As long as I'm on a roll...

I'll keep on rolling. So I was just thinking again about a new name for this blog. I sort of wanted to incorporate the nickname "Treee" so I googled it. News: There already is a Treee blog! Not fair. It's a cool blog though, the person is an artist with some cute comics.

And then I thought, wow I've never even mentioned my little stuffed guys! I mean, no one really reads this blog yet because I won't post it anywhere or tell anyone about it, but there needs to be a record. So here they are in order of appearance on Earth.

Chedda, the sock monster. He has dreadlocks and a messy heart.

DoboRAWR, the dinosaur. His name comes from an old joke between me and Jackie and his bodysuit comes from a tshirt Emilie gave me. The dinosaurs are glow-in-the-dark.

Breeze, the windmill. Requested by a friend that used to draw windmills..but the other kind of windmill that is thin with three twirly things. I thought that'd be too hard to make so I made the old-fashioned kind instead. He is made from a Batman t-shirt and his face reminds me of Beaker from the Muppets. I like to pretend the twirly black part of him is also dreadlocks. Beaker with dreads.

Oh and hey! this is the first appearance of my face! ...ish.

no name boombox. Made for the same friend that requested the windmill. He didn't want to name this one I guess. I was going to find an old pair of headphones to put behind the "speakers" so the cord could come out of a hole in the back and he could be plugged into an ipod...but I never did that. He is just full of stuffing. Also has a heart on him...I wish I remembered to give them all hearts.

Second shot of my face. My left eye gets all the action.

Thunder, the Owl. Made during a lightning storm. He has glasses but they are hard to see.

My tree! For A-treee-sa! I love it, that's all. Except it is currently on the floor of my bedroom where it does not belong.

This is one of my favorite things! I am so proud of it because I thought about it for a long time then spent months making it. This is the turtle I made for my pister's birthday. It's huge! She loves turtles and traveling, and I remembered an Iroquois creation myth that we read in high school, about a turtle that carried the world on its back. So I found a version of the myth that I liked and printed it out on the card.

And here's the last thing I've made. My brother's former roommate said she liked my stuffed animals/things and I told her I could make her one if she knew what she wanted. She requested a panda bear in underwear so I did that and gave him boxers. Bears are hard to make though and this is not really my favorite piece, but she loves it which is good. He has a tattoo on his arm of her initials inside a heart, and a piece of bamboo to munch on during his trip to NY. My friend and I decorated the box with inspirational phrases in order to confuse my brother, and it worked.

Bruce, in his natural habitat - my room. I just thought you should finally meet the little troublemaker. He is not stuffed, only with rabbit food and timothy hay.

So that's that. I think once I get all settled and get that job I'm hoping for, I can start making a new one. I was thinking about making a calavera but the 3D part of it would be difficult.

Anita Job

So I've just gotten home and need to apply for jobs. My goal was to do this Monday morning, but that is when my friend said he would come visit, so it was pushed back. Could've been done yesterday afternoon but I think I need to go in the morning. So today was the plan...and I got up and looked good and looked up the bus route and fixed my resume some and emailed a couple more jobs then printed my resume (half of the copies turned out too light) and brought Bruce upstairs for the chance to stretch and nibble on everything under my bed. ready to go. oh, I missed the bus...

And now I can't decide. Is it better to take the bus that gets downtown at 11:30 and apply today but during the lunch hour, or wait until tomorrow and try again to go in the morning (but on a Friday)? I think Jackie just decided for me that tomorrow is better and I think I decided that myself when I sat here to write this all down. So Friday it is. Four days later than my goal.

Here's the other issue:
Will someone hire me please? I have no professional experience. I've worked as a volunteer at the hospital and the shelter and schools and I've babysat kids for months at a time, but businesses don't see that as real experience. I could get a babysitting job easily, but I want to work where I can meet people and have coworkers for once. I think all the skills transfer: I almost never miss a day of work, I arrive on time, I am constantly busy and multi-tasking, and I take care of the needs of my customers. In some ways, I do more than most jobs ask for, but telling people that I babysit doesn't exactly show that off. I offered a cover letter, but that can only be so much...I at least need an interview. Or I just need someone to trust me and give me a shot!

Cross your fingers and hope that tomorrow will be the best job application day known to mankind (but for me, not for my competition) ;)

4 weeks

Four weeks is how long that "blogging once a week" idea lasted. I knew it would happen..I got into midterms and papers, and any minute I could spend not on the computer (besides Facebook, of course) was a godsend. But the quarter's over and I'm a college graduate! It's so weird that I started this blog right before leaving for school and I returned to it right before graduating. So much happened, but much of it doesn't fit this blog's theme. Now I'm back home and I know it's the type of place I belong.

My friend was visiting from LA for the past couple of days, so I got to show him around SLO. His first comment to me was, I didn't know you lived in the country. I didn't either, but as we went about our tour of the area, I knew what he meant. Everything I could think of showing him was outdoors: Bishop's Peak/Madonna Mountain, Edna Valley, Montaña de Oro, Morro Bay, Terrace Hill... Not surprisingly, every time we came back to the house we were exhausted. And that's how I know I belong in a place like this one. All through school, whenever it was finals week or I had a paper due, I'd make myself take a break from staring at a book or my laptop to look outside. I kept thinking my eyes were going to waste looking at screens and text; my eyes are meant for seeing trees and leaves and a natural world with too many details to remember, so you just have to stand on a rock, take a deep breath, and fill your body with the world around you.

Remember in Avatar, when they talk about the connections among the plants, and how the people can connect with the animals and trees? I think it's true that there is a connection among the energies of all living things, and I think that connection is harder to recognize the more we dissociate ourselves from the natural world. My sister told me about a study that measured the energy levels of trees in a forest and found that they are different when a normal person walks through and when a person walks through with an axe. I wish I could find it online. Anyway, think about how you feel after spending time outside. You feel refreshed, like your mind has been stimulated (and not just from the view) and your whole body gets tired. You could run around in an enclosed room with fake trees and lakes and animals and you wouldn't feel the same. Outside, our mind and our body is responding to so much more and that is tiring.

I love feeling like that though, I love sensing that connection to something real..which is why I'm through with living in Davis and going to classes. I'm done sitting inside for weeks on end. So what am I going to do? I'm gonna go find me a job where I can talk to people every day, then go out on hikes and to the beach during my time off. I'm going to save up money then make my way to a new country, where I can connect with the people and the environment there.
I'm going to get Bruce out from under my bed and go see my sister.

this blog needs a new name

suggestions welcome.

from you, Claudia, because you read it.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Last night, as I was writing down my grandma's stories about growing up in a small town in the 30s and 40s, a completely different subject was on my mind. About an hour earlier a friend had texted me saying "Apparently there's a rapist in Davis who's tried to rape 4 women already so just be careful and pass it on."

At first this text didn't faze me. Well, duh, there's always at least one rapist wherever you go and I feel like I'm always somewhat on-guard. I ignored it for a few minutes, then read the message again. "Pass it on." I couldn't fight the feeling that if I didn't pass it on, one of my friends would be a victim, and I knew that if every woman in the city was aware of this guy, his chances of victimizing another woman were slimmer. I texted every girl in the Davis area in my phone (save those who I knew the other girl would have texted). "Thank you!" responses came one after the other, and I realized that not every girl grew up with the mindset that I did.

I grew up watching Law & Order (especially the SVU series), and my mother has always been paranoid about rapists. Before every sleepover she told me not to be alone in the room with my friend's father, and for every trip alone to the store she asked me and my sisters to stay where there were a lot of people. Already in my mind there were criminals, rapists, and kidnappers hiding behind every building, waiting for a crowd to disperse and a young girl to make her way around the corner. In high school, my mom started working for the Women's Shelter Program; I would get headaches on the car rides home from school because of the stories she would tell about her clients. She wouldn't usually detail the physical abuse her clients suffered, but even the emotional abuse -- the courtroom drama, her clients' fears that their abusers would gain custody over their children -- would make me tense.

I am so grateful that I have made it 20 years without being victimized in these ways. I don't like to bring up these details with friends, but I do find that I am much more sensitive about people joking about assault. Er, let me re-phrase. I don't know anyone who jokes about stranger rape anymore; they mostly scare that out of you in junior high. But I know that a lot of my college-age friends are still naive about how often domestic and dating violence occurs. The other day my friend took a quiz on Facebook: "Which Glee character are you?" She got the pregnant cheerleader...but they described her as something like, you're nearly perfect, but you've gone through some hard times, or something. Anyway, she made some joke about it meaning she's pregnant (she's not) and her boyfriend said "where's a flight of stairs when you need one?" I hated that. I don't mind this guy, but I hate him for that comment right now. I kept thinking back to a painting my mom did that incorporated some statements from her clients. One said "he pushed me down the stairs"...and that wasn't the first time I'd heard a statement like that from my mom's job, including descriptions of men pushing their girlfriends/wives down the stairs when she was pregnant.

[I'm getting frustrated and am going to get preachy in a moment.] See, I don't think my friend's boyfriend would ever hurt her, but if this is something our generation can still joke about, it will be hard to condone others when they sound like they are a little too serious about the joke. If we act blind to assault, domestic and dating violence, then we push prevention that much further off. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Make yourself aware, help make others aware, and think twice before joking about assault.

Letters

In January of 2009, I started writing letters to my grandma and asking her for stories about her life growing up. This is in part because I think she got married around my age..but she never got to that part in her life. My letters to her were always about my classes and friends in college, and now hers are also about the events she attends in her retired community. She apologized many times in her letters that she is old and can not always remember stories from so far back, but she had quite a few so I don't press her for more.

Anyway, her stories are sweet so I thought I'd share a few here, in her own words. Write to your grandparents. It's fun and they get so exci

ted.

Left to right = my maternal grandmother, Aunt Gerry (Gerry is my mom's youngest sister), me=I look to be about 3 years old, my dad, my mother.

Since I look about 3 years old - this would be summer of 1937 = my dad died Sept. 1937.

Photo taken Bowdle, SD at grandparent's home.

Dear Aly,

You wanted to know what my life was like in my era.

You may already know I was born in 1934 in South Dakota. I was born in Eureka but we lived in Greenway, SD and now the only thing you see in Greenway is cellar doors. The town has disappeared - too small to stay alive.

My father died when I was 3 years old - making it necessary for my mother and me to move to Bowdle, SD to live with my grandparents while my mother trained for a job as a telephone operator. When I was 5 years old (1939) the telephone co. offered my mother a job in McIntosh, SD. The telephone switchboard was in a home where we lived and had to be serviced 24 hours a day - but it didn't matter as there was nothing to do in McIntosh - population then about 300.

South Dakota then, and I'm sure over the entire US was very innocent, safe and poor. The "Great Depression" ended in 1931 or 1932 and people were still very much affected by it - at least in the Dakotas. In 1941 my Aunt Gerry (mother's youngest sister) came to live with us while she finished her junior and senior years in high school. When that happened our house became a gathering place for her friends and life in McIntosh was not so boring. She was quite popular - and there was always someone to play Monopoly with me. Every year the town would block off two blocks for snow sledding - and we lived on the corner of the second block - so I spent many days on the sled.

At least once every summer I was allowed to ride the train alone to visit my grandparents - about 90 miles away - but it took about 6 hours. My mother put me on the train, told the conductor to "look out for me" and not let me off. He gave me a feather duster and told me to dust the car - that kept me busy. My grandparents were always there to meet me.

...

By 1943 we decided we had enough of snow and cold weather - and Aunt Gerry had graduated from high school - so we decided to move to Lodi, CA. My grandparents and a sister and a brother of my mom had already moved to Calif.

---

School in McIntosh - a two story brick building 1-12. I went there 1st thru 3rd grade - and a high school student was responsible for every grade school student - this was necessary especially during winter storms. World War II started in 1941 and once in a great while an airplane would fly over the town - because it was so rare, teachers would allow kids to run to the windows or even outside.

Dear Aly,

On the days I feel there might be a letter from you I practically run (imagine that) to the mailbox [across the street and 3 houses down].

...

McIntosh, SD: Whenever a telephone call would come in to the telephone switchboard (remember-we lived in the telephone office) to someone in town that didn't have a home phone - I would get 25 cents to run to their home to come to our home/office to receive the call. This, however, did not happen too often.

There was a movie theatre right next to our home, so I would often go on Saturday afternoons, and it was usually a cowboy (western) movie. I would run in and out to go home - probably for the bathroom or snack - but I don't ever remember having to pay. Then at night I would lay in bed, hear the music and voices from the theatre, and remember the movie all over again.

If you were to go to McIntosh today (I did in 1990) it would look pretty much the same as when we left in 1943. I remember it to be like any town of "Little House on the Prairie" era. Very isolated, no events, no excitement, but my nicest memories of growing up are from my McIntosh days.

When my mother, Aunt Gerry, and I decided to move to Calif. my mom had a box built to ship all our belongings. The box was probably 4' x 4' x 4' and took about a month to arrive in Lodi - by train. I can still remember going through it as we needed something - like clothes. But mostly I remember my mom's wedding dress. At the time she married my dad (early 1930s) the trend was pastel wedding gowns - so my mom's was very pale green - like celery green.

When we moved to Lodi - we came out by train - and since it was during World War II the train was very crowded. We were very lucky to have a seat - but I remember several women having to sit in the ladies room. It took us about 3 days to arrive in Lodi.

Fortunately my mom was able to transfer to the telephone company in Lodi - as a telephone operator - but since we lived with my grandparents - and did not have a car - she had a long way to walk every day. Again, since it was wartime, finding a place to live was impossible - but, we did find a (one) "room" with hot plate privileges - and share a bathroom with other tenants. The only good thing, she had only 3 blocks to walk to work. Eventually (about 6 months) we found an apartment - 2 rooms. We had an ice box (not a refrigerator) that the ice man came once a week with a block of ice - that went into the top of the box. Every day we had to empty the tray at the bottom of the ice box, and if we forgot - then you'd walk into the kitchen with cold water all over the floor and feet. Woe! that's a quick wake up.

We arrived in Lodi June 6, 1943 - and I would spend most of my time at my grandparent's. My Grandma was the sweetest lady I knew and I later realized she was my best friend. She died when I was 14 years old. We would always sing while she was washing dishes and I was drying dishes. She was artistic in her own way. Often in the summer we would have watermelon - and she would carve small animals out of the watermelon rind. She didn't speak English much - my mom's intent was that I'd learn to speak German by staying with them - but it did not happen.

Back to McIntosh again - in our home/office we had the siren for fires and war warnings. I have no idea why anyone thought that McIntosh would be a target for a bomb. But in the 4 years we lived there - we never had to sound the alarm - not even for a fire.

One time when my mom and I were on the train to my grandparent's home - while the train had not yet pulled out of the McIntosh station - one of us remembered that we had forgotten to pack the belts to all of my mom's dresses. The conductor held up the train while I ran home, got the belts, and back on the train. We lived only about a block and a half away. This was/is typical of SD people = helping any way they could.

Dear Aly,

....

You mentioned Cinderella - I've never been interested in "fantasy" and I blame that on the fact that McIntosh did not have a library - and we couldn't afford to buy books - though McIntosh didn't even have a store to buy such things. It was probably when I was in 6th grade that I went into a library. Sad, huh! South Dakota lacked good teachers. A teacher would get his/her teaching credentials in only 2 years school after high school graduation.

We moved to Lodi when I was in the 4th grade - so I went to public school for the 4th and 5th grade. The Lutheran Church opened a school so I went there for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. There were only 7 kids in my class - and 4 grades in our room. 1st thru 4th grade in another room. Believe it or not - I feel I got a good education at that school. But - of the seven in my class - only 2 others and myself went to Lodi Union High School - and we entered the freshman class of about 300 kids - those kids probably knew most of them for their entire 8 years of grammar school. Lodi was - and still is very status conscious - and since I lived on the wrong side of the tracks - could not wear the "name brand" sweaters that most had - I was really not included or accepted in their circle. It was for that reason - a number of years before I went there - the school adopted a girls uniform code - which every year after that the girls voted it in.

The uniform was black, navy or white skirt, and any type sweater or blouse. After four years you got pretty tired of black or navy skirt - but - when I started my banking job right after graduation - the first thing I bought was a black skirt.

So now that I've told you a little bit about Lodi - you can see why I was happier in South Dakota. Also, while I loved my grandpa, I did not like living with him. He was very "old world" and this meant I did not want to bring friends over - no music, etc.

....

Back to McIntosh (with my story) just to give you an idea of how little it had to offer. As I told you - no library, no hospital, only 1 doctor, 1 dentist, 1 grocery store, 1 barber shop, 1 weekly newspaper, 1 small hotel.

One 2 story brick building that was 1-12 grades school. What was common in those days - kids from nearby farming communities would spend the whole week in town - at the hotel - and their parents would take them back to the farm for the weekends - if the weather was good enough to get them. Now this was only high school girls - boys needed to help at the farm. We knew 2 sisters that had this arrangement at the hotel - they had a hot plate - and every night their dinner was "creamed corn and bread." I don't mean to give the impression that the hotel was filled with high school girls - probably never more than 2 or 3 at a time - some girls were housed in McIntosh homes, but even that was a very small number.

"May Day" was fun. The day before May 1st, my mom - and no doubt other moms too - would make little baskets about the size of a coffee mug. My mom would use crepe paper or fabric - and sew these little baskets - sometimes with ribbon too. The baskets would be filled with candy or cookies. I would take a basket to a friend's home, knock on the door, leave the basket and run. The friend would try to catch me. This may have been an old Russian custom - as much of the Dakotas are people or descendants of "Germans from Russia," as were we. My grandparents were both born in Russia. "Katherine the Great" allowed Germans to come to Russia to homestead there. My grandparents were both born there - near the Black Sea - and both came to America with their families while they were very young. I once asked my grandpa why they chose South Dakota to live and farm - he said "because that was where the train ended."

Dear Aly,

....

Your last letter asked how old I was when I got married. I was 20 1/2 - married 12-18-54.

....

My grandmother - if you recall I mentioned was my best friend - and a woman who I never heard complain (and she has good reason to complain as my grandfather liked to drink). She was a wonderful cook - and baked great things. She had a wood burning cook stove - not with an automatic thermostat like stoves are today. I believe I told you in an earlier letter that my grandparents had "inside plumbing" when they moved into town - meaning an inside toilet too - but I talked to Martha today and learned that the "outhouse" was necessary in town - and that meant taking baths in a wash tub - and heating the water on the stove. She says that meant not always fresh water after each person's bath - ugh! I'm thinking that grandma's happiest day was when they moved to Calif. and she had indoor plumbing. She liked gardening and always had a vegetable garden - some flowers too.

Dear Aly,

....

I've been trying to think of more stories - and not sure if I've already written about these.

When I was about 4 years old - and we were still living with my grandparents while my mom was being trained for a job - my Aunt Martha (you've met her) was about 17 or 18 and whenever her boyfriend would come to pick her up for a date - I would get in his car and would not leave. I wanted to go with them. Now who would want a 4 year old while on a date - so I would "hold out" until he gave me money. At that time - in about 1938 I think - he would give me 5 cents and I thought that was pretty fair. In a year or two they married - probably to save him from giving me money.

Now I'm moving along to about 1944 - I am 10 years old and living in Lodi, CA. I spent most summer days with my grandparents while my mom worked. My grandfather invited me to go with him on an errand. Now that meant he would buy me a soda (in those days it was called Pop) and then it was always grape, orange or root beer. My dilemma was this: did I want the pop so much - or risk my life riding with him. He was a poor driver. He always felt he had the right of way at every intersection. Well - the pop always won out - I would ride along - and hold my breath at every intersection.

My grandmother was the sweetest, loving person - never complaining. I wish you could have met her. She died a very painful death (of cancer) when I was 14.

Running Club

It's unfortunate that I don't remember dreams more often. Even when I remember something about them a day or a month later, I can't remember it twice. I would write them down but I think that might ruin the magic of them and I don't really want to start dreaming consciously. I love the way dreams can represent your emotions, tell stories, repeat themselves for months, or have similar themes. But mostly -- what I've been thinking about lately -- is that I think my dreams can sometimes tell the future. Not in any important way, but just like deja vu. They're simply, really.

The other day I was conducting an interview for my writing class -- I have to write a profile on someone working in a field that I am interested in. I've worked with and interviewed teachers before, so I thought I would talk to a special education teacher. We sat in her office, adjacent to the classroom, with the door open behind me. About ten minutes in, a woman with a loud, happy voice walked into the classroom and said (either to the woman I was interviewing or to someone else in the other room), "Hey hey! Running Club!"

My interviewee looked up, smiled, and waved. I froze. I had dreamt that moment before. In fact, I think I had even woken up and mentioned it to my roommate. I told her I had dreamt of sitting in a room, talking to a woman, and someone came in to say hi (or "hey hey!") and then she'd said something else. I had remembered that she was announcing some event but nothing big, and I didn't know the woman I was talking to.

The part that's funny to me is that, I work at that school in a first grade classroom, and my kids have told me over and over again that Running Club is on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I first contacted my interviewee on Tuesday and, because I needed to do the interview within a week, she asked me to come in the next day (Wednesday). I went by the school Wednesday afternoon and she wasn't there; she had a meeting that she had forgotten to tell me about. So, the interview took place on Thursday, the day of running club. If I had caught her before the meeting on Tuesday, there would have been no "Hey hey! Running Club!" Maybe there would have been a "Hey hey! Teacher's meeting!" but I don't think so. If I had remembered my dream and known what it meant, maybe I would have known that the Wednesday appointment wasn't going to work out, and saved my time.

This isn't the first time this has happened though. Like I said, I can't remember my dreams much, but I remember thinking before that a moment in time was one that I had dreamt about. Almost exactly like deja vu. Hopefully I keep this up. If this happens again, I will write it down, but, like I said, I'm not going to start writing down all of my dreams. It would be neat if it happened with more significant moments, but that might A) ruin the surprise, or B) turn me into a late night drama star who helps the police solve crimes.

Dear Weatherman

Bunnies like it to be about 55 degrees, not 102. Unfortunately for me, this makes having a bunny very stressful. As a first-time bunny owner (we got Bruce a week ago), I freak out easily. I have looked online to find out how to cool off my bunny and let me tell you, Bruce is not having it. I gave him a frozen water bottle and he pushed it away; I put a wet washcloth on the floor of his cage..he laid on it for a few minutes then grabbed it in his teeth and moved it to the other side of his cage. Online they said I could give him a fan but not to put it directly facing him. I tried this, but when he's hopping around outside his cage, he stands in front of the fan...so I put it directly on his cage when I get scared about him overheating and he likes that.

So it's been hot all week and I've been on edge about Bruce. Then the other day, I got a text from my roommate that said that all of his water was gone when she got home. This is weird because he never drinks half his water and I didn't even think he could reach the bottom of his cup. I got this text about 20 minutes late because I was in class and trying not to check my phone (which failed, obviously). So I asked her if he was okay. She responded with, "I don't know, I had to leave for class but he was sitting there then randomly fell over." This is definitely a situation where I would not have left for class. I'd spent 15 minutes that morning trying to get him out from under her bed and was late to my internship. Luckily, my class ended then so I rushed home to find out if he was dead or in a coma. He was hanging out in his cage, perky as a bunny, with his whiskers blowing in the wind of the fan. Oy.



The other thing I found online is "how to train your dragon rabbit." I decided to wait a bit until Bruce stops being so scared of us, but since we've been scaring him out from under every bed and chasing him around to get him back into his cage, this isn't happening so quickly. So I tried a little of this training early on. Obviously, you train the bunny with food. Bruce likes apples, grapes, cucumbers (not the "treats" I bought at the pet store and not carrots) so I grabbed an apple and held it a few feet in front of him. Nothing. He only digs it if you bring it right up to his mouth or lay it in front of him.

Looks like we have a stubborn rabbit.
which means he takes after me


Luckily, the temperature's going down and Fall is on its way. The only thing I have to worry about now is clipping his nails...which terrifies me actually.
But for now, Bruce is running around my room (and under beds), hopping up to the computer and sniffing my shoes. All is well in the bunny world.

Chilena/Chicana

I'm taking a class on Chicano Art (capitalized.) and I already love how it's making me feel like I'm growing. We spent the first day wasting time because the professor had accidentally told the person who sells the course readers to come later than he meant. He asked us where we were from and what ethnicities we had in the class. I didn't get to tell him I'm Chilean which sort of bummed me out. Almost the entire class is Mexican-American...which is a term I found out quite of few identify with rather than Chicano. [I think two girls in the class are Asian, but I didn't really get a good look. One was sitting next to me, and the other was sitting in the back in a wheelchair. Those are definitely two situations when you cannot stare at a person to figure out if they are Asian or not.] A lot of the class had an opinion of what term they prefer to use when labeling themselves. I said that I identify as "latina" but, as the professor pointed out, that is such a weird phrase too.

I remember when we started doing state testing in elementary school and we were asked to fill in our ethnic background. I definitely knew what I wasn't, and then there was the word "Hispanic". First off, I wasn't Hispanic, I was Chilean. Once I was told that those two go together, there was another problem. The form looked like this:

Check one -
White (non-Hispanic)
Hispanic

Okay, well what if I'm both? I didn't really identify with other "hispanics" at school--even throughout high school--but I wasn't just White. I think I more often chose Hispanic just to differentiate myself from everyone else in SLO. Aside from that, I didn't identify with the term much. Here and there I'd teach my friends little bits about Chilean culture, but my mom was my only source of information there...I didn't feel much like a part of the culture.

Etching: "Libertad" by Ester Hernández

So now my homework is to read articles about what it means to be Chicano..even though I'm not. Still, I've always rooted for Chicanos over any other group in California and it feels important to learn about the culture and the activists that helped Chicanos fight assimilation into the mainstream "American" culture. When I'm learning about these things, I feel like I'm becoming much more educated than I do when I'm learning about psychology or biology. I'm excited because I'm also taking a class about prejudices in the American education system, and I think these two classes will help me become the type of educated person that I admire. I mean, if there is anyone who I envy for their knowledge, it is always someone who is knowledgeable about world cultures, especially third-world society and how minorities have struggled in first-world societies.



PS, I have a new bunny. His name is Bruce.

let's see how long this lasts

So it's been three years since I started this blog and I'm sad to see I didn't keep up the pace of writing that I started with. I guess things got in the way...missing my friends back home, boys, too many assignments. I didn't want this blog to involve my personal/emotional life so I had to stop writing when that was all I could think about. How ironic that I had so much trouble being creative when my creativity and intellect were supposed to be developing at college.

Anyway, the point is I need to start writing again. Mandatory post once a week. Let's start today's.

I was just going through my pictures on my computer, which for some reason led to me going through documents. I have all these notes written to myself..which I guess is a good thing because I've forgotten about all of them. There are things I want to do with the classes I teach in the future..little projects and lessons about the world I guess; then there's one labeled "In 10 Years" with a small list of things I'd like to do when I have the husband and the house and the kids. Apparently that is something that will always be ten years away..I suppose I should change that title soon ("In 9 Years"). I can't tell you what is on this list but I hope I think of many more. Just re-read all my posts on here too so I guess I should add "frame the pictures of my children playing, not of my children posing" to the list.

I know it's going to take me a little bit to get back into the writing mode (something that will probably improve when school starts next week), and I'm getting distracted thinking about food. SO...here's an unfinished poem I also found on my compy. I don't know why it was cut off where it was but I remember starting to think about it on the way to the bus or something and not being able to write it down for a while. Maybe that has something to do with it.


a mushroom in the forest
wished to be a florist.
he resented weeds
and wished to please
the ostentatious trees.

he toiled all day at tilling
but the forest floor was not willing
to be pushed aside
for flowers that'd chide
the sun's inclination to hide.

at last he sowed one seed
and attended to its every need
until the morning an elm who'd had doubt
spied near his roots a small greenish sprout
and gave the forest an earth-shaking shout:

Gather around my fellow trees
and look at what I was sure could not be!
a sprout, like that mushroom wished to grow
it's here near my trunk but far down below
and at the spot where a seed he did sow

the oaks and pines they all bent far down
but all stood back up with a tsk and a frown
"what's could be there? oh there's nothing in sight"
"it just cannot be, it's a trick of the light"
and "wait! I think the elm tree is right!"

the oak pointed out how down in the mud
was a small shaft of green, a leaf, and a bud.
twisting their trunks, at the mushroom they peeked...