We talked a lot about sustainability when we were at Harrington House yesterday. Sustainability meant something different when Bruce used it in terms of Harriton House, and when I hung out in my spot afterwards, it made me think of the sustainability of the beech tree that I've been sitting in.

A lot of the trees and deer that are around Harrington House are really abundant now, but they were hardly in the picture when Harriton was built. Even though I sit in a tree every week to observe "nature," I'm really sitting in an arboretum--a pale, human-made replica of what nature "should" look like. I observe a representation of nature, next to a grass lawn, this week with pop music blaring from the athletic fields. Like the "nature" around Harriton House, the tree sit in, and other bits of "nature" on the campus allows the collegiate image of Bryn Mawr to be sustainable.

Like the deer near Harriton, the squirrels that scamper around the college are probably a lot more populous than is "natural." But I still see the squirrels as being a part of nature. I still think that my issues with squirrels reflect a greater problem with animals and anything not molded or consciously protected by humans. Now I just need to figure out what humans have influenced, and what's really supposed to be out there. Or even what "supposed to be" really means.

“You can’t plant in the spring and leave in the summer.” Bruce Grill said at the Harriton House when introducing us to the cluttered community garden (October 2012). “The plants grow everywhere”, Bruce continued. The plants were everywhere indeed. The tomatoes and the squash were mingled together in a corner and some sort of red flowers were hiding among tall grass, which people define as “weeds”. However, isn’t the community garden a great example of “wild gardens” Michael Pollan is talking about in his essay Weeds are Us? People spend too much effort into cultivating an “ideal” garden that always turns out to be too artificial. And no matter how hard people try, nature will always find a way to creep into the fences and make its own wonders. Even on the well-weeded and well-trimmed grass on my site, I find many “intruders”: several cluster of clovers, one dandelion, and other clusters of unknown species.  These aliens managed to escape from the sharp razor that “beheads” the field grass that surrounds them and survive the dreadful potions that are designed to kill “weeds”. Human can’t defy nature. The nature in these clovers and dandelion dictated them to reside on the grass and people can do little about this. “The bees goes whenever they pleases.” said Bruce. I think it is the same thing with gardening. The “weeds” decide to grow in the gardens whenever they please, people can’t simply arrange a garden. 

Anne had shared this piece earlier as a reply to Smacholdt's Thoreauvian (Labyrinth) walk but I just wanted to expose this a bit further and share once again - Jeanne-Rachel Salomon is the creator of the Labyrinth that sits next to the hill in front of Rhoads. She had an interest in Shamanism, cured herself of cancer (not suprisingly) and states, "If one has travelled long enough and the distance between the onset of the journey and the moment of reflection is sufficient, one gains understanding of the journey’s meaning." A frequent visitor of the labyrinth myself, I invite you all to "be and become" more in tune with your lives and take a few moments of reflection and journey through the labyrinth and through life with a renewed awareness.

http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/mcbride1.htm#salomon

I was sitting by the moon bench and staring at the buildings as I had done over and over before. They don't breath like the trees do. They don't shimmer and shake like the leaves do. At Harrington House the older buildings absorbed the sunlight or walled off the cold. They were ecofriendly. The houses take the heat from the sun to warm the house. It is as though the environment is in the house, or the house is part of the environment. As I looked at Park Science it was cold and rigid. Standing straight, not swaying in the wind. An upright posture compared to the more lackadaisical composure most students have. Park Science is a science building where I have biology class. Biology-the study of life. Life is all around the building except in it. The mahine made test tubes and assembly line/factory made tables. Compared with the houses at Harrington and the objects inside. In the kitchen the utensils were hand made and the chairs were carved from mahogany. 

The new movement toward ecofriendly buildings, lifestyles and sustainability is not new. It has always been there. This new resurgence of sustainability or even permaculture causes us to relook at the history of older buildings such as Harrington House.

I went to the English house in the morning this time and I felt more exposed than I usually do. There were professors coming into the parking lot in their cars, and I could hear people walking to and from the Russian house which usually does not happen in the evening. When I entered the backyard of the English house a squirrel scrambled back and forth and back and forth for cover. I suggested that she(?) should calm down, she didn’t listen, but ran it into the woods and up a tree. I sat in the damp grass because it felt like the right thing to do. I faced out towards the woods (it’s interesting that I never sit facing the English House). Bees bounced through the vine covered tree and in the grass. Squirrels bravely leapt. Birds took off and landed. Sunlight streamed gracefully through the trees. Cotton ball white clouds floated easily across the sky-blue sky covers everything. While leaning back and looking up I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I thought it was another squirrel, I Iooked down and saw that it was a buck walking across the opening to the woods. I gasped quietly, and it nodded at me. I laughed and it nodded again before walking off.

My image is more abstract. It implies that the female offenders that we read about, and will soon meet, play a small hand in the misfortunate conditions of their lives...and ultimately their crimes. Other factors, like racism, sexism and classism are active participants in their every day lives even though it is not often clear to those oppressed by them.

“You are only a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things” ~Unknown

SLSA 2013 CALL FOR PAPERS
The 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA)
VENUE: The Campus of the University of Notre Dame
DATES: October 3-6, 2013

CONFERENCE THEME: POSTNATURAL?
What does it mean to come “after” nature? In 2012, Arctic ice melted to the lowest level in human history; with ice everywhere in retreat, island nations are disappearing, species vectors are shifting, tropical diseases are moving north, northern natures-cultures are moving into extinction. Acidification of ocean water already threatens Northwest shellfish farms, while historic wildfires, droughts, floods, and shoreline erosion are the norm. Reality overshoots computer models of global warming even as CO2 emissions escalate. Yet none of this has altered our way of living or our way of thinking: as Fredric Jameson noted, we can imagine the collapse of the planet more easily than the fall of capitalism. What fundamental reorientations of theory—of posthumanity and animality, of agency, actants, and aporias, of bodies, objects, assemblages and networks, of computing and cognition, of media and bioart—are needed to articulate the simple fact that our most mundane and ordinary lives are, even in the span of our own lifetimes, unsustainable? If we have never been natural, are we now, at last, ecological?

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/10/11/where-yunior-came-from/