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I wanted to post the poem that Le Guin references in case anyone had any interest in reading it! I copied it from this site: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

To his Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

I was eating with Girl A and Girl B (both from South Asian American backgrounds) at the reception of a recent culture show. A group of people walked by--- two South Asian American girls in arms linked with their boyfriends, surrounded by some of their other friends. Girl A looked up and waved at the girls with boyfriends, and after the group had left the room, Girl A turned to Girl B and said, "I wish I had a white boyfriend!" Girl B nodded in agreement and said, "Mhhm!" In that moment I didn't think to ask Girl A to elaborate on her remark, but looking back on it, I really wonder what she would have said if I asked why. What makes white boyfriends more desirable than any other kind of boyfriend? Her remark surprised me, but I can't really explain why it gave me a weird/funny/unsettling(?) feeling. 

I woke up last Monday to an email saying classes were canceled due to snow and all non-essential staff were asked to stay home. So I was surprised to stroll into the bathroom and see my hall's housekeeper wiping down the sink countertop. I wasn't expecting anyone to be there, but particularly not any college staff. "Wait, don't you get the day off?" I asked. She explained that no – she and the rest of the housekeeping staff are considered essential and have to report into the college regardless of the weather conditions. She then expressed concern that the weather would make it difficult for her to pick up her daughter on time. I wished her luck, and left feeling shocked, helpless, and a little bit guilty. I was surprised the college would require housekeeping staff to report when faculty don't have to – especially because, as 18-22 year olds, I feel we should be pretty capable of restocking toilet paper or keeping our spaces clean, at the very least for a couple of days. I felt helpless because I didn't know what I could do to ease the situation, and wasn't sure what my responsibility was. And I felt guilty because she was forced to risk her own safety to come in to take care of our mess and our spaces.

I am a student representive for a committee of Haverford alumni. Yesterday, I sat in on their meeting and talked to them a little bit about current issues on campus. I brought up how many students were upset about the modification of the no-loan policy and how a lot of students would not have come here without it. The alumni were shocked and somewhat offended. "But everywhere has loans!" "They are not that big!" "Why would you not choose Haverford because of money, Haverford is so special!" Most of the alumni were white and almost all of them currently have high-paying jobs. When they were at Haverford, it was a much less diverse place. Also, college in general cost less then. Currently, Haverford costs $10,000 more per year than the U.S. average yearly income. 

These alumni do not fully understand that for some people, $12,000 in loans after college is a deal breaker. For some people, recieving a few thousand dollars more from one school than another is a deciding factor. Haverford is indeed "special", but not everyone gets to pick the most "special" college, they have to pick the most affordable. 

They also began to complain about how students who recieve grants from Haverford don't give enough to the school after they graduate. Since when did financial aid come with strings attached? Yes, it would be nice if everyone gave back to Haverford, but why should students who needed to be on financial aid be expected to give more than other students?

This isn't directly connected to any class assignment-- but I thought this TED talk was super interesting, considering our recent discussions about interconnectedness and nature/society/world, and considering our artistic approaches to representing the environment. Many of us seemed to photograph the ice at Tinicum, and this is one artists approach!

When reading Chapter 4 of Urban Wildscapes, I kept reflecting on my own childhood and how I was socialized in an environment that mostly restricted play in the industrial ruins. Even when reading about the industrial ruins, I was thinking about the picture I had of what that looked like and how for much of my life, playing or even spending time in that type of space did not seem appealing as they "allow wide scope for activities prohibited or frowned upon in other urban public spaces" (66). However, as I was thinking more deeply about this, I recalled how as children, my brother and I played in a construction site behind our back yard that was composed of many mounds of dirt, some foundations, loose nails--it was certainly an unregulated space and could be charactierized as an industrial ruin. David and I created a make believe town which we invited our other neighbors to play in. We claimed this space as our own and together all of us played games and took on roles and characters of townspeople in this place. While this construction site was not as clean, colorful, regulated, and supervised as the park a few blocks from our house, it did allow us to put more of our own stamp on how we navigated and managed the space, as well as how we were able to use our imaginations. 

I meant to post this the other week when we were talking about fibonacci in nature. Enjoy :)

I had a wonderful, thoughtful conversation with my friend last night—the one my last post referred to, in regards to his class background. I wanted to be upfront with him about the fact that I wrote about him for my class because I felt that, although my post was vague, he had the right to know that his experience was influencing me and was entering my thoughts and conversations. We ended up talking for close to an hour about what I had written and other related topics. Reflecting back on the openness and honesty of our talk, I have one nagging question that I keep asking myself: Why do I not feel comfortable having these same rich and important conversations with my upper middle class white friends?

In the last year or so, I have started to seek out individuals with whom I can talk through some of my immerging understandings of my own identity, background, etc. These friends are, almost without fail, either students of color, students of a different class background than my own, or other students who study education or who I know to be comparably as aware of their cultural identities, as I am. These conversations and the people I have them with stand, in my mind, in direct opposition to my closest friends who I live with. I live in a dorm with twenty other people, some of my closest friends, and I do not feel comfortable talking explicitly about race, class, culture, our identities—the assumptions we carry, etc. with them. (It should be noted that I primarily live with upper middle class white people).

What is striking about Katy Mugford’s chapter, “Nature, nurture; danger, adventure; junkyard paradise” is the four photos of children all in front of different landscapes. And they all have very grim expressions and the same awkward, unenthusiastic, reluctant postures.

This reminds of me of parents taking photographs of their children when on trips to various places, with the classic reluctant child pose. Why do we like taking family photos when we travel to new places, monuments, historic sites, etc.?

There are already countless of photographs and documentations — both professional and amateur — of the Eiffel Tower or the Capitol building or the Rocky Mountains, and yet we still take our own because they are not as meaningful as when they include a familiar, non-stranger person. When we know the subject, or we are ourselves the subject, of a photograph in any landscape, we are capturing ourselves inserted in that landscape. Printed out on a flat surface, that photo physically levels out the degrees to which we may be separated from the landscape. We become part of the landscape.

My family has countless photographs as well, of our own trips. I owe so much to my parents for giving me the lifestyle and platform that allow me to create a relationship with the many environments I’ve experienced. However, I don’t know if I’ve consciously gone about relating the books I read in my childhood with the way I learned about my ‘setting,’ my environment in the close world around me.