Tag Archives: hanna

tattoo no. 3

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

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artwork by Thomas Gustanis

Even in the midst of this Boston heatwave, I’m starting to get excited about the appointment Hanna and I have tomorrow for our new tattoos! They will be, respectively, her fourth and my third pieces — and our first projects with our new tattoo artist, Thomas Gustanis, the husband of one of Hanna’s colleagues at the Center for the History of Medicine.

We were excited to discover Thomas was building his tattoo portfolio, as our previous artist — Ellen Murphy — left the Boston area to work at Red Rocket in New York City.

*sad face*

But! Life (and tattoo art) move on, so we’re looking forward to building on the addiction that Ellen jump-started with Thomas’ developing style.

I had my first tattoo inked to mark the completion of my graduate degrees in January 2011.

Along with Hanna, I had my second tattoo inked in celebration of our marriage in August 2012.

When the opportunity to have a third tattoo completed arose I did not have an obvious design in mind, although I new I wanted something organic. After sitting with some possible designs and placements, I’ve settled on the lovely juniper branch Thomas sketched out (above), to be inked on the back of my right shoulder. The smell of juniper in the heat of summer sunshine is one of my strongest scent-memories from childhood: it grew as wild ground cover around the cottage in Leelanau, Michigan where my family vacationed every summer, and was also a pervasive scent in Bend, Oregon, where we regularly visited my maternal grandparents when I was young. Northern Michigan and Central Oregon are both deep parts of my geographically-rooted self, and I chose this tattoo to ground those spaces and memories within my bodily self.

It was only after I had selected the tattoo subject and finalized the design with Thomas that my grandmother, Marilyn, died in Bend. But I will be sitting for the tattoo tomorrow afternoon in her memory, and in thanks for the way she helped make Oregon a part of my Homeland.

minimalist wedding preparations [wedding post the fifth]

17 Friday Aug 2012

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Well, folks, as hard as it is for us to believe four weeks from today we’ll be getting married in our self-designed ceremony at a coffee shop, Tatte, here in Brookline, before a group of coffee-drinking witnesses! And as the date draws nearer, “plans” become “preparations” and items are slowly checked off the to-do list.

Here’s a few items of note for the interested.

1) Our Marriage License. On Monday Hanna and I walked home via Brookline Town Hall and filled out the paperwork for our marriage license in the Town Clerk’s office. The woman on duty over the lunch hour was chatty and nice, asking about Hanna’s tattoos and sharing the secrets of the Best Water Bottle Ever Made. We wrote down all our identifying information in triplicate (name, birthday, birthplace, parents’ names, etc.), signed all the forms, and then had to swear under oath we’d gotten everything correct. The clerk was impressed we were able to read aloud so well in tandem!

Hanna does subversive paperwork

I admit I had a few momentary waves of panic prior to going to the Clerk’s office that they would refuse to issue us the license or just be weird about it. I actually had it all worked out in my head what I’d do if the person on duty was rude about it (be calm; request their supervisor or an alternate clerk; read them the riot act in letter to the town government later!). But all fears of homophobia were baseless in this instance, and things could not have gone more smoothly.

Anna and Hanna: Doing our best to destroy traditional marriage one piece of bureaucratic paperwork at a time!

I woke up in the middle of the night the day we went to file for the license thinking about how the 19th-century Boston Brahmins who pushed for civil marriage laws and vital statistics collection (marriage had previously been the province of the church). Those old white dudes, hand-wringing over the rising divorce rate, could not have imagined that two hundred years down the road their descendants would be utilizing laws that were essentially an expansion of government oversight to make claims for marriage equality and equal protection under the law. I love it when reactionary politics comes back to bite the conservatives in the ass (even if it takes two hundred years!).

Possibly I’m a slightly bigger history nerd than I previously imagined.

2) Flash Wedding! A couple of weeks ago, when Hanna and I were discussing what location we’d like to hold our solemnization at — suddenly the office of our Justice of the Peace was feeling too impersonal — it was Hanna who came up with the idea of getting married at one of our favorite coffee shops. Over our morning lattes. So we’ve settled on Tatte in Audubon Circle in Brookline, a tiny little storefront where we’ve been regularly stopping for coffee and pastries for the past three years. The manager was moved that we’ve asked, and we’re going to meet with her next week to explain what we’re envisioning.

3) Preparing the Space. We went with the notion of a “flash wedding” in large part so that we could keep it loose and casual, and minimize the performance anxiety. Nonetheless, we’re going to do some preparation of the space — both physically and on a more emotional level — as a way of marking the transition into marriage. Hanna and I are assembling some objects for a table-top altar space, which we’ll be setting up just prior to the exchange of vows (we plan to arrive a bit early and get some coffee to ease the nerves!), and we’re going to speak with Tatte’s manager about the feasibility of playing “Jesu, Joy of Men’s Desiring” on the coffee shop sound system during the ceremony — it’s the piece my parents had for their wedding processional, and one Hanna is also fond of.

Tatte

While the cafe will remain open for business during our exchange of vows, we’re going to do our best to create a little micro-space either out on the front walk (if the weather is fine) or in the front corner of the shop (if it’s not) where we’ll use meditative silence and readings contributed by friends to move in an out of the sacred space of the solemnization.

4) Our Witnesses. We’ve invited three friends who live in the area to join us at the coffee shop as witness-participants on the 14th, and then again in the evening for a celebration dinner (place TBA) after we’ve scattered our separate ways during the day.* We’ve invited them each to bring a short piece of prose or poetry of their choice to share as opening and closing words, and one of them has bravely volunteered to take a few photographs so as not to disappoint the parents and friends who’ve threatened to drop us if we fail to provide material evidence of the nuptials.

And, as I’ve written previously, we’re all going to be signing the document I’ve come to think of as the “witnessing document,” our wedding contract with the vows handwritten by us, in turn, and then sent around the country to be signed by our nearest and dearest … and then framed and hung in our homes-to-come along with, perhaps, a photographs or two and a copy of our marriage certificate.

All in all, I think we’re well on the way to Making Our Wedding Day Matter. Melissa, our therapist**, impressed upon us at our last appointment the importance of making the day matter for us, regardless of how big or small the wedding itself was going to be. The importance of acknowledging what a Big Important Thing we’re embarking upon together.

And I’m proud of us for doing just that.

Stay tuned for post-event coverage in late September, as well as a post breaking down what all this cost in the monetary sense. Because I think it’s interesting to see what both the explicit and hidden costs of these life events can be.

*Hanna and I are hoping to get in for our wedding tattoos at some point during the afternoon, but we haven’t had a chance to settle an appointment with our artist at Chameleon.

**I know. On the one hand, that sounds so terribly yuppie and self-indulgent to be saying, but a) it’s true that we have a kick-ass therapist, and I think it’s important to de-stigmatize mental health care by acknowledging that, and b) I’m grateful every day that we live in a state that mandates mental health coverage in all health insurance plans — and, additionally, mandates health insurance. Even when Hanna and I were technically living below the poverty line (aside from student loans) we had state-subsidized health insurance that covered mental health care. Thank you former Governor Romney!

household economies [wedding post the second]

29 Tuesday May 2012

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UPDATE: Molly’s comment on this post made me realize I should make a point of saying that this post is about my own personal experiences and desires regarding shared finances, not meant to be a general statement about what “should” happen for couples, or what is morally “right” for all households, etc. Material security is a very, very personal thing. So all of the thoughts below are about me/mine — not meant as a judgment of anyone else’s life.

One of the first things Hanna and I did after we became a couple was go out and open a joint checking account.

Well, okay, it wasn’t one of the first things — but it was within a couple of months. And even though we’d been living together and sharing household expenses for a year and a half at that point, the shared account somehow seemed more possible, more right, to establish once we were in a sexually-intimate relationship.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t make any rational sense when I put it like that. But at the time, that’s how it felt. We were a couple, my logic went, and couples share material resources without keeping score. And the best, most efficient, way of doing that was an account to which we both had equal access.

And it’s worked for us since then. So much so that, as we move toward our wedding in the fall, Hanna raised the question of consolidating finances further — perhaps pooling our (frighteningly modest) savings, and more actively planning for a future down-payment or international travel. I agreed this sounded like a good move.

money love by cembas @ flickr.com

I got thinking about this last week when blogger blue milk put up a post about money and relationships, riffing on a New York Times piece on money-sharing in marriage. The comments on the blue milk post reveal a diversity of arrangements, and — to my mind — a surprising number of long-term couples whose financial resources are still fairly separate, or at least kept distinct.

It’s not that I haven’t known other options are out there for household finances, besides the single-financial-profile Hanna and I seem to be trending toward, but it’s fascinating to me how many people (women particularly?) feel strongly about maintaining their financial independence even within stable, long-term relationships.

Generally-speaking, there seems to be a lot of angst and anxiety these days about establishing household economies. Which (me being me) makes me reflect on why I don’t feel that level of angst and anxiety incorporating another person’s financial expectations and spending habits into my life (and trusting another person with my own income). Was it weird, at first? A little. It’s impossible to keep as tight a grip on the pulse of household spending when there are two of us — unless either of us were willing to spend a lot more time tracking trends (we aren’t). And I had to get used to Hanna making decisions with “my” money that I wouldn’t necessarily make vis a vis discretionary spending … but then again, she’s had to do the same. For the past three years, my paychecks have been automatically deposited into an account that Hanna has full access to, and that’s never really bothered me.

So the question becomes: Why? Why don’t I worry? 

I think it has something to do with how material resources and respect for individual decision-making and personal property (the things of our lives) were handled in my family of origin.

I grew up in a family where there was one main source of income: my father’s salary. My mother had done wage-work before we were born, and has picked up work-for-hire since we grew up and moved on, but didn’t work for pay while we were growing up. Yet regardless of the source of income, financial resources were consolidated: there was one checking account out of which bills were paid and daily expenses withdrawn. It had both my parents’ names on it. Their financial assets were theirs never “his” and “hers.”

Us kids all got spending money when we were small, and were taken to the bank to open savings accounts once we were earning pocket money (and later more significant income). So as kids, we had money that was separate from the family economy. We were also, correspondingly, expected to take responsibility for our own discretionary spending as we were able.

And I think almost more important than the specific, technical, details concerning the flow of cash, is the fact that we had confidence in one another to be financially responsible. My parents have confidence in each other as financial decision-makers, and helped us kids gain a basic understanding of our own finances so that as we moved from familial inter-dependence into adult fiscal independence (contrary to mythology, a gradual and far-from-decisive process) we were able to communicate about economic needs and desires without moral judgment. Resources were finite, true, but decisions about how to work within those material realities was always pursued collaboratively

Perhaps because of this model, I felt little discomfort in pooling our financial resources. 

Neither Hanna nor I enjoy book-keeping. So it’s way easier to have a single account for joint spending (virtually all our spending now) than it is to keep track of who’s paying what bills, buying what groceries, or who should be responsible for paying the tab for the rental car. Or, as I’ve seen some couples do, pay one another back via the monthly rent check or something similar.

OH MY GOD THAT WOULD DRIVE ME INSANE. Actually, it drove me a little bananas when we were doing that, or trying to, for the first year and a half of our relationship. The endless “Who’s turn is it to …” and “How much do I owe …” and “If I pay for, then you can get …” At which point pooling finances seemed like a simple expedient to cut out all the white noise of negotiation and haggling.

Would I worry more about protecting my financial independence if I were in a heterosexual relationship? To some extent, perhaps. Like with marriage itself, I worry less about falling into heteronormative sand traps because our relationship is by definition already non-normative. I don’t have the fear, for example, that my husband will just fall into handling the finances because social expectation and pressure encourages him to do so. In a relationship with two women, there is no “obvious” partner to coordinate the household economy. Rather than having social forces relentlessly pushing us toward integration, we have to move forward with deliberate insistence that, yes, this is what we wish to do. This is how we wish to live.

Which is not to suggest that hetero couples aren’t making deliberate decisions. Just that the social pressure to fit heteronormative marriage ideals (male breadwinner, female home-maker) isn’t applied so heavily when it comes to people who aren’t in hetero relationships. We have to argue for the chance to engage in activities straight couples are pressured to do. So the experience of choice and agency is qualitatively different there.

Is part of my ease due to the fact that I am (though by a thin margin at this point) the primary wage-earner in our household? I don’t have a complete answer to this. When I wrote in comments at blue milk about the fact that I don’t resent the inequality in wage-earning because things even out overall in terms of domestic responsibilities, another commenter got on my case about the “regressive” nature of such an arrangement. She assumed that I was somehow implying that my wage-work was more valuable than Hanna’s, when in fact I’d been trying to argue that wage- and non-wage work that contributes to the running of our household counts equally as far as I’m concerned, and as I said in my response to the critique:

With two (or more) adults in a family, you spread both wage-earning and other responsibilities around according to who is available to do what, who has what skills, and what feels fair to all people concerned. Too often, mainstream media reduces equality (and power) in household relationships to income and ignores all of the other aspects of running a household to which everyone in a family contributes.

To my mind, part of being in a marriage (or non-marital long-term relationship) is the luxury of not keeping financial score, as it were. Obviously you still keep your fingers on the pulse of basic fairness, in the sense that you speak up if it starts feeling like you always end up stopping for groceries or your partner always gets to pick the Friday-night movie. But I felt very strongly, going into our relationship, that I wanted our household to be ours not “hers” and “hers” in a nit-picky material way.

We share books, clothes, food, bath and body products, we co-care for Geraldine. Psychologically and emotionally, I didn’t want to get into a situation where I started resenting that Hanna’s physical therapy bills were a significant monthly expense, or to start stressing about whether her decision to prioritize buying a new season of Supernatural was less justified than my decision to pre-order the latest Diana Gabaldon in hardcover.

Do I catch myself doing it sometimes? Sure. I’m as fallible as the next person. But I want to work toward a place where mutual confidence and trust is so normal that it’s unremarkable — dare I say nigh invisible?

guest post @ the last name project

11 Friday May 2012

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I have a guest post up at from two to one today as part of The Last Name Project (co-hosted by Danielle of from two to one and Shannon of The Feminist Mystique). The Last Name Project profiles “an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities.” For my contribution, I wrote about the decision Hanna and I made to combine our middle names when we register our marriage:

This solution felt right to us because it doesn’t privilege either person’s family name. It adds to, rather than erasing any aspect of, our (linguistic) identities. As a feminist and queer woman, I think extensively about mainstream notions of marriage, family, and identity, and I knew that I wanted a way to honor my individual self and family history alongside incorporating my partner into who I am and will become. Weaving Hanna’s middle name together with mine feels like a positive way to entwine our individual selves together without losing those other strands of who we are and have been.

Check out the whole piece over at from two to one.

minimalist wedding plans [installment the first]

08 Tuesday May 2012

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While I loved to dress up and play princess or flower fairy in my babysitters’ hand-me-down prom dresses as a child, I don’t remember having much of a thing for weddings. Even my princess games tended toward the “orphan princesses run away to the magic forest to set up housekeeping together in the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse” feel to them (who me, pre-adolescent passionate friendships? what?). So I can completely and entirely, without any regret, say that I’m thankful beyond belief that Hanna isn’t interested in a bells-and-whistles wedding.

About a month after we decided we were getting hitched on, like, a particular date, the major decisions have been made and the pressing details ironed out. Everything else is just icing-on-the-cake details. (Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago what kind of cake we were going to have and I was like, “Oh, that’s right! An excuse for cake!”)

For folks interested in the process of minimalist wedding planning, here’s what we’ve got sketched out so far.

1. Ceremony. It’s going to be a civil ceremony (neither of us are active in a church/religion), performed either out-of-doors or at the office of the Justice of the Peace we’ve hired for the occasion. The state of Massachusetts requires paperwork to be filed three days in advance of the license being issued, so we’ll be heading down to City Hall to do that together at some point the week before the wedding. As I mentioned already, Massachusetts is one of those easy-peasy states where the fact we’re both women is neither here nor there as far as the bureaucracy is concerned. (Thanks to GLAD for the legal overview; PDF)

The vows are still a work-in-progress, though we’re shooting for impersonal-formal without saying shit we don’t actually believe in. This is harder than you might think.

2. Witnesses. We aren’t required to have witnesses, here in the state of Massachusetts, but we’re talking about who we want in attendance. One problem is that the short list is scattered across at least four states and multiple time zones. So the question of who will be with us on the day, if anyone, is still under discussion and advisement. We do have a work-around in mind we’re pretty happy with; more on that soon.

3. Rings & Things. We’ve decided to have rings, a matching set from an artist in Spain who sells through Etsy. She’s engraving the rings with our new middle names (see below). We fussed a bit about the font for the text before deciding to supply her with the names written in our own hands.

“Sunday best” will probably be in order, just to spruce ourselves up a bit, though neither of us are inclined to spend the time or money necessary for the wedding clothes we might — in our ideal fantasy headspace — enjoy dressing up in (hint: there has, in the past, been talk of knee-high boots, corsets, and waistcoats).

4. Names. We’ve been going back and forth about this for about as long as we’ve been talking about getting married, and finally decided that since children aren’t in the picture and there’s no elegant way of combining Cook and Clutterbuck, we’d go with combining our middle names instead. Hence our new, legal, middle names: Elisabeth Jane.

5. Tattoos. Wedding tattoos, I know. But we’ve both got ink already and since my ability to wear jewelry consistently is a bit dodgy we decided ink was a more permanent way of marking the transition to being wives. Drawing on Hanna’s Buddhist practice and our English-Scottish roots we decided we wanted a knotwork design, and chose the eternal or endless knot. We’re going to have my dad work up some different options incorporating colors we’re both drawn to, including browns, purples, blues, greens, and grays.

6. Announcements. We’re asking our friend Diana to design us letterpress announcements to mail out to family and friends. Photographs of any kind are still under negotiation, but a wedding portrait of some kind may or may not be included.

7. Honeymoon. This part actually came first! Our original plan was to spend a week’s vacation on Cape Cod this fall (our first honest-to-goodness vacation that doesn’t involve travel for professional development or family visits) and it was in planning that vacation that we decided the time was ripe to get married. So we’re renting a tiny studio cottage on the ocean for a week and planning to spend lots of hours wandering around the national shoreline, hanging in coffee shops, reading, watching Supernatural and Stargate: Atlantis, cooking, wading in tidepools, and all the other things one does on a vacation-honeymoon with one’s wife.

8. Family. With my family scattered across the U.S. from Michigan to Texas to Oregon, we’re still working out the details of how to mark the occasion with family members. There’s talk of celebration dinner with the parents of the brides, or a “grand tour” to visit the siblings … basically, we’re not sure yet. Time and money being what they are, a unified family-and-friends gathering probably just isn’t in the cards.

9. Larger Meanings. Getting married. Being a wife. Having a wife. As an historian with an interest in sexuality and gender, and as a queer feminist, I’m obviously acutely aware of the historical specificity of what we’re doing here. It’s living in this time, in this place, that’s making it possible for Hanna and I to conceive of ourselves as being in a relationship that falls within the purview of marital relations — and then makes it possible for us to act on that self-understanding. Without fear of losing our jobs or being shunned by friends. Quite the opposite, in fact: our friends and family have celebrated with and for us, and when I told my colleagues about the nuptials I got a hug from my boss.

There have been other times when, there continue to be other places where, and other couples for whom, this manner of openness, legality, and celebration is not an option.

I’m also aware, and in political sympathy with, many of the people who decry the way the institution of marriage, however equal, has become the gateway to a whole host of civil rights, responsibilities, and benefits — from parental leave to retirement benefits and everything in-between. The navigation of private meaning and personal choices as they interact with and help to shape public dialogue and structural inequalities, for better or worse, is something none of us can escape. Writing about what we’re doing, and why, is part of my commitment to thinking about how the personal and political interact in myriad ways.

10. Cake! When I was a child, my default celebration cake was chocolate chip pound cake; these days I’m a fan of red velvet (is there a better mode of cream cheese frosting delivery? seriously). Clearly important decisions must be made.

I’ll keep you posted!

a wee bit of news we’d like to share

01 Tuesday May 2012

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“Never will I take for granted in this world your generosity of exploration, how you have listened to my body and found what you could do.”
~Joan Nestle, “Our Gift of Touch,” in A Fragile Union (144).

It’s my parents’ thirty-sixth wedding anniversary today, so it seems somehow appropriate to take this moment to make this particular announcement.

Hanna and I have decided to get married. It was one of those gradual processes that doesn’t really have an event of engagement attached to it — we talked about it, and then talked about it some more, until at some point it felt true. That at some point we would be married. Eventually.

And then, back in early April, I came home late from work one night to find Hanna reading in bed.

“Hey,” I said, “I’ve brought you a present.” It was a mint chocolate chapstick I’d seen that morning at Whole Foods that had made me think of her.

“I think we should get married when we go on vacation this fall,” she answered.

I admit, this wasn’t quite the response to the mint chocolate chapstick I was anticipating, but hey! I was willing to go with it.

At which point sleepy, comfortable, familiar, probably Not Safe For Work, kissing commenced.

these two mugs are getting married!

Happily, we’re in Massachusetts where legal marriage is a boringly normal option for us. Believe me, there’s a real thrill to be had from anticipating the moment when I can say phrases including the words “my wife” and experience precisely zero negative ramifications as a result.

Or, at least, if anyone does push back we have the backing of the law to tell them where to shove it. (Yes, I get a certain satisfaction from knowing this. No, it doesn’t make me a particularly charitable person.)

We’re getting married on September 14th. Our “to do” list for the wedding currently has a decidedly underwelming nine items, including three that are more properly related to vacation planning than the wedding itself. And half of them are already taken care of! There’s a lot to be said for going the minimalist route.

What strange things we humans do. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts as the season approaches.

Meanwhile, I am so very, very thankful, every day, that Hanna has chosen to build a life with me. There’s no one I’d rather have here, at my center-space. No one outside my family of origin who so immediately and irrevocably meant home and safe as Hanna did. I know she doesn’t fully understand why I feel this way, or always believe it to be true. Yet she’s willing to take the risk anyway — and that makes her one of the bravest people I know.

Wherever we travel from here, I’m glad we’re a team. I think we make a pretty damn good one.

new blog launched: the corner of your eye

05 Thursday Jan 2012

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I warned you it was coming, and now it’s here! Hanna and I have started a new joint review blog, the corner of your eye* , which can be found at corner-of-your-eye.blogspot.com. or via the link on the left-hand sidebar under “find me elsewhere online.”

the corner of your eye

I know, I know … like either of us have scads of free time going to waste. But none of our existing online spaces are really dedicated to arts and culture reviews per se, and we thought it might be fun to experiment with joint blogging. Really, it’s pure indulgence for us both in terms of letting us opinionate about the books, movies, and television shows that occupy so much of our discretionary time (when we’re not writing fan fiction or trawling the interwebs).

Our goal is to put up two posts a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll likely be cross-posting some content here, particularly when the creative juices are running low.

We’re still tweaking the visual look of the blog, so please feel free to comment re: accessibility and all the rest.

*bonus points for anyone who can identify the allusion

looking back/looking forward (from where we are now)

31 Saturday Dec 2011

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it’s been a busy and oft-times exhausting year!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been feeling more aware and more thankful than usual of all the ways our life feels more settled than last year and — while still containing its stresses — just generally better on the well-being front. So here are a few notes on what happened in the Cook-Clutterbuck household this year.

The Good:

  • Last December I completed my library science degree which, hooray!
  • On the first Monday after New Years, I began my full-time position at the MHS.
  • Hanna took the leap of leaving a workplace that had been steadily eroding her health — a particularly brave move given the current economic climate — and has been rewarded by steady gainful employment at the Center for the History of Medicine and the related Medical Heritage Library with a fine group of fellow archivists. As I type this, she’s looking forward to two more years of grant-funded archival processing and digital projects.
  • I’ve been blogging at The Pursuit of Harpyess since January 2011, an opportunity that has led to slightly more active participation in the feminist blogosphere than I had the energy for during graduate school — and certainly kept me more engaged during my first year of post-grad employment than I might otherwise have put in the effort to sustain.
  • I finished my thesis in May 2011 and brought my graduate school career to a thankful close. 
  • Also in May, I finally had a chance to take Hanna to visit my hometown in Michigan.
  • With neither of us in school, we’ve had more time to settle into life here in Boston, which appears to involve a lot of coffee shops, used bookshops, libraries, and hosting dinners for a few close friends.
  • 2012 will mark the fifth year of living in this apartment and neighborhood, both of which we’re pretty happy with. We keep talking about moving at some point (a bigger kitchen would be nice; and space for more bookshelves), but thankfully moving isn’t an urgent need.

The Not-So-Good:

  • In the event anyone wants to know, depression still sucks. I’m so, so thankful for Fenway Health and the wonderful medical and mental health care providers we work with there. And I am continually amazed at Hanna’s strength and patience, with her willingness to put one foot in front of the other (particularly on the hard days), and her determination to hold onto hope we’ll build a life worth sharing.
  • While Hanna and I are more securely situated than many vis a vis our employment and financial stability, carrying a joint burden of some $160,000.00 in student loans — even if they’re our only form of accumulated debt — is a vulnerability we’re just learning to live with. Even as we scrabble around to start long-range savings and consider the possibility of paying for things like travel abroad or a mortgage. I’m thankful the issue of educational debt continues to be a topic of conversation and concern on a national (and international) level, since it’s not going to get better without significant structural change.
  • Given our limited ability to travel, living far away from family and close friends continues to suck. We’ve got loved ones in Texas, California, Oregon, Michigan, and Maine. All of whom are missed dearly. Social media helps, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the distance between us.
The Possible Future:
  • Thanks to Hanna’s continued employment in the Harvard University library system, she’ll be eligible to take a history seminar in the spring, virtually free of charge (hooray!). While they don’t offer courses specifically in her area of interest, Irish history, she plans to enroll in a course on intellectual history that she hopes will give her a chance to continue her research on the history of Irish nationalism.
  • I’m working on a paper for the New England Historical Association and the MHS on a 1914 case of alleged sexual assault here in Boston documented by the New England Watch & Ward society as part of their ongoing efforts to eradicate vice. 
  • In March, I’ll be traveling back to Michigan (hopefully with Hanna for company!) to take part in the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the Hope College Women’s Studies program, of which I am a proud graduate.
  • Hanna and I are knocking around the idea of starting a joint review blog, tentatively titled stuff + things, which will roll out in January. Watch for further details coming soon.
  • As if that weren’t enough, I’m still working on oral history transcription and hope to start posting final versions of interviews on the project blog later in the new year.
I’ll obviously be writing about all of this as time and energy allow, so stay tuned … I look forward to sharing all that’s to come in 2012 and beyond. 

four years ago today: "something like the five stages of grief"

24 Monday Oct 2011

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Part of an ongoing series of posts highlighting primary source material from my first semester at Simmons during the fall of 2007.


From: Anna
To: Janet
Date: Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 2:51 PM
Subject: Mid-week touchstone 

Dear Mum, 

I’m sitting at the Mass Historical Society desk for the afternoon. Being here reminds me of all those hours I spent in middle school doing “homework” in the Holland Museum lobby, waiting for tourists to appear :).

This is my second full day at the MHS. This morning, I was photocopying papers, I turn to the next paper, and what do I see? A letter from M. Cary Thomas — turn of the century woman scholar, educated at Johns Hopkins, founder of Bryn Mawr college — written in her own hand when she was president of Bryn Mawr! Oh. My. God. It’s so surreal just to find something like that, and know once she was holding it, and then find myself putting it on the photocopier!

at the front desk of the MHS (October 2008)

It’s strange and not at all comfortable (given my personality) to be a novice at this job. I have certain skills to draw on, of course, but there is so much to learn in terms of the conventions of an archives versus a bookstore or library or museum. Particularly, there is so much more need to monitor the documents, since they are moving around the building — rather than in stable exhibits — and are one-of-a-kind, extremely rare items. So I am learning new procedures as well as the usual learning of everyone’s names, and where the bathrooms are located, and how to use the email system, etc.

I am enjoying it, although it’s been a rough few days physically, which puts a damper on my mood. While usually my cycle isn’t particularly taxing, it can be a bad combination if I’m already weary (which is just the general state of things this fall . . . I know it will be got through, but annoying while it lasts). Headaches, which lead to Excedrin which leads to insomnia, etc. Yesterday, I intentionally drank coffee like a fiend in the afternoon to keep myself going through my book review assignment (more below), so today I’m feeling rather hung over (and it’s a long day, with class this evening from 6-9). Whine whine whine. 

I wrote this book review, which for some unknown reason (or reasons) I’ve been dragging my heels about for three weeks and absolutely panicked about finishing. I think it became a convenient locus for my anxieties. For a few days, I couldn’t even think about the project without panicking and/or falling asleep (which is my physical defense mechanism–I literally can’t stay awake). And then, it came down to last night, when I was pretty willing to just blurt on paper and print it out to turn in. I didn’t even really proof it. Oh, well. Not my finest scholarly hour, but I sort of feel like I can afford to have an off-semester as I’m getting adjusted. I can’t imagine (my own hubris, I know) that an “off” semester will be anything worse than “B” work. And I know my history class — where I put my best energy — will be a clear “A” (again, hubris) so I’m not too anxious in terms of keeping my scholarships. 

I was thinking last night (haha) that my approach to academic projects is something like the five stages of grief: (1) I have totally unrealistic self-expectations about what I can get done and what I want to get done (denial); (2) when it becomes clear that I’m not going to get my ideal project done, I start resenting the project and the professor, and castigating myself for the unrealistic expectations (anger); (3) I debate internally with myself over what sort of project that’s less-than-ideal I can get done, and maybe argue with the professor about altering the assignment (bargaining); (4) if none of these approaches work, it’s time to start despairing about the entire educational system and wondering what I’m doing there, and imagining I will never complete the assignment and probably drop out of school (depression); (5) finally, when I get tired of feeling crummy and/or it gets down to the wire, I finally give up on the ideal project altogether and just patch something together (acceptance). 

The book I had to review was actually quite interesting, so I’m not entirely clear why I got hung up about it. It was on the history of passports, and there’s lots to say about the history of identity papers, and how they relate to actual persons, and how they connect persons to governments. Part of my problem was no doubt lack of FOCUS, which is usually provided for smaller assignments by class discussion and course readings–but in this case the assignment was poorly written and I just got off on a muddled foot.

I think, in general, it’s been like pulling teeth intellectually to focus on abstract intellectual ideas right now, with so many external changes going on. I’ve never been good at focusing in the best circumstances, which for me means an utterly non-distracting environment (why I can’t study in libraries, ironically enough, since they’re not spaces I can take for granted and ignore). Well, right now, my whole world is a distracting environment! So I feel lucky when I manage to have a more or less coherent thought that’s defined enough to put into a short response paper :).

I had coffee with Hanna Monday night — her initiative!! — which was really good, I think, and have “dates” scheduled with both her and G for next week. I realized that, even though I treasure the alone-time, I can get too wrapped up in my own self-critical monologues re: my graduate work, etc., when I spend every moment I’m not in class or at work by myself. It’s easy for me to forget that fellow students can actually bolster my mood and energize me (as well as reminding me how unrealistic my expectations for my own work might be :)!) since 90% of the time, they aren’t very helpful. But a few well-chosen comrades can make a difference. 

Happily, my own well-chosen comrades (H and G) are going to be in the same history class next semester, and have convinced me to be in it as well . . . so hopefully the collaborative energy will be exponentially enhanced :). G is also taking oral history, which I will be doing as well, so I’m looking forward very much to the spring. I’ll probably panic when the time comes, and go through the predictable cycle (see above) anyway, but right now I can idealize things to my hearts content! 

I really hope you and Dad are able to make a trip to Boston in the spring. I’m already haphazardly collecting little things to do . . . eg the Wednesday morning art tour at the MHS, which I was given privately today, and very much enjoyed; and a visit to the Brookline Booksmith, my favorite independent bookstore so far . . . apart of course, from showing you my own spaces, and the museums and lovely parks that abound. Hm, and places to eat! I walked past a pub this afternoon called “The Foggy Goggle” which I think is just begging to be tried! 

I was asking Dad about filling my levothyroxin prescription online; I may at some point soon ask if you could pick up a refill at Model Drug (where my current prescription is), unless it seems easy to get a new prescription from Krayshak’s office. Dad says it shouldn’t be difficult to send it out here. And I’d reimburse you, of course. 

North Hall, Simmons Residential Campus

Tonight is the first game of the world series, so the neighborhood is going to be bustling! Since I’m on foot, I don’t anticipate much trouble, and I live just far enough away that the noise doesn’t wake me up (living on the res campus, I think, insulates me from the street just enough).

That’s about all the news around here . . . I’m going to sign off and see if I can catch up on a couple of other emails before the end of my shift, 

Love, 
Anna