life is too short to waste any more of it on you

i finally told my parents about what happened. they were amazingly supportive, clear-headed and wise. i don't know why i expected any differently.

the best advice they could have given me was this: life is too short to be unhappy and life is too precious to let bad people break you down and make you feel less worthy of happiness than you are. forget it like a bad dream and move on. you owe it to yourself to fight for what's yours, for the happiness you deserve.

god, i love them.

and they are so right. onward! upward! the past is behind me and i'm not looking back.

(if only i could) sleep all summer

i saw Neko Case perform at the Egg in Albany with some good friends last night: a college friend, a friend from my recent graduate program, and one of my best friends, my partner of 7 years (he turned 30 yesterday).

Neko came out to perform this song for her encore. just her and a guitarist. i was in tears by the end of it. something about sitting with all these people who i loved so much, people i've needed in different ways at different stages of my life, some who i've gotten much closer to over the years and others who i know time and distance will eventually pull us apart, not knowing the future of things, not understanding the past, and wanting so much to pull it all in tight and protect it from the erosion of time ever-marching onward. i've never been so afraid for a moment to end.

so i'm just gonna put this video here, and some lyrics that particularly spoke to me, like a little fragile time capsule for me to come back to another day and remember how i felt in this particular moment, tears streaming down my face in a dark spaceship-like concert venue, afraid for the lights to turn back on again.

"I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man

Give the ocean what I took from you so one day you could find it in the sand
And hold it in your hands again

Cold ways kill cool lovers
Strange ways we used each other
Why won't you fall back in love with me?"

This American Life examines a Chinese life on the assembly line

EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP WHAT THEY'RE DOING AND READ/LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT NOW.

what does it mean for something, everything to be “made in china?”

fascinating/horrifying revelations of the factories and working conditions in china that make all the shit you take for granted.

Shenzhen is a city without history. The people who live there will tell you that, because 31 years ago Shenzhen was a small town. It had little reed huts, little reed walkways between the huts. The men would fish in the late afternoon. I hear it was lovely. Today Shenzhen is a city of 14 million people. It is larger than New York City. Depending on how you count it, it's the third largest city in all of China. It is the place where almost all of your crap comes from.

And the most amazing thing is, almost no one in America knows its name. Isn't that remarkable that there's a city where almost all of our crap comes from, and no one knows its name? I mean, we think we do know where our crap comes from. We're not ignorant. We think our crap comes from China, right? Kind of a generalized way. China.

But it doesn't come from China. It comes from Shenzhen. It's a city. It's a place.

Shenzhen looks like Blade Runner threw up on itself. LEDs, neon, and 15-story-high video walls covered in ugly Chinese advertising. It's everything they promised us the future would be.

[...]31 years ago, when Deng Xiaoping carved this area off from the rest of China with a big red pen, he said, this will be the special economic zone. And he made a deal with the corporations. He said listen, use our people. Do whatever you want to our people. Just give us a modern China. And the corporations took that deal, and they squeezed and they squeezed. And what they got was the Shenzhen we find today.

i find it important to emphasize, that my absolute horror and disgust in reading this is less directed at the Chinese government and the Chinese leaders or even at the Chinese corporate heads who allow this condone this sick, sick operation (though, of course, they are fault here as well). what horrifies me and disgusts me most is actually the fact that American people are totally ok with/ ignorant of / willfully ignorant about it. we condone this kind of human rights abuse, because we want our crap to be cheaper, and we always want more of it.

think about how amazingly, completely backwards and effed up this is:

As a creature of the First World, I expect a factory making complex electronics will have the sound of machinery, but in a place where the cost of labor is effectively zero, anything that can be made by hand is made by hand. No matter how complex your electronics are, they are assembled by thousands and thousands of tiny little fingers working in concert. And in those vast spaces, the only sound is the sound of bodies in constant, unending motion.

modern technology has advanced to such a degree that we (Americans) assume most things  everything is made by machines, even the relatively simpler things that used to be made by hand, like sweaters, and books, even our food. most people probably think we live in the mechanized future, where handcrafted things are a luxury, a long-lost artifact of history and ancient cultures and the pioneers. so in an age of inconceivably advanced technology, where the machines get smaller and more complex and powerful year after year, you would expect these machines to also be borne from the labor and precision of machines. but, in fact, Mr. Disney tells us, they are assembled by hand, millions of precise hands, working repetitively in an unending mechanical whir. and, in fact, these millions of tiny hands are actually cheaper and more expendable than those big machines.

what makes that such a perverse and deplorable realization is compounded by the fact that those big expensive machines are what put people in America out of work. and here is where i get really angry: in America, where we have labor laws and unions and it's illegal to pay your workers nothing and have them work endless days, the big corporations figured it's actually cheaper and better for business to bring in those big machines. that's what happened in the coal industry, and the automobile industry, and many other industries: human labor got replaced with non-stop, wageless, liability-free machines. other corporations, who couldn't use machines (such as computer manufacturers, i guess), shipped the jobs overseas, to China and India, where they could get human hands to build their products and still get paid next to nothing.

and the really terrible thing is, that China's and India's wages keep dropping year after year, to "stay competitive" with one another in the international market for jobs. so you see, this is a compounding problem that grows worse year after year, with no foreseeable end, because the trend in dropping prices of tech products comes at the price of workers' wages and working conditions.

but, slave labor does not necessarily have to exist in order for these markets to exist. if American companies, such as Apple, commit to fair labor practices (as Apple just did, in joining the FLA), they set the standard for business practices around the world. if American companies demand ethical practices from their suppliers and partners, businesses and employers around the world will change to meet the demand. American companies and American consumers need to demand and expect better.

back to the future

have i mentioned, i love time travel!

i found this wonderful photography project by a woman in Brazil by the name of Irina Werning, who has been collecting old photos from her friends in Buenos Ares and having them "go back in time" to re-enact moments from their past.

at first i thought she had just found old photos and then procured models who could be dressed up and posed in a way resembling the photographs, but about halfway thru the gallery it occurred to me that these past and future people are actually the same people. once you realize the photos are actually juxtaposing real past with real present, with decades in between, you're humbled by the human ability to transcend change. or to put it another way, humans wear change very well. babies become adults, brunettes become blondes, sprinkles of chest hair grow, trees grow, crooked teeth straighten, beards are grown, laugh lines appear – there are acute superficial differences, but the characters beneath the surface (one can imagine) are still relatively the same, albeit with some insane tattoos accrued along the way.

it's been quieting to look at these photographs and feel reassured of the constancy with which time grips us all. lately i have been perceiving myself as a stranger, so different from who i was yesterday, the year before, and ten years ago. to think of an image of myself when i was eleven and contrast it to how i feel now feels alienating and weird, like wearing the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. but i am reminded that perhaps life moves more in ripples than seismic waves. most of the time, anyway.

transhumanism? thoughts on our robot futures.

litmus test: is this frightening? Y/N

remember when people used to worry that the future would be bleak because we'd be captured and enslaved by a superior robot race? remember how ridiculous that sounds? now, remember how simple life was when everyone used landlines (actual pre-planned play dates! if you wanted to have a date you actually had to plan and keep your promises!) and dial-up internet was new wave? remember when Cyber Monday didn't exist? remember when calling an office line or a toll-free number meant waiting on the line to speak to an operator, before interfacing with voice-recognition software and keypad menus (to then be put on hold to speak to someone) became commonplace to modern existence? even i remember those days.

as technology advances, computers become faster, more efficient, more accurate and (more significantly) cheaper at performing the jobs formerly held by humans. imagine a DMV line made expedient and seamless by a wall of computers instead of bulky attendants and clerks. how sleek an LCD screen can be compared to the bulbous inconsistency of humankind!

technological advancements occur at increasingly rapid paces. perhaps out-pacing evolution and the rate of human biological development. it's no wonder a consistently frightening convention of fiction and fantasy is the image of an inanimate object coming to life and possessing the ability to move, change, and destroy. [Cf. Poltergeist, Chuckie, kids' cartoons(?)]

what with technology being (and becoming) what it is, it's expected that machines and computers will come to replace (and out-perform) human employees in many current jobs. while it may come as no surprise that toll takers, for example, have been replaced, the machines are coming for YOUR job next. librarians, postal workers, Blockbuster staff recommenders, watch out! it might seem impossible for computers to perform the jobs of doctors, lawyers, poets and teachers, those jobs that require a unique human brain with the capacity for judgement, critical thinking, creativity, and insight. but consider this: travel agents no longer exist because you can Wiki-travel any destination for yourself. who's to say WebMD won't come to replace professional medical advice in the future? i've already witnessed a robot performing the jobs of a lab assistant in a hospital, couriering blood tests from one medical wing to the other:

and while it takes a special grasp of language, its lyricism and rhythm, to compose the most compelling poetry and prose, randomized text generators can create a free association of words reminiscent of poetics. podcasts of lectures and language lessons can provide an educational experience without the hallowed walls of an educational institution.

before i get too Glen Beck on you all, i guess what i'm trying to say is "no kidding the job market sucks right now." i may have sparkling credentials and an imperturbable work ethic, but so do hundreds of thousands of other jobless applicants. and still, computers will never unionize for health insurance and better pay and better working conditions.

as long as we keep finding ways to replace human workers with computers, and as long as the human population keeps rapidly growing, the gap between job availability and job need will be ever-expanding. kids will continue working on the illusion that they can go to school and work hard and accrue millions of dollars of debt and emerge gainfully employed in the end. only to find a life of depressing retail work and fast-food service await them. back to adolescence, back to where you started. no wonder people are turning to television and Chatroulette and endless escapism. endless, vicious cycle of technology-dependence. and yet, all of us were quaking in our homes on the eve of Y2K, clutching our piles of firewood for strength, hoping the computers would survive the wipeout. shucks, we missed an opportunity.

living in the digital age

fyi, anyone born post-1977 is a "digital native" and anyone pre-1977 is a "digital immigrant."

this video is terrifying.



this makes me rethink the "digital divide": my students may not have access to computers at home, but at least someone in their home has a smart phone with internet access. the digital world at their fingertips, and not a clue how to use it. frightening.

a wish for the new millenium

it's 2010, the "future." where's my flying car? my space suit? why haven't we colonized Mars yet?

all i want for my futuristic present is for someone to invent a time machine so i can travel back to the 1970s/80s and watch a young Bruce Springsteen sing "I'm On Fire" in an intimate low-lit concert venue and not feel guilty or self-conscious about squealing like a teenage girl.

aw heck. i don't need a time machine to do that!

avocado couch

i opened an etsy account the other day, because of recently developed aspirations to start crafting from home instead of working a 9-5 job (this is because, more than likely, i will no longer have my teaching position at school next year due to budget cuts, and due to a lack of interest in devoting myself full-time to graduate school, will most likely be living at home, not “at home” as in with my parents (not that there's anything wrong with that b/c my parents are exceedingly lovely ppl), but in a home, that is, a dwelling-place, or, what i imagine to be just one large room with carpet and a window (because that's all i need), so, anywhere really).

ANYWAY! the etsy shop i opened is called Avocado Couch, and when/if it opens, will probably specialize in random things made of felt, hand-bound books, t-shirts with strange animal pictures on them, stationery, and who knows what else. i think mostly i just want to stay at home (/”inside”) and sit on the carpet, and cut paper with knives and sew things. that would be nice.

this will be my banner!

-stephan!e

---

!edit! i just realized that etsy requires a registration fee, and considering i have no start up money to speak of, no "products" to sell (yet), and no customers (yet! haha, i kid!), it seems unwise to pay a website for services i could more or less undertake myself. so! for now, or, in the future when this finally comes to fruition, i can post things i make on this website you are currently staring at and taking the time to read (thank you!) and i'll include my contact info and we can hassle each other over prices and all that performative business-talking bullcrap on the phone or via email. really, it would just be so wonderful to have little creations of mine wandering around out there. that's what i'm really in it for, not the money, or the fame, i just want to make things. livin' the dream y'all!

here i dreamt i was an architect

spending the majority of your day among people half your age and size is an unnatural way of being. this is why our modern educational system is plagued with problems. Freire and Dewey and others have all touched on it before, but now, after 2 years of public school teaching, i'm beginning to fully understand what they mean.

seriously, think about how often you naturally or willfully come into contact with more than 3 or 4 children at a time. it typically doesn't happen because, except for at school, human children don't travel in packs. (unless, of course, they are "wilding".)

thus, i propose we do away with the education system as we know it, and revive apprenticeship! every adult in America should volunteer to adopt 2-3 children/young adults to mentor and guide into adulthood. this would more evenly distribute the adult-child interactions among the population, reduce crime, increase self-esteem among the younger species, increase general feelings of good-doingness, boost humanity's morale, in addition to solving the problems with education. that's like, a whole flock of birds with one giant boulder!

... and i once dreamt of being the next big Secretary of Education...

-stephan!e

eurythmics

(adj.) of or relating to harmonious proportion (esp. in art).
(n.) a 1980s British pop group fronted by Annie Lennox.

related or not: eurythmia. an irregularity of the heartbeat.

i am currently suffering from the latter.

description of symptoms: butterflies in the chest cavity. a sudden gasping for breath. my heart pounding against the wall of my ribcage like a small animal running against a wall.

there have been a lot of things lately that cause my heart to beat against time. mostly, thinking about next year and what i really want to do and what options are open to me. trying to determine my motivations for acting, and knowing that the next step i take influences a lot of other things (relationships with people, future careers, future living spaces, distance from family, fulfillment of life goals, general happiness of myself and society, etc.) in addition to full awareness of the consequences, knowing that i haven't provided myself enough time to really think things through, to contemplate the different paths, to explore what lies at the end of each choice.

i am a horrible decision-maker. in times like these, i wish some higher power would intervene and throw me in the right direction, whatever results in the greatest positive sum in the end. if higher powers existed, they would be able to decide based on destiny or fate, while i get all confused considering the infinite possibilites. i know i can't be objective, so i get confused considering other people's interests, other people's wants, and then i can't balance others' wants with my own any more. i think about "what could have happened." you know those "choose your own story" books? or the flow charts where you go one way depending on what you answer? i'm the kid that always answers it one way the first time, then goes back 5, 10, 20 times over to explore the other possibilities if one of those choices was a little different. only with life, the option of retracing one's steps is not so simple or possible.

i cannot decide where i want to live and what i want to do. and it is making my heart skip beats.

proposition: blogging as life preserver

i've had a lot of conversations lately in which my motives for blogging were called into question. and though i find it hard, usually, to think so metacognitively about the reasons for my writing, i realized today that it's a tree in the forest kinda thing.

if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound?

i remembered this post i wrote in the beginning of my foray into blogging, and how i was thinking about death and the ability of the internet to preserve experience and writing.

this digital age is a mausoleum, which is a word i love, because it sounds like what it means: "death museum." we produce so many artifacts of our lives, but at the same time these artifacts exist mostly in the ether. we write emails, dozens a day, these all go into mailboxes, each of us with mailboxes thousands of emails full. there's a permanence but also an invisibility to this kind of production. while it exists and accumulates, it so easily disappears. someone dies, their email address and inbox goes with them. all those MB's of virtual space and productivity and creation lost, irrecoverable. and here, i hesitate again, because this virtual medium has the capacity to recover and revive, just as easily as it can be erased.

i want to remember things clearly, i don't want things to fade!

the wonderful thing about this is that digital technologies are allowing us to preserve little mummies of ourselves all over the interwebs (which sounds kind of gross, but admit it, you're fascinated!) snapshots of life and moments. and the complexities and details of our lives will read, in retrospect, so much clearer than any other materials of the past or present. just as the clarity with which we see things has improved with the emergence of digital imaging and hi-res photography, our understanding of the past will be significantly clearer because of the details we are writing now. we are constantly writing and re-writing our own autobiographies, from the moment we self-publish.

and isn't that such a beautiful thing?

-stephan!e

(written sunday, 3.22.09, 9pm PST)

bag lunch

one aspect of my daily routine that i despise, and perhaps more than i really should, is packing my lunch.


i don't know how eating became such a taxing and boring task. make the sandwich. bag the carrots. wash the apple. pack a snack. pour water into thermos. repeat.

one thing i'm looking forward to about cohabitation with my love next year is the possibility and potential of breathing excitement into currently mundane tasks. lunchtime could be an activity, rather than a chore: making each other lunches, writing notes to slip in with the carrots, swapping apples for dragonfruit.

i imagine a dozen different domestic situations that i want to change next year and i am so, so ready.

the future

in the future, we won't travel by plane, or automobile, or even hovercraft, as the movies might suggest.

no, the real way of the future will be thru miniaturization. we will make machines that can shrink us down, to pocket size, and we will mail ourselves in envelopes, padded with bubble wrap (for protection as well as pass-time – we will prepare ourselves with plastic cocktail sabers and pop bubble wrap in transit). this will be the only way to travel.

upon arrival, we will slice thru our deflated receptacles, emerging into the lap or onto the palm of friends/family. hello!

this will also be the way of sending greetings by post. no more tacky recordable cards, no awkward scrawled messages. our grateful recipients will be able to hear our sentiments from our mouths, and our hearts.

and to return us to our original state, our friends and family will merely have to place us in a tub of warm water, where we will gradually grow to full size overnight.

this will be the way of the future.

-stef

future past

i had a dream that i was back on Miami's campus, and it was the future because everything was so old looking: the brick streets had cracks in them, little wiry grass blades growing up through the fissures. the bell towers looked dilapidated, rusted, verging on collapse. everything was gray and sepia-toned.

the other futuristic thing was that they had erected a huge saloon/ movie theatre on the edge of campus – a center for tawdry activities. men in britches and high hats, with unruly facial hair and mean swaggers. i was walking over treacherously uneven sidewalk to meet a friend at the theatre and buy a ticket for whatever was showing. and it occured to me how funny it was that no matter how "future"-like the future can be, there always remains some connection to the past, some nostalgia or fetishism. and it doesn't seem odd, these lingering glimpses of past, but right, so very right.

the last of 2008

i woke up this morning and lay in bed thinking about 2008...

i taught my first class(es) in 2008. i wrote my first thesis in 2008. i moved away from home and into my first apartment in 2008. i started my first job in 2008.

i met Grizzly Bear in 2008.
i built a bookpress and hand-bound books in 2008. this blog reached 20,000 readers in 2008!

i've learned to appreciate home and my family in new ways, and i learned what it's like to fall completely in love with someone in 2008.

...and now, in the dark, on the floor of my parents' living room in the house of my childhood, next to a dying fire, with the miserable tv on in the background, i'm thinking about 2008 again. it really has been a great year.

and 2009 is going to be even better, i know it.

with love,
stephan!e


post-script: my half-hearted and last-minute attempts to live twitter new year's eve. could have been fun if longer-lasting. alas, noted for next year!

idealist

i joined Idealist.org about a year ago, when graduation was pending and "the future" we'd always talked about but never really pondered was looming, no, was here. i was terrified i would collect my diploma in May and then have nowhere to go and nothing to do. after 16 years comfortably riding out the formal education system and its strongly set paths, the idea of the track suddenly ending and launching me forward with no idea of what lay ahead was worrisome.

i think this fear of the unknown is dangerous; rather than explore the possibilities and potentials of the unknown and undecided, we are swept into fates we don't want b/c of fear of failure. i think this is particularly true among the freakishly driven and busy, those whose schedules drive them to the point of burnout and leave them with hardly any sense of what "free time" means. suddenly the idea of not having something to pour all yr energy and time into feels like failure. why?

the point of this post is this: i felt that after struggling with the process of writing my undergraduate thesis, i needed a break from higher ed, wanted to put off grad school, and avoid law school. i figured working a job in the meantime while i sorted out my feelings for formal ed was a good idea. and so i signed up for Idealist to look for jobs, something to fall back on in the next year.

that was a year ago, and i still get the emails. i can't bring myself to unsubscribe from their email list b/c, admittedly, i guess i'm still looking. i check their emails, every day, to see what alternate lives i could be living: lead filmmaker in Venice, community organizer in Chicago, youth media coordinator in NYC, and lament the disparity between my current job and the work i could be doing instead. every time i read about a new job, a different salary, a different locale, i imagine completely different lives and wish i had been more comfortable with uncertainty.

-stephan!e

politickling

tweeted ideas for a debate drinking game!
had i money to buy alcohol, i would probably not be conscious to type these words right now, so consider yrselves lucky!

chatting to my friend Brandon about the first presidential debate (read: a huge disappointment).

so, if you didn't make it thru the debate, read B's and my commentary instead. it will probably save you the 2 hours of life we spent actually watching.

-stef

---

me: I MISS YOU!!!!!

6:11 AM i'm sending you a virtual hug RIGHT NOW

**squuueeeeeeeezzzzeeee!!!!!**

Brandon: and while we hug, I will nonchalantly and secretly work my hand over your luscious booty

6:12 AM me: ahahahahahha

i wouldn't want it any other way!

did u watch teh debates?

Brandon: sho did

me: i did too

but might as well not have

6:13 AM Brandon: for serious

me: i feel like the whole time they were just trying to make each other look foolish

mccain's whole message was "obama is naive"

and obama's was "mccain is a doddering old fool"

6:14 AM we didn't need 2 hours of "debate" to get that, come on!

Brandon: i was really looking forward to the part of this campaign when something substantial would happen, but I'm starting to lose hope that that would actually happen

me: yeah

i was actually excited, until i saw the debate

and realized we're pretty much screwed

Brandon: for serious

6:15 AM me: it's a pretty shitty time to be a politically conscious american

Brandon: agreed

me: on another note,

6:17 AM do you have Lykke Li?

that was the other one i was thinking of sending you

Brandon:

no, i haven't even heard such a crazy name!

me: oh yay!

then i can share some swedish goodness with you!

6:18 AM b/c of course, as with all music of the past 2 or 3 years, it comes from sweden!

Brandon: i have vastly been ignoring the swedes in my life and they need to come back

me: i'm seriously thinking i need to move there

YES

we all do

/ need swedes

6:19 AM OK

so you should listen to the album

it's dance-y

6:20 AM Brandon: ooo!

me: which means you will LOVE it

Brandon: i haven't had something dancey in a while

me: and come on, it's swedish

you should move here and have a dance party with me

we could drive away global warming with our amazing powers of dance

6:21 AM Brandon: that would be only the most amazing solution to our problems ever

me: woudln't it?

6:22 AM i think that we should propose that as the next debate topic

Brandon: i pine for such a resolution to things

me: "senators obama and mccain, if you could fight global warming with the power of dance, what would be yr best moves?"

Brandon: and what would you choose to dance to?

6:23 AM me: i imagine mccain would do the old hip, hand grind

you know, the butter churn

Brandon: if his hip lasts that long

me: hahahahahaha

Brandon: i was kind of impressed that he was actually able to stand for the duration of the debate

me: haha, i hadn't thot of it

6:24 AM oh man, i AM really excited for hte VP debate tho

Brandon: it should certainly be entertaining if nothing else

me: palin's gonna get absolutely thrashed

Brandon: in the post-debate thing when they were interviewing biden he has absolutely no reservations about what he says haha

it was great

me: i don't know if i like biden yet, but SHIT, he is out to embarass her

shoudn't be hard to do tho

Brandon: i like biden

me: yeah, haha, i know

6:25 AM wait, did the VPs already debate?

did i miss it?

Brandon: i think the ticket would be better if it was reversed

me: damn!

Brandon: no, they're next thursday

me: oh, sweeeeeeet!

Brandon: i wonder if the republicans are regretting it yet

me: i hate that ppl are actually more excited about th GOP now that she's on the ticket

haha

6:26 AM i heard some interesting commentary on Countdown with Keith Olbermann today

Brandon: i think that's starting to die down now though

i heard someone call her Caribou Barbie and i thought that was pretty funny

me: some conservative woman writing to say that Palin was an embarassment and she should step down if she knew what was best for her party and her country

i thot that was pretty apt

caribou barbie?

HILARIOUS.

6:27 AM Brandon: yeah, i've seen a lot of commentaries of people telling her she should step down

me: she's gonna fall onher face in the debate on thursday

Brandon: gosh i hope so

6:28 AM me: oh man!!!! (gleeful squealing)

it's gonna be so awesome

i'm gonna plan anight around it

wanna watch together?

Brandon: i thought it was really telling that after the debate they interviewed biden, but palin wasn't there and they interviewed giuliani instead who is just an arse

me: oh man, giuliani...

6:29 AM the GOP just can't catch a break

ha ha

Brandon: idont know what he was watching, but none of his comments made any sense in reference to the debate

6:32 AM me: yeah.. he probly just wanted to talk about 9/11 right?

oh rudy rudy rudy

the GOP's one-hit wonder
"play freebird!"

she lives!

(that's me with the "proof" of my finished senior project! alt. title reads: "Idiots and Jackasses: How American Public Education Fails to Meet Its Democratic Ideals." you like?)

hello everyone!

yes, this is stephanie, returning to you from the edge of death and emotional/psychological/existential despair, to say that

1) I AM DONE!
i finished the project after much duress, at noon on Monday, April 14th, 2008. i had to haul a lot of ass to get there, and it was certainly not the easiest thing i've ever done (i slept 10 minutes on Sunday night, 2 hours on Saturday, 3 hours on Friday, ate maybe 4 meals in that expanse of time), nor the easiest to understand (i wrote 25 pages in one night!), nor the most believable (i wrote 25 pages! in one night! with only 10 minutes of sleep!). but i did it! I AM SET TO GRADUATE! (*fist pump and hip thrust!* *yeah!* let's have a party now, pls?)

2) there's still so much to do...
i am presenting my thesis at the undergraduate research forum in 4 hours, and i have nothing in the way of visual aids or even mental preparation. i hope to just show up and be able to garble something remotely intelligible.
the "dress rehearsal" for my big thesis defense in May is coming up on Thursday, which is also a little too early for my taste. i don't think i can whip up a powerpoint and a formal presentation in one night, especially since i still haven't slept more than 5 hours since i finished.
(my body is def taking a toll from all this. on Monday, when i wrapped up writing, my face looked like i'd been chainsmoking 2 packs a day since i was 14. i was so haggard, i couldn't believe i was still alive. and sadly, i still haven't gotten a chance to completely rest up, i've been editing and formatting the project, and working on SFS stuff again, and bouncing around meetings. i can't wait until next week, when i will hopefully be able to sleep and eat to my heart's content and maybe even read a good book again!)
AND, there's still another chapter i want to write, because it just doesn't feel done yet, but i don't know if i have the patience/time/energy/will-power to do it. i'm telling you, i have a disease! i need to just put it aside, let it wait for the dissertation!

3) THANK YOU!
thru all of the trials and tribulations, this blog has really been a huge source of relief for me. it's been a place to informally write what i'm thinking, and a nice opportunity to step away from the project, remember that i can write, i just need to be less editorial about it and let it flow.

and, to know that there are ppl who read it, who enjoy it (don't you?) and who care, well, it really puts the sunshine in my (as of late) dark and dismal existence. (i can't tell you how glad it made me, as sick as this sounds, to know that ppl were worried and wondering if i had died. i'm so glad you care that i live! shucks, yo... thanks!)

and, i wanted to thank the blog itself, as odd as that sounds, because it literally saved me. when i lost all the data on my computer (all my writing from college, all my photos), i didn't know how the fuck i was going to finish my thesis. there were diagrams, little nuggets that i'd written in little .rtf files, little things that i couldn't possibly think to recover. some were screen shots of websites long lost and forgotten. some were passing thoughts that i couldn't reconstruct or re-place.

but then i remembered that i had posted most, if not all, of these things on the blog! and sure enough, there they all were, neatly labeled and organized, even showing me which dates i'd created them, so i could make accurate notations in my citations list! hahaha, what a beautiful thing!

anyway, i should really get back to work. i'm running around to meetings and presentations and interviews all day, and then i'm teaching class until 10 pm (which i really need to prepare for), and then i gotta find time to put a powerpoint together for tomorrow... oh geez, it's looking like another all-nighter week...

when everything is said and done, i hope there will be copious imbibing and heavy snuggling.

until then, yours in life and virtual death,
stephanie

mending the work/play dichotomy

moments after i make the earth-shaking decision to commit the next two years of my life to teaching special ed in Los Angeles for Teach for America, i read their list of rules, regulations and procedures and am appalled to see the following:

"The following activities are prohibited while charging time to an
AmeriCorps program, accumulating service hours towards an educa-
tion award, or otherwise engaging in activities supported by the
AmeriCorps program:
• Attempting to influence legislation (uh, how else are we going to make any real change in the educational system?)
• Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes (how else am i going to stay politically active and excited?)
• Assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing (how else are we going to make any real change for the working people in our communities?)
• Engaging in partisan political activities or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to any public office (i begin to wonder now if TFA just wants mindless apolitical robots who will be easily programmed to do their blanched apolitical biddings, as it would seem to me this definition could be construed to mean ANY form of political activity... even voting...?!)
• Participating in or endorsing events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, political platforms, political candidates, proposed legislation, or elected officials (seriously? Fall 2008 is going to be one hell of an election, and only the second presidential election i will have been eligible to vote in, and they're asking me to sit on my hands?! they might as well ask me to crawl into a hole and die.)
• Voter registration drives held by AmeriCorps members are unacceptable service activities. (okay... so they're serious. APOLITICAL ROBOTS, DO YOUR BIDDING!)

now i can see why my friend Dylan was so upset to hear i was considering Teach for America. when i told him i got accepted, he replied that he "was glad [i] got in, but sad to see teach for america take another radical peer." i can see why he was worried: in all my work as a community organizer and living wage advocate, even in my undergraduate thesis research, my overwhelming credo has consistently been: you've got to practice what you preach. that is, you have to find a way to blend theory and practice, you have to be a political practitioner. as Paulo Freire said, "this is a radical posture - you can't be neutral on a moving train.

so it saddens me, too, to see that another radical is being subsumed into an apolitical, gutless machine, a fate i had fought so tenaciously and conscientiously to avoid. i've always wanted to find a job that would allow me to practice the political convictions that before were only theories, that would allow me to mend the fissure between work and play, that would be challenging, crucial work that would change the world and that i would enjoy for that very reason.

but, sadly, it seems teach for america is not that dream job, not even close. i wish they'd understand that genuine change and conscientization (which, let's face it, are the ultimate goals of education) don't come from following existing academic standards and policies, but from enacting new ones. nor does self-sustaining systemic social change occur by merely injecting a few well-qualified college graduates into low-income communities to do some "community service"-style work. ending socio-economic injustice requires the dedication of whole communities to changing oppressive systems and their structures, of using education to liberate and empower people (rather than recreate and reaffirm injustices and inequities perpetuated by the very system of privilege and power of which we are products and survivors).

furthermore, i am offended by their suggestion that it takes a deliberate political inertness to be an effective corps member/teacher. this is glaringly wrong! i cannot think of anything low-income communities need more than active political leadership, and who better to provide it than their children and youth? they don't need to be taught to pass tests, they need to be taught to use their voices for change! how can an apathetic, groveling and subservient teacher be any sort of positive role model to youth in a time when what we need most is political change and awareness?!

maybe i should drop out. i could work for a presidential campaign instead, or continue union-organizing. i'm going to burn-out either way, might as well accomplish something...

i've made a huge mistake...
-stephanie

I'M MOVING TO L.A.!

this news is madness!

i found out this evening that Teach for America accepted me, and i will be teaching grades 1-8 in Los Angeles next fall!

i can hardly believe it. i've been sweating the news all break. anytime anyone brought it up, i got all defensive. everyone i know has been saying for the last 3 months, "oh, i'm sure you'll get it steph. you're perfect for it. they'd be crazy not to have you." and i would get really upset, tell them not to say it, b/c i had convinced myself that i messed up in my interview, that i performed poorly on the problem-solving task, that my lesson plan on the difference between farther and further was not impressive or realistic. i didn't want ppl thinking i had it locked in, only to find out later i was rejected.

so, this is why i haven't been sleeping well lately, i think. i've been tossing and turning, dreading the news. what if i didn't get it? what then?

i spent the morning looking for other jobs. a teaching position at a boarding school in Massachussetts presented itself. some thoughts for labor-organizing or volunteering with non-profits crossed my mind. aiding the campaigns in 08 occurred to me, too.

but now, i finally know. and now it seems the next 2 years of my life are planned out. i should be relieved, really, but it seems my anxiety is reaching new directions. i've gotta move across the country, to a city i've never seen, to teach something i'm utterly unprepared to teach, to possibly start a life i'm not ready to start living?

i don't know, it just seems like things are happening too fast for me.

i'm excited, just scared. and trying to think of ways to enjoy my last months as a college student, and really get to know the ppl around me, who i may never see again. i want to know what it feels like to live in the moment, and enjoy it for every drop. i've met so many wonderful ppl where i am now, the idea of moving so far away from it makes me kinda sad. and lonely.

-stephanie