At Thanksgiving, I learned that my cousin has been the captain of his riflery team for the past three years. I also learned that my great grandfather was the head of the big D.D. Jones trucking company in Norfolk. DD stands for "Darling Divine." There are a few large estates owned by old English families with those names, so in the South their descendants started to name their children "Darling" and "Divine" in the hopes that they could end up with their proper English inheritance someday. Southern family ties are so arcane.

My other cousin, who has been in graduate school studying the link between Javanese and Sanskrit for about two years, is now thinking about dropping out because it "isn't relevant." My cousin Liz, one of my best friends growing up, has a job lined up after graduation to be an actuary for an insurance company receiving $65,000/year. That makes the third one of my friends making upwards of 60K. When I started to sulk about my lack of direction my brother smacked me upside the head and told me that coming from Towson High school I had to make a very conscious decision in order to Not make that much money. He's right. I've always been the righteous hippy of the family, now everyone else gets to have the last laugh when they as me what I'm doing and I say I'm planning on joining the circus. My uncle started complaining about "those damn pollution cleanup laws" and how he now more or less owns the side of a very dirty mountain in Utah. My aunt, to break the awkward silence, started talking about her water aerobics class, and in response my father piped up with "I just read about some water an-aerobics classes they're giving down in Guantanamo."

Last week we had a general strike against the war at Macalester. It was amazing that 400 people showed up; and it also was disappointing that 400 people showed up. It is true: we don't have to sacrifice anything for this war. We don't even have to suffer a guilty conscience if we just don't read the newspaper. I'm sure that in fifty years Iraq will look like one of the more barbaric periods of United States history. Afterwards we staged a protest of about 100 people at a major intersection. We started to block it, drivers got angry, the police came, and the poor dean of students had to come and negotiate with all of them. I don't know, with my research about Sudan and Iraq and the carbon sinks, I just don't want anything to do with petroleum anymore. Flying home I felt dirty knowing how much was fun stuff coming out of the airplane's engines. I wonder how long I'll have to feel guilty before I really figure something out.

This is cool:http://www.planetizen.com/node/24990. California is suing its muncipalities for the greenhouse gas emissions caused by suburban sprawl.



"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

E.B. White