Time grows short

I can't believe I'm less than a month away from finishing my thesis. Let me tell you: writing a massive paper when you live somewhere that can't get your thyroid meds straight? I wouldn't recommend it.

Not much to report, as I have been holed up in my cave for the last week working. At some point, I went to a pub. Yesterday, a sparrowhawk (first one I've seen, ever) tried to snag one of my garden's resident blackbirds -- he flew about a foot past my open door, which was quite cool. That's really the extent of my incredibly interesting life.

So yeah. First draft of thesis, almost complete. Thyroid issues, legion. Environmentally-related employment outlook, well, I'd rather not discuss that right now because I've only just managed to stop fretting about it. Ooh, but we are going on our honeymoon, finally (!), and I've even decided not to job-hunt intensively until after we return, just in case I land that ideal job and then have to take two weeks off the day after I start. I was really hoping we'd go to Albania, but the country doesn't quite have its international travel together, and so we couldn't quite make it work in a two-week window when we were also going to Croatia. (Buses in Albania run when they feel like it or when they aren't broken, and we aren't willing to drive in a country where drunk driving's relatively acceptable and most car owners have only had licenses for the last decade).

So, it will be off to Albania in the spring, either as the next "big" trip or as my last hurrah before admitting defeat and going home to find work. Here's hoping for the former, particularly since the Other Half would stay here to finish his PhD (I still have no suitable online moniker for him, sorry...). The honeymoon, then, will consist of two weeks in Croatia and Bosnia, ideally with stopoffs at Plitvice Lakes (awesome hiking, potential wolves), Mostar (charismatic Bosnian city still recovering from war), and Lopud (tranquil tiny island within hopping distance of Dubrovnik). The rest of the agenda is pretty open -- maybe a day on the Montenegran coast, since we'll be in Dubrovnik for a bit anyway, maybe a visit to Risjnak or one of Croatia's other parks, definitely a day trip from Mostar to one of Bosnia's villages.

But before then, there's a thesis to write, and a move that requires packing, and a potentially terrifying job hunt. Oh wait, I'm not supposed to think about that last one yet. Augh. Regular posting will resume at the end of the summer, but I promise to maintain at least the once-per-week thing until we depart for the Balkans.

Research methods for the border region

How many people get to say this in their methods section? (Thanks to my dear SuperGeneticist for the inspiration.)

Safety measures taken:

1. Put water commission decals on state car during monitoring tour to avoid being mistakenly targeted in firefights.

Sweet. I love this stuff.

Thesis progress

To-date:

1. I'm now done with the massive revisions of 2 major sections. Yes, yes, I do despise the very sight of them.

2. The third major section, the research methods chapter, is but an outline on the Fujitsu. Work on it commences tomorrow from the corner window stool of a certain local coffee house. ("Work", as in, rereading all the articles I don't remember and consulting an old paper to see what I said I'd do on this part.)

3. Most of my tables, maps and figures are finally done, although I still have one substantial conceptual map to build, and I need to track down current and historical numbers on pollutants so I can visually depict the river's condition via a jaw-dropping chart.

4. I have to go back to my introduction to see if what I said I'd write about bears any resemblance to what I've done.

5. I need to create a timeline for the PhD work I don't intend to do, becuase under the guidelines here I'm still expected to fake it.

6. I need to write a conclusion. As it always has been, this small, relatively insubstantial portion of the paper is the part I most dread.

7. I need to maintain a steady tempo for the next five weeks, regardless of how tired I'm feeling or how annoyed I am with the work.

8. I still need to find time to go to the gym, continue rowing, and occasionally read something that doesn't involve environmental governance or riparian conflicts.

9. Oh hell, I need to add one extra bit into the section I just finished, the one that's already about 700 words too long.

10. First, since it's about 90 degrees out, I think I should probably go sit in the shade and...um..."brainstorm" a few ideas for the new section. Yeah, napp -- I mean, brainstorming, sounds really good.

Very unapologetic and possibly nonsensical rant

So I just finished watching The Constant Gardener for the second time with a couple of friends who've never seen it...and not five minutes after the film ends, one turns to the other and says, "So, are we still going clubbing tomorrow night?"

How anyone can watch that film and not sit silently devastated by humankind afterwards, or at least sit there and question everything about how you choose to live your own life, is beyond me. Like the first time, I still don't really want to talk to anyone. I just feel completely overwhelmed, and at the same time I don't like admitting it because I've been criticized in the past for being too sensitive or too bleeding heart...but what am I supposed to do? Shrug it off and go about my life thinking that it sucks, but what can I do? Shut my mouth because no one wants to hear it? Fine. Don't read this post.

You just feel so futile afterwards. The filmmakers did an amazing job with the whole movie. It doesn't preach, and yet it just fills you with this sense of anguish, this all-too-concrete realization that the way our lives play out depends in part on the fortunes of where we are born. The understanding that most of these kids, if they make it through adolescence, are going to die decades before us because because they don't have elemental things like food and education and fucking basic health care. Meanwhile here I am, bitching about how I need more this, more that, how I'll never have enough cash to buy my own house...

I think what really destroys me about the film is that, for whatever reason, it's the one thing that really makes me feel like I can't ever do anything big enough or effective enough to alleviate one miniscule piece of the suffering in this world. And I want to, but like so many people I'm too paralyzed to even begin. What the hell could I possibly do anyway? Rent for the rest of my life and save the rest to start yet another foundation pushing yet another solution with yet another plan that never works? Move somewhere else and be the good little developed-world white martyr who thinks that just because she "gets" the problem, she's somehow got the right to put herself in the middle of it and fight the system in ways that aren't necessarily helpful, let alone right? Sit around and moan about how awful the world is without doing a damn thing about it because I can't think of anything that feels ethically okay?

I just keep thinking about fate, fortune, timing. Why I'm here, why someone else is stuck in a brutal world they didn't ask for. Why everything I want to say comes out sounding cliched when what I'm feeling is anything but. It tests my faith, this knowledge that so many people in the world are screwed from the day they're born. What kind of god would do that? What kind of world would allow it? What the hell is wrong with us?

Being a martyr's no good. If you don't get killed, you burn out, wind up sacrificing everything for nothing, a grain of sand tossed by the storm. But the whole reason we seem to need martyrs is because we can't develop the collective will to do something about it, to each move one brick and rebuild the foundation. Instead, we sit around looking at the bricks, muttering about the bloody bricks, grumbling about how someone should do something about the bloody bricks but how there's no sense in throwing your back out because what good would it do if all you did was put one more brick down for a stupid project that will never be completed?

I just don't know what to do. About any of it. If I look back and feel like I never did a damn thing about it, I don't think I could accept my life. But what am I going to do, and why haven't I started yet? Look at me: I'm a bloody student. Whoopee. I supposedly have all this great potential to change the world because that's why I received this bleeding scholarship, but what am I supposed to do with that potential and how on EARTH can I even begin?

The worst part of it is that I don't think I'm going to find any answers to those questions. I just hope I don't waste all my time thinking about them instead of just slogging forward and hoping somehow, some way, I'm doing something that actually matters, something that actually remedies even one iota of everything that's wrong with the world.

No, really, give me my damn meds

So, I suppose I can't attribute my current stress levels solely to my thesis. My phantom thyroid also appears to be going out of whack, as evidenced tellingly by my dry skin, thinnish hair, general inability to focus and raging mood swings (I'm fairly certain that my GIS now lives in terror of doing anything that might turn me into the alternately raging-or-sobbing psychopartner he never knew existed...unfortunately for him, I never know what's going to set me off, but everyone within a mile radius becomes aware as soon as it happens.)

Thyroid-related depression is always exacerbated by another cruel symptom, the "WTF happened to my thighs?!?" syndrome.

Some people enjoy clothes shopping. I used to be one of those feckless individuals until I suddenly found myself clothes shopping every season this year because my lower half no longer fit last season's wardrobe. Shopping's become a guessing game: gee, which size will I take this time? It never helps that current fashions appear to be designed for an alien race of stick insects with large waists and microscopic butts.

Me? I have a butt. I find it quite handy for sitting, but it's a little annoying when the only trousers I find that will make it past the thigh-butt meridian wind up being about two inches too big for my waist. Hello world! Yes, these are my Ex Officio briefs, thanks for asking.

Since it is somewhat alarming for an otherwise healthy individual with carefully cultivated diet and exercise behaviors to find herself going up two or three sizes in about six months, I visited my GP. Yes, this is the same GP whose full prescription for my motion-inhibiting back pain was to keep moving. I stupidly assumed that thyroid problems would raise more alarm, so after emailing my awe-inspiring endocrinologist back home, I went in to ask for a different medication that's commonly prescribed at home for people who just don't cut it with normal thyroxine. T3 has been prescribed in the US for years.

Note to self: in hindsight, it would have been helpful to know that GPs are very suspicious of anything that the US prescribes regularly, as they think we are a country of overmedicated hypochondriacs popping pills in lieu of afternoon snacks.

My conversation went something like this:

"I think that my thyroid levels have dropped a bit."

Annoying GP: "Oh?"

"You see, I seem to have developed a bunch of secondary symptoms --" At this point, she is already checking her watch. Appointments last 10 minutes here, unless you are extra-special ill, in which case you can book for 20 minutes if there's space. Generally, I think this means that they have to chuck a sickly child back onto the street to make room, judging from the number of people who appear to be living in the waiting area every time I visit. Hence, you just don't take up 20 minutes unless you are a sociopath because what kind of person would put their piddling autoimmune problems ahead of a snuffly child?

I start listing my symptoms. When I get to weight gain, her eyebrow arches.

"It's just that I've gone up two sizes since Christmas," I said. "For me, that's not normal."

The eyebrow climbed higher. She asks me to step on the scale. I do, and she informs me that I've actually lost weight. This is not possible. I ask her to check again.

"Look. Your BMI is still normal, so until you're fatter..."

Row, row, row your boat

Straight into a barge...

See, the Rowing People (for rowing is a way of life over here, complete with its own language and clothing), they tempt you into this by telling you that rowing is fun, that summer rowing is particularly fun because you really just use the rowing as a pretense to reach nicer pubs on the outskirts of town, where you then spend most of your practice time posing by the boat and telling cute passersby that yes, yes you do row.

The Rowing People are fucking liars.

Contrary to all assumptions, rowing is insanely complicated. You have to lean back from the hips with your arms out in front of you, then move your arms forward and down, roll forward (back straight!) from the hips, slide slowly forward until your knees are fully bent, then shoot backwards while you keep your arms and your back straight until you finally have to bend the elbows and pull the blade to chest height.

Got all that? Good. Now do it about three times faster on a narrow channel that masquerades as a fully navigable "river," complete with psycho boat people from Serious Boat Clubs and full to the brim with barges, sculls, the occasional river kayak and the rare inebriated cyclist who tumbled off the bank into the water. Although you may be tempted to brain all drunken obstacles with the flat of your blade, do not do this, as it may wreck the blade. Did I mention you also have to keep precisely to the rhythm of the person in front of you? Well, you do. This is always fun when the person in front of you has been rowing for years and decides to set a just-shy-of-Olympic-record pace that leaves you flailing hopelessly, snagging duckweed and half-swamping the boat as your blade gets caught beneath the surface. Then, she has the audacity to glare at you when your handle smacks her squarely below the shoulder blade because you're out of synche...At this point, I'm thinking the only way to slow her down is to break a rib or two, so obviously I'm just not smacking hard enough.

Serious Boat Clubs are by far the worst. City bumps are this weekend, we think, as there were many Serious Boat Crews out on the river this evening. Some of them are polite enough to slow down until we novices can steer for the nearest bank to let them pass. Others roar right up behind you, apparently intent on honing their bumping skills by crushing our fiberglass boat. They then become highly annoyed when you yell at them...but you can't really do anything, as the boats are apparently so fragile that sneezing on them will cause permanent damage. Seriously, after we heft this 8-man boat out of the water (and it is surprisingly heavy for frigging fiberglass), we have to stand there grunting with the boat numbing our palms as the cox wipes it down because IT CAN'T STAY WET.

It is a BOAT. It is supposed to go in WATER. Yet, water hurts the boat.

You will also enjoy the Weekend Boaters. You know, those fine, perpetually sloshed lads and potbellied middle-aged men who loll on seats at the riverside pubs and make snide comments about your rowing abilities. "Oh, bad form," they'll tut before returning to their pint glass. You can almost hear them: "When I rowed back in university..." You want bad form? Yourself in a speedo, darling.

So, at the end of the day, you finish with numb forearms, screaming glutes, seeping blisters below your fingers, and a growing distaste for the Rowing People...and yet...and yet...you sign up for the next outing and promise you'll learn how to hold the blade square by next time.

But you're definitely clotheslining the next Serious Boat Crew.

The posts, they're sort of a problem

Sorry about the delays, AGAIN. I think it's going to be like that this summer, at least until the end of August when the thesis is done. I will post sometime in the next day or two with a real, honest-to-goodness, humorous update. Promise.

Seriously, this sucks

The aforementioned meeting resulted in 10,000 words or so of my thesis draft due to the advisor by Wednesday...and I'm suffering from the worst case of "can't untangle my fieldwork to write about it"-itis I've ever had. I'm 4000 words or so away from done and I've spent most of the day staring at my computer in absolute frustration and agony.

And to help that writer's block, my examiner's comments for my other program papers came in today. Not bad, but not what I wanted, so that sort of threw any remaining will to succeed out the window.

Back after Wednesday.

Today, my head feels like:

No, really. This whole "write your Master's thesis in a year" thing? It's great. Just great. So fantastic, in fact, that I can't imagine why US universities don't adopt a similar policy. Just think of all the graduates you could churn out -- and advisors would have a lot less stress, since half of their charges would self-combust before they ever made it to a second meeting!

But I'm not bitter.

I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow, and I thought it might help me if I reviewed what I'd written to see how it fit together thus far:


It seems I am have been operating under the delusion that what I write actually makes sense. I had to stop editing partway through because my pen ran out of ink. Okay, okay, I really had to stop editing because I started getting into Stressed Overachieving Student Mode, in which I convince myself that I am going to produce the worst thesis in the 800-year history of this university, then promptly spend a lifetime consigned to admin assistant drudgery because I'll never escape my English major past.

So instead of coming up with brilliant questions to ask my advisor, I decided to shave my legs.

Look, they really needed it.

I'm serious. Personal hygiene sort of takes a backseat to EndNote these days.

Tomorrow is another day, and the day after that may be the day I finally manage to type without wincing because the stupid blisters on my palms from my first rowing effort will disappear. (By "rowing," I mean flailing around and almost sinking the boat as the cox looks on in disbelief. Oh, and smacking my potential teammate with the paddle. I mean, oar. I mean, blade. See, it's the terminology that screws me. Well, that and my inability to remember the order in which one physically executes a stroke, thereby providing much entertainment to the semi-professional rowers and fully-intoxicated pub crawlers observing from the riverbanks. At least I can put "incompetent rower" on my CV next to "bewildered graduate student" so people can appreciate the full fruits of my labors.)

Augh! Auuuugh!

I'm at that point in the thesis where I'm working on a very tricky part of the literature review -- tricky because I've realized that most scholars are smart enough to spend a very long time reading up on this particular topic before attempting to summarize it themselves...and here I am, having read about 30 papers on it, suddenly trying to come up with 2500 words or so that *don't* sound like academic nonsense. For an example of how poorly I'm doing, here's my latest sentence: "Broadly, “governance” involves a transition away from traditional, state-centered forms of agenda-setting and policy implementation, to more diverse processes where a range of non-state actors also participate in an intentional effort to influence human activity around a given issue."

Yes, that's as terrible as it looks. I hate the whole thing, but it's better than the three other versions I wrote previously. Oh, how I despise this stuff. I have 14 pages of outlines from the papers I've read that I need to skim through so I can draw out the key themes and turn this into a real discussion. Then, somehow, I have to bring in a bunch of papers on water management along the border to explain why the hell I'm talking about governance instead of wastewater management or something that might actually be relevant to my research.

I have a meeting with my new advisor on Friday, and I think it's going to go something like this:

Advisor: So, what progress have you made?
Me: *blink.*
Advisor: Okay, let's take a step back. How did analyzing your fieldwork go? Have you pulled out a few themes?
Me: *blink. blink.*
Advisor: Do you have any questions?
Me: (hoarsely) When...will this...be over?

Yeah, it's going to be a painful couple of months. Oh wait, even less than a couple of months!

I have to go be ill now.

Fever pitch

The last time I watched the World Cup, I was 12 or 13 years old. I spent half my summer parked in front of the television, rabidly lapping up every game Italy played. Roberto Baggio was my hero, scraggly rat-tail hair and all. I spent my allowance on official Cup gear (I still have that somewhere), and I still remember being down on my knees about two feet from the screen, begging Baggio to hit that last penalty shot, sitting stunned when he failed and the Cup went to whoever the hell they were playing. I was still an aspiring defender myself, and I've always harbored a love for football that most people in the States don't understand.

It's happening all over again, except this time I'm addicted to all of it. Every game, every analysis, every single dribble, pass and shot. I realized this quickly on Saturday, when husband and I seriously contemplated ditching our anniversary plans to stay crammed into our smoky, spot at the Isaac Newton so we could finish up the Mexico-Argentina match. (Mexico lost, hijo de puta!) Fortunately, our stomachs won out because we've sadly learned that man cannot subsist on ale and stout alone -- but as we settled into our intimate, romantic meal at one of the town's nicest restaurants, I said it seemed perfect...and husband leaned over and said, "Now, if only we had the match on."

Yes, we are absolutely addicted. The bloody, bare knuckles Portugal-Holland game? Saw it. The somewhat boring English games? Check. The absolutely edge-of-your-chair Latin American matches? Oh yes. We caught all of America's brief three games, except the Czech Republic match which I think I'm glad to have missed. We spent our US-Italy match in the company of a good friend from back home, who in turn spent most of the match on his feet alternatively spewing invectives and screaming encouragement, slapping the table and egging on other viewers...all of whom looked completely bewildered to see some crazy tall American guy having fits over a football match. I think the Italians would have knifed him on the way out if he hadn't been so congenial after every insult. What do we talk about now over dinner preparations? Bad referees, the comparative styles of Latin American and European football, the hopelessness of the USA team...even my Scots friend says we're a bit off our rockers, but she's just annoyed that her British occupiers are still in it.

It also says something that I'm choosing to fill you in on my football fanaticism instead of talking about the much-anticipated May Ball or the ensuing week o'chaos. Naturally, I'll watch the England-Portugal match (and Germany-Argentina, and Italy-Ukraine and hopefully Ghana-Spain but probably Brazil-Spain) this weekend and scream my lungs out for gutsy, gritty Portugal, despite the fact that doing so in an English pub legalizes my immediate death. If I don't come back, the hooligans probably stuffed me into a pint glass and threw me at nearest goal post.

Regular posting will resume

Sunday or Monday. Too much debauchary this week to even think about posting. Since Saturday, number of events/parties: 4 (soon to be 5). Number of visitors to entertain here or Oxford: 3. Number of alcohol units: enough to say I've done my Irish heritage proud (20+). Number of calories consumed: enough to fatten a beluga whale. Number of hours sleep missed: at least a full night (thanks, May Ball).



Number of times I've glanced at that mess and thought, damn, I really should do something about this before returning to wine and beer? Enough to make me regret this all next week.

I'll be back by the start of the week, promise. Thanks for putting up with my bad posting this month.

Why I will NEVER make it into the world's elite circles

Yesterday at an end-of-the-year scholarship function, one of the trustees introduced himself to me. I quickly realized that his family is one of my undergraduate school's biggest benefactors, made all the stranger because he was standing about 10 yards away from the university's Greatest Benefactor of All. This slightly smaller benefactor (only a couple buildings with his name on them -- clearly, he's just not up to snuff) was a wonderfully nice person, but I was still a bit awed by the fact that he was That Rich Guy.

Unfortunately, as a result, when he said something about going to the UW himself and then mentioned his name as if I hadn't seen it on his nametag, I blanched. What could I say? He waited expectantly for some sort of great remark about me, or world politics, or my plans to revitalize the entire downtown core...

"Wow," I said, listening to the words coming out of my mouth and unable to stop them. "I had a class in your building! I mean, not just a class but a couple...I mean, not your building, but you know, the one with your name..."

And as he looked slightly bemused, I saw my chance at piercing through the city's upper echelon evaporate before my eyes. Valiantly, I tried to recover, but the combination of complete humiliation and too much champagne had taken its toll. (Who the hell provides copious amounts of champagne but only a single tray of ice-cube sized hors d'oeuvres for vegetarians??) Behind me, two of my good friends here -- not the typical scholarship kids themselves -- tried to give me sympathetic smiles. Unfortunately, they were snickering too hard to do anything besides turn away slightly so That Rich Guy wouldn't hear them.

"I just hadn't realized--" I stopped, realizing I had almost made the fatal error of saying something along the lines of I thought everyone our buildings are named after was dead. Instead, I managed a partial save by saying that I hadn't realized how great my old school was until I left; consequently, I planned to return to the school to finish my graduate work someday. Alas, I was talking too fast and my face had turned strawberry red, so I'm sure I came off sounding like a slightly intoxicated, starstruck schoolgirl. There's a career move for you.

Naturally, just as I might have redeemed myself by actually talking about something remotely intelligent, the photographer insistently herded us away for our group photo. I withdrew politely and immediately downed my giant goblet o'champagne in one gulp.

Rich Guy probably flew home thinking it was nice of my graduate school to admit such a tongue-tied, inarticulate weirdo.

Robins

If there's one thing I adore about England, it has to be their robins. They are the most vivacious, adorable, lively birds I've ever seen, and I've spent many an afternoon gazing out the window between note-taking as the resident pair scours my garden for the seed I scatter.

These robins are much smaller than ours and much more endearing. When the male in my garden found a mate, he engaged in typical courtship behavior: selecting the most appealing seed, raisin or mealworm and hopping back to his mate to place the food in her waiting beak. He sang to her on top of the garden wall, and she sat down and swayed back and forth slowly, as though completely entranced in his song. It was possibly the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

I'm not the only one to be smitten by these puffball-sized birds. Frances Hodgson Burnett was as well, and she tells her story here.

The heat is on

Whew! In a single week, England morphed from frozen, windswept tundra into humid, muggy oven. I actually have tan lines now -- real tan lines! -- and we've finally remembered what it's like to walk without carrying an umbrella or wearing a raincoat. My poorly insulated flat has adapted to the trend: I can't see my breath in the evenings anymore, but now I can lie on top of my sheets at night, sweating and wondering why no one in Cambridge considered proper ventilation when constructing student homes.

Unfortunately, England is scheduled to revert back into land of tepid downpours this week, and I've been warned by several Cambridge residents that this may be the only time I see the sun this summer.

Excuse me while I crawl back into my room and die now.

At least the presence of World Cup fanatics will keep the area warmer for awhile, surrounded as we are by hordes of shirtless, sweaty, ale-guzzling fans who invade the pubs with their faces painted and their England flags hoisted high.

On Saturday, we visited Stratford-upon-Avon, home to the one dead white male worth worshipping.


Yes, that is the Bard's Officially Rumored Birthplace, and that's me touching the railing in the desperate hope that talent radiates from the building and will transfer to passersby.

Naturally, the afternoon matinee of Romeo and Juliet didn't finish until
Shakespeare's Birthplace closed for the night, so we had to stand outside and oogle the dust-filled windows. It may not have mattered anyway. Since the entrance to the birthplace was three buildings down in a shiny new edifice blaring "Enter Shakespeare's Birthplace HERE!", I'm thinking perhaps the Bard's abode still has a lingering touch of the plague.

Alas, I'm afraid I've married someone who does not appreciate the Bard's wit, so it's probably just as well that I'm not an English PhD because I'd have to disown him. Over our pints after the show, he looked at me nervously and stutteringly said, "So, so you like this stuff. Can I ask: why?" Math people. Dropped at birth, I tell you. I suppose I can still find some redeeming qualities.


Granted, this performance didn't rank among Stratford's finest. A modernized rendition, it featured ambiguous period costumes that could have been 1920s Verona, although Juliet spent most of her time running around in a slip for no apparent reason. The low point had to be the avant-garde decision of the director to feature...Dance Fighting. That's right, Mercutio and Thibault perform some sort of Flamenco-Tap-Capoeira choreography and melodramatically swing giant bamboo poles at each other, occasionally pausing to hammer them on the ground, ape-like, and then are impaled/bludgeoned/embarrassed to death.

It was pretty awful. Ruined some otherwise fine acting, too. Alas, thanks to the dancing fools, the only way I'll ever get the husband back to Shakespeare involves a lot of lies and drugs.

Fortunately for us, we were able to experience more dancing fools at the Dirty Duck, a famous literary and theatric hangout. I'd hoped to see a famous Shakespearean actor or two while we nursed our pints, but this was the afternoon of England's first World Cup match, so instead we were treated to the sights and sounds of approximately 15 pale, shirtless men howling children's songs from picnic tabletops in the beer garden. England, it seemed, had won.


Clearly, the appearance of mandatory plastic cups was not a coincidence.

After being treated to about 11 cycles of "Sunshine Mountain," we were severely disappointed when a barkeep came out and asked them to leave. Frankly, I couldn't imagine a more interesting evening than one that involved trying to discuss postmodern literary theory to a chorus of "Going up Sunshine Mountain...Meee and youuuuuu!"

Naturally, I had to have a photo with one of the quotes on the bar walls. It had to be either Hamlet or King Lear, but the Lear quote wasn't spectacular and this somehow seemed appropriate for a grad student:


Note: I am neither bright red nor that sweaty in real life. I blame the questionable camera quality.


Stratford itself is charming: lots of shaded paths along the riverside, quiet side streets, quaint shops bearing every name ever found in a Shakespeare play...but alas, the trip ended too soon and today I am feeling completely overwhelmed by the ever-growing workload.


The thing in the middle is the conceptual map I'm trying to make for the "discussion" part of my thesis. My new problem is that my literature review and my fieldwork discussion aren't exactly matching up. I think I would like to quit now.

Two more months. I should be elated, but the very thought of time slipping away has me panicked...and next week is May Week, or the most Drunken of Debauched Summer Days, and there's no way I'm getting anything done then because I am either attending some sort of snooty soiree or recovering from the soiree. Oh yeah, and did I mention I had a lovely ant infestation this morning to top everything else off? Gotta love living with slobs for flatmates...I think I'm going to go drown my sorrows in a bowl of ice cream. Might as well get fat if I have to spend all summer inside...heh heh. Sigh.

An Open Letter to the United States

Dear America,

Why must you try my patience so? Here I am, overseas, enjoying the dearth of religious rhetoric in daily political life, and yet I still resolve to come home to you. And then you had to go and let Ann Coulter publish another book, in which she shrewdly notes that "liberals just want to kill humans." (Side note: Damn it! Who let our secret slip? Now I have to hide all the bodies.)

I can accept your questionable literary tastes, America. Hey, at least you're still reading, or at least everyone but those 40 million functionally illiterate people. But reading is an admirable pursuit, particularly now that you've officially made it impossible for us to ever see anything interesting on network television again. Look. In Britain, after 11:00, they start running documentaries about the world's largest penis, or breastfeeding five year-olds in public, or kicking a heroin addiction on live television. None of the Brits seem particularly traumatized by such fare; in fact, they've developed a revolutionary technique to defuse the situation called Turning Off the Frigging Television. Then again, in our Puritanical culture, I suppose the lingering aftershocks of Janet Jackson's boob merit more legislative attention than other piddling matters like impoverished American kids or global warming -- after all, how can we even think about bigger issues when our minds are forever being assaulted with the image of that super-sized offense?

But America? It was a BOOB. Half of you have them. It seems a bit odd to be so utterly offended by one's presence, particularly when one could argue that little kids perhaps should not be watching the Superbowl anyway, what with its scantily clad cheerleaders and ubiquitous beer commercials. But now? Now you're offended by gay MANNEQUINS?? Those creepy plastic dolls actually sparked enough outrage for a national campaign? Why doesn't anyone complain when the female mannequins are topless, huh? Or freaking naked? Why do only male mannequins dressed to be "gay" raise eyebrows? (And why the hell do any of you care enough to launch a campaign about it?)

America, your obsession with all things homosexual is beginning to disturb me. I'm beginning to think that perhaps those of you who express such revulsion are, in fact, closeted, and simply cannot accept your own feelings towards people of your gender. In the meantime, while you deal with those repressed urges, could you please, please fixate your attention on something that's actually remotely important enough to be considered national news??? No, I don't mean campaigning to prevent kids from getting a vaccine that might save their lives someday.

Look, America. Let's make something clear. I want to come home. Your efforts to turn this entire country into some sort of weird religious safe haven for straight, white illiterate virgins are not making me happy. Don't you hear the entire rest of the world laughing at you? Don't you know how many people are, like some of my friends in Mexico admit, waiting for us to take ourselves down so they can finally get out from under our thumbs? Hasn't it ever occured to you that now is the time to start acting like a little less of an ass?

When I come back, there'd better be a gay mannequin on my front lawn holding a television that's broadcasting something involving naked people. That is all.

Disturbedly Yours,

A Concerned Citizen, courtesy of her sources at The Stranger

Head...spinning...

I've decided to document the thesis writing process with occasional pictures, all of which promise to be low quality and gratuitously melodramatic. Here is Image One, in which she realizes she will in fact be living at her desk the whole summer. Note how England has suddenly decided to be sunny. Sometimes I hate this country.



That cereal bowl there is not posed. I actually did eat two of three meals in front of the computer today, transcribing my bloody interviews until I wished I'd just flipped the recorder off halfway through them and made up the rest. Unethical? You try listening to nine or ten hours worth of recordings over and over and over again and then tell me if you still think interviewees should be able to speak for themselves. They don't have a Human Subjects Review or a research ethics protocol here, remember? Or was that one of those things I was supposed to refrain from talking about until after I graduated?...

So I'm going to spend my summer writing until my keyboard falls apart. Now, of course, the undergraduates are also finishing their exams, so a week of sheer drunken rioting is about to begin. It has begun, actually: the undergrads across the street (the only people I've ever actually filed noise complaints about) are apparently done, as they seem to have all gotten smashed and then passed out with the same bad, Nintendo-sounding techno song blaring over and over and over again until I feel like I'm trapped on a video game level I can't escape.

I don't really blame them: for the first time since September, the weather is beautiful, and people here react much like they do in Seattle (strip, burn off a layer of skin, repeat). The punting guides are out in force, hurtling in front of bikes and buses if they see potential prey across the street. If anyone asks you whether you fancy a punt, just scream at them and run. Punters, by the way, are the people who navigate you up and down the river in punts, sort of like gondolas but bigger and flatter and lacking the pointy bits on the ends. It's a fun thing to do, but I suspect the guides are paid on commission, as they will ask anyone within a 10-foot radius if they'd fancy a punt down the river today. This includes those of us who are lugging vast armfuls of groceries. I've always wanted to say, "Aw yeah, let me just throw the fruit and veg in the back and make a wee snack while we're at it." If you talk to them, though, it's over, so running is generally a better idea. Besides, it's much more fun to try steering the punt yourself. Based on my casual observations, about a quarter of the people who do fall in, but the water's deep and not that brackish. Mmmmmm.

It's finally warm enough to shed the raincoats and sweaters (okay, at least the sweaters). Alas, if midriff shirts are supposed to be out of fashion now, someone forgot to tell the lasses here, many of whom are flouncing around in floofy pirate-type skirts and tops fit for someone about half their age (and half their weight). It's always amusing. You can sort of tell who the foreigners are. The European students tend to be dressier; the Americans and Canadians look like most of us rolled out of an REI catalog (oh wait...); the British students either run around in baby pink shirts (boys) or half an outfit (girls).

To clarify, there are some nicely dressed people here, and I'm sure not every half-outfit belongs to a British student, but this uni's sense fashion is unique. No one I know from another country wants to buy clothes here. We all go home with half-empty suitcases and then lug them back filled with the next season's wardrobe. I have a friend here who wants to publish a true-to-student-life fashion book that will feature only short denium miniskirts paired with black tights and muffin-top shirts. In the dead of winter. When it's below freezing.

Now that I've offended most of the student population, I'm going to go print out my transcribed interviews so I can start analyzing them for the paper! Then, I'm going to curl up with a cup of tea and obsess about ever finding (let alone qualifying) for a job here. I haven't been diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive yet, but that isn't because I'm not trying.

Sorry for the silence

My fricking internet is down in Cambridge, so I can't really post pictures or do anything I want to do right now...it's been down for a week, apparently, so lord knows when it will return to normal. As soon as I can, I'll update. Thanks!

Heartbroken

I had to say goodbye -- again -- to my best friend Monday. Even though it's supposed to get easier, since theoretically each goodbye is one less to do, it doesn't. Instead, I drove home harboring an emptiness that still lingers in me as I sit here now, slouched on the couch, disinterested in anything that involves having to feel something. Every time I leave and hug her goodbye, it's like a piece of me is torn away. Sure, we still have email and occasional, well-scheduled phone calls, but it's just not the same.

My husband has pointed out that we don't see each other any less than we used to, which is an accurate and typical male assessment that is also completely irrelevant. It's not about seeing each other, at least not really. It's about being able to call her whenever I have a bad day, or a good day, or a stupid day that I just want to grumble about for awhile. It's about knowing that I could be there in a day's drive if she needed me, about all the times I had my keys in hand and was ready to drive six hours to cheer her up if things didn't improve by nightfall. It's about knowing I can be there for her like she's been there for me, instead of having to wait until both of our awake schedules overlap.

It's hard to explain it to anyone who hasn't had a friend that could just as easily be a sister. Our relationship is quirky and long-lasting. On the surface, people may not even understand why we're friends: we don't really like most of the same movies, or music. I suck at video games, and she's an ace. We drink different things, watch different things, do different things. But on that deeper, better level? All I can tell you is that I would rather watch a movie with her that I know I won't like than enjoy one on my own. Because somehow, watching it with her makes it worth doing and makes it more fun than I could ever imagine. She knows me like no one else in this world, in a different way than my parents or my husband, in a deeper way than I know myself sometimes. In a single conversation, she managed to put my long-distance relationship in perspective when I didn't think there was any point in trying. She makes me laugh, lets me cry, humors my occasional antisocial weirdness and accepts my complete inability to accel at anything involving coordination, like climbing stairs without falling on my face. There couldn't be another person on this earth who could make a better friend, and I just hope I do half as much for her as she for me. Anywhere in this country, be it Chicago or Florida or Maine or Washington, I would at least be able to call her. I can't, and it eats away at me even though I know it's temporary. I worry that I can't be the kind of best friend I should be when I'm not even able to pick her up on a bad day. She has a fantastic boyfriend and amazing support from her friends, but it kills me that I'm not there to share in everything that's happening. I miss her. I hate this. I know it will end sooner than I think and that we'll be back together again, but it doesn't make it any easier now. I just wish I could tell her how much she's meant to me over the years, how happy and proud I am for her now as she does such incredible things with her life, how painful it is for me to miss them. A best friend, a sister, a confidant -- there's not much more I could imagine finding in one person. So I'll get on this plane and swallow the ache in my throat again...but this emptiness? This missing piece? It's with her. Always.

Anywhere in this country, be it Chicago or Florida or Maine or Washington, I would at least be able to call her. I can't, and it eats away at me even though I know it's temporary. I worry that I can't be the kind of best friend I should be when I'm not even able to pick her up on a bad day. She has a fantastic boyfriend and amazing support from her friends, but it kills me that I'm not there to share in everything that's happening.

I miss her. I hate this. I know it will end sooner than I think and that we'll be back together again, but it doesn't make it any easier now. I just wish I could tell her how much she's meant to me over the years, how happy and proud I am for her now as she does such incredible things with her life, how painful it is for me to miss them. A best friend, a sister, a confidant -- there's not much more I could imagine finding in one person. So I'll get on this plane and swallow the ache in my throat again...but this emptiness? This missing piece? It's with her. Always.

God's country

Crap. Well, this was the best I could do considering I was going about 60 mph when I tried taking this (oops, Mom, don't read that part). Anyway, what you can't really make out here, through my wildlife-splattered windshield, is a bumper sticker on the back of that truck that seriously says, "Viva Bush." Yep. Viva. Bush.

Water officials here have shared their frustration with me over the county's politics. There probably aren't many other places on earth which have been hurt so badly by pro-growth, pro-development policies that put the almight dollar first, and yet this area remains Republican owned-and-run. Only 5% of the county votes, and they're the 5% who happen to be white and conservative (and it is true that most white folks here are conservative). A large proportion of people here are illegal, according to everyone I've talked to -- not so much in
Calexico, but further north where the Border Patrol isn't quite so visible. Still, you see empty cars strewn up and down the highways here, signs that la migra pulled over a car full of migrants on its way to safer ground.

The majority of elected officials live in San Diego and other areas out of the county; this is changing slowly, but not fast enough to alter the political terrain before the Salton Sea dries up and blows down the valley.



I'm really disappointed, by the way, that you can't see how much dirt is on my car right now. I'll have to take a picture from the right angle so you can see the full speckling on the exterior. I'm not sure what's gotten into me, but there's something addicting about rolling around in the dirt. It helps that this car isn't much bigger than my Jetta, which makes it easy to spin around offroad.


At the same time, Calexico is a happening place. On Saturday, I went to the 15th Annual Mariachi sin Fronteras festival, which brought in famous mariachi acts from around Latin America. My two favorites? Los Reyes del Valle and Mariachi Divas. I'd highly recommend checking out either, even if you don't like mariachi -- I hadn't realized how diverse the contemporary sound could be. This very blurred photo is of Mariachi Divas. I had to shoot it from about 1000 feet away, through a fence and without a flash...so you get what you can at that point, especially when you're working with a mediocre digital camera. Anyway, they were a fantastic group. Gotta go get some CDs before I leave...but that requires another trip to the g-d Walmart, and I'm trying to avoid that. I'm actually running low on food, but I refuse to go back there again, and I've taken to shopping at the highly questionable dollar (peso) grocery store in town. I've also developed a strong predilection for sangria, which I blame entirely on that store, as it sells the stuff at a ridiculously low price.

The festival drew people from all over Imperial County, the Mexicali Valley, southern California and Baja California, Mexico. I was outside the actual event, sitting with a lot of families and couples in the section for people who were too cheap (or too confused) to buy tickets, and the atmosphere was incredibly relaxed. Lots of kids kicking soccerballs around, friends passing beers, overly eager young security guys pacing the perimeter like they expected us to dash across en masse...then again, we are on the border, so maybe they're just jumpy...

Back to work for me (not really, but I'm trying). Tomorrow, I get to interview Mexican water officials en español, which should be fantastic since my Spanish isn't good enough to discuss policy. Add in the fact that my guide only speaks Spanish, AND the officials are probably guarded already because of a recent international incident involving an LA television crew, and you're pretty much guaranteed an interesting evening. Wish me luck. If I wind up in jail, send sangria.

Sigh...

It's a quiet day here again; I had two interviews and am looking at another evening of working in the hotel room (Calexico isn't exactly a happening town). I just realized I have 10 days left until I go back to England. On the one hand, it will be amazing to see the Husband -- I don't think we've been apart this long since we started dating! On the other, I'd give anything to stay home (with him here too, of course). I leave so soon. Too soon.

Stupid emotions.

Thesis agony (and a REALLY long post)

This is the way my summer is going to go, I know. I hammered out around 2000 words this weekend but feel like that wasn't much. The joys of being completely overly obsessed with perfection. Trust me, it's not worth it!


On Thursday, I visited the Salton Sea with a couple of local authorities and advocates for saving what remains of this vast inland body of water. The bad news for the Sea is that "saving" it is almost impossible. The plan to restore it costs upward of $50 billion, and there's just no money available that could ever meet the cost. The Salton has been our dumping ground for sewage and agricultural chemicals and pesticides since the turn of the last century; with the decision to divert vast quantities of local water to San Diego and central California, what little flow it still receives will be reduced almost entirely over the next 15 years. Because the Salton is an inland waterway dependent on ag off-flow, it can't replenish itself. The toxins build and build until the combination precipitates massive avian die-offs, made worse because the sea is also the only layover for migratory birds now that the Colorado Delta runs dry. (The United States utilizes almost all of the Colorado, and what little remains goes to Mexico for agriculture -- the great river of old is now a muddy brown trickle miles before its original delta begins.)


Out in the distance there? That dark spot? Yeah, that's a tire someone dumped. After careful scientific inquiry, I've concluded that there is no place on earth too ludicrous or remote that it can avoid becoming a tire dumping ground. Who the hell drives all the way out over a gravel berm in the middle of absolutely nowhere in 100+ degree heat to dump a tire by the seashore?

That white area used to be covered by the Sea, but because the body of water is so shallow, the smallest change reduces its total surface area dramatically. The 15 year water plan is meant to reduce its depth by about 10 feet, but this will actually move the water's edges about 1 mile away from where they currently lap the shores. The water is also going to become hypersaline as freshwater inflows disappear, meaning that it will become a super-salty body of water that works for some migratory birds...but not for all.


Blue herons should be okay, although this juvenile's wing indicates that he had an awful run-in with a boat (apparently it happens a lot) or a coyote. We called the refuge to see if they'd come pick it up, but who knows. The water is so shallow that he could run far from the shoreline if he decided that people were getting too close, so a rescue seems difficult.

The migratory birds are a huge issue, but the greater concern is over air quality. See that white stuff around the edges of the lake in the picture before the heron? That's a crust of chemicals, salt, and toxins left behind when the water level dropped. When you walk on it, the earth crunches like bubble wrap. It's extremely windy around Imperial Valley, and the constant breezes pick that stuff up and carry it over local communities and crops. Your California produce likely comes from the IV, and now some of it risks being dusted with a toxic powder every day. The air quality in the area is already some of the worst in the state (note how the sky isn't actually blue in this photo -- actually, the mountains are more visible here than they've been anywhere else I've driven). The "do nothing" scenario to "save" the Salton Sea still costs about $5 billion, largely because of mitigation measures required to reduce the risks from airbourne pollutants. Some people argue that it won't be that bad, but look at how quickly the earth blows away when we drive through it:


This is at least 30 seconds after the truck in front of us passed my Jeep. At first, you can't even open the car doors because the dust is so thick. Want to inhale these particles every day? Move to one of the towns downwind from the sea.


Perhaps a town like Bombay Beach, home to many ancient, dilapidated, rusting hulks like these. About 30 years ago, these towns were supposed to be the next big thing for retirement communities whose residents wanted year-round sun in the great outdoors. Then, the funding dried up, the sea grew more polluted, and people realized it wasn't such a great place to live after all. Still, die-hard residents hold out, peering from the doors of their sweltering metal boxes when newcomers roll down the streets.


But hey, it could be worse. You could live along the banks of the Alamo River! The Alamo isn't as polluted as the New, but it receives a LOT of pesticides and pollution from the IV's farms...and its condition isn't being helped by the refuse dumped into it, all of which appears to have jammed up against this low-lying bridge next to the Salton Sea. Don't worry, there are tires here, too -- they're just out of my camera's lens.

The quality of the Alamo is further degraded by the dark lumpy blob underneath the shadow of the man standing on the bridge. I know you can't see it, but crushed against the bridge supports is a very dead, very much decaying horse. I tell you, I'm taking the complete olfactory tour of the Imperial Valley. Ridiculously briney, toxic-smelling Salton Sea? Check. Noxious New River? Check. Stomach-turning equine carcass? Oh yeah, baby. I don't really want to think about how long that horse had been there or what the hell had leached into the water from its remains, but one of my companions just about went out of his skull when he saw it. He's been working on water issues in the IV for years, and as he said, "You think you're worried about the sea? Who cares until we clean this shit up! This is absolutely inexcusable, to have this going on in the United States while we blame Mexico for what's going on." The Alamo does come into the US from Mexico, but it's so small at the international boundary that there's no way a fully grown dead horse could wash all the way up to the end of the river. This is godforsaken country...


...except not for everyone. Meet Sacred Mountain, aka Salvation Mountain, located just outside the remarkably post-apocalyptic town of Niland, California, home of Deliverance's cousins. Niland, population 1200 or so, will forever exist in my memory as the place where I met a guy wearing pant fragments. He had on denium cutoffs that were split all the way to the waistband on both legs. This east-of-Salton style was accentuated by a stained, mussed t-shirt and a wild-eyed stare, accompanied by a litany of "God Bless you's" and rambling commentary only somewhat directed at me as I left the local convenience store ("Thank you very much, are you having a good day 'cause I'm having a good day you know you're just like the doctor what he ordered I mean God bless you, no God bless you...") This is after I spent 10 minutes inside the store having one of the strangest "conversations" of my life with the desk clerk and a wizened middle-aged man buying a 24-pack. Both of them materialized from the store's dark interior after I walked in and saw absolutely no one inside the shadowy cavern -- no lights, of course, because having lights on in the store would imply normalcy, and that's not the image the good people of Niland want to project. The conversation went something like this:

Me (to the Latino clerk): "Hola. Esto es todo."
Clerk: What?
Me: Sorry, I just want to buy this
Clerk: (silence)
Me: Um. Can I buy this?
Clerk: ...Do you speak English?
Me, backpedaling slowly and wondering if I can sprint out the door before he gets me: Um. Yep.
Clerk: Oh, I thought you were German or something.

Finally, we went over to the counter, where the beer-toting customer was waiting. He was a short Asian American man in worn jeans and a cowboy-style shirt, wearing a cowboy hat (of course).

Me: Go ahead.
Beer Guy: (silence, followed by suspicious staring in my direction)
Me: (confused silence)
Beer Guy: She can go first.

Beer Guy then directed all of his comments to the clerk, even though I was standing approximately 18 inches away.

Me: Hey, do you know where Sacred Mountain is?
Clerk: Sacred Mountain?
Me: Sacred Mountain.
Clerk: Sacred Mountain?
Me: (give up speaking. nod.)
Beer Guy: What's she looking for?
Clerk: Yeah, it's about two miles from here. Just take a right.
Me: Take a right? Where?
Beer Guy: Why would she want to go to Sacred Mountain?

Beer Guy is now looking at the clerk as though I am some sort of threatening alien life form sent to rob him of his alcohol. He also looks just scary enough for me to think I should leave and drive roughly 15 miles north to ask directions from the slightly less frightening trailer folk at Bombay Beach. At least there, most of them are old enough to outrun.

Clerk: Take a right.
Me: WHERE?!?
Beer Guy: What's she want?
Clerk: Anywhere.

I give up, snatch my stupid Gatorade off the counter -- which I only purchased to avoid being rude by asking for directions without buying anything -- and start to head out the door. Finally, Beer Guy turns and asks me why I don't know where the mountain is.

Me: Well, I just want to see it. I'm not from here. (winning smile)
Beer Guy: Oh. You aren't? (withering glare that sends smile to my toes)

I don't even bother with a response, instead electing to run for the door. Alas, as I reach the smeary glass door with its rusty iron bars, the spectre of Semi-Shredded Shorts Man looms on the other side...

So the deal with Salvation Mountain is laid out in a great book called Salt Dreams, which I highly recommend reading. It also goes into great detail about Slab City, the other Niland attraction and the only pseudo-town to rival Bombay Beach and Niland for the most authentic post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Slab City is basically a jumble of concrete and half-destroyed trailers now inhabited by anti-government anarchists and survivalists from the US and Canada. I really wanted to find it, but after the Niland Encounter I decided maybe I should wait until I owned a large, potentially rabid Doberman. The Niland Encounter wasn't finished, of course, because I still had to reach Salvation Mountain (sculpted and painted entirely by one man's hands -- and, of course, the man decided to use lead paint for most of his work). This entailed driving through one of Niland's main streets, where I saw a church which had what I almost swear was a beer keg on the front porch.

As soon as I got onto the street, the handful of people in it stopped and stared. Most of them were kids on bicycles, which meant that I now had to maneuver the car around a bunch of squinty-eyed children who were sitting in the middle of the goddamned road looking at my car like they'd never seen one in their lives and didn't know if they should worship it or kill it. Naturally, a whole flock of Niland residents started coming out of the shadows of their front porches and moving towards their fences (if they had fences), also staring at my car in some sort of trance-like state.

By this point, I was essentially ready to turn around and burn rubber all the way to Calexico. My gas gauge looked a little low, but I decided I'd rather brave the desert on foot than step outside my car again. Finally, I bumped over the train tracks and saw a scattering of trailers (and discarded tires!) in the distance...and a garish mound rising from the earth.


The guy who did this is supposed to be harmless, genuine, and interesting, but heads are peering from trailer interiors again and I decide I'm perfectly happy snapping a few pictures and getting the hell out of the area forever. The Jeep and I roared back over the train tracks, shot through town (more gaping kids on bikes) and straight back onto the highway.

I hope no one from Niland ever reads this, but if they do I just want to advise you that it might be wise to chain half the population up inside when strangers come through town, unless you really think that "Niland: Deliverance, but Warmer" is a good tourism slogan.

Unbelievable

Three fractures above and below the fetlock, including a fully shattered long pastern (we're talking 20+ pieces here), plus one dislocated ankle...and our boy is out of surgery and eating. Eating! I can't even tell you how remarkable this is for a horse, but trust me: the fact that it's happened at all is worth celebrating. It will probably be a few months before he's officially out of the woods, because horses don't exactly like to lie around recuperating, nor are their bodies built for staying still (it's actually quite hard on their internal organs). There's a nasty condition called laminitis that can occur in the other foot if he spends too much time on it, but still. This is better than any of us expected.


That's a Derby picture there. If you're curious about what happened in the Preakness, just check out his right rear leg here.

I'm not posting the picture here because the bent leg is pretty upsetting to some. This is less graphic to look at than a couple of the in-race photos, however, when everything around the fetlock (ankle) was pointed at a 90 degree angle from the leg.

Oh my God

Barbaro just broke down in the Preakness. And I'm alone in my hotel room and don't have anyone to cry with here.

Awful, awful injury. They're doing x-rays, but I don't know...looked like he shattered his right hind ankle. Gotta love slow-motion replays.

Sweating it up in low-down California

Yesterday, I drank two liters of water and didn't use the bathroom once. This concerned me until I found out today that yesterday's high was 109 degrees. Considering that I spent about four hours of that tramping around outside, I think my camel-like consumption was probably a good thing.


Welcome to Imperial County, California, the poorest, hottest, heaviest water-consuming county in the state. I've been here for a week and will be in town for one more, studying the New River, which has earned the dubious distinction of being the dirtiest river in the United States (some also say it's the dirtiest in North America, but the jury has yet to reach a verdict). Those are phosphates flowing across the international boundary with Mexico, which is just to the left of my photo. In Mexico, it's still acceptable to use phosphates in detergent and other products, which wouldn't actually be a huge deal...except that the toxicity of the river means the foam has come into contact with all sorts of nasty viruses, fecal coliform, VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and chemicals...which still wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that it's windy here in the IC, and the foam tends to blow across the street into the parking lot of the adjacent grocery store. When the foam blobs are house-sized and blat onto produce stands by the front door, people tend to get upset.


This is the grocery store with the foam blat problem. I'm incredibly disappointed that I haven't seen any house-sized blobs yet, but I don't really want to stick around until one rolls across the pavement, since the summertime highs here get into the 120-range. What have I seen in the river? Well...


It's a terrible shot, but I was in a sprint to snap the photo before he disappeared back across the border. There was a film crew in town from PBS in LA, and I joined them to listen in as they shot a documentary on the pollution situation here. Apparently, as we worked near the border, we flushed a migrant who'd been hiding in the bushes next to the river. He trudged out slowly, clad only in a pair of maroon shorts, holding a black plastic garbage bag filled with belongings. None of us even noticed him until one of the local water experts, Jose, said, "Hey, look what we found!" Most of Calexico, the town where I'm staying, is Latino; the majority are recent immigrants from Mexicali, Guadalajara, or further south -- but they have ambivalent feelings about the influx of illegal immigrants who cross the New River every night. Anyway, Jose told me to go take a picture, so I started towards him, which is when he started running. Before we knew it, he'd splashed straight into the river and waded back into Mexico. See, the river is so toxic that the Border Patrol won't go in after you, so it's a popular aquatic highway for migrants to use. I've been bugging the patrol all week to let me ride along and watch people cross, but I think I'm just going to drive down to the bridge myself and sit there for a couple of hours tomorrow night.


The banks of the river are lined with discarded clothing, underwear, plastic bags and garbage. The Border Patrol estimates that 40 - 60 people cross here each night, with a peak of 100 - 150 during the cooler season. Right now, it's getting brutal outside during the day (although people here think it's pretty cool, all things considered). It won't be long before the weather takes its toll on people crossing; each year, several dozen immigrants die in the deserts. I've driven within walking distance of places where it's happened.


This is the international boundary. The area where the foam originates is actually not the New River -- it's an outlet for a lot of the wastewater from Mexicali. Right now, they're completing a wastewater treatment plant with help from BECC and NADBank, two environmental development agencies created by side agreements in NAFTA. Once that goes online at the end of the year, pollution should decline to a level where it will be easier to confront on the US side. Everyone here talks about Mexican sewage, but it's easy to forget that an equal number of problems originate in the US. The IC is the heart of agriculture country -- and where there's ag land, there are pesticides by the ton. I've driven past fields of melons, onions, sawgrass, sugar beets, oranges, lettuce...you name it, it's grown here. You buy it? It probably came from here, too. On every field, I've seen men clad in heavy gloves and protective clothing, spraying a brightly colored assortment of liquids onto the food. Between that and the endless feedlots with thousands upon thousands of cattle, it's enough to make me swear off eating for life.


The chemicals and sewage are problematic, but dumping is another problem. The PBS crew filmed in Mexicali on Wednesday and saw huge trucks pumping gallons of murky brown substances into the water...but this shot is from Calexico, and there's a river under all that crap that flows north to the Salton Sea. Everyone treats this river like an open sewer, a place to get rid of all the refuse you don't want anymore. They've put up fences to block dumpers from throwing their refrigerators into the river, but so far it seems like people just peel back the chain link and drive right up to the shore. Or, they go around the fence. IC has unique attitudes about the environment that are too complex to parse out here without a lot of writing. Long story short, the Imperial Valley has long had access to the cheapest water in the world, thanks to its reliance on Colorado River water. I think the IV uses something like 75% of the water allocated to California, and it's all for 500,000 acres of farmland. With increasing demand for water in urban areas like San Diego and Los Angeles, pressure's on for the state to pay farmers not to farm, diverting water to the cities. See, Cali's exceeded its share of the Colorado by an incredible amount, and now the other basin states are forcing it to stick to its original allocation. This means that people here are feeling incredibly defensive about their water. The county may be poor, but some people are very, very rich, and they're used to the environment doing whatever they want it to do. The population is growing, the water is diminishing...the area is a powder keg in many ways, and dumping is only one indication of the work that needs to be done to teach residents that there's just nothing left to abuse anymore.


Alas, what you can't experience through these photos is the smell of the New River. It's a legendary odor, cited for decades by Calexico developers who blame it for their stagnant growth. I have a terrible sense of smell, but even I grew a little ill when I spent an afternoon touring sites around Calexico (in sandals, because I am stupid -- I'm sure my feet classify as a Superfund site now). I couldn't get the smell out of my clothes, my skin, my nose for two days. It's a combination of tar, garbage, sewage, decay and chemicals that scorches the back of your nasal passages. It takes your breath away, but you can't hold it long enough to avoid getting a whiff. In the stifling late spring heat, when the wind blows the right way, it's enough to make you feel light-headed within minutes. There are people who live within 200 feet of the river. When they go on vacation, they literally seal off their houses: tape the windows, block the doors. It doesn't work. Upon their return, the houses reek of the river, and there's nothing they can do about the odor once it gets inside. Maybe that's why there are so many household items in the makeshift dumps...


The up-side to all of this? I'm learning a ton, perversely enjoying the experience....and I get to offroad all the time. I had no idea that driving a 4x4 around a bunch of sandy, rutted "roads" and spinning out in the dirt could be so damned fun. After a few days, I'm now on a mission to see how filthy the exterior of a rental Jeep can become. So far, I'm doing pretty well. People here have gone from giving my car a double-take because it's new (trust me, I wanted an old one) to looking twice because I'm pretty sure it resembles a ball of dirt on wheels. I'll get a photo before I'm forced to wash the windshield, which has so many bug splatters on it that I'm having trouble seeing at dusk.

I've also been forced to use my Spanish like never before, and it's been great. I went to Calexico's sister city of Mexicali (Baja California, Mexico) last night and managed to carry on a very long conversation with Jose and his friend without completely embarrassing myself. Speaking Spanish is important here: as a white person, I already stand out in a fairly negative way. If I can speak both languages, I've been told, it lets people know that I'm "not a racist." It's always awkward deciding which language I should use when I have to initiate a conversation -- I don't want to offend anyone by assuming they don't speak English, but at the same time I don't want them to feel like they have to speak English because there's another dumb gringa who just wandered into the local store. So far, I've managed to get by without too many problems...except for that first afternoon, when I ordered bread and wound up eating something that was either pumpkin or dead animal. I'm still not sure.

There's so, so much to write. I saw colonias in Mexicali, the makeshift shantytowns on the edges of the maquiladoras, and I want to describe them because I think it helps people understand why water quality really isn't a top priority there right now. I want to write about how this region feels like a country unto itself, somehow both American and Mexican, completely amazing and entirely integrated. I want to write about the Salton Sea and its slow, painful demise; about the efforts people are making to save what they can; about Niland, California, which you sort of have to see to believe (let's just say Deliverance, but tanner). So I promise to write more this weekend, in between study breaks. Tomorrow night, I'm off to the 15th annual Mariachi sin Fronteras (Mariachi without borders) festival in Calexico. I have no idea what to expect, but apparently it's a gigantic event that draws people from all over the region. Full report coming soon.

Rove going down?

The blogosphere is afire with word that Karl Rove has been indicted -- and that dear old, trigger-happy Dickie might be next.

Do you think this means we'll actually dip below 29% on the approval ratings?

Seriously, peeps, how many people in this administration need to be indicted before we wake up and see that there's no imaginable way for Bush to be innocent in all of this? Unless he is as stupid as some of us think...key officials in multiple positions are now being or have been brought up on charges that make Clinton's little tryst pale in comparison. (...And yes, I still stand by my argument that his lie is A LOT LESS OFFENSIVE to the American public than Bush's lies about the war. Hello, how many people died because of Monica Lewinsky??)

Take down Rove and Cheney, and that White House is going to lose some of its most important people. Sure, those two have been operating under the radar lately, but you know they're still instrumental in running the show. Can you say "Worst President Ever"??

Keeping it honest

Very unedited freewrite here, so forgive the pedestrian prose.

Sorry about the lag time between posts. I find I have fewer reasons to write here because so much of what I compose is actually a way to vent frustration these days. I'm not very frustrated here. Sure, I'm preoccupied by real estate prices and murky future job prospects, but coming home has never felt so good.

I know I keep writing about this, but it has been truly remarkable to rediscover myself here and to experience relief knowing that I can metamorphose back into who I am and want to be, even when I feared that parts of my spirit had been wrung out of me elsewhere.

The downside to this, if there is a downside, is that the "rooted" analogy is as true as I suspected. I'm inextricably linked to this place. Take me away from it for too long and I fade a little, like a sheet left on the line. Before everything changed in my life, I warned my loved ones that there were a few things about me that probably wouldn't be able to shift: I want to be near my family, I need to keep my career from consuming my life, and I belong in that unique space where mountains and seascapes converge. If I go against those core components of myself, I would still survive -- but I wouldn't be me anymore, or at least I wouldn't be the me that finally feels like it fits. I can't do that.

Being away isn't all bad. It's let me recognize the good aspects of this country, as well as the bad. I've met people from dozens of places around the world, and many of them have provided insight into politics, society or personal life that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. In the end, though, I can only be away so long, and there's only one true home for me. Maybe that's the Irish blood coming out, stubbornly clinging to its patch of earth for better or for worse.

It isn't perfect here. It rains too much. It's too expensive. Sometimes, I just want to smack the yuppies on their cell phones when they almost annihilate my bike because they don't have a spare hand to flick their turn signal. Yet, I've felt more content in the last two weeks than I have since we moved away, and I've reverted back to the independent, relatively laidback, bordering on actually happy (if politically rabid) wife my husband married, instead of the depressed, dependent, overly anxious alter ego that seems to come over me back in the UK. I missed me. I can't tell you how important it is to realize that this is largely what's wrong.

People keep telling me that I should be reveling in every moment I spend overseas, and I understand what they mean but beg to differ with the details. Being abroad is certainly a worthwhile experience; it expands your worldview, challenges your preconceived picture of things and helps you become a little more tolerant of others. After the honeymoon phase, however, when most people get to go back home (I'm thinking the six-month mark is what did it for me), you also realize that being abroad has its downsides -- like when you start understanding how unique your own country is, but can't return yet. Or when you see the uglier side of other people and get frustrated with their equally incorrect stereotypes of you. If you're a roving nomad, then living abroad likely is fantastic...but when you're 25, barely married, closer to your family than most, just beginning to grow comfortable with the way your life's taking shape, more place-based than you thought, and learning that you're incredibly happy with the way things already are, it can be a difficult transition. It takes a heck of an emotional and physical toll (as evidenced by the outrageously expensive, fragile-looking sliver of plastic that's supposed to stop me from grinding my teeth out of alignment -- seriously, I can't believe you're allowed to charge so much for something that weighs less than the stack of bills I paid for it). Coming back makes me realize how much I hate the time zone difference that makes it impossible to call my best friend on a whim to bitch about my day, or how much I miss being able to have a spontaneous afternoon out with my mom. I miss riding the trails in the rain with my husband, sending arcs of water up over our wheel rims and arriving at our destination with nicely mud-splattered clothing.

Maybe it was the constant moving we seemed to do when I was younger, or perhaps I can attribute all this to some Taurus moon in my horoscope, but somehow I think it's just a central part of me that's been growing since I moved into my first apartment five years ago. I'm off to California tomorrow and promise many amusing posts once I have internet access there (if I have internet access at all, as someone from the area warned me I'd be going "back in time" technologically). For now, though, I just want to be honest with myself and to keep track of my own thoughts on this ever weirder journey I'm taking.

Warming up

It's 7am and already 70 degrees where I'm headed on Saturday.

Doing research in your own country: $4000. Having your shoes stick to the asphalt in May? Priceless.


Sure, it looks pretty. This is the calm before the 100+ degree storm. It's supposed to reach 104 degrees today and stay around 100 the rest of the week. So much for the 93 degree average in May.

A population of 30,000 a downtown boasting little more than a McDonalds and a WalMart, and more people passing through the border each day than live in the town. Yippee.

Back in the rhythm

I've logged 40-odd miles on my bike since Monday and was actually somewhat relieved to give it to the shop yesterday for its annual inspection (file that under Things I Should Be Capable of Doing By Now). While I love riding it, my legs were starting to wonder if they'd ever be allowed to recover from the trauma of climbing Capitol Hill's backside every day. I managed to have incident-free rides the entire time, apart from one of those great drivers who slowed down and pulled across the lane into a parking space in front of me without signaling. Gotta love it.

I'm hitting all the spots I've missed since Christmas: Musashi, Agua Verde, Victrola, Pizza Pi, Piecora's, Star Life...it's pure bliss, and not something I get to do very often. I've also been walking around the neighborhood where my friend lives (Judkins Park) and enjoying it quite a bit. Much astir in my mind regarding housing, and hopefully we'll be able to get the ball rolling relatively soon.

Visited work on Wednesday and found myself missing the chaos, despite the fact that it used to drive me up the wall now and then. It was a good place to be. I hope I'm fortunate enough to find something like it again.

Now, we're off to Lummi for the annual mother-daughter retreat, and we'll be back late Monday. It is so damned good to be home. If I just had the Husband here, I'd be set for life!

Little things

When you lose something you love, you miss little things you never imagined.

I've had one permanent loss this week (Leo), and one temporary reacquaintance with something I've lost temporarily.

In both cases, it's small things. For Leo, it's realizing that my jeans are denuded of their customary dog hair layer, or opening a suitcase and finding all of my clothes are dry instead of in their typicallly damp, just-sniffed state. It's missing the warm, heavy weight of a sprawled body on my feet, like the one I have right now at my friend's house, courtesy of his massive Australian Shepherd. It's wishing for one more whine, one more incessant "in-and-out" of the door routine, anything that used to exasperate me. Since I missed his actual passing, I still can't associate the too-small plot in the backyard with the dog I loved. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and, if I just keep my eyes half-shut, I'll see him again, curled up and hoping that I don't make him get out of his bed just yet. He would have been 14 today.

For the other, the second hole in my heart (more painful because it's being refilled only to empty again soon?), it's coming home to the city where my soul still resides. I might live physically in England, but my heart and dreams are here, somewhere between 15th's crowded streets, Fremont's sun-speckled sidewalks and the Burke's rain-slicked, solitary nights.

I've never felt so good coming back to a place. I don't actually think I've felt this alive in months. Everything routine becomes special, and I find it's the little things I was missing again, like the careful detail of a foam-embossed leaf on my drink at Victrola's, or the smoldering burn of my legs as I slog up the back side of Capitol Hill.

It scares me, really. I am so desperate to come home for good someday that I don't know what I'll do if I can't. We both want to be here, despite the skyrocketing housing costs and the bad traffic. This city nourishes me in a way that no other place has; in an instinctive way, I know no other place could, even the tucked-away corners of the world I haven't seen yet. There are parts of who I've become that are entwined with this place. But the best-laid plans go awry. Standing in an empty home for sale yesterday, I listened to the realtor tell me we'd be lucky to find anything we could afford now, let alone in a few years. That's when the jitters set in, the comingling sensations of hope and dread that kept me up last night and chased me over the city streets today.

So maybe we'll rent forever. We wouldn't be the first. Is it crazy that I'm willing to bend everything else -- grad school, career goals, lifestyle, potential firstborn -- to be somewhere so right that every fiber in my body cries out to stay when I'm here?

I never thought I'd want to stay in one place, but now I'm afraid of being uprooted from the only place I want to be. Maybe if I dig down deep enough and hold on with both fists clenched, nothing will be able to tear us away again.

In memorium

I didn't have any pictures from his younger years on the computer...




Fourteen years. So why does it feel like no time at all?

Bon voyage

I'll be back online in a couple of days, but I'm flying home tomorrow for fieldwork and will probably be incommunicado until I've recuperated from the jet lag.

Keep a candle lit in your hearts for Leo tonight. I can't write about it yet because I'm having a hard time keeping my composure, but he'll be winging his way home sometime this evening. It's time. It's for the best.

It's still awful.

But I'm going home to good food, good friends and great weather (gasp!). Yay! Talk to you in a few days!