i said burr . . .

It's cold down here! On the one hand, I like it cause I like fall and winter clothes more than summer clothes. On the other hand, it's cold!

I imagine it's going to get much colder this weekend. :(

But I can't be too down cuz the dynamic duo are coming to town! Yeah!

Run's House

it's the best reality tv show i've ever seen!!

Manic depressive

I was on this music induced high as I walked out the door of my apartment to catch the 3:45 shuttle to emory to make my 4 o’ clock class. I had even put on my Michael Jackson button (a picture from when he was still black) and ya’ll know I don’t do accessories. I was feeling really good and I was on time to meet the shuttle. As the driver open the door. there was a man slowly making his way down the steps of the shuttle to the side walk. I was annoyed because I didn’t want to keep the driver waiting and I impatiently looked at the man. He had on flimsy, almost cellophane sun glasses and I realized that he was blind. As he was trying to reach the side walk with his foot, he stepped out, only to barely catch the edge of the curb and he ended up falling flat on his face.

I saw it happen. I saw it happen in slow motion. I saw his foot tentatively search for a landing place and I just stood back and watched it all. I could see it happening and I did not move paralyzed by societal forces that tell us not to touch not to help that we are all fucking autonomous. I tried to help him up. Well, I reached out to him and crouched asking if he was ok. He said he was fine. The driver got off and helped the man to his feet. His “glasses” were askew and I could see thick whitish scar tissue on his eyes. He knew him. The driver asked Clint where he was going. Clint said he was going to mcdonald’s to get something to eat and then he only had to walk a block. The driver said ok but be sure to use the cross walk. And Clint said ok. He walked off and the driver got back on the shuttle. I got on the shuttle and I noticed that everyone on the shuttle was sitting in their seat. they acknowledge me with a weird stare and I’m sure they saw the whole thing transpire. I sat down and I started crying.

I don’t think I can convey correctly how deeply this upset me. I talk about race but damn. Clint, a 40 something working class (I’m assuming based on his attire) black man has to ride the shuttle, has to fucking walk the streets of Atlanta with it’s anti pedestrian sidewalks and fall flat on his face because I was too scared, dumb, insensitive, rude, individualistic, to actually help him. Disability is something we tack on to our interlocking oppression spiel. But falling down because society assumes that everyone should see is no different from any of the other problematic assumptions society makes that we privilege in our discussions of oppression. I cried all the way home on the walk back from class. I cried for Clint and the fact that there is no one to be with him as he moves through this hostile city. I cried because there shouldn’t have to be anyone with him because society should understand that some people can’t see and that it is imperative that provisions be made. I cried because we are so invested in our own little spheres that we forget our fellow citizens. I cried because I’m in a women’s studies program supposedly looking at disability and I wasn’t anymore sensitive that someone else might have been.

I challenge you as I am challenging myself never to be so callous again. I prayed (another thing I don’t do) for forgiveness for not acting in this situation, for Clint, and for the strength and courage to never be a bystander in that sense again. I’m not sharing this to illicit sympathy but to hope that if any of you encounter a similar situation that you won’t make my mistake.

Dem girls got . . . brains!

so i am so crunk on scholarship today. On rap (not hip hop) too. It's absolutely incredible how music can completely alter your mood and your thinking. A disconnected phone call, words of fire, and dem boys in the hood is a rather invigorating combination!

The scholar/activist is back in full effect!

Can you loan me 20 dollars til I get my check next . . . month?

had a conversation with someone i hadn't talked to in a while. it's weird how things can fall right back in synch. I surprised myself by what i was willing to tell, what ended up being said explicitly and not. On a related note, people's recklessness with other people's emotions and lives is so disheartening. More and more i wonder about relationships and why people seem so invested in them.

oh and i'm broke. like i have $40 to last til the end of october cuz emory messed up my check (it's not just the hbcu's!). so yeah i'm on a serious budget now.

But I still want my vacuum!!!!

Thanks Jah . . .

A hit, a very powerful hit . . .

I had my first blow to my ego yesterday. I was in my med anthro class trying (very inarticulately i might add) to question anthropology and it's goals. I don't know the jargon of the field so my comments were simplistic and wholly disappointing. i felt like their was a masked hostility from some of my classmates toward me and it wasn't cool. It just made me mad that certain anthropology students will go to some part of the world that they know nothing about, not speaking the language, do a study and then for the sake of the ethical standards of anthropology, give the studied population a copy of whatever work they produced, in english no doubt, and with no way to decipher it. I think i inadvertently put my professor on the defensive too which i didn't mean to do. i was just trying to understand.

and that was the beginning of a day filled with little reminders of my newness to this kind of academic environment. Spelman was a womb and to an extent so is my dept but I am rapidly being pushed out and it is cold and bright! I am no longer moya campus activist extrodinaire but one of the many inkblots who make people and institutions feel as if they aren't racist. I was naive to think that this was gonna be a non issue because i had a good first week. One day can do a number on an ego though.

but the struggle continues . . .

feelin' good feelin' great . . .

so things are good! after my first week it is apparent that the women's center has prepared me well for women's studies discourse at the graduate level. i feel like i am so on top of my game having had dr. k and bgs mold me these last couple of years. pc and bgs gave me shout outs at meetings i attended at spelman recently. those meant more than they know and sustain me when i'm back across town in the different different world. I swear if spelman had a grad school i would have never left.

but it's not all fun and games. the reading seems almost insurmountable but i'm doing what i can. I'm plugging away and am so geeked by the scholarship that it doesn't seem like a chore. I love it and I'm trying to suppress my feelings of guilt with the knowledge that this is a temporary pit stop on the road to revolution.

Anger

So i'm really pissed off about this news coverage. It is making me angry to see these newsreporters in the field reporting on the situation and seemingly being of little help to the people there. They show these images of black people looting that they have looped, and shoot crying children and elderly people who are obviously in need of immediate attention. And the rest of the country, myself included, is going on with their day, checking in, becoming disturbed and changing the channel again.

I will say that spelman is taking in students from xavier but i don't think dillard will recover from this. This is just crazy! Crazier still because this could have been avoided.

If the US hadn't colonized this country the way it had, maybe followed the living migrational patterns of the indigenous people who lived in the region maybe it could have been avoided. If slaves hadn't been brought in to work the land, maybe the faces on the tv screen would be a little lighter and maybe people would be more inclined to reach into there pockets to help. If we hadn't upset the natural balance of the world so much, maybe a category 5 hurricane wouldn't have come to be.

and yet and still life goes on. I have to read 200 pages for feminist methods and topics and it's all about how women studies is this different field this field of compassion that puts people first and yet, there's this national crisis going on and we are reading textbooks? Not only that but there are social events, even one that am hosting tomorrow while there are people who haven't had clean water to drink for 3 days, and not even in some part of the world we don't think about but one or two states over. When will wake up out of this collective daze that is the status quo and move to do what we know is right?

It's official!

I am enrolled as a grad student @ Emory. I'll be taking the med anthro class! yes! avoiding that possible political land mine in theory. yes!

we had our grad school orientation today. our grad student pres. is "Farmer Ted"/Brian all grown up with a little ferris bueller thrown in. he's adorable and he's teaching charlie and the chocolate factory to some first years so he gave away golden mugs that entitle the bearers to cut to the front of the keg lines at the grad events through out the semester. I'm at Emory now . . .

Tomorrow i have to buy some worms for lil' Agnes and i have an outdoor social gathering. lizzy, the other pop culture fiend in my cohort, is going to see the 40 year old virgin with me this weekend. Grad school is pretty cool so far.

You know it's hard out here for a . . . scholar

so i had my departmental orientation today which was cool. very cool actually. my department is the bomb. According to one of the professors, BGS was bigging me up at some conference in ny. I swear if i was a little older . . .

I'm taking a race & feminism class along with a topics and methods class. Verdict's still out on class three but I'm leaning toward this medical anthro class that is dead on in terms of my area of interest and potentially requires less political navigation.

I can walk to school and I kind of feel like I did walking to the library from leverett all the way back in elementary school. It's a nice time to think and it's far enough to feel like exercise.

The vma's were horrible. JB gave a good recap and i'm totally feeling her on her new found simpson hatred. I'll add my two cents:

Diddy can't dance
How are you gonna introduce krumping and not say anyone's name but LaChapelle?
Beyonce and 'em looked so tacky
Rock and Rap, that's it?
how did gideo get a job? How does chuck norris still have one?
and R. Kelly, are you f*cking serious?!

I don't think we should watch this anymore. I'm serious! Celeb worship is out of hand and i am not going to participate anymore (well i'm going to try not too).

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go upstairs and see if alison will let me get in on her indoor bowling tournament.

A new thai place

so today i went to the first social gathering for my dept., a dinner at a thai restaurant in the dec.

I was the last to arrive (i underestimated the drive) and i decided to sit by Danica, the other new black girl in the program. Also a spelman grad, class '01 as well as the recently retired miss georgia. She's cool people as are the rest of the people in the department. conversation was easy and not too awkward. I was pretty quiet though. Not really jumping into the fray as much but i'm sure things will be different tomorrow.

Now off to watch the VMA's so we'll all have something to talk about in the morning.

feelin' so good . . .

Today was a good day, good day indeed! the universe is moving and i'm back in the swing of it back in the mix and it's great. I feel like I'm ready and I'm doing what I need to be. Making peace and forgiving, or trying to.

J lo ain't so bad . . .

grad school on the horizon

so i got this book that is supposed to help me prepare for the next 5 (hey i'm optimistic) years of my life. It's pretty good but a little depressing as well.

I don't want to be anything other than someone completely dedicated to the humanity of the globe and i thought that going to grad school was a way to aid me in that. but from what the book says, academia is as much a hierarchical good ol' boys club as anything else. However, I am in a women's studies program and i'm hoping that that means something, that that will negate a lot of the pitfalls he points to in the book.

So some useful or not so useful tips he offered (summer what do you think?):

Create a calendar mapping the entire length of your program including the dates of publication of articles you should be working on and conferences etc.

make contracts with your professors about when you are supposed to finish things and stick to them

write and work on your thesis for a couple of hours each day as opposed to in large concentrated blocks

set up a filing system etc.

For those of you who know me and have seen my room, or my apt. you know that organization is not something that is high on my list of priorities but i guess i've got to work on that. It's just hard to get into that frame of mind when it's the summer and friends are here and gavin is playing!!!

But i'm going to get it together. Trust! B/c the revolution depends on it!

Misc.

don't really have anything new to say but i wanted to see something else on this page. Maybe another list is in order.

1. I'm really feeling luther (Track 6) right now
2. the salt eaters is speaking to me in a weird way, i've never read a book like this (meaning both the way i'm reading it and the content)
3. anyone heard from sarah?
4. I'm going to see gavin next friday!!
5. This feels a little like 20 questions but a lot less cryptic and mean.
6. I need to work on being angry, or at least be more vocal about it.

That's all folks . . .

the fast runner

I've always felt this connection to inuit people. I really don't know what that's about but i thought I'd share a little bit of their struggle because They are so often overlooked. In the oppression olympics, they are gold medalists.

"The impacts of climate change have very real, negative, harmful impacts on the Inuit's ability to sustain themselves as they have traditionally done, their ability to be healthy, which they have a right to in the Inter-American human-rights system," explains Wagner, of Earthjustice. "Their ability to maintain their unique culture, which is absolutely dependent on ice and snow; their ability to hunt and fish and harvest plant foods; their ability to have shelter and build their homes -- all of those rights are impacted by climate change in the Arctic."


The Inuit had been noticing alterations in ice, land, water, and wildlife for years -- phenomena that fell outside their extensive traditional knowledge. Ice formed later in the year and broke up sooner. Changes in the ice pack altered travel routes over land and sea. Experienced hunters were falling through thinning ice into seawater cold enough to kill in minutes. Once-frozen coastlines were eroding, destroying Inuit homes.

Also potentially devastating, residents were observing changes in the creatures around them, including caribou, polar bears, ringed seals, walrus, beluga whales, and seabirds. The culture has relied on these animals for food, clothing, and other materials for thousands of years. Now, increasingly, they were noticing that polar bears couldn't find seals along the receding ice edge and were forced to scavenge elsewhere for food. A mosquito invasion drove caribou into the hills during the summer, forcing them to forsake rich lowland grazing for scrappier fare. And robins and barn owls -- birds for which the Inuit had no name -- appeared for the first time.

Global warming is not the first industrial threat to reach this land. In the late 1980s, medical research revealed that chemicals and pollutants including chlordane, DDT, and PCBs had been accumulating in the globe's farthest north for decades, carried from thousands of miles away by atmospheric and oceanic currents -- or, as scientists have more recently supposed, by bird droppings. These persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, become more concentrated higher in the food chain, reaching unprecedented levels in predator mammals at the top like polar bears, ringed seals, beluga whales, walrus -- and Inuit, who carry more than 200 toxic pollutants in their bodies.

This poisoning from afar means "we have to think twice about how we deal with going out into the environment," says Watt-Cloutier, "because the environment's our supermarket, it's our way of getting food back to our families and to our communities." Canadian Inuit mothers, for example, who have seven times more PCBs in their breast milk than women in the country's largest cities, are advised either not to nurse their babies, or not to eat meat from the hunt.

The Inuit have also struggled to survive a cultural dissolution common to many indigenous peoples who have experienced rapid modernization. Canadian Inuit struggle with some of the highest rates of alcoholism and drug abuse in the nation. Inuit infant mortality rates are two to three times higher than the Canadian national average, life expectancy is about five to seven years shorter, and the suicide rate is six times higher.

"Everything is connected," she continues. "Connectivity is going to be the key to addressing these issues, like contaminants and climate change. They're not just about contaminants on your plate. They're not just about the ice depleting. They're about the issue of humanity. What we do every day -- whether you live in Mexico, the United States, Russia, China ... can have a very negative impact on an entire way of life for an entire people far away from that source."

This summer, Wagner, Goldberg, and the ICC will continue gathering facts to support their case, including videotaped testimony by Inuit elders. In the meantime, Watt-Cloutier's stature as a global activist is growing: in April, she accepted a U.N. Champions of the Earth award and helped stage a massive, Hollywood-infused "Global Warning" photo shoot on the ice in Nunavut, Canada's Inuit territory; in June, she generated headlines from Norway when she accepted the international Sophie Prize, given annually to a recipient "working toward a sustainable future."

back by request

and this too shall pass . . .

I put a dining room set together!

cuz that's what grown ups with their own apartments do. They also do said assembly instead of writing their premiere academic article. But the night is young, even if I have work tomorrow. I will forge ahead.

incidentally, strawberry sorbet and black water is quite a combo!

Soy un perdedor

I think this is a lesson for my passive aggressive nature. I've got to be more direct more clear, more assertive. And I know this and I say this and yet I don't act. and the truth is, the worst is not bad when you're holding all the cards. Feelings get hurt, well mine were hurt already.

the writing's on the wall . . .

but not in this blank word document i have in front of me.

tryin' to write this D4/4/3 piece and i'm having a little trouble. I have to admit the second album is kinda hot. I can't find the writing credits on any of these albums though. Any suggestions out there?

by the way my tire is fine.