For the first time that I can really remember, I’m thinking of the next 6-12 months as just the next 6-12 months, not “the next school year”. That’s just one of the many adjustments I have ahead of me as my family moves to the Bay Area and I leave academia. What exactly does figuring out what I’m doing with the rest of my life entail?
Read the rest of this entry →
I have mostly ignored the discussion surrounding the blog post on sexy female scientists. I don’t think it’s unimportant, but I didn’t have the energy to really dig into the many issues raised by the post. My opinion, if you’re curious, is probably most closely aligned to Sheril Kirshenbaum’s.
However, yesterday I also saw a blog post on a nurse-in at a Johnny Rocket’s in Kentucky. (Nurse-ins, for those of you who are not in any mommyblogger loops, are generally organized as a response to a business or organization asking a nursing mother to leave or nurse elsewhere. This is often in violation of state law, as forty-four states specifically allow women to nurse in any public or private location. Yes, including businesses. One day I will have a post about how nursing in public is a feminist cause, but today is not that day.) And, well, you can read the comments yourself. Some of them are supportive, some of them are willfully mis-interpreting the law, and then some are complaining about how they don’t want to see “dirty tits” or “gross-looking” women.
These two issues are really two sides of the same coin. They happen to be extremely relevant to my life — as I am a woman scientist, and a mother who has nursed her child in public — but they are merely two examples of the sexism that is still in society. Forget about whether I’ve contributed anything to our understanding of galaxy clusters, or whether I’m trying to provide the best nutrition for my son. Am I sexy? No? Well, then, clearly I have no value.
I don’t care what Lukeprog’s intentions were in posting that list. The sheer act of compiling and posting it is hardly different from the Consumerist commenters complaining about ugly women nursing in public. It’s treating women as objects of attraction first, and scientists, mothers, and members of society last.
Indeed, I managed to “Publish” instead of “Save Draft” when starting a post for, like, the end of July. I blame the iced tea I had at lunch for putting me over the edge, caffeine-wise! (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, no worries. But dang, RSS feeds don’t let you forget your mistakes!)
I hope I don’t do the reverse and accidentally delete the paper I’m working on. I’ve had a couple of catastrophic data losses in my time, but none of them were directly my fault. So while we’re already here, let’s share some of the stupid things we’ve done! Bonus points if you really thought you were being clever in the process.
I’ll start: years ago, I was deleting pictures on my camera, and accidentally deleted the only picture of my husband at his thesis defense. (An incident which I’m sure he’d forgotten about until now. Hi, dear!)
Back in January, I made the resolution of uploading at least one picture a week, not counting pictures of my son. This seemed much more doable than all those crazy Project 365 people. And my rule was to upload them, not necessarily take them, so I thought it would force me to go through my archives and upload some good pictures lurking in there.
I don’t know why I thought that even a weekly task was doable. I knew I’d be busy when I went back to work. A rule of thumb that has always rung true is, “Family, work, self: pick two,” and right now it’s clearly all about family and work for me. Even if I have a few spare minutes in the evening, I’m more likely to work on Project Euler than photography. Still, I wasn’t prepared for how swamped I’d be, and we’ve been traveling and we’re getting ready to move and this summer is just insane. Some weeks are just too busy for anything else, and that’s okay. So I’m going to change the rules a bit, and make it project-based rather than time-based. The things I want to finish in 2010 are:
I also finished the alphabet poster in 2010, so I think finishing these goals will make it a pretty successful year.
(And I’ve been flossing regularly!)
Before I moved to California, I was one of those people who swore I couldn’t live someplace without four distinct seasons. Once here, though, I realized that California does have seasons. They’re subtle, but there. The poppies and lupines bloom in March and April. June is jackaronda season. Our lemon tree goes crazy in January and February. There’s even a fenugreek season, according to our favorite herb guy (. . . not that kind) at the farmers’ market. Eventually I realized that I didn’t miss the four seasons as much as I specifically missed a “proper” midwestern autumn, and everything associated with it — the changing leaves, apple-picking, hot cider, cool weather, football game days on campus, and even Halloween decorations. But mostly-warm weather year round? I’ll take it!
What I haven’t gotten used to yet is the way that coastal California is out of sync with the rest of the country. When everyone else is freezing in the winter, we’re enjoying sunshine and warm weather. In May and June, when it’s starting to get hot elsewhere, we’re stuck under cold marine layers. In October and November, when it’s starting to get cool elsewhere, we still get temperatures in the 90′s F (30′s C). But perhaps nothing is as bizarre as this week — there is a brutal, brutal heatwave in the Northeast, and here it is . . . 60 degrees F and rainy. RAINY. In California. In July. WTF. Do I blame El Niño? Or is this just what I get for gloating about the weather here?
Guess I should get used to it if we’re off to the Bay Area this fall. Throw in the extremely high local variability in weather, and I’m about to get very good at layering.
I was visiting family in Western Pennsylvania last weekend, and the visits are always too short. Not only are there dozens of cousins to see (who have now met my son for the first time!), I’ve never managed to do any proper photography there. Pittsburgh is a gorgeous city, and it’s quite the scenic drive along the Ohio River. There’s lots of industry along the river, but in many places the hills remain undeveloped (shhh! don’t tell the developers). This results in a surprisingly picturesque view, as it feels like a glimpse of what the river looked like 50 or 100 years ago. (On some stretches of the road, there are buildings that look like they’ve been abandoned for that long, but that’s another story.) I’d love to spend a day just wandering up and down the river with my camera. Maybe next summer . . .
Back at home with only two months left in Santa Barbara, it’s time to make sure that I’ve hit all the hotspots in town with my camera. The three biggest attractions are probably the harbor, the Mission, and the courthouse. I’m actually indifferent to the courthouse — it’s beautiful, but I find it a bit sterile. (Full disclosure: I’ve never actually been inside it.) The harbor is my favorite spot for photography in Santa Barbara, and I’m fairly happy with the pictures I’ve taken there. As for the Mission, I really must share one of my favorite photographs from 2010:
In addition to that, I actually finished the alphabet poster made of letters from signs in town. That’s actually a pretty good dose of Santa Barbara, and I think it makes up for not really wandering around UCSB with my camera.
There is still one project in town that has been on my to-do list for a long time, though: the Orthodox Churches. Near downtown Santa Barbara there are two small Russian Orthodox churches, a mere block and a half from each other. I’ve only ever seen people (and a priest) at Holy Resurrection, but both appear to be well-kept from the outside. With the white walls and blue roofs, they really stand out in a neighborhood of cottages, and I’ve wanted to do a series on them for quite some time.
I have some great pictures from my other travels, but I don’t know why two small churches and the entire state of Pennsylvania keep eluding me. (Certainly, I marvel at my SIL Amanda‘s ability to take tons of great pictures of her home — check out her July 4th fireworks pictures, for example.) What are the photo destinations, either at home or on the road, that you keep meaning to hit and just never do? And what’s keeping you from it?
I’m on vacation now, and using my iPhone for the vast majority of my web-browsing, tweeting, email, and blogging. (Indeed, I am typing out this draft with my own two little thumbs.) When I was pregnant, I got my iPhone partly for that reason — so that I could stay connected when traveling without lugging around a laptop and a baby.
Alas, tonight I was trying to post a comment from my phone onto a Blogger blog (the excellent Stand and Deliver), and said blog was using a Captcha verification in the comment form. Standard form nowadays, really. But the image itself is unreadable on my phone — it shows just a small question mark in a box. When I try clicking the handicapped logo, for another (audio?) version, I get an error message saying that the video cannot play.
When did this happen? It is incredibly aggravating, considering how many blogs I read are on Blogger and use the Captcha system. How am I supposed to comment on blogs from my phone? Meanwhile, E and I are mortified to realize that our own shared blog has this same problem. And again, while I can type most of this post on my phone — doing just a few last touch-ups with my parents’ computer — filing a bug report to Google from my phone is non-trivial. So blogging it is!