Downton Abbey Observations

I watched all of Downton Abbey and the continuation movies, and I was so puzzled at Tom’s insistence that Lady Mary and Henry Talbot were a good match, because they had little in common and it didn’t seem as if they really knew anything about each other. So it was kind of satisfying for him not to show up in the later films and for them to divorce. But I never really liked Matthew as a match for her anyway, so whatever. I honestly loved the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith. She hilariously delivered so many good lines. Here are some I wrote down (season 3, episode 6 was gold):

S3E6:

"I have spent many happy evenings without understanding a word. The thing is to keep smiling and never look as if you disapprove."

"You will both admit it when you’re wrong."
"That's an easy caveat to accept; I'm never wrong."

"One forgets about parenthood, the on-and-on-ness of it."
"Were you a very involved parent with Robert and Rosamund?"
"A bit."
"I imagined them at a nanny's and an hour at tea."
"Yes, but it was an hour every day."

"If you had to sell Charlie to the butcher to be chopped up as stew to achieve the same ends, you would have done so."
"Happily, it was not needed."

S5E6
"I blame the war. Before 1914, nobody thought about anything at all."

S5E7
“But you don't plan to tell Robert? He is Edith's father."
"He's a man. Men don't have rights."

S6E3
“You can’t expect me to avoid talking to my own wife.”
“Why not? I know several couples who are perfectly happy, haven’t spoken in years.”

Downton Abbey Movie (2019)
“And you’re an expert in the matter?”
“I’m an expert in every matter.”

“How like you. A word of resistance and you slash with your saber.”
“It is lucky for Miss Smith that I do not own a saber.”

Also, I learned some interesting words:

• Jejune: not interesting, immature
• Rialto: a theatrical district or marketplace
• Verruca: a plantar wart
• Bally: bloody; used as a mild intensifier
• Cock-a-hoop: reckless, jubilant, or tipsy
• Pogrom: a massacre of a minority group, especially against Jews
• Trunk call: a telephone call made outside the local calling area
• Pally: chummy, friendly, can be derogatory

In books

I discovered this week that I was listed in the acknowledgments of A Journey Through American Literature by Kevin J. Hayes. It says, "I also kept a blog during the composition of this book, encouraging readers to respond to various questions such as what constitutes literary greatness, what are the best short stories in American literature, and what autobiographies deserve recognition as literature. I thank Rebecca Ford at Oxford University Press for overseeing my blog. And I thank everyone who responded: Mark Athitakis, Nigel Beale, Phyllis Funke, Michelle Glauser, Kelly Parisi Castro, Karen Resta, Sanjay Sipahimalani, Jerry Waxler, and Daren Young."

The blog was hosted on Oxford University Press, and I remember responding to it, but my googling is only showing a post about this specific topic wherein I commented with a question and not really anything helpful. So either I was thanked just for commenting, or there's another comment or blog post I'm not finding. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

I'm also quoted in Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin — she liked a tweet I shared about better words to use for group meetings than "powwow" and asked if she could share the alternatives. It says on page 145: "My friend Michelle Glauser—found of Techtonica and creator of the Bay Area's 2015 #ILookLikeAnEngineer ad campaign—offers a slew of alternatives, including 'meeting,' 'check-in,' 'talk,' 'huddle,' and 'one-on-one.'

I wrote a chapter of Habits of Being about my grandma's journal, I was one of the editors for as|peers (though I asked for my name not to be included), I did all the editing for someone's doctorate, I wrote a chapter for my own master's thesis, I had a big hand in several school yearbooks, newspapers, work newsletters, I worked closely with Holly Welker to create a chapter of Baring Witness that was eventually cut during the final edits, I was interviewed for a couple of studies and books about diversity in tech that I don't recall the titles of now, and I've written a couple of books in Google Docs that I've never sought publishers for.

Happy Birthday, Uncle George!

Today would have been my great uncle George Bergman's 91st birthday. He contracted HIV and developed AIDS in the 80s and died in 1985. I never met him. Recently, I realized that since he didn't have any descendants, if I didn't ask my grandma about him soon, his story might be lost.



My grandma lovingly told me about George. Her brother loved music and played one of Chopin's polonaises before he ever had a piano lesson! He enjoyed singing (he was a tenor), playing the violin and piano (he and I learned on the same piano!), and going to the opera.



Their mother especially adored her golden boy, which I'm sure was hard for my grandma at times. There were quite a few pictures of him (as a child, he looked like one of my cousins!), and a few papers—letters from schools, news articles about him, and his funeral program.



When George died, my grandma was by his side in Philadelphia. One of the last things he said was, "There are so many astral people around."



I've enjoyed using library resources to research more about him—I found him in news articles and phone books, and was delighted to learn that he and my grandparents always lived within ten blocks of my favorite and longest-yet apartment in San Francisco!



I wish I could find people who knew him in the 50s and 60s in SF and NYC. My grandma said he was a music critic for an SF newspaper, but I've only been able to confirm that he worked on the San Francisco Examiner's classifieds and wrote one opera opinion piece. Every music critic has since died.





I wish I could find out the name(s) of George's partner(s) in New York City, San Francisco, Paris, and Philadelphia. Would he believe that gay marriage was legalized within his sister's lifetime? Did he face violence or arrests because he was gay? Did he join any early pride parades?

I'd heard different things about George's cause of death, so I requested a death certificate, but only immediate family members and direct descendants are allowed to receive a copy, which begs the question—what about decedents without descendants or living immediate family?



When I tried to request his transcript from SFSU to identify his major and graduation year, I was told I have to prove I was related. I'm trying to figure out how one does that—apparently a family tree isn't enough.

Thankfully, the SFSU university archivist was very responsive and easily found George's commencement program with his major (Italian) and graduation year (1962) that included a photo.



But one thing I keep thinking about was that big parts of his life are likely missing because the family didn't talk openly about George being gay, and he lived far away from family members still alive today.



So I started looking up some of George's former students who were named in an article about George's foreign language and performing arts video collection being donated to Germantown Friends School and found two who had talked about George in a Facebook post!

I ended up connecting with former students, a coworker, and the school's archivist, all of whom shared wonderful things! George was fashionable and always wrote with a purple flair pen. He had an “incredibly resonant voice with stylish cadences” (I'm trying to find a recording).



Despite the understood "don't ask, don't tell" attitude at the time, George made a welcoming space for closeted kids and faculty members. He earned respect by having no doubts about himself.



George recognized the school's opera queens and opera-interested and accompanied them, with his mother, to a New York opera and brunch at the World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World, where he declared that everyone *must* see the amazing bathroom. (Anyone have a pic?)



Somehow, George was good friends with Coe Glade, a woman who held the world record for performing as Carmen in the opera the most times. He found out a coworker's mom loved opera as well and escorted her a few times, dressed very elegantly.



George played classical musical at "an ear-splitting volume." He showed up to support student songwriters and attended rock concerts with students. He surprised a coworker by telling her all about Pink Floyd.



Among George’s favorite movies were It’s a Wonderful Life, Sunset Boulevard, Casablanca, All About Eve, Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, The Lion in Winter, Notorious, A Star is Born, Rebecca, The Little Foxes, Wuthering Heights, and Becket.

George organized a celebration of 100 years of recorded sound and played the best recordings—Enrico Caruso, Leopold Stokowski conducting . . . and a song written by student Joshua Newberg, after which he announced, “That of course was Rudolf Schmidt and the Vienna Quintet.”

His extracurricular activities were: “Photography, Piano, Swimming, Theatre, Tape Recording, Concerts, Cinema, the Nations of the World.” He put on Romeo and Juliet with his French students and Frenchified everyone's names in the program. Thank you, GFS archivist!



He put himself in positions where he could support people who needed support and had an instinct for what people needed to hear. He accepted a very out-of-character role in a play for a shy kid directing it and told a visiting graduate, “You have evolved” (in French).



When George died, people at the school said he'd died of cancer without mentioning George having AIDS, and they said it was to protect his mother. I think that with how close George and his mother were, she probably knew he was gay and that he had AIDS.

Student David Dunn Bauer said, "George was glamorous, and we as a Quaker school were not, but George treated us as if we were. If we’d been in NYC, he'd have worn a full-length mink and it would have been fabulous. I graduated in 1977, and every one of these memories of George is vivid. George does not fade."



George's friends at GFS made a quilt square for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in honor of George. It didn't take me long to find it, and I was surprised to recognize it as soon as I saw it. That cleft chin is unmistakable.





What a gift to learn all these things about George so I have a clearer picture of him on his birthday! I'm also writing about my Grandma's life and love and learning more about her when we chat once per week.

The last year has been beautiful

The last year has been beautiful.

I figured out how to better split domestic responsibilities with Michael and adopted the life-changing weekly spousal one-on-one meeting. I relished no longer having dinner be my problem. I went on daily walks with Maggie and Michael and marveled at the beauty of our home in the San Francisco Bay Area. I biked around San Francisco and enjoyed excellent food with Michael and Maggie, our very good girl. I took a multitude of pictures of Maggie and cut and threw endless pieces of carrots and green beans and radishes for her. I expanded the "foods dogs can eat" list on the fridge. I picked up trash and Maggie's and other dogs' poop at the park. I discovered a great new hike we can enjoy with Maggie. I comforted and distracted Maggie during thunderstorms and fireworks. I had Wellness Wednesdays workouts, dinner, and learning with Michael, Claire, and Maggie.

I took drastic measures to eliminate invasive weeds, built new garden beds, and coaxed the garden to be more like my vision, with strawberries, raspberries, passion fruit, olallieberries, lavender, snapdragons, carnations, blueberries, corn, onions, tomatoes, garlic, green beans, radishes, carrots, potatoes, lemons, limes, pomegranates, plums, apples, avocadoes, peppers, tree dahlias, lettuce, bok choy, nasturtium, cala lilies, camellias, hydrangeas, and more. I sorted a ridiculous amount of objects, mostly trash, dug up in the yard.

I created a baking calendar to make and enjoy my favorite goodies over the course of each year. After Reading How Not to Die, I adopted a vegetarian diet and developed a really healthy and delicious smoothie recipe. I had a delightful conversation with the person in the painting I inherited from my artist grandfather. I meditated and savored my bed. I mourned the decline of Twitter. I set app limits and loved it. I became overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to do. I drew boundaries. I finally processed an email that had been in my inbox for years. I paid someone else to take the headache of taxes for the first time this year and was ecstatic when we filed a few days ago.

I grew as an empathetic manager and cheered on many people at Techtonica. I was censured for advocating for inclusion. I received a raise. I lost a job. I learned about negotiating severance and shared what I learned. Layoffs caused hiring partners to back out of their agreements, so I negotiated contract terminations and found solutions for unplaced grads and launched a new Techtonica program to support past grads looking for jobs. I said goodbye to Techtonica's Partnerships Manager of three years and interviewed and negotiated with job candidates before hiring someone amazing who starts next week. I became the resident feedback expert. I learned about and advised and played Gartic Phone with Techtonica participants. I gathered feedback, implemented changes at Techtonica, and had the satisfaction of seeing participants and staff members thrive. I learned to stop working in the evenings.

I picked up antique woodwork and furniture restoration. I figured out how to safely and effectively strip lead paint through a lot of trial and error while devouring audio books at 2.5x. I acquired a foosball table, Eastlake furniture, and a barrister bookcase. I dusted off my piano skills and the perfect 1895 piano built in San Francisco and learned a song I've liked since I heard a friend play it in Leipzig. I visited lovely historic houses and joined an old house community. I saw a tiny Buddhist temple and learned about the history of Chinese people in Mendocino County. I installed rope caulk, bronze weatherstripping, and portières to make the winter less miserable for us.

After years of mostly business writing, I started writing for me again. I researched my great uncle who died the year I was born and found out some fascinating things about him from past students and schools he worked at, then wrote about him and my grandma. I received a letter in shorthand from my grandma to treasure forever.

I continued to learn about and try to be a better advocate of anti-racism. I managed not to suffer too much from allergies with a dog in the house, but was sick and had a mysterious skin bump and weird allergic reactions to stuff outside. I started having my prescriptions mailed, and was relieved that my doctor could prescribe the restricted daily allergy medicine, Allegra D, that I'd been buying every two weeks for years. I discovered the best non-fogging, sanitizable, breathable mask, Airgami. I lost my keys. I bought two of the most comfortable Duluth coveralls for projects but then couldn't stand to make them dirty.

I appreciated over 100 books, especially A Little Life, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Ejaculate Responsibly. I was in charge of the monthly family book club, mostly so I could talk to my family each month. I donated to organizations planting trees every month in hopes of curbing climate change. I grumbled about cars and smoke and noisy motorcycles and junk mail and sexism and people painting woodwork and more.

I enjoyed visits and email and text and cute and funny video exchanges with friends and family.

I'm pleased with the life I've built and who I've become and I hope to grow and experience like this over the next year, too.

Tl;dr: Life has been very full in the last year and I'm looking forward to more.

Adding Maggie to the family

 We adopted a dog! Maggie is a 4-year-old chow mix and she is so sweet. 

We marvel at how lucky we are to have found such a calm, well-behaved dog and I’m really, really glad we got an adult dog that didn't need potty training. She doesn’t chew on things, she rarely barks, she’s never had an accident inside, she doesn't eat human food, she doesn’t care about toys, she rarely whines, she doesn’t seem interested in houseplants, she only goes on grass or wood chips, she's good about not getting on furniture, she doesn't slobber, she doesn't let her tongue hang out, she doesn't often lick faces or jump on people, and she loves attention but can settle down on her own when we’re busy. Plus, she's just so cute and entertaining!

I worried about how a dog would fit into our life, but Maggie showed up and continually brings out the best in us. Having Maggie as part of the family has helped us have more balance—I think we surpassed our last year's number of walks in the first few weeks. We've learned a lot about dog care and she entertains us and sweetens our life every day. Adopting Maggie was a good choice and the top highlight of 2021.

My Aunt, Diane Ellingson Smith

One year ago today, I was running a hackathon event at Twilio when I received a text message from my cousin saying that my Aunt Diane had died. I remembered all the lovely visits to her and my Uncle Scott's house—barbecues, sleepovers, lunch and woodworking—and enjoying her wit and friendliness at family get-togethers.

She was an accomplished gymnast years before I was born and despite dealing with a huge, life-changing injury because of the sport, she remained a lifelong gymnastics fan. I loved re-reading her book, Don't You Dare Give Up, utilizing old research skills from back when I worked at two libraries, and re-watching a video made about her to review all that she achieved and stood for during her life. You can read her bio here.

Here's a video that shows some of her gymnastics, her sharing lessons learned, and a glimpse into her time as a teacher:

I miss her and hope she's doing flips and cartwheels now.

The Last Five Years' Best Books

To celebrate five years back in San Francisco, I'm sharing some books that have really stuck out:

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
• The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
• Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution by Dana Caspersen
• The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano
• On Gold Mountain by Lisa See
• Lila by Marilynne Robinson
• The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery by Wendy Moore
• Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan
• Educated by Tara Westover
• The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirähk
• The Power by Naomi Alderman
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
• Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
• The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow

But seriously, there's one masterpiece that every high schooler should read:

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Read my reviews on Goodreads.

This September I'll Remember

The womp of the waves against Shelter Cove
The porcelain of rocks worn into roundness over time

Breathing in sunsets and storing away the calm for later
Playing Scrabble and the scrabble of a crane fly on the ceiling

The roar of rocks rolling away
The glaring glitter of the sea

Taking on a path with cliffs on both sides
Gallivanting like goats

The Michelle Gs at TechCrunch
The piling up and ups and downs of pain

Volunteer nights and nights volunteering a listening ear and computer tips
Mini olallieberry pies to make space in the freezer and joy in my heart

Fear of having taken on too much
Hanging in there so far

Snickerdoodle the cutest Corgi
Seeing Salesforce Park for the first time

Burmese and ice cream with visitors from our 2014 life
Jumpsuits and the visit of a sister

Missing perfumed hours spent next to my lost music mentor
Reading about Peggy's first penicillin shot

Replacing Michael's favorite shoes
A tired anniversary

A grand plus of dentistry
Weezer's cover of "Africa"

Setting a record on dinner and asking about rolls before dessert
Rolling fog, fresh air, a view from the other side, and whorls of grass

The hardest shin whack maybe ever experienced
The lotion rub that was supposed to be a massage

Ice cream before Indian
The betrayal of communal mothers

Revisited vistas and a seal, king of the rock
A traffic jam made okay by togetherness and The Tsar of Love and Techno

Pondering the eucalyptus life
An empty apartment

Saying goodbye to two offices, hello to two more, and working towards yet another
Trying to keep orchids alive and watching the flowers fall

Last-minute community wrangling
Rejoicing in graduates at Grace Hopper

Worrying about not enough yeses
Avoiding news to save myself

Salty spam
Giggling at Gritty

Weekend naps
Chocolate just for me

Scrabbled

To my utter joy, Michael has recently learned to enjoy playing Scrabble with me. Unfortunately, the nearly-70-year-old Scrabble game I inherited from my great uncle was missing 15 tiles.

I was disappointed to find you can't really order just the tiles you need from the game maker, but I'm ecstatic that it only took $8.50 to get all the missing letters from someone on Etsy! Get your own here (and get 10% off with 10OFF code).

My Breathing Thing

For the last year and a half, I've dealt with what I call a "breathing thing." It started around the time I did the Techtonica crowdfunding campaign, and it's never gone totally away or been explained by the doctors I've seen. Basically, sometimes I can't get a satisfying breath. I try to breathe in deeply, but I can only get a good breath every several breaths or so because of a tightness in my lungs. It's worse when I'm more stressed or tired than usual. As a result, I end up feeling fluttery and sighing a lot.

The lack of a consistently-good breath makes me anxious, which just makes my breathing even worse. Interestingly, almost everything I've looked up about how to calm one's self starts with focusing on breathing slowly and deeply. As you can imagine, that method backfires in this case.

Michael thought it might have to do with my very-messed-up nose, which is lopsided and lumpy and doesn't let in a lot of air after several sinus surgeries that were supposed to help with that and all the sinus infections. He once discovered that pulling up and sideways on the skin next to my nose results in me feeling cool air hitting membranes that don't usually get it (it's a very strange feeling). I talked to an ENT about the problem, and I found out that there's a name for Michael's "method"—it's called "Cottle's Maneuver."

The ENT sent me to some surgeons for consultations, but they all said that unfortunately there wasn't enough bone to work with in my nose and they'd need to use one of my ribs to support reconstruction. I did not like that idea one bit and asked about a cadaveric rib, but I was told it could dissolve! Knowing the weird medical issues I've dealt with, that would probably happen to me. Also, both surgeons told me they weren't sure they could get insurance to justify surgery. Soooooo that's a no-go.

But I don't think the breathing thing is from my messed-up nose, because that would mean that breathing through my mouth would fix the problem, and it doesn't. The doctor checked my air intake with a spirometer and the oxygen levels in my blood, and both were fine, so I just deal with it and try to get some rest before it gets so bad that I can't sleep. Of course, all the stress from running a nonprofit by myself and the reflux I also deal with makes it hard to stay asleep. I often feel like things have to get better at some point, but then when I examine that thought, I realize I'm trying to look at things as fair, and really, it's more likely that more and more physical things will go wrong as I get older.

Anyway, it's so hard to get enough rest, and I'm not really sure why I'm sharing this, so off I go.

Passion Fruit Yogurt

On my birthday, I invited friends to meet me at Straw, a restaurant that was donating 10% of dine-in sales to Techtonica. Although I was perfectly happy to have people be there or donate to the Facebook fundraiser I'd started, one friend I am always so impressed by brought me a gift. In addition to a Target gift card that she insisted I spend on myself, she gave me a whole pack of passion fruit yogurt.

Now, it's one thing for someone to happen to give me a flavor of yogurt that I really love, but I knew as soon as I saw the yogurt that she remembered this poem I'd written six months earlier (August 28th):

This is just me crying on a Post-it note

You have taken
my passion fruit yogurts
that were in
the company fridge

and which
I was looking forward to 
all
day
long

Replace them
they cost more
than I've earned in a year
and I would have savored
every
last 
bite

The yogurt showed that she saw me and appreciated me, even in a moment when I felt petty about feeling upset by missing yogurt. I'm still feeling in awe of her thoughtfulness. 

Fumbling for Words

Have you ever simultaneously had the breath knocked out of you and the pain of the world knocked into you? That somewhat explains what happened to me last November. Despite the leaps of progress for women after centuries of denial of opportunities, and after getting to a breaking point with many tragic humanitarian issues in the country, a huge portion of the U.S. decided they didn't care about other people. One person really hurt me by saying, "It's not like someone died," but to me, it felt like an expansive death sentence or at the very least a huge, selfish, "We utterly don't care about you" directed at millions of people that would result in harmful policy and ongoing discrimination and tragedy. I didn't just feel my own pain; I felt the weight of widespread devastation. And what can one say when they can't breathe and they've been told their voice doesn't matter?

I'm amazed that despite the heavy burden of constant terrible news over the last year, many people have been able to process quickly and get enough breath to raise strong voices in opposition. I'm just now starting to feel like I can feel around in the dark for my voice, but only because I've been guiltily using my privilege to mute a lot of the constant influx of bad news. All I've been able to do for the last year is focus my energy on building a program that empowers people who have even fewer privileges under the current administration. It's so, so hard, but I care so, so much about this important cause.

#ImWithHer

When I was in elementary school, I made friends with an older woman in my neighborhood. Pat had a cute little dog named Goochie, her house was full of curiosities that any young child would marvel at, she would happily give you one of the amazing-smelling roses from her garden, she had the most curious mole on her face that I couldn't help but look at, and she was always friendly and accepting. My family would invite Pat over to Sunday dinner and occasionally she would invite my very large family over to her house for dinner.

One time, when we arrived at Pat’s house, she had the television on. Hillary Clinton was speaking, and Pat said something along the lines of, "Isn't she just wonderful?" Pat occasionally did strange things, and who could blame someone getting up there in years and living alone? At the time I didn't know much about Hillary Clinton, but I watched my mom avoid the question and later heard my parents talk about the Clintons and specifically Hillary in a disparaging way, so naturally I thought Pat's opinion of Hillary must be one of her quirks that was forgivable due to her age.

From people I was surrounded by, I learned that Hillary couldn’t do anything right—I even remember hearing her being criticized for getting expensive haircuts, which most of us would probably do if we had the means and our looks were being critiqued by the world.

It took about 20 years for me to re-evaluate the belief that Hillary was a horrible person. Today, #ImWithHer.

In the past few years as much of my life has circled around my professional life, I have learned a lot about gender bias. I’ve learned that women are often expected to balance on a very thin fence and it’s often impossible to please people—women either have too much makeup, or not enough. They either are not involved enough or too bossy. They either smile too much or too little. These opinions do not just come from men; we've all learned to look at women this way and it takes effort and dedication to look past what we've learned. It's hard for women to completely win at whatever they do.

I’ve seen all the same bias at play with Hillary—her voice is shrill, her voice is too manly, she’s not loving enough, she’s a woman and women are too emotional. She’s been criticized for her husband’s choices and her outfits. Media focus has been more on her past mistakes and where she as a person falls short than on where she stands now. Through it all, she has remained unwaveringly confident. I wish I could have poise like that.

Honestly, I've mostly looked at politics as annoying and to be avoided as much as possible. I think it says something that someone like me has been seriously affected by the hatred and selfishness spewed by Trump in the current election.

I’ve cried when hearing that people I know are supporting Trump—not because they’re not supporting Hillary Clinton, but because I hear "Like Trump, I don't respect you or any woman and I am not willing to show love and understanding to people who are different from me."

A lot of people have had trauma re-surface because of Trump and it’s terrifying to think his hatred could be normalized more than it already is. I can’t even begin to tell you how emotional I’ve been this election, from the trauma of Trump, to the excitement at possibly having a woman in the office of president, to the bitter disappointment at how strong the racism, xenophobia, and sexism are in the U.S.

Although I haven’t lived in Utah for many years, this breaks my heart:





I was so proud of so many from the state I was raised in disliking Trump. What happened? Were people unable to look past their party? Do people know that Utah used to be Democrat and it's okay to vote outside of your party to thwart someone like Trump?

As far as I know, in my lifetime, Trump is the only U.S. presidential candidate who has been so openly, repeatedly, unapologetically hateful of people different than he is. I do not believe that either party is an advocate for hatred and I’m confounded as to why Donald Trump has come this far. This election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is no longer a question of political views or parties; it is a question of hating/allowing hate for or supporting your fellow humans.

I don’t believe it’s possible for any human to be a perfect leader (do you?!), and I don’t think Hillary Clinton is the exception to that. I do know that Hillary Clinton has long cared about women’s and children’s rights, that she has years of experience dealing with the most difficult situations, that she does her homework to make the best decisions she can, that she stuck it out with an unfaithful spouse (seriously, wow), and that she’s seeking to learn and be more inclusive as we all should.

Having Hillary Clinton as president would be a whole world better than an America with a hateful Trump as leader. Again, I know that Hillary Clinton isn’t perfect. But I also know that she hasn’t sexually assaulted anyone, been unapologetic and even encouraging of sexual assault, mocked people with disabilities, proudly avoided paying taxes, stereotyped minorities as rapists and criminals, stooped to endless name-calling and body-shaming, talked casually about nuking, not paid hundreds of people for their work, been hands-off about raising children and discouraged fathers from being involved, or been endorsed by the KKK.

If I felt like I had any sway and that it’s not mostly too late, I would beg: do not vote for Trump and the hatred and fear he stands for. It has been somewhat relieving to hear of family members who have decided to vote for third-party candidates in mostly Republican states, but in the end, they are essentially voting for Trump and "spoiling" the election. (See this video about voting paradoxes to learn about the spoiler effect.)

It has taken a lot for me to say this publicly online, but the more I think about it and feel upset by the awfulness of Trump, the more I feel like I have to say something or forever regret not standing up for someone I believe in and against a horror. I, like many others, have asked myself if I would have stood up against Nazis in Germany or if I would have been on the wrong side of history. Today, though I'm late, I stand with the person I believe will steer America clear of similar utter chaos and tragedy.

To anyone reading this who has been afraid to publicly support Hillary Clinton or at the very least to speak up against Trump, I encourage you to stand with me.

To anyone who has not closely examined their disgust of Hillary Clinton and needs some inspiration (even if you've already voted), let me know and I will add you to an amazingly inspiring, Hillary-supporting Facebook group that you can read about here.

At the end of today, I hope to be able to know for sure that we will finally have a tough, experienced woman as president who will set an example for generations of girls and women. I hope if Pat is watching, she'll be proud. I also hope that my ballot stub will be a treasure for years to come as I've seen happen with suffragette sashes.

I leave you with some words that resonated with me from blogger CJane:

[Hillary’s] fight feels so personal to me. She's had to fight like hell and she's still standing--and that's important to me because I've never seen it done before. And I need to see it done. What will we gain from a nation full of women who fight and stay strong and don't give up until their voices are heard from the very, very top? We don't know. But I am willing to bet it's going to be radical, transformative and ultimately healing.

#ImWithHer

Some other things to check out:

• One-Day Democrat
• This inspiring video
• "The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton"
• The awful abortion experience of this Mormon woman

Recognized by LinkedIn

LinkedIn chose me to be on their first "Next Wave" list of professionals 35 & under—I was in the top 10 for software (you can read more here). This is what they wrote about me:

Any good engineer can solve problems; Glauser challenges the assumptions behind them. If you missed the #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag and billboard campaign in 2015, then you also missed how Glauser, 31, prompted women and minorities throughout the tech industry to empower themselves and to express their identity as engineers. In a similar vein, she’s now working on a startup that will help further empower low-income individuals by giving them free training and helping place them in companies looking to increase diversity. Glauser completed Hackbright Academy in 2012 and has worked as a full-stack developer in several different companies since then. In addition to her tireless efforts to create opportunity in software engineering, she also serves as the Lead for the San Francisco PyLadies meetup.

I don't really know how they came upon my name, chose me, and found out all of those details (it seems a little too specific to be directly from my LinkedIn profile, but maybe not) but it was definitely an exciting day with a lot of people reaching out and following me on various platforms. My feelings were varied from embarrassment and not wanting to share, to doubt that they'd chosen the right person, to being humbled by being placed with other seriously amazing people, to being glad to have some of my hard work recognized in some small way.

I ended up sharing in many places for a few reasons:

1. I was still in the midst of running the crowdfunding campaign for Techtonica and didn't want to miss any opportunity to drive traffic to Techtonica,
2. Michael threatened to share if I didn't, and
3. I'm always hearing about how women understate their accomplishments and I'm working on not doing that.

Hilariously enough, when some people from LinkedIn first emailed me and said I was in the running for an award and asked for my best address, I stupidly told them, "This is my best address," thinking they meant email address. When they came back asking for a mailing address, I became really suspicious and asked what they'd be sending and if my mailing address would be added to a list and doom me to never-ending snail mail junk. They didn't answer me the first time, and when they followed up, I again asked the same questions before they told me, "We want to send you a gift for winning, but please don't tell anyone yet, and no, you won't be added to any list." Still, I wasn't quite sure if these people were really from LinkedIn, so I gave them Michael's office address.





These sunglasses arrived in a box much bigger than the sunglasses. They were in a special plastic case nestled in nice packaging and all of that was wrapped in tissue paper. I told Michael, "These are either the most expensive sunglasses I've ever owned or the most delicately-wrapped sunglasses ever."

Thanks for the honor and the gift, LinkedIn!

I'm Launching a Nonprofit Called Techtonica

I finally publicly announced the reason I've been so busy for the last while . . . I'm launching a nonprofit! Techtonica offers low-income women and non-binary adults free tech training, along with living and childcare stipends, then places them in positions at sponsoring companies that are ready to support more diverse teams. Read more here.

Fogust in San Francisco

I remember wearing sandals and having a couple of warm weeks in August last year, but this "Fogust," Karl the Fog hasn't had many vacation days. Of course, when offices are kept cold enough to turn your hands blue and send you in search of USB-heated gloves, the weather outside doesn't matter much anyway.






I escaped to warmer afternoons and chilly, but Perseid-graced nights at St. Dorothy's Rest with friends. One night, I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside by myself. I drank in the starry sky, the cool, refreshing air, the smell and towering presence of redwoods, and the quiet. Even though it was pretty cold, I had to wrap up that peaceful moment for later.




What do you do when you forgot to bring your contact solution and case with you and your eyes are burn-y? Improvise with eye drops and spoons.




This is Sufi. Though Sufi often looks at me like she's judging me and I'm not usually a huge fan of smaller dogs, Sufi doesn't make messes or bark and I love having her around at work. Sadly, I won't see her anymore after this Friday.

Glasses

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly ten years since I had LASIK done on both eyes (wow, look at the terrible quality of that digital photo!). Unfortunately, my eyes have "receded" since, and contacts/too much computer time/post-LASIK dry eyes have made my eyes burn-y all the time. The eye doctor told me that she wouldn't let anyone do LASIK at such a young age now because eyes can still change significantly. She also said that doctors now put people on a prescription before doing LASIK that helps prevent the dry eyes after.

So, for the first time in nearly ten years, I have prescription glasses. They're not very convenient for biking or snuggling, and I keep forgetting they're not screen glasses or sunglasses and putting them on top of my head, which gets my hair snagged in the nose pieces. It's such a relief to be able to give my eyes a rest, though I have to switch back and forth so that I can play soccer and bike places and wear sunglasses while still being able to see, but meh.





Michael also got glasses—his first pair ever. He keeps making a sad face and saying, "I have football eyes" because that's how the doctor described astigmatism to him.





Thanks to FaceTime and my sister Heidi for helping us pick hip glasses.

Adventures in Humane Mouse Capture

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered mouse poop in our cupboard. We'd found poop before and blocked the hole in the back of the cupboard, but apparently that wasn't enough this time. A few days later, I went to bed early (which is a clear recipe for Michael forgetting to ever go to bed), and Michael heard scratching before I woke up wondering where he was. When we discovered a bag of chips and a bag of rice had been chewed into despite being moved to a high shelf away from the cupboard, we knew something had to be done.

I really don't like the idea of killing things, and once Michael saw the mouse freeze while using the microwave cable to climb up to the shelf, he started saying, "It's so cuuute. Can we keep it as a pet?" I told him how when I was little, I'd once found a mouse in a mouse trap at my grandparents' cabin. I can't remember if it'd eaten rat poison or if it was in a trap, but it was really weak and unable to run. I felt so bad for it that my dad put it into a box and I watched it and provided it with food. I even gave it a name—Marie. Unfortunately, Marie didn't make it. Telling that story made me remember how my siblings, cousins, and I had caught squirrels, so I told Michael about the squirrel-catching method we used: you attach a string to a stick, prop a box on the stick, put some food under the box, and wait for the squirrel to go for the food before pulling on the string.



City version of the cabin squirrel trap: garbage can, broken chopstick, and packaging string attached to an iPhone charger cable.


Unfortunately, the mouse was too scared to run out in the open and just stuck to the edges. I was really surprised by how little the mouse was; I don't remember them being the few times I saw them at the cabin. Its ability to squeeze under the oven, dart and wriggle into the cupboard, and hide behind the fridge was quite impressive. We blocked off all the good places to hide and put all the chewable packaging into the fridge or a high, closable cupboard.

The next night, after trying to get the mouse again and turning our kitchen into a disaster area, we started googling. We tried the balancing-spoon-with-peanut-butter method with a Blue Apron box (handy). We tried the balance-a-glass-on-a-nickel method. The mouse didn't fall for any of those methods even though I waited and watched each time until it came back out of hiding and wandered around. Finally, I decided to try the string-through-a-plate method and waited and waited. I think because I'd stuck the ramp right into the mouse's hiding place, it was too scared to come out again, so I went to bed after waiting for a long time.



The precarious spoon method.



The precarious plate method.


Nothing in the morning. In the evening, when I got home, I saw this in the box:




It looked subdued, like it had jumped itself out and was hopeless. I had no idea how long it had been in there, but it had clearly been jumping and trying to make a hole in a top corner to get out.

As soon as I decided I'd better cover the box, the mouse started going berserk and jumping, and its panic gave it super powers—it jumped right out even though we'd made the walls higher than we thought it could jump (about 18"). I re-set the trap, got some cardboard ready to cover it if I got another chance, and went into another room. A few minutes later, I heard scrabbling, and ran in and taped the cover over the box right away. I didn't really want to do anything with the mouse without Michael, so I left it in the kitchen like that, but I felt nervous that it was going to get out somehow and checked on it several times. Each time it had been jumping and wearing down a corner of the box where I'd added a piece of cardboard to make it taller, so I covered the corner with tape.



Our kitchen was a disaster.



The mouse burrowed its way under the bottom flap of the box whenever I'd go to look at it.


I decided to put my camera on the edge of the counter and film what it was doing when I was gone. It took 10 minutes on the dot for the mouse to make its way out.

When Michael got home, he was excited to see the mouse, but it burrowed its way under the flap and was too scared to come out, even when we put peanut butter close to it. So Michael captured this picture:


Mice can sure get flat!


I said we'd better take it to the park.



Michael was sad, so I agreed to bring along a "care package" to send the mouse on its way: some sunflower seeds.

Our conversation on the way to the park at nearly 11 PM:

Michael: "Are you sure we can't keep it?"
Michelle: "Yes, it'll chew its way out, escape, and then steal our food again."
Michael: "It wasn't stealing; it was hungry."
Michelle: "It moves really fast, so you can't really cuddle it like you can with hamsters."
Michael: "So I'll just look at it."
Michelle: "Our lease doesn't let us have pets."
Michael: "I can feel it shaking in this box. It's so scared. Maybe we can just put it in this yard [across the street] so we can visit it."
Michelle: "No. The Chow Chow that lives there will scare it to death! And it'll get into that house . . . though it'll probably find its way from the park to someone's house anyway."
Michael: "What about this house? No one has moved in yet, so it can have the whole house to itself."
Michelle: "No! Besides, there's no food in there. Whew . . . it is such a clear, cold night; look! There are a few stars!"
Michael: "Won't it be too cold out here?"
Michelle: "No, it'll build a nest and keep itself warm. My hamsters did that with whatever was nearby."
Michael: "Do you think those people are wondering why we are carrying a box into the park late at night?"
Michelle: "Probably. Maybe you should have just given it to them."
Michael: "Let's let it out here."
Michelle: "No."
Michael: "Do we have to go all the way to the top? How about here?"
Michelle: "No."

Finally, we let the mouse go, though we had to use a stick to open the flap to get it to run away.

When we got home, I said, "My parents always said that where there's one mouse, there are multiple mice." I re-set the plate trap but didn't really think we'd catch anything. After three nights of being up really late trying to catch a mouse, I weirdly took my time getting ready for bed. And then suddenly I heard scrabbling again! I turned to Michael with wide eyes and said, "Do you hear that? We've got another one!"

The second trip up the hill and release weren't quite so full of fanfare, though I kept exclaiming at catching another mouse and at the fog that had completely moved in during the ~50 minutes we'd been inside. Michael wanted to know if the mice would find each other and if they were siblings or a couple. "Maybe both," I replied.

When we got to the same spot as before, we could see that the chip and peanut butter we'd left were gone, hopefully to Mouse #1. Mouse #2 never figured out the flap thing, and it darted out and in the opposite direction of where Mouse #1 had gone. Here's a video:




No more mice have been caught. I haven't yet decided if we should ask our property owners to fill the hole or not. I don't want them thinking we have a dirty household (which we do not) and blaming it on us (especially since I'm still hoping that some day I can convince them to replace the old windows), but I also would really rather not to have to lose food and clean up after and catch more mice.

For now we have an entirely empty cupboard and we're happy to have a quiet kitchen. The mosquitoes in the bedroom, on the other hand, are as annoying as ever . . . they can smell me through the ancient windows and make their way in with the windows, blinds, and curtains closed, and we don't always find them with our perimeter checks before turning off the light. Our neighbors must wonder about the middle-of-the-night circling followed by a sudden slap of a flip flop on the wall or ceiling.