bicycling only sucks when it reminds me of having a car.

I love being car free and all that, I really do, but there are some days when biking / bike ownership is just a pain in the ass. LIKE TODAY.  Whew, excuse me, caps lock got away from me.

It started before I even got out the door.  It was a grocery getting run, ideal for the Old Dutch, and to prepare for the ride I actually put on some makeup and tried to you know, rise to the aestethic demands of riding such a fine looking bike.  And then I went to pump up the poor neglected tires because the folding bike's been getting so much love lately.

Well, let's be real about this. I don't enjoy any kind of bike maintenance accept for accessory acquisition, which doesn't count for shit, and periodically my evil, socialist Woods valves get into it with my decidedly American pump made for decidedly American valves.  Now before this devolves into an entire post on how Woods valves are an enemy to democracy and I should've swapped out my tubes a million years ago, I'm going to sum up my feelings in a haiku.  Here it goes:

Woods valves. 

UGGGGGHHHHHH.

That's the best I could do.  At any rate, I beat the shit out of myself getting the bike down the stairs (this is not unusual) and spent an overlong time fussing around with my pannier and then finally, FINALLY, I am on the road.  And I'm just too amped up to enjoy the ride because my Big Unwieldy Bastard of a bike has been this ungrateful arbiter of torment (I like my bikes like I like my men?), and then the road and Trader Joe's were both full of idiots (this is not unusual), and I'm all amped up, and ya know, by the time I made it through the checkout a second time, and almost got hit by someone not observing a stop sign, and realized that the handle of my bell somehow got busted off, I was just like Really?  This is a better way to travel?

Woods valves.

UGGGGGHHHHHH.

I know that's not actually a haiku, but it makes me feel so much better.

how the eff do I fix this?

I was going to end on a moralizing note- like "but it's still better than driving a car" but I think I'm going to leave it.  Because I'd really prefer to moralize about how you know, there are good days biking and days that suck, and maybe that's just part of getting around and being alive, etc. etc.

What?  You still want a happy ending?  FINE.  I found my favorite treat ever at the store- STROOPWAFFELS!- and because I got on that damn bike I GET TO EAT THE WHOLE BAG.

confronting the hard parts.

I like what I do. It's a privilege to tell the stories of others. I've enjoyed meeting the people I study. I love going to conferences, I love going to class, I love the feeling the feeling of opening up a box and not knowing what I'm going to find. The challenges of interpreting the past engage me deeply. I have made a lot of sacrifices because being a historian is so satisfying and rewarding that I want to do it for my whole life, and I want desperately to learn how to do it well.

I love to study New Right conservatives. I admire their passion and temerity. Their rhetoric and writing captivates me. Making sense of a time in which my parents came of age and the moment I was born into has great appeal for me. I have come along way since I started studying these people, and I really, genuinely appreciate what they have to say and how they challenge my worldview.

I say all this because today I had to confront the aspect of my topic I hate the most. It's impossible to write about the New Right without talking about abortion.  For many social conservatives, it's the reason they mobilized, the one thing in the world that they would give anything to change.

I hate reading about it. I hate talking about it. I would do anything to avoid it all together.

The descriptions in pro-life literature, while well-intentioned, are often grizzly and grotesque. They depict excessive and unusual procedures, and overemphasize poorly handled situations.  I concede that it is purposeful and deliberate language. But I think that by and large pro-life accounts are as decadent as the behaviors they are intended to critique.

It has little to do with the fact that I'm pro-choice. I believe that women should have  access to safe medical procedures should they elect to do so. I stand with Linda Gordon in acknowledging that women have made this choice throughout history regardless of its legality, and with Barack Obama who feels that unwanted pregnancies should be prevented through affordable birth control and comprehensive sex education. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I believe that it is not a question of either / or. But my politics seldom enter the picture. I am guided by professional ethics and exercise a level of restraint that others have called judicious and even admirable. What I write is not about me. I am not trying to change anybody's mind, nor am I open to my mind being changed.

I just don't like reading about blood and tissue. Needles, suction, disposal, no thank you. I think it's a terrible way to spend the day. It makes me miserable. I don't find it enjoyable to try to understand what's going on in the text; I find it so abhorrent that I struggle to get motivated when I have to address the issue. It's impossible to focus on, requiring breaks, endless coffee, snacks, checking of blogs, email, twitter, and anything that might offer relief from the task.  If someone called and said, "Hey, would you like to come clean my toilet?" I would probably opt for that.  My work ends with descent into exhaustion and then unsatisfying naps. I wind up feeling drained and find it near impossible to shake off the dirty feeling I get from reading this rubbish. To use a turn of phrase from my Mormon days, it offends my spirit.

I love what I do. I love what I study. I wouldn't change my path even if I could. 

But what do we do with the parts of our jobs- our vocations- that we hate? 

the bunnies were SAVED.

I know this will shock you, but sometimes my work makes me irritable.  I usually prefer to focus my studies on sensible, logical people like Phyllis Schlafly and William Buckley.  This semester I decided to expand my knowledge of New Right social movements with a project on Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. In spite of my standard, accepted, baseline level of ivory tower NPR liberalism, I pride myself on my ability to be pretty objective, moderate, and restrained.  

Falwell has turned out to be a real test of my mettle because there are times that I really do think he was CRAZY.  He had twelve different narratives for every event, a staff of really obvious ghostwriters, and sometimes appeared to be a total huckster.  He just isn't as lovable as Phyllis and sometimes I've really resented that.

Until I came across this:

I

That Jerry! He cared about bunnies so much he included them in his autobiography! When ever I get annoyed with him over the course of writing 15-20 more pages about him, I'm going to look at this photo. The bunnies have such a neutralizing effect. 

P.S. I can't even mention the word "saved" without thinking of this:

if only i could ride the bike i just bought.

The D3 arrived this morning. It's an pretty overcast day here, and I woke up feeling not so well, so getting the bike was pretty exciting. It was easy to get up the stairs which is about all it takes to make me happy. Or so you would think.



Getting it together was, for the most part, a breeze. I really liked all these clever little hinges. It really does just snap together.

So this it where I started to have problems. As you can see, there's no seat. Currently, as it stands, if I try to put the seat post in, the seat is taller than the handle bars. As I have a 28" inseam, that would work, oh, I don't know, basically never.

The problem is that there is this white piece of pipe stuck up the stem (?- my bike vocab is limited here). There's no mention of this piece anywhere on the instructions or in any picture. My first call to Performance's product support, the guy says, "Yah, that's just a piece of packing material. Pull it out." And I was like, well, funny you would say that because I already tried that, but what the heck. I'll try again. So I hang up, and I try pulling really, really hard, and it won't budge. So I call Performance's product support again, and I'm like, no really, that piece of pipe won't come out.


And so this guy, he's a little more committed to being helpful and suggests maybe needle nose pliers, which would work if I had pliers that had an eighteen inch nose on them. And ultimately he says, well, you should take it to a shop. Which pisses me off to no end, because for this bike, they don't give you the option of shipping it to the shop to begin with, which I would do because I'm not a mechanically oriented person. So now I have no option really, lacking the necessary brute strength to get the pipe out (really, I think most people would- it's going nowhere), but to try and figure out how to get it to a shop. As SEPTA has a no bikes policy (including folding) and I lack bungee cords to strap this shit on the back of the ODT, I feel pretty hosed right now. Going to give the local Performance shop a call to see if they can make this right.

trial by blog, update.

First I wanted to thank everyone for their fantastic, well thought out feedback. It's given me a lot to chew on and it has been nice to know that people care so much about my journey. Feel free to leave thoughts if anything else comes to you. The jury is still out and will be, perhaps, for a few more weeks. I talked to the graduate director at School B today and here is the information I now have:

-I have until the "official" April 15th deadline to respond, although they have asked people to respond by April 1. So, hypothetically, they could make me an offer during that 2 week span if they have TAships to give out. After that, in spite of it being an ethical quandry, she said I could accept both schools and pull out from one during the summer. Not preferable, she noted, but she suggested that I do what I need to do on that front. Basically, she made it sound like she's letting me make my acceptance of admissions contingent upon funding if that's how I want to do it. Not sure I feel good about accepting multiple schools, but I like having until the 15th.

-She said that last year they were able to fund everybody that wanted to come; most years, they are able to offer 80%. People that come unfunded are almost always funded by the second year. It's hard to know what the circumstances will be this year, but historically they have a good track record for funding.

--Their waitlist is chronological with PhDs getting priority-- she didn't say where I'm at on the list but I am definitely in the top group.

--Touchy feely stuff that gave me a good impression: she recalled my writing sample and commented on how interesting it was. She also said they don't admit people that they don't want to come (no courtesy admissions). Her advice to me was that if only thing holding me back is money then I should think pretty seriously about coming, something my Mom told me about an hour before.

What did I get out of this? Well, even though she couldn't make any guarantees as to what kind of offer they will be able to make, she represented her program well and tried to give me confidence in the program. And really? I appreciated that she was in her office calling people back at 6:30pm.

So I'm undecided, still, and I'm going to let it be that way for a while(I will probably continue to shrink from the stress... that's another post for another time...).

Tough tittie in Tacoma City, as my grandmother would say.

trial by blog.

I have a conundrum that I would like to put forth to my readers, mostly because I don't really feel like calling everyone to get their perspective. I have two options.


School A: Offered me a funding package including full tuition benefit and a stipend.

I go to School A already. I have good relationships with the faculty, find the location to be very livable, beautiful and comfortable and I have many wonderful friends here. I've gotten good public history experience here and would continue to have such opportunities. Granted it's a really tough year for the job market-- nobody that I know who's applied for jobs with a PhD from my school has gotten hired. For the uninitiated, everyone in our field is operating on the assumption that the job market will continue to be rough.


School B: Waitlisted me for a similar funding package and won't notify waitlisted people until after they accept the admissions offer. Basically, they are asking me to make a blind decision.

School B is located in a huge metropolis on the other side of the country-- living there would definitely be an adventure and would offer more of a singles "scene" (not to mention great cultural and sporting events, the resources of several other universities in town and it is only a few hours away from some of the best libraries in the country)-- and I could take my car there. It has a very strong group of 20th century US historians and offers excellent public history training. School B is more prestigious than School A, and they have a very good rate of job placement (everyone who's worked with the person I would like to work with now has a university teaching job).

So which one would you choose? Short term stability with a risk of not getting a job at the end, or short term risk with a reasonable guarantee for employment at the end? What questions would you ask and what factors would you take into account? Flights between both places and home cost basically the same, for example. Both schools have the same school color, though School B has a cooler mascot. I'm tossing up a poll in the sidebar, but do leave a comment with your rationale.

milking mormon masculinity for all its worth.

I saw this on facebook today. Maybe it's because my blood pressure is a little high right now because people are DUMB but I saw it and was just like, "great, as if they need to be even bigger douchebags when they get home."


It's like you think you've gotten over things and then you realize that you haven't. I mean really, I have gotten over things... but REALLY? Yesterday my friend was just talking about how weddings are such big business in Utah, and this was like icing on the cake-- exploiting things that should be valuable and emotional and special for business! ARGH! I am going to go live in a cabin in the woods ALONE. Good thing nobody clicks on facebook ads anyways.

p.s. isn't screen grab useful?