Finding the perfect dress

Look what I found this morning by my car! A dead bird. Gross. I feel so bad for it. It's little feet look so...dead. I must be having some kind of bird saga going on in my front yard. Everyday it's something.

Today I went to an English major gathering at the Black Horse. That was nice.

Then I went shopping to find a graduation dress to wear under my robe tomorrow since everything I own clashes with navy blue. I tried every dress on in Kohl's and did not like a one. They were all too patterned or burlap sack-like. Grrrrr. So, I went to Target in desperation, tried on every dress in the store, and loved almost all of them. Hello? I don't think I've ever bought clothes there before. Have I been missing out? I got a cute summer-y blue shift dress.

Emerson on My iPod

Now that my American Lit final is over I am done! Done. Done with undergrad work forever. I don't really feel much. I thought it'd be pretty excited, but I'm more or less feeling like I always do. Huh.

My favorite American Literature author that I read this semester would have to be Ralph Waldo Emerson. We read his Nature, "Self-Reliance", and The American Scholar. actually found a podcast of Nature on learnoutloud.com for free, so I listened while some guy with a deep voice read my homework to me on my iPod. Let me tell you, that is the way to do class assignments!

I think what Emerson was writing 100+ years ago is still relevant today. He values the thoughts, actions, and judgment of the individual. He disdains the concept of society because he believes it destroys the virtue of its individual members. He calls it a "conspiracy" against man. He says, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," as well as, "Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers". He is outraged that people are not forging new ideas for themselves.

I would ask, doesn't every generation struggle with the creation of a new identity? In today's age where non-conformity is common, is traditionalism the new individualism? And is it even possible to not let society chose our paths for us? We can't all go live in the woods and develop our own transcendentalism.

Ceramics

Today was my ceramics final. We went through the class and critiqued everyone's work sprawled out over the room.

I basically lived in the ceramics studio this semester. I might as well have set up a tent and slept in there too. At times I questioned my sanity, but now looking over my work, I am pleased. I feel like have a few very strong pieces that I might actually want to set out instead of wrapping up in newspaper, never to see the light of day again.

The thing about ceramics is this: There are so many opportunities to screw up. There are so many stages, steps, considerations, mishaps, unknowns, uncontrollable factors, that when you get something good that makes it through the final glaze firing, you'd better hold onto it for dear life (and not drop it on the way over to your shelf).

Now I can make tea in my teapot, dinner in my casserole dish, hot chocolate in my mugs, cereal in my bowls, and lemonade in my pitcher. I can stick flowers in my vases, candy in my jars, and paperclips in everything else...except for the sculptures...they can, um, sit on the mantel and look pretty. What fun.

What? Is there a whole flock of birds in there?

There's this little robin that lives in the pine tree beside where I park my car. Everyday she has a chirping fit as I walk by. She acts as if I'm going to steal her eggs away and jump on them or something.

I try to tell her that I'm a human, and her nest doesn't mean anything to me, but she still hasn't gotten the idea.

When I went to my car today, some bird had done a real number on my windshield. There was so much bird doo splattered across it that I could barely see out. I turned on the windshield wiper make it go away, but that only made the white and rainbow goo smear across my entire windshield. Gross. Now I have dried bird doo stains streaked across my car.

Pleasant. Real pleasant.

Purple Flowers

Finals week this week. Sigh. 1 final down, 3 to go. This pre-graduation time isn't as great as I thought it was going to be. Things seem to be falling apart.


Happy Cinco de Mayo! I didn't even realize that it was May 5th until pretty late in the day. Oh well. I live too far north to celebrate anyway.

Maplewood

Yesterday I went to the grand opening of the new greenhouse and produce store in Shippensburg called Maplewood. The family who runs it is Amish. I always see their children in the fields tending to their plants. I don't know whether to feel bad for the kids or not. They seem to like their lifestyle... but goodness, shouldn't they be it school? or playing? or something other than hunching over the fields all day long?

But anyway, the new greenhouse was huge! There were hanging baskets everywhere and tons of gorgeous flowers. There was pink and blue and yellow and orange and red and green everywhere you turned! My family bought some plants and delicious homemade bread. The Amish sure do know how to do organic farming and baked goods. I have to give them that.

Conservatives are more happy

Studies have proved that conservatives are almost consistently more happy than liberals.

Non-partisan survey data clearly show a large, persistent “happiness gap” favoring the political right.

Why is this? There are many conjectures. Arthur Brooks seems to think it corresponds with religion. People who are religious just tend to be happier and the religious right happens to make up a big chunk of the republican party. I guess I can see that, but I have my own theories.

I think it has a lot to do with policy. Leftists tend to think EVERYTHING is wrong and needs to changed which says a lot about trust in government and a prevailing fatalist world view, making happiness harder to achieve on even a smaller individual scale. Rightest on the other hand, are more likely to favor tradition with suggests happiness with the current state of affairs. Also, social responsibility starts at the individual instead of from the top down, so that makes happiness easier to attain when you are in control.

Myself personally, I think there a lot of problems in the world but I am confident that life is good, no matter what situation. Regardless of what is imposed upon you, life is what you make it friends. We determine our own levels of happiness.

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam

My latest read was Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. It has won considerable recognition in the literary world, most notably as the 1998 Booker Prize winner. Don't let the title fool you though. Most of Ian McEwan's book, Amsterdam, takes place in London.

It is a story about two men in upper-class London. Clive Linley is an accomplished musician who embarks on a journey to compose a masterpiece that defines the millennium. Vernon Halliday is the editor of a prominent newspaper with waning readership. The conflict is nestled in decisions of morality. Is it better to accelerate one's career or to protect those in need? Should Clive delve into his composition at the risk of others? Should Vernon publish sensitive information that would destroy a popular public figure? The moral dilemmas are believable, raw, and engaging. Clive and Vernon do not struggle with the morality of their own decisions, but find it quite acceptable to reprimand one another for their life choices. They see the flaws of their friend, but never their own. This is the realism that McEwan tugs at.

However, the random unity of realism that colored the pages throughout the book converges into a realism that could never exist. The ending was too obvious, too easy, and an author that can sustain a beautiful narrative for 183 pages ought to be able to carry it on for only ten more. In an attempt to show authorial cleverness, the end lacks the subtlety and finesse that defines the greatness of the rest of the piece.