My new friend is leaving . . .

So my friend Yongjia, a colleague serving as a fellow from China this year, is planning a big Chinese New Year celebration. We're all getting into planning the party for the year of the Ox. I'm taking him to Party City tomorrow to gather decorations. He's going to cook dumplings and download some music. We're going to play poker, treat the children with good luck money bags, and wear red underwear!

I live in a very small southern town, and we teach together at a community college. I gotta give props to Yongjia for deciding to spend his fellowship in absolute middle America, rather than a big shiny city. He's seeing laid-off Americans struggle through remedial college courses, struggle to pay for gasoline, and elect the first ever president of color. He's a cultural anthropologist, soaking up everything around him every single day that he's here. He came over to our house for Christmas Eve dinner and even went to church with us. My friends and colleagues and I took him to the Renaissance Fair and his first drive thru. We managed to get Yongjia to quit smoking, fed him turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes for the first time, and had him over to to micro-brew some beer. We have explained our expressions, our beliefs and our customs, and he's done his best to explain his. All in all, it's been one of the best examples of multicultural interpersonal communication I've ever seen.

And, the interesting thing about it is that he doesn't want to leave now.

He's excited to be going home to see his wife, but that's about all. China makes him unhappy. He feels oppressed there. I asked him if it was meaningful to him to go back to China and try to change it for the better, and he said that it wasn't possible for one man to do so. He views the government leaders there as corrupt. He came to our Halloween party and got to vote on best costume - joking that this was the first time he was ever able to vote. Interestingly enough, he won for best costume as well - dressing up as Zhong Kui, the Chinese Ghost Warrior.

He told me today that his mother thinks he's getting too fat, eating our American food. I laughed and told him that this was the opposite of the traditional American mother, who tends to want to feed you until you pop. (Or at least my mom does.) Of course, I reminded him that the quitting smoking probably had more to do with him eating more than his being in America, and surely a few extra pounds are better than carcinogens, right?

But I worry for Yongjia. I don't want his inquisitiveness and sense of humor swallowed up by censorship. I don't want his personal and professional choices to be limited by his government. I don't want his opportunities to decline or disappear entirely. In short, I want him to have the opportunities he would surely have here.

I plan to continue communicating with Yongjia after he returns to China next month - my new e-pal. Maybe the shrinking of the world through electronic communication will help ease his transition back into Manchurian culture. He tells us that his university will be sending another fellow, this time a woman, to take his place here, teaching his Chinese and cultural studies courses. I hope she can hold a candle to his friendliness and charm.

In the end, I'm sure she will be great. She'll be an individual, not like any other Chinese citizen. She'll be herself, with plenty of things for us to teach her and plenty of things for us to learn from her.

But I'll really miss hanging out with Yongjia.

好运气！

Good luck, Yongjia

And, to top it off, I'll be 37 in 9 short months . . .

2009 seems so odd to me.

It's an awkward-sounding year. 2000 was nice and round. 2008 was a big and crazy election year. 2010 sounds so fascinating and science-fictiony. But 2009 dawns bulky and worrisome for me.

I visited Washington D.C. over the holidays, and it's gearing up for the biggest event this side of the American Revolution - the inauguration of Barack Obama. Regardless of my or others' political views, my greatest feeling as we near January 20th is that I am fearful for the safety of our nation's capital. Not just the architecture and our various assortment of national treasures, monuments, museums, and government leaders, but for the untold scores of souls that will be descending upon the Potomac's shores to be part of this historic occasion. I can't help but think "What if all the safety measures, anti-terrorism plans, and military might can't stop an attack on the US on this day?" What if the unbelievable happened? What if the man upon whom so many have invested their future is destroyed before he can bring about his change? What if this gathering of our nations' leaders is wiped out? What if the 2-4 million Americans expected to attend are killed in one fell swoop?

Would this be the end of our nation?

Heady thought, that. I shuddered as I typed it just now. I don't know whether I really believe it could happen, but I find myself making myself think about it.

But say that it doesn't happen. What then? If all goes according to plan, and the inauguration goes well and happily, and Obama's presidency begins (relatively) smoothly, and Comedy Central loses the majority of its entertainment fodder, and we all go back into our daily lives, what then? What does 2009 possibly have in store?

I cannot speak for anyone but myself. I plan on making 2009 a year of resolution and restrategizing. I need to get myself healthy again, by taking better care of myself and making more time for my kids. I need to work smarter instead of harder. I need to pray for more patience and wisdom to deal with my personal and professional life. I need to enjoy life beyond simply struggling to live it.

2009 is the year of my 15th undergraduate college reunion. It's the year of my 14th wedding anniversary. It's the year I turn 37, my oldest daughter turns 9, my youngest daughter turns 5 (ack!) and my husband turns 40! But I'm not there yet. I still cling strongly to 36. I have little desire to see my children leave 8 and 4, and, although I have some preliminary plans for celebrating my husband's 40th, I'm a long way away from taking action on them.

In the meantime, I'm in the middle of an academic school year. I don't generally think of the year as a January - December affair - I'm on the August - May plan. I'm in the middle of fixing the courses that I taught last semester, making them better for my spring semester students. I'm in the middle of a new series of books that I seem to be enjoying reading. (The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart - juv fiction.) I'm in the middle of trying to figure out how I'm going to work in the energy and determination to exercise every day. (It's January 5th, and, since it's only now a Monday, I still haven't officially started that resolution yet...... check back with me next posting to see how that's going.) I'm in the middle of remembering myself as a young, exuberant woman, and imagining myself as an old, wise (but tired) one.

2009 is the year for me to face the reality that I'm no longer young, but I refuse to be old. (I believe Marilyn Monroe was 36 when she decided she'd stop there; I don't agree with the suicide-as-youth-preservation approach.) It's the year for me to be kind to others, pray for the safety and advancement of our nation and our nation's hopes and dreams, and do my part to help advance those hopes and dreams. I like the future. I look forward to finishing a novel someday, seeing my children become teenagers (sort of) and getting a woman who knows what she's doing into the White House's center seat.

But it's still an awkward-sounding year. I wrote a check this morning and dated it appropriately, but it took a lot of concentration to do so. I'm certain it will be 2010 before I've decided to fully embrace this awkward and odd year - 2009.

But cheers, anyway - a bit belatedly. Welcome to 2009!

It's an allegory, really!

Okay - good Lord, it's been A LONG time. So here I am. It's nearly Thanksgiving. I'm blogging again.

What gives?

Well, it's nearing the end of the (teaching) semester. I have a million papers to grade. Time to procrastinate - n'est-ce pas?

I have become an addict. No, it's not alcohol, pills or sex. It's not porn or jogging. It's not even Doritos - although those can be kinda tasty. No, I'm addicted to a fictional series. Yes, it is Twilight. (and New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn and the unpublished Midnight Sun.) Stop laughing. Yes, I know I'm 36 years old.

Let me explain. First off, I'm only one year older and have one child fewer than Stephenie Meyer - my new personal hero. I can relate to how she got started writing the series. (I have a novel of my own - unfinished, mind you - that had a similar conception. If you don't know Ms. Meyer's story of how Twilight came to be, link here. I may not be a teen aged girl, but I remember what it was like to be one, and I have a penchant for vampires too. I love a good story full of complex characterization and romance as much as the next gal. I love a story that won't let me go to sleep at night.

There's a forum that I've joined called Twilightmoms. Read its opening credo, and you know what my addiction is like. I too have mountains of laundry and undone work, ignored the cats' litter box and sloppy children, because my free time of late has been devoted to OME! (Oh my Edward!) I've philosophically joined Team Cullen, the La Push Cliff Diving Team, the Alice Fan club (who would bet against her?) and the Bella bandwagon.

Yes, I saw the film. Yes, I loved it. My husband did too, thank God, because if he hadn't, we wouldn't be speaking, I think. He's going to read the books now - now that he knows they're safe for his consumption. And he's a 38 year old physician.

We're grown ups. What gives? Twilight has Harry Potter qualities. It has the capacity to transcend young adult fiction and fantasy labeling. It incites a fervor that makes me proud to be literate. I'm excited by the way this Mormon mom has made abstinence cool. (If your sexy boyfriend is too afraid that he might eat you or crush you to death, it's hard to hook-up, after all.) I'm excited by Meyer's metaphors. In many ways, Twilight is an allegory for the difficulty that all young people have when faced with first love, the pain of loss, the natural attraction to danger, the concept of 'living forever' embodied quite literally in Edward Cullen. Bella too, is a smart and clumsy girl, unsure of herself, unaware of her own fragile beauty, unhappy in her family life, unsatisfied in her friendships. Bella is Everygirl. The reader can't help to breathe with her, blush with her, gulp with her, sigh with her, yearn with her, cry with her. When Bella's angel is a killer, her protector is a predator, and her lover is her future damnation, Bella's life shows us that there are always two sides to every shiny coin. There are no black and whites. Or perhaps there are black and whites, but they spin together so fast that they appear a permanent gray.

Enough philosophy: don't hate this series, whatever you do. Don't discount it as teen hoopla. Don't turn away from it. It's brilliant. It's magical. It's painful and heartrending. It will make you feel seventeen and one hundred and seven.

Alive and undead.

The film sequel is coming . . . meanwhile, I'll go reread the books . . . again.

taking a break

Birdhouses of Thought is taking a lengthy break right now . . .

Teacher lady had a rough end of the semester and is working on other things and taking it easy.

Be back eventually.

- Bye for now!

is there a god?

Why is mankind's search for god so
d#$%ed divisive?

Add religion to death and taxes, in the count of what is certain in human life. Every culture has manifested a form of religion. Some of them may seem diametrically opposed to each other, but most religions have a fair number of eerie and telling similarities.

All of them have creation stories, for example. Most of them have flood narratives, messianic figures, and foretelling of the end times.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all derivatives of the same religion, worshipping the same god, and yet, there has been more slaughter in the name of these three faiths than is really conceivable.

Add to these "big three" the in-fighting between other religions, denominations, sects, cults, and radical philosophies, and you have a flavorful and volatile mix that is often a powder keg ready to go off at any time. (has gone off . . . continues to go off . . . )

And then there is the confounding problem of science and where it fits into the circle of faith. People can go so many ways in their views of science. My three-year-old's daycare teacher doesn't believe in evolution or the big bang theory because she takes a literal interpretation of the creation story in the bible. She also doesn't know what she feels about dinosaurs, since they weren't mentioned at all in the bible, but she really likes The Land Before Time movie, and has no qualms about showing it to either her own grandchildren or her charges.

There are creationists who denounce scientists, specifically evolutionists. There are scientists who denounce creationists. There are creationists who are scientists. There are more flavor combinations in the areas of science and creation than Baskin-Robbins can boast.

I can only speak out my own beliefs. What really confounds me is why there are all these disagreements in the first place. I have never seen a problem between believing in the big bang, evolution, and all of that, and believing in a creator. After all, the big bang theory necessitates the question of how/what/who caused the bang to occur?

My seven year old daughter has, to my happiness, developed a fascination for our reading bible stories together at night before bed. We read the Genesis account of creation last night (albeit a simplistic, child picture bible version). She had, of course, heard the story before, but her picture bible is nicely illustrated and the words are simple enough that she can really grasp her mind around it. She remembered watching science documentaries on TV with me - the ones that discuss the origins of the Earth and the extinction of the dinosaurs. She remembered that science is pretty firm on the notion that these events happened over the course of millions and billions of years, not a few days. But, interestingly, she didn't have a problem combining these two, seemingly conflicting worldviews. For this I am proud of her. She takes it all in stride and has no problem opening her mind up to the possibility that God's days are epochs to us, and that "and God said, 'let there be light' and there was light" was clearly a description of the big bang - the explosion of light from darkness, the exponential expansion of matter and energy in all directions from a central, unified, massive point.

Perhaps it is mankind's eternal struggle to question the bigness of our universe and the comparative smallness of our personal lives . . . perhaps it is the eternal quest to find reason and answers to our most troubling questions . . . perhaps it is our fear of non-existence . . . I'm not sure why it is, in the end, but regardless of whether you believe in a creator god(dess) perhaps you can find some measure of peace in knowing that the human psyche is united in its quest for that knowledge. The quest for the answer of "is there a god?" is so substantive in and of itself that it takes on a life of its own.

It is a force unto itself.

and then Barack Obama rescued me from the gunman . . .

Okay this is a weird one.

I had a dream about Barack Obama.

Dreams are tricky things. Sometimes they do mean what they seem to, sometimes they are just random images strung into some sort of surreal story with no real meaning at all.

Regardless, I'm a registered Republican - so it's interesting.

A little background information on my politics: I was raised in an ultra-conservative, but highly educated family. My father was a shrewd businessman, a veteran, and a religious conservative. My mother was his right-hand "wo"man. She was an accountant, a fantastic mom, a well-read lady, and a Sunday school teacher. My brothers were all avid outdoorsmen, business majors, smart good 'ol boys. I was the princess of the family, spoiled but raised pretty strictly.

I loved politics. I loved it since I was about three years old. My home felt the fervor of political seasons and elections. We all debated policies over the breakfast, lunch and dinner table. There wasn't a single day that went by where we didn't all sit down to the 6:00 and the 6:30 news.

I enjoyed history, social studies, geography and political science in school. Now, they weren't my favorite subjects - I was an artsy-fartsy type, after all.

I remember going into the voting polls with my mommy and daddy and turning their little voting levers for them. (They picked the candidate or the issue, and I did the deed.) I remember watching the 1980 elections with delight when Ronald Reagan swept the nation with popular votes. I registered to vote when I was 17 years old, and actually voted in my state's primary at 17. You are allowed to vote in the primaries at age 17, so long as you turn 18 prior to the fall elections. (Betcha didn't know that, did you?)

But, like many young adults, I lost all of this fervor when I went to college and then made my way in the world afterwards. The gloss of it wore away for me, and I became lax. I voted from then on, still voting for my parents' choices, but with little conviction of my own.

I have become a political moderate, and lately a political not-much-at-all. I did manage to convince my highly democratic husband to vote republican for the last two presidential elections, simply because he's so darned concerned about finances. He is what I like to call a fiscal Republican, even if he's a moral Democrat.

I want a change in the U.S. leadership; I really do. But I don't really know what to do for this upcoming election. I mean, my God, I can't find a candidate that I can relate to. (As John Stewart so adroitly labeled it, it really is a cluster f$%^ to the White House.)

I'm a woman, and I would dearly LOVE to have a strong woman in the White House. However, I don't believe in Hillary Clinton. I would have respected her and probably even voted for her if she had left that two-timing sexpot of a husband, and gained the candidacy on her own merits.

I felt like all of the Republican candidates this time have been boring, middle- or senior-aged white men who seem tired. While I admire McCain for being a veteran, I just can't quite join his camp.

I have weird, weird stuff in my head going around about Obama. I liked him a lot when I first saw him on Oprah Winfrey a few years back. However, since then, I have felt more like Oprah herself should be running, rather than Obama. He seems to be only as strong as the strong women around him.

Now, about my dream. I dreamed that I was going to some sort of gathering to hear Obama talk. (Probably because he was coming the next day, and I had heard so on the news.) I didn't get to. I was going up to meet him personally, when out of the crowd a friend of mine from way back in college came up with an uzi and began opening fire. (This friend had romantic feelings for me which I had turned down, but I had no idea he felt so bad about it.) In my dream Obama pulled me out of the way and pulled me into the back of a car away from danger.

Does it mean what I think it means? Does that dream mean that Barack Obama is going to save me? Does it mean that he is meant to save the U.S.? Does it mean that the guy that I knew back in college is crazy? Does it mean that I need to lay off the Diet Coke before bed? What does it mean?

Would I be stupid to vote for Barack Obama because of this dream? I don't feel that he would necessarily be our best national leader. He might well be the lesser of three evils, but I certainly hadn't intended to vote for him. But now? I just don't know.

Anybody?

I certainly won't be telling my dad about this dream; that's for sure!

sticks, stones, bad words, and chivalry

"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Bullshit.

Okay, my sister-in-law reads my blog; no doubt she'll call my Mom and tell me that I just wrote a bad word on it.

Which only illustrates the point I want to make: words do hurt. And in this information age, they are the chief source of weaponry. How about "the pen is mightier than the sword"?

My friend wrote in his own blog a lengthy post about how he, as a sensitive feminist, has been upset about calling Ms. Dupre (Spitzer's hookup) a whore. Apparently the late night hosts have been bandying about the terms "prostitute" and "whore" without any sense of concern. My friend doesn't like those words. He equates him to words like "n-----" that reek of pure hatred.

Do they?

When I was a teenager I didn't curse. I actually agreed with my conservative parents - cursing was fundamentally bad.

Then I became an English major. It isn't just that I became more liberal. I have learned to embrace the power of words - judiciously.

I had an image in my mind that I commissioned an artist friend of mine to draw for me. It is of a chest of drawers with words coming out of it - so many words that they cannot hope to fit in the drawers. There are top drawer words, like insouciance, erudite and prodigious, middle drawer words, like fantastic and intense, bottom drawer words, like flat and whatever. But there are also those colorful dust bunnies living underneath the chest of drawers itself, where we find words like f---, s---, G--d---, and c---. My artist friend wisely didn't write these words out in his drawing. (As I haven't.) He let those words lie face down on the floor beneath the chest of drawers. (I do have it hanging up in my office, after all. Wouldn't want to overtly offend.)

Whether or not you agree that any words are innately offensive, the point is that words do have power. The power is held not necessarily in the wielder, though, but in the hearer.

It's the tree falling in the woods phenomenon. If my friend, sensitive feminist that he is, hadn't listened to David Letterman describe Ashley Dupre as a whore, he wouldn't have taken offense to it. (And then, sadly, he wouldn't have had a thing to blog about.) But it was an extreme reaction. Though I can appreciate his chivalry, I don't have to agree with it. To me, prostitution is pretty deplorable. It doesn't hurt my feelings to call her a whore. It doesn't hurt my feelings to call anybody a whore who definitionally earns money for sex. I think it's sad that the word whore has more negative connotations than the word pimp. It's a horrible double-standard that pimps are glamorized, while whores are downtrodden. But, I would argue that Dupre isn't downtrodden in the least. She's a capitalist opportunist (bless her heart). She'll have more than 15 minutes of fame over this. She'll be a rich whore, in the end. Anyone can take whatever offense they like, but in the end, I don't have to support her. (Although I clearly just did, having given her more press by blogging about her. So I'll stop.)

And about male feminists who tiptoe around terminology: keep doing it. It's safer that way, but know that that is what you are doing. Being indignant about such terminology is no less chivalrous than opening a door for us.

There's nothing wrong with opening doors, but then, I'm only a moderate feminist. Some of the more strenuous female feminists would clobber you if you tried. Words can hurt me, and if you called me a whore, then I'd take offense.

I only teach for money.