uneven seams

i am grading papers at school this afternoon, and reading student's ideas of what is socially acceptable and what is taboo. they are evaluating these social norms per the formal and informal sanctions attached to them. relatively basic intro to sociology business.

reading all of the personal accounts folks responded with makes me think of something that is troubling me today. i have given in to an informal social norm on this same day of the year for the past eleven. i don't talk about people who have died and how i feel/felt about them. clearly this norm exists for the preservation of positive, up-lifting thought. its sanctions are bolstered by the ever popular "debbie downer" stigma. today, for a brief moment, despite my fleeting judgement, i opt to disregard this norm.

my sister, Becky Denice Gerow, died in a car accident on this day in 1997. every year i try to write something to her, but i thought this year i would make it public (no clear reason why). i love my sister very much. she is a giant part of the whole that made me who i am today. we had just begun to tear down our sibling relationship limitations and become friends the year before she died. i think about Becky every day, and often tell her things about my life. this is an odd experience for me, as it is likely the only spiritual activity in my life. i have no real spiritual beliefs to speak of, but i recognize that this is not entirely an action existing in our physical world. i am not going to give the details here, as anyone who knew her already knows their version and everyone else would likely not benefit from mine. i simply want to make mention that this is a traditionally odd/tough day in the midst of our lovely fall, and i suppose i chose to make it public knowledge because i feel that others have "traditionally odd days" as well. i want to say more, but am going to post this before that urge to erase it takes charge.

another one bights the dust

well that was easy. i went into work this morning and told my boss that I had been offered a teacher's assistant position at psu, and he simply said congratulations! i then had an exit interview at 9am and was out of there a half an hour later.

i will be working for two professors in the sociology department. Margret Everett is a recent arrival to to the soc department, she has taught at psu in the anthropology department foe the past 12 years. her focus is health inequalities in southern Mexico and several regions in South America. the other professor i will be working with is Joshua Bass. his main fields of study are centered around globalization and people of minority status. i am super stoked to learn everything i can from these professors about research and teaching! i am also excited to be a part of an academic faculty that will help me get a better grasp on my own research endeavors. today is a good day!

eavesdropping (this prose is in no way related to my previous post, but to a conversation earlier this afternoon)

she found out while sitting cozy on the couch with her favorite weekly news rag.
her daughter was fast asleep, and husband off on a frantic book signing tour.
she chose to take the first night alone. the rest of her life would be with their worries.
the cork came easily from that dusted bottle of whine. they had received it as a gift on their wedding day.
the following morning she flexed out a bit of urgency and relayed the life altering message.
amazed she was that mere words could remove the pyramids from their resting place.
desert birds of prey circled over the conversation in with parched pallets.
for the next three years they all prepared for the cancer to win.
she read coming-of-age stories to her daughter each night for an hour.
they were prepared.
at age fourteen, her daughter came-of-age.
she is doing very, very, very well.
her husband tells of their last agreement to one another,
while taking with strangers in well lit cafes.
those were the best three years of either of their lives.

passed present

i write with some incredibly horrible news today. one of my favorite professors, and a person who was a great inspiration to my future has died recently. Dr. Heather Hartley was taking some time off from her busy schedule of teaching and research this past term, due to a worsening illness. in class this thursday one of my other professors announced that she had committed suicide over the past weekend.
this is a great loss to her five year old daughter, the massive community of people who look up to her, and the rest of the world that will miss out on the fruits of her fabulous research (which included the implementation of female viagra!).
you will be greatly missed Dr. Hartley!

if this is not an inspiring quote, you may want to check your pulse!

"when it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice.
when denied a mouth it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all.
because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others."
Eduardo Galeano, "Celebration of the Human Voice"

paul farmer is the bee's knees!

classes have begun, thus my writing here will likely be sporadic, quick as well as brief. i just wanted to make note of a book i am now reading that is likely the most well written and ordered academic works i have ever had the pleasure to intake. it is titled "pathologies of power: health, human rights, and the new war on the poor" by paul farmer. it is an eloquent piece of art which also serves as an incredible resource for current anthropological educating. enjoy!

across the street

so it has pointed in a fall-erly direction. by it i mean the earth, and by fall i mean the calming scent of cooler weather and warmer clothing when you remove it from its place on the annual shelf. for the past four years it has been a staunch reminder that school is back in session, and it is time to "come on feel the noise".
cyclocross race season is in full swing, and my ribs have their own fancy little story they could tell about that scenario. i went down hard last week on some cross walk lines after a light rain, and yesterday at a race my ribs were on fire. it's the rib on the upper right side of my torso that ache, so as you can imagine this is making carrying my bike quite the chore.
and now, despite my better judgment, i am off t another race. just wanted to log what the hell was going on before classes begin and i have no time to write for fun.

left and leaving

please check out this short film. it is an interesting and nuanced take on an over written theme. is also is folowed by a beautiful weakerthans song, if you hadn't guessed.

just cram this into your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhKuMBkTin8&feature=related

belly ache

oh my goodness am i sick! myself and five of my team mates came down with a horrible virus after the Pain on the Peak race this weekend. one of these team mates,who is a nurse, did some research and found that we had all contracted the nora virus from penelope.

Norovirus (was "Norwalk-like viruses"), an RNA virus of the Caliciviridae taxonomic family, causes approximately 90% of epidemic non-bacterial outbreaks of gastroenteritis around the world,^[2][3] and is responsible for 50% of all foodborne outbreaks of gastroenteritis in the US. Norovirus affects people of all ages. The viruses are transmitted by faecally contaminated food or water and by person-to-person contact.
After infection, immunity to norovirus is usually incomplete and temporary. There is an inherited predisposition to infection and people whose blood type can be detected in their saliva are more often infected.
Outbreaks of norovirus disease often occur in closed or semi-closed communities, such as long-term care facilities, hospitals, prisons, dormitories, and cruise ships where once the virus has been introduced, the infection spreads very rapidly by either person-to-person transmission or through contaminated food. Many norovirus outbreaks have been traced to food that was handled by one infected person.
Norovirus is rapidly killed by chlorine-based disinfectants, but because the virus particle does not have a lipid envelope, it is less susceptible to alcohols and detergents.

Penelope had been sick a few days before, and we all played with her a good amount at the race this weekend. it was a great time away from the city, and a super fun course, but this stomach pain is not worth it. i am going back to sleep!

landmarks (not only for finding your way)

miss Peneope Beatrice turned fifteen months of age yesterday! she is walking forward and aft, and has begun not to notice so much. that's right, she has been waking for roughly a month now and has already begun the disconnect from consciously recognizing her foot motion. she can now do several things while she walks, without falter.

she also enjoys dancing and rocking back and forth while she laughs. this weekend while spending time with her grandmother, she rocked so far forward while chuckling that she jacked her forehead on a wooden letter-bock and now has a perfectly placed bruise on her dome.


we went to a dog park this weekend and Penelope Beatrice went mad "woofing" at all the k9. she absolutely adores dogs, and communicating with them. at the park, we also played on a swing and slid on the slide. she was so excited about the slide that she began climbing up it from the bottom. awesome weekend baby date!

rose & thistle

small glass,
sugar,
citrus,
liquor,
ignition,
she said it was the first hot drink of the season,
apologizing profusely as i was, it warmed my belly well,
and slow to consume it, for the bottom means a staggering wait for the six months pissing rains to end,
the clear shown table though holds another cold dark fit,
she could not see in my tired face, the fear growing for the appearance of clean wood grain,
too many others,
long last the reasons for long faces,
glasses,
a smile,
money changing more than hands,
expectations,
air scented a trailer home's perfume,
too much to remember in one sunday,
without the gloss of oak bar room snare, her visage read equivalent,
a brilliant woman,
a couch,
some yarn,
a circular saw,
the memory of deceased k9,
neither wanting to admit the growing taste, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches,
drink gently,
relax as long as you like,
rest a weary sense of longing to release this annual letdown,
a feeling a kind to the first nail through such tender groomed modern feet,
this is why we love it

homage

"thanks to t.v. and the convenience of t.v., you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either liberal or conservative".
kurt vonegut "cold turkey" may 10th 2004

a- “without”, and nomos “law”

there exists a sea of words that are claimed by the scientific realm we agree to call sociology. many of these terms could belong to any other field of science, but when a scientist from one sect gets a hold of them they create the appearance of ownership, in some right.

one of these terms that remains in a most heated dispute is "anomie", which basically means normlessness or lacking a common idea. every social theorist who uses this term has a slightly unique interpretation of its meaning, but the one directly associated with normlessness is Emile Durkheim. Emile was a structuralist, which explains why theorists from other perspectives would have different interpretations. norms are unspoken social rules that are understood by the vast majority of inhabitants of a society. examples of these would be; keeping a low tone in fine dining establishments, not scoffing when asked for change, smiling at children and elderly, and so forth. norms can run much deeper as well. there are norms attached to every role we play in society, from the way doctors placate patients, bikers wear black and look angry, police officers and clergy pretend to have compassion, sixteen year old anarchist kids all have the same idea of how to be different from everyone else, mail carriers unquestioningly wear shorts in the winter months, and the list could continue for every sub-segment of the human population. these are things that are expected of a person because of the role they choose to or are forced to play in the world. these are not the most relevant examples, but they are also not the point of this particular diatribe.

the point is that i am experiencing some degree of anomie today. or for two days. perhaps it has been a few fortnights. feels like years. i recall being thirteen once, and it may have begun then. it's relatively overt lately. an awful lot is changing, primarily for the good, for me as a person with many roles (person twenty-seven years of age, single father, european american, male-ish, grad student, agnostic, cyclist, vegetarian, serial drinking, egalitarian, east coast sales representative, non-cigarette-smoking, professor wanna-be, poetry lover, bass player, sexually confused, socially awkward and on...) to attend to. this week i moved out of the house my good friend emily kate olson and i brought our daughter home to fourteen months ago. i have a job that bores me to death, but provides healthcare for penelope beatrice and me. my graduate program begins in about a month and i am not sure how i am going to afford it, as the funding was nearly dry by the time i was admitted.
the vein of all this confusion is that i don't have any idea what to expect of myself, or what is expected of me right now. it may be that there are a few too many major changes to deal with at one sitting, as that is definitely the first thought.

i reckon that i am honestly saying that if you (i think only one of my fans still reads this rag) see me any time soon, and i seem to be a bit lost, i likely am. you should hug me and invite me to tea. another symptom of this anomie is that you get insecure and may come off a touch defensive about being touched. the truth of the matter is that touch is all i want right now. some human contact that is genuine in some way at all. must be insecure if i am alerting my needs in a forum no one will ever see. huh?
so now that i have obligated you, be sure to make that genuine, eh? i kid. i realize now that this sounds a lot like i am depressed, but i don't think that is the case at all this time. just incredibly lost like never before, and a little frightened. i hear we need that every now and again.

snake juice

off to bend, oregon this weekend for a full weekend of bike racing goodness at the "high desert omnium". it's been too long since i have spent a weekend outside the bubble that is Portland. i am looking forward to some r&r in the sweet clean desert air, when not racing. time to finish some book reading that has been on hold. yeah!

just a thought

Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela!!!

"Nelson Mandela, the man credited with ending apartheid in South Africa, has marked his 90th birthday by calling for the rich to do more for the poor." (bbc.co.uk)

not only on the moon!

penelope beatrice walked her way across the filthy kitchen floor this evening! seven steps in all, for a lifetime achievement award well awaited! it's true, my kid is a rockstar!

nothing was broken

i went out last night with some of my bike team mates, and had the most ridiculously good time! we drank until we could no longer hold a drink well enough to continue, and ended it all at my house where we sat in a circle and shared some odd malt beverage as others might share a pipe. in the morning, three of us woke up at my place and sauntered out into the daylight for breakfast at hungry tiger too. it has made for one amazing weekend! oh, and we each smoked a cigarette which was a hilarious sight because none of us have smoked in years and we were coughing like mad.

i have recently been reminded that when i work forty plus hours a week, the quality of time off is far more important than it would otherwise be. i have to wait five days to have this much time again, and i want it to be as well spent as possible.

there is no real point to this blog, i just wanted to remember that i am thankful for good friends and a good time spent in the limited space i have. oh, and work is for suckers!

omaha, nebraska

maria taylor's show at the doug fir last night was nothing short of incredible. maria played drums in the second opening act, and followed with a long eloquent set riddled with her intelligent banter and wit. i believe maria taylor to have the most amazing voice in music today, and anyone who has not had a chance to check out her new ep should do so. her songs have grown more eclectic, as has the lineup of her band.
thanks omaha!

not all too into cars, but right now all i want to do is drive across canada on a mission to find the islands of the eastern coast. road trip anyone? particularly someone i've never met or have not hung out with for a long while?