Boring, Oregon

Today was definitely a boring day. I went to my two classes, did some grocery shopping, and visited the library. That's it. Apparently there's a town called Boring in Oregon. Who knew? The slogan of the city is "The most exciting place to live!". Funny.

So in Sociology in the City we talked about this article we had to read. It discussed a few theories that people have come up with about cities. One of the main ones in the Theory of Zonality. The theory gives a little blueprint for most major cities. There's the major business zone. There's a zone of transition where most new immigrants and poorer people live. The middle class zone and commuter zone round it out. I think that that sounds about right at least for Minneapolis and St. Paul. As usual, its not perfect and doesn't apply to EVERY city but I think its helps talk about cities and areas of them. We spent the rest of class talking about crowds and the personalities of crowds. How some crowds can turn violent easily and some can't. We watched a video of people in Hyde Park watching Princess Diana's funeral. People were bawling and everyone clapped at the end of the speech by Diana's brother. It was interesting. My prof couldn't get over the fact that people were feeling this way about someone they didn't know. I think with all the coverage of her, some people probably did feel like they knew her. Also, death is scary especially when it happens suddenly and to someone who had a lot of life left in them. Plus she was famous. Anyway, next week we are going to get a tour of the East End with our prof because he used to live there. It should be interesting.

I ate lunch and then went to Senior Sem. We finished discussing Chapter 4. That included the Natural Law Theory and an example of mixing religion and morality. I don't really want to talk about either so I won't. Honestly, there's not much to say about them, at least for me. The rest of class was doing a whirlwind history of music from the fall of Rome to the present (about 1600 years). I thought it was interesting but some people were not listening and it was pretty obvious. That's ok, I don't blame them. I just like music so it was interesting hearing about the progression of it. We were learning about this because in Senior Sem, we are going to spend some time looking at British music so its important to know the context of it. Like next week, we are going to look at "The War Requiem" by Benjamin Britten. It was written as a sort of anti-war song. Interesting. It was commissioned for the re-opening of Coventry Cathedral (we are going there in March) after it had to be rebuilt after WWII. Its cool how stuff we do in class connects with the places we go and how the places we go all kind of connect together as well.

After class I went grocery shopping which was ok. I didn't get anything super interesting. I bought a whole bunch of pasta and sauce along with a couple frozen pizza, maybe preparation for Italy? Actually they were just cheap. For dinner, I had one of the frozen pizzas. It had green peppers, onions, and spicy beef on it. It was fantastic. Before dinner though, I went to the library and got some more books. It turns out that that book "Atilla" that I just finished reading is actually a trilogy. That makes sense. I was wondering why the book just sort of ended all of a sudden with him at age 13 or so. So I'm excited to read the second one. The books are definitely "blockbusters". Lots of violence, big sets for the action, love, bad guys, all that stuff. I like it. That's about it for now. I'm doing a little more research for the weekend of March 6-9 and where I want to go. Cheap flights are in Northern Spain so that's what I am looking into at the moment. No commitments, as usual ;-)

I added a page element thingy to the left there. It's just a list of the books that I've read here (obviously). I did that just so I could keep a record. I spend quite a bit of time reading (especially when I'm traveling somewhere) so any book recommendations are welcome by e-mail, snail mail, facebook, comment, whatever.

Have a good one!