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Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
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3:37 pm - "Before eating, always take a little time to thank the food." - Native American proverb
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I have become a foodie. I blame Chris. At least partly.
I've always enjoyed food - sometimes too much. This may come as a surprise to someone who knows my size, but has never eaten with me. I eat a lot. I eat sometimes as much as my dad, who is 6'3'' and 200 pounds. And this isn't something new. When I was younger, my mom said I had a "hollow leg." I would often say to her, "I'm hungry!" to which she would respond, "No you aren't, you just think you're hungry." Which was an easy assumption to make, as I would often protest my hunger only an hour or two after significant meals. But I wasn't imagining it - I was truly hungry. Unlike some people with quick metabolisms (looks at husband jealously), I was never skinny, just hungry more often than an average girl of my age. To make up for it, I've been an avid exerciser for much of my life. When I haven't exercised regularly in some form, I have gained weight, which has further reinforced its necessity for me, if I don't feel like being hungry all of the time.
Because of this back-and-forth, food has been slightly problematic for me as an adult. For most of my teenage life, I didn't care about my weight. The only time I really struggled with it was an attempt to stay below 127 to make the lightweight boat for crew team. And that wasn't so much about weight as athletics. I didn't care about my weight because I knew with all of the exercise I got, I was going to be in pretty good shape no matter what. The first time I started caring much at all about what I put in my mouth was my freshman year of college. But even that was a pretty low level of interest. I liked my morning muffins and Cornell's terrific food, and going any further diet-wise than limiting myself to one dessert a day seemed impossible.
Self-realization on my relationship with food didn't really kick in until the summer after my sophomore year. I had just quit Alpha Zeta, where I had lived for a year. To understate the situation, it wasn't a good year - socially, mentally, and even physically. The food was terrible. I didn't sign up for a meal plan, because we lived far away from the main dining halls, and wasn't that what we were paying the frat cook for? That was a bad plan for several reasons. First, because I believe in eating breakfast, and the only breakfast available was cereal with out-of-date milk or giant muffins. I went with the muffins. Lunch was just as bad, resulting in a lot of peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. In terms of dinner? The frat cook was terrible. Truly awful. The food was mostly edible, but never good. Plus, much of the food he made was "homecooking" standards that I don't like - meatloaf and other such beef-based dishes. So I ended up eating a lot of pasta or dessert. Lastly, and perhaps worst for morale of all, was that we had to make our own food on weekends. At that point, I had no confidence in my skills as a cook. Plus, it didn't help that all of our food was in bulk, individual ingredients were impossible to find, and the kitchen was quite disgusting. As a result, I ate out a lot, mooched off of other people's fried food, and consumed far more EZ Mac than one individual should consume in a lifetime. The food only contributed to my sense of learned hopelessness and anxiety. Unsurprisingly, I gained about 5-7 pounds that year.
Upon leaving AZ, I worked on taking control of my life. Pledging and living at AZ had wrestled away all of the self-respect I had worked so hard to gain over the years. It also demolished any healthy mental or physical habits I once had. I felt a need to prove to them - and more importantly, myself - that I was a different person than they believed. A more fun, more laid-back, prettier, healthier individual. So I went on a diet. Bad idea, no? But in reality, the diet itself wasn't a bad one to pick, if one had to pick a diet. It mainly involved eating a lot more vegetables than I was used to and a lot fewer empty carbs (namely, pasta). In addition, I went back to doing some strength exercises, which I had abandoned long ago. Between the two approaches, I lost over 10 pounds and felt a hell of a lot better. Changing what I put in my body made an incredible difference in my attitude and outlook. It wasn't an easy summer, but it was a hopeful one, a vast improvement over the year I had just been through.
For the rest of college, I maintained an uneasy peace with food. I tried to stay healthy by frequently eating stir fry and salads and not visiting the dessert table too often. I discovered the great pleasure of a wonderfully-done Gardenburger. (Which probably got most of its taste from the meat fat it fried in, but still.) But I missed eating whatever I wanted. My diet felt a bit boring, quite honestly.
At the same time, Chris's own unique relationship with food was shifting. As a kid, Chris was a painfully slow eater. In high school, he frequently didn't finish his lunch by the end of lunch time. I was constantly stealing his fries because it seemed like a waste to throw them out, even if they were rather disgusting. (And of course, because I was hungry. I really wasn't underfed, I swear.) As I got to know his family, Chris's slow eating was given a broader context. On one hand, Chris's mom eats very fast. Growing up, her strict Irish family didn't even talk until all of the food was cleared from the plates. On the other hand, Chris's dad is extremely picky and takes his time, eating each individual type of food separately. He is not a man who eats stews, needless to say. So Chris's behavior fell somewhere in the strange middle. And yet, somewhere along the line, Chris became a more adventurous eater. Perhaps he always was one, and never had the chance to express it because of the limits his dad's eating imposed on the family.
And then Chris and I, somewhere along the way, developed a collective relationship with food. Although we didn't know it then, I think this began all the way back with me stealing his fries in high school. He didn't like it, but I did it anyway. I think this reinforced two consistent themes in our relationship - a high level of comfort/emotional intimacy and me being a little pushy. Although the second theme isn't a good habit to be in, that fry-stealing was worth it to help establish the first (along with the many other ways that happened). Beyond the involuntary lunch-sharing, the major food and life landmark of that first year together was our anniversary. For our one year anniversary, Chris offered to make me dinner. His offer surprised me, as I had no idea he could cook. I accepted it, of course. I figured even if it wasn't particularly good, it was certainly a sweet gesture. Fortunately for both of us, the meal was pretty good. I remember it all vividly, even now. First course, french onion soup, main course, chicken kiev with potato wedges, and for dessert, an Alice's Chocolate Cake that I made. Me in a simple black dress, him in a button down shirt and tie. Sitting at a small table in his parents' living room, with flowers decorating it. The AC turned way up to accomodate for the fire in the fireplace next to us. Vaguely ridiculous, but at the time, it seemed terribly romantic. Heartbreaking romantic, as we saw this as the last hurrah for our relationship. That was when we planned on breaking up after high school. And so, it seemed like it would be both our first homemade, formal meal together and our last. Like many things we assumed at the time, that was thankfully wrong.
The next major milestone in our joint relationship with food came when I gave Chris a Christmas present than was way more insightful than I realized at the time. (And I thought I was being pretty insightful!) I knew Chris really liked watching the show Good Eats on Food Network, and was interested in cooking. This was about 2 anniversary meals after the first one, both of which had been progressively more complex. I thought, "Ah ha! Why don't I get him a cookbook?" So I bought him the Good Eats cookbook, along with a set of measuring spoons. Partly inspired by my encouragement, Chris began to cook a little more. Along the way, he got a job at Applebees and went from busboy to cook. At some point in time, his family members got the idea in their heads that "Hey, Chris likes to cook!" and barraged him with cookbooks. None of which he's ever used. He's not a cookbook kind of guy, unfortunately. But all of this support, combined with the skills he gained at Applebees, heightened his confidence in his cooking. His anniversary dishes began to border on gourmet, with the best of them being an incredible stuffed lobster (which he did actually use a recipe for).
The third major milestone occurred in moving to England. Along with learning a number of other things, we finally learned to cook for ourselves. In Maine, we cooked, but it was mainly limited to pasta. In Ballston Spa, we occassionally cooked, but we mooched off our parents a lot. In England, we were forced to cook, because the dining hall was expensive, and eating out even more so. And we couldn't rely on packaged food, because it was absolutely terrible. You had to add so many of your own spices to the jarred tomato sauce that it was silly not to make it from scratch. So I ended up cooking all of my own lunches and Chris cooked dinner.
But more importantly, this was also the point at which Chris moved from being a "cook" to a "chef." I put those in quotes because Chris's official position still is line cook, but the difference in attitude between the two reveals a universe about food. Previously, in America, Chris had worked at Applebees for three years. He had moved from fry cook to being the most senior person there who wasn't a kitchen manager (which I'm sure they would have offered if he stayed). He worked all of the stations and regularly trained new people. But he had reached a point at which there was nothing else to learn. In order to produce the same product time after time, chain restaurants rely on a huge amount of frozen and precooked food. The cooks follow strict recipes and are neither encouraged nor have any desire to be creative. A surprising number of things are microwaved. After three years, Chris had picked up all of the knowledge that the Applebees kitchen had to offer. In contrast, Chris found a job with an independant restaurant in England. Even though it was a cafe that only served breakfast and lunch, it was rooted in a very different philosophy. They used a lot of fresh food, and had daily specials. The owner came from a fine dining background - he was a consultant at one point for one of the most expensive restaurants in Oxford. The chef, Luke, was classically trained. And to top it off, Luke himself was actually French. At first, Chris struggled because the owner was a neurotic perfectionist who never really explained his expectations. But once Luke returned from his sick-leave, everything fell into place. Luke and Chris got along very well, as they appreciated each others' dry humor and laid-back personalities. Luke taught Chris an incredible number of techniques and tricks. He also gave Chris quite a bit of responsibility and flexibility, something he would have never had at Applebees. Chris even ran the kitchen on Luke's days off, sometimes making the specials on his own. Although Chris was originally hired to be a "sandwich bitch" (his words), Luke gave him the opportunity to do much more.
While both of our cooking was improving, I became much more interested in the idea of sustainable eating. The idea of eating locally was just picking up steam as a movement, and it really excited me. We had been part of a vegetable box scheme in Ballston Spa through the natural foods store, and signed up for the one through the college as soon as we arrived in Oxford. Unfortunately, we eventually canceled it because of the abnormal vegetables we got, combined with their very inflated prices. But we did learn that this scheme had the potential to work, and that we were capable of making edible food out of some very unusual ingredients. At the same time, I started leaning more towards vegetarian food. I still ate meat, but Linacre always had a very good vegetarian option (and often meat options that I actively disliked), so I usually ate it no more than 2 or 3 times a week. There were probably some weeks that I went completely veggie. On top of all of this, we discussed food issues quite a bit in class, within the context of labels (organic, fair trade) and world economic systems, so it was on my mind a tremendous amount.
Since we've been home, the gourmet and the sustainable eating influences have converged. This confluence was helped along by the coincidence of reading three different books on food in a short period of time. The first one was called The Soul of a Chef, which Chris's boss gave him for Christmas. It follows three chefs at different points in their careers, and just made me hungry reading it. The last section is on Thomas Keller, probably the most acclaimed chef in America. The praise heaped on Keller and people's reactions to his food made me willing to try anything he made, even cow's brains. But the one thing that particularly struck me about Keller was not just his passion for cooking, but the respect that he had for his ingredients. When he made rabbit, he killed and skinned the rabbits himself. Not that we should all have to butcher our own meat, but I think that our society's attitude towards eating meat would be vastly different (and more compassionate) if we had that level of respect. And that even goes for non-sentient things. If we had the same level of respect for the land where our food grows and the people who grow it, it would certainly be a step in the right direction towards a sustainable food system. Then, the book's main message - that making good food is essential to who we are as people - was definitely reinforced upon reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's about how Americans see and process and eat our food, and how our current system is ridiculously dysfunctional. Really, most of the book is about that idea of respect for our food and ourselves that I had barely gleaned from the other one, but writ large. Despite, and because of, the research-heavy nature, the book is very good, and very entertaining. This book made me think not only about the process of cooking food, but everything it goes through to get to your stove. The second book, which I read in-between the two, was similar to Pollan's book, but less fact-heavy and more personal. It's called Plenty, and is about a couple who decide to only eat food produced within 100 miles of their house for a year. It has some statistics, but is mainly about their personal relationship with food and each other. On top of all of this reading, I wrote an article on local eating for the Conservationist, for which I did a lot of research. (It also gave me an excuse to read Plenty at work.)
All of this reading and research continued to make me rethink my personal relationship with food. (Hence, this entry.) As a result, I'm trying to move towards a lifestyle of eating that is environmentally and personally satisfying. For example, we have continued to buy locally, and found out that hey, not all of the food from local markets has to look funny! In fact, sometimes it's much, much better than what you buy at the supermarket. (Eggs have better yolks, tomatoes are better tasting, veggies are fresher.) I've even found some amount of joy in cooking, something I used to dread doing. I've actually made dishes that I was extremely pleased with, which I never expected to happen. (Of course, now I expect it to happen every time, which is unrealistic, but...it's me, the perfectionist.) Chris has continued to make some truly amazing meals.
And so, I'm a foodie. Not in terms of being pretentious, but as one who loves great food. As a result, I think, for one of the first times in my life, I've worked out how to be happy with what I'm eating in all ways - in terms of environmental sustainability, health and taste. Although I still do occasionally eat what Pollan calls "non-food" (mmm, Peeps dipped in chocolate), I am (generally) happy with what I eat. And although finding food is no longer the focus of our days like it was for the hunters/gatherers, the fact that I can thank God for my food and truly mean it makes me grateful indeed.
current mood:  calm
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| Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
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7:57 pm - Alleluia!
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I've been reading a lot about Wendell Barry, farmer/writer extraordinare in Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma. And then Slacktivistjust posted a link to a lovely poem by Wendell Barry that's perfect for Easter. Since he didn't post the poem himself, I'm afraid I'm going to have to. Enjoy!
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.</p> So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
And as John seems to be the go-to Gospel for Easter, here is my favorite part...
John 20:10-18 (NIV)
Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Fatherand your Father, to my God and your God.' " Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!"
May I be like Mary, shouting for joy at the goodness of God's love. Practicing resurrection indeed.
Happy Easter to all!
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| Monday, February 25th, 2008
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11:31 pm - I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps...
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This past Wednesday, Chris and I went on a trip to New York City. Now, I've been to New York before, but this trip was exceptionally odd.<
To begin with, the reason for going was a little strange. I went to take a civil service exam to qualify for a special honors program through the federal government. It's supposed to be this prestigious program. In fact, to even qualify to take the exam, you have to have a graduate degree and have your university recommend you. Unfortunately, the running of this program seems to epitomize everything wrong with federal bureaucracy. The website is incomprehensible. The entry time only gave you a month to turn in the forms once they went up. Because they were originally supposed to go up in September, I checked the website in a number of countries as we travelled around Europe. As it turned out, the forms didn't actually go up until November! November! You expect us to get our stuff in within a month, and you put it up a month and a half later? What the hell, really. Then, once I got the exam announcement, guess when it is? On a Wednesday at noon in New York City. Thank you federal government for assuming that everyone lives in New York. And that we wouldn't rather stay the weekend since we have to take the entire day off anyway. How convenient.
I would have gone down by myself if necessary, but thankfully, Chris managed to switch with someone to have the day off. We originally planned to drive down to Poughkeepsie and take the train in, but there was a horrible ice storm predicted for the night before and that morning. My parents basically pleaded me to take the train from Albany instead. As it turned out, the train from Poughkeepsie is way more expensive than it used to be. Plus, my parents sweetened the deal by offering to pay the difference between the two train tickets.
Because of the need to get up so early, I wanted to go to bed early. I planned on printing out the study guide - which I didn't find out until the day before because it was buried at the bottom of the alert e-mail - and study on the train. But the housesitting situation got the best of my efforts. We thought we would be able to attach the laptop to our printer and print out the study guide using our hosts' printer. But our computer couldn't connect without the printer driver, which despite being an engineer (rocket scientist, specifically), Graham failed to leave us. We attempted to download it from the Internet, but that didn't work. So I decided to stick it out and stayed up late to review. Do you think, that of all people, I would not study for a test if I had materials? Stupidly, I didn't realize until around midnight that I could print stuff out by downloading it onto Graham and Karen's Mac that is attached to the printer. [sound of hand connecting to forehead]
The next morning, Chris and I woke up very early (at 5:54 am) and drove to the Renselelear train station. Thank God we decided not to drive down. It took us over an hour to get to Renesselear alone. And, on the drive there, we had to skid into the next lane on Balltown Road to avoid hitting the car in front of us. I also fell on my ass in the train station parking lot. It was that icy.
Thankfully, the train was on time and everything went well. We got off at Penn Station, took the subway, and found the federal building where the test was being held rather quickly. Chris left to go meet Melissa for lunch and I went into the building. The security guards were okay at first, but then got a little snotty when myself and the other girl who came in with me asked about the test. They gave us this "why do you want to know look?" and then told us "It's in Room 215, but you'll have to wait in the cafe on the 10th floor." Then the one guard turned to the other and asked, "Why are people coming so early?" I'm not the most prompt person in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but this was a government exam. You show up with plenty of time, and we were less than an hour early. I don't know why they seemed angry about it.
Following the guard's advice, this girl and I went up to the cafe as suggested. I was glad there was somewhere to eat, because I picked up a sandwich in Penn Station on the way there. We sat at the same table and had a surprisingly lengthy conversation, considering my usual awkwardness in similar situations. We talked about the test, which she knew quite a bit a more about than I did. She actually knew someone who had taken it before and got picked for a position. She also agreed that the positions seemed a bit lame in terms of both status and pay for something that was supposed to be such a big deal. She said that she already made almost that much at her current job and didn't particularly want to move down to Washington. I said that I certainly didn't make that much money, but that moving would be a pain in the ass and that living expenses were far higher there. But the strangest thing she told me was that they used to have a role-playing "live action" section! It was an Apprentice-style problem-solving activity, where you had to prove your "leadership skillz." You've got to be kidding me. Thankfully, they did away with it a couple years ago.
After 45 minutes of talking, we both headed downstairs to the testing room. Oddly, I don't think I ever found out her name. The testingroom was like many other testing rooms I've been in, with rows of desks set up neatly and young people sitting quietly. The one person ahead of me looked a little out of place there. He was a middle-aged Hispanic man in slightly-crumpled professional-looking clothes in a room of young, white people in jeans and t-shirts.
The test began with a very bored looking exam proctor introducing the five million things the government wanted us to know before beginning. Sheesh. You'd think if we were such bright students and national leaders that we could read at least some of the directions ourselves. The first part of the exam was on critical thinking. Before reading the study guide, I thought it would involve writing essays arguing a point or what one would do in response to a specific situation. But no, the government didn't want to test us on anything so practical as actual writing or thinking skills! Instead, the section was on logic. Logic. Something I haven't done since I was in ninth grade math. Which would be great if I had taken the LSTAT for law school, as logic games are a huge aspect of that exam. But you know, not everyone who works in government is a lawyer. When I was studying for the exam the night before, this section gave me a lot of trouble. I'd think that I had a problem worked out, and then realized that I was completely wrong when I looked at the answers. And the worst part was that the exam wasn't logic in any "logical" sense. For the most part, it followed the rules of logic we learned in math, but occassionally, unpredictably didn't resemble them in any sense. For example, they had sections on "if...then," "only if," and "if and only if" - but we only learned "if...then" and "if and only if" in class. And quite honestly, their explanation of how the three differed only heightened my confusion. Thankfully, the exam went a little better than reviewing with the practice booklet. I drew a lot of weird-ass pictures that vaguely resembled Venn diagrams and probably only made sense to me. I felt like I had a good handle on all of the questions, but quite honestly, I couldn't tell you how many of them were actually right or wrong. I just didn't have the sense of confidence in my answers like I usually do in exams.
Of course, it only got worse from there. The second part of the exam was a personality assessment! A personality assessment! The last time I took one of those, it was for the Borders application and asked questions like, "What would you do if you discovered a co-worker stealing?" It was completely ridiculous. For one, I sounded like an ass in the beginning part of the section. It asked questions like, "How would your supervisor rate your ... writing ability, productivity, ability to have projects done on time, reading speed (?!), etc.?" For which I answered "superior" on pretty much all of them. Because I know Dave thinks this - he's told me! The only ones I think I said "average" on were "how well you get along with people" and "how well you receive criticism." It was odd, because you didn't want to sound ridiculously full of yourself by answering superior, but at the same time, they want "superior" people so you really shouldn't be overly humble. I couldn't figure out what the hell they were looking for. The most ridiculous question was, "How often did you go to social events - like dances, getting together with small groups of friends, etc. - in high school?" WTF? Who cares how social I was in high school? Especially because they were testing people who had graduated from grad school, which is certainly a nerdier group than the average population. Ridiculous. At least I know I answered "correctly" on all of the questions asking about why you want to work in government, for which I basically wrote "Because I want to serve the public" on all of them.
The third section was on writing, which would obviously be my strongest suit. Unfortunately, instead of actually having people, you know, write, they asked stupid multiple-choice questions. There were a lot of "which statement is the best written?" questions that made me want to yell "They're all terrible! I could rewrite them all better!" I don't think the proctors would have appreciated that though.
It was simulantously the most annoying and the most confusing test I've ever taken. I've certainly taken more difficult tests, but I knew what I was getting into with them. I think I had taken more eye-rollingly stupid tests in college, but at least they weren't three hours long. I took the entire time, but only because I didn't want to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of impatience.
Once I finally finished the test, I was terribly relieved. I called Chris - but he wasn't picking up his phone! Arrgh! As it turned out, Chris and Melissa were in the subway and he didn't have any reception. It was particularly awkward because it was still raining outside and I had to stand in the lobby. Once I finally got a hold of him, I followed his vaguely confusing directions to meet up with him and Melissa. After a couple of turns, I found them standing across the street, smiling and waving at me! It was a lovely sight after such a frustrating few hours.
We hung out at Melissa's apartment for a little while, which is in Greenwich Village. Chris had become soaked roaming around the city, so he had to take off his soaking wet jeans. Melissa lent him sweatpants and her roommate's boyfriend's socks while Chris's jeans dried on their radiator. We planned on going to South Street Seaport, but then realized that we wouldn't have a lot of time to eat dinner by the time we shopped and had to get to the train station. Since Melissa lives in the Village, which is a tourist attraction in and of itself, we just decided to hang around there. We went to a terrific little bookshop with the name, "Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books." Totally my sort of bookstore. And they didn't just have self-righteous political tomes, but a lot of great used and overstocked books. As a terrific birthday present, Melissa offered to buy me several books! Of course, I took forever and a half to pick them out. They had two different great-looking books on Monty Python! I ended up not buying either of them, but instead getting "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (which I've wanted for forever), a pop-history of Paris, a Chuck Klosterman book (his stuff just looks interesting in general), and a really neat print of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss on canvas (one dollar!).
Then, we wandered for a while, and ended up in a pseudo-British pub called The Slaughtered Lamb. It wasn't nearly so spooky as the name suggests, although we missed the room with the werewolves behind glass. However, we did spot "The Dungeon," their basement where they open for weekends and parties. Being a Wednesday afternoon, the place was pretty chill. One nice detail was that they did have flags from British beers hanging up around the place, which was a pleasant reminder of our recent home. We sipped our drinks - mine was originally messed up, but they did replace it - in front of a lovely, warm fire offsetting the very London-y weather outside.
After finishing our drinks, we headed back to Melissa's apartment for dinner. Although she wasn't making us dinner. Instead, we were eating in the Ethiopian restaurant immediately below her apartment. She had wanted to go there for quite a while, just for the hell of it, and we promised her we would. I was actually quite excited about it. When else would I have a chance to try Ethiopian food?
Walking past the tarot reader that's another tenant under Melissa's roof, we descended the stairs that lead to the restaurant. The restaurant itself was small and narrow, not much larger than Melissa's apartment. There were a few tables on each side, with a bar at the end. African-looking, richly colored art, along with rope lights decorated the walls. The entire place had a warm, earthy feel to it. We sat down and received menus from our server, who seemed mostly indifferent to us. I perused the menu, reading each item a couple different times, as if I could make better sense of them the second or third time around. I finally settled on the least-spicy sounding vegetarian dish, while Melissa and Chris chose lamb and beef respectively. We figured we could share them all. The server took our menus back with the same lack of interest as she had originally. At the beginning, we were almost the only patrons. There was one girl in knee-high striped socks there, who was reading a book. When another group came in and sat at the table on the other side of the wall from her, she kept looking up at them in this very annoyed manner. I didn't find them particularly annoying, but she appeared disturbed by their presence and eventually left without ever seeming to order anything.
Our server eventually showed up with our food, carrying a huge silverplatter. She placed a gigantic pancakeish-thing on it, and then spooned various types of glop onto it. The vegetarian stuff was the most gooey, while the meat dishes had a bit more solidity to them. Then she put down a plate of smaller pancakes in front of me. Then she left us, with only the pancakes and goo. We looked at the pancakes and the silver platter and then all looked at each other, all thinking the same thing, "How are we supposed to eat this?" Melissa said, "Aren't we supposed to have utensils?" I was about to call over our server when it dawned on us, that no, we weren't supposed to have utentils. The utensils were the pancakes and our very own hands. We didn't even have plates to eat over! It was definitely surreal. The lack of utensils freaked Melissa out a bit. I liked the food a lot, although I was the most enthusiastic. Melissa distinctly didn't like it, and Chris thought it was "okay." We were all glad to have done it though – it was worth knowing that we had tried, even though no one else wanted to repeat the experience except for me.
From there, we moved on to a restaurant more Melissa's style – BB Sandwich Bar. Although BB's is infamous for their cheesesteaks, Melissa was looking for something sweeter. She is extremely fond of Tonni's cupcakes, ranging from vanilla to red velvet, which is sold in the same little bitty shop. Chris and I got one cupcake each, while Melissa had one to eat and one to save at home. While eating, I pointed out to Melissa that the same thing she had such an issue with earlier - eating with her hands - didn't seem to be a problem at all now. She shrugged, and said, "Yeah, that's true." It's all in the context, I suppose.
We headed back to the subway afterwards, then back home via Penn Station. I mainly slept, while Chris started "When Androids Dream." Around midnight, we finally arrived back home, visions of a surreal New York remaining in our memories in our suburban home.
current mood:  sleepy
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| Sunday, February 24th, 2008
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11:40 pm - Still crazy after all these years...
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I'm a quarter-century old. It's very strange indeed. As Mom said this morning, "A hundred years ago, you'd be middle-aged."
I had a terrific birthday weekend. First rockclimbing with my mom and pizza with my parents, then out on the town! Thanks to everyone who came out to my "party" last night to roam the wilds of Lark Street with me. It was terrific to have (most) of my friends around me, and many more people came than I expected. It was so great just to stand around and talk to people, my favorite thing to do in the world. And I finally got my birthday margarita at Bombers! I've been waiting years to get that damn drink.
It was probably the best birthday I've had since my junior year of high school, when we had the kareoke party. That party was particularly memorable because it was the first thing Chris went to since he got out of the hospital after his lung collapsed. Little did I know that I would still be so excited about his presence more than eight years later! I had the same feeling when he showed up yesterday at Susy's after work. Some birthday presents never get old. Even if he was up at 9 this morning - after less than 5 hours of sleep after driving my rather intoxicated self home - to bake my birthday cake.
All in all, yesterday and today were two very sweet days, and not just because of Chris's homemade chocolate frosting.
current mood:  chipper
current music: Academy Awards theme music
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| Friday, February 1st, 2008
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9:40 pm - Fifteen Things I've Done that You Probably Haven't
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The "Ten Things I've done that you probably haven't" is an old meme, but it's one of the few that actually interest me. I saw it at John Scalzi's (SF author) blog, The Whatever, and it got me thinking. I've done a lot of cool shit! And not just because of travel, but also because my choice to participate in some weird things. Some of these are described elsewhere on the Livejournal, but not all of them. I had trouble whittling it down to ten, so there's 15. So here's my list:
1) Gotten stuck for 3 hours on a glacier in Alaska while waiting for a new airplane to pick us up.
2) Mistakenly herded sheep while hitchhiking in Ireland.
3) Eating a “spacecake” in Amsterdam - and failing to get high. After numerous warnings to eat it slowly because of its strength.
4) Been served shrimp cocktail in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
5) Watching my parents renewing their vows in a Blue-Hawaii themed Elvis wedding in Vegas with two separate Elvises, one of them under 5 ft high.
6) Lived in a house in incredibly rural Maine for three weeks that was originally infested with spiders, lacked running water, and was surrounded by poison ivy.
7) Stayed up until dawn every day for a week straight to film a goofy movie about zombies and vampires that I starred in and had written the script for.
8) Got paid $500 for only watching one hour of TV per week for six months (when I was in sixth grade).
9) Ran around campus and through classrooms dressed up as Sue from Ms. Pac-Man with the other ghosts and Pac-Man.
10) Have interviewed Bill Nye. He carries a copy of the periodic table in his wallet!
11) Seen the only remaining head of a dodo complete with skin. It’s stored in the back storage area of the Oxford Museum of Natural History.
12) Bicycled 92 miles in one day while only planning to ride 50 (AIDS Ride for Life).
13) Walked around downtown Oxford dressed in a sheet with a logo on it and worshiping random corporate stores – McDonalds, Starbucks, etc.
14) Writing “like a buffalo thunder, with a smell of sugar” and other lyrics from Dirty Epic in chalk on the sidewalk as people walk by and give you some very strange looks.
15) Drank five-euro champagne under the Eiffel Tower in a raging thunderstorm.
Unlike most of my other blog entries, this one is a lot more fun with a bit of audience participation. Feel free to answer it in your blog or in the comments. So what have you done that I probably haven't?
current mood: chipper
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| Thursday, January 10th, 2008
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8:27 pm - Family Storytelling: Part III
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The final part of my family's stories...
Mom and Dad college stories: Although my parents grew up relatively near each other in New Jersey, they didn’t meet until attending junior college together. As they attended college in the 1970s, first in New Jersey, then in Florida, they came out of the experience with a number of colorful stories. I didn’t know certain details of them until recently (ahem, hem), but that was only icing on the cake.
Originally, my parents were strictly friends. Best friends, in fact. Mom was still good friends with Maureen, but Mom and Dad had a comfortableness around each other unlike anyone else. This was especially odd because my Dad was extremely shy at the time. Now, some of my friends joke that they’ve never heard him speak, but that could have been a legitimate statement at that time. He hardly said anything, and never ever spoke to girls. Except my Mom. Not surprisingly, he was completely in love with her. But like all sitcom-ish situations, my Mom was clueless. Completely and utterly clueless, not that fake clueless that you pretend to get out of awkward situations. He was just her best friend. Besides, as she would tell you, she was dating this guy at the time quite seriously. They were even engaged. So, like any good friend-who-is-a-boy, my father listened to her whenever she bitched about her fiancée. And from the sound of it, he wasn’t exactly a peach. Nan and Pop seriously disliked her fiancée, and repeatedly suggested that she date Dad instead. Finally, Mom wised up. She said she could imagine being like Lisa in that episode where she imagines marrying Ralph – “Kids, I’m watching mah stories!” She broke up with her fiancée just before the wedding. Although my grandparents lost some money, I think they were quite relieved. Then, she finished junior college and decided that, “Hey, Richard and his friends are at University of Florida, it looks nice, why don’t I go to college there?” So she did. Without ever stepping foot on campus before her first class. But it didn’t matter because Dad was there along with his friends, it had a good program, and that’s all she needed. Eventually, at some point in Florida, Dad got drunk one night. This in and of itself wasn’t that unusual – they did live near the Anhaeiser-Busch plant. But this night, Dad kissed Mom for the first time. And she realized that her best friend had been more than her best friend all along, and the rest is history.
Besides their get-together story, Mom and Dad had loads of other college stories. My parents went to college in Tampa, FL and lived in an apartment with a balcony that looked out over a courtyard. One fall, they were celebrating my dad’s birthday with some friends out on the balcony. As they sang happy birthday to him, they heard another group on a different balcony across the courtyard join in harmony. It turned out to be the Outlaws! The Outlaws were a semi-successful 1970s group that formed in Tampa. They ended up having two songs that still occasionally get played on the radio – “There Goes Another Love Song,” and “Green Grass and High Tides.” So although they weren’t superstars, my dad still remembers the occasion fondly.
In addition, my parents had some very colorful characters as friends. For example, one of their best friends, Billy, lived on the apartment complex’s lawn on a lawnchair for about a year. Thankfully, it was Florida, so this wasn’t the worst thing ever. But it wasn’t until I was older that I realized that Billy had been more than just odd as a student/young adult. Similarly, they had a friend who would take on any challenge to eat anything. This happened to include, on one occasion, dog food. On a different occasion when camping, they stripped this guy naked and threw him out of the tent! As my Dad hardly ever said anything, I doubt this was his idea, thankfully.
Camping trips never seemed uneventful with my father’s friends. One time they went canoing, and – somehow - they went over a waterfall! How do you not notice a waterfall? They were probably drunk at the time.
As earlier suggested, drinking was a big part of my parents’ college lives. My dad’s friends had one favorite drinking game that they created themselves. It was called “Teeth.” It involved throwing a beer cap at each other. When you threw it at someone, if you didn’t say anything, they had to catch it. However, if you said, “Teeth!” they had to bounce it off of their teeth. If they didn’t do the right task, or dropped the cap, they had to take a drink. As they continued drinking, hilarity ensued. Although previous to her college career, Mom also talked about how her and her friend Maureen would sneak across the border into New York so they could drink. At the time, the drinking age in NJ was 21, but only 18 in NY. They would hang out at skeezy bars down at the docks. That never sounded appealing to me, quite honestly.
In the case of the story about my parents getting together, it really served to reinforce the idea that my parents were meant to be together. Not that they just fell into each other’s arms, but that their relationship was based on a conscious choice. They made decisions to be together and worked on it. It also taught me and later reinforced how essential friendship is to a romantic relationship. My parents were best friends first in their relationship. It wasn’t based on a knight-in-shining-armor love, but on a cultivated mutual respect and affection. I think this is really one of the main reasons they’ve always had such a strong relationship and why I put such an emphasis on it from the beginning of my relationship with Chris. And of course, Dad winning out over jerky-bad-boy-fiancé showed that nice guys (truly nice but shy, not “Nice Guys”) can get the girl, and will be way better boyfriends and husbands than the alternative.
However, many of these stories served the purpose of entertainment mixed with warnings. As in, “We were jerkasses, do something better with your time in college than we did.” Although I think this applied most strongly to incidents like the canoeing mishap, it was a general theme of many of my parents’ college stories. They acknowledged to me that they drank a lot, and that they had exposure to that atmosphere. They even admitted having fun doing it. But they also weighed that with the idea that they didn’t approve of me doing it, and that really, there were better things that one could do with one’s time. Mom has said many a time that she wished she took more advantage of the many opportunities available at college. And honestly, from my freshman and sophomore years in college, I can verify that there are many things more fun than hanging out with obnoxious people when they are drunk. (Unobnoxious people can be another story.) In some ways, I think that even without the “afterschool message,” my parents’ telling these stories actually made drinking less attractive to me. It wasn’t mysterious or fascinating to me. It was something they did and were willing to talk about it, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. And quite honestly, who wants to be more like their parents on something like that?
Mom’s school stories: My mom, for those who don’t know her, is an elementary school teacher. From as early as I can remember, she has told me stories of her experiences in schools.
Some of her earliest school stories were about her teaching in Florida, in some very rural school districts. One day, while she was attempting to teach language skills via animal identification, she held up a picture of an opossum. One kid said, “We had that for dinner last night!” Mom was rather surprised, to say the least.
After moving back up to the north, Mom took a position at a facility for children who were very mentally disturbed. She worked there because many of them were also mentally retarded and required serious language help. The story of one child in particular always stuck with me. He was the child of circus people, who locked him in a cage for hours and days on end with the animals. As he was only a child while he was in the school facility, he must have been very young when this happened. As a result of this abuse, he behaved like an animal, one who never had positive contact with people. He didn’t communicate, was violent, and didn’t know how to express emotion. He was – and my mom never uses this term lightly – unsavable. He was just pushed too far over the edge from a very young age. He was incapable of showing – much less understanding – love. Although he probably had the worst history, there were other children who had also been horrifically abused. There were also some that the teachers knew it wasn’t a question of if, but when, they would be going to jail.
Thankfully, working at this school wasn’t all gloom and doom. In fact, because the students were so out-of-the-mainstream, Mom and her friend Karen had a lot of flexibility. Young and idealistic as they were, the two of them thought it was a good idea to bring their class on field trips. They brought them to the many, many places these kids never had an opportunity to go to before. They even brought them on short hikes! When they passed by the cliffs near Thatcher Park, one kid pointed out the window and asked, “Who made those?” He had never seen anything so big or dramatic that wasn’t man-made.
After she became pregnant with me, Mom switched jobs, and eventually ended up in her current job at her current school district. Although it is a normal school district, it’s also a public school in an urban area. So she faced some of the same problems she faced at her previous jobs. This time it was different though, because I was around. And I was always welcome at her school. I spent many days in her classroom, part of her groups at first, and then growing to help and guide the children. Eventually I graduated to teaching them myself, as a substitute aide and teacher.
All along the way, I heard stories of her children, who were never biological, never my brothers and sisters, but her children nonetheless. She told me about the broken families, where the children lived with their mother and her rotating line-up of boyfriends. She told me about families where the parents, whether single or not, worked terribly hard and yet still had difficulty providing the necessities for their children. She told me about the foster children, bounced from home to home, never quite knowing where they would end up. She told me about the children whose only meals for the day were at school, because breakfast and lunch were free. The children who dreaded summer break because they didn’t have anywhere to go during the day, anything to eat in the house.
As it turns out, somewhere along the line, Mom realized that she most loved the most difficult children. Probably because she knew they needed the most love. She loves her students as her children to the point of almost making it real at times – she seriously considered adopting one of the foster children she taught. (It fell through for a number of reasons.)
Hearing my Mom’s school stories always reinforced how extremely lucky and blessed I am in life. I often heard these stories at dinnertime, while I was eating in my house, with my two parents on either side of me. The contrast between my situation and theirs was clearly evident, even from a young age. Not only was my family economically stable/well-off, but also emotionally nurturing and supportive. My parents always emphasized both sides of that coin. Also, these stories raised the awareness in me that not everyone was as well off as I was. Unlike some other kids in our comfortable suburb, I had a strong awareness that most of the world was not like this. I knew that even though I lived comfortably, less than 20 miles away were people living in desperate situations. Perhaps most importantly, I knew that children, who did nothing to cause their poverty, were living in these situations.
Besides just knowing about the existence of poverty, Mom’s school stories instilled in me the value and need to help others who were less fortunate. I think she felt this responsibility partly because of her recognition that others, including family and friends, had supported her family when they were poor. But this responsibility was more than just a payback, it was a task to be embraced and enjoyed. She always framed it as a commitment, a welcomed duty, not a burden. Her passion and belief in her job always shined through in these stories, even on the toughest days when she looks forward to retirement.
My passion for social justice derives from a combination of these stories and my time spent at Mom’s school. Because I knew that no matter what these children’s parents did or did not do, the kids did not deserve to live in poverty. They did not deserve to live that life. As adults, with the potential to have influence, we had to take care of them in whatever ways we could. For my mom, it was teaching. For me, it is advocacy and campaigning – changing the systems themselves.
So those are my family’s stories. There are many others, of course. There’s loads of stories my mom tells about me as a child, from my babysitter dressing me up as a clown when I was asleep, to me managing to put anything in my mouth that I could imagine was food. There’s ones about my aunts and uncles that didn’t directly involve my parents, like Aunt Patty breaking both her arms one summer and meeting Bruce Springsteen at a party another summer. Most recently, there’s Shea stories, involving Chris’s parents and extended family. But I chose these because they are the ones that have affected me the most, shaped my view of the world.
Eventually, Chris and I will have our own family stories. We have some of our own stories now, that we tell our family and friends. But I feel that these stories don’t quite solidify as truly “family stories” until we pass them on to our own children. Although not for some years, I do foresee a time when we will be able to pass them on. When that time comes, I hope that when we do tell our children our family stories, that they are just as vivid and insightful as when our families shared their stories with us.
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| Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
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1:23 pm - Finally!!!
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Eeeeee! I have a job, I have a job! [does a dance]
That is all.
current mood:  ecstatic
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| Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
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11:33 pm - Happy New Year!
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Happy New Year to all of my friends! May you have a joyful year overflowing with hope and love. A year lacking worry and full of grace.
2008 is here!
A few thoughts on the future:
"Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it."
-Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
"When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world … look to Christ."
- Pope John Paul II
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
-E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977
current mood: hopeful
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| Sunday, December 30th, 2007
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7:47 pm - Family Storytelling: Part II
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The (Mis)Adventures of Nan: When I was in elementary school, I had to write yet another book about a family story. Since I had already recounted Grandma’s tale several times, I decided to focus on Mom’s mother, Nan. Although I knew there were a lot of stories about her, I had no idea how many until I started talking to her and Mom about it.
Nan was a precocious, curious child who was unafraid of trouble. She was known for her naughtiness, even going so far as to steal bow off of graves to use as hair ribbons! She also had no fear, of heights or consequences. At some point, she decided that she would try flying with the help of an umbrella. As Mary Poppins wouldn’t come out in the movies until 1964, I have no idea where she got this idea. However, one day she jumped from the roof of their garage armed with only a brolly. Thankfully, she had only a few scrapes to show for it.
As Nan grew up, she lost little of her idealism or naivety. She first met my grandfather on a city bus, standing near him and noting how handsome he looked. He saw her as well that day, and had a similar reaction. Coincidently (or perhaps through fate), she re-met that young man only a few days later at a USO (I think) dance. They danced together, still liked each other, and the rest is history. Common to the time, they were both young when they married, with Nan having just graduated from high school. Nan was so naïve that the first time they went to a restaurant, she pointed to the hors d'oeuvres on the menu and asked, “What are these horsey doovers?”
Although Pop (my grandfather) adored Nan, he also loved to tease her. Early in their marriage, he requested that she make one of his favorite dishes for him, split-pea soup. Knowing her lack of kitchen skills, he told her that she had to wake up very early so she could split each pea individually. Thankfully, Nan stopped by Great-Grandma’s house for assistance before setting off to the store. After scolding her for her silliness, Great-Grandma quickly set her straight on the actual task of making the soup.
Even after having children, Nan and her friends loved joking with one another. When Mom was a young child, she lived in a small planned town in New Jersey called Winfield. They lived in a duplex, connected to the other side by a door in the basement. At this time, Pop was working the night shift, and so was sleeping upstairs. One Halloween, as Nan was giving out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters, masked bandits ran up the basement stairs, stole the bowl of candy out of her hands and dashed out the door! Nan, having no idea what just happened, started screaming her head off, yelling, “Thieves, thieves!”. Pop woke up in a hurry and sprinted out the front door, clothed in only his undershirt and boxers. He caught up to the masked intruders and tackled one on the grass. Under him, he heard muffled cries of, “Lloyd, it’s us, Lloyd!” Once he removed the masks, he realized he had tackled “Aunt” Joan, a close friend of the family who lived in the adjoining house. The other thief was, of course, her husband, “Uncle” Jimmy. I’m sure they had quite a laugh afterwards, but I’m sure they never expected to be tackled with such force when planning the prank.
These stories provided a lot to me, in a very different way than the stories of my other relatives. Most of these stories were more light-hearted and funny than the others, if nothing else. They really demonstrated the sense of humor my family had, especially my Mom’s side. But they also showed me that even my grandmother was a young girl once, who did naughty, silly things. I wasn’t encouraged to do these things, but I knew that the adults weren’t always adults. Lots of parents remind their kids that they were once kids too, but they are never believable without stories. These tales provided the evidence, the truth to the assertion that perhaps they did understand childhood and all of its trials and fun. It also showed me that even back then, little girls weren’t always afraid to get dirty. Along with Laura Ingells Wilder and Anne of Green Gables, Nan provided an example of girlhood that wasn’t prim and proper, but adventurous and fun.
These stories also provided a counter-balance to the high standards set in the immigrant stories. They didn’t lower these standards, but they provided a bit more wiggle room. The split-pea and Halloween stories especially demonstrated to me that everyone screws up sometimes, but that when that happens, you just get back on your feet and laugh about it. Although the mistake may have already been made, you can still do your best to fix it and move on. And they showed that adults didn’t start off knowing everything they do now. Recalling the split-pea story and Nan’s current culinary skills gives me a bit more hope for myself as a decent cook.
Stories of Mom growing up: Along with Nan, Mom has told me many stories over the years about her own childhood. One of these stories were included in the original version of The (Mis)Adventures of Nan, but it was really more about Mom and Aunt Linda.
Although not whole stories, background on my mother’s upbringing always provided the context them. Part of this background came through family artifacts. For one of my grandparents’ anniversaries, Mom compiled their old fashioned family movies into a VHS tape. Through those old films, I was able to see their family Christmases over and over and over again. The films were stereotypical 1950s Christmas home movies, excepting the Santa Claus arriving in a helicopter bit (especially knowing that that Santa was going to stop at my Mom’s house for a beer after arriving). However, although Mom and Aunt Linda grew up with a semi-middle-class lifestyle, it wasn’t due to their family inherently having a lot of money. Whenever I heard about their presents or being spoiled, it was quickly followed by the explanation that Pop worked his butt off to provide for his family. He constantly had at least 2 jobs, and sometimes three. Now there’s a note of sadness in her description (Pop died a few years ago), but there was always a deep admiration in her tone. But knowing the sacrifices her parents made to bring Mom and Aunt Linda (and later, Uncle Rob) the lifestyle they did also made them seem even brattier as children at times.
The brattiest thing they ever did occurred when Mom and Aunt Linda were fairly young. There was a television in their shared bedroom, and they were watching it one day. Suddenly, they ran downstairs, screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, the TV’s on fire, the TV’s on fire!” Of course, Nan rushed upstairs in panic. When she reached it, she immediately saw that the TV was not on fire. To which Mom and Aunt Linda said, “April Fools!” Except that it wasn’t April Fools Day. It wasn’t even April. Nan was seriously displeased, needless to say. Even though it was Mom’s idea, Aunt Linda got punished because as the older sister, “she should have known better.”
The other prominent story from their childhood occurred during Mom’s thirteenth birthday party. At the party, someone suggested having a séance, a fairly typical girl birthday party idea. So they turned off the lights, sat in a circle and someone asked if spirits would come. Except that the whole thing was much scarier than they realized. Just when everyone’s nerves were about shot, one girl said, “God, if you’re there, give us a sign!” And there was a sharp rap on the window! Followed by two more! The girls started screaming and sprang up in terror. Although Mom was frightened at first, she quickly cleared her head and knew exactly who was responsible. Linda! Linda is two years older than Mom, and was constantly trying to get revenge for years of being blamed whenever Mom did something wrong (such as the TV incident). When they started the séance, Linda had previously gone upstairs and Mom’s best friend Maureen, because they were “bored.” Uncle Rob, who was only 3 at the time, went up there with them. Of course, Linda claimed to have no idea what happened and certainly was not involved in such trickery. Maureen denied the charges as well. Until little toddler Rob emerged from the bedroom, dragging several curtain rods taped together. Which were the perfect device for hanging out the bedroom window and tapping the window below. I’m not sure that Aunt Linda ever confessed, but there was no question whose idea that was.
From listening to stories of my mom’s childhood, I had a bit more perspective into a specific time and my mom’s personality. Knowing about Pop’s jobs, I understood why she had such a strong work ethic and wanted to instill this in me. I felt proud hearing about Pop’s hard work and knowing that I came from that tradition. Also, I knew that I was fortunate in comparison to my parents’ childhood lifestyles, because although my grandparents provided well, they still didn’t grow up with many of the luxuries I was used to. My father didn’t go out to dinner at a regular restaurant until he was 18 or so. And like Nan’s stories, Mom’s childhood shenanigans just showed that she was an oblivious and naughty child at one point too. Plus, these stories are just plain entertaining, especially when Mom and Aunt Linda tell them together.
current mood:  nostalgic
current music: Humming Spoon's The Underdog
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| Friday, December 28th, 2007
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1:08 am - "Myth is more potent than history" - Family Storytelling Part I
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Thanksgiving was always the one time of year that I knew I would see my extended family. Sometimes I saw them on Christmas, occasionally on Easter, but always on Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving tradition was driving down to New Jersey, listening to Alice’s Restaurant at noon, eating dinner at Aunt Linda and Uncle Rick’s house and visiting my Aunt, Uncle, cousin (Sarah), and Grandma on the other side of the family the day after. That was the routine – that was just the way things were. And after the year away in England, that’s how things were this year as well. For the most part, at least. We ate dinner at Grandma’s and visited Aunt Linda and Uncle Rick’s the next day, so that was different. And Chris was with us this time, so that was a wonderful change.
But the most important thing remained – we spent time with our extended family and it was good. I am extremely lucky that my family has very good relationships with each other. There’s a couple times when there’s a little bit of tension, but it’s rare. Most of the time, we spend sitting around the table, talking about everything that we missed in each other’s lives the rest of the year. We play games sometimes, or watch TV, but mainly just talk.
And much of that talking is storytelling. That was certainly no exception this year. Chris and I told stories of England and our travels – and Aunt Patty responded with her own. Uncle Bert and Aunt Ronnie were at Grandma’s with their son Joseph, so we heard lots of military stories from Uncle Bert. (Them being present was exciting in and of itself, because they live in California and Chris had never met them.) Rob, Mary, and Mom told stories of teaching and children. Uncle Rick told stories of struggling and surviving through late-stage cancer. (I hadn’t seen him since he got sick, so again, very glad to be there.) I think more than many families, storytelling is in my blood.
Perhaps this is why I’m so interested in storytelling, enough to focus on it in my masters dissertation. The act of storytelling and the reasons for it interest me almost as much as the stories themselves. As my name shows, I’ve always considered myself a storyteller. I’ve always created tales, whether they were about my stuffed animals or just recalling what happened to me that day. But perhaps most tellingly, I’ve always monologued to myself. I think in sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs, recounting what has happened, how it could have happened differently and imagining what could have happened in the future. As the length of my LJ entries can show, I’ve felt an obsessive need to recount what has happened to me and reflect on it. Although I always wanted to walk around with a tape recorder (it looks so fun!) and I do talk a lot (as anyone who knows me in RL knows), I’ve found writing is a key tool for reflecting and planning. To figure out who I was, where I was coming from and where I was going. (My response to Shameem’s comment “What is with all of this ‘finding yourself’ stuff?” in high school was “You don’t?!”) But most importantly, writing was essential to just get down all of those words, all of those stories in my head.
In the past, I thought everyone did think like this – not just in words, but completed ideas. I didn’t understand Deb when she said she thought in images. When I found out that most people didn’t think like this – which is why my first-person narratives could be horribly boring at times – I assumed that storytelling was less important to them. I didn’t find out how wrong I was on that point until beginning research on my paper.
What I learned in my research, from both reading and in the field, was that storytelling occupies an essential part of our lives. Not only in our cultural stories, but in how people process information and events. Although most people may analyze less than I do (as Elizabeth Gilbert says in Eat, Pray, Love, “Can’t I have an unexamined lunch?”), they still use stories to make sense of the world. My entire paper was on how people use stories to put together events chronologically, outline themes, and characterize themselves and others around them.
Personally, I strongly associate storytelling with family bonding, if that’s not obvious from my intro. But while doing research, I realized how destructive it can be within families and societies. Some of the papers described how storytelling can demean people within families, reinforce abusive power structures, and encourage immoral behavior. Thankfully, the storytelling in my family almost always lifted me up and shaped what I consider the best parts of me today. As I reflected on my family’s storytelling, I wanted to write down these stories and what effect they have had on me.
Great-Grandpa’s stories: Unlike my relationship with my grandparents now, which is loving but a bit distant, my mother was very close to her grandparents. Mom and Aunt Linda spent an immense amount of time at their house. Unfortunately, for all of the time they spent, Great-Grandpa didn’t talk a lot about his experiences. Fortunately, they do know a bit about his incredible life and passed it down to me.
Great-Grandpa was born in what was then Czechlovakia. He came over by himself on the boat when he was 12 and stayed with some family members for a few years. He set out on his own when he was only 15! (I can’t imagine that.) He made his way in the world, and was a member of the Calvary. But the story I know best was his bicycle ride.
He and three of his friends decided that they wanted to bicycle around the world when they were eighteen. They prepared extensively, even creating postcards that they sold to raise money. We have one of the originals, with the four of them smiling out at us, their young optimism shining through the black-and-white. They had their bicycles next to them, which look surprisingly modern. Three of the boys headed off from New Jersey – one boy’s mother locked his bicycle in the garage! That detail always struck me as hilarious while providing a bit of context – not everyone at that age was as independent as Great-Grandpa. Great-Grandpa did leave, but stopped in Ohio because he fell seriously sick partway through. The other two boys bicycled all the way to California. There, they gave up their round-the-world dreams to join a circus as the World’s Best Bicyclists. Which at the time, having rode across the country, they could have been!
This story taught me quite a few values that have influenced me over the course of my life. The bicycle ride in particular instilled in me a sense of adventure and love for travel. Cycling across the country has been a huge goal of mine for as long as I can remember, and it’s one of my mom’s as well. Considering that I had this dream far before I had cycled farther than 25 miles at a time, it’s obviously influenced by this story. But even beyond that immediate goal, I think my desire to see new places and experience unpredictable things was influenced by this tale. A need to know life through travel runs in my family. The fact that I could laugh at some of the most bizarre things during our travels derives from this love for adventure and its fickle nature.
This story also taught me the importance of self-reliance. After all, if Great-Grandpa was able to set off on his own at 15, then why shouldn’t I be able to if circumstances demanded? If he could bike to Ohio on those roads with that bicycle, why couldn’t I in this day and age? With that example, I knew that inner strength was possible and could be drawn upon if necessary. This idea that people in our family could get through anything – and succeed despite those challenges – has always inspired me to be independent and accomplished. Perhaps it’s even contributed to my high self-standards and perfectionism. Likewise, it also encouraged me to set high goals and have confidence I could reach them with hard work. Unsurprisingly, I think intensity runs in my family – at least Mom’s side (as anyone who has met her can attest).
Grandma’s immigrant story: Whenever I had to write a story about my family for school, I wrote about Grandma’s story. It’s such a perfect immigrant tale.
My Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather on my father’s side came over to the United States from Poland for the sake of greater opportunities. Poland didn’t have good luck, even before the Iron Curtain. Unfortunately, they did have some financial problems in the US. After she gave birth to a little boy, Babcia (pronounced Bopshi; my Great-Grandmother on Dad’s side) traveled back to Poland with her son to borrow money from her family, while Ja-Ju (Great-Grandfather) stayed behind.
However, Babcia was unaware that she was pregnant with Grandma at the time. As the journey was very long, she gave birth to Grandma in Poland. Unfortunately, due to American law, she was not allowed to return to the US until Grandma was at least three years old.
Finally, they were able to come back to the United States, and passed through Ellis Island. Grandma says her first memories are of meeting her father and seeing the Statue of Liberty. She said she remembers thinking he was handsome. Now that I think about it, they might not have had photographs of him to show her at the time, poor as they were. Oddly enough, Grandma was the only child in her family to be naturalized as a citizen. Despite her having older and younger siblings, all of them were born in America.
Because of this story, Ellis Island is a moving place for me. Visiting it, I could close my eyes and imagine Bapchi as a young woman with her two children, maneuvering through this crowded and chaotic place. I could feel the history of it, both familial and national. As of a few years ago, Babcia and Grandma’s names are on the wall at Ellis Island, making them as much of a part of it as the walls and floor.
Like Great-Grandpa’s story, Grandma’s story inspired a forward-thinking attitude in me. It introduced the idea that change is often to be welcomed and even pursued if it could lead to a better future. That placing hope in a future situation, even when it is risky or dangerous, is a good thing. Thankfully, neither side of my family has ever encouraged stasis. This willingness to take risk was part of the reason I was able to pick up and move to England for a year. I was certainly not the first in my close family to live in a foreign country, even if it was for a vastly different reason.
Being from a family of not-so-far-back-immigrants has also reminded me of the importance of embracing new people from other county. Being thankful that they did allow Bapchi, Uncle John, and Grandma through Ellis Island that day. How close I could be to not being American. I think I have far more sympathy for immigrants, either legal or illegal, than someone who would not have these stories as part of their family tradition. It makes it easier for me to imagine their desperation, their need for hope and a better future ahead of them.
More family stories to come…
current mood:  grateful
current music: Our new TV on in the background...
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| Sunday, November 11th, 2007
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3:48 pm - Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. - Vonnegut
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Since I am keeping a prodigiously detailed journal of Chris' and my European trips (yes, keeping – I'm still in the process of writing it), I just thought I'd write this one LiveJournal entry for anyone who was still interested in listening to me blather on about them. It could also be useful in case I never do finish the journal, which is a possibility considering my pace. As everyone I’ve talked to about the trips has asked me, "What was your favorite?" and I didn't really have an answer, I'm organizing this entry in terms of superlatives. This entry covers three separate trips. On our first trip, we took a day tour of the lower Highlands of Scotland, spent a day in Edinburgh, and spent a day in York (in England, which I had already visited). The second trip, we traveled around Ireland, where we visited Dublin, Glenalough, Newgrange/Hill of Tara, the Erris area (where I did my masters research), Galway, and Cork. Our third trip was for three weeks and covered many of the major cities in Western Europe. We visited Paris, Bordeaux, Barcelona, Avignon, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Berlin, and Amsterdam.
Most unexpectedly favorite place: ( Barcelona )
Most historical city (ancient): ( Rome, Rome, Rome. )
Most disappointing (high expectations): ( Rome. )
Most disappointing (no expectations): ( Avignon. )
Most historical (modern): ( Berlin. )
Most oddly counter-cultural: ( Amsterdam. )
Most gastronomic: ( Bordeaux. )
Most artistic: ( Paris. )
Most beautiful (natural):( Western Irish Coast. )
Most beautiful (man-made): ( Venice. )
Biggest language barrier: ( Our hostel in Venice. )
Most livable: ( Vienna. )
Most desperate: ( Hitching from Ballycastle, Ireland. )
Most surreal: ( Herding sheep in Ireland. )
Most quaint: ( Pitlochry in Scotland. )
Most touristy but fun: ( Kissing the Blarney Stone. )
Most Just Plain Ancient: ( Newgrange. )
Scotland and York photos: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2141862&l=95d0e&id=405889
Ireland photos: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144699&l=6a9a5&id=405889
Continental Europe photos 1: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147336&l=a4478&id=405889
Continental Europe photos 2:
http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147342&l=bdf04&id=405889
Continental Europe photos 3:
http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2147344&l=38bd4&id=405889
current mood: remembering
current music: Hearing Mama Shea listen to a wedding show on TV
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| Thursday, November 8th, 2007
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5:04 pm - We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience. - Martin Buber
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More interesting things that happened over this past summer...
Linacre Ball: Oxford colleges have a tradition of throwing elaborate parties, with the most elaborate of these being their annual (biannual for the uber-rich colleges) College Balls. Our theme for the Linacre Ball this year was Pirates and Princesses, which I thought sounded quite goofy. It turned out to be rather goofy, but also a lot of fun.
( Linacre Ball continued... )
Photos from the ball: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2116728&l=125aa&id=405889
Cowley Road Carnival: Most of the time, Oxford seems like Tourist-‘O-Mania. Hordes of tourists, particularly school groups, crowd the city center, shooting photographs and just generally blocking up everything for the residents. But as much of Oxford’s economy runs off of tourism (and the rest off of undergrads – grad students don’t have any money!), I couldn’t complain too much about it. Especially because I was relatively privileged to live there at all.
But thankfully, there are sections of Oxford very different from the medieval downtown. Downtown is certainly beautiful, but occasionally just requires some escaping from. And one of those sections is Cowley Road. (The other is Jericho, which has become kind of gentrified.) Cowley Road is off-the-beaten-path tourist-wise, but is where much of the culture of actual Oxford residents resides.
( Cowley Road Carnival continued... )
The Shea family visiting: During the summer, a couple weeks after exams, the Sheas visited jolly olde England. There were some significant worries, as Papa Shea Did Not Want to come. Part of the reason was because terrorists had attacked the Glasgow Airport only a few days earlier. Thankfully, the terrorists were incredibly incompetent (“Let’s drive our car into an airport, and then pour gasoline on ourselves while we’re on fire! Great idea!”) and were quickly tackled by hardy Glaswegians. The other reason I think Papa Shea was uncomfortable had to do with cultural differences – the difference in driving and the general fish-out-of-water things that the Sheas sometimes struggle with. Papa Shea in particular is incredibly picky about food. (However, I thought Chris adjusted to England remarkably quickly, considering he had never visited. He picked up on slang and phrasing much faster than I did.)
( The Sheas visit England continued... )
current mood: reflective
current music: 6Music's Tom Robinson
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| Monday, October 29th, 2007
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8:58 pm - Wildlife spottings!
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I had two very neat wildlife spottings recently, and they both brightened up my day.
The first occurred on Saturday night, as I was driving back from Saratoga around 2:30 AM. On the Northway, I saw a red fox running into the woods! The only other time I have ever seen a fox in the wild was in Alaska. I only saw him for a moment, but it was long enough to spot his deep black eyes and bushy tail. I just hope he doesn't think it's a good idea to cross the Northway. I yelled, "Fox!" but Chris was so fast asleep in the passenger's seat that he didn't even respond.
The second one happened on Sunday afternoon, while we were playing football (American :-) ) in Longkill Park. Someone pointed out that a hawk was flying in the sky, far above us. That in itself isn't unusual. But only a few minutes later, we saw that the red-tailed hawk had perched on the fence bounding our field! Our football goes over that fence all of the time! We were all standing about halfway up the field, so it wasn't that close, but much closer than I've ever seen one in the wild. While the rest of us stared, Chris started approaching it. Mark offered him 100 dollars to pet it. Although I don't think he would have actually tried to pet it (it might even be illegal), he did get remarkably close. I'm not sure who was gutsier - Chris or the hawk! Eventually, the hawk became annoyed, and flew off to a nearby tree. He watched us play football for a while, and then flew away.
Both incidents cheered me because where we lived in England was quite urban, even though it wasn't a huge city. It's been lovely to enjoy the trees changing color and seeing wildlife beyond squirrels (even if that's terribly unusual in Clifton Park).
current mood: comfortable
current music: Listening to Papa Shea watch Yankee Doodle Dandy on TV
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3:10 pm - "Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure." -Rachel Naomi Remen
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This is Part II (out of three entries) describing a number of events that occurred this spring/summer that I never had the chance to write about, but would like to remember in detail.
My parents visiting: My parents visited us during the spring break between Hilary and Trinity terms. As they had already visited England before, they were able to take their time and not pack as many attractions in as they would normally. My family vacations often move at semi-breakneck speed and involve incredible amounts of driving. Although my parents went to a number of different attractions, the most memorable was Warwick Castle, for both reasons good and bad.
We chose to visit Warwick Castle on that particular day because they had a series of special events for Easter Weekend. As advertised on their website, they were going to have a Siege!! And indeed, the Siege was quite impressive. They actually brought in close to life-size “armies” to reenact the Battle of Warwick, where someone (can’t find info about the battle on the Interwebs) attacked Warwick Castle. They lined up on both sides, complete with replica weapons and all, and kicked the crap out of each other. We watched from the top of the Castle mound, the highest point in the Castle. Right where the family members of Warwick probably would have been standing. It was fantastic.
To top it all off, the “army” members were volunteer re-enactors. Or in other words, hard-core nerds! We had a 20-minute talk with a monk, who I think was actually a real life monk, about the Magna Carta. It started off with me mentioning Oxford, then ended up with American history. Of course, I loved it. We also had a talk with a really funny 10-year-old kid back at the army’s camp. The re-enactors stayed over the weekend with their camps set up in period style. This kid was attempting to show some tourists (including us) how to use a bow and arrow, but kept pointing it at them instead of the ground. His mom freaked out a couple of times. “Don’t point it at them!” His enthusiasm was infectious, but he did need to learn a couple basic safety tips.
So those were the good reasons. Now for the bad (but not completely) reason why Warwick Castle was memorable. We had arrived rather late in the day on a special weekend, so we ended up parking in the rarely-used overflow parking lot. At the end of the day, we decided to go into the town for dinner, and decided “Our car’s fine there.” Famous last words. Returning from dinner, we found our (rented) car was the single vehicle in a lot that had a huge padlock on the gate. I think our collective, simultaneous thought was “Shit.” But people of action that we are, we started our long walk back to the Castle doors. We passed some re-enactors on the way, but they had no idea where we might be able to find some security people. Eventually, we did find some security people, but they were as befuddled as us. Because the lot was used so rarely, they had no idea who might have the keys. After driving us back and forth around the grounds several times (the gate was really hard to find in the dark), they dropped us off at the café outside the ticket booth while they went to investigate. By that point, we had been with them for over an hour. They could have just told us, “Tough luck,” but they were incredibly kind and were going to help us solve this issue by any means necessary. They even considered finding bolt cutters. In the meantime, Chris and Mom walked into the town to see if the local bed and breakfast had any space, in case we had to wait it out until morning. Just before they were going to check us in, we got a call on our mobile phone that they had located the keys and could let us out! Hurray! It was the sort of situation that is so ridiculous that it’s funny, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Other cool things we saw on the trip:
- The church door in the pretty Cotswalds’ town of Stow-on-the-Wald that probably inspired the door to the Mines of Moria in Lord of the Rings
- Canterbury Cathedral – Probably my favorite cathedral of all time. Relatively simple design (not cluttered like Westminster Abbey), the location of some fascinating history (martyrs!), and intriguing hidden details.
- Seeing Spamalot in London. Complete with the guy sitting next to me that sang along to all of the songs – loudly.
- The Roman Baths in Bath
- Blenheim Castle, especially the lovely gardens
Exams and post-exams : Oxford Exams Suck. I knew they were going to be harder than any exam I had ever taken, including essay exams, and I was right. My exams were over two days, with three hours for each exam. During each exam, we had to write three essays, which were supposed to total about 5000 words. Within these essays, we were not only expected to draw from class lectures and readings, but also show outside knowledge and give citations for our sources. All of that on top of having original, brilliant ideas. There’s a reason they gave us almost the entire last semester to study for exams! But with many hours spent in the Linacre College library (away from the Internet), a big stack of index cards, and a lot of hand-written practice exams, I survived through them. Even though my hand was sore afterwards. But more importantly, I felt prepared when I got the exam, and was mostly satisfied with my answers. There was only one essay I didn’t quite finish because of time, and it was only missing a sentence or two.
Then came the partying! Chris and Drew met me after exams, as Drew was visiting us in Oxford. Chris knows I don’t particularly like flowers, which many other people had, but he did come bearing a bag of Ben’s Cookies. They are cookies from heaven. Seriously. While Drew and Chris visited the Oxford museums, I moved on to the Turf Tavern with my classmates, place of celebration since approximately 1300. Oxford definitely has a way of making you feel like you are part of a grand tradition, even in its drinking. We were even dressed in the same way as exam finishers would have been then! (Of course, those days it was all male, so some things have thankfully changed.) From there, we moved onto the picnic that our department threw for us. They had a barbecue flaming, with Paul manning the meat and veggie burgers. It was fun to see my advisor with an apron on, flipping hamburgers like it was his backyard. We had a really nice time at the picnic, hanging out and talking about whatever. No longer freaking out, no longer worried about exams. Since many of my classmates were leaving Oxford just after exams, it was also the last time all of us would be together. Unlike my previous majors, where I didn’t have many personal ties, I truly enjoyed my time spent with people in my program. My social awkwardness struck occasionally, but they seemed to mostly accept it with a shrug. Of course, the best part was spending time with people who had such a diversity of interests, experiences and backgrounds. I think I learned as much about “how the world works” talking to my classmates as I did from my professors. Which my professors wouldn’t consider an insult at all, as the people in charge of my program valued that interaction themselves. That was probably the most valuable part of graduate school – that respect and appreciation for our own intellectual (and practical) contributions. So the picnic was an appropriate end to our enjoyably challenging program. Plus, we got a photograph taken in a tree!
Photographs from exam day: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2114204&l=a4c20&id=405889
Drew visiting: Due to his work scheduling, Drew chose to visit us right before my exams. I was really frustrated that I couldn’t spend more time with him, but he didn’t seem to take offense. However, it was terrific to see him, as we hadn’t seen any of our “home” friends since Christmas break. Although Chris spent a lot more time with him than I did, I did take the time before exams to have a nice pub lunch out. We just talked about what was going on in our lives and let the conversation wander where it would. E-mail doesn’t normally foster those sort of conversations, except with very specific people. After exams, we had a great day in London, where Drew got to see all of the major “on the street” sites (Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, etc.) and the British Museum. I love the British Museum, and I get a kick out of showing people around museums that I’ve gotten to know pretty well. I totally could be a tour guide in another life. (Or perhaps in this life, if the job search doesn’t pan out.)
Photos of Drew’s trip: http://oxford.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2114781&l=d4260&id=405889
current mood: groovy in the electronic sense
current music: 6Music's Introducing... with Tom Robinson
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| Friday, October 26th, 2007
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1:20 pm - "When I look down, I miss all the good stuff when I look up, I just trip over things" - Ani Defranco
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Thankfully, most of the time I do look up in life. Even when it does result in me ending up occasionally face-down on the floor. Alas, some bruises are necessary. Unfortunately, being so busy with this looking up business means that I haven't had much time to write about it. So this entry and the next are just a run-downs of (almost) everything of interest (to me, at least) that's happened over the last several months that I would like to remember and didn't have a chance to write about. However, I am going to write about our travels and leaving Oxford in another entry.
May Day: Although a bigger deal than in the US, May Day isn't a huge deal in the UK. In fact, none of their holidays are, at least not compared to the zealousness of Americans when it comes to holidays. But unlike the rest of the country (as in many things), May Day is a big deal in Oxford. That's because - again, like in many things - Oxford is stuck in a time warp. But in a cute, joyful way that dates back to medieval times.
On May Day, at 5:00 AM, the Magdalen College chorus stands at the top of the college tower and sings. They sing traditional choral songs, and are often accompanied by the tower's bells. However, because most students are way too lazy – or just nocturnal - to get up that early, many of them stay up all night instead. Some colleges even have their balls on May Day Eve. Or in other words, May Day is yet another excuse to get terribly drunk and stay up on a weekday. (And to jump in the incredibly shallow stream nearby from the rather high bridge, but that's something I really don't understand.) But honestly, I doubt the motivation was actually much different in medieval times. I've heard of some of the crazy things they did then. Talk about Old university legends!
As I did want to get some sleep, with exams approaching, I convinced Chris that it was probably a bad idea to stay up until 5:00 AM. But we did want to get in on the fun, so we compromised by attending part of the May Day Eve pub crawl. We started off at The Grand Cafe, which is this very posh-looking place with a fancy bar and huge mirrors in the back. However, because most of their clientele comes for lunch, they have half-priced cocktails at night. Whoo, mojitos! It was the first time I had been there and it all felt terribly classy. Especially since we were surrounded by ball-goers in tuxes and evening dresses (despite our slobby wear). We then moved on to a couple other pubs, including the South African-themed Cape of New Hope. We begged off the rest of them, despite Mick's insistence, on argument of keeping our sanity.
We woke up around 4:30 AM the next morning, and walked over to the Magdalen Tower, about a 10-minute walk away. We joined a large crowd of people, some of whom appeared to have never gone to bed. Formal/club wear at 5:00 AM is a dead giveaway. However, there was a surprisingly large non-student contingent there, including families with kids and the G&D's mascot cow with a huge bunch of balloons. The Madgalen singers came out at 5:00 AM, prepared for a couple of minutes, and then – music. Clear, beautiful music. It sounded like classical music angels singing from on high. If you closed your eyes, you could easily imagine you were living in the 1500s. In many ways, Oxford was like that. Nothing ever changed, but everything changed. A surreal, lovely mix of very old and new.
People and Planet – The Forum: The Forum is one of the three national conferences People and Planet holds each year, and the only one that focuses on the democratic process. The student activists choose all of P&Ps campaigns, which the office then creates the materials to carry out. I attended the Forum on St. Patrick’s Day weekend with David and Suzy as representatives for the Oxford chapter.
We took a big ol’ minibus with P&P members from Oxford Brookes, Surrey and Reading up to Nottingham, and had a fun “mix” intro session at a lovely little community café. We slept on the gym floor of a community center, and then got up bright and early the next day before they kicked us out. We grabbed some hot cross buns from a small grocery store (I think I ate more hot cross buns that weekend then I ever had previously in my entire life – hell, maybe more just that first day) and headed to the first session. We started with another (very silly) “warm-up” session and then did a training session on consensus decision-making.
At some point during the weekend (I don’t remember if it was the first or second day), we had to put these consensus decision-making skills to work in deciding on the new campaign for the coming year. We were deciding between campaigns focusing on ethical investment, fair trade/ethical clothing, and living wages for campus workers (which was presented by the only person I knew presenting, Rhiannon). I and the rest of the Oxford group thought the living wage one was the best, because we know how little college cleaners are paid and how expensive it is to live in Oxford. Unfortunately, most of the rest of P&P disagreed with us, and in fact, couldn’t agree on any one choice. This made a consensus rather difficult. They had us line up in lines, raising hands, switching around to say how much we actually opposed one idea or the other – all to no avail. No matter what, we couldn’t get a consensus. I can’t imagine how hard this would be about something really important like a trial! So we ended up voting on it, and the fair trade cotton/ethical clothing campaign won out.
Besides the main decision-making, I also participated in a couple of committees (on coalition-building and image) and we elected the student board representative for that year. But perhaps the most memorable was just the time we spent hanging out together. I had never met the members from Surrey before and they were delightfully weird. We had a great time riding up together, hanging out between sessions (mmm, vegan cake – well, as mmm as vegan cake can possibly be), and talking during the dinner/party. On Saturday night, they put together a big dinner, which various people brought both alcohol and instruments to, always a potent combination. We listened to some pretty awesome jamming sessions.
However, the biggest moment of bonding came when one of the office people burst into a Sunday morning session and announced: “Hey, has anyone seen Little Miss Sunshine? Well, that’s like our minibus! Come help us!” My first thought was, “Hey, I just saw that movie recently.” My second thought was, “That’s sort of funny, but it sucks for them.” My third thought (definitely the lightbulb one) was, “Oh, shit, that’s our minibus, isn’t it?” Indeed, it was. So we all ended up pushing the minibus up a slightly sloping, but longish hill to see if we could get it started on the downhill. “Oh please, oh please, let it work!” we were all hoping, some not-so-silently. And halleluiah, it worked! We couldn’t stop on the whole trip home – much like Little Miss Sunshine – but we did end up safe and sound.
People and Planet – lobbying: As part of our Ditch Dirty Development campaign, one of our tasks was to lobby our Member of Parliament. When organizing this event, I was amazed at how much more access UK citizens have to their elected government officials than American citizens do. There are some very occasional times when citizens might have access to their Representatives in the House, but even then, you usually end up talking to their staff. Hell, I was excited when I could talk to someone from the New York State Assembly! But lobbying an MP would be closer to personally lobbying Hillary Clinton! And it was so simple. We called their office up, made an appointment, and he came to meet us. Craziness. For all of the talk in American politics about connecting with “common people,” I think British politicians are much more open and willing to talk to people. They see it as more of their job.
When the day came, we dressed in “smart casual” clothing, had tea/coffee and biscuits set up, and nervously waited around the table. Our MP (one of two for Oxford), Andrew Smith, showed up a few minutes late, but was wonderfully apologetic and friendly. He sat down and munched on a couple of biscuits as we explained our campaign and made our case. I talked about the harm fossil fuel extraction can have on communities in developing countries, in terms of health and environmental hazards. Some of it was based on my own research and reading, which I was pretty proud of. He listened intently, hardly ever interrupting, and nodded a lot. When we were finished, he said that he thought we had excellent points and that he agreed with us! Hurrah! He commented that with a lot of environmental campaigns, they might have justice issues by restricting economic growth, but that this one seemed to avoid those negative points altogether. He agreed to do everything we asked him to, and even came up with something else he could do that we didn’t even know existed. It was thrilling to have a direct impact on something a policymaker was actually doing. And it was such a positive, encouraging experience. I wish our policymakers would be that accessible, but I guess that’s a standard we have to hold them to ourselves.
Christian Aid events: From January through June, I held a position as a campus representative for Christian Aid, the development/poverty agency for the UK and Irish churches. I really loved three things about Christian Aid: their dual focus on direct help and on the root/systemic causes of poverty, their ecumenicalism, and their lack of direct evangelizing (aka no strings attached). They provide religious information for people who want it, but their focus is on helping people, communities and nations, get and stay out of poverty. Most church-based poverty organizations say this (I’m looking at you, World Vision), but I believed the sincerity in this statement when I found out that you don’t even have to be Christian to work for them. Take that, you organizations that require signing a weirdly cult-like statement of faith! Because if you want to help, you know what? You should be able to help. And if you need help? We’ll give it to you, no matter what. Because that’s what Jesus did. And so, despite the frustrations of my job, I loved the tenets it was based on.
I planned two major events for my job, both fund/awareness raising events. Both focused on climate change, because it’s something I’m really passionate about and Christian Aid was in the process of launching a new campaign on it. Wanting to do something different, I proposed to organize a poetry slam-like event and a bicycle ride. I worked 5 hours a week on average to plan the events, although I spent a lot more time in the weeks leading up to them. For both, I advertised my ass off – flyers in most colleges, e-mailing JCR reps, e-mailing every local and campus relevant mailing list I could think of, creating Facebook events, e-mailing blogs. I mean, absolutely everything I could imagine. For the bicycle ride, I even sat in the mall by myself and recruited people. Having most people ignore you and almost the rest reject you can definitely be discouraging. Especially when no one is signing up for the ride that you hoped at least 50 people would sign up for. But I didn’t give up! Instead, I just publicized even more.
The performance poetry event occurred first, the day before I left on my second research trip to Ireland. I had teamed up with the host of the local, monthly poetry slam to MC the event. His events were a bit haphazard in terms of poets showing up late and such, but they had a following and he was a great host. When first planning the event, I had gone to one of the Hammer and Tongue poetry slams and it was tremendous fun. He even – coincidentally – chose me as a judge. (He just picks people he doesn’t recognize.) I also had a really cool location – the Vaults and Gardens, a terrific organic/natural café, that had great acoustics and had been used for previous Hammer and Tongue events. I even had the Hammer and Tongue slam champion (my friend from P&P) performing, and a video crew from Christian Aid to cover the event.
But then, I stood outside to sell tickets … and waited … and waited … and waited. A few people came, bought tickets, went inside. And I kept waiting. But no one else arrived! We only had about 10 total audience members and 4 poets, when I was expecting 80 audience members and 10 poets! Ack! I sort of freaked out, but thankfully only in my head. I did look distressed, but I’d be screaming if my outside reflected my inner state of mind. I justified to myself that it wasn’t my fault, that it was the fault of the weather (we had a very nasty thunderstorm for several hours earlier that day) and exams.
So instead of screaming, I went inside and started the show. And despite the very low numbers, it otherwise went beautifully. Thankfully, Steve (the host) and Danny (my friend) had a whole bunch of poems up their sleeves about climate change, environmental damage, poverty, consumerism and just about every other radical hippie concept one could imagine. We also had a vaguely nutty older gentlemen who was a Hammer and Tongue regular (and who I don’t think ever paid to come in!) and a teenage girl who was very scared but quite good. The audience seemed to enjoy it all, and despite my disappointment, I did as well. Plus, we got a lot of free food because the owner of the Vaults made a bunch of food that he expected audience members to buy and would have thrown out otherwise at the end of the night. Mmm, natural hippie food. Here’s the YouTube video of the event that the camera crew shot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss9kjp2e36w . I sound dopey, but the poetry’s good.
Even though not very many people signed up for the bicycle ride in the end, I felt like it was more of a success overall. I had about 8 people show up that morning. Although one person who signed up didn’t show up, one rider brought a friend along, so it evened out nicely. Everyone showed up just about on time and the weather seemed promising. It was chillier than expected and a bit cloudy, but had started clearing up. After signing people in, collecting their fundraised money, and giving them their goody bags of information and pins, it was time to go!
And so off they went, leaving me to clean up my table, haul it back to Linac |
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