Brain Cells at the Stretching Point

Today I was the closing speaker for this conference “Disruptive Environments: Journalists, Academics and Activists in Conversation” here at MIT.

The discourse is pretty rarefied and supersmart. As an on-the-ground activist, the stratospheres of academia are by no means my usual stomping grounds. My job is to distill important information into common, immediately applicable language, and help working class folk feel why ecological and health issues are immediately important to us. At first I felt a little out of place, but since I’m an information junkie I appreciated the expectations and challenges. Here, people casually speak about carbon ppm’s and endocrine disruptors as casually as I might speak about the homeless down the corner with holes in his shoes and teeth or about lifting weights and drinking fresh wheatgrass juice. But to be honest, I find all the info pretty fascinating; and my brain cells can handle it. (Up to a point, anyway.)

They put me up at this bougie (sp?– slang-short for bourgoisie (<– I can never spell that word right and Im too much in a hurry to look it up) hotel called LeMeridien. It’s the third trendy hotel I’ve been put up in in the last half year. Why in their bathrooms do they all have these new white bowl sinks set on top of a counter instead of just a regular sunken sink? I guess it’s supposed to be trendy, but to me they look like them big white things they put over a poor dog’s head so he don’t scratch himself after he has his head worked on or something. These sink things aren’t very functional, either. Take up the whole counter. And it’s hard to stick your head down in there if you want to wash your mouth out after brushing your teeth.