The UW Chronicles: Volume VIII: "Fair"-istas and the Beauty of a Cold Climate

It was cold this morning, my breath hung in a crystalline haze behind me as I walked briskly to my Astronomy 101 quiz section at 8:15. The cold air stings my cheeks and wakes me up, and has done wonders with my usually pimply skin. In other words, we are quickly moving towards winter, and it is quite apparent in the bareness of the trees and the bulk everyone is beginning to put on, scarves, hats, jackets and mittens. I have finally conceded defeat and have begun wearing close toed shoes, I am no longer a stubborn flip flop wearing Californian.

In other news I worked the Fair Trade, Shade-Grown, and Organic coffee booth this afternoon. You see, us Earth Clubbers decided to give out free "conscious coffee" and I suggested that we make little informative wallet-sized cards showing where you can buy fair trade, shade grown and organic coffee on the Ave. Then we decided to make them laminated because it's Seattle and it rains. Now we thought this would be an easy process, but little did we know that we would be sitting in the copy center for three hours last night from 6:30 to 9:30 cutting out little laminated cards. By the time we were done we had made one hundred and one cards and had bonded considerably. Today we handed them out along with steaming mugs of coffee and our little spiel which goes a little like this: "Fair trade means that farmers get a living wage and that some of the profits from the coffee go to education and healthcare, shade grown means that the coffee is grown under tree canopy, unlike most coffee which is grown on deforested land where the soil gets degraded every year, forcing farmers to deforest another plot of land. This allows for 140 species of birds to flourish, unlike sun grown coffee farms where only 5 species of birds are found. Organic means that no "-cides" were used, pesticides, herbacides etc. and no chemical fertilizers. It's better for you and it's better for the farmers." We then declared ourselves "Fair-istas" which is a play on the esteemed title "barista." I had always said that my dream Seattle job was to be a barista, a fair-ista is even better.

Laura and Alli of Earth Club (and my mug "Stan" in the middle) enjoying the fair trade, organic, shade grown coffee.


I'm popping Laura's bubbles (muhahahaha!)


Pigs are friends, not food...a member of CARE (Campus Animal Rights Educators) nurturing her inner pig across the sidewalk from our table. I wanted to wear the chicken costume, so I guess I'll just join their club too.


My friend Queena, she's such a cow, and also a member of CARE. That little sticker says, "Meat's no treat for those you eat." And it has an anxious looking and quite plump chicken on it.


Someone enjoying our coffee and conversation.


Our beautiful sign exclaiming the fabulous-ness of Tully's Compadre Blend, which is fair trade, shade grown and organic and is sold on campus.


Bubble war: Yecelica and Amanda engage in a soap sud battle


A nice young woman enjoying our coffee in her re-usable mug! Yay!


A clear, cold day. Mount Ranier in the McMahon lobby window.

P.S. I was really touched by the comment left on my previous blog...thank you to whoever left that, and by the way, who did leave that? But thanks again, it made me feel much better.

The UW Chronicles: Volume VII: I See Dead People and Other Consequences of Going to an Urban School

They found a body. Not of a student, so don't worry. My friend Jessica and I were walking along 45th, past the frat houses through the autumn leaves, when a Seattle police car came screaming up the side walk and screeched to a halt right in front of us. Two others came up behind and the officers stepped out and walked to a wooded area about twenty feet to the left of us, next to a sidewalk that cuts through a little patch of woods on North campus. A bike had been left there, a helmet dangling from the handle bars. I remarked that maybe there was a dead body, and boy, when I saw the silent ambulance stopped at the intersection and the cop cars beginning to block the streets and paths I had a very bad feeling.
We walked down past the squad cars and did our shopping, shampoo, soy milk and the like. We were assaulted four times in about a block and a half, first by a scrawny guy with a scrawny beard asking us to save the children, oh, and give him our debit card numbers while we were at it. Then we walked across the street and began jogging after spotting "La Rouche", a particularly aggressive and very radical leftist newspaper. Ah, but they caught us, a woman exclaiming, "Have you reached your full potential?!" And we both stammered yes, yes we have, "prove it!" she screamed after us. I yelled back, "I'm vegan! And that's good enough for me!" She didn't follow us and we finally got to the bank to deposit some checks.
Then as we walked out a woman approached us saying that her purse had been stolen and that she needed a dollar to get a bus. She obviously didn't own a purse, and the bus costs a dollar twenty. We declined, and sprinted across the street.
Fortunatly we also saw a dancing hot dog on our journey and a message in the sidewalk that said "Go Vegan!" It was quite amazing how much happened to us in the space of about sixty minutes.

After we finished our errands we walked back, passing yellow police tape, and frat boys standing outside their houses, smiling and waving to the news cameras that had arrived. As we passed a police car that blocked an entrance to the woods I said a silent prayer, and thought, well the leaves are turning orange and gold, and the sky is clear and bright, if today was my last day, I don't think I'd mind it. When we got back to the dorm, Erin screamed that a dead body had been found in the woods off of 45th, and we watched footage of the young man's final resting place, where we had been less than ten minutes before. Life is such a strange creature.
The sunset is turning the clouds pink and orange tonight, and the air is still. The cars and buses continue to lurch by, and the trees stand silent, red leaves dangling stiffling from bare branches. The world rumbles on, and today I've come to the realization that it is a very beautiful one.

The UW Chronicles: Volume VI: The Taste of Sweet Success and Conscious Caffeine

Two very meaningful things happened this morning, and it’s not even 11:00 yet. Firstly, I had my Astronomy 101 quiz section, and in that quiz section I received my score for my first mid-term. I got a 3.8, which is really good! And I was happy. I think I know exactly what questions I got wrong, so I’m feeling pretty good about the exam right now.

Secondly, I had my first cup of Seattle’s finest attraction, coffee. I had my mug (what am I talking about?! I ALWAYS have my mug, it’s glued to my hand) and they were giving away steaming mugs full of organic, shade-grown, fair-trade coffee at the Students for Fair Trade booth in the middle of the Quad. So I said, fill ‘er up, and while I’m at it I’ll sign a letter saying that Brazil should stop exploiting coffee farmers and laborers, and reject Free Trade policy and begin to trade fairly.

And you know what? I LIKED it. All of my cluster mates were like, uh oh, Erinn likes coffee. Of course, I’m a light weight, I put like a cup of vanilla soy milk in it and two packets of sugar. Speaking of sugar and food and such, I haven’t gained the freshman fifteen, in fact I’ve stayed at my previous weight, I work out just about every day now and we students are like cattle, we walk EVERYWHERE (in herds.) And there are stairs and hills everywhere, and we have to dodge squirrels which randomly propel themselves out of trashcans and scurry across the sidewalk. They’re quite frightening.

One time I caught a squirrel sitting at the base of a tree in front of McMahon chewing off the bits of meat from a hamburger wrapper. He looked at me with one beady eye, and seemed to say, “What are you lookin at you damn herbivore?!” And I was like, OK, and backed slowly away as he went on chewing menacingly and staring at me with that one big black eye. Carnivorous squirrels…scary.

Anyway, the leaves are changing, and I was going to take some photos because they’re quite pretty, but there was a huge windstorm the other day and most of the trees are looking very self-conscious, being that they are naked. I don’t think they would appreciate me taking a picture of them. Supposedly, it snows a bit in the winter here, and campus is just gorgeous. I definitely take a picture of that for all of you.

Well, I’m listening to this song by folk goddess Ani DiFranco called Little Plastic Castle, and it compares us humans to goldfish with short memories and one of the lyrics is: “…the little plastic castle is a surprise every time…” And that’s how I feel, I feel as though Seattle is a big fishbowl and that the UW is the little plastic castle that is a surprise every time. I just can’t get over certain things, like the Space Needle lit up at night and how it feels like it’s in a snow globe in some tourist trap, it’s just so beautiful. And when you can see Mount Rainier it is just amazing. The sunset lights up the snow on the peak and it glows orange, and during the day it’s a stark white against the gray of the sky. The buildings are also amazing, I mean, where else can you study in a reading room that looks like Hogwarts from Harry Potter? Brennan Figari thought the UW looked “fancy.” Yes, it is beautiful when the crows lift off from the spires of Suzzallo Library at around 6:00 pm every night in great flocks and the sky is speckled with moving black shapes against the gray.

Well, enough of that, I must go take a shower now and go get my laundry. I love you all and miss you.

The UW Chronicles: Volume V: Fremont is the Center of the Universe and an Upcoming Test on Other Less Important Parts of the Universe

I'm sitting at my desk drinking hot chocolate soy milk (I worked out for forty five minutes today, so I deserved it) and I'm listening to Ani DiFranco, a cool, indie, guitar strapping, dreadlocked rock chick, and the wind is howling outside. The clouds were moving so fast today, just sweeping across the sky. I described them to Grandy as those Halloween spider webs that you can buy, all stretched out over the sky, leaving a little blue stripe before the dome of the sky meets the earth (horizon-astronomy term, yes!)Except they've been pulled a little too tight and there are holes of a deeper shade of grey. It's beautiful. I thought I'd be depressed by the greyness, but it is not a homogenous grey, it is full of holes and shades and it has a tattered beauty. The Space Needle is bright tonight, and you can see a little sliver of all the cars going over University Bridge. Just the other day I witnessed the bridge opening up to allow boats to pass underneath it. My mouth was agape as I stood at the crosswalk with Laura, the co-president of the UW Earth Club. She let me have my moment, and then we went over to her apartment and had dinner and discussed Earth Club stuff.
I saw a bridge open up just yesterday too, in Fremont. Fremont is this funky little artsy Seattle neighborhood, and my friends Dani and Jessica went with me. We hopped on the 31 and passed the famous Fremont Troll which resides under a bridge and holds a VW bug in its cement hand. When we arrived in Fremont I immediatly gravitated towards the only Peet's Coffee and Tea that I know exists in Seattle. I practically ran to it, my friends just had to sprint to grab the door before it closed behind me. I ordered a Chai latte and wow, I was home.
We walked around the little thrift stores, went into a record shop and just as we stepped outside noticed something written in the concrete to our right.

It was a very Julia Butterfly moment. I felt like all my Circle of Life peeps were right there with me. It was awesome. See how far ripples can go?
Fremont is a fabulous place, a sign on the bridge that connects them to Queen Anne proclaims them to be "The Center of the Universe." There are statues of people waiting for a bus, with a man's face on the dog waiting with them. You see, the artist got mad at the guy who was funding the project because the funder said he didn't like his art. I guess you should never piss off an artist.

Jessica feeding a hungry man waiting for the bus a gingersnap.


Dani tries to blend in.

Well, from there we caroused around some thrift stores and found various items of interest. We also got to planning our Halloween costumes. I think I will be a gypsy, or perhaps a hippie. My friends keep saying that I don't need to wear a hippie costume, because I already am one.

A California native finds her hat.

So, to make a long story short we had just oodles of fun. And then today I had to study real hard for an Astronomy midterm (yes, the quarter system goes really fast,) and I've found that Fremont is just so much more interesting then our universe. So, I guess that is where I'll leave you, Fremont really is the center of the universe.

The "French Fry Man" of Fremont gets some action.


Dani and I wearing masks from a funky little boutique, she's a geisha and I'm a conquistador. Aren't we scary?


I'm picking the Fremont troll's nose, and believe me, I picked a winner.


The Fremont troll, what a handsome guy.

We were waiting for the bus back to campus, and took these pretty shots.
Jessica, Danielle, and me.

The UW Chronicles: Volume IV: Brownie Points and Other More Delectable (and edible) Forms of Nourishment

Just got back from my Geography 270 lecture, and again it was a very interesting class. It turns out Professor Jeffries checks the Geog. 270 message board, on which I posted a message about New Right Development theory which is partially based on Laissez-Faire economic policies (check the meaning of Laissez Faire on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire. Super interesting.) The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund rely heavily on these theories, and in effect have told countries that they must remove any restrictions to trade. When Professor Jeffries talked about this in class my hand immediately shot up, "So does that mean countries must peel back environmental regulations in order to satisfy the World Bank and the IMF's guidelines?"* "Excellent question..." Wow, was I nervous, but I did it! In front of three hundred of my peers I asked a question and thirst for that particular piece of knowledge was quenched, yes they do peel back environmental regulations, because in Prof's words, the New Right developmentalists see the environment not as something that needs to be protected, but rather as simply a resource.

*My old(not old as in years,old as in "used to be my"...) econ teacher Bluestone taught me about this stuff, the rabble rouser that he is...OK, are you happy now Blue? :)

But anyway, back to the message boards. I posted some links to various parts of the IMF and World Bank's websites, as well as some links to the Global Exchange website and their critiques of the WB and the IMF. And I just had to include Seattle and the huge protests that took place against these massive organizations in '99. And guess what, my googling paid off, the professor told the class to look at my post because it was particularly interesting and relevant to today's world of development. Sitting next to me was a guy from my FIG (Freshman Interest Group) and he looked at me and said, "Wow, major brownie points Erinn."
My reasoning is that since I find this class so interesting and engaging, and since it challenges and re-molds my own political and ideological views on globalization and the IMF and the World Bank, I want to be an active participant. I am actually now seriously considering pursuing Geography as a major and perhaps double majoring in Geography and Law, Societies and Justice and then minoring in Journalism.
Put simply, I love college and how it expands your mind and your opinions beyond their original boundaries.

But I received something just as delectable as "brownie points" through the mail from my fabulous aunt, Nancy. She is the ultimate baker and even after hearing that I was vegan, she told me she would still bake cookies for me. And before you know it, there's a slip inside my mailbox telling me that I have a package. I was ecstatic and the person behind the counter thought I was a little weird, exclaiming "Vegan cookies!!" But, oh well. I got up to my cluster and munched on them with Jessica, the other Erin and my roommate Patricia. Nancy, they're so fluffy and yummy, and you asked if you should add cinnamon, the consensus is that they could use a bit more cinnamon, but that the chocolate chips and raisins work very well together. Thank you!

Happy, Holy Vegan cookies, notice the halos and smiles, oh and the rays of light, indicating that they are yummy and made with love and without animals! Yay! Yummy! Thanks Nancy!

Oh my, I'm already a "tree hugging, granola eating, radical, wacko hippie." (Quote courtesy of another tree-hugger, JB you know who you are) That fine art on our room door's whiteboard is courtesy of my cluster mate Jessica, isn't it cute?

The UW Chronicles: Volume III: Late Night Mexican in Flip Flops While Raining and My Four page Long Thesis

It's 11:48 in the afternoon and my english 198 class starts in fifty minutes. You see, this is the class that I didn't sleep for. The homework was to turn in a brief thesis with claims based on one of the questions she gave us about the nature of development theories. By 1:00 in the a.m. my thesis was a paragraph, and my claims ran four pages long. I have written an essay instead and I have no idea what her standards are, so I'll just have to sit tight and see what happens.

Well, anyway, it rained yesterday. So, I guess it was my fourth Seattle rain. It started pouring the day before too, just as my friends Kevin, Drew and I were leaving the IMA (intermural Activities Building, AKA the gym.) On the way back to the dorms our shoes started to squish and it began to thunder and lightening. It was pretty exciting actually. We were idiotically excited primarily because we're all from out-of-state and to be walking in our sweaty gym clothes through a true Seattle storm was an invigorating experience. Whoop, gotta go, my class starts in twenty minutes and it all the way over at Mary Gates Hall! See you!


4:27 pm
I'm back. I was the only person in all of English who had a thesis outline that was four pages long. The professor saw how I went overboard(but on recycled paper!) and just smiled and nodded her head. We'll be writing essays, so I guess I'm ahead, seeing that I already wrote my essay.
Geography 270 was very interesting today. My scottish-pink-shirt-wearing professor talked about Marxist development theories and the radical left wing development theories that arose in the 1960's and are still in circulation today through the anti-WTO and globalization protests that are gaining momentum (especially after the one in Seattle in '93.) I found it just fascinating that development theories that were discussed forty to hundreds of years ago are still making impacts today! I mean, I was just nodding my head at everything that he talked about today, it was fabulous.
Anyway, I have not even begun to address our late night Mexican food outing in the rain! Last night was Jessica's birthday celebration, she's 19, what a baby. Anyway, it was raining and we all got dressed up in heels and in my case, flip flops, and walked to the Ave and ate Mexican food with some of Jessica's good friends. So, if you can imagine, it's about eight at night, raining, and there's a herd of college students with strappy shoes on and little tank tops squeeling as they step in the puddles dotting the Ave and hitting each other with the multitude of umbrellas they carry. The funniest sight you ever saw. I swear. So, that's where the late night Mexican in the rain and flip flops comes from.

Us clustermates all dressed up. And arranged by height. Funny.

Patricia(my roommate), me and the other Jessica (not the birthday girl)


It's "V" for VEGAN! Lien Sandy and me sharing a veggie moment (and a meal), just two vegans in the great big world of meaty Mexican food and a table full of carnivores.


All of us. From left to right, top to bottom: Patricia, Jessica, Jessica (b-day girl with Mr. Sombrero, me, Shilpa (far left, bottom), Audrey, and Devon.


My fourth Seattle rain.


The view through our dorm room window:
The Seattle Spaceneedle and angry stormclouds.







The Suzzallo Library, where I read the last of 106 pages of Geography 270 reading. It's the cathedral of studying, and its reading room was also dubbed by the students, the "Harry Potter" room. The "Harry Potter" room is supposedly the largest reading room in the United States.