Godless Professors and the Subversion of American Youth

Did you know that universities are subverting the minds of America's young people by turning them into godless socialists? Dr. Mike S. Adams, a professor at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is dispensing advice at Townhall to a father who is distraught about his daughter coming home with scary new leftist ideas. Jeff Fecke (h/t) has already taken down Dr. Mike bit-by-wingnutty-bit - including his coinage of the oh-so-clever acronym STD for "Socialist Teaching Disorder." I just want to zoom in on one little piece of Dr. Mike's take on university life:

First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.

Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.

(If you must, you can read the rest here.)

Although I'm not a real socialist - just a fan of redistribution, thanks to my pastor when I was 14! - I am one of those freethinking university professors. Scandalously, I think it's a good thing when my students start to examine their beliefs and preconceptions.

I just finished teaching a class on religion, gender, and sexuality that might well enrage Dr. Mike. I framed patriarchy in materialist terms and lectured on how poverty multiplies the odds that a woman will terminate a pregnancy. (Socialism!) We discussed the Gnostic Gospels and the struggle between heterodoxy and orthodoxy in Christianity. (Heresy!) We delved into the roots of the Christian valorization of virginity. (Sluttishness!)

At the end of the quarter, students were asked to write a short essay in which they discussed how their views had changed over the past ten weeks. Many of them said that the class upset their certainties. Some of them questioned their faith. How, after all, can you trust the Bible's authority if a politicized Church hierarchy - not divine revelation - determined which books became canonical?

So yeah. Dr. Mike would hate this class. So did one student (out of 85), judging from the final exam. She objected to the feminist framing of the material. She would have preferred ten weeks of Catholic dogma. She transparently didn't bother to engage with the material in any serious way.

The rest of the students - including many current and former Catholics - realized that they didn't have to follow any party line. Not mine; not any religion's. One young Catholic woman had a real crisis of faith mid-quarter. By the end of the quarter, she felt stronger in her beliefs than before. Another young woman who's planning to become a minister wrote of her past and present struggles with her faith.

Did I turn those students godless? Not by any stretch. And that was never my intent. If a person is going to embrace faith as an adult, they're going to have to find it themselves. They can't just continue believing a Sunday School version of it with colorful, sanitized pictures of Daniel in the lion's den and Jesus surrounded by fluffy lambs. They'll have to navigate their way from dogma to actual faith. That's exactly how some of my religious students used the class. They started questions and haven't stopped. And they have matured in their beliefs. (Interestingly, a number of them declare some affinity for Buddhist ideas, even as they remain in their own faith tradition.)

A substantially minority of my students wrote that they consider themselves agnostics or atheists. So did I convert them to godlessness? A few of them did begin to call themselves agnostics during the class, but most of them came into it already rejecting or questioning religion. Many of them felt liberated at being able to "come out" about their unbelief in their discussion groups - something they often had felt unable to do, until now.

These students took my class for one of two reasons. Some had grown up without any religion and felt they needed to close a gap in their education. Others were questioning their religious upbringing or had rejected it altogether, often in the wake of a loved one's death. (It's ironic and sad that religion seems so often to fail people at the very moment when it's supposed to provide the most comfort.) Disproportionately, the students in this second group had been raised Catholic. For most of them, the Church's condemnation of homosexuality was a serious dealbreaker, with its position on abortion and contraception coming in a close second.

This is why the Pope's statement on gender last Christmas made me crazy. There was some controversy at the time about what the English word "gender" connotes when used in Italian (as in the Pope's address), and I can't speak to that as an expert. I know about a dozen words of Italian and I wasn't raised Catholic. But the context - as well as some of the smarter commentary on this - convinced me that he was affirming the church's teachings on the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and traditional gender roles.

More importantly, the Pope was trying to shut down all discussion of all gender issues within the Catholic Church. This is exactly what's driving young people out of the Church. They see the condemnation of homosexuality and the hierarchy's refusal to even discuss it as contemptuous and inhumane.

Dr. Mike, his letter-writer, and (I'm betting) a lot of conservative parents want to short-circuit that discussion too. It's a terrible loss, because their kids want to have it. They need to have it. That goes for everyone from the young fundamentalist to the hard-core nihilist. (And yes, the range in my class was that wide.)

If Dr. Mike were paying attention to his students, he'd realize that whatever their professors do or say, they are at an age where they're bound to question their upbringing. A good university education should help them learn to think for themselves in a more thorough, systematic, and deeper way. It should prod them to question received wisdom and authority. It should expose them to a variety of viewpoints. (Yes, even Dr. Mike's.)

If that's subverting young people, then I'm blessed to be a part of it. One student sent me an email at the end of the quarter saying the class had changed her life; another said the same as she turned in her exam. I don't personally take too much credit, because the potentially life-changing work happened in the discussion groups, not in my lectures. But even so, staying on the job full-time this quarter through weeks of illness and fear was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'd worried that my students got cheated. I blubbed in gratitude when I read that email.

Oh, and as far as I know, I didn't convert a single student to Marxism. Nary a Trotskyist. Not even a mild-mannered socialist-feminist. I guess I'd better try harder.

The Poetics of Heirloom Tomatoes

My Sungolds, August 2008.

Now that I’ve put my winter quarter grades to bed, I finally had a chance this week to start my tomatoes, a week or two later than I’d prefer. I grow them from seed for two reasons. You can’t get most of these varieties from nurseries, and I am just endlessly fascinated by seeds. (In theory, I might also save money by starting my own, but I sort of doubt it, since I’m too obsessed with variety.)

Most of the ‘maters I grow are heirlooms, meaning they’re older varieties that will breed true without any human intervention. If I were more dedicated, and better organized, I could save the seeds, but I’m not, so I don’t. I do grow a couple of hybrids: Sweet Million cherries, Brandy Boy (which combines the flavor of Brandywine with much higher yields, but is annoyingly available only through the Burpee catalog. And of course – Sungold cherry tomatoes.

The names of tomatoes are ripe with color and flavor. I’ve got a whole series of purples: Pruden’s Purple. Marizol Purple. Eva Purple Ball. Purple Price. Cherokee Purple. They’re more pink than purple, except for Cherokee Purple, which is actually closer to the blacks, but I love the very idea of purple. I will say that the pictures of Purple Price look close to a real purple, but I managed to kill it last year in the Great Overfertilizing Disaster, so I can’t confirm its color.

I fell in love with black tomatoes last year: Black Cherry (which grows huge but wasn’t especially prolific, Chocolate Cherry (new this year), Black Krim, Carbon, and Black from Tula. They taste dusky and rich. Carbon was great for me last summer, which smacks mildly of irony, since I live at the edge of a dying coal region.

The tomato my family nearly fought over last year was Kellogg’s Breakfast Tomato. No corn flakes involved: it’s a big, juicy orange guy. I’m also planting a couple of bicolors, Big Rainbow and Isis Candy (cherry); they’re prettier than what the Tiger renamed “the Breskit Tomato” but not as flavorful. For the first time, I’m trying a bicolor version of Mortgage Lifter, so named because its original developer apparently got himself out of debt thanks to the variety’s huge fruit and prolific yield.

For some reason, tomatoes – like ships – are more likely to get feminine than masculine names. I’m planting Kimberly, Snow White, Marianna’s Peace, Aunt Gertie’s Gold, and the aforementioned Eva Purple Ball, but only two with dudely names, Andrew Rahart’s Jumbo Red and Matt’s Wild Cherry.

Then there are the names that are all over the map. Bulgarian #7 (no word on the whereabouts of 1 through 6), Galina’s (a tart yellow cherry from Siberia), Azoychka (a medium-sized yellow, also from Russia), Caspian Pink, Stupice (from then-Czechoslovakia), Nepal (from the Himalayas), and Stump of the World. I guess the Stump is where you land after all that traveling. Oh, and there’s Giant Belgium, which is apparently from … Ohio.

To round it off, I started Brandywine, Boxcar Willie, Great White, and Sioux. And did I mention Sungolds?

I do not have space for all these plants. I'll no doubt crowd too many too close, like I do every year. Today I finally finished what ought to have been the fall cleanup (and was grateful to finish the job without fatigue sideswiping me). All those dead vines reminded me that fungal disease is my enemy, air circulation is my friend. By the time I plant this year's babies out in six weeks or so, I will have forgotten that lesson.

I've still got oodles of seeds, so if you want some, let me know in comments! I would seriously send them to you. (You'd need to email me your address.) Or just show up in Athens around Mother's Day, when you'll find me disoriented, circling my garden, desperately plotting a way to squeeze in just one more plant.

Seeds, Sentiment, Magic

Sorry to illustrate a post about seeds with a flower I grew from a bulb, but hey, this is what's blooming in my garden today. The photo shows my little rock iris.

Today I started to plant my garden. Well, that's the truth if you don't mind a little embroidery. My garden is entirely indoors, so far, and all I planted was a slew of impatiens seeds.

It's hard not to get, well, impatient while planting those little buggers. They're small. Very small. I have to take off my glasses to see them. I end up hunched over the seeds and the flats like a clumsy horticultural Mr. Magoo. And so they make me feel old. Planting tiny seeds relentlessly tracks my presbyopia from year to year. (If you clicked on that link, you're probably young enough not to worry about it yet.) One of these years I'm going to need bifocals. For now, I can get by without them, but only because I can leverage my nearsightedness, Magoo-like.

Anyway. There aren't a whole lot of smart reasons to grow impatiens from seed. They're readily available from any nursery - even Wal-Mart. It's true I want a lot of them (for my too-abundant shady beds) and I'll save a little money by starting them myself. That is the official rationale.

If I'm honest about it, though, I'll admit it's not really about economizing. Not at all. I just love seeds. And so I'll promiscuously start almost anything indoors, weeks before I can really garden outside. I keep watch on the seed coat as it softens and relents. I'm spellbound by the improbability of the seed leaf emerging from its harsh husk, sometimes after years of dormancy, wakened from sleep by the kiss of moisture. I hold my breath in fear of damping off (the plague of seedlings). I'll dab my own spit on any recalcitrant seed coat that threatens to trap the leaves, then coax out the tender greenery. So much wonder and anticipation even before the first true leaves, never mind the flower and fruit.

I'm no different from my son the Tiger, who planted beans in his kindergarten class last week. He doesn't know exactly what to expect. He just knows they're magic. And he's waiting for that magic beanstalk to emerge, leading places only he can imagine.

The Perils and Privileges of Invisible Disability

This isn't exactly a LOLtopic, but invisibility of any sort calls for a kitteh - from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Spurred partly by my recent scary health experiences, and partly by posts from Julie at Alas and Daisy at Daisy's Dead Air, I've been thinking about the peculiarities of invisible disability.

About a week into my bizarro neurological adventures, I started to go public with my colleagues and a few students. I realized I wasn't going to be healthy again overnight. It became obvious that I might need some extra support - which I got in abundance.

The first group of colleagues I told were shocked. "But you looked like nothing had changed!" "Nobody could tell that there was anything wrong!" "Really, your lecture was just fine!"

What shocked me, upon reflection, is how gratified I felt to hear this. I had a mild tremor in my lower left lip, and I was convinced I must look like Inspector Dreyfus from the Pink Panther movies. My facial muscles were freakishly tight and I was sure my face resembled a death mask. Brain fog interrupted my ability to string together sentences, and I perceived my own lectures as rank gibberish.

I suppose it's understandable that I was glad to hear that none of this was evident to an outside observer. And yet, I think my reaction also betrays an investment in "normalcy" that I really ought to have shed by now. I've been teaching about disability in women's studies classes for years. My partner has a somewhat visible physical disability. While in grad school, I experienced another invisible, ultimately temporary, but fairly long-lasting disability when I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

What does it take for a gal to get over the ideal of normalcy? Why was passing so important to me?

There's a serious privilege built into invisible disability. While I'm still pretty far from normal (my hand tremor is acting up as I type this), I can choose whether to disclose it to people. I don't have to respond to questions from strangers about what happened to me - something that happened to my partner all the time when he was wearing an arm brace. It's as though any piece of orthopedic equipment makes your body and its history public property. I'm very relieved not to have to defend my personal space and privacy.

Faced with wearing a wrist brace that might help her heal but would call attention to her disability, Daisy explains why she can't quite make herself do it.

It makes me appear vulnerable and calls attention to my age, in a job market in which older workers are getting left behind. I try to look energetic and "happy" on my job, since we are "selling a lifestyle" and all that shit: I feel pressure in the health supplement industry to always appear healthy. Since it's a job in which people are always talking about their health, I am duly questioned about mine, when there are many times (like now) that I'd rather not answer. The overall sentiment seems to be: well, if you know so much about supplements, why are you falling apart? Aging is inevitable and people are in denial about that, as well as in denial about disability-as-part-of-life in general...

I'm not in the health industry, but in my work I'm surrounded by apparently-healthy young people. As their instructor, I often hear about what lies beneath. One person has ADHD, another is coping with rheumatoid arthritis, yet another has Crohn's disease, someone else comes down with mono, and a legion of them struggle with various mental health issues. Yet the norm on campus is what's visible. And all you can see - except for the occasional leg cast - is "healthy," vigorous youth. It's possible this is more pronounced at my university than most, because the campus is hilly and the accommodations for anyone who's mobility-impaired are a joke.

This silence and invisibility contribute to the denial Daisy mentions. So does our shared but repressed fear of mortality and decline.

There are also serious perils in looking "too healthy." Julie at Alas recounts how she can't wrap her own mind around the idea that her back pain is real, and this sabotages her ability to get the care she needs. Daisy points out that Julie's experience collides our expectation that if a person is young, attractive, middle-class, and educated, she ought to be healthy, too, just by definition.

Maybe most people with invisible disabilities aren't as hard on themselves as Julie appears to be, but they also can't always count on the recognition and help they need. When I had my chronic fatigue experience, my grad school advisers were wonderfully supportive, but some of the other people in my orbit really didn't get it. My then-boyfriend once accused me of using my illness manipulatively because I could find energy for some activities but not others. It was hard for him to understand that my energy level varied, and that I had to set priorities. (This was the beginning of the end for me and him.) A few fellow students expressed skepticism behind my back, which came back to me through the grad-school gossip tree: How could I really be sick? I didn't look sick! Was I just trying to get a break on my coursework? To my face, though, some of my comrades radiated pity; this group overlapped with the skeptics, weirdly enough.

This time around, I've encountered only warmth and support from family, friends, and colleagues. My husband took on some of my usual household tasks. My mom sent money and offered to come help if we needed her. Friends took care of the kids, often at short notice, and one of them babysat overnight so we could go to Cleveland. One colleague gave a lecture while I was away, and another was on call to cover my seminar. Yet another found money to pay a grader so I didn't have to deal with 90 midterms.

I'm sure it helps that I'm out of the grad-school hothouse with its petty resentments. More importantly, most of the adults in my life are now old enough to have some close-up experience with disability. Without their support, I don't know how I'd have made it through the past weeks.

But the precondition for all this help was that I had to make the invisible visible. I had to take the risk of making it public. I couldn't hide under the mask of normalcy. I had to give up the privilege of passing, however uncomfortable that made me. I'm so grateful that the people in my life all chose to make that radical phenomenological leap of faith - to believe in the reality of my reality, no matter how impossible it was for them to see it.

What would it take to transform our society so that invisible disability is always taken seriously - and that leap of faith is no longer even necessary?

The Fall Unemployment Forecast, Minus One

Motivational kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Maybe I don't have it quite as good as this LOLcat, but I do have a job I love. For the past several months, though, it hung in the balance as the university awaited Obama's stimulus plan and then the contours of the Ohio state budget. At one point, rumor had it that every last "visiting" and "part-time" regular faculty person would be laid off. That would've included me, too.

Today I heard that my job is safe for next year. I'm overjoyed, albeit in a rather sober key. There's not much to crow about when my county is at 7 percent unemployment and most of the surrounding ones are over 10 percent. I also haven't heard if anyone in my orbit has gotten bad news. The university is making deep cuts, and I'll be amazed if they don't hit any of my friends and colleagues.

While I think I'm pretty good at what I do, I can't claim my brilliance saved my position. I'm not deluded enough to believe academia is a pure meritocracy. My chair is smart and savvy. Our dean has been supportive of our program. Women's and Gender Studies teaches a lot of students on the cheap. All of those factors probably far outweighed my actual sterling qualities as a teacher.

However it happened, I'm so, so grateful not to be joining the ranks of the unemployed. I'd love to celebrate, but the Tiger has a high fever, so I'm not going anywhere tonight. Festivities will consist of a glass of wine and the second season of Weeds on DVD.

Wherever you are, please raise a glass with me.

My First Shivering Crocus

Here's my first lonely crocus of the year. It popped up a day ago, rising above the brown and trodden grass. This morning, it refused to open in the damp grey air. It's holding out for a few more rays of sun, and I can't blame it. My daffodils, too, are sending up their first tentative shoots, but they're still nothing but hope and promise.

And then there are my ornery pansies, under ice ten days ago, now stubbornly trying to bloom. They're not a thing of beauty, are they? But that's beside the point. The point is, they're still here. They persist. Despite sub-zero temperatures.

Just because a metaphor is obvious doesn't mean it's any less true.

My Beautiful Optic Nerve

I learned two things at OSU's MS clinic this morning:

1) My optic nerves are beautiful.

2) I almost certainly do not have multiple sclerosis.

I feel like my life was just handed back to me, in its entirety, fresh and new.

(Gratuitous daylily from last July's garden, just because I am so happy.)

As in Cleveland, I had a wonderful experience with the doctor at OSU. He was smart and kind. He had a great sense of humor. His wife studies the social history of medicine (which is my research field, too); I'd love to have dinner with both of them.

He spent an hour talking with me and performing a neurological exam that involved vibrating tuning forks and the Ministry of Silly Walks. All normal except that my reflexes are a bit exaggerated.

He looked at my brain MRI and told me that I also have a beautiful brain - and that my scan is normal. Normal. Those extra spots? A mystery of nature. He showed me pictures of brains afflicted with MS, and the difference was evident even to me.

I don't have to go back again unless I have a repeat performance of my symptoms, which the doctor thinks is extremely unlikely. I don't have to get a spinal tap. I'll get a repeat MRI sometime six or twelve months from now, just to be safe. That is all.

I feel incredibly lucky. Incredibly blessed.

So what went kaflooey with me? Maybe a virus; maybe the Bactrim after all; maybe something wonky with my thyroid (and I'll still talk to an endocrinologist about that). As long as I keep getting slowly better, I can live with the mystery.

I may still blog about some of the thoughts I've had lately about disability, "passing" as normal, and the relation between body and mind. But I hereby declare an end to blogging about my day-to-day health (unless I get an answer someday, after all).

You can assume, along with me, that I'll keep getting better, and that I'm wallowing in the amazing good fortune of having a beautiful brain.

In Love and Romance, Sickness and Health

All right, I'll admit it: I like getting flowers every once in a while. I don't believe they should be mandatory for a particular day, and I think the commercialization of Valentine's Day is about as sexy as the commercialization of Christmas. It's just capitalism revving its internal motor.

But still. I got flowers today and I adore them. Their backstory is pretty cool. My husband bought a raffle ticket from one of the administrative assistants in his department. He just figured he was donating $5 to one of the poorly-funded schools that borders our own relatively fortunate district. Instead, he won a dozen roses in a vase.


These are the lucky roses. (The keen eye will note the Ants in the Pants game in the background, which tells a whole 'nother story about my life.)

I love the idea of winning anything. It makes me feel lucky in general. I am totally reading this as a good omen for my whole life.

And yet, these roses pale next to to the real gift I got this Valentine's Day. My husband was supposed to spend most of the week at a conference in Germany. He didn't go. He stayed home with me instead. When he could have been reconnecting with old friends and basking in scholarly acclaim, he drove me up to Cleveland and held my hand and promised we'd get me healthy again. He didn't think twice about his decision.

That line about "in sickness and in health"? This is part of what bell hooks is getting at, I think, when she writes that romance is a fickle and a shaky foundation for a life, while love is solid but demands that we consciously choose it over and again. (I realize I keep harping on this idea of hers, maybe because its ramifications are more complicated than they first appear.)

I've been on both sides now, the sickness and the health. Both exact a higher cost than most of us imagine when we utter a vow in the flush of youth. If we're wise - or at least lucky - we keep choosing love anyway.

I see no reason to swear off romance: the butterflies, the flirtation, the vase full of red roses. Love ought to be fun, too, after all. But when the petals shrivel and fall, it's love that remains - with its constant demand to choose - challenging and sustaining us.

Life, the Feminist Universe, and Everything

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town links to a fascinating interactive graphic showing linkages in the feminist blogosphere. Kittywampus is on the map, much to my surprise! It's cool to be part of the feminist universe, even if I'm a white dwarf or a nebula. Heck, I'm just pleased not to be a black hole.

The map was part of a presentation at the Feminism 2.0 conference. If you're curious, you can check it out here. (You'll need to log in with username= fem2pt0 and password= linkfluence.) I haven't figured out the methodology behind it, but it seems to be based on ingoing and outgoing links, and I suspect this includes one's blogroll. They've also got a ranking of the top 30 feminist blogs, again based on links, as far as I can see. It's hard to tell how inclusive the map actually is, since the map structure doesn't allow for a comprehensive list of all the blogs it depicts. I saw lots of familiar names but missed a couple, too.

So my blog is apparently healthier than I am. However! I felt distinctly better today. My hands are steadier, and so is my brain. For the first time since my illness started on January 20 (yes, Inauguration Day) I gave a lecture without feeling like it was an out-of-body experience. I don't know if this improvement will continue, but I'm feeling greatly cheered.

I also saw my doctor again, and we're running lots more tests - twelve vials of blood yesterday, and two more tomorrow - so I feel like the medical wheels are turning. Up to now, the blood tests have been relentlessly normal. My doc is going to try to get neurologists who are experts in MS and vasculitis to take a look at my MRI. (There's really only one type of vasculitis that I could plausibly have, a fairly rare condition called benign angiitis of the central nervous system. If you follow the link, note that the scarier variants don't fit my symptoms, nor is anyone about to do a brain biopsy on me! BACNS is highly curable with strong steroids, and it doesn't normally recur.)

In short, I'm feeling stronger, physically, and hopeful, emotionally. After the dark places I've visited recently, it's the most brilliant feeling in the galaxy.

Update on Me: Another Good Reason to Watch Dr. House on TV

If you've ever watched House on TV, you know that in every other episode "vasculitis" enters into the differential diagnosis. If you've never watched it, you should know that Hugh Laurie plays the drollest misanthrope ever to grace the small screen; that it's a medical detective show featuring Dr. House solving impossibly complex cases; and that vasculitis should practically get star billing.

I used to joke about how the diagnostic trail always led through lupus, lymphoma, Guillain Barre ... and vasculitis. (Oh, and the mandatory break-in into the patient's home to see where he or she was lying about their medically relevant recreational drug use/sexual history/other vices and secrets.)

I'm not laughing today, but I am grateful that I googled vasculitis months ago so I could follow the plot of House. Because vasculitis is the leading candidate for what's wrong with me.

Initially, the radiologists' report came back suggesting MS, with vasculitis mentioned as another possibility. However, because the report was frustratingly vague, I badgered my family doctor for clarification. That resulted in a second, more experienced radiologist reading my scans. His opinion was that the lesions in my brain would be unusually small and atypically located for MS.

Now, MS could still be the culprit, and I had some very bad hours in between my two conversations with my doctor. Right now, though, I think vasculitis is probably the correct call. To sort it out, I'll have to undergo various unpleasant tests, and it's possible I'll have to park in the hospital to get them done sooner rather than later. I'll obviously go to Columbus for all of this; Ohio State has an excellent neurology department.

If the OSU guys come up with a working diagnosis of vasculitis, I'd get high-dose corticosteroids (a prednisone relative). Not a picnic, but the prospects would be good for recovery, as far as I understand. (If you start googling "primary CNS vasculitis" or "cerebral angiitis" or variations thereupon, you will find some pretty alarming stuff. I don't recommend you do it. My situation, so far, seems to be serious but not nearly as dire as what you'll find on the intertubes.)

If vasculitis is ruled out, then we'd be back to a workup for MS.

Blogging may be thin through all of this. If I can get to feeling a little better, there's all sorts of stuff I'd love to say. Concentrating is hard, though, and most of my spare time and energy is going into researching my situation.

Yes, I know all that googling can be unhealthy. But I wouldn't have known how vague that first radiology report was, except for my research. I wouldn't have pressed for more answers. I wouldn't have known which answers to press for. And that would've left us with a possible red herring and perhaps a harmful delay in further testing. (Time is more urgent in CNS vasculitis than in MS.)

I've been terrified and I'm still scared. But I'm almost equally swamped by the outpouring of love and support from every direction:

My husband, who is dealing with much of the domestic burden and letting me know that he's there for me no matter what.

My family in California, who are willing to hop on a plane if it'll help.

My colleagues, who have already taken on extra burdens and will carry my classes when needed.

My neighborhood friends, who've held my hand at the doctor's office, brought flowers, and swooped up the kids so I didn't have to act brave the whole time. (I do brave rather poorly.)

And not least, my farawy friends who've poured those same impulses of love and kindness into emails, google detective work, and quiet worry.

For someone with blobs in my brain, I'm greatly blessed. So very blessed that I'm tearing up - again! - as I write this.

The World Sparkles and Spins to a Halt

Last time I posted a picture of this vine, it bore a clematis blossom.

Today we woke up to an ice storm that kept the kids home from school for the third day running. They'll be home tomorrow, too; we've blown through all of our snow days, and then some.

The university closed due to weather for only the second time in the past eight years. In Columbus, Ohio State canceled classes, too.


All this ferocious beauty. The neighbors' Japanese maple was one of the few trees that seems not to have lost any twigs or boughs. Lots of people lost power. I got lucky.


Oddly, we had a lake in our backyard in the midst of all the snow and ice. In the foreground, you can see my butterfly bush, bowed but not quite broken. It's an apt enough metaphor for all us beleaguered parents, wondering when our kids will ever return to school.

My boys have been pretty great about letting me tinker with lecture material while they play. The Bear has even shoveled snow as stoically as his North Dakotan ancestors. (It probably helped that I bribed him.) We're just all really ready to get back to a normal routine.

As for me, I've felt a bit better the past two days, though still far from normal: less tremor-ish and a lot less stupid. I'm off the Bactrim now but the improvement predates that. So the mystery thickens, and we're doing more tests. I luckily got in to see my doctor yesterday ... because today, even the clinic was shuttered due to the storm.

A Bear, A Tiger, and an Awesome Inauguration

I watched the inaugural festivities in the university's grand (i.e., scandalously expensive) new student center, surrounded by dozens of friends and colleagues and happy strangers. (Oh, and my husband, too.) We shared high-fives when Biden supplanted Darth Cheney. We cheered when the clock struck noon and made Barack Hussein Obama our 44th president. And I wasn't the only one who spent most of the hour teary-eyed. I am, as the Germans say, "built close to the water," but yesterday seemed to a high-water day for an awful lot of people.

My kids had a different take on it. The Bear thought the ceremony was "very cool," but his class had to do math worksheets while the TV droned in the background. Aaargh! History in the making, and the kids are cramming for those damn standardized tests! I have sympathy for the third-grade teachers, who are evidently feeling the crunch from all the snow closures; we've had five days with two-hour delays, plus three actual snow days. But still!

The Tiger watched the inauguration in the cafeteria at lunchtime. His take? "It was not awesome." (The Tiger currently divides his whole world into two categories: awesome and not awesome.) And why not? "There were only grow-mutts." Only adults. He was only slightly mollified when I told him about Sasha being close to his age - and apparently about as bored as he was.

Aside from those few miniature dissenters, it was an awesomely awesome day. We kept the kids up way too late at a party, where it was also awesome to see a bunch of fellow campaign volunteers for the first time since November 4. Catching up on things today ... well, that's been not awesome. But oh, so very worth it.

With all due respect to my dear little Tiger, I loved Obama's sober tone. I loved his call to collective responsibility. I loved his reference to "putting away childish things." I happen to think it's awesome that there's a grow-mutt in charge of the White House again.


This, by the way, is the poster I won in the end-of-campaign raffle for all the local canvassers and phone bankers. Look closely and you'll see where Biden signed it during his stopover in Athens. (My winning it was undeserved; lots of people put in way more hours than I.) The pic below gives you a better view of Biden's scrawl.

Cornel West, Love, Justice ... and Me

Well, okay. I didn't actually even shake his hand, much less get to talk with him one-on-one. But I got to hear Cornel West speak at my university today, and I was both moved and impressed.

Impressed: because he's got such an stirring delivery. If I tried to riff on the whole scale of emotion and power that he uses, I'd come across as a screeching, bombastic pedant. (Heck, I'm still trying to get comfy with wielding a microphone when I lecture!) But he's got the voice and presence to pull off the sort of oratory that's otherwise reserved for legendary preachers.

Moved: because he's not just way smarter than me, and he's not just a brilliant showman. He calls us to tend to our own spiritual maturity while committing ourselves to rooting out oppression. He takes Socrates' injunction that "the unexamined life is not worth living," mixes it with the blues, and inspires you to recommit to a better self and a better world. Actually, the better self is the bridge to that better world.

I'm not going to try to summarize all that West said. (He was giving the keynote at a conference on a founder of progressive Islam, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Sudanese visionary executed by his government for his beliefs, whom West grouped with Gandhi, King, and Mandela.) Instead, I'll just share a few of the lines that I found most inspiring, yet pithy enough that I got them on paper - no small thing, because the ideas were flowing so furiously.

Indifference is the one trait that makes the very angels weep. It's the very essence of inhumanity.

Optimism deodorizes the catastrophic. Hope allows us to confront the catastrophic.

These weren't just eloquent yet empty phrases. While celebrating Obama's upcoming inauguration, West called on "Brother Barack" to serve hope, not optimism. To speak out against the carnage in Gaza. To explain why he chose Rick Warren in apparent contempt of his LGBT supporters.

This, however, is the thought I've promised myself to repeat every day until it becomes part of my blood and bones:

Justice is what love looks like in public.

Imagine what the world might look like if that became everyone's mantra. Imagine how different our history would be. How radiant our future.

Of course this is way out of season, but I swear it's posted in a spirit of hope, not optimism. (The flower is a Climbing Peace Rose from early September 2008.)

A Catty Comment on the Weather

So this is how people react to winter where I grew up (and yes, I'm from North Dakota, but the mindset is identical - so laconic that you'd think tempers had frozen solid):

[S]ome Minnesotans took it as just another winter day, even in the state's extreme northwest corner where thermometers bottomed out at 38 degrees below zero at the town of Hallock and the National Weather Service said the wind chill was a shocking 58 below.

"It's really not so bad," Robert Cameron, 75, said as he and several friends gathered for morning coffee at the Cenex service station in Hallock. "We've got clothing that goes with the weather. ... We're ready and rolling, no matter what."

(Source: AP via Columbus Dispatch)

And this is what happens here in Southeastern Ohio: Monday morning, with a scant 3/8 inch of snow on the ground, school is delayed two hours, with my husband - and our one and only car - out of town for the day.

Another 3/8 inch fell this evening, again on bare ground, and I'm already wondering what'll happen tomorrow. Not to mention Friday, when we'll get subzero temps, which also typically crash the school system. Adding to my antsiness, the radio station that posts closings is super-slow to update and the school's website has been down for over a month.

I realize that the root of these hassles is poverty. Well, okay, also an absurdly nervous superintendent. But if the region weren't so poor, roads might get cleared. The school district's website might get fixed. And there'd be less worry about kids being underdressed for the conditions. Those same kids don't get subsidized meals when school is off, nor do their parents typically get paid if they can't make it to work.

Failing that, I'd love at least an improved weather prediction service. Like this one (via Lynn Gazis-Sax at Noli Irritare Leones).



(Translation: Temperatures have been pretty darn brisk in Germany, too - at least for those not snuggling their own personal furry heat source.)

Frustrated as I am with the capriciousness of my school district's snow day policy, I'm not blind to my blessings. A friend of mine, a transplant from Indiana, loaned me her car Monday so I could haul my kids to my office, meet with students, and then schlepp the kids to school by eleven. When I thanked her that evening, she said:

None of us have family here.
And so all of us have family here.

The Cushy Life of the Historian?

Photo of the Staatsbibliothek (State Library) in Berlin by Flickr user NathanBushDesigns, part of his very cool Staatsbibliothek set, used under a Creative Commons license. I spent many hours there, happily engrossed in the writings of dead German feminists and gynecologists.

Who knew I was so lucky? I have the seventh-best job in America! Okay, women's studies instructors were excluded from the survey of the "best" and "worst" jobs that the Wall Street Journal reported on earlier this week. But historians showed up as #7, and that's the field where I received most of my formal training, including my Ph.D.

Topping the list were mathematicians. And man, that just gave me the giggles. What I know about our local math department is that it's full of, um, personalities. I haven't had direct contact with them, but indirectly I got to know the quirks of one of 'em a little too well. Last winter, I taught in a room in the math building with a pull-down screen. One morning, I arrived there only to find that the screen was up - and its cord was gone. I pushed a table against the wall, and one of my tallest students volunteered to leap up and grab it.

Later, I talked to one of my friends who's well acquainted with the department. From him I learned that one of the mathematicians has a vendetta against anyone who leaves the screen down. (That wouldn't have been me, but many instructors use that room.) And so he periodically snips off the cord - with wire cutters.

I'm not saying all mathematicians are looney-tunes (I know a couple of exceptions, and even I know enough to realize that my sample size is far too small). But universities in general are brimming with eccentrics. While I like eccentrics, some of them are flat-out difficult. My own colleagues are wonderful, but I recognize that lots of departments are profoundly dysfunctional, and I don't mean just the mathematicians. David Lodge's novels may be fiction. They're also deadly accurate as anthropology.

Much more importantly, most jobs in academia come with a lot of pressure. Scientists have to get the grants. Everyone has to publish. People on the tenure track face intense stress until they make tenure - and even greater stress if they don't get it. Those of us not on the tenure track are harried, too: Do we have any shot at a long-term position? Will we even be hired for the next term? How high a price will we pay to keep our careers alive? Should we think about abandoning academia altogether?

And so I'm skeptical about this survey (which you can find here). Eight of the top twenty careers are in fields where universities are the prime employers (math, biology, history, sociology, economics, philosophy, physics, astronomy). The criteria were: Stress, Work Environment, Physical Demands, Income and Outlook.

Clearly, academic positions offer a clean physical environment with few physical demands. If you make full professor, you've got a pretty decent income. But stress and a toxic collegial environment are all too common. The survey says historians work an average of 45 hours a week. I'd love to meet one who does. Possibly some practitioners of public history (working for the state, cities, etc.) might actually leave their job behind in the evenings.

Income? My husband's response: "Yeah, you're making $200,000 - over a decade!" Assuming I stay employed, that'll be just about my average from 2002 onward. If the average income for historians is about $61,000, as this survey claims, they're surely not counting all the unemployed and underemployed.

The outlook for academic jobs has never been great; this year, it's dismal. The decline in new openings is estimated at 15% compared to last year, according to Inside Higher Ed. But that surely understates the scope of the problem, because searches are being cancelled left and right, sometimes so late in the game that they wreak havoc with people's lives. A friend of mine in another field had received and accepted a firm offer. It was withdrawn just as she was about to make a campus visit to sign the contract and start the process of relocating. I'm sure this isn't specific to academia, but the latest crunch comes on top of a market where the number of applicants has always greatly exceeded the openings.

I do treasure a lot of things about my work. I have a fair amount of flexibility apart from classtime, which is completely inflexible. I get to pursue my interests, and I can get blissfully lost in libraries and archives - like the Staatsbibliothek, pictured above and below. I know that the ideas I study and teach about matter. I enjoy going to conferences, though it's almost always on my own dime. Most important for my daily routine, I love working with students, and most of them feel the same about me. Since September, I even get paid a living wage for all this.

I wouldn't suggest people flood into any of those "top-rated" academic jobs, though. Academia is fraught with stress, anxiety, and snipped-off pull-cords. It's only worth it if you really, really love the work - enough to do it as a hobby, if necessary. As I've said before, it's a little like blogging that way.

The Berlin Staatsbibliothek's windows, again from Flickr user NathanBushDesigns in his Staatsbibliothek set, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Year "Resolute" Went out of Style

One of the things I really, really hated about George Dubya Bush was his abuse of the word "resolute." It was just code for "I don't like to think anyway, and so I'm just gonna turn of my brain now, kthx bai."

Also, I've never been a New Year's resolutions kind of gal. So I'd like to proclaim 2009 a year for being irresolute.

Irresolute kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Then again, I've had the privilege of a pretty wonderful 2008. I've noticed that a lot of blogs are ringing out 2008 as if it were mostly a disaster. Yeah, the economy tanked, and I too am alarmed at how bad things still might become. But politically, 2008 marked the end of the Dubya era. For that, I think we can all be grateful, no matter how irresolute we may be.

And personally, I had a very good year indeed, after a string of years that were very hard on the people I love. My husband's health is improving rather than declining. Without going into TMI, good things have happened in my marriage over the past year. Myself, I'm actually in better shape, physically, than I was a year ago, thanks to time spent on my bike. I even lost some weight, though for all the wrong reasons.

My kids still quarrel, whine, and talk back too much, but it's improving month by month as the light of reason slowly dawns upon the Tiger. The Bear is almost always a pleasure to be around. The Tiger ... well, he's lucky he can still rely on little-kid cuteness.

Professionally, I don't know where I'll be in eight months, but for now I still have a "real" job with health insurance. A year ago, I couldn't have said that. The latest round of cuts to the Ohio state budget spared higher ed, giving reason to hope my job might be spared, contrary to what I'd heard over the past month.

Is this starting to sound like Thanksgiving minus the turkey?

So if resolutions are in order for me, it's to try to stay on the same path, however irresolutely, and to appreciate the goodness of Now. Here's wishing you an equal measure of blessings in the year ahead.

Sungold's Gold: Volume I

To be honest, all the "end of year" roundups get on my nerves. January 1 is such an arbitrary date. Why not celebrate the winter solstice instead? Or the spring equinox? Why not the start of the school year, which to me - perpetual student that I am - still feels like the "natural" beginning of the year?

Nonetheless, Jill's generous call at Feministe for her readers to promote their "best-of-2008" posts got me browsing my archives, and once I started, I decided I might as well embrace the tradition. Heck, if Abba can hawk "greatest hits" albums, why not me? Plus, I was having a lot of fun looking back; the historian in me was seriously happy. So was the navel-gazer.

First, this is as good a time as any to say how much I appreciate those of you who read Kittywampus. I love you even more when you comment. So thanks! I hope you'll keep coming 'round in the new year. I'll try to not waste your time too much ... or (I hope) be mildly amusing when I do.

When I look back, I'm amazed and appalled at how much I wrote. This blog was supposed to be a place to park some ideas and reflections for teaching, and maybe an outlet for the excessively long comments I'd otherwise leave at some other poor soul's blog. Instead, I wrote more than a post a day - 385 and counting - and some of them were really more essays than blog posts. (Okay, some days I just posted Tina Fey's latest takedown of Sarah Palin, but that was all good, too.)

Can I earn a second Ph.D. for this? Oh, nevermind. I'm sure somewhere on the Internet, you can buy a Ph.D. in any discipline. Including blogging.

Anyway, here's my "greatest hits" selection. These posts actually aren't necessarily the ones that got the most hits; they're the ones where I thought there was a flash of an idea, or maybe more. I notice that like my posts themselves, this list is way longer than the average blog year-end round-up. I don't think this is necessarily a virtue, but it's who I am - the same gal whose dissertation ran to some 900 pages. To be honest, I'm compiling this list mostly for myself, as an index of sorts. If you see something you like, though, I'll be pleased.

Teaching - my original raison de blog - really did spawn a few decent posts:

• I'm still grateful to those former students of mine who contributed to my thoughts on men in the women's studies classroom. I presented this material at the National Women's Studies Association annual meeting, and the guys' comments were really the heart of it.
• A class discussion gave rise to an analysis of the relationship between finger length and prenatal testosterone exposure.
• I explained why I don't blame the Patriarchy - but instead prefer to think of patriarchy as a set of specific, historically situated conditions - and followed up by asking whether fundamentalist Mormonism meets those patriarchal conditions.
• A post on Bild Lilli - a sexy German predecessor to the Barbie doll - still gets oodles of hits. It's short and glib, but I was searching for good pictures of Lilli to use in class, and I found some great ones.

My favorite posts, though, are the more reflective ones, often not overtly political, but still informed by my politics, I'm sure. One group of these dealt with how we construct our selves, often (but not always) through our embodiment:

• I reflected on what it means to write the history of the body (a project that occupies most of my non-blog writing).
• I pondered aging as an experience of alienation from a "true" younger self.
• I explored the connections among blogging, narcissism, and the confessional impulse - and why tripe like the infamous Philip Weiss New York Magazine article sucks me in every time.
• I considered regrets at midlife (and my general lack thereof).

I wrote an awful lot about sex for someone who doesn't call herself a "sex blogger":

• My favorite piece on sexuality is probably the one I felt most nervous - most naked - about posting: how sexual vulnerability is both essential and terrifying. This post really belongs more in the last category because it's all about how particular embodied experiences shape our sense of self.
• I explained why I'm ambivalent about "sex positivity" as a label - and I still feel that way.
• I considered how commodification shapes desire in gendered ways - how commodification intersects with male privilege in prostitution. - and how the Elliot Spitzer case offers ample evidence of male privilege at work in prostitution.
• I chewed on the disparity between the rates of infidelity reported for men and women.
• I indulged in a thought experiment on "mindblowing" sex and traffic lights.
• Spurred by the revelation of John Edwards' extramarital affair, I pondered the less-obvious links between serious illness, infidelity, and relationship turmoil.
• I criticized Lauren Slater's assertion that a person can unilaterally impose a sexless relationship on their partner and expect them to be okay with it.

While not every last one of my posts on health and medicine related to gender or sexuality, most of 'em had at least an oblique connection:

• I deconstructed the war metaphor so often applied to cancer, and took some potshots at "staying positive," too.
• I expressed outrage at the denial of insurance coverage for reconstructive surgery after prostate cancer and bemusement at the failure of the campaigns against breast and prostate cancer to make common cause.
• I speculated that the health benefits of ejaculation are systematically underplayed due to our culture's anti-sex, anti-body bias.
• To mark Viagra's tenth anniversary, I criticized doctoring women's desires.
  

I explored the connections between feminism, parenting, and just being human from a bunch of angles:

• As the Duggar family announced the impending birth of their eighteenth child, I looked at how the Duggars fit into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement.
• I mopped up after a truly fruitless food-fight between childfree people and parents, and then considered how "reasonable" it is to choose parenthood anyway.
• As 9/11 marked another anniversary, I mulled over the impossibility of preparing kids to live in a world full of atrocities.
• I explained why - even though I see it as a reasonable and a potentially feminist choice - I don't homeschool, and I followed that up by analyzing the risks of long-term at-home parenthood.

Like motherhood more generally, childbearing and reproductive rights are at the heart of my academic research, too:

• I looked at how gestational surrogacy is entangled with notions of the Good Mother and socioeconomically inflected intimacy.
• I cast a skeptical eye on advocacy of orgasmic childbirth.
• Extrapolating from my knowledge of history, I imagined the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade.
• I reflected on the moral complexity of abortion and what we lose if we deny it.
• In a post that attracted a lot of detractors, I explained why reproductive rights are human rights.

I expended way too much emotional energy on Sarah Palin - yet another reason to hope that her career will henceforth be confined to Alaska:

• I explained why her decision to fly from Texas to Alaska while leaking amniotic fluid betrayed reckless judgment. This was one of several posts that took a more speculative and judgmental stance than is typical for me. (Another one castigated the idea that you can simply delegate the care of a special needs child - or really, any child - beyond a certain extent.) While I don't plan to make a habit of judging so harshly, I do think later events confirmed that my reading of Palin's personal behavior was spot-on as a predictor of her political character.
• I tried to articulate the principles of Palinofeminism. (Hint: they're not very feminist after all.)
• Extending Tim Wise's analysis, I considered the role of white privilege on the Republican ticket.
• Finally, I reflected on why so many of us feminists who actually had better things to do with our time obsessed about Palin in spite of ourselves.

I spun my minor-league involvement in the Obama campaign into a few posts that I think are still a good read even after the election:

• After describing my experience at Obama's rally in Berlin, I dabbled in actual reporting and knocked down the wingnutty rumor that the mammoth crowd only came for free beer and bratwurst.
• Based on phone calls I made for Obama's campaign, I reflected on the appeal of voting for a woman - any woman.
• As a canvasser, I tried to understand the political ramifications of deep poverty after a harrowing visit to a trailer park full of vicious dogs.
• Similarly, I drew on my experiences as a canvasser to try to fathom the effects of racism on the election.
• In a fit of post-election melancholy, I mused on the thing with feathers.

And that seems as good a place as any to embark on the new year: hope. I wish it for you, my kind readers, and for all of us who totter on this spinning Earth. Thanks for spinning along with me.

A Tail of Two Tigers

What to do when the kids are burbling with post-Christmas energy and turning the house into a zoo? My little Tiger, in particular, has been bouncing off the walls, acting silly and obviously craving the company of his own kind. Frustratingly, nearly all of his friends are still out of town for the holiday.

And so yesterday we packed these bouncy, giggly kids into the car and drove to Columbus. If you're running a zoo, you might as well take it literally. If my Tiger couldn't be with his friends, at least he could visit his namesakes.


Here's the tiger's best pussycat imitation ...


... and proof he was just faking it.


"I can has cheezburger?" (Or is that a childburger? He was looking straight at us!)


Thanks to weirdly warm temperatures of almost 70 degrees, the flamingos made a rare winter appearance.


I'd never seen the koala awake before yesterday (they sleep 22 hours a day), but apparently he too warmed up enough to scootch slowly, slowly toward his eucalyptus leaves.


The tree kangaroo was nearly as sleepy and slothful as the koala, and just as furry.


This gorilla was looking after a baby who made me very grateful for my own kids' comparatively good behavior. Her little charge was smearing something on the window that looked suspiciously like poop.


The Columbus Zoo does a holiday light show, Wildlights, which drew so many visitors yesterday that traffic was backed up for miles in both directions when we headed home. A photo can only hint at how many lights there were (millions, I think) and how beautiful they are when you see them "by real," as the Tiger would say.


On the drive home, the Tiger fell asleep, all his silliness and wildness now just a shimmer of a dream.

The Tragedy of the Elves

Today I have a horrible elf hangover. No, I didn't fall too deep into the egg nog last night. I was up until the wee hours doing the work of the elves.

As always, this wasn't how I'd planned it.

A few weeks back, the Bear mentioned that the one toy that caught his imagination in the Christmas catalogs was a puppet theater. I whispered to his dad that we could maybe build our own; the one in the catalog looked small and flimsy. By "we," I of course meant "he." The Bear didn't bring it up again - until a few days ago, with hope gleaming in his eyes. By then, his dad was under the weather and nothing was going to be built of wood and hardware.

But I started to fret that the Bear might be disappointed to not get the one and only toy he'd requested. So yesterday, I got the brilliant idea (and by "brilliant," I of course mean "harebrained") that I could sew a puppet theater. These Martha Stewart-ish fits strike me only about once a year. They always end in me feeling grateful that home ec was a required course during my long-ago North Dakotan girlhood - and foolish at not having learned my lesson during my last fit of craftiness.

4 p.m.: I'm in Wal-Mart, scouring the fabric department for supplies. (Please don't chide me for patronizing the evil empire; it's the only source for fabric within 40 miles.) Finally I find the only bolt of velvet in stock. Technically it's velveteen, but it'll do. It's lush and black. As for trimmings, I settle on sequined braid, ribbon, and tassels, all in a festive gold.

9:30 p.m.: I sneak the sewing machine out of the upstairs closet and past the kids as their dad gets them ready for bed. I discover that the prongs on the plug are badly warped. I unwarp them just enough to render them pluggable. Mercifully, the machine runs smoothly; I hadn't used it since I'd driven all the way to Zanesville for repairs after I'd broken the entire needle unit while sewing a Halloween costume. It dawns on me how stupid it is to engage in Christmas brinksmanship.

9:35 p.m.: The Bear appears downstairs. I bark at him - rather unmerrily - to get back to bed. I thank my stars that it wasn't the Tiger, who still believes.

11 p.m.: My husband slinks out to his woodshop in the garage, after all, to sand down a dowel to support the bottom of the stage's opening.

12 midnight: We cross the Christmas dateline without any kids appearing again. Ribbon loops grace the top edge of the curtain, an arched opening has taken shape, and I'm about to hem the edges. I realize that the edges are really long - six foot along the floor and nearly five feet vertically. This theater is big enough to accommodate three or four puppeteers.

1 a.m.: Everything is finished except the trim. I reconsider my original plan of using the hot glue gun to attach it. What if it makes the curtain too stiff? What if it melts the sequins? If I wreck the theater, I've got no Plan B. How about if I sew the sequins on with the machine? No, no, no - that's how I broke the damn thing last time. (My machine is no match for the glue on sequined fabric and trims.) I google variations on "attaching sequins" and come up remarkably empty. Oh Martha, Martha, why hast thou forsaken me?

1:15 a.m.: I sigh and start sewing on the sequined braid by hand. It is two yards in length. I learn that black is a truly fiendish color in dim artificial light when your eyes are tired and you've refused to get bifocals despite advancing presbyopia. I take off my glasses and bring the fabric within a few inches of my face.

2:30 a.m.: I go through another round of dithering about how to attach the tassel trim. This time, I use the machine. The metallic gold thread breaks again and again.

3:00 a.m.: I hang the theater on the suspension rod. I can't believe it's finally done. I can't believe it actually worked and - as the Tiger loves to say - "it looks awesome." I'm so tickled, I have to take a picture.


I lay out a trail of animal puppets to lead the kids from the stairs to the theater. Santa's work is done, and not once did I use the seam ripper.

3:30 a.m.: I crawl into bed.

4:00 a.m.: The Bear crawls out of his bed.

6:15 a.m.: The Bear wakes me up to inform me that the motor for one of his toys just overheated.

I promised you a tragedy, so I'll tell you right now that nothing burned down from this incident. But as I groggily assured the Bear we'd figure it out later, I realized that yet again, the kids proved it's impossible to witness their pleasure when they discover Santa's goodies. Unless, of course, you stay up all night. Hey, I nearly did pull an all-nighter, and I still missed that mythical magical moment.

That's the tragedy of the elves, isn't it? Every year, they do Santa's bidding. And then, every year, Santa gets the credit and the elves - unless they're uncommonly early risers - miss the show.

I'm reminded of a story my mom still tells of how my dad once built a kid-sized tool bench for my brother. Santa got the glory. I'd always vowed that I wouldn't do the same; that I would refuse to let Santa be a free rider.

Except for this: The Bear is in on the secret. A few years ago, he dissected all the logical flaws in Santa's cover story. And so after I finally dragged my bones out of bed later this morning, he and I exchanged a few knowing, smiling glances. He knows. I know he knows. That's good enough. That, plus the excited gleam in his eye as he said, "I really love the puppet theater, Mama."

Hot Mama Blogger? Moi??

So awhile back, when I was bloviating on how Sarah Palin's looks were one of the few things I did not hold against her, I mentioned I could be magnanimous because when I was a senior in high school, my friends nominated me for "basketball homecoming queen." I was not the type of girl who won such things. I wasn't a beauty pageant girl, I wasn't dating any athletes (or anyone else, really), I wasn't Popular, and in fact I was kind of an anti-candidate. My friends and I tended to be ironic and sarcastic about such things. But I had a bunch of loyal friends, and I think I came in second as a result.

Well, I've been nominated for another popularity contest - for the first time in nearly 30 years! - and this time, the nomination is quite sincere. And so I'm sincerely touched and grateful that Kochanie nominated me for "Hottest Mommy Blogger" in the Blogger's Choice Awards. Thanks, Kochanie! (She also put me up for "Best Political Blog," but I think the mommy category is probably more apt. There's not a feminism category, which is where this blog would be most at home.)

I don't have a snowball's chance of winning (the leading blog already has 100 votes) but I'm hoping my friends and readers will go cast a vote for me anyway, lest I be embarrassed that the only two votes have come from my kind benefactor, Kochanie, and (shudder) myself. Worse yet, since voting isn't by secret ballot, anyone who visits my page will see exactly who cast those two votes!

Of course, if you honestly think I am a hot mama, I'll gratefully take that, too. Either way, if you're so inclined, just click the little box below or follow this link. The site requires a brief registration. Also, you may see a notice that "2008 voting has closed." This is totally deceptive. It refers to last year's awards. Ignore it.



While you're there, you might also cast a vote for Kochanie's blogging partner, figleaf, who writes some of the smartest analysis of feminism, sex, and relationships that you'll find on the intertubes. He's up for Hottest Daddy Blogger (and he really is a devoted work-at-home dad, though his readers see more of his hot side). He would truly deserve it; he's a brilliant blogger and a good-hearted human being. Go here to visit his blog. Click here to vote for him.

In the animal category, I Can Has Cheezburger is leading; you know how Ceiling Cat would like you to vote, don't you? Here's where you can do it.

Boy, I'm still in GOTV mode, aren't I? Someone needs to deprogram me.

My name is Sungold, and I approved this message.

From I Can Has Cheezburger?