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Skidmore has been in the news a lot lately. There was recently a full article about Skidmore and financial aid in Time magazine (which, when I have a little more time, I will comment on) and today, to my surprise, when I opened my NY Times on the train, Skidmore was again featured on the front page

Skidmore has made a lot of improvements over the last few years, since the time I started there, until now. While not all of Skidmore’s decisions are ecologically driven, I am am proud to say that at least they do take their student’s ecological concerns into consideration. When they rebuilt the dining hall between my junior and senior year, they made many improvements, both to the food and to the appearance and atmosphere of the place. While before there were huge round tables, now there are more intimate tables by fire places and windows where you do not have to feel awkward to sit alone. While during my freshman year I used to eat Lucky Charms for dinner because the food was so bad, by the time by senior year came around, I longed for a meal plan and would have underclassmen swipe me in. I feel like when they redesigned the dining hal, they reallyt ook into consideration what their students wanted. They listened to students like my friend Jonathan who campaigned to have locally grown food served at the dining hall.  Skidmore is in upstate New York after all, full of farms and orchards, and it not only is healthier to eat local food but it saves money, something any school would love.  Skidmore’s new dining hall also set up different food stations- which were present on some level before-but the food had already been slopped down onto plates and was sitting under heaters until you took it. The food is now being cooked as you approach the station and you can ask for the portion that suits you, which hopefully will reduce food waste (and unnecessary eating).  I thought this article was fun, es[ecially compared to everything else that was on the front page of the NY Times today, and I am happy that Skidmore is leading the way in eco-friendly dining.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/nyregion/29tray.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=lunch%20trays&st=cse

If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don’t have it, no matter what else there is, it’s not enough.

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. - The Dalai Lama

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection. -The Dalai Lama

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

James Baldwin, Another Country, 1962 (One of my favorite books)

I always write about the Real Housewives, mostly because they are so crazy you just have to laugh. But this week, I got in three fabulous episodes and it was the only thing that made me laugh all week, and for that, I am thankful.

Alex and SImon are looking for architectural treasures in their brownstone that was probably built in the mid twentieth century. While they hunt for something important, their children are walking around barefoot near nails and broken pieces of wood but don’t worry they have hard hats! Don’t you own a hotel Simon? Doesn’t it seem like a good time to take advantage of that fact? I can’t wait to read their book on child rearing in NYC. The chapter on getting your kid into a decent preschool must be thrilling. Hey, at least we learned that SImon got his tubes tied. Phew.

LuAnn gave Bethanny some dating advice which I’m sure she regrets heavily since her pending divorce was announced this week in the papers.  I guess LuAnn’s suggestion that men are getting sick of equality with women  and Bethanny should act all subdued didn’t really check out.  Maybe we can come back to the 21st century now countess? Or should I just call you LuAnn since you no longer have a title.

Bethanny gets unecessarily baraded by Kelly who invites her to discuss their issues, shows up 30 minutes late only to tell her that she is above her adn they are not friends. I’m pretty sure B knows they are not friends and just wants her to get off her high horse (which should be pretty easy since she sucks at riding). Kelly- no one under the age of 40 has any idea who you are so get over yourself. Thanks. If LuAnn didn’t think Bethanny was being rude, you know you’re in the wrong because that woman thinks peanut butter is rude.

Jill and Ramonna and apparently now Mario are having intense fights about a tennis competition but I think they love each other somewhere deep down. And they seem to have great relationships with their husbands which is definitely something I am jealous of even if I have no interest in picking up any more bags of crazy.

I still have two more episodes to catch up on before Tuesday but the way I feel right now, I could really use the laughs.

How do you know when to give up on something and when to keep trying?

I work with a guy who I really like. He is a kind hearted, funny and decently smart guy who I have known for almost two years. Aside from his relative immaturity, since he is 30 years old and only talks about how wasted he got in college and never mentions what he will do with his life, I truly find to be a good guy. But we had a conversation last week that completely changed my view on him. We basically argued about what it meant to live in a free country. His version of free country entailed fat people continuing to eat whatever and however much they want, crack being legal for all crackheads to enjoy, few laws of any kind including basic safety laws like wearing a seat belt and more that I don’t want to even get into. His basic  idea was that if he wants to eat unhealthily, and not where a seat belt when he drives then that is his problem, and hurts him and no one else. I tried to explain to him the concept that we live in a society and humans can actually not function alone without the help of others, but the idea of social responsibility went right over his head.

But what really changed the way I look at him are his opinions on guns. I have always known that he is a hunter and owns shooting rifles. He lives in upstate New York and his family owns a hunting camp, and for that I do not, nor have I ever judged him. But I recently found out that he also owns a pistol and carries it almost everywhere, aside from when he is coming to work. I asked him if he felt threatened and why he felt the need to carry a pistol everywhere? He said the same thing everyone else says- for protection. Yet he doesn’t want laws that would make it harder for mentally unstable people ot get guns. If you had to go through an extensive series of background checks and mental status history, maybe fewer crazy people would have guns and we wouldn’t need a gun for protection. The fact is, you have to be mentally unstable to shoot another human who is not harming you. No one normal can do that.  However, my co-worker just seemed to say that bad people were going to get guns no matter what so there was no point in not being prepared. People completely misinterpret the meaning of the second ammendment and what it means to be a free country. If we were free in the sense that most people think, then crack would be legal, and crazy people could have guns and I could kill whoever I wanted during my road rage episodes and I would not go to jail. But there are laws, and most of the time there is a good reason.

In the last month alone, I can think of three major serial killings that have killed more than twenty people. There was Michael McLendon in Alabama who killed his mom, aunt and uncle, neighbors and then random strangers in Alabama. There was Robert Stewart who decided to take out his anger on people 78 to 98 years old in a nursing home in North Carolina. And then most recently there was Jiverly Wong, who fired at least 98 shots and killed 13 people in Binghamton last week. Now maybe you could say that if you were in one of these situations and you had a gun then you could protect yourself better. Expect, I am pretty sure that if you whipped out a gun in front of one of these three men, you would have been the first to die. Wouldn’t it just be easier if these killers didn’t have guns in the first place? Or if someone had done a background check on any of them? Hunters don’t understand that gun control laws are not meant to prevent them from hunting. Sarah Palin, eat your heart out. But guns are not meant for anything less than a dense forest. They are not meant for big cities and they are not meant for small cities like Wilmington, NC or Coffee County Alabama (I am not making that name up). We do live in a free country but that doesn’t mean we are free to do whatever we want, and it is really time for people to start understanding that. It is almost the 10th anniversary of Columbine and the second anniversary of Virginia Tech. No one should have to fear going to school and no one should feel the need to carry a gun to the supermarket to protect themselves.  But until people understand that the second amendment does not give everyone the right to  walk around with a pistol in their pocket, we will not be free- because we will always be worried that the next psycho is just around the corner.

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to the City of NY telling them of my concern of street smoke. While they have banned smoking from restaurants and bars and office buildings, all of those people have merely transferred themselves to the sidewalk. It may seem like a stupid thing to complain about, but when I walk the 6 blocks everyday to Grand Central from my house, I am bombarded by crowds of smokers standing outside their office buildings ripping “heats.” Aside from the more vane reasons I don’t like it, like it makes me freshly washed hair and clothes smell bad, I don’t see why I have to be exposed to mushroom clouds of smoke at 9AM. When I walk into my class at Hunter, I have to pass through anywhere from 25-50 kids standing right outside the door smoking. They even smoke in fron of the sign that says, “Please Do NOT smoke in front of the windows.” Nothing anyone does will stop people from smoking. They put ads on TV where they show black lungs, or children dying and abandoning their toddlers in train stations. They raise the price of cigarettes to $10. NO ONE CARES. People who are sick with terminal illnesses continue to smoke. When people have so little regard for their own bodies how can you expect them to be considerate of other people? There needs to be a law for everything and I think there should be a law banning smoking and congregations of smokers outside of buildings.

While the City of NY has still nto responded to my complaint, the NY Times has. In yesterdays paper they wrote that “More than half of all nonsmokers in New York City have elevated levels of nicotine byproduct in their blood indicating recent exposure to cigarette smoke.” They seem to be confused as to why this is since they thought passing the Smoke Free Air Act of 2002 had fixed everything. Well think again. If you push smokers out of bars, restaurants and their own offices, where are they to go? The sidewalk.  And where do most people walk? The sidewalk.  That wasn’t too hard to figure out. Now I can think ahead here. And if by some miracle they can ban smoking in large groups right outside of office buildings and bars, people are going to smoke more in their apartments. I already live next to a smoker and believe me, my bathroom reaks of smoke all day long since we share an air vent.  You can’t push smokers away because no matter where they are, they are bothering someone. You just have to make them stop.

In the meantime though, I’d like a free and clear sidewalk please Mr. Bloomberg.

There is something that has been bothering me lately and I just don’t know how to discuss it in a very PC way because it is a touchy and sensitive subject.  My mother works in an office that tries to get immigrant high school students tutoring for their Regents and guide them into getting into college. My mother is the assistant director, but she does mostly everything because her boss is *&$#% (you can fill in whatever word you would like). it’s a pretty well known fact that my mom’s boss(Lets call her L) does not do her job. She skims by with doing the  bare minimum amount of work necessary. She takes at least two “sick” days a week and often leaves around 2 or 3 claiming that she is too cold in the office and will get more work done at home. One of her major tasks each year is grant writing so that underprivileged children of immigrants can experience taking college classes and maybe get into a community college. So what does L do? She writes a piece of shit, makes my mom rewrite it and then doesn’t even submit it on time. Nice. L recently told the other people who work in the office that if someone calls for her to tell them that she is “at a meeting” since before they would respond truthfully and say that she has not arrived at work when it was 12:15, or that she had gone home sick. Aside from her two hour lunches, sick days, general apathy, malaise and laziness about what she does, she doesn’t even have the courtesy to show up to meetings for the students. Who does show up? My mom. With snacks and drinks and prepared discussion topics. One day my mom showed up to work, on a weekday, even though it was a school holiday, and L yelled at her. Why? Why would you yell at someone for going to work on a workday? You would only do this because you are afraid it reflects poorly on you.

There is someone somewhere that knows that L isn’t doing her job and yet she doesn’t get in trouble. Instead, my mom is now at risk of losing her job. My mom has to re-interview for her job and one of the people who decides if she gets it is of course, her boss. L is bitter that the woman below her works harder and she wants to fire my mom to keep her own job. I think the problem though goes beyond just having a bitchy boss. There is a reason she isn’t getting fired and I think that the college is afraid to because of her race.  Race remains such a touchy subject in our culture that it is hard to do what is right because it can be taken the wrong way. And yet, if the roles were reversed, and my mom was the boss and never came to work and made L do  everything and never get any credit for it and then have to fight to keep her job, my mother would be labelled a racist. If my mother walked around the office with the same air of entitlement and abuse of power as L did, the situation would be seen completely differently.  So what do you do? I am not quite sure. At this point, how do you even accuse your boss of being lazy and unresponsible without looking like you are just trying to defend your job?

This makes me feel lucky that I have such a wonderful boss. Who is not only a mentor but my friend

On the surface, this show is nothing but a bunch of rich, caddy high school girls who got older and never grew up. But in reality, it is way more. It is a microcosm for so many things in our society- like how girls treat each other, or the extent that people will go to appear wealthy and well adjusted. I have been really behind with getting my weekly dose of this show on Bravo, since I no longer pay for cable and unfortunately bravo does not just magically appear on my microwave door. I have learned however, that itunes is a great resource, and its way cheaper than cable without the commercials. I am in love <3

Anyway, back to what really matters- aloofness and superficiality. Bethanny had her fifteen minutes of fame this week when she was on the cover of socialite magazine, and she almost got on my nerves until the countess, who is coming out with a book on manners, outwardly asked if she was being airbrushed. Apparently the countess didn’t get the memo that Bethanny has already had her touch up in her real life and does not need photoshopping. She also might want to add a chapter to her book “Note to self, do not blurt out to friends in magazines that they are ugly and might need a touch up. PS. Do not Open mouth at cancer benefit. PPS: Do not be bitter than your modeling career did not pan out.” Bethanny got a good retort in there when she asked Luann how marrying someone with a title made her more knowledgeable about manners than everyone else, which was a good point since Luann doesn’t really have as much tact or class as she thinks she does. Or any at all for that matter.

After calling Bethanny ugly to her face, LuAnn later implies that Ramonna’s slutty ways would “build a bad reputation in her world.” For once Ramonna replied with a cohesive sentence, that was actually funny, and told LuAnn to shove it because she was a “man magnet” and that LuAnn had no clue because her husband was old. Apparently, they didn’t teach LuAnn math in countess school because she can’t believe that someone 15 years her senior is an older man.  You can always tell how mad/jealous/bitter LuAnn is by the number of times she calls people my sweet or my love. That is the true way to proper etiquette- hide all emotions under pink rainbows and sunshine and no one will eve know you are cold witch.

I dont really want to talk about the fake socialite closet couple, but I will say that Simon and Alex traded the Hamptons for a kiddy pool in their shitty backyard and then packed their pink jeans for St. Barts. (Simon’s jeans of course).