A skateboard designed by Baechler
Four works on paper
A portrait of Donald by Andy Warhol; he still hasn’t even unwrapped it from its paper!
Another portrait of Donald picking his nose by Andy Warhol, also still wrapped in paper
Some completed and one unfinished sculpture
The kitchen in the studio and one of my favorite of Donald’s sculptures
Two unfinished sculptures
Two unfinished sculptures, in different stages of process
It seems like just yesterday I was packing up my things and heading off to Washington D.C., but now it is Friday, March 4th and 4:42 pm and I’m sitting at my regular spot at the kitchen counter, typing up one of the final few posts recapping the trip.
Firstly, let me say that not only was the Washington D.C. trip incredibly fun and new and exciting, but it was also humbling and shocking (and in some ways depressing).
Let me recap yesterday.
Jeff had straight A’s in high school, has a college education, speaks eloquently, has a kind soul and a happy heart, and wants nothing more than to bring a smile to your face. Jeff has bipolar disorder. Jeff is formerly homeless.
Jeff sells papers for Street Sense, an organization that helps the homeless get back on their feet by providing them with a meager source of income. Street Sense is a paper written mostly by the homeless, focusing on homelessness issues in Washington D.C. and the world. Homeless individuals can buy a paper from the organization for 35 cents a pop, and then sell them on appointed D.C. street corners for 65 cents profit.
Yesterday our group donned the bright yellow uniform that designates a Street Sense vendor and walked past the White House, past several eateries, to K Street, a street infamous for lobbyists and nightclubs. For two and a half hours, from 10 am until 12 30 pm, our group scattered over a five-block radius and sold papers for the benefit of Jeff.
It’s unbelievable how cold some people can be. I found that many people walked faster when they noticed my luminescent yellow vest, and the great majority of people refused to make eye contact with me.
I would say, “Good morning sir/ma’am! Support the city’s homeless for a dollar?”
And you know how people answered 9 times out of 10? They said, “No, thanks.”
I remembered that Jeff said not to be offended, just smile and say “God bless,” or “Have a beautiful day,” but I just couldn’t understand. Nothing I said constituted a “No, thanks.”
You say no, thanks, when something is offered to you. You say no, thanks, when the flight attendant asks you if you want a drink. You say no, thanks, when you’re asked if you want all your hair chopped off.
You do not say no, thanks, when someone asks you to look into your heart to donate 1 dollar, just one dollar, to maybe better the life of someone else.
I did listen to Jeff and pretend it didn’t bother me that at least two hundred people passed me on that absolutely frigid morning and only around 12 of them bothered to pull a dollar out of their pocket.
There was one particular man who I remember. He had on a green tie, a pale blue shirt, and a black, very business-y looking jacket (he had pants on too). He crossed the block at least three times, and every time I asked him again if he would be willing to donate a dollar to support Jeff. Around 11 45, when I could hardly move my fingers any more and my toes were so cold they were starting to feel warm again, I saw him cross the street and walk purposefully towards me.
“I went to lunch,” he said and smiled, handing me a dollar, “This is my change.”
A lot of other stuff happened, and I’ll post about it later, but for now I’m just going to post a few more pictures!
Hope everyone is having a great break/ beginning of March!!
Hello all,
Today I did some more distributing of flyers for the venue with a member of the collective. We explored Hamtramic, which is a neighborhood separate but connected to Detroit. It’s hard to explain, but basically in the 60’s the government built highway 75 which destroyed the neighborhood. The highway was also a point of racial tension. In Hamtramic we stopped off at the place know as the Detroit Disney World. Some guy hit retirement and didn’t know what to do with himself and covered his house in crazy stuff. After I got back I went for a bike ride to the train station. The building has a real presence and beauty in its decayed state.
Peace,
Henry
Emily here –
I like to think that 90% of writing is living, and these past three days have been full of it.
After my return from Barcelona, I had a few hours of catchup before starting the next day with my commute to New York City, where my art teacher helped me find an exciting internship in the artist Donald Baechler’s studio, where the other assistants and I help him with his paintings, prints and sculptures, along with various bookkeeping and organizational tasks. Like all of the other assistants, I am an artist (though still, in many ways, aspiring) and I look to Donald as a sage of sorts: he is an extremely prolific painter and is highly respected both inside the art world and out.
Donald’s work can be seen in the Whitney Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Fine Art, the Philadelphia Museum, and in countless other museums across the world. He has had almost innumerable solo and group exhibitions worldwide, with his work selling for almost ungodly amounts to the worldly elite (I saw in looking through inventory that even James Brown owns a painting!). More even than the numbers, though, Donald’s character demands respect. His quiet wisdom endears him to anyone he meets, while his Quaker sensibility puts them at ease, drawing even the least learned to his adroitly perfected level.
Starting Wednesday morning, my internship gradually turned from general introductions and thumb twirling to interesting conversations and independent organizational help: most of which meant sorting and unpacking the hidden clutter after a group gallery tour with the Museum of Modern Art in NY. I discussed: recent works by Vik Muniz and Christian Marclay, the state of NGOs in Haiti and across the world, and a recent article in The New Yorker that explored Scientology from an insider’s perspective, all while I was bent over a long, wooden, Chipotle-covered table with Donald and the other assistants. They invited me to gallery shows that they were having or were going to, and offered to show me their own studios whenever I had the chance.
I finished up work at 7:00 and went to meet my friend Allegra, once a classmate of mine at Westtown, who’s now living in the city with her boyfriend. We went to the ever-chic Ace Hotel, for some of the best cappuccinos in Manhattan, where we reconnected over the bustle of the lobby. The ambiance was incredible: a seductive vocalist purred along with the half-hidden jazz band, undulating in perfect harmony with the crowds and the talk and the rolling laughter. I capped my first day with vegan dumplings and a sleepy train ride back to New Jersey, wishing more than ever I didn’t have to leave so magical a place.
Thursday was spent with Donald at Pace Prints, the print studio associated with the Pace Gallery (which, according to Donald, is among the five most important galleries in the city), where we worked on a series of ‘crowd’ monoprints. The crowd is a subject matter relentlessly reworked by Donald; because of its versatility it’s become one of my favorites of his subject matters. For this project, Donald made a series of nearly 70 woodcut faces and skulls (‘Just two eyes, a mouth and a nose,’ as he says), which were arranged like puzzle pieces, inked, and printed on handmade paper. Most of the faces were layered with Chine Colle, a process that glues rice paper under the ink and onto a page during the printing process. This gave the opportunity for the negative space of each face to be a different color, despite the monochromatic inking.
My job during the majority of this was to cut the different colored rice papers to fit the templates of specific heads before they were printed. I was able to choose the color that I thought would best suit each face, and that would correlate with the colors of the surrounding faces. While tedious, the job was fun and collaborative; I met lots of interesting, young printmakers and I learned much more about a medium that I’d though I knew almost everything about. More importantly, though, I felt like, while discreetly, the job I had was making an important mark on the final product, as if it were a signature of sorts.
Thursday’s workday ran late as well; after leaving the studio at 7:00 I ran to Utrecht to pick up supplies before walking to the East Village for dinner with Allegra and friends.
Today was the quietest day of them all; there was only one assistant in the studio other than me, excluding Donald’s personal assistant, who stopped in for a few hours this morning. With no significant work to do, I worked on personal projects until Donald arrived at 2:00 (I arrive around 11:00), and chatted with the other assistant.
When Donald arrived, he talked to us for the majority of the time, showing us pictures of paintings sculptures that he was interested in buying or that he held in high renown. Towards the end of the work day, I helped him sign an edition of prints he’d made while he was in Barcelona a few years ago, which he wants me and one of the other assistants to begin cataloguing in coming days.
After work, I went with Erin, a coworker, to the opening of a show that she and another coworker were in at the Canada Gallery. The opening was packed with exotically-dressed twenty-somethings and smelled like stale beer, but it had a feeling of general excitement and creativity. The show was a collaboration of 20 artists, who made a highly conceptual film, and displayed with it pieces of unrelated art.
A bit overwhelmed by the density of strangers, I left rather quickly, taking the subway back uptown to Penn Station, from where I headed home. Once home, I met with a few friends in their apartment down the street, and we listened to jazz music while talking about our plans for tomorrow, which you’ll hear about soon enough!
Until then,
Emily
02/24/2011
Let me just start out by saying that the two days since I last blogged have been emotionally exhausting and it is past ten at night here, so my train of thought may be a little off. We have been staying a Ramat Hashofet Kibbutz in Israel, and talked to mostly Israelis about their perspective on this conflict. Yesterday we spent the day with a man named David. He was not born in Israel, but has spent a large portion of his life here. He works with an organization called Givat Haviva which is a learning center in Israel that works with both Israelis and Palestinian to break down cultural barriers. David is a brilliant man and I learned so much about cultural history of the Jews. He also took us into a town called Barta’a which is an Arab town that was split in half by the green line in the late 40’s, making half the town citizens of Israel and half citizens of Jordan. This, of course, creates an interesting dynamic within the town and taught us a lot about the tensions for Arabs with Israeli citizenship between both Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
Today we visited a Kibbutz about ten minutes away called Mishmar Ha’emek. We spent our time there with a woman named Lydia who has lived in Israel for 45 years and also works at Givat Haviva. We toured the Kibbutz and learned that a Kibbutz is basically an intentional socialist community. All members live on the Kibbutz, the work they do is to benefit the Kibbutz, and all the money they make must be given to the Kibbutz. In some ways, it is similar to communes that we hear about in the U.S., but a Kibbutz is much more accepted and part of the Israeli culture than communes are in the U.S.
Since I began learning about the conflict, I have also looked to Israel for blame. And here I am, in the middle of Israel proper, spending two days with Israelis who very much believe in the State of Israel. One of them served in the Israeli army and would willingly go back if called to protect Israel, and one is a self-identified Zionist. You can imagine my initial rejection of their ideas. But getting to know them and listening to their ideas showed me that it wasn’t so easy to paint them into this stereotypical “bad Israeli” corner. Both spend a large amount of time working with Arabs in both Israel and the West Bank. When we visited the town of Barta’a with David, we met someone who he considered his brother. They both clearly care about Palestinians, and are actively working towards peace and equality among Israelis and Palestinians.
You may be able to imagine my confusion. A whole new side of this conflict was opened to me in just two days time. I wrote the following paragraph a second ago to describe how I have been feeling. It came out as a blabbering mess, but I am going to leave it in that form to show you what has been going on in my head for the past two days:
Of course Israel should exist! The Jews need and deserve a homeland! But at the same time, I don’t think what Israel is doing is right. The Palestinians were already here. Someone can’t come and take someone else’s land. Israel has no right. But they do! They have been oppressed for thousands of years. Hell, six million of them were murder less than 100 years ago! They need a place where they can express their own culture in beliefs safely. This is where their origins are. Of course they would be called to move back to this land. But, it isn’t safe here. No wonder they have been the aggressor. But that doesn’t excuse their actions. They have still pushed thousands of people out of their homes.
And it goes on…
Hopefully now you can see how, after two days, I am thoroughly “pooped”. There was a point this afternoon where I wanted to go back to my room, watch a stupid movie, and not even think about the words “Palestine” and “Israel” ever again. It is just so overwhelming. I never thought that it would be like this. I knew I would be challenged, but I honestly couldn’t foresee just how pushed I would be. Just imagine taking something that you think you understand pretty well, and having it flipped completely upside down in the course of 48 hours is mind blowing. Before coming here I didn’t consider myself “anti-Israel”, but I did mostly side with Palestine. Now, I have been exposed to the richness of the Jewish culture. It is truly impossible to understand without experiencing it firsthand.
While I am totally confused and turned around by my revelations of the past 48 hours, I have nothing to say to David and Lydia but “thank you”. Without them I would still be blind to half of this conflict, and I am extremely grateful that they opened my eyes.
Now that I have rambled on for a really long time I am first going to apologize for doing so (sorry) and then I am going to sleep.
לילה טוב (good night),
John
As the humidity of Bangkok is weighing us down, we managed to take a tour around the King’s temple, palace and street shops yesterday. It still hasn’t hit me that I am in Bangkok, almost half way around the world with my friends. We are having a wonderful time in the city so far, touring and experiencing the Thai culture.
Yesterday, after my blog post, our group went to the riverside to take the boat up to all the sights. First, right after we got off the boat, we walked around this open flea-market that sold all kinds of jewelry, food, drinks, shoes, bags, old coins, you name it and they had it somewhere along the streets. The King’s temple and palace were amazing. There was so much detail in the murals, the outside walls covered with jewelry and gold, etc. We could tell that the place belonged to a royal family. Another thing that was all around was the Buddha. There were temples that people worshipped inside the palace but photography was prohibited. But, we were able to see the “Reclining Buddha,”
By the time we went to the palace, the boys had to put on pants because people with shorts were not allowed to even see the palace. That was something that everyone struggled with the most yesterday: dealing with the appropriate attire in the dead heat. The boys looked good in their pants, some wore them over their shorts. Anyway, we went inside to see the temple and the palace; and the outside of the buildings were spectacular. I think John-Michael was a really big fan of the gold temple. Maybe it was from the shock of the beauty of the buildings, but we were pretty tired by the end of the King’s temple. We managed to have fun at the same time.
After the sight-seeing, we went to more vendors and each found a place to eat. I picked Pad Thai. Then we took the boat again, to climb this building. To be honest, I don’t remember the names of the places we went to. But there are pictures! This shrine had really steep steps and we all climbed up to the top except Wei-Hao. His excuse was a bad shoulder… My knees also hurt while climbing up, but after seeing the view from up top, it was all worth it. The view was absolutely beautiful.
We are all happy and safe. Tomorrow we go into Chang Mai. It’s pretty late right now. I promise I’ll blog about today tomorrow morning. I know I am behind, but there is more to come! Yay Thailand!
P.S. if the pictures are not uploading, check out my flickr account, I will upload more pictures from Day 1 soon.
February 25, 2011
Lynn
Every day at BSM introduces a whole new aspect of the organization to me. Which is awesome, but pretty intimidating to blog about after I let 3 days get away from me. But it’s also a good sign that I haven’t had time to blog for the past three days; it means I’m busy doing more pressing things and haven’t had a moment to sit and reflect. Anyway, today was reasonably easy and I was only there from 9:30 to 3. So, I’ve had a bit of relaxation throughout the afternoon, and now am relaxing even more at a friend’s house and boring her to death as I attempt to backtrack and reflect on everything that’s happened. I think it’s best to attack this day by day…
Tuesday: 10 AM-4 PM
Brittany showed me how the mail service works, so that I will be able to run it by myself next Monday. The best thing about the mail service, to me, is of course the face-to-face interaction with clients who use it. This was the first real interaction I’ve had with multiple homeless men and women through BSM, beyond dinner conversations during No Barriers Dinners and the like. Brief description of the mail service: it’s a program for people who do not have a viable address at which they can receive mail. BSM hosts over 300 people through the mail service. But one woman in particular struck me. I wrote something about it on the train ride home, really quickly, in order to not forget the details.
“They stole my medicine… they attacked me and stole my medicine. They will never fix this, the way they are doing things… they always attack me…” I hear her words before I even see her. Her voice is smooth and calm, yet disconnected. She enters the room with the same disconnected look in her eyes, wrapped in layer upon layer of leggings, scarfs, skirts, shirts, jacket, and hat. Her arms cradle a worn paper bag. “They stole my long underwear… it is too cold to walk to get any… I don’t have the money. It is too far, and they will attack me… I don’t look bad and I don’t do anything bad… but they attack me. In Athens, my husband’s property… it was in my name. But they took it and they took my long underwear. I’m here for my mail, do I have any mail?” Brittany greets her and looks for her mail. There is none today. I close my laptop and listen. “The same people who ruined my career, lost my money, they stole my medicine and ruined my long underwear. They attack me.” She stands in front of the desk as a man walks into the room behind her. He recognizes her and sits down, waiting for her to turn and leave. She doesn’t. She continues to speak in circles, pleading and gesticulating gently, and I stare at the wall in front of me. Brittany knows better than to interrupt. She continues for a few more slow, uncomfortable minutes, until she slowly backs out of the office, speaking in the same even, empty voice. As she turns out of the room, the man quietly picks up his mail and follows her to the door. He exits, and she stands in the doorway, out of sight, lost in her story.
It might seem like this encounter stuck with me just because of how strange and uncomfortable it was. But the one thing that got to me, more than anything else, was when she mentioned a “career.” Wow, she hasn’t always been this woman. Wow, this personality is a condition, a situation, an experience. Yet it has permeated her soul and affected her entire life. It blows my mind how things change for people. I’ve met people who’ve been homeless for years, for weeks, and even for only three days. And each story, however fragmented, broken, or false, is a testimony to humanity’s unfailing impermanence and the unjust nature of every day life. You know, that whole “life isn’t fair,” deal we all have to accept at one point or another.
Wednesday: 7 AM-9 PM
Wednesday was madness. I, of course, as the new intern, had a ball. But most of the staff were quite stressed out. Which is understandable! For some reason, around 5 events were planned for Wednesday night. The schedule we were handed at the staff meeting, which covered the late afternoon to end-of-the-night activities, was a page and a half long. A quick definition of the main event: No Barriers Dinner. NBD is a once-monthly community dinner, set up in the sanctuary, in which all are invited to participate in a dinner that is designed to break down barriers and build bridges between peoples who wouldn’t normally have the chance to connect. It rocks. You get to feel completely confident to sit down at a table filled with strangers, cause everyone else is doing it too, and jump into a conversation about anything and everything. But before I get to that, let’s start at 7 AM.
I came in so early to assist with the extended hours of 315 Cafe, which is BSM’s overnight homeless shelter. Not actually designated as a homeless shelter, the Cafe is designed to give people who are not able to find places in actual homeless shelters a place to stay. During a Code Blue (concerning weather and temperature), which it was on Tuesday night, around 75 people are allowed to stay at BSM. This was another amazing spot for me, as it offers the chance for a lot of connection with people. Because the people living at the cafe are allowed to stay until noon during the extended hours, many are more than willing to get involved in long conversations, art projects, or are just content to continue to sleep or watch a movie. I met a really sweet man and we talked for a pretty long time about a variety of random subjects. Wrestling, lacrosse, horseback riding, motorcross, where we live and where we grew up, stories from high school, pitbulls. This was my first chance to make a real connection, and it is so awesome now to see him at other events and be able to greet him by name, pull up a chair and feel like I am really a part of the community now that I know more people than just the staff.
The afternoon was filled with a lunch with Liam (which was great, he always has really good insight and is an intimidating conversationalist), a long and dull staff meeting (which was fine because what else are staff meetings supposed to be?), and hurried work to finish setting up for the NBD and volunteer fair and movie showing and choir practice and whatever else. During NBD, I sat at a table which initially felt really awkward and quiet. No one was interested in participating in a conversation, and I felt really intimidated and only tried, weakly, once or twice to engage them. But as the meal continued a few more people joined the table and all of a sudden I was thrust into this amazing conversation with two of the men at the table. Both residents of the cafe, they were open about their stories, how they got to where they are today, and their entire lives basically. The connection we felt was huge, on my part and theirs. This is the magic of NBD. We went down to the volunteer fair separately, but wound up together again and quickly heavy into another conversation. I realized something really important about myself through all of this: I fancy myself a “people person,” but it was hard for me to put myself out there. I am so used to people being inquisitive towards me that it was hard for me to start the conversation in an effective way. What a cool thing to notice. While it’s exemplary of my own egoist ways, it also rocks, because it gives me something to work on personally for the next week which will help me to become a better person in general.
Thursday: 9:30 AM-3 PM
Today was Breaking Bread. Breaking Bread is a lot like NBD, except it extends beyond a meal and is much more oriented towards people who are either homeless or in need of clothing, personal supplies, or simply human interaction. I worked in the third floor balcony, directing and helping a bunch of other high school seniors in organizing the absolute chaos that has resulted from the donations BSM has gathered over the years. These donations make up the clothing closet, which is a place for those who need clothing to come, browse, and take up to five items. It was hard for me at first to be working with high school kids, who are people I feel that I understand and am not often inspired by, while I knew that the people I had met yesterday and so many more were downstairs eating and interacting. But I got over it, since I knew how important it was to sort the donations. We worked there for about two hours, but then Jere, the personal care coordinator at BSM, asked me to help him within the Clothing Closet for the last hour of Breaking Bread, which was so awesome. It was a lot like being a personal shopper, in some weird world that would be run by thrift stores, and it was fun interacting with people in a way that it was really easy to make jokes about certain pieces of clothes and lighten up the mood. I saw the man I met at Wednesday’s extended hours again, which was awesome, and I met a bunch of other people. So all in all, my frustrations were answered.
A short reflection:
I love this internship. What I’ve been doing is what I want to do with my life. I could write about this forever and not even get to the really important stuff (obviously). Conversation is a really significant thing. Breaking down the barriers that are complete constructs of our culture is actually enlightening. And to circle back to the idea of hope I touched on last time: so many of the people I’ve met have pointed towards scripture or a member of the staff as the light at the end of their tunnel. They’ve spoken about how they’ve just held a staff member’s hand or gaze as they talked through an issue, and it helped them to turn their lives around. It is all just another example of how empowering support, hope, and another’s love (spiritual or interpersonal) can be, and I can see how, for so many people, faith can be a powerful foundation for this love.
-Caylin
PS- sorry for how long this is! Usually I would try to condense it in some way, but it is almost midnight and I plan to be on the road to be in Philadelphia by 5:50 AM tomorrow morning. So sleep is my most pressing desire. And expect pictures of: the church, funny staff members, an adorable baby, and some really amazing people sometime in the near-to-far future!
I’ve just finished up my first week at WXPN. My reflections can basically be sorted into two categories.
The BEST things about my internship thus far:
1) Being constantly surrounded by music and people who like music is definitely the biggest perk. Even though a lot of what I’m doing is formatting scripts, researching featured artists and writing promotional blurbs, it all involves music I’m interested in. I’m absorbing so much information about new artists and albums that I easily get lost in the work. I can’t help but listen to the bands while I write about them. Just walking through the hallways of the WXPN office makes me happy – they’re covered in signatures of all the bands that have been there before. I can usually be found gawking at the names of my favorites in the middle of the hallway, looking like the shell-shocked teenage girl that I am. Another great thing about working with music is the vast CD collection I get to sample while I type endless documents.
2) Getting to meet bands and musicians is pretty awesome. I am in charge of taking care of bands that come in to record for the World Café program. Thus far I’ve “hosted” Summer Fiction, an indie rock band who’s actually really good (look them up!) and some guy named Vusi. He’s from South Africa, where he’s known as “The Voice” (I wasn’t sure what to call him. It ended up just being “sir”). I get them coffee and take pictures for the website while they do a sound check. The picture part is slightly uncomfortable, especially since the grumpy videographer likes to tell me I’m “in his shot.” I also make sure they sign the wall. But otherwise, it’s really fun chatting with the band and hearing them play. I’ll try and post about the artists more when I host in the future. (Hopefully) I’ll even get to sit in on their recording sessions with David Dye.
3) The other interns are really great and supportive. No one flinched for a gratuitously long time when I told them I was in high school (“Yeah I’m doing a Senior Project…No I’m not a senior in college.”). They all like the same kind of music that I do and it’s really fun to swap concert stories and favorite albums. They’ve been really helpful in showing me the ropes and editing my writing and research. They’re all local college students: two from Penn, three from Temple, one from Drexel. Most of them have been working at WXPN for three or four years, which is a little intimidating.
4) The Free at Noon show – which takes place every Friday – features a World Café artist for a free show, at… well, noon. The interns are in charge of making sure the show runs smoothly, but we also get to watch it. I can’t wait to see my first one! They are often packed and difficult to get passes for, but as an intern I have first priority. Adele performed two weeks ago and Bobby Long is performing in a couple of weeks (watch him here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAG2flpe8Yg ).
The WORST things about my internship thus far:
1) The commute is killer. I live 45 minutes outside of the city, but during rush-hour, it’s more like an hour. Instead of driving the whole way, I drive to a local train station (which takes a half hour due to the horrendous traffic) and then get on a train to 30th Street Station. By the time I’m at the WXPN building, I’ve been commuting for almost an hour and a half.
2) Being in high school feels a little weird. People keep asking me where I go to college and it’s very uncomfortable to tell them I’m not in college yet. When a band member from Summer Fiction inquired about school, I hesitated for a while before stupidly blurting out “I’m a student!” He looked at me very strangely and didn’t press the matter. Hopefully I’ll handle this question better in the future, I just don’t want to be treated differently because I’m a few years younger than the other interns. It’s beginning to seem almost inevitable, though. I’m just happy that the college students I work with don’t seem to care.
3) When I tell anyone I’m doing this internship, they say to me: “I bet you’re doing a ton of clerical work, since it’s an entry-level job. That’s how everyone starts out: at the bottom of the food chain.” I’m very sick of being told this, mostly because I am doing a ton of clerical work, but also because it’s hard to hear again and again how everyone has to “start at the bottom.” I get it. I’m living it. It can still be fun and worthwhile, though – that’s the goal.
Beyond that, I’m just getting started and learning the ropes. I’m hoping to post some interesting stories in the future because I’m meeting some pretty cool artists! I hear Bright Eyes is coming in for a session in a couple of weeks…Stay tuned. And don’t forget to listen to the World Café on NPR!
Today is day three in Germany (my project got off to a bit of a late start due to a stomach bug) and it’s awesome. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to understand anything, and even though I have to ask everyone to speak slowly,it’s going pretty well. I am constantly surprised at how well everything works here. Everything is on time, and everything is in order, especially at the SSB workshop. There, they take subway cars (which come in pairs), strip them down, and rebuild them completely. Here’s a little bit of what I’m doing (they have me doing something different everyday):
Day 1:
tour, general repair, rebuilt a pneumatic suspension system with guy named Andy, who thought I was from England
Day 2:
milling, turning, drilling
they have huge CNC mills (awesome)
huge computer controlled lathes (also awesome)
and a drill press taller than I am
In the afternoon, we drove to a park where there is a miniature railroad for tourists, scoped out a rebuild for one of the engines.
They all think I’m from england!
in the car one guy asked me if it was weird driving on the wrong side
Day 3:
spent in the machine shop, where they build custom parts for the subway cars, because the company that built them (165! sets) went out of business
Heading to Paris tomorrow for the weekend!
More to Come,
Jack
Westtown Senior Projects' Blog 