The Homeland

Although to many, Ikea is a place for a great value on home-decorating pieces, for me it is also a slice of a second home. My father is a full-blood Swede, and his uncle stayed behind in Sweden while his father and two remaining uncles came to America. During the summer between seventh and eighth grade, my mother, Eric, and I visited Sweden, spending half of the time in Stockholm with a friend of my mother's teaching there for a year, and the other half was spent in Gotland, where my father's family is from.


My cousins Birgit and Åke (beer-ghit, oaky) live in Stenkyrka (sten-shurka), Gotland, not too far from the town of Vall. When my grandfather and great-uncles came to America, the immigration officials told them that there were too many of "them" - meaning the Johansson was too common of a name. Thus, they were forced to take the name of the city where they were from in Gotland: Vall. But the immigration official spelled it wrong, giving us the surname "Wall."

Visiting them was nothing short of lovely, and Ikea's selection of Swedish foods reminds me of the time I spent with my relatives on the island.


Lingonberries: slightly less tart than their close relative (cranberries), these berries are extremely prevalent in Scandanavian cuisine due to the climate and ease of preparation (as well as their high vitamin C content). I was able to buy both lingonsylt (jam) and saft (see below...it's the GIGANTIC gallon of concentrate. I am so excited!). Lingonberry also makes a really good mixer for drinks, going very well with vodka and champagne)

Anna's Pepperkokkar (Anna's Gingerbread): Swedes enjoy a coffee and chatting break around 10 each morning, and gingerbread cookies are often the sweet of choice (and for those of you that just really need something sweet as a snack, they are small and fairly low in calories).

Elderberry saft: saft is a fruit concentrate that you dilute with water before drinking (kind of like a classy European koolaid with much better flavors and no fake sugar).

Bilar: chewy candy cars: deliciously odd tasting candies.


Unfortunately, they don't have such delicacies as almond buns, real fresh sill (fish), or beet salad that dyes your tongue bright red...I'll just have to go back some day.

Zipcar!

I had my first Zipcar experience this past week to go pick up groceries, the chore that is, in a practical sense, quite a pain. Trying to bring over two bags of anything up to my apartment takes soooo long. (I know, poor me, right?). I have to sign out the moving dolly, bring it outside trying not to break any of the glass in the doors, load all of my groceries onto the dolly, fumble my way back into the lobby through double locked doors, beg the woman at the front desk to watch over my things as I return the car, then walk back to my apartment, wheel the dolly upstairs, bring all my groceries inside, put away the perishables, and finally return the dolly. Whew. It was a much easier process at home when I could just carry in two at a time and leave the car unlocked...oh well.

In other news, I found out today that as a graduate student, the money I make puts me in the top 2% of the world in terms of monetary wealth. That brings me to two concepts: one...wow. I need to be more thankful for where I am and what I do and the opportunities I have. Two, even if I am at the top 2% monetarily, how does this correspond to happiness? Or well-being? Global markets put an economic slant to everything, but sometimes that isn't the most robust rubric to judge a person, group, or country. How do we rectify this? Is there a way? Should we even try?

Ponderings of the Future

“Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so our children can fly.”

- text message sent to Ed Welch, Manufacturing Training Alliance instructor (non-profit which teaches technical skills for manufacturing jobs) regarding voting

I look into the future, and I get teary hoping this will happen. Maybe it's just my idealistic soul, but I do see hope. And I do see possibilities. I dream of that world, and the fact that my children might grow up in a time when public service is valued...where education is deemed one of the most essential human rights...where conscious consumption drives the market...where everyone has enough food to eat...where everyone has health care...where the world is at peace.

Obama: you have a hard road ahead. But I'm there with you. Let me know what I can do to help.

I Voted!

This year, I officially put down roots and declared myself a resident of Massachusetts. I voted for president and for a myriad of public officials, all democrats running with no opposition.

I must say, it's kind of funny with all of the two past years of election hoopla that the piece of paper that makes it all happen is plain, unadorned, and you have to actually look where you're filling in the bubbles...it's not like there's a big red elephant next to McCain/Palin, or a blue ray of hope next to Obama/Biden. It's just black and white text. Pretty powerful, when you think about it.

In addition, I voted on three propositions:

-eliminate personal taxes (aka a whopping tax cut) - no. Education, energy reform, and America's infrastructure need this money.

-transition marijuana possession under 1 ounce to a fine-based offense (about $200) - yes. This reform also includes much harsher penalties without jail time for juvenile offenders: they have to both pay the fine and do community service (with their parent's knowledge - parents are informed of all offenses). At the end of the day, I believe that police should be focusing on larger crimes, not marijuana. The jury is out for me on whether marijuana should be legal or not (yes, it is bad for you), but regardless...police officers, your help is needed elsewhere.

-make greyhound racing illegal - yes. This is a practice that just needs to stop. It is inhumane. Plain and simple.

So yes - my final thought of the day is GO VOTE! You have the right. Use it.

In Memoriam

Pa -

I thought that five years would give me better words to describe what you meant to me. But the truth is, it is all summed up by how much I miss you and love you.

Happy Halloween!

Fall in Cambridge

...is not like fall back in Minnesota where my childhood was spent raking leaves into piles and jumping in them...only going inside when mom MADE us come in. Then we'd drink hot cocoa and watch Gopher football and Eric and I would drowsily pass out on the couch, completely tuckered out from a long day of leaf-pile jumping.



It's not like the fall at Wesleyan, either. Watching the trees change every day as I walked to class was pretty much my favorite thing to do:







Fall in Cambridge is more subdued...there just aren't enough trees to see the change of colors like I did just walking through my backyard at home. The sky is an alarming shade of blue some days - it always seemed more cloudy in Bloomington or home.




I want a day to rake leaves all morning, and then get cozy with a good book and some fresh apple cider...sigh. Someday.

Biomolecular Kinetics

Little did I know that I would be taking several foreign languages here at MIT....and this class has them all smushed into one big garbled mess. The professors are teaching in Latin, my TAs speak Finnish, my problem sets are all in Chinese, the textbook is in a combination of cuneiform and middle English, the programming is in Math, but the help files are Esperanto, and I have to turn in my assignments in regular English (although, this is engineering English, which does have subtle variations). Thank goodness that there is at least one person who can translate each respective language for me in this class...otherwise I think I'd be a goner.

Don't get me wrong--I can see why this class is important, and I can see that after this class I'll be thankful for what I've learned and what I have accomplished. But right now? My feelings can be summed up as seriously overwhelmed, with a chance of hope that I'll make it out brain cells intact.

Bioengineering

One of the questions I often receive here is, "So - what do you do exactly? What is this bioengineering thing all about?"

Here's what MIT has to say on the matter:

"The goal of this biological engineering discipline is to advance fundamental understanding of how biological systems operate and to develop effective biology-based technologies for applications across a wide spectrum of societal needs including breakthroughs in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, in design of novel materials, devices, and processes, and in enhancing environmental health."

In English, this means that bioengineering uses engineering principles (physics, chemistry, math) to better study and fix biological problems. These can range from:

-building better ways to study isolated liver tissue in order to assess toxicology before bringing out possibly dangerous drugs into clinical trials

-hacking the immune system in order to force antigen response to cancerous tumors

-using engineered viruses to bind inorganic materials in order to "build" batteries without toxic chemicals

Click here to watch a video delivered by Doug Lauffenburger, the head of the bioengineering program here at MIT. It's a great introduction to a particular facet of engineering.

This is an interview with Linda Griffith, the professor I worked for this past summer. The stuff that this department does just blows my mind...

If you are interested in viewing other Open Course Ware materials, click here for the youtube site. The great minds of MIT are being videotaped, and if you want to be astounded and amazed - this will do it. Forget David Blaine...this is the real deal.

Is a $40,000 wedding green?

At the ripe old age of 22, I am starting to attend the weddings of my peers. It's scary. But that is another post...today while on Google reader, I came upon an article about Clay Hill Farm and a special contest they are having:

http://feelgoodstyle.com/2008/10/02/clay-hill-farm-is-giving-away-a-40000-green-wedding/

A $40,000 wedding. Let me type that again...forty THOUSAND dollars.

“The Green Wedding Giveaway will be a daytime wedding ceremony and reception at Clay Hill Farm on June21, 2009, the summer solstice. Rehearsal dinner, ceremony, catered reception, Hand-painted watercolor invitations, flowers, photography, DJ services, live cocktail music, cake, hybrid bridal transportation, spa services, organic beverages, tuxedo rentals, wedding-night suite and honeymoon week.”

Now, the definition of what is "green" varies widely, and people enter this spectrum at many different places, adapting their lifestyle accordingly. But when I think of what it really means to "be green" is a commitment to conscious consumption of what you need. Therein lies the rub: do you need a wedding? What are the boundary conditions and requirements for this important time in the lives of two people, and their families/friends? (edit: gag me...I just used programming terminology from my engineering class in a blog post. What is my world coming to??)

I don't think I could say no to a wedding. And I don't think a wedding I have could be completely green, anyway (anyone met my father? yeah...). But, I hazard a bet that a non-green wedding that costs $5000 will be a whole lot less wasteful that a green wedding that costs $40,000.

So...what do you do? I am at a loss. The best thing I can think of is to really think about what you both want out of a ceremony and party, and how best to interpret that in a meaningful way.

Thankfully, I have quite some time to think on it...