Book Learnin'

I'm feeling a real thirst for knowledge these days....basically, wishing I was an undergrad again. What a life! Taking classes in whatever I wanted, learning for the sake of learning, writing papers on things I was not at all qualified to expound upon, and discussing my not-at-all-original ideas with friends and teachers. I didn't appreciate it at the time! But how could I?, I was 21 and miserable.

Also, I had (and, sigh, have) a real guilt about learning for the sake of learning. I have such a conflicted relationship with academia - part of me thinks there could hardly be a better life than to learn and read and write and discuss full time. But the other half of me thinks, how indulgent, how pointless, how privileged. Or is all of that a cover for my fear that I'm not smart enough to partake in such a life, such discussions? Ah well, I don't know if that conflict will ever be resolved.

In an ideal world, if I was going to spend my life studying, I'd to go back to school and get my masters in public health (focuses: epidemiology? reproductive rights? environmental racism?), maybe also a masters or PhD in some sort of urban planning (or just study Anthropology with a focus on Urban Studies? Or maybe a focus on Rural Studies instead....). I'd love to get an undergrad degree in science, and finally understand the natural world around me. There isn't much I wouldn't love to study. Hell, I'd even love to go back and do law school all over again.

Since I'm not headed back to school any time in the near future (or even the future future), I've sort of been putting together syllabi (syllabuseses?) for myself on different topics. (In fact, I recently wrote my college advisor and Anthropology professor asking if she wouldn't mind sending me her syllabi.) One of the "self syllabi," as I'm calling them (which combine books and articles and movies), that I'm putting together is on urban studies stuff (I guess that's a good title for it. My subtitle - I told you, I'm a huge dork - is "city love, rural roots"). So far it's a mix of Mike Davis and Jane Jacobs and this recent book, which is on the top of my reading list as soon as it comes out in paperback (my local library, sadly, doesn't have it).

But I'm realizing that I want there to be a rural component too. I love me some cities, I love thinking about ways they can be changed or planned or lived in to maximum benefit, but I'm a rural girl at heart, and I live in a rural area now - how can we work to make small towns more sustainable, healthy, progressive, economically viable, ecologically responsible, etc? I see so much awesome material on city-love, but know so little about similar work re: rural areas....thoughts, anyone? Reading recommendations (articles, blogs, books, etc)?

(Image: old pic of me reading a great book, William Kunstler's My Life As A Radical Lawyer)