The joys of NHS

In theory, universal health coverage is a great idea. In pratice, it's actually not bad -- but there are some perks to HMOs (I know, an oxymoron) that I find myself missing.

Last week, my back decided it had tolerated enough bad beds, sorry excuses for desk chairs, constant walking, chronic stress and assorted preexisting structural problems. The result? I've discovered the joys of lower back spasms. Of all the issues I've had lately, this may be the one that has me the most upset (and, consequently, leads to *more* back spasms). I'm a voraciously active person. If I'm not biking, I'm walking. If I'm not walking, I'm jogging. Favorite things to do? Hike. Bike everywhere. Kayak ineptly. Horseback ride. Walk the length and breadth of a city to get the feel. Things I'm suddenly afraid will be curtailed? All of the above. What that would mean for my life? Really, truly, can't think about it yet. But stuff hurts A LOT that never used to hurt. I'm desperately hoping that it will improve after school ends and that somehow I'll figure out whether this is all related to a short leg, a screwed-up sacrum or a torqued pelvis and get it sorted for good...the alternative is too depressing.

So, I managed to see my GP today (general practitioner), per the suggestion of the college nurse. I brought a hefty load of reading material to the appointment; it is an established fact that surgery appointments here (not "knock you out" surgery) are always behind schedule. Today, for example, I had enough time to plow through an incredibly dry article on issue linkage and water resources management, even though I arrived about five minutes before my appointment. During the 20 minute delay, a host of patients filed in and out, spending about three quarters of their time in the waiting room and no more than a quarter in an actual doctor's office. I felt particularly bad for the middle-aged man to my right, who'd been sitting grumpily in a chair when I entered, who became even more disgruntled when I was called before him, and who was downright surly when I left the building.

I'm fortunate to have an incredibly nice GP, but doctor's appointments here are different than the ones back home. You don't really get to chat, or even to bring up questions about other health issues that suddenly occur to you. They are efficient to the point of making you feel sort of like you're on a medical assembly line: introduce, diagnose, prescribe. Next! If you're lucky, you'll get ten minutes with the doctor -- I seem to average somewhere in the neighborhood of five. This causes you to become incredibly skilled at spitting out your medical history and current problem in 30 seconds or less. For example, today's conversation went something like this:

"Well, how do I sum this up quickly? Um, the thing is..." Oh crap, she's already giving me that impatient, "get to the point" look. "Lower back pain. Knife-edge spasms. Two weeks. Couple months stiffness prior. Could be short leg. Might be ilio-sacral. Don't know. Acupuncture. Chiropractic. Massage. Ideas?"

Before I knew it, I was plopped onto the examining table for a 12-second exam that consisted of bending my legs in various positions, noting that my glut was tight (no, really??), and referring me to a physical therapist for "evaluation, advice and exercises."

Great. Sounded good. The problem? Oh, I have to wait for six months or more to see this therapist. At which point I will no longer reside in Cambridge and will have the delightful choice of either a) taking a frigging three and a half-hour bus ride to see some guy about back pain, which will have increased considerably after the roadtrip; or b) trying to transfer my place on the waitlist to the therapist in Oxford, with no guarantee that it will actually happen. I tried repeating the NHS mantra, "It's free, it's free, it's free," but my back knew better and tightened up another notch.

So, I asked, feeling a bit deflated, what should I do in the meantime? The answer? Keep moving.

I reiterated the whole problem with the knife-edge pain and the discomfort moving. "Yep," she said brightly, "Motion is very important."

Maybe if I go bang my head against the wall hard enough for the next six months, the pain in my skull will distract me from my aching back.

And now for a happy interlude

I've been a bit too caught up in self-pity lately to report glad tidings and the reason for the big grins above: the spectacular Coalescent Boy received word that his funding came through for the rest of his PhD.

CB is possibly the one reason I'm still standing right now. As the year's progressed, I've found that, more and more often, he's the one who always seems to know what to say when I'm down -- or, if he doesn't know, he still senses what not to say, or what gesture would be just enough to make me feel like smiling. Even when I'm at my worst, he always listens to the grumbling, the crying, the bitching. It's been almost three years since we started dating, and every day the way I feel about him becomes more integral to who I am.

I always shied away from the idea that it was a good thing to make someone part of you, because somehow I associated that with relinquishing my identity, or at least subsuming my life to someone else's. Instead, I've learned that he makes me more of a person. Better. Happier. Braver. Still me, but somehow new and improved.

Congrats again, mi amor. This hasn't been the easiest year, but there's still nowhere else I'd rather be.

Empty nest

For a couple of weeks now, my backyard menagerie has been going strong -- there's a pair of courting robins who fly in and out, erratically swooping between bushes and pausing so the male can feed the female whatever he finds (it's part of their mating rituals). I have a flock of giant woodpigeons who've discovered the birdseed bonanza and now gobble up everything as soon as I scatter it. I've seen one elusive song thrush, several different kinds of tits (chickadees back home), a cork-sized wren and a smattering of assorted songbirds.

What most excited me, though, was the pair of blackbirds who built a nest in the holly bush. The female was the fattest bird I'd ever see before she laid her eggs, and she and her mate defended the nest rabidly against everything. Yesterday, I saw her challenge a sparrow who strayed too close. It was really fun to watch them and to tiptoe around during morning feedings, listening to her rustling the leaves as she turned around in the nest.

So today I'm feeling pretty low, because there's no bird on the nest. There hasn't been all day, and the three eggs are cold, cold. I wonder what happened. The male was around this morning, but he's gone, too, and I'm afraid that the female must have been hurt by a cat or hit by a car. She seemed too experienced to abandon her nest, and if the maintenance guys and the lawnmower didn't frighten her off earlier this week, I don't know what could have.

It's nature, right? This happens. Still, I was looking forward to hearing the baby birds call as their parents poked around the backyard for food. I hope she's okay, but I sort of doubt it. Crap, crap, crap. With the way the week's been going, I shouldn't be surprised. I really need to stop getting so attached to every feathered or furry thing that comes into my life.

Fat chance of that.

Reaffirming the suspicion that men are evil

See this face? This is the Face of Panic, captured for all posterity so I can look back and remember the very moment when my hair began graying and my skin began wrinkling. Note the wide eyes, the deceptive smile (or is that an impending twitch?). Thank you, oh graduate school, for making this opportunity possible.



The Face o' Panic reached a new stage of alarm earlier this week when it learned that Ndugu, Disgruntled Tort extraordinnaire, has morphed into Ndugu, Disgruntled Tort Who Weighs Nearly a Kilogram. He knows he's not supposed to get bigger until we can afford to buy a new house in Seattle (oops, make that slightly used recycling bin, with housing prices climbing and all). Sure, he looks small in this photo, but this was before the impressive 200+ gram weight gain.


Just when the Face thought it could relax, a new reason for dismay arose, on her damn birthday no less (which is itself a cause for Dismay, thanks to the many, many people out there who still think the "quarter of a century" remark is somehow amusing). This, oh women of the world, is the husband. Sure, he looks innocent enough, but thanks to a mishap with some pasta sauce earlier, he is wearing MY DAMNED JEANS...and they fit him better than me.



Seriously. Can you blame the Face if it's a little perturbed by the cruelties of life?

T-Minus 10 Days

To-do list:

1. Rent hotel. Preferably other than the "Don Juan Motel," which apart from its name has the utter misfortune to be located within smelling distance of the most polluted river in North America.

2. Discover destination is so overlooked that both Travelocity and Hotwire do not list it. Learn that none of the hotels are online. Reconsider Don Juan. Reconsider olfactory-offending river. Stop considering Don Juan.

3. Rent car. Look at rental car company reviews online and discard every affordable option because reviews of budget companies run the gamut from, "Threatened to sue me!" to "Car broke down in the middle of a swamp," to "Broke my knees when I returned the car with a scratch it already had." Wonder if highly overpriced but well-reviewed rental company will be angry if one takes a small compact offroading in the desert.

4. Write interview questions. Mentally lobotomize self for failing to read literature before choosing case study, thereby requiring sprain-inducing mental gymnastics to make questions fit newly discovered, completely inappropriate gaps in aforementioned literature. Silently curse prospective interviewees for wanting to know what I'd like to learn before I've figured it out.

5. Buy tape recorder that can survive 100+ degree heat, caustic chemicals in river, and blows from rocks I throw when batteries die in the middle of a key interview.

6. Figure out if there's a bug spray on this planet that protects the wearer from disease-ravaged, encephalitis-carrying, rabid mosquitoes without causing the wearer's skin to turn interesting shades of gray.

7. Purchase pay-as-you-go cell phone for communication needs when car overheats, mosquitoes corner in alley, desert roads begin looking identical, etc. Delight in words of wisdom from sage ex-San Diego resident who says that reception in destination area can be "patchy."

8. Commiserate with fellow program sufferer, soon to depart for Mozambique. Feel slightly better that land mines and crocodiles are not on my risk assessment form.

9. Contact potential interviewees to schedule meetings. Hear nothing. Wonder in mild state of panic if it is possible to spend two weeks in the field and obtain no results.

10. Check weather forecast and climate history for destination. Purchase SPF-50 sunblock and curl up in small corner of bedroom.

11. Realize that only choice of supermarkets in area is limited to a Walmart and a local store noted in many documents for the large, bacteria-laden foam blobs from river that blat onto produce during breezy days. Consider adopting a no-food diet for duration of trip. Choose foam blats and voluntary abstention from produce over manic smiley-faced spawn of Satan.

12. Contemplate chucking degree and moving to Croatia to work in national park chasing bears away from tourists.

FYI

Just in case any of you are registered in Snohomish County, don't forget to vote to renew the school levies this month. They're the same ones we've had for several years and they already failed once because no one turned out for the vote...

I think those of us from the Class of '99 remember the aftermath of the '94 levy failures all too well (those cascading sheets of rain coming through the overpass, the heat they only turned on occasionally, the absence of kleenex, soap and textbooks dated past the 1980s...). This time, the district would lose most of its sports, the pool, new books and a lot of staff, so here's hoping SHS doesn't have to go through that again.

Wrapping up Dublin

Ugh, this is going to be one of those weeks where on every night, around 11pm, I'm going to sit down and think, "Damn it, I didn't write my Dublin blog again! Well, tomorrow I'm writing it!" Then, the next night, around 11pm, I will think, "Damn it..."

I leave in two weeks for fieldwork, and consequently everything's a bit of a madhouse right now. However, I finally received the two pictures of the Liberties (the Dublin neighborhood through which I wandered), about a week after I emailed them to myself from my phone. Not so swift, this technology. Their arrival makes me feel like I'd better write this stuff down now, so here it goes.

After two days in Dublin, I needed a change. In my notes, I scribbled: "Without meaning to, I find myself tiring of my travel companions. I long to slip away and find some corner bar where I can sit, silent, anonymous, soaking up the surroundings." Instead, we toured the Guinness factory, which was fun, but the walk back became more interesting. We took a detour to reach a restaurant on the other side of town, and in doing so we wound up in a "rough" neighborhood. My Brit friend grew uneasy. She's cautious to the point of paranoia about being English in Dublin, even when I'm fairly convinced that they couldn't tell by sight (most of her family's Irish anyway). She wouldn't let me stop to photograph the banner celebrating Sinn Fein's 100th anniversary, even though I'm pretty sure any local members would be moderately flattered by the fact that a tourist knew what SF was. I was more interested in the picture's ironic value: their headquarters was located next to a large pile of rubble that presumably had been a building. Rather than alluding to its dark past, to me it indicated something about where SF has put itself: it's teetering on the edge of oblivion, and no one in Dublin seems to care.

Getting back to the point, once we left the factory, there was a distinct change in the environment. The streets suddenly grew very quiet, without the traffic noise, shops and bustling pedestrians of the city center. (Oh lord, I almost wrote "centre.") Across the street, kids played on a discarded mattress in a bare asphalt parking lot ringed by chain link. Others in school uniforms were kicking a dirty soccerball between compact cars on a dead-end street as adults watched from front stoops above the curb. The most striking change was the presence of laundry. In Dub, entire neighborhoods seem delineated by the presence of absence of washlines, strung between buildings, hanging from window ledges to fences, drooping precariously between trees and other lines. Invariably, they are decorated end-to-end with small childrens' clothing, plaid skirts, work uniforms, dresses. Against the grey, black or red brick facades of looming apartment complexes clustered by the dozen, they pop out, swaying in the light breeze. The futher we traveled, the more I found myself itching to get out into these areas more, to stuff my bloody "Look, I'm a tourist!!" Guinness bag behind a dumpster and learn to blend into the fabric. Before then, there were only fleeting moments when it felt like you might recapture the feel of the old city, rising up from between the smooth, worn stones lining an 18th-century alley where oppressive brick buildings stand guard, casting long shadows at your feet. But then, we'd turn a corner to find a tour bus, a chain store, a high-end restaurant, and the street's memory seeped back beneath the paving. Now, the smell of the city itself was changing: burning peat, brewing beer. While my friends planned a last day of shopping and museums, I concocted a different plan. My idea became firmly entrenched when we spent the next day visiting Dalkey, a seaside suburb of Dublin that I swear to the freaking heavens could have been Carmel if there weren't an ancient Celtic church off the coast. Seriously, they had freaking palm trees. Palm trees! Oh yeah, and Spanish-style villas, and imitation castles...you wish I was kidding. C'mon, look at the picture below and tell me that doesn't look like California:


At least there was one shop in town with fresh-caught cod and chips (and that's how both Guinness and fish and chips were ruined forever in the same trip). Overall, though, I seriously wanted to run screaming onto the nearest train. So, on our final morning, I memorized my intended route and shoved my guidebook into my purse until I could conceal it entirely. As mentioned previously, I went for the slightly scruffy look: olive drab hat pulled low, worn jeans. I'm sure the stupid rain slicker gave me away anyway, but I tried.

It didn't take long to get into the old town. The Liberties actually used to be a wealthy, almost autonomous neighborhood of weavers back in the 18th Century, until the British authorities tried to exert a little more control over it. Residents resisted and the neighborhood was basically destroyed, and it's still not fully recovered (this is not me making this claim, this is your Lonely Planet guidebook, which is pretty awesome if you ever need one). Anyway, the area is reputed for having problems, shall we say, but it's also said to be one of the few places left that the city looks on with growing nostalgia in the face of rapid change. This isn't to say that it's a good place, per se, but there are certainly things about it you don't find elsewhere, like a tight-knit sense of community. And Irish people. Those are nice, too.

I didn't have time to write much while I was there, but I took a break at a small corner bakery partway through to sip a cheap (!) cup of tea and note a few impressions. The things that stood out: concertina wire strung across high cement walls. Garbage blowing down quiet streets. Bleak buildings. Nameless shops that were absolutely spotless. An ancient (and frankly awful-looking) hospital. Tall, graffiti-tagged housing blocks. More families than I saw anywhere else. More elderly people, too. A charge in the air, not dangerous but just alive: there were neighbors talking to each other, kids playing with beat-up toys, a vibrancy running along the streets. Changing graffiti -- it's not about the IRA anymore. The resentment now is around what you see in the city, reflected in angry tagging like, "No War But Class War."

One of the images I wish I could share is one of the more striking things I've seen traveling so far. On a long, empty road, a high cement wall with a rounded top walled off a neighborhood from the street. It was a cloudy day, threatening to rain, but the sun momentarily broke through at my back, and the wall began to shimmer. Along the top, running the length of the block, jagged shards and pieces of glass glinted dully like seaglass. The polished greens, browns and clear triangular chunks looked strangely beautiful and at the same time felt ominous. Who put them there? Who were they meant to keep out? Or in? As I walked, I wound up seeing more of that in the center of the neighborhood. I've read that a lot of the 1916 rebels came from the area, so perhaps it remained the site of Irish-English conflict afterwards. Whatever the reason, it's hard to explain why it made such an impression. I thought about pulling out the camera phone, but then I looked around and decided that innocuous anonymity was the mantra of the day.

I can't elucidate why this neighborhood was so evocative and intriguing. Maybe it was just because I finally felt like I'd seen something beyond the average tourist's take on Dublin. I'm not sure. I've always been drawn to the outskirts -- Bryan and I spent a full day wandering around the edges of Prague's central area, and we felt like we learned more about the city than we had in the previous three days. I felt the same way about Kilmainham and the Liberties, I suppose. Anyway, here are the two photos I did feel okay taking. The color is terrible, but the resolution is better than I expected. I don't know if they'll be of any interest because they really aren't as good as they should be, but here they are anyway:


There was something out-of-this-world about seeing a brand new BMW parked on what might have been the second-dingiest block I encountered. It's hard to make out in this picture, but the brick building behind the car and the one to its left are both crumbling to rubble: roofless, windowless, boarded-up and sprouting with weeds. The weeds feel almost trimphant, in a way, perhaps because they're the only living green things in the neighborhood...except for the tidy flowerboxes beneath each window of the house on the right. The house itself is pretty standard: aging roof, deteriorating side walls...but the front...That's what I wish you could see, those defiant splashes of red, blue and yellow in spotless white containers, stubbornly refusing to be consumed by the grime and dirt and decay around them. There's pride and community in the streets of the Libertines, even if it manifests in something as simple as a splash of color.



Damn, you can't see this one, either, but it's on the outskirts of the Liberties, just before you head back towards the river. I will eventually write about how construction projects are springing up everywhere to wipe the blight of the housing projects off the face of the city. This one was huge: this is one building in a full block of identical structures with black, tar-and-cement looking exteriors, stacked row upon row like dominoes in a blacktop lot devoid of play equipment or trees. When I saw it, the area was crawling with machinery, rumbling over adult-sized piles of crushed concrete and twisted rebar. An old man across the street stood watching for as long as I was there. I think he'd been standing there for awhile, and it looked like he wasn't leaving anytime soon. I wondered if he'd lived there, or if he lived in the slightly less depressing blocks behind us. Maybe those were scheduled for demolition, too.

What really got me, though, were the interiors of the apartments. This is what you can't see, again, but every single room inside that building is painted a different color. There are blues, greens, aquamarines, pinks, violets, marigolds, lilacs...and maybe it's because the developer bought cheap cans of paint wherever he could find them, but somehow it looked like it was intentional, like residents decided to create their own sense of vibrancy among the drab statement of the projects. I stood there for awhile, peering into each room, trying to make out the outlines of posters or the regular patterns of stencils on walls.

Where did all of these people go? That day, I saw project upon project with names like Lourdes' Place or St. Mary's Shelter, every one of them shuttered, every one slated for demolition or already ground beneath the bulldozer's wheels. There were traces of the people who once called them home: Irish flags painted across decks or sprayed in outlines on the naked elevator shafts; down by a rapidly gentrifying section of the rail station, a three-story banner proclaiming one of the largest complexes to be "Gone But Not Forgotten," with a picture of uniformed schoolchildren smiling shyly in the complex courtyard. Where did they put them all? Maybe they wound up in nicer neighborhoods, somewhere outside the city center. But then I think about what's happening to Seattle, how the CD keeps getting more like Madison Park, how few traces remain of the neighorhood that was so complex, troubled but alive in a way other places weren't. I looked at that banner for a long time, wanted to take its picture but hesitated -- there were a lot of photo opportunities that day, and very few where I wouldn't instantly betray my disguise as just another local. That, and it felt intrusive, too. Whatever was going on here, I was not a part of it. I couldn't understand it in an afternoon, so what story would a photo really tell?

Then again, I took these two. I still don't know why.

Happy Easter from the UK

That uniquely British sense of humor is alive and well in Cambridge.


Actually, I think it's more my sense of humor...excuse me, "humour"...I'm pretty sure you'd find similar cards in the US, but somehow the use of the word "arse" actually makes it funny.

P.S. They still have better chocolate here. That sorry excuse for Cadbury back home? Clearly, like beer, there's a conspiracy going on overseas. We may be the global superpower, but they'll be damned if we're going to have better culinary artery-busters!

Panic button

I needed to do this for weeks. There's been a two-foot-high stack of papers giving me the evil eye in its dusty corner, waiting for me to remember that I've a thesis to write...last week, I set the seemingly unlofty goal of roughing out a lit review section before doing my fieldwork. Today, I was feeling pretty good. I'd come up with a skeletal but helpful outline of the thesis itself, so I decided to set out on my review task. Then, I realized that I have several problems with this modest proposal:

1. I haven't had time to touch any of these papers since Christmas break.
2. Apparently, over Christmas break, I only read one third of them.
3. I do not remember a single freaking fact from any of that third.
4. The papers appear to be from a variety of theoretical, disciplinary and topical backgrounds. Putting them together into a coherent review will be akin to creating a full puzzle out of those half-full boxes in doctor's waiting rooms, after that tyrannical three-year-old in the corner chair ate the last corner piece.
5. Suddenly, I realize I don't even know what my thesis is really about. At all.
6. I'm either too bored, too terrified, or too amazed by my own screwed-ness to begin sorting out this problem.

Also, Myspace has taken over my life. Slice your ethernet cables to ribbons before you go on that site.

Furthermore, somehow, I'm supposed to come up with interview questions for my contacts based in part on the gaps in the literature I theoretically should have found by now.

Did I mention I leave in two weeks? TWO WEEKS???

I have made it a point not to swear on this site. However, there's only one thing that could possibly summarize my emotions at this point in time: Holyfreakinghellandfuck.

I have no rental car. I have no hotel. No interview questions, no tape recorder, no interviews scheduled (all pending, supposedly), no game plan, no bug spray, no encephalitis vaccinations because there aren't any for this f'ing strain, no time, no clue, NO SANITY!!! Oh yeah, and no socks. The laundry, it sort of fell off my to-do list. At least I managed to singe a semi-respectable frittata this afternoon. I should have done the honorable thing and brained myself with the pan afterwards.

What health threat??

Just to put you at ease, the UK is taking the bird flu issue seriously and is dealing with it in an appropriate manner.


I just realized that this won't make sense to anyone back home because none of you have ever seen Lemsip, upon which this is based...but you should! It's a wonderdrug, that Lemsip: whatever Paracetemol is, we must demand access in the US. With one magnificent, full-blown slap to the face, it will wipe out your flu, cold, distemper, rabies, whatever you contract.

That Ireland post is still coming, I promise. It's just been a slightly longer day than I'd planned, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry!

Goodbye, old friend

I can't believe that the Paper Cat is gone. P-Square won't be the same without this gem of a stationary shop. Robert Jamieson contributes today's eulogy.

The Paper Cat was the only stationary shop in town open past five on a Friday afternoon in December, when we were scrambling to find giftwrap for a last-minute donation to the Virginia Mason giving tree. I remember being completely enchanted as soon as I walked in the door. The atmosphere was uniquely Seattle: warm, laid-back, inviting. The shop was small but brimming with gorgeous paper, stationary and cards. I vowed I'd return in the spring to buy one of their beautiful journals...and now, it's gone. Like so many other local favorites, it fell victim to indifferent new building owners and obscene rent hikes.

Look, Seattle: I've been to Dublin. You do not want to end up like that, a soulless city that caters to tourists instead of locals. A new array of shiny buildings and expensive boutiques can't replace what we lose when we tear down the old churches, defoliate P-Square and drive out the mom-and-pop shops. For once, can't we decide that we don't want to be like everyone else? I want to come home to a city I remember.

Drunken lullabies

Flogging Molly lyrics ran through my head a lot this week, although their Ireland exists largely in memories and whispers rising from the River Liffey.

The trip was a whirlwind four days, full of the usual misadventures: one early cab, which resulted in one forgotten 35mm camera (mine); one lost cellphone (friend's); one piece of crap digital camera which offed itself two days into the trip (mine, of course); one return bus to the airport struck by building materials just before boarding (ours).

The camera really annoyed me, as I am a photography addict who likes nothing better than wandering around new places looking for unique shots. On Tuesday, it decided that it wasn't going to recognize fresh batteries anymore. I cajoled it, threatened it, bought a couple of new packs in case the other ones I purchased had been damaged...finally, tonight, as I desperately tried to retrieve the few photos I had taken, I resorted to an old Nintendo trick: when in doubt, blow on the bastard. The gods of archaic gadgets smiled on me, and I at least managed to keep it on long enough to grab the photos.

(A view of Christ's Church from the ground. Turn right past the church to head back to the city center, but go straight if you're feeling adventurous.)

Naturally, all of the best moments were lost because the real picture moments happened today, when I parted ways with my travel buddies and spent the day roaming the streets of Dublin's less-frequented areas. Three of us went to Dublin together, but our British companion was uncomfortable moving much beyond the city core, and the other was completely happy to go clothes shopping with her, so I pulled a cap low over my eyes, adopted the best swaggering, rolling slouch of disaffected Irish youth that I could imitate, and forayed off to Kilmainham and the Libertines, neighborhoods that have seen better days...and which, consequently, impart far more about the city than did the glimmering new commercial district.

After a few days in Dublin, I had to visit the "rare auld days" that locals say still lingers in the Libertines. The city center is a dizzying mix of old and new, but it's largely the new that dominates. Old pubs, local haunts, are still around, but they remind me of the last fishermen in Ballard, doggedly clinging to their docks as the yachts close in on them. As a result, the pubs are very insular. In other words, the exteriors look like crap for a specific reason: to keep tourists and "New Dublin" away. We were recognized as outsiders almost immediately, even though we usually hadn't said a word; accents regardless, the very unfamiliarity of your face marks you out in Dub's pubs. The regulars tolerated us, probably resigned to our presence, although we did our best to keep quiet in a corner, making sure the clipped American accents didn't drown out the rich brogues around us. Occasionally, though, an older, shabbily dressed patron would snarl something derisive in our direction. Our reactions were diverse: the British friend grew uneasy; I swallowed it as the momentary swell of general frustration with Dublin's changing faces; the East Coaster felt annoyed. The correct emotion was probably some combination of the three -- it's true that we hadn't done anything to deserve their contempt, but at the same time, our presence wasn't really benign. We were part of the huge changes coming through the city, the same ones which made portions of Dublin feel more like London (and what on earth would Padraig Pearse, Joseph Plunkett and Michael Collins think of that??). In places, there's nary an Irish accent to be heard amid the Mandarin, Italian, Polish, Eritrean, Croatian. You can (as I did) actually spend two days in the city and realize that you haven't spoken with a single Irish person -- everyone in the shops is Eastern European, and Croatians ran our hostel. There are as many Eastern European grocers as there are Irish ones, if not more.

(The view from the River Liffey. The area on each side has been transformed into a cosmopolitan mix of international shops and restaurants. It could be Ireland...It could also be London, Seattle, New York, Italy or France.)

It doesn't seem to be the diversity itself that bothers old Dubliners, as much as the speed with which that diversity exploded. Dublin's undergone a complete transformation since it joined the EU and went from being one of Europe's poorest countries to one of its wealthiest. As one might imagine, a decade or so of rapid-fire change has created as many curses as blessings. Dublin's arts scene, long one of the world's grandest, is in crisis. Think about it: on what do Irish writers muse? On poverty. On pride. On dignity in the face of oppression, dark mirth dredged from the dingy gutter. What happens when the cornerstone of your tradition begins to crumble? The only thing left now's the alcohol, and there's a reason Dublin is now one of the more violent cities in Europe. When the bars let out, it's best to go home (and we made sure to tuck in long before that happened, as Americans and Brits are less-than-popular, even when people are sober). So sure, the city's wealth has grown, but there's a palpable edge to it: beggars sit outside the fancy shops, and there's a portion of the male population trudging about with a visible chip on its shoulder. Plus, there's something out of synche with the worn cobblestone alleys, now home to trendy boutiques and Urban Outfitters.

(This is the Official First Pint, which makes up for the Official Awful Plane-Ride Hair. I haven't been this happy since Gale Norton resigned.)

Still, Dublin's worth a visit. When you do find the old pubs (and I can give you hints about a few), they'll be small and dark, filled with bantering patrons. There's a warmth you don't find in English pubs; it radiates from the walls and fills the room with a sense of camraderie. In the neighborhood pubs, there aren't any bar menus: if you don't know what pub food is, why are you trying to order? We staggered into our first pub as soon as we'd arrived in Dublin -- it was a small, narrow, dimly lit room with the requisite telly on in the corner. A row of men lined the narrow bar counter, and they were the most quintessential Irish-looking elderly men I'd ever seen: florid, weathered faces, laughing eyes, elfin smiles. They treated our entrance with momentary curiosity -- this clearly was a bar stocked with a daily regular crowd -- and then turned back to the bar. Following my Brit pal's lead, I ordered a cheese sandwich from the no-nonsense, matronly bartender. She turned to a table full of middle-aged men drinking lager and started ordering them around, instructing them to go to the folding table beside the bar so they could make sandwiches from the packet of white bread and the packages of cheese. A small griller sat beside the store-bought goods; it was like having your mom make you a cheese sandwich for lunch! Since it was exactly noon, I figured it was late enough in the day to try my first Irish Guinness, which is deservedly reputed as the Best Guinness Anywhere. Ordering the Guinness also clearly impressed the bar crowd, and two of the elderly men offered to help me carry my drink to the table...although this reaction may have been amplified by my friends' decisions to order tea and coffee at a freaking Irish pub. I will NOT get started on the number of highly embarrassing episodes in which they went into frigging pubs and came out with espresso. Dear Lord, I wanted to crawl under the table and die.

(Me in one of those truly Irish pubs, with a rare pint of cider to keep me company as I scribbled down first impressions on the only piece of paper in my bag. In my defense, I'd had a pint of Guinness before this and followed it up with a couple more that evening.)

I can confirm that I will *never* be able to drink Guinness again without feeling a pang for what I drank in Dublin. The Guinness there is smoother, somehow, with a more distinct flavor and a fuller head. In four days, I established that you can in fact live off pints of Guinness, with the occasional Bulmer's cider or Smithwicks thrown in for good measure. I think I drank about a pony's worth of Guinness on my own (that's a half-keg), or at least managed to put away enough to feel I'd taken full advantage of the opportunity. (Guinness is particularly nice with suitably low-key pub fare, like a cheese sandwich with HP Sauce. Seriously, that stuff is fantastic.) It's also amazing to look around an Irish pub and realize that every single male in the establishment drinks Guinness -- and ONLY Guinness. At every pub we visited, this single standard held true. It was remarkable, and actually sort of cool. The ladies seem to stick to cider, but there's also a core who can down their Guinness with the lads. I count myself as an honorary member of that contingent...although I'm sure my Brit friend wasn't too happy about its side effects (walking slightly sideways past the GPO -- post office -- where the 1916 Easter Rising occurred, I pointed out the bullet holes and started on an impassioned but possibly incoherent diatribe about the bloody eedjits who'd oppressed Ireland until then and who'd starved out my family...Hey, I'm patriotic.)

(This is me at the completely worthwhile tour of the Guinness Factory. That maniacal grin indicates my awareness that a free pint awaits at the end of our visit.)

There's so much more to post, but I have a feeling this is long enough for now. So, tomorrow I begin Part Two of the Irish Adventure, in which I see many interesting and somewhat overrated tourist attractions before chucking the whole thing for the slums.

A new adventure

Tomorrow, I'm off to Dublin until Thursday with a couple of girlfriends, and I'm eager to write about what I see. Riding the Celtic Tiger has been a mixed bag for the city, which apparently is swimming in skyrocketing prices, higher crime rates and some of the worst suburban sprawl Europe's seen. At the same time, it's still Dublin -- it's still the homeland, and I am pathetically excited to reach its shores for the first time. This is the initial four-day foray, and then hopefully we'll travel there for a couple of weeks next summer...After all, I have family to find!

Will be sure to post when I return, and I'll raise a glass to ye from Dublin!

Zipping those lips...

There are so many things I'd like to write about school from which I must refrain in the interest of self-preservation, at least until I'm far enough from the city that I have a head start on the mob. However, this one's too good and too illustrative to resist.

The libraries are proud of their 800 year-old heritage, so proud in fact that they've retained many characteristics of those bygone days. E-journals? Forget it. If you're lucky, the library will tell you that journal isn't online. Then, two weeks later, you will accidentally stumble onto an online version of it through a random library link (there are countless search engines in the library and few of them cover all of the libraries in the colleges, departments and faculties). It will tell you that it has all of the editions from 1996 to 2001. However, upon searching for your article, conveniently published in 1997, you find that someone obviously didn't update the description on the site, because now the library only subscribes to 2000-2002. Fortunately, they have hard copies in the UL (University Library) -- but alas, you have to fill out a little slip requesting the edition you need and wait anywhere from 30 minutes to half an eon for them to unearth it from the catycombs in the basement. Then, when you finally think enough time has passed, you go up to the desk to pick it up, only to be told that someone came back hours earlier with a note saying that the entire volume is missing. Trust me, don't ever ask if they can look for it.

The stories go on and on -- we've all had that special library experience -- but none quite rivals the experiences of a grad school friend at the end of this term. She'd checked out a few new books from her department library and made sure to return them before the term finished (again, in adherence to tradition, late fines here also resemble medieval usury). Then, she left to visit her home for a couple of weeks. Upon her return, she discovered a Stern Letter in her pigeonhole (this being the birthplace of Stern Letters of academic varieties). It informed her that she'd damaged two books "beyond repair" and would have to pay roughly $100 before she could use the library again.

My friend is kind to books. She's kind to everything -- she's a sweet, good-natured person who goes out of her way to make everyone else happy, and who consequently is more than a bit bewildered by the accusation that she's destroyed a pair of books. So, she went down to the library to inquire about the problem. She asked that they show her the books, and the grim-faced librarian turned to the page in question to reveal...four light underlines in soft-lead pencil.

My friend looked at them for awhile as the librarian tut-tutted. Then, she unzipped her bag and pulled out an eraser. "But they aren't damaged beyond repair," she protested. "Look, I can get rid of those marks right now without even making the type fade." She reached for the book, but the librarian slammed it shut and whisked it away.

"They Are Damaged," she said, enunciating every word in outrage, "Beyond Repair. You cannot fix this! This cannot be fixed! You must pay the fine or appeal to the Library Board!"

The Library Board is probably part of the Syndicate. We aren't sure who they are, but they clearly have connections to all sorts of covert groups: "The Syndicate does not allow bags in the library." "All queries should be directed to the Syndicate." Fail to turn a book in on time? The Syndicate will get you. Pay those fines a day late? The Syndicate will throw you from the Bridge of Sighs to be consumed by rabid swans.

My friend wrote a three-page letter to the Board and the Syndicate, after paying the ridiculous fee so she could set foot in her library again. They are weighing her appeal...or fitting her for concrete shoes. Whichever seems easier.

If I had a million dollars...

Okay, more like six million, but the very sight of this makes me shiver:


This is an honest-to-God 17th Century, complete edition of Shakespeare's First Folio. It goes up for auction at Sotheby's in July. This book is the reason we can savour plays like Macbeth today (okay, did I really just write "savour" with a u? Does it even have a "u" in American English, or am I starting to suffer from UK English syndrome?). Anyway, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar...all of these only survived because a handful of the 250 copies of the First Folio made it down through the ages, harbored by literature lovers. The best thing about this copy is that there are notes -- notes!! -- from 17th Century readers in the margins, which means you actually get to see how Shakespeare's works were interpreted in his own time.

I am just drooling with envy...maybe if I showed up at Sotheby's and looked really, really pathetic, they'd let me look at it. To be in its presence...I'm serious. This is the absolute pinnacle of English major nerdiness. The very thought of its existence makes me quiver (no, I'm really not kidding). I hope the British Library buys it; I'd gladly make a pilgrimage by Tube to bask in its presence for a few happy hours.

Impromptu survey time

As I contemplate the potentially vast amounts of time stretching out before me next year while el esposo finishes his thesis, I've been turning over an idea in my head. Those of you who know me are well aware that I'm completely obsessed with writing. Up until now, I've never felt I have anything worth saying...and I still don't, but I'm going to force it upon you anyway. So, I'm thinking about taking some of the posts I've written here and using those as the foundation for a book about this year, a tongue-in-cheek examination of what it's really like to go to Cambridge and live in England.

Thoughts? Yays or nays? Any volunteer readers/editors willing to review bits and pieces over the next year or so? (Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask...)

New visitors

I've had a couple of new birds come to visit, including these colorful finches:


These are chaffinches, which are apparently quite common here. However, it's the first I've seen of them. I had one elusive song thrush a week ago, but it seems to have moved on (they're quite rare now because of habitat destruction, so I was hoping it would linger a bit...). Naturally, of course, I also have the ubiquitous fiesty robins and dunnocks, as well as a bunch of blue tits (they look like our chickadees, but blue). I also have a mysterious burrowing creature that's taken up residence beneath one of the hedgerows. Whatever it is, it enjoys sunflower seeds. I'm guessing vole, judging by the size of the entry, but I keep holding out hope that it's actually a doormouse, just so I can say I have a doormouse. Or a hedgehog.

Side note: Ndugu points out that one can clearly observe the principles of evolution at work. Note the bird's ability to draw in its head, hunch its shoulders and glare at you with all the indifference of its reptile relatives. However, genetic ties aside, he notes that he would still have one for lunch if he were permitted.

It's definitely spring here -- the temperature climbed about 10 degrees overnight last weekend, and suddenly there are bees browsing among newly blossomed flowers, mating-crazed birds chasing each other around the holly, and an alarming number of large, squished frogs on the road...since there aren't really any permanent bodies of water near our stretch of road, we can't figure out where they came from (although the absence of water may explain their attempts to cross the busiest road in north Cambridge). I'm still disappointed because I haven't seen the mini-deer that supposedly populate the area (muntjacs), the foxes OR the badgers. Bryan, of course, has seen at least one deer in a field outside Cambridge, as well as a badger...although I don't think the badger counts if it's a flattened pelt on the highway shoulder.

The best part of spring in England? Thousands of baby lambs in the countryside, skittering about in the fields with disproportionately large ears and knobby knees. They are the epitome of adorable. Meanwhile, I'm stuck here with my papers, slowly plugging away at a beast about feminist methodology, situated knowledge and positionality. Yeah, 'bout as exciting as it sounds.

Sometimes, the stereotypes are true

So, under the guise of “doing fieldwork,” I’m going back to Seattle in May to visit the dentist.

Okay, so I actually am doing fieldwork, too, for which I need about a thousand vaccinations (more on that later), but the significant bonus is that I get to visit a dentist.

I’m really not kidding.

If there’s one stereotype that’s true here (and there may be many), it’s the poor condition of anything pertaining to dentistry. You see, the health care system here doesn’t require that dentists practice under the NHS (National Health System). Instead, dentists can choose to be NHS dentists, or they can go into private practice. You have one guess as to which pays lucratively, and which offers the reward of feeling satisfied at the end of the day because you’ve fixed people’s teeth for little monetary compensation. But hey, you get to be an NHS dentist!

Consequently, because citizens have to pay out of pocket for private dentists unless they have expensive private healthcare plans, NHS dentists are in hot demand. As in, they are overbooked to the point where one friend recalls an episode where people lined up the night before a new practice opened, just to see if they could get on the clinic’s patient list before it filled. Most students here stay with their family dentists as long as they can, even if that means taking six-hour train rides to have their teeth cleaned. It is that hard to find a dentist here.

As you may imagine, this puts international students in an interesting spot. Most of us can’t hop on the next overnight flight home if we develop a toothache, yet every person I know was warned by our various colleges “not to waste our time” trying to sign up with an NHS dentist (we’re all covered by NHS here), because it would take months to be seen by one. One of my husband’s friends at Oxford didn’t really believe this and decided to make an appointment. In husband’s presence, he dialed the local dentist’s number. The conversation apparently went something like this:

“Hi, I’d like to make an appointment for a cleaning…No, I’m an international student…uh-huh…uh-huh…really?...oh…Are you sure it would take that long?...Is there anyone else I can call? Really? No? Um…”

The friend wound up flying to Poland to have his check-up, something that I thought seemed a little extreme until I mentioned it to my British classmates, all of whom began exclaiming, “Oh yeah, yeah, that’s a great way to go! Poland has lovely dentists, and they’re so cheap!” Who knew about the booming Polish dentist industry?

Meanwhile, one of my friends, who’s plagued by bad teeth, cracked a molar last month and knew she probably needed a root canal. She called her dentist at home and received an over-the-phone diagnosis (they know her well). She then called the local dentist here and explained the emergency. They listened calmly and then replied that they could definitely work her into the schedule. Of course, she’d need to come in for a consultation first…would sometime around the end of April work? Then, she could come in for the root canal in early summer?

By this point, my friend is in agony, and the prospect of waiting two months to be told that she’s in agony doesn’t appeal. So, what’s a girl to do? At first she, too, thought about applying to a geography conference in the United States so she could swing by her hometown and have her tooth fixed, but instead she opted for two flights to Ireland for the procedures. She’s now spent two weekends in Ireland to have a small country dentist fix her tooth.

It doesn't help that my teeth seem to have instinctively picked up on the generally poor state of oral hygeine here and seem hell-bent on trying to fit in with the crowd. I've never had tea stains in my life, but there's a telltale line showing up on the edges of my teeth that I can see if I squint in the mirror. I'm taking better care of my mouth than I ever have after being warned by a dentist, "Whatever you do, don't get anything fixed in England. Lie, tell them your parents want to pay for it, suck on an ice cube if it hurts, but just don't get it fixed there." Yet, despite all of the flossing, brushing, scraping and Listerine-ing, my teeth are being swayed by peer pressure. Consequently, when I knew I could a) go straight to California for my fieldwork or b) spend the same amount of money on a flight to Seattle first and visit the dentist, I choose option b. This might seem a little extreme...but try spending a night in a pub here looking at other peoples' mouths as they laugh, and then tell me you wouldn't hop on the first flight home, too.

in the dawghouse

i'm at cb's place and his shift keys on the computer don't work, so i will be writing the entire post in lowercase. somehow, that seems appropriate.

we were up from 3am to 6am listening to the game, and i think it took as much a toll on us as it could have on anyone. the bottom line is that the calls didn't go our way and that even the very impartial announcers agreed we could and should have won this game. the technical on roy and the no-goaltending call that should have gone against conn probably cost us the win, and both of those were unjustified by all accounts. too, the luck didn't run our way. we were up by 4 with a few seconds to go and managed to make one of the dumbest fouls we've ever made. i feel terribly for the guy who made it because he's one of our senior players and the blood in his veins runs purple and gold. he takes missed opportunities harder than anyone else on the team, and it is just brutal that this will be the final play of his uw career.

the good, if there is any, is that we hung with conn through regulation time and overtime, stayed with them when our best player had to sit on the bench for 7 minutes, and gave them a battle until the very end when five of our best players had fouled out. we should have gone farther; the game proved we could play any team in the tournament and win, and i think a win here would have given us a run to the final four or even beyond that.

still, we'll be back. all indications are that this bodes well for the future of husky basketball; we have a hot recruiting team coming in next season, but it just stings to think that the guys who built this team won't have the chance to play for a title. i didn't sleep very well last night, thinking about what could have been and how we'll remain unappreciated -- in the eyes of east coast commentators, all this does is prove conn is the best team, rather than revealing that really, honestly, the other huskies could have taken them out despite a ridiculous amount of adversity, bad calls and height disadvantages.

we'll live to fight another day. still, that's small consolation this morning.

Disgruntled chelonians

Ndugu Montoya, our resident Disgruntled Chelonian, regrets to inform you that the world's oldest foul-tempered tortoise passed away today. Addwaitya, an aldabra giant tortoise weighing in around 150 kilograms, he was kidnapped from his birthplace in the Seychelles and forced to endure life under one of those tea-drinking, "jolly good" exclaiming British colonialists in India. 130 years ago, he thought he was going to make his big escape, but unfortunately he was relocated to a holding pen in the zoo, where he finally died of rage in 2006. Here he is, looking suitably disgruntled for an old soul who's had to witness 250 years of human stupidity:


Ndugu volunteers to translate the caption for this photo:

"Oh no, not another peon coming to admire me. Look, I already informed my tenders that no one is permitted to lay eyes on my greatness unless they come bearing live, suitably stunned sacrificial offerings. Please go away before I am forced to smite you with my malevolent glare, which I have perfected over the course of two centuries."

You non-tortoise people out there may not be aware that tortoises are capable of depicting a range of emotions. Their primary moods are: disgruntled, disdainful, disinterested, dyspeptic and irate. Occasionally, flashes of disdainful curiosity occur ("What is this meager offering you've placed before me? Is it some form of paltry vegetable matter? I scoff at its presence and now proceed to tread on it in your sight.") Tortoises are particularly disdainful of furry, stupid-looking excuses for animal life forms, like these coyote bonbons trying to pass for rabbits.

Ndugu just piped in to inform me that they generally prefer to be irate, unless they are sleeping, in which case they're just annoyed.

Time for a Dawgfight

It's Dawgs v. Dogs tomorrow night when UW faces 1-seed Connecticut in the Sweet 16. I don't care if you don't have a basketball bone in your body -- this is going to be a tough fight for us, since Conn is arguably the best team in the nation, and we need your support! At the very least, humor me and think of the purple and gold tomorrow night (yes, you too, chica, it's not my fault that the Oregon basketball team sucks). Hell, we're staying up to hear the game start at 3am England time, so throwing a good thought our way is the least you can do. :)

Seriously, though, this is a huge game for us. It's a chance to claim the national recognition we deserve and for the man who should be NCAA Player of the Year to receive some much-deserved attention. I don't think I've ever been this worked up about a game in my life...no one thinks it's going to be easy, but if we play our best and shut down their big men, we'll have a chance.

Go Dawgs!

All Creatures...

Folks back home probably know about Mooie already.

In another demonstration of the benevolence of humankind, someone hurt this four month-old puppy bad enough for vets to euthanize her on the spot. The story is back in the news after Pasado's Safe Haven (one of our best animal rescue agencies) blew the whistle on the investigating agencies. They deny they've botched efforts to find the perpetrator, but it sounds pretty questionable, particularly since this is precisely the kind of crime that indicates the aggressor is capable of doing equally brutal things to other people.

The photos at Pasado's are terrible, but maybe posting them will catalyze people to lobby en masse for action. I won't post the direct link, but you can visit their website here and click on the banner at the top if you're inclined -- it's hard to miss. Poor baby girl. If you have a pet, would you cuddle it for me tonight? I feel the need to reassure something that most of us aren't monsters, but my resident flock disdains any contact with humans beyond what's needed to scatter breakfast on the ground. I can't say that I blame them.

Oh England

You know, I was looking forward to coming back because I thought it would be warmer here...but no, it's not. Cambridge managed to situate itself in the coldest, most exposed part of Southeast England, right where those Siberian winds sweep through the plains unchecked and turn all of your extremities a pretty shade of blue.

I was going to post more photos, but Blogger is resisting my efforts. Will try again tomorrow.

Prague, continued

Upon emerging from the depths of Prague's metro system, having navigated successfully through Czech language-only bus and tube lines, the city lay beneath a modest snowfall, wrapped in a transluscent mesh of fog and smog that floated over the Vltava. From every vantage point along the river, Prague Castle's ancient spires rose above the mix of modern, Baroque, Rennaisance and medieval buildings that gathered at its feet.


The city is an agglomeration of old and new; beyond the tourist-centric neighborhoods of Josefov and Stare Mesto, ancient, proudly decaying towers stand beside glass-and-cement office buildings. On our third day, we traversed Nove Mesto and Mala Stranska, two neighborhoods bordered by the Vltava, but outside the areas where most visitors journey. In these places, it becomes clear that Prague is in the midst of a vigorous growth spurt after the end of its Communist occupiers. Everywhere, backhoes and bulldozers shovel aside mounds of rubble from demolished buildings to make way for new apartments, condos, office parks and transit centers. The city exudes a quiet sense of forward-motion, of transition away from a bitter past. It's a quirky, lighthearted, beautiful place where many of the streets are meticulously tiled with hand-sown black, white and red cubes of stone from another era. Coffee bars, beer halls and restaurants line the narrow, winding alleyways, competing for space with cluttered souvenier shops offering an endless array of glassware, beer steins, ceramics, nested dolls, jewelry and t-shirts that only the tackiest of visitors could love ("To Beer or Not to Beer?"). For the most part, locals are extremely friendly, patient with people who stumble over the dearth of vowels in Czech words. Life is sweet...


We had our share of memorable experiences, including an illustrative episode in the joys of working with different languages. I'd reserved tickets to a Mozart concert online before we left England, and we arrived at the Rudolfinum box office with a printout bearing the reservation number and instructions for paying. The woman behind the counter seemed extremely flustered and kept insisting that our reservation wasn't in her computer. I tried to show her the reservation number, but she just repeated, "The tickets paid already...I show no number in my computer." To us, this sounded like someone had nabbed our tickets -- and it didn't help that neither of us really spoke the other language. My Czech is limited to hello, yes, no, thank you, you're welcome, pardon me, and please. Her grasp of written English was small, but she laboriously struggled to read through the paper, only to sigh in consternation and repeat, "Tickets paid." Finally, after about 10 minutes of this, we resorted to shouting at each other really loudly and really slowly, as though somehow that would make it easier to understand the problem. One last time, she said, "Tickets paid?" in more of an inquisitive tone than before. I gave up, shrugged and said, "Yeah, sure." She turned, pressed a button, printed our tickets and said, "Goodbye." The concert was nice, I have to say. I still don't know if I actually paid for those tickets or not.


It was a wonderful trip, and I think we managed to avoid too many Americanisms...although we did offend/bemuse one waiter by completely failing our etiquette test. He brought out a huge slab of bruchetta, which we cut in half and ate by hand. A few minutes later, he returned and raised an eyebrow as he removed the untouched, extra knife and fork from each of our place settings. Oops...Seriously, I've learned from both England and Prague that we Americans have the most unrefined table manners of any group on the planet. Switching our knife and fork hands, daring to cut things with forks when they don't require a knife, eating "too fast" (which in Prague meant taking less than an entire night to finish a meal, apparently)...


I have a few more pictures to post, but I'll save those for later. If you ever get the chance, I definitely recommend visiting Prague...or in the immortal words of another bad t-shirt hanging in a window, "Czech it out!"

Blogging Prague

We've just returned from our Prague excursion, and I'm in love with the city of 1000 spires. Although I'm too tired to write much now, I'll blog about it over the weekend. Many of my photos are on the 35 mm, as I'm still stubbornly clinging to film -- I enjoy using my Canon too much to part with it, and I couldn't afford a similar digital camera if I wanted one...for now, here's my favorite shot from the digital array. These are icicles hanging from the gutter of a former military barracks on the Golden Lane in Prague Castle.

The end is near!!!!

Oh my freaking lord, Gale Norton resigned!!!

This *might* actually be the best thing I've ever read in a newspaper. Not sure what to do now that my arch-enemy is stepping down -- she's the only person whose office ever contacted a paper for which I freelanced to tell them I needed to get my facts straight about her work demolishing our environmental legislation...and the only office that never responded to my three page letter detailing the straightness of my facts.

Must go celebrate now. Although where can I possibly direct my diatribes after this?

My old man

Those of you who know me are aware that I'm a diehard horse person...one of the most ornery racehorses of all time turns 31 today -- still alive out of spite, I'm sure. He'll still charge photographers for fun if they get close enough (or so I've heard). What a beautiful picture of this dignified old man. Happy b-day, John Henry. Hope you turn up those heels a few years more.
http://www.bloodhorse.com/images/JohnHenryAt31AE.jpg

Coping Skills 101

How to deal with a demanding end-of-term:

1. Take 1/2 bottle of cab sauv
2. Add generous quantities of post-cab port
3. Mix with discussions about weird British/American-isms
4. Repeat for three hours
5. Blog about it before you come to your senses the next morning

A mist-fine drizzle coats the sky...Dave Matthews muses on the radio...it feels almost like home today, and god, do I miss it.

I've been itching to travel for so long that I never thought I'd be so homesick once I left. Part of this has to do with the strange microcosm that is the Cambridge universe: not quite British, not quite international, a nice place to visit but a "just bigger than cow-town" village that gets stifling after a few months. Still, part of it is also the growing realization that somehow the damp and the rain and the mountains seeped into my blood until I couldn't separate from them without feeling like I'd pulled myself apart.

On sunny days, I'm transported back to the memories of spinning my wheels under blackberry cane fences on the Burke, cool breeze in my face, light and shadow turning Lake Union into a perpetually shifting tapestry. On damp afternoons, I think about curling up in our cozy Fremont apartment with a book, or nipping out to the nearby coffee shop for a drink and a few hours of tranquil studying.

It wasn't perfect or cheap, and sometimes the endless rain or the unsocial behavior drove me crazy...but it was home in a way that no place has ever been for me. Before this year, I always thought that all of my childhood relocations would numb me to future departures. Instead, I think that I finally found someplace I could settle into -- and see myself staying for good -- and I had to pry my feet from the floor at SeaTac to get on the plane.

Right now, I'm sure everyone's thinking, "What's wrong with you??? You're in Europe! I'd be thrilled to live there!"...and you're right, but at the same time, it's just not that simple. I think that the rapid-fire changes last year really threw me, and to have all of this happen at once is a bit overwhelming (marriage, move, sudden change of career plans, turn 25...). Too, I think that I'm more of a homebody than I knew...

Getting into the spirit

Can you tell it's the end of term by the way my posts are dwindling?

Despite the fact that I'm slammed as hell before my trip home for fieldwork and, well, an excuse to GO HOME!!!, I've decided to do a very un-me thing: schedule nonacademic trips.

In one week, we're off to Prague for four days of bone-chilling adventures as we shiver our way through the ancient city and attempt to decipher menus. I thought about learning a few Czech phrases, but that was before I realized "Good morning" takes several seconds to say and contains approximately one vowel.

A four day trip wouldn't crunch my workload too badly...but then, some girlfriends and I spontaneously decided to go to Ireland today, and before I could change my mind, we booked tickets for four days in the beginning of April. I'm figuring at that point, I'll only be three weeks away from going home, which means three weeks before I have to have my proverbial refuse together in order have my pilot study fully planned and turn in work equivalent to 40% of my grade. Hence, I'll need to guzzle all of the Guinness I can acquire anyway, so I might as well go straight to the source.

There's a tiny little voice in my head right now screaming, "What the hell were you thinking???" But then I think, when am I ever going to be able to fly to Ireland again for $80? So why am I worried?

The way I see it, if I flunk out because I actually decided to see something of Europe beyond the Cambridge Bubble (residents' words, not mine), then it was probably worth it. Heh...heh...right, guys? All of us are going stir-crazy from being trapped here for so long anyway (particularly my med student friends in their fifth year of enduring small town oddities). A break will be good for me, after all. One more weekend of enduring screeching undergrads clad in "I can see *all* of your underwear" miniskirs or dodging herds of lumbering tourists trying to photograph an authentic Cambridge student, and I may start acting like an Ugly American.

Turn of phrase

Overheard tonight during a pictionary-type round in the game of Cranium (UK edition):

"Stubble! Time! Oh, I've got it -- six o'clock stubble!"

Poor chap, he was really stunned to find out how close he'd come to the actual phrase. Whoever classifies British English, Irish English, Scotch English and US English as the same language should spend more time over here.

For the birds

Ugh. I am as brain-dead as can be after finishing my paper edits yesterday. Bad timing, but what can you do?

I think I'll attribute what happened this week to my general brain-death. I mentioned that I've been feeding the birds in my backyard, which now include a pair of English robins (so ridiculously adorable that I want to introduce them as an invasive species), a pair of blackbirds, a flock of racous dunnocks (sort of like sparrows), a couple of collared doves, an elephantine woodpigeon, and an assorted variety of small chickadee-like birds.

In the past, I've been able to walk through town to the local pet store, but I learned last week that it relocated to miles outside Cambridge. Since I have no interest in riding my bike through any more of this perilous shire than I must unless absolutely necessary, I decided to shop online. Before too long, I found a great place with high-energy winter feed and robin-specific blends. (I know, I'm a serious ecogeek, but what can you do?)

I typically go through a five pound bag of seed in six weeks, so I ordered what I thought worked out to about 15 pounds of food, just to avoid constant restocking. It arrived Tuesday, and I went to pick it up from the porter's lodge, a sort of front desk where college officials keep track of packages and the like.

That's when they told me it was too big for the lodge.

I looked outside the lodge and spotted a giant box resting on the floor. It was approximately the size of my desktop. "That can't be mine," I said, disregarding the fact that none of the other students would have ordered anything from CJ's WildBird Foods unless they really enjoyed seed for breakfast.

The porter shrugged. "It 'as your name on it."

I turned around and walked across college to the MCR, aka the graduate lounge. "Quick," I said to my friend and flatmate, Anna, "How many kilograms in a pound?"

"Two point five," she said. "No, wait, I think it's the other way around."

Oh shite.

So yes, with a brilliant reversed calculation, I've acquired something in the neighborhood of 35 pounds of bloody birdseed. It's taking up most of the kitchen counter on one side of the room, and I have no clue how I'm going to get rid of it by the time I leave. It doesn't help that the birds are skeptical of the new gourmet menu and have been turning their beaks up until today. Normally, that wouldn't matter -- but I have a wheelbarrow-sized lot of birdseed to toss, and two days without a peck suddenly becomes a crisis.

Bloody birds. I should have tried cultivating flowers. Or just used a calculator. Stupid meaningless conversions I thought I'd never use...this wouldn't happen if the world could just decide on one way to weigh things!

No-brainer

In the past three days, I've logged approximately 25-30 hours writing a paper. Consequently, my brain is pretty much beyond revival...which is why it seems like a perfect time to think of British foods I'll genuinely miss when I leave (no, really, they do exist):

1. Hobnobs. The best freaking cookies in the world. Except they're biscuits. Cookie isn't really a word here.

2. Hovis Digestives. While the name is off-putting, to say the least, these little breadloaf-shaped gems are like graham crackers, but slightly less sweet and infinitely more satisfying. Alas, they only come in variety packs of crackers (something to do with the fact that they're categorized as digestive biscuits), so I'm forced to buy giant cracker boxes for five freaking Hovis' (Not sure what the plural is: Hovii?).

3. Earl Grey Tea. I can't even tell you how good it is here. I may have to have the local tea shop ship its own kind to the States, because everything else just seems inferior now.

4. Good Guinness. Apparently, it's even better in Ireland - but it's pretty nice here.

5. Fish and chips with malt vinegar. The one meal that consistently rises above expectations. Although I'm starting to weird out the neighborhood pub with my propensity for using half a bottle of malt vinegar per meal.

6. Sticky toffee pudding. 800,000 calories, 2462 grams of fat, and worth every seam-splitting lick of the spoon.

7. Brie and tomato sandwiches...although they get a little old after the newness wears off and you realize they're one of two or three, tops, vegetarian options in most sandwich places.

8. No, there's really no eight. Seven's all I can muster so far, but I have to admit it's seven more than I anticipated finding. I realize that technically two of them are not food, but Guinness definitely has more calories than a Hovis, and I'd probably subsist off Earl Grey if I could just find a way.

I'd post the number of foods I miss, but it would just make me cry. ;-)

Under the microscope

This morning, I rolled out of bed for a weekly acupuncture appointment after a long night of television viewing, as I am in denial about the paper deadline lurking in the middle of next week. (I'm writing about multiscalar networks in climate change governance, which is about as coherent to you as it is to me...right now, my running outline is two pages of gibberish followed by rambling "Oh no! Oh hell! How am I going to write another 3000 words??" panic that I apparently decided to compose in lieu of actual work.)

Anyway, after staying up in a state of paralysis-inducing panic, I had just enough time this morning to slip into my clothes, pull my UW beanie over my mad-scientist morning hair, and race down the hill to the office.

Within a few blocks, I couldn't help but notice that every male in Cambridge appeared to be staring at me. This was particularly odd because England's version of attractive apparently is 180 degrees opposite of me. Words used to describe me here: "weird," "you know, sort of, freaky?" and "unique." These gems come straight from the mouths of friends, the same ones who've seen my passport photo and driver's license (taken all of six months ago) and gush, "Wow, you look so young and pretty there!" I don't even want to know what I look like now: old and haggish? As far as I can determine, the only thing different about my appearance now is a pierced eyebrow, which is not exactly a trait of the aging has-been.

Anyway, I was almost feeling flattered and wondering if I ought to leave the house every day in a semi-disheveled state of barely-awakeness, but then I noticed that every woman in Cambridge was also looking at me. Quizzically. They all seemed to have a question on their lips that they didn't have time to voice before we passed each other.

As soon as I saw the acupuncturist, everything became clear. I started to take off my hat and he said, "Aw, c'mon, I need a picture of you in that! D'you know it says 'Dawgs' on your head? Did they misspell it on purpose?"

I'd forgotten a cardinal rule of Cambridge: no one knows what a mascot is. People walk around in subtly-cocked berets or fluffy dead-animal wrappings (seriously, one of the most popular women's items here is a scarf that looks like forty round balls of rabbit fur strung together)...but no one wears anything that says "Ducks" or "Yankees" or "Huskies." Let alone "Dawgs."

I tried explaining mascots to him, but the whole thing about difference between the UW Huskies and the actual physical mascot Husky didn't make sense. Really, I shouldn't have tried describing the Stanford Cardinal and their redwood tree.

The great thing about acupuncture is that you lie on one of those tables with the round pad where your head rests and your face slips through so you can breathe...which means you finish the session with nice oblong lines running the length and width of your face from where you rested on the seams, like a shirt you left folded in the closet too long and forgot to iron. On the way home, even more people stared at me. C'mon, wouldn't you want to gape at the creased-face girl with the misspelled word emblazoned across her forehead?

Ecogrrl in England: why fit in when you can stand out? Or something...

Good morning, sunshine

Ah, February, the coldest and most unpredictable month in England, and the time when all of us fall ill for one reason or another...so of course, I'm down with a cold -- not too bad, but just enough for me to feel like sleeping in today...except, at about 5:30 am, this small brown songbird perched on the fence outside my backyard and started singing the same tune, over and over, for about three and a half hours. I tried throwing socks at the window to scare it off, but it quickly figured out that there's some sort of wonderful transparent barricade between my projectiles and its perch and continued singing unabated.

The only time it ever stops singing is when it's down on the ground foraging for the food I stupidly started leaving out before winter, thinking it might keep the poor birds from starving as suggested by the local bird society. Well, they sure aren't hungry now. They're at war. The backyard is a virtual battlezone of blackbirds, robins, wrens, sparrows, pigeons, wood doves, chickadees, squirrels, and god knows what else. My favorite bird's been bullied into hiding by a pack of voracious dun-colored pipsqueaks who are skilled in the art of chasing bigger birds away. As it's the middle of winter and they've come to depend on the food, I just have to tolerate the early morning cacaphony -- and I did, until this stinking brown bird showed up and started its incessant mating call or wakeup chant or battle cry or whatever the hell it is.

Back to bed for me -- think I'll read under the covers today, at least until my awful three-hour statistics course this afternoon. On a happy note, I'm going to Trinity Ball! Let the hype begin...

Having a ball

Y'know, I was always under the impression that balls had gone out of fashion with corsets, carriages and Rhett Butler...

Here, however, May Balls might actually be the biggest deal of the year. All of the wealthy colleges have them -- and to give you a sense of just how big these blowouts can be, Trinity supposedly spends £1 million annually on theirs, which covers the live fireworks show, the big-name bands (this group called the Rolling Stones played there a few years ago...maybe you've heard of them?), and the extravagant five-course meals, followed by breakfast and boat trips down the River Cam. There are also a couple of uber-snotty colleges who hold tiny little soirees that are white tie formal. That means top hat and tails, folks. No one actually wants to attend these, apart from the oldest of old-boys and members of the colleges themselves...Then again, they do truck in their own ferris wheel so you can soar above Cambridge all night swilling champagne and frisbeeing your tophat into the courtyard of the neighboring college.

Consequently, every one of Cambridge's 14,000 or so students is champing at the bit to snatch up tickets. Herein lie the problems I face:

1. My college, while lovely, is poor.
2. It does not have a ball. It has a spring garden party, which is sort of like a ball without the lush spendings, gourmet food, a-list bands or customized fireworks.
3. Tickets to the big balls (Trinity, John's, Clare's, Caius -- all the colleges on the river) are reserved first for college members.
4. This reservation policy usually leaves about 40 tickets for the countless hordes from less financially endowed colleges at which to throw themselves, en masse, in a ritual that tends to involve: waiting until midnight for disclosure of the secret ticket selling location; sprinting in your pants (that's underwear here) across a frigid campus in February, elbowing aside anyone who looks like they might be headed to the same place; clustering together in a seething horde for about eight to twelve hours; filling out a form which then goes into a lottery from which you may, just may be a lucky winner.
5. If you are a lucky winner, yours is the privelege to shell out £300 or so for a pair of tickets to all-night debauchary. I don't even want to think about what £300 could purchase back home. Crap. Just did.

So, what's a girl to do? Well, obviously bribe every semi-acquaintance at the big name colleges, offering to pay even more than £300 for tickets. A friend from the BIG party offers to find her tickets, but no guarantee. Then she runs into the problem of a slightly less-big-name college with a damn fine reputation taking pity on her plea ("It's my first wedding anniversary that weekend and we're only in Cambridge for a year and I'll also give you the rights to my middle name and my firstborn...").

Only in Cambridge would I ever experience a dilemma like this. Go for the five-star party I'd never attend in any other part of my life? Or hold out for the six-star party on the river?

I almost want to take a shower now...feel so...posh wannabe.

In my defense, these things did make Time magazine's "top 10 parties in the world." Not going would be equivalent to visiting France and scoffing at the prospect of seeing the Eiffel Tower. Hell, worse: the Eiffel Tower doesn't offer fireworks and free champagne.

Striking a blow for Rosalind Franklin

In the center of Cambridge, just past King's College where the bar's being repainted "Soviet red" in homage to its socialist past, there's a winding side road that takes you past one of the city's biggest bars, where Watson and Crick killed off many brain cells celebrating the discovery of the DNA double helix.

This bar offers a nice assortment of British brews, as well as your standard pub fare: fish and chips, burgers, baps (sort of like a burger but with much better fillings, like brie and mushroom). You can place your order, pick up your table number, and traipse off to a snug corner in one of their many low-lit rooms, where you can idle away a half pint or so until the food arrives.

Unless, of course, they neglect to provide your table number, don't bother telling you it's important, and forget about you for over an hour. Until the kitchen closes.

We'd tried flagging a few waittresses down when we realized we'd been at the bar long enough to watch a full shift of pre-funking collegiates rotate through the building, but most of the blonde, Slavic-accented employees just leaned in close and said, "Yeah, it's coming. We're very busy." Finally, I chased someone down when I heard him calling what should have been our table number, only to discover it was a full two table numbers later: our order'd already been cooked, called and chucked into a bin.

Twenty minutes and many more apologies later, we finally received our fish and chips. An interesting note: in Britain, fish and chips usually consists of one large, batter-encrusted slab o'fish, rather than the palm-sized pieces we're used to back home. Nevertheless, we consumed the entire thing in about five minues and finally managed to get out the door...but on the way, I managed to shatter a window in this historical bar which is older than the city of my birth. The entry was packed, so we kept close to one side as we squeezed between patrons. Without even thinking about the wall of tiny glass blocks next to me, I pulled my purse strap over my head and heard a terrific "crack!"

Somehow, I failed to associate the sound of glass splintering with the unexpected pain in my elbow until I heard a girl gasp and a guy say, "Did that girl just do that?" I whirled around in a panic, but the gasping lass quickly rearranged her features into a harmless smile and said, "Ah, nah, nothing, it wasn't you, go on!" Methinks she's broken a few windows herself staggering around Cambridge...or she's a fellow sympathetic klutz with no sense of physical space.

Last week, I snuck back into the bar to see whether I'd actually inflicted any damage, and there at eye level was a glass block pane, spiderwebbed into four neat fissures.

Rosalind Franklin, in case you're wondering, was denied recognition for her part in the DNA discovery because she didn't fully trust her male colleagues, and they didn't like her antisocial behavior. She spent the rest of a too-brief life knowing she was entirely correct in her misgivings. Given the angle and velocity I needed to crack a window that high, I'm thinking I subconsciously rebelled to help Rosalind leave her mark on what's forever known as Watson and Crick's bar. That one's for you, dark lady. Take that, boys!

I love Keith Olbermann

I don't know, I personally think the guy gives Jon Stewart a run for his money...and Keith's the only cable news anchor who actually covered the very legitimate problems with the 2004 election. He's great.

Watch this one all the way through, and then feel for poor CNN's Paula Zahn, who really doesn't deserve to be ridiculed by O'Reilly:

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002814.html#002814

The perks of globalization

Finding Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough in the local Sainsbury's. MMMmmmmmm.... suddenly, working on papers within arms-reach of my freezer doesn't seem like such a dismal prospect.

Rage, rage against the night

There'll always be a few things, maybe several things
That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive...

We're gonna commandeer the local airwaves
To tell the neighbors what's been going on
They will shake their heads, and wag their boney fingers
in all the wrong directions, and by daybreak, we'll be gone.
--The Mountain Goats, "Up the Wolves"

I really hope you're happy, you 50+ percent who put the same administration in office twice.

Yeah, I know. You don't care. This is a great day for you: now, finally, you can smite the evildoers who dare suggest that all people ARE equal and merit the same treatment from us because who the hell are we to know what's better in the eyes of whatever god may or may not be watching us? (For the record, I'm Catholic and believe in the same God, supposedly, as a lot of people back home. Sure doesn't feel like it most days.) You can kick people out of schools who teach ideas that you find too liberal (sorry, but since when has it been established that something labeled "liberal" suddenly means it can't possibly be correct?) Screw the poor because they should have worked harder in the first place to overcome the insurmountable cycles of poverty and inadequate resources and screwed-up, self-righteous public policies that enable some of us to sit easy in Belltown and Manhattan while others wade through the streets of New Orleans. Enact abortion laws that throw up a dozen hurdles for impoverished moms while retaining all sorts of loopholes for people who can afford to drive to clinics, rent hotel rooms for mandatory 24-hour stays, take time off work. Screw the environment and anyone still willing to wear the "environmentalist" label: what value could Nature have unless we can exploit it? Why preserve a meager shred of frozen "wasteland" that gives us at least some idea of what the world was like before we left our tracks on every last mile? After all, we can turn it into oil! Because an oil-based global economic system clearly makes us free, financially secure, and able to gift our children with a great future.

I can't write anymore. I'm too tired and too angry. Except, I'm not even angry. I'm heartsick. You want to call this a victory? Fine. Have a freaking parade already and rub it in my face a little more. I have news for you: we won't quit. I'm not talking about being a self-righteous martyr. Martyrs don't fight back. Maybe the entire purpose of my existence is to serve as a thorn in the side of those self-aggrandizing people who think they're fooling anyone by preaching about less government oversight while pushing for the same governments to regulate every last, microscopic aspect of our personal lives. So be it. I'll be the sharpest thorn you've ever encountered, and I'll dig down deep until nothing will root me out -- not a Supreme Court appointee, not a presidential win, not a moral majority.

Just try to stop us.

I'd talk to you right now but...

soon I have to crawl back into bed and ball up beneath the covers.

The quarterly newsletter published by my scholarship funding body arrived today, full of stories about the kind of hyperachieving peers who make me feel like an underevolved species. Read about the girl who's publishing a book this year -- WHILE she finishes her PhD and BEFORE she's even 25! Oh wait, flip the page to the guy who's become a professional photographer while he's still a student here! Then there's the great one about the kids who are planning a 15000-mile expedition driving little three-wheeled vehicles from western Europe to China! Hey, those last kids aren't even grad students yet!

The great thing about studying here is that there will always be at least a herd's worth of other students who are smarter, better-looking, more accomplished, and decidedly more organized than you are. Do you speak two languages? Well, I have a friend who speaks 7 (and those are just the ones in which she's fluent). Like to ski? There's an Olympic cross-country qualifier here. Trust me, within a few short months of being here, you develop self-esteem neuroses you never knew were lurking in the dark crevices of your psyche.

So far, my major accomplishment for the academic year involves spotting a rare subspecies of squirrel that few people ever see around here. Take that, expedition kids!

Armageddon approacheth

We're not going to talk about Alito. I can't talk about Alito. I can't even think about Alito right now because it sends me into quivering fits of rage that are completely unsuitable in stiff upper-lipped England. Plus, it would frighten my flatmates.

So, lighter-hearted signs that the end of the world is nigh:

1. The freaking Seattle Seahawks are in the Superbowl. How the hell did that happen? It sort of ruins our reputation - other cities might be cursed because they can't win anymore, but we never won at all! It even makes me want to be a Seahawks fan for a day (and no more than that, apologies to all professional football acolytes).

2. The UPN and WB are merging into one large, unremarkably mediocre network. That's right, the network that brought you "The Mullets" and "Homeboys in Outer Space" and the network that introduced us all to "Dawson's Creek" (*retch*), "7th Heaven" (why won't you die?!?) and "Reba" are teaming up to bring us more intellectually insulting, poorly scripted television.

You know, after that last one, I feel like running into the kitchen and shoving the television off the refrigerator (it's a small kitchen). The worst part of globalization may be that countries can send their worst shows overseas now: hence, the UK sends the US the show that spawned "American Idol" (damn them), and the US sends us "Invasion" (sorry, not digging it). The day that we start swapping episodes of "Neighbors" and "Days of Our Lives," I may have to take out a few television satellites.