I’ve been playing with bones!
I’ve collecting data for my thesis project, that is. Measuring bones. Doing fieldwork. Very official. Very much hard work.
… and spent all of last week in the coolest skeleton-filled attic ever. Continue reading
We dada, wewe… (You sister, you…)
THE SINGING. Still brings me tears.
Video from Tanzania in 2006 – I was sixteen, it was my first time traveling on my own, and my first time in Tanzania. I spent three months – volunteered in an orphanage, taught English, went on a safari, saw some chimps in the mountains. Sometime later that year, I threw a bunch of the video clips together and backed it with some of the kids singing, from the background of other clips…
I don’t have the original video files anymore (a fact which also makes me want to cry), but… the singing! Really wished I’d recorded more of it…
The snow has finally melted.
I hated the snow. I was complaining about it constantly for the last two weeks, moaning and making every possible excuse to stay indoors. But now that it’s melted, I already miss it.
I should have gotten a photograph. It was beautiful. The streets, covered in nearly a foot of snow. The open courtyard behind my building was filled with snow. The river and the pond in front were covered, and the roof of the cottage perfectly peaked in white. The tree branches were tipped with it. The fences were perfectly frosted. The field across the way was utterly white (the field that’s lined with trees, but in the summer had man-sized bales of hay tied… Continue reading
I’m blonde and blue-eyed. I’ve been called a gringo, farang, ghost, mzungu.
I’ve been called one, and I know that I am one.
There are things that you can tell by looking at me: I’m well-educated. I am (more or less) middle class, despite being momentarily broke – or, perhaps because I am broke, but I know that it is a momentary condition. Largely because I am white and more or less middle class. I can’t pay next month’s rent and I have college debt – but I am still, nonetheless, undeniably rich.
What you can’t see – and what I rarely bother to explain, is that I was raised by a single-mother and we lived on well-fare (benefits). I know what food-stamps won’t buy (toilet paper and toothpaste) and I’ve nursed illnesses that we couldn’t afford to see a doctor to treat. Money from the state helped us survived; it was money from family, loans time and again, that enabled us to do more than survive, as well-fare isn’t enough to keep the electricity from being shut off, or pay the phone bill.
None of this changes the fact that I am rich and racist. Continue reading
Confession: I have been stealing pictures… Continue reading
Fossil-hunting at Runswick Beach, Yorkshire UK on holiday with my uncle and his family – yes, we went fossil-hunting on holiday. (Twice, actually, since the afternoon was high tide and we had to come back in the morning – my 9yr old cousin woke me up. Have I mentioned how much I love my family?) Continue reading
I know, I said I didn’t take any pcitures. That is, I didn’t take any except for the Catacombes. I totally got pictures of the Catacombes. Continue reading
(And I’d promised myself I’d never call the city that… )
So… I was on holiday/vacation for the last month. And for the first time traveling, ever, I didn’t write so much as a word.
On top of that, I pretty much “forgot” to take any pictures. Woops.
I got to spend time with my family (which, when you only see them once a year and live on a different continent, is a glorious thing indeed!). After running around Nice and Paris and briefly dropping by Cambridge (long enough to find me a place to live next year)…. Continue reading
I’m in Paris, in a charmingly curious little hotel near Notre Dame and l’Ile de St Louis.
We flew in this morning, from Nice, where I met my parents – whom I hadn’t seen since December – and my brother and a lovely family who put us up for five days. (Five days which went entirely too quickly.) They have a beautiful, rambling 17th century farm house – all corridors and white plaster – with an incredible garden, twenty minutes walk from the beach.
They fed us more foie gras and cheese than we could eat, wine more amazing than I know how to appreciate, and ran around in circles with us. We tagged with the family – a gallery opening (a Sosnos exhibition, and met the man himself) to which the… Continue reading
We tried – the few of us that remained seated – to restore some peace… (Photograph taken by Nicole Llyod. Borrowed because I’m in it.)
Quite a week to be on twitter, isn’t it?
Assembling these for an essay (twitter hashtag as piece of material culture, mediating personal experience, archiving the ephemeral) and thought they might be worth sharing. Tweet of a friend and myself during the second Stokes Croft Riot. There were many others tweeting, as well, although the main use of #StokesCroft has been post-riot, as we’ve been sharing updates, news, follow-up discussion and analysis
As we Tweeted it (most recent at top):
