Blockbuster: The Living History Museum

Courtesy of The Onion

Make Way for Goslings

I was walking between the Longwood T stop and North Hall this afternoon, when I happened to spot this family of Canada Geese. Awww . . . .

done done done done done

So yesterday, I turned in my last paper and handed off my oral history interviews to the Oral History Archive. I'm done with the semester! Hooray! It's hard to believe that a year ago at this time of year I was still in Holland, working at Barnes & Noble, and had three months to go before moving to Boston . . . a hell of a lot has happened in the last twelve months, and I'm looking forward to some time over the summer to sit back and take stock.

More soon.

When I'm done with the last paper . . .

This weekend, I'm working away on one final history paper on mid-twentieth century feminist historians and Native American women's history--if you're interested in details, check back in a month when I have more perspective! But in the part of my brain not preoccupied with academic writing, I'm happily assembling the beginnings of a summer reading/viewing list. At the top are . . .

• Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, by Daniel Radosh. I don't know what it says about me that at the end of term, what sounds most appealing to me is to pick up a rollicking bit of journalism that allows me to laugh at the "parallel universe" of Christian fundamentalist evangelicals . . . but this one's at the top of my list.
  
• My latest issue of the journal Radical Teacher, which just arrived in the mail this evening, is the first of a year-long subscription I picked up with Christmas money, and I look forward to perusing it. Ms. also has a new issue out I haven't had a chance to look at.
  
• Tasha Alexander's latest mystery featuring you widow Emily Ashton, Fatal Waltz, is out in bookstores and I'm looking forward to a bit of historical-mystery-romance escapism if I do say so myself.
• He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, Jessica Valenti's latest, is unlikely to have anything terribly mind-blowing, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless--when someone offers you astute feminist analysis in a book that doesn't require note-taking to make sense of it, why not spend an afternoon enjoying yourself?
  
• My friend Joseph gave me Anne Fadiman's collection of essays, At Large and At Small, at Christmastime and I'm ashamed to say I haven't yet found time to read it.
  
• Plus, I still have the last four episodes of Torchwood, season one, waiting to be watched, and Hanna reports that Prince Caspian is opening in the weekend of Simmons' graduation.

So I'm sure I will have no trouble filling my leisure time . . .

I have a few other more substantive post ideas that I hope to work on after my brain recovers--check back in a couple of weeks.

Gene Robinson on Fresh Air

Mom pointed me toward yesterday's interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Bishop Robinson, who was ordained four years ago this spring. Listening to him talk about Christianity and the contention over sexual orientation and identity always makes me want to cry because he's just so articulate.

The whole interview was interesting, but I was particularly struck by his story about a recent media kerfluffle over a joking remark he made about the civil union he and his long-time partner are planning for this summer in New Hampshire. He told someone he had "always wanted to be a June bride." Apparently, this got out on the internet and people were quite wound up about it. Anyway, Terry Gross asked him about it, and his response was really striking in its feminist perspective:

I think part of why that [comment] raced around the world in no time flat due to the magic of the internet has to do with misogyny and its connection to homophobia. I think the thing that really irritates the world about refering to myself as a "bride" is that I'm supposed to be privileged because I'm male, not female, and to refer to myself with a feminine word like bride offends the patriarchal system that I think is beginning to come apart--and gay and lesbian people, I believe, are helping to begin the deconstruction of patriarchy [begins at 26:10].

He also had some trenchant thoughts on the way he negotiates living in Christian community with people who are not accepting of homosexuality and other sexual orientations and identities without either walking away from them or compromising himself or the lives of other marginalized people.

Spring . . . maybe?

We've had a couple of beautiful spring days here in Boston this week, when the temperatures have edged toward sixty--on Thursday even seventy! Yesterday, after a morning at the Schlesinger Library doing work on my term paper, I walked home along the Charles River, where humanity was out in force walking their dogs, playing with their kids, jogging, and even (in one intrepid case) sunbathing in a bikini! I tried to do a bit of double-duty, reading Franz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks which is our assigned history text for the week, but I also managed to snap a few pictures along the way.

Because it's all I can muster . . .

As the semester winds down toward May 7th (the date my last assignment is due), I'm fairly sure that the blog entries will slow to a trickle. I had two migraine headaches this week, which was no fun. I also had my first oral history interview with a doula from here in the Boston area who's been practicing since 1969 as a birth educator and support person for women in labor long before the modern meaning of "doula" was articulated in the 1990s. We talked for over an hour and a half and there was so much more I would have loved to talk with her about. Happily, I'll be taking her doula training workshop this summer, so will have an opportunity to learn a lot more about the work she and others are doing in the area.

After the interview I was ready to crash, so Hanna and I got together, ate chips, dip, and pocky, and watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, an episode that lampooned this "horror" film with agonizingly slow pacing, nonexistent plot, lots of sunshine, and lines like "this is where the fish live." We followed it up with Stranger Than Fiction (which was just as good the second time as the first).

I hear that Spring is finally arriving in Michigan, so I hope all you Third Coasters are enjoying the end of a grueling winter.

More news as soon as the term ends and I settle in to my new apartment in the middle of May (I promise pictures eventually!)