jumping ship

um, so blogger kinda sucks. And livejournal seems to have sold out completely.

I've made the switch to wordpress.

Find me here http://fullandbye.wordpress.com/

Kingston Burning

A political situation that has been slowly stewing here in Jamaica for almost a year completely exploded last week and has in the past few days made headlines around the world.

If you read no further, know that I am safe. Peace Corps always stresses that volunteer safety is their number one priority. While I have sometimes doubted the wisdom of specific safety policies (helmets while driving a donkey cart? Really?) The past few days have definitely ossified my faith in Peace Corps having their act together when situations get legitimately dicey.

And dicey they are indeed. News can gotten anywhere. For back story, the best journal article summarizing the situation (as of last week, before things got "hot") is this article here. Very comprehensive. Good reading too.

This story was published before the violence began. Since then there has been fighting between government security (military and constabulary force) and the private militia armed and paid by organized crime figures. Most of the major news outlets are on this story so information should be easy to come by.

Like most conflicts that make world press, this one is concentrated in a a few cities. There is a visceral tension in people's mood even in this bucolic outpost. But really, were it not for the media it would be hard to notice anything amiss throughout most of the country. Port Antonio remains peaceful, laid back, and pleasant. Moore Town remains quiet, beautiful, and friendly. When it comes down to it, farmers in the Rio Grande Valley (farmers everywhere, presumably) have other things to worry about.

I am not worried for myself at all. I am worried for my friends in the JDF.
My move from Port Royal could not have come at a more fortuitous time. When I was still in Port Royal, anytime I went to Kingston I had to travel right through the part of Kingston that is now the heart of this conflict. I met some wonderful and engaging people; taxi drivers, market ladies, hawkers, domino players, and buskers. I worry for these people too.

Updates as they come. Several people around the world--in Ghana, Israel, Seattle, Italy etc. have contacted me to ask about my safety. I am profoundly touched by the concern. It means a lot. I hope I have put your minds at ease. Anyone with further questions about me or about this situation is, of course, welcome to contact me privately off-list.

Tuesday will be the one-year anniversary of my shipping out from Seattle. The image from that 737 of Mt. Index and Lake Serene as we passed over the Cascades remains as clear in my mind as though it were yesterday. In a sense, it feels like yesterday.

Peace.

roosters

If there is hell, I hope there is a special place reserved in hell for the asshole who started the myth that roosters only crow at dawn.

I have news for you, urban dwellers who have never been around a cock in your life: Roosters crow whenever the hell they feel like it.

I actually think that roosters crow whenever their five functioning neurons manage to fire simultaneously and give roosters a "thought" (including the thought "Holy shit! I'm a rooster!).

But it is true that roosters crow a lot more at dawn. This is easily explained by my previous logic. I think that roosters are so dumb that by daybreak they have forgotten completely what dawn is so they think "holy shit! it's getting light outside!" and then once it is light they are surprised by pretty much everything they see; "Holy shit! Two sticks in some mud!" or "Holy shit! A pile of garbage!"

I am all for civil liberties. But after living in rooster land for a year already, I can really appreciate Seattle's ban on urban rooster keeping.

irony

For some reason (laziness mostly) I have kept the predictive text feature on my phone turned on.

In the past this has led to some pretty amusing discoveries; such as the time I tried to write "guacamole" but my phone decided upon the term "hubbanoke". Not knowing what a "hubbanoke" is I nevertheless tried to use it in scrabble. It did not work. Apparently the nokia dictionary does not cut the scrabble mustard (or guacamole).

But it does now and again come up with a gem of irony.

Behold! The numeral combination that yields the word "pants" will, as the second option no less, also create the word "scots". The Scots of course are an ethnic minority in the British Isles known among other things for not wearing pants.

This gives me a sense of peace; the irony of the phone.

the captives

Is it bad that I use this blog to publicly ponder random things going on in my head as much or more than I use it to provide a glimpse into the exotic and titillating life of a Peace Corps volunteer? I promise I will write more about Jamaica. But right now I want to post a thought about social media sites.

A recent slew of wall posts on my facebook account led a friend to observe that we now have the choice to either reveal almost nothing to acquaintances, or to reveal a whole lot more than perhaps should be revealed in one fell swoop with people we are just getting to know.

It is an interesting point. On the one hand, I doubt if my close friends could learn much by poring over the details of my facebook profile. But I also frequently "friend" people who I have just met but who I very much want to stay in contact with. In a few minutes examining my facebook profile, these people can learn lots of trivial things about me, and a handful of not trivial things about me. Before facebook, these trivial and non trivial things used to be revealed to a new friend slowly through the process of dialogue and mutual inquiry.

I guess the question is whether or not this really matters. I think it does. For all the poo-pooing that smalltalk gets, I think that smalltalk is actually kind of important in the process of making friends: You meet someone, you smalltalk. After you smalltalk a little, you move into bigger and more substantive topics of conversation, and after you know someone a while longer you might feel comfortable getting into the lengthy sorts of dialogues that reveal some really complex facet of your being. Isn't this the process of making friends? I wonder if we interact with people differently now that we can largely circumvent that process of discovery. I no longer need to engage in a series of conversations with a new friend to discover what their taste in music or art is, or how they like to spend their freetime, or even how they feel about divisive political issues. Shit, I can even see if they are married, single, or in an "it's complicated" situation.

In speaking with this friend it dawned upon me that maybe we have lost something really valuable to facebook. Have we lost the process of discovery? Have we lost an essential element of the process of making friends? I am reminded of the series of scupltures in the Michaelangelo museum in Florence. As you approach the statue of "David", on either side of the corridor are some studies that Michaelangelo never finished. They are haunting and beautiful, these forms forever trapped in the marble. But isn't the process of making a friend in large part the process of mutually chipping away at each other's exteriors until you reveal and let yourself be revealed? Isn't this what dialogue is, really? And isn't dialogue the root of friendship?

I worry that facebook has made public identity too cartesian, too reductionistic. There is really nothing on my facebook that I consider very private at all, but I still think that something of human interaction is lost when we can get by with learning the details of someones life through an itemized list without going through the process of asking questions and exchanging bits of information to reveal the form underneath the formless exterior.

skipping stones

This is my last night as a resident of Port Royal. Tomorrow morning I move to Moore Town in Portland Parish.

This is a maudlin occasion. I am excited to get working on my next project, but I am realizing just how settled into the life I have become here.

This all got me thinking about skipping stones.

Hard to watch these ripples fade. But I'm definitely excited to skip some more stones.

Tomorrow is my last day in Port Royal. Bright and early Tuesday Jeffrey the awesome PC staff member will pick me up and we will road trip it up to my new site. I'm excited to head up there. I am also going to miss Port Royal. This town is something special. It is safe and small and friendly and everyone has their nose in everyone else's business.

Also, I have become something of a B-list celebrity to the local kids. With my newfound powers I can get them to stop hitting each other simply by staring at them. I am so happy I chose to remain living with my host family here rather than moving into my own place. To be sure, my room is kinda small and kinda hot, and it is really loud. But by living here for a full 7 months I have become really close to my landlord and now consider him to be my Jamaican brother. I have an open invitation to come back here whenever I want and I intend to take him up on the offer.

Sail race today. Boat was shorthanded and it was blowing 25-30kts solid, so we decided to sail a white sail race rather than attempt anything with the chute. Some good tactics heading to the first mark put us more than a mile over our competition and everything was going perfectly until the hydraulic backstay ram blew a seal and spewed oil all over the place. Disaster! The piston for the adjuster is maybe 7" or so, but these seven inches mean the difference between a taut forestay and a slack forestay. They also mean the difference between a properly tensioned mast and a disaster waiting to happen. We finished the downwind leg fully rigged but had to douse the jib before beating back to the finish line. Without the jib, progress was slow and we did not have enough power to really punch through the steep chop. This ultimately meant a lot of pounding and a lot of spray.

Oh well. So long as no one gets hurt and so long as the boat is not seriously damaged, the worst day sail racing is still better than the best day doing most other things. So I really cannot complain. I mean, who else in Peace Corps gets to race sailboats sometimes?

Boy oh boy and am I ever in a bloggy sort of mood.

So while I am at it, let me put down this thought.

Today Republicans blocked debate on financial reform. This toddler-esque behavior is apparently how they intend to participate in "governance" during the Obama administration. This infantile bullshit is a deliberate act to sabotage the core function of the great deliberative body of government. How thoughtful! How patriotic! How confident they must be in their policy positions if they find it necessary to completely torpedo the very conversation in which they might defend those positions.

It reminds me of the ten rules for debate I would always introduce when facilitating a class section in college.

Sidney Hooks ten rules for debate. Presented here in their entirety.

1. Nothing and no one is immune from criticism.

2. Everyone involved in a controversy has an intellectual responsibility to inform himself of the available facts.

3. Criticism should be directed first to policies, and against persons only when they are responsible for policies, and against their motives or purposes only when there is some independent evidence of their character.

4. Because certain words are legally permissible, they are not therefore morally permissible.

5. Before impugning an opponent’s motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.

6. Do not treat an opponent of a policy as if he were therefore a personal enemy of the country or a concealed enemy of democracy.

7. Since a good cause may be defended by bad arguments, after answering the bad arguments for another’s position present positive evidence for your own.

8. Do not hesitate to admit lack of knowledge or to suspend judgment if evidence is not decisive either way.

9. Only in pure logic and mathematics, not in human affairs, can one demonstrate that something is strictly impossible. Because something is logically possible, it is not therefore probable. “It is not impossible” is a preface to an irrelevant statement about human affairs. The question is always one of the balance of probabilities. And the evidence for probabilities must include more than abstract possibilities.

10. The cardinal sin, when we are looking for truth of fact or wisdom of policy, is refusal to discuss, or action which blocks discussion.

I wish these were prominently displayed somewhere in each house of congress.

nicknames

Why do I always think of the best nicknames after the fact?

When I was a freshman at theatre design conservatory one of our assignments was to design a soup can label. I made a label that my design teacher loved. It was very sleek, very modern, and was for gazpacho. I did not think of the Razpacho play until long after I had turned in this project.

Why oh why did I only think of "Razputin" recently?

I should have considered this nickname sometime in the winter of 2007.

Behold, Rasputin.

And now Razputin. This photo was taken February 2007 after 4 months of not shaving.

Uncanny or what?

the axis of ambition and the axis of crazy.

News Brief: I've gotten approval to pursue a project in Moore Town, Portland Parish in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Moore Town is the major cultural/historical center of the Windward Maroons. There are some nifty articles online if you want to read more about the Windward Maroons, or the Jamaican Maroons in general. I will move in early May most likely but housing in the community still must be indentified. I visited Moore Town a few weeks ago and I absolutely loved it. Cannot wait to get out there and get into the swing.

I am working with the current batch of Peace Corps Trainees (they got here on March 18) to get trained in literacy training techniques because I would love to work with the two schools in Moore Town in addition to the environmental projects I want to pursue. This is pretty much the measure of things at the moment.

I really love spending time with trainees, learning their motivations, their histories, their ambitions. I am not sure exactly what rubrics Peace Corps applies to determine who gets invited to serve, but I am pretty sure that in addition to overall awesomeness (PCVs on the whole are a quality bunch) they look carefully to see how applicants fall on two scales or axes. This brings us to the title of this blog post.

So, I am increasingly convinced that to get into Peace Corps and to be happy in Peace Corps and to keep Peace Corps' faith in you, you must fall in some "sweet spot" along two crucial axes: The axis of ambition, and the axis of crazy. Let's discuss.

There is such a thing in Peace Corps as too much ambition. I would be very worried if I were interviewing someone for PC and this someone was convinced that given a plane ticket, a few months of training, and a mosquito net, they could substantially reduce the AIDS rate in Botswana. This person would be way high on the axis. Likewise, I would be pretty nervous about an applicant whose motivation seemed more driven by simple wanderlust than any motivation to serve. It is not unheard of for Vols to get pretty nihilistic and catatonic in Peace Corps. Ultimately on the axis of ambition you need to fall somewhere in the middle.

The axis of crazy is a little harder to think about. Really, you need to be kinda crazy just to fill out the application and get an interview in the first place. The application is long, the essays prompt are vague, and the pre-service medical instructs doctors to stick their fingers in your ass (note: I managed to dodge this bullet for pre-service medical but my number was up when I had to med-check to transfer). So it is already sort of a given that applicants are a little bit nuts, the point is that they cannot be too crazy. You need to be crazy enough to apply for a job without knowing what continent you might get sent to, let alone any real job description. You need to be crazy to willingly subject yourself to isolation, sickness, climatic extremes, and a life without coffee for 2+ years. But you cannot be so crazy that Peace Corps is worried you might turn into some Colonel Kurtz.

Keeping yourself sane and motivated once you get here of course is an entirely different story.

Enough for now.

Current time: 22:30

Current location: Port Royal

Current Temperature: Low 80s, presumably.

Current Music: The Pixies. The riff at the start of "Here Comes Your Man" just kills me every time. "Doolittle" is such an amazing album.

State of the Raz: sleepy, hopeful, excited for next steps.

good heavens

It has been the weirdest 24 hours.

Also, hi! Hello! Been awhile. Have a seat.

Ths short of it:

I am changing sites. Following the opening of the PRML Biodiversity Centre in late January, things took a turn for the worse at that site. This is one of those shitty adult situations where there is plenty of culpability and bad feelings to go round, but no one person is to blame. And even if there was clear cause to blame or assign guilt, no one involved had bad intentions.

Sometimes I wish life were more like comic books or Disney movies; clear villains, heroes out to defend the meek, and citizens who are generally charming even if they are also generally boring. But no. Life is not like that and sometimes shitty situations arise despite all parties involved being ernest and well-meaning.

I wonder if this is the innocence that is lost in childhood? I used to think that the loss of innocence meant the realization that ordinary people are sometimes guilty of extraordinary malice. Now I wonder if what is lost is not really innocence, but the false belief that all bad situations arise from a confrontation between a party who is guilty and a party who is innocent. In the adult world situations sometimes arise when two well intentioned people simply cannot be well intentioned together. Maybe childhood ends when you realize that negativity does not rely on malice, evil, or even incompetence for its genesis. Sometimes even objectives that are good can result in situations that are bad.

Sometimes I think I am a grown-up. Today I am not so sure.

Sorry for the abstract nature of this post. I'm sure I can fill you in on more details at some point, but certainly not in this forum. You can email me though! If you do email me, be sure to tell me a story in your email. You could just tell me about your day, or you could tell me another story.

Don't think you have any good stories? Bullshit. Come on! Tell a story! You are beautiful! You are interesting! Express yourself! Be free! fjdlkjdgbvkjnvbjf!!! See? Was that so hard?

The project I have been working on since coming to Jamaica opens to the public a week from Tuesday. I am so excited, but also frantically busy. It is a good feeling.
On a specimen collection dive on friday (coral mostly, but also some invertebrates) I saw a sea turtle. The turtle was maybe 20' deep and was hiding under a ledge in the reef. It was maybe 1 meter in diameter and I later was able to identify it as a green turtle. So gorgeous. Nature's penchant for color and pattern is best displayed in tropical ecosystems. Simply amazing. Peace Corps life can be trying at times, but moments like that make up for every frustration.

Book thoughts.

I just recently reread A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I enjoyed it much more this time. I first read that book when in between my second and third years of college, and I really did not get it. But the book is really a book about the compromises to youth that Dave Eggers made on account of finding himself suddenly a parent. The context is so much clearer now. Strangely, the book is about Eggers' life between the ages of 21 and 27 and these ages are likewise the ages of my first and second readings. Now that I have experienced life post-college and now that 25 does not seem ancient (at 21 I could hardly imagine being 25) the experiences recounted in the book are so much more relatable. What is interesting is that they are not relatable because they are similar to my experiences, but because now I can see what Dave Eggers felt cheated out of. I was so focused on finishing college when I first read the book, that the thought of being post-college with a sibling sidekick just did not seem that weird. Now I can look back and say with full confidence that the past five years that I have treasured so much for the independence and self-definition they afforded me would be gone were I to find myself in Eggers' situation.

Currently rereading Tropic of Cancer. So good. This book I read only four years ago or so, but on this reading I appreciate it differently as well. I think that living abroad is part of this difference in perspective. One of the strange things about living overseas is that I am frequently surprised by who my friends are. It is easy to bond with other expats but sometimes I wonder to myself "would I really be friends with these people in any other situation?". I think Miller frequently asked himself the same thing living in Paris. Incidentally, this question is also at the heart of the film "The Breakfast Club". Not sure where I am going with this line of reasoning.

But what I am really enjoying about this reading of Tropic of Cancer is the historicality of the book. I take it for granted that Henry Miller was more prone to discussing matters of the flesh than most of his (or our) contemporaries. But what makes the book so delightful is to revel in the incongrouity between it and pretty much all other english language (or photographic) representations of life between the two world wars. Not counting pics of the depression era destitute, people looked so damn classy in 1932! And the Hays Production Code further adds to the sanitized view I have of this era. So Miller's work is this wonderful little time capsule that assures me that despite their clothes, and despite the cinematic representation of their time, people then (at least Miller and the people in his circle) were every bit as debaucherous as anything I can imagine now. I take comfort in this fact.

earthquake in haiti

The earthquake that has wreaked devastation upon Haiti was hardly felt in Jamaica.

I am fine.

I am not sure if I felt the earthquake or not. I was in the water up to my waist at the time, and had been in the water and off and on boats all day so I was sorta sea-leggy. I do know that I noticed waves but could not find a ship that kicked up the wake, I did not think much of it. There was a tsunami warning for the North side of the island (I am South side) but it expired pretty quickly.

That said, the situation is Haiti is really bad. Now is a good time to donate. I have not heard anything about whether Peace Corps Response (formerly Crisis Corps) will go and help with the reconstruction effort. Hopefully yes, but these things take time. If there is any way for PC Jamaica volunteers to work on this effort, I will definitely try to get there.

Otherwise. Work is going well. I am really busy and we open the biodiversity centre in less than two weeks. I am learning a lot about aquarium chemistry and am getting a lot better at managing the various tanks. Generally happy, generally productive.

I reread A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Currently rereading Tropic of Cancer. I will probably write a post on this experience as well.

To sum up
State of Haiti: Disaster.
State of Jamaica: No More Disastrous Than Usual.
State of Raz: Pretty happy. Definitely ready to go home and bathe.
State of Clothing: Trousers filthy. Keens smelling REALLY bad (what do I do about this? Any suggestions?)
Current Time: 17:35
Current Weather: Low 80's, slight southeasterly breeze.