People always say "It's a small world". I've come to see that a little more as this school year as progressed. As I've talked with my St. Olaf peers about where I come from, my high school and my hometown, I keep running into this shrinking world. My Minnesota friends will know someone who went to a college in Illinois who now has a chemistry lab with someone who went to my high school. It's seems so unreal when ever something like that happens. You would think with the frequency of these incidents we would get used to it. Long connections like this end up being very useful; networking is a perfect example. It was through networking (kind of) that my friends and I got to go to Perkins one night. For a few hours we had my friend's sister's roommate's car so we decided to get off campus for a bit. That was kind of random, but I think it's a good example of long connections.
It was networking that led Neihardt to Black Elk; Black Elk had the distant connection to Crazy Horse and was able to shrink the world for Neihardt just a little bit.
Perhaps my favorite example of a shrinking world (that just so happens has to do with Crazy Horse) happened when my family and I were on vacation in South Dakota. When I was 13 my family and I loaded up the car and commenced the 15 hour car ride from Illinois to Mount Rushmore. While we were there, my family and I also decided to spend an evening at the Crazy Horse Memorial. It's kind of like Mount Rushmore (being carved into stone)but it's a work in progress (and has been for a very, very long time now). We read in one of those tourist brochures that after it got dark there was a free laser light show. Thinking it would cool to see, we planned on going to dinner then heading over to the show. After dinner, we got in the car and started heading down the highway when all the sudden I realized I left mt retainers on the table in the restaurant. We raced back, explained our situation, had a bus boy go digging in the garbage (we felt really bad about that but the restaurant wouldn't let us do it because of liability) and eventually found them. With found, and thoroughly cleaned retainers, we got back on the highway to go to the show. Just as we pulled in the parking lot my mom looks out her window and says "JIM! (my dad)WHO IS THAT?" All 4 of us turn attention to the guy walking across the parking lot and realize it's our friend Kirk. Kirk and his family live all the way in Illinois and we know them through mutual friends. Running into them all the way in South Dakota just blew our mind. We didn't even know they were planning a trip there that summer. It turned out to be really nice. They ended up staying in the park for the laser show with us that night and we got to make plans to see the dead lands with them the next morning.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Dirt Matters!
Just like Chris said in class when we first started reading de Tocqueville...
Last Wednesday Hoyme had an egg scavenger hunt. It was lots of fun and had teams of 5 running all over campus (through the mud-just to keep the dirt theme going) looking for clues and racing back to the Hoyme lobby. After the scavenger hunt was all said and done, Hall Council had DIRT PUDDING waiting for us. Yummy!!
As I sat down with my cup of dirt and worms, I was flooded with memories of my Grandma's house. She used to make dirt pudding for my brother and I every holiday we spent at her house. For 7 year old Clara and 3 year old Brian (my brother), dirt pudding (along with brown cows, cheese chex mix and British board games) was a highlight of Grandma's house.
As I ate the dirt pudding and thought about my childhood, I couldn’t help to wonder how those memories had an influence on who I am today. We all know that the past is an important factor in shaping the future, but it’s odd things like this that make me wonder what little things turn out to be huge in the larger sense of things. It might just mean that I was more excited than I would normally be about free dessert because along with deliciousness I got to relive those memories from when I was little. Can we really measure how important the past is in our present and how important it’s going to be in our future?
Last Wednesday Hoyme had an egg scavenger hunt. It was lots of fun and had teams of 5 running all over campus (through the mud-just to keep the dirt theme going) looking for clues and racing back to the Hoyme lobby. After the scavenger hunt was all said and done, Hall Council had DIRT PUDDING waiting for us. Yummy!!
As I sat down with my cup of dirt and worms, I was flooded with memories of my Grandma's house. She used to make dirt pudding for my brother and I every holiday we spent at her house. For 7 year old Clara and 3 year old Brian (my brother), dirt pudding (along with brown cows, cheese chex mix and British board games) was a highlight of Grandma's house.
As I ate the dirt pudding and thought about my childhood, I couldn’t help to wonder how those memories had an influence on who I am today. We all know that the past is an important factor in shaping the future, but it’s odd things like this that make me wonder what little things turn out to be huge in the larger sense of things. It might just mean that I was more excited than I would normally be about free dessert because along with deliciousness I got to relive those memories from when I was little. Can we really measure how important the past is in our present and how important it’s going to be in our future?
Monday, April 18, 2011
Lunch with Lions
Today, Jessica and I went down to the Northfield Golf Club to sit in on the local Lions Club weekly lunch meeting. Going into it I didn't really know what to expect. For some reason I had a vision in my head of people all sitting in one room just in rows of chair arranged in a block as the president stood at a podium and went over what was going on currently in the club, what was coming up in the future and reflection on recently completed projects and events.
What Jessica and I went to was kind of like that, but not really.
First off, they fed us. It was a lunch meeting catered by the golf club. Chris was right, people open up over food. Secondly, Jessica and I stood out like sore thumbs. Not were we lacking the infamous yellow vests but we pretty much the only ones under the age of 50. After the group (about 20 of 35 members were there) had time to eat and mingle they started the meeting with the pledge of allegiance, a prayer (which surprised me just because of this day and age where religion in public spaces can be quiet controversial) and songs. Yup. We sang. They had a little jingle about being members of the lions club but then they broke out these booklets of song lyrics (over 100 songs). They had everything from church hymns, to do-ray-mi and "Some where over the rainbow". After a few songs they had a couple of quick announcements (including having Jessica and I stand up and explain who we were and what we were doing) and then it was on to a presentation. The lady that presented at today's meeting just came back from serving in Romania for the Peace Corps and was sharing her experiences over there.
What was really wonderful about her presentation was the connections it had to our class. Part of the time she talked about how Romania became a democracy in 1989 and how they people there have been having a hard time making it work and how their history is working against them. She discussed how people will do things like litter because they can now, no one is telling them not to. Not only are people telling them they can't litter, but they also aren't being told to "volunteer" to clean it up like the communists did before they gained their independence. To the Romanians, volunteerism has a history that causes it to be an undesirable activity because it was forced upon them during the reign of the communists. She said democracy has had a really rough start in Romania because they don't know how to be a democratic society.
Once she was done speaking, the meeting was pretty much over. The president of the club and one other member came over to Jessica and I and sat down so we could talk. It was amazing how the two of them just kind of started talking and started discussing things Jessica and I were going to ask them about. I don't know how they did it, but they seemed to just know what kinds of things we were looking for for this project.
What struck me the most about our conversation with them was the claims they made on volunteerism in our society today. First off, they both believe that today's youth are more civically engaged than ever before. They think that "young people" are volunteering today because it has always been something that have been exposed to and involved in. They also think that the nature of volunteerism is changing into something our society has never seen before.
There is so much more I could talk about in this blog post but to do so would take wayyyy to long and would leave my group nothing left to include in our presentation.
All in all, lunch with the lions was really wonderful today and we gained a lot of insight on how the Lions Club of Northfield adds to social capitol and the strenght of our country' democratic government.
What Jessica and I went to was kind of like that, but not really.
First off, they fed us. It was a lunch meeting catered by the golf club. Chris was right, people open up over food. Secondly, Jessica and I stood out like sore thumbs. Not were we lacking the infamous yellow vests but we pretty much the only ones under the age of 50. After the group (about 20 of 35 members were there) had time to eat and mingle they started the meeting with the pledge of allegiance, a prayer (which surprised me just because of this day and age where religion in public spaces can be quiet controversial) and songs. Yup. We sang. They had a little jingle about being members of the lions club but then they broke out these booklets of song lyrics (over 100 songs). They had everything from church hymns, to do-ray-mi and "Some where over the rainbow". After a few songs they had a couple of quick announcements (including having Jessica and I stand up and explain who we were and what we were doing) and then it was on to a presentation. The lady that presented at today's meeting just came back from serving in Romania for the Peace Corps and was sharing her experiences over there.
What was really wonderful about her presentation was the connections it had to our class. Part of the time she talked about how Romania became a democracy in 1989 and how they people there have been having a hard time making it work and how their history is working against them. She discussed how people will do things like litter because they can now, no one is telling them not to. Not only are people telling them they can't litter, but they also aren't being told to "volunteer" to clean it up like the communists did before they gained their independence. To the Romanians, volunteerism has a history that causes it to be an undesirable activity because it was forced upon them during the reign of the communists. She said democracy has had a really rough start in Romania because they don't know how to be a democratic society.
Once she was done speaking, the meeting was pretty much over. The president of the club and one other member came over to Jessica and I and sat down so we could talk. It was amazing how the two of them just kind of started talking and started discussing things Jessica and I were going to ask them about. I don't know how they did it, but they seemed to just know what kinds of things we were looking for for this project.
What struck me the most about our conversation with them was the claims they made on volunteerism in our society today. First off, they both believe that today's youth are more civically engaged than ever before. They think that "young people" are volunteering today because it has always been something that have been exposed to and involved in. They also think that the nature of volunteerism is changing into something our society has never seen before.
There is so much more I could talk about in this blog post but to do so would take wayyyy to long and would leave my group nothing left to include in our presentation.
All in all, lunch with the lions was really wonderful today and we gained a lot of insight on how the Lions Club of Northfield adds to social capitol and the strenght of our country' democratic government.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Courtly Love of.....farms?
In my history class, courtly love in the middle ages, we read the book The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus. In his book Capellanus basically gave a how to guide on adultery (this book was written in the middle ages if you're thinking this is kind of odd). One of his big points was that the lovers were not to actually "enjoy love's final solace". According to Capellanus, lovers in adulterous affairs were not to engage in sex because doing so would satisfy their desires and therefore make the relationship less thrilling.
Our professor illustrated the point by telling us about her son's obsession with Legos. She said there is always a new Lego set or new pieces that he wants and he drools over the idea of maybe owning them. She lets him look at the pictures of the sets on the Lego website, go through the catalog, look at them on the shelves at the store, but she actually gets them for him only every so often. Every time he gets a new Lego set he's excited and plays with it for a few days but quickly becomes bored. So to avoid the boredom and a household take-over of Lego sets, she only lets him look so he can be entertained the of the IDEA of them, and not by actually having them.
I was reminded of this day in my history class when I read about Thoreau looking at all the farms and taking the deal as far as he could without actually owning the land.
I thought it was curious how he did that, but I couldn't figure out why. Was he trying to keep an interest in the land? Was it a reminder of why he was going to go live at Walden Pond? Did he use the farm deals as kind of a motivator to go through with his idea?
I think I was most excited about this point because I was able to connect it to something else in my other class. I get really excited when I can make connections between seemingly unlike or random subjects/events/ideas.
Our professor illustrated the point by telling us about her son's obsession with Legos. She said there is always a new Lego set or new pieces that he wants and he drools over the idea of maybe owning them. She lets him look at the pictures of the sets on the Lego website, go through the catalog, look at them on the shelves at the store, but she actually gets them for him only every so often. Every time he gets a new Lego set he's excited and plays with it for a few days but quickly becomes bored. So to avoid the boredom and a household take-over of Lego sets, she only lets him look so he can be entertained the of the IDEA of them, and not by actually having them.
I was reminded of this day in my history class when I read about Thoreau looking at all the farms and taking the deal as far as he could without actually owning the land.
I thought it was curious how he did that, but I couldn't figure out why. Was he trying to keep an interest in the land? Was it a reminder of why he was going to go live at Walden Pond? Did he use the farm deals as kind of a motivator to go through with his idea?
I think I was most excited about this point because I was able to connect it to something else in my other class. I get really excited when I can make connections between seemingly unlike or random subjects/events/ideas.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Vastness
Warning: What I'm about to write is a total contradiction of my last post
On Sunday I read the first few pages of Emerson's Nature but had to put it down so I could walk into town to get my hair cut. As I was walking into town I was suddenly struck by the fact that I'm in Minnesota and really quite far from home. I thought about how far my walk had taken me (not very, I was just coming up to the tracks on St. Olaf Ave) and how long it took me to get to that point (about 20 minutes). I thought about the 370 miles that separate me from my home, my family and everything that had been my life up until 7 months ago. I kind of panicked when I thought about the immense amount of space between Northfield, Minnesota and Algonquin, Illinois. Its a lot more than I realize. I never had that feeling before. I guess living up here on the Hill in our campus community makes that gap feel a lot smaller and it took getting off campus by myself for me to really comprehend where I was.
After the moment of panic, the thought of that immense amount of space reminded me of Emerson's opening thoughts on the skies and the power the stars have to bring humans into solitude. For me, looking out to the empty highway gave me the sense of solitude I'm sure Emerson was trying to convey (without the moment of panic of course).
On Sunday I read the first few pages of Emerson's Nature but had to put it down so I could walk into town to get my hair cut. As I was walking into town I was suddenly struck by the fact that I'm in Minnesota and really quite far from home. I thought about how far my walk had taken me (not very, I was just coming up to the tracks on St. Olaf Ave) and how long it took me to get to that point (about 20 minutes). I thought about the 370 miles that separate me from my home, my family and everything that had been my life up until 7 months ago. I kind of panicked when I thought about the immense amount of space between Northfield, Minnesota and Algonquin, Illinois. Its a lot more than I realize. I never had that feeling before. I guess living up here on the Hill in our campus community makes that gap feel a lot smaller and it took getting off campus by myself for me to really comprehend where I was.
After the moment of panic, the thought of that immense amount of space reminded me of Emerson's opening thoughts on the skies and the power the stars have to bring humans into solitude. For me, looking out to the empty highway gave me the sense of solitude I'm sure Emerson was trying to convey (without the moment of panic of course).
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