cat(s)wymming

moving

2007-10-15T13:51:00.001-05:00

i'm moving to wordpress. hoping to start blogging on a semi-regular basis again. we'll see.

new year

2007-01-02T09:23:00.000-05:00

2006 was a big year for me, but it doesn't feel that way.

the biggest change was that i stopped being a christian. it doesn't feel like such a big change because it all just fell away like so many bricks. i didn't decide to stop believing, i just could no longer see the world thru that point of view. and all of the questions that i had been suppressing suddenly seemed so big and unanswerable.

and, mostly, i just stopped feeling ashamed. i never realized how much of my faith hinged on being ashamed. ashamed of my desires, my feelings, my actions. and it was largely my realizing that i wasn't ashamed of things the church and the bible told me i should be ashamed of that led me to realize that i didn't believe in christianity any more.

i realized that the biggest pull of religion is the community aspect of it. that you get this instant group of people who care about you, who are your friends, who are willing to help you thru just about anything. people to hang out with, to call when you're lonely, to cry with, to share life with. that is so appealing and why it took me so long to pull myself out of the church; and the hardest part of not believing is not being an automatic member of that community.

so, what do i look forward to in 2007? new friendships, new relationships. more time for engaging in my passions of working toward a better world--the one that we live in, rather than the one to come.

my concrete goals are to start an under the sink composter. woo, worms! and to start a bit of container gardening. i'd like to start with one veggie, plus some herbs and tea plants. it would be really nice to make some homemade dried herbs and teas, perhaps even to give away as christmas presents next year.

for a rainy new years day

2007-01-01T11:05:00.000-05:00

Jersey Rain

Now near the end of the middle stretch of road
what have i learned? some earthly wiles. an art.
that often i cannot tell good fortune from bad,
that once had seemed so easy to tell apart.

The source of art and woe aslant in wind
dissolves or nourishes everything it touches.
what roadbank gullies and ruts it doesn't mend
it carves the deeper, boiling tawny in ditches.

It spends itself regardless into the ocean.
It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright:
Sweat on the moon, a shroud of benediction,
the chilly liquefaction of day to night,

The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one:
it smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River,
Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne.
I feel it churning even in fair weather

To craze distinction, dry the same wet.
In ripples of heat the August drought still feeds
Vapors in the sky that swell to drench my state--
The Jersey rain, my rain, in streams and beads

Of indissoluble grudge and aspiration:
original milk, replenisher of grief,
descending destroyer, arrowed source of passion,
silver and black, executioner, font of life.

~robert pinsky

i almost agree with dobson

2006-12-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

Time magazine has an opinion piece this week by James C. Dobson about Mary Cheney and her female partner, who are now pregnant with their first child.

of course, dobson feels that this is wrong and bad because babies need a mommy and a daddy and it's been this way for more than 5000 years, and science says so. disregarding the fact that nuclear families are not nearly as traditional as dobson would like to believe, i want to focus on one point that he tries to make.

in trying to create evidence that children need a parent of both sex, he says:

"...researchers have determined that boys are not born with an understanding of 'maleness.' They have to learn it, ideally from their fathers."

although he doesn't say which researchers have determined this, i am very willing to believe it. however, i think that dobson is conveying something which he is very much not intending and that is: gender and sex are two different things and are not inextricably linked.

little boys are not born knowing how to portray what our society deems masculine behavior, just as little girls are not born knowing how to act "feminine." they are taught by being told to "act like a lady" or "take it like a man." They are taught to wear dresses, or not depending on sex* and culture. They are taught to either be emotive or keep their feelings to themselves. They are allowed to manifest physical displays of affection, or not, again depending on sex* and culture.

i'm glad dobson understands this, even if he doesn't really understand this.

one nit i'll pick, even with this short statement is that dobson never explains why they have to learn it; or why it's best that they learn it from their fathers. given that our whole culture is saturated with messages instructing you on how to act in a properly gendered fashion (i.e. your gender matching your sex*) it's hard to miss this lesson.

*sex here really means perceived sex.

the return of the poem?

2006-12-11T10:34:00.000-05:00

i was going to post this poem last week, but it seems even more apropos today.

blk/rhetoric

who's gonna make all
that beautiful blk/rhetoric
mean something.
like
I mean
who's gonna take
words
blk/beautiful
and make more of it
than blk/capitalism.
u dig?
i mean
like who's gonna
take all the young/long/haired/
natural/brothers and sisters
and let them
grow till
all that is
imp't is them
selves
moving in straight/
revolutionary/lines/toward the enemy
(and we know who that is)
like. man.
who's gonna give our young
blk people new heros

[. . . .]

( instead of quick/fucks
in the hall/way of
white/america's
mind)
like. this. is an S.0.S.
me. calling. . . .
calling. . . .
some/one.
pleasereplysoon.

~sonia sanchez

same shit

2006-12-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

i saw a brief snippet of fox news last night (no, i don't regularly watch fox news).

it's about a conservative publication at Tufts University, The Primary Source, changing the words of "oh come all ye faithful" to "oh come all ye blackfolk" in order to "start a discussion" on the issue of race based admissions. (as far as i can tell they have taken it down from their website at least.)

First BU, now Tufts.

according to this, the number of black students in the fall 2006 class was 53 out of over 1300, or about 4% of the class. you know those blackfolk, they are just taking over.

anyway, i like this post that amp put up last week over at his site to the accusation that whites are suffering so.

why do white people want to feel oppresed?

2006-11-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

i subscribe to my college newspaper via email. even tho i graduated several years ago (nearly five, wow) it's a nice way to keep in touch with what is going on there.

today's headline article is:
BU group offers white scholarship

nice. guess which group is offering this "white" (altho they are sure to call it "Caucasian") scholarship? yep, the college republicans (BUCR).

Applicants must submit two essays, one describing the applicant's ancestry and one describing "what it means to you to be a Caucasian-American today."

first we need to make sure you're really white, and then we need to make sure you're really proud to be white in this here culture where everything is being taken over by those brown folks. but to be clear: the BUCR "are not doing this scholarship as a white-supremacy scholarship." no, no. that's crazy racist talk. and they're not bigots, you know.

a member of the Admissions Student Diversity Board responds well (and kindly) with:

"While I can see the controversy over scholarships toward specific ethnic groups, we need to keep in mind its intention," she said. "The [group-specific] scholarship is there to increase the interest of students in that group to continue their education and reach the equality that we all strive for."

and then the BUCR and their friends (another group of CRs who did a similar stunt a few years ago) start talking about hypocrisy and blah, blah, blah. cuz you know, white folks are so opressed. that's why we need things like white history month, and maybe even white male history month. to balance all that learning we do about george washington, and thomas edison, and...oh, wait. i got confused for a second.

and then we have "comedian" michael richards who was heckled by some audience member for being not funny. so he got angry. and, like we all do when we get angry, he started shouting racist crap. oh, wait. i got confused again.

Richards described himself as going into "a rage" over the two audience members who interrupted his act Friday at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. Richards responded to the black hecklers with repeated use of the "n word" and profanities.

but, the best part is in the apology. of course.

"I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this," Richards said, his tone becoming angry and frustrated as he defended himself.

so, if calling black people the "n word" and making other very sick racist comments doesn't make a person a racist, what does?

trying to catchup

2006-10-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

wow, haven't felt like posting in awhile. still don't, but feel i should just so...well, just so.

in any case, these are the things i'm interested in today.

jessica, over at feministing, is publishing a book. go here to check out the cover.

nubian, at blackademic responds with some of the things i was thinking.

why not just call it a young WHITE womans guide to WHITE feminism?

as feminists, i feel we should all try to be aware of...well, we should just try to be aware. and if i'm going to subtitle a book "a young woman's guide..." to anything and then put a white body on the cover, emphasizing the naked skin of it, shouldn't i be conscious of how women of color will view that?

secondly, why the need to put a sexy, headless female torso on a the cover of a book about feminism at all? don't i get enough of that on ads for lotion, for nail products, for underwear, for...well, everything and everywhere? i can look everywhere to see female commodification. now i can even get it with my feminism.

*********************************

reclusive leftist posts the entirety of a column by bob herbert in the NYT. which kinda made me cry, so i'm linking to it.

these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

**********************************

and finally, this morning, there is some hubbub about michael j. fox ads supporting democrats in several races across the country. cnn reports:

The risk, Jamieson adds, is that the ads could appear as using Fox's hopes for a cure for political gain, as some claimed was the case when the paralyzed actor Christopher Reeve lobbied for stem cell research before his death in 2004.

oh, right because the republicans never use human life for their gain (hello, terry schiavo). i guess it's only bad to do this because it's for democrats, who are actually supposed to have morals, which no one expects of the republicans.*

*let's note that i'm not a democrat, and don't actually think they have very much political moral principle, but it is my general perception that the "left" is considered to behave more ethically in these sorts of things.

exactly why we need unions

2006-09-14T19:01:00.000-05:00

the boston globe is reporting that the transportation authority is going to save a little money this year... by taking it out of the pocket of non-union employees.

one way of saving money?

Ending a policy that gave employees one floating holiday a year, a savings of $16,000.

i mean, talk about cheap.

considering that his predecessor made $223,000 a year, it seems he could chip in a little bit of savings in order that these workers could at least keep his holiday.

and yes, this is the transit authority overseeing the $15 billion dollar Big Dig project.

that, yes, is still plagued with problems.

roundup two

2006-09-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

some interesting things going on this bright tuesday morning.

autism incidence increases dramatically with father age.

from the article:

Those whose fathers were between ages 30 and 39 at birth were 64 percent more likely to be autistic than those whose fathers were 29 or younger.
Those whose fathers were 40 to 49 were 5.65 times as likely to be autistic.

those are huge numbers, and huge increases. another interesting finding was:

Typically, about six times as many boys as girls develop the disorder. When the fathers are over 40, however, the ratio is 1 to 1.

the worst parts of science is cute. i particularly enjoy the section on "the last experiment":

About a quarter of all scientists at anytime are performing the famous "last experiment". This elixir supposedly will solve all the researcher's problems. ... Often the desired result is needed to prove the "model" (see # 8) and so a negative result is greeted with a "just try it one more time, but this time why don't you try ..." Conversely if the experiment works, magically a NEW last experiments appears. Like a black hole, weeks and months disappear with nothing to show for it.

"i just need to try one last thing" is something you'll often hear around the lab.

an article at CNN talks about how parents now need to talk to their pre-teen girls about the decision of whether or not to get the new HPV preventative vaccine and, oh gosh, how much should they tell their kids about sex and STDs and vaginas? and how this is sooooo worrying, esp for parents of girls!

HPV is a weighty topic that more parents are addressing with their daughters, since the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the vaccine for girls as young as age 9. Some parents, particularly those with preteen girls, are wondering just how much information to share.
Do they simply say it's a vaccine against cancer and leave it at that? Or should they also explain that HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that, among other symptoms, causes genital warts?

and the next section is entitled "growing up faster." but then the article says:

Government surveys also have found that about 7 percent of children have had sexual intercourse before age 13, while about a quarter have done so by age 15.

so, the kids aren't growing up faster--either way sex is present for many.

just talk to your kids about sex, people! it is NO BIG DEAL. i was probably six or seven when my mom brought out the "blue books" as i refer to them (a series she had about teaching children about their bodies and sex and i don't remember what they were called but their covers were bright blue), to talk about penises and vaginas and how sex is when you put a penis in a vagina and if anyone tries to do that or touch my vagina without my permission i should run away and tell someone.

see, no big deal. but now your kid is informed and thus HAS POWER. but noone wants kids to have power for some reason. they want to keep it all for themselves.

and lastly, cuteness.

we celebrated the first anniversary of chaucer coming to live with us this labor day. in honor of that, dlamming kindly created this photo site to look at handsome pictures of my baby love.

roundup, catchup

2006-08-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I figure I haven’t posted here in long enough (due to an abundance of overwork) that it’s time for a little something, so here’s a roundup of things I’ve been thinking about/up to.

first of all, i got a car. woah. granted, i presume most 26 year olds in the US who have the means to own one have a car since it is near impossible to live here without one, but i have been fortunate enough to live in one of the few metropolitan areas where it is not even close to a necessity. it's been something i've been thinking of for about a year, planning out if i had the money and the initiative to drive all the time. last year i moved to a location a bit further from 'everything' and my friends have been consistently moving further from public transit (due to cost) and the cost of public transit has been going up up up, so that now it is not so much of a financial tradeoff to have a car versus using the train. which is sad.

but there you have it. to note, i got a little scion xA, which so far i like and it gets good gas mileage, as cars go.

I was among many others in my sadness to hear about the Pluto demotion.
I grew up with pluto as one of the nine, and in my heart it will always be a planet. I mean, who didn’t like plucky little pluto?

I’m on vacation this week, but not doing much besides relaxing and catching up on errands and household chores and duties. Plus hanging out with chaucer, who has been mommy deprived with all my working. We’re just about to celebrate his first birthday, and he got this as his present.

I also thought I’d start talking about what I’m reading.

Currently, I’m reading “collapse” by jared diamond. it's not as good as "guns, germs and steel", which i highly recommend, so it's taking me awhile to get through it. he basically looks as societies which have succeeded or failed in the past so as to apply those lessons to today's societies. i'm only about half way and he's covered all the polynesian islands, the 'american' southwest, and the vikings (greenland, iceland, etc). academically his reasoning seems good, but it's just not as compelling a read.

I'm also reading "reefer madness" by eric schlosser, the guy who wrote "fast food nation" (another really good one if you haven't read it). "reefer madness" is also really good but depressing. it's all about the black market and how it is a natural product of capitalism and it focuses on marijauna, strawberry harvesting (and thus "illegal" immigrant labor), and pornography. i've read the first two sections thus far which are really depressing because of how draconian our marijuana laws are and how miserable life is for people working to harvest the food that we all eat. i'm curious to read the final section because, while i am for the legalization of marijuana and against shutting people out of this country, i am also anti-porn which will be interesting.

i'm also reading "hungry planet", which is a beautiful book which profiles families all over the world focusing on what they eat. each family is presented with the food they eat for the week. it's very interesting and powerful to see how food intake varies across the world, considering food/water is probably the most important aspect of our life (closely tied with health and healthcare, imo, altho the two are obviously related in many ways).

finally, i'm reading the latest issue of bitch magazine. which is always great, and i just picked up bitchfest at my local bookstore to add to the queue. i encourage everyone to buy a copy to support this wonderful, feminist endeavor.

the allusion of safety

2006-08-11T09:29:00.000-05:00

the things that aren't allowed on planes starting yesterday:

No liquids or gels of any kind are allowed in carry-on baggage until further notice. This includes all beverages, cologne, hair gel, suntan lotion, contact lens formula, toothpaste, shampoo, and all items of ``similar consistency." The only exceptions are baby formula and juice -- but just for those passengers traveling with children-- and medicines, which must have the traveler's name on the container.

so, they allow juice for kids as long as someone drinks it beforehand.

so why can't i have my bottle of water as long as i drink from it beforehand?

secondly, what about folks who are insulin dependent? they have a liquid medication that you can't verify is actually insulin--you can't force a diabetic to take a jolt of insulin just whenever, you know.

and okay, folks can still hide things on their person: small vials in underwear...or even vaginas.

at least one cnn article addresses some of these concerns:

Boyd sees the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's ban as a knee-jerk reaction that leaves Americans no safer than they were before the 9/11 attacks.

"Remember Richard Reid, the guy who tried to light up his shoe on the airplane? After that we had to take off our shoes. Imagine what would have happened if he had hid that bomb in his pants," Boyd said.

and not just pants: you could have a container within a container of baby formula that holds the thing you want. the padding liner of many women's bras. people could eat small wrapped pellets of things, like they do to carry drugs across borders.

the intention here is not to make things actually safer--but to make people FEEL safer.

"Standing there looking to make sure no one has a tube of toothpaste is patently ridiculous, because now we're looking for objects again -- we're not looking for threats" said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colorado.

and

Clark Kent Ervin, a former Department of Homeland Security inspector general, points to a recent Government Accountability Office report that revealed that congressional investigators were able to sneak bomb components past screeners at all 21 airports tested.
"And if bomb parts could get past then, obviously, things like liquid gel, which nobody would typically think of as a bomb component, could do so, too," Ervin told CNN.

but....

After Kristin Reinke of Champlin, Minnesota, dumped her bottle into a tub at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, she complained to her husband, Mike Reinke, "I just threw out $34 worth of hand lotion."
He was sympathetic, but accepted the Transportation Security Administration's reasons for the ban. "What are you going to do?" he said. "I guess you have to be safe."

(from a different article)

aww, look at the little sheeple, so accomodating. but where do you stop accomodating and say, enough is enough?
for some reason people have come to believe that inconvenience is equal to safety.

let's be clear: you can never be one hundred percent safe. there is no such thing.

and, as the famous ben franklin quotation goes:

"They that would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary saftey deserve neither liberty nor safety."

ssdd

2006-08-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

i saw a snippet of a bush speech about the proposed peace-keeping 'force' for lebanon. he said something along the lines of: to protect the border with syria?

wtf? with syria? what about the border with israel?

which reminded me of this nice post by maia at capitalism bad; tree pretty:

They want to put a peace-keeping force in Southern Lebanon. What the fuck? If you actually want to keep the peace you don't put peace-keepers where the bombs are falling, you put peace-keepers in the place that is sending the bombs. That's where the peace is being broken.

recruitment to start younger

2006-08-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

it's Army World!

a theme park where you get to be a soldier.

You can command the latest M-1 tank, feel the rush of a paratrooper freefall, fly a Cobra Gunship or defend your B-17 as a waist gunner

and kill loads of people! oh boy, i can't wait.

and i love that the towns' folk's objection to this was the traffic it would cause:

authorities in Fairfax County are objecting because of already traffic-clogged roads surrounding the proposed site.

getting older

2006-08-02T10:29:00.000-05:00

People with lower socio-economic status appear to age faster than their better-off counterparts, British researchers said on Thursday.

i found this interesting. further,

"Not only does social class affect health and age-related diseases, it seems to have an impact on the aging process itself," said Dr Tim Spector of St Thomas's Hospital in London.

which isn't surprising, given that dlamming would tell you that aging itself is the disease.

the study was carried out on twins and corrected for other factors:

Even after adjusting for factors such as obesity, smoking and exercise, which can also influence aging....
The average difference was equivalent to about seven years ... which also could not be explained by education or income, according to the study.

anxious

2006-07-31T22:17:00.000-05:00

“you’ll never have to worry,” my uncle said upon my responding to his question of what I might do once I finished my phd in biochemistry.

Worry about rent money, about buying enough food for the week, gas money, car payment, bus change, electricity, diapers, taxes, phone, heat, shoes. Worry about how do I get the money for this thing I need when I already don’t have the money for these other things I need.

But I do worry. What if I got sick? What if I couldn’t work for a little while? How would I make it?

Not to mention… so many things. Not to mention my family. And the world. And that worry.

That worry that never goes away.

Seeing that worry in my mother’s face as she calculated up our cartload of groceries before getting to the register so she would never have to put something back that we couldn’t afford with the food stamps she had.

That worry as the bills lay spread out on the kitchen table, her checkbook by her side, her notepad scratched with 10 for this, 20 for this.

Consternation at the idea of another field trip at school: could she afford to send me? Should I ask, dare I ask when there is so much we already don’t have? When I already take so much?

Worrying at school about my second hand clothes, my salvation army clothes, my lack of toys and stuff to list off as christmas presents. How do I get money to go to the movies or mcdonald’s with my friends? How do I pretend I’m not poor?

Worrying about getting into a college we could “afford”. Worrying about affording the colleges I got into. Worrying about what to do with my life, picking a career that would be financially stable but that I could get to being poor. You dismiss the idea of med school because being $150,000 in debt is unimaginable. How do you think about going to a school which costs more than your mother makes in a year? Calculating how many hours I need to work to pay for school books, phone, bus tickets home, and everything else one needs for college life?

But I made it through. I made it up. I made it out. Supposedly. According to people still on the inside, I have nothing to worry about. and they're right. i can't dismiss that they are right.

Being a grad student is certainly not a wealthy lifestyle, by any means. But I am stable and I don’t struggle to pay my bills. I don’t have to think about every dollar I spend on groceries, and if it’s going to come from somewhere else. And, moreover, I’ve learned very well how to “pretend I’m not poor”—how to interact and dress in ways that belie my origins. In those things, I do not have to worry.

After grad school I should be able to get a job which will be able to more than supply the necessities. In that, I do not have to worry. And yet I will. I will feel that, carry that anxiety with me. I will always struggle over whether I really need something before spending my money. Agonize and then regret the purchase if I think I could have done without it.

Despite my uncle’s assurances, I will worry, even if I don’t have to.

sweet little poem

2006-07-20T08:10:00.000-05:00

Blessings

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
leading a horse to water
and making him drink.
I have a clue.
I can see the forest
for the trees.
All around me people
are making silk purses
out of sows' ears,
getting blood from turnips,
building Rome in a day.
There's a business
like show business.
There's something new
under the sun.
Some days misery
no longer loves company;
it puts itself out of its.
There's rest for the weary.
There's turning back.
There are guarantees.
I can be serious.
I can mean that.
You can quite
put your finger on it.

Some days i know
I am long for this world.
I can go home again.
And when i go
I can
take it with me.

~ronald wallace

scientific methods

2006-07-19T10:29:00.000-05:00

there is this whole ongoing debate in science circles about how to present science to non-scientists. how much science should non scientists know? what should be our role as scientists and what should be their role as 'regular' people?

dlamming, over at saccharomyces, describes something that i want to get more into by offering my solution to the problem.

a lot of folks have suggested that more, or better, science education in high school level education is the solution.

well, i certainly disagree with the premise that the general public needs to know more science (at least in terms of scientific details, which is what classes generally are). what i do think, is that the general public should know better how to think.

dlamming talks about how science and the scientific method is not necessarily intuitive and took much learning for it to become intuitive for him:

First, at this point in my life, I consider the scientific method rather intuitive... but is it? Over four years of college, I took numerous courses in which I was taught how to figure out how to solve a problem instead of simply regurgitating answers. A lot of these classes were really hard... at least until I started to figure things out.

it's not that folks don't get enough science education, it's that they don't get the right kind.

generally, your first few (required) years of science are: memorize and regurgitate. first off, this is worthless if you're not going on in science. why the hell do you need to know how many chromosomes a mouse has? secondly, it's worthless even if you are going on because you're not going to remember anything you've memorized and regurgitated anyway.

as dlamming says, it took several (many?) upper level classes to learn to THINK the right way.

those classes that taught him, and all scientists, to think should be the introductory classes. the first thing you should do when you approach science (which is just the modern day incarnation of early philosophy) is learning to think about the problem, the solution and how to get from the former to the latter.

after those introductory classes, after you've learned to think and problem solve, then you get into the general knowledge stuff.

further, i think when teaching general science knowledge classes it should always be in the context of science history. how did we learn this? what was the problem people saw and what did they do to solve it? again, couching it all in the method of: how do you think about problems? how do you go from first principles? how do you problem solve?

once people know how to think through issues it is infinitely easier to feed them information that they will be able to process on their own, while coming to more intelligent conclusions.

the legendary

2006-07-19T08:31:00.000-05:00

so i clicked on an article on cnn about rep. cynthia mckinney.

most of the article is not about her tho, but about the republican primary, and thus the opponent whom she will be facing in the election in the fall.

one of the repubs battling it out for the nom was george wallace, jr. son, of course, of that george wallace. here's how cnn describes him:

In Alabama, George Wallace Jr. -- son of the legendary Alabama governor and presidential candidate -- lost his bid...

legendary? doesn't that have a somewhat positive connotation? wouldn't infamous be a better term? perhaps notorious? or even more neutral, just "well known"?

vegetable medley

2006-07-18T08:18:00.000-05:00

as my mom would say, we were never big meat eaters. we could never afford to be. meat was expensive and a single mom on welfare, and then a part time school bus driving gig had to make the meal stretch.

add a can of kidney beans to the pasta sauce. that and a quarter pound of hamburger was enough for the two of us for dinner one night and lunch the next day. add a few more potatoes to the sausage, pepper, potato casserole. meat was not a big thing.

and yet, it was. culturally, it was. it is. meat is 'healthy', it's a staple. it's down-home and common. i may have known a few folks growing up who dabbled in vegetarianism. but it seemed out there. that's not what poor folks do. that's not what my people do. how do you live like that everyday? besides, i never had a problem with the idea of animals as living beings and yet there for us to eat. i still don't know that i think using animals for food is always a wrong. but it came down to other things.

i knew cassie all through her three years at university with me. by senior year we were friends and then we worked together the summer after graduating. she had made a commitment to go a year without eating meat. our boss questioned her about it one day. that was the first time i heard the word agribusiness. i had always considered myself an environmentalist. recycling, alternative energy, stopping the whaling, reducing purchasing and packaging--i was all for it.

the more i learned about the waste and destruction created by agribusiness, the inhumane treatment of animals, and the health factors of living without animal products the more i realized that i would have to change.

it didn't happen overnight. it was easy enough to cut out red meat, pork, most dairy products (being lactose intolerant helped in that area). then came chicken, and not for a few more months did i give up my tuna sandwiches and general seafood eating at restaurants. a few months after that i ate my last dairy yogurt, about three years ago.

it's easy enough to live this way, especially at home. especially living in a large enough city that there are many grocery options for me, many restaurant options, even, if i want to not cook one night.

but it can get tiring and frustrating too. going back to where i grew up; family picnics; vacations; hearing everyone criticize me for what i'm eating. not that i've considered eating meat again (okay, maybe seafood, sometimes). i think the slow transition helped me in that respect. it's mostly frustration at this world. at people who even know better, and still do what is easy, or common for them. at a society who chooses to ignore reality rather than change it.

but mostly i live this life quietly. i don't proselytize. if people ask, i'll explain my reasons. but i also know many people aren't ready for the truth. aren't ready to change what they do, and who they are. what i hope most is only to show that this life can be lived. that it isn't hard, it isn't out there. i recommend cookbooks, recipes. i cook for people. i live my life to show other people that this life can be lived. i think that is how change often begins. that's how it began for me.

unders

2006-07-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

a shocking number of people have told me in the last few years that i should become a prof at an undergrad only university.

in one respect this makes sense: i love being at the bench and i enjoy teaching. not only that, but i'm really good at teaching. it is both an innate ability and something i have worked hard at to be very good.

in another respect, this makes no sense at all. why? because i hate undergrads. despise them. they waste my time, destroy reagents, generally fuck up experiments and require constant hand holding. worst of all, they pretend to understand things that they don't.

this is the thing that gets me the most. you pretending to understand things will only mess things up more in the long run. mess things up for ME.

grad school depression

2006-07-07T17:41:00.000-05:00

someone defended today.

this is always both a sad, and encouraging event.

it's always nice to see someone get out. (make it out alive, with degree intact, that is.) but it's also sad and frustrating to realize that one is not there yet.

with the beginning of july comes the realization that i'm now a fifth year grad student. gah. when i came i felt like i didn't even need to get to know the fifth years because they'd be gone soon. of course, that was also when i still believed the lie that the "average" time to graduate was five years. try six. maybe six and a quarter. with a significant number of seven (and a few eight) years.

i don't write much about grad school. and there's a reason for that. i hate it.

not that i hate science. in fact, i love bench work. i love figuring out problems and solutions and doing the experiments to get there. it's just the whole set-up of the program.

the idea of grad school is basically to demoralize grad students. before i started i heard someone joke about how grad school makes you paranoid. i thought (at the time): how could that possibly be true? i still wonder how it could be true. because you know what they say: it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

granted, i work at a small research university, with few grad students, few options, little money, and poor resources. to make it worse, i'm in a (fairly) new lab. the first grad student will graduate in a few months. which will be especially sad. to lose an integral part of our lab, which is small anyway. he is someone i rely on for support: scientifically and mentally. it will be a long two years without him.

but such is life. especially life in grad school. high turnover. although it doesn't necessarily feel like that when you're the one going through the wood-chipper.

prisons, part I

2006-06-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

i've written about prisons before, but i want to talk about them a little more.

i was discussing the point of prisons, or what they hope to accomplish, with dlamming last night. he took the standard liberal approach that prisons ought to be centers for rehabilitations (whether or not they actually are) or, if rehabilitation is impossible, places that criminals are at least removed from harming their targets.

to note, we both agree that this is not what prisons are right now.

but i would further posit that this is never what prisons were intended to be, nor what they ever could be.

primarily, i think the purpose of prisons is to remove folks from the economic sector.

starting out, prisons did not exist: there were mostly local, small jails where folks were holed up for short periods of time. initially, being in jail for a few days or a few weeks would have been a good deterrent for future crime: if you can't work, you can't eat, or feed your family or take care of your farm or whatever the case may be. in a newly burgeoning economy with seemingly limitless possibilities (early US) you don't WANT folks to be removed from the economic sector, and they don't want to either.

but, as you know if you're logical, there are not limitless possibilities for growth. natural resources, and even (manufactured) demand cannot grow forever.

between 1900 and 1940 the percentage of folks in prison in the US doubled (from .076% to .132%). that number stayed relatively constant until 1980 (.15%), and then more than tripled by 2000 (to .48%). in the six years since then that number has grown about 150% to .67%. in just six years.* i think it is relatively common knowledge that the US has more prisoners per population than any other western country. and here's a few stunning pics to illustrate that growth.

what interests me most about these numbers is: the great economic downturn between 1920 and 1940; the great number of wars and conflicts between 1940 and 1980 (which concomitantly purged people from the labor market while creating great demand in the market); the recession between 1980 and 2000; and the economic stagnation since then.

further on than this, i hope to get into how racism and classism play into this picture; recidivism and the lack of job oppurtunities for those leaving prisons; the privitization of prisons and using prisoners as slaves.

*numbers determined based on prison population rates and US census data.

verbal tics

2006-06-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

so, four years ago i started grad school. my first semester i had a prof who would always start his sentences with: so,...

everything began with "so,...." and i thought, "how strange, why does he do that?"

well, many folks will tell you that i now do the same thing. mostly it's my non-scientist friends who have pointed it out to me. so, i was highly amused to stumble across a blog talking about verbal markers of "the scientist". the most obvious one, he notes, is starting sentences with "so,..."

why do we do this? why do i do this? who knows, really, but i like this explanation:

See, by training, scientists like to start at the very beginning with first principles, and recostruct the origninal reasoning behind things. But journalists and other civilians like to have final the conclusions right off the bat. Thus, when asked a question, I can almost hear certain scientists "fast-forwarding" very rapidly through a line of reasoning, looking for a kind of off-ramp that's near enough to the conclusion the listener is hoping for. In this sense, the "So" is an AUDIBLE "therefore" at the end of an INAUDIBLE explanation that the scientist thinks through but isn't allowed enough time to share.

of course, that's probably only part of the reason. all subcultures develop verbal tics (akin to "jargon"), and this is probably just another one (which, maybe, sprang out of the above reasoning and then became habit).

it's not flirtation, it's just friendliness

2006-06-27T12:24:00.000-05:00

Feministe posts a comment about a study that says men often read sexual overtones into conversations where the women involved did not, and did not intend to give them.

ok, great, but what woman doesn't know this? who doesn't know that men often see things which just aren't there? which is what led me to title this what i did. so often i have found that women (myself included) have to act downright rude to men in order for them to not think we're interested. simply saying you are not interested is not enough.

and, what this all really points to:

The fact that men appear to "oversexualize" more often than their female counterparts may provide the basis of future studies that address the roots of sexual harassment and date rape, Mr. Levesque said.

when you grow up

2006-06-27T12:14:00.000-05:00

i go through these phases of not being sure what i want with my life and changing my mind a lot and something becoming a passionate obsession for me and then fading away. i guess since i never did this when i was eight, i'm doing it now. right now i'm in the: it would be okay to be a scientist and work at the bench at a company for the rest of my life phase. i think it's mostly laziness: without really any effort, that's where life will sweep me.

in honor of those without

2006-06-12T14:23:00.000-05:00

today is world day against child labour.

here's an article discussing one facet of this.

here's another article discussing what are supposed to be solutions.

according to them, we need to end poverty and the way to do this is...more aid from rich countries to poor ones.

we don't need to stop allowing companies to exploit human beings and the earth for their own gain. we don't need to re-evaluate the way we live our lives--checking to see if it is sustainable, or compassionate. we can continue to pretend that socialism is a dirty word and that capitalism is the be all, end all of where it's at.

we can continue to ignore what we (as wealthy americans) are taking from the world, and who we are taking it from.

what's wrong with liver abcesses?

2006-06-06T16:01:00.000-05:00

in this week's time there is an article about grass fed vs grain fed cattle. the point comes up about how grain fed cattle are often prophylactically given antibiotics because

"...a grain based diest often leads to stomach ulcers and liver abcesses in cattle--a problem that has fueled the wrath of animal-rights groups."

i knew the article would piss me off before i started because, obviously, if you're debating the merits of one type of cow eating versus another type you're starting from a point of saying either is okay.

but, come on...why do you have to say "of animal-rights groups"? why can't you say:

"a problem that should fuel the wrath of any person who has compassion for other living beings"?

would you be okay with your cat or dog or other various household pets having continual stomach ulcers/ liver abcesses?

i'm sure i can answer for you.

rapier woman

2006-06-06T15:13:00.000-05:00

posting problems delayed this.

"He had known languishing women with eyes
That looked upon blue, Riviera skies
And pekinese and Paris frocks.
He had known women who looked on kitchen clocks
And aprons and clean beds,
Women one weds.

But this woman was like none of these.
She had a rapier mind to seize
Advantage, quick in thrust and parry,
And she had lips to marry
His own mouth mad with the sight of her.
Here was a woman not as others were:
Things for a man's delight, brief toys to catch,
To fondle for an hour. Here was his match!

Quicksilver brain to brain,
Temper to temper, arrowing pain.
For once he could not be the buyer.
He must be singed by the beautiful fire
Of the one woman whose spirit he could not span.
Here was a woman mate for a man."

~lucia trent

to some few hopi ancestors

2006-05-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

No longer the drifting
and falling of wind
your songs have changed,
they have become
thin willow whispers
that take us by the ankle
and tangle us up
with red mesa stone,
that keep us turned
to the round sky,
that follow us down
to Winslow, to Sherman,
to Oakland, to all the spokes
that have left earth's middle.
You have engraved yourself
with holy signs, encased yourself
in pumice, hammered on my bones
til you could no longer hear
the howl of the missions
slipping screams through your silence,
dropping dreams from your wings.

Is this why
you made me
sing and weep
for you? Like butterflies made
to grow another way
this woman is chiseled
on the face of your world.
The badger-claw of her father
shows slightly in the stone
burrowed from her sight
facing west from home.

~wendy rose

how?

2006-05-25T13:47:00.000-05:00

how do you make those big decisions? what factors do you take into consideration, and which do you throw out? how big a risk is too big? what are you willing to settle for?

what i do now, i love. i enjoy being a scientist. i enjoy working out problems, being at the bench doing experiments, and thinking of new and better ways to analyze data. and i would be perfectly content to do this for the rest of my life. (as long as i could make just a wee bit more money doing it.)

which is a big thing and saying a lot, since many many folks who get their phd working at the bench then either leave science altogether or get a job not being at the bench (i.e. professors/PIs). but this thing also means that there really aren't all that many jobs being at the bench for someone with their PhD. not to mention the fact that i fear in not too long a time much of the science done in this country will be done in another, far cheaper, one.

but there is this other thing that i dream of doing. and it scares me because it is a HUGE risk. in many ways. changes and being risky are not things that i'm good at. things that i've taught myself to lean away from because of who i am, where i come from, how i grew up. it is safer to be safe.

it would mean making decisions without seeing the final outcome. without seeing how it will turn out. whether it will all come together, whether it will all be alright. whether i'll be able to do it, or not. without having a backup plan. these are all things i've never done before.

i don't have to make this decision today. but soon, i will. and it is easy enough to cast the line. harder to know what to do if i get a bite.

the smell of cnn in the morning

2006-05-24T07:46:00.000-05:00

here's a great headline:

"rape as a tool of war.....in Congo".

um, yeah, right. in congo. how about in the world, right now, everywhere, here in the good ol' US of A, every day. every two minutes.

according to the article:

...said Dr. Denis Mukwege Mukengere, the lone physician at the hospital. "It's a kind of barbarity that only savages are capable of."
He added that "these perpetrators cannot be human beings."

well, at least we are agreed on that. the thing i don't like about this article is that it specifically posits the problem as "over there". as a tactic of war, rather than an every day life existence for women everywhere. if it is a tactic of war, then we are all at war all the time.

aren't women kind of soldiers when as soon as we step out the door of our home (and unfortunately, many are not safe even in their homes) we keep our eyes and ears open and on alert for the enemy, for any sign of unsafety? when we think tactically of the best route home at night, keep to the light posts, change to the other side of the road if we see a potential enemy heading our way? when we feel we often need escorts, and defensive training because there is no green zone anyway, for any of us?

and of course, the saddest part of this article comes from what one of the women who have been attacked says:

"I wish they'd killed me right there with my husband," she said, "What use am I now? Why did those animals leave me to suffer like this?"

the tragic consequences of living in a society that teaches that it is the victim of assault who must be ashamed, who is made to feel that it is her who is damaged now, who sees life as not worth living because of her "impurity". rather than that of her attacker.

i mean, if we're talking about a war on terror, how much more terrible can you get?

a good follow-up to last weeks poem

2006-05-24T07:44:00.001-05:00

"how i got that name"

Oh, how I love the resoluteness
of that first person singular
followed by that stalwart indicative
of "be," without the uncertain i-n-g
of "becoming." Of course,
the name had been changed
somewhere between Angel Island and the sea,
when my father the person
in the late 1950s
obsessed with a bombshell blonde
transliterated "Mei Ling" to "Marilyn."
And nobody dared question
his initial impulse - for we all know
lust drove men to greatness,
not goodness, not decency.
And there I was, a wayward pink baby,
named after some tragic white woman
swollen with gin and Nembutal

My mother couldn't pronounce the "r."
She dubbed me "Numba one female offshoot"
for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die
in sublime ignorance, flanked
by loving children and the "kitchen deity."
While my father dithers,
a tomcat in Hong Kong trash-
a gambler, a petty thug,
who bought a chain of chopsuey joints
in Piss River, Oregon,
with bootlegged Gucci cash.
Nobody dared question his integrity given
his nice, devout daughters
and his bright, industrious sons
as if filial piety were the standard
by which all earthly men were measured.

Oh, how trustworthy our daughters,
how thrifty our sons!
How we've managed to fool the experts
in education, statistics and demography-
We're not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning.
Indeed, they can use us.
But the "Model Minority" is a tease.
We know you are watching now,
so we refuse to give you any!
Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots!
The further west we go, we'll hit east;
the deeper down we dig, we'll find China.
History has turned its stomach
on a black polluted beach-
where life doesn't hinge
on that red, red wheelbarrow,
but whether or not our new lover
in the final episode of "Santa Barbara"
will lean over a scented candle
and call us a "bitch."
Oh God, where have we gone wrong?
We have no inner resources!

Then, one redolent spring morning
the great Patriarch Chin
peered down from his kiosk in heaven
and saw that his descendants were ugly.
One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge.
Another's profile-long and knobbed as a gourd.
A third, the sad, brutish one
may never, never marry.
And I, his least favorite-
"not quite boiled, not quite cooked,"
a plump pomfret simmering in my juices-
too listless to fight for my people's destiny.
"To kill without resistance is not slaughter"
says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death.
The fact that this death is also metaphorical
is testament to my lethargy.

So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,
married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong,
granddaughter of Jack "the patriarch"
and the brooding Suilin Fong,
daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong
and G.G. Chin the infamous,
sister of a dozen, cousin of a million,
survived by everybody and forgotten by all.
She was neither black nor white,
neither cherished nor vanquished,
just another squatter in her own bamboo grove
minding her poetry-
when one day heaven was unmerciful,
and a chasm opened where she stood.
Like the jowls of a might white whale,
or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla,
it swallowed her whole.
she did not flinch nor writhe,
nor fret about the afterlife,
but stayed! Solid as wood, happily
a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized
by all that was lavished upon her
and all that was taken away!

~marilyn chin

a good follow-up to last weeks poem

2006-05-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

cultural stereotypes

2006-05-16T16:55:00.000-05:00

ahhh, the age old question: why do girls lose interest in math and science?

apparently one person to blame: your mother. according to education secretary margaret spellings:

Spellings said mothers can inadvertently send signals to their daughters that math skills are not important. Educators must change the culture so it is not acceptable for women to brag about not being able to balance their checkbooks, she said.

first of all, i have never heard anyone brag that they could not balance their checkbook. admit, yes. confess, yes. brag? no. but whatever.

we all know the real reason girls give up on science and math:

stereotypes that girls are not good at math or science.

now, i want to ammend this statement a bit. it's not that "girls" are not good at math and science: it's that girls who are attractive to men are not good at math and science.

we've seen the t-shirts.

girls are taught from the time they are very young that one of the most important things in life is to eventually get married to a man. to do this they must be attractive in very stereotypical ways: deferring, not aggressive, and dependent. this seems to be tied in to being the opposite of excelling in math and science. if you have to give up one for the other, it doesn't surprise me which one most girls choose.

the red wheelbarrow

2006-05-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

~william carlos williams

what a world, what a world

2006-05-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

here is a copy of the chain email i received this morning.

Please read very important *Girls must read*
Body: IMPORTANT PLEASE READ

A friend stopped at a pay-at-the-pump gas station to get gas. Once she filled her gas tank and after paying at the pump and starting to leave, the voice of the attendant inside came over the speaker. He told her that something happened with her card and that she needed to come inside to pay. The lady was confused because the transaction showed complete and approved. She relayed that to him and was getting ready to leave but the attendant, once again, urged her to come in to pay or there'd be trouble. She proceeded to go inside and started arguing with the attendant about his threat. He told her to calm down and listen carefully:

He said that while she was pumping gas, a guy slipped into the back seat of her car on the other side and the attendant had already called the police.

She became frightened and looked out in time to see her car door open and the guy slip out. The report is that the new gang initiation thing is to bring back a woman and/or her car. One way they are doing this is crawling under women's cars while they're pumping gas or at grocery stores in the nighttime. The other way is slipping into unattended cars and kidnapping the women.

Please pass this on to other women, young and old alike. Be extra careful going to and from your car at night. If at all possible, don't go alone!
This is real!!

The message:

1. ALWAYS lock your car doors, even if you're gone for just a second!

2. Check underneath your car when approaching it for reentry, and check in the back before getting in.

3. Always be aware of your surroundings and of other individuals in your general vicinity, particularly at night!

Send this to everyone so your friends can take precaution.

AND GUYS...YOU TELL ANY WOMEN YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS

this, just so you know, is NOT the first time i have received this email.

and, boy, does it piss me off.

first of all, it's the same old tripe about how Girls: you need to be more careful; Girls: you need to do this, or not do that, or check this, or be more aware.

in sum: girls, it's your responsibility to not get raped. and if you do get raped (cuz, chances are you will), it's basically your fault for not being more careful.

and i LOVE the last sentence: and guys--your only responsibility is to tell gals you know all about how they should be frightened basically ALL the time, but especially if they are out by themselves at NIGHT (god forbid women be without a male escort!).

how about instead of this we send a chain email around to boys saying, in effect:

Boys: do not rape women. do not sexually assault women. if a woman leaves a car door unlocked, do not think this means she wants you to come home with her and rape her. if she gets drunk at a party, do not think this means she wants you to rape her. she does not want you to rape her.

it is YOUR responsibility to prevent rape. it is YOUR responsibility to NOT RAPE.

and girls.....you tell any boys you know, not to rape women.

cheers!

moms are underpaid

2006-05-04T15:24:00.000-05:00

who doesn't agree with that sentiment? even if they aren't sure there is anything that can or should be done about it, i think we all know "moms" (i.e. stay at home parents) work HARD.

a new study says they'd be making over $130,000 a year. nice.

"It's good to acknowledge the job that's being done, and that it's not that these women are settling for 'just a mom,"' said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "They are actually doing an awful lot."

only saying, yeah, you deserve to be paid, isn't really the acknowledgement most "moms" would probably prefer.

the question is, who's going to pony up the cash? or a better question, why aren't mothers on welfare "earning" what the government is "giving them"?

(and where did that pony expression come from?)

yankees vs. red sox

2006-05-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

you've got to decide this early. and you have to go with your gut.

if you're from CT, as i originally am, you're probably more likely to support the yankees.

but i could have told you that.

file under: give me a break

2006-05-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

the pResident can't speak spanish all that well, according to his press secretary, so it's absurd to suggest that he sung the national anthem in spanish during the inauguration.

yeah, well, he can't speak english all that well either, but he certainly seems to memorize his lines well enough to give speeches.

tuesday

2006-05-02T15:50:00.000-05:00

stumbled across this site which is basically a compilation of translated news articles from around the world. a very neat thing, if you ask me.

got to spend some quality time with the pook this weekend, although he somehow developed what seems like conjunctivitis, so he's got some antibiotic eyedrops for the next few days.

got to rewatch Serenity friday night and i realized that i don't think that the operative chasing River et al. would be so changed in his allegiance to the alliance just because of the Reavers. i think he would just see it as a failed experiment in the quest for the "sinless" world.

random, eh?

let's see...what else?

oh yeah, i realized i've pretty much got all the basics of matlab down. which is lucky since that helps me do just about, oh,....let's go with... none of my data analysis. it's kind of like, i know the alphabet and now i just need to learn to analyze a joseph conrad novel.

but luckily i'm really, really in the mood/mental place where i want to be doing my work all the time. i was actually really bummed out that i had to leave early yesterday to take pooka to the vet. which is good and bad. good, because it allows me to drive away at the data without feeling burned out or annoyed. bad, because it allows me to blow off all of my non-work committments and not even think about them. and by comittments i mean, friends etc.

which is bad. for the friendships.

oh, tomorrow i should talk about "hustle & flow" and "north country", my movies the past two weekends. hopefully i'll get to it.

ntozake shange

2006-05-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

i stumbled upon this poem today and knew it had to be my poem this week.

just to note, before you read it, it is disturbing as it deals with graphic images of abuse.

With No Immediate Cause

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a lil girl is molested
yet i rode the subway today
i sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his
daughter but i sat there
cuz the young men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
i might not shut my door fast
every 3 minutes it happens
some woman's innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red & split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body
i rode the subway today
& bought a paper from a
man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/i don't know
maybe he catches lil girls in the
park & rips open their behinds
with steel rods/i can't decide
what he might have done i only
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so
i bought the paper
looking for the announcement
the discovery/of the dismembered
woman's body/the
victims have not all been
identified/today they are
naked and dead/refuse to
testify/one girl out of 10's not
coherent/i took the coffee
& spit it up/i found an
announcement/not the woman's
bloated body in the river/floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/not the baby
broken on the floor/
there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands & lovers with no
immediate cause"

i spit up i vomit i am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women's bodies are found
in alleys & bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before i ride the subway/buy a paper/drink
coffee/i must know/
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child across a room
are the lil girl's panties
in yr pocket

did you hurt a woman today
i have to ask these obscene questions
the authorities require me to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day.

~Ntozake Shange

the OR is just like everywhere else

2006-04-25T10:51:00.000-05:00

a recent survey looked into why fewer women than men go into surgery, particularly interesting as fewer m.d.s are entering into surgerical residencies.

there are a few things that stand out to me:

men are apparently more concerned than women about family and workload concerns. i found this result surprising and in thinking about why this would be so (since it doesn't seem to me that women in general have stopped being concerned about a work/life balance) i can only surmise that this would be because women may see all fields as equally difficult in balancing family and work?

and, then of course, there are the not suprising findings that women are more likely to see sex discrimination in surgery, and percieve surgeons to comprise an "old boys' club" (not to mention women tend to be more disturbed about the "surgical personality", which i think fits into this).

but these results indicate something which really bothers me. it is one thing for women to feel like they can't do something because of the practicalities of the situation: they want to have children and don't see time for it, for example. but it is an entirely different thing for women to feel like they can't do something because of a perception that they just don't belong there doing it. i'm sure this is true in other situations too, but it just makes me sad.

i feel like i have a lot more thoughts to add to this (like how this is or is not reflected in popular culture in shows like ER, or Grey's Anatomy), but no time right now.

let america be america again

2006-04-24T15:27:00.000-05:00

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

~langston hughes

totally misguided

2006-04-21T15:56:00.000-05:00

so, if you've been following the news you know that the president of china, hu jintao, is visiting the US. you probably also know that at his arrivial ceremony a protestor started shouting against him.

she apparently started out with:

"President Bush, stop him from killing," the woman shouted, to the surprise of hundreds of guests spread across the lawn on a sunny, warm day.

now, i would be suprised too: she is asking BUSH to STOP someone from killing. this just seems totally misguided to me. i mean, bush is the "war president", and wars involve death, as we all know.

in response:

Bush leaned over and whispered to Hu, "You're OK,"

yeah, don't worry hu--i'm down with the killing, and we can still be good buddies. good thing we've got such a friendly president.

the article goes on to say:

Chinese leaders place high importance on protocol and symbolism, and Bush moved promptly to deal with the protest on the lawn. Once they reached the Oval Office, Bush apologized to his guest.

"He just said, 'This was unfortunate' and 'I'm sorry it happened,'" said Dennis Wilder, acting senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff.

phew, you wouldn't want the president of china thinking people actually have a right to protest! or that we're not all down with state sanctioned murder.

"It's hugely embarrassing," said Derek Mitchell, a former Asia adviser at the Pentagon and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China "must know that this Bush administration is good at controlling crowds for themselves, and the fact that they couldn't control this is going to play to their worst fears and suspicions about the United States, into mistrust about American intentions toward China."

that's right--they might think we're a democracy, that we'll use those constitutional rights. and then we probably couldn't be such good buddies.

average

2006-04-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

maybe i don't belong in science.

it seems lately, from what i've been reading and talking about, that if you are in science, getting your phd, or past that (into postdoc, academia, industry) you must want greatness.

but i don't. i used to. i used to have all those dreams about being the Next Big Thing, making some big discovery that lead to the Nobel or some other worthy prize.

but i realize that, even if i do stay in science, i don't want to be on the edge. just an interesting problem will suffice (and what problem isn't interesting?). me at my bench and/or computer working it out and enjoying myself.

i don't want the stress, the fear, the paranoia, the responsibility of being "great". i want life, fun, time, fresh air, good food, and a furry pooka monster on my lap.

i am a little church

2006-04-18T14:02:00.000-05:00

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~e.e.cummings

last week before easter

2006-04-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

so last haiku posting. and i won't do a poem post next monday as i'll just be coming back home from easter weekend with family.

as a christian, this is a mournful week for me. it is a time to remember the ever-present death of Jesus Christ to atone for my sins. it is a time to remember that i am a murderer, thief and liar. that my own heart contains every manner of evil. it is often hard to acknowledge how much i need jesus.

"Chrysanthemum growers-
you are the slaves
of chrysanthemums!"

"before the white chrysanthemum
the scissors hesitate
a moment."

~buson

class effect

2006-04-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

in hugo schwyzer's blog, he writes about white privilege:

"It wasn't arrogance, but rather a kind of confidence that came from always being seen as someone who "belonged". My friends of color could not report the same set of experiences! In countless ways, my white skin (as well as my sex and my class background) have opened doors for me."

which inspired me in thinking about how i grew up feeling as tho i didn't belong, despite being white, and how class has impacted that feeling. i feel like one of the connotations of "white" is "middle class". because i wasn't middle class i didnt feel as tho i always belonged, or was always safe.

I grew up poor. welfare poor for many years of my young life. Because we were poor, we lived in a poor neighborhood, with many other poor white people and people of color. so my experience of the world is a bit different, i guess. our sins were on the outside. police constantly harassed folks, and it was a tossup between whether taking another one from your abusive husband was better than calling the cops. In that neighborhood, in that setting, my white skin did not mean much. and later on, this made me keenly aware of the fact that my white skin let me "pass". pass under their radar as long as i was in the right neighborhood, or was wearing the right clothes, or was not in the company of folks of color.

but at least i felt i belonged among the people in that neighborhood, at that school. we were all in it together, we had to be for each other, because the rest of the world was not looking out for us.

when our apartment building was condemned as too dangerous to live in, we moved to a middle class neighboorhood, albeit in the more rundown area and in the lone apartment building in the area (something we struggled to afford even now that my mom was off of welfare and working a full time job). whereas before, i was one poor kid among many, i was now one poor kid among many wealthy ones. and i was made to feel it. feel as though i didn't belong. feel as though i were dirty. maybe (?) particularly because there were almost no people of color at this new school, my white skin did not automatically include me in the party.

so, in high school and especially college, i always felt i was on the outside. i couldn't afford high end clothes; my speech defects were constantly pointed out to me; i had no financial safety net to fall back on. i couldn't party every night because i needed to keep my grades up for my scholarship; i always had to keep a job in addition to class work just to pay for the essentials like a meal plan and books; and i couldn't fly away to an exotic locale for spring break every year. not all of these things bother me (and neither does growing up poor, as i appreciate the life view it has given me). but all of them were reminders that i was "different"--and in a capitalistic culture, different financially is definitely "less than."

not to mention

2006-04-05T12:01:00.000-05:00

i have been incredibly stressed out lately.

this is not good for many reasons, but most of all my sanity, by which i mean my faith. it means i'm not remembering how relatively easy and blessed my life is.

i'm trying to do data analysis at work, which means learning matlab. i'm so not a computer programmer but it is good to learn and i have an EXCELLENT teacher, thank God. it is also harried because my advisor wants data to give in her talk and to send in an abstract for a conference in june. which i don't have. data, or time to do it in. i already spent three more hours on it this morning than i was supposedly allowing myself.

i've also been very busy with social obligations. normally i try to be very strict about limiting myself in this category because of the overwhelming-ness of lab, but i have a couple of good friends moving away in the next month, and a friend coming into town, and easter coming up so my schedule there is packed also.

not to mention the class i'm taking this semester.
not to mention personal issues going on in my life.

so, all of this is stress.

and i forgot my winter hat on the train today. again. and it's snowing.

but i finally get to see brokeback mountain this week, so yay that.

too late is not the same as never

2006-04-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

"No talent
and so no sin,
a winter day."

"moon, plum blossoms,
this, that,
and the day goes."

~issa (for both)

hillary was wrong.

2006-03-31T08:26:00.001-05:00

do you remember back a few months ago when hillary clinton described congress as a modern day plantation? yeah, i laughed out loud at that too. if she really wants to see a modern day plantation, complete with slaves who have NO WAY OUT, maybe she should try going to prison.

CNN reports that "conservatives"/ republicans are saying instead of using illegal immigrant labor for low paying jobs, we should use prisons.

must be their prison-industrial complex running buddies aren't making enough money just housing these folks. now, we need to make slaves out of them. (not that this idea, or practice is new).

if you didn't know that prisons are an overtly racially discriminating business, now you do.

it sure ain't easy

2006-03-23T08:18:00.000-05:00

if you've watched the movie "crash", or this years oscars ceremony, you'll know what this is a takeoff of.

if you don't, check out this website.

It's Hard Out Here for a Feminist

You know it's hard out here for a fem'nist (you ain't knowin)
When she tryin to get some respect from the men (you ain't knowin)
For the energy and work hours spent
Because a whole of lot of misog'nists talk shit

In my eyes I done seen some crazy thangs in this world
Done seen women raped, done seen women beat
Done seen women live in poverty on the street
It's fucked up where I live, but that's just how it is

It might be new to you, but it's been like this for years
It's blood sweat and tears when it come down to this shit
I’m tryin to get justice ‘fore I leave up out this life
I’m tryin to get thangs right but it’s hard fo’ a fem'nist
But I'm prayin and I'm hopin to God I don't give up the fight

haiku for today

2006-03-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet--

~issa

__________________

one is enough for today, for the week. this is one of my favorite haikus. it is so powerful.

VWAV

2006-03-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

well, the wkd wasn't as relaxing as i had hoped. altho i did get a great nap friday night (is it sad that my favorite thing to do on friday nights is fall asleep on the couch with the pooka on my belly?) i woke up early saturday morning and worked all day cooking and cleaning and doing loads of dishes. that was the theme of the wkd: doing dishes.

sunday, i finished up cleaning and did my shift at bread and jam's in the afternoon. which is always nice and i actually had a great crew of volunteers which makes all the difference.

so, it was definitely vegan with a vengeance wkd at my house. i made: pomegranite bbq tofu; chickpea and brocolli casserole with the chickpea punk rock gravy; and the blueberry coffee cake.

all of which were super delicious.

previously i have made: lemon corn waffles with blueberry sauce; peanut butter seitan with soba noodles; tempeh bacon and tofu scramble. the first two were amazing. second two not so much but i have a recipe for tofu scramble already that rocks and i was never a fan of regular bacon so....there you go.

i had also wanted to make biscuits and tempeh-whitebean gravy but was too tired. maybe a couple of wkds hence.

plus i've been seriously thinking about what i want to do when i'm done with grad school. it's two years away but i do have that feeling of wanting to know what comes next. this is seriously the first time in my life i don't have a five and ten year plan which is scary but also freeing.

do i want to stay in my field or do something different? how biological can i get if i refuse to work with animals? do i stay local or try a completely new locale? do i want to stay on the coast or am i willing to move into the country? do i move abroad? how will that work with the pooka? how important is weather?

in the meantime: another wk of data analysis and paper reading. oh joy.

for posterity

2006-03-16T18:42:00.000-05:00

xf and i do very similar things in lab, so we are often discussing our experiments/ data analysis. esp the caveats of doing single molecule work.

me: "so many things to think about."
xf: "so much time needed to waste."

at which i cracked up. of course.

panda bear

2006-03-10T13:42:00.000-05:00

"The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts."

from True Blue Liberal

this statement represents what i find extremely disingenuous about the new wave of conservatives criticizing Bush/ the Bush admin.

I am not surprised at how inept he has been. I am not suprised at how evil his actions have become. It was all there, plain as day, for anyone willing to look.

but people are too concerned with labels. he was "conservative"; he was a "republican"; he was "a man of faith".

um, yeah, right. and i'm a panda bear. it must be true because i just said it!

two haikus by basho

2006-03-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

It's not like anything
they compare it to--
the summer moon.

~basho

First day of spring
i keep thinking about
the end of autumn.

~basho

the wonderful weekend

2006-03-06T11:39:00.000-05:00

this past weekend was gorgeous.

i was completely by myself (well, of course, the pooka was there, but he's my baby) which got a bit strange after awhile.

but i got everything done i wanted to, went to church on sunday (i hadn't been in a month) so i got to see many of my friends, took a nap, and made lots of food. it was so relaxing, and peaceful which was what i needed. it was also delightful because spring was in the air.

and i made some medical decisions for myself that i feel good with right now.

and i watched the oscars a bit last night. i was really hoping for a "brokeback" win. granted, i haven't seen the movie, but i have read the short story it is based on and i have seen "crash". which, imo, was less than stellar.

it wasn't that it wasn't well acted--i thought everyone involved did a great job; it was beautiful and smooth in looks. and i loved the scene where the little girl protected her dad from getting shot.

but it was so....well, trite. cliche. unsatisfactory.

wow: good people can be asses. bad people can do good things. i never knew! thank you, hollywood.

but really, do i think matt dilon's character was truly redeemed because he saved the black women whom he had already raped from a burning car? no. esp because i don't think he did it as an act of redemption versus his: this is what cops do.

do i think sandra bullock accepting her latina housecleaner as a 'friend' (because she has NO ONE else) means the next time a latino comes to change the locks on the door she won't think he'll sell her keys to his gang buddies?

do i think snow blanketing the city of los angelos after the "good" white cop kills his black hitch hiker is anything at all meaninful?

no, i guess i don't.

and it seems like i'm not the only one

so, there you go.

poem and post

2006-02-27T10:23:00.000-05:00

this week begins lent. i'm not a catholic but i am a christian and have taken up the practice of lent the last few years.

the idea is basically to forgo something for ~40-45 days before easter in order to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for me by coming to earth.

i will also 'take something on', to help me remember what jesus took on my going to the cross. something which will be difficult, challenging but worthwhile.

so, i'll be posting haiku poems during lent. these are small poems, japanese in origin. they are meant to be very 'zen'--contemplative without necessarily meaning anything. observatory, objective, and distant. this is an extremely difficult form to master--both because we as humans imbue things with meaning by creating them, and we as humans see(k) meaning in things. the writer of the haiku is attempting to separate him or herself, and the reader from making an emotional connection with the object of the poem.

*****

"Flowers of morning glory.
The sky above this street
Begins to overcast."

~hisajo sugita

this wkd

2006-02-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

so the poem isn't really technically as late as you may think.

today is my monday because i actually took a three day wkd! yay!

well, i'd been working flat out for the two week prior to that, including weekends because of some things that i couldn't stop at work.

and the next month, starting today and going through march 19, will be the same.

so, in between i decided to take a mini-break. besides which it was my birthday. besides which my mom came up for the wkd. besides which, my boss is out of town.

and now i'm learning matlab.

this weekend included a trip to the movie theater to see harry potter and the goblet of fire. it's been out for awhile and will come out on dvd soon, but i hadn't seen it and wanted to on the big screen, as they say.

so, one of the things i hate is the increasing genderization of the characters. it's there in the books, and there in the movies.

oh, those boys: they can't express their feelings because that would be, like, a completely girl thing to do!

but good thing they've got hermione around--she's a genuine girl! you can even tell more now because she wore a DRESS to a ball! and danced with a boy! and her hair was all curly and stuff!

and what was up with that scene with harry in the bath, and moaning myrtle trying to get a look at his penis? did that make anyone else as uncomfortable as it made me? i mean, the kid is fifteen, or something!

ok, back to GUI.

"the plan"

2006-02-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

the plan

"who told you
you were invisible?"

God said,

meaning naked
or powerless.

*

We had planned this meeting
in advance,

how we'd address each other,

how we'd stand
or kneel.

Thus our intentions
are different

from our bodies,
something extra,

though transparent
like a negligee.

*

Though a bit sketchy,

like this palm's
impression of a tree--

flashing scales,

on the point of retraction.

But sweet.
You don't understand!

Like a lariat made of scalloped bricks

circling a patch
of grass

~rae armantrout

again with the cnn

2006-02-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

an addendum to an article on CNN about the muslim rioting in response to the danish cartoons published depicting mohammed.

CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.

in other words: CNN is not showing the cartoons published because the network believes its role is not to fully inform people, or support freedom of speech. we do not believe that you, the reader, can or should think for yourselves.

a poem

2006-02-13T11:14:00.000-05:00

coming up

our father who art in a penthouse
sits in his 37th floor suite
and swivels to gaze down
at the city he made me in
he allows me to stand and
solicit graffiti until
he needs the land i stand on
i in my darkened threshold
am pawing through my pockets
the receipts, the bus schedules
the matchbook phone numbers
the urgent napkin poems
all of which laundering has rendered
pulpy and strange
loose change and a key
ask me
go ahead, ask me if i care
i got the answer here
i wrote it down somewhere
i just gotta find it
i just gotta find it

somebody and their spray paint got too close
somebody came on too heavy
now look at me made ugly
by the drooling letters
i was better off alone
ain't that the way it is
they don't know the first thing
but you don't know that
until they take the first swing
my fingers are red and swollen from the cold
i'm getting bold in my old age
so go ahead, try the door
it doesn't matter anymore
i know the weakhearted are strongwilled
and we are being kept alive
until we're killed
he's up there the ice
is clinking in his glass
he sends me little pieces of paper
i don't ask
i just empty my pockets and wait
it's not fate
it's just circumstance
i don't fool myself with romance
i just live
phone number to phone number
dusting them against my thighs
in the warmth of my pockets
which whisper history incessantly
asking me
where were you

i lower my eyes
wishing i could cry more
and care less,
yes it's true,
i was trying to love someone again,
i was caught caring,
bearing weight

but i love this city, this state
this country is too large
and whoever's in charge up there
had better take the elevator down
and put more than change in our cup
or else we
are coming
up

~ani difranco

sweet stuff

2006-02-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

and kitty porn to get you through your thursday!

by the by

2006-02-09T12:41:00.000-05:00

it seems as though i've been blogging for a year now.

woah. how it all rushes by.

what democracy requires?

2006-02-09T12:33:00.000-05:00

time article from last week about "bringing democracy" to other places and why it succeeds and fails.

i've often been curious about this and am not nearly enough of a political scientist/ historian to know.

but here is what joe klein says:

It is common wisdom among serious democracy advocates that there are preconditions for successful representative government. There must be a solid middle class; there must be the rule of law and freedom of speech. But a more elusive human quality is necessary as well: a drastic change of public sensibility from passivity toward active engagement. In a place like Iraq--or the former Soviet Union--passivity was a survival mechanism. The best way to live with a tyrant like Saddam was to draw as little notice to yourself as possible. A Russian friend once told me that he was taught as a child never to smile in public. You never knew when a smile might be interpreted the wrong way.

Democracy requires the exact opposite. It demands that people take charge of their lives and make informed decisions. That takes time, the careful accumulation of the habits of citizenship.

i really like this. i don't know that i've thought through all of the implications or, again, have enough knowledge to agree or disagree. but i like it.

i also think it has implications for our current political situation given the fact that all people think is required to be a citizen is to check that box/ pull that lever every year (or two or four).

poem of today

2006-02-06T15:15:00.000-05:00

The german army, russia, 1943

For twelve days,
I drilled through Moscow ice
to reach paradise,
that white tablecloth, set with a plate
that's cracking bit by bit
like the glassy air, like me.
I know i'll fly apart soon,
the pieces of me so light they float.
The Russians burned their crops,
rather than feed our army.
Now they strike us against each other like dry rocks
and set us on fire with a hunger
nothiing can feed.
Someone calls me and I look up.
It's Hitler.
I imagine eating his terrible, luminous eyes.
Brother, he says.
I stand up, tie the rags tighter around my feet.
I hear my footsteps running after me,
but I am already gone.

~AI

oh betty

2006-02-05T10:16:00.000-05:00

betty friedan dies

generosity

2006-01-31T08:49:00.000-05:00

i mean, beggars can't be choosers, right?

i'm just wondering if the dog food quality in new zealand is as poor as it is here. i sure hope not, or this offer is even worse than it seems.

excellent

2006-01-30T11:35:00.000-05:00

a very nice opinion piece in the boston globe

are we in a state of war?

some snippets from the article:

There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war....

But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war -- and that is an enemy.

at first, i thought this article was going to go into how the american mindset is not that of a nation in war--which is an important point, but this article exceeded my expectations.

it is directly addressing the fact that iraq was no threat to the US. the people there simply want the same things "americans", or any people want. the right to a self-described freedom, the right to self determination. Freedom cannot be imposed on you by another nation--then it is inherently NOT freedom. Freedom is working on your own terms, living with and for and by your own agenda and not someone elses'.

Americans who bother to imagine the situation from the Iraqi point of view -- a massive foreign invasion, launched on false pretenses; a brutal occupation, with control of local oil reserves surely part of the motivation; the heartbreaking deaths of brothers, cousins, children, parents -- naturally understand that an ''insurgency" is the appropriate response.

the Iraqi people are not stupid, or naive. they understand why americans are occupying their nation--and no matter what motive you think this might be i don't think anyone is brash enough to suggest we are there simply out of concern for the iraqi people. we don't understand what life was like for them before the occupation, and we don't understand what life is like for them now. most of us have never lived in a country under war, living in enemy occupied territory. but we do know that whatever they are suffering now they are suffering, at least in part, because we are there. every innocent civilian killed, tortured, or jailed is at our hands. and, unfortunately, there has been a lot of those things going on.

Bin Laden was a self-mythologized figure of no historic standing until George W. Bush designated him America's equal by defining 9/11 as an act of war to be met with war, instead of a crime to be met with criminal justice. But this over-reaction, so satisfying at the time to the wounded American psyche, turned into the war for which the other party simply did not show up. Which is, of course, why we are blasting a substitute Iraq to smithereens.

emphasis mine. because this is the thing that has always bothered me most about the whole post-9/11 thing.

full head, busy feet, and empty heart

2006-01-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

"The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone."

from "home burial", by robert frost.

at church yesterday the pastor said something which really stood out to me, and that was that a sure sign that passion has leaked out of our relationship with God is to be in a state of: "full head, busy feet, and empty heart."

this exactly describes how i feel. how i have felt, increasingly, over the last year. i have fallen out of touch with God and realized that He is not my first love, if He ever was. it has been disconcerting to realize that i have never given him any part of myself that was not conditional, that i didn't want (and expect) back, in full at some later point.

and i don't know how, or if, i can get to the point that i want to be. or, that i know i should be at. i just do not have the mental willpower to work on this. and i do not have the courage to ask for help to do this. i would rather spend my energies on things i can control, on things that are neat and orderly and easily established.

at work, doing experiments, reading papers, getting things done and having set starts and stops. on my house: baking, cooking, cleaning--where i can clearly outline accomplishment. where i can praise myself for a job well done. where i know it is MY work, and MY effort, and my mental and physical capacity that will work it out.

these last two weekends have been exhausting. times of good-byes but not hellos. of ending, but not knowing where or what to begin. i see life right now as a tiny trickle of water trying to make it through the swirling sand dune. i don't mean that to be overly dramatic, because that is not the way i feel. i'm too tired for that.

part III

2006-01-23T09:10:00.000-05:00

the final installment of susan stewart's "Apple"

Fire will take in whatever it can
and heat will draw back
into earth. "here is the fruit,
your reward and penalty
at once," said the god

to the waiting figures.
Unbearable, the world
that broke into time.
Unbearable, the just-born
certainty of distance.

You can roast late apples
in the ashes. You can run
them in slices on a stick.
You can turn the stem to
find the letter of your love

or chase them down with
your chin in a tub.
If you count the seeds to tell
the future, your heart will
sense more than your

tongue can say. A body
has a season, though
it may not know it
and damage will bloom
in a beauty's seed.

If I could come back from the dead, I would--
I'd come back for an apple,
and just for one bite, one break,
and the cold sweet grain on the tongue.
There is so little difference between

an apple and a kiss, between desire
and the taste of desire.
Anyone who tells you other-
wise is a liar, as bad
as a snake in the quiet grass.

You can watch out for the snake and the lie.
But the grass, the green green wave
of it, there below the shadows of the black
and twisted boughs, will not be
what you thought it would be.

part II

2006-01-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

you need a hillside, a small and steady wind,
a killing frost, and, later, honey-bees.
you need a shovel, and shears, and a ladder

and the balance to come back down again.
you will have fears of codling moths
and railroad worms, and aphids.

scale and maggots and beetles
will come to their undoing.
Forests will trap the air

and valleys will bend to gales--
cedars will bring on rust, so keep them
far in the distance. Paradise,

of course, was easy, but you and i live
in this world, and "the fruit of the tree
in the midst of the garden"

says nothing specific about apples;
the "apples of gold" in Proverbs
are probably oranges instead.

And so are the fruits
Milanion threw down:
an apple does not glitter.

If you're interested in immortality
it's best to plant a tree, and even
then you can't be sure that form

will last under weather.
The tree can break apart in a storm
or be torqued into pieces over many

years from the weight of its ruddy labor.
The state won't let you burn the wood
in the open air; the smoke is too dense

for breathing. but apple-wood
makes a lovely fire, with excellent
heat and aroma.

divided

2006-01-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

into parts. i want to do longer poems. too long to spend writing up at once. this will be a three part series.

Apple

If i could come back from the dead, i would come back
for an apple, and just for the first bite, the first
break, and the cold sweet grain
against the roof of the mouth, as plain
and clear as water.

some apple names are almost forgotten
and the apples themselves are gone. The smokehouse,
winesap and York imperial, the striped
summer rambo and the winter banana, the little
Rome with its squat rotunda and the pound apple

that pulled the boughs to the ground.
The sheep's nose with its three-pointed snout,
the blue Pearmian, speckled and sugared.
Grime's golden, cortland, and stamen.
If an apple's called "delicious," it's not.

Water has no substance
and soil has no shell,
sun is all process
and rain cannot rise.
The apple's core carries

a birth and a poison.
stem and skin, and flesh,
and seed, the apple's name,
no matter, is work
and the work of death.

If you wait for the apple, you wait
for one ripe moment. and should
you sleep, or should you dream, or
should you stare too hard in the daylight
or come into the dark to see

what can't be seen, you will drop
from the edge, going over into
coarse, or rot, or damping off.
you will wake to yourself, regretful,
in a grove of papery leaves.

~susan stewart

no excuse

2006-01-06T09:34:00.000-05:00

since i'm stuck at home today with a pulled leg today i really have no excuse for not updating my blog.

so, anyway, yeah, 2005 ended and a new year has begun. i think we all try to reflect at this time of year and i'm no different. well, usually. this year i haven't done too much reflection because i've been feeling quite overwhelmed by several things. because of that, i haven't wanted to think about them. we'll see how that goes tho.

anyway, my christmas was crazy with being home for about three days. spent some time with the father and his wife (even tho i didn't really want to); christmas with my mom's side of the family at my aunt's house with the million or so children who are now in my family; monday i met my mom's new boyfriend. he seems nice enough. and then back to the city on tuesday.

but i did get to take a vacation last week so i could clean the house and catch up on some things, and sleep in. which actually made it harder to get up this week. hopefully i'll be fully back into the swing of getting up at 530am next week.

so, speaking of my aunt, i just found out this week that she is getting married to her long time boyfriend. they've been together so long i don't even remember how many years--at least 7, probably more. they've lived together for almost that whole time, they bought a house together a few years ago, and she's been sporting a diamond for awhile--because, let's face it, a diamond is forever. or so i hear.

anyway.

what i'm trying to figure out is when life all of a sudden became about boys. i feel like every conversation i have is about boys. i mean, yes, in once sense life has always been about boys--partriarchy, hegemony, masculinism. but we're talking personal here. and since the personal is political i guess one could say they are the same thing. but they are really not. i'm babbling.

my mom--new boyfriend. she hasn't dated in about 20 years so this is pretty significant, and she talks about him like a schoolgirl. everything is now about "tom".

it wasn't so long ago that my friends and i were all single. which is significant when you're in your mid to late twenties. people start asking. all the time. now, one of my friends is "in love" with some boy she started dating about two months ago and calls constantly to "freak out" about if she's doing things "correctly". my other close friend has been vacillating between two boys and so we have to talk about what they've been saying to her and signals she's been getting and giving.

and yeah, a boy for me too. so that christmas became all about questions about this: how did we meet; how long we've been dating; how i'm feeling; where do i see this going; what's his sister's uncle's fourth cousins name?

where did this all come from?

my grandmother is now talking about how she needs to find a boyfriend?!

that's when you know things have gone too far. when your 76 year old grandmother is asking for tips on how to find a man.

the poem

2006-01-02T12:23:00.000-05:00

"into my own"

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

~robert frost

euthanasia in new orleans

2005-12-22T10:24:00.000-05:00

CNN is now reporting that allegations of euthanasia by doctors at the hospitals in new orleans after katrina hit may be true and that these doctors will be tried for this "crime".

"The physicians and staff responsible for the care of patients, many of whom were gravely ill, faced loss of generator power, the absence of routine medical equipment to sustain life, lack of water and sanitation facilities, extreme heat in excess of one hundred degrees, all occurring in an environment of deteriorating security, apparent social unrest and the absence of governmental authority. Dr. Pou and other medical personnel at Memorial Hospital worked tirelessly for five days to save and evacuate patients, none of whom were abandoned. We feel confident that the facts will reveal heroic efforts by the physicians and the staff in a desperate situation."

all i can say is, if these doctors are tried for euthanasia/ murder then so should FEMA director mike brown and george bush for forcing those conditions upon the staff and patients there for five days by giving one of the most lame-ass responses to disaster.

catswym, champion of puppies

2005-12-21T09:07:00.000-05:00

so, this morning i'm walking to the train and all of a sudden i meet up with this little brown puppy. he's wearing a red harness and looking particularly cold (being in the teens fahrenheit last night, i can understand why). i think: okay puppy, i'll go around you, don't bite me and i hope your folks let you in soon!

i walk a little bit further and notice a sign for a "lost puppy" named Hank, who is brown, very short haired and was last seen last night, off leash wearing a red harness!

i'm thinking, okay, i'm late for my train, this is going to make me miss it, the puppy could have already run away again, but should i call? yeah, i should. i walk back down the street, see the puppy, call the people.

they were ecstatic. all "do you see him right now?" "we've been looking for him all night" "call him to you" (i already had called "hank" to which he gave me a curious: do i know you? look).

anyway, they were just down the streeet but i'm glad i called because: a, it was cold; b, he could have run again; c, he kept darting into the street--not a great thing to do in the city.

and it was soooooo wonderful to see how happy they were at the sight of their beloved puppy.

and it basically made my morning.

coffee and ethiopian food

2005-12-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

last night was christmas at the terrace (as my home is generally called, even tho we no longer live on the terrace). we used to live on a terrace, and apparently this was another in a long line of simpsons' references that i don't get.

how exciting! (early christmas, not simpsons' references.)

i got: Are men necessary?

so, i've heard nothing but bad things about this book (and not just from male reviewers) but i'm curious to read it.

i also got chocolate covered espresso beans---yum. i really really like these things.

and speaking of that, coffee was the only thing that got me out of bed this morning. i have a fair amount of work to do today and we have our "lab dinner" tonight at the ethiopian restaurant in town.

and it's really dawning on me that christmas is less than a week away and i'll get to go "home" and i'm in a good mood and actually excited about seeing my family. can you believe it?

i suppose

2005-12-19T13:11:00.000-05:00

oh, the weekend. you are a cruel mistress who teases with her fleeting presence.

i did get to watch "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy".

i recommend it as a pretty funny movie. i haven't read the books, so probably most of the jokes were over my head (the towel???), and i had low expectations going in--esp as i thought it was the flatmate's choice.

turned out to be good after all.

caught up on cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping. that's what weekends are for, i suppose.

i also picked out a present for my father. the hardest one to get.

he's getting Guns, Germs and Steel. a really great book if you haven't read that.

i'm just full of recommendations aren't i?

i was also glad to see that the reason they put a fence around this building near my house was not nearly as sketchy as i had thought--they were tearing it down. all of a sudden one day last week there was a fence about five feet from the building, even covering over the sidewalk. that didn't strike me as a good sign. and maybe it wasn't--and now they've destroyed the evidence.

hmmm.

wcw

2005-12-19T09:21:00.000-05:00

willow poem

It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river
as if loth to let go,
they are so cool, so drunk with
the swirl of the wind and of the river—
oblivious to winter,
the last to let go and fall
into the water and on the ground.

~william carlos williams

once in a sycamore i was glad

2005-12-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

NRM news flash: it be some treacherous conditions out there right now.

if you're in the northeast corner of the united states, i'd stay home if i were you.

there's a thin layer of ice underneath rain coming down. most of the way to the train i walked on the road, since the heat from the cars mostly melts the ice.

in other news, on pieces of lab equipment and machinery it is common to tape the card of the tech person whom one calls if said equipment breaks down.

for the ultrasound at my doctor's office--this persons's name is Thaddeus Penas.

how do you think that last name is pronounced? cuz i know how i think it's pronounced and it's funny in that "ironic" sort of way, given that this piece of equipment is used in a ladies' doctor's office.

i'm hoping this person grew up in a foreign country. otherwise, all i could think was, poor kid.

more pepper should do it

2005-12-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

pain sucks.

the last four days have been pain-filled wonderlands.

last night i was talking to my mom and started laughing maniacally while describing the pain of this weekend. perhaps i'm actually starting to lose my mind? oh, who am i kidding--maybe i've lost my mind?

i did get to do some cooking and cleaning at home the last couple days since i haven't felt the ability to stay at work all day, and i certainly can't work out.

i made a new recipe--corn chowder this week. it's decent, and i made some whole wheat biscuits to go along with. next time i need to add a bit more spice to it--more veggie broth and pepper should do it.

i have to go to the doctor's office tomorrow. i'm hoping it's just a cursory visit so that he can give me pain meds and be asured i'm not drug seeking. well, not drug seeking in the bad way, rather than trying to foist hormonal mind control on me.

oh, and i don't drink flouridated water either.

oh, john berryman--how you understand henry and me.

mmp 12-12

2005-12-12T12:35:00.000-05:00

dream song no 1

Huffy Henry hid the day
unappeasable Henry sulked
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
it was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked and away.
but he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

~john berryman

bleery eyed

2005-12-10T11:18:00.000-05:00

it's okay to stay still if it makes you better

it's okay to stare if it keeps you from leaving.

~julie doiron

i promised myself not to be lazy this weekend.

and here i am being lazy.

too much spam for me

2005-12-09T09:34:00.000-05:00

in case you didn't know--it's snowing today.

i used to live just off the main road in The People's Rebuplic of Cambridge. it was nice. people shoveled, the roads were clear, sidewalks were wide so you didn't get car spray.

now i live in craptown, mass. i was so tempted to not come into work today. the road wasn't clear outside my house, no one had shoveled. it looked like the world was holed up.

and then i get to the train station and there were tons of people there. same thing at school. but all the public schools are apparently closed today. doesn't it make you wish you were a high school teacher.

-----------------

yesterday was a new low. my flatmate--we'll call him "d" here-- is broken. his back is out and so i've taken to carrying his packages up the stairs to the apartment. but yesterday i reached my limit.

"d" is getting drugs in the mail. there was a package which obviously contained a drug bottle, and if you shook the envelope you could hear all the pills rattling around.

he says they are for his "back". i'm dubious--i mean, we all get the spam, don't we? we all know what "drugs in the mail" are really all about.

either way, i'm no drug running mule.

-------------

new posting comments settings. too much spam for me. let's see if this helps.

--------------

busy weekend ahead. i need to stop being so lazy.

if you were a little girl

2005-12-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

why is it that the phrase "anything's possible" becomes so negative as one grows older?

when you're little "anything's possible" is the world awaiting. fresh and open, thinkable was attainable.

if you were a little girl you could think about being the president! it was real. you could be a firefighter, a CEO, a nobel prize winnning physicist. if you were a little boy you could be the "first gentleman", a house-husband, an elemenatry school teacher.

you screamed it out as a defense of your dreams: "anything's possible".

your parents and loved one whispered it in your ears: "anything's possible".

dream big, live wildly and hope hope hope. because hope was alive and tangible.

and then you get old, and bury deep inside the world and dreams lose their flavor and hope loses its scent.

and people tell you something wild and then ask, "it's possible, isn't it?" pleading for you to help them, hold them, cradle them in their desire for that to be real, credible.

and you answer back, "yeah, anything's possible," in a tone of voice which leaves an unspoken "you naive fool" behind it. you hear yourself saying it, saying those words like they are coming out of someone elses' mouth to crush your own aspirations, dreams, wishes to be true. you make that true for yourself at the same time you make it true for someone else.

because we live with doubts and hopelessness and failed enterprises and longings and desired unfulfilled and ungiven. and we are afraid that it isn't possible and so i make it so.

tuesday morning lover

2005-12-06T08:29:00.000-05:00

gently you wake me up
nudge me, rub me out of bed

the thought of you gets me up;
warm, soft, smooth i let you in

constant, thorough, welcoming
my breath, my need fulfilled

later you will be there again
to see me through the day

through the night, through long weeks
when there is nothing else

and back again i return
home, full, done, satisfied

mon morning column

2005-12-05T09:46:00.000-05:00

i like the idea of a monday morning poem. so i'll start posting one, hopefully every week. it won't always be e.e., but today it will be again.

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"

old time busy days

2005-12-05T09:23:00.000-05:00

you can tell the moment you step over the line from somerville to cambridge.

nobody shovels their walks in somerville. nobody puts down de-icer or salt or sand. no body cares if you live or die.

step into cambridge. clear walks, evidence of de-icer. people have shoveled, rather than let the fallen inch or two of snow morph into sheer ice due to the friction of peoples' bootsteps.

yesterday was one of those old time busy days.

four loads of laundry; church; pay bills/ go thru two weeks of mail; make cookies, muffins, bread and curry pot pie for dinner; made a dozen christmas cards. all in one day. and then, last night, the pooka decided to sleep in the center of the bed without moving. you say, why not just push him aside? yeah, i wish i could do that. he's a nearly twenty pound beast who will not move if he doesn't wish to move.

i also watched "born into brothels" this weekend.

i loved it. it's a movie about children living in india's red light district (their mothers are sex workers). visually beautiful and an interesting way to tell a story--thru the children's photographs and stories. recommended.

friday

2005-11-28T11:33:00.000-05:00

i am never, never, never going shopping again.

my mom dragged me to target the day after thanksgiving at 630 in the morning. i can only quote kurtz with, "the horror, the horror."

from now on, despite my principles of wanting to support human being jobs (poverty wages tho they may be) i just cannot fathom stepping into a store like that again. it is sooooo much easier to just order online. go to amazon, pick, click, ship.

remember when that idea used to be the scary one and people were all afraid that the internet would create this world of people who never leave their homes and have no human contact and just get everything off the net.

well, just call me sandra, because that sounds perfectly fine.

i was, however, able to get all of my mom's christmas presents, and my mom, in turn, was able to finish her shopping by getting stuff for me. i mean, she only started last january (okay, maybe march) so she should be able to be done. me? i'm just getting started. friday was the gunshot at the start of the race. not that i buy very much. but then yesterday i ordered a few things online (oh that magic word). and the real toughy will be a father present. it always is. sigh. i don't know why i bother--he won't like whatever it is. although he'll pretend to. but he will get really pissed off if he doesn't get anything.

and speaking of my mom, i didn't get to meet her new boyfriend friday because i was just too exhausted. she did, however, ceaselessly talk about him the two days i was home.

and saturday i nearly sliced my thumbtip off chopping some spinach. but at least today i get to wear a cute Dora, the explorer bandaid. yesterday, it was clifford the big red dog.

and just think folks: only one month till christmas.

oh, but i did get to volunteer yesterday and it was fabulous. normally we serve cafeteria style but we did a sit down dinner with traditional thanksgiving fare so make it special and i think folks really enjoyed it. and it's so funny to me when the volunteers thank me (i coordinate the meal) at the end of the shift--they're the ones doing all the work. and it's not a trivial amount of work here either. i'm usually sweaty and food covered by the end (yesterday being no exception after having a cup of orange drink spilled down my pants). but it's always great. and i feel exhausted and refreshed by the end of it.

and finally: this article is a little frightening considering our heavy reliance on foreign labor in labs across the country. oh, and my aversion to racism is a little piqued by it too.

(hopefully, that is a not a sign-em-up only article. let me know if it is.)

here's a highlight tho:

"The U.S. Department of Defense is proposing a similar plan that would force foreign-born researchers to wear color-coded badges that would restrict access to labs based on their country of origin. Foreign-born researchers and American-born researchers would also be segregated in labs.

Both plans focus on country of birth - not country of citizenship - which means American students who were born overseas would be subject to the new restrictions. These plans require universities to apply for special licenses before foreign-born faculty members and students are allowed to set foot in research facilities."

and of course these countries include such terrorist havens as china and india.

and the best part of coming back to boston (home) was coming back to the pooka.

let's start the week

2005-11-28T11:03:00.000-05:00

with some e.e.cummings.

because he is so he.

"my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings."

thanksgiving vay-K

2005-11-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

took today off since i didn't have anything to do around lab (waiting for reagents stinks--but extra days off is great).

woke up before 7, but at least i slep in a little. i've folded laundry, packed for my few days back home in CT, cleaned up the house a bit, and will commence some yoga in a few minutes.

i'll leave tonight and come back saturday. it's a short break but sunday i'm already scheduled to volunteer.

tomorrow should be interesting. i have a generally good attitude towards thanksgiving due to being with friends and family. but it is also rather depressing given that now i sit around a table full of food that i don't eat and think about how not great the history of thanksgiving is. blah.

i'm also supposed to meet my mom's new boyfriend while i'm home. should be interesting. as should be the grilling about my new tofu. and no, D, i don't mean the soybean curd.

speaking of which, had dinner with my flatmate's parents last night--who were not nearly as crazy as i had feared based on his description!

i also saw a street sign on the way to dinner last night that said: bikes stop on line for green.

and there was a picture of a person on a bike with a line going down the center of them.

now, what does this mean? first of all, there was no line on the ground--i looked, being high up in the bus. and most signs speaking of lights say "when green", not "for green". and why would the bike stop when the light was green anyway?

ok, everyone have a good thanks-giving. eat loads of cranberry sauce.

momma said there'd be days like this

2005-11-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

okay, so first, why? why?! is there a package of breastmilk storage bags on top of the microwave at work?

so, i see this package as i'm heating up my lunch, naturally, and it doesn't strike me as odd initially. i'm like, oh, breastfeeding, that's cool. i'm a proponent of breastfeeding.

but then, i start to process this. there are only two or three labs which use this microwave. and then there is the cleaning lady who basically uses the room with the microwave and frig as her little office. she has her stuff on the tables that the microwave and toaster oven also occupy. so, i'm thinking this must be hers? but why she is pumping at work? first, i don't even think she has a baby. she's gotta be at least 45 and i haven't noticed any appearing and disappearing belly lumps. and, even if she has a baby, why is she pumping at work?! where is she doing it, and why? don't you pump at home in order to leave the milk there? and if you aren't pumping here, why are you bringing in breastmilk storage bags?

secondly, i've dropped two significant things today.

one was a cuvette. for you non-spec people, this is a relatively expensive piece of equipment (at least for my ghetto lab), of which, about four have been broken by various members of my lab over the last three months.

the second thing i dropped was my lunch. all over my desk. yeah. great, huh?

and i spent half my weekend (and the previous week) trying to resolve my friends' life crises.

and there was no tofu this weekend. pretty sad, isn't it?

and, i've apparently morphed into a full-on "chick", according to more than one person.

the wisdom of xiaomin

2005-11-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

xiaomin is one of the "crazy" people in my lab.

every day, while we're both in the lab doing work we chat. it passes the time and we laugh a lot. i'm a relatively funny person, and xiaomin may be less so, but everything she says is made more funny by the fact that she barely speaks english. so there is a lot of mis-understanding and she often uses the wrong word for things. you get the idea.

anyway, last week we were having one of our usual conversations when she interjects that she is "straight." i, naturally, start laughing. i'm not sure if she says this because i'm always telling her how lovely she is; or, if she's reassuring me that, despite the fact that she is constantly slapping my ass, she is not interested in me.

and she is. constantly slapping my ass, that is. i guess in one sense, this could be construed as workplace sexual harassment. but i don't mind. and she (usually) does it when we're alone.

so, i ask her why she has told me she is straight. apparently she is just testing the word out. isn't that an awesome idea?! don't you wish you could use that someplace? say something totally ridiculous, and just respond with a: oh, i was just testing that out?

war and torture and diamonds

2005-11-10T09:48:00.000-05:00

"First, I think it should be a stated goal of United States policy to not melt the skin off of children. As a natural corollary to this goal, I think the United States should avoid dropping munitions on civilian neighborhoods which, as a side effect, melt the skin off of children. You can call them "chemical weapons" if you must, or far more preferably by the more proper name of "incendiaries". The munitions may or may not precisely melt the skin off of children by setting them on fire; they do melt the skin off of children, however, through robust oxidation of said skin on said children, which is indeed colloquially known as "burning"."

from a dailykos linked diary.

sorta brings into play bush's whole not just going with what is legal, but what is right. which coming from him you should take with a grain of salt. or the entire ocean.

yeah, there's a whole lot of pain in the world and some mornings you just can't forget about it. sometimes it even get shoved in your face by people wishing their broken back problems could be transferred to your cat. or you read an article about human beings getting burned to death by a substance the US military has no problem admitting it uses. and you read other stuff and some of it is true and some is half true and most are lies. because people want to lie to you about all sorts of stuff. about war and torture and diamonds and where your clothes come from and how we live in a meritocracy and how pretty soon all the forests will be chopped down and we won't be able to breathe, but that's okay because today we're free. and we should enjoy our diamonds and clothes and fancy mcmansions and suvs.

and we forget about the earth, about the trees, about the butterflies and the people and our children and our grandparents and what comes next. and we drive across the country and fly across the ocean and bury ourselves in pills and sex and power and othering. we other ourselves so we can forget.

but some mornings you just can't forget.

2005-11-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

not feeling well, so i came into work late today. took the 1130 train, which is apparently the one all the english phds ride because they were talking about footnotes and quotations in papers and whatnot.

anyway, two of them were having a conversation on the train behind me and i couldn't help but overhear. i have trouble tuning out "background" noise.

it was amusing, so here you go.

boy: you know in cvs, they have that atm that you just swipe your card thru instead of inserting it?
girl: yeah, yeah.
boy: those are dangerous cuz-
girl: oh really?
boy: well, yeah, i was gonna say those are dangerous cuz, well, for instance, i was in line to use it and there was a guy in front of me. anyway, he used it, took his cash and walked away. i go up to the screen and it still says: can we help you with another transaction today?
girl:
boy: yeah, well, my moral dilemna was....do i let the person behind me have some of this guy's money too?

smirk.

feminist critique

2005-11-08T09:18:00.000-05:00

from bitch magazine:

"[the researcher] Darker-Smith discovered a subtle but provocative correlation between fairy tales and violence. women who grew up reading such tales as cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, she found, internalize unrealistic attitudes about romance, namely by manifesting submissive behavior and holding fast to the belief that love conquers all--even violence. DS has her critics: author marina warner notes that DS misreads certain tales, such as Beauty and the Beast, in which the beast treats the heroine well, and the crux of the tale centers not on female thralldom, but on seeing past appearances."

except! who is the one seeing past appearances here? not the man who has been sentenced to imprisonment in the beastlike visage (exactly for NOT seeing past appearances, no?), but the woman who once again must bridge the gap for both the man and the woman to set the man free. would this not be again--love conquers all. even the bad traits of the male which are miraculously transformed by the 'work' of the female.

but i do like the ultimate critique of this and these studies:

"and deborah cameron, a language prof at Oxford University, declared that this is just another study that examines the psychology of victimized women rather than questioning why so many men think it's okay to beat their mates."

indeed.

can "J" vote today?

2005-11-08T08:38:00.000-05:00

so, today is election day for all you voting advocates out there. i care more about today's election than most, considering it was only local governement votes for me where i think my vote actually matters more than in, say, federal elections where most people are only choosing between the "lesser of two evils". or so they tell me.

anyway, D and i get there a few minutes before seven b/c we are used to the People's Republic of Cambridge where there would already be a long line and i have to catch the train at 737am, so we want to get in and out.

first of all, there is basically no one else there to vote. oh, one guy. yes, this is somerville. yes, i'm ashamed. but there are a million people "checking" voters. well, only two to sign us in but a whole host of other folks sitting behind these two doing i have no idea what.

so, i go up to the desk, give my address and then my name. the woman finds it and then pauses. then screams back to the "official" lady in charge: "it's a J. can J's vote today?" the man in front of me was just allowed thru. presumably he isn't a J though. the "official" lady yells back that "anyone" can vote today. apparently even us "J"s. why don't they just try to malign me in front of the whole office? why don't they just try to shame me into not voting? why don't they just try to rig the election!

but i'm not ashamed of being a "j". that's right. i'm not a democrat. i'm registered green. well, apparently it's "j"-green. or however they spell it in somerville.

the whole operation was pretty shady. their clocks were slow (d played "spot the republican challenger" while we waited) and the guy at the ballot box was there, apparently, to yell at you for "taking" a privacy sleeve for your ballot even tho you had no choice.

next time around we might start a write in campaign for me for mayor. can you imagine a "j" as mayor? wouldn't that throw the town into a tailspin?