Journal, July 21, 1976 PM

I’m feeling worn out and drugged up. I got some cold medicine (pills and syrup) from the Peace Corps nurse this afternoon, and took a pill and a teaspoon full. I ate supper and then just conked out on my bed from about 6:30 ‘til 10:30. I got up & finished my application for the University of Wisconsin {Madison} for next spring. I’m applying so as to have an alternative if they don’t accept me for an extra year in Peace Corps in Costa Rica. I’ve had such bad results the last two times I applied to school, that I’m going to mail this application “certificado” {certified mail} and have all their return correspondence sent home so the folks can censor it, and send me by air anything I need to answer. I have no clue as to what became of the application I submitted last spring. I think it’s still possible a response of some kind will arrive by land mail.

Hopefully all this extra sleep will put me back near 100% for tomorrow. I have to write Juan Coward in Costa Rica (Agriculture Program Director there). Now that I have Chico {Rodriguez} and John {Jones} moving. I also have to get on repairing and selling my bike. The rim which lacks a spoke is in Peace Corps Office, just got to get it to a repair shop.

I’m lost in my day-to-day “metas” {goals} for the time being. Same thing with my work at DGRNR {Dirección General de Recursos Naturales Renovables}, just cranking out a write-up for a study (as my highschool Physics teacher Don Koleck would have phrased it). The terminology “crank out” describes the process well; it is not an especially creative thing, you are a sophisticated machine analyzing data - probably less efficiently than a good computer would - and summarizing. It’s only a semi-thorough and semi-important study (fishermen’s coops in El Tamarindo and La Unión) so motivation comes hard. I write and am reminded of one of the quotes I copied into my little book, “To feign to approve of what you do befits the temperament of a lackey.” I guess that’s what I am right now, though I keep thinking the big {Río} Tamulasco thing {watershed study project} will give me a chance to use my Rural Sociology education and my personal experience to make their study a good one. They are serious about that study and that will help. But where will a good study take us? Will they pay any more attention to it? How will it make the agencies who are to carry out the project any more efficient? “Between the ideal and the real falls the shadow.” (T.S. Eliot)