A Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

“A Tennyson garden, heavy with scent, languid; the return of the word swoon.”

Tim Tim, Cheers

The feeling when you are overwhelmingly, lose-your-breath happy and when you don’t think you could possibly be any more content, but somehow you’re still looking forward to something and you’re not there at the place of perfection just yet but you’re still perfectly fine to be where you are, and when any step you take will bring you to right where you want to be.

(500) Days of Smith

It’s been a lot more than 500 days of Smith, but I couldn’t resist the allusion to a Joseph Gordon-Levitt film.  As the curtains of my Smith show finally draw to a close, I can’t help but feel… sad?  Bittersweet?  Overjoyed!  I should be feeling at least a twinge of sadness with graduation looming near, even if the only reason is because I’ve been a Smithie for the past four years of my life (and a Smith alumnus forever), but let me check my feeling soup – nope, not even a sprinkling of sadness.

It’s not because Smith is such an awful place.  I learned a lot about myself at Smith. Of course I will never know if it was brought on by the “Smith environment” or just by the college experience in general. In any case, I am so proud of myself – and that’s something I hardly ever say.

I’ve always considered myself a pretty good student.  I do almost all of my homework. I generally care about my grades. I almost never purposely miss class.  I’ve also enjoyed school for ~85% of my 16 years of schooling; I’d say that’s a pretty good percentage.  I never would have thought I’d be so happy to graduate.  Everyone older than me has told me how bittersweet it will feel this last semester.  I expected to feel upset, but now that I’m thinking about it all over again – why be upset?

Smith has given me everything I wanted out of college – a great job to look forward to, and a great experience left behind.  It’s given me the confidence to do well in my future, and I think that’s pretty awesome.

In other news – I got an email today from my future employer about my company’s 2011 incoming class. I’ll be working with eight recent graduates from Harvard, Yale, UPenn, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, and UVA. Bit intimidating. Outnumbered by the Ivies, yikes! But if there’s anything that Smith’s taught me, it’s that people can only intimidate you if you let them (yay single-sex education!).

SMITH 2011 (:

How Many Gays Must God Create Before We Accept That He Wants Them Around?

Elliott Erwitt Photography

A Gay Former N.B.A. Player Responds to Kobe Bryant

By John Amaechi, for NYT NBA Blog 04/15/2011

After Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant directed an antigay slur at a referee Tuesday night from the bench in a game against the Phoenix Suns, the N.B.A. fined him $100,000. Bryant has apologized, saying his words should not have been taken literally. He said he would appeal the fine.

Douglas C. Pizac/Associated Press John Amaechi, a former N.B.A. center, announced in 2007 that he is gay.

Kobe Bryant isn’t some great, bigoted monster, as some have implied, but he isn’t the innocent victim of some overblown one-off incident about a word that’s “not even that bad,” either.

This controversy is not a storm in a teacup turned into a vendetta by loony liberals, as many in the sports world seem to think. What our heroes say and do means something — and in an America where sports stars carry more influence and in some cases more credibility than senators, what they say matters more than ever.

When someone with the status of Kobe Bryant, arguably the best basketball player in a generation, hurls that antigay slur at a referee or anyone else — let’s call it the F-word — he is telling boys, men and anyone watching that when you are frustrated, when you are as angry as can be, the best way to demean and denigrate a person, even one in a position of power, is to make it clear that you think he is not a real man, but something less.

I challenge you to freeze-frame Bryant’s face in that moment of conflict with the referee Bennie Adams. Really examine the loathing and utter contempt, and realize this is something with which almost every lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender person is familiar. That is the sentiment people face in middle and high schools, in places of worship, work and even in their own homes across the United States.

Right now in America young people are being killed and killing themselves simply because of the words and behaviors they are subjected to for being perceived as lesbian or gay, or frankly just different. This is not an indictment of the individuals suffocated by their mistreatment, it is an indication of the power of that word, and others like it, to brutalize and dehumanize. This F-word, which so many people seem to think is no big deal, is the postscript to too many of those lives cut short.

As for the original apology, I am amazed that people still think apologizing in such a way as to make it clear that it was the victims who misunderstood is acceptable. I had hoped that the sorry-if-you-are-oversensitive school of apology would by now have been thoroughly discredited.

Many people balk when L.G.B.T. people, even black ones, suggest that the power and vitriol behind another awful slur — the N-word — is no different from the word used by Kobe. I make no attempt at an analogy between the historical civil rights struggle for blacks in the United States with the current human rights struggle for L.G.B.T. people, but I can say that I am frequently called both, and the indignation, anger and at times resignation that course through my body are no greater or less for either. I know with both words the intent is to let me know that no matter how big, how accomplished, philanthropic or wise I may become, to them I am not even human.

I am tired of people having this debate about the relative impact of pejorative words on their target minority group. If injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, then the relative power of an antigay gay slur is irrelevant, it is simply a threat to human dignity, and that should appall us all.

I don’t think Kobe Bryant is some vicious homophobe, but I do think he made a mistake and has sounded more like a squirming politician than a national hero since the incident came to light. When you know that people hang on your every word, you should take more responsibility when the wrong words spill out in anger. When you understand that people treat you like a god, you should endeavor to be more benevolent when you exceed expectations and more contrite when you let people down.

I started playing basketball at age 17 in the United Kingdom. I went from the fat child who hid in the corner of the library to starting in the N.B.A. six years later. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t hold a candle to Kobe, but even with my limited prominence, I always knew two things: I was always under scrutiny and what I did and said mattered more because of that.

Kobe, stop fighting the fine. You spoke ill-advised words that shot out like bullets, and if the e-mails I received from straight and gay young people and sports fans in Los Angeles alone are anything to go by, you did serious damage with your outburst.

A young man from a Los Angeles public school e-mailed me. You are his idol. He is playing up, on the varsity team, he has your posters all over his room, and he hopes one day to play in college and then in the N.B.A. with you. He used to fall asleep with images of passing you the ball to sink a game-winning shot. He watched every game you played this season on television, but this week he feels less safe and less positive about himself because he stared adoringly into your face as you said the word that haunts him in school every single day.

Kobe, stop fighting the fine. Use that money and your influence to set a new tone that tells sports fans, boys, men and the society that looks up to you that the word you said in anger is not O.K., not ever. Too many athletes take the trappings of their hard-earned success and leave no tangible legacy apart from “that shot” or “that special game.”

Kobe Bryant is powerful enough to make an important change in the way we look at real equality in sports and in general. Kobe is one of sport’s heroes, one of sport’s gods, and I hope it’s not too much to ask for the occasional good deed worthy of those titles.

John Amaechi, a journeyman center, played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Orlando Magic and the Utah Jazz before leaving the N.B.A. in 2003. Four years later, he became the first N.B.A. player to acknowledge that he is gay. He wrote “Man in the Middle,” a book about his difficult journey from an overweight, British bookworm to N.B.A. player while struggling to understand his sexuality in a masculine-driven sports culture. He now works as a psychologist, educator and social entrepreneur in the United States and Europe.

NYC; Enough, Already! Reclaiming The Right to Be Grumpy

By Clyde Haberman, for NYT 03/10/2001

THIS business of the nation loving New York City to bits makes John Kass ill. Maybe ”ill” is too strong a word. Let’s just say that he is as eager as the rest of us to get back to normal, only normal for Mr. Kass includes disliking New York until his sides ache.

Don’t be too hard on him. He can’t help himself. He lives in Chicago. Worse, he’s a newspaper columnist; he really can’t help himself.

”Chicago has always hated New York,” said Mr. Kass, who writes for The Chicago Tribune. ”This has put us in a strange predicament, morally.” He was referring, as you may have guessed, to the warmth with which people in other parts of the country (known in some circles as real Americans) have embraced New York.

Tragedy, it seems, has turned us into the Sally Field of cities. Remember her gushing acceptance speech after she won the 1984 Academy Award for best actress? ”I can’t deny the fact that you like me — right now, you like me!” she said, as if she couldn’t believe it.

We New Yorkers are a bit like that now. Thank goodness we have someone like Mr. Kass to help us get a grip.

He went to Comiskey Park in Chicago two weeks ago when baseball resumed after the timeout to absorb the shock of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Yankees were playing the White Sox. A cry that may never have been heard in Chicago rose from the stands. ”We love you, New York!” a fan bellowed, and almost everyone cheered.

Not Mr. Kass, who advised New Yorkers against getting used to the cheers.

”We want to be polite,” he said by phone. ”We’ll wait 40 days. That’s a proper mourning period. Then we’ll hate you again. Well, not really hate. But sooner or later, it will be back to normal. Then we’ll want to see Derek Jeter get tested with a really hard inside fastball.”

It was tempting to point out that 40 days after the terrorist attacks, the Yankees may be headed toward another World Series triumph while both Chicago ball clubs will be nowhere, as usual. But this columnist held his tongue, being a typical, ineffably polite New Yorker.

He did, however, admire Mr. Kass’s spirit, which can be felt in other cities.

”I haven’t heard too much bad talk lately about New York, but by next summer that should all have changed,” said Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist who is also the host of a radio talk show on WRKO.

Patt Morrison, a columnist for The Los Angeles Times, says much the same thing. Sure, Ms. Morrison said, everyone aches with New York and greatly admires its civic backbone. But ”New York has not been permanently beatified,” she added. ”Wouldn’t you in New York hate it if it became the warm, cozy hearth of America?”

Absolutely. There are just so many cuddles that a rough-and-tumble place can take without suffering long-term damage to its soul. Yes, we are going through a horrible patch, and will have to depend on the kindness of strangers to get fully back on our feet. That’s why we put up with all those members of Congress traipsing through Lower Manhattan’s rubble and mouthing the same bromides.

But New York did not achieve greatness by being fuzzy and docile. It has always preferred to be respected, even feared, rather than loved.

Besides, unbridled affection can get out of hand. What if the city ever has to reciprocate?

THIS thought popped into mind when President Jacques Chirac of France came to town the other week to show solidarity. It was very nice of him. Also nice was the Spartacus-like headline a few days earlier in the French newspaper Le Monde: ”Nous Sommes Tous Américains” — ”We Are All Americans.” You have to understand that a kind word about the United States in Le Monde appears about as often as Halley’s comet.

But what are Americans, especially New Yorkers, to do if, heaven forfend, Paris is attacked? Would we not have to declare that ”Nous sommes tous français”? But how far are we prepared to go with displays of solidarity? Can you bear the thought of watching one more Jerry Lewis movie just because the French think he’s the greatest thing since the éclair?

Reassuringly, Ms. Morrison said that even if New York has Los Angeles’s heart right now, the rivalry has not faded. ”New York,” she said, ”is definitely not my cup of two cents plain.”

She should only know what a comfort it is to hear that.

Prague’s Off-Limits Baroque Library

Source: www.wired.com/underwire/2011/03/strahov-monastery-panoramic-image/

Lupe Fiasco – The Show Goes On

An Ode to Indonesia

Tonight at Hubbard, I ate dinner at a table full of Chinese international students. There was one freshman girl who sat at the table silently, though she was with those she knew. She had her hair in a low ponytail and thick lenses in her glasses. She had her head down and she never looked up, not because she was lacking in self-confidence but because she was lacking in self-awareness. I almost couldn’t stop myself from staring at her – she reminded me of me, circa 2003.

In 2003, I was a freshman in high school. I thought I was a big shot getting into Stuyvesant High School from my under-achieving middle school. I was one of only two from my year to make it in. I was the most brilliant student ever to walk the halls of I. S. 93. The walls of Stuyvesant High School will bend at my will. I probably should have kept my day job, because I was definitely no psychic. If the walls of Stuyvesant High School ever bent, they were probably coming down to kick my ass.

Stealing glances at the freshman, I realized how much and how little I’ve grown in eight years.

With each passing day as a college senior and walking the same paths across campus for the n-th time, I feel more and more like a freshman. I look a lot like a freshman, with their where-am-I-going expressions. I have a permanent where-am-I-going-in-life stare.

It’s hard not to think about one’s future when everywhere you turn, there are email notifications about career fairs, advice on how to write a resume, workshops on networking, and even a few stories about engagements. When I think about ten years from now, I think a lot about my family. I don’t mean my future family, but my family in the future. I am blessed to have three sisters. As an immigrant family, I think having siblings is especially important in keeping cultural traditions alive. It’s morbid and bad luck to think of what will happen once my parents are gone, but sometimes, it’s impossible not to. Every time I think about it, I always become extremely depressed.

And then, all of a sudden, thinking about your future turns so easily into reflecting on your past.

My parents are not only my parents – loving and forgiving people whom I owe everything to, literally and figuratively – but people who are solely responsible for an entire facet of me, my Indonesian culture. Without them, I will probably never hear another Indonesian word. I will probably have no need to ever speak Indonesian again. All the Indonesian-inspired recipes will be completely void in my diet. I realize that it sounds selfish (“My parents are only good for cooking me Indonesian meals!”), but to me, an absence of Indonesian culture is like saying my parents never existed.

Plucking toothpicks off banana leaves to reveal a medley of mint and meat. Showers out of a basin. Batik outfits that were always cool to the touch. Ox-tail soup. Perkedel – my favorite. Being fed bubur when sick. Gado-gado on summer days. Being called affectionately “anak” by Mami. Being told by Mami affectionately “kamu anak ku” as a reason for why she does things. Hearing “ado!” instead of “ouch!” Broken English. Eating durian with family who appreciates its taste and smell. Finally learning the English word for “mie” – noodles. My nickname Vero, and family who pronounces it correctly. Pronouncing Veronica the Indonesian way. People who realize that my middle name “Agustina” is not missing a “u.” Massaging my hair with aloe. Satay barbecues. Fried tempeh. Really missing home during one of my first nights at Smith when they served tempeh here all wrong, but really happy to see it too. Cendol. Es campur. Pecel and sambal. Spicy everything. Seeing my parents excited when they found shadow puppets for the first time in twenty years. Seeing Mami cry when she saw her sisters for the first time in twenty years. Asking Papi to sing the Indonesian anthem. Calling my sisters “cece.” Listening to Papi talk about riding a locomotive and working in the fields and raising chickens. Imagining Papi on a motorcycle and smoking. Listening to Mami talk about her parents. Listening to Mami talk about Anton and Bertha. Crying with Mami about Anton and Bertha. Visiting my grandparents’ graves. Passing the house where I was born. Passing the schools Lily and Winnie attended in Indonesia. Endless explanations about the becak. The story about how a monkey stole Silvia’s sandals. Prayer. Indonesian superstitiousness. The Indonesian storybook. The popularity of John Travolta in Indonesia. Ginger and flour ball soup. An untranslatable Indonesian conversation.

I want to write all of it. I want it all written, because I know that one day I will forget it.

And it would be easy to forget it. It would be easy to drop my heritage, because I am mostly influenced by my American roots. I don’t have any Indonesian friends. In some respects, this has been a blessing. I have been able to mold “Indonesia” into an inseparable mix of cultural tradition and personal tradition because there is no other Indonesian who can prove me wrong. On the other hand, “Indonesia” is so personal, it’s probably less to do with the country and more to do with my family.

I used to consider myself part Chinese, because I have Chinese blood on my father’s side. As I meet more and more Chinese who were raised in a Chinese household, I learn more and more how I am not Chinese. I’m Chinese in the way the color red is white. Red couldn’t exist without the color white, but that doesn’t mean that the two colors aren’t completely different.

When I was younger, I used to ask my parents, “Are we Chinese or Indonesian?” Both my parents would say Chinese. My father would say it because his parents were born in China, though they moved to Indonesia at a young age. My mother would say it because she claimed her ancestors were originally from China. Now I know, the relationship between the Chinese and the Indonesians has a long and complicated history. The way some Indonesians feel about the Chinese is the way some whites used to feel about blacks in America. If you had one drop of African blood in you, you were considered black. If you had one drop of Chinese blood in you, you were considered Chinese. Being Chinese in Indonesia meant you were likely from a wealthy family and only in Indonesia to make money by taking advantage of the “real” Indonesians. To my parents growing up Indonesia, I guess identifying yourself as Chinese (no matter how true it was) was a way to improve your self-image. Indonesians were seen as poor, Chinese as rich.

Today, I can ask my parents the same question about our heritage and they’d probably both say Indonesian. I don’t really know what changed. Maybe the nuances of being Chinese-Indonesian versus Indonesian-Indonesian became irrelevant after living in America for so many years.

In any case, I relate to being Indonesian more than Chinese. Being American more than Chinese. I have a very strong allegiance to the American flag, to the Indonesian flag, (maybe even a little to the Australian flag, haha), but none to the Chinese flag. I’ve never been to China (though I want to). I know that I look more Chinese than Indonesian, but I’m not. And I’m extremely proud to be Indonesian.

So what have I learned in the last eight years, anyway? A little bit of who I am, and a lot of who I’m not.

Last week, a random international student asked me, “Are you an American-born Chinese?”

No, I’m an Indonesian-born American.