oh...just me: October 2004 Archives

I dunno. I'm just wondering. Can one "hail" oneself? Can I call forth the valences in "me" that I choose, rather than those that are called forth from others? Of course, I'm pondering the whole parent- and partnerhood thang. The more distance I have (and I don't think I'm talking about the aesthetic kind!), the more able I become to disengage from the less appealing valences and personalized history that has fed them and perceive "where things went wrong" and hypothesize about why/how. And....this makes me a bit more capable of recognizing when those same valences are being triggered (silence just flips me out; it can be so aggressive and diminishing) and - while being pulled into "old" (repetitive, familiar) emotional patterns - I can imagine that maybe this silence isn't a disciplinary silence (one designed to let me know that I have transgressed some communicative/relational code) but a "silence" of another kind, for instance, of gathering one's own resources, of "dealing", of coming to terms with one's own subjective tendencies and "choices". Then again (see here comes the drift!), maybe it's just an opportunity to solidify the suppression of any residue of affection...no no no, here is the moment....I call to the better parts of my own nature and banish suspicion.

Did you know:

"Dragons have been portrayed as "evil" the world over, but the Chinese see them as representing prowess, nobility and fortune."

Sarbjeet sent this article about lion and dragon dances to all of us in the class on transnationlism. Some people know I've always been partial to dragons. :-)

This was a bad movie about really fascinating stuff! Too evangelistic for my taste, but a useful compendium of cutting edge theory in quantum mechanics, human biology and chemistry, and consciousness studies. I was fascinated by the whole neural net/nerve connection scenario in the brain - where repeated emotional experiences sortof install routine pathways that lead to a kind of "addiction" in which experiences that will stimulate those same pathways are sought....over time the biochemical pathways for other emotional experiences are impaired and eventually cut off. Its reparable - one can shift one's neural nets - but requires concentration, deliberation, time, and repetition.

Well, I have other work I really need to be doing but I can't concentrate until I process this, so here I go.

Of the five classes I'm involved with, I "acted out" (for lack of a better term) in three (actually, four, w ith only a mild stretch) of them this past week. Here's the "data":

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) is a medium sized bat. Their bodies are about 9 centimeters in length, and they weigh about 15 grams. Their ears are wide and set apart to help them find prey with echolocation. The fur color varies from dark brown to gray.

The Mexican Free-tailed Bat is widely regarded as one of the most abundant mammals in North America, and is not on any Federal lists. However, its proclivity towards roosting in large numbers in relatively few roosts makes it especially vulnerable to human disturbance and habitat destruction. Documented declines at some roosts are cause for concern. It is considered a Species of Special Concern due to declining populations and limited distribution in Utah.

Mexican free-tailed bats live in caves in the western and southern United States, Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, central Chile and Argentina. Their colonies are the largest congregations of mammals Ýin the world. The largest colony is found at Bracken Cave, north of San Antonio, Texas, with nearly 20 million bats.

When the baby bats are born, their mothers leave them behind in the cave while they go out to hunt insects. She remembers where she left her "pup" by recognizing its unique "cry" and smell.

The species is very important for the control of pest-insect populations. But its populations are in an alarming decline because of the pesticides.

Bats
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
: Mammalia
: Chiroptera
Families
Pteropodidae
Emballonuridae
Rhinopomatidae

arrives in every moment.

It's gotten a lot more difficult to post in this thread because now I know there actually are people reading along. Maybe you skip over these? Argh. It does feel important to maintain the vision I had when I started this whole thing....first, can I just complain about whoever it was that didn't remind me of the carrots in my backpack, which liquified and smeared the inputs on my brand new laptop? Which, consequently, wouldn't even turn on this morning. :-(

The cab driver who took me to the airport yesterday, Mr. Hailey, has driven a cab in DC for 46 years! What stories he could tell, eh? I asked him what had changed the most, and he said concerns for his own safety. That's sad, eh? He used to go to all places in the city, even those with a reputation for being dangerous. Now, he steers clear of them, concentrating on the airports because the folks flying in/out are usually (95% of the time, in his estimation) engaged in some kind of business, trying to get to a meeting or get home from one.

I needed to escape the CIT conference for awhile and recharge my soul. I went to the new American Indian Museum, which includes/covers all the Nations of South, Central, and North America. On my way there, I was sitting outside waiting for the subway, and a freight train rumbled by on the other side of the tracks. I guess because I was anticipating where I was going, I was attentive to the sensation of the train. Before I heard it's arrival, I had been listening to the birds and the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. Then a disturbance in the air, which grew louder and Louder and LOUDER until the earth started to vibrate. The train wasn't even in view yet! It came around a curve and the roar was, while not deafening, louder than anything natural except perhaps an avalanche or a tornado. It lingered too...fading slowly, as if its passing had left an indelible mark in the atmosphere. I could imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like for those first trains to careen across the continent, rending the rhythm of the world.

"Teaching people how to create is the antidote to oppression."

After I eavesdropped on a long conversation about knitting (!) I gave my card to these folk because I knew I was going to blog about them. :-)

When Patty N. said this to me yesterday, I knew it was a joke (no one has ever known me for my fashion-sense)! It suppose it might have been a reflection of her official role interpreting for the conference: if she was dressed down, like me, then she would have been a participant. (Anyone have other possible interpretations?) ;-)

Patty G. has been a great roommate. She comes in each evening and regales me with the humorous anecdote of the day. First it was Lynn's debacle with the subway on the way to Mongolian barbeque (which I understand was yummy), and then it was a friend's kid, a firstgrader who reads at the graduate level. Can you imagine having a kid that reads better than you? I had to wonder what that means.....in my 3rd year of grad school I'm realizing that even though I *thought* I understood what I've been reading for the past two years, there were more layers and dimensions to it of which I had no awareness at all! How can someone with so little life experience comprehend reading at that level? Personally, I think it makes the case for reincarnation.