A blog on blogs

This is an interesting article on Japan's blogging culture. There, blogs aren't a vehicle for self-promotion or polemical tirades. They're humble records of daily life, in the apparently long-standing Japanese tradition of diary-keeping. The article attributes this blogging posture to a number of factors, primary among them a Japanese social ethic of humility and deference. It's interesting to me--although it shouldn't be surprising by now--that a nation generally without Christian tradition would embody some fundamental tenets of the Christian spirit in, of all places, its blogosphere. It's disappointing to me that, once again, Americans touting their Christian tradition prove to be so often brash, offensive, and proud in their own electronic communications.

I'd like to think that the blogs I frequent--those of my friends, mostly--occupy an honorable position in the blogosphere, avoiding the showing-off that is such a temptation with this medium. I'd also like to think that our blog here is more a record of our lives, our thoughts, and our treasures than a venue for self-aggrandizement. I also use it as a practice of discipline in my writing, but in that context I can be prone to showing off. So, in a motion of transparency here, a confessional litany of words I paused over (because I wanted to sound a little smart or clever) while writing this post: polemical, postures, social ethic, tenets, confessional litany. OK, enough about me. Read the article.

Patience is a Virtue

I just updated my Facebook profile (a rare move), and changed my status to read "Kendra Langdon Juskus is hunting and gathering." (A side note here to clarify that I do have a Facebook profile. After giving many disparaging soliloquies in opposition to the thing, Ryan "gifted" me with it for my birthday. I'm sticking with it as an exercise in self-control, trying not to get carried away with self-definition and self-glorification, and resisting the temptation to add too many applications, details, and activities so that it usurps all of my real-life time. But I'm on it. So friend me. Let's make this official.)

I have been hunting and gathering for several weeks, inspired by a few interesting job leads to search the employment jungle, parse out some fruits with promise, and take a bite at them. I do feel like I'm slowly gleaning and storing away some prospects--none that, by my tone I'm sure you can tell, have particularly struck a passionate chord with me. And I think that's because I am also hunting and gathering in another, deeper way. I'm hunting for the particulars of really important things like my identity, my dreams, and my purpose. These are things in constant flux, but their changing nature is particularly acute in this period of life when very few people are legally responsible for me and when my own responsibilities are relatively limited. Meanwhile, the possibilities are endless. When my current job ends in December I can do any of the following:

1) "Become" a writer, devoting my newfound free time to writing poetry, articles, and essays and perhaps vainly shipping them around the country for publication.
2) "Get a real job" in a position that may or may not be appropriate for me, with an organization or company that may or may not do fulfilling work.
3) Buy a house. This has been on our minds lately, but taking this plunge would preclude us from taking several other actions that appear later in this list, such as
4) Move to New York. It's home. A man on the radio last night won tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert and said, as he gleefully thanked the radio station, "Yeah, I used to go see Bruce a lot back up New York way." Grammatical awkwardness aside, there is part of me that never wants to have to say that.
5) Move to a new apartment. With light. Obviously to do this and buy a house at the same time would be unwise.
6) Have a baby. Difficult to juggle as new home-owners, I'm sure. Also may not be something we end up having all that much control over.
7) Move to the country. This prospect seems idyllic at times, probably because neither of us has ever had to wake up at 5am to tend to cattle or try to wade through the vagaries of the the latest Farm Bill as it applies to our lives. Thus we consider doing this in conjunction with people like Wren and John, who actually know how to do it, or Greg, who--we've heard through the grapevine--is suddenly intent on being a farmer.
8) Stop, drop everything, and leave. WWOOF it all over Europe for a few months and return to . . . who knows? At which point the dilemma begins again.

The problem is that while we could do any of these things, we cannot do all of them. We are lodged in reality whether we like it or not, and each of these options carries with it the inevitability of diverse joys and griefs, as does our current life and life in general. Ryan likens our situation to that of pieces on a chess board. Along with our friends--scattered across the nation and the world--we are tentatively taking up new moves and positions, but also watching all of the other participants in the game make their own decisions. If more people move to one city, will we follow suit? If someone does invite us to farm with them, will we take them up on it? If we have a baby, will we leap ahead of everyone else, and be left behind at the same time?

At the same time that all these questions whirl around--and they seem to come in droves, attacking our defenses all at once--I have to remind myself to surmount the situation and look at it from a wider angle. "Patience is a virtue," I often quip to hurried people. It's easy for me to believe this in the context of relationships. When friends who are single or dating get caught up in the momentousness of every little relational detail and begin agonizing about missed opportunities or apparent mistakes, I proffer them the examples of long-married couples whose stories have taught me a lot: a woman who hated a guy in college, but who ended up marrying him several years after graduation and is still happily married to him today; men and women who, after being widowed, have reconnected with high school sweethearts with whom to happily live out their years; husbands and wives who dipped in and out of each others' lives for years before they ever settled down together. The fact that my own relationship with Ryan failed for a period in college often surprises people--surely the road to marital bliss isn't plagued by such blind turns.

But whereas it's easy for me to toss these examples out to others, I, or we, who are all in this upheaval of our twenties together, need to see their parallels with life in general. That of course there are blind turns and potholes and even wrong ways. That most likely, in twenty years I will not regret having passed up buying a condo in Washington, DC, or having a baby in 2008 that I could have had in 2007, or spending a year of my life uploading web content and writing on the side. Most likely we will have a lot of memories, and a lot of stories, and a lot of unwanted advice to give to our children--probably along the lines of, "patience is a virtue," which, like us, they'll probably have to learn for themselves, anyway.

Recipe for Distraction

To say that my recent days at work have been mind numbing would be to dishonor the sensation with a predictable cliche. The fact is that my brain has become so petrified with uselessness that an excruciating amount of effort is required even to drag myself into the realm of creative writing. One would think that, with all this free time on my hands, my days would be replete with literary inspiration and written proliferation. Alas, the sight of eggshell-white walls and concrete building-sides doesn't easily whet my creative appetite. I suppose I could use the drudgery to force my words onto the page, as good writers are supposed to be able to do, but I'll spare you that now and get to my point. It is possible, after all, that you too are having a mind numbing day, and would therefore welcome the recipe for distraction that I have advertised above. Therefore, read and enjoy this essay from The Sun Magazine. It explores issues of identity and family and language--some of my favorite things to ponder, nerd that I am--in a narrative and personally (and refreshingly) accessible style. Frances Lefkowitz is honest and articulate. I'm glad that she wasn't too mind-numbed to write this.

Culinary Exploit of the Week

Saturday morning, at a church yard sale, we found a pasta maker. A real pasta maker, circa 1975, straight from Italy, still in its faded 1975ish box. Ryan got very excited about it. We did a number of things for the rest of the day, like the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, and a housewarming party for a friend around the block. But Ryan could do nothing but think about the pasta maker. Finally, at 8:30 in the evening, we set upon our maiden pasta-making voyage.

Here is the pasta maker in all of its antiquated glory:



First, Ryan made a dough out of eggs and flour:

















Then, he flattened it in the pasta maker:


This made long, flat pieces of dough:


That got longer the more we ran them through the machine:


Until finally we could run them through the fettucine slot:


Then we cooked 'em (al dente):


We sauced 'em (with basil from the garden, and tomatoes):


And we et 'em.


And they were good.

Misinformation

Where I've been working recently (which, for the sake of its good honor and reputation as an academic institution, will remain nameless), I sit at the front desk, and have access to a nifty "Network Viewer" which allows me, at any given time, access to the security cameras in front and back of the building. Since I also control the door opener, when someone knocks I can view who it is and open the door, or not, depending on the looks of 'em.
Today some men were painting the front of the building, and I couldn't help but hear some of their conversation from where I sit. Because it was such good stuff, which I will share in a moment, I also turned on the camera. It was like a regular tv show, as much for its inaccurate propaganda as for the fact that I was watching it on a screen. Here's what I heard from the painters . . .

For some reason, the conversation was about May Day, the first of May, which the communists* brought to this country** at first disguised as "Earth Day."*** You know, Earth Day. It was supposed to be this day when you do not like really radical stuff like worshipping the earth,**** but like, you know, you're supposed to take care of the earth or something. So they brought May Day over here first as Earth Day, but that didn't go over very well,***** so they had to think of another way of doing it. So then in the 70's****** they tried to bring it back again, but this time, they decided to disguise it as this thing called Cinqo de Mayo,******* so that, oo, it's like this Latin holiday, you know? So Cinqo de Mayo is really May Day, a holiday of evil communist propaganda.
After hearing this, I wanted to justify the righteous, know-it-all emotions I was feeling, so I paid a visit to my trusty friend Wikipedia. Among the other things that I learned about May Day, which you will find enumerated in the copious endnotes to this entry, I discovered that although May 1 is generally dubbed Loyalty Day or Law Day by our country's leadership (names which I think display a shocking lack of originality, beauty, or imagination), one of the initial purposes for the holiday--to honor workers and their rights--is observed by us on Labor Day. I bet that's a holiday these guys don't mind celebrating.

*May Day was originally a pagan holiday celebrated in pre-Christian Europe, to herald the start of summer. This incarnation of the holiday is still celebrated to a certain extent, especially in Europe. Later it was given an additional meaning, and associated with socialist and labor movement celebrations as International Worker's Day/Labour Day.
**May Day--in its socialist, labor-oriented form--originated in the United States to commemorate Chicago's Haymarket Riot of 1886, the movement behind which started on May 1 of that year.
***Earth Day, which has two dates officially (neither of which is May 1 or even in May) was first observed between the years of 1969 and 1971, when John McConnell and Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson both introduced the idea of a global day to practice environmental stewardship on March 21 and April 22, respectively.
****The irony of this statement, as noted under * above, is that May Day actually did originate as a form of earth-worship. Huh.
*****Actually, Earth Day still exists. The U.S. generally celebrates it on April 22, and in DC there's a whole Green DC week leading up to that date.
******Which is when Earth Day was invented . . .
*******A holiday (not even celebrated federally in Mexico, but only by region) to commemorate the initial victory of Mexican forces over French forces on May 5, 1862. In the U.S. it is commonly seen as a day to celebrate Mexican traditions and the heritage of Mexican-American citizens.

But, then again, those guys could probably teach me a lot about painting a building.

My Inner Judge

This is my inner judge. She has been modeled from dark gray clay, and is loosely patterned after a variety of girls I knew in nursery school. She has pigtails (because pigtails are perfect), bangs (because everyone has bangs), and an engaging smile (because perfect people smile). You may not think she looks very judgmental, or intimidating, or particularly critical. But you would be wrong.

I started a pottery class this week. Well, it's really a course in "Intuitive Hand Building," led by a woman named Hope, who, although she doesn't have PhD in art, likes to say that she has "an inner authority." I trust any woman authoritative enough to not shave her armpits. Plus, a whole month of classes is 5 dollars, read it, 5. So I sat in a church basement for an hour-and-a-half with Hope and two other women, Jean and Jennifer, making pinch pots and trying to intuit how my clay wanted to be built.

When the class began, Hope gathered us all at a table for some sharing time. She displayed a few pieces that she has made over the years, and one that she had done just that day: her inner judge. This inner judge was nasty. It was hunch-backed and beak-nosed, with sagging breasts, a reptilian spine, and hair in a tight bun. It looked like the fourth grade teacher everyone dreaded having in my elementary school, except that Mrs. Yagod wore clothes and wasn't made out of clay. Hope explained that we would all make our own inner judges--evoking the critiques, inhibitions, anxieties, and judgments that keep us from creating freely, and expressing them in a physical form--and we would put them outside in the stairwell while we potted, or clayed, or hand-builded.

I wanted to make my inner judge immediately, because I knew exactly how it looked, but first we had to make pinch pots. My pinch pots looked exactly like the one I made with my dad when I was five, so I tired of that easily, and when given the go-ahead, lit into my inner judge with panache. You see, when I was three- or four-years-old, I went to nursery school with a whole gaggle of very adorable, very outgoing, very sociable, very non-only-children. I immediately recognized myself as different from all of them because:

a) I could be (and even liked to be) alone

b) I was dressed differently

c) I lived far away from them, and not on a cul-de-sac or even on a street with a sidewalk

d) I played differently (eschewing puzzles and games to use the rocking horse in the corner to zip through forests and chase down evil ogres).

But I didn't want to be different. I figured, if everyone else does this one thing, but I do this other thing, I must be doing something wrong. To add to this psychological confusion was the fact that I didn't have bangs. Everyone had bangs; where did mine go? It was concluded that I must have been born with bangs, like everybody else, but that somebody cut them off for some reason. I have a widow's peak. Doesn't that sound so much more romantic and sophisticated than "bangs?" I think so.

But getting to my point, I couldn't own this difference. Nor could I own the fact that I was clearly a true artiste. I colored a rainbow one day, but to the horror of the other little girls, I had included black, brown, white, and gray in my rainbow. Quite progressive by today's standards, but I was promptly told, "There is no black in rainbows." Ohh. I had done something wrong. Better not do that again. Better not do anything out of the norm, unexpected, imperfect, or original again. At least not until you're a teenager. But don't worry, by then you'll be too nervous about taking a wrong step that you won't even have guts left to be original without worrying that your originality won't be an accepted originality.

But who knew that one day, I would be asked to personify, or clayify, my inner judge? And who knew that my inner judge would end up being a schoolgirl made out of mud (which is all we all are anyway), and that I would suddenly be able to trace it all back to being four-years-old?

An Image of My Wife

This is my first post as the lucky husband of Kendra: Lover of Bumblebees

She opened up that organic white cheddar cheese that was starting to mold in the refrigerator. My eyes widened with the thought of her preparing me a good meal with cheese in it. She cut off the mold and put a few slices on a small plate and ran outside onto the patio (which is at eye level from our basement apartment). As it turns out, that cheese wasn't for me; it was for a kitty cat who entered the patio through a small hole in our fence. Upon delivering this cheese to its new happy consumer, she noticed the cat giving a high five to a rather large bumblebee who was returning with his own attempt at a mutual display of affection. Yes, the cat and the bumblebee were gesturing what looked like a high five.

Kendra left the cheese for her newly adopted visitor cat, who then ran away. She poked the bee to check his vital signs and saw that his end was near. Rather than send that bee to its creator, as most would do to this "damn pest", she scooted him under the elevated fire pit so that nobody would step on him. She preceded to visit and check on that bee every few hours for the next two days until he was finally home in that sweet, big honey comb in the sky. She spoke of him as if he were an old friend and his passing as the inevitable ending in a broken world. In this snapshot of Kendra, this bumblebee was, in fact, a friend - a friendly reminder of this good earth's simple treasures, of a patio where a kitty cat, a bumblebee and a woman can share some space on God's good earth for just a few moments.