Back on the blog! i swear!

Hi Friends --

As usual, I am delinquent about the blog... but I am back! and will attempt to contribute more regularly.

This semester has been nuts.

Between my usual life in three locations -- New Haven, NYC and my parents -- and loads of school work (5 demanding classes) and two clinical sites -- prenatal and BIRTH -- it has been difficult to catch my breath!!

I am feeling super excited about changes and shifts in my life!

1. Moving in with Milo! (It's temporary, we say. 1 year trial. If we don't have fun, we're breaking up. I say this is unlikely, but I also say we've been together for four years, so if this isn't fun, it's time to move on!) Super excited about our apartment -- we move in tomorrow -- in the Lower East Side... lots of lovely cafes, drinking establishments and restaurants... we'll see how much of a bullshit nyc experience it is -- I love new york, but sometimes its dwellers are so damn entitled and irritating. ha!

2. ALMOST A MIDWIFE! I really really love it. I have been doing a lot (and some extra) prenatal clinical lately and it's super fun. I finally feel like I'm getting the content of it better, which let's me relax a little and just have a good time with clients. Now that I actually get what I am supposed to do in prenatal visits I've been able to branch out a little more and talk about other stuff women think and/or I think is important to discuss prenatally. Expectations for birth? Any fears? (it's crazy that talking about fears isn't standard, but it isn't. No time! they say. but I'm a student and I get to take all the time I want. :) ) Baby catching is also awesome!! Haven't caught one for a while now... but I will have an opportunity next week if someone's in labor when I'm there... It is a little scary though -- they come out all slippery! (afraid of dropping)

3. I've been getting pretty good at not getting stressed out. It's not worth it, generally. My strategies: exercise, eat good food, sleep enough, drink water, do one thing at a time, take deep breaths... it will all get done! :)

LOVE LOVE LOVE :)

megan

SXSW

I think it's up to Selena and Carmella to upload some more photos, but here's a taste of what I have (images courtesy of my phone's Hipstamatic app...apropos for this crowd), and a list of bands that we saw, all for free:

Future Birds
Mother Falcon
The Dodos
Twin Shadow
Cass Mccombs
Matt & Kim
The Strokes
The Horde and the Harem
The Guards
Grandchild

These are all fab and deserve a download. Also something I've been liking lately are KEXP Music that Matters podcasts.

Love ya'll, back to school,
Rose

south by south MISSIN YOUSSS

hey y'all from TEXAS! rosie, selens and i have been enjoying the music festival SXSW (south by southwest) here in austin for the past couple of days and it's been complete craziness - in a good way, of course! we have lotsa stories and made tons of fun memories, some maybe involving selena vomiting out the car window?! (but still managing to give me driving directions in between hurls!) don't worry, we have pictures AND video! we came, we saw a trillion bands, we conquered.

other activities included: hipster-watching, eating from fancy food trucks (or "trailers" as the austin-ites like to call them), biking in dresses, marveling at selena's hipster outfits and hipster friends, trying to understand the complex inner workings of selena's social circles, eating chips and salsa at every meal, trying to understand the need for ridiculous hipster facial hair, bumping into celebrities (conan obrien and michael cera are on our list!), and more!

austin, you're pretty awesome. we love you!

chapman folks, you're super awesome and we wish you had been here to party with us!

anyhow, i head back to miami tomorrow and then i'm roadtripping back to new england the first week of april. we're trying to organize a little reunion in or around amherst the weekend of april 9-10 so i hope lotsa y'all can join us (and help me move into my barn!). also, i'm planning on being in nyc and boston in the days before that weekend, and i think i'm going to catch a production of Rent (the musical) at BU that rosie choreographed the dancing for on friday the 8th. also, megan's bday is april 7th = more reason for reunion that weekend?!

hearts, carmella

back from the rainforest

Hello friends! I'm glad that we've been hearing from a few of you silent beauties. Thanks for the updates, pretties! And as always, a big thanks to Selena for getting the ball rolling on the 2012 new years reunion! It's going to be epic, friends. Epic. The world (as we know it) might be ending, but at least Chapman will be UNITED.

In other news, I've returned from Ecuador. My time in the tropics was lovely, and I was sad to leave. But! I left the country with an interesting offer: to be the co-director of this biological reserve which also happens to be my favorite place on the planet (seriously). A dream job, right?
Well, my brain was a jumbled mess for a few days trying to make sense of my life, and in the end, I decided that the job in the jungle wasn't the right next move for me. For one thing, I already have a job (working on a farm in Belchertown starting in April) and also, they wanted me to start asap meaning I would have to drop everything and fly back down to Ecuador (on my own dime) for an extended period of time (at LEAST 2 years. The woman I'd be replacing was in the position for 9 years and was a fixture in the community - tough shoes to fill). As appealing as that all is in theory, I decided to take the "responsible" route and stick to my original plan. Also, the pay was truly a pittance, even for me, and I'm used to being underpaid! (I just found this handy dandy flow chart that would have been helpful last week when I was grappling with this decision. I know you guys and gals will appreciate it - http://www.shouldiworkforfree.com/)
Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to do something like that at some point in my life because I really do think that it's super important work. I just can't make that commitment right now and the responsibility of running a remote biological reserve is a bit scary to me right now...

Otherwise, being back in the rainforest was so wonderful, and I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to return to a place that I've been dreaming about for nearly four years. Each afternoon, after a hard day of hiking and planting in the jungle, I would go down to the river and just soak it all in - the beauty, the sounds, the serenity, the life force that exists there is simply astounding - and every day I would internalize it all and bottle it up inside me to carry with me always. Pictures will never do this place justice, but I will damn well try.

and for more videos from Ecuador, go to my youtube channel. love!!

Cha-cha-chaaaange(s)

Friends! I love you! Let's just get that out of the way. And, even though they're emotionally turbulent, I love changes too. I'm surrounded:

- Friday was my last day at the Holyoke Community Land Trust. I am proud of what I accomplished -- resurrecting an organization from dormancy, reconstituting the Board of Directors, raising grant money, building the community membership, training new staff. I am also proud of leaving.
(- In a strange twist of Amherst College fate, Ariel Morales's dad is one of the front-running candidates for my old job. So weird.)
- Tomorrow I start as a community organizer with the North End Outreach Network in Springfield. The North End is a wicked interesting neighborhood -- lots of poverty, environmental issues, health problems. I-91 runs straight through it. The building we work out of is condemned. An elementary school there was just condemned. So much organizing potential. And, the woman I'm going to work for is fierce. She reminds me of Chapman women, but 15 years older.
- Part of the reason I chose this job was that I will be one of the only white people -- if not THE only white person -- working there. It'll be a challenge but, as part of the ongoing effort to become an anti-racist racist (we're all racists because of our ugly racist society), I'm looking forward to it.
- I have also been part of this awesome movement in Springfield called No One Leaves/Nadie Se Mude, which organizes people who are being foreclosed or evicted against the banks that are doing the foreclosing and evicting. It is one of the most exciting things I have ever been a part of. Few things infuriate me like the financial crisis and the 2008 bailout, and this is one way to put that fury into productive action. Lately we have been averaging a protest a week. Selena, that civil disobedience training we did in DC could come in handy. We might be gearing up to do eviction blockades and get ourselves arrested.
- Wednesday I move into my new apartment in downtown Holyoke. Living alone -- no more vampire roommates! The place has lots of room so you all should stay with me when you visit New England. Julian, you especially, if you're missing old homes. The building is a converted historic mansion. (Fireplace in the bedroom! Fireplace in the living room!) Anyway, once I'm settled in I'll have a party and everyone even remotely nearby should come.
- I'm having an eyeliner phase. It's a thing.
- I'm liking this guy I've been seeing, Jason. It's also a thing. We're nearly into March, so I suppose it's moved out of the realm of the summer fling. Make your serial monogamy jokes -- maybe we'll decide to be polyamorous and then I'll have the last laugh! He's not my boyfriend. I'm definitely not his girlfriend -- resolved never to be anyone's that ever again. And it's working. It's a project -- we call it an "Experiment" -- in how honest and communicative and open and anti-misogynistic and balanced a romantic thing like this can be. I'm still scared by how easy it is to fall into manipulative and unbalanced and sexist patterns, especially with romance and sex thrown in, but I am cautiously -- caaaaautiously -- optimistic about this.
- The world is blowing up! Have you all noticed?! Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain and Libya and Yemen and WISCONSIN! I love it. Time for a revolution. I'm ready. The world is messed up. Our government is messed up. And it's entirely on our generation to make it not messed up anymore. Thank goodness for Hosni Mubarak and Scott Walker for waking everybody up.
- The other day someone was talking to me about how our entire country went to sleep when Visa and MasterCard came out. Nothing kills a revolution like a credit card. So I am making the concerted, political decision to get out and stay out of debt as much as financially possible.

I think those are all my changes. Oh no! One more! I'm going to get a dog! It's going to look like this:


Well, maybe not that big. But I am going to get a Great Dane. Gentle giant! When my dog plays with Megan's, it will look like this:



Ahhh hahaha I can't wait!

Oops.

Okay, so like most other people (it appears), I totally forgot about this blog for a while. Sigh, my bad.

Things on my mind recently:
-Research universities are fucking crazy places.
-Professors who like teaching, and work hard at teaching, and spend their time making themselves better teachers, are fucking awesome. And, despite what Amherst showed me, quite few and far between.
-Therefore, I am so convinced of the amazingness of liberal arts schools. Money well spent, in retrospect.
-Living in a city is fun.
-I miss cute things about New England. Like snow, rivers, rolling mountains, seasons, old houses, etc etc.
-Living in the same city as Hannah is also fun.
-Speaking of which: Hannah and I live in the same neighborhood. And it is awesome.
-So, um, come hang out with us. We'll totally put you up and show you fun things to do.

love from ecuador!

hi friends! sorry i can´t write more but i´ve just finished writing a blog entry on my new blog so please feel free to check it out! http://renouncerejoice.blogspot.com/ . All is well with me and I hope with you as well, wherever you may be. Thinking of you, my loves, always!
con amor! carmella

Sunny SD

Hello from San Diego!

We are just beginning to recover from the MASSIVE FLOODS following approximately FOUR DAYS of LIGHT RAIN!!!
"SAN DIEGO (AP) — The National Weather Service says more than an inch of rain has fallen in San Diego as Christmas shoppers battled flooding in the parking lot of a major mall.
Meteorologist Tina Stall says parts of the Fashion Valley Mall parking lot flooded Tuesday.
The weather service says 2 inches of rain have fallen in San Diego since Friday, more than half of that on Tuesday. The five-day total exceeds the county's December average."
TWO INCHES. Why is everything flooding? Because San Diego manholes are water-tight and we DON'T HAVE GUTTERS. We're really just asking for it. Also, palm trees loooove to take down electric cables. This is why I moved.

In other news, yesterday I watched a cool documentary about the North Korean Mass Games, with some sweet footage of gymnastic choreography.

Super cool and kind of scary. There really is no media access in that country. I would love the dear leader too. And damn those six-year-olds can do some backflipzzz....

I also stole some books from Romain to read, I like them all - I'm reading them all at once like one chapter of each at a time, which is less confusing and more schizophrenic, in that I keep thinking that all of these book are TOTALLY TALKING ABOUT THE SAME THING MAN, it's like....CITIES and EMPIRE and IDEOLOGY and SURVIVAL mannnn....but not really:
1) Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia - Michael Taussig
2) The Secret Life of Saeed: the pessoptimist - Emile Habiby
3) Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

I remember trying to read a book by Italo Calvino at the beginning of freshman year but then giving up because he kept using the 2nd person and that pissed me THE FUCK off:
Italo: You are reading this book. Perhaps you are sitting in an easy chair, next to a fire....
Rose: OMG I hate you so much.
Italo: You take a sip of cognac....A woman walks through a snowstorm in the novel you read. Perhaps it is a hailstorm...
Rose: FUCK YOU. *returns book to frost* *drinks alcohol*

Also, when I return to Boston, I will be choreographing UMass Lowell's production of Rent with my old high school friend and now-director Mary Plant-Thomas. I'm getting paid a tiny amount which I'm pretty sure makes me a professional choreographer. Sweet! I'm also taking a piece I choreographed in the fall to ACDF (American College Dance Festival) at Keene State College in New Hapshire in March, so that'll be cool. It is the one with lots of screaming and LIVE LIVE LIVE bananas. So that's what I'm doing this spring. Also grad school. Haha. Gonna be a busy semester...

Merry Christmukkah.

Blue Eyed Babies

Quick post (because I agree with Carmella that a revival is necessary!) Here are a few cute pics of my niece and nephew, including Hannah's first school picture! And a picture of me and my new (well newish) manboy. Happy Holidays everyone!






Now i'm off to make cinnamon roll cheesecake and kahlua cake cookies :)

friends! we need to revive this baby!

Hello loooves! I am sad that we have fallen off the wagon in terms of this blog. Luckily, I still talk to most of you all regularly so I know you're alive and well, but some of you I haven't heard from in ages! Let's get back to it, ladies and gent!

I am writing to you from the deep south, lovely Nashville, TN. Maybe going to stop by Cookeville and visit Rachey's brother this weekend, and then onward to stay with a friend in central Kentucky for a few days.

I'm going to be back in western Mass dec 9th (for Jess' bday!). Hopefully many of you can make it to the Valley for wine and cheese which is that Friday night...

Otherwise, not much else is going on. I've been bouncing around a lot since leaving the Vineyard in late October. NYC, a train halfway across the country to Minneapolis, a lovely stay with the amazing and wonderful Sammy Jo Ellingson! She was a great host, by the way, (duh) and you should all go visit her! seriously! Sioux Falls is cool too. Has an... interesting reggae scene... heheh. She even took me to the Little House on the Prairie, which was awesome but it was too cold to get out of the car and explore. Oh well, maybe next time I travel to the Artic, I'll go in the summertime!

Speaking of summer, I'm headed southbound this winter to the land where it is eternally summer: Ecuador! After the holidays, my mom and I will travel to the Andes and through the rainforest for 2 weeks, and then I'm staying on 3 weeks after she leaves to work for the same nonprofit I worked with before - replanting the rainforest! I am beyond excited... I have been wanting to go back ever since I spent time there 3 1/2 years ago! And when Delta gave me TWO $400 travel vouchers last week after messing up my return trip from South Dakota.... well, I just knew it was a sign!

I hope you are well and healthy and happy! and that everyone had a joyous Thanksgiving with your loved ones. I got to spend my Thanksgiving cooing over the newest addition to our family, the sweet tiny little Camila! tiny fingers! tiny toes! tiny everything! (although, I am cautious of the fact that last time I was home, I was super enthralled by this flock of tiny kittens we had running around the house. and this time, well they weren't so tiny anymore. and therefore, less appealing :/ its the sad truth, folks.)

lots of love!! Carmella