all worked up for a date with the treadmill

the last two morning i have gone to my apt. community gym where they have a nice treadmill (among other nice equipment) and a big flat screen TV. it is great to be again connected with the world (i don't have cable at home) and to see what is going on in the world - thank you CNN. watching CNN on the treadmill reminds me of my DC gym days with Kelly (fond, fond memories) sweating it out on the hill before the staffers flocked to the gym. while watching these past mornings i have had ... how shall we say ... the serendipitous occasion to be watching when one (to remain nameless) choice vice-presidential candidate was speaking on the campaign trail.

all i will say is this - thanks for getting me worked up these past two mornings ... I burned a lot of calories while watching you speak. i even lost 1.6 pounds this week (no joke). so, if nothing else your speaches are good for my weight loss and to that i am eternally grateful.


On another note ... did you see how well OBAMA did on the debates Wednesday night? If not, check it out ... the first 20 minutes or so I should have been on the treadmill again, but Barack always calms me down - thanks!

Check it out. VOTE.

(don't worry - the link to the above left takes you to the Full Video of the last Presidential Debate ... uncut and unbaised ... not just the parts I like).

enough with the blame

i am kind of over the whole "pointing the finger" stuff that is going on about the collapse of the stock market and the ruining of our economy. Are we not ALL guilty? - granted, some more than others - but nonetheless almost ALL of the middle, upper, and higher classes of AMERICANS have been living beyond their means ... living on credit (hey the student loan holding graduate student writing this is guilty as well), buying more than we really need, spending money we don't have. That's how we got into this mess. Don't Believe me?? And why should you, I study historic architecture, not economics ... check out Factcheck.org and see this:

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
  
  
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
  
  
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
  
  
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
  
  
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
  
  
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
  
  
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
  
  
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
  
  
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
  
  
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
  
  
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
  

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

Embracing the New

I like the old ...

Exhibit A: I have a BA in Archaeology
Exhibit B: I am currently pursuing a master's degree in Historic Preservation

aka - I dig historic architecture (don't you just love how I managed to combine those two things together? ... dig (archaeology) historic architecture (historic preservation) ... what? not that funny? oh ... uh ... sorry)

So yeah - I am into the past, the ancient, the long gone by, the historical, the reminiscent, the once upon a time. As I have stated before, I have an old soul ... I like Paisley (as seen here and repeated - with much better taste I might add - in my current abode ... pictures soon I promise) and hanging plates and black and white photos.

Oddly enough, however, I have the conflicting urge to change my scenery and living situations very often (as inventoried here). I want to live so many places for a year or two - South Carolina, Louisiana, Boston, upstate New York, Texas ... it just dawned on me that most of those places are on the East Coast. In all fairness, those are places far from my family and thus most likely won't be places I stay forever ... places like Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego - those could be forever places. But this moving thing is an exception ... every other aspect of my life tends to lean toward to the old, solid, stable, and classic. However, the Fall is a good time to embrace the new and that is what I am trying to do.

School starts tomorrow ... late, I know ... and with that comes new classes, new students, and new adventures. This also translates to new people at church - a lot of them - which is wonderful to see this morning. To add to the "New Fest" as I will call it, we received a new Relief Society President, which is the head of the women's organization in my church. This position is a big deal, not because it suggests she is the most righteous or capable woman in the ward (although one could argue that both these characteristics describe my good friend Jessica) but because great responsibility is placed on her shoulders. Her call to the position I know is inspired and I felt that today as she spoke to the sisters. I felt the spirit testify of her plan and organizational style as she expressed her sincere love for the women in the ward and the gospel in her life. She made me want to be better and she continues to help me re-new my commitment to the Lord and live as a better disciple of Him. I too have a new "calling" or responsibility in the Relief Society. Jessica has called me to be the Compassionate Service Leader and has charged me with the concern and welfare of the ward - to get to know people and discern their needs and help them feel the love that our Savior has for us. I feel honored to be a part of her presidency and hope to live up to the desires of both her and my heart in serving the Lord.

I am also blessed with the opportunity to serve with Jessica in the Portland temple twice a month. I am extremely excited and humbled by this calling and pray that I can learn all that is needed and provide a great service to my fellow sisters in this life, as well as the next, as we do the work of our Father in Heaven.

On a scholarly note, I will be assisting my Program Director as a TA for the first year master's student's Introductory class this Fall. Lots of preparation and time will be devoted to this class, as well as my own research and writing for my thesis.

So, lots of changes are coming about, however I know that as I embrace all these new things and strive to put the Lord first in all that I do, that I will be able to accomplish all that is asked of me.

my style

I have been a little consumed with home decorating blogs these days ... its really becoming a problem. The other night I came across a blog (through a blog through a blog ... you know how that goes) that had a "find your style" type of quiz. Its really fun - you should take it and tell me what your style is. My results were as follows:

YOU ARE A HOMECOMING QUEEN

Nothing - including budget - stops you from putting your
all into creating a dream home.
Your look is quintessentially feminine:
cool, pretty colors; layered patterns and textures; and flawless attention to every detail

You know ... I can't really argue with that assessment. It goes on to further break down your style by room, which is quite an interesting idea. In all fairness I did have to fudge on some of the questions since I don't currently live in on place (being a student kind of makes you a bit homeless) and they ask you questions like "what most reflects your current location and housing layout" and things like that that require me to project my future desires.

LIVING ROOM: You love to indulge the senses, pamper, and prettify
Sounds like me, I like lots of things ... out of control decoration with a lot going on

BEDROOM: Mix in max feel
Check and double check on this ... matchy matchy is not very personal ...
in fact I have been busy painting all sorts of fun random things for my apt. in Eugene!

DINNING ROOM: Your a maestro of minimalism, using carefully chosen ingredients
This the one that is odd ... minimalism in decorating style? hmmm ... yes with food

HOME OFFICE: Who says paying the bills can't be glamorous?
Glamorous is a great word for furniture

Like I said, I have been busy painting mix and matched items. The hard thing is that I realize all the fun things I buy and work on won't necessarily go together or work in the small apartment I will be sharing with a great girl next year. But I am starting to collect things for a house I hope to one day have (it will probably be small but a girl has got to dream, right?)

My collection includes the following (wish I would have taken before pictures ... but of course I did not):

two old window frames
one end of a horse head book end
an urn shaped lamp
one small and one big watercolor/ink drawing from Firenze)
a stone shield with a fleur de lis (the sign of Firenze) from Siena
a porcelain carp teapot without the lid
a wooden fleur de lis
an old shelf
a porcelain sea urchin bowl
multiple black and silver frames of various sizes

not to mention the stuff I have in Eugene already:

two white serving platters
one green serving platter
two small circular carved wood mirrors
one small rectangular carved wood mirror
three extra small gold carved wood frames
10 small square wooden mirrors
two silver geometric candlesticks

*** UPDATE ****

I wrote this before I moved back to Eugene ... and now that I have gotten hear and set up shop I have acquired a few things ... like a red retro "waterfall" style children's desk that I needed to remove a drawer (so that I could sit under it) and paint light blue and add glass drawer pulls too ... and a vintagy french country night stand ... they are both heaven! Pictures to come when I have internet (a week from today) installed at my house. Stay tuned!

I was thinking about my swimming adventures and decided to make a list of all the major bodies of water I have SWAM in ... not just visited and saw with my eyes and dipped a tow or finger in, but actually was fully emerged in. This is what I came up with:

Oceans and Seas I Have Swam In

By

Bethany Johnson

Pacific Ocean
(California, Hawaii)

Atlantic Ocean
(North Carolina, Delaware)

Sea of Cortez
(Cabo San Lucas)

Caribbean
(Mexico and the Islands)

The North Sea
(off the Coast of Belgium)

Adriatic Sea
(the Dalmatian Coast)

Ligurian Sea
(Cinque Terra,
Part of the Mediterranean Sea)

I think that is it ... perhaps I left something out?

futuristic boats and and nameless eels (CROATIA TRAVEL LOG)

The historic island/city of Trogir (a UNESCO world heritage site, by-the-way) sits between the mainland and another larger island and is linked by foot and car bridges. You can read the history of the intact medieval city here. As a result the "Riva" or waterfront is the "it" place to park your HUGE yacht. Some of these boats looked like they were capable of not only sea voyages, but underwater and space travel as well ... these are boats of the future ... unfortunately the biggest ones were foreigners and not Croatians.




On an island, the name of which I cannot remember, where less than 100 people lived and only the small harbor had electricity, we romped around some long forgotten limestone houses and communities. We were lucky enough to have our own private boat and captain waiting for us to hike the few miles up to it, especially since there was only two ferry stops a day - 9 am and 12 noon. The island is so small that it doesn't even have a school, it shut down a few years ago since only one child lived here ... how strange is that. He ended up going to live with grandparents on the mainland. Something about that makes me a little creeped out ... not that I normally think about schools of the number of children that live in a town or neighborhood ... but doesn't that just seem kind of ... final. It makes a place feel even older. In the harbor area, the only place with electricity on the island, there is a really old church (of course) still standing with its fake facade (picture above) that started out as the real facade until they realized they couldn't afford to build such a big building. It now has a bit of a courtyard and I really really like it.

Another really cool thing about historical Dalmatian is the water catchment systems they set up. Oh, P.S. the coast of Croatia is called the Dalmatian Coast architecture and town plans, according to wikipedia: "Dalmatia is a region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, situated mostly in modern Croatia [... and] signified not only a geographical unit, but it was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt..." The climate is Mediterranean ... so its like southern California ... a bit arid at times and so they try to catch all the fresh water they can. These huge limestone (historically) and concrete (more recently) slabs lay in sloping expanses, in essence funneling the water into storage cisterns or wells. The water is channeled (above) into the well through a gravel and sand filter (below).

This particular well (below) located in an abandoned village on the coast was recently quality tested by the regional government and rated as having some of the purest water in the area! The owner, who heard through the grapevine (or at the local cafe) that American students were interested in documenting their little town, randomly meet up with us at the village and wanted to show off his well. His son, who now lives in Sweden was visiting and was kind enough to translate for us (another example of people speaking multiple languages ... Croatian, Swedish, and English ... sigh). He said that there was an eel living in the well and that is why it was so clean! I about died ... and then he said that the eel was 45 years old! I said ... wait ... how do you know he is that old and how do you know he is still alive (i was shocked and thus not thinking clearly that they put him in there that long ago and that he would float to the top and the water would start tasting bad if he were dead ... all good points). Then I asked if he had a name ... because hey at 45 ... he is part of the family! They roared with laughter and the son had to ask his dad to make sure he did not have a name (i thought that was funny). They said no and then I proceeded to ask if I could name it ... to which I got the response ... "no, you cannot Christen our eel" ... ahhhh, good times!

(home of nameless eel)

Italia and Hrvatska

Why is it that people rarely call countries and cities by their native names?

For example ... we say Italy, not Italia ... Florence, not Firenze ... Rome, not Roma .... and Croatia, not Hrvatska .... WHY?! It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the trip to start:

an island on the Dalmatian Coast (in Croatia)

church in Sbenik, Croatia


self portrait ... laying down in Ancona, Italy


Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy


Manarola, Cinque Terre, Italy


Abby and Bethany ... I ate a whole fish! That is a big deal for me... I don't really like fish, FYI.


Duomo - Siena, Italy


Tim and Bethany on roof of Duomo in Milano, Italy


This is what I woke up to every morning in Canova, Italy ... I know it doesn't seem real.


My feet and my huge backpack that got me through it all.