Kate.Julia’s Weblog

I am so woefully behind on the blogging. But I don’t think you out there in blogoland mind much. According to some blog-o-meter thing I signed up for, approximately 0 (read: ZERO) people read my blog. For several days I thought to myself, “This can’t be right. I have a lot of friends, I’m relatively attractive, I don’t smell, and dammit, people like me.”

But the 0000s persist.

Maybe, if you stop blogging, people stop reading your blog? Funny how that happens.

Just general FYI: Matt twisted his knee and broke bits of bone off the underside of his knee cap when he was riding his bike on a trail Saturday. We’re visiting the orthopedic surgeon tomorrow morning and looking at surgery in the next week or so. In the meantime, Matt’s limping around the house and making do.

Send him love and check out the x-rays here. I’ll keep you all updated!

At the end of February my college friends Alina and Erin and I met up in New Orleans. We ate VERY good food, drank VERY good drinks, and listened, also, to VERY good music. It was such a blast to get away, even just for the weekend. While we were there I literally bumped into my high school friend, Melissa, at a bar. We met up the next day and she showed us around the French Quarter and took us for an amazing breakfast of bananas soaked in rum and fried seafood items.

Enjoy the photos!

Erin (on left) and Alina modeling our drinks from Cafe DuMonde.

Erin is picky about food textures; obviously, crawdads are not high on her list.

Oh, the indecency!

My beloved Mississippi.

Lunch.

Alina looks like a supermodel on her drivers license photo. Erin and I try to imitate.

We were listening to really good music.

That drunken-banana and fried seafood breakfast I was mentioning. Friends with weak stomachs and/or morning sickness: sorry.

I absolutely must post on this blog. I’m gathering my thoughts. Be patient, dear ones. Blog greatness is nigh.

BWAHAHAHAHA.

1. I finished my dissertation proposal defense meeting. Finally. This means I can write away to my heart’s content.

2. I have somehow found a way to not work on the diss at ALL this week.

3. I’m going to New Orleans this weekend with two college girlfriends, Alina and Erin. I’ve never had a girly weekend away, so I am SUPER excited. We’re going to shop, go to museums, listen to jazz, and EAT. Lots.

4. Our photo director at work, Krista, took amazing photos when she went to the border the other day. Look at them on her blog: www.kristaniles.wordpress.com. She’s amazing and we love her.

5. I finished the second installment of the PBS Frontline edition on Mormonism and I’m even MORE fascinated with the religion than I was before. I’m on a curiosity kick. Anyone read an interesting history of Mormonism and popular culture other than Under the Banner of Heaven?

6. I had a Disaster Run this past Sunday (this happens to me every few weeks–I plan to go on a really fun run and then somehow manage to fuck it up by not taking water, forgetting socks, etc.). For some reason, I decided to go for a run on the hilliest trail in Tucson in the burning mid-day sun wearing insulated running tights and a long-sleeved shirt without having eaten lunch. Why?

Anyway, the point is, halfway through the Disaster Run, I ran (more like walked, at that point) past a parked minivan with Ontario plates. The car was running, the owners several hundred feet away at the top of a lookout point. I honestly considered, for a split second, stealing their car. Has this ever happened to you? I didn’t follow through, obviously. But I’ve started thinking about what I would steal if I could. Got any ideas? What would you steal if you knew you’d never get caught?

This weekend Matt took me to Marfa, Texas, for my birthday. Everyone in the design world knows about Marfa–it’s this Texas cow town in the middle of nowhere that was adopted in the 1980s by the minimalist artist Donald Judd. In the wake of Judd’s death, the town has turned into a mini design Mecca, boasting two artistic foundations (the Judd Foundation and the Chinati Foundation), numerous galleries and a handful of really nice restaurants (when we pulled into town around 9 on Friday both of the dinner places that were open were $30 a plate wine bar-type places, both completely packed with smart-looking people wearing black). Our plan was to hit up as many galleries as possible, take in as much minimalist sculpture as possible, and then take off to the Chinati Hot Springs 2 hours south of town. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking, as the landscape around Marfa (just north of Big Bend National Park and very near the U.S./Mexico border) is spectacular and humbling.

Before I let the pictures talk, though, I’ve got to put my two cents in about the town. Marfa is weird, you guys. To the wealthy art connoisseaurs it attracts, Marfa is weird in a charming way. As an outsider who’s not wealthy or in the process of making some kind of art installation, I’d say it’s not necessarily as much weird-charming as it is…weird-weird. The town seems to be divided between locals (people who ranch) and the design folk, who fly in on the weekends from New York on their Lear jets (no joke–there were a few parked right outside of town).

Enjoy the photos here. The rest should be up on Matt’s Picasa page, linked just to the left.

Big sky.

Us.

Can’t every little Texas cow town support at least what, 5 or 6 architecture firms like this?

The old barracks where Donald Judd’s aluminum box installations are housed.

Judd aluminum box installation.

View from the Judd armory.

Judd concrete box installation.

Crushed cars at one of the galleries in town. They looked like big balls of crumpled paper.

Sunday brunch at the Austin St. Cafe. Organic black bean soup over green chile quiche.

…but Matt wanted celery, instead.

For real…in the art world. The whole thing’s an exhibit on the side of the highway. This storefront houses the fall 1995 Prada collection, but the door is actually bolted shut and can never be opened.

On Thanksgiving (I know, a long time ago, but I can’t let this post go unposted), Kelly and I ran the Turkey Trot 5 K at Reid Park here in Tucson. We finished in…

28 MINUTES!!!!!!

We were astounded. Also, we thought we might puke at the end. But perhaps MOST exciting was our brief foray into the world of professional athletics when, after the race, we found ourselves rubbing elbows with the men’s 5K winner, the extremely fast man pictured below. But intimidated by his speed (he ran the whole 5K in under 15 minutes!), Kelly and I decided that we’d just take pictures with him from afar. Enjoy.

Before we ran.

After we ran, and confused about how to count out “28″ for the camera on our fingers (this is why we’re English PhDs).

And the sequence begins: Kelly “poses”with our 5K winner (the one in the blue and white track outfit).

Checking to see if he’s looking…

Only a little creepy.

And…he totally knows we’re taking fake portraits with him. Frick!

Introducing…political issues that really scare me, in no particular order (I think they’re all interrelated):

1. The humanitarian crisis on the U.S./Mexico border. Two years ago one of the youth staff at 110º did a story on Al Garza, the Executive Director of the Minuteman Project. During the research for this story, Jennifer (the author, who did an incredible job) and I spent a lot of time near the border, hanging out with Minutemen. We discovered disturbing facts: every summer in Tucson, hundreds of undocumented immigrants die in the desert, often alone, from dehydration, sun exposure, starvation, and criminal activity. These individuals, often mothers with young children or children traveling alone in order to find their mothers (check out Sonia Nazario’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, Enrique’s Journey, for more on this) are desperate to reunite with lost family members, desperate to find work in order to support ailing or struggling family members, desperate to make their life better than what they were living at home. In the mix out there in the desert are also seriously scary drug runners and ruthless coyotes, who are known for ditching crossers in the desert as soon as their crossing fees are paid.

Lots of homes in Tucson sport yard signs that say, “Humanitarian Aid is Not a Crime.” I’m on this side. As per Arizona law, it’s a felony to “aid or abet” undocumented crossers. Instead of turning a blind eye to the death that occurs on the border, we need immigration law that respects the global roots of our immigration crisis. A fence isn’t going to fix anything.

2. No more No Child Left Behind! NCLB mandates that all children be taught more or less the same content, regardless of cultural background.  When schools try to meet children where they are, they are often punished or labeled “underperforming,” a categorization that cedes local control of a school to the state. Also rolled into this is the increasingly inaccessible pathway to higher education. Many pell grants–the government-funded scholarships that paid for countless college educations after WWII–are now only available in the form of loans. For first-generation and low-income college students who already have children or who are unfamiliar with the college process, $40,000 in student loans is unimaginable and unspeakably risky. For these populations, paying for a college education might mean never being able to afford to buy a home–it’s just not worth it. As I teach more college classes and see more and more of my minority, first-gen and low-income students drop out because of financial stress, I wonder if the harm we’ve done to these families can be made up in this generation. If college is only for the wealthy (or for those who only already have a leg up in life), then the distance between rich and poor is just gonna get bigger and bigger. This REALLY scares me.

3. Healthcare. I can think of handful of my friends who have healthcare. That’s not good, or OK.

4. The war in Iraq. I’m a huge supporter of the troops, and I want to bring them home. As somebody who grew up in a pretty rural, conservative part of the country, I believe that the first people hurt in a war are often those who are the most vulnerable: those who are forced into the military in order to secure funding for college, those who look to the military for a stable source of income for their families because other jobs are scarce. We owe it to these people to make sure (1) their families are safe and taken care of in their absence, (2) they have the best mental and physical healthcare available, and (3) that they’re not being sent to war for purely capitalistic purposes.

I’ve got a political post in the hopper (as promised, Bethany!), but I’m backed up with the diss this morning. Wanted to post this in the meantime. Enjoy!

Warning: Small pics ahead. I’m still trying to get the picture uploading thing right. I’ll figure it out eventually, I promise.

While Matt and I were home, we had two encounters with the hot air balloon: once as chasers, once as passengers. We had a few pictures, thought I’d share:

On the first balloon day, Mark took Will, Matt’s childhood friend and neighbor, and his girlfriend Kelli up. It was Kelli’s first time up in the balloon, so it was fun to watch her go up. Emily, who was in the basket, took these pictures. Saying goodbye from the ground (it was cold!):

Back on the ground, Kelli listens patiently as Mark explains the history of hot air ballooning. This is a ritual for first-time balloonists.The ritual goes like this: Mark asks the first-time passenger to take a seat on a blanket while he recounts a tale of how ballooning began. Sue gives the passenger/victim a bouquet of grass from the landing site. The passenger/victim might notice that all others in attendance are suddenly VERY thirsty, and drinking bottled water. Mark puts on a solemn face and recites a balloon prayer. At the last line of the prayer, everyone throws the contents of their bottles on the victim. (See the other Kelly get the water bottle treatment at her blog–follow the link on the side of this page.)

In this photo, Will stands placidly behind his dry, enthralled girlfriend as she listens to Mark weave his ballooning tale. He looks so innocent, right?

Doused!

And from the ride the next day: the air was so still that we ended up inflating really quickly and rising VERY fast. We went higher than I’ve been in a while, and we could see the edge of the cloud bank that was covering town.