, coming to a tiny bank accross from an obviously man-mad shore of conrete and stones. The amount of water separating me fromt he opposing shore was miniscule. Had I been wearing big rain boots, I could have splashed right through it. In order to get to that bank, my new mission, I had to go all the way around, a proces which involved exssting through the gap in the fence, crashing through dry, overgrown wildlife, climbing over the fence, and carefully navigating down a tricky hill. 

I chose to have class today in the Quita Woodward Room because of its windows. Goodhart's glass atrium would have given us a more panoramic, uninterrupted view, but it was closed for student use because of the production. So, the Quita Reading Room it was! I'm really glad that we ended up having class there (although sorry for the short notice!)--it was warm and the wood paneling and bookshelves made it all the more cozy.

From where I was sitting, there was a large tree right in view, and Rock seemed to almost create a courtyard around it. The wind was twirling its branches all around, and it seemed to have lost quite a lot of its yellow leaves because of it. I was certainly very glad to be out of that storm! A major downfall of not being outside was the lack of noise, though. If we had been out in that windstorm, I could have heard the wind whipping through that tree. Instead, I heard myself typing notes about the view. More isolated from the outdoors than usual, I wrote instead of observing. There are quite a lot of distractions outside, but I usually give them all equal weight, instead of being more involved in note-taking than the actual class.

That being said, I was still a lot more comfortable out of the cold. Especially now that winter is coming, I'll just have to get used to observing inside, and find a balance between reflecting on my surroundings and paying attention to them.

The first half of my hour of observation felt like a very standard observation period for me. I noticed it was windier, slightly colder, how the tree’s had lost even more of their leaves (not only could I now see the Nature Trail but I could see all the way through the trains along the Haverford Road to the golf course on the other side of the R-100 line),the diminishing animal life (excluding dogs being walked), and how the nature trail was starting to resemble a trail in a forest (with all the leaves covering it) rather than one on a college campus. Sitting on the bench , and making what I saw as my rather standard observations, I began to get bored and started to wonder if I could actually observe something new. Sure unlike in the previous weeks the weather was less turbulent, and the cold and wind weren’t bothering me that much (showing that I was at least becoming more adapted to the seasonal transition) so there was that. Still wanting something more exciting to observed as well as a change of pace, I finally figured out how I was going to mix things up. I decided…. to stand up from the bench and walk around a little bit.

Honestly revising my previous paper took me longer time than writing it for the first time. The first time I didn't write a very argumentative essay, and I was just persuading people to "wake up and think about nature". But then, after I revise the paper, I had a clear thesis, arguing nature has the ultimate power that surpass that of human beings.

I tried to aim to perfect, and I want to explain every point clearly--at least seem clearly to myself--and I did...and then, it becomes tedious. I am still happy, because I felt like doing something right, and when I read the paper again, I feel like it is really becoming clearer.

Shengjia's advice inspired me--I could be MORE specific. If I concentrate on the first aspect I was talking about, the essay would not need to be divided in three parts, and therefore would become more concentrated, concrete, focused. I could just try to undermine anthropocentric views with more reasoning and fewer examples. I should learn to give up something--although I really didn't want to.

Reading each others' essays really helped me a lot, and I hope my suggestions could also be helpful to my dear classmates! :)

I decided to post the things I wrote in class today.  

Rather than write a reflection on the entire class period, I wanted to share a small vingette I noticed as I was settling in.  

The class was supposed to be finishing their Scratch projects (we've talked about that software before; it's sort of a game for middle schoolers to learn the principles of computer programming while still producing a cartoon) but two girls couldn't access their group file because it was saved on another student's harddrive and that student was absent.  

As they waited for their teacher to give them new directions, the two girls started looking through their harddrives.  They opened up different files and tugged at each other's sleeves with excitement.  

"____, guess what I just found!"

"Ooooh, look!  We made this in first grade!"

"I remember!"

"We totally had the best project." 

With one double click they were transported back in time, to work they submitted in the first, second, fourth grade.  Their sense of nostalgia and pride was palpable. Sitting there, looking through an unorganized Finder window in the middle of a computer class, they might as well have been sitting in their bedrooms, looking through old scrapbooks--that's how sweet and moving it was to watch their excitement.  

So I was doing some reading for my thesis and came across a story about a black student who was photoshopped into a picture for an admissions brochure, without his permission.  When this came out the student was understadably upset and a couple people from the school apologized.  The student later said "...Institutions don't apologize verbally.  Instituitions apologize with policy changes and budget changes."  (This is from a book titled "Interracial America" and a chapter called "Diversity Does Not Improve Education" in case anyone wants the longer version of the story). This very much reminded me of the situation with Perry House.  A verbal apology from Bryn Mawr doesn't seem to mean much when what really creates change is policy and "dollars and cents".  Thoughts?   I was telling Jody about this, and it's also interesting given that we were discussing apologizing yesterday in class.  Also, in case any of you didn't know there is a meeting with Jerry Berenson to talk about Perry House this Thursday morning at 9:30.  If you want to go and need more details, let me know!

After several weeks of waking up at 7am only to find it darker than I would like for my site (or "sight") sit, today revealed the effects of falling back last weekend. The difference in light, combined with our recent LaDuke readings, made me think back to a storytelling gathering I went to at the United Indians Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Seattle…

How Raven Brought Light to the World

Raven was a shapeshifter. Like magic he could turn himself into a man from a bird and back again. Long ago there was a selfish Chief who lived alone with his daughter. The Chief was the guardian of all the light in the world, but loved only his daughter and so kept all of the light in the world hidden away. 

Now Raven was very tired of always bumping into things and seeing all the people on the Earth cold, so he turned himself into a white bird and so pleased the Chief’s daughter that he was invited into the longhouse. When Raven saw all of the light inside of the Chief’s longhouse he stole the light and flew through the smoke hole into the sky. He hung the sun high up in the sky. It was so bright that he could fly far far away, across from the sun, and hang up the moon and scatter the stars in the sky. Raven still had fire left, so he flew back down to Earth with the stick of fire in his beak. When he got closer to the Earth he dropped the burning stick on the rocks for the people there. That is why now when you strike two stones together, fire comes out.

Our discussion last Wednesday about responding to Hurricane Sandy in an eco-literate way seemed highly relevant to my spot. We talked a lot about restoring damaged property once the storm was done- whether doing so is worthwhile venture or if we need to take preventative measures instead. Why did this seem so relevant to me and my location? Well, here’s a picture of the pond, taken from exactly where I sit to record my presence there, during the storm:

I didn’t take this picture. It was taken by one of my good friends, Lee McClennon, just as the storm was beginning to hit. To contrast, here’s a picture I took of the exact same location at the beginning of the year: