of course, the assert doesn’t work
This about sums things up, of late:
Author: Kelly
small things that bring faith in humanity
I mentioned a bit back about David Cook (current American Idol contestant) wearing an orange bracelet in support of a seven year fan who has leukemia. I noticed this last week, and simply haven’t gotten around to mentioning it now: he’s continued to wear the bracelet at media events and on American Idol, but as far as anyone can tell, he hasn’t used it once, or mentioned it in order to gain attention or votes.
A serious class act, and the sort of gesture that, as stupid as it sounds, on days (weeks) like today, is the sort of positive affirmation that not every human being sucks that is nice to have.
where everybody knows your name
If anyone were to walk by the graduate student office right now, they might be concerned, worried, and ultimately puzzled, as I reassured them that no, no, everything is fine – I’m crying because I’m happy. But just sitting here, now, I basically burst into tears as I realized that I am happy. I am actually happy.
I’m making friends here. I’m starting to go out and socialize with folks from the department, but also people I’ve met through other means. I’m starting to make plans, I just invited someone in the department to take a few art classes with me in May, I’m meeting a handful of people in an hour or so just to hang out. I’m involved with activities, and I’m really starting to feel valued here. It’s weird to be a go-to person, but I am a go-to person – got a bioethics question? I’m ya gal. I get looped into other people’s office hours to help and harass students, I get asked to speak in general about some aspects of the field, or generalized publishing knowledge.
It’s not just school, though. There’s a local group trying to create a community feeling at a warehouse full of arts and crafts and fun and music, and they know me there – they know be my name, they bring in newspaper things to share with me, we talk about stuff. Not just what I do, either – we talk art and music and blueberries and the care and feeding of bees.
People are starting to call me on the phone.
People are starting to pick fights just to have a fun argument.
People are starting to make summer plans, and including me.
Last week, one of the grad students who’s been around longer than me looked up from the middle of a bunch of us having lunch and said, to me, in front of everyone, “you’re not just a team player, you organize the team and then you make everyone want to be a part of it.”
I think I’m just finally starting to feel like I can belong here, I do belong here.
There’s a lot of damage I need to…undo isn’t the right word. Repair is. It got bad, being me, for a while – I slid into a bad place, mentally just checked out of everything for a while. I had to curl around the little spark that was me and protect it, keep it lit. But I’m hoping this is a sign that I’m coming out of that funk, that the world will continue to turn into vibrant colours, that I’ll have a chance to apologize to those who deserve it, and make amends to those without whom I wouldn’t have so much that I do now. And that I’ll keep crying, not from sadness, but joy.
Match It for Pratchett
What just about everyone knows is that my mother died from cancer. She didn’t smoke, nor did she have the smoking-related sort of lung cancer; it was probably environmental, although who knows. Sometimes, genes just hate you. Some people know that my (paternal) grandfather is a medical literature oddity, thanks to his service record in WWII, and died from complications of a calcium shell around his heart. What most people don’t know is that my (maternal) grandmother died of Alzheimer’s, and it became a bit of an admittedly macabre running joke in my family to blame Mom’s spaciness or my tendency to forget things that are middling to early on-set. (Yes, tasteless, but hey, that’d be my family on these subjects.) Thing is, Alzheimer’s often skips generations, so… *glances around* Yep. One of those bullet-time bullets hanging in the air, maybe going to hit me or one of my sibs, but maybe we’ll bend out of the way fast enough.
Anyhow, I keep up on research, for obvious personal interests. So today’s Match It for Pratchett, courtesy of Neil’s blog caught my eye, and I’m reprinting it here. (For those of you who missed it, Terry Pratchett has an early-onset form of Alzheimer’s, and it’s grim, grim news.)
Today, it was announced that Terry Pratchett has donated half a million pounds to Alzheimer’s research. Hearing that, it occurred to me that if half a million of us all donated a pound to Alzheimer’s research, we could match his donation and make it an even million.
So whaddaya say, guys? It’s a pound. That’s about 2 bucks US dollars, give or take a couple of (US) pennies. You can spare that much. Go here and make your donation. Tell them it’s in honour of Terry Pratchett.
Let’s do it!
Fastfwd‘s idea, gillo‘s image/icon, a fantastic idea. Pure money like this is important in medical research – it drives actual research, with actual results; we don’t have to worry about companies tweaking results because of the pharma-money backing, we don’t have to worry as much about trial results influenced by needing to please shareholders, there are no strings attached – how research should always be conducted, in an ideal world we’ll probably never live in. So contribute a couple of bucks, wouldja? It just might make a difference in someone’s life – might even be mine.
are we as post-feminist as we want to believe? or, “The most powerful people in the world are old white men and pretty young women.”
the politics of the last few months have certainly opened a spigot on the question of where exactly society stands on gender matters. Weren’t we in what some people have long called a postfeminist era, when we thought the big battles were over, or at least that the combatants had reached some accommodation?
The NYTimes Week in Review has an interesting piece on politics and postfeminism running; well worth reading. Some choice clips:
In an essay she wrote last fall for the new book “30 Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers,” the Nation columnist Katha Pollitt declared that the “sulfurous emanations” about Mrs. Clinton made her want to write a check to her campaign, knock on doors, vote for her twice ”” even though she’d probably choose another candidate on policy grounds. “The hysterical insults flung at Hillary Clinton are just a franker, crazier version of the everyday insults ”” shrill, strident, angry, ranting, unattractive ”” that are flung at any vaguely liberal mildly feminist woman who shows a bit of spirit and independence,” she wrote, “who puts herself out in the public realm, who doesn’t fumble and look up coyly from underneath her hair and give her declarative sentences the cadence of a question.”
Chelsea herself apparently appended a note saying that while she did not agree entirely with Ms. Morgan’s point, she was starting to understand what older women were complaining about. “I confess that I did not entirely ‘get it’ until not only guys stood up and shouted, ‘iron my shirts’ but the media reacted with amusement, not outrage,” the note attributed to Ms. Clinton said.
Seriously – people are shouting Hilary Clinton should get back to the kitchen and iron clothes, rather than run for president? And people aren’t outraged by this?!
A contest between a woman and an African-American raises the inevitable question about whether it is harder to overcome racial bias than gender bias. Few claim to know the answer, and many argue it’s too hard to tease out the ways each plays a role. But some also argue that the media is not as quick to recognize misogyny as it is to recognize racism. “The media is on eggshells about race, but has blinders on about sex and gender stereotyping,” said Ms. Goldberg of Columbia.
Kate Michelman, a former president of Naral Pro-Choice America, who is an adviser to Mr. Obama, said in an interview that “racism has risen to a level of social consciousness that sexism has not.”
Of course, it was comedy that crystallized the moment. “Saturday Night Live” mocked reporters falling faint over Mr. Obama (Sample debate question: “Are you mad at me?”) and cutting off Mrs. Clinton for being that irritating bore talking about health care again. Meanwhile, on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central last week, Samantha Bee played the role of the philandering wife, standing behind a podium contritely acknowledging her offense while her husband stood behind her with the downcast eyes so familiar from Silda Wall Spitzer and the political wives who had come before. It was, of course, preposterous ”” and not just because Ms. Bee’s husband was wearing pearls.