fuerza

Fascinating Story of Environmental Injustice

Native Americans, racism, the Mob, lead poisoning, strange cancers, undeclared Superfund site, Ford: sound intriguing?

Read it and weep.
http://toxiclegacy.northjersey.com/

And then make a small gesture:
http://www.change.org/petitions/protect-the-ramapough-mountain-indian-tribeclean-up-the-ringwood-superfund-site

Summery (sic)

It’s been a great summer up in Boston; I’m currently on my way home and I’m sad to be leaving. Especially since there are still so many things left unexplored. The better you know a place, the more things you realize there are to do. But it will be great to spend some time with the fam, some friends & take a break before things get heinously busy again. Part of me is ready to be done with college: I’m past the point where getting dressed up in ridiculous costumes to greet freshmen or sitting around playing frisbee have much appeal. The other part of me is terrified: there are still so many classes I want to take, internships I want to do, professors & friends I want to know better, research I could do. qué será será though, I really need to calm down about everything.  

Anyway, here’s a brief retrospective of the summer: goals vs. what actually happened. 

1. Have a cool internship

Check. Working with Cultural Survival was really great and I’m going to miss them tons. I’m thinking of coming back to help out in the fall if some other plans fall through.  

2. Read a lot. 

Check. 33 books and counting. 

3. Learn another language!

This goal failed epically. I have no idea when I thought I would have the time to do this. This was partly me thinking it would be cool to study Portuguese again and partly this one week where I decided I should learn a language my ancestors spoke. I decided Hungarian would be cool. There is a basic Hungarian course downloaded into my iTunes. However, I still speak 0 words in Hungarian. 

4. Go on a hiking trip.

While I did finally get around to exploring the Fells, a nature reserve right next to Tufts, I never made it on a backpacking trip or anything more extended than a long walk in the woods. I did however, travel home on 3 separate weekends, to Western Massachusetts for a family party, to Falmouth, MA/Tiverton, RI for my internship and to Nantucket. Not to mention getting to know Boston & Cambridge better. And I went on an epic 30 mile bike ride to the North Shore to work at a wedding. So not a terrible summer for adventuring. 

5. Drink at a rooftop bar.

Boston has a lot of really cool rooftop or patio bars. Never made it to any of em. 

6. Learn to Dance

Despite making it to several “Salsa Abajo las Estrellas” events, I still am a pitiful salsa dancer. At this point, I think the only thing that will really redeem this would be to end up in a serious relationship with an extremely patient Latin American dancer. Which seems rather unlikely at present. I also never made it to any of the African Dance classes at the Dance Complex that I had been dying to go to.  

7. Grow vegetables.

I found some free vegetables in the street once, and was going to have a small garden except the plants died on a hot weekend when I was home. Oops. 

8. Be economically self sufficient. 

This is sort of a misnomer since my parents are still footing tuition, healthcare, cellphone bill and probably a bunch of other things I’m forgetting about, but I had hoped to be able to cover my rent for the summer. This went well for the first two months, until I ran out of hours at my various jobs and needed a bailout package. At least I’ve cooked for myself for the last 6 months or so. 

9. Vegetarianism 

In my opinion, summer is one of the hardest times to be vegetarian. On the plus side, there are tons of delicious vegetables. On the negative side, people are always barbecuing delicious things. My (delicious) infractions: linguica stuffed clams (I mean come on!!), mussels, chicken filled spring rolls, shrimp, clam chowder. But hey, what are principles without a bit of flexibility?

Feliz Dia del Niño

Check out this amazing album of photos from Chile's continuing protests for free education, an interesting observation of El Día del Niño. I'm not 100% sure on context bc I haven't checked with any friends yet, but I'm guessing there were many symbolic layers to the event. Obviously, education is very much about families and future generations. Secondly, I would guess that the presence of children in the streets was meant to counter the violence and police brutality that have characterized much of the ongoing standoff. Lastly, Día del Niño is basically a very comercialized holiday, another day to buy presents for. So- taking your kids to a protest= promise of future education and advancement/a way to fight back against the commercialization of everything.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2316542752452.141225.1215963344&type=1

Wishing I were in Chile right now...

Completely contrary to the US students passive acceptance of massive debt, Chilean students are literally fighting for their right to quality education as a state function. Man I want to write about this more, but it's so late.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14412646

Feeble Salsa Dancing & Dangerous SUVs

Today was pretty much the best day ever, despite a lot of sweating like a proverbial hooker in church & a minor fall.


I worked for my catering job and Northeastern today. Basically I just chilled out with fun staff who had multiple danceoffs and got to bring home a bouquet.

After that, I biked around the South End, which I realized was an area I didn't know that well. I wanted to hate it for being totally gentrified, except it was so damn cute that it was nearly impossible. Little brownstones and parks and sidewalk cafés...

On the way home I had an incident that made me feel like a true Bostonian cyclist. I got doored, ie someone opened their door and hit me. I almost stopped in time/only caught the very very corner, so I almost didn't even fall. No major injuries, just 2 tiny bruises. And of course I was wearing a helmet, so that was good. Honestly, I've had worse falls down the stairs. So so so lucky. But seriously, lady, if you weren't driving a BIG ASS SUV (So 2000), there would have been room for me to go by in the bike lane and you to open your door. Get that crap off the road already!

Tonight, I went with my friend Suzanne and some of her salsa dancing compañeros to Salsa Abajo de las Estrellas, a weekly free outdoor salsa dancing extravaganza.  So much amazing dancing. I think I figured why I am such a terrible salsa dancer: I can't move my hips without forgetting the steps, and producing those two movements simultaneously is fairly crucial. It was so fun though: you can't help but be happy while listening to salsa. 

It also kind of negated my previous point about the South End. We were gathered in a park right next to Villa Victoria, a crucial center of Puerto Rican culture and activism, and there was an amazing cross section of people who showed up for the event. Keeping culture alive, reinterpreting it, reviving it, sharing it, through movement and music. What could be more beautiful?

Side news: An article about an awareness event the Guatemala radio network is having made it into the Guatemalan press! Perhaps I will translate the article at some point for y'all, google translate obscured too much of the meaning.
http://www.lahora.com.gt/index.php/nacional/guatemala/departamental/3581-buscan-aprobacion-de-ley-de-medios-de-comunicacion-comunitaria

I had a dream last night that I went on a fact finding mission with the members of Cultural Survival to draw attention to the plight of a group of indigenous peoples. I can't remember "where" though.  Triple nerd score.

Brief reflections on my bookcase and the system that produced it

O hey there insomnia, really missed you. I swear, I haven't been this mentally restless since sophomore year of college.

So my bookshelf sits across from my bed and after staring at it for a while, I decided to inspect it further.

A rough and unscientific survey of the contents:

Poetry: 4 volumes. All male. 2x communist womanizer Pablo Neruda
Music: The Rough Guide to Jazz. This is the only book I have that remotely deals with the African American experience. Embarrassing.
Literature:
So many dudes. Whiny dudes.
"I want 'my' desert back" Edward Abbey- Desert Solitaire
"Being wealthy during the Pinochet Years is such a drag that all I can do is get high "Alberto Fuguet- Mala Onda
"I just got a noble prize for coopting Mayan imagery" Hombres de Maíz- Asturías (to be fair, he wrote unbelievably well)
"Let's have a cross continental bohemian romp" Rayuelas- Julio Cortázar
Economics: 4 volumes. If you count the Euro-enamored"Wealth and Poverty of Nations" and "Small is Beautiful."
Latin America: This part of my collection has a lot of breadth. But all expat academics, minus a lone Chilean author, Manuel Antonio Garretón.
South Asia/Middle East: All written by outsiders. 1 book about the Shi'ia, 1 about Islamic art & 1 alarmist/ing? view of Pakistan's nuclear program
Africa: According to my book shelf, Africa is nothing more than child soldiers & the legacy of Belgian genocide in the Congo. Cue the sad music and NGO pleas for money. Shameful.
Europe/Former USSR: Chernobyl. What a downer. 
Asia: Huh? Where's that?

I was shocked to realize I only own 2 books written by women. "Wasted" is about a woman's struggles with anorexia. The other is a male voiced narrative of spiritual journey in Spain.

Using my bookcase as a metric, it's visually apparent that the university does some things well: expose us to a wide variety of topics and shape more specific interests. What it doesn't do well: expose us to non-white, non-western, non-male views. Or let the inhabitants of different regions speak for themselves. To a certain extent, this isn't really academia's fault as much as it is the myriad legacies that led to disparities in education and investigation of the problems of the other rather than engagement with one's own society.

But it does really explain why I am only becoming more truly aware of my white privilege 3 years into my college education (a lack of consciousness that of itself represents tremendous privilege).

I/we have a long long way to go.

TED Talk: Language Diversity Matters!

Cultural capitalism?

Chanced across this again today- been meaning to repost for a while.

Quote of a hot hot hot day*

*Not actually related to the weather.

"To understand the extent, reality, and sacred nature of the rights of the person without destroying society, without fracturing it to atoms: such is the most difficult social goal."

-Alexander Herzen, quoted by Tzvetan Todorov in "The Conquest of the America: The Question of the Other"

Quote of the day

"We need to rigorously explore the ways our interventions as 'white people saving brown people from slightly less- brown people' may maintain colonialist- style relations, may blind us to difference among these people and are integral to consolidating a subject-position as gringa."
A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala, Diane Nelson


Damn straight. I (and probably every NGO ever) totally needed someone to remind me of this. To deconstruct the anthrobabble, she's arguing that the act of intervening is how foreigners in Latin America consolidate our identity in that context aka "gringa"

Dirty Water, Hard Partying Armenians & 235 Years of Rugged Individualism

Happy Fourth of July! As my independence day celebrations generally tend to be amusing, I figured I would recount this weekend.

On Saturday, some friends & I were going to go to Haymarket to the market to get vegetables, but then we rerouted and decided to go kayaking on the Charles! We had the best weather imaginable so it was a great adventure. Renting kayaks from Paddleboston, based out of Kendall Square, is actually quite affordable, at $18/hr for a double or $12 for a single cockpit, $1 drysack rental. A nice spot of exercise with fabulous views of Boston for about the same price as going to the movies. After that we never really made it over to Haymarket, but we walked back through Cambridge/Somerville, encountering a wild turkey yet failing to encounter the Union Square Farmer's Market. O well. That night, we had a bbq/fire pit which slowly devolved to the point where we were chilling on a porch with the 2 Irishmen who are subletting from one of my friends, trying to get them to remember our names and make their jokes slightly less offensive to women. Typical night for Slummerville, I suppose. The firepit was awesome though.

 On Sunday, I refused to do anything productive all day except read Kim Barker's "Taliban Shuffle" (still haven't totally digested how I feel about it) until I went to a catering around 8. I thought it rather odd that a dinner was starting that late, especially since it was a holiday weekend, but it made more sense eventually. Apparently, it was for an Armenian Awards Convention of some sort. I'm not entirely sure the details because all the posters were in Armenian. At least initially, I ended up serving food to the room they had set aside for all the kids, which was a terrible idea because it got rather rowdy. I felt like I was in a video game- dodging small fast moving objects while trying to get to a certain point. Or maybe babysitting. Definitely not your run of the mill catering experience. Kids running around, all the gorgeous adults drunk, a bunch of people making loud speeches in Armenian, a hooded religious figure, kitchen staff creepin' (Señorita, I love you!): it was rather chaotic. Dios mio.

Things got even more wild once they started blasting music with a live band. It reminded me of a Bollywood score, speed up, with extra string instruments thrown in for good measure. Eventually, everyone was dancing in a circle and then all these guys started breakdancing and then dancing with carrying men on their shoulders AND carrying another guy around the waist. Then they started waving various flags. By this point, it looked more like a mob celebrating election results than what I'm used to as a dance party. Quite unexpected but a good reminder that life is to be enjoyed. a lot.

So then it was time for independence day. I decided to be nice to America and spend a day without criticizing stuff, which is hard because pretty much all i do is read about reasons one should criticize american power and influence. (We know you can be better!!!) But anyway, turned off my brain & threw on some red white n blue & went to a bbq (i ate veggie burgers though).  Then we watched fireworks over the Charles which were AMAZING. it was quite good & far more laid back than my all night partying yeah yeah Chilean independence day. but 2 independence days in twelve months? Maybe I should make that happen more often.

can't get you out of my head

Happy song!

MEXICO 2/11 | The Plastics Revolution | Saturno - Light Of Day - Money Talks | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.


Why am I awake right now? Today was my day to sleep in! it's ok though, this music makes me want to do happy awake things!

What I did at work this week

-Researched (a.k.a stalked using the internet) Guatemalan/Mexican concession owners of multinational corporations.
Results: Holy crap! There is no way we can possibly hope to influence these people! They own everything! And are absurdly powerful!

-Tried to make a drunk guy who stumbled in our office at 10:30 in the morning leave without being rude. SO AWKWARD. Luckily, the rest of the staff are much more used to these things, as the office seems to draw "interesting characters." I wasn't there to witness it, but apparently a slightly off kilter fellow wandered in last week, claiming that he was a novelist, and needed people to give him ideas for book characters.

-Researched major figures at World Association of Community Radio Stations (AMARC) & drafted letters to them, inviting them to participate in an event in Guatemala City in August to push for the legalization of community radio stations there

-Transported documents about an ongoing court case in Panama regarding the displacement of the Ngöbe people by a dam to our lawyer at Harvard Law School. By bicycle of course :)
(Two side comments:
1. Harvard Law School is super liberal! At least the professors are. I had not quite expected that. I hadn't seen so many "No human is illegal" stickers in quite some time.
2. There is absolutely no security at Harvard Law School. New plan to find successfulintelligentboyfriend: Do homework at Harvard Law School. )

-Translated(somewhat poorly I'm afraid, but it was English to Spanish) a document about film making for a workshop we're sponsoring in Guatemala. Then I also "translated" the images used in the booklet, changing them from reflecting white urban realities to a rural/indigenous Guatemalan context. This was a lot of fun, since I got to look through all of the amazing and gorgeous photographs in our Flickr account.

-Briefly pitched in Cultural Survival's weekly wiffleball game, continuing to prove that there are many reasons I didn't play sports involving hand eye coordination.

Look Who Graduated

the one in the middle <3 Congrats to Audrey Clayton, Bernards High School Valedictorian 2011

"No queremos migajas, queremos sentirnos libres": Some thoughts on my internship

*"We don't want crumbs, we want to be free"- From a song by the amazing Anita Tijoux

Apologies de ante mano (beforehand), I sense an insanely long post coming on. Amazingly, I've already been working with Cultural Survival for over 2 weeks now. It's been a highly emotional experience, which I think will be apparent as I talk about it more.

The office staff and my fellow interns are really truly warm, intelligent and amazing people and I'm excited to continue to get to know them better throughout the summer. The office is super relaxed, which  I'm learning is a working environment that I really value. A lot of the staff live far away and commute to the office only when they have to, so there's a changing cast of characters throughout the day(s). And just being around the office environment of a non profit provides an inside look and learning experience. Just from overhearing conversations, I'm getting a sense of the complexities of the politics of charity navigator ratings(somehow ours went down despite the % of dollars going directly to work increasing), the sometimes awkward dance with potential funders, the cycle of asking for donations, and shifting an organization to be relevant in the digital age. There are always funny surprises too, such as people leaving letters outside the office reading "What about the Indo-European tribes?" or a woman trying to donate her goat farm to us??????

I should give some background about my specific project, the Guatemala Radio Project. At the best moments, it feels like I'm part of an important struggle for human rights, a dramatic complex dance of David and Goliath. At worst, I feel like a imperialist hack, meddling where I don't belong, in a cultural context I don't fully understand, and for what, self aggrandizement? A sexy sounding job title? As if the US didn't have its own struggles and problems.
May have gotten slightly carried away with the hyperbole there...

ANYWAY, the actual projects I am working on are incredibly varied, from creating maps & video content to screening audio to translating/transcribing documents to testing a phone system to transmit radio messages over the air in real time. Lots of Spanish. Which is sorely needed, after I realized how bad things had gotten when I tried to talk to my old language partner the other night. The biggest project I am working on right now, however, involves a project to legalize community radio stations. Despite provisions in both international law and Guatemala's 1996 Peace Accords, Guatemalan Communications Law does not actually allow for frequencies to be allocated by any means other than expensive auctions. As a result, Mayan communities have limited access to media. And thereby are excluded from other important forms of information, such as news, health info, political info, especially in regions that mainly speak Mayan languages. So what we are trying to do as a last hurrah before elections in September is get the Junta Directiva of the Guatemalan National Congress to put a bill, Initiativa 4087, on the agenda to be voted on, which would provide a definition of community radio stations, creating a framework to legal challenge the shutdown of radio stations and simultaneously allow for their expansion. To do this, we are figuring out who is important politically and has power over the agenda: both political actors & sponsors of commercial radio stations, many of whom are internationally owned corporations or subsidiaries. Most of what I did today was look up the history of Coke (can anyone say depressing?) and Domino's pizza in Guatemala which made me realize how consolidated the world's corporate ownership is, yet just decentralized enough to avoid responsibility. Realizing some of this interconnection made me feel less like an interloper. Consider these linkages: Bain Capital is founded by Mitt Romney. Bain Capital buys Domino's Pizza. Domino's expands in Guate. Providing them with capital to advertise on commercial radio stations. When commercial radio station owners hear interference from other stations, they get the police to crack down on "piratas," pirates, because they have paid to use the waves and the others have not. Community radio station struggles to get back on its feet again if it can at all. Disparities in power abound, but I just indirectly connected a US presidential hopeful to a Mayan villager in about 5 giant leaps. Small freakin world.


Let me give an example that really sums up a lot of the ethical hurdles I've been pondering.  This week, I was assigned the task of finding high quality examples of radio broadcasts about health that a specific funder had provided support for. In some ways, the series was great because it provided simple, easy to understand information about a variety of health problems. However, our sponsor, unnamed, happens to be founded by a conservative catholic, who is completely opposed to birth control and discussions of abortion so I was instructed to avoid anything seemingly controversial. This censorship in order to make the donor happy kind of pissed me off, especially since it was completely hypocritical since we had actually funded several spots, for example, about condom use, with their money. It also illustrated how, in order to fund something we feel is important, i.e. health information spread by radio, we covered up a discussion about the future role of women's reproductive rights in a very traditional country. Similar example of this pragmatic approach: asking Otto Perez Molina, a former military general cum politician generally believed although not convicted of crimes during the Civil War against Mayan villagers to support our campaign. This may or may not get you where you need to go, but boy it feels sleazy to me.

I got really mad though at one point when I listened to another radio broadcast from the same series about dengue fever. Follow with this example for a second. I've been thinking a lot about a study Paul Farmer did in Haiti, in which he surveyed sick patients in a rural Haitian village to see if they believed voodoo was responsible for their illnesses. A trial group who were given money for additional food and other such items fared far better in the long run, regardless of whether or not patients believed it was voodoo or microbes that made them sick. Back to the case at hand, it's clear that mosquitoes cause dengue, and in some ways those are easier to avoid than invisible microbes, alongside the eradication of sources of stagnant water. The thing that upset me though was that the underlying inequalities that lead to stagnant water in Guatemalan villages were completely unaddressed, which in a sense implied the patronizing notion that villagers only don't take action against dengue because of ignorance. How about a gigantic storage bin filled with stagnant water because your family, who despite technically having access to clean drinking water, only actually have access via a pump for 2 hours every day and therefore have no choice but to store what they can for future use? Or poor housing conditions with leaky roofs?  Or how about chronic malnutrition rendering people vulnerable to disease despite lower middle income country status?

The problem is, you can't fundamentally address these inequalities without calling for a radical change to the order of things. And that's already been tried. But dark humor aside, this is one of the questions this summer's work has posed to me: is it enough to say you are working for social change if you are unwilling to deeply confront the issues that cause the problems you are trying to remediate? Are fair trade, corporate social responsibility and unenforceable human rights utter bullshit, vain attempts to justify a system that arguably isn't working for most people? Can we justifiably pressure corporations to not destroy indigenous homelands with massive infrastructure projects when our own consumption is fundamentally linked to the need for power? Is international partnership and collaboration an actual reality given the immensity of the disparities in wealth and power and influence?

I will say this: as tired and overstimulated as my brain is right now, longing for this weekend in the verdant pastures of New Jersey (intended unironically), I don't ever think I will want the sort of job I can stop thinking about when I leave the office. I doubt I'll be "selling out" for a while yet, although I think its pretty clear from the rant above that I'm not entirely sure how much more integrity the non-profit sector has anyway.

Life Updates

Things are going swimingly.
I paid my rent for the month. I had a lovely trip home to see the family. I have a mentor. My "summer home" is a slight step up from my previous lodgings: I am no longer living in a converted porch, the basement pipes are not covered in asbestos, there is free laundry, a big backyard with grass and a grill, a dishwasher and I have an absurdly large queen size bed.
I started my internship with Cultural Survival officially yesterday. I really like it so far. Everyone is really relaxed and there is no apparent dress code for the interns. We get to hang in this cool basement/library near the kitchen or upstairs at a giant table. We got delicious banana bread that one of the staff members, Polly, brought in.
I spent most of yesterday getting acquainted with the staff, the office and the specifics of the Guatemala Radio project. Because I am lazy, see link here for now: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/current-projects/guatemala-radio-project Basically, though, I just read a ton of back issues of Cultural Survival's magazine. My head was swimming with new things when I left: violence against Papuan women, Leonard Peltier, Guatemalan mining laws, the silence of the US, Austrailia and Canada on indigenous issues in international law, conservation refugees, etc.

The other interns are really cool too, ranging from grad students with families to intinerant travelers to another Tufts senior. Everybody brings really unique things to the table, which I'm excited for.

All in all, shaping up to be a good summer.

And even more blogging!!

>Yeehaw today is awesome. I went cold turkey on caffeine. I opened a bank account. Pending my first article, I got a freelance agricultural blogging gig. AW YEAH. And it even pays a little cash money. Hopefully I will be able to rise to the occasion, given my scant experience in journalistic writing beyond scheming up absurd headers for my high school newspaper such as "Write here, write now." (It is upsetting that I have probably misplaced important information about world events to remember this).

There's this really cool organization called Seedstock that is working for the promotion of innovation and research into sustainable agriculture practices. When I talked to the founder, Robert, he explained that he was eventually looking to have an institute at a university but is using this aggregation of information as a first step.

Check em out!!!
http://seedstock.com/

Notables & Quotables: May 15- 21

"And basically I found out all the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally"
-Zoya Danilovna Bruk, in "Voices from Chernobyl", an amazing journalistic project by Svetlana Alexievich

"Just because you love silence doesn't mean you have nothing to say"
-Kader Attia, quote seen at visit #1 of the week to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)

"Obviously those aren't fake flowers. That wouldn't be up to our standards, DUHHHH"/
I'm going to go *********** insane if I can't find it"
-Truly insane, though frequently amusing catering supervisor.

"E-Dog, get those plates"
-New highly amusing nickname from catering coworker

"This night reminds me of/everything they deprived me of"
-Nicki Minaj, "Moment for Life," song played at the absurdly over the top prom I catered at the ICA. Irony has never been more lost.

"How many dates have you gone on with people you've met at a truck stop?"
-Lead singer of Georgia Overdrive, at TOAD in Porter Square, a tiny but charming bar with free live music where my friends & I are quickly becoming regulars

Senior Week...

...Is very very loud. Too bad I am really not in the mood to rage to Kei$ha right now. Feeling a little more in the mood for:

Reveling in Post Finals Bliss*

* Finals are over?

This is so weird I have not actually been able to comprehend it yet, even though I have been done for a full two days. I'm really bored bc I'm at work right now and now was is here for me to watch, so I'm going to make an exhaustive list of things I've been doing to celebrate.

-The night we finished finals, one of my friends and I planned to go out on the town. This did not materialize in the slightess, as we ended up drinking tea and wine on my couch, and hitting the hay after about an hour.

-Read 2 books. Reviews forthcoming...

-Cooked Paraguayan Cornbread, sopa paraguaya, adapted to be heart healthier, using cottage cheese and butter instead of heavy cheese and lard. The results were lighter and fluffier than expected, but still quite nice. And of course, some vegetarian empanadas to go on the side.

-Went on a nighttime raid of "Jumbo Drop," the school recycling program in which old items are donated, sorted and resold. Ironically, I am working part time for Tufts Recycles, so really, I was just making my work down the line easier. Memorable items salvaged included 4 boxes of coffee filters, glittery craft straws, gourmet canned soup, a new wardrobe and a copy of the Wilco album "A Ghost is Born"

-Worked every morning shift at the pool at 6:45. The president's (of Tufts) wife always comes to swim, she's really nice.

-Chilled in the interlibrary loan office of the library and got to return tons of books to other libraries. Nothing like being paid to nose about what other people are ready.

-Went to an absurd unpaid training session for a part time catering job. Received the most boring lecture of all time, 20 minutes about how to pick up and carry a large serving tray.

-Went Salsa dancing!!! At Ryle's, Inman Square's premiere Latin Dance/ Jazz Venue. It brought back a wave of Chile nostalgia, not to mention provoking a good deal of my horrible singing. Also, I have not gotten any better at dancing. The most amusing incident for me was when this guy asked me to dance and I asked if it was actually salsa music that was playing (to be fair, I am rhytmically challenged and they were playing other genres as well) and he judged me super hard, while pretending to pray for my poor culturally barren gringa soul. Despite our lack of dancing ability, our group had a most excellent time. Also it was free to get in which was amazing.

-After accompanying my housemate on her informal taxi service route to the airport, we went on an adventure to East Boston to find Peruvian ingredients for a dish we're obsessed with called Lomo Saltado. (Except that lomo is beef and we are vegetarians) We bought tons of things, like puffed corn kernels, ají amarillo, chica morada and lucuma ice cream. It was epic.

-Then, we rerouted and headed back to Boston's elegant side for a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the Chihuly exhibit. I have never seen such lively, inspired and trippy glass sculpture. I totally want to become a glassblower. Adding that to the list of things to learn this summer.

That's about it so far. But yeah. It's really nice to be done with school I guess, especially since I've been nerding it up with about a book a day, so it doesn't really feel like I'm done with school anyway :)

The Ivory Tower Asshole & America's Favorite Pasttime

Last Friday, it was one of my good friend's 21st birthday, and to celebrate, a group of us went to a Red Sox game. This was exciting because it was something I had wanted to do before graduating from school up here. It also showed me how hilariously out of touch I am with the actual "real world." First of all, I couldn't even find normal clothes to wear- apparently I don't own anything red or Red Sox approved. I ended up wearing these absurb Chilean jeans (think acid wash + knee patches) and a tweed blazer, because they were the only things that I had clean. Saving up quarters to do laundry in my sketchtastic basement is sometimes a struggle.

Secondly, despite the fact that I can talk ad naseum about topics such as the Guatemalan Civil War and the politics of "Selective Service Provision in Latin American Cities," when it comes to things that the majority of people actually find interesting, I am absolutely hopeless. Thanks to gym class, I actually know how baseball is played, but as for actual players or stats or any of those things, I am completely lost. It took me a good 15 minutes after arrival to figure out where the score of the game was being tallied and which team was which. I got really confused when they started saying "You" when player Kevin Youkillis was up at bat, because it sounded like booing and I couldn't figure out why everyone would have such bad sportsmanship, especially towards their own teammate.

Surprisingly, given my tendency to be a complete bore at sporting events, I/we had an amazing time. Fenway Park aka the Green Monster (I knew that much at least) is a wicked awesome place. It was so fun to see everyone all excited and varied and it was just so American. And I can honestly say, other than times I was hanging out with family or friends, it was one of those moments where I felt truly present and happy to be exactly where I was. Wanderlust temporarily quenched.

Kind of did miss the insane illegal fireworks and riot cops aspect of South American sporting events though...

Study Break

One most test to go, unfortunately the most odious...Statistics. It's actually kind of interesting, I just happen to be really bad at math. But, theoretically I never have to take math for the rest of my college career at least

So pretty much I only reblog links that I think are cool nowadays, but here are two things that struck me today.
Chile today approved the plan to dam some of the last wild rivers in Patagonia for electric power use, but it remains "pendiente" due to a lot of opposition. But the cards are on the table, the government's priority for growth over environmental protection manifest.
http://www2.counton2.com/news/2011/may/09/chiles-patagonia-could-see-7-billion-dam-project-ar-1822086/

A BBC photo essay on the anti-cartel violence protests in México:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13330067

"You should only have to kill an enemy once every thousand years"

http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-one-buddhists-response/

So I got this forwarded to me from the Buddhist group at Tufts that I am quasi affiliated with, and I think it's a really cool (albeit totally hippy-dippy) way of looking at the major news story of the last few days.

Summer

Internship- Check- Officially working with Cultural Survival in some capacity, not sure of the project yet
Housing- Check-Living next to the gym, which should be convenient for working there
Employment- Check???- Have odd work at least through May which will keep me solvent through July, and HOPEFULLY work for the rest of the summer at the library/pool. Round 2 of applications starting soon?

Seeing Flowers on Horseback

Word of the day (yep, bringing it back): despabilarse- to wake up, become aware, wise up

One of my professors described the way we had gone through the material for our class this way, which apparently is a Chinese saying for having passed by something incredibly quickly. I chose it as the title for today's blogpost because I feel like it captures this semester perfectly. So many beautiful fleeting moments, so much superficial learning, tempting me to go deeper, so much change, in ourselves and in the ever shifting landscape around us. And suddenly it is over. Or rather, beginning. It took me a couple semesters of college for me to realize that the things I learn the most from are self directed adventures, and that is exactly where I am headed for the summer. I have a list of books several pages long that I want to read, and about as many movies to watch and places to visit. I've finally solidified my plans for the summer somewhat, got housing and hopefully an internship, soon to be revealed because I'm superstitious that something will go wrong with it. Interview tomorrow!

Today as usual was a day of crazy contrasts. Writing on final projects, followed by a marathon of classes, and then to a conversation about peasant land struggles in Guatemala, which deeply affected me. There is no such thing as post war in Guatemala: so much of the ongoing violence is directly linked to past processes. I'm sharing the clip below because it needs to be seen and confronted and acted upon. The context of the clip is that a prominent landowner used the police and army to violently evict peasants for their lands, in order to plant biofuels there. A perfect example of how processes are no longer merely local or global.


Here's an article that gives a bit more background on the issue:
http://wilderutopia.com/international-issues/guatemala-biofuels-production-leads-to-violent-evictions/

And after this, I ended up at an insane mall getting ice cream with friends, which was extra weird because I'm pretty sure I hadn't been at a mall since I was back in Chile. It was the sort of place that people in other countries probably imagine when they think about the US: giant sculptures of Bostony themed things, lights, a giant green monster, cute jelly bean decorations. The hyperreal. Even more ironically for someone who's been writing a paper on water provision in developing world cities for what seems like ages, there was a giant over the top fountain show with music and lights. I felt like an overstimulated child.

It's a crazy world we live in. Safer and unsafer everyday. Just depends on what corner of the world you're looking in.

Late night song of the week: some ska perhaps?

Why yes, that sounds lovely. Ignore the absurd video.

an interesting article on rental housing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/affordable-rental-housing-scarce-in-us-study-finds/2011/04/25/AFcBjilE_story.html

Values: awkwardly confronting global power and influence

All while wearing fancy clothes!!!

I feel kind of like a phony. Or very confused at the least. I personally value finding balanced arguments and trying to understand how different people and actors view situations, but that has been throughly challenged this week, because as usual, I am realizing how I am truly at an elite institution, despite wherever I may feel that my sentiments lie.

I spent a good deal of this week trying to get hired for an internship with Corporate Accountability International. They do a lot of really interesting work, pressuring corporations and trying to create change through various campaigns, currently focused around the water, food and tobacco industries. I loved the office and the staff seemed like awesome people, but some things made me uncomfortable. For instance,as I think I've mentioned before, Tufts, for all its liberal bias and talk of active citizenship and social change, doesn't usually like to expose us to a ton of anti-market thinking. I've been exposed to the idea that you need to frame an argument subtly. So I'm not entirely sure that I can truly reject things like water market privatization wholesale. Water is a human right, but is it better for water to be mismanaged by a corrupt government or a profit making apparatus?

Cut to part 2: At the last minute, I ended up hosting people for an event the Institute for Global Leadership is putting on, without really knowing what I was getting into. Turns out the conference, on social enterprise is sponsored by the Young Presidents Organization(YPO). Basically, it consists of children of global elites(ie presidents of companies) networking at an expensive conference. So, I currently have a member of the Guatemalan oligarchy sleeping on my couch, along with another slightly less exotic member of the American elite. I met two other kids last night as well. You may know that I am involved with an organization called BUILD that works with former guerrilla combatants in Guatemala, who fought a 36 year civil war, essentially against the concentration of wealth and power that aforementioned individual literally represents. Even more ironic, we spent a BUILD meeting today talking about agriculture, land markets and Mayan struggles for economic recognition. What frustrates me the most is that I want so desperately to talk about these issues, but it is impossible for me to feel comfortable doing so without knowing someone very well. However, if I've become convinced of anything while I've been in college, its that in order for social change to be lasting, there needs to be a recognition and a commitment on the part of elites to see the injustices and inefficiencies that inequality generates. Maybe the speakers they're being exposed to in the conference are the first step towards that change, but I'm not entirely convinced. From a more abstract perspective, these kinds of linkages fascinate me, sociologically speaking. No longer do we simply have national elites, but the emerging global elite and their increased sense of interconnection fascinates me. Oh, and its totally weird to be chilling with kids who don't think much about money when I am trying to figure out how to magically fund unpaid internships. Also, sorry for using the word elites a thousand times: too many political science courses.

In other interesting news, this weekend was the Tufts Energy Conference, which interestingly enough involved me going to a cocktail party to schmooze with people and going to a workshop sponsored by BP (yes, that BP, aka the ASSHOLES WHO DESTROYED THE GULF OF MEXICO) as a favor to a friend. Was my presence in the room a tacit approval? Should I have boycotted? Protested? Would that ultimately have made any sort of difference???

I am challenged by the realization that despite the feeling that I am separated from these "real"/"wealthy" people, that my current reality is what it is because of my ties to them. Almost every good I consume traces back to some corporation. My parent's salary. My education. The media I consume. We can raise a voice against injustices, but we also perpetuate them by virtue of existing in the modern world. This gives us power, but also renders us hypocritical from the very second we open our mouths.

On a lighter note, I realized that in this last week, I've been wearing professional looking clothes as much as I haven't been. Not sure how I feel about that. Like always, my identity is in flux, trying to figure out what the best way for me to just live my life is.

Blog within a blog (part doux)

So, since i keep telling prospective internship employers that i have experience blogging, i have been trying out other blogging platforms other than blogspot.

Today's adventure: tmblr.

Pretty, although admittedly useless since I'm not actually a photographer:

http://jumbolicious.tumblr.com/

It's official...

Buds are out! Happy spring everybody, we deserve it!!

I miss the sound of acoustic guitar

Rays of Hope

These last couple of months, I keeping being reminded of something one of my professors in Chile said:

"Democracy means an increase in conflict, not less"

The context of the quote was that when we are truly free, there are more voices heard, which may be in conflict with each other, something which usually brings about an end that is ultimately good. I wonder what he would have thought about this current budget lunacy.
With so much of the other kind of conflict lately, the destruction of human life for selfish ends, its hard to not become cynical and hardened about our prospects.


But while I was looking through some articles for my crisis mapping class today, I found two really cool projects, bringing the opinions of people around the world together to report on stories and secondly, to keep their leadership accountable. It's these kinds of things that are what democracy truly represents to me, a forum that has the potential to be a lot purer than a bunch of old white guys in suits bickering while pretending to truly represent the needs of the constituents of an amazingly culturally diverse nation. Of course, technology as democracy has its downsides, access being first among them, vulnerability as we share ourselves with audiences we may not even realize and the empowerment of hate alongside the empowerment of discourses of justice and freedom and fairness.

Anyway, these give me hope that we can create a different world, slowly, click by click.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/

http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/

Read my/our other blog!

So my housemate Rebecca and I have a food blog, chronicling our classy home cooked meals- Check it out! Appropriately named Cuisner (French for to cook) since Rebecca studied French pastry making and cachai for my random smattering of Chilean/vaguely South American contributions.Throw in a smattering of absurdly cheap groceries from Chinatown and you'll have a pretty good idea of our fushion cuisine...

http://cuisinercachai.wordpress.com/

And what the hell, another music video too.

Los Bunkers: Sueño Con Serpientes

Revisiting 3rd Grade History

"But this victory from which we all derive, Europeans and Americans both, delivers as well a terrible blow to our capacity to feel in harmony with the world, to belong to a preestablished order; its effect is to repress man's communication with the world, to produce the illusion that all communication is interhuman communication; the silence of the gods weighs upon the camp of the Europeans as much as on that of the Indians. By winning on one side, the Europeans lost on the other; by imposing their superiority on the entire country, they destroyed their own capacity to integrate themselves into the world."

Tzvetan Todorov "The Conquest of the Americas and the Question of the Other"

I came across this AMAZING quote while I was working on my midterm for Globalization. I'm starting to grow quite fond of the class: it's wonderful to approach history as a question rather than an answer. Why did things have to happen as they did and could they had been envisioned differently?

Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

A good look at where our national priorities are right now....

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/tax_breaks_infographic.html

Cortisol Detox

After finishing with my midterms, it was time for a break. After my last class on Thursday, I ran into some friends on the president's lawn (the big hill in the center of the Tufts campus) and we just sat for a good half hour, not doing much of anything, listening to the awesome rhythms of BEATS, Tufts drumming collective, who bang out tunes on everything from real drums to garbage cans.

That night, we had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day Dinner party, including very very green pancakes.

And yesterday, ahhhh just one of those wonderful wonderful days.
After work, I biked downtown to the Museum of Fine Arts, in the gorgeous warm weather. (although eerie from a climate change perspective.) As much as I love Tufts, its so good to get away and have a little perspective, seeing other people that make up the fabric of the city. Everyone was dying to get outside after the winter: it always amuses me how much less lame of a place Boston is in the summer. After that, I went with my housemate for a free wine tasting which was quite lovely. And then we went home and cooked an impromtu middle east inspired dinner, before a late night soccer game on the quad.

These are the days when you realize why people describe college as the best time of their lives.

FUERAAAAAA DE AQUI

Going home for spring break! Excited to chill with the fam for a bit. Had this song in my head lately. It's actually about abuse BUT it has a really catchy refrain: Fuera de aqui (Get out of here) which is why I am adopting it as the official start of spring break song.

One Problem Set Left til Spring Break Song

A Hopeful Song

Internship Search

I am having a hard time with my search for internships during the summer. I really want to have an interesting chance to gain more experience...along with every other undergrad in the country. And typically for me, I can think of about 25 different subject areas off the top of my head that I would be interested in working with. I'm a little upset because I just found out yesterday that one option I had been thinking about, working with a coffee cooperative BUILD partners with, is not going to be possible because they are having a very unusual year due to the extremely high global coffee prices. See a really interesting New York Times article on the subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/science/earth/10coffee.html (Proof that Tufts kids are totally coffee fiends: at least 5 separate people I know have brought up this article in conversation recently)

Anyway, this means that for now I am trying to apply for more competitive things. Which I don't like. Because I lost all my competitiveness last semester when I had to assimilate to a society that values solidarity and group work. I jest. Basically though, I dislike this because it seems like a waste of time to apply to internships with basic description that sound like:

"Seeking dedicated unpaid labor to do office work most of the time, although there's a chance you may get a chance to do something cool for a bit. Maybe. I mean you'll be working for us for 50 hours a week so.....By the way, we did mention we can't pay you anything whatsoever, right? And good luck finding a cheap apartment round here. To apply for this amazing opportunity, send us 2 copies of your resumé, some other form, an official transcript, a 5 page writing sample (like we'll read it), 3 references, a cover letter, blood samples. Preference will be given to applicants who are willing offer us their firstborn child."

After being frustrated by the fact that I am about as likely to get any of those as I was to get into an Ivy, I ran some internet searches on some other ideas. Mining policy came to mind. Until I googled mining activism and found that the first 3 pages of results were people who had been assassinated. Not very reassuring. Probably any career that hypothetically sounds really cool has a pretty high death rate associated with it. Not bueno.

I should stop complaining though, I am lucky enough to have a world class education and will no doubt find something worth while to do with it.

In the meanwhile, I am keeping calm by drinking lots of tea, because I am getting sick because Tufts is currently a germ infested hole, no doubt caused by midterms concentrating everyone in the library without much ventilation. I went to Buddhist mediation at the Greater Boston Buddhist Community Center today which was pretty cool too, except we didn't actually meditate much, just listened to a buddhist nun talk about certain ideas for practice. And I am listening to this awesome mellow Chilean guitarist chap, Manuel Garcia, over and over and over.

http://youtu.be/mS5ODsIlWqI

Just staying calm and trying to get things done, because there is just nothing else that I can do, except try and control my destiny to the best of my ability.

One more tidbit: If you are in Buddhist temple, it is generally considered disrespectful to point/ stretch out your feet directly towards the Buddha statue representations. Oops. At least I know now.

Thoughts and Prayers...

To all those affected by the horrible events of today. Fuerza Japón!

Translating...Or not.

While trying in vain to find something in Spanish that hasn't been translated into English for a final project, I came across this interesting article. Words are so great. yeah. Ok, back to finding something global scholarship has neglected to render bilingually.
http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/

Una noche, una noche toda llena de murmullos, de perfumes y de músicas de alas

Nighttime is fast becoming my favorite time of day.

I read somewhere once that in the middle ages (or some time long ago and far removed) that people used to sleep in two shifts, waking up midway through the night to get up, walk around, even socialize. According to Ingrid from my internship in Chile, the Mapuche believe that 3 in the morning is a time of the day with magical characteristics.

So clearly, I'm not completely alone (read: insane) in thinking there is something especially beautiful about this time of the night: the lights of Boston sparkle from the lookout on the library roof, looking different every time, invigorating cold air rushes against my face as I bike home, everything is absolutely calm and still.

And now on to "hacer tutto." 40 winks, shut eye, what have you.

Newly Annointed Late Night Library Theme Song...

"At home she's looking for interest
At home she's looking for interest
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process"

........................................

"At home she feels like a tourist
She fills her head with culture
She gives herself an ulcer
Why make yourself so anxious
You give yourself an ulcer"

Gang of Four, "At Home He Feels Like a Tourist"

There is no better song I can think of to describe late night study here.

Coatpocalypse

This weekend was slightly ridiculous.

On Saturday, I tried to go see a Brazilian drumming/Ethopian funk band/stationary marching band concert, except the plan failed horribly when we arrived and I realized I did not have my id. Although it was 18 and up, they wouldn't let us in, and since I can't pull the "O, but I'm a dumb gringa" flirtation trick anymore, we ended up having to go back to Tufts.

Then, yesterday, afternoon, I got a rather frantic phone call from BUILD, the sustainable development group I went to Guatemala with (OOOO- I should blog about us eventually!!!!) asking if I would be willing to help out with a coat check that we had just found out we needed to do for a Gala to celebrate the 25th anniversity of the EPIIC program, which is run by the umbrella organization that also funds BUILD. Funny story, but we had actually run a horrible coat check last year during Tufts' Winter Bash event, which was literally the worst night of my life since it involved literally 100s of drunk girls rushing at us, trying to find misplaced "black pea coats" and "black northfaces." ANYWAY, 30 minutes or so later, homework and fear of coat checking be damned, I was dressed in an eccentric cocktail dress and headed downtown. 4 of us arrived at the hotel where the event was being held right at 6, which just so happened to be the same exact time as the guests were arriving. On finally finding the racks for the coats, we were informed that THERE WERE NO HANGERS AND TAGS. Apparently, these are customary items to bring with you when you run a coat check. Hotels do not even own hangers, we were told. An interesting development....Without tags, we had to resort to ripping pieces of looseleaf. It was pretty bad, especially once a line built up and we had to make up a system as we went along, and then spent 3 hours fixing the non-functional system.

While it was not the best evening ever, I realized something really unexpected. When the wealthy IGL donor types/important dignitaries had to come in to find their coats because we couldn't, if they knocked a coat off the rack, they would just leave it on the ground. Or they would just throw their paper slips on the ground or the counter or wherever. I realized: I don't ever want to be "too important" to pick up a fallen coat. And maybe I shouldn't have been picking up papers off the ground, but I don't ever want to be the kind of person who thinks its perfectly fine to make extra work for a janitor likely working for minimum wage.

I want to live with unobtrusive dignity. And if its at the expense of getting ahead, I think I'm ok with that.

Get your ire on!

This week was a pretty good reminder that there is no shortage of injustice and short-sited thinking and greed in the world.

On Tuesday, I squeezed in a lecture by controversial academic Lawrence Lessig on the subject of institutional corruption. Using a variety of examples from US politics, he proposed the very simple yet profound idea of institutional trust as a cyclical problem. If there is a perception, regardless of its validity, that politicians or institutions are biased, or outright corrupt, democratic participation in that institution will drastically drop off because its assumed that nothing can be done to fix the problem, which only makes it easier to get away with questionable behaviors.

So then, the day after, I went to see Gaslands, a documentary about the relatively new process of natural gas extraction through hydralic fracturing or "fracking," that has gotten a ton of press lately with its Oscar nod and backlash from gas companies who challenge its message. With dark humor and a homemade aesthetic, filmmaker Josh Fox tells personal and institutional histories of what appears to be yet another faustian bargain for "cheap" energy. Harking back to Lessig's message: even if he had fabricated the entire thing, as many gas companies have the audacity to claim, the fact that we live in a world where it's completely plausible for serious exceptions to the Clean Water Act to have been made for special interests, where water could be polluted with impunity and where budget cuts could have obliterated environmental accountability says more than whatever did actually transpire behind the closed doors.
Plug: Watch the movie.


Finally, this weekend, was the annual EPIIC conference, a big conference bringing in speakers and students from all over the world to address one theme. This year's was "Our Nuclear Age," pretty much the biggest example of humans being short sited that I can think of.
I made it to 2 panels:
-The first was on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty System, addressing whether or not the system was actually functioning and addressing areas of contention that have been exploited by states with intentions to nuclearize.
-One really interesting statistic I happened to remember from the panel: every year, the US makes about as many nuclear weapons as Pakistan and India have made in the last 20. Funding $$$ for NPR and education anyone? (Naively oversimplified, I know.) But, as is quite evident, how can we expect other states and actors to not want weapons when we continue to send a signal that they are desirable?

-The second, "Re-Thinking Iran" provided fewer truly innovative solutions than might have been expected given the pre-fix, but still had some really interesting perspectives on what Iran's capabilities truly are and will be, the role that a divided political elite within the country has on nuclear policy, the effectiveness (or not) of sanctions, regional power politics and the role of the 6/12 elections and spreading protest in the middle east. What I had really wanted to hear was someone say, ok, well since it seems pretty obvious that they are going to get weapons eventually, what do we do when they do?

So, as usual, lots of things to think about. And fight for/against.

Weekly Round Up: Quotables

"It's all about balance"
-Random hipstery guy at Market Basket, after overhearing me and my housemate debate whether more salt or more sugar was desirable in our tomato sauce.

"I always sleep so soundly when I'm in Sierra Leone"
-My advisor, in a quick chat we had about readjustment to life in the US and the stress that our constant multi-tasking here creates.

"Sepamos Combatir/Por Nuestro Honor/Nuestra libertad"/“Let us know how to fight for our honor and our liberty”
-Mural, Villa Victoria, a housing project in Boston's South End that is an example of community organization in the face of urban gentrification projects. Visited with some friends before going on a random and improvised culinary tour which included Peruvian, Ethiopian and Chinese food.

"They eat the flesh of their enemies, not because it is good, but because it is established custom"
-Antonio Pigafetta, who sailed around the world with Magellan, from a primary source document describing his travels and the peoples he met. Most of whom are described as either crazy or naked or both.

"To date, states have been far more effective in the destruction of housing than its construction"
-Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, a scathing look at the city in the modern era

Hip- hop 2

It just blows my mind how much cool music is out there that i have absolutely no knowledge of. Here's an interesting cast of South American hip- hop characters I've been introduced to just in the last few days:

Anita Tijoux- 1977
A female Chilean rapper! Her french stage name comes from the fact that she was raised in France due to her parent's political exile.


ChocQuibTown- De Donde Vengo Yo
Afro-Colombian hip-hip


Bomba Estero- Fuego
Also Colombian


Juana Fé- La maquinita
Not actually hip- hop at all, it's alternative cumbia from Chile aka Chilombiana. But I finally figured out who this song was by!

February 9: Intervention/Translation

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "intervention" lately, since I feel as if I've just come to look at in a critical context for the first time. In international relations and economies and social work, it's so common place to jump right in "to create change" that we almost never question if it's the right thing to do, blinded as we are by the overarching goal.

I'm currently working on homework for my translation course and I realized there are really cool parallels between translation and socially focused intervention. Basically, you are motivated by a good goal: translating a work into another language so that more people can enjoy it or understand.

BUT, your job is frustrated by levels of cultural meaning that you cannot interpret. Your act may have significance beyond itself, for example, reinforcing the global primacy of English. Mainly however, in the process, you need to be sure that you say no more or less than the text itself does or what the author suggested. Doing no harm is the very basic first step.

I'm taking a really cool course through Tufts' Experimental College on Crisis Mapping, a very new method of humanitarian intervention. Today, we talked with a Tufts alum who is working with internally displaced persons from the earthquake in Haiti, in large part making use of technology to have input from affected individuals on their survival needs. She talked literally in terms of translation, mainly of taking human need and turning it into humanitarian response.

So, today's big question: how can we learn to enter into each other's lives and texts without doing harm?

February 5th: Somerville Adventures:

"No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another prhase."
-Translation Studies, Susan Bassnett McGuire

So after a productive stint of research memo writing (sans internet, obvioooo) at the o-so hipsterlicious Bloc 11 Café in Union Square (there were also a lot of small children there too which was rather an odd mixture), I went on a quick grocery run to explore the local food store offerings. I stopped into a Brazilian Paderia (bakery) for some delicious and reasonably price coconut /sweet bread. YUMMM. There's also an Italian store and several stores with Indian products and several with Hispanic food products: basically, it's an awesome cultural hodgepodge.

I stopped in Market Basket as well, the dirt cheap grocery store with the amusingly economic sounding name, which never ceases to inspire me with its astounding multiculturalism. I was only buying eggs and ended up having to wait in line for nearly half an hour since pretty everyone who lives in Somerville and their mother (literally) were trying to buy things before the storm. I heard Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Haitian Creole, Nepali or some other language from the Indian subcontinent, Chinese and possibly Korean and Russian. Mothers and children, pregnant women, the elderly, college students, the working poor, Cambridgey hippies, immigrants representing every single legal category and nationality , middle class moms, White, Black, Latino, Asian American, Muslims, mixed race, etc. etc. etc.
And I realized how absolutely singular* this particular moment was: each of us was interpreting the same space and sensory inputs was and translating what we saw in the world around us into our own language, maybe even languages, our own biases, our own very very varied life experiences. All of us waiting in line together, no one with any more power to change the situation than anyone else despite our complete differences in opportunity and wealth and happiness and socially constructed labels. And where else could this possibly occur but America: a conjunction of people who have so little and yet so much in common, all sharing the same corner of this earth, making the best of what we are given, striving for better lives for ourselves and/or potential offspring. HELL YEAH.

*Probably pretty singular. In my class on globalization, however, we've been talking about how incredibly diverse trading communities in the Indian Ocean in the 1300s-1500s or so were. But I'm going to guess not quite this diverse.

Hip- hop

For some weird reason, listening to rap helps me focus when I'm doing work, maybe because it has a steady beat? At any rate, I am burning up in the Tisch library right now (which is probably only 75 degrees but feels positively balmy compared to the outdoors and my 58 degree house) rocking out to Chilean rap group Tiro de Gracias. I never really got around to writing about this while I was in Chile, but it is fascinating to me how "street culture" of the US has been exported and reworked, in both its positive and negative manifestations. Think graffiti covered walls, and "flaite" fashion, a degrading Chilean word that basically is the equivalent of looking "ghetto". Baggy shirts, flat brim caps and all. In the same way that rap is pretty much the only music that voices the problems of the inner city in the US, rap in Chile provides a similar voice to urban poverty, although there's also a stronger tradition of socially conscious folk music.

Anyway, Tiro de Gracias. They kind of sound like a really white (although not quite Beasty Boysesque) Chilean permutation of 90s rap.
Joven de la Pobla (roughly translating to Kid from the Hood. If you look in the background of this video, the landscape is pretty similar to what it looked like where I worked in Maipú. The tall buildings are the Chilean equivalent of housing projects)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_lxa7nam90

Melaza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPwgkGch5cE&playnext=1&list=PL03DF7E075B4642E7

Study Break: A Few Thoughts.

I feel like I've been in school for way longer than a week and a half. As much as I moan about how challenging it is, it is sort of fascinating how much personal and intellectual growth goes on in such a short period of time here. A brief panorama of recent experiences:

-I'm taking a lot of economics this semester, 3 of 6 classes. It's a bit much sometimes, especially Microeconomics, mostly because I disagree with its point of view so much, ie the idea that we can somehow chart happiness by looking at consumption. What a horrible place a world that simplistic would be! But I love the economics course I'm taking on cities in the developing world, even though it is pretty challenging. At least my newly acquired doing-work-in-Spanish skills have been coming in handy as I'm doing a policy memo on housing conditions in Lima, Perú. I also love my class on Translation which has turned out to be both more challenging and artistic than I expected. As much as I was not looking forward to taking ANOTHER class on globalization, the history based one I'm taking with Peter Winn, Tufts in Chile advisor, has provided an interesting new angle, attempting to look at things from a non-Western centric viewpoint. Lastly, I'm taking a course with the "Experimental College" on Crisis Mapping, a newly emerging field at the intersection of humanitarianism and technology. I still haven't adjusted to the idea that I'm supposed to be doing work any second that I am not eating or attending the occasional party, but I imagine I'll come around after another week.

-Friday was the annual Winter Bash, a revelrous event involving college students pretending to be classy by going to a hotel in Boston to dance in fine frocks. It mostly turned into a nostalgia fest since I made pisco sours and then kept playing Chilean music at the small party we had beforehand, but it was still quite enjoyable.

-I met 2 random strangers at my favoritest cafe in the whole world, True Grounds, and we just all ended up talking about the random things we had in common and then we went out to dinner at a Mexican place together and I ate cactus. An exercise in breaking away from our socially enforced fear of the unknown and embracing the serendipitious.

-On Sunday, my housemates dubbed me "hippie Martha Stewart" after I made homemade fig and strawberry spread and scones for a goodbye brunch for my friend Maddie who is going abroad to China :( Other than the jail time, it is sort of an accurate depiction at present.

-I've been trying to make it to Buddhist Sangha weekly, which has been great, because it is an oasis of calm in my crazy weeks and its nice to have a community to belong to, something that I never quite felt Catholicism provided. This has inspired me to try and do a few things:
-Smile. Simple yet revolutionary.
-Pick up trash.
-Be more open to stories and sharing.

I think Chilean me is still hanging on, even if she has a lot more on her plate. Hopefully my recent "let's talk about our feelings" phase won't stand in the way of my formation in the soulless international relations and economics tradition XD

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

So totally random- I just happened to stumble across this article today, and it's a much better description of an art exhibit I saw in Santiago by this super cool artist Eugenio Dittborn.
http://www.economist.com/node/17957320

January 23: Je ne veux pas travallier

Learning some french from my housemate Rebecca, the useful phrase: I don't want to work.

Things always get better after I write semi-depressing blog posts: probably I should just wait a bit longer before writing. This weekend was really lovely, including an impromtu dinner party featuring homemade vegetarian corn, bean and cheese empanadas and Tawainese pastries, a urban hiking adventure across Boston to buy groceries in Chinatown, a very nice evening of warm drinks in Harvard Square, and an unproductive but wonderful afternoon of listening to random music, drinking obscene amounts of tea and cooking Afghani style pumpkin. All these things will probably be not possible once school actually kicks into session, which is sad. My current goal for the semester is to at least try and say (somewhat) sane and maintain my quality of life a bit. As I was talking about with Rebecca the other day: Why should I be so stressed out that I can't even spend a half hour to cook a beautiful meal for myself? If I can't do that, what am I really living for anyway?
Take that american campus culture.*

*Who am I kidding, I'm about to go do work now....

Domestication.

Moving into my off campus apartment near Tufts has been unduly stressful. When I arrived with my father this past Saturday, things were less desirable than I would have liked, especially given my tendency to be allergic to dust and mold and other gross things.
3 or 4 days of carrying boxes, cleaning, removing rugs, vaccuming, scrubbing floors, walls, oven, microwave, reorganizing cabinets, duct taping, contact papering, going on random adventures to Craigslist postings to find bubble wrap to insulate the windows, moving and removing and re-re-moving furniture, decorating,etc. etc. etc. have left me rather exhausted. Additionally, miscommunications with my friends who we are subletting from led to some rather emotional drama with my housemates. Everything is resolved now, but it just wasn't what I had envisioned for starting off.

But I'm trying to look on the positive, so here's some good news:
-I'm currently situated in a room with tons of natural light from 6 (!) windows.
-I got both of my old on campus jobs back, which is great. I'll be working in the pool as a lifeguard and also in the library.
-We've been eating deliciously, thanks to the food the former tenants left in the freezer. Sample meals cooked by my culinary genius housemate Rebecca include:
-mango tomato salsa
-quinoa/spicy black bean veggie burger wraps with guacamole
-french toast with berries drizzled with honey.

I'm back to being vegetarian, which I imagine I will get back to in another post. I've been doing some cooking contributions myself: I made a tortilla española yesterday and a delicious tomato chickpea pasta today.

I'm still finding America a bit depressing, not going to lie. There are some things that I love that I am readily reembracing like the amazing diversity of cultures that have managed to come together to make a nation, something that seems so amazing when you really stop to think about it or for instance stumble into the grocery store in Somerville and see people from every corner of the earth. But the horrible weather has really got me down for starters. I guess another thing that is driving me nuts now is the need to be everywhere on time and the stress that it causes. Once you've been exposed to a culture where this doesn't exist it seems rather unnecessary. All this is sort of inevitable: I just had the best 6 months of my life, free from worries about pretty much everything so I suppose it is hard for anything else to match up. What I'm finding scarier than the let down of reality though is the fact that everything seems so cyclical: I'm back in the same spot doing the same things, yet I am a totally different person. So what am I still doing here? I feel out of place, especially when I walk around campus and don't recognize or can't place people.

Classes start tomorrow which I certainly think will be a positive development.

My weigh in on Tucson

I'm not going to make a political statement here because anyone who has read my blog for a while can guess what I would probably say. Rather I do want to make a sad observations about our culture. Yesterday, while every radio in the country is still blaring news and opinions about the causes of the tragedy, I saw a harried mother at Target buying a large fake water rifle at Target for her child. I wish I were making this up. And then when I was getting pizza with my Dad, a hyperactive 3 or 4 year old had his hands pointed into guns, "shooting" at his sister. Guns have trickled down to be something that is so commonplace that even young children know what they do, even if they can't fathom what it would really mean to take a life. And this is only seen as a game.

So where can start to "make America as good as she imagined it?": teach our kids that violence is wrong, even jokingly. And in the meantime start making our political discourse fitting for adults instead of duking it out playground style. And yes that includes you too Democrats.

THIS IS SO COOL*

Ok, slightly less cool than say, Patagonia, but anyway I found this really cool site that has "pocket documentaries" of Chilean indie rock. Basically just short music videos in pretty places. But still, purty neat.
Yaktoka.org