crime

I'm at work, and I started reading about crime in Washington, DC. It's strange that I live so close to DC yet I feel like don't really know anything about it. I read the DCist pretty much every day when I wake up, and it gives me the scoop about what's happening here in my favorite city. I find plenty of entertaining articles for me to read about mayoral campaigns, the best restaurants in town, and the pandas at the National Zoo, but I only just realized that there's a disparity in the information that I'm presented every day.

This morning, amid articles discussing a film project happening at St. Elizabeth's Hospital and photos of the construction occurring on 17th Street, there was one article in particular that caught my eye. A 27 year old man was shot Sunday night outside of the Capitol Heights Metro Station. And it wasn't even the fact that I live a mere 3 Metro stops away from Capitol Heights that caught my attention. Nor was it the fact that I have friends who grew up and live in Capitol Heights. But rather, it was the startling, sobering fact that this was the third homicide to occur within a quarter mile radius outside of the Capitol Heights Metro Station in the past two weeks.

That fact was absolutely baffling and I was left stunned.

So I started reading about crime in DC and swimming through all sorts of statistics. I found out that while crime in DC has been slowly decreasing since the early 1990s, its crime rate remains four times the national average. One statistic that made me sad was:

In 2008, 42 crimes in the District were characterized as hate crimes; over 70% of the reports classified as hate crimes were a result of a bias against the victim's perceived sexual orientation.^[13] Those findings continue the trend from previous years, although the total number of hate crimes is down from 57 in 2006,^[14] and 48 in 2005.^[15]

--From Wikipedia: Crime in Washington DC

So right now, I'm just kind of chewing on this information and thinking lots of thoughts like:
Where's the DCist of the poor?
Who's blogging about the problems in SE?
Who's doing something about the crime that's happening?
What's the source of all of these problems?
What can I do?
Does education play a role in the decisions that people make to commit crime?
If we improved education in DC would these problems get better?
What if I joined Teach for America?
There has to be a way to fix this.

[steven]

farsi: day 1

Had a relatively productive day, doing some reading for work.

Also, I spent a good several hours trying to teach myself Farsi.
It's so pretty and fun to write.
And it's not nearly as impossible as I thought it would be.
It's definitely tricky, though.
Maybe I'll know a thing or two by the end of the summer?
Hopefully I'll be able to stick with it!!

[steven]

the start

Today was kind of wonderful and exciting and terrifying all at once.
Had OA training in the morning.
Then delicious sushi for lunch.
And then I landed a job at BSF in the afternoon.
Then I ran two miles and lifted weights.

I basically skipped home because I was so happy.
This summer is going to be the best summer ever.
I've decided.

---

*My dad walks into the kitchen and his hair is a noticeable auburn color.*

me: Hey... Uh, Dad, what happened to your hair? It's brown!
dad: What?
me: Did you dye it or something?
dad: OH! Haha! No.
me: Did it just naturally decide to turn brown or something?
dad: Well, I bought this new hair gel, and I was using it for about two weeks when I realized that it was lightening gel! Yeah! And everyone at work was like, "Hey, Bert, what happened to your hair?!" The box says that it'll turn blonde hair into white hair in two weeks.

[steven]

bend, don't shatter

This summer is going to be about learning to love and accept myself.

I remember lying on my sister's futon in New York.
I was madly in love with D at the time.
He inspired me to write poetry again.
It's odd reading those poems now, because things are so different between us.
And at the time, I couldn't imagine anything changing, because things were so beautifully, cloyingly... wonderful.
I don't think that I've ever felt that way about anyone before.
It was terrifying.
(I hope to god that I'll let myself feel that way about someone again.)

But look at where I am now: (!!!)
D and I are no longer friends.
I went to a gay dance club for the first time.
I danced with a boy for the first time.
I came out to my friends at school.
I even came out to my sister.
I had my first boyfriend.
Who I held hands with proudly openly in public.
Who I shared my first gay kiss with.

Everything is different now, but it's all for the better.
Definitely for the better.

And one day I'll find someone I love and who also loves me back.
That's all I want.
But I figure that that dream is still far off.
After all, I've still got stuff to work on.

It's impossible to ignore the fact that:
I'm still hiding my desktop background of Justin and Austin from Ugly Betty, sharing their first kiss.
I'm still hiding the book that I borrowed from the library, Bend Don't Shatter: Poets on the Beginning of Desire, under my bed.
I'm still pretending
and lying
and protecting the people that I love
from what?
me...
I'm protecting them from me?

So that's what I'm working on this summer...
Not those lofty goals that I've been telling everyone.
Not French, not lab work, not any of that.
Just me.

[steven]

moshpit

Liv, Steph, and I went to the DC101 Chili Cookoff!
Historically, the event began as a Chili Festival where people competed to earn the title of DC's best chili. Over the years, however, big bands began to upstage the chili itself, and now,it's more of a music festival with chili on the side. I guess people like music more than they like greasy, cheesy, artery-clogging, (not to mention toilet-clogging) deliciousness? I made sure that I stayed dehydrated so that I could avoid using the port-o-potties. With all of those people there, I don't even want to imagine...

Bands that we saw:
Anberlin
Switchfoot
Cage the Elephant
Alice in Chains
Stone Temple Pilots

Apart from being kicked in the face, punched, and trampled in the moshpit, I really enjoyed Chilifest. Too bad it started raining. By the end of it, Steph and I were so cold from the rain, we were holding each other for warmth.

Confession:
There was a girl who was crowdsurfing.
Brunette. Skinny. Pretty.
And somehow I got stuck bearing all of her weight.
And well, I'm kind of scrawny..
And I was doing my best to carry her, but I couldn't, so I ended up dropping her.
Right in the middle of...
Er... I don't really know the technical term for it...
But I call it the "punching circle,"
Y'know... those circles that form in the middle of moshpits where "macho" guys often with a lot of tattoos and muscles, ram into one another and punch each other for no apparent reason, save sadism.
Yeah.
I dropped her in the middle of one of those, accidentally.
Yes, accidentally.
(Even though I think crowdsurfers are rude, I would never purposefully throw someone in the middle of a "punching circle.")
So I dropped her, and she had no time to figure out where she was before...
... she got tackled to the ground.
And punched.
I felt bad.
But it was her own damn fault.

[steven]

poached

The Food Channel is way too good at inspiring me to take risks cooking.
Some random chef made it seem like making poached eggs was a piece of cake!
"Just add three tablespoons of vinegar to water that's just below boiling...
...then swirl the water around like a whirlpool...
...then drop your egg into the water, just like so...
...and VOILA! ---a beautifully poached egg!"

yeah, no.

I still don't know how you're supposed to know when it's done.
I just get so anxious!
I'll poke it with a fork...
Or swirl the water around some more in hopes that the movement will help it along...
But then I'm scared it'll fall apart.

Some say that poaching eggs is an art.
They can say whatever they want.
I'll have mine scrambled.

----

Went to the library and picked up some new books!
I'm really excited about one of them, because it's a book of poems about people discovering their sexuality.
Bend Don't Shatter: Poets on the Beginning of Desire
Check it out!

[steven]

opening windows

I thoroughly enjoyed this past semester, but it’s nice to finally be back home for the summer holidays. I drove to the grocery this afternoon with my windows rolled down all the way. I know that the whole image of “freedom = driving with the windows down” is an awful cliche, but in my opinion, there's no better way to celebrate the first day of summer. It’s as if I’m becoming alive again. It’s as though the fresh honeysuckle air rejuvenated me somehow, cleansing me of the smog and dirt of College Park.

I belted my favorite songs that I put on a mix CD that I made last year. Then I belted the songs from the Tallest Man On Earth CD that I bought last month. It’s amazing how the same songs continue to make me feel things each time I listen to them.

C broke up with me today. He was very sweet about it, and even though it sucks, I’m not upset. I knew he'd be leaving for six years, so I guess I had been prepping myself for the breakup from the start. But now that it's here... it's as though it's always been here... I don’t know if my lack of heartbreak is a good thing or a bad thing. But I think this is a testament to the fact that you can’t force matters of the heart to be real, even if you want them to be.

[steven]