The same FedEx man who used to deliver to the main desk in BB still delivers this year to Booth. Last year, he used to make deliveries between 8am and 10, where he would frequently find me dozing in my post, because, frankly, it's a human rights violation to make college-aged students get up much before 10. He always greeted me with a smile, though, and would ask about my day and listen to the answer. If he didn't believe my almost unfailingly cheerful response, he would wait until I made my confession. ''I have a test! I'm tired!" He always calls me (and I am sure every other female on the planet) "dear," which you could say is sexist or inappropriate, but at 8am if you call me anything other than "loser-face" I would probably just crawl into your arms, sigh gently, and little tiny "Z's" would start coming out of my mouth.
Today, he came to deliver in Booth, and I was bent over (in my usual position), and heard him knock, looked up for literally a split second, then turned around to flip the switch to bypass the door and let him in. Immediately he exclaimed, "Uh oh, someone's having a bad day!" This he could tell a split-second flash image of my face as I turned to let him in? What!? I smiled broadly and said "What! Me! Heavens no! I'm in a good mood!" And he looked at me with that "Do I look like an idiot?" glare that I've found most parcel carriers have perfected and said flatly, "Really?" I can't lie to the FedEx man! He stared at me with his soulful brown eyes and defeated, I said, "Well, I'm sick, I think I might have the flu." He said, "I thought as much. I can just tell these things about you, you know."
Friday, January 18, 2008
Monday, December 31, 2007
Good morning America, how are you?
I know that writing about this won't do it justice, and no matter what I write, it can't really ring true, or be an accurate enough description. There are certain moments that lodge in your memory without a clear order of events, accompanying sounds, or smells. You remember them only by the intense feeling you experienced at that time, feelings of dizzying glee or an electrifying excitement. Sometimes it's just a dramatic snapshot, a lone image that will stick with you forever, and be your only memory of a particular day or time.
A couple of weeks ago, I drove with a group from SU's chapter of Habitat for Humanity through the seventh and lower ninth wards of New Orleans. These are two of the most damaged areas, which have been mostly untouched since Hurricane Katrina destroyed them more than two years ago. My memory of these places will be defined by a handful of images and a couple of physical/emotional reactions. I'll remember a sickening weight deep in my stomach, of having so many thoughts at once, that eventually my brain slowed down almost to a stop. All I could do was look out the window. There's not much to say when there's so much to see. I'll remember the dozens of houses that had writing on them, left presumably by the people who lived there, begging for help. The front of one house was covered with the words, "HELP US, Please help, any donations," and other pleas, hastily spraypainted in a time of panic, still left for us to read years later. Did anyone ever come to help? When have you ever seen such a desperate, open cry for help, scrawled publicly for anyone who would read it?
Our car was quiet, we drove slowly, like tourists, through a place where people had died when a flood came, like something out of a disaster movie, and somehow, no one came to help. Two years later, in these areas, it still looks like no one ever came. What will stick with me are the foreign images of abandoned houses and empty streets, and the accompanying physical feelings I felt. What stays with me is the heavy desperation and overwhelming sense of hopelessness and heartbreak that hangs over those neighborhoods.
From the outside, some of the houses looked unremarkable. In most of them, it seems no one had moved back, because certainly, the insides would have been rotted through. The owners likely couldn't afford to fix it up, or wouldn't want to. How could you move back to a neighborhood that looks like a ghost town? A few people did; there were a few cars parked in driveways that still had the large X's on the houses, markers made by people who came through after the hurricane to check the houses for bodies. Four numbers were left in each corner of the X: the date, the number of people who came through, a number of dead humans found, and a number for dead animals. Imagine living in one of these houses, or even across the street from a house, marked with a number 3 beneath a giant X. I can't imagine what it must feel like to live in an empty neighborhood, staring at a number, left during a time of crisis and panic, a single digit strangely marking the needless deaths of three people. Who's been in the house since they removed the bodies? I kept wondering why the people who moved back didn't try to remove the markers from the fronts of their homes. Did they want to remember? Or feel too for guilty trying to forget? What does a person think, walking by something like that, every day on the way to the front door?
The devastation has taken extreme tolls on everyone left behind, not the least of which is a giant skyrocket in mental health issues among survivors, and very notably nearly 47,000 children. When we drove through those neighborhoods, I wondered how anyone could be okay still living there. What would a young survivor think? His school is boarded up, his home in ruins, and his parents might not have the resources to make anything better for him.
After all this time, there aren't answers for New Orleans. How can you rebuild something, when there's no way to stop the same thing from happening again? How do you begin to help? I don't know if my visit brought me to any conclusions. In fact, it probably muddled my opinion more. But it did renew my own sense of responsibility. It feels wrong to to drive through a devastated area, in your own country, rubbernecking out the window at someone else's sadness. But I think, even more than I did before, that it's all our responsibility. You shouldn't turn away because something's hard to look at or understand. You can't ignore news about genocide, war or a natural disaster because it turns your stomach. Katrina's devastation is largely a result of this type of ignorance and evasion-- people couldn't deal with issues of pervasive and persistent poverty, rapid climate change, impending crisis, and decisions involving government responsibility. We should look. We should remember, ask questions, and do something. Anything, really.
A couple of weeks ago, I drove with a group from SU's chapter of Habitat for Humanity through the seventh and lower ninth wards of New Orleans. These are two of the most damaged areas, which have been mostly untouched since Hurricane Katrina destroyed them more than two years ago. My memory of these places will be defined by a handful of images and a couple of physical/emotional reactions. I'll remember a sickening weight deep in my stomach, of having so many thoughts at once, that eventually my brain slowed down almost to a stop. All I could do was look out the window. There's not much to say when there's so much to see. I'll remember the dozens of houses that had writing on them, left presumably by the people who lived there, begging for help. The front of one house was covered with the words, "HELP US, Please help, any donations," and other pleas, hastily spraypainted in a time of panic, still left for us to read years later. Did anyone ever come to help? When have you ever seen such a desperate, open cry for help, scrawled publicly for anyone who would read it?
Our car was quiet, we drove slowly, like tourists, through a place where people had died when a flood came, like something out of a disaster movie, and somehow, no one came to help. Two years later, in these areas, it still looks like no one ever came. What will stick with me are the foreign images of abandoned houses and empty streets, and the accompanying physical feelings I felt. What stays with me is the heavy desperation and overwhelming sense of hopelessness and heartbreak that hangs over those neighborhoods.
From the outside, some of the houses looked unremarkable. In most of them, it seems no one had moved back, because certainly, the insides would have been rotted through. The owners likely couldn't afford to fix it up, or wouldn't want to. How could you move back to a neighborhood that looks like a ghost town? A few people did; there were a few cars parked in driveways that still had the large X's on the houses, markers made by people who came through after the hurricane to check the houses for bodies. Four numbers were left in each corner of the X: the date, the number of people who came through, a number of dead humans found, and a number for dead animals. Imagine living in one of these houses, or even across the street from a house, marked with a number 3 beneath a giant X. I can't imagine what it must feel like to live in an empty neighborhood, staring at a number, left during a time of crisis and panic, a single digit strangely marking the needless deaths of three people. Who's been in the house since they removed the bodies? I kept wondering why the people who moved back didn't try to remove the markers from the fronts of their homes. Did they want to remember? Or feel too for guilty trying to forget? What does a person think, walking by something like that, every day on the way to the front door?
The devastation has taken extreme tolls on everyone left behind, not the least of which is a giant skyrocket in mental health issues among survivors, and very notably nearly 47,000 children. When we drove through those neighborhoods, I wondered how anyone could be okay still living there. What would a young survivor think? His school is boarded up, his home in ruins, and his parents might not have the resources to make anything better for him.
After all this time, there aren't answers for New Orleans. How can you rebuild something, when there's no way to stop the same thing from happening again? How do you begin to help? I don't know if my visit brought me to any conclusions. In fact, it probably muddled my opinion more. But it did renew my own sense of responsibility. It feels wrong to to drive through a devastated area, in your own country, rubbernecking out the window at someone else's sadness. But I think, even more than I did before, that it's all our responsibility. You shouldn't turn away because something's hard to look at or understand. You can't ignore news about genocide, war or a natural disaster because it turns your stomach. Katrina's devastation is largely a result of this type of ignorance and evasion-- people couldn't deal with issues of pervasive and persistent poverty, rapid climate change, impending crisis, and decisions involving government responsibility. We should look. We should remember, ask questions, and do something. Anything, really.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Let your heart be light
It's Christmas morning and the family is gathered in the living room. I am Santa, proudly wearing the hat and passing out everyone's presents. Part of my father's gift from me was a couple of six packs of specialty winter-brew beers.
Because we like to keep it classy up in here.
As I bring the large bag over to him, the clinking of the glass bottles is clearly audible.
Dad: Oh, jeez. Clink, clink! Can't imagine what's in there.
Catherine: Well, Dad... you only have a couple of real interests, and we pretty much have to cater to those.
(beat)
Dad: Oh...the emptiness of life...
These types of off-hand comments define our family holiday experiences. We all burst out laughing, even though at the time the comment seemed sincere. We just don't ask. He mentioned later in the morning that I would be repeating the same phrase all in good time. Further proving our affection and tendencies for all things sinister, a couple of Thanksgivings ago, someone mentioned that Raffi died, a musical staple of the kid's childhood and the adults' parenthood. Dinner came to a complete halt, people began screaming belligerently, voices cracking with emotion. Raffi couldn't die! We had to pause the meal to fact-check on Google. (You'll be glad to know that Raffi is still with us.)
This most recent Thanksgiving, we were playing Apples to Apples. The adjective was "awkward" and Cassidy submitted "The Challenger Explosion" as an answer. It was so out of place with all of the other answers, and so strangely hilarious, since it was sort of the opposite of awkward and really just tragic, but nevertheless, it was the winning submission. The next game we played was in two teams. What did we name those teams? The Challenger and Columbia. Click the links if you don't remember, and either rejoice or be horrified by my family's sick sense of humor and insensitivity. These are the holidays at my house.
I hope you all have a lovely holiday, and enjoy the presence (and presents) of whomever you spend it with. I've just come back from my trip to Louisiana, so please wait with bated with breath for those entries. I'll try to be a better blogger, as I've got three weeks on my hands with absolutely nothing to do.
Because we like to keep it classy up in here.
As I bring the large bag over to him, the clinking of the glass bottles is clearly audible.
Dad: Oh, jeez. Clink, clink! Can't imagine what's in there.
Catherine: Well, Dad... you only have a couple of real interests, and we pretty much have to cater to those.
(beat)
Dad: Oh...the emptiness of life...
These types of off-hand comments define our family holiday experiences. We all burst out laughing, even though at the time the comment seemed sincere. We just don't ask. He mentioned later in the morning that I would be repeating the same phrase all in good time. Further proving our affection and tendencies for all things sinister, a couple of Thanksgivings ago, someone mentioned that Raffi died, a musical staple of the kid's childhood and the adults' parenthood. Dinner came to a complete halt, people began screaming belligerently, voices cracking with emotion. Raffi couldn't die! We had to pause the meal to fact-check on Google. (You'll be glad to know that Raffi is still with us.)
This most recent Thanksgiving, we were playing Apples to Apples. The adjective was "awkward" and Cassidy submitted "The Challenger Explosion" as an answer. It was so out of place with all of the other answers, and so strangely hilarious, since it was sort of the opposite of awkward and really just tragic, but nevertheless, it was the winning submission. The next game we played was in two teams. What did we name those teams? The Challenger and Columbia. Click the links if you don't remember, and either rejoice or be horrified by my family's sick sense of humor and insensitivity. These are the holidays at my house.
I hope you all have a lovely holiday, and enjoy the presence (and presents) of whomever you spend it with. I've just come back from my trip to Louisiana, so please wait with bated with breath for those entries. I'll try to be a better blogger, as I've got three weeks on my hands with absolutely nothing to do.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Something you didn't know
Many of you look to me as your sole source of intellectual fulfillment. This is a weighty responsibility, and I take it very seriously. Today, I learned something, and I want to share it with all of you.
Toads molt.
A quick Google search came up with a 1977 document from the Forest Preserve in Cook County, Illinois, that seems to confirm this fact.
I don't know how to react to this.
Toads molt.
A quick Google search came up with a 1977 document from the Forest Preserve in Cook County, Illinois, that seems to confirm this fact.
I don't know how to react to this.
Monday, November 5, 2007
SUperfreak
I was recently perusing Syracuse University's timeline of key events in the school's history. Don't worry, I was doing this for research for an article; not to satiate my overwhelming thirst for all things orange. Here are a few gems:
1874
A need for spittoons in the Hall of Languages is announced by The University Herald, forerunner to the Daily Orange.
1898
The student handbook warns freshmen "not to conclude that the University can't get along without you. It certainly can."
(zing!)
1906
One hundred spectators are injured and one is killed when bleachers collapse during a Syracuse-Colgate football game at New Star Park, the team's temporary home.
(the first of several tragedies that SU fondly remembers in its timeline)
1910
The Daily Orange holds a three-day editorial campaign to promote campus friendliness.
(Has it improved yet?)
1918
Twelve students die, emergency hospitals are erected in dormitories, and the campus is quarantined for more than two-and-a-half October weeks because of a Spanish Flu epidemic.
(if I had been here 90 years earlier, perhaps I could have been an emegency nurse in one of the clinics, thereby fulfilling my sick desire to be a civil war nurse in the south, Gone With the Wind style.)
1921
Dancing is banned for the final two weeks of the spring semester by Chancellor Day, who says, "We are close upon examinations and have no time to dance."
1930
A Daily Orange story declares college is a waste of time for women: "For an average girl who intends to make marriage her chief business, to waste four precious years that ought to be devoted to romantic adventure seems tragic."
1947
The Goon Squad is created to enforce the wearing of freshmen beanies, which are supposed to enable upperclassmen to easily spot freshmen and offer them help and guidance. Instead, beanies become a way to harass freshmen. Architecture students of the forties are particularly harsh on beanie-less freshmen-they're carried off to be dunked in a sink. Beanies become obsolete after the 1970 student strike.
1960
Use of the Alpha Tau Omega cannon, fired after SU touchdowns in Archbold Stadium since 1922, is indefinitely suspended after an accident injures five students during the Penn State game.
(seriously?)
1966
Men are required to wear socks in dining halls.
1985
More than 73 years after the Daily Orange first addressed the need for a student union, the Schine Student Center opens.
(always so timely in addressing students' needs)
Syracuse University... proud of its nearly 150 year of ridiculousness.
1874
A need for spittoons in the Hall of Languages is announced by The University Herald, forerunner to the Daily Orange.
1898
The student handbook warns freshmen "not to conclude that the University can't get along without you. It certainly can."
(zing!)
1906
One hundred spectators are injured and one is killed when bleachers collapse during a Syracuse-Colgate football game at New Star Park, the team's temporary home.
(the first of several tragedies that SU fondly remembers in its timeline)
1910
The Daily Orange holds a three-day editorial campaign to promote campus friendliness.
(Has it improved yet?)
1918
Twelve students die, emergency hospitals are erected in dormitories, and the campus is quarantined for more than two-and-a-half October weeks because of a Spanish Flu epidemic.
(if I had been here 90 years earlier, perhaps I could have been an emegency nurse in one of the clinics, thereby fulfilling my sick desire to be a civil war nurse in the south, Gone With the Wind style.)
1921
Dancing is banned for the final two weeks of the spring semester by Chancellor Day, who says, "We are close upon examinations and have no time to dance."
1930
A Daily Orange story declares college is a waste of time for women: "For an average girl who intends to make marriage her chief business, to waste four precious years that ought to be devoted to romantic adventure seems tragic."
1947
The Goon Squad is created to enforce the wearing of freshmen beanies, which are supposed to enable upperclassmen to easily spot freshmen and offer them help and guidance. Instead, beanies become a way to harass freshmen. Architecture students of the forties are particularly harsh on beanie-less freshmen-they're carried off to be dunked in a sink. Beanies become obsolete after the 1970 student strike.
1960
Use of the Alpha Tau Omega cannon, fired after SU touchdowns in Archbold Stadium since 1922, is indefinitely suspended after an accident injures five students during the Penn State game.
(seriously?)
1966
Men are required to wear socks in dining halls.
1985
More than 73 years after the Daily Orange first addressed the need for a student union, the Schine Student Center opens.
(always so timely in addressing students' needs)
Syracuse University... proud of its nearly 150 year of ridiculousness.
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