Oh the humanity.

There's a girl sleeping on my couch right now. I don't know anything about her, except her first name, and the fact that she was at a party tonight. I was typing my paper when I heard someone call, "Help me?" I wasn't sure if I'd imagined it, so I opened my window and waited. "Somebody?" she called again, and I spotted her sitting on the pavement under the streetlamp outside my window.
"Are you ok?" I yelled, probably waking up at least one roommate.
"No," she said. "I'm really sick."
I grabbed a coat and told her I was coming down.
My friend Zen was down there when I got to her. We helped her up to my apartment, because she said she didn't know anyone on campus. "I never drink," she said. She was hiding behind her hair. I never saw her face. She apologized when she stumbled on the stairs.
She's sleeping on my couch now, still wearing my coat, with a glass of water and a bowl next to her head. Maybe in the morning I'll see her face. Maybe she'll be gone and I'll never know who she is.

When I told another friend what happened, he said “It was really good of you to help her.” I told him I didn’t think of it as good. It was the only human thing there was to do. I couldn’t watch somebody else suffer and not do anything about it. I don’t know anything about this girl; I don’t know why she didn’t have any friends with her, or why she couldn’t manage to drag herself inside a building where she wouldn’t be freezing, and maybe find a phone. That stuff didn’t matter. The fact was that she needed helping, so I helped her. That doesn’t make me a particularly good person, I don’t think. It just doesn’t make me a really terrible one.

Race, etc.

It's 4 in the morning, and I'm attempting to finish a book for my class tomorrow (today).

I'm reading three books at the moment, and they all have their unique purposes.
Power, Privilege, and Difference is for the class I'm taking to become an RA. It's interesting, but ultimately it's a middle-class white guy talking about racism. And since that's pretty much what I am (minus the guy part) I pretty much know everything he has to say. Plus it's just so "You should be ashamed of who you are! If you're white, you'll always be a racist no matter what! Especially if you think you're not a racist. Because that really means that you are a racist. Don't even try to deny it. You're only friends with people of color because you're trying to prove you're not a racist." It's a little much at times. When I read it, I get so irritated with the apologetic, accusatory tone, I start getting angry with it, and feeling like there aren't really any racial injustices in the world anymore; the author of this book is just a bleeding-heart liberal. And then I think "Oh my god, I'm becoming a Republican! How did this happen?!" and it's very disconcerting.
But then I read my next book, which is The Dream and the Nightmare, which is the most disgustingly racist, classist, sexist piece of propaganda I think I've ever been forced to read. One page of that and I think "Oh thank god I'm still a Democrat." Seriously, the guy is so scary and frothy.
And when I'm tired of being put through the emotional/political wringer, I read You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, which is fascinating and inspiring and beautiful. Howard Zinn is my hero. I want to be him when I grow up.
And then I pass out on a pile of books for a few hours before class. I like my existence.

At the request of my mother...

I dyed my hair on Friday. (The hair-dying wasn't the request, but photos were.) Here's me before and after. In a bizarre twist of fate, that night Crosby also dyed her hair from red to brown, thousands of miles away, without us discussing it. Anyway, there it is.

I've been spending quite a lot of time playing Uno lately. House rules make the game far more interesting, and also far more terrible and long and awful and hilarious and bad. It's a great homework-avoidance tool.

I went to a meeting today for Code Pink: Women for Peace. It's been a long time since I was involved in a political action group this disorganized. They're very well-meaning, though, so I think I'll stick around. We're going to have a benefit concert thing at my dad's restaurant in March, but we're not yet sure who it's going to benefit. I think that last sentence pretty much sums up the group. It's fun, though. We wear pink, we want to stop the war. These are missions I can get behind.

Oop! I almost forgot. Mine Aunts M and K sent me a Valentine's package with stickers and a book that looks quite lovely. This made my day.

She does exist!

Hmm. I tried the email-posting thing, but it worketh not in this particular instance. Oh well.

I haven't been updating, because... um... I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't do it unless I have interesting things to say, but I think I'm giving up on that idea because it's been weeks.

I'm in an interesting class this quarter. My professor was one of the founding faculty at my college, so he has lots of fascinating stories about the history of the school, among other topics (he was media guy for the Eugene McCarthy campaign in Florida, which is pretty darn cool, and got death threats from public officials. Also, he spent a while in Australia and thus knows Cockney rhyming slang, which they speak there. And once he saw Elvis in concert.) Our seminars go off on strange tangents all the time, but they're interesting tangents and I learn a lot just by listening, so I don't mind.
Soon I will be beginning my research for my end-of-quarter symposium presentation, which at the moment involves women's reproductive rights in the 1990s. I anticipate lots of depressing research, but less than if I had gone with rape (my original topic).

I made zucchini bread yesterday in my brand new baking dish. It was delicious.