The Air Force and Pentagon Memorials, Fall 2008
Posts
8. Thinking of Central Asia, Fall 2002 9/11’s airplanes did get me to Central Asia though, if not yet knocked up. It’s cliché but true that tragedy and loss are great motivators for those who survive them and/or are not directly touched by them. As I related before, I wrote to the Peace Corps when I was 15 and then I just waited. For what, I don’t know. After Spain and meeting the boy who would be my boyfriend for a long time, he and I moved first to New Brunswick, NJ, and then to Manhattan. Paying over $1,500 monthly for a ragged room that was a hotel back in the olde steam ship days. I had a job, working at a nonfiction publishing company. He rocked back and forth between jobs, fired and unemployed, and I guess I thought I had settled into “life.” That said, during this time, pre-2001, I still thought of Peace Corps at times, my hyper-romanticized version of it, of course. The planes smacked me out of my lethargy and emboldened me to announce to Steve one night while eating Indian f
7. Interlude: Today & September 11, 2001
Perhaps it is all getting too philosophical so I’ll bring my story back more to the now as much of the book, heretofore, has been recollection. My husband’s younger brother and his girlfriend had a baby yesterday. Today’s my mom’s birthday. One of my closest childhood friends who now lives in Utah (and no, she’s not Mormon although she is blonde) had a baby boy less than four weeks ago. So much reproduction! I’ve lived these many years never getting pregnant or having a child. Why? After the pristine sky of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was obscured by burning jet fuel and the blood of too many, I thought to myself: What if I had died today? What is there in the trajectory of a “normal” life that I’d like to have or experience? With that simple question, the obvious resolutions of traveling more, reaching out to friends more, maintaining relationships better, solidifying and fostering them, etc., popped into my mind. Stop being so lazy and get writing. Go to South America. Adopt a home
Picking Up Where I Left Off in Chapter 6 Speaking of race and difference and the resentment they needlessly yet inevitably enable, anthropologists like myself are taught to say and to be able to explain the fact that the concept of race has no biological reality, no gene-based salience. In fact, if you analyze the genetic make-up of people living in Africa today and compare it to that of those people living beyond humanity’s first home, you’ll find that there’s more genetic diversity inside Africa than anywhere beyond it. Fascinating. These findings have to do with early human migrations out of Africa. More people stayed than originally left but those who left and went on to people the far corners of our earth reproduced amongst themselves for many generations. You can learn more about this concept if you go online and check out the American Anthropological Association’s website or ask an anthropologist. Believe me, it’s true. Okay, once we accept that “race” has not biological releva
6. Language Back to seventh grade at Saucon Valley Middle School: It was time to choose what foreign language I would learn. The decision was simple for me. It involved thinking what other language, besides English, I heard around me. Spanish. That's all. So, I thought, I should learn Spanish. This simple decision has taken me to many places and brought many new people and ideas to me that I'm so happy I chose wisely. Perhaps I'd say the same thing had I selected French or German but I can pretty confidently say no. Yes, if I had studied German I would have lived abroad in Germany and had adventures, indulging in too many drunken nights and visiting too many medieval castles as I did in Spain but beyond that year, coming back to a United States, where would German have taken me? My knowledge of Spanish and the window it provides me into Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States informs how I understand our conflicted and perhaps hypocritical nation, divided as we ar
5. To Madrid, September 1996
Out of Penn my third year, I flew to Spain. I think I shared a row on the plane with a Spanish jai lai player. We talked all night. I arrived at Madrid's Barajas Airport exhausted but elated. I was on my own in a new country; I was 19. I expected to see other students heading to our program's appointed meeting spot, a University of Madrid dormitory I would come to call “the bunker,” and readily identified one donning a University of Michigan sweatshirt. I approached her, introduced myself, and with Kristie from Battle Creek, Michigan, grabbed a cab off to the center of Madrid. We chatted with the cab driver while en route. I was wary we'd be ripped off as I had been warned by guidebooks. But, I think we fared quite well. I was pretty shy with my Spanish but Kristie did her best and talked to the driver about her father, who worked at the General Mills cereal plant. Our discussion revolved around Cheerios. After about a half an hour, we arrived at the bunker. We took the ski
4. The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 1994 to May 1998
I was drawn to Penn ever since I was in seventh grade. My father and I ventured down to Philly from our home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to visit the University's Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology.1 I don't remember know why exactly we went of this trip but I recall shuffling into the Hall of Pharaohs and being enthralled, speechless in the presence of the magnificent pillars and Sphinx heads. The darkness, how somber and holy it all felt. I didn't know then, of course, that many of these pieces were plundered from Egypt, turn-of-last-century elitism and colonialism at their worst. Ethics aside and to be discovered later, I was impressed. So, when it came time to pick a school and, with it, in my mind at the time, determining my future, I naturally fell into Penn. When I announced my preference to attend Penn to my parents, they were wary; nervous about Penn's inner-city location, its high rates of crime, and gargantuan tuition. But, then again, Penn is Ivy Leagu
"I'm Baaack ...." Chapter 3: Madrid, España
[Editorial Note: You'll notice I stopped posting there for awhile. I guess I was torn about how effective/wise/strategic posting my book on a blog in fact might be. I'm not sure I answered that question but have since learned about Catherine Sanderson's new book, Petite Anglaise , and felt inspired and marginally hopeful. She's a British ex-pat living in Paris who's blog (http://www.petiteanglaise.com/) got her fired but culled a sweet book deal. Does such luck come in pairs? I can dream, can't I?] 3. Madrid, Spain, September 1996 When I was a senior in high school, before I lost my front top four teeth in a nasty field hockey accident, before I split my lip and broke my jawbone, I wanted to study abroad that very year. My parents declined. They said it would be a mistake to “miss” my last year in high school, one that, they said, promised to be memorable with proms and parties, leadership opportunities at school, etc. Perhaps they were right; but, perhaps also
An Instructional Interlude
Hello Kids, Just wanted to say that as I start posting my book/blog, it's somewhat Dickensian (is that right?). I don't mean that in an egotistical way but that it's shaping up to be like a 21st-century serialized novel that you read backwards. The oldest post is the first and thus backwards is (almost) always forward. :)
And the Kat Came Back the Very Next Day: Chapter 2, Uzbekistan, Early 2003
2. Uzbekistan , Early 2003 In Ulugbek , Uzbekistan , [1] the neighborhood people burn their garbage every Tuesday evening at that part of the day I love and, which, in Spanish is poetically called “el atardecer.” Uzbeks burn their trash because they don’t have a trash pick-up service. That’s what I deduced; I could be wrong. The air on Tuesday evenings can be stifling. A brownish gray fog engulfs the village. As the sun recedes and true darkness takes over, little hearths dot the night in the yards of homes and apartment buildings. The scene seems ritualistic but it’s merely functional. Uzbeks dispose of food scraps, chicken bones, the shapely peels of oranges, fatty gristle, and many other indistinguishable organic bits and pieces by simply tossing them out in the yard. Surely, a scrappy “wild” dog or some other such creature will happily scoop up such waste and abscond with it. Not so with paper and tissues and the like. They must be burned. This category of things to be burned
This is the start, the start of somethin' good ...
Ok, ok. My first post. Here's what's what: I started last fall, fall 2007, to write my first book. It's what I've started to call a semi-autobiographical, travelogue, self-help book. But I hope it's not as dull as it sounds. What I'm going to do is post a bit of it every day or so, chapter by chapter. Once I run out of "book," I'll just keep writing. Perhaps you can give me some feedback or, if you work for the book publishing industry and see a glimmer of potential in me, give me a call or email. Really! Please do. I have plenty of other ideas and lots of energy. Plus, I'm a fast typist. The book's working title was: The Birds and The B It's subtitle: Autobiographical Sketch, Mini Travelogue, Cultural Commentary, & A Calculus of Life Things you should now: Unable to escape my past work in scholarly book production, the "book," now blog, was footnoted. Now it will be endnoted, meaning, there will be note numbers in the tex