Last Day at Elements

Two years ago I spent my first day in the field up until midnight in pouring rain, sitting in lightning drills for 3 hours, watching kids call focus groups crying and overwhelmed, and by the end of the day the ten faces of my first students kept playing through my mind like a slideshow of horror. What the hell had I got myself into? Only the best thing that's ever happened to me. Two years of brutal winters, epic desert vistas, radical teaching and learning, superhuman friendship and absolute majesty are now over.

Thank God I was stubborn enough to stay with the job. Thank God for the mentors I found and the friends who found me.

RECOLLECTION OF ADVENTURES I

RECOLLECTION OF ADVENTURES FEB-JUL 2010
Soooo many things have happened, more than half of which aren't even represented by a single picture here. But let's take a stroll down memory lane.

I. THE GOONIES BEACH
The four elders of our little radical tribe (Brett, Heather, Cory, Matt) all piled into Cory's Chevy Lumina (the Eurotrash) in late February (immediately before Eleanor was born) and drove twelve straight hours culminating in a magnificent sunset drive along the Columbia river with Mount Hood calling to us from afar. A gang of High School punk kids tried to beat us up, we went to a lame dance party, drove around Portland for hours blasting awesome radio all night, ate Vietnamese food, bathed in the Pacific, met a one-eyed black Pug named Valentino (my favorite event perhaps, of the whole trip), and did countless other things like see From Ashes Rise and play darts and sleep way too late every day. Pictured here are some images from our trip to the beach where the Movie THE GOONIES was shot.
For some reason few other pictures of this epic 4 day trip to the Pacific Coast survive.
(note to self: perhaps they were burned by our enemies so jealous of all the ridiculously awesome times we have.)

My favorite couple of all time; Hettnbrethers (Brett and Heather) on the beaches of Oregon

The four of us all enjoying each other's affection; Bippy enjoying the sap of a three hundred year old evergreen. I don't blame him those trees are GORGEOUS.

OM NAMAH SIVAYA

Last week in the San Rafael Swell...

Hola, familia! Here are some pictures of my last week in the field. My camera had a hard time catching the moonrise above--for some reason the beautiful massive full moon just looks like a blurry white spot? I think kodak can go to hell.






Au revoir, love you, and talk to you soon.

Life in the Temple of Khazad Dum

Welcome to my blog. I'm primarily writing this for the immediate family; I want to show y'all what my life is like in Utah and share a little slice of who I am these days, what I've become, and the things I'm interested in--there won't be a huge amount of posts here, but i can't fit all this stuff in an email.

Just in time for me to figure out how it actually works, my camera has broken. I have to argue with the "on" button for upwards to five minutes before anything actually happens. However, just in time I have extracted the forty odd pictures of any worth from my camera and I shall post a few here! First, let me show you what the temple of doom is like.

This is the statue of Kuan Yin, Buddhist goddess of mercy, which is fixed in my little sanctuary of indian tapestries, tibetan prayer flags, incense and other fire hazards, which is also my bedroom. I live in a 8x6 alcove of another person's bedroom--thus my rent is only 88 bucks a month (whooo!)



Here below are Brett William Roch Ruether, with whom I climbed Timpanogos and went to Portland and James, another of my musical roommates. Brett is from Missouri, an anthropology student, former Anarchist anti-globalization/environmentalist activist who used to do everything from Forest defense stuff in the pacific northwest to demonstrations at WTO summits and stuff. He's probably the coolest person I've ever met. James, a Salt Lake native, is in a band called Bramble and shares with me a love of Marquez and Neruda.



Here are Matt Laser (BFF!) and James, again. Matt is the biggest space cadet I've ever met, super happy all the time but totally oblivious to the world around him in some ways. He's a drummer, and his practise in the band room is often the bane of my novelwriting existence.



This is my newest and most amazing coworker, James's girlfriend and a badass in her own right, Amber, who worked in a battered women's shelter in Honduras and drives a GM regal with red leather interiors. Amber is my astrological opposite and we get along like peas n' carrots.



And here at the hot springs in the west desert, another of my beautiful roommates, Etta, who is the DIY mistress of the house (she can do everything from car repair and vegetable oil conversion on diesel trucks to bookbinding, gardening, electrical work, and countless other things)



Everybody I live with is not pictured, but all the most important ones...except Bobby, the bearded beloved crust punk lord of Salt Lake who I share a room with. At Dum we cook alot, eat alot, and clean less than we should--it's generally a total mess. Every room has piles of ski gear, backpacks, snowshoes, boxes of free food from dumpsters, drums, guitars, and amps, snowboarding boots, tea, beer cans, piles of unread mail, and everything else. If I can get the camera to work, I will send more pictures when our garden starts coming in.

Love you all, hope to show you more soon.