Guess what, blogosphere?

I'm a sorry excuse for a blogger these days.

Semitic Semantics

Okay, the post title is kind of lazy (that is, not completely descriptive), but lovers of alliteration can see why I chose it.

Just read an interesting article by Professor Juan Cole, who is a Middle East expert and fluent in Arabic.

He writes about the ado made of Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, what it actually means and how he got it. He also compares this family name to other names of Semitic origin in America. It's an interesting article, and I encourage you to read it, especially if you are an entomology geek.

And at some point I will post something that doesn't relate to Barack Obama. At some point.

The Ten Year Languages Plan

I was talking this over the other day with a self-proclaimed language geek (the kind who can actually teach himself languages). I never thought I'd get as far as I have learning another language (my second being Spanish), and now that I've started, I'm anxious to learn a few more.

Although I don't expect fluency in them all, here is the list I came up with and a very loose timeline for the languages I'm going to try and become familiar with between now and when I'm 50.

1. Spanish (Including this because I'm taking Spanish 4 next semester, which is text heavy, and I really hope to keep working on listening and speaking the language).
2. Latin (need 2 semesters for my B.A., and will be a good basis for language #3 and others)
3. Italian (no real reason, kind of seems like a gimme after Spanish and Latin.
4. Arabic (the U.W. or someone related has a 4-6 week immersion class in the summer, which seems really fun and challenging - I almost did this two years ago instead of starting at MATC).
5. Japanese or Mandarin - This seems kind of capricious, doesn't it, like "my Asian language", but both of them are really tempting and I feel like saying I want to study them both is like saying "oh, I'm not serious about trying either one." I'm guessing I'll do Japanese because Japanese culture has been of interest to me for a longer time (via my dad and his interest esp. w/Zen Buddhism). This is the "when I'm 50" language.

French is in there between Italian and Arabic. Probably after Italian I can study that one at home and do pretty well. I took it in school (okay, Middle and half a year in High School), and I think I can probably figure lots of it out after Spanish, Latin and Italian.

Plus, I'll be all chicken to start something COMPLETELY different, so I'll be procrastinating.

Just this morning after my shower, I was practicing Spanish and I started crying because I couldn't remember something. The 8 year old came to the bathroom and asked me what was wrong, and I said I was just feeling frustrated because I was having trouble remembering something and being too hard on myself. And I am. Too hard on myself. And having trouble remembering.

Call her

When she's sick and she calls you from the parking lot saying "I'm so out of it, I think I have to take a nap in the car before I can drive home", even if there is laugh in her voice, even if you don't want to call her because things have been strained and strange between the two of you, pick up the phone and see how she's doing.

Call her.

Write it

When all else fails, take a notebook, a pencil (or a pen, because years later a pen is less likely to have smudged, at least a ball point or a sharpie is), and start writing.

Write in a cold quiet corner of the room full of coats at Thanksgiving in an apartment full of people for whom conversation is coming easier than it comes for you.

Write in the middle of the night in the dark hotel room.

Sneak into the bathroom and write for a few minutes when you will not be missed.

And later, when you have nearly forgotten that you took that time to write, go back and read your story.

And smile.

Because despite everything, every heavy-handed metaphor and each awkward bit of dialog, you see that you are a writer, in some way, you are a writer, and you are meant to write.

Keep that notebook going. Fill it and then get another one. Make the stories in it real if you have to, if that will fuel you to write more.

You are a writer. In some way. At this time. You are a writer.

You are living. Write it.

Tagged

I feel quite privileged to be read here by "The Anthropologist"and even more pleased to be tagged for a meme when I was actually reading a book!, . Unfortunately, the 161 meme requires a longer book than the one I'm reading (It's just under 155 pages). My 161 is part of the foot notes, so I chose page 61 instead.

And here it is the 6th sentence of the 61st page of Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

Dumsele does not say that the Milot palace was was designed or named after Potsdam.

Hmmmmm. Not very exciting I'm afraid. The book itself is interesting. Here's the short blurb on the back to whet your appetite for more:

Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.

Now, I know of only one person besides The Anthropologist who reads this blog on a regular basis, and he doesn't blog, but if my lurking friend T cares to, he could do the meme in the comments. And if Tom, who comes by every once in a while, would like to give it a try, I suggest taking the sixth sentence from the 161st page of your NaNoWriMo effort this year, if you are game.

Homophobia Ruins Everything

One of the many generic insults I have for people is to call them a "mo". It's short, I think, for moron, kind of like calling someone a mook (which may or may not be a variant of the word "moke", which was likely used as a racial epithet a long time ago, but of course makes me nervous because words mean things).

However, I recently read an blog post which sadly makes my use of "mo" a bit more delicate - if only because it reminded me that some people use "mo" as short for "homo" as code for gay-in-a-bad-way.

Damn it, homophobes, you ruin everything.

---

For a long time I was aware of many parts, if not a large part, of what constituted hip hop. I knew people who were into it and gave me mixtapes, I listened to the Tribe Called Quest/Jungle Brothers/De La Soul/KRS ONE kinds of groups, and I watched BET. But that was a LONG TIME AGO. I have little idea what goes on in Hip Hop anymore, just as I have no idea who is on the top 40. And I'm not exposed to street level culture much at all, emo, hip hop, country, whatever, I don't have casual conversations with many people, and rarely do I talk to "the kids" these days, even at school. So things like "no homo" are just out of my range. I was really saddened to hear about it though, because GOD DAMN, we don't need that shit. Isn't it hard enough for men to be normal without having to qualify everything they do which might be interpreted as being nice to another man for fear they might "look gay"? Fuck. That. Shit.

This is article by my old school chum (and would be paramour, as he made my young heart flutter in 6th grade), Peter S. Scholtes interviews Tori Fixx, a queer MC in the Twin Cities.

And here is a great, "STFU" post directed at a particular subset of the hip hop crowd.

All I know is that my children are going to get an earful from me if I hear them calling things 'gay'. I hate that lazy kind of insult. I swear like a sailor, which is bad enough, but at least I keep it gender and race neutral. Damn.


p.s. Peter, email me the next time you are in town!

Precision!

LOLZ (I love Ryan from qwantz.com!)

I fear for myself if I ever let my passing interest in etymology become an active one.

I'm only bleeding

Here's me:

dolorous \DOH-luh-ruhs\, adjective:

Marked by, causing, or expressing grief or sorrow.

Dolorous derives from Latin dolor, "pain, grief, sorrow," from dolere, "to suffer pain, to grieve."

(via dictionary.com)


The worst thing about 'how I get sometimes' is how much sense it makes: because I am broken and imperfect I should kill myself. And there seems little else that would so perfectly and completely solve the problem that is me; the inconvenience to others, and all the other negative effects of my existence.

But there are many layers of logic and feeling between me and those feelings, at least in deed. I promise to let those layers break my fall stop me from jumping.

---

(90 minutes later)
I feel better now, after some music and a cup of coffee. I think sometimes lose sight to how much I need to talk about what I am feeling. I have been keeping things to myself precisely because I don't want to be a burden, but that, obviously, isn't working too well. Still figuring this all out, still figuring me all out. And singing some dolorous shanty tune about the weary cutters and the weary sea taking my laddie, that's helped too.

Great "idea"

Last night I was chatting with my fantastic friend J and for some reason started putting things in "quotes", for no reason, and it ended up being so funny, I wanted to do it here.

My "plan" as it were, was to start quoting "everything" (which I now "realize" could include things like spoken word with the addition of "air quotes"). It's instantly "off putting", because (to me) it creates this "air" of sarcasm which is a bit unpleasant*. But funny.

Just doing it now makes me laugh. One of those irrational things that is hilarious to me, but not so much to "everyone else".

"Join me", won't you?

* Also, because people who do a lot of air quoting in "real life" tend to put the emphasis on the wrong "word", which is confusing.

Word of the day, Monday June 11, 2007

quiescent \kwy-ES-uhnt; kwee-\, adjective:

Being in a state of repose; at rest; still; inactive.

This is VERY me today.
I'm emotionally and physically exhausted, and letting it slow me down.
Birthday weekend was fun, but I need a vacation day.
Summer school starts today tonight. I really really really don't understand algebra, so this should be interesting.

On the good side, this is a hybrid in class/online course, so there is a lot more structure than the class I took last summer. I have more of an idea what I am *expected* to learn, and online practice and other stuff. Wish me luck.

The ever widening gap

An interesting article in the Guardian Unlimited (online).
The author Mark Braund references the Make Poverty History campaign, and although the name is familiar, I don't know much about it. I did think these graphs were worth quoting:

The growing gap between rich and poor, within nations and between them, is an inevitable consequence of the way we've chosen to arrange the economy. Over the last 30 years, a politically-driven programme of economic liberalisation has tied economic success (as measured by GDP growth) to growing inequality. More people may be richer than ever before, but many more people are poorer; both are the inevitable consequence of economic advance under the current model.

It's pointless blaming emerging elites in developing countries for appropriating a disproportionate share of new wealth when that's exactly what happened in rich nations at a similar stage in their development. It's hardly surprising if an African running a recently privatised former state enterprise in Ghana or Gabon feels himself entitled to the lifestyle of an executive running a similar businesses in Europe or North America. That, after all, is what globalisation is all about.

Serious poverty reduction will only be possible if the economy is reconfigured to provide a redistribution, not of wealth, but of the factors that beget wealth. The growth in scale of corporations that has accompanied globalisation has restricted access to the resources necessary for economic independence to a small minority of people worldwide.

As next week is a relatively free one for me, I picked up a couple of books from the library at school (a small but fairly satisfying collection of fiction, and a lot of quite interesting non-fiction can be found there). I picked up ZZ Packer's "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" (short stories), which I heartily recommend, and John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", which I've heard a lot about. He's got a new book out and is doing the media circuit for it; hearing him talk about it prompted me to pick up this book.

I do believe "Confessions" will prove what this author is saying about economic liberalization creating greater economic inequality through the developing world is true.

In my Mass Communications class we had to watch a Tom Friedman interview (yes, the horror - to make it worse his shit eating grin was accompanied by a mock turtleneck/sport coat ensemble) and write about his ideas that the world is fair now because people in India get to affect American accents in call centers. Srsly.
Anyhow, this subject reminds me of him, because it's fairly obvious that while high tech stuff is moving across the globe (and you know, I need to learn more about what is going on in the less talked about continents in this discussion - Africa and South America), people are not being relieved of poverty in comparable numbers.

[I've just put in an interlibrary loan request for Mark Braund's book. Apparently there are 72 libraries in the world who have a copy of his book, 2 in Wisconsin. I'll review it when it comes in.]

I lack a manifesto

This is something I have thought about a lot for many years. I really have never sat down and written out what I believe. I do want to do that for many things as I started to in the "this is what I think" post below.

This is something I am not here to fix - not right now. Final draft of paper (and I'm really angry this morning because I found an article about how bushco is working hard against international reproductive health programs because they acknowledge abortion as a part of reproductive health care - I do plan to write about this in more detail soon) is nearly done, take home exam also nearly there...

Just wanted to note it for posterity. Manifesto-esque posts will be on the menu for your summer reading (dis)pleasure.

Yay, I'm a genius

Ah, the many mood swings of the research paper combined with an interim class.
Feeling much more genius-y today than yesterday, although I'm STILL not done with the paper, I'm nearly there. I'll be sure to tell you all about it when it's done. I hate to excerpt it lest I use it as the basis for more research down the line and end up being accused of plagiarizing myself.

Yes, I'm serious.

Anyhow.

Birthday in two days. Actually beginning to look forward to it.
Eat, drink, and be merry, and all that.

Tomorrow, I present my paper. It is likely I am the only one who is seriously considering writing up a presentation.

This is so crazy, my geeking out over what is essentially a pile of policy reports.
I'm loving it.

This is what I think

Today I happened upon a link to the blog Afrosphere, and I decided to write a response to this post. Here is my comment in full (edits where I caught them are in brackets)

Until women can control their own fertility, we will not be an equal part of our society [societies].

This means women need to be in control of when they have sex and with whom, in control of contraception (but not bear the entire burden of it), in control of the choice to terminate a pregnancy as well as in control of the choice to continue one even if she is poor, ill, or the father does not want a baby.

The right to all kinds of reproductive health care, and make no mistake, medical and surgical abortions are HEALTH CARE - whatever you think of abortion, is a moral right for both women and men.

For too long women (and women of the African diaspora [in particular]) have not had implicit or explicit control of our bodies. Moralizing abortion, considering it outside of health care, and stigmatizing women who make the choice to end a pregnancy are parts of the problem.

Yes, we can all agree that abortion should be rare, but it will NEVER, EVER be non-existent. We may disagree as to when a new life truly takes hold, and we may mourn those lives which never come to fruition, but the real, tangible lives of women must be put first.

Women are not merely vessels through which more life comes. We are mothers, sisters, wives, friends, lovers, workers, bosses, politicians, teachers…PEOPLE. People upon whom society rests its collective head, from whom we get our food, our companionship, our values, our consumer goods. They deserve, WE deserve to have control over what happens to our bodies.

Anything less is immoral.

Right now I'm working on a research paper about how gender inequity is negatively effecting women's reproductive health across the globe, and how a "gender equality" approach to reproductive health is a tool to make positive changes for women.

The gender equality approach to reproductive health care has the potential to make an enormous difference in the lives of women around the world. For over 30 years (not coincidentally along the same time lines of the mass marketing of hormonal contraceptives and population concerns) the focus of reproductive health care has been on women. Women's health clinics, female contraception methods, and a focus on what women can do to prevent pregnancy have been paramount. Let me make clear that this has not been a bad thing - controlling ones body is the essence of freedom, and I am glad for progress that has been made this way. What is troubling, however, is how the process of providing options has been turned around to make women solely responsible for conception and pregnancy (and childrearing) in many people's eyes.

What is exciting about the gender equality approach to these issues is that they don't start with a western notion of what poor women of colour need, but instead they look at the society and culture is and use that knowledge to create programs which will actively engage both men and women.

Strengthening the position of women in our global society will strengthen the family, help in the lives of children, and create stronger, sustainable economies. This is not a "feel good" idea, this is a powerful way to create change.

And for my part, I have become personally dedicated to furthering the idea that medical and surgical abortions are not a moral issue, but as part of reproductive health care options, a moral right.

Happiness is...

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) "Emotions"