First thing we do, let's all keep it civil

When I first heard about a district superintendent in Rhode Island who dealt with an under-performing school by firing 77 teachers rather than negotiate with their union, I was shocked. I still am. When I read CNN contributor Ruben Navarette's "Firing all the teachers was justified" this past weekend, part of me was infuriated, but another part was so sickened by his accusatory, holier-than-thou tone that I just wanted to pull the covers back over my head and tune him out.

Navarette seems to be of the opinion that not only was the firing of an entire school's faculty "justified," it was a great idea. And that this is just the way things should be handled in all struggling bureaucracies, including when it comes to politicians in the federal government (who are largely, um, elected officials, just so we're all on the same page here). His snark touches on the idea that a seven hour teaching day, extra tutoring, more non-classroom time with students and some professional development during the summer isn't an unreasonable request. And he's right, it isn't - if it's accompanied by a reasonable increase in salary.

Teachers already work far more than the hours they spend in the classroom every day. They grade papers and plan lessons at home, they shop for supplies (more and more often bought on their own dime), they arrive early and stay late. Many of them sponsor clubs and other extra-curricular activities for their students, investing more of their own time and money. Do all teachers give of themselves so generously? No. Is it likely that each and every one of the 77 teachers fired from Central Falls High School were among those who are in it only for the short hours and long vacations? Absolutely not.

Whatever, Navarette says, they deserved it. Their students performed abominably and it's up to the teachers to face the music.

Certainly some fault lies with some of those 77 teachers, but not nearly all of it. Probably not even half. Particularly in districts where resources are few and the administration is less than supportive, students are often passed to the next grade level when they shouldn't be. Parents don't understand enough of what their children are studying to help them, and can't afford to get them outside help. Sometimes, parents just don't care, and that attitude gets passed on to their children. Teaching someone who lives with the idea that school is just someplace you go until you're old enough to work and that teachers are wimps isn't easy, especially if you're trying to do so after they've been pushed through a system they can't keep up with for ten years.

You already know I think our education system is broken. Frances Gallo, the superintendent who fired the teachers in Central Falls, isn't fixing that. She's just ensuring that the students in Central Falls High School will be so distracted from their studies by the turmoil she's inflicting on her district that retaining anything academic will be even more difficult than before. I hope someone brings her to her senses before her high school is full of overcrowded classrooms led by a handful of inexperienced teachers who are terrified of losing their stressful jobs.

The content of his "contribution" to CNN isn't my only quarrel with Navarette. I also object - strongly - to the fact that he makes his case so rudely. Snark is an amusing and much-used weapon in the blogosphere (which I use myself when something gets me really fired up). It is neither amusing nor appropriate coming from a member of a newspaper editorial board (The San Diego Union-Tribune) writing for a major news source like CNN.com.

Yes, opinion pieces are an important aspect of the news, but writers whose bylines are following respected names like CNN or The New York Times are generally not encouraged to offend every second person reading their work. Or at least, The New York Times generally doesn't publish those who do; given CNN's rampant use of "iReporters," I suppose they may not actually care, as long as they can add content to their site. A blog's raison d'être is presenting an opinion (or, really, whatever the blogger wants it to be) and creating space for an opinion-based discussion; an opinion piece exists to flesh out relevant news stories with the point of view of someone close to the subject. No dice, Mr. Navarette, try again. Not paraphrasing Shakespeare and Sarah Palin in the same piece might help.

N.B.: I actually wrote this post last week, but was in the midst of a bout with a particularly tenacious rhino virus and wasn't certain it was entirely coherent. Now that I'm on the mend and have tweaked it a bit, here it is. And an update on the situation in Rhode Island: graduates of the school have been protesting the firings and speaking up for their former teachers, which is very nice to see.

Learning to Like the Girl in the Mirror

Body image and the unhealthy way Americans handle it is an issue I've been trying to figure out how to write about for quite a while. It's a touchy subject, one that we as a society often choose to ignore, although the havoc it's been wreaking for several generations is something that isn't going anywhere until we figure out how to deal with it.

Some people place the blame on the fashion industry with their tiny sample sizes and skin-and-bones teenage models. Some look at airbrushed Hollywood starlets with personal chefs specializing in fad diets and personal trainers on call. Both are part of the problem, but so are we, your average members of society. We've put the fashion and film industries on a pedestal and look at them as things everyone should aspire to, devoting our lives and our bank accounts to attaining the current definition of physical beauty.

It's an unhealthy outlook, and it's not okay.

I've struggled with my own body image for most of my life, whether because I grew up chubby in bikini-clad, Hollywood-obsessed Southern California or just because I'm a product of my generation, I'm not sure. I don't remember when or why my body started to bother me, but by the time I was in middle school it seemed like something that had always been.

I started my first diet - The Zone - when I was twelve, and although after a few months I was probably healthier and certainly skinnier than I had ever been, I didn't feel any better about my body. I look back at pictures from that time now and wonder why. Between dance and marching band, my weight stayed fairly stable through my first year of high school, but after that I started to gain weight, every pound feeling like another albatross around my neck, and my self-esteem began to plummet.

Sure, I was smart and articulate and mature for my age, a talented musician, a steadfast friend, a good daughter - a well-rounded, generally nice person. But my body was ugly, so what did it matter?

In class, I never sat with my feet on the floor, balancing just my toes on the ground to keep my legs from looking fat. After middle school, I stopped wearing shorts. Ever. Department store dressing rooms became my personal version of hell, and clothing sizes the demons that haunted me. I nearly broke down in tears two hours before my junior prom because my dress was beautiful, and my body was ruining it.

That was the year I'd started to hate my body with a desperate virulence that festered in the back of my mind, always whispering in my ear. If there was just some way to make that extra weight go away, I'd be so happy. If I could wear a bikini, all would be right in my world. The month before that junior prom, I ate as little as possible. Breakfast was a SlimFast shake. So was dinner, if I could get away with it. I ate the fruit and sometimes the string cheese my mom packed me for lunch, and handed everything else out to my friends - with teenage boys around, someone was always hungry. My caloric intake was probably less than 900 calories a day, a number that makes me cringe now, because I know how unhealthy it is. And still, I hated myself as I zipped up that beautiful dress.

In January of my senior year, I got on a scale. I don't remember why, because I usually avoided them like the plague. The number it registered, while nothing that would elicit more than a shrug and a recommendation for moderate exercise from pediatricians used to dealing with serious childhood obesity, finally pushed something home: wishing and starving myself were never going to make me either thin or comfortable with my body, and I was going to keep hating myself until I tried some other way to get there.

Not much of a revelation, but since I was done with marching band for the year and had some afternoons free, it got me to the gym a few times a week. At first, it was loathing for my body that drove me. Directing all of that frustration, disgust and anger at a machine was better than having nowhere to put it.

Still avoiding scales, I didn't notice a change in my body until I went - reluctantly, dreading what I might find - to try on my junior prom dress to see if I could wear it again to my senior prom. I couldn't - it all but fell off. I bought a new dress in a smaller size and felt pretty for the first time in years. Digging through my closet, I found that I fit into a lot of clothes from my freshman year - including the formal black dress my mom had made for my concert band's spring concert that year. I wore it again to my senior concert, and although I was still self-conscious, that desperate hatred had retreated.

When I went to the doctor for my pre-college physical in August, I'd lost 13 pounds since that awful day in January. The number on the scale was still frustrating, but after a few months away from the demons in my head ranting about sizes and weights and fat, I had the perspective to recognize it as a personal victory.

The next hurdle was college, and the dreaded freshman 15. I was terrified of that phrase, and vowed that I absolutely would not fall victim to it. I spent thirty to forty-five minutes at the gym three or four evenings a week, and by the time I went home for Homecoming in October, I'd lost another 10 pounds. By the middle of my sophomore year, I'd lost an additional 25 pounds and was wearing the clothes I wanted to, in sizes that were SoCal-acceptably small. My cardinal rules were a) that the number on the scale had to drop a fraction every time I went to the gym and b) strictly limiting myself to 1,000 calories per day (one of the most widely-accepted minimums for what it takes to keep a body more or less my size functioning is 1,200) was a good way to lose weight. I compared myself to everyone around me, and if I wasn't among the thinnest girls in the room, I was uncomfortable.

I panicked when I lived with a host family while studying abroad. If someone else was cooking, how could I keep track of how many calories I was consuming and keep the self-loathing monster in my head at bay? I mentioned my worries about gaining weight to some of my new friends. One of them said "Do your clothes still fit?" "Well, yes, but..." "Then what are you worried about?" Perfectly logical, but it took me by surprise and left me completely without a response. I had always avoided talking to anyone - with the occasional exception of my mom - about how I felt about my body. Now that the issue was at least partially out in the open, it suddenly didn't seem like quite the deep, dark secret I had always felt it to be.

That moment wasn't a magic bullet. It didn't make me see immediately that the way worries about my weight lurked behind my every thought was unhealthy. But it stayed in the back of my mind and when I was being so ridiculous about how I looked that even I was sick of myself, it helped me turn away from the mirror and go on with my day. It wasn't until I had been running seriously for several months and had to drastically overhaul my eating habits in order to not pass out that the way I thought about my body really began to change. Gradually, I was able to acknowledge that it was never going to be healthy for me to be rail-thin, because I'm just not built that way. And as I began to view my body more as a functional tool than a display window, I realized that what I looked like was secondary to how I felt.

I weigh more now than I did at my thinnest in college. I'll probably never be entirely comfortable with how I look in a bikini. I still sigh into the mirror sometimes, or fret over the fit of a piece of clothing. But I accept what I see when I face that mirror and a fair amount of the time, I like it. I understand my body better and rather than struggle against it, I listen to what it's telling me. I don't count every calorie I put in my mouth anymore, I don't skip meals and I don't obsess about the number on the scale (in fact, I generally don't even get on one except once a year at the doctor's office). I eat sensibly and stay active, and both my mind and body are stronger than they've ever been. I intend to keep them that way.

I've come a long way from despising that girl in the mirror because all I could see were her flaws. But I know there are too many women (and probably men, as well) out there who can't see anything else in their own mirrors. They starve themselves, exercise with nothing in their systems to burn and mentally compare themselves to cover models, thinking they should be able to look the same, even without professional photography and airbrushing.

The beginnings of an outcry for average-sized models are rattling around the fashion industry, and some actresses are asking magazines not to airbrush photos of them. But until we, as a society, can accept that health and Hollywood's version of it are not the same thing, we're going to continue raising generations of self-loathing women who spend their lives agonizing over numbers on a scale and scraps of cloth. Rather than what will make us healthy, we're told what will make us look better. Rather than seeing ourselves as we are, we're pressured into looking at ourselves through the lens of someone else's body and someone else's definition of what's attractive. Rather than being encouraged to be comfortable in our own skin, we're encouraged to be prettier, thinner, better. I don't know how we succeed in changing that, but I know we have to start by changing the conversation. I hope that sharing my own struggle with that girl in the mirror will move us just a little bit closer to being able to do so.

Bookshelf: Waiter Rant

I just finished Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip - Confessions of a Cynical Waiter by Steve Dublanica and if you eat out regularly or have ever worked in the food service industry, it's definitely worth a read.

I picked it up late last year because the title and the few pages I read while standing at the "New Non-Fiction" table at Borders made me laugh. It got pushed to the middle of my to-read pile during the holidays, but since today is the DC area's third consecutive snow day - the fourth, for some of us - I've had ample time to catch up.

"The Waiter," as Dublanica is known on the blog that launched the book, has been one since an unexpected career change at age 31. Waiter Rant is definitely a first book, with scattered typos and a lexicon that sometimes tries just a little too hard.  And if profanity offends you on principle, don't read it (or ever work at a restaurant).

That said, it's a great read. Dublanica's descriptions of the ups and downs of life as a restaurant server are sometimes poignant, often hilarious and always dead on target. (And although it's sometimes a little out of place in Waiter Rant, his descriptive style, particularly when it comes to the seasons and city streets, guarantees that I'll take a look at whatever he writes next.) Why do your expectations of a big, romantic meal on Valentine's Day fall short? Because there are five gazillion people who all want the same thing, and a limited number of hours and restaurant staff to make it happen. What's the big deal about tips? Well, in New York, where Dublanica works, servers make $4.60 an hour (in DC it's $2.77, unless it's gone up since 2007, when I waited my last table). That wage is there so the government has something to tax - servers are expected to make all their actual income in tips. Waiter Rant illustrates these and other restaurant industry tips and mysteries with anecdotes from the waiter's perspective that by turns amuse and impart wisdom (and possibly shock, if you've never been inside a restaurant wait station).

At the back of the book, Appendix A is (a sometimes tongue-in-cheek) "40 Tips on How to Be a Good Customer" that, if followed, will guarantee you never receive a server's death stare - or poor service - again. Some of my favorites (and personal golden rules):

7. Be polite. Say please and thank you. Be courteous to the hostess, bus people, coat-check girl, bartender, and waiter...
36. If you pay part of your bill with a gift certificate [or receive some portion of your meal for free because of a mistake that was not the server's], make sure you tip on the whole check - not what's left over after the certificate's been redeemed.
40. If you can't afford to leave a tip, you can't afford to eat in the restaurant. Stay home.

When I was waiting tables, full-time for one summer and part-time for another year after that, my muttered complaint on bad days was "Anyone who wants to eat in a restaurant should be required to wait tables first." Now I'll amend that: if you haven't waited tables but have read Waiter Rant, I'd be happy to serve you.

Blogging for Choice: Trust Women

Dr. George Tiller's murder on May 31, 2009 sent shockwaves through the pro-choice and women's rights movements that are still vibrating. Not, as the anti-choice movement would have it, because we're bummed about not being able to easily murder really-soon-to-be-babies anymore but because a good man was gunned down for spending his career doing something he believed in: helping women.

That the "pro-life" movement has branded itself as the only side in this fight that respects human life infuriates me. Do they think it's easy for a woman to decide to give up a child she hasn't had a chance to know? Do they think it isn't gut-wrenching to be told that, if a woman goes through with a pregnancy, she and her unborn child are likely to die? Do they think forcing a rape victim to carry her rapist's baby to term is somehow going to help her recover, rather than sending her into a psychological tailspin of despair, hatred and fear? Do they not realize the heartbreak involved when a pregnancy that brought joy to a woman or a couple has to be terminated because the fetus has stopped growing and the mother's life has been put at risk? Do they not see the courage it takes for a woman to admit that she isn't capable of caring well enough for herself to give birth to a healthy child?

I have been firmly pro-choice since I understood what it meant. I have never questioned my stance on this issue. And I cringe when I think of an abortion as applied to me, my body, my child. There's nothing easy about it.

From all accounts, Dr. Tiller was a man who understood that. He apparently often wore a button that read "Trust women," a phrase that really struck a chord with me. Why do so many people refuse to trust women? Why do they doubt our ability to know what's best for ourselves and our families, to make the best choices we can, to live our own lives, in our own bodies, as we see fit? Why do they think that what happens inside my bedroom and inside my body is their business? It isn't - it's mine.

Society trusts women to carry their weight - to pay our taxes, cast our ballots, care for our families and be generally responsible citizens. In fact, in developing countries, women are often considered better bets for investment than men. More microfinance lenders trust them because they're more reliable about repayment and they're more tied to the community than men. So what's the holdup, in the United States of America of all places, in trusting us when it comes to our bodies and our futures?

Yes, there are irresponsible people out there and some of them are women. We hear about irresponsible people every day - people who rob convenience stores, who grab people's wallets and purses on the street, who murder doctors. You wouldn't take it upon yourself to personally ensure that everyone who went for a walk anywhere showed no sign of being a mugger. (And as far as I know, we have yet to outlaw convenience stores in order to protect their owners.) You just keep an eye out when you and those you care about are out on the street. This isn't any different - you aren't responsible for the bodies or the actions of women you don't know. And when it comes to the women in your life you have a say, but decisions about their lives are ultimately up to them.

So trust us. Trust your mother, your sister, your wife, your girlfriend, your best friend to make their own choices and live their own lives. Trust them. Trust us. Trust women.

This post was written as part of NARAL Pro-Choice America's 5th Annual Blog for Choice Day, on the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. To add your blog, click here. Blog for Choice Day 2010 is also taking place on Twitter, using hashtag #bfcd.

Team Tuffy Tofu Rocks Arizona!

If everybody had an ocean across the U.S.A., then everybody’d be surfin’ like California... 

At any other time, two women running down the middle of the street, belting out The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” at the top of their lungs would be cause for concern. Sunday, it was pretty much par for the course since these women were into the last third of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona marathon and were loopy on a combination of adrenaline, aching legs and starved muscles. They also happened to be me and my mom.

My mom was a pretty fearsome athlete before she had me. She ran three marathons in less than two years, regularly placing in the shorter 10K and 5K races she ran. After mostly avoiding the water in her childhood, she took swim lessons in her 20s and 30s, determined to become a stronger swimmer – which she did, moving from marathons to triathlons, including one in Portuguese Man-of-War-infested waters in south Florida.

She kept up her running after I was born, and talked/walked/jogged me through one 5K a year starting when I was about 8 (I could have sworn I’d never want to do a longer race than that first 5K). She encouraged me as I started to run more seriously in college and, with my dad, (and some of my colleagues!) acted as cheerleader through my first marathon in 2008.

She turned 60 in August (don’t worry, I got her permission before typing that) and had been talking for a couple of months about doing another marathon to celebrate. It would be her fourth - and her first in almost 30 years - and I was running my third in October. I started to think that a mother-daughter fourth marathon might be pretty cool.

In September, my mom registered for the 2010 Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona marathon. When she called to tell me she was really going for it, I mentally cheered, registered before we had hung up, then called my dad the next day to tell him he had to keep the whole thing a secret for four months.

As she sweated and shivered and paced through her training miles at 6,600 feet in the Arizona mountains, I did the same in Virginia and Washington, grumbling about the unusual December cold snap and fibbing to my mom about how many miles I was running. I nagged her into making the drive down to Phoenix on Friday rather than Saturday, saying I’d feel better if I knew she had more time to acclimate to the warmer weather and wouldn’t be rushed. And on Friday night, when she arrived at the house of a friend who was in on the surprise and very generously offered to put us both up for the weekend, she cried when she realized I was there to run with her.

Sunday morning, we pulled on our matching “Team Tuffy Tofu” tanks and were ready to go. “Tuffy Tofu” is the nickname my dad gave my mom when they were dating and she was a vegetarian putting an insane number of miles on her feet every week. Then I was born, and was christened “Tuffer Than Tuffy Tofu” (which was completely unmerited, but funny). My dad had shirts made for us, and the joke came up repeatedly over the years, making it the perfect team name for a mother-daughter marathon.

And there we were, at mile 20-something, bobbing along to our own personal soundtrack of The Beach Boys and waving at the cars that passed going the other direction, cheering deliriously at every mile marker that got us closer to the finish line. We crossed it hand-in-hand, whooping at the top of our lungs. And as we walked off with our medals, I looked at all the people younger than my mom finishing behind us and looking in much worse shape than either of us.

My mom is 60, and she just ran a marathon. How awesome is that?

Helping Haiti

As you've probably heard from six different news sources by now, a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti - about 10 miles from the capital in Port-au-Prince - shortly before 5pm yesterday. No one has a solid grasp of the damage yet, but with multiple aftershocks of 4.0 and higher, it's going to be bad. The New York Times' latest update gives Haitian president René Préval's estimate that the death toll will be in the thousands.

Getting aid to Haiti quickly is crucial, and complicated by the fact that many of the aid organizations with offices there are searching for their own missing and coping with the deaths of their colleagues. The global outpouring of support started almost immediately: the German government has sent €1 million, the World Health Organization is deploying a 12-person team of health and logistics experts, Iceland has sent a search-and-rescue team, Switzerland has sent an emergency response team and China is sending $1 million in aid, to name just a few of the relief efforts already underway.

If you want to help, here's a quick-and-dirty list of links (N.B. Humanitarian websites and donation pages get jammed with unusually high levels of traffic after a disaster, so if any of the links won't load right away, be patient. Try reloading every few minutes until you get through.):

• The U.S. Fund for UNICEF - unicefusa.org/haitiquake
• Text "Haiti" to 90999 to make a $10 donation to the International Red Cross (With mobile giving, the organization sets an automatic amount - either $5 or $10 - that's connected to a numeric code and the keyword you send to it. The donation is sent to the organization immediately, and the amount is added to your monthly cell phone bill.)
• Friends of the World Food Program 
• CARE
• Direct Relief International's summary of the situation and donate page.
• Habitat for Humanity International is gearing up its response, and is accepting Haiti-specific donations here.
  

These are the humanitarian organizations working in Haiti that I know the most about and in whose work I have a great deal of confidence. If I've missed any you know and support (and I'm sure there are dozens), please post them in the comments. To stay abreast of the global relief effort, check ReliefWeb's latest updates.

What's next?

Even though I'm not a fan of making resolutions on New Year's, the end of the year is still a good time to look forward, right?

If I'm neurotic about anything, it's planning ahead. For me, part of the fun of any new adventure is having time to work out the details in my head and get excited about it. Plus, by planning ahead, I can usually avoid that awful "I have no idea what's going on/where I'm going" feeling. So I search early and often for plane, train and bus tickets, haunt the websites of papers local to a potential new destination, buy a guidebook as soon as I know I'm going somewhere new, think about possible life scenarios years in advance and always have a backup plan. Or two.

As a result, there's a new guidebook on my shelf this month, and it's called The Rough Guide to Australia. (And I'll be adding Living and Working in Australia - thanks Santa! - and In a Sunburned Country - thanks big brother and sis-in-law! - to the travel shelf when I get back to DC next week.) Why? Because in 13 and a half months - February 2011 - I'll be starting my grad school program at Macquarie University, located just outside Sydney.

(I've said or typed some version of that statement at least a dozen times since I received my official "letter of offer" earlier this month, but it still makes me want to jump up and down, shrieking.)

So, why am I going down under, not for a vacation, but for a degree? The answer to that starts somewhere in my senior year of college, when I decided that pursuing a career in translation was a definite possibility. I hoped. Actually, the answer starts with my English to French Translation professor during my junior year abroad, Francesca Manzari - one of the most broad-minded, encouraging, quietly brilliant people I've had the pleasure to meet - but that's a longer story.

I looked at programs in Paris and Geneva, but the red tape for non-citizens of the E.U. was daunting. Added to which, translation is a much younger profession in the U.S. (well, much more recently recognized, anyway) than in Europe, and American companies and individuals tend to have a blended definition of translation (written) and interpretation (oral), while in Europe they're two very distinct disciplines. Given that I want to be able to work in the U.S., it made more sense to try to study both.

So I started looking for combined T&I (a common abbreviation for the two industries) programs and found one at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. It sounded like an amazing program, although the price tag made me nervous about the loans I'd have to take out. T&I is one of the sectors that's actually expected to continue experiencing job growth for the next decade or so, but it can still be difficult to break into, especially in the U.S., where people are sometimes convinced that a machine can do the job just as well. (Which it can't - machines and nuance don't mix.) What if I came out of school with a Master's from a stellar program, close to $100,000 in loans...and no job?

By poking around the web, I found another combined T&I program at some school called Macquarie in Australia, and kept it in the back of my mind as a less expensive option. I mentioned both schools to a friend from my study abroad program, and he found another program at Macquarie: a dual Master's in T&I and International Relations. It was the perfect combination of disciplines for me, since translating and/or interpreting for NGOs and international organizations is one of my top career choices. And it was still a two-year program and only marginally more expensive than Macquarie's T&I program alone.

Throughout the last year and a half, I've argued with myself countless times about whether to consider Macquarie or Monterey my first choice. They're both well-rated schools with international reputations. Monterey is more expensive; Macquarie is literally on the other side of the world. Monterey is closer to my family and friends than I've lived in a long time; Macquarie would be an unparalleled experience for me. This summer, I finally sat down and did some serious research. Annual tuition costs and cost-of-living estimates, average annual tuition increases for the last few years, plane ticket prices at various times of the year, average prices of apartment rentals listed near campus, internet and cell phone prices, the cost of buying a car in California vs. the cost of a bike and public transportation (and possibly a car) in Sydney...

Somewhat surprisingly, Macquarie came out as the less expensive option, even with two Transpacific trips per year. And since the program fits more exactly with what I want to do than Monterey's, I finally decided a few months ago that I would apply to Macquarie first, and to Monterey only if I wasn't accepted.

The school year in Australia runs from February to December (logical, when you consider the weather puts that at something like August to June in parts of the U.S.) but I didn't want to start in early 2010, so I asked if I could apply insanely far in advance for the 2011 school year. I collected my transcripts, got a copy of my diploma notarized, filled out the few pages of the application and sent it all off, mentally wringing my hands. With no letters of recommendation, how would they know I'm a good student, a dedicated one? With no résumé, how would they know what I've been doing with my life? Without a personal essay, how could I explain how completely the lone translation course on my transcripts changed the direction of my life? (On the other hand, not having to run around getting all of those things together felt really good, if I could ignore the nerves.)

Two weeks after the school had notified me that my application had been received, I opened my inbox to find an email titled "Macquarie University - Conditional Letter of Offer for Jessalyn Pinneo." My heart jumped into my throat. They wanted me! Sort of? I had to take a French language exam, and as long as my scores were acceptable, I would be admitted to the program. I tried not to get too excited, because it seemed like just the sort of thing that could jinx me into failing the exam.

Not quite two weeks later, I got another email that sent me jumping around my apartment with my hand clapped over my mouth to muffle the elated shrieking that might alarm my neighbors. It began, "Congratulations from Macquarie University!" and pretty much made my year right there.

So, Australia is what's next for me. Thrillingly, nerve-wrackingly, somewhat surprisingly next. There's still a lot of time before I go - a lot of planning to do (woo hoo!) and a lot of changes to make. Some days the fact that I'll be most of the way around the world in a little more than a year doesn't seem real. Other days, I can't believe it's still so far away. Either way, tomorrow is one day closer to my next new start, and I'll be taking today's lessons - and all of yesterday's - with me.

Making Connections

The general pattern for winter weather forecasts in Washington, DC is as follows:

1. Forecast snow.
2. Predict that it will be the biggest storm in a decade, liable to keep everyone at home for days and make it impossible to get anywhere or do anything.
3. Send broadcasters to report on every single snowflake that falls on or near the District.
4. Make it sound like the world is coming to an end once the first quarter-inch is on the ground.
5. Pretend nothing was ever mentioned about a snowstorm once the snow stops after reaching a total accumulation of approximately half an inch.

As a result, DC Metro area residents have taken to rolling their eyes at all reports of incoming winter weather and sarcastically refer to forecast snowstorms as "Snowpocalypse [insert current year here]."

This year, however, Snowpocalypse 2009 actually arrived (on December 18th/19th - I know, I'm very late and have been very bad about posting lately) and sent the area into a frenzy with about 16 inches of snow in less than 24 hours. Which happened to be the same 24 hour period in which I was attempting to leave the area to visit my parents for a couple of weeks.

The snow started Friday evening, but it was drifting down so slowly and looked so pretty that I wasn't worried. Until I tried to schedule a pick-up for my 7:00am flight on Saturday and was told by every cab company in Arlington, VA that they weren't accepting reservations for Saturday - I would have to call as soon as I was ready in the morning and take my chances. Okay, so the cab companies were spooked. No big deal, they were overreacting, just like the weather forecasters, right?

Wrong. I woke up to a terrible scraping noise at 3:00am and looked out my window. A pick-up truck with a plow attached to its grille was clearing my building's parking lot of the four or five inches of snow that had accumulated. (Yes, for normal people in places that acknowledge that they get winter weather, that amount of snow is nothing to worry about. In DC, which - when it comes to weather and food, at least - is adamant that it's Southern, two inches is enough to shut down the streets and send people into a panic.) Oh good, I thought, the city was (inexplicably) starting with my parking lot, but then they'd start plowing the streets and everything would be fine in a couple of hours. I got up a little early and got ready to leave, spent 10 minutes on hold with a cab company and, at 4:50, was given a pick-up time in 30 minutes. A little long for a company whose drivers often park/idle next to my building at night, but no big deal.

By 5:30, I was worried. No cab yet, no call from the company telling me when the cab was coming and their lines were now so jammed I couldn't get anything but a busy signal. I took all of my stuff downstairs (Did I mention that my cat, a total stranger to air travel, was included in my luggage?) and flinched when I looked outside. The wind had picked up since I'd gotten out of bed, the snow was coming down harder and it was quite clear that the streets had not been plowed. Another resident was pacing around the lobby, trying to get through to any cab company while the security guard on duty looked up bus schedules for him. I offered to share my cab, if it ever arrived, and paced in the opposite direction, on hold with the cab company again.

By 5:50, my partner in panic (his flight was also at 7:00) had decided to give either a bus or one of the nearby hotels' shuttles a try. I was ready to walk at that point - DCA is literally down the street from my apartment, 1.7 miles by car according to Google maps - but I had no idea what Nala's tolerance for cold might be and I didn't want to risk giving her hypothermia by spending more than a couple of minutes either walking or waiting for a bus in the snow. I promised my fellow traveler that when (if) the cab showed up, we'd circle the block to look for him.

Shortly after he left, a woman came downstairs headed for the J.Crew sale at the nearby mall, which apparently started at 6:00. She was debating driving or walking and I was desperate enough at that point to offer her $20 to drive me to the airport. She decided she'd rather avoid driving in the snow and opted to walk to the mall.

Another resident pulled into the lot just after 6:00 and I briefly debated physically throwing myself in front of his Jeep and begging for a ride (without letting go of my cell phone, of course - I was still on hold with the cab company) before deciding it was on the edge of too late anyway. He came in as I was debating running back upstairs to call the airline from my land line to ask about a later flight, and the security guard - who had been on hold with another cab company for about half an hour at that point - asked if he would consider driving me to the airport, since she knew him. He was clearly reluctant, having just finished work and a long, snowy drive home, but when he looked at me his expression wavered (I have no idea what my face looked like, but it was probably painful to look at) and I pressed my momentary advantage, launching into a series of - polite, I hope - pleas interspersed with explanations of why I wasn't already outside dragging my luggage through the snow.

This gentleman turned out to be the nicest person on the face of the planet and said he'd drop his work gear upstairs and come back down to drive me to the airport. We left at 6:15, with me thanking him profusely approximately every 12 seconds.

It took Mr. NPE (Nicest Person Ever) and I 15 minutes to drive that 1.7 miles, and we only saw one cab (not from the cab company I was waiting for, which, incidentally, never did call to tell me they weren't coming), trying very hard not to slide backward down the ramp into the airport. Everything else on the road was SUVs. After thanking him one last time (okay, maybe it was more like six last times), I gave Mr. NPE my apartment number for anything he might need in the future - cereal, a cup of sugar, a kidney - and dashed into the terminal at 6:30, crossing my fingers and trying not to jostle Nala.

I got checked in with no trouble thanks to the minuscule size of Reagan National and at 6:45 tore off in the direction of the escalators and the security line, which turned out not to be a line at all, thanks again to the tiny size of DCA and the fact that a number of people were having the same trouble I had getting to the airport. (And, I found out later, to the fact that Delta had canceled all its flights the night before.) I scooped up a confused and fairly terrified Nala and clung to her for dear life while TSA ran her carrier through security, coaxed her back inside, grabbed a bottle of water and pelted down the concourse to my gate, stopping just long enough to hand my boarding pass to the gate agent, who was in the process of opening up all the unclaimed seats on the flight to stand-by passengers.

Fortunately, the woman sitting on the aisle in my row liked cats and cooed over Nala as much as the flight attendants had while I got her situated under the seat and we exchanged "getting to the airport" stories. One of the stand-by passengers claimed the seat between us and joined the conversation. While we laughed with relief over our good fortune in having made it onto a plane that was apparently going to take off, the stand-by passenger looked thoughtfully at Nala and said, "You know, I think I was on a shuttle with one of your neighbors. This guy was trying to get the driver to go past this apartment building because there was a woman there who couldn't make it to the shuttle because she couldn't take her cat outside. He even offered the driver $15, but he couldn't deviate from his route." My partner in panic hadn't forgotten me!

Neither of my seatmates nor I had eaten breakfast, but once we had been de-iced, anti-iced and cleared for take-off, they each bought snack boxes (which, when it came my turn to ask for one, turned out to have been the last two on the plane) and our row had a mini-party with them and the magazines we'd all brought. In between snatches of sleep, it was definitely the most fun I've had on a plane since high school Model UN trips. And although we took off an hour and a half late (de-icing takes a while, and before that the taxiway had to be plowed), we arrived a mere 27 minutes behind schedule.

That Saturday started with the potential to be the worst day in recent memory, but through the kindness, generosity and good humor of strangers, it turned out to be one of the best. Nala and I will definitely be baking a batch of "thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!" brownies for Mr. NPE when we get back to DC. And I'll be happily paying forward all that good cheer with every stranger I meet for a long time to come.

What happened to "Girl Power?"

I've been thinking about this since my Metro ride this morning. I averted my eyes from the girl standing across from me after one glance, because I didn't want her to think I was judging her. She was probably 16 or 17, was wearing more makeup than I used to wear on stage, had intentional bedhead hair - perfectly curled and carefully tousled - and wore a push-up bra that was beyond extreme and showcased by her shirt, which was unbuttoned to the top of her ribcage.

As I stared out the window, wondering why so many young women feel the need to call attention to themselves in such negative ways, I started to feel sorry for her, and then to feel sad. Teenage girls like her have a sense of self-worth that's obviously wrapped up in their looks, and I feel like they're in the majority these days.

I went to middle school and high school with some girls who dressed similarly to the young woman I saw on the Metro, but the majority of the girls I grew up with valued their minds and personalities above their perceived attractiveness or sexuality - at least most of the time. We came of age with The Babysitters' Club, the first wave of American Girl dolls and books, Jewel's first three albums and Martina McBride's powerhouse voice and feminist message.

Yes, we felt immense pressure to be thin, to be pretty, to fit in, but we were encouraged at least as often to be ourselves, whatever that looked like. We embraced female artists with individualist tendencies, like Natalie Imbruglia and Dido, and snickered at cookie-cutter pop divas like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson (even if we did sometimes sing their songs). We were still figuring out who we were, but we celebrated the parts of ourselves we knew and did our best to accept the aspects we knew were still changing.

One of my strongest memories that evokes the positive message I remember growing up with is from my 14th birthday party. My girlfriends and I were at my house and, having pushed the dining room table and chairs out of the way, were taking turns lip-synching/singing and dancing to our favorite songs, blasted on my parents' boom box. Five of us got up to do a Spice Girls favorite (I don't remember which one, but best bets are "Wannabe," "Spice Up Your Life," or "Stop"), arms around each other, singing at the top of our lungs into plastic spoon "microphones," grinning and laughing the whole time. Someone snapped a picture and every time I look at it, I remember how strong and happy and loved I felt at that moment.

The Spice Girls' motto was "Girl Power!" It's a pretty good expression of society's attitude toward young women in the 90s, and the women I know who grew up during that time took it to heart and remember it fondly. I haven't been a teenager in a while, nor do I know many anymore, but that positive, affirming outlook doesn't seem to be as evident in today's society. Gender equality was never in question for me, and I think that holds true across most of my generation; the idea that being women meant we had to look or dress or act a certain way never occurred to us. Our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers had fought to be fully-functioning, completely equal members of society and had won (back then, I didn't hear much about women earning less than men). We were lucky enough to live in a time when all we had to do was enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Now I wonder if we're forgetting, as a society, what those women fought for and why. Women's suffrage and women's lib aren't subjects that are often covered in history classes. In fact, I only learned about the history of the women's rights movement in a classroom twice: when I selected women's suffrage in the U.S. as my topic for a history project in eighth grade, and when I studied Roe v. Wade in American Government in high school. Combine that lack of attention with the number of Americans who identify as anti-choice actually increasing and girls being inundated with air-brushed images of chemically and surgically altered models and performers, and I'm not sure how we can expect being a woman to continue to carry a positive message of independence and strength.

What happened to girl power, and why does it feel like we're slipping back to a time when a woman's face was more important than what went on behind it?

A year, already?

One year and 78 posts ago today, There Is No Spoon was born. (Happy birthday, blog!)

Most of you who visit know me personally, but some have stumbled across the site via a random Google search. The two most popular searches that land people here? "Netflix vs. cable" takes people to an early post about my love of Netflix vs. my hatred of Comcast, and some variation of "fairy tales bad influence" will land you on this summer's defense of fairy tale princesses. (The puzzling thing about the fairy tale search is that 95% of those hits come from the UK, Australia or New Zealand. Any thoughts on why that might be? I'm coming up blank.)

I'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts on issues from whether or not the Kindle is a good idea to the unfairness of some of the U.S.'s immigration requirements - and I love having a reason to write more often. So keep reading and telling me what you think and I'll keep writing. Deal?

(On a side note, a big thank you to Kathy Sena at Parent Talk Today! After I emailed around asking for help getting the word out about Running for Life, she posted about the campaign and the general awesomeness of charity: water. Check it out!)

Faith healing, or religious roulette?

Despite the fact that I may not be the most devout of worshippers, I'm not "anti-religion" and never have been, but there are some things done in the name of religion that drive me nuts, and a few that absolutely infuriate me. Most notably in that last category are parents who rely solely on faith healing for their children.

Every time this comes up I'm infuriated all over again, and reading Jonathan Turley's take on the issue in The Washington Post this morning was no exception. If we're picking sides, Turley and I are probably on the same one. He doesn't outright say that he disapproves of faith healing itself, but it's implied in his argument that the parents of the children who die from a lack of medical care essentially get a pass from the law:

In the past 25 years, hundreds of children are believed to have died in the United States after faith-healing parents forbade medical attention to end their sickness or protect their lives. When minors die from a lack of parental care, it is usually a matter of criminal neglect and is often tried as murder. However, when parents say the neglect was an article of faith, courts routinely hand down lighter sentences. Faithful neglect has not been used as a criminal defense, but the claim is surprisingly effective in achieving more lenient sentencing, in which judges appear to render less unto Caesar and more unto God.

Turley writes specifically about the Neumanns of Wisconsin, one of the most recent of these cases to be decided. Their daughter Madeline had diabetes that went undiagnosed and eventually killed her at age 11 last year. He compares the Neumanns to the Washburns of West Virginia, who don't practice faith healing and whose baby boy, Alex, died of an undiagnosed head injury after falling and hitting first his head, then his chin. In both instances, a child who could have been treated - and likely saved - by a doctor died because their parents didn't take them to one. The sentences? The Neumanns will serve one month a year in prison for the next six years and will be on probation for a decade. The Washburns relinquished all parental rights to their remaining children and will be in jail for three to fifteen years. Um, hello, double standards!

I agree with Turley that the "more lenient sentencing" for parents whose neglect of their children involves faith healing needs to stop, but my anger with this issue doesn't end there. I'm not a parent, so I can't fully appreciate the parent-child bond, but I'm on the receiving end of it from my parents and a familial observer of it between my brother and sister-in-law and my niece, and I cannot wrap my head around what kind of logic these supposedly loving parents are using as they watch their children suffer and die.

Faith or no faith, I don't see how any parent who watches their child's life slip away without running - screaming - for a doctor and demanding immediate treatment can possibly claim to love them or to be acting in their best interest. More than that, they're imposing their own religious restrictions on a child who isn't yet old enough to decide whether or not he or she agrees with them. "Making" little Susie or little Johnny give up their Sunday morning to go to Sunday school is one thing; ending their life because you believe if God doesn't save them they were supposed to die is another thing entirely: negligent homicide.

Yes, faith is central to the lives of many people. Yes, many parents can't imagine that their children would ever not carry on the religious traditions of their family. Yes, parents absolutely have the right to impart their beliefs - religious or otherwise - to their children. But no one has the right to watch a child die without exhausting every available resource to save them. Adults have enough knowledge of the consequences to say "Stop, that's enough, let nature take its course" or to sign a DNR. Children don't.

Play religious roulette with your own life, parents; until your children are old enough to decide for themselves whether or not faith healing is for them, take them to the doctor and keep them healthy the conventional way. It's kind of why mankind has spent so much time and energy throughout our history developing medicine. And doing everything in your power to care for your children - including taking them to a doctor when they need one - is one of the most basic responsibilities of being a parent.

Newsflash: 26.2 ≠ 26.2!

This morning, one of my co-workers sent me the link to a New York Times article written by Juliet Macur and entitled "Plodders Have a Place, but Is It in a Marathon?" He rolled his eyes at the snarky article; I was infuriated by its message.

Macur talked to several "elite" runners who say they can't stand the fact that running a marathon has become such a popular thing on people's lifelong "to-do" lists; that if you're going to take six or seven hours to finish, it isn't a real marathon and detracts from the accomplishment of the elite athletes who finished in under three hours.

Purists believe that running a marathon should be just that — running the entire course at a relatively fast clip. They point out that a six-hour marathoner is simply participating in the event, not racing in it. Slow runners have disrespected the distance, they say, and have ruined the marathon’s mystique.

Excuse me, but in an individual sport where except for the top five or ten competitors of each gender everyone is basically racing himself, isn't participation the point? And 26.2 miles is 26.2 miles. What am I missing here? Most of what elite runners talk about when it comes to speed is their PR - personal record - for varying distances. And breaking that is often their primary goal, win or lose. A win when a seriously competitive runner doesn't break his or her own PR for the distance is a little bittersweet - they beat the field, but they didn't beat their own best time. A PR always feels good, whether your PR is 2:05:38 like the current American Marathon record holder, Khalid Khannouchi, or 7:14:30 like the last person to finish last year's Marine Corps Marathon.

Training for a marathon is an extremely demanding process, both physically and mentally. It affects every aspect of your life and takes up a lot of time. You train in pouring rain, in high humidity, in cold weather, in gusting winds and in soaring temperatures with one goal: taking the last step of those 26.2 miles, the one that puts you on the other side of the finish line. The race itself is no picnic, either. Many runners hit "the wall" around mile 20, making that last 10K feel like the rest of their lives. Between leg cramps, swollen feet, blisters, broken toenails and finding the balance between dehydration and hyponatremia, figuring out how to convince your body to finish a marathon without wanting to collapse immediately afterward is a science - with some luck tossed in - no matter the pace.

One thing I've always respected and admired about runners is that they're such an open, friendly bunch. Yeah, the "elites" blow past everyone else with tunnel vision but most runners - fast or slow, trying for a PR or just out for some fun - are a rowdy, cheerful crew of jokers who are more than willing to lend a helping hand or encouraging word should the need arise. And that's what this article - and apparently some of the world's elite runners - doesn't get.

Crossing the finish line at a marathon is a personal victory, one that isn't impacted by anyone else's race, which is why I don't understand the point of view of the "elite" runners Macur interviewed on the topic. Because regardless of whether you walked, ran or wheeled your way through the course, one thing holds true for every participant: finishing a marathon takes stamina, endurance and a whole lot of heart.