Things I'm Learning in School

It has been a while since I have written anything substantial. One excuse was my parents visit, and the other is that I've just finished up midterms and am realizing how intense the rest of the semester is going to be.

But speaking of school, one of the main things I get asked by you all is, "how is school going? What are your classes like?" To answer that I thought I would make an interesting/funny/weird list of things I've learned so far this term. Anything in quotes is a direct quote from one of my professors.

According to the ancient Greeks and Romans, patterned textiles are the mark of barbarians

A Senmurv is a magical creature that is part dog and part bird. When depicted in textile form, it looks like a squirrel.

Scarlet is a kind of fabric. You can make a blue scarlet coat.

In reference to adults making knotted rugs: “Even fat fingers can do fine work, it just takes longer.”

“If you are serious about rugs, you should join the Rug Club.”

In order to make flax plant stalks into usable linen, you have to let it sit out somewhere where it can rot. The longer it rots, the better the quality of the linen.

You can make regenerated fibers out of just about any protein. In the 1930s-50s fibers for clothing were being produced from milk, corn, and ground nuts.

Polyester is boring under a microscope. Cotton is awesome

Silk isn’t spun, it is “thrown.”

Linen naturally prefers to be spun in a particular direction. Cotton is like, “I twist both ways. I’m game for anything.”

If scientists can ever figure out how to produce spider silk commercially, we will one day be able to buy bulletproof T-shirts.

One ounce of silkworm eggs will result in enough silkworms to eat 1 ton of mulberry leaves and then produce 12 pounds of raw silk.

“Nothing is more futile than railing against fashion.”

Before the French Revolution bright pinks and purples, flower patterns, and pastels were all common for men’s wear. It was only during the 19^th century that we got the idea (still around today) that dark colors and neutrals are the only appropriate shades for men.

“Never be led astray by something an art historian says about fashion.”

In the 17^th century it was fashionable to have your hair longer on one side than the other. Sort of like a side mullet (business on the right, party on the left).

High heels were invented for men, and the heels were originally red. They were worn at the court of King Louis XIV of France, an initially only the King, his brother, and their 12 favorite friends were allowed to wear them. Slowly they allowed other men the privilege of wearing red heels. It was a huge honor.

In the 1720s a new style of dress emerged for women. They figured, “The old king is dead, I’m going out in my negligee.”

“When fashion is working properly it predicts the future. The French Revolution was preceded by the revolution in dress.”

In the 1780s various shades of brown were in vogue. Some colors included “Paris mud,” “dead leaf,” and one that roughly translates to “poop of the Prince.”

In a similar vein, the following are the names of fashionable colors for men’s stockings in the early 17^th century: Dying Monkey, Amorous Desires, Sad Friend, Mortal Sin, Sick Spaniard, Resuscitated Corpse, and Colour of Hell.

“The only thing that can successfully stamp out fashion is the fear of death.”

Project Roommate

I just got home from saying goodbye to my parents (they've been in New York this whole week), ready to spend the evening relaxing a bit. When I walked into the living room I found my roommate curled up on the couch watching one of my DVDs. Apparently he took the day off work because he was feeling sick, and thought he would check out season 4 of Project Runway. He got hooked and was 8 episodes in when I arrived. I joined him for number 9. Awesome.

Things you might not know about New York...

In the bathrooms at the Metropolitan Opera House, the toilets are flushed using a foot pedal near the floor, and there are built in ashtrays on top of the toilet paper dispensers.

Just thought I would share.

The New Yorkiest Weekend

I don’t know that I’ve fallen in love with New York yet, but in the meantime I’m enjoying playing the role of a seasoned New Yorker. I’ve figured out how to jaywalk without getting run over, where to go to get cheap groceries, and I barely look up anymore to gaze at famous buildings. This week my F train was twice rerouted along another line, and I just shrugged. I knew that wherever it dumped me I would be able to find my way.

In addition to all this, I am finally starting to cultivate a bit of a social life. Tonight I am spending my evening blogging and watching TV on hulu, but last weekend was much more exciting. First of all, I finally went out in my own neighborhood. On Thursday my roommate and I bonded over a drink at a local bar, and on Friday I met up with Marianne (visiting from Boston) for brunch. For the latter, we had a perfect Brooklyn experience at a diner my roommate recommended. We sat at an outside table on a charming street corner, and dined on coconut-banana pancakes and grits with tomatoes and goat cheese. That evening the second year students in my program invited us first years out for drinks. We have all been very congenial with each other, but this was the first time my class really socialized outside of class. Some phone numbers were exchanged, mutual love of Clueless and Romy and Michele’s discovered, and there was even a brief Beyonce sing-along (someone said “to the left,” what else was I supposed to do?). I also got the very New York experience of paying $6 for a bottle of Bud Light.

On Saturday I got some homework done as my roommate and his friends held a stoop sale outside our building (the New York version of a garage sale). In the evening I went to the hipsteriest of hipster parties. It was in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg area in a commercial space converted into an artsy multi-person apartment (I was invited by one of my classmates who lives there). There were multiple bands, beer from a keg, and throngs of people. I swayed along to the moody retro-sounding band and stared out at all the saggy v-neck T-shirts and handlebar moustaches. I had a great time, and managed to stop myself from drunkenly bidding on too many items in the silent auction (the party was for some cause that I forget, but I was assured that it was “for the children”). When I left, I completed my first solo post-midnight subway ride. For those of you who are my parents, I can calm your fears by saying that there seem to be more people on the subway in the middle of the night than mid-day.

I got up at a reasonable hour on Sunday and decided to go to the Cloisters. One of my professors was giving a presentation about Medieval dress, and a classmate was participating as a live model (about eight hands went up in class when we were asked who would be interested in modeling historic garments, but I had to put mine down when one of the stipulations was knowing a boy who could also be roped in). When I arrived, and had to push myself past a parade of belly-dancers, I was reminded that the demonstration was part of the Medieval fair (faire?) going on that day. Oh man. Aren’t Medieval/Renaissance fairs such a great combo of secretly awesome and embarrassingly stupid? I was filled with a mix of snobbery (so many ridiculous interpretations of historic dress!) and affinity for these exuberantly nerdy Earlham types. It was a great afternoon. I learned about authentic 14^th century garb from my professor, fell in love with the Cloisters (again), and successfully resisted the urge to eat some “ye olde fried dough.”

As my final adventure of the weekend, I decided to brave another church. This time it was Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, and it was even more sparsely attended than the Episcopalian place I tried two weeks ago. However, I think that I might actually go back to this one. While the pomp and pageantry of high church is decidedly grim when preformed on a small scale, the personal nature of the Mennonite style works fine even when only 15 people are there. Parts of it were a little lame, but I talked to a bunch of lovely people and they gave me a free jar of honey.

Well, it looks like I rambled on for a long time again. Gold star to you for making it all the way through!

Tales From The Apartment Hunt: The Worst

Alternate Post Title: I Like Trains But Hate Railroads

I had this idea that I would end up writing about most of the apartments I saw, but now I’m having second thoughts. As I’ve been taking a stab at it, I think many of them really aren’t that interesting or funny in written form. One filled me with an unshakable sense of grimness. Another seemed mostly ok except that the whole place reeked of cat pee. I saw huge rooms in sketchy parts of Brooklyn, and unbelievably cramped quarters in awesome parts of Manhattan. I had to ask myself questions like, “could I survive with just a mini-fridge?”, “will buying a new mattress pad make me feel ok about sleeping on an old mattress?”, and “can I automatically veto a roommate whose e-mail address is ‘paininlove@hotmail.com’?” Some of it is certainly worthy of mockery, but I don’t think it will really be that fascinating for me to go through each place in detail. So let’s just cut to the chase: what was the worst place that I saw?

I could use a lot of criteria to define the worst, but for me the one that stood out was the one that was the most depressingly/hilariously overpriced. This winner was about $920 a month, and was a railroad apartment. It was located in a surprisingly dull part of Williamsburg (Brooklyn), above a store that appeared to sell mostly Hello Kitty products and bongs. For those of you who don’t know (I didn’t until I moved here), a railroad is one where all the rooms are laid out in one long line. There aren’t hallways or central areas--each room just connects to the next. The room that the woman was renting was in the middle, and windowless. While my prospective roommate did have a door in her bedroom that allowed her to go around (via the exterior hallway), the offered room was basically a passageway between her room and the rest of the apartment. She promised that I would have privacy. “I’ll only come through your room if I really need to pee or something,” she said. She eagerly pointed out that the room had a closet—admittedly not standard issue in New York. The “closet” however turned out to be only around 6 inches deep, and had four metal hooks sticking out rather than a bar for hangers. I think in the real world we call that a coat rack.

As I was sitting in the kitchen chatting with the woman, I noticed a tube of toothpaste near the kitchen sink. Suspicious, I asked to see the bathroom. Sure enough, the bathroom was so small (a half-sized tub crammed up against a toilet) that there was no sink. The kitchen sink was also the bathroom sink.

I think the woman could sense my dismay, and she tried to turn the tide in her favor by talking about how “this is New York” and as shocking as it may be this is just what the apartment market is like. She started to press me about whether or not I wanted to take it. I said I had to think about it, and confessed my doubts about the middle-room situation. “It is really not that bad,” she said, “go in and close the doors, and you’ll see how nice it is.” With a growing feeling of hopelessness, I agreed. I went into the room, closed the doors on either end, and sat down on the bed. A strange feeling of calm came over me. I wondered how long I could sit in there before it got weird and she came to check on me. I had seen enough places by this time to know that for $920 I could do better. But the search was exhausting and I was desperate for it to be over. I knew that as soon as I got up and left, it would mean that I was checking off one more place and continuing the process. The space was quiet and I was alone, and for a few moments it was my much longed for personal piece of New York. But I knew that eventually I would have to get up, get back on craigslist, and make more appointments.

I think it was after visiting that place that I thought of writing posts about the apartment search. It was grim at the time, but I could see that once I was finally settled, some of it would be funny. $920 for a windowless hallway room in a place with no bathroom sink? I mean, really.