November 17
I know I need to manage my time better. As always, I will begin tomorrow.
1980
I talked to the department chair again about my position and told her I was looking - actively seeking - a better, more permanent position. I am no longer sure I want to stay here and I truly do not know why. I guess I don’t see the department as a stimulating workplace. But would it be different elsewhere? What does my environment need to provide? What is up to me? I know I need to manage my time better. As always, I will begin tomorrow.
Comment 2023
After laboring for Rebekah, the university gave me Leah. Instead of the tenure track appointment they’d advertised, I was hired as an instructor. A one-year contract. And they advertised the position again, because the only applicants the year before were two of their own PhD students. (Myself and a classmate. So awkward.) Yes, I ended up applying for - and getting - the tenure track position. But what a wake-up call about life in academia!
1984
Another Saturday that I can’t get into the office. Boo hiss. Well, I have lots of things I could do at home. To whit:
Rake leaves
Clear garden
Deadhead chrysanthemums
Re-do membership list
Some Kiddo laundry
Read Home Ec Extension project
Think of more stuff to do.
Comment 2024
Was that last item really necessary?
1986
It wasn’t last night, though again I was awake for about two hours with some fairly strong contractions 7 minutes apart. Eventually they slowed down and got milder, so I went back to sleep. Too bad these rehearsals usually happen at night. Kiddo has certainly been active last few days, so I don’t worry that he’s ok.
Time for a new notebook. It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?
1992
There is a rumor that the campus may be getting cold feet about this reorganization. I don’t know how I feel about that. Few people in our department would celebrate its survival, me included. They could have made a stronger stand for the college, making an argument for the preservation of our land grant mission, and proposing a merger with other colleges with similar missions. The programs in our department would have been difficult to preserve under the best of circumstances. Consumer Economics had the best shot, but was killed by two “colleagues” who refused to work together.1993
Here’s an idea:
Hand out the final exam the first day of class. It can be handed in any time, but only once. Grade in class= class participation weight X (paper + final).
Comment 2023
Gawd, how I hated grading.
1997
A luminous fall day. Many of the leaves are on the ground in front of the house - the maples and ornamental pears. The oaks in the back yard are still clinging to their leaves, some of them still yellow-green. A few days of heavy wind and rain took their toll; now it’s a carpet instead of a canopy.
Soccer season is over at last. Kiddo 2 did a good job and tried hard. They fought to a second-place finish against Bowie.
I have so many ideas bubbling around in my head right now - - I wish I had more time! The end of my term at church council chair is coming not a day too soon.
2010
As walkabouts go, it’s been different today. No Trains this time. I drove to Bowie, spent 2 1/2 hours getting my repeat mammogram. Nothing suspicious turned up. Then lunch at Noodles, a beautiful drive to Columbia Mall, where I returned my clogs and traded for “wicked good” slippers in red. The clogs were a HUGE disappointment. Though similar to the ones I had many years ago, those wore like iron and lasted forever. The new ones popped their staples within a few wearings. The slippers are delicious.
Then Cinnabon and coffee break, a little window shopping and now I am heading home.
2016
My parents had a mixed marriage; Mom was a Republican, Dad was a Democrat. Now mind you, in the 1950s, that didn't mean much. The first President I remember was Eisenhower, and he would be considered a RINO by today's GOP base. My mom's family was decidedly Republican, as were many German Lutherans in the Midwest. My mom had little use for Catholics and Jews, but of course that was expressed in the nicest midwestern way ("not our kind", and a tendency to point out which Hollywood stars were Jewish, even when the information was a complete non sequitur). When she moved to Maryland in the 1980s, she had several Black friends; I know, because she never failed to identify them as "my Black friend so-and-so." My dad, raised below the Mason-Dixon line in southern New Jersey, had grown up in a small town that sanctioned interracial friendships but not interracial dating or marriage. He idolized Satchel Paige, Louis Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton, but he also laughed at Amos and Andy and told racist jokes. I have seen a picture of him in blackface for a minstrel show in Port Norris. But his dad trained young Black men as typesetters and printers and sold his print shop to one of them when he retired, to the disapproval of his family and many of his neighbors.
So, like many white Americans, my personal history with race and racism is complicated. So is the racial history of North Platte. I am a huge fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates, and his take on the social construction of race. In Between the World and Me, he uses the phrase "people who call themselves white", which underscores the historical fact that many groups who are now considered white were once not considered part of that privileged and protected group. (And, I might point out, deserving the associated legal privileges and protections, from personhood to public accommodation, to voting rights.)
This is how complicated it was in North Platte in 1920. The local census enumerator, Mary Durbin, had a bit of trouble assigning racial categories to two particular groups: Mexicans and Greeks. Compare these entries:
January 20, 1920. Race is in the forth column from the left. Mexicans are coded Ot (Other race), but then changed to White. Greeks are White.
January 21, 1920. Greeks are coded Ot (Other race), then recoded White.
February 3, 1920. Greeks are coded White, Mexicans are coded Ot (Other race).
Over the forty or so pages of Mrs. Durban's enumeration, the Greeks became White and the Mexicans became Other. That is how slippery a thing this thing called "race" is.
And what about me, in 2016? I call myself White; my ancestors came from Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, and -- surprisingly -- Sweden and Italy. I, too laughed at Amos and Andy and listened to Louis Armstrong. I danced to the Temptations, and read Uncle Remus stories. I sang "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Old Black Joe" in school choir. I also voted for Barack Obama (twice) and developed a course called “Diversity in American Culture” back in the mid-1990s. I think reparations need to be part of any discussion about racial reconciliation. We need to be as familiar with our nation's white supremacist legacy as with the civil rights movements that struggled against it. We need to know white supremacy when we see it, whether in everyday interactions or national news.
Would my views of race and racism would be the same if I had lived my whole life in North Platte? I would like to believe the answer would be "yes", but in my heart of hearts I know that is unlikely. The harder question to answer is how much of the racism I learned long ago still lingers in me.
2017
Today is Friday
Why did I agree to review this manuscript? Blech!!
Later today: Franklins, perhaps other errands, writing. Thinking about snacks for tomorrow. Thinking about pink and blue, MeToo, and Al Franken. Thinking about the weird book I am working on. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Each day is clear, but the weeks, months, and years ahead are not.
What is the relationship between patriarchy (or matriarchy?) and the gender binary?
What is the relationship between power and categories, binary or otherwise?
Is it possible to organize society without oppression?
Are binaries hard wired in humanity?
The only binary that matters is living/dead.
2020
Appreciation The roomful of kimonos A splendid landscape Forever recalled to memory A beautiful day.
Comment 2023
Inspired by a poster of one of my favorite exhibits of all time, Landscape Kimonos by Itchiku Kubota, which I saw at the Smithsonian in the mid-1990s. A former grad student, knowing how much I loved it, gave me the poster. It greets me every day. To learn more about Kubota’s work, go here.
2023
Today is the first day of the craft fair at my retirement community. Ta da! Here is my 2023 production. Not as beautiful as Kubota’s kimonos, but it keeps me off the street.
2024
I have once more survived the craft fair. Also slept nine hours last night, on top of a two hour nap.