The (Relative) Calm Before the Storm is Practically Over/ people like us

I'm bracing myself, I really am. Just waiting for the next horror to unfold and make me anxious and upset.

I meant to post this yesterday, when the new policies on immigration weren't out yet and I could have written that the calm was almost, but not yet, over. Sigh... this new  "regime" of #45 is relentlessly upsetting (I was going to create a new and unfortunate #45 label for the blog, but I already have "Unprecedented times," so I'll keep that instead). 

The worst part about all of this is the utter despair that it's not a far fetched possibility that there will be EIGHT LONG YEARS of this nightmare. And by then it may be too late to reverse the damage done to the country (whose democracy and prominent position in the world may be very well be destroyed), to the environment, to the lives of countless people who will be hurt by the immigration laws and the healthcare act's demise. People will die. And, there may be war, an even worse prospect.

War...

Sigh...

Why would anyone want to go to war? This horrible man Bannon, which SNL displays as death personified, wants to do just that. Some people profit from wars, other people actually enjoy inflicting suffering on others they disagree with. (Shudder)

How will this country be in four or eight years? How will the world be?

By the way it's going, it seems that in this country truth and facts won't matter, racial and gender tensions will become worse and horrible, the rich will be richer still and the poor more destitute. What else?

The past two weeks have given me some small, but much needed respite, but I wish I could have hope! :-( There is no hope. Even my optimist husband is gloomy, upset and discouraged. He refuses to watch SNL because he doesn't think it's funny. He watches Steven Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers instead.

I read those new memes on facebook, the one about the "I will not work with him" to do this and that and this long list of horrible setbacks which you're supposed to cut and paste and add your name to the end; or the one about the country "being great again" because everyone is mobilized, getting informed, calling their representatives, etc. and I just feel worse and worse.

There are news and calls to protest events and countless appeals for signing this or that petition show up, and I am truly thankful that nearly everyone I'm friends with on FB feels that same way. And then these horrible articles are published about how we're isolating ourselves and only interacting with like-minded people and not trying to understand the other side.

How can we understand the other side, though? HOW?? I'm truly afraid to talk to most people in my church for fear that we have next to nothing in common except for our religious denomination/faith. I cringe to think that one of my son's teachers (soon to be homeroom teacher for 8th grade in September, my older son's teacher in both 7th and 8th grade) went to the inauguration. I don't want to talk to him about any of these things. How can I? It's too personal for me, being an immigrant and all... I don't feel like I can talk to anyone without breaking down into sobs and making them really uncomfortable. But maybe I should? I probably wouldn't cry, I would just sound so angry and upset I'd be incoherent and unable to formulate good arguments. I just can't bring myself to talk about politics with anyone. Sigh...

people like you and me

Last, but not least, a few quick words about the three families from Aleppo we are sponsoring. I have met one of them, the young man in his early 20s who came with his parents and whose apartment we helped rent. He came to church twice and sat with our family. The day I met him, it was hard, very hard, not to cry. I quietly followed him and my husband to our seat, almost biting my lip, crying inwardly. Just thinking about the other two family and their 7 children makes me want to sit down and cry and cry at the outrageous thought of not helping such families, such people.

Such a handsome young man. Dark hair, black rimmed glasses, shy and quiet, doesn't speak much English. His family is Yazidi, BTW, that's why he came to visit our church, the other families are Muslim.

I got some snippets of news from our friend who lives in their same town and has visited often the two families and taken them to the doctor/hospital, etc. (the 2 year old girl of the youngest couple was having lots of trouble with her legs, I don't know if there was a diagnosis yet). The older couple who has four children, twin boy and girl (14), two boys (11 or 12 and 9) probably had their application for refugee status granted because the middle boy has autism. After they'd left Aleppo to Turkey 4 years ago the children had never been able to go to school. The autistic boy had actually never been to school. After all their paperwork and immunizations got straightened out, they went to school and the boy with autism loved it. So much so that the next day he got up and got dressed on his own and was next to the door waiting for the bus.

If that doesn't make you want to cry, I don't know what will.

Then, two weeks ago my friend posted that one of the twins and the boy with autism had gotten hearing aids and had been able to hear their mother's voice clearly for the first time. The fathers are working and our pastor helped them buy a car so they can drive to work. The 20+ year old young man doesn't like it here because it's very rural and there's nothing going on -- social life is intense in Middle Eastern countries. I hope that after they get work and apply for their residency they can move to a place that will suit them better.

One of the things I hated the first day that young man came to church, about 12 days after their arrival and 7 days after the travel ban was issued was how several people kept telling him: "You came just in time! You're so lucky!" Why did they need to point that out? Sigh...

Maybe I'll get to meet the other families this coming weekend. I'll let you know more about it when I can. And soon the next storm will start, that will impact the lives of many more people like them -- like us. :-(

The Beginning of Summer Freedom (and Penilessness)

My last class at U#2 was Monday and my last one at U#1 will be tomorrow. But I still have five exams to give and grade (three starting tomorrow, two next week on Wed & Th), that's why I'm saying this is "the beginning" of my summer break, but not quite yet.

rant coming:

It's really, really irritating that people (acquaintances) always make a point of saying that teachers/professors have "all this time off" in the summer. I tell every single one of those commenters that, sure, it's great to have time off, but I also don't get paid a penny and I'm pretty much "unemployed" in the summer. And since my kids are off school, it's hard for me to get a job (which would probably be teaching a language class somewhere -- Ive given up offering summer classes here at U#2 -- no students register).

Another reason why I cannot get a summer job (because of the kids) is that my husband, who is the "real" (tenure track) professor has to work all summer because that's when he can get research done, grants written, etc. Most importantly, his students do research and he needs to supervise them  -- even if he has no grant and no summer salary to speak of like it happened last year and this year. He can take two- three weeks off in August (and a few days here and there), but he's busy the rest of the summer. If I ever get to have a "real" job too, I'm also supposed to be writing and doing research all summer too -- hopefully I can get grants and go travel and do research somewhere, but it's not "free" time -- it's research and work time!

So, yeah... hopefully someday I'll have a real job and maybe even summer job or a research grant summer thing... something! Someday! In the meantime I just have to resign myself for not having a paycheck until the end of August and the very end of September (U#2). I get pretty sad when I get my last paycheck in May -- it's pretty depressing. Sigh...

I know, first world problems. I know I'm lucky I at least have a 9 month a year job, right? or two  almost-jobs...

The Holiday/Vacation Spoiler or maybe Destroyer

Forgive me... sad rant ahead, feel free to skip entirely. 
I hope to resume regularly scheduled programming shortly! If I can! :-(

Yesterday the boys and I woke up at 10 am (we'd arrived home at 1 am) and I milled around all day and didn't do much. Most certainly not the translation.

Today, I was a bit more productive, I put away all the clothes and stuff at the foot of my bed. Cleaned up some the old exams, papers and books in the office floor. Cleaned the dining room getting it ready for a crafts project that I did NOT start. Sigh...

And after tons of procrastination  -- which included over an hour fiddling with the 'year in review' thingy on evil facebook (I ended up emailing myself a bunch of photos from both of my computers to make the thingy more inclusive of this year's best moments, since I do not post a lot on facebook, only during the world cup) -- I began working on the translation an hour ago.

And I resent this project/job/mercenary pursuit mightily. I basically hate it! And I know I won't be done for a couple more months, probably!

It is precisely what I knew it would  be -- a holiday spoiler. A vacation killer.

BLAH. But we need the money. Desperately so (it's precisely what we owe in our credit card since we bought the car).

So I'll carry on. resentful and upset, but carry on I will. While my husband continues working on his infinite to do list: grant application review, meetings with collaborators, recommendation letters to countless students [only a few done], grade reviews and emailing students, trying to work on publishing (that will never end, sigh...), etc, etc.

And did I mention that we need to do tons of things around the house to have it in moderate shape for guests in January? Oh, and the guests come during the first week of work for us?

Sigh...

I hope the 5-6 days in Florida will be good to us. The only rest during the holidays. TOO BAD we need to drive 11-14 hours to enjoy them!

Sorry for the whiny post. Like I said, I will try to work so I can write more fun stuff later.

P.S. my husband was away all day on campus and I screamed at the boys all day long trying to get them off the computer or ipads to eat, to help me, to just not be there. And now they're going to play a board game or two. But I can't do that. Obviously.

What Wise Man Noam Chomsky Said about Adjunct Labor & Higher Education

I'm late* to this since it was published online in February at AlterNet, but "better late than never" is my motto!! *(but not as late as publishing a 2009 article as "new/news" here this year, that was embarrassing and I'm thankful for the commenter that pointed it out. No link for obvious reasons!)

and thanks to my dear friend Diber for the link!

WARNING: this is a "Soap-Box" kind of post. My apologies in advance for the inflammatory language!

"Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Being Destroyed" (subitle: Faculty are increasingly hired on the Walmart model as temps.) is a great article not only explaining how/why the university system is "adjunctified" nowadays, but also exploring in great historical detail how universities have fully adopted a "corporative model"or the model of private enterprise. 

I suppose people on the right would probably argue that his arguments are flawed, blah, blah, blah... but seriously, he is perfectly right in saying that it is only possible to have a really profitable corporate world by exploiting lots of people and, at the same time, relying on them as consumers. 

I'm sorry if you disagree with me, but I cannot, in any way, shape or form, understand how people cannot see the truths he's pointing out in this speech/essay. I cannot help but be a "leftist," and I cannot really understand anyone who thinks that exploiting other people and not granting everyone (including women, children, people of color, people of other countries, people of every sexual orientation, etc) equal rights and protections is the way the world (and this country in particular!) should operate. I just cannot understand. 

You don't need to be "communist," "socialist" or any other "ist" to believe that people are inherently greedy and that there is no way any system (particularly a supposedly "communist" one) can work without exploitation and, most importantly OPPRESSION of weaker classes of people (and suppression too -- that's why I secretly, and not so secretly admire whistle blowers such as Edward Snowden and the WikiLeaks people). 

Chomsky outlines a series of ways in which Higher Education is being destroyed in this country: 

1) relying on very vulnerable (i.e. graduate students and adjuncts) teaching body, while hiring less and less tenure track faculty, is conducive to CONTROL. In addition, reducing the time and the quality of the time students are in contact with faculty also enhances control and decreases the possibility of dissent and critical thinking. The vulnerability of this group (ME, MY FRIENDS!!) is great and in many cases prevents them (US!) from organizing, unionizing, protesting. 

I LITERALLY CRIED reading his paragraph about that. 

2) Hiring lots of administrators (and staff too) and paying them higher and higher salaries. I had no idea that the numbers of students and faculty hasn't been changing much, but the number of administrators (of all levels and their staff, under-deans, secretaries, etc) has swelled incredibly.

3) Increasing the cost so students will be saddled with LIFELONG student debt that they will be forced to repay. So, they are most effectively controlled for life because of their debt!

I HAD NO IDEA that education, even an Ivy League education, was relatively inexpensive 60-70 years ago (until WHEN? I wonder). 

If you've lived in this country all your life, you may not know this (and you should see my students poor wistful faces every time I tell them that -- I just did last week), but in most other countries, UNIVERSITIES DO NOT CHARGE TUITION. Getting a college degree from a prestigious university is free or practically free in most developed countries, but not in the United States.

OK, I'm getting of my soapbox right now. Screaming like this is exhausting!!!! 

It's just I wish with all my heart I could be a "real" activist, but I just CAN'T! And it's not just that I'm a vulnerable adjunct, but I really don't have any rights here where I live. I cannot unionize, I do advocate for myself as much as I can, but although that can give me a temporary one more year of a full-time contract, it doesn't guarantee AT ALL future work. 

Sigh... all this is exhausting. I wish I could take a break from these thoughts, but they are my whole entire life, day in and day out. The mega-commute, the teaching of too many classes, the meager paycheck (which is actually great compared to other people in a similar situation).

It's easy to just feel too weak and tired to fight back. It's easy to feel defeated and powerless. But I don't want that for myself. I don't know how, but I will fight. I won't give up! (hopefully)

thanks for listening, if you're still here. 

Those EXPLOITATIVE MONSTERS!!

(because I don't swear, I cannot bring myself to, even under such absurdly & patently unfair circumstances)

What would you do?

A family to help feed and clothe and no possible real job in sight FOREVER and ever. Those are my prospects.

I wish I could just walk away and force them to try to hire someone to teach my classes the night before I start teaching them.

That's what I wish I could do

Because having the courage to tell someone that YES, that's what we're going to do with you, exploit you for all you're (NOT) worth and "Hahaha!" if you walk away it's OK, just do it. The night before, when work has already been put in, when you've been communicating with students, when they know you need the money...

THAT is inhumane, not just unfair, it's... I don't even have the words for it.

How am I supposed to answer that email? How can I even face my students at 9:30 am tomorrow morning, after a 1h+ drive and such emotional turmoil? How can I find the strength to do this?

And the worst thing is that I KNOW there'd by a desperate person somewhere willing to move to make only, say, 20K a year to teach these classes. That's how absurd the situation in academia has gotten. They can get away with ANYTHING because that's how desperate we all are.

Why do I allow myself to be tortured like this?

If I don't do this we may not go really hungry, but I don't know if we can really pay the mortgage and live. For sure we won't be able to travel next year, we won't do so many things, I just can't do it.

But teaching 5 class meetings and being paid the same as 3 is something I wish I could refuse to do.

What in the world can I do?? But sign on that dotted line and walk like a silent lamb to the slaughter? I'd rather go kicking and screaming, but for who to hear?

If I could do some kind of protest, something, anything but WHAT? HOW?

I think that they actually WANT me to quit, they totally do!

How can I go back to putting the final touches on my syllabus now, How?

why I hate fashion

quick rant and just ONE of many reasons why fashion bothers me
(and... don't get me wrong, I really love clothes and shoes [unfortunately], so it's not about the stuff necessarily)

my question/rant:
when something is ugly. really, really, ugly, like huge black rimmed eyeglasses (my current fashion pet peeve), why, oh, why, is it that people wear it just because it's in fashion?

I just hate hate hate that!
(when ugly or weird stuff is "in" and people wear it "just because")

Why is this type of "peer pressure" so pervasive?

(And sometimes it's happened that I don't have the courage to wear something because I know it's totally "out" of fashion. That makes me mad too.)

Are humans hard wired to simply want to look like each other and brainlessly imitate those who are prestigious and famous?

Why? This disgusts me (and always has).

on facebook (annoying!) & twitter / links

I think facebook is very, very annoying. I try to spend as little time as possible in there. I just do it so I can know what's going on with friends, family &, mostly, acquaintances. Can't stand it apart from that, though. Blah!! (if it weren't so rude to simply unfriend the acquaintances... :-( )

Twitter is not much better, a bit less of a waste of time if I quickly check it at the end of the day.

I think I'm getting really, really old -- blogging is it for me and I can't move on to other, more superficial things. I like depth & I stick to it. Am I wrong?

Fb & tweets are only food for thought when they link to good stuff (which today some of them did -- Dawn shared this link to a most moving essay that mentions adoption disruption). That's all.

Oh, and Lauren pointed out to an interesting article about Philly -- makes me miss it there. :-(

And Laura this article about how a great famine is coming. If this were her blog, this post would be titled "Spreading Love #xyz" ;-)

Taking the Leap + Useless Rant Meant for Anonymous Commenter

Like many other wiser bloggers before me, I'm seriously considering switching to Wordpress. OK, I have mostly decided, I just have to work out the details. I even got the URL already (same name).

I'd spent all day thinking about this -- mostly for other reasons, the desire/need to have password protected posts -- and then came this "lovely" anonymous comment which totally pushed me over the edge. I don't know how Heather Armstrong could take the hatred for all those years (I totally supported her "profit from the hate" initiative [it had another name]). And I, a thin skinned stupid over-sharing person should have watched my mouth, but didn't. Good thing, I say again, that I don't have many readers, or else it would be much worse. Please forgive me if I become truly aggressive in the next paragraphs. I just have to get this out of my system. I don't know how to write for nothing. It's the only weapon I have in life. The writing.

What's hurtful to me is that it sounds like this commenter was not an occasional reader. I wonder if it's someone who's commented before and whom I may "virtually know." That's why I think it's so annoying to me that people always hide behind anonymity to criticize others. Or do it behind their backs in "real life." Of course, earnest, idealist me wants to be always honest. And, YES, you're right, commenter, I AM, have always been a whiner. Unfortunately. It's what my husband hates the most about me (good thing he likes pretty much all the rest). This is my blog, however, and I have never asked you to read it. You're reading of your own volition. I've also been known for blaming others, but my husband and I talked this subject over hundreds of times and I really wasn't the one making the decision. I just stood by whatever decision he made. Are you angry that I'm writing about this? (And I know that I could talk about other things in the blog that could be "blaming others" -- like blaming others for not having a job or for the PhD being useless. I'm not really doing that, since I haven't even looked for a job, and a humanities phd is useless after all, but I would still have done it).

And another thing. I don't think your tax dollars are going towards my mortgage, did you hear me? I'm pretty sure that all of the principal that's not paid now is being deducted from our equity and we'll end up paying for it all in the end. And besides, I have already paid enough taxes in this country, you hear me? And not been eligible for most everything that other tax-payers are. And I've always been here legally. I have spent thousands of dollars paying your consulate to get a visa to travel back and forth to my country. I didn't want to be an immigrant here to begin with and it's encountering people like you that make me feel like this is indeed a hopelessly lost land full of shallow, selfish people. I can go back to Brazil if you want to, but you have nowhere to go, right? You're stuck here and if this country unravels, then you're just going to have to face it.

OK, enough. I have a feeling that the commenter won't even read this, or, if he/she does, maybe he/she won't want to do a rebuttal. Whatever.

And I thought of deleting the post, but I won't. I don't like to take back any of my words. I'm not talking about anyone's life but mine. It's therapeutic to share these details. It will be better doing that safely behind a password once in a while, though. At least I won't need to waste my sons' sleep (we were going to bed when I came and saw the comment) and my adrenaline.

I'm done now. My apologies for all my other readers for this rant. Peace and love to all. Really. Even to anonymous.

Anonymous Comments Are ALWAYS Negative

How nice, no?

Why do people have to hide behind anonymity to say something bad to you? I find this ridiculous. Why even comment? Just to make people feel bad? Why are they even reading the blog?

Of course I have to admit first and foremost that I'm an idiot for having a blog in the first place and writing boring an annoying things about my personal life. I should know better right?And I should actually be thanking the universe because I have had basically no trolling here. Of course... I'm not a famous blog, those bear the brunt of the trolling in the blogosphere.

Now, don't I already know there was NO PLANNING whatsoever and ridiculous negligence of our part already in this and that? Thanks for pointing the obvious out, anonymous WIMP.

P.S. I also know it's childish and stupid of my part to be annoyed by this, but it's a pattern -- this anonymous posting of negative things -- and I wanted to comment on it. However imature of my part...

Edited to add: Perhaps I should just ban anonymous commenting, right? Heather Armstrong did a good move when she created her community and had only members comment in her blog. I'm all for freedom of expression, though. I just have to get used to it.

It's all our fault (and Brazil's bureaucracy's), but I'm still upset at the prospect of being stuck here longer

Ridiculous title, I know, you don't have to tell me.

Ridiculous situation to be in -- now I tell you. All because in the past some evil parent kidnapped his/her children and took them out of the country without the other parent's authorization. So now all parents need authorization to travel with their children without the other parent. Not only to leave the country, but also to move within the country using public transportation -- this I already knew, it was already like that when I lived here 13 years ago.

So, THE DUMB THING: we totally forgot to print out authorizations for me to travel with the boys and take them to a notary public where K needed to sign and have them notarized. We only remembered this past Sunday when we were taking K to the airport bus. We stopped and purchased some blank printing paper and he signed about 15 of them. Today I painstakingly assembled the authorizations (one for each boy, two copies of each, with printed color photos and all) and printed them on the signed papers. Then I took them to the notary public (one in which K already has his signature registered and "recognized" [firma reconhecida]) for notarization.

They couldn't notarize it, though. Because K needed to be there to sign in person. TOO BAD because he's in Philadelphia right now. HOW GREAT!

Now we're going to spend upwards of 100 dollars for K to drive to NY, pay the notarization fee at the Brazilian consulate and then mail the authorizations back express to us.

How fun. And the poor guy has his first phone interview tomorrow afternoon, so he won't even be able to pick up the authorizations and will have to go back to the consulate on Thursday and mail them only on Thursday! Unless we beg some kind soul to get the paper from K and retrive them in the afternoon. Or unless they are kind enough at the consulate to stamp and notarize the document WHEN HE'S THERE.

Bureaucracy RULES in any Brazilian government office or organization, though, so I don't know if they'd do this for him.

My apologies for the pathetic rant, it is all our fault after all... we should have remembered to go to the notary the day K got here. SIGH.

We're supposed to travel back home next Tuesday, the 19th. Wish us luck.

P.S. I was really really (pleasantly) surprised that I was able to travel with six-day-old Linton by plane from Connecticut to Texas and back. Here in Brazil this would NEVER EVER be possible. First, because one cannot travel using public transportation with a child in Brazil without the birth certificate. Not even the parents. Second, because as only one mother, I'd need the permission of the father.

Nay/ "Neguei"

(only my BIL/SIL and maybe some Brazilian readers will understand the second part of the title, it's a slangy expression that means "negative" or "[I've been] denied something" or "something went wrong")

In fact, I would be shocked (if thrilled) if it were a "yay" instead of a nay, but it was only predictable that I wouldn't get in. The email I received states that there were over 300 applications for the postdoctoral fellowship I applied to. It's only natural I wasn't one of the 5 "lucky" ones. Whatever. Hopefully this doesn't reflect on the quality and value of the work of 295 of us. It only means that graduate schools HAVE GOT TO STOP ACCEPTING PHD CANDIDATES ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or, obviously, misguided souls like myself have to stop applying or, get the degree and go back to our home countries already (it is true that I would have an academic job there, although I hearsay that most higher education institutions that can are firing all their PhDs and hiring people with Master's degrees instead -- in Brazil the salary for the various levels of teaching jobs are regulated by a national teacher's union, so people with doctorates have to earn more, so they become undesirable).

I think that slowly but surely I am giving up any and all sliver of hope of ever becoming an academic. I will always be in the margins, if anywhere near the ever more disgusting "Ivory tower." I actually feel like really giving up for good this time and never even thinking about my dissertation and submitting any other papers for publication or presentation... Not going to the conference at Harvard in May (I will, though, since I was the one who had the idea to invite my friend to co-chair a panel). What a WASTE of ten years of my life, in a sense... good thing at least I had a splendid excuse to just stay home with my boys and have my parents come and help us for 24 months...

What a nice Xmas present, no? I'm glad last year we really had a live-saving gift, right on our anniversary (that we celebrated last week, but it's the subject for another post! :-).

OK, enough of ranting.

On other news, my grandma's funeral will be this afternoon at 5 pm. I hope to talk to my parents on the phone later today. My uncle (the one who lives in D.C.) just called me. It was nice talking to him.

I have to go back to cleaning the house. K just picked up his parents at the airport and is coming home. I have to prepare lunch too. Hopefully I'll have more time to blog later. There is another post about some "blunders" that was ready to be published when I heard about Grandma's passing. She was lucid to the very end and only her daughter (the one who's lived with her since 1979) was with her, my uncle told me.

Half-Hearted Guilt & Righteous Indignation

I defend the dissertation in five days, and yet, I haven't finished writing my conclusion and given it to my committee.

I haven't yet revised all chapters according to the feedback I received in the past couple of weeks from my most demanding and, in the end, extremely helpful reader (and in the past couple of days, including today -- from advisor), and I probably won't have a nice, collated PDF file of the complete dissertation for the committee before the defense. Well, maybe only on THE DAY before...

And yet, I have the nerve not to be feverishly working. And, on top of that to feel absolutely calm and confident.

How can that be? Why can't I even feel guilty about not working? Why don't I feel like working at all, in fact?

You know... I guess there's an answer to those questions. Perhaps I'm not really cut out for this because these may be signs that I'm not taking this seriously...

Oh well, who am I kidding? If you saw my dissertation and if you'd worked as hard as I have to write it in the past three years you'd be laughing at me for saying I'm not taking this seriously.

What I mean is this, though: I refuse to let scholarly concerns take over my life. I enjoyed spending time with my guests and simply "living" after being consumed by the dissertation for a few days. I decided to travel with my family to Nashville in spite of the fact that I was not done as I said I'd be. I value life much more than this degree. And from what I perceive, observing from the sidelines, basically only from reading blogs because I'm not on campus anymore, is that one cannot have that mindset if one wants (1) be offered and accept a tenure track job and (2) get tenured. So, I shouldn't even bother, I suppose.

Why can't there be a middle ground, though? I'm passionate enough about my research, I think it is quite relevant, why is it that my whole life has to be devoted to it? Besides, I won't even get into the reasons why I WON'T EVER even be offered a tenure track job -- the fact that I don't fit in with what's fashionable and what departments are/will be looking for. I have perfect conviction of that, in spite of my "great qualities" and those of my work.

I'm not really upset by that, though, only indignant. That people like my friend Articulate Dad didn't get a single offer, not even a single interview (for a TT job) after over one hundred and fifty job applications is OUTRAGEOUS!! I mean... I don't even want to belong to a system like that. That's why I keep thinking I should go back to Brazil even if it meant I'd have to put up with violence and being afraid and having to live in a crowded, polluted city. But no, I don't want that. And this is my quandary right now, had been for a while.

Well, rant over. Enjoy the weekend. All three of you who are reading this post. ;-)

Blogging Blues (Again)

Disclaimer: This is a disgruntled post about how I'm feeling regarding the fact that recent posts got no comments at all (except for my SIL's, thanks sis) in conjunction with my grouchy feelings about the dissertation and academia. If you're reading it, chances are you don't "deserve" to read it (it's like those teachers who reprimand the class when those who needed to be reprimanded aren't even there -- I don't know if this ever happened to you, but it happened to me a lot when I was in grade school and even high school).
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

Was it the weekend? Or is it just that nobody's reading this anymore? I don't ever check the stats, only look at the weekly email from my free sitemeter, but they don't mean much now since there are feed readers now, and most of those hits are from random search engine results anyway...

Perhaps the absence of comments indicates that you're just tired about dissertation-themed posts, but the recent post didn't even mention the dissertation!! It's pathetic, but sometimes I wait on the wings before posting again because I'm hoping that if I leave the older post up for a few more days, more people will comment. I know I blog for myself and not for others, and besides, my life is pretty uninteresting as it is and that I won't ever be of any real consequence in the blogosphere.

To make matters worse, now that I'm finishing the dissertation and getting this useless Ph.D. I'll loose an important part of my identity as a "blogging graduate student/ABD mama" and I will just be an unemployed, former academic mother. Yeah, it doesn't really matter that I'm not even included there (although I'm wondering if there are any other grad student mamas from other countries represented there -- see? I'm already trying to make my "minority" status count for something, how embarrassing. I bet there aren't, but who really cares about my experience if I cannot write well? That's the real reason why one is not selected for publication, not any concerns of representing a group or not).

Tomorrow is the deadline for that CC post and I don't think I'm applying to it after all... why bother? I won't be selected. I know I should send it, but just the thought of writing a cover letter when I'm not even done with the LONG OVERDUE DISSERTATION CHAPTER (one of the reasons I didn't work on the application last week was that my husband wanted me to finish the dissertation first and then work on the application -- haha, I didn't do either thing!).

I hate to be wallowing in self-pity. I am really a happy, fortunate person and I KNOW THAT. I have the most adorable sons in the world, I have a fabulous dissertation that I have confidence will be published in Brazil, and maybe someday I'll be able to work enough to attain good writing (although I have so many issues with this subject that I cannot even begin talking about it). Perhaps I will even have a decent, fulfilling job someday... It is hard to be in this in-between situation, though. Swimming against the current -- see, what a ridiculous cliché?

I've been thinking lately that I can be a proficient bilingual, that I can be a smart, even bright person, a good English speaker, but I'm a hopeless writer because of this very bilinguality. I have read a lot, but not enough... Sometimes ridiculously old and weak clichés sound interesting to me because I wasn't BORN into this language... in moments like these I feel like I want to go back to Brazil. I have this feeling that there I could be a good academic, I might even be able to write there... but no, I don't really want to go back.

OK, I'll end here. I know I'll feel better soon about some of the things I wrote. About others, there's no real way out, they'll remain there. Together with the other rejection letters. Thankfully, mine not as plentiful as my dear friend Articulate Dad's. I truly admire him and I hope he can succeed. One of these days I want to reflect upon some of the brilliant things he's written about giving up on academia. You can begin with this letter, and also check out his thoughts on Unemployment.

P.S. Oh yeah, and I'm so sick of my own inability to give any really original contributions, not even to my blog, that I removed my photo of the fern from the masthead and left the old blogger template image.

SOMEDAY, someday I'll be able to reinvent myself, the blog, my incipient writing, my non-existent work career. I know that someday it'll happen, but someday is not now. And now I have to work. work hard.

I need a good cry, but I don't really want to cry, I kind of like feeling angry like this, as long as it feels like justifiable anger. Hopefully it will help me keep writing and working. It generally does.

Motherhood and Feminism (and why I won't watch Juno)

I will confess right away that I am only a fledgling feminist, no real hands on "militant" experience like Dawn, no women's studies classes or certificate like my colleagues from graduate school, a rejected "I am a feminist because" post in a "Carnival of Feminists" back in 2005 (I still like it, though), what else... My scholarship centers on women writers, but not on an obvious feminist framework (perhaps because I dislike theory so profoundly).

My friend Kateri's latest post, though, brought up an idea that I hadn't thought about before. I had only kind of suspected it subrepetitiously under some of the feminist works I'd read. But let me backtrack to give you the context of her diatribe.
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Kateri is a birth-mother, an extremely articulate birth-mother (go read her archives if you want to be deeply moved) and I have learned so much from her experience (as well as from Dawn on the other side of the coin as an adoptive mother in an open adoption). A while back Kateri blogged about Juno (if you read her post, do read Cecily's also), and then last week she was interviewed in a Chicago Tribune article about Juno and birthmothers. The comments to this article were deeply troubling to her (I didn't read them because I didn't want to be angry), and then, the hate mail started pouring in... and it was in her post about the hate mail that Kate made a comment that got me thinking... (she wrote another shorter post to follow up).
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Kateri first wrote that feminism has turned its back on birth-mothers, then, she, who has been thinking for a while now of writing a book about her experience, wondered if this book would matter to anyone outside of adoption (and Kate apologized for her "myspace syntax" here):

i'm not sure what i'm trying to say, exactly. there's this missing piece, this leap i haven't made. it has something to do with the question- "why does Juno find motherhood so unappealing?" why did i, at the time? why is that the obvious, foregone conclusion? what's wrong with motherhood? i know all the answers: school! freedom! your own life! blah blah blah.
. . .
there is this underlying belief that the best mother is one who martyrs herself and kills her own dreams.
. . .
the assum[p]tion of this belief as fact is what keeps us from looking at the state of motherhood in the culture.

(bolding mine)
And she ends by questioning why we cannot accept, celebrate even, motherhood in teenage girls.

My comment to her post was:

Hmmm, I think you're getting at the heart of the problem here: "the state of motherhood in the culture." Motherhood doesn't really matter much, does it? Do the feminists really talk about it? They don't! They talk about choice, but it's mostly regarding "choosing work," not having kids and caring for them -- that would be "the old way" or something... It's really sad that motherhood is seen as a stumbling block for everything in life. Is there ever a good time to be a mother? Never, I think!! It's tough on those who work, tough for those in graduate school like me... it's not that different from the situation of a teenager, it's just that women in other situations have accomplished a bit more. Even these older women have to give up on her dreams (e.g. getting a Ph.D.) to become moms... no matter the age, the financial situation, there are always "setbacks."

I say proudly to people that I'm taking 10 long years to get my Ph.D. because I gave birth to two sons in the meantime, but sometimes I wonder if taking this long to finish will not just have killed my chances in academia (there's a great book about this that's coming out soon, Mama, Ph.D.), but I digress... What can we do, though, if being a mother is just so unacceptable to so many "institutional settings" (like academia, corporate America, etc).

Then, in a short conversation with Dawn here about how Kateri should frame her book, Dawn wrote that "she should position the book as a feminist manifesto," but now I'm thinking that perhaps it's going to be a manifesto challenging the feminists for abandoning mothers.

DIGRESSION: I should be working on my dissertation and I was, but I came write this post because I found a quotation precisely about these issues and just had to come here write this post.

In an endnote of this book, the Brazilian scholar Renata Wasserman summarizes very neatly how the feminists have rejected motherhood.

Julia Kristeva explains that since " we live in a civilization where the consecrated . . . representation of femininity is absorbed by motherhood," and "this motherhood is the fantasy that is nurtured by the adult . . . of a lost territory" the representation of which is "an idealization of primary narcissism," feminism [at least French feminism, I guess] tends to "identify motherhood with that idealized misconception and, because it rejects the image and its misuse," it ends up rejecting motherhood altoghether ("Stabat Mater, " in The Kristeva Reader . . . 160-86, 161).

Sad, huh? Note: comment about French feminism above is mine.

My dear friends, feminists, scholars or not, out there, please tell me... what is your perspective on this issue? Has feminism summarily rejected motherhood? What are we to do, if, like Kateri argues, so many deep set beliefs "keep us from looking at the state of motherhood in the culture?" and not only that, but stigmatize young mothers to the point that they simply dismiss motherhood and suffer lifelong consequences...

Edited to add: I'll be back in the comment section this time because I'm hoping we can talk more about this (very loaded) subject.

Very Unhappy with V3rizon!!

Note to feed readers: I had to edit this post (although I probably should have just deleted it) because it's been coming up on various search engine results and random people are commenting on the blog. I didn't really mind until today's commenter was a bit too nasty, so there you go.

By the way (regarding this last commenter) . The problem really is NOT the cancellation of the account, is the fact that when they switched us to the new "data only" account, we were put on a one year plan, which we were NOT informed about. This is the biggest problem now -- they refunded the months we didn't use service, but want us to pay a cancellation fee because of the "one year contract" that I didn't even know existed!!! I guess other companies are beginning to do that (which has been standard in wireless phone service for a while) -- force you to be with them for a certain period.

In May or June last year, when we we switched to VOIP, we already knew we were going to be moving in September, so if I knew there was a one year plan, I would have just dumped V3rizon and gotten another internet provider. Oh well... too bad I couldn't remember all these details when I wrote this post and now as I result I'm getting nasty comments. Well, that and having used the company's name without the disguising typing.

Never again. I just wonder how long it is going to take for the change to take effect and this post not to come up in search engine results anymore... Sigh.

May 11, 2008.

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I am SO angry right now I shouldn't even be posting on the internet. It's just that I feel so small, to helpless, so utterly defrauded by these big corporations that run our lives nowadays that I have to vent a little bit, so bear with me. I promise to soon post again with more interesting subjects and in a better mood.

Can you believe that back in September 2007 before we moved I called our DSL provider, V3rizon, to cancel our services but we never did? We had already removed the call-in-only landline that we had (for 14 bucks a month, I may add -- a good thing to have if you use mainly your cell phone) earlier in June when we got our VOIP phone service, so I couldn't even access my account online anymore because V3rizon is weird that way (not that I had ever used their ridiculous email services or anything).

Anyway... we found out about the non-cancellation because we had automatic billing on our credit card and they kept billing us, but we didn't find out until early December when we promptly called them, very angry about this problem. The only thing they helped us with (I had my husband call because I was so MAD that I couldn't even talk to them on the phone) was removing automatic billing (and they did ask for our new address). Because we wanted to cancel the account but also receive a just REFUND for the months we had not even used it because we weren't at that house and address anymore They kept transferring K from person to person until he got disconnected without the problem being solved. This was a few days before all our holiday travel took place, so we didn't do anything else about it until we received a bill in the mail today.

I just CANNOT believe this. I mean... I'm certain that I called to cancel, and if I didn't by any chance on earth, the service wasn't USED, how in the world can I be billed?

In the past month I caught a snippet of a NPR (Talk of the Nation?) story about this woman who had to endure ENDLESS and almost unbearable psychological pain because of wrongful billing from her cell phone provider (if I'm not mistaken). I'll try to find it and link to it here (as well as listen to the whole thing). There was this one costumer service representative who "saved her life" being so courteous and helpful that she even cried over the phone with him several times.

Why oh why do we have to be screwed by big corporations like that? (and I don't even like to use the kind of vocabulary I'm using in this entry, but I don't know what other "polite" words to use to convey my anger). K is on the phone with them again, but I know it's going to take many hours to try and solve this and we may never see this money again -- as if we had tons of it to give away!! And we have another internet provider now (another big corporation unfortunately, why can't consumers have more choice of providers?) .

Any horror stories to share?
Bring them on because they're surely going to make me feel better right now!