Elizabeth Skene

Today has been a bummer day – I didn’t get either of the funding sources I applied to, so it looks like I’ll be paying for my trip myself. I talked to the career advisor & she said that funding is very tight & extremely competitive this year & that she’ll let me know if she hears of anything, but it’s highly unlikely. I’m pretty disappointed. Oh well – I have my ticket, I’m going & it will be an amazing experience.

Last year sometime, Joel came back from walking Wes & said that someone had taken his picture. I didn’t think much of it until today when reading Mark Maynard’s update of The Ypsi Project. The project sounded interesting & I was intrigued if this had anything to do with Joel being photographed. After going through about 13 pages of really wonderful photographs of Ypsilanti and its citizens – there he [& Dan & Wes] was!

Erica [the lovely photographer behind the project], wants to have a gallery showing of about 100 of the portraits. I’m really excited about this opportunity [even though I’ll probably be out of the country for the show itself] & donated a little bit of money to help back the project. You can do the same [& even get some lovely gifts] on their Kickstarter page.

I really love this town & felt inspired to wear my Michigan necklace today. My grandmother got it for me as a Christmas gift this year from City Bird – a Detroit store that features Detroit-themed goods, as well as items from over 50 local designers and artists.

You may remember my 50 Books in 2010 project – one that I’ve fallen ridiculously behind in [the goal is pretty ambitious for a grad student], but I haven’t given up on it completely. Last week I finished reading The Little Book – an interesting time-traveling tale about family, love & Vienna. This weekend I picked up A Canticle for Leibowtiz & I’m over half finished. I also checked out some audiobooks to listen to while riding the bus & working. I’m starting with Gilead by Marilynn Robinson. My cousin-in-law Angie didn’t give it a great review, but I absolutely loved her first book Housekeeping, so I’m willing to give it a shot.

Here’s hoping the rest of the week is up hill from today. If the weather forecast is any indication, I think it will be!

I started writing this post on Thursday & it’s already Saturday! This has been a long & busy week!

The best day of this week was Wednesday, minus the part where I took our cat back to the vet & she’s still not better. We have another check up in three weeks. It’s a little frightening how expensive the vet can be…. But after that! Joel & I went out for dinner at Beezy’s Cafe – an amazing cafe right downtown Ypsilanti that has some of the simplest & best food I’ve ever had. After that we headed into Ann Arbor, picked up some espresso at Comet Coffee & went to the Power Center on campus. We watched an absolutely amazing performance of Checkov’s Uncle Vanya, performed by the Malay Drama Theater of St. Petersburg. It’s playing all weekend & I recommend going if you can.

Earlier this week we got a package from a good friend in Bulgaria. He sent us a bunch of martenitsi (мартеници) to celebrate & encourage the coming of spring. Traditionally, these red & white bracelets are exchanged on March 1st, the holiday of Baba Marta (баба марта). The bracelets are worn until a blooming tree or stork is seen & then usually tied to the branch of a fruit tree to bring good luck and health.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Klearchos Kapoutsis.

Right now I’m at the main branch of the Ypsilanti District Library – I needed to get out of the house, concentrate & do some work. A library & some Debussy always seem to get me motivated. Additionally, the second floor is open, full of natural light & has a beautiful view of the woods:

I’d love to be exploring those woods right now instead of doing homework!

Here’s a gratuitous photo of myself hugging my dog this morning. [He's the best!]

My passport came today!!! Only 33 days!

Sorry for the infrequent & substance-less posts  lately. In about 4 weeks time, the semester will the over & I’ll be in Egypt where I’ll have lots of interesting things to say & pictures to show. Until then, I apologize for the decrease in quality posts. [I still love you all].

After 4 sunny days in a row, today we got a LOT of snow. It stopped a few hours ago, which is too bad since I may or may not of had my fingers crossed for getting my night class canceled…

Unfortunately I spent the weekend sick & feeling pretty terrible. [Although I'm doing a bit better today.]

Things I did this weekend:
- blow my nose [x 10000]
- whined about how sore my nose is
- stared at the computer screen
- drank tea [x 10000]
- did 1 word search & 2 sudoku puzzles
- thought about the homework I should be doing
- daydreamed about Egypt
- showered
- watched The Wire

I did do some knitting & finished another hat!

I also finally get us renter’s insurance – something we’d been talking about for awhile, but had never gotten around to doing. Friday night, our friend’s apartment was broken into & his laptop & tv were stolen. Break-ins are unfortunately all too common in Ypsi & I feel good knowing for $20 a month we have $15,000 in coverage.

This afternoon I turned in another funding application. I’ve now applied to do different places that each offer $5,000 & I only need $4,000. Hopefully one/both of them come through but, if not, I already bought the ticket & there’s no way I wouldn’t go now.

Forbes did an “America’s 20 Most Miserable Cities” list that Flint and Detroit are of course on. Less of a bummer is this list by CNN which names Detroit as the second most affordable city to buy a house in the United States! I’ve been thinking lately that if we stay in the US, I’d like to stay in Ypsilanti or Detroit. Strange as it may be, I feel most comfortable there or abroad.

Here’s a silly music video that gives quite a good description of what archivists do:

I’ve been enamored with the website Information is Beautiful lately. So many wonderful & informative visualizations and info graphics.
For example, here’s the most effective male photos at okcupid.com:

or the gender divide online:

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Class in thirty minutes.

After a full day of snow, it was a county-wide snow day today. Almost all the local schools were closed, Washtenaw County had a half day off and even Eastern Michigan University closed. U of M, however, was open – they’ve only ever had two campus-wide snow days, one in 1945 & another in 1974. Also, contrary to the rumor that I’ve heard a number of times today, it’s not because some law students sued the university over a snow day.

Although life has been SO busy, I’m really thankful for all the opportunities I have & the ability to live such a carefree life. Last night a group of us went to Sidetrack to celebrate the coming snow day. The snowfall doesn’t look too dramatic, but considering the snow was nearly completely melted, it was quite a storm.

Google just added Buzz to Gmail – it’s like Twitter or a Facebook status & allows you to add other sites into your feed. I honestly don’t see a need for it & think it’s a little obnoxious, but then again, I’m feeling pretty down & cranky today. At any rate, I think I’ve reached my saturation point for web 2.0 & social media.

This afternoon holds more paper writing, application work and computer programming. Although there’s been talk of sledding, which would be a welcome break from sitting in front of this computer.

I love making lists. A lot. All sorts of lists. Actually, I love organizing & being organized & lists are only a part of this. In Everything Is Miscellaneous [which I finally have time to begin reading], Weinberger has a section in Chapter 4 called “The Secret Life of Lists.” It talks about metadata & the ways we organize it & he quotes a essay by Jorge Luis Borge called “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.”

In the essay, Borges invents a Chinese encyclopedia, which he calls the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge and devised animals into the following catagories:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

I love how whimsical & arbitrary this list is! Using this as an example of a non-list, Weinberger gives an interesting commentary on the nature of lists & the ways we use them to lump [put like things together] & split [put a boundary between this lump & that].

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At the moment, I’m watching the Ypsilanti City Council meeting online. I follow the Ypsilanti Citizen, our local newspaper, on Twitter & they tweeted about streaming the council meeting. In my Information Use in Communities class this past semester, we talked a lot about the role of technology & information in promoting civic engagement & I think this is a great example of that! Right now they’re discussion the new proposed beekeeping ordinance [they recently passed an ordinance allowing residents to keep chickens!].

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Here’s a fascinating study done on “grade-hungry” vs “knowledge-hungry” students. They had a group of students take a general trivia test, telling them after each question if they were right or wrong & gave them the correct answer. While doing this, they wore a helmet that measured brain activity. The grade-hungry students paid attention to if they were right or not, but not so much the right answer, whereas the knowledge-hungry students paid close attention to learning the right answer. You can read the article here.

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Tomorrow, I have the whole day off!! I can’t wait, although a lot of it will be spent doing homework. But still, no work, no class, no stress. Yay!

xoxoxo