Auyon’s Neighborhood

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy

Blog Action Day

6 comments

Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.

This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!

Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.

Can't wait to read your posts!

~ daisy

Change has been not only constant but VAST this summer and fall!

I am living in a new place,  the 4th this year after Belgrade, North Conway and Wolfeboro. Matt and I have a great apartment in West Lebanon, NH that is starting to feel like home (thanks mostly to my mom's appetite for Ikea furniture that has no place in her house) and a new roommate, Monica, who is becoming a solid girlfriend - which I've been missing for a couple years now. Female companionship has been sparse and transient, and I am realizing now how great it is to have it back in my life!

I started my first year at Dartmouth Medical School six weeks ago, and thus lifestyle changes about. Without any foreseeable income beyond pathetically meager part-time work and a largesse of learning material related to the human body, "fun" as I used to know it has been cut back quite a bit. Adjusting to a student lifestyle has been tough - especially when the last two years have been the antithesis of what I'm doing now! Wandering, traveling and working are much different than staying put, being in debt, and studying. That said, its not as bad as I'm making it sound - I am learning incredibly interesting things, I get to dissect a human cadaver (how cool is that??), I am surrounded by an excellent community of both med-school and non-med-school friends, and above all, I've taken a real, tangible step towards my dream of becoming a doctor. And, as part of my curriculum, I get to hang out with a pediatrician and help diagnose and treat her adorable kid patients. That keeps me going through weekends spent studying indoors while the leaves turn to fall ... and let's be honest, I don't study all the time. There's been plenty of bike riding, rock climbing, hiking and visiting family and friends. Matt and I havn't even been home the last 4 weekends - visiting Matt's dad on Lake Winnepesaukee, attending Sam and Emily's incredible wedding, going to see U2 at Gilette Stadium, hanging out with Woody and Keith, and traversing the Carter-Moriah are just a few of the recent fun. But no matter what, medical school at this point is a means to an end for me - I am not made to sit in a class room and study over piles of books, and that's what we're doing for the most part. Clinical stuff comes around in 3rd year, and from then on, things just get better and better until you finally get to practice medicine on your own. That's a carrot the size of Montana to me!

The Upper Valley is incredibly beautiful, and I feel lucky to be in school here - if I were in New York, I'd be hating my life. It's amazing to be able to get out of class and pop over to Rumney, or head up Gile mountain to a firetower just outside of town, or jump off the roof of a friends' house in the Connecticut River. I can bike to school every day, a nice 4.5 mile jaunt door to door. And a world class medical center is just a few minutes away, tucked in those hills. It's pretty great. I think I'll enjoy calling this place home for four years - longer than anywhere has been home in a while! But once I'm done, we'll probably light out for the West again ...

The course material is mostly interesting, and mostly very understandable, but very voluminous. The analogy they tell you in orientation is that its like trying to drink from a firehose. I felt incredible unbalanced for a while, hating the idea of studying but knowing I had to, and I'm slowly adjusting to spending my time more wisely, studying smart, and still enjoying myself while giving the appropriate amount of energy and respect to my schoolwork. I want to be a great doctor, and that won't happen if I don't have a solid background in the basic science of medicine. Plus, its kind of a challenge - let's see if I can ace this anatomy quiz, even though there's thousands of terms we have to know. That kind of thing. We have tests every 2 weeks in every class, so the "quiz weekends" are not exactly fun, but certainly doable and a worthy sacrifice.

And things with Matt are also great. We've settled into a lifestyle where though we don't see each other as much (he's still doing shift work over in North Conway), the time we do spend together is always fun, interesting, and comfortable. I always miss him when he's gone, even though it allows me more time to be productive, focus on school, and get out and socialize with my classmates - who are truly awesome! I definitely picked the right place in terms of location and student body character. And we are settling into a pretty strong long term relationship, which is even more of a comfort. All in all, I'm pretty happy! Optimism and perseverance are things that can certainly be refined as a first year med student, so I consider it in some ways a blessing that things are hard.

And the leaves are turning. It's hard to remain upset for long when it's fall in New England!

Ciao,
Anna

The Amazon Conduit will be working again on October 15, 2009. Thank you to everyone for your patience.

Have a great weekend,

daisy, Team Vox

In my last Team Vox post, I let you know that we're aware that the Amazon conduit is broken and that we're working to fix it. Many of you want to know when it's going to be fixed and I'm so sorry I haven't gotten back to you about that sooner.

Unfortunately, I don't have an exact date to give you, but rest assured, the Amazon conduit will be fixed in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I'm about to finish my latest book and I could use a few suggestions as to what to read next, so... if you don't mind, let me know in the comments what's on your nightstand and/or what book you think I absolutely must read next.

Thanks! :)

daisy

Some of you may have noticed that right now you cannot add books from Amazon to your Vox library. Giving people a glimpse into what's on your night stand is important to many of you, so I just wanted to reassure you that we are doing our best to get this bug fixed. I'll keep you posted.

So sorry for the inconvenience.

Hope you have a great weekend!
daisy

It's been three weeks since I left behind Mississippi, and my two years of teaching English in a rural Delta school district (and two partial summers of mentoring and coaching new teachers!). I've been meaning to sit down and give an "ending" to this blog, so to speak, and I think enough time now has passed that I feel like I can do that objectively.

Leaving Mississippi (or more specifically, education in Mississippi) was definitely bittersweet - certainly "relief" might be the first word that comes to mind. I am relieved to be back in an educated state, in a place I love, surrounded by family and old friends. I am relieved that I will never again have to face the pressure, stress, and heartbreak of teaching in the Delta.

But a part of me is distinctly frustrated at the thought of leaving the classroom, or the realm of education. I'd like to work a way back into the education sphere in some way - if not through a career, then peripherally as a volunteer, a board member, a community leader, or even as a participant in a sort of wider conversation about education reform. That was the root of much of my Mississippi woes - I would rather reform the way education happens (to avoid the huge gap in achievement for low-income students) than try to work within a broken system (as a teacher to those low-income students). That conclusion was reinforced as I crossed into Minnesota driving up 35N on my way home from Mississippi. Ironically enough, the first thing I hear over the radio in Minnesota was the last 30 minutes of the Minneapolis School Board Meeting (broadcast over public radio) -- I thought I was leaving education only to re-discover it in a whole new way as I arrived. Listening in on the meeting was fascinating. No board meeting in a Mississippi school district would sound like this. But they had their fair share of big problems, controversial issues and inside arguments, too. Made me want to hop on the bandwagon as soon as I can - and I still plan to.

And so ends this blog. I hope someday soon I will have the sort of incredible inspiration that teaching in the Mississippi Delta brought to me (with perhaps little more free time!), so that I might start a new blog, with new thoughts, on new experiences. I'll leave this blog up here -- partly because it serves as a easy way to remember my experiences, and partly because it might help future teachers cope with theirs. Feel free to read back, and back and back any time you wish!

For now, my time is devoted to writing for someone else's blog. And at the very least, I will still feel connected to the digital world on facebook, twitter and linkedin....

EDIT: An interesting conversation went on re: this last entry over on Ephblog, the Williams alumni blog-meeting space. Read it here. 

A good friend of mine likes to quote an unknown speaker: "The only thing that is constant in life is change." For myself at this point in the great circle of being, this rings rather true.

Since my last entry, I have moved 2000 miles. The company that I keep has changed almost entirely, except for Matt. The hills around me are closely forested, a lush green. The mountains are my kingdom of recreation and solitude, but my skis are carefully tucked away in a corner of the attic. I awaken each morning hoping for sun and breeze to warm the cliffs, rather than calm silent flakes of precipitation to cover the trails. My daily routine can be summed up in a stream of words as such: coffee, breakfast, bug spray, climbing, growlers from the Moat, couches, dinner, friends, love, sleep. Sometimes I go to work, too.

I am a contemplative person by nature, and more so when confronted with changes and decisions in my life. Though on a day-to-day basis I rarely think long before plunging willfully into whatever sounds most fun and exciting among the opportunities of a given situation, I like to sit around and have long conversations, too, sometimes with myself, in my own head, when the urge strikes. With change stitched across every aspect of my life in recent months, certain things seem more relevant in my experiences.

I am someone that likes to make connections with people. When I like someone and enjoy being around them and find they have interesting things to say and that they understand me, I want to spend all my time with them. I've been lucky enough to often be surrounded by people that I feel that way about. When I don't have that, I retreat into my writing, reading long novels, reaching out to others in my life that I've felt connected to in that way that aren't physically present. I am struck by the genuine happiness that I feel when I'm just sitting in around, talking, eating, drinking, being with a person or people that I am spiritually connected to. I look around and I say, we are all human beings, and that is what bonds us. It doesn't matter the location or the circumstances, foreign or familiar, extreme or typical; shared experiences, no matter how simple, feed my heart and soul. And it never gets old to travel somewhere new and push your personal limits and find those moments along your journeys. When things change, I can always count on knowing that there are people who will come into my life and enrich it in unpredictable and unique ways.

I spent a week between jobs early this month with two friends that I had known only briefly in the past- people that I happened to have met at a crossroads, with me headed in one direction and they in the other. Though our time together was short, we are bonded by a love of climbing, a passion for exploring, and a penchant for late nights and early mornings. We spent a week constantly in each others company and reading each others thoughts. Again we met at a crossroads, with me headed off to a different place again, but that didn't diminish the joy I felt in their company. Would that one day we'll all be in the same place for many days ...

Change is constant, and wonderful.

Moxie

I