Shut Your Mouth

Aaron and I have different philosophies when it comes to maintaining our respective Facebook friend lists. He keeps his trim, between 100 and 200 people; he cleans up his list every few months or so, eliminating people he doesn't interact with frequently. He also seems to be in a relatively constant state of annoyance with the whole idea of Facebook and grumbles about its very existence.

I am more of a friend hoarder: if I've had more than passing contact with you, or we were at one time friends, you're probably on my friends list. If we're related, you're there. If we went to school together, had a class together, or worked together (or if you worked with Aaron), you're there. If you're friends with one or both of my parents and have managed to figure out the Facebook, you're probably on my list. This isn't to say I have a lot of friends, or that I'm outgoing. I just don't see much harm in adding people that, for one reason or another, were part of my life at one time.

Some of my Facebook friends are people I met ONCE, at a party or through mutual friends. Others are people that I happened to sit next to in a lecture hall (Hi, Lindsay!) or met in a theory course, and I have grown to know them better in the intervening years, through Facebook, than I did while we were in the class together. And I think that's kind of awesome.

But having more Facebook friends means that there's more of Facebook to consume: more stories in your feed, more pithy quotes, more images, more links to interesting (or frightening) websites, etc. In an election year, that has the potential to ruin your entire image of a person. I find myself asking Oh my, how did I not know this about you? or Really? That's how you feel? Because I remember you being far less hateful when we were friends in sixth grade.

I've often heard that if you want to ruin a dinner party (or a friendship), bring up politics or religion. I always thought that admonition required a certain level of mistrust for the maturity level of the conversing parties, because COME ON, WE'RE ALL ADULTS HERE. But an election-year Facebook newsfeed, overflowing with the ideas of the people I have chosen to associate with, makes me reconsider.

Recently, I unfriended someone after I couldn't stand his incessant, hateful, bigotry-laden political posts on Facebook. It wasn't that I couldn't handle seeing the views of someone I disagreed with--it was more that there was active disrespect, the hands on the hips stance of "This is how I feel, and I'm right, and you're stupid if you think otherwise." I grew tired of this person calling me (and unseen others like me) a moron for disagreeing, before I even had a chance to formulate a response. Did I believe I was a moron? No. But I also felt like he wasn't interested in a conversation with someone like me, so there was no point in remaining Facebook friends with him. He can keep having his screaming match with the world somewhere else--but not on my newsfeed.

I've become more mindful of my own political posts on Facebook. While I don't want to actively disrespect people who have chosen to include me among their "friends," I'm also quite passionate about a number of subjects and I'd really like to share my ideas and start a conversation. That's the key to it--I want a conversation. I can do without the one-sided, mean-spirited bullying, the name-calling, the moral and intellectual superiority complexes that come with voting a certain way or supporting a certain party or candidate. I want to talk about actual issues and ideas, not rehash talking points or shout at each other.

Facebook doesn't always foster that, though, because it feels safe and anonymous (even though your name is attached to it). The screen adds distance, but not necessarily perspective. People (and I'm talking about grown adults, many of whom have attended college or grad school and who know how to use their critical thinking skills) don't always think of the arguments they are making about themselves by posting, sharing, or commenting on something, because a series of mouse clicks or screen taps or keystrokes makes it so easy to megaphone your ideas, unbidden, into the world. Being able to click that you "Like" something is easy; being able to rationally explain why you like it takes work.


I'm not saying I want people to censor themselves, because it would be selfish and unrealistic for me to even suggest something like that. I'm not saying I want it to stop. I also acknowledge that by logging into Facebook, I bring it upon myself. That's okay.

I also figure that most of my friends (Facebook and otherwise) already have a pretty good idea of my political leanings, either from conversations we've had or articles I've shared or comments I've made. I guess I just don't always trust myself to be above the self-righteous sniping I see on every comments section of every article I read online. So, I hesitate before sharing. I don't share 90% of the things I'd like to, and part of me feels like I'm cheating myself out of a real conversation.

The ease of using Facebook (and Twitter, which I am not part of and probably won't join unless forced) as a personal soapbox has made the world a little smaller, but also a little uglier. We all have political opinions, as well as deeply held personal values, that might seem ridiculous or offensive to other people. It's the seeming anonymity of social networking that turns what used to be an inner monologue or a face-to-face conversation into a deluge of publicly shared information.

That's what makes Facebook entertaining and addictive, but also dangerous: we are able to carve out an online self, represented through words and images, with quite a bit of power over selecting these details. It can be done with care, but I can also be come an exercise in self-congratulatory aggrandizement. Our ideas are out there, instantly, and people we know (or don't know) can interact with them. This might lead to some feelings of self-importance: My ideas are out there. My ideas matter. My opinion matters. All the time. (And yes, I realize the irony of saying this via the personal blog I have maintained since January, writing about the things that matter to me, and which I post links for on Facebook. I'm holding a mirror up to myself with this one.)

What's my point? Keep posting, keep sharing, put your ideas out there--but also be willing to talk to each other, with respect and civility. Be open to the ideas of others. Know that your way isn't the only way, it's not necessarily the right way, and even if it is, things might not turn out that way.

Book Report 2

I know I haven't written in a long time. And that I haven't even finished my posts about India. And that I've written almost nothing about what we've done this summer. And that I haven't said how my new job is going. Those posts are coming. Eventually. But for now, I think I can manage a post about the books I've read since April's book report post.

17. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

I first encountered Donna Tartt's work when I picked up The Secret History at (surprise!) a library book sale back when we were living in Mt. Pleasant. Since The Secret History still reigns as one of my favorite books ever, I thought I would give The Little Friend a try. The book started with so much promise: it seemed to offer insight into one family's struggles to deal with the aftermath of a horrible tragedy (the death of a child); plus, it was set in rural Mississippi in the late 1960's/early 1970's, so there was a lot of compelling cultural context available.

I felt I really got to know the main character, Harriet, and her best friend Hely; I felt like I saw what their summer was like in Mississippi. I appreciated how the plot reflected the mindset and thought processes of a moody adolescent girl desperately trying to understand the horrible thing that happened to her family. Tartt's writing was just as imaginative and captivating as I remembered it on a sentence-by-sentence level; at the same time, though, the book was bulky with detail and description that didn't do much to move the plot along.

There were some suspenseful moments that nearly shivered me out of my skin, but mostly because there were so many snakes in the book. Crates of them. Nests of them. Slithery, bitey, poisonous snakes. I had a few nightmares about snakes and drowning from this one. A book like this might be better as an audiobook on a long drive--provided you aren't driving through Mississippi.

18. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Paul Schramm recommended this one to me, and I am so glad I took his suggestion. It's a clever, quick read that demonstrates the importance of having the means and freedom to communicate. The fictional government of the book outlaws the use of specific letters as they fall off the plinth of a statue, taking their falling as a divine proclamation that the letters should no longer be used. The tale is told in letters and messages between several characters, the content of which become increasingly restricted as more letters fall. It's an allegory for the kind of oppression that seems innocuous or just inconvenient at first but soon escalates beyond reason (think Patriot Act or religious dogma). I enjoyed it immensely, thanks to my resentment at government meddling as well as my love of language.

19.-21. The His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
(The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass)

I read The Golden Compass soon after the movie was released, so my initial interpretation of the series was skewed by that. I was anticipating an adventure with realistic but supernatural characters, and I thought it would skew slightly younger in the young adult range. The books, however, are deeper and darker than the movie version suggested, which I really appreciated.

I was in middle/high school when this series was released, and I honestly don't know if I could have handled reading them at that time because of my seriously conflicted feelings towards religion. The books enact the kind of serious critique of religious dogma my teenage mind was desperately trying to articulate and sort out. Add some talking animals, witches, inter-dimensional travel, and theoretical physics, and you get a not necessarily fun but definitely compelling series.

22. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Yeah, sometimes I need to read predictable and formulaic pulp. I will not apologize for it. I just wish professor Robert Langdon (the Tom Hanks character) didn't like to hear himself talk so much, because seriously: dude likes to lecture. He needs to be part of Pedants Anonymous--except that will never exist, because pedants like you to acknowledge their credentials so much.

There's some suspense. There's a creepy villain. There's dismemberment. There's a secret society. There's a pretty girl with her life in danger. Ho hum. It was good bedtime reading because it doesn't take much brain power.

23. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

This is an instance where a book's subtitle really sums up what it's about: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office. It's a memoir. And even though this woman is supremely bitchy and unlikable, and I found myself reacting out loud every few pages to express disgust with something she had said or done, I still enjoyed it because it was that funny. Some of the humor comes from schadenfreude, it's true, but that's totally excusable in this case. I get so annoyed with ostentatious displays of wealth and people who seriously believe that their money makes them better than everyone else, so it was nice to see one of these women suffer. Although...she got a book published, so I expect things are looking up for her again.

24. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

In the library of my brain, there is a section of required reading for English majors. These shelves are crammed with so-called classics that every self-respecting book nerd or literature lover is supposed to not only have read, but read outside of a classroom setting for pleasure. When I go to this section of my brain, I see disappointment: the English-major staples that I haven't read (Tolstoy and Steinbeck and Joyce), started reading and couldn't finish (Austen), or read all the way through and hated (I've given The Great Gatsby at least five chances and I still hate it).

But To Kill a Mockingbird is on the "You should read this book more often" shelf, because it really is that good. It's rare to find a book that examines race, class, regional culture, family dynamics, and childhood so deftly, and without coming off as sanctimonious or pandering. But it does.

25. and 26. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Because sometimes, you need to re-read the Harry Potter books for the millionth time. Usually, I re-read the entire series from start to finish, and I've done that since before the fourth book was released. This means, however, that I've read the first three or four books quite a few times, and the last three only a handful. I watched the last three movies, then read the last two books again, and it actually changed how I felt about the screen version of the series--I felt less cheated by the movies than I had previously done, because I realized that there was no way they could equal what I had built up in my mind from reading the books. Basically, I finally let myself view them as a separate beast altogether.

27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

The last time I read these books, I was in eighth or ninth grade. My memory had softened the weirdness of the books somewhat, so that in reading them again I was able to be shocked or startled by the behavior of the characters, the way they spoke to each other, and the violence of some of the plot.

28. World War Z byMax Brooks

Really, really good. It didn't focus too much on the zombies, but rather on how the world dealt with the outbreak and aftermath, which I found fascinating.The greatest success of this book was the way the author made it all seem so plausible. From the beginning, you're forced to accept the premise, and through the first-hand accounts, you see it as a global event that happened.

29. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom

One of the rare instances in which I will say the movie is much, much better than the book. Some of the basic plot elements and a few snippets of dialogue are preserved from page to screen, and for good reason: that's all that was worth taking. The Forrest of the book is an aggressive simpleton rather than a guileless one. There's no charm to the book--it's a series of wild stunts rather than an engaging plot. I think what bothered me most was how racist Forrest was, and that the author's point in doing so was totally obvious: it's somewhat okay for Forrest to hold those views because he's an idiot, but what's your excuse?

30. Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald

I bought this from the Carbondale library book sale, mostly because the cover features an illustration of a young girl holding a pig. At first, I was afraid I couldn't get into the book because the narration seemed to be in a broken dialect that took great effort to decode, since I was reading before bed and my brain was already tired. Once I got through the first few chapters, I realized that the narration alternated between two characters: the subliterate pigman Jack Plum, and Holly Lock, the normal but awkward teenage girl he befriends. With some patience, I grew to love reading the Jack Plum chapters because they were almost poetic in the inventiveness of the language. I was conscious of the effort it took Fitzgerald to render Jack's voice, and she did so with unmistakeable style. Had the entire book taken place from Jack's perspective, it would have been a chore to read; Holly's chapters provided breaks but also served as a contrast to the way Jack's mind worked.

31. Stardust, 7-Eleven, Route 57, A&W, and So Forth by Patricia Lear

This was another Carbondale library book sale purchase, and I am sad to say that the title was the best part of this short story collection. The stories were absolutely boring, and not in a way that seemed intentional or for greater effect--it was just that nothing happened in them. I only finished out of stubbornness, so I could tell myself I had read it, given it a fair chance, and was disappointed not because I expected anything great but because I expected anything at all.

I'm glad I only paid 25 cents for the book. Perhaps there was one moment in one story that was worth the price.

32. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I'm counting this as having been read, even though I listened to it as an audiobook on my Evansville commute. It's a strange book to listen to, driving alone through thick fog between Harrisburg and Eldorado and the long (and sparsely populated) stretch between route 45 and Mt. Vernon, Indiana. The book is so unapologetic, bleak, and lonely. I've long enjoyed post-apocalyptic stories because one of my frequent daydreams involves having the entire world to myself for a few days, a week, a month. What would it be like to be truly alone? Would your mind create noise to fill the absence of all that outer noise that comes from other people?

It was heartbreaking to imagine a young child having a constant awareness of his own mortality, and to imagine a father who's forced to fight for a life that holds little promise. The man and the boy remain nameless throughout the book, which hammered home the truth: that identity is so largely dependent upon belonging to a group and having a relationship with the human world. When that's gone, the self becomes an almost ridiculous idea.

The Road made me rethink my definitions of tragedy and horror. When large numbers of people are killed by disease or disaster, we think of it as a horrific event. We can count the dead and mourn them. It would seem that a global disease pandemic or large-scale environmental catastrophe or nuclear disaster would be the ultimate tragedy, but The Road proves otherwise: that the real horror could be surviving the event, left to figure out a reason for living when civilization is just a memory. The book was definitely worth the horrible nightmares I had.

33. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Before I started reading this, I knew the basics: a 14-year-old girl is murdered; one of her suburban neighbors is a suspect; it takes place in the 1970s. All this I learned from seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of the book a few years ago. What I missed, however, was the central idea that the the victim, Susie Salmon, is telling her story from her version of "heaven." I was instantly skeptical about how much I would enjoy reading it, based on the plot and the premise, because this could have gone horribly wrong. Instead, I found myself mostly buying into it. Sure, there are some cringe-inducing moments (particularly in how Susie's presence is made known among the living at times). I'd say I was engaged with the narrative 80% of the time, for the first 80% of the book. The last bit, however, went everywhere I hoped it wouldn't and became a bit too sentimental.

I am curious about how the movie version handles some aspects of the book, though, because it seems so internal, which doesn't always translate without a voice-over (and that often seems like a cop-out).

Why We're Staying in Marion for Awhile

In my last post, I mentioned that I had a job interview. It turned out not to be an interview so much as a discussion of what I'd like to teach and when I'd be available to do so, given what was offered in the schedule. Thus, I decided to take a (part-time) adjunct teaching position at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville. It's about 1.5-2 hours from Marion, but I'll be teaching my three classes on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule. I decided spending about eight hours per week in the car was worth getting some actual teaching experience, since all I really have are my years as a graduate assistant, which requires all the work of a real job but offers little of the prestige on the resume. Like I used to tell my students: they were real students receiving real grades, but I wasn't a real teacher.

What initially complicated but ultimately solidified my decision to accept the USI job was that Aaron was called for an interview at the NBC affiliate in Green Bay, Wisconsin the day we had my interview in Evansville. They seemed impressed with his resume and cover letter, and wanted to arrange to fly him up for an in-person interview after an hour-long phone conversation.

All signs, initially, pointed to YES. We would be further north, slightly closer to home, and in a cooler climate. The station was an up-market move and had just become the official station of the Green Bay Packers. It was corportate-owned, which could possibly mean higher pay. I think I may have been more excited than Aaron was about the whole thing. I started daydreaming about wearing sweaters and driving through blizzards. And eating a lot more cheese.

They flew him up to Green Bay (by way of Marion, St. Louis and Chicago) to tour the station, meet everyone, and get interviewed. Aaron's flight from Chicago to Green Bay was cancelled due to storms in Detroit, and while that caused a minor inconvenience on the way there, it was nothing to also having all of his return flights cancelled. But he got there, and met everyone. He toured. He saw Green Bay. He ate at Lambeau Field.

And when he came back home, he had about two days to make a decision. Ultimately, after talking to his coworkers here and discussing it with me, we decided to stick around southern Illinois for awhile longer because it wasn't a good fit. It may have looked great on paper, but the timing wasn't right and Aaron wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to what he's built up here.

Making decisions as a married couple is complicated. He may have been willing to take a job that wasn't quite what he wanted had I said that it was what I really wanted for us. We were willing to consider having him move to Wisconsin while I stayed behind in Marion until my semester of teaching at USI was over in December. Basically, married-couple-decisions are fraught with the notion that you're simultaneously one person and two people, and you have to somehow get your interests/wants/needs to align in such a way that if both people can't be happy, at least one or both won't be miserable, either.

So, we'll be sticking around here awhile longer. Aaron gets to keep the job he loves, and I get to try out being a "real" teacher. We don't know where we'll be a year from now, but up until a few weeks ago, we didn't know where we'd be by the end of July. I'll take this as progress.

Unhiatusing

You may (or may not) have noticed that I haven't written in awhile--over a month, actually. I haven't felt much like writing lately, which is kind of unfortunate, since that is what I do every day for my job (which actually might explain why I don't feel like writing).

I'll be honest: not much has been happening here.  Aaron and I are still applying for jobs. We're both still getting rejections. I have an interview on Monday for a job I can't realistically take, since it's only part-time and it isn't local. I guess it will be practice, since I've done very few interviews in my life and eventually I will need one to go well enough that I get hired.

I've embarked on a small-scale self-improvement project, which means I'm trying to sit on my ass a little less and sweat a little more. I ride my exercise bike while watching documentaries on Netflix because it's too hot to do anything outside. I've only been exercising regularly for a week. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, though.

Which brings me to my next point: the depressed funk I've been in for a few months hasn't yet lifted. I tried (and failed) to write a post about being depressed. I saw it as a way to help figure out just what the hell my problem is, but it's hard to write about depression without sounding pathetic and trite--and that made me feel worse, somehow. So I never finished the post, and I'm still depressed. Now that I have health insurance, I feel like I might actually have some options if I do choose some kind of treatment, which is a nice change.

I've been reading books. I've hung out with friends a few times. We had people over (a big deal, since we never do that). We went to the bar once or twice. We've driven around the backroads of southern Illinois, looking for nothing in particular and finding interesting stuff, anyway: waterfalls that have run dry, grazing cows in the middle of a wildlife refuge, a small cemetery, hiking trails through rock formations. This week, we even cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner because we felt like it. We call home too seldom, and haven't visited since March.

Basically, nothing has been happening. Just life. I guess that's enough, though.

Big Brother Tata

When I travel, I like to take notice of as many little details as I can, storing them up so I can get a sense of the place, and the people who live there. It doesn't matter where I'm traveling; I do this when I visit another town, another state, or another country. I look at what people are eating, what they wear, the gestures they use, whether or not couples hold hands in public--no detail is too mundane, and I am fascinated by all of it.

One thing we noticed throughout India was a brand name called Tata. We saw it on the bottled water, tea and coffee in our hotel rooms. It was on vehicles: cars, trucks, and buses. There were billboards for Tata's high speed Internet service in Hyderabad (for a really, really good price!). I had a sense that Tata was big, a corporate giant, when we saw their massive building complex in the area of Hyderabad called HITEC City, which also included complexes for pretty much any other technology company you can name.

But I didn't know how big Tata was until after we had come back to the U.S. and did a little Internet about their corporate holdings. Guys, Tata is HUGE. Tata is like Big Brother. Tata is going to take over the world.

Our hotel in Mumbai, the Taj, was not only owned by Tata--it was the company's first project, opening in 1902. Within the next few years, Tata branched out into a bunch of other industries, like education and steel and electricity. They now have 93 hotels in India and 16 around the world.

In Italy, I had always giggled at the tiny 3-wheeled "trucks" I saw hauling goods into the narrow alleys of Rome; I was a bit puzzled when I saw the same little trucks around Mumbai. As it turns out, Tata bought Piaggo (an Italian company) in 2008.

Reading the list of Tata's acquisitions and holdings is dizzying. They bought Tetley Tea in 2000. In 2004, they bought Daewoo Commercial Vehicles. They own the Boston Ritz Carlton. They bought Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008. Steel, chemicals, information technology, airlines, salt, financial services...you get the point.

Go to your local grocery store, to the coffee and tea aisle. Pick up a box of Tetley Tea or Eight O'Clock Coffee, and Tata's logo will be staring back at you from the side of the package.

Tata is watching you.

Raskin Bobbdins

If you've spent any time with my family, you know that it can be difficult sometimes to get my dad to take things seriously. My dad has a joke for every situation. He also delights in embarrassing my mom, especially in public places.

As they shop, he walks funny and yells things at my mom in different voices, assuming the role of a few favorite characters:

• Enlarged Prostate Man has a bowlegged shuffle and calls after my mom, yelling "Honey! Wait for me!" while using his balled fists to propel his momentum. His pants are hitched up over his belly button.
• The Belly, a variation on Enlarged Prostate Man, also hitches his pants above his natural waist; in addition, he arches his back to round out his stomach like a globe, swaying side to side with each step. Sometimes he rubs his belly, saying "So-ahh....You know-ahh....Weeeeeeell.....!"
• The Old Fart wheezes a little and has a limp. He also farts loudly, waving his hand in front of his nose and shouting "Oooh, well paaaardon me!" and giggling slightly.
• Pegleg walks with one leg stiffened, dragging the shoe sideways. He sometimes has a harelip.
• Blindy shuffles slowly, making little headway. His reading glasses, if he has them, are pushed as far as possible down the bridge of his nose. Taking a bottle of something toxic off a store shelf, Blindy gestures at my mom, commanding her to read the label for him: "Are these the kind of instant mashed potatoes I like?" he'll ask, referring to the box of rat poison in his trembling hands. "Read this for me, I can't tell if this is motor oil or transmission fluid" he'll say, holding up a bottle of Italian salad dressing.
• The Incompetent has problems controlling his mouth and eyes, sometimes drooling, often pulling his lips down into a clown-like frown and opening his eyes wide, as if stunned. Sometimes there are strings of incoherent sounds.
• The Stroke, similar to pegleg, drags one leg. He also drools out of the side of his mouth.
• Pantsfull is...self-explanatory, I think. There's quite a bit of waddling.

People stare. Some laugh. Children point. My mom disappears down the next aisle while my dad chases after her, cackling.

In restaurants, my dad shows the server he needs a drink refill by getting up from the table with his empty glass and inquiring loudly where the refill station is. As he makes his way over, the server inevitably tries to stop him, insisting "Sir, let me do that for you" while my dad says "Thanks, but I can do it myself."

In Chinese restaurants, my dad insists on speaking a little Spanish.

At fast food drive-thru windows, my dad asks for his meal "to go." The teenagers whose voices blare through the intercom do not always get the joke.

Nothing infuriates my mom more than my dad's made up language, though. Over the years, my brothers and I have participated in hammering out the linguistic details, most of which seem to come naturally to us.

The language uses English words, but adds plosive/hard letters like p, d, and t between syllables or at the ends of words. For example, "coffee" becomes "cofftee" (this may have been the origin of the language, as my dad actually heard someone say this in conversation). Some words ending with -el or -le drop their real endings and peter out in an "o" sound. Here are some examples:

• Glasses --->Glasstes
• Capable--->Captable (not pronounced "cap table," though)
• Rubber--->Rubbder
• Slippers--->Slippters
• Dog--->Dogd
• Apple--->Apptle
• Applebee's--->Apptlebee'sd
• Burger King--->Burgder Kingd
• Logan's Roadhouse--->Rogan's Loadhouse (Aaron and I added this one; I have accidentally used it in conversation with "non-native" speakers)
• Rascal--->Rasto
• Weasel--->Weaso
• Bubble--->Bubbdo or Bubbo

The language has no formal name, but it is also peppered with malapropisms, reversals and turns of phrase from several family friends. For example:

• Sombrero--->Lombardo
• Flabbergasted--->Fiberglassted
• Bereavement--->Begrievement
• Reba McIntyre--->Reeva McIntosh

 My dad measures the success of his shenanigans based on the shrillness and volume of my mom's voice. As her annoyance level rises, her indignant bursts of "Mike! Stop it!" become increasingly deafening. His power to bug the shit out of my mom fully registered one time when we were in the car, driving down Euclid Avenue on a Sunday. I don't remember what year it was, exactly, but Aaron and I were dating, and he was at CMU, so it was sometime between 2002 and 2005. Mom was trying to make a point to Dad, but he kept interrupting her, naming the restaurants and businesses we passed:

Mom: So I think we should--
Dad: Oh, there's Tacto Bellt!
Mom:--stop at Kroger--
Dad:You mean Krogder?
Mom: Mike, stop it! Will you just listen for a minute?
Dad: Listen? (spelled the same, but with a pronounced "t" and said with a sly grin)
Mom (with increasing agitation): Honey! Cut it out!
Dad: You mean Hontey. Oh, Hontey, don't get mad!
Mom: Mike! That's stupid! I hate that!
Dad: Hey, you wanna get ice cream at Raskin Bobbdins? They have 31 flavdors!
Mom: MIKE!

I still giggle every time I pass a Baskin Robbins.

We Regret to Inform You; Or, Life in The Rejection Section

Last May, I finished my second go-round with graduate school, earning an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. I loved my program; half because I was able to spend three funded* years writing poetry and teaching, and half because of the people I was lucky enough to work with over the years--students and faculty alike. Not that I'm shilling for SIUC, but it was an awesome experience because Rodney, Allison, Judy and Jon felt more like poetry godparents than "faculty" at times. I've always looked down on the big-name programs because I'm not a name-brand kind of girl, and I've read about how students in big-name programs are neglected, that the atmosphere is hopelessly haughty, that the "literary star" faculty members are never there, etc. I'd take a kiss on the cheek from Rodney Jones over possibly, maybe, catching a glimpse of super-famous poet X any day. And Rodney likes my banana bread.

So I entered the world last spring with an MFA diploma to hang next to my MA from Central Michigan University. I had really developed my passion for teaching, and won an award (with a cash prize!) recognizing my efforts. I wanted to keep teaching. I loved teaching. It was the only place I really felt at home. The world was my oyster!

Well, no. As it turns out, the world (as far as teaching positions are concerned) is a rotten oyster. One of those mutated Gulf oysters suffering the adverse effects of the BP oil spill. I was released into a job market flooded with many, many qualified applicants, many of whom also have PhDs, in addition to one or more master's-level degrees.

Universities and colleges have openings, but I'm often disqualified from the beginning because I don't have a PhD. I'm further disqualified by the amount of specialization they're looking for in potential applicants, because they want the most bang for their (sometimes agonizingly paltry) buck, to the point where an applicant needs to be able to teach composition and/or ethnic literature and/or drama and/or gender studies and/or American literature and/or use technology in the classroom (pick three or four of these, and you get the idea). I can do some of this. I cannot do all of this. I'd wager that very, very few people actually can do all of this.

It keeps me up at night, that nagging yet cartoonish voice that says "Maybe you need to go back to school. Maybe you need a PhD to even things up." But I don't want to get a PhD right now. I may never want to return to graduate school, since I've already spent five years of my life as a graduate student.

So I apply. I broaden my search to include admissions and academic advising positions. I look for jobs in a huge general geographic region, but I'm still limiting myself because Aaron and I have this crazy plan that involves starting our real lives and having children, and we'd like to live a little closer to home so that our parents don't have to be long-distance grandparents. I know that's probably stupid, because it really does limit us, but I tear up every time I think of my unborn children only seeing their grandparents on holidays and trying to get my parents to figure out Skype.

And as I apply, and enter my personal information and education background and employment history, and upload cover letters, and submit resumes and CVs, and try to communicate with nameless faceless automated systems, I desperately hope for a break from a Human Resources representative or hiring committee. Often, there's no one to address the letters to, no name associated with the job search, no way to look them in the proverbial eye with a steady gaze and give them a firm handshake that says hire me.

And then I wait.

Recently, I had a telephone interview for a job I really, really wanted. It was a position as an academic advisor for the liberal arts college at a large university in the state of Michigan. Upon seeing the posting, I had rejoiced, because I went to a liberal arts college, I had not one but two master's degrees, I had a connection to the area. The interview went well.

But they still rejected me, saying they wanted someone with more experience and a broader education background. That it was an honor to be chosen for a phone interview. That there had been 221 applicants for the position. That I should take solace in all of this. And yet, it still felt like a punch in the gut. Or a brick hurled through my bedroom window in the dead of night, rubber-banded with a note that read Guess what? You're just not good enough.

I know that my self-worth is not tied to this one job. Or any job. And that being rejected for this position really doesn't mean I won't be good enough for a different position down the road. Or that, with a different applicant pool, my credentials would have buoyed me higher. If you look at in a strictly mathematical sense, though, I'm a penny-slot gambler thrust into the high-stakes table games.

The house wins.

Today, another rejection: a letter mailed to my house, rather than an impersonal e-mail. The ink on this one was smudged, my letter being just one among many rejections printed, signed, folded, and mailed out that day. Having a tangible letter feels slightly better than the hollow rejection e-mails, but only just.

So I keep applying. I write and rewrite cover letters. I whisper "Hire me, please" to unseen committees when I hit those submit buttons. And I push down the voice that tells me I should have majored in business or marketing or economics, anything but English, because I don't trust that voice to have the answer to what my soul has needed all along.

*The funding at SIUC was the biggest shock to me, kind of like a bait-and-switch from a shady used car salesman. Sure, you get your tuition waived and you get a monthly stipend. You also have to surrender an entire paycheck each semester to cover exorbitant student fees; you might get funding for one summer, but you also might not. And don't even get me started on the library without any books in it.

Book Report

I love books. I may, in fact, be a little obsessed with books. I own more books than I can fit on my bookshelves. My office is stacked with boxes of books. I have at least two books on my nightstand at any given time. I have racked up untold sums in library fines over my lifetime. I borrow them. I buy them at thrift stores and book sales and actual retail stores. I lose them. I get them as gifts. The last few Christmases, I have invariably received at least one bookstore gift card from my relatives (because they all know it's easier to get me a gift card than to buy me a book I don't already have).

So I figured I'd follow Melissa Reed's lead and write about the books I've read so far this year (and if you feel inclined, you can read her book reviews/commentary on her blog, Seriously Funny Business.)

Just because I'm a lifelong English major doesn't mean I'm a snob when it comes to books, though. I have a very haphazard way of choosing what to read, and I don't exclude books on the basis of supposed literary merit or lack thereof; instead, I read whatever I feel like reading. If I get twenty pages into a book and decide I don't want to read it, I don't force myself (which is how I cannot manage to get through ANY Jane Austen).

1. The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory

Yes, this is the same lady who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl (which I have not read, but I saw the movie--meh). When I read historical fiction, I often read Elizabethan/Tudor era stuff because it's usually pretty juicy: sex, violence, plotting, religious upheaval, and a level of what-the-fuckery because it often seems impossible that Europe was run by a bunch of idiots who believed the throne was their birthright and it was a good idea to marry their cousins and it was a woman's fault if she couldn't give birth to a son (even though genetics tells us it's the man's DNA that makes this determination). Whew.

I've found that these books either sympathize with Elizabeth/demonize Mary OR call Elizabeth a tramp/sympathize with Mary, and Gregory's book falls into the latter category. The main character, Hannah, has fled Spain with her father, a Jewish bookseller, and they've ended up in semi-hiding in London. At first I was interested, because I hadn't read anything with a Jewish perspective of this time period, but Gregory's handling of the topic is at once informative, heavy-handed, and a little lazy. While Hannah is taken into the precarious position of Fool to the Queen (hence the title), she struggles with her identity in terms of culture, religion, gender, nationality, socioeconomic status, etc. That's fine. Conflicted characters can be interesting. Except dear Hannah has the same realization over and over again, phrased almost identically each time. Just like every mention of the burning of heretics affects her in exactly the same way, with the same phrasing.

I just kept thinking "You tell me you are growing and maturing, dear protagonist, but I don't quite believe you." Not necessarily a bad read, but definitely not the best I've read in my Tudor kick.

2. I Am Mary Tudor by Hilda Lewis

Another on my Tudors kick. But this one was boring, not very well-written, and a chore to finish (actually, I'm not 100% sure I finished it--it was that bad). I tend to read books from Elizabeth's perspective, so I was eager to learn more about Mary. Since this is a first-person account, I thought it would liven up what I've read in history books, but it was just dull. I was able to sympathize more with Mary's struggles, and it was interesting to see Elizabeth flat-out demonized, but the most interesting part of this 1973 paperback was the glossy, full-color cigarette advertisement in the middle of the book.

3-6. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers

I will not call it a saga because the connotations of that word are too grand and noble to apply here. Seriously, a saga isn't whiny or creepy. Stuff happens in a saga. You're probably wondering why I would bother to read such dreck (and, admittedly, it wasn't my first time through the series), especially since there are literally millions of better books available. It comes down to this: I like to read, and sometimes I read books that aren't so great, knowing they aren't so great, because there's still something of value in the act of reading. It's about understanding where we are as a culture when something like this, as flawed and poorly-written and possibly harmful as it is, becomes such a phenomenon.

I'm not going to spend time ragging on the books, because countless others have been doing that for years, and in far wittier ways. Every negative thing you've ever heard about them is true, to some extent. I personally like this highly-illustrated explanation of the books, because it's so fun (and it taught me about Mormons!). But reading these books is also kind of fun--even though I sometimes wanted to stab myself from the writing, the content, the terrible ideas young girls could get about relationships, etc. Reading the Twilight series the first time actually helped me better understand the collective mindset of my freshmen students--as do the yearly Beloit college mindset lists (which simultaneously freak me out/make me feel old).


7. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

I bought the German version of the book (Der Teufel Trägt Prada) at a thrift store because I someday hope to read an entire book in one of the foreign languages I have studied (and I don't count reading Shakespeare or the Canterbury Tales in the original, since both are technically still English). I thought it would be helpful to become familiar with the English version before I tried to read it in German. I know it's fluff, but there were still some good moments in there. And since I primarily read before bed, I usually can't handle anything too literary. The book is slightly better than the movie, in that the characters are more miserable. But you know I kept picturing Meryl Streep barking orders at Anne Hathaway as I read.

8. The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury is my go-to when I can't decide what to read, and no matter how many times I have read a given story collection or novel, I'm still enchanted and surprised. He creates an atmosphere that no other writer quite accomplishes, because the stories are a strange balance of grounded familiarity and wacky, absurd, suspenseful futurism. I will always go back to Bradbury. In this collection, I love the creepiness of "The One Who Waits"; it's terrifying to read right before bed. And "A Miracle of Rare Device" made me think about the way I find things I'm not looking for, seeing things other people miss, because I live in my own little world most of the time.

9. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

I first discovered Maguire by accident, picking up Wicked at a garage sale on a whim many years ago. What I like about this one is how he fills in the details of Cinderella in a way that is almost plausible. Setting it in Holland, adding the fate of painters and tulip bulb speculation to the plot, takes it just beyond the fairy tale without going too realistic. It's a quick read, which I like about his books, but that doesn't mean it's overly simple. I kept picturing Angelica Huston as Margarethe.

10. Border Songs by Jim Lynch

Honestly, I bought this at the Marion Carnegie Library book sale, partially because there's a cow on the cover. I decided to read it because part of the plot revolves around drug trafficking along the Washington/British Columbia border; we had been watching Breaking Bad and Weeds at the time, so it seemed appropriate. Although I had a hard time not picturing the author as the main character (because of the unfortunate picture of the author on the back cover), I liked the book because the protagonist is goofy and accident-prone and only accidentally good at his job as a border patrol agent. He counts birds, and some of the descriptions of the calls were inventive and hilarious. I like characters who are freakish, either physically or mentally, and this guy is both.

11. Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton

Part of my method in selecting books is wandering aimlessly through the library stacks and happening upon something I feel like reading, which is how I found Hamilton's most recent offering. I had read the other Alex McKnight novels awhile back, mostly because they are set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While the writing is not particularly eloquent, these books move through the plot well and have just enough gory details to make them fun crime stories. I find myself rooting for Alex McKnight because he seems like an average, middle-aged, middle-class guy from Michigan who ends up in situations he really shouldn't be in, all because he can't seem to mind his own business. He lives in a cabin in Paradise. He drives a pick-up truck. He spends a lot of time at the one bar near his house. I read this during that week of 80 degree weather, and it helped cool me down a bit.

12. Happily Ever After edited by John Klima

This was another random grab from the library shelves, and I'm so glad I found it, because it was a goldmine of rewritten fairy tales, sometimes with a modern twist. There's over 30 stories in here, which means there's a huge variety, without the commitment of an entire novel. Kelly Link's "The Faery Handbag" was wacky and fun, but just believable enough that I found myself wishing I could have met the grandmother in the story. There were several re-tellings of Snow White, Rapunzel, and Alice in Wonderland, but my favorite in the whole book was K. Tempest Bradford's "Black Feather," because it reminded me most of what I strive for in my own writing, while still relying on the methods of fairy tale (repetition, symbols, dreams). I was mesmerized by this story. I wanted to live in it. I wish I had written it.

13-15. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Everyone had been telling me to read this series, and I didn't get around to it, but since I want to see the movies I figured I should probably read the books. If I see the movie first, I can't picture the characters or the events the way I want to, and I get annoyed. So I requested them from the public library, got impatient, and borrowed the first book from Emily Finnegan so I could get going on them right away.

I love post-apocalyptic fiction/science fiction/speculative fiction, so The Hunger Games earned a place on my shelf from the beginning. While I was reading the first book, though, I found myself wanting to know more about what had caused the creation of Panem (it is explained throughout the series, but not to my satisfaction). I had to keep reminding myself that Katniss's knowledge would be limited and therefore so would mine as a reader, but I still got frustrated, because I expected more. I was easily drawn into this world, though, and I can definitely see nods to gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome and reality television (like Survivor). One of my only real complaints is that it sometimes felt like Collins was in a rush to finish, especially near the end of the third book, and the narration was as spare as possible to propel the story based on connecting the plot points. I wanted to stay in Panem longer, get to know the characters better, have more reflection from Katniss. Also, was it really necessary for her to be drugged so often? By the end of the series, it felt a bit like a cop-out.

Over and over, though, I kept thinking about how kids nowadays are probably well-equipped to identify with Katniss et al. in terms of the public persona, since teenagers now have to worry about crafting a very public image on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. The younger generation watches and is watched, and probably doesn't get the willies about the Capitol/communication/surveillance the way I did while reading. Have these kids read 1984? I also found myself wondering how kids/teens reading the series now would react to the descriptions of starvation and poverty. I thought about my students, some of whom had lived in cities all of their lives and had probably never set foot on a farm.

16. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

This was my most recent random library pick. I saw this book on the clearance table at Barnes and Noble a long time ago, and now I wish I had bought it, because DANG. It's about a girl who can taste feelings in whatever she eats, which sounds interesting until you see that she can't shut it off, and it makes her life unbearable. Food takes precedence over most other aspects of the main character's life, so we've got an angry, detached protagonist who has trouble relating to others but who also has insight into others through the emotions in the food they prepare or cook. Bender makes it seem possible, while still retaining an air of magical realism to the whole thing. The characters refer to it as a "special skill" rather than a super power to keep it seeming just normal enough.

I found myself very annoyed with Bender's sentence structure (so many commas! such long sentences!) until I realized that it's because I hate that about my own writing. Once I realized that, though, I cruised through it. My other moment of annoyance came near the end, because the narrator had promised us some information and failed to deliver into there were only a handful of pages left, but when I got to the end I saw why it was done that way and forgave. One of the big secrets in the book made me feel absolutely queasy; even so, I wish it had been described just a little bit more because I couldn't quite picture what the narrator saw, and I wanted to, because I wanted to believe it.

I don't know what to read next, so I'll probably read some more Bradbury until I can make another trip to the library.

The Gifts of Four Grandmothers

Tonight I found myself thinking of the grandmothers in my life. When Aaron and I met, we had three grandparents between the two of us. And now we only have one (my maternal Gramma). I've been fortunate to have four grandmothers in my life. And last night, they were all in my kitchen with me.

1

My paternal grandmother died from a brain tumor when I was two years old, so I never got to know her. Mom has always told me that I would have liked her, that we would have gotten along well, because we were so similar. My immigrant grandma was only 4'9" tall (technically, a little person) and felt more comfortable speaking Ukrainian than English. I have no memory of her, of her voice, but I am told she was sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, stubborn. I know little else but that my grandparents fled Stalin's cruelty, and brought with them the work ethic and thriftiness that seems to be every immigrant's story from that era. I have been told that when some high school kids toilet-papered the trees in her yard, my tiny grandmother went outside with paper bags and a broom to collect it (free toilet paper!). As a middle schooler, I started wearing clothing Mom hated: psychedlic florals, polyester, corduroys--but I was told my grandmother would have loved them.

2

On my Dad's side my grandmothering came from his aunt, my grandma's sister. She lived in Chicago, but we visited for holidays. She was a woman whose love was expressed in meals; when you walked in the door, you ate. While you ate, she cooked the next meal. The home video from Thanksgiving 1987 shows how seriously I took this commandment: I am eating in every scene. Stuffing my face. Unabashedly. She always told me how beautiful I was. When she passed away, I felt like I lost part of my Ukrainian self.

But last night, steaming cabbage and frying bacon, both Aunt Anna and her sister were in the kitchen with me, finally sitting down at the table while someone else's feet wore a path between stove and sink. As I separated chicken breasts from skin and bone and tendons, I hoped these tiny women were hungry.

3

My Mom's family has Gramma. Her laugh is like a clucking chicken. She wears turquoise and silver rings. And she bakes cakes. We would drive over to Gramma's house in the summer to cut from the patch of asparagus along the ditch and inevitably find a plate wrapped in waxed paper, waiting for us. Since she had to cut the rounded tops of the cakes to make them flat for frosting and stacking, she saved the tops for us. Sometimes there would be a stack of one flavor; other times, there would be layers of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or banana, as tall as a big stack of pancakes but so much better. We ate it with our fingers, digging into someone else's wedding or graduation or baby shower cake without having to get dressed up, attend, bring gifts. We watched her pipe borders, scroll names and wishes onto the white faces of cakes, turn out frosting roses in every color onto waxed paper-covered cardboard trays.

And her whole life, this woman has used $25 hand mixers from K Mart. My own new stand mixer feels ostentatious by comparison, dwarfing my old Sunbeam retro model and taking up a good portion of counter space. But I don't think I'll ever make a basic frosting as good as Gramma's.

4

Aaron's maternal grandmother adopted me as a granddaughter early on; technically, Aaron and I probably weren't even dating when I became the third grandchild and, for years, the only girl. When I met her, she was 81 and using a cane. She still drove, but not far. I was the only one who hadn't heard all of her stories, so we would sit together at the kitchen table in Aaron's parents' house, playing dice and talking about the dresses she wore, the music she listened to, the arguments she had with her sisters. She kept her nails painted, curled her hair, wore make up and earrings and rings. She was a classy lady.

At meals, especially holidays, she was a notorious pre-meal food-snitcher. No one ever officially saw her do it, but I may have been known to push a dish into her reach. She had a way of asking for things that would have been annoying coming from anyone else: "I could really go for a cup of tea." Or, "You know what would be so good right now? Yes, that cake. Oh, are you having some?"

As she aged, her body slowed her down, caused her pain, while her mind stayed sharp. Her memory and her hearing were not affected. I wonder sometimes about the whispered things she heard from the next room but never told. I was saddened when she decided it would be best for her to stop driving. Then I watched as she switched from a cane to a walker, and then, nearest the end, a wheelchair. On our wedding day, she was in a nursing facility, so we planned the day specifically to allow enough time to make the drive there in our wedding clothes, show her the video of our seven-minute ceremony, and drive back for our reception.

She passed away almost three years ago. I inherited a green checked half apron and a red floral smock from her, both handmade. When I put the smock on to fry the bacon, I felt like I needed to also put on some eye shadow, paint my nails, maybe put on some earrings. The sound of the bacon frying wasn't enough to drown out the rumbles of thunder from a passing storm, and I thought about how terrified Grandma was of storms, how she would hate living in southern Illinois, with its constant 30% chance of rain.

I gave up on cooking. I ate a BLT. I sat in my red smock, listening to Barbara Walters talk about how someone's life was about to change with over half a billion dollars in lottery winnings, an unfathomable sum of money. And I had my four grandmothers keeping me company.

Thumbs Up for Thums Up

When I travel, I love to try local snacks and beverages, not only from my deeply-rooted love for junk food, but also because I feel like you get a good sense of a place by eating and drinking what regular people have when they're not trying to impress anyone.

My cousin's husband introduced us to kvas, an eastern European drink traditionally made from fermented rye bread. It was like a combination of beer and hard cider: a little sweet and fizzy, but with a yeasty taste. Definitely unlike anything I've ever had before, but in a good way. It's on my list of things to buy from a street vendor if I'm ever lucky enough to visit Ukraine.

Of course, I also love regional variations of store brand soft drinks in the U.S. While visiting friends in Atlanta, we made a point of visiting the local QT (QuikTrip) gas station/convenience store, which has the largest selection of fountain beverages I have ever seen. I recommend the Rooster Booster energy drink.

In Italy, it was the tiny black cans of Oran Soda from the vending machine at American University of Rome. It was a cross between regular orange soda and pulpy orange juice, made by the Campari company. On Mondays, I had six straight hours of class (Masterpieces of Italian Opera to Roman History to an accelerated Italian language course) and I usually managed to scrounge 40 Euro cents so I could slurp down a can of it, usually with a baggie of cookies or a granola bar, to get me through the rest of the day.

While in London, I marveled at the different flavors of Pringles chips at the grocery store, which included Curry and Paprika. Yorkie bars were also fun, if a bit misogynistic ("It's Not for Girls!).

Yes. Not for handbags. But delicious!

 And everywhere in Europe, I bought Kinder eggs. They're just thin hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in foil, and the chocolate isn't anything special. But inside the chocolate egg is a plastic egg holding a toy surprise--things like puzzles, character figures, or vehicles. Once, I even got a green Dumpster like the one in front of our Rome apartment, complete with moving arms controlled by a rubber band. I bought a Kinder egg nearly every time I went to the grocery store in Rome, and I still have the toys. I saw a gigantic Kinder display in the Amsterdam airport, and I promised myself I would buy a few on the way home.

India gave us a few opportunities to try local snacks, since there were street vendors and small stores everywhere, and our hotel room included a "mini bar." This meant that every night when we came back to the room, we could pop the top off a slightly chilled bottle of either Sprite or an Indian cola called Thums Up. I had seen the billboards and bus signs for Thums Up: the slogan was "Taste the Thunder!" and the ads exclusively featured men. A visit to the company website (it's a Coca-Cola product) shows that this is intentional, as the company claims "Thums Up is known for its strong, fizzy taste and its confident, mature and uniquely masculine attitude. This brand clearly seeks to separate the men from the boys."

It's burning his esophagus with its awesomeness!

I don't care that I'm not the target demographic for Thums Up. I was eager to try it. On a first sip, it tastes like a normal cola: sweet, syrupy, fizzy. It's not quite the same flavor as Coke or Pepsi, but it's close. The aftertaste is where I concede that there is definitely something masculine about Thums Up, because it tastes like chemicals. Specifically, it tastes a little like licking aluminum siding (that must be the "thunder" the ads mentioned). It made me think of the smell of ozone, and testing batteries on my tongue, things that were routinely part of my childhood because my older brother liked to take mechanical things apart and build new contraptions out of them, often harassing me along the way. Thums Up seems like the kind of thing Tim would drink. It wasn't exactly a Tesla coil in the mouth, but I can see where they were going with it.

And you know what? I grew to like it. I actually looked forward to getting back to the room at night, because the housekeeping staff would have restocked the mini bar. There's just something about cracking open a cool glass bottle of lightning-flavored soda after a long day of shooting video and taking photos.

Kitty Dentures; Or, Why My Cat Has No Teeth

 

This is Brie.

If you think she looks a little sad, you would be right. When this picture was taken, she was in so much pain that she had stopped eating. She would walk over to the food dish, sniff it a little, look around to see where I was, and meow plaintively.

We adopted Brie from the Humane Society in Mt. Pleasant in early 2007. She was nine months old and seemed afraid of everything. She also had some behavioral quirks; most notably, she didn't chew her food. When we first brought her home, we thought she swallowed her food whole because she was afraid there wouldn't be a next meal. Having a constant supply of dry food, however, didn't seem to make a difference, and for the five years we have owned her, she has never chewed her food. She also seems to lack a sense of smell. We didn't think it was that big of a deal, though, because she ate and played with our other cat as if everything was normal.

Over the past two years, however, it became clear just how problematic it is when a cat doesn't chew. She developed severe gingivitis. She stopped eating a few days before a week-long trip back to Michigan, so we took her with us for a vet appointment there. The doctor anesthetized her for an ultrasonic teeth cleaning procedure, after which he told us he had never seen a mouth that bad on a cat that young. He gave us antibiotics for her, and we went home.

But the problems became a cycle: she would feel better for awhile, and then her mouth would become red and irritated, sometimes with bleeding gums. Her breath smelled awful. She had trouble properly grooming herself. So we would return to the vet for a combination of injections: steroids and antibiotics, usually with an at-home antibiotic to be given over the following 2-4 weeks.

She hated the antibiotics. One kind was a bitter liquid we had to squirt into her mouth with a dropper. Another kind was a pill that she would inevitably spit out a few times. We became adept at forcing open her mouth, shoving the dropper or pill-popper (a cruel-looking wandlike device that shoots the pill down the cat's throat) far enough into her mouth that she couldn't dislodge it with her tongue. I have several scars on my arms and legs resulting from these treatments. Eventually, we started wrapping her in a towel before attempting to medicate her.

And then, a week and a half ago, she stopped eating again. She was clearly losing weight. She was clearly miserable. Her back teeth were blackish-gray. I took her back to the vet for the steroids and antibiotics, during which Brie screamed (!) and tried to bite the vet tech assisting the doctor. It was heartbreaking. But the doctor leveled with me: the best thing would be to remove as many teeth as was necessary to end the infections, so we wouldn't have to keep bringing Brie back and getting the injections.

We had broached the topic before, but the cost was staggering: cats have 30 teeth, and it could cost $35 per tooth, plus the fees for medications, boarding, etc. We were looking at possibly spending over $1,000 to make the cat healthy again. And I felt like a terrible, cruel, inhumane person every time I postponed the inevitable surgery, because as much she needed it, we had other expenses to consider.

This time, though, I couldn't put it off any longer. Something about the way Brie seemed to have completely given up made it impossible for me to keep her waiting. I scheduled the surgery (without consulting Aaron) and drove home, panicking a little. I knew I had made the right decision, but I didn't know where the money would come from. When I called him, he understood, reassuring me that it was okay.

In the days leading up to the surgery, I tried to be as kind as possible to Brie. The steroids and antibiotics had already taken effect, to the point where she gained nearly a pound in less than a week because she was eating so much. Two days before the surgery, I fed her chicken-flavored baby food from a spoon, and she didn't have to share with Muenster.

We dropped her off Monday afternoon for a Tuesday morning surgery. When the procedure was over, the vet called me to say Brie was awake and very "talkative." They had removed 23 teeth, and since seven had already fallen out on their own, our cat was now completely toothless. When the vet tech brought her into the room where we waited, Brie seemed a little dazed, but eager to see us.

It's sometimes hard to know if pets understand our motivations. But it seems like Brie knows that now, despite having no teeth, she is much better off.

And she will never again bite the hand that feeds her.

Production: Day 2

Our first day in Hyderabad was guaranteed to be a long one, because we had to do 95% of our remaining India preproduction by the time we went to sleep that night.

Since the Green Park is a hotel meant primarily for businessmen, a breakfast buffet was included. I know a buffet isn't the best way to taste local cuisine, but I saw it as a great compromise between blindly ordering from a menu (not knowing what to expect when the server brought the food) and chickening out with Western food. Plus, buffets allow for sampling, which greatly decreases the risk and embarrassment of Unpleasant First Bite Face (and since we were eating with Rob, I was a little more aware of this). I scooped small, neat piles of rice and vegetable dishes, like upma and bisi bele bath onto my plate, along with corn and mutton idly.

A van was sent to pick us up at the hotel and take the three of us to the Andhra Pradesh Productivity Council's Hyderabad headquarters, which also house the CMU Information Centre and some computer companies. We had to take all of our equipment with us, but by this time we were reasonably comfortable lugging everything around. Of course, as soon as we approached the van, the driver wordlessly took everything out of our hands to load it into the back. He didn't make eye contact, and didn't even look up when I thanked him. It's unnerving to be served like that, and I don't think I can fully explain how every new instance of it made me so uncomfortable.

Each time we sat down in a vehicle, we had a new experience of what it was like to get around India. The drivers that had been arranged for us seemed to fit into a hierarchy based on the level of terror induced by the ride. Our driver this morning was the same we had the previous night on the trip from the airport, so the ride was relatively smooth and stops were gentle. At the time, of course, it felt like he was weaving crazily and stopping just short of ramming us into idling cars. The traffic in Hyderabad was jam-packed, and we saw how motorcycles and scooters were preferable to larger vehicles. On some roads, they made up 2/3 of the traffic, and even when the lights were red, motorcycles jockeyed for a slightly closer position. They were like buzzing insects, constantly moving. Some intersections had traffic police stationed in kiosks to monitor violations, but we had to wonder how they would be able to catch someone in that kind of traffic (as it turns out, cameras and e-tickets). Pursuit would be nearly impossible.

Upon arriving at the APPC building, we were greeted and given bouquets of roses again. Then we were given a tour of the place, which served as our first round of location scouting so we could get all of the shots we needed (especially the India shots that were supposed to look like somewhere other than the CMUIC). The building was five or six stories tall (the top two floors were unfinished) with one or two companies on each floor. The main floor, where the APPC is located, has one large office with a few smaller offices and alcoves with desks in them for some of the staff. The rest of the employees worked at rows of desks with computers on them. We were introduced to every single person working there--about 25-30 in all.

Have you ever been introduced to thirty people, one at a time? It's an odd experience. There was little hope that we'd remember even a fraction of the names we were told, but it was helpful for them to see us so they wouldn't wonder what we were doing in their building for the rest of the week. They were gracious and welcoming, even though Aaron and I were just two white people with some camera equipment, suddenly standing in an office building in India.

Next we sat down with two of the APPC's administrators to talk about the Council's mission and goals, which was one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had because we learned so much about India in general and the state of Andhra Pradesh in particular. Much of what the APPC does is linked to economic and entrepreneurial development, but there's a huge focus on the development of human resources, especially in terms of education. Call me a nerd, but I can listen to people discuss education all day long, especially over cookies and Fanta orange.

In our discussions of Andhra Pradesh and Hyderabad, we were told that the region has excellent (and very spicy) food. We had lunch at a restaurant called Southern Spice, and the name alone had me panicking a little. Here we go, I thought. A spicy meal in India is going to make me cry, and that's going to be really embarrassing. Even though the menus are printed in English, our companions spoke English, and the waitstaff seemed to have a good command of English, ordering was tricky because most items were labeled with a name and a very simple explanation that didn't reveal much about what was actually in the food. Spice was never mentioned. Ingredients remained a mystery.

For the picky and non-adventurous, it was a gamble. Rob asked about some fish on the menu. "What's the sauce like?" he asked. "Is it spicy?"

"Not too spicy," our waiter said. Unfortunately, that was his default answer. Rob asked them to make the fish without any sauce on it. The waiter nodded.

Aaron and I were a little more conflicted in our ordering, as Aaron is both slightly picky and not-too-adventurous. He was also still quite concerned about getting sick. I had stupidly adopted a "NOTHING CAN HURT ME!" attitude, but that didn't help me understand what any of the menu items were. We asked the waiters a lot of questions. We struggled with the unclear answers. In the end, we settled on Chinese food, which seems to be quite popular in India.

When our food came, Rob let us try his fish, which was in a mildly spicy sauce. We shared our chicken, which was in a red, burn-your-lips-off spicy sauce that made Rob cry a little. I thought he must be exaggerating, but the initial bite coated my tongue in a blanket of hot. Unlike other spicy food I've suffered through, however, this wasn't about pain--it was just heat, and it faded rather quickly. In fact, the sauce would have been delicious, had it not also been chock-full of cilantro leaves. Oh, the soap-tasting humanity. I filled up on vegetarian soup and chicken fried rice instead.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the CMUIC for preproduction. We rearranged the furniture and displayed the CMU paraphernalia Rob had brought with him, including some banners, pennants, and a new clock. A light kit had been rented for us, so we blocked out our shots and figured out how to make the best use of the room's two windows, the fluorescent fixtures and the diffused incandescents in the kit lights. Since Rob had to meet with some students regarding CMU's graduate programs, we were shuffled over to Dr. Reddi's office to finalize our shot list and make a list of the props we'd need to buy that night so we could shoot the next day.

And then Aaron had an unfortunate post-meal incident I cannot discuss. I will only say that we were prepared.

As the afternoon wore on into the evening, Rob and Vinay (the CMUIC advisor) were ready to take us shopping for props. Our task was to transform the slightly bland and mildly industrial CMUIC into a prospective student's living room, where she would discuss her education options with her parents. We had a couch, two chairs, and a glass coffee table to work with, so we set out to the mall with a list that included curtains, a rug, a vase, a lamp, and some throw pillows.

The mall was like a very large department store, spanning several floors of the building and divided into merchandise categories. We had to go through security scanners to enter the building (with, once again, a separate curtained-off area for women). In a country that constantly challenges the senses, the mall was another form of sensory overload: the displays were bright and crammed with merchandise; the music was loud, pulsating; salespeople wove their way into the crowds; and the colors were exaggeratedly bright. It was like the vision of consumerism I'd first noticed growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s had been reanimated, but with a foreign flavor. There was so much there, screaming to be purchased, and crowds of people with that adrenaline-infused, slightly glassy stare of want glinting in their eyes.

We were here on business, though, so I couldn't let myself get distracted by every fascinating detail. I couldn't buy anything for myself (or for others--I so badly wanted to find the perfect turquoise sari for Allison Joseph). And even though we had a list, a set of directives guiding us through the towering displays and labyrinthine halls of stuff, it took us forever to find the right items. We had to try to make an office look like a home, but we also had to think about the way these props would photograph. We had to think about matching color and pattern but also textures, reflectivity, saturation, the scale of the pattern in relation to other elements. It's definitely not how we normally think about furnishings.

Somewhere between one store and the next, I had developed a strange rash on my arm. It was a little red, a little bumpy, and a little itchy--and unlike any contact dermatitis I had ever had. It was only on one arm, so I went to the restroom to wash it and (maybe) prevent it from spreading. All I needed was to wake up in the morning with my left arm red, swollen to twice its normal size, and completely unusable. We finished up at the mall and had the driver take us to a pharmacy, since I had somehow neglected to pack any kind of Benadryl in my gigantic toiletry/first-aid kit.

The pharmacy was marked with a green plus sign, like the ones I had grown accustomed to (but had never visited) in Rome. It was tiny, with most merchandise behind the counter and two pharmacy clerks there to help. I was very grateful to have Vinay with us, since the pharmacist spoke Telugu and I didn't recognize the brands on the shelves. I held up my arm to show the pharmacist, and he gave me a tube of something called Fourderm. It was a white cream and smelled vaguely medicinal (I still can't figure out what it reminds me of), but it didn't contain hydrocortisone. I paid my rupees and fervently hoped I wouldn't have a bad reaction to the cream, since my skin does not act like other people's skin. In fact, my skin sometimes decides to react to things that were once safe, like laundry detergent and certain fabrics. I can only imagine what my immune system was going through.

By this time, it had been dark for hours and I was ready to be in a quiet place, alone. But first we had to go back to the CMUIC to set up the props for the living room scene, and we managed to do that in about 20 minutes. I think we were all ready to go back to the hotel, to come up for air. None of us had even eaten dinner, because we had all been so busy working on the video project (and Rob and Vinay had meetings with students).

At least the work was getting done.

Twelve Reasons Today Was a Good Day

 For Aaron and I, it's always about the little things in life. And I'm grateful our lives are so small.


1. I had to set my alarm to make sure I was awake for the UPS man to deliver my new vacuum. I've needed a replacement for over a year, and Aaron ordered one for me.


2. I was able to go back to bed for more rest. I didn't fall back asleep, but I wasn't really awake, either.

3. I had my first milkshake today. Yes, I'm serious--I've never had a milkshake before. I thought drinking melted ice cream was nuts. It was delicious, and half-price.

4. Aaron and I spent the afternoon walking in the cypress swamp at Heron Pond. Apparently, the best way to recover from physically overdoing a work out on Sunday is more physical exertion on Monday. We took photos. We enjoyed the sunshine. We didn't answer our phones or worry about what time it was.

The entire pond was covered in small red and green plants, which made it look like the trees grew out of something pink and slightly gelatinous, since it rippled a little when the wind blew.













The mosquitoes loved him. I wore long sleeves.








5. I saw wildlife, up close and personal: Mosquitoes. Gnats. Vultures. A red-headed woodpecker.  Squirrels. A crayfish. Several turkeys, who flew across the road as our car approached.

We played with this little guy for a long time. Aaron kept worrying that he'd pinch my fingers. I told him not to be so afraid of everything, that this is what kids do all the time.






6. Aaron took me to the "redneck zoo," which means we drove around until we found a dairy farm with a fence close to the road so I could watch the cows. This is one of my most common requests when we go on drives in the country, because I love cows. I love staring into their oddly-spaced eyes, listening to them snort and chew. If they moo, all the better.

7. We went grocery shopping together. I usually go alone, so it was nice to have company. Bargain-hunting at Kroger netted us ribeye steaks on sale. We also bought a bag of charcoal, four bags of salad, and a 20 lb. bag of rice that were "Manager's Specials" (meaning: super cheap). We also managed to make a trip in and out of Aldi in about seven minutes, since it was 7:51 and the store closes at 8:00. Why does that feel like a victory? I don't know, but it does.

8. The ruby-throated hummingbird migration has brought them as far as Montgomery, Alabama so far. Though they aren't here yet, they'll be in southern Illinois in a matter of weeks. I check the map every day because I'm so excited that some tiny birds will be flitting around my backyard come April.

9. When we came home, Aaron put away of the groceries while I cooked dinner. Then he put together the new vacuum and tested it out in the living room and kitchen. I put away the dishes. With two people cleaning, it feels less like chores and more like a competition to see who can be nice longer.

10. We watched a few episodes of Mad Men on Netflix, after being too busy the past week or so to watch any together.

11. I got to open the windows today, and leave them open tonight. Even though I had to wash all of the silverware I've been leaving in the sink because I hate washing silverware, I finished it tonight because it's hard not to feel good when you're standing at the sink with a cool breeze blowing in the window, listening to the peep of a thousand frog voices and the drawn out chord of an oncoming freight train.

12. Aaron and I had a mutual day off together that we spent mostly together, rather than sequestered in our offices (with the exception of the past hour or so).

Goodbye, Mumbai; Hello, Hyderabad

Much of what we did in India consisted of sitting and waiting: in lobbies, on steps, in hotel rooms, in airports, in lines, in the backseats of vans. We became very good at it by the end of the trip.

Like this crow. We were just as good at waiting.

 Waiting for Rob to come back from Elephanta Island gave us a chance to sit in the hotel lobby and think about everything we still had to do. We wanted to figure out a way to call home using Skype, but even after paying the exorbitant rates for hotel Internet access and trying to load credits on our account, we couldn't do it. That didn't stop Aaron from messing around with the iPad, trying to get it to work. It was impossible to plan ahead for the portion of the shoot we would complete in Hyderabad during the rest of the week, since we didn't know exactly what we would be working with, but we talked about the shots we would need.

After awhile, though, we realized that it was getting very late, and there was still no sign of Rob. Having already experienced what it was like to get around Mumbai on our own, we didn't want to repeat that. But he was very late--to the point where we started to wonder if we would need to book a car and leave for the airport without him, hoping that he would make his own arrangements so we could all catch the flight together. Neither of us wanted to think of this as an option, but we also didn't want to think about what would happen if we made the flight and he didn't. Aaron's rational, logical brain kicked in, and we set a time limit: if Rob didn't make it back to the hotel by that time, we would leave a note for him at the front desk and depart without him.


I think Aaron and I managed to make each other more and more nervous as we speculated about the causes of Rob's lateness. Did he completely miss the boat? Did something terrible happen to him? Did he leave without us? It was within five minutes of our imposed deadline when Rob walked through the revolving doors into the lobby, explaining what happened in between bursts of apology. There had been a very large tour group ahead of him on the jetty to return to the mainland, and they had filled the only available boat--which meant he had to wait for another boat to come to the island.

Rob still had to finish packing his suitcases and check out, but we no longer felt panicked, really. It was like we didn't have the energy to worry. When he came back downstairs, we booked a driver through the bell desk, which was quite a bit more expensive than it would have been to take a regular taxi, but it turned out to be an excellent decision. Remember how our ride from the airport to the Taj was the most terrifying experience of our lives, during which we feared abandonment, murder, accidental death, kidnapping, and general abuse? The ride back to the airport for our domestic flight could not have been more different.

Two or three bellhops took our luggage out of a side door while another escorted us through the front doors to a waiting Toyota minivan. Our doors were opened for us. Not only was the vehicle clean, it was air conditioned and there were chilled bottles of water and mints waiting for us. Our driver spoke impeccable English and wore white gloves with his suit and hat. He explained that he had perfected his English while working for the U.S. Embassy, driving dignitaries around Mumbai.

He was, by far, the best driver we had while in India

Our driver took us along a scenic route that included Marine Drive and the Sea Link, a newly completed bypass toll bridge over Mahim Bay. I understand why our first ride was nothing like this: it was a more expensive route.

The skyline went for miles like that. As far as the eye could see, really.

Even though we saw so little of Mumbai, this ride gave us the chance to see a more developed side of the city, where people had time and money to spend on leisure. We passed beaches, cricket being played in huge stadiums, gardens, universities, lavish apartments, mosques.

After we crossed the Sea Link and the driver paid the toll, he pointed out the slums lining both sides of the highway. He told us that Slumdog Millionaire had been filmed nearby, in one of Mumbai's largest slum areas.

I couldn't get over the scale of this (and the one on the other side of the road was much, much bigger). I understood why Ganesh had wanted to show me, because it was unbelievable and devastating. It would have felt crass to get in a car for the express purpose of gawking at other people's poverty; seeing it accidentally felt surreal.

The trip to the airport took slightly less than two hours, since the traffic was heavier and it was daytime, but it had felt quick because it was so much more comfortable than our previous ride. As soon as we were out of the car, we rolled our suitcases towards the entrance and were faced with armed guards. We had to present our ticket receipts and passports just to get into the building. Rob took us over to the Air India ticket counters, where we waited in a line that didn't seem to move, like when you're at the grocery store and the person in front of you wants to use sixty coupons.

Eventually, we had our bags checked and boarding passes printed. I'm not sure if this is at all domestic airports in India (or if it is a common practice elsewhere), but we had to put ID tags on our hand baggage and had to have it stamped when we went through security. It's an interesting idea, and I suppose it's just one more way to prevent terrorism by adding another means of monitoring what enters each area of the terminal, and what gets on the plane.

This was my first real experience with gender-specific security lines, and I appreciated it because not only did I have more privacy, I also didn't get as thoroughly groped as I have by other security officers and my line was shorter than the ones Aaron and Rob went through. It made me feel more relaxed to be herded through with only women, because passengers seemed to be more patient with each other.

We had about 45 minutes before our flight left, which was just long enough for us to grab something quick to eat in the terminal. There was a small sandwich stand near our gate. Rob and Aaron panicked a little at the offerings, since the sandwiches looked dry (they were) and contained questionable ingredients. I had been smelling something delicious as soon as we turned the corner from the security checkpoint, so I followed my nose again and saw samosas. They were huge, and they gave you two for less than a dollar. I'm drooling a little just thinking about that airport terminal samosa dipped in ketchup.

As soon as we were done eating, Rob told us we should all stand in front of our gate. We looked around, a little confused, because everyone else was sitting down. There were empty seats right in front of the gate podium. "Trust me," Rob said. "You have to be more Indian here, and show less respect for the rules. Plus, this way you'll actually have a place to put your carry-ons." It turned out he was absolutely right, because within a few minutes a knot of people had formed around us, and we were closest to the front. By the time our flight was announced, there was a wall of people several deep, which prevented those who had sat down from even getting up.

Air India, it turns out, is a really nice airline. But the plane was small enough that Rob's warning about not having a place to stow our bags would have been valid had we not boarded at the beginning. Even though the flight was only just over an hour, we were fed by the most efficient crew of flight attendants I had ever seen. The meal was also one of the strangest I have ever eaten, because I don't typically consume tofu, corn, cilantro and another unidentifiable ingredient together on a sandwich, but it was strangely good, and I was so hungry that there wasn't room for complaint.

We landed in Hyderabad just as it got dark, and experienced the "everybody stand up before the plane stops moving" routine we had come to expect in India. There was some waiting. Then we entered the terminal to claim our baggage. There was some more waiting. While the domestic terminal of the Mumbai airport had reminded me of a 1980s bowling alley in ambience and decor, the Hyderabad airport looked brand-spankin'-new, all shiny and modern.

Rob assured us that we would be picked up by our contact in Hyderabad, so we didn't have to worry about booking a car. What we didn't expect was that Vinay Kumar, the academic advisor at the CMUIC, was waiting for us with bouquets of roses, an assistant, and a driver. He helped them load our huge bags into the van, and we somehow managed to cram six adults in the space for four, since Vinay had been displaced by our luggage. This was our first taste of the uncomfortably gracious and self-sacrificing hospitality we would experience our entire time in Hyderabad. I couldn't help but feel like a total jerk, because I had legroom (and I obviously don't need it).

The ride from the airport to our hotel was about 45 minutes, but it seemed longer in the dark. From what I could tell, the airport is located far enough outside the city that it is still somewhat rural. At the rate India's cities are growing, however, it probably won't be long until Hyderabad expands out that far.

Soon enough we were at our hotel, the Green Park in the Greenlands area of the city. It was at once fancy and comfortable: slightly better than the hotels Aaron and I normally stay in, but not anything like the Taj in terms of size or price, for which I was extremely grateful. It's billed as a place for business travelers, so it had conveniences without catering to luxury. Our rooms were on the second floor and had a view of the courtyard, where private events are held.

It was another situation where all I wanted to do was collapse on the bed, fully clothed, and sleep until morning, but we had things to do. Aaron was finally able to get Skype to work, since the credits had posted to our account while we were in transit between Mumbai and Hyderabad, so we called our families to let them know how things were going. It was hard to get used to the idea that it was night in Hyderabad but 7:00 in the morning back in Michigan, but it actually made calling home convenient because we were in the room at times when we knew our families would be available.

I also had to play seamstress for Aaron, since the strap on his new backpack had broken earlier in the day, while we were out shooting photos and video. I've always been completely enamored of the complimentary items in hotel rooms, and we had made sure to grab everything from our room at the Taj when we packed our suitcases--including, thankfully, the sewing kit. Even though I was voiding the warranty on the bag by repairing it myself, a bag that breaks on day two of a ten-day trip doesn't leave many options. We watched episodes of American television shows ("Big Bang Theory" was on every night) and drank cold sodas out of the free minibar. We were living like kings.