instead of wearing costumes ourselves, this year we dressed up our cupcakes.
[ 31.10.07] · [ ]
it's not looking so good for the rockies, is it? unfortunately my grandfather hasn't been able to watch much of the series. I've been having a hard time getting into it on his behalf. in 2004, when we all knew that the red sox were going to win for the first time in eighty-six years, I actually left my friend's wedding reception early so that I could make it home in time to watch the last three innings. (I don't think she noticed. there were several hundred people in attendance.) tonight I feel as if I'm watching out of obligation. why are two teams I care about, with players I like to watch, so uncompelling?
oh well. either way I'll keep wearing my hat.
[ 28.10.07] · [ ]
why I want the rockies to win the world series
I'm saying it now so that I can't back out later. regardless of what the red sox do tonight in game seven of the alcs (and I think and hope they will get the pennant), I want the rockies to win the world series. I know that makes me something of a traitor, but objectively it's an easy call: 1) the red sox have the second-largest payroll in baseball, and the rockies have the second-smallest; 2) this is the first time colorado has made it to the championship; 3) who really wants to be the team that beats the cinderella rockies now?
objectivity alone wouldn't be enough, and it's not as if I'll be sad if boston wins it all, but I have a bit of a history with the team in purple pinstripes. I was in seventh grade when they had their inaugural season in 1993, and I somehow ended up with a poster of the entire team -- managers and batboys included -- that decorated my bedroom wall for several years afterward. I've never really embraced the rocky mountain part of my heritage, but that side of my family is particularly fanatical about sports, so cheering for colorado teams has always come somewhat naturally to me.
really, though, I want the rockies to win for my grandfather. he's always been the quietest and most stolid of my elder relatives, something like an elephant in my young perception; large, grey, and peaceful. now he is nearly ninety years old and lives alone in an assisted living center, where, it seems, one's social life revolves around televised sports. grandpa has lost most of his memory and his mental acuity, but in their place is an endearing, enduring sweetness. so I can imagine his happy excitement, and his pleasure in sharing it with his neighbors, when the rockies win. my father says it's all he talks about on the phone these days, and I'd love for him to have something really thrilling to talk about.
besides all that... I've been wearing this hat for fourteen years. it's been through both the washing machine and the dishwasher, I've twice re-stitched the seams that hold the bill in place, and since my last years in high school the broken adjustable strap has been stuck together with a sparkly silver band-aid. it seems wrong to abandon it now that it finally has some postseason significance.
[ 21.10.07] · [ ]
rudy giuliani is making me so angry these days. I really can't stand him and it's scaring the crap out of me how so many people seem to think he will be a good president. especially since that opinion is apparently based solely on his personality and the pack of lies he's using as a platform. particularly the big lie, the one that says he tamed an 'ungovernable' new york city.
recently, over pizza and beer, we had an uncomfortable conversation about politics with some extended family members. it ended with someone saying, "the liberals hate giuliani because he cleaned up new york." now. I am a liberal, and I do pretty much hate giuliani, so I guess that statement is at least somewhat true. but -- unless "cleaning up the city" means "slashing the budget for social services and arresting a bunch of homeless people," which does actually seem pretty despicable -- I don't hate him for cleaning up the city. I hate him for taking credit for it.
so let's get this straight. tell everyone you know. tell everyone who spouts this stupid lie at you. rudy giuliani did not clean up new york city. it was not headed for utter ruin and lawless dereliction before he came along. it was already getting safer and cleaner.
it's easy to prove this, too. the graphs below are from a department of justice statistics report called "the remarkable drop in crime in new york city" (langan & durose, 2004 -- you can google it). the data are from NYPD crime statistics records. I added the little colored dots showing the bounds of each mayor's time in office. (david dinkins, giuliani's immediate predecessor, was a democrat and the only black mayor of new york in the city's history.)
plus, as I think everyone knows, crime decreased in almost every big american city during the 1990s. the drop was especially noticeable and dramatic in new york, but it was still part of a larger trend. again, blue is dinkins and red is giuliani:
I suppose there are legitimate philosophical and political arguments to be made in favor of some of giuliani's policies. personally, I think most of those arguments are morally wrong, but ... you know, I get that my political views are radically out of sync with the average american's. I don't get why people are so willfully ignorant of facts, and so ready to embrace a story that's just not true. giuliani can believe whatever he wants about his political record. that doesn't mean we all have to believe it too.
[ 15.10.07] · [ ]
well, this is bad:
greenhouse gas emissions hit danger mark.
(as if they were perfectly safe two years ago.)
[ 12.10.07] · [ ]
I'm supposed to be working on a paper now; I have a meeting with my advisor in an hour and class right afterwards. the paper, though informal, is a draft of stuff I'm working on for my dissertation proposal, so not something I would blow off lightly.
what I'm actually doing is sitting in the open window of a classroom at teachers college, listening to the speakers at the rally against racism. I can't tell whether this most recent noose-related hate crime is actually getting more attention than some of the other jena copycatters, or if it just seems that way to me because this is my community. but it definitely seems like people are genuinely shocked that someone would put a noose on a black professor's door at a liberal institution, and that the media is treating this as a much more culturally aberrant event than what happened in jena or even pittsburgh. racism? in the northeast? new york city? at a liberal ivy league institution? we should all be shocked!
I found out pretty quickly yesterday that I'm not shocked. I didn't know anything about the noose until I got the email from the teachers college president at about four pm. but I wasn't even surprised. I can't really describe how terrible this makes me feel -- that someone hung a noose on a black professor's door and I wasn't even surprised. maybe it's that working in education, in urban public schools, there is racism everywhere you look. and maybe to me nothing will ever seem as bad as witnessing, and feeling helpless to prevent, the systematic discrimination and hatred directed at some of my kids. (my kids who I loved, who I still love.)
but I also think it's worth pointing out that this is not an isolated incident. the ultra-liberal world of academia is not some anti-racist utopia and I don't know how to respond to the people (students, reporters, administrators) who seem to be claiming, however indirectly, that it's inconceivable that something like this could happen here. as if to say that something like this has never happened here before. but things like this do happen here. I wish I knew what to do about it, besides sitting at protest rallies.
(this is cathartic, though, yelling back and forth:
"not anywhere!"
"not here!"
"not anywhere!"
"not here!"
"not anywhere!"
and as usual, I wish some of my students were here, to be given a chance to yell for themselves.)
[ 10.10.07] · [ ]
just some canine frivolity for your long weekend:
[ 6.10.07] · [ ]
at school, a seemingly-official someone has started a "take the stairs" campaign. signs are posted on the elevator doors and in the stairwells, with cute little graphics and sayings that are supposed to make you feel good about walking instead of riding. sometimes victory goes not to the swift, but to those who keep moving. that sort of thing.
I do, in fact, always take the stairs, mostly out of impatience but also because I think traveling under human power is usually the best idea. but for some reason the signs are making me feel guilty, or at least somewhat self-conscious, every time I bypass the elevator on my way up. I worry that the signs are ableist, that making people feel good about taking the stairs is functionally the same as making people feel bad about taking the elevator. not that I've ever met someone in a wheelchair at TC, but some disabilities are invisible. (the majority of my elevator-pass-toting students had respiratory or cardiac issues, not broken legs.)
plus, from an environmentalist standpoint, I am cautiously in favor of elevator technology. like the subway, it uses energy that might not be strictly necessary, but that makes a lower-footprint lifestyle more possible. elevators mean you can build vertically, sharing resources like heat and water that might otherwise have to be parceled out to individual buildings sprawled flat across the landscape. city life would look awfully different without elevators, and we all know I'm a fan of cities from both a philosophical and a personal standpoint.
(it still annoys me when people take the elevator up or down one flight, though. that's like driving one block. take the freaking stairs, people.)
[ 4.10.07] · [ ]
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