![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Marching on with the daily prompt meme
Mar. 10th, 2023 03:14 pm1. Do you have a favorite sound?
I, too, love to hear my extremely loud cat's snoring from beside my head at night. Otherwise, the sound I probably like most is the sound of rain falling. At night, in the day, the harder the better. I love rain. I lived in England with A LOT OF RAIN very easily, and imagine I could also live in Portland or Seattle, same reason. Except according to eyewitness testimony (of my sister, who has friends there) it is Very, Very White, and I don't need that.
2. What have you learned from previous jobs or involvements you’ve held?
"Involvements"? That's weird phrasing. Let's stick with jobs. All of them, over and over, keep teaching me that I am still a procrastinator and lazy, though I mostly successfully cover that up. What else? I never, never want to be in charge of someone else's labor, e.g. a manager of any kind. My mom was the same. She was promoted once, when she was a librarian in Evanston, and after a couple of miserable months INSISTED she be demoted, and was punished by being sent to work on the Interlibrary Loan Department, which was a couple of cities away from Evanston. She didn't care; it was better than managing other people. I feel you, MQ! She came back to the Evanston Public Library as a plain old reference librarian after a year or so in exile. Work is so weird. But it's one of the joys of teaching that unless you really work hard to become an administrator, you don't generally have to side with the bosses.
3. In what ways is your family a reflection of your personality?
I live alone, so I am going to assume this means my family of origin, including my sister and her family who live, I dunno, fifteen miles away from me in Oakland? Why would they be a reflection of MY personality? Wouldn't I be a reflection of THEIRS? Or maybe this question is only for people who live with families? Huh. I'm perplexed, now. Since I don't live with family, I will reverse it and ask myself how I am a reflection of my family's personalities. I share a lot of things with both my dad, PQ, and my mom, MQ -- which is what I called them most of my life, after "mommy" and "daddy" wore out.
My father is endlessly curious and never stops wanting to learn, and that is true for me too. He doesn't take as much advantage of current technical means, e.g. the Internet, but that's just his generation. He certainly has ME look things up whenever we're together, to get background facts and check his memories of stuff, at age 80. He is also politically a revolutionary marxist, as am I, but never a stupid or irrational ("Smash the State in '88" as one of the Maoist groups used to chant, substitute years and rhymes) one. And he is also not stupid and orthodox, fixed on minutiae and excluding those less pure than... whatever -- which some Trotskyists... okay, almost all Trotskyists have been. My mom, too -- but her revolutionary marxist politics were always more emotionally based than my dad's -- I know I've said this before in this blog, but I remember vividly walking from our apartment in south Evanston to downtown (a distance of about... two or three miles? Not sure) along Sheridan Road, which was a very rich street a block or so from Lake Michigan, with huge old houses on it. She would get very resentful and start pointing to them and saying what each would be repurposed for After the Revolution. Not that she really expected that, either, just that injustice and inequality burned in her otherwise extremely kind and tolerant heart. I think my tolerance and enjoyment of difference comes from her. My dad enjoys difference because of his curiosity and interest in place and time; my mother enjoyed it because she cared a lot about people's pain and happiness.
Both of them love or loved learning, reading, writing, which are loves I share. My mother also loved cooking, drawing and painting and taking photographs, learning languages (well, Spanish, at which she never got good, though she did go through a very weird period in her dementia, in the last year, where she would go in and out of [not good] Spanish in the middle of speaking otherwise English sentences.) She also loved making music -- singing and guitar. I can't play the guitar, but otherwise I love all of those things and learned them from her. Except I am better at languages than either her or my father. I guess all of those things are not necessarily personality traits. I dunno; this question confuses me.
4. What is an opportunity that you are glad did not work out?
Ha. I mentioned one of them in the last set of prompts -- but positively (I think? about how I am curious about a road not taken or some shit? Oh, if I'd like to live the life of someone else?) Well, even if I am CURIOUS about it, I am also glad it didn't happen, twice. In 1988, I spent some time (age 22, after dropping out of Northwestern University WITH ONE QUARTER LEFT, because of deep, deep fucking depression) commuting to Detroit for a week or so at a time to work on our socialist group's journal -- back then, it was still literally pasted together on "boards" (I just found an article by someone from the London Review of Books discussing this antique process), subediting articles and also, a little more subtly, being trained to become a staffer for the organization. I was one of the founding members, the only youth at that point in 1985, and a child of members who'd been socialists since 1965 or so. Detroit felt stifling. The apartments I stayed in were depressing (well, so was I, depressed), the streets were ugly to me, the bus system awful (and I had no car, which was bizarre in that city). So I basically said no to that future -- the two people training me, more or less, were both older women comrades whose lives had been devoted to being full-timers, and NO, I did not want that life. I can barely imagine what it would have been like. Ugh, shivers run up my spine. And then I basically recapitulated the whole experience but on an international stage, when I went to Paris to work for the international socialist group we were (more or less) affiliated with, on another magazine -- but even just two years later, we were using software on some of the earliest Mac Classics to do the creation of magazine pages and the organization of subscriptions, etc. There, in addition to subediting, I also translated articles, and sometimes was even needed to interpret, live -- STRESS!!! Fascinating, but stressful, in a booth with earphones that spoke directly into people's headsets, translating French to English. I could get in a zone, and do it, but whew, exhausting. Anwyay, same situation, there were two older women comrades who were clearly training me to be a full-timer, more or less. After nearly a year, I opted out of that life, basically by crashing and burning with a continuation of the depression I suffered from age 21 to 24. Back to the US. Slowly emerged. Finished that last quarter of my undergrad degree with a 4.0, ha. Went to grad school in social and labor history which was basically a fucking PLAYGROUND of joy and pleasure in comparison, whatever kind of political and personal issues cropped up. And then, abandonment of academia for public school teaching.
5. What is your ideal Saturday night?
A friend or one or both of my nieces hanging out, watching silly stuff on TV, ordering dinner in and maybe drinking but not really to excess. I mean, my younger niece Rosie will certainly SMOKE out, whether her bong or whatever, weed-vape usage is "to excess" or not.
6. How do you feel about where you live?
I still love Oakland, although I hear more and more about rough stuff, and I do not love the community in which I live, which is just a couple of highway exits away. Part of why I dislike it is purely aesthetic: the architecture is so fucking ugly. One-storied mid-century boxes, laid out on dull residence-only zoned streets, separated by long business boulevards with strip malls. My own personal residence-zoned street is on the upslope of a foothill, so it is greener and has a view (even of the Bay) but... it's not a community I enjoy. I enjoy my apartment a lot, but not the area.
7. Do you still keep in contact with your childhood best friend(s)?
From Madison, Wisconsin, where I lived until I was 8, really only one person, and it is harder and harder to be in touch with her, because she seems to have gone full in on Christian and occasionally anti-immigrant, right-wing populist FB posting, spaced out by stupid twee ... I don't even know if they're memes. Images. Today's is "Sometimes it takes losing what we were settling for to remind us what we deserve" [sic]. Agh. I sound like a bitch. But it's not a mode of communication I enjoy. From people I knew AFTER we moved to Evanston, from middle school, almost no one except one teacher and one friend (who, ironically, moved to Madison, WI). From high school, I have a few more near-to-best friendships maintained, though not very closely. Mostly via FB. From college and grad school, many more, but I guess that's not really in the purview of this question.
I, too, love to hear my extremely loud cat's snoring from beside my head at night. Otherwise, the sound I probably like most is the sound of rain falling. At night, in the day, the harder the better. I love rain. I lived in England with A LOT OF RAIN very easily, and imagine I could also live in Portland or Seattle, same reason. Except according to eyewitness testimony (of my sister, who has friends there) it is Very, Very White, and I don't need that.
2. What have you learned from previous jobs or involvements you’ve held?
"Involvements"? That's weird phrasing. Let's stick with jobs. All of them, over and over, keep teaching me that I am still a procrastinator and lazy, though I mostly successfully cover that up. What else? I never, never want to be in charge of someone else's labor, e.g. a manager of any kind. My mom was the same. She was promoted once, when she was a librarian in Evanston, and after a couple of miserable months INSISTED she be demoted, and was punished by being sent to work on the Interlibrary Loan Department, which was a couple of cities away from Evanston. She didn't care; it was better than managing other people. I feel you, MQ! She came back to the Evanston Public Library as a plain old reference librarian after a year or so in exile. Work is so weird. But it's one of the joys of teaching that unless you really work hard to become an administrator, you don't generally have to side with the bosses.
3. In what ways is your family a reflection of your personality?
I live alone, so I am going to assume this means my family of origin, including my sister and her family who live, I dunno, fifteen miles away from me in Oakland? Why would they be a reflection of MY personality? Wouldn't I be a reflection of THEIRS? Or maybe this question is only for people who live with families? Huh. I'm perplexed, now. Since I don't live with family, I will reverse it and ask myself how I am a reflection of my family's personalities. I share a lot of things with both my dad, PQ, and my mom, MQ -- which is what I called them most of my life, after "mommy" and "daddy" wore out.
My father is endlessly curious and never stops wanting to learn, and that is true for me too. He doesn't take as much advantage of current technical means, e.g. the Internet, but that's just his generation. He certainly has ME look things up whenever we're together, to get background facts and check his memories of stuff, at age 80. He is also politically a revolutionary marxist, as am I, but never a stupid or irrational ("Smash the State in '88" as one of the Maoist groups used to chant, substitute years and rhymes) one. And he is also not stupid and orthodox, fixed on minutiae and excluding those less pure than... whatever -- which some Trotskyists... okay, almost all Trotskyists have been. My mom, too -- but her revolutionary marxist politics were always more emotionally based than my dad's -- I know I've said this before in this blog, but I remember vividly walking from our apartment in south Evanston to downtown (a distance of about... two or three miles? Not sure) along Sheridan Road, which was a very rich street a block or so from Lake Michigan, with huge old houses on it. She would get very resentful and start pointing to them and saying what each would be repurposed for After the Revolution. Not that she really expected that, either, just that injustice and inequality burned in her otherwise extremely kind and tolerant heart. I think my tolerance and enjoyment of difference comes from her. My dad enjoys difference because of his curiosity and interest in place and time; my mother enjoyed it because she cared a lot about people's pain and happiness.
Both of them love or loved learning, reading, writing, which are loves I share. My mother also loved cooking, drawing and painting and taking photographs, learning languages (well, Spanish, at which she never got good, though she did go through a very weird period in her dementia, in the last year, where she would go in and out of [not good] Spanish in the middle of speaking otherwise English sentences.) She also loved making music -- singing and guitar. I can't play the guitar, but otherwise I love all of those things and learned them from her. Except I am better at languages than either her or my father. I guess all of those things are not necessarily personality traits. I dunno; this question confuses me.
4. What is an opportunity that you are glad did not work out?
Ha. I mentioned one of them in the last set of prompts -- but positively (I think? about how I am curious about a road not taken or some shit? Oh, if I'd like to live the life of someone else?) Well, even if I am CURIOUS about it, I am also glad it didn't happen, twice. In 1988, I spent some time (age 22, after dropping out of Northwestern University WITH ONE QUARTER LEFT, because of deep, deep fucking depression) commuting to Detroit for a week or so at a time to work on our socialist group's journal -- back then, it was still literally pasted together on "boards" (I just found an article by someone from the London Review of Books discussing this antique process), subediting articles and also, a little more subtly, being trained to become a staffer for the organization. I was one of the founding members, the only youth at that point in 1985, and a child of members who'd been socialists since 1965 or so. Detroit felt stifling. The apartments I stayed in were depressing (well, so was I, depressed), the streets were ugly to me, the bus system awful (and I had no car, which was bizarre in that city). So I basically said no to that future -- the two people training me, more or less, were both older women comrades whose lives had been devoted to being full-timers, and NO, I did not want that life. I can barely imagine what it would have been like. Ugh, shivers run up my spine. And then I basically recapitulated the whole experience but on an international stage, when I went to Paris to work for the international socialist group we were (more or less) affiliated with, on another magazine -- but even just two years later, we were using software on some of the earliest Mac Classics to do the creation of magazine pages and the organization of subscriptions, etc. There, in addition to subediting, I also translated articles, and sometimes was even needed to interpret, live -- STRESS!!! Fascinating, but stressful, in a booth with earphones that spoke directly into people's headsets, translating French to English. I could get in a zone, and do it, but whew, exhausting. Anwyay, same situation, there were two older women comrades who were clearly training me to be a full-timer, more or less. After nearly a year, I opted out of that life, basically by crashing and burning with a continuation of the depression I suffered from age 21 to 24. Back to the US. Slowly emerged. Finished that last quarter of my undergrad degree with a 4.0, ha. Went to grad school in social and labor history which was basically a fucking PLAYGROUND of joy and pleasure in comparison, whatever kind of political and personal issues cropped up. And then, abandonment of academia for public school teaching.
5. What is your ideal Saturday night?
A friend or one or both of my nieces hanging out, watching silly stuff on TV, ordering dinner in and maybe drinking but not really to excess. I mean, my younger niece Rosie will certainly SMOKE out, whether her bong or whatever, weed-vape usage is "to excess" or not.
6. How do you feel about where you live?
I still love Oakland, although I hear more and more about rough stuff, and I do not love the community in which I live, which is just a couple of highway exits away. Part of why I dislike it is purely aesthetic: the architecture is so fucking ugly. One-storied mid-century boxes, laid out on dull residence-only zoned streets, separated by long business boulevards with strip malls. My own personal residence-zoned street is on the upslope of a foothill, so it is greener and has a view (even of the Bay) but... it's not a community I enjoy. I enjoy my apartment a lot, but not the area.
7. Do you still keep in contact with your childhood best friend(s)?
From Madison, Wisconsin, where I lived until I was 8, really only one person, and it is harder and harder to be in touch with her, because she seems to have gone full in on Christian and occasionally anti-immigrant, right-wing populist FB posting, spaced out by stupid twee ... I don't even know if they're memes. Images. Today's is "Sometimes it takes losing what we were settling for to remind us what we deserve" [sic]. Agh. I sound like a bitch. But it's not a mode of communication I enjoy. From people I knew AFTER we moved to Evanston, from middle school, almost no one except one teacher and one friend (who, ironically, moved to Madison, WI). From high school, I have a few more near-to-best friendships maintained, though not very closely. Mostly via FB. From college and grad school, many more, but I guess that's not really in the purview of this question.