I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long

I was trying to come up with a word for the emotion that Margie has at the end of Fargo, but couldn't think of one and eventually used two words to place it within a spectrum of feelings. Trying to communicate is a mad struggle every second. Being a person is both really difficult and enjoyable at the same time because words are so imperfect and not comprehensible enough. It's interesting to talk to really eloquent people (Liz Kramer, Julia Weese-Young, etc. etc.) to see how they do it. If I had a superpower, it would be that I can communicate far better than I can now.
I'm hugging life today, are you?

Into the Darkness

Dependent Study heard about this via Ecology of Absence, and I think we're gonna try to go? You should peep it. Basically, it's a documentary movie about urban exploring and the people who do it. We're sort of doing some urban exploring,during day. But it's interesting and its at Webster University. So, we're taking this as an opportunity to:

1) see this awesome movie
2) take a bus adventure to Webster
3) explore Webster

Come, yeah?

Antonio

Crown Candy might be a problem

We ate lunch at Crown Candy today and noticed two important things: 1) for an area so devoid of population and nearby jobs, the place was packed. There were people waiting at the front of the store to get a table. 2) We decided that the vast majority of the customers were not from Old North. Some were wearing business suits, hinting that they came from downtown. Anyway, these phenomena led us to discussion of the larger problem of gentrification in areas like Old North. Even if there is affordable/low-income housing in Old North, if there is enough desire to live there the locals will be forced to move out because the cycle snowballs until everyone wants to live there and prices can't help but go up. Crown Candy itself is not the problem, in fact the Malts are delicious and it's an amazing place, but if people are willing to drive from far away just to eat lunch there, and if Old North becomes as desirable as it seems it will, people will pay big money to live there, which will totally change the area.

GRAFFITI 4 GOOD

<- Some 2002 STL graffiti
Every time I ride the metro I stare out the windows at the concrete walls whizzing past and look for new pieces of graffiti that have cropped up since the last time I rode that way. I love graffiti a lot. Wait, I should qualify that: I love good graffiti a lot. Let me now define "good": good graffiti is not done on buildings/structures/places which would otherwise be beautiful without the graffiti (I know everyone has opinions about what is beautiful, but some are easier to pinpoint than others). For example, I don't like it when there is graffiti on brick buildings or old buildings. Actually, it's pretty hard for me to think of a building on which I approve doing graffiti. So where should graffiti be done? I think that all underpasses, all concrete walls that run next to train tracks, and train/metro cars should be viable grounds for graffiti art. They are pretty ugly as is, so adding color can never hurt, and has the potential to be beautiful. I'm not saying I think graffiti should be made legal. The illegality of graffiti is what makes it appealing: it's risky and exhilarating. The point of most graffiti is to leave your mark on a place, artists merely write their names in ever more complex and interesting ways. The status of a piece is elevated by its complexity and difficulty of location (like if it's on the side of Eads bridge or something). I think that graffiti needs to evolve. Artists have the potential to reach a vast audience (young and old alike) with their work, and they should take advantage of it. Graffiti should be a means for The People to voice their opinions in a very public way. Doing graffiti that has some sort of message (a good message of course) can affect a ton of people. I think it would make a lot of people's day if a big fill-in of "SAVE THE METRO" showed up on the side of some underpass on the way to downtown.

-DJ

Let Me See You Bounce That Bounce That

The Skandalaris Center in Simon Hall helps people do things to help people.
In the past few weeks, they've just come up again and again in helping fund community-development-type initiatives, especially WashU grads trying to make things happen in St. Louis.
I briefly talked to II Luscri (most awesome name probably ever) about this event that they have about 5 times a year called IdeaBounce. It's where they pick out 10 or 15 people's ideas from the ones submitted on their website, give them a two-minute elevator pitch, then pick five winners and give them 100 dollars. The real point of the event is not the Benjamin, but the connections the people can make with the people that attend the event. Apparently some guy got a job overhauling an entire company's website because he pitched a cool intracompany idea sharing web thing at IdeaBounce. And of course, the Burning Kumquat was at IdeaBounce once upon a time. Ideas presented in snippy snappy talks, yummies, and all these people you can talk to? What more could you ask for?

It's on September 18, Thursday at 5:00p.m. in
Room 310, Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser Busch Hall (law skool)
This one's environmental-themed! In association with this year's Freshman Reading Program, which was organized by my super awesome ex-advisor Alicia Schnell.
Sorry about the excessive name-dropping, but you should definitely come.

Lift for Hug Life

pictures!! Over the weekend, we worked with Architecture for Humanity-St. Louis on the Lift for Life Academy greenhouse project. Again, it was my first time visiting a project Hitomi and DJ had been working on over the summer and I was impressed yet again. The LFL charter school serves St. Louis City kids and provides them with a middle school education (grades 6-8th) starting this fall, they will begin to offer 9th grade courses, adding another year of high school each year until 2011.

Anyway, this project is really cool because the greenhouse is designed to eventually be taken apart and repurposed when the Academy begins to expand its buildings. It's great that there is an organization in the city devoted to offering top-notch educational services to kids who cannot afford to buy a private school education. From what I've heard, the public education system in the city is not so great, so it's excellent that there is such an opportunity here for these kids. Of course, it would be great if there was more than just one LFL-style educational institution in the city or- better yet- if the public education system could get its act together and perhaps begin offering a meaningful and worthwhile education to the children of St. Louis. We cannot expect our cities to grow and flourish if we dont first focus on educating the people who will one day be voting, living, and working in those cities. It's irresponsible and idiotic for us to believe that we can get by without an adequate educational system.

dont you think?

Hugz,

Antonio

Mo Money Mo Problems

One really frustrating thing about staying involved in academia is the amount of manipulation and competition that sway true learning. It's pretty obvious that money plays a big role in how a scholastic institution is run. If your middle school was in a struggling school district, you hardly learned anything in class because your classes were too big, there weren't enough books to go around, and the school administration didn't have enough resources to organize a sane school day. In college, funding becomes a big deal, especially for a private school (which I attend), and every aspect of its education and operation tend to lean towards what the investors want, or what the administrators think the investors want.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing; I think it's good and honest that an organization with people putting money into it tries to listen to those people keeping that organization afloat. It only gets tricky when things like genuine curiosity in a subject or a thirst for learning becomes hindered by the monetary and logistical concerns of the educational institution. This can be also interpreted as specialization in a field by each school being a strength in the American school system. It's still hard as a student to cope with the realization that your school would rather listen to an old guy that may not even live in St. Louis to make decisions about what affects you every single day.
Another interesting facet of academia is the research industry. It's a crazy mix of pure curiosity, big-money greed, and philanthropy. A lot of researchers research things they don't really care about or for in order to make a living; a lot of researchers go into a field of research to try to solve a problem. Apparently a surprising number of cancer researchers had cancer as children and was inspired by their recovery aided by cancer research and treatment. Even if you aren't a scary greedy cash money monster, if you have two kids to send to college, you need to keep your job no matter how much or how little you personally have investment in your research. A lot of researchers (like my dad) really enjoy the process of discovery and creative problem-solving that is inherent in research.
Money is a really difficult thing that gets imposed on everything people do nowadays. It's refreshing to think about society without money or constraints of endowments, but it's also difficult to imagine how the current global culture would function without currencies. But on a small scale, I'll bake you brownies and you can teach me how to grow fish in a rain-collection barrel. Deal?