Art on Pinterest

          Let me be honest.  I spend a lot of time in Pinterest.  Apparently, it's fun to look at things.  I try to make it a little more interesting by looking at different categories of things, and today I took the cultured approach and checked out the "Art" category.  One of my favorite things I saw was a set of photographs of people recreating past family photos.  I have seen this kind of thing on tumblr before, but I had never really thought about how much it is an art. 

          There’s always a before and after shot of these – the first an old, faded family photo, usually of children.  Sometimes posed, sometimes ridiculous, always looking like a nineties photo.  You know that quality I’m talking about – the way you can tell some photos weren’t made by digital cameras.  They just look unedited and awesome the way they are, because nobody looked at it immediately after and announced how terrible their face is.  And the second shot is the same people, maybe ten years later so the children aren’t super tiny, and they pull the same ridiculous faces they pulled before and it’s just hilarious because they usually don’t fit that role.  Like, crying three year old was cute, but thirteen year old is super funny. 

          I like the idea of people recreating the past – it’s the idea of nostalgia as a type of homesickness, and the past is a destination we try to reach.  In my life right now, I’ve been trying to think of ways to move forward – much like a favorite winning presidential candidate – and these photos are a reminder that the past is also a nice place to go.  There are things that shouldn’t work like they did in the past but there are things that definitely should.  

My own viewpoint, Michigan Daily reaction

Today, I came across an article on the online version of the Michigan Daily that I disagree with. 

Jeffrey McMahon begins by sharing his personal experiences with hook-up culture.  I think it’s really brave of him to share such personal experiences and perspectives via school-wide, internet-searchable newspaper. I think it’s wonderful that he shares his story, but that makes the next part of the article hurt more – he says “I know how it feels.”  He assumes that everybody else’s experiences are just like his.  He says it hurts him that women are “resigning to that lifestyle,” and he dismisses men who participate in hook-up culture as not “real men.”    He asks people to try to understand his experiences and then takes a 180 degree turn to let me as a reader know that he doesn't try to understand experiences that are different from his own.  Firstly, I don’t like it when people judge other women’s choices with regards to sexual choices.  If you can’t respect a woman who chooses to have sex, why would you respect my choice not to have sex?  I don’t want people to respect my choice because they agree with it, I want them to respect my choice because I am a human being and making choices about my sexuality is my right. Secondly, as a woman, I am very troubled when people try to define what makes someone a “real woman.”  I am a woman, and I don’t need you to tell me whether or not I’m real.  So his judgment on what a makes a "real man" irks me.  I think McMahon’s intention is to question people who use others and who dismiss commitment because they want instant gratification.  I don’t like the assumptions he uses to make that point.  Women should be able to wear what they want – even if it is “barely more than a bathing suit” – and behave how they want, without people thinking there’s something wrong with them.  Men should be able to make choices about their sex lives without being told they think women should be “possessed and used.”

Where I think McMahon really pushes his luck is when he says that women are “away from their homes and families and are now in our care,” implying that men on campus must take care of the women on campus.  I think this is an odd way of looking at it.   I backpacked Europe alone.  I flew to China alone.  I'm not saying nobody helped me.  But nobody was over my shoulder taking care of me the whole time, just as nobody is doing that now.  Men I have never met are not responsible for "taking care of me."      

McMahon’s following slippery slope assumes that men who participate in hook-up culture don’t respect or value women and that women who participate in hook-up culture do so because they have been abused or neglected by the male figures in their lives.  These assumptions sound like over-generalizations of the author’s personal experiences.  There are men who value women and have sex with them outside of committed relationships.  There are women who have sex outside of committed relationships whose parents were active and wonderful in their lives. 

McMahon then implies that if I don’t find “security, support, and comfort” in a man, I must search for it “here and there” and that I will be “ultimately left objectified and used.”  Well.  I guess he doesn't think I’m capable of holding down a secure job or getting support from my friends and family or finding comfort in my accomplishments.  Who doesn't value women now?

McMahon tells me I am “amazing and worthwhile” after that.  It’s nice of him to notice, but after what he just said, I don’t know if he really means it.  Especially because he calls me a “girl,” and follows it by telling what to do.  He tells me what to look for in a romantic partner, and what to wear.  I have never met McMahon before, but he assumes he knows what I want out of life AND that every woman on campus wants the same thing I do.  If McMahon actually cares about me, he can comment below and we can grab lunch and talk.  But if he isn't willing to get to know every woman on campus, his is in no position to give advice to them.  

Locke

“ Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others; become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.”
 – John Locke, Two Treatises of Government

 My awesome econ class this semester just read Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and we talked a lot about this passage – the turfs passage – because it’s been a heavily studied thing in economic history.  The big deal about it is the phrase “the turfs my servant has cut.”  Locke’s general idea of property is that, if you put work into something, and anybody else could have done it, than it is your property.  So if you plant an apple tree, it’s your apple tree, because anybody else could have planted an apple tree just as you did.  

So the turf’s passage causes many people to give an intellectual double take – it is easy to get that my horse’s grazing land is mine, and that if I dig ore it is mine – but I did not cut the turfs.  My servant cut the turfs.  So why is it my property and not my servants? Like I said, this causes many people to give an involuntary intellectual double take.  A little “what the hell” moment, if you will.  Locke’s point is that a person’s work creates his own property, so why is he saying that the fruits of one man’s labor are another man’s property?  This didn’t cause me to do an intellectual double take.  Look at language in which Locke writes – you can tell from the passage he likes to use personal pronouns.  He also likes to talk about “we” – he is including himself and his reader, although he may mean all of man when he says “we.”  Because he also likes to talk about man – man this and man that – to talk about the nature of . . . man.  And given when he was writing this, I am certain he was not using “man” as an all-inclusive and gender non-specific, as it is often used today.  His language and the time period in which he is writing make it clear to me that the fruits of my labor would not be counted in my property.  Just like the grass the servant cuts, the things that I create or achieve are the property of another.  The turf passage does not stand out to me because I do not stand out to Locke – it makes sense to me that he might consider the fruits of some people’s labor as a different person’s property because Locke has been telling me that this is the case the whole time.  

This is something I totally expect out of this class – these are not modern writings, and I do happen to know that history is not all hunky dory when it comes to the rights of women.  I’m actually really excited because my professor managed to get a female economist onto the reading list.   My point is just that all these feminist perspectives on things pop into my head and it’s totally awesome.  

Graffiti

Here's a bitty video of my favorite bit of graffiti in Københavns Hovedbanegård, the central train station. Once I moved in with my host family, I took a train from this platform almost everyday.

10,000 points to whoever comments the song I'm singing! :)

Relay for Life - Step One: Sign Up!

Hey - I'm running in Relay for Life with the University of Michigan Wesley Foundation!

My fundraising goal is $100 - hopefully I'll make a few blog posts about my teams fundraisers!

I'd rather have the capuchin monkey

So I went to Starbucks this morning

And I didn't want to get a really sugary drink

So I ordered a Capuchin Monkey

No, not really, that's just the first auto correct option, and I liked that

Really I ordered a cappuccino

Because it doesn't have lots o sugar

And then I went to work

And when I started drinking it, I thought "well, I don't particularly like this"

So I put four sugar packets into it

THE END

Ten Years Later

I was ten years old and in Mrs. Hedges fifth grade class. We knew something was wrong all day, but nobody told us anything. We had indoor recess. Two kids from my class were picked up early. We were dismissed for the bus in an unusually organized manner. And as I was making my unusually organized way from my classroom to the bus I ran into my father. And I thought “father dearest, whatever are you doing here, you are supposed to be at work.” Or something of that sort. He had come to pick up my sister and me, and he was surprised that we didn’t know, and he told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center Towers in New York.

So I felt relieved. I had known something was wrong all day. I had been trying to figure out what was wrong all day. The best my fifth grade mind could come up with was something about a guy with a gun near my school. I had heard rumors about what was wrong all day. The best my fifth grade peers could come up with was a bomb scare at the Renaissance Center. To find out that whatever was wrong happened 635 miles away in a building I had never heard of was quite a relief. I felt guilty about that for some time, but I know that at the same time I did feel really bad (angry, sad, etc) for what happened in New York. So I’ve mostly gotten over feeling guilty about it. Relief might have been inappropriate, but I was ten.

That’s my September 11th story. Where I was, how I was feeling. And it just amazes me that there are people who are alive today who might not have their own. It’s not that the attack feels like yesterday. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.

My grandmother’s 5th birthday was the seventh of December, 1941. That was a long time ago. She remembers when it happened. Not the details of the attack or what was on the radio, but the reactions of her family, and how they were listening to the radio, and how everybody put down every other thing that they were working on to learn about what had happened. And she knows how that day changed the world.

And I think that’s important to remember on the tenth anniversary of September 11th: Even those who didn’t know what was going on on this day in 2001, they know how people reacted. My ten year old self heard the words “plane” and “crash,” heard statistics and numbers, but didn’t know what any of it really meant. A five year old probably remembers his parents transfixed to the television, or people being worried. Those younger than that are likely to not remember anything. But in the past ten years, we – those who were really young on September 11th 2001 – have seen things. Among other things, we have seen airline security tighten, had a lot of education about what terrorism is, and watched as our government pays for a huge war. We may not have known or fully understood what was going on then, but September 11th is a as much a part of our lives as it is for those who knew things or who could begin to understand what it might mean for the future.