I'll miss you, Chuy!

Stupid SYTYCD jidges! They cut Chuy! so WRONG!. Here's the routine that won the hearts of the Television Without Pity SYTYCD boards,

You can do it!

I am extremely proud of myself because I was able to repair something wrong with the kitchen sink all by myself. What's the big deal you say? Well, like some many women my age (I turn 50 this year, wowza) I absorbed the idea that fixing things was a man's job. I needed to call The Plumber if something happened to the faucet in the kitchen sink that made it spray sideways. But I was able to overcome my natural inclination to inertia and my learned helplessness in the fixit department. I unscrewed the part that wasn't working, went to the hardware store, got the correct part, and went home and put it on. Voila! It seems so simple, but believe me, inside I feel as if I have won a major victory over The Patriarchy. At each step of the process I had to work to overcome the little voice that said, "turn off your brain, you can't do this."

Oh, and I bought a pair of giant clippers and spent four hours cutting back branches and brush that needed to be trimmed around the building. Again, it wasn't hard, but I had been thinking I needed to call someone to do it for me, and I did it myself. I feel like The Little Engine that Could!

Thoughts about consumption, materialism, ethics, and necessity

I've been reading some heated discussions elsewhere in the blogosphere about marriage, housework, capitalism, patriarchy, how to make social change, justice for immigrant workers. Of course these things are all related, and more and more people are trying to become aware of the relations and make changes in their lives and in our society. The particulars of the arguments are interesting in and of themselves, but I often get sidetracked in these discussions by how some folks like to think in the abstract and others prefer to think in the particular, and how few people move comfortably between these two kinds of thinking. We often talk at cross-purposes and get frustrated with each other, even though we might agree on some common goals (we should change our consumptions patterns to save the planet, for example, or exploiting other people's labor is a bad thing, whether that person is a wife-type person or a minimum-wage worker). These kinds of conversations can oblige us to stretch our empathy and solidarity muscles in ways that are painful, and also to do some soul-searching about values.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about my own passage through various stages of economic dependence and independence, and my own efforts to both live well within my means and to make more ethical choices as I do so. For years, I lived without a car. I did not get my driver's license until I was 32. Arguably, it was because I lived in a location (the SF Bay Area) and in circumstances (walking distance to excellent transportation services, work, school, etc) that meant that I did not need a car. And while I was in college and graduate school, I simply could not afford a car or car insurance. Any extra money I could get went into long distance travel instead. Therefore, accidentally, I also ended up saving a large amount of money by not owning a car, and reduced my carbon footprint, although neither of those two motives was uppermost in my mind at the time. Looking back, I know I wasn't unaware of these facts, but I just didn't sit down and decide that, as a matter of principle, I should not own a car for these reasons. Looking back, I also realize that I refused to learn to drive for many years because driving/riding in cars with my rage-aholic father was deeply traumatic, but that's another story. Did I live without a car because I was too poor to buy one? being frugal? virtuously thrifty? responsibly sustainable? too lazy to get my driver's license? able to live well without one by accident of geography? Who cares?

I finally did learn to drive and bought my first car after living for two years in a different city where the public transportation is only OK, and bike-riding can be extremely difficult for several months of the year due to weather extremes, both heat and cold, although I did gut it out for 2 years, and relied on walking, biking, the bus system (such as it is) and the kindness of friends. I also was finally earning enough money that I got my very first credit card, and had finally established enough of a credit record to be able to get a loan. For years before that, I had lived in a strictly cash economy because in California at the time, if you didn't have a credit card and a drivers' license, no business would accept your checks. I was turned down in my application for a credit card, even though I had a job, because of "choice of major" (Comparative Literature students were not good credit risks!). The only checks I could write were for rent and utilities; everything else was cash or recycling (other people's castoffs, garage sales, Good Will, trading).

I'm well aware of the degrees of privilege from which I've benefited over the years. On one level, as a student I was living on very little money, but I also had a safety net (family would put me up) and was working toward establishing a position as a credentialed professional, albeit in a field that does not pay the big bucks. As a white, well-educated woman, I also had access to opportunities that meant that if suddenly I needed a different job, I'd get my foot in the door more easily than many. So although I lived extremely frugally, I never felt poor or classified myself as living in poverty. Then again, I also made the deliberate choice not to merge my financial life with that of a man through marriage (self-reliance and economic independence above all) or to have a child (couldn't afford it and accomplish the goal of more stable forms of economic security). As I was the only one of my father's three children who received his financial support for my BA after high school, I was keenly aware that I was lucky. If my brother and sister could be kicked off the middle-class ladder to security by divorce along my mother just because they happened to be born after me, then I needed to make sure that I could provide for myself (and any children I might have) in the future, no matter what.

I've preserved many of the habits of frugality and thrift taught to me by my mother (who grew up in an immigrant family working its way toward the middle-class dream), and cultivated over fifteen years of living as a student. Now that I have a car, I find that I use it more than I absolutely need to because it makes so many things so much easier. I could take the bus to work, but I rationalize my choice to drive by saying that I need to be able to transport my child to school, buy groceries in larger quantities than I can carry on foot, etc, and this is because the time I would otherwise spend on these activities without the car could be better spent on work. This is true to some extent, but it is also true that the freedom and convenience of using the car enables me to do many pleasurable things, not just more work. When I had a broken foot and couldn't drive, many people helped me out, but I also got back on the bus once I was more mobile. I have next-door neighbors who work where I do who live without cars (but they don't have a child). I could take the bus more often, but I don't want to and I don't have to. I'm trying to refrain from qualifying these activities with judgmental language, but y'all can supply your own.

So, here's what I'm going to be thinking about today: what does it mean to live sustainably? Be a freegan? Be thrifty? What's the difference between being thrifty and being a tightwad? between being a tightwad and being too poor to eat without food stamps?

We do things to survive (eat out of dumpsters); we do things to be virtuous (waste not, want not, or, eat out of dumpsters); we do things to amuse ourselves (Look what I found in the dumpster!); we want to be responsible (we have to remove ourselves from the exploitative cycle of consuption, and rescue food from dumpsters); we do things to be mindful (I'm grateful for my food and all the labor that went into it). We do things because that's the way our family has always done it (clean your plate! those kids in Guatemala have to live in the dump!). We do things our families couldn't afford to do because now we can and that's why America is great (clean running water in your house. It's a good thing).

Sleeping with cats

Leo the large, my beloved cat, almost lost one of his nine lives last night. At about 1 AM, he decided it was time for me to wake up. Now, normally he accomplishes this goal by lurking in the hallway and meowing loudly, at which point I get up and put him out on the porch. Even if the porch door is open, he will not go out there until I put him out and close the door. I don't mind this usually because I always have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. But last night, he decided to use a different wake-up method, the single claw to the big toe. He usually does this only in the morning, after I am already awake but not yet out of bed. He'll delicately extend a single claw and delicately poke a toe, never really hard, just enough to get my attention. Last night, however, I was awakened by an sharp pain to discover that the bleeping fur monster had jammed his claw into my big toe right on the edge of the toe nail, ripping a small chunk of skin and causing a surprising amount of bleeding. I had been lying on my stomach with my toes dangling off the bottom edge of the bed and he just couldn't resist. Some cursing ensued as I stumbled to the bathroom and applied pressure, wiped the blood off the bathtub, cleansed and bandaged the wound. I was too groggy to apply Neosporin, but I'll make sure I do that this morning because cat claw puncture wounds can get infected easily. I put him out on the porch. I am extremely proud of the fact that no animals were injured in this process even though I was tempted to eject him from the building with prejudicial force.
He knew he was a bad kitty, though. He may have a brain the size of a walnut, but he is a cat.

On practice

NPR has a series called "This I believe", inspired by Edward R Murrow. This morning while I was making my coffee, I turned on the radio and caught this piece by singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter. I happen to love her music, and I was distressed to hear that she had recently had a narrow escape from death; she suffered chest pains, and it turned out she had blood clots in her lungs. She wrote a piece about the aftermath of the experience, and the depression she suffered, her struggle to recover her connection with joy. Having experienced some similar struggles in my life (without the pulmonary embolism part), I was glad to be reminded that I, too, have found my way out of despair over illness through a practice of gratitude.
Here's one from the original radio series in the 50s by dancer Martha Graham in which she talks about practice.

Dancing in my dreams

"And so we say, Hip Hip, Chin Chin. The Rhythm Section"


Max and Yulia demo at Blackpool, 2006.

Here is a paso doble danced to music from the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula (yes, the one with Keanu Reeves!)A very unusual choice of music for the paso doble, but what amazing dancing!


At the end of this hustle video, the best guys break out their moves, and check out her great arm styling!


Dominic and Sabra in my favorite routine of the season so far:

Liza Minelli sings "Maybe This Time"

My daughter just watched the film Cabaret. When I was her age (pre-video, pre DVD, pre YouTube) I went to the movie theater and saw it ten times. Here's one of my favorite Liza Minelli numbers. My sister bears an uncanny resemblance to Liza, only prettier.

I had a huge crush on Michael York because of his role as Tybalt in Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet.

Stories of coffee

David Liss was a graduate student in eighteenth-century literary studies when he published his first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper. Set during the period he studied, the novel combines the historical mystery genre with a fascinating background of the emergence of coffee-house commercial and intellectual culture, along with the social and political situations of Jews in London. I rather liked it, and so did a lot of other people, because it became a best-seller, and he was able to walk away from academia. He's since published at another novel with the same protagonist,

While looking for novels with a setting in Amsterdam, I found another book by Liss, The Coffee Trader. Once again, Liss gives us a fascinating look at the complexities of Jewish life in Europe, following Portuguese conversos, or "Secret Jews", who've fled Lisbon to live in the relative freedom of Amsterdam of the 1600s, a city becoming a hub of international commerce and finance. I enjoyed how Liss incorporated the details of daily life--food, domestic relations, taverns, the geography of the city, the relations between classes, the Dutch and foreigners--into a tale in which duplicity as the rules of business stands in uneasy relationship to the morality of the community.
A great follow-up to this novel is a book I bought in order to revise part of a course I'll be teaching again next Spring: Mark Pendergrast's Uncommon Grounds:/the History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World.

momo's little girl

Today as my daughter and I were walking through the airport, I realized that her legs are so much longer than mine that I have to take bigger steps to keep up with her. We said goodbye, and as always I cried on my way down the escalator as we went back to the parking lot. I will see her in just three weeks, but it's always so hard to say goodbye. I'm thrilled that my new Mac will allow us to do iChat with video! we tested it this afternoon, talking to Blas in Zaragoza, so we know it works.

Last night, we went with Loren to see Mamma Mia in the Orpheum Theater on Hennepin Avenue. The production values were great: wonderful lighting, costumes, set, staging, choreography, a capable cast, and a surprisingly funny and touching story along with the camp and the kitsch. We enjoyed the hell out of it, and sang all the way home. I had never listened to Abba on purpose earlier in my life, but their songs are int he category of "the soundtrack of your life" for people my age, but when I met Loren, I discovered the fun of Abba, especially as motivational music for doing housework. When our daughter was really little we would put on Abba Gold and dance around the house, especially to her favorite song Fernando.

Here's one of the songs that was in the show last night. Great for when you want a really sentimental wallow.

you won't see this on SYTYCD

Another installment of Ultra Fast Lindy Hop: check out the flips and tricks

Some ultra-slinky west coast:

Separated at birth?

Nigel Lythgoe, Montgomery Burns. They're both on Fox.

A little history of Portalrubio

Portalrubio has its own Wikipedia entry in Spanish! It is obviously written with great love for the village.

Here is a page that situates Portalrubio as a "localidad" of a neighboring ayuntamiento Pancrudo, in the comarca of the Comunidad de Teruel, which is one of the 10 comarcas making up the province of Teruel. Teruel, Huesca and Zaragoza are the three provinces of Aragon, one of the Autonomous Communities of Spain. This site about Aragon has been put together by Javier Mendivil, an amateur historian who has dedicated himself to documenting on Internet the history of Aragon. I'll bet he makes regular visits to the Rastro, the flea market in Zaragoza, on the hunt for old pamphlets, books and documents to add to his collection.

I also turned up this fascinating page, created by Manuel P. Belanche, a history buff and "friend of Gregorian chant", in which he has compiled a list of all the towns and villages of Aragon in order to document the existence of a particular type of structure called a "peiron":

Los peirones, también denominados pairones, son pilares o monolitos construidos en piedra o ladrillo que señalan, a la salida de una gran parte de los pueblos de Aragón -principalmente en Teruel y Zaragoza- un inicio o confluencia de caminos. Suelen terminar, en su parte superior, con una hornacina (a veces una cruz) decorada por la imagen de un santo o virgen.

These stone or brick pillars marked the crossroads. Originally probably of pagan origin, they now have a cross or a Christian image, since the conquest of the territory by Alfonso el Batallador in 1120. The word peiron is not Castilian Spanish, but rather Aragonese. In a second page on this site, he has a list of Aragonese words that he collected years ago; with the exodus of people from the villages into the cities and the extension of education in Castillian Spanish to the entire population, the use of Aragonese has declined.

Here is the page for Portalrubio and its peirones. Although the village has been reduced to no more than 30 or so official residents, in August several hundred will gather, from Zaragoza, Valencia, Barcelona and other towns, to reunite generations of families.

Layout change

I decided to change the blog template. When I switched from my PC to the Macbook, I realized that the color green in the background looked different, more like pea soup. And the center column appeared much more narrow on this smaller screen than it did on my super big (and heavy) Dell laptop. I've changed to a template that is cleaner and fiddled a little with the colors and font size. Next up is to figure out how to add an image to the banner.

What do you think?

ETA: Thanks to advice from Ms. Kitty, I am trying out this image in the banner. That was so easy! The picture is of the village Portalrubio, in Spain, where my daughter's father was born and grew up. Although not so many people live there year round, many go there in the summer and everyone who can goes to the village fiesta at the beginning of August.

"Once" is a great film

Last night, I went to the movies, as I often do, alone. I love my local theaters, especially the Uptown which has never been divided into a multiplex. It still has a big screen and a balcony. The seats are a little shabby, but that's part of its charm; it feels like home. Because it's part of the Landmark chain, it debuts indie films like the one I saw last night, Once. John Carney filmed it in Dublin for $150,000 using hand-held digital cameras with telephoto lenses. It's a fictional story of a man and a woman who are both musicians, who meet and begin to make music together. Most of the film actually consists of their musical journey: she hears him busking on the street, they play together for the first time in a music store where she is allowed to play the piano, they share songs on tape recorders and CD players, they share dreams of making a record. He's still in love with the woman he's left; she's a Czech immigrant scraping by with her mother and toddler, with a husband back home from whom she's separated. Each is writing songs out of the rawness of their feelings, and they connect through their music making. Neither of the leads is a professional actor (although Glen Hansard did have a minor role in the film The Commitments when he was 21), but they are musicians, and they performed all the music in the film live, with no overdubbing. Watching the process of music-making unfold, especially as they meet other musicians to cut a demo, is fascinating and full of warm and melancholy details. They have feelings for each other, but one of the gifts they give each other along with the music is the courage to honor their attraction to each other but also to honor each other by resisting temptation so they can try again with their loved ones. The New York Times review tells us that the film was originally written for Cillian Murphy (an actor who was a rock musician before he started to act) but that he backed out because his co-lead was not a professional actor. I'm glad, because I think his replacement, the musician Glen Hansard from the Irish band The Frames, is perfect for his role. Murphy is a great actor but he's too freakin' gorgeous--the film would have lost some of become a "Cillian Murphy" film, and lost the intimacy that is so much of its effectiveness.
The Dublin in the film is a working class Dublin, but there are a few scenes where the characters go to the water and we can see the absolute beauty of the land and the sea. There's also a priceless scene of a party where everyone there contributes a song, and if one of the singers there wasn't Marianne Faithful, she could have been. The film was picked up in Galway for a showing at Sundance, where it ended up winning the audience award. I'm happy for all those involved in this labor of love. If you have a chance to see it, go for it.
Here's the trailer

Web 2.0 video

I am taking a week-long workshop on Digital Teaching. I'm loving it. It combines pedagogy with introductions to a variety of tools that I'll be able to use to enhance my courses. I've already worked with some of them, although only in a beginners mode, but others were absolutely new to me. As part of the workshop, we viewed this little five-minute video on the concept of Web 2.0. It was made by Mike Wesch, a professor at U Kansas, who posts at the Anthropology blog Savage Minds. The video moves fast and packs a lot in, but it is very provocative. I'm going to watch it again a few times as I work through my assignments for the course, and make a to-do list of things to check out.

"Cloggah!"

The participation of Brandon the clogger in the Atlanta auditions episode of So You Think You Can Dance? has clogging fans all excited. Will he appear in tonight's episode in which the 20 finalists will be announced? Does he have enough dance experience so that he can take his mad clogging skillz into ballroom, lyrical and hip-hop? He was featured in the audition, but didn't get shown in the Vegas bootcamp episode aired last night, in which 200 dancers were cut down to 50, so we'll have to wait until tonight's episode to see if he makes the cut.

I've seen clog dancing once at the Tapestry Folk Dance Center and it looked like great, energetic fun, but I didn't know much about it. A little Google research, and I learned that clogging has its roots in the Industrial Revolution; workers in the mills of Lancashire, England who wore wooden clogs at work, would dance with their clogs. Their competitive dancing was influenced by the influx of Irish workers who brought the tradition of Irish step dancing with them. Immigration brought clogging to the Americas, and in Appalachia, clogging has been a living tradition alongside traditional folk music, both influenced by African dancing and musical practices; Appalachian clogging, like tap dancing, uses an earthier, more grounded stance than the highly erect Irish step dancing. Clogging was featured in early vaudeville (Charlie Chaplin's first performances at age ten were as part of a clogging troupe called Eight Lancashire Lads), and in the US is now danced by precision troupes. People still do clog dancing as a kind of folk dance, or in the Appalachian style, but some kids are mixing it up with hip hop as this folk tradition mixes with popular culture. The "precision clogging" dance teams in this video show how hip hop and clogging meet:

UPDATE: Brandon was cut in the samba round of the auditions, but posted this funny message on clogdancing.com:

It has been an awesome experience. I've made tons of new friends and met some amazing dancers in all styles of dance! I feel like I'm a big star or something and its kinda freaking me out!

I walked into a restraunt tonight and the hostess said to me "You look so much like that guy that was on So You Think You Can Dance the other night!" and I said I am that guy! She then started screaming and slapping me on the arm with the menus she was about to hand me. It was really funny. As we were leaving she asked me to dance for some of the employees because they didn't belive I could dance.

I never imagined that I would get so much attention from 2 minutes of TV time. It's unreal how many messages and nice comments I've recieved on myspace. I also never knew how country my accent is until I heard myself on the show. It was horrible!

I hope everyone enjoyed my performance and continues to follow the show to see how it turns out!

- Brandon Norris

Eurovision 2007 (a little late)

I return to blog frivolity. I am deliberately avoiding posting about all the things that make me want to rant and rave because so many other people do that much better than I do, and right now, this blog is serving as a place for me to have fun as therapy.

We have American Idol, but Europe has the fabled Eurovision song contest. National pride is at stake! Spain was so upset at its lamentable showing last year, that they created a whole reality show/Eurovision contest to pick a better song. Unfortunately, the people's choice ended up in 20th place, and, as usual, outraged opinions about the politics of voting filled articles and the comments on YouTube videos.
Here we see why Spain's song fared so poorly (my daughter's expert opinion--it's the same stuff they always do):

And here is the wonderful parody video!

Finally, my daughter's favorite, the second place Ukranians who have got this Eurovision thing down! Gotta have a catchy beat, and outrageous costumes help.

Winner Serbia was represented by a ballad. Accusations of song plagiarism by Albanians were heard, but I'm more interested in the fact that gender bending was definitely a factor in several of the presentations (including Sweden's group The Ark with openly bisexual singer Ola drawing much love from the fans).

First aid for a scald

Shriek. Jump away from the plunger coffee pot which has turned into a volcano. Run cold water over the scalded area on the inside of right arm. Cry. Stand with your arm under the cold water for at least ten minutes. Splash cold water into armpit to remove coffee grounds. Clean coffee splashes off stove, fridge, floor. Run more cold water over burned area. Rinse out clothes. Curse. Apply ice packs to entire length of inside right arm, including armpit. Google "first aid scald" and determine that your burn is "superficial" even though it hurts like the dickens because there are no blisters, oozing or skin penetration areas. Note that the use of adhesive bandages and the application of creams, lotion, fat, or any other substances are not recommended. Feel sorry for self. Remember the lawsuit over scalding coffee at McDonalds with more empathy. Compare burn sensations to the last bad sunburn on upper thighs from canoing without sunscreen. Remember the horrible accident when Cynthia and Billy Allen got third degree burns from boiling water because their mother had left the eight-year old girl to heat a bottle for the toddler who pulled the pot of boiling water off the stove onto both of them.
Wonder if Tylenol or aspirin will work better for the pain. Wish there were some vicodin left from the broken foot episode.
ETA: Next day, it's still a little painful, but healing well.
Learn how to swear the way they do it in Spain: