a dispatch from the summer of 2010.

It's been a while since I blogged.  I think the whole internet slows down during the summer, and personally, I think it's fantastic.  I haven't been posting because I've been playing pretty hard.  Playing too hard to finish LGRAB's summer games... or to even ride my bikes.  Playing too hard to do the reading and language study I should be getting to... or to even get to the library.  Playing too hard to clean my floors or paint that bookshelf.... or to even buy groceries.  


It's been delightful.  


My body bears the telltale signs of a summer well-spent-- a range of ever changing tan lines, a tummy that's a little soft after a good many beers, and a headful of hair that's getting white blonde.  My friendships feel strong and ready for the assault of another year of graduate school-- my fourth.  After going all over-- to Delaware, South Jersey, The Shore, New York, Boston and Cambridge-- I am eager to fly home tomorrow to continue the summery process of replenishing my spirit.  This summer has taken on an unexpected richness, a kind of abundance that would seem inconceivable if you saw how low my bank balance is or knew how hot it got in the house we moved out of or about any other number of dramas.  But still, life is sweet, and there is nothing more to do, I suppose, than finish with my favorite poem, because it seems to capture all the joy of living that I'm so high on right now.  It's funny how life gets to be so good when you aren't finishing all the items on the to-do list, or, even better, when you forget the to-do list existed at all.

wishing you a merry summer from Philly!

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-lifted from the no

of all nothing-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened) - e.e. cummings

Don't forget: It's not too late to help the children and win a bag o' swag at Tacoma Bike Ranch!!

summer lifestyle lessons from england, part 1.

Last summer I went to visit my mom, stepdad, and pup siblings in England.  It was the trip of a lifetime- seven weeks in the English countryside with some very wonderful company.  We went to National Trust houses and beer festivals.  I presented at my first conference in Cambridge.  No piece of antique furniture could escape our loving gaze.  Sunday roasties and the pleasures of tea-time (clotted cream, where art thou?!)... lovely lunches and riverside walks... beautiful churches and lingering trips to Marks and Spencer (to emerge with canned cocktails for public consumption)...  Eastenders and the joys of the BBC... really, it as the most wonderful trip. (a handful of related blog posts here)


I've been thinking of the trip often lately.  As it stands, I am grounded in Philly for the summer; at present, I am beginning to gather materials and start reading in preparation for my comprehensive exams (one must have an occupation).  There have been summers in my life that escaped my memory (Summer 2008, I'm looking at you) so I've decided to apply some of the lessons of pleasured living from last summer to this one.  Realizing that there are so many lovely points to highlight, this is the first in a series of posts.  So what if I can't live in the now.


1.  Find somewhere nice to visit with friends.

Caerphilly Castle

Last summer I went on an excursion to Wales with a friend after hanging out at his place in Cambridge.  This summer I'm planning on making a couple of trips to Boston and New York with my buddies.  If it's close, you should go.  Grab some honey ale and some stilton and crackers lest you get lost and need to picnic.

2. Don't forget to visit the beach.

                                   

Hunstanton Cliffs

This is very important for health and well-being. This summer I'm bound for the Jersey Shore, and you can bet your sweet pippy when I get back to Washington, there will be some beach time as well.

3. Beer festivals are a top priority.

                                      

Three different kinds of cider at a beer festival we happened upon unexpectedly.

The Campaign for Real Ale has done much to promote and preserve English beer culture.  We took great pleasure in selecting a range of delicious local brews from an overwhelming number of casks at CAMRA festivals.  It expanded my palette and was just so dang pleasant.  This summer, I'm looking forward to Philly Beer Week. June 4-13  is going to be a very glorious time.  I've already got the June 9th Real Ale event at Johnny Brenda's scribbled onto my calendar.

(excuse the wonky formatting... ahem, Blogger...)

tacoma biking, part 1: my little french friend.

This blog isn't dead! Really! Between the end of the semester and being called home last week for family business, I haven't had a whole lot of blogging energy.  But I'm done! I'm back! So get ready for me to start blowing up your Google Reader like whoa.


The first two days of my trip came at the end of #30daysofbiking.  I was really committed and wanted to ensure that in spite of my travel and stresses, I met the goal.  As I was to be spending a lot of time going back and forth between two family homes linked by a bike lane, biking at home was an easy and feasible transportation choice.  Big Brother asked a family friend if I could borrow the vintage Peugeot folding bike that BB rehabbed last winter. Alas, to my delight, me and The Peug were joined together for 8 wonderful days. The link above will give you better insight into the specs of the bike, so now I can just prattle on about the bike's awesomeness.

This bike fits me the best of any bike I have ever ridden.  I have a long torso and short inseam, so my smallest-size Old Dutch is a bit of the stretch, and the Dahon is you know, fine.  But The Peug fits perfect.

This bike is what you would see if the Old Dutch Treat and the Dahon had a baby.  Size-wise, The Peug would fit nicely in a car trunk or small apartment.  Size isn't everything, though, so you still get all the amenities of a city bike- nice upright position, a skirt-friendly frame, built-in lights, and a rear rack.  The positioning is great-- riding the bike, it feels like your sternum is being thrust out in a very "Hello, World!" kind of way.  Compact bike happiness if I ever saw it.


We are very grateful that the person who loaned me the bike generously ended up giving The Peug to our family.  I am looking forward to riding this bike when I go home at the end of the summer... and will probably start trolling Craigslist for one of my own.  It's that fantastic.

 

Moms and daughters alike love Peugeot folding bikes!

three disparate things.

1. I'm reading The Handmaid's Tale again.  After a particularly difficult year of high school, I asked a favored English teacher what to read that summer, knowing that she had to have good taste because she'd done her masters thesis on e.e. cummings.  She suggested Atwood's book. I loved it. It got me thinking about woman's place in the world.

As an undergraduate I pursuaded another kind English instructor to let me do a paper on it. The course of that research introduced me to Phyllis Schlafly, the ERA, the Christian Right, and the LDS Church's efforts against the proposed Amendment. It revealed to me that dirty word: feminism. As a graduate student I've done work on the Eagle Forum and am now working on the Moral Majority. The Handmaid's Tale was written in a very particular moment, and that moment has come to define my career and how I spend my days.

And to think it all stemmed from a very casual book recommendation to a teenage student.

2. When I was living in the dorms at college, I embarked on a mission to a suburban Macy's for a bathrobe. I left the store with a piece of fluff the color of buttercream frosting. It was one of the first times that I said, "damn the costs," and bought something because I liked it and I knew I would need it for a long time.  Now that it's suddenly winter bathrobe season, wearing it puts me back in Pflueger Hall, back in the steamy smell of Dove body wash, back next to the drafty window where I used to sit after my showers. It puts me back in a time before I was an aunt and before my relationship with Mormonism got so fraught. I put on this bathrobe and I go back in time, back to before I knew anything about how good life could be.

And yet I kind of like that my cozy bathrobe takes me back to that time of not knowing any better.

3. Yesterday I went to New York City for the first time. It was big and bustling and dense and busy and shadowy. I only saw a few rushed snippets of the city, and I didn't like it all that much. How do people live there?  Why would anyone choose that? 

And then I remembered that I was in New York City, where I had never been before. That I made choices- a lot of them, big ones- that got me there. That I'd better enjoy right where I was because I'd never get to go to New York City for the first time ever again. Times Square got a little prettier and the people seemed a little nicer. 

New York made more sense to me when it was a myth, but at the very least, there I was. And Philly seemed so blissfully quaint when I returned.

rocky mountain high.

After not posting for twelve days, guilt is finally starting to set in. I know, I know, twitter isn't enough for you people! (you people!!!) My first impulse was to post this Whitney Houston video because I fell in love with the song watching VH1 while I was in Denver (tvs are so novel to me), and then I was like, oh yah, I went to Denver!

There were so many awesome things about the trip. I went for a Western history conference, and of course enjoyed the expected joys of conference attendance- finding out what kind of work other people are doing, networking, presenting, free coffee. Less expected, but definitely what made the trip worthwhile, was the time spent with friends. It was a strong reminder to me that facebook is so illusory- connecting and reconnecting in person matter. The memories of the weekend will definitely buoy me through the intensity of the rest of my semester.

I was lucky to have extra time after the conference to see the city. While exploring on Sunday, I was stoked to come across this:

Pretty sweet huh? I'd been bummed about not being able to take the folding bike and the total dearth of bikes in downtown Denver (well, it was freezing), so I was pumped to stumble upon the very promising beginnings of a city-supported bike program.

and we danced on the floor, in the round.

Ok, so it's been ten days since I posted and I am having some major blogger guilt. I've been major busy, having been out of town for five days. Wales was awesome and my (first!) conference presentation went really well. I was lucky to have the opportunity to cut my teeth at a small conference AND to get such a great response to my work. I haven't felt this good about my topic since I don't know when. The paper I presented was the start of the reworked argument that I had wanted to make before and I am finally feeling confident that it can and should be expanded into something "article length." Moral of the story: presenting is valuable! Doy.

Anywho, I'm sure the death of Michael Jackson is old hat by now, but man let me tell you it was weird to be in a London tube station at midnight hearing shocked people pass the news along to strangers. For all the weird details starting to come out about the man's latter days, I have enjoyed the outpouring of appreciation for his music. One of the few memories I have of being a wee ballerina is that if we were really good during our class, the teacher would put on a Michael Jackson record for us to dance to at the end. That I have continued to dance to MJ's music since then seems to point to his lasting pop legacy. I mean really, who can resist "Billie Jean" twenty five years on?

i need it for my trip.

When I was fourteen, my cousin and I went to Europe. In anticipation of her travels, she and her mom did a lot of shopping with the justification "I need it for my trip." Well, I LOVE justifications so I have been distracting myself with cute but uncostly accoutrements for my upcoming European soujourn.

Etsy has been a great resource for really neat stuff. I gave a bag from bayanhippo as a Christmas gift. It got rave reviews for quality craftsmanship. She uses durable materials to make high capacity bags at a very reasonable cost, and is a pleasure to work with if you want a certain color. This woman is prolific-- she has new bags up everyday.


I look at the bag and think about the adventures we are going to have together. Isn't the orange fun? For some reason I've really learned to love bold colors during my time in Utah.

I also got a cute little passport cover. Toile print meets Little Cabin in the Big Woods? Sign me up.


I'm still on the prowl for a watch, which is the only thing I can think of that I actually need for my trip (being sans cell phone and all)... but am totally sucked in by cute things that can be purchased for trips. Look at me, doing my part for the recession. Praise deity that George W. Bush equated captalism with patriotism... that's almost as good as "I need it for my trip."

you're the promise that i found.

These pictures of the Venice flood kind of blew my mind, and sent me into a whirl of "I've got to get back..."

I think it's turning into Mark Kozelek week here at COTGB, which is alright by me. Click here for "Revelation Big Sur." It's lovely.

Thank Bicycle Jesus that we have Chris Buttars to save Christmas.