Sweet Relief
What great news to hear since I've been eating way too much chocolate, among other things,during this cold study week. :)

Not Your Average Yalie.
Check it out: The Freshman.

Rethinking "Activism"
As I recall, last September I declared in this blog that I had had it with activism, at least the university variety. That is still true for me, but only partially. It is not activism itself that I'm tired of - far from it. After all, ordinary citizens working for important liberal causes are the reason why we're not still living in 1950. I thought recently that the problem was one of priorities - students putting too much time into their causes of choice at the expense of their Yale education. But actually, I'm realizing, it's a beautiful thing for a student to feel so committed to making a difference that she or he treats it as a course unto itself. The problem is not in students' activism; it's in how they choose to act.

Let's face it - most Yale progressive groups are pretty annoying. My own included. You can spot me from yards away as I prowl cross campus with clipboard in hand and no place to go. "Do you have a minute for the environment?" I ask as you speed up and feign an incoming cell phone call. You really don't want to talk to me. Maybe you want to talk to the people at the "Students Against A Nuclear Iran" booth, because they have hot chocolate and a committment-free petition. But only then do you realize what it is you've just done: consumed 120 calories and added your name to a somewhat ineffective looking list. It might as well have been "Students Against Really Cold Days." Nobody likes really cold days, but a list of undergraduates affirming this fact is not going to make May come any faster. Then there are the door knockers and the dining hall stalkers, all trying to convince you why you should care about X,Y, and Z. Walking by them induces guilt; stopping for them makes you feel like a sucker. It's a lose-lose situation.

Finally, there is the rally. A rally can be a great thing. For example, the entire Civil Rights movement. Alternatively, it can be an ineffectual and even laughable spectacle. Rallies depend on three things for success: a worthy and attainable cause, a critical mass, and a realistic audience. Thirty people marching for financial aid reform just a year after the university made significant improvements in financial aid policy with the stated intention of stopping there does not come across as inspiring. It comes across as uncompromising, tired, and naive. I was encouraged to join in this exact effort by a good friend. I'm still in find-an-honest-excuse limbo.

So how do we convert our desire for social justice into meaningful action? Here are some ideas.

1. Choose the right issue. One of the good things about the first financial aid movement was how called for it was. It had support not only from the radical UOC, but also from the YCC. President Levin had shown a surprising lack of compassion in an open forum, and comparisons with comparable schools were not in Yale's favor. By contrast, see the aforementioned Students Against A Nuclear Iran.

2. Choose tactics that make a direct, noticeable impact. Voter registration produces one of the most annoying waves of clipboard crusaders, but in the end you have actual registered voters, the bread and butter of progress. On the other hand, the ever-popular "phone banking" leaves you no guarantee that the person you have pestered is going to follow up. Conferences rarely amount to more than preaching to the choir, and sit-ins, like noisy rallies, really only work in special circumstances.

3. Unless the issue at hand pertains directly to Yale, skip the student campaigning and go for direct community service. This is not unheard of at Yale. Among other things, SLAM, a prison system reform group, provides buses for inmates' families to visit them. The Environmental Education branch of YSEC used to visit elementary schools and teach ecology. Amnesty International writes letters to world leaders. The truth is that the Yale students who really care about issues are already involved in activist groups. "Raising campus awareness," in the long run, is no substitute for results.

This last point is, I think, the heart of the matter. Unfortunately, too rarely activism at Yale is just a way for students to pick a button to identify themselves by and raise a self-contained storm about it. It is easy for us to get caught up in the glamour of "justice" when in truth we're serving no one but ourselves. But when "activism" takes the form of actual action, it is worth our time just as much as that anthro midterm, if not more so.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

The kids at the Peabody today were so wonderful. You would think it would be tiring, giving the same spiel countless times throughout the afternoon. The fact that Megalodon lived 25 million years ago and was three times bigger than the Great White shark today seems banal, a line to rattle off for the next customer, an evolutionary sound bite. But really, each time you say the line it becomes new, transformed by the reactions of the eager-fingered children and their boundless imaginations. Their desire to touch, to know what is and is not real, their minds as open as their eyes in the pure space where questioning and acceptance can reside together. Wonder-full indeed.

Eliot was wrong.
April is not the cruellest month. It is February. But I will spare you the whining about how much I disklike midterms, lab, group projects, and cold. I have so much to be thankful for that complaining is ridiculous.

Over the past few weeks I have started to pay more attention to what is going on in the rest of the world, not just the petty corrupt sniveling of US scandals. I was inspired by the successful student campaign to get Yale to divest from companies that do business with Sudan. The cartoon controversy has gone from absurd to heartbreaking, and Iraq, the cradle of civilization, is being rent asunder. Then of course there are the Olympics to remind you that Georgia is a country, not just a state, and the little Tibetan prayer flags that came in the mail asking for a donation for the pursuit of religious freedom. These prayer flags are now on my wall, and when I think of them I feel the sorrow and the hope of the whole world.

I've been going to church a lot and have been a part of a new campus small group ministry that began last month. The girl who started it is a senior Anthro major (woot woot!) who is planning to become a UU minister. This all has rekindled old ideas for me. Sometimes I see a little glimmer of an alternate reality for me. I saw it before when I was burnt out on archaeology and school, as I am right now, but I have also felt it in a positive setting, like when I met Laura and learned she was applying to Starr King, or when last week's sermon at USNH almost made me cry.

In my meditation after yoga last night I tried to reconcile the conflicting desires and callings within myself and delve beneath the stress of the day to see what I really was feeling. I didn't find an answer, other than "You can always be free; don't put trust in plans; let yourself shine," which, like a cheap fortune cookie, could mean anything.

I want to dance my life wildly and purely and, in some small way, make the world better. There is so much time, and yet so little.

Winter Haiku 2
Holy freaking crap.
There is a mouse in my room.
Holy freaking crap.

The World Has Gone Insane!!!
Absurdity reigns.

First of all, people are dying because of cartoons.

In case you haven't heard, the Vice President shot someone. Of course it was an accident, but a pretty serious one, made humorous only by the fact that it was Cheney. Why is this such a big deal? The Vice President has effectively killed thousands of people in Iraq, and that was on purpose.

Less absurd is the fact that Jack Abramoff has ties to Karl Rove. Who still hasn't gotten indicted. Figures.

Most absurd of all, the Democrats are still so helpless that they have turned to George Lucas to help them. What is going on???????

Also, God has sent Australia a plague of toads.

A Winter Haiku
Nighttime snow creeps in
Through the window cracks, and melts
All over my books.

...


Santa Barbara's looking pretty good right now.

Tidings of great joy
My brother was accepted at Pomona College!

And I switched browsers to Firefox. I had to Force Quit stupid Safari today three times before I realized it was a fossil. The whole computer feels lighter!

And we're having a blizzard. Gotta love February.

Daughter of Elysium
Now Playing: Awe. Just echoes of awe.
Just. Heard. Beethoven's 9th. Live.

What a thing that was. Goosebumps in waves. Seeing Beethoven's last symphony performed was a bit like watching Return of the King for the first time. It's big, loud, and has at least one too many climaxes, but damn that stufff makes you cry. You know exactly what's coming, and yet when it does come it floors you. It was one of those moments when you realize why cliches have become cliches. And to think that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote that.

This was the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Glee Club, and four very talented professional vocalists. It cost five dollars. Five dollars for a little glimmer of heaven!

I can't imagine what the very first performance of this must have been like. I mean, this was the first time the human voice had been used like the other instruments in a symphony. And it was crazy! And long! And staggering. The first three movements, while containing their own experimental components, must have done little to prepare that first audience for the emotional explosion of the fourth. Beethoven (and Mozart as well) to me is proof that there is something in this cosmos that is simply beyond our grasp except in the rarest of moments. It's just plain magical.

(Fact: In order that listeners could enjoy the entire work in one sitting, the 74-minute 9th Symphony was used to set the standard capacity for a compact disc.)

My friend was waxing poetic about this: "It's like, when you think about the human mind and the ability to write music, and on top of that the ability to build these beautiful instruments, and the fact that all people can and do make this sublime thing called music...you wonder how people can ever hate one another."

"All people become brothers where your gentle wing alights."

If only.

I think I've redeemed myself from the fact that last night I witnessed the U.S. debut of Gunther and the Sunshine Girls. I feel like I've experienced the entire course of human evolution in 24 hours. And so to bed.