Sharing the link-love on my blog, too:
My professor-friends will enjoy this one! http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-stages-of-grading
via Facebook http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-stages-of-grading
A “Top posts from 2012” from one of my favorite blogs, This Is Colossal: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/12/a-colossal-year-the-top-15-posts-on-colossal-in-2012/
via Facebook http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/12/a-colossal-year-the-top-15-posts-on-colossal-in-2012/
I used to send out Christmas cards every year. In fact, it was one of the things I most looked forward to about the holidays.
Composing the newsy letter with updates about each family member and a photo in front of our family tree, meant so much (although in the one below, we are so much bigger than our tree, you can’t really even tell that we are standing in front of it…).
About 5 years ago the cards stopped. Mostly it was because of graduate school–all Christmas break I would be feverishly applying for grant monies to fund my next year of studies. Cards fell by the wayside. That, and I never was quite sure how to explain that our family had left the Mormon church and that my (now ex-)husband was excommunicated. How would that fit into a tidy narrative that included my kids’ swimming lessons?
Then after the divorce I wasn’t really sure that there would ever be a cute family narrative again. The kids were teenagers anyways, and not very interested in wearing a Christmas sweater or a velvet dress and posing in front of the Christmas tree (although I have to say that I do like last year’s “goofing off in front of the tree” photos very much).
[flickrslideshow acct_name=”pilgrimgirl” id=”72157628152003563″]
The other issue that was rolling around in my head, is how best to discuss my new partner in my Christmas card. Do I make some type of official, “hey, guess what,” sort of declaration, or do I just include him in my family update without any mention of the change?
Though the card is still in “draft” stage (pending approval of the kiddos, who haven’t yet seen yet what I wrote about them), I opted for fairly brief text, listing just a few recent highlights on each person. It’s succinct, but it also catches everyone up on the exciting happenings of the past year (new address, new schools, new jobs, etc).
The photo part of the card was a bit harder than the text. I messed around last night with a bunch of photo collage templates to see if I could do something artful from our travels this past year. But after I did this for over an hour I realized that no one that I was sending this card to would care much about a view of the alps or of Tuscany. I am pretty sure that they’d like to see us and not what I ate for dinner in the Netherlands.
So…my plan is to herd everyone in front of the tree after Gameboy returns from college on Thursday evening and snap the annual holiday photo.
Because it feels like some traditions should stay the same, even in the midst of so much change.
Note: I recently opened up my Christmas card address book and realized that it’s five years out of date, and so many of you have moved in the meantime. Please email (janaremyATgmail) me your new address if you would like a card and you’ve moved since we were last in touch via post.
When I go through the “TSA personal massage” process, the agents giving the patdown are usually skeeved when they feel my right calf and foot, which are textured to feel like real flesh and bone. I’ve been told that it gives them the “chills” to feel something so real and know that it’s not. Or, as has happened more than once, they assume that my titanium thigh (which is evident as hard metal even through clothing) is somehow connected to a real flesh-and-bone knee, calf, and foot).
From Cyborgology:
This may or may not be so – it’s difficult to be sure, in what are arguably still early days of this particular kind of human augmentation, but again, I would take this a step further: that, as both Jenny and I have argued, what makes us the most uneasy right now about human augmentation is the idea that it might make people – especially people with disabilities – better than abled humans. We can usually stomach humans with close relationships to objects and machines, provided they don’t begin to transgress the boundary that not only delineates a category but defines that category as an ideal.
I don’t yet have bionics that rival an organic limb, but I welcome that day and I assume that it’s not far away. For now, my fake-leg-wishlist includes the ability to add a wifi hotspot and a USB port for charging my phone. I’m not far off from that goal, either–my awesome friend Scott has already built up a prototype of the USB-adapter leg with my old bionic knee.
And once that’s in place I suppose that I’ll even let my friends charge their devices off of my battery once in awhile. Because I’m nice like that and I feel a little bit sorry for the rest of you that don’t have awesome bionic peripherals like mine. ;)
Recently a group of progressive Mormon women decided to organize a Wear-Pants-to-Church-Day. Really, it’s hard to believe that in the 21st-century that skirts or dresses are still the mandated attire for Mormon women, but it’s true. Growing up LDS, I was told my some stalwart church leaders that I should not even enter the Chapel (the meetingroom where Sunday services are held) without wearing a dress or a skirt. Even on weekdays or to vacuum that room when volunteering for weekly church cleaning.
It’s tough not to be a bit snarky about this issue–as if God cares what kind of clothes you are wearing to worship services. Because Mormons are picky about their clothes. Men wear dark suits and white shirts and ties. Women wear dresses or skirts that cover cleavage and shoulders and knees. And let’s not even get started talking about the mandated skivvies that all faithful LDS wear (so many people have asked me these past few years if LDS really wear underpants manufactured by their church. The answer is that Absolutely Yes They Do).
So…back to pants…
The thing that is pure genius about this movement is that the feminists win either way. Win. Win-win. Because the church has been forced to come out and state their position on women and pants, which is:
“Attending church is about worship and learning to be followers of Jesus Christ,” LDS spokesman Scott Trotter said Tuesday in a statement. “Generally church members are encouraged to wear their best clothing as a sign of respect for the Savior, but we don’t counsel people beyond that.”
Huge. HUGE. This means that women no longer have to wear skirts or dresses. They can be counseled to do so, but the official word is that they don’t have to.
But what it really means is HUGE HUGE. It means that all of that gender folklore about women and dresses and no-pants was just wiped away with that simple statement (a statement which adheres so much more closely to anything godly than the Women-in-skirts rule).
So that is why the feminists win. They get to wear pants and they’ve also shown that the church will bend in the face of looking foolish in front of mainstream media.
That the church’s statement goes against everything I was taught about “Sunday dress” growing up is…well, it makes me a bit crazy. There were emphatic lessons given by prophets about “appropriate” women’s Sunday attire as recently as two years ago, such as in THIS TALK that warned about the dangers of mothers wearing flip-flop sandals or THIS TALK that warned against women wearing more than one set of earrings. And of course card-carrying Mormons are told EXACTLY what kind of undies they need to wear to get into heaven, and they are asked regularly by their bishops if they are wearing said skivvies “night and day.” So it boggles my mind that the LDS church PR department has back-pedaled so quickly by stating that “we don’t counsel people beyond that.” Honestly, that is a lie. They have counseled about specific elements of their adherents’ wardrobe over the pulpit. Repeatedly. It’s in print. It’s google-able. It’s on their website. It’s a known fact of LDS culture.
12 Simple Things that are Making me Smile…(on 12/12/12 at 12:12)
1) Catgirl
2) Gameboy
3) my Belgian
4) Belgian frites and ales
5) Belgian nights (and mornings)
6) home-cooked meals
7) porch swinging
8) snuggly winter evenings in front of the fireplace
9) friends who listen
10) long walks, in the rain
11) soaking in a warm bath, before bedtime
12) and most of all…the promise of the holidays, with all of us together again.
Photo above taken in the Flemish countryside, about two weeks ago.
My biggest experiment with my students this semester was having them edit a wikipedia article about a local area as part of their Final Project. I think, it was also my biggest success. I’ll be writing more about it soon–once the grading’s done.
Perhaps the other success of this experiment is that I’m now enjoying my own forays into the world of wikipedia-editing. And I can tell that this is just the beginning…
Desk-dancing to this one today, as I power through my end-of-the-semester to-do-list:
Oh, I beg you, can I follow?
Oh, I ask you, wanna always
Be the ocean, where I unravel
Be my only, be the water where I’m wading
You’re my river running high, run deep, run wild
Emily Rapp's "Dirty Or Clean?" Such a good read abt mother-love and midlife dating http://t.co/dIBtteFc #fb
— Jana (@janaremy) December 3, 2012