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things are pretty good.

i finally wrote a chapter of my thesis and turned it into my advisor last week. i'd kind of been putting it off for awhile and it felt good to actually get a chapter written. hopefully, i'll be able to maintain that momentum and get several more written in the near future.

we got all week off for the thanksgiving holidays, which is a nice treat. i've been pretty busy all week. first i went to new haven to see the harvard yale football game. well, not to see the game so much as to see some friends of mine. i ended up seeing a good couple of dozen of folks i know from my college days, many of whom i literally haven't seen in years, many with whom i probably didn't have much to talk about either. but whatever. it was kind of a trip to be back in the harvard social environment all of a sudden, for better or for worse. i felt a pang of the old insecurity (the many evenings i spent wandering through harvard parties feeling lost and not knowing what to do) but i think i benefit now from a lot more perspective. i can walk through that social scene and not let it get me down. a lot of it is power-driven people networking and i just dont need that. but in the end it was just kids getting wasted, and thats really not so very different from penn state, is it?

i went up to boston after that, and over a couple of days saw a bunch of friends. its nice to have friends in different places.

then i went to new york. all the driving's actually been kind of fun because the trees still have some lingering orange and red color, since we had such a warm fall this year. it actually snowed quite a bit as i drove south from massachusetts, but the weather in new york was beautiful. stayed with rustin in his new apartment on the upper west side. then came to his girlfriend's house in jersey, the fifth state where i spent the night in one week (PA, CT, MA, NY, NJ)!

i went for a long walk in manhattan yesterday. i love it there. i love new york. i love cities. i felt really good as i went on that walk, happy with the things i was seeing - people, humanity, out on the streets, in public, being a community. i walked from midtown down the east side, through stuveysent town, through the east village, then into some public housing projects along the east river, and finally to the outskirts of chinatown. i love how the neighborhoods of new york are so distinctive and change so quickly. i'd done most of the neighborhoods in manhattan on my many previous trips. this includes the east village, which is one of my favorites. i love how you can see the spread of yuppidom eastward. it's pretty much inundated avenue A and most of avenue B and its reaching avenue C but avenue D still seems to be relatively safe. on the other side of avenue D is public housing. it all seemed safe and pleasant as i walked through. i don't know if areas like this are still considered 'ghetto' but i don't see anything wrong with them. maybe it was just that people were in good moods since it was the day before a 4 day weekend, but new yorkers seemed to be in really good moods yesterday.

there are a lot of reasons to not be so pessimistic as maybe i've been somewhat of late. i think its easy for me to get down, when i read about things i think are fucked up, and take on the weight of the world on my shoulders, or just feel guilt for all the bad things. but i dont know. maybe thats selfish. maybe its not my right to feel so bad on others' behalf. my life is pretty good. i should be thankful for that, and use it to try to do things as best and as socially responsible as possible. maybe thats all i can, and should do. when it seems that so many of those who we people of privilege try to 'help' seem to be happy all on their own, despite their limited means, maybe we should be happy for them, instead of feel sorry for them.

i also wonder if its possible for corporations to be socially responsible. corporations as a whole have a very negative stigma in my mind that has only intensified since i've been in grad school. but maybe it is the result of unfair generalization. without giving carte blanche to every corporation that *claims* to be "socially responsible" (because so much of those claims, i believe, are just marketing ploys built upon false promises and self aggrandizement) maybe it IS possible for some corporations to be socially responsible, to work for the greater social good. and maybe i could see myself working for one of them some time and not needing to worry about selling out or selling my soul to the devil.

i also think maybe i am interested in going into planning (urban/regional/etc) after all. i used to say i'd grown disenchanted with the field. i used to say that i wasn't as interested in the policy side. but now i think maybe the policy side of planning is important, and it might be an area in which i am best poised to contribute. planning policy for social justice. it must exist. i think it is a field that attracts a lot of idealistic people like me who want to use planning as a means to social chance and improvement, and i'm not naive enough to think that any of it is easy, or that there aren't all sorts of conflicting influences and demands from different parties and pressures to give developers (those with money and power) what they want, at the expense of those with less money and power. but effective policy also has the potential to empower those people, and to limit the power of those with great quantities of it. and it is undeniably geographic. its about how power is manifested in space...its about control of space and the right to use it. planners have to interact with a lot of different actors in the city. i think i'm starting to get a better idea of who the power brokers and powerful people are, what they do. i think maybe this is a world i can enter. it requires being comfortable socially interacting with other people, including people who are devious, manipulative, sneaky, and out to screw you. but i think i'm becoming better at sniffing out the bullshit, and that that's a quality that will help me better navigate the social landscape.