Cynthia...You're 18! Happy Birthday!

Of course we will always remember those moments of Cynthia doing her little kicking-Tyler-in-that-weird-helmet PubSpeak, Cynthia singing (even in Korean!), Cynthia dancing & just generally being very fashionable and awesome. Happy Birthday!





















On a side note, I think it's pretty cool & amazing that our whole suite had interestingly-arranged birthday/roommate combos. Pretty sweet. Enjoy your adultness day!

While I'm aware that posting poetry on blogs (TASP or otherwise) is probably bad form, you guys have to read this poem. it's amazing. seriously. grant me the next two minutes of your life and if you are disappointed, i promise to do something similarly absurd and useless for you for two minutes someday. like comment all your facebook pictures. or read litwack.

ANYWAY

Conversation with Jeanne
Czeslaw Milosz

Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.

For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.

We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.

I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.

You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their breasts,
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,
Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.

Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.


I know. DAMN.

A few small things:

1. This semester I'm taking an english class (yes, an english class) called film studies. It's laughably easy and basically means that 2-3 days a week I get to come to school and spend an hour and a half watching classic movies. Basically, it's the coolest thing ever. Last week we watched Annie Hall. In school. I watched Annie Hall in school. (somewhere, Bre is cringing). I had almost forgotten how ridiculously excellent that film is. You know the scene where Alvie and Annie are at a party and this guy is trying to get them to try coke and Alvie asks how much it costs and when the guy says $20,000 he picks it up to look at it and then accidentally sneezes into it? ahahaha. Amazing.

2. I'm leaving on Thursday for Durango for the Durango Independent Film Festival. Durango, it should be noted, lies in the exact, dead-center of nowhere. It's a seven hour drive southwest of Denver, through towns whose welcome signs say "home of the fighting [insert high school football team's name here]" and whose main street is the two lane interstate that runs through them. That's southern Colorado for you. I'm still planning to try to make it over to Telluride while I'm there, which is about an hour from Durango and similarly situated far from everything I know and love. I'll keep you posted.

3. There was a long article in the Denver Post this morning about diversity at my school. I think the whole thing is worth reading (plus I interviewed the woman who wrote it for my documentary and think she's really cool), but some highlights:

The Denver School of the Arts has, in 16 years, grown into one of the most exclusive public schools in the Rocky Mountain region, admitting less than a third of the students who apply to get in every year.

In auditions, artistic prowess trumps grades, determination, hardship and whether applicants even have a Denver address.
The school's parents and advocates say this unwavering focus on talent has produced a shining star of academic excellence and artistic passion in a struggling urban school district.

But a byproduct of this exclusivity is a stark reality: DSA's student population does not reflect the rest of Denver Public Schools.

Almost 30 percent of the school's 880 students live outside Denver. Twelve percent of DSA's students live in poverty, and about 35 percent are minority.

Districtwide, 65 percent of students come from impoverished households and 76 percent are students of color. About 5 percent of DPS students come from outside the city."

annnddd...

Is racial and socioeconomic diversity a high-enough good that educational institutions ought to take it into account when selecting students? It's a question all levels of American education have long struggled with.

DSA senior Ryan Brown, who recently got into Yale, said there is "silence" around the issues of racial diversity.
"We tend to overplay the arts aspect ... we're all unique and that sort of thing," she said. "Who's going to make a school a more interesting place? Is it going to be interesting if everyone who goes here is the same type of kid and reflects the same kind of background?"

I enjoy being quoted in the paper, even it's for saying rambling, only semi-coherent things. But in all seriousness, this is a major issue, not just at my school but at public magnet schools in every school district in the US. I am of the opinion that if affluent, well-funded magnet schools in poor school districts are serving only the district's most wealthy students, they don't have any right to exist. Maybe that's harsh, but think about it. If they're not in those types of magnets, those kids (myself included) can and will go to private schools/public schools in high property-tax neighborhoods and take private/after school art classes and still get an excellent education and be prepared for college and all that. The people the district NEEDS to be reaching out to are kids who will be shut out of good educational, and in this case, artistic opportunities if they don't get a chance to go to a school like this.

At the same time, I do NOT believe the solution to issues of racial and socioeconomic isolation in public school systems can be solved by magnet schools alone, and I think it's silly to place all the blame for such problems on schools like mine. What about all the neighborhood schools that are so bad that less than 5% of their students are passing the state standardized tests (and there are schools like this in Denver)? If those schools never get better, there will always be kids who lose out because they don't know about/can't get into magnets/better schools. I hate to watch the district parade the success of its arts school, its IB program, its new science and technology high school, because it diverts attention from the fact that this is still an impoverished, struggling school district that graduates less than 50% of its students. And needless to say, those 50% who drop out are, by and large, not the kind of kids served by DSA or the IB program.

4. That was not supposed to be so long. My bad.

5. I remembered over winter break all those books we raffled off at the end of TASP, and how I really wanted to read some of the ones I didn't get (I started reading the one I did get, Howard Zinn's history of SNCC, but it turns out that from the vantage point of 2007, Zinn-on-black-people-circa-1965 turns out to be a whole lot less radical than you'd think). So I finally went out and got Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: something something elaborate subtitle psychology! race! and The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Both are excellent and come highly recommended to this TASP audience. Especially if any of the stuff I've rambled about in my last few posts about school segregation has touched a nerve with you, you have to pick up The Shame of the Nation. It's way too well done to be passed over.

6. Dang, this was a much longer post than I thought it would be.

7. Seriously though, this is ME we're talking about. Did you really believe me when I said "a few small things"?

8. THE END.

Happy Birthday to a Fantabulous Feminist!!!

Happy Birthday, Mina!!! Here's to debate and singing and Las Vegas and all that jazz!

Happy 18th!
















I almost posted the picture of you making out with the Scream...but I think now that you're an adult and we don't know how old the Scream is, we have to be careful about the possibility of legal repercussions and so forth. Tis a shame.

Cheers! :)

P.S. I might now, in light of this wonderful occassion, finally forgive you for continually locking me out of the bathroom for like...entire nights.

School:

Fuck. this. shit.

That is all.

on race and then some stuff

The local newspaper is publishing a weekly bit on race in our community. I think all of it's worth the read, but here are some highlights:

5% of enrolled students in the district are black
1 in 640 teachers in the district is black

http://lacrossetribune.com/blackinlacrosse/

Excerpts from my life in the past few weeks:
1. Forensics TROPHY for me. yay. 2nd place in extemporaneous speech at some competition (you keep up on current events, you choose 1 of 3 questions they give you, you get 30 minutes, you give a speech). Plus I get to advance to districts. And if I do well enough, I'll go to state again, which is in Madison.
2. Valentine's Dance. Whoa. So much organizing. It was worth it, though--NHS raised about $500 for senior scholarships. Not too shabby.
3. Choir! We got to sing with the Iowa University choir, which was really good. At our Solo & Ensemble Festival, our madrigal was, according to the judge, "collegiate." One of our songs is a Jewish folk song.
4. The death of my car. Terribly depressing, and I'd rather not tell the story again. Details are on facebook.
5. Advanced Speech is my favorite class...ever. Tomorrow I get to give a presentation on why Focus on the Family sucks. I mean, I get to do a critical analysis discourse on the linguistic engineering involved in the formation of the organization's name.

lastly
KEEP THE BLOG ALIVE

post and you will be rewarded. or at least you will make your fellow TASPers happy.

Food for thought

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/

What do you guys think about this? Does the BBC really have a secret agenda? Is the ANC waaaay over reacting? (Raises the eyebrow perplexedly.)

Gosh, it is still so hard to write about TASP. What happened? Why was it meaningful? What did we learn in seminar again? It seems those experiences are just so much a part of me--and, practically speaking, they happened half a year ago, which is a pretty long time-- that it's ever difficult to pick out each memory, each feeling, and regurgitate it through a keyboard.

But okay, so here's what I'm doing: I'm writing an article on TASP for Imagine Magazine, this publication done by Johns Hopkins U Center for Talented Youth. It'll reach "gifted and talented" (yeah, I really don't believe in that designation in general, haha, but hey) students and I want to represent well the six weeks that we spent together, and tell how much it meant to me. But to really capture TASP... is that possible?

As you can see, I'm really having a ball with this piece. Bah, writer's block!! Help!!! Also, if any of you would be willing to help me look over/edit/remember I would really appreciate it.

Much love.

The dark side

Dearest TASPers,
I have broken down and joined the dark side: that is, I have acquired an account with AIM, that great abyss into which so many idle hours disappear... At any rate, I would love to hear from you, so please feel free to... What is it? Message me? IM me? I shake the fist at this techonological foolery.

On with the Revolution!
Alison

New blogger!

Oh, technology! Well, I've switched the blog over to their new version of nonsense. So now, when you click on the "UPDATE the blog" link you'll be prompted to enter your Gmail address/password or set up a Google account, which should take like 30 seconds.

Everyone please do this!! Let's keep this blog alive and, most importantly, stay connected. Love and miss you all,

the champion jumper

Getting the Girl: TASP Style

Just a little something to get you in the Valentines spirit. Or whatever.

This is from the February 12th New Yorker, an article on these two married philosophers (named Pat and Paul, how quaint) and their work.

Enter Pat, age 25ish, unsuccessfully pursuing a Phd at Oxford.

"She was about to move back to Canada and do something else entirely...but meanwhile Paul Churchland had broken up with the girlfriend he'd had when they were undergraduates and determined to pursue her. He came over to Oxford for the summer...Paul had started thinking about how you might use philosophy of science to think about the mind, and he wooed Pat with his theories."

Take note, boys: flowers? charm? physical prowess? nay- the ladies dig philosophy.

You heard it here first.

Thank you and goodnight.

Sleep is for girly men

For those of you who don’t already know, this past Saturday, the Etiwanda Jazz Bands had their annual Valentine’s Dance, which is a general excuse for parents to get drunk to the dulcet accompaniment of their children’s singing and playing. The dance list comprised of general stuff: Earth Wind and Fire, YMCA, Proud Mary, etc, and I did “Mack the Knife” and “Play that Funky Music”, and also wrote out and arranged Justin Timberlake’s “Senorita,” which I did backgrounds on. Perhaps the most unnerving part of this is that my parents, always the responsible and level-headed types, opted not to drink, but to take video…and then put it on Youtube. As you can imagine, this was a great source of consternation to me and it was taken down, but should anyone want to see the video, Ill see what I can do. Onto the post:
My senior year has been a veritable comedy of disappointment, screwups, and general non-merriment, along with the occasional bright spot, most notably getting voted most likely to fall asleep in class. After only two years, I had no clue that I would make a strong presence at Etiwanda. So far, I have in music, scholarship, and all that other fluff. And yet, when my children look back and find daddy’s old high school yearbooks in the attic, they will see that his peers saw him notable, not for his wit, candor, charm, poise, and general voluptuousness, but rather for his inability to keep awake in class. Now, the TASP likes might acknowledge that this isn’t a surprise, considering that I did dose off during key moments, ie seminar, movies, lunch, in the middle of doing my essays. Yet, this occurred after long nights of nearly perverse amounts of sleep deprivation. When the school year started, I would routinely get 10 to 12 hours of sleep and still fall asleep during class (by 12 hours I mean 6 PM to 6AM, ie when I got home to when I needed to leave the next morning). My doctors suggested that I might have a potentially serious disorder called sleep apnea, where I stop breathing during sleep. And so, to find out, they sent me to a sleep clinic, which might be the single weirdest experience of my year. Now, what they normally do is glue weird little sensors of the “oooo what does this one do???” variety and let you sleep, with one catch….someone is watching you. While you sleep.....Ill stop now and let you know how awkward this may have been. In my case, a pleasant and somewhat chubby, touchy-feely man named Ernesto had the onus of watching me during my most vulnerable moments. Aside from this, my experience was exceptional because they sent me to sleep in the creepiest room they had, with a dull orange glow coming out from under the curtains. At one point, I could have sworn I saw an upside-down crucifix on the wall, but that may have been due to the lack of sleep I was experiencing, or a dream, or that the room may have been inhabited by Satan.
Whatever the case, my doctor called me in a week or so after the test to discuss my results. In his words, I have “55 percent sleep efficiency,” meaning that for every hour Im unconscious, I get roughly 30 minutes out of it. And yet, I don’t have sleep apnea, which is good. And so, he prescribed Flonase, and sent me on my way. In retrospect, I think the whole process could have been more streamlined, you know, deal away with the middleman. It’s sort of like going into the office to check for lupus, and finding out you actually need your tonsils removed. With the exception that you didn’t have to sleep in a creepy room, being monitored…probably by a spirit of Hell. Anywho. This is all for now. Here’s hoping that all of you receive an ungodly amount of booty this Valentine’s. As we all know, the TASP rule isn’t “No sex at TASP.” It’s “no sex at TASP while the factota are watching.”
XoXOx (big kiss, little hug, big kiss, big hug, little kiss), Ruben

My friend tells me that I shouldn't express my support for political candidates so publicly since I hope to run for office one day. Nonetheless, I continue to support Barack Obama, and on Friday, I had the chance to hear him speak again at George Mason University. It was crazy to say the least. There were easily over 500 people there (most of them under the age of 20). I was pleased by the turnout of the crowd and I will be extremely pleased if even half of them vote come Election Day. Cynical, I know, but hey! Prove me wrong.

Some pictures:

On the way to the rally, the sticker stands for “Students for Barack Obama,” which is an organization that an alumni from my school (Tobin) helped start. SFBO is the organization that put on the rally. Barack Obama even personally thanked Tobin, which was cool. I live vicariously through Tobin, so it’s pretty much as if Barack Obama was thanking me (ahahha). Oh and ignore the peace signs,it's a long story...





There is the man himself speaking, even though it was extremely crowded I managed to push my way to the front of the crowd.


I really like Barack. Although, I am afraid he might have peaked too soon, but once again, I hope people prove me wrong. I would love to be alive when the first “black” man (or even non-white male) wins the presidency (shoot even is nominated); I am skeptical though. What can I say I’ve been conditioned by society. Virginia did elect the first black Governors (Doug Wilder), and I do not think that too many expected that. I just hope Barack can escape the Bradley Effect.



We will see.

In two weekends, I will attend the Jefferson-Jackson dinner (a fancy-schmancy- fundraiser dinner for the VA Democrats). Tickets are a whooping $165 dollars, but I have connections (ahhh), so my ticket was only $50. Guess who the keynote speaker is? BARACK! Yes, I will see Barack AGAIN. I am hoping to get a picture; we will see how that goes though.

That is all for now. I’m off to a super bowl party. Go Colts!