post eleventy-hundred: nerd blessings

Today, after making a trek to Harvard's library privileges office in the middle of the first heat wave of the summer to apply for spousal library privileges (what could be nerdier than that?) I finally made the time to watch Wil Wheaton's message to a baby nerd, which Hanna sent to me several weeks ago via the Mary Sue.

I thought it was appropriate to share as my 1100th post here at the feminist librarian.

Stay cool, everyone, and spend some time this weekend loving your favorite things as hard as you can.

holiday cheer [random acts of kindness]

This morning, as we finished unwrapping our presents from far and wide (photos tomorrow!), little miss Teazle decided to expand on her exploration of our potted plants to use them as a platform from which to spring to the top of our television set.

the TV is to the left of these shelves

Our television set was inherited from friends and weighs a ton; for three years it's been sitting precariously on a pine shelf scavenged from the junk heap. Left to its own devices, it's safe enough but with a kitten scrambling about on top it was starting to sway noticeably. And after three successive scruffings and time-outs in the bathroom, after which Teazle simply returned to pick up where she'd left off, it was clear a solution was needed that would not result in our coming home after work one day to find a squashed cat, a shattered television screen, and a giant hole in the floor.

Yesterday, on our afternoon walk, we'd happened upon a lovely little cupboard out on side of the street for pick-up. We poked and prodded it and stood around discussing what to do with it -- but could think of nothing. So we decided to leave it for someone else to take away and walked on.

Suddenly, around 10:00 this morning, we really wished we'd snagged it.

So I said, "I'll go out for my walk and see if it's still there."

"You won't be able to carry it home alone!" Hanna said.

"Oh, I'll figure something out -- if it's still there," I said. I assumed it would be gone -- stuff usually doesn't last fifteen minutes in this neighborhood.

But lo, it was there! So I started hauling it the mile or so back, about half a block at a time, carrying it awkwardly braced against alternating hips.

It was going to take awhile.

Maybe, I thought, someone driving by will stop and offer me a lift, or someone walking in the same direction will offer to help.

I likely wouldn't have accepted an offer from an unknown driver -- but an extra pair of hands would have been nice.

About halfway home, I was starting to feel ominous twinges in my back and arms. But I didn't want to abandon the cupboard to go back and get Hanna for fear it would disappear before we could return. So I kept going, one leg at a time.

I passed by a woman taking a smoking break outside her house.

"What a great find!" She said, by way of greeting.

"Yes!" I agreed. "Now it's just a matter of getting it home!"

"Do you live far from here?" She asked, "Would a dolley help?"

"Actually ... yes," I said, "a dolley would be super helpful!" Usually I demur offers of assistance, but it seemed really stupid to do so in this instance. Particularly since she'd offered it without knowing me from Eve.

So with the help of the dolley, I got the rest of the way in under ten minutes. Hanna and I put together a bag of cookies for the kind stranger and I hauled the cart back again before we set up the television on its new, more stable, cabinet.

Not that this appears to have deterred Teazle from her kitty parkour one bit!

She's determined to get across to Hanna's home altar on the far left bookshelf ...

... and she has now figured out how to watch movies from a front-row perspective!

wee ones ftw [two articles]

via

There's been a lot of talk in the mainstream media in recent years about child-on-child bullying. Rightfully so, in many cases, since kids can be as cruel as adults and often their cruelty goes just as unchecked as the cruelty of grown-ups. As a culture we're still enamored with the myth of childhood innocence (and its doppelganger the narrative of childhood depravity). Children are either seen as beings of sweetness and light to be sheltered from the reality of the adult world or they're seen as barely-civilized monsters a la Golding's Lord of the Flies -- ready to devour one another (and probably the adults around them) at a moment's notice. We are both terrified of, and disdainful toward, young people.

Between these two poles of "good" and "evil" it can be very difficult for us to see young humans for what they are: people with a wide range of experiences and behaviors. People who can grow and change and respond to their environment in the same way adults do. Sometimes their learning happens at the encouragement of adults. Sometimes kids learn incredibly well without adult management and, in fact, can teach us a thing or two about what it means to be decent human beings.

To whit: two recent articles that have come across my dash in which the young people behaved in a significantly less bigoted and freaked-out fashion than the adults. First, a recent article in Bitch magazine by Avital Norman Nathman, Pink Scare: What's Behind the Media Panic About 'Princess Boys'? (Summer 2011). In discussing the panic over boys who express and interest in "feminine" activities, clothing, and toys, Nathman quotes a mother who was harassed for letting her son choose accessories seen as "girly" by other parents:

“I picked up Dyson from gymnastics and some parents spoke about his pink butterfly backpack,” she recalls. “A mother: ‘What a shame that mom buys girls’ stuff for her son.’ A father: ‘I’d never allow my boy to be anything but a boy.’ Then the son asked Dyson, ‘Where did you get that backpack? I like butterflies.’ As Dyson answered, the father grabbed his boy [away]. Kids are not the problem.”

You can read the full article over at Bitch Media. In our rush to explain children's behavior with theories of gender or innate evopsych proclivities ("human beings are just naturally selfish creatures") we forget that from the moment they are born children are steeped in a dense network of relationships in which human behaviors are modeled for them. It's a wonder, really, that despite adults cueing children so relentlessly that pink butterflies are for girls there are kids with a strong enough sense of self to disregard those messages and simply express an delight at something they like.

Similarly, via Jos at Feministing, we have the story of a 10-year-old trans girl who has been accepted as no big deal by her age-mates while the adults around her totally spaz. While parents went ballistic and called the child a "freak," demanding she play on the boys' sports teams and change in a private bathroom, the kids seemed completely chill. As the girl told her local news outlet, "They haven't really said anything ... my friends stick up for me and say 'he feels like a girl so he can be on the girl's team.' " Jos writes of the story:

I hope it’s clear that the acceptance she’s felt from her peers is much more important than the specific pronoun they use. Yes, language matters, but I know I greatly prefer the support I get from a friend who genuinely accepts me as myself, even if they’re not up on all the lingo, to someone who talks the talk but doesn’t ultimately treat my identity as valid.

So I just wanted to take a moment this Friday to give a shout-out to the wee ones of this world who are refusing to cater to adult anxieties and instead continue to interact with their friends (and, hopefully, relative strangers too!) with kindness, generosity, interest, and enthusiasm. It's people like you who give me hope for the future of this planet -- no matter how young in years you may be.

new spectacles + good vibes (both kinds!)

It's been awhile since I posted something that was just about life in Boston, so here on this hot, humid Saturday -- as Hanna and I watch Denmark vs. Cameron at the World Cup -- I thought I'd share pictures of my new library lady spectacles. They're my first new pair in over five years, and I feel like the world just got a little bit clearer! Hopefully, they'll help with the headaches and eyestrain as well.

Hop over to Twitpic if you want a larger version of the photo (I'm on Hanna's laptop at the minute and too lazy to edit the .jpg without my usual software).

Hanna says they are very 1950s and reminiscent of the ladies in Farside; perhaps this will help with my fearsome feminist library lady persona? Time will tell!

In other low-key weekend news, we happen to live about a ten minute walk from the only Good Vibrations store on the East Coast and I enjoy stopping in occasionally -- mostly to window shop as most high-quality sex toys are simply beyond my modest discretionary budget. So I paid them a visit this morning on my way to the grocery store and while I was browsing a fellow customer came up after making her purchase and offered me a $10-off coupon she'd just received that she said she would never had a chance to use (I assume the was in the Boston area on holiday). I have no idea what her name was or what prompted her to pass the card along to me -- but thank you mystery woman for that anonymous treat! I already have a few ideas for how to make use of the gift :).

from the neighborhood: PSA graffiti

When Hanna and I arrived at the train station in Lowell a couple of weekends ago, en route to Lunenberg, we happened to spot this helpful message on the side of a traincar.



"Very soon the dead will rise out of their graves."

I'm not sure if this is meant to be a eschatalogical prediction or a warning about zombie invasion. Either way, I feel the person who painted it with a certain public spiritedness about them.

Possibly, they could have benefitted from the company of whomever offered this bit of advice outside one of the Berklee School of Music buildings near the Massachusetts Historical Society.



"Keep your chin up, old sport."

from the neighborhood: npr!

Ever since coming to Boston I've been frustrated by the inconsistency of the reception for NPR stations in the Boston area. Our apartment is wretchedly fickle about letting us get solid reception of WBUR or WGBH. But yesterday, Hanna had a brainstorm to hook up her Sansa MP3 player (which gets really good radio reception in our apartment) to a pair of computer speakers which we aren't currently using -- and voila! A 21st century radio! We were just in time to hear the Sunday Puzzle on Morning Edition.

Now I have NPR in the apartment and I am happy. My girlfriend is awesome.

thank you thursday: jet-lagged edition

The first summer I lived in Boston, a friend of mine (in town doing research at the Historical Society) took me out for lunch and left her wallet on the table when we left. Ten minutes later, when she realized it was gone and went back for it, someone had already taken it and disappeared. What followed were endless phone calls to put holds on credit cards, debit cards, renew IDs and replace other vital forms of information (library card anyone??). Not as catastrophic as it could have been in the identity theft department, but certainly a headache all around.

So this morning, when -- tired and distracted by the back-from-research-trip "to do" list -- I left my wallet at the Coolidge Corner post office on my way to work, and didn't realize I had abandon it until about fifteen minutes (and a mile's walk) later, I was prepared for the worst. I was already starting to make a mental list of the places I was going to have to phone as soon as possible to make sure our bank accounts weren't drained through the ATM machine.

Which is why I would like to extend my fervent thanks to the anonymous, civic-minded soul who picked up my wallet from the post office counter and turned it in -- every piece of money-generating plastic inside -- and handed it in to the post office staff. So that when I turned up, sweaty and anxious from my one-mile trek back up the road, they could hand it back to me.

I don't expect generosity from strangers, but it's sure as hell a wonderful feeling to know there are people out there in the world who choose to be generous in their daily lives. Generous to someone they've never met, but whose life they've just made a hell of a lot less stressful than it could have been today. So whomever you are: Thanks.

that was sweet, mr. J.P. Lick's man

There's a J.P. Licks ice cream shop in Coolidge Corner that Hanna and I stop at on our way home from work or school. The weather being what it is, we haven't been in there for a while, but on Wednesday we stopped in for a pint of their egg nog ice cream to go with the gingerbread we made earlier this week. One of the guys who's been working there for a while, whom I know by sight but not by name, was behind the counter. We were considering our ice cream options and I said something to the effect of "what sounds good to you?" and gave Hanna a kiss on the cheek, just as the guy asked if we were ready to order.

"Sorry," Hanna said, for failing to respond to his question immediately (we were both tired and distracted, having just come from the computer lab where we'd printed out five copies of her 130-page thesis; that's a solid ream of paper folks!).

"No need to apologize for public displays of affection," he told us, as he packed our ice cream container.

"Oh, no," Hanna responded, "I was just apologizing for my inability to use the English language!"

On the one hand, it seemed a little intrusive for him even to mention the fact I'd kissed her. But if he thought Hanna was apologizing for my actions, I think he was kind of him to let us know he wasn't offended. I know plenty of people in the world who would have been. (Sad, but true). Not that I spend my time wandering around wondering what the world thinks of my PDA behavior (well, I admit, if I got the sense we were being criticized I'd probably have to quell the urge to be even more outrageous). All the same, I think it was a well-intentioned comment.

So thank you, Mr. J.P. Lick's man, for saying what you did. It was sweet.

On the Syllabus: The Survival of a Counterculture

The book I've been reading this week for my thesis research, The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards, by Bennet M. Berger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) was a find on the Brookline Booksmith $1 cart by Hanna while I was on vacation visiting family (thank you H, for thinking of me!). Even though it was published the year I was born, and written by a sociologist rather than an historian, I am still finding a lot of really good observations and theoretical musings that help me clarify my thinking about the interaction of philosophy and practice in human communities.

Berger set out to study the place of children within "hippie" communes, and although his observations range far and wide in this particular book -- not focusing on children to the exclusion of other aspects of commune life, he still spends a good deal of time describing adult interactions with young people. The following excerpt is from his third chapter, "Communal Children: Equalitarianism and the Decline of Age-grading."

In treating the history of the concept of childhood, social scientists have emphasized the differences between [the pre-industrial] status of children . . . where they are regarded simply as small or inadequate versions of their parents, totally subject to traditional or otherwise arbitrary parental authority . . . [and on the other hand] the modern, industrial, middle-class view of children [in which] children are increasingly treated as members of a distinctive social category, their social participation . . . increasingly limited to age-homogeneous groups.

. . .

The prevalent view of children at The Ranch (and other communes like it) fits neither of these models exactly. Rather than being members of an autonomous category of "children" or being inadequate versions of their parents, legitimately subject to their arbitrary authority, children and young people (or "small persons," as they are sometimes deliberately, perhaps preciously, called) are primarily regarded as "persons," members of the communal family, just like anyone else -- not necessarily less wise, perhaps less competent, but recognized primarily, as my colleague Bruce Hackett put it, "by lowering one's line of vision rather than one's level of discourse."

Berger's later descriptions of adult-child interactions at The Ranch illuminate and refine this general philosophical approach to understanding young people in the context of the communal structure -- obviously there are nuances to each portion of this description (how is the "less competent" aspect dealt with? what does it mean for children to be seen as potential sources of wisdom?). But I was struck by the re-orientation necessarily in a community where this is the starting point for adult-child interaction, rather than one of the first two positions described (and in our modern American society, the modern, industrial, middle-class ideal dominates, whether or not it is upheld religiously in daily practice). What would it be like to interact with kids primarily "by lowering one's line of vision rather than one's level of discourse"?

Friday video: cutest. robot. ever.

well, okay. maybe not EVER. Wall-E was pretty darned adorable. but, anyway, via Alas, a Blog comes this New York City art project involving mobile "tweenbots" who are let loose on the streets of the city and aided by passersby.

And the world gets a little better . . .

So I don't think the Obama administration is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ or anything, but I have to say the tension that has existed for the last eight years somewhere down near my uterus un-knotted a just wee small bit when I saw the juxtaposition of these two pictures.

Also: to the undergraduate standing in front of me in the coffee line who turned around after paying to say to me, "I saw you reading Feministe just now and I was so encouraged!" -- it's so nice to know there are other people out there in the real world who feel encouraged by the same things I do! You totally made my day.

And then yesterday got a little bit better

I was feeling tired and depressed, and slightly headachey yesterday (just one of those days). But I was scheduled to go to dinner and a play (see below) with a co-worker and her former roommates, and having paid for the ticket I decided to suck it up and go anyway. So we went to dinner at this place in the South End called Delux, a restaurant, which had -- by the way -- delicious gnocchi with smoked mozzarella cheese. And I didn't want alcohol, well, I wanted it but when I have an incipient headache this is not a good idea so I asked if they had coffee (no) or iced tea (no). The waitress was very apologetic. So I was making do with water, when she came back a few minutes later and said to me, "This is going to sound weird, but our beer rep just brought me an iced tea from the cafe down the street and I don't drink iced tea and I thought it was so weird because you had just asked about it and I'll just be throwing it out so anyway, do you want it?" She brought it to me free with two slices of lemon and made my day just a little bit brighter.