Preview

Katie D.

March 17, 2009 - 9:45 AM

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! I hope you're all listening to Irish music and drinking green beer (although not quite at this early hour). I, unfortunately, am about to step into a Spanish final, so the joy of St. Patty's day is yet to enter into my life. Today will be a busy day with essays, studying, and prep for Spring Break. Oh, and maybe some dish washing because I seem to be a bit behind in that department... This evening I will carve out some time for a St. Patrick's celebration, complete with Irish music (traditional and Flogging Molly/Dropkick Murphys style) and green kool-aide (21st birthday pending T-5 days).

 

Anyway, I thought in the midst of all this finals business I might write up a "coming attractions" blog to let you know what the next few weeks have in store. So here we go...

 

TONIGHT Dinner at Professor Fracchia's house to celebrate the end of an awesome term. It's a potluck, but the main event is some real Italian food cooked by Fracchia himself.

 

Thursday, March 19: Departure for Spring Break on the Border! More information on this later, but let me just say that we're facing 22 hours on the road, and then a week without showers. But I'm quite excited about it.

 

March 22nd MY BIRTHDAY!

 

March 23-27 Spring break

 

March 30th First day of Spring Term. New classes, new schedule, and a whole new set of plans. Ten Humphrey Scholars will be arriving at the American English Institute! These are mid-level professionals studying English here before doing research at various US Universities, and I'll be working with them as an Activities Coordinator. I am very, very excited about this!

 

On a less fun note, my friend Grant will be gone this term, off to do an internship at the Burke museum of archeology in Seattle. I'm really excited for him, but will miss him so much. My friend Nathan will still be studying in Japan, and Maddy will be finishing up studies in Singapore and then heading to Malaysia for an internship. I'm so excited for them all, but miss having my friends here with me in Eugene.

 

I am really excited about my classes next term. Here's the lineup:

 

Physics 361: Science and Society

 

HC Colloquium: Latin American History

 

Inside-Out class (More on this later, but I will be participating in this class again as part of my thesis project)

 

Thesis prospectus class

 

The term is 14 credits this time, and Wednesday is the only day with more than one class. Hopefully this will help me balance out my busy, busy life!

 

April 2nd My friend Melissa arrives from Colorado to spend the weekend with me!

 

April 11th My driver's license expires. I guess I'll get to experience the joys of the Eugene DMV.

 

April 16-19th I go home to Colorado for a visit and to see my little sister, Kelly, as the lead in the high school musical Damn Yankees. I won't be there for her 18th birthday, or for her graduation, but I'll be there for the play and that's what's most important to us both, I think.

 

May 16th NOMAD Panel discussion for this year's Undead edition! I'll be published in the magazine and be a part of the panel of undergraduate students.

 

May 21st The Decemberists concert.

 
During this whole time I'll be taking classes, working at the AEI, doing tours at the Honors College, writing blogs, participating in events at the Wesley Center, rock climbing, working on my Undead essay for NOMAD magazine, and beginning work on my thesis. I think it's going to be an amazing spring term, even if it will be busy and absent some of the most important friends in my life. Spring is my favorite season, and I wasn't here to see it last year because I was in Chile. It is so beautiful here right now, with flowers everywhere and more on the way. Hopefully I'll get to spend a lot of time out in the beautiful spring weather, hiking in the Cascades and visiting the coast. I have a really good feeling about spring term, actually: like a little sunshine and two credits less is going to make a wonderful difference in my life. Plus, with all these exciting things coming up I'll have lots to keep me busy and happy.

 

That's all for now. But look forward to my upcoming blogs about my spring break plans. I'll be returning to the US/Mexico border south of Tucson, Arizona, to volunteer with humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths. Updates coming soon!

 

[0 Comments]

Roots

Katie D.

March 15, 2009 - 7:45 PM

We are a nation of immigrants. Of migrants, even. I keep thinking about this basic fact of our young nation's history as I do work with international students, or during my work with the migrant community on the US/Mexican border. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and I'm ready to celebrate like the proud Irish woman that I really am not. Isn't it interesting that we maintain these international ties just for the few times they come up as relevant? When I speak with students from China or Iraq many are confused when I mention that my last name is Irish. But Ireland isn't far behind my family history. If you're a "dominant culture" American, you're probably a recent transplant. Imagine living in a country your family had been a part of for more than five generations. It's just not the reality here.

 

I just claimed status as Irish, but really I'm something of a mutt. On my Dad's side I'm both a third-generation American (of Irish descent), and a Daughter of the American Revolution: here since Day One. My Mom's side seems to be a little bit more confused, or at least less well-documented, but includes Scandinavian (I can "Uff Da" with the best of them), and a vague history of some Native American roots as well.

 

It's interesting to stop and think about how these factors in our histories play out. Strange how I keep the Irish pride for St. Patty's Day, am proud of my DAR status but haven't paid to actually join the club, and keep having to check with my Mom about that side of the family's pedigree.

 

Does it matter or not? Hard to say.

 

The other part of this is the migrating issue. We Americans are movers. We move for school and for jobs, we move to marry and to just have a change of place. When I talk to my online tutoring students from Iraq (through the American English Institute), many of them are very surprised that I have chosen to live hundreds of miles away from my family and my home to go to school, and that my best reason for having removed myself from my community is that I "like Oregon." Some students react to that by telling me I'm brave, and some hide pity for a young woman so obviously away from her roots.

 

This is a poignant issue for me at the moment because of my Mom's side of the family. My "Uff Da" relatives, the Minnesota farmers. With Fargo accents and a history of corn and cows.

 

Some of my best childhood memories were back on my grandparent's farm. The old barn with musty straw where my sister and I would play, the huge old oak trees, and the rows of corn behind the barn that were always a little scary to the little girl I was. We would drive up to Minnesota every summer, driving through the Great American Bread Basket and counting cattle. Grandma and Grandpa's house was such an adventure: my suburban landscapes expanded outward to a farmhouse on a hillside, to chasing snakes in the grass and exploring the enigmatic tools in the old garage. There was a smell in the house like no place I have ever been. And the dirt in their garden was the darkest, most beautiful dirt my Colorado eyes had ever seen.

 

My Mom left Minnesota years ago. She was a first-generation college student, and then married my Dad and settled down in Colorado, not too far from where he had grown up. But I feel like I have roots still in Minnesota, like part of me claims it as home.

 

I talked to my grandma today. They've moved off the farm and into a townhouse in the nearby town of 1500 people that is more reasonable for an aging couple to manage. And, as happens all across the US, the older farming generation is not being replaced by young farming families. It's not an easy lifestyle, and not one facilitated by our country's fascination with mechanization and huge agribusiness.

 

The land is going to be sold and made into a subdivision. Sometime in the next month the Watertown Fire Department will be using the farmhouse as a practice site for new trainees. It's the practical thing for my grandparents to do, and a rational step toward retiring comfortably and leaving the farm. But the house I loved, the barn and the garage, they are all going to burn.

 

Rationality doesn't have any place in a lament for the loss of a childhood love. It's the same with my neighborhood back home in Colorado. It's not home, and not the kind of place I'd be interested in living in again. But still there's a connection to a place with so many memories: with old hide-and-go-seek spots, with dogs whose names I know and trees I used to climb.

 

I've packed up and left home, just like my Irish great-grandparents did. Just like my Revolutionary War ancestors did, and like my Mother did when she left her home. We are a nation of immigrants and of migrants. And, living that reality as I do, I find mostly a great feeling of freedom and possibility in that fact.

 

But there is also the remorse that comes from knowing you've left something you can never get back, and that some part of your past will cease to exist, burned and subdivided.

 

Strange sense of connection from a wandering girl like me. But we all come from somewhere, and my somewheres include Colorado suburbs, Minnesota farmland, and a stretched but strong love of Ireland and my far-away Irish roots.

 

[0 Comments]

Portland with AEI

Katie D.

March 8, 2009 - 11:30 AM

Yesterday I completed my first real trip with the American English Institute as an activities coordinator. Instead of just showing a group around campus or helping them get settled in US culture, I was taking a small group of students on a day trip to Portland.

 

As I continue the job of Activities Coordinator, I'll be doing this kind of short trip more and more: trips to Portland, the coast, skiing, and to Crater Lake. I'm sure that eventually the trips, especially around Portland, will become somewhat routine and less exciting as I become more used to the driving, more accustomed to the city, and less surprised by Portland's quirks.

 

This trip, though, was really wonderful and exciting. Because of scheduling conflicts, our group ended up being just five, instead of the seven it could have been: my boss, myself, and three Argentinean law students. We piled into a car (postponing the day I'll have to drive one of those 12 passenger vans for a long distance) and headed north. Some of us slept and some of us talked about everything from the AEI language classes to our opinions on the political situations in various Latin American countries. I even learned a bit of Portuguese. I have really enjoyed working with this Argentinean group, partly because of my Spanish language abilities, and partly because they are a really fun group interested in social justice, the environment, and US culture.

 

The trip was also fun because I have not spent enough time in Portland to really feel like I know the place. We stopped in Woodburn for a shopping trip at an outlet mall I didn't even know existed. We ate at Escape from New York (which is apparently a famous and "must see" pizza place) and I was impressed again by just how quirky Portland can be. And, although I have been to Powell's Bookstore almost every time I've been in Portland, I doubt I will ever get bored with that place. For an obsessive reader like me, Powell's is just about a wildest dream of Heaven. I could easily spend an entire day there.

 

We also went to Voodoo Doughnuts Too, which I hadn't ever been to before, and were again impressed by epic quirkiness. Aside from the doughnuts themselves (both delicious and aggressively eccentric), the decorating of the place defies description. Let me just say that the place is pink, has chandeliers, and that the seating is...unconventional. The Argentineans loved it, and so did I.

 

Then we went to Pioneer Square and Pioneer Place. We took pictures with the umbrella man and stood in the small amphitheater in the square (if you don't know what about it is special, I'm not about to tell the secret). Then other people in our group shopped while I sat on a bench and read (have I mentioned that I hate malls?). We ended our day at the Rock Bottom Brewery, where we watched a rowdy bachelorette party and generally had a very funny time.

 

Basically it was a perfect day. A long day, but a really great time seeing Portland again as a newcomer, introducing international students to some of Oregon's charm, and talking and laughing the whole day. I got to climb on the umbrella man and eat at a traditional Portland pizza place. Plus I feel very privileged to be a part of these students' time in the US and hope they have some of the same kind of wonderful memories of the USA that I have from my time studying abroad in Chile.

 

[0 Comments]

Classes recap

Katie D.

March 6, 2009 - 7:00 PM

So, with just one week of classes left this quarter I'd like to write a little about each of my classes this term. I have been very lucky with my classes this term, and have really enjoyed each one of them.

 

20th Century Spanish Literature: Repression and Resistance
Spanish 407 Professor Lisa DiGiovanni

I am so happy to have finally reached 400 level Spanish classes. We are discussing some amazing literature in this class, focusing on Repression and Resistance in the literature of Chile and Spain in reference to the military dictatorships in each. This focus is so interesting and has led us to discuss a wide variety of cultural aspects of these countries, from the history of the dictatorships to the cultural repression in the form of violence, imprisonment and torture, disappearances, and censorship. We have read about theories of memory and methods of collective recovery after such social devastation.

 

And it is so fun to be in a Spanish class having real discussions. Instead of practicing vocabulary we are practicing literary analysis. Instead of filling in blanks we are writing essays. And instead of learning verb forms we are putting all of our studies into practice by speaking and reading about topics that have huge importance in the literature and culture of Chile and Spain.

 

Don Quijote
Spanish 460 Professor Luis Verano

I am also taking a 400 level Spanish class about the famous novel Don Quijote (sometimes spelled Don Quixote). I love this class. Our professor, Luis Verano, has been teaching this novel for thirty years and is still incredibly excited about it. The class is in lecture format, with each of us reading the novel and then attending lectures about the literary importance and cultural/historical context of each segment. We bought the book in both Spanish and English with the hope that we would do the reading in Spanish, and use the English translation to help with comprehension. I had the best of intentions to begin with: I had planned to read the whole novel in Spanish, cover to cover. I have had to adjust that plan in the face of over 500 pages of Renaissance-era Spanish, but love to listen to our professor lecture in Spanish. I think that this book is a fascinating tribute to its literary moment and am in awe of its impact on culture since then (the only book that has been translated into more languages is the Bible).

 

Senses of Place
English 469 Professor William Rossi

I've already written a lot about this class, I know, but let me just say again that I really, truly love it. It has been the best class I've taken in the English department. We have read some amazing literature, had great discussions, and have our Personal Place essays due next week, which we are all going to post on blackboard! It is wonderful to be in a small class like this, with everyone sharing ideas and perspectives. People will be writing essays about hometowns and Eugene, about service projects and senses of displacement. Each one of us has picked an important place or series of places, and taken their own interpretation on the construction of this important place in their lives. I can't wait to read them! (Not to mention finish writing my own.)

 

Our final book for the class is called Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita. It is absolutely fabulous. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in an alternative look at our American identities and the conflicting senses of place that can arise in a single city. I haven't finished it yet, but the discussion of the first half was amazing, and I can't wait to finish the reading for class on Tuesday. So check it out if you're looking for a new book.

 

Social and Cultural Roots
Honors College 431H Professor Joseph Fracchia

I signed up for this class originally not because I was particularly interested in the topic but because I had had Professor Fracchia for freshman history and had been wanting to take another class with him ever since. He is a fabulous professor, specializing in introducing new topics and ways of thinking in a way that forces students to expand their perspectives. He told us during the first week that confusion is a good thing as it leads to new discoveries.

 

Despite initial doubt about my interest in exploring the corporeal roots of human society and culture, I have come to truly love this class. Honors college classes are so fun because they bring together students from a huge variety of majors and set them in discussion-based classes and encourage them to dialogue. Professor Fracchia does a great job of this, too-because we are talking about human body structures we need the human physiology majors to help us understand what that means. We need the biologists to tell us why we might have arrived at this form. We are exploring a kind of alternative philosophical pattern, so the philosophy majors in the class help us out a ton. And because we are looking at society and culture, we need the sociologists, art majors, and other humanities-based students to bring everything into a perspective of what is going on in the world so we can look backwards and try to understand what place our physical bodies have in the scheme of culture.

 

We are all writing essays on a basic corporeal unit (such as hands, or vision, or the sense of balance), and writing an essay about the place this corporeal reality has in our culture. The basic idea is that if we had vision like a bee's, our constructed reality would be completely different, or that without a sense of balance we might have different metaphors for justice. My paper is about human body frame (stature and bipedalism) as it relates to labor and the construction of our built environments.

 

Rock 1
Rock Climbing, Professor Jenny Strong

I love this class! I'm asking for a climbing harness for my birthday and have plans to go climbing out doors this summer. I spend a lot of time looking forward to the next time I get to climb.

 

This term has been really fun for a lot of reasons. I've gotten to be more physically active with my rock climbing class, been busy with my jobs, done a lot of writing, and had really wonderful classes. I'm excited about the literature I've been reading in both English and Spanish, and have felt truly challenged intellectually, especially by my Social/Cultural Roots class. Now that the quarter is ending, all I've got to do is finish all my papers, take a couple of finals, and mentally prepare myself for a whole new set of classes starting in April.

 

[3 Comments]