Could I BE having a better Sunday morning?

1. Ani DiFranco Pandora station (forgot how much I love her)
2. productivity on grad school application and district funding application
3. fresh pot of coffee since I cleaned the mold out of the machine yesterday afternoon
4. windows open and air cool enough to be able to wear a sweatshirt and pants
5. good lesson plans written for the week
6. grocery shopping done
7. up early enough to do all of this and still be able to get over to church for the first time in a long time
8. little brother coming to visit esta noche
9. Alex and Jessica coming back today, too

The answer is definitively no. This morning could not be any better.
Man, I used to hate Sundays in college.

Well!

Now that's a good word.

my response to

you, Cassie:

Here's Alex' team playing soccer

whilst the apocalypse looms.

shockingly shameless

Check out two of the most popular articles on the Time website right now:

Ex-Wives and Others Eagerly Await UBS Tax-Cheater List
Michelle Obama and the Shorts Heard Round the World

Sorry for being so unladylike (...NOT), but what the FUCK.

Maybe if the one about offshore bank accounts had any sort of statistic -- gosh, even some sort of unconvincing "fact" even -- to back up their presumption that the holders of such are men, then maybe that sort of shit wouldn't be so outrageously fucking sexist, but even then, probably no. I find that woman as sort of bitter, ruthless, gold-digger bullshit incredibly offensive. In fact, I actually feel kind of personally insulted by this suggestion. And y'know what, the article is pretty heteronormative, too, huh?

Maybe it's because I read this article after reading about how Michelle Obama "just didn't look particularly good in shorts. Her arms are much admired. her legs are just, you know, legs." I've posted before about how infuriating it is to me the way the media so often belittles Mrs. Obama, but this shit is... GOSH.

I mean, the way this article ends sounds like it was written in the 1950s. Srsly.

For women, Michelle's shorts were long on significance. They give accomplished, glamorous people license to do what the power brokers at Vogue do, and that is to wear whatever the hell they like sometimes. So, ladies, get out your least flattering outfits — your terry shorts, your oversize T-shirt, those extra comfortable arch-supporting shoes — and wear them with pride. All the fashionable women are doing it.

Oh, really? I can? *bats eyelids* Thanks! *punches Time Magazine in the face.*

on being a townie

I don't like being a townie. It's taken a lot of the anonymity out of living in this place.

When I used to walk on the quad as a student, I would marvel at just how many classmates I had. I would think about the fact that I would probably never see some of the faces that I was passing again even though myself and the strangers around me were all so familiar with the same campus landscapes.

Now, though, it's easier for me to see how everyone is connected. I run into a student and/or a parent nearly every single time I go to the grocery store, for example, but it's not just people from work. I mean this in the least I'm-a-big-deal way possible, but it just seems like I've started to know a lot of people around here and they all know each other, too, for various reasons.

I can definitely see how this could be construed as a good thing. Sometimes, I do like it. Like the other day, I ran into the parents of one of my students while we were all volunteering at a food pantry that we were invited to by a good friend of mine. That was kinda cool, real community-like, y'know.

That said, I'm just not a smalltown person, and this place doesn't even qualify as a small town. It's not really to do with those kind of stereotypical everybody-knows-everybody's business issues -- and Lord knows it's not because any majority of people are stereotypically conservative over here. I'd just really much rather feel my insignificance in obvious ways every day, the way I feel while riding public transportation in a city, for example.

I almost can't believe I'm saying that; what, I want to teach in a big ol' impersonal school district where I don't have any valued input into the way things work? to live in a place where any kind of positive contribution I make to my community could only be so relatively tiny as to almost be pointless? where it's maybe easier for people to dehumanize one another since there's less of a chance that they'll have to interact with one another meaningfully?

It doesn't make sense when I really think about it, but really, sometime relatively soon I'm going to make a move towards someplace where I can feel a little less known. It'll be good for my level of modesty.

(ha. Ask anyone in Champaign-Urbana. My name rings out here. Right...)

Is my new blog title photo hipster-ish?

Cassie, that question is directed at you. I'm genuinely unsure of whether or not I am a hipster, but I don't think I am. That being said, the article you posted noted that part of being a hipster is denying that you are a hipster, so now I don't know what to think.

brain is on overload

I'm pretty excited for school to start. I've been working in my classroom a lot -- setting up, selecting materials, making copies, writing plans, trying to be preemptive about dealing with the annoying parts of teaching like constantly having to catch up kids who have been out the day before. More pleasant has been skimming back over the stuff I've read this summer in preparation for trying something new with writing instruction, and getting re-energized with all of the good ideas I came across and now get to try out with Real Live Teenagers.

So far I've had the seemingly compulsory:
"How's your summer been?"
"Pretty good! How's yours?"
"Oh, great. Too short of course. Ha. Ha. Ha."
conversation quite a few times this week. So boring. I wonder if every workplace is as riddled with this conversation as mine is. During the school year, it happens every Monday, and has a hyper-presence after any 3- or 4-day weekend or fall or spring break. I've also had some genuinely-happy-to-see-you conversations with colleagues I know a little better and really like.

I want to start a The Wire watching group that gets together twice a month or something and watches a couple episodes and then discusses over beers or coffee or pizza or caramels. I suppose Kasey, Jessica, and I could do this but (1) Kasey and I pretty much agree on everything besides the relative importance of Americorps, and (2) Jessica would think it was boring. Maybe there's one on campus.

I'm actually looking forward to cashiering for Dump and Run this weekend. (And anybody in town -- if anyone is still reading this -- should come and spend cash money. Lots of cool stuff this year.) Doing so reminds me of the Saturdays and weeknights I used to spend working with my Dad in the concession stand at St. Laurence High School football and basketball games. All the hotdogs with delicious just-add-water onions I could eat.

Old movies, why must you hate so?

Last night I watched An Affair to Remember on TV. I'd been meaning to watch it for a while. I generally like old movies like that, even when I don't like them, since the dialogue sounds so funny. Not funny haha, just funny odd. I think it's cool to see how different they are from movies now.

It goes like this: Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet on an ocean liner headed back to New York from a nondescript European location. Grant is a world-famous lady-killer on his way home to marry a filthy rich heiress and thus secure his lavish lifestyle; Kerr is the poor-but-beautiful-nightclub-singer-turned-housewife-in-training of some wealthy New York businessman. Aboard, they fall in love, much to the gossipy amusement of their fellow passengers and the ship's photographer who acts a bit like a modern-day paparazzi. (Actually, they really get into one another when the ship is docked for a few hours near his grandmother's home and they go and visit her. What I want to know is where the hell they are supposed to be docked. They get there after at least one, maybe two nights aboard the ship. It's tropical, and you sort of get the sense that her late husband was some sort of colonial official. But what tropical destinations lie two-days' journey away from Europe on the way to New York City? It is a movie, I realize.) Anyway, they decide that they want to be together forever, so they vow to meet one another at the top of the Empire State Building in six months, giving them enough time to break it off with their current beaus and enough time to do some hard work and save some money on their own. When the evening of the meeting finally arrives, he's *SPOILER ALERT* there waiting, but she gets hit by a car as she's rushing up to meet him. He's humiliated; she's in the hospital, unable to walk again; they're both heartbroken. The rest of the movie sorts out whether or not they'll end up together.

That's probably when I should have turned the movie off.

See, now she has to become a teacher (Oh! The horror! What a tragedy!), so she teaches music at a Catholic elementary school. There's an unnecessarily long scene in which she's directing the choir, and all of the lovely little children are singing about resisting temptation, blah, blah, blah, and there are lots of little solos built into the oh-so-cute song so that the camera can close-in on their adorable little up-turned faces. Then, for the first time in the scene that's been going about three minutes, the camera pans over two Black children's faces just in time for them to part through the choir from the back row to the front to do some silly minstrel-like dance and sing-song verse that's totally separate from the song's melody. (Y'know, it's not unlike McCauley Culkin's little "rap" in the middle of MJ's "Black or White" video, now that I think about it.)

The kids are back a few scenes later to visit their beloved teach while she rests at home (or maybe it's in a hospital?). This time, the Black boy gets to open the scene for he children by asking, "Is she going to be okay, Doc?" only to be quickly corrected by the children's accompanying priest, "Call him, Doctor!" How dare that boy not codeswitch!

I googled around a little bit looking for commentary on these ridiculous, racist, and highly removable scenes, but couldn't really find much. There were several reviewers who suggested that the scenes with the children were unnecessary inasmuch as they distract from the shmoopie love story.

And as if that shit weren't enough to make this movie a "not" for me, much of the justification for the lovers' agonizing separation after their fateful missed connection is that of course she can't tell him that she's disabled! How terrible and disgusting and unlovable! Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

a fitting finale, I guess

this penis building in Ypsilante, MI:

the midwest leg

In Ann Arbor, MI, they have the first Borders ever:
The door is newly purpled at Cassie's house in Ann Arbor:

Here's the restaurant in Cleveland where we ate breakfast lunch and where Harvey Pekar eats. I might have seen him, but I don't know what he looks like:

unsafe driving

between Elkton, MD and Cleveland, OH

The thing about driving on the express way is that you have to have, I think, an inordinate amount of trust in the people driving in front of and behind you. I don't have that kind of trust. I get really nervous when anyone gets close to me at all when I'm driving because how the hell do I know that they are not going to slam on their breaks or ram into the back of the car I'm driving. Maybe it won't even be accidental; maybe it will be some kind of intentional but random terrible car-crashing. This is what I'm thinking about when I'm driving for hours and hours these days. I'm thinking about how remarkable it is that all of the people driving around me are kind enough and talented enough not to crash into Cassie's car even though they could at any second.

My Dad taught us that our family motto is, "Trust but verify," which is probably why I'm thinking this.

the city of brotherly love

Cassie, looking so tiny:

a delicious cheesesteak:

Apparently, there are hundreds of murals in Philadelphia, but we only saw a few. This one's dedicated to the work of W.E.B. DuBois in Philly:

In the Dumpster Divers' Art Gallery on South Street. This piece is called screwing Yellow Hill. There's a handwritten description of the piece by the author right there in which he explains that everything here is litter he picked up on Yellow Hill and lamenting the carelessness of litterers in Yellow Hill:

lots of blue things in the Dumpster Divers Gallery:

still more Dumpster Diven stuff:

South Street, Philly. Home to really freaking sweet thrift stores:

Arriving into Philadelphia, PA. I like this city:

Southward, ho!

Cassie on Pleasant Beach in I think Connecticut:

At the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, they have an exhibit of the work of Shepard Fairey, the guy who did that Obama poster, and TONS of other cool stuff. But I couldn't take photos in the gallery so I took a photo of this in the lobby:

They also have this really sweet computer lab that's angles downward like an auditorium but with no stage, just a window that shows you that you're sitting out over the harbor:

And here's Cass and I standing in the lobby:

can'tstopwon'tstop

According to Josh, "the most important landmark in Boston" is this Citgo sign:
artist, Cassie Jo Cleary:

The belltower in which Paul Revere signaled one if by land and two if by sea:

Looking out the window of the oldest bar in America:

Look at all these 21st Century folk eschewing the all those old fashioned reference books in favor of the World Wide Web (even though using those books would require using that cool ladder!):

inside the Boston Public Library:

same thing:

goto

I was going to write about the "show" we saw in NYC, but then Cassie did. Articulately and eloquently. So I don't feel the need to anymore.

I've also been planning on writing some long, boring post about the purpose of travel. It occurred to me when we were wandering around in the Guggenheim that we spend a lot of time and money going places to use our eyes on new, cool stuff. And not just our eyes, I know. We also use our noses, ears, fingers, and tongues on new, cool stuff. And pretty much that's why we travel? I don't think so. But I really don't feel like writing any further since I'm already painfully aware of how dumb I'm making myself out to be right now.

Also, we're probably not going to Delaware now, so I won't have a chance to post this video clip and write, "Hi. I'm in Delaware." unless I do so now.

explanation

In a paper on Josh's coffee table I found this sentence:

In reality, we're only as free as our genes are pliable in the slosh of our developmental milieus.

AAAAAhahahahahahahaha.

more fone fotos

In backwards order of taking.

Harvard flags that use textspeak (the last of which is incomprehensible to me):
(UPDATE: Cassie says that we do know what it means. That it means "May the force be with you," but I'm not convinced because no one says that about going to class. Josh suggested that it could mean "May the fish be wet underwater," which is also true. I still don't know what it means.)

haha. "FUCK!" in Harvard Square:

Their campus is okay but our quad's WAY better:

Cassie's favorite:

"really bad Portuguese music" according to our hosts:

lots of lights and flags for the Portuguese festival, The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in New Bedford, Massachusetts:

Apparently, this town is really Portuguese because when the New England whalers would go looking for help for their whaling missions, the currents of the Atlantic take boats from New Bedford, MA straight to the islands off of Portugal and then right back to New Bedford. Huh.:

the mills and small beach in New Bedford:

more to come on this fellow later (preview: OMG.)

the theater where we saw the worst piece of theater ever theatered:

Spanish Harlem:

graffiti wall of fame at 106th and Park:

Off camera this looks more like "ASS TRANSPORTATION." I had to take a picture because of the connection I felt with my favorite part of Sister Act II, when Sister Mary Clarence is standing in front of the door to where she'll be teaching and it says "MUSIC ASSROOM."

a community garden in East Harlem:

part of my favorite exhibit at the Studio Museum Harlem, a collection of photography by area high school students:

cross-stitch in the Studio Museum Harlem!:

the Apollo:

the library at Colombia's main campus, which I saw on my way to the Teachers College bookstore: