#36 - Read 30 Books

On 11/11/14, I thought I had finished this item because in my head it was 20 books.  So I had to fit in 10 more.  Special thanks to Evelyn Sommariva for some last-minute loans.  Where I took notes, I have included a favorite quote.  Where I did not, I included the first line so I wouldn't spoil anything.  Funny, the books I finished were mostly school-related (though mostly still very enjoyable) or pretty...  well, easy, popular reads.  I guess that's what I needed.  I had hoped to finish Confederacy of Dunces, The Book Thief, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Mockingjay, but I just couldn't keep the pages turning during the turbulence of my last cross-country flight.  They'll be at the top of the list in 2015.  I also think I finished The Location of Culture and Communicating in the Third Space, but somehow I didn't record those, and I suppose it doesn't actually matter because either way I reached my goal!

My year in books... minus 2 that I couldn't find...

1.  Darkness Visible by William Styron

1/4/14, gifted to me by Kathy Krone & Jerry Krone
Currently misplaced

2.  Dharma and Development by Joanna Macy

1/5/14, assigned to me by Cheryl Getz

"Even if, after it is all over, the village seems to revert to business-as-usual, it is never quite the same; for the experience of sharing and working together is not forgotten, nor are the skills acquired in organizing the event erased." (p. 52)

3.  Tea Time with Terrorists by Mark Stephen Meadows

1/10/14, assigned to me by Cheryl Getz
"If terrorists were dangerous enough to provoke sweeping changes in our federal laws, I felt, then they were dangerous enough for me to try to understand them." (p. 29)

4.  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

1/25/14, loaned to me by Kathy Krone & Jerry Krone

"An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War." (p. 3)

5.  Buddhism at Work by George D. Bond

2/1/14, assigned to me by Cheryl Getz

"The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement represents one of the earliest expressions of what has come to be known as socially engaged Buddhism." (p. 1)

6.  Suckers Portfolio by Kurt Vonnegut

2/1/14

Current misplaced

7.  Divergent by Veronica Roth

2/18/14

"There is one mirror in my house." (p. 1)

8.  Presence by Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers

3/10/14, assigned to the class I TA'ed by Zachary Green

"'I worry much more today about unquestioned answers than about unanswered questions.'"

9.  Insurgent by Veronica Roth
3/18/14

"I wake with his name in my mouth." (p. 1)

10.  Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

?, assigned to the class I TA'ed by Zachary Green

"Colleagueship does not mean that you need to agree or share the same views.  On the contrary, the real power of seeing each other as colleagues comes into play when there are differences of view." (p. 228)

11.  Allegiant by Veronica Roth

?

"I pace in our cell in Erudite headquarters, her works echoing in my mind: My name is Edith Prior, and there is so much I am happy to regret."  (p. 1)

12.  Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

4/29/14, assigned to me by Fred Galloway

"People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory -- and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media." (p. 8)

13.  Outdoor Leadership 

5/14/14, assigned to the class I TA'ed by Mark Ceder

"This text takes a core-competencies approach to understanding the practice of outdoor leadership" (p. xiv).

14.  127 Hours by Aron Ralston

5/15/13
"He was a better boatman than a cowboy, a better cook than a train robber, but John Griffith, with the distinguishing mark of one blue eye and one brown eye, became a favored extra hand with the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy's gang, during his time in the Robbers Roost country of eastern Utah." (p. xi)

15.  Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

5/18/14, reread after being assigned to me by Zachary Green
"This is as obvious as affirming that a person learns to swim in water, not in a library." (p. 137)

16.  Looking for Alaska by John Green

6/7/14

"'...Takumi, you gotta stop stealing other people's problems and get some of your own.'"  (p. 43)

17.  Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

8/4/14, loaned to me by Kevin Robitaille

"'We should start back,' Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them."  (p.1).

18.  InterViews

9/14/14, assigned to me by Paula Cordeiro and Lea Hubbard
"Give your whole attention to the person interviewed, and make it evident you are doing so" (p. 45).

19.  Paris Was Ours, edited by Penelope Rowlands

11/7/14, gifted to me by Kathy Krone

"We had passionate, terrible arguments, about time and space and other Kantian issues, until finally it became unbearable to stay."  (p. 237)

20.  A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

11/12/14, loaned to me by Kevin Robitaille

"The comet's tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky."  (p. 1)

21.  Hunger Games by Suzette Collins
12/8/14 (for the 3rd time)
"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold" (p. 3).

22.  Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley
12/21/14, mentioned enough by Zachary Green that I couldn't resist anymore
"What if we slip out quietly along the curvature of space, out into its far reaches?  What if, once there, we adjust our eyes to the invisible?  There, instead of emptiness, we will see a richness of organizing energies.  We once were made secure by things visible, by structures we could see.  Now it is time to embrace the invisible.  In a world where matter can be immaterial, where influences move among us unseen, why not contemplate the influence of fields?  For such a little act of faith, space awaits, filled with possibilities" (p. 58).

23.  Catching Fire by Suzette Collins
12/25/14 (for the 3rd time)
"I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air" (p. 3).

24.  Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crocket Johnson
12/28/14, loaned to me by Evelyn Sommariva from the collection of Leo & Garrett Sommariva

25.  Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
12/28/14, loaned to me by Evelyn Sommariva from the collection of Leo & Garrett Sommariva
"One day, Little Sal went with her mother to Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries."

26.  Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
12/29/14, loaned to me by Evelyn Sommariva from the collection of Leo & Garrett Sommariva
"In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of --"

27.  Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar Schein
12/31/14
"Here I also have a choice.  I can either not commit to tasks that make me dependent on others, or I can deny the dependency, avoid feeling humble, fail to get what I need, and, thereby, fail to accomplish the task or unwittingly sabotage it.  Unfortunately people often would rather fail than to admit their dependency on someone else" (p. 12).

28.  Excuse Me: A Little Book of Manners by Karen Katz
12/31/14, loaned to me by Evelyn Sommariva from the collection of Leo & Garrett Sommariva
"Mommy says, 'Do you want peas for breakfast?'"

29.  All by Myself by Mercer Mayer
12/31/14, loaned to me by Evelyn Sommariva from the collection of Leo & Garrett Sommariva
"I can get out of bed all by myself."

30.  Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
12/31/14, loaned to me by Kevin Robitaille
"The day was grey and bitter cold, and the dogs would not take the scent" (p. 1),

#2 - Take a Road Trip to Somewhere New

The road trip fully entailed a drive out to the Salton Sea detailed in the previous post about my camping trip, but the ride home was certainly more eventful than the trip there.

Our first stop on the way home was Bombay Beach, a once popular tourist destination in the 60's that was hit by hurricanes in back-to-back years.  Yes, hurricanes.  There are still folks who live there but there are also still the remains of washed-out homes and trailers from the 70's.  It's spooky.

Our second stop was Salvation Mountain.  Salvation Mountain is a strange place that an artist created with mounds of trash, hay bales, adobe mud, and paint.  It's visited by strange people.  It's surrounded by Slab City with is a bit of an off-the-grid living environment in the middle of the desert.  Chris MacCandless wrote about it in his diaries and it was featured in Jon Krakauer's book and later the movie Into the Wild.  The volunteer at Salvation Mountain told us we had just missed a rager of a "prom" the previous night, where men dressed in tuxedos or tuxedo t-shirts and women in ball gowns, some they come wearing, and some they select from the racks of donated dresses available.  He told us that it was cool though because they were having an end-of-the-season party the following weekend we were welcome to attend.  Thanks, homie.  It was super strange but I loved every minute of it.














Then we headed home.  I'm sunburned and happy.

The last stop was for gas and milkshakes in Pine Valley.  Delish.

#50 - Go Camping. For Real This Time.

Our campsite.

Remember that time I bitched about how often I'd had the "You've Never Been Camping?!" conversation?

Me too, and guess what?  I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN.

I am so excited.

I am so excited never to have that conversation again that I'm having trouble focusing on just how fantastic my first camping experience was.


Since no one ever followed through with organizing an actual camping trip with me, I found another route to get myself into a sleeping bag on the ground in the middle of no where.  I asked Mark Ceder if I could be his teaching assistant for his Outdoor Leadership course at the University of San Diego.  He graciously accepted even though my outdoor experience did not include any camping or real outdoor overnight experience at all.

One component of the course is a class camping trip.  We debated a bit on where to go and landed on the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert in California.

The Salton Sea is a weird place.  A WEIRD PLACE.

We left USD around 5pm on a Friday and drove to the desert in a van with a trailer full of kayaks.  We got some looks.  We stopped at El Centro for some In and Out and made it to our camp site around 10pm.

We set up our tents by the light of headlamps and had some s'mores around the fire.  Emily and I decided that the 4-person tent looked a little squishy for 4 actual people, so we set up our own and then had no idea how 4 people would fit in a tent that size.  Until we got up in the morning and realized that we had set up a 2-person tent that was half the size of what everyone else was sleeping in.

I don't have much to say about sleeping in a tent except that I really don't mind it it all... as long as I'm not 400 yards from train tracks of a line that runs regularly all night.

Mark, Scott, and Weston cooked us a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and hash browns with apples that the 10 of us enjoyed all together around the picnic table.

Then we headed out on a hike of the Painted Canyon.  The rock was in a variety of colors but those browns, blacks, whites, and grays were the only colors in the Painted Canyon since it's the desert.  So that was weird for me.  But there was a bit of variety of terrain in that we entered in the canyon, climbed some ladders, headed through some slot canyons, found ourselves on a ridge, and then hiked down into a wash for lunch and then the trek out.  I really like hiking and it was fun to chat with some of the students I hadn't gotten to know as well.  Retroactively, I really liked that Mark kept vowing to jump into the Salton Sea when we got back.  A ranger had stopped by in the morning and announced how refreshing the water was.

After 4-5 hours on the trail, we stopped by the visitor's center for a short video about the weird place we were in.  Then we headed back to camp for some down time.  Mark convinced a couple students to join him in his swim, so I followed them to the shore with my camera.  (Because of my professional background, I don't really enjoy recreational swimming.  I definitely don't enjoy it in waters that have substantial warnings about eating the fish that come out of them.)

We quickly found a pile of decomposing fish.  Then we walked across what should have been sand but was really just crushed up fish vertebrae that are extremely uncomfortable to walk on and get into flip flops very easily.  Then, at the shore, we noticed how snotty the water looked and the film that seemed to lie across the edge of the sea.  It was disgusting.  We stood around and commented for awhile.  Then we headed back to the site.  I accidentally stepped in a marshy section of fish bones and got the nasty fish water on my feet, which then made the fish bones stick to it more.  Gross.

Everyone washed up and then we had a delightful burrito dinner, and, in true California style, that included avocado, cilantro, limes, and Tapatio.  Obviously.

Then we lit a fire, Mark made us apple cobbler.  We played Hot Seat.  I loved how open everyone was to sharing, even some difficult stories.

The next morning we got up for a sunrise paddle (kayak) on the sea.  However, once we were up, Mark informed us that it was way too windy so we should go back to sleep and we'd go for just a quick paddle from the Visitor's Center back to camp in a bit.

That was awesome.

We had bagels and fruit for breakfast.  Then we headed to the Visitor's Center.  We had a quick paddle school at the boat launch and then spent some time practicing in the marina, which it was pretty calm.  Then we headed out to the sea, which was not calm.  It went really well, except for every time someone got sprayed or splashed with sea water, there was a cry of disgust.  We got to camp in about 10 minutes and checked kayaking in the Salton Sea of our lists.


We packed up and headed out.  See #2 - Road Trip Somewhere New for the fantastic tales of the trip home.