Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Summer Cleaning

You know the old saying: A disorganized blog is the devil's playground. Well--not really an old saying. Perhaps not a saying at all. (Until just now.)

Anyway. I'm cleaning out some old drafts of posts I'd hoped to get back to but never did. I have excerpted what I think were the main points of these essays. Maybe I'll take them up again at some point and maybe I won't. But at least by documenting some of what I wrote I feel more motivated to delete the longer drafts of which they were a part.

The Clothes Make the Prof

What more can I say that has not already been said about the whole issue of faculty and dress?

I'm sure folks in the academic neighborhood of the blogosphere have already talked about how all this depends greatly on gender, age, and college or university culture. I would add to this (in case no one has) that race, ethnicity, and culture also play a part.

But the main thing I might contribute has to do with a much larger issue than suit jackets versus khakis, pointy heeled pumps versus Converse high tops: I think this issue of dress reveals that many (most?) academics are ambivalent about hierarchy. I think many in higher ed want on the one hand to be seen as just "regular folks" while on the other hand want to be seen as a respected intellectual/creative class.

Beauty and "Hair Day"

Maybe because it is (or, was supposed to be) Hair Day today in this household, this Salon piece hit me harder than it normally would when I read it.

The hours-long ritual that is washing and braiding my daughters' hair is more than just a task that needs to be done. It is also an exercise in ethnic identity and pride building. First, the three of us ldecide on a style by looking through one of our hair books ("It's All Good Hair," "Kinki Kreations," "Kids Talk Hair"). It's not that I am good enough to pull off many of these styles given my current level of very low skills. (Growing up, while my sister and girl cousins were doing each other's hair, my nose was usually in a book.) But I can at least usually approximate the styles. And looking at the books gives us a chance to speak about the wide range and beauty of Bllack hair. These children are beuatiful, I tell my daughters. Their hair is joy to behold.

Then we wash hair. We do this sitting in the tub, combining the hair washing with playing with a lake's worth of SpongeBob sponges, plastic tug boats, rubber squirty fishes, and little capsuls that transform in minutes to foam animal figures. With products bought from one of the few Twin Cities beauty supply stores owned and operated by African Americans, I wash, rinse, condition. You are beautiful, I chant to them, my face wet from getting squirted. Your soapy-sudsy hair is a joy to behold.

Cloning: Don't Knock It 'Til You've tried It!

Cloning is one of those scientific news stories that we never seem to tire of. You've likely heard about Snuppy (Seoul National University puppy).

There was also the article CLONOPHOBIA: WHY ARE WE SO FREAKED OUT BY THE IDEA OF OUR MIRROR IMAGE (Here, via Butterflies and Wheels):

Cloning seems to kindle fears that run particularly deep . It doesn’t just threaten God’s place in the universe, but our very idea of self. Most of us believe that each human being is a unique individual, with some kind of fixed essence that persists over time. Cloning seems to challenge this.

...And yet, they fascinate us, because no question is more pressing than that which asks: who am I? The moment we cease to be fascinated by the idea of clones is the day we cease to be interested in ourselves.

In my draft I made al sorts of connections among this discussion on cloning, my work on adoption, my experiences parenting twins, and my dissertation topic involving lay beliefs. But this got much too involved. Maybe another time.

In the meantime philosophical ponderings about clones aside, it sure is fun to actually do cloning--which you can (at least in a virtual sense) at the Genetic Science Learning Center at the U of Utah (here).

Well, that's enough cleaning for one day. Now maybe I've made room in my brain for more dissertation-related topics. Maybe not, but I can always hope!

Posted by perry032 at August 22, 2005 11:13 AM | TrackBack
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