Alba

Recollections swirl amid
the chaos of my brain
like the leaves falling so
suddenly
from the still-green trees
in an eerie and autumnal
haze, rendering the trees cold and
bare.

Their emptiness fills the
back of my mind where
the drone of bagpipes
echoes-
-not as a nuisance,
but as a reminder
of the promise made that

One day I shall return
to the land of my love
and once more I shall walk
the streets against a
bitter wind
in the twilight
of an
early afternoon,

Feeling just as content
as a less hardy woman might
on the white sands
of some
tropical beach.
Give me the purple thistle,
the grey of streets and sea and sky,
The orange hillsides of dying heather

bathed in a light such
as I
have seen nowhere else
in all of my (short) life.
A westerly glow:
ethereal,
fleeting-
but at the same time

etched
indelibly
in my memory.

a letter to my idiot congressman

The following is text from a letter I am sent to Congressman Joe Walsh, who is trying to sabotage our country. This is only one of the ways. See any of his recent appearances on cable TV for more proof on his economic attempts.



I recently received a letter from you commending me on my recent scholarship from the Inverness Garden Club. In this letter, you called my dedication to environmental issues “inspiring.” I am calling you out on this, Representative Walsh, because it seems to me as if you have certainly not been inspired by anybody with a fervent drive to protect our environment, and specifically our waters. I feel that you have certainly cheapened any intended praise. After receiving your pandering letter, I was not at all surprised to find that you cosponsored H.R. 2018, the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011. This bill threatens to undo the progress that our country has painstakingly made since the adoption of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Representative, I wonder how you can, with clean conscience, claim that dedication to environmental issues is inspiring, while at the same time supporting some of the most environmentally unfriendly legislation since the “Dirty Waters Act” in 1995.

All citizens of this country deserve the right to clean water, and H.R. 2018 would effectively rob them of that. Without a federal baseline for water quality, there is nothing stopping upstream states from implementing ridiculously low standards in order to attract businesses. In the short term, perhaps this would increase economic activity, but in the long term would lead to degraded health, quality of life, and economic opportunity. We are past the point where nearsightedness and a lack of planning could be considered acceptable. H.R. 2018 would essentially allow states to override National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits, removing incentive to improve or preserve water quality. As a current employee of a sewerage district, I have seen firsthand how NPDES permitting forced innovation and creative problem solving (which created jobs and boosted the economy) and resulted in significant improvement of Lake Michigan’s water quality. Without requirements, it would be easy for state and local governments to cut short-term spending by ignoring water issues, which, I am sure, is exactly the reason you supported this bill. I only wish that I had received your letter with enough time to contact you before the vote, not that you would have bothered to listen to my comments.

Our environment should not be a political issue. It is neither liberal nor conservative to care about the health of humankind. Your unwillingness to engage in dialogue, not only with the Democratic Party, but also with more moderate Republicans, is an indication that you do not respect your district. I remind you that you only won your election by 291 votes, and I would hardly call that a mandate to represent our district in a very far right-wing manner. Your letter was counterproductive, Representative, since I am not currently your constituent. I chose to register in Minnesota where I attend school, but should you choose to run in the Illinois 8th District in 2012, I will be changing my registration back to my home address so that I can vote against you and your disgusting misrepresentation of my home district’s wishes and opinions.

roots grass.

I think I'm going to start doing more things spontaneously. I wandered into a consignment store today, and subsequently met the very interesting lady who worked there. After last week's pleasant surprise when I decided to go see Midnight in Paris, I decided that spontaneity is generally nice. So, I was wandering around the store, realizing that everything cost way more than I was willing to pay (this is, after all, Shorewood), when the proprietress of the store asked if I went to Minnesota because I had the M on my bag. Her daughter goes there, and was supposed to graduate this spring, but had to retake some science or math class. The lady really wanted to talk, and was very impressed that I had passed chemistry (YOU PASS CHEMISTRY? me: um, barely. her: WONDERFUL!! ... I wish everybody were that enthusiastic about my subpar chem skills...). She really wanted to talk about global warming, and how maybe the car was a bad invention, even though she loves her car because instead of taking ten days to get somewhere, it takes one hour. Anyway, I ended up buying a pretty ugly bracelet because I wanted to buy something, but also because I really needed to go and was having trouble ending the conversation. The lady made me promise I would come back before I leave. She grabbed my arm, and said "I LOVE YOU! You do good things." That made me feel good. Her parting wisdom was that the roots grass will save us. The roots grass. Old people are snatched by greed. We need roots grass.

So, my roots grass friends, let's save the world, shall we?

time flies when you're having fun (or, you know, being lazy)

I have now been in Milwaukee for eight weeks, meaning that I have only four more weeks in this city. I can’t believe I have wasted so much time not appreciating being here. I haven’t gone to RiverWest at all, haven’t been to the Art Museum, haven’t gone to a Brewers’ game (BUT I LOVE BASEBALL SO MUCH!!), haven’t really checked out the thrift shops downtown or gone to any of the Third Ward bars. All I’ve done is hang out at Bradford Beach and go to Summerfest a gazillion times. And play some kickball and drink a lot of beer (which, I guess, is a pretty Milwaukee thing to do). I’m always so frustrated with my own inertia. It takes so much to get me to go out and see a place, since I always feel like I have way more time than I really do (case in point: Edinburgh… how much of that city did I miss? How much time did I spend hanging out in peoples’ flats or the same pub over and over? Though, those things are in themselves experiences). I haven’t gone on a single brewery tour yet!! I need somebody to come be my partner in crime!

And even if I have four weeks here, my weekend time is severely impeded. This weekend I’m working 8 hours at a community festival (it’s a jazz, blues, and gospel festival, so it should actually be awesome!), then driving straight up to Nick’s fiancee’s parents’ cottage on Lake Michigan to spend the rest of the weekend. I’m really excited about this, since in all my time in the Great Lakes/Land o’ Lakes, I have been invited to a cabin/cottage/lakehouse only once, and that time it was impossible for me to attend. Also, Nick, his fiancée, Ashley, and their friends are really quality people. I need to decide what to make tonight to bring to share! I was thinking cookies, but that is a ton of effort without a stand mixer. Maybe brownies, though I brought that to the last gathering. Also, I really don’t want to turn the oven on so much, since it’s going to be a hot hot hot (!!!) weekend. Yuck. Oh well, fun times shall be had, whatever happens!

Next weekend, I have to work four hours on Saturday morning, and then I think I might go home, but I have to decide whether to do that or go home the next weekend so I can see my little brother’s band, Flounder Gus, play in the regional Battle of the Bands. They are on FIRE! If they win there, they move on to play at the Illinois State Fair, and I’d have just enough time to go see them before I have to go back to Minnesota. August 5-7 will be my last weekend here! I plan to go see Here Come the Mummies again at the WI state fair (I HIGHLY recommend seeing them if you ever have the chance. Their show was quite possibly the most fun I have EVER had) with ye olde kickball team, then do a brewery tour cruise on Saturday. Seriously, if anybody wants to come up and join me, I am VERY open to this idea! On August 12, I’ll finish work here, drive home, head into Chicago, hang out with the delightful Tara for the night, get on a Megabus at 7 am and be on my way to Indianapolis to visit my friend Emily, whom I have not seen for, oh, more than 7 months (has it really been so long since we left Edinburgh!?)! I snagged the elusive $1.00 fare for my trip home Monday night. I’ll spend the week piloting my thesis interviews, then pack and be off to the Great White North to start my pre-term field class (SO EXCITED!).

Last week, some of my friends from high school came up to go out for dinner at the Safe House, which is a pretty cool (if ludicrously overpriced!) restaurant with a spy theme. It doesn’t say the name on the outside or anything. It’s just a little door in the alley that says something like “International Imports and Exports” or something, and you have to know it’s there, and then know the password or do some stupid task to get in. The best part: if you have to earn your right to go in, you’re on a camera that everybody in the bar and the restaurant can see, so when you go through the hidden passage and walk in, everybody claps for you. Of course, I ruined the fun and found the password on teh Interwebz and ditched the girls. They had to do Charlie’s Angels poses, which was pretty funny to watch, if a little pedestrian. We had to wait forever to get seated, but we had fun exploring the nooks and crannies and hidden passageways of the building, though we couldn’t get the secret phone booth exit to work, and I was very disappointed. All in all, it was a really fun evening and it was great to see some old friends!

I just finished Sloane Crosley’s second book, How Did You Get This Number? Those of you who know me well may know that it is my ultimate goal in life to write a wildly successful memoir or essay collection, and Sloane Crosley’s are at the level I aspire to reach. She’s hilarious, but also insightful, though I did not like this one as much as I liked I was Told There Would be Cake. I highly, highly recommend reading them if you haven’t already. They’re both fairly quick reads and definitely well worth your time. I think this is now quite long for an entry, though it hasn’t really managed to sum up all of my thoughts for the week, so expect more late. I’m VERY upset about HR 2018 passing the House, though I am comforted by the knowledge that Obama has said he will veto it if it passes the Senate, which I hope it will not, so that I can still have some faith in this country’s government.

what is happening here?

Wisconsin politics are crazy, and I say this coming from Illinois. In the wake of the recall of State Senator Alberta Darling, the Republican party recruited a fake Democrat to run in the primary to give Darling more time to prepare her campaign before the actual recall election. A primary forces the election into August, when many are on vacation, or will have forgotten their anger. The woman in question, Gladys Huber, has been very active in the Republican party and conservative activities. Yet, somehow she was able to run as a Democrat. These politicians are trying to undermine our democracy. Thankfully, it seems the "protest candidates" across the state have been defeated. Each of these candidates needed only a few hundred signature to be included on the primary ballot, while to recall the senators, a matter of tens of thousands was necessary.

Doesn't seem fair, does it?

I only have a month left in Milwaukee.

I know nobody reads this, but if you happen to stumble across this, please consider writing or calling your representative to urge a "NO" vote on HR 2018. This bill would remove any power the EPA has to regulate baselines and permits for water quality. Without a national baseline, downstream states have a distinct disadvantage in the race to the bottom, as pollution from upstream states (who don't have to worry as much about their water quality standards) will ultimately affect their waters. Everybody deserves the right to clean water, and the EPA has shown its ability to successfully implement the Clean Water Act of 1972. Do not trust the name given to HR 2018: "The Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011." OVer 40 years,the EPA has helped states to clean up the mess that was left by a lack of regulation, and now the representatives from states who would like to pollute more (much of the force comes from mining states, who face restrictions on mountain top removal) would like to take that away from everybody.

Congressman Tim Bishop (NY) made a very eloquent response to this bill on the floor. http://timbishop.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=79&itemid=1898

I am writing to my representative. Please contact yours (http://www.cleanwaternetwork.org/issues-actions/legislation/clean-water-cooperative-federalism-act-2011). We have to make our voice heard now, or live without any assurance of clean, safe, fishable, or swimmable water.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jhadams/dont_water_down_the_clean_wate.html

stupid wisconsin!

Buhhhh! Scott Walker just signed into law a bill permitting concealed carry, and the law seems to encourage employers to place no restrictions on weapons. Employers that DO place restrictions on weapons have liability, whereas those that don’t have immunity, should any ‘incidents’ occur. Walker is such a nutjob. This is his statement concerning the bill: “By signing concealed carry into law today we are making Wisconsin safer for all responsible, law abiding citizens. This legislation has been in the works for a long time—I co-sponsored a similar bill when I was a member of the State Assembly. I am pleased the Legislature approved a bill that included training and permits. Today I would like to specifically thank Senator Galloway and Representatives Mursau and Suder for moving forward this important public safety bill."

Public safety? Hardly! This legislation makes it LESS safe for all ‘responsible, law abiding citizens’ because (and I know this is a fallacy here, I’m just mad) many of the people who are going to be USING those guns in ‘self-defense’ are the sort of people who would shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe I should just get a gun so I can defend myself against every person I see in the street who could be carrying a gun with them. Stranger approaches a young girl, walking alone at night, BAM. “Oh whoops, he just wanted to know when the bus was coming!”

Interestingly enough, this leaves Illinois as the only state in the Union that does not have some form of concealed carry.

constructive summer

It's been a few weeks, my friends (should I say friend, since there is apparently only one person reading this blog? Wooo, Emily!), and has it ever been an eventful few weeks. And when I say few weeks, I mean nearly a month. Whoops. I have now finished 7 weeks of my internship, which means that I have only 5 to go. I'm working weekends to cut off the 6th week that I was supposed to have, but need off to work on my thesis and pack.

Oy, my thesis. That's a topic for later. Back to the issues at hand- I am working every weekend, but usually only on Saturday mornings. I have to work all day next Saturday, and I'll probably go home the weekend after that. This means that I have, effectively, 3 more weekends in Milwaukee. Just as I was starting to love it and feel pretty comfortable, I'm going to be wrenched away. At least, for once, I will be returning to familiar territory. I'm so glad to be staying in my house from last year when I go back to Minneapolis. It sure makes moving easier. So, in three weekends, there are at least 6 brewery/distillery tours I need to cover, I want to take a river cruise, I have to go to the Calatrava, the Public Museum, hit up a Brewers Game, ride on the Hank Aaron State Trail, go to the Domes, and eat as much frozen custard and drink as much beer as possible.

I think I'm setting myself up for disappointment, here. I won't be able to do all of those in the time left. If there's one thing I've learned about myself over the last year, it's that I am nothing if not adaptable. Drop me anywhere, and I will ache for the first few weeks and whine and moan, but eventually, without my even noticing, I will be fine. I can handle things. It just takes a while. And with all the constant movement I've had in the last year, I haven't had a chance to get settled in before it's time to move on. I've been living on an air mattress for 7 weeks, and at this point, I am managing to ignore the back pain, and sleep through the night. I've finally started making friends at the office, and I don't eat lunch by myself every day anymore. All of this has severely cut down on my reading, though, and made my expenditures skyrocket. Then again, what am I spending my money on aside from room and board right now? Very little. I deserve to have a fun summer. It would have been more fun if I'd had time to make the trips I've been wanting to make, but I am now almost completely certain that I will at least be able to make it to Indianapolis the weekend I finish up work. Then, I have a few days in Chicago to run my thesis pilot, see my friends for a bit, and pack up.

My thesis- it's not going great. I agreed to work on it when I didn't have a job lined up for the summer, but when I got one pretty last minute, I couldn't back out of the thesis. I downloaded a load of articles that claimed to have anything to do with compost, and as I have started skimming through them, very few will actually be useful, and I don't understand much of the social science statistics used in the salient literature. So, in summary, I am screwed.

But let us speak of other things. Kickball has been fun. The team is great. Unfortunately, my best friend from the team, Morgan, is moving back to Green Bay this week, so who knows when or if I will ever even see her again! We've only been friends for 3 weeks or so, but everybody asks us if we've been friends since elementary school or something. Sometimes, two people just click as instant friends. I've been lucky with that a few times recently, but normally it takes me ages to warm up to people, and vice versa. The roomie and I have been going to trivia, and we got 3rd place last week, which I think was pretty damn good (as we only lost 1st by maybe 4 points). Matt wants me to come down this Saturday for the IL bar trivia champs, but I have to work. BOOOOO!

Summerfest has been going on for the last week, and I'm so glad I got the chance to go multiple times. I definitely missed a lot of bands I'd love to see, but I got to catch Girl Talk, Cage the Elephant, Florence and the Machine, The Black Keys, the Sam Roberts Band, Here Come the Mummies, and Michael Franti and Spearhead. I've been waiting since I originally became a fan of the Keys in like, 2005 to see them, and it was amazing. I wish I'd had the chance to see them before they got huge, though, because I imagine a grimy club show would have been way more awesome than a packed amphitheater. I was so far away, but I still loved every second of it. I'm going to see Ted Leo in 3 weeks, and I'm really jazzed for that. Matt, Hannah, and Hannah's friend Jeannie, whom I'd met on Hannah's 21st, came up for Girl Talk, and it was fun to have people visit. I ended up going home for the 4th because I like air conditioning. Nobody was home, so I also got to relax. I chilled with Amy most of the weekend, which was really nice since I hadn't been able to see her for like, a year.

Speaking of long-time childhood friends, I went to Buffalo 2 weeks ago on rather sad terms (we were burying my grandpa's ashes. He died about 7.5 months ago), but saw all of my mom's side of the family, which is always great, and got to spend nearly an entire day with Kathryn, who was nice enough to drive in from the Roch. It sucks when you only get to see your bff a few days per year. We had a really good time though, wandering through a farmers' market (we got to pet alpaca!) then eating at a really yummy Vietnamese place, getting lost, and playing with my tiny cousins. We went bowling with my mom and aunts at night, and had a splendid time. I think I was able to hold up as well as I did over the weekend because Kathryn was there. Some people just bolster you. I know I've said this so many times, but I hope it doesn't lose meaning to any of you as I repeat it: I am so lucky for my friends. Without those of you who were with me in Scotland, when you barely knew me, you saved me. I would have totally, completely, and absolutely lost it if it hadn't been for all of you. I miss you dearly. Also, all of my friends at home who were willing to take my transatlantic phone calls or Skype at weird hours, and even people who just wrote on my fb wall or commented on my blog occasionally, you helped me get through such a difficult time.

All of that came back while I was in Buffalo. For the rest of my family, this wasn't really a big deal. They'd been together while they were going through all of this, and they'd been back to Buffalo since it happened. This was the first time I was back in the house. It was all so different from the last time I had been there. I know they changed things before he died, but to me, it was like being in a dream where you are in someplace that is so familiar, but the tiny changes make it extremely disorienting. I went downstairs, half expecting my grandpa to be there with a cup of coffee for me like he had been so many times before, but of course, then I quickly remembered what I was doing in Buffalo in the first place. My cousin, who is 10, kept asking me if Maddy (the dog) seemed sadder than usual, and then talking very seriously to her about the big changes around the house. I don't know how to respond to small children most of the time, and I was especially overwhelmed by trying to deal with a small child who was trying to deal with death. That just made me feel eight thousand times worse. It was kind of precious, in a weird way, though.

It's so weird to think that I don't know if I will ever go back to Buffalo. I spent so much time there, and in the 36 hours I was back over that weekend, I wanted to squeeze in all of my favorite Buffalo things. The only one I managed was Andersen's custard, and that happened while I was sitting in the car crying my head off after we buried him. Putt-putt golf, wings at Duff's, Shakespeare in Delaware Park, the painting elephant, Condrell's, Parkside, the North Tonawanda farmers' market, Niagara Falls, Old Man River, the harbor... the list goes on and on. I never realized how much I loved Buffalo (despite how much Buffalo freaks me out) until it occurred to me that I don't really have a reason to go there anymore.

So many of my formative moments took place in that city. My first rollerblading memory was in Delaware Park. The first Christmas I remember was in the house where my mother grew up. Grandpa read us Edward Lear, and I have a vague memory of Grandma playing horsy with us when I was very, very small. I realized also that I have very many fewer memories of her than I suspected were stored in my head. We were digging through a box of Grandpa's stuff, and I found some articles and more pictures. Everybody looked so elegant back in the day. There is a picture of me from Scotland on top of Arthur's Seat in which I, according to my aunt, look very much like my grandma. I wish I could have had a chance to have known her well enough to reflect upon that with meaning.

Shit, all of this is just coming out now. I'm bawling. I shouldn't be allowed to stay up past midnight and start waxing philosophical and rambling my head off. I apologize, dear reader(s?).

Reading Vonnegut reminds me of my Grandpa. He met Vonnegut at a party once.

I hate when people continually say that somebody "passed." Let's just call a spade a spade, please.

I think this is getting to rambly and weird, so though I have barely scratched the surface here, I'm going to end it. Maybe there will be more later. If not here, in my memoirs.