Winter?

The following is an article about the snow storm out East this past weekend:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/historic-october-northeast-storm-epic-incredible-downright-ridiculous/2011/10/31/gIQApy7LZM_blog.html

One of my older brothers is living in Washington D.C. and told me about all of the snow!  My other older brother, who lives in Boston with his wife and 3 little girls, told me he wasn't prepared at all.  It's funny for me to think about a state OTHER than Minnesota getting snow before us!  I also feel like we have been incredibly lucky with the warmth that we've had so far.  Most of the time we get snow before Halloween But not this year. Rumor has it though, that we will have snow within the next 2 weeks.  Don't know if I am excited or not!  Actually, once 102.9FM starts playing Christmas music on November 1, I would be happy to have snow.  I love the spirit of the holidays! We have started Christmas Fest music in choir too.

This past weekend I was worried about having snow because I played in an ultimate frisbee tournament down at Winona State University, called "Hallowinona".  We were lucky and did not get snow! I was yet again reminded of why I love it so much -- because of the team dynamics, being outside, and the honesty with which people play!

7 billion Population!

According to the United Nations, today the world has hit a population of 7 billion people.  Geez!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-population-not-only-grows-but-grows-old/2011/10/25/gIQAdt17VM_story.html

Apparently we are "going gray"; or in other terms, there are way more old people than there used to be, and way less young people than there used to be.

"The aging of the human race has been faster than anyone could have imagined a few decades ago. Fertility rates have plunged globally; simultaneously, life spans have increased. The result is a re-contoured age graph: The pyramid, once with a tiny number of old folks at the peak and a broad foundation of children, is inverting. In wealthy countries, the graph already has a pronounced middle-age spread."


We do not have enough young children to replace the older people in the work force because of the fertility rates being so low.  Experts always thought it would just be something that took care of itself; but it didn't.  Cultures may change because of this:


"The aging of the world will change cultures in myriad ways. People may have to extend their working lives far beyond the traditional retirement age. Countries may start competing for immigrants. Across the planet, vast numbers of people already are migrating from high-fertility countries to those that need workers"


It will be interesting to grow older in a world where the elderly are more common than the youth and to see what happens in the next 20 years as the world tries to increase fertility rates.

Vaudeville and Performing

With Vaudeville on my mind, yesterday in my Christmas fest mass choir rehearsal I couldn't help but think about performing.  Vaudeville performers were so passionate about what they did and everyone was so into it.  Anton and Aspaas always talk about how we as singers need to put passion into our singing.  It has to be more than a note and a word.  We have to translate it into our own lives a so that we can convey a passion to our audience.
Vaudeville performers would also 'get the hook' if they were not pleasing to the audience or if they were not family-friendly (and appropriate) in the later years of Vaudeville.  This is somewhat synonymous with choir here at St. Olaf.  Not that we 'get the hook' persay, but we are expected to have the highest standard of musical quality and integrity and work ethic as possible.  And if we don't, we get yelled at, or, we simply just feel very bad/guilty for not putting in the same amount of work as other musicians.  We of course keep our music appropriate as well.
Lastly, Vaudeville performers made up their own acts, whereas as a singer in Christmas fest we have our 'act" (aka music) handed to us.  This means that as a performer, we have to listen to our director and conform ourselves to sing the pieces the way he or she wants it.  This is different for orchestrating it on our own because this means that we have to listen to our director, our peers, and ourselves.  There is a little less freedom, but there is also a lighter burden because it means we do not have to discipline the group without the help of a leader.

Child Labor

"...Although in our work girls under sixteen, as well as boys, are counted children.  It will be remembered that the census returns place girls over fifteen among adults, but reckon boys as children until sixteen years" (Hull-House Maps and Papers 52).

Girls were considered adults before boys were.  What?  Humans are humans, children are children, age is age.  This is saying that 15 years old meant that girls were adults, but boys had another year of childhood.  So girls' childhoods were taken from them even earlier than they were supposed to be.  First off, I am going to hit this from a feminist standpoint.  Girls were supposed to grow up faster and become adults before boys; so in some ways girls had more responsibility, they lost their childhood before boys.
We talked yesterday in class about how Hiis's pictures sent the message that children lost their childhoods; they were forced to act older, to grow up faster, to have more responsibility.  What goes along with this message is the assumption that childhood is a right.  Everyone has a right to a childhood; I personally believe that one of the greatest (yet very common) tragedies is when children lose their childhood.  I believe that when children are forced to grow up fast, to have to seek out love on their own, to have to fend for themselves, they are robbed and something within them "breaks".  What "breaks" is the child's sense of safeness, the sense that they are okay and that they will be okay.  When faced with hardship during the early years of childhood, children are robbed of growing up and believing that they can have a good life.  They are robbed of the vision of the American Dream.

America and Individualism

A question from "Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half'" article: 
"If different "races" and nationalities possess inherent moral and cultural characteristics, how can that be reconciled with the American creed of individualism?"


I LOVE this question, because I struggle with the idea of American "individualism".  It seems to me as though society wants us to conform to the 'norm'.  Yet there is this strive, this American Dream to be individualistic, to stick out.   How can these two ideals coexist?  I have a hard time with this.  


I think of Perfect Cities, and how different jobs, the upward mobility of Chicago as a whole, and the emergence of women's and men's rights caused this city to be individualistic. But then I find myself kind of clumping together all the people of Chicago into little groups and just assuming they were all the same; it is just that simple.   But then this defeats the "individualistic" vision I have of Chicago.  Can a city have individualism itself, even if the people are not all individualistic?   Can individualism naturally exist in a person, or does the idea of individualism have to be planted in his head?  Is it even individualism if someone before him thought of it?


Inherent moral and cultural characteristics will always be a part of America.  We are a big hodge-podge pish-posh of different cultures and morals.  This makes these different morals and cultures individualistic.  They are defined, they stick out.  But do the people?  Or are they just swallowed up into the group?  Does individualism of a group or a city cancel the possibility that a member of that group or city can achieve individualism?

Cantorei Choir Tour 2011

I spent this fall break with Cantorei Choir, touring the midwest (Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska).  As there was a lot of bus time, I took the time to read Perfect Cities, and I came across this quote:

"The tourist of this era, then, was a person who intentionally placed himself or herself in a strange situation, for pleasure and for instruction"(James Gilbert 22)

I am a tourist!  Of the midwest, on a choir tour.  So...here's my experience on this trip in terms of this quote.

1. "...placed herself in a strange situation":  I placed myself in a strange situation, that's for sure!  I got on a bus with 85 other people of whom I probably knew 15 at MOST; went to 3 states (drove through 4 if we we count Iowa!) that really don't have too much to offer except for the churches we are singing at and lots lots LOTS of cows; and I stayed with host families each night.  So I basically got on a bus to spend 4.5 days with people I didn't really know.  Strange?  I thought it would be.
But, as per St. Olaf habit, it was SO MUCH FUN.

2. "for pleasure":  I wasn't really going on tour for 'pleasure' persay.  I was going because I was required to as a member of the choir.  But, it turned out to be for 'pleasure' by the end -- I enjoyed the people and the music so so much.

3.  "and for instruction":  It is true that I learned a lot on this trip.  I learned more about singing and music.  I learned more about people.  I learned information about the different states we went to.  I learned what it feels like to be in a car that runs over an animal (and how emotionally traumatic it is).  I learned how to stay with people I knew nothing about.

Oh, job applications

I just finished taking 2-hours-worth of assessments as part of my interview for Target's "business analyst intern" position that I am trying to get for next summer.   These assessments reminded me a little of psychology class -- I took a personality test; they were also a reminder of the ACT (high school!) because I took a 'numerical analysis' test and a reading test.   It's funny how we never get too old for tests.

I am reminded again of how competitive the business industry is, let alone any industry.  The fight for and the drive for success starts right here, right now.  It's so different to how it used to be; my dad talks about applying for college 3 months before it started, how he didn't pick his major until senior year, and how graduate school wasn't really expected.  Now these things have completely changed!

I feel as if I am in the midst of 'writing' the most important part of my life story during these next few years. What I do now will significantly impact what happens in my career, family, life in general.  As we read through different texts (Quicksand, Ragtime, etc) and we go through an entire story of a character, beginning to end, I find myself wondering what my story will turn out to be. What do I want my story to be?  What do I want my ending to be?

As for the present moment, I am off for a fall break of touring the midwest with Cantorei Choir!  WOOHOO

Dreams of Change -- Quicksand

"She began to make plans and to dream delightful dreams of change, of life somewhere else.  Some place where at last she would be permanently satisfied. Her anticipatory thoughts waltzed and eddied abou to the sweet silent music of change.  With rapture almost, she let herself drop into the blissful sensation of visualizing herself in different, strange places, among approving and admiring people, where she would be appreciated, and understood" (Larsen 53).

This is perhaps my favorite passage that I have read thus far in Quicksand.  And what I see when I read these words are sadness.  Sadness about life; dissatisfaction as well.
I am once again reminded that every individual struggles with something.  It can be easy to get caught up with what we would like to change about ourselves, our friends, our community, America in general. People always have complaints, they always have things they would like to improve.  And while improvement is not a bad thing, it is also good to recognize what we have, just as we are. Marissa recently wrote a blog about recognizing how great our bodies are just as they are--everything they allow us to do.
However, I realize Quicksand is a little bit of a different situation.  It is set in a time where everything was judged, changing, and hard to find one's place in.   Of course she wanted to find a place where she was appreciated and understood.  To find a world in which she could be herself and not have to worry about being "out" of the crowd.
It's interesting to think about this and how things don't really change that much.  The need to be understood and appreciated travels through generations.  I find myself wondering if these needs are learned, or if they are innate in us as Americans.

Team = Social Capital?

I played in an ultimate frisbee tournament this weekend; as usual, it was super fun and made me super tired!  But, at the end of the day, this thought popped into my mind:  Ultimate frisbee tournaments are an out-picturing of social capital (last semester, anyone?)
Within each team there is so much love and acceptance.  Teammates have to trust each other to catch, throw, follow through the continuations. We spend so much time together that we all know each other impeccably well. But there is more than just that.
Ultimate frisbee is a culture.  The jerseys, the shorts, the hats.  The attitudes.  The games that you play with the team you are playing against -- not just the game of ultimate frisbee, but during timeouts and afterwards, games are played between the teams.  Silly games, like "WA" or "kungfu" or "mini tanks".  Games that allow for laughter.   I can't think of many sports where rival teams get a long like this.
Part of the reason I love ultimate is the 'spirit of the game'.  There are no referees.  Fouls are called on a trust basis; you call a foul if you get fouled. The person that fouled you can 'contest' or 'no contest'. Honesty is a big component.
Both between teammates and between teams, there is a lot of trust and kind attitudes that are shared.  Sounds like a great kind of social capital to me!

Coherence

My paragraph that I chose for coherence, from Takaki:

"The demand for Mexican exclusion resonated among Anglo workers.  Viewing Mexicans as a competitive labor force, they clamored for the closing of the border.  In 1910, the American Federation of Labor's Advocate asked: 'Is it a pretty sign to see men, brawny American men with callouses on their hands and empty stomachs - sitting idly on benches in the plaza, while slim-legged peons with tortillas in their stomachs, work in the tall buildings across the way?  DO you prefer the name Fernadez, alien, to the name, James, citizen, on your payroll?' Five years later, the Advocate again denounced the employment of Mexicans as cheap laborers:  "True AMericans do not want or advocate the importation of any people who cannot be absorbed into full citizenship, who cannot eventually be raised to our highest social standard.  Clearly, race was being used as a weapon by the American Federation of Labor:  Mexicans not only constituted 'cheap labor' but were regarded as incapable of becoming fully American."

Who Gets to Decide?

As I read Gay New York, I can't help but think "Who gets to decide?"  Who gets to decide what is acceptable?  Why does society shun that which is different or new?  When did this phenomenon start? What is its root? 

Doctorow writes, in a section about the revulsion against gay life (this also connects to my last blog post about masculinity):

"The revulsion against gay life in the early 1930s was part of a larger reaction to the perceived 'excesses' of the Prohibition years and the blurring of the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable public sociability.  But it also reflected the crisis in gender arrangements precipitated by the Depression.  As many men lost their jobs, their status as breadwinners, and their sense of mastery over their own futures, the central tenets undergirding their gender status were threatened.  A plethora of sociological studies of 'The Unemployed Man and His Family' reflected a widespread concern that massive male unemployment and job insecurity had upset gender relations and diminished the status of men in the family.  The reaction against the challenges posed to manhood by Depression dconditions was widely evident in the culture, from the celbration of pwoerful male physicques in the public art of the New Deal to the attacks on married women for 'stealing' men's jobs and the laws passed by several states requiring women to be dismissed from teaching jobs when they married.  Lesbians and gay men began to seem more dangerous in this context - as figures whose defiant perversity threatened to undermine the reproduction of normative gender and sexual arrangements already threatened by the upheavals of the thirties.  The new laws forbidding gay people to gather openly with heterosexuals in licensed restaurants and bars and banning even the representation of homosexuality bespoke a fear that gender arrangements were so fragile, even a glimpse of an alternative might endanger them.  The risk seemed so palpable that special attention was not even given to the threats such contact or images posed to impressionable young people - the usual vehicle for the expression fo fears about social reproduction.  Even the adults who patronized TImes Square nightclubs needed to be protected from them" (353-354).

Why did society have to try so hard in order to stop a movement that wouldn't be stopped?  Why is change such a bad thing?  I have question after question...

I think of gender roles as socially acceptable.  Society accepted them, created them even, and so therefore they were good. When they were threatened, society was threatened.  Sex roles, however, were never really defined by society.  It was just assumed that everyone was straight.  Because these were undefined, when homosexuality came along, it threw society into an uproar.  Add on top of that the women who wanted to change their gender roles, and it's no wonder why society felt threatened.

But why is society threatened by change?

Where did this threat originiate?

And does it still exist?

Masculinity in Gay New York

I left class today with SO MANY thoughts racing through my head.  But the one that I kept wanting to say was about this second passage that I had also picked out for class:

There was this whole worry that the masculinity of men was being damaged in the early 1900s; that because of this gay movement, the image of the typical American masculine man would be destroyed.  But this didn't really happen, did it.  Men are still the "head of the household" and are still very respected.  They even still are regarded as (maybe) superior to women in the workforce.

Chaucey writes: "But the fairy also provoked a high degree of anxiety and scorn among middle-class men because he embodied the very things middle-class men most feared about their gender status.  His effeminacy represented in extreme form the loss of manhood middle-class men most feared in themselves, and his style seemed to undermine their efforts to shore up their manly status" (115).

This is so crucial because part of America has always been about men;  European men were the "first ones here" with Christopher Columbus.  We've always had male presidents. Male soldiers dominate. Men. Men. Men.  The masculinity of our culture is so evident, it kind of seems silly to me that these middle-class men were so afraid of losing it because of the fairies.  If you look at our culture now, men are still the center of it. I don't like admitting it, but they are.  Perhaps this gay movement that emerged in the early 1900s proves that the masculinity of men will never disappear -- it's always been here, and it will never be undermined.