FNMI Inclusion and the Bigger Picture

Today I visited a woman at the college who is tasked with helping to develop a strategic plan to increase enrollment and completion rates of First Nations, Metis, Inuit (FNMI) students. I figure if they ask for input (they did), I'm happy to put in my $0.02.

My central idea was if the college is serious about increasing enrollment and involvement of FNMI students then the college should reflect FNMI community, values, and spirit. A big argument for implementing such a wholesale change is that it would also positively affect all students, faculty, and staff.

How would I describe what I mean? My own way of teaching and interacting reflect many of the same values. I operate from a standpoint that my first job is to love them (my students; I have written about how I am able to do this as teacher, not so skilled with the rest of humanity) and my second job is to create an environment where we can be our own supportive community. Measurement (who is first or who is winning) is not of interest to me; although in most of my classes I follow detailed rubrics to determine marks. Everyone is learning (me too); everyone is a potential teacher with real, human wisdom from their own experiences not just from their report cards, resumes, or credentials.

In my public speaking and communication classes people have felt safe enough to talk about very difficult issues. Among other subjects, people have spoken about their own personal experience with childhood sexual abuse, pornography addiction, drug and alcohol addiction, anorexia, being a bully, aftermath of residential schooling family history, living homeless, racial prejudice, etc.

Needless to say, this doesn't happen on the first day, but it does happen within a few weeks. I believe it happens because I have an intention to show up honestly. I am not interested in being the smartest or the bossiest, though I do take the job of holding a safe space seriously. I am not trying to take advantage of anyone. I once had a student make offensive remarks about a photo of a young girl, basically saying she was a slut who probably had sex with her brother. In class I said that I found his remarks offensive but I didn't hammer him over the head. After class, though, we discussed the implications of his "joke." Another guy once made offensive reference to "turban heads." Again, I didn't say too much; I corrected his context (Sikhs do not make up the ranks of Al Qaeda) and mentioned that his remarks were offensive. But after class, I asked him why he felt like saying those things and told him how they could be hurtful. He acknowledged that his dad said things like that all the time and that as soon as he said it he regretted it.

In that same class there was a guy who always made rude jokes and sarcastic remarks. One day I took him aside and asked him if he could give me a fucking break. I explained that I understood that this wasn't his thing but that it was a required course so we were basically stuck with each other and that I was giving him lots of breaks. He calmed down after that and eventually wrote me a golden email to say that he couldn't believe it but he'd actually gotten something out of the class. A lot of learning and healing can come out of being patient and holding the space and being respectful even when people are acting like jerks. Maybe they're just making a mistake or need time.

I'm not saying other teachers don't do this kind of thing, I'm saying that me behaving this way and treating people this way comes out of my wisdom, not out of some program-based expertise or training. Native traditions value wisdom over knowledge. Colonial/capitalist culture values knowledge as a commodity or means to an end.

I also started doing something really simple and powerful--I get my students to sit in a circle or semi-circle. This immediately makes everyone part of the group and equal. Nobody can hide; people are forced in some way to connect; it helps facilitate support. Sitting in a circle is a very basic FNMI tradition. It is a very cheap and powerful way to create a community of learners. My classes are "touchy feely;" on some level you have to deal with yourself as a communicator or public speaker in a way you don't have to in a biology or accounting class. But every type of class can create a community of learners by sitting their students in a circle.

The circle is a powerful but simple example. Perhaps if more people were exposed to the idea they would be moved to try to implement it in their classes, even though it's a pain in the ass because administration looks down upon moving the desks and in many classrooms the desks are simply fixed in place. Sometimes I have even had people sit on top of the desks. Anyway, I believe many people wouldn't be interested in the circle idea because with more connection comes more responsibility and more vulnerability. If I stand behind my podium I am safer than if I integrate myself in the classroom. And, for a student, if I sit at the back, no one will notice me.

Connection and responsibility and vulnerability create and affect each other. Historic FNMI cultures included violence; until I learn more I'm not yet an advocate of any culture's compassionate superiority. But FNMI values and spiritual understandings start with the same idea that quantum physics and yogic thought also share: we are all connected; our energy and actions make a difference. Also, our connection to the earth and to each other carries with it responsibility. We will die; dying and its partners, aging and vulnerability, are unavoidable. Our dominant culture's dominant responsibility is to the financial bottom line, at the expense of the physical world in which we all live.

I believe FNMI people and creative people (especially children) and both men and women with feminine values/energy have lost the most in this culture--through their culture, background, energy, aptitudes, sensitivity, they are simply more able to connect in a community sense and also in a holistic sense, e.g. to the energy of the earth and the damage that has been and is being done--but also the most able to help us out for the same reasons. But who gives a shit about FNMI people or children or creative people or feminine energy in a bottom line culture? (Yes, I include myself in that group.)

p.s. While I enjoy and applaud cultural and diversity celebrations, display booths with Indian art and the odd Native dance demonstration don't cut it.

Just One Thing

Tonight my almost three-year-old told me I was the most beautiful lady in the world. After she said it she made sure to look at me and nod to emphasize her conviction. And then I told my husband what she said and he said: She's right.

How great is that?

Fell Asleep... (missed yesterday's post)

Fell asleep with the girls and now I've been up for more than two hours in the middle of the night and still... I got nothin.

Haiti

I just need to add something... Haiti is there but I can't write about it.

I Am Naive

A Facebook friend of posted this: "Olympics core vales: Excellence, friendship, and respect. What a joke! Excellence=only professionals, no more amateurs, Friendship=what peace, supports oppressed countries Respect=commercialism, exploitation, what is the environment"

I feel like an idiot for still having a little naive excitement about them.

I am a naive person. It's all those years of not having a career. I finished my M Ed project proposal. Only as I was finishing it did I realize that when some fancy academic says to me, "You should read so-and-so," most of them don't mean actually read it. They mean look at it and take a few ideas or quotes from it.

I honestly thought they meant I should read all these books and I just thought, fuck off, how can you seriously expect me to have the time or energy?

I know some of them really read these tomes and really digest them. But it finally dawned on me that many don't and don't actually expect me to either. BUT NOBODY SAYS THIS!!

It would have been really useful information for me.

Can't Do It Today

The Voice of Love

I love my children and my husband and my dog and I am very grateful for the miracles that led them all to be in my life.

I had an inkling I could be happy one day.

I went through a lot of pain.

I have many moments of happiness now.

I have times when I am comfortable in my skin.

I love those children and all children should be loved and safe.

I don't watch the news.

I wonder how Barack Obama is doing; he knows there is evil; he is Doing Something.

I know about Doing Something, too (but, like, a lot less than Barack Obama); it's not enough; it could be the exactly wrong thing to do.

Safety is elusive.

The Spirit of the Olympics, Brought to You by RBC and Coca Cola

My 8-year-old daughter has been excited about the torch coming through Lethbridge since early December or maybe even November. We had the day marked off for attending the festivities for weeks. That hallowed day dawned today!

Dutifully I packed cheese sticks and Olympic mittens and other supplies and the family headed off to the torch relay ceremony site this afternoon.

Earlier this week it came to Claire's attention that there would be Olympic hoodies for sale at the ceremony. Frantically, she scoured the house looking for any money she may have mislaid; she also nailed me for some back-owed allowance. Enough to buy an Olympic hoodie!

When we got to Henderson Lake and found ourselves a place in the crowd to watch the stage, did Claire pay any attention to the various performers? No, she did not. Her only desire was to go to the Olympic-crap trailer to buy a hoodie. She expressed this desire with verve and frequency.

The poor child has been buying-addicted since a young age and this does not come from me. I am the supreme anti-shopper. I sincerely hate shopping. Part of why I hate shopping is the way I feel manipulated and hypnotized in stores, so I guess she got that part from me. She fixates on some desirable object only to immediately forget about it once it is owned. This pushes my buttons big time. This area of parenting is one where I am not skillful.

The whining went up a giant notch once the torch had arrived and her purgatory at the ceremony (yes, the one she'd been waiting to attend for weeks) looked to be through. I continued to explain that we were there for the ceremony so Claire declared that she wanted to go home then. Okay; we took her up on the offer. Meltdown and hitting her mother: Claire. Yelling in her face, "Clearly you didn't understand the point of coming here was to see the Olympic torch!": me. Yes, excellent parenting.

Clearly, though, Claire has a much cannier grasp on the Olympic spirit than I have. I have never been at an event where the line between sponsor and what the event was actually about was so blurred. Imagine if you went to a music concert and the musicians spent 80% of the time they were playing mentioning who their sponsors were and even singing jingles from those sponsors.

If you weren't there, that's what you missed! First there was a Coca Cola concert, then there was an RBC concert. The concerts were more about Coca Cola and RBC than they were about the Olympics or even Canadian Olympic athletes. I spent precious life hours cheering for Coca Cola and RBC in the name of the Olympics. Talk about being trapped and implicated.

I have had an RBC account since I was a teenager. Changing bank accounts is harder than getting a divorce. I know because I got a divorce but I still have a joint account with my ex-husband (he just doesn't use it). And I really like Coke. It is the only pop I drink when I drink pop. I probably won't change my bank or change my pop. But I am disgusted by what I experienced tonight. It was crass and embarrassing.

And invasive!! I went to honour the torch and got that shit!! Plus a painting-entertainer who used a spinning canvas to create an RBC-brand-colours, torch-lady painting in just 8 minutes, just to add insult to injury. A painting in just 8 minutes!!! And isn't this great--RBC presented this masterpiece to the Boys and Girls Club as a legacy of the torch ceremony! Branded kitsch!

The ceremony began with a First Nations prayer by a man called Francis First Charger. I do not know Mr. First Charger. He could be one of those guys who is very sincere or he could be one of those phony prayer guys that come in all nationalities and backgrounds. The prayer was in Blackfoot, which I don't understand, and people were mostly not paying attention to him. I did pay attention to him, though. When he started to speak, I had this feeling that he was actually for real and I looked right at him for the whole prayer. He was too far away for me to tell if he was looking at me but I felt connected to him.

I had this feeling that we should be prayed for in Blackfoot. If a Blackfoot person can pray for us, this is good news. Most Canadians are too close to this to get it. How about this parallel: it's like the Dalai Lama praying for the Chinese (which he does).

Another First Nations man did a hoop dance before the RBC and Coca Cola branding-fest. Sometimes I wonder if hoop dancing and other competitive Pow Wow dancing is too kitsch, like the Ukrainian dancing my daughters do. But the Ukrainian dance club dancers are crazy for their Ukrainian dancing and the hoop guy looked way into it. It's just the contexts fuck with our heads. There is no way to attribute meaning to hoop dancing in the branding-fest context or Ukrainian folk dancing in the 21st century North American urban context, so then the meanings that are attributed are fake. There is something that carries through in the dance, some energy and connection to a real spirit; but the manmade-fibre, "authentic" costumes and the blah-blah-blah about high stepping through the Poltava region or butterfly story ritual seem forced.

I also cried. I almost always cry during our national anthem and this one was sung by a bilingual choir of beautiful little kids who sang it in English and French. I cried through the English part. I also changed the words when I sang, as I recommend all Canadians should do: "Our home and the natives' land" and "In all our daughters' command" are the proper lines. The first for obvious reasons and the second because it's about time our daughters got a turn.

I cry because I am very moved by the tolerance of this country. It's probably because Canandians are retardedly polite and reticent, but I'll take it.

I cried during the French part because I think it's really beautiful that we are a bilingual country, a country that includes Quebec, a huge country that includes all these disparate places that are more similar in their tolerance of their fellow human beings than different in their regional xenophobias.

I also cried when the torch came. I cried because of the human scale of torch bearing, one step at a time, for miles on end, through little towns and big cities, all across our experiment of a nation, held by a human being (and the Lethbridge torch-bearer lady seemed genuinely honoured), passed off to another, one step at a time. I'm crying now writing this! I'm crying because the Olympics really is a beautiful idea and the Olympics really do connect people. The raw athleticism of the participants and the coming together of nations in peace is authentic and inspiring.

So fuck you, actual decision-maker people at RBC and Coca Cola, whoever you are, for sullying something beautiful just because your company paid to help.

Too Tired

Something about APA citations and reference pages just sucks the life out of me.

One Wonders What Happened in the Meetings

I have been working on the M Ed project proposal. The one below is a very shitty first draft. Some very nice professor ladies are working with me and they are so kind and patient and good at what they do that it seems very churlish to complain about how much I hate doing it. My complaints are never ever directed at them.

I just don't care about fitting into the way these things are done. But I am so close so I will mostly shut up and do it and I am very thankful for the help and guidance they are are giving me. Thank you E. and C.

I received $9200 in research funds from Lethbridge College to edit a Human Body Project video this term, mostly the footage from the Edmonton fringe (the same video that will be my M Ed project--it's just the M Edders need a different fancy proposal wrapped around it). The college even announced it publicly last week. Around the same time last November, I submitted a proposal to do a Human Body Project presentation at WestCAST, an education conference hosted by the University of Lethbridge this year. I was accepted in December. That's two naked lady thingies supported by two actual institutional thingies!

Except that today the U of L faculty people in charge of the WestCAST conference sent me an email asking me to remain clothed! No reasons were given for this turnaround. I have asked them to explain. One waits.

Needless to say, I have some ideas about how to approach this but I'll wait to see their reply. If I was at my office I could copy my proposal here but I'm not. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow. I mean who doesn't want to see a WestCAST proposal for a naked lady thingie?

Blogging and Sex

Blogging, like sex, should not be kept until after the kids fall asleep, because I don't feel like it. But who has time in the middle of the day?

Hello Bloggy (Not Quite a Haiku)

Hello bloggy

Painting fun

McDonald's again?

Glam meals in Previa

M Ed Project Proposal--Shitty Second Draft (I May Get This Fucker Done Yet)--I Copy It Here Because I Did It (!) and I Can't Write Anymore

I deleted it on January 20, because I will post the proper, finished one in a day or two.

Cranky, Tired, Freaked Out, Messy

Unlike Julie in Julie and Julia, I am freaked out by the idea of readers. As far as I know, I have been blogging to maybe a maximum of ten people (only one of whom has been a regular; thanks, S.) since 2006. Until this year, I haven't done anything about that. Today I realize at least one new person read my blog (thanks, D.) and I am already freaking out.

I am a big wimp. Though I hold strong opinions and often have a cranky attitude, I have absolutely no appetite for conflict. Part of me imagines new readers wanting to argue with me or stone me or shun me. I think there's more though. I'm not exactly clear what the freak-out is about. I'm too freaked out and tired to examine it further right now.

I'm really a lover not a fighter. But part of being a lover is fighting for what you love and this is why I do this work and why I feel like it needs to be taken up a notch, fear notwithstanding.

On the other hand, I know I do better work as a teacher and as a naked person. I let down the defenses? I'm just more tolerant of people's foibles.

Anyway, if it needs to be said about a blog: these are my opinions in the moment; this is me working stuff out; this is me and how I experience and process; sometimes I'm a more patient, more diplomatic person.

More stuff I want to write about:

A recent New Yorker short story, Diary of an Interesting Year, by Helen Simpson

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/12/21/091221fi_fiction_simpson

A completely non-happy story about what happens to a British couple after the "Collapse." No Internet, no electricity, no stores, nowhere to live, etc. I don't like to say this, and in fact almost never have to anyone, but I believe our world will come to this in this decade. Freedom 55!

Which brings me to the Mayan calendar stuff and 2012. I am familiar with almost nothing about this information because, although I am open to alternative ways of knowing, I find most "new-age" literature really irritating. I may try to learn a little more because even though I don't know about the 2012 prophecies, etc. I feel in my bones that this will be the decade of really Bad Shit. Which is, again, why I go so far out of my pathetic comfort zone and do the naked thing and write my little blog. My pathetic little effort to Do Something.

I say pathetic because it seems so little and futile. And then added to the futility and tininess is my difficulty and fear. It's ridiculous but, on some deep level, I know it's one of my karmic jobs, the whole mess of it.

Things I Want to Write About and Sort Of Just Did

This writing a blog a day thing is perhaps not the best way to write about everything I want to write about but it does get me here. I still can't do much about the time and energy thing...

So here's a list of some things I know I want to write about:

A heart-wrenching story in the Globe and Mail yesterday about a Yemeni family that was quite liberal and culturally hip in the 70s that is now full of women in burkhas and the ideological equivalent in ideas.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/from-bikinis-to-burkas/article1424587/

I find this story relevant for two main reasons: 1) my daughters are growing up in this world where Islamic fundamentalism basically rules and fucks around with a huge swath of humanity and 2) I find it interesting to compare this family's transformation--as their environment became more unstable and more hard-line, so did their beliefs--to my quite fundamental Christian and Mormon students who, while part of quite conservative churches, exhibit much more open-mindedness than their religions spout. (My theory is that their relatively safe, free and liberal environment allows them to move beyond the scary dogma stuff. I also hasten to add that neither of these religions is even close to as scary and violent in their dogma as fundamentalist Islam. For instance, I know of no Mormons or evangelical Christians who wish to martyr themselves by blowing up heathen.)

Another article I read in the Globe recently in which the often shallow and annoying, but in this case relevant, Margaret Wente discusses the deep dark secret (yeah, nobody knows) of men with Martin Amis, who is one of the few men with enough balls to talk about it: "Violence against women is the great curse of masculinity." He also argues that Islamic extremists have no place in our society. I just looked at the article again and I agree with everything he says.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/martin-amis-versus-the-taliban/article1362629/

This brings me to an issue that often bedevils me, the far aheadness of women in terms of consciousness. Alpha males are destroying the planet. What do the non-violent/non-survival of the fittest males have to say about it? Not too much as far as I can observe. I was in a conversation on Friday about how I haven't had to endure a male-dominated, competitive environment since my Maclean's days (with a brief tenure associated with the City of Lethbridge). In one of my M Ed classes we learned about work environments. I can't seem to find all four terms: there was the really horrible and damaging, the quite stuck and more quietly damaging (like Maclean's and the U of L), the "benign" (like LC), and the "generative" (anywhere???). We never discussed how the first two are full of crazed alpha-male behaviour.

This brings me to menstruation. And an annoying article in the Globe this week about how lots of women go to university and blah blah blah but aren't yet in power centres like CEO positions and politics.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/leaders-must-recruit-leaders/article1425262/

It's not the most important question. The most important and invisible question or issue is the value of femininity and motherhood and children. When you live in a world and the water you swim in is masculine, good stuff for women and children is seen through a masculine lens. Getting better jobs and day care is not the point, although in a world of clitoral chopping and marrying girls at 9, what the heck, let's aim for better jobs and day care--I do get it. It's just that the whole value of feminine energy is completely not in the ken of almost anyone. Mother love may just be the world's most important resource. Yet it is completely unimportant in most realms. Love, nurturance, holding, allowing, being with one's body (menstruation on a woman's terms; I wonder if any woman on Earth has experienced this?), being with one's body means being more able to be respectful to the earth, etc. etc. This is what women can do (part of being really smart and conscious) and what has been taken from them. Non-violent, non-alpha-male men may argue that they haven't got life in their body to be lived on their own terms either and I would agree. So start speaking the fuck up.

My shamanic healer and friend Betty says we are moving into an era where the masculine energy is finally doing what it has always been supposed to do (check up on chivalry, for instance), support the feminine energy. I see it in terms of how men in my circle are fairly supportive of their wives and children in ways that fathers in my day would have been laughed off the block. I see it in other ways, too, like the way more people are aware of how the world is connected. Compartmentalizing is a masculine skill, connectedness is feminine. But I am often frightened.

Tonight, Claire, told me she is sad because I will die. I held her and tried to talk about how life is full of happy/sad (conversation not being her favoured means of communicating that's about as far as we went). This too is feminine, holding the happy/sad. I.e. allowing feelings, dealing with feelings, feeling.

There's more but I'll stop here for tonight. Status update: Tasha is happy/sad.

p.s. Don't know how to make the links linky.

Dancing is Fun

Beautiful parent viewing of Ukrainian dancers tonight. My two were pause pause pause trying to find better word than heart-wrenching/poignant/beautiful/special... how to express my feelings watching the 8-year-old smiling away with her lovely gappy teeth and the almost-3-year-old dancing with her group without parental or sisterly escort and doing many of the steps and staying with her group. Not 3! And seeing other kids who have grown and one was a kid a couple of months ago and she is suddenly a teenager. Time is passing and I love them so much and and and... The enormity of our feelings for them, our children, so rarely spoken, needs to be said more, but how?

The kids had fun. The adults, in their hindered way, did too. I danced too. Dancing is fun.

Mastering the Art of 21st Century Parenthood

I am back in mother vs jobby/stuff-I-need-to-do mode. I was wondering, as I trudged down to the computer when I remembered my daily vow, how Julie (in Julie and Julia) worked at the Twin Towers victims' hotline and then managed to make at least one but usually two of Julia Child's recipes every night and then write a blog about it.

Then I thought: a) no kids and b) lives in NYC where shopping does not require a person to go to a heinous, fluorescently lit, poorly and surly staffed, nightmare acre of a store to get one's provisions.

I would love someone to give me an instruction booklet on how to be a mom and be the other things at the same time. The mom thing is hard enough, right? I am one of those parents who is exploring what is beyond bossing your kids around and ignoring their feelings, which is my quick bloggy, possibly unskillful way of describing the 60s/70s childhoods I saw and experienced. I am also 48 years old and the mother of a not yet 3-year-old and an 8-year-old. I am sleep deprived. I am tired!

I have found that little interference and being honest are my ways of dealing. This includes letting them fight, letting them eat what they want, being crabby, not curbing my swearing. E.g. Oh for fuck's sake, what is it with people and swearing? (I do not swear at them but I do find that swearing is expressive language that cheers me right up.) Etc. I feel extremely idiotic and unskillful at this job.

Then throw in all the other stuff: teacher (love it but it requires time and commitment); wifeyness to my husband (he always gets the short stick); the Human Body Project (so many things on my mind, like update the fucking website already!, and not enough time to do them... a brain energy burden); the house and laundry and shopping (in heinous, fluorescently lit, poorly and surly staffed, nightmare acres of stores) and cooking and driving kids to lessons; and then that horrible fucking academic albatross, the M Ed!

I am not good at compartmentalizing. And my multi-tasking days seem to be over. I find it difficult to focus. I want things to flow more. I want spontaneity. My kids need it too, from me and for themselves. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Not That Much Going On

Doo doo doo. I don't have much to say. I am in the process of trying to recover some momentum in the M Ed program. We'll see how this goes. While I still feel like the whole thing is a fucking arranged marriage, I don't need to complain about it at this moment.

I am feeling equanimous. Equanimity is not that interesting to read about but for a feelingmeister (just experimenting with descriptive terms for my feelingness, whadaya think?) like myself it is a lovely reprieve. Doo doo doo.

I am sitting in my office, alone, in the benign environs of little ol' LC. Soon I will have to pick up kids and go to tap and figure out dinner. It's really cold but warm in here, and I have my nice tea. Peaceful.

I "heart" Teaching at LC

We made it. Home sweet home (or at least, house sweet house... but let me complain about Lethbridge another time). Our furnace was off! At -20 C outside and the house at 48 F, it seems like it hadn't been off long. Luckily a guy came and fixed it quickly.

I taught my first "straight" institution (Lethbridge College) art class today. I loved it. One of my goals is to create a community of artists and there we were, a community of artists. I am very happy to be teaching painting! It only took 6 years for it to happen! (Oh, well. I love teaching public speaking and communication, too.)

I have decided to put my Facebook energy into my 2010 daily blog. This one will really be just a Facebook-status-updatey blog. I am really tired. Happy to be back teaching. I really do love teaching at this little college. Happy to have had great visits with friends and family in Toronton and Burlington. I feel so much more energized than when I left.

Air Travel/Sleep Deprivation

Could sleep deprivation be a blessing in disguise? My children (and/or dog) interrupt my sleep every single night. Last night C. woke me at 3:30 and I never went back to sleep. And then we went to the airport for noon and hadn't checked the Air Canada website and the plane was delayed 3 hours (ended up being 5 by the time we landed). And then we went to a giant mall in Mississauga and we were (well, I was) delighted to find Princess nightie gowns on sale at the Disney Store so we bought S. two so that she would finally change out of the one Princess nightie gown that she has worn for the last 2 1/2 months (no exaggeration--day and night). She did. She is wearing a purple flouncy satiny number now rather than the ragged pink hand-me-down one we have come to know and love/hate. Everyone (really, everyone) in the airport smiled at her or said: "You look like a Princess."

Eventually we waited at the airport for our late plane. The CBC interviewed me (attracted, no doubt, by the Princess dress) about these new fangled security scanners that are coming in that, can you believe it, scan through to your skin?! Needless to say, my reaction was non-plussed. I suggested naked travel or airline-issue jumpsuits. I didn't get a chance to rant about the idiotic regulations regarding traveling to the US. Did they not think there might be some other kind of terrorist coming up one of these days? Hey, what a brilliant idea, the most recent terrorist had something in his lap in the last hour of a flight so that must be what those goldarn terrorists are up to now. No more stuff on your lap in the last hour! They'll never figure out they could do lap stuff in the last 2 hours, for instance.

Anyhoo... I was without husband. He is on a later plane. I still have picking him up awaiting me. The girls were actually very patient and I was glad Air Canada fixed the generator and de-iced the wings. I actually didn't and don't feel like complaining about the flight. I was able to read some of my book (a crime novel, of course) and watch a movie that was for once in my whole life geared not to male masturbation fantasies but to middle-aged lady masturbation fantasies!! Who knew these things existed?! It was called Cairo Time. Patricia Clarkson plays a middle-aged lady whom a sexy, age-appropriate Arab guy has the hots for. I also watched 2 episodes that I hadn't seen of 30 Rock. This is really not the travel purgatory I'd envisioned. (Last night as I lay awake in my in-laws' basement I envisioned myself writing about the purgatory of air travel).

Instead, I'm happy we got here safe. And pure retarded with exhaustion and child neediness (they need to go to bed and I am blogging and they are hanging on me and my parents went out on some inexplicable errand at 10:13 PM).

As one slept and the other played with her DSI and I watched the non-smutty Cairo Time, I mused about Islamic fundamentalists (a sub-sub-text of this low-key movie and an ur-text of air travel) and felt heart pain and love for these beautiful beings I created and love so much.

Denial Before the Storm

I'm typing in my niece's bedroom. It's a faraway place from the freak-out that awaits me in 36 hours. Fist time teaching an art class in years... on the day I get back!! Get Claire to choir! Situate Sophia with her babysitter again! Buy groceries! Make dinner! Read emails!

Deal with M Ed!

Edit HBP video! Update the fucking website, come on already!!!

I'll focus my fretting on the upcoming plane ride.

Holiday Limbo

We are near the end of a short trip to see friends and family in Ontario. I am experiencing that rather pleasant sensation of no responsibility. This is not my messy, cluttered house (it is, rather, an orderly, neat house). My job and classes and kid's school, etc. are far away. I will be hit by many decisions and duties as soon as I hit Alberta soil but out here they still seem far away.

How will I continue in the M Ed program? The last time I really gave it thought, maybe three long weeks ago, I sobbed in complete frustration. That's the biggest question. But here it is barely a blip. I get a break from trying to figure out that particular piece. (Main dilemma: I need credential vs. I detest and do not value the program. Also, I have put off dealing with the coming term for so long I may not even have a choice about what I decide anyway...)

I'm tired and in this limbo state, so tonight is not the night to blog about my issues with academia. Instead, I will embrace a buffet-induced torpor that nicely complements this holiday limbo and go watch the kids play Wii.

Michael Jackson

After a lovely party with good old friends in Toronto last night, back in Burlington today with family. My 8-year-old nephew is really interested in Michael Jackson so we watched a video collection of MJ's greatest hits. What disturbing and touching artifacts these are. Also a bit of a trip to watch them on sleep-deprived and hungover brain.

I am always moved by Michael. He was such a beautiful being who transformed himself so tragically into a freak. One of the things we were talking about last night (with old friends I've known for more than 20 years) was discomfort with our looks. I have real issues with how I look and find myself frustrated with the amount of energy I give these thoughts. But listening to my friends whom I think look adorable helped me put my own looks more in perspective. Perhaps I don't completely resemble my 75-year-old father, the guy I see in the mirror.

MJ and his purposeful transformation is such a glaring extreme of this wish for "not me." I do not understand why there is so little written by black commentators about his complete rejection of his African features, not to mention the fact that he basically bought himself a few white babies. If I were black, this is the last guy I'd want to consider a hero.

The videos we watched today were from the late 70s to the early 90s. His huge stardom occurred in the 80s when I was in my 20s. I remember owning the Thriller album but not Bad. For Thriller he'd had some surgery. By Bad, a Martic Scorcese-directed music video I did not recall paying attention to at the time, he was a freak but placing himself beside real actors. E.g. Wesley Snipes and he play ghetto dudes. Snipes and the other actors look like ghetto dudes; Jackson looks like an anorexic gay gigolo. And then he dances and sings and it somehow works for millions and millions of people!

I get how my 8-year-old nephew is attracted to MJ. The videos he told me he likes least are the ones I liked best, the 70s tunes Rock With You and Don't Stop 'Til You get Enough. I feel deep maternal feelings for the vulnerable young man in those videos. My nephew likes the buckles and drama of the other videos. None of the kids, aged 3-11, seemed to notice how weird looking he got. What's the story with all the people over 12 who also adore him? Even after the pedophilia stories?? (Newsflash: the kid described Michael's impitigo-spotted penis.)

The self-hatred of what he did to himself... and those frickin white kids of his left with the crazy Jacksons... what an American family.

I'm Allowed to Fuck Up

I watched Julie and Julie on the plane and was inspired to up the volume on my Human Body Project work and do a blog a day for a year. (Sadly, for my husband, no French cooking will be involved.)

I am freaked out about it. So I need to declare as above that I'm allowed to fuck up. There are no rules. No requirement to be insightful and brilliant. No word length limits or minimums. Just do it, but probably without the glamourous Nike sweat.

Heretofore, I have allowed my ambivalence about being researcher and researched/art and artist to more or less rule the day. I honour my commitment and do at least one Human Body Project event a year. I blog when it feels really necessary. I think I've written before that these blog entries feel, for me, like putting messages in a bottle. Very few people, as far as I'm aware, read them. Even fewer comment. I am able to feel somewhat safe and anonymous, with the odd (in both senses) interlude of showing up physically naked.

I also kind of detach from the project in between naked "shows." I find balancing my mother/wife/teacher/M Ed student life enough of a challenge and throwing this project into the mix pretty much feels impossible. (And trying to integrate this project and the M Ed is a whole other giant bag of giant worms to be written about, but not today.)

This decision to do a blog a day for year is a change in intention and commitment. I am freaked because of my biggest difficulty, lack of time. I am freaked because, like Julie, people may actually start reading my blog and, while I can admit that I'm ready for more acknowledgement, influence, and a book contract, I am frightened of provoking violent people. What I'm doing is a form of non-violent resistance (I want to write more about this, not today either, though). You may remember that Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi were both assassinated. I am wholly not interested in martyrdom. I am interested in being a mother.

I am also freaked about doing a "good job."

It feels like time to deepen my commitment, but in a gentle way. So, here it is, the January 1, 2010, entry.