The warning is quite clear, but a few days ago I noticed a lone bubble sail up past my window. I immediately grabbed my camera and took this photo. The girl underneath me was blowing bubbles in flagrant disregard for University policy! Clearly she is destined for a life of crime.
Jenny has asked me to post photos of my dorm room this year. You've all seen it before, of course. And if you've been reading me long enough, you'll remember my room from last year. Now, by clicking on the above photo, you can see pictures of my room as it looks now. Next year it will be even more fantastic.
Tonight there was a special Valentine's Day dinner in the dining hall. I've been trying to avoid refined sugar, but I was helpless before the pink.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to go beyond the free trial of my dot mac account, but today it occurred to me that I can use it share video. And since both of my digital cameras have some video capability, it seems silly not to be doing this. The only downside is that, once I fill up my quota, I'll have to start deleting stuff in order to be able to put up more. So anyone coming to this entry months from now will find themselves unable to access the movies. (If you happen to be a visitor from the distant future, I'd like to apologize for the non-functioning links.)
Remember the scrub jay from last year? I'm living in a new dorm this year, so it didn't know where to find me. Over the past few days I've been putting an unshelled peanut on my windowsill every day hoping it would be spotted. The peanuts invariably disappeared after a few hours, but I wasn't sure if they were just being blown off by the. Today the jay (or possibly a jay) showed up while I was home. Within an hour I was able to get it to take food from my hand.
Once it knew I had peanuts in my room and could see them, all I had to do was open the window, step back and let it come in and take them. Each time it left, I put them further and further from the window and closer to me. In this first clip you can see just how close I was able to get it to come.
As the bowl of peanuts got ever closer to me, the jay started to get nervous. I'm sure it was thinking to itself how much easier it would be if that large dangerous human would just leave so that the bowl of magically appearing peanuts could be approached in safety. In this visit, the peanuts are a bit closer to me, and if your speakers are on, you can hear the threatening cries of the mighty scrub jay. Basically it translates into English as, "Okay, I'm coming in now, but you'd better not try anything, or the next nut I carry out of here won't be a peanut."
I decided to try hand feeding, which the jay seemed to find easier to deal with than entering my room. Whenever a peanut appeared, it could just fly up and grab it on the go. I never could figure out where it was taking them, but somewhere on campus is a nest overflowing with peanuts. Oh, here it goes again.
If you only have time to download one clip, this is it!
Following up on yesterday's post pertaining to Indiana University, today I'll relate an interesting incident that occurred while I was studying there many years ago. (It really is too bad that I have chosen to start blogging during such a dull period in my life; all the really exciting stuff happened to me years ago, so perhaps I should think about retelling an old life experience as a weekly feature or, at the very least, stop trying to cram in so much parenthetical text.)
When I attended IU, I resided in a huge dormitory with four wings and fourteen floors. It was called Eigenmann. (You can see a picture here.) One night I was watching TV. Star Trek reruns came on at 10:30 PM every weekday, and all the good programs usually ended at 10, so there was always a half-hour window from 10 to 10:30 when nothing was on, and I had to sit through Fox News. On this particular night, the news began with a breaking story about a shooting in Bloomington, which is where the university is located. I thought that might be moderately interesting. After the commercials, the news returned, and it was announced that the shooting had taken place on the IU campus. Interesting. Then they showed a picture of my dorm -- the one I was in!
At that point, I decided it would probably be a good idea to stay in my room, no matter how much I might need to use the bathroom. I also phoned my parents to let them know that I was still alive. An emergency hall meeting was called to fill everyone in, but thankfully, it ended in time for me to watch Star Trek.
Here's what happened. A woman on the fourteenth floor had had a boyfriend in another state that she broke up with. (I believe it was Texas.) He was angry and told her that he would travel to Indiana and kill her, and he threatened to do this in various ways, one of which he followed through on. The police offered to post someone to insure her safety, but she declined. He showed up that night with a loaded shotgun, entered the building, took the elevator up to her floor, and started banging on her door and shouting. Apparently this went on for a very long time. Then she opened her door, and he started beating her up in the hallway. This also went on for a long time. Finally, two nearby residents came out of their rooms and tried to subdue him. In the end, he shot both of them and the woman. Then he ran out of the building and shot himself in the head halfway across campus. Then the police arrived.
All four people died. The Texan gunslinger died immediately. His ex-girlfriend died about a day later, and the other two people lingered on in critical condition for a few days before passing away. Each one had a scholarship set up in their name with a little donation box in the lobby.
Other than the fact that it was kind of upsetting that something like this had happened in my building, I was completely uninvolved in the incident. I do have a vague memory of hearing a siren, but the dorm is located a few blocks from a firehouse, so that was not unusual.
The reason I've been remembering this of late is that last year my dorm at the University of Oregon started reminding me a lot of the one at IU. When I started attending the U of O, I lived in a dorm called McClure, which was full of single rooms, and just like Eigenmann, it was a situation where the residents seldom socialized with one another, even though they lived in very close proximity. The RA said he liked that situation, because he didn't have to deal with interpersonal problems. The problem is that this can be a potentially dangerous situation.
I didn't know the woman or anyone else on the fourteenth floor at IU, but I would imagine that that floor was not unlike the rest of the building. People no doubt heard the shouting and banging but did not know anything about the situation and were not emotionally invested in the woman, so no one did anything for a very long time. I assume the police arrived late, because no one thought or cared to call them.
Living in McClure gave me very much the same feeling of vulnerability. I didn't know my neighbors; they didn't know me; and there was no mechanism for fostering a community in the building. In August, I moved into a different dorm -- Carson. It's a lot louder, and there is much more mischief going on. I'm still not close with my neighbors, but many of them are close with each other. And that makes me feel much better. So even though the noise is often horrendous, and I sometimes have to contend with people flicking Cheez-Its under my door in the middle of the night, at least I no longer fear for my life. And that is a good thing.
As a postscript to this story, several years after leaving IU I met an IU student who told me that the shooting was not only remembered, but new students to Eigenmann were told about the incident as a sort of initiation rite. Well, at least that means they're interacting a bit more than they did when I was there.
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