What I've Been Doing! Such a Hussy!

Okay so I sort of promised in yesterday's post that I would be talking about the stuff I worked on this week.  But that was before I came down with a rip tooting hullabalooting cold last evening and before my nose fell off this morning.  It's hyperbole, folks.  But this will be shorter than I had anticipated due to difficulty typing because of constant drip-drip-drip from my nose.  Ack. Gack. Kerchoo!

Anyway... I own the URL donenesting.com and I have been trying to figure out what to do with it.  I think I have come to a decision and I've started working on the site.  I've hinted previously that I really want to have a blogging, networking, blog-carnaval-ish site for folks who are through with the broody phase of their lives and are done nesting but really are not all that keen on the term "empty nest."

I really like the image I came up with for Done Nesting and I think I will use it for the donenesting.com site. Note that I've added little scrapbook photo holder tabs on the image.  I think it is cute with them, don't you agree? 

We can hope there is nothing missing from most people's lives who demographically fit the category of empty nester; the natural progression of raising a family requires the shift in roles as time passes. 

Anyway, the website template that I want to use, called elist, allows people list their sites and the site can be a compilation of Done Nester sites as well as listings of blog posts in a WeBloPo Challenge (ala NaBloPoMo and GBE 2)  that stands for  Weekly Blog Posting Challenge that is sort of like a  Blog Carnival in which bloggers agree to post on a certain topic at a certain time and have their collective posts listed together somewhere online. 

This idea grew out of my participation in the BlogHer site and events which clued me in to phenomenon of mommy bloggers who naturally cluster together for defensive ;-) or strategic purposes.  There just doesn't seem to be a perfect fit with a group of more mature (Why oh why do I always think of manure when I write the word mature?) writers or artists or hussies that I have found.

We were sooo Classy! 

Aside:  I have only felt at HOME in one online community, the one and only ORIGINAL Brazen Hussies, and that was one in which I was known as The Word Wench. ( It was a great group of folks who loved the glamour of old Hollywood and witty, suggestive (in the way of old Hollywood) repartee.  This was way back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The site is still there and kept up by a loyal editor but the community has sort of fallen by the way side which is natural don't you know, darlin', for folks who just can't keep on the straight and narrow.  I was best known back then for my cadre of pool boys and for being able to logically and necessarily referring to John Waters in every single Word Wench post, dish, or article that I wrote.  Oh my goodness, I did it again!

Anyhoo, something I said all the time in that former wenchy life, I will be setting up the site and trying to figure out the blog posting permissions for WeBloPo (and yes, this newly invented word is why I thought of the good old days with the Brazen Hussies) for those who list their sites.  So check it out if you want and give me feed back and sign up or list yourself and help me figure out how it all works.    It won't launch for a few weeks yet and our mistakes can always be disappeared.

I did other stuff this week too involving finances, boomer domains, talking to my precious b-daughter (as contrasted with my s-daughter) as she goes for interviews and deals with the sub-arctic temps of her newly adopted home.

Hasta whenever.... I may just post pics these next couple of days if I don't feel any better this weekend than I do now.

Personal Changes In The Empty Nest

My post 10 Things Lists – Should Content Be Organized This Way? over at my business website should more than count for today's post towards meeting my NaBloPoMo requirement, but I'm not sure it does, so here goes.

I usually find the blogging challenge to be a great way to motivate myself to write something early in the day to get me going toward work.  But writing multiple blog entries can be difficult.  Ideally I would like to have so many articles back-logged that this does not become a problem, but today it might. I'm not in the best of moods, today.

I don't usually write about personal, ongoing challenges - other than depression - but I'm changing that today as I think if this blog is to be of any real use to anyone other than for purposes serving prurient interest by family and friends (Hi all!) then I should be honest.

Dear,  dear Hubby has not really clued in to this fact, although I have told him in many different ways, that I am working in my office all day, every weekday, and some other days too, from now on,

commencing this past Monday, the first week I am home after my husband's return from Sabbatical and after my b-daughter's move across country.  I've tried to gently and consistently let him know that if he comes home and the house isn't clean, which it never is - this is ME talking after all, that it just means I've had a productive work day.

But very morning so far this week he has let me know there are pressing tasks that must have my attention today.  They were pressing, no doubt about it, but I still bristle when he acts like a supervisor and checks in to see that I have enough work, from him, to keep me busy all day. 

Yes, some of this is because I am "at home."  But he did this in a slightly different fashion when I worked full-time and was on-call 24/7, had a small child, led a Girl Scout Troop, and was part of a Girls Soccer support group,

There are many, many times and ways he could have conveyed the same information without alienating me.  And there are probably still some ways I could learn and practice to not let these behaviors bother me. 
But the truth is, until large chunks of money start coming in from my work that are at least as great as what he makes, he won't take me seriously.  That has always been a problem.  I will not ever see any different behavior from him.  Remember, this is the guy who told me before we married that his career would always come first, but that does not make it any easier to live with now than it did almost 23 years ago.  My take then was, "Well, at least he has a career!"   

Aside: My ex routinely lost good jobs and the last time he did it was so he could stay home and make sure I didn't leave him.  Needless to say, that did not work.  By comparison Hubby was a gem.  And in many ways he is.  He is a world class scientist who has done novel work in neuro-pharaceuticals that will make life better for countless generations to come. 

And no this does not come straight out of The Donna Reed Show, or maybe it does?  Was Donna Reed married to a Dr.?  If so, then it does apply.   Physicians, veterinarians, scientists and other "powerful" professional careers with hefty "respect" and sometimes hefty salaries often have blinders that seem to distance them from "regular" life. 

 Aside: But salary generalization isn't the case for research scientists who are usually at universities and receive only a fraction of what industry would pay them but who are committed to original, boundary pushing, ground-breaking, research. 

Some of my friends think I'm crazy to put up with this rather old-fashioned behavior, but to me marriage is a life-long partnership unless there truly are irreconcilable differences.  I don't think our problems are irreconcilable.  I am not even convinced that the behaviors with which I have problems are from old fashioned gender expectations but rather from the hierarchical culture that exists in the scientific academy.  But something close to this situation is something with which many "empty nesters" have to deal in one fashion or another.  Behaviors that might have been passed off as "just the way it is" become reframed with the new context that develops when the care-taking functions that had been centered on the child or children cease to be daily considerations which significantly shifts the behavior of those folks who were care-takers. 

So, in short, my first week of work on my "new" career, has thus far encountered a few rough spots, but I have been successful overall.  I will talk about some of those successes tomorrow.

Noam Chomsky Lecture - 1st Annual SBS Lecture

The lecture I mentioned yesterday was a resounding success!  It was so successful in fact that the Fire Marshall's dictated room capacity was reached with probably close to a 700 people waiting to get in. And this for a linguistics lecture!  Hubby and I think that the overflow crowd is a sign that the rather, shall we say, progressive ideology of Noam appeals to a larger audience than might have been true a few years ago when so many people were silenced by the strident call for conformity broadcast incessantly by media's redistribution of the Bushite's decrees.

The short story of yesterday is that we didn't get in but I did see Chomsky at close distance.   I was standing by the men's room when he was escorted too it.  Only managed to get a pic of the back of his head.

So here I am again.  In line - this time for the political lecture on education that is to start at 7 p.m. In Centennial Hall.  And today rumor in line is that there are overflow viewing spaces available for "attending" this lecture entitled,  "Education: For Whom and For What."

-------

I got in!

Here are my rather sketchy notes from the lecture, if you are interested.

-------

 LECTURE NOTES
2/8/2012
Noam Chomsky Lecture:  "Education: For Whom and For What."

Standing Ovation
Occupy Tucson thanks him using human microphone.
Higher Ed. Not unconnected to early Ed.

For whom
Elites
Walter Lipman :  responsible man, intelligent minority, manufacturers consent.
Committee on public information. Used to alter public opinion to one in favor or war.
Engineering of consent.

Emerson says  educate them to keep them from our throats -- capitalize on fear.

Madison -  public must be marginalized.  Power in the hands of the wealth of the nation.  (benign nobility)

Aristotle eliminate inequality.

Hume -

Education has to be enlisted in this view.

Jonathan Rose ...the reading of the British proletariat.

Factory Girls. (Link is a download.)  Read it.  Documents taking away high culture from factory Girls.

1930s 123 infinity
High culture. Proletarian dyad acts.


------
2 approaches:
Pouring water into vessel.       Leaky vessel.
Following a string.

Policy implications.

Science editor --  rote vs. enjoyable.   Joy of discovery.
Details that obscure.
Trivialize and complicate science.
Breakage fee $17.   No child left behind.
What will you cover versus what will you discover?

Seed shell stone.  K3 which is the seed?

After WWII. -   50% of world's wealth. Elite education was a gentleman's club prior to ww2.  Turn farmers into factory laborers.  Factory girls.  Read it.  Wage labor is different from child slavery only in that it is temporary.

Gain wealth forgetting all but self.

800th Anniv. Of Magna Carta
Charter of liberty and charter of commons.
Preservation of commons from predatory royalty.

Move toward new spirit of the age - gain wealth forgetting all but self.
1970s labor strikes- strike for dignity -  lordsburg.

study before ww11 European.
Afterwwii
-ugly incidents upon old school european thoughts
-us rejected sound economics of and adopted piracy
After WWII funding for science tech through Pentagon through fear.

Socialize costs / privatize profit. And waste resources. Increase in students.  1957. Sputnik.  Exploited the fear of falling behind.

Israeli magician. Set theory.  Space between brackets- null set.

End of 1960s.  MIT.  Role of tech in society.  Day to discuss this.  Civilizing the county.  Dangerous.  Lewis Powell.  Trilateral commission Report: The Crisis of International Cooperation (download) provided insight into the assault on Democracy.

Powell to chamber of w commerce.  Read it.  Take over of country by ....

Alternative to free enterprise. -- subsidy of tobacco.  Subsidize and conceal.  Talked about business being targeted for elimination. Education supported by business he said and being marginalized.  Reaction by opposition (the trilateral commission)  public is supposed to be passive etc.  Placing too much pressure on state.  Institutions for the indoctrination of the young.  Must preserve national interest rather than special interests.  Business was thought to be a national interest not special interests.

University Education:

Mexico - free.
US - private only...we are moving forward.
Debt trap.  Is indoctrination.
Not because of economics.

Britain barred govt intrusion into academia.

Turing.  Prime Minister Cameron will not apologize for death.

Corporate versus government funding.
Short term versus long term funding.
Also more secrecy.  Corporate funders nonrenewable contracts.  Focus on profit and turning everything into a commodity.

Costs to public are rarely counted. (Remember the commons.)

K-12  

Caring about each other violates the"new spirit of age."
Care about disabled widow across town.

New spirit of the age and destruction of the commons is hateful. Destruction of Mexican American Studies and removal of it's literature and classics right here in occupied Mexico.

Freedom and justice.

Standing ovation.  Again.

Had to leave.





 

You Cannot Be Upset If You Roll With The Punches

GBE 2 theme for the week is "upset.". NaBloPoMo theme for the month is "relative." I am playing with this juxtaposition because I really, really, really believe that attitude is just a matter of perspective.   I mean how can you be upset if up is relative? The view from free fall can be liberating.

Take it with a grain of salt?  (Image by Andrew Duhan, sxc.hu)

Upset requires an up and a down.  For someone like myself, a confirmed, card-carrying relativist (I have degrees in Anthropology, I think that diplomas more than count as cards) up and down is way too much like black and white.  Up or down?  Compared to what? 

To be upset is to be turned over, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, turning most things refreshes them, but... to be disoriented from the positioning, well,  that can be just plain old upsetting.  Seriously, if you expect "up" and you get "down," you may become disappointed.  But if you expect a spatial orientation "of some sort," either up or down will fill the bill.  I am not saying you should lower your standards, or expect nothing; I am saying that evaluating the position you are in from the viewpoint that comes with the position gives you many more options than prejudging a viewpoint from which you may have never taken a gander. 

Most of the people I've met in life would much rather be happy than sad, and jubilant rather than angry.  Being upset is not an emotion.  Apple carts can end up in a mess from all sorts of feelings or emotions. 
The state of being upset comes from, in the apple cart case, rigidity.  If the cart had had more flexibility it might have been able to shift and spring back and not have tipped over. 

Upset is out of balance.  Extreme emotions are out of balance.  Fear does not need to lead to hatred.  Anger does not need to become rage.  Sadness does not have to lead to a black funk.  Happiness does not need to lead to mania.  The rigid polar nature (as in north/south, up/down, in/out) of up requires a down.  If I have to be one thing, whatever it may be, and I do not achieve that state, I may become unbalanced because of the "have to" and not because of anything actually related to the state. 

I routinely remind myself of these distinctions  because I once operated most of my life from an "upset" perspective.  Truth be told, I would not have recognized either up or down if everything in the world had righted itself before my very eyes.  I knew I had been knocked over and could not find the proper  place to be nor the view from that place because I thought I was supposed to be a version of myself that had never been knocked over.  I was more concerned with being upset, knocked over, or not in the right position or place than in taking in all that was around me from exactly where I was.  At this same time I thought expressions such as, "No matter where you go, there you are" were absolutely inane.  Now I love the playful nature of this near Buddhist perspective. 

I now try to live life in balance even though the world is koyanaskatsi and me with it much of the time.  No once can be balanced when he or she cannot move.  To be balanced, you must know how to move.  If you are rigid you are more easily knocked over by minor shifts, more easily upset.  It is all relative you know. 

Note:  Tomorrow's post will be less philosophical... maybe.  I'm off to hear a lecture by Noam Chomsky right now. 

Moving Zilla to Minneapolis - Trip Synopsis

Trip Preparation

First we had to work on her warm weather attire.  These woolen necessities were purchased for her in the L.L. Bean flagship store in Maine during Hubby's Fall 2011 Road Trip.

 

And to get her acquainted with the basics of living far away from parents in her own home.  Here she reads her new copy of The Joy of Cooking. 

 

Day 1

Then we finally hit the road on January 17th and drove East on Interstate Highway 10.  We knew we wouldn't get very far, but heck, we knew we would get in a few hours of driving.  And we did. 

Benson, AZ

Texas Canyon, AZ

The yawning began.  It is gonna be a long trip!

New Mexico!

North Hidalgo, NM

We took the New Mexico Highway 26 shortcut between Deming, NM and Hatch, NM. I love visiting Las Cruces and Mesilla Park, but making good time was more important than visiting some dear friends in Las Cruces and visiting one of my favorite independent book stores in the world in the Old Mesilla Square.   This shortcut takes off at least an hour from the trip. 

I would post pics of the motel we stayed at in Truth or Consequences, NM, but we didn't take any.  The folks were really nice, but the Motel 6 was sort of grody.  We were glad we brought a big ol' can of disinfectant spray along.

Day 2

We got breakfast before hitting the road.  Zilla likes her OJ and was hell bent on drinking lots of it before this winter's poor, bitter crop hits the shelves. 

The most important meal of the day in Truth or Consequences, NM

And it is back on the road again.  

Not all that far past Truth or Consequences, NM

Apparently traveling along El Camino Real  according American Society of Civil Engineers plaque dedicated in 1993 celebrating the 1598 founding of the highway.

We drove to from Albuquerque, NM Liberal, KS via Interstate 40 and U.S. Highway 54.  I 've taken lots of routes trying to get from New Mexico to various places in the northern Midwest:  I've taken the Raton Pass and gone up I-25 to I-70 and I-25 to all sorts of CO State Highways through Dodge City and other small towns and on up to I-70,  I've taken I-40 to I-35 and I-40 to I-44, and now I've take US 54 from just outside Tucumcari, NM to Wichita, KS. 

Taking the Raton Pass was most scenic and I met the most unusual people on that trip.  And this trip Jan 2012 trip where I took the U.S. 54 "shortcut" was not fun.  Too many big rigs on this small two lane highway which we drove at night, so I don't have pics.  But the next day going was slow again.  (see Day 3.) And getting onto I-35 is a feat in Wichita.  For presbyopic eyes like mine and I35 and a135 can look alot alike.  I wouldn't take this route again.  Interstate 40 is boring.  The I-35 Toll Road isn't bad at all. 

Day 3

We had breakfast at a local place that had the weirdest omelet in the world.  What did I expect?  It was called The Pancake House.  And I would have looked elsewhere until I found something had I noticed the Haliburton advertising on the high tech ad board in the place.  The overheard conversation of the day, from the booth behind us, came from this breakfast place, "I did really good at math until 7th grade or so..." 

Day 3 at Breakfast in the Pancake House in Liberal, KS.  Wearing same clothes as Day 2.  Who is to know?

Back on U.S. Highway Route 54 after breakfast we found the driving less dangerous but slower than we would have liked.  In this pic below we are waiting for a lead car to drive us through a stretch of road that did not seem to have any construction or obstacle between the two flagman staffed stop points. 

Waiting for a Guide Car

The only vehicles I saw pulled off the road between the two points were the ones in the following pics -- and the VW is Zilla's.  Doesn't look like anything was going on to me but highway crews giving themselves something to do.  

Guide Car (see orange flag on top of it) finally arrives.

Following Guide Car

Now why did they close this section?

I only have this one pic from further on in the drive that day from Northern Kansas as it was sort of ho hum driving for me and I was thinking about other stuff. 

Because I took the northern  non-toll road route and Zilla took I-35 she got to the stopping point and found the hotel for the night in Clive, IA.

Day 4

We ended up spend the entire next day in the hotel in beautiful downtown (actually suburban) Clive, IA - just outside of Des Moines - because a small winter storm decided to hit early on Day 4 in Northern Iowa between Des Moines and Minneapolis.  There was not that much snow accumulation but there was wind, blowing snow and low visibility according to folks working in the area who front desk staff at the Best Western were nice enough to call for me.  It was a nice room that looked just like this. I recommend it, although I thought the price was a bit high for a Best Western but then I didn't book it.  I'd have gotten a better rate.   

Best Western Plus Inn and Suites, Clive, IA  --  Image by VFM Leonardo Inc.

Zilla had never driven in snow before and we decided to just stay in and work on her Graduate School applications.  She wrote.  I got a severe case of push button finger (just like George Jetson) from repeatedly going through automated menus of inordinate complexity and length to order GRE scores be sent to her schools.  I kept getting booted from the automated phone system after almost completing all the entries for the list of schools.  Frustrating.  

Day 5

Of a 3 Day Trip

 Yippee!  We are finally headed toward Minneapolis.  You could tell we were nearing our destination because the scenery finally looked like the black and white winter imagery we were expecting.

We eventually arrived in Ritchfield which I guess is in Southern Minneapolis and unpacked the vehicles.  

I had to have a Juicy Lucy from the 5 8 Club so.... we trotted our buns over to 5800 Cedar Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55417-2648to get a burger on a bun.   I am not a beef lover.  I occasionally will opt for a burger.  This was first on my list of things to do in Minneapolis during this visit, even coming in above a visit to the Walker Art Center.  The first bite was exquisite.  The onion rings were fine but nothing to write home about, they were hot and crispy but were pre-packaged I think.  The burger was all home made.  Two patties with American cheese in between.  Yum.  And a cold brewski.  Well worth doing if you are in Minneapolis.  There are a couple other locations too. 

 Char Char had to wait in the car while the peoples ate burgers.  Poor baby.  Even when wearing her winter jacket, she s not impressed with the cold and snow. 

It doesn't get this cold in Bordeaux.

But the trip was worth it.  The young couple, Zilla and Tree Boy, with Mr. Hendrix and Char-Char in their new home. 

Young Love.

I will write about the rest of my trip - the solo part, after Minneapolis, another time.  This was just the first leg of my journey.