Be Prepared

So camping went...not as planned. After driving up to Santa Cruz, we stayed at Marty's uncle's house for the night. We got in at 01:00 and got up when the (very loud) espresso machine dictated. Once awake we discovered that some of the trails we planned to hike were closed and we couldn't get some of the permits that we needed on the weekend (it was Saturday). Poor planning on the part of the person who planned the trip. Oh well.

We had a backup plan. Sort of. We made one up on the spot, so that's kind of the same thing. We decided to make a day-hike of what would have been the last day of our trip and then go the rest of the way home to the north bay -- all three of us live within an hour's drive north of San Francisco -- and then go to the Boy Scout camp in San Rafael to camp for a couple of days.

We started our day-hike and had to ford a stream. Our oxen didn't die, fortunately, but Marty didn't have AMAZING HARDCORE WATERPROOF HUNTING BOOTS like Liz and I and so he hiked the rest of the 10 miles in wet socks. He had 5 blisters afterwards and decided to bail on additional camping. We took him home, spent the next day working out details of getting permission to camp on the Boy Scouts' land (a mini-adventure of its own) and then went out to spend one night camping.

Along the way we came across something that I had forgotten was up there: an old B-17 engine. One of the last B-17's manufactured crashed there on its way to Hamilton Air Force Base and one enormous radial engine is all that remains. I decided that my portfolio theme for my photography class would be HMC students doing non-academic things that they really enjoy, so I took some pictures of Liz with the engine and our packs, tying in to both her love of aerospace and of backpacking. When I finish shooting this roll we'll see how they turned out.

The moral of this story is something that I didn't realize until I'd been at college for a while: things don't always have to go as planned and that doesn't have to be a bad thing. I often get an idea of how something is going to work out in my head and then get stressed, consciously or unconsciously, when real life gets a hold on my plan, even if my "plan" is just my unofficial, unconscious view of what I expected to happen. It's amazingly freeing to step back and realize that it doesn't matter...we can have a fun time by completely ignoring the plan and doing something totally different.

Be Prepared is the title of this post, and the motto of the Boy Scouts, but being prepared can take on many forms...often it means having a well thought-out plan, but it could just as well mean be prepared to throw out your plans and do something different. If you're prepared, it'll work out fine. I was just told by someone that you need a well-formulated plan so that you have something to deviate from when you get into the field.

Although that was a good stopping point right there, I thought I'd bring this back to Mudd. I mentioned above that my photography theme is pictures of Mudders doing things that get them really fired up. I decided on this because I'm graduating in May and wanted to explore what it was that made me love this place for the last four years. I remembered back to freshman year when I was amazed to find the breadth of personality here at this tiny, technical (officially liberal arts) school. We have all kinds of people who enjoy all kinds of activities:

Jacques and Tavi, my freshman year, taught a class on Maori fire-spinning, called "Poi" which I really enjoyed. Jason was so good at unicycling that he can ride his unicycle up and down stairs and "idle" in one place talking with you. Brett drives to the mountains and tries to convince people to go mountain biking with him. He also sculpts. Scott flew RC planes and turned down at least two good job offers to go get a PhD in some form of aeronautical engineering. Marty plays Go. Alex was offered the role of Simba in the Disneyland Parade, although he turned it down because he would have had to take a year off of Mudd. Matthew auditioned for the Dapper Dans: Disneyland's barbershop quartet. A surprising number of Mudders are on the ballroom dance team. Liz bakes cookies for the dorm and sews magnificent costumes because she feels like it. Camillo dropped out because he decided his passion was in the martial arts and last I heard he was teaching German Longsword lessons and learning parkour.

We have all sorts here, and it really makes it an amazing place.

~KMarsh

And so I emerge victorious from the black depths!

Welcome back. Sorry it's taken me this long to update, but I am indeed back at Mudd and the semester has gotten underway. Today's title refers to my first time in a darkroom since senior year of high school. I'm taking intermediate B&W photography this semester and the darkroom here is somewhat different than what we had in high school. It's also in the sub-basement of the physics building. Next to rooms with really big lasers.

In other news, I decided not to continue with Russian this semester, so in addition to photography I'm taking Philosophy of Mind on CMC, Clinic, Tools, and independent study with Professor Dodds. It's a light semester with only 12 units (I can't get on the Dean's List for this semester because of this, for instance), but I think I'll be very happy with my decisions.

In addition to all the academic classes I'm taking I also am taking 2 ballroom dance classes on Pomona. Pomona has a dance department whose students study modern dance, ballet, and other expressive dance forms. Mudders can take those classes for Humanities credits (that department is where I did my humanities concentration in Movement Studies, actually), but the ballroom dance classes are perhaps more accurately called "lessons" and are taken for PE credit (0 credits at Mudd, but you're required to take at least 3 pe classes before you graduate. I think I'm up to 10 now, 2 of which I helped teach...). The head of the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company, Paul Roach, is a recent Pomona College alumnus and teaches the ballroom classes. He's a very funny guy and has a unique style of teaching dance to large groups that I find to be very similar to the style employed by my martial arts instructor before I left for college. This semester I'm taking Silver (intermediate level) International Standard Dance and Silver Social Dance.

Standard is Paul's personal favorite dancing, and it is much more commonly danced in competition than socially (except, perhaps, for weddings you rarely see it in social situations) so that class is very exacting. That class drives us very hard for technique. The 5 Standard dances are Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Quickstep and Viennese Waltz. This semester we are starting with Waltz and then moving on to Tango. Last year Liz and I took the Bronze (beginning) International Standard Dance class in which we spent most of our time on Quickstep, but also learned some Waltz and ended with Viennese Waltz. I've never danced Standard Tango and I'm really looking forward to that.

The social dance class is one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life. Bronze Social was alright, but the goal there was mostly to teach an enormous group of people the basic steps to a number of common dances (Cha-cha, Salsa, Triple-Step Swing, Polka and Lindy) and to try to get people out of their shells and make them more comfortable in social situations (while Mudd is the most technical school of the 5-C's, the others are no slouches and the difference between college students and high school students is, in some cases, only spelling, so social interaction can be a foreign concept to many people.

Silver Social, on the other hand, is an amazing class. Paul deliberately told us not to form lines like most of the dance classes and the result is a very organic and fairly chaotic group of fairly good dancers who are learning how to be themselves while dancing and look good while having fun on the dance floor. It is more fun than I can do justice to and I suspect will be a very, very good source of stress relief later on in the semester.

Dancing is fun, and I'm really glad I started taking these classes while I was at college.

~KMarsh

Would M'lady Care to Dance?

The Scottish Rite Temple in Oakland, California plays host to the quarterly Gaskell Ball. Gaskell's is a social ball set in the Victorian era.  The signature dance is the Viennese waltz (danced in the old social style, rather than modern ballroom style) but other dances make more than token appearances, such as polka (deadly, high-velocity, skipping), heel-toe galop (aim and charge at other couples in utter chaos), polka mazurka-waltz (slow Viennese waltz with a kick every half turn to warn off hapless dancers and small children), schottiche (German interpretation of what the French thought the Scotts were doing...or something), and some insane set dances with names like "The Jolly Dog Polka" and "Sir Roger de Coverly" (the latter is often followed on the setlist by the "de Coverly Recovery Waltz").  They have a live band, Brassworks, who, incidentally, played at SteampunkCon earlier this year.

The regulars are generally the same people who work at renaissance faires and things like The Great Dickens Christmas Fair.  This means two things: first, the people are a little bit strange.  Second, the costumes are AMAZING.  Many of the people make

 their own costumes and they are phenomenal.  My girlfriend made my vest and tailcoat as well as her dress.  She's actually the only active member of the sewing club at Mudd aside from Professor Sparks, who makes positively stunning quilts.  They hope to get more members soon, so if you've an interest in sewing (or learning to sew) you should be pleased to hear that you'll have an outlet at Mudd for your creative urges.  And time.  Sort of.  This dress took Liz 2 years from start to finish, but most of the work was done last semester in preparation for Gaskell's (the ruffles, unseen in this picture took 8 hours of labor each...there are 5 of them.  I can't possibly imagine spending an entire work week doing nothing but ruffles).

Oh, and I mentioned the bizarre dance that is the Schottiche earlier.  It's danced to 4 counts as follows: step-step-step-HOP, step-step-step-HOP, step-HOP-step-HOP, step-HOP-step-HOP!  You can do any number of variants, like the Goose-step Schottiche for a military aspect, the Vecchi Schottiche for a sketchy old man aspect, or the ever-popular Penguin Schottiche for a hilarious and somewhat cute aspect.  This dance is usually danced in the shuttle position (partners side-by-side, hands held across the front of their bodies) rather than a traditional ballroom position: your partner's knee comes sharply up with each HOP....  Penguin Schottiche, however, is usually danced in something akin to a conga line.  Oh, and Schottiche is pronounced "shoddish" (like the pokemon).

In addition to dancing, I also took pictures.  I'm taking Intermediate Black and White Photography next semester (in addition to 2 dance classes, clinic, a philosophy class, and independent study...) and my grandparents gave me their old Canon A1 to use.  It's about 30 years old and hasn't been used in nearly that long so I took it with me to the ball to see how it worked.  That film is in the shop tonight getting developed (the first three pictures here were taken on my digital camera), so stand by for an update when I get it back and digitized.  Until then, happy holidays!

~KMarsh