Seeing Mario Capecchi Drive

Every morning I have breakfast by the window of my living room.  It looks out over Mario Capecchi Drive, which is a four lane road (two going in either direction) with a wide meridian and an extra lane on the southbound side for turning right.  Every morning at about the same time, excepting Friday, traffic will start to pile up in the same place.  This is because just down the road (north of my building) there is a left turn lane to a street into campus.  The traffic almost always exceeds the boundary of the left turn lane itself, and instead spills backward into the left lane of the road.  I've often noticed that the traffic is pre-sorted.  What I mean by this is that those continuing on the road stay in the right lane, while about 95% of the traffic in the left lane utilizes the left turn lane when they finally reach it.

It is also fun to watch the street on a very rainy day. When it heavily rains for more than 10 minutes, an area of grass across the street from my window starts to vomit up water.  Presumably it's a storm drain, but I haven't really checked it out.  Since the terrain on the other side of the street is sloped steeply downward toward the street, the torrent of water quickly finds it's way to the storm drain there.  However this drain quickly fills up, and before long a very large puddle collects.  Once we estimated it was about 3 or 4 feet deep.  This puddle also collects on the road, not on the side of it.  It makes driving on the road very dangerous, although I haven't seen anyone crash yet.  It is funny to see a street that looks so functional and utilitarian be reduced to half capacity just because of a rain storm.  The road is slightly slanted in race-track fashion, so that the innermost lane is lowest to the ground and the outermost lanes are at a higher elevation.  It is because the road is so adapted for fast traffic that it has the problem of the giant puddle.

Another important feature of this road is the Fort Douglas TRAX station next to the seldom used extra right turn lane I mentioned above.  Every day excepting Friday a man gets off the northbound train at the same time.  He is always dressed in army clothes and usually carries a tan duffel bag that looks very full, as well as his military backpack.  He always jay-walks across the street toward Fort Douglas, which is really not all that surprising considering his dress.  Sometimes, other people jaywalk across the street too, but he does it every day.  His predicament brings into light many issues with the street.  First and foremost, it is an area for cars.  People are not welcome; there are not even sidewalks on the side of this street.  TRAX deposits people, either walking or riding their bikes at the top of lower campus.  Anyone who wishes to go to upper campus needs to either walk along the length of the TRAX station, up the stairs to legacy bridge, and across, or they need to make their way in the other direction to the intersection south of the TRAX station.  Unsurprisingly, almost nobody chooses the intersection.  It takes up to 3 minutes before the signals let pedestrians cross in the desired direction, and there is no clear path between the TRAX station and the intersection because of the lack of sidewalks.  There was never any consideration on the part of the planners to make foot transportation between the TRAX station and the intersection possible, and the only way to do it is to walk along a sidewalk that suddenly dissappears, walk across the entrance to a parking lot, walk across another parking lot (all the while losing elevation), and then walk up a steep, large set of hidden stairs.   Yes, I do mean they are hidden.  At first glance, they would look like part of a 25 foot retaining wall made of concrete.  So, all in all, I perfectly understand why army dude jay-walks across a very busy street every morning: because it's much easier.

Other than army dude, there aren't really faces associated with the street.  There are people in their cars, and there are people who get off TRAX, and there are students who cross Legacy Bridge, but nobody interacts with the street on a fundamental level.  It is a place for people who don't want to be where they are.  

Empathy Part II: Identity

I identify myself in many ways that distinguish me from others.  When asked to list my identities, most of the things that I come up with are things that make me unique and different from others, for example, my given birth name, my screen usernames, and my identification as a part of the very small group of female engineers, which also makes me unique in most settings.  However, my identity isn't just comprised of things that make me different from other people, although those are the things that come to mind.  I can identify with many large groups of people, and this is also a part of who I am.  I'm not sure if it's convention that gives me the idea that identity is something to distinguish you and set you apart from other people, or if I'm just weird.  But I do consider it rather alarming that I try as a matter of course to throw my empathy and relations away when I think about who I am.  I'm still not sure what it means to try to identify my separation from others as opposed to my connections with them, but now that I am aware of it I am trying to expand my list of identities to be more inclusive of all of who I am, not just the parts that I can't relate to anyone else. 

Empathy

Empathy: "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."  

Empathy is different than sympathy, which is empathy without the personal experience, aka pity.  Most people claim that empathy is always the more powerful emotional response of the two, however I find that in this respect I differ from the majority of the population.  My most powerful emotional responses have always been toward animals' sufferings.  I do feel for people in difficult situations, but animals in bad situations inflame my emotions tenfold of any empathy or sympathy I have ever felt for a person.  I am sort of afraid of being perceived as heartless or uncompassionate because of this, but I will own my emotions here.  The video "The Collector at Bedford Street" made me happy to see a community support one of it's members, but I was much more emotionally impacted to see the community of buffalo join together to save their baby.  The challenges that humans face are more moderate than being eaten alive by lions while crying out futilely for help from your parents, however humans do face the metaphorical equivalent.  That is probably part of the reason my emotions are stronger with regard to animals-because the challenges they face are so much more brutal than human challenges, though human challenges can be just as severe/fatal in the end.  

Also, in the video "Battle at Kruger," there were multiple sets of emotions that I felt that contrasted one another.  On one hand, I know that the baby buffalo would have had a miserable, short existence if it had been eaten alive.  On the other hand, the lions need to eat, and they spent a lot of energy capturing the buffalo.  Contrary to the Disney "the lion is the king of the jungle" attitude, lions are actually denied their prey on a routine basis.  So my emotions were divided, because I thought the lions still deserved to eat, but it would have pained me to see a baby buffalo eaten alive.  

During the past week I read a story that broke my heart.  I would tell you not to read it if you don't want to experience sadness, but I am beginning to realize that just because something is sad doesn't mean we should avoid it or emotionally withdraw.  So I'm going to recommend reading this, even if you don't feel like acknowledging that the world has problems today.  

http://uglythecat.com/

Towards a Just Metropolis

Just a note: I wrote the previous post before I read Soul of a Citizen, and it's surprisingly relevant.  I think that Soul of a Citizen addresses many of the things going on in my life right now.  I read it in parts over the weekend and each time I put it down for awhile, something would happen in my life that connected me to the next section of reading, which was a cool experience.

I want to start out this post by explaining my political views, though they may at first seem irrelevant.  I consider myself to be a liberal.  What that means to me is that everyone should have the ability to decide things for themselves.  I consider this ability of individuals to make their own choices an inalienable right, and I consider it to be morally corrupt for anyone to take another person's choice away from them.  This means that, from my perspective, individuals do not have the right to make a decision that impacts the health of someone else.  For example, when individuals in the Salt Lake Valley choose to drive large trucks with poor gas mileage that pollute the atmosphere much more than is necessary on an inversion day, that decision does not only effect them.  By making that decision they are also impacting the health of everyone in the valley, particularly those people with asthma and other health issues.  In this case, their individual decision has impacted the rights of other people to be healthy.  I believe that the rights of the individual to make their own decision end when that decision begins impacting someone else.  To avoid giving people the power of harming other people, I think individual decisions that impact the public should be regulated by the government or perhaps some other ruling body.  Now I must diverge here for a bit to explain that of course I believe there are exceptions to this right, such as children, who's decisions are made for them by their parents until their brains are well developed enough that they can think for themselves.  

Given my belief in this right, I find it difficult to entirely accept Soul of a Citizen as a true work.  What I mean by this is that the author certainly had good intentions, however I try to avoid putting myself in a position where I can or must make decisions for other people.  For example, my friends have recently developed a fascination for taking road signs that have been left on the side of the road.  Now, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to take government property, even if it seems abandoned, so it makes me uncomfortable when they do try to take the signs.  However, I don't want to make their decisions for them, so oftentimes I just tell them that if they want to take it, I won't help them, but I won't stop them.  I am afraid to get involved to a point where I have to make decisions for other people.  

After reading Soul of a Citizen I realized that I want to do more than allow things that I don't like to happen.  I am still confused as to whether it is right or wrong to involve myself, however I also want to make a difference in the world, and I don't want to be a bystander.  I know I would feel more fulfilled as a person if I didn't feel helpless about my sociopolitical involvement.  I hope that through this PRAXIS Lab we can all gain an as-complete-as-we-can-make-it understanding of the problems this valley is facing so that we can use the power we have as responsibly as possible,  I believe our PRAXIS lab truly does have power, because we have a significant amount of money, and because we have a  group of people dedicated to studying and improving the Salt Lake Valley.  

Also, I calculated my ecological footprint on the following website:
 http://myfootprint.org/en/visitor_information/
 (Links to an external site.)

My ecological footprint=3.15 earths, which is terrible...  

Power to the People

I had a thought the other day (I know, I know, thinking is good).  Unoriginality aside, I thought it might find an expression on this blog.  The Second Amendment was created to protect the right of the citizens of the United States of America to keep and bear arms.  Now, aside from the typical "guns kill people/the constitution says I have a right to possess weapons" debate, I think there is a larger weapons issue in this country right now.  The Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment to ensure that the citizens of what was then a British colony would forever have the ability to defend themselves against their native government.  However, the Founding Fathers couldn't have predicted the arsenal of modern weaponry that world governments now have at their disposal.  The art of war has evolved far beyond population numbers.  We now live in an age where accountability resides in approval ratings.  The purpose of the Second Amendment was to give people the power to change their government if they didn't like it, but citizens can no longer do that simply because of the vast wealth of power the U.S. government has accumulated.  So really, the issue isn't about whether people own guns or not, the issue is how to take approval ratings and give middle and lower class citizens the ability to impact the government if things aren't working out.  The intention of the Second Amendment was to prevent the system we have now occurring.  Sure we have the same name as the good old U.S. of A, but we sure as hell are not the same country.  Now, frankly, I'm not sure what to do about that, because I see no way out of the trap that I have suddenly found that my ancestors let me fall into.

So yeah, just a mildly depressing thought...

Human Scale/Cities for People

My room has the bones of a typical college dorm room (beige walls, short, grey carpet that doesn't stain, and various smoke detectors, heat detectors, fire alarms, motion sensors, vents, and the lighting that you see in the ceilings of high school buildings).  I have one window that faces east, which I don't open very often because there is a very busy road and a train that goes under it.  On my door I have a poster that says "Each place is lucky to have you visit it."  I have ten posters and a string of twinkle lights hung up on the walls in an attempt to splatter myself all over the space, but there are still plenty of empty stretches of wall.  One corner of my room is dysfunctional because of the way I have my bed positioned.  I use it for storing things, but I wish there was a way to make the space more active.

I share my living room with three other people, and I see this space as an extension of my bedroom without the mess.  I spend most of my non-sleeping time here.  I also have a bathroom that I share with just one person, my direct roommate Itzel.  This space is very important to me because I do most of my serious thinking in the shower.  I even went so far as to modify my shower to make it more comfortable by adjusting the water pressure.  I also feel a certain space ownership in the living room of the apartment across the hall from mine, since my front door is propped open so often.  Last year my apartment also had an "open door policy" with the apartment across from us, and this really expanded my comfort level for getting to know people and being social.  When I have more ownership of a space, I tend to hang out there more; it just feels more like home.

I also feel at home on the U of U campus to a certain extent, because I know I'm always 20 minutes away max. from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  But the true feeling of home comes when I round the corner of the soccer field and I can see the front of the MHC.  Living in an apartment means I don't have a front yard per se, but I do have a fire pit and some weird landscaped sections of ground covered in wood-chips.  I also feel ownership of this space, but I am uncomfortable hanging out there because it feels like the environment is built to discourage people from spending time there.  There are not many places to sit comfortably with a large group of people.

When I do venture out to the rest of campus, my first impression is of construction, because both of the buildings immediately next to mine are being built.  I hate this part of my commute; sometimes I try not to breathe, because the construction smells so terrible.  The rest of campus is alternatively beautiful and frustrating (like the Hyper buildings).  The other places I regularly venture to are Smith's for groceries, and my parent's house every Sunday night for dinner.  I don't feel very welcome at my parent's house, but Smith's is just a weekly part of my life.

So I'm not really sure what I've taken away from this reiteration of my daily goings, but I do try to spend my time in many places where I feel welcome.