I started a new blog about SpongeBob SquarePants called the SpongeBlog. Thanks to Kevin for the name.

Check it out here: www.thugtug.blogspot.com

My friend Mahi is a co-host for a radio show called WomenSpeak on KFAI community radio, you can find the one I'm writing about in their archive here.

The show was about white people and brown people, Indians (from India) and Americans and people who are both.  Mahi was talking with her friend who lives in the bay area, CA and works in an Indian store that sells a lot of Indian things to white people who have lots of money.  She was describing her experiences with some of the white customers in the store that make assumptions about who she is because she is Indian, and she talked about a pamphlet that tells white people how they can become Hindu.  The discussion was kind of about whiteness and brownness, people making assumptions, and why white people are so into India.  I loved the show, so I thought I'd write a response for anyone interested enough to read it :)

One of the main questions that came up was why white people are so interested in India. 

Personally, I think that it's partly about culture. As a white person, it took me a long time and a lot of talking to people not from here to realize what "American culture" is and that it is my culture, my heritage. I didn't feel like I had a "culture"; I am white and so are a lot of people I know.  Three or four generations ago, my family was German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, French Canadian... but now I'm just "white", which isn't a country and I don't think it presents itself as a cohesive culture.  When you look at another culture from a lens or through a perspective that you don't even know you have, how can you compare what you see to your experience? I think that the "Indian" or "Hindu" culture or any specific culture with a far reaching history and well established beliefs and traditions (like many Asian cultures- Chinese, Japanese are two other examples) is appealing to white Americans because it seems to answer questions and provide a cohesive framework from which to experience the world- something that I never felt like I had.

Another question was about why people may feel the need to learn about another culture and then tell the people of that culture who they are, or feel all high and mighty when they know something about Hinduism that an Indian American doesn't know.

I think it's easier to look at another culture and put it in a neat little box, and label it with a name than it is to see your own culture (at least for me!).  I find that the better you know an individual, the harder it is to put them in a box or label them because you learn that they are complex and unique.  Labels and names help people understand things, make sense of things, provide an order in their mind, but they can also limit your openness to seeing things from another perspective.    I feel like sometimes there is a tendency to view another culture as a landscape painting, with the people as part of the painting.  We feel like we know what's going on because we can see it, but it's a sort of two dimensional and static understanding of what is in the painting.

Understanding American culture for me

I would say that the two main events that I can attribute to my discovery of my American culture or heritage have been watching the movie Accepted and reading the book Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff.

The movie Accepted is the one where the kid doesn't get into college so he starts a fake one and all these kids come and teach their own classes.  He ends up in trouble, but the kids all learn so much that the adults decide that the school should stay open, and also after screwing it up he gets the girl in the end.

I watched this movie with whoever happened to be lounging around amidst Aneeqa's wedding stuff in Dhaka, Bangladesh and I remember discussing it with Melissa and one of Aneeqa's good friends Natasha, who is from Dhaka but lives in Canberra, Australia.  She made a comment about how the movie was "so American", so I asked her why she said that.  We then had a conversation about telling stories, and all kinds of elements in this movie were just very American.  For example: it's very individualistic-the main character doesn't get into college, so he starts a new one almost entirely on his own.  It also celebrates people who break the rules for the greater good- he got in trouble, but the adults recognized that the kids were all learning which is good, so they went easy on him.  He did something dumb and lost the girl (I forget exactly what it was that he did) but in the end he realized that he messed up, she realized that he was still a good person and she took him back. 

As we talked about it, I realized just how many of our movies or stories (books and shows too) have similar ideas in them.  And I love them!  I am a total sucker for the rag-tag group of kids or outsiders that overcome all odds to save something they love (like in The Goonies).  I am still only starting to think about this, so I'm not sure what all the common themes are or what exactly it is that I love about the stories.  I am also not sure what makes them different from non-American stories, because I also love Harry Potter and it is similar.  But it's something I think about.  I think you can see what a culture values from its stories if you know where to look.  The negative side of that is that sometimes I watch VH1 and there are shows like For the Love of Money and that Sweet 16 show.  When I see them, I lose faith in humanity and am convinved that this is why the world hates us.  These people are all about money, at the expense of anyone and everyone around them.  Ugh.  That's a whole other blog.

The book Don't Think of an Elephant! is about progressive values and how we need to be able to talk about them within a framework of our own making.  Instead of defining what we are about in terms of issues or what we're against, it is about what we vaule and what we are for, like: caring, protection, freedom, opportunity, cooperation, honesty, equity, equality, democracy, government for a better future, ethical business, etc.  My favorite part is when these values are talked about as American values, things this country was founded on.  Somehow that connected me to my country's heritage and culture.

I guess to me, figuring out what it means to me to be an American- heritage, culture, ideas, values etc. helps me to know my perspective and at least become aware of its limitations.  My recommendations for figuring that out would be to go to Bangladesh for a month and meet Aneeqa's friends and family from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Canada, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the UK and the US and talk to them about things.  Then read books, and keep talking.  That's what I did :) 

As for India, I was only there long enough to get one picture on the border between Bangladesh and India.  But I did watch The Darjeeling Limited, so I know all about trains and snakes and tigers eating Christians.

blah blah blah, something about me, blah blah blah.

having fun remembering: going to Ashland (despite new drama), going to the cabin with Amanda and Season (particularly the hot tub), Kristin's b-day and bloody marys, hanging out with people, my triop (RIP), finishing a book

looking forward to: science field trip with Lara, drinking and hanging out some more, kohl's, fun projects and a little more organization at work, documentary about high school debate, mummification, a new bolt, bike race next weekend, buying a new book

not so excited about: figuring out loans for school, sitting in my office, my to-do list items that are over two months old, cleaning my room, grocery shopping, horseflies, bike grease all up on my new shirt

I think that about covers the basics.
send any questions, comments or concerns to my myspace inbox. or wherever.

today it's hot.  real hot.
and I spent the whole day working on something I thought was kinda done and just needed some fleshing out- I am teaching middle schoolers science for 8 weeks this summer and tomorrow it's all about money and growing plants.  I'm not a teacher, and I don't know what I should assume these kids are capable of and I'm just pulling all of this out of my .. hat.  We're growing some plants- starting with a salinity experiment (salt inhibits plant growth and this is an ongoing environmental problem all over the world, probably most notably in places like Australia and India and now Myanmar because of Cyclone Nargis) and moving on to growing and measuring vegetable growth in a science garden.  Well, we planted the seeds so now it's time for step two: collecting data on our plants growing.  Then I'm going to kick it up a notch and talk about food production.

In the US our food travels an average of between 1500 and 2500 miles from farm to table.  So we're going to do some math (yay!) to figure out how much it will cost us to grow vegtetables in our garden versus buying them at the store.  We are also playing a relay game where we learn about where our food goes between the farm and the store.

but putting all this together on a hot sunday makes me a super crabby pants.  it's too hot for pants.

but!  I did get some good news that I can borrow the air compressor rocket launcher from some Girl Scout volunteers for the science kids.  aw yeah!  I wish I had a giant pool with a swim up bar.  I'll settle for beer in the fridge, I guess.

one night on the way to trivia I put things on the new bike kevin got me for $25. the bike is awesome but as I was to learn, my biking skill has something to be desired. I put on the chainring, handlebars and then the rear wheel so that I could make it go with the push of a pedal. so I'm riding along, la la la, and then I decide to kind of take a half-ass try at skidding, which I could do on my Surly when it was a fixed gear. well, this bike has wide-ass cruiser bars and they wobbly as hell (pronounced "hail"). so wobble wobble wobble over the handlebars I go. I somehow end up in the middle of the street (thankfully not a busy street) with my bike on top of me. before I even knew what was happening, my head hits my helmet, which has apparently hit the street. first thing I thought of was wear your helmets kids! yessss.

somehow I managed to land my left leg on top of a bar (handlebar? top tube?) of my bike, so I have this trough in my leg. I had a huge bruise that is mostly gone, and a bruise on my other leg that's also mostly gone, but a hard lump of muscle and something remains on the left. it stung so bad I couldn't ice it that first night; I couldn't even tolerate cloth on it. but now it's mostly better (this was... June 10th?). I also have a little road rash action on the back of my right leg somehow. the worst part is that I can't use my foam roller, so if my knees get sore from biking it's just too bad.

you have been misled, there are no other anecdotes. I have to go to work.

oh, where to start.

I went to Boston for the National Science Teachers Association conference, and it was awesome! I totally geeked out with science teachers for four days. Here are some highlights:

-Kicking off the conference by going to the Science Museum with Kurt for five and a half hours, over an hour of which was spent in the Mathematica room- they have this expansive wall with a time line on it that has mathematicians, breakthroughs in mathematics, and all kinds of stuff. There’s even a picture of a quipu!

-Seeing BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY speak! He talked about energy in the new space age. He only jumped up on the table once, and kept saying that he was kooky for different things- one of which was geothermal energy. He talked about his vision for bike expressways where you would always have a tailwind, and said things like "who loves no child left behind? yeah I don’t see any hands up". He also talked about sexy electric and hyprid cars, and how we should store energy that we get from renewable sources in cars.

But my favorite thing of all was when he showed us a picture of the sundial that he advocated for on the mars rover

(read about it, I promise it’s good!).
He said that science is the joy of discovery, and of course all of us science educators went nuts. We’re kooky for discovery!

-I got to hold this:

It’s an African millipede and its little feet tickle.

-I learned so much about the world of formal science education and how what I do fits in with what and how kids are learning science. I’m still processing that info, and I have a million notes that I took. Hopefully I’ll have more on this later.

-I went to a talk about Creationism and Intelligent Design, and the tactics that people use to put those ideas on the same level as Evolutionary Theory. It was interesting, informative and scary all at the same time.

-While I wasn’t at the conference, I hung out with my friends! I mostly stayed with Kurt and we hung out, I saw Nikki from NCCC and Ben from VISTA.

-The best part of my visit with friends in Boston was when Kurt jinxed me on the word "colloquially". I was talking about packing my bag, and since we’d been talking about topology, I offhandedly commented that I wasn’t actually putting anything inside my bag but that I use the term colloquially. At this point in time, Kurt had been talking while I was talking (because we do that) and somehow we just ended on the same word. HOTT.

I think that’s enough for one blog, I have a lot going on now but that my friends is a story for another day.
Oh, also I updated my flickr, so check it out!

it took me a week to find another job after ending that last one.
I had been doing some work with Ken at the Patchwork Quilt Digital Divide Initiative (PQ-DDI) developing curriculum for some TryScience camps this summer, and so I went to meet with him about that.  he told me that he had to let the other employee go and so now he had all this money and didn’t want to go through another hiring process, and so now I had all this time.
I started the next day, and have been full time (30 hours, my favorite kind of full time) with benefits ever since.

I am now the PQ-DDI Project Coordinator.  I’m kind of a big deal!
the organization is kind of new and growing faster than it probably has capacity for, and I’d been involved with the advisory board since the beginning of the organization way-back-when (like a year and a half?  I don’t even remember) so it worked out for everyone.

PQ-DDI focuses on empowering Minneapolis residents with computers and skills by refurbishing donated computers and distributing them to community folks, requiring recipients to do a workshop where they learn about their computer.  they have to volunteer for four hours to earn a seat in the workshop.
here’s a link: PQ-DDI.

anyways, so that’s been keeping me busy.  I’ve also had a bunch of family stuff going on, and I’ve been thinking about how to finance this school thing I want to do in the fall.  I still have yet to do my taxes and fill out the FAFSA, and I have an outstanding dentist bill.  I never claimed to be a responsible adult, ugh.

I’ve started reading again, which is awesome.  my latest book was Kevin’s dad’s which I highly recommend.  it is about his career in the foreign service and it’s totally funny and easy to read. I wrote a review of it but apparently I have to buy something before I can upload my review.  weak.  if I make it work, I’ll post another blog about it.

four of my goals for sring/summer are:
1. to compost with worms
2. to complete a 5000 piece puzzle with my homie matt
3. to have an herb garden.  I hope to plant veggies too, but really it’s the herbs I’m after.  I’m kind of a fresh basil freak.
4. to try free range chicken noodle soup made by kevin, and to compare and contrast with chicken of the woods.  I’m going to hunt it this summer.

oh yeah, and then there’s my bike.  pretty sure it’s getting a makeover.
more updates to follow, blah blah blah.
shit, I have to wake up early.  what am I doing?

or at least I used to!  I am officially done being a program specialist for the Girl Scouts.  which means a few things:
1.  I don't have to go there anymore to work
2.  I get to sleep in!  or more likely, I'll get up and do other things instead.  I am not good at sleeping in.
3.  I will need a new job to pay those obnoxious bills.  they are like parasites, always taking and never giving anything back.  except for a place to live, phone service, cable...
4.  I can come up with more things that I can do to procrastinate working on my other job, TryScience curriculum development.
5.  I might finally finish some projects and clean some house.  only time will tell.
6.  I will be watching a lot of spongebob squarepants.

I am excited to be done, but I will miss a lot of the people I worked with.  I am still volunteering there and will probably see them though, so that's good.

I don't have anything else that's interesting, so hopefully I'll either make something up or something interesting will happen.
wee!

omg guess who got into grad school?
ME!

I will be attending the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs for my Master of Science in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy.

and I am super jazzed.

huge mega thanks to everyone who helped me with my statement and put up with my cranky pants while I flipped my shit to get the application in on time.

In other news, my job with the Girl Scouts ends Feb. 26 and while I had a pretty good experience there, I am excited to move on (.org).  I currently am doing some contract work with the Patchwork Quilt Digital Divide Initiative that involves developing curriculum for some TryScience camps this summer, and also I get to teach people how to implement these camps with youth.  Next week is engineering week, and we'll be doing a challenge and then taking a field trip to the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life.

I am still sick from my trip to Bangladesh, but I'll live.  At least I have a reason to wear the really cute scarves I got there.  Hopefully they are as healing as they are cute.

I went to Milwaukee this past weekend for a Northland College Alumni Board meeting- my first one as a board member.  I also got to go sledding with Adam and Emma.  Both experiences were inspiring and exhausting.

I am up past my bedtime after neglecting an important task at work, learning verbs in Norwegian, and finding out what I'll be doing in the fall.
Stay tuned for more details.