A vid from last year of duet with GameBoy and his cello teacher. The sound on this clip was compressed a bit funnily so it doesn’t exactly match the cello playing. But it’s a lovely piece of music anyways, I think. You can also get a little view into what Christmas looked like in our 650 sq ft apartment. :)
December 2007
I shot the following video a few days ago and have debated since then about whether to post it. But after I saw Sara’s cat vid for today, I knew I had to share a bit of my own kitty-love with all of you!
In this clip EllyCat is playing hide-n-seek in some strips of wool roving. She is laying on her very favorite dark purple ottoman. After a few moments, Lil’ sister TobyJoy comes over to investigate.
Warning: you will hear me speaking in my special ‘kitty voice’ in this video. This is not something I usually do in front of anyone except for close friends and family….
What I like best about this clip: you can see the difference between the personalities of our two cats. Elly likes to lounge and play and is a totally kicked-back relaxed kind of girl. Toby, OTOH, is curious and composed. She likes to sit daintily upright with her tail curled over her front paws. Her petiteness (she doesn’t even weigh 5 lbs) makes her almost irresistible.
From someone who loves flowers as I do (Persisting Stars):
If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by
a flower in bloom, perhaps your soul has never been in bloom.”
~Audra Foveo ~
Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most ancient traditions which has survived their decadence.
And since flowers had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication with which they inspire us. So it is that certain peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an entire novel:
The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts,
or: The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon,
or: The Sunlight in the Forest,
or: The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin,
or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain;
or, even better, this one:
I Possessed My Lover in the Garden.
~Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden
Note: The picture above is from some lantana in my garden. I only wish I could grow peonies. Because they are poetry.
I’m not a morning person. I also don’t work well between the hours of 2-4pm. My most productive time of day: 8pm-midnite. Sometimes 10am-noon is good, too.
I like the idea of getting up early in the morning, but it’s unnatural for me unless I can get naps. When I was single and could live my own weird schedule, I stayed up till about 2am, slept until 6am. Then got up and did stuff and went back to bed from abt 2-5pm each afternoon. Then got back up and started the cycle over again.
Unfortunately that is just not a practical schedule for life.
John is a morning person. When we were both at our extremes a few years ago, I would be staying up until 2 am-ish and he’d be waking up at abt 3am-ish. Not very conducive to a good marriage…
People: this is a superlong post. Many apologies. Chalk it up to today being the last day of the quarter. A time for reflection.
I was thinking yesterday about my life experience and how much I’ve learned even though my formal education has been a bit erratic and I’ve never had much of a ‘normal’ job. I have had experience, even if that’s just been cumulatively building inside me without so much of a formal outlet.
And I’ve also been thinking about what I want to do with my life. There’s the mundane question of my career, but then there’s the larger question of what sort of mark I want to leave on the world. What I want to accomplish before I die. What my personal philosophy is and how it guides my actions.
So in the process of muddling over these questions, I made this list of ‘what I wanted to be when I grew up’ at different stages of my life.
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Young years:
I wanted to be a scientist of some sort. I was enchanted by Meg Murray’s parents (from A Wrinkle in Time). I wanted to cook meals over a bunsen burner and have a family and a huge house and a ‘ol dog named Fortinbras. I had this nebulous dream of wanting to “cure cancer.” I often told people that I wanted to be a microbiologist or a molecular geneticist when I grew up.
Middle School:
Entered my own terrible battle with bone cancer. Didn’t think too much about a career, just hoped to live through the end of the year. But in the process I was nurtured and supported by the most amazing and compassionate team of surgeons, oncologists, nurses, physical therapists, etc. That experience forged a stronger desire to go into medicine someday. I wanted to be like those great people who had cared for me. And, of course, I still wanted to cure cancer…There was this added fear, though. Many cancer survivors who had treatments like mine ended up with brain damage and memory problems. We were unsure how that might affect my future academic aspirations. But that same year while I was in cancer treatment I won the school and district spelling bee. We figured that was a good sign for future academic abilities…
High School:
This was a complex time. I was trying everything to see what ‘fit.’ I had a Biology teacher that motivated me like no other. I enjoyed chemistry, too. I learned that I really disliked math, except for geometry. My passions, though, were literature and journalism. By my senior year I was the editor of my school paper (one of the most award-winning-est school papers in the state of CA at that time). I won numerous honors for my newspaper writing. I also read voraciously. You know those lists of books they give you for ‘enrichment’ reading over the summer? I would read every single one of them that I could find in the library system. I did a summer internship with the LA Times, thinking that I would pursue journalism as a career. My junior year I won more awards in the Academic Decathlon than anyone else in the school and was 2nd in the district. As part of the AD experience I gave a speech where I imagined myself as the first woman president. My speech won top honors and I gave it at venues throughout the city afterwards. My political leanings began to galvanize. I worked avidly at the Dukakis/Bentsen campaign even though I wasn’t even old enough to vote. I started toying with the idea of a career in politics.
College:
I applied to 10 or so schools. I selected a different major on nearly every application, totally unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up in SoCal for various reasons, most of which had to do with proximity to my parents’ home (not too far away to go home on weekends), the safe community, and the gentle climate. My major: Biology.
I learned quickly that I was only a so-so Bio student. I wasn’t competitive in classes with curved grading systems. I struggled through the required advanced math classes (a pox on you, differential calculus) and physics. What made it bearable were the English classes I took for my minor. That, and the 2 or 3 journalism classes that I took along the way where I excelled. To pay my way through school I worked as a legal secretary, a file clerk, and an ESL tutor. At times I also worked in a coffee shop and the school bookstore, was a janitor, cooked meals for foreign exchange students, and did childcare.
After five years of school, I graduated with a degree in Bio, a minor in English, a young spouse, and a newborn baby boy.
Full-time SAHM:
My saving grace during the years of being at home: the Internet (it was in its infancy way back in 1994). I found email just before my son was born–in the stone age when PINE and telnet were cutting edge (a part of me still misses my beloved PINE interface!). I joined a Mormon Literature listserv (AML-List) where I could talk books with a super-smart bunch of like-minded people from all over the world. I loved it! Before too long I started writing a regular weekly column for the AML-List. Just after my daughter was born, I presented a paper at one of the AML’s academic conferences in Salt Lake City. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in front of an audience! But at the same time I really loved being included with the academic crowd. I decided I would return to school and study American Lit.
In my spare time I learned HTML, just for fun. John and I and a friend had a short-lived startup business creating webpages for local businesses. I remember this moment when we were brainstorming and I had this great idea to approach car dealerships about listing vehicles online. That thought, then, was just preposterous to all of us–we couldn’t imagine any dealers taking us seriously (how things do change!).
At one point I was offered a job in the computer industry and I turned it down, but suggested that my spouse might want it. John’s career took off quickly (this was in the dotcom boom era).
The Return:
I took a few lit classes at a state university in Utah (where we lived at the time).
I applied to a PhD program in American Studies and wasn’t accepted. I decided I needed more classes if I was going to get into grad school…
We moved back to SoCal and I took a few classes at a community college. Knowing that I would need a second language if I was to enter grad school, I took French classes.
After my kids were both in school I took a Humanities class called “Journey Narratives.” The first day the prof asked us if we saw our lives as a journey, and asked us to explain why. I became pilgrimgirl shortly thereafter (a moniker that John gave me, that I used as a login for various things long before it became this blog). I also took classes in writing Short Stories, Novels, and Magazine articles. I studied the writings of Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams, and others. I joined a writing group called the “American Night Writers“–mostly SAHMs writing at night after the kids had gone to bed.
In the meantime that AML column had turned into being the Book Review Editor for the AML Journal, Irreantum.
I then started taking classes at the nearest university, which also happened to be the same school where I’d done my undergrad work. I took classes to turn my old minor in English into a second bachelor’s degree, thinking that I would need this to get into grad school in English. Because I wanted to study 19th century literature I took a History class about the 1800s. I soon bailed on English and started taking History classes exclusively. I then moved quickly from taking undergrad classes to graduate seminars. I applied to the PhD program and was accepted. Shortly after starting grad school I decided to focus on the History of Medicine. In the meantime I accepted a position as the Book Review Editor for Dialogue and became a permablogger on ExII, Sunstone, etc.
Now:
I’ve passed my Qualifying Exams for my PhD and I’m the throes of writing up the proposal for my dissertation and applying for research funds. I love historical research. I love spending time in the archive. I love reading books. I love teaching. I am passionate about the craft of writing and hope to write many books someday.
******************
When I think about that little girl who wanted to be a scientist and cure cancer, I wonder what she thinks of this journey that I’ve been on since then. Sometimes, I think she’s a bit disappointed.
“Scientists are so important,” she says. (She doesn’t think History Teachers ever make much of a difference in the world)
“You’re probably right,” I say. (Even I know that History Teachers rarely make any difference in the world.)
But then I reply:
“I know I’m not important. But I am happy.”
For the first time in more than 30 years, I left the house this morning without changing my underwear.
SSC #2.2: Due to a sleeping pill that I took last night and my new-found skill at turning off my alarm w/o waking up, I didn’t open my eyes until 9:01 am. And I had a lecture hall full of students and a colleague waiting for me two blocks away for 9:00 class.
SSC #2.3: I drove the two blocks to school and parked illegally in front of the classroom building.
Favorite concert ever was seeing John Denver at the Greek Amphitheater. John, Mom, and I had cheap seats and were at the top with no one else around us (I guess everyone else was either richer than us or was willing to jump to an open seat lower down).
I sang at the top of my lungs, every word of every song (even though JD asked us to stick to the choruses).
(Note: H/T to Caroline for inspiring this post)
This is one of my most-googled posts ever. Lots of folks out there in cyberspace searching for hairy armpitted feminists, I suppose. Originally posted on March 8, 2007.
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Take a minute to watch this short video “Are YOU a Feminist?”
For whatever reason, feminism seems to be equated with armpit hair and lesbianism. That’s so odd to me, as I don’t know any female feminists that eschew shaving (tho a few male feminists that I know don’t shave their armpits) and only a handful of my feminist friends are lesbians. Why is the feminist label so maligned? Is this a legacy of the Equal Rights Amendment era? Or is this indicative of larger social discomfort with assertive women?
An anecdote: I’ve recently found myself in a social situation where I’ve observed several undergrads who have behaved belligerently towards an older woman in a position of authority over them. These same students treat a young-ish man with a similar position with much greater respect. Though there are many reasons why this might be happening in this particular situation, I suspect that much of it has to do with gender. Most people seem to be uncomfortable with assertive women, but not so with assertive men. IMO, this is a shame. Though the woman might be more qualified and more capable, the man is preferred. Why?
And, also in celebration of IWD and some truly radical feminist women (no hairy armpits, I promise). Take a few moments to watch and listen:
Note: The original clip that I linked to seems to no longer be available. Here’s a similar vid, though with a more contemplative (less militant) bent: