Category Archives: life

Freak Power Exhibit at Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

9 political posters from the 1970s on an angled wall to lead visitors into the exhibit space. Facing the posters is an enlarged reprint of a newspaper page. The headline is at the ceiling and reads "Scurrilous Sheet Hits the Streets". There is a image of writer Hunter S. Thompson and another man holding a poster. Past all of these images is a portrait of Hunter S. Thompson that wraps onto the back wall leading into the rest of the exhibit space.
Selection of art from the Hunter S. Thompson’s run for Sheriff in

The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has a fantastic show of political posters from the Freak Power Party. The displays over several rooms tell the fascinating story of Hunter S. Thompson‘s run for Aspen Sheriff in 1970. It includes great background on the history of the time and all the ways people were working for a better and more just world. It resonates with what is happening now because the more things change the more they stay the same. I wish they had some of the political posters in the show as prints or stickers to being home since they voiced what I think now.

It runs until the end of the month and is definitely worth the trip. Darrin and I planned a whole weekend in Santa Cruz to see the show, and it was a great decision!

Well Hello!

It has been a minute, and it has been something…..life? So many changes and so many lessons, and finally getting this site back up and ready to run again! Security has been updated, new posts will be coming soon, and hopefully more good adventures.

Adventures seem like a ridiculous hope to have today as women in most of the US are learning (many not for the first time) that we are less that fully human and worthy of the life that we want. My thoughts are still coalescing, and many perspectives and stories need space before I will have a post on the Supreme Court ruling today. My foundational belief is that people with uteruses* deserve access to the healthcare their healthcare providers deem best and other people shouldn’t interfere.

I’ll get around to posting life updates later because there is a lot to update. But for now, I’m happy to have figured out with the webserver host’s help how to address the security issues my poor neglected site to transform it into a cared for, functional site.

*Is that the plural or is it with an i? Oh! Just checked Merriam Webster and “es” a correct variation on the plural!

Saying goodbye

Pets have the funniest ways to weave themselves into the fabric of Normal Existence. Amelia was no different, though her place was both larger and smaller than everyone else in the apartment. All of the things she’s left behind fill a storage tub.

An African Pygmy Hedgehog, she was a perfect excuse to keep the apartment heated closer to my desires because the cold could have her trying to hibernate. A night animal that could take or leave high levels of interaction, she was the perfect companion for late night writing sessions. 

Caring for her was a constant level of mindfulness without being overly high maintenance. She was pretty good at letting me know what actions were annoying through a variety of huffing sounds and actions. Until the end. And then there was no warning. Now all I have are pictures and memories. 

Thank you little pet for 5 1/2 years. They were too fast. Goodbye, Amelia.


My dad

Untitled

I have never talked about my dad much. I never really wondered why, which is odd. I love my dad, and he’s an amazing man who helped foster my love for fantasy literature, and who helped me realized the importance of staying informed and involved in the political system. But when I share about my family, I tend to talk more about my mom and my sister. I’m not sure why. My family has always been the constant in my life. I’ve added some friends to that consistent level, but through everything, my family has always been there. Yet I’ve tended to consult and share more with my sister and my mom more than my dad, which probably adds to why I tend to not talk about my dad. But I find that now I want to share more about my dad, which will be very hard.

In October 2014, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There’s no way to know for sure,  but that diagnosis is what the doctor used to base his decisions on. His personality is also changed a bit as a result of his brain deteriorating, so he became a little less my dad with each passing day.

You might’ve caught the past-tense in this post. That’s because in the year since the diagnosis, we learned my dad had stage-4 esophageal cancer that killed him 5 weeks after it was discovered. And this finality has added another layer of pain and sorrow that I know I will spend the rest of my life learning to live with a bit better every day.

I am in the 3rd year of a 4 year PhD program, and the news added an additional level of stress. My schedule prevented me from being able to help guide my dad through daily decisions and help ease my mom’s stress. And when I think of the future, a sadness creeps in realizing that my dad would most likely not have understood or remembered what all the work the initials I will one day add after my name means. It has also been another season of attending numerous weddings and baby showers, which is yet another constant reminder of the many moments still to come that my dad will not be present for.

As I work on my degree, there is a part of me that carries this weight. But there is another part that realizes this too is part of life. I never expected my dad to live forever; I just didn’t realize I would lose him the way the shore by the ocean disappears – a tiny amount wearing off at a time before it is suddenly and entirely consumed.

Writing my papers this semester has been the hardest because in the quiet spaces I carve out of my schedule to capture what I’ve learned in my classes, these thoughts dominate. And my classes aren’t about grief or loss – they’re about pedagogy and learning and education.  A case can be made that my professors have been more gracious and understanding of my situation than I have been. I am looking forward to being done with the semester. I am not looking forward to not having my dad around for the holidays.

It’s a new site

Hello! If you look around, you might notice that the site looks a little different. I’m still fiddling with it, so expect it to look a little different for awhile. But at least it’s back 🙂

Also, if you’re looking for something older, I am working on reposting those from the import that I did, but it’s spring semester…

Ant Attack

Ant horde
Ant horde by Jonathan Fox used under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

I think the apartment I currently live in was built on an ant colony. We have them all year, but they’re the worst in the summer. Mostly they come in looking for water, but sometimes they find the cat food. And in very horribly moments they find the crickets (I am so very, very sorry, crickets).

See, I have a small mammal that adores eating crickets. I don’t always keep them on hand because she doesn’t eat them as fast as I would like, which means I have to then add crickets to the creatures that I have to keep alive. And they are tricky, sometimes. Plus, they are insects, so their life spans don’t always wait her appetite out.

My relationship with the crickets is complicated. I feel bad when they die in the cage they stay in until it’s time to put them in her cage to be eaten. Sometimes I think this is a silly sentiment, because I don’t feel bad when they get eaten. Perhaps this is because I have made their fate food, and when they die stuck in a tiny, plastic cage, their lives lose some of their meaning. And then part of me remembers that they are, in fact, crickets. But they are still living creatures, and I feel bad that I have cause their lives to be less than their wild existence would allow. When they are attacked in the tiny, plastic cage I’ve trapped them in by a horde of ants, I am horrified. As soon as I see their tragic turn, they get released in a effort to provide some space to live – because being eaten alive by an ant horde seems ghastly to endure.

And I am sure people will think that this response is unmerited for creatures that are generally despised. It is my philosophy that a person’s true nature is revealed in how they treat beings that are completely helpless. I buy the crickets for my small mammal to eat, because I have taken her from her natural habitat and shrunk her space to a 40 gallon fish tank. She seems happier when she has something to chase to eat (since most of the time she just has a bowl of food). But in doing so, I take on creatures even more vulnerable that I feel obligated to ensure only suffer when they serve as food.

At a time when so much is not good* in the world, remembering to care for the most vulnerable creatures that surround us seems to be the fastest pathway to making the world good again.

 

*A post about how I use the word good is forthcoming, because I see it carrying so much more weight than its typical use indicates.

 

Oh, hello!

The last wall...The thing about the being in a PhD program is that there is a ton of thinking and a ton of writing, and it’s interesting; it just takes over your entire existence. And all the thinking and writing makes it difficult to have a life outside of the realm of school, which I’m finding even includes keeping up here.

Some of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about – comic books, video games, critical pedagogy, the non-monolithic-ness of popular culture, and how much I love the coffee shop that has opened in the neighborhood (though I wish it was open later in the day, because I have a hard time making it there before it closes at 7:30 L ). I’ve also been toying with the idea of re-structuring the layout of the site, because I would like to start sharing the reading responses that I’ve been writing. I think it would be more helpful to think of the writing as having to be more for an audience I don’t know. And then I could potentially get feedback that would be helpful, if I decide to take the plunge to revise the writing for potential article submissions…. But I also want to write silly reviews for all of the movies that I’ve seen, and I’m not sure that academic-type people would be as interested in the silly reviews (though I’m sure some would).

Basically, right now, my head is full of dreams and ideas that might turn into plans at some point in the near future. And I needed a study break from writing the early draft of 1 crazy end of the semester paper, so I decided to stop neglecting the site.

Poetry

image

nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it.
– excerpt from Poetry by Marianne Moore

I haven’t always loved poetry. It’s confusing and obtuse and frequently leaves me frustrated. But I can’t quit reading it.

Because in the cadence of the words there is truth. Poetry is the fastest way to share the indescribable  elements of reality without music. Those real toads are especially difficult to deal with when their hardens are imaginary.

Which is why I hardly ever share the poetry I write.

Not that I write poems that often. In fact, I can really only write poetry when I’m surprisingly happy. And the poems are never very good. (Which is another reason I hardly evershow the poems I’ve written to anyone)

But, despite all the current madness in my life currently, I’ve been writing poetry. These ones would have to be revised (which I don’t have time for), so they’ll still probably never be read, even if they weren’t so revealing.  I’m just glad to be writing them in all their terrible glory.

Sometimes it has to be shared

This is a fair warning post.

I’ve written a number of posts that are very self-reflective that I’ve never published. They’ve been coalescing in my drafts folder until such a time as I was ready for other people to read them.

Now is that time. For some of them.

Keep in mind you don’t have to read any of the posts. If you think you’ll think of me poorly, or like a real person with flaws, or you just don’t care, or some other take altogether, that’s cool. Don’t read them. I certainly won’t be grading you, and you’ll still be welcome to whichever posts you want to read and comment on.

Please do share your thoughts, questions, anecdotes on posts with comments! Sometimes the idea has to be shared in order to make room for new ideas. And if any of my posts do that for you, feel free to use the comment section!

(Though I will remove all names connected to me from comments, and will remove comments that are simply attacking or belittling me or anyone else along the way. This is my space, and I expect this to be a space of respect (which doesn’t mean agreement).)