Author: Jana

  • Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2012-07-06

  • Get to work (and get a life)…

    Get to work (and get a life)…

    My friend Anna Leahy suggested Get to Work: . . . And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late to me awhile back when I was blogging about work-mother balance.  I was a bit wary of the book after reading the reviews, but I’m so glad that I bought it anyways (used for $.01–what a deal!)…

    As a result of my reading most of this slim book this evening, we had a pretty heated discussion around the dinner table about the concessions that women tend make in their careers because of spouse and family.  I find Hirshman’s argument quite compelling, that women need to choose early on to have careers so they have more choices later in their life (instead of being dependent on a spouse and having only-marginal employability).  She points out that our society needs to change to make home-work more balanced between spouses and that there is much work that can be done on the political front to give women more leverage in the workforce.  But her larger point is that for the most part women forgo successful and satisfying careers willingly–and that is what needs to change before men take a larger role at home and before the social policies favor women who work outside the home.

    Perhaps what was most satisfying about the discussion around the dinnertable was when the kids acknowledged how crazy I was back when I was a stay-at-home Mom and how happy they saw me become after I went back to school and began teaching.  And while I don’t necessarily regret any of my choices over the years (I’ve always done the best I could), I began to wonder how my life would have been different if I’d made career aspirations a more important part of decision-making–I wouldn’t have gotten a PhD in History if I was thinking about my long-term employability, that’s for sure.  I probably would have focused my aims on medical science, as I did when I was an undergraduate.  And while I don’t think I would have necessarily been any happier if I’d had a career earlier on in my life, I suspect that if I did I could have avoided those awful years of depression that resulted from being financially dependent on a spouse who no longer wanted to be married.

    Soon I’ll be scheduling a Book Club to discuss the Hirshman book along with The Price of Motherhood.  If you’re interested in joining in, we’ll have an “in real life” meeting with those of you who are local to SoCal as well as a “virtual” bookchat over skype.  Fill out THIS FORM if you’d like to join in the discussion and I’ll send you a follow-up email to arrange the timing that works best (note: form responses will only be viewed by me and I won’t send you any emails except to arrange this Book Club).

  • Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2012-06-29

  • Library-ish

    Library-ish

    I’m rarely more content than when I am perusing the shelves of a library. There are many reasons why that’s the case, but I’ll just focus on one of them today:  it’s because I know where to find the stuff I want. There’s a lot of pleasure in finding a call number in the library catalog and then heading directly to the place on the shelves where the item is located.

    Because of my desire to be organized and have a place for everything I own, a few years ago our family adopted a classification scheme for our thousands of books.  As a busy graduate student I needed to know where my books were, so I could consult them regularly for my research.  Enigmatic piles of books and haphazard shelving practices were not my friend.  So we used the Book Collector program to create a database of our book ownings and tagged the spine of each book with its Library of Congress number for easy shelving and retrieval.  It was a lot of work.  So much work that it took two summers (one for fiction, one for non-fiction) of data entry before our collection was entered and tagged.

    When we divorced, John took the bulk of our books.  I was happy about that–wanting to shed the weight of so much ‘stuff’ in the process of moving on with my life.  However, I did keep the academic books for my teaching and research (and my poetry books), bringing them to my office at Chapman University.  However, in moving them I didn’t pay much attention to their shelf location and also acquired many new books as I was in the final stretch of dissertating that weren’t in the book database or weren’t tagged with a library number.  I told myself that when I was done with my PhD I would get things organized again.  And of course that means now.

    So last week I did some research on the best software for creating my new book database and settled on the iPhone app Book Crawler.  It allows you to use the camera on your phone to scan the ISBN barcode on the back of any book for importing the relevant data fields into the app (i.e. title, author, publisher, etc).  It can also do google searches for books on the title or author name if they do not have a barcode on the back cover (this is the case with many books printed prior to the 1980s).  And, it can sync your book collection to Dropbox.com and export as a CSV file (right now I’m emailing a CSV of my database to myself daily as a backup for my collection).

    Even with the handy Book Crawler app, cataloging my books is taking a lot of time.  I set a goal to do one shelf per day and have accomplished that on most days since I began.  But in the midst of the project my office is looking a bit untidy, which is good motivation to power through and get this done as soon as possible (because I like people sitting in my groovy office chairs, not stacks of books):
    Office books mess

    Not only is there a lot of pleasure in getting my books in their rightful places on their shelves, but it’s also fun to peruse each of them and consider how I acquired them and why I’ve kept them (I regularly cull my books to keep the acquisitions from getting out of hand).  Along the way I’ve found a few treasures, such as this early self-portrait by Catgirl, and this signature by author Terry Tempest Williams, which spawned a series of memories that will be another blogpost soon.

    I feel certain that many of my readers are probably rolling their eyes at my desire to be so organized with my book collection.  I’m sure you think I’m over-the-top with my need to control my shelves.  But for me, one of the best parts of owning books is that they are there when I need them.  So if I’m having an I-need-Mary-Oliver-right-now moment, I can reach over and grab that book in an instant.  Because if I didn’t know where to locate my books when I needed them, it would hardly be worth the owning of them for me.  If I can’t find it, what’s the use of having it?

    PS: One of the biggest charms for me, in meeting my current partner, was seeing the library in his home for the first time.  Knowing that he cared about books as much as I do confirmed my hunch that we had a future together.  I think you can tell quite a lot about a person by how they treat their books, right?  :)

  • it’s breaking over me…

    it’s breaking over me…

    A few years ago, whenever I was faced with a situation where I would typically insert deity into my thinking, I started inserting the ocean instead. It seems something worth worshiping (whereas God was no longer something I could worship) because it is vast and ineffable and powerful. I find it easier to surrender to the currents and ways of the sea than I do to anything else in my life right now, and find that time out on the water also seems to put everything into perspective.

    Perhaps that’s why this song struck me so powerfully when it came onto my Pandora playlist recently…

    And it’s peaceful in the deep,
    Cathedral, you cannot breathe,
    No need to pray, no need to speak
    Now I am under.

    And it’s breaking over me,
    A thousand miles onto the sea bed,
    Found the place to rest my head…

    And the arms of the ocean are carrying me,
    And all this devotion was rushing out of me,
    And the crashes are heaven, for a sinner like me,
    The arms of the ocean deliver me.

    Though the pressure’s hard to take,
    It’s the only way I can escape,
    It seems a heavy choice to make,
    Now I am under.

  • Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2012-06-22

  • short (not-so)shameful confession #20

    short (not-so)shameful confession #20

    As I searched the procession of hundreds of graduating seniors filing into the arena at my son’s high school commencement yesterday, I found him by recognizing the guy who looked the most like Harry Potter.  I then zoomed in on his face with my camera to confirm that that was, indeed, my son and not another Radcliffe look-alike.  :)

    And, I must add that I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier or more confident than he was yesterday as he crossed that stage (which was, incidentally, the same one where I’d been hooded for my PhD just two weeks prior).  I’m so proud of the man that he’s becoming, and so happy to be his mother.

    Previous short shameful confessions

    DSC_9684
    the hawt
    IMG_3674

  • Digital

    Digital

    Last night when you were steering a canoe through some heavy swells you caught the edge of your thumbnail on the gunnel of the boat and the angle was just so that it pulled off half of the nail. And you swore and then realized that was going to hurt a lot and then you kept paddling because you needed to. If it was just that one thing perhaps you wouldn’t have wondered so much. But if that followed an incident over the weekend when you grabbed your razor wrong when you pulled it out of your suitcase and sliced through the pad of your fourth finger (and thank you concierge for the band aid and the sympathy) and last Tuesday when you grabbed a pan from the oven the wrong way and got second degree burns on three other fingers and just a few weeks ago you accidentally sliced off the tip of your middle finger…

    If this is you, you might wonder why such things just keep happening to your fingers. And whether you ought to just preemptively bandage them all because you’re worried about what will happen next…

  • birthday

    birthday

    My birthday fell about halfway through my trip to Europe in May, while we were in Tuscany and staying at a villa just outside of San Gimignano.  The night before I thought a lot about what I wanted to do that day.  We’d already had several whirlwind days of traveling so I thought it would be nice to something a bit slower-paced for a change.  What I did for my birthday:

    • Slept in a bit and then headed for the nearby town for a bit of sightseeing and wandering
    • Had my first and only Italian gelato
    • Shopped for a few small gifts for my kids
    • Did my daily 40 laps in the cold water of the villa pool
    • Spent an hour or so lying in the sun and dozing
    • Watched an afternoon storm roll across the sky and across the valley around the villa
    • Ate a simple dinner of bread, cheese, olives, and charcuterie, along with a bottle of local wine
    • Took a rambly walk around the grounds of the villa with my camera, including a visit to the organic garden
    • Went to bed a bit early

     

    Here’s a slideshow of photos taken on that day:

    [flickrslideshow acct_name=”pilgrimgirl” id=”72157630166422846″]

  • Identity (and relationships)

    Identity (and relationships)

    Since being single I’ve felt a strong resistance to dating anyone with young children (young as in, still living at home).  It’s not that I don’t like children (I do like them, very much), or it’s not that I have any prejudice about dating a parent per se, but my reticence seems to stem from a desire to maintain an identity for myself that’s separate from my role as a mother.*  Perhaps it doesn’t make much sense as I try to articulate it here, and perhaps it sounds especially odd given that I’m a parent and anyone that I date has to accept that part of my life…But what I seem to crave now is to be defined by my own merits and not to be put into a situation again where I will be defined or restrained by a caregiving role.

    Navigating romance and relationships in the middle-stage of life is tricky business and I certainly have my fair share of baggage from the past to make it more complicated.  So I’m figuring all of this stuff out as I go along–proceeding with caution and listening as closely as I can to my various inclinations in the process.  These matters aren’t entirely logical and there are few models to follow, so it feels like I have to depend on my own intuition as I move forward.

    I’m curious if any of you have made similar decisions about dating and relationships?  Do you have ‘rules’ that you follow (e.g. no kids) as you evaluate potential matches?

    *FWIW, I’ve also not been interested in dating anyone LDS or formerly-LDS for the same reason.  I’ve put my natal religion completely behind me now and I don’t want it to play any part in my future relationships.

  • On powering down…

    As I packed my suitcase for this trip, I remember pretty distinctly the moment that I packed all of my power cords–checking to make sure that I had phone charger, iPod charger, and laptop cord (all necessities for a technology conference). And it wasn’t until last night that I realized which power cord I forgot–the one that powers me (it charges the battery in my bionic knee). I don’t actually know how long my battery will last, never having pushed it past 48 hours before. But I’m a few hours over that now and still going strong so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised and have power until I get home in 2 days (but I doubt it).

    About 15 minutes before the battery goes dead my leg will chirp a few times and vibrate (like a phone). After that, the knee will go analog–maybe something a bit similar to losing power steering in your car. The pneumatic will go stiff and it will be difficult to bend the knee at all.

    I’ve never had to walk with my leg like that, much less traveled with a stiff knee. It’s sure to be an interesting experience–a good reminder not to take my bionics for granted. And I’m feeling really happy right now that I opted for a ‘more legroom’ seat for the flight in the way home…

    UPDATE:  My battery died just shortly after take-off on the plane ride home (apparently not disrupting the navigational system of the plane as it buzzed and chirped to let me know that it was dying).  I still can’t believe that it lasted while I traveled for four days, but I’m so glad that it did!

  • a beautiful day…(and a room with a view)

    a beautiful day…(and a room with a view)

    When I travel, the one blessing of jetlag is that some days just seem to last forever and it’s possible (with a few catnaps) to just keep going and going and going…This last trip to Europe I had one of those days…

    It began with breakfast in the hotel dining room (why oh why is European yogurt always better than anything I can find here in the States) and with a hour’s lounging at the sauna, with an amazing view (above).

    And then we went to the station to book tickets on the historic Bernina Express train route through the Alps. Without a doubt that train ride was the most scenic that I’ve ever experienced, and we lucked out to have an entire panorama car to ourselves because of it being off-season in the region. Here’s the train station, just before we left (note: click on any of these photos below for a larger view):

    swiss trains in St. Moritz

    And here are a handful of photos from the trip, as we made our way up and over the Alps (where I learned that swiss green is greener-than-green):

    IMG_7023

    It was raining and snowing a bit that morning. I loved how the clouds hovered around the tops of the mountains…

    IMG_7073

    Our views out the windows looked like this (i.e. amazing, there was so much to see):

    (more…)