Rena’s Neighborhood

NYC pneumatic tube receptacle
Originally uploaded by maximolly.

Everyone in the world knows of my fascination with pneumatic tubes. Here's one from the US Postal Museum.

I like Vox. But I like my own domains better. So that's where I've gone.

• girlwonder, my personal site since 1997 (and in other forms since 1995)
• active social plastic, my blog about architecture, design, urbanism, music, literature and other more intellectual pursuits
  

Please visit me there!

What part of your childhood do you miss the most?
Submitted by Maretta.

I miss the neighborhood where we lived: Macalester-Groveland in St. Paul, Minnesota. I grew up on Goodrich Avenue in St. Paul, which was walking and biking distance to all kinds of things. I had a best friend next door (Gretchen) and across the street (Krista), and other friends down the block (Krissi and Susan). The proximity to Macalester College was terrific, of course, but there was a soda fountain, good alleys for riding bikes through puddles, places to get candy and baked goods, two outstanding bookstores (Odegaard and my beloved Hungry Mind, both closed).

When we were 13, my family moved to a suburb. It was the right thing to do as far as space was concerned, but I lost all of my mobility: there was nowhere to bike, nowhere to visit, and for that matter, no friends in my neighborhood. The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I took "Acting, Music and Dance" at Macalester's TCITY (Twin Cities Institute for Talented Youth), and one day, sat down in front of my old house and just cried.

My brother Andy lives two blocks from this house now; my Dad still teaches a mile away from it at William Mitchell College of Law. Every time I visit home, without fail, I drive by it and wave. The crabtree we planted nearly dwarfs the house now; the skyline locust that replaced the elm tree after the Dutch elm disease outbreak is broad and mature. I still dream of that little house when I think of home.

How old were you when you had your first "official" boyfriend or girlfriend? What was he/she like?

I guess it would have to be Bryan Iverson when I was 13, the summer between 7th and 8th grade. He was older than me -- he was 16, almost 17, and I met him at the TCITY summer school program at Macalester College. When I went to Rocky Horror for the first time, he came along and our knees touched. This was all very exciting. When I went away for a week, he wrote me letter after letter. It was great. One afternoon, I met up with him in South Minneapolis and he carried a little boom box that was playing Let It Be by the Replacements. It was the first time I heard it and it's still one of my very favorite albums today. My parents had no idea where I was and they so completely grounded me. They were ready to kill me. (I'm still sheepish writing about it 23 years later.) That was the day that I kissed him. It took about two hours before I had the guts to do it.

But for some reason, after two weeks or so, he dumped me. Maybe it was when I went to camp? He'd apparently been very into Sarah, my so-called best friend. I have some recollection that he was dating me to be around her. She and I, later that year, tricked him into coming over to her house and we both jumped out and laughed at him. He drove away. I still feel bad about that.

I burned every single one of the letters Bryan sent me using a pack of matches he gave me. I counted them off. 1. 2. 3. It's one of the biggest regrets I have: I wish I hadn't gotten rid of them.

There's a nice epilogue to the whole grading story for the semester. On Monday, I got email from the professor who taught my favorite class last semester -- a straight history class on Europe between the wars. I got an A- on the paper and an A in the class. (It made me cry.) This is all the more amazing to me because it's the first college level straight history class I've taken. I've taken history of any number of things, just not a strict history class. It was a lot of work -- sometimes 500+ pages of reading a week. But I loved it.

So I stopped by to visit the professor on Wednesday to say hello and thank you. He owns a little red terrier who comes to school with him. She and I like each other. I rub her ears, he and I discuss Germany history in the 20s and the 60s.

Anyway, another student tried to open the door and she ran over, barking. The student quickly shut the door.

"Very interesting," he said. "You know what she just did? She protected you."

I looked down and she was looking up at me, very pleased with herself. I told her she was a good dog and of course, rubbed her ears.

Things must be okay if my favorite professor's terrier is going to bat for me.

When I was began thinking about applying to graduate school in late 2004, I had a conversation with Peter Lunenfeld, a professor in the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design -- he had visited Ivrea and I was one of his hosts there.

"Prepare for the death of your ego," he said.

It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I began to really feel how true that was. When I did my master's, I had already internalized just how irrelevant my previous career and life experience was. You think that architects care about interaction design, the web, mobile phones? Save for scant few exceptions, think again. There's a rant I wrote at the end of my first year titled "fuck you, architecture," where I lamented how architecture steals from many disciplines but declares its own as pure.

The Ph.D. is another layer of this. For us, our entire currency is papers. In the third year of our studies, we do our generals, and in our case, that means submitting a dossier of 6 papers we've written throughout the two years of coursework. We then defend them. This means that no paper is ever really complete: we keep reworking all but three of them. I didn't know how emotionally taxing it would be to write a paper that became 50 pages long (because it didn't have a point), then rewrite it to 25 pages in which I carefully reasoned my argument. It represents the strongest academic writing I've ever done and it still only got a B+. (This will change when I rewrite it, but still, ouch.) I've collapsed into a crying heap after not eating because I was working in the arts library. I've declared on Twitter, no less, that I was utter shit.

Prepare for the death of your ego, indeed.

Last weekend, I went to Savannah for the IXDA Interaction 08 conference. My first night (after a lot of wine and a Roberta Flack sighting in the Sheraton Four Points hotel bar -- she may have killed us softly with her song, but I digress), Matt wondered why I wasn't blogging: he wanted to read more about what I was doing in school. I tried to explain any number of things. School has made me very internally focused, made me realize that my audience is my professor or advisor, my fellow students and the head of my program -- and that little else matters against that. Thinking of externalizing it just makes me tired. Moreover, I'm competitive. I look at the writing of my good friends (and for that matter, Enrique), and I think: how can I possibly keep up with this? Where do these guys find the energy?

So back to the conference. I wasn't sure what to expect but the whole thing was dam breaking. It made me realize that I do still belong to the interaction design community -- more than ever. And it made me realize how much I miss being engaged with the people in it. Finally, writing is so damn hard -- it used to be so easy for me when I was younger, but what did I know then? So the way around it, then, is quite likely to write more. And to put it out there, and see what comes back.

I don't think this is so much the reinstantiation of my ego, but maybe the trusting of my own voice. That feels like a heartening thing.

It's been a really hard Christmas, a long trip (3 weeks) away from Princeton, long enough for a side visit to San Antonio to visit Enrique's family. I also have found a wedding dress and potential wedding location, a great caterer that I can't use at said location, and a flower shop run by two guys out of a former gas station. I have three papers due in a week and will likely only complete two. Par for the course, I hear. We want a dog but we're low on cash.

I guess all of this is to say that I'm ready to get my 2008 on. I need to get back to the routine, eat normal amounts, drink less, exercise. You know the drill. I feel optimistic about this.Plus, soon we get new classes.  That's always fun.

Also, every year, I post a look back on 2007. I started writing mine but then we had to put the dog to sleep and I felt rotten and didn't really feel like looking back on anything.

Okay so, safe travels. Maybe I should blog more. Hm.