ruminations and
regurgitations
by Kate Walquist
Random Co-op Stuff There is now a window in the office, from one side to the other. Well, there will be by the time you read this. As I write, Mike Reeves is cutting through dry-wall with a razor.
Oh summer. had a conversation with Dan Tooman the other day about summer and how, while we suddenly have this free time to do things that we otherwise are just too busy for, it’s also summer. And summer means taking it easy. I think sometimes I forget that . I love the co-ops and I love it when the co-ops function well, but I think that while I am doing these summer things that I don’t have time for in the school year, I forget that it’s okay to take it a bit easier. It’s okay for it to be summer. So this is a short Pine Press, but that’s okay. It’s summer. I’m going to the Barrel tomorrow and then on Friday I’m leaving for a week to go up north. I keep hearing about other co-opers heading up north too, and it’s making me ridiculously excited. After I get back I’ll also be done with classes, so I think I’m going to make it a point to relax a bit more. And I don’t mean relax in front of the TV watching reruns of the Office and True Blood like it’s winter, but relax outside. In the park. Not in front of a screen. Hell yeah. Page 1
The Pinot Prose is out! Well,sorta. I only have two copies printed so far since it takes a while, the printer hates me, and not all computers can print it. But your house will eventually get one! I swear! Chris Walsh is a pretentious faux-intellectual douchebag. However, he has some pretty awesome music. Raft put in a patio at the top of our driveway during our work weekend last week. We can now sit outside on our awesome picnic table and chillax. I am only telling you this because I worked my ass off and am proud of it. Orion’s Future Party rocked. Everyone looked very futuristic and there were many good times had. If you missed it for any reason, you suck. Fact: I suck. Twilight comes out on Thursday. I am not going to the midnight showing but I am planning on a marathon. There was a paint and cleaning party at Avalon since we are all getting ready to re-finance the house. The Avalonians, Emily, Leah, and that guy from Orion who showed up (sorry no one said who specifically!) did a great job. It’s pretty cool see the improvements happening! I saw Bowie too, and let me tell you the floors look amazing! Last I saw the bathrooms were gutted, but I am sure they will look great too. Vesta turning into a swimming pool next summer is still on.
TABLE OF CONTENTS winter is awesome page 4
news from the board page 2
10 fun and summery things to do with your house page 3
table of contents page 2
ruminations and regurgitations page 1
vesta at nordhouse page 5-6
He Who Lacks Diphenhydramine HCl page 6
News from the Board... The last Board of Directors meeting was held on a sunny day in the park, and all was good. The Board returned to the topic of Executive Officer compensation, after the Finance Committee reviewed the initial proposal to make the Board responsible for approving EC members’ monthly assessment breaks. After some discussion about the schedule for such decisions and questions of
responsibility, the Board voted to approve the change to the Code of Operations. The Board will now vote at each meeting on one EC member’s assessment break, after hearing reports from the Corporate Secretary and the Board members who sit on the standing committees. The Board has the option of reducing the assessment break to be commensurate with the officer’s performance.
In other Board news, EVP Dan Tooman will be taking up the role of President while Emily Bradley is abroad in Europe! Let us all pray that he will be a benevolent master. Yours in cooperation, Chris Walsh New Community Page 2
10 Fun and Summery Things to do with Your Housemates 1. Make a picnic lunch or dinner and bring in to a park, along with a Frisbee or other fun lawn games, like bocce ball or croquet. 2. Rent a canoe and paddle down the red cedar river on a warm day. 3. Take in a free concerts in Downtown East Lansing Fridays (Fountain Square) and Saturdays (Ann Street Plaza) from 7 to 9 pm. 4. Watch a free summer movie (beginning at 9:30), preceded by a live musical performance (8:30 pm), Thursdays in July 15 through August, in Valley Court Park. 5. Attend the free Summer Circle theater performance of Alice and Wonderland, June 23-26 at 8 pm, outdoors between the Auditorium and the Red Cedar on MSU’s campus 6. Visit Lake Michigan and spend the day swimming and playing in the waves 7. Attend the Common Ground Music Festival (July 12-18) in Lansing, or the Great Lakes Folk Festival (August 13-15) in East Lansing 8. Build a fire (in a city approve above-ground container), and endeavor to roast things over it; marshmallows and cheese are particular favorites 9. Visit the East Lansing Farmer’s Market (Sundays beginning July 11 in Valley Court Park) and Lansing City Market (Tuesday-Saturday, 325 City Market Dr.) 10. Visit the Gone Wired coffee shop on Michigan Avenue in Lansing for live jazz performances every Tuesday beginning at 10 pm. LeighAnna Beach Bower
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Winter is Awesome ...because nobody likes it. Even if you say you “like” winter, it’s usually because of what you do to get warm as a result of its chilly airs. You wear a thousand layers of clothing, sip on teeth-rotting hot chocolate, and plug in, warm up, and tune out with your electric blanket wrapped tight around you. There is also Jesus’ big birthday giveaway and the calendar turns its frown upside down a few days later. These are just material things however. Even winter at its prettiest is usually winter at its most primal and threatening, excluding those fun little winter snowstorms (blizzards.) Though, if you’re of the kind that likes taking shelter during a rather threatening thunderstorm or particularly bite-y tornado, then those represent rather minimal discomfort. This is the point in this article where tell you that it is awesome that this happens, and that is indeed true. It’s brutal enough now, but take into consideration the beginnings of European expansion into the northern climates of North America. The colonists were repeatedly annihilated by it, while the native peoples respected it and smoked their fish inside for the season. Dutch traders would travel between their villages in order to explore and expand their trade during the winter. Think about all the great armies winter has stopped in its tracks. Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany were both brought down by the russian frost. Winter has brought peace to history’s
most idiotic wars. Winter is peace. It kills pride, prejudice, and possibly even zombies (note: check if zombies die by long term exposure to extreme temperatures.) Summer swells up the soul. It builds muscle. It makes you itch. It makes you twitch. You get rich. You build and manage. You seek to be savage. What a bad piece of cabbage. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, winter will skull fuck you to death if you do not respect it. Well then, let’s just bring it a little closer to home. Winter in East Lansing, MI means for most the coming end of a semester and later the beginning of a new one. The first winter for coopers can be a bit surprising. Battling the elements merely to get to class safely might feel new to some after having spent a year or two leaving that to the super or MSU’s skilled facilities maintenance staff. Time spent shoveling the sidewalks, salting the steps, and watching those with cars chip away at their giant tin cans might take some people aback. The winter brings new meaning to being a cooper. It shifts the focus of coop-dom from summer gardening and bicycling safely to a desperate trial at withstanding the temptation that is the furnace downstairs for as long as possible and bicycling unsafely. It’s quite a feat. One that has broken many spirits and duped the rest into believing that this is both the most responsible and cheap decision. Of course, there’s the secret waiting to be revealed that all your house has turned on its own personal heating prosthetic, functioning only to provide the precious
warmth your body cannot alone provide to you. The fact that this form of heating is quite inefficient escapes most. However, Raft Hill for example is an elderly structure, unprepared for the this modern-style winter, unseen until now somehow. It was apparently built to prevent heat from rising, since of course, back in the olden days, heat was much more vigorous and would permeate throughout a solid structure with or without barriers. Also, with so much stress placed onto the aging pipes with a constant cycle of expansion and contraction should probably be kept in mind when taking such a bold step toward lowering heating costs. Is it worth it? Well, winter shall make you well aware sooner or later. So the winter brings new tidings, brings friend and foe together in solitude, and affords the opportunity of social snow activities, such as gliding upon it using aerodynamic plastic seating or shaping it into human-like stacks of balls. How wonderful. I think that about sums it all up. Winter is pretty much the best damn season ever, because it brings one back to their roots. It settles the thoughts, fears, and squabbles. It tests what people call progress by revealing the truth through erosion. Viva la nieve! Michael Davidson Raft Hill
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Vesta at
Nordhouse
These are photos I took at Vesta’s annual camping trip at the Nordhouse dunes about a month ago. One of them I’m submitting as a sort of farewell to Sara Vitale, from Vesta with love. I think you can guess which one. Zach Jay Vesta
He Who Lacks Diphenhydramine HCl A Lamentation Recorded into a Cellular Phone What happened to that commonest of species inhabiting the Midwestern highway intersection: the free-standing 24-Hour Pharmacy? I swear they were on every corner just yesterday, though tonight they may as well have gone extinct. Tonight with the inevitableness with which my backlit wristwatch’s minute hand slogs towards “1” [AM] my hunger for a Rite-Aid approaches starvation. My mind – normally an amalgamation of thought and emotion – has congealed into a monolithic tombstone with “INSOMNIA” its epitaph. How inextricable am I from my suburban upbringing that I now find myself incurably restless without the purchase of a sleep-aid from such a quintessentially exurban establishment? Very inextricable. This much is apparent.
occasional cross-traffic, but rather the elusive orange neon messiah that outlines the word (oh! to type it is to tremble!): Walgreen’s - logo of the insomniac’s respite. But alas, the only orange hue to greet my weary eyes is the jeering high-contrast burnt sienna of text emblazoned across a black sign that reads, “I’m sorry we’re CLOSED.” This phrase, which is propped ever-so-casually against a free-standing pharmacy window, sinks my spirits downwards and my desperation continues. I cling yet to the hope that I may encounter this Passenger Pigeon of the concrete and asphalt stripmall, but like the Mauritian naturalist that still seeks the dodo, my hope is small. I call out into the night, “Where are you, 24-Hour CVS?” but inside I do not expect an answer.
I dictate this into my phone while stopped at tonight’s Deeper inside, though, my body craves quest’s umpteenth stoplight, from beneath whose Diphenhydramine HCl. “Not habit-forming”? My Ass. hazy red glow I search for another light, and find many. However, I seek not the ubiquitous sickly sodium lining Daniel McClosky the city streets, nor the weary twin headlamps of Hedrick Page 6
tell me more tell me more!
like did he submit to the Pine Press? PINEPRESS@GMAIL.COM