One Tree and Two Wrong Turns

I was driving around on Sunday looking for poorly-planted trees and hit the mother lode at the Home Depot in King of Prussia. Pretty much every tree there has about 18 inches of mulch piled up on the poor little tree, which causes moisture to rot the trunk. Then fungus gets in and then insects, and then you have a dead tree -- sad, really. So for everyone out there, this is not good. You have been warned.

Anyhow, I made a wrong turn into a carpool parking lot which was also apparently a bus stop. A bike rack was there for all the cyclists, but instead of bikes on the rack there were not 1 but 2 devices to help the mobility-impaired among us. A wheelchair and a walker were both locked to the rack. My guess is that these folks wheel themselves to the bus stop, get off here, and go right to the liquor store which is the only thing around. Crazy.

If you are sensitive to foul language don't scroll down any further, but I couldn't resist sharing. A few weeks ago I made a wrong turn and saw this graffiti:

Apparently I make a lot of wrong turns. Gotta love Philly and the graffiti, although I'm not sure where whores are not supposed to go -- and what if you aren't driving a car with windows* to smash?

*or more accurately, your "window's" what?

and then...

As you may have noticed from the upsurge in posts, Sharon and I are back to living apart. She has a tish (but not more) of spare time on her hands as the semester isn't fully in motion yet, and I have no class at UPenn at the moment. So time abounds. The biggest news for me over the past week is my attempt to cut back on my cheese intake. I already don't eat meat, drink milk or much fast food, so the loss of cheese is a big hit. For various reasons I decided to cut back, and about one week later I'm doing okay. I've found that I am much better at NOT doing something than starting something new (like flossing).

That was exciting. In other fun news, on my commute to work on Monday I was surprised to see a deer out in the middle of a creek on an icy logjam under a bridge. I thought about taking a photo, then decided against it -- I didn't want to spook the deer into a cold icy death, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Today I saw a fox and when I stopped to look, he ran away a bit then stopped to look at me. We watched each other for a minute until it got too cold to just be standing around in sub-freezing temps staring at another species. Later in the day I saw a group of deer trotting through the woods with a big proud buck prancing behind his ladies like one of those high-steppy fancy horses (like this).

I've enrolled to take the Arborist Certification Exam at the end of the month. I still have a class project due from my class at UPenn last semester, and my intern project needs to get rolling something serious to save myself from embarrassment. The Morris Arboretum spring course catalog just came, out so I'm picking out my favorites (one of the perks of being an intern are the free courses).

Lastly, as I sit here in Philadelphia with snow falling, the hum of four-wheelers racing in the streets, and the faint smell of smoke from yet another warehouse fire about a mile away, I remember where I was a year ago today: in Desarmes, Haiti, just finishing up a fun weekend with friends. A lot has changed since then. We are happy to be back in the US and look forward to the future. The news stories from Haiti are still heartbreaking: disease, destruction and corruption. My faith in international aid has been practically obliterated, as I see where Haiti is today and the many foreigners that have come and gone (a little wealthier with their resumes bolstered). I know good people there are doing good work, I just wish they were all those good people. This article seems spot-on in the Huff post.

Procrastination

So, I'm supposed to be reading right now for my Urban Studies class at U.Penn, which has been a challenge for me. So much theoretical/philosophical/critical thinking is verging on the limits of my brain power. The rest of the class is filled with Penn prodigies who can talk endlessly about the Marx dialectic of the fetishization of commodities. The other hard thing is that we're sitting in a classroom filled with relatively wealthy individuals and we're talking about the working class like we (collectively) are all on one big team. Somehow I miss the connection between most of the class and their socio-economic background compared to that of the rest of Philadelphia.
I'll get off of that track before I offend anyone.

So yesterday I had several first time events. First, I bought coffee from the corner store. Nice to know that's available. Second, I went to a class through Greensgrow on fermentation where we made sauerkraut, pickles and mead. Third, I went to the new South St. bridge which is now open and there was a pre-opening (to cars) free time for anyone to walk/bike around. Fourth, I had a Vietnamese hoagie. So good. Then my amazing day ending with the neighbor complaining about my campfire in the yard, so I retreated indoors to read/procrastinate reading for the rest of the night, which has continued on to this morning.

Here are some pics, didn't remember to check my ISO before I started snapping photos, so they're kind of grainy. Lesson learned.

Stuffing sauerkraut into jars and prepping mead in the background.

Ya Philly, new bridge for all the Penn folk, I'm sure a lot of people are happy about this. I almost never go this far south and need to go to W. Philly so not that big of a deal in my daily life, but, if it's good for Philly, it's good for me, somehow.

The best part was that the Bicycle Coalition invited people to play bridge on the bridge, here they are doing their thing.


Now that 12 noon will soon be upon me, I really should start reading for class. 100 pages and 12 hours until midnight is only 8 pages an hour (eek!) better get started that sounds like a lot of reading. The book, by the way is by Alex Callinicos, Social Theory.

Old friends and fire

So, when Sharon was back in Philadelphia (which was amazing) we found out that a few of our old co-workers from Haiti were going to be in town for a training. So, we borrowed D&C's car and made our way down to South Philadelphia and hung out at the airport waiting for our old work pals and after only a few minutes they emerged, and here they are:



That's Meleck the office administrator, Margot (not sure what her current position is), Nahomie an environmental educator and Frantzo an environmental educator. Me, of course, arborist intern and Sharon, graduate student at Vanderbilt. A fine looking bunch.

On to somewhat exciting and scary events, take a look at what happened a few blocks over from the house last night.



What?!!! Ya I know, crazy fire......I couldn't stop taking photos:

And with my new found camera skills, I just kept taking more and more:

and then I got worried it may go out before I take the perfect photo, so I took more:



and then I realized that thing is not going out soon, so I then leisurely sat around on the roof looking for amazing fire photos:


and then I got the perfect photo:



Well, maybe not, but it was a good ending to the story 'eh?