This isn't actually my old house's closet but it may have well been,
this is nearly exactly what it looked like...I found it on Google here.
Okay, so the house I grew up in until the end of second grade was tiny. I don’t think you could have a house that was smaller and still consider it a house; except for those teeny tiny houses that are part of the Small House downsizing countermovement that can compete with Thoreau’s lovely abode in Concord…
In my family’s teeny tiny house, our coat closet for coats and umbrellas and such was less of a coat closet and more of a study; a study where we kept our computer. So one of my first memories involving computers is me sitting on a big swivel chair (by big I mean tiny since it had to fit in the closet, but gigantic-looking with me sitting in it) playing lemmings. That’s right, I don’t know if any other 90’s babies remember this game, but that one with super pixelated animation of little men following each other off cliffs unless you built a wall or bridge to redirect them.
After that game, lemmings were always something that I was really into but really had no clue what they were. What I discovered with a quick wiki search is that they are actually pretty cute. They look like little hamsters. But what blew my mind is where they live. Get this—lemmings are ARTIC RODENTS. What?? Apparently they live in tundra. In the snow. To me that just sounds like the name of the band, the Artic Monkeys; something ironic that doesn’t actually exist (right?? I don’t actually have any clue..). Check out this video, I feel bad for the little buddy because he seems scared out of his mind but I was intrigued merely by the weirdness of the little dude.
To sum up what I was getting at, I didn’t use the computer much pre-middle school given where we kept our computer. Also, without internet there wasn’t much use I would have had for a computer as a kid. I wasn’t about to type out a 10-page word document and even if I did have the internet I don’t feel like it would have caught my attention in that point in its development. My family actually didn’t get internet until after my brother got to high school, so maybe 2003? I would have been in seventh grade. II remember noticing as a sixth grade that I felt disconnected or behind without the internet by that point. That's when of course I started going on the computer regularly. I would need it for school to research for projects and then I got a Yahoo account which turned into a Google account. At the beginning of my freshman year of high school, I got a Facebook and then I started blogging my senior year for a class. Now I have this personal blog, and last night I created a twitter...There are so many different media for web interaction..it seems a bit overwhelming, right? Nowadays, every single website has a login and personalized something. I also have a stumbleupon, an etsy, a pinterest, a skype, a vevo, picasa web albums, a dropbox, a walgreens photo account. And three or possibly more different emails. It has gotten to be far more accounts that I can even remember...
This guy Bob who gets the photo cred, also calls them funnies..is it a Boston thing?
Getting back to when I was younger, my media exposure was more based on more traditional outlets like tv, books, and the newspaper before the time of Webkins. For whatever reason, what comes to mind are Christmas movies: Charlie Brown’s Christmas and The Snowman. I never watched Saturday morning cartoons, I didn’t have cable. I’m pretty sure I read the comics in the newspaper “or the funnies” from the Boston Globe every week on Sundays because that is when they were in color and had a full five pages instead of the usual single page black and white section.
As I got older, I started to read more books. I loved the Little House on the Prairie books and I read all of the Magic Treehouse books. I liked first-person narratives that made you feel like you feel like the speaker was your best friend. Books were my window to the rest of the world outside the suburb where I lived. In middle school I loved the book Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan. And The Giver by Lois Lowry. They were books about different world's, the first about a different culture and the second about an imagined world. Another thing, is that I always remembered the names of the authors, it was like a way of meeting people. I still have never read The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns but I learned the author's name, Khaled Housseini, a long time ago for whatever reason. Now when I read articles for my Journalism class on the computer, I have to remember to even read who wrote it.
My parents read to me a bunch when I was younger. My mom loved books like, Goodnight Moon, and books illustrated by Eric Carle. The really simple yet artful ones. She is all about simplicity. My parents would read Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales to me, the old Winnie the Pooh, Harold's Purple Crayon, Blueberries for Sal, and Chinese folktales; Lon Po Po and Tikki Tikki Tembo.
These books are actually fairly telling of my personality now. Like Little House on the Prarie, I’m always looking for adventure. Like my favorite fairy tale, The Wild Swans, I’m really into resourcefulness (haha..). Like Eric Carle I love creating beauty out of the everyday. And about the Chinese folktales and Homeless Bird, I am fascinated by culture. At this point in my life, I sadly don’t read too much. I am mostly consumed by my computer. It would have been nice if it hadn’t ever left my closet.
Hi my name is Amanda Chin and this is my blog, Keep calm and Carry your spork. I grew up in a suburb six miles outside of Boston in Arlington, Massachusetts. It’s a cute little historical town that prides itself on the fact that Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride that started the American Revolution took him through it. And celery. Arlington grew delicious celery in the 1800’s. (A fun fact that I learned this summer while chatting up my co-workers who were all about 40 years older than me, give or take, while working the polls of a town election. I heard some good war stories too.)
Robbins Farm Park or "Skyline Park," (photo cred to ken ken)
Anyway, I am currently a sophomore at the University of Vermont, majoring in Environmental Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. I haven’t yet declared a minor or an ENVS concentration but in the future, I hope to work for a non-profit with a mission that addresses both environmental and social justice issues. I probably got on this whole track the summer after my junior year of high school when I worked my first summer of two at The Food Project, an organization with the vision of “a world where youth are active leaders, diverse communities feel connected to the land and each other, and everyone has access to fresh, local, healthy, affordable food.” It’s a non-profit, Boston-based farm with a number of different land plots in suburban and urban areas that works to empower a diverse group of youth to advocate for food justice in their own communities, while growing together. One critical thing out of many that I learned from my time there, was how simply community could come together with a common goal to accomplish something really big. Like a bunch of teens learning to farm while breaking down racial and class boundaries. And then going to run a farmer's market in the inner city where there would otherwise be no access to fresh vegetables.
So from there, I kept getting involved with a bunch of different organizations that all seemed to have a common thread of social justice, which eventually led me to the conclusion that it was an interest of mine. On campus, I am currently involved with the Eco-Reps program through the UVM Office of Sustainability, FeelGood (gourmet grilled cheese to sustainably end world hunger), The Dewey House of Civic Engagement, and the Garden Club through Slade (student co-operative living community).
Eco-Reps helping with freshman move-in day (Eco-Reps)
This past summer while I was living on an eco-village/farm/yoga & meditation retreat center/heaven, called Metta Earth Institute, I was informally trained to facilitate a three-hour long Generation Waking Up workshop that is meant to motivate my generation, our generation, to get connected and make social change a.k.a. inspire us to get shit done. Here's a really cool video that is a part of the presentation from a partner organization called, Four Years Go:
So that's a little bit me! I can't wait for the rest of the year and to see where it brings me. Ciao for now :)
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