Hung out in Dogtown too long

My Stanley summer is finally coming to an end. Stanley really is a magical place, but if you’re stuck with a shitty job, it takes away your lust for life. I know i’m being really melodramatic about it, and part of it is that I’ve always only had freelance or part-time summer jobs, never a real 9-to-5er (or in this case, a 6:30-2:30er). A huge part of Stanley is socializing in the bars at night, meeting new people, planning adventures, listening to country music, and occasionally drinking (resort towns are far too expensive to get drunk at the bar every night.) I missed out on that part of it, partly because I felt bad that Josh couldn’t go, but mostly because my body and mind were so tired from waiting on 200 people that day that I just wanted to go home and sleep. I might come back here again, because it’s a great place, but I definitely wouldn’t hire on to the Swillage again. It’s far too hectic for what it was, and if I’m in Stanley, I’m gonna enjoy it, goddamn it.

I’m now entering a brief liminal period filled with gear shopping, trying on boots, buying long underwear, reviewing itineraries, and entering the long wave-train of paperwork, Raytheon orientations, and flight-layover-flight-layover-flight-layover-ICE-type schedules. Then it will be a new chapter of my life, filled with hard labor, endless days (literally, the sun doesn’t set), and bitter, bitter cold. I’m pumped!

Mountain Mamas

This past weekend was the Mountain Mamas Arts and Crafts Fair, which, before I attended, I thought ws an actual craft fair, with fun craft booths for the kids, maybe a merry-go-round, etc. However, the locals here speak of it not as a family fun event, but as another goddamn roadblock in Stanley. Which is sort of what it was-- not only is the 3rd weekend in July Stanley's biggest weekend b/c of Mountain Mamas, but it is probably statistically the best weekend to go camping as well. These powers combined (much like Captain Planet) led to what has been possibly the worst weekend of the summer for me as a server at the Swillage. Goddamn that place and all the non-English speaking people they hire. I LOVE people from other countries, but I blame the restaurant for hiring people in positions where you have to be fluent, and they're not.

You Just Got Rick-Rolled!

For the first time today, I actually felt a twinge of happiness at living in Stanley. I know that in previous posts I mentioned that it was a wonderful place to live, blah blah blah, I should be greatful, and it's true, but my job's diet consisted exclusively of my soul and Mountain Village was slowly munching away at it, 40 hours at a time. Katie Pond said that this place would draw you back, but most of the time I hate my job so much that I didn't really believe her until now. There's no goddamn way I would come back and work for the Swillage (as its former employees so lovingly refer to it), but if I could somehow score a job at Riverwear or something cool, I would. Problem is, I don't think good jobs are easy to get here, since a good job in Stanley is such an ideal situation and peeps hang onto something once they get it.

daaaaay tripper

I think it’s safe to say I’m “tripping” on hydrocodone right now. I took two instead of one tonight, partly in frustration of my tooth-hole pain (extraction of wisdom teeth, hence the availability of hydrocodone), partly from wanting to be able to go to sleep earlier, and party from wanting to see what it would feel like to actually be stoned on it. It feels pretty good. Relaxing, drowsy-ing, a tiny bit dizzying. I do feel euphoric though, a bit, which is nice. I had kind of a bummer session this afternoon when it hit me that Josh would be gone for 4 days. Still trying to figure out if I should go down there to Boise on Thursday after work since I have Friday off.

I’ve only been working for a few days at MV and I’ve already experienced incredible frustration that accompanies a 40 hr/wk job. I think it may actually be worse since I don’t necessarily have weekends off, and those are the times when I would want to come to Boise.

I think summer will be a time of character-building for me in many, many ways. “Having” to be outside all the time will be a big change for me, and a good one. My exercise habits and eating habits will change, and hopefully become more stable. (For example, hiking to the top of the butte each day is a great goal.) I’m going to reduce my screen/internet time vastly, I can already tell, and learn some songs on the guitar for Open Mic nights at the K Club. And I’m going to write in my journal. I ‘ve noticed a trend with journaling…when I do it, my life is consistently better. Not sure if it’s a correlation or actually cause/effect, but there’s some sort of relationship, so I will do it.

I was reading Dove Rainbow’s travel blog earlier tonight and her entry was about getting stuck on a section of highway on her way to a hut while hitchhiking in New Zealand. She was frustrated about not getting picked up, but changed her attitude and made her day so much better instantaneously. It’s incredibly applicable to my Stanley situation; I’m frustrated at I don’t know what.. (not having a busy social calendar?) but I need to realize that life is actually really good right now. I’m with a really awesome guy who treats me well. We live together in a cozy apartment with pretty cheap rent within walking distance to work (up a gorgeous little trail). We’re in a mountain playground where people pay really good money to experience for a weekend what we get to experience every day. That air outside is clean and breathable, and there’s grass and wildlife and mountains. Anyone should be appy in this situation, and I’ve decided that I’m going to be. Starting NOW. (might also be the hydrocodone)

The First Night in Stanley

We made our bed out of backpacking mattresses and sleeping bags, like true middle-class vagabonds. The Williams family cooler multitasks as the kitchen dinette set, coffee table and extra seating, and our apartment door is the only one in the complex that has mini Basque flags strung across the eaves leading into the kitchen/living room.

Most people here are missing teeth and I can’t really figure out why. I always pictured Stanley, Sawtooth City, and all those little places to be filled with people like us—city folk who yearn for peaks and hikes, and don’t mind schmozzing rich people to do it. But I guess we are oinly the summer crowd. The real winter-overs, the people who comprise the 100-person demographic of Stanley, stick around teven during the times when all there is to do is drink. At least during the summer, you can boat while you drink. So, hats off to the toothless, I say.

Ohhhh I love summer!

Journal - www.WGAL.com

WGAL, the local news channel in Lancaster, PA, is the very example of how a broadcast medium has utilized multimedia to effectively market themselves and deliver accurate and up-to-date news.  Right off the bat, the home page grabs users' attention by using a flash animation to deliver top news stories with catchy graphics, effectively telling us what we should be concerned about.  This is actually very smart on the station's part, because oftentimes users log on to a website with no particular attention.  With red lights flashing and convincing photos--the movement on a page-- WGAL hooks users in for another look.

The most impressive and user-friendly aspect of the site, in my opinion, was the uber-practical sidebar.  Pragmatic and concise, WGAL had a skeletal map of the site laid out in a link format: "national news :  local news : News in Pictures : Weather..." etc.  There were no fancy taglines, nothing standing in the way of the user and the news itself.   WGAL also showed evidence of tapping a younger target audience by adding "Prom 09" to its sidebar.  It's mostly a plug for Seventeen magazine and its subsidiaries, but it's reaching out to teenagers nonetheless.  A favorite section of mine was "Weird News", which today included  the headline, "Men Accused of Smuggling Songbirds in Pants".   I love that people will report on that stuff.

For the Survivors

When I heard my grandma had finally died, I hung up the phone and just waited. I don't cry very often, so when I started crying a few minutes later, I had to ask myself what it was for. And it wasn't that she had finally died; we were all there at the end, especially Mom, Jules and the nurses, who worked tirelessly to help make Grandma comfortable during her final days, which was a hard, hard job. I'm glad she's finally at peace.

But it wasn't Grandma's death that made me cry; it was remembering her life. She was like a second mother to me. I remember staying at her house on so many school nights, and she'd make steak and baked potatoes for dinner (one of her favorites) and we'd stay up and watch TV and play Boggle. In the morning to get me ready for school, she'd holler "Hey Laelie, time to get u-up Laelie," in a singsong voice. She took me to voice lessons, piano lessons, clarinet lessons, Basque dancing, and was my emergency rides to school-- in a service she called FART, short for Ferron Area Rapid Transit. She was at recitals, games, school plays, all of it.

And it's remembering those things that makes me cry. But I realized that they're not tears of sadness like the usual sadness when someone dies; the pain of being separated from your loved one, to know you'll never see them again. It's not that. The tears are from the nostalgia of remembering my life with Grandma, and what a big difference she made. They're tears of happiness and being blessed to know and love such a great woman who really was a very GRANDmother.

People say death is a part of life; but grief? Grief is a part of love.

What is grief? It's different things for different situations. For the survivor that lost a spouse or a child, someone who was ripped out of our lives and ripped out of this world, it is the pain of attachment. It's a feeling of helplessness, of disorientation, of confusion, of loss. It's the untimeliness and surprise of it all that gets us. But when my Grandma died after being completely immobile for two weeks, almost bedridden before that, and very frail for the last year, it was no shock, so it was easier for me. Maybe that was because I wasn't there for the diaper changing, the late night crying, and the general disarray and pain. But for me the pain was remembering my childhood. It reminds me of the Ben Folds lyrics, "everybody knows, it hurts to grow up..." and it does. But with the pain of change comes laughter and love. And that's exactly what I remember about Grandma-- laughter and love.

From Base Camp at Yosemite

Here we are . . . the mountains on all sides of us, cliffs rising so high it hurts your neck to see above them. The group is pretty diverse-- 1/4 of the group is international students (which is awesome). Last night we had to sleep in the parking lot while we waited for spots to free up. There's a huge boulder in the middle of camp, as tall as the second-floor window in Hayman. Everyone's got their camp chairs, and I have a mug of rum and coke. Life is good.

Free Write - 5 things wrong with America

1)      We have to pay a ridiculous amount for health care.  Free public health care would

2)      Underpaid and undervalued public education system

3)      Racism and discrimination in the criminal justice syste

4)      Rampant Capitalism.  Sure, folks should be rewarded for working hard and succeeding.  But Americans seem to forget that we're a community that should watch out for each other.

Top Problem: Health Care

When we declared independence from England, as a pillar of our new country we professed to care about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.  Liberty and pursuing happiness are (supposedly) guaranteed by our politics, but there aren’t really any governances on providing our citizens with health.  Social programs are remedial at best, but what’s really needed are institutionalized programs designed to provide everyone with affordable health care.

Free Write - Reality TV

Reality TV, for most Americans, satisfies a need for interpersonal relations that can be accomplished while vegging out in front of the TV.  We laugh, cry, and get mad at the “characters” that are just like us while they dance, lose weight, hook up, paint their bodies with mud, eat gross things, and sing.  We can relate, because the contestants on the shows are just like us.  It is very entertaining.

Conversely, since the characters are just like us, the quality of the program is extremely compromised, and for two reasons: one, the people aren’t trained actors, and selected for their dramatic and/or scandalous personalities and potential to fail (which the audience loves), and two, the producers interject, selectively edit, and prod the contestant to spark drama in the program. They market it as “reality,” when in reality, it is just the directed throwing of fits.  Sure, we like getting to know the contestants on Survivor and rooting for our favorites, but what do we learn from it?  That the only way to win a contest is to lie, cheat, and double-cross your teammates?

Journal - PressThink

PressThink is a blog very relevant to the discussion of media convergence - the "Information Era" brings both benefits and problems to journalism.  Jay Rosen, the head blogger (and founder?) discusses the advantages of "citizen critics", who have gained the tools to become journalists, and and the impending danger of "Absolute Commercialization."  The tagline, Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, points to a time when the media and press were interchangable words.  Now The Media has enveloped little ol' The Press, and is becoming a multimedia commerical giant.  Rosen is trying to save what little of The Press is left, or so he claims in his blog.

The PressThink Intro Page champions the cause of journalism that's worth fighting for and "worth dying for". Not sure about that one, but it did remind me of that movie Veronia Guerin where an Irish journalist writes about a drug ring, and is eventually asassinated because she won't be bullied into stopping her investigation.

Rosen's post are excruciatingly long, but contain valid content; though he knows that "meta posts",  as he calls them, are long and arduous, he unapologetically explains that it is his website, damnit.  If you like it, leave some comments.  If not, you can leave.

becoming a rambler

Today is St. Patrick's Day, 2009. My favorite holiday. Pond and Chris Holcomb stopped by the OP, and we discussed our "plans", which were the equivalent of 5-year plans for most college grads, but we call them our "6 month plans." Why would you live with more committments than you need? My definition of success is being happy and working little.



I want seasonal jobs in 6-month tracts of time for a very long time. I don't see any reason to get a mortgage, a steady job, a marriage, a kid. I don't see a problem in using my mom's house as my "permanent address", and getting my mail in big paper sacks when I stop by home. I want a Subaru I can sleep in, a good dog, and a tall, long-haired travel buddy. I want to learn Basque and Spanish, and get tan on a Costa Rican beach. Does everyone want to live like this when they're young, or is it just a particular breed of us afflicted with wanderlust?

the coldest, windiest, highest, driest place on earth

Above, in the photo from November titled "Antarctica Supporters for Obama", is my aunt Jules,holding the American flag amidst a group of red-parka-ed scientist and base workers at McMurdo Station. With any luck, I'll be working there too this winter. I just applied with Raytheon for positions as General Assistant in construction, Administrative Assistant, and Courier. Maybe by this time next year, I'll have finished a season of being an Antarctic mail lady.