Subscribe:
RSS feed
The personal blog of Maria Pacana
Egg Freezing: An Update
N.B. – This post is ongoing. Parts I-II are finished, parts III & IV are not. I. Injecting I was both on edge and unprepared on my first night of injections. I didn’t bother watching injection preparation videos, figuring that it couldn’t be any more complicated than high school chemistry class. My boyfriend and I […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Canvassing [Reno, Nov. 2016]
February 13, 2017
In a departure from my normal life behind a computer, I went to Reno the weekend before the 2016 election to get out the vote for Hillary. Though I dreaded the idea of knocking on doors, it was the only way to salve my anxiety about Donald Trump catching up in the polls. It was […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Egg Freezing: The Beginning
August 1, 2016
No one wants to be here. The classroom is full of unsmiling women and their partners, all in their thirties and early forties. Practice syringes and medical vials are arranged on the tables in front of us. Our teacher, a friendly nurse named Glynnise, has written the names of our many medicines on the whiteboard: Follistim, […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
OHM 2013
August 26, 2013
In September, I traveled to a campground north of Amsterdam to participate in OHM (Observe. Hack. Make.), a large gathering of hackers and makers. It was the latest in the sequence of Dutch hacker conferences that includes What the Hack and Hacking at Random. OHM’s Like Burning Man… On the surface, OHM seemed a lot like Burning Man: a […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Berlin’s Abandoned Places: Teufelsberg Tactics
August 21, 2013
History The Teufelsberg spy station is the crown jewel of Berlin’s abandoned places. It was originally built by the NSA during the Allied occupation of Germany to eavesdrop on Soviet and East German communications. Teufelsberg (literally “Devil’s Mountain”), is a man-made hill, built from houses that were blasted down to rubble in WWII. After the Wall […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Berlin’s Abandoned Places: Plänterwald
August 12, 2013
A Park with a Peculiar Past While in Berlin, I toured the Spreepark in Plänterwald, a former amusement park with a fascinating history. Note: Since I don’t understand German and had to have everything translated for me, what follows below may not be 100% accurate. Originally built by the East German government, the Spreepark was […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Pig Processing
January 21, 2013
Vegetarians and vegans beware! This is a very graphic post, complete with pictures, about pig slaughter and butchery. Like many of us, I’ve spent most of my life as a conflicted omnivore. I ate meat because I thought it was nourishing and delicious, but felt uncomfortable with the suffering inflicted on farmed animals. I tried […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
2012 Wise Traditions Conference
December 26, 2012
In November, my boyfriend and I attended the annual “Wise Traditions” conference, held by the Weston A. Price Foundation (“WAPF”) in Santa Clara, CA. We went to talks ranging from informative to entertaining to kooky, tucked into some gluten-free cheesecake, and adopted a slimy kombucha SCOBY. Weston A. Price (or “How to Get a Foundation […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Fungi Furniture
December 26, 2012
This October, I attended a workshop by Phil Ross, an artist and DIY biologist whose claim to fame is growing his own armchairs. The process he described sounded time- and resource-intensive, but conceptually simple. First, he takes some reishi mushroom culture from a local fungus farm and combines it with wood chips, which serve as fodder for the […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Lost Horizon Night Market IV
November 11, 2012
Last night, Dan and I enjoyed the most recent iteration of the Lost Horizon Night Market, an undercover art event that takes place in desolate industrial corridors of New York and San Francisco/Oakland. At the Night Market, differently-themed box trucks gather in the dead of night at a location that isn’t disclosed until 24 hours […]
Posted in: Uncategorized
Maria's Many Lives 
February 19, 2017
0