Hired-Up

My interview for work went well enough on Monday that I was offered the job on Friday. The job I was iffy about for more money, not the library job I was excited about for less.

So after mulling it over for a few hours, I decided to sign on and re-join the working class, take the plunge, and as Dr Strangelove would say, "How I stopped worrying (about $$$) and learned to love the bomb," or Job. Whatever. Being two terms into the student experience, and actually looking at graduation for Summer 2009, I am not as worried about being sucked into a work situation that I enable by making myself indispensable to my boss, then finding my feet captured by quick-curing cement into the foundation workings of the established business. I can balance things better now after the hiatus and back-to-school trail, and I'm actually thinking how higher income can help me out with some things, like modern dentistry and and the urban homesteading ideas germinating in my noggin.

This Spring Term was tougher on me than I'd have thought, the astro-physical strain was high, and all those many equation-analyzing hours would not have been available to cover a real job and still squeak out a decent grade for this degree-requirement class. It's somehow all working out, and when the hiring manager replied to my acceptance email, she said my current class schedule was perfect for their scheduling needs for now, and being term oriented, schedules are always readjusted to accommodate the students' classtimes. I like this. Going forward, I'll be packing together as many Anthropology classes into each term as I can and don't see anything ahead as brain-reconfiguring as teaching myself Trigonometry by doing forensics on equation fragments to determine cause of impossible results. All that effort will now go back into my major classes, and brainspace for learning a new workplace culture and software system.

And it is summer, after all. Finally picked up some plants for the garden yesterday morning, some hearty tomato starts at Fred Meyer's Founders Day sale, and those quaint forget-me-nots I've been craving since forever for that shady corner under the mock orange bush. In Michigan my grandparents had a pink version of it too, and the blue with some pink carpeted the shade under the huge lilac bushes by the rhubarb patch. The cheerful purple and yellow faces of johnny-jump-up pansies rounded it out as a border. They all reseeded and came back after every harsh Michigan winter. Slowly, but steadily, I am gaining ground in the ultimate conversion of this home into a facsimile of the family 1902 homestead that I loved so much growing up. Okay, a mix of that and the Bath Street house, the two old houses I hated to leave behind. We double Cancers are just a mess with this house business, I've surrendered completely to it and have much more peace now. It just is this way.

Four cucumber plants, five types of tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, sunflowers, herbs, and now I'm thinking potatoes. A trip to the Limbo organic market for some specimens to let go spiky with sprouting eyes, to cut up and plant in a big pot like Kathy does, and where can lettuce fit in, and a bush soybean? Sprouts of Texas red grapefruit seeds are working in a shallow sushi tray and I started another avocado pit in water. These of course are hot climate dreams, or the beginnings of cultured trees in a conservatory to be built when the neighbors gather to re-claim the lot where Steven's house is. He still plays along that it's okay to have his house moved off the lot and donate it to charity, so his 'friendly' neighbors can converge on the plot and create the communal garden space with bamboo tea house I've been dreaming of. What a great sport.

Heliocentric

Whatever I'm doing, whenever it is, if there's a sustained sunbreak, I drop my piddling little task and bolt for the outside. It's just time for winter to be finally over, and time to sit on the porch in something other than black solar-magnet clothes to ward off the chill while waiting for the blaze.

How funny is it that in Astronomy class we are studying the Sun, being tantalized by films of solar flares, boiling radiance of the photosphere, waving heat coronas in eclipse---and I get to walk home from the bus in sideways frozen rain. Brrrr.

The astonishing thing lately is that I am starting to begin to understand some of this trigonometry.
The calculator I bought has helped, and the professor is focusing more on the 'what' instead of the 'how', but neat pieces of this whole snarl of Greek letters, exponents and subsets are falling into place. Slowly, I should add, so as not to challenge the Math Gods with my arrogance.

There are all these websites to visit with animations of a full day's Sun rotation, seeing sunspot frequency, the granulations of convection cells rising to the surface and cooling (to 5 million degrees Kelvin) and sinking back under the surface to be reheated. In the presentation, there are all these cooking and stove analogies, and who knew that neutrinos came in three flavors?
During the break after the first hour of class, I saw my face in the ladies room mirror, and I looked sunburned.

This is the official Midterm week, and I just found out today I am getting an aid package for the summer term that starts the end of June. It's what I was hoping would work out, to stay at it and make up for some of all the lost time. Hopefully, there's going to be something offered that I want to take, now that I'm committed. Until the summer schedule is posted, I hover in the mysterious cloud of unknowing. Flirting with the sun.

Over the Cliff

We were advised in class today that we'd taken our professor too literally, and followed his directions so unswervingly, we took it right over the cliff. The paper assignment, I mean.
And again, he threatened us that he has much much higher expectations for the one we're beginning after the midterm next week. I hope he gives us the topic parameters more than just a week ahead of time for this one, and maybe if he quit threatening us, we'd not step on the backs of his heels trying to do it exactly right.

I was surprised to hear two fellow classmates behind me on the stairs after class saying how they are having to do more research just to figure out who the main figures are in the field, because the prof keeps referencing them but never really had us learn about them, but expects us to know which guy said what, and why are we reading about baseball superstitions when we could be reading about these founders of the discipline? He has us read these assignments, but then never discusses them in class. Our textbooks don't even give an overview of the terminology, list the definitions or significant breakthroughs, or what's going on in the field now. And I had thought these two young women were so busy playing with their text messages to even think about this, so good for them, and shame on me. But it's true.

So he's going to hate my paper, now I know it for sure. Someone told me to just withdraw from the class, get an incomplete, and take it again next year with hopefully a different professor. Now that the term is almost half over, let's just get it over with and move on, is my thought. The ultimate irony is that this was going to be the focus of my major in the subject, and now I'm all put off. It just feels like a no-win all the way around.

The weather isn't helping. After that 80 degree sunny weekend almost two weeks ago, I feel like a barnacle on some barge under the Morrison Bridge. I've changed all my slide shows on my computers to tropical islands, Rocky Mountain wide blue skies, and Saharan Dunes under pure azure. My retinas need sunshine and blue above me, HELP! Saturday's supposed to be nice, high 60s and some sunshine. Reading the Odyssey on my front porch and doing laptop astronomy homework are my only plans. I got a scientific calculator today that promises fewer hours and tears, but ha ha ha, I have to learn how to use it. This is a different term entirely.

Hillary won in Pennsylvania last night, and I am so happy that she's fighting on, and not caving in to the pressure from the pundits that a national civil race war will break out if she wins the nomination by super-delegates. What kind of crap is that? How freaking racist is it to have white guys on CNN promising riots and mayhem bringing down the whole election if Hillary doesn't quit now and go home? That's like telling Obama to bug out now because if he gets the nomination by only a slim popular vote, every woman and blue collar worker will riot against African Americans and threaten the safety of the country. Like that would happen. We have two candidates that we don't want to see go all mean, to stoop to those old dog tactics of yesteryear, and I think they've held onto that position for themselves for a good long time. But the Republicans are catching a whiff of fresh air that maybe John McCain isn't so bad after all, and maybe they can win. I think Evil Rove is resting up for the summer so he can sharpen his teeth on whichever Democrat is left standing after the convention, and then this race will start to look like those ultimate cage fighters on cable---and that Democrat had better be able to suit up and let it fly. And I really want it to be Hillary, let Obama serve another term or two in the Senate, and then run and win.

Thinking about this the other day, I totally 'get' the generational thing, and why the average 25 year old is all hyped for Obama. None of these kids want to have a president that reminds them of their mom or one of their mom's friends, it's still a little weird yet. Much of my support for Hillary is for her personally, because I know her story and I know what a huge part she played in Bill's presidency, I was there and hoped she'd have her own shot at national politics afterwards. Part of it is her being a woman candidate, naturally, no shame in that for me, but I have always liked her, mostly because some of her story resembles mine I think. And I want her to go all the way, over the guardrail and fly out over the resistance and win this election, and be my president. If she weren't running, I'd most likely have the Obama buttons on, knowing he's going to need some on the job training, rattle the political science faculty of higher institutions now.

Cultural Misunderstanding

Ahhhhhhh----the supreme delight and satisfaction of finishing a paper assignment. And it only took me about three hours, is a bit too long and will be tightened up tomorrow, and is absolutely true and rather funny, if I do say so myself.

My young prof asked us to write of a personal experience of having a cultural misunderstanding. My personal experience of this assignment is that it's kinda voyeristic of him to require this, but when reflecting over the last few days, I realized that most of the 18-20 yr olds in my class (and I) would have a difficult time writing of an abstract cultural misunderstanding in 3 pages. Can't really do justice to the Israelis and Palestinians in 3 pages. Or the situation with Ellis Island or First Nations. So let's keep it breezy and first hand, right? So against the advice of my pal who worked with me through this certain period of time in the 1980s, I plunged into my story of Midwest Gamine moves to South Florida and emerges from her naive realism into the diverse and much louder Southern Branch of the Gotham City Culture.

I think my pal was afraid I'd come off sounding too bitter, or bigoted, or bitchy, but I think that it's possible to write about how overwhelmed a person can feel being immersed in a totally new cultural environment, being completely ignorant of how it all works, feeling very young and inexperienced about life in general, and be honest in describing it without being any of those b-things. Plus, since it's all true, and I remember parts of it so well, there is a bit of actual recreated dialogue. The part in the bagel place changed my whole attitude about living in South Florida.

Okay, so seeing as I was the one in the minority in the BocaWorld, I get to be the one who lost her naive realistic innocence and joined the greater Gotham Culture. Naive Realism is the anthropology term for when people think that the entire world is the way that they see their own particular piece of it. That got smacked right out of me the first month I worked there. I learned a lot of things, including some bad Yiddish words I used to be able to use but have now forgotten, I learned how to give shit and got better at taking it when I had a name tag on. I also learned how to hold my own, and wished I'd have been able to learn that better in my teens instead of in my 20s and 30s.
And now I get to write about it for college credit. So so cool. And what's really funny, is that if I were even bolder and still had more of my East Coast on, I'd have included how living in Gotham Culture for so long is sometimes why the Snark Episode happened with this young prof in the first place, and also why he reacted as he did, being so West Coast as he is. But I am not so bold, at least for this graded writing assignment. Maybe sometime, since I'm staying in this department for my degree, he and I will laugh about it all.

He'll laugh reading my paper, and that's my strategy.

What's Math Got to Do With It?

Uh-oh, in the weeds already. After I finished the hysterical laughing part, the 7 hour, two page homework assignment began.

There was the 90 minutes of teaching myself the astronomy software program (that we were told not to rely on to do the homework--more laughing). Then the time looking up fun facts of scientific notation, that I went ahead and did the long way instead so I could see how the math magic happens with all those zeroes and exponents. Then the drawing of the earth and imaginary planes of reference with wonky angles and imaginary horizons and trying to use common sense instead of reading Greek letters. Some tears, a bowl of cereal, and back at it.

I want the Carl Sagan Experience, damn it! Michio Kaku doesn't ruin a romantic night looking into Deep Fields by whipping out his Texas Instrument. I'm into Big Screen Astrophysics, there's people who can be hired to plot out this swarm of ant-like troll-script, don't bother me with this crap, I've got massive theory to polish in my mind.

Professors must dread people like me taking their specialty courses. This may truly wind up being a pass/fail course for me. Why not a "Science for Right-Brainers" or "Astronomy for Painters" or "Physics for Philosophers"? In perspective, the writing assignments for my other classes feel like email letters to my best friends. But I go on too long...

It was funny to be sailing along in the midst of the Iliad this morning, admiring the smoothness of the translation, thrilled to be using the same copy I used in 1979 in my Great Books class my freshman year. Which shows that a person can expand the neuro-synapses after years of dry-dock, only reading corporate manual jargonese and lighter non-fiction bestsellers, and be able to drink in the un-watered wine of classic Greek epics. Only to hit the rocks in the afternoon with astronomy. This Renaissance Woman program demands a high price of her aspirants, math entering into the process again. There just has to be a trick to this, some smoke and mirrors so I can plunge the swords into the basket and arrive at the white dove flying into the footlights. I mean, there really is, right? Silk scarves, presto-change-o, abracadabra, alacazam! Trig-o-nom-it-tree!! Whammo!

Battle cry of the Dilettante.

Portland Needs Archaeology!

('Mars Needs Women!'--- I know, I thought it too)

Whilst all of Portland was returning to their work stations from lunch yesterday, they had no idea that a brain trust meeting was being held in an office at PSU that would be gathering steam to completely change the future of urban life on the Willamette as we know it!

No, not free Cirque du Soleil tickets to all.

Some students and members of the Anthropology Department were discussing a new class being offered for the Spring 2008 Term on Community Archaeology, and how this can be a great threshold for educating and encouraging the people who live in an area (Portland, for the sake of this idea) to get involved in preserving the cultural resources surrounding them. No mere coincidence that I was there, seeing as I wholeheartedly believe that this is just what Portland needs, as well as being encouraged that one of the organizers is Wendy Ann Wright, a volunteer in the office of Sam Adams. The focus of the class will be creating an annual hands-on event, that brings together local land history with ways to investigate and preserve it, and ideally get attendees interested to get involved at different levels. There can be fun things for kids and their parents to do, as well as some more involved things like foraging skills, tool-making, indigenous plants and how they were managed by native peoples, techniques of archaeological digs, the devastation of site looting, before and after depictions of how the Portland waterfront was developed---and as dedicated as we Portlanders are about our city's well-being, I think we can accomplish some good things by getting started with an event like this.

Looking out over the Portland skyline, I see all these mega-cranes, new towers under construction for new Portlanders, 4 foot trenches in the roadways exposing old brick, holes the size of a square city block 50' deep near the river, restored 19th century homes with abandoned urban lots behind them, and I see all this hidden history. No where do I feel that this developing of places should be made difficult, but there are all these lost chances to know more about our town and the brave people who wound up here long ago when this was the frontier, and the thousands of years before all that. There was a creek through there? Really? This family had an orchard there, that bend of the Willamette was an early refrigerated warehouse (no way!) that shipped fresh seafood to Denver, that site was where native peoples from all over the Pacific Northwest came and harvested obsidian. Sitting in that meeting yesterday, I knew that there are hundreds if not thousands of people here who would love to know this, especially if they're walking over it everyday or live in the neighborhood built on top of someplace so important back then. Back in my book retail days, we had one of the most heavily shopped local interest sections of any store I'd ever seen, and we had to put a display table up, so the big Photographs of Historic Portland coffee table book could be left out for browsing over, and the Portland Streetcar book, and the Portland Baseball teams book, and the Portland Gardens book, the Hill Walks of Portland, Underground Tunnels, Portland Jazz and Blues, Portland Confidential, end of the Oregon Trail. We sold hundreds of these books.

So how is this going to change life on the Willamette as we know it? I think it could, I really do, because we can create a source point for further work going forward, create a living history of a place, a block, a neighborhood, a building, a shore, a bridge, a house, a street, and ultimately, a community. It's fascinating to hear the story of a place you know, who doesn't like a good true story?

Finals

My last week of classes for the Winter 2008 term have been this week---finished already. Crazy.
One more archaeology class Friday, then exams Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday.

Then let Spring Break begin!

Not that I need a break, I'm still all fired up and being a goof about it all. Still.
As the week went by, more and more of the syllabi were getting shortened, running out of term, less to have to cover for the finals. Then today, one prof said "I've decided the exam will not be cumulative, just cover what we've done since the mid-term." The class of 90-something students broke out into rowdy applause. She smiled in relief and her shoulders fell about a foot from around her ears. She doesn't have a TA this term---poor soul.

Next term looks bright, too. The last Intro Anthropology class, the last PSU-peculiar "university studies cluster course" requirement (I picked Medieval Studies), and Roman History. However, this class may or may not work out, the 10-minute break between classes to get from one building to the other won't be enough time to get 5 blocks and at least four stories up from the Engineering Building to central campus Cramer Hall. What's a history class doing at the Engineering Building? Is this class heavily chosen by engineering students or something? I'd need a golf cart to do that sprint, so I may have to change it out if they don't reassign it to a closer building. The Roman part of my art history class was my favorite section, so I want to know all about Rome now. Everything. This happens to me all the time. You should see all the books I have on Egypt...

It's fun to read the texts and go over the notes and feel like you know this stuff, no need to cram. The idea I heard about is that your short-term memory files things you learn straight into your mid-to-long-term memory if you study, then take a nap or call it a night and go to bed. So while I'm dreaming about Bruce Campbell as a trapeze artist like Errol Flynn in a technicolor movie in my brain theater complete with a glass harmonica orchestra playing circus tunes, all that biological anthropology and paleoanthropology material is becoming part of my mental office studio (this happened). There it will be, all that information, forever close to the tip of my tongue to horrify and bore my friends, "Hey, that reminds me of this group of hominids who walked across an ash field---wait, don't go, okay I'll stop."

Now that Garden Season is here, prepping the Garden anyway, it will serve as the great balancer of brain and body. Being in the dirt releases a trip-switch in my head, and I work out all kinds of things while weeding, planting, gathering marigold seeds, or ripping out last year's wintered-over stems and stalks. What could be wiser than reading textbooks while enjoying porch time and the tomato starts?

All is well.

Leap Day

Back in the Ann Arbor days, the early 80s, when I was doing a lot more writing, I composed another front stoop poem, on a strangely warm, sunny day at the end of February. The house on Bath Street was perched next to a woody ravine on a dead end street, surrounded by bungalows with rampant herb gardens. Purple sage can survive a cold Michigan winter, shrinking under the snow and waiting for spring. I sat on the listing plank steps with my face to the sun, and waited for the clear sign of what to chose next for my life; go to Florida and a new life, or stay here and find another job. Re-reading the poem, I knew I had already made up my mind, I was going to go, and I'd never sit in the warm sunshine in late February on these steps again.

Waves of that day came back to me this morning, walking downtown and seeing clumps of drowsy purple sage next to gray lavender and blooming rosemary in a large planter. What was a complete anomaly in Michigan, is a normal winter's day here, and I much prefer it this way. I can sit on my stony concrete steps with my face in the sun in late February in this place, on these steps, and it all comes washing back. That I am finally back in school, dealing with the Biggest Incomplete of my entire life, but outwardly doing much of what I was doing back then in Ann Arbor, is kinda funny. Almost like the last 22 years didn't happen. More and more, it even feels that way.

To some, this may look like Being Stuck. As in, "Ma'am, it's done already, move on, get over it, drop the baggage!"

And I reply, "That's what I tried to do those 22 years." I did the Job Thing, the 'My Beautiful Career' Thing, the 'Serious Adult Relationship' Thing, the Survival Strategy Thing, and even the Not-Caring Thing. Years and years spent in the wilderness. One or two major choices I may have done differently, looking back, but if presented with the same circumstances, my path would probably look much the same. I mean, living in a condo on Highland Beach, Atlantic Coast South Florida for free for eight months at 24 years old---who is going to say, "Uh, no thanks, really, I much prefer my unheated room in a run-down house with flaky roommates in a Michigan winter, a chronic respiratory illness and being unemployed,"?

Today was the first time since that last day at the B-store that I walked past my old workplace downtown. It felt weird. Past the bank where I spent so much time each weekday afternoon waiting to make a bag of deposits, past the parked FedEx truck of my old driver, with a ticket on it (as usual). Past the mall, past the Russian 'kofe' place, smelling the Mexican lunch place; how many hundreds of times did I make that walk, but veer left to the wall of glass doors? Today, I was smiling and just kept walking past, towards the river, towards home in the middle of the workday with my class notes in my book bag. No big deal, I know, but for a fraction of a second I was time traveling, 22 years, then 13 months, but also into the near-future. Because Portland is the place to navigate from, for me, and no condo in a warm place could change my mind. PSU has no clue what mad power it has to change the stream of Deep Time.

Memoirs of a Slacker

A strange kind of weekend off, for a student person. The big lead-up to my Friday morning exam was all consuming this past week, cramming, making study-guide outlines, craving that "A". By 11:10am Friday, I was free, and felt just like I did after driving away from Pioneer Place Mall for the last time with my car loaded and no 'God' key on my keyring anymore, just over a year ago.

The sun was even out, it was about 50 degrees, and I had nothing pressing at all. My term paper wasn't due for two weeks yet. I stopped by FedExKinkos and got the artwork for it printed in color from my flash drive, and it wasn't even noon yet. what to do, what to do, what to do?

Caught the bus home, bought some beer, walked Miss Daisy Bassett, and basically goofed off.
It is a weird feeling, to be a "grown-up" and know in your head what you should be doing, or could be doing, and still just slack like you were born to be one, because nothing is a crisis right at the moment. I like this.

So, being the adult, I am spending a part of this afternoon being responsible, doing laundry, reading over my art history research notes for that paper, running over to New Seasons for a couple of things, but I may just be getting better at time management after all. Or getting better at power-slacking; like power-napping, in the right amount at the right time, I feel like I'm getting away with something. Or taking art classes, leaving the library with a $200 book on the history of still-lifes, and it was okay to do that, too.

It all sounds so silly, I know, but I just thought all of this was going to be so much harder than it is, and I had that idea since I began thinking about going back to school in 1986, 5 years after I had had to quit. The cost, the job-juggling, the shitty local Florida college, the re-locating to one I would want to attend, the relationship, the commute, the age difference, the unmet expectations, the Magic Golden Perfect Job at the end of the stage when I got my diploma, the debt to repay, yadda yadda yadda. It was all too much. Abandon ship! Just get a job and work your way to some mid-level with some insurance and make Life be about something else. Don't listen to that little voice going on and on about dreams and being real, get real about paying the bills instead.

Also, now is just the right time, it came together without the moving of Heaven and Earth effort it would have required before. There was some noticeable remorse when I was sitting in that room of my peers at the Anthropology Dept. lecture a few weeks ago---they have their Masters and PhDs already, shit, I'm still just an undergrad---and it did feel crappy. It really did.
But I realized I'm not interested in excavating all my regrets and reasons, it would take a long time and just make me feel worse, so don't do it. Keep moving--- advice I gave friends and employees for tough times, just keep going forward. Take naps---my other bit of advice. Put on some great music and something will surface. Lay in some snack-age, frosty bevs, and chill. Take a long brisk walk, come home to a hot shower, then snooze for 20 minutes. Then---get back to your task. Or not. slacker

The Unswept Floor

When the 10' high image flashed up on the white screen at the front of the lecture hall, I experienced a moment of utter delight and the thrill of seeing why Art is so crucial to education.

This is a mosaic on the floor of a Roman villa, in what was a sumptuous dining area with reclining couches for feasting, and this charming floor to toss your lobster shells, peacock bones, sea urchin spiny shells, bruised olives, lemon rinds, etc. So it all would blend in with the tromp l'oeil cast-offs already tiled with faint dimensional shadowing beneath your chaise. Don't hit the mouse.

So I think at least 50 of my cohorts in the ancient art history class are ditching their previously researched research topic for something as fun as this. We'll all say the same thing 50 different ways, our poor professor. She'll regret slipping this slide into the lecture, it wasn't in the textbook.

So maybe some more art history classes for me are in store, I am really enjoying this one, and there are specialized classes spending an entire term on one era or cultural movement, not just a week like this Intro class. Romanesque, Ancient Near East, Ancient Asian, Islamic, Renaissance architecture...if I only have 54 more credits to fulfill my major, I'm going to need some electives.
Honestly, I knew I'd like this class, but I didn't know it would be this much fun. Mosaic artists do their modern version of this, with RedBull cans, cigarette butts, gum, lipstick, underwear, dust bunnies, Cheetos---the average dorm room floor. Mine would be books, magazines, cat toys, recycling in the corner, bus tickets, shoes and bookbags. This type of art is basically a snapshot of popular culture of the time---Roman villa to PSU dorm floor. Full circle.

Six-and-a-half weeks

I'm sitting here with the Spring term course schedule already.

This is week 6 of the Winter term, half over, midterms behind me, I shoulder the bookbag up and down the hills filled with library books loaned to me from all over Oregon about the ancient Hittite Empire, the Research Paper to write, then only the Final Exams ahead.
Afterwards, the 10 days off before Spring term starts on March 31st.

What do I need to do to retrieve my photographic memory of the first lap of my schooling? Only needed to read something twice, and I not only could remember it for exams, but could visualize it on the page. Before anyone calls out the AGE card, I think that the working world had it's own level of memorization requirements, as in unpacking 150 cases of books and remembering that in the flurry of sorting them into storage bins whether the third Spiderwick book came in and whether it was in paperback or hardcover. And how far back in the bin you stacked it.
So my memory skills were merely redirected to assist me as a customer serving boss instead of a student (or singer of rock lyrics).

Six weeks in, and my stair-taking is less embarrassing, I know which of the busses running through the fare-free zone stops have a drop-off stop at PSU (Portland, she rains) and which cross-over bridges between buildings are enclosed so I don't have to passively smoke a cigarette or two on my way to Neuberger Hall. If only there was one to the library...

I love that library. It has that mid-century smell that I remember from before the digital age and it comforts me when browsing through the stacks and finding an irresistible book on 1930's Mandarin Chinese poetry in translation, or repaired bindings on 100 year old books so they can still be read. Libraries are treasuries, attracting serious students, snoozers, and today a table of fully chadored young women playing with their cell phones and giggling when a young man sat down at their table. BTW, the Hittite books are fascinating, how am I going to narrow down which works of art to compare for the paper? I love these kind of dilemmas.

But I need a new laptop, clearly the 2003 Sony is so slow and noisy and almost 9lbs, it's not going to be hanging off my shoulder on the bus and throwing out the other side of my lower back. There have been days when I've come into a lecture hall and the whole back half of the room is wall-to-wall upright laptops, and the pitter-patter of Apple keystrokes has become just as integral to the lecture as the whir of the slide projector over my head. Free wi-fi access is everywhere on campus, so I could work on my online research at the table by the window with my hot organic coffee gripped in my hand, then speed off to my next class. I get a student discount if I get one through the online Apple Education store, or I can check Best Buy, but being able to carry around my files and add to them while on campus will really come in handy. As Steven would say,"Well, some bitches better get a job!" I'd rather get a grant, and shake some Apples loose from the money tree. Some bitches get wicked crafty...

My neighbor John was snickering at me today, he's a retired teacher, that I'm just so happy to be doing what I'm doing, loaded down with books late in the afternoon, coming home from the bus. Sometimes I feel seven years old again, can't wait to break open the books after class and mentally run like hell. There is nothing else in the world I'd rather be doing.

Archaeology is a Contact Sport

Who knew? I thought it would be a bunch of wonks, Star Wars alumni, Tolkien freaks, time travelers, anti-Indiana Joneses, Outcasts of the Curious Anachronism Society and RenFest drop outs. Well shame on me, although I'm a tad disappointed to see that they seem to look alot like me, except for the manly men with earnest expressions and one or two with Merlin beards. At least here in downtown Portland, it isn't a Summer of '69 reunion either attending the Anthropology Department's "First Thursday" Lecture event at 4pm yesterday afternoon. Of course I was going to go, and it has nothing to do with the extra credit essay, because the topic was establishing a Cultural Resources Preservation Program for the City of Portland, to enforce the national, state, county and municipal historic sites' laws as well as bringing it to a higher profile in the community.


Honestly, I was stunned. You mean Portland doesn't have this already? I thought. You've got to be kidding me.

The presenter was Wendy Ann Wright, a PSU student in the Anthropology department, a Powells Books alumna, mom, and passionate member of Sam Adams' staff at City Hall. OMG!!
What better person to catalyze this idea in the city, and she had a great slide presentation of the research she's done in other cities nationally, to find models that are community-based and effective already. Again, I sat there looking at her slides of St. Mary's Academy Wall demolition that she may as well have downloaded from my blog, as well as hurried excavations of privies and Chinese cemetery graves with a row of bulldozers and backhoes hovering in the background.

Portland doesn't have this in place already? I can't believe this! When she concluded, my hand shot up. "Hi, I'm really uninformed about the whole City permitting process, but everyday I see the progress of the building project at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge, and they're already 50 feet down---before the contractor started digging, he had to find out about gas lines, water lines,
how strong the soil barrier is between the hole and the river---I would think historic maps of municipal locations are available to check this just like the gas and water companies survey and OK going ahead with excavating, right? Couldn't a City of Portland Archaeologist or Historic Site Manager Office be layered in here at this point so at least within the city limits sites aren't just plowed up?"

Well, she mentioned the standard fire maps, and archived city maps, but no, there isn't really anything like this in Portland at this time, it would be a budget issue certainly.

An older gentleman stood up. He was concerned that there was a punitive attitude coming off of archaeologists and site preservationists that would actually have the opposite effect of discouraging people from coming forward with asking for site assistance if an artifact showed up in a shovel of dirt or their basement bricks collapse and there's old bootlegger paraphrenalia falling onto the floor. Why couldn't the utilities and industrial corporations be asked to underwrite some of these efforts and also cooperate with the city in recovering some of their own industrial history and be seen as caring about the community preservation movement instead of being told to absorb the time and costs of investigating sites all over the city? He started out seeming a bit hostile to Wendy's anti-looting attitude that makes all collectors and antique markets suspect, but she was able to agree with him and turn his question into an approach almost everyone could agree with. She said there was an African American Art exhibit that Sam Adams' office was involved in that had had an antique bottle collector involved, but he pulled out after getting some flack from the archaeologists in town about his collection being "looted", which in strict trade terminology means removed from its historical context (or dump pit). It is a comment on we everyday townsfolk that most of us need to be educated that saving a cloudy antique bottle (it's blue and says 'poison', cool!!) from your backyard compost pile of 103 years ago constitutes "looting". But it is. Strictly speaking. Even if you own the property.

This is where the contact sport part comes in.

Needless to say, in Wendy's research to find a working preservation model that has widespread and cooperative community involvement, she finds that there are plenty of struggles with individuals' and commercial property rights when it comes to designating something 'historic' or a 'cultural resource' , and different cities have varying levels of success with this issue. She mentioned Alexandria, VA and Vancouver, WA as two cities with viable programs and great community involvement and support. These agencies get the kids involved with introductions to archaeology with a "kids dig"; artifact copies that the kids get to use methods of excavation to "find" and analyze. Also, many Native American Nations are active in community awareness and education to preserve sites and ways of life, often coordinating with municipal and county agencies to work with the public and commercial interests. Often, she said, there are laws in place already that are poorly enforced or thought of as arcane, and educating officials about these laws would be a place to start with raising preservation with the public.

There's already a faint sound in my head, "You should do this, you love Portland so much, what a great project this would be to get involved with and help launch!" I haven't had a huge ambition in a few months, it's about time to have a new one, isn't it? Halfway through my first term, after 25+ years out of school, and already I'm the department expert in my own delusional brain. Too funny, isn't it? And the fact that these "First Thursday" Anthropology lecture attendees are about my age, already have my interests, and go to a pub afterwards to eat and drink and talk shop would be the perfect arm-twister to get me to keep going. And earning extra credit. And blogging about it. Until maybe I finally dive in and present Sam Adams with a plan.

Politics and Real Life

I have a mid-term tomorrow, so this will be short.

My dear friend Jolie took her 13 year old daughter out of school last week to go to a political rally at Denver University, knowing the experience of 'politics as rock concert' would have a lasting impression on her youngin', and here she is. (they grow up so fast)

She shook Bill's hand, and took pictures of him going through the reception line. Jolie was so proud, and happy to be the shining blue light in her red state neighborhood, and that her daughter got the political bug of how important this election is in her lifetime, and to be aware and awake for it while it's happening. Talk about handing the torch to the next generation, Ted Kennedy's got nothing on this one.

I stayed home from an Anthropology Department after school lecture on 'Myth-busting CSI Forensics' to watch the Clinton-Obama debate last Thursday live on CNN, and found out the next day that the lecture was packed, and the kids in class didn't even know there was a debate or who was debating or that only two Democrats were left in the race. I already knew that no one under 25 listens to the radio anymore, which guarantees the final death rattle of neo-Cratzies talk radio shows, but other than Obama buzz online, the GenYers don't watch news or CNN either. No newspapers, no radio, no landline telephones, no tv news---we're undergoing a complete media revolution and over 40 people don't know it yet. The campaigns who 'get it' will lead the way to the political future and everyone else will be wondering what just ran them over.

I'm watching the bug-eyed furious conservative 'faith' party implode because a reasonable man who wants to work with Democrats will win the nomination, which is another example of how crazy this 'moral majority' crap is and that it's finally drawing to a close in the light of reason. This new generation who loves Obama won't fall for this line of narrow exclusionist thinking, Rushbaugh can fade away with Cheney and the rest of the Nixon/Reagan interns and we can get on with leading our country into the future. It's a nicely odd feeling when I can choose between a black candidate, a woman candidate and a white republican I respect in a presidential election, and they all have an absolute chance of winning, AND will all work together after the election. I have hope again.

The Tao of Pho

Everyone's been asking me how it's going, the school thing. And laugh at how I smile like a kid on Christmas morning. It's true, that's how the school thing is going for me, better than whatever Mary Poppins magic Santa ever left under the tree for me. I was always one of those kids who loved school, played school during the summer (when I wasn't reading under a tree) and thought August was truly the cruelest month.

It reminds me of that phase of infatuation when you don't need to eat, sleep, rest or think, the rosy sparkle cloud just carries you along effortlessly, buoyed by love and seeing the perfection of the Universe in everything.

That's how my first week of school has been. Sometimes the sparkle cloud is sky blue.

This morning I finally purchased my biological anthropology textbooks that came in last night, so we get a chance to catch up on all the reading before class on Tuesday. My first History of Prehistoric and Ancient Art class was divine yesterday, I barely got into it, thankfully a few people dropped it between Tuesday and Thursday. So for a few weeks I will be traveling in Deep Time and early history in all my classes, and reading for real what I've been gleaning from popular culture and cable TV for years. Like the 'Hobbitt' skeleton found in Sumatra that is in the center of controversy in paleo-anthropology right now; is it a new subspecies, or a child with encephalitic disease? This was on the National Geographic channel the past few months, and is showing up in my class, too. So so cool.

I'm finding out the category of anthropology I've always been the most interested in, it's called Post-processural Anthropology, uncovering the whys and hows of cultural history, and opening up the perspective to other viewpoints other than Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian, white male based. There. So now I know what it's called. (so happy)

Sipping chrysanthemum white tea and listening to classical 89.9, I find myself in a beautiful and unexpected place. There is a wonderful Vietnamese Pho restaurant near the campus that I stopped at on the way home for some lunch and chance to see the student flurry go by outside the wrap-around windows of the corner location. There are these occasions where I like to just observe and witness the whole picture and experience, to make it real each time while still marveling that it's happening. The restaurant was very busy at 12:30, and there were 5 or 6 women my age doing the 'table for one' thing, so I ordered a beer and the Bun Ga (chicken with vermicelli and the cilantro-mint-sprout-cucumber-carrot melange and sweet vinegar-chili sauce) and just relaxed. What a week! What a great beginning! Such a happy kid again. What a strange trip the past 12 months have been, and I could not have foreseen being here, now, doing this, from where I had been last January 11th, closing stores, ending so completely that 10-year phase of my life. It was a vast void of misty uncertainty to me then, what would start February 1st 2007. I like fog, I'm comfortable in it, can maneuver fairly well, and wound up here doing what has always been my greatest wish---going to school. Finishing school. Learning for real. And today the sparkle cloud is sunny yellow and gold, warm all around me, and stretching ahead as far as I can see.

Rainless in Portland

STOP THE PRESSES

Dawn breaks without rain today, I can trudge up the hill to campus with my face lifted to the mist lingering on the West Hills, the building facades blushing rosy and gold, looking like I feel; vintage but restored, in my best light, ready to face the busy day.

And already I'm behaving like a student, I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to drop my Asian Women's class and take an Ancient Art History class instead, more lecture and note taking instead of grooming to be a TA next term and too much outside of class group meetings. And one more degree requirement taken care of, so I just hope the prof lets me squeeze in as a transfer student because the class was already closed online. (push push push)

I was telling my friend how I leave the house earlier than I need to in the morning, so I can sit in the student lounge before class starts and catch my breath, journal a bit, and observe the current student body. How is student life the same as I knew 20-some years ago? What are all the ways it's radically different? In what ways do they look differently, the changes of fashion and the return of fashions that lull me into thinking it's still the '70s. One thing I felt is that "my whole life is still ahead of me" feeling, and I am caught up in it as well. I don't want to waste time being bitter or sardonic, this is a fresh bag of salad I'm opening this year, let's be ready, let's be as unbiased as I can, open to the experience.

Amazing---blue sky out my north window, a small 'V' of high-flying geese, squirrels and crows in a stand-off in the back yard. It's great to be in the right place at the right time.

After School Snack

Well, really it's lunch, but it is after school, my first day of school, my first round-trip to class and back. Toasted white tuna sandwich with lettuce and sweet relish and an orange.

Bliss.

And even more synchronous, my textbook for today's class arrived in the mail this morning already, so I can do the reading assigned before the next class on Wednesday. Is this perfect OR WHAT? My Intro to Archaeology prof is a funny woman who manages to keep her reading glasses hovering above the very end of her nose and they never slide off. About 40 students in all, three over 40 years old, and only two cell phones rang during class. Prof showed some slides at the end of the class period, and then it was suddenly over. Sixty five minutes, syllabus in hand, I went and activated my student email account, then headed home. I'm also seeing new shoes in my future, because it is quite a hike from the bus top to campus and all my Birks need re-soles.

I know it's goofy to be this excited about undergraduate classes, but getting to this humble place has been a 25 year journey. Bringing lots of baggage along. Yes, I'll get a job doing something, I reassured Betty, and gave up trying to explain why I'm majoring in Anthropology. She thinks I'm going to do Forensic Science like on television. Whatever. It's my money, I'm not going to worry about who gets it or not. Everyone else I know is thrilled for me, and that warms my heart so much, my enthusiasm is contagious, my face glows with it. "I got a fever, babies!" says my inner Christopher Walken. Say no more.

Chop wood, carry water. That's what you do before you are enlightened, and what you resume doing after you are enlightened. So today, I'm doing laundry and washing dishes, while reading my text between loads of clothes and dishes. I'll try not to be a total spaz and call everyone to twitter about class. But as I went over the Hawthorne Bridge this morning, it dawned on me how many of my deepest life wishes have come true in the last couple years. Big BIG wishes, major Life's Dream types. Going back to school, to get an upper college degree---in motion again. Meeting Robert Plant in person---September 2005. Having my own bookstore---done. Being a writer---varying degrees of consistency, but happening. What's left? Well, going to Provence is huge. And large-canvas painting. Singing in public. Creating a permanent grand-scale garden with a varietal bamboo grove and tea house. Finding a great guy. I think that's about it. And I think they all look doable from here, because the really big ones at the top of the list are checked off already. Holy shit! So so cool.

Tomorrow morning is Intro to Biological Anthropology, and Asian Women's Studies, a senior level class. Hominids, neolithic tool makers, the beginning of art. Asian cultures to prehistory and the roles of women in it. No wonder I can hardly sleep at night, I feel incendiary about this stuff. "So why aren't you taking any business classes?" Betty wanted to know. There's no fire there for me, it's a bucket of someone else's cold ashes, not even mine. Finally, I'll quit explaining, it should be evident to everyone by now.

Under All That Weather

I'm so sick.

Ugh.

So today is short and crabby.

PSU has my transcripts and all is underway now.
Saturday I met the Jasmine Tree Girl for lunch at the Kennedy School---so much to say, but not today.
Never underestimate the power of Taco Bell to raise the dead( or someone who looks like it, feels like it and drives like it.) Two double decker taco supremes and a large Pepsi made me believe I was going to live again.
While in the fever stage, I hallucinated an entire three story haunted home with made up best friends and we were ghost-busting and painting the walls, reinforcing the assorted balconies, setting up a pink fur bar and lounge area, fighting over the secret rooms, hanging lights and putting in cable outlets. I woke myself up, shouting for help to get unstuck from between the worlds, hanging by a piece of loose carved molding over the cobble stoned street, and the shimmering, evil hungry ghost was ready to annihilate me. The two cats were looking at me with worried faces, from the safety of the hallway.

When I wake up again this afternoon, I'll take the long hot shower, change every linen and article of clothing anywhere near me, and try to make it up to the cats. I'm not usually violent.