Something Shiny! » Musings

When animals attack

emily — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:44:12 +0000

Recently, a bear attacked a camp site in Yellowstone and killed a camper. While I don’t deny the horror of the situation, I doubt that the attack was premeditated. And yet, the language we use to talk about such events would suggest that we suspect otherwise. From NPR: “the bear entered several tents and attacked the campers for no reason readily apparent to humans.” Really, NPR? Really? Are we really suggesting that humans can deduce the motivations behind a wild animal attack? We haven’t figured out what keeps airplanes up! And here’s the thing that completely baffles me: they’re going to kill the bear. Just like they kill alligators who attack people, or sharks who attack people, or zoo animals that attack people. They’re going to kill the bear for acting as wild animals do. And again, I’m not trying to say that the attack wasn’t terrible. But the death penalty for wild animals? Really? And here’s the other thing that gets me: check out that headline! ‘Grizzly Bear Suspected in Fatal Yellowstone Attack Captured.’ Suspected! What if we don’t have the right one? Then we’ve got a killer grizzly on the loose and we’ve decreased the bear population! Is anyone with me on the sheer ludicrousness of this?

Bittersweet

emily — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:43:44 +0000

Last Friday, Zack and Nikki’s baby was born. Armed with a full shock of black hair, Max was finally ready to make his grand entrance. There’s a new baby in the family, and we can’t wait to meet him at Christmas. For my part, though, the celebration was tempered with sadness. In the same week that Max was born, a dear friend passed away. I worked with Marty in college, at K-State’s main library. In any given room, she was the first to laugh and the first to smile. She always wanted to help people. One finals week, I woke up and couldn’t open my eyes; they were swollen shut. I couldn’t imagine what had happened and I didn’t know what to do. So I called Marty. Now, in all honesty, she didn’t know what to do either! But she gave me all the suggestions she could and she was a tremendous comfort to this freaked out undergrad. So, as we welcome Max into the world, we say a fond farewell to Marty. She was a spectacular woman with a beautiful soul and a tremendous spirit. She will be sorely missed.

Babies

emily — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:26:29 +0000

No, not mine. We’re anxiously awaiting news on John’s youngest brother’s wife, whose due date was Friday and who was, as of last night, 75% effaced. (I say that like I know what it means, but I don’t. I’m content to be ignorant, though, which is a rarity for me.) This baby ride has been very different from the other baby rides for which I’ve been An Anxious Observer (TM). Partly because we’re super close to the parents-to-be, and yet, geographically, we find ourselves helplessly far away. Partly because we were the first to know (weeks before the rest of the families, woot!). Partly because, well, they seem so young. They’re not, of course, that young. They’re five years younger than us. But for a person who still feels too young to have kids… well, you can see where this is going. Ahem. Anyway, for now, we wait. On pins and needles and with bated breath, we wait.

Uncooked chocolate

emily — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:58:54 +0000

Fair warning: this might turn into a rant on Food Culture, The Death Of. At the grocery store last night, I picked up a few bars of Lindt dark chocolate (80%). As the checker rang them up, she looked at them quizzically and said, “what are you going to do with those?” I told her I planned to make brownies with them. The look of confusion on her face was something otherworldly. She seemed to not believe me. I laughed and joked that I should have said I was going to eat all of the chocolate myself. She chuckled nervously and said, “yeah, but isn’t that like eating [wait for it] uncooked chocolate?” Uncooked chocolate. Uncooked chocolate? Give me a minute while I weep for how little upcoming generations know about baking and cooking. What are these people eating? McDonalds? Frozen dinners? I digress. While I puzzled over what she meant by uncooked chocolate, it became clear that she was referring to Baker’s chocolate. I explained that no, dark chocolate isn’t the same as Baker’s chocolate and that it’s perfectly fine to eat. She nodded, but she clearly thought that my brownies were going to taste like ass. She probably also wondered why I wasn’t just going to use a boxed mix. Because isn’t that where brownies come from? Hold me.

Waiting game

emily — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:44:27 +0000

One of my favorite quotes from a book reads, “it does not to do dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Lately, I confess, I’ve been dwelling on dreams. I try so hard to live in the now, as it were, but I feel as though I’m failing entirely. With my dissertation safely in the hands of my committee members, and the dissertation status meeting more than a month away, I’ve got some time on my hands. Sure, I’m working on potential articles and dabbling in dissertation-related work, but I also find myself dreaming a lot. Maybe too much. About where we’ll be a year from now, about what kind of job (if any) I’ll be able to land, and, mostly, about what our life will look like When We Get Where We’re Going (TM). It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams, of course, but I can’t help but dwell a little bit. Especially in the middle of all this waiting.

The problem with Facebook

emily — Sat, 29 May 2010 13:50:17 +0000

I have a real love-hate relationship with Facebook. On one hand, I like keeping up with friends. On the other hand, I’m constantly puzzled by the people who try to add me as a “friend” on Facebook. People who, for example, I’ve not seen since high school and who, once I cave and add them as a friend, say absolutely nothing to me. What? What’s the point, here? Oh, but wait, it gets better. Most recently, my high school boyfriend’s wife tried to friend me on Facebook. I’ve never met this woman. I’ve never even seen her. I’ve never corresponded with her in any way. I haven’t even seen her husband (my high school boyfriend) for the last, say, fifteen years. It is in this regard that I suspect I’m really missing the point of Facebook. Not that I bare my soul and my deepest, darkest secrets on Facebook. Far from it, actually. But why would I friend people I’ve not seen for the better part of my adult life? Or, more puzzlingly, people whom I’ve never met at all? (I should also mention that Facebook suggested I reconnect with John the other day. We both had a good chuckle about that.) It’s a mystery.

On priorities, the reshuffling thereof

emily — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:21:39 +0000

My parents came for a visit this weekend and it was so wonderful to see them. I’ve written before about how hard it is to be so very far away from home, but what has surprised me even more is that this hasn’t gotten easier despite the fact that we’ve been in Florida for seven years. (Which: seven years, GAH!) I guess I always thought that I’d develop thicker skin and the hurt would subside after a time and then, ultimately, disappear. But it hasn’t. It’s as hard as it always has been. Yesterday morning, after dropping my parents off at the airport, I felt like my heart was literally breaking in two. We get to see them for a grand total of about six days a year. And I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s just not acceptable to me. But I’m not supposed to think that (much less say that), am I? As an academic, I’m supposed to go where the job is. I’m supposed to be willing to sacrifice everything on the alter of publish or perish. I’m supposed to happily live hundreds of miles from the people and places I know and love, so that I can raise my flag in the ivory tower. But I want a better life than that, a fuller life than that. I want to have more than a passing relationship with the people in my heart. I don’t know how I’m going to make it happen, and I don’t know if I’ll wind up in academia on the other side. But I think it might be time to rethink my priorities.

A turn of phrase

emily — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 03:56:26 +0000

Do you ever think about the sheer wonderfulness of idioms in the English language? They’re so diverse, so eccentric, so… bizarre! Take the idea, for example, of falling “ass over teakettle” in love. What on earth? Or being so hungry you could “eat a horse.” In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should note that in John’s house, growing up, if you were truly hungry you could “eat the ass out of a dead horse.” Mmm. Thanks, but I’ll pass. Keeping with the horse theme, what about “wild horses couldn’t keep me away”? Are wild horses better at this than tame horses? In my family, there’s the classic “Bob’s your uncle,” which is utterly nonsensical, but none the worse for it. And let’s not forget that something that’s easy “is like taking candy from a baby,” that “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,” and that if you’re really happy, you’re “happier than a pig in sh*t,” which may or may not be as “happy as Larry.” Which, what? Really, what?!? Who comes up with these things? Can anyone, just anyone? And, more importantly, who’s Larry and why is he so happy?

On the post office and the public option

emily — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:14:13 +0000

I visited my local post office today to get a new passport. Technically, I also visited my local post office yesterday to get a new passport, only to find that their “passport office hours” were not the same as their “regular post office hours,” and as such I was too late to “get a new passport.” Ahem. I’d done all my research on what I needed to know about the passport business. I knew I couldn’t renew by mail because my marriage certificate shows my maiden name, not my married name. I knew I wanted to expedite the process, and had calculated what the additional fees would be. And I knew that my passport photo had to show me with my glasses on, because I need them to see, and thus they were considered part of my ‘normal street attire’ (in this, I directly contradicted the guy at Kinkos who told me to remove my glasses for the photo). Suffice it to say, I thought that I’d be able to waltz up to the postal employee this afternoon, cut a check, and be on my merry way. (You know where this is going, right?) Ha ha, it is to laugh. Looking over my paperwork, said postal employee sighed grandly and announced that I’d filled out the wrong form. As he was reaching for a new form, I nicely but firmly told him that I’d filled out the right form for my circumstances (see above, re: marriage certificate). Once he was satisfied with that, he started mooing and lowing about how my passport photo (with glasses!) would probably be rejected because it was, he thought, a millimeter too big. He even brought out a fancy transparency that he laid over the top of the photo to show me. It was fine, but he took the opportunity to caution me that my application might be rejected anyway. Something about how I needed to be holding a pig under the full moon when Mars was in retrograde. I’m paraphrasing, naturally. With the line growing behind me, he pressed on: did I know that it would take five to six weeks to get a passport? And that it might not arrive in time for our tentative summer travel plans? I assured him I knew, and that I wanted to pay extra to expedite the process. Then I passed him a twenty and asked how much it would cost to expedite this particular process. (No, of course I didn’t.) Convinced that I knew the risks involved, he moved on to question 21a: Status of most recent passport book. I’d selected ‘In My Possession,’ since my old passport was, you know, in my possession. Ah! he said. It’s not technically in your possession since you have to submit your old one to the State Department! Right, but I hadn’t yet submitted it and… oh, nevermind. He was already marking ‘Other’ and scrawling ‘submitted’ next to the box.

All of which is to say, half an hour later, I was convinced that it’s a good thing the public option is no longer on the table in the health insurance debate. Can you just imagine? You go into surgery, mentally prepared to have your left leg removed (as an example). Once you’re on the table, the doctor tries to tell you that no, in fact, it’s your left *arm* that’s supposed to be removed instead. And, in any case, you’ve filled out the wrong form. Please proceed to the next window, where Marla will be happy to remove both of your arms. Oh, but be sure you fill out the form first. Next!

On loyalty and disloyalty

emily — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:30:59 +0000

During my classes today, we discussed the Cold War and how the fear that Communism would spread to the US led to an anti-Communist movement in the 1940s and 1950s. I wanted to get my students thinking about loyalty and disloyalty, so I told them that during World War Two, one of the things the United States government asked of Japanese Americans (before they sent them to the internment camps) was that they furnish proof that they had always been loyal to the United States. How many of us, I asked, could furnish such proof? Is it as simple as signing a loyalty oath? Is it singing the national anthem? Is it wearing an American flag lapel pin? And they came to the conclusion that loyalty wasn’t something that you can demonstrate. So I asked, if you question your country or disagree with your government, does that make you unpatriotic or disloyal? No, they said; our democracy can only flourish if people are allowed to question the government, and besides, freedom of speech and expression are built into our Constitution. I continued: did they think something like McCarthyism could happen today? No, they responded: as a nation, we wouldn’t let such a thing happen today. So I asked them where Mikey Hicks fit into the equation. Mikey, all of 8 years old, shares the name of a suspected terrorist on the no-fly list. Mikey has been getting frisked at airports ever since he was two. And I also asked them where Obama’s lapel pin fit into the equation. During the campaign, Obama was pressured to wear an American flag lapel pin, to demonstrate his patriotism. He responded, reasonably, that patriotism isn’t demonstrated by wearing a lapel pin; it’s something within. He used, in short, the same arguments that my students pointed to today. But then one of my students raised her hand: “Yeah, but you know, there’s so much with Obama and the American flag.” I asked her to elaborate. “I don’t know what to believe, you know? I heard that he went to an event where they burned the American flag and, you know, that his wife wrote things against the government when she was in college.” And I honestly couldn’t believe my ears. Here was the same person who’d defended the idea that patriotism came within, and that freedom of speech was protected. Did she not see the inconsistencies in her logic? Does freedom of speech somehow not extend to the first family? Burning the flag and criticizing the government may not be popular, I understand. But it is our right as citizens to speak freely and, some would argue, our duty to criticize the government when we disagree with it. It’s part of living in a democracy, is it not? If we’re forced to keep our mouths shut and quell dissent, can we really say we live in a democracy? They say that those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. And as American politics becomes ever more shrill, I have to wonder: are we repeating our own unfortunate past?