i do not joke with you. pennsylvanians are crazy.

Pennsylvanians are CRAZY. CRAZY HARDCORE.

This is a tale of Pennsylvanian Christmas Hardcore-ness.

Preface:
I spent Saturday night at Greg’s house, with his family, because he invited me to the Howe Family Christmas on Sunday (his mom’s side). On the way to Greg’s house at about 9 p.m., it was sleeting and dark and freezing and unhappy — the edges of his windshield were forming little ice patches as we drove. The salt trucks were out makin’ the highways safe(r). People were driving stupidly. I was hoping Greg’s new car would not suffer damage in such bad driving conditions.

Act I:
Now, Mrs. Snader has massive amounts of siblings — 7 I think — so mere preparation for this event was way hardcore. Mrs. Snader cooked and carved 40 lbs of turkey the day before, and her sister cooked and carved 35 more. In case you can’t add, that’s SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS of turkey.

I mean, holy crap, right?

I wake up Sunday morning to the usual Snader household apocalypse (I guess with 5 kids the definition of “inside voice” changes). All six of us kids shower, breakfast, dress, caffeine, bundle up and venture outside. . . ready to go.

Act II:
The weather was not ready to let us go, however. We walk outside to a driveway sheathed in almost a quarter-inch of ice. Every individual blade of grass is iced over, and just shatters underfoot. Halos of ice surround every twig, branch, and tree trunk. The cars? Oh, the cars. Also sheathed in a solid quarter-inch of ice. We used the one ice scraper to chip at the ice around each door of the two cars; half an hour later we’ve broken in and are ready to pile in and leave. (the whole time we were trying to break the ice to get into the cars, Greg’s youngest brother is hip-checking the side of the car to try and shatter the ice.)

Then three people remember things in the house they’d forgotten to get/do, so we wait a while longer.

Then Greg, Charlene, and I pile into his new car and leave to get gas — the driveway was so slippery we don’t want to follow close together. We drive with one tire in the grass. It is way hardcore. Greg cannot see out of either of his side mirrors because hey — they’re still covered in a quarter inch of ice.

Act III:
We get a phone call at the gas station — after we’ve broken into the gas tank — the windshield wipers on Chris’ car are broken. So we go back, pick up the other three kids at the bottom of the driveway so we don’t have to try an drive up the steep icy slope, break into the trunk without an ice scraper to deposit all our belongings, then cram six people into Greg’s car.

Then we drive an hour. Loudly. And with much poking, arguing, yelling, teasing, smushing-one-another-around-curves, more sleet, and lots of rain. And lots of reminding ourselves why the heck we were leaving the house on a day like today, when the weather is utterly terrible. Seventy-five pounds of turkey. Just remember, we have to go eat 75 pounds of turkey.

Finally we arrive at the Howe reunion. We eat almost all of the turkey.

Filed under general, absurdity, humor, travels, winter, snow, Christmas, food | Comment (0)

“we fall but our souls are flying”

I AM VERY EXCITED BECAUSE I GOT A LIBRARY RESEARCH GRANT! And not only that, but my roommate got one as well! Go Elena Yamamoto! Wooh!

What are the library research grants, you ask me? Friends of Murray Library offers Messiah students the chance to earn awards of up to $750 to go somewhere and research something near and dear to their hearts every year.

For me, the research relates directly to my senior honors project in English. I’ll be going to Vassar College to view Elizabeth Bishop’s poem manuscripts and travel journals. I want to study her revision practices, particularly the patience she displayed in completing poems. One poem, “The Moose,” took her 20 years to complete. If I can, I want to see how she made decisions about what should be kept, what should be scrapped, and when a poem was complete. I’ve never been to any part of New York that isn’t New York City, so I’m pretty psyched. Yeah adventure!

Elena is going to fly out to LA to see Japanese textiles for her senior honors project as well. She’s studying textiles in the Edo period. Did you know that in the Japanese weaving industry, as an apprentice, you are not even allowed to touch the loom for years? How amazing is that? By the time you got to the actual weaving process, it would seem like such a privilege.

Also, in other news related to fun campus happenings, there was an impromptu rave at exactly 12:12 in Lottie Nelson Dining Hall today. And by “rave,” I mean that someone snuck into the sound system and put on rave music, switched off all the lights, and about three people stood up and started dancing.

Still, massively entertaining. My entire table burst out laughing and didn’t stop for an entire five minutes. I like living in an apartment, but I sort of miss Lottie, just because there’s so much amazing group interaction that takes place there. Against all odds, Lottie Nelson is a cool hangout. Who knew?

Filed under general, humor, housemates, travels, raves, lottie nelson | Comments (2)

“black bird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see.”

I’ll be candid. Normally I hate the Department of Visual Arts’ New York City field trip (last time, in sophomore year, I had the flu). I don’t really like cities, much less New York City, where it is a challenge to navigate the crowded side walks and the smell is so extremely distinctive. And I don’t really like getting up at 6 a.m. and getting back at midnight (it’s a marathon of a day). But this year, I count the sunken eyes and tired feet worth it.

I am a lot closer to the senior class of art majors than I was to the sophomore class of art majors. So hanging out with them was a lot of fun. Even if we did walk way more than can possibly be healthy. = )

Also, I am not as attached to or intimidated by tradition as I once was. I used to sit in museums and think, “I can never be an artist. Look at all this stuff. Look how good it is.” Or I would think to myself, “I can never be an artist. I don’t think this is art at all. How can I be an artist if I reject the tradition of art?” This time, when we visited the Museum of Modern Art, I thought, “Hey, this is great. Look at all this stuff. It’s beautiful! I’m gonna make something beautiful some day.” And when we visited the galleries in Chelsea, I thought, “No wonder these people are making such disturbing art. They live in New York City. I’m going to make art, but I’m going to make art that is true to my own little slice of life regardless of what is gallery-worthy or not.”

It was fascinating to see what NYCAMS students thought was gallery-worthy, too. The NYCAMS studios, which we visited over lunch, were beautiful. Hard-wood floors, big windows, the artwork the students are working through for their studio class hanging everywhere. Their one art class is basically whatever they want, culminating in a show at the end of the semester. The studios are seven floors up, so it is not nearly so claustrophobic as being on the street, and the kitchen area seems tranquil and focused (of course, I always do my best thinking in the kitchen anyway). NYCAMS students also get to work at an art-related internship, whether it’s working for a gallery, a design firm, or working apprentice-like for a painter. And that would be a phenomenal opportunity. Maybe it would be difficult to live in the city for me, but if I had some extra time at Messiah, I’d consider applying.

New York City is full of trends and absurdity, in art as well as in general. Some of the Messiah students who were studying at NYCAMS this semester showed us around and took us to their favorite cupcake cafe. “Cupcakes are so chic right now,” said Elena-my-roommmate. Yes, in New York City, even cupcakes can be chic. People wear the strangest hats and dresses over skinny jeans and high-heeled boots.

I engaged most with the city when we stopped for the cupcakes. I’m not that into cupcakes, no matter how chic they are, so I settled for a welcome dose of caffeinated goodness (i.e. coffee). Our group overwhelmed the seating available inside the cafe, so several of us retired to benches outside, and I ended up on a bench by myself. Not long after I sat down, an old woman in a plaid coat and a black scarf came out of the cafe and sat down beside me.

She started talking about how she is a pianist and walked in Chelsea at night once when it was dangerous (because there’s still such a homeless problem). She asked me where I was from and talked about the pace of life in the city and visiting her son and how it seemed boring to her but maybe it was peaceful for him. She talked about how hard it is to be an artist and that maybe I should consider another line of work or else choose to make mass art. She asked me why people make mass art? Well who knows the answer to that one?

I excused myself after ten minutes or so and went back inside the cafe to ask what time we had to meet the busses to go back to little ol’ Grantham, Pa. That conversation, however odd, made me realize that living in New York City could be valuable to a writer because there are so many strange characters to study and a particular rhythm of conversation that could be used to create an engaging narrative. But I think that I would miss slowly considered speech.

Living in a city could also be valuable in forcing one to develop a sense of architectural space, but I would definitely miss seeing green things and the leaves changing, actual silence and seeing the star-deep fields at night.

Filed under general, absurdity, the real world, travels, strange old women on benches | Comment (0)