7 Quick Takes Friday Part XVII

1. At Suellen's graduation, I wore "nice" shoes for three days in a row. I may never walk again.

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2. I haven't dried my hair in a week (I've been putting it in a French braid) because I couldn't find my hair dryer. I couldn't find it when I was packing to be away most of the past week, so I didn't bring it with me, and I couldn't find it when I got back to my apartment yesterday. I happened to need something unrelated from the drawer where my hair dryer belongs, and when I opened it, I was shocked - shocked - to see my hair dryer in its drawer. Why would I have ever put it away? It may belong in that drawer, but it lives on the floor next to that drawer, plugged in to the wall. It never even occurred to me to look there.

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3. Speaking of hair dryers, here's a funny story that reveals quite a lot about me:
I was home over some break at some point during college, and hadn't brought a hair dryer, so I used my mother's. I didn't ask her, just used it and put it back where it came from. Some time later in the day, she made mention of the fact that I'd used it. "How did you know it was me?" I asked. (After all, there are two other girls in the house.) "Because when you put it away, the cord was wrapped around it just so with no twists or kinks."

It continues to boggle my mind that people can stand to put away their small appliances with the cords all loose and twisty and messy. I can't do it. (This once got me a job, when I used the hair dryer anecdote in an interview to illustrate that I'm neat and attentive to detail.)

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4. I'm about to put my last sheet of pumpkin leather in the oven. I started my concerted effort to use pumpkin a little over two months ago, with the goal of finishing all the pumpkin in my freezer before I moved out of this apartment, and, on the day before I move out, I've finally succeeded. I'm a little sad to have closed the "pumpkin" chapter of my life, since I don't see myself saving mass quantities of pumpkin at any point in the near future. I've come across a few good recipes, though.

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5. Remember when I mentioned the paper I had to do? That I couldn't get an extension on? I pulled an all-nighter the night before it was due (at 5 pm). I still had a few pages left to write, which I finished in the car. We stopped at a friend's house to pick up some things before heading to the memorial service, and I plugged my computer into his internet to e-mail my paper. When I signed into my e-mail account, there was an e-mail from the professor, from only a couple hours earlier (about 6 hours before the paper was due) offering an extension to the whole class. I was furious. You can't give me an extension to go to a memorial service, but you can give the whole class one on a whim? And not tell us until right before it's due? Like it's any good to me; clearly I'd had to finish my paper by then. On top of everything else, one of the reasons he gave me for not allowing me an extension was that grades had to be submitted by Wednesday. If he was so conscientious about submitting grades by Wednesday, why haven't I gotten my grade yet?

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6. I don't get a lot of hits from Google searches, but I've noticed that this week, a number of people have been directed to Frankly, My Dear after searching for some variation on "NYU graduation speaker." Funny what happens when you actually blog about relevant things as they're happening. Maybe I should have paid more attention so I could have actually written something substantive.

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7. Investigating that last phenomenon, I came across this NYU student (Tisch, I think) who live-Twittered graduation. Probably funnier if you were there, but I find it very amusing and true-to-life.

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The Monday Project

A fundraising idea from the Women's Health Center of Jacksonville, FL, to make the occasion of Obama's Commencement Speech at Notre Dame the biggest pro-life fundraiser ever. Will this be a positive or a negative moment in pro-life activism? The Monday Project asks, "Obama speaks at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday. What happens on Monday?"

If you donate through their website, they'll send a postcard to Notre Dame for you. If you take the opportunity to otherwise donate to pro-life causes to mark the occasion, I wouldn't hesitate to send your own announcement to Notre Dame. If you're an alum withholding donations from the university, consider donating your money to pro-life causes instead, and let the university - and how about the Obama administration? - know about it. Even if you're not all that worked up about Obama speaking at Notre Dame, consider it a reminder to donate to pro-life causes and help save lives.

Every little bit helps. I just donated. How about you?

H/T Amy Welborn

Oh, the painful irony

Suellen's graduation today was beautiful, though my personal preference is for Georgetown's more intimate, more formal, more personal ceremony. Some of the speakers were great (Whoopi Goldberg at the Tisch graduation event yesterday was great, though I'm pretty sure there was a point where she implied that anyone who didn't get the interpretive dance number couldn't be human. Where does that leave me?)

Clinton was decent, although my sister remarked that she forgot she was at a graduation; she was right, it seemed a little like a press conference in both tone and content sometimes.

In the address, she actually said, "In the times that we face, we know we don't have a person to waste. . ."

Is it possible that someone as intelligent and well-educated and logical as she appears to be actually doesn't understand how many people, potentials, lives, and ideas abortion wastes, in this and any other time? Is it possible?

(As for yesterday's post, apparently I can't help thinking about the victims of abortion, graduation day or no graduation day.)

Heartfelt Conviction vs. Heartfelt Desire

I've spent the past two days at various NYU graduation events; my sister Suellen is graduating from the Tisch School of the Arts (and boy, let me tell you! Art school graduation is way different from any other graduation I've ever been a part of! But very nice, nonetheless). Today is the real graduation ceremony, at Yankee Stadium, with Hillary Clinton as speaker.

Because of Suellen's graduation, I've spent a lot of time lately thinking (fondly) of my own, from Georgetown, last year. And because of happenings in the news and the blogosphere, I've been thinking (worriedly) of the what-ifs and what-would-I-dos.

The fact that the graduation speaker tomorrow is Hillary Clinton does not perturb me in the least. She's not my number one choice, of course, but I have no particular objection, nor surprise, at her selection by NYU. Besides, today is about supporting my sister, not my own politics or even my own morals.

My graduation speaker last year at Georgetown was the founder of Teach for America. Nice speech about making a difference in the world because we're young and idealistic and assume we can do things the world says are impossible.

But I keep thinking about what I would do in a different situation.

What if I'd been at a different prestigious Catholic university? What if I'd been graduating a year later? What if my graduation speaker last year had been similar to Notre Dame's this year?

Would I have been outraged that my Catholic school was bestowing an honor on a pro-abortion politician? Yes.

Would I have been pissed that my graduation ceremony had been hijacked by hype over the speaker? Definitely.

Would I have boycotted the ceremony? Would I have attended the protest and the alternate ceremony in, say, Dahlgren Chapel or Copley Crypt? I'm really not sure.

In that situation, I should have, definitely. With my beliefs, and the beliefs of my church, my university's faith, being disregarded like last month's news, with the lives and deaths of millions of innocents being ignored in favor of prestige and "honor," I should have taken a stand. Made sure that my presence at graduation did not contribute to any news reports about how many students at the school were ambivalent, or glad to see him, or didn't care about abortion, anyway. Taken steps to ensure that my presence did not appear to bestow legitimacy on his presence the way ND's invite so improperly appeared to bestow legitimacy on his beliefs.

But we're talking about my graduation day. I want to be able to celebrate with my friends (all of whom, I assure you, will not be protesting or boycotting). I spent the past 4 years with them. We were there for each other through miserable finals, bad grades, sleepless nights, homesickness, new friends, break-ups, heartbreaks, new loves, new jobs, sick parents, the deaths of grandparents, the first flowers of each spring, the first snowfalls of each winter, terrible professors, wonderful professors, exciting insights, personal injury, bad decisions, 2-day hangovers, that time the cops broke up my party, the 2004 election, the 2006 election, the Red Sox winning the penant (freakin' Red Sox), the Hoyas getting to the Final Four; the point of college is the education you gain, but the most important parts of college are the friendships and the life experiences that make them up.

That is what I want to be thinking about on my graduation day. Not Obama. Not politics. Not the victims of abortion. (I spend time thinking about and praying for them every day. Can't graduation be about me? (Self-centered? Yes. Appropriately so? Probably not. Understandable? I think so.))

It'd be an easy choice if all my friends felt the same way I did about Obama, the abortion debate, and the bishops' guidelines. I'm not saying, of course, that my friends' opinions take precedence over mine; what I'm saying is that I shouldn't have to choose, not on my graduation day, between my heartfelt convictions and celebrating graduation with the people with whom I'm graduating.

And I'm saying that if I were forced to choose, I don't know what I'd do. I know where I'd want to be. I know where I should be. And I know they're not the same place.

Fun Trivia About Deoderant

From CNN:

1. Be thankful for your foul body odor. According to anthropologist Louis Leakey, it might be responsible for early man's survival. Leakey's theory claims that most predators avoided feasting on humans because our body odor was "too repugnant."

2. Not only did the ancient Egyptians give us pyramids and flush toilets, they also pioneered the field of deodorants. Egyptians were the first to popularize the idea of applying scents to armpits, usually using cinnamon and other spices that wouldn't turn rancid in the heat.

3. The Roman poet Ovid preferred a more proactive solution. In Book III of the Art of Love, he cautions women against carrying goats under their arms.

Read the rest at CNN!

Just the other day, when I got on a bus next to someone who clearly hadn't showered in some time, it occurred to me that 1,000 years ago, everyone smelled like homeless people. Imagine what buses were like then!

7 Quick Takes Friday Part XVI

1. My mom is on facebook.

Let me say that again: My mom is on facebook.

Prepare for the apocalypse, kids. This is the first sign.

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2. Her very first status message (I'm so proud!) is "I'm freaking my kids out."

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3. As promised in number 7 here, I proceeded to leave my last paper until the night or two before it was due. At this writing, I've got 14 pages to write in 2 days. I'm writing a blog post instead. Wish me luck.

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4. How come all of the sudden, in grad school, professors require Chicago style citations? All through undergrad - in the same fields, mind you - I was asked for MLA or APA. I'm 22. You can't teach an old dog new citation styles. Writing this paper will take me twice as long as it would if I could cite intuitively.

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5. Things I hate: canker sores, apparently. I've never had a bad one until two days ago. Ouch.

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6. Everyone in my life knows I have a 15-page paper to write before we leave for the funeral first thing Friday morning. They are all asking how it's going. It is no fun to continue telling each of them that I only have 1 page written, no matter how many hours have elapsed since the last time I told that person - or any other - that I had written one page. I've begun telling them that I'm "writing." I am conspicuously and intentionally neglecting to mention that I am "writing" on my blog that they know nothing about - not my paper.

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7. This paper I keep bringing up is a hagiology (just learned that word today; it's the study of hagiography) of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. I really enjoyed reading the various biographies of the Saint. But, my professor actually told us we didn't need to read all of the books we were writing about. He said we could get a decent appreciation for the books by reading the prefaces, introductions, and conclusions and skimming a little. Finals certainly haven't left time for any more than that. I really wish, though, that I had time to actually read about the books about the life of this fascinating and holy woman.

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Spring Break Part II, much-belated

About a bazillion years ago, I promised a post about the low-lights of my Spring Break. That was a long time ago, but I'd like to relive my vacation instead of studying for my finals. They're not particularly terrible; most are about the weather. Here goes:

1) It started raining as we were loading the car Saturday morning. It rained for the next 4 days. Then it stopped. Then it started again.

1a) And when I say it "started again" I mean this: We had one morning to spend on the beach. We got there, it was cloudy, we laid on the beach anyway. The sun came out. Excited, but worried about sunburn (Rhett and I are both pasty white kids), I went across the street to CVS to get sunscreen. I got back to the beach and began applying sunscreen. The rain had started before I'd finished putting the sunscreen on.


1b) When I was in high school, there was a period of time where it rained for two weeks straight. Ever since then, I've thought of how a story about never-ending rain would make for a good horror story, but I can't think of a plot, except the ones that have already been done, like Ray Bradbury's All in a Summer Day. (Read it here, after clicking on the link under "Training Resources.") (That, for the record, is a story I can't even read. I find it too horrible.)


2) We had a lot of things planned for our first day, Sunday in Virginia Beach, so I got up to go to a 7 AM Mass. I don't think I've ever been to church that early before, and I don't think I will be again until I'm at least 65, like all the other people who were there that morning. The priest gave a rather long, complicated homily that had good points but was a little difficult to follow. He ended with talking about how you shouldn't do good deeds or pious practices so others would see how good you were. "Do them in secret," he said, "God will love you more if you do."

Really? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that how much God loves me doesn't depend on anything I do.

3a) I left a pair of pajamas in Savannah. I just plain forgot them. They must have been under the covers or a towel or something.

3b) I started to run short of underwear towards the end of the trip, so in Florida I took 3 worn pairs out of my suitcase, washed them in the sink, and hung them up to dry in the bathroom. I didn't miss them until I was most of the way through South Carolina. One of them was my favorite pair, too.

3c) The following Monday, as I was heading in to work, I couldn't find my badge. I got a provisional badge for the day, and looked through my suitcase and all over the house when I got home. No luck. I had to get a new one; my old one could be anywhere on the East Coast.


4) When I got back, I had a headache for 4 straight days. I'm pretty sure it was my eyes adjusting to the new glasses I got when I was in New York; I hadn't had an appropriate prescription for over a year.


5) We had an amazing trip, but my goodness, a 9-stop road trip over 9 days is not a relaxing vacation.


6) Our 30-minute trip over an incredibly long bridge in the cloudy, gray rain. There was nothing but gray for as far as the eye could see: gray bridge, gray clouds, gray rain, gray water. The bridge was so long we couldn't see where it ended, and I literally thought we'd be on it forever. It seemed like it was never going end. We called it "Purgatory."

Are people also wondering how many Lutherans play for the Capitals?

This evening I started a Google search. (No, it was not related to my paper. Stop asking.) It began "Catholics who. . ." and Google's drop down menu filled in possible searches:

Catholics who voted for obama
Catholics who use birth control
Catholics who have had abortions
Catholics who left the church
Catholics who support abortion
Catholics who have left the church
Catholics who have abortions
Catholics who have played for rangers

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. . .

Yeah, what ARE they for?

While I was reading comments on posts on my family genealogy blog:

Rhett, looking over my shoulder: Wow, do people really read your blog?
Me: Apparently a couple actually do.
Rhett: I mean, I know I read it--
Me: You do?
Rhett: Of course. What are boyfriends for, if not to read your genealogy blog?

(Compare to Suellen's attitude here.)

A Prayer Request AND a Rant

First, I'd like to ask for prayers for a friend's family. His completely healthy father had a stroke, out of nowhere this weekend. He's on life support, with minimal brain function, and they're planning on disconnecting the machines as soon as they've arranged organ donation. So I'd like your prayers that they get through this time as best they can.

Second, they're Jewish. I'm not sure whether I'll be going to the services - depends on whether he wants us to make the trip, and if he does I'll go - but in case I do: Does anyone know anything about proper behavior at a Jewish funeral and/or when families are sitting shiva?

Third, coincidences.

-Morbidly ironic coincidence: This friend was the freshman year roommate of the friend whose mother had an aneurysm just two weeks ago (She is still facing serious problems, but continues to do better than she was expected to.) Bad week for the vascular health of the families of that dormroom, huh?

-More than coincidence: At church last night - not two hours before I heard the news - the priest (a priest whom I've noticed has a particular gift for saying exactly what I need to hear), in the course of his rather long but very good homily, used the phrase, "We're all just one phone call away from being brought to our knees." He was referring to that unexpected, unwelcome news that changes everything. "Too true right now," another friend said when I mentioned it.

And fourth, a rant. I have 1 final to take on Tuesday, and a paper due Friday. I e-mailed both professors explaining the situation and the fact that while I still very much don't know what's going on or what will happen when over the course of the next week, there's a strong possibility that I'll have to travel out of town for the funeral of a close friend's father, and if it's a conflict, would it be okay if I asked to make up the exam at another time/have an extension on the paper?

The professor whose class I have a test for said sure, we could reschedule the test as long as it was within a few days. This fits with the caring and human attitude of every professor I've ever approached with a situation like this.

(A friend's mother died during mid-terms last year, and we - 11 or 12 students - were able to drop everything and travel to her funeral. Every professor we approached understanding and flexible. My grandfather died during finals the next semester, and I handed in one of my last papers shorter than it should have been, unpolished, and with no conclusion. I wasn't going to say anything, because, as it happens, I found out my grandfather had died only two hours before the paper was due. I shouldn't have left it until that late, anyway. But a friend explained the situation without my knowledge, and the professor was very kind and accepted it as it was.)

The other professor responded that extensions are only applicable to students whose relatives have died, so no, I could not have an extension. Let's be clear. I wasn't asking for an extension because I was so grief-stricken about the death of this very nice man I've met half a dozen times. I was asking for an extension to allow me to travel up the East Coast so that I could support a friend who is grieving his father. Just to make the demands on me slightly less burdensome, because the 3 days that I had planned to spend writing papers were now likely to be spend making a round trip to New England. So that I could be a decent human being and fulfill the basic duties of friendship. Surely even a history professor must realize that comforting those in mourning is more important than a 15-20 page historiographic essay. We've even talked in this class about how the ideal profession is one which allows us to do some good and make the world a better place. How, pray tell, does a professor believe he is fulfilling that by insisting that students get no latitude to put human beings before graded papers?

Of course, my initial reaction to his response was a little less elegant, and a little more along the lines of "What an @$$!"

You've heard of the Flying Nun. . . ?

From Eilmer of Malmesbury, a medieval Benedictine monk, we get the "first known serious flight attempt."

Dr. Richard P. Hallion writes:

"The first known serious flight attempt in world history occurred about a thousand years before the Wright brothers, in western England. Then, a young Benedictine monk leapt with a crude pair of cloth wings from a watchtower of a church abbey at the beginning of the 11th century. This monk, known to history as Eilmer of Malmesbury, covered a furlong--a distance of approximately 600 feet--before landing heavily and breaking both legs. Afterwards, he remarked that the cause of his crash was that 'he had forgotten to provide himself with a tail.'"


Puts that trip to Kitty Hawk into a whole new perspective. (He went further on his first flight than the Wrights did on theirs; they started from the ground, though.)

Via Fr. Z

7 Quick Takes Friday Part XV

1. Watching House as I tried to write a 15-page research paper made me think that one of the perks of doing genealogy is that if I ever get sick, especially if I ever have some crazy disease that needs to be diagnosed by the country's leading diagnostician, is that I'll be able to give the doctors a familial medical history going back to my great-great-great-great-grandmother. (She died of old age, so she tells us nothing, but still.)

2. Speaking of medical histories, a few years ago, I broke my nose. After a week or two, I still seemed like I was congested and runny, for no good reason, and my mom made me see an ENT. The form asked for a family medical history, and I gave a brief one - Dad had sinus problems, sister has asthma, grandmother died of breast cancer. She asked for more details. And more details. And more details. I had skipped the part about what kind of health my "aunt" was in, because I have *9* aunts. She asked how old each one was, what exact health problems each had ever suffered from. But when it really started to get ridiculous was when she had to know whether my twin aunts were identical or fraternal. For a broken nose. Could someone with medical training please explain how the type of twins my mother's younger sisters are could possibly have any bearing on the depressed fracture I got from being being headbutted during Judo class?*

3. Irony: having been too busy last week to put together 7 Quick Takes, but realizing that I posted *9* quick short little 1-3 sentence posts in the days surrounding last Friday.


4. I opened up my Gmail account when I was studying abroad in Florence. Because of this, when it takes a moment for me to sign in or sign out, the screen reads, "Attendere prego" instead of "Wait please" (which I assume is what it would say if it were speaking to me in English). I have found this endlessly amusing every single time it's happened for the past 2 years.

5. Speaking of Italy, I am dying to go back. I didn't have the stereotypical "best three months of my life, I never wanted to leave" study abroad experience, and I couldn't wait to get home. For a long time afterwards, I thought I was done with Italy. As nice a place as it might be, I couldn't imagine going back without reliving the soul-crushing loneliness of that trip.

Last week, I saw the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where the family travels to Italy, and I've been pining for Italia ever since. I think I'm over my study abroad-induced phobia, and instead I'm missing the relatives I met while I was there, remembering how swimming in Mediterranean was so much more fun than any other swimming I've ever done, crying over commercials for Barilla pasta, contemplating taking a summer course to brush up on my Italian, and sending Rhett links that have pictures of beautiful places in Italy in an attempt to convince him that we need to start saving now, because our honeymoon is going to be a very long, very comprehensive, and very expensive Italian tour.

6. Just yesterday, I was thinking about how the pursuit of genealogy is chiefly involved in finding documentation to back up what you already know and disseminating information to other people. The "Ah-ha Moments" are few and far between. Then I happened upon an Ancestry.com member tree which I'm almost positive records, though it spells her maiden name wrong, the descendants of my great-great-grandmother's older sister. I literally got up and danced around the living the room, a little butt-wiggling, arms-flailing move that never would have seen the light of day if my roommate had been home.

7. As you may be able to tell, I spent the past day doing genealogy. This is part of a vicious cycle, wherein immediately after I hand in an assignment, I feel that I both need and deserve a break. Then I take a break until a day or two my next assignment is due and am forced to work for constantly, to the extent of not sleeping and eating only Ritz crackers with nothing on them for days at a time. As soon as that is done, predictably, feel that I need a break until immediately before my next assignment is due. The next week is going to suck.

*FYI, headbutting is not a legitimate Judo technique.