Some premature reading notes

Due to my mom's stressful job and the fact that I have little cousins (roughly age 5 and 10) I'm going on a late family vacation to Disney World until Monday (thank God for no MWF classes). Since I'll probably forget to do my reading notes when I come back, I'm doing them now.

I thought Tuesday's discussion about non-places was really intriguing. Not going to lie... I had not read for the class because last week was pretty much the busiest week "work-wise" of my life (I'm a waitress right now, so homework wasn't an option after all the long hours). But after the discussion, it really inspired me to do the reading anyway. The article sounded like it would be interesting and something that I could actually grasp, since I feel lost most of the time when I read for this class.

I think it's really mind bending to think about how a place can be a non-place to one person while to another it's vice versa. For example, at my job (Cheeseburger in Paradise in Middleton, but please don't come ask for me because I HATE serving people I know- Hi! My name is Randi and I'll be your islander today) people usually come in to eat or drink. They don't interact with those around them, sometimes not even the staff, monotonously eat their meal and drink their drink and then leave. For those people, CIP is a non-place. These people have no relationships at this place, they don't come to this place for a real life-oriented purpose, and it's usually a stop in transit for the rest of the evening. However, for me, this is obviously a place. After countless shifts at this location, I've made a lot of really good friends and have a lot of my personal life invested in it. I spend more time there than I do in my house most weeks.

This brings me to something that I really liked in class: our "homes" in Madison as non-places. The places we rent are all in transition to a permanent arrangement when we get out of school. I could make the argument that if you've lived in the same apartment for 3 years, it's probably more of a place to you. However, if you're anything like me and my roommates, you just move furniture in, sleep in a different room than you were last year, pack up and move out. Rarely do people invest time and money into these temporary dwellings because often we'll get fined if we make any major changes or create major holes. Sure, we hang pictures and have relationships between each other, but it's too hard to really make that place our own.

One final thing I'd like to say regarding non-places...The more I thought about observing a non-place for the blog, the more I came up with a realization. Many non-places have a social standard for how long it is acceptable to be there. If you think about a gas station, convenience store, bus stop, etc., if you linger too long people will begin to ask questions. Loitering rules are in effect in a lot of places. In that -30 degree week, my older brother was visiting and partook a little too much. He got VERY lost going back to his friend's house and ended up being outside for 2 hours. He went into a convenience store to gain feeling in his legs, but the store clerk told him that he had to buy something or leave immediately. It's assumed that if you want to spend extended time in non-places, you are there because 1) you have no where else to go, 2) you have nothing to do, or 3) you are there for a conniving purpose.