Stars…

In Isabella…

We took this tonight at Flathorn Lake picnic area in Isabella.

The exposure itself took 25 MINUTES…. yep, that’s 25 minutes with the shutter open.  The red at the bottom right is the northern lights… they were pretty faint to the eye, but the camera saw them.

Don’t tell me that Andy’s not both technical (i.e. smart) and artistic.  This photo is awesome and I’m happy I was there with him when he took it.

Philosophy is not in the top 20..

… most useless college majors.. I’m not sure how that happened.

Jobs for philosophers are notoriously difficult to get… and impossible to get as an undergrad.  Really, to be employable as a philosopher you need a Ph.D.

Philosophy majors do learn useful skills — the ability to read carefully, write and make an argument.  Perhaps that’s enough…

Maybe it’s because many philosophy majors go to law school?

Actually being a philosopher involves sitting around thinking, reading and writing articles nobody (including your own mother) will read… I’m not sure how that is more useful than majoring in Mechanical Engineering Technology or Chemistry (#7 & 8) — or Photography (#14) or Psychology (#18)?  All of those majors result in useful skills and actual career paths…

hmmmm…. makes me wonder about the validity of the study.

School updates..

I actually CAN use the projector…. barely…

First — I have to note that when I googled “image college professor”, it took me 11 pages to see a female face…. 11 folks…. apparently women aren’t college professors on the internet.

My real purpose is to give an update on the semester…

Andy’s having a great semester, getting good grades and taking amazing photos.  His professors seem to love him…

I’m now done with the Conference I was organizing.  That’s lovely, as I’m now free of little details and lots of e-mail to answer.

My courses are nearly done — which is good and I’m actually caught up for the moment… that will change soon enough. In some ways I’m behind, as I need to get my summer syllabi done and copied… sigh…. it’s 40 degrees and raining out there and I’m behind because the copy center doesn’t have the copies yet.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with the curriculum committee — which should be interesting — I’m going to discuss several possible courses with them… that I’d develop on sabbatical.  YEA!!!!!

Final Destination……

Have you seen the movie Final Destination? The kids change fate by missing a plane crash and for the rest of the movie the angle of death is stalking them?

Patty’s Camera’s are being chased by the angle of death as well.

On our group birthday trip to Duluth Patty’s nice digital camera was stolen out of her car along with her Ipod.

Perhaps you have read the fate of her last camera dashed against the rocks near Grand Marias by the Temperance river.

So Camera number three has the full insurance package on it………….as long as we can salvage the piece with the serial number on it.

So today Patty was parked closer to the door at school, and as we have the campus rule that you must smoke in your car, I chose to smoke in Patty’s Toyota.

I sat down…………gosh no lighter?   I looked in Patty’s purse to see she had one.

I have been using lighters for a long time and I feel qualified to use one safely. I lit my smoke and tossed the lighter back in her purse like a good bff so as not to steal it.

But see………………..even though I had released the lighter………..it was still burning…………all by itself……………right next to the camera.

If I hadn’t happened to take a quick look back the camera would have been lost…………….probably the purse……….perhaps the Toyota…………………….Spooky!

Easter Memory…

This post was inspired by one of my bloggy friends… Seeking Solace..

One of my favorite Easter memories involves vomit…

One Easter my mom and aunt thought it would be a good idea to have Easter at the Grandparents’ in Slater, Ia.  I was probably 6, my sister and cousin would have been 3 — the only reason I think this is because I don’t remember my cousin’s younger sibling being there — but, he could have been an infant…

So, we drive from Minnesota to Slater, have the usual dinner and candy extravaganza — and then drive home in the afternoon….

My mom drove a blue Volvo — my sister, cousin and I fit in the back seat.

About the Minnesota / Iowa border (so, maybe 2ish hours from home) — the first of us blew chunks (it was either Pam or Em..) — technicolor chunks of chocolate, ham, peeps and jellybeans and the ubiquitous rock candy my grandparents always had for us… all over the back seat of the Volvo.

As we passed Buck Hill (for those of you not from MN, you should know that Buck Hill is a ski area in the south part of the Twin Cities metro — and our signal that we were almost HOME)…. the other young one blew her chunks… again in the back seat…

Given my propensity for vomit — I’m still impressed that I held it in until we hit the driveway — I remember running up the sidewalk and actually making to the bathroom… and being very proud that I didn’t puke in the car.

The Volvo was never the same –

Happy Easter!

Cameron’s House…

Is up for sale in Chicago..

You know Cameron, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

You can buy it for 1.65 MILLION…

It’s worth it, Obviously….

Advantages…

I’ve been thinking a lot about unrecognized and institutional sexism…

Especially in Academia…

In a community in which outright sexism is now taboo, it still happens with shocking frequency.  Part of the problem is simply one of socialization, men have historically dominated academia — and they tend to hire people the perceive as similar to themselves — male.  Part of it is probably about communication styles, comfort and directions of research — but no matter what the cause, the effect is the same… and it sucks.

It goes beyond hiring — even when women are hired into tenure-track positions, they tend to do more service and get paid less.  Because they do more service, they publish less and are promoted less often.  They are also less likely to be invited to do “key note” presentations, because they tend to have less time to do the mountains of research and publishing necessary to catch the attention of the folks who make those decisions…

I think the roots of this are very deep — girls internalize the idea that being smart isn’t something boys like.  They tend to go for “soft” majors in college and thus are a large percentage of some fields and a minority in others… philosophy is one of the fields in which women are a minority.

I think that, in the end, girls turn into women who sell themselves intellectually short.  This makes me sad– mostly because I see so much of it in my younger self.  I also think that women are more likely to take school/life considerations into account when choosing both undergraduate and graduate schools.  Men, on the other hand, are given reasons to believe in and pursue their academic goals, and considerations of life are simply less important to them.

I suppose what’s really bothering me about this is the fact that a male academic I know well had many advantages — support of his department, a great committee, time to write and lots of encouragement from his family and faculty — and he still hasn’t finished his dissertation.

When he went on the academic job market, part of his frustration was that women in his field seemed to get hired and he didn’t… but — he didn’t have a completed dissertation either… hmmm…

I contrast his circumstances with my own.  I made the best academic choices I could, within the set of limited choices I had.  I went to an affordable undergraduate school and only really had one choice in terms of grad school.  Partially because of the perception that they wouldn’t lose me if they didn’t give me funding, I also got very little financial support from my grad school.  I took out loans, worked / taught the whole time and finished my courses.

Two months after finishing my coursework, I moved back to Minnesota because Hubby was accepted to grad school.  I was happy to move back here, no question — but, I left Nebraska with only an idea about what my dissertation would look like — having not even passed my Ph.D. candidacy qualifying papers (at my grad school, in my discipline, we don’t do comps — we write papers that have to be passed by a committee).

It took several years for me to reach “Doctoral Candidate” status.  I’m sure it took longer because I was 400 miles away AND because I was teaching full-time, most of it at Century.  My dissertation took equally long to complete, for many of the same reasons.  The one summer I took off of teaching to write, I had cancer…

The thing is,  I still finished — AND I have a tenured teaching position.  In order to do it, I spent much of my available free time writing, revising, researching and traveling back to Nebraska for meetings with my advisor.  In other words, I worked my ass off…

I can’t say for sure — but, I think I’m as smart or smarter than my male colleague.  I know that my work is as interesting as his — and in retrospect, because I finished, I was a better “bet” for the support I didn’t get, partially because of my gender and geographical limitations.

The male colleague hasn’t finished and still complains of sexism in academia… pal, don’t talk to me about sexism until you’ve walked the halls of academia in my heels.

Home?

This is a photo from the weekend…

It was a weekend of meeting really fun, cool, eclectic people– and having good conversations.

We spent a good part of Friday night and Saturday night at the only place open in Isabella — On Friday it was quiet.. just us, the only employee and a few local folks.  The employee is a good friend of mine and it turned out that we had a lot in common with the local folks — all of whom know my mom .

Saturday a local girl was turning 21 — and boy did she.  Her family brought a ton of food, the whole community showed up and she did shots with both of her grandmothers… Isabella’s that kinda place, where you drink with your grandparents.

Andy and I found that we are kinda good at Karaoke — well, Andy’s good at it and I’m a great go go girl.  Later in the evening, the women in the group sang a few girl power songs like “You’re so Vain”… and a good time was had all around.

At one point, one of the birthday girl’s “city”" (i.e. Duluth) friends called and asked if she needed to be concerned about being bitten by a deer… ummm… yea…

On the way home we picked up a couple of dudes who had left the festivities on foot — it was snowy and cold and they were planning to walk a couple of miles home.  Ummmmm, no.  We took them to their cabin, stayed a while and had some more good talk by the fire.

Sunday we made our way to Grand Marais — and found ourselves at the Gunflint Tavern — we needed a battery charge and some food — and I met Ramona and Dan.  Ramona and Dan are BFFs… so they get the Patty / Andy BFFness…

Ramona is someone who says she can find something to love in everyone.  We had a short, intense conversation in which I learned that Dan’s sister probably took an Ethics class from me –

As we talked, I found out that Ramona has a whole tribe of people who hang out and are unconventional… just like Andy and I.  She gave me her phone number, informed me that I’m now part of her tribe and told me that if we’re in the area on Monday nights we’re invited to her house for poetry readings…. you bet we’ll go!

Finding your tribe is important — really important, and I’m thinking that I’ve found mine.  They’re quirky, funny, opinionated and genuine.  They look out for one another and keep one another in line.  Most important, they’re a community of people you can count on to help you, support you and love you regardless of your income, looks or profession.

I’m back in the cities now — but, I’m feeling like I’ve left my home for my “real” life — and that I need to get back there.

We finally got a picture of a moose!!!!!

After two fairly ferocious weather days we finally got a pretty day for pictures. So when I rolled out of bed at the crack of noon, we hit the road.

We are currently having supper and charging camera batteries.  We are at the Grateful Dead approved Gunflint Tavern.

We have purchased exactly one hour of internet time so I’m trading the laptop for the green chili enchilada and Patty can tell you her story.    Scoooooooooooot………..

As Andy was snapping beautiful pics at Cascade, I decided it would be a great day to sit on a rock wall and look at the lake… Not thinking, I put my new baby camera in my pocket… When I went to stand up, I herd a soul-crushing crash below me…  My baby camera was in the rocks… and just not in the rocks but down a tiny crack only a baby camera could fit into.

I cursed, I cried, then I yelled for Andy.  At first he couldn’t even spot her — she was in a space under some rocks.

After a valiant attempt with several sticks– and by wedging his body down into the rocks, (after exacting a promise that I wouldn’t leave him to chew his own arm off ala 127 hours) — some kind folks came by with bungie cords and Andy was able to fish out my baby camera by her wrist strap.

She lost her battery in the accident, so I don’t know for sure if she works — and she has a few battle scars, but thanks to my BFF, she’s safely in the car…

Where everybody knows your name……..

It’s fun coming up north.

No matter which direction we go someone knows Patty, Patty’s mom or a friend of a friend.

Barb, if your reading, Paul misses you and wants to snuggle!