Things That Are Awesome VI (Current Events Edition)
It's possible you've seen all these before. But if you haven't, behold!
On swine flu:
On Obama's first 100 days (click for full article):
And, finally, on birds and science and dancing (read story here; see video here):
This past week has been a little nuts.
Wednesday, I gave a two-hour lecture on Picasso to the prints class for which I've been TAing this semester. (My friends at school said, "What do you know about Picasso?" The answer is, before prepping this lecture, basically nothing--especially about his prints. Now, after a whole lot of reading and PowerPointing, I know a little bit.)
Monday, I had to submit material to the dissertation workshop that met today, so I wrote a draft of my Portland presentation.
Today, in addition to presenting at workshop, I also had to return the 65 3-5 page papers my students had turned in two weeks ago, but which I hadn't really touched before the past few days because I'd been preparing that Picasso lecture.
They take their final exams next Wednesday, and I'll have 65 of those to grade in a single week, because I'm flying to Portland the next Thursday.
But, before then, I have a week of relative relaxation to make up for last week's craziness. I thus have time to catch you up on last week, which in addition to crazy lecture prep, writing, and grading, involved a VISIT! From David!
Wednesday after I picked him up at the airport we went to the Mall of America, ended up having the picnic I'd packed on the seventh floor of the West parking garage (my favorite place in the MOA, returned to school for my lecture, and then ate with my neighbors at Pancho Villa. Thursday, we had even warmer and more gorgeous weather, so we took the bus downtown, wandered Nicollet Mall and the farmers' market, explored Mill Ruins park, and enjoyed an appetizer outside at Spoon River before meeting a friend at a theater downtown for the live broadcast of This American Life. Friday, we went for a run around the lakes, biked to the Walker sculpture garden and back, caught a film at the historic Riverview, and had a lovely dinner at Jasmine 26. Saturday, we met friends for brunch, ate tamales at the Midtown Global exchange and poked through the booths, took the Greenway to the river and discovered a trail I'd never noticed before that goes clear down to the water, and then attended a friend's birthday party. Sunday, David had to fly home, but we got brunch at the Bad Waitress and still managed to get him on his plane in time (if only barely!).
You'll notice (especially those of you who have had the tour!) that I definitely have my favorites when it comes to showing people around town. It's slightly different without a car; whereas I took Paul and Ter and Ellen, on their respective visits, to my favorite Indian restaurant in the suburbs, that wasn't on the itinerary this time around. However, we were able to bus and bike pretty much everywhere else with ease--and the carless tour does present a unique way to see the city!
I had to work slightly more than I would have liked to, but David was a good sport and even helped me assemble and format the slide list for the final exam. I didn't do any of my own writing or grade any papers, which sort of caught up with me after he left, but now I'm caught up and won't be deluged again until next Wednesday! That's plenty of time to revise the Portland paper and pack for that trip.
If you're interested in pix from the visit, David has posted the highlights here:
Today it hit 65°F! Sixty-five! I could feel the sun on my skin, which I exposed--heedless to those it might blind--when I went running in shorts and a tank top. I did my afternoon reading in a sunbeam on my back porch:
Uploading that picture from my camera phone, I found a few more--my lunch at the Palace Cafe:
...And unnecessary quotation marks spotted on the trip (not all of them, either!): 
Last weekend, as you may already know, I was in New Orleans for the annual national conference of the Pop Culture Association/ American Culture Association, giving a paper. The trip was ridiculously, ridiculously expensive (conference registration was $125, after the $55 association membership fee, in addition to airfare, hotel, and food) and rather stressful, as these things are, but was still a good time.
I could spend hours telling stories (as a few of you can confirm), but in the interest of this post, I'll stick to bullets (call me if you want longer versions!).
The Good:
Especially on the days I'm trying hardest to write, I find myself doing a lot of staring out the window. Here's what I saw today:
Gymnast Squirrel from Disaster Kitchen on Vimeo.
Because I am supposed to be re-writing the paper I gave a Dry Run for on Wednesday (which I had already re-written, you may recall, following dissertation workshop the preceding Friday), in anticipation of my New Orleans conference presentation this coming Friday (for which I fly out on Thursday); and because the Wednesday after that my students hand in their final papers (which I will have just two weeks to grade [before the final exam], in the middle of which fall my two-hour lecture for that class and my last submission to the dissertation workshop), I am, instead, distracting myself online.
I was looking up a flight to Portland for a May conference to which I was just accepted, and from there was looking at my options for getting from the airport to the conference site and the friend's house where I'll be staying. As I was looking at the map, I recognized the highway we used to take to get to school, and from there, it was the shortest of jumps to look at my childhood home on Street View. Although I've looked up my current residence, my parents' house in DHS, and countless commercial sites, it had never occurred to me to look up the house where I spent ages seven through eleven, and which frequently shows up in my dreams (including this recent one).
I haven't been back in person since we left, and at first I didn't even recognize my old house. In the 17 (yikes!) years since I lived there, the occupants have redone much of the front yard and have put up a strange wooden screen around the front door. Still, as I studied the image, I recognized the huge maple, unmistakable in the middle of the yard and looking like an old friend. As I clicked up and down the street, I remembered the neighbors who had lived in the houses around us, and the big pines where the street dead-ended at the railroad tracks, where we'd had little picnics and run around. Much of it was very familiar, and highly evocative of childhood memories and sensations.
Looking at my old neighborhood as a grown-up, though, I also found myself a bit depressed. The fact that the photos were captured on an (uncharacteristically!) gray day can't have helped. Things probably did look better two decades ago, before the Northwest weather wreaked its usual trick of turning everything mossy, damp, and droopy (if still impressively lush and green). And the neighborhood, which was always an interesting mix, in hindsight, of quite stately homes and smaller, less-kempt ones, may not have aged all that well. My idyllic childhood home, although plenty respectable, was rather generic, a bit dishevelled, and certainly aging.
The strangest sensation was the concurrent distanced objectivity and opacity lent by, in addition to the computer screen, decades of life and experience, and the surprisingy visceral intimacy prompted by a location I loved so much and filled with the memories only a child of that age can.
Many of my friends grew up in a single house, in which their parents may still live. I was always rather jealous of this. When I went to my neighbor's parents' house for Thanksgiving a few years ago, I got to see her still-intact childhood bedroom. I don't know if those people have more, or fewer, dreams about the homes they lived in with their parents.
I feel plenty fortunate that my parents left the cold Northwest for sunny southern California several years ago, and that I get to visit them there. Now that I'm older, I can even appreciate our multiple moves and the fact that I got to live in many parts of the country.
In a few days I'll be visiting New Orleans for the first time since we moved to the house I just visited virtually. I remember very little of it, though I can still conjur the scent and flavor of a French Quarter beignet and fully intend to test those memories against the real item.
I had always wanted to return to the city as an adult; after Katrina, I figured I'd never be able to return to the same city. Then again... you never really can, anyway.
Ride to school in the snow; arrive damp and muddy.
Ride home from school in the wind; arrive sweating and weeping because a spring gale is both warming everything up and whipping debris (liberated from the snow that has been collecting and covering it all winter) into my eyes.
Ahhhh, April.
In any case, thank goodness we're done with March for another year. I think things are on the upswing!
