off to goddard again next week!

well, time flies when i'm having fun, and not blogging.

despite my ignoring all school-related things since i handed in my portfolio, it is time again for summer residency.

fun facts:
-the theme for the dance is: PIRATES!
-i emailed the friend i signed up to share a room with, and it turns out she is not coming this semester. we hadn't done too well at keeping in touch, but at least i found out before i got there, as opposed to last semester, when i didn't learn that my roomie wasn't coming until she failed to show up. i hope that i end up with a single room for the price of a double, like last time, rather than getting stuck with a stranger.

uhhh. out of fun facts. more next week. instead, here are some parts copied from a profile of Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from VT, which I wanted to post a link to, but the rag that rhymes with Moo Fork Limes, does not see fit to let the non-paying public read its archives...

'I urge you all to argue with your teachers, argue with your parents,'' Sanders told a group of about 60 students at South Burlington High School -- generally liberal, affluent and collegebound -- one afternoon in mid-December.

The newly elected senator whipped his head forward with a force that shifted his free-for-all frizz of white hair over his forehead. (Journalistic convention in Vermont mandates that every Sanders story remark on his unruly hair as early on as possible. It also stipulates that every piece of his clothing be described as ''rumpled.'')

___

Sanders calls himself as a ''democratic Socialist.'' When I asked him what this meant, as a practical matter, in capitalist America circa 2007, he did what he often does: he donned his rhetorical Viking's helmet and waxed lovingly about the Socialist governments of Scandinavia. He mentioned that Scandinavian countries have nearly wiped out poverty in children -- as opposed to the United States, where 18 to 20 percent of kids live in poverty. The Finnish government provides free day care to all children; Norwegian workers get 42 weeks of maternity leave at full pay.

But would Americans ever accept the kinds of taxes that finance the Scandinavian welfare state? And would Sanders himself trade in the United States government for the Finnish one? He is curiously, frustratingly non-responsive to questions like this. ''I think there is a great deal we can learn from Scandinavia,'' he said after a long pause. And then he returns to railing about economic justice and the rising gap between rich and poor, things he speaks of with a sense of outrage that always seems freshly summoned.

...that's all folks.