The Magpie Killing Field

        Another bird has gone down on the section of the lawn in Newnham's Garden that I have renamed "The Magpie Killing Field."  We're up to dead bird number four since my arrival on campus in October, and I've given up on alerting the authorities.  No one on staff seems really bothered by the handiwork of the magpies except for the guy who mows the lawns every other week or so, and he only really cares if the lawnmower finds whatevers left of the bird before he sees it and scoops it into a big black trash bag.   Regardless of how many maintainence requests are entered that mention the need for yet another victim to be removed from The Magpie Killing Field, I get the feeling that this poor guy never gets the memo in time.
       One of the perks of living in a small collegiate town that plays home to a large science based university is that the presence of dozens if not hundreds of life science students means that almost *all* the birds here that can be described as having any level of intelligence at all, have been netted and tagged.  Frequently more than once.  They bouce around on the lawns or scream from the trees with little red, yellow, orange, purble, maroon, green, or blue tags on their legs, just waiting for someone to hang out with a notepad documenting the days of their lives.  This makes naming the magpies easier.
       Purple-Blue-Yellow (colors in descending order) is a particularly nasty specimen, and has a habit of hanging out in the apple tree near The Kills, in order to scream at anyone passing by.  He even sleeps there.  Or at least seems to, because on occasion I've decided to take predigious advantage of Newnham's exceptionally liberal attitude towards lawns, and cut corners off the trails coming home at night.  Walking on the grass, and inevitably rousing his ire. 
       Green-Orange is a sweetheart in comparison.  She'll follow people from tree to tree, sort of waiting to see if you'll drop any food, and while I've caught her eating the victims on the Magpie Killing Fields, I've never actually seen her engaged in direct murder.  It could be that she doesn't have the stomach for it, or it could be that she's just happy to let others do the hardwork, while still reaping the benefit herself.  I'm also not really sure if the magpies are taking advantage of place where birds sort of go to die naturally, because it's quiet and away from most people, or if they locate sick birds and harass them across campus to the apple tree where they have some dark plot to torment them to death.  Either way, it almost always ends the same way.  Fat, happy magpies.
       If there is a plot, I blame Only-Purple and Maroon-Blue-green.  They are friends.  But only with each other.  Anything else living, including other magpies are either on the "enemy" list, or the "dinner" list.  They like to hang out together in the big poplar-looking-tree-that-isn't-a-poplar-because-there-aren't-poplars-here, and dive bomb other birds and the occassional squirrel.  I wish I could find the students who are conducting the Purple, Maroon, Blue and Green experiments or observations and explain that they ought to track both Only-Purple and Maroon-Blue-Green if they want the whole story behind these birds.  But since I have yet to see a bird actually being caught and tagged, I'm gonna go with my current understanding that science students are really smart and will someday have actual jobs, and therefore us mere mortals in the social sciences don't run into them often.   Kind of like legends or gods.  You hear about them, you see evidence of them in history books, etc.  But you never actually meet them.
       I figure a dead bird is as good a way to start 2014 as anything.  It means a) the magpies are fine, and b) that life goes on regardless of the markers and changes that we attach to it.  The universe, no matter how we try, doesn't like being put into a box.  
        Yellow-Orange-Red, maybe the oldest and scruffiest magpie that hangs out around Newnham, was still screaming at me this morning when I opened the bathroom window to air out the steam.  Either that damn bird is just *always* screaming and we just can't hear him with the window closed, or he really does hate people so much that even the idea of seeing us is scream-inducing.   
       A dead bird right now---with all the college staff gone home until the 2nd---also means one more thing.  The Magpies are gonna get to eat for DAYS.  Way longer than they normally would.  A veritable Happy New Year's feast.
     I'm gonna make a bet with myself; I'll get two extra deserts next week if that bird is still on the lawn when I get back next week.  And guess what?  I'm gonna win.

More Christmas Complications

       It's December 27th, in years past I might be taking down Christmas trees, wrapping ornaments in newspaper and lining them up in ratty cardboard boxes.  Winding lights into neat circles, and bunching tinsel into plastic bags to settle neatly underneath dust for the next 11 or so months until the sound of Christmas radio and church bells coaxes them out again.  I'd pay a bunch of Girl Scouts $10 or so to take my tree away for "recycling" and make a promise to buy cookies as soon as they come back around with their order forms and sales goals.  I'd be back at work and the last few holiday events of the season would be winding their way down, culminating in New Year's Eve parties and a long lazy January first before the new year begins it's eternal countdown to another holiday season.  The days growing first longer and then shorter.
       This year I'm sleeping in longer than I should, staying up late at night watching documentaries on Netflix, reading articles about gender differentiation and trying to wrap my brain around what the next six months of my graduate school adventure will entail.  Wiling away the post Christmas days with student loan paperwork, and almost-daily erg regimes that will undoubtedly turn out to not have been enough once the term starts and rowing picks up yet again.  
       I have to keep reminding myself that another holiday season has come and gone.  Without those annual traditions it almost doesn't feel like Christmas has come, let alone gone.  Cambridge has been a ghost town since about the 20th of December.  The students that are left either come from far enough away that they can't afford to go home for the holiday break, or for whatever reason they don't have anything worth going home to.  Some of the science students are here to run experiments with living things like rats, beetles or cell samples that need checked on daily.  But we're a small, odd group, enjoying the stark cold sunny weather and waiting for our friends to come back from where ever it is that they went to celebrate Christmas.
       Holidays are always an opportunity for me to wonder what it is that causes tension and trouble.  What flips a bland afternoon into an evening of fighting, screaming and hurt feelings?  When do you cross that line from semi-boredom to saying and doing things that you'll regret for weeks or months to come?  What turns a mildly awkward family dinner into a chance to rehash--over and over and over and over and over--bad days from years ago.  The minutes turning into hours of staring at the same ugly history.  A history that can't change because the past is what it is.  Family get-togethers mean proving loyalty.  Demonstrating that you still know what's "right" and who is "wrong."  A world in which time with friends is worth so much more than time with family, because one comes with pain, the other with laughter.
       From that perspective, a quiet Christmas in Cambridge was a Christmas devoid of expectation.  Good or bad.  There was no sickening dread in the pit of my stomach to be quenched and swallowed, and no hope to be crushed.  And I come from what could widely be considered a pretty happy family.  No one is dying of cancer, we've all managed to avoid substance abuse and most of us are employed.  I can't imagine what a Christmas would be like if there were actual problems.  Real things causing real stress.
       I like to believe that every year is a new chance to make new memories.  Enhance what is good, replace what's not.  But bit by bit, year by year, the choices we make can change or reinforce what we expect, and maybe the key to letting change in, is to let go of those expectations.  To untie the present from the past as much as one can.  We can choose to be defined by what happened before, letting old wounds fester and seep into the present.  Sometimes we can't help it.  Pain can take years to ebb into the everyday flow of life.  But it can shape us, without defining us.  It can become a part of us without controlling who we are and how we live.  That we were hurt does not need to become our identities.
        And the chance to see the motions of life from another perspective, to take a year quietly 'off' of traditions and home, can be a chance to remember that.  To remember that every day is a new chance to be not who we have always expected to be, but to be who we have always wanted to be :-)
       
       

Callie Writes a Race Review

       On December 5th, 2013 my crew--NCBC Novice Women's 1--had our last race of the season, and our last race as a crew.  Coming in a day before the end of term, I promised that I would write a race review for the NCBC website if no one else did while I was on a long weekend to Rome.
      No one did.
      So I promised I would write it "soon" if no one else did.
      Soon ended up being a couple of days ago, but I did write one.  And like most things that I write for other things, I'm also going to throw it up here, just so I have it saved somewhere in context :)

       Enjoy.

       Wednesday, December 4th, NW 1 met for a short outing.  Just one last practice outing as NW1 before Fairbairns and the end of our existence as a set crew.  The weather was perfect.  Sunny, not too cool.  The water was pristine.  Flat, even.  Empty. The most perfect rowing conditions the Cam has to offer. Basically everything that Thursday, December 5th--race day--was not.
       Thursday, December 5th, was so windy that several of the girls decided to walk from Newnham to the boathouse because they figured it might not be totally safe to cycle.  The flatwater of the Cam stirred up about as nicely as the atmosphere in the locker room when NW2 (racing in the same division as NW1) realized they were short of a rower as a lovely morning surprise.  
       Jenna screaming “Call ANYONE who has ever held a blade NOW!” was how we started out our race prep. Sarah Adams, our stroke, saved the day (it seemed) when she talked a friend who had rowed in college to join us---until that friend called back after puking.  Messages were left, hair was pulled out, madness occurred and in the end NW1’s cox, Sam Flint, threw in her sweater and donned her lycra to row for NW2, and NW2’s coach, Hayley, nabbed said sweater and pinned on a boat number as NW1’s new cox.  Already down a rower (Leanne did GOOD on breaking basically everything in her thumb except  the bone) Gabby ended up being swapped sides to Bow side (for the first time), and the footplate on seat 6--a constant culprit for needed boat repair--got re-inserted literally minutes before push off. 

       Marshaling 50+ boats on a river barely wider than an 8 is long, was everything anyone whose rowed the Cam could ever dream it might be.  Beautiful chaos.  All that was missing was an orchestra to provide a soundtrack.  Angry swans, screaming coaches, cox and near collisions galore. NW1 happily pulled off our first ever rolling start as a crew (in our last row as a crew) and off we went for 2.7 kilometers of Cam, wind, rain and then sleet down the river, under the bridge and onto the reach, with our coach Jenna, and injured teammate Leanne, cycling along.  
       Hayley took every opportunity to power 10 us up through the fabulous new cox box (somehow breaking the boat earlier in the season meant it reappeared not only fixed, but updated).  With a final time of 12:01.1, NW1 came 6th in our division, and even better than that, we managed to spin and row home without getting blown into the bank.  Not something either the boat ahead of us, or behind us, were able to manage.  By the time the afternoon races rolled around the rain had turned to solid sleet, a tree fell over and blew into the river, and hence races were cancelled.  
Overall, a very good day for Newnham novices.  We’re officially ready to keep rowing and as seniors now :)
Oh yeah,  it was basically the best time ever.

       To read this, and other Newnham College Boat Club news and race reviews, see: http://www.newnhamcollegeboatclub.co.uk/#/current-race-reviews/4569851752

I'm Here Because of Obamacare.

Okay, another blog not about the history of Cambridge, or cultural differences, or even somewhere else I visited.  I know, I know.  I’m being a bad travel guide.  The longer I live here, the more this feels like just another place that I live.  The shiny is starting to wear off the fact that sometimes I study in things that look like castles, and real life is settling back in, and settling back in hard.

Over the last week or so quite a few of my friends have been posting about how the Affordable Care Act has been impacting them, good and bad.  “Obamacare” as it is more popularly known officially becomes a thing in it’s most visible format (required insurance, and guaranteed care) Jan. 1, 2014.  The ride to this point has been a rough one.  Since barely surviving the disaster that is the Congress of the United States in 2009 and 2010, the law has been gutted to a degree.  That said, it’s key provisions remain intact.  All Americans must have health coverage--of one kind or another--medicaid can be expanded to include far more low income folks, that coverage cannot be denied or revoked when your health insurance carrier finds out you've been diagnosed with cancer, lifetime care caps are a thing of the past and the 80/20 rule means that 80% of your premium actually goes to delivering you care.

The roughly 40,000 Americans that from a variety of reports found on the CDC to CNN to the BBC, we know are dying every year because they lack basic health care, get diagnosed too late, or can’t go to a hospital until it’s too severe to treat, are going to start living longer, healthier lives.  Some big businesses will pay higher taxes if they choose not to insure employees, and many people who purchase private health insurance will either see a spike in the cost of their current insurance policy, or have to shop around to find a new policy that they prefer in their original price range. So-called "disaster policies" are a thing of the past. Your health insurance now actually covers health, not just a portion of your care after a catastrophic accident.  I, according to facebook, know a lot of people whose policies are being impacted.  And let me tell you.  They are pissed.

If I were still at home, would I be?  Maybe.  My old health insurance---the health insurance I carried since birth, funded through college, into which I poured tens of thousands of dollars, about 1/12th of my working income during my total adult life--would have doubled.  I would have had to have gone back to the calculator, figured out how to make it work, and then scrambled to find the money.  Because as an asthmatic, once I lost that policy, I would never be able to get insurance through a private policy again.  Never that is, until now.

The fact that Obamacare was being implemented before I would finish my degree and return to the United States opened the door to me to attend the University of Cambridge.  To say yes to an opportunity that I believe may greatly enhance what I can do for the world in the short time I get to be a part of this world.  I will go home, and I will buy insurance.  I’ll pick something I can afford that covers my inhaler.  I will not be charged more simply for being female, and most importantly, no one will send my form back with the phrase “denied” stamped across the front of the letter.  No one will explain to me that their corporate profit margin is more important than my ability to continue to breathe, and no one will take away that coverage after I’ve paid for it because they as a company changed their mind about their ability to insure me.

The fear of going without coverage will never dominate my life again. That was my world.  I bought employment flexibility by pouring money into a secondary health insurance.  I bought security of mind by never being a day late, by buying top ramen and rice, and riding my bicycle to work so that in the pre-Obamacare world I would always know I had the healthcare I needed to continue to be a productive member of society.  I delayed graduate school, and worked a minimum of two jobs at a time.  All because I wanted to be healthy enough to contribute.

Yes.  Some people will have to change.  Yes.  Some policies will cost more.  No.  That’s not going to last forever. No, that's not necessarily a bad thing even if it's scaring you.  Obamacare is designed to reign in health care costs over the long run by reducing emergency room visits, upping the health of our population as a whole, so we’re catching disease earlier, and treating it when it’s cheaper to treat.  Obamacare is designed to extend all our lifetimes.  And I won’t lie, if you have been so lucky to have never had to ask yourself what you would do without insurance.  So lucky to have never watched a loved one struggle with a company for life-saving treatment.  So lucky to think that the worst possible thing is an increase in insurance rates from one year to the next if you’re unwilling to change policies, then I would ask you to take off those rose colored glasses and take a look around.

Almost 50 million Americans are getting insurance for the first time.  Millions of others are like me, and are experiencing the freedom to take risks, go to school to become more qualified, apply for new jobs, that we never could have taken when our lives were governed by an insurance policy.  And try to remember, skeptics that you may be, that the day may come yet when you or a loved one is lying in a hospital bed, thanking their lucky stars, because without Obamacare, their treatment would have been denied, they would have hit their lifetime cap of care, or you might have just been eliminated from a policy, and weren’t, because Obamacare protected you--the consumer, and you, the American, and you the Human Being--because you have value and the value of a human life and opportunity should not be weighed against corporate profit and found lacking.

Even if, lets say, you NEVER would have had to have faced any of that because you are just so damn lucky, you will still be better off in a nation whose economy benefits froma healthier workforce, whose children grow up well, whose people don't live in fear, and can take this opportunity to better themselves, start businesses, take risks because they are not tied to a single employer for a single policy. You will benefit, and even if you can't see it now, you will benefit directly.

Yes, it’s easy for me to see that because I am a immediate beneficiary.  Yes, it sucks to pay a little more each month for something you are required by law to buy. Yes, sometimes it sucks to not be totally self-focused, and selfish about an industry such as healthcare. Having to think about the nation as a whole, and people who aren't as well off as you is difficult.  And yes, Obamacare will change America.  I honestly can’t wait.  As a citizen of the most inequal society that has ever existed, it’s nice to breathe the fresh air of a little change.

Christmas Reflections: NOT SAPPY.

       December 19th.
       I'm not the kind of person who counts down the days to a holiday.  Whether Christmas is in a week or a year or a month or tomorrow isn't that exciting.  Sparkling lights, ringing bells and carols are more a reminder that another year---once tiptoeing in---has inevitably slipped away.  The days after Christmas come easier to me than the days before.  The sky is lighter each day starting on the 22nd, and life's easy routines are back by the beginning of January.  Miserable drives to work in the freezing rain.  Cookie season.  Another chance to set New Year's Resolutions that I'll be ignoring within 6 weeks.  Improv classes start back up, and usually I get a cold.
       In other words, life.  Being in another place means that as of yet, my regular routines haven't been interrupted, or disrupted.  Lectures are over, but labs and libraries and study rooms are still open.  There's more for me to read in the next four weeks than I think anyone is capable of reading in a lifetime.  The weather's gotten milder.  Sunny every day for the last week.  But other than the fact that the in-town parking lot now has the "full" sign lit up every day, and the crowd back in the colleges is looking more and more international as everyone wanders home, not much else has changed.
     Here and there you'll find a Christmas tree, and some shop windows have strung up lights.  But in comparison to the virtual Christmas Cornucopia of Capitalism that invades every aspect of my life starting in October in the US, this is pretty tame.  Almost September-level for what I consider my culturally appropriate Christmas-time-meter at home.
     And honestly, I don't at all know that I mind.  Holidays are complicated little messes for my family at the best of times, and I would be lying if I said in any way shape or form that this year represented a "best of times" for us as a group.  All roosters come home to nest, and the diaspora that hits even easy happy families as adulthood hits the kids, is in full effect.  Holidays, a chance to have your loyalties vetted, to see where you stand and they are more complicated than ever.  Siblings, parents, my grandmother who probably doesn't know or care that it's Christmas anyway.  Siblings partners families meaning we balance when and where and how on top of a rattly cage that can barely hold all our emotions in anyway.  
     I tend to grit my teeth and bear it.  Doing "Christmas" because I have younger siblings who deserve a family at the holidays.  Who still haven't spread their wings to fly, and for whom having that picture, that Christmas tree and string of lights, with gifts and a train underneath, still seems to mean something.  Who deserve to have a holiday even if I wish I were making time and a half pay washing dishes or playing at data entry or whatever else it is I do to get by with each passing year.
       But this year I don't have a choice.  The cost of a plane ticket home over the holidays would have been more than my entire cost of living for the next three months.  That's what happens when you move half way across the world.  And while I miss the chances to sip hot coffee with my friends, to wander through the zoo with families and their kids, marveling at the lights, to write a ridiculous Christmas letter about how I am still single, still happy and forever childless, I think a quiet Cambridge Christmas, spent wrapping my brain around the idea of gendering epistemologies, is exactly what I need.

   Merry Christmas ya'll--from Callie, the Grinch.

The Colosseum: Callie Consults Wikipedia.

       Rome in December is a balmy 65 degrees.  In the sun.  After a cold wet British fall that even puts Portland to shame in terms of long grey days and endless drizzly nights, the idea of sun at all is sort of mind blowing.  The idea of sun all day, or even standing in line in the sun, is sort of like the idea of a space elevator. AKA, that's nice, but come back to reality.  All of which made standing in line, outside, in the sun, for tickets to peruse the largest bit of Roman architecture still "standing" (ish) almost unbelievable.  The Colosseum is like Big Ben.  These things are real, but in a far-away-I'll-never-see-them since.  Having seen both within two and a half months is disconcerting.  At best.  For 12 Euro (18ish dollars) you can tour not only the Colosseum, but several other historical sites as well.  For 18 Euro (more dollars) you can have a guide.  12 Euro was pushing it.  No guide.  That meant that when I finally got back into the hostel last night all I wanted to do was read about ancient Rome.  So I did.  And now you are the beneficiaries.  Concocted from Wikipedia, signs on site and helpful things I gleaned from trying to steal into other people's tours, my little sum-up of the Colosseum, aka the largest-sports-arena-ever-known-to-man.      
      The Roman Colosseum, perhaps more correctly referred to as the Flavian Amphitheatre, is to this day, according to Wikipedia (well known as the font of all knowledge) the largest amphitheatre in the world.  At one time the massive structure played host to crowds of between 50,000 and 80,000 per event.  Originally the wooden floor of the arena/stage could be removed and the empty pit below flooded so that the emperor Titus (heir to Vespasian) could watch elaborately staged "sea battles" in addition to the gladiatorial combat and wild animal hunts.  Built initially in just over ten years, the Colosseum was upgraded, repaired, remodeled, and re imagined by Roman Emperors for over 500 years before finally falling into disuse, disrepair and starting to crumble in the 7th century A.D.
       Today the Colosseum is the largest single structure left from Rome in the world.  It towers meters above the tourists wandering outside, and is in a perpetual state of repair.  Scaffolding hugging the exterior of the building, and tan men with bright yellow hard helmets and orange vests occasionally appearing in the midsts of the crowds of onlookers and tourists who wander through by the thousands day after day.  Originally over 150 feet tall, and over 600 feet in diameter, the Colosseum is to this day a sight to behold.  Over a thousand years of earthquakes, political dynasty shifts and scavenging have left the building a hull of it's former self.  Originally adorned in white marble, with frescos decorating hallways and statues lining the arched exterior, today brick shows through.  The wooden floor of the arena is long gone, and the tunnels below it were turned into graves, and then emptied out by archaeologists seeking out history.  Recycled from the heart of the Roman Empire's entertainment the Colosseum has been a church, a castle, a quarry.  Held stables, and tool sheds, and monks and squatters.  With Rome collapsing around it the Colosseum stands even today as a reminder of what once was.  A visual note that empires do not last forever, and that when the mighty fall their bones are ground to dust at the same rate as those of beggars.
       Despite popular belief, the Colosseum was not actively used to martyr Christians.  There were indeed executions staged there, but surprise surprise, public executions were not what drew Romans by the thousands to sit on the marble steps, eat hot food sold by vendors who had access to ovens below, and drink wine---allotted by pre-given tokens.  Romans came to watch sport.  Teams of gladiators battling for favor, victory and life.  Hunters (men and even sometimes women in the later years) chasing prey that ranged from rabbits to tigers through elaborate sets meant to imitate the natural habitat of the hunted.  Executions served to pass the time.  When sets were being removed, or lunch was being served and people might be wandering about.  In other words, they wanted to keep things busy, but certainly didn't want to spoil the main attractions.
       Standing in the Colosseum it's hard to imagine the might of the Roman Empire.  A people who before electricity and steam engines and penicillin, could erect this structure in barely 10 years.  A people whose iron fisted rule governed the extent of the known world, and whose Republic inspired the idea of people as equals for generations to come, and who even then, fell into despotism and decay.  The child of an empire, raised in it's shadow and beholden to it's glory, I find the idea that empires rise, fall and then fade into antiquity one that is humbling. Rome, a modern metropolis situated in the midst of the ruins of an empire long faded, is a reminder that we can neither imagine the world behind us, or the world to come.  Time is a bitter mistress and in the end none can stray from her steady gaze.  Not emperors and not street urchins.
       From the Colloseum, it's a short walk up the hill, through a series of arches, to where the emperor's palace once stood.  Standing on the edge of the hill, with the sun settling over the western sky, it's easy to imagine that one day this bustling city will shift and change unimaginably. Harder is to have any idea of what it might someday look like.
      On a lighter note, guess what I saw yesterday?  Also: the icecream here is good.

Jelly Babies, Stress Eating and Rome.

       Jelly Babies are what power the Newnham Women's Boat Club.  So I have been told.  They are small, powdered sugar covered chewy candies with oddly soft centers.  They come in a variety of flavors (aka colors) and they have names.  The back of the package tells you what to call them and provides fun facts about their individual personalities.  As a person who is capable of anthropomorphizing everything, this is a candy which suits me well.  It was also the only thing available at the airport boots Sunday morning for under two quida  bag, and as I am incapable of flying without engaging in a fair amount of stress eating first, had gotten myself a bag of Jelly Babies, and was picking out all the "Bubbles" (aka yellow-flavor) first when it occurred to me--as it does every time I fly--that I was not only going to eventually die, but that "eventually" could be sometime within the next four hours, and that my death might in fact be preceded by the most terrifying three minutes of my life as the plane fell from the sky.
       Logic isn't something I excel at when airplanes are concerned, and the older I get the more it becomes apparent that I'm going to keep flying, and keep traveling, and that flying is really the most sensible way to simply and affordably get from place a to place b and still maintain any semblance of a job.  So with t-30 minutes to boarding I moved onto "Bumpers" (aka orange-flavor).  I always feel bad eating Bumpers, because Bumpers is the drummer in the Jelly Babies band, and without a drummer, what's a band?  Bumpers is also the second best color/flavor and the least sticky of all the Jelly Babies.
       Moving on from Bumpers to Baby Bonnie--pink--I kept glancing at the arrival-departure board.  Ryanair does not apparently announce their gate numbers until 15 minutes before boarding.  This seems to be a combination of hoping that people wont' gather at the gate, and honest-to-god-maybe-actually-not-knowing.  We were the 9:10am Stansted, London to Ciampano (rhymes with champion) Rome flight.  Two hours, 17 minutes and approximately 4 cups of sugars worth of Jelly Babies stress eating from me standing on the actual European mainland and chalking the number of contents I've had my boots on up to four.
       North America was fun.  I think.  Having been born there I don't actually remember my first day, but I imagine that it was traumatic and engaging.  India (asia) blew my mind.  Africa humbled me and gave me a good taste of my own uppity-ness and weakness.  Europe?  No idea yet.
       As to whether or not the UK is a part of the European continent proper I have no idea.  Maybe?  Maybe not?  Depends who you ask?  Italy?  Solidly.  For sure.  But for a mainland European nation, it reminds me oddly of the center of Guatemala City.  Except that here I have no idea what's going on.  And it's colder.  Than Guatemala.  Warmer though, than the UK.  To date (in the one day I've been here) we've seen the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Forum Romanum, the Arch of Constantine, Tajan's Column, The Arch of Titus, The Column of Marcus Aurelius, several musems and a shit ton of tourist shops full of the same magnets (only 1 Euro) and bonafide Italian scarves (made in China).
       The list of things yet today before I buy myself another bag of Jelly Babies or Mars Bars at the Ciampano airport in anticipation of my next stress-eating adventure, is enormous.
       In the meantime I actually miss my camera for the first time since the little lens on it froze up, and regret dropping my phone---as minus both of those things,  I have no camera at all--not a problem in Cambridge, but apparently I like making facebook albums of pretty things more than I'd thought I did.  Hopefully since I can't take another photo of a fountain that's been photographed a thousand times, I'll just appreciate seeing the fountain for realzies even more.
       Well, as they say here Ciao, and stay away from Big Heart.  He plays bass and tastes like cough syrup.

....And catch!: Why I Will Always Row

I remember the moment I fell in love with crew.  The sport.  It was a November morning in 2006.  I was 20, the temperatures had been dropping since Halloween and we couldn’t muster enough people to run either a full women’s or a full men’s 8. So we were running a mixed crew. Standing at the edge of campus, waiting for a van to Hagg Lake, one of the guys was walking up and down a strip of lawn, listening to the crunch as the ice crystals shattered under his tennis shoes.  We could see our breath on the cold morning air and I remember rubbing the newly formed blisters on my hands.

One.  Two.  Three. Four.  One.  Two.  Three. Four.  Five.  Four on my right hand, five on my left. My brother/Irish-twin was being non-communicative. Fairly normal (and totally fair) for him on a morning when he'd been pestered by me non-stop.

It was pitch black, four forty three am.  No moon and a the sky was like dark velvet, peppered with diamonds of light.  29 degrees fahrenheit.  One degree colder and we could have crawled back into our warm beds and slept until class.  Instead we stumbled blindly into the van and dozed through our 15 minute ride from town to the lake.  Winding further and further away from city lights. Past the herd of elk that while still exciting would become a daily sight for us, and then up and across the dam.  The dark water stretching it seemed like forever into the hills.

In it’s early years, and maybe today--I don’t know--Pacific University’s rowing program was about as hipster as anything comes.  

We did not have a boathouse.  We had a rack, and a railroad storage container.  We did not have a dock.  We had mud and shoes we didn’t give a damn about.  Our equipment, boats, oars, etc. was ALL from the 1970’s.  Beauty and The Beast, our two eights were wooden framed monsters weighing between 300 and 400 pounds each.  The internal ribbing visible.  No deck to stand on.  Just a couple of wooden slats near the foot stretcher and under the seat.  I’m not sure how many hours of my life I’ve spent sanding down the wooden bellies of those boats--and our four, The Andrea--so that they could be re-sealed, or helping with what seemed like an endless chain of patches and new paint on the fiberglass hulls, but we stayed afloat as a team, financially and literally, together.

That morning I was bow.  The shortest person (save the coxswain) who’d showed up.  By the time we’d broken the ice, waded into the water carrying our several hundred pound boat, and locked our oars into place I was freezing.  By the time I hauled ass into the boat (after pushing us off) I’d stood in thigh deep icy water for what seemed like an eternity and couldn’t feel my legs.  Even the edges of my orange shorts were dripping and freezing to my thighs.

There’s a sort of magic.  When the world gets cold enough.  When everything seems to hold it’s breath.  Even the air settles, still and quiet and unmoving.  Letting the surface of the water turn into a perfect reflection the sky.  The darkness was so complete that the outline of the trees turned the valley and the lake into an oval of darkness.  Peppered with light.  Stars above.  Reflections of stars in the perfectly still water below.  The only sound was the rattle of our slides and the steady clips of our oars locking into place, followed by the tap into the water.  Breath, slide, tap.  Breath, slide tap.  Our trail marring the surface of the universe itself. Pushing stars to tumble and reflect.  Spiralling off into the darkness of the water, before reforming in our wake.  Breath, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.  As we cycled from rolling fours up to sixes up to all eights, our rhythm never changed.

Breathe, slide, tap.

Suspended as though between worlds.  Sweat gathering under our fleece jackets even as our breath froze on our lips and noses, we hit a moment that lasted an eternity where nothing else mattered.  Just the steady strain of our legs, pulling our boat through the belly of existance.  Nothing in our minds except the pace of the person in front, and the perfect synchronicity.

Breathe, slide, tap.

I remember that moment.  “Easy there.”  Pausing at hands away, our oars suspended not over water, but over the depths of eternity, our boat just cruising into nothingness.  “And down.”   We shattered whole worlds when our blades hit the water.  Skimming along and breaking apart stars and endless night and even the patterns our breath made in the air shifted.  But we’d held it, for a moment/eternity.  We’d been a crew instead of eight people in a boat.  Each a part of something greater.  Connected inexorably to each other through the rhythm of our blades and the laces of our shoes.     I can’t say that moment lasted or the outing was perfect.  It wasn’t.  

Far from it in fact.  

Seven wouldn’t set the boat and three kept catching crabs. Like all outings ever, other people's flaws were easier for me to see than my own--even though I know they were there. But we had our perfect moment.  We’d not just been a crew.  

We’d been a crew cradled outside of time.  

I was hooked.  I knew, even as I jumped out of the bow of the boat in our morning parking ritual to keep us from hitting ground, that I’d get to a point where I couldn’t count the number of mornings I stood in ice-cold water, waiting for people to number off and clamber in. As the sun crept over the horizon, shattering the perfection of the illusion of being outside of everything, I knew it wouldn't be the last dawn I'd watch break over the hills surrounding the lake.  I was short, and athleticism was not “my thing” by a long shot.  
 
But rowing was more than a sport.

It was a part of who I was becoming, and who I will always be.  Something I remembered again, for a moment/eternity in the afternoon sun on the Cam when the world shrank to the back of the person in front of me and our blades dipped into the afternoon water in perfect rhythm. Breath, slide, tap. Breathe, slide, tap.  Breathe, slide, tap.

When our motley group of eight girls in a boat became--for that moment/eternity--a crew.

The Man in Black

       Admittedly, my original blog post plan was something like 1-2 photo blogs per written blog.  Mostly because it's a LOT easier to wander around town with a camera than it is to think through saying something mildly intelligent, structure it, write it, edit it and then wonder if you've inadvertantly plagarized anyone/anything.  That said, my camera broke on the very horrible, no good, shitty bad day two weeks ago.  And then on the Sunday following I dropped my phone (which also had a camera) so there are no more pictures.  At least for a while.  As a direct result of there being no more pictures, there will also be no more picture blogs for a bit.  Meaning that I'll be posting blogs sort of based on whenever it is during the week/month that I feel sufficiently self absorbed enough to sit down and write 500ish to 700ish words about Callie and Callie being in Cambridge.
       Apparently today is one of those days.
       One of the things that I am learning about myself by being in Cambridge, and really just outside of the United States of A as a whole is that I am utterly and completely "American."   And not just in the sense that yes, I am one of 953.7 million people born into one of 35 countries sitting squarely on either the North or South American continent.  No.  I am American in that 1950's, blonde, blue-eyed, stoked about the space program sort of way.  I am an apologist for the biggest war machine the world has ever seen, and simultaneously confused--on an emotional, not intellectual level--as to why people hate 'us.'  Yup.  From "Leave it to Beaver" all the way up to "Breaking Bad" I am a fan.  American Camelot all the way through to dystopian dream.
       That said, one of my solidly American habits is an obsession with Johnny Cash.  I do not use the word "obsession" lightly.  I. Love. Johnny. Cash. 
      And by "I, Love. Johnny. Cash." What I mean is that I FREAKING LOVE JOHNNY CASH AND ALMOST ALL THE MUSIC HE EVER WROTE AND/OR PERFORMED. 
       As an artist--just to clarify. 
       Johnny Cash is in many ways an emblematic icon of America and everything she stands for.  He struggled his entire life with the darker side of himself.  Sometimes turning to drugs, sometimes to alcohol and sometimes to God to quell his inner demons.  Despite never serving a prison sentence himself, Johnny Cash identified strongly with men who would never walk free.  Singing concert after concert in prison cafeterias and writing or covering songs such as "Mercy Seat" and "Folsom Prison Blues" Cash walked a line (pun intended) between the socially acceptable, what he should say, what he would say, and those inner demons that never slept.
       For a person who likes to anthropomorphize her desk, it's not a hard leap for me to decide that Cash's music is so powerful precisely because he struggled so deeply.  It's that struggle that I think echoes through "God's Gonna Cut You Down" "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and Cash's last recorded song--a cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt."  Normally, I can listen to Johnny Cash songs (on youtube, because I'm just that good at maintaining a library of music) with limited negative impact.
       However.  "Sunday Morning Coming Down" listened to first thing on a Sunday morning is the best way I can think of to blow a whole day.  Just gone.  From the first stanza where Cash infers the view of an alcoholic (beer for breakfast, and one more for desert) I'm stuck.  Wondering and thinking about what it is that we're all up to on this comfortably warm rock hurtling through space.  From there I'll usually start wondering what significance anything has--if not social--and how it is we manage to assign value to anything.  And then I start to think about what makes me really happy--being around friends whom I can trust implicitly.  Then I realizing I chose to move away from a very solid group of such friends, maybe the first group of such friends whom I hope to know for life.  Friends who are currently chilling out on the other side of the comfortably warm rock we call home that is hurtling through space at speeds that the human mind can barely comprehend.
      Then I think about the scale of the earth in comparison to the sun.
      Then I think about the scale of the sun in comparison to the galaxy.
      Then I'm toast.  Like at that point I've broken my brain for the day.  Just done.  Usually I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.  Because it seems as interesting and meaningful as anything else if all context is taken into consideration. It's certainly more meaningful than my homework, and decidedly more meaningful than my problems.  Which when compared to the cosmic time scale of the universe, have no meaning at all. At some point the sheer scale of the EVERYTHING is the most unutterably overwhelming sensation I think people can experience.  Particularly when held in context with Johnny Cash soulfully singing about heroin addiction and the regret of a life not lived well.
       That's usually when I revert to watching YouTube videos of Mr. Rogers neighborhood to remind myself that the shit we care about matters.
      Even if it only matters because we have decided it does.  And maybe it matters even more, because it's what we've decided matters.
       Either way, it makes the headcold that I'm rapidly developing seem suddenly far less impactful on life, the universe and everything in general, than I would normally--had I not listened to "Sunday Morning Coming Down."
It's a great song.  Listen to that and then "Hurt."  And yes.  It's okay to cry.

I promise in my next blog to be more descriptive about Cambridge :)

An Evening on Broadway: Callie Reviews a Show.

I've been seeing some shows around town by writing reviews for the The Cambridge Student. It's a good gig. I get to see performances I normally never would b/c being broke means no going out to things that require tickets. Unless tickets for free can be acquired. But like all good writing gigs, I get edited. I liked this review. A lot. It got edited. A lot. So I'm posting it here as a blog entry. Unedited.

Meet "Callie the Reviewer."

Maybe it was the weather, or the stars, or 4 hours in a bus in London traffic after the least productive day of my as of yet very short Cambridge career, or a broken camera, or being called names viea facebook message.  But by the time I walked into Trinity Chapel two minutes before An Evening On Broadway by the Cambridge Pops Orchestra began, I was shivering, starving and ready to burst into tears.  Not the best mood to start a review in.  By a LONG shot.  I was prepared to be disappointed.  Because EVERYTHING on Friday had been disappointing.

And then, barely two minutes in, an energetic, engaged, tap-dancing Henry Jenkinson (SUCH an expressive performer and clear vocalist) sang the words “Outside it’s winter...but in here?  Here it’s beautiful…..even the orchestra is beautiful”

And damn it, he was right.  

From the first burst of the organ, to the colorful witch hats, to a bright orange boa, to the violins, violas and trumpets, it was beautiful….and that was before they’d even really gotten started on the evening.  Ranging across the decades and styles the compositions chosen were a showcase of Broadway’s best--even if they were not all the ‘classics’ we are so used to hearing.  The arrangement was both smart (drawing the audience in) and fun.  Bright and vivacious the conductor Simon Nathan wasted no time getting started, and it was clear from the moment he walked into the room, that he’ll have a career in music if he wants one.  His personality shines through his selections and the verve with which he handles his orchestra and choir demonstrates his skill and confidence.  Eight soloists soared (with the help of a microphone) over the orchestra and choir.  

Sam Oladeinde is a man with stage presence.  Also: he can dance.

Bethany Partridge, and Hetty Gullifer, two very contrasting voices, were showstoppers.  Each in her own way, and her own right.

The applause lasted 5 minutes before an encore was called.

And oh what an encore.

By the time I walked back out into the cold, I was no longer hungry or cold or even angry at anything.  I was on cloud nine.

The worst thing about this preformance?  They only did it ONCE. I CANNOT GO AGAIN TOMORROW OR SUNDAY OR THE NEXT DAY. OR EVER AGAIN.

Cambridge?  Send them on tour.  They deserve a larger audience and a bigger space with better acoustics.

10 stars.

Or 11.

Hell.  42 freaking stars.

This rocked.

And Mr. Nathan?  You bet your buttons I’m buying tickets ahead of time to ANYTHING you conduct.  Because you know what?  Your orchestra?  They are god damn beautiful.  In every way.

Callie and the Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad Day.

       The nature of life is that there are a lot of bad days.  We're essentially really really really smart monkeys living within a complex social and economic structure that we depend on because our preferred/required habitats have been niched to the point of non-existence in the natural world.  We fuck each other over, starve each other to death, kill each other en-masse, beat the crap out of our young, and generally make life miserable.  Every.  Single.  Day.  All because we're all sort of scared we won't get enough to eat, crave control and desperately need to be loved and valued.  And because significance is the one thing we can never really believe we have in the grand scheme of the universe once we actually start to contemplate the scale of it all.  Or if we're left alone for too long.
      In light of that over-arching reality, Friday, November 8th, 2013, was actually a pretty good day for me.  From my limited personal perspective, constrained by my ongoing delusion that I am the center of the Universe (at least as it pertains to me) and that the comparison of my suffering to others is semi pointless as I cannot possibly really empathize with them in any real way, Friday, November 8th, 2013 was a fucktastically craptastic day.  In every way possible, short of a relative dying of a sudden heart attack.
       From that very limited perspective, it was a Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad day with exactly two bright spots.  Each of which lasted less than an hour.  I started my Terrible, Horrible, Shitty, No Good, Awful, Very Bad Day 12ish hour before Friday actually began with a minor social disappointment on Thursday.  One of those times when you suddenly realize you are maybe not as cool as you wish you were, or when you suddenly realize that you and another person are NOT on the same page.  And that because you are NOT on the same page, you've likely made people very uncomfortable.  Which is awesome.
      NOT.
      So Friday morning I was already a little sluggish, a little sheepish and feeling a bit put off by the Universe in General.  That was before I woke up.  At 7:02am.  I should note here that I had a non-refundable, non-transferable bus ticket to go to London that was scheduled for exactly 7:28am.  At a location that is (by foot) about 35 minutes away from where I live.  The resulting stumble out of bed, into clothes and towards the door meant that Callie did not shower, Callie did not eat and Callie forgot her actual wallet.  She brought her old wallet.  The one that stuff falls out of, and that she had a few things in, but notably not cash.  Yay step one.  I took my bike, locked it at the Downing Site and then ran to catch my bus.  Which I reached just as it pulled out.  First (of two) small victory of the day: I got a window seat.  First victory soured: said window seat was under an air-conditioning vent that was stuck on high.  I froze my ass off while reading Gender Trouble by Judith Butler for the next 2 hours.
      London was everything I'd imagined.  Cold.  Wet.  Confusing.  Ancient.  Modern.  Cosmopolitan.  Entertaining.  Kinda like New York, but Not.
       And expensive.  Particularly for a person without everything they need in their wallet.  Traveling one of my most favorite things to do is to just sort of pick a direction and walk.  Just to see.  What are the stores, the little hole-in-the-walls.  Who is driving by.  It's a good strategy.  In a city where it doesn't rain.  All the time.  Every day.  All day long.  I'm from Portland.  I should have been prepared.  But alas, in my stumble out the door and towards the stairs I'd pulled on a cotton jacket.  I had an umbrella.  But not a real coat, and certainly not the kind of coat tat keeps one happy and warm when walking through 40 degree rain all day long.
       I did see Buckingham Palace, and the Halls of Justice, and a cool little market thing.  I walked through a park and even bought some postcards and stamps at a post office where my Visa worked.  It was at Buckingham Palace that my little Canon Powershot finally kicked the bucket, and somewhere between there and the Victoria Tube station that my University ID card (also known as the key to my house, my library card and my meal ticket) mysteriously disappeared.  But on I persevered.  This was London, I'm an American, and Yes is a much much much much better answer EVERY TIME than no.
       Keep walking?  Yes.
       Look at the Thames?   Yes.
       Stare into a coffee shop dreaming of food?  Yes.
       Check my facebook messages and email only to continue a non-productive semi-painful argument with a dear friend/relative?  Hell Yes.
       Yes.  Yes. Yes.  I'd actually come to London to see a cousin whom I last saw when I was 11 or 12.  We were going to meet at 2:30.  But the Tube had a hiccup, and our hour long meeting turned into a rushed 20 minutes in a Starbucks.
       That 20 minutes was the second bright spot.  And it was a good bright spot.  I am occasionally amazed at the intelligence and talent of people I am related too.  It is awesome.
      Then I caught a bus.  That got stuck in traffic for four hours.
       Four.  Hours.
       By the time I pulled into campus, my phone was out of battery (and credit), I was sopping wet, freezing and mad at the world (should not have read Carol Gilligan all the way back) and ready to bawl.  But I'd committed to reviewing an orchestral piece.  And failed to invite a friend.  So I gave the second ticket away, loved the show and went home (with no uni-card) to no food (hadn't gone shopping) and a bit of mail letting me know that a package I'd been really really looking forward to was going to cost me 50 UK Pounds to collect.
       Because apparently 10 year old cowboy boots need a helluva tax.
       And oh, then Sunday I broke my phone.

Today (Tuesday) is as of yet, significantly better.  I rowed a 1:49 500 meter for NWBC NW1 and even if I am socially awkward, phone-less, camera-less, uni-card-less, antagonizing to my relatives/friends, cold, tired, hungry and can't have my cowboy boots, Friday is over.

And you know what?  Even though there won't be a blog with pictures again for a bit, I never have to live that Friday again.

Rock on.

     

Newnham College

       Named after Newnham Village, Newnham College was the second of Cambridge's 31 Colleges to admit women.  It was established in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick and Millicent Garret Fawcett.  Many of the lanes and buildings in and around the college are named in their honor. 

       Henry Sidgwick, originally a fellow at Trinity College--one of Cambridge's oldest--was known as a mover and shaker, giving up  his fellowship at Trinity in a dispute after refusing to take an oath of faith to a God he didn't believe in.  Henry Sidgwick spent his life challenging University policies (including that which kept women from attending the University proper) and legend has it that some of his peers coined the term "Sidgwickedness" in reference to his antics and sense of mischief.  

       Originally a single house, where rooms were rented out to young women under the supervision of Anne Clough (who never attended secondary school or college herself) Newnham was a response to the overwhelming demand for accommodation near the University after women's lectures were begun in 1870.  By 1875 Newnham's first building--Sidgwick Hall--had been constructed, and the archetict Basil Champney's was in the process of designing what today makes up the bulk of Newnham's campus.  A series of graceful Queen Anne Style red brick buildings linked together by Europe's second longest indoor corridor---so that young women studying would not have traipse out of doors to get from their rooms to their meals to some of their courses.  

       Newnham is also home to one of the most extensive College Garden's in Cambridge, in addition to a beautiful historical library that is a protected site.  Said library has an extensive collection, and many alcoves for study and work---a vestige of days when female students were not allowed in the Main University Library, and needed separate resources of their own.  Newnham even has a series of buildings which once housed science labs for women studying who were not allowed in dept. laboratories.  Today this space, fittingly titled "the old labs' is used mainly for performance.

       It wouldn't be until 1948 that women gained full acceptance at Cambridge (Oxford admitted women in full in 1920) and as late as 1921 male undergraduates destroyed an ornamental gate at Newnham in celebration of their "victory" when women campaigned for, but were denied, full admittance to the University.  Today Newnham is one of three remaining all-female colleges not only in Cambridge, but in all of the UK.  Lucy Cavendish and Murray Edwards make up the triad of women's only colleges at the University of Cambridge.

       Today Newnham is home to approximately 400 undergraduate students, 150 graduates, and 70 academic staff.  The college fields a competitive crew team, and has sent rowers onto compete in the Olympics.  Women at Newnham participate in a variety of extracurricular activities, including a termly lecture series organized by students and share in chapel and music services at the nearby Selwyn College.  Considered one of Cambridge's "new colleges" Newnham graduates include Emma Thompson, Mary Beard and Ruth Cohen.  The College has an active and engaged alumna society that frequently hosts events on the college campus for current Newnham students, or "Newnhamites" as they are fondly referred to within the walls of the college.    
       Newnham students pursue degrees across all academic fields, from science and engineering to literature, sociology, art and music, and at all levels from first undergraduate through to PhD or even post-doctoral fellowships.  Each spring Newnham provides students with hands on opportunities to present and share research through a graduate fair--designed to both expose undergraduates to the opportunities awaiting them, and to give Newnham's vibrant graduate community a chance to practice the presentations that will in part earn them their degrees from Cambridge University.
       

       Academic life at Newnham is managed through the Junior, Middle and Senior Common Rooms.  Each of which provides meeting space, study space and events for the students and fellows which they serve.  Events such as Formal Halls frequently extend to include individuals from all walks of college life.  Newnham is also known for it's support of students pursuing music in addition to their other work.  Providing ample opportunity and even some limited funding to students who wish to continue pursuing an instrument or vocal instruction through the University Music Dept.  Less well advertised, although perhaps occassionally capable of also being heard throughout the halls of Newnham are the Newnham Nuns.  The College's renowned drinking society.
Less important to the general history of Newnham College, but seared forever into my memory is this tree and this lawn.  It is where I watched the slow degredation of a pigeon's body over the course of six days.  Six days during which I was exceptionally vocal about the state of the bird, it's location and suggestions as to an appropriate course of action that could be taken at the Porter's Lodge, or P'Lodge, the general entrance to the College, where students keep their Pigeon Holes (mail slots) and interaction between Newnham College and the general public ostensibly begins and ends.                    

Upon admittance to a program within Cambridge University students applications are forwarded onto the 31 colleges for consideration.  All students are promised at least one offer of placement froma  Cambridge College, however if you turn down your primary offer, you may not be given a second.  Students have the opportunity to rank their first two choices on their application. Yours truly knew nothing about the Colleges, nor the ranking system and as a result ended up in Newnham either through blind luck or simple happenstance.

       Living in an all-female environment takes my last job (for Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington) and makes the gender breakdown there seem absolutely diverse.  While the general subset of human knowledge present on the internet seems to agree that gender segregated environments foster educational attainment in girls aged 13-17, I'm not sure that it extrapolates to people in their late twenties to early thirties.  However, since my program (MPhil in Gender Studies) is one that has essentially self-selected to be over 90% female, that's a hypothesis that I get to suss out personally.  I'll let you know.  I will admit that I am certainly far more likely to wander around the halls of the college barefoot and in my pajamas than I did as an undergraduate where there were (GASP) boys.   That said, my general level of personal shame drops a few notches every year, so while I might be able to chalk tht up to a gendered environment, I might also be able to chalk that up to "Callie has gotten older, realized more thoroughly that we're all just biological organic goo smeared on a rock, and gives less of a shit about the little stuff." 

All that said, Newnham seems to be a good fit for me.  Everyone is either nice, or I haven't figured out how to read British-not-super-niceness and as long as you are competent enough to figure out your own problems (there is a lot of hand wringing if you need help) it's an easy place to get people to slowly come around to solving those problems if you can provide clear easy steps and an understanding of what went wrong and why.  If you are patient.  Patience is key.  Housekeeping does leave mildly passive aggressive notes whenever something is found to be out of order and the cleaner comes to the house I am living in at 8am---making morning prep either early or awkward.  (In 10 years no one besides me has brought this to the attention of housekeeping.  They claim that means it's not a problem.  I claim it means they haven't put enough pushy US citizens into this house in the last 10 years).  

       One way, or another, Newnham is "home" for the next 8-10 months.  And it's another reminder to me that "home" is not a static place, thing or idea.  Home can move with you, or not.  Or bits and pieces of home can come and bits and pieces can stay.  Our ancesters, unless we are grossly misled by the historical record, didn't really do a whole lot of picking up and moving half way around the world.  So it is up to us, in our vague, odd modern epoch, to create new definitions of "home" and new forms of "community" that stretch beyond geographic boundaries in many cases.  We get to relearn what it means to be happy.  What it means to be connected, and what it means to be whole in a wide open world of uncertainity.

       Good luck on your quest.  Whatever it may be.

      Much of the information gathered for this post was gleaned from walking tours of Newnham provided during Freshers Week, the venerable Wikipedia, signs in and around campus, and of course the official website of Newnham College.