THANKFUL FRIDAY

Many of you may not know that I took the MCAT before I took the GRE to apply for grad school. I was still undecided about medical school. Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted. Here is what I knew: I was flooded with excitement and wonder whenever I looked in a microscope and even the smallest scientific discovery made me clap my hands with glee. Life around us is fascinating and the tiny life forms of this planet are spectacular. I did very well on the MCAT, well enough to probably get in to medical school, but something told me that I would not find that life to be as fascinating.

When I started working for Margaret, I didn’t know anything about Dictyostelium, but I learned very quickly how to grow, culture and care for these little soil amebas, as well as manipulating them for microscopy viewing. When food is scarce for Dicty, they’ll send out a signal to other Dicty cells in the area. Then they all group together to form a slug that eventually transforms itself. The head of the slug becomes spores while the rest turn into a stalk with a fruiting body on the end containing dormant cells that can fall off under more favorable conditions. A large portion of the cell community dies so that some cells can live on later when there’s more food or the environment is nicer. We kept plates of Dicty in this form and I remember asking Margaret once about seeing them like this in the wild. She assured me that it was possible to find Dicty in the wild as fruiting bodies and since then I’ve been a little obsessed with the idea. 2022 was my year for seeing Dicty in the wild. First, Heather sent me a picture of them growing on her car. Then I found some hanging off my porch light. That sighting made me light up and immediately morph into Jordan from Real Genius. I excitedly told Michael all about the life cycle of Dicty while I took photos of our porch light.

Recently I’ve been talking to one of our graduate students about making miso. He’s been experimenting with trying to make his own koji (think starter, like sourdough, but with Aspergillus oryzae instead of yeast). This week he brought me a book on making koji and we had a long nerdy talk about trying to culture the powder koji starter that he has. I helped him get set up on a microscope and then went back to my desk. I started flipping through the pages of the book and came across some glossy prints of microscopic images and I got so excited. I ran back into the microscopy room and sat down next the grad student and started blathering about culturing and checking strains with microscopy and I got really excited about making my own miso. The part that excites about making miso has very little to do with making actual miso, but a whole lot to do with the science side of fermentation.

So here’s my gratitude. I am so grateful to be in a position where I have been able to maintain my excitement and enthusiasm for life sciences. With my job and the people I get to interact with every day, it sometimes feels like a dream. It is the difference between just having a job and getting to choose your job and that is a privilege.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had an 8 AM dentist appointment this week and it was probably one of the highlights of my week. My dental hygienist only sees me twice a year, but every time she leans back my chair to get to work, she asks me about something I told her I was going to do at my previous visit. This week was “how did grown-up camp go?” She remembered from my last visit in February that I was going to go to Camp Wildling. She’s fantastic. She always tells me that I’m doing a great job at flossing. At the end, the dentist comes over and he also asks me follow up questions from my last visit. On this visit, he told me that my teeth are a ten out of ten. I left the dentist’s office with clean teeth and a hop in my step. All of that nightly flossing and taking care of my teeth stuff seems to be paying off.

Then I opened my email to see a new email from Macy’s furniture department and I yelled out “We’re getting our new couch!”

We are not getting our new couch. Once I actually read the email, I found out that we have a new estimated delivery date of 11/30/2021. Yes, that says November thirtieth. I think what really rubbed me the wrong way was in the email, they said “Thank you for your recent furniture order.” as if we bought the couch last week and not six months ago. No one likes the current seating situation in the living room. The animals walk over to where I’m sitting in the chair I bought to go with my desk and they just stare up. The cat was so desperate to lay on some part of my body the other day that he flopped down on my feet. Josephine just sighs heavily before stretching out on the floor next to me. The Cabbage was on vacation with their mom last week and the first thing they asked when we picked them up was if the new couch had arrived. They didn’t even really sit that much on the old couch and they are tired of this seating situation.

We have a futon in the basement that (on top of the futon mattress) Michael has placed an actual mattress. That’s where he sleeps when the Cabbage is with us. I bought a simple fold up bed frame to put the mattress on so that we can haul the futon up to the living room. My friend Sarah asked me if I wanted to borrow her son’s bean bag chairs. I am not, but I told her that I might as well because we’ll already be sitting on a futon like it’s 1996. All I need now is a stinky bong for the coffee table and a lava lamp. I know that 90s fashion is making a comeback. Anthropologie just sent me an advertisement for sweater vests, but recreating my college day living room decor is too much.

I know what you’re thinking. Where is the gratitude in this story?

Three days a week, I walk Josephine up to Tower Park (also known as Snack Park because that’s where she finds all the good snacks) where we walk the whole loop of the park. There are regulars who walk there that know the two of us by name and we greet each other every morning. There are also regulars who sleep in this park. In the last few months, I have noticed the number of homeless sleeping in this park has increased. One man has even attempted to build a cardboard house in the baseball stands. I’ve taken to carrying granola bars with me to leave discretely next to a sleeping person. One morning a few weeks ago, Josephine and I arrived at the park just as a city park’s ranger was clearing people out. One by one, they filled up their carts or bags with their belongings while Josephine and I walked the park. At the end of this, Josephine and I had a place to go. The park people did not, though I believe that they should be allowed to sleep in that park because they have very little options. Their homelessness is not about being unable to find a job. It is about mental instability and addictions. It is about once having a stable life and then losing a job and or having huge medical bills and then finding themselves suddenly homeless without any know how to pull themselves out of homelessness.

So my couch problem is a problem of privilege and in the wake of what I just told you about the homeless in the park, a bit of a disgusting problem to complain about. I am grateful for my current uncomfortable seating situation.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Looking for the bright side

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My car is in the shop. This week has been an adventure in car pooling and scooter riding. Tuesday was one of those days where we had a goose, a bag of seed and a fox. Only one of us could fit in the rowboat at a time and we all had to get to the other side of the lake. We had several arguments/discussions on the best way to do this. I was pushing the idea of me riding my scooter. Michael was totally against me riding the scooter considering the temperature was thirty two degrees. My attitude shifted over to a you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do attitude, while Michael was just trying to get us all over to the other side of the lake without the fox eating the goose and the goose eating the bag of seed. I can tell you that I am not handling this without a bit of whining or flopping over with how exhausting the hassle of being down to one vehicle seems to be.

I am a spoiled brat.

For most of our time together, Chris and I barely had one fairly functional vehicle. There were a few rare years where we each had our own fairly functional vehicle and then there were the years where we both had scooters. I say that our vehicles were fairly functional because they always made the kinds of noises that made us believe that the only thing keeping the car going was hopes and dreams. Chris and I had an abundance of both hopes and dreams. We worked at the same place, which made things convenient and when I was teaching yoga, Chris just tagged along. He worked out in the gym while I taught class or joined my class at the studio. We were also fortunate enough to be near to Chris’s brother Brian, who can fix just about any car. Rumor has it that Todd’s/Chris’s Mazda that once hit a cow and had more than a quarter of million miles on it by the time we gave up on it, is still somewhere out there on the road thanks to Brian. I have no idea why now having one vehicle is such a big inconvenience other than I have just grown accustomed to the independence of having my very own car. There are a number of households who do not have any access to a car, the majority of those households are African American. They have to rely on public transportation or a friend just to get to work. Talaura relies on public transit every day. It’s great. When it’s working. Or when you don’t have to cart home bags of groceries. Public transportation is even more unreliable in areas of urban sprawl like much of the midwest.

I have made it to work on time, if not a little early, every day this week. I have made it to various appointments and classes. Michael has been able to continue with his open mic gigs. Our lives have not really been all that disrupted. I know I am privileged, but my reaction to being with out a car this week reminds me just how privileged I am and how easy it is to take that privilege for granted. In fact, I feel a bit ashamed of myself to tell you the truth. I mean, I can make excuses for myself. I was worried that I would need a whole new engine or stressed over coming up with the funds to pay for repairs. All of my excuses can be boiled down to one thing: inconvenience. I am going to be inconvenienced. And it isn’t even a big inconvenience. It will not cause me to lose my job. I will not have to choose between fixing the car and eating. There are too many households that have none of those luxuries.

This is not so much a reminder for me to be grateful for my privileges, but to be empathic, kind, and generous with those who do not have these privileges.

PRIVILEGE

Levels of gray

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My brother said something over the weekend about how he’s supposedly the enemy now because he is a white privileged male. He followed this up with how he didn’t understand how he was privileged because he’s had to work hard for everything he has. He sounded dejected as he said all of this and I felt bad for him. My brother is a good man. I wanted to explain to him how, even though he’s worked hard for everything, he still has a certain amount of privilege allotted to him because of the color of his skin and his maleness. How do you explain to someone who hasn’t had it easy, that they are privileged?

Privilege: a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group.

I can see my brother reading this definition and asking “what was my special right?” Oklahoma is still a very racially segregated state. Most, if not all, of what he experiences is in a community of white where marginalization is socioeconomic. As a good friend of my pointed out, even the right to work is a privilege. This study is a good example of how just the name on your resume can keep you from getting a job.

White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews

I once had a boss ask me if it was true that some of the people we were working with didn’t want to talk to me because I am a woman. He said this with all sincerity. He was genuinely clueless. It just never dawned on him that this sort of discrimination was happening in his environment. Because it was something he himself had never experienced. This is privilege. Walking into a store without being under constant supervision because of the color of your skin is a privilege. Going to buy a wedding cake and not being turned away due to your sexual orientation is a privilege. Being paid and treated the same as your coworkers is a privilege.

I recognize that I too have many privileges allotted to me. I didn’t ask for them, but I sure did take advantage of the safety it provided me. I allowed myself to be naive in thinking that all people had the same advantages if they only worked hard for it. Honestly, I didn’t have to work all that hard to get to where I am today. Scholarships just appeared. My parents had just enough. I did not have to work and support myself while I was getting an education. THAT IS A PRIVILEGE. With my whole heart, I believe this should not be a privilege but a right for everyone. Now I use the benefits of my privilege to support education whether it be through volunteer outreach or donations. The first step is recognizing your privilege. The second step is using that privilege to do good, to speaking up for the marginalized and to be grateful.

Your privilege doesn’t make you an enemy unless you believe that you are owed these privileges because of your race. Or that you are owed these privileges at all. This is an important conversation that we need to be having because we need good men like my brother on our side. The last thing I want is for my brother to feel threatened or alienated for a number of reasons. Look what happens when white men feel threatened and alienated. They do stupid things like vote for Trump, hold rallies declaring their superiority, and have parades promoting their homophobia.

THE IRRITATION OF IT ALL

Storm damage

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It’s sometime after lunch and I decide that I need a cup of tea. I think I might as well do a loop outside on my way to get said tea. Get up, move my body around after a few hours of staring at a computer screen exporting data. There is a small parking area on the side of the building and I as reach the area, a man steps out of his Lexus and approaches me. He’s maybe late forties, early fifties, business suit type. He’s holding a sticky note with a name of a building and an address written on it. He asks me if this is the B building. I kindly shake my head and reply “No…this is the S Institute. I think you’re looking for a building across the street.” The man then holds the sticky note out and points. He says “But, the address says it is on Rockhill Road.” It was on the tip of my tongue to say something about how there’s two sides to a road when one of our security guards walks up and takes over.

I step back and continue on my way, but the more I think about it the more irritated I become. I mean, I can see the building the man was looking for right across the street. It has the name of the building written across it in big letters, for gosh sakes. I couldn’t help but believe his doubt in my ability to give him the correct directions had something to do with my gender. He didn’t question our male security guard when he also told the man the building he was looking for was right across the street. Part of me wants to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just needed a second opinion. But another part of me is pissed off and sweary over the whole thing. I’ve put this man into the pile of older white privileged males that I’ve been mentally collecting to be pushed over a cliff with a bulldozer. That pile grows larger by the day. It includes all of those old white dudes who vote and make decisions regarding women’s healthcare or think they can grab a woman and do whatever he wants with her.

I’m going to need a bigger bulldozer.

There is another side of this white male privilege that I have been struggling with lately. It is not necessarily a story I can write here, at least not the details of it. It has to do with someone using their privilege to gain access to resources for cancer treatments for a family member that not everyone would have access too. I like this person. I respect this person, but every time he starts talking about next steps and details of it all, I have to get up and leave the room. My emotions range from anger to guilt to shame and doubt. I wonder if I had known to ask for this resource if it would have been available to me. Then I feel stupid that I didn’t even think to ask in the first place. A little bit of rage and jealously settles in because I know that his access to this resource is only possible through his privilege and that if I had asked for it for myself, I would have been told the same thing every doctor told us.

There’s nothing we can do.

Inevitably, after the times I have to leave the room, I end up standing in my favorite bathroom stall, gasping in air between sobs. I stand there, clutching the top of the door, trying to regain control. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. This man is just prolonging the outcome. That’s all I would have been doing. Prolonging Chris’s illness. When I think of it this way, it sounds cruel in my ears. There’s no way I would have prolonged Chris’s suffering. This man is just using his privilege to give his family some hope and I can’t fault him for that. Hope is nice. Also, this man is clueless and naive about his white male privilege. It doesn’t even dawn on him how fortunate he is to have access to this kind of hope. In his world, any one could do what he’s doing. I soothe myself a little bit by letting myself feel sorry for him and his naivety.

But I don’t for a moment forgive him for it.

I pull myself together and tell myself that I am not one of those people. I’m not one of those people who think that if I don’t have something, you can’t have it. I let myself be the naive one for a change and believe that after his experience, maybe he will find a way to share this resource with others. He will find a way for more people to benefit from this. Maybe it’s my job to remind him of this, teach him to use his privilege to help others.

I bet I could do it in such a way that he’d even think it was his own idea.

GUILTY

Wheat

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Someone recently posted this blog post by Rumya Putcha at Namaste Nation on a yoga teacher Facebook group I am part of. It is a very eye opening read and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Rumya Putcha discussed the mis-appropriation of 'namaste' and cultural appropriation of upper class white women and yoga. Yoga is thought of and marketed as a white woman's domain. I have become hyper aware of the lack of diversity of people in yoga studio classes. I will be sitting on my mat, waiting for the class to begin and I'll look around the room. We all look alike and this makes me very uncomfortable. I don't tell you that to garnish some kind of sympathy or "Oh, no Cindy. You don't need to feel uncomfortable." I DO need to feel uncomfortable. This should make me feel out of place. 

“When you’re white in this country, you’re taught that everything belongs to you. You think you have a right to everything. … You’re conditioned this way. It’s not because your hair is a texture or your skin is light. It’s the fact that the laws and the culture tell you this. You have a right to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, be however—and people just got to accommodate themselves to you.” Ta-Nehisi Coates

My first exposure to yoga was in a gym setting. In fact, I did not attend yoga classes in yoga studios until yoga teacher training. Yoga was/is a workout option. There was no talk of the spiritual side of yoga or stories of the Gods who inspired these poses. The teacher said 'namaste' at the end of every class and we just nodded our heads in response. I didn't know the meaning of that word. I just assumed it was some sort of goodbye/thank you/blessing. Like ending a prayer with 'amen'. I have a giant Ganesh tattoo on my back, not because I am Hindu, but because I like elephants and was attracted to this Hindu God because of his elephant head. I did do my research before having him permanently placed on my body and I love this tattoo. But I do question what right I have to put Ganesh on my body in such a way. It is hard to admit because no one wants to admit to being part of the problem, but I am part of the problem. 

I see my mistakes and I'm working on being part of the solution. My roommate in college was full blood Cherokee. She used to invite me to her home in Stilwell Oklahoma mostly because she didn't have a car and missed her family so much. She would say "Drive me home this weekend and we'll have Mom make Indian tacos and we'll go to a stomp dance." I always agreed because her family was so nice and I loved going to the stomp dances. The dances would run late into the night and into early morning and I watched for hours as Cherokee men and women danced in a circle. I would help my college roommate tie on her tortoise shell shakers that fit the length of her shin and was always surprised by the weight of them. The dances were beautiful and mesmerizing but I never participated unless my roommate specifically dragged me into the circle. I was very aware that I was an outsider and that I had no claim to this culture.  This is how I should also approach yoga. I do not lay any cultural rights on yoga. It is a gift that has been brought to our Western society, a gift that should be treated with more respect. 

I chose to teach yoga at the Y because I thought it would be the best way to bring the benefits of yoga to a more diverse group of people. I teach my students how to move safely into yoga poses and to challenge themselves physically. I teach my students to focus on their breath and how linking your breath with your movement aids in calming the mind. I encourage my students to find joy in their practice. I do not teach the spiritual side of yoga. We do not chant or "om". I still say 'namaste' at the end of class. I don't know if it is the right thing to do any more. I say it, fully meaning the sentiment behind the word: that which is beautiful in me salutes that which is beautiful in you. But my students don't know that this is the meaning of namaste. This is another mistake on my part. When you know the meaning and reverence of something, you are more likely to be more reverent with that something. You are less likely to toss around a sacred word like namaste.

This is true for all languages and cultures. 

SOME THINGS ON MY MIND

Right outside my front door

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There's a long list of chore related activities that I should have done over the holiday weekend, but instead I spent my time watching movies like Jurassic World and Mortdecai. I started a new book that was promised to be a "beach read" that is mindlessly entertaining. On the actual fourth, I went to a yoga in the park event at the Nelson that turned out to be the most patriotic yoga class I've ever attended. There was a lot of talk of how great it is to be an American (I do not disagree). Then Michael and I rode our scooters all over the place for the rest of the afternoon. 

First we rode over to a new place for lunch. Rye is now considered to be our new favorite, especially because our waiter went back to the kitchen to ask the chef how they make the meringue on their lemon meringue pie. I know how to make meringue, but this meringue was unlike any. It was almost like marshmallow fluff. I know now that it's a Swiss style of meringue and next weekend may just be a pie making weekend. After lunch, we rode over to REI just to look around (some things do not change). We ended up parking our scooters next to another scooter. The owner of that scooter was coming out just as we were taking our helmets off. We had a lovely time talking about scooters and engine sizes and the joys of riding. 

As we crossed the parking lot to head into the store, we noticed some people chatting around the cutest teardrop style camper. They had the back open so you could see the whole set up. We joined the conversation asking about things like space and air conditioning. I told the woman about this couple we ran into last year from Canada and how they were driving an un-air condition VW bus across the US. The woman said "Was it orange!?" I said "Yes!" Then she said "We know those people!!!" They had just spent a week camping with them. The world is so tiny. We talked with that couple for a while about Jeeps and trailers before we all finally made it into the store. 

Later on Michael found me looking at the dehydrated meals and I told him how every once in a while, Chris and I would each pick out a different packet and that's what we'd have for dinner one night. We picked out a meal to have for lunch some time and then I grabbed a bag of Moon Cheese off the shelf. I said "let's try this!" Any way, it turned out to be the best thing ever and possibly laced with heroin or crac or both. Michael can't stop talking about it and last night he looked up the patent on how it's made. He quickly determined that we most likely could not manufacture our own Moon Cheese and will be forced to purchase this deliciously weird snack. Michael said that we should never try heroin together.

As I'm typing all of this, my thoughts move back around to my very patriotic yoga class where there was an emphasis on being grateful to live in this wonderful, free country. The mix of it all though...the yoga in the park, the carefree scooter rides, fucking Moon Cheese....rings out as so grossly privileged particularly when you wake up the next day to news of yet another story about white police officers shooting a black man. I wonder if journalists just have a fill in the blank form letter written up by now for these things. They just erase the names and replace with new names. Alton Sterling was the 154th black man killed by police this year. He was pinned to the ground when he was shot. You're an idiot if you think the cop acted in self defense. You're blind and delusional if you do not see that this country has some seriously gaping wounds infected with gangrenous racism. 

If you say racist things, if you support candidates who incite racism, you are part of the infection. If you see racist behavior and do not step up and say something or at the very least make it known that you are watching, you are part of the infection.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others - Philippians 2:4 

The world is really so very tiny.