Resolution: write

My New Year's resolution is to write more or rather to write. Here are a few ideas that have been floating around my head or just in this moment came to me:

Icelandic arcs: A story about Iceland and its people; the financial crisis; tourism boom; and society's shifting landscape. I'd approach these ambitious topics through a profile of Hadda and Haurkur, who own and operate Hrifunes Guesthouse and Iceland Photo Tours. I stayed with H&H at their guesthouse in November. I want to explore the tension between hard work and gambling: how H&H worked to build things, and in contrast how hot shot bankers profiteered from gambles that eventually landed the 300,000 Icelanders with billions in debt. The premise is that individuals, including those that head up institutions (i.e. banks, governments) operate by principles. Haurkur and Hadda reflect good principles; many bankers reflect bad ones. Most clearly, the latter ended up living large on borrowed money and dropping their debts on the likes of Haurkur and Hadda. However, now H&H are thriving on the unexpected result of the speculative investing: the weaker krone has precipitated a tourism boom that is reshaping Iceland's many contours.

Dying migrations: A ruminative encyclopedia of migration with a focus on extinct, perishing, hampered, and mutated migrations (are there any?). The unit of analysis here is the migration itself, the periodic, ritual journey of procreation and renewal. I'd build up from the journeyers to the journey, synthesize across journeys, and then delve into dying migrations. I'd interrogate first, what is the purpose migrations? Who journeys and why? What is the salmon's motive, the goose's, the whale's, the antelope's? Are there human migrations? Why? I'd close with philosophical thoughts, untethered to great thinkers, on the loss and mutability of things. 

Dormant connections. In the mid- to late-1900s, the University of Pennsylvania partnered with a technical university in Shiraz, Iran called Pahlavi University, since renamed Shiraz. Penn worked extensively with Pahlavi to redesign the university in the American model. Students and teachers shuttled back and forth. Professors collaborated. Pahlavi awarded President of Penn, Gayord Harnwell, an honorary degree for his work. Then the Islamic Revolution happened, ended the collaboration, dug a nigh-uncrossed chasm between the universities and the countries. I'd like to explore the dormant connections and the potential for reconciliation in the political dynamics. I don't want to harken back to a better era. The earlier intercourse rested on imperial, autocratic, and unequal foundations. The Penn-Iran connection betrays a similar inequality of flow, an unevenness, elements of paternalism and imperialism. It was beautiful but it was imperfect and perhaps it fed the discontent that drove the revolution. Nonetheless, I'd like tot talk about the relationship, current political events, and prospects for reviving the lost relationship between Shiraz and Penn and Iran and the US.