Monday, February 22, 2010
8 Inches of Snow, 2 Inches of Slush
Just in time for spring break, we got the most snow Ann Arbor's had all winter! It was beautiful this morning; now it's half turned to slush and I am debating whether to wear snowboots or rainboots. Meanwhile, I am celebrating "spring" break early by only waking up at 7am once this week (business school classes are cancelled for their quarterly exams) then heading up to Boston on Friday to reunite with my favorite Unit 5-ers! Tentative plans include the aquarium, so I can at least pretend I am at the beach, and the Lion King, so I can pretend I am in the jungle swinging from vines and being chased by hyenas. I'm really looking forward to being back on the East Coast with some of my very best friends!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Plant a Money Tree
Working in science in a terrible economy keeps you humble. Funding is an elusive dream. You write proposals and put on a suit and heels for interviews, kissing each envelope or email as you send them off with prayers for consideration. Months later, the message shows up in your inbox:
"Dear Ms. Santoro, we regret to inform you..."
All the applicants were highly qualified. The economy has limited available funding. We are unable to support you at this time; please look to us again in the future.
I've heard all the excuses in the book.
But because you know how important your work is, because you are both frightened and inspired by development needs and environmental concerns, you continue to submit proposals. You reach out to different audiences. You try not to become too disenchanted with the world. You remind yourself that money is not everything, although it does cause a heck of a lot of trouble and tears sometimes.
All this is to say, I have $21,000 more worth of funding applications due by Monday. If you know any organizations looking to fund sustainable development, reforestation, and land use management in Madagascar, put in a good word for four inspired students from the University of Michigan! :)
"Dear Ms. Santoro, we regret to inform you..."
All the applicants were highly qualified. The economy has limited available funding. We are unable to support you at this time; please look to us again in the future.
I've heard all the excuses in the book.
But because you know how important your work is, because you are both frightened and inspired by development needs and environmental concerns, you continue to submit proposals. You reach out to different audiences. You try not to become too disenchanted with the world. You remind yourself that money is not everything, although it does cause a heck of a lot of trouble and tears sometimes.
All this is to say, I have $21,000 more worth of funding applications due by Monday. If you know any organizations looking to fund sustainable development, reforestation, and land use management in Madagascar, put in a good word for four inspired students from the University of Michigan! :)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Skittles, Explained
This is what I was talking about when I said a bag of Skittles had exploded all over my life. This is my calendar for this week--colorfully chaotic! Can I pencil you in? Saturday and Sunday are still pretty empty...
Going Forward
Man, what a busy semester this is turning out to be. I promise I'm still here, alive and well, but between classes (5-and-a-half), masters' project, new job as part of the Campus Sustainability Integrated Assessment- Energy Team, sleep, and meals, I haven't had a spare moment to breathe, let alone update my blog!
Anyway, we are well into the throes of Michigan winter. It is consistently below 20 degrees, and I actually look forward to snow because that means it'll be a little warmer. Cloudy days are also best, since the added layer of insulation in the sky keeps temperatures up. Twice a week I have class at 8am, and that means walking 20 minutes to the business school in dim pre-sunrise light. And because SNRE decided to schedule our core class during dinner time this semester, I walk home barely having seen the light of day. Not that I see much of it anyway when I'm outside: my nose is buried into my scarf and my hat covers my ears and forehead, leaving only a small window of visibility to avoid bumping into similarly bundled snowmen.
Then I come home and my plants are all huddled by the window sill, slowly turning yellow from lack of sunlight. Michigan is very gray. I water them and talk to them, encouraging them to stick it out for just a few more months until sunshine reappears.
But despite the lack of color outside, it sometimes feels like a giant bag of Skittles exploded all over my life, making everything happily chaotic.
I bought myself a cookbook, entitled How to Boil Water: Life Beyond Takeout. It's filled with wonderfully useful tips like how to smush garlic and how to buy ripe fruit and which wines grown-ups drink with which types of food. They even provide a nice diagram of a cow, a pig, and a lamb, all parceled out into their various cuts of meat. I haven't progressed to actually cooking the recipes yet, but I have moved beyond spaghetti and peanut butter.
I've also been hired to work on the UM Campus Sustainability Integrated Assessment. I'm part of the seven-person Energy Analysis Team. Over the course of the next three months- and if they want to keep me- through the summer and next fall, we'll be developing long-term recommendations for campus energy use. We'll be gathering data on the effectiveness of current systems and setting goals for the future, later to be compiled into a report of specific recommendations. Just think--five years from now, UM might be running on wind, biofuels, or even treadmill-power!
As a study break this past weekend, I went to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a longtime dream of mine. Half of the School of Natural Resources & Environment went to the concert, and it was incredible to see these guys, the oldest of which was at least 70, doing high kicks over their heads while singing in perfect harmony. They are so fun to watch! It seems as though the singing comes effortlessly, so they spend the time teasing each other onstage and dancing playfully with more energy than most teenagers.
Most of the songs they sang were in not-English (Zulu, maybe?), but this one, Homeless, was English and one of my particular favorites because of the way the group introduced it. They talked about Haiti and the need to help each other, the importance of family and friends. Because, they said, "we are all homeless."
I thought that was a beautiful sentiment. Without each other, we are all homeless. From a natural resources perspective, too, I liked the thought: we are homeless. We are transient visitors to this world, not here to take over and make it our own but borrowing it from our children's children and the birds and frogs who may outlast us all.
I also liked the final song they sang, Shosholoza, which in Zulu means 'go forward.' It's a traditional folk song originally sang by "all-male work gangs" (thanks, Wikipedia).
That reminds me, I heard from my Motswana sister Mpelo recently, and a group from her Medical School in Grenada traveled to Haiti to help the earthquake victims. Shosoloza, Mpelo: we need not be homeless alone!
Anyway, we are well into the throes of Michigan winter. It is consistently below 20 degrees, and I actually look forward to snow because that means it'll be a little warmer. Cloudy days are also best, since the added layer of insulation in the sky keeps temperatures up. Twice a week I have class at 8am, and that means walking 20 minutes to the business school in dim pre-sunrise light. And because SNRE decided to schedule our core class during dinner time this semester, I walk home barely having seen the light of day. Not that I see much of it anyway when I'm outside: my nose is buried into my scarf and my hat covers my ears and forehead, leaving only a small window of visibility to avoid bumping into similarly bundled snowmen.
Then I come home and my plants are all huddled by the window sill, slowly turning yellow from lack of sunlight. Michigan is very gray. I water them and talk to them, encouraging them to stick it out for just a few more months until sunshine reappears.
But despite the lack of color outside, it sometimes feels like a giant bag of Skittles exploded all over my life, making everything happily chaotic.
I bought myself a cookbook, entitled How to Boil Water: Life Beyond Takeout. It's filled with wonderfully useful tips like how to smush garlic and how to buy ripe fruit and which wines grown-ups drink with which types of food. They even provide a nice diagram of a cow, a pig, and a lamb, all parceled out into their various cuts of meat. I haven't progressed to actually cooking the recipes yet, but I have moved beyond spaghetti and peanut butter. I've also been hired to work on the UM Campus Sustainability Integrated Assessment. I'm part of the seven-person Energy Analysis Team. Over the course of the next three months- and if they want to keep me- through the summer and next fall, we'll be developing long-term recommendations for campus energy use. We'll be gathering data on the effectiveness of current systems and setting goals for the future, later to be compiled into a report of specific recommendations. Just think--five years from now, UM might be running on wind, biofuels, or even treadmill-power!
As a study break this past weekend, I went to see Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a longtime dream of mine. Half of the School of Natural Resources & Environment went to the concert, and it was incredible to see these guys, the oldest of which was at least 70, doing high kicks over their heads while singing in perfect harmony. They are so fun to watch! It seems as though the singing comes effortlessly, so they spend the time teasing each other onstage and dancing playfully with more energy than most teenagers.
Most of the songs they sang were in not-English (Zulu, maybe?), but this one, Homeless, was English and one of my particular favorites because of the way the group introduced it. They talked about Haiti and the need to help each other, the importance of family and friends. Because, they said, "we are all homeless."
I thought that was a beautiful sentiment. Without each other, we are all homeless. From a natural resources perspective, too, I liked the thought: we are homeless. We are transient visitors to this world, not here to take over and make it our own but borrowing it from our children's children and the birds and frogs who may outlast us all.
I also liked the final song they sang, Shosholoza, which in Zulu means 'go forward.' It's a traditional folk song originally sang by "all-male work gangs" (thanks, Wikipedia).
That reminds me, I heard from my Motswana sister Mpelo recently, and a group from her Medical School in Grenada traveled to Haiti to help the earthquake victims. Shosoloza, Mpelo: we need not be homeless alone!
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