26 Thursday Nov 2009
Posted in our family
Hanna and I are planning to enjoy the day sans things academical and plus Charles Shaw merlot and a Tofurky roast from our local Trader Joe’s.
Bonus Radical Feminist Link: Women Postpone Thanksgiving Dinner to Meet Militant Feminist! a 1909 news story via Sociological Images.
30 Friday Oct 2009
Posted in think pieces
My alma mater, Hope College, has been making minor waves in the news recently due to the administration’s unwillingness to approve an invitation by students to screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar last year for Milk) to join in a roundtable discussion on human sexuality. Since Hope is a college with strong ties to the Reformed Church in America (RCA), and the denomination — like most Christian denominations — is currently split over the issue of homosexuality, this not really a surprise to anyone who knows the campus: the invitation was bound to be controversial.
Since the late 1990s (as I was starting to take classes on campus as a teenager), sexuality and gender in the context of Christianity have been a flash point at Hope, much like they are in the wider culture. During the 1998-1999 academic year, when I was taking first-year courses in English and Religion, the campus was rocked by explosive debates over feminism, sexuality, and the place of Christianity in higher education. My own adult political awareness — the decision to identify myself politically as a feminist, and my engagement with the politics of human sexuality — has its roots in that formative adolescent experience. Thankfully, as a seventeen-year-old, I saw faculty, staff (including my own father) and students speak out forcefully against bigotry at the same time that I was witnessing the intolerance that characterizes certain conservative Christian worldviews.
The exhilaration and pain I experienced that school year of 1998-99 profoundly shaped my relationship with Hope: from that point forward, I knew that however supportive and intellectually challenging my professors were (you were awesome, folks!), Hope College as an institution was not interested in championing an open and affirming vision of Christianity or of a broader human community. Because of that, the school has never truly earned my trust or my allegiance. In conversations I’ve had this week with my sister (a current student) and some of her friends, I can see a similar trajectory in the growth of a whole new generation of students.
I know first-hand how painful and personal the politics of these denominational and institutional conflicts can be, and I recognize the powerful sway of conservative donors and the strength of religious convictions — even when I believe those convictions to be theologically misguided and inhumane. It’s complicated, and I’m usually the first to admit that. But damn, Hope. You guys gotta learn. And you really need to quit hiding behind the waffling of the church and the fear of losing donors. ‘Cause you’re sure as hell losing future donors now. Not to mention doing a patently crap job of modeling civil discourse and educated, educative discussion.
How old are we — two? Is it impossible to imagine students having thoughtful conversations about issues they have deep personal convictions or questions about? If they can’t have those conversations on a fucking college campus where can they have them, exactly? Can we please exhibit some mature behavior here and demonstrate that thoughtful people can disagree without chewing each others’ arms off? And can we please, please pause for a moment to consider what sort of message non-conversation is sending? Possibly (shock! horror!) recognize that certain members of the Hope College community, past and present, have felt “hurt and marginalized” by the institutional reluctance to have open conversation? Not talking does not make the scary bad feelings go away. It just puts them (all too often) on the shoulders of people with less political and financial clout. Which is not an unexpected tactic, but still deserves to be called out and identified as the sort of immature abuse of institutional power it is.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the folks I know who continue to work and learn in that sort of environment, and I’m sending good vibes their way. I learned ten years ago that I, personally, have limited energy for front-line action in these sorts of political and educational battles. But I deeply respect the people — including many friends and family — who have the guts to keep on speaking up day after day after day in less-than-perfect situations, doing their best to make the next day a little bit better. So thank you all for being there for me, when I was a student, and to all of you — faculty, staff, and students alike — who are continuing to make Hope a place where marginalized folks who are there can, despite the odds, find emotional and intellectual support, and forge a worthwhile learning experience for themselves.
To the folks who didn’t, and aren’t, I realize this probably means little to you, but you are on my shit list and I will see to it in my own behind-the-scenes way that you have as little power to fuck with peoples’ well-being as possible. End of story.
26 Monday Oct 2009
Posted in linkspam
As this posts, I’ll be in the air somewhere between Boston and Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I’m going for an all-too-brief rendezvous with my parents, youngest sib, a few close friends . . . and of course Toby the cat (see above). Meanwhile, here are a few of the week’s internet finds to keep your brains active!
On a personal note, I’ve been cajoled into participating in National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo; please repeat seven times fast) in which writers around the globe feverishly churn out prose and log words written with the organization, which tracks the mountain of creative effort expended (no actual skills needed, thankfully, other than the ability to produce a great volume of words — something I have always been fairly adept at). Writing starts November 1st with a goal of 50,000 words (1,666 per day) by the 30th.
Coolest news item of the week: San Francisco now requires composting as well as recycling. While I’m not holding my breath, I’d love to see Boston follow suit!
Least-cool news of the week award is split between the judge in Louisiana who denied a mixed-race couple a marriage license (“I’m not a racist, I just play one on the bench”??) and Jan Moir, the UK columnist, who wrote a truly nasty, homophobic column for the Daily Telegraph and (cool news again) was called out by Stephen Fry, and a record 22,000 others.
Also worth reading was Charlie Brooker’s op-ed in response:
It has been 20 minutes since I’ve read her now-notorious column, and I’m still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It’s like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.
While we’re on the subject of right-wing wackaloonery, commentator Debbie Schlussel recently got all bent out of shape about (of all things) Disney’s re-design of Tinker Bell’s costume, which she claims “masculinizes” the otherwise appropriately-feminine “nymph.” This gave Jeff over at Alas, a blog, a wonderful opportunity to snark.
Maybe Ms. Schlussel would be happier if everyone lived according to the rules of this 1962 marriage manual, helpfully scanned and annotated by Gwen of Sociological Images.
I am probably not a nice person for finding fundamentalist Christians funny as well as scary — chalk it up to necessary self-protection growing up in a conservative area where my childhood friends were convinced I’d end up in hell because I wasn’t baptized. So on that note — and in celebration of Halloween — a church-sponsored book burning (story via Hanna) that will include translations of the bible (wrong translations obviously) and the face of Jesus which has been spotted on a toilet-stall door at an IKEA in Glasgow (via Melissa at Shakesville).
Hanna’s new group blog, paper not included, is still in the planning stages, but until the official launch of the project, let me share a review she wrote recently of David Wellington’s vampire thriller 99 Coffins, the sequel to 13 Bullets (I guess we’re going for a number theme). I can’t comment yet as I’m not finished with 99, but I thought the first one was great and am still rooting for the protagonist halfway through the second.
And before I sign off, two great library- and archives-themed jokes: the definition of “oldgasm” and a great shelf tag from Hanover, New Hampshire (if you don’t get it right away, read the text out loud).
04 Sunday Oct 2009
Posted in linkspam
My awesome brother Brian, free-lance artist and middle school art teacher, just had another t-shirt printed by the online company Threadless. It was a collaborative design with a young artist, Piper Kirkby, and has so far been a big hit with folks of all ages.
Check out Brian’s blog post for further pictures and information on how to order.
06 Sunday Sep 2009
Posted in a sense of place
Tags
I realized a couple of weeks ago that Labor Day weekend would mark the second-year anniversary of my arrival in Boston to begin graduate school. The moment (so often the case in these situations) feels both much more recent than two years ago and also as if it happened in some far distant past-life. Not that the experience has been radically different from what I expected in any way, but it has felt like a more decisive, and more permanent, break from previous my previous existence than other relocations have been. So now that I’ve reached the 24-month mark, I think it’s appropriate to pause and reflect on whether or not I’ve made peace with my new place in the world.
I use the phrase “made peace with” deliberately, as I have never felt quite at home, full stop, in any one geographic place I’ve lived. I often react intensely to the landscape of a geographic place: the semester I lived in southern Oregon, for example, I fell in love with the contours of the Cascade mountains, but missed the vast openness of the great lakes acutely; during my year abroad at the University of Aberdeen, I chafed at the (to me) claustrophobia of big-city life, while I fell in love with the North Sea, just a stone’s throw from my room. When I am away from West Michigan, I feel the temporal displacement in my bones even though when I am there for long periods of time I grow restless and increasingly ready to depart again on the next adventure.
I knew when I left Michigan for Massachusetts in 2007 that I would miss my family grievously. Yet returning home is no longer possible in the way it once was, as the people of my generation scatter across the country and (myself among them) set up new homes, in new spaces. In short, it is no longer so easy to identify one single place as “home.
After two years here in Boston, I still find it difficult to think of myself as a Bostonian-with-a-capital-B, yet I do feel I have made peace with the city and with my graduate program (perhaps to a lesser extent than Boston itself — but then again, that’s how I always feel about educational programs). I am embarking upon my self-directed thesis work about which I feel passionate and am content with my work daylighting as a library assistant. My neighborhood feels like my neighborhood, and I have tentatively started to imagine what it would be like to live here for more than my student years. I have the sense that, when or if we leave, I will only then realize how fond I have become of its particular shops, parks, sidewalks, trees, sights, sounds, and smells.
Above all, I am fiercely protective of this life Hanna and I have forged together; a life that I hope with my entire being we will take with us regardless of where in time or space we eventually wash ashore. Meanwhile, Boston has been a damn good place to live, all things considered. School and work — along with the used bookstores and awesome coffee shops — keep me here for the time being. But life with Hanna is what makes it home.
*photograph by Hanna Clutterbuck, March 2008, Salem, MA.
24 Monday Aug 2009
Posted in book reviews
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While I’m enjoying the last few days of summer (I’ll be back blogging after the Labor Day weekend!) I thought I’d put up this little book blurb my father, manager of the Hope-Geneva Bookstore, wrote for the Michigan Association of College Stores newsletter when they called to ask what he’d been reading. The Strain was a novel that Hanna read and passed along to me earlier in the summer; I recommended it to my father who read it and passed it to my mother, who emailed me last week to tell me about this vampire novel she was reading . . . such is the, er, viral nature of good reads in a family of bibliophiliacs.
Without further ado, here’s Mark:
If you are looking for a summer read that will keep you turning pages (or refreshing screens) late into the night you could do worse than, The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The first of a promised trilogy of vampire novels (forget the Twilight series), this worthy addition to the genre reads like a cross between Stephen King and Michael Crichton. While Spanish film maker del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) is not known as a novelist his storytelling ability is clearly on display. The novel starts out with a routine jumbo jet landing at New York’s JFK. The plane suddenly rolls to a stop and the lights go out. All communication with the tower cease. An investigation of the mystery reveals that everyone on board is dead including the pilot and co-pilot. The creepy action ramps up from there.
In a radio interview earlier this year del Torro described his effort in the book as wanting to take the modern romance and “sexiness” out the vampire legend and return to the concept of pure evil inherent in the blood-sucking parasites. I think he does a good job of honoring our core understanding of the mythology while combining it with the threat of a modern viral epidemic. His characters are familiar types but engagingly articulated and the close of the novel leaves us waiting for the next installments.
21 Sunday Jun 2009
Posted in our family
Dad has spent the weekend cleaning up his bookstore from the massive flooding they’ve had in West Michigan over the past couple of days. Hope he’ll be able to find some time during the weekend to get out and do some of that outdoorsy activity he enjoys so much. Meanwhile, here’s a picture from our 2004 father-daughter trek along the West Highland Way.
Happy Dad’s Day, Dad and thanks for all the memories!
17 Sunday May 2009
Posted in our family
11 Monday May 2009
Posted in think pieces
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My mother, from whom I seem to have inherited an allergic reaction to formal, mainstream holidays/occasions of any sort, has never been very interested in celebrating Mother’s Day. It was such a non-event in my childhood that I suggested a few days ago we take Hanna’s parents out to lunch on Sunday and couldn’t understand why she nearly had a heart attack: I had forgotten that everyone and their mother (not to mention their third cousin twice removed) would probably have the same idea, on account of the holiday.
But of course, the fact that the holiday itself hasn’t meant a lot to me, or my parents, doesn’t mean that we don’t mean a lot to each other. So in a celebratory spirit (hey! it’s the end of the semester!), I thought I’d give my mom a shout out for a few of the things that (in my opinion) make her a great parent.
5. Good art supplies. My mother, who got her start in education working with preschoolers in the Greenville, Michigan, Headstart program during the 1960s, has always appreciated the importance of decent materials for creative endeavors. One of my memories from early childhood is the regular trip to the art store to replace the heavily-used colors in our Prismicolor pencil set. We always had scissors that cut, glue that stuck, pens that weren’t dried out, and enough paper for whatever projects we had a mind to pursue.
4. Sharp knives. In some ways the same principle as above: my mother’s argument was always that rather than remove sharp objects from the reach of children, you helped them learn how to use them safely. Hence the swiss army knives we all got the Christmas we were six years old. And the lessons in using the microwave, stove, kitchen knives, washer and dryer, and the power tools. More broadly, I appreciate that Mom and Dad were focused on helping us acquire the skills we wanted or needed to be independent actors in the world, from the days when we were very, very small.
3. Books. There’s a reason that the sound of someone reading aloud, whether in person, on the radio, or a book on tape, has an instantaneously soothing effect almost regardless of what it is they are reading — as Hanna says, “they could be reading the phone book and I’d still be happy to listen to them.” Thanks, Mom, for reading, reading, reading, and surrounding us with books. My life is so much the richer for it.
2. Never asking what I planned to do with a Women’s Studies or Library Science degree. Majoring in Women’s Studies as an undergrad, I got to hear lots of colleagues tell stories about parents who didn’t understand what possible use the degree would be in the “real world.” I have always been grateful that I never had stories of my own to swap in this regard. Likewise, it’s amazing to me how many folks I’ve met since moving to Boston whose parents were skeptical about the utility of a library science degree — or even more simply, of their child’s desire to go into the field and spend their life with books, manuscripts, etc. My parents (closet librarians at heart, I feel) never blinked at the decision, and at times express more enthusiasm than I can muster at the possibilities for my future career!
1. Trust. Above all, I’m incredibly grateful for the way in which my parents have trusted all of us kids to find our way in the world, and to find (and create) living spaces, new relationships, and learning and work environments in which we will, ultimately, thrive. That confidence is humbling and the older I am, the more I appreciate how rare a gift it has been.
(Apologies to Mom and sister Maggie for re-using this tongue-in-cheek photograph; it was taken on Mother’s Day, 2005, incidentally the same day I graduated from Hope College. The card was a joke from Maggie to Mom. The scarf my mother is wearing is, in my opinion, one of her more lovely fashion accessories).
01 Friday May 2009
Posted in our family
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My grandma back in Holland (Mich.) is adopting a puppy this summer, and the litter was born earlier this week. My dad forwarded me a picture of the mama dog with her brood.
Somewhere in there is a sweet little female who will someday be named Addy!
the feminist librarian 