Spring On Comm. Ave.

It took me a while, but I finally got around to taking some shots of the campus. The trees finally started to bloom here last week so it was a good time for it. BU's campus is long and narrow, running alongside Commonwealth Avenue. It's not much to look at, but the center of it has a nice quad area and courtyard adjacent to Marsh Chapel. The quad here is called "the BU beach," so named because, if you lie on the grass and close your eyes, the traffic on the road sounds like the ocean. Yeah, it's lame. The shadowy dungeon on the bottom left is the Economics building. Dismal Science, indeed.



Only a week of class left before a month of exams. Crazy.

Shotgun* Wedding

Today a classmate of mine from Taiwan got married. It was not planned. His girlfriend, also from Taiwan, has been in town for a few weeks and they decided to get hitched before she flies back tomorrow. So a group of us rented a car and drove to Hartford, CT where there is no waiting period for a marriage license. So, I played impromptu wedding photographer.



After getting their license and fashioning their makeshift rings, the ceremony was held in an adjacent room and presided over by an elderly woman who could not for the life of her pronounce Chinese names (or stop talking about her grandkids).



It was an interesting day. Also, it may come as no surprise to those who know me, but I would be a terrible professional wedding photographer. I am not very good at corralling people into looking sentimental and sincere. So, if you're in the market for a demanding, impatient photographer for your engagement shoot, you know who to call.

* - I was just informed that the actual meaning of a shotgun wedding is a wedding forced due to an unplanned pregnancy, which makes the title of this post a misnomer. No one was pregnant in this instance - just an impulse wedding.

Spring At Last

At long last, it's starting to warm up in Boston. I wasn't able to make it back down to DC for the cherry blossoms this year, but in the spirit of spring I thought I'd a share a few shots from previous years. Everyone else is doing it.



Hard to believe it's April already. Just a few weeks of classes, finals, and a comprehensive exam (blerg) left and it'll be summer. Whether or not I actually have something to do over the summer remains to be seen, but it will be a welcome break. Less than a year back in school and I'm already pining for vacation!

On another note, in the past month, under various circumstances, I've helped shoot several conferences at Harvard. While not the most artistically compelling work, there were some interesting images. I may share some soon.

Broken Flowers

I saw a lot of these rose (?) trees in Mississippi during my week there.

Unlike previous blogs I've had, I've steered away from focusing on any overly personal, political, or philosophical pontificating with this one. Perhaps I'm not quite as angst-filled as I once was, but I feel some soul plumbing coming on some time in the near future. I've found myself in an odd place in recent months. I feel that I've not focused on taking stock of myself to the extent that I'm normally accustomed. It's kind of snuck up on me - the realization that I've become less consciously mindful of myself. While not necessarily positive or negative, it deserves some attention.

Mighty Mississippi (Alternative Spring Break)

A couple of weeks ago, a classmate mentioned that the Alternative Spring Break program at BU still needed chaperones for a number of their trips. Without any other significant plans for my break and on somewhat of a whim I volunteered. So, this morning I returned with sunburns, mud-encrusted Nikes, and a stiff neck (from two 36-hour van rides) from a week in Natchez, Mississippi.



Excluding myself, our group consisted of 10 undergraduates averaging around 20 years old, 9 of which were girls. Not a social dynamic I'm normally accustomed to (I've never heard so much Beyonce and Rihanna in my life), but it wasn't unbearable. We spent the week volunteering at the Natchez Children's Home, but only some of our time was spent working with the kids. The majority of the week was spent helping prepare a garden for planting, general landscaping, and some interior work. Much of this work was in the company of the home's resident handy-man, Calvin, a former-mechanic turned Baptist preacher, and Buddy Miller, an aged, eccentric, independently wealthy southern farmer.



I don't think I had any clearly formed expectations of what kind of work I'd be doing when I elected to come on the trip, but getting to work with my hands was a nice reprieve from school. As I'm cresting the middle of graduate school, it's been easy to get stuck in high-minded ideas of approaching development and poverty from the mindset that theory and math are the major tools for change, but this week has been a helpful reminder that there is a lot work to be done that is not intellectually glamorous.

On another note, the culture in small-town Mississippi is archetypal of what one might expect the south to be like. People are welcoming and involved, waistlines are larger (I saw a KFC BUFFET), and there is a confounding mix of intransigent conservatism and a disarming lack of political hostility. A reporter from a local paper, the unexpectedly named Natchez Democrat, came to the home one day to write a piece on our trip (the story can be found here). I'm quoted saying something pretty inane and the writing is comparatively pedestrian (it's no NYT or Economist), but the amazing part was that the following day almost everyone we encountered had read about us. The story had run on the front page and we were the big news of the day (next to the unprecedented changes to the historical tableaux/pageant). It was a little surreal.

I can't say that I don't miss having a week to relax and do nothing, but it was a rewarding experience. Now I need to go listen to something that will drown out Rihanna's "S & M" from my brain.



Incidentally, I also turned 25 a little over a week ago. What up, quarter life.