Cold Spaghetti

Dear Dissertation: I promise I am getting back to it after this quick lunch break.

Facebook note!
What 15 books will stay with you forever?

Here are the rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They don’t have to be the greatest books you’ve ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Copy these instructions and tag 15 ( or more) friends, including me – because I’m interested in seeing what books are in your head.

1. The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
2. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
3. Birth as an American Rite of Passage (Robbie Davis-Floyd)
4. Native Son (Richard Wright)
5. Killing the Black Body (Dorothy Roberts)
6. Death Without Weeping (Nancy Scheper-Hughes)
7. Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser)
8. Betrayal of Trust (Laurie Garrett)
9. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
10. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
11. The Woman and the Body (Emily Martin)
12. The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)
13. D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths (Eric and Ingrid D’aulaire)
14. Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
15. Harry Potter Series (JK Rowling)

**

Will’s last summer camp performance included the kids singing along to Jimmy Buffet. Paul and I felt that it was too strange to hear Jimmy Buffet without adult beverages, so we concluded that parents should be encouraged to play drinking games at kids performances. It would go something like this: Drink when your kid does X on stage.

Most likely, the drink list would include:
— Nose picking
— Tooth wiggling
— Crotch grabbing
— Lip pulling
— Butt picking
— Yawning
— Staring off into space while other kids sing
— Making excuse of stage time to hold hand of cute girl or boy,
or,
— Stage diving.

The stage dive wasn’t captured on video. Which is probably a good thing, as we’re trying to keep our un-insurable people ratio at 1:1.

Maybe he can get some extra points for speaking French?

TO DO, before August 1st.

— Apply 4 years of ethnographic research to roughly 60-80 pages of unwritten manuscript, comparing to (approximately) last 50 years of research on relevant topics.
— Hire desperate computer-savvy person to enter several hundred sources into new software and tie them into ongoing drafts.
— Hire or beg help to improve terrible translations… currently over 20 pages of them.
— Draw two portraits.
— Wean Kate from the pacifier before she gets herself into (more) trouble.
— Get glitter for the coming tooth fairy return.
— Finish one major grant submission.
— Be okay with putting all other work tasks on hold… cancel meetings, apologize, explain, and try to delegate.
— Have a least one meeting that would not go on hold from above.
— Finish lodging reservations for Scotland.
— Arrange camera rental for Scotland.
— Presents: mail wrapped b-day gifts for C, W, and R… and just cuz present for W. Figure out birthday present and send to B. Order/ship wedding present. Belated b-day for brother and anniversary for brother and sis-in-law, too.
— Find house/cat sitter.
— Make beach decisions.
— Prepare two 2-hour classes with lecture and discussion… bonus points for being alive to deliver them.
— Freak out over all the things I’m forgetting.

— Since last weekend’s writing retreat, which took place in an out-of-town colleague’s apartment, I’ve been able to fall into a much more productive writing schedule.
— My dissertation is fleshed out into 10 Chapters. All currently have written sections… none of which are finished. I’m guessing 1/3-1/2 of it is written… and of that, the majority ranges from “okay” to “crap.” Somehow it all makes sense in my head but makes no sense on paper. Hmmmmm.
— I know what each needs to say and getting them to that point really scares me.
— How come I’m freaked out by my own visions for The Thing? I thought I’d feel better at this point in the game.

— We’re spending the first week of August in Scotland. One my best friends from college is getting married in Ayr… in a castle… on a cliff… by the sea. We’re going in a few days early to check out the Western Island(s) and Highland area before the wedding.
— When we get back from Scotland, we’re going to the beach with the kids. Paul will be working then, but we’re hoping to manage it all to get in some quality family time before the school year starts.

— My committee chair is back in town in a little over a week. We’re meeting on the 30th. YIKES.

— Work is still overwhelming, but I had a few learning moments and realized that I needed to let go a bit until the dissertation draft was done.

Seeking….? Advice on Scotland. And the post-Scotland beach. (Did I mention we’re flying direct in and out of ORLANDO?) Ideas on balancing. And strategies for sustained writing inspiration.

Will’s been working on sight words in the past few months and has been working up to actually putting them all together. In the French system, reading isn’t emphasized (particularly in French) until 1st grade. During Kindergarten over the last school year, he had English 2-3 times a week for about an hour each time. I didn’t think that it would actually amount to much. We read regularly and have helped him build his words as he’s learned to write, but there was no heroic effort on our part to push skills on him. Yet, here he is… working on completing a Summer Reading program that requires his reading a dozen English books and 3 French books.

I felt his reading this book was particularly appropriate.

Especially since he now has ANOTHER loose tooth.

Today is Bastille Day and, as one might expect for a French summer camp, there were school-related activities.  Sometime last week, Kate’s teacher sent home notes asking the students to wear costumes for Bastille Day for their party and parade.  Accordingly, I planned on not thinking about it until 8am this morning, roughly 30 minutes before leaving for school.

Thanks to a tu-tu stuck in the back of her closet, Kate was a cloud:

She is holding a Christmas ornament with a picture of herself in it at age 7 months.  I have no idea from where she took said ornament or why she insisted on posing with it this morning.

The white bracelet?  She made it at school last week.  I thought it gave her outfit just the right touch.

Remember this guy?

And the whole loose tooth thing?

Uh-oh. What’s this?

What happened at school today?

Uh-ho. I thought I’d have one more day!?

Roughly twelve hours until he wakes up tomorrow morning… anyone got advice? What does/did the tooth fairy do in YOUR house??

The most amazing part, to me, is that it happened without the influence of blunt force trauma.  That darn tooth just came loose.  The natural procession of things. One tooth moving out, making room for that adult tooth coming in behind it.

Which tooth?

The one on the left.

Remember that kid?  Yeah, well, he has a loose tooth.

And while I don’t necessarily feel old over the fact that my baby has his first loose tooth, I do suspect that in the same moment that little tooth started to wiggle, a dozen gray hairs sprouted on my head and my boobs sagged another inch.  The natural procession of things.

June has been a difficult month, with posts that reflect this with writing on the thoughts and life changes that come with civil unrest, national conflict, and personal loss. Two countries which we have deep personal connections, Honduras and Peru, have been immersed in violent clashes. I’m still not sure where I stand with the Honduran coup d’etat… I’m not even sure if I feel right calling it a coup. I do hope that the International community keep Honduras in it’s sights no matter how the situation continues to unfold: it is a country of beautiful, open, forgiving people, 70% of whom live in poverty. Any sanctions or separation imposed on the country due to its political situation will ultimately work to the detriment of the nation’s most vulnerable. The Big Picture, the fantastic photography site hosted at Boston.com, posted a collection of photographs of the protests.

Peru also has experienced civil unrest. For years, indigenous peoples have lived in remote areas of the Amazon rain forest with protection from development. But the country wants to use it’s natural resources, particularly it’s forests and oil reserves, to comply with agreements the government made in the US-Peruvian free trade agreement. Violence erupted at roadblocks where people gathered to protect their land from entering developers. You can read more about the conflict at Life in Peru, particularly this post.

Also, as was pointed out by another Peruvian blogger, Peru also lost one of it’s musical legends, Alicia Delgado, who was unexpectedly murdered (a true-to-life telenovela type story). In honor of Alicia (and with appropriate homage to Alejna’s musical JPs) here is Ms. Delgado:

Below are the June Just Posts. Thank you thank you thank you.

• almostidealist at One Year to Change the World with Take action for Tiananmen Square’s victims, Sexism sells, Free speech, free range and Going green for the Iranian protesters
• Barbara Drake at An American in Lima with Archbishop of Cusco to Evict More Local Restaurants
• Christine at flutter with The Luxury of Safety and an untitled post
• City Girl at Country Girl/City Girl with Oh, HELL no
• Emily at Wheels on the Bus with This is what a leader looks like, Education dollars at work,
  Questions (part one) and Rejecting Yertle
• Emily at LA Mom’s Blog with What kids need
• Erika at Be gay about it. with My, what a gayngled web we weave.
• Emmy at Los Pininos with Revised Eulogy
• girlgriot at If you want kin, you must plant kin… with Voice of the People?
• Glenna Gordon (guest posting) at Scarlett Lion: Liberia with Global Post: Miss Coco’s Liberian Barbies
• jen at one plus two with the universal backbone and guess what’s coming to dinner
• Kyla at The Journey with My child, every child
• La Gringa at La Gringa’s Blogicito, with Relative calm in Honduras, despite what you might read and Honduran views on Mel Zelaya and the current events
• laloca at baggage carousel 4 public health stuff
• Mary at The Eleventh with Fed
• meg at A Different View of a Good Life! with Prison in Belize
• Mouse at The Mouse’s Nest with The radical act of being ourselves
• papilio588 at Walk with Me with Nickelsville
• Paul Newnham at Give a damn about poverty? with Why is fighting poverty so hard? and 40 Hour Famine
• Rebecca at Flying Tomato Farms with Are you “Man Enough” for the Middle Border?
• redbird at A Gringa Diary with The Honduran coup was personal here
• Zack Ford at Zack Ford Blogs with Sorry white men (and Ann Coulter), Sotomayor is not a racist. You are.
• Chris at Formerly Fun with Oh Oh, She’s Back on Her Soapbox Again

This month’s readers:

Mad
Emily
Holly
alejna
Stacie

Be sure to head over to Alejna’s for more Just Post love and musical thought!

View of downtown New Orleans from the rooftop of Tulane’s 6-story parking garage.

The view of downtown New Orleans, with Fourth of July fireworks silently exploding in the distance.  There are two sets of fireworks because the celebration here has “dueling barges” sending off pyrotechnics from the river.

All in all, an easy way to see fireworks with no crowds.  Drunk college kids arrived part-way through (note to Tulane: install a sobriety check-point directly at the exit of the garage at 9pm on the Fourth) but the roof area is large enough for them to be only a minor annoyance… in the sense that we can’t help but look at ourselves and go, “my goodness, were we that self-absorbed and clueless when we were that age?!”

It’s not a sign that we’re old.  It’s a sign that we’re simply mature.