La Primavera!

Frau Löwe

Meerkats!

Spring Break
a break to catch the fine mornings of spring
and forget those things that are insignificant
for things that I forgot were mammothly most significant
like sunshine, frozen yogurt, geese, and sake.

Oh, I'd be remiss if I don't first tell you how the conference went. My research partner and I stayed up late drafting a comprehensive overview of our research findings, having surveyed our student body about what they thought about ethnic diversity at our school. Come conference day we stressed over our presentation drafts and practiced our speeches and then piled into our panel room, which was...the size of a closet. It was so small that we sat with the attendees around a table. So much for big formal presentation. So we talked about our findings. Then some sociology students talked about what it was like to be a woman of color in soc. The panel didn't all relate to itself, but I guess that's ok. The conference was about changing the culture of the academy to allow for more diversity as a means for achieving excellence. The cheese at the reception afterwards was glorious.

On to Spring Break!

(Oh yeah, I took a 3-hour test for San Fran County child welfare. Gah, I want to know the results. Will I have a job?)

- Oakland Zoo. Animales! A pretty small zoo, but fun to see the giant fruit bats and lions and chimpanzees and alligators and tropical birdies and sun bear. And this male baboon that totally sexually assaulted a female baboon. She just deflected and started grooming him. It was more of the ppl going, "Oh god!"
- Lake Merrit. The land bound lake in Oakland with lots of high-rise condos scattered around. Grimly beautiful, with many geese. Cute shops and lots of ppl in abundance.
- Scharffen Berger Factory. Our local chocolate factory in Berkeley! I ate more chocolate in samples that I have all month. Delicious chocolate though.
- Takara Sake Factory. Our local sake factory with free tasting. I wasn't that taken with the standard sake, but quite delighted by the dessert ones. Plum sake is smooth and delicious. yum yum.
- My apartment. So clean now that I took the time to clean it with my roommate. How it sparkles!

A Hundred Million Miracles

I guess this will be more a recollection of events that thorough processing. I wanted to devote individual entries to these, but due to time and psychic energy--the lack thereof--I resort again to bullet points.

- Went to see Stephen Hawking speak. Was great to feel like part of a social phenomenon or something to see him, but he was basically wheeled to the middle of the stage in Berkeley's big performance hall where he commenced to present a powerpoint lecture on the origins of the universe, a highly generalized discussion right out of his book. Hmm. But still cool to see this person, the physicist and cultural icon.

- Went to a rally for Barack Obama in Oakland. Didn't really see him, more like just heard him. Was disappointed that the speech was so politicky with buzz topics like the war in Iraq and universal health care. I was looking for inspiration and I got generalities. Ai. That's ok. I will still keep my eye on him. For him to talk about racial disparities sounds truer for his identity and personal experience than I can believe for the other candidates. I'll keep my eyes and ears open.

- Went to see the Flower Drum Song, a Rogers and Hammerstein musical movie from 1961, that takes place in San Francisco's Chinatown. Conventional, or course, but messes with stereotypes about Chinese Americans too in challenging ways. Also so affirming to see an entire cast of Asians doing it all, acting, singing, dancing, falling in love, wreaking revenge, being filial, or striving for success. It was part of the Asian American Film Festival in San Fran, a sing-a-long! Fun for that reason too.

- Also, ah. I will be presenting on a panel at a conference this week on my research project, having to do with surveying the MSW student body on their perceptions of ethnic diversity in our school. Gah, I'm freaked out a bit, but I think it will be a great learning experience. Ah. A link about the conference http://cci.berkeley.edu/news/.

- Friday I take a written exam as part of the application process to doing CPS with San Francisco county. Egad, I need to brush up on safety/risk assessment to prepare. Wish me luck!

Chapter 4

From Steinbeck's Cannery Row.
(The painting is of Monterey by Chiura Obata, formerly interned during Japanese internment and former professor at Berkeley.)
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Chapter 4

In the evening just at dusk, a curious thing happened on Cannery Row. It happened in the time between sunset and the lighting of the street light. There is a small quiet gray period then. Down the hill, past the Palace Flophouse, down the chicken walk and through the vacant lot came an old Chinaman. He wore an ancient flat straw hat, blue jeans, both coat and trousers, and heavy shoes of which one sole was loose so that it clapped the ground when he walked. In his hand he carried a covered wicker basket. His face was lean and brown and corded as jerky and his old eyes were brown, even the whites were brown and deep set so that they looked out of holes. He came by just at dusk and crossed the street and went through the opening between Western Biological and the Hediondo Cannery. Then he crossed the little beach and disappeared among the piles and steel posts which supported the piers. No one say him again until dawn.

But in the dawn, during that time when the street light has been turned off and the daylight has not come, the old Chinaman crept out from among the piles, crossed the beach and the street. His wicker basket was heavy and wet and dripping now. His loose sole flap-flapped on the street. He went up the hill to the second street, went through a gate in a high board fence and was not seen again until evening. People, sleeping, heard his flapping shoe go by and they awakened for a moment. It had been happening for years but no one ever got used to him. Some people thought he was God and very old people thought he was Death and children thought he was a very funny old Chinaman, as children always think anything old and strange is funny. But the children did not taunt him or shout at him as they should for he carried a little cloud of fear about him.

Only one brave and beautiful boy of ten named Andy from Salinas ever crossed the old Chinaman. Andy was visiting from Monterey and he saw the old man and knew he must shout at him if only to keep his self-respect, but even Andy, brave as he was, felt the little cloud of fear. Andy watched him go by evening after evening while his duty and his terror wrestled. And then one evening Andy braced himself and marched behind the old man singing in a shrill falsetto, "Ching-Chong, Chinaman sitting on a rail--'Long came a white man an' chopped off his tail."

The old man stopped and turned. Andy stopped. The deep-brown eyes looked at Andy and the thin corded lips moved. What happened then Andy was never able either to explain or forget. For the eyes spread out until there was no Chinaman. And then it was one eye--one huge brown eye as big as a church door. Andy looked through the shiny transparent brown door and through it he saw a lonely countryside, flat for miles but ending against a row of fantastic mountains shaped like cows' and dogs' heads and tents and mushrooms. There was low coarse grass on the plain and here and there a little mound. And a small animal like a woodchuck sat on each mound. And the loneliness--the desolate cold aloneness of the landscape made Andy whimper because there wasn't anybody in the world and he was left. Andy shut his eyes so he wouldn't have to see it any more and when he opened them, he was in Cannery Row and the old Chinaman was just flop-flapping between Western Biological and the Hediondo Cannery. Andy was the only boy who ever did that and he never did it again.

Something is a-brewing...

It's coming! 2008 when we can flex out political will and change the direction of our nation, albeit as far as our elected reps will take it. I went to a rally for John Edwards in Berkeley on Sunday just to see a Democratic hopeful speak. (I'm still all about Obama.) He was striking in a soap opera star kind of way and charismatic as someone who has publicly voiced opinions about health care and poverty for many years. And it was interesting to hear that he has big plans for universal health care and admits to regretting having supported the war, but when he spoke of racial discrimination he witnessed in the South while growing up it just didn't ring true for me. What can this white dude have to say about personal experiences of racism against African Americans? His understanding, no matter how personal and deeply felt will never compare with that of a person of color. Does our nation need more white leaders? Anyway, that is how I felt about it. I think the crowd on Sunday was just hungry to rally around some Democratic alternative to Bush, though the murmurs I overheard were speckled with "Obama" and "Hillary."