chelsea + obama at BELOIT?

DISCLAIMER: This post is about politics. I hope that the entry, though, is unbiased because I support no candidate.
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We promised our supervisor, Bryan, that if he canceled work for us last night we'd all go see Obama speak.
And we did.

But earlier in the day another came to answer some questions: Chelsea Clinton.



The main floor of Pearson's Hall was already pretty full when Allison and I sat down at 1 PM. By 1:45 it was packed. A music mix was pumped through the speakers and we joked, was it Hillary's iPod? The athletes in front of us sang along with the Police's "Every Little Thing She Does It Magic" and the Smash Mouth cover of "Believer".

Though Chelsea was supposed to speak at 2 she didn't manage to get the microphone until after 2:30 because Tammy Baldwin, the representative for Beloit's district, was speaking of her long friendship with Hillary.



Chelsea answered our questions for an hour; everything from college tuition to the Iraq War. She told us exactly where her mother plans to fund all of these changes. She wasn't inspiring in the same way Obama was but she told us factually what would happen. She was humble about every question directed toward her and handled questions by the opposition with grace

On the walk back to my dorm I spotted the first of the Obama supporters. It was nearly 4 PM and they had been outside the Sports Center for nearly 2 hours. They would be there another hour before the doors were opened and they were allowed to stand in line.

Some email checking and dinner later and I bundled up with my camera, iPod and homework to see Obama. A few friends had gone over at 6 but I waited until 7. I quickly found Katie, Nicole and Allison in line and we stood/sat/leaned for the next hour and a half in line in the Field House.

We zig-zagged our way back and forth and they pushed the line tighter and tighter together. At 8 PM security opened and groups of 15 or so were let through and upstairs. Just after 9 PM we made it into the Flood Arena where we met up with Beth who had been volunteering for 4 hours.



The Beloit Memorial High Pep band was playing and the crowd was antsy. They continued to pack us in close, panning cameras over the cheering crowd on the floor and in the stands [we were on the floor].



Obama was to speak at 10 and we started counting down while singing to the music pumped through the speakers. A local singer sang a song by Rob Tamaro, a music professor, and some local coordinators pumped us up.

Amazingly, he started early!



He spoke for about 45 minutes of hope, change and the opposition. He roused the crowd and got huge cheers. Obama was about inspiration and hope.



Luckily, I managed to get one video before my camera’s memory card filled and the batteries died.


Over all it was really cool to see both of them speak; each was different.


++Images are MINE!++

I had an entry planned out in my head but I don’t know if I can write it coherently after finding out about the shootings as NIU. All my thoughts and prayers are with them.
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It’s Thursday night before the second Presidential Scholarship weekend and that means the Admissions Office is biz-ay! But that’s boring stuff you don’t want to read about so I’ll tell you of my Wednesday instead.
I had forgotten that it was the 2nd Annual Karaoke night but quickly remembered when the background choral work of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody rang through Commons. With my Tapatio sauce in hand [yes, I do bring my own hot sauce] I settled down with friends to eat tacos and listen to sober people sing their hearts out.
Then I decided to sing too.
It was another 20 minutes before I got up and sang Mama Cass’ “Dream A Little Dream of Me”.


Fast forward six hours and I’ve finished all my homework, watched Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” and I’m about to send one more email when the fire alarm goes off. The lucky people at the other end of the building ran into Maurer, which we are connected to. After midnight we can no longer enter other buildings from the outside so I, on the other hand, put on sweat pants, a long sweat shirt and shoes before heading outside.
It was around 0F as we stood out in the snow. Most of us were in pajamas and shoes rather than snow boots and jackets. We threatened that there would be blood for 1) waking many people up and 2) making us stand outside in the cold.
The RAs, we grumpy and it didn’t get any better when snow balls began to be thrown. 20 minutes later, close to 1 AM, we made our way back inside to thawed in bed. Thanks Mom for the microwavable heating pads. They are excellent.

trapped in the blinding whiteness of the TUNDRA!

You know it’s winter in Beloit when…

+Your nose hairs freeze with your first breath

+Even your long underwear is stiff

+You turn on your computer before 8 AM to check if your professor has cancelled class [rare]

+You dream of wearing only two layers

+Your Chem professor uses your pants’ rock salt absorption line as an example of capillary action

+You don’t mind wearing snow boots to a dance party

+You plan trips 10 minutes early to scrap ice and snow from the car

+You get Facebook invitations for giant snow ball fights in front of Pearson’s

+English professors reference the “Storm of 1976” in comparison to the previous night

+And you are studying it in your Biology class

+You stay here anyway

slip 'n slide!

I complain of the weather often.
And I’m sorry.
But seriously, Mid-West, warm temperatures + ice rain + below zero + 9 inches of snow over night?
C’mon!

Enough, enough. I resolve to complain of the weather no longer in this post although it did make walking to downtown a bit of an adventure this morning.

My Environment and Society classes headed down to the new headquarters of Beloit 2020, the civic committee who have been revamping Beloit for the past 19 years. We got to wander a bit through the fabulous displays of what has been changed and what is to come. I highly recommend getting a peak at it [even through the windows] if you’re visiting Beloit.

In Environment and Society class, at the moment, we are focusing on Beloit as an ecosystem. We’re all researching various topics of sustainability and human-environment interaction. Most of the presentation we saw was about what changes have happened and are going to happen. With this in mind, during the after-question-session many of us asked of specific green/sustainable plans being implemented in town.

Though the students are quite keen on these new technologies, current in-chargers [is that even a word?] don’t seem to have the background to want to use them. Sure, local small-city politics play a role but it’s about individual initiative!

There may be a local produce market coming in but, again, there is a lack of interdisciplinary-mediary types to move these sorts of small business along. Oh, and the whole “we-need-money-to-do-anything” aspect too…

This is a plea to you who read this; we need people well versed in multiple interpretative communities if anything is to get done!

don't get it...

nataliedee.com

It may be Superbowl Sunday but that doesn’t mean I’m not snacking! The Admissions staff never fails on leaving left over snack food [which the SOIs then eat].

I really do love Bit-O-Honey, even if no one else does. And by the looks of the hidden candy stash, no one else does!

It was Presidential Scholarship weekend with great results. It wasn’t nearly as cold as last year [and managed to hold off on the snow until tonight]. We saw the magician Peter Boie. Being the skeptic I am, I saw right through his tricks [except for maybe one or two]. Those orange sneakers he wore were just to keep us from looking at his other hand!

We then ventured over to watch the student improv group Voodoo Barbie. Judging by their drawn on facial hair and plaid shirts, it was Lumberjack Night. As always, they were fabulous and Richardson Auditorium was packed way beyond the fire code limit. The stairs will filled, the window sills packed – but this made it all the better.

One of my prospies had an interview at 8:30 the next morning so we were up and breakfasted before I even get up for classes!

Well, by 3 PM, most prospective students were on their ways home and all those involved could relax.

I've got to finish up a presentation on Greenland's melting ice sheet for my Global Climate Change class tomorrow before I bundle back up and high-tail it back to my dorm.

Oh, and don't get scurvy.

all i want is a room somewhere...

The fax machine keeps spewing out random fax cover sheets every few minutes since I sat down tonight.

I wish sitting down meant I could have a break, but it's Monday night which means no.

I feel like all the professors got together and decided that they would assign lots of reading and then response papers/journals as homework. With three of my classes doing this [and the other just assigning insane amounts of reading], my week nights are booked.

In just the next few weeks I have at least this:
- poetry recitation
- 10 page non-fiction essay
- 6-8 page essay for rhetoric
- multiple small projects for the two biology classes
- presidential scholarship weekends
- vagina monologue rehersals
- sleep?

Two weeks in and my brain is getting fried. This is not a good thing.

I do keep sane by going through my Netflix queue and browsing pretty sites like Apartment Therapy. The more I read that site, the more I want to save up to buy my own Eames Lounge Chair [and ottoman] and go antiquing for DYI projects.

What Rhetoric major wouldn't want a dictionary wall?

Most of these are viable in a dorm room but that didn't stop my roommate and I from hanging a clothes line across the room or insulating our windows against the cold [Ace Hardware's window film is a miracle]!

For now though, I must be content with the computer chair here in Admissions as I write up a wiki article for my Environmental Studies class.

carmex

My red scarf covers half my face as I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. I can smell the heavy medicinal menthol of the Carmex I have smothered on my lips with each warm breath that is filtered through the fleece. I pull my hat down more to cover my ears but resist tying the strings because, even in the dead of winter, one still cares if they look like a dork.

I shuffle through the snow, already inches high only hours after maintenance has all gone home for the night. With my hands so tightly jammed in my pockets, if I slip, I will just roll into a ball. This is a constant worry for me; thoughts of a childhood fall involving broken teeth replay in my head and I slip my way over the powder.

The pristine snow glitters off the orange street lamps like the sparkles all the girls wore on their eyelids in elementary school. I can see each individual snow flake on my sleeves, each with its unique formation of crystals holding it perfectly together. They really do mirror the snowflakes we cut out of paper in my Californian elementary school.

I re-adjust my scarf after a few choice snowflakes drift in, only to have the red fleece stick to my Carmexed lips.