Pic: Here we're on a very windy hillside in Mycenae with the sea behind us. (The sea always seems present in Greece...) And yes, we're wearing matching blouses.
PocoBrat
A Daily Self-indulgent Postcolonial/Feminist/Poetry-in-Progress/Culture Blog
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Nafplio
Monday, December 09, 2024
"Of course, you must absolutely win at your vacation"
My sister and I have been dreaming of going to Greece for practically our whole lives, and we've been planning it for months now. But it always seemed a bit unreal given the state of the world, our parents' health, my incapacity lately to spend money on myself, etc. But this was my sister's big birthday present, and I decided to just go for it.
I started to get really excited about it this past week and told EM that I must read up on all the places we're visiting so if the guide asked questions I would know the answer. This led EM to gently mock me: Of course, Maya, you must absolutely win at your vacation." (Hence the title of the post.)
As it happened, I got too busy to actually read up. But then my sister and I have prepared for this our whole lives: from the Greek wedding dolls my father's Greek colleagues gave us when we were babies, to the Greek myths we pored over, the Byrons, the abridged and then unabridged versions of so many Greek classics (epics, plays, poems), Gerald Durrells, Lawrence Durrells, Mary Stewarts, Mary Renaults, --heck, even the Mills and Boons, etc. that loved Greece and Greek culture so much... So I think we'll know most of the answers already... we'll be ok.
We're here for a week and we plan to cover so much. We haven't seen each other since Summer 2023 so today is just for catching up.
Pic: My sister in profile... We were marveling about being able to see the Parthenon from our hotel room.
Sunday, December 08, 2024
weeks where decades happen...
*Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide, I know the U.N. and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have made similar declarations, but Amnesty is somehow better known and represented in the U.S.
I also saw that the Vatican's nativity this year features a sweet baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh; the statues themselves are carved by carpenters from the West Bank, reportedly.
*The CEO of the largest US health insurance company was killed and the killer immediately became a folk hero. Stories about the killer abound (the bullets were inscribed with insurance delaying feint words, the backpack was full of Monopoly money) and it feels like this is how it might have felt to hear Robin Hood stories back in the 1300s. Big A said that when he walked into the ER the day it happened, he had never seen so many people celebrating someone's death since Bin Laden. It feels ugly to celebrate anyone's death. But it's also obscene to make 10 million dollars a year for sucessfully turning people's life support off and denying life-saving treatment from behind a desk.
I am in NYC on a six-hour layover at JFK (on my way to join my sister for our long-awaited vacation together!!!!) when a friend jokingly texted to ask if I was there for the look-alike contest. Apparently, New Yorkers were celebrating by holding a killer look-alike contest.
*Martial law was declared in South Korea and FAILED WITHIN HOURS due to people's actions and protests.
* The Assad regime has collapsed in Syria and people are already making their way back home!
*Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide, I know the U.N. and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have made similar declarations, but Amnesty is somehow better known and represented in the U.S.
I also saw that the Vatican's nativity this year features a sweet baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh; the statues themselves are carved by carpenters from the West Bank, reportedly.
*The CEO of the largest US health insurance company was killed and the killer immediately became a folk hero. Stories about the killer abound (the bullets were inscribed with insurance delaying feint words, the backpack was full of Monopoly money) and it feels like this is how it might have felt to hear Robin Hood stories back in the 1300s. Big A said that when he walked into the ER the day it happened, he had never seen so many people celebrating someone's death since Bin Laden. It feels ugly to celebrate anyone's death. But it's also obscene to make 10 million dollars a year for sucessfully turning people's life support off and denying life-saving treatment from behind a desk.
I am in NYC on a six-hour layover at JFK (on my way to join my sister for our long-awaited vacation together!!!!) when a friend jokingly texted to ask if I was there for the look-alike contest. Apparently, New Yorkers were celebrating by holding a killer look-alike contest.
*Martial law was declared in South Korea and FAILED WITHIN HOURS due to people's actions and protests.
* The Assad regime has collapsed in Syria and people are already making their way back home!
Saturday, December 07, 2024
the resistance
Friday, December 06, 2024
getting there
Somehow I'm the shortest human in the frame, 3/6 are smiling, and 4/6 are looking toward the camera... Perhaps it can't get better than this? I kind of like the excited and slightly wild vibe.
Offices seem deserted at work, but it's SO BUSY! My online Gaza course is winding down too. The big challenge here is to pare down my lecture slides as students are accessing materials from internet cafes, so big files are a challenge to download. Also, it's grad school application deadline time, so recommendation letters are due everywhere. Over at my regular job, it's finals week, and grading is piling up. It's a breathless kind of busy. It will get better this weekend.
Also, Nance commented that I must be proud of At, and--omigosh--I so am. In 2022, it was pretty heady and I wrote, "We’re so very proud of At, our labor organizer extraordinaire, who made national news for leading the first Chipotle in the country to unionization. I like these articles featuring At and coworkers:
Slate "Two mad-online leftists. The Starbucks-worker playbook. And an accordion."
Labor Notes "How Zoomers Organized the First Chipotle Union"
Jacobin "Chipotle Workers on How They Won the First Chipotle Union in the United States"
Washington Post "Michigan Chipotle outlet the chain’s first to unionize"
Related story in the Washington Post "The labor market is still red-hot — and it’s helping union organizers"
NPR "Chipotle in Michigan first to unionize for the fast-food chain nationwide"
Thursday, December 05, 2024
snow... and how they grow
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
slide to the left
FB memories brought up this old poster from December 2011...
The Occupy Wall Street movement had spread to university campuses by November 2011 and students had begun organizing. There was a viral video of a policeman casually pepper-spraying students seated on the ground (it later became a meme too).
It started out as a conversation with GG about basics: Pepper-spraying students is wrong. Before long, we were organizing a teach-in with Nathan Brown from UC Davis, Pranav Jani and Steve Conn from OSU, and various Yellow Springers.
Sometimes people belittle Occupy, but it held the seeds to the popularity of Bernie, the resurgence of the youth labor movement, and current university protests... People supposedly get conservative as they age, but in my case, I think I get more radical and angrier as I get older and learn more.
I'm thinking about these things because I'm proud of At, who is off to Seattle today as an invited speaker to the UFCW about democratically organizing a union. One of our dinner table jokes is that Pete Buttigieg's and Kamala Harris's parents must be disappointed in them--both of them had professor parents whose Marxist politics were probably more radical than that of their kids. We're definitely on more equal footing over at our place.
Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Nafplio
I've even had students named after Greek philosophers before, but oh--the thrill of hearing "Aristotle!" or "Chimera!...
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I have the feeling that I’m going to succumb to the season and put out a list of resolutions soon. Just wanted to establish this heads up th...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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Today is the birthday of the best sister in the whole world (mine:)! Happy, Happy Birthday, Chelli! [AA, my favorite aunt in the whole world...