October 25
...a rough snapshot of where I am coming from, and where I am going.
1977
What a sunrise it’s going to be! I’ve turned out the lights and am writing by the rosy glow of the rising sun. Very impressive. Things are looking up I guess. I’m feeling better about myself, anyway. I sneaked a peek at my recommendations while running them over to the fellowship office. My MS advisor said I was brilliant. (Whew!) Dr. Turnbaugh said I did a competent, thorough thesis and produced a paper of publishable quality. It was sneaky, but I think the boost in my self-image is worth it. A brilliant sneak. Oh, well.
1978
Association of College Professors of Textiles and Clothing regional meeting today. Mostly what I did was socialize and help with registration. The main part of the meeting is tomorrow, really. I have to finish typing my paper and sew my garter on. (Cheap Frederick’s of Hollywood garter belt!)
1979
Here I am at Williamsburg, nursing sick sinuses and a caffeine headache. No more coffee for me! Seeing Dr. Penalis after all these years was nothing less than astonishing. Oh, do I feel that I have changed! Seems so very long ago that I was suffering from terminal senior slump. Was it only 9 years? Was it 9 whole years?
Comment 2023
How many of us have a person in our lives who was very important and whom we disappointed terribly? That was Dr. Frances Penalis, my undergraduate advisor. My last semester was ridiculous. I managed to sign up for 9 credits under three different numbers for designing the costumes for a play. (That’s against the rules, BIG time! Please don’t tell Syracuse; they might rescind my degree.) I was taking her advanced design class and produced one hideous, sloppy project after another. I finished the final project so late that I just left it outside her office when she stepped out to the restroom.
So to see her standing in the back of the conference room as I gave my first paper at a national conference was unsettling. And then she smiled. No, she beamed. And she told me afterwards how pleased she was to see me again, and to know I was in graduate school, because she knew I had the ability. Not a word about that last semester.
2010
(Facebook)
Good news: managed to trim the paper I am giving this Friday down to 21 pages. Bad news: it's supposed to run no longer than 20 minutes.
2016
I'm off! And as I rode the Washington, DC Metro to Reagan National Airport, I couldn't avoid noticing the people around me, and their amazing diversity. This is my world on a daily basis, and has been since we moved here in 1976. (If anything, it has become more varied in forty years.) There were men and women of all races in business suits and track suits. There were women in hijabs, and men with waist length dreadlocks. Piercings galore. It being a chilly fall morning, there were no visible tattoos, but I know there was at least one -- mine. My Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice, a gift to myself on my 60th birthday. My workplace, a large state university, is similar. My church is less diverse, but certainly looks more like the DC Metro than my girlhood Lutheran church.
North Platte, according to the 2010 census, is about 10 times bigger than my little town of University Park: 25,000 people, compared with just 2,500. But North Platte is surrounded by farms and ranches, and University Park is eight miles from the White House, and surrounded by dense suburban sprawl that reaches for miles in every direction.
Both places are predominantly white, but the similarity ends there.
University Park is "78.5% White, 9.3% African American, 0.1% Native American, 4.7% Asian, 3.0% from other races, and 4.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 11.3% of the population. North Platte is 93.1% White, 1.0% African American, 0.7% Native American, 0.7% Asian, 2.8% from other races, and 1.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.8% of the population." Outside of University Park, our county is "majority minority" ("64.5% black or African American, 19.2% white, 4.1% Asian, 0.5% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific islander, 8.5% from other races, and 3.2% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 14.9% of the population.") Lincoln County, of which North Platte is the seat, has about the same demographic mix as the city, and a total population of about 34,000. Let that sink in. There are about 10,000 people in the county who live outside North Platte. Prince George's County, home to University Park, has over 800,000 people, including my 2,500 neighbors.
So that's a rough snapshot of where I am coming from, and where I am going.
2017
Today is Wednesday. Jim and I had a nice trip to Steppingstone Farm yesterday. It was a sunny, warm day with the fall colors just coming out. Today: lots of small writing projects. Mostly “correspondence”. I like that word.
2019
Please let me get back on track!
2023
Just got my Covid shot and am now hoping that it doesn’t hit me too hard. Beginning this evening, I have a packed 24 hours: A movie tonight (Chak De! India!!), then tomorrow a lunch date, helping with AV for a meeting, a rehearsal, my writers’ group, and a second movie night (Beowulf). Note to my writers’ group friends: I have nothing this time. Again.