Things that Coloradoans Know

It may have been 65 degrees for a while, but we still have a couple of blizzards left.

Always keep your winter coat in your car.

You can expect 40 degree temperature swings any day of the year.

The best day to go skiing/snowboarding is superbowl.

The best concert venue in the world is Red Rocks.

When you go, you still may need a hoodie in July.

The Mishawaka Amphitheater is great too. It's located up the Poudre.

It's still Fiddler's Green to me.

The best beer in the world isn't from Belgium, it's from Colorado. Colorado is ranked number one in terms of gross beer production and fourth in number of brewpubs and craft breweries in the United States, while Denver ranks first in beer production and second in number of breweries. We have New Belgium, Odell's, Great Divide, and so on and so on. Oh yeah, look at Stranahan's, our liquor distilling is getting up there too. (Here's the proof). Oh yeah, Coors.

Denver is one of few places in the country you'll see/smell someone smoking a bowl on the street. Also one of the few places where medical marijuana clinics outnumber McDonald's and Starbucks combined.

We have the nicest stadiums in the country between Pepsi Center for the Avalanche, Coors Field for the Rockies, and Mile High for the Broncos. Our teams are pretty badass too - you won't be able to find any Coloradoan who doesn't know the names John Elway, Champ Bailey, Joe Sakic, Patrick Roy, Todd Helton, and Troy Tulowitzki and hopefully Peyton Manning soon. The list goes on, so forgive me if I left someone out.

The only thing Colorado Springs is good for is Garden of the Gods, Cave of the Wings, and the Airforce Academy.

Trinidad has the most sex changes in the country.

If you're going to go out downtown, start at the 16th St. Mall. Red Square for infused vodka, Appaloosa for live music, and Rialto Cafe for inventive drinks and late night happy hour. Rock Bottom gives validation for parking at the garage beneath it, and has great bartenders in the back bar.

The Evil Blue Horse at DIA killed its maker (true) and will kill you too if you cross it (also true). It is the gardian of Colorado.

If you're broke and need a drink, go on a brew tour.

Greeley smells like manure, but I hear you get used to it (though I wouldn't want to). Due to prevailing winds, Fort Collins, and otherwise great town, occasionally smells like that too (usually Wednesdays).

Please feel free to post any I left out, there are many more!

Red Rocks

Timor-Leste

A week or so ago, I was offered a position on a research trip to Timor-Leste with my professor PVA (Peter Van Arsdale). It was stiff competition - six people for two spots, and all were very qualified, so I'm really excited to get it. Luckily, my buddy Grant got the other position, so that will make the trip even better.

Let me tell you a little about PVA, the guy who will be leading the trip. First of all, he's my favorite professor since John Roberts at CSU, and is up there with Terry Smith (though not quite, of course). He's 65 and has worked decades i

n Humanitarian Assistance, I have him right now for Humanitarian Aid in Complex Emergencies and I'll have him next quarter for Field Protocol and Survival. Oh yeah, and he's worked with the president of Timor-Leste before, so I guess he's got an in.

When I say he's worked in the field for decades, I mean it. Back in 1974 he co-led a team to Papua that discovered the Korowai People, and then didn't tell people right away because they didn't want them to be exploited by Westerners! In Field Protocol next quarter, we are going to go up into the mountains for a few days for a simulated field experience. During it he is going to have former students create checkpoints, kidnap people, and who knows what else. If that doesn't sound like a fun class, I don't know what is.

The trip will be from June 4-24 (with probably 4 days of that being travel). It is all expenses paid and includes a $1250 honorarium. It is funded through the Office of Naval Research and was awarded to e-Cross Cultural Corporation (ECC), which has created a computer model to improve field research. The main goals of ECC are to enhance humane military operations in the field and improve communications, data usage, capabilities, and on-site/off-site interaction. Basically ECC is trying to develop and test field models that can work on site in conflict and post-conflict environments.

Over the next few months until we leave, Grant and I will be working with a couple of other Korbel students here to do preliminary research on water and sanitation in Timor-Leste so we have data to enter into the model so it can begin to make predictions about improvements int he sector. We also will be looking up Visas, vaccinations, flights, etc. When we get to Timor-Leste we will be working with a local NGO, Bufuturu, for translation and logistics, and will basically be gathering data on current water and sanitation in the country to compare the current situation to the projection.

For those of you who don't know where Timor-Leste is:

I'm really excited about the trip. The timing is perfect: it is right after my last quarter, and halfway between now and when I leave for the Peace Corps, so I have something else to look forward to. The only problem is that I won't be able to go to my fourth year of Bonnaroo, but this years lineup wasn't my favorite anyways. I'm looking forward to being able to travel a bit too, I haven't been out of the country (other than Canada) in seven years, and even then it was just for the summer. Of course the best part of the trip is just the amazing opportunity to get some real experience in the field in the area I want to work in after the peace corps - humanitarian assistance. Or as PVA puts it "putting our boots in the mud."

Of course, it isn't bad when this is where the mud is.

An Incomplete Thought

The other day I saw a quote that a friend had posted on the FB.

I glanced at it right before I got in the shower, so I had some time to think about it. It's not that I disagree with the sentiment - actually, I think it's important that people take responsibility for their actions. That a lot of where you end up in life just depends on how hard you work and the decisions that you make.

But that's not entirely true. The essence of the American Dream is for someone to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. To take themselves from poverty to millionaire, or at least to a point where they own their own house with a two-car garage and the cars to fill it.

After a few years of teaching in low income schools, and then my studies in both undergrad and at Korbel, I know that hard work is often not enough. In so many places, like where I taught in the Bronx, education is hard to come by. The fact that in many schools, the valedictorian still has to go through remedial classes when they get to community college or university is ridiculous. That in no way reflects poorly on that student - no matter where you are, if you are valedictorian, you worked hard and probably have a decent amount of intelligence. It reflects poorly on the system. The whole system - the education system the socioeconomic system, the justice system.

With a multitude of my students, education was not necessarily important in their family or culture. Just the other day, my dad was talking with an older hispanic woman he works with. She had been born in Mexico and only received a basic education. She has two teenage sons, and the one who is turning 18 had never thought about college. What he does think about is working with horses, something he realized he will have a lot better chance of doing if he goes to college. My dad told the woman about all of the scholarships her son would be eligible for - first generation to go to college, 'minority' scholarships, etc. He told her to get her son to go the counselor and find out more about them, to go online and apply for as many as he could.

She was very grateful and asked him to tell her more about this stuff - she had little to no knowledge about any of it. It's not that she doesn't want the best for her kids, it's just that she never had anyone to teach her about this stuff. When I think about how much my parents helped me - excuse me, help me - I can't imagine doing it without them. From pushing me in school to helping me apply for scholarships or FASFA or taxes, my parents have always been there. Even just the family norm that college was something we were going to do, there was never a question about it, helped to make me the person I am today.

Then I think about the luck that it took for me to be born in the developed world at all. In Cameroon, where I'll be going for the Peace Corps, half the population is under 18, the life expectancy is only mid-50s, a third of the population is illiterate, and 1 in 20 people have HIV/AIDS. At my research assistant job I've been reading weekly situation updates from the height of the Sri Lankan civil war, about how many tens of thousands of people were displaced. My gigantic Sisk paper is on Cote d'Ivoire's civil war, in a country that has been in periodic conflict since 1999.

At the African Community Center I've been working with refugees, mostly from Burma. The chances of them going from where they start in America - a few thousand in debt to the International Organization for Migration - to their own house with a couple of cars, is incredibly low. Are they less intelligent or less hard-working? I doubt it. I can't imagine the courage and tenacity it must take to not only leave your own country to live in a refugee camp, but then fly across the world to a country that has a different language and different culture.

Sure, a lot of where you end up in life depends on you - your work ethic, your decisions, the directions you take - but a lot also depends on where you started and the people around you. Even people who own huge companies and make tons of money can't say they've done it by themselves. No matter how independent they are those companies would not exist without the roads and electricity, the workers and the schools that they were taught in. I don't understand fighting for lower taxes then there are already, what's wrong with giving back to the community, country, and world that has given those who are successful so much? To me the American Dream is of a country where everyone is given the opportunity to succeed, where those who have become successful strive to help others have the opportunity to do the same.

While I agree with part of what Dr. Ellis said, that it is important to take responsibility for where you are in life, I think it should be continued. Maybe an addendum: "And no matter what that destiny is, help your fellow human and make sure that the world is better for your having lived in it." Or something like that, I don't quite have the style to articulate my thoughts as well as Al.