Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars

So, I totally wish this group's tour had come a year and a half earlier. Their show would've been a kickass way to spend our budget. RIDLEY: you must see them at the Ark on Thursday! As the name suggests, they're a group of musicians that came together in a refugee camp in Guinea where they fled from the civil war in Sierra Leone. The short and sweet: great music, amazing stories. I'm going to see them at Calvin on Friday night, and I'm so excited. They've played at Bonnaroo Hen! Oh! This music is sweet. Website

KALX

The Berkeley student radio station, KALX 90.7 FM, has 75,000 distinct pieces of music in its library. At the moment I'm working on uploading the cd portion of that onto my laptop... and volunteering there, marginally. They have everything... from ever in the history of ever. I'm going to need to buy an external hard drive. Or ten.

Wierd

Hokay; so all you math nerds out there, calculate the probability of this happening

I watched the "finite simple group" video (laughing my head off of course) and then went to my friends' room. As we were talking I remembered the video and said "check this out", and proceeded to bring up utube on her computer to show them. Then, as it brings it up and begins playing, one of my friends blushes and says under her voice "oh my gosh"
I turn to her and ask what the matter is

"that's my brother"

That's right. One of the guys in that movie is the brother of a girl whom I met at a dance at St. Olaf and am now friends with.
Top that for coincidences

Finite Simple Group (Of Order Two)

nerdiness + a cappella = brilliance

In case you haven't seen this youtube video already. Do. The lyrics are in the video description.

Jason

Midterms and Music

A friend V.I. Lenin once wrote about him:

One evening in Moscow, when Lenin was listening to Beethoven sonatas...he said: "I know nothing greater than the Appassionata; I'd like to listen to it every day. It's beautiful, superhuman music. I always think proudly--it may be naive--what marvelous things people can do....
But I can't listen to music too often, it...makes you want to say kind, silly things, to stroke the heads of the people who, living in a terrible hell, can create such beauty. Nowadays you mustn't stroke anyone's head, you'd get your hand bitten off, you've got to hit them over their heads, without mercy, although, ideally we're agianst the use of force. H'm, H'm, our duty is infernally hard."

News from the orange bubble

Here's what I've been up to.

My parents had the strange idea that it would be fun to check out all the other universities I might have applied to, before actually heading over to Princeton, so I have a bunch of photos from across the North-east, but most of them are boring, so here are some of the actually nice ones (basically from Yale, which looked ridiculously pretty for the two hours I was there).


























































Plus, I got to see bits of MIT's creative craziness, like "Jesus: the ride", which cracked me up on first sight.



















And, I got to meet Charles!















Understandably, after walking around other campuses and being slightly smitten with some of them (MIT and Yale, actually) , I experienced a little doubt and pre-emptive buyer's remorse before seeing Princeton for the very first time. It didn't help that the remnants of hurricane whatever were passing through as the little rental car pulled up to my dorm. It was freezing, wet, and windy -- not the best conditions for a brilliant first impression. But as it turns out, my fears never bore fruit, because I am ridiculously in love with this place.

Princeton is beautiful. I posted some photos on facebook. Perhaps I'll soon be jaded and long for something other than squirrels, trees, and gothic buildings, but I doubt it.

The people are, as expected, brilliant. It was a little startling and very humbling to discover that my physics lab partner is an IMO medallist and that a friend's hallmate is a student of Itzhak Perlman's, but superficially people here don't seem any less normal. I run into Sophie every now and then, but not nearly often enough, and I haven't seen most of the other TASPers (I did see Andrei from WashU TASP during orientation, but that was about it), although I hear that one of them (Mariam from UT Austin TASP) is basically terrorizing the rest of the humanities sequence students, so I definitely want to meet her. Princeton certainly has the whole work hard party hard mentality, with the streets filled on Thursday through Saturday nights, and eerily quiet the rest of the time. I haven't actually partied at any of the eating clubs yet, but that's not for the lack of things to do. We have a club here called the Colosseum Club that stages fun events during those end-of-week nights. Think laser tag in the gym lockerrooms, inter-residential-college capture the flag, water fights, and giant dodgeball games. They're starting a university-wide game of assassin soon, and I'm definitely signing up.

My current four courses are physics (fun and not too challenging), multivariable calc (boring, easy, and essentially a waste of sleeping time), a writing seminar on refugees and immigrants (brilliant, because some of us are super-liberal so I like being devil's advocate and taking the other side), and chinese for illiterate people who are relatively fluent speakers (this course was made for me, and my teachers are these two women from beijing who can't be over 30 and start each lesson by asking about developments in our personal life. They keep asking us questions in chinese like "what would you do if your girlfriend were pregnant" and "what are your views on same-sex marriage", which, once deciphered, have to be stumblingly-answered with our very limited vocabulary). It's the most hilarious class.

On the musical front, I was a little disappointed that the Katzenjammers (undoubtedly Princeton's most amazing a cappella group) didn't accept me, but then that's what the spring auditions are for, so hope for good news then. Dunno how many people I told, but anyway, I started learning to play the clarinet right after TASP. I'm planning on trying for Sinfonia (kind of like University Orchestra - lite) next semester, as well as chapel choir and/or glee club, so spring semester could leave me with even less time than I currently have.

We don't have many big bands coming into town (that's what New York is for... actually, I watched the musical Avenue Q last weekend and it was beyond awesome, I think Meredith was the first person to tell me about it), although Rihanna (spot the lip-synching!) was here playing with the Pink Spiders (waaaay better than Rihanna) for lawnparties. However, there are a lot of jazz and classical greats visiting in the next few months (I freaked when I realized Lizz Wright was performing here in November), like Krystian Zimmer and Joshua Bell (OK, arguably not that great, but I'll still be there, because the most beautiful part of all this is that it's free for students). An all-male a cappella group performed here two weeks ago. They're called Chanticleer, and are now in my opinion the most talented a cappella group in the world. Look them up.

At the moment, I'm only committed to two activities: badminton and the Daily Princetonian. The badminton club meets at ridiculous times (midnight on wednesday/friday and midmorning on weekends) because we get shafted by basketball for court space, but I love the sport and we've got games against Cornell and Yale (I might be in Yale!) coming up, so it's all worth it. The Daily Princetonian is our main campus newspaper and so if you go to some event and there's an annoying continuous clicking from somewhere in the audience -- chances are good that it's me. I'm a photographer for the Prince, hoping to become a photo editor down the line. Competition for assignments amongst us, the rookie-masses, is a little ridiculous, which means I've been trying to set my e-mail to text-message me when a photo assignment comes out, because it's first come gets the job, and I swear some of these photographers live beside their laptops.

Btw, that orange bubble comment refers to a brilliant song written by an '06 Princetonian. It opens with:

New Haven has its murders,
Philadelphia decays,
And in the town that's home to Brown
They smoke away the days.

They kill themselves in Ithaca,
In Hanover there's snow,
There's violent crime in NYC,
In Cambridge egos grow...

The beautiful melody makes everything so much better. The song's become a Princeton glee club classic, and it's basically one of the reasons I'll try and join glee club in spring. And on this note, here are my songs of the moment (I finally discovered Princeton Record Exchange -- bargains galore!)

1. Orange Bubble
2. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
3. Behind the Wall - Tracy Chapman
4. No Tomorrow - Orson
5. essentially all of Yo-yo Ma's album "Obrigado Brazil"

That's it from me,

Till later,

Jason

Whoops

So basically the taspum page didn't refresh in my browser til just a second ago. Thank you all for making my day. Thank you Bern especially and sincerely for having such an awesome idea. It does me good to hear that you're all doing so wonderful. Now if only we could gather at some common geographical location at a mutually agreeable point in the not too far distant future...

OH. To take a tip from Mr. Youngblood:

5. Mr Grammarticologylisationalism Is The Boss- Fela Kuti
4. Blue School- Blue Scholars
3. Baila Me- Gispy Kings
2. Sinnerman- Nina Simone
1. I Know What I Know- Paul Simon

GAH!

I checked back to discover that there was basically a whole page of fresh posts, and I know I didn't make the deadline, but I'm definitely going to post something substantial later today. Photos included, of course.

The once-prolific blogger who is indeed still alive,
Jason

All Right Now!

Wow. This was a good idea, Bern.

People are always talking about Stanford being laid-back - I think that's a good description, especially when contrasted with MIT. What surprises me the most is how comfortable and settled I am here. It's a beautiful campus, and I'm constantly reminded of how lucky I am to be here. The best part is my fellow students, who are all simply amazing people. For one of the first times since TASP, I'm not "the smart kid" anymore. It's a refreshing feeling.

Big self-discovery moment of the quarter: I love programming. My introductory computer science class is sweet - I live for the problem sets and the rush of discovering that my code works. I have to save my CS homework for last or I never get anything else done. My Introduction to the Humanities class is also pretty wild - the professors have us playing the online role-playing game Second Life so we can "interact with a machinic world." Our first paper (due tomorrow!) is supposed to compare the machine-like attributes of Plato's Republic and this online society. Math class is math class: after my first math lecture, I realized that although college is amazing, it is still school. But hey, I like school, I like math, and I am loving college.

One thing that's not going so well is figuring out when I'm supposed to jump when the Stanford Band (finally off probation, though still banned from traveling) plays "All Right Now." It's a good thing I have 4 years.

I started work at the biology lab. It's kind of an informal family atmosphere, with flexible working schedules all around and traditions such as summer barbecues and a pumpkin-carving competition against the other labs. So far I haven't been assigned a specific project to do, but I'm enjoying being in the lab at all.

I don't have any real anecdotes of debauchery or promiscuity (which, frankly, I'm glad about). I have participated in a certain amount of obligatory craziness, however, notably the traditional scavenger hunt in San Francisco, where dorms are split into groups and sent into the city with a list of crazy stunts to perform, with point values assigned according to craziness: getting a taxi driver to do the Macarena with you, protesting the mistreatment of wax people at the wax museum, getting a stranger to feed you an orange, trying on a wedding dress at Neiman Marcus, getting one's hair cut in a mullet, etc. The group with the most points (backed up by photographic evidence) wins. Results are yet to come in, but I think my group has a good shot at the title. Although I was one of the less intense team members, I did eat garlic ice cream, hop down Lombard Street on one foot, and kiss the lion statue at the entrance to Chinatown.

I met a transfer student from Deep Springs the other day. !!! The L.L. connection here seems to be pretty strong (there's even a TASPers at Stanford facebook group!), and although I haven't talked to the other '05 TASPers here yet, I've seen at least one of them once or twice. I'm hoping to get involved in the reading of TASP applications this winter.

Reflecting on my choice to come to Stanford (one of the best I've made in my life), I'm convinced that my desire to recreate our six weeks together was a big part of what pushed me out here. So thanks, TASPers. Life is good. I'm hoping to head up to Berkeley this weekend to hang out with a certain poet of our mutual acquaintance, and I'm confident I'll run into several more of you, whether or not a full, in-person reunion materializes.

I love you guys!

Groetjes,
Sam

From the armpit of America

Dear Lovers of Loving Love and Online Reunions:

So New Haven isn't nearly as bad as people say. In fact, I'm kind of loving it. I went to a Flogging Molly concert last week, and it was pretty much the best thing ever. Reel Big Fish, The Fiery Furnaces and Del tha Funky Homosapien are all coming this and next month, so I'm basically about to pass out from excitement. I saw the movie The Departed on Friday, and it AMAZING. You are all hereby instructed to see it. The Illusionist, too, was great; it was the kind of escape that I haven't found in a long time. I've discovered that I'm a partier at heart, something I never saw coming. Concerts, dances, scuzzy parties in the basement of frats: I'm at all of them every weekend. I've misplaced my sensible shoes somewhere.

The marching band followed the football team to Dartmouth last weekend. I was wistful for the great state of New Hampshire, except when I woke up in the morning to rehearse and it was 35 degrees. Ugh. My friends and I checked out the Darmouth frat scene. They have a nice frat row, unlike the dirty tenement-like street that we have. All of the parties were in basements and all anyone did was play Beer Pong. It's like the official campus sport or something. No dancing, just Beer Pong, which is possibly the dumbest game ever. I don't believe in drinking to get drunk. You dance and get drunk and return home when the police come, the speakers start smoking (see last night) or your feet feel like they're going to fall off. On the way back I rode "The Fo'ty Bus," on which everyone is provided with forty ounces of malt liquor to drink as we ride for 4 hours back to "The Have." So much drunken singing.

We have amazing, crazy times together in the band. Last night was "The Dirty Dance," which I won't even talk about, it would take too long. One of the best features is the Singing Bus on the way back from home football games. We sing dirty songs at the top of our lungs. One of my favorites goes like this: "My father is a *blank*" The band responds: "A *blank* a *blank*, and a mighty fine *blank* is he!"
You say: "All day he *verb* (he verbs, he verbs)"
Band responds: "And when he comes home he *same verb*s me! Oh dance with me fuck with me, follow the band! Follow the band all the way!" And then the next person goes.
My contribution this week was "My father's a food critic!" "All day he eats out, he outs out, he eats out!" The response is...."And when he comes home he eats me!"
It's really the best use of our minds to come up with dirty double uses for verbs. My father's an elevator, all day he goes down... People occasionally bring their parents on the Singing Bus, and the lesson is this: parents are dirtier than you think.

In short, college is more promiscuous and drunken than I'd anticipated. The guys downstairs are so funny. We can always smell the weed and booze from their room, and Thursday-Saturday, there's bound to be some bass pumping. One of them raps, and he's got this amazing set-up with the speakers, microphones, etc. He writes these absolutely hilarious songs. But anyway...

I have my first midterm tomorrow, for Cognitive Science. I'm hoping it goes well, because I'm considering it as a major. I'm going to try to work in the infant cognition lab or the monkey lab next semester I was determined to never take a math or science course again, but things change. Suddenly I'm interested in neuroscience and secretly dreaming of being an archaeologist, even though I know now that it won't be like Indiana Jones. Or maybe I'll be a psychology major, or anthropology. Anway, the humanities that I was so wed to pursuing are taking a hit.

The water polo coach from my high school said, "The trick is to find something you love doing and get someone to pay you for it." In honor of that, I'm on the path to becoming one of the music review regulars for the newspaper. We get reimbursed for the albums, so I'm building up a collection of really excellent (and not so excellent) free stuff. If you're interested, I've got an article up on the website (from Friday): http://www.yaledailynews.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=33712
The review I'm writing this week is for this guy called Dosh. He was instrumental and hard to describe beyond being indie, but he's introducing vocals this album. He's got a lot of guest artists, some of whom I like, like Andrew Bird, so I have high hopes.

Volume, formerly gunslinger., the only undergraduate music magazine, is being released on a quarterly basis. I've written a profile piece for Ted Leo of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, among other things. There's also some song reviews. I'm doing some work on subscriptions, too, because I wanted to see the business side. It's cool because it's only been around for a couple years, and there's still an opportunity to really influence how it's run, as opposed to, say, the Yale Daily News. I LOVE MUSIC. The end.

So, Yale's hard. But as they say, if Yale were easy, it would be your mom. It's definitely worth it, though, and life is good.

Love,
Meredith, Girl of Many Words

Ummm, where IS the sun?

Well, I suppose I must contribute a line or two to the blog, and I do actually have a few minutes to punt. Cambridge is a great little town in a great little latitude, but I'm afraid the days of sunshine here are all but over. Last weekend was great; I took two long bike rides basically back-to-back through New England foliage in simply gorgeous weather. It's quite a treat to blast through the back woods in a sea of yellows and reds, and I'm sure everyone in the northeast will attest to that. But for now, the landscape is all grays.

As for the college living, I think my character and being have already been profoundly affected by MIT. Firstly, I'm overly impatient now, thanks to MIT's crazily maintained computer system. Yesterday our hall downloaded an entire full-length movie in high quality onto our server. In five minutes flat. Meaning we could have started watching when it started downloading and we wouldn't have gotten through the credits before it was done. It's madness. Similarily, I can't stand people who don't answer e-mails instantaneously, whether that's a valid request or not. Everything moves at light speed here, especially homework deadlines, which sneak up on you and murder you in the night. I've been caught out by more than one.

Perhaps even more than my behavior, my vocabulary has been MIT-ified, and I can't help it. There are two modes of life here: "tool" and "punt". Tooling is to do legitimate work, like psets or papers or lab writeups. Punting is to slack off and play videogames or putz around with friends, whilst avoiding productivity. Right now, I'm punting a physics pset which will get attention later in the night. Another common status, if not the default, is the phenomenon of being "hosed." That one comes from the proverb "Getting a MIT education is like drinking out of a fire hose." That's the reason that all math grad students smoke (really, ALL of them) and that keeps me up until 4AM on a all-too-regular basis. Which brings me to another idiom, that of the "night-shift." Everyone on campus is shifted at least a few hours from a normal concept of nighttime, and to me, 2AM is an early bedtime. Around here, noon till sunset is afternoon, sunset to midnight is late afternoon, and past midnight is when true night begins. And what about morning? Morning doesn't exist.

I'm trying to think about how to condense the rest of my time here into a closign paragraph, but it's just too much. In the past two weeks I've been to the IgNobel lectures (the study on spaghetti breaking was the coolest), learned to play hallway cricket (I'm an atrocious bowler), and gone sailing on a windy moonless night. Not to mention the Saturday night pasttime of creative trespassing or hacking. I love this place: it makes me smile and cry and bang my head on the wall and laugh out loud in the wee hours of the morning when I realize what my professor wants me to learn for the next day's test. Oh, and if you're walking around MIT after midnight, just look up and you'll be surprised at what you see.

-Charles

Sunshine until 8 at night

That is probably the best way I can describe living in Atlanta. Honestly, this is one of the happiest places in the world that I've ever lived in. Emory is wonderful and keeping me as busy as a squirrel before winter. I'm taking four courses and they're all alternately keeping me up until two every morning with work. Especially Freshman Organic Chemistry. What a beast of a class, seriously! I think half my class failed the first exam. And my seminar (Medicine and Literature) has me reading a book every weekend, and asks for a paper due every Tuesday. And don't even get me started on labs. :) But I love being busy, so it's all good.

I can't match you guys in the number of concerts that you've been to, but I have been garba-ing at various colleges in the Atl (and there are a number!) a few weekends for pre-Diwali. Garba is a really fun Indian social dance where you go around in large circles in different step routines and you wave your dandiya sticks around and stuff. And you get to dress up like a princess in all the colorful skirts and scarves. It's awesome. Here's the difference between North India and the South - the northerners have a lot of fun at their get-togethers what with dances and social mixers and what not; the south has good food. yep. So this was my first time at garba, and it was SO different and fun. I love it ALOT.

Atlanta is cool - we're in the heart of it, but it doesn't seem like it at all on campus, and it's not easily accessible to freshman. The Marta transit system is very limited and most destinations take a good amount of walking and shuffling between trains and buses to get to, so unless you know someone with a car, it's very tiring to go explore the city. But that said, the upperclassmen here are extremely friendly and they've taken me and my friends out a number of times. Besides, a couple freshmen that I know brought their cars illegally here with a parking permit bought off of a graduating senior, so we're always going downtown for shopping and dining. I've been to a Braves game (the Astros lost!) and to city restaurants for friends' birthdays. FUNN!!! hahahha

So what else can I elaborate on? ooh, Diwali's coming up and I'm helping to organize it! Friday, the Indian Cultural Exchange has us booked at a really classy hotel in the city, where we get to have great food and watch dances put on by around seven different performing groups - bhangra, garba, Bollywood, and a lot more. I'm taking part in a fashion show too - but ours is a lot more informal than yours, Emma. We're coming out on the runway in fifteen-second comedic skits, in groups of three, so it's more of a laugh then a wow. The second Diwali event is hosted by the Hindu Student Council at the campus chapel on Sat - this one's more traditional and prayer-oriented, and I'm helping to create the Diwali awareness exhibit at the entrance. This weekend is going to be SO awesome! I can barely wait.

And like Meredith, I've been churning out articles for a number of different publications on campus. I'm writing for the Emory Wheel, a science magazine called Hybrid Vigor (my current article is on the science of sex addiction!), and I'm on the board for the literary magazine Alloy, and the Emory Undergraduate Research Journal. I'm learning just as much as I'm contributing, and having the time of my life while I'm at it. My little desk planner is so crammed with reminders and deadlines in the tiniest handwriting - it's so satisfying.

Well I think that's it for now. Sam, I've seen your aunt, Dean Brzyinski speak, but I haven't met her personally yet. I will do so soon!

Lots of love,
Sanjukta

In the shadow of John Calvin.

I'm going to have to make this as brief as possible because I have massive research to do for a paper about Chinese literature in the Song dynasty.

Like, well, everyone, I'm crazy busy and insanely happy about it. Everyday I go to about six lectures and a movie, go to a concert every weekend (did I tell you guys about Danielson? The Psalters? Sierre Leone Refugee Allstars? AND Sufjan and Anathallo are coming. Yes!), and anytime I can throw in some rock climbing, environmental stewardship coalition or social justice committee I do. I figured that at a Christian college in the midwest, campus life would not be the best part of school, but I've been very happily surprised. I chose Calvin because I figured I could do about five semesters of study abroad, but I love life here so much that I've lowered that down to just two, and I want to really invest myself in this place.

Last night I modeled in a campus fashion show. It was fantastic! (pictures will come soon.) I didn't think my hair was long enough to do anything with, but it was curled and they put more makeup on me than I've worn in about the last three years put together. A girl on my floor made the dress; it was strapless, dark burgundy with a big fur strip down the side and a totally awesome hood. It was pretty amazing stomping down the runway, but I was crazy nervous! It's nothing like performing a solo on stage or anything, it's so much crazier. I had to go commando and as soon as I got out there the foremost thought in my mind was, "My word. I am not wearing any underwear!" I hope I can do it again when I'm less nervous.

What else can I say? It's alright going to school so close to home--I eat lunch with my mum and sister once a week, since they're both on campus because my sister is student and my mum's a prof, and I usually go home for a meal on Sunday. The whole Christian college thing is alright. Certainly not everyone's a Christian and this ISN'T Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. People are open-minded and incredibly intelligent, my professors are amazing and truly first-rate. There are a few idiots on campus, but I suppose that's not unique to Calvin. I like going to chapels because unlike my highschool they aren't mandatory, and it is nice to be able to enter a conversation or discussion with a Christian understanding. It adds another dimension to discussions that I appreciate. I'm afraid that the fact that it's a Christian instituion automatically discredits it, but I've found that this really is a great school, and I'm looking forward to my four years here.

Otherwise, dorm life is great. I'm making a ton of friends and loving life. I live in the newest dorm so we have enormous bathrooms that we share between four people, a large community kitchen and a nice lobby connecting the guys' and girls' wings (yes, we are separated by gender). I live on what we call the Mosaic floor, which is basically just a floor that we had to apply to live on and where the goal is intentional multiculturalism. We also just had UnLearn week, which is a week of lectures and activities aimed at unlearning racism. It brought back some memories of great discussions in the seminar room. I heard a sobering lecture by Tim Wise on white privilege this week, and you should all check out his book White Like Me if you get the chance, which I'm sure you won't since you're all busy with your own amazing lives. But if you get a chance, do think about it.

Ah I love and miss you all! Ridley, do you think I could come to A2 and stay with you on the weekend of Nov. 3? It's not set in stone, but a friend of mine is driving out for the weekend and I might see if I can go with him.

Keep it funky TASPers, and enjoy beautiful fall!
Emma

Way to go Isaac and Henrik!

and anyone else who posts while I'm writing this.

So--now that I have some time to elaborate on my life

St Olaf is rockin it up. We're on fall break now so the dorm is more or less empty. It also means that I have the room to myself for the weekend. My roommate is awesome, but there is only so much time you can spend together. We are in the smallest dorms on the campus and there is approximately enough space for a goldfish. On the minus side, the caf is closed this weekend. On the plus side, I'm not eating caf food this weekend.

I had the joys of midterms last week. I actually felt pretty good about my physics test. I have high hopes for getting enough points to offset my abysmal homework grade (I'm of the "screw up on the homework and then learn from the mistakes" school of thought) We've also moved on to voltage and magnetism--things I understand much more than electric field. Which is odd given that both are derived from electric field.

Last weekend my orchestra gave it's first concert. Went pretty well, although I felt very bad for the stand in front of me. They were situated directly underneath an air vent. Their music would not stay still on the stand and at one point went flying into the audience forcing the girl to dive off the stage and chase it down in the middle of the quiet part. I know I'm not supposed to find humor in a situation like that, but I'm sorry; it was hilarious. Maybe just because I have way too many concert horror stories of my own.

I finally got a haircut today. I had high hopes upon moving to minnesota that the humidity would curl my hair a bit and I would have to deal with it less than in oregon. Alas, instead of curling it into a stylish, slightly cute muss, it transformed into a wavy ratty mop. weeellll.....crapola. Add that to the list of things I still have to worry about. After I got back to campus some friends and I decided on a whim (you get these ideas when the dorm is empty) to build a massive leaf pile. And I mean massive. We had it up 5-6 feet. When was the last time you did a backflip into a 6 foot pile of leaves? If it was more that two weeks you need to go build one. NOW.

Anyway, I think that is enough for me. I'm looking forward to hearing all of your stories.

post on!

Oh yeah--top 5
(a bit eclectic this time)

1) Hey, Hey -- Dispatch
2)mmbop -- Hanson
3)My humps -- black eyed peas
4)Crash -- DMB
5)Banana pancakes -- Jack Johnson

miss you all

-bern

Introspection of Idyllwild

Hey you all. TASP Reunion baby! I've just stepped in as well, and seeing that I am alone (as far as I can see), I inspected the vestiges of Isaac's visit. Man that boy has been brewing up a strom in California, hasn't he? It's so interesting to see our futures unraveling, fulfilling the prophecies that Adam and Jenny made about us all. How on the first day they told us we'd be getting to know some of the most exciting people we've ever encountered, that some relationships would continue into our collegelife and adulthood. Man they were on the ball. Heraing about you guys at your respective schools is an endless source of inspiration. Whenever I'm in a flunk, feel like I can't get done what I set out to achieve, I simply just read our blog. And as you all indulge yourselves in your respective colleges, meanwhile....

Can you believe I just got out of the SAT? Those dreaded things? It actually wasn't so bad, as I had good reason to go - decided to raise my verbal. But on a more emotional level, I never thought I'd say this but, I felt so great about taking that test, waking up early, and being productive. Too many times have I woken up at 11 on weekends, waited til 1 to get moving. But you guys know what feeling I'm talking about. It helped that the weather here is so moist and autmnal; the clouds roll inhere on the mountains as we art students lurk about the Jefferson Pine Trees and breathe in the droplets that almost hover around us. This weather is so pristine now, the first day of brisk, fresh air and comfortably warm jackets and plad scarves. All that's missing are the orange/red trees from back home, in Vermont.

I've become the hippy of Idyllwild, the green, organic, earthy crunchy environmentalist with a liberal attitude and long hair. Of course I'm just in my normal state of mind and character, but I'm the only Vermonter with a Vermont paradigm, I fit quite the stereotype here. But it's a great sense of current identity, how I can change it, where I'd like to stay with it, and so on. Ironically enough, however, I've discovered a new passion most definitley in pursuit of my interdiscplinary dream career, and this discipline is Environmental Science. I have always been concerned about the Earth and it's well being, society's flaws ad how its environment is being degraded in its own way. But as soon as I started taking Environmental Science here I've gone bananas. I started an Environmental Club here to promote awareness and to address concerns of our daily practices here involving the use of natural resources, and about 1/8th of the student population signed up! I'm beginning to have screenings here of important documentaries such as "The Corporation" and "An Inconvenient Truth". being in an Arts school, I just feel this calling to help everyone here realize our relationship with the earth, considering everyone here understand and appreciates the wonderous beauty of nature and uses it to paint, to compose and play music, and everything. I think I may have found my academic niche (or, at least a fundamental root in all the disciplines I delve in), but I'm not jumping the gun just yet.

Other than that, tings here have been getting so busy. In Performance Workshop, the only required class for "Interdisciplinary Majors" or "IM's", we're doing our initia test performances. Next Tuesday me and a couple of other kids are doing a musical/dance performance depicted in the hillbilly south of the 1930's and 40's. Our goal is to start off with a Leadbelly tune called "Cotton Fields Back Home", as me and a girl sing and play the melody and another guy is playing the spoons as we're all dressed in that good ol' southern attire. Meanwhile, a life size string puppet is dancing with us and another dancer - quite the howdown. But halfway through the song that glorifies agriculture (and we have a painted field behind us with a famous quote of Woody Guthrie, "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do" written in the skyline), we switch to an amplified, hard rock White Stripes version of "Boll Weevil" a song that talks about the dustbowl and vacancy of crops. Simultaneously, the backdrop is ripped down and behind it is a sombre depiction of a city with a quote about copyright infringement and such. We're trying to make a statement about all them copyright acts, but seeing as we're all super stretched out we may not be able to get that second switch in.

Meanwhile, I'm joining the Calculus Club, College Applications are well underway (Oberlin is my dream), Painting is doing wonders for my aesthetic understanding, Parent's weekend is coming up and thus Jazz band has a concert coming up. My Jazz Band teachr is off the hook, he is so unbelievably amazing. He has played with all of them - Miles, Coltrane, Hancock, Gillespie - I mean everyone. And his inspirational presence is astounding. During our Theory classes he brings in philosphy, metaphysics and what he calls "High Math" where 1 + 1 = 3. I've been learning so much it's unbelievable. And my guitar instructor is equally as passionate about what he does. When he's not bombarding me with work, we talk and talk about all the Jazz Greats, he lecturesme on Pat Metheny. Man, this place is a trip. The people here have such a great sense of community and a vibrant attitude towards life - it might be the elevation. I know everyone already, it's really embellishing my individuality. Although I'm in a "solitude amongst others", I'm so comfrotable and within good company here I can't wait to see what happens.

But that's my life thus far here, I'm finding new friends, new ideas, new skills, new everything. And I'm still in High School. Remember when ya'll thought I was crazy in doing another year of high school?

Anyways, I hope you al are doing well. I really hope we can see each other again sometime. This next summer sounds promising to me, but we'l see.

Henrik

It has been far too long...

since I posted on this.

Seriously folks. I am beginning to think that some of us have been eaten up, chewed and digested by the monster of college life. I realize we all have things to do, but really; what's more important to your future health and happiness--physics or blogger?

Let's see some priorities people.

That said, I am proposing that we host a TASP e-reunion on the blog this weekend. All who read this should post something on the blog sometime between 12 AM Saturday morning and 12 AM Monday morning. It doesn't have to be much if you don't have time. Just a note of "hey I'm still alive" would be great. Let's see if we can hear from everybody.

As for the rest of my life;

not a lot happening in minnesota right now. This weekend is fall break (kind of like spring break except it's just sat-tues) so much of the campus is heading home. Me and a friend are going to try and make pancakes saturday morning for everyone who is still in the dorm. It's mad cold and snowing right now. I'm excited because the guys in my corridor are planning to sleep out under the wind turbine next weekend so if the weather holds it could be pretty intense.

I bought a paper shredder on monday. My life has new meaning.

Okay, I have to go--religion midterm.

miss you/hoping to hear from you all

-bern

I LOVE YOU TASPERS!!!!

I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I've been reading the blog very regularly and I miss you all!

Can we get on the reunion planning again? How does this winter break sound? (There's lots of fun to be had with snow... heehee) Henrik's place again?

<3