And now, 16 years later
Current mood: energetic
Category: Sports

I finally got a diagnosis for my leg pains that began in 1992: Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome.

Basically I have severe fascia build-up in two out of four "compartments" in my calves, which is caused by muscle swelling that blocks the flow of blood through the area. I am genetically predisposed due to how my knees are built, but it was definitely caused by "toe-walking" in childhood (enforced en point training between ages 5-9). My flare-ups now come from lower back dysfunction, bad shoes and fast walking.

Amazing! I just had my first treatment of electric stem and ultrasound on my legs and for the first time in my life I don't feel as though my achilles tendons are going to snap.

With some luck this can be treated through natural/non-invasive means, although there is slim chance I would have to have surgery if treatment doesn't have enough of an effect.

How did I come to this diagnosis? I did Internet research and have now had it confirmed by my chiropractor and a DOM/sports medicine doctor. It was missed all this time because 1)I'm not a jock (usually only diagnosed in runners and dancers) 2)My dance "training" was left off of my medical records for my entire life and only discussed and factored in six months ago, and 3)My most-affected compartment isn't where this usually occurs (ECS is usually first mistaken for shin splints, which isn't my primary affected area).

Mostly I'm just thrilled that I finally have a name/reason for this other than 1)a blocked chi, 2)poor fitness level, or 3)mental problems.

Currently listening : Anyway By Amy Farris Release date: 2004-05-04

12:55 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

P-Dogs
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Sports

Prairie Dogs: Fun Facts!

Prairie dogs have a high-pitched, bark-like call.

Prairie dogs possess the most sophisticated of all natural animal languages.

They have different "words" for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, deer, red-tailed hawk, owl, eagle, raven, coyote, badger, ferret and snake.

Prairie dogs can run up to 35 miles per hour for short distances.

The prairie dog has only one defense that works — raising the alarm and disappearing quickly.

Prairie dogs' feet are usually a creamy color.

Prairie dogs have an intricate social system composed of one male and several close-kin females and their offspring. Populations vary from 5 to 35 per acre.

Prairie dogs dig their own burrows. The entrance holes are funnel-shaped, from 3 to 4 inches in diameter.

The various native plants of the Great Plains make up the prairie dog's primary diet, comprising all kinds of grasses, roots, weeds, forbs and blossoms. They acquire all of their water from the food they eat.

8:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

$5 for a good cause: please read
Current mood: creative

The college I work for and graduated from is having money troubles.  (Visit www.csf.edu to read the press release.)

The College of Santa Fe is broker than ever before but we have a plan. From the ashes springs a bit of bravery--finally, we're going to be true to our nature and restructure as a "school for creative arts."

We're keeping visual arts and art history, film, creative writing, music, theater and documentary studies, and of course we're keeping a strong liberal arts core and the option for liberal-arts-infused hybrid majors (for instance, Art & Politics or Film & Cross-Cultural Psychology). The big difference is that you most likely won't be able to get a BA strictly in a liberal arts area--everything is slanted toward the arts.

This is good for CSF. I work on the marketing and admissions side of things, and I know from experience that the tighter your focus the easier the recruitment and messaging. People want to know who and what they're dealing with. For the alumni reading this--remember those people who left in a semester or a year because CSF just "wasn't what they thought it would be"? It's called cognitive dissonance, and it costs us a lot of money. I'll admit, I didn't get the place at first, but it didn't make me leave. See, I transferred to CSF from the Art Institute of Chicago, so I know all about "art school." 

I came to CSF to be around a wider variety of people, but there were some fantastic things about SAIC that would be great to implement at CSF. (More interesting and challenging academics, longer studio classes that meet less often...) By keeping all of the arts, CSF will strike a perfect balance: we'll retain most of our intellectual diversity, but all the annoying "this is a little too much like high school" aspects of the curriculum will be gone.

If you've read this far, it means you care at least a little bit about the College of Santa Fe or for whatever reason, you care at least a little bit about the things I care about. Thank you. Please keep reading.

In my job, I edit the alumni magazine; write admissions materials,Website copy, and fundraising publications and letters; oversee and write 99% of all media outreach; and serve as general proofer and editor on all published material and advertising. Basically, the vast majority of prose of any kind that comes out of CSF (even things that appear to be written by other people) were either written by me or were passed through me for proofing/editing. What I mean to make clear by telling you this is that from a "who we are and what people think we are" point of view, I know the college inside and out.

We're supposed to be an art school. The cold heard fact is that for many years we aggressively downplayed our arts majors in order to seem more middle-of-the-road and therefore welcoming to liberal arts majors. Didn't work. Our numbers in those areas are miniscule and it is bleeding the college dry. We need more students and the truth is that preppy kids think we're weird, and the creative scrubby freaks find us no matter what. It's always been that way, even before they started letting us put the barefoot kids and the kids with purple dredlocks and the fat kids and the gay kids and the kids who never made it into their high school yearbooks into our viewbook, which is the full-color brochure that is sent to thousands of teens across the country to try and get them to consider CSF as a college choice. There are thousands of colleges, and most people can name ten, maybe. It's a rough business, especially when only 4% of your 10,000 alumni give back.

A few of us staff/alumni have been talking about what we can do to help make sure the college gets through this fiscal year and onward to a seriously for-real-this-time balanced budget. Certain grassroots efforts are beginning. Everyone's got a pet project or two: mine is the Five-Dollar Plan. I would like everyone who reads this and cares enough about saving a small, strange creative arts college in the high desert to send us $5. It isn't much (though please send more if you want!), but multiplied by several thousand (I can dream), not only does it add up, but the sheer number of people sending in money, no matter the amount, will influence deeper pockets that we're worth helping.

And it's a nice thing to do.

Send $5 to the Campaign for the Future/Development Office/College of Santa Fe/1600 St. Michael's Drive/Santa Fe, NM 87505

Or give on-line at   https://www.alumni.csf.edu/NETCOMMUNITY/SSLPage.aspx&pid=246&srcid=183

Message me with any questions. Please feel free to link or re-post.

3:05 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

In Memory
Category: Life

Google "Leigh Zurmuhlen" and you will find she's enshrined forevermore in the archived Web entries of a pornographer. Redact that: Luke Ford chronicled porn, or the doings of the porn industry, or somesuch — as far as I can tell he did not in fact create porn. Anyway, I believe Leigh would be thrilled by this turn of events — and to think: she died before the Internet age. It is a fair bet she never had an e-mail address.

It's fall now, and that means Leigh is on my mind.

Back when we knew each other, she made me promise to make her famous by writing a book that could be turned into a movie that she would then star in, and if I recall correctly, it was also supposed to be about her. I promised to try; she grinned and shrugged and called me Pookie and said, "It will be easy! I already have sunglasses."

Leigh had certain ideas about life, certain charms and defenses she used to get through her days. Youngblood told her sunglasses made people automatically famous and she believed him, or she acted as though she believed him. Of course she did: she was seventeen.

I never understood girls who crushed on Youngblood. He seemed crazy to me. In fact, it is the combination of my distaste for him and the perplexing/profound way this ragamuffin hipster boy affected so many CSF co-eds that paved the way for the following circumstance: Youngblood "dated" both Leigh and then my next college roommate — apparently at the same time or close enough to it that there was drama. Later, when Leigh died, Youngblood was contacted by her family and subsequently chose to tell this roommate of mine to tell me — because he was afraid of me — and this roommate decided I would think he was making it up, so she didn't tell me.

My ex-boyfriend told me a few weeks later, around Thanksgiving. My ex, Matt, heard from his ex, who heard it from a mutual ex of hers and Leigh's, who was contacted by a "Hard Copy"-type news magazine show. I conflate her death with the Halloween party I attended that year, an event that, all by itself, might have permanently turned me off to the Holiday and, consequently, ever ever ever again dressing in costume.

*

Websites are routinely shut down for mentioning the circumstances of Leigh's death, and so I've heard, even her name. We'll see what happens. I will refrain from mentioning the names that get the lawyers salivating over their cease-and-desist orders, but who here thinks famous people might kind of suck, at least the ones Leigh knew? If you leave your hotel without checking out and without removing the "Do Not Disturb" sign, and inside you've left a girl "sleeping" but who is actually dead of a drug overdose — and naked — you should be hauled back to the state to face the same questions a non-famous person would have to face, and that's all I'll say about the much-needed prosecution of Mr. T.V. Unless, of course, it's time for Mr. T.V. to dream up a new show. Maybe it's time for him to make Leigh famous, really famous at last. I'm sure she thought he could. But he would prefer to claim she didn't exist, that his involvement in her death is pure fiction, because she wasn't a real person. Well, Mr. T.V., Leigh Zurmuhlen was my roommate at the College of Santa Fe in the winter and spring of 1994. I'm here to say that she was absolutely real.

For a long time, I blamed myself. This began before she died. I believed I'd been a bad friend to her, because she was so troubled and I couldn't fix her. I was nineteen, twenty. I understand it now: no one could help her. But the tragedy is that she was desperate for help. I've met so many people with eating disorders and other serious issues since then, and she was leap years ahead of every single one of these people in understanding precisely what she was going through. She kept a journal pretty faithfully — had she lived, she might now be a famous photographer-slash-blogger, a celebrity in her own right with no help from anyone. Every day, she vowed the next day would be different. But, at least when I knew her, time moved too slowly for anything to change.

If you're reading this and you knew Leigh, leave me a comment or send me a message — especially if you didn't go to CSF. I want to know who you are.

ETA 11/30/07: Ran into Youngblood today. As a 30-something, he seems to be about 98% less crazy. Ah, the folly of youth. Sorry dude.

1:59 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Any Cloggers Out There?

I have no idea who reads my blog. And since I have no clue who you are, you probably don't know me very well, either. Here's something to think about: I, Jennifer Levin, would like to learn to clog. That's right--old style, traditional clog dancing. For all I know, you, whoever you are reading this, are all about clogging. You might be a master teacher, or maybe a clogger lives upstairs from you and all you hear all the live long day is click click click.

I am not a very good dancer, in that I have trouble remembering left from right, but I really want to do this. I'm looking for classs in Santa Fe or just one person who knows how to teach me. My feets, they want to keep time to the down beat.

1:44 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Drunk on Words
Current mood: contemplative

The phrase was written in praise of the prose stylings of Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and the newer, not nearly as good Paint it Black. (The critic was speaking of the first book on the back of the second book.)

It took me three tries to read White Oleander because of a personal issue I seem to have with writing that is purposefully "lush." White Oleander seduced me, however, because stories of teens without proper adult role models (isn't that a fun way to put it?) are kind of my thing. And the "lushness," I realized, could be attributed to the age of the narrator, as well as the fact that she was the daughter of a poet who was also a convicted murderer--a carefully planned crime of passion; the mother is insane, though not by any legal definition.

When I found Paint it Black on the new release shelf at the Santa Fe Public Library, (Detective Goren would be so proud of me, using my most important investigative tool!), a quick scan of the blurb convinced me to take it home and read all 470-odd pages in seven days. I'm capable, but I do work full-time; it took concentrated, scheduled reading periods several times a day, and I was sick of the thing on page 12. The plot--youngish punk-rock runaway girl in LA in 1980; boyfriend commits suicide and she has to come to terms with that as well as his insane mother--really was enough to keep me reading. Problem: I knew the "truth," which was reavealed rather late in the book, the first time I was told anything at all about the boyfriend and his mother. Essentially, I kept reading to see if I was right.

Because OH MY GOD, JANET FITCH, STOP TALKING.  You use way too many words and your metaphors are out of control. Seriously, reel it in, dial it down, and for God's sake, please do not refer to a city skyline as a drunk whore passed out with skirt yanked up and her panties showing, or whatever it was that took your overwrought story from merely tortured to "example of someone in dire, dire need of an honest editor."

What the hell, publishing world? Can no one edit this poor woman? Can no one take her out for a cup of coffee and suggest a little modesty? A little sense of economy? Background and foreground? Can poor Joise just get from room to room without ruminating on every aspect of her relationship with her insufferable--if deservedly insufferable--dead boyfriend for 10 pages? This is more than a "show don't tell" problem; this is an author who shows us each emotional moment or state or truth 40 times, and then tells us three times per show (if that makes sense to anyone who hasn't taken a fiction workshop). Can Josie get some place without the author giving us a point-by-point description of the drive? Please? By the last 50 pages or so, which are critical and probably quite good, I was reading only to find out what happened (which is pretty high praise, if you think about it).

I tried to give the author and the story the benefit of the doubt: again, a young, emotional narrator given to dramatics and hysteria, and often for quality crap-childhood reasons. Fitch was showing us grief in all its rather annoying splendor; I get that, especially given the level of grief some of my friends have been going through in the last few years, but the thing is, and as terrible as it is, other people's grief is often boring. It's one thing to sweat it out with your friends because you love them, but committing to a fictional character on that level is another matter. I did, because I'm overly empathetic to fictional characters, but it had little to do with the voice or style or anything but that I personally have things in common with Josie. 

Janet Fitch, you are a good writer, but you need a bit of 12-step for your word addiction--and so do a hell of a lot of other people out there. Say it once! Say it well! Say it with a minimum of adverbs! Stop vomiting all over the page. I know you feel the need to guide the reader, and I've been told that "readers are dumb," and need to be told what to think--a point of view I have a hard time agreeing with.

What do you think, readers? Do you like being hit in the head with anvils?

6:10 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

narcissism
Current mood: cynical

I don't know how to credit this, but I found it through a friend's blog and it's giving meaning to my life right now--echoing my new "truth" headline. Not "truthiness," but "truth." I don't know how to link or credit this--apologies in advance.

That you tell your story so well is precisely why it bothers him so much. If you told it badly, it wouldn't threaten his version. When you tell it well, it seems like it might possibly even contain truth; and I am sure this scares the bejeebus out of his overriding complex, in its (so far rather successful) desire to remain as unconscious as possible. Narcissists can never stand being unable to control other people's stories, particularly those which include them as characters. It's like water to their Wicked Witch; they dissolve screaming, less in pain or fear than in outrage.

8:43 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Antibiotic Fever
Current mood: angry
Category: Life

Did you know that antibiotics can make you sick? Like, sicker than you were before you started taking them? Like, sicker than you thought you could ever be--not just physically but in the head? Did you know they can cause not only a persistent high fever but hallucinations?

The only things that kept me tethered to reality this week--as I insisted to doctor after doctor that it was the medicine making me sick, and was in turn told that I was being ridiculous by no less than three "medical experts"--were my boyfriend and reruns of the Gilmore Girls on the Family Channel. Thank you to William, the Palladinos, Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel.

I am trying to get this shit out of my body, but it's sticky stuff.

Hallucintations, people! I had them. Western medicine is fucked.

ETA: Not the "fun" kind of hallucinations. The scary, nightmarish, voices-in-your head kind.

6:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Space Between Your Ears
Current mood: chipper
Category: Travel and Places

I was reading a review of the show Friday Night Lights on Salon.com, and was promptly enraged by the letters section. Why, you ask? This was a non-snarky TV review by Heather Havrilesky, who actually likes the show she was writing about. My anger is at the so-called liberal, educated people who wrote in expressing hatred for this show, whether or not they've seen it, for the following absurd reasons:

It is about football and it is set in Texas.

Where to begin?

I have seen this show once, after reading a couple of re-caps on televisionwithoutpity.com. Since TWoP is all about "no pity," the shows they actually like number about half a dozen. Not one aspect of TV escapes their criticism; they are cutthroat; TWoP disproves the commonly held belief that watching television is a passive, brainless activity. (I should really do another blog entry entirely on the wonder that is TWoP.)

Back on topic: if TWoP likes it, it must have some merit, so I tuned in. It is a good show. I'm not a fan of shaky camera work, so I could do without that, but otherwise, Friday Night Lights is well written and well acted--and is about football in much the same way that Sports Night was about sports. I understand that some people were truly tortured by jocks in high school, which is awful. If you had your head stuck in a toilet, were beat up, or God forbid were raped by a jock, I can see why FNL might not be for you. But if you were just sort of annoyed by and/or jealous of the jocks, get over it. All teenagers are fucked up, including you and including the in-crowd. And, if you're being honest with yourself, you realize you were probably mean to people too, at least one person, even if right now you're saying to yourself, "I was never mean to anyone. I would never make anyone feel bad." You are wrong; on purpose or not, at some point in high school you made someone feel bad, as bad as other people made you feel.

Now, on the idea that "football culture is one of the ills of society," go live your own life. I barely register football on my radar, ever. It has no connection to anything I do; it does not take up space in my brain. This is not a difficult state to achieve. Just don't pay attention and football goes away. I attended exactly one football game, one swim meet, and one wrestling match in high school, but I knew plenty of jocks because we had classes together. Not a single one of them ever made me feel bad about myself--and I was a "weird" kid.

Jocks? Done. On to Texas. Did you know that there are people out there who blame Texans for the Iraq War? Who blame them for playing any part in electing W governor of their state and then their country? Do you know that people take the dictum "Don't Mess with Texas" as an indication that Texans are, as a group, crazy stupid rednecks? I find it funny. I want a tough state motto, too! (New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment!) Hey! Liberals! Do you like it when Europeans think we all love W and the war and that we're all fat and beat our wives? People in Texas voted for Gore and Kerry, too. And some of you do beat your wives. About half of you, at some point, regardless of where you live. (That's a statistical fact--sorry.)

Just as there are jocks everywhere and there are assholes everywhere, there are stupid people everywhere. What is it that makes many otherwise educated, liberal, open-minded people buy into the stereotype that anyone with a southern, rural or Texas accent is an inbred half-wit? Please. Have you ever spoken to someone from Boston? New Jersey? Long Island? The Bronx? Lifelong residents of these locations often sound, to my Santa Fe-via-Chicago ears, as if they have serious, deblilitating speech impediments. But I give them the benefit of the doubt because at some point in my life I realized that not everyone is exactly like me.

When Natalie Maines told that British concert audience that she was ashamed that Bush was from Texas, she meant he doesn't stand for all of them. I would tell you to "trust her" or something equally direct, but you know what? If that's not your instinctive response, maybe you can't be educated about this. And you probably think she's a yokel, anyway, because you just "can't stand" country music.

I'm not telling you to run out and watch Friday Night Lights. I'm telling you to remember that there is a whole country between New York and California, and in the way you don't care about the things we care about, we don't give all that much thought to you. Do you know that many people in, say, Kansas and Utah are uninterested in ever visting Manhattan or Hollywood? Not because they're scared or actively against the idea but because it would never occur to them to do so? And they don't know or care that you think they're hicks?

This is kind of ranty, but I'm tired of dealing with these perceptions about where I live when I visit my family in New York at Christmas. Sometimes they seem surprised that we have indoor plumbing and we don't put on full makeup and a cute outfit to go to the grocery store.

It's true, we just sort of wander out of the house. No one looks at you twice for having bedhead at brunch. It's really nice.

11:01 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Tooling Around Town in My Roadster
Current mood: mellow
Category: Automotive

As some of you know, I had a small but scary one-car car accident a few weeks ago. One car (mine) and a pole, specifically the kind that has a stoplight on top of it. To summarize: it snowed; the college did not clear the roadways; my brakes locked on my way out the back entrance (onto Siringo), which is a downward slope into four lanes of oncoming traffic. As I said, my brakes locked. There was no stopping--and I had a red light. To avoid death, I swerved onto the sidewalk and wound up slamming into the aforementioned pole at about 15 miles an hour.

Fast forward three weeks, past the insurance company telephone calls and visits from the adjuster. My car is in the shop, and for the last five days, I have been tooling around town in a bright blue automatic PT Cruiser with Texas plates.

First of all: people who don't know how to drive stick don't actually know how their cars work. Automatic is boring, but I'm getting used to it. I've only tried to clutch twice in the last three days.

Second of all: as much as I loathe the bright blue color, there is something interesting about the Cruiser in that it is a fake old-timey car. I respect the impulse and the artistry, plus anything vaguely old-timey makes William grin from ear to ear and get all puppy-dog like. It puts him in the mood to make more mix CDs. (That's right. he rips and burns compilations under the faux label "Jennbilly Records." We are awesome.)

I'm supposed to pick up my Chevy Cavelier from the shop tomorrow, supposedly good as new. Ha! In addition to the $2,000 worth of body damage, there is no way I'm really going to feel safe again when it snows if I don't have my brakes looked at properly.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I didn't know how to drive and the concept of a deductible was lost on me.

5:40 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment