Two museums...

The summer after my junior year of high school I spent a little over a week on an American Indian reservation in North Dakota, called the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux reservation. I was part of a team running a week of overnight camp for middle schoolers on the reservation. It was an amazing time for many reasons. The week opened my eyes to the plight of American Indians in our country. On the reservation, the alcholism rate was 80%, and the unemployment rate was 60%. The land on the reservation was pretty much infertile. The towns in the reservation were lifeless. Beyond lifeless. They would suck the life right out of you. Feelings of uselessness, boredom, depression, and worthlessness pervaded the place. I get up in arms about blacks and Hispanics being oppressed in America, but they have it good compared to the lot we gave American Indians. Census briefs from the 1990 census report that 20% of reservation homes don't have complete plumbing, and 20% don't have complete kitchen facilities (for the rest of America numbers are about 4%). Even American language and culture have not yet come to respect American Indians: sports teams are still named the Redskins or the Braves, and caricatures of American Indians are still very common.

The Gateway Arch. Part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. I wrote in a post awhile back about this museum I visited in St. Louis, on my drive from Houston to South Bend. The museum is just what the name sounds like: a tribute to American westward expansion. I found this museum to be a little bit disturbing. It narrated expansion from Lewis and Clark on, including narrating the destruction/subjugation of many American Indian tribes. There is a national park commemorating this? Co told me I should think of it in terms of the settlers, often people with little or no money, finally getting a chance to make it. Still, I have a hard time looking at this museum/national park with anything but disgust.

Last weekend I went to the polar opposite museum. The National Museum of the American Indian. The museum just opened last Tuesday in Washington DC, occupying the last available space on the mall. (I was lucky enough to land a free trip to DC for the weekend visiting a dear friend from college). There was a big festival on the mall for the grand opening, including 8 or 10 stages with all sorts of dance, storytelling, and music going on, not to mention yummy American Indian food.

The museum itself was very cool. The first exhibit we walked into was called "Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories." The first wall, there it said: "INVASIONS". It chronicled the sad history of American Indians being invaded, pushed out, destroyed by European diseases, tricked, and treatied off their land. At some parts I actually got teary reading the horrible descriptions of what happened to these people. The great thing about the museum is that they went to American Indians and had them create the exhibits, and it's a living history museum. The other two big exhibits were "Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World" (about traditional beliefs) and "Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identity" (all about American Indians today, both on and off reservations, etc).

One of the coolest things about being there opening weekend is that there were many people there who are actually American Indians. And given the cosmopolitan and diverse nature of DC, there were also plenty of black people there, plenty of white people, and plenty of Asian people. It was one of those rare times I felt good about race relations in America, like we were actually taking a step in the right direction by taking a truthful look at our past and where we are, and coming together to celebrate usually denigrated cultures.

As a footnote, I'd just like to add that I think it's a bit ironic the federal government supports both the westward expansion and the American Indian museums.

The Airport Guy

Another layover. Another time I face mild boredom in a brightly lit but rather sterile airport terminal. What to do? Well, get some food, first of all. But getting food is a relatively mindless process in the airport terminal, and it needs a concurrent activity. Sometimes I people watch. Today I'm going to Airport Guy watch.

The Airport Guy. Quite different than the Airplane Guy. The Airport Guy is more desirable, for several reasons. First, he requires considerably less commitment than the Airplane Guy. If the airport guy turns out to be a dud, he can quickly be dumped for another terminal or quick paced walk in the other direction. On the other hand, if by some miracle a conversation starts, an airport terminal is a far more desirable place for such interaction. You can sit and chat, walk, grab food, even get a drink, all considerably more conducive to a fun time than sitting in cramped coach class seats.

In the beginnings of my search for food I spot Airport Guy #1: a clean shaven white guy in a suit, with a laptop bag and PDA. Definitely a business guy, but definitely about my age. He starts talking on his cell phone, and not finding food in that direction, I about face and head the other way.

Three quarters of the way down the terminal I spot Airport Guy #2: a very good looking young black guy with a wheelie suitcase. In his "Newark" sweatshirt and me in my "Ocean City" sweatshirt, I consider that perhaps New Jersey destiny has brought us together. I head to the pizza place a few feet away, where I turn over my life savings in exchange for a ridiculously small, greasy, and squishy slice of pizza. Here, any hopes for Airport Guy #2 are squashed as I see him with Significant Other, a gorgeous black girl with a matching wheelie suitcase. (Significant Other is not to be confused with Airport Girl, who has perfectly done make up and hair and a super cute outfit, usually a skirt, always making me look frumpy in my usual comfortable plane-wear).

Hoping that perhaps the third time will be the charm, I head toward my gate to eat my bread soaked in grease (aka pizza slice). Hark! There, sitting just a few benches away, is Airport Guy #3. I see him from the back, so it's a gamble. The good haircut is what catches my notice, it says a lot. Yellow and green t-shirt, looks alright. Black backpack. He has dark hair, but he's clearly I white guy. I can deal with that.

I sit and give my hands an oil treatment trying to eat my pizza while watching the back of Airport Guy #3's head. Ah, the moment of truth! He's standing up. I've seen enough cute back-of-the-heads to be cautious, as all too often then are attached to very old, very young, or very not good looking guys. A turn of the head, and I see he's none of the above. But, wait. God, no! Is that a . . .?
Not only is Airport Guy #3 wearing a fanny pack, but he's wearing over one shoulder across his chest. I sigh a sigh of disappointment. Three strikes and I'm out. Luckily by the time I wash the grease off my hands and get back to the gate, it's time for me to board, so I can't dwell on my umpteenth consecutive strike-out among Airport Guys I've never once talked to.

The Hilarious World of Sociology

(Sorry to those who I've already sent these to)

I get a lot of mailings from various publishers with all their latest sociology books coming out.

Here was an ad in one of the recent brochures I got:
THEORY TRADING CARDS
Impress your friends and colleagues with your very own collection of Theory Trading Cards! This edition includes a set of 21 cardsfeaturing the most important social and cultural theorists of our time. Like their sports counterpart, our trading cards are designed in an easy-to-read, portable format. Each card includes a photograph, a summary of each theorist's critical ideas and essential information such as important publications and biographical material. Theory Trading Cards provide concise answers to questions such as, "What is the essence of Michel Foucault's 'oeuvre'?" "What are Bell Hooks' most important works?" and "What is Theodor Adorno's astrological sign?" Theory Trading Cards will make a handy reference guide for students, teachers, and fans of social and cultural theory, and gender, identity, and media studies.

While we're on the subject of these new books, here's some interesting titles I noticed...
"Vegetarianism: Movement or Moment?"
"Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life."

lastly, a newly emerging field within sociology is "animals and society". i think it's bunk as social science, but apparently it's gaining steam. some of their new titles (remember, these are being promoted as *sociology* books) include...
"Cat Culture: The social world of a cat shelter"
"Introduction to animal rights: your child or the dog?"
"Understanding dogs: living and working with canine companions"

Last night's gospel choir rehearsal

If you're reading this, you probably know that I'm happiest when I have friends who aren't all like me. I don't want my friends to be all sociologists, or all girls, or all white, or all Christians like myself. The race one is a big one to me, and I loved having friends from all different backgrounds when I left Rice. Here in the Bend and at the Dame, it has been really hard to find that kind of diversity. There's just fewer non-white people in the Bend, and the area is SUPER segregated. The Dame is even worse, only 22% of the student body is non-white (as opposed to 33%+ at Rice), and among graduate students it is way less than that. So I have been looking for more creative ways to meet people, since it doesn't just happen as it seemed to at Rice.

In part of this quest to find non-white people here at the Dame, tonight I went to the Dame's gospel choir practice. I had a great time. A part of me was a little on edge, being in a big group where I know exactly NO ONE. But a bigger part of me felt a big sigh of relief walking into a room that wasn't entirely white. The choir isn't all black. There were six or seven white girls and one white guy there (there were probably 40 people there total). As I was standing there, I realized what an amazing group of people was in that room.

First, the black students. At the Dame, black students are 3.5% of the undergraduate population. That is an incredibly small minority, and I imagine these kids have faced their fare share of discrimination or being misunderstood. They are also at a top tier university that almost anyone would be proud to get into. While certainly not all blacks are extremely disadvantaged, I bet a higher proportion of these kids than the white kids had to overcome obstacles or fight through things to get where they are. To me, they represent much strength, determination, hard work, and endurance, along with the courage it takes to attend such a predominantly white university. Some people would look at these kids and think they were undeserving of being at the Dame ("they only got in because they are black"); I think these kids deserve to be here more than anyone else.

Here are the words to one of the songs we rehearsed tonight:
You don't know my story / All the things that I've been through / You Can't feel my pain / What I had to go through to get here / You'll never understand my praise / Don't try to figure it out / Because my Worship / my Worship Is for real / I've been through too much / Not to worship Him

I love those lyrics, they are so expressive especially with the music to the song. And I started thinking about the depth and real-ness of worship in black churches. When black people sing about getting through struggles and pain, they know what they are talking about. It means so much less to privileged white people. Have you ever met someone who has been through all kinds of crap? I have found that often these people are deeper, more insightful, very aware, and very purposeful in what they do. Blacks in America surely fit this bill as a group, and I think I caught a glimpse of why the black church has remained so strong throughout American history, even still today.

The second set of amazing people I saw in that room were the non-black kids who were in the choir. These white students are not the norm. Most kids at the Dame are very white, come from decently wealthy families, dress preppy, and work out constantly. I saw so much in these students, getting out of the all-encompassing white bubble that is most of the Dame. I was impressed at their boldness and courage to do that, and I was impressed that many of them have stuck around and become really a part of the gospel choir group. These kids are a testament of love and courage, going off the beaten path, being willing to put themselves out there when they could live a comfortable all-white life.

A quote from my sister's friend Janet

"It was never a question of whether or not to fight the war on terror, but how to fight it. It was never an issue of right and wrong, but how to reconcile one person's right with another person's wrong. As we point fingers and caricaturize evil, the utter lack of self introspection and will to understand the reasons for evil is something Americans should be ashamed of. I do not believe that evil exists in a vacuum. Just as we believe that poverty, ignorance, and bigotry have their roots in societal iniquities, so too we must take responsibility for the societal iniquities that cause terrorism. There is nothing to fear except the exploitation of fear. There is nothing more dangerous than the those who would have us believe that evil exists without cause, without reason, and without a claim to righteousness."

(Janet is one smart cookie if you ask me. By the way I stole this from my sister's blog, who stole it from Janet's AIM profile.)

The Medina

How I miss the medinas of Morocco. Just now I put in "Morocco medina" into Google's image search, and looking through the pictures brought back a wave of memories. Not specific event memories, but memories about the feel of the place, the sights, the smells, the sounds, the people, the routine, the mosques, the beggars, the cats, the shops . . .

Medina literally means "city" in Arabic. In colloquial language, however, medina refers to the old section of a city. Every city in Morocco has a medina, usually surrounded by high walls. These are the old cities, from hundreds of years before the modern apartment buildings, stores, and businesses built in the European tradition. The medina is a maze (quite literally) of tiny alleys full of houses, shops, schools, vendors, mosques, and hammams (public baths). The streets are lined with small "dukans", loosely translated as shops. I say loosely translated because many of these shops are little more than counters in front of tiny holes in the wall where people sell everything from chocolate to batteries, fresh mint to every kind of button imagineable, Arabic and French newspapers to head scarves, bootleg cassettes to beautiful fabric. Some dukans are big enough to walk into, often selling clothing or dried fruit and nuts. In Marrakesh the medina is full of people selling brightly colored slippers. In Fez there is much more woodwork.

The medina is the center of life. It is full of activity and commotion. Partly because the alleys are so narrow, the streets are always crowded with a great number of people walking from one place to another and a great number of people simply standing around: maybe talking, maybe watching, maybe begging. Every day I passed dozens of beggars in the medina.

The medina is also full of mosques and schools, as well as fountains where those without running water can fill up buckets with fresh water. You can never count out the motorcycles and donkeys that create extra commotion, or the infrequent cars that barely can make it between the walls.

Beyond the small shops and buildings, there are hundreds of people in the medina selling their wares in the middle of the street. There are men dressed in red with metal cups that will give you a cup of water for 1 dirham (10 cents). There are people on bicycles with baskets of fresh oranges. There are people with tarps in the middle of the larger streets selling almost anything. One alley in the Rabat medina we called the vegetable street because it would be lined end to end with people selling every kind of fruit and vegetable in baskets and on various tarps. At night, the lights come on and light up the smoke and steam from freshly cooked meat and or freshly fried pancakes and pastries at small carts wheeled in during the late afternoon. In the spring for a few weeks you can find people selling snails, either still alive or freshly cooked.

The medina has a distinct smell. There is the smell of dust and dirt, mixed with the smell of live chickens (for sale), and freshly cooked pastries and meat. The wealth of medina sounds are foreign to a western ear: the muezzin's call to prayer, vendors calling out about their wares, much loud talking, tapes playing with chanting of the Quran, children playing, beggars feebly asking for money. . . almost all in Arabic, with a little French and English thrown out to the lone tourists. It is all very loud because the walls lining the streets keep the sound in.

The medina is the poorer part of the city. People there are more traditional. It also tends to be more crime ridden (and with such crowds, it's no wonder). For awhile when I was in Rabat during the beginning of the Iraq war (April 2003), US Embassy personnel and their families were forbidden from going to the medina, because of "security concerns". My fellow students and I had no such regulations: our school was located in the middle of the medina, and about half of us lived with families in the medina. The heart and soul of the city is in the medina, in my opinion. I miss being there every day, in the middle of so much life and activity, history and culture.

I took very few pictures of the medina when I was in Morocco. The medina was a place I became very familiar with, and a home to me. We constantly saw tourists taking gawking photos of the medina, and I could never bring myself to do the same. There was too much orientalism in that act: capturing an exotic culture in an instant so I could neatly hang it up on my western bedroom wall. Given the traditional, poorer, and disadvantaged nature of much of the medina, it just didn't feel right taking a slew of pictures for myself. As a result, all I can offer you of a visual glimpse in is some pictures I found around the internet.

If you...

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world who do.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

**I'm not sure where this is from originally, so I don't know who to cite with it.

My ultra-political post

The other dayI got into a semi-intense discussion revolving around the presidential election. Or more specifically, about why I should vote conservative in the election. My lack of quick thinking during the discussion left me thinking of why specifically I will vote for John Kerry in November, barring massive changes in the current situation. Please note, I don't consider myself pro-John Kerry. I consider myself anti-George Bush. Here's just three issues I have.

Iraq.
Now granted, I was living in an Arab-Muslim kingdom when the war with Iraq first went down, so that probably skews my perspective a bit. I saw graphic news footage of the war, footage of the millions upon millions protesting around the world, and many opinions opposing the US administration (these views were heard frighteningly infrequently in the USA). Plus, exactly 0% of the Moroccan people supported the war in Iraq, as evidenced in the two protests while I was there, one of which number 1,000,000 people in a city of only 900,000.
But as I see it, we invaded a country that had never once threatened the United States (or anyone else, leading up to this invasion) auspiciously looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, which it turns out we never had any evidence of in the first place. In the process, we scorned the entire international community (except for Tony Blair sans support of the British people) who asked and told the US repeatedly there was no justification for invasion. And in the end, we never found any Weapons of Mass Destruction (although this fact has rarely been brought up), got a whole bunch of people killed, and are now stuck being military police in a country rife with guerrilla violence.
Not only this, but in order to get support of the American people for the war, the administration led people to believe Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda were working in cahoots; not only was there no evidence of this, but these two guys are actually pretty much arch enemies. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like being deceived, and I don't like the arrogance of our country to decide we know what is right, even though the entire rest of the world is telling us it's not.

Life.
I am pro-LIFE. LIFE is in caps so that you don't confuse that with pro-life the abortion stance. I am pro-LIFE as in all LIFE. The current president is pro-life, but that only applies to unborn children. It does not apply to life of the environment or natural world. It does not apply to life of those convicted of capital offenses. It does not apply to the lives of innocent Iraqis killed during our invasion.
You all read my sociological facts on differences in life expectancy by race an entry ago. Pro-life does not apply to all these years of life lost due to inequality and problems indicating institutional discrimination. Several million people have lost health insurance in the past four years (ask one of your friends without health insurance what a doctor's visit costs). Now, maybe this is picky, but why are pro-life people not pro-health as well?
Given all this, I think I will call this position pro-unbornlife from now on, to avoid confusion. (and I will retain use of pro-LIFE meaning life more broadly speaking). In any case, it bugs me when I hear people talk about the administration being pro-life, when what they really mean is pro-unborn life.

Sex.
The current administration is pro-unborn life. It also supports plans that will offer Sex Ed funding only to schools that teach abstinence only, despite the fact that study after study has shown these programs are ineffective at preventing teen pregnancy (not to mention the spread of STDs). Clearly, not telling children that condoms exist will keep them from having premarital sex. So, more kids are getting pregnant and are not allowed to get abortions. This just smells of disaster to me.
The current administration also only offers money to fight AIDS in Africa to programs doing abstinence only. Again, study after study done in Africa shows these programs are ineffective in stopping the spread of AIDS. And yet, we claim to be fighting AIDS.