The best way to predict the future is to invent it

Okay, so some of you may have been subject to me complaining a while back about this dude I went on a date with who said "oh, I see you're starting to talk like a local" and then pointed out that I had ended a sentence with a preposition. It seems I put "at" at the end of sentences (e.g. "where did you eat lunch at?"), though this structure isn't the result of any Philly influence, it's just the apparently crappy way I talk.And now (ooh, I started a sentence with and!) I'm writing this paper for school and stupid Word is correcting the phrase "my client said she was the first girlfriend he ever really cared about."F--- you, Word. Am I really supposed to write "the first girlfriend about whom he ever really cared"? No one talks like that! Boo to your rule! Language is a living thing, I say this rule is dumb. At.

I saw these yesterday in my "Comparative Social Welfare" class. Apparently Singapore has a 'psychological defense unit' (forget the name) in charge of marketing to the masses. Too few kids? Promote family! Highly educated and successful women having trouble finding suitable mates? Tell everyone to stop being so picky! The jingles are probably the best part. So good.

I am addicted to this song. Jay Z's voice isn't one of my favorites but I love the beat/hook.

I found this postcard book at a novelty shop in Asheville, NC, and I absolutely loved it. Enjoy.

Since returning to the US in July 2007, I haven't left, and ooooooh am I feeling restless. A month or so ago I got my fancy new passport (embedded microchip and all...plus just really pretty art on the pages) and I can't wait for an opportunity to use it. I don't even need to leave the country, though that would be my first choice. I just want to go somewhere!

So, I am absolutely thrilled to have not one but TWO upcoming trips to look forward to: a weekend roadtrip in two weeks to Asheville, NC and (time permitting) Charelston, SC, followed by a spring break trip to Puerto Rico! Oh, and I must add that the sweetest part of the PR trip is the fact that it will be funded with the proceeds of my judgment against my former crazy Philly landlord, which FINALLY (after moving out a year ago!) came through the other day. Did you know in PA that when a landlord withholds a security deposit that they rightfully owe you, you get to ask the court for double? Oh yes! Fabulous law! Long story short, I bet she's wishing she just gave me the amount she owed me when she owed it rather than having to pay double plus lawyer/court fees. Ha!As I was saying....It's going to be hard to pull myself away from travel guides long enough to read for classes. Maybe come the end of school I can even persuade a couple friends to head north to Montreal with me, and then all my travel wishes will come true! Brief getaways, then the tropics, then finally another country (and poutine)!Yay!

I just read this article on whether or not it's a good idea to Google a prospective date and, despite only turning up an honor roll listing the last time I checked, I decided to give the old self-Google a second try. Well well well! I found my Linkedin and Facebook profiles (eek, these things are Google-able? How did I not know this?), photos of myself at a Moldovan orphanage, an article in which I was interviewed when was 17 years old (!), and....my squirrels article!About a zillion years ago, you see, I attended a conference in Moldova against domestic violence where I was part of a small group. For the assignment of promoting diversity, we came up with a story of two squirrels, big-eared

and little-eared (based on my fascination with poofy-eared Moldovan squirrels, though I should say squirrel, singular, since I only ever saw one), and how they came to understand each

other's different cultures. Well, time passed, I submitted an essay on the experience to the seminar's funder, and....nothing. Here I'd had visions of fame, or at least my name in the credits on a website, and nothing!Then I left the country and up until now I'd forgotten about it entirely. So imagine my surprise to see my article, "A Tale of Two Squirrels: A Creative Approach to Gender and Peacebuilding", posted at long last! The only problem now is, it doesn't appear to be a link, just an article title. Bloody hell. The tease continues.Well, it was really awesome, I can assure you that.Go on, now, Google yourself.(A few minutes later)WOOOOO! I kept digging through my search results and there it was, a pdf of the article! Click here to enjoy it in all its glory, my grand debut as a writer. Well, actually it's pretty different from what I remember writing, so maybe it's more Sergiu's article than mine at this point, but there's a picture of me working on the squirrels story and you can see my trademark spoon ring which I still wear! Hee hee.

Ah, Sunday morning back home after a weekend with friends. Due dates for two papers loom in the near future. A great time to blog!Wednesday evening I headed up to Brooklyn to join some Peace Corps friends for Thanksgiving festivities. I've been to NY quite a few times now that I'm living in Philly, and I have to admit, I never know what to do with myself there. Here it's a city among cities, the end-all be-all, and I usually find myself doing the same two or three things. This makes New Yorkers cry, I know. But where to begin?! That's the beauty of living in a manageable-sized city like Philly, I have a reasonable mental picture of what's available, I don't get lost, yet I can still find new things to explore. And I live on a beautiful tree-lined street. (Ooh, damn, did I just work in a dig there? Sorry, I guess I left NY on a bit of a concrete overload).Anyway...this was my first time in Brighton Beach. Too my embarrassment, I actually didn't know it was even part of Brooklyn, or that nearby was Coney Island, or...lots of stuff. Brooklyn is really huge, people. I'm not sure how I failed to realize this before. So anyway, I took the Chinatown bus up to NY, then hopped on a train for the long ride out to Brighton Beach, nothing too eventful, except that I then exited at the last stop and WALKED INTO MOLDOVA! It began the moment I left the train: people speaking Russian around me, the woman in front of me at the turnstile wearing a coat like the one someone loaned me my first winter (see photo), shops with signs in Cyrillic, and men in black leather jackets and black caps. Perhaps more than the language, I was

transported by the arrangement and style of things, like shops with clothing hung flat along the walls and selling spike-heel boots and fur hats, and a woman sitting at a window on the street calling out "Pirizhochkiyeh goryachieyeh!" (hot pastries). The feeling only intensified at the site of products in the shop windows, the exact brands I used to buy. I felt suddenly compelled to run in an buy a carton of juice, a type of juice I am fairly certain I hadn't thought of once since returning to the US. Then -- then! -- I came to the corner near my friend's house and there was a small Russian restaurant advertising pelmeni, and inside, two men sat at a table with plates of pelmeni, a bottle of vodka and two glasses. I wanted to immediately go find my friends and drag them in, and hopefully get invited to join these men for a shot.That night I didn't succeed in dragging them out to the corner cafe, but we did hit up one of the neighborhood grocery stores for beer and dinner ingredients. The products were sold at multiple counters, just like in Moldova, and the saleswomen were all chatting amongst themselves in Russian. Again, I was transported, and cravings struck for things I never think about anymore. Suddenly there was nothing I wanted more than soohariki, tiny flavored croutons in a packet. There was no way to ask for them without speaking Russian, so it served as a way to push me past my strange nervousness. Feeling as if I was about to do something exotic and magical, I asked one of the sales women where I might find them. "Upstairs," she replied. That's it?! Perhaps I was expecting balloons and streamers to fall from the ceiling, or for her to commend my ability to speak, or ask me where I was from. (I guess to be treated like the exotic American again?) Instead her response was utterly matter-of-fact. I was pleased with her response to the extent that it indicated that my accent came out well and she understood me perfectly, but still I found it a bit anticlimactic. I suppose that in this neighborhood, Russian was what I should have been speaking, as far as she was concerned, so it was nothing notable for me to do so. In any case, it turned out that they didn't carry the item I wanted, so Nic and I decided to go with dried fish instead: salty, a bit sweet, oh-so-stinky, and a great beer accompaniment.

I left the store feeling incredibly nostalgic, and even with a certain heart-pounding excitement at speaking Russian for basically the first time in 18 months, and successfully no less. You'd think I had just given a speech in front of an auditorium, as nervous as I was. The funny thing was, somehow the setting made me feel confident in my language abilities, I think because I was suddenly immersed in the setting where I used to customarily speak Russian. It seemed natural. Also, hearing it and seeing the words on food packages and everything else all served to jog my memory. I think my memory of the language is tied to these various stimuli, so the words came easily.

Sigh. So that was that. Nic, Dechen and I had a nice evening of cooking, stuffing ourselves, and catching up, until in the wee hours it was time for Nic to head out to join relatives for Thanksgiving. We, meanwhile, caught a couple hours' rest before heading up to Central Park to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. It seemed like quite the all-American classic thing to do, and now I can check it off whatever mental list such an activity might have been on...and I will never again have to freeze my butt off to watch giant inflatable Dora the Explorer travel down Central Park West.We then met up with another RPCV friend, Jessica, so it was another evening of cooking, discussing the meaning of life, and talking about boys. Then Friday night we took the train to Sunnyside, Queens, which turns out to be a bit of a Romanian enclave, though not as obviously so as Brighton Beach is a Russian one. We joined another RPCV and his wife for dinner at a Romanian restaurant, and again I was transported. I had no idea I could get my international travel fix as cheaply as a $10 bus ride to New York. Inside the TV played Romanian news and our waitress addressed me in Romanian, which sadly I wasn't able to reply to. We feasted on tocana (stew) over mamaliga (polenta), mamaliga with cheese and sour cream, stuffed red peppers, and smokey eggplant spread, plus a few bottles of Romanian pinot noir. It was SO GOOD. As we exclaimed over the food, we couldn't help but laugh at ourselves--this the very food we used to be so tired of, the food that had us thinking we would give anything for some Pad Thai, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, anything but another dinner of mamaliga! Eating the stuffed peppers, I noticed all the dill in the broth and realized how important it was to the dish and my enjoying its "authentic" taste...dill, the very ingredient that I once thought was so overused. Funny how time can cast things in such a romantic light. I even found myself reminiscing about that first winter in Moldova, where at its worst the temperature got down to -40F and I had to sleep fully clothed inside my sleeping bag under the covers, and woke up with muscles sore from a night of shivering. Maybe I can now better appreciate how my grandpa would wax lyrical about foods and events of his childhood, me all the while thinking It was the called the depression because it sucked! Ah yes...spend enough time away from a place or an era and anything can become good. Plus of course there is a certain beauty in simplicity.-----------------Sadly, my camera batteries didn't cooperate for long on my trip so I didn't get many representative photos of Brighton Beach and you'll just have to take my word for everything. I can at least provide some musical ambiance, though: here, enjoy "Start wearing purple" by Gogol Bordello:Then, to kick it up a notch (or if you just liked that last one, and are ready for more high-intensity Gypsy punk), here's "Not a crime". I have to say, these videos make me sad that Gogol Bordello's fan base has expanded so much since I saw them in, what, 2004 at Bumbershoot in Seattle, because now they can charge $40 a ticket for their concerts. Boo.As a parting word, I encourage any of you with plans to head east to get in touch. I'll be more than happy to go on another international expedition within NY's boroughs.

I was a bad American and didn't watch the third and final debate the other night, so I thought I'd redeem myself by reading the transcript. This may have been better, since it let me focus purely on what was said. Well, I have to say I was surprised and thrilled with something Obama said in reference to taxes. Prior to this, the raising/lowering taxes debate and question of who deserves tax cuts was driving me crazy, especially given that Obama's plan doesn't even strike me as extreme. I mean, he repeatedly references the middle class, then assures everyone that "...if you make less than a quarter million dollars a year, then you will not see your income tax go up, your capital gains tax go up, your payroll tax. Not one dime." Phew! When I hear statements like that, I'm reassured that Obama is looking out for the financial interests of people like me, just your average Jill Six-Pack $250,000-earning 'middle class' folks!So yeah, this all struck me as so ridiculous, and crazier still, I never heard anyone in the media say "So, uh....$250k a year is middle class?" I realize that politics is a game where candidates seek to please the broadest range of people possible, but with a median household income in the US of $44,000, come on now. So here's what got me so excited: Obama not only said unequivocally that he'll raise taxes on the very wealthy, he put himself out there as someone who could stand to pay a bit more to make life easier for those at the bottom. And by the way, to clarify what is meant by these apparently wild and crazy tax increases, Obama proposes to simply return to a Clinton-era tax rate on those in the top tax bracket (those earning upwards of $370k). That is, he wants to bump them up from a 35% to 39% tax rate. Is that so horrifying? Check this out:Per 2008 tax brackets, a single individual without children pays:0% of the first $8,950 of income (because net income is zero after $8950 standard deduction and single exemption)10% of the income between $8,951 and $16,975,15% of the income between $16,976 and $41,500,25% of the income between $41,501 and $87,800,28% of the income between $87,801 and $173,500,33% of the income between $173,501 and $366,650, and35% of the income exceeding $366,650.Looking at this, I'm not thinking 39% sounds unreasonable. In fact, what I'm thinking is, why don't we change the upper limits on the brackets so that a single person making $170k a year (a single person, people!) shoulders substantially more of a burden than one making $41k, rather than separate them by a mere 3 percent. I realize these rates may seem high if you look at it in terms of total tax paid, but if you look at it in terms of net income, I think it is equitable. (Though what I'd really like would be for a large chunk of the proceeds from the tax increase to be funneled directly into programs benefitting the poor.) I think that the guy earning $360k will get by okay on the $200-something thousand he's left with, though I realize the yacht purchase may have to be put off for another couple of years, and my heart aches for him, really it does.So now for that debate snippet I keep referring to:MCCAIN: Who -- why would you want to increase anybody's taxes right now? Why would you want to do that, anyone, anyone in America, when we have such a tough time, when these small business people, like Joe the plumber, are going to create jobs, unless you take that money from him and spread the wealth around.OBAMA: I'm not going to...OK. Can I...MCCAIN: We're not going to do that in my administration.OBAMA: If I can answer the question. Number one, I want to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans. Now, it is true that my friend and supporter, Warren Buffett, for example, could afford to pay a little more in taxes in order...MCCAIN: We're talking about Joe the plumber.OBAMA: ... in order to give -- in order to give additional tax cuts to Joe the plumber before he was at the point where he could make $250,000.Then Exxon Mobil, which made $12 billion, record profits, over the last several quarters, they can afford to pay a little more so that ordinary families who are hurting out there -- they're trying to figure out how they're going to afford food, how they're going to save for their kids' college education, they need a break.So, look, nobody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself. But ultimately, we've got to pay for the core investments that make this economy strong and somebody's got to do it. [So rational, balanced!]MCCAIN: Nobody likes taxes. Let's not raise anybody's taxes. OK?OBAMA: Well, I don't mind paying a little more.

Maybe it's just my state of exhausted dilirium, but I think this video is hilarious. Happy Friday, everyone."Another One Bites the Dust"

This summer I made my foray into the world of TSS (therapeutic support staff) work as a summer job between my first and second years of grad school. Ideally, TSS workers are present in the classrooms of youth with mental health/emotional problems, offering therapeutic interventions that allow them to be successful in mainstream classrooms. In practice, they often sit bored in the back of the classroom as sort of glorified babysitters, offering the occasional interjection of "hey, sit down" or "stop doing that". As you might infer, I don't plan to pursue a career in TSS work after graduation.Anyway. Our social work program ends early so I was able to start as a TSS during the end of the school year for Philadelphia public schools, where I worked with a 7th grader for about a month. Then the school year and my work ended, until the summer camp season began, and again I was working, this time with an 8 year old client.Due to packed camp groups, my client had the poor fate of being placed in a class with 6 year olds. However, this meant that I got to hang out with 6 year olds, and they are awesome.Up until this summer, I hadn't hung out with little kids in a really long time -- these days my work brings me into contact more with the troubled adolescent type. Well, it was a marvelous change of pace. Little kids are so straightforward, so unashamed, so full of curiosity! They...want to know why I'm white?Which brings me to another interesting tidbit about my summer as a TSS: it placed me, for probably the first time in my life, into a situation where I was a complete minority**. At the middle school earlier this summer I was the only white TSS on staff, but I did pass the occasional white face in the hall -- the librarian, a couple of teachers (though no students). Now, working at a summer camp located just 5 minutes south of my home in West Philly, I was the only white adult present, and there was only one child among the 50 or so present who might be considered white, though I think she was actually Latina.Due to being white, my working as a TSS proved very interesting for the kids, most of whom I'm guessing have very little interaction with white people in their lives. White people don't live in these kids' neighborhoods -- no, they live a couple minutes north, in my neighborhood. They don't teach them, work at their stores, or go to their schools or churches. This makes white people in general--and me specifically--quite exotic.Little girls looked at the hair on my arms and told me, "You hairy." I had my hair petted, was told it's soft, was asked how I grow my hair so long, was told I have hair like a Puerto Rican**, and received countless requests to braid my hair. Plenty of times I just felt my hairclip being undone followed by a pair of little hands working with my hair. One day after tugging out my ponytail, my braider announced, "Your hair is nappy, you need to brush it. Don't you have a comb at home?"Sometimes my hair's popularity got old, particularly since my would-be stylists generally yanked out a good amount of it in the grooming process, but overall I enjoyed the conversations my totally weirdo hair led to. Working at the middle school the students had been quite aware of my race and my presence, but none openly discussed it with me. There were awkward moments where kids there made comments about hating white people, followed by furtive glances in my direction, an oh, crap, forgot she was here kind of thing. There was also one occasion where a kid in a bad mood sitting behind me began chanting Cracker, c-r-a-c-k-e-r, cracker in a stage whisper. These incidents made me want to have a discussion with the kids about race, but I didn't have much of a relationship with any of them, and so I never addressed it.But as I said, 6 year olds are full of wonder at the mysteries of the world, and haven't yet learned to edit their questions according to the taboos followed by adults. One day a little girl who had grown particularly fond of me (she came by each mealtime to hand me a squished bit of whatever it was she was eating, unappetizing but endearing offerings from Hostess pies, sandwich crusts, bubble gum) wanted to get my attention to come along with the group."C'mon whitey!" she said cheerfully."Whitey?""You white ain't you?""Yeah, but I don't know if you should be calling me whitey..."There was a pause as she seemed to ponder this a moment."Why are you white, anyway?"Hmm, what a question."Well, my mom and dad are both this color, so when I was born, I was this color too."She thought a moment, apparently found my answer acceptable, and was ready to go play.A similar question came up when I was goofing around with one of the boys and he brought his face up close to mine, at which point he noticed my eye color."Why are your eyes all greenish?" he asked."That's just the color they are.""What color are my eyes?""Dark brown.""Aww, I want eyes like yours!"Another incident involved my client. I really struggled to establish a rapport with him initially, though once I did, we got along great. We were on a field trip one day, sitting together on the bus, when he mused, "I hate white people.""But what about me?" I asked."But you're nice.""Well, maybe you should say you hate mean white people...Or better yet, just mean people in general."He thought this over for a bit."I hate white people because they put us in cages and sold us."Hoo boy, wasn't expecting that one. Unfortunately the conversation pretty much ended there, though of course at home later that night I thought of all sorts of things I could have said to further our discussion of race and oppression, and all in an ingenious way accessible to an 8 year old of course. Isn't that the way it always goes.Another incident was amusing in that it showed me that white people have no special claim on some of the ignorant behavior out there regarding race. An older white woman from a nonprofit had come to give the kids a presentation on ecology. Her presence upped the white count to a grand total of 2, including me of course.The kids looked at her, then at me."Is that your grandma?" several asked."No, she's a lady here to teach a class for you."They were astounded."Wow," they told me, "you two look so much alike!" Aside from getting me to ponder race and segregation and the potential for improved race relations in the U.S., this experience was also full of simply amusing moments. For as popular as my hair was among the little girls I saw each day, for example, almost as popular was asking me two questions: "Do you have any kids?" and, "Are you married?"One of my last days at the job I was asked this question yet again by two of my favorite girls. I do wear a ring on my ring finger, though it's made out of a spoon, generally a dead giveaway I'm not hitched. 6 year olds don't yet make the distinction between multiple carats set in platinum and bent cutlery, however."Are you married?" they asked."No.""When?""When what?""When are you gonna get married?""I don't know, I don't have anybody to marry. Don't I need a guy first?""October.""I need to get married in October?""Yeah!""Where will I find a guy?""Just go find one.""A white guy, so you guys will match your color.""Okay. So I can just walk up to a guy on the street and say Hey, I'm supposed to get married in October, and he'll go for that?""Uh-huh.""Okay then."Like I said, 6 year olds are awesome._________________________________**Sticklers on the issue of race/racism in the U.S. might have me distinguish that I mean a numerical minority, as minority refers to power and as a white person I have greater power in the U.S. even when underrepresented in a group, just as women in fact make up a larger portion of the U.S. (and world) population yet are considered a minority due to their lesser power, etc.**The comment that my hair is "like a Puerto Rican's" requires some explanation to those of you not in the Philly area, because it is a reflection of the ethnic/racial makeup of the city. Puerto Ricans are a sizeable minority here, and represent an interesting case as far as race goes due to the history mingling of native, Spanish and African influences (check out this article). A Puerto Rican may look Latino yet have typically "Black" hair, or look Black yet have long wavy hair, or any other combination you can think of; I was thrown off more than a few times when I first came to the city when I passed someone I took for African American only to hear them speaking Spanish. When the kid described my hair this way, I took it as evidence that in their world, white people/characteristics were so absent that the closest approximation the kid could come up with to understand my exotic feature of long, smooth hair was to think I must be Puerto Rican -- a group that, unlike whites, the child did come into contact with in their community.

Check it out here

So suddenly it's warm in the city though not yet sunny, a muggy 75 degrees, and just like the blossoms on the trees frat parties have appeared seemingly overnight. If PSU had frats I wasn't aware of it, and in general PSU wasn't your typical school in that way. Well, I'm now getting first-hand exposure to the very sort of college experience you see in all of the movies, which by the way I had thought was probably fictitious. But oh no.The path through campus that leads to the library is lined with student housing and frat houses, and as I lumbered by with my heavy backpack today I passed an endless number of buildings blasting music, with carefree undergrads holding plastic drink cups, dancing around, and engaging in various forms of debauchery. I caught snippets of drunken dialogue, and one guy saying "Man, I have been doing way too many drugs..." There were also a fair number of shirtless guys yelling "WOO!" I also saw a guy in handcuffs (hrmm?) and a seated girl who appeared to have puked all over herself and then passed out and was being assisted by EMTs. And all of this at 3pm.Now, I'm not saying I necessarily want to be at one of these parties, and I certainly don't care to trade places with the handcuffs guy or passed out girl, but they sure do rub in the fact that one is trudging off to the library on a balmy Saturday. Boo.