I Love New Haven!
Mood:  happy
Ah...

I am writing from the beautiful confines of Sterling Memorial Library. Since the hideous plane flight yesterday I have had the best time here. Despite arriving an hour late in Hartford I made my limo with plenty of time, and he took me right to Phelps Gate without my having to call a cab from the limo station. As soon as I saw the university buildings I was filled with delight. Even the humidity felt nice and homey. The hotel I stayed in was nice -- all to myself! -- and served me a wonderful dinner (very, very important when one has been eating airplane food, balance bars and taffy all day).

In the morning I slept in, showered, ate breakfast at the hotel, checked out at noon, and walked around town (or rather, down the road) with my huge backpack and duffel. I sat on the bench outside the art gallery and read until I got hungry for lunch and went into Atticus (yay!) for curry chicken salad. I figure I'll use every opportunity to eat meat and vegetables before FOOT sticks me on the bread, nuts and cheese diet. I finished some errands at the post office and such.

I was hesitant to give up my solitude, but carrying my luggage around finally got to me and I decided to seek out fellow FOOT folk. Duncan, Claire, and Liba were waiting on the steps of Bingham when I showed up, with hugs and questions and a key to my Vanderbilt room, which I moved into. Apparently I was only the 17th person to arrive. Now I am free until 8 am tomorrow. I think I'll call Anny tonight to see if she's arrived yet and wants to do dinner.

Did I mention I love FOOT and Yale?

Leaving On a Jet Plane
Now Playing: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Bob Dylan
It's back-to-school time for me. Waking up at 4 am, driving to the ariport, flying for four hours, getting off the plane, waiting, getting on another plane, flying for two more hours, waiting, getting in a van, driving for an hour, arriving at school, realizing I just lost three hours of my day, being the only one on campus...

Ah well. I'm eager to be on support crew for the FOOT backpackers. Word has it that support crew is more fun in many ways than leading. It'll be a nice transition back into the groove.

Moving in will be hectic and probably hellish. I hope I won't have a nasty cold like I did last year.

One thing's for sure -- I'm glad to be finished packing. Goodbye sweet west coast!

Five Rings to Rule them All?
It's hard to believe that until the last decade, the Olympic Games were always held in Presidential election years. Even now the Summer Olympics coincide with elections. I realized this in my effort to figure out why the Games seemed so uninteresting this year. At first I assumed that the election had overshadowed them, but clearly it can't be that simple. True, this is the first election that I have been old/informed enough to seriously follow (okay, obsess over). However, this does not explain the lessened interest of my parents, who always used to watch the Olympics with us kids on TV. I don't think it's just my family, either -- media attention seems half-hearted, a side note, as if they feel obligated to cover Athens.

Maybe it's the fact that performance enhancing-drugs have tarnished the glory of the Games. Maybe it's the timing: summer is almost over after all. But then again the 2000 Olympics in Sydney began even later.

I think that the problem with the Olympics this year is not that they coincide with an election, but that they coincide with this election. Nobody knew in 2000 how unfathobably important their decision that November would become. Now, everybody knows. And unlike other tense times for America, we cannot rally behind our athletes in pusuit of a rival, such as the USSR. We are a nation at war, with no clear enemy. There is no "Terror" team to defeat in Athens, unless you count the real terrorists some have feared might try to sabotage the event. Finally, unlike in 2002, when we were still basking in the post-9/11 sympathies of the world, who will root for America now? Not our alienated allies. Not the Middle Eastern nations who have been devastated by our foreign policy. And sadly to say, a fair number of Americans, good patriots all, feel uneasy about cheering for a country who has done so much damage in the world. It's not that cheering for America equates with cheering for Bush. Rather, the symbolic implications of "America vs. the world," even in sports, echo the attitude of our leaders in war. Until our government makes it clear they know that war is not a sports game, I for one will never feel right about keeping track of America's Olympic medals.

Love and Marriage in a World of Judgment
In an ideal world, this entry would not be called "political." Of course, in that world I would have no need for this entry at all. Sexual orientation should not be a partisan issue, but like race in the 1960s it has become one of the most divisive.


First, I'd like to give a shout out to one of my political heroes, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco. I was saddened to hear that the California Supreme Court voided the 4,000 same-sex marriage liscences Newsom issued this spring. The court ruled that the mayor overstepped his bounds, which may be true, but calling the marriages "void from their inception" is just wrong. We should not live in a world where elected officials have to overstep the limits of their authority to affirm basic human rights. A friend of mine flew from Connecticut to San Francisco to marry at the time. When he returned, his joy was heartwarming, proud and infectious as he showed us the wedding band. Now the court is trying to make that ring mean nothing.

In New Jersey, Governor James McGreevey announced his resignation after admitting an affair with another man. I suspect that the hype and scandal surrounding this would not have been the same had the adulterer been straight. Infidelity is contemptible, but is it enough by itself these days to ruin a career? Think about the outcome for Bill Clinton had Monica Lewinsky been male. We live in a world of double standards. If all men are not created identical, let them at least be treated as equals.

Swift Boat Veterans for What?
These days it seems the news is giving as much airtime to liars as it is to those who tell the truth.

Of course, "truth" has apparently become a pretty flexible word. Take the latest vector of the Republican smear campaign, the group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. These vets, who claim to have served with John Kerry, are on a mission to prove he was "no war hero." Their TV ad, highly publicized over the past week, is so false that not even the Bush campaign will be associated with it. The man who said he treated Kerry's first war wound (and claims he lied about his purple heart) is nowhere to be found on the candidate's medical records. In fact, none of the men who appear in the video were on Kerry's boat; they merely were in the country at the same time. All of the crew members of Kerry's boat joined him on stage for the Democratic Convention! Just which "truth" these veterans stand for is unclear. Maybe it's the same truth that Bush used when persuading the Congress to let him attack Iraq.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a fellow vet and friend of Kerry, publically derided the ad. In fact, McCain himself was similarly smeared during his 2000 primary run against...who else? None other than G. Dub. At this rate, though, I don't know what it would take for McCain to withdraw his support from the President.

Of all the talking heads out there, Jon Stewart seems to be the most astute, catching on to stories that the mainstream media glosses over. "But Traily," you say, "Jon Stewart's show airs on Comedy Central. It's fake news." That may be, but it's about as fair and balanced as, say, "The O'Reilly Factor," with humor instead of acute nausea. If Jon Stewart can't air on a "real" news network, neither should half the stuff on Fox News. As a matter of fact, I propose to rename Fox News "Comedy Right-of-Central." How's that for fair and balanced?

Cross Country
Mood:  smelly
This morning I went to practice with my high school running team. There's a tradition of inviting alumni to the Peninsula Course every August, and I thought i'd make an appearance. I ended up running most of the course but skipped out on the last killer hill to be nice to my hip flexors. Ah, the joy of that team! I feel so old, though. It's amazing how few people are left that actually ran with me. The team is much larger, with huge numbers of underclassmen whose names I don't know. It was great seeing so many old friends and running that darn course. It really brings the passage of time into focus.

Times like these make me half-wish I had stayed with the sport in college, but I don't think I could have done it. XC took too much out of me and I had nothing -- emotionally, physically, mentally -- left to give. It consumed my life entirely, and I'm still feeling the effects of that obsession with the body. I needed time to recover and rediscover parts of me that had been lost during the four years of running. Today I was incredibly happy and wouldn't have changed a thing.

Major Sighs of Relief
Mood:  celebratory
Today, Professor Tartaron emailed me to let me know that as long as the class doesn't fill up with grad students and upperclassmen majors, I'll be allowed to take his Archaeological Ceramics classes this year! This is a relief for me because I am very excited about these courses and they would ensure that I wouldn't have to take Chemistry for my Archeo major.

If I had received this a few days ago, I would be incredibly nervous about the class filling up. However, I read in the catalogue that in order to double major, no more than two term courses can overlap. This makes majoring in both Anthro and Archaeo very, very difficult, since the vast majority of archeology classes are cross-referenced under Anthro. It looks like I'll have to major in one or the other. Anthro is more general and gives me the most leeway in case I want to go down a different track. In that case, then, I don't need to worry about the difficult course requirements for Archaeo, which reduces my potential stress level quite a bit.

On a side note, since I don't want to make a whole new entry for this, the floor in our kitchen is done! Look at the cartoon of me enjoying the new wood floor! Yay!

I also wrote today. Thank you, Frank Herbert. And the Dodgers won. Methinks I will go to high school cross-country practice tomorrow to visit old friends.

Changes
My house has just shrunk dramatically, thanks to the new floors coming in this week. I'm confined to the backyard, the computer room, my parents' room, and to a lesser extent my own room. I'm also in the early stages of planning what to bring back with me to college.

The Dodgers traded some of their best players for pitcher Brad Penny a few weeks ago, with the idea that they can do well in the playoffs only with a stronger starting rotation. Well, yesterday against the Phillies Penny strained his bicep in the first inning and had to be pulled out of the game (which the Dodger lost, unsurprisingly, 4-1). They were having such a good year, and if they blow it because of these trades the fans will not be pleased.

Rereading Dune has reminded me that what I really want to do is write. More than archeology or anthropology, I dream of writing. However, I think it's important for me to have a career outside of literature in order to broaden my experience of the world from which I draw inspiration. One of my goals for myself should be to set smaller goals, and not be disappointed with myself that I haven't finished anything yet. This is still my "soaking up life" stage. That said, I should still write more :)

Of Symphonies and Sandworms
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: "Sonata No. 26 in E flat, Op. 81a," Beethoven
I've been listening to all my dad's classical music. He doesn't have the world's most varied collection -- disproportionate amounts of piano and Mozart, for example -- but it's great stuff. This fall I want to take the "Listening to Music" class to enhance my ability to take in the classics and distinguish them from one another. You'd think that with seven years of piano training I'd have had a fine exposure to classical music, but alas, I began to fall into the trap of preferring "songs" to "pieces." Don't get me wrong; I've always loved going to orchestra concerts and absolutely adore the one classical CD I own (and have listened to over and over whilst creating fantasia-like stories to accompany it). Well, no longer. I'm determined to be able to say "I like (say) Strauss" and mean it; to be able to pick a favorite piece that wasn't by Howard Shore. I'm currently enamored with Dvorak's New World Symphony (yes, I know that's not the real name, but it's concise), which actually echos one of Shore's LOTR themes in its second movement. Ahh, strings...

Speaking of rediscovered loves, I started reading "Dune" for the second time yesterday. Man, do I love that book! Herbert's imagined world is so densely tangible and grittily real, and the characters are so lifelike! Even though I like the sequels well enough, they feel thinner in richness, and I miss young Paul too much, and the Duke. The full story may not be complete in the first book, but unlike many first volumes it does stand firmly on its own. So good!

Off to the Dodger game!

Joyfulness
Mood:  happy
I got my course catalog! I have my spring schedule planned out already, but there's still some flexibility in the fall. I get to take Native American Studies! Some high authority must have been listening to my complaints about the one sad hole in the anthro department. Ah, the joys of shopping period. Of course, all this is providing I can get credit for my summer archaeology program and don't have to take the intro course. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes and writing a letter to the profs.

We're getting a new "wood" floor in our kitchen and hallway. No more ugly green/orange/khaki carpet from the '70s!

I went to a party last night and everyone there was planning on voting Democrat! Oh, and one of my high school friends became a Reverend. He just filled out a form online, and now he can marry people. I don't think he's even Christian. What a wonderful world.