My predictions turned out to be wrong. There’s more red tape than expected, and frankly I’m confused by some of it. I’m also disappointed by my inability to bring some change to this situation, but at the same time, I think this is bigger than one person.

Just to recap, our building – a commercial building – is not legally required to recycle glass and metal items, including bottles and cans. However, we are legally required to recycle the following items:

• Corrugated Cardboard (flattened boxes)
• Office Paper
• Magazines, Catalogs, Phone Books
• Newspapers

Further information about the recycling laws in regard to commercial buildings can found here:

NYCWasteLe$$: Business Recycling

Recycling: It’s Not A Choice, It’s The Law. A Handbook for NYC Businesses (PDF)

Rules Governing the Recycling of Private Carter-Collected Waste (PDF)

So first thing is first – we should comply with the law and recycle paper. However, paper recycling is not happening at this school, and we are therefore effectively violating New York City law.

In conversations with Judith Watson, she noted my concerns, but also said that in order to move forward, the Graduate Council must pass a resolution stating the following:

1. Students are concerned about the environment and the need for recycling.

2. The J-school community notices recycling is not taking place at the J-School, and;

3. We urge the J-School and its landlord to adopt a recycling program.

The resolution would then be given to the landlord of our building. This all sounds great, but honestly, I’m not sure why we need a resolution in order to start complying with the law. I think the law takes precedence over a student council resolution.

Is it because the landlord is not complying? When I talked to the landlord of the building, he claimed that the building does paper recycling and he is aware that they are legally required to do so. (Also, if you believe that your building is not complying with paper recycling, the Department of Sanitation has a violation form on their website).

I don’t think it’s the landlord who is the cause of this situation though. Instead I think we are just collectively confused. Nobody knows where to put what, and frankly, that needs to change. We need to start recycling even if we’re not sure that the building does it. Yes, a resolution sounds fine and dandy, but we can start separating our trash without one.

• So here’s what I propose. Let’s start recyling paper, and let’s start in January. Confused about where to put paper? Let’s designate bins in the school that are for paper only. Print the sign below, and start hanging it up around the school above recycling bins. Let’s pick the big recycling bins, and perhaps keep it to one bin per room. Download the poster here: RECYCLE PAPER SIGN
• The Governance Council must pass the resolution. We can also voice our concerns to the landlord before the resolution is passed.
• I suggest that an environmental committee be formed within the school. Basically our goal should be to make sure we have a comprehensive recycling program in place before we graduate. This includes bottle and can recycling, as well as paper recycling. I’ll be happy to start it, and I welcome other concerned students to join. Please email me if you’re interested.

Anyway, with that, I wish all a happy holiday! See you in January…

Mother Ruby Graham, 77, is the coordinator, wearing a sea captain’s hat, and does most of the cooking. Her assistant, Sister Curtis, and volunteers Sister Meebam (wearing a magenta hat and blouse) and a retired military veteran (wearing an “I Love NY” shirt), help Mother Graham run the place.

It wasn’t easy taking photographs because of the dimly lit place with few fluorescent lights illuminating. Additionally, some of the the people who came to get a hot plate might have been convicts who were released from jail and immigrants according to Sister Meebam. So the ISO had to be increased, and the pictures came out brighter.

The event coincided with the International Human Rights Day and was conceived in response to California’s Proposition 8 initiative which banned gay marriage. According to press reports, the turnout was low.

No word yet on whether or not there will be a repeat next year.

Breakfast: There’s a great spot on St. Louis Street called Petunia’s Restaurant. Located in a 19th century Creole townhouse, you’ll find a warm & cozy spot for brunch. I had their absolutely delicious French Toast – which I highly recommend. The service was terrific. They were friendly, fast and attentive to empty coffee cups. Get there early if you want to avoid a line out the door.

Lunch: Take a drive, stroll or bike ride down Magazine Street for nice selection of shopping and dining. When you get to State Street, stop and try some of Reginelli’s tasty pizzas and salads. They have other locations throughout the city but I love the vibe of this area. I felt like I was in the East Village. And the staff is mellow and polite. 

Dinner: When you’re looking for a more upscale option, I recommend a trip back to the French Quarter for Bayona. Give yourself some time to browse the extensive wine options. Their menu changes daily and my only criticism is one that applies to all the restaurants of New Orleans – not enough vegetarian options. But if you do fish, there’s always some delicious blackened something or other. Dinner for two will set you back at least $100 – depending on your appetizer and wine choices. This is the place to splurge.

Bon Appetit!

I’m turned off by most advertising to begin with, but I think that the lack of interest among young people in network news can at least partially be attributed to the ads.

Unless I blinked and missed something worthwhile, 100% of the advertisements were for prescription drugs to treat ailments that, God willing, I won’t ever have.

I know market research is designed to help advertisers find programs whose audience fits their target demographic.  But what happens when the demographic is targeted so thoroughly that the advertisements make the audience (in this case, me) feels that they shouldn’t be watching this program?

Is there any sort of chicken-and-egg aspect to the fragmenting of the audience (men and sports, old people and news, the educated and PBS), whereby women don’t dislike sports per se, but are simply uninterested in 3+ hours of commercials for beer, fast food, pickup trucks and violent movies?

Either way, it’s back to watching the news online, on my time, and not feeling excluded from a program I enjoy by the bullshit vomited onscreen during the pauses.

“Voris, you’re like an old man” (paraphrase) – More People Than I Can Count

I have friends who would rather undergo dental work without anaesthetic than have a discussion of what images flashed across the back of their eyelids the night previous.  If you count yourself a member of this cohort, I advise you to read no further.

I’m not a very ambitious person.  Dreams, in the ambitious sense, are not that interesting to me.  I want to do good work, travel, read, at some point have a family, and perhaps one day synch my body clock to the time zone in which I reside.

I am, however, fascinated by the brain, and dreams, in the unconscious gobbledygook sense, rank right up there with music and Modernist literature in terms of shit that I spend far too much time pondering.

Here’s why: I wake up in the morning and my conscious mind begins processing the linear movement of time and space – it’s 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, December 16, 2008; I am 27 years, 2 months and 16 days old; I walk down the 18 steps from my apartment to the street, pick up the day’s New York Times from my stoop and head to my deli, where I get a large coffee with milk, no sugar and a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.  The process takes about five minutes.  Each second moves like thread through a sewing machine, spooling from unknown future to remembered past via that brief hiccup we call the present.

But the brain doesn’t only exist in the present moment.  Nor does it follow the linear progression of time.  As I walked to the deli for my bagel this morning, I was remembering the cemetery in Chicago on Friday, how flat and spare it was in comparison to Green-Wood.  So while my body was in Brooklyn on Tuesday, at least a part of my mind was in Chicago last Friday, and what’s more, the memories of the cemetery that came to me this morning didn’t occur in the order they occurred Friday: there was the board covering the grave that my grandmother’s casket would eventually be laid in, which was basically the last thing I saw; my cousins and I walking the casket into the chapel, which was earlier on; my uncle Jimmy staring furiously at my cousin Ryan, who couldn’t bring himself to stop crying and walk out into the afternoon frost, which happened in the time between the two preceding memories.

I value my dreams because my mind’s natural tendency to jump across time is uninhibited by the constant flow of the present.  The deep patterns of memory, of what might be called my soul, are on display.  Recurring themes include: The Unfinished Bridge, Tree Cities, Absolute Body Control, Lights In The Distance, The Island That Cannot Be Reached, Telepathy, Resurrected Brother Who Must Die Again, Jimmy McNulty, Star Wars, The Interaction Of Rocks And Sunlight, Neverending Cafe and The Long, Curly Hair Of Various Girlfriends.

I’m not sure what many of these themes mean.  Smart as they were, I have my doubts that Freud or Jung could unravel all the layers of meaning from my life that my brain throws out on busy nights.  I don’t think I’d care to know, because the answers are never as interesting as the questions, and my own belief is that life is best not when understood but when shared.

How can dreams be shared, though?  I don’t expect anyone reading this to have the slightest idea what that list of images above could possibly mean, and yet words are the best means available to me to convey what happens when the barrier of the world is removed and the unconscious takes over.  My friend Kel would argue that film is the best method for documenting the interior life of a person in that film, like memory, can jump back and forth across time and space, is imagistic, and can edit out those moments that are unimportant.  To a certain extent I agree.  I was born in 1981, and so I have spent my life being inundated by moving pictures.  This has an obvious effect on my dreams, in that I almost always dream in the third person (I see myself as if a camera was following me) and that there is a cinematic quality to these visuals (sweeping, all-encompassing landscapes, angles, even zooms).  However, I believe that if I spent my whole life attempting to document my dreamlife with a camera I would give an impression that was muddled at best, inaccurate at worst.  This is because a filmed image is a concrete thing.  When you see a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, that is the image you have.  When I write the words “a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge,” you can probably think of a number of pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge.  This suggestive aspect of words is why they are my preferred means of communicating that which is inherently non-communicable.

My best friend and I call this thing empathetic imagination.  The Unfinished Bridge means something very particular to me, and the image it conjures for you is, in all likelihood, very different.  But by inviting you to have your own definition rather than imposing a specific picture, there is an opportunity for you to speculate what The Unfinished Bridge looks like and what it means.  This affords you the chance to bring your own experience into play and, in essence, meet me halfway.

So what does this have to do with journalism?  The attacks in Mumbai were documented using just about every conceivable method, and while all of these methods successfully conveyed the horror of those days (though how could they not), it was the written accounts that hit me hardest.  Reading about the carnage in the train station was more shocking for me than seeing it on television because the words put me in the station, while the camera is someone else in the station; the blood on CNN is the blood there is – the blood in The New York Times‘ story is as much as my mind will allow.  I understand that, as a matter of accuracy, the image captured by the camera is better, but the nebulous border that divides accuracy and truth is straddled more effectively by the words.  The truth of Mumbai’s suffering came across the less I was spoonfed the information and the more I was allowed to imagine.

It is true that the dreams of one young man are of little consequence when held against the totality of the world and the depth of history, but it’s in dreams that those few things that transcend the world and its history – love, death, timeless memory, the potential of a brain unencumbered by a desire for bagels, a body that is no slave to gravity or insulin – reveal themselves.  They are sacred precisely because they are untranslatable.  You have to imagine.

I meant this to be a light post about how I’ll be glad when the semester’s over so I can get more sleep and enjoy a few good dreams, but somehow it’s gotten away from me and become some sort of manifesto in praise of writing and imagination.

Sorry about that.

Bettie Page, legendary pinup queen died on Thursday of pneumonia at the age of 85 in a Los Angeles hospital, a week after suffering a heart attack.

Page had a large following of worshipers of men and women of all ages. She was ahead of her time and will be continued to be seen as an icon of 1950’s culture.

The All about Bettie Page said, “Bettie has been resurrected time and time again – and now, into the 21st Century, she still thrives in the underground (and not so underground) limelight, delighting a variety of folks from different strokes – all of whom adore her raven-haired-bangs and curvaceous figure, not to mention the twinkle in her eye and the sweetness of her smile.”

Her agent Mike Roesler said in a written statement, “”She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality. She is the embodiment of beauty.”

“Her popularity as an underground, guilty pleasures phenomenon has continued to soar despite the fact that the reclusive Page disappeared almost a half century ago, leading many to believe that one of the most photographed individuals of the 20th century was already dead.” Roesler said.

Page was one of the first women to appear in Playboy and posed for many other magazines, posters and photographs. She was thought to be a sultry mix between provocative and sweet.

Some of her photographs were shrouded in controversy, with the U.S. lawmakers believing them to be pornographic. By today’s standards the photos are quite tame and Page has stood up against the test of time with cult followings and millions of dedicated websites to prove it, including the Bettie Page Memorial site.

Rest in Peace

This seems to be the reason that the blog, that once propelled unknown writers and videographers, has now become the status quo.

November’s issue of Wired provides a great summary of blogging issues that people have been talking baout over the past year or so.

“Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter,” written by Paul Boutin in Wired magazine, Nov. 2008.

I tend to agree with these sentiments. The Interactive Fundamentals blog has been great for seeing each other’s work and showcasing it to anyone interested, but it also emphasizes that it is something to be taught rather than a tool for getting attention for unknown publishers.

The attention that Twitter got during the Mumbai attacks seems to corroborate the point that Wired is making. It is interesting that it was the reporting tool and not individuals who gained attention and notoriety as citizen journalists during the attacks.

I know we have spoken a lot about this in our classes and it was brought up again today, so I figured I would blog my own two cents.

Here are a few links to what others have to say on the topic.

http://www.yongfook.com/items/view/94/the-blog-is-dead

http://2008.northernvoice.ca/session/blog-dead-long-live-bloggers

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/01/28/when-is-it-time-to-end-your-blog/

Okay, I admit it. I’m that 34-year-old. And yes – oh my god – I love Gossip Girl, a television drama about social-climbing, Prada-wearing, Upper East Side teens.

It all started with the right touch of irony, I swear. I wasn’t supposed to really, you know, like this show. My old college friend suggested I watch Gossip Girl as a form of therapy, since I spent my formative middle school years at a school similar to the fictional Constance Billard school, and was fairly traumatized by the experience. So here I was, a self-assured and mature older adult, ready to make fun of teenagers on television. That’s all.

But then I got sucked in to what was a really good drama. Catfights, unrequited love, washed up 90s rock stars, guerilla fashion shows, love child scandals, jokes about Brooklyn, class warfare, deaths, weddings, Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck. I mean, this is good TV! People of all ages can appreciate it.

Perhaps you shouldn’t take my word for it, but instead watch this classic video clip. Cause you know you love me – xoxo, J-school girl.