Resistance is Futile

This is one of the best cat photos I’ve ever seen. I’m borrowing it from my friends at Cute Overload.

I Recognized Myself

Today I happened across a post about information hoarding, which I had thought was my own personal issue. I mean, I thought I’d just sort of invented the idea by default. To my relief, I now realize that at least one other person in the universe has recognized this problem.

It would be a really intriguing and exciting problem if it was your job to find solutions to it. Unfortunately, from the view of people who do not have information and do not have opportunity for growth and training at their jobs, information hoarding is a practical, not a theoretical, roadblock.

Ways to Fight Boredom at Work

Eat.

Horses, again

Since I’ve got horses on my mind, and poetry, and Minnesota, here’s another poem, too–”A Blessing” by James Wright. My brother recently emailed me this poem, and I was glad to get it  because it had been a few years since I’d seen it. Enjoy.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

My Little Horse Must Think It Queer

Just figured out that I can have “snow falling” on my blog till January 4. It’s a little holiday celebration from the WordPress folks, I guess. So I took them up on it.

Sort of funny that the snow ends on January 4, though. Where are these WordPress people from, anyway? Apparently not Minnesota. It’ll be snowing here until at least April 4.

Anyway, since my Home Page features a horse and it’s now snowing on my blog, here’s a poem that won’t go away now that I’ve thought of it. Everyone knows it, but it’s still fun to read once in awhile:

“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Possible New Year’s Resolutions

• Keep my house cleaner
• Quietly boycott Wal-Mart all year long (it’s the only substantial store in my small town)
• Clean the litter boxes at least half the time instead of “letting” hubby do it most of the time
• Call my elderly neighbors more often and make sure they’re OK
• Find and use recipes for more vegetarian meals that are easy to prepare
• Eat less, but eat more fruits and veggies
• Resist the temptation to roll my eyes when hubby says something that annoys me
• Baby my cats more
• Play with my cats more, not just talking to them and petting them
• Don’t let my flower & vegetable gardens get weedy so early in the year
• Be happy, not envious, for hubby that he has summer vacation
• Listen more and talk less, everywhere
• Get out the guitar and start giving myself lessons again
• Unclutter the downstairs closet, permanently (am I fooling anyone?)
• Listen to more new music and don’t be so stodgy in my musical tastes
• Listen to less NPR and more books on CD
• Read more poetry
• Be more supportive of hubby while he works on his second book
• Wash the kitchen floor more often instead of just sweeping it
• Locate and buy a vacuum cleaner that is actually not a piece of junk
• Be more open minded about my job and the good things that we do as an organization, instead of being so critical about the stupid things we do
• Learn to watch the Twins without getting upset when they make errors or don’t score when they should
• Paint the kitchen and replace the cabinet knobs & hinges, and the  lamps that hang over the counter
• Be less judgmental toward people who do not share my political beliefs (only an idea—and maybe not an appealing one)
• Do not drive to work during blizzards or icy weather when I do not feel safe driving, despite the fact that the office remains open and the decisionmakers at work feel too guilty to close the office. Just take the time unpaid. After all, I am an hourly worker. Sheesh!
• Don’t be jealous of people who have jobs they love or like. Just be happy for them.
• Don’t waste energy stewing about things that make me mad.
• Don’t open my big mouth at work about anything related to church or organized religion.

Things I Try to Forget

In 1992 I entered a graduate program at Vanderbilt University. I was unhappy the whole 2 years I was there, so I left with my master’s degree, having taken no Ph.D. exams. Stupid me, I even assumed student loans with which to fund my misery. Voluntarily. (I’m less of a glutton for punishment now that I’m grown up.)

I wasn’t miserable at Vandy. I wasn’t sick or depressed or in pain. But when I look back at that time, I realize I was:

• bored (and worse!—disinterested) with the subject matter
• very intimidated by my fellow graduate students, even though I learned in time that they weren’t any smarter than I was
• too shy to get over my intimidation and just get to know them as people—it’s hard to change your personality
• broke
• lonely
• homesick
• shocked, culturally—I’d never before heard of the Civil War referred to as the “War of Northern Aggression” or known people to hang confederate flags in dorm rooms

My department’s attitude toward graduate students was, “prove yourselves, you nobodies.” In my first year, several very capable students—nice people, too—in the department dropped out because of the chilly environment. I decided to battle through to my M.A. because I’d taken out loans and I wanted a degree to justify my debt.

The most troubling aspect of my time at Vanderbilt was the disinterested professors. I just didn’t bond with them. I’d come from a small private college in the midwest, where teachers loved teaching and spent a lot of energy encouraging, and providing suggestions and opportunities to, students who were interested in their classes. They loaned out books, encouraged us to think critically, invited us to their homes for dinners, knew us personally, and served as mentors and role models. I was in love with higher education.

So when I arrived at Vanderbilt, I was appalled to realize that the professors in my department only taught classes to pay their bills. Their real purpose in working at the University was to represent the University by publishing articles and conducting research, so that the University would look good and get more enrollment, funding, prestige, etc. These highly intelligent creatures could write books & articles that approximately 7 other people in the world would read. If they published enough, they’d get promotions. Students, even graduate students, seemed to be a bother, a hobby at best, and usually something that just got in the way of the professors’ real purpose—to publish. “Teachers” were amazingly disconnected from their students.

Two memories from those two years aptly illustrate my experience.

1) A female professor insisted on holding a weekly graduate seminar off campus instead of on campus, because she liked people to sit back and drink wine while discussing the subject matter. (I’m not kidding.) So one evening per week, we met off campus for a few hours. The class held about a dozen students. Various students would have to volunteer their apartments to serve as a classroom for an evening. The hard part about this was, I didn’t have a car, so I always had to ask another fellow in the seminar if he would be willing to drive me to wherever the class was every week. His name was Jeff and he was really nice about it. In retrospect, I’m sure he was glad to help. But it was awkward always having to depend on someone else to get me to class, just because a professor didn’t want to meet in a regular classroom. Also frustrating was that I didn’t have any money, but we were all expected to share a bottle of wine at each class, so every week I had to buy a bottle of wine with my VISA card. Ugh, it makes me shudder.

One night at the seminar, during a class discussion, one of the other graduate students accidentally committed (right word?) an anachronism in order to make a philosophical point. Our professor, who had had 3 or 4 glasses of wine at that point, and chain smoked throughout class, stopped this student, made sure she had our full attention, and said forcefully, cruelly, unmercifully:

“I ABHORE ANACHRONISM.”

And that was that. We didn’t discuss it anymore because the professor so openly hated the way the student had made his point. The professor said, in effect, “if you can’t argue correctly, don’t argue at all.”

2) As I thought and wrote my way through my nauseating master’s thesis, I ran into a snag. It was an ”idea” snag, not a logistical snag like my printer breaking down or the fact that I hated my subejct matter. None of my three committee members could help me work it out, but they suggested I meet with Dr. H. in the department. Maybe he could point me in the right direction?

I’ll admit it, I was a bit leery of Dr. H. He was loud, a southern good old boy, and he’d never given me so much an “hello” when I’d walked by him in the hallways countless times. (He knew I was a grad student in the department.) But I screwed up my courage and knocked on his door one day during office hours. I briefly explained my problem and asked him if he thought he could help me. To my surprise, he looked at his calendar, suggested that I come in the next day at noon, and said we could talk then. He gave me the names of a couple of articles to read before our meeting.

I didn’t have the articles, of course, and the internet was in its infancy, so I spent the next couple of hours tracking down the articles in the Vanderbilt library. I spent several dollars making copies of the damn articles, then I read and studied those articles all that evening and the next morning. They were difficult and I could hardly understand anything, but I studied for that meeting with Dr. H. I wanted to be ready and prove that I was worthy of meeting with him.

Frazzled but as ready as I could be, I showed up at his office at noon. He greeted me personably and invited me to sit down. He asked me to describe my (intellectual) situation. I took a deep breath and started in. I spoke for approximately 12 seconds when he looked at the clock, became alarmed, and shouted, “Oh, damn!”

I said, huh?

He exclaimed, in a panic, he’d just remembered that he had planned to have lunch with another professor and he had to go. He grabbed his coat, ushered me out,  locked the door behind us, and strode away from me as quickly as he could without saying goodbye. It all happened so fast that I didn’t have the time or presence of mind to suggest we reschedule or meet later. He didn’t, either.

And I never got that meeting.

I still ran into Dr. H. very regularly. Never did he stop me and invite me back to his office. Never did he apologize or ask me to reschedule, or even acknowledge that he had blown me off after a 12-second meeting.

I was so put off—or so purely discouraged—that I worked around the problem in my thesis, and never did have that conversation with him.

I’m a big girl now. It’s 17 years later and I no longer feel intimidated by college professors or people who supposedly know it all. Life, my experience in the workplace, and meeting other “challenging” people has helped me to grow up. I am now probably a bit too outspoken when it comes to things that are important to me. When others don’t agree with me, I’m usually convinced they’re wrong. When I really need to get what I want, I’ll say the uncomfortable thing as many times as it takes. If Dr. H. blew me off today, I’d be back in his office first thing tomorrow morning, giving him a hard time of it and rescheduling the appointment. And even maybe trying to make him feel a little guilty for messing up my schedule.  

But then, I was young, inexperienced, timid, uninformed, and whatever else you have to be to fail to insist that a professor give you the time of day when, if nothing else, you’ve PAID for the education that you’re trying to earn in return. Years ago, I stopped berating myself for not asking him again for help. He should have acted like the smart, white-collar professional that he was, and offered to see me again. He was the teacher. He made a mistake and wasn’t responsible for it.

By the way, did I mention he was Director of Graduate Studies?

So today, my blog is just a bitch session. Sorry about that. I sure feel great about writing this all down, though. It was fun. I guess I’m mostly over it.

How to Work Here

Always do things the way they’ve been done in the past.

Happy Holidays, dammit!

Today, a friend sent me an email that read:

I will be making a conscious effort to wish everyone

a Merry Christmas this year …

My way of saying that I am celebrating

the birth Of Jesus Christ.

So I am asking my email buddies,

if you agree with me,

to please do the same.

And if you’ll pass this on to

your email buddies, and so on…

maybe we can prevent one more

American tradition from being lost in the sea of

“Political Correctness”.

The message was sent to her entire address list!

I responded with the following, to every damn person on her list:

“Happy Holidays” doesn’t bother me a bit. If I were Hindu or Buddhist (or whatever) and I knew someone was trying to include me in their good wishes because I don’t celebrate Christmas, I’d think that was awfully nice of them. There are some good things to be said about political correctness.
 
Sometimes, thinking that Christianity is the ONLY reason to celebrate a season can be construed as insensitive. Why do Christians always seem to be the only ones offended by so-called “political correctness,” when others are just trying to be inclusive and kind? Some Christians sure aren’t very open to dealing with people who don’t share their exact beliefs.
 
No apologies here . . .  I am PROUD of being politically correct and I love my Christian, Muslim, atheist, and Buddhist friends alike. They’re all wonderful human beings (and yes, I really do have Muslim and Buddhist friends). Just because they don’t share my spiritual/religious beliefs doesn’t mean I can’t respect them. If my beliefs are bestowed upon me from God, why would someone else’s beliefs, or lack of beliefs, also bestowed upon them by God, be any less holy?
 
And why shouldn’t I be considerate of their beliefs? They’re considerate of mine.
 
(Oh, if I were queen for a day!)
 
Happy Holidays, everybody. I mean it in the best way possible.
 
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Take that!

The Wonderful “Year of Wonders”

And then there are those glorious books that I can hardly put down. This is the one I read this week—Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.

This book is very engaging. Like Brooks’ March, it’s a first-person narrative of an individual I came to care about at the very beginning of the book. This narrator is a young widow in England in 1666, who lives in a village that contracts Bubonic Plague. The villagers decide to quarantine themselves, and then they’re all stuck with each other until the Plague is exhausted. It’s also a book about friendship, religious fanaticism, seventeenth-century science, and forgiveness. (!)

Bubonic Plague killed a quarter to half of the population of Europe in 1346 and 1347. It was referred to as the Black Death because victims’ infected tissue turns black. Bleck! The Black Death also showed up during the Great Plague of London in 1666. Appararently, it’s generally spread by fleas that bite rats and mice, then the fleas go on to bite human beings, too.

(Of course, none of the sources I read mentioned how the rats &  mice get it. Presumably by eating rotten junk?)

As recently as 1940, Bubonic Plague was being used as a weapon of war. The Japanese dropped plague-infested fleas on a city in China, and people got sick and died. Apparently there are still 1,000 – 3,000 cases of Bubonic Plague diagnosed each year, and 10-15 in the United States. Now, people can take antibiotics and get well. In 1666, they would just die.

One reason Year of Wonders amazed me so, is that so many characters in the book believed that the Plague was some sort of message from God—a punishment for sins and a statement that they’d better shape up. (If you believe in an unmerciful God sending a great flood, why not the Bubonic Plague?) The seventeenth century was still a time when many believed in the powers of witchcraft, so viewing a deadly disease as a punishment from God wasn’t a radical notion.

The narrator in the book comes to realize that some things just happen independent of God, and that Plague is one of them. And the town in the book is based on a real village in England that quarantined itself during the Plague of 1666, so I could enjoy the ”it’s true!” aspect that I love about nonfiction, at the same time soaking in the pleasures of a solid novel.