Winter break with parents

Mom (edge in voice, looking at 3/4 empty bottle of organic red wine from Italy): Did you drink all that wine tonight?

Heather: Nooooo.

Mom (visibly relaxing)

Heather: Tether drank it.

Mom: (chortle)

. . .

. . .

I'm so glad we've come to an understanding here.

Roma and lead poisoning in Kosovo

Another heartbreaking story from Europe.

Anti-Roma Violence and Hostility in the European News

So if I keep my eye off the international news for even a few minutes, I always regret it. The news from Europe for Roma is . . . not good.

First off, there's the situation in Italy. We'll be talking about that in a panel at U of M on December 10 at noon. I haven't seen information go out about the event yet, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll keep you in the loop.

Then, in early November there was a killing of Roma in northern Hungary, probably ethnically motivated. It got a brief mention in the BBC News and the International Herald Tribune.

Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, according to the European Network against Racism, "At a march organised in the town of Litvinov in the Czech Republic on 17 November, about 500 demonstrators linked to the far-right Czech Workers’ Party chanted anti-Roma slogans and threw stones, firecrackers and petrol bombs with the intention of attacking the Roma community." From all accounts and images, including CzechNews, and the BBC News video footage, the incident looks terrifying.

And the nastiness spills over into the virtual world, too, with racist facebook groups organizing ethnic violence on the popular networking site.

It's never seen the sun, it only comes up when the moon is on the run

I was just reading in Martha Stewart's delicious holiday issue all about amaryllis flowers, and now Park Seed has more than a dozen different varieties on their site . . . I think I've fallen in love with their Cherry Nymph.

LIFE magazine's historical photograph collection

Wow, this is great. Life Magazine has just made its collection of historical photos available online in an archive hosted by Google. Only about 20 percent of the LIFE collection is currently online. The entire archive, comprising about 10 million photos, will be added over the next few months. Above, an image from 1938 of a family living in a rural shack in Poland. Below, a family in a British industrial area. For those of us interested in poverty and its photographic depiction, this is a goldmine.

Oh, the joys of being a graduate student instructor

You know, I find that being in grad school this many years has really changed my approach to dress when I get up in the morning. Instead of, "Do I look cute?" the questions become:

"Is my body covered adequately?"
"Will I be unbearably hot/cold?"
"Have I avoided looking like an ENORMOUS freak?"
"Is the odor of the clothes I have taken off my bedroom floor minimal enough not to cause offense?"
"Can I be REASONABLY confident that I've done everything to avoid that when my undergraduate students run into each other in the bar, at a frat party, or in the ladies room, they won't be conversing about my body and clothes?" (I know some of them will, no matter what I do.)

sigh. I wish I had the time and money to buy a new wardrobe, lose 30 pounds, reliably use my anti-acne, anti-psoriasis, and anti-aging skin treatments and go to the gym.

But today, at least I am showered and no one can see my ass crack.

That's something, at least.

Guns, burning crosses, angry white men, and other stupid shit.

Along with all the people who are celebrating a new era in American history, are those who are terrified that their grasp on power is loosening, and are pulling all kinds of stupid shit in response to the election. 

Like, for example, the people who thought it was a good idea to burn a cross on an Indian-American guy's lawn in New Jersey because his wife had created a banner congratulating President elect Barack Obama on his victory.

And, for instance, the angry, violent gang of white men who, encountering a high-school-aged Liberian-American Muslim on Staten Island on election night, shouted "Obama!" and proceeded to beat him with a baseball bat.

And then there are those who are just threatened by the possibility of change they embodied in President-elect Obama, even though some of them nominally support change. There's something a little terrifying to me about the fact that America is arming itself with record speed even though Obama confirms our right to bear arms. Glenn Parshal, a gun retailer in Las Vegas says, "One of the strangest things that I've had happen the past few weeks, is I've had a lot of people come in here wearing Obama buttons and Obama t-shirts, in here to buy guns, they tell me they're in here to buy 'em before he bans 'em." 

I need to follow this up with a photograph from the country road I take home from Ann Arbor. The local resident there initially set up a wooden, spray-painted sign informing passing motorists that "SOCIALISTS ARE THIEVES." Now, he's added two more, including one warning us to "LOAD UP ON AMMO."