Still high on Tryptophan

Lots of moving around these days. A week in Philly for my (horrendous) AmeriCorps training, a night in Connecticut for Monty's dad's wedding celebration, a few days of work back in Northampton, two nights in New York for Thanksgiving with the men in my life (my dad, two brothers, Monty), and now two nights in Maine for Thanksgiving redux, mom style. Tomorrow's will be my third Thanksgiving feast of the week (after my office's and my dad's) and, frankly, I don't know if I can handle it. Pretty sure my mom is bribing me with chocolate cream pie, so I'll rally and pull through.

First: Why is the American federal government so cognitively impaired? (I'm trying to erase 'retarded' from my vocabulary.) But seriously, my AmeriCorps training was troubling. I tried at one point to make the case that "poor people" (who apparently represent a homogenous category) are most likely intelligent, resilient and resourceful if they're able to survive, and thus potentially helpful partners for those of us trying to do community development work; and the response I received from the trainer was that poor people (again, one homogenous group) internalize the messages of worthlessness, uselessness, stupidity and laziness associated with their poverty, and so cannot be relied on for our work. UGHHHHH. Does anyone else think there's something wrong with this message? Plus they showed us all these completely gratuitous images of brown people pushing grocery carts and living in tents as if that were going to teach us something about poverty other than the stereotypes we all already harbor. AND I tried to make a comment at my table about the ridiculousness of the generalizations used in the training and the response I got was: "The whole point of a generalization is that it doesn't apply to everyone." RIGHT, that's why we don't use them! I could go on and on. Needless to say, I laughed my way through the AmeriCorps oath at the end, when I swore to "protect America against its enemies, foreign and domestic" (um, what?). Luckily I found a few other people who found the training imperialistic, normative and absurd, and together we critical theoried the fuck out of the whole thing.

Clearly you can take the girl out of the Anthropology department, but you can't take the Anthropology out of the girl. Alas (or maybe, probably, not alas?), I'm to be an overly critical academic my whole life, at least inside my own head.

Oh! And my roommate was from Texas (I thought of you, Selena! Except she was nothing like you). Within the first five minutes of meeting she told me she wasn't a feminist because she doesn't "burn her bra". Uh-huh.

The greatest part about the training was when it ended, because it meant I could (and have) officially start my job full-time. So far I like it! I've had a very warm welcome all around. And I've already helped to submit two grant proposals, one for $5 million and one for $34,000. That feels pretty good. (For those of you who heard my heinous Friday story of driving to Boston at 90 mph to submit the application, the foundation decided to accept it for review, which means our application is in the running, which means I'm not a total screw-up. Yes! There have been multiple jokes at the office about the experience being some sort of hazing exercise, which, needless to say, are not funny.)

I love Thanksgiving! And I love you guys! Come visit our apartment and the bears in our backyard. (Still figuring out how I can get Monty a pet baby Black Bear for Christmas, but it's not looking good.) xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxxxxcan'twaittoseeyousooooon.