Thankgs-Giving 2012

There haven't been any posts lately, because I've been studiously working. Having completed a draft of the fourth chapter of my dissertation earlier this week (it's actually going be the second chapter, when all is said and done), I am studiously avoiding work over the holiday. To celebrate, I am completing blog posts that have been languishing as drafts. Today's is a potpourri of experiences I've had with my family and friends over the last several months; there will be two more next week. I am truly grateful that I have enough health, money, and free time to enjoy life like this.

Memorial Day Weekend: Dear Husband and I drove down to the airport to welcome home a group of WWII veterans who were flown to Washington DC to visit the war memorial there. Unfortunately, their plane had mechanical trouble and took off hours later, and we couldn't wait that long. These are some of the 1000 flags lining the drive to the airport.

Later that weekend: DH and I drove a couple hours to see the Old Time Piano Playing Contest. Players are required to wear a period costume, choose music composed no later than 1929, and acknowledge the audience's applause while they play. There is apparently a whole group of people who know each other and cultivate this art form. Click the link to see short videos of some of the contestants. Maybe next year we'll go on their Mississippi River cruise.

July: I got another year older. Some people got together in wacky outfits and celebrated. 

Early October: I re-created my dance from Europe for The Chorale's fall concert. As I explained in the previous post, I borrowed some motifs from an earlier liturgical dance. Because I didn't want to offend anyone with jumps or leg kicks (and the music wasn't right for them anyway), most of the dance was in the arms. However, because the venue was a Protestant church this time, I tweaked the ending a little: rather than making my final supplication toward the cross (as in the Catholic churches in Vienna and Prague), I turned at the end to include the congregation, too.

Election Night Party: making soup for the local men's shelter

Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce with walnuts and clove, stuffing with vegetables (under the foil), mashed  potatoes, sweet potatoes roasted in olive oil and rosemary, and broccoli sauteed in butter and oregano. Also wine, and for dessert, French vanilla ice cream topped with a warm chutney of green apples, dried cranberries, cinnamon, onion, and brown sugar. Our guests were My Awesome Parents and two Korean graduate students, who were experiencing their first Thanksgiving dinner. To top it all off, we taught them how to play Mexican Train dominoes, of course!

A Terror-full Halloween

Dear Husband and I like Halloween. We're not fanatics who start planning our costumes months in advance, and we don't even get around to carving a jack-o-lantern every year. But we enjoy a good scare, creative decorations, and watching Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin special with some candy pumpkins.

Six years ago the church and faith-based student center where we go to Bible study started a food pantry. Four or five years ago someone got the bright idea of hosting a haunted house in the big old building to raise money for the pantry. The students build sets, recruit make-up artists and actors (to play zombies, of course), and turn the whole place into a dark and bloody scene of terror. It's great. Me, I'm stingy with my time, so I just show up one night out of the three or four to do make-up and act as a hostess or tour guide. This year I decided to dress up as a murdered doll, complete with Kewpie face and latex slash on my throat. For half the night I lay crumpled in a chair before coming to life and leading the groups outside to the stairway and slide that served as the entrance to the haunted house, which began in the church's basement and boiler room. The second half of the night I crazily and creepily delivered the introduction about the food pantry (1,300 served in the month of October) and the safety rules (no cell phones, watch your pretty little head, etc.). I think the best scare on Friday was the group of middle-school boys who collectively freaked out when they came around my chair and saw me lying there.

The monster rutabaga I bought at the farmers
market last Saturday; we'll have mashed turnip
with our pork chops and steamed broccoli this
week. It was as big as my entire hand in dia-
meter and made eight servings. I find the taste
 of turnips more interesting than that of potatoes.

The next night, DH and I met some friends for spooky storytelling concert at a museum on campus. (We had wanted to hear "Grimm's Grimmest" the weekend before, but we were in Indy for DH's race.) Instead, we heard an international mix of stories, from England, Thailand, the US, and Vietnam. All the storytellers are members of a local storytelling guild. My favorite story, "The Buried Moon," sounded like it had Celtic roots. I said afterward that in another life I would like to be a storyteller. Between my lectures and children's messages, I guess I sort of am, already. The experience reminded me of how my brothers and I would sometimes make ourselves beds on the floor and huddle together to read Scary Stories to Read in the Dark, collected by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated in gory detail by Stephen Gammell. Despite repeated readings, we still scared ourselves silly! I'm tickled the above link replicates some of the stories and illustrations.

Sunday evening I joined another friend at her house for a viewing of The Exorcist, which I had not seen before. It's her all-time favorite movie, one that gets better every time she watches it, because she notices some new detail or foreshadowing. I thought it started slowly but otherwise was a good watch--better than a slasher film. We're talking about watching Rosemary's Baby for our next movie night!

I finally got around to decorating the house on Monday. It had been rainy and windy here, and I figured decorating too soon was just asking for trouble. I put up the last of the glow-in-the-dark cotton for spider webs by the front door and hung a large hairy spider with some fishing line from the storm over over a hook in the eaves. When we open the door to hand out candy, the spider descends about a foot to the height of a child's head.

Speaking of decorating the house, on Saturday I helped a friend build his Lego Haunted House. I should have been working on fellowship applications or on teaching prep or on search committee business, but instead I was poring over book 3 of directions and scrounging around on cookie trays for little plastic pieces. He brought the finished house to the election-watching party we attended to show it off: complete with moving fireplace, trap door to the attic, glow-in-the-dark ghosts, and body parts under "glass" domes.

Hither, Thither & Yon

Dear Husband and I have been on a the road the last couple of weekends. Here are some pictures of where we went and what we did:

Hither
Last weekend we drove west to Hither, where we celebrated the life of the pastor of my home church where DH and I met. HON was appointed there my second year in high school and left a few years ago. A friend and I took over the Children's Sermons when he arrived, and when there weren't any children anymore, HON encouraged me to give these little messages anyway. We called them "Youth Speaks." Sometime after that I took over the position of regular Sunday liturgist. I learned to sightread from that lectern. Tongue-twisting passages from Paul's epistles? Bring'em on. Words to an unfamiliar reading scrolling up a screen and quickly out of sight? I've done that too! HON encouraged me to be a confident, out-spoken young Christian leader. I will always remember him for that. And his wit, his loathing of hypocrisy, his commitment to social justice, and yummy curry on New Year's. At the memorial service, DH played a piece he had composed, and I read a poem the organizers had picked out. We're very glad we made the trek hither.

Thither
This weekend we drove in the opposite direction to Thither, where Dear Husband ran his first half marathon. It being mid-October, the weather was characteristically cool and wet. You can see him and some other runners huddled around one of three fire pits they had going before and during the races. He certainly looks ready to run 13.1 miles, doesn't he? Well he was, minus three or four layers of clothing. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have from the trip. When we arrived, DH asked whether I brought my camera, since he had left his at home. I asked him what kind of wife and Girl Scout he thought I was, if I was going to drive him all the way thither without my camera? But I had forgotten about the flashing battery light while we were filming my action figure post, and the battery promptly died. Even without photographic proof, DH was able to beat his goal time with a personal best of 1 hour and 54 minutes. Way to go!

Yon
Finally, it turns out that Yon is pretty close to home. For lunch we went to a local burger joint, which offered to donate 10% of today's net proceeds to a local family struggling with advanced ALS. A large portion of our church showed up to consume burgers, shakes, and fries for the cause. You can't see them because of the reflection on the glass, but the line extended to the door and was like that the whole time we were there. There was a nice coincidence, too. I chose and presented a special reading during the service this morning that turned out not to have anything to do with the sermon (whoops); it was about finding Christ in the eyes of the person across the table with whom you are breaking bread (e.g. eating together). Today, the servant church was at this restaurant. Soon, it will be donating meals and gas cards for the affected family to go for visits to the nearest care facility (a shocking 2 hours away). But today, it was yon.

Who Are We?

This past Friday, the student newspaper published an open letter I researched and wrote with two fellow graduate students. We are asking the new chancellor, who just started her second year here, to change the atmosphere between the administration and the labor unions on campus. This University talks a lot about “inclusivity” and how “great” we are, but their policy stands toward graduate student employees suggest exclusivity, a desire to turn us into yet another source of revenue, and a short-sightedness that will hamper research and learning. In honor of this occasion, we have released the second doll in our line of student action figures.

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NEW! Now you can purchase the Graduate Student as a card-carrying member of the Graduate Employees Union (IFT/AFT Local 6300 AFL/CIO). She wears a bright red t-shirt that declares “healthcare is a right” and boots for stomping on injustice. The pockets of her cargo pants are stuffed with a contract and her membership card. One arm is movable so she can raise her fist at rallies, and if you press the button on her back, she yells one of three slogans:

“The University works because we do!”

“No contract, no peace!”
And one slogan that you can record yourself! 

Doll comes with poster, pin, contract, and membership card. Real working toy megaphone and companion union members sold separately.

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One of our union rally cries starts with the leader yelling, "Who are we?" The crowd answers, "GEO!" It's short and to the point, good for making noise outside the windows of administrators. But it is also a question that we see being asked and answered in the bargaining room. The administration seems to see "us" (the University) as a world-class institution...hobbled by the state's financial crisis. We see an institution that has successfully collected record private donations...and that refuses to pay a living wage for all graduate employees. (And that hires yet more administrators while threatening employees lower on the pyramid with furloughs.) This administration sees a homogeneous graduate student population (think: single, white, middle-class, male)...we see parents, international students, veterans, LGBTQ individuals, and an over-whelming majority of bright, dedicated individuals who would not be here without tuition waivers. We would be at other institutions, or we would not be in graduate school. This is an R1 research university that refuses to guarantee full tuition waivers, the standard practice at institutions of higher learning of this caliber. Without full tuition waivers, only the wealthy or the desperate will come here for graduate education anymore. Who are we?

Adventures in New Haven

Image courtesy of the Yale Medical Library website.

This past weekend I completed my (near) annual pilgrimage to the East Coast for the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine, affectionately known as JasMed. This conference run by and for graduate students is one of two chances I have every year to get together with other junior scholars who are weird in the same ways that I am weird (the other is the large national meeting of the American Association of the History of Medicine in the spring, or AAHM).

This year we were at Yale University, where the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library provided an appropriate setting for papers on the history of bloodletting, of touch and sight in gynecology, the connections between psychiatry and politics, and of the smallpox eradication campaign in Cameroon. My abstract about closing the reception loop between nutritionists and lay people in early twentieth-century Germany was not accepted, but the quality of the papers that were taken was so high that I don't mind. I find it fun and educational to hear what my colleagues are doing at their various institutions, and there is always plenty of time scheduled for socializing. Bless their hearts: the conference organizers made sure we ate every two hours or so, so I didn't go hungry!

Our early afternoon session discussing a pre-circulated paper about tuberculosis in Cuba got out early, so a few of us took a walk from the medical campus to the main campus, where we searched out the rare book building, home to 500,000 rare books and "several million manuscripts." It's a bibliophile's dream. Built in 1960-1963, this "jewel box" of modernist architecture contrasts greatly with the surrounding neo-Gothic buildings. From the outside, the Beinecke Library looks like a white block of concrete, but inside the marble "windows" let in amber-colored light. In the center, a glassed-in tower displays part of the stacks in spectacular fashion. I might have had a bibliorgasm. Click here for photos.

Back at the hotel room I shared with a friend from college, one thing made me laugh, and another made me shake my head. On the right, members of one side of my family can probably guess what hotel chain we were at: that's right, a Marriott. I don't doubt that the protection and warning on the sprinkler head are the result of a certain favorite uncle's accident with a sprinkler, a hanger, and a fire alarm during the Slet in Fort Worth two years ago...

In the shower I made the mistake of reading the promotional text on the little Paul Mitchell shampoo and conditioner bottles that came with the room. Are you ready for this? The shampoo read,

"Go native with the lush lather and moisturizing goodness of Hawaiian Awapuhi. Brightens all hair types by removing dulling buildup. Color Safe."

::sigh:: The advertising major who dreamed that up must have slept through the distribution-requirement Anthro 101 s/he took in college. But it gets worse. The conditioner read, "Triumph over tangles with this super rich conditioner." That's right, once your hair has "gone native," you can force it into submission with your colonialist conditioner. Happy Columbus Day.

Toadstools & Technology

Today's image is courtesy of our neighbor down the street, who had three of these enormous mushrooms growing in her yard. The scale may be hard to judge, but this one was easily 6-8 inches tall, and the cap was bigger than the spread of my hand from pinkie to thumb (i.e. the size of a small dinner plate)! These invaders were probably occasioned by our recent wet weather, but they are gone today, as the weather was so nice this weekend that everyone was out doing yard work. I've paired the image with a classic poem about a rain-related technology that seemed to fit the situation.

The Elf and the Dormouse

~Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

Under a toadstool crept a wee Elf, 

Out of the rain to shelter himself.

Under the toadstool, sound asleep, 

Sat a big Dormouse all in a heap.

Trembled the wee Elf, frightened and yet

Fearing to fly away lest he get wet.

To the next shelter—maybe a mile! 

Sudden the wee Elf smiled a wee smile.

Tugged till the toadstool toppled in two. 

Holding it over him, gaily he flew.

Soon he was safe home, dry as could be. 

Soon woke the Dormouse—"Good gracious me!

"Where is my toadstool?" loud he lamented. 

—And that's how umbrellas first were invented.

First comes love

Me: I don't love you for your ability to throw a frisbee.
Him: Clearly.

I've been thinking a lot about love and marriage over the past month or so. If you've read any of my recent posts, you know that Dear Husband and I just celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. Having reached that magic (hexed?) number, we've gotten a lot of jibes about itching and straying. We've all seen the movie, right? All I have to say to that is that the last time we reached the seven-year mark...we got hitched. We no longer qualify as newlyweds, moony and head-over-heels in love, but thanks to my educational program changing every year, we haven't gotten into any kind of routine that could be shaken up by scratching an itch. Instead, the fact that the other is there (wherever "there" happens to be that year) has been the constant that has driven us closer together. We are comfortable with each other but not yet bored. For instance, today I learned that DH didn't know how to throw a frisbee.

To celebrate our birthdays, we went to The Art Theater to see  Moonrise Kingdom,
the awkward fantasy about pre-teen love. Is our story any more believable?

I've been giving love and marriage extra thought recently, because the last thing I read before we headed out the door for our anniversary trip to Madison was that a friend's marriage is breaking up. One of them is moving out, they're trying to figure out custody of their child, their car, their house. The one said, I don't know who this person is anymore, but I still love him.

It got me to thinking about how much emphasis our culture puts on "love" in marriage. The ideal is a couple falls madly in love with each other, stages a fairy-tale wedding, and lives happily ever after. The problem is that "happily ever after" lasts a lot longer than wooing and marrying does. Then come the dirty dishes, the dirty socks, the dirty bathroom, the dirty car, the mowing and raking, trips to the vet, deadlines at work, classes at school, committees at church, and oh yeah, and try to have some couple time, too. Heaven forbid the couple have any problems with sex or disagreements about raising the children, the two things that most obviously bring them together. I don't think "love" as we usually define it can sustain a marriage through all of that; I think it takes a kind of commitment that our culture does not acknowledge or support enough.

(For instance, we recently attended a family wedding, and the pastor mentioned many times the couples' love for each other. That's great, but it seemed somewhat cliched. At a wedding you have a captive audience! Then is the time to remind everyone about the hard work it takes to sustain a committed relationship through job changes, various phases of life, losses of loved ones, decisions to move, and especially the busyness that is everyday life.)

I don't know why my friend's marriage didn't make it and don't presume to judge their situation. I have to believe they know what is best for themselves. But I mourned their loss in the car as we were driving up to Madison. As someone who believes in the institutions of marriage (civil and religious), I take marriage vows seriously, and when friends or family feel they can no longer honor the things they promised when they were still so much in love, it does make me sad. Divorce should obviously be allowed, but surely not every marriage that ends that way needs to.

I mentioned my concerns about the relative weight placed on love versus commitment to DH. He told me that he had come to a realization early in our relationship.  He found that when we had a conflict, if he sought to resolve the conflict first, no matter how he felt about me beforehand, afterward he loved me more. It was a question of choosing to act first rather than waiting to feel good ("in love") and then acting on it. I was moved, especially considering how often a hot-head like me can push someone's buttons. For a moment, it was the most intimate we could be going 65 miles an hour along an interstate highway.