A Modern Prometheus

Writing on a Wednesday ... huh. I know it's cold out there, but has hell REALLY frozen over?

Today's topic is both near and dear to my heart. In fact, I've been meaning to talk about it forever yet have simply never found the right time or words to discuss it. Such is the nature of the beast, I guess; we're talking about procrastination.

I have a loooooong and storied history with the fine art of putting stuff off. Going back as far as kindergarten, I distinctly remember telling my teacher, "I don't need to do my coloring now, because I'm a fast color-er and can do it later." She told me that we only had fifteen more coloring minutes and that our pictures would later be hung on the wall, so they needed to be really good. Not one to back down from a challenge, I stared at her, grabbed my crayons, colored the entire "D is for Dinosaur" in five minutes while staying strictly within the lines, stared at her again, and went back to my blocks for another ten minutes. It was following my first parent-teacher night that I learned that the word "precocious" is teacher code for, "pain in the ass."  

Unfortunately, over the next sixteen years of schooling, I never learned otherwise. Every year, it seemed, another teacher would read me the riot act about how, while I might get away with putting my projects and homework off until the last minute THIS TIME, it would eventually come back to bite me in the ass. "You won't be able to do this when you get to the fifth grade!" became, "...to junior high!," "...to high school!,""...to college!," "...to your JOB!" Yet here I sit, 38 years old with both a Bachelor's and Master's degree, not to mention a pretty successful career arc, still honing my procrastinatory tendencies.

To be clear, this is not something of which I am proud. A little smug, perhaps, but definitely not proud. Because while I tend to excel under pressure, that doesn't mean I don't get an overwhelming sense of anxiety leading up to the main event. It also makes it very hard to motivate myself to undertake a task without a specific goal or deadline in mind. "Run a marathon" has a very real, tangible and finite ending; "write a book someday" does not.

Yet here I am, yet again, asking you to give me a chance to post...to write...to go on sharing my absolutely insane, asanine and melodramatic thoughts. I'M BACK..

BACK AGAIN, and I hope you (and I) will follow along with wherever this space encourages me to go next! 😈  

hello again, world.

Soooooo many people have asked me when I plan to return to ranting to the internet at large...I'm fairly certain that half of them don't even really know what "the internet" is, yet here I am, spewing into the unknown yet again.

I don't know where to even begin describing my feelings about the last 18 months, or, honestly, the last 18 days of my life, because they were WEIRD AS HELL. 🤷‍♀️ 

I hope that this becomes a space for me to spew my thoughts, but I have already been down the 'blogger" trail and hated it, so let's see how it goes this time.

July 1, 2020

There are just SO. MANY. MOVEMENTS. happening in the world right now that I would like to address that I barely even know how, where or when to start. 

BLACK LIVES MATTER

I thought that I made my stance on this clear in a post I wrote like 5 years ago, but based on my social media friends list, apparently I should have been more explicit. 

BLACK. LIVES. MATTER.

I know, I know -- you grew up poor; you had a rough family life; your parents had a nasty divorce; you suffered childhood trauma; you had addicts in the family; you were an addict; you or family members were arrested for crimes both petty and major; AND YET, you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps to make something of your life -- and you are mad and don't believe that you have any privilege or bias as a result. HOW DARE anyone try to dismiss YOUR hardships and accuse you of privilege? Your life has been anything BUT privileged, and these snotty little kids should shut up and observe their history, lest they repeat it.

Well, SURPRISE! I am a white, middle-aged, professional middle-class woman with a husband and a house who experienced all of the above. Some of those situations were really bad; like really, REALLY bad, and I am happy to swap stories and compare mental scars with anyone who asks. Still, NONE of the situations I have faced were made more difficult by my being white. 

Do you believe that yours were? I ask becauae the majority of the stories I have seen saying that you were persecuted are that you, a white child, had a Black friend from school and had to walk through a diverse (non-white majority) neighborhood to visit them at their home while being stared, whispered or gestured at. I know it is uncomfortable to recall, but remember how targeted you felt during that time? Your heart rate probably picked up, you probably started sweating, you wondered if you were going to be approached by someone who thought you didn't belong in this place and that you were going to be harmed simply for being there to see your friend from school.

Does that sound right? I promise; I am not judging. I have felt that way, too.

Now, imagine that, instead of every time you went to visit that neighborhood, you had that feeling every single time you left YOUR neighborhood. Wouldn't you be scared? Wouldn't you be constantly on edge? Wouldn't you feel like a second-class citizen?

That is the reality that Black people, and Indigenous people, and other People of Color deal with every time they step outside of their homes and *designated* neighborhoods. Walking their kids to school or the playground to run off their energy and finally take a flippin' nap. Running to the store because they're out of seltzer and who really drinks eight cups per say of regular water. Commuting to work to do experiments at their lab bench so that maybe we can cure something someday. Sitting on their steps and making awkward small talk with their neighbors.

Do these situations sound familiar?

Have you ever felt that your life was in danger (and I mean *really think* -- you might have been scared in a situation, but was it because you were actually threatened and felt that your safety was in jeopardy), or that you might be stopped by the police, on your own property, in your own home, in your neighborhood or another very public place, while minding your business, *SOLELY* because you were white?

If your answer is no, then I ask you to be honest with yourself and count how many times you have felt that way. Remember, I am asking about times in your own or a friend's neighborhood, not even during adventures in "sketchy" places.

Is it less than 5?

Is it less than 15?

Is it less than 50?

I know my experience hovers in the 5-10ish range.

Is that surprising?

It shouldn't be, because while I absolutely felt scared that in the moment, I realized how ludicrous it was for me to have felt that way without experience. And then I met my *diverse* neighbors and realized they were much more welcoming, nice and normal than I had anticipated.

That realization? The ability to dig deep and realize that even though I was *WILDLY* uncomfortable in my surroundings, but there was minimal threat that I would be raped or maimed or killed just because of my skin color, and I could relax among people who did not look like me? 

THAT is white privilege. 

Not an easy realization, is it? I know that I fight against it every single day, only to eventually put myself in the shoes of a BIPOC person and realize that not only would I not want to be treated the way that non-white people are in society, but I would be horrified if I were judged and sentenced in accordance with the relative number of criminals who share my skin color's sins. Yet it happens over and over every single day to non-white people. 

I don't really know how to end these thoughts, other than to say if any of this has struck a chord in you in which you would actually like to learn more, please comment and I will do what I can to direct you toward resources. 

REWIND! Loyal Sons

I first wrote this post on my old blog back in 2011. Tonight, as Rutgers takes on UMASS, I am reposting and reliving and remembering every bit of this story. College football, to me, will always be the best football!

Loyal Sons

As a born and bred New England girl, there are some elements of my person that aren't very surprising. When I'm under stress (read: exhausted or inebriated), my speech pattern resembles that of Amy Adams in The Fighter. I suffer the famous "Irish Whisper" (also known as, "sometimes I yell when I talk"), a gift that I blame on competing with my four younger siblings to get our parents' attention (She who screams loudest gets answer -- ancient Irish proverb). In high school, I smoothed my very wavy hair with an actual iron so it would lie flat against my head (still have the scars), and the amount of F-bombs I can drop in a single sentence could stun even a well-seasoned sailor (I try to restrain myself on the ol' blog for my readers' sakes).

We New Englanders take a lot of pride in our Pro sports teams. I could name the starting lineup for the Red Sox beginning at the ripe old age of five. I don't really care about basketball, but I know most of the rules and the major players for the Celtics and once, in the fourth grade, I forever sacrificed my pinky finger's range of mobility in an effort to show the boys that yes, girls can TOO play (and thus ended my illustrious basketball career). I followed the Bruins BEFORE they made their run for the Stanley Cup, and in a region where college hockey might as well be pro, I went to a university that lives, breathes and bleeds Hockey East glory (NCAA titles, on the other hand....not so much. GO WILDCATS!).

[Source]

As for the Patriots? The vaunted, love-em-or-hate-em, did-they-or-didn't-they? enigma that is the New England Patriots? I love them, too, and spend every Sunday next to Andrew in jeans and a Brady jersey, cheering and screaming and sometimes swearing louder than he does (see above). Our neighbors probably hate us, but tough shit -- if you want to fit in 'round these parts, you learn that In Bill We Trust and how to live the Patriot Way. Or else.

The thing is, while I do love the Pats and lust after our shagadelic quarterback (though the entire world knows that physically, I'd take Matt Cassel), I harbor a dark little secret. One that a lot of my northeastern-bred friends just don't understand.

Because while it's true that I learned to love football growing up, the Pros had nothing to do with it.

My pigskin loyalties were bred with the other kind, the BEST kind, of football:  

COLLEGE football.

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The loyal son of a proud Rutgers alumnus, my Dad grew up in Nawth Jerzey in the same town where The Sopranos was filmed, screaming, "Up stream, Red Team!", eating hoagies and sporting a sweet Donny Osmond haircut. At 18, he packed up his belongings and set out for the only other acceptable football mecca in the northeast, Boston College.

Those were the pre-Flutie years but needless to say, once a hundred whispered Hail Marys were answered and that famous football arched through the sky and landed safely in the endzone, college football exploded in these parts for the first time. The day after I was born, Dad barely made it back because he was busy cheering on his alma mater at the BC-Notre Dame game. I spent my childhood Saturdays eating chicken fingers and real NJ hoagies, screamin' for the Eagles and swearing never to attend no stinkin' Syracuse. In our world, Saturdays were for football; Sundays were for Church.

One of my favorite traditions was the annual BC/Rutgers game, an event that included either a 5-hour pilgrimage to Gramma and Pa's or the invitation to join them at their hotel here in Boston, depending on who had home field advantage. Once a year, my mom, dad, brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and I were all together, sitting in a parking lot, eating a meticulously packed tailgate and laughing over beverages (beer for the grownups; soda for us kids). Though one of my Aunts had followed my Grandpa's footsteps to Rutgers, the BC crowd always had the advantage; I always suspected the reason Dad had so many kids was so that he could create a miniature army swathed in maroon and gold, destined to dominate on GameDay. We stayed until the end, no matter the score, because as Pa would say, "you never desert your team" and you ALWAYS stay to listen to the marching band play "Loyal Sons", regardless of who won.

The man responsible for my refusal to EVER leave before the end!

It was at these games, college games, that I learned the rules of a game that would some day, over a series of Sundays, impress Andrew enough that he asked me to dinner.

Back in those days, Dad had season tickets. He kept them straight up until BC deserted the BigEast and our favorite foes, opting instead to funnel their dollars into the pockets of the ACC. At that point, he gave his tickets up in protest, because he didn't want to watch his team play a bunch of far-away schools with big-name talent. If he didn't have to explain to his kids what the eff a Hokie was (a big orange loser, that's what!), he wanted no part of it. It also didn't help BC's cause that when I received my lifetime-awaited envelope from them eight years ago, it was of the small, thin "We had an impressive pool of applicants..." variety rather than the big, fat, "Welcome to the Class of 2007!" kind.

We He might still be bitter.

Between that, attending a college where hockey games sell out in minutes but football is a forgotten afterthought and dating a man who seriously would have cried if the NFL lockout didn't end in time for the season to start, I've drifted away from my collegiate football roots. Andrew has never been a fan, and "just can't understand the appeal of rooting for a team of a school you didn't even go to", and most of my friends either went to private colleges within a 5-hour drive or attended the same hockey-centric public university that I did. I know that I could watch on my own, but 90% of the fun of college football is sharing it with your fellow fans. Plus, I just don't have the time anymore.

Now, Saturdays are for long runs and errands; Sundays (and Mondays, and sometimes Thursdays) are for football.

My good friend, Katie from Once a Southern Belle, Always a Southern Belle, is a born-and-bred Texan. As such, she is the epitome of all that is right about college football: gameday snacks, cute outfits in coordinating colors with diehard loyalties and friendly rivalries shared amongst family and friends. Her excitement and enthusiasm for last weekend's NCAA kick-off weekend, as well as that of all the other fab Southern-school bloggers she has gotten me hooked on, was palpable.

And on Saturday, as I was scouring the internet for two tickets under $300 for next Sunday's Patriots home opener (an anniversary present for Andrew), my Twitter feed filled at an impressive rate with #GoBigSchool!, rankings and Heisman predictions. The streets of Boston and the T were full of obnoxious Northwestern students and drunken SuperFans stumbling home from BC's home opener. And in the midst of all this, three words crossed my mind.

Color me jealous.

Heartbreaker Home

Well, the fingers crossed for us to love the house we saw this weekend worked.... unfortunately, it takes more than luck and good vibes to win a bidding war these days. #wompwomp

This house was absolutely NOTHING like what we envisioned for ourselves -- it was a single-story bungalow with only two bedrooms and one bathroom, and was approximately 250 sq. ft. larger than our current apartment. Typically, I would have skipped right over it on MLS, but when it popped up Friday, I got a fuzzy feeling and sent it off to Andrew to ask if he wanted to see it. Within seconds of walking inside, we both looked at each other and said, "this is it; we are offering and we're willing to be aggressive."

The really crazy part is that this house was below -- WELL below -- our current budget. Our realtor, who is a good friend, even said that she thought it was slightly overpriced for the size, but the area we are looking in is hot, hot, hot (good school systems, good commute to the city, good town infrastructure and community atmosphere), so we initially went in at $5k over asking knowing there would likely be multiple offers. We received the counter to come back with best and final around 10am yesterday, and learned that we were one of three offers still in the running. We increased the offer slightly, and raised our inspection threshold.... then sat on tenterhooks until we got the news at 2:30 that the seller went with another offer "with better terms."

Typically, when people bemoan the current state of something, I assume that there is a level of exaggeration involved. What is so aggravating about this whole home buying process is that the market really *is* as insane as everyone says it is -- this house came on the market Friday, had an Open House Saturday, with final offers due Monday by 10... and it had multiple bids over asking price with all kinds of waivers for stuff like the inspection, the appraisal and the mortgage contingency.

How are we supposed to compete with that?!

I know that if waiving and overpaying were the keys to this house, it wasn't the right house for us. I know that. It still doesn't make it any easier, knowing we've been looking for a year, with pre-approval and down payment in hand, and have only seen three properties that remotely match what we're looking for. I read articles with comments stating that we millennials want too much and how we think we're entitled to convenience, etc. -- and to a point, I agree. But I'm sorry, I don't think a house with 2-3 bedrooms, 1-2 bathrooms in a suburb 45 minutes-an hour outside of the city for under a small fortune should be too much to ask for. It has to be out there. At some point, this bubble is going to have to burst.

And so, we will continue looking. And waiting. And hoping.

Keep those fingers crossed for us, would ya?

Five on Friday #2

Friends, Romans, Countrymen.... oh forget it. It's been forever since I've written about anything aside from Management/Research Administration (ONE WEEK FROM SUNDAY UNTIL MY CAPSTONE/THESIS IS DUE!), but I have been DYING to get back to some semblance of creativity so, here we are. Without further ado, I present:

FIVE ON FRIDAY: THE SEQUEL

(Disclosure: This isn't really the sequel. FoF was a common feature on my long-dead previous blog, as was the ever-popular "Friday Confessional." Oh well).

1. SENIORITIS
As I mentioned above, I am approximately one week and 60-some odd hours away from being D-O-N-E with my Master's degree. It seems as though it has been an excrutiatingly long time coming, but when I stop and think of everything that has happened since I started my Program -- my engagement, my marriage, births, deaths and in-between -- I can't help but smile (and shed a tear or two). As some of those closest to me know, I made and then lost a very dear friend during my graduate studies. At some point, I hope to write about her and the impact that she had, and continues to have, on me, the way I see life, and the way that I approach others. So as excited as I am to finish up, it is bittersweet knowing that she and I won't be going on that tropical graduation getaway we planned as we slaved away over powerpoints and prospectuses. So for the next week, I'll be thinking of her as I type away and prepare to end this chapter of my life.

2. Holiday Cheer
IT'S THE MOST WONDERFULLLL TIIIIIIIME OF THE YEEEEEAR! Seriously, though, Thanksgiving is my husband's favorite holiday (Halloween is mine, thanks for asking), and I love the Christmas/holiday season, so both of us have been in our element this week. We kicked it off with his 50-somethingth annual family football game on Thanksgiving morning (well, technically we kicked it off the night before when we tapped the kegs we're in charge of for said football game), and the celebrations continued throughout the weekend and this week. As usual, we spent quality time with both sides of our family, and there was plenty of wine, dancing, laughter and family shots (both camera and otherwise) involved in the merriment.

3. Nosy People
I wrote a FB PSA the night before Thanksgiving about this topic, and it quickly became one of my most liked posts of the year, so it probably bears repeating. This one goes on the "negative Nancy" list, but whether it's the status of our house hunt, size of my jeans, or state of my uterus, I am going to go verbally ballistic on the next person who inappropriately inquires about OBVIOUSLY personal issues. If you ever find yourself about to ask what might be an invasive question, ask yourself, "does the answer to this personally affect my life in any way?" If the answer could even in the slightest be "no," then I believe the venerable 90s queens of hip hop, Salt N Peppa, said it best: "IT'S NONE A YO' BUSINESS!"

4. House Hunting
That being said, I feel comfortable sharing that we are still very much in the midst of house-hunting, almost one year to the date from when we started looking. We've put in two offers during that time, and while both were competitive, we lost each to other couples with more cash in hand. In retrospect, in at least one of those cases, it was definitely for the best; we had another opportunity to buy almost the exact same property a few doors down and, once we considered it, we decided to pass. We have narrowed down the area where we are looking considerably, which doesn't help, but after a lot of discussion regarding where we would ultimately be most happy, we know that it's worth the wait.

BUT! We are going to an Open House tomorrow for which I am trying not to get my hopes up, but cross your fingers for us and, if you pray, say a little one for us that we find our new home!

5. Hamilton
Yes, I am aware that this is probably the most #basic (do we still say that? Or is it #extra? God, I am so old) thing that I could possibly say here, but after a several-months-long hiatus from the nonstop Hamilton soundtrack looping through my head, I have to admit that "My Shot" is back with a vengeance. The one-year anniversary of my birthday trip to see it in NYC passed a few weeks ago, and I'd be lying if I said that Lin-Manuel Miranda's vehement devotion to and tangible action for Puerto Rico had not sparked another spiral into the abyss of the Ten Dollar Founding Father. So to my colleagues, random people next to me on the bus, and any animals within hearing distance, my apologies. (But I'm not going to stop).

#Sciencemarch #WOA

Almost 10 years ago, I graduated with a degree in English Language and Letters, and also Political Science, from one of the foremost public research universities in the country. During my time there I took two science classes, because my public high school Bio II had provided enough college ed credits to cover my bio requirement in college.

From there, with a 3.98 GPA in English, I tried to get a job in publishing. I was immediately shot down because I hadn't interned at a publishing house. A family friend suggested I apply to hospitals, so I did.

I was hired at Boston Children's Hospital two months after I graduated, as an assistant to a Program Director who was a brilliant, groundbreaking scientist. I had no idea at the time; he offered me a job on the spot and I took it. My dad Googled "Judah Folkman" and, over a congratulatory dinner, tried to tell me what I had just signed myself up for.

Dr. Folkman was more than just a boss; he was a living legend, a visionary, and a surrogate grandfather to me. He founded a field of science and was involved in more discoveries than you or I know of. He passed in 2008, six months after I started working for him. It was one of the hardest periods of my personal and fledgling professional life.

I was beyond fortunate to be taken on by someone else in a similar capacity, and later as a senior admin. Without getting into details, I spent the next several years learning about scientific discoveries, hypotheses and theories that changed the way I approach the world. I learned about drug delivery, cancer and eye disease in terms that my English brain did not even know existed -- yet everyone was patient, and explained what their research was about and how it could help others.

During my time in the world of basic science, where discoveries are reduced to the basic building blocks of the universe, I also learned a lot that can't be found at the lab bench. I learned that even in an environment where anything is supposedly possible, bias, gender inequality and a marked lack of female and minority leadership are still issues with which we struggle today. I learned that the world isn't always fair, and that you have to fight for ideas that others might not find compelling.

Despite my initial feelings of iniquity, I learned that, in the end, there isn't a ton of difference between the writers and the scientists; at the end of the day, we need each other to interpret each other's findings. The key to discovery, it turns out, is not so much in the scientific method as it is in communicating our findings with one another, and then using those findings to advance our communal standing as one united people of the world.

Over the past several years, I think that this symbiotic relationship between science and communication has eroded, to the detriment of both science and journalism. Essentially, I believe that we need to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and how it affects the everyday person, and I believe this administration is doing its best to further undermine that relationship. Scientist and writers need each other; of this I am sure.

With that said, #sciencemarch #womeninscience #WOA #scienceisreal #confessionsofanonscientist