Day 13

Not much to say about today! Got up really early to cram for my presentation and to do the writing assignment, which took much longer than I expected.

Got the presentation done! Kicking myself because I forgot to make a few crucial points.

Here are some of the cartoons I showed in my powerpoint about bicycles. My thesis was that the mass manufacturing (and subsequent lowered price) of the bicycle facilitated:

1) the emancipation of women (mobility, independence, less constrictive fashion, physical exercise)
2) the rise of advertising as bicycle brands competed
3) de-urbanization as commuting became possible
4) the rise of sports as entertainment (cycling clubs, velodromes for bike racing, the Tour de France)
5) the rise of excursionism, of taking day trips into the country, which decreased the isolation of small towns, encouraging them to build tourist industries and bringing in money.

Caption: The idea that a person should perform work previously relegated to animals struck some as comical, if not regressive. This caricature from Le Journal Amusant of 29 October 1868 lampooned the curious role reversal.

The rest of class was a lecture about impressionism, which would have been very interesting, except we were studying their use of color, and the projector was broken and didn't show the color red! Kind of problematic!

I was so exhausted from cramming all night that I spent the rest of the day at St. John's. Chris and I did a lot of research about Columbia housing because his form is due tonight. The Columbia dorms are ridiculous! Some are giant high-rises with 400 kids, and the student reviews say a lot of them have rat problems and are either party dorms or dorms where people pass like ships in the night and never really know who lives at the end of their long corridor.

We found an awesome potential solution though: the Living Learning Center. The LLC dorms are Wallach and Hartley, they are composed of large (7-11 people) co-ed suites with kitchens, and they are supposed to emulate family living-- each suite is mostly freshmen and sophomores, with three or four juniors and seniors. The rooms are supposedly nice, the dorms are alcohol-free (though it's not enforced), and it has a friendly, low-key reputation. Socially, it's hit or miss, but it sounded like a good bet to put as his first choice. Apparently transfers have priority in the lottery, so we'll see what happens. His second choice is Broadway, which is a standard high-rise that's newly renovated and has lots of doubles.

Sleep tight!