Zadie Smith, Lifevest

In which Carrie goes back to college . . . . 

This itch.  Once at the height of my intellectual stamina.  The time when the person starved of morality sees the world through literature, and begins, anew, on a quest for purpose.

Zadie Smith will save me.

Memories of dead philosophy professors, still living and some actually deceased.  Byron, vanilla-flavored pipe at the lips.  Simple-minded me telling you I will take a trip to Bhutan where they believe in Gross National Happiness.  You said, Professor, with a keen moral philosopher’s mind, are you sure it follows from the social structures availible?  Me, in my naivete, thinking surely this other culture has it figured out, why wouldn’t I believe this catchy abandonment of Gross National Product.

Fast forward to the decision of a profession.  The requisite undergrad initiation into literature proper.  E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End.  Followed by On Beauty.  Modern British Authors or something number 400 level course for English majors. An inspired body reaction stemming from a mind well-used in the recognition that symmetry is possible and two books side by side will yield the same message: social injustice.  Amazing to behold, one in each hand.

“One may as well begin with letters and emails sent between characters . . .” start Forster and Smith, signaling the conflict which invariably arise from relations with others.  Zadie says I will tell a modern day version of a brilliant commentary on upper class warfare on the less fortunate.  Forster, one in a setting favoring the genteel persons who are obliged to pretend concern for the state of the world.

“He [Leonard Bast] was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more.  He knew that he was poor, and would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich … But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least doubt of it.  He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable.  His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor …” (Chapter 6, HE)

Bast is on his way home from a concert where the classes mixed, and where he almost lost his precious umbrella to Helen, a stranger-to-him, of the upper classes.  He then goes home to his stuffy flat,  umbrella retrieved, which he shares with a desperate woman who won’t understand his dreams, and cracks open his copy of Ruskin’s Stones of Venice.  He reads it slowly and with the performance of one separate from those who take Literature and Art for granted, struggling to understand it and integrate it somehow into his relations with people he wishes to rise above.

 

Smith, post-Modern British author, writes a similar scene centering on a middle to upper class, mixed race family.  They too have been to a concert, a free one featuring Mozart’s Requiem.  A mix-up occurs between the proprietership of similar discmans (not umbrellas): one belonging to Zora, the daughter in love with those in her father’s collegiate cohort yet able to mix with those in the hood, and a Leonard Bast look-a-like (except, in Beauty, a six foot something black man) named Carl.  Carl wishes to improve his mind through free concerts and lectures and poetry performances, and thereby his standing in the world of Art and Literature.

“‘You at college or . . .?’

“‘Nah . . . I’m not an educated brother, although . . . ‘ He had a theatrical, old-fashioned way of speaking which involved his long, pretty fingers turning in circles in the air.  His whole manner reminded Levi of his grandfather on his mother’s side and his tendency to speechify, as Kiki called it.  ‘I guess you could say I hit my own books in my own way.‘”  (Chapter 7, OB)

Like in 2007 when I first studied the British Moderns, I felt a sympathy for these characters, the poor wishing to improve themselves.  These who valued something which they were excluded from by birth, yet craving it for its intrinsic nourishment commanded by the elite. I, too, felt this craving to shed the skin of a confused past where I never learned to properly write or appreciate beauty in the way of scholars, and gain it through higher learning.

And so I return.  To the past of my betterment and the post-modern exploration of the same material. I now read these two novels in tandem – an exciting rejuvenation of a self slightly successful – and study the possibility of developing my own Art and Beauty.

 

 

 

Ghost Vision

In which Carrie was startled and nostalgic …

Ghost Vision

The light

Or the memory of light

Or her brain reaching

Outward toward

The light

Entered a subjective field of vision

Populated with

Tigers

Polymaths

Players of Poker

Time and spatial curves

Even things of light and joy:

flowers, children, summits of mountains, books

Which once made the seeing

blind eye

Grasp at the infinite

Nothing.

The Universe holds no color.

1/19/15

I Reckon

In which Carrie reflects on the matter ….

 

Explosion of earthly

Wonder

I wonder why

I am born a reckoner

And would I be

without our

Milky Way.

 

Orion points me true

I see you in the

spattered galaxy.

 

From Sisters

I stop and think

Of ways I might

have been

Startdust

Less beautifully.

 

1/10/15

Love and Grit

In which Carrie thinks of two “Bobby McGees”  . . .

 

A jarring purr-call of crows in the forest, which, to other avians must seem like a lion’s roar.  I ignore my labor and self-doubt with the distraction of interesting looking forest debris and idle chatter about things I would have a much easier time discussion were I sitting with my hiking companion over a cup of coffee.  It is eight in the morning and we put one foot in front of the other up a gentle incline which nature will turn into steep, loose cinders later on in the hike toward the end.  This is my first, my second, my third, my fourth attempt up the mountain.  They all blend into each other.  I have known this country.  My memory assures me it was I, Carrie Anne Ebner, who travelled there.

 

I also once tried the Portland Marathon.  I remember this September (or was it October) morning, after a night of watching two strange black-and-white movies (Pi was one of them) and not really feeling like sleeping, as the sun was rising by the second and I was smiling (at least internally) at the little downhill bit near the Naito Parkway.  An older woman passed me and I followed her skinny frame and the sign clipped to her shirt which said, “This is my 18th marathon.  How about you.”  I remember lime green something, and her moving farther along ahead of me.  It didn’t matter that she passed me or that this was my first official marathon, or that she was, like, 80.  I was happy to be there.  I wore a cut-off shirt with a giant sunflower printed on the front.

 

I have just read, and re-read a quote found in the book Running Away: “When a bad thought floats into your head you have to say, Thank you for coming, thank you for visiting, now go away.”  The runner Bobby McGee said it.  It is probably a well-worn sentiment used by coaches of many varieties to motivate their charges.  It has succeeded in both advising me right now while also invoking the Janis Joplin song which will probably be in my head for most of the day.

 

The trail is getting steeper, but I know there is relief coming, this being my multiple time here, the Three Sisters Wilderness.  Soon it will flatten into a plain and to the right of my companion and me will be Moraine Lake, and Broken Top, void of snow this August, farther off.  We’ll stop for a snack and some water up by those damn-tough looking trees.  They are probably five hundred years old or something.  How would I know, but that I suppose someone told me that they grow slowly, but enduringly, in this hostile habitat.

 

The other marathon was a lot more successful, though unconventional.  I might have worn that same sunflower shirt part of the time.  I remember waking up on my twenty-first birthday with something like a smile.  I had been thinking of running my own version of 26.2 miles for a week or two, and took two days off of work at Black Butte Stables to allow for the run and a day of recovery.

 

I jogged my first 5-mile loop in sweatpants.  I came home and ate and drank water, changed my clothing into something cooler–it was August– and went for a different loop.  Ten miles in a row was the longest set I had put in ever. My “training” consisted of ten-hour work days with horses and an occasional hike.  My ambition was fueled not by knowledge that my body was ready for this but that I loved something about the idea.  I wanted to at least try.

 

I went for another jog, had a longer break and completed the last 10 or so with a couple of friends of mine who seemed to admire me for this strange enterprise.  For some reason I didn’t consider it a big deal, not like getting an advanced degree or having a baby or buying a home.  I sipped a few gulps of merlot where they took me for a birthday dinner and complained of soreness.  I had run five and a half hours in one day which, by my loose estimate on my average mile time (13 minutes), was, indeed, a marathon.   I am the tortoise.

 

I miss running.  The book I read made me crave it.  I missed running and hiking long trails when I was studying philosophy and linguistics at Portland State.  I underwent a different genre of endurance–one where my thought and creativity and scholarship was remarked upon to the point of feeling not very good about myself–almost the entire time I was there.  I would read biographies about mountain climbers–the real ones who faced actual death every moment of their Himalayan treks–and would fit some homework in here and there.  Probably those stories kept me on track to graduate.

 

It was hard to thank the bad thoughts which floated into my head and firmly, but gently, invite them to leave.  I took therapeutic walks with my German shepherd while writing my papers in my head.  The verdancy of Tryon Creek State Park enriched me in my darkest moments in which I composed nothing resembling philosophical argument but passionate explorations of deep philosophies–useful ones.  Life-affirming ones. I would look upon the cyclical habitat with awe.  I came to know Wolf spider webs in the fall and explosive buds littering the trail in the spring.  Very different from where I grew up.

 

The summit of the mountain wasn’t really the end.  Nor the second or third one. Maybe that is what helped me think, It’s not a big deal.  Sure, nobody can take away those accomplishments one accrues in a lifetime, but there is still the downhill trek.  And the next unremarkable day unremembered now.  I faced other ambitions later which took longer and required the participation of more than one or two people in order to make me win or lose, more or less.

 

I finish and finish again and try something else and remember who I was in my sunflower shirt with nothing, really, to lose.

 

April 23rd – Poem in Your Pocket Day

In which Carrie shares her poem in her pocket for this most notable holiday from the ordinary . . . 

I’m a little fascinated with language for its own sake.  Georges Perec, a French author with many instances of the vowel “e” in his name, endeavors to write La Disparition (French), a novel which omits the vowel in its entirety.

 

The translator of my copy, Gilbert Adair, had an even harder task for the English version, A Void.  In this English version, syntax is convoluted, characters are always looking for something missing, and several of our poets–Milton, Poe, Shakespeare–are reproduced, without retaining that popular vowel in any of the semantic forms.  One such is a rendition of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy.

LIVING, OR NOT LIVING by William Shakspar

 

 

 

It is of personal preference that I recommend “Po’s” poem BLACK BIRD, which would take too much space here.

Memoryin’

In which Carrie remembers something nearly forgotten . . .

Now it is used to store trash cans which aren’t really cans and several boxes of my books are in the stall named “Annie,” for she was the last resident.  She came along after I had gotten past my horse ownership phase, but my mother took up the torch.  I had three that I called mine.

 

As an adolescent I was introduced to horses by getting one and getting bucked off him a few times to instill the fear properly.  That horse (He Who Shall Not Be Named) was sold three months later.  I got Scotch Lad, or “Scotch,” soon after.  He might have really been my first love, as girls who get to own horses can understand.  We even don’t think their shit stinks, which helps.  It has a oaty-hayey clean smell to it and is usually around tack and other good smells, like the horse himself.

 

What I was just memoryin’ (to borrow David Mitchell’s coinage for “remembering”) came back to me like a twelve-thousand pound hug.  A salve for loneliness and feeling lost and driftless in an ocean between continents.  Is it why we have memories like these, and why something in me plucked at that stray daffodil among a field of cheatgrass?  The warm tones in the barnlight and the horse fur kept me in some cloak of okay then and now.

 

I believe I must have felt lonely a lot as a kid. Not unlikely, not uncommon.  But some have more usual routes to manage that and more friends and family to share the burden.  I had those but was too afraid to ask sometimes.  I had the horse too which is better in some ways than people.

 

I would ride in the daytime, but not everyday.  It was work and effort to saddle up.  Plus, I was afraid sometimes.  I wasn’t one of those girls who was all free spirited and fearless.  I had to work myself up to getting on.  But one thing was an easy release of my self.  My way of losing who I was in that state called by some “flow.”  I didn’t really know about it until now until I remembered going out to the barn in the evenings.

 

The trail from my parents house to the barn is still slightly carved, and gets some rare foot traffic.  I remember it being thick with snow sometimes.  I would go out in the middle of the night in my jacket and nobody looking.  I would walk and call to him.

 

He came for the little extras, carrots or a handful of hay or oats, and sometimes I’d just leave it at that.  I’d stand there, arm across the barn wall, in the beautiful barn colors of leathery saddles and cloudy saddle pads and firm bridles and earthy hay bales and those standard bark chips on the floor.  I’d watch him rolling the food in his jaw, or sometimes go in there and put my ear to it and hear him demolishing the carrot.  I think I thought in those more serene moments, watching.  Smelling.  Thinking about my troubles or pleasures.  Troubles become pleasures like that.

 

Other times I would put him in the cross ties.  His face looking out the rolling barn door usually closed in winter.  It was well lit in there.  I could have used it as a reading room but I don’t think I ever did.  Hay is kind of uncomfortable to sit on.  It comes through the cloth and there are spiders and stuff.

 

Sometimes I would have so much energy.  Some nights practically burning with it pent up by the square chairs at school or the suffocation of other people.  I’d let it out through brushes and hoofpicks and other weapons of mane and fur maintenance.  Scotch’d just go with it.  The hind feet were a little ticklish at the hocks.  He’d pull a little in resistance but I wasn’t really too afraid of being kicked.  He was a really trustworthy animal.  An all-around good guy.

 

I’d talk to him.  He’d smell my breath when I breathed into his nostrils. He’d let me fondle his ears, and I still retain the old habit of scratching the insides of ears belonging to other horses to check for fly egg deposits or lice or whatever gross thing it is inside horses ears, mostly in the warmer months.  This, I just realized, represents something I know.  This is knowledge I have in the form of an action.  I’d never really thought it before.  And now I write it.

 

This helps to think about.  The image of a saddle when I type “saddle” but more than just an image.  It is like a whole miracle that happens only within me.  Same with hoofpick and handful of hay and Scotch’s copper penny fur, thick and dull on this remembered winter night, shiny when it becomes summer inside my imagination at another time I call on horses to help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For an Old Guy

This Old Guy

Skin crackling from cackling laughter.

It is most apparent around the eyes.

 

He has been

bumped, bruised,

dinged and donged

Unreservedly used.

 

All purpose skin.

Necessarily thick,

but sensitively thin.

 

Now listen, he speaks:

Make it clean.

And keep it clean.

 

 

The invention of the wheel was just the beginning.

That kid just got rolling not ever wanting to stop.

 

Now this old man waits, remembering,

for the next time his duty is called

A wonderful old friend.

 

 

 

A model who will last

when the form is gone.

Exquisite Corpse

In which Carrie, Steven and Kariessa play a game of Exquisite Corpse … 

ROUND 1

Seed: It was a dark and stormy night at

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Always

It was a dark and stormy night at

the circus and the clowns were restless. It had

neva occurred to Smithey that for once

he had gone a whole month without drinking water.

But that wasn’t important now, because the

water was there, in his four-tentacled hand.

He took a deep drink of the salty brine, savoring the

burn of it as it went down his esophagus. “Oh how

much better this would taste with a twinkie!”

So, he made a twinkie out of rotting wood and slime.

But somehow it lacked that je nais sai qua, like

the way dust motes dulled vision in wind.

He sighed and realized that he was forever

restless, forever a clown, and it would always be dark and raining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bella’s Addiction, Edward’s Reform

It was a dark and stormy night at

the end of a pencil when Bella snorted when

she was taking drugs. Then, Edward came

and pointed out that sugar wasn’t really a drug.

She looked up at him with dulled visage

as he hadn’t fed in weeks. His eyes gleamed

in a satisfied, easygoing sort of way, as he contemplated

the slimy snot running down her lips and

the gaping rents in his face, from which pus

had dripped. “You look good tonight,” he said with

Victorian charm. “Your earlobes look pale

and your scent…” He lunged forwards, crosses bared

and then changed his mind. There was a better way-which

involved vegetarians, and their little dogs, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conquest of the Eyeballs: A History of Their Victories and Pulsating Ways

It was a dark and stormy night

at the haunted restaurant. Eyeballs floated

nervously, unsure of themselves, but confident

of their ultimate design. Dawkins appeared

and the zombers wondered who he was. Then,

he pointed out how clever he really was, so much more than

the evil scientist so many had thought

was going to be the first to make ants dance.

But the eyeballs had a new though, that perhaps

they could evolve, or devolve from high rank.

So, their floating changed. Each started to pulsate

and stared intently, daring Dawkins and the zombers

to do what they might, but knowing how

they would eventually pulsate their way into victory!

ROUND 2

Seed: She was a bad cat, really, if you

How Kitty’s Heart Turned to Ice: A Cautionary Tail

She was a bad cat, really, if you

weren’t paying close attention. “Once,” I said,

“She walked all the way across the field, carrying a

mountain on her back (dwarves included).

And the next day, she lounged around all day,

weary and sore, but tender in her affections.” Then,

everyone realized that the last sentence didn’t

follow from the first. But a cat has its tail

tucked underneath, and like the every flexible feline

she could produce round droplets of slime from her

ears or her… But wait! She has some

other things she cared about besides slime and genes.

She also loved to eat slime, which was totally

divine to cat kind, the Opiate of Meow.

So she became content. No more mountains, no

more affections. Her heart became cold and desolate forever.

Bad Cat I

She was a bad cat, really, if you

looked at it from the bird’s point of view. But

who cared about the bird, anyway? He was just

“endangered.” All those hippies need to come to

realize that there was an easy solution. Penguins

just needed to be genetically modified so that

they stopped the tux act and blend in.

And the cat knew that – knew that in a way that

made the world make sense. So, her evil plot

started edging up the plot pyramid, vying

for Evil Plot Victory. The first step was to get rid of

the lesser plots. She did this by suffocating them with

furball clots. The penguins paled. They

knew they had just one chance. They had to get

the Dark Lord Voldemort to help them. So they did. The

Dark Lord gave free tux rentals & she was finished.

Bad Cat 2

She was a bad cat, really, if you

thought about how she had drunk dog vomit and

then vomited that up, and drank that, too.

But that wasn’t the worst thing. Not at all – for

she also loved to roll around in her scat, and

then cat skat at the local club where all

the kool cats sat, chewing the fat on the mat eating

their own flesh. After all, they could make

more! The gene-squencing cats at Washington

had found a way to power cats with nuclear energy,

turning them into warheads. Technically, it was the plutonium,

but, when used effectively, those suckers

really roll round ranking, rhyming, running, and

eating each other. What no one knew was that

Edward and Bella never kissed or ate

cats, after all. So she was finally able to sleep, purring contentedly to herself.

Is Education … Barbaric?

In which we think things we probably shouldn’t think and say things we probably shouldn’t say …

An educator friend of mine supposed recently, “when humanity -one hundred years from now – looks back on what we do in American education, they will think it was barbaric …”  I laughed a little at this idea and remembered when I last sat in uncomfortable chair-desk when my body wasn’t as well-packed with middle aged weight.  And then I reflected again at a more recent experience of substitute teaching in a local high school.

It was awful.

(I shouldn’t say this.)

I’m trying to land a “real” teaching position and putting something like the following up in a public space could compromise my chances of scoring that highly coveted position (due to scarcity).  But, I’ve been abused enough by the education system and now armed with my high school diploma and 300+ credits of higher education, mostly upper-division (400 + level) courses I feel ready to be a citizen of this country.  I’m like that guy in Office Space who is suddenly relaxed about going to work, because he just doesn’t care to compromise his integrity any longer and can’t be bullied anymore by false authority.

I was at a school, one which would be called “State-of-the-Art” regarding the quality of athletics, programs, and the gorgeous building itself.  I went in optimistic.  I left with my heart in my hands.

 

This, due to the scarcity of sub jobs where I live, isn’t an optimal financial strategy (I work maybe once a week) but a really good one when I measure my physical and mental health next to other experiences I have substitute teaching.  “Just say ‘no’ to stress” be my motto now; my health depends on it.  And by “stress,” I don’t mean the normal amount (which is more than enough) I have at any given school (with any given set of poorly-crafted lesson plans and groups of lively and wonderful kiddos who sometimes test my limits or with other  educators with too little time and too much to do to be bothered with any below-the-surface understanding the the kids who compelled them in the beginning to serve with an objective to change the world for the better), I mean the kind of stress which drives dictatorships and authoritarian government structures into a tension with willpower to explode and exterminate, which in turn leave the citizens in a state of constant fear and on the brink of retaliation.

Because that is what the kids did with me.  Don’t these soon-to-be-adults know that they are getting a free education?

The last of four classes I had repeated the pattern from the three preceding it.  After being in their assigned seats (according to a picture chart available for me) they matriculated to where their friends were seated after my explicit instruction to stay in their seats and work with their table partners or people behind and in front of them.  I believe in cooperative learning- especially for such banal material like vocabulary – but experience has taught me that if one works with friends who are on the other side of the room for a reason, work doesn’t get done.

And my job was to make sure they learned (did their work).

Why did they move seats in spite of my direction?  Could they not see the reasoning behind my request?  Couldn’t they see by my demeanor of smiling calm that I cared about the test they would take later and the natural social-bonding aspects of school as well?  Is it that I am too soft on them perhaps that they figured they could get away with it?

Well, the last class of the day did.  I observed their blatant refusal to work with table partners and people at desks nearest to them as they one by one – popcorn-style – moved to places they wanted to sit, to be next to people they wanted to be with, and do their work.  This was not the case for the previous two classes, one of which I had to call in an administrator to help reinforce my (and, in essence, the absent teacher’s and the community-at-large – taxpayers’-)expectations for the day.

But my stepping from the podium and trying to observe these different dynamics with as little micromanagement as possible, I couldn’t help noticing also the times I was respectfully asked if a student could go to the bathroom or get a drink of water.  I say yes to this nearly every time  even though I suppose in most cases they don’t really need to use the facilities and are most certainly not that dehydrated, but are just bored and need to take a break (to text a friend most likely) from the classroom.  They really do try their best to control themselves, and work with me on this. It has been  pointed out to me how authoritative this practice is, or, rather, that there is an indignity in having to ask to use the bathroom.  Students accept some rules but not others, like being told where they should sit in order to review vocabulary.

I’ll no longer serve the State-of-the-Art school as a substitute now – I had to make that decision.  I also had to make a bold move to stand up for a certain student who was especially tenacious at testing me, but  – as was revealed later  – shared a common ailment with me.  Knowing about this commonality then compelled me to write the counselor of the school in a rage of reasoning passion and advocate for better understanding among school staff about this student and many like him.  It was my antidote for the physical stress I endured as the authority figure in a deeply authoritative school structure, one which is counter to my instincts toward humanity.  After all, I had my own share of mind-numbing in the American education system.  If it weren’t for some key players along the way I might not hold a masters in teaching today, much good that it does me,

Astronauts and Allegories

In which Carrie’s young filosopher friend considers the ambitions of children and difficulties they face because of the American debt crisis ….

Guest Post: Roisin

Ask a kindergartener  what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll hear cliche answers such as doctor, veterinarian, astronaut. Grade schoolers and middle schoolers answers are more diverse. Still a common element is significantly found in all young children’s answers when asked what they imagine themselves to be in the future; all of them have their hopes set high. No one tells the child with her eyes fixed upon the moon how unlikely it is to make it into the space program. No one tells the child, plastic stethoscope in hand, that his family would never be able to afford medical school. How dare we squash innocent ambition? Reality will eventually sink in, I suppose, somewhere between the first high school report card and that meeting about tuition with your college counselor. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Hard work in life doesn’t automatically equate to monetary funds. Sometimes, it seems like we live in an unfair society. That years of hoping and dreaming and long hours and idealizing are trampled upon and reduced to more “practical” careers. And suddenly, that little astronaut who could is left to merely gaze in envy at the moon.

Yes, I’ve realized that I’m probably not the first kid who claimed to be future president. I know many before me have vowed to change the world. As I prepare to enter college, with all it’s built up glory and anticipation, I’ve encountered an unanticipated obstacle. Money.

 
Naive, I know.

 
Forgive me for believing that good grades and pure drive were enough to get a student an education in this country. Forgive me for even posing to ask the question of why the cost of self improvement escalates into the thousands of dollars. Then. Forgive me for being so selfish.

 
Life is hard. It’s been said before. Our dreams slowly change from being a doctor, to becoming a mother or a secretary or a carpenter. It’s not about the occupation. It’s about being happy. Who am I to say that one dream is bigger or better than another? The enlightened one in Plato’s allegory discovered that his previous games and awards were nothing compared to what awaited him on the outside, in the light. In the light I see that title or money really doesn’t mean you’ll be happy. What matters is having a dream. Strive to reach it, no matter what. No matter if that dream is to become an astronaut or secretary. Those who say that your dream is “impractical” are still living in a cave, and they’ll view things differently. Their awards consist of nothing but shadows and titles and money and none of that truly matters.

 
I think that inside, we all still carry that flame of a goal. A goal perhaps deemed unreachable by a insensitive teacher or friend. It’s true, in the end we cannot all be the President. But some one has to be, right?

 

About the Author:
Roisin is a senior in high school and spends her time playing basketball, writing, attempting to understand her AP Statistics homework and contemplating what exactly Kant was talking about…. (when she figures it out, she says she’ll get back to us).  Roisin loves being outdoors and hopes to attend university in Montana.