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.

Introducing BookFairy!

After five weeks of intensive learning and another five weeks of slaving away at Hackbright Academy, my app is up!

I made BookFairy, a site for library junkies like myself. BookFairy allows a user to upload an entire list of books in a .txt file and choose which branch of the San Francisco Public Library she or he prefers to visit, and the site returns a list of all the checked in books with their Goodreads ratings. You can try it out here: bookfairy.heroku.com

I'm sorry it doesn't work for every library; it was super hard just to scrape the San Francisco Public Library and Goodreads pages because the HTML was so messy. Also, it will be slow until I work on some more things (maybe cacheing or threading).

I actually have a lot of ideas about what to work on next, but now I need to work on technical interview skills. Thank you for everyone's support! (Special props go to Christian, Charles, Julia, David, Kenneth, Joe/Joseph?, Michael, and other Hackbrighters.)

If you speak techie and are curious, I used Python, Django, PyQuery (the library had no API and the Goodreads' API wasn't good enough and BeautifulSoup wasn't strong enough, so I had to scrape), fuzzywuzzy (to check correlation percentages), Heroku, etc.

I am a developer! I developed!

"Marry Him!" Ponderings

I have a really smart (and Mormon) friend named Betsy. Whenever we get together, we end up talking about recent popular articles about dating and marriage since she has written a number of articles on the same (including a chapter in this book, this article and this article). Last time we talked, she told me that reading Lori Gottlieb's book (not just Gottlieb's article by the same name), Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, might be worth my time. Reading the book made me want to gather a lot of my thoughts, and what better time to share them than on Valentine's Day?

Though I found Gottlieb's interviews, personal experiences, and statistics interesting, there were a few things that really shocked me--such as the fact that a LOT of women, even short women, are looking for really tall guys. Being short myself, I've never thought much about height. There was one time that I went out with a guy and realized that wearing boots made me feel a bit tall next to him, but I never considered height a determining factor in a relationship. Gottlieb has a hard time budging at all on her height requirement even though she is also quite short. And though I have been member to the "he's too skinny" or "he's too chubby" party, I've nevertheless had great relationships with guys fitting those descriptions. Sure, I've also complained about ridiculous things like prematurely grey hair, big pores (I'm rolling my eyes with you), and unattractive shoes, but in the end I've realized those things aren't as important as other things.

Gottlieb discusses the feeling that many people have--that one can eliminate the possibility of a relationship within one date or one email. As it turns out, many of the successful relationships in the book didn't start out with any kind of butterflies. Similarly, a coworker of mine several years ago told me how she had been irritated by her future husband when she first knew him. "The more I got to know him," she said, "the less he annoyed me." I shook my head in disbelief. How come she even gave him the chance to stop annoying her when instead of butterflies, she felt annoyance? I remember wondering a few years ago if I was too old to feel butterflies. But when it really comes down to it, it's not butterflies I'm looking for--it's mutual constancy, support, help, comfortable companionship, and goals. When Mormon Church leaders describe marriage as “a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other,” I don't see a clear link to butterflies, and I no longer think there needs to be one.

Gottlieb also mentions the problem of too many choices. Modern dating is so unlimited in its numbers that it can be problematic. I think we all know the feeling of going to get something at the store and being so overwhelmed by the different choices that we end up making no choice at all. Or, alternatively, we buy one option only to forever wonder if we should have bought another. We don't want to fully commit because we want to try them all, and the same problem can happen when an online dating site or even a Mormon singles conference shows us thousands of options.

Gottlieb's book is great at convincing its readers to go out with people they wouldn't normally go out with, to create soul mates by actively loving them, and to narrow down relationship needs to only three items.

But Gottlieb doesn't say much about sex. I think she should. As unpopular as a conservative view on sex may be today, according to statistics that my friend Betsy has gathered, people who save sex for marriage are more satisfied sexually. And I think that when both of you wait, the commitment level goes up. After all, you're not giving it away lightly. You're not only asking, "Is this someone I want to be with the rest of my life?" you're also asking, "Is this someone I'm willing and ready to give myself away to that way?" (Basically, I want to quote huge sections of Betsy's articles. I really think you should read at least one.) However, I realize that most readers of this blog (and of Gottlieb's book) have already made a decision about sex one way or the other. To those who aren't as conservative, let me just say that there is such a thing as re-committed virginity and I believe it can be just as rewarding. For the record, I think the idea of sexual faithfulness to one's future spouse is the most romantic notion out there, and it can be realistic as well.

Gottlieb also doesn't comment much on communication, which is something that is so important to me. Every time I watch any kind of chick flick (as well as other kinds of movies, actually), it seems like the conflict can be boiled down to communication. If people would just talk to each other, so many problems would be solved! And can't the same concept be applied to dating and relationships and marriages? There are, of course, horrible communication failures in Gottlieb's book, such as the woman who broke up with a man because he was doing something minuscule that bugged her. When asked if she'd talked to him about it, she said, "No. He should have already known not to do that." If that one thing was all the woman could complain about, how successful could that relationship have been if they had worked on the behavior together? She gave up the rest of the benefits of the relationship because he "should have" known something? Of course the naysayer in us can say, "Well, maybe he would have reacted badly and refused to change the behavior." True. But what if he'd simply said, "Oh, okay. I didn't realize that was annoying"? Or what if she'd learned to look past that annoying behavior, like my friend did?

Fears hold people back from commitment. We fear messy divorces and boring lives, but one of Betsy Vandenberghe's sentences really drove the fact home that I actually want what could be considered a boring life: "[S]o, some bloggers are correct in accusing marriage of lacking excitement, if by that they mean it consists of economic stability, less stress, and fewer doctor visits."

Gottlieb talks about marriage being a business arrangement (arranged marriages are working better than un-arranged marriages, she points out), and how even though that sounds unromantic to modern ears, it's helpful to think of it that way. She's changed her viewpoint from looking for the guy she is proud to show off and who has no issues (not possible) to someone who will help her lead an economically stable life and who will get up in the night when the child cries. That sounds boring when paired with a romantic movie, but it sounds satisfying and safe, doesn't it?

Betsy has also shown me statistics about couples who considered getting divorces and didn't. As it turns out, in the long run, most couples are extremely glad they stayed together. Even after the stress of conflict, spouses enjoy more stability, they're healthier, and their children are happier. Marriage is a piece of work.

Dean Larsen said, “Marriage is not an easy venture. It is largely a one-time-through, do-it yourself project for the husband and wife. I repeatedly encounter the illusion today, especially among younger people, that perfect marriages happen simply if the right two people come together. This is untrue. Marriages don’t succeed automatically. Those who build happy, secure, successful marriages pay the price to do so. They work at it constantly.”

Many marriages today are separated from any religious affiliation, and though the pictures at court houses look lovely in their simplicity, I think there is something truly beautiful and binding about making marriage a religious covenant. After all, religious covenants are more personal than a government's declaration that two are one. They are also stronger than that official oath, because covenants go both ways--we promise God to be faithful to each other and to Him, and He in turn promises to bless us.

Gottlieb's book helped me do some good thinking about what it is I'm looking for and what I need to improve in myself in order to contribute to a great relationship. Though it's a book aimed at women, I think a lot of men (including apostles who keep trying to give motivational talks about getting married) would also benefit from giving Marry Him a quick read.

Their Eyes Were Watching God Quotation

One of my favorite quotations from one of my favorite books, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God:

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the watcher turns his eye away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time."

Childcraft Book on Gender

Do you ever glance at books that have been around forever just to see what they hold? I laughed at the obvious generation gap that showed up in a Childcraft book on my parents' shelves. Just look at this page:





"It's fun to be a girl and wear a gay costume. It's good to be a mother and sew. Such companionship makes a girl want to be like Mom."

Wow. So many levels of discomfort for someone of my generation and feminist leanings (not to mention the use of a word which was so great for rhyming but which now has a very different meaning). Being a girl is all about being fun, huh? And girls should all be interested in dressing up? What about mothers--is it bad to be a mother and not sew? Does that mean girls won't have companionship with their mothers? What if they don't want to be just like Mom? How do you like that capitalized "Mom"? We could do a close reading just on that . . .

And man, that poor mother looks like she's at least fifty years older than her daughter. Sad.

Last question: is it just me, or does that girl's profile kind of look like mine?

Women in 19th Century China

A few months ago, I read a book called Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, leant to me by a friend. I learned fascinating things about 19th century Chinese women's culture.

There were really detailed accounts of foot-binding. I never knew that the toes were curled under the foot until the toe bones broke and then further until the foot bones broke. The girls started around 7 years of age at the latest, 3 at the earliest, when they were kept in the upstairs "women's room" and made to walk around with their blood and pus-filled bandages. Who knows if the number is correct, but the book said one in ten girls died of complications of foot-binding. Who even came up with such a painful tradition and how in the world did it spread?



I also heard the first I'd ever heard about nüshu, a script created by and known only by women. Cool. This writing is the most simplified written form of Chinese ever concocted--it is phonetic instead of having each symbol stand for something. Women made contracts with friends so they would be committed to each other for life, and they wrote back and forth to each other.



It was interesting to see how much of women's lives were directed by religion and traditions that seem rather old-fashioned and superstitious coming from my perspective--so much was based on numbers, for example.

And to close, here are some favorite quotations:

• "I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one and the same." (3)
  
• "We women are expected to love our children as soon as they leave our bodies, but who among us has not felt disappointment at the sight of a daughter or felt the dark gloom that settles upon the mind even when holding a precious son, if he does nothing but cry and makes your mother-in-law look at you as though your milk were sour? We may love our daughters with all our hearts, but we must train them through pain. We love our sons most of all, but we can never be a part of their world, the outer realm of men. We are expected to love our husbands from the day of Contracting a Kin, though we will not see their faces for another six years. We are told to love our in-laws, but we enter those families as strangers, as the lowest person in the household, just one step on the ladder above a servant. We are ordered to love and honor our husbands' ancestors, so we perform the proper duties, even if our hearts quietly call out gratitude to our natal ancestors. We love our parents because they take care of us, but we are considered worthless branches on the family tree. We drain the family resources. We are raised by one family for another. As happy as we are in our natal families, we all know that parting is inevitable. So we love our families, but we understand that this love will end in the sadness of departure. All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality." (59)
  
• "But the love between a pair of old sames is something completely different. As Madame Wang said, a laotong relationship is made by choice. While it's true that Snow Flower and I didn't mean all the words we'd written to each other in our initial contact through the fan, when we first looked in each other's eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us--like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love--true-heart love--must grow. Back then I didn't yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the river with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow--through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now! Waaa! I knew so little about life, but I knew enough to think like a farmer." (60)
• "'I am thirty-eight years old,' Aunt said, not with sympathy but with resignation. 'I have lived a miserable life. My family was a good one, but my feet and my face made my destiny. Even a woman like me--who is not so smart or beautiful or is deformed or mute--will find a husband, because even a retarded man can make a son. Only a vessel is needed. My father married me to the best family he could find to take me. I cried like you do now. Fate was crueler still. I could not have sons. I was a burden to my in-laws. I wish I could have a son and a happy life. I wish my daughter would never marry out so that I would have her to hear my sorrows. But this is how it is for women. You can't avoid your fate. It is predestined.'" (78)
• "Uncle Lu was the ultimate master, but I secured my place by being the first daughter-in-law and then by giving my husband his first son . . . For these reasons I have told the young women who have married into the Lu family, and the others I eventually reached through my teaching of nu shu, that they should hurry to have a baby boy. Sons are the foundation of a woman's self. They give a woman her identity, as well as dignity, protection, and economic value. They create the link between her husband and his ancestors. This is the one accomplishment a man cannot achieve without the aid of his wife. Only she can guarantee the perpetuation of the family line, which, in turn, is the ultimate duty of every son. This is the supreme way he completes his filial duty, while sons are a woman's crowning glory. I had done all this and I was ecstatic." (151)
  

Kindle

Last weekend, for the first time, I held a Kindle in my hands (an electronic thing that you can read books on). Within moments, the wish to have one welled up within me. I could see what people meant when they talked about the paper-like screen designed not to tire your eyes the way a computer does. I liked its not-so-shabby reading function, the simplicity of turning the page, the way you can prop up the device when your arms get tired, and its light weight. And I liked to read about its decreased price and its global wireless capabilities.

And the more I thought about it and $259 dollars, I thought of how no matter how rich I become, I will always have a weak spot for libraries, free books, and a pile of books to be read. The Kindle doesn't satisfy those desires. And I can see myself fearing to take the Kindle on trips since it might get broken or stolen.

So, for now, I will settle stick with the long tradition of paper books.

Sitting in the Crotch of a Fig Tree

There were days in my young life when I would go to the library once a week and check out seven books so I could read one each day. I remember putting them in order so that the ones I was most excited about were last in the pile. Opening each book was like Christmas--I was breathlessly excited for whatever awaited me.

Like those days, I went to the library this week and checked out five books on hold for me. Every one is a book I've been meaning to read for a long time. And the first one I popped open engulfed me, so much so that I thought, "Wow, interesting how this author didn't split the book up into chapters" shortly before turning the page and discovering chapter 8. Just like old times, I was so glad to be reading and every moment I wasn't, I wished I were, until there were no more pages and I mourned their loss. Books can have such a marvelous effect on me. I delve into the characters and learn new things about myself through them. This last book especially did that and I hope the next will, too.

Before I start the next book, though, I wanted to share a passage with you.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.(85-86)

Without using some online search tool, who can tell me what book the passage comes from?

Pioneer Woman

I have no idea how I missed the famous blogger, Ree Drummond, a.k.a. "Pioneer Woman," for so long. I did, after all, write my master's thesis on mommy blogs. But anyway, I found a link to her blog and ended up reading her novel-sized, dramatic, post-by-post story of how she, a city girl, fell in love with a cowboy. I won't lie. I was addicted after a few paragraphs and couldn't wait to read each chapter. I finished before the day was out, though I had a lot of other things to do.

She is so funny and her writing flows really well. Plus, the story is the kind that makes me sigh.

And I love how after a lot of lovey-doveyness, she gives her male readers a break by showing pictures of a baler. Ha ha. Here you can find the baler post (James might like this).

This is my favorite chapter because that's the way I want to feel about someone, that it's just right.

Here you can find all the chapters (warning, they're addictive!). So go read Black Heels to Tractor Wheels.

Of People, Books, Movies, Money, and Health

Happy birthday to Virginia Woolf yesterday.

Monday, we watched the new Emma movie. It seemed to be a tasteful film, especially for something coming out of low-budget production of Church members. However, I found that it jumped from subject to subject, from dialogue to dialogue. Now they're dancing, oh, now she broke the pitcher, oh, now she's writing another death in the Bible. I realize portraying a whole life is difficult--but there could have been better transitions between almost every line, and much of the dialogue was either cheesy itself or delivered cheesily. Also, the lady who portrayed the older Emma bugged me somehow. I think she's had Botox or something that makes her face hang funny, and her character was portrayed too cheerfully (again, this may be a problem of the writers). I specifically remember her grandchildren describing her as a woman who never smiled. Plus, if she was so good at encouraging her daughter to stay true to the gospel, why did she split from the Church? I'm not saying Emma is not oft-misunderstood and surely had a difficult life that may justify many of her actions, but her decisions were not accurately portrayed in the film.

I do, however, suggest the film Seven Pounds. Yes, there is one part where you should close your eyes/fast forward.

I've been reading all of Jane Austen's books--they're all on the GRE Literature reading list, so I may as well. I understand why Persuasion isn't the most famous, and I was ready to give up on Mansfield Park after a few chapters. However, I forged on and I was amazed at Austen's talent--she can make me feel very disappointed in the seemingly-sure future I predict for characters and then suddenly fix it all. The "suddenly" part and some feminist issues (implying that the girl whose character and mindset has been formed by a man goes to that man) are what got to me. But I can't deny her skill.

I've been dying for some changes recently. That usually means that I go and dye my hair until something bigger can change. This time, I'm cheaper and I've been curling ringlets into my hair. This is what it looks like in the evening:















The curl is completely gone. At least it gives it some volume. I need a trim. And I'd like to get some layers.

I fulfilled my lifelong dream of owning a peacoat, despite wool allergies and after hours of worrying about if it was the right color, size, cut. Friends helped me by looking at pictures I took in the dressing room, but I was still indecisive. I finally bought it for only 20 Euros.

Kira moved back to Ohio.

I bought a new laptop case on eBay last week since the zipper on my old one finally bit the dust. It arrived from China. And it can't zip closed. I'll just have to keep using the old case with a rubber band.

My knee is acting a little crazy. It was doing so much better but now, I kid you not, it can only be described as arthritic. It aches, it gets really stiff, and when I'm in the cold, it just doesn't work. Fun. Tanya says I should stretch it. But how?

I went to a Stewart O'Nan reading of his new book, Songs for the Missing, a book about a girl who goes missing from a gas station--a background theme in another of his books. (Last year, I did an essay on his book Wish You Were Here.) I've heard a lot about his ability to write in all sorts of genres and know what's going on in the literary world. He took a few questions after we heard several chapters read in English and German. Since his new book seemed similar to Lovely Bones, a book that was on the bestseller list for ages three or four years ago, I was glad he picked me to pose a question. I asked, "You said you started writing this book 10 years ago. Were you disappointed when Lovely Bones came out and became a bestseller because of the similarities in the plot?" In short, he gave an answer that made it obvious he hadn't actually read the book--the dead giveaway was him calling Lovely Bones a fantasy. Professor Koenen told me later that she had wanted to ask the same question, so that's a good sign. She also agreed that he hadn't read the book. However, I really liked his answers to other questions. Some authors just give very short, surface answers that aren't very pleasing. But he talked about writing about the every day and how it's nothing exciting but that's what fascinates him. He said he's really bad at coming up with titles. He described how he observes people and makes whole notebooks about one character he's going to create until they become real in his mind. He said that's a good thing unless they're insane, like in Speed Queen. For the new book, he got so close to the subject of a girl disappearing, that when his daughter didn't answer her phone or emails for ten days, he sent the police to her dorm room. She was mad because she was looking pretty crappy with the flu and the police officer was young and cute. Ha ha. But most impressive, he talked about how this new book tells the real story of missing people--the story of those left behind. He said that people tend to hide much of themselves from those they're close to. I wrote down these words of his:

I think finally, we need to grow closer to the people we think we're already close to . . . We need to find ways to directly address the people we're closest to."

And I leave you with those words.

Books by Color

Melissa, thanks for the idea. With my blaring lack of money budget and my constant desire to change little things, this was the perfect opportunity. I'd always ordered my clothes by color, but books? Brilliant.















In other news, some day I hope to be able to say that I slept through the Nobel Prize phone call. After all, sleep is more important than fame. And maybe by then I'll have a really cool library like this guy. Then again, I hope by then that all that stuff will be digitized so I can go wherever in the world I want to and still have access to an endless amount of information through my laptop. Of course, that's assuming that I'll have internet access wherever I go, so I hope for that too. And if I still worked in a library, I would seriously think about buying one of these shirts, or at least making a sticker out of one of them.

Last of all, check out this well-researched post done for me by a blog-writer I love to read for her personal insights into people as they relate to Church history. It's proof that even though I was born that year, it was still a good and eventful year. ;)

Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

Did you know this book, which I loved, was made into this movie? I want to see it.

The prize winner of Defiance, Ohio : how my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less / Terry Ryan ; foreword by Suze Orman. Where is it?

by Ryan, Terry.

Easter Celebration

We went for a walk to the park today, where we claimed a chocolate Easter bunny as ours. This sight amused me, especially as I watched people's reactions:












I guess it's tradition to have an Easter fire to burn away the winter (apparently New Year's Eve fireworks are to burn away the past year or something), but the bad weather prevented making a fire. We instead walked around with these things. I told people that Americans just used fireworks on holidays because they had an excuse to be pyromaniacs.












On a more serious note, I have to say that I am so grateful Christ died for me. I just can't imagine how much love He must have to have done something like that. I feel bad for the pain I have caused Him and continue to cause. Because of His example, I want to be a better person and to serve others. I realize it's hard to accept the Atonement. I would suggest this book to people: Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson.

The Enchanted April

Last night and today I read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. It reminded me of a lot of other novels at the close of Victorianism, but I liked it. Here are some favorite parts:

"For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again longing, desiring . . ." (15).

"To be missed, to be needed, from whatever motive, was, she thought, better than the complete loneliness of not being missed or needed at all" (28).

"There was a sense of broken ice; they felt at once intimate and indulgent; almost they felt to him as nurses do,--as those feel who have assisted either patients or young children at their baths. They were acquainted with Mr. Wilkins's legs" (172).

"And the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle" (185).

"How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again, --not important on platforms, not important as an asset in an organisation, but privately important, just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one -- oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!" (201).

Literary Theory

Ever since my Poststructuralism class three years ago (man, I'm getting old), I have loved Oxford Press's Very Short Introductions series. They are so simple and I love their perfectly-applicable illustrations. Can you see that? It's a guy saying to two people, "You're a terrorist? Thank God, I understood Meg to say you were a theorist." Ha ha.

I did a lot of reading today, hoping that after three hours I could really dig into my essay writing. All I learned was that I have a lot more to learn.

"Theory makes you desire mastery: you hope that theoretical reading will give you the concepts to organize and understand the phenomena that concern you. But theory makes mastery impossible, not only because there is always more to know, but, more specifically and more painfully, because theory is itself the questioning of presumed results and the assumptions on which they are based."

I read this paragraph from Catherine Belsey (Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction) and thought, "That explains it exactly." Now I'm tempted to just turn in my essays with that quotation repeated on all of the pages (45 in all). Nah, it's that desire for mastery that keeps me going, even if it's impossible to reach.

American Purgatorio

I went to my first real reading this week. I was expecting some dimly-lit place where funky people with berets would snap at the end as they drank their coffee. You know, something like the poetry slam in "The Bean Scene" on The Goofy Movie. My professor, John Haskell, the one I told you about, read from his book American Purgatorio. The reading wasn't exactly what I imagined, but it didn't let me down. It was held in a funk-ified factory building. Students gathered on benches to listen to him read and answer questions, and then to a German actor read from the German version. Professor Haskell's answers to the questions were exactly what I would expect from him. He would tell stories in reply, get to the end, and say, "So yeah." Then the lady who was directing the questions (a local radio persona) would say, "I'm not sure that's an answer," and everyone knew it wasn't but loved what he said anyway. I thought it was hilarious when the radio persona asked about teaching classes. It was obvious he knew it wasn't his thing, but he didn't want to say that straight out in front of his employers and students. She said, "So you're teaching a creative writing class. Do you think it's possible to learn how to write well?" He hemmed and hahed, especially once he noticed Heather and I laughing in the front row. He made a comment about how you can be "helped along," but then he really made me laugh by comparing it to something totally not learned. In other words, it's hopeless for his creative writing students. :)

The book sounded just fascinating. If I had more money and reading time to spare, I would buy it. Maybe I should just do it since I have the chance for an autograph now. After all the formalities were done, we were free to look around (while enjoying tunes from some local DJ) at the art displayed from two artists, one of whom is from Brooklyn. People were given free drinks (beer or bubbly pop, neither my thing), pretzels, and cheese! One of the exhibits had little kaleidoscopic thingies to look through hanging from the ceiling. Here is a picture of me through one of them:











And this picture is of me being really excited about the exhibit:

as/peers

A new link has been added to my links. This post is to tell you about it. We are starting an American Studies journal called as/peers. (There's really supposed to be one of those vertical lines in between "as" and "peers" but my Mac is unable to do that.) Sure, there are lots of American Studies journals already, but ours is especially cool because it's a place for European American Studies graduate student perspectives to be published. We want it to be legitimate but artsier than usual (not boring). The deadline for the first edition's submissions is coming quickly. One section is open to all, please refer to the under-construction site, where all the basic info is included: www.aspeers.com.

I love being able to work with my peers to make this dream a reality. I've been studying layout, publication, and ISBN/ISSN options. Each of us has a unique way of looking at things which makes decisions take longer, but the end result is better.

Here we are trying to decide on layout in one of our two main fishbowl-style classrooms. Notice that I asked people to bring food, which they did: hummus and pita bread, chocolate, gummies, lebkuchen . . . mmmm.

Canon According to Steve Martin

What makes a good book a good book? The issue of canon is huge. I've been debating it in my own head for years and especially whenever my mom gives me a hard time for giving her a hard time about what she reads. In one of my classes last week, we looked at different "Best 100 Books Ever" lists and discussed what influenced their ratings. I thought that this one was worth sharing. I especially appreciated 6, 12, 17, 18, 29, 53-55, and 85. Enjoy.

http://www.compleatsteve.com/essays/100bks_nyr.htm

11th Woman Nobel Prize Lit Winner

Congratulations to Doris Lessing for being the 11th woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. I'd like to read some of her work some day. It probably won't happen until I have a bigger variety of English lit available. Anyway, I found an article about her quite interesting.

First she says, "I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something," Lessing said. "If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge."

Sounds good. I like that.

However, at the end of the article she mentions that her editor is having a hard time reading the second half of her newest novel, and she says, "Well, I hope so, because it's my intention to put people off war."

Wasn't that contradictory?

Traveling and Books

Of course I waited too long to buy tickets to Germany. I'm not sure now why I didn't buy them before . . .

It looks like Friday I will be taking a nineteen-hour bus ride to Leipzig . . . Good thing I bought some books!

Twilight was better than I first said, but I still argue that much of the cheesy, girly stuff could go. I'm not sure I'll read the other two. I definitely will not buy them. Alana is keeping Twilight.

We stopped by the biggest Waterstone's in London and I couldn't help but gather books. I had about eight in my hands when reality set in. I bought four: Forever in Blue: the Fourth Summerhood of the Pants, A Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Gilman), and another I can't remember at the moment. Let me just say that they will fit in my suitcase and they were on sale. Let me also say that I have enjoyed Dorian Gray immensely, even though nothing has even really happened yet. I even started over to underline and write notes all over it. I wish I could study it at Uni! All the contradictions are superb.