About Robert Boehlert

left handed, etc.

just a box in a cage

Posted on 11/10/2015 by Robert Boehlert

i just got back from this event, and i wanted to write about it now while it was still fresh on my mind. this was the second, discussion-style event i’ve gone to, and i liked this one even more than last week’s (side note: it’s funny how the weeks work with the rose scholar program. i did last week’s events on saturday and this week’s on monday. they’re two different weeks but only two days apart from one another. weird.) i’m going to start with the negatives and get them out of the way. i thought this event would’ve benefited from being longer. it seemed like the group got into its groove discussing the subject matter only to pack up and go soon afterwards. i’m not saying it needed to be four hours or anything, but maybe even another half an hour would have been beneficial. secondly, i thought the weakest part of the event was the part actually pertaining to the boxes. i liked the thought process with them, and it was fun to do something more interactive, but i think that the group had a lot of momentum going in its discussion and the the gendered boxes slowed that down a bit.

now the stuff that i did like. i was impressed with all the questions the moderators had prepared, they took the discussion to many interesting places, and it felt natural. i liked how small the group was as well. everyone had ample time to say what they thought about any particular issue brought up, and to the credit of everyone present, it didn’t feel like only a few of the people did most of the talking. i liked the subject matter of the discussion. as a white heterosexual male, i don’t face adversity very often, but that doesn’t mean that adversity doesn’t exist. i thought everyone in the group had a lot of wisdom and insight into the nature of gender inequality, and i was happy to hear all the different perspectives, as well as offer my own.

i’d give this event a 10/10 ten times. i really liked this one.

[insert obligatory haddaway reference]

Posted on 11/10/2015 by Robert Boehlert

i liked this event a lot–probably more than most of the other ones i’ve been to thus far (which, to be fair, doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot since i’ve 10/10’d every event i’ve gone to). don’t get me wrong, i think that guest speakers and trips to interesting places at cornell are really rewarding and i’m happy to have done them–i hope to do more–but i’m a big fan of the group discussions. i love that people can come together, respectfully and comfortably, and share their varying insights into something that we all experience in a unique way. i tend to learn more from doing than from listening or reading, so it’s much easier for me to engage with the topic when i’m actually encouraged to engage with the topic.

my group discussed many different types of love, such as familial, romantic, platonic, humanistic (agape) love, and spiritual. we talked about how the nebulous and far-reaching nature of the word can be a detriment to understanding, sharing, and nurturing it. we didn’t spend very long any one of them though, as the discussion progressed naturally and openly. one thing that i thought we could have spent more time on was non-heteronormative love. we didn’t spend very much time at all on the the lgbtq community or how their experiences can be compared and contrasted to those of heterosexuals. additionally, i don’t think we spent enough time addressing what expectations we have for how a person is “supposed” to love. (a man is “supposed” to be strong and independent, etc.) i understand that we had a limited time frame to work within though so i can’t really fault the event very much for these shortcomings. i think the fact i’ve focused on finding criticism of this event shows how much i enjoyed it, though. i was truly impressed with how forthcoming and friendly my fellow scholars were throughout.

i’m giving this event 10 <3s out of 10.

a stroll through history

Posted on 11/02/2015 by Robert Boehlert

the kroch tour wasn’t exactly a tour. i’d characterize it more as a presentation i think. after we arrived the tour guide/presenter showed us a duplicate copy of the thirteenth amendment, signed by abraham lincoln, which was really cool. it’s strange to be so close to history like that. it makes me feel small. anyway, next we took a stroll through an exhibit on religious artifacts, which, among many other interesting artifacts, had a gutenburg bible. after that we filed into a classroom and our presenter showed us a series of interesting things he’d pulled out of cornell’s vault. the most instantly striking was an original print of shakespeare’s first folio. i also enjoyed seeing e.b. white’s handwritten drafts for charlotte’s web. famous novels like that one are so ubiquitous that i think we don’t often contemplate how much effort and revision went into making them. speaking of novel’s we also saw a print of fitzgerald’s tender is the night with a note written to his friend, “what the hell?” which i thought was great. there were loads of cool things to see, the first print of frederic douglas’s newspaper, cuneiform tablets, sitting bull’s signature… i had no idea cornell collected so many important and resonant things. obviously the vault everything is kept in is tightly secured, but i can’t help but want to sneak in there and take a stroll through history. overall i’d rate the kroch tour a 10/10 and i would’t hesitate to recommend it to all ten of my top ten friends.

my new clam to fame: i met a guy who knows the guy from the national

Posted on 10/21/2015 by Robert Boehlert

i went to the marshall curry dinner conversation not knowing anything about him other than that he was a documentary filmmaker. truthfully i haven’t seen many documentaries that aren’t crappy history channel specials about ancient aliens, but the few i have (jiro dreams of sushi, room 237, food inc, mistaken for strangers, and montage of heck being the five i can think of off the top of my head), i’ve really enjoyed. marshall told us a little bit about his journey from majoring in comparative religion, to his philanthropic projects, to his work in web design, to his decision to just buy a camera and final cut pro, and give a shot at making a documentary, something he’d wanted to do for a long time. i have a lot of respect for that. it’s so easy to say, “oh, well, that thing i want–it’s way too unrealistic to want. i’m just not even going to try.” but he went ahead and did it anyway. good on you marshall curry. also, he told us that, when he was a web designer, he worked with matt berninger, who later went on to be the lead signer of the national, which is crazy awesome. marshall curry even produced a documentary on the band called mistaken for strangers (which as i said, i’d coincidentally seen already). i’ll definitely be bragging about having me a guy who knows the guy from the national to all my friends now. anyway, after dinner i went to the showing of curry’s first film street fight, which i enjoyed quite a bit. (now i can tell people that i’ve seen six documentaries that i’ve really liked.) overall, i’d rate the evening a solid 10/10 and would recommend it to a top ten friend, especially if he or she happens to like the national.

this is not a discussion of interstellar war criminality

Posted on 10/08/2015 by Robert Boehlert

this was my first wednesday-night informational-talk for the rose scholar program. to be honest, until i arrived, i didn’t even know what the professor’s discussion was going to be covering. tonight was the only evening i had free, so i didn’t look very closely as to the content of the lecture since i had to go no matter what. upon entering i noticed that in the back of the room, the projector displayed a page where students in attendance could text in the names of infamous war criminals, and have them appear on the screen. most were serious answers like osama bin laden, omar al-bashir, and josef mengele, but there were a couple funny ones too, like donald trump and garrick blalock. i really wanted to add grand moff tarkin to the list, although, to be fair, the discussion revolved around international war criminality and g.m.t. is arguably more of an interstellar war criminal. i showed up at seven exactly so by the time i’d apportioned an embarrassingly large number of chocolate chip cookies for myself the only seat left was in the front row. i’m not really a front row kind of person usually, but i didn’t mind today because professor jens david ohlin turned out to be a relaxed, well-spoken, and personable guy. over the course of the hour the conversation shifted fluidly from the international criminal court, to the recent u.s. bombing of a hospital in afghanistan, to the on-going quest to bring al-bashir to justice. i know less of international affairs than i care to admit, so i found the evening to be informative and entertaining. overall, i’d rate professor ohlin’s discussion a 10/10 and would certainly recommend it to a top ten friend.

hamburgers don’t come from helicopters

Posted on 10/03/2015 by Robert Boehlert

sometimes i think that the world’s too small now. historically, people have always wanted to discover, to explore. it’s why today we love star wars or lord of the rings or doctor who or a million other stories about rich new worlds. we want to say, “i don’t what that is, but i’d like to go find out,” and it’s hard to do that now when google maps makes finding someplace in the remote french countryside as easy as finding your friend’s house. the blurb for this week’s saturday rose event mentioned hidden rooms, secret tunnels, and sushi (question: what has two thumbs and loves sushi?), so the micro-adventurer in me was pretty excited. first, our group listened to a bit of history on the founding of cornell university. i’m not usually the biggest history buff, but i did really enjoy finding out that ezra cornell only had a third grader’s education. i think there’s a lot to be said for a man who, with very little formal study of his own, dedicates his legacy to advancing the education of others. next we went to noyes, and found out about the different facets of its fitness center, which wasn’t really of much interest to me, apart from the revelation that their are free massages every other thursday. (question: what has two thumbs and a lot of tension in the shoulders?) next we saw the world war one memorial, and i leaned a little about the quill and dagger society, which i’d never heard of before. cool name, incidentally. after that garrick took us to becker and vented about his pet peeve of domino’s pizza delivery men/women driving through west campus. he’s having a gate installed to prevent this, despite the glaring issue that domino’s pizza delivery men/women will no longer be able to drive to west campus and bring me pizza. this segued into garrick’s explanation of how the food in rose dining gets to rose dining. en lieu of a helicopter based delivery system, cornell has built a series of tunnels under west campus to transport meals without big trucks driving through the dorms. i love getting lost places, so i had a blast walking around in the slightly labyrinthian-feeling passages. especially when i learned we can access those tunnels anytime we want; i’ll probably wander back there periodically for the rest of the year while i procrastinate assignments. finally, garrick and his wife were nice enough to open their home us and provide us with sushi, and an opportunity to interact with their superfluously cute dog. i had a great time, and would rate my experience 10/10 and would happily recommend it to a top ten friend.

hug me (i’m a little chile)

Posted on 09/19/2015 by Robert Boehlert

the pepper party was my first rose scholar event, which was a little spooky at first. our group arrived right as it started to rain and a lady bug took refuge in my hair (and later my shirt pocket) until the deluge passed. the first station i went to was inside the horticulture building. (actually, i’m pretty sure it’s called the horticulture building, but don’t quote me on that if i turn out to be wrong.) with help from volunteers i crafted myself a rather fashionable decorative pepper necklace. the tag on the necklace reads: “hug me… i’m a little chile” and instructs the owner to: “1. hang chile this winter. 2. hug family and friends underneath. 3. repeat.” great advice for ithaca residents if you ask me. i also tried chocolate pepper macaroons; they were really good. exploring upstairs i found some bongos and it took all my self-control to stop myself from playing with them.

back outside, different tents had traditional pepper dishes from several countries. i was a big fan of the hungarian pepper goulash and thai egg rolls with spicy pepper sauce–which turned out to be sriracha. i’m coming down with a bit of a cold right now, so i couldn’t really smell very much at first, but as i sampled the spicier dishes my nose started running like a faucet. that prompted an impromptu tissue-hunt back inside, where i found a display case with various peppers and their spiciness rating next to it. i thought ghost peppers were the hottest you could find, but i learned there exists a pepper called the trinidad moruga scorpion that’s almost twice as hot. incidentally, trinidad moruga scorpian is a really intimidating name for a food. there were several educational stations outside as well, but i was having too much fun tasting all the dishes to make it over to them.

we finished things up with some habenero ice cream and a group picture. overall, i’d rate the pepper party ten out of ten, and i would happily recommend it to a top ten friend.