A fine table

I’m back.

The return trip was one nightmare after another – the Buffalo to Chicago flight canceled due to (I’ve just learned) tornadoes; the process to rebook unbelievably badly handled by American Airlines that’s AMERICAN AIRLINES; the  rebooking entailing a four hour wait in Buffalo and a time of arrival in Seattle five hours later than the scheduled one; the Buffalo to Detroit flight made to sit at the gate for an hour because of a storm in Detroit, and – now this was really unfair – the train from the airport to downtown Seattle made to sit in the third station for twenty stinking minutes because of an accident on or near the tracks farther up the line. Do admit.

On the other hand – there was the getting off in Detroit and going to the Departures board and finding the next flight to Seattle and seeing that it left in twenty minutes and was 61 gates away – and the sprint to get there in 19 minutes, knowing the whole time that it was hopeless because all the cancellations would mean that every flight was packed to the rafters, and my deep loathing of every human being who impeded my desperate sprint, which they all did, and finding the gate and seeing the last people at the door, and rushing up to the desk to gasp out “Do you have any leftover seats?”… [Read more…]

Looking at the edge

I saved up and splurged on taking the tour to Niagara Falls yesterday afternoon and evening. I didn’t say anything about it beforehand, because Taslima had decided to go with me and if I had mentioned it we would have had to take a security detail with us.

We went first to the Botanical Garden and the Butterfly Conservatory, and then in stages down the gorge with stops to gape in awe, ending up at the Falls. One of my favorite views is a few yards back from the falls where you can see the edge kind of hanging in the air but not what’s behind and below it – but you know what’s behind and below it, yet the edge itself looks so calm. It’s a weirdly terrifying, sublime, spooky kind of sight…and, now I think of it, simple enough that you can actually hold an image of it in your mind, unlike most landscapes.

Another favorite – everyone’s favorite – is right above that edge. The river is dark as it charges along over the rocky bed, and then as it hurtles over the edge it’s bright, toothpaste green. Also, it’s very within reach. There’s a decorative wrought-iron fence and a little area of grassy river bank like any other grassy river bank – and then there’s the Niagara River just before it plunges off the ledge.

We had dinner at the Skylon, 500 feet up. You can imagine.

Taslima took pics; I’ll ask her if I can share some.

One foot in front of the other

Walk accomplished.

The campus isn’t as ugly as I remembered.

……

……

IT’S UGLIER.

It’s like an act or revenge on the students.

I’m serious. You just walk around saying “what were they thinking?”

But – I hadn’t done any sustained walking (apart from the walk from the Ks to the Gs at O’Hare) since I left home, so this was good.

Dang it’s muggy though. Seattle doesn’t do muggy – once the temperature goes up the humidity drops.

I saw five ground hogs on the side of a little hill.

I got slightly lost coming back from the central part of the campus, and there is NO ONE around – I felt mild panic for a minute (not wanting to miss Stephen’s lecture just because stupid) but then a car appeared so I was able to confirm that Flint Road was that way.

What is this “walking” you speak of?

I’m going to Niagara Falls this afternoon. I was here for nearly 3 weeks in 2007, and I never managed to get to the Falls, though I did get to the Finger Lakes (all the way to Skaneateles) and Niagara-on-the-Lake, which were cool. The omission has always bugged me, so I’M GOING.

So there.

Meanwhile I think I’ll have time for a walk this morning. Ima go over to the entrance to the university, if I can make it without being run over – there are literally no sidewalks here. None. You have to walk in the street. Hey, you’re not supposed to be walking in the first place, so don’t look at us! It’s extra fun because people go about 50 miles an hour on these suburban streets with no sidewalks.

The second time

A great moment. At the secularism panel just now with Barry Kosmin and Ron Lindsay and Phil Zuckerman, moderated by Paul Fidalgo, Paul asked the audience, how many of you have attended a Secular Sunday Assembly?

A LOT of hands went up.

Ron said something I didn’t hear, and Paul said, “That’s a great question – how many of you have gone twice?”

One hand went up.

Discomfort with the more social aspects of gender

I upset quite a few people the other day with that Nail polish post. Some of the people who were upset are, frankly, assholes, and they can go ahead and be upset, but a lot of them aren’t, and I’m sorry I upset those people.

I didn’t like or agree with everything in that Elinor Burkett article, and I skipped over most of them – but maybe I should have said I wasn’t endorsing the whole thing.

Someone in a Facebook group recommended this tumblr post cis by default, and I found what it says resonates with me a lot. It starts with some body discomforts, and then moves to the social.

I also just had a lot of discomfort with the more social (not physical) aspects of gender. And this admittedly did start from a lot of conversations about trans and variant gender identities – partially because they made me realize that everyone else did not, in fact, think about gender the way I did. Hearing both cis and trans people talk about how they had this mental sense of gender confused me, because I never felt that way. I identified as female, yes, but only because I I had the traits that defined that category – the same way that I was seen as [mostly] white (another whole issue) or labelled as upper middle class, it was just a role that was assigned to me based on how society organizes categories. And I could deal with that.

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