Back Again, With News to Report

And once again, I've let this poor blog go by the wayside. I'm sorry little blog. Please don't grow up to have abandonment issues.

There's lots to report on. I make no guarantee that you'll make it to the end of this post, but I hope you will. 

First off, you haven't seen much action on this blog because I've started blogging for Campus Pride, the only national non-profit that supports college students and organizations working to "create a safer college environment for LGBT college students." They published the guide on Transgender Issues in Sororities and Fraternities that I wrote with Jessica Pettitt last summer. Blogging for Campus Pride is a really great outlet for me to feel a wee bit political and connected to the LGBT community. 

If you're interested, here are links to the posts I've done for them:

Our Peers on the Streets

             A post about the high percentage of homeless LGBT youth
Should I Pack the Closet

             Issues faced by LGBT students when studying abroad
Something Old, Something New, A Good Case of the Bisexual Blue

           Thoughts on the Prop 8 Case from a bisexual point of view

I'm trying to pump out a post a week for them. It's really stretching me to learn more because unlike here where I mostly report on my life and things I'm thinking about, I do a lot more research for the Campus Pride posts. I've also taken on a volunteer project for them, which is making me feel more capable. 

In totally other news, this past Monday I drove Riane Eisler from her home to San Francisco and back. She was speaking at a conference put on by Will's work and so he lined up the gig for me. There's a similar conference happening in D.C. in June if you are interested.

I'd never heard of Ms. Eisler before spending several hours in a car with her, but in other circles she is a celebrity. She has published several books that have been translated into 22 languages. To say it was a little intimidating to talk to her at first is perhaps an understatement. But, by the car ride back we were able to have a really nice conversation.

She gave me copies of two of her books and wants me to email her to talk about them when I finish reading them. I'm only a little bit into The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a More Caring Economics, but it's full of interesting ideas. She basically focuses on all of the work that is done that remains outside of how we measure our economy, makes a clear case that it is work associated with the stereotypical feminine values of caring, and talks about how our economy would be different if we included and gave importance to care giving. My favorite example so far is that we think nothing of paying a man $50+ /hr to take care of our plumbing and require some sort of certification before trusting them, but we only pay around $10/hr for someone to take care of our children. Talk about wrong priorities!

Since beginning my unemployment/trying to get a job adventure, I've become more and more aware about how money reflects priorities and how salaries and access to jobs reflect who is valued by society. It's been eye-opening. A few weeks ago I called this law firm where I had applied to do admin assistance to see if they had received my resume. I had a long talk with the office manager, and in the end, she told me that I was overqualified and that I would be too bored to do the job. I thought it was interesting that just because I have a Bachelor's degree I'd be bored, whereas someone without one is assumed to not be bored? It's interesting to watch how the working world almost refuses to allow me to do certain work, even if I am ready and willing to do it. I'm on the lucky side of this equation because I'll probably wind up eventually with a challenging, professional job that's salaried and relatively stable, but the dynamic still bothers me. 

For those of you who I haven't told, I was accepted to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. I'm really excited, but nervous that I won't get a placement in the bay area. I'll be making my final decision in March when I am told of my placement. It doesn't start until early August, so I'm also nervous about how I'll make it until then. We shall see.

...and that's all the news from Lake Woebegone.

I'll try to be better about posting, so I'm not just updating, but rather, getting more into my thoughty-thoughts. Hope you don't mind until then.

Long Time, No Posts

I know it's been a while. I fell off the bandwagon. or slipped. or huddled in the fetal position with a lot of blankets in the corner so that the other members of the band wouldn't see me. Something like that.

The truth is that in late November/early December the depression took a turn for the worse and all I could think of to write about was how painfully sad I was. No matter what I started to say, it somehow managed to come back to sadness. I didn't want to write or even admit how sad I was, so I just stopped. I stopped in a lot of other ways. I stopped volunteering. I stopped looking at jobs. I stopped eating breakfast or lunch. I stopped sleeping. I stopped getting out of my pajamas. I stopped showering. I excelled at watching television on hulu, crying, and worrying people sick.

Now, I'm doing better. Much better. Going home and getting a change of scenery really helped. I feel reinvigorated about applying to jobs. I just applied to two office monkey jobs today. I have also finished my application for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which I'm really excited about (even though getting the medical form filled out was a headache). I've been reading John Dear's A Persistent Peace. He's a really interesting Jesuit who focuses on the nonviolence of Jesus and then translates that into activism. Some of what he does is really intense, but his rationale is spot-on. He certainly has more courage than I do, and I really admire him. I'd really recommend finding his book in your local public library or bookstore. It's definitely worth a read.

I've been following the federal court trial of Prop 8 (the voter amendment in California that knocked down same-sex marriage) through Prop 8 Trial Tracker. It's totally fascinating to see how the case is being built. They have called a lot of professors as expert witnesses, and reading along has been like a series of mini-lessons on the history of marriage, the history of queers, and sociology. I really recommend checking it out if you have a bunch of time (it's basically a transcript with commentary interspersed and a few blog posts). It's kinda like watching a football game on tv if that football game were actually a landmark legal case. Another great place for coverage is KQED. They have a blog going, and it might be easier to jump in late in the game on their site.

I'm also eating, showering, and dressing regularly (so you can stop worrying).

Hope all is well with you and yours!


p.s. If you are in the position to give financially, I would appreciate it if you could give money to the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. Click here to do so. They are currently providing me with donation-based counseling, and I don't have that much to donate.

p.p.s. We're also trying to send one of the kids Will lives with to this awesome summer camp for transyouth. They also need donations.

Commenting on my blog is hard

...and I'm sorry about that.

I've been trying to respond to some of your comments (thanks to everyone who comments!) and I have had a terrible time. I can't do it. I sign in. I type the comment in. It disappears. I don't sign in. I click on the blank part of the list choices. I type the comment in. It disappears. Some of you have emailed or messaged me with your similar woes. This leads me to ask one question: Successful commenteers, what is the trick?

Also:

Emily, tell Ryan he can keep his right nut. It's the left nut that's valuable anyway. Also, the 3-d printer was pretty cool. The first thing that I thought when I saw it was "So, this is where rainbow slinkies come from!"

Forklifts, and Cold Saws, and High Altitude Wind Energy! Oh my!

The day after Thanksgiving I ran across this ad. I was feeling adventurous, and like I didn’t have much to lose—plus, I am interested in creating things—so, I contacted Tim. He responded that he was in the middle of a kitesurfing trip, but that I should come in on Monday. I knew it was probably going to be pretty interesting at this point.

After battling the public transportation gods,* I made it to Tim’s office in Alameda. I’m not exactly sure what Tim does besides build lots of things for Instructables, but he showed me a 3-d printer, which he said he used to produce. He had a lot of random things, and also a lot of knowledge. We then took the solar-powered gold cart (I’m pretty sure Tim converted it to solar power himself) across the lot and began building a new shelf for Tim’s office. He explained the basics of epoxy and carpentry (he’s a really great explainer, and it’s a pretty wonderful thing for me to have this person just tell me all of this stuff that I don’t know). Then I learned how to drive the fork life, just because.

I really enjoyed driving the fork life, and think I could actually enjoy some sort of menial job where you drive one. I was recently going through the book How to Get Any Job with Any Major, which contains a lot of exercises aimed at helping to broaden your ideas of what you would like to do. One of the questions that it asks is: If you could do anything and prestige didn’t matter, what would you do? My response: Drive a bus. Honestly. I love riding on public transit, and as long as the route is long enough, I really like the routine of a going to the same place over and over. In fact, when I was younger, there was a time when I was staying with my grandparents for a longer amount of time, and they borrowed a neighbor’s 4-wheeler for me to play with while I was visiting. I played on it for hours because I was so overjoyed to pretend to be a bus driver. I’m not even kidding. I think if I could listen to NPR podcasts while driving my forklift, I might have a really enjoyable (but perhaps only short-term) career.

At some point in there, Tim made me lunch, and I met a few of the other people who work in the same building. Tim shares his office space with a company called Mikani (which was started by the same people as Instructables). Mikani is researching ways to harness high altitude wind energy. It’s pretty neat, and later in the day I got to work in their workshop. I first received a lesson about drill bits, and then looked over all the drill bits and ordered new ones. Afterwards, I got my own pair of coveralls, and protective glasses. I worked with Mose, an engineer, to start creating a custom-made part for a prototype. The specific part we worked on is going to help cool off the engine. First, we took a giant piece of solid aluminum and filed the edge, then I learned how to use a cold saw (well, first I learned how to load coolant into the cold saw, how to pick out the right blade, and how to load and unload the blade), cut the aluminum into several pieces, and then took it to another machine.

The second machine I would best describe as a robot inside a giant window. Mose had a 3-d model of the finished part, and somehow his computer transmitted instructions to the machine to know how to cut the aluminum exactly. We had to do all sorts of things so that lasers could read things correctly, and watch to make sure everything went just perfect.

At the end of the day, Tim gave me a ride to the Bart.

All in all, a great adventure.



*I was standing for the bus at the bus stop at the right time when it whooshed right past me. It stopped again on the next block, so I ran after it, but narrowly missed it because a car decided to turn and so I couldn’t cross the street fast enough. When I finally got on the next bus, I made it all the way to downtown Oakland, got on the next bus very close to Oakland Chinatown (and was then the only non-Chinese speaking person on the bus besides the driver), but then missed my final stop and had to get on the bus going the opposite direction. I still arrived at my final destination (albeit an hour late), so I count it a success.

Thanksgivinganza

I had a lovely Thanksgiving (and I hope you did, too!) Now I’m so stuffed full of leftovers that I’m having a hard time thinking of what to say. Since I live miles and miles away from my family and since most of my friends also live miles and miles away from their families we gathered together for our own special Thanksgiving feast. We didn’t have traditional foods per say, but there was turkey in the lasagna and squash and pumpkin in the curry. Ah, Americans of the 21^st century. Our food was delicious! I am so happy to have so many friends who cook so well. We topped our Thanksgiving off with projecting Shrek on the wall. All in all, a delightful day.

And now…pictures!

The food I cooked:

Chive Biscuits

Carmelized Onion Quiche

Ginger Pumpkin Cheesecake

All of the food!

David and Caely set the table:

and silly picture posing:

Will decided to do an entire series exploring his inner ghost in front of the camera. (I don't know why. I date--not explain--Will Pasley).

I had many more pictures, but now I can't find them on my computer (boooooooo.)

So here's the last one:

 

Thanksgiving+Shrek+ Couch = Very Sleepy Sarah

And now....a post! Update on U.C. Protests, Thanksgiving, Hooray for Caely

Okay, okay, so I haven't been doing as well as I hoped at the once-a-day posting.

I'm finding that maintaining momentum (for anything) is a struggle these days, but I am posting again as a way to fight my own instinct to slowly crawl into the fetal position. It's a pretty resilient instinct. Who knew?

Will has been keeping me up to date on the U.C. Protests. A few nights ago students occupied the lobby of the President's office in Oakland. Apparently another occupation has happened/is happening(?) at U.C. Davis. It's exciting to think about where this is going to go. The older I get the more disillusioned I become with our current systems of operating. Things are not working, and it's hard to be on the receiving end.

There have been and continue to be a lot of struggles, and the lone unemployed recent graduate in a recession in the richest nation in the world is hardly the biggest victim, but I do feel shaken up enough to know that this is not the system I want my children to grow up with. I dislike living in a society that so casually commodifies people, and largely acts inhumane because money is valued over humanity. But what is money, really? Just a system that allows us to not have to think/take responsibility for how we organize ourselves. It's easy to think of things happening because of a financial crisis, or poor countries having to borrow money (on interest!) because that's how "economics works," but I think this is often a poor excuse. Enough of that rant, though.

In other news, I am thinking about volunteering at Three Stone Hearth, a community supported kitchen. My friend Caely volunteered there for a while before. It would be a way to cook with other people. I have gotten quite into cooking lately, and I need people in my life, so it seems like a pretty good option. I'm not quite decided, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to try it out.

While we're on the subject of cooking--I am so excited for Thanksgiving! I am cooking (it's currently cooling!) Ginger-Pumpkin Cheesecake, Carmelized Onion Quiche, and Chive Biscuits. So exciting! I'm going to go over to my friends' house for a small gathering. I'm happy to bring my small bay area family together.

Also, my friend Caely got a job! I am so happy for her! Gooooo Caely!

The Perks of Dating an Activist

Last Friday, right as Will got off of work, he called me to ask if I wanted to go check out the U.C. Berkeley protest.* I could hear the helicopters overhead, and things only got more intense as I actually approached the protest itself. Earlier Friday morning, several U.C. Berkeley students began occupying Wheeler Hall. Additional students surrounded the building to make it impossible for police to take the students out of the building. When Will and I arrived, there were 700-1000 people surrounding the building. Police were guarding all of the entrances and dressed in riot gear. They had rubber bullet guns drawn, which both scared the shit out of me and gave me a big dose of “this is for real.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Will look so happy.

The police presence was unsettling. Not just because it seemed to escalate my feelings, but more because it felt as if the police are protecting the interests of the people who are largely making education unavailable as opposed to protecting the students. I am happy that the protest remained nonviolent, but I feel like it was the police who were provoking violence more than the actual students. I am still mulling over this, but it seems universally unfair that those with the power to hurt students get to be protected from the rightful anger of the students.

This was not Will’s first protest, and he kept pointing out things that would have made the occupation more successful (training in non-violent protesting, walkie-talkies, better building choice so that people could be rotated in). Even given that, I still thought it was a pretty successful protest.

We wound up staying until all of the students left the building at around 7:30. They were released into the crowd in phases, and were supposed to hold a press conference afterwards. They were all charged with misdemeanors. Three students who were taken out that morning were charged with felonies.

These occupations are happening all over the U.C. system. Will has counted eight occupations, and there are rumblings of others.

Internationally, similar things have been happening this fall in Austria, Germany, England, and Greece. (and that’s just what I know about).

*If you haven’t heard, the U.C. Board of Regents recently decided to increase student fees by 32% (I think that it’s about the equivalent of adding a few thousand dollars per year..but I’ll have to check out some more news sources). Passing this financial burden onto students will significantly impact several students’ ability to attend and seems out of line with a PUBLIC University.

And if you’re curious:

Nov. 20 at UC Berkeley
Video of Police Brutality at UCB http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOI5l2_RghQ
KTVU -- Very good TV coverage -- Strong Images of Police Brutality http://www.ktvu.com/news/21674608/detail.html
The Daily Cal -- Good Article and Footage of Protest/Chanting in Rain http://www.dailycal.org/article/107612/wheeler_hall_occupation_ends_peacefully
San Francisco Chronicle - Good article http://www2.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/20/BA611ANSAB.DTL
The Daily Cal- Great Photo Slideshow http://www.dailycal.org/mediabox.php?id=415&type=slideshow
NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/us/21tuition.html?ref=us
Indybay.org coverage http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629379.php

Nov 18-20 Protests Throughout the State
UCLA Video Coverage (Check out poll: 79% of public are against fee hike!): http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=7127527
UCLA Indymedia Coverage: http://la.indymedia.org/archives/display_by_id.php?feature_id=1906
CSU Fresno Library Study In: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629688.php
UCSC Occupation of Kerr Hall: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629398.php
UC Davis Protests after 52 Arrested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsX5oPkqjnk
UC Davis - Good Student TV coverage of Occupation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWBa20tygk0
SF State Nov. 18 Action - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=718K2LT5vU4

UC Santa Cruz: http://occupyca.wordpress.com/