Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Obama Time: 6/3/08, St. Paul, MN

Wait in line: 1 hour 20 minutes...

(Image credit: H-Dub)

I know that some folks were in line for eight hours or more. But I did not think I could handle more than an hour or so--let alone two little girls. At first my daughters were a little nervous. They said they had never seen so many people at one time. But soon they relaxed and got caught up in the carnival-like atmosphere. While in line one of the t-shirt vendors, singing an impromptu song to attract attention to his wares, even pointed out one of my girls and worked her into his lyric: "Vote for Obama when you've had enough/Like that pretty little girl with the afro puff." "Mommy! He's talking about me!" While in line I read one of the final chapters of the fourth installment of Harry Potter aloud. It not only entertained my daughters, but several other children and their parents in the line around us.

...Decision-making regarding button purchase: 15 minutes...

(Image credit: Chad Davis)

Both my daughters finally decided to spend their $5 on a button featuring Sen. Obama as Harry Potter, complete with round-framed glasses, robe, and wand. (Though not, as one of my girls pointed out, with the lightening scar on his forehead.) The caption promised that Barack Obama would "bring wizardry to the White House." I am not sure what wizardry that would be, but if it has anything to do with such things as a better economy, improved education, and peace and stability at home and abroad, I am all for such magic.

....Dap from your boo before the big speech: Approx 7 seconds...

(Image credit: Texas Revolutionary)

"Look at her dress, Mommy! She's beautiful!" "Where are his kids, Mommy? Aren't they gonna come, too?" "Can we go down there on the floor to see them?" ...No, we did not make it to the floor of the Excel Energy Center. But at least we made it inside. From high in the rafters, the Obamas were but dots far below. But that was compensated for by the sight of them on the big screen of the Jumbotron where we--and the world--were treated to the sight of their (now famous) dap. (Or "fist pound," if you prefer.)

...Seeing your daughters witness history: Timeless.

(Image credit: Me!)

Foolish

A couple days ago I got back into town from visiting relatives and was greeted by temps in the 40s and students in shorts and flip flops tossing frisbees. This morning I was greeted by half a foot of new snow, bundled myself and my girls in hats and gloves, and spent 10 minutes clearing heavy snow from my car. Thus, I'm reposting "The Sun Also Rouses" from last summer to cheer myself up about our cruel April Fools joke. Trust, Minnesotans: It will get better...

Sometimes, during our long and cold Minnesota winters, I play a trick on myself. I go out to my sunporch--a small, enclosed, window-filled space that heats quickly if the sun is shining, no matter how low the outside temperature. There I sit on my porch swing, close my eyes, and pretend that the warmth I feel is the warmth from a distant island. I am far, far away from here (I tell myself)...The waves are mere steps from me, and palm trees are swaying languidly overhead, cool breezes carress my skin (I continue in reverie). After some moments of this, I open my eyes. Only then am I fully aware that I am not on some palm-dotted, sun drenched isle, but in the frozen tundra of the northern USA.

This moment of realization always fills me with an oppressive sense of sadness and regret. I tamp down this sense only because I have so much to do--bills to pay, journal articles to draft, children to drop off or pick up. And I figure that at least for the few moments that I was self-fooled, I may have soaked up enough vitamin D to ward off any unpleasant ailments for another few weeks.

A couple weeks ago I was actually sitting on an island in the middle of the sea with the waves and palms and all that. I was vacationing with my family in Hawaii, on the island of Ohau. At one point on the beach, I closed my eyes and pretended I was back home in my sunporch instead, only pretending to sit on a beach. I needed to ensure that I captured any additional sense-details that I could carry with me to use this coming winter.

The first sense I attempt to nail down is the breeze. I conclude that "cool breeze" is different qualitatively and not just quantitatively from either a "hot wind" or "cold gale." In other words, it is not just a wind midway between these two. For example, a cold wind is so unique that I often refer to it with its own folk name, one that--if you do not already use it--is difficult to explain without you just experiencing it first hand: "the hawk." There are also phrases, metaphors and such for the cold. "Cold as a witch's left...um...breast." (Insert other folk name--slur?--for breast.) I am not sure of the origin of this comparison. But somehow it fits, no matter how nonsensical or misogynistic such a statement may be.

There are similar comparison's for heat: "Hot as hell," for example, simply and concisely sums things up. I can think of no such sayings, however, for the cool breezes I experienced sitting on the beach in the city of Ko Olina. But together with the warm sun, such breezes constituted an almost living system-- the sun-breeze continuum, call it--interacting to both calm and excite, keeping me in a perpetual state of intentional, but moderate motion.

Then there were smells...

Over the summer I have gotten in the habit of buying fresh flowers for our home every 2 weeks or so. I was surprised to find how happy seeing these splashes of beauty made me, and I have vowed to continue this habit. But I have also been surprised at how smell-less most of these flowers have been. Perhaps they put something on the flowers to make them last longer (they do stay beautiful a surprisingly long time) that interferes with their scent? Perhaps I am just too spoiled by super strong fake scents that squirt out of a can or waft from a wall plug that I can no longer appreciate the subtlety of "real" flower scents? I do not know. But many times I have been taken by the beauty in my vase, then walk over to bask my face in their scent only to smell only the slightest hint of aroma--or nothing at all.

This lack of smell, however, is not an issue on the island. There the scents are confident...arrogant, even. They will not be ignored. Together with the equally bold colors--and combined with the sun and the breeze--these smells create another active entity enlivening the atmosphere and influencing my actions within it. (The sun-scent-color-breeze continuum...)

And what about those waves? I have read of waves being "gentle" or "carressing," of waves "lapping" at folks' feet, even of ocean water feeling as if it is "baptizing" someone. Well, I think any one of these characterizations alone is not quite correct. The water and waves have a much more complex personality than this. At the point where the waves wash up against the sand they are, indeed, fairly gentle--playful, even. Waves taunt my daughters by--yes--lapping and licking at their toes. Their trickster nature makes them flow over the girls' sand castles, removing from them their form and detail. Yet the waves' builder character enables them to create their own art using sand as medium: cooling hot sand, compacting and smoothing loose sand, even inserting small shell fragments as if adding objects to a sculpture.

A little farther out the water is warm, the waves still gentle--carressing feet, ankles, lower shin. But move still farther out. Now the water is deep and cool--suddenly, as if an absolute dividing line has been passed. The waves are stronger here. They are more insistent, effortlessly moving my whole body with their strength. Schools of thin little fish call this depth their home. They will swim past me, brushing against my thighs with no fear of capture. Farther out still and the waves, cooler still, are king. I do not go out this far, as my swimming skills are not that great. Here, I know, an unexpected tide can carry a person far out to sea. Here is where people who like to court and tame wild waves paddle out on big boards in an attempt to walk on water.

The multifaceted waves add yet another package of senses--combining temperature, personality, tactility and adding them to my complex continuum of sun, scent, color, and breeze. The continuum is almost complete.

The final sense is one that I think will be the most difficult to capture while sitting on my sunporch. Standing at the edge of land and ocean, feeling the sun and breeze and smelling the smells and looking over the water and all of that, makes me feel very small in a very big universe.

Here, the world goes on forever without end, farther than my eyes can see. Water meets sky at the horizon. I see few people, but have the abstract knowledge that at that moment billions are born and living and dying. I see no stars (except our sun) in the daylight, but have the abstract knowledge that they, too, are coming into being, sending their light across space and time, and snuffing out. My concerns--of bills to pay, jobs to progress in, children to care for, tourist attractions to visit, and all manner of other thoughts--seem very small. There seems to be ample time to breathe deeply, to just sit in the warm sun and feel the cool wind tickle the small hairs on my face. There seems to be ample motivation to then stand and move on to the next thing, neither dimimished nor depressed by the transition from my prior state of calm, but instead roused and energized by it.

I can't wait for my sunporch in December.

SITBB Vault: Thanks. Full.

This holiday weekend in 1999: What was I thankful for then? Perhaps I was relieved to have gone a few hours without the terrible morning (actually, "all day") sickness that had plagued me throughout the first half of my pregnancy. Or maybe I had been thankful for an "everything looks normal" verdict following the most recent ultrasound scan of my crowded and expanding uterus. I may have also been thankful for successfully navigating the first couple months of my PhD program.

But there is no doubt about what I was thankful for a few months after that Thanksgiving: These two little munchkins:

I remember walking through our front door for the first time with our daughters swinging from our arms in their car seat/carriers. It seemed strange to suddenly be back in my own home after an extended stay in a hospital room. It seemed familiar, yet somehow completely not. These two little infants all bundled up in their too-big newborn clothes (they were about a month early) seemed to actually warp the space around us as we toured the house with them. As we whispered to them, "here's your new house," "here's the crib where you'll sleep," "here's the kitchen," I sensed that this could not be quite right.

Was everything that these babies needed really here in this little two-bedroom townhouse? Yes, all the outlets were stoppered with clear plastic plug covers. Yes, their cream colored bedding was all tucked in place in their brand new matching cribs. Yes, the electric double breast pump had been delivered and was out of the box. But this place was no hospital.

And who the heck was I?

I recall feeling in those first couple of days that at any moment we would receive a call from the hospital: "We have made a terrible mistake. We are sorry for any inconvenience. But you must bring the children back here. Immediately."

Of course that call never came. Nope. These babies were ours, free and clear. And very soon any such insecurities about my new role as "parent"' evaporated in a hazy cycle of cleaning and nursing, bathing and napping, cuddling and soothing.

Yes. I know I must have been heart-overflowing with thanks for our daughters during those first few weeks--just as I have been ever since. But in a sense these babies were not just a gift to me, my husband, and our family. They were also a gift to the world from us. And so, as the world embraces these now five year old girls and whispers to us this weekend "Thank you" I whisper back, "You are welcome."

The Art of Natural Destruction

August was a stormy month here in Minnesota. A few weeks ago I saw the aftermath of one of these storms at Como Lake during my walk. I couldn't take my eyes off of the twisted, stripped, broken, and uprooted trees. The sight of them was sad--but at the same time, they were...lovely. It was as if the trees, in their state of ruin and disarray, revealed beauty normally hidden from view. I vowed to return to document this art, and did so a few days later with camera in hand and daughters in tow.

Daughter #1: "So sad, Mommy." Thoughtful pause. "But it's kind of like sculpture or something." Yes. Exactly.

The Sun Also Rouses

Sometimes, during our long and cold Minnesota winters, I play a trick on myself. I go out to my sunporch--a small, enclosed, window-filled space that heats quickly if the sun is shining, no matter how low the outside temperature. There I sit on my porch swing, close my eyes, and pretend that the warmth I feel is the warmth from a distant island. I am far, far away from here (I tell myself)...The waves are mere steps from me, and palm trees are swaying languidly overhead, cool breezes carress my skin (I continue in reverie). After some moments of this, I open my eyes. Only then am I fully aware that I am not on some palm-dotted, sun drenched isle, but in the frozen tundra of the northern USA.

This moment of realization always fills me with an oppressive sense of sadness and regret. I tamp down this sense only because I have so much to do--bills to pay, journal articles to draft, children to drop off or pick up. And I figure that at least for the few moments that I was self-fooled, I may have soaked up enough vitamin D to ward off any unpleasant ailments for another few weeks.

A couple weeks ago I was actually sitting on an island in the middle of the sea with the waves and palms and all that. I was vacationing with my family in Hawaii, on the island of Ohau. At one point on the beach, I closed my eyes and pretended I was back home in my sunporch instead, only pretending to sit on a beach. I needed to ensure that I captured any additional sense-details that I could carry with me to use this coming winter.

The first sense I attempt to nail down is the breeze. I conclude that "cool breeze" is different qualitatively and not just quantitatively from either a "hot wind" or "cold gale." In other words, it is not just a wind midway between these two. For example, a cold wind is so unique that I often refer to it with its own folk name, one that--if you do not already use it--is difficult to explain without you just experiencing it first hand: "the hawk." There are also phrases, metaphors and such for the cold. "Cold as a witch's left...um...breast." (Insert other folk name--slur?--for breast.) I am not sure of the origin of this comparison. But somehow it fits, no matter how nonsensical or misogynistic such a statement may be.

There are similar comparison's for heat: "Hot as hell," for example, simply and concisely sums things up. I can think of no such sayings, however, for the cool breezes I experienced sitting on the beach in the city of Ko Olina. But together with the warm sun, such breezes constituted an almost living system-- the sun-breeze continuum, call it--interacting to both calm and excite, keeping me in a perpetual state of intentional, but moderate motion.

Then there were smells...

Over the summer I have gotten in the habit of buying fresh flowers for our home every 2 weeks or so. I was surprised to find how happy seeing these splashes of beauty made me, and I have vowed to continue this habit. But I have also been surprised at how smell-less most of these flowers have been. Perhaps they put something on the flowers to make them last longer (they do stay beautiful a surprisingly long time) that interferes with their scent? Perhaps I am just too spoiled by super strong fake scents that squirt out of a can or waft from a wall plug that I can no longer appreciate the subtlety of "real" flower scents? I do not know. But many times I have been taken by the beauty in my vase, then walk over to bask my face in their scent only to smell only the slightest hint of aroma--or nothing at all.

This lack of smell, however, is not an issue on the island. There the scents are confident...arrogant, even. They will not be ignored. Together with the equally bold colors--and combined with the sun and the breeze--these smells create another active entity enlivening the atmosphere and influencing my actions within it. (The sun-scent-color-breeze continuum...)

And what about those waves? I have read of waves being "gentle" or "carressing," of waves "lapping" at folks' feet, even of ocean water feeling as if it is "baptizing" someone. Well, I think any one of these characterizations alone is not quite correct. The water and waves have a much more complex personality than this. At the point where the waves wash up against the sand they are, indeed, fairly gentle--playful, even. Waves taunt my daughters by--yes--lapping and licking at their toes. Their trickster nature makes them flow over the girls' sand castles, removing from them their form and detail. Yet the waves' builder character enables them to create their own art using sand as medium: cooling hot sand, compacting and smoothing loose sand, even inserting small shell fragments as if adding objects to a sculpture.

A little farther out the water is warm, the waves still gentle--carressing feet, ankles, lower shin. But move still farther out. Now the water is deep and cool--suddenly, as if an absolute dividing line has been passed. The waves are stronger here. They are more insistent, effortlessly moving my whole body with their strength. Schools of thin little fish call this depth their home. They will swim past me, brushing against my thighs with no fear of capture. Farther out still and the waves, cooler still, are king. I do not go out this far, as my swimming skills are not that great. Here, I know, an unexpected tide can carry a person far out to sea. Here is where people who like to court and tame wild waves paddle out on big boards in an attempt to walk on water.

The multifaceted waves add yet another package of senses--combining temperature, personality, tactility and adding them to my complex continuum of sun, scent, color, and breeze. The continuum is almost complete.

The final sense is one that I think will be the most difficult to capture while sitting on my sunporch. Standing at the edge of land and ocean, feeling the sun and breeze and smelling the smells and looking over the water and all of that, makes me feel very small in a very big universe.

Here, the world goes on forever without end, farther than my eyes can see. Water meets sky at the horizon. I see few people, but have the abstract knowledge that at that moment billions are born and living and dying. I see no stars (except our sun) in the daylight, but have the abstract knowledge that they, too, are coming into being, sending their light across space and time, and snuffing out. My concerns--of bills to pay, jobs to progress in, children to care for, tourist attractions to visit, and all manner of other thoughts--seem very small. There seems to be ample time to breathe deeply, to just sit in the warm sun and feel the cool wind tickle the small hairs on my face. There seems to be ample motivation to then stand and move on to the next thing, neither dimimished nor depressed by the transition from my prior state of calm, but instead roused and energized by it.

I can't wait for my sunporch in December.

I Can Has Laff Out Lowd Winzday?

No, it is not time for Friday Cat Blogging. But I did want to share another cat-themed blogging phenom I discovered recently, lolcats. (More info here; Slate slideshow and essay here.)

It has been a long time since I have had cats as pets. But just a few moments looking at these images and captions brings back in a flash all the joy and humor of being a cat's human. There are spin-off sites and concepts that are very funny, too. But so far, nothing I have seen tops the feline antics of sites like this one. And lest you think these are mindless, note that you have to master a special language, or at least a pigdin English, to read and to create lolcats. There is also an extensive techno-culture associated with the phenomenon--one I am not privvy to as a direct participant, but that I find interesting from an academic perspective nonetheless. (Info on the language and history here.)

Of course, in Life.2.0 the ultimate mode of being is to be a creator. Thus, I offer my first lolcats, created with this handy generator. ENJOY!

Yup. There must be some missing law of physics accounting for the complex relationships among deadline dates, motivational level, quality of data/writing, necessity of the project for your career, and the deadline's speed of approach...

This is actually a pretty good approximation of how I look after a full day af data analysis with SPSS. There is no avoiding this condition, but a book that always makes recovery possible for me is Discovering Statistics Using SPSS by Andy Field--who, by the way, is also a cat person!

LOL, indeed! Yet, postdoc-ing is still a vast improvement over gradstudenting...

OK: my minute is up! Back to SPSS!

SITBB Vault: Birthday (Faux) Guest Blogging

This week it's all about The Girls! Who knew last year when I posted this that a year later I would be finished with my dissertation (well, I had hoped this but did not "know" it for sure) and working as a postdoc with data from the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (though actually I am working with adoptive family and not twin data). Twins, twins, twins: Move to the Twin Cities, give birth to twins, work with MC-Twin-FR data! I guess you never really know where life will lead you, or what strands will emerge as consistent themes. Maybe that is one of the reasons why we hold onto remnants of the past (like the photos below): to help us keep hold of the unfurling thread in some attempt at control. Speaking of which, we recently cleaned out our garage, and the stairway gate in the background of the last pic below was still in there. Why? I do not know, besides concluding it is an example of what I just talked about. Anyway, happy birthday, ladies!

Hi! Thanks for stopping by our Mommy's blog today--on our birthday! We are her daughters. Actually "we" are our Mommy, speaking in our voices (or, what she imagines might be our voices). She calls this type of thing adults' (mis)appropriating the voices of children to say things they (the adults) would really like to say themselves but feel, somehow, that it is better/easier/more clever to say through their children.

We have no idea what any of this means.

Our Mommy is in Graduate School and she lotsa times says stuff like this that doesn't make any sense.

Anyway. This is one of our first pictures:

Actually that is only one of us. (We were just "Twin A" and "Twin B" at this point.) It is a picture of one of us in you terro. That's Latin. That means we were in our Mommy's you-terrus. We were not in our Mommy's belly. Mommy hates when grown-ups tell children stuff like that instead of giving them the Proper Terms for things. Saying that babies that aren't born yet are "in their mommies' bellies" makes it sound like their mommies ate them. Which is not true.

(And, actually, is a little bit scary.)

We do not have many of these pictures from before we were born. Mommy says these types of things are part of the medical-lie-zation of pregnancy and childbirth. That's another one of those Things that Mommy says when she's been reading too many of her school books.

Here's an early picture of us. Lots of people ask us "What's the best part about having a twin sister?" The best part about having a twin sister is that you always have someone to talk to and play with.

Now, here's a picture of one of us with our first baby doll. Most of our baby dolls (like this one) are brown. That means that they are African American. (That's the Proper Term for some brown people who were born in the United States.) Mommy has been meaning to write something for this blog about Images and Children and Diversity. Before she wrote about this kind of thing and TV. (You can read it here.)

Here we are again:

This picture shows something we do a lot: Hug each other!

We are all grown up now (six years old). But it is really fun to look at pictures of ourselves from a long, long time ago. Thank you for spending part of our birthday with us!

SITBB Vault: What Dr. King had in Mind

...Black Barbie and Dora the Explora sitting down together at the table of sisterhood...Winnie the Pooh and Care Bear joining hands with the Cat in the Hat and Tigger...all the children's toys--gophers and wolves, big bears and small bears, Disney characters and PBS Television characters singing in the words of the old Romper Room classic:

The more we get together
Together
Together
The more we get together
The happier we'll be

"Endless Forms Most Beautiful"

In Which My Daughters Contemplate the Wonders of Biodiversity, Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois:

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

~Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species

SITBB Vault: 60 Minutes with 3 Bulls

Just before I cross the street, on the start of my walk from Parking Lot S101 to my building, I can see them there. They are gathered in the grass, flanked by trees. One, the one I have come to call the Leader, raises his head. Every day he looks out for me. Every day he is there to be sure that I am there, returning to campus for another day of work.

I move closer. Now I am across Carter Avenue. The Leader whispers "Ah, it's you" and goes back to looking out for other students, professors, and assorted campusfolk.

But today I do not keep walking. Today I stop for a while to visit with the 3 Bulls.

This one, I call him Number Two, looks over to the one I call Sleepy. I do not think he approves of Sleepy, perhaps because Sleepy is always...sleeping. Well, except for that time he was about two feet from his current position, and tipped over on his back. When these Bulls were first installed, they would every once in a while be in new positions. The campus paper at these times claimed the Bulls were the victims of student pranksters.

The possibility that they are, actually, alive never occurred to most people.

But here is proof that they are alive. See how the ground has been disturbed by Sleepy's breath?

One thing that is difficult to appreciate by mere pictures is how very appealingly tactile the Bulls are. Their deep night skin invites me to touch them. The crosshatches in their pelt tingle my fingertips as I play across them like instrument strings.

They gather, retain, exaggerate their surrounding weather. In the summertime, on our walk to Lot S101 from the U's day camp, my kids used to love to climb all 3. I could quell any disappoint ("Oh, Mommy, can't we stay at camp five minutes longer"; "But why can't we go to McDonalds for dinner"; "You said we could have a play date with ______--You said") by promising my daughters a visit with the Bulls. But some days, some too-rare nice and warm and sun-drenched Minnesota days, the Bulls were too hot to be climbed on or touched at all.

The 3 Bulls live across the street from the Dairy Building--which, as I recently found out, is actually called Haecker Hall. Haecker, like my building, McNeal, is located on the St. Paul campus of the Twin Cities (main) campus of the University of Minnesota. Our St Paul campus is kind of like the poor country cousin to the other two TC sites, East Bank and West Bank. This, even though these two Minneapolis campuses are only a 10-15 minute shuttle ride away from St. Paul's.

Once when I was riding the shuttle bus from the East Bank I overheard this conversation:

Student 1: "So, man, you gettin' off at the Gopher [parking] lots?"

Student 2: "No, man..." Softly, "I'm going over to the St. Paul campus."

Student 1: "St. Paul!" Laughs, "Man, I've been here four years, I don't think I've ever had a class Over There."

Student 2: "Yeah, man, it sucks big time...it's all, like, cows and horses and agriculture and shit. I don't even know why they put the ______ Department over there."

Student 1, getting off the shuttle: "A'ight, man, I'll see you tomorrow."

Student 2: (slouches in his seat as the shuttle pulls off and begins down the transitway to the St. Paul campus)

But I love the St. Paul campus. And I love the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall--even though I have never had a class or meeting in there. The very best thing about the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall is the bathrooms. Here, on the tiles, across from the big Bulls, are still more bulls--along with horses and pigs and all manner of other animals representative of "agriculture and sh**."

I've now spent an entire hour with the 3 Bulls. This, because of an exercise inspired by "Stretching" Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. It is exercise 4.2: "The Camera as an Extension of the Eye; The Eye as an Extension of the Soul" on page 92. I am not sure I have now succeeded in "finding out what kind of qualitative researcher [I] might become." I did see a familiar setting in a new light.

Tomorrow I'll go back to just passing my Bulls. The Leader will look up and acknowledge--and reinforce--my continuing presence on campus. Maybe if I get to campus early enough, I'll arrive to see Number Two look past Sleepy to the grassy quad beyond, where some folks from the Raptor Center might be helping an injured boreal owl take flight again.

There are not many places you can be protected by a bull's watchful gaze while owls and eagles fly overhead. In fact, the only place I know of is on the St. Paul campus.

***News story about the installation of the Bulls here.***

Birthday (Faux) Guest Blogging

Hi! Thanks for stopping by our Mommy's blog today--on our birthday! We are her daughters. Actually "we" are our Mommy, speaking in our voices (or, what she imagines might be our voices). She calls this type of thing adults' (mis)appropriating the voices of children to say things they (the adults) would really like to say themselves but feel, somehow, that it is better/easier/more clever to say through their children.

We have no idea what any of this means.

Our Mommy is in Graduate School and she lotsa times says stuff like this that doesn't make any sense.

Anyway. This is one of our first pictures:

Actually that is only one of us. (We were just "Twin A" and "Twin B" at this point.) It is a picture of one of us in you terro. That's Latin. That means we were in our Mommy's you-terrus. We were not in our Mommy's belly. Mommy hates when grown-ups tell children stuff like that instead of giving them the Proper Terms for things. Saying that babies that aren't born yet are "in their mommies' bellies" makes it sound like their mommies ate them. Which is not true.

(And, actually, is a little bit scary.)

We do not have many of these pictures from before we were born. Mommy says these types of things are part of the medical-lie-zation of pregnancy and childbirth. That's another one of those Things that Mommy says when she's been reading too many of her school books.

Here's an early picture of us. Lots of people ask us "What's the best part about having a twin sister?" The best part about having a twin sister is that you always have someone to talk to and play with.

Now, here's a picture of one of us with our first baby doll. Most of our baby dolls (like this one) are brown. That means that they are African American. (That's the Proper Term for some brown people who were born in the United States.) Mommy has been meaning to write something for this blog about Images and Children and Diversity. Before she wrote about this kind of thing and TV. (You can read it here.)

Here we are again:

This picture shows something we do a lot: Hug each other!

We are all grown up now (six years old). But it is really fun to look at pictures of ourselves from a long, long time ago. Thank you for spending part of our birthday with us!

More Vacation Pics (Plus Needless Commentary)

It is a bright sunny day and a balmy 41 degrees here in Minnesota. Just a couple weeks ago, however, I was relaxing in temps in the mid to upper seventies. As I said before, part of what I like about vacationing is contrast--Which, I guess, is part of the reason why I can't see the point in ski vacations in the winter when you're from someplace like Minnesota that is already cold and snowy all winter (and part of fall and spring).

Anyway. Here are some more vacation photos in case you're chilled and snowbound and need some warmth.

I do not know what it is about palm trees that is so fascinating to me. How they tower so tall on trunks so thin? The fact that they grow such oddly fuzzy but tasty fruit? I do not know. The funny thing is that most palm trees look, to me, less "real" than fake palm trees I sometimes see in the atriums of malls and office buildings or on TV. This fake/real theme is one I have contemplated before while on vacation, and this vacation was no different.

Like this Mayan-style "temple," for example. The steps lead to the top of a huge water slide. From there you can slide down a clear tube through a tank where real live sharks swim around you. On the resort TV channel there is a program running in continuous loop that shows how this temple and other features of the resort were built. Great pains were taken to create cracks, crevices, and other aspects to make everything look ancient, worn, rediscovered. I spent more time than I am willing to admit pondering the various implications of this. And wondering why--on a resort with multiple pools, a "lazy river," several water slides and a huge aquarium--our hotel room contained a card asking us to please conserve water...

But then all this overanalysis and cynicism melts away once I recognize the gift of being able to see the world through the eyes of my daughters. This was their first time seeing an ocean. They have loved to talk about "The Ocean" for the past couple of years--speculating about how big it is, about how long it would take to get there, whether they would see Sponge Bob or whether he would be too deep under the sea for them to spy... For them, then, this trip will constitute a memory of their first trip to a real beach and real ocean. In fact, likely it will all be real--the cracks in the giant boulders, the sand, the waves, the sun, and spending hours on end with Mom and Dad.

Contrasts: Between the sun and sand there and the sun and snow back home; between my pointlessly applied analytical skills on a vacation resort and my more fruitful (and necessary) analytical dissertating skills; between the artificialness of the resort and the authenticity of our family togetherness. All in all we had a wonderful time. And this trip, not a single frog child in sight.

Merry Christmas!

A View to a Chill...

The view outside of my window this morning:

The view outside of my window two mornings ago:

Contrast: What life--and vacationing--is all about. Oh well. Back to work...

Thanks. Full.

This holiday weekend in 1999: What was I thankful for then? Perhaps I was relieved to have gone a few hours without the terrible morning (actually, "all day") sickness that had plagued me throughout the first half of my pregnancy. Or maybe I had been thankful for an "everything looks normal" verdict following the most recent ultrasound scan of my crowded and expanding uterus. I may have also been thankful for successfully navigating the first couple months of my PhD program.

But there is no doubt about what I was thankful for a few months after that Thanksgiving: These two little munchkins:

I remember walking through our front door for the first time with our daughters swinging from our arms in their car seat/carriers. It seemed strange to suddenly be back in my own home after an extended stay in a hospital room. It seemed familiar, yet somehow completely not. These two little infants all bundled up in their too-big newborn clothes (they were about a month early) seemed to actually warp the space around us as we toured the house with them. As we whispered to them, "here's your new house," "here's the crib where you'll sleep," "here's the kitchen," I sensed that this could not be quite right.

Was everything that these babies needed really here in this little two-bedroom townhouse? Yes, all the outlets were stoppered with clear plastic plug covers. Yes, their cream colored bedding was all tucked in place in their brand new matching cribs. Yes, the electric double breast pump had been delivered and was out of the box. But this place was no hospital.

And who the heck was I?

I recall feeling in those first couple of days that at any moment we would receive a call from the hospital: "We have made a terrible mistake. We are sorry for any inconvenience. But you must bring the children back here. Immediately."

Of course that call never came. Nope. These babies were ours, free and clear. And very soon any such insecurities about my new role as "parent"' evaporated in a hazy cycle of cleaning and nursing, bathing and napping, cuddling and soothing.

Yes. I know I must have been heart-overflowing with thanks for our daughters during those first few weeks--just as I have been ever since. But in a sense these babies were not just a gift to me, my husband, and our family. They were also a gift to the world from us. And so, as the world embraces these now five year old girls and whispers to us this weekend "Thank you" I whisper back, "You are welcome."

Maybe next Halloween I'll go dressed as a good parent...

Being a good parent means continually downgrading one's expectations of what it is to be a good parent. Leave it to Halloween to (re)teach me this life lesson. This year I successfully failed in three areas:

(1) Breaking my daughters of their deeply ingrained gender stereotyped wishes for costumes;
(2) Making them beautiful, handmade costumes with (as Spongebob said recently) "love sewn in every stitch," and
(3) Partcipating in old-fashioned, neighborhood, non-commercial Halloween festivities.

Last one first. We went trick-or-treating this year at Camp Snoopy, the giant amusement park housed inside the Mall of America. Now, as a card carrying liberal, I am supposed to despise everything that Camp Snoopy/MOA stands for. I am supposed to espouse an ardent belief that Camp Snoopy/MOA is the very handbasket in which our hell-destined nation is currently being carried: Commercialism. Crass consumerism. Cookie-cutter chain stores. And probably a lot of other hard-c words that I just can't think of right now.

But. To Camp Snoopy we went. The girls stopped at the dozen or so stations sponsored by different food and other companies, exclaiming "TRICK OR TREAT" to the costumed, thoroughly bored looking teen employees in charge of doling out the corporate-donated booty. Not quite the "old fashioned" trick or treating I remember from my childhood.

Second failure achieved: Hand made costumes. In years past I have been shamed when I observed the elaborate get-ups that some of my parenting peers had lovingly wrapped their offspring in. Here my kids were in store-bought, not-quite-right-sized costumes that--despite my most careful clipping--still managed to have stray plastic tag stays sticking in the most uncomfortable places.

Here their kids were in custom-made Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz outfits, feet clad in red jeweled shoes with taps in the heels, a real live little dog trailing beside them on a leash.

This year I swore I would rise to the occassion and make our girls' costumes.

One problem: I do not sew. But no problem. I bought tape-on velcro and this special fabric bonding paper I saw on HGTV that only requires a household iron on silk setting. My daughters picked out their own colorful ribbon and fabric. I cheated a little with pre-made tiaras, wings, wands, and leotards. But the overall look was to be (in my mind) quite unique and 100% homemade. Other parents would gaze upon the costumes and nod knowlingly: "Now there is a Mother Who Cares."

Well, hours later (hours) I had crafted something that looked like what someone might piece together following twenty minutes of fruitful dumpster diving. Folks who saw my daughters thought they were cute. But no one was quite sure what look I was going after. (Typical comment: "Ohhhh, how cute! What are they supposed to be?")

And now, about those costumes...

The mister and I have been fighting an unrelenting battle against the Disney Princess marketing machine for the last couple years now. We repeatedly explain our objections: girls can be so much more than princesses; wouldn't it be better if they showed more beautiful brown girls like you and your sister; etc.

This year we compromised: They were tooth fairies. (Or, they were supposed to be tooth fairies. See above.) A far, far cry from the firefighter or vet or dino-digger I had tried to steer them toward. But at least they were not any of the Disney princesses.

Yet. Still. I am a good parent. (Lather, rinse, repeat.)

The kids had a ball. They proudly sported their inexpertly-rigged costumes even as parts of them unravelled as the evening wore on. They were thrilled at being in the princess/fairly/angel club with so many other little girls (and one secure, successfully gender smashing little boy). And even though Camp Snoopy was crowded, chaotic and even more completely over-the-top than its usual tacky spendor, that only seemed to add to the spirit of Halloween.

And see here? Apparently even fairy/princess/human butterfly/ballerina types can be NASCAR drivers!

All in all a very successful Halloween. And thankfully over--for another year at least.

60 Minutes with 3 Bulls

Just before I cross the street, on the start of my walk from Parking Lot S101 to my building, I can see them there. They are gathered in the grass, flanked by trees. One, the one I have come to call the Leader, raises his head. Every day he looks out for me. Every day he is there to be sure that I am there, returning to campus for another day of work.

I move closer. Now I am across Carter Avenue. The Leader whispers "Ah, it's you" and goes back to looking out for other students, professors, and assorted campusfolk.

But today I do not keep walking. Today I stop for a while to visit with the 3 Bulls.

This one, I call him Number Two, looks over to the one I call Sleepy. I do not think he approves of Sleepy, perhaps because Sleepy is always...sleeping. Well, except for that time he was about two feet from his current position, and tipped over on his back. When these Bulls were first installed, they would every once in a while be in new positions. The campus paper at these times claimed the Bulls were the victims of student pranksters.

The possibility that they are, actually, alive never occurred to most people.

But here is proof that they are alive. See how the ground has been disturbed by Sleepy's breath?

One thing that is difficult to appreciate by mere pictures is how very appealingly tactile the Bulls are. Their deep night skin invites me to touch them. The crosshatches in their pelt tingle my fingertips as I play across them like instrument strings.

They gather, retain, exaggerate their surrounding weather. In the summertime, on our walk to Lot S101 from the U's day camp, my kids used to love to climb all 3. I could quell any disappoint ("Oh, Mommy, can't we stay at camp five minutes longer"; "But why can't we go to McDonalds for dinner"; "You said we could have a play date with ______--You said") by promising my daughters a visit with the Bulls. But some days, some too-rare nice and warm and sun-drenched Minnesota days, the Bulls were too hot to be climbed on or touched at all.

The 3 Bulls live across the street from the Dairy Building--which, as I recently found out, is actually called Haecker Hall. Haecker, like my building, McNeal, is located on the St. Paul campus of the Twin Cities (main) campus of the University of Minnesota. Our St Paul campus is kind of like the poor country cousin to the other two TC sites, East Bank and West Bank. This, even though these two Minneapolis campuses are only a 10-15 minute shuttle ride away from St. Paul's.

Once when I was riding the shuttle bus from the East Bank I overheard this conversation:

Student 1: "So, man, you gettin' off at the Gopher [parking] lots?"

Student 2: "No, man..." Softly, "I'm going over to the St. Paul campus."

Student 1: "St. Paul!" Laughs, "Man, I've been here four years, I don't think I've ever had a class Over There."

Student 2: "Yeah, man, it sucks big time...it's all, like, cows and horses and agriculture and shit. I don't even know why they put the ______ Department over there."

Student 1, getting off the shuttle: "A'ight, man, I'll see you tomorrow."

Student 2: (slouches in his seat as the shuttle pulls off and begins down the transitway to the St. Paul campus)

But I love the St. Paul campus. And I love the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall--even though I have never had a class or meeting in there. The very best thing about the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall is the bathrooms. Here, on the tiles, across from the big Bulls, are still more bulls--along with horses and pigs and all manner of other animals representative of "agriculture and sh**."

I've now spent an entire hour with the 3 Bulls. This, because of an exercise inspired by "Stretching" Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. It is exercise 4.2: "The Camera as an Extension of the Eye; The Eye as an Extension of the Soul" on page 92. I am not sure I have now succeeded in "finding out what kind of qualitative researcher [I] might become." I did see a familiar setting in a new light.

Tomorrow I'll go back to just passing my Bulls. The Leader will look up and acknowledge--and reinforce--my continuing presence on campus. Maybe if I get to campus early enough, I'll arrive to see Number Two look past Sleepy to the grassy quad beyond, where some folks from the Raptor Center might be helping an injured boreal owl take flight again.

There are not many places you can be protected by a bull's watchful gaze while owls and eagles fly overhead. In fact, the only place I know of is on the St. Paul campus.

***News story about the installation of the Bulls here.***

If it's the third Sunday in June it must be...

...Fathers' Day!

So, happy Dads' Day to my husband, all my uncles, my father-friends, and especially to this dapper young man holding the cutest baby in the world in the pic below!

Tour de France 2018 Training, Day One

Well, it finally happened. We finally went with the kids to buy them their first "big girl bikes."

I don't know why, but we always never seemed to get around to it. First the weather was too cold. Then there was not enough room in the garage. Then we had to spend money on our trip to Indianapolis for our family reunion...

But, I finally became convinced that we were past due to make the plunge. I think that realization struck when my daughters were struggling to ride their Big Wheels and one of them nearly bloodied her lip with her knee.

So. Onto the Internet. Then off to the bike shops.

(We decided to go to real bike shops instead of Target or sommeplace like that.)

These shopping excursions taught me two things. One: Cycling helmets are not designed for little Black girls' hair styles. (Picture us in the middle of a bike shop show room, removing handsful of butterfly barrettes and big baubly balls on the ends of rubber bands...) Two: There are actually people who spend more on their bikes than I spent on my first car. And for things that weigh less than a small bag of sugar!

Anyway. We were successful, and finally went out the other day for the First Ride. And, as proud as I am, I did mourn a little as we loaded the back of the wagon up with the big wheels (and the Graco double stroller, and the two unbrella strollers, and the baby slings and all manner of other artifacts from our kids' babyhood) to make room for the bikes. I know all this stuff will go to good homes. And I know that it's a good thing when your kids grow up...

**sniffsniff**

At any rate. Here is my photo essay documenting this momentous time in my--er, I mean, my daughters' lives...

"Finally, my bike riding day has come!"

"I'm so excited--I just can't believe it!"

On your mark, get set, GO!

Battle scars...

...But true champions climb right back on to ride again!

Using time wisely, coloring well, and general deportment...

I have been reflecting a lot lately about my own achievements, work style, etc. Perhaps I am feeling a little anxious as I enter this next stage of my graduate school career. I feel like I must quickly learn to STOP PROCRASTINATING NOW! SEEK OUT INPUT EARLY AND OFTEN! STOP BEING SUCH A PERFECTIONIST! STOP BITING OFF MORE THAN I CAN CHEW! etc. etc.

Well, in the midst of all this attempt at work-habit makeover, my mother sent me a box of my childhood keepsakes. One hilarious thing in this package was the following:

YES. Here is my very first report card--What started it all, my amazing march to scholarly greatness! Opening it up, however, reveals that I was not the perfect 5-year-old scholar that I imagined I must have been:

Note that in all areas, I had to work my way up from "S-Satisfactory" to "G-Good." In fact, in the area of "General Deportment" I appeared to suffer a second session slump ("S-") before righting myself the final session. Next page:

Oh, the shame. I began the year "Needing Improvement" in two areas. (I guess I'll ease off stressing about my own daughters' current difficulties with the whole shoe lace tying thing.) Good to know, though, that my patriotism was apparently well achieved.

ANYway. What lessons should I take away from this?

Well, this school thing is all still a process. And that's OK. There is always an allowance for lack of initial competence and room for ongoing improvement.

I should not allow my life to be defined by my academic successes--or my academic disappointments. I remember around the time I got this report card my parents bought me my first "big girl" bed which I helped to pick out: That is one of my earliest memories of one of my greatest joys. So, there will always be more to life than whether or not I've mastered letter sounds or structural equation modeling.

And if all else fails, there are always colors. ("Knows Colors"=straight G's--Yeah, baby!)

What Dr. King Had in Mind

...Black Barbie and Dora the Explora sitting down together at the table of sisterhood...Winnie the Pooh and Care Bear joining hands with the Cat in the Hat and Tigger...all the children's toys--gophers and wolves, big bears and small bears, Disney characters and PBS Television characters singing in the words of the old Romper Room classic:

The more we get together
Together
Together
The more we get together
The happier we'll be

(This entry was originally posted January 7, 2005. See this entry for my original follow-up post.)

OK, so now I'm recycling entries. But I owed a post from the other day. Plus, I had to have an excuse to tell a few "cute kid" stories about my daughters and King.

1) One of my girls was talking on the phone to one of her grandmothers. She mentioned that we were right in the middle of reading a book about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her grandmother asked if she knew who that was. She said, "Yes, he was our president." Thinking this cute, her grandmother laughed and repeated "Oh, he was the president." To which my daughter in all seriousness corrected, "No, he was our president!"

2) Still under the impression that King was a former president of our country (at least for some of us), both girls were in a heated discussion the other day about which denomination of US money he was on. (Note that there is a real life effort to get Dr. King on some money. See: http://www.putkingonthe20.com/.)

3) We have a ritual that goes along with our nightly family meals: holding hands around the table and saying "Bon appetit" along with saying any other special greeting relevant to the day--e.g., "Happy Valentine's Day" "Happy Birthday, Daddy." Last night one of the girls noted that Dr. King's birthday had passed but we had failed to say happy birthday to him at dinner that evening. So last night, after wishing each other a good meal, we wished Dr. King a very happy belated birthday.

A Good Ten Inches

The Strib says: "5.5" officially in the downtowns, but many western/northern suburbs picked up closer to 7" from yesterday's storm" but our measurement says otherwise.

Kwanzaa Day 7: Imani

...So, the question becomes: If Kwanzaa is supposed to be a celebration that does not replace Christmas or other religious observances, if it is supposed to be something other than a "holy-day," then when we speak of imani--faith, then faith in what or who?

As far as I am concerned, for my daughters (and this just for starters):

Faith in each other--as former "wombmates" and as sisters forever; Faith in the power of friendships, like going over to a friend's birthday party today on New Year's Day, and being so happy because you hadn't seen her in a couple months ever since she moved to California, but after an hour or so it was as if you had never parted; Faith in joy and in love and in curiosity; Faith in Mommy and Daddy, and in the simple pleasure of spending New Year's Eve watching movies together and toasting at 10pm with real champagne flutes filled with real grape juice... Just for starters.

To end, enjoy our

KWANZAA 2004 PHOTO ALBUM

And finally:

Bart Springs Eternal!

What all the Chia-Barts are wearing this season

Yeah, there will be a Kwanzaa post for today.

But first, another Chia-Bart update.

The directions said to encase the Chia in a plastic bag to effect a kinda greenhouse effect. This Apple store bag works nicely: It has a cool drawstring to better enclose the planter. And it's attractive. (Unlike the disturbing, wet, growing, disease-looking thing underneath it...) And I like the playfulness of layering several cultural icons on top of each other like that.

Not, I realize, a worthy tribute to Susan Sontag. Not by any means. But you see how intellectual you are after a week and a half of winter break with two four year olds.