GESUNDHEIT

two thousand eleven, in review.

2011-12-31T21:25:00.026-02:00

Unsurprisingly, I find myself closing out yet another year wishing I had blogged more, taken more photos, and did an all-around better job of chronicling the day to day of my attempts at practicing adulthood. I am left with this smattering of photos highlighting 2011's greatest, from the numerous day trips with katherine anne, to timbers game days and seattle/vancouver away, and all-around enjoying the fair, cultivated culture of Portland Oregon for the first time as a true resident. From neighborhood association meetings to midnight bike rides, food carts to rain, 2011 was a good reintroduction to my hometown after a couple of years gallavanting around the Midwest (reoregonizing, if you will!) With any luck, 2012 will bring about nothing but more of the same. (decent jobs for Kate and I would be nice, too.)

OCC, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

newport, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Emeril, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

orygun, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Wintery Commute, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0420, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0510, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

cannon beach super moon, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0462, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0947, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0967, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0136-1, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

por que no?, originally uploaded by katesokol.

IMG-20110612-00239, originally uploaded by katesokol.

cross-town furniture moving pt. 2, originally uploaded by katesokol.

DSC_0190, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

IMG-20110729-00450, originally uploaded by katesokol.

pdx pop now 2011, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

just a hipster in a sea of bikes, originally uploaded by katesokol.

mississippi street fair, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

papa brown is RCTID, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

king of clubs, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

victory slipping through our hands, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

IMG-20110816-00489, originally uploaded by katesokol.

PICT0056, originally uploaded by katesokol.

DSC_0868, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

"i couldn't fill a cavity with this!", originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DESTROYED, originally uploaded by katesokol.

IMG-20110813-00475, originally uploaded by katesokol.

DSC_1624, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Crater Lake excursion, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0733, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0764, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_0816, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

PICT0207, originally uploaded by katesokol.

PICT0198, originally uploaded by katesokol.

by katesokol.

DSC_1890, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

oh hai, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_2054, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

9th and alder on a wonderful autumn afternoon., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

DSC_7778, originally uploaded by stevenwilliambrown.

by stevenwilliambrown.

Most relevant albums of 2011:

1) Bon Iver - Bon Iver

2) An Argument with Myself - Jens Lekman
3) Motopony - Motopony
4) Prison Boxing - Cataldo

5) A New Kind of House - Typhoon

6) Departing - Rural Alberta Advantage

7) Cape Dory - Tennis

You can learn a lot about a neighborhood by the stickers on the bike rack.

2011-11-14T05:54:00.001-02:00

You can learn a lot about a neighborhood by the stickers on the bike rack., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Mississippi Avenue, Boise Neighborhood, Portland Oregon

no pity from the rose city

2011-05-15T21:51:00.001-03:00

no pity from the rose city, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

northern invasion

Wintery Commute

2011-02-25T19:53:00.001-03:00

Wintery Commute, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

My Letter to Representative Greenlick.

2011-01-15T01:29:00.002-02:00

"Representative Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland) says that his concern for the safety of children is behind House Bill 2228. The bill, which would make it illegal to carry a child of six years or younger on the back of a bike or in a trailer, has quickly caused an outcry among people throughout Oregon and the country."

-via bikeportland

Representative Greenlick, I am a constituent in your district that has happily voted for you since I was of voting age. I've never been the type to email my representatives directly about particular bills, knowing that they often are read by an intern or generally ignored, but this particular issue caused me enough concern that I felt necessary to respond.

As a resident of the Bethany area, I can certainly appreciate and understand your interest for legislation concerning the safety of people who choose a bicycle for their main means of transportation. I frequently choose a combination of bicycle and Trimet to get to my job, which is located on the central east side of Portland, and I certainly agree that our state legislators should be focused on finding ways to improve the safety of our transportation system for all intended road users. However, as I'm sure you heard from the many of responses to your proposed bill HB2888, attempting to condemn the activity of transporting children under the age of 6 on a bicycle, accuses those who choose to bicycle as the problem instead of the horribly unsafe conditions of our disastrously planned suburban roads.

The state house needs more advocates for safe transportation of all mode types, Representative Greenlick, and as your constituent I would love to see you pursue policy that encourages safe transportation options for all. I applaud your entrance into this discussion, and take you at your word that you had only the best intentions in introducing this bill and that you are interested in promoting bicycling to improve the state of our wallets, the state of our health, and the state of our planet. No doubt, Oregon state legislators have an important role in helping bicycles be a part of the future healthy communities we are attempting to create, but I urge you to get in contact with those interested in the issue. The Westside Transportation Alliance, for instance, is interested in promoting active transportation and transit in Beaverton and other areas near your district, and there's a bevy of bicycle activists located in Portland (the BTA, for example) that I'm sure you are aware of, pending your recent legislation. As a daily commuter, Representative Greenlick, I can tell you now that encouraging Washington County road sweepers to avoid dropping all of the gravel into the Barnes Rd. bike lane, for instance, would be a strong step in the right direction, before I or another commuter slip and fall into four lanes of high speed traffic. I know that you aren't directly responsible for Washington County road services, but the same OHSU report that you cited explained that gravel in the road is a grave danger to those on bicycles, and as you said, "If I thought a law would save one child's life, I would step in and do it. Wouldn't you?"

Thank you for reading my letter, and I hope that you not only kill HB 2888 but that you also use this opportunity to listen to your constituents and activists interested in promoting a safe transportation policy and infrastructure that meets the needs of all intended road users.

My Letter to Representative Greenlick.

2011-01-15T01:29:00.001-02:00

Representative Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland) says that his concern for the safety of children is behind House Bill 2228. The bill, which would make it illegal to carry a child of six years or younger on the back of a bike or in a trailer, has quickly caused an outcry among people throughout Oregon and the country.

-via bikeportland

Representative Greenlick, I am a constituent in your district that has happily voted for you since I was of voting age. I've never been the type to email my representatives directly about particular bills, knowing that they often are read by an intern or generally ignored, but this particular issue caused me enough concern that I felt necessary to respond.

As a resident of the Bethany area, I can certainly appreciate and understand your interest for legislation concerning the safety of people who choose a bicycle for their main means of transportation. I frequently choose a combination of bicycle and Trimet to get to my job, which is located on the central east side of Portland, and I certainly agree that our state legislators should be focused on finding ways to improve the safety of our transportation system for all intended road users. However, as I'm sure you heard from the many of responses to your proposed bill HB2888, attempting to condemn the activity of transporting children under the age of 6 on a bicycle, accuses those who choose to bicycle as the problem instead of the horribly unsafe conditions of our disastrously planned suburban roads.

The state house needs more advocates for safe transportation of all mode types, Representative Greenlick, and as your constituent I would love to see you pursue policy that encourages safe transportation options for all. I applaud your entrance into this discussion, and take you at your word that you had only the best intentions in introducing this bill and that you are interested in promoting bicycling to improve the state of our wallets, the state of our health, and the state of our planet. No doubt, Oregon state legislators have an important role in helping bicycles be a part of the future healthy communities we are attempting to create, but I urge you to get in contact with those interested in the issue. The Westside Transportation Alliance, for instance, is interested in promoting active transportation and transit in Beaverton and other areas near your district, and there's a bevy of bicycle activists located in Portland (the BTA, for example) that I'm sure you are aware of, pending your recent legislation. As a daily commuter, Representative Greenlick, I can tell you now that encouraging Washington County road sweepers to avoid dropping all of the gravel into the Barnes Rd. bike lane, for instance, would be a strong step in the right direction, before I or another commuter slip and fall into four lanes of high speed traffic. I know that you aren't directly responsible for Washington County road services, but the same OHSU report that you cited explained that gravel in the road is a grave danger to those on bicycles, and as you said, "If I thought a law would save one child's life, I would step in and do it. Wouldn't you?"

Thank you for reading my letter, and I hope that you not only kill HB 2888 but that you also use this opportunity to listen to your constituents and activists interested in promoting a safe transportation policy and infrastructure that meets the needs of all intended road users.
--

Emeril

2011-01-12T07:41:00.001-02:00

Emeril, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

mmx

2011-01-01T21:11:00.015-02:00

Third year in a row I'd do a bit of a year-end recap. (2009) (2008)

then i fell asleep and the city kept blinkin', originally uploaded by _ambrown.

nodak, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

View From Your Porch - January 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Beerlympix 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

home away from home., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Founders' Day 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

33rd and 8th, Manhattan, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

KIRA IN CHINATOWN MARCH 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

happy st patricks day from 1139, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

wisconsin, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

sons and daughters, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

opencity, admo dc, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

rooftop bros, sparks, and the capitol, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

like father like son, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

i like you too., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

diploma. i has it., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

We emerged from youth all wide eyed like the rest, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

under midwestern skies, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

scan0008, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

rilo 2k10, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

rmf, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

#cascadiabsides2k10, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

the city and midwestern skies, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Lake Calhoun, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Just another hot hot summah in my life., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

What did we get ourselves into?, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

what a night., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Colin, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Matt, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

City Middle, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Cross Crusade - Rainier OR, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

mud slog, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

scan0010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

scan0009, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

MOVE FAST FER DEALZ, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

choklit park, vancouver bc, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Top Accomplishments!
1) Eating ten pounds of pho noodles and winning the pho-king challenge at Saigon Restaurant in Saint Paul.
2) Graduating college, I guess.
3) Completing my honors project.
4) Getting a job at Metro
5) Sending Kate the best birthday present ever
6) Completing/surviving the Minneapolis Stupor Bowl
7) Completing/surviving student government
8) Completing/surviving #deathbyburnside
9) Completing/surviving two cyclocross races here in Portland
10) Biking 1000+ miles this summer

2k10 playlist
January I Can See Your Tracks - Laura Veirs
February My Heart - Wildbirds and Peacedrums
March Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit
April This Is What - Horse Feathers
May Sounds Familiar - The Weakerthans
June Bushwick Blues - Delta Spirit
July Mouthful of Diamonds - Phantogram
August Niagara Falls - Harlem Shakes
September Sprawl II (Mountains beyong Mountains) - Arcade Fire
October You've Got A Place Called Home - Hannah Georgas
November Love is All I Am - Dawes
December 10 Mile Stereo - Beach House

Top Albums
1) July Flame - Laura Veirs
2) The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
3) Mines - Menomena
4) High Violet - The National
5) Teen Dream - Beach House
6) History from Below - Delta Spirit
7) The Winter of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit
8) North Hills - Dawes

Top Books
1) Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities - Leonie Sandercock
2) Player One: What Will Become Of Us - Doug Coupland
3) The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City-and Determined the Future of Cities - Joe Flood
4) Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest - Carl Abbott
5) FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars in Today's Game

mont royal

2010-10-01T22:37:00.001-03:00

mont royal, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Just another hot hot summer in my life

2010-08-01T20:11:00.001-03:00

Summer 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”

-Arthur Conan Doyle

I'm back in Minneapolis for one last month. Let's go on a bike ride? I'm tired of studying for the GREs and writing cover letters that will never be read.

Happy Fourth Minneapolis

2010-07-04T16:19:00.002-03:00

Happy Fourth Minneapolis, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

This photo is from last year, but it still captures many of the reasons that the Fourth of July is possibly my favorite holiday of the year.

Not much has been happening. Minneapolitan Summer is going pretty well, even if I've largely been pretty lethargic. I've actually been writing a lot lately, but I haven't finished editing it to post on this blog. I'm going back to Portland in two weeks, so hopefully, if you're reading this and haven't seen me in a while, you'll have an opportunity to see me sometime in the next few weeks.

yours,
Aaron

Happy Fourth, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

diploma. i has it.

2010-05-16T23:13:00.001-03:00

diploma. i has it., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

GRADUATED.

The Midtown Greenway on a sunny sunny wonderful Minneapolitan spring afternoon

2010-04-11T01:32:00.001-03:00

The Midtown Greenway on a sunny sunny wonderful Minneapolitan spring afternoon, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

"Life is changing so fast and there's nothing I can do to stop it
But when I crane my neck to kiss your head, I know
That there is something that I can rely on"

Drafts are almost done.

The View From My Window - April 2010

2010-04-07T19:39:00.001-03:00

The View From My Window - April 2010, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

snow has melted, spring has sprung?

Welcome to Brooklyn.

2010-03-20T23:42:00.001-03:00

Welcome to Brooklyn., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

mspdx.

2010-03-07T01:27:00.003-03:00

The road to Minneapolis, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Quiet night, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Ankeny Aldrich
Burnside Bryant
Couch Colfax
Davis Dupont
Everett Emerson
Flanders Fremont
Glisan Girard
Hoyt Humboldt
Irving Irving
Johnson James
Kearney Knox
Lovejoy Logan
Marshall Morgan
Northrup Newton
Overton Oliver
Pettygrove Penn
Quimby Queen
Raleigh Russell
Savier Sheridan
Thurman Thompson
Upton Upton
Vaughn Vincent
Wilson Washburn
Xerxes
Yorke
Zenith

Waiting for Spring

2010-02-26T05:41:00.001-03:00

Upper Midwest, waiting for spring, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

the slow, tantalizing thaw of february

Stupor Bowl XIII

2010-02-10T06:18:00.001-02:00

Stupor Bowl XIII, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

land of ten thousand (frozen) lakes.

2010-02-01T16:02:00.001-02:00

land of ten thousand (frozen) lakes., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The Winter Break Coma/Hibernation Period Ends.

2010-01-11T08:31:00.002-02:00

Papa Brown and Rilo, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Hey, Portland. It's been real. This photo is from Thanksgiving Break but it could very well summarize my couple of weeks here at home over the break. My general lackluster, sleep-late-every-afternoon pattern comes to an abrupt end as I valiently attempt to graduate from college and move into "the real world," whatever that is. Sounds very 2010 to me.

But yeah, monday afternoon, Empire Builder-ing to Saint Paul. See you on a bitterly cold, sunny, cheery Saint Paul Wednesday Morning.

2009 in pictures

2010-01-03T10:45:00.009-02:00

I did this last year, and I liked the results. I tried to put up photos here that I hadn't published before, but some photos (Carnaval) are just too legendary not to be included in a "Best Of" list. There's a sad dearth of photos post September; I still haven't scanned in all of the film that I've accumulated over the past semester in my photography class, and to be fair at least a few of those shots would otherwise be included. But! Hopefully I don't get too bogged down in 2010 with everything (HONORS/WORK STUDY/SENIOR CAPSTONE/STUDENT GOVERNMENT/AHHHH) and I actually take some photos for fun.

I recently went to Vancouver with Papa Brown, and I want to write about that, and I hope to also blog about how excellent it is that we're done with Decade Zero, but I feel like I missed the boat for opportune timing on those blog entries. Stick with me dear readers; there will always be times at five in the morning when insomnia strikes, and I'll want to throw together a blog entry and tell you how I feel. Worst comes to worst, things'll definitely pick up post graduation.

Until I actually do get the chance to write something heartfelt, meaningful, , reflecting, thoughtful or whatever, I like how my blog has slowly morphed into a cyberscrapbook, a collection of miscellaneous pictures or phrases or thoughts that capture something relevant to my life while I'm procrastinating on doing real work. Expect more ironic wittyisms, flickr photos, and gchat conversations to fill in the gaps. If you're really into that sorta thing, I got addicted to twitter this fall, and on the sidebar you can follow me and my friends.

So long, Oregon., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Obama is inaugurated as President of the United States of America, Times Square, New York, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The Summer's Life is Good, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Third Largest City in the world, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Carnaval 2009, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The Last Supper, or at least the last game of snooker, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Hey buddy., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Numbers 6, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Fire on Table Mountain., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Home sweet home in Langa., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Raf, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Football, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Evenings on the West lake., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

IHPers in Vietnam, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The hanoi living room project., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Ihp portraits., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

International Honors Program, Cities in the 21st Century 2009, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Leeeeean, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Happy Fourth, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

goal, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Waldo Lake 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Rilo, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Montana, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

bridge no 9., s.e. mpls., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Peter, Chelsea, Joe and Ian, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

hayley loves the cold weather, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

oh hey macbikes, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The Drive, VANCBC, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

2009 audibly, according to Lastfm: (a reliable source)
1 Bon Iver 1,389
2 Blind Pilot 1,010
3 Frightened Rabbit 516
4 The Rural Alberta Advantage 438
5 The Weakerthans 427
6 The National 418
7 Death Cab for Cutie 402
8 Barenaked Ladies 354
9 Horse Feathers 313
10 Red House Painters 276

not cold enough

2009-12-11T18:33:00.001-02:00

not cold enough, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Pathways

2009-12-10T03:45:00.001-02:00

Pathways, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

The snow doesn't discriminate about the built environment the way that we do. Our cities are built with such hard-and-fast rules; sidewalks are for people, streets are for cars, lawns are for the people who own them and the dogs who pee wherever they want. The actual topography of the "built environment" that lies beneath the rest of the built environment is meticulously regulated with curbs, paint, gutters, bus stops, and all sorts of little differentiated quirks designed to completely segregate cars and pedestrians, to inhabit different spaces in some modernist appeal for "order" to our streets to ensure cars can get from point A to B as fast as possible with no hindrance from other road users. In the name of "efficiency," we've denotated every square inch for its optimal use, with the clear intended goal of forcing us to see our landscape as a mosiac of private versus public space, natural versus manmade, safe versus unsafe, cars versus people.

And yet, the snow doesn't ever care. It's still early in the season, so I'm still giddy when I see it's going to snow eight inches or whatever, but even when the winter has long worn out its welcome on those awful Minnesota-in-April mornings, a big dumping of snow gives one quite the opportunity to watch the ways that we reinforce these divisions of our landscape even when you can't see the literal lines in the sand. It's 11:30 at night right now, and the municipalities are eagerly firing up their snow plows, getting ready to clear the arterials and restore the sense of order to the streets by pushing all of nature's residue out of the way so we can carry on about our lives, almost uninterrupted. But before they do, before the snow plows and the adventurous drivers attempt to recarve out their space in our Twin Cities, in the midst of the big snowfall the snow fall is uniform, evenly distributed across space. There's no curbs, no busy streets, no tangible way to tell the neighbors property line from mine. It's just....shared, untouched, open space. As a livable streets advocate, its so fascinating to watch studded tires and footprints and snowblowers reprioritize and categorize streets into streets and sidewalks into sidewalks, because in my mind the process shows just how intrinsically we understand and reconstruct our urban form to be split into separated use, even in the spaces between houses. When there's enough snow on the ground, you can walk right down the middle of the street; why not? Who's going to stop you? And you can look back and see exactly the trail you've left, and above the crunchy sounds of your boots gripping the ice you can look out and see nature attempt to remind us that all these divisions we've created for ourselves are a product of our own imagination, our own internal mandate, and that maybe, somehow, things could be different; those busy streets could maybe be used for recreation not just during the epic snowball fight but year round, that minor street might work better if it was only for bicycles, our front yards could form a linear park of shared space connecting the smoke shop to the laundromat to the corner pub.

Until then, the paths left in the snow instead just leave vestigial reminders of the way we're moving through our spaces, the ways we understand the spaces around us. And just like our dissipating breath that escapes quickly into the crisp cloudless night sky, the snow forces us to see that we're here, that we've left a mark, that our presence was noticed, that this isn't for naught, that we're alive, that tangibly the world remembers everything we do.

semester is winding down...

2009-12-08T20:02:00.000-02:00

We recognize the present
Is half as pleasant
As our nostalgia for
The past'll be presented
Recast and reinvented
Until it's how we meant it

rilo brown.

2009-12-01T04:24:00.001-02:00

rilo brown., originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Tomorrow is the first day of the last month of the last year of the first decade of the twenty first century.

If you think that's weird, think about where we were December 1st, 1999, and how far away that seems. What on earth will we be up to December 1st 2019? I'll be 31 years old then! We could be driving subarus around subdivisions by then, cursing under our breath while trying to fit the baby seat into the back of the car, frustratingly late for whatever jobs/grown up responsibilities/important life moments have replaced the current barrage of student government meetings and honors project papers. It's kind of baffling, really, to think that 2000-2010 has been an era of pure adolescence and relatively consequence-free growing up, and that somehow the turning of the decade represents a seismic shift in all of that.

ISN'T RILO CUTE OH MY GOD

In Transit

2009-11-26T04:14:00.001-02:00

Somehow, on an entire 737 full of eager travelers, it appears that only two passengers managed to miss the plane, and the stars somehow aligned so that their empty seats sit to my right and left here in 21B. The cabin is sealed, we take off from the earth, and I slide over to the window seat, disappointed that the low cloud cover prevents me from observing the fractal-road patterns of suburban Minneapolis. My last site of the frozen tundra landscape was of an arterial interstate cloverleaf, shaped with an oddly calming geometry that ensures commuters and thanksgiving travelers headed towards Apple Valley will make their transfer from 694 to 35W with efficiency and expedience.

Does it make me an asshole if I put my back against the airplane window, now feeding the plane with harsh, 35000 elevation North Dakota sunlight, and stretch my awkward, no-longer-adolescent-but-not-quite adult legs out across 21B and C? At what point won’t I get away with this youthful sort of self indulgence anymore? I admittedly feel a bit of guilt knowing how packed in the rest of the passengers are, after watching a larger woman who is also at least 200 years old attempt to fit her purse into the overhead bin and then struggle with the confines of the middle seat.

With any luck, when I surprise my mom and my sister by showing up in Portland this afternoon (no, I didn’t actually end up going to Lincoln, Nebraska), these could be the most expensive smile I’ve ever procured.

I am Seattle bound, before my final destination in Portland. Longtime, astute readers with impeccable memory might think this beleaguered attempted at travel writing and waxing nostalgic about places and hurtling across the country all sounds a little familiar; travelling home for thanksgiving invokes a very sharp, particular set of emotions that are often coupled with surprising clarity. I think thanksgiving inspires me because it is here, under the auspices of blaring, inane Headline News and airport-priced Caribou Coffee that an entire country attempts to rearrange itself, to head the primal, instinctual desire to spend six hundred dollars for a reaffirmation of the definition of home, of family, of belongingness. Logistics, practicality, finances be damned; its thanksgiving, dammit, and those with the means are honestly willing to bear almost any cost for those moments of authenticity, of candlelit turkey-and-cranberry-relish dinner, of help eating the leftovers, of arguing with friends whether Jeremy Masoli is going to take the Ducks to the Rose Bowl. Tin cans full of people are vaulting across the country, soaring over deserts and shopping malls and mountains and parking lots. Minneapolis/St Paul’s airport bristles with activity; the gates are lit up with fluorescents, with dreary televisions neatly lined up to herald the name of a deindustrialized Midwestern metropolitan region at which each flight intends to arrive. I’d like quite a bit to be an astronaut aboard that space shuttle right now, the one NASA keeps tweeting about, looking down on a tumultuous continent full of people that decided today they’d make the journey to someplace, somewhere, someone they call home. You could look down on the Twin Cities, glowing with red interstates lines heading east and west and north and south to Chicago and Fargo and Duluth and Iowa, and even more red lines as planes from around the country hop and skip their way into the airport and out, hub and spokes, a whole country interconnected by the Dwight D Eisenhower Interstate System and cheesy United Airlines Commercials and a solemn yearning to dedicate a day of the year for commitment to family, place, and belonging.

Much like the beginning of the end of senior year of high school, it really does hit me in the most unexpected and unfavorable times just what it means and how serious it is that my time at Macalester is drawing to a close. Last week it was the belated-diwali dinner, where I had been sent on photography assignment, a handful of Southeast Asian students and their friends reaffirming some commitment to multiculturalism or perhaps a connection of a home of their own. The lights of Macalester’s science building’s atrium are dimmed, and behind the silhouettes of girls clothed in dresses the colors of glamorous foreign spices and the lingering caterers who aren’t sure when to leave begins the slideshow. I should admit that even with Macalester’s small size and my perchance for both meeting people and facebook stalking, I’m only acquaintances at best with many of the students in attendance, and I contemplate leaving the dinner while students fumble with the AV chords that never, ever, ever seem to work correctly. Yet the slideshow starts, and the crowd oohs and ahhs with the pictures that commemorate the seniors who are leaving and have helped through the MASECA events in the past. It was as though I have been unable to truly grasp what any of graduating and “real-worlding” and moving on from so many stages of my life actually mean to me, but that the sight of vaguely familiar students sharing a warm moment of acknowledgement at the ritual, coming of age, the beauty of friendship, that make me wonder if I should be having these moments of my own.

“The radio would be turned on, full of love songs and rock music; we believed the rock music but I don’t think we believed in the love songs, either then, or now. Ours was a life lived in paradise and thus it rendered any discussion of transcendental ideas pointless. Politics, we supposed, existed elsewhere in a televised non-paradise; death was something similar to recycling.

Life was charmed but without politics of religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers- Life after God – a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest thing to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life – and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt.

I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched. And I wonder if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God.

But then I must remind myself we are living creatures – we have religious impulses – we must – and yet into what cracks do these impulses flow in a world without religion?”

-Life After God, Douglas Coupland

So far, by far, the best night of the semester has got to be the Zombie Pub Crawl. I guess the Geography Progressive might make a close second.

I’ve over a year removed from some of the darker, rougher times in my life. It’s an odd thing to be nostalgic for – the gritty, cold insomniatic depression best immortalized in my memory as a collection of images of trudging through snow with inundated sneakers, coughing and wheezing in a cold bed, and the sight of a frozen Mississippi River from the window of an airport-bound 84 bus that I would swear away as a parched tundra to be forgotten. The homework was hard, the breakup was harder, the doubt of self was hardest. Maybe nostalgia isn’t the right word for it, but I’m left wondering about the authenticity of emotion, at least after having finished this Coupland book on the flight. This semester has been pretty tough for me as well, in terms of the amount of imported Stumptown Coffee beans needed to keep me awake/functional and in terms of the hours of student government meetings and textbook readings required of this semester. But now, after a whirlwind tour and yet another set of rearrangements, I… well, I’m chugging along quite nicely. But it is odd to miss the severity of those emotions, even if they weren’t positive ones.

To come back to this whole waxing nostalgic for travel thing: I think it’s only here, in Montana, whether on eastbound I90 with a friend like I did this summer or six miles above it heading westbound, participating in the ritual act of being physically between two places and two worlds, it is here that it is possible to truly understand how we are travelling throughout the rest of our lives anyway. It’s only on this precipice between Minnesota and Oregon, a bumpy six hour trek above time zones and Marlboro man cowboys, that it becomes so abundantly clear how much of the rest of my life right now is defined by intellectual, and emotional movement. It’s here, waiting for the Rocky Mountains to spring up from the unassuming Tattooine foothills, that retrospection encourages an honest assessment of how little is constant and how applying for a job in New York isn’t just A New Thing in life but potentially The Next Thing in life. It’s over my plastic glass of ginger ale, with airplane ice cubes that routinely don’t pass health inspections for water quality, that my ruminations on navigating through space on a bicycle on an Alley Cat race aren’t all that different from my ruminations on navigating through my own desires, plans, and concerns for life. It’s all about constantly dodging obstacles, whether its roadkill in the Fairview Avenue bike lane or young children darting in front of you on the airport’s peoplemover or the eminent threat of leaving Macalester or escaping loneliness.

All of this for a little bit of my mom’s Watergate salad.

Okay, enough of this. I have three full seats on this aisle to take advantage of, and I’m still pretty tired from those almost-all-nighters for the Ecology Lab and Econ paper earlier this week. Updates of my time in thanksgiving to follow, maybe.

I'm running out of stumptown coffee.

2009-11-18T05:02:00.000-02:00

Papers that someone should write, as compiled by Sir Alexander Harry Leeding and Aaron Brown via gchat

me: "Occupying the cracks in the Urban Streets: Ben Gibbard and the Urbanization of Young White Emo Americans"

4:38 PM "Wondering What's Buried Underneath: The Narrative of Urban Infrastructure"

oh god i could go on forever

Alex: "The Skyline Looked Like Crooked Teeth: How the Resistance of LEED-certified building has Ruined the 21st Century Urban Ecosystem

4:39 PM 21st Century Towers: The Search For Affordable Condo Living in Inner Cities

me: "Taking Nicollet to the 494: The Hold Steady and the Right to the City"

4:40 PM "Meet me at the Construction Site: Placemaking in Winnipeg with The Weakerthans" ____

8:44 PM Alex: I Missed the Exit to Your Parents House Hours Ago: How The Interstate Freeway System Contributed to a Half Decade of Suburban Depression

me: winnar

8:47 PM Alex: thank you. held onto that for a couple of hours. thought it up on the metro ride home

me: In the back of the grey subcompact: the sexualization of the automobile in 1980s america

Alex: oh nice

8:55 PM Searching for Some Legal Documents: An Analysis of the Evolution of Storage Space in the Modern Automobile

8:56 PM me: The air of railroads is making the same sounds: urban memory and nostalgia in a postmodern age

Alex: Spinsters All Around Us Making Notes: The Evolution of Modern Telecommunications

8:57 PM me: There'd be no distance that could hold us back: Ruminations on spatial geography and urban narrative

9:00 PM Alex: ill come up with something.

9:01 PM me: i'm looking over my itunes and i feel i'm out

9:02 PM there's at least a dozen good ones for we will become silhouettes

and brand new colony is almost too explicitly easy

Alex: this place is a prison as well

the postal service is far to heteronormative

2009-11-12T22:15:00.000-02:00

10:58 AM me: its this old asbestos building

Alex: killing all yall softly

10:59 AM me: ECONOMIC EXTERNALITY

Alex: oh noes

11:00 AM FARRA

7 minutes

11:07 AM Alex: fun fact, i am in the same metropolitan area as john farra. i could theoretically run into him at any time

11:08 AM me: ITS ALWAYS POSSIBLE

your goal this year has to be to buy him a drink

Alex: maybe a shot

that way i wouldnt have to make small talk with him

11 minutes

11:20 AM Alex: ONLY ONE IN THE OFFICE

KING OF MY DOMAIN

I OWN THIS COMPANY

11:21 AM me: CEO LEEDING

TRADING PUBLICLY

Alex: STOCK MARKATS

11:22 AM i should just lock up

5 minutes

11:27 AM me: i just noticed my entire office is empty too

Alex: LETS MERGE

me: they are all freaking out about something and i don't know what and suddenly everybody dissapeared

advertise macalester while placing foreign exchange students

Alex: CORPARATE ACQUISISHUNS

2009-11-09T04:15:00.000-02:00

marriedtothesea.com

This goes well with the news that the Sounders lost today. Brian Ching, that was a beautiful 95' goal.

Another weekend that went where again? It's suddenly November?

Notes from the field

2009-11-04T03:57:00.000-02:00

"You need to let it dominate your life."

-Professor Sarah West, today in class on our upcoming environmental economics paper, and hard work in general.

2009-10-24T01:54:00.000-02:00

10:43pm Kate
bees are really futuristic when you think about it

10:46pm Aaron
oh?

10:48pm Kate
yeah think about it: at least in an apocalyptic-futuristic way. the drones, the efficiency, the communication, the swarming and/or collapse of the hive

just like japan

four in the morning

2009-10-19T07:01:00.001-02:00

four in the morning, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

October 11th, 2009

2009-10-13T02:29:00.001-03:00

October 11th, 2009, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Andrew Sullivan didn't post my photo this morning for his infamous "The View From Your Window," so I figured meh, tonight I'd post it myself. My blog has almost the same traffic as the Daily Dish anyway, right?

I'm always apt for saying that summer is my favorite season, but there's something about fall and winter that praises redemption, recycling, reinvigoration. The snow was exciting this morning, and it stuck around all evening. Quite the bike ride into Cedar/Riverside this afternoon.

"I've got this store bought way of saying I'm okay."

2009-10-06T04:09:00.001-03:00

Aaron_Brown_Poster_final, originally uploaded by _ambrown.

Here's one of a couple reasons I haven't been blogging much/socializing much lately. I succumbed and got a twitter, though, and i think it's updating on the sidebar of my blog. follow it and hilarity (of the "21st century, urban revivalist technologically-connected-but-emotionally-alienated existentialist crisis state of our privileged-Western World lives in which irony is a vehicle we use to convey the emotion we somehow can't otherwise express" variety) will ensue. I've been taking a bunch of photos with my film camera for a photography class I'm taking at St Kate's, so I have an excuse for those of you who actually read this blog (all four of you) and are wondering where all my photos have gone. They'll get scanned in, eventually, although probably not until December.

The damp days of fall are arriving, and they bring with them the end of the Timbers season, the advent of 40-degree high days, caffeine dependence, and the perfect mindset to listen to a bunch of Mark Kozelek every night before I go to sleep.

2009-09-23T03:05:00.004-03:00

Even the most tumultuous of days can conclude peacefully after spending five minutes of listening to crickets and cars from the porch of my apartment at one in the morning. Illness, multitudes of bosses/professors, sleep deprivation and doubt can sure take a stab at confidence and resolve. It sure is a struggle sometimes to keep my head above water sometimes. Yet the satisfaction that accompanies those few moments of clarity and peace of doing my best to keep it all together in silent reflection give me a humbled excitement to wake up in the morning.

Reading Jane Jacobs in Marvin Plaza, or, The Death and Life of Great Macalester Spaces

2009-09-19T22:46:00.003-03:00

This'll be published in the mac weekly next week, but I felt particularly proud of it, so I'm publishing it here, unedited, since TMW will likely shorten it.

After an exhausting first week back on campus, I celebrated the end of the week by curling up in the library with a book. I had picked up the recent biography of Jane Jacobs, a 1950’s urban thinker whose community organizing efforts managed to save her Washington Park neighborhood in Manhattan from the bulldozer and from becoming a new highway. Her innovative ways of chronicling, observing, and fighting for urban vitality make her a hero among us urban studies geeks; I’ve personally met people wearing “What Would Jane Jacobs Do?” wristbands and t-shirts. The book frames her life against that of Robert Moses, the urban planner who led the movement for gigantic freeways and contained a autocratic, tyrannical, dictatorship-esque zeal for urban renewal.

I took my seat in the West Gallery on the second floor of the Library and began reading. As I read, my gaze inadvertantly moved towards the new Marvin Plaza, surprisingly empty on a wonderful late-summer afternoon, lying just outside the window. Robert Moses himself would be proud with the exacting manner in which Marvin Plaza was built; during the summer, a set of fences inadvertently appeared, a space on campus was torn down, trees removed, and an expensive new space was introduced to the Macalester community without significant consultation.

This is not to say that Marvin Plaza is not a welcome addition to the community. Nor am I trying to say that an investment in revamping this pivotal location on our campus was a bad idea. In some regards, "the Marv'" is actually pretty cool; it gives an alum a reason to donate a ton of money to the school, it was constructed with some newfangled ecobricks that reduce storm water runoff, and there's an extra set of bike racks. Rather, my concerns with this new plaza lie with what this says about student participation in the design of the physical form of the public spaces we in the Macalester community inhabit.

Sadly, this is only the latest in a series of campus construction projects that seem to have slipped by without much consultation with students. Macalester, as an institution, seems to be on the move. This summer Macalester opened the doors to the Institute for Global Citizenship, which admittedly has its own student council and a few dedicated students involved with the process, but rankles many who STILL wonder just what the heck the building is other than a paean to the International Studies department and a home for Kofi Annan's bust. Last fall, Macalester's environmentally-minded students were shocked to learn about the imminent construction of a cooler system that locked Macalester into a decidedly ungreen future of carbon emissions; MACARES denounced it as "contrary to the vision of promoting collaboration and participation in the development of sustainable and cost-effective infrastructure." And, lest we forget, multiple controversies still exist around the recent construction of the Leonard Center; why couldn't they find the space for a unisex bathroom, why are we parading this gigantic building as a paradigm of ecosensitivity when it's so large, and why did we spent so much on a building (with ridiculously nice accomodations for athletes) when there aren't nearly enough lockers to meet demand for student body? Could these funds have been spent in a manner more consistent with students requests? A different biography of Moses once vividly described him sitting in his office, watching gleefully as giant bulldozers tore through Queens while building his projects. Watching the way this college knocks buildings down, moves 'em around, and builds them up (LEED CERTIFIED!!!), most without substantial student input, it is easy to pessimistically cast Macalester in similar light.

This is a particularly frustrating trend as Macalester gears up for the biggest capital investment in decades. The Fine Arts Center is going to be rebuilt over the next five years. Macalester benefits from having Provost Murray (who knows quite a bit about art) at the helm, and departments have been making plans for the center since we were in elementary school. Yet the construction of the art building is relevant to more than just Art Majors or Professors; performing spaces are currently used by anyone in the Trads, African Music Ensemble, Orchestra, Drama, and other organizations.

I don't want this article to be read as another bland, "I WISH STUDENTS HAD MORE SAY" opinion piece; I wholeheartedly believe that every forward-thinking institution needs a Robert Moses. There's an advantage to having the administration plan certain projects and create long-term visioning goals that a student body (which entirely changes every four years) can't possibly create. I'm the first to admit some of the higher ups are a lot smarter than I am and are making, on the all, generally wise decisions with regards to the future of the college. Macalester is a better place because of the administration's ability to turn visions into goals, projects, and eventually reality.

So how will students get their voice heard? I'm sure that the hyperorganized MACARES will be happy to provide suggestions for reducing carbon footprint and fine arts majors will get the chance to informally voice preferences through their departments, but how thoroughly will the Robert Moses-esque Macalester administration incorporate elements of Jane Jacobs' activism to find out what students outside of the arts department actually would like in that space? An upgraded dark room for photography, a state of the art auditorium ready for 21st century performance, more galleries, more spaces for informal musicians and performances? What if Bad Comedy, MacPlayers, and Fresh Concepts had somewhere better to perform than the dank Dupre basement? There's also a slew of much smaller spaces on campus that students could rally around. I bet students have some good ideas about how to make Macalester more friendly to the differently abled, how to encourage more biking and walking in our community, and where wifi networks are needed most. We only need to be asked.

The consultation process shouldn't just enable particular students who get excited about this sort of stuff to get involved, but rather encourage broad participation from all cross sections of our community. If the administration actively solicited ideas about how to make Marvin Plaza more interesting, I'm sure they would have received a handful of good ideas, a few bad ones, and plenty of ridiculous ones (GIANT SHARK TANK!!). It'd take extra time and resources to survey students, but the delay would ensure alums who generously donate to Macalester knew their contributions were positively impacting the campus. Economists and Political Scientists have devoted careers towards empirically showing the benefits of community visioning and bottom-up decision-making. If you're going to make an investment for students, it seems wise to find out what the students actually want.

In short, I exhort Macalester students to invest time and creative energy into imagining

what you would like to see on campus, and I implore the Macalester administration to invest further in giving students a seat at the table. I'm confident there's enough Jane Jacobs in all of us to cooperatively guide Macalester into the years ahead, and enough Robert Moses in the administration to ensure our collective vision is enacted.

Aaron Brown '10 is the head of the Academic Affairs Commission of MCSG, but here he speaks only for himself. He recommends you pick up a copy of "Wrestling with Moses" written by Anthony Flint, and can be reached at ambrown at macalester edu.

One last fall in the Cities

2009-09-09T01:19:00.001-03:00

One last fall in the Cities, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Classes? Tomorrow? Really?

Waldo Lake 2009

2009-08-24T13:27:00.001-03:00

Waldo Lake 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"The Northwest fills the lungs, heals the pain in my chest."

Heading back to the midwest via Washington, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota. While I'll certainly be busy as hell this next semester, I return to Saint Paul recharged, refocused, and ready for my last Minnesotan fall. Highlights of being back at home include the Portland Century ride, the Timbers' unbeaten-in-23-games streak, great weather, the Oregon Coast, getting my friends into The Room (You're tearing me apart, Lisa!), the Safe Routes to School Conference, and of course, camping for the tenth straight year at Waldo Lake.

Things are going to get a little hectic, caffeinated, difficult, and frustrating, but stick with me, dear reader, there will be photos to accompany, and it's going to be a hell of a ride through senior year. Among other obligations, I got a job this semester working as a photographer for college relations, so get ready to see a bunch of photos of happy multicultural macalester kids doing cheesy macalester things. Stick around.

Goal!

2009-08-07T04:34:00.001-03:00

Goal!, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Portland Timbers, I missed you.

Breakfast.

2009-08-04T05:04:00.001-03:00

Breakfast., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Saudades for Brazil, and mangoes.

Memories of Manzanita

2009-08-03T14:55:00.001-03:00

Memories of Manzanita, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I'm so sorry for everything.

2009-07-17T21:41:00.003-03:00

I'm so sorry for everything., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"They're like a gin and tonic when you should have been cut off hours ago!"
- 6'3" tall guy that decided to stand right in front of me right before the concert started.

I can't decide to give him credit for a clever remark about The National or to decide that he's some two-bit wannabe clever smug loser, like the guy that stood in front of Woody Allen in line for the movie in Annie Hall. Either way, Matt Beringer and the rest of his sextet showed up in Minneapolis last night, and I was reminded why, over the course of the last two years, their songs ring such a resonant chord in my life. Boxer is an anthem of urban existentialism, class anxiety, and the daunting reality and clarity that comes with staring in a mirror and contemplating the "uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults." I saw them two years ago at the Fine Line, a much smaller bar on the edge of Hennepin, and then only last year at Sasquatch, where their final song was greeted with an immediate onslaught of rain, a shawshank-esque downpour to couple with their last songs "Mr. November" and "About Today." So while I hate to admit it, smug tall guy that stood in front of me for the first half of the concert, I think you're onto something; listening to the National is a past time I took up a lot last year while attempting to shift into a drunken sleep, after having been cut off many drinks ago.

Turn the light out, say good night
no thinking for a little while
let's try not to figure out everything at once,
it's hard to keep track of you, falling through the sky
we're half awake in a fake empire

This year has been fraught with good concerts. I'll try and summarize them with less than a paragraph:

Blind Pilot, Early January Sneaking into the Aladdin Theatre in a pair of stolen bowling shoes, I watched from the balcony as the two-bit band mesmerized the Portland crowd. The show served as a fantastic Portland send-off before my giant trip abroad.
Manu Chao in Sao Paulo, February sometime I greeted some of my study abroad friends at the nearest Metro Station, and we proceded to pay about 2 Reals a shot of nasty listerine-tasting liquor to some street vendor running a bar out of his van that was only too happy to keep raising his prices for a bunch of desperate, drunken Americans. Set in quite possibly the largest theatre I've ever visited, Manu Chao greeted every single Paulista Marijuana smoker with about twelve encores and what felt like four hours of music. Epic night.
Sun Kil Moon, Early May Again with the bowling shoes, back in Portland, I celebrate my birthday by buying myself a single ticket to go see the man, the legend, Mark Kozelek. His concert was one of the strangest I've ever seen; his slowcore chords and baritone voice seemed to envelop the entire audience. He played to a sparce crowd in the Wonder Ballroom, with every attendee standing and staring, relatively motionless, waiting for an old song from the "Red House Painters" days. He rewarded us with "Make Like Paper"; Success!! The room was literally silent between songs, not for lack of an audience, but because, well, who really feels like talking about anything while listening to one of the most depressing people in the world play a drop-d guitar and sing about death, loneliness, and addiction?
Third Eye Blind (hah!), Late May oh, nostalgia. I suppose this concert isn't any different than the Sun Kil Moon show, in that I showed up only to hear specific songs that remind me of specific, irreplaceable and unreplicatable moments of my life, but for most of the third eye blind songs, those moments were collections of moments of doing homework in my room as a middle schooler.
Blind Pilot, June It was great to see Israel, the lead singer, hanging around outside as we walked up to the 400 club. A much smaller venue, the band still brought it, and I wore an Oregon shirt in solidarity.
The National, July I won't fuck us over.
Grizzly Bear and The Weakerthans (forthcoming!), September
Oh wow, the Weakerthans. I've wanted to see them live for the longest time. John Samson has the ridiculous ability to write lyrics about the most obscure anecdotes of modern life (smoke alarms, bus drivers, cracks in the ceiling, "a store-bought way of saying I'm alright") and somehow turning them into telling stories that express emotions weren't aware you were capable of posessing. He's oh so witty.

To be honest, life is good right now. I'm getting paid to do research, pretty much at my own pace, on the Midtown Greenway. I'm about to run a bunch of juicy, exciting multivariate regression models to prove how weather, class, age, status, gender, and all sorts of things are affecting who is on the Greenway, and how they are using the public space. I'm hoping to basically write a "place paper" (IHPers, think of it as a mix between a neighborhood day and a case study) showing some sort of a dialectic relationship between the city at large and this narrow, five mile strip of former-railroad that now carries up to 10,000 bikers a day during the summer.

During Study Abroad, I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish this summer and this fall, and one of them was to keep this blog running, if only to give me a chance to air out my grievances and thoughts. Instead, I just incessantly check Google Reader and wait for a blog about urbanity, music, or whatever express a sentiment I had been thinking about, and then veg around on the couch some more. Perhaps I'll make another go at it.

There are nights in bars that I recall...

2009-06-16T13:52:00.001-03:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

The Blue Door Pub
Nelli's 21st birthday
Selby and Fairview, Saint Paul MN

Bright new Minneapolis

2009-06-01T22:40:00.001-03:00

Bright new Minneapolis, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I'm already through my first week of my latest Midwestern summer.

The Endless Summer Continues..

2009-05-08T13:56:00.004-03:00

International Honors Program, Cities in the 21st Century 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Okay, so I'm totally smitten with the art of photography, but after spending time over the last year or so browsing Vimeo, I'm really starting to get drawn to the medium of video. Check out these videos I found of the cities that I've visited; it takes me back to Sao Paulo in ways that even my best photos of Diadema could never even touch.

Urban Age :: São Paulo Film from OutrosFilmes on Vimeo.

A Question from Rowan on Vimeo.

Hanoi crazy night traffic from v!Nc3sl4s on Vimeo.

Oh, and tonight's my last night with my host family here in Hanoi. We leave for a retreat for the next week, and by next friday I'll be on a plane heading east once again, this time over the pacific ocean and back towards the united states. This blog started off in earnest in January as a vehicle for me to get in touch with people back home, organize my thoughts, and attempt to write poetically about urbanity and my travels. I would say that my travels are about to end, what with my impending flight back home and my upcoming move-in to a dorm back on campus for the summer (woo free housing!), but to be a pretentious prick about it, I hope that I'm never finished "travelling" or ever done with keeping an eye open to my surroundings and finding things to write about. I know this blog got a bit sloppy here and there over the past few months, and that it was difficult to write effectively and intelligently when there were so many better things to be doing (like seeing penguins in Cape Town!), and I feel like I definitely lost my focus on what I wanted to write. My professor read most of these entries and went so far as to say I was a bit "undisciplined," but that's what I get for not actually keeping this journal on the topics that the original assignment required. Nonetheless, I'm thinking I'm going to keep this blog running, post-IHP, just as an opportunity to keep my soapbox around, should the desire come about to air our some grievances, post some photos, and ruminate on midwest and cascadian urbanity. My entries from Brazil (particularly those in Sao Paulo) make me homesick for the congestion, chaos, insanity and intensity of Rua da Consolação, and I've decided its not enough to just take photos of my meanderings without attempting to coherently piece together whatever it is I'm thinking about. WIth over 400 unique visitors to my blog, and over 1000 page views, I guess someone somewhere likes what I'm doing, so I'll keep it up.

My summer stands to be pretty interesting; I'll be doing a project on the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis, and perhaps this blog will help chronicle the stories of an undergrad way over his head in the world of socially-minded academic research. I'm also hoping to do some serious roadtripping around the upper midwest this summer, and since the horizon of the end of 2009 brings possibilities of stories of extended time on student government, potentially hammering out an honors thesis, taking a 200-level biology class (why the hell did I sign up for that?!) and all the other drama that waits in the wings, it'll be fun to blog about all of it. There's "Contested Urban Space" in every city, and perhaps I'll find some neighborhoods in Minneapolis worth writing about this summer. Plus, by blogging, I can make a statement against using the asinine piece of idiocy that is twitter.

Meanwhile, I've got about a week until I get back to Portland, and since I've posted Vimeos of the three cities I've lived in, I'll post one more as to what I'm looking forward to upon my jetlagged return to the City of Roses.

My Pretty Portland from The FREELS Brothers on Vimeo.

New York, New York, USA - Jan 19 to Jan 29
São Paulo and Curitibas, Brazil Jan 30 to Mar 4
Cape Town, South Africa Mar 5 to Apr 10
Hanoi, Vietnam Apr 11 to May 15th
Portland, Orygun May 15th to May 23rd
Saint Paul, Minnesota May 23rd through August

"Vietnamese girls put on the pounds"

2009-05-06T11:39:00.003-03:00

Vietnamese girls put on the pounds
http://www.hoilhpn.org.vn/newsdetail.asp?CatId=123&NewsId=10678〈=EN

The beauty of Vietnamese girls is legendary. The image of charming girls riding bicycles along streets with long black hair falling over slender shoulders is engraved in many memories.

However, 20 years of innovation and modern living has turned many slender girls into fat ladies jogging and exercising around parks and lakes in an effort to lose weight.
Like many Western women, Vietnamese sisters are now faced with obesity, something they had never contemplated before.

Perhaps the best part about this article? This comes straight from the Vietnamese Communist Government's "Women's Union," an organization that is supposed to mimic civil society and stand up for "women's issues" around the country.

- hat tip to my roommate here in Vietnam, Jacob Koch, for finding this article.

May Day in Hanoi's Lenin Park.

2009-05-04T14:14:00.000-03:00

May Day in Hanoi's Lenin Park., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

After a minor case of illness that might as well have been Swine Flu, and a mysterious set of medicine and massage therepy by my wonderful host mother, I'm back and healthy and looking forward to the conclusion of my study abroad trip. I'm not exactly sure what pills those were in those tiny envelops she gave me, and exactly how that peppermint ointment massage works is beyond my Western understanding of medicine and biology, but I'm at full strength and greatful nonetheless. I'm also excited to report that after my group presentation on bicycles in Hanoi tomorrow, I'm pretty much done with all of the academic work on this program. Things are going well here in Hanoi; the group has chilled out a bit, and I'm really looking forward to our retreat next week. I'll be back in Portland May 15th, and stick around long enough for Papa Brown to buy me a beer for my birthday. Are you going to be in town between the 15th and the 23rd? Wanna hang out before I skip over to the Twin Cities? Send me a message, fool.

Gentrification in Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa

2009-05-04T14:11:00.001-03:00

Gentrification in Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Much of the orthodoxy and writing on cities suggests that cities should be read as organisms; millions of disparate, tiny parts working and interacting in various ways to grow, progress, and manuever, and evolve while hopefully avoiding death or distinction. While the city-as-organism model definitely has a handful of flaws (as outlined in our UPSE reading from new york), I think that it is a helpful way to approach the million dollar question about neighborhood sucession and gentrification.

Gentrification in the United States brings about a very particular sort of storyline. The script suggests that a poor, usually nonwhite innercity neighborhood attracts the attention of investors and Richard Florida, creative-class single white yuppies who like the "gritty feel" of the built environment and its proximity to some revived central business district. The renewed interest in these area is often promoted by municipal subsidies desperately clamoring for a tax base and eventually creates a price raise on rents and everyday goods,thus pushing out the original inhabitants of the neighborhood to flagging first ring suburbs or cheaper parts of the country.This plotline seems to fit a handful of situations nicely; detractors bemoan that it's happening in New York's Harlem, it's happening on Chicago's Upper South Side, it's happening to Portland's Alberta Street, it's happening in many American cities where factories, warehouses, and decrepted slums turn out to make great places for condos and Starbucks for childless hipsters and vegan advertising directors.

What's frustrating is that this story is simutanously horrifyingly true and painstakingly false at the same time. As we learned in our case study of "gentrifying" neighborhoods in Cape Town, various sections of the city are always undergoing change and succession and evolution. The whole "city-as-an-organism" thing wouldn't really work if the same neighborhood held the same people with the same backgrounds and same occupations; in fact, the most exciting and original urban spaces I have visited and studied are collected vestiges of dozens of different economic, political and social uses of the landscape, mixed into one gigantic cornocopia with new uses for old people, old buildings, and old street patterns. In short, I am trying to instill that the gradual shift of one neighborhood from occupying one set of characteristics to another over the course of history is inevitable, and hardly something that is a necessary evil.

So when does gentrification happen? If, in the case of the Bokaap, a neighborhood becomes more and more expensive, and residents choose to move out of the neighborhood to cash in on their newly valuable property, one could argue that residents were acting on their own free will, and that very level of agency means that the changes that happened in that neighborhood were not ones of gentrification but instead of one group of people leaving while another entered. This becomes even more intruiging when one considers that the residents who are most adverse to changes in the Bokaap are of a much older generation than those that are about to inherit valuable property and are socially more inclined to cash in on their property for a piece of property out in the northern suburbs. However, many of the changes in the Bokaap neighborhood were not brought about by the free agency of the neighborhood; the rise in tourism, while one of the largest reasons for their increase in housing value, has also craeted unfortunate circumstances, such as the fact that now many restaurants in the Bokaap serve alcohol. If the pattern of lifestyle in the Bokaap is severely disrupted (as in, families in the Bokaap no longer shop at their local stores because of religious custom against alcohol), couldn't this be an example of a neighborhood responding to external factors to make the original inhabitants less welcome in their original community? Is THAT gentrification?

Ruminations on Sapa

2009-05-04T13:37:00.001-03:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Sapa is a remarkable gem of a town situated precariously in the mountains that form the northwestern border of Vietnam from neighboring China. An overnight train and an hour's van ride up a narrow, windy, almost nauseating one lane road leads us to the town advertised in every tourist book, shop and postcard they sell back in Hanoi. Even with all of the photos in my lonely planet book and my own level of familiarity with the small village town (I visited Sapa with my father on vacation three years ago, and eagerly organized a trip up on our IHP stay in Vietnam to share the experience with my friends) the small tourist getaway exudes an aura of distance and removal from the rest of the world; perhaps its that awkward border town of Lao Cai where you deboard the train, or perhaps its the psycological aspect of waking up at a god-awful early morning train station to catch a bus, but without exoticizing the town too much, the surrounding small villages around Sapa really do feel about as far as one can get into the "periphery" away from the world of the 21st century. While the village has hotels, ATMs, and amenities abound, and the town has seen rapid economic development as a result of the blossoming tourist destination (I definitely saw buildings and hotels that were not there when I last visited), you can't "develop" your way out of Sapa's freeing feeling of isolation and remoteness that comes from the stunning, terraced valleys that spread in all directions from the center of the small town. Sure, you may know that an hour's descent back to the railroad station might bring you back to the world, and Sapa is no stranger to internet cafes or the English language, but the sheer journey itself, the boundless mountains, the uncharacteristically cool air and the joy of putting as much physical and psychological distance as one can between their life (back in Hanoi, Europe, the US?) and their body (the Sapa trail to Lon Bac village) make the trip to Sapa one of the most memorable parts of my trip on IHP.

The bummer? I don't think that tourism is ultimately having a net positive impact on the Sapa community. The hills aroudn Sapa are dotted with villages and rice patties maintained by the legions of ethnic Vietnamese minorities (H'mong, Dzao, among many others) that live in the area, and many are understandibly becoming wise to the ways of European languages, bartering and sales. Unfortunately, the way that tourism is being conducted and the large-scale social structures that are perpetuated by tourism dollars may not be currently the best possible vehicle for economic and political empowerment for a largely disadvantaged, impoverished community. I staunchly hold the believe that tourism and travelling can be a force of good in the world (after all, I'm on IHP, I would have to be pretty self-hating or non-introspective if I hadn't cleared that with myself), and when one considers that each tourist spends anywhere between 20-60 bucks in the Sapa economy on meals, souvenirs, tours and hotel rooms, this is quite a lot of money to suddenly start flowing into a valley town that originally was just the largest market in the region for farmers to try and trade their goods. I couldn't get over how many women and children (all young girls) from age 40 to age 4 were ready to speak in fluent english to convince me to buy a scrap of fabric or souvenir; "you buy from me!" they plead, almost all wearing their traditional ethnic clothing with the dyed blue wool.

Here are some policy recommendations for making tourism in Sapa socially sustainable and responsible.
1) Get them kids in school. and pay them to be there. Kids are understandibly choosing to support their families and make their own money by acting as tour guides and taking tourists up and down the foothills to look at all of the villages. While the young girls are making money through this system, they are undoubtedly receiving much less than the tourists paid, since the money seeps through so many middlemen in the travel agency business, and more importantly, every day missed in a classroom context is another possible missed opportunity for economic and political empowerment. While children should obviously feel no pressure to leave their own culture and their own customs behind, and I am taking efforts to avoid romanticizing life in a small ethnic minority community up in the Vietnamese mountains, I do think that education provides the true opportunities for everything from better managing the family farm to finding ways to live a happier life. I feel that without education, these young girls at ages 8, 9 and 10 will in a few years suddenly be too old to give tours, stripped of their innocent cute demeanor that sells so well, and without education they face a bleak life of poverty with the only prospect of skimming a few dollars off of the tourists coming through the hills. The tourism agencies need to institute minimum ages for children to be giving tours, and the schools need to provide economic incentives to keep their kids in the classroom. This happened in the South Bronx, where The Point paid students to get good grades and get involved politically in their community, why couldn't extra tourism dollars fund that?
2) Destroy the gender barrier. This one is really simple in definition, yet difficult to fix. Until we were miles away from Sapa, we saw virtually no local men. While all of the local H'mong women had walked for literally two hours to get to Sapa before the sunrise to greet the vans and buses of tourists with their trinkets to sell, the men remain back at their houses. While it is understandibly problematic to interfere seriously with the gender roles that are largely vestiges of the H'mong tradition, many of the girls we talked to complained that their husbands/brothers weren't tending to the rice fields but instead were "being lazy" or drinking alcohol. There are unfortold reprocussions to this sort of world of gendered economic possiblity, not least of which the increase of sex tourism and kidnapping from across the Chinese border. Young girls need the same opportunities as young boys, and tourism in Sapa cannot expect to produce positive effects on the community if it is so reliant on creating a gendered division of labor.
and
3) Impose a two or three dollar surcharge per ticket on travel agents in Hanoi to go towards a general community development fund. This fund could go towards these new education programs, a microfinance program, a rainyday fund to help prepare for droughts or landslides in either rainfall or tourism, or could even be used to start H'mong and Dzao-owned tourism businesses. You could have the community elect a local council to ensure the efficient spending of these resources, not unlike Porto Alegre's participatory budgeting scheme. Plus, this could really help direct some funds towards roads and infrastructure (water) developments to make sure that farming remains a viable option for families throughout the province.
4) In Lao Cai or elsewhere, develop a student interchange program. I guess all of my policy proposals are really heavy on education, but perhaps thats what I get for spending so much of my weekend in Sapa with children under the age of 18. Some sortof exchange program to get kids out of the village into other educational programs could provide an interesting cultural exchange for all, and might encourage more scholarship or more attention towards the plight of the ethnic minority tribes.
5)A new, specific bureau of government affairs to manage tourism. I have read and heard complaints that the Vietnamese government is a bit slower to act to help the ethnic minorities who live up in the hills; many think that the H'mong are "backward" and the increasing urban/rural divide and pace of Vietnam's economy/globalization are surely not helping bridge this divide. I think that a specific entity of the Communist Party, similiar to the Women's League or the existing Minority League, that would specifically monitor and set goals for progressive tourism policy could be a large step forward.
6)Address the problem of mass-made tourism trinkets. When every single shop sells the exact same scarves and scraps of silk, it's obvious that there's no local entrepreneurship going on here. This is counterproductive to the notion of tourism as bringing up a local community; it merely means someone somewhere has found an object that tourists in Sapa are willing to buy, assuming its "authentic." Exploration should be made in finding ways to produce local trinkets on site in Sapa and pumping the money from unique, handcrafted cultural souvenirs back into the aforementioned fund.

This is the street where I live in Ha Noi.

2009-04-29T14:00:00.001-03:00

This is the street where I live in Ha Noi., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

There are numerous, wonderful charms of the city of Hanoi. Coming from Cape Town and Sao Paulo, it would be pretty easy to write about the almost complete lack of crime in the streets, the lack of divisive social/racial antagonisms splitting the city apart, or the absurd affordability of a bowl of pho noodles. Cape Town and Sao Paulo so efficiently stood as manifestations of Mike Davis' geography of fear; gigantic walls, shocking socioeconomic inequality, and a disquieting nagging feeling of walking aroudn in a dystopian neoliberal global cities made the cities so fascinating to visit, and the last three weeks in Hanoi, while fraught with culture shock and food-related illnesses, have given me at least a glimpse of the way the Urban Global South can follow alternative trajectories. This is not to gloss over Hanoi's struggles in governance (rigid), transportation planning (don't even ask), or the gradual influence of increased investment from foreign entities. It's just that in so many ways, seeing Hanoi through the eyes of this International Honors Program (as opposed to the lens of a tourist as I did three years ago) has piqued not a moral outrage about urban social inequality the way Cape Town and Sao Paulo did but a curiousity about a different narrative of development and economic advancement.

This is a wordy way to say that, while I could write about so many pleasant things in the city of Hanoi (and so many tiny little frustrations that make me anticipate my May 15th arrival in the United States even more), I think that I'm most drawn to the way the city feels like a patchwork quilt of thousands of streetside, Vietnamese renditions of Edward Hopper's infamous Nighthawks Painting. Whether getting up at five in the morning or arriving home at from the late shift at eleven at night (and the Vietnamese work ethic propels many to choose both), the cityscape is covered with impromptu, informal little pho vendors serving out the same food for any meal of the day. Usually lit by harsh flourescent, office park luminaries, it's possible to see groups of Vietnamese, young and old, men and women, huddled in tiny plastic chairs along the streets at any time of day, fighting the humidity with a glass of bia hoi and engaged in friendly, warm conversation. Many a writer has ruminated on The City as a place for lonliness and alienation and contempt for existentialist nihilism that comes with being around so many unfamiliar people, but the tiny pho noodle vendors and their makeshift, portable restaurants set up in streets and gutters and sidewalks and first floor living rooms are emblematic to me of an alternative way to acheive a sense of belonging and a sense of meaning. This is, of course, enhanced by Vietnamese culture's strong preference towards kinship and powerful family ties, the Hanoian humid climate that refuses to unstick to your body, and lack of housing space that therefore encourages citizens to spend their evenings outdoors and outside of family houses. In short, it'd be difficult to build such outdoor communal spaces in Minneapolis in January, or in any city where the vast majority of the citizens can easily hop in their cars back to the outer suburbs to spend their afterhours in climate-controlled, cable television anonymity/bliss.

These feelings of urban anomie are, at least to me, the night owl, exacerbated late at night; in Portland, I can't count the number of good nights shared with friends at 2 in the morning at Hotcake House or Coffee Time. So in Hanoi, where the city veritibly shuts down at eleven every night to get ready for the next early morning, and every single bustling store has closed its gates for the evening and the streets loom largely unlit, the tiny florescent lights at the corners of intersections that illuminate a ten foot white bubble forming a delineated space of social interaction and a good bowl of cheap food, is, to me, the antithesis of alienation in the city.

Good lord, I should finish this paper. Since when did 1500 word essays become so difficult?

Go Blazers in games six and seven! Go Timbers in the homeopener tomorrow night!

Sharing some headphones and a view of the lake.

2009-04-29T13:28:00.001-03:00

Sharing some headphones and a view of the lake., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

An Afternoon in the Old Quarter.

2009-04-17T09:03:00.001-03:00

An Afternoon in the Old Quarter., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Looking back, I've come to realize just how many photos of football, bicycles, and coffee that I've taken on this trip.

Traffic in Ha Noi, Viet Nam

2009-04-13T14:38:00.001-03:00

Traffic in Ha Noi, Viet Nam, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

A numbers game.

2009-04-13T14:35:00.001-03:00

Urban Retreat, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Sometimes, a little fresh air away from the motobikes and pho restaurants will do you some good.

I'm living just north of the old quarter in Ha Noi, Viet Nam, for the next four weeks. Jacob and I have about a forty minute walk by West Lake to where our classes are held, at the Ho Chi Minh Museum.

Let's go through some numbers and costs that explain the mood I'm in right now:
Pho: $1.30
Bia Hoi Ha Noi (Hanoi Draft Beer): $.13
Motorbike ride to class: $2.50
Time that the Liverpool/Chelsea game will be on next week, Hanoi Time: 2:40 am
Games left for the Portland Trailblazers until they play a playoff series, likely against the Rockets, and with as high as the second seed in the West: 2
Number of Years since the Los Angeles Lakers have won in Portland: 4
Points scored by Rudy Fernandez in 2 seconds against the Suns on national TV to end the 3rd quarter: 5
Opinion articles in the Oregonian's editorial page where the head of the BTA FINALLY came out against the Columbia River Crosing: 1
Number of times my host brother Lam said that my roommate Jacob looks like Jason Mraz ("he sing, 'I'm yorr'-horrr-hor-horrrs?"): 1, but it was funny
Time spent looking for this one happening bar with my friends Max and Kira, only to turn up empty when the cab driver dropped us off god knows where on the other side of town: 60 minutes
Number of international soccer games on our satellite tv right now: 4
Time at which I woke up this morning for breakfast: 6:15
Kilometers that a friend Max and I ran last Saturday night to follow a friend we met that night who was riding his motobike: about 1
Number of friends I've gotten to listen to the best band to come out of Portland in a while (and you know that's saying something,) Blind Pilot: dozens
Price of an ice cream cone along West Lake, on the walk back home from class when it's hot and humid: $.15
Number of great vietnamese propoganda signs I've seen: dozens
Days until I'm back in the states: 31
Days until I'm allowed to drink alcohol in states with the desired quantities I've managed to down here in Vietnam, South Africa and Brazil: 38
Days until I'm set up in some oncampus housing back at Macalester: about 50ish
Cost of living on campus this summer: technically free, but I'm sure there are some negative externalities about ten weeks in the dorms
Actual, meaningful blog entries I plan on writing for this over the next two weeks: 9 more to go (this one doesn't count)
Books I read on spring break: 2 (a kickass book on Kinshasa, the capital of DRC, written by an anthropologist and a photographer about the postcolonial struggles of african urbanism. and that Paul Farmer book everyone raves about)
Books on my to-read list for this summer: Seriously 25 right now
Photos left on my camera's memory cards: 1300
Photos I've already taken: about 5000

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dietpoison

My favorite back alley in Hanoi

2009-04-11T17:10:00.000-03:00

My favorite back alley in Hanoi, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I missed Asia.

Cape Town and Environmental Justice

2009-04-11T07:10:00.003-03:00

p>I had begun to throw the concept of "Environmental Justice" around in a few classes I had taken in the past year, bouncing the idea around like a pinball around in my head, sounding out the phrase and teasing out its implications. I thought about it in a handful of contexts, most often in my class with Chris Wells, US Urban Environmental History, although it had been difficult for me to have any emotional attachment to the subject until I wrote a paper about the demolition of a black neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota for the creation of a highway. Biking over Interstate 94 on my way to the Minnesota Historical Society to scourge for sources, the stark reality of a giant corridor dug out of the earth where a particularly poor, black neighborhood once stood became the image I carried with me to understand how the ability to shape, manipulate, extract and use "nature" is not evenly distributed through a society, and that discussions about environmentalism desperately need to be paired with discussions about political agency, social justice, and even racial inequalities. Landscapes, both urban and rural, are inherently laced with clues about which set of priorities and notions of little-e environmental philosophy are held by whichever set of power-brokers are in charge. It takes little work to notice that the distribution of natural resources across urban landscapes is hardly equal; access to recreational nature (beaches/parks), consumptive nature (food), resourceful nature (mining, energy production), and even Muiresque "preserved" nature (wildlife parks, reserves) are often controlled by particular groups of people in a society, and many others in society have to find their own navigation through these systemic inequalities to get access to the "nature" necessary for a sustainably lifestyle.

Avery shows us some landmarks from the Bokaap., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

With this pretext, Cape Town is the most spectacular place in the world to study Environmental Justice. After spending the past few days muddling through clouds and dreary overcast skies in Curitiba and Buenos Aires, our subsequent few weeks in Cape Town reveal a pretty stark, blunt, monumental physical, urban, and social landscape. There are mountains, oceans, tons of open sky, exotic unique plants like fynbos, white people, black people, neither white-nor-black-but-still-maligned people, wealthy people, poor people, unmitigated pollution, virtually worthless systems of garbage collection and no ethos of recycling whatsoever, contests of modernity versus traditionalism, contests about the way the environment should be used between local, regional and global actors, influences on the landscape from places thousands of miles away. The story of Cape Town is just waiting for an astute reinterpretation of a city that has managed (and been managed by) world resources, people, and ideas for hundreds of years. The social and built landscapes of Cape Town are direct creations of an overarching society that likes to create dichotomies and social constructions about everything: urban/rural, urban/natural, black/coloured/white, wealthy/poor. Environmental Justice is not just a question of why black people in Langa don't have access to nice parks or suitable open spaces, but rather a pursuit to understand how a group of people managed to find different ways to differentiate and understand nature and people; rather, exactly who are black people anyway (and who decided that they are black?), and which ways are different subgroups of a population exposed to different sets of resources and experiences? It isn't enough to sit back and exclaim, "well, golly, the unsanitary garbage heaped in Langa's streets and the rat poison that is killing children in Khayelitsha sure is different and unequal from the way that Table Mountain and Cape Point have been canonized as sacred natural sites!" There are sets of political actors who are managing landscapes in this way; nothing is inevitable in the stories of cities.

This is to say that a certain set of political actors decided everything from which pieces of land (and subsequently which flora and fauna in the ecohotspot that is Cape Point, the world's smallest floral kingdom) would be preserved from significant human development, which people would be placed on which lands (and subsequently, how each group of people would have agency to affect/control their own plot), and how the resources in these different spatial locations will move about the city/metropole/region/country/continent/planet. I hate to make the comparison between "invasive species" and the racial subcategories of non-indigenous people residing in Cape Town because of the negative connotations implied by saying that certain people "don't belong," but the comparison is helpful, I think, in understanding that Cape Town has been created through so many contestations between subjects and objects originating both locally in the Western Cape and from far away colonizers in Britain and Holland and farther away colonized south east Asia. The skyscrapers, the style of the parks, the roads, the diets, the plants and animals, the racial constructions, so many tangible and intangible forces that constitute Cape Town exist thanks to a compromise between so many ideologies. I do find it helpful to think of Cape Town as a melting pot of so many different organisms that are fighting survival and for David Harvey's infamous Right to the City. Cape Town is a location on a historical trade route that has moved so many different people, plants, and animals onto the peninsula from so many different places around the world, be it commodities or people (or in the case of slaves, both) of British, Dutch, Indonesian, Malaysian, descent. Not all ideologies are weighted equal, of course; District Six as a delineated space within the city is currently the blank field that it is due to the historical shifting power balances and the different ways different ruling elites have tried to reshape the area for their interests, and the obvious historical ramifications of Apartheid have strongly shaped which people live in which areas and access which resources.
Some plants came to Cape Town and successfully took over the countryside (often with human help) both for human consumption and because they proved much more adaptable than the natural species of fynbos that originally grew.

Afternoon breeze and the laundry out to dry., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

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Perhaps the most rewarding part about studying Environmental Justice is to find the interventions against this form of spatial and resource-based inequality. Whether visiting the Edith Stevens park, a bastion of ecological protection in the heart of Cape Flats, or visiting the Sustainability Institute that found ways to compost their own shit, or listening to Lance von Sittert's presentation on the way Table Mountain is being reinterpreted through the stories and uses of black African history to give the mountain to all of the city's inhabitants, its heartening to remember that these environmental injustices never happen without a fight; there's always concerned people out there, attempting to stage their own event to counter these systemic inequalities. Instead of seeing the Mountain from the water as the perfect backdrop to the perfect, "nonAfrican" African city (as problematic as that is), I grew to really like the view of Table Mountain from Langa. Sure, the view from the east townships destroys the notion that the Mountain is perfectly, picturesquely flat, and the mountain is less image-worthy when the view is obscured by the power plant, underlying slums, and the like (especially considering you can't even see the mountain at night since we weren't allowed to go out at night in the first place), but then again, this is the way that the majority of Cape Town's citizens figuratively and literally see the mountain, and thus, it reflects a fascinating, sordid truth about life in the Mother City. You won't hear this story next year, when Cape Town hosts the 2010 World Cup; after all, urban planners took pains to place the stadium in the downtown City Bowl, where Table Mountain will be seen from the water on televisions across the planet. Yet discussing and acting on the political, economic, and environmental reasons that the view of Table Mountain from the East is so different from the view of Table Mountain from the West is the only way that these inequalities can be addressed.

Wish you were here, v4

2009-04-11T05:37:00.001-03:00

Wish you were here, v4, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

spring break 2009

Wish you were here,

2009-04-11T05:30:00.001-03:00

Wish you were here,, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Home sweet home in Langa.

2009-04-11T05:29:00.003-03:00

Home sweet home in Langa., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I lived with Avery in Langa.

South Africa's Opposition Party, the DA, have a logo that looks oddly familiar.

2009-04-11T05:29:00.001-03:00

South Africa's Opposition Party, the DA, have a logo that looks oddly familiar., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Langa, Cape Town, with Table Mountain and Lion's Head in the distance.

Change your look? Yes we can!

2009-04-11T05:23:00.001-03:00

Change your look? Yes we can!, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa.

Ha Noi

2009-04-10T08:30:00.001-03:00

Pigeon's head., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Okay, so if this photo looks familiar, its because this photo is from that crazy Spring Break 2006 trip I took with Papa Brown. Photos of Vietnam 2009 are likely to be online soon, as well as our spring break and all the photos from Langa... Apparently I'm pretty behind. Dammit.

We have safely landed in Hanoi, and I'm surprised by the level of detail to which I remember how most of the downtown area is laid out. I even remembered specific restaurants, and I visited my old hotel about an hour ago.

. I have a ton more photos to upload, and since I decided to spend my time on that miserable 12 hour flight from Cape Town watching the Simpsons and furiously scribbling and doodling instead of writing in my urbanity journal I'm keeping for this trip, I've got about eight rough draft entries that I intend to publish over the next week.

This pigeon's head was delicious, for what it is worth. Tam Biet until then.

sb09 sa.

2009-04-02T14:36:00.001-03:00

Oh snap., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Spring Break on the northern Atlantic Coast of south africa for a wonderful week, starting tomorrow. After that, flying to Vietnam. Hope all is well in whichever corner of the world you reside.

One of my favorites.

2009-03-25T12:49:00.001-03:00

One of my favorites., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Aaron: "And what did you think about Sarah Palin? Did you hear about Sarah Palin last year."
My Xhosa Host Mother in Langa, whos name means "successful" but is a whopping 14 letters long and I couldn't possibly spell it correctly so I won't even try: "I won't say anything. That's your country. That's your mess."

That doesn't even compare to the responses I received in Brazil. Deni said something along the lines of "that woman is absolutely crazy," and when I explained how fucked America would have been with her as president to Kika, my mother in Curitiba, she responded that she thanks god everyday that Palin isn't calling the shots right now. You should have seen the look on her face when I explained aerial wolf hunting.

Langa is intense. I have to be home by 7 every day, because the township is pretty sketch after dark, and we have to take a series of little minivans to get around to anywhere, but my host family feeds me and Avery very well, and her four year old grandson is possibly the most entertaining and intelligent little bugger I've ever met.

2009-03-22T09:54:00.001-03:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

It is difficult for me to express just how much I wanted to see penguins on a beach. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. When I was down in the dumps last November dealing with a ton of school work and a ton of stress, the thought of seeing penguins on a beach kept me going, and alas, my waiting is officially over after a wonderful trip down to Cape Point and Boulder Beach last weekend. THEY WERE SO ADORABLE.

Today I leave for the township of Langa for a week and a half. After that, I've got about a week to backpack along the southern coast of South Africa, only to make it back to Cape Town in time for my flight to Vietnam. I'm going to miss hearing the Call to Prayer bellow through the streets of the Bokaap, although I'm excited to actually live outside of the City Bowl and see more of the city. I know I say this often, but the internet situation is unknown; I've just uploaded a kajillion photos to flickr, so check that out while you are waiting to hear more word of me.

2009-03-21T11:02:00.001-03:00

This one is for Bonnie, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

This is a photo of Kate Sokol from last Sunday, a wonderful excursion down to Cape Point.

LET IT BE KNOWN.

2009-03-18T13:47:00.001-03:00

My last game of the season, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

It looks to be almost certain that on Friday, Portland Oregon will be announced as the site for a new MLS team to play starting in April 2011. That gives me about nine months after graduation to get settled back in Portland to be there in PGE Park just in time for our opening match against the hated Seattle Sounders. Coupled with the ascension of the Blazers in recent years, it's going to be a great couple years for Portland sports. I can't wait to rent an apartment in north portland and bike downtown every day to work, timbers games, coffee shops, house shows, concerts in basements, voodoo doughnuts, and the like. All I have to do is score a sweet job fighting gentrification or promoting alternative transportation; everything about my idealized perfect portland life is falling into place.

I'm still in Cape Town, and the city is still beautiful. I never have time to get in depth about things I'd like to blog about, like how this is a ridiculous place for a city, or how neoliberalism sucks and is transforming the way cities exist in the 21st century (in especially profound ways for cities in the global south), how much people overlook ecology, and the generally problematic exportation and adoration of American suburbs in cities around the world. Nevertheless, I am well, and I have another couple days with my family in the Bokaap before we move out to families in Langa, a township on the periphery of town. I then have a week vacation to myself, and as of right now, I'm thinking I'm going to follow the aforementioned Amanda Garant on the backpacker's express "BazBus", and see how far around the coast I can make it before I have to hightail it back to Cape Town for a flight to Vietnam.

Last night, we celebrated St Patricks Day at a jazz club, and came back to our houses in the Bokaap and watched a fire burn along the edge of Table Mountain, with the city in the foreground covered in smoke. Scary, but beautiful. Photos are following; I'm terrified to take my camera anywhere with the risk of mugging, so I might wait until we get to Langa or perhaps even Vietnam to start extensively uploading photos of penguins, Cape Point, Valhalla Park, and anywhere else my travels take me. Keep in touch dear reader, I am only an email away at ambrown at macalester dot edu, and I would love to hear from you.

The Zen of Amanda Garant.

2009-03-16T13:44:00.001-03:00

The Zen of Amanda Garant., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

We climbed Lion's Head at sunset to catch the view of both the sunset over the ocean and the moonrise over the city to the east, and Amanda, in one of her many spiritual moments where she stands alone with a giant smile on her face while taking in the incredible scenery, managed to stand in the perfect spot to get a really nice photo.

Cape Town under the mountains and moonlight

2009-03-16T13:41:00.001-03:00

Cape Town under the mountains and moonlight, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

This picture reminds me of all those nights up on Pittock Mansion, with Alex Leeding, where we would see how many streets and roads we could identify while looking down on beloved Portland, counting off all the streets that we could recognize, watching Sandy and Burnside and the interstates snake through the city, eating voodoo doughnuts, even if its one in the morning there's still traffic on the streets somewhere. Sometimes, it is only in the dark that we can see the patterns and the different ways we live in and interact with the urban environment. In Cape Town, it's particularly pronounced: it's so easy to see the environmentally protected Table Mountain, jutting from the urban landscape above the city and the oceans, and how so much of Cape Flats in the horizon is set up to allow people to get in and out of the tiny, concentrated downtown of Cape Town that hugs its sharp, nonnegotiable natural boundaries. Of course, with a little extra knowledge of the area, you could also see how in the Cape Flats in the horizon, the areas with fewer lights are the Townships, the informal settlements without adequate street lights, or you could talk about the development patterns and the city by the alignment of major roads.

The view from my window. Bokaap, Cape Town, South Africa.

2009-03-16T13:32:00.001-03:00

The view from my window. Bokaap, Cape Town, South Africa., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

This is the view from my bedroom window. Somebody call Andrew Sullivan.

Cape Town

2009-03-14T09:09:00.001-03:00

Cape Town, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I just uploaded around fifty photos to flickr, go check 'em out.

More to come on African Urbanism, Table Mountain, and 90 Rand bottles of wine.

Ordem e Progresso.

2009-03-08T07:30:00.001-03:00

on the river, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

In reflecting on the past few weeks in Brazil (and comparing those weeks to the urbane, majestic landscape I find here in Cape Town, South Africa) I can't help but think of the phrase Ordem e Progresso that is proudly displayed across the Brazilian flags I saw flapping in the wind along buildings on Paulista Avenue or enthusiastically waved at soccer games and Carnaval. While "Order" and "Progress" are two concepts that admittedly aren't obvious when seeing either the utter chaos that defines Sao Paulo's pace or the grim realities of life in the favelas, there is some sort of inherent logic to the way the country is modernizing and preparing itself for the next century's commerce and culture. Who stands to benefit from the reinforcement of this "Order" and "Progress?" How are the various actors shaping their country's own order and progress? These questions are especially relevant in Curitiba, a self-proclaimed sustainable ecotopia that makes its money from auto manufacturers and provides ample public transportation so long as you are wealthy enough to afford land inside city limits.

I climbed Table Mountain yesterday, and the view was spectacular. Who on earth thought to build a city on this windswept, jagged peninsula at the edge of the continent?

Hope everyone had a good founders day.

Curitiba, Parana State, Brazil

2009-03-05T15:03:00.001-03:00

Curitiba, Parana State, Brazil, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I have arrived in Cape Town, and am currently trying to simultaneously pick up ground on lost sleep and use Table Mountain and the Ocean to oreint myself to the city. While I figure that all out in our hostel for the next few days before we move in with my host family, here is a pretty picture of Curitiba and the coastal mountains that seperate the city from the ocean.

Saudade.

2009-03-04T03:54:00.001-03:00

Colombo, outside of Curitiba., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

This is where I was living in Curitiba.

New York, New York, USA - Jan 19 to Jan 29
São Paulo and Curitibas, Brazil Jan 30 to Mar 4
Cape Town, South Africa Mar 5 to Apr 10
Hanoi, Vietnam Apr 11 to May 15th
Twin Cities this summer! (confirmed.)

Am I seriously already leaving Brazil?

Carnaval 2009

2009-03-02T07:22:00.001-03:00

Carnaval 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Backlogged...

2009-03-02T03:45:00.002-03:00

Tchao, São Paulo, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I hate the "OMGZORS I AM A LAME BLOGGERRRRR <3333" entries, as I´m sure you do too. At least my "i´ll get around to blogging eventually" posts come with photos!

But in all seriousness, to prove that I have been furiously scribbling notes in my DSG notebook (don´t ask) about topics related to urbanity and my travels, and to prove it to you, here´s a list of interesting things I may blog about before my flight to Afrique du Sud on Wednesday morning. I assure you that my extensive blogging soon to come will provide much enjoyment and pleasure, and at the very least, a decent set of procrastination for my friends in Minnesota, who I hear just received a gigantic dumping of snow from a blizzard.

1) Carnaval as a sanitized spectacle, stripped of most significant meaning yet still bewilderingly incredible to watch and partake in.
2) Reforma Agrária in Brazil, and my thoughts on challenging the entire system of landownership through which I am familiar with.
3) The phrase "Consuming Culture" (I´ve been thinking about this one for a while, it´ll be a highlight of this blog when it gets cranked out.
3a) Coffee, and milk: how are they different in Brazil, and how is this related to everything from agricultural policy, an ugly history of imperialism and Starbucks?
4) The relationship between São Paulo and Curitiba, the city in which I am studying now. This one will also be a top entry, really.
5) My host family. This blog entry will be a lot less analytical, but they are absolutely, definitely worthy of a few posts of their own. We live outside of the pristine city of Curitiba near unpaved dirt roads, João and Gabriel are both tweens that are simultaneously wonderful and exhausting, their single mom works 65 hours a day at three different jobs, and their extended family of 25 all live on the same block, and there is only one cousin who speaks any english whatsoever. I am, for what its worth, friends with all of them on Orkut, which is pretty much if you put facebook, myspace, a pornography website and a bunch of bright flashing obnoxious colors in a blender and created the ultimate social networking website (which is, of course, owned by Google).
6) The shape of Curitiba. The linear city? Also, the role of starchitects, urban planners, and the "planning elite" who quite literally get to shape the city in placemaking, sustainability, and empowering everybody else. Oscar Niemeyer´s museum, with this huge floating eye, is pretty awesome, but to what purpose?

That is all for now. It is almost four in the morning and I need to finish this ethnography paper. Saudé! Also, a shout out to my loveliest friend Rachel Fortuna; she is having a rough week and you should send your thoughts to her and her beloved dog Macy.

My 13 year old host brother.

2009-02-26T08:37:00.001-03:00

My 13 year old host brother., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Wait until I tell you about my host family here in Curitiba. I spent the day surrounded by extended family, none of whom speak any english. I met grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and was generally overwhelmed the entire day. I just posted like fifty photos of our visit to the Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais sem terra settlement, go check them out on flickr.

Curitiba is a lot like Portland, and if this is so, we live in the Troutdale of Curitiba.

Good Morning São Paulo

2009-02-25T01:30:00.001-03:00

Good Morning São Paulo, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I am currently in a hotel, after being in transit from São Paulo and an MST settlement and heading towards Curitba, where we will stay with a new host family tomorrow. I´m up late for no reason, and i still have a small paper to write for tonight (hooray!), but since Í´m getting lonely and all, here are some addresses to which you should send some postcards. Another girl on the program requested mix CDs of new hip music and of crappy American food, but I´ll settle for updates from the Macalester bubble or from wherever else in the world you might be hanging out.

March 4th through early April:

Aaron Danger Brown
c/o Sally Frankental
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701
South Africa

mid April through May 15th.

IHP c/o Hoai Anh Tran
For Aaron Danger Brown
E4 Ciputra Rum 804
Phu Thuong Ward
Tay Ho District
Hanoi, Vietnam

Please keep in mind how fast (read:slow) mail takes, and plan accordingly.

Having the trip of a lifetime.

On "Taking" Photos, Carnival and leaving São Paulo

2009-02-22T16:58:00.004-03:00

Stare-down, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Portland, Orygun, Cascadia - Dec 15 to Jan 19
New York, New York, USA - Jan 19 to Jan 29
São Paulo, Brazil Jan 30 to Feb 22
Curitibas, Brazil, Feb 25 to Mar 4
Cape Town, South Africa Mar 5 to Apr 10
Hanoi, Vietnam Apr 11 to May 15th

I bought my first digital camera the fall of my senior year of high school, after having a dorky interest in Photography spurned by my father, my friends Sharat and Alex, and a few family vacations where it felt so necessary to capture the essence of wherever I was in some sort of image to take home. It was a respectable Canon point and shoot, and the camera became attached to my right hand by the end of my senior year. My photos were never really that fantastic, but I whored them out on flickr and used a somewhat religious fervor to tag and group my photos to get attention, and I ended up getting a handful of photos into Flickr´s Explore. The winter of my freshman year of college, I bucked up and bought my baby Nikon D80 that I have now, a mammoth DSLR on which I have taken tens of thousands of photos, to multiple music concerts and festivals, through the hottest summer days in Portland to the worst coldsnaps in Saint Paul, to sunrises and sunsets, to at least seven countries, to beaches and cities, to lakes and parties, and even, once, to the top of an active volcano. A year as the school newspaper´s photography editor pushed me to think objectively, as though I was a fly in the room, and to take interesting photos of the boring speakers or new recycling initiatives that inevitably comprised the college´s weekly news. While this screams of an entry from the blog stuffwhitepeoplelike, I am happiest when I am biking somewhere around the Twin Cities, feeling caffeine flow through my system and stopping to whip my camera out of my messenger bag and take a photo of a nice urban landscape. I also invested in some toy film cameras as well, and over the past few months I´ve been slowly working on understanding my dad´s old film SLR that I robbed from his closet about a year ago. Thanks to the degree to which I´ve managed to keep a camera within arms reach over the past four years, I have what I would consider to be a pretty impressive collection of visual images that represents just about everywhere that I have been around the planet for the past three and a half years. Many of my photos aren´t that great (especially the old ones) and I can hardly claim to really, truly understand the intricacies of photography the way that professionals, journalists and artists do, but I enjoy finding ways to frame images, people, and places where I am in some sort of memorable, interesting way.

The point of this blog entry was to ask the simple question: why? Upon looking at my flickr stream, going all the way back to the days in E-hall at Sunset High School, it is pretty interesting to see just how many photos I have taken, how many times I have put a proverbial and literal lens between me and a subject I wished to document. While all those new, flashy point-and-shoot cameras have gigantic LCD screens on their backs and people can take photos while holding their camera at arms length, all of my cameras demand that I look through the viewfinder, thereby inherently distancing myself from a panoramic world in which I stand, and find a limited 4x6 area in which some part of my surroundings are framed and depicted. Furthermore, once I have found a particular frame I wished to leash around a subject, and played with whatever sort of lighting/shutter/apature/film speed/color setting that represents my artistic view on it, I press a button, and the photo is forever stored as a jpg file with thousands and thousands of little pixels of varying hues, waiting for me to find a computer and upload it. And then there! I have proof I saw this particular image, I was somehow related or proximate to this particular combination of time and place, and through the means of the internetz I can show that I WAS THERE.

Diadema Favela, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I guess I´m still beating around the bush about the original question, as to why to photograph. As my study abroad program tours Sao Paulo, at any given moment at least 75% of us have cameras on our body, ready at any moment to document any particular moment so that we can upload it to facebook and flickr and impress our friends with the absurd things we´ve seen. Often we pose; hey, look, here I am on top of a very tall building with an incredible view, let it be known that I WAS HERE, and I have moved on to somewhere else where I WILL ALSO BE SEEN, and MY EXISTANCE HERE WILL BE DOCUMENTED. Considering even the cheapest cameras cost about $200, and my baby cost conciderably more than that, and flight travel of almost any sort necessary to visit far away countries is exorbitantly expensive, I often see my desire to chronicle my ability to go to cool places as a luxury, with mobility and documentation as priviledges not afforded to all. This becomes even more frustrating when our program visits Brasil´s sprawling favelas; why am I taking a photo of these kids standing outside their tiny shack of a house? Even more discouraging is when my desires to photograph the shockingly destitute is multiplied among our group as a whole; suddenly, we are the paparazzi, a swarm of mostly-american kids trying to best chronicle what we have seen, and what we will be able to freely escape upon the timely arrival of our bus back to our comfortable homestays. To be fair, these photos can serve a point, and can work towards positive agendas; being able to look through old photographs can help reshape forgotton memories, and there are countless examples of photojournalism and art that have served important causes.

In a related note, Friday night was Carnival. While São Paulo´s Carnival is a shadow of the Carioca parade that will dominate international headlines in the upcoming days, the feat is undoubtedly impressive: at least a dozen samba schools have a full hour to march down the Sambadromo, each school with around three thousand people and divided into subgroups all organized and decorated around a particular theme, with much singing, dancing, euphoria, and nudity. I was fortunate enough to be able to march in the Carnival with the first school of the night, Escola de Peruche, and then watch the rest from the stadium seating that lines the constructed avenue, the sanitized arena that represents the original streets where communities gathered and took over neighborhoods for their own causes. While I have a bazillion thoughts about Carnival and how it might be one of the greatest experiences I´ve had in my entire life, I did not have a camera with me. For the most outlandish, ostentious, colorful, meticulously planned (and framed?) event I´ve ever attended, I went sans camera, since my hulking Nikon would be a bit of a bummer while dancing the Samba in front of the giant crowds. While many of the other kids on the program had cameras and took some incredible photos, (and Hayden´s blog gives a pretty good detail of what went down), I had no choice but to not distance myself from the event and watch the glitter float down from the sky with my own eyes, without the help of a camera lens (although my lenses of my glasses sure helped). Carnival can´t really be documented or described, one of our readings described, only experienced. And I can only conclude that the same is true for travelling in general. In fact, taking photos probably makes it harder to truly experience anything; the necessary fudging with camera controls and calculating light/apature ratings put a strain on one´s abilities to smell the sewage in the water in Diadema, to feel the combination of smog and sweat that hangs heavy in the subway stations, or to even be able to treat others as equals. When I walk in with my 135mm lens and attempt to use it to distance myself from my subject by pressing that shutter button, I am quite literally "taking" a photo; I am not, as photojournalism as a profession and medium so desperately attempts to claim, merely a fly on the wall, but a living, breathing person often attempting to put other living, breathing people into some sort of frame that communicates the world I would be actively describing if I wasn´t actually ratcheting up the shutter speed. Unfortunately, this is something that I can´t immediately resolve without entirely dropping photography, and that´s something I´m hardly prepared to do at the moment. I guess I can only try to continue to be conscious of what I´m taking photos of, and continue to critique myself as to why I want to be seen in a certain environment, why I want others to be seen in a certain environment, and what purpose my photos are serving and will serve as I return home.

I´m leaving São Paulo tomorrow. I´m going to miss this absurd city. I will miss Aldeni, my host mom, and her high-pitched voice and incredible cooking, and I will miss the hyper-concentrated tension that takes shape in everything from the rain clouds to traffic congestion to social inequity, and I will definitely miss the hipster bar Menos we found near Paulista that played Spoon, The Smiths, The Postal Service, Q and not U, Belle and Sebastian, the Breeders, Modest Mouse, and Wilco, but I am excited for a change of scenery. I am looking forward to a breath of fresh air (literally) in Curitibas, and my next host family sent me an incredibly adorable email. Before we go to Curitibas, we´re stopping in with MST, a radical Brazilian land reform group, which will likely prove to be pretty interesting. And on final note, this marks the end of my stay with my roommate here in São Paulo, Michael, who has been absurdly nice in letting me use his laptop to waste copious amounts of time on the internet; expect fewer entries and musings and photographs in the weeks to come.

Minnesota has viewed this blog 26 times, and Oregon´s at 23, while the city of São Paulo leads all civic municipalities with 42. I love geeking out over that.

Return, I will, to Old Brazil...

IHPers explore Sao Paulo

2009-02-19T02:37:00.001-03:00

IHPers explore Sao Paulo, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Diadema, Brazil

2009-02-18T03:14:00.001-03:00

Diadema, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

One more photo while we're at it.

"If I were starting a business, it would be in either concrete or hair gel. I'd be the richest man in Brazil."

2009-02-18T02:38:00.005-03:00

Avenue Paulista - Sao Paulo, Brazil, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Some people were complaining about the look of this blog, so I've done some HTMLing, and added my top 100 favorite blogs to the sidebar. Now you can procrastinate just like I do!

This is a quick entry to write about the horrendously intense clouds that were looming over Avenue Paulista this afternoon. The day had started with an unbearable 90 degrees of heat and humidity and awfulness, but as the day wore on, and I know this is a cheap cliche but I'm running with it, you could palpably feel the tension in the sky as the clouds rolled in and got ready to rain like all get out as it tends to do here in Sao Paulo. Granted, this afternoon we were spared the onslaught, but after years and years of Portland's six-month someone-left-the-faucet-on-upstairs drizzle, the sheer volume of the water falling from the sky is quite impressive. Even the storms in Minnesota's summer, complete with afternoons spent in the basement listening to the radio for information on tornadoes, doesn't quite compare. Sao Paulo is a pretty tense city; the streets are loud and full of cars that won't cede an inch to pedestrians, the pace is fast and the fumes noxious, and the general concrete fortifications that parcel out this entire city create a pretty stressful metropolis. I've already written some on the way safety is constructed spatially and it's relationship to health, and considering how much of a beating Sao Paulo has already given to my lungs (pollution), my liver (caipirinhas), and now my heart (all this stress) it becomes a lot easier to see the tolls and frustrations with urbanity that have long driven everyone from Thoreau to the Brady Bunch to my parents to choose shelter by living in the suburbs. I wrote about New York a few weeks ago, comparing the city to Anne Spirn's conceptual Granite Garden, but here in Sao Paulo the term "Granite Jungle" seems more fitting; Sao Paulo humid, sticky, and full of the invasive species of homo concreteus-sprawlicus that suggests that guiding growth of the city is impossible. After a particularly busy day on the train system today, a suburban commuter line pulled above ground to a neck of town I had never visited before; the urban landscape still continued in all directions, as far as I could see. The enormity and sheer size of Sao Paulo remains conceptually out of my grasp, especially as a kid used to living within a mile of Portland's Urban Growth Boundary. But I digress. I have more that I want to write about water in the city of Sao Paulo (specifically in the way that the rivers have been straight-jacketed with concrete and asphalt, like everything else in this city, and the torrential summer floods turn the steep city street gutters into gushing streams, guiding the water to who-knows-where downstream where someone less fortunate probably lives) but I should be sleeping to rest up for Carnival this weekend, the futebol game tomorrow, and hell, even some academic work somewhere in there.

To end on a happy note, I arrived early to the Metro station today, and while flustering about my generally horrendous Portuguese, the woman working at the convenience store took a liking to me and, after asking where I was from, gave me my coffee for free. This only really saved me about forty five cents - the Real/Dollar conversion rate is generous - and they only serve coffee around here in the tiniest thimble-like shot glasses, but it made for a good start to my day. I've also been meaning to write about experiencing culture through literally consuming it in the form of Brazilian takes on pizza, sushi, mangoes, alcohol, and the like, but that post will come in time too, I guess.

On another happy note, I received the most adorable email from my next host family in Curitibas. I'm pretty sad to leave Aldeni, my mom-away-from-mom who feeds me super well and greets me with a long, cheerful "Oi!" every time I come home from class, but this program is of course continuing at break neck speed. I've been on IHP for about a month?! What?!

Casa do Hip Hop, Diadema Brazil

2009-02-16T22:28:00.001-03:00

Casa do Hip Hop, Diadema Brazil, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"Return, I will, to old Brazil..."

Paulistanos

2009-02-16T02:09:00.001-03:00

Kids, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

"Anyone who predicts the death of cities has already met their spouse".
-Clay Shirky, Here Come's Everybody.

Some sort of holiday passed this weekend back in the states about love and relationships and Hallmark cards and those heart-shaped candies that are delicious in January but always manage to be pretty stale and chewy by the time the actual day itself rolls around. But yes, Valentine's Day. Here in Sao Paulo, there was no perceptible uptick in romance, lust and love, but then again, it would be difficult for people in this city to live more passionately anyway. In my travels around the city, love is surprisingly in the air around every turn; couples seem to really get into tonsil hockey pretty much anywhere, whether on the street, the 701U onibus that takes me to class, the Universidade cafeteria, bars and restaurantes, wherever, really. With a quick conversation and a "você quer ficar comigo?" almost any two clubbing brazilians will swap saliva for a while and then get back to the club, commitment-free, to see who else is around. Kissing isn't just for hardcore making out, either; it's traditional to kiss someone on the left side of their face when first meeting them, a practice that I find fascinating because of what it says about construction of gender relations (men never greet other men with a kiss, only man/woman and woman/woman) and the different sort of cultural understandings of personal space, physical intimacy, and "closeness" different societies create for themselves.

Talking about "closeness" in Brazil is a pretty decent segway, really, into talking about the urban form here in Sao Paulo. My study abroad program has done a pretty stellar job of encouraging us to explore and understand the urban fabric here in a city teeming with twenty million people, unbearable heat, and blunt social inequality. In a city with such absurd power imbalance and a premium for basic social services, the differences of Paulistano lifestyles and abilities for to control their surrounding environment create blatantly absurd landscapes. On consecutive days we visited a fortified enclave of million-dollar condominium towers in suburban Morumbi followed by a visit to a Favela, a courageous undertaking by urban homeless to reclaim unused private land and scour for discarded concrete to build an informal, undocumented neighborhood. The contradictions between these two landscapes are many, and I was really happy to see that one of our readings referenced Mike Davis and his notion about the creation of a geography of fear. Are people in those high towers, with 150 security personnel and gates and guarded entries, really safe at night? Do they feel safe at night? Are the people in the tiny shacks and beer-bottle-window favelas, with neighborhoods ardently guarded by druglords and an unspoken dominant power hierarchy, really unsafe at night? Do they feel unsafe at night? We had a fantastic speaker last week that really challenged our notions about safety, and how its constructed spatially, and I couldn't help but link it to health. In the city of Sao Paulo, with traffic galore, everyone feels safer using an automobile to get around, and most cars own the streets by even run red lights at night to avoid carjacking. Yet the air pollution is abundant here; every day's worth of air here is equivalent to smoking three cigarettes, a nasty, uncomfortable pollution that clings to your skin in the muggy weather and never quite gets scrubbed off, much of it mostly related to the supreme reliance of cars necessary to get around the city. While kidnappings are rampant here in Sao Paulo, I'd argue the nasty air here is just as likely to kill you. Perhaps in the 21st century, its time for cities to start developing a geography of fear that doesn't build walls and install fortified security cameras but instead well-lit mass transit, wind turbines and sidewalks.

This computer's battery is low, and while I want to write so much more about my trip, I probably shouldn't, at least not tonight. I apologize for cutting my last entry short (i think my roommate clicked "post" before I was ready to), and I'll try and keep current with whatever I'm up to. It's Sunday, we watched a great football game today, I had the best pizza of my life last night at three in the morning, Carnival is this next weekend, and I leave for MST and Curitibas sometime next week. I apologize for my above attempt at linking my experiences to Valentine's day, and doing so a day late anyway. I've already been on IHP for about a month?!

Tudo Bem.

Life in the Cidade

2009-02-13T21:37:00.001-02:00

Life in the Cidade, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

According to GOOGLE ANALYTICS, the link to this little ol' blog of mine from Kira's Out of a Suitcase has resulted in a whopping six hits from Poughkeepsie, New York

The Summer's Life is Good

2009-02-13T17:29:00.001-02:00

The Summer's Life is Good, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Still alive, having a great time in São Paulo. I´ve been collecting a handful of scribbled notes about things I want to blog about, so stay on the edge of your seats, a significant update may be coming your way this weekend.

Happy Birthday Oregon! 150 years, and never looked better.

Ilhabela

2009-02-09T20:41:00.001-02:00

Ilhabela, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Sure beats Minnesota right about now.

More ruminations on contested spaces and colors.

2009-02-09T16:18:00.000-02:00

The IHP program takes our classes at Universidade Mackenzie, which is some private school about the size of Macalester a good 45 minute walk from my host family's house in Pinheiros. Being summer and all here (I know, in February, crazy, right?) this is the beginning of the semester for Mckenzie students, and for many freshman, their first week of college. While Orientation is always a big deal at Macalester, it doesn't quite prepare to the revelry and ridiculousness of Orientation week here in Sao Paulo. On our walk to school last week, we encountered an entire group of students, covered in bright paint colors, throwing eggs at each other and shaving their heads as part of a ritualistic beginning of their studies at university. We could hear their celebrations all day in our classroom (which made the presentations somewhat hard to sit through), and after class a few of us joined this gigantic party that had formed in the neighborhood streets surrounding the school. Colors, colors everywhere, and coolest of all, there were so many kids streaming out of the bars that they took over the streets, stopping traffic and celebrating in a gigantic summer's party.

Later that week, we went to a Samba School, in which the group is eagerly practicing for the upcoming celebration of Carnival, and they too were able to formally close down the streets so that the 50 part drumline, the dancers and the singers could practice strutting their music and costumes. They played one song for about twenty minutes, which had a chorus about how Samba is in everyone's DNA, and watching this tiny older woman move to the beat and shout every word of every song made me think about how lame America is and how much I wish Americans made it a point to celebrate life more often. There's something fantastically emblematic about shutting down the streets for cars, stopping traffic and formal commerce so that the entire block can be turned into a setting for a party with cheap, informal food shops, lots and lots of dancing that goes on all night, and an opportunity to get out and reclaim all of that public space for yourself.

And to speak of contested space, you can't talk about cities without talking about density. I think the first time I really noticed it on this trip was in New York, where I would have difficulty maneuvering around the tiny tables at cramped restaurants, each arranged to fit as many people into the place as possible. There is such a premium on space, such a demand to use it efficiently and for a profit, that the whole island of Manhattan was built on a grid to make it easier for speculators hundreds of years ago to purchase their plot and make their investments. Here in Sao Paulo, I see the contests of density not so much in restaurants as in traffic. Cars flood the streets in Sao Paulo, and traffic is a mess as people use buses, subways, cars, and even helicopters for the very rich to get around this sprawling metropolis. On Consolacao, a major road leading towards our University, there are miles of buses clogged on the bus lane, each bus beyond capacity with heads sticking out of windows to grasp a bit of less-humid summer air, while the next two lanes in each direction are full of sparcely populated cars, each comfortably sitting in their own spheres of comfort, a space in which 15 people would fit with the same density as the bus. I can't help but think about the notion of transportation justice, as we read and hear about poor construction workers and house maids who commute hours upon hours, standing on buses to get into the inner city and retreat to their favelas or farther outposts away from our garden city, well kept neighborhoods.

Speaking of colors, I am horrendously red from my trip to Ilhabela, which might be one of the most serene places I have visited on earth. I will write more about all that later, but I'm trying to keep my posts short and relevant, neither of which will happen if I allow myself to continue rambling on. Life is good, and I am sunburned.

Third Largest City in the world

2009-02-03T22:47:00.001-02:00

Third Largest City in the world, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

20 million is a lot of people.

As I think of the next thing worth blogging about, be sure to check out my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dietpoison. I post the best photos here, or at least the ones most pertinent to whatever I'm thinking about, but I'll be keeping my flickr fresh, at least until we leave for Curitibas. I'm fortunate to have a nice (read: understanding) roommate that is allowing me to relinquish my internet needs for the next few weeks by letting me use his computer to updatez my google readerz and see the top stories (Daschle? Transit Stimulus Bills? Blazers over Hornets? Funny hipster runoff posts?) and update this blog. My family is absurdly wonderful to me, Aldeni makes me a giant plate of food every night, and her chirpy English is better than my emerging (read: nonexistant) Portuguese. Things are looking as though we'll be heading to Ilhabela this weekend, an island a few hours northeast of here out in the Atlantic covered in rainforest, and I'm sure that'll bring about many pretty photos, stories, and blogworthy ideas. Until then, I'm trying to come up with some sort of connection between how, you know, I go to school in St Paul, and now i'm in Sao Paulo, and how different they are/similiar they are, you know... yeah.

São Paulo

2009-02-01T21:17:00.001-02:00

São Paulo, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

I took so many photos in New York in black and white, and why not? Winter in The City means short days, lots of artificial lighting, washed out condescent-lit faces, and shooting black and white (especially with contrasty settings and high iso) helps photos take on that gritty, blunt, stiff aura about The City that I wrote about a few days ago. New York in January, not unlike in many other months, is the product of an almost entirely man-managed environment forced to deal with extreme temperature, unpredictable weather, and even snowfall, all of which are natural features that mankind is only starting to learn to manipulate and to which we are largely at the fate of mother nature. While residents of New Orleans and other sites of natural disasters can justifiably claim that there is a spatial, social logic as to who takes on the blunt of environmental hardship, we have obviously not found a way to prevent the environment from figuratively/literally raining on our parades and adversely impacting ourselves, especially those of us in cities, the places that are seemingly the farthest removed from nature in the first place. But I digress. Even on the crisp, sunny days we enjoyed during my stay in The City, I found that shooting in color didn't represent the way the Brooklyn Bridge, the 1 line Subway or the South Bronx and the people who inhabit these spaces defiantly built, shaped and reshaped their environment. The 125th St Subway station in New York is such a testament to audacity; who dreamed up building such a large lattus of steel to move the subway above the smaller valley? Similiarly, the efforts to pull the South Bronx out of disinvestment and urban blight are best viewed through black and white; the racial disparity of urban society are still clearly demarcated, but the film exposes all the shades of grey that exist only when you look for them.

And yet, after a ten hour sleepless flight and waking up in São Paulo, all I see is color, color, color. The different colors of skin on the streets, where race is also heavily contested yet constructed in so many unique ways, the colors of the absurdly potent caipirinhas and other drinks at The City's voracious bars, the vibrant colors of the sunset that sneaks through endless lines of towers, the colors of the delicious mangoes I am graciously fed by my host family with every meal, the colors of graffiti and murals on every wall that, not unlike New York's own citizen initiatives, hint at an underground meritocracy where anyone with creativity and drive can have a lasting impact on the built environment, or even the figurative colors of portuguese, a language that is as much about expression and emotion as it is about grammar, where the innovative pronounciations of the letters C, J, and D keep the language bouncy and keep me on my heels as I navigate a country and language in which I'm inescapibly, entirely immersed.

But perhaps most prominent are the colors of a warm, southern hemisphere summer and an oppressively hot sun that watches my every move and oddly sets in the North. Things have been cold for a while. If you look at this blog, I've been posting my favorite photos since December, almost entirely in black and white, photos that look great on a bleak, black background that tried to convey that blurry-eyed bon-homie from late night hotcakes and coffee back in Portland. But in so many ways, I'm not there any more. There are just too many colors in São Paulo to rely on those quiet nights for entertainment, to dwell on the harsh, dark urban landscape, and above all, to shoot in black and white.

In other news, I definitely scored the email address of an attractive brazilian girl at a bar last night. As they say in Brasil, Tudo Bem.

Because the rest of the world doesn't seem to exist.

2009-01-27T22:47:00.001-02:00

Because the rest of the world doesn't seem to exist., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

American Exceptionalism, writ into the urban fabric.

The City, as of the last twenty years or so, is now again seeping into cultural relevance once again. In The City with cultural institutions and pop-culture references on every block, it is interesting to think that only a generation or two ago, the sitcoms, characters and plots that America paid attention to were out in the suburbs. We never really knew where the Brady Bunch lived, other than some newly minted ranch-style house in suburban California somewhere. A generation or two before that, American storytelling used The Great West as a setting, with cowboys and indians and all sorts of other cultural constructions to sell cigarettes and live in the appropriate setting for wherever the American Dream was taking place. Now, with Seinfeld, Sex in the City, Friends, and now Gossip Girl, and the Disneyification of Times Square and TRL and Dave Letterman and Jon Stewart and Real World Brooklyn and even popular blogs all using Manhattan as an address, one can't help but wonder if the American Story has moved back into a small condo on the Island. Other cities too have seen this rebirth of cultural significance through television and pop culture references: Seattle now sells coffee and Grey's Anatomy, Chicago is cool again, and every once in a while some deadbeat character from some show is from Portland. I'm writing this kind of quickly, without tons of research on the matter, but as I pass Tom's Restaurant on the Upper West Side every day, I can't help but wonder if it represents a larger cultural appreciation of the relevance and "cutting edge" of cities.

I leave Thursday for the Pinheiros neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I should probably start to learn some Portuguese.

Winter and the City.

2009-01-26T02:04:00.001-02:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

It's difficult for me to really talk about New York. I've spent my life in a leafy suburb of a leafy city, and the Twin Cities also largely seem to lack the gritty, industrial, asphalt might that New York shoves in your face the minute the clouds break and the five boroughs come in to view during a LaGuardia descent. To catapult yourself into New York City is to truly grasp at the notion of what Anne Spirn called "The Granite Garden;" a meticulously controlled, intensely contested, bluntly grim lattice of concrete and steel boxes where the bitter cold wind only intensifies the trademark New York cold shoulder. And yet, despite this island's fierce landscape and unwelcoming appearance, humanity seems to thrive here. Sometimes it feels as though every block of every borough is a significant cultural institution, a tribute to American ingenuity and labor that such a dense, dirty old city of steel can thrive with such flair and personality. I've almost started to pick up the arrogant world view espoused by East Coasters that the country ends on the Hudson; after a week on these islands carefully divided into cartesian grids and blocks, Oregon and Minnesota just seem so far away, like such abstractions, and without much internet access I feel like the tribulations of Portland's mayor or the midwest's harsh wind chill could be a world away. As I sit in the International House, a giant dormish building for international students at NYC schools, I keep placing myself on this mental map in the Upper West Side, surrounded by neighborhoods of varying ethnic background and socioeconomic status, thinking about the tales of power struggle and the astonishing ability of New Yorkers to challenge the outside forces that attempt to break their neighborhoods, be it gentrification, terrorism, environmental racism, pollution, segregation, or any of the other urban ills that have threatened the livelihoods of citizens of these islands. The other night, we went to an improv comedy club on the lower east side. While I enjoyed their dorky jokes about video games and pop culture references to musicians, I was most struck by the way the crowd and the comedians appropriated the latest story in the city. Somehow, the comedians ended up on a plane, and the skit involved a plane crash with that pilot that miraculously guided the plane into the river and avoided death and destruction. While the story has a happy ending and a hero was made, I would have assumed that jokes about plane crashes we're still a bit of an uneasy topic here. And yet, after a quiet beat shared by the audience and the comedians, they took it and ran with it, joking about how awesome the pilot was and how he could land a plane no matter how shitty the situation. The last week has given me rose-tinted happy glasses to wear when thinking about the American Dream, and the co-opting of fear and uncertainty into the austere bravado of a city of dreamers, thinkers and idealists seems like an appropriate example of something this country does right.

I am amused by the fact that you can't spell either audacity or authenticity without the word "city."

I am here until Thursday, at which point I depart for Pinheiros, a wealthy neighborhood in Sao Paulo. For some reason, they decided that I should be the guy who gets slated to lead the 35 of us through John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport. We're screwed.

I'm alive.

2009-01-22T22:35:00.001-02:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

New York City is so gritty, so bustling. I've been waking up early every morning (seriously!) to walk down to the main street and buy some warm breakfast, and the city looks nice with a little extra snow. I watched the inauguration in Times Square, I've managed to hit three of the five boroughs (and really, who visits Staten Island?), it's the Chinese New Year this monday, I've got a big bike ride planned from here in the Upper West to the Brooklyn Bridge, and until now I've been blessed to hardly even think of Oregon or Minnesota. I'm optimistic about the rest of the kids in the program, and I'm looking forward to Sao Paulo. I also, at the moment, have absolutely nothing profound to say.

So long, Oregon.

2009-01-18T10:52:00.001-02:00

So long, Oregon., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

~~Portland, Orygun, Cascadia - Dec 15 to Jan 19~~
New York, New York, USA - Jan 19 to Jan 29
São Paulo and Curitibas, Brazil Jan 30 to Mar 4
Cape Town, South Africa Mar 5 to Apr 10
Hanoi, Vietnam Apr 11 to May 15th

...and so it begins! I revived this blog with the intention of writing a lot more than I currently have, and for that I apologize. I had a unique idea that I would either post one picture of a thousand words in every entry (since, you know, they are worth the same...) but i've been relying heavily on the photo option and keeping any thoughts I have about urbanism, geography, life in the suburbs, Paul Schaffer, bicycles, technology, relationships, and Real Human Moments (tm) to myself. Now that I'm about to skip about the world, maybe I'll have more thoughts and ideas that I feel compelled to share with the rest of the world. I am more than aware that starting a blog about studying abroad is just a starved excuse for attention and an attempt at pretending that my particular experiences HAVE NEVER BEEN EXPERIENCED BY ANYONE ELSE BEFORE EVER, but I'm hoping i find some gimmicky, interesting way to present my thoughts that you keep coming back for more. I know the internet doesn't need another skinny white guy writing about his left-leaning political ideology or his caffeinated experiences in a foreign country, but I won't let that stop me. I had a livejournal in high school that was clearly the shit, and just imagine what I could do to this blog with a little html, some life-changing experiences and non-qwerty keyboards.

Hello. My name is Aaron, and I'm about to travel 25000 miles across the globe to learn something about sustainability, urbanity, social justice, and pho noodles. Nice to meet you.

"It must be in the air here."

2009-01-16T07:59:00.001-02:00

What a wonderful world., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Washington Park, on a beautiful sunny wintery day in Portland Oregon.

Do you spend more time checking out how your facebook profile appears than you do checking out how you look in the mirror?

All the rage these days

2009-01-13T10:00:00.001-02:00

All the rage these days, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

And if all your love was wasted, then who the hell was I?

Lauren and Trimet

2009-01-11T06:53:00.001-02:00

Lauren and Trimet, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Upon my arrival from my voyage down to Eugene, I have made a todo list to guide the next week of my life before I go on my study abroad program. As follows, with no particular order.

Luggage lock?
Pick up camera lens from shop
Lunch with a mister Nick Hagerty
Lunch with Grandma Brown
Mail that music package to the Berk
Is Lauren Middleton still in town? Is anyone still in town?
Summer Applications for jobs! Call Macalester about the Lilly Fellowship
IHP homework - write a paper on Oregon's Urban Growth Boundaries?
Blazers road trip! Four games this week to watch.
Blind Pilot concert this next Saturday night at the Aladdin
Figure out if I'm serious about that free tattoo that parlor is offering
Visit Sunset High School?
Compile extensive postcard list for study-abroad; if you would like a postcard please consider emailing me your address.
Talk my father into taking me up to the mountain and going snowboarding
What the fuck am I going to do for a cell phone for the next few months?
Bury everything distracting that I don't need.
Finish reading Everything is Illuminated and Running with Scissors and Hey Nostradamus!
Get some sleep

2009-01-09T09:35:00.001-02:00

, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

Leaves are turning brown
All over the ground
Leaves make like paper
Make like paper sounds

Way back, back then
I considered you my best friend
But the last time I saw you
I knew I'd never see you again

-Make Like Paper, Red House Painters.

The First Meal of 2009

2009-01-06T08:18:00.001-02:00

The First Meal of 2009, originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.

ringing in the new year.

2009-01-02T04:14:00.003-02:00

ringing in the new year., originally uploaded by Aaron Michael Brown.