Review of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whoa...finally finished a book though I stayed up until 3:30 reading the most intense part. The sexual assualt featured throughout the book and the theme of women's issues are what bring it from standard, good mystery novel fare to actually substantive reading. I shouldn't have read the most intense parts at night - I tend to be extremely sensitive to accounts of physical and emotional abuse, and there were a few moments I actually had a physical reaction to what I was reading (trembling, starting to feel sick). I don't think anyone could read this book without having a new take on, or at least fresh reminder of the brutal violence that happens to all kinds of women the world over, every day.

The characters aren't very complex, with the exception of Lisbeth Salander, the main woman character with a mysterious past (sounds like we get to find out about it in the sequel, "The Girl Who Played with Fire").

One notable recurring line (but not a spoiler) from Salander is "woman-hater" or "he just hates women". I guess since it was written in Swedish, I can't be sure this was the author's intention, but in English it's a nice retooling of the "man-hater" meme that is used to dismiss feminists and feminist convictions.

View all my reviews

The Kids Are Alright (Review...sort of)

Just caught this film finally, after wanting to see it for weeks. I saw it at the Lagoon Theater in Uptown Minneapolis this rainy evening. Of course the moment I got my jacket on and locked the door, the rain started coming down hard.

But if I learned anything on RAGBRAI, it was that indeed, rain is just water. And since I was sitting by myself in the theater, I figured the soggy, faint wool smell from my fave Smartwool shirt wouldn't offend anyone if I sat far enough away from others.

I was sort of in a comfort food/romcom mood this evening, so I was almost leaning towards seeing something else, but I knew I had to see this after all the anticipation and the great NYT review.

I went into it wary of the storyline (semi spoiler alert) - it didn't seem very original or very appealing that one of the moms had to get involved with the sperm donor, because that smacks of the idea that all a lesbian needs is the right hot guy to turn her onto the right path. Similarly, the method of arousal in the couple's intimate moment towards the beginning of the movie hinted that the male physique is really the thing that gets ladies going, even if they are lesbians.

But the dialogue and interaction of the family members - Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and their kids, an older, by-the-book, reserved daughter and a younger teenage son, maybe starting to get involved with the wrong kind of friend - redeemed most of the pieces of the plot that leaned towards mainstream treatment of a lesbian couple. "Human sexuality is...complicated..." offered Jules in response to her son Laser's question about finding his moms' porn video of gay men.

For me, the best quality of the movie was that it treated a subject that I don't think I've ever expected to come out of mainstream Hollywood. While not my favorite movie ever, it touched some chords for me just because it made me realize no film or television has ever even come close to representing a family remotely like mine. Highlights for me included the embarrassment the daughter when her mom, Nic, interrogated Paul, their sperm donor at dinner, and when Nic squeezes Jules' hand in the car after dropping their daughter off at college.

Something about finally seeing a gay couple in a long-term, loving, and yes, complicated and bumpy relationship means that people who aren't friends with gay people (or who don't know they are) are going to have a chance to see what we've seen in heterosexual relationships in mainstream art forever. And it's just going to be harder to demonize and other-ize "those people" and their families.

My family was different from the one in the movie by a lot, but it's the first time anything has ever come close. And the character of the older daughter as over achiever who has fulfilled everyone else's wishes resonates with me, as does the younger brother who's trying to figure things out but keeps to himself and is hard to draw out (my younger brother, anyone?).

The sperm donor character was kind of a likable surfer type, with good intentions. But luckily, he didn't get to win the girl and ended up on the receiving end of both kids' anger, justifiably. It was gratifying that just because he was charming and cute, he still couldn't get away with carelessly wiping out a family in harmony and getting off the hook.

Overall, I highly recommend this film just for the experience of seeing a non-traditional family depicted in a very traditional Hollywood way, but with integrity. Do it for us sperm donor kids.

FCC Hearing Report from S Minneapolis

So, it's been ages since my last post. I'm not going to spend time apologizing for that.

Tonight I went to the FCC Hearing/community meeting on "saving the internet", the free and open internet, that is.

There was great public testimony from community organizers, librarians, business owners, unemployed folks, non-profit advocacy types, and others still. Walking into South High School in South Minneapolis with so many other people, talking to each other with conviction, exuding determination and really, most clearly, a readiness for civic engagement on this issue, was invigorating.

Working at the meta-level of the community organizing field (okay, fine; update: yes, I'm still at PTP, now I'm a full-time staff member with bennies and I even get to do trainings along with the grant-writing, event logistics, and data collection and analysis that's also part of my job!), I get to hear about inspiring ways that organizations are moving citizens to reclaim their own power and demand what's just all the time. And I can't help but experience impostor syndrome in my job. For full disclosure, I'm not a community organizer. I wish I could claim that experience, but I can't. So coming to a town hall meeting about net neutrality, "the first amendment issue of our time" is a step towards the higher degree of civic engagement I'd like to practice. (That link, by the way, is video taken during tonight's FCC meeting, and opens with Franken's comments about net neutrality, followed by a community panel, and Federal Communications Commissioners Mignon Clyburn's and Michael Copps' comments).

I would have liked to hear from more women and more people of color and more low-income people at the hearing. But we know why that didn't happen. Those 60-some community folks who did speak up spoke eloquently and represented a variety of interests, none of which included Googizon's or Comcast or AT&T's bottom line. So let's hear it for the people. And as I step towards a greater degree of civic engagement in my own life, including becoming a more active part of various community dialogues, I want to be aware of why this is starting now in my life, and what barriers there were to my willingness to participate more fully before now. Because that is an essential question. Why would someone who is privileged and educated withdraw from this kind of public engagement? And what has it taken to get me to a place where I'll inch back towards the town hall?

Il freddo di febbraio

Hurry, a post before February is over so I can at least maintain my one-a-month pace. This is not about how cold February is. Sorry for the false advertising. I'm just freezing right now as I write this, so think of it as the backdrop to this post.

Today was a day for kudos. (Let me start with a shoutout to our dear birthday girl, Nancy! She deserves her kudos for being alive and being a wonderful, effervescent person).

And the kudos I got today? I think I deserved them after the work I've put in.

I've been apprenticed to our grant writer-former funder extraordinaire so that I, too, can have the ever so marketable skill of grant-writing. And so that I too can suffer when we get the call from one of our funders: Quick, your report that we never told you about was due a week ago. Send it to us yesterday!

This apprenticeship is extremely exciting. I want to have this skill. It's simultaneously terrifying and painful, because it's like writing a college paper except some disgusting amount of money is depending on it, which, if nothing else, makes cramming even less desirable.

This is a combined proposal and report for a foundation that is near and dear to us and took part in the founding of PTP. So after a number of weeks of chipping away at it fruitlessly (or perhaps it was fruitful in a way, because it all led me to today), I finally arrived at a draft that GW-FF extraordinaire says is "really, really excellent". Oh stop! I'm blushing. Well, my genius all lies in taking notes verbatim, fleshing them out slightly, and then turning them around to her. So I'm a little more than a fancy speech-to-text machine, but not much. Either way, all this pain has been very good for me. I'm internalizing our language and organizational culture (nod to Lubeck and his field notes lecture) in a way that I wouldn't be able to without actually writing it down myself. So yay! I think I'm making progress. I even feel the difference in the way I'm writing this post. Short, meaningful, unflashy, NON-ACADEMIC, sentences. Maybe the narrative arc is not quite as perfect, but that's because I haven't been working on this post for the last four weeks.

In other news, I'm taking a slew of classes and doing lots of new activities to continue the trend of exploration and adventure that Minnesota has inspired in my life. (Did anyone catch the NYT travel article about MN, Trekking with Wolves? Disclaimer: don't expect wolves).

After going salsa dancing with my UCSC linguist friend (he wouldn't admit to it) E who is here on a temporary work contract, I realized I wanted to actually learn how to dance. So I signed up for Salsa I through Minneapolis Community Education, a great resource. While I was at it, I thought I'd sign up for Sewing I as well, and then the Learn How to Make Money Recording Audio Books workshop caught my attention. So I'm doing all of the above. I'm also playing indoor soccer on Sundays at Powderhorn Park (my neighborhood community hub) which is keeping me active. And for anyone who's considering Zumba, I highly recommend it. I just started going at my local YWCA - it's an "aerobics" class, but really, it's hyped up dancing to Latin music with a crazy, non-Minnesotan who knows how to move named Bernice.

The challenge is to maintain balance and get enough sleep. Which is where I'm headed now. Last kudos before I go: my sweet former Italian language student, Celeste, is studying abroad in the adopted motherland this semester. She has a beautiful blog and actually posts regularly and has recently made me as famous as I'm ever going to be by posting about her tour of Bologna (and my recommendations) in it. Check it out! (She also may be the only one who reads my blog, so more kudos to her for her attention!)

Home Away From Home Away From Home

Hello, New Year.

I just got home to Minneapolis from my other home in Berkeley, where I stopped after spending time at home in my original hometown. I thought about other Christmases I had spent in Bologna, Cork, the Bay Area, and once in Portland. Luckily I didn't have to be weighed down by the memories of all the Christmases I spent where I was this year, at home home, because I was there, creating another iteration of that version of Christmas with my little family and our little stockings by our little fire.

Funny how a love of travel and a willingness to transplant myself often gives me multiple homes and constantly pulls the rug out from under me, leaving me feeling ungrounded and sometimes lost in an existential sense. Where is my home? Or often the more useful question: who is my home? Will I ever find a place I can't feel at home in? Does everyone have this experience after staying in a place for a long time?

I'm just getting my bearings here in the Cities in terms of friends, community, support, knowledge of the area, opportunities. But does this mean I'm letting go of some other home(s) that are dear to me? I don't think so. Seeing so many people (thank you all for your time and love) from my hometown, from my college experience, from my family reminded me that it's possible (or at least it was this time, again) to pick things up where they were left off, in spite of time passed and distance traveled. I hope that this is a pattern - that other relationships I don't actively maintain with people I've met abroad and afar are not necessarily over either.

It's 8:07 in California and 10:07 here. Luckily, I'm dog tired and am going promptly to bed with my new book, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain. To all a good year!

Face Coverings in Minnesota: A How-To

'Tis the season where my 25-block walk to work becomes increasingly difficult. Some may be following the headlines about a bit o' frozen precipitation hitting the Midwest - true indeed.

The snow is like a fine dust - I can't help but think it must be akin to the dust that covered Oklahoma in the 30's during the Dust Bowl. It's very, very light but covers everything and is so dry that it's not icy but blows around and amasses in big drifts that are knee-deep in some places.

'Tis the season of a spilled drink on the sidewalk whose ice cubes stayed frozen and the drink inside froze in a puddle around it. And as for face coverings...

I suited up this morning for my walk (it's not even really cold yet, they tell me). I covered the bottom half of my face with my scarf and in a move of brilliance, remembered to grab my sunglasses for eye protection. Once I got outside and started stumbling around in the snowdrifts, my glasses immediately fogged up because I was breathing into my scarf. Then, of course, the fog on my glasses froze and I couldn't see anything, at which point my next step plunged my foot into a mid-calf deep snow drift. Luckily, not being Minnesotan, or at least not hating the winter with passion yet, I found myself laughing uncontrollably at myself. I quickly learned that it just takes the right technique. One must breathe into the lower fold of the scarf and the glasses stay fog free.

'Tis also the season of neighbors! So many people were shoveling their walkways. I said hello, buenos días, and thank you, to at least 6 people this morning. (Normally, I'm lucky if I exchange a greeting with one other person on my way to work.) And it's fitting to thank those who shovel their walkways - I realized it's like parking kindly or letting someone with fewer items go ahead of you in line - it's a contribution to the public good. We were in solidarity together, making our way through the snow: at intersections, people taking their turn preemptively were kindly tolerated - once you start, you can't really stop easily driving in the snow. This all lends credence to my theory that people in more extreme climates are kinder to each other. Or maybe just Minnesotans are nicer than SoCal-ians. (Have you noticed my love for sweeping generalizations about large populations of people? Now matter how ill-advised and unscientific they might be, I just love making them. Bear with me.)

Ta-ta for now, stay toasty!

Something to write home about

There have been so many reasons to blog...many a blog entry has been composed in my head and then washed away by the lapping of everyday to-dos and "I'm late"s and the like.

I've been to Chicago and New York, two significant stops on my Great American Cities tour. And we've had Halloween and Thanksgiving, two significant holidays in the autumn-winter holiday accumulation of spirit and festivities.

And I've also just been informed this last week that my internship is indeed ending when I go home to California in late December. So the Great American Job Search also commences.

But the real thing I'm writing home about - the real piece of edgy, newsworthy news is that my stuffing was a hit. Of course it was a hit by virtue of a combination of factors that were largely out of my control (J lent me slivered almonds and cranberries, L lent me walnuts, the Midtown Global Market didn't have any sage, and Ze Chef let me use all this delicious salty, olive oily French bread left over from a crostini event). But all that aside, Ze Chef said he tried mine and then ate more of the stuffing left over from the K family Thanksgiving, and he said the latter didn't even taste like stuffing anymore. Wow. Big compliments from Ze Chef. I also made tiramisù (wrong culture) for Thanksgiving, on par with the challah (wrong holiday) that I made for our office potluck to welcome in the new environmental lawyers that moved in.

So again, the horizon spans in front of me, open, waiting. (It bodes well for higher frequency posts here, if nothing else.)

Home New Home

My posts are becoming less frequent. This must mean my life here is feeling like less of an adventure and more of...more of a life? But it is indeed a good one.

The rough spots emerge now and then, but there are clear signs of awesomeness in many aspects of my life here. Like the following:

1) I just moved into a new place tonight and I'm living with some awesome people. Some I haven't even met yet (one who has worked at the Fat Duck in Berkshire, England) but their interests range from good food to Tibetan Buddhism to yoga to the connection between US aid and poverty in Africa.

2) It snowed yesterday!

3) I have a sleeping bag to sleep in tonight (rather than just sheets, which is all I had when I got here) and this is a very good thing. It is below freezing outside and I have my doubts about whether the inside temperature is actually much warmer than the outside temperature. I feel like I'm camping in the Sierras.

4) I have a very good friend who helped me move my stuff today! And who I went to check out the Saint Paul Art Crawl with tonight. And who I ate Ethiopan food with. And who's not just Minnesota nice but is genuinely awesomely nice.

5) Tomorrow I'm seeing a friend drum in a West African dance performance. Which I will probably want to join after seeing it. And this same friend is competing in the Solar Decathlon on the Washington Mall that's going on between 20something universities in the US and world to build a solar-powered house that competes in ten (hence decathlon) categories in a DOE-sponsored contest.

6) And there are so many other reasons that I'm blessed.

More to come soon though --- check back for a posting about the exotic variety of Minnesotan English, Somalis in Minneapolis, and the Mini-Apple.

Love to all,

Robyn

Inglourious Basterds

Bursting out of the theater --- into the warm womb of summer air outside. Safe. Whew. Or...? Can't get a ride home, will have to bike. The darkness, ragged breath, shallow in my throat, I'm gasping for air. University Avenue --- traffic courses by to my left. A noise, pat- pat- Colonel Landa of the S.S.? No, a jogger. Deeper breath, stay calm. Can passers-by see the terror in my face, my mouth messily gaping? By the stadium, I gulp breaths of light, of air ---

Running across the field, family killed by the S.S. Laughing in the smoke of the theater.

Intestines still twisted around my gut, trying to relax. The intercampus transitway stretches out in front of me, the hot, summer air turning to ice, the empty road at once a snow covered path in an alpine forest, the truck crossing the roadway a vehicle of war, carrying prisoners. A light up ahead, now nothing. Now another, blinking towards me --- friend or foe? A sloppily dressed college student, riding hands free, talking on his cellphone. Movements in the grass alongside the road are bunnies, enemies in the race for survival.

Crossing the main road, nearly home, but foiled by road construction --- will have to go the long way, unless I cross the tracks. Up the rocky path, through the bushes --- But a vast and many-membered monster stands in my way, obstinate, cold, silent. Between the train cars, bullets fly. I dodge them and follow the vacant roadway up and around. Tarantino clenching my stomach, quickening my heart, squeezing my eyes shut so tight. Wait at the light and cross on red when no one comes. The smell of manure at the fairgrounds is like home and I can breathe a bit more now. Smooth pavement and a sense of college campus security. Now clean laundry smell from Married Student Housing hits me and I'm nearly there, and I've nearly shaken Landa. The blood and scalping still jump out as I'm rolling into the alley, easing off my bike, and....the...terrible...magic...is...gone.

It was just a movie.

State Fair Mania

Full moon, chocolate dipped key lime pie on a stick, a trip to Lake Wobegone with Garrison Keillor, an East Tennessee band called Quicksilver complete with dashing fiddler, deep fried cheese curds (twice), giant squash, grilled chocolate sandwich, tiny donuts, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal showing us youngins how to rock, deep fried green beans, raspberry chocolate wine ice cream (twice), Princess Kay of the Milky Way butter busts, baby calves being born on the big screen, and eww, swine flu. All this and more at the Minnesota State Fair. Princess Kay Butter Busts! (Yes, scary.)

After volunteering at the Sierra Club booth this morning, and popping over to Minneapolis for a couple of hours of work, I spent the rest of the evening at the fair for a last hurrah. It ends Labor Day and I've already been three times, which is plenty (my body chimes in "Please, stop the fried-food assault!") Garrison Keillor was at the Grandstand tonight --- my first time seeing Prairie Home Companion in person. A highlight (besides the handsome fiddler from Tennessee) was Garrison's song about September in Minnesota, about this year, this particular State Fair, exactly tailored to what's happening right now. It reminded me that art and song and poetry move us through transitions, render them more than mechanical and chemical processes that produce new seasons, different colors of leaves, cloud formations, weather patterns, and animal behaviors. They become cultural because they are infused with meaning, even as little as a song that was sung about these processes. "Nights are getting cooler, school is beginning" Keillor sang, and to accompany the music, my years of memory bound up with September and the crispness of the air and smoke out of chimneys was that feeling that transition is upon us, that newness is imminent even though it's not the newness of spring. Fall is indeed nipping here. Today was warm, like a last attempt at summer heat, but a good one.

(Notice GK's red socks in this photo.)

I feel nostalgic about the newness of school that September used to bring. There is a new newness now --- an anything-is-possible newness. We just got word that both H and I are welcome and wanted longer than our original three months here in the Twin Cities. They'll have us until December if we'll stay, which is a great honor from my perspective, and very exciting. I think it casts uncertainty on the prospect of applying to graduate school but maybe I can manage in spite of working full-time. So far, the job has been incredible in terms of coming into working relationships with extraordinary people. We work with people who have impressive experience doing community organizing, handing out big money in the world of grantmaking, and rubbing elbows with other such money-tossers and project-launchers.

The prospect of staying into December is also exhilarating for the winter that everyone's been ominously warning us about. I have to inform them that there are indeed parts of California that get snowed on and I grew up in one of them. But then I concede that it doesn't really get that far below zero so this really will be a new experience for me. And will give me just the excuse I need to buy a beautiful winter coat.

Oh yes, and even swine flu struck here, but don't be alarmed, folks, it's under control. (It's not all that comforting that we live two blocks away from the fairgrounds but I understand swine flu isn't the big monster it's reputed to be.) Three brothers in the 4H barn came down with it, but everyone seems pretty civilized about the whole thing (every who was passing out frisbees and disposable fans are now passing out hand sanitizer).

In other fair news, this is a big fish sculpture made strictly of garbage found in the Mississippi. They were building it at a workshop along the bike path I ride on and I was betting it was headed to Burning Man, but lo, it appeared like at great spectre of human consumption, risen to remind us of the detritus our lives so frantically produce. Will we take heed, great Garbage Fish? Stay tuned...

Big Labor Day weekend full of festivities coming up and I'm hoping to make lots of food. More news soon.

My Commute

Sunflowers in community garden with Somali neighborhood in background. This is a view from the bike path between Franklin Avenue and the Cedar-Riverside light rail stops.


Frank Gehry is following me. Sort of. (The Weisman Art Museum, complete with hip bike racks).


Worker-owned bike coop, the Hub.


Remnants of fallen 35W bridge (remember the Minneapolis bridge collapse?) taken from the upper level of the Washington bridge



Wine and molten lava chocolate cake at the Happy Gnome

Getting cultured in the Midwest (Or Various Dairy Products That Will Be Available at the State Fair)

Much cultural enrichment has been had in the last week. The Twin Cities are right there on par with those grand metropoles (plural of metropolis is what?) like Tokyo or Amsterdam, but there are two of them!

H and I and the adopted fam went to the Walker, the Minneapolis art museum, and enjoyed a whole slew of beautiful treasures, like Tre ragazze alla balconata by Michelangelo Pistoletto, pictured below. One of my favorites was a nice little mystery: a series of picture frames filled with only the photos from world newspaper articles from April 20th, 1978 and the name of the newspaper. They all had the same photo of man (Aldo Moro, former Prime Minister of Italy) holding up a newspaper article that asked "Moro assassinato?" Behind him is a (probably red) flag with a white star that says Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades.

The story behind the image is quite involved, but the piece gave nothing but the relative sizes of this image in newspapers all over the world, and as you glanced at each frame, you began telling yourself the story, trying to fill in the blanks (Is that guy Moro? Is he with or against the Red Brigades? Was there a rumor he had been killed?) But what the piece drew to my attention was the emphasis that gets placed on certain stories in certain countries. In this newspaper it was a tiny blurry photo, and you couldn't see what was written on the banner behind him (kind of like the image I found, ugh). In the next, it was huge, and "assassinato" was shown clearly in the newspaper Moro is holding.

H and I returned to the Walker Sunday to see the sculpture garden. We had stunning weather over the weekend --- as much as I tried, I couldn't stay in my slouchy mood. I loved the arbor especially, and thought of seeding rudbeckia (a.k.a. Black Eyed Susans) with Theo at the Homeless Garden when a little sign reminded me that that's what I was looking at.

The Syringa Tree which we saw Sunday at the Jungle Theater was a one-woman autobiography of childhood in South Africa during apartheid. It was incredible...as soon as the actress came on stage, I remembered she would be alone on stage for the next 90 minutes and resigned myself to a lack of variety. How wrong I was. Her diction and pronunciation, her body language, her disposition morphed suddenly into distinct characters throughout. The main storyteller was the author at seven or eight years old. The actress and the playwright must have studied with great scrutiny the movements and musings of oodles of kidlets to execute the Elizabeth's character as they did. I actually wanted to blubber at the end but had to be satisfied with quietly sniffing and wiping tears in the final 20 minutes.

So because I'm building towards great cultural enrichment, tomorrow begins the Minnesota State Fair, complete with deep fried cheese curds, Princess Kay of the Milky Way butter busts, Garrison Keillor (who I'm going to see September 4th!) and other deeply enriching experiences. But first, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal tomorrow. Culture indeed!

Oh yes, and work is going very well, to let anyone know who's interested. I'm learning about the delicate business of relationship management in the non-profit world with funders, community organizations, allies. And just because it's non-profit, don't make the mistake of thinking it's all rose-colored glasses and kumbaya......oh no. There's intrigue, drama, romance, and...scandal. But not so much in my office. We're pretty much all holding hands and giggling like school children most of the time as we make our pivot charts and plan to take over the world. Until next time, wishing you all sweet dreams of food on a stick.

August 22

I'm trying to make my posts a bit shorter and perhaps more frequent. Here's a first go.

New friends. New ring. Shining sun. Good day.

An Average Weekend with the S Family

I don't really know how to begin describing our weekend with three Mexican shaman women. M and S had given us notice on Friday afternoon that we'd have some guests from Mexico, which wasn't surprising considering S's competency in Spanish and history of organizing in Nicaragua and other parts of Central America (sí, ha estado en El Salvador también). But when we got home, we found out M and S hadn't met these people either. A friend who's into agricultural sustainability had had something to do with a convention on sacred plants in the Mdewakanton Dakota territory....and the short story is that she asked M and S to host some visiting healers, all from different parts of Mexico.

In between massages and discussions of collective consciousness, the highlight of the weekend was a ceremony that these three women held near the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers (have I mentioned I bike over the Mississippi every day?!? I can't get over it! Makes me want to mark twain...) So the ceremony involved burning copal in incense burners, asking permission to do the ceremony to the guardians of the four directions, sounding shells, and singing..."que florezca la paz, que florezca la paz, que florezca...." We repeated that line over and over again, each time changing what we hoped would flourish: las tradiciones, la amistad, el amor, even las ciencias (science). Prudently, the river patrol didn't intervene because clearly it was a sacred moment and that would have been SO not politically correct. It was very beautiful, and ALL in Spanish. It was a whole weekend of Spanish! And my Spanish crawled out from the dusty spot on my mental desk where I had pushed it aside and put on a good show.

The first night they arrived, there was a fourth healer, Lalo. He had to leave early the next morning so he said, "We didn't give everything away at our convention...if anyone needs any healing, you can tell us and we are here for you." And then he added, "And even if you don't tell us, we can tell you," following that with a mischievous giggle. He looked at my right eye and said that my right side was the one that needed a little help, and that I should be careful of my kidneys (have I not being paying extra attention to them lately, Mom?). Nothing is wrong now, but of course I ought to avoid sweets and floury stuff and concentrate on preventative measures, which is all I can think about since he told me, naturally. But it didn't put me off...on the contrary, it was like having my palm read.

How are we so lucky to be housed with these people who have amazing connections with all sorts of progressive, creative, and dare I say revolutionary life stories? It's baffling and wonderful. Of course they invited their other friend, the Mexican American poet-organizer to take them for a spin at the mall on Sunday while the S constituency went off to the Minnesota countryside for a family gathering. I didn't really think I could live in a cooler place than my Santa Cruz digs, but lo and behold...Mexican shamans??

It's been a welcome distraction from my lack of a social life. I'm thinking of joining a book club around here to meet folks and taking language classes (any language will do!) since this is the first time in my adult life that when I go home I leave my work where it belongs and my mind is free in the evening. Je voudrais apprendre français!

So far people seem so nice here, all smiles. I have even been out on a "date" with a friend of a friend who's actually my age --- who took H and I out to a hopping bar with her fiance and some friends. I even got a number, yeah baby. (Of someone named Molly, who may invite H and I to a birthday party, how cute.) But there is SO much going on in this huge metro area that we want for nothing as far as events go. It's just a matter of conserving enough energy after a day of armed combat with Access and other such brilliant programs, and during the forty-hour work week in general...

Beh, this is getting long. I'll post again soon, but that's the haps for this round. Thanks for reading, my lovelies. And a big hug and kiss to Grandpa and Liz who I hear have become readers!

The Bicycle Tire Thief

Greetings from the/(a) heartland! It feels so....so...AMERICAN here, but in a good way. People say "sow-nah" for "sauna" (okay, that's Finnish) and they grow lots of corn and there's more sky than land though there's plenty of land. I ride over the Mississippi River on my way to work! There are even tornado sirens that let you know you should go down into the basement and wait it out because someone's seen one coming. Tornadoes. The prairie, even.

My internship with PTP has just begun. I even have a PTP t-shirt now, which means that in some fundamental way, I belong. We're organizing a training that starts Sunday for community organizers from London, Tennessee to Oakland, California on framing and messaging, which essentially helps people scrutinize the way they deliver the messages they're trying to spread. It's been a whirlwind of logistics mostly, but it's deeply satisfying to have something concrete and simple to work on before the real fun begins. Which may involve me actually going out on a few limbs, trying things that I haven't done (i.e. who am I to be put in charge of anything relating to "information architecture"?).

I'm considering buying a camera (yes, perennially stingy me!) for all the fabulous things I'm seeing. For now, I can only hint at their allure and mystique.

Bike racks shaped like bikes, a Calatrava-looking bridge, a beautiful mosaic outside of a beautiful co-op grocery store, a street name Minnehaha, and the Mississippi River, of course.

They've realized a dream of mine in this city, the number 2 bike city in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau. A co-worker told me she's not used to biking on trafficked streets because their are so many bike paths! One solution to the perpetual biker-motorist civil war is making two separate --- if not completely, mostly --- sets of roadways. This is unlikely to happen in places where there isn't a great deal of motivation and passion to combat the inertia, the status quo of road domination by vehicles. So my conclusion, of course, is that in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are full of motivated, passionate cyclists. So I'm happy to be here for this reason too. Today, I biked with co-workers H and L to Common Roots for an after-work beer along the Greenway, a bike path built along an old railroad route (the tracks are gone, of course). It's clever because it passes through the important areas of the city but not on the car routes, and it's below the roads, with the train tressels arching above the path. And just in case one hasn't yet had their fill of wild, Minnesota raspberries, the path is lined with them.

So take heed, all you aspiring bike cities: convert your unused railways to bike paths! This does of course attract the aspiring bike thieves. Today, as H and I left the office to grab our bikes and go, a distraught fellow biker with helmet in hand looked sadly at her frame, locked to the stand outside of the office and missing both tires. So I will be bringing my dirty bike with enormous mountain bike tires into the office henceforth.

For now, I'll have to settle for photos I found on the web, but I may just find a camera soon! I bet there's a rowdy bunch of Minn-SP Freecyclers around here.

Je vais dormir!

The Twins

So what I should be doing at the moment...this is always the preface of a blog entry, although soon one of the shoulds will actually be write in a blog (not this one).

I'm writing from Saint Paul, Minnesota, a place I never thought about six months ago.

It's breezy outside, but warm enough for me to need to blow cool breath on my fingers every few words I type. As I began, what I should be doing at the moment is refining the day's intensive anthropological field notes that I took during the first two days of work at my internship at the Progressive Technology Project. These notes are nonexistent but I have made a lot of observations in my first two days. What an exciting place to work! Exciting in a low-key way now. But in a big way if you think architecture and engineering --- the building is completely green, with a rooftop garden complete with a huge solar array, recycled glass ceramic tiles in the bathrooms, low-flow toilets, efficient heating and cooling systems, and a very stylish industrial look (strangely similar to the HQ of my other office in SF).

Instead, I want to reflect on what it's like to be here in MinnesOWta --- this place that is both part of my home country and more foreign to me than at least one foreign country.

First, I'll just give a few key details and elaborate on my experience in a later post. I'm staying with the family of the former director of PTP and they've been extremely welcoming and comfortable with us so far. I say "us" because another Santa Cruzian is here with me, interning with the same org. We have our own rooms in this big, beautiful house that used to be a boarding house, at one time housing 18 people. There are three stories, plus a basement (um...did you say there are tornadoes in Minnesota??). Two kitties come included, Iris and Katie. The worst problem we've encountered so far is TOO MANY RASPBERRIES! And I was sad about leaving all that beautiful fresh produce at the Santa Cruz farmer's market.

That's all for now. So far so good.

O

It's like what Bill Grace said all great leaders have. Obama's sincerity comes from his awareness every time he is in public, but probably when he's in private too, that he is the face of something that is much bigger than him. How else could a leader stand there and not collapse from the love and the pressure and the intensity of such a mass? He has to call upon this awareness often, remind himself of this greater force behind him, constantly recall that he's just a man with a message. But he knows it so well. He knows is SO WELL that he is only there because of the power of us.

There are four days between now and the day we can kiss the last eight years of leadership (or rather, fear conditioning) goodbye forever. I guess we're susceptible to a bit of post-election depression if we think Obama's our magic pill. But whatever happens on election day, the movement has already begun. The beauty of his campaign is that so much has emerged already through the nationwide movement to elect him. It's such a perfect campaign --- he's already won without even winning by stimulating our collective imagination.

When I see McCain speak, I see a generation passing on into history. I see a man out of touch. I see a strategy that's finally failing. Joe the Plumber wants to install environmentally friendly plumbing! Joe the Plumber is starting to realize that black and white is just what you see when you're so far away from reality that you can't distinguish all the beautiful shades of gray. Joe the Plumber is trading in his Red Bull for some Kombucha. Okay, maybe that's last one is just Joe the Plumber from Santa Cruz. But I'm ready to accept the challenge of some real leadership in our country. It means that we who have been unhappy can't be unhappy and inactive anymore because we're done hoping for some legitimate politicizing.

Throw Me a Scone!

There's something kind of amusing and kind of lonely about hanging out with non-native speakers of English all the time. After 2.5 weeks in Ireland, I've finally met my first Irish person yesterday. Giovanni lives with Alexandra (from France) and Louise (from Ireland), but the latter was MIA ever since I got here until this past weekend. I've spent time with a good number of Italians, French people, my one friend in Cork who's Belgian, and even an Omani!

Of course I'm overjoyed at all the cultural enrichment, but do wonder if it wouldn't be a bit enlightening to meet an Irish lass or lad while here on the Emerald Isle. Of course I've seen and heard real, genuine Irish people on the street here in Cork, but without frequenting pubs, and I've yet to be in a pub so far (blast!), it's not easy to chat anyone up on the street. Plus, being acutely sensitive to anti-American sentiments, I am trying to pick up attitudes appropriate to an urban European environment as I normally do when I'm abroad. It doesn't seem to be all that common to chat with someone you're waiting in line behind, or to make much conversation with strangers. I suppose this is true in San Francisco too, but maybe less so.

This weekend, Giovanni and I went to Galway to stay with Giuseppe and Maryam, an engaged couple of non-Irish people who are making their living here. We ate fabulous Omanitalian home-cooking including risotto with a tomato and tuna sauce with Omani curry spices, delicious fluffy pancakes, and sort of Mexican fajitas (guacamole à la Robyn) and enjoyed their company. Sunday we went to County Mayo to Ashford Castle, and after a long walk around the immaculately manicured grounds, our stomachs began to growl. The Italians, the Omani and I circled around the castle that houses a five-star hotel and equally ranked restaurant and caught a glimpse of the basement kitchen through ground-level window. I offered that we should just scurry over to the window and ask for a quick bite to eat or two: "Hey, why don't you throw me a scone!" Ha ha haha haa, and I found myself laughing alone and then beginning to explain my clever little play on words. But such explanations never do justice to humor. I shouldn't have expected them to throw me a bone, so to speak. So I recount it here, in hopes I can share my cheesy line with some native English speaker.

Similarly, later that evening as the four of us were preparing our internationally inspired fajitas in a kitchen too small for two, Maryam complained that Giovanni and Giuseppe were kicking a bottle that was on the floor as we all shuffled around each other in the famous too-small kitchen-and-too-many-people-in-it dance. I quipped, "At least they're not kicking the bucket," and made my own buh-dum-bum-chhhhhh to underline my stupid humor. "What, at least we're not kicking the bottle?" "No...to 'kick the bucket' means....ahhh, nevermind." At least I'm amusing myself.

Far West

I like to see only the silhouettes of people at sunset. They become not full people but shadows of what they were during the day. I can be alone with myself. At most I see a hand hanging out someone's open window as they sit in their vehicle to watch the horizon and the falling sun. Other runners become a pant, a face that flashes back into dusk as quick as it came. People on bikes shrink down to a flashing light and a bike tire whir and they're gone too. Surfers squeege by whose boards reflect a streetlight. My shadow moves in next to me as the car lights pass by. The world seems to simplify into sounds and dark and light. Here at dusk there's no future to worry about tomorrow's phonology assignment and no past. Just me and the fading sun. Me and snippets of conversation from other people's worlds. "The fact is, in my opinion..." Me and my sweat, my knees, my spit. "And she said, 'Don't be shy...'" Me and an expansive ocean-sky. "If Barack Obama is candidate for president...whole new opportunity for the rest of the world..." It's just me and my fading headache. As I turn back towards my house, my shampoo, my dinner, my phonology, the dark part of the sky is left and what remains of today's sun is a pale memory on the horizon behind me. A woman pulls up her underwear after peeing beside her car in the dark. My mind is quieter and as I pass some of the silhouettes again that I passed on the way out I realize I can't avoid recognizing someone. The lights seem brighter as the dark gets darker and it's easier to make out the features of passersby. I suppose my obscurity is less certain too. I even have to shield my eyes like I did from the bright sun today to discern the path across the open field back to my house. Here I am.

Next Stop: Eireann

I'm cold! I'm writing from overcast Cork, Ireland. I'm a bit dazed after a quarter of always having something hanging over my head, of never being able to catch up. I was able to take it in stride and accept that I wouldn't be able to actually catch up, knowing that I was still a good student and that the work I was doing was good.

I was swimming around in future soup a lot during this last quarter, not sure of what to grab on to (a PhD program? But in what subject? A master's? Where though? Should I stay in California? Should I change course from linguistics to equality in education? Would a higher degree linguistics be in line with my values about social justice and equality? Would it separate me from the real world? Could I do anything practical with it?) but thinking it was probably best to grab onto something. In the end, I decided not to apply to graduate school this year. Imagine: for the first time in my life, I will do something that I devise interesting or worthy of looking into rather than just taking the next obvious step that my scholastic career so far has molded me, has indoctrinated me to take. And even that seemed like too gaping a precipice to drop right off of, so I will be turning in one application. It's for Teach For America, a program whose goal is to supplement the deficiencies of rural and urban public schools whose students are years behind in literacy and math standards. It sends students with bachelor's degrees to these communities to become actual teachers for two years. Students like me, with no formal or informal training as teachers, who may have majored in biology or linguistics or history of consciousness as is possible at Santa Cruz or best yet, education. There is an intense and rigorous summer training, followed by two years of classroom practice.

I'm reading a book by the founder of Teach for America, Wendy Kopp, who, like me, was evaluating her future options as a senior a Princeton in the late '80's. She wanted something meaningful to work for rather than to go to a two-year business school just to get rich. I guess it's fair to say I'm not exactly worried that my alternative options are just to go get rich, but I am concerned that they might not be meaningful. Or rather, I think time off doing something real and practical could set the stage for a meaningful degree in something I believe in, and would help me figure out EVERYTHING that I don't know, which is most everything.

Hark, I think I see the sun! And by contorting my body at weird angles, I think I might have spied a tiny corner of blue sky from the window of Giovanni's apartment, one among many in a complex not designed to bring in the little natural Irish lighting that might poke through the clouds now and then. I am reticent to say that this is a dreary city, but suffice it to say that this is a city with friendly people, fighting not to be dreary against the very stiff odds that the omnipotent weather imposes.

This is Day Five in Cork. I have been volunteering half days at the Oxfam Fair Trade shop on French Church Street, and it's been a very good way for me to spend time while Giovanni is at work. It's fair to say I've met more non-Irish people than Irish, but I've met a few of them too. I price and count things that have arrived, I restock the shelves, I work at the cash register (often causing it to stop working when there are more than five people in line), and I drink divine hot dark chocolate from the shop down the way and chat with Esther, the Belgian manager, and other volunteers. Many of the other volunteers are international: French, Italian, etc. Others are Irish, and despite the difficulty I have in understanding many with really broad accents, I'm having fun meeting so many people and actually talking to a few for an extended period of time. It's nice to travel when you can manage to find real opportunities to meet local people.

It's been a quite international experience so far. The first night I arrived, Giovanni and I went to dinner at his friend Giuseppe's house, another Italian who's girlfriend is from Oman. There were also two other couples, the recurring them being Italian male, international female. The other two girls were Dutch and Serbian. It was a lovely evening, especially since the two Sicilians cooked pizza and pasta al forno for dinner!!

I'm going to step out now that the sun has unabashedly begun to shine outside the window. I can't miss the occasion! I would like to see the University of Cork on a day like today. Pictures will be posted soon.

Next week, Giovanni and I will go to West Cork hopefully, and perhaps Kerry, and Wicklow for Christmas. Maybe we'll even make it to Galway before he starts work again!

I only know how to say "buses" and "potato" so far in Irish. I don't know how far that will get me...