roc ers

8. I would like to form a Special Projects Collective, where we will have some work space, a warehouse or something, and we will pool our money to have buckets of supplies and tools that everyone can use. The main resource I'd be looking to gain from such a scheme is the creative energy of everyone else involved, seeing everything that they are working on, building. That sort of thing is contagious and priceless. Sometimes I am skeptical that the right kind of people are here in Rochester, but right now I know that they are—but how to find them, rally them?

bait and switch

9. It turns out that the $170 roundtrip airfare from here to the Dominican Republic is not for real. The real deal is that there is a $170 "fare" followed by $120 in "fees". Nonetheless yesterday I checked out one of the public library's copies of Lonely Planet's Dominican Repulic and Haiti, and am now beginning construction on a hot air balloon.

adventures with christine

A. Meeting Christine [shephi] and the adventures she took us on were the best part of the Boston trip. Before, she was just yet another abstract internet persona. But she met us for dinner at the fairly good restaurant at our hotel: me, Stefanos, Adrian, and Christine. Adrian asked how we knew each other. "Actually, we don't..." And in the nights that followed she led us on many an adventure through MIT, cheerful and exuberant about the place. I think I have a new friend.

seeing MIT

B. Seeing MIT was quite an experience, trapsing through all the dorms with these crazy things going on. I wrote about this before, how they were kind of like the Berkeley co-ops but kind of not. Though my non-admission to MIT still stung as a fresh wound, though seven years old, I was glad I went to Berkeley, with its redwood- and riverbrook- filled campus, but the x0xb0xen were near sensory overload. It was a deeply moving trip in the sense that it has inspired me to change the course of my life in Rochester.

the artisan works

C. Coming home was very sweet, to a bright household. Yesterday Bree and I camped out at the public library, gathering imagery and ideas. There are such great things at the public library. We found ideas for murals and for sculptures and for geodesic domes. There is nothing I would rather have been doing. Yesterday we went to Artisan Works, which I will not attempt to describe other than as an incredible, wonderous spectacle. There are people working on all kinds of things here in Rochester—how do we meet them, how do we combine their energies?

how chan learned boston

D. Chan told us how he learned how to get around Boston. "I'd get on the T," he said, "And pick out the most interesting looking person. I'd follow that person until they got off the T, and I'd get off the train there too. Then I would walk back to Boston. Sometimes I'd tell the person I'd followed them, sometimes I'd ask the direction back to the city."

wanderings for the last autumn day

E. Wednesday a week ago was this year's last autumn day. By luck Bree and I took that day to wander out through highland park, where sunbeams broke through and showed through the passing greyness. Leaves folding under foot, we trapsed up through the highest reaches of the park, then down across the road and into the campus of Colgate Divinity School.

Colgate Divinity School is high on a hill and in an ornate building, one befitting of a divinity school. "I wonder if we can go in?" we asked, and answered simulatenously, pulling open a door and setting about wandering the halls, seeking to climb to their high tower. We ran into two current students, both friendly and hilarious, who directed us to the chapel as their most impressive publicly accessibly structure. "It's where we kill our guests," one of them chimed in humorously. Or was that ominously? On our way out we stole apples from their tree (any symbolism was completely lost on us), whose fruit, mostly windfallen, seemed otherwise completeley neglected.

Back in Highland Park, we took the eight minute tour through the balmy glass domes of Lamberton Conservatory. As far as municipal botanical gardens go, this one is fairly pitiful, but any ability to stroll through aisles of tropical orchids mid-winter is to die for (next time I'm bringing a hammock and setting up residence). We concluded our afternoon with a visit on the porch of South Ave Motel and a (successful) quest to see the Epileptic Gorilla.

critical mass / november

F. Friday was a wintry and solitary critical mass. I rode alone and in the dark from University of Rochester, on an ice-encrusted bicycle, over snow-covered paths and empty streets, through subzero temperatures. But it was good, and I was happy, warmly bundled up and warm from the exertion, surveying the winter streets. At the liberty pole I met Ted from Chicago and together we bicycled through the Southwedge, looking at all the homes looking so snug, comparing notes from the last month. And so we continue our little ritual, even as our continent turns away from the sun and the ranks of the faithful dwindle.