Author: Julia

chlorawhat?

Search for “chloramine” on PennLive.com and the only hit returned is yesterday’s article about a woman protesting Pennsylvania American Water’s decision to start putting the chemical in our water.

This isn’t news.

What is news is PAW’s decision. I’ve done the same internet research as this woman protesting, and maybe more as I still have access to McDaniel’s journal subscriptions. Most of the sites are hysterical (not hysterically funny, just hysterical), but what seems to emerge time and time again is that there just isn’t a whole lot of information available about the risks of chloramine.

We know that chloramine creates fewer by-products than chlorine alone — but not what all the remaining by-products do to the human body. We do know that chloramine itself is one of the harmful substances produced when chlorine interacts with organic matter. The EPA doesn’t even pretend to know whether or not chloramine causes cancer. Scientists — not hysterical citizens — have linked chloramine to increased blood lead levels, and anemia.

It is, of course, the responsibility of each citizen to be as informed as she wants to be. We should not, especially these days, rely on the mainstream media to accurately report everything that might be important to us, nor should we necessarily take at face value everything they do report.

But come on, guys — if you thought a woman who did internet research was worth writing an article about, maybe you could break out your notebooks and go talk to the people who actually know something?

away from el sol

We’ve been eating at home more frequently now that we have a decent kitchen and I have a regular schedule, so tonight, when we decided to eat out (on a weeknight!) it was something of a big deal. I, having come home and immediately changed into pajamas, even put on pants for the occasion, so excited was I to try Harrisburg’s newest Mexican restaurant, El Sol.

I’m not sure I should have bothered.

El Sol is fairly attractive. It looks like what it’s trying to be — a slightly funky, slightly upscale, casual Mexican restaurant. Except that the chairs of the first table we were taken to were so uncomfortable that we asked to move the first time an employee approached us, many minutes after we’d decided what we wanted to eat. They were friendly about the request, and moved us to a table at the bar, the only one open with a different chair/table style. But then they apparently lost track of us again, until Fred asked the woman who had seated us if she was our waitress, and she said, “No.” “But I can be. Are you ready?” We were ready, had been ready, were nearly past ready. We gave her our orders.

The sopes were good, but not nearly as good as Herby’s. Herby’s has this thing that works in Mexican food and very few other cuisines, where it tastes like it came from a street vendor. El Sol’s sopes tasted, and I know this might not make any sense, like they were made for a restaurant, but not for actual eating.

The guacamole, on the other hand, was very good. The other salsas in the salsa sampler were mediocre, though fresh. The chips were fresh, too, but also not great. We spent a while trying to decide what their odd flavor was, then decided they must have been cooked in peanut oil. I don’t know this for a fact, but if you have a nut allergy, you may want to check into it before eating there.

Or just don’t eat there. My fish tacos, on first bite, were too hot — in terms of temperature — to taste any flavor. After letting them cool a bit, they were too hot — in terms of spice — to taste any flavor. The description on the menu states that the tacos are served “with a mild green sauce.” I love heat. I love hot peppers. My tolerance has declined since I left California (where it increased greatly), but I don’t tend to be a wuss, and I do tend to be able to differentiate flavor from heat. This heat killed the cilantro and onions it smothered, and only a faint hint of fish made its way through. To top it off, the “cabbage salad” that came with it was a small pile of iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce on the side is very standard, but it ain’t cabbage salad. The sliced radishes were okay. I mean, they were radishes.

It probably won’t add anything to this rant to talk about Fred’s fajitas, but since they were the worst part, they must be mentioned. First, they weren’t grilled. I’m not sure how they were cooked — maybe pan-fried, maybe even some combination of searing and steaming, but they were *not* grilled. And second, they were covered in a tomato-based sauce. The sauce itself had some interesting flavor (this based on the one bite I took), but it didn’t quite work, and it certainly had nothing to do with any kind of fajitas I’ve ever had.

My verdict is that this would be an okay place to have drinks (the margaritas were passable, though not great) and maybe appetizers if you absolutely have to eat in that neighborhood, but given my experience with Bricco (did I blog about that?), I’d recommend just finding another locale. Like Steelton, where Herby’s serves much better Mexican food for much more reasonable prices. Their margaritas are pretty good, too.

gaps

I don’t always know ahead of time what a post will be about, but I did this time, so I started by trying to assign the relevant categories (listed up there under the post title). To my surprise, I have no categories for either “fashion” nor “environment”.

The two can probably only be called passing interests for me — in this post-An Inconvenient Truth world, everyone’s concerned about the environment, and I have to admit that recycling is a “when I think of it” thing rather than a way of life. And although I have a subscription to Lucky and I buy many more fashion magazines off the stand every month, well, most of my shoes are from Target.

A huge chunk of my non-shoe wardrobe, however, comes from Gap. I’d probably buy shoes there, too, but they don’t make them in my size. I buy Gap because there’s on one every corner (although no longer the corner of Haight and Ashbury), and because their clothes are reasonably priced and pretty much guaranteed never to go out of style. I never gave a thought to their “greenness”.

But apparently they’re greener than you might think. According to this article in The Motley Fool, Gap Inc. has been testing 100% organic cotton, hemp blends, and domestic violence outreach. I didn’t know either, but that’s kind of the whole point of the article — Gap has apparently neglected to capitalize on its conscience.

The only Gap mention of this stuff I can find is a tiny link at the bottom of their website, down there with the boring shit like “Privacy Policy” and “Investors”. The link says “Social Responsiblity“, but I’m too tired to read what follows. If it’s interesting, let me know. I’m still more interested in the clothes.

okay, okay

Okay, here’s an update.

I graduated on the 19th. It was kind of like turning 18 — a lifetime of anticipation, but when you wake up, well, it doesn’t really feel all that different. I have moments when I feel proud to be done, moments when I wonder what the hell took me so long, and — the majority — moments when I wonder just what the hell that piece of paper sitting in a tube in a box in a cluttered room of boxes is really going to do for me.

The cluttered room is full of boxes — instead of just unboxed clutter — because we’re getting ready to move in June. Now that I no longer have to drive to Westminster every day, there’s no reason for us to be in southern York County where our social life consists of talking to the Starbucks girls. My favorite days are those when it’s the cute Starbucks guy at the counter, but they are few and far between, and I’m ready for something a little more diverse.

So Mechanicsburg it is.

I had dreamt of living in Harrisburg proper, of going to city council meetings and walking along the river, but when I think of what life is likely to actually hold, it doesn’t include the time or energy for deep involvement in city politics, nor the willingness to deal with on-street parking, flooding, or a lack of grocery stores.

We’ll be moving just a mile or so from the new Wegmans, and while we won’t be within walking distance of the Susquehanna, our deck (and our bedroom!) will overlook the Conodoguinet, but from a great enough height to make it safe from floods. It’s enough to make me forget any philosophical issues I have with living in the ‘burbs.

And what will I be doing with my days? I’ll be working. And working on applying to grad schools. The latter part of that is important, because Harrisburg offers very few opportunities for a recent graduate to put her English degree to work, and the more I think about the more sure I am that I need to do something I couldn’t have done sans degree, if only to preserve my sanity. College was fun and rewarding and it got me out of working a real job for a couple of years and blah blah blah, but in this postmodern age we all want direct and immediate results, and I’m still looking for those. I mean beyond the enormous additions to my library.

When it comes time to move, it turns out hoarding books doesn’t seem like such a great idea after all.

roast this

I’m feeling a little guilty about this, a little scared to admit to it, but I guess the only thing to do is ‘fess up and hope for the best.

I’ve started a new blog, but it’s not what you think.

I asked for green coffee beans for Christmas. That’s coffee that hasn’t yet been roasted. My family has a $15 gift limit, so I figured I’d get a pound or two of coffee — just enough to try it out, see if it was something I’d be interested in doing on a regular basis. Instead, though, my grandmother, who is not bound by the limit, gave me something like eight pounds of beans.

It’s taken until this past week for me to gather the equipment, time, and guts to try roasting. It was easy and fun, and the coffee that resulted was so good and so different from any coffee I’ve ever had before that I was pretty much immediately hooked. Also, I still had almost eight pounds of coffee left to roast. All the coffee roasting sites I’ve read say you should keep a log of all your roasts — and since I found it hard to believe that I’d actually take pen to paper, well, I figured I’d start a blog.

You can find it at www.roastthis.com. I don’t plan on it replacing this one, but no promises on frequent updates. As if you didn’t already know that.

done

I just spent the drive home from Westminster thinking about, among other things, what I would blog now that I no longer have anything I can point to as more pressing. I figured I’d write something about how it feels to have written my last (undergraduate) paper, what my McDaniel experience has meant to me, and what the hell I’m going to do with my life. It turns out that all I want to do is veg.

If you haven’t gleaned it already, today I completed the last of my work for the last of my classes. I also tied up all kinds of loose ends related to a number of extracurricular activities, checked my campus mailbox, and cleared the remaining balance off my student debit card (which cannot be converted to cash) via the purchase of a sweatshirt.

All that’s left is the graduation ceremony, a week from tomorrow. For now, I’m going to go do something mindless.

my blog is smart

My blog is smart. Not the part I write, but the software itself.

Over to the left of this text there’s a section for upcoming events. You’ll note that there are very few non-Poetry Thursday events these days, since most of the regular Oba Oba and Chester Attic gigs have been canceled. But that’s not the point. The point is that it says Daylight Savings starts on April 1st. But! Right above it, it warns you that this is a joke, by also providing notice that it’s April Fool’s Day.

I was going to fix it, but I’d like to encourage such software-cleverness as this.

bong hits 4 jesus

You all hear about this? High school kid unfurled a banner reading, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” as the Olympic Torch passed by. His principal tore down the banner, then suspended the student for 10 days. Now Supreme Court is hearing the case. Ken Starr (yep, that Ken Starr) is representing the government.

Wonkette’s amusing write up is here, and the Wall Street Journal Online has some uptight readers.

Update: okay, minutes after I wrote the above, I found more recent information from the WSJ, saying that Alito had expressed doubt about Starr’s argument that the school should be able to limit speech that it believes is promoting drug use.

I’m not sure you have to go so far as to believe schools should allow speech promoting drug use. I think you just have to have a sense of humor.

pluto’s day

I hate to disrupt my silence for something frivolous, but this was too good to keep to myself.

From Wired News: State Might Make Pluto a Planet

New Mexico state representative Joni Marie Gutierrez has introduced a bill — to be voted on next Tuesday — that says, “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies, it be declared a planet.”

The bill is expected to pass easily, as Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, is from Gutierrez’s district.

The Pluto debate itself highlighted for me the arbitrary nature of many definitions — as well as the fact that “objective” science is not operating so completely outside the framework of humanity as to be infallible in its classifications. Beyond that, well, I have to admit that I didn’t get all too worked up about Pluto’s demotion.

This possible action by New Mexico is far more interesting to me. I don’t really care how the state of New Mexico classifies Pluto, although it might prove for some awkwardness if New Mexican students are learning a different solar system than everyone else in the world. But I am disturbed by the idea of a government — at any level — passing legislation designed to supersede a scientific definition.

But then again, humanity’s justified some pretty hideous things in the name of science. Maybe highlighting its fallibility isn’t such a ridiculous thing to do.

snow day hooray

I am home today, enjoying a surprise day off due to the snow. I know, I know, it’s not really that bad out there — but two of my on-campus commitments were canceled anyway, and at 8:30 this morning I was worried that the 45-minute return drive on back roads might not be safe. And so, here I am.

This semester is going well so far, although somehow I think it might be my most work-intensive one yet. The fact that it’s my last semester just makes it all the harder to deal with.

I’m taking History of Modern Philosophy, a Spanish class which I originally thought was going to be way over my head but may actually turn out to be okay, Rhetorical Approaches to Non-Fiction Literature, and a couple of PE classes. I was taking a class on Jane Austen, but I didn’t need it, it was a non-trivial amount of work, and I was feeling overwhelmed. So I dropped it, but have been doing the reading and going to class anyway. It’s pretty much a perfect arrangement — I get to read and think about books I love, but I don’t have to write any papers or take any tests.

The last couple of days, though, I’ve been thinking not about Northanger Abbey, but about Israel. It started because I read excerpts from Joe Sacco’s graphic novel Palestine for Rhetorical Approaches, but what I ended up contemplating was not so much the legitimacy of the Israeli state, but the American political attitudes towards the Israeli state.

Israel wasn’t something I heard talked about much until I got to Hampshire College, where a large percentage of the student body is Jewish. Israel was an important topic, and nearly everyone supported it wholeheartedly. A number of my friends harbored fantasies of joining the Israeli army. I didn’t have much of an opinion myself, but I thought of support for Israel as a liberal stance.

Fast forward eight years to our current day post-9/11 world. While I get the impression that no one wants to be on record as being anti-Israel, I’m encountering more and more liberals who at least have Palestinian sympathies. Did I misunderstand the issue before? Or is this a shift that’s taken place over the last few years?

If it’s a shift, where’s it coming from? A reaction to the neo-con support of Israel? Or something about the issue itself? I certainly can understand taking it up as a human rights issue — but why now?

As was the case in 1999 when I first heard about the issue, I still don’t feel like I know enough about the situation to have anything close to an easy to explain opinion about it. However, though obviously one-sided, Palestine woke me up enough to start wanting to know.