I started thinking about this topic a while back. While I was cramming for copy editing test, and revisiting AP style conventions, I noticed how Barack Obama was always referred to as Obama, Mr. Obama, and Hillary Clinton was referred to more casually, as Hillary, not Mrs. Clinton or Senator Clinton. It was a fleeting thought until today, when I read this blog in the NY Times (http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/woman-in-charge-women-who-charge/?em&ex=1212897600&en=3149a226e69054e9&ei=5087%0A) and watched the video below. I know it all sounds like sour grapes, but what are we saying to the young girls of America when Britney Spears antics get more attention from the media than Hillary Clinton's policy?

 New Order - True Faith
Pixies - La La Love You
Guster - Ruby Falls
Tom Waits - Downtown Train

I want to dig my toes in the sand and let salty ocean water run over them.

I want to get on my bike and ride until it's time for beer.

I want to sip frozen cocktails in far away places.

I want to take a siesta.

I want to hear cheerful music in another language.

I want to sleep under the stars in my hammock.

COCOON.

Drab habitation of whom?
Tabernacle or tomb,
Or dome of worm,
Or porch of gnome,
Or some elf's catacomb?

I'm posting this as a memorial to Don Gowan, dean of students, lacrosse coach, history teacher and all around awesome, fair guy who died of a heart attack earlier this week.

1.) you've been subjected to weekly room searches
2.) mail has been a central facet in your life.
3.) you've been on a chaperoned shopping trip after the age of 12
4.) you have ever had an incredible urge to study at a certain time after dinner, and remembered that is because it was your old school's time for mandatory study hall
5.) Dinner is essential, and you are never late because it is the most exciting thing that happens to you all day
6.) you've ever had to experience a themed parents weekend, and then enjoyed yourself immensley simply because you werent rotting on dorm eating pizza
7.) you know what a mixer is
8.) you kept attending mixers long after they were ever meant to be cool
9.) your first roomate cried like a lonely 9th grader, becuase well, she/he was...
10.) you quickly discovered the joys of clandestine stale-cigarette smoking
11.) you've ever attended a formal dance with more teachers then students present
12.) you never went to prom, or homecoming, or ring dance, or whatever....because your school didnt have any of the above.
13.) you've ever been threatened that skipping gym is a serious punishable offense
14.) you continued to skip anyways
15.) you never occomplished anything during the time you skipped gym that made the skipping worth it.
16.) you know that social probation is
17.) you've ever hidden a lighter like it was worth more then a pound of cocaine
18.) you feel closer with your friends from school then you do your own family
19.) you've ever had required chapel. on sunday. and monday. and possibly friday.
20.) you know that nature trails are far better for things other then a brisk jog in the morning
21.) fans and febreeze are the only things that have kept you from being expelled on numerous occasions
22.) you can remove a screen form your window in complete darkness at 3 in the morning, smoke a cigarette out a 3 story window, and put that screen back in , drunk, while barely missing campus security
23.) you know by heart and instinct when security makes rounds
24.) youve ever been checked in at night, every night, by someone who isnt your parent
25.) faculty gossip is worth more then your life.
26.) the water bottles in your fridge may or may not actually contain water.....light rum? vodka? everclear? gin? the possibilities could be endless
27.) you have become very creative when hiding things
28.) you know that a full sized nalgene holds a fifth, perfectly.
29.) you've ever gotten in a vicious battle over the t.v in a dorm commons room
30.) when taking a walk through campus, you may at any time be armed with any number of the following:
>gum
>wearing a hoodie even during the hottest of days
>cigarettes hiden artfully in a hoodie
>a scent concealing spray
>weed
>the smallest bowl money can buy
>enough clothes under your hoodie so you can change and not be cold
31.) youve ever considered stealing liquor from an alumni weekend
32.) Pills.
33.) you know what robotripping is, and that it is incredibly lame....and you did it anyway.
34.) you know what its like to be on the look-out for narc-happy fellow classmates
35.) you've ever been "turned in"
36.) you've ever been told that NOT turning someone in is just as bad as if you had done the crime yourself.
37.) you know that the nurses are very good people to manipulate
38.) youve ever gotten out of class for long periods of time because the nurses like you
39.) you've gone to school with people richer then god.....and not cared about it for a second
40.) you've had a relationship with the opposite sex that relied on the phone, internet, and mixers...and made it work
41.) you never had a snow day, ever. you didn't get federal holidays either......
42.) you've ever been told that wearing a collared shirt is esstential to learning....or that wearing a knee-legnth skirt to a dance is ample oppurtunity for pregnancy or at least a "finger drive-by"
43.) you've ever caught your self trying to convince a group of non-boarding schoolers that going to the movies and eating dinner chaperoned with a small group of people of the same sex, is actually just as fun as a raging kegger, and much more uplifting. (and sometimes you may have even been right)
44.)you've ever been kicked offline earlier then your four-year-old half-sister every night...and then went on an internet bender for the first 2 days of every break
45.) you've ever had satuday classes, or a.p weekends...or anything else that would make sure you would stay on campus until your eyeballs bled with boredom on the weekends
46.) you learned to understand and manipulate every aspect of AIM connections and would communicate via email if necessary with everyone in the school to find the proper combinaton of numbers to keep it up and running.
47.) you know you went to boarding school if....youve ever hooked up in any of the following and thought it was normal:

1. photolab

2. empty classroom

3. the woods

4. golf course

5. any other sketchy public place

6. and the best of all : possibly even a chapel


48.) you were sure glad when you graduated.....but felt sort of empty when you left

So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made,
In love we disappear.
Leonard Cohen- Boogie Street

Yeah, this was gonna be some heartfelt blog about starting weight watchers today. But instead I'm laughing my ass off at this blog (and you should too!)

http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

Hey, Phil! Hey, Rhonda! We're so glad you could come over! Rhonda, you sit by Ted--and Phil, why don't you sit by me.

You know how we play doubles in tennis? And sometimes we, you know, switch? Well, it's 1974 and all, and... oh, yes, it's a little forward of us, but... well, why don't you two try my Melon Mousse and think about it? Okay?

Mini fridge freezer

Your are icy but not cold

Why bother with you ?

Crystalline ice

You snugly guard my vittles

But they thaw anyway.

Fat sleepy snowflakes drift slowly to the ground

Late day light briefly turns bright against gray snowdrifts,

A final glimmer of the day before the muffled wintry darkness sets in

We walk home from the old barn with our scarves and mittens stinking of cigarettes, a daily ritual of high school made mysterious under the wintry disguise of a blizzard.

On the outside a snow plow, whistle from the ice rink

On the inside I hear The Rain Song.

January. Melancholy. Perfection.

    Cyclists are allowed, by law, to "take the lane" or occupy the entire lane if they otherwise cannot safely ride in the bike lane, shoulder, or on the right side of the road.

If you try and run me off the road again, I'm gonna put a rock thru your window.