Saturday, August 27, 2011

The stone stairs in the Stone building

The Stone Building is never very crowded. Students don't congregate and smoke cigarettes to talk about novels; education majors' motivations tend to be more extrinsically driven as compared to the (stereotype?) typical liberal arts student, so they tend to stay away. Maybe they hate school as it pertains to classroom learning because that's their life.

Like the engineering building at UCF, Stone has been renovated in the fashion in which you can see the outside walls of the its old brick self in the atrium. The stairs in this large, open yet echoey, sterile place are made of polished steel-colored stone. The edge of each step is smooth and rounded making it easy for your shoe to slide down with the pull of gravity. I am surprised I have never slipped on these stairs with the variety of unsafe shoes I wear.

Almost every time I go downstairs (not upstairs) I have this intense urge to plop my ass down on the top edge and slide all the way down. This might be because I am exhausted from the full-time experience of graduate school, but it's most likely because I miss being a kid. I can't remember the first time I thought about sliding down Stone's stone steps, but now I can't stop.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Some of the Most Beautiful Women

Never heard of the Cotton Club in Harlem even though I have visited a couple of times. This is just one of the clubs where the Harlem Chorus girls danced in the 1930s. Some of these women still dance together in the group, The Silverbells. Check them out! The documentary about them, Been Rich All My Life is currently playing instantly on Netflix.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Things to Read about Alcoholism

Jellinek's etiology of alcoholism (1955, 1960)
Social Cognitive Models of Alcohol use (Marlatt, 1978) & (Wilson, 1978)
Neurobiology of Craving (Wise, 1988)
Medial Forebrain Bundle

Children of Alcoholism: The Struggle for Self and Intimacy in Adult Life