33 (and not quite 1/3rd)

So I recently celebrated my 33rd birthday. And I love it! Mostly because I love cake and celebrations and having my friends nearby. But also because I am healthy and employed and happy and have all my teeth. It's funny because here, in our age-obsessed, wannabewrinkle-free society, we complain about getting older when in fact, we are fortunate to be alive and in pretty good shape. In Peru, birthdays are a big deal, and everyone gets a party and a dinner and cake and the whole nine yards. They joke about women turning 15 and men turning 18 over and over and over again, and when I share about how Americans fear age, my Peruvian friends sharply retort, "aren't they glad they're alive?" In a country with a much shorter life expectancy, it's no wonder that Peruvians would treasure life. Grey hairs? Bring 'em on. Slowly, anyway.

Here I am celebrating my 28th birthday in Iquitos, Peru in 2006.

Time change

So if you really did discover a time portal to 35 billion years ago, wouldn't that screw up the parallel time of the future? Like, wouldn't dinosaurs get used to humans, humans to dinosaurs and then humans and cro magnons would have a war of their own? An unmatched war, of course. And then what if humans and cro mags mated? Would the future alter as the past was? Or would there just be a parallel future? Or would past and future blend later or before?

Time is tricky territory and truthfully, I don't entirely understand it. According to Einstein (or better yet, according to my limited understanding of Einstein's theories), we can never travel backward in time but only forward. And in the novel, Einstein's Dreams, we are given thirty different vignettes of how time could change subtly and not so subtly. 

All of this crosses my mind while watching the (relatively problematic, colonialist, racist and also ridiculously over budgeted) tv series, Terra Nova, which depicts the first possibility described above (humans from 2149 who leave their desperate, filthy world for earth some 85 billion years beforehand). There are as many problems with the show as there are dinosaurs in it (thanks, Stevie!), but it does raise the interesting question of time travel and of course, it pits the nerdy (though buff) scientist realm against the cro magnon (pun intended) militaristic realm in hopes of offering hope/escapism in an era of environmental and political crisis and exploring the time-honored (once again, pun intended) tradition of time travel and its possibilities. I'm not sure why I watch it other than for the purposes of procrastination (and to see how well I can identify dinosaurs, which fascinated me as a child; my favorite was the ankylosaurus because he could really knock out an opponent with that tail club), but it does occasionally lead me to ponder some questions out of the norm of my everyday life. Sigh. 

Sporty

CLE Fun Fact: Cleveland had the first traffic light in the United States back on August 5, 1914 at E. 104th and Euclid.

Organized sports have never thrilled me. I was raised by a devout Buckeye fan (class of 1967, I think) and have spent much of my life attending Ohio State football and basketball games, not to mention major (Oakland As) and minor league baseball games (Pawtucket Red Sox, anyone?), hockey games, professional basketball games, and the occasional soccer game (World Cup 1994, Chicago). We went to a fair number of Ohio State swim meets, but that doesn't really count as organized sports. I don't usually understand the rules to sporting games, and I'm generally bored. I got a little bit more interested in soccer after living in Spain and Peru and I like a soccer game here and there. I do love to watch World Cup but I think it's more about seeing the fans strut their stuff, which I find absolutely fascinating. Then there's the Ohio State Marching Band, which I have loved since youth. They are so tight and well organized and so very classic: they make me want to shout OH - IO despite my lack of allegiance to the Buckeyes as a football team. 

But that's the thing that's really electrifying about sports. They unite (some would say blindly, but still) people across diverse backgrounds and cultures in a solidarity rarely found elsewhere. It's hard to put a jock and a geek and a princess and a nerd in the same place and have them get along, finding common ground but at a game, they're best friends. Fans also believe in their power as fans of X sport: "if I'm not there, they might lose!" or, "they have to win, I wore my lucky cap!" That kind of superstition is part of our culture, kind of like knocking on wood. Even though it's not really my thing, and I prefer more solitary sports (running, swimming, cycling), I do have an appreciation (to an extent) of that jocky, weird culture, even if I don't have an interest or investment in it. 

Single Sex

I have long been a proponent of single-sex education. I attended an all-girls school for 9th and 10th grade and while no high school experience is without its traumas, I wouldn't take that time back for all the tea in china. (Or for a lot of money since who really needs that much tea.)

Recent studies allegedly disprove the theories that single-sex education is beneficial to students for learning and social development. While I understand part of their viewpoints, I bring to the table a high school experience evenly divided between single-sex and coed institutions. I found that in my first school, Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart in Lake Forest, IL, I was challenged far more in an academic sense, and I also felt extremely confident in asking questions, answering questions, and participating in debate and conversation. I was also less concerned about my general outward appearance and found competition at the school measured and healthy. Recently, Woodlands added a multi-million dollar science learning center, continuing to advocate for women's participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). While it's a small school, its theater and music programs are strong and heartily supported.

I spent my last two years at Westerville South High School in Westerville, OH, which was a dramatically different school. With a coed population of nearly 2,000 students, it was ten times larger than Woodlands. While I rarely met an academic challenge at WSHS, I participated in a world-class marching band and theater program. As the new kid with mad music skills (at the time) who came from a big city and was already in the National Honor Society (an honor that WSHS students didn't receive until their senior years), I was often given a certain amount of deference. Had I been there since the beginning of my high school career, I doubt I would have received the same reaction. My difference helped me navigate a huge school with a distinct bullying problem where many of the boys were actually practically grown men, and the divide between the sexes (and between straight and gay students) was palpable. There were expectations that women excel in certain arenas (foreign language) and not in others (statistics).

Today's high school student isn't nearly as fortunate as I was. The opportunities to marginalize, stigmatize, hate and bully students are everywhere; one no longer has to corner someone in the bathroom or in the hallway. One click of a cell phone button sends gossip swirling, ruining a young person's social life. I don't know if this would be better in a single sex school, but I do know that I generally felt more comfortable around female peers than around male AND female peers. I felt that I knew what to expect, and that I could defend myself to someone who is very much like me. Teenage girls are volatile, strange creatures (as are teenage boys) but it takes one to know one. Things might be different today, but I was pretty convinced by the single sex education option. Food for thought.

Books

I worked at a record store in undergrad (Finder's Records for you BGSU alums) and I had several regular customers. One of them was an English professor (whose name I don't remember at ALL) who was relatively snobby about her music tastes. Shortly before I was to leave to study abroad in Spain, she came in and asked me about my upcoming trip. I told her that I was excited but I was looking for some good books for the plane ride. She looked at me doubtfully and asked if I even knew what good books were. I listed some of my recent favorites (including Kingsolver, Smiley, Friedan, Sachs, Ozeki, etc.) and she looked surprised, like how could I - record store employee - know anything about literature? She wished me luck and left the store. The next day I came into work and my boss said that there was a package that had been delivered that morning; it was a bag of books with a note that explained that these were some of her current favorites, including A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. I sent her a thank you immediately and also sent her some postcards from Spain, but I never heard back. Kindness of strangers....


And may I recommend an addictive website for those book lovers out there.

Start slow and taper

I do love running. It wasn't always that way; in fact, I used to hate it. My mom was a marathoner and she made my brother and me run when we were kids and we were loathe to do it, choosing instead to hide by the docks and eat dry Ramen noodles.

In October of 2003, I started running because I was in a bad mood. Angry at my ex-boyfriend, I decided to blow off some steam and nearly passed out after less than a mile. I went straight home and signed up for a half marathon. The next day, when I realized what I had done, I called my best friend Michael who I remembered had mentioned running before. He enthusiastically signed up for the half as well, and thus, a runner (and her brave friend-turned-coach) was born. I didn't like running for a long time, although for some reason (likely how much I loved the trail where I trained in Austin), I kept up with it. I finished the half (February 2004) in 2 hours and 45 minutes. I decided to sign up for a full. I finished that the following year in 4 hours and 52 minutes. As soon as I crossed that finish line in February, 2005, I couldn't wait to train for the next one. And then I discovered that I actually loved running. And I challenged some other friends to join me for another race in October of 2005. Five of us ran. I finished in 4 hours, 25 minutes.

I'm still going. This Sunday I will run my sixth marathon with my dear friend April (who braved less than optimal conditions with me at the Tulsa Marathon last year), and I am so excited. I've infected new friends with the running bug and reinvigorated those who haven't run in a long time. I strike up conversations with strangers and I could talk about it for hours. I am eternally devoted to my running club and I've not found the peace and comfort that I get running on the Town Lake Trail in Austin. More important than running marathons is just running, pure and simple. Sometimes I do it to blow off steam, sometimes I do it to get invigorated, sometimes to think and sometimes to turn my mind off altogether. Sometimes it's to catch up with old and new friends. Sometimes it's because I feel weary and out of shape. Mostly, it's because it is remarkably freeing and validating because I can do it. And I hope that I can do it until I die. Maybe I won't always be able to complete the 26.2 milers, but getting in that run, even if it's just a 3 miler, is vital to my health and sanity.

Do you want to run? Give it a whirl. You can find a training guide right for you right over here. I encourage you to try it out for more than a few times; as I mentioned, for some people it takes a while to get into it, but I find it's the cheapest therapy available.

"It's a treat, being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or to tell you what to do."

-Alan Sillitoe

Painful inspiration

My dear friend Becky and I went to a print fair far, far away on the other side of Cleveland in a mildly depressing office park with a smattering of industrial businesses and empty fields. Despite the strange trek through typical Americana (strip malls and Wendy's), the destination was absolutely worth it. There were prints of all kinds (woodblocks, lithographs, etchings, lino cuts, screenprints) from around the world made within the last hundred years or so, and they were awe-inspiring. Design, color, technique, theme: I kept gasping for air at the same time that I wanted to rush home to draw and create. Most of the prints we saw (that ranged in price from $125 to $5,000, all far beyond my budget) were what I call "hurt-me" pictures: art so beautiful that it gives your stomach that knotted, nostalgic feeling difficult to explain and difficult to contain. Kind of like what you feel on a crisp fall day with winter imminent but the breathtaking colors of the leaves just getting you right there. Becky and I oohed and aahed, making desperate plans to begin our adventures with the linoleum blocks that we bought last winter; we wanted to start making art right then and there.

This was one of the prints that was etched (pun totally intended) in my mind. It's by Helen Hyde and was made in 1912. It's called Mt. Orizaba. Sigh. Let's go make art!