The Action Potential

Ah – there is a huge rain storm pelting Atlanta right now. The fog and storm is so thick I can’t even see out of my window to the house across the street.

Tomorrow I start work! That means that today I want to give you all on update on how I have been entertaining myself since moving in.

DeKalb Farmer’s Market
Oh, man. This place is incredible. I have been enjoying picking out ingredients at random then trying to figure out how to turn them into meals when I get home.

During one trip to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market, I noticed that they were selling ground chicory and decided to give it a try. Eugh. Turns out the only way to make chicory palatable is to pour it down the drain…and refill the cup with coffee. From coffee plants.

Arabia Mountain
I spent a great afternoon exploring this wild moonscape just outside Atlanta. The “mountain” is a huge outcropping of granite that’s covered in lichen, moss, and tiny flowers.

Beltline Hike
Yesterday I went on a seven-mile hike around the North Western section of Atlanta’s Beltline project.
The beltline is an awesome initiative to connect Atlanta communities through a light rail network. As the project gets underway, there’s some nice hiking along the abandoned rails that are going to be used…and along some not-so-abandoned rails. It was a fun chance to see Atlanta from a totally different perspective and meet a really cool group of people.

D.M.V.
I have spent countless hours trying to get a Georgia driver’s license and to register my car. The DMVs here are more surreal than most – which is saying something. They are all run like poorly organized (and needlessly popular) delis. Take a number. Wait for a few hours. Most recently I went to get tags for my car and found the waiting room had pews in place of chairs. Oh, Georgia, did you really rob a church to furnish a government office?

Met my neighbors
One of my neighbors is an obese and nimble cat named Ralph. Here, Ralph attempts to sneak through our cat door to steal our cat’s food. (He does this all day, every day. He is often successful.)

Two of my favorite tales of my human neighbors should give you some sense of the community. (I would not characterize it, generally, as a community where people slip through the cat door to steal food, so I feel obliged to go on):

Once, I looked up from a desk where I was writing and saw a little boy playing in our yard. He was about four years old, had no parent with him, and was consumed with the concerns of his imaginary world. He went poking around the yard, finding leaves, playing in puddles, and generally amusing his adorable self.

A few days later I came out of my front door and found that my neighbor from across the street was sitting in one of our porch chairs, reading the paper. “Good morning,” she said. “Your porch gets more light at this time of day.”

Hi all-

I am back from my (great) trip to Panama! I just posted a summary of the work we accomplished on my research blog, but just wanted to update you on some of the other highlights of the trip:

5. Camp food
Hooray for textured soy protein, cowboy coffee, and copious quantities of hot sauce!

4. Howler monkeys
I loved waking up to the spine-tingling sound of howler monkeys yelling at the rain. It is of some comfort that my new place is right next to a mosque, so I am now being woken up by a muezzin call. Can’t complain.

3. Rainstorms under LAI=7
The canopy was so dense (leaf area indices (LAIs) of 7 are unheard of in the Appalachians!) that when there were down-pours of rain, hardly a drop reached us.
To experience such stillness in the midst of violent wind and rain can only be described as a spiritual experience.

2. Hiking to the boundary of Kuna Yala
Kuna Yala is an independent, indigenous province that borders Panama province. Our hike there brought us through lush cloud forest and a fog bank so thick we could barely see thirty feet ahead. The warm, moist climate had given the area an exuberance of life that is unrivaled by any other I’ve seen. Every individual tree surely supported more species than there are in an entire New England forest. Each tree, though small in stature at that elevation, seemed to be just dripping in epiphytes, bromeliads, orchids, mosses, lichens, insects, and birds.

1. The beauty of the rain forest

Hey again. In the spirit of reviving my long-abandoned blogs, I also posted on my old research blog. I’d forgot it even existed so this was only my second post in two years. Click here to see it.

As for now, I am still stranded in Panama City. Both of our partner-NGO’s trucks are broken (!) – we’re waiting on transmission repairs for one and new brakes for the other. Hoping to get out to the nature reserve on Wednesday!

Hello all!

Sorry I have not kept up with my blog for the past – egh…four months. Whoops.

Anyways. I graduated from Warren Wilson in December! I had a great final semester living with lots of thoughtful fun folks in Eco Dorm. It’s sad to be parted from so many people I adore.

Right after graduation, I spent the week celebrating the holidays in Florida with my parents, brothers, and extended family. We had a great time at a beach on the Gulf. We spent most of our days fishing, walking, finding seashells, and just talking.

From there I moved into my new apartment in Atlanta. The community I’m living in is called East Lake Commons. It is a co-housing ecovillage that won the World Habitat Award in 2001. It is awesome. I was only in Atlanta for about five days but it was a total whirlwind. I bought my first car! I’m still hoping to bike to work most days, but I just didn’t feel safe living in Atlanta without a car. Two days after I return to the States, I’ll be starting my fellowship at the CDC. I’m incredibly excited to begin!

That brings us up to the present adventure. I arrived in Panama City on New Year’s day and will be heading home in a week and a half. Landing – alone – in a country where I don’t speak the language and trying to navigate the city on my own for the weekend has been very exhilarating. I’ve managed to explore pretty much anything that I can walk or take a cab to. Actually, the amount that I’ve walked since Friday is starting to show – I just tore my Chaco’s completely in half. Unfortunate.

Yesterday I explored Casco Viejo, a section of Panama City that goes back to colonial times. It is stunning in bizarre ways. Some of the buildings are well-restored and the plazas make you feel like you’re in Spain. Other buildings are crumbling to pieces and you can see huge trees, ferns, and palms taking root in the lobbies of long-dead hotels. Muggings are pretty common in the area, but crumbling buildings are actually the biggest danger! After Casco Viejo, I walked along a broad boulevard on the Pacific coast. When I visited Panama two years ago, construction of the road was just beginning – now it is a huge highway and lovely park. With hideously ugly Christmas decorations. The number of construction cranes at work in Panama City doesn’t seem to have decreased since the last time I was here either.

In the afternoon, I walked up Ancon Hill to get a view of the whole city. Until just a few years ago, the area was closed off to the public and still in use as a military base. Now it’s just a nice stroll with a view. It is nice to see how things are transitioning – especially in the rare cases where military bases aren’t just being replaced by malls. After exploring the city some more I met up with a college professor from WWC, his family, and a former classmate to spend the evening out on the causeway.

This morning I went hiking in the Metropolitan Park, a huge tract of rainforest that’s right next to the hostel where I’m staying. I saw some tamarins and tons of colorful birds and butterflies. When I’d had my fill of kicking around the humid forest, I escaped over to the Mira Flores locks along the canal, which only served to replace humidity with heat. I got to see some massive cruise ships go through the locks and explore the museum that overlooks them.

I’m going to go spend some time in the hammock to get some rest. Tomorrow everyone will be back from holiday vacation so we’ll tackle the logistics of our trip out to Cocobolo Nature Reserve.

Ciao!