O Brave New World...

1. How has your ability to entertain yourself changed since you were young?

Less imaginative play -- make-believe, dress-up, dolls/dollhouses. More screen watching, occasional drinking. Probably the same relative amount of reading and writing.

2. What are some milestone experiences that made you who you are today?

Hm. Trip on my own to Montreal when I was 14; Archaeology summer camp in Southern Illinois also when I was 14; political activism in high school; Alliance Française scholarship to Paris after high school graduation, also abandoning that French class and going to a socialist youth summer camp in the Black Forest and meeting especially Brit revolutionary youth who became my best friends; year abroad divided between the University of Sussex and a working class neighborhood in London's East End (well, probably a bit further out than that: Ilford/Newham); working in Paris on a revolutionary magazine; moving to California; witnessing my older niece's birth...

3. If you could change your living space to make it more pleasant or comfortable for you what would you change?

I like my living space a lot. I guess I'd replace the carpet with the same thing but cleaner. Never thought I'd like CARPET of all things.

4. Which animal do you feel best embodies you?

Clichéd, but aspirationally, a cat. A happy, content, domestic cat.

5. What can you not imagine living without?

Books

6. What would you change about your school experience if you had the ability to do so?

Huh. I pretty much liked my school experience, kindergarten through grad school. Sixth grade was pretty horrific, and seventh. But then again what doesn't quite kill you can make you stronger, and I guess it did.

7. What scares you the most?

ill health

8. What are some things you've tried that you'll never do again?

Not listening to myself when my internal gut says "Jesus, this person is an asshole: AVOID; back away; definitely do not go out with for months." Hm. I'm not sure there's much else, but I also don't know whether that's because I am personally conservative, or sort of go-with-the-flow. Probably the former.

15. Are you satisfied with your sleep?

God, no. I get my own sleep schedule so far out of whack by deliberately staying up later than I should because I want non-work fun time, and then I want to sleep too late in the morning (and I partly can since, until August, I am still working from home), and then it gets worse on weekends, and then I also just want to sleep ALL THE FUCKING TIME, because I am hella depressed.

16. What cultural mores, pleasantries, or standards do you not agree with

I'm not great at responding naturally to "How are you?", as I distrust blithe bullshit, and know at some level that no one wants one's real, authentic response.

17. What is a habit you were successfully able to break?

"I've gotten slightly better at remembering they/them for singular." What Microbie said (again). Anything else? I guess, back in childhood (pretty fucking late childhood) I was successful at breaking my habit of sucking my thumb. Not sure there've been many such victories since then.

18. What are your top five favorite concerts?

I haven't been to a ton of concerts, really, unless you count small venue folk concerts, which I will. So, let's see.

Pete Seeger and Florence Reese, at some Northside hella woke church in Chicago around 1981?

Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert, same church, at least once, possibly twice.

Éritage, a Québecois folk group, at Holstein's, a folk bar in Chicago, in... 1983, probably?

The Smiths, at the Aragon Ballroom, in 1984 or 1985 -- whenever the Meat is Murder tour hit Chicago.

Depeche Mode, at the Sharktank (San Jose Arena) in... 2005, maybe? We had nosebleed seats and mostly saw the band members on jumbo screens. But it was really good anyway.

(other memorable concerts, since I go to so few: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, and oh, god, I always forget WHICH feminist singer songwriter trio this was... Dar Williams, I think -- at the Fillmore, around 2003 maybe? Green Day doing their play/opera whatever, somewhere here in the East Bay, maybe 2004? Not sure; Neil Young, with Lucinda Williams opening for him (first time -- okay, only time I saw, but first time I heard her), 2003; oh, and Billy Bragg twice in Chicago in the mid 1980s -- once at the Cubbie Bear a bar kitty-corner from Wrigley Field, small space, fairly small crowd, which is hard to believe, and once at I think the Metro? Or else at Links Hall? With Michelle Shocked opening for him, then)


19. What is the best thing you’ve created?

Hm. I used to write and illustrate amazing letters to friends, including large size illuminated manuscript ones. I've also made illuminated manuscript letters as models for an art/history project when we've studied the medieval period, and I am proud of those.

20. What are you looking forward to in the near future?

Spring Break is very late this year, but it starts April 10th, and I am looking forward to that. Grades are due for Quarter 3 April 4th or something like that, so I will feel (I hope) fairly unburdened by work.

21. What would you ask your older self if you could?

What a very strange question! I have never imagined asking my older self anything. (I have read Proust, though... a French Studies degree will do that for you). If I... had to? I dunno. I honestly cannot imagine this circumstance. I can imagine warning my past self of at least one thing. But asking my future self?

22. What is your dream job?

Being a published writer (if I could plot mysteries? Not sure). Or an editor. I'd be a really good editor.

23. What is a high and a low from your week so far?

A high last week? Huh. I found out a mug I adore (is it ridiculous to set such store by small objects one owns?) and thought had been lost or broken was not. It is the dumbest thing -- but I like it. I have several mugs I cherish. Most of them are probably ones that are sanctified by being from my family or childhood or both. But this one is a relatively recent purchase (six years? something like that) by a company called Calamityware, and it is in the style of Blue Willow Ware, but in addition to miniature pagodas and bridges and willows, there are also monsters and UFOs and dinosaurs. The company calls the mug "Things Could Be Worse" and I am just ridiculously fond of it.

A low last week... I dunno. I feel uninspired, teaching right now. Kids are very unengaged, and I keep getting new (unengaged) kids, which is hard when I am teaching all three damn grade levels. One of my new students came for three days and then I got an email after I enquired about her subsequent two day absence from Zoom, from a counselor at a community intervention service, that she is in the hospital because she tried harming herself. So that sucks.

1. 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.

8. What is a view about the world that has changed for you as you’ve gotten older?

I thought the right wing had reached its post fascism heights with Reagan until Trump et al -- the whole metastatic, writhing cauldron of sickness that is the resurgent Christofascist Republicans and neonazis etc just fucking confounds me. I mean, it's not like I thought socialist revolution was on the cards -- I was never that ultraleft. But I was pleased that the WORD socialist made it back into the political discourse, and pleased at the growth of DSA (the Democratic Socialists of America) after Bernie's runs in 2016 and 2020... but it's really hard to hold on to that, given the thundering herd of the right. I mean... there are countervailing tendencies, but it's hard not to shudder.

9. What is a fad you fell into? How do you feel about it now?

I don't think I ever really did fads. Maybe in middle school? Probably not. More likely I made a faint, lukewarm, hesitant nod towards a fad, like cowl neck sweaters, and then immediately retreated, especially because my own cowl neck sweater was from K-Mart and pilled immediately and it was just pointless.

10. What is something you would like to be able to say no to more often?

"Work, obviously." We are as one here, too, Microbie. GOD I wish I could retire. I have... five more years? I think? But it seems like forever, and any horrible thing could happen to my work life in the meantime.

11. Is there anything you wish you didn’t have to do right now?

Ditto

12. If you could go on a trip anywhere right now where would you go?

I wish I had so much fucking money that I could travel to Europe in style and luxury on some damn huge passenger ship. I think one or two of those still exist. NOT a cruise; just going from New York to Southhampton, or wherever such ships go. And then I'd visit friends from Brighton through London and Newcastle to Edinburgh.

13. What is your best recent memory?

Hm. I'm usually good at enjoying small moments, but this is hard, when you're called upon to recall one instantly. Also it's weird to say recent "memory". I'm confused by that. A memory is by definition from the past. I don't know if I think about RECENT memories... that seems to beg the question of how good one's aging memory IS. Okay, this is weird, but the one that comes to mind is, strangely, from the very early days of the pandemic. My niece Rosie would come over a lot because we had a family "pod" and she couldn't really go outside the house to see anyone else in person. So she'd come over here a lot, and bake. She made a lot of bread that was wonderful the first day, and rock hard, the second.

14. If you could choose between having a personal chef, housekeeper, or personal trainer which would you choose?

I think a personal chef, even though I have always liked to cook. I don't do it any more and I swear to god it would almost be cheaper and certainly more healthy to have someone else cook for me. I mean, as opposed to DoorDash or Ubereats or whatever.

15. What is your relationship to physical exercise?

I don't have a relationship to physical exercise.

16. When you were a child how did you imagine your adult life?

I think I've said before that I have a very clear memory of me at age five, imagining the future female commune I would live in with my friends. I think I was imagining this partly in response to some of those friends wanting to play wedding with their Barbies. Later, I vaguely thought I'd be a writer or a professor of history, but I pictured my life as being more or less the way my parents' lives were: a month of summer vacation, a stable job that paid a mortgage, etc.

17. When was the last time you surprised yourself?

Surprised myself. Hm. I always surprise myself by how long I can procrastinate to the absolute last possible minute and then get all that procrastinated work done in a ridiculously small amount of time.

18. If you could eliminate one thing from your life today what would it be?

Diabetes. Yeah, if I could eliminate diabetes I would be very pleased.

19. What is something you'd love to try?

I used to want to try sky-diving, but nah. If I were in better physical shape (a LOT better) I'd love to be one of those old volunteers who works on an archaeological dig. I'd like to go to outdoor hot springs.

20. Do you feel like you gained anything from the books you were required to read in school?

I loved the majority of the books I "was forced to read in school". I can name most of them now. In high school English: Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Mother Courage, Mythology by Edith Hamilton, The Odyssey, The Old Man and the Sea (okay,
I hated that book), The Catcher in the Rye (hated that book too), The Once and Future King, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, The Grapes of Wrath, Ethan Frome, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Crucible, Daisy Miller, The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Points of Departure (a collection of short stories including some Graham Greene, Alan Sillitoe, Nadine Gordimer and John Updike, Absalom, Absalom, As I Lay Dying, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and that's it

... there are some I am forgetting, but I remember most of them. I did take English AP, so some of the excess titles are those.

In Russian history, we read one Russian novel of our choice (I chose Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and to date it is still the only Russian novel I have read, though my older niece is constantly trying to get me to read more. And we also read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

In French, I remember Les Jeux Sont Faits, Huis Clos,L'Etranger (which I loved and which led to a fascination with Camus), a collection of poetry, Le Petit Prince (which I loathed), Tartuffe, L'Invalide Imaginaire, and Candide (which I adored).

21. What part(s) of your work do you enjoy the most? The least?

The most: planning interesting lessons. The least: grading and paperwork

22. Why do you dress the way you do?

I work from home! Never mind athleisure; I own more pairs of comfy pajama bottoms than I could EVER HAVE IMAGINED three years ago. If I have to go back to in person next year, god knows what I will wear. UGHHHHHHHH.

26. Have you ever been blindsided by something someone told you?

I was blindsided when I was told what I was going to get for winning the annual French contest at the end of my senior year of high school. I thought I was going to get a dictionary, and was hoping for a Petit Larousse. No, instead I was getting a scholarship to an Alliance Française course in Paris, fucking unbelievable. I was also blindsided when I was told, more recently (about a year and a half ago) that I was being involuntarily transferred from my school site of ten or so years to the alternative (and right now still virtual) school I am at now.

27. What is a positive habit you’d like to cultivate?

I HATE this kind of question, because there are SO MANY good habits I do not have and will probably not cultivate. The one I am working on now is trying to make food from pantry shelves and fridge rather than ordering from DoorDash.

28. What are your favorite "little things" in life?

Really, a lot of it is petting my cat, and drinking tea. Even just taking the first sip of tea makes me feel better, when I am stressed, and the exact same thing is true of petting Devlin. I am sure petting all cats is calming, but her fur is particularly plush and dense.

29. When was the last time you had to hold your tongue?

Yeah, work meetings are a good bet for this one. I had to bite my tongue repeatedly at our Zoom Staff Meeting yesterday, sigh.

30. How do you feel about traveling to and possibly inhabiting other planets?

I would actually be into this if it were kind of along Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy lines, which involve anti-capitalist revolution on Mars and also anti-aging treatments.

31. If you could redo a decade in your life which would you choose?

Not an entire decade. One year, yeah, probably. Worst relationship I was ever in, and I'm still mad at myself for even beginning it, much less failing to end it until it had been most of a year. UGH.

1. What was the first vacation you went on as an adult? (IE – without parents, etc)
I was struggling with this, but then I reframed it as "the first time you traveled somewhere major without parents, for an extended period of time." Because it wasn't exactly a vacation, though some of it was. At the end of my Senior year in high school, I took the Alliance Française concours de français (as I did basically every year in high school) thinking that the prize for winning was a French dictionary or novel or something. No, in fact, for three of us in the Chicago suburbs, it was a six week Alliance Française course in Paris, along with plane tickets, room and board at a Catholic hostel for girls on the Ile St. Louis, and $1,000 -- all donated by the McCormick (of McCormick Harvester, we shot the striking workers that set up the Haymarket "riot" in 1886 fame) family, who lived in a penthouse apartment in Chicago with literal marble floors. My parents and I had to go there to get the plane tickets and check from their lily-white hands.

I'd never been on a plane before. A five year old in the seat next to me informed me very knowledgeably about air sickness. But I didn't get sick.

The Alliance Française course itself, on Boulevard Raspaille, was actually not interesting partly because the prof was a hardened sexist misogynist asshole and I couldn't pipe down. But Paris! We were there for Bastille Day and literal dancing with PCF (parti communiste français) members in the streets at night; the other two girls and I dove into international friendships and ate cherries and brie and baguettes on the banks of the Seine; an Egyptian woman in her early 20s tried to explain to me Islamo-Marxist-feminism; I went to the Cimetière Père Lachaise to see the Mur des Federailles, where the Communards were executed (also where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried, though I don't care about those, or at least I don't care about Jim Morrison). I hung out with Fourth Internationalist comrades and then got the chance to skive off from the rest of the course at the Alliance Française and go to the Schwarzwald for the first International Socialist Youth Camp, organized by the FI. Which was AMAZING for someone who had never known any revolutionaries of my own age. And I got to do a lot of informal simultaneous translation between young French comrades and young comrades from the Brit delegation (of whom, to my shame, I said, ALOUD, when I met, "My god, you really do sound like Monty Python"). A lot of the translation was in aid of gay hook-ups. After the camp, I went back to Britain with the Brits and stayed in squats in Hackney and somewhat filthy apartments in Brixton and got seriously ill and got better and went on a 250 mile march around British airforce bases hosting American MX cruise missiles, with the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, called the Bases Tour. I was the pet Yank, who made anti-nuclear and pro-Central American solidarity speeches at various stops, like Milton Keynes. I made some of my best, most enduring friendships on that march, but had to leave in the middle, to get my stuff in Paris and fly home. At least the last day in Britain, I was in London for the British Miners' Wives demo. I wish there were transporter devices, because it sucks that so many of my close friends are in Britain, and none of us are rich.

2. What streaming service do you use the most?
I use enough of them that it is faintly embarrassing to list them. I don't have cable, or TV at all. In descending order, Amazon, Netflix, Acorn, (my niece's) Hulu (account)... Kanopy, which is for documentaries and is virtually free for five titles a month (if you don't already use it, you might love it, Microbie!)

3. What is your favorite outdoor activity?
I had to think about this for a while. I am not really an outdoor person. But my answer is: being on a boat. A huge ferry, like the ones between England and France, or Sweden and Poland, for that matter; a car ferry, like those on the Great Lakes and off the coast of Canada; a smaller motorized boat like the three hour whale watching expedition we went on near Monterey. I like being on boats, for hours or almost days at a time. I'd like to see if I liked longer trips, too.

4. Have you ever been to the emergency room?
I had never even been in a hospital except to visit someone until last year during The Cancer. Then in the middle of that, I had to go to the ER because I had what turned out to be a kidney infection that almost went septic. They kept me overnight, pumping a "bolus" of antibiotic into my veins. I had a whole year of having things pumped into me via painful IVs, from the total hysterectomy in December of 2021 to that ER visit.

5. Favorite brand of chips?
Crunchy Cheetos!

6. Favorite place to eat at the mall?
I never go to malls, and the malls I've been to more have restaurants than food courts. I guess the last place I went to eat that was in a mall was a P. F. Changs with my uncle? That was years and years ago. My mother was a fan of Orange Julius restaurants, in malls.

7. Do you enjoy leftovers?
No. I am very, very bad at eating (restaurant) leftovers, unlike my stepmother, who seems to enjoy them more than the restaurant meal itself. She hates cooking, though. I like eating leftover food that **I** cooked, however. Mostly soups.

8. Which do you prefer, desserts or appetizers?
I am just going to quote Microbie here: "I never understand these dichotomy questions." But for me, I think it splits about 50/50.

9. Do people spell your name wrong often?
My name is very short -- four letters -- and while it is almost never misspelled, it is mispronounced probably 90% of the time -- or 90% of the first time someone says it. I've gotten over being annoyed by it, but I do correct people.

Following in Village Charm's and Mr. Smearcase's and Microbie's footsteps and writing about the decade. I haven't prepared as well as Microbie, so I am not sure how accurate or specific I will be able to be... Maybe I'll glance back at some entries while writing this? Damn, doing that, I just realized that a) either my life was much more interesting ten years ago, or b) just writing more frequently (five to seven times a MONTH, when I barely manage five times a year these days) made me describe my life more interestingly. I sure hope it's the latter.


1. What did you do in the 2010s that you'd never done before?

buy an apartment -- a condominium, I guess, but that word is so weird -- in April of 2018; have a parent die, in June of 2018; do a cross-country road trip with my stepmother and four with my mother; learn to love doing laundry (in my apartment, nay, in my KITCHEN; it's the best); consider voting for a Democrat (Bernie, in 2016) (and will consider voting for a Democrat this year, too, if Bernie gets the nomination)


2. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My friends River and Dani had a baby, Juniper, who is now two and a half. All the other children in my life were born in the early 2000s.

4. Did anyone close to you die?


My mother died June 25th, 2018. A friend, Mischa, told me the second year can be worse, and so far what she observed is true -- I find myself crying quite often when I think about my mom.

5. What countries did you visit?


None apart from these United States

6. What would you like to have in the 2020s that you lacked in the 2010s?


Health? Retirement! I can't retire at 55, unless we suddenly get Medicare for All... and even then, I would get a monthly pittance compared to retiring at 60... or, in fact, 62 (if I've done the calculations correctly, which I need to check with the California State Teachers Retirement System, CalSTRS) which would give me $2000/more per month than at 60, which seems crazy.

7. What date from the 2010s will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Just the date of my mom's death.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the decade?

With the help of my father (I could never have accumulated a whole downpayment without him; I thought downpayments were 10% or something. No, they're apparently 50% or MORE. I could never have accumulated that on one person's salary, even though I've done much better at regular saving than I ever would have imagined.) I bought property, the apartment I am sitting in right now, with a wonderful layout and a great balcony that is almost an extra room in the summer.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Health and losing mobility; still being vulnerable to the outside judgment of workplace authority figures; I won't say being single because I think I am into that... I'm more chagrined that I ever managed to convince myself that the relationship with Mark (which I'd forgotten continued into this decade) was in any way real. What an idiot.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Yes, illness and debilitation

11. What was the best thing you bought?

This place and a lot of books. It was pretty liberating when I moved, to get rid of SO MUCH STUFF. Two (very expensive) visits from 1-800-Got-Junk? were well worth it. I Marie Kondoed the hell out of my place before that trend even happened. And it is a calm and soothing place to be.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Colin Kaepernick; Greta Thunberg; Bernie Sanders; Jeremy Corbyn; #MeToo; DSA

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

British socialist feminists I know who are fucking TERFs

14. Where did most of your money go?

Buying (and paying for) this place and Amazon for ebooks and groceries and ordering out. I've just about paid back my savings account for the $11 K closing costs, which is a relief.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Honestly, it's exciting to hear the word socialism on news shows, and to see regular ordinary people enthused about democratic socialist political stances from Medicare for All to Free Tuition and cancelled student loan debt; it's exciting that DSA ballooned after the 2016 Presidential bid of Bernie Sanders (who I've adored literally since I was a kid)

16. What songs will always remind you of the 2010s?

I can't do this as individual songs, most of which I become aware of just because I am a teacher and get kids to send me yearly ("appropriate" or clean versions of) songs for a Student Playlist we sometimes have on if they're doing what is depressingly called seatwork. ARTISTS I learned about this past decade... hm. I've mentioned a few in this year's DW/LJ posts... Tyler Childers; The Highwomen; Guy Clark (he's not new ... just new to me)

17. Compared to the start of the decade, are you happier or sadder?

happier

ii. thinner or fatter?

much fatter

iii. richer or poorer?

richer, despite the mortgage. That's "good debt", right? Despite what taking it on did to my stellar credit rating?

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

feeling like I could travel; traveling

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

worry about work, delude myself about Mark, though that is more of a 2000s thing.


20. Did you fall in love in the 2010s?

With Devlin, my cat.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

It's hard to rank older ones from earlier in the decade. I'm not sure when some of them started. Little has eclipsed The Wire. I like the new Trek, Discovery; I like The Expanse; I enjoyed season one of Gentleman Jack and the available seasons of Shetland (written by the same author as Vera. I binge watch things like Queer Eye and The Great British Bake Off. I rewatch things like Marple mysteries, Vera, and Battlestar Galactica. And nevertheless, I spend much more time reading than watching shows.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate at the start of the decade?

Trump, of course. Also Boris Johnson. And Freddie Bolsonaro, if I am spelling that right.

24. What were some of the best books you read?

This question is too hard! I really liked Anathem and SevenEves by Neal Stephenson, and read his other recent works without liking them as much, especially Fall, or Dodge in Hell. Jo Walton's work is a discovery of the past decade, and her stuff is great. There are a lot of authors I intend to read in the NEXT decade.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

This was answered earlier.

26. What did you want and get?

I didn't know I wanted to own a place until Oakland rents went through the roof and my apartment building went on the market, taking with it my far, far, far below market-rate rent.

27. What did you want and not get?

Hillary Clinton would have been better than Trump, much though I dislike her. Palatable neoliberalism.

28. What were some of your favorite films of the decade?

I agree with Microbie on Black Panther, Bridesmaids, and Coco... I haven't seen Sorry to Bother You yet! I don't see a ton of movies in theaters.

29. What one thing would have made your decade immeasurably more satisfying?

not having diabetes

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept during the 2010s?

someone who wears clothes that are comfortable and not actual eyesores

31. What kept you sane?

My nieces, my friends, my sister, my Devlin, some work mates for sure

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Hahaha, Microbie -- John Cusack IS crushworthy, I agree! Who else? I don't pay a lot of attention. Aishwarya Rai (I agree with my younger niece on this); Alan Rickman, now dead, sigh; Edward Snowden, sure.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

Medicare for All; #MeToo on the microlevel (that is, once it percolated down below celebrities); fucking TERFdom; endless racism and anti-immigrant actions

34. Whom did you miss?

my mom, really... also, my grandmother, who died back in 2002, and whose 104th birthday today would have been. There are so many questions I would ask her; and she would be better able to answer them than my mother. I kind of wonder if I am becoming more like my grandmother, though I hope not in the way that she verged on solipsistic narcissism.

35. Who were the best new people you met?

I agree about VillageCharm, who is a LiveJournal gift of the past decade, for me! KS, a workmate at the school I transferred to in 2011. LP, another teacher, who moved on from my school but is crazy and interesting and creative.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in the 2010s.

Becoming more introverted as you age is okay. Boundaries are hella important.

37. What are you looking forward to in the 2020s?

Actual rather than peri-menopause; retirement; continuing to watch my nieces become excellent people; seeing the DSA continue to grow

I think the image above sort of sums up 2013 for me -- I made it my goal to read 365 books this year, via Goodreads (whose purchase by Amazon has not so far much changed it, as far as I can tell). I read (as of today, the last day of 2013) 440. I would like to have made it an even hundred over, but I cannot read twenty-five books today.

Anyway, I will deal with All the Topics, IN THIS ONE POST. That wasn't the point of the meme, at all, but having topics I promised to write about is starting to make me feel guilty, and guilt is a feeling I loathe.

Portal Fantasy: I had to ask what this was, but since sabotabby kindly told me, I get it. I read the Narnia books at about the normal age for them, and I guess either they or the Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland were the first portal fantasies I encountered. Hm. It's interesting. I would think that my reaction would be positive, but in fact, when I think about reading these, except for the Wizard of Oz, I had problems. I did not like Alice in Wonderland. It was too trippy, I think, and I couldn't get much of a sense of the main character, Alice. I've never been comfortable with that story. And Narnia just pissed me off as soon as I figured out what Aslan stood for. I remember viscerally the rage I felt while reading the stone table sacrificial (crucifixion) scene, at how blatantly the reader's emotions were being manipulated for religious purposes. Why was The Wizard of Oz different for me? Huh. I appreciated the American fairy-taleness of it? It's very rooted in Americana -- all of the books of the series are. I think the one I like best is actually the one where Dorothy gets swept overboard while she and her uncle and aunt are on their way to Australia, and Dorothy ends up in a hen coop, with a talking hen whom she names Billina (actually, the hen may have been named that by some earlier child owner... there was a whole discussion about the confusing gender implications of sexing chicks and of names) -- the moment when the hen begins to talk is when Dorothy realizes she's in that other world again, though not precisely in Oz. It's a shipwreck fantasy AND a portal fantasy, and I like those both. I went to Goodreads and found a list of portal fantasies to see other examples, and it included the Harry Potter books, which I wasn't sure about, because the two worlds seem to overlap somewhat. But I like those books -- not as much as I like Diana Wynne Jones' various series, but well enough. I guess my verdict is: portal fantasies -- yes, good. Time portal fantasies -- where a character somehow falls through time to real history -- possibly better.

YAF > regular F: That is, the advantages of young adult fiction over regular fiction, or adult fiction. You know, I am not sure, except that it's easier, and more enjoyable. There is usually less to wrestle with in terms of ambivalent characters and wretchedness. It tends to be reassuring in the way that mysteries are reassuring -- most things will come out well, plots will tie up neatly. It can be formulaic (also reassuring) but not as formulaic as romances. Except for a subset of YAF that deals with tragedy (including John Green, who does this well) it tends not to confront the reader with aging or mortality. When contrasted with literary fiction, it is not as preeningly self-aware of the use of language, though some YAF writers enjoy playing with language. I'm not a fan of the YAF novels-in-poem form (Karen Hesse), but they exist. YAF, which really only goes back to the 19th century, is a good primary source document of its times, and is interesting in that sense -- I mean, YAF as a primary source is obviously also propagandistic; it can't help but be, but that itself is interesting. I know that toastykitten and I have thought about that aspect before with regard to the Anne of Green Gables books -- her Anne book set during WW I is overstuffed with pro-war propaganda. She even has a very thinly disguised version of "In Flanders Fields" written by one of her characters instead of John McCrae, also a Canadian. ANYWAY, whatever the advantages are, I really like young adult fiction, full stop.

Favorite YAF novels and/or Funniest Things Kids Say or Do: Hmmm. The former question is too huge. I wrote a month's worth on my favorite novels and authors a few years ago. But a random handful of authors: Laurence Yep, especially his Golden Mountain chronicles, which go from the 1840s in China to the present in the USA. Really, really good. Carolyn Mackler -- contemporary young women. Michelle Magorian -- writes exclusively about WWII and its aftermath (early 1950s) on the home front in Britain. Ellen Klages -- only has two YAF books out, but they're both great; about the Los Alamos project and its aftermath, from the perspective of two middle-school age girls whose parents worked on the atomic bomb. Karen Cushman -- mostly great girl-centric historical fiction set in the Middle Ages, but also a good Cold War book about McCarthyism called The Loud Silence of Francine Green. Trudy Krisher -- a few historical YAF books, one very good on the Civil Rights era -- Spite Fences and one contemporary Southern, Kinship, and one set during McCarthyism that I haven't read yet, but which looks really good called Fallout. Gah, obviously I could write about this stuff for a long, long, long time and not get bored of it.

As for the what kids say stuff... I don't know. Middle School students -- especially 7th graders -- aren't founts of hilarity. They're all so concerned with their social standing vis-à-vis each other. Ugh. 6th graders are a little better as far as saying things unselfconsciously. One of my fairly interesting sixth graders asked me in a sort of probing way something about believing in god. Most of my students ask that only if they get a horrified sense that I might not -- it's a locale with a LOT of Christian families and some Mormons, too, though there is a leavening of Buddhists from Southeast Asia. This kid was clearly testing for some atheist solidarity, which has happened a few times over the years, and which I always enjoy, though quietly. It's not worth it to make atheist waves in my district. Okay, so that's not a funny thing a kid said. I can't think of any right now. Kids are enjoyable, though. This year (see: Year of Books) seems to be one where more of my students react positively to reading. There are a fair number of kids doing Scholastic Book orders, and kids participate in some of the internet-reading-tracking schemes I've got going, and they read the comments I put on their Weekly Reading Logs, and then come show me the books they're reading, many with the hope that I will read them too. Which I well may. One girl is very adamant that I read the results of Chris Colfer's newest career, some series of portal fantasies, the first of which is called (I think) The Land of Stories. Dude is a Renaissance Man.

1980s Central America Solidarity movement: Which of these things is not like the others? johnbcannon, I cannot write about that right now in one entry with all the other things here! I will try to write about it, because it's an interesting topic. Next year.

Oakland -- cool and cheap: You know, when I moved to Oakland, in October of 1998, I did NOT feel at home. This is not really my preferred coast, if I am choosing between coasts. But this was where I knew my sister would be reproducing, and I wanted to be involved in that as an auntie. It took me at least three years to grow some roots here in the Bay Area, and it was a slow, difficult process. Now I do love Oakland -- it is urban in a way I like; it has different neighborhoods with their own personalities, it has beautiful perspectives from the hills, and it is funky and real. It is also a manageable size, and it is not too into itself (unlike San Francisco). I used to be able to say it had good rents, but that is not true any more, except when compared to San Francisco.

The first things I discovered that I really liked, on my own, that are Oakland/East Bay, and are cool and also practical (aka cheap or free): San Pablo Avenue. I have a car (though I didn't for the first five years, and the 72 L bus goes up San Pab) and driving up San Pablo is still a lot of fun. My students used to tell me that it was the main drag for prostitution, around MacArthur and thereabouts, but that whole area has been pretty gentrified... 40th and San Pablo is the beginning of Emeryville and a lot of consumer products and Mall stuff. Probably not very cool, but sometimes necessary. Driving north on San Pablo (at least I think it's North; I still get very, very confused about directions here) you go through a cute couple of blocks that have tchotchke stores (I think the Sino-Antiques shop where I got my Little Red Book Mao Girl is gone, though, sigh) and Good Vibrations, always an enjoyable stop. And some cafes. A few more blocks and you're at University, which is the main Indian store area of Berkeley. Good restaurants and sari shops and Indian groceries. One of the main purveyors of Bollywood music and DVDs has sadly just closed and reopened as a 7-11, ugh. The Freight & Salvage folk music venue used to be just off San Pablo a few blocks south of University, but it has moved to downtown Berkeley, ugh.

Still in that general area, one of the coolest (and free) things in the East Bay is the Albany Bulb, which is a jutting mini-peninsula just north of Golden Gate Fields (a gorgeous horsetrack, well worth visiting on its own -- there are dollar Sundays). This vacant land was where all the detritus from the last major earthquake was dumped -- all the collapsed freeway parts and rebar and cement. And nature and anarchists reclaimed it and made it into a fennel-covered art park. It's eerily beautiful and the smell of fennel in season is great and there are wildflowers everywhere and sculpture parks and so on. There are several paths, but you can feel like you might get lost, too. I wonder if there is an online guide? Well, it has its own Wikipedia entry.

You've already discovered the Paramount Theater and you live right by Lake Merritt, so I don't need to say anything about those. I like the homely and dilapidated elegance of the Grand Lake Theater (and also its opinionated marquee) a great deal. I haven't been to the new version of the Parkway pub-cinema, but its predecessor was a good place to watch third run movies and drink beer while sitting on couches. The branch libraries each have ambiances of their own: Rockridge's is hella new and pretty, and is on College Avenue, a chi-chi shopping district with a cafe specializing in hot chocolate -- Bittersweet. And a good independent bookstore right next door, Diesel Books. The 51 bus route goes up Broadway to College to University, though I think now you have to change at the Rockridge BART.

I will keep thinking about this topic, because Oakland and the East Bay ARE pretty great. The Oakland Museum is quite good -- I didn't used to think so, but it's been redone.

Okay -- now I can end 2013 without feeling like I have shirked a self-imposed responsibility.

... a celebrity I don't enjoy? That would be most of them. Another teenage topic, I swan.

Let's see. I wanted to succeed in going to my grave without knowing what Justin Bieber looked like, but I think I failed to reach that goal, if only because of the semi-Bieber themed Glee episode. I don't enjoy the Hilton-Kardashian-Windsor famous because they're rich or royal celebrities. I don't enjoy most political celebrities. I don't really enjoy celebrity is the truth, I think. I like people who are famous for doing something well, who nonetheless seem like they MIGHT be kind of regular if given a chance. Or people I can IMAGINE are like that, like, e.g. John Cusack, Stephen Rea, that guy who always stars in John Sayles movies, and played an excellent Wobbly. I like scientist celebrities, like Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Stephen J. Gould, Lewis Thomas, Marie Curie. And I like left wing political or historical celebrities, like most revolutionaries.

Which reminds me, I need to have a list of African-Americans that I come up with myself to talk about each day of February in my social studies class, though we are studying medieval Japan right now. But that was the mandate from the office, today. I guess I like being given free rein to bring in whomever *I* want to talk about. Okay, the first few are done; I will work on the rest this weekend.

Feb. 1 -- Olaudah Equiano -- Enslaved Nigerian, worked in American colonies, wrote first recognized slave autobiography which became crucial propaganda in the abolitionist movement in Britain, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African [1745-1797]
Feb. 2 -- Crispus Attucks [1723-1770]
Feb. 3 -- Phyllis Wheatley [1753-1784]

Feb. 6 -- Nat Turner [1800-1831]
Feb. 7 -- Mary Jane Seacole [1805-1881] (thanks, springheel_jack!
Feb. 8 -- Joseph Cinque [1814-1879]
Feb. 9 -- Frederick Douglass [1818-1895]
Feb. 10 -- Madam C. J. Walker [1867-1919]

Feb. 14 -- W. E. B. DuBois [1868-1963]
Feb. 15 -- Zora Neale Hurston [1891-1960]
Feb. 16 -- Bessie Coleman [1892-1926]
Feb. 17 -- Langston Hughes [1902-1967]

Feb. 21 -- Josephine Baker [1906-1975]
Feb. 22 -- Fannie Lou Hamer [1917-1977]
Feb. 23 -- Lorraine Hansberry [1930-1965]
Feb. 24 -- Hank Aaron [1934- ]
Feb. 25 -- Angela Davis [1944- ]

Feb. 28 -- Octavia Butler [1947-2006]
Feb. 29 -- Little Bobby Hutton [1950-1968]

Now I have to go grab a bunch of Hiroshige images and put them in iPhoto and then on a flash drive, to show as a slideshow tomorrow in class.

Like springheel_jack, I am doing this from memory, by guess, and by, um... golly.

1) What author do you own the most books by?

Hahahaha... I think I should start as I will have to go on. Not Marx, though I have quite a few by Marx. But the most titles? Probably L. M. Montgomery, followed by Elizabeth Peters and the Mormon Murderess, Anne Perry.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

I also own several copies of the Communist Manifesto, and several copies of Alexandra Kollontai's Love of Worker Bees and for some reason several copies of Marge Piercy's He, She, and It. Hm. And at least two or three copies of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age.

( and the rest of this long thing is behind the cut... )