We took Baby J to the pediatrician this morning. Fortunately, nothing about his health was distressing. But as we set up his next appointment, the receptionist gave Bee a sticker. Totally random happenstance, but it was an Ariel sticker.
Bee was excited (as she always is about the Little Mermaid), and I didn't think anything of it. I've tried to let the whole Disney princess thing be neither here nor there, so that it won't be a power struggle and so that I won't be one of those completely unhinged moms.
After we got home, as J was nursing, Bee pipes up (from her position laying flat on her back on the floor and looking up at her enshrined sticker) "I don't like myself. I want to look like this."
Let the unhinging begin.
It was totally unprovoked, I hadn't said anything at all about the sticker/movie/stupid-freaking-model-of-disobedience-and-lack-of-any-real-self-worth mermaid. So Bee and I had a talk about "Ariel is not real. I AM real. That means I am more special than Ariel, because Heavenly Father made me. Ariel is just a drawing, but I have a body." (To which Bee added "And a Spirit!" I guess Sunbeams has kicked in already!) I think I handled my deep-seated feminist anger well and didn't focus on it...I tried to just focus the discussion on Bee and how smart she is, how sweet she is, and even how pretty she is (which we usually don't talk about because I don't want her to focus on it....apparently we need to work on that!). It was a good talk.
But I'm still reeling over the power of a well-funded franchise over our little girl's perception of herself. I might have to become a little more obsessive.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Are you seious?
I ran to campus on Thursday with the kids (which I try to avoid doing, because it's just a hassle, and I get stares like there's not tomorrow) because I needed to drop off a hard copy of my reading list to one of my professors (really it was just a not-so-subtle hint to remind him I exist, since he hasn't responded in any way to the first copy of my list that I emailed to him before the semester break).
Anyway. I was grumbling to myself about taking the stroller down the 5 flights of steps from the top of the parking garage (Do they have an elevator? Yes. Was it working? No.) when a nice woman struck up a conversation with me. Turns out she's in another department with offices on the same floor as my department offices, and so we were going the same way. I don't really remember how it came up, but at some point she said "There are some students who do what you're doing...family, and school. And maybe neither one gets the attention they deserve, but it seems like you're putting your family first."
What a way to kill a perfectly nice conversation. I mean, I recognize the "you're putting your family first" as a possible attempt to make up for the preceding remark. But in five minutes of walking and talking, can she really judge that I'm doing that?
I always have this overly-defensive reaction to this sort of comment...I want to jump into how developmentally advanced Bee is linguistically and Baby J is physically, how I make them hats and clothes, how I quilt, how I make and can homemade jelly, and dry seal food storage things, how my house is always clean when I go to bed at night because of my obsessive need for order. And not to let my professional side be outdone by all that, how my grades are the same or better than my single and childless counterparts, how I've presented at three graduate student conferences and three professional conferences (one of them twice), how one of my papers has been published (albeit humbly, and mostly thanks to David Wiseman), how I am proceeding through my program ahead of schedule, and how I consistently earn "meets and exceeds departmental expectations" on my teaching observation evaluations (even the semester that they observed me when I had morning sickness so badly that I was sure I was going to fail the evaluation)!
But it's just that: defensive. It's completely self-serving to try to bring any of that up. So I usually just find a way to wrap up the conversation, and mosey on through the rain with my kids, to drop off my papers.
Anyway. I was grumbling to myself about taking the stroller down the 5 flights of steps from the top of the parking garage (Do they have an elevator? Yes. Was it working? No.) when a nice woman struck up a conversation with me. Turns out she's in another department with offices on the same floor as my department offices, and so we were going the same way. I don't really remember how it came up, but at some point she said "There are some students who do what you're doing...family, and school. And maybe neither one gets the attention they deserve, but it seems like you're putting your family first."
What a way to kill a perfectly nice conversation. I mean, I recognize the "you're putting your family first" as a possible attempt to make up for the preceding remark. But in five minutes of walking and talking, can she really judge that I'm doing that?
I always have this overly-defensive reaction to this sort of comment...I want to jump into how developmentally advanced Bee is linguistically and Baby J is physically, how I make them hats and clothes, how I quilt, how I make and can homemade jelly, and dry seal food storage things, how my house is always clean when I go to bed at night because of my obsessive need for order. And not to let my professional side be outdone by all that, how my grades are the same or better than my single and childless counterparts, how I've presented at three graduate student conferences and three professional conferences (one of them twice), how one of my papers has been published (albeit humbly, and mostly thanks to David Wiseman), how I am proceeding through my program ahead of schedule, and how I consistently earn "meets and exceeds departmental expectations" on my teaching observation evaluations (even the semester that they observed me when I had morning sickness so badly that I was sure I was going to fail the evaluation)!
But it's just that: defensive. It's completely self-serving to try to bring any of that up. So I usually just find a way to wrap up the conversation, and mosey on through the rain with my kids, to drop off my papers.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Why I love Melveena McKendrick
I'm doing work, I promise, I just had to shout out to the void! I really love to read Melveena McKendrick's work. (If nothing else, she has an awesome name!) She has a strong voice, and doesn't take her academia so seriously as to make her writing obtuse. She writes on cross-dressing women in Golden Age plays, a number of feminist theoretical concerns, and history of Spain in general.
Today, though, there are two quotes that are why I love to read this woman:
(She's talking about Lope's "El castigo sin venganza," a really good [never thought I'd put THAT adjective with the genre following...despite the unfortunate plot, great writing] wife-murder play)
"And although each of us may, quite legitimately, favour a specific interpretation, it is impossible categorically to deny validity to any of the carefully thought-out and observed readings so far offered us." (82)
"There is something about Spanish Golden Age plays that encourages us to try to become their master rather than their servant, whereas a great many of them, I suspect, are far more resistant to domination than we like to think. [...] If we try to stop trying to squeeze the play into the comfortable corset of our own moral perceptions and literary predilections, what we are left with is an ambiguous play and our own feelings of discomfort and puzzlement. Since we cannot very convincingly ascribe this to incompetence on Lope's part, we have to assume that he has achieved more or less what he set out to achieve. The play then stands as an aging man's statement on what he has learned about life - that there often are no reassuring solutions, no neat apportionings of blame." (93-4)
From BCom 35.1 (1983):79-95.
Today, though, there are two quotes that are why I love to read this woman:
(She's talking about Lope's "El castigo sin venganza," a really good [never thought I'd put THAT adjective with the genre following...despite the unfortunate plot, great writing] wife-murder play)
"And although each of us may, quite legitimately, favour a specific interpretation, it is impossible categorically to deny validity to any of the carefully thought-out and observed readings so far offered us." (82)
"There is something about Spanish Golden Age plays that encourages us to try to become their master rather than their servant, whereas a great many of them, I suspect, are far more resistant to domination than we like to think. [...] If we try to stop trying to squeeze the play into the comfortable corset of our own moral perceptions and literary predilections, what we are left with is an ambiguous play and our own feelings of discomfort and puzzlement. Since we cannot very convincingly ascribe this to incompetence on Lope's part, we have to assume that he has achieved more or less what he set out to achieve. The play then stands as an aging man's statement on what he has learned about life - that there often are no reassuring solutions, no neat apportionings of blame." (93-4)
From BCom 35.1 (1983):79-95.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
For your reading pleasure....
......more student errors! They're from last semester, but I got bogged down. I'm taking my day off today (I get one evening a week to rot my brain with TV, crochet on Lou's Christmas scarf that STILL isn't done, sew buttons back on, blog, etc)...usually I make it to Thursday. But not today. The thought of trying to cross anything off my reading list makes me want to cry.
SO! Here they are. The essay prompt was something to the effect of "How do you define the word America? What symbols do you associate with it?" I'm reproducing errors in grammar as well as revelatory cultural bias.
Primero, America es este pais y no otra pais porque norte America tiene mas recursos como America de Sur.
Yo incluyo solamente America norte en mi definicion porque America de Sur es muy diferente.
Si yo fuera EEUU, creeria los simbolos de America es nuestra bandera.
Los ciudadanos de Latinoamerica tienen perspectivas diferente que los personas de EEUU porque los no comprenden la pictura grande.
Un ejemplo geografico que representa los EEUU es la Statue of Liberty.
Have fun commenting, everyone! I know I almost had multiple blood vessels burst by the time I got through all 43 essays! :-)
SO! Here they are. The essay prompt was something to the effect of "How do you define the word America? What symbols do you associate with it?" I'm reproducing errors in grammar as well as revelatory cultural bias.
Primero, America es este pais y no otra pais porque norte America tiene mas recursos como America de Sur.
Yo incluyo solamente America norte en mi definicion porque America de Sur es muy diferente.
Si yo fuera EEUU, creeria los simbolos de America es nuestra bandera.
Los ciudadanos de Latinoamerica tienen perspectivas diferente que los personas de EEUU porque los no comprenden la pictura grande.
Un ejemplo geografico que representa los EEUU es la Statue of Liberty.
Have fun commenting, everyone! I know I almost had multiple blood vessels burst by the time I got through all 43 essays! :-)
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Two random things
Sunday evening as I looked at my wreck of a house, I asked Ben "How do I let it get like this?," to which he calmly replied "You took a nap." I always forget that I do sort of repeated maintenance all day long, while he just lets it all go until the kids are asleep.
Yesterday Ben kept the kids and I went to the grocery BY MYSELF! (What a way to celebrate a Monday off teaching, right? Usually Tuesday is grocery day, and I go with both kids during the day.) While I was there, I saw a girl that made me wonder. Admittedly, she was really cute. She had dark brown hair with honey-colored highlights, was wearing a North Face fleece vest over a cute long-sleeved T-shirt, Ugg boots, and jeans with various colored patches on the butt pockets (here Bee would say "Mom, butt is not a nice word!"). The thing that made me wonder was when the cashier asked her how old she was and she answered "I'm ten." Who lets their ten-year-old dye their hair? And who has that kind of money to spend on clothes that kids outgrow in a few months?
I have no desire for people to think that Bee is a teenager when she's only ten. So maybe that's what has me wondering about the whole thing.
Yesterday Ben kept the kids and I went to the grocery BY MYSELF! (What a way to celebrate a Monday off teaching, right? Usually Tuesday is grocery day, and I go with both kids during the day.) While I was there, I saw a girl that made me wonder. Admittedly, she was really cute. She had dark brown hair with honey-colored highlights, was wearing a North Face fleece vest over a cute long-sleeved T-shirt, Ugg boots, and jeans with various colored patches on the butt pockets (here Bee would say "Mom, butt is not a nice word!"). The thing that made me wonder was when the cashier asked her how old she was and she answered "I'm ten." Who lets their ten-year-old dye their hair? And who has that kind of money to spend on clothes that kids outgrow in a few months?
I have no desire for people to think that Bee is a teenager when she's only ten. So maybe that's what has me wondering about the whole thing.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thoughts on Haiti
I saw an article on CNN that mentioned Pat Robertson's comments on the slave revolt in Haiti in the late 1700s-early 1800, and its potential relationship to the earthquake. I try to look at multiple sides of things, so I found a statement from the 700 club trying to clarify the comments that were made. Following their advice, I searched for "the whole video segment." I finally found a bit on YouTube. (I couldn't find a longer interview on the 700 club site to provide more context, so this is the best I could do at watching "the whole video segment.")
First, some history. This is the only slave revolt in the history of this side o the world to abolish slavery, which makes it a case with nothing to compare it to. (And really there were some legislative things that happened, too). Robertson keeps talking about how "the Haitians" revolted and won freedom from the French. Really, we're talking about native Africans brought to Haiti and forced into slavery, communities of runaway slaves living in the woods so they can have some semblance of freedom, plus some leaders who were of mixed European and African ancestry, with varied levels of education. There weren't "native Haitians" around any more (Columbus and his early folk knocked out the indigenous population on the island pretty effectively).
So, those things in mind, I want to draw attention to a couple of phrases Robertson uses:
"Under the heel of the French." - If that even comes close to describing the fact that Saint Domingue had over half of the slaves in the entire Caribbean, denied them any rights whatsoever, and caused so many slave deaths through overwork and poor conditions that they continually imported new, native-born Africans to fill their labor needs.
"Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts." - Uh, I lived there for 4 months. Has he ever gone anywhere but the beaches "full of resorts" to see the poor kids? The slums? Probably not. I LOVE Dominicans and the Dominican Republic, and living there was one of the happiest parts of my life, but I would NOT say that it's a paradise that we should use to put Haiti to shame.
"They need to have a great turning to God." - I'm all for this, but he makes it sound like this will be what will keep more of the "cursed with one thing after another" pattern from happening. How bout suggesting turning to God for comfort instead?
I'll let that be my rant, and not go on and on about the ridiculousness of thinking any just God would punish people now for the actions of people over 200 years ago, the closed-mindedness of the idea that a voodoo ceremony (especially one from THAT LONG AGO when African religions in this hemisphere still had some contact, through influx of new people, with their tradition) automatically equates to Satan worship, and the paternalistic suggestion that this rich "Christian" white American guy has the answers that will save these poor "heathen" Haitian blacks....oops, I guess I just couldn't keep it in.
First, some history. This is the only slave revolt in the history of this side o the world to abolish slavery, which makes it a case with nothing to compare it to. (And really there were some legislative things that happened, too). Robertson keeps talking about how "the Haitians" revolted and won freedom from the French. Really, we're talking about native Africans brought to Haiti and forced into slavery, communities of runaway slaves living in the woods so they can have some semblance of freedom, plus some leaders who were of mixed European and African ancestry, with varied levels of education. There weren't "native Haitians" around any more (Columbus and his early folk knocked out the indigenous population on the island pretty effectively).
So, those things in mind, I want to draw attention to a couple of phrases Robertson uses:
"Under the heel of the French." - If that even comes close to describing the fact that Saint Domingue had over half of the slaves in the entire Caribbean, denied them any rights whatsoever, and caused so many slave deaths through overwork and poor conditions that they continually imported new, native-born Africans to fill their labor needs.
"Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts." - Uh, I lived there for 4 months. Has he ever gone anywhere but the beaches "full of resorts" to see the poor kids? The slums? Probably not. I LOVE Dominicans and the Dominican Republic, and living there was one of the happiest parts of my life, but I would NOT say that it's a paradise that we should use to put Haiti to shame.
"They need to have a great turning to God." - I'm all for this, but he makes it sound like this will be what will keep more of the "cursed with one thing after another" pattern from happening. How bout suggesting turning to God for comfort instead?
I'll let that be my rant, and not go on and on about the ridiculousness of thinking any just God would punish people now for the actions of people over 200 years ago, the closed-mindedness of the idea that a voodoo ceremony (especially one from THAT LONG AGO when African religions in this hemisphere still had some contact, through influx of new people, with their tradition) automatically equates to Satan worship, and the paternalistic suggestion that this rich "Christian" white American guy has the answers that will save these poor "heathen" Haitian blacks....oops, I guess I just couldn't keep it in.
Friday, January 8, 2010
SNOW!
We had fun yesterday. I couldn't get J to sit up long enough to get a picture...he wanted to dive bomb into the snow. And Bee was WAY too busy to look at me.
It was a good time. And totally worth the aftermath.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Pomegranate vinegar
I'm taking advantage of Baby J napping, Ben "watching" football, and Bee reading stories to my incredibly patient 11-year-old cousin.
On Wednesday (after T was nice enough to let me and the kids stay all night with her and her clan) I made pomegranate vinegar with my Aunt T. We've done this for several years now, and I always look forward to the whole experience.
I really love being with T anyway. She and I get along really well, and she's a really good example to me. I've watched her parent, cook, clean, decorate, and just teach in general with her welcoming, kind way of being. She's so wonderful, and I hope that I can be like her some day. For now I'm content to drink tea and think of her, and do my best to imitate the sweetness she has.
Making the vinegar was icing on the cake, though. There's something about breaking open a nice crisp pomegranate, with a little splatter of juice that you can smell more than feel. I think that that particular red is one of my favorite colors. I love the texture of the arils, too...just waiting for you to pop them. Sometimes when I toss a handful into my mouth I feel like a little kid who's excited about popping bubble wrap! :-) Something about working to get to their wonderful-ness makes them even more fun, I think.
The recipe calls for 2 cups of smashed pomegranate arils (of course with the juice), 3 cups of red wine vinegar, 1/3 cup of honey, a tablespoon of coriander, and six 4-inch strips of orange zest. The only special thing you have to do is dissolve the honey into the red wine vinegar...then you just toss everything else into a jar, let it sit for two weeks, and strain it. It'll keep for a couple of months, with a little bit of fall all winter long.
I mean, doesn't that just speak for itself??? When you pour the honey into the red wine vinegar, there's some sort of initial chemical reaction that happens, and you can smell the edge coming off the vinegar and the honey smell comes through almost strong enough that you taste it. Then the pomegranate arils are beautiful, and when you crush them they turn a darker color. Zesting the orange sent a citrus-y smell all through the kitchen (I smelled delicious for the rest of the day!), and the soft, almost non-smell of the coriander softens everything together.
And it looks lovely in a jar.
The combination of textures and smells, plus being in a nice safe environment where I could revel in them (because T is just the same way!) was the highlight of this week. After we were all done, I had to pack up the kids and run on....but I told T thanks for letting me come to her beautiful home. I always feel safe there, and it's a nice home to be in since I can't go to my valley house any more.
On Wednesday (after T was nice enough to let me and the kids stay all night with her and her clan) I made pomegranate vinegar with my Aunt T. We've done this for several years now, and I always look forward to the whole experience.
I really love being with T anyway. She and I get along really well, and she's a really good example to me. I've watched her parent, cook, clean, decorate, and just teach in general with her welcoming, kind way of being. She's so wonderful, and I hope that I can be like her some day. For now I'm content to drink tea and think of her, and do my best to imitate the sweetness she has.
Making the vinegar was icing on the cake, though. There's something about breaking open a nice crisp pomegranate, with a little splatter of juice that you can smell more than feel. I think that that particular red is one of my favorite colors. I love the texture of the arils, too...just waiting for you to pop them. Sometimes when I toss a handful into my mouth I feel like a little kid who's excited about popping bubble wrap! :-) Something about working to get to their wonderful-ness makes them even more fun, I think.
The recipe calls for 2 cups of smashed pomegranate arils (of course with the juice), 3 cups of red wine vinegar, 1/3 cup of honey, a tablespoon of coriander, and six 4-inch strips of orange zest. The only special thing you have to do is dissolve the honey into the red wine vinegar...then you just toss everything else into a jar, let it sit for two weeks, and strain it. It'll keep for a couple of months, with a little bit of fall all winter long.
I mean, doesn't that just speak for itself??? When you pour the honey into the red wine vinegar, there's some sort of initial chemical reaction that happens, and you can smell the edge coming off the vinegar and the honey smell comes through almost strong enough that you taste it. Then the pomegranate arils are beautiful, and when you crush them they turn a darker color. Zesting the orange sent a citrus-y smell all through the kitchen (I smelled delicious for the rest of the day!), and the soft, almost non-smell of the coriander softens everything together.
And it looks lovely in a jar.
The combination of textures and smells, plus being in a nice safe environment where I could revel in them (because T is just the same way!) was the highlight of this week. After we were all done, I had to pack up the kids and run on....but I told T thanks for letting me come to her beautiful home. I always feel safe there, and it's a nice home to be in since I can't go to my valley house any more.
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