Mandy

'The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming...

'In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."...

'After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews...

'The fight between Dr. Hansen and administration officials echoes other recent disputes. At climate laboratories of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for example, many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone.'

yay scientists, boo government. all the ucky details: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?hp&ex=1138597200&en=df8f81d4867a2143&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Couple at the Window

This is Sunday morning;
for fun we lean
out the window, lazily
watching the street.
The sun shines. Life flows.
A small dog, a plump child...
We have found ourselves here
for days, weeks, months
and for hours--for hours.

I, the man, don't think of me.
Today I stay home,
today I won't go to the office--
...though the taxes still need to be done...
What time? I don't exactly know.
She is a woman to me,
I feel bound to her
for days, weeks, months
and for hours--for hours.

I, the woman, am glad to be with him.
We don't speak of marriage.
But one day I want him
to be fully, completely tied to me.
The plump woman on the balcony next to us
gives her child a candy
and plays with her dog...
that should be my life, someday--
not only for hours--for hours.

A current connects us, mind to mind;
we are still an adventure.
One day we could part,
and another would come...a new one...
Or we could stay together forever;
our wild flames would be extinguished,
habit would be where love once was.
And only in rare seconds
would memory flash on that beautiful year,
and on hours--on happy hours.

-Kurt Tucholsky

i'd like to shamelessly promote this book to anyone who sees this page: The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. i think it's really something unique, something new and unrepeatable. and sad and fantastic and enviable. it's about a time traveller, a guy who is randomly pulled back into his own past or future, and the wife who meets him for the first time when she is 6, who he meets for the first time when he is 28, though there is only an 8 year age difference...

"I sit at my drawing board with a pencil in my hand and a sheet of white paper before me. Nothing comes. I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a tube of watercolor, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is limp with moisture, and darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum arabic. In the centre of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but an anatomically correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins, delicate road maps of veins, that reach all the way to the edge of the paper, that hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. 'See, there's his heartbeat.' "

ok, go read.

whichever, i don't care. because i just received perhaps the best eval ever. from my 'politics of gothic literature class', here's the killer:

'Mandy is a fantastic writer: her prose is sharp and specific, and moves with dynamic transitions from idea to idea. Her final paper opened, “Dracula wastes no time with preliminary explanations,” which unglazed my eyes in the midst of marathon paper grading.'

Judith Frank, please let me bear your butch babies.
(i guess i won't mind going back to school in a week)

Januar: i´m here! the keyboard is really weird and i haven´t found cheap internet yet, so this must be short.

i mean, if they have LOTR figurines, they must be ok ;)

Februar: hmm...being lazy at the library.

and settle into the goal of "experiencing" this city in such a way that it flies home with me in some kind of satisfaction of accomplishment.

Marz: many odd things to write about, but i'll just go with some pictures instead. (berlin weirdness)

and just as nice to feel some sense of 'home' as my tired feet took me back down into familiar u-bahn tunnels.

Avril: i found a secret in prague this weekend

i think my stammerings today got across my frustration a little more than normal. again, thanks to the wine.

Mai: yesterday was may day and berlin sure did turn herself out for it

which is german for "i love katie bryson and inter-continental melted chocolate bars"

Juni: i cannot believe i survived 19 years without mehrkorn prinzenrolle cookies.

yea, schroedy, that's what you get for hanging out with americans.

Juli: just turned the ol' berlin calendar for the last time.

but home home home, i sure do have a neato home.

August: ...

September: tonight all of my modmates were sitting in our living room, engaged in various forms of reading, test preps, cookie baking, etc, when Kirsten came up with a good idea.

also, reading this over, i am apparently the dorkiest person i know.

October: Name ten things that make you happy

November: yay for krithi and her camera.

Hermione: (scared)"Everything's going to change, isn't it?"
Harry: (reassuringly)"Yea, it is."

Hermione: (scared)"Everything's going to change, isn't it?"
Harry: (reassuringly)"Yea, it is."

yay for krithi and her camera. here's the tiny good part from halloween this year:


katie's innocence is doomed


everything looks better in black and white.

Name ten things that make you happy and tag 5 others:

1. Cooking with my mod/spending an entire evening in the process of buying, preparing, and eating
2. Adult Swim on saturday nights
3. the exact feel of the air since the clouds finally broke yesterday. scarf weather.
4. the hampshire college library on weekends when i'm the only one working
5. mornings that start with a pot of coffee and some very dorky sort of reading (gothic novels, jewish folktales, irgendwas auf deutsch)
6. deutsch sprechen, lesen, schreiben, usw.
7. jeff's hookah
8. my two redheaded girls and the people they come with
9. walking after sunset
10. the shins

tag: fwegan, lisandra_inez, forgoodmeasure, herzkrankdagget, boopsiecomplex

tonight all of my modmates were sitting in our living room, engaged in various forms of reading, test preps, cookie baking, etc, when Kirsten came up with a good idea. so we went around in a circle each reading a line from our current occupation, thereby making an economic historical math oriented yiddish folktale. then we ate katie's now perfected oatmeal-ginger-chocolate chip cookies and watched the daily show. i love my mod.

also i love jeff wallen and imagining a college career that includes early graduation and berlin again in 07, while eating paninis and talking about Kleist and the absurdity of handys in germany.

and the hampshire library is the happiest place on earth

and my german teacher is the cutest little chinese woman ever

and apparently i suck at live journal now. which doesn't seem to upset me.


also, reading this over, i am apparently the dorkiest person i know.

so by the way i've been home for...11 days? yea.

who knew i loved so many people in western mass? or loved so few people so well? anyway, its a lot of love. for place as well as people.

sometimes i miss berlin, but miss isn't the right word. more like i realize every now and then how far away i was and for how long and how much that actually means. and then i get confused. and kind of want back that whole adventurous 'life' thing i might have been establishing.

but home home home, i sure do have a neato home.

so we went to paris. cause, you know, how could we not?

she got pretty excited



meanwhile i defied physics.



there's really nothing more to tell.

except oh yea, i will be in GREENFIELD massachusetts, the united states of america, on sunday.

so, i'm in that pic, somewhere between those big white baloons and the stage and the hundred-fifty thousand berliners, not being able to see green day or audioslave, but trying very hard to and having lots of fun anyway. the proof, here's me taking a picture of the stage:



and here's me taking a pic behind me. notice large white baloons.



and this, i swear, is a picture of green day. i think there's even a light colored blob that might be one of the band members



so yea, i'm not getting my hopes up to high on that 'make poverty history' thing but we DID sing along to 'we are the champions' with billy joe. and that's certainly something.

ps. berlin rocks, doesn't it? i mean, was there ever a cooler backdrop for a concert than the siegessaule or the brandenburger tor?

i really want this girl. right now.

just turned the ol' berlin calendar for the last time. my deep sighs are confused between relief and anticipated missingness.

"German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has arrived in Washington for talks with US President George W Bush.

The two are expected to discuss Germany's bid to obtain its own seat on the UN Security Council and the future of the European Union.

Europe's role in the war on terror and its negotiations with Iran over the country's nuclear programme are also believed to be on the agenda.

It comes as polls show Mr Schroeder's popularity at home at its lowest ever." (BBC news)

yea, schroedy, that's what you get for hanging out with americans.

so, my conception of Time is kablooey. i give up forever. i mean, if a teenager can leave her parents' home and count out six months in a foreign tongue, only to have the promise of home rush back towards her-only wanting it, missing it, needing it more with a self now somewhat bigger than teenager- and it can feel, before it is even over, as if it never happened? and tomorrow we have to start this life in berlin? i mean life in berlin is done for now, start a life in greenfield? that's asking a lot.

i swear i just went in to see what the place was like. *maybe* to make an appointment. i walked out an hour later with a pain-high and my middle wrapped in cellophane.

Die Welt dreht sich, sie dreht sich schön und


leidenschaftlich, aber die


Achse knarrte und rauchte


there's my berlin momento. only two tasks left. ok, three: 1- start working out so i won't be embarrassed showing it off, 2-go to lucky's and have them turn the 'u' in 'uber' to an 'a' as in 'aber' (oops) 3-never get pregnant. the war against stretch marks has begun.

eek! i am so FUCKING brave. and crazy. and hot.

the fucking easiest cookies ever (katie please note, especially the endless room for improvisation):

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder

-melt the butter, remove from heat
-add sugar and salt, stir (till sugar gets melty)
-add oats and baking powder, mush it all up
-spread in 9x13(ish) baking dish
-bake at 400F for 8-10 min, until it starts to set/sugar melts/oats start to brown
-cut while hot, let cool (sets while cooling)

and it totally makes yummy caramely oatmeal cookies! i threw in raisins cause i'm addicted to them, but i'm thinking any kind of dried fruit, or apples, or god, imagine bananas! the possibilities!

o gott, die Freude des Fahradfahren und deutsche Dorf Landschaft!

( bikes and countryside! )