tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87242595962367737282024-03-13T08:50:09.046-06:00Who Let Me Use Big People Scissors?Discovering adulthood.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-65981673139847512222016-12-01T10:11:00.003-07:002016-12-01T10:11:41.465-07:00Cutting in Front of Black Men in LinesSo, I'm racist.<div>
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I'm only slowly wrapping my brain around what that actually means. I don't burn crosses, use racial slurs, or kick small children of any skin tone. I try my best to be polite whenever I can. But something has become painfully clear to me in the last month: all these things are true and I am still a racist. The fundamental assumptions of racism are in my very bones. I don't wear Confederate flags or wear White Power t-shirts, but you know what I DO do?<br /><br />I cut in front of black men waiting in line. </div>
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I probably would never have noticed except that I've done it twice in the last two weeks. The first was at the post office. The post office in my town is pretty small, and the "line" is an anomalous concept when there are only a couple of people there. When I entered, there was only two clerks working, both assisting someone. Standing roughly at where the line might be, if there was one, was a black gentleman doing something on his phone. </div>
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Being the polite, considerate white girl I am, I walked up to this gentleman and asked, "Are you in line?"</div>
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He responded, but I didn't quite catch what he'd said. Maybe he had an accent I wasn't expecting. Maybe he mumbled. In any case, I heard "Svlsndlfkser," unaccompanied by any clarifying gesture as he still had both hands on his phone. </div>
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"Okay, thanks!" said I, politely, and stepped up to the edge of the counter that is where the head of the line is when there's a line. I didn't really plan to. My brain went into awkward-social-situation panic mode, the thought of saying "Sorry, what was that?" made me want to die, and my feet had just stepped me forward with all the polite urgency of stepping through a door that someone is holding open.</div>
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And then, as I waited, I started second-guessing myself. What HAD he said? Had he said he was in line? Surely not, because if that were the case, he'd be correcting me, right? He'd be saying "Hey, miss, I said I was next!" And there are lots of reasons for people to NOT be in line at the post office. He could be looking up an address, or waiting for someone, or any one of a hundred things.</div>
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He was doing none of those things. I stepped up to the next available clerk, and thirty seconds later, he stepped up to clerk number 2 whose last customer had just left. </div>
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I was horrified. I'd gotten it wrong. My mind reeled with analysis. Was this just one of those silly misunderstandings not worth mentioning, or was it a manifestation of my white privilege? How should I make it right? Had he noticed?</div>
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I screwed up my courage, and as we were both leaving the post office, I apologized for misunderstanding and cutting the line. He gave me a look--a very eloquent look of "Are you now going to waste MORE of my time with your white guilt, lady?" and left, uninterested in standing around to listen to my self-flagellating post-colonial analysis of the situation. </div>
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Well, lesson learned, right? </div>
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Wrong.</div>
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Because last week at Ikea, I freaking DID IT AGAIN.</div>
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I was coming up to the checkout line with my arms full of a picture frame, a frying pan lid, and several bottles of sparkling juice (you know how Ikea is). Coming up from the opposite direction was, you guessed it, a young black man (not the same one, thank goodness) pushing a cart with a flat-pack box on it. We converged. </div>
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And without thinking, without hesitating, with a polite smile, I hustled quickly into line ahead of him. Every bone in my body knew that the polite, the courteous, the ladylike thing to do was to move quickly and get my shopping done and get out of his way as soon as possible, to minimize the inconvenience to this other person. </div>
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"Hey," said the checkout clerk, "I'm going on break, so I need to close this line after you guys."</div>
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"Oh!" said I. "Well, I'll just go to another line, then." I turned and smiled at the man behind me. "You can go ahead."</div>
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"Yeah," said he, pointing to the black woman in line ahead of me, "Because I'm with her."</div>
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The bottom dropped out of my stomach. </div>
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I didn't even check. I didn't make so much as a ceremonial gesture towards the "After you . . . no, after you" game of which Minnesotans are so fond. I just expected that man to yield to me, the way I expect an escalator stair to move up as I step on it. I was polite, I was courteous, I was smiling and friendly, but I expected him to yield to me and acted accordingly. </div>
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It's a funny word, "expect." We hardly ever use it in the right context. In school, I mostly heard it in terms of behavior: "I expect everyone here to be quiet and attentive while I'm talking." What those teachers all meant, of course, was that they <i>didn't</i> expect anyone to be quiet and attentive--they just <i>wanted</i> that to happen. If they had expected it, there'd have been no need for the announcement. The teacher <i>expected </i>all the students to continue being stuck to the floor in accordance with the laws of gravity, to keep breathing, to blink on a semiregular basis. The teacher was <i>ordering</i> them to be quiet precisely because quietness could not be expected and needed to be enforced.</div>
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I have never in my life given a black man a lecture on how I <i>expect </i>him to step back and let me go first in line. But I do expect it. My foot goes forward automatically, on the assumption that this is how people interact in the world. I don't stop to think "Hey, is this guy joining his wife, who is already in line ahead of me? Is this man just passing the time waiting for a post office clerk by playing a round of Candy Crush? Should I maybe step back and let someone else go first, in a politeness that feels to me to be extraordinary but might actually just be the baseline, ordinary, normal politeness that this man should be able to expect me to show?" I've never stopped to think. And now I've left wondering how many times in my life I've cut in front of a black man in line and don't even remember doing it. </div>
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I am white. I am privileged. My sense of what is right, proper, appropriate, and normal is skewed by those facts. I don't get to fall back on a sense of my own politeness as a defense against accusations of racism. I've got to do more than that. Part of me wants to blame those guys for not calling me out--Why didn't you just say "Hey, Lady, I was here first!"?--but I know that's not fair. I know what might happen to a black man calling out a white woman in public for being racist and rude. I might protest to myself that <i>I </i>wouldn't have reacted badly, fought for my stolen spot in line, cried 'reverse racism' and 'unreasonable' and 'mean' and 'harassment' . . . but even if I wouldn't, how is he to know that? By the 'I'm Not One Of THOSE White Women" t-shirt I'm always wearing? (Just kidding. I don't own such a shirt. And if I did, I wouldn't be entitled to wear it, as I clearly AM one of those white women--the ones who cut in front of you in lines and think it's totally normal.)</div>
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The burden of observation and correction is on me alone. This is my problem to solve. My racism to observe and address. This month I noticed it. Next month I get to start trying to fix it. And on the way, let's hope I notice other unkindnesses that I inflict upon the world without conscious thought. I know they're there. After all, I am racist. </div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-56748526046304693342016-11-20T21:59:00.000-07:002016-11-20T21:59:14.430-07:00The Trump Era; or, The Reign of the Bullies<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember being bullied. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyone who thinks that bullying is just a normal phase of growing up, part of the process of learning to navigate society, never had to endure it. It’s hard to articulate to adults what bullying is, because it’s part of the invisible social fabric that kids weave among themselves. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> kids exist to succeed and rejoice, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> kids exist to be ridiculed. Everyone in the middle is scrambling to get into the former category and stay away from the latter. Laughing at a bullying victim is a demonstration of one’s own superiority: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See? I get the joke. I am not like that pathetic victim-thing. I am powerful. See how I laugh. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The victim-thing isn’t human, as such. Its feelings do not elicit empathy, but scorn. Getting it to cry is like winning at Pop Goes the Weasel—a gleeful release of built-up tension as the group watches its self-control crack. A truly skilled player can get it not just to cry, but to rage. That’s extra points: anger is seen by adults, and punished. The overarching authority in its ignorance reinforces the abusive, profitable social order. It’s hilarious. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adults, at least when I was a kid, just did not get it. My teachers were in my classroom every hour of every day, and didn’t see what was happening to me. They saw an awkward girl unable to play well with others, like this was an inherent quality, part of my temperament. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She just cries all the time. She can’t seem to make friends</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They didn’t see the steady diet of dehumanization and provocation I got fed to elicit that behavior. Like poking a dog with a stick until it bites you, my classmates poked at me until I broke, over and over and over again. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Metaphorically. They never hit me.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh, how I wished they would hit me.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I used to fantasize about it. A bunch of them ganging up on me at recess, stealing my glasses, tripping me when I went to retrieve them, kicking me in the stomach and the head. That would have been so wonderful. Because violence would have been </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, tangible, something the adults could see as evidence of what I’d been trying to tell them: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not safe here</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They might have believed me. They might have taken me seriously. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course it never happened. There were just words. And, as I was repeatedly informed, although sticks and stones could break my bones, words could never hurt me. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And of course they didn’t </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hurt</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> me. My bones were fine. It was my spirit that got broken. I just curled into myself every time I was spoken to. I just kept my eyes on my shoes when I had to interact with a classmate. I just submitted, broken and docile, any illusion of my own equality thoroughly shattered. When I was seated next to a popular boy who didn’t want to be my tablemate, he told me to talk out of turn until one of us got moved. I did it. When I had to be the third person on a bus bench seat, I rested only half of one thigh on the cushion, effectively crouching in the aisle so as not to crowd my higher-status seat companions. On one occasion when a teacher caught another student kicking the trash can full of dodgeballs I was bringing in from recess, and gave the kid a brief lecture on (I paraphrase) not being a dick. I stared at the teacher in astonishment. He clearly didn’t get it. That was what I was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I knew my place. So did the kicker. The teacher didn’t get it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The teacher dwelt in a magical world of basic human decency. That, I learned, was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">adult</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> conduct. I adored adults. Adults were always kind and polite. Patronizing at times, sure, but they never demeaned me and then laughed in satisfaction at my tears the way my peers did. Adults lived by a different code, one in which petty cruelty was a major faux pas, where a fit of crying indicated a failure of the community, where empathy was expected from everyone. I wanted so badly to make it out of middle school and into a world of adults, where I’d be safe. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, now I have. And for the most part, it’s been a blessed relief. Adults are sometimes cruel or hurtful, but usually it’s accidental, and often they apologize. Adults are often comfortable with announcing “We shouldn’t do that; it’s mean,” and their words are mostly heard and respected. Adults who fail to follow these rules are quietly, restrainedly shunned. Bullying embarrasses no one but the perpetrator.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now . . . </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now, now, now . . . </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Donald Trump has been elected to be the president. And all the bullies who never discovered the tranquility of adulthood, who still endeavor to make themselves powerful by making other people cry, have emerged from their online lairs to impose upon society their sixth-grade model of how it ought to work. And the President of the United States, the teacher in this national classroom, the authority figure, the standard-keeper . . . he is a bully, too. Go ahead and cry. See how he laughs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This feels exactly like middle school. I can feel it in my bones—an uncomfortable, humming tension as I ache to hit something and struggle to restrain myself. It’s in my stomach, too, as the nausea of terror, and in my spine, which tries to curl down towards my feet in defense and submission. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do you know the desperate panic that floods your bones as you scream “I am human! I have feelings! What you’re doing to me is wrong!” at a crowd of people who simply do not care? If you don’t, you may soon. We are entering the Reign of the Bullies.</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-7e82c93c-853b-a638-e43b-cabad7eb2e9c"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are there still adults out there? Are there enough of us to stem the tide of violent words? Do we have the numbers and the collective will to assert that honor is for the compassionate, that dignity is included with admission to the human race, that picking on people is about as acceptable as picking one’s nose? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please say we can do it. I can’t face sixth grade again. Not alone. </span></div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-31507637894628784872016-10-22T11:32:00.000-06:002016-10-22T11:32:30.619-06:00The TenSo remember how I said I wasn't going to run hour-plus sessions anymore? Kinda lied, a little.<br />
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This morning was the Fargo Mini Marathon, the last big running event in the area before the cold well and truly sets in. I signed up for it because, well, I did 10K that one time at Katy's house, I might as well get a medal out of it, right?*<br />
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Except last night I had a whiny freakout (see Facebook for further details) that extended into morning in the form of weird dreams, from the very plausible (set alarm for 8:45 instead of 6:45, missed race) to the very far-fetched (tidal wave drowns runners, self escapes with a mermaid). So from about 4 a.m. onward, I was waking up, talking myself down, and getting fitfully back to sleep. My bedmate was not pleased.<br />
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When 6:45 actually happened, after non-actually happening about five times, I crawled from bed, popped in lenses, braided hair, and put on running tights and race shirt. The weather was supposed to be nice: 62 and sunny. However, the race was starting at 8 a.m., at which point 62 is not feasible. Temp outside was 31. I put on an extra pair of pants and my heavy jacket, whining and grumbling, while the cats whined and grumbled about not getting fed.<br />
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Cats fed. Me not fed: there was no breakfast food in the house that didn't require cooking, and anyway I didn't fancy such a long run with an omelet sloshing in my belly. Glass of water. Out the door.<br />
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Driving through downtown Moorhead I realize I am, in fact, hungry. And there's a train in my way. I pull through a convenient McD's and grab an egg McMuffin. Train has still not passed by the time I reach the crossing, chomping away on my hot and tasty non-vegetarian non-local non-good-for-me breakfast.<br />
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When I reach parking, on the Moorhead side of the river, it's actually no more than deeply cool outside. I swap my heavy jacket for the sweatshirt that lives in my car, grab my phone and headphones and car key, lock up, and head across the river, stuffing the key down my shirt as I haven't any pockets.<br />
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The Fargo Civic Center, which is not very big, is packed with that fearsome breed: Spandex-wearing runny-people. I hide in a corner and try not to be noticed by the massive muscly men and whippet-thin women. Many are in blazing pink: apparently, this race is to fund breast cancer research. I feel a little selfish for not having "Running For X, Who Beat Breast Cancer" emblazoned on my clothing in Sharpie. I decide I am running for myself, in honor of the breast cancer I will be developing any minute now (thanks, genetics). Feeling warm and overdressed, I strip off my hoodie and extra pants and stuff them behind some rolled-up mats in a corner. Then, suddenly, the crowd (that a minute ago seemed to be made of nothing but people in skin-tight shirts and capris) is made entirely of people in windbreakers with fuzzy earwarmers. I work harder on hiding. Am I overdressed? Underdressed? Gaah!<br /><br />I am, as far as I can see, the only person carrying her phone in her hand instead of on an arm strap. I wonder if I will be disqualified. Also my lips are feeling chapped and maybe I have to pee and I forgot to wear a headband and was that Egg McMuffin really a good idea? Man, I am such a wuss.<br /><br />Gradually, the crowd thins as first the half-marathoners, then the 5K folks take off. I maneuver to the back of the 10K crowd, where I hope the other slow people are congregating. When we start, I feel almost exactly like I'm on the first climb of a roller coaster that I am now seriously regretting. But too late now! We're through the loading bay doors and out on the streets of Fargo. I turn on my zombie run for the day, which is an expedition to someone's garage to collect power tools.<br /><br />
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We cross the bridge I just walked over and veer north into the park that edges the Red on the Minnesota side. Even sulky and cold, I can admit that the river, covered in mist and edged in frost, is just beautiful and well worth waking up early for. Maybe not waking up early five times, but still . . .</div>
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I'm mostly keeping pace with the folks around me, many of whom are running and walking by turns. I'm using my at-least-I-can-keep-it-up-more-or-less-indefinitely shuffle-jog, which determined walkers can overtake without much effort at all. Oh, well. 2K down; 8 to go.<br />
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Then on the path, what do I see? A lost glove! I scoop it up and yank it on, exulting. In addition to being a convenient way to keep my poor sorry fingers at reasonable temp, the glove will also serve very well post-race to be chopped up and made into little sleeves to wear over my toe rings, so I don't scratch the poles during pole class. I've been waiting for one of these gloves to cross my path for weeks now. Ha ha.<br />
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We all clomp over a wooden foot bridge onto the North Dakota side as I listen to the Abel Township radio coordinators and the New Canton radio coordinators squabble in my ear. In this park, we pass Mile 2 and its accompanying water/Gatorade station. I slosh down some Gatorade. Then I pass a guy handing out those little packets of energy goo. I've never had one, so I grab it as I go by.<br />
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Energy goo, as I learn when I tear the packet open and squeeze a little into my mouth, tastes like all the nauseating regret of a post-candy-binge sugar hangover without the actual pleasure of eating any candy. It tastes like artificial honey and Red 40. I make a face, but swallow anyway. I've already passed all the trash cans, so I'm stuck with it for now. I take a little dollop at a time and let it dissolve on my tongue. This isn't pleasant, but at least it's something to do as I clomp along through the park past Kilometer 4 and listen to the New Canton runners make snide remarks about the living conditions at Abel. The sugar actually keeps me salivating, so my mouth doesn't take on the feel of old packing tape, and makes me keep my tongue down so I don't inhale it and choke.<br />
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The zombie mission finishes by Kilometer 5, and the airwaves are taken over by an extremely awkward New Canton DJ. I'm now encountering dozens of folks who have finished the final loop and are on their way back.<br />
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By Kilometer 6, I'm being overtaken by people whose level of fitness is weirdly high for people who've been behind me all this way. Then the pacer goes past, and I realize they are the first of the half-marathoners. Sigh. I settle in and keep plugging away at my shuffle-jog.<br />
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I've only finished half the goo by the time I hit the aid station again, and throw it away without regret.<br />
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Somewhere along here I find a discarded headband. Score! I pull it on and mop the sweat from my face with the glove. New headband. Awesome.<br />
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Back through the Moorhead park, now encountering scads of people from the other races headed north. One more dang kilometer. I feel like I should be speeding up, but most of this distance is for getting out of the river basin and back up into downtown, so I figure just not walking is victory enough. And really, my left foot hasn't fallen asleep and I'm not freezing to death, so I'm not doing half-bad really.<br />
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I make it across the finish line just inside the Civic Center door at a little over 75 minutes. I snag water and a medal as I pass by and just keep on going, because I know if I stop moving forward my lungs and throat will lose the rhythm they were keeping with my feet, and trip all over themselves, and give me hiccoughs, which at this point would probably kill me. So I walk briskly back outside the building and do a few quick laps around the lawn while I wait for my heart rate to come down. Then, when I feel capable of standing still without choking to death, I head back inside for a peculiar but well-appreciated second breakfast of chicken noodle soup and chocolate milk. My stash of extra clothes is still where I left it. And that was my Saturday morning.<br /><br />The Zombie tracker informs me that I did every kilometer in somewhere between 7 and 8 minutes (7:01 for the first one! New record!), which is a very good pace for me, for that distance (overtaking half-marathoners be hanged). I want to add some self-deprecating commentary about my slowness and general unfitness to be running, but if now-me made those kind of comments in front of last-February-me, last-February-me (who could barely shuffle-jog for ninety seconds at a stretch, but did it anyway) would be very entitled to kick now-me in the face. So I will forbear, and take the liberty of being proud of myself.<br />
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And now I am home, resting my sore self and watching the cats dismember my number.<br />
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*Yes, I wanted a medal. Yes, I am a millennial. So sue me. Except don't, because all my disposable income for this month went into registering for this race. Again, because I'm a millennial.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-59919482891022488452016-07-29T12:28:00.000-06:002016-07-29T12:28:20.596-06:00Running . . . From ZombiesIs this a product review? This might count as a product review. Be warned.<br /><br />Anyway, in my journey towards more reliable foot-based forward propulsion, I have been using two apps: C25K and 10K, both by ZenLabs. These two apps have served me well and faithfully, giving me helpful instructions in my ear to walk, jog, turn around, and quit for the day. And hey . . . free is good.<br />
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These apps believe that you should be running 5km in about thirty minutes. HA. No. So when I say I "finished" the 10K app, I mean that I completed its final 60-minute run. I did not actually traverse anywhere near 10 kilometers of ground. Or treadmill track, in this particular case. I happen to know I was going a steady 3.8 mph, because the over-informative treadmill computer told me so and now I can't un-know it.<br />
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Anyway (again), I've decided that for right now, 60 minutes is about as long as I want to keep running at any one go. I would, however, like to get batter at covering more distance during that time window. Not much more distance. Just some. Baaaaaby steps.<br /><br />My original plan was just to start over at the beginning of these apps and step it up a notch: jog where it said walk, run where it said jog. Reasonable plan. I may still adopt it. But just to shake things up, I decided to test something different: zombies.<br /><br />Zombies, Run!, by Six to Start, is like a Choose Your Own Adventure audiobook with an added twist of GPS stalking/surveillance state. You run. It tells you a story in your ear to explain why you are running. I'm only one chapter in, but I'm guessing the reason is usually going to be zombies.<br /><br />I was expecting great things from this app, having encountered many positive reviews and junk. Since the app has an actual storyline with some dialogue and stuff worth paying attention to, I jettisoned my usual audio book (Casebook of Sherlock Holmes; nearly finished with the whole collection!) and turned on Pandora for that muzik stuff I keep hearing so much about. I picked the Murray Gold channel. I figured, dramatic, sci-fi, kinda creepy -- perfect zombie music, right?<br />
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And really, it all went pretty well. As I wandered through the neighborhood at sunset, I got informed that my helicopter was shot down (by whom? Floating plot thread) and that I needed to get to Abel Township (which is somewhere in England, judging by the accents), but as long as I was passing the hospital, I should pop in and grab some medical supplies and records (what records? Floating plot thread). I got all this handy background information from Sam, our friendly neighborhood radio guy, who talks when he's nervous. He designated me Runner 5, as the previous Runner 5 (with whom, it's implied, he'd been romantically involved) just got infected, so the jersey was up for grabs I guess.<br /><br />I've got only two complaints with this app so far. The first is that it didn't give me a halfway point, even a coded in-character one, so my dumb self might have gotten halfway to Pelican Rapids before realizing I had no way home. In future, must set my own timer.<br />
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The second complaint is, um, that, well . . . It didn't let me cheat.<br /><br />Let me explain.<br /><br />
Okay, so I'd stumbled across a CDC file (note: why was there a CDC file in England? Or why are all these British people in the US? Does the UK have a CDC, and if so, do they call it that?) that could be very important. Someone hovering over Sam's shoulder hinted strongly that this file was my ticket into the protection of Abel township. I also knew that if I got caught by zombies, they'd take some of my stuff, as app technology has not yet advanced so far that my phone could actually infect me through my headphones. I had lots of stuff to take--I'd found a food, a water, some medicines, an ax (BOSS!), some bullets (but no gun), some underwear, a pair of pants and a pair of shorts (but no shirt, poor me). But I had no way to know if the zombies would take all that stuff, or take my CDC file. And I wanted that CDC file. I wanted it bad.<br /><br />Last stretch of land to the safety of the town. Sam's telling me they're sending out an armed patrol to cover me. Just gotta outrun the zombies . . .<br /><br />I'd already outrun some zombies earlier. I'd kicked into a sprint for about thirty seconds when the app informed me they were on my tail. Yaay. Good for me. Except you know what's really hard? Getting your breath back, at a jog, after a sprint. So I was still at two steps to the breath when I reached this climactic finale, which is faster than I want to be breathing.<br /><br />And guess who's the lead zombie after me? You guessed it . . . The Late Runner 5.<br /><br />Okay. So the character whose place I am taking in the narrative is chasing after me, no doubt to steal the file that is my ticket to community acceptance, watched nervously by her grieving lover, while unnecessarily creepy Dalek-related music plays in the background and it is now well after sunset, people. Good storytelling, certainly. But good storytelling doesn't necessarily mean good running, particularly if my huffing puffing self suddenly goes into vivid-imagination-induced fight or flight mode, and I just cannot . . . (gasp) . . . flee (gasp) . . . fast enough.<br /><br />But dang if I'm going to let her get that file.<br /><br />So I hit pause.<br /><br />I slow to a walk. I get my breath back. Then I hit play and take off sprinting again.<br />
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There's no Sam on the radio.<br /><br />There's no alert of how close the zombies are behind me.<br />
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There's still creepy soundtrack, but I put that on there, that's my fault.<br />
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The clocks are all running, but there's no indication that I got back into the story when I hit play. So after a while I slow to my usual shamble. I run past my building and turn around at the corner, in case I just need to wait longer for something to happen. Nope. I walk a couple laps around the complex to bring my heart rate down and wait for news from Sam. Or zombies. Or anybody. Nothing.<br /><br />Maybe I was just so slow I just died.<br /><br />Anyway, I make it home, take a shower, feed the cats, and go poking around the app to figure out what went wrong. I'm still not sure what, but eventually I find a big "RESUME" button that was not there before and hit it. Thankfully (because I didn't fancy running laps around my apartment in a towel) the story resumes just as I make it into the gates of Abel township. I get a "Next Time On . . ." teaser, and the episode is marked complete.<br /><br />So . . . is the previous Runner 5 still alive? Jeez, I hope so. Shame to waste a good foil. Who shot the helicopter? What's in the file? What's my secret mission in this place? (Oh, yeah, I have a secret mission too . . . the chopper pilot told me so before she died in horrible gruesome wreckage.) What is the CDC doing leaving important documentation all over the United Kingdom? And will I ever find a shirt?<br /><br />Find out next time . . .<br /><br />. . . when I will set a halfway-point timer, play something in the background that WON'T send my imagination into overdrive, and try not to cheat again.<br /><br />Or at least try to try.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-46394163102621415572016-07-28T12:13:00.000-06:002016-07-28T12:13:22.861-06:00Further Thoughts On The RunningI have thoughts to add to my previous thoughts on the self-torture that is The Running.<br /><br />Since posting that last one, I have:<br /><br />Finished the 5K trainer app<br />Actually run (very slowly) an actual 5K<br />Finished the 10K trainer app<br />But have not yet run 10K<br />
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And over the months, some things have changed. Here are some additional little insights:<br /><br />--If you are doing hills, firstly, you poor thing. Secondly, don't try to go slow on the downhill. It's actually more work. Just fall, and let your feet keep up with you. It will hurt less, and as an added bonus, you will go faster.<br /><br />--If you are bringing water with you when you run, I highly recommend tossing a tablespoon of lemon juice in your water bottle. Don't even need sugar: just water and lemon is very nice on a dry throat.<br /><br />--If your brain tells you these words: "Surely we can get this run in before that storm hits", go inside and stay there, you idiot.<br /><br />But there's one variable that I had not yet encountered at last posting, and it needs to be addressed at some length. I speak, of course, of HEAT.<br />
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Formerly, we spoke of cold. Cold is very unpleasant, and a powerful deterrent to doing The Running. But Heat is a different monster entirely. Heat will probably not send you screaming back indoors--at least not at first. Heat is so pleasant-looking. It's bright and blue and cheerful. And it isn't even a little bit cold! How lovely!<br />
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I first encountered Heat at the beginning of April. Following my own wise counsel to never run the same route twice, I decided I would start from my place of employment and run through downtown Moorhead and over the pretty bridge up there into downtown Fargo. It was bright and sunny and cheerful outside. All was well.<br /><br />Except it wasn't.<br /><br />The thing about most downtowns is: there are no trees.<br /><br />This is also a major design flaw of most bridges.<br /><br />By the time I reached my turnaround point, I was gasping like a dying fish. Not because I was running any faster than I'd run last time, or very much farther--It was just the Heat. Weaseling into my lungs and skin and brain and slowly shutting everything down.<br />
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About seven minutes from the end of my run, a luckless friend called me.<br /><br />"Luckless Friend," I gasped, "Tell me . . . a story!"<br /><br />"What, right now?" asked Luckless Friend.<br /><br />"YES! Any . . . story. Just . . . keep . . . talking."<br /><br />Luckless Friend's phone call was much longer than anticipated as the poor faithful soul recounted to me an entirely improvised tale of discovering a ladder to Hell to keep me distracted from my imminent demise. I could relate, as I dragged my only semi-functional body through the last few minutes of torturous, listless jogging. Then I gave my frantic thanks to Luckless Friend, returned to my place of employment, and sat in the break room for twenty minutes sucking on ice cubes until I was reasonably sure I wouldn't vomit all over the inside of my car.<br />
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Because yes, Heat will make you vomit. It will do all kinds of nasty things to you, subtle things that you think you can muscle through and are probably just your imagination. They are not. Cold is unpleasant, yes, but when it comes to the Running, heat is downright dangerous.<br /><br />So if you engage in the Running in a season or location that is susceptible to Heat, please heed this wise counsel:<br /><br />--First: Do not play chicken with Heat. Do not convince yourself you are tough enough to beat it. You are not. That sun of ours isn't a very big star, in the grand scheme of things, but it is still much bigger than you and is not intimidated by your posturing. You are flammable. Don't forget it.<br /><br />--Try altering the time of your Running. Go early in the morning or late in the evening. I've discovered that putting my midpoint right at sunset is very useful and comfortable. If you sleep through your early morning and are busy in your late evening, do NOT try running somewhere in the middle of the day anyway. Don't do it. Not safe.<br />
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--Find shade. If you have tree-rich neighborhoods, wild forests, river trails, go for those. Again, this is not you being a sissy: this is you having a teaspoonful of common sense.<br />
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--Try migrating indoors. No, not on a running track: those are insanely boring (round and round and round) and are populated by Spandex-wearing runny-people. Go for a treadmill instead. Treadmills are kind of weird. The whole "the floor is moving" thing is pretty disorienting, and will make you fall over if you think about it too hard. And treadmills give you WAY too much information about how far you've run and how fast you're going. But they are a space of sacred isolation: no one will challenge you to a friendly race on a treadmill. You can watch a show or something. Put a piece of paper over all the numbers, turn on the X-Files, and chug along. It's dull, but survivable.<br />
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--Accept that even with these precautions, sweat will ooze out of every orifice of your skin and make you disgusting all over, no matter how easy you're taking it on yourself. Drink much water. Do much laundry. Embrace the gross.<br /><br />--Cut yourself some slack. If Heat causes you to miss some runs or cut runs short, GOOD. You should not be out raising your body temperature in that crap. Keep yourself out of the hospital and you can get back to your mighty Running Schedule of Doom (if you have one) when autumn settles in.<br /><br />--Sunscreen. Duh.<br />RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-43341328952507374112016-03-29T12:42:00.000-06:002016-03-29T12:42:42.202-06:00How To Do The Running, Which SucksRunning sucks.<br />
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Let's just get that out of the way right now. It is the least pleasant form of exercise known to modern humans, outside of sportsball. It's painful, boring, lonely, competitive, and often cold or wet or both. It cannot be done in the privacy of one's own apartment.<br />
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I have been most determinedly anti-running since my one disastrous year on the cross country team. I joined up because, in my ongoing quest to observe and successfully mimic the behavior patterns of adolescent humans, I noticed a correlation between "people who run cross country" and "people who have much social capital." What I got, instead of an infusion of social capital, was months of runs far beyond my undeveloped capacity and a mix of shunning and humiliation from the team's actual members. Nope. Nope nope nope. Never again. No mas. Done.<br />
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And yet, here's the thing. Running may suck, but the ability to do it is dang useful. In an emergency situation several years ago, I tried to run for help and ended up puffing and wheezing and gasping 75% of the way to my goal. My lungs did not care that this was an emergency. They were weak and flimsy, as were my leg muscles and my floppy lazy heart, and could not have gone any farther if there had been a dinosaur after me. My thoughts would eventually have been "Heck with the dinosaur, I need a breather." And then the dinosaur would have eaten me.<br />
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So now, after what, nearly twenty years, I, me, my particular run-hating self, am learning to run again. And am discovering that, much like many activities introduced to me in the public school system, the activity itself is not what made the experience hellish. School is just really, really good at presenting everything in such a way that you will hate it forever.<br />
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So, as the sun has started creeping back over chilly little Moorhead, Minnesota and "outside" has been launching its annual ad campaign ("Outside! A Nice Place to Be!"), I downloaded a couch-to-5K app onto my phone and began to learn to run on MY terms.<br />
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I am now three weeks into this experiment, and the purpose of this blog post is to share with you, dear Reader, insights I have gained on How To Do The Running when The Running is a horrible thing to do.<br />
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I am writing this because most of the How To Do The Running articles I have encountered are full of lies. Lies like "Running is awesome! You totally get in the zone, and you get this runner's high, and it feels soooooo cool, dude!" This is untrue. There is no zone. There is no high. There is only the running. There is a sense of satisfaction, but it is akin to that of scrubbing off the grime on the metal things that live under the stove burners--a sense of "I did a boring, unpleasant, but useful task! I get ten adult points!"<br />
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So here are my thoughts on How To Do The Running.<br />
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1. Get an app. The phone app provides goals that are more reasonable than the goals you think you can set for yourself. "I'm gonna go out and run for a while!" you say, full of righteous optimism. No, you won't. You will run for a third of a block, and then you will walk, and then you will go home and remind yourself you're bad at this running thing and never try again. The goal of The Running is not to be good at The Running--it is to be good at making yourself do The Running repeatedly. The app will tell you to run for a little, then walk for a lot, then run for a little, then walk for a lot. Do not disobey the app: the app knows you better than you do. If the app says "This is not a running day. Do not run. Do not run again until tomorrow," obey it. The app knows you will get sick of running if you decide it is fun and you should do lots. You should not do lots. You should do a little. Trust the app.<br />
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2. Get some gear. Yes, I'm sorry, you need the gear. You need running shoes and headphones and a hair tie if your hair is long and something to cover your nakedness. Most of these you should already have in some form. The running shoes, maybe not. You must go and purchase them. They will be most comfy on your feet, reducing the amount of pain inflicted by The Running and thus its overall suckiness. The running shoes will be expensive, and if you only run with them once before giving up, that will be a very expensive run. My new running shoes cost sixty dollars. It cost me sixty dollars to run in them the first time. But the second time I ran in them, they only cost thirty dollars per run. Then twenty. Feed your inner cheapskate and watch your price-per-run go down.<br />
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3. Get some entertainment. Running is an inherently boring activity. Get an audio book or some of that music stuff or some of those podcast-thingys. Give yourself something, anything to listen to other than the sound of your throat trying to choke you to death to get you to stop running.<br />
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4. Get warm. People will tell you "Oh, you'll warm right up!" as they go out to do The Running in spandex shorts and a jog bra in January. These people are liars. You will not warm right up, because if you go outside in such a getup you will be freezing, and you will immediately go inside and drink three cups of cocoa instead of running. Ignore these people and their spandex. Be warm. If it is cold, put on enough clothes for you to go outside comfortably. If you don't, you won't go outside at all. You may be too warm after running for a while, but this is much better than being too cold and writing off the whole endeavor.<br />
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5. One thing you should not get: other people. Other people are awful. They say things like "Come on! I'll race you to that tree!" and "Keep pushing! Come on! You can do it!" Maybe you can do it and maybe you can't, but trying to do it will completely suck and then you will not want to do The Running ever again. Get rid of people. Stick with the app. The app will not let you fizzle out.<br />
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6. Never run the same route twice. If you run the same route twice, then you are automatically in a race with the last version of you that ran that route. You will think, "Last time I came this way, I made it to that mailbox. This time, I must make it farther. I must go past the mailbox." And then the next time, you have to go past the next mailbox, and then the next time you lie in bed shuddering at the thought of making yourself go all the way to the corner, and you do not go out to run. It is too hard. It gets harder every time. You stay inside and watch mediocre romantic comedies instead. Take a different route every time. See a different part of your town. Start from work instead of your house. Start from the grocery store parking lot instead of work. Please remember: your goal is not to go faster. Your goal is to go at all.<br />
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7. Do not work on speeding up your feet. First, focus on slowing down your breathing. Breathing is nice, and you enjoy doing it. Taking big, slow, deep breaths is good for you. When you start running, try to breathe in for six steps and out for six steps. When you need more air (which will be almost immediately), go to five steps per breath. Give yourself more air as you get tired. Air is good. Lack of air is a horrible feeling. The worst feeling is taking a breath every two steps and still not getting enough air. If you are doing this, you are running too fast, and it will suck, and you will quit.<br />
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But, you might say, if I never push myself to go faster, how will I get faster? How will I improve?<br />
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Here is the freaky secret: you will improve anyway. If you do The Running over and over again, you will get better at The Running. You do not have to make the experience awful in order to accomplish this. Pushing yourself might make you improve more quickly, but then you will be miserable and you will quit and you will un-improve and then not improve at all. Do not worry about going faster. You do not get a medal for going-faster-ness.* Your goal is not to go faster, remember. Your goal is to go at all. Faster will come. It will not feel like "RAAARR! I FEEL THE BURN! PUSH THROUGH IT!", which is the definition of success in some circles. It will feel like "Why am I going so slow? I feel fine. I could take longer steps and still be fine. Look at my longer steps! Yaay! Oh, time to walk now, says the app. We must do what the app says." This success is better because it will not result in, forty-eight hours later, saying to oneself "Why did I run so fast? It felt horrible. I hated it. I won't do it today." and then never doing it again.<br />
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This is my advice. It seemeth to me to be good advice, after three weeks of trying it out. That's right: I, me, my run-hating self, have been doing The Running on a regular basis for Three Whole Weeks. Last week, I measured of of my Runnings and discovered that I had traversed 2.2 miles. If you are a spandex-in-January-wearing, burn-feeling, zone-into-getting runny-person, this distance is laughable. If this is the case, I say: heck with you. Shut up. Go run away. You're good at that. Show us how good you are. No, keep going. We're not impressed yet. Off with you. Shoo.<br />
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To all the rest of you, I say: good luck. I can recommend some audiobooks if you'd like them.<br />
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*They do give these out, but not to the likes of you and me. They give them to people who think the point of The Running is to go faster than everybody else. These are the kind of people who will double the cost of their own plane ticket so they can get on the airplane before you do. They are mean and stupid people. Ignore them.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-7307722437028484972014-12-07T16:34:00.000-07:002014-12-07T16:34:27.177-07:00A Quantifiable Analysis of Why I Am Still Single<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-align: left;">I've had this conversation more times than I can count.</span></div>
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<br />Me: Hey, hi! How are you!<br />Well-Intentioned Other: Oh, just fine. How about you?<br />Me: Just great!</div>
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W-I O: That's wonderful! So, are you seeing anyone?</div>
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Me: Nope.</div>
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W-I O: Well, how can that be?</div>
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There are some variations on this last line. Sometimes it is an expression of incredulity ("Oh, come on. That can't be true.") as though it's obvious that I must be going on dates; I'm clearly just too stupid to notice them when they happen. But often it's the question: Nobody's asking you out? What's wrong with you?</div>
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Laying aside the sub-surface rudeness of this question, it's counterproductive. Asking a person why no one will date her is like asking her what that thing is on the back of her head: the person you're asking is in the worst possible position to be able to answer the question for you. Ask almost anyone else, and you will get better information.</div>
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There are certain things that are Simply Not Done, even in our permissive modern society. One of these things is to inquire of a person, "Excuse me, but why are you not sexually attracted to me? If you could give me three or four specific reasons, that would be very helpful." This is Simply Not Done because there is no possible answer that could be considered polite, and we try not to force our friends into acts of breathtaking rudeness if we can avoid it.<br /><br />But the question still haunts: what's wrong? If the normal, expected course of events is for a person to be actively pursued by at least a few others, then why is that not happening in (Person X's) case? The knowledge would be intensely helpful, either for making changes or for washing one's hands of things that cannot be changed, but it remains elusive.<br /><br />Until now.<br /><br />I've heard the joke tossed around many a time amongst single people: "Someone should just take a survey!" "I know, right?" This week, I decided to up'n'do it. The crucial obstacle to obtaining useful data (fear of being rude on the part of those surveyed) can be mitigated by the anonymity of the Internet. Accordingly, I wrote and distributed an anonymous survey. </div>
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The survey was divided into two parts: What's Wrong With You?, including possible reasons a person might have for not dating me that have nothing to do with me, and What's Wrong With Her?, a list of my traits and perceived traits that might discourage a person from pursuing a romantic relationship with me. First, I will discuss the What's Wrong With You? data.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qk2POTYbem0/VITTWDwZbKI/AAAAAAAABV8/F91NJkqsMnw/s1600/WhatsWrongWithYou.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qk2POTYbem0/VITTWDwZbKI/AAAAAAAABV8/F91NJkqsMnw/s1600/WhatsWrongWithYou.png" /></a></div>
In this category, there were three clear leaders: persons of my acquaintance are not sexually attracted to women (a category including heterosexual women, homosexual men, asexual persons, and possibly demisexual persons who don't know any women very well), those who live too far away for a relationship to be feasible, and persons already in monogamous relationships. The 'monogamous relationship' response was easily the most popular, with 53 persons out of 98 total responses. Yes, well over half of those polled decline to pursue me because they already have spouses or partners. This finding, I think, adds significant strength to the idea that legalized gay marriage damages traditional (heterosexual couple + biological children) families, as the greatest obstacle between me and my future traditional family is clearly other people's marriages. The numbers don't lie.<br /><br />Beyond criminalizing gay marriage, the only other actionable option in this category is that of living too far away. I may need to either move closer to most of the people that I know (which might be complicated, as some are in Korea, some in England, others in New Zealand, and at least two in west Africa) or invest heavily in a global public transportation network.<br /><br />Of note is the rather dark horse category of "I have a dark and tortured past . . ." (indicated as "Byronic archetype" on the graph above). This category was much more popular than expected, with 14 responses. I evidently know more Byrons than I'd thought.<br /><br />One further category of note is "She already has turned me down (indicated is "Previously rejected"). According to the prevailing theory that single women in their late twenties are "too picky," this category should be quite robust. Instead, it received only 3 responses. Moreover, these responses were 67% correlated with "I am in a monogamous relationship" responses. This would seem to indicate that of the persons whose advances I have spurned, fully two-thirds of them were already married/spoken for (in which case, good for me) or have since become so (in which case, my rejection clearly did them no lasting harm). (The remaining respondent also indicated that he/she was a Byronic archetype, so my rejection was probably wise, if not kind.)<br />
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The "What's Wrong With Her?" data was more difficult to analyze. At least one set of responses clearly indicate that the person surveyed (Respondent 5) was not taking this seriously. We know this for two reasons: 1. Respondent 5 indicated several pairs of self-contradictory options ("Too feminist," "Not feminist enough") and 2. Respondent 5 selected "Her breasts are too small." As this opinion is clearly untenable, I have chosen to disregard that person's input.<br />
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Dismissing Respondent 5 left several categories empty, including: "brunette," "too fat," "too thin," "breasts too large," "breasts too small," and "smells objectionable." These data (or lack thereof) clearly indicate that the entire beauty industry is a futile waste of effort and resources.<br />
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The chart below shows the results of the survey once Respondent 5's results were discounted, and the resulting empty categories dismissed from the analysis.<br />
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The data presents us with several problems of analysis. For example, "Too confident" and "Lack of self-esteem" each received 4 responses, despite being antithetical. Thus, I am unable to decide whether I should attempt to attract more suitors by being more confident or less so. "Taller" scored reasonably high (pardon the pun), but less than expected, tying with "Vegetarian" at 8 votes, and lagging behind such unexpected results as "Too physically attractive" (9 votes) and "I think she is a witch" (11 votes).<br /><br />Other high-scorers included "Too feminist" and "Too Mormon", though these responses were almost entirely mutually exclusive (the only exception, Respondent 49, also indicated "I don't know who she is or remember how she got on my Facebook," so we will not lend too much credence to his/her input). This may indicate that in attempting to please everyone, I have ended up pleasing no one, or possibly that Mormon feminists in general are just caught between the proverbial rock and hard place when it comes to dating.<br />
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"I don't know who she is or remember how she got on my Facebook" gained unexpectedly high marks (13) indicating that I don't know enough of the people that I know, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.<br /><br />"She is smarter than me" and "I think she is straight" also performed well, at 17 and 19, respectively. The latter concern is not terribly helpful, since to the best of my knowledge I was born straight and will continue to be so at least until scholars conclusively determine the fundamental nature of human sexuality (which may take a while). The "she is smarter than me" problem might be more easily rectified, either through determined acting or the judicious use of inhaled cleaning solvents, but I fear that in this case the cure may be worse than the disease.<br /><br />The two most telling results, though, are these: "I can't articulate why, but I'm just not physically attracted to her" (15) and "Other" (the clear leader at 22). These responses imply that the impenetrable fog that surrounds human attraction may not be entirely due to our desire to be polite; it may simply be that we don't <i>know</i> what attracts us to other people. Uncovering motivations below the level of the conscious mind, while a fascinating prospect, is beyond the scope of this study.<br />
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In any case, the next time a kindly, well-intentioned person demands to know how it can possibly be that I am not currently the object of anyone's sexual desire, I'll certainly have plenty to say on the subject.<br /><br />***<br />The research team would like to thank Respondents 1-4 and 6-98, Google Forms, Google Spreadheets, and the National Science Foundation for their invaluable assistance with this project.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-56712031569972002262014-11-05T23:58:00.000-07:002014-11-05T23:58:12.271-07:00If a Woman Have Long HairI will never, ever cut off my hair.<br />
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It's extraordinary stuff, my hair. Not as thick and dense as Cat's, nor as unapologetically curly as Bethe's, it hovers somewhere in between--a long, complex, casually elegant tumble of nonchalant half-curls that are called 'beach waves' by those who know about such things. It is deep, dark brown, but catches the light in red.<br />
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It is not beautiful the way it ought to be beautiful. It does not catch the eyes of men. The one man who was ever in a position to comment upon it found it annoying. His loss. My hair is not here to impress anyone else. It is mine.<br />
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I began braiding my own hair in the late nineties, when I was about ten years old. Before then, my mother had always done it for me. My mother's hair is straight as a pin all the way down; she was simultaneously frustrated by and proud of my troublesome, tangle-prone locks. Children are not the mirror of their parents, but the interpretation.<br />
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I learned to braid before I first went to summer camp, so I could keep my hair sensibly out of trouble in the woods. But like so many things, what began as an artistic option became a socially imposed necessity.<br />
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I do not think that I went out in public without my hair braided, except on very rare and special occasions, from 1997 to 2003. It was always the same: one thick braid, straight down my back, tied with a black or brown elastic. Never a French braid or a fishtail, never one set high on the crown of my head to start, never one plait shorter than the maximum my length could hold.<br />
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1997 was when the bullying really started. People whose names and faces are now lost to me extracted confidence and social clout from my tears like petroleum from crude oil. They were so cruel for so long that I almost forgot I did not deserve it. They mocked my behavior, my clothes, my habits, my speech, my smell. But they never noticed my hair, in one plain, unremarkable braid down my back. More fools they.<br />
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My hair was where I kept my sense of self-worth, woven tight among the plaits, pulled snug against my skull. Through 1997 and 1998 and 1999, that dangerous knowledge stayed knitted away, and I was the Mme. Defarge that wove it there every morning. The beauty of my hair was my secret. My classmates never saw it, and thus could not laugh at it and take away its value and meaning like they'd done to so much else. My hair was the only thing that was <i>mine </i>about me.<br />
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In 1999, I moved away. I wept like I was being dragged bodily out of the Stockholm <i>Kreditbanken</i>.<br /><br />In 2003 I set foot in a public school with my hair loose around my shoulders for the first time in over five years. It felt like being naked: vulnerable and terrifying. Here was my closely guarded secret--my basic, fundamental worth--on display for the world to see and laugh at. My hair screamed at the world: <i>I MATTER</i>. My hair defied the world to prove it wrong.<br /><br />It has not. Not yet.<br /><br />I've yet to forgive those idiot children back in Minnesota who knew not what they did. I suppose I should. I should pray for them. I'm still more pleased with the thought of throttling them with the long, thick, inexorable cord of my hair. <i>You missed a spot</i>.<br /><br />But now my hair is lying across my shoulder, long and languid, forming absentminded corkscrews while it waits for me to finish blogging and go to bed. It has not been desecrated or chopped off. It is still mine, as much as any mortal thing can be. So I'm off to sleep, and the irrepressible knowledge of my own inherent worth will tickle my cheek as I dream.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-75511772125712895712014-09-28T23:02:00.000-06:002014-09-28T23:02:04.034-06:00Nothing to Fear But . . .There's a thunderstorm happening outside.<br /><br />
I'm writing this to help myself calm down so I can sleep . . . school in the morning, and all.<br />
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Okay. So I've stated before on this blog that there are three things in life that scare me: heights, needles, and thunderstorms.<br />
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The scar on the inside of my right elbow is evidence to my courage in the face of needles. I'm willingly getting stuck with a big fat needle twice a week to help finish off the last of my student loan from London (plastitution at its finest). I hiss when the needle goes in, and I can't look at it, but I can take the stick. I'm brave.<br />
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I can manage heights. I think. I'm not called upon to confront them very often. Except ladders. And I can manage ladders okay.<br />
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Nearly everything else in the world, I'm not scared of. Spiders? Cute. Dark alleys? Bring 'em on. Bats? Old news. Public speaking? As if. Ticks? Eat 'em for breakfast. I am not the sort of person who has to wander through the world being afraid. I'm big, and confident, and clever, and powerful. I've got this life thing under control.<br />
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But I don't have thunderstorms under control.<br />
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I've got tears on my cheeks as I type this. Tears. I'm <i>crying</i>. Not dramatically or anything, but . . . I've never cried before. Not even the night this all started. I've jumped, and screamed, and ended up perched on top of furniture . . . I've flinched, and gasped, and cowered. But I've never cried. Why am I crying? I know that the odds of lightning hurting me are astronomical, particularly as I'm writing this from inside a snug and sturdy building. And I know that thunder does nobody any harm whatsoever. I <i>know</i> this. So why am I crying? After two years?<br /><br />I do not have freakin' PTSD. I know; I Googled it as soon as the tears started. But neither do I have control of this crap.<br /><br />I used to think maybe I was being reflexively melodramatic, that I was playing up my tendency to jump out of my skin because it made people give me hugs. But why would I do that, when I know that I can just ask for hugs, and usually get them? And who am I showing off to, curled up in my own bed? Did I bring this upon myself, by letting myself gasp all those times? Letting myself shake? And does the fact that I'm blogging about this invalidate my concern that this might not be just a plea for attention?<br /><br />Blast if I know. Somebody get Freud down here. He'd probably have something entertaining to say about how lightning and thunder are a metaphor for my repressed Electra complex or something. (Electra = electricity? He'd go there. I know he would.)<br /><br />Okay, I'm cracking jokes now. I must be feeling better. And the rain has stopped, and there hasn't been a strike in the last couple of minutes. I'm off to brush my teeth and see what I can do about sleeping.<br /><br />Thanks for listening, Internet.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-77805544275374792112014-09-23T12:46:00.003-06:002014-09-23T12:58:02.475-06:00The Sociopolitical Complexities of Self-Improvement, or, How to Make Yourself Do Push-Ups"I swear, I'm so ANGRY right now! I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot! I'll chop the legs off every dragon I fight! With my face!"<br />
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<i>How to Train Your Dragon</i><br />
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I've just had a thought.<br />
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This thought has two points of origin. The first is John Oliver's brilliant segment on the Miss America pageant from this week's <i>Last Week Tonight</i>, which you really should watch if you haven't yet. The second is my semester goal.<br />
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I've discovered that I can handle semester goals. New Year's Resolutions can bite me, but a semester goal is manageable. And, at least for me, a four-month goal can become a habit. Last fall semester, for example, I decided to swear off fast food and meat until Christmas. Both of these have worked out quite well. I now regularly pack my lunch to work, and that lunch tends to be made of black beans, noodles, quinoa, or lentils. Very healthy, extremely cheap, quite yummy. (The yumminess took some practice, but we got there in the end.)<br />
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This semester, I have decided I'm gonna freakin' exercise. This has always been a problem for me, because I am A. lazy, B. poor, and C. self-conscious. This fairly well rules out any exercise that I have to leave my house for. Swimming's a hassle that puts my body on display. Gym classes cost money. Cycling has a tendency to leave me stranded far from home in the cold and the dark with a flat tire. Kayaking is wonderful, but only while the weather holds, and it involves a fair bit of there-and-back transportation. And anyone who suggests any kind of competitive sport is gonna get a kick in the shins.<br />
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So I've been doing these: <a href="http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/12/09/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/" target="_blank">Nerdfitness.com's Body Weight Circuits</a>. Zero money, zero travel time, zero special equipment. I can huff and puff and blow my lungs out in the privacy of my own room and the privacy of my own underwear (I don't own workout clothes. Seriously, none at all). And so far, it's been really pretty good! I'll watch or listen to something while I do my circuits, then pop immediately into the shower as soon as I've completed my daily squats and lunges and push-ups. No muss, no fuss.<br />
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Of course, I loathe being in pain. I'm a complete sissy about it. So doing "just one more" push-up is decidedly NOT my idea of a good time. And I've never managed to do it consistently in the past. So why is this working so well now?<br />
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That's where John Oliver and Miss America come back in. See, exercise for me carries this far-off, teasing promise: <i>If you do this enough, eventually you will be beautiful. You'll be beautiful enough for someone to love you. </i>Beauty is a weapon in the competition of singleness; it allows you to dominate other women and claim a partner for your own. Maybe. If you're also a nice person. And smart, but not too smart. And just dang lucky. But you'd better be doing your workouts, or the kindness and smartness and luck aren't gonna do you a bit of good. It's a buyer's market out there. You've got to beat out the competition.<br />
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I hate competition.<br />
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Like haaaaate.<br />
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And this is why I've never exercised regularly. Because fitness means beauty and beauty means competing and competing means somebody has to lose. I would much rather stay quietly at home and marathon-watch <i>The X-Files</i> than engage in a competitive sport like spouse-hunting where somebody, inevitably, is gonna get hurt.<br />
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So I've given myself a new far-off promise: <i>If you do this enough, you will be strong. You'll be strong enough to lift boxes of costumes and heavy wooden benches and sections of the dock. You'll be strong enough to haul huge coolers of cranberry juice up and down hills, to keep injured victims afloat in deep water. You'll be strong enough to be useful at camp.</i><br />
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And that's a great promise. That's amazing. Because I will do pretty much anything to be useful at camp. Useful at camp is my favorite thing to be. If I am strong, I can help. I can serve. There's no possibility of me losing, because it's not a competition. If I am stronger, everybody wins.<br />
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I can't serve people with beauty. I can't use my face to do any good in the world for anyone except myself, and even then, the good for me would be harm for someone else. But I can serve with strength. I can haul things and lift things and fix things and climb things. I can be not simply good, but good for something. And that is so satisfying. Satisfying enough to merit one more push-up.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-8138272422239107352014-05-29T17:35:00.002-06:002014-05-29T17:35:30.100-06:00The Problem is the Bear<i>"What's going to happen's going to happen. Just make sure it doesn't happen to you."<br /><br />"Max, don't you EVER say that again!"</i><br />
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The Sound of Music<br />
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TW: Rape.<br /><br />So, if you've been on the internet at all in the past week, I assume you're up to speed on #YesAllWomen. If not, head over to Twitter and read for a few hours.<br /><br />You back yet? Okay, good.<br /><br />In the conversations that have been consuming nearly all my energy and attention, I've repeatedly seen comments encouraging women to protect themselves from rape. Lots of resources have been suggested: the buddy system. Martial arts training. Keychain pepper spray. Apps like Kitestring. Clothes like AR Wear. Viciously spiked anti-rape condoms like RapeX. (Though the vindictive part of me clamors approval for any measure against rapists that involves viscous spikes. But, as you'll see below, even spikes don't address the real problem.)<br />
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Those with a little more experience in the conversation decry these suggestions as "victim blaming." But the people making the suggestions don't seem to get it. So here's another way to think about it.<br /><br />My freshman year of college, I was walking home late at night. A young gentleman, the worse for drink, approached me and introduced himself. He was from Texas. He wanted me to run away back to Texas with him. He was rather insistent.<br /><br />Luckily, he'd encountered me only about a block from my apartment, so by the time his invitation escalated into a shouted monologue in which the word "bitch" featured heavily, I was in my well-lit courtyard surrounded by people and could sprint up the stairs into the safety of my kitchen.<br /><br />I did everything right. More than everything. I was taller and heavier than this guy, and I have a few years of martial arts training. Beyond that, the party I was on my way home from was a medieval one, so I was wearing a sword. Yes, a sword. I was safe that night. Nothing happened to me.<br /><br />But that guy was still wandering the neighborhood, drunk and looking for some action.<br /><br />Was there another student walking home later on? One not as big and powerful as I am, one without the confidence that comes with martial arts, one who was unarmed, one who had more than a block to go before she reached safety? What happened to her?<br /><br />No matter how many resources we employ to ensure our own safety, at the end of the day, we're not stopping rapists. We're just redirecting them onto someone else.<br /><br />It's like the old joke: How fast do you need to run to escape a hungry bear? Answer: faster than the slowest person in your group.<br /><br />I've been through so much this week. So many stories, from strangers and from dear friends. Stories of molestation, manipulation, and assault, of broken lives and shattered safety. Stories of good returned missionaries who wouldn't take "no" for an answer and of good bishops who told rape victims they needed to repent. And through all of it, I'm naturally thinking: <i>Thank goodness that hasn't happened to me</i>.<br /><br />Of course I'm glad it hasn't happened to me. I'm human. Having a bad thing happen to someone else is infinitely preferable. But it still isn't good enough. Because rapists are not an act of God, like a tornado or a hurricane or a deer walking in front of your car. They are human beings with free will who make the decision to rape. Not all of them know that's what they're doing. They may not call it that in their heads. But they make the choice to gratify their own desires at the expense of someone else's safety. And that's behavior. And human behavior, unlike tornadoes, can be changed.<br /><br />The problem here isn't the speed of the various members of your group. The problem is the bear.<br /><br />So please, everyone: stop, stop, stop. Stop telling women to learn to run faster. Stop telling us to carry weapons, cover our shoulders, stay inside after dark. Stop telling us to make sure to always run with a slower person, who can be eaten by the bear in our stead. We're sisters. All of us. And none of us should be eaten by a bear. Making it happen to someone else is not enough of a solution.<br /><br />Maybe that drunk Texan raped another student in my place. Maybe the man who tried to get me into his car when I was fifteen persuaded some other girl in my neighborhood instead. And I'm not okay with that.<br /><br />So let's talk about reporting and prosecution. Let's talk about those thousands of untested rape kits languishing in police labs across the country. Let's talk about teaching consent. Let's talk about how to make raping more shameful than being raped. Let's talk about how we can deal with the bear. Because I'm sick of running.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-5831959699326053972014-04-23T13:19:00.002-06:002014-04-23T13:28:35.763-06:00To Resist, or, RoseE in the Sexiest Piece of Clothing of All Time<i>"Will you come along quietly, or do you intend to resist?"</i><br />
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<i>"Well, don't be stupid! Of course we intend to resist! Just give us a moment, all right?"</i><br />
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I started my day feeling very glad I'd decided to do this trip by myself, as it'd be hard to talk someone into coming to see the <i>Musée des Egouts de Paris</i>. Yes, it was smelly. Bring a handkerchief, preferably with a drop or two of perfume in it. Super interesting, though. For instance, do you know that they clean a lot of the larger tunnels by floating a giant wooden ball down them? Like these. See, the ball floats, and since it's blocking most of the tunnel, the water managing to get underneath it is super pressurized from the buildup of water behind it, so it basically hoses the sand and sediment off the bottom of the tunnel.<br />
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I feel that this system might bring us some great insight into what was actually going on in that first sequence of <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>.<br />
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Look what they found in the sewers:<br />
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Swords. Whoops.<br />
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Did you know that Victor Hugo was pals with one of the sewer system engineers, and in consequence his portrayal of the network in <i>Les Mis</i> is entirely geographically correct, and Jean even takes the most direct and efficient route from the barricade to Marius's grandfather's house?<br />
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So all in all, extremely interesting. Smelly, yes, but educational.<br />
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After emerging from the sewer system, I headed up the river a bit to Les Invalides. OH MY GOSH GUESS WHAT IS GOING ON AT LES INVALIDES RIGHT NOW?!?<br />
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An exhibit on the Musketeers. Oh, YEAH.<br /><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Manuscript copy of T3M on your left there. As in, the handwritten first draft. The real thing.<br />
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First edition of first serialized chapter, right here. D'Artagnan riding into town on his horrible decrepit horse right there at the bottom of the third column.<br />
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Aside from my slack-jawed fangirling, my higher brain functions managed to note that it was, in fact, an extremely well-researched and -constructed exhibit. It roughly followed the plot of Alexandre Dumas' three Musketeer novels,* using them as a frame in which to contextualize actual historical content. Like who the actual historical musketeers were and what their uniforms looked like and how they were deployed in military contexts and who was in charge of them, and what Queen Anne's diamond studs would have looked like, and who Milady de Winter might be based on. It was really, really cool. And all about masked prisoners and the political careers of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin and the construction of the Hotel de Ville . . . and, of course, the long life and distinguished military service of the real Captain d'Artagnan.<br />
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So here's a picture of me in the sexiest piece of clothing that has ever been created in all of history or fiction. You can keep your loosened cravats, your wet linen shirts, your swishy capes and long dramatic coats . . . even your stetsons, fedoras, fezes and bow ties. Give me a man in musketeer blue, and I am conquered. And glad to be so.<br />
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At length, I went to explore the rest of Les Invalides, including checking to make sure Napoleon was still there. He still was.<br />
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I have a vague memory of reading about one of the honored daughters of the Shannon family (possibly Lydia?) causing a scene in this very room because she was convinced the tomb was made of chocolate and was determined to eat it or die trying. Well, the girl's got a case. And once the idea has crossed your mind, you can't un-see it. It's totally chocolate. I mean, actually it's marble, but . . .<br />
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And then I went poking around the World Wars, and picked up some cool info about the French Resistance. (Warning: next paragraph is very sad. Skip if necessary, down to the folding motorcycle.)</div>
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The letter reads:<br />
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"Dear parents,<br />
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"My letter will cause you great pain, but I have seen you so full of courage that I don't doubt, you will want to keep it, if only for love of me.<br />
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"In my cell, I suffered from being unable to see you ever again, to never feel upon me your tender care, except from far away. During these eighty-seven days of confinement, I've missed your love.<br />
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"Thank everyone who's been interested in me . . . tell them of my confidence in eternal France. Give big hugs to my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, cousins, Henriette . . .<br />
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"I'm dying for my country. I want a free France and happy French. I am keeping my courage and good humor right up until the end, and I'll sing "Sambre et Meuse" because it was you, my dear little mother, who taught it to me.<br />
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"The soldiers are coming to fetch me. I await their step anxiously. My writing might look shaky, but that's because I have a short pencil. I'm not afraid of death. I'm dying voluntarily for my country. (...) Goodbye, death is calling me. I won't need to be blindfolded, or tied.<br />
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"I love you all. It's hard to die, after all. Thousand kisses!<br />
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"Vive la France!"<br />
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Henri Fertet. He was imprisoned and executed for his activity with the French Resistance. He was sixteen.<br />
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On a much less solemn note, please enjoy this folding motorcycle, dropped in by parachute in a capsule-thing, all ready to go for the invasion. This is the silliest and yet most awesome vehicle ever.</div>
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Also, due to weird formatting, you may be seeing a very large picture of two tourists dancing in the rain in the courtyard of Les Invalides. It's a good picture, even if I can't fix its position or size.</div>
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*The capitalization here is correct. Dumas wrote three novels about musketeers. One of them was called <i>The Three Musketeers</i>, which makes that sentence a little difficult, but there are in fact two sequels, <i>Ten Years After</i> (which I have not read) and <i>The Man in the Iron Mask</i> (which I have).RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-73414930730442225732014-04-23T00:38:00.000-06:002014-04-23T00:38:22.982-06:00Strangers in a Far-Off Land"Well, wasn't it Shakespeare who said that when strangers meet in a far-off land, they should ere long see each other again?"<br />
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"Shakespeare never said that."<br />
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"How do you know?"<br />
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"It's terrible. You just made it up."<br />
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<i>Charade</i><br />
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I had some surprising encounters on my first fully conscious day in Paris.<br /><br />First, I found myself <i>aux Champs-Elysées.</i><br />
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It was <i>sous la pluie</i>, at about twenty minutes to <i>midi</i>. I'm counting it. And there was <i>tous que . . . </i>well . . . <i>tous que j'ai voulu</i>, I guess, because at the end of them was the Orangerie, which is where dead impressionists live. The big attention-grabber is two astonishingly beautiful Monet panoramas, which are like stepping into a fairy kingdom. Sadly, no pictures allowed.<br /><br />I did get a picture of this, though: </div>
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I've never been that enamored of Cezanne. Monet was my Impressionist of choice, mostly because my dad showed me one of his Japanese bridges at the Art Institute in Minneapolis when I was little, and I can still remember the magical instant when my dad, after backing me away from the canvas, asked, "Can you see the bridge?" and then suddenly I could. But this Cezanne really grabbed me. He has something Monet doesn't. He can paint summertime. Not just the colors and textures, but the sound and the smell of it. Looking at this painting felt like those precious moments at camp, when it is perfectly comfortable to be outside (rare moments--outside is generally uncomfortable in some way; that's why we invented inside) and there is no pressing task and you know for certain that you will be young forever and ever.<br /></div>
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Here's a pretty picture of a room full of pretty pictures. It is a selfie, one of which I'm rather proud. Can you spot me?<br /><br />
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<br />Wandering past the Orangerie, I encountered this rather startling sculpture. Those in the know will understand why this resonated with me.<br /><br />
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My next unexpected encounter was while having lunch in the garden (a crepe all stuffed with egg and cheese and mushroom . . . yum). My uninvited guest was a house sparrow, just barely seen here perching on the back of the chair opposite. He wanted to share. I was less enthusiastic.</div>
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Then I dove into the Louvre, and encountered lots and lots of things. I encountered <i>La Liberté, </i>but she was busy <i>guidant le peuple</i> so we didn't get a chance to chat. </div>
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I also encountered my heretofore-unknown namesake, the Empress Ariane:</div>
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And of course I encountered the strange and magnificent pyramid that is the peculiar and compelling liminal hub of the museum. </div>
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Magical things happen in liminal spaces.<br /><br />It's true.<br /><br />Because guess who was there in the crowd?</div>
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I will close with an image of this person about to start on his <i>flambée </i>and extremely rum-soaked <i>crèpe Martinique</i>. </div>
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<br />Like, really rum-soaked. It stung on the way down.<br /><br />(Hey, Word of Wisdom only says I'm not allowed to <i>drink</i> it.)<br />RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-39319366773765449942014-04-21T00:32:00.001-06:002014-04-21T00:32:38.192-06:00April in Paris, or, I Swear I Am Not Making This UpWell, I'm beat.<br /><br />It seems, for all intents and purposes, that the unit of time I'm choosing to call "yesterday" started Saturday morning. I woke up to it in a cute little riverside hotel in Oxford, immediately worried about one thing only: were we gonna make it to Heathrow airport in time for Marjie's plane?*<br /><br />It turns out that yes. As fortune would have it, we walked straight onto a train going directly to Paddington station, without having to change trains in Didcot like I thought. At Paddington, the Heathrow Express was easy to find and quick to board, and the trip took five minutes longer than I'd been counting on. So we made it to the flight in plenty of time.<br /><br />I then had some fun figuring out how to get a rented wheelchair back to its rightful owners. I ended up cutting to the chase and just walking it over to the front door of an employee of the company, who lives just by Heathrow. It was a little odd, but effective.<br /><br />Then back to London, and down to Metrogate to put in my laundry. After fighting with the temperamental machines for a while, I grabbed a Barclay's bike and zipped across the park to see Kiersten, my New Zealander friend who has been holding onto a suitcase for me while I've been galavanting about the countryside. The suitcase belongs to Jo, one of the study abroad students, who overpacked and was facing three weeks of European travel with a massive and weighty suitcase. As I was just going straight to Paris and staying there, I offered to take it with me. Eventually I won't regret that, but . . .<br /><br />So, Kiersten thanked, I hauled the suitcase back to Metrogate House, folded laundry, watched an episode of <i>Agents of SHIELD</i>, and ate a candy bar. Then I hauled self, backpack, purse, and suitcase over to the Victoria underground station, and thence to Victoria coach station (which, it turns out, is a bit of a jaunt). The coach station was as most coach stations are: crowded and uncomfortably seedy. Still, I spent the last of my British change on a couple of hot rolls for my dinner, filled my water bottle, and brushed my teeth before getting on the bus.<br /><br />I was pleasantly impressed with this bus. I've traveled Megabus once before, in the States, and it was not a totally enjoyable experience. Got me where I needed to be, for cheap, but it wasn't a terribly comfortable ride. This bus was nice. The seats were comfy, there was lots of room, and I could put that darn luggage down and let it be someone else's problem. I curled up and went to sleep for an hour, until awoken to go through border control at Dover. Thence, after a bit of waiting, onto my fourth ferry of the trip. I found a hidden window seat, curled up, and went back to sleep again, but I'm by now so paranoid about getting left behind on boats** that I set my alarm for much earlier than I needed to and ended up getting less sleep than I thought. Then back on the bus, resetting my watch for the hour lost crossing the Channel, and back to sleep.<br /><br />I arrived in Paris at 5 a.m. Easter morning. (Or 4 a.m., if you're going by London time.) Then all my baggage and I got to struggle to find the metro station (not as easy a task as I'd been conditioned to think) and navigate the system. In proper Sunday tradition, the line I needed was down for maintenance. So more detours, more train changes, more stairs.<br /><br />Finally, I made it to my correct station, found where I was supposed to be staying, didn't know what apartment number to dial to be let in, discovered I'd left my phone on the bus, tried to get internet to e-mail that I needed to be let in, borrowed a phone off a guy in the street, had call picked up by my host's friend who was just getting home with the dawn, got let in by friend, met host, got shown to apartment. Whew.<br /><br />Checked maps, left apartment, grabbed a <i>pain au chocolat</i> from the bakery on the corner (open on Easter Sunday? Yes! The proprietor was a hijabi, which might explain it . . . hooray for faith diversity) and popped back on the tube to head into the city.<br /><br />Couldn't figure out connecting train. Decided to hoof it; only two stops, right?<br /><br />Well, two stops is a long way in Paris, it seems. But it was a long way along the banks of the Seine on a sunny Easter Sunday, so that worked out nicely. I strolled up the river at my leisure, enjoying the astonishing quiet, all the way to Notre Dame cathedral.<br /><br />I've now decided that the best way to get to know a new city is to walk the river on a Sunday morning, and attend services in the biggest, most tourist-laden church you can find.<br /><br />NDdP was packed, of course, but much less packed than I'd anticipated. I had to queue up to get inside, but the wait wasn't long. Once inside, instead of shuffling round the edges of the church with the other tourists, I squished into the crowd at the back and listened to the service. When it was over and everyone cleared out, I pressed forward to find a seat for the next mass, which started almost immediately. And was presided over by the archbishop/cardinal, with his mitre and little red cap and everything, so that was cool. I'd love to tell you what his sermon was about, but I kind of fell asleep for some of it. No fault of his.<br /><br />(Side note: I've seen my share of cathedrals this year, most of them wonderfully gothic, with some good solid buttresses poking out of the walls to hold the ceiling up. No worries. NDdP's buttresses <i>fly</i>. They're enormous . . . like the bones of a wing . . . and reach out from the building more like spider legs than people legs. Gothic ceilings are impressive, but ND's must be the most impressive of all--not because it's the most beautiful (it's very simple compared to others I've seen), but because that sucker is being held up by physics and prayer, as it should by rights have crushed the walls to powder and glass shards long ago.)<br /><br />The young woman I was sitting next to turned out to be a Korean tourist. My brain was hard put to it. (Switching between French and Korean is head-explodingly difficult.)<br />
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When the service ended, I headed out into the sunshine and walked back to Les Invalides along the opposite bank of the river. Along the way, I found a bench under a tree, where I lay down on my coat and took a nap. I was . . . I kid you not . . . within earshot of a busker playing "La Vie en Rose" on an accordion. I swear I am not making this up.<br /><br />At length, I got back on my feet and continued on my way, crossing some pretty bridges and stopping at an antiques market to buy a cheese sandwich. Then I spent a long time figuring out how to get back down into the métro. I took my train, got off one stop early because I'd seen a grocery store there, found it closed, found my ticket wouldn't let me back on the train, walked up to the next stop (long way) but found a grocery store where I got milk and raviolli and pasta sauce.<br /><br />Once back at the flat, I downed 24 ounces of water and fell asleep at 6 p.m. or thereabouts.<br /><br />So that was my weekend: one long trek of hauling stuff (either self or baggage) across northern Europe. I'm not tired anymore, because I can't get back to sleep, but I still feel like a zombie. It might have something to do with the vast amount of "I'll eat later" I've been doing. I'll get myself around a bowl of porridge and see if that kicks the brain back into gear.<br /><br />_________________________________________<br />
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*For those of you wondering, I've spent the last week hanging out with Marjie, my adopted mom/aunt, and showing her around London and Bath during her spring break.<br /><br />**Had a couple of near misses on the ferries to and from Ireland. And that was on a bus full of people that knew me and would notice if I were missing.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-2962009260961969272014-03-31T14:30:00.001-06:002014-03-31T14:30:36.899-06:00Greenwich: The Times and Sea-sons<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of those weekends . . . the kind where I wander off into the blue without telling anybody, explore London in the company of my own thoughts, and have a marvelous time.<br />
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Friday was Greenwich.<br />
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Greenwich is primarily famed as the defining point of the Prime Meridian, the entirely arbitrary center of the world as you go round from left to right (or right to left).* Here's the line, with Paige standing on it for scale.<br />
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And here is the very official time, along with several other very official measures. So this is exactly what time it was when I took this photo. EXACTLY.<br />
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Greenwich is also famed as the site of a rather good smash-up alien invasion in one of them Thor movies, in this complex that was a palace and then turned into a hospital and then into a college.<br />
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It is split down the middle like that, not for any silly reason like "We needed to put a CGI alien spaceship slicing through it," but for the good and sensible and practical reason that Queen Anne, whose house lies behind, didn't want her view of the Thames obstructed. She still has a clear vista, even though she barely lived in that house a year and is quite dead now in any case.<br />
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She had a point, though. Although it's just down the river from central London, it feels open and airy and very far away from city life. As pleasant a park space as ever I've wandered.<br />
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Although the palace has been revamped quite a few times, it still holds onto some pretty dang breathtaking ceilings in what is straightforwardly enough called the "Painted Hall."<br />
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Queen Anne's house is now used as a gallery to display the collection of the Maritime Museum, which sits just next door. Of particular note was a display of from-life illustrations of World War II. My favorites were these charcoal sketches done by a WREN (whose name is too blurry to make out in the photo, more's the pity) of her colleagues at work. </div>
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I love these. There's so much power in them. None of the women face the viewer; they're too busy fixing things and building things and manning the wireless and winning the war. Maybe they're tired. Maybe they're lonely. Maybe they're scared. But they're getting things done, with their own two hands and the brains in their heads, because somebody's got to do them.<br />
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By this point, I'd fully lost the other members of the party as I delved into the Maritime museum itself.<br />
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I tend to enjoy naval museums, partially because I'm a Navy brat and it's in my blood, partially because of an enormous and beautiful picture book that made me conversant in the management of tall ships when I was about twelve. So I had a good long crawl through this one, and enjoyed myself thoroughly.<br />
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This being a very British naval museum, they have an impressive collection of figureheads.<br />
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I also found this giant map, and on this giant map I found my mission country--one of the three nations I now claim as a home. </div>
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The museum had several fantastic and very sensitively constructed exhibits, including one on the history of the East India Trading Company and another on the history of trans-Atlantic British commerce. Here's an infographic that caught my attention; the widths of the lines represent the number of people who followed that route to settle in North America before about 1750.</div>
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My gosh. I mean, my GOSH. Those skinny lines are all the people necessary to settle and populate the colonies that gave Britain and France such trouble . . . and the huge broad lines are the slaves brought in to make those colonies profitable. All those people, outnumbering the Europeans by an order of magnitude . . . and yet their descendants are technically classed as 'minority.' So many thousands of people who didn't live long enough to have children.</div>
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Also of note are Lord Nelson's bloody socks and trousers. Man, the poor guy bled to death surrounded by souvenir hunters. First the bullet, now the poor man's socks?**<br />
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And as one more comforting blast from the past, look what I found in the entryway! Awww, he memories.<br />
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Wandering through town afterwards, I stumbled across another museum. Here, for your edification and entertainment, are photographs from the world's only Museum of Fans. </div>
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I learned all kinds of things . . . what different parts of fans are called, and different styles, and what the different parts are made from, and all about the illustrious guilds of fanmakers (did you know they had guilds?) . . .<br />
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It seems that painting pictures to be mounted on fans is, in fact, a thing. A rather prestigious thing. </div>
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There was another by Gaugin, but I didn't get a photo of it. </div>
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Up next: the London Transport Museum, Southwark Cathedral (the behind-the-scenes tour), and other meanderings.<br />
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*This is ignoring the undeniable fact that left and right are entirely arbitrary themselves, when we're talking about a globe in which "up" and "down" are also arbitrary.<br />
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**If ever, ever, EVER a blood-stained piece of my clothing goes on display in a museum, I beg everyone reading this to burn that museum down.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-20141734896174088912014-03-20T17:47:00.000-06:002014-03-20T17:54:07.299-06:00Sunny Times in Stratford<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Tuesday night, in keeping with my strange new addiction for live theater, Jo, Jarom, Ryan and I all went to see <i>Spamalot</i>, which, in keeping with the lyrics, didn't suck.</div>
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It was silly, it was juvenile, it was a ton of fun. I was smiling so hard by the end that I could barely whistle for "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."</div>
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In the morning, we dragged our zombified selves onto the bus to head out for our day in Stratford-upon-Avon. First stop was Anne Hathaway's house (Shakespeare's wife, not the Academy-award-winning actress).<br />
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It was quite nice, but not near as much fun as what came next.</div>
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Welcome to Mary Arden's farm. Mary Arden is our man Bill's mother, and her just-outside-of-town farmstead has been restored as a functional, period-correct farm, complete with heritage livestock.<br />
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One of the Cheerios and I found this lovely piece hiding in the woods:<br />
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The Green Man. Appropriate for the first week of spring.</div>
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I also made friends with a cow, whose kind attentions ended up doing some genuine damage to my hand.<br />
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Meanwhile, Saren and Katie made a new friend as well. (Under the supervision of a competent falconer. They were in very little danger of having their sculls crushed by eagle owl talons.)</div>
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No one ended up making friends with these pigs, but I must include a picture anyway because CURLY PIGS!</div>
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And suddenly the name 'hedgehog' makes so much more sense.</div>
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I stopped into the kitchen and chatted with the ladies making fish cakes and pease porridge for lunch/dinner/noonsies. This looks like a REALLY fun kitchen to play in.<br />
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The coolest part, though, was a conversation I struck up with a shepherd named Joe. Joe told me all about the sheep he was handling, and let me take one back to their stall/paddock thing and take off its rope halter, and then took me back to one of the work sheds and let me help myself to all the wool I could carry.</div>
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That's right. I walked away from this farm with two big bags of Cotswold wool to play with, for free. Thanks, Shepherd Joe!<br />
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Washing this wool so it no longer smells like sheep is now on my to-do list. I will need to borrow a bathtub. I'll also end up needing to borrow someone's carding brushes eventually. Ashley Aedo, got any lying around?<br />
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At any rate, we then headed into the town itself to see Bill's daughter's husband's house, Bill's parents' house, and Bill's next-door-neighbor's house.<br />
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Interesting point in here was the walls. They're covered in linen that's been painted or printed. Which apparently is period-correct. Who knew?</div>
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Although Bill's own house was razed to the ground by a later tenant who was sick to death of living in The Shakespeare House, the gardens where it used to be have been recreated. Well, partially recreated, partially filled with cool statuary.<br />
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Of particular note is a mulberry tree. See, King James I gave Shakespeare a mulberry tree, which he planted in the garden behind his house. The disgruntled tenant mentioned earlier chopped it down because he was sick of people sneaking in to steal cuttings. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.<br />
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So that tree is obviously gone. Another one is there now, planted in I think the 1930s in memory of the first one.</div>
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About four years ago, there was a major excavation of the foundations of the house. It was incredibly fruitful . . . until they made it to the mulberry tree. And then they stopped. And they'll pick it up again when the tree dies.<br />
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Odd, that. It's a tree. It's not even the original tree. And yet, in reverence for this tree, we'll put this dig on hold for what could be another hundred years. I think this demonstrates the kind of patience that only a 1500-year-old civilization could produce. I can't imagine Americans stopping a dig of Shakespeare's house for a mulberry tree that isn't even THE mulberry tree. Good on you, Brits.<br />
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Upstairs in the neighbor's house was a very cute kid-friendly exhibit of artifacts and props, centered around the 10 most popular Shakespeare characters (according to the poll). The artwork accompanying these characters was freakin' adorable, so I include it here.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's hard to see the details, so let me just point out that Hamlet is Tweeting #ToBeOrNotToBe on his phone, Henry V has an England Football scarf around his neck, Beatrice's bodice is decorated with a 'Girl Power' symbol and Mercutio has little sunglasses hanging from his belt. </td></tr>
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At length, when all the houses had been visited, I took a walk down the Avon.</div>
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Interesting sights along the way included BYU students chatting on a tree stump: </div>
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. . . and another BYU student in a cute and picturesque rowboat that turned out to be christened "Ophelia." Not the name I would have chosen for a boat . . .</div>
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My stroll terminated at All Saints, where our friend lies at rest.<br />
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And there he stays, because he cursed it so they can't bury him in Westminster with all the other writers. Seriously, that's the reason. Don't mess with poets, man.<br />
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I happened to stumble in just in time for evening service, which happened in a little side chapel to stay out of the way of the tourists. I ended up having a very nice chat with the vicar before wandering back into town.<br />
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On my way up the high street, I stopped at Lush and got myself some too-expensive but delicious and lovely lip stuff. I also asked to grab a sample of lotion, to put on my cow-damaged hand, and the nice shop assistant gave me a generous scoop in a little jar. Then I wandered some more and got kind of lost and then got un-lost and finally settled in at a pub to eat some dinner and read a while. Server: super nice. I'm firmly convinced that Stratford has more nice people per square mile than anywhere else in Britain. Part of this must, of course, be that it's a tourist town, but my best moments (with Joe the Shepherd and the vicar) were kind of behind-the-scenes-ish.<br />
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The evening was devoted to Henry IV, Part 1, otherwise known as "How You Likin' That Stolen Crown NOW, Bolingbroke?" (Because I'm still on Richard's side. Because David Tennant. Shut up.) It was a tremendously good show, but coming as it did at the end of a very long day, it did not enjoy the full consciousness of its BYU audience for its entire duration. Darn it, though, we tried. And then we stumbled to the bus like zombies and made it back to London at 1 a.m. and then I had to get up and teach <i>The Importance of Being <strike>Awake</strike> Earnest </i>in the morning. And then I slept all afternoon when I should have been writing quizzes. Well, at least I blogged.</div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-82875658007795623162014-03-12T17:50:00.003-06:002014-03-12T17:50:50.860-06:00North Trip, Day 3: Come On with the RainHere's one thing I learned on my mission: on your darkest days, all you really need is an umbrella for a prop and someone to sing "Singin' in the Rain" with you. Here's looking at you, Rachel Margaret Ogelvie. (BTW, saw your clan tartan in a tourist shop today. It is stripey. In case you were wondering.)<br />
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Today is Edinburgh.<br />
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Of course, I've already been. 'Twas old news. We started at Edinburgh Castle, where I promptly lost everyone else (as usual) and went to see all the stuff I didn't see last time, which was a lot of stuff. I also re-saw some stuff, including the Stone of Scone* which I must have just walked past without noticing last time, despite its being in a glass case and having a guard and all.<br />
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Anyway, after giving the castle a good once-over, I trotted down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace, where Isabel and I had arrived just fifteen minutes too late to get in. This time was better: I was only ten minutes too late. Rrrrgh. Well, progress.<br />
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To comfort myself, I wandered into the Museum of Childhood, and then wandered out again because it was kind of creepy . . . an empty museum full of dolls and toys. Something in there has to be possessed. So instead I wandered up to the National Museum of Scotland, which contained lots of non-creepy things like skeletons and coffins. Sadly, I only had half an hour in there before they closed, but I enjoyed my half-hour immensely.<br />
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(Scotland takes credit for John Muir. Well, more power to 'em.)<br />
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Wondering what I was going to do with myself until bedtime, I happened upon a theater. It happened to be hosting a touring production of <i>Singin' in the Rain</i>. They happened to offer ten-pound student rush tickets. I happened to have my student ID handy. So that worked out nicely.<br />
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I had dinner with some of the study abroad folks at a very tasty burger pub, where I had a cheese burger (quite literally. It was a grilled patty of cheese on a bun. So good.) and formulated sad theories about <i>Singin' in the Rain</i> to help Tiffany achieve her party trick of crying at will.** And then I went to the theatre.<br />
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It made me miss my parents, which is not something that happens a lot anymore, globe-trotter that I am. But <i>S'itR</i> is a my-parents thing. They would have loved it. Nothing brings a smile to your face like watching Don Lockwood kick great sheets of water out into the audience like Shamu hitting the Splash Zone. Leena was fabulous, and got her own number, which was the sort of bad singing that can only be done by a really, really good singer. Cosmo was adorable, Kathy's voice was fabulous, and after the first round of bows everybody came out to do one more rain-soaked number. Everybody everybody. The whole cast, with silver umbrellas that opened to reveal brightly-colored undersides, kicked and splashed and got soaked and had a grand old time. I grinned until my jaw fell off and I had to ask the person sitting in front of me to please pick it up and pass it back.<br />
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And as it is now ten minutes to midnight, I bid you all a very good morning, and off I go to bed.<br />
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*Pronounced 'Stone of Scoone,' unless you read Terry Pratchett, in which case it is pronounced just like it's spelled, otherwise the joke doesn't work.<br />
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**Saddest theory: Leena, in her rage at being publicly humiliated, kills Cosmo after the premiere. Even I almost started crying at that thought.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-61761258419773908782014-03-12T13:00:00.001-06:002014-03-12T13:00:35.342-06:00North Trip, Day 2: Lakes and Poets<div class="p1">
Post-dated: this is yesterday's blog. You've been warned.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Three adventures today: the Preston temple, Hill Top Farm, and Dove Cottage.</div>
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The temple was as temples generally are: clean and white and quiet and lovely. In the midst of this clean white quiet loveliness, I had an experience faintly reminiscent of a Marx Brothers movie, in which I changed my clothes no fewer than six times as the temple workers kept coming up with different things they needed me to do. It was a bit chaotic, in a serene whispers-only kind of way, but I got to do a lot and that was nice. And props to Sister Ford, the sweet lady who got me some antacids or something when she saw that I was in such pain from breakfast that I was finding it difficult to stand up. </div>
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After ending up in most every nook and cranny of the temple, I got piled back on the bus and off we went into Lake District National Park . . . up to Hilltop, home of Miss Beatrix Potter. I cannot even tell you how lovely it was. The day has been absolutely cloud-free from dawn to dusk, so the cottage was absolutely saturated with sunshine. The house and garden are all fairly well just as she left them, so much so that some of her illustrations match up like photographs. The rhubarb was just coming up in what was most decidedly Mr. McGregor's garden, though the local bunnies (of whom I saw at least four) are now kept out by chicken wire rather than badly-fitted gates. </div>
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Miss Beatrix Potter. Upon the capital made from her writings, she purchased a little cottage in the hills just for her, where she lived and wrote and drew and gardened and, in general, did exactly as she pleased. I would be very glad of such a life. </div>
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The students had to be herded back into the bus like recalcitrant sheep; sunshine and warm, fresh breezes are not easy things to give up. But in the end we got them all on board, and down we went to our next stop: Dove Cottage, the home turf of Romantic poetry, the 1970s Haarlem of the 18th Century. </div>
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I want to live there. </div>
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I want to light the coal fires at the cottage in the morning, and man the desks with my drop spindle for entertainment when it's quiet, and go hiking in the hills to read poetry in the sunshine, and explore the lakes in my kayak on my days off. This place is like Minnesota: a lake-filled, tree-filled place, where summer tourists are just another sort of fauna and where the winters are long and deep. There are sheep here, rather than dairy cattle, and big impressive hills, rather than little hardly-noticeable ones, but . . . it <i>tastes</i> right, if that makes any sense. This is a proper place for a water-baby like me. </div>
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I will e-mail the directors as soon as I have internet again, and ask their permission to live there. Jenna wishes to as well; I don't know if that makes us buddies or rivals. But she's much more of a Wordsworth scholar than I am, so she'd better merit a chance at the internship, and if she obtains it and I do not, I won't be able to begrudge her. Her face just glowed with pleasure in that place. </div>
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And now we're at a hostel by the lakeside, and I write this entry as I wait for it to be my turn at dinner. Big breakfast = morning queasiness = tiny lunch = ravenous RoseE by dinner. And tomorrow, to Edinburgh, and the Heart of Mid-Lothian. </div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-21873385659980882912014-03-10T14:05:00.001-06:002014-03-10T14:05:33.602-06:00North Trip, Day 1: Springtime<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">― </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2041.Frances_Hodgson_Burnett" style="background-color: white; color: #666600; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Frances Hodgson Burnett</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3186437" style="color: #666600; text-decoration: none;">The Secret Garden</a></i><br />
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Spring happened this weekend.<br /><br />Britannia seems to be raising her face up to the sky, shaking the rain out of her hair, and laughing.<br /><br />Every public park is sprinkled with crowds of people, who have popped up on the lawns like flowers, and flowers, which have popped up in the landscaping beds like crowds of people. There is sunshine above and there are daffodils below.<br /><br />Saturday, I had every intention of taking a walk in the country with a local tour guide. My Saturday morning brain being what it is, I got on the wrong train. Three times. So I gave up and went to play in Portobello Road instead. Then, upon my arrival home, I was swept into a group doing the best thing that could possibly be done on a sunny Saturday in springtime: renting paddleboats on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.<br /><br />Sunday involved a bit of semi-deliberate getting lost, just to be out in the sunshine some more.<br /><br />And today, Monday, we launched our week-long North trip.<br /><br />Today, we visited the Wedgwood Factory, where we saw craftspersons making beautiful pottery. As usual, I dove into the museum (which was very informative and contained a vast amount of beautiful ceramic everything), and as usual, everyone else magically disappeared. Dr. O. eventually came and fished me out, as we'd apparently decided to leave 1.5 hours earlier than planned.<br /><br />I keep following the directions exactly re: where to be and when, and plans keep changing behind my back while I'm distracted by museums and/or forests. It has happened at Stonehenge, at Chawton House, at the British Museum, at Charles Dickens's house, and now at the Wedgwood factory. It's getting annoying. Also, why do people keep hunting for me when I have a phone and they know it? Sigh.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm now watching QI XL, <i>legally</i>. No pictures today, as the internet is being iffy. But remind me to tell you all about Chawton House, about the Drowned Man, about teaching Byron, and about coffee-sipping guitar-strumming hippie church.RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-11825016777512553552014-03-05T15:01:00.001-07:002014-03-05T15:01:38.705-07:00Dieu et Mon DroitThis blog is all about God and Government.<br />
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Let's tackle government first.<br />
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Today's first stop was Runnymede, which certainly was runny . . . the country has yet to entirely dry out, so we ended up with muddy boots.</div>
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Runnymede, for those of you who don't know, is where they signed the Magna Carta, which was the lords laying down the law upon King John. It's mostly about boring things like inheritance procedure, but it's important because somebody bossed the king, documented it, and got away with it.<br />
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And all of that is very important and historic and stuff. But the little gazebo you see in the picture, and the plaques and signage, were all paid for by the American Bar Association, which is not about to let you forget it. It's carved into this site in like six different places. A little ways off is, I kid you not, a memorial to President John F. Kennedy . . . who also signed stuff, so I guess that's why he's there . . . brought to you by the American Bar Association. If I hadn't seen a copy of the Magna Carta last week, I'd be very worried that it might have been re-titled "The American Bar Association Presents the Magna Carta."<br />
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Well, lest we Yanks get all uppity with our Parliamentarian ways, our next stop was Windsor Castle.</div>
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'Twas the most beautiful thing in the whole wide anywhere.</div>
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Sadly, they didn't let us take pictures inside, so I cannot show you the palace's amazing china collection, or the amazing elaborate all-but-fully-functional doll's house, or the Order of the Garter on EVERYTHING. (Apparently the Order of the Garter is to Windsor Castle what the American Bar Association is to Runnymede.) I got to visit the grave of Henry VIII his-bad-self, and Wife 3 Jane Seymour, the one who died in childbirth and should be bally grateful for it, because it could have been a lot worse. I also saw the bullet that killed Admiral Nelson, because in the midst of a naval battle with splinters flying everywhere and wounded men lying screaming on the slippery, bloody decks and the ship pitching underneath them and Admiral Nelson bleeding out all over everything, some enterprising soul thought, "Hey, I'd better keep track of this bullet! It's historical!"<br />
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Also saw that lovely portrait of Princess Elizabeth that I've used in this blog before. It really was cool to see in real life. I didn't recognize it at first, and my brain was all "I know that person. She's got to be a Boleyn, right? The round hood, the square neckline, the teardrop pearls . . . too young to be Anne, though . . . and a redhead . . . oh, hey, it's Elizabeth!"<br />
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Here's some more castle-y-ness. It's all very crenelated. The sky was also ridged clouds from horizon to horizon, so I predict some nasty rain within the next two days. </div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvQrrb93DVI/UxePbxtfYCI/AAAAAAAAA7o/JsaV9mUC_zo/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EvQrrb93DVI/UxePbxtfYCI/AAAAAAAAA7o/JsaV9mUC_zo/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a>My favorite part of the castle, the only part I'd actually like to live in, was this great little housing complex for the choir boys and their families. So cute, and full of signs that actual people with actual little kids live here. Just . . . here. In Windsor castle. And they leave their bicycles on the royal lawn sometimes.</div>
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In addition to being a politically charged day, it has also been a day of holy godliness. Yesterday, in keeping with the finest tradition, Jo and I got our kicks by making way too much gumbo and chasing it with way too much cake.<br />
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And then we woke up in the morning and it was Ash Wednesday. We didn't have hangovers, but I was groggy from staying up too late getting in one last splurge of Facebook, so that's something. (By the bye, I'm off Facebook for Lent, so hopefully this blog will be much more faithfully updated. I'll still check messenger, though, so if you need me, call.)<br />
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In honor of the holy season, we visited Chalfont St. Giles, where Thomas Grey wrote his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" and reminded us that "the paths of glory lead but to the grave." </div>
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And then we stopped in at John Milton's cute little cottage, where he went to just get away from it all.*<br />
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Again, no photos of the inside, sorry. :( But there were some very very cool, very very old editions of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and one not very old but very cool one open for white-gloved perusal, complete with the passionate watercolors of William Blake.</div>
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For visitors' entertainment and edification, the statuary in the garden re-enacts the Fall of Man.<br />
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We arrived home from our travels just in time for me to hustle over to St. Mary Abbot's for Ash Wednesday service. I've never actually attended such a service, though I've heard glowing reports from my bff Emily, who is much more knowledgeable about mainstream Christianity than I am. I'm really glad I went. Lovely music, lovely-smelling incense, lovely smiles and handshakes from folks, lovely and needful fresh perspective on the Atonement. Part of the service included a read-through of the Ten Commandments, with a pause after each one so I could admit to myself and to God the ways in which I have violated and am still violating that command. It was some pretty brutal soul-searching, there in that dark little gothic church in Kensington.<br />
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The Reverend Jenny (yaay female clergy!) spoke on the woman taken in adultery . . . about her humiliation and her vulnerability. And she said something that is now lingering in my head: Through the grace of Christ, I am more than the sum total of my failures. I like that. Really, my failures are all I have to offer to God . . . all my attempts at goodness that didn't pan out. And hey, I've got lots and lots of those. But I'm not going to become better by myself. Not even a little bit. And it is, in some way, nice to let my improvement be the job of someone qualified to perform it. Christ makes me better. I'm just along for the ride.<br />
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So now my forehead is marked with ashes. I haven't planned my lesson for tomorrow, or graded the quizzes for Henry IV, or written the quizzes for <i>Hard Times </i>or <i>Tess.</i> But now it is bedtime. I have walked and worshipped, bantered and blogged. I have done what I can today. Tomorrow, I will do what I can do tomorrow, masha'Allah. And thus it is. Amen.**<br />
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*And by "all," I mean "the bubonic plague," not "the stress of modern life." #twentyfirstcenturyproblems<br />
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**This spiritual insight is brought to you by the American Bar Association, the Order of the Garter, and the letter T.</div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-87476144030233125892014-03-03T16:29:00.000-07:002014-03-03T16:29:05.918-07:00A Night to Remember"Did you kiss a boy?!?" demanded my flatmates, when I announced that it was the best night ever.<br /><br />No, darlings, I did not. And quite frankly, any boy would have to be a heck of a kisser to beat tonight.<br /><br />What was tonight?<br /><br />Tonight was Feminist Home Evening: London Edition.<br /><br />
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Tonight was dinner at the Savoy Hotel.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wSo9grDQCZE/UxULk7qtY7I/AAAAAAAAA50/aAodJ6U-nuk/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wSo9grDQCZE/UxULk7qtY7I/AAAAAAAAA50/aAodJ6U-nuk/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a><br /><br />Tonight was getting cheerily drunk on virgin margaritas and mojitos.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U4Ov75P3pxI/UxULGfMB7CI/AAAAAAAAA5c/gRcsW7sAcjw/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U4Ov75P3pxI/UxULGfMB7CI/AAAAAAAAA5c/gRcsW7sAcjw/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w-AyqdoxWZs/UxULNlVDNhI/AAAAAAAAA5k/uOE7W4RXdFY/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w-AyqdoxWZs/UxULNlVDNhI/AAAAAAAAA5k/uOE7W4RXdFY/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Tonight was the most beautiful and delicious piece of fish I have ever been served, which I swooned over when I wasn't stealing a bite of Lisa's raviolis or Cadence's risotto.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-paiC0Y4EkzQ/UxULb2tkUiI/AAAAAAAAA5s/wiYtfrtDHag/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-paiC0Y4EkzQ/UxULb2tkUiI/AAAAAAAAA5s/wiYtfrtDHag/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Tonight was staying for dessert, which included a crème brulée that tasted like heaven caught fire, an apple/rhubarb crumble that was so juicy I wanted to drink it, and this thing, which is the bastard love child of a cream puff and an ice cream sandwich:</div>
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Tonight was extraordinary puppetry, sound design, and storytelling from the front row of the balcony.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WNnr5o6fNMQ/UxUL9jkVVxI/AAAAAAAAA6M/FNx2ikS8wKQ/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WNnr5o6fNMQ/UxUL9jkVVxI/AAAAAAAAA6M/FNx2ikS8wKQ/s1600/ST150F" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Tonight was a very, very good night. </div>
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RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-18277083714532163932014-03-01T15:22:00.001-07:002014-03-01T15:22:13.553-07:00Walks, Wanders, and World War IIToday was a long day, feet-speaking.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It started at what should have been 8:30 and kinda wasn't, because I'm bad at making myself leave the flat on the right time for getting to anything. My flatmates were headed to the High Street Kensington station. I, being contrary, went in the opposite direction to South Kensington, which is a slightly longer walk but two stations closer to where we needed to go. Which was Westminster.</div>
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This is the old part of the Houses of Parliament, used primarily for laying people in state and allowing tourists to take at least one photo on their tour-of-Parliament day. The ceiling's pretty dang cool.<br /><br />The rest of the building is much, much cooler, but for that you'll have to Google. Suffice to say: gilt. Paintings. Heraldry. Beautiful woodwork. Statues. Benches on which we were not allowed to sit. House of Lords: Red. House of Commons: Green. Monarchy: Tudor rose. Parliament: Beaufort portcullis. Pomp and ceremony: in spades. Political debates peppered with petty name-calling and various instances of physical violence: oh, go on then.<br /><br />'Twas pretty cool.<br /><br />But the day was not over! After touring Parliament, we braved the crowds (getting thicker with the warmer weather) to do this week's Walk and see some cool stuff. For instance, we found this cool new memorial to the women of World War II.<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1x9laIdN500/UxJSNbv8UPI/AAAAAAAAA40/jH5JPqIxlI8/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1x9laIdN500/UxJSNbv8UPI/AAAAAAAAA40/jH5JPqIxlI8/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a>It was just outside the horse guards, where, as advertised, some honest-to goodness horses were standing guard. They had people in silly hats on their backs. We also wandered past a Banqueting Hall, a statue of Charles I (folks are still really kinda proud of themselves for beheading this guy), an imperial arch, and the capital of France.<br /><br />Or, at least, where the capital of France was when Charles de Gaulle was running things from over the channel. They've put a statue of him across from the building, so he can remember where his house is.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yJS_LZMtX7g/UxJSWt7MlyI/AAAAAAAAA5E/moutk2W4OoU/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yJS_LZMtX7g/UxJSWt7MlyI/AAAAAAAAA5E/moutk2W4OoU/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a>Speaking of finding one's house, and World War II, and other such, our next stop was the Churchill War Rooms.<br /><br />(In between these two stops, I hiked up to Leicester Square to see if I could snag a ticket for the last night of <i>One Man, Two Gov'nors</i>. Turns out I couldn't. So then I hiked back down. There was some walking. That's okay, though, right? I can walk forever and ever. I'm tough.)<br /><br />So the War Rooms are where Churchill and his staff camped out during the Blitz, keeping track of everything on a primitive GPS known as "a giant map pinned to the wall with pins in it." It's a little warren of meeting rooms and basic housing, plus one super-secret telephone to the White House disguised as the only proper bathroom in the facility.<br /><br />The parts of the complex that weren't restored have been made into a Churchill museum, assembled by the Imperial War Museum (which is made up of folks that know a thing or two about museums, believe you me). The man was a great speechwriter. He was also kind of full of himself and seems to have given the poor typists merry hell, but a heck of a great speechwriter.<br /><br />I caved here and finally bought something from a gift shop: a bottle of dandelion and burdock soda. Yaay, wartime ration treats! It was actually pretty tasty.<br /><br />After a good wander through the War Rooms, I teamed up with Ashlyn and Tyler to hit Camden Market, where Tyler hadn't been, Ashlyn had been but wanted to check out some brooches, and I wanted to go to get a cup of tea at my favorite tea shop. It is still the very best tea shop.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nHFbXOcTVlE/UxJSbEtEanI/AAAAAAAAA5M/lTrDuQxrbC0/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nHFbXOcTVlE/UxJSbEtEanI/AAAAAAAAA5M/lTrDuQxrbC0/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a><br />
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We also discovered Ashlyn's compelling and bizarre love of antique suitcases.<br /><br />So after a good wander, and a hike up the road to find an ATM, and a hike back to the market to buy shirts (Tyler's, not mine) and an umbrella (finally found one for 3 pounds . . . and now it will never rain again), and a hike to find a useful bus station, and a hike from the bus's drop-off back to the house, I am curled up in my bed and wondering, "Why do my legs feel all funny?"<br />RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-62817931866421895642014-02-27T07:55:00.001-07:002014-02-27T07:55:51.104-07:00RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-46880107746463398762014-02-26T13:44:00.001-07:002014-02-26T13:46:51.317-07:00Sea and Sky, Wind and Words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So last week was our first overnight trip. It ranged about southewest England. It got a little wet, but not nearly as wet as we'd been dreading. And it took me through some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life.</div>
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We started with the small fry: Glastonbury Abbey.<br />
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As you can see, there isn't too much left. Arthur and Gwenivere* are supposed to be buried here, but they got misplaced somewhere along the way. Which is odd. You'd think, in the ranking of "Things I should keep track of," that King Arthur's bones would be up there with "my keys" and not down around "that tube of Chapstick whose flavor I didn't really like anyway."<br />
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It's 8:00 p.m. Do you know where your semi-mythical British monarchs are?<br />
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Moving right along.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k7bv772wrQY/Uwh0Q9CcPJI/AAAAAAAAA0U/3jotrwXySpo/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k7bv772wrQY/Uwh0Q9CcPJI/AAAAAAAAA0U/3jotrwXySpo/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a>Tintagel Castle. Once the home of the kings of Cornwall, back when Cornwall had kings. It is now the most beautiful, wild, terrifying, intense, magnificent place. The remains of the castle are perched on the rocks at the edge of the sea. The waves crash dramatically, way down below. The gulls circle forever, laughing their contempt at the futile dreams of mortal men. And the wind, the wind, the inexorable remorseless wind, pounds against the pilgrims and goes howling through the stones. </div>
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Uther Pendragon, magically disguised as Gorlois, came here one dark and stormy night to seduce Gorlois's wife Igraine. After being there, I believe it. It's the sort of place where that sort of thing would happen. </div>
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Magic, Zina taught me, happens in liminal spaces; the points where worlds almost touch. Tintagel is one of those places. Sea wars with sky, air with earth. The dusky grass clinging to the castle's overgrown pavements is fierce in its humble tenacity. There are no gift shops here, no guided tours, no <i>now</i>. Just <i>then. </i>Or maybe just <i>always</i>. </div>
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I will wander Tintagel in my dreams for a long time yet. Maybe Igraine does, too. And Amalthea. And all the deep-eyed women who stood in crumbling castles at the edge of the sea and watched their destinies come to devour them. </div>
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There's a funny thing about poetry.<br />
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The funny thing is that the kinds of places that produce it also produce some inconvenient side effects, like muddy boots. </div>
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And sweaty backs and cold noses and general exhaustion. </div>
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We stayed the night at the Hotel Victoria in New Quay (pronounced Key, for reasons known only to the Cornish and to God). Obviously BYU's definition of proper, economic accommodations is a little different from mine. This place was a PALACE.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here Jo freaks out at the size of our room, which boasts . . . I'm not even kidding . . . an antique dressing-table and a wardrobe.</td></tr>
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I spent a long time doing the hot tub-sauna-swimming pool loop, cooking the weariness and the poetry out of my bones. Jo spent a long time at the badly-tuned grand piano in the lobby, doing an impromptu concert for the twenty or so people hanging out there. Tyler holed up in a pub to watch Olympic curling. Gabe discovered that the elevator is haunted. The person in the room next door snored like a sawmill. Everybody ate too much at all-you-can-eat-and-then-some breakfast. It was quite a night.</div>
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Bright and early, we packed ourselves back onto the bus and continued southwest until we could go no farther, and I stood at Land's End in my Land's End jacket.**</div>
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Land's End is extremely beautiful, but it was sunny outside and so I felt much less inclined to wax rhapsodic and break my heart over nothing at all than I had been at Tintagel. </div>
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Our cheery and sunshiney day continued as we headed back up the coast to a real, proper beach. And shimmering across the water was my new favorite island: St. Michael's Mount.</div>
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St. Michael's Mount, for those of you who may not know, is the home of James, Baron St. Levan, and his family. It's been open to the public since the 50s, and the baron's actual family tend to actually live elsewhere while the National Trust maintains and displays the castle. It's one of those "You absolutely can come home and kick us all out whenever you want, on the understanding that you won't actually do it" kinds of things.<br />
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The castle is a little inconvenient to get to, and this is coming from a girl who hiked up to Tintagel yesterday. St. Michael's mount is technically an island. Except at low tide, when it becomes a peninsula, thanks to a cobbled road that rises from the water like magic.***</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--UJHcmST1x0/Uwh1Zu-hw4I/AAAAAAAAA1s/riW88P2kqiw/s1600/ST150F" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--UJHcmST1x0/Uwh1Zu-hw4I/AAAAAAAAA1s/riW88P2kqiw/s1600/ST150F" height="240" width="320" /></a>We arrived just a bit too soon for the causeway to be terribly useful, so we reached the island by troat. Or by buck. It was a boat with tires, or a truck with propellors.**** It was cool. Since the water was already nearly gone, this trip was a nice truck ride that included a seaside cruise of about fifteen seconds. </div>
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This site is, according to some, supposed to be a point of origin for the stories of Jack the Giant Killer. Was there a giant, or just a bossy local lord? No way to know. But that magical causeway could put to shame any three giant beanstalks you might mention. </div>
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The castle itself is just the cutest, sunniest, snuggest, most charming and well-appointed little castle you could ever hope to see. The rooms are all small and well-furnished and comfortable. It's got the requisite study, library, dining hall, and private chapel. The views are astonishing in every direction. If it was once the home of an evil giant (or local lord or whatever), I must praise his most excellent taste. I would be perfectly happy to live there forever.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goodbye, St. Michael's! Remember me!</td></tr>
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Alas, we had other places to be, and in haste. We had a whirlwind tour of the castle, a quickish clamber back over the causeway (those of us with the proper education making <i>Scarlet Pimpernel</i> references with every step), and a mad scramble back into the bus. Time for our final stop: Exeter Cathedral. </div>
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Not gonna lie: the cathedrals are starting to blur together at this point. Maybe they'd be easier to keep track of if I were more faithful in my blogging. And at least they've all got lots of history and interesting points of variation and are all just magnificent. I keep thinking how much more befuddled I'd be if I were doing a study abroad across Utah and Idaho and visiting a new stake center every week. I love my faith, but architecture is not our strongest point.<br />
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Anyway, the real high point of Exeter Cathedral isn't even in the cathedral, but in the library adjacent. It was brought in by a bishop, passed over for gifting to one of the big universities, ignored for centuries and there it still is, nearly as good as new: <i>Codex Exoniensis</i>, the Exeter Book.</div>
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What is this book, you ask? Just one of only four remaining books of Anglo-Saxon literature. Only the largest volume of Anglo-Saxon poetry in the world. Only the origin text of the Riddles in the Dark. <i>THE</i> Exeter Book. And I saw it.<br />
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Ryan remarked later, laughing at me a little, that no one had yet seen me so happy. He might be right.<br />
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*My brain doesn't want to spell today. Guenivere. Gwenyfar. Jenny.<br />
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**Shoutout for Land's End Clothing: I have been in rain, snow, wind, and hail on this trip. I have splashed through mud and been knocked off my feet by wind. But no part of me covered by my Land's End jacket has been cold or wet for one minute of that time. It's true what they say: there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad equipment.<br />
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***It doesn't rise out of the water. The water recedes and exposes it. But you know what I mean. The sight's about as dramatic as the reveal of Hamunaptra in <i>The Mummy</i>.<br />
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**** 'Buck Troat' would be a great name for a fictional detective. </div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8724259596236773728.post-30320023508676767962014-02-22T13:46:00.000-07:002014-02-22T13:46:16.490-07:00Blenheim Palace and Oxford (for lack of a cleverer title, which is why I'm not at Oxford right now)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So . . . Blenheim Palace.<br /></div>
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Think Downton Abbey, only more . . . Downton-Abbey-ish. And still going strong.<br /><br />'Tis the honest-to-goodness home of an honest-to-goodness duke, namely John Spencer-Churchill, the 11th Duke of Marlborough. His wife is a Duchess (though not the 11th, as she's Wife #4 and thus would be at least Duchess #14), his sons are Lords or Marquesses, and his daughters are Ladies. One of his middle names is Vanderbilt, in memory of where the money to keep this family going came from, two generations back.<br /><br />The first duke got the money for the house as a gift from Parliament on his victory at the battle of Blenheim, which can't have been terribly important in the long run, but was probably dramatic at the time (as recorded by the many extremely large tapestries hanging about the house). The family remained of the military persuasion: the house was volunteered as a convalescent hospital during WWI . . .<br />
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. . . and was the birthplace and childhood vacation spot of Winston Churchill. The room where he was born is very clearly labeled as such, and was full of glowing praise for his accomplishment of so daring a feat. I had to hunt for five minutes before I found his mother's name. It was Jeannie. Apparently she was present on the occasion, too. But hey, kudos to Winston Churchill for being born . . . and two months early, too! Such a precocious child.<br /><br />The real showpiece of this palace is the grounds. They're magnificent . . . beautiful rolling sheep-grazed hills and massive old trees in every direction. We had a little less than an hour in which to explore, which was not enough, but dang it was lovely to just be walking in the countryside. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dangers of a Country Walk.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crossing a flooded cattle gate . . . we were at risk of re-enacting some scenes from <i>Tess</i>, but thankfully most of those of delicate constitution were wearing shiny new Hunter wellies, so no one had to be carried.<br /></td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;">The other truly extraordinary sight Blenheim had to offer was the library.</span></div>
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Really, truly, honest to goodness, this has to be where the <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> library comes from. It's breathtaking. Literally. I gasped. And then started scheming how I could get a job here, so I could just live among the grounds, and the books, and the paintings, forever and ever, world without end.<br /><br />But the time was gone, and I had to fly back to the bus. My heart broke a little.<br /><br />It continued to break on our next stop: Oxford University.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Meet Debbie, truly the best tour guide in all of England.</td></tr>
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A beautiful, ancient, sprawling school . . . a library that makes even jaded scholars fall to their knees and weep . . . Oxford.<br /><br />It seems that everyone else in our program bought hoodies. I didn't. In the first place, because I don't wear hoodies, but in the second place . . . I wouldn't want to wear any such thing unless I'd earned it. It's kind of the embodiment of everything I wish I were, as a scholar. While my thesis proceeds at a snail's pace . . .<br /><br />My sole consolation was in the pub. </div>
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Yes, this pub. Hangout of the Inklings. Home of the random bits of conversation that grew into one or two . . . or ten . . . remarkable books. I raised a glass (or, rather, a fondue fork, as I had fondue) to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.<br /><br />I also celebrated Jo enjoying her first cup of tea. </div>
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She's been addicted ever since.<br /><br />On our return, I had a second dinner, better than the first, with dear friend Isabel, who has completed her time in London and now returns home, green tie in hand. </div>
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Dinner was shabu shabu, for those of you who know just what, and how awesome, that is. </div>
RoseEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04661691621310590334noreply@blogger.com2