Category: albany

03/24/07 05:07 - 47ºF - ID#38606

accepted

I was having the worst day yesterday... but I got some good news. I actually got accepted into a PhD program, at the history department at SUNY Albany. I don't think I am actually going to go there, for a number of reasons. One is that I have always loved Buffalo and the city here, and I don't really want to leave. The second reason is I really hope to get into the program at UB (it's very good), and I am still waiting to hearfrom them. Three is that I have no idea whether I will be able to get any funding for the Albany program, and there is not way I can go for a doctorate without funding. I'm just so psyched that I didn't get rejected to all three schools that I applied to. I got a rejection through email from Binghamton that was kind of nasty. So I am hoping either things will work out with UB or that I will find a good job in Buffalo, but I am glad to have a remote backup out there if all else fails.

Permalink: accepted.html
Words: 186
Location: Buffalo, NY

03/15/07 12:40 - 37ºF - ID#38472

public transportation

I wish I could come to the party on friday. I was looking at the bus schedule, and the latest bus from buffalo going closest to my place in williamsville leaves at 8:00.

I wonder if maybe there are some cab companies in williamsville. It's so annoying not having a car.

Permalink: public_transportation.html
Words: 50
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: music

02/20/07 11:47 - 38ºF - ID#38218

last fm

I really like lastfm. It's a little bit like Pandora in that it has the radio station format based on selections you might like, but this has some cool networking/blogging features that are unique.

What do you estrip people usually use as far as music seeking/playing programs?

Permalink: last_fm.html
Words: 49
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: life

02/02/07 02:43 - 27ºF - ID#37964

it's been awhile

It's been a long time since I last posted. Things got really hectic and I guess I just lost track of things. I wanted to go to the estrip parties that were in December, but I ended up spending both times with friends. I've been trying to catch up on reading journals here lately, though.

I moved from Elmwood to Williamsville two weeks ago. I am renting a room in a house with some people that I know. I like the place that I am living in a lot, though, I miss living in the actual city. It's easy for me to get around Williamsville and to Buffalo by day, but harder for me to get to and from the city at night (I don't own a car. There is busses at night, but only at certain times). But it's been good. It's less expensive than where I lived before, and its comfy.There is even a mini-spot coffee cafe in a grocery store a few streets away! I love cinco shakes.

I'm finished with all my master's classes, just trying to work on my thesis. Which has been a long process. I'm writing about the looting of the Iraq Museum in 2003 and the recovery of the stolen art by international organizations. It's a really interesting topic that I have enjoyed reading about, but I find it hard to actually write and organize what I have researched. Its been taking me a lot longer than I anticipated.

I am applying to PHD programs in history at UB, and a couple of other places. I think it is probably a long shot because they are selective, but I thought I might as well try. It would be cool to get "paid" to go to school, definitely. Hopefully I will be able to find a job that will work out for me here in Buffalo, if that doesn't work out. I really like the area, and would prefer not to move.

I hope everything is going well for all of you!
-Jess

Permalink: it_s_been_awhile.html
Words: 340
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: news

06/04/06 07:44 - 69ºF - ID#29660

what shocks me

I found
this story online a few minutes ago. I guess after awhile, you find yourself desensitized to a lot of the violence that takes place. But this was pretty shocking to me. Sometimes you wonder what the world is coming to; but then you realize it's always been this way in some form or another.

It's interesting when I'm around people of my parents or grandparents generation and they are talking about the days when things were safer, or better for people to live in as far as violence is concerned. I'm not sure if such assumptions have a lot of veracity to them. I wonder sometimes if a heightened perception of violence is just more apparent given the increased proliferation of media sources (especially electronic and visual).

My grandparents generation, for example, is one in which millions upon millions of people died from genocide- between Hitler and Stalin. My parents generation were witness to the horrors of what went on in places like Cambodia, where a government carried out systemic violence and cultural extermination against its own people. While life in 2005 can be terrible in that people are exposed through the media to violence; it always gives the potential of making us more aware of what is going on in the world (at least in theory).

Permalink: what_shocks_me.html
Words: 218
Location: Buffalo, NY

11/08/06 11:28 - 54ºF - ID#29659

politics, tunes, and coffee

It was nice to get some good election news as far as the democrats gaining the majority in Congress. I'm not sure it will make a huge difference as far as policy goes, but, it still sends a message that people want a change.

I was surprised Tom Reynolds got reelected, though... I thought people wouldn't want to support someone like that. I was no Jack Davis fan, but I never would have voted for Reynolds if I was in that district.

Any good music that you would recommend? Lately, I've been kind of all over the place in my musical tastes. I like to try most anything except a lot of the commercial rap/country/pop that you hear on the radio or mtv lately.

I should get coffee and get back to working on the "thesis of doom". Theoretically.

Permalink: politics_tunes_and_coffee.html
Words: 141
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: buffalo

10/26/06 05:05 - 45ºF - ID#29657

Halloween

What do adult people in Buffalo usually do for Halloween? Do you usually go out someplace or just stay in? What do little kids usually do- is there trick or treating in most neighborhoods? Do they go to some kind of special kid event instead?

I moved here from Jimmytown a year ago and was curious. Last year, I sort of eschewed the Halloween thing to hang out at spot coffee for a date.It was actually really fun... if not kind of an odd day for a first date with someone.

Permalink: Halloween.html
Words: 92
Location: Buffalo, NY

10/11/06 06:43 - 62ºF - ID#29655

quiz

museumchick --
[adjective]:

Banshee-like

Jessica --
[noun]:

A person who laughs at anything (even this entry)

jess --
[noun]:

A person who has the ability to be invisible

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Permalink: quiz.html
Words: 40
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: poems

10/03/06 09:09 - 63ºF - ID#29654

sex without love

"Sex Without Love" Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Permalink: sex_without_love.html
Words: 179
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: poems

10/03/06 09:07 - 63ºF - ID#29653

Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness by Naoimi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Permalink: Naomi_Shihab_Nye.html
Words: 245
Location: Buffalo, NY

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