Thursday, June 18, 2009

Scholarships

A brief bit of news today...I promise I'll follow this with actual writing.

Three days ago I received one of the greatest gifts a college student can ever receive. Money is great when you get it from a paycheck or from dividends but there really isn't anything like scholarship money. On one hand a scholarship is free money given to you to pursue your goals, and, on the other hand, it's a vote of confidence in your abilities as a student, academic, etc. After a few channels were crossed and repaired with the scholarship office I am the proud recipient of three scholarships. These scholarships should go a long way in taking the financial burden off of my family and college fund. The scholarships and their amounts are as follows:

Forrest W. And Ida J. Benson Scholarship - $1850.00
Ana Call Scholarship - $650.00
Albert Laferriere History Scholarship - $500.00

Special thanks goes to all of the scholarship sponsors and the Sonoma State Scholarship committee who, despite my numerous calls to their office, patiently assured me that I was still eligible for the scholarships despite the US postal service delaying my acceptance letter (long story).

Monday, June 8, 2009

The Kaiser: A Story from the Archives


When I was thirteen, my family and I made a pilgrimage to my great uncle’s estate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the annual family reunion. To this day, I don’t remember what the exterior of that house looked like; it must not have been all that exciting, or maybe it was just eclipsed by the house’s interior.
The estate was an "interesting" building internally, and "interesting" wasn’t always flattering. The interior seemed to have been designed by a person trapped in the 60's. If one could get past the yellow shag carpet, one might have thought the house "eclectic" but could not miss the floral wallpaper, the colors blending over the years into something resembling mud. The living room looked like the 60's had exploded outward with the force of an atomic bomb; a great lime green sofa dominated the room, facing a 1960’s television set surrounded by winged chairs of a terrible floral pattern. The kitchen featured the trademark pastel appliances that should not be confused with the new “retro” ones from Sears. The kitchen also sported a lovely, blue, Formica table ringed with four green cushioned chairs. In every room was the smell of old wood and moth balls.
Amid its ugliness however, the house contained several beauties. My great uncle, the artist of the family, had placed outside enormous sculptures of iron and steel. A great iron dragon stood in the center of the estate, surrounded by other works of twisting steel, artfully woven together to form great spires towards the heavens.
Reigning in the garage, untouched and unseen by the family for many years, sat the greatest beauty of all, ageless by all standards and evidence of a more sophisticated era. My father and I understood the beauty of my uncle’s car. The car was the color of fresh crème, a two door coupe, with rather peculiar pocket doors, and wine colored leather interior; it stood erect against the sands of time that had decimated the rest of the house. Few knew that it was in fact a 1954 Kaiser Darrin, perhaps one of a hundred still in existence. The man who engineered it, was, like my great uncle, an "art person."
Howard "Dutch" Darrin was a designer and friend of the automobile manufacturer Henry Kaiser. Darrin had always been infatuated with the idea of constructing a fiberglass sports car. Darrin, who worked for Kaiser, poured his own money into a design project unbeknownst to Kaiser. Darrin's project would eventually produce the Kaiser Darrin. Kaiser initially refused to manufacturer the Darrin, believing the car to be impractical, but, pressured by his wife, he eventually consented and began the production of 450 Kaiser Darrins. Before the order could be completed, however, the company collapsed, and the first fifty Darrins were sentenced to the scrap heap. Darrin was enraged and purchased the cars from the company himself, taking them to his warehouse in Santa Monica. After several years and many attempts to integrate the Kaiser Darrin into the automotive industry, Darrin sold the cars.
While I do not know how my uncle came to own the car, I continue to regard it as a piece of history, illustrating perfectly that our world changes as we do. Unfortunately, we do not have such cars anymore: cars artfully crafted from the blood and toil of mankind's labor. We just have the Honda or the Hummer.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Cleaning, A Dorm Room, and Parenting



{Above} I apologize for the language used above. I felt that despite the language it was a very good example of my frustrations. I did not take the picture nor do I know where it comes from.

While this is a rather old topic I feel it needs to be addressed. For the last academic year I was privileged to attend Sonoma State University. Perhaps one of the best parts of the SSU campus were the amazing dorm rooms where myself and my fellow students lived out our Freshman year. While I know that a certain degree of "messiness" in dorm rooms is to be expected, the accumulated piles of garbage in my dorm room and the damage done to our living room and hallways was, to say the least, extensive. Coming from a home that valued order and cleanliness, the experience of the dorm room was incomparable.
Thankfully, I was given a single suite which allowed me to close my door to the outside and granted me the ability to clean my room. The central living room and kitchen of the suite, however, was shared with several other people. While I cannot damn my dorm mates for their lack of cleanliness I do wonder how they will survive in the real world if they find it acceptable to live in a cesspool of filth and decay. When one has to tiptoe to the microwave and move large piles of week old milk bowls just to heat water, things have gone too far. When one has to kick a path through the living room to the back door, and once there, remove the ailing curtain from its hinges just to leave the dorm room, things have gone too far. I was appalled by my roommates' definition of "clean". Of course, I understand that, with all of our classes, extracurricular activities, and our particular suite being the meeting place for many people a fair bit of mess will be accumulated naturally. However, this doesn't mean that it is in anyway acceptable to leave the dorm room in such a horrific state for nearly the entire year.
Despite the more obvious reasons in favor of a clean dorm room there are a few others. First, allowing such volumes of black mold accumulate in the sink creates a considerable safety hazard. Second, if the dorm had been kept clean throughout the year fewer damages would need to be paid to the university. Third, keeping the dorm room clean, throughout the year, would have made move out week far less of a task and would have led to less strained tempers.
While I came to care for all of my roommates and wish them only the best of luck in their future undertakings I was less than pleased by their actions on move out week. I understand that many of us needed to pack up our belongings and clean out our own rooms with due haste, however, that does NOT excuse you from cleaning the common areas. There is no excuse for leaving before serious cleaning has taken place and you have personally contributed to said cleaning. While I appreciated a few of my roommates genuine help in cleaning the dorm I was quite angered by the actions of some of the others.
I felt used. Contrary to popular belief, I don't like to clean. I like order and cleanliness but spending my last days bent double over the floor scrubbing was not how I envisioned the last week of my Freshman year. Of course, it would be poor of me to blame my roommates for all of their actions. I wasn't born with a respect for hygiene, organization, or cleanliness. My parents taught me that.
Speaking generally, I wonder why (or how) many other parents seem to have missed passing this lesson to their children. It horrified me when I saw a fellow student in the laundry room unable to operate the washer. I saw this poor soul shove all of his clothes (whites, colors, etc.) into the washer and pound the console in an attempt to start the machine. When it didn't start he stared at it exasperatingly for another few moments. I decided to start my own laundry in the hope that he might pay attention and start his own. Thankfully he did.
Of course, I can't blame the parents entirely either. After all, they did their best, and now that we have moved out of their home it falls on us to adapt and take their lessons with us. Unfortunately, I fear that many of my fellow students don't see it that way. Perhaps they were raised in a home were all of these things were done for them. I certainly didn't have a difficult childhood. Many things were done for me. Now, I realize that. Now, I am able to appreciate a clean house, a clean kitchen, and ironed clothes. Even if I couldn't as early as last year. I suppose then, that this has become both a warning and a salute to parents. If you child doesn't know how to operate a dishwasher or clean a room properly don't send him or her to college, where, undoubtedly, your child will be a burden to those children who were PROPERLY raised. For those of you parents who have taught your children good hygiene, organization, and cleaning technique: Thank you! You have made the world a far better, more ordered, place.

A Brief Note:

I'm not a saint of cleanliness, nor do I put myself, in any way, above my roommates. I make my own mess. I also realize that my reaction to mess may be extreme, bordering on OCD. For that, I apologize. However, I was hurt by my roommates' lack of respect for our fantastic suite, and the time which others took to clean it.