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Sadie, you make my life much more cool than i...
October 29, 2005 by Jamie in Sadie & Greg
Sadie, you make my life much more cool than it really is. You go girl! Thinking of you, Jamie
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A chilly but dry Halloween weekend is upon us...
October 28, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
 A chilly but dry Halloween weekend is upon us, and our shrunken heads and jack-o-lanterns are ready for mobs of trick-or-treaters. Our neighborhood, originally the working-class area of Williamstown, is full of sidewalks and duplexes- ideal for greedy little goblins. We have a few friends coming in for Anna's Berkshire Symphony concert and some harvest festivities. There may be a burlesque show involved. Should be a good time.
I'm driving to Meadville, PA on Wednesday to go to a community asset mapping conference. Dorothy is putting me up, but I'll get to spend plenty of time with Jed, Amara, and Satchi as well. It will be so exciting to see Meadville from the eyes of a community organizer! I'll report back on my findings.
And if you're dying to hear my radio show on Monday and Friday mornings from 9-10 EST (6-7 PST), we have online streaming at wcfm.williams.edu! I take requests!
Hogs and quiches!
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Anna found this very interesting article
October 24, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Anna found this very interesting article. The author is a big advocate of energy conservation over energy efficiency, and has some interesting ways of explaining his thoughts in this article:
http://www.kilawatt.com/articles/NCSA%20presentation%20EFF%20INC%20RES.pdf
He emphasizes that the best things in life aren't necessarily the most efficient. An excerpt:
The products and processes that are the most valuable to us are, by necessity, inefficient. Examples are democracy, raising children, learning, loving, art, manners, and even nature itself, which H.T. Odum estimated was only 2% efficient. Respectively, we can make each of these more efficient through dictatorship, child labor, cheating, pornography, mass production, selfishness and genetic engineering – all with repercussions. Increased efficiency destroys the things we value most and yet adds value to the more quantifiable products and processes that harm our environment.
He also suggests a "Reverse Peace Corps" that brings ideas from less efficient but more sustainable societies back to our crazy consuming country. Enjoy!
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Anna and I are in the local coffee shop, eves...
October 21, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Anna and I are in the local coffee shop, evesdropping on a really loud conversation about a management ladder. I'm pretending that it's an inside peek at the bureaucracy of a regional prostitution ring, which makes it much more exciting.
This is the weekend of tourist leaf-peepers, and the coffee shop is full of foreign voices using the restroom. They're much quieter than our American neighbors, who are now nearly yelling about making money. Even the women from the Women's House of Peace executive committee, had a crescendo of passion about meditation space in their conversation. I myself love to know that other people can hear my intimate witticisms- a bizarre American egotism, I suppose. Anna, having spent a year of her childhood in France, is somehow exempt from this boisterous public volume. How that woman keeps me in line.
However, she couldn't keep me from painting the living room red yesterday. It looks amazing, and I'll send pictures soon.
The weather and the leaves have responded beautifully to the tourists' attention and are in full flame. Williams called Mountain Day today, so all the students are picking apples and frolicking in the woods. It's a lovely day for a mocha, advil (the Miller remedy for all ills, mine from yesterday's paint fumes), and a little walk in Williamstown.
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After torrential rain and major flooding, the...
October 17, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
After torrential rain and major flooding, the sun has finally come out, and it's looking like a proper New England fall. Ah, the crunching leaves.
Love to all!
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Anna and I are working collaboratively on a m...
October 13, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Anna and I are working collaboratively on a mini-energy audit and winterization program for households who receive emergency fuel assistance from the Berkshire Community Action Council. It's exciting to get to do something so concrete that links together our local community assets and needs and broader national and international energy issues.
I'm also working on a few other big and exciting projects, which keep me manic and distracted.
But despite making myself invaluable, my position at the college is seemingly more tenuous than it’s ever been. Of course, I've never been able to be found on the college web directory, but I always liked the outsider position. I never actually felt like I was kept out of the loop on the vision of the office or the institution. On the contrary, I felt closer to student action and college administration than a hired community service director would feel. But there is a subtle and illusive shift that I can't quite place, but which seems to spell change led from above.
Now, my loving and sensitive family, you know me well enough to know that I tilt at windmills half the time. I am an intuitive and romantic person that spends more time talking about the texture of fog than the 3 school district tutoring database I'm negotiating into creation.
But intuition is a hint of some material reality. So let me lay this out in shadows that my intuition, but perhaps not yet the institution, is pulling together.
First, my boss, the part time chaplain of the college and part time coordinator of community service, is getting a doctorate in some wing of divinity. These elite certificates seem to tip balances in administrations, and I suspect that they could tip him into becoming the full-time dean of religious life of Williams College. In that case, we'd need a full-time coordinator in the office of community service.
Second, the college must be getting nervous about its civic engagement ranking, and the deanery and president's office might do something about it in a way that is not very consultative or collaborative. I suspect (possibly) that they may subject the office to the administrative powers of the dean's office or the campus life office. In my mind, the possibility of being absorbed into the campus life office is immediate death. Becoming part of the dean's office sounds almost as terrible. The best possible, but possibly least probable, merger would be of experiential education, the Office of Career Counseling, and the Office of Community Service. This umbrella organization for these college offices is not uncommon. Allegheny, for example, has an umbrella office for these groups. Would all the queens of the various offices (including myself, of course) be able to work collaboratively? Certainly not. But the Office of Community Service has an endowed fund. So we don't have to.
Which leads me to the next problematic that makes my office seem like it's at the edge of some weird precipice. We have money in the form of an endowed fund, but no staff. What would happen if the chaplain became a full-time chaplain/dean of religious life? Who would administer the fund? A college would not allow some young uneducated whippersnapper to doll out money. With the current hiring freeze (yes! Even at Williams College), the best possible way to have a staff person would be to get an existing position, or existing part-time position, to take over the coordinating role.
So, we have Paula Consolini, PhD, the part-time coordinator of Experiential Education, and we have those lost souls that are shifted into dean's positions by invisible strings from above. I cannot imagine that these options are ideal. Paula should be full-time, but working soley on experiential education, which should be more robust anyway. And isn't is obvious that a dean would not come to student meetings at 9:30 pm on a Wednesday night?
But perhaps we can simply hire a new position for the coordinator of Community Service,
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Anna is fine
October 07, 2005 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Anna is fine. And laughing next to me as I sketch our little place, which is, of course, as unbiased as a Texan Supreme Court nominee.
This morning's walk to work was obscured by a fog as this as pea soup. I've been consumed by work lately, returning home frazzled and ocassionally missing limbs. Now I know why every social justice-y conference has a workshop on "taking care of the caretaker." My whole office is addicted to caffiene and weary pauses.
On the homefront, the house is shaping up beautifully, and we're almost ready to accept our first non-family guest to stay this weekend. If you knew where our guest bed was from, you would not think me neurotic to have spent all day airing out bedding.
The gruesome and exciting realities of co-decorating are thick at 72 Linden.
New Carpet: 3 hours to choose
Fabric for matching (but not too matching) curtains: 1 hour to choose
Making a living room we both think is nice (but not out of a catalogue nice): priceless.
I think this newfound labor makes up for the fact that everything in the house that wasn't taken from a garbage heap was bought at a thrift store. On sale.
Much love and happy leaf peeping!
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