We Could Be Getting Married in the Morning

A month from now, that is, in California. A few key excerpts from the majority opinion:

"The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry "will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage."

Bilerico has some good posts on the subject (including one warning about the socio-political-legal backlash that will likely follow. So once you're done doing the happy dance, get your activist shoes out and get ready to politic, ok?).

So Far, So Good

Despite some despair on Thursday and Friday, it looks like things are working out with the house we want. We're paying a little more than we'd hoped (but within our budget), and we still have to do the inspection, appraisal, and close on the mortgage, not to mention the house. But we've agreed to the sellers' counteroffer, and that feels good. Mississippi Friend would say, "Don't put your mouth on it," and she'd be right. So I'm going with so far, so good.

In Her Heaven

Curious Girl is busy with thank you notes for her birthday. Tante Mississippi and Curly Haired Cousin gave her a birthstone necklace, and here's what she told them at the end of the note:

I'm glad you're my aunt and Curly Haired Cousin is my cousin, and that Uncle Quiet used to be my uncle. Now he's uncle in my heaven.

We don't really talk much around here about heaven (except when CG is spinning theories about it), but it fascinates me to see CG's ideas about life and death playing out as she gets used to Uncle Quiet's death. Every now and then she'll ask me what Uncle Quiet is doing now, and I usually respond with the parental classic: "what do you think?" She has a lot of answers: "being dead," "taking a bath," or "sleeping" being some recent ones. (Yes, we have had a conversation about whether heaven has bathtubs. Haven't you? For the question of whether heaven is or is not like Facebook, I recommend you to the comments on a fabulous post by Arwen.)

*************************

One night last week, Curious Girl woke up. As I snuggled her back to sleep, she said, "Do you want to hear a story about Uncle Quiet?" I did, of course. "Once upon a time there was Uncle Quiet. He was very kind. The End." I asked her if I could write that down for Tante Mississippi, telling her that I liked the story very much and that Tante Mississippi would, too. CG said, "Oh, and a joke, too. She needs a joke." She stopped to consider. "The pink tiara, was that at my party or Curly Haired Cousin's?" She was trying to remember where she saw Uncle Quiet playing with her sparkly tiara with pink fur trimming. We have a great photo of them together, being silly. Uncle Quiet had quite the silly side, which is really rather funny, as he was so very unsilly in many respects: he was the snappiest dresser of any male friend I've had, and reserved, and dignified. So the sight of him teasing Curly Haired Cousin and CG with the tiara was pretty funny. "I'll tell her a joke after the story. That will make her more happy." "Knock knock." (all together now..."who's there?") "Tiara." ("tiara who?") "Pink tiara."

She may have more social graces than comedy skills, I grant you. But she is awfully sweet.

*****************************

I miss Quiet Friend. CG's birthday party was the first social event at our house that he missed--Politica and I were always quite touched that he almost always came to events at our house even when he was super tired. But this time, no Quiet Friend. Mississippi Friend came, and we spent part of the party talking about the weather and cooking, trying to remember which was the party where she and Politica were at the grill, one cooking, the other holding an umbrella, and which was the party where Quiet Friend did the cooking in the rain.

Mississippi Friend is having a tough time of it, which is normal, I suppose, but as she points out, it's pretty darn irritating to have people say "Oh, that's normal," when she tells them something about her grief (so let me amend that sentence: what she's experiencing is so.not.normal: there's nothing normal about losing your 43 year old husband whose last 7 years included so much pain, fatigue, and medical procedures. It's not fair, is what it is.). It's clear from Mississippi Friend's stories that even the most well-meaning friends or relatives can say totally wrong-headed things. I've thought a lot about a thoughtful post Snickollet wrote on grief a while back, outlining ways people can do for their grieving friends. It's frustrating, watching a friend grieve: what she really wants is a whole re-do from the Universe, and we can't give her that. I can only hope that Politica, CG, and I are generally more helpful to her than not. I'm working on a letter that simply collects some of my favorite memories of Quiet Friend. One thing I can do, is write. So I write here, and will write privately for Mississippi Friend and Curly Haired Cousin, hoping my words capture some of the love we hold for her and Quiet Friend, here, and in our heavens.

Houses, Again

• We are in the midst of making an offer on a house, in the city neighborhood we want.
• It's a FSBO, not yet listed anywhere, but our realtor walked through it this morning and says it's pretty much got everything we want. We've seen his photos and the photos the seller prepared, and Politica has driven the block the house is on. So we're going to make an offer.
• Our realtor called the sellers this evening to find out a fact he needs to fill in on the offer, which is offering them full price. The only thing we're asking them for is half the closing costs (although I don't know they know that yet). The seller said that they would want two weeks to respond to the offer, so they can list it on the FSBO site on the weekend.
• We are now feeling cranky about the sellers. I understand that sellers want to maximize the price they can get for a property, and I realize that the first people to see a house and make an offer might make the seller think, "oh, I could have gotten more." But it seems quite greedy to simply want to take time to see if a bidding war will ensue.
• Our offer will give them until Friday. I hope it works out. This house feels like a very us house. I'll get to see it, I hope, next week, if things seem to be working. We've moved up quite a bit in the price range we decided to consider, but I'm not sure I want to move up higher.
  
• In any event, thanks for all the house comments. Politica and I talk about these things endlessly, and it's nice to have you all listening and commenting. I'd happily throw an ice cream social for all of you, were you all here, rather than in the computer. (but hey, poke pro could take care of that!)
  

Baby Bonding

When Jennifer Margulis asked me if I wanted to be part of the book tour for The Baby Bonding Book for Dads, her newest book--co-authored with her husband, James di Properzio, I said, "You remember I'm a lesbian, right?" She did, but said that she wanted the book to tour a variety of places in blog land, and she'd love to have a stop here. "Sure thing," I said. "Send it my way." (disclosure: Jennifer and I first got in contact with each other via some bloggy connection, and she phone interviewed me for a magazine article she was writing that never got published. Since then, we've had every-now-and-again e-mail correspondence in relationship to some of her writing. Her publisher provided the book for my use. You can read more of Jennifer online in at Literary Mama, Mothering, or the website for her previous book, Toddler.)

This book is a nice size--just slightly bigger than a 7"x7 square, with 20 short chapters, three pages each, with two photos each. And the photos alone are a reason to take a peek-- Christopher Briscoe's photos are exquisite. The chapters themselves are good--each very positive, stressing what to do with your new baby (as opposed to what to avoid). It's nice to read parenting advice that focuses on using playful, relaxed contact to build a great relationship with a new child.

When Politica and I were in the midst of our adoption process, we read a lot about bonding and attachment, so I read The Baby Bonding Book for Dads through all the attachment theory I've read. It's a nice idea to write a book for fathers that assumes they're competent and involved caregivers (I remember one of Curly Haired Cousin's doctors saying to Quiet Friend once, "So, you're playing babysitter today?" when Quiet Friend took Curly Haired Cousin to the doctor (who was accustomed to seeing Mississippi Friend there instead). "No, I'm being his father," Quiet Friend pointed out.) But there's nothing here that's particular exclusive to fathers: all new parents (of older children, of newborns) could practice what di Properzio and Margulis recommend here: spend time with your child, skin to skin. Carry her. Talk to him while dressing him. Feed her. Take him outdoors. Play games while changing her diaper. This book is clearly written by people who love their relationship with children, and who have great ideas about ways to start building a relationship with children from the very first moment of contact.

When Curious Girl first joined our family, we spent weeks playing on the living room floor together. CG (then 9 months old) wasn't very strong at first--in fact, she learned to crawl with her legs in that first month, and it took her a while to get up the strength to crawl over my legs. I remember that being a big deal at the time. She'd been used to life in her orphanage, which was a pretty quiet place, and we didn't want to overstimulate her. We also wanted to teach her who we were, help her understand what it means to live in a family rather than in an institution, and give her time and space to figure out her new life. And mostly, we wanted to encourage her to attach to us. When we first came home, she'd have gone to pretty much any adult (especially those with white coats, like her orphanage caretakers wore; since she was sick constantly, she saw lots of white coats in those early months!). We used our floor time to make lots of eye contact, to get her to look at us, come to us, react to us. We sang songs to her, made fun games out of everything, so she'd see us as sources of fun, and more importantly, sources of comfort and caring. A lot of what we did is reflected in this book--so while the title is focused on fathers bonding with their babies, I'd actually like to see it repackaged as a baby bonding book for parents.

I know, I'm contrary about gendered parenting books. I read this book with some suspicion, half expecting to be irritated by generalizations about mothers or fathers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book is mostly just father-to-father informal conversation, like this:

Anything you can do with your face is interesting, too. Pretend to look surprised, wiggle your ears. Blow little puffs of air into the baby's face and then laugh or make surprised noises--even gorillas play this game with their young--and your baby wil either laugh or frown. This is your first chance to let go of your staid, grown-up demeanor and be silly, because nobody wants to be like the really serious, boring old dads some of your friends had when you were a kid. Maybe you don't feel like a cool dad yet, but when you were a kid, like every kid, you knew in your heart that you weren't going to be a strict/boring/old-fashioned/whatever like your dad. This is prime practice time, because babie are like dogs: they don't care what you do so much, as long as you're paying attention to them.

Turns out my big quibble with this book is that I can't figure out what Jennifer Margulis actually wrote here. She and her husband are named as co-authors on the cover, but the book is written entirely in the first person singular by her husband. The preface leads off with a story about how the author used to watch his father shave and now his daughter watches him shave. I suppose there are a few chapters that don't have an explicit first-person reference (so perhaps this is the answer to my question), but her husband's "I" pops up enough through the book that it really reads like a singly-authored book, by a man writing to other men, particularly in the preface and epilogue. So I wondered a bit about where Jennifer was in all this. I'm a writing teacher: I think about how authors represent themselves. But that probably isn't going to detract from others' enjoyment of this celebration of parent/child bonding.

for a Certain Someone of A Certain Age

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much anymore

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

(A.A. Milne, from Now We Are Six, transcribed from the edition I got from my aunt and uncle for my fifth birthday)

German Houses Redux

Trying to move long distance is not a lot of fun. I'm expecting Politica home from a house-hunting trip any minute now. I haven't gotten the full scoop yet, but so far we have learned that I'm drawn to green spaces and she's drawn to more of a city neighborhood feel. That's OK: I rather like the city neighborhood she likes, too. Too bad we can't seem to find the right house. (Note to Universe: you could send a house anytime now. We'd be very grateful.)

At the moment, the options seem to be:

• move to small suburb, which is very small, and very homogenous, both in terms of income and race, and have a short commute on a not-so-interesting road. The upside? A neighborhood full of kids, with reasonably spacious houses that are new enough to have modern conveniences like large closets and family rooms but old enough to be reasonably well constructed. Reasonable size backyards.
  
• move to Germany (the pseudonymous one, which really needs a new pseudonym, but it so cracks me up to hear CG still making this confusion that I'm having trouble coming up with a better one), which is pretty diverse in terms of income, not so much in terms of race. The downside? so far, very hard to find a house we like.
• rent, but finding a rental actually doesn't seem easier (although I've not yet tried very hard).

So far, Politica has seen two houses she's enthusiastic about: The One That Turned Out Not To Be For Sale, and The One That's Listed for $119,000 more than We Hoped To Spend. Then there's the bad floor plan on the busy road, the OK house right next to a crisis pregnancy center/transisional housing/rehab center, the perfectly functional and modern house in the suburbs, The Hobbit House in the suburb's little center....this is very frustrating, and I beg your pardon and indulgence for whining about it here. It's a mysterious housing market--the neighborhood we really want to move to seems to be FSBO central in which houses get snapped up almost immediately, and houses are for sale without really being listed (Politica saw two or three houses that she just heard about from someone while she was visiting around). Sigh. This too shall pass, right? People do manage long-distance moves all the time. But still, sigh.

I'm not used to this

I'm finally getting to vote in a presidential primary with an actual contest going on. I just got a phone call from a gravelly-voiced someone alleging to be from the state's Election Board wanting to know if I had decided who I was going to vote for for President. Shouldn't the Election Board know that I"m not voting for president in the upcoming election? I'm voting for the nominee for president. Not the same thing.

A few days ago, I got a phone poll call, from an outsourced commercial polling outfit I'd never heard of. I couldn't decide who was sponsoring the poll; it was full of questions about whether I was more worried about losing civil liberties or terrorist attacks (the former, for the record) and whether I was worried about a decline in morality and relations between church and state. One question asked if any members of my family are gay or lesbian. The poll clearly didn't envision a lesbian respondent.

The AP poll got me, too. I love polls, which amuses Politica.

A local poll, focused on our Congressional primary, had a pollster who had been trained on all the candidates' names, but otherwise was reading very haltingly (as was the outsourced pollster asking the church/state questions earlier). I'm not impressed by people who can't read the forms properly. I wonder what that does to poll results, actually.

Earlier today, a volunteer from Hillary's campaign called me to find out if they could count on my vote. I'm leaning that way, I said, but still not quite sure. "I know people say it would be great to have an African-American president," the volunteer replied, "but wouldn't it be great to have the first woman president in our lifetime?" This is the sort of thing that makes me think I liked Hillary for president better before she started campaigning. I was going to just get off the phone and get back to work, but I thought, no, I should say something. I pointed out that it wasn't necessary to play a desire to have an African-American president against having a woman president: the categories aren't exclusive (in the abstract), and I don't want to cast my vote in the primary on either gender or race. Why not have volunteers say something substantive about what Hillary would do as president? The reason I'm leaning towards her is her health care plan. But her volunteer call has got me feeling crabby about her campaign. That's no way to educate likely voters, and it simply promotes an oversimplified and unhelpful view of both race and gender. Vote for me because I'm a woman? That doesn't get too far with me.

That said, we may try keeping CG up late to see Hillary at a rally here on Saturday. She'd be thrilled, and even has a little Hillary shirt to wear to it.

Choosing Family

This review is sponsored by Mother Talk: I received a copy of the book and an Amazon certificate.

I hope Alexandra Soiseth writes another memoir that will take up where Choosing You: Deciding to Have a Baby on My Own takes off. She's got some stories to tell, and despite the fact that I found some elements of her story-telling to be disappointing, I closed this book wanting to know more.

Choosing You endeared itself to me almost immediately. In the introduction, Soiseth explains how she welcomed her donor (sperm) into her family while getting ready for her first insemination. Olaf, the donor, sat at her dinner table nightly. She made conversation with the large steel container that had shipped the sperm she chose from Denmark. This is the kind of quirky detail that makes Soiseth's story remarkably engaging: as she describes the conversations she had with her running buddies, the interactions at parties, relationships with old friends and family, the details show real people out and about in the world. Not all the characters here are likeable all the time--but they're all the more likeable, on the whole, for their flaws.

This isn't a book that dwells much on the particulars of pregnancy-by-insemination. Soiseth, in fact, appears almost shockingly unaware of some of the legal and practical issues involving sperm banks and the possibilities for openness down the line. What Soiseth does here is chronicle her journey to motherhood: her longing for motherhood, her pregnancy, her delivery, her postpartrum depression. And all this is set in the context of her life. She has an amazing ability to create community and family beyond biology. A central set of characters is the extended family of her childhood best friend. This other family is family to Soiseth.

Is family about blood, or not? This is a story I'd love to hear Soiseth tell from several angles. She gathers family to herself, yet the passionately yearns for a blood connection to her child. She chooses donor sperm so that her child will look like her, look like her biological family. I had a complicated reaction to this theme: in many ways, I define family as those you choose, not those with whom you share DNA. Yet I treasure Curious Girl's longing to know her first parents, and I see how the biological question marks, and points of difference, are important to her. Important to me. So family is about blood, too. I want to know more about how Soiseth is continuing to talk about blood and family with her daughter. (You can see some of these issues hinted at in one of Soiseth's Literary Mama essays.)

I read this book twice now: the first time, I was disappointed. It wasn't the book I expected it to be. I had assumed more discussion of insemination politics and legalities, more dicussion of stories for her daughter about her donor father. I enjoyed the writing, but I was disappointed in the story. Reading some of the other reviews at the Mother Talk site, I realized I had perhaps been disappointed by my own assumptions. So I re-read. Soiseth's book is the story of her. It's not a story about how she talks to her daughter, it's not a story about insemination. It's a story about one woman's sense of self, one woman's ability to define herself, one woman's struggle with how others view her weight and how she views her body.

I hope she'll tell some other stories, too. But this set of stories takes us into the quotidian joys and struggles of someone making their own choice: take it on its own terms, and enjoy.

Getting Used to Leaving

My department surprised me last week: at our student honors ceremony, I got flowers, and four of my colleagues--an associate chair, my two predecessors as chair, and one of the writing program administrators--made amazingly beautiful remarks. "It's better than retiring," one of my colleagues noted later. "When you retire, no one who preceded you is around to speak." It was interesting--and so moving--to hear what people said. My predecessors, Long Serving Chair (who hired me), said that I'm really organized, not simply because I need to be or like to be, but because I can see into the future of situations and I use organization to present that vision to others. Shorter Serving Chair (the chair when I got tenure) also spoke about my organization, and about his memories of the dinner we had during my campus interview. He said he was proud of the work he'd done helping to hire Politica and me back from Big Sky State U, and that while he knew at the time that we were meant to be at current U, he was now forced to see that New U is the right place for us (and Curious Girl). My writing program colleague joked that she'd taught me to say no, and I'd taught her to delegate, so we were a great team. She'll miss me as a colleague in writing but also as a friend, and talked about how special it is that she plays a wonderful role in CG's life (CG calls her Tante Colleague, and she's really like another grandparent to CG). Our associate chair said that I'm a good chair because I work hard, dream big, and support other people in achieving their dreams.

I was pretty speechless--we're having a department party after the semester ends, and I had planned to have something to say there, and I had remarks ready for our last department meeting. But after all that, mostly, all I could say was "you're welcome" in response to that big departmental "thank you."

Politica laughed when I came home and told her about it, laughing mostly about the being organized part. "I am organized! I just use those powers at school more than home," I insisted. The fact that I have somehow lost my parking permit twice this year is no reflection on my organization.

I was touched that so many of my colleagues mentioned CG in their remarks. My department has been a very family-friendly workplace, and I'll miss having colleagues who've been so interested in my kid. I'm going to miss having colleagues who have known me so long. I know I'll build good new relationships at New U, but I'm realizing just how much I'm going to miss, moving from the place where most of my career has taken place.

I feel a little freer now, though. This surprise helped me move into leaving, really leaving. I'm having secret transition meetings with my yet-unannounced successor. Earlier in the semester I was feeling a little badly that a few key projects aren't finished yet, but today I realized that it's OK. It's not the chair's job to finish everything. These projects--like a promotion and tenure criteria document--belong to the department, not to any single chair, and in the life cycle of a department, some things need to move from spring to fall. I'm leaving various projects in various stages, and that's OK. It's a sign of a healthy department (or so I tell myself), that we have ongoing business. The department is going to be fine. And I'm feeling fine now, too, fine to be leaving. It's been hard this year, knowing all year that I was going to be leaving. I had a verbal job offer from New U in June 2007. That's an unusually long time for an academic position to be open and waiting. I've been making plans for the new job while doing the current job. Things are tipping now, slowly, towards the new job. Somehow, the ceremonial surprise helped free me up for that. And that may be the most moving thing of all about it.

Given all the emphasis on my organization, I tidied up my bookshelves and cleared the top of my desk off. I know my colleagues weren't speaking about organization only in terms of office tidiness (in fact, I doubt they were thinking of that at all, given I have had a slew of Politica's things in my office this year and a growing collection of empty boxes making a grand mess). Still, it seemed like my office should reflect the department's description of me. I wonder what my new office style will communicate to my new colleagues. But that's a post for another day...

Just Say No (Thanks), But Say It Well

I don't know how many academic jobs I've applied for over the years. I had two big years of job searching, one right as I was finishing my doctorate, in which I applied for jobs all over the US and Canada and tried to work out whether I wanted to be a literature-and-writing researcher or a composition and literarcy researcher, one in which I thought I wanted to be a literature specialist, and then a few more scattered applications here and there for positions that seemed interesting. That's a lot of letters, and, of course, a lot of rejection letters sent my way. I still remember two of them: one, from Big State University, a short rejection letter in the fall, after they'd asked to see a writing sample, with a handwritten note from someone on the committee at the bottom. She used an ocean metaphor I can't quite recall to say that she was glad to have come across my scholarship in the search, and that while this wasn't a good fit, she looked forward to seeing more of my work, more of me in the future. The other, a full-page letter sent from Regional State University, went to all applicants who'd applied for a position whose funding had been yanked after the position had been posted. The department chair's letter explained the situation, and talked about how he had loved reading all the applications, describing in general terms the kinds of research and teaching interests he had seen reflected in the applications, and how much he wished he had the chance to meet more of us, and how he wished us well.

Those letters were written by people who were imagining readers on the other side. They were written by people who were self-conscious about the rhetorical situation. They made me feel good about my work, because both letters showed me that real people were out there reading them.

Tenured Radical recently posted on the art of rejection letters. Her tips, as always, are sound, and search committees would do well to heed them:

1. Do not send rejections by email.
2. Do not send rejections by post card.
3. When writing a letter to candidates, if you actually met them, or solicited the candidacy, take two seconds to write a personal note. This means not having your departmental secretary sign them, of course.
4. Send rejections in a timely way: at least when the search is over, if not before. In fact, although wisdom has it that you reject no one until the chosen candidate has signed on the dotted line, truth be told, a large part of the pool is out of the running after the first cut. Why not tell the people who didn't make the semi-final cut -- say, in January, rather than April? [just to be clear: these 4 tips are the Radical's words, not mine]

I'd add a bit to TR's excellent list (framed in the way that English searches happen, which is to say, with deadlines in the fall, interviews at or around the time of the MLA convention in late December, and campus visits anywhere from January through March):

1. Do not send rejections by voice mail on people's home phones.
   
2. Send rejections in ways that acknowledge interactions with the candidates (at least the formal stages of the search): a letter to someone you interviewed at the convention should be a bit different from someone who didn't make that cut. It should be clear to the candidate that you remember meeting them, and that you remember something about their work. It is easy to personalize letters given the wonders of mail merge.
3. Send rejections. Does the fact that the campuses who never wrote to me back in 1990 when I applied mean that I'm still in the running? Probably not, and in any event, I've not found the job I want for the next phase of my careers.
   
4. Send rejections in waves. When you advertise for a position in Magical Forestry, and specialists in Green Peas who took a single course in Magical Forestry apply, it's pretty clear that you wouldn't hire a Green Pea specialist for the position even if everyone else in the applicant pool fell away. There are probably other candidates who are clearly not going to make the final cut. So send those rejections promptly (I wait until the affirmative action review of the interview list is settled). There's no reason to wait until after the search has concluded, which in English can sometimes be 6-8 months after applications are first received.
   
5. When you interview candidates at MLA, and a few of those candidates are clearly not a good fit, send those rejections right away, too.
6. When you invite your top candidates to campus, but think that the next few people on your convention interview list might be fine to invite if some of your top candidates withdraw, let the other candidates know. Yes, this will let them know that they are not your top choice, but they're likely to figure that out when it's mid February and you still haven't called. This gives you a chance to say, "We've invited some other candidates to campus. We had strong applicants and we're impressed with you and your work. We'll keep you posted." This kind of honesty lets candidates know where they stand. OK, this isn't exactly about rejections, but it's related.
   
7. When people come to campus, and they don't get the job, write them a personal note that acknowledges the ways in which they interacted with you. Yes, it is difficult to write such a letter, especially when the reasons for ranking candidates sometimes turns on things candidates can't control (like whose secondary interests overlap or don't with other members of the department), and when candidates 2 and 3 may be really quite good. A short, general "We're reviewing applications and unfortunately your application will not proceed any farther in the search" kind of letter is fine for an early refection, but rejections later in the search should acknowledge the nature of the contact with the candidate.

In some of the departments I've worked in, search committees have used very brief letters of rejection out of fear of creating extended interactions with rejected candidates. But from the writing side, and the receiving side, I'm more comfortable with letters that reveal the humanity in the process. (I'll pause for some snickers. yes, there is much to be cynical about in academic job searches, but the search committees I've participated on or supervised as chair have generally done a fine job working through a crazy process.) There are people on both sides of the search, and search committees hold almost all the power through most of the search. Our correspondence should be gracious, clear, honest, and timely. Searching creates networks, and we never know how candidates will move along in their careers. Writing well on a search creates a good impression of a department, and it helps job seekers.

And yes, I do like to read Ms. Manners, in case anyone was wondering.

Comments and Comment Settings

I wasn't organized enough to participate in Robin's most excellent carnival on blog reader appreciation, but it's never too late to tell people you appreciate their presence and their words. So thank you, readers. I love my readers and commenters (and those of you who read and every now and again delurk). When I check my site meter, I'm even grateful for people I can see are reading and not commenting. You don't mind when I post less often, or more often, and you read through my various blogging moods: more academic for a while, more adoption for a while, more meme-y for a while. Thank you for reading. I read and write much of most days at work, but I enjoy having this space to write in a different voice, about different topics, with people who follow my random strands of consciousness over time.

With all that appreciation in mind, let me ask a question about comment setting on blogger. Aetako notes in the comments on punctuation that my comment settings are changed to prevent anonymous comments: I recently changed the comment settings from "anyone can comment" to "registered users--includes OpenID." I made that change because for the past 20 posts or so, every post I make generates four anonymous Chinese spam comments (at least, I assume it's spam b/c I can't read Chinese!). I got tired of deleting it. Although, come to think of it, the last post generated Chinese spam from a registered-with-blogger user with the userid "you," and I had to delete that, too. I don't know why my little blog attracts these 4-spam Chinese spambots, and I don't know why it bugs me that someone wants to attach spam to some older posts. So maybe I should just go back to letting anyone comment.

Anyone have strong feelings about this? I don't want to discourage people who want to comment here!

She's a Comma, I'm a Comma, are you a comma too?

Rev. Dr. Mom is a comma. So am I. What about you?

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic. You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything. You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests. You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. (But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.) You excel in: Inspiring people You get along best with: The Question Mark

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Haiku is more fun than Houses

House indecision reigns (buy now, or wait a bit and risk losing what we kind of like now? buy a smaller house where we could ski/snowshoe from the back door and walk to the center of Cute Little Town?) , so what better than haiku? (via pilgrim/heretic, and you can get your own)

went to sleep planning
to dream about living with
her and i love the

series with the girls
they are not uncommon i
feel closer to joyce

i love cg's teachers
they knew cg was born always
saying we don't

next can't you see
shouted piglet haven't
you got eyes look at

what to do that is
truly at home and somehow
i think the movie

German Houses

Curious Girl continues to confuse Germany (the real thing) with Germany (the place we're moving, where we are right now, looking for houses and me doing some preliminary set up for next year). "Can we go to the Hello Kitty street?" she asked last night as we drove home from dinner. The Hello Kitty street is in Berlin, near the Hackesche Markt: there's a Hello Kitty store near by, with a sign on a lamppost close to the train station. We used that sign to guide us down the street to the apartment we rented for a week last summer.

We are also house hunting. We know what neighborhood we want to live in, but there aren't any houses for sale there. Well, there are two for sale, but one is on a majorly busy street and the other just doesn't have the kind of layout we want. So we can't decide whether to wait and see whether more houses come on the market in this neighborhood, or whether to set our sights on another neighborhood.

So we've been looking in other neighborhoods, trying to decide whether we should live someplace more suburban (where the housing is much cheaper), whether we should live in a cute small town 15-20 minutes away from the campus we'll be working at (and whether we should live in the suburban part of said cute town, or in the center, in a smaller house that's walking distance to the center of small cute town). Or would it be better to be closer to the area's Distinguishing Geographic Characteristic? Or to have a view of that Characteristic?

Germany isn't the most diverse spot in the US, but the cute small town is less diverse than the not-so-diverse-and-way-more-expensive city. Tough choices.

Maybe this means we've just not yet found the right house. And we're definitely overthinking this all. I hope some clarity will emerge when we sleep on it.

Princess Sita

Curious Girl came up with the title, and she wishes this post could be written in cursive. So use your imaginations on that score. This post is inspired by Librarian Mom and her princess-loving daughter, who got it from Alkelda the Gleeful, whose blog I've never read but will now start because how could anyone not love a name like Alkelda the Gleeful?

We're off to househunt (and me to do some consulting) in Germany! So wish us good househunting vibes, and here's a quick guest blog by Curious Girl herself, with help from Mama.

What do you like about princesses?

They're girls. They're my favorite thing in the whole wide world, because they are all my favorite princesses.

What do princesses do?

Dance.

When you pretend to be a princess, what do you like to do?

Dance. I was Ariel last night and I was swimming with Snow White's baby sister, and she was scared. I said, "It's OK, do you want your sister to come with us?" and she said "goo goo, yes." And then she changed her mind and so Ariel and Baby Sister went swimming alone, and then we did a pattern, and I got so tired swimming I almost fell right down when I was swimming I was so tired. But I didn't! And Phew! That's good.

When I'm Belle, Belle and Cinderella both live in a cottage together. We saw ABC things all over the place. We, Belle and Cinderella, thought the people who do the ABCs a lot, this would be their cottage, so we would take a little walk and went out for a walk in the woods, and we saw candies everywhere! And that was the track. So we picked them up and followed the candy track, and always picked them and picked them and picked them, and when we got home, there was the ABC girl. And we were like "Is that you, ABC Girl? Can we go to your house?" And her hair was all fancy just like ours. She was going back home and she didn't see much candy because we hid it all in her house so she got lost. And that was the track to her house. She was lost almost forever, but not forever, finally. She didn't get home in time for supper but after everyone was asleep and all the wolves and scary things were out, she was home.

What do princesses do that is good?

They kill bad guys with their magic powers. They are kind, isn't that good? They don't be scary, and that is so good.

What are some princess stories that you like?

Cinderella and Belle and Sleeping Beauty, Mulan. Editor's note: we don't actually read a lot of princess stories around here--you can get a good sense of Curious Girl's princess play ideas from her answers so far. But I'm looking forward to her being old enough for Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons and its sequels. Cimorene, Wrede's heroine, is a kindred spirit to Elizabeth, The Paperbag Princess, with a much longer plot and series. And Lauren Child's Princess and the Pea is beautiful, although the humor is a bit over CG's head at the moment.

Anything else you want to say about princesses?

Once upon a time, we were in Disneyland, and when we were in Disneyland, we saw princesses. We went to Belle's area, and there were some princesses I haven't met yet (ed. note: Jasmine and Mulan) and I was so excited to see them. We met each other, and we met each other again at lunch. I liked talking to Belle, and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella told us stories.

I lost two teeth. I wish I could draw the tooth on the computer. (ed. question: when will Blogger add the KidPix tool?)

Slightly Anxious, Good at Getting Stuff Done

Via Chichimama and Rev. Dr. Mom:

Your Score: Kanga

You scored 13 Ego, 14 Anxiety, and 19 Agency!

"I am not Roo," said Piglet loudly. "I am Piglet!"

"Yes, dear, yes," said Kanga soothingly. "And imitating
Piglet's voice too! So clever of him," she went on, as she took
a large bar of yellow soap out of the cupboard. "What will he
be doing next"

"Can't you see?" shouted Piglet "Haven't you got eyes?
Look at me!"

"I am looking, Roo, dear," said Kanga rather severely.
"And you know what I told you yesterday about making faces. If
you go on making faces like Piglet's, you will grow up to look
like Piglet -- and then think how sorry you will be. Now then,
into the bath, and don't let me have to speak to you about it
again."

You scored as Kanga!

ABOUT KANGA: Kanga is Roo's mother and Tigger's foster mother. While she is a kind and motherly sort of person, the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood suspect that underneath, she is a Fierce Animal. Her hobbies involve talking about Roo's health and development, watching Roo while he practices jumping, and making Roo and Tigger take their strengthening medicine.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are the kind of person who takes on other people's worries. You are efficient and a person of action - the type of person who Gets Things Done. Your friends tend to rely on you to get them moving and keep things running.

The problem is that you tend to forget about yourself in all of this. You need to remember that you are an important and worthwhile person, and sometimes it is okay to say "no" to people's constant requests and demands. Give yourself some time off.

Link: The Deep and Meaningful Winnie-The-Pooh Character Test written by wolfcaroling on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(wolfcaroling)

My Wednesday Book Club, 2nd semester

In the fall I posted about the books I've been reading with Curious Girl's class most Wednesdays. I go for lunch, and read to the girls afterwards, and then CG and I head over to her violin lesson and spend the afternoon together. Here are the book selections from the winter/spring Wednesday club, starting with city books to go with their city unit (Some other city books to consider are recommmended at the Miss Rumphius Effect, by the way). Then I tried to work on some art books (although every book for this age is an art book, too), and mostly tried to work on books with strong and interesting girl characters. I have only one or two more books to read, as the end of the school year is fast approaching and I'll be on the road again for most of one week. The very last book I'll read to them is one we are writing together! I'll post about our collaborative authoring project separately. Here's what we've read together so far this year:

• Knufflebunny Too, by Mo Willems. This Caldecott-honor book hardly needs any additional publicity from me, but the girls loved it. It's a great story of two city girls resolving the problem of two Knufflebunnies in one classroom! And a great two page spread of Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. This was the first book we'd read together that many of them had already read, or where they knew the characters (since almost all of them knew Knufflebunny, which a surprising majority pronounce just like Curious Girl does, "snufflebunny." Actually, there's an interesting phonetic moment in the book where we learn that Trixie pronounces the K in knuffle.)
  
• Black Cat, by Christopher Myers. I actually don't care for the scansion in this book about the ramblings of a black city cat, but the illustrations are amazing. Lots of cats-eye insights into what makes a city. We had a great conversation about whether there is a fire in the apartments/projects shown on one page, or whether the author just likes to draw with red and yellow. It's a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book.
  
• Nothing but Trouble: The Story of Althea Gibson, by Sue Stauffacher. A biography of Althea Gibson, presenting her as a girl whose mentors recognized her gifts and could see beyond her rough edges and childhood ways. Great colors--we had a good discussion of what the colors meant in the different illustrations when Althea was mad or playing tennis.
  
• The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,by Mordecai Gersten. I tear up at the end of this Caldecott-winning book every time. It's a true story about Philippe Petit, who did walk a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. One of Curious Girl's classmates said at the end, "I wish it were about a girl."
  
• The Silk Princess, by Charles Santore. While I think the font is too small on the pages, that's a minor quibble about a wonderful story. Ever wonder how silk got discovered? By a very brave little princess long ago in China. Gorgeous illustrations and a strong girl story: what's not to like?
  
• The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County, by Janice Harrington. I love, love, love this book, about a girl whose dream is to catch the most beautiful chicken in her grandmother's yard. Both she and the chicken learn a thing or two as the book progresses, and the collage art is amazing. The scansion is superb-this is a book meant to be read aloud.
  
• Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing and Sylvie Kantorowitz, a great story about a resourceful girl whose bedtime-avoidance drawing comes to life (and how she finally gets to sleep). Great kid-like, crayon-y drawings, and a cool story.
• Mirette on the High Wire, by Emily Arnold McCully. After the comment about The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, this was a natural selection: a Caldecott-winning story about a young girl whose enthusiasm for the tightrope and empathy for her teacher leads both of them to new heights. I see there are some sequels, too. (This same author has several other series, including one about a mouse family. Check out the utterly delightful wordless book School.)
• Nora's Stars, by Satomi Ichikawa. This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of Nora's nighttime adventures during a visit to her grandmother's rather magical house--dolls and toys come to life and the stars do some amazing things, and Nora makes a smart choice about the stars and the sky.
• Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. Told from the perspective a a young girl thinking about her elderly great aunt, this book reveals the wanderlust and love of beauty passed down from generation to generation within a family. "You must do something to make the world more beautiful," each character learns.
  

My New Old Friend

I've been e-mailing with a friend who told me he's been doing something very, very different. What's up, I wondered: it turns out, my friend has had gender identity disorder since very early childhood. George, it turns out, is Joyce.

My immediate reaction was to smile (albeit with a bit of a dropped jaw: I'm sure Joyce is enjoying the list of things her friends imagined might be the new and different thing she has been making arrangements to talk about). I quickly dashed off an e-mail to say something like this: I know I speak for Politica too; we love you; we support you--and your wife; we are your friends, and we are part of your support network.

My second reaction was to laugh. George was, is, the kind of person who's done everything. Grew up on a ranch, can ride a horse. Has lived abroad, is multilingual. Helped found a business, has disparate graduate degrees, isn't afraid to stake out controversial positions while listening well to others. George is (forgive the mixing of names, genders, and tenses: I'm mixing time and space here) gentle and forcefully quiet, so these experiences don't come out one after the other as any kind of bragging. It's just that in virtually any conversation, it seemed to turn out that George had relevant expertise. He knows the stars (that ranching big sky background, I guess). He's lived here, and there. He's parachuted. And what does the man who does everything do? Become a woman. That struck me as funny, just as the fact that George owned his own parachute did the night I found that out.

**********************

Joyce is an academic--smart, eloquent, rational. Her e-mail to me, while personalized, is one that I imagine she's sent to many friends and family members over the past few months. She gave me some reading tips (including Jennifer Finney Boylan's utterly compelling, you really-should-run-out-and-get-it, memoir of her MTF transition in her 40's, She's Not There), and mentioned that she has a blog, something she's been using to chronicle her thinking over the past year and a half, a period which opened in deep depression and has slowly moved through her decision to transition, heartbreakingly beautiful meditations on any number of aspects of the transition, and more recently, chronicles of telling family members, thoughts on conversations with friends and family, all mixed with snippets from the past. I skimmed through the blog in its entirety, and have been reading it more slowly and carefully, learning more about my friend, rethinking our past, imagining our future.

I want to be clear--for Joyce, and anyone else-- my immediate reaction to this news hasn't changed one bit. I loved my friend George; I love my friend Joyce. I feel closer to Joyce, in part because it's now clear a big wall has tumbled down , in part because I've been reading her blog, which contains some intensely intimate entries (albeit public intimacy, staged by a masterful rhetorician). At one point in her blog, Joyce hopes that her friends are writing through their reactions to her news. So this entry is one such point for me.

**********************

Cartoonist Scott McCloud has some work titled "I Can't Stop Thinking!" In some respects, I can't stop thinking about Joyce and her wife Mary Jo. I have other trans friends, but none that I've known in the midst of transition. I just can't stop thinking about Joyce. In the couple of weeks I've been thinking about this news, I've had vivid dreams, one about George being a gay Olympic swimmer who was transitioning to being a woman, and in the dream it turned out that his partner (also an Olympic swimmer) was also a man transitioning to be a woman. How convenient! I've also had several nights of dreams involving wild animals running free, like on an African savannah. No plot, just lots of movement and energy and freedom and elation. Somehow, it seems connected to the news about Joyce, and it feels good.

**********************

One of my favorite memories of all time involves George, Mary Jo, and their children. We all went camping one year, to a big festival, and it was so very hot one day that we left the festival and went to a state park nearby. We lazed around in the river, we lazed on a picnic blanket, singing songs, telling stories, laughing at the wonderful young boy that was George and Mary Jo's oldest son. That afternoon was perfect in the way that only a lazy summer day can be: a big blue sky, warm temperatures, warm water, good company, and only the rhythms of pleasure to guide us. We wrote about this day in our holiday letter (back in the days when we sent holiday letters in December. This year, look for more of a Fourth of July holiday letter. We're working on it, really.)

Now I'm thinking: did that day really happen? Having read Joyce's blog, I'm seeing the past through another lens, a lens of struggle with gender identity disorder that grew worse over time. We've not yet seen each other to have a longer conversation about this, and I wonder whether that afternoon sticks in their minds, too, with the clarity and perfection it does in mind. But how perfect could it have been if George, relaxing in an inner tube, was struggling with desires and secrets and selves he thought couldn't be revealed?

**********************

A few years ago, I met George in the hallways of our national professional association conference. Politica was in the midst of a pretty bad set of flare-ups associated with some of the chronic medical problems she has. "That's not fair," he said to me. "That's just not fair. Not fair at all." I was touched by the sweet vehemence of the phrasing. Now, I think back, and just as firmly say, "that's not fair" about the painful choices George had to make, moving through the world as a man. And I wonder, too, whether in that moment, George was aware of that pain, projecting some of it into his comment about Politica?

On Joyce's blog, she mentions being--as George-- at another conference and having a terrible time, sure that her colleagues would not be happy with the news that she's transsexual. I remember seeing George at a public event, and in my memory now, George was standing a bit apart from the crowd, looking sad. Is that real, or am I projecting sadness and separation into the past because of the blog posts I've now read, because of the memoirs I've now read? As I read the blog post about this moment, I thought "but you could have told me! I'd have hugged you." As I did hug George at the time.

I don't know how to trust my emotional memories of the past, now that I realize how much more was going on than I knew. But what I did know, was real, and the foundation of a good friendship.

**********************

I should, logistics willing, be seeing Joyce and Mary Jo sometime next month. I'm looking forward to it--I've always treasured the spontaneous meals we've managed to arrange at conferences, but this time, I'm hoping we'll be able to plan a time to be together and talk. Joyce may be looking forward to talking about anything but all this, though. I remember a point after Curious Girl came home, after her surgery, after her medical conditions seemed to be more stable. I realized I could answer the question "How are you?" without explaining her condition in great detail, or talking about adoption. It was rather liberating. I talk about feeding issues and adoption regularly, of course, but it was good to know that I had other narratives available to me. I wonder whether Joyce feels the same way: gender identity is a compelling narrative, but perhaps she wants to tell other stories.

**********************

We found a Shona sculpture in an art gallery, and bought it for Joyce and Mary Jo. The sculpture symbolizes spiritual evolution through physical transformation, and the contrast of polished curves and textured ridges seems like a tangible and beautiful reminder of friends afar. (You can see similar sculptures online, although this isn't where we bought it and I don't know the site.)

**********************

I'm still e-mailing Joyce on George's computer account.

Sometimes, I just stop and look at her name, and it seems to pop off the screen and rotate. Who are you, Joyce? I turn the name over and around, learning my way around its shape on the screen or page. Joyce isn't--alphabetically, materially--the same shape as George. Curious Girl would say, "I'm still getting used to it." (Note to self: as this is getting long, I'm going to write about my conversation with Curious Girl about all this separately.)

**********************

I'm realizing what mundane things I didn't know about George. Like clothes, and where they come from. George was, is, a pretty spiffy dresser at work: classic clothes, not flashy, good quality, nice looking. At home, nice quality clothes, practical clothes that would change depending on the activity. On the blog, Joyce wonders about where to shop for her new look. Me, I hate to shop, but I understand the questions about the new look (questions I have, in fact, about our upcoming move. Do professors at German University dress differently than professors here?) Joyce wonders whether a shirt from This Store, a skirt from That Store might be suitable. I never think about clothes like this. I bet Joyce dresses better than I do (she certainly knows more about makeup than I do!). It's interesting, discovering ways in which my friend is thinking about clothes. I'd never have thought to think that way.

As I said in one of my e-mails, it's a good friendship that is still unfolding all these years later (even if shopping for clothes isn't the most profound example. But there's something about the material intimacy of it all that fascinates me).

**********************

Some days, I wish I had a chance to say goodbye to George. But then, what would I say? And isn't George in Joyce?

George had a wonderful voice. I used to love being at his house when his mother would call, just to hear him say, "Hello, Mama," with wonderful elongated syllables in Hello and a lilting southern accent on the phrase. Of course, Mama passed away a few years ago, so I'd never have heard that again anyway.

I do wonder what Joyce sounds like.

**********************

It's not so simple as George vanishing and Joyce appearing. Gender is innate, but gender is performed, enacted, learned. Politica reminds me that George was really one of her few good straight male friends--but it turns out, he's more queer than straight. So it's not so simple. George, transitioning to Joyce, is making choices about intonation, fashion, gesture, voice...so many things. There are many narratives intersecting here: the creation of a trans identity, the creation of a female identiy, the refashioning of an academic identity, perhaps creation of an activist identity. Not to mention the recreation of a family identity, and the reshaping of friendships. So losing George isn't the only story, if it is a story at all.

As anyone who's been reading here for a while knows, I think a lot about adoption as something that happens at a moment in time, and something that unfolds over time in terms of identity and relationships. I've found myself wondering how much similarity there is between the kind of thinking I've done on adoption and the kind of work Joyce is doing now. Stories about making peace with the past, stories about making a coherent narrative of fragmented parts of the past...obviously there are many, many differences between these two situations, but the kind of emotional flexibility that adoption has promoted seems useful as I think about Joyce. Facts can be interpreted on multiple levels, interpretations can change over time, and sometimes contradictions just have to be lived with. George is(n't) Joyce; there are losses and gains, continuities and disjunctions.

**********************

I'm sorry Joyce struggled with such sadness at various points in her life. Reading the blog, I can't be anything but inspired as I look at the evolution she's gone through, and so pleased at the community around her--some of which I share with her as academics working in related fields, some of which I share from a period of shared geography, some of which I can see online.

I have a new, old friend: I like it.

Then and Now

My first Broadway show was Shenandoah, starring John Cullum (and Penelope Milford, who played the oldest daughter, who was of course the character I fixed on). My mother took me, just she and I, into the city for a matinee. I loved going into the city with my mother, who is a rather shy and naive woman. The city transformed her into someone who walked fast and purposefully, who took control, who was in charge. My father--also city-born and city-bred, albeit in Queens, while my mother grew up in Manhattan and worked there for many years as well--is curiously cowed by the city, and that reversed their usual dynamic. Not that my dad is an overly domineering sort, but in matters of logistics and transportation, he was usually the one leading the way. But not in the city.

Shenandoah just blew me away. I'd always been drawn to narrative songs. Among the belongings in the basement that I need to decide what to do with is a box of records, including my childhood recording of Cinderella, and probably Danny Kaye singing Hans Christian Andersen. As I got older, I practically wore out my copies of Jesus Christ Superstar and 1776. I loved the vocabulary of songs (I learned rubicon from a song in 1776 and grippe from Guys and Dolls, e.g.). I loved the stories of the songs. So I went to the theatre expecting to love it, and love it I did (click through the link above and you'll hear selections from the touring production starring Cullum--very cool to see him as I recall him).

Magpie posted recently about the smell of Penn Station. I love the smell of Manhattan, generally. The pretzels, the people, the trains. I love the memory of walking along the city streets with my mother, and I love the magic of my Shenandoah memories. I thought the songs were amazing, the costumes so beautiful, and the story just gosh darn romantic.

So that was my introduction to Broadway. I don't know when Curious Girl will see a Broadway show on Broadway, living as we do quite far from the city. But today I took her to her first Broadway-ish show: H.igh S.chool M.usical's national tour came through. Maybe someday she'll be blogging--or writing in whatever technology she will have available--about her memories of her first show, comparing them to what her child's first big show will be. CG was transfixed (as much by the fact that her favorite teacher and her daughter came with us as with the show). We've seen the movie too many times to count, so CG knew the plot (but sometimes, I think, got a little confused by the rearranging necessitated by the move from screen to stage). Not all the songs are the same, and I found myself nitpicking about the sound system, which just sounded so electrified. Am I just getting old and crabby, or is more amplification reducing sound quality?

We had a good time (although I think the movie is better than the play, which plays up stereotypes more sharply and more meanly, and is less emotionally subtle than the movie). And for all I know, Curious Girl fell asleep as entranced as I was by John Cullum, Penelope Milford, and the rest of the cast sometime in the mid-70s. Sweet dreams, my theatre-going girl.