| ONCE AGAIN |
[27 Oct 2005|05:47pm] |
My life is very different now, as it should be. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) whitney_arlene now, quite unexpectedly. Still in the processing of adding friends so I ask for patience and forgiveness. I alternate between feeling guarded and explosive.
|
|
| OVERHEARD IN AN UNDERGRADUATE COMPUTER LAB |
[29 Apr 2005|12:01pm] |
|
"Yeah, so this guy is, like, a PhD...so really unbiased..."
|
|
| FACTS OF LIFE |
[31 Mar 2005|06:32pm] |
|
If I hear one more undergraduate, pro-choice activist disclaim her reason for supporting abortion rights with, "Well, if I got pregnant I probably would keep the child, but that's just me, that's just who I am," all my niceness if going to go away and I will explode.
|
|
| SYLLABUS |
[22 Feb 2005|06:16pm] |
|
If anyone has been following the Ward Churchill scandal, centering around an essay he dared to write, I suggest you check out a recent speech he gave at Boulder called What Did I Really Say? And Why Did I Say It?. And for those of you who don't know anything about him, Churchill is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wrote an essay a few years back about September 11, Malcolm X's "chickens come home to roost" comment, and where guilt lies when we look at that tragedy. I think it's worthwhile to know that Churchill is Native American as well; this identity informs much of his writing and politics.
|
|
| LETTERS TO MYSELF |
[18 Feb 2005|02:35pm] |
One of my last-ditch efforts at feeling better, whenever I need it, is to write a letter to myself. They are often more loving than anything I've recently written to another person. They reek of confidence, of calm, of care. I've told myself, "It was o.k. to cry in the car today on the way to Wegmans. You haven't in a long time," and in the same note, "Touch does not always equal understanding and sexual attraction is not to be prioritized over another kind." This summer I said to myself, "Don't ignore your family."
When I go back and reread my journals, as I tend to do for therapy, the pages full of these letters stick out the most. The voice is different, she is not the usual perspective that takes over when I get a pen in my hand. From them I hear exactly what I needed to hear and more often than not, it applies months or years later. I'm always amazed, and here's where I sound self-help-bookish, how powerful it can be to flip through a book and see, scrawled in my own handwriting, "Whitney: you are okay."
|
|
| PEOPLE, WITH LOVED ONES AND PERSONALITIES |
[15 Feb 2005|07:21am] |
It took four people to remove my grandma from her house yesterday; her oxygen count was low, the emphysema making her wheeze, the Alzheimers making her difficult. Today we found out it's not pneumonia, it's tuberculosis. I'm sorry but I didn't know that was really an option anymore. Serves me right for being young and ignorant.
Also, my mother's older brother--he's 56, or 57--has been called up. National Guard. Eighteen months in Iraq. Security duty. Three children, two grandchildren. Put on a face on this fucking war.
|
|
| LETTING IT SPEAK |
[30 Jan 2005|03:55pm] |
Morning, in my apartment.
|
|
| FINALE |
[28 Jan 2005|05:08pm] |
It's been cold here, really very cold. This morning an old man scowled at me for wearing a skirt. He looked down at my leg warmers and puffy vest and said, "It's cold, huh?" It wasn't as much a question as it was a message: you crazy (read: stupid) girl. But I smiled because I usually scowl at the people who wear what I assume to be ridiculous clothing. Or no hats.
Anyway, I withdrew from the class I was taking on Dante. In short, I was interested in the material but was not learning very much from the teaching style of one of the two course professors. Best lecturer I've ever had, that professor, but lecturing is not teaching. My last semester in undergrad is still looking busy but I'm enjoying it thus far. A directed study in creative non-fiction with a couple of great writers from my previous class, an African-American Lit course that has prompted some fascinating discussions both in and outside the classroom, a survey of Women & 19th Century Social Reform Literature, a Geology class that connects with my inner geek, and an Anthro class that is basically an intro to feminist thought, leaves me bored, and fulfills my women's studies minor.
Lately Harrison and I have been sitting on a big, soft chair in my living room and watching the snow cover everything. The other night we went outside in it, around midnight, and it was so quiet, hushed. I'm sort of torn about leaving.
|
|
| WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INAUGURATION* |
[21 Jan 2005|02:34pm] |
I saw a lot of
-southern women in long, fur coats; men wearing cowboy hats.
-police from Northeastern & Midwestern states; police in riot gear; police batons; guns; face masks; snipers on the roof; secret service personnel.
-pictures of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; Bush/Cheney signs, buttons, and clothing; John Kerry buttons and stickers.
-barricades, security checkpoints, metal detectors, signs displaying What We Couldn't Bring In, etc.
-American flags; floats (one depicting a "traditional" scene from Wyoming--think covered wagon and cowboy with lasso, I'm serious; one celebrating Texas; one with a giant, gold Eagle); corporate media.
-empty bleachers on the other side of the A.N.S.W.E.R. contingent.
I heard a lot of
-chants, including, but not limited to, "Racist, Sexist, Anti-Gay: Bush & Cheney Go Away!" or "Rich man's war, poor man's blood," or "George Bush, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?" or "Not our war, Not our president" or "Support our troops! Bring them home!" or my personal fave "Tell me what democracy looks like! THIS is what democracy looks like!"
-booing; fuck you's.
-Texan accents; conversations about the various "balls" from people sitting near me on the metro who had been to one of the various balls the night before.
-obvious Bush supporters saying, "Wait, I need to get a picture of the weirdos," or "Communists!"
-heckling from folks on the Anti-War side ("Boo! You have blood on your hands! Boo! Shame on You") whenever people who may or may not have been Bush supporters walked through the A.N.S.W.E.R. bleacher section. This was followed by attempts from other protesters, myself included, to tell them to please be peaceful and set a precedent for peaceful exchange.
-cheesy music from marching bands dressed in American Revolution costume; "patriotic" songs sung by a choir and broadcast throughout the city
-confusion; questions; mis-directions; wrong directions.
I felt a lot of
-disappointment in the choices some people from the anti-war contingent made, most notably the very negative, very alienating hecklers, especially when CNN decided to tape them.
-nausea when Bush and Cheney's respective motorcades drove by
-confusion and some annoyance when the people around me freaked out when Bill Clinton drove by, as if he is Saint of United States and not politician with a bloody record himself.
-excitement at the large turn out, conversation, and camaraderie.
-exhaustion from doing the whole D.C. trip in 26 hours.
-gratitude towards the organizers
-alarm at the amount of police and the weapons they carried at their sides.
*from my perspective, that is.
|
|
| PLAY ALL DAY |
[13 Jan 2005|11:18pm] |
It was 68 degrees in Buffalo today; it is January. I rode my bike around in a t-shirt and sandals and frowned at all the anti-bike signs I saw. I should have known better than to pedal through car-haven plaza parking lots but errands needed to get done. Anyway, I bought Mod Podge and spent the rest of the afternoon doing crafts in my living room.
I've made serious progress on the zine tonight and it feels good. I hope people who read it don't hate me because I wrote so tiny; I found this pen in my brother's drawer with a very, very fine tip.
While I was in New Orleans, my boss from the farm called and asked if I wanted to come back again this summer as a counselor. I said yes and I'm going to run games & archery. My first post-undergraduate job requires me to play all day and sing folk songs at night. Hmmm.
(It takes an enormous amount of psyching-up for me to post here)
|
|
| GNASHING |
[11 Jan 2005|03:32pm] |
Spent the last six days in New Orleans, living in a rad apartment that Brynn and I subletted. Believe it or not, the pictures don't do justice. We're talking ten-foot ceilings, wide wide open space, a large sitting room, gigantic bathtub. What's more, when one of the co-owners left the day we arrived, she left us a stocked refridgerator complete with white wine, vodka, veggies, and more. Clearly, Brynn and I have a fairy godmother.
The apartment was in Bywater, a poor, Black neighborhood in New Orleans. Actually living in a neighborhood gave this visit a completely different and welcome feel; we got the fuck out of Bourbon Street, mastered (sort of) the public transportation, and spent a lot of time walking, reading, and sleeping at the flat. Don't ask me if I partied hard because I didn't. It ain't my bag, baby.
I've been knitting quite a bit and working on a zine; hopefully that will be out in a few weeks and if anyone still reads this, look for some information regarding the zine. Anyway, school starts a week from today and I'm feeling ready if only because I know it is the last semester. The fall was so charged, political, positive, and full of change that I'm gnashing my teeth a bit, ready to get back on track.
Like a good girl, I'm kicking off the semester by skipping my classes the Thursday after next so's I can hop on a bus for the counter-inaugural protests in DC. On Friday, I think a group of us from NYPIRG are driving up to Syracuse to visit their chapter and in general, plan out our action for the Spring. I might be tempted to stay home and recuperate but again, like a good girl, I'll probably make some connections for the good old job market next year. Ugh.
|
|
| READ AND RESPOND |
[27 Dec 2004|12:36am] |
A couple weeks ago, during a meeting of Geneseo's Student Association, the following question was raised: What would a Geneseo without SA look like? It was posed as a potential slogan for the upcoming pro-SA, pro-budget, pro-mandatory student activity fee referendum. Now I am, for the most part, in support of the mandatory student activity fee since it funds a majority of the organizations of which I am a part. It is also possible for a student to be refunded if he or she does not want to pay the fee. However, I sat in the back of the much regulated, very formal SA meeting--the President actually uses a gavel--and thought, Hmmm, what would a campus without SA look like? I knew what I was supposed to think--horrible! apathetic! unorganized!--but upon some further chin scratching, I thought maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.
For clarification before I launch into my diatribe, SA is the standard campus bureaucracy that is run by elected, undergraduate officers that are thought to represent the larger student body. As far as I can tell, however, most of them operate along administration-friendly lines which sometimes, believe it or not, aren't student-friendly lines. It's incredibly bureaucratic and a majority of the SA officers I've encountered revel in both the bureaucracy--"Um, I'm sorry but that budget realignment needed to be in at 3:30 and it's now 3:45"--and their position of representation which somehow gets misconstrued as a position of authority.
So I'm thinking to myself, what would a Geneseo look like without SA? Without all the red tape and rules about endorsing candidates and not hanging up flyers unless they're in designated flyers spots AND approved by the guy that approves these things? To say it has potential to be great or interesting or worthwhile is too simple.
Let me give you a common scenario that I've encountered both personally and through my friends: Fresh-faced, full of moderate enthusiasm girl or guy goes to an open meeting of the Womyn's Action Coalition or The Progressive Student Coalition or the Anti-War Coalition or the Muslim Student Association (I'm only using groups I’ve been involved with myself). Girl or guy sits through the meeting, either likes what she or he hears and comes back, or decides that the organization isn't doing the kind of projects that she or he imagined. The guy wanted to campaign for better access to birth control on campus but the Womyn's Action Coalition is only doing a project on Take Back the Night. The girl wanted to start a prison moratorium project but the Progressives are too busy working on their Minimum Wage campaign to take it up. And so on, until, and I think this happens a lot, you get a majority of the student body that wants to or would consider working on like-minded projects but has been disillusioned by the actual process of going to the meeting. After all, it ain't kosher to walk in to these established organizations and start, well, organizing. You gotta work your way up, you gotta be part of the bureaucracy. And hey, maybe it would be kosher sometimes but very rarely is someone going to have the guts to just go at it--why would they when it's set up/required to be hierarchal? So that fresh-faced enthusiasm, all the ideas and spirit, get lost because there is only ONE feminist group, only ONE lefty group, only ONE Latina group, etcetera. Any spontaneity is crushed because you can't just do it because you gotta make it official to get anything done, including access to room reservations, tables in the College Union for information distribution, and other resources.
A group I was involved with last year, the Geneseo Outing Club, has had a terrible time with SA recognition. Prior to their recognition process, when they held their interest meeting, over 50 people showed up. It was the largest interest meeting I've ever attended. Some dudes in their dorm room--freshmen, mind you--had the idea and started organizing trips. This year, as they wade through the complications of official recognition and funding, they've offered maybe one activity. Seems like the outing club could have survived much better if it had simply been a mailing list to which everyone could send emails and proposed trips: "Hey, I'm going bouldering this Friday, call me if you want in." That sort of thing. Instead, this group is paralyzed and the 50 people who showed up at the meeting are not going on trips, not meeting each other, not being involved.
Very often, among all the uber-involved folks who organize the SA groups on campus, I hear complaints about the apathy at Geneseo or how no one wants to do anything. Maybe I have too much faith in people but I think that there are interested parties; they're simply being strangled by SA, the nice, tidy Student Association. Sure, some people will sit on their ass but for the most part, good leaders are not one in a million. It's more like a dime a dozen. They just need to be encouraged, developed, and supported. Earlier this year, while I was working on a voter registration project with our "unofficial" organization Friends of NYPIRG, I learned invaluable lessons centering on this truth. Every person that came to a Think Globally, Vote Locally meeting was asked "What do you want to help out with?" It was different than any organization I'd been a part of before because it was entirely student-run, student-ruled, and group-organized. We welcomed ideas--even really bizarre ones--and maintained what I thought to be an integral self-consciousness. This project, while well organized, was somewhat anarchic in that it was often spontaneous, idiosyncratic, and subject to change; it seems to me that these qualities allowed it to be successful. There was room for every person to work on the campaign and every person could work on the campaign.
There have been other "underground" groups I've been involved with at Geneseo--I'm thinking the performance poetry group Inner Rhythms and this year's progressive collective infoSHARE--which lead me to believe even more in the potential of students to organize without SA. In regards to Inner Rhythms, and as I explained with the Outing Club, I think our attempt at SA recognition and the general move to act out of tradition and not spontaneous desire killed the group, at least in part. I'm not entirely convinced that SA is useless, that hasn't been my point however fiery my words are here. Certainly I think it's more useful for some organizations than others; in a lot of ways it doesn't make sense for "progressive" leaning groups. This question--What would a Geneseo look like without SA?--is worth mulling over. Maybe some room to move and breathe is what we need around here.
|
|
| STRAIGHT A's |
[24 Dec 2004|12:56am] |
I went out tonight, a local bar where some good friends and their parents were drinking beer and patting backs. I saw Scott; he's going to Iraq in a couple weeks. As I watched the back of his head while he stood talking to someone else, I silently sipped a drink made by the bartender who is really my high school sweetheart and also the boy to whom I lost my virginity. It's always incestuous back home for the holidays, the annual night out--seeing who gained weight and turned spineless, remembering when you dated at least three of the men in the room and kissed about half. I watched the back of Scott's head and couldn't help but to think that maybe the next time I see all these people in one place we'll be at a funeral. Not pleasant thoughts, not tonight.
This semester is the first I've received straight A's and I congratulate myself on knowing how to play the game. At the bar people I haven't seen in several years asked me what my plans were for next year, after I graduate. I hate questions like these because if I really started to answer they'd tell their friends in the bathroom later that I talk too much. So I say, "Oh, there's a lot I want to do" and change the subject, ask them a question about their life. I saw the man who was co-editor of the yearbook my junior and his senior year of high school. He lives in Manhattan, works for JP Morgan, trades stock. We didn't have much to say to each other anymore.
Ashley opened her Hanukkah gifts last night, told me she got a new ski jacket, and asked if I was going to church tomorrow to celebrate the Lord Jesus. I told her no, that I was probably going to stand outside though with some signs, asking people to Pray For Peace and wondering What Would Jesus Bomb? She said she prays for peace every night and I asked if she wanted to stand outside with me and hold some signs. She laughed and hugged my shoulders. I bit my lip and glanced once more at Scott, a few weeks from an indefinite stay in the Middle East where he'll do things no one in that bar will want to know about and I just don't know how to be quiet anymore. But most everyone, they don't want to know, and if they do, it's after the fact.
|
|
| ADD TO MY RANT ALL YE FORMER EARS WITH FEET |
[28 Nov 2004|06:28pm] |
Why do most female singers that I like insist on using THAT FUCKING BABY VOICE?! I was listening to Tales of a Librarian in the car today--I took it out from the library because I won't buy it, pish--and most of the newer Tori vocals sound like she's cooing to her daughter while rocking her in some glittery rocking chair. Please. This was happening as early as 1998, I know, when she insisted on that nauseating intro to "Jackie's Strength." It's just gotten worse! And even Ani is doing it now too--what the FUCK?! Educated Guess won me over by the lyrics alone. Otherwise, it sounds like she's goo-goo-gaa'ing the microphone.
I say this: ENOUGH, ladies. I don't care if your voice is getting gravel-y and hoarse, at least you'll sound real if you just sing instead of coo! It doesn't help either when you're sort of straddling the line between still rocking and washed up old news; the baby voice makes me feel like you're trying to step back into the past but it's going too far, too far. I FUCKING LOVE IT when you get all riled up and throaty sounding, when you really rock out and bypass the la-la-la bullshit. Enough, enough.
|
|
| (WHO NEEDS) DIRECTION |
[19 Nov 2004|10:31am] |
School has become even more of a joke than I thought possible; once you learn to play the game folks, it's nothing special at all. We'll see how I feel when I get my grades in January but I have a feeling I'll be saying the same thing.
So I've been thinking a lot about Next Year: where I'll go, what I'll do, how I'll live. Working with Friends of NYPIRG and other student groups this semester has renewed and revitalized my committment to youth and student activism. I'm looking into jobs as a campus organizer with NYPIRG but word has it they don't hire until the summer; I suppose I can just hang tight but part of me wants a security blanket. Actually, if I had one I'd probably kick it off in the night anyway--too stifling. Brynn and I have a desire to move somewhere and live together; it would be wonderful. I'm struggling with it though because making plans with another person is always difficult and requires compromises. Most notably, I want to live in a city, she doesn't. There are a few areas around upsate New York that we agree on but it just depends on the jobs we find/want, the directions we find ourselves moving in the next few months.
A couple nights ago I talked with my dad and brother--separately--as they had gotten into a fight over Josh's grades. He's 13 and he hates middle school (obviously) and he just wants to be a musician and it's just a difficult time in life. My dad is worried about him, prone to father-son drama just like my mom and I were prone to mother-daughter drama. So yeah, I have a vested interest in remaining somewhat close to my family over the next year; Josh starts high school in a year. And if my parents ever get the balls to go ahead and divorce or separate then it's going to be all the more important for me to be nearby.
Regardless, I'm strung out on coffee and a lack of sleep. I've got to write a reaction paper to this biography of Gloria Steinem and then go to a meeting with the fascists that run our Student Association. Ouch, Whitney, that was harsh.
|
|
| ANTHROPOLOGY CLASS ROCKS |
[18 Nov 2004|03:50pm] |
|
Wow, I really love listening to college students (myself included) try to retell Native American folklore: So then this girl comes to his door and says, "I want to marry you" and he says, "No." Then she says, "But I really want to," so he says, "Yes." Then his Uncle, who's a cannibal, comes and eats this wife. It happens like three more times and finally the guy's like, "I don't trust you, you eat my wives."
|
|
| OCTOBER 29, 2004: PREPARING |
[18 Nov 2004|01:43pm] |
|
|
| OBLIGATORY "I'M BACK" POST |
[11 Nov 2004|05:48pm] |
So I've been busy. About six different sentences have been started and erased and I just decided now that there is no point in and no way to rehash the past three months.
Since Election Day, on which I awoke at 5 a.m., I've probably slept 25-30 hours maximum. It made sense in the beginning, since I was working hardcore shifts all day on November 2 with Think Globally, Vote Locally. Since September I've been working with TGVL and the experience has been the best of my student/political/organizing ever. I've got a lot more to say about it when I can think clearly and reflectively, when I'm not so fundamentally exhuasted.
What else is there to say? It's my last year of college, I'm trying to think about what I want to do next year without making any concrete plans; factored into that dilemma is a new urgency to do important work, social work. I've the desire to run off and be a farmer, or travel around Europe and get drunk but over the past week it's become clear that the time to work is now. I don't want to indulge in that privilege at the moment; I've been doing it for four years. Anyway, living alone is wonderful. I may soon realize what three weeks ago I thought impossible: meaningful sex before Christmas. My dear friend Scott is going to Iraq in January. All the men I've dated in recent months have been crackheads & emotionally unavailable and I've been damaged by it, damaged. The one I just started seeing though is surprisingly considerate and cool--I'm waiting for it to fuck up. My brother plays four instruments and is growing his hair long, wants me to dread it. Nothing, everything. I'm just going to get started, okay?
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
