Hair will never "just" be hair

I admit that I am a closet trekky (or trekker, it doesn't really matter to me) and I very much looked forward to the new Star Trek movie. It did not disappoint. The actors fell into their well-worn roles effortlessly. The 23rd century imagined by the filmmakers was exciting and inspiring. It was a brave new world where starships roamed the galaxy, the fabric of space time was altered, and some enterprising person had put the relaxer in space.

Although many things were updated story-wise in the new version Uhura's relaxer was retained as were the sixties style uniforms of the other characters. It could be argued that perhaps Uhura's hair was just an aesthetic choice on the part of the filmmakers to tie the two franchises more closesly together, but even that had not remained the same. Her hair style was transformed from a relaxed beehive or pixie style to Lady Godiva-like tresses. As I watched Uhura whip her relaxed (probably weaved) hair through the cosmos, I wondered if in two centuries people would still be talking about "good hair." By contrast, on a much more boring sci-fi series entitled Defying Gravity, a future is imagined where all of the black characters sport natural hair styles in mission control and the Milky Way.

Does the distinction matter? Does it matter if the relaxer "boldly goes where no one has gone before?" Isn't to relax or not to relax, just a matter of fashion?

After a long hiatus I am back. Much has happened during my time off from writing. One of the biggest developments was that I cut out the last of my relaxed hair and went natural. Today Bill sent me this link from the New York Times about the enduring politics of black hair entitled "Black Hair Still Tangled in Politics". I quickly read it and found that article did the same thing that many articles on the subject do - surveyed the whole gamut of hair opinions, and then ended by asking why black hair just can't be hair and wondering if in this post-Obama world the choice to straighten or not to straighten will not be one of existential significance for African American women.

One thing that I don't understand is why it is so hard to make an argument nowadays when it comes to matters of racial or cultural experience? Well I am going to say what is quite obvious to most black girls at the age of around eight when they are asked by non-black friends why they don't do this or that with their hair: Hair DOES matter. Obama's election has changed much, but we have not entered a shangrila of acceptance where Black hair is just hair. I learned this lesson early on, when as a young pre-teen at summer camp I was barraged with questions about why I put a garishly pink lotion on my hair, why I slept with a satin night cap and didn't wash my hair everyday. The rub was these questions occurred after I had endured a Herculean effort to burn my hair straight with lye.

One of my favorite comments in the NYTimes article was from one woman who said that the older generation of women from her family who live in Ghana straighten their hair. This, she offered, as proof that to straighten or not to straighten is not a political statement, it is just a simple fashion choice. And perhaps that would be true in the dimension where Africa existed in a vacuum and wasn't profoundly affected by the same historical racism that affects the United States. Black natural hair, in Africa as in the New World has a historical significance that belies any effort to make it "just hair."

My own hair decision was about 1 part curiosity, 1 part fashion, and 2 parts "statement". Whether I want it to or not, my hair speaks even if my lips remain silent. When I was a child I was maligned for "talking white." I still don't understand that distinction, but I do understand that growing up in private schools, dancing ballet and listening and playing classical music gave me a certian degree of disconnection from black culture. I wasn't totally disconnected - I had the stories my parents and grandparents wove for me about our past in words and in food, I had the jazz my dad played on the piano every night. But when I left the insular world of family, I existed in the dominant culture and I did not feel as much a stranger there as I did at school dances when someone turned on hip hop and the black kids started dancing and I stood trying to transform the positions I had learned in ballet into what they were doing on the dance floor.

Cutting my hair did not suddenly tune me into the collective "black" cultural expressions that I couldn't engage in comfortably as a child. But it did connect me to something. Something older than myself. Something stronger than just my existence here and now. Something that will last past my own fleeting time on earth and might even explore the cosmos. Hair does matter and I hope that never changes.

Cabin Fever

Spring break is coming up and I am excited. It is sad to admit, I am excited because of the opportunity to research without that pesky class load always getting in the way and not because of some tropical escape. I do look out onto blue azure waters every day...my computer background of Curacao's shoreline appears on two monitors...but that is a close as I am going to come, at least until the reasearch funds come through. Then I will get to see the inside of an archive on the carribean paradise when the sun is high in the sky. Still, I am not complaining, its Curacao!

For now, I will escape with my compy background and pictures of warmer times. The best remedies to keep cabin fever at bay!

I’m dreaming of a Diapered Christmas

This Christmas season has been marked by a big change – we are finally moving everything up to Ithaca. Yet, I have found that when I go to share my holiday news with family and friends, they interpret the excitement in my voice to be news of a different sort.

“You’re pregnant,” they breathlessly offer.

My face drops a little and my mind is brought to the extraordinary amount of time I have spent in an OB-GYN office recently, surrounded by an army of pregnant women

“No, I'm not preganat yet...Bill is moving up to Ithaca…we are finally getting to live together again!” I manage, a little less excited than before.

“Oh,” they respond their smiles a little less full.

Filled up to my eyeballs in boxes and wondering where the heck my life is going, I have started getting the cards full of holiday cheer. Card after card shows the smiling faces of many of the single wedding guests at my wedding. Only they are not single anymore. Most of them have found that special someone, got married and now have one, some even two little bundles of Christmas joy. I was the person who fell right outta my graduation robes and right into my wedding dress. Literally. The day after graduation, six and a half years ago, I got married. And now I find that I am sitting in a half packed apartment, my student status restored, whining the ears off my dear husband. While so much has changed, I still remain an overgrown kid. As I enter the last year of my twenties, I can still be found watching the Disney channel, only without a mini-me.

Yet, there are children in America and all over the world, living in a shelter no sturdier than a packing box, wondering why nobody wants them. There are people who are packing up boxes with nowhere to go. Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is a time of joy and babies too. But the holy infant so tender and mild was born in a manger. He was rejected by the world around him even at the moment of his birth. Yet, he came to bring good news to the world – the good news of love and everlasting life. A message that he sealed in his blood. A message that we are called to pass on. We are invited to the lonely place where the King of Glory was born, called to open our eyes and see the children around us – young and old – and embrace them with love and wonder as we greet again the newborn king.

May God Bless You and Your families during this Advent and Christmastime!!!

On Human Life

I still have to pinch myself to make sure that I am awake. A day that I didn't think that I would live to see arrived, and a historic moment occurred in a park where I played countless concerts. Sadly, it was a moment that I could not experience in person. I cried with so many other Americans when Obama walked out with his family. I felt something that I thought I had lost forever: true love for my country.

For so long my love was tarnished with a cynicism and hopelessness that is hard to explain but is something that two black strangers instinctively know as they nod to one another on the street. A hardness within me crumbled when I watched Obama walk down that stage and I let the tears flow.

In the days that followed, I have heard expressions of everything from doom to adulation on his election. But, there is one group that mourns, really mourns his appointment. That is those who for the sake of unborn millions, cast their vote against the junior Senator from Illinois.

It is no secret that I am pro-life. I do not hide it and I am not ashamed of it. Some Americans are given the right to decide whether another group of Americans lives or dies, because the weaker voiceless group looks different than the stronger. It is a familiar story, and in our country, an old one. But it is far from simple. To most in the modern-day pro life movement overturning Roe v. Wade is the answer. If abortion is made illegal, babies will be saved. To support a candidate who is pro-choice is the ultimate betrayal.

But I think that the ultimate betrayal is something much more insidious. Abortion has been legal and illegal at various times. But women have continued to seek out abortions, and some despite considerable physical and personal costs. Why? For many women it is because they continue to be treated as if they were less than human by our culture.

A law will not stem the tide of abortion without a seismic shift in the way women are treated. Just like the passage of the 13th Amendment and Reconstruction didn’t ensure racial equality in the U.S,--that is still a fight that is being waged even with the extraordinary step of the election of the first Black president--a law against abortion will not mark an end to abortions.

Look around at our culture – it is socially acceptable to use derogatory language about women on network TV, in common conversation, and in the media. No woman, no matter how much power or schooling they have, are sheltered from this, but rather we are daily bombarded. How is it right that women are dismissed from work, compelled to drop out of school, and face lower income possibilities due to the working of their bodies. This includes pregnancy but it is not limited to that – most women have felt some discrimination due to the whole gamut of womens' health issues. In the fight for a "culture of life" it seems as if nobody is fighting for change on this front. It isn’t even on the docket.

We must struggle with the same ardor for laws that ensure child-care, equal pay, and forbid employers to discriminate against women at all stages of life. Most everyone gives lip service to the notion that a rising number of abortions is not a good thing. But I offer this challenge: get specific about what is mean by education. It is not enough to have an awkward conversation in high school health class. Education must be done within an environment where it is not OK to say B**** and laugh. Where it is not ok to discriminate against women. To those who would save the silent millions, I challenge you to think past Roe V. Wade. How loud is the outcry when women are denied paid maternity and even more widespread not given equal pay for equal work?

Discrimination against women must crumble before real change can happen.

But it doesn’t even seem like this is on the table...

Survey Says…Its all your fault

Many women's first work experiences read the same–the low pay, the demeaning tasks, men with half their education and work-experience getting hired at double their salaries. My own Harvard degree mocked me from its gilded frame on the wall of my micro mini apartment. It was a golden ticket alright, but I was not playing the part of Charlie Bucket. During those grueling experiences, many women long for a break in the storm, for someone to just play by the “rules” – they long for an answer to why things are so unfair.

It turns out the answer was right before us all along…the problem, it seems, is us.

In “Girl Power at School, but Not at the Office,” Hannah Seligson narrates an early job experience that reads eerily familiar to many women. She writes of unequal pay and highly qualified women becoming “‘assistant-ized’—saddled with all the coffee runs and photocopying.” She chronicles female/female job sabotage and pay discrimination. But ultimately, her focus is on the “young women…getting in the way of their own success.”

How do women get in the way of their own success, according to Seligson? By carrying an unsuccessful toolkit of resources into the work world. In fact, she argues that “we need to build a new arsenal of skills to mitigate some of our more 'feminine' tendencies.” No. No! NO!!!

The answer is not to conform to the status quo, but to bring change to the work world. It is not to learn how to “grab a beer” with the guys, but to forge new ways of building networks. It is not to scrap “the more traditionally ‘feminine’ trait of sensitivity” (whatever that means), for hard-nosed terseness. And, contrary to popular misinformation about what women have been up to for the past eons of history, it is not sitting around isolated on their own personal domestic islands.

“Women don’t have as much of a tradition of business networking,” Seligson asserts. Oh yeah, says who? Women have been networking amongst themselves and with men, for centuries. The interpersonal skills garnered from these encounters are just as valuable as those gained in a smoking club.

We need to honor our history, honor the invaluable work that we have already brought to humanity, and the networks forged by women. We need to bring our presence into the light that it deserves and demand that conditions improve for women in the here and now. Are there things that each person can improve on individually? Yes. But, the unfair experiences that women face in the work world should not be cause to denigrate that which we deem different in ourselves as of no account. It has its dignity too, and should be respected, not repressed.

I was born around the same time as Seligson, in the early 1980s, but I had a different experience. I saw women discriminated against, left and right. I understood the struggle that was before me. Perhaps being both African American and female highlighted that struggle and the existence of glass ceilings even more, but one thing that has been imprinted on me during my brief tenure on the planet is that there are still many fights to be waged in the battle for equality. Now is not the time for conformity, but for courage.

Women's Dreams May Come

With the whole hullabaloo about Sarah Palin, I find myself compelled to throw in my oar. There has been a flurry of discussion about Palin’s daughter, Bristol, and Palin’s views on abortion. Frankly the whole conversation has become quite predictable. There is the one side that says that women should have the right to choose, reproductive education should be frank and birth control products widespread. This side looks at Palin’s daughter and scoffs…this is the fruits of so-called “abstinence only” initiatives, pipe dreams at best, and at worst, social pollutants just as potent as greenhouse gases. The other side says that there is no choice at all – to be or not to be, that is the question – and that is a question that can only be answered by the Almighty. Abortion is just a portion – the most murderous portion – of a culture of death of which condoms, birth control pills and permissive educational programs are an integral part. Bristol should be lauded for keeping her unborn child and planning to marry the father.

But at the heart of both arguments lies the question – how can what makes women different fit seamlessly into a society designed for men? In the recent Domestic Disturbances column in the New York Times, “The Mirrored Ceiling," Judith Warner laments that, to some women Palin “seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes.” Why does Palin, Warner writes, “deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so 'real'?"

Warner further questions, “Shouldn’t a woman who is prepared to be commander in chief be intimidating?”

And why is that?

Let’s imagine another world, governed by the cycles of womanhood. One where at the turn of the nineteenth century men slowly abandoned military schools in order to pursue midwifery. In 1920, the first male midwife was accepted into the most prominent circle of female midwives. In 1960, the first male hormone pill came on the market, which mimicked PMS symptoms in males, allowing them to partially participate in what had long been a girls only club – monthly hormonal cycles. This innovation allowed men to more easily incorporate into the overarching female world. In 1973, medical procedures which gave men full control over their physical reproductive capacities were legalized, so that men could now shorten or completely curtail the amount of time they were virile each month, a province long enjoyed by women who, since the dawn of humanity were only fertile for a short window of time in the middle of their cycles. The twentieth century witnessed droves of men starting to pour into housework, midwifery and child care, even though they were still not held in equal esteem with women in these same fields. After the recent nomination to public office of a man with a military background and limited care-giving experience, a male rights advocate protested,

“Shouldn’t a man who wants to be trusted with the reigns of society prove himself to be unintimidating – a consummate diplomat in the home?”

There are some who may read this counter factual history and recoil. They recoil because things that were traditionally “female” seem today obviously inferior (the graduate student "ack" reflex compels me to post the disclaimer that "traditionally female" is not a fixture but is itself a function of historical moment). Women’s cycles are something to be controlled or stopped altogether, by any means necessary, and housework is where women’s spirits go to die. Pregnancy, that capability that connects women at once to the future and the past is something that is best planned out carefully or rejected out of hand. Why are our life goals dominated only by male physiology, male psychology, and male dreams?

Let’s dream bigger.

We Can Not Just Watch From Our Sofas…

I, like many people, have been swept up in Olympic fever. I am not a sports viewer at all – my husband repeatedly tries to get me to watch baseball games and football games (although I can appreciate a good superbowl now and then), but when he turned on the Michael Phelps races I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the screen. Several crew races, diving competitions, and men’s tumbling matches later…I am officially hooked. But as this is a blog generally related to thinking about how history will record what's happening now I could not help but send a shout out to my good friend Audrey.

In addition to being one of the most creative and talented writers that I have been blessed to know, Audrey is the queen of throwing a good party, which is something that I miss terribly now that she has moved away from the Northeast. Her devotion to the Boston sports teams is absolute, but when it comes to the Olympics Audrey has kept her eyes on the “prize;” the most precious prize of all -- human rights.

So it came as no surprise that it is she who has consistently, throughout the games, sent e-mail articles and commentary that highlights the continued sufferings of the Chinese people. It is shameful how China’s repression has been tolerated so long. Can the image of a demonstrator standing before a tank be so easily forgotten, swept away by product placement and spectacle? Right now, people in China are being imprisoned, tortured, and killed for exercising their God-given rights; rights we take advantage of…the right to religion, free speech, and assembly.

We must never forget…

Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

James 1:23-24 NIV

Forgetting is easier that one might think. Indulge an alternate universe for a moment. Let’s imagine a reality where Afghanistan is a very powerful state. In 2021 a Kabul run by the Taliban has been deemed economically open enough to participate freely and socially on the world stage. It has been awarded the summer games by the Olympic committee. Would the glittering banners and the roar of crowds be enough to blot out the image of the towers in flames?

Just a few weeks ago, I walked through the Anne Frank House and seethed over how the Holocaust was allowed to happen. The pain and horror of the loss of one little girl among so many millions, brought me to tears and I felt as if I would never forget. Just a week later, I sat down on my couch and turned on the television, a new Olympic match was just beginning…in the split second between the enthusiastic commentaries and almost super human feats of athleticism my reflection passed across the screen…

I had already forgotten…

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27 NIV

Charity Begins Online?

During the summer I have found myself on various online forums and boards. One thing that I have noticed is that people are so much more blunt on boards then they are in person. In person, most will try to sugar coat their thoughts and curb their baser instincts – at least in public. Not so on the web-board. Ironically in a forum that has an edit function, it seems as if people are much more free with themselves, to the detriment of cordiality.

The internet has been blamed for much, but could it be that the net is also the place where civility goes to die? “Tell me who your friends are, I’ll tell you who you are,” is a maxim that was oft quoted in my house growing up but now perhaps the little zingers left on boards scattered in cyberspace are the truest measure of an individual’s charity.

What A Finish!!!

Congratulations to the USA women's crew team and the Netherlands women's crew team!

This Ain’t Your Yuppie Mounds trip…

This morning Bill shot me an article from the New York Times travel “escapes” section entitled "Ancient Midwest." There is a beautiful picture of ancient mounds in the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Ohio, and a ethereal caption that announces that the serene scene is non-other than “Mound City.” But there is a modern day “Mounds City” and a smaller town holding the “Mounds” moniker just miles from the Illinois Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site that won’t likely make it to the New York Times travel page. It is in those Mounds, and their surrounding areas, that the treasures of summers with my family; grandparents, great uncles and aunts, cousins lay hidden.

When I was young, my entire family would pile into the car when it was still dark and start the long journey from the Chicago area down the entire length of Illinois towards our summer house in Mounds, IL. Now, we were not ignorant of the Cahokia sight, for as long as I can remember my grandmother saw fit to educate everyone on the local history, as well as some family folklore. As my parents team drove my grandparent’s 1978 powder blue Cordoba across miles and miles of flat countryside grandmother would quiz us on what we knew of the American Indian Mounds builders and share the story of her great grandmother’s flight from slavery in Alabama with her infant daughter (my great-great grandmother), a flight that brought her to settle right over the Mason-Dixon line, but divided her family. And my grandfather would quiz us on the Bible.

The Mounds of my youth was filled with as many attractions as Disney World; the family homestead in America that my grandmother’s father built by hand and still remained standing after decades of tornadoes, the Dollar Store where everything was just one dollar (Now I seem to see them everywhere but in the eighties it was not a common sight in the Oak Park area), Bessie’s restaurant where you could get fried frogs legs, the Future City sign, right outside the Cairo overpass, which stood in an empty field of tall weeds and grass, an advertisement for a city whose construction would remain forever in the future, and Shemwells restaurant in Cairo, the home of the best barbecue sandwiches on earth.

There was catfish fishing at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio, boat riding along the Horseshoe Lake, and scores of family cookouts. Yet, we never made it to the Cahokia Mounds Site. It remained woven in with the folklore of the region and the stories of slave escape. And now perhaps the passage of time has knit the Mounds of my youth within the fable. It will certainly never be a destination covered by the New York Times, but it will live on in the stories that I pass down to the next generation. But if you do visit the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, might I add a dining recommendation that also did not make it into the article…Shemwells is a must visit!

A Bottle of Contact Solution Goes Kaput and Dracula’s Storm rolls into Boston

I passed the last hours in Amsterdam as I did the first – largely unconscious. As if my body were preparing for the time shift ahead of time, I found myself struggling to stay awake the whole day. After rooting out a seat on the train to Schiphol airport next to the public toilet and wishing for nobody to utilize the facilities only to see our hopes dashed at the very last moments before the train pulled out, we successfully found our way to our departure gate. Yet, we had to look twice at our tickets, which read a boarding time over an hour and a half before the plane actually took off. It turned out that security was, in fact, at the gate. We made it past the first two gatekeepers (I even threw in some Dutch which got a smile out of the agent) but Bill’s contact solution that had served him well through many a business trip did not survive the Atlantic crossing, meeting its demise in a blue trashcan at the gate.

The flight was smooth and comfortable, and the food was exceptional. We were extremely impressed. After high praise from Bill for the book The Historian, I started to read it on the flight. It was as good as he had said, and very creepy. Not giving anything away, the book is a take on the Dracula legend. That being explained, when the plane came to a soft landing in Boston, the weather suddenly turned south. It was literally like the storm that always followed Dracula blew into Boston Harbor. It was so bad that we sat a few feet from our gate, unable to move into position because the tower would not give us clearance to pull up to the retractable walkway for fear that the workers would be struck by lightning. But we made it back none the worse for wear, filled with fond memories of the Netherlands.

*Click on the picture for the full album of photos in the Netherlands!

Of Waffles and Masterpieces

The last full day, Saturday, found us in full tourist mode. We walked around the city for one last hurrah, shopping for souvenirs and soaking in memories. We could not go in the palace because it was closed for renovations but we went window shopping at the Magna Plaza and wandered through the Nieuwe Kerk, which was holding an exhibition called “Black is Beautiful.” We finally made our way over to the Museumplein, visiting the Rijksmuseum which was slightly smaller than usual due to construction, followed by a quick walk by the Van Gogh Museum. We got some extraordinary waffles at a stand on the Museumplein and then strolled our way by a save the pigs protest, back towards the city center, passing the Vondelpark and Leidseplein on the way. When we finally caught the tram to our hotel, we were exhausted but happily so – the weather that had been sunny all day transformed into a steady mist. Quintessentially Amsterdam!

To den Haag and Beyond!

The national archives in den Haag was everything that I hoped for and more!! The hour long train ride to the diplomatic capital offered wonderful vistas of the pastoral Dutch countryside. Even in the face of missing the train stop by one station and a walking detour that took us past the archives by about two kilometers, we successfully navigated our way to the archive, which was nestled in a street framed by buildings that resembled an industrial park one might find if jettisoned forward in time at EIGHTY EIGHT MILES PER HOUR!!!! At the very tail end of my research, after pouring over a binder of codes and collections list (my elementary Dutch being stretched to the limit), I was able to get a very exciting lead on my research! I exclaimed and audible “Yes” and probably caused those around me to think that I had lost it :-). When the archives closed, we got on the train headed back to Amsterdam again and enjoyed a round of celebratory archive-find drinks! Proost!!

Raincoats, Mini Stroopwaffles and Warme Chocolademelk

Today saw both rainclouds and another cruise ship roll in. Turns out, the PTA (Passenger Terminal Amsterdam) next door is, low and behold, a docking point for cruise ships! You can read all about it at www.ptamsterdam.nl/site/eng-pta.php (or for those of you who spreken Nederlands, www.ptamsterdam.nl). So, as the high seas creatures of comfort huddled near their climbing wall to avoid getting wet, we marched out into the elements to find some rain gear.

Our trip took us over hill and dale and man-made harbor walkways to de Bijenkorf, described by Frommer's as "Amsterdam's answer to New York's Bloomingdale's," where we found a cute white rain coat for Nicole, but a dearth of men's raincoats for me (Bill, guest blogging for today's post). But, never fear! A quick jaunt across Dam Square (avoiding the Trams and mad, wet weather cyclists, of course) took us to Peek & Cloppenburg, described by me as Amsterdam's answer to New York's Target.;-) A few Euros later, I was wearing a black raincoat far too stylish to come with its own rollup bag, even though it did.

Of course, once we had our raincoats and had filled up on mini stroopwaffles, warme chocolademelk and cappuccinos in de Bijenkorf's first floor cafe, the sun broke through the clouds, sending the cruise ship passengers scurrying out into the city for trinkets and souveniers in their waning moments at port in Amsterdam and leading us to the only logical end point for two Americans who had too much exercise and ate too much sugar -- a nap back at the hotel, followed by lounging in the spa, and late night archival preparations for Nicole.

Anne Frank Huis

Today we got a late start but it was a gorgeous day. We attempted to bike over to the Rijksmuseum but somehow got turned around so we found ourselves at the Anne Frank Huis instead. After enjoying tapas at a restaurant next door to the museum, we got in the long line that wound its way around the museum. The experience is something that I will remember forever. It was incredibly moving.

"I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!"

- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

One Good Archive Deserves Another

Archive day finally arrived! We woke to find a huge Carnival cruise ship docked in the river IJ right outside our hotel. It was so large, even though our room is on the sixth floor, the top of the ship towered above us. We biked out to the Stadsarchief Amsterdam (the Amsterdam municipal archive), whizzing past the shopping district, Dam Square and the national monument. After finding a bike parking place along the Herengracht, we grabbed a bite to eat – I got a chance to taste some real uitsmijter (Dutch fried eggs on incredible bread)! The archive building was old and imposing on the outside, but inside it was very sleek and modern. After the archives closed, we sat on a park bench along the Herengracht and watched canal tours and families on private boats drift by as I planned my next day’s research. Yet, the day was not all work and no play. On the way home we stopped by Dam Square and went to the Bijenkorf for some shopping. My trip to the Stadsarchief Amsterdam revealed the need for another archive visit in another city…the Hague!

West-Indisch Huis

Today we biked around the city, scoping out the best way to hit all of the sites and archives. At the bike rental under the hotel, we got some great bikes and trekking advice. I also got some extended language time! A quick trip to the C1000 supermarket led us on an adventure in IJburg and then we were off to the center of the city. After locating the West India house, we found some delicious Indian food on the Haarlemmerstraat, and then wound our way through the streets and over the canals of Amsterdam!

Caffeine, Bitterballen and Saint Nicholas

Our first full day in the Netherlands has been one of discovery. Sunday morning brought with it the longest extended time I have spoken Dutch since arriving…at mass at the Sint Nicolaaskerk, right across from the Amsterdam Central Station ( St. Nicholas is the patron saint of Amsterdam and, also, the saint from whom my name derives). It was such a treat!!

After mass the day became overcast and rainy – perfect for exploring the hotel! The Mövenpick’s sleek style coupled with its, spa, and trendy bar makes it one of the most modern and comfortable hotels that I have stayed in. The room is pure compact perfection!

After several rounds of caffeine – red bull, double espressos, and cappuccinos – to ward off the lingering jet lag, we ended the day with a great glass of beer, oude kaas, sausages, bitterballen and some warm apple pie…lekker!!

Media Vita in Morte Sumus...

...In the midst of life we are dead. When I was young I grew up listening to the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos' Chant CD. I was completely entranced by the track, "Media Vita in Morte Sumus." The refrain is particularly haunting and it was my favorite because I thought that I had deciphered the meaning of at least one of its words. "Someday," I sang along with the monks in the main refrain, dropping out to let them sing the rest of the words that I could not associate. It turns out that they were singing, "Sancte."

Sancte Deus, sancte fortis
Sancte misericors Salvator
Amaræ morti ne tradas nos

Holy God,
Holy Strong One,
Holy and Merciful Saviour,
Do not hand us over to a bitter death.

Indeed history makes us realize that in the midst of life we are dead. But this is not defeat, for as Saint Francis prayed,

It is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

Will Posterity Care if you Were Portly?

Even though I have started to fill my days with history reading I can't shake the feeling that occasionally enters my brain like a nervous tick; I feel excessively rotund. Now this is not going to be the start of a weight loss blog, but rather a rumination on why those thoughts fill up so much of my head cavity.

Rarely have I wondered when thinking about a historical female subject whether or not that person had a healthy BMI. But so much of my own thought revolves around how fiercely the moon is pulling me down to earth. But it isn't just me. So many conversations that I have had with girlfriends, female relatives, strangers on the street devolves into a dirge to how fatty a certain food is, how much weight so and so has gained, and what diet plan works or does not work.

Were our great-great grandmothers secretly obsessed with how closely they adhered to the physical norm that existed in their own minds? And how will the incessant calorie, fat and carb counting of our own lives translate to the pages of history? Is it something that will be captured in an archive? Even if it is, will any scholar think it important?

What archive could reconstruct the hours of time spent staring at a screen..

Starting my reading list for my impending A exams and getting my website back up and running has made me realize that I spend an awful lot of time staring ahead, completely immobile, my mind far away. As I think about my plan of attack on getting to the archives in the Netherlands, I wonder about what moments of my own life will actually leave a footprint. Will a developer inadvertently stumble on my long forgotten grave causing a flurry of scholars to descend and rifle through my bones spitting theories about why I decided to be buried with a fabulous necklace wrapped around my waist? Will my social security number be all that survives (gasp, horror, that's like something out of an Orwellian nightmare), or perhaps my trash? How will future generations write the hours, years, decades of inert time sitting in front of books, computers or TVs? Will it be a pillar to the ultimate cruelty? When noxious ships pulled into New York Harbor three hundred years ago New Yorkers complained of the stench but not of the injustice of the people cramped inside.

Will another someday write that while millions lived on $1-2 dollars a day struggling to find clean water or to dodge ethnic cleansing or religious persecution, an army of others sat and stared blankly ahead at a binary code of bright colors.

Struggling, struggling, struggling

After much struggling I have finally gotten this blog up and linking back to my site. Who knew it was soo tricky?