Delighting in the Jarlath Diaspora

A few years ago, I thought it was odd when a co-worker asked me about the St. Jarlath's t-shirt I was wearing -- Jarlath being a rarely-used Irish name, and me being related to four people who have it. Come to find out, there's a St. Jarlath's Catholic church and school in Oakland. 

This week I decided to find out why.

So I went to mass Sunday morning to see what I could see. I learned nothing about the reason for the Jarlath, but it was Palm Sunday, which I happen to love*. I left during the homily because I was bored and then to my utter delight, there was a vendor making bacon-wrapped hotdogs in the church parking lot. Not a total loss.

Later, I had a fruitless google of it while I texted with my cousin Jarlath about the failed mission -- "They are missing a trick there - the jarlaths of the world would buy some," he replied ruefully when I answered that no, they did not have any merch available. 

Undeterred (and since I'm on leave from work), I made myself an appointment at Oakland Public Library's Oakland History Center for the next afternoon. A research adventure!

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Lately I'm more inclined than ever to follow threads that lead back to Ireland like this one. My mom is dying of colon cancer. She's receiving hospice care at home in Chicagoland, and I'm across the country in Oakland, making monthly trips back to spend time with her and processing the ocean of terror I feel about life on this planet without her. One wave that has come up is that in losing Mom, I'm somehow losing my connection to Ireland, my status as an Irish Irish-American (because American Irish-Americans are deeply embarrassing a lot of times). My little brother and I even sent in for our Irish passports; I think he senses this aspect of our loss, too.

Anticipatory grief is fun because you get this frantic and futile guilty urge to capture every bit of the utterly uncapturable. I'm on this quest to find out why a church in Oakland is called St. Jarlath's as if knowing why will save me losing Mom.

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God smiles on librarians.

When I got to the spacious room on the second floor of the downtown branch, someone had already pulled a file of newspaper clippings related to the Catholic church in Oakland, including a photocopy of the article below which solves the mystery:

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St. Jarlath's parish opened as an offshoot of St. Anthony's, pastored by Father Peter C Yorke, proud alum of St. Jarlath's College in Tuam.

My granddad went to St. Jarlath's in Tuam, too. Father Yorke was "a labor activist and an Irish patriot," and though I don't know the family history back that far, I do know that our family home in Dunmore, just outside Tuam, had enough IRA pamphlets on guerrilla warfare in it for me to suspect that Yorke could have been a comrade of one of my great-great-greats. Mom was delighted by my findings. Me too.

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So anyway, that's the answer: He said "it was the delight of the Catholic church to remember her glorious dead."





* On account of the props (sword-shaped palms) and a dramatic reading (with parts!) of Jesus' arrest, conviction, and execution. Palm Sunday mass is kinda like Catholic Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had dinner with friends that night, and when I told them about my providentially-timed visit, the other one who was raised Catholic gleefully raised his fist in the air and shouted "Barabas! Free Barabas!" which is from the crowd part that we get to play lolllll. Palm Sunday mass was my second favorite behind Good Friday mass because when I was a kid that's when the priest would lay face down sprawled out on the ground in the same shape as Jesus on the cross for three minutes of silent prayer at 3 pm, the scriptural hour of Jesus' death. The drama!

learning styles

Last night Jon was saying that my thesis draws a line from students' style (as in fashion, etc.) and their learning styles. For example, one kid, a Muslim girl who wears a hijab, works within bent versions of the teacher's rules and academic expectations just like she works creatively around her hijab to achieve the look of "popularity" (read: in part, whiteness).

I usually hate when people talk about "learning styles" as if that's why meaningful academic opportunities are scarce in the hood. Because when people say "learning styles," they're talking about, "I'm a visual learner," or "I'm an audio learner." And sure, it's smart for teachers to present materials that students can access through multiple modalities -- if only because lesson planning in that way makes it less likely that they stand at the front of the room and drone on for fifty boring-ass minutes.

But Jonathan was talking about "learning styles" in terms of students' particular orientation to authority and knowledge. Students' orientation to authority and knowledge informs their identities; if your sense of yourself is that you're cool/bad, then the literacy practices you're more inclined to pick up are those associated with coolness/badness. Graffiti, rap, sagging your pants, etc. If, as was the case for me, you are a little fearful of displeasing authority figures, you're more likely to assent to the literacy practices imposed on you by the authority figure, regardless of whether or not the authority figure is legitimately authoritative.

What if we gave pre-service and in-service teachers lots of practice discovering students' orientation to power and knowledge -- practice reading the clothing, handwriting. body language, and tons of other ways that we perform our identities? What if more of us were capable of designing learning experiences that draw on the identities (and associated performances and literacy practices) of the students we traditionally fail, those students who resist authority? It's totally possible.

two new things

Brittney Cooper is my favorite news commentator.

She spoke at the Y a few weeks ago, and they taped it, so I watched it.

Two (of the) things I learned from her:

(1) The sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline.  I knew that many, many people who are incarcerated -- especially women --- are survivors of sexual abuse, but I'd never heard that term before, and I think it's a brilliant way of naming that reality.  Naming is so important.

(2) The critique of intersectionality coming from scholars arguing for assemblage as a more helpful construct.  I don't exactly understand the distinction, but now I want to.

Also, at 59:30, she gets asked about the 2016 election, and the way she responds is so YEAH YEAH EXACTLY YEAH.

KIDS THESE DAYS

I typically find it unbearably boring when people talk about texting and how it's going to ruin civilization because now we say "ur" instead of "your" or "you're." Borinnnnnngggggg.

I remember once making a fool of myself in class laughing so hard when no one else was laughing: The class was called the History of the English Language, and the professor said to us one day, dead-pan, that soon our language would consist of only emoticons.  It's, like, kinda funny, but for some reason that joke really worked for me right then.

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Check these two text exchanges between me and J:

And later that week:

I seriously love language. (And J.)

And I am stoked about this emoji thing.  "Or whatever"?  What!? So cool.  Look how it's "officially" translated.  Language, as Dr. Dyson says, is a public bus; it doesn't work if you try to have your own.  So how did "or whatever" get around?  Who knows that it's "or whatever," and who doesn't?  What other things does this emoji mean? And do other emojis mean?  How do those meanings vary across race, class, age, gender, sexuality?

Want to do research project.

I keep on changing my mind,

But lately, I've been thinking about seeking out an interdisciplinary doc program: critical pedagogy and liberation theology.

Analytic Note #2

Here's Baldwin saying what I've been trying to say about "luckiness" but saying it with so much more clarity and beauty.

Were it a possibility, I would like to take a bath in James Baldwin's writing.

And for a moment we are silent, alone in our room, which we have shared so long.  The slight rise and fall of Harriet's breathing creates an intermittent pressure against my chest, and I think how, if I had never left America, I would never have met her and would never have established a life of my own, would never have entered my own life.  For everyone's life begins on a level where races, armies, and churches stop.  And yet everyone's life is always shaped by races, churches, and armies; races, churches, armies menace, and have taken many lives.  If Harriet had been born in America, it would have taken her a long time, perhaps forever to look on me as a man like other men; if I had met her in America, I would never have been able to look on her as a woman like all other women.  The habits of public rage and power would have also been our private compulsions, and would have blinded our eyes.  We would never have been able to love each other.  And Paul would never have been born. 

Perhaps if I had stayed in America, I would have found another woman and had another son.  But that other woman, that other son are in the limbo of vanished possibilities.  I might also have become something else, instead of an actor-singer, perhaps a lawyer, like my brother, or a teacher, like my sister.  But no, I am what I have become and this woman beside me is my wife, and I love her.  All the sons I might have had mean nothing, since I have a son, I named him, Paul, for my father, and I love him.

my lucky list

When I talked to Suzanne about her lucky list, she prompted me to parse out the differences between lucky and grateful and privilege and blessed and straight-up intuition.

So I used those as categories when I wrote my list.  Here it is:

LUCKY

Nobody made deliberately choices or put in purposeful effort to make these things work out the way they did.  They just did.  Coincidences that are awesome.

• Meeting Amanda through some listserv that Rebecca was on.
• Finding Joaquín on Craigslist.
• Rachel interviewing at UHS.
• Jessica and I going to IHOP that one time when we realized we were both staying in C-U after graduation.
• Nora finding my application in the SFUSD system.
• That Andrew and Raymond were at Esquire that one time when I got stood up.
• That I said “yes,” to Pete asking me if I was interested in tutoring in local schools with VIS-A-VIS on Quad Day 2008.
• That as a student-teacher I was assigned to Mike L.
• That I responded to that poorly designed job posting for the internship in Mobile.

GRATEFUL

Things that did not have to happen but did because someone in my life made the decision or did the work to make each of them happen.

• My parents stayed together.
• Michael sent me a new phone when mine got stolen.
• Scott suggested I take classes with Dr. Dyson. 
• Dr. Willis bringing me to LRA two years ago.
• Kasey inviting me out for that night with Amy.
• That I got to have Greg J. as a mentor early in my career.
• That Angi F. and Todd T. helped me learn what was what.
• That Moe always reminds me of that one picture of Jim Morrison I taped in her locker once that said, “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”  She is.
• Having had so many models of women leaders/bosses to mentor me.
• Elders.
• Spending so much time in Ireland as a kid.

PRIVILEGE

Things I have because I am White, non-disabled, straight, cisgendered, middle-class, American, Language-of-Wider-Communication-speaking, thin, young.

• That without a real job, I can manage.  That I can hang out in the lobby of the Hilton, using their free wifi and watching all the people there for conferences, and the security guards assume I belong.

BLESSED

Things that make me feel like "the world is very mysterious," like Bobbie told me.  These things freak me out and make me feel like stuff is purposeful and we are not in charge -- "more sacred, more broken, more salvageable than we know," like Ron says.

• NCF.
• My Bible Study at Glide.
• That I can write.
• That I went to India, even though it was mostly a crappier experience than I anticipated it would be.

INTUITION

Things that are because I listened to and trusted myself even though lots of times I don't.

• EJP.
• Becoming friends with the White Guy.
• Thanksgiving 2014 at Michael and Jackie’s with my family.

• Tammy booking an appointment at David’s Bridal right when I quit my job.
• Taking Dr. Mayo’s class.
• That Andrew wanted to check out churches with me.
• Hanging around Caleb long enough to get to read his book and be affirmed in my suspicious that he is so so great despite all the times I wanted to punch him when we worked together.  And just, I don't know, feeling somehow restored by that.
• That I took the job at UHS instead of moving to New Orleans.
• That on the day when J was saying he "couldn't" read Night, I said, "What's up," instead of just directing him back on task.

research project

As I've taken up writing on here anew, I've also been better about writing in my journal-thingie.  And that's a good thing because I bought it a couple of years ago, a fancy Moleskine one, and it'd been a damn shame that I wasn't filling it up and getting my money's worth.

I bought it when I started this research project about romantic relationships and what they mean for the self -- the past, present, and future self.  In particular, I was trying to figure out what they meant for my feminist self.  I interviewed my Mom, some of my best friends, a couple of women from church.  And I got some good stuff.  Originally, I had a plan for writing up the project, but ultimately, I guess I just came to some insights that I was needing and then that was done.

Seemingly abrupt shift: A few years ago, Rachel told me that a cantor had once described faith in God to her as "feeling lucky all the time."  That resonated with me, and I've thought about it a lot since.

I've been feeling tentatively better the last couple of weeks, and part of it, I'm sure, has been that I've felt really lucky several times.  It's made me feel held, protected.  I'd like to be better at nurturing that sense of gratitude as a way of staving off the intense despair that's marked the last several months for me.

I'm thinking about taking up another "research project."  This time, I'm thinking of asking folks ahead of time to come up with a list of ten or so things (people, experiences, whatever) in their lives that make them feel lucky.  (And nothing cliche.  You can't say "family" because, duh, boring.  Gotta be specific.)  A gratitude survey.  And then I want to chat with them about their list, take my dorky notes in my Moleskine.  Think about what they say so much.

First I'll write my own list to see what that's like, and then, I'll get started.