summer update!

i guess i haven't really taken the time to write down my thoughts about the job i'm currently interning at this summer. well...i'll just do that right now, while i'm taking a short break from said internship.

so for the first half of this summer, i'm working at a small law firm in berkeley which represents native american tribes exclusively. i have to say right off the bat that i love this job. it was the perfect choice for me. i mean, the office is close to home, it's really casual (i can wear jeans and slippers, if i want to, though i usually don't), everyone is really nice, they bring their dogs in to work sometimes, they work in the very specialized field that is one of the few parts of law that actually interests me, the hours are flexible (though i'm usually here from 9-6 daily anyway), and it pays. so all in all, it's been fantastic.

i obviously can't talk about the cases i've worked on, but a majority of them have had something or other to do with environmental law, which i love as well. it's surprising how, in practicing tribal law, you gain this cursory knowledge of all other types of laws (i.e. environmental, tax, criminal, constitution drafting, statutory interpretation, etc.). and in a few of the projects (on in particular, see last post), i've gotten really interested and will definitely keep tabs once the internship is over.

so my days usually start around 9-ish. i get to the office and pretty much just jump right in. i'll spend most of my days researching whatever project one of the attorney's has given me, then i'll generally draft up a memo for them to let them know what i've found in my research. as you can imagine, knowing me, the handing in of these memo's tends to be really nerve-wracking each time i do it.

i think i'm probably learned more in these short few weeks than i have in the two years i've been in law school, but i guess that's to be expected. and it's not just the legal stuff either (i.e. what pro se or in pro per means, what a general stream adjudication is, just how important legislative history is since Congress has decided to be perpetually vague, etc.). i think i've learned a lot, particularly in regards to how i operate in a work environment, my strengths and weaknesses, and where i want to be in my future.

for example, i should be a little more confident in my work. generally (and i stress, generally), i tend to do good work. my memo's tend to be thorough and well written, and i'm an average to good researcher. but i need to work more quickly. i feel like i'm producing the work, but i'm doing in rather slowly. and while my researching skills tend to go in my favor, i get really anxious when i can't find the things the attorneys need me to find in the time they need me to find it in, even though we all know its out there and accessible. and then, of course, there's be one or two times when i've turned in a memo and the work i did just wasn't what the attorneys wanted/needed. and they're really nice so they'll tell me in the best way possible that i interpreted the question they gave me slightly different from the one they needed me to answer (this one happened this morning, in regards to this case on water rights - which i admit is really complicated and i know nothing about, but still), or that i didn't find support for the answer, which was an extremely reasonable one, that our client needed so my memo was sort of useless(which happened last week and involved a statute that has so many vague provisions and so little caselaw that i was going crazy just to come up with any arguments at all). but i beat myself up over those times because i really want to do well here and make a good impression (especially because i'm applying for a fellowship here after graduation).

and i get it that i just started and i can't expect to know everything and find everything when i've never practiced law before...but i don't like not being good at what i set out to do. in fact, i hate it. i want to be perfect at this now. i want these people to be like, "wow, she's great!" you know? it's stupid, and i know it's impossible, but when i'm not perfect, or when i'm not producing everything these attorneys need me to produce, i feel incompetent. i can't stand being incompetent. this is a learning experience, yes, but this is also a job. i need to do well at it.

i don't know. i think i've just be feeling like, because of the short time i'm going to be working here (only 2 more weeks!), there's no coming back from doing bad work. there's no time to make up for it and prove that i really am capable and smart or whatever.

and yes, i also realize that i'm paranoid. none of the attorney's have given me the impression that i'm any different than any other summer associate they've ever had. but i'm a worrier. as N. said, i get nervous about everything.

that's why i've listed these things under the "weaknesses" category. i need to work on them. i know.

but all of this has also really made me think about my future as an attorney. do i really want to be an attorney? i think i do...right now. but i know that i don't see myself being one 10 years down the road. am i just wasting my time then? but i can't think of any other job that i would want to do besides what i'm doing. and i'm so close to getting my j.d...it would be stupid to stop now. and again, what would i do with myself??? *sigh* i hate being an adult.

ANYWAY, that's me in a nutshell right now. i'm going home next weekend (just for the weekend) to watch L. get married, and to [hopefully] meet my new niece. then i'm coming back to work to finish out the week, and then i'm officially off for summer! i've finally accepted that i need the break. i'm at the burn-out stage, i can feel it. so i'm taking july and most of august off, heading to ireland for 10 days, and just relaxing. sounds like heaven...

what i want to do with my free time:

join a gym. take yoga. do more hiking. go bike riding. read lots and lots of trashy romance novels. write something...finally. rearrange/redecorate my room. buy new book shelves. visit A. (providing i have the money to do so). hang out with boyfriend and friends more. revamp the JLSC office at school. make some headway on the article i'm writing with prof. K. get a dog (not going to happen). go apartment hunting (probably not going to happen). learn to drive on the freeway (will have to drag myself bodily out of the house to do this). bake more. cook more. take pictures. go camping at yosemite. go to lake tahoe. so much more.....

native issues

Battling Upstream

The tribes on the Klamath know that as the river goes, so go the salmon

Glen Martin

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The Klamath River surges just below Merk Oliver's house. Right now, the water is slightly turbid, clouded and green - perfect for steelhead fishing. The Klamath is the second largest river in California, following the Sacramento, and its watershed encompasses a landscape that seems removed from the rest of the state by time as well as distance. Freeways, the digital economy, the entertainment industry, industrial agriculture - up here they seem like ill-recalled dreams. But what happens on this river affects Lower California greatly. It determines whether commercial fishermen and recreational anglers can take salmon - and whether there'll be fresh wild salmon in markets and restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ultimately, it figures into the availability of water for the state's homes and farms.

Oliver's home is several hundred yards from the river's mouth, and from his property you can hear the muffled reports of big combers breaking on the beach. A group of Yurok Indian youths are in the yard, grilling Pacific lampreys - anadromous, eel-like fish with circular mouths filled with sharp radula. Lampreys are highly esteemed by the Yurok, and are gaffed in the winter during low tides, when they skitter across flooded sandbars from the sea to the river. The close proximity to the big surf makes eel snagging a dangerous business, and fatalities from sleeper waves occur with some regularity.

Inside the small, clapboard house, Oliver, a tribal elder, is eating strips of smoked salmon. Oliver is thin but not frail, an exceptionally handsome man with long iron-colored hair and dark eyes glimmering with humor. He is 78, and has lived in this home for 55 years. A wood stove provides radiant heat. On the walls are photos - of family and tribal members, but also of fish: big salmon arrayed on a plank, skewered salmon staked around a fire, a close-up of a lamprey in shallow water, a huge sturgeon hanging from a tree limb. The room smells pleasantly of smoke and fish. A few Yuroks are seated and standing around Oliver, who is ensconced in a comfortable chair near the stove. As he nibbles on the fish - symmetrical, long strips of blood orange chinook, translucent as stained glass - he uses a jack knife to carve a lamprey hook handle from yew wood.

Lamprey hooks are the essential tool for eel fishing. The requisite technique is to chase an eel as it lunges across the sandbar, snag it with the hook, then flip it high up on the beach with a flip of the arm and wrist. Oliver's eel hooks are held in particularly high regard, a set of finished hooks hang on a wire above Oliver's chair, the golden yew wood handles glossy. They are carved with uncanny accuracy to represent a lamprey head, right down to the radula in the mouth and staring, inquisitive eyes. The lamprey is an intelligent fish, say the Yurok; when you run after them with the hook, you can see the alarm in their faces. Somehow, Oliver has captured that sentience in his carving.

The talk is discursive, humorous and mildly chaffing. Oliver asks one of the young men if he is still seeing a Tlingit woman. Tlingits are a southeastern Alaska tribe, accomplished fishers and marine mammal hunters who have long... enjoyed must be the operative verb... a reputation for pride and aggressiveness.

No, the young man says, a half-smile on his lips. She went back north. Oliver nods his head sagely, intent on his carving.

"That was a tough woman," he says after a time. He looks around the room, fixes on a visitor sitting nearby on a stool. "That woman could've whipped three of you," he says. "She was fierce. Ate too much seal meat." There are gentle laughs, and heads nod in agreement.

This is a conversation that has been going on for a long time - eight to ten thousand years, give or take a millennium. That's how long the Yurok, California's largest tribe, have occupied this reach of the Klamath River.

The three main tribes inhabiting the Lower Klamath - the Yurok, Hupa and Karuk - all have maintained strong cultural identities, but the Yurok are perhaps most closely identified with the river. This is because of the location of the ancestral Yurok lands: From the Klamath's mouth and surrounding littoral territories to more than 50 miles upstream. All the Klamath tribes depended on the fish runs, but the river and its coastal nexus assumed particular significance for the Yurok.

The Yurok had access to the migrating fish as soon as they left the sea, when they were at their fattest and brightest. Along with the river - and its salmon, steelhead, lampreys and candlefish - they also had the open ocean to exploit. Their food sources included Dungeness crabs, seaweed, mussels, abalone and periwinkles from the intertidal zone. They carved - still carve - elegant boats from redwood logs, and were redoubtable mariners, hunting marine birds, seals and sea lions and fishing for ling cod and rockfish in the rough inter-coastal waters. They had first rights to the dentalium and abalone shells that were the primary medium of exchange for the Klamath River tribes.

The river was their source of food and wealth, and it was their highway, their means of establishing commerce with other tribes. They were a water people, and still are. The photos on Oliver's walls are religious icons - graphic representations of all that is sacred to the tribe: the fish. Fishing nets and implements. Boats. The River. Because in any conversation with a Yurok, it always comes back to the river. To a very significant degree, the river is the reservation: Tribal holdings extend 1 mile inland along each bank from the mouth of the Klamath more than 40 miles upstream. Most of the land is exceedingly steep, of little utility for anything except conservative and limited forestry. What the tribe has always had, and still has to a significant degree, is the Klamath.

"The river gave us everything we needed to thrive," said Troy Fletcher, a tribal member and resource policy analyst. "It gave us food, wealth, beauty. This was paradise, and we knew it." But like most rivers in North America, the Klamath has suffered. Agricultural water diversions have depleted the river's once mighty flows; four moderately sized hydroelectric dams along the Klamath's main stem - plus a huge dam on its major tributary, the Trinity - have greatly reduced the spawning grounds for anadromous fish. Too, the main stem Klamath dams warm the river's water, encouraging destructive parasites and blooms of toxic blue-green algae. Increasingly, it is clear the Klamath can have the dams or it can have fish, but not both. For years, the Yurok have been at the vanguard in a battle to remove the dams. Allied with them are the other Klamath tribes, commercial fishermen and sport anglers. Opposing them are the dams' operators - which have shifted over the years, as the facilities have changed ownership - and farmers in the Upper Klamath Basin, who divert the river's water for potatoes, grain, alfalfa, horseradish and other crops.

The Klamath always has been a major front in California's water wars, one that has waxed especially hot throughout the Bush administration. In 2001, increased downriver flows by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to sustain salmon were resisted by Basin farmers, who seized irrigation canal head gates in protest. Water availability already was a flashpoint issue on the Klamath because much of the Trinity's flow is diverted south for the state's cities and agricultural lands. The Upper Basin skirmishes heightened the sense among the tribes and their allies that the entire system was being drained, with no regard for the fisheries and the people who depended on them.

In 2002, the Bush administration sided with the farmers and slashed the releases to the river, delivering the water up to the irrigation districts. A massive fish kill on the Klamath followed; the salmon never really recovered from the blow. The incident scarred the collective sensibility of the Yuroks, and it is a subject that still engenders deep anger on the reservation. The situation on the Klamath has far-reaching consequences - all the way down to Monterey. The scarcity of Klamath fish has resulted in multiple truncated commercial salmon seasons for California and Oregon, because the Klamath fish mingle with the nominally more plentiful Sacramento River salmon in the open ocean. As the Klamath goes, then, so go the fortunes of the West Coast's commercial fishing fleet - and the Bay Area availability of fresh wild local salmon. [Some fisheries biologists say it's already too late for salmon in the Lower 48 states. Development, logging, water diversions and dams, they claim, have compromised the spawning streams to an irreparable degree. Oceans warming due to climate change - and perhaps overfishing - are just additional nails in the coffin.

As of this writing, the Pacific Fishery Management Council - the regulatory body that governs West Coast marine fisheries - is poised to proscribe all salmon fishing for the 2008 season. The reason: An unexpected collapse in Sacramento River salmon stocks, which up to now have been relatively robust. If the ban is enacted as expected, it will be the first complete salmon closure for the California coast since commercial fishing began more than 150 years ago. But many fisheries experts maintain Pacific salmon and steelhead can be revived in the continental United States. Further, they say, salmonid restoration will have ancillary benefits. Bill Kier is a Humboldt County consulting biologist who has designed computer programs to track fishery restoration efforts on the Klamath; they are so accurate they have been applied by scientists across the country. Kier acknowledges that the data on southern range Pacific salmon is a mixed bag.

"But I still believe they have a very real fighting chance," he said. "The fact is that caring for salmon results in stabilized watersheds, better water quality, more wildlife - and in general terms, a cleaner environment. If you manage water and land for salmon, it doesn't matter if you're talking about the Klamath or the creek that flows through Mill Valley - life will be better not just for the salmon, but for the people who live in those watersheds, whether they're Native Americans, farmers or suburbanites."

Dams are not the only thing winnowing the Klamath's salmon. A couple of years ago, fluctuating ocean conditions off western North America reduced the production of plankton, the basic building block for all marine food webs. Pacific salmon typically run in two-to-four year cycles, so many biologists think the plankton paucity had a deep and negative effect on the fish populations that are now returning - or rather, not returning - to the rivers.

Oliver, who has been watching the fish runs all his long life, is convinced pollution also is a major factor in the decline.

"Everywhere in the world, people are using these harmful chemicals to do everything, right down to cleaning their toilets and dishes," he said. "The timber companies are spraying their lands with herbicides, and it runs into our rivers. The farmers are using too many pesticides. The whole system is poisoned, and the fish can't take it."

But for the Klamath, most biologists agree, the biggest problem is the dams. The battle over their disposition has raged in the courts, Congress and the media for two decades. Last year, the Yuroks and their allies caravanned to Omaha in an attempt to meet with Warren Buffett; his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, had recently purchased PacifiCorp Power, the company that owns the Klamath hydroelectric dams. Buffett declined to meet with tribal leaders to discuss possible dam removal, claiming he never interfered in the management of subsidiary companies.

He may have been unnerved by a similar trip the Yuroks, Hupas and Karuks took to Scotland in 2004 to engage representatives of Scottish Power, the company that owned PacificCorp at the time. The Scots, who consider themselves a tribal and salmon-loving people, hailed the Indians as kindred souls and heroes, and reviled Scottish Power. Chagrined, Scottish Power executives promised to negotiate a solution with the Klamath tribes. Instead, they sold PacificCorp to Berkshire Hathaway.

After getting stonewalled by Buffett, a certain level of depression settled in along the river. But it now appears that serious negotiations about dam removal and increased flows were not wholly undermined by Buffett's rebuff. Indeed, talks have continued - both with Upper Basin irrigators and PacificCorp. The negotiations, Fletcher said, are at a sensitive stage, and he won't discuss details. But other stakeholders who weighed in on the Klamath for this article indicated a deal is very close. Not everyone is completely thrilled by the prospect. Both commercial fishermen and the Hupa tribe - who live just upriver from the Yurok - have expressed concerns that the settlement now under consideration may not guarantee sufficient flows for the Klamath. "That worries us," said Zeke Grader, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "On the other hand, we're not going to actively oppose a settlement. We have to have good cops and bad cops on this thing, and the Yuroks are the good cops. We understand that."

Fletcher did say any settlement must be predicated on the removal of the main stem's four dams and adequate downstream flows for the fish. He also noted the tribe never really felt like its fight was with the farmers.

"After (the) 2002 (fish kill), we reached out to them," Fletcher said. "They share a lot of our values. They're rural people, people who are tied to the land, who are spiritual and hard-working. And like us, they face an unstable future. When we started talking to them, we realized, hey - we have a lot in common with these guys."

But there is still PacificCorp. The farmers aside, Fletcher acknowledges it is naive to think any corporation would sign an agreement that results in a significant financial loss simply because other parties consider it the right thing to do.

"We understand this has to make sense for PacificCorp," he said.

Fletcher is built like a logger: big shoulders and arms, and a torso like a keg. Arriving at tribal headquarters near the Klamath's mouth for a recent interview, he walks into the building with his hands blackened from grease and soot. He had just driven over a snowy mountain road from the hamlet of Weitchpec, about 40 miles upriver. En route, he had come across a car engulfed by fire, and had stopped to help its owner put it out. That kind of instinctive willingness to aid a neighbor in trouble is embedded in most rural cultures, but in Yurok society it extends to the landscape itself.

"We believe we were given an obligation by the creator to restore and protect our land and our fisheries," Fletcher said. "It's spelled out in the preamble to the tribal constitution. For us, this goes back to the beginning of time. The challenge right now is extreme. But the obligation has always been there, and it will never change."

As part of meeting that obligation, the tribe imposes fisheries closures and season quotas on its members, even though the Yuroks have the sovereign right to catch as many fish as they want. Not all members are happy with the strictures, though they comply.

One tribal member who feels the regulations should loosen up a little is Tommy Wilson. Orphaned at 13, Wilson went to Atlanta to live with a married sister.

"That big city," he said. "I couldn't hack it. After a couple of months, I came back here, lived on my own, and did what I had to do to stay alive."

That included selling salmon, sturgeon, black bear parts and home-grown marijuana to a friendly man who later turned out to be an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent. In court, Wilson argued that his sovereign rights allowed him to make a living from tribal lands through any reasonable means.

"I said that we should be able to thrive, not just survive," he said. "That means when I catch a fish or kill a bear, or plant a seed and harvest the plant, I should be able to do with it what I want. We were once a wealthy people - and it was this river that made us rich. I didn't feel the federal government had the right to force bare subsistence on us."

The judge agreed, and threw the case out of court. But despite his entrepreneurial views - by no means unusual among the Yurok - Wilson obeys the tribal fishery regulations without rancor. That, of course, is integral to being a Yurok tribe member in good standing.

"Individually, we don't define ourselves first and foremost by our professions," said Maria Tripp, the tribal chairwoman. "To us, the most important thing is to be Yurok. Work is what you do - Yurok is what you are."

Courtesy among tribal members and hospitality to visitors is written into the Yurok constitution. There isn't any emotive breast-beating or preaching, but everyone is expected to strive for right thinking and right acting. You see this manifest, especially, when it comes to boat building.

The Yuroks have been carving redwood log boats for thousands of years; the craft are exquisite artifacts by any measure, and sacred to the tribe. All the boats are carved by hand without jigs or other mechanical aids, and a long apprenticeship is required before an artisan is allowed to create one without direct supervision. More than a steady hand is demanded of the carver: A clear mind and quiet heart also are requisite.

"No one is allowed to approach a boat if he is angry or upset," said Fletcher. "We believe the boats are living things - we carve then with hearts, lungs and noses. They can be affected by bad thoughts and feelings."

On a large, grassy lot in front of tribal headquarters, tribal member Dave Eric Severns has been carving a boat every day, up to 12 hours a day, since Thanksgiving.

"It's not something you just - do," Severns said, slowly peeling away long strips of straight-grained wood with a gouge. He moves slowly and talks softly, seemingly out of deference to the boat. "You live it. I work on this boat all day, way into the night. And when I go to bed, I still see it in my thoughts. It stays with me in my dreams, and then I wake up early in the morning and come back out here."

This is the first boat Severns has carved on his own, after working for six years under his mentor, George Wilson. It's about 20 feet long. The log it is carved from was more than 5 feet in diameter, and weighed about 1,600 pounds. When the boat is finished, Severns said, four men will be able to lift it and move it with ease.

"This is a river boat," Severns said, moving his hand along the smooth, brick-red gunwales. "The ocean boats were up to 60 feet long and 12 feet wide. Eighty years ago, Yuroks used the ocean boats to deliver milk from Klamath dairies up to Crescent City (about 20 miles). They were incredibly seaworthy craft."

There is a knob in the bow section of the boat that is meant to represent its heart; a small black stone rests on it. The stone, says, Severns, is a lock that keeps the boat secure.

"Boats had primary owners, but anyone could use one if they needed it - unless there was a rock on the heart," Severns said. "Someone from the tribe comes by here and sees the rock on this boat's heart, they know it isn't supposed to be moved."

Up at Oliver's house, the lampreys have finished cooking on the charcoal grill. Nearby, a couple of young men check conditions in a large smokehouse. It is full of lampreys; they hang like golden stalactites from racks near the rafters. One of the Yuroks cuts off a slab of grilled eel, rolls it in a slice of white bread and hands it to a visitor. The meat is dense, rich, oily and incredibly sweet. Oliver walks among the youths, evaluating the cooking techniques, sampling eel, essaying humorous comments. Sometimes he simply looks at the river for extended periods of time. Tripp says Oliver and other elders are the tribe's bedrock assets, keeping the people anchored to their place in the world.

"When my friends and I were going to college (at nearby College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University), Merk was always coming around to feed us with traditional foods," she said. "He was out of time - connected to the old, old ways. He kept us grounded, made us understand who we are and where we came from."

A map of the Klamath Basin area

The fog over the Klamath Valley

The toxic algae which grows in the warm waters of the reservoirs behind the Klamath dams. This algae has been shown to be dangerous to people and pets who play in or drink the water from the Klamath River, and is probably dangerous to the Klamath fish and those who eat it.

Dead fish.

More dead fish.

those damn vampires

Yeah, you wanna know what I don't appreciate?

Paying $34,000 for law school and having to teach myself the area of law I want to go into.

I believe you, but my tommy gun don't

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Could the founding fathers have been any more vague?

Me, nutshelled: The only thing you're going to catch in the middle of the inner city with a 9mm is people. Deer don't live there.

maybe we don't want to be found

as suggested by the ever-wise ka'imi (spelled you name right! woot-woot!), i took a personality test. scary true.

check me out HERE.

go scare yourself and take your own test HERE.

there's beauty in the breakdown

i guess it's no secret that things haven't exactly been the easiest for me these passed couple of...well...years. and i shouldn't be complaining. i, of all people, should be the last person on earth to ever complain about my situation. i mean, i know what i have is amazing. i know that. i know that it's not everyday that a girl from a rural village in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the pacific, winds up with a full scholarship to not only college, but law school as well. i have an amazing, amazing family that is there for me like no one's ever been there for anyone else. i have a beautiful relationship with someone i love more than anything. anything. and my friends are wonderful. so supportive. so fun.

so i'm not writing this as a complaint. it's not. i don't exactly know what it is at the moment, but i know it's not that. i would never complain about this life i've been given.

not seriously, anyway. :)

i was looking at a picture of myself last night. have you ever done that? found a picture you rarely ever look at and really study yourself? the things you see...wow. the picture i found was from graduation 2 years ago. just 2 years. such a short period. a blink of an eye. a lifetime. it was a candid shot, my favorite kind. i'm sort of looking off camera, and if memory serves, i'm looking at my family. and they're looking back at me. they were so proud of me that day. it almost chokes you up to remember that, you know?

anyhow, i'm standing outside of husky stadium on a beautiful almost-summer seattle day, in full graduation gear (cap, gown, tassels, lei). and i have this smile on my face. i usually hate my smiles, but this one...this is one of those real smiles. i mean, that girl was really, really happy. i had just completed what had turned out to be 4 amazing years of my life. i would say that they were 4 of the most amazing years of my life, but realistically, that's an untrue statement. because looking back on my life just now, i can say that kamehameha (intermediate, highschool) was the most amazing 7 years of my life. but then i could also say that my childhood, living at home, being around my family, my sisters, was the best 11 years of my life. i've honestly had a pretty fantastic life so far. so we'll just say that college was 4 really amazing years.

who i was during college was who i had always wanted to be. i was self-sufficient, even if i was a little selfish. if i wanted something, be it to stay up all night, to go out of a drink, to run off to ireland, new zealand at the drop of a hat. if i wanted it, i went for it. i didn't have to think about anything passed the want, and the getting it. because that was my plan: to take advantage of absolutely everything i found at my fingertips. in this picture of me, this snapshot of a fantastic day, i was everything i had ever wanted to be. and the people that mattered to be were proud of that person.

so i look at this picture as i'm sitting in another exhausting 3 hour lecture on some abstract, though extremely important, law that's more acronyms and statutes than useful. and i'm thinking that this girl in the picture has no idea what she's in for.

i talked to some friends today and we discussed the girl in the picture. i tried to explain to them how i often feel like i'm this dual person. i said that i feel like that girl has disappeared. i look for her and look for her and look, but i just can't seem to find her most days. what's in her place is not a new person, because i've always also been very practical and straight-edge. it's part of how i got here, you know? but that person's never really dominated my life because i think i knew that if she did, i would lose a part of myself that meant too much.

i guess in the simplest of terms, because this has just become a bit too weepy for me, i feel like there's a constant battle between what my head says (i.e. practical woman) and what my heart says (i.e. girl in the picture).

and for the last 2 years, i feel like my heart has all but disappeared.

FYI: Kamehameha Schools

Kelly Hu on Doe v. Kamehameha.

This is old, since the case has now been settled, but I figured that this is a clearer way of explaining why I'm always ranting about my high school.

do you love to gossip?

get on gossip girl if you aren't already.

that's all i have to say about that.

another awesome video

this is nick pitera. nick can sing. nick can sing both parts of "a whole new world" from alladin. listen to nick sing.

endings or beginnings

finals are over and christmas has come and gone. this amounts to being very bittersweet for me.

but i'm in love with the changes coming up. i have resolutions to make, habits to get rid of, re-organizing and re-arranging to get on with.

i'm in the process of changing out my room. not only is this a fabulous excuse to go shopping, but it's just good to get rid of the old and bring in the new. i returned from hawaii (which, as always, was wonderful even though some very important people in my life were missing) to the chaos of my room, post-finals. it was like walking into a brick wall of stress. there were outlines everywhere, clothes strewn across desk, chair, and floor, flow charts tacked onto the walls, evidence of my mad dash to do some last-minute mainland christmas shopping before heading to the islands. and then i added my luggage to the mix. it felt like a layer of fog had rolled over my room so that there was no where to step, no where to think, no where to breathe or be calm.

so i've spent the last day and a half cleaning up. not only for my own sanity and peace of mind, but also because my little sister (one of those important missing people) is coming to visit me tomorrow! excitement!

i'm dreading the new semester to come. this last one was so difficult and i'm not sure what to expect next. what will be thrown at us this time around?

but i don't want to think about that for a few more days. i've got some fun things to look forward to this week: A., new years, sight-seeing, good friends and good times. we'll deal with the unpleasant when it becomes necessary.

i've posted pics from thanksgiving through winter break on myspace!