I really should write about my trip to the city of lights but I’ll post some these pictures for now…

Makes you marvel at the French use of graffiti/ drawing on public posters…I like it!

In the metro

Someone puts a pen to Le Pen!

In February of 1998, my parents had to go to Berlin for business.  Now one would think for a wanderlust travel bug that I was at that age (16), I would have jumped at going with them.  But no I played it like I was being shipped off to reform school when they told me I was going.  My reluctance to go stemmed from the fact that I would be missing Valentine’s Day with a certain someone.  They told me I could bring a friend, any friend, so I invited a good female friend who has turned out to be one of the main reasons I have traveled as far as I have in my short life.

At that point in my young life, I was not ready to fully confront the past that Germany had.  I didn’t understand why they wanted to completely dismantle the Wall.  I was intrigued and clearly they were haunted.

That February, Berlin was freezing, but I had the time of my life in that four-day period.  My friend and I went to an awesome bar (any bar you can get into at 16 years old is awesome) and had a fun time giggling and chatting.  I remember thinking so this is why it is important to have smart female friends!  During the four-day period, a bird shat on my head, I saw some amazing art and grew closer to my friend forgetting all about the reasons I didn’t want to go in the first place.

What sticks with the most is being able to see what Soviet Europe had looked like.  My only trips to Europe before had been to cities like Paris or London where cities were both exquisitely historic and fashionably modern.  In Eastern Berlin that wasn’t the case.  Stepping between East and West was mind boggling, as it had only been mere years since the literal division was taken away.  But divisions still existed in 1998 and I noticed it when we took a historic tour around the city.  Clearly, things were omitted, smoothed over and well avoided.  At one point we got out to take pictures of the Wall that were still intact.  Our tour guide mentioned how the city was poised to take the Wall completely down.  This made me sad, as they clearly served as a blank canvas for people to voice their frustration, talent, humor and to capture their feelings for younger generations to see.

Four years later, I found myself in Berlin during a backpacking trip.  I was surprised and excited by how vibrant the city seemed.  I stayed in a hostel in what was East Berlin, which seemed to be lacking the desolate feeling, which had encompassed it years earlier.  I visited Holocaust memorials and exhibits at different museums.  I even went to the fun and eclectic Checkpoint Charlie Museum.

I also noticed that parts of the Wall were still up for preservation purposes.  I thought perhaps the City had decided to hang on to a bit of its legacy. In the four years since I first visited, Berlin had grown more into else. While still changed forever by its troubling history decided to try and remember what set it apart from its other European siblings.

That trip changed my life in so many ways that I didn’t even realize at the time.  I strengthened a frienship that is still integral to my life (and still centered around travel from Connecticut to Australia!).  And it cemented my desire to study history, as I was able to see how a city’s own history impacted the way it was viewed by outsiders and insiders.

I’ve returned from the city of lights…more details to come!

Gone for a few days to a lovely city.

Little to no updating until April 22.

Je t’aime, Ms. Rose

Yesterday, we scrapped our original plans and went to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum.  We went to the Clinton Library in Little Rock, AR last fall, so I was curious to see another one.

Some highlights of the museum included:

• Watching the Nixon/Kennedy presidential debates
• A special exhibition on JFK’s trip to Ireland
• And a ton of pictures of Jackie-O well being Jackie before the O
  

We swung by Boston Commons which was gorgeous and took some pictures (will be posted when the computer networking isn’t acting wonky).

Oh yeah and we went to Cambrigde on Friday to get a drink and we walked a bit on the campus that needs no name. Before that we went to get a drink at a weird hybrid of a meat market/ tourist/ family place.  Guess you had to be there.

Some more thoughts about the conference:

Two people in panels read directly from their computer screens (no visuals).  One said her power went out and she couldn’t print. She came from New Hampshire where they were having snow! The other one was a dishelved person who showed up 15 minutes late to his own panel.   Watching people read from their computers didn’t really bother me because they both made decent eye contact.  I wonder how much a trend it is…Good night!

I forgot it was Good Friday until about 3:00 PM today. Such a bad Catholic.

My first and last full day of the conference was good. My presentation went well though I did say “um” twice. What can you do? (Except improve your public speaking skillzzz!)

There was a very captivating piece on Ugly Betty, how ABC transformed it from a telenova to a weekly drama comedy. I love how America imports from other countries. There tends to be the dominant theory that everyone is taking their ideas from the USA but it the opposite is actually true. Sometimes, it’s better in its original form.

Being in Boston is a lot of fun. I came here on a school trip in 8th grade. I had my first cappucino at Faneuil Hall and I yelled at other school group because they were matching blue shirts. Gosh, I must have been so annoying. We’re staying at a hotel next to Quincy Market, so it jogged the whole 8th grade memory.

I’ve been back to the area since but stayed mostly in the Watertown/Somerville/ Cambridge area. I’m surprised at the beauty of the city. I always thought it was beautiful but its amazing to note the difference between here and NYC. Every building here seems (and probably is) historically important.

Tomorrow, we’re going to do some sight seeing. The husband wants to go to the Sam Adams Brewery and I want to go look at Boston Commons and maybe Boston College because I hear its gothic architecture is beautiful.

That’s it for now.

I’m at my quirky hotel in Boston. I’m sitting here trying to figure out the T. My hotel has some strange features. There are Trojan condoms in the mini bar. I think great for safe sex and the best place if you need them in the hurry. I’ve just never seen them anywhere beside on an RA’s door or a store or bathroom vending machine.

And the hotel charges .29 cents per page to print in the business center. BAH! I got hit by an urge to cut things out of my paper, so I needed a new copy. Would I have done that if I knew my print out would have cost me roughly $2.00…I don’t know?

I got to Boston at 5:30 and went by the conference location to catch a 6:00 panel entitled:

Composition & Rhetoric VIII: Oprah, Dr. Phil, & Letterman:

Inviting Popular Culture into the Composition Classroom

It really deserves a lot more of a detailed description than I can give it right now. It made me go back and think over my talk in my head because the panelists were all talking about teaching composition.

According to the 2006 UN Human Development Report:

Norway  (1913), Iceland (1915), Australia (1902), Ireland (1918), Sweden (1919),  Canad (1917), Netherlands     (1919), Finland (1906), Luxembourgh (1919), Belgium (1919), Austria (1918), Denmark (1915), United Kingdom (1918), Germany (1918), Hungary (1918), New Zealand (1893), Poland (1918), Estonia (1918), Lithuania (1919), Latvia (1918), Russian Federation (1918), Belarus (1919), Ukraine (1919), Armenia (1918), Georgia (1918), Azerbaijan (1918), Kyrgyzstan (1918), Zimbabwe (1919), and Kenya (1919)

All granted the women the right to vote before the U.S.A. (1920)

Statistics here.

New York is a city free of inhibition.  Walking down the street, you hear snippets of people’s discussions with friends, words from cell phone conversations, men and women muttering angrily to themselves. ( This NYTimes piece discusses personal space issues in NYC.)

It is also full of confrontation.  Cab drivers will furiously flag their middle at offending drivers and pedestrians.  People will ask complete strangers questions like “how much did you pay for your shoes?”

The subway commute during the morning rush hour produces a sizeable number of confrontations.   People are in a rush.  Some are trying to balance a hot latte, newspaper, bag and ipod as they cling to the poles.  Others take up too much room.  Several women attempt to apply makeup to their face as the 1-train rushes between 50th and 42nd streets.

And people bumping into each other continuously.   Having lived in the city for more than fifteen years, I have seen my fair share of verbal sparrings over people bumping into each other, hogging seats, and dirty looks. Unfortunately, homeless people are sometimes the object of these attacks.  I’ve heard the every day commuter tell them “to get out of my face,” “go get a job,” or even “get a life” when homeless people approach them for money.

I honestly thought I heard the worst until my husband told me an atrocious tale of one of his daily commutes.  A young homeless woman came onto the subway holding a two-year-old child.  She then proceeded to ask for money as she explained the circumstances that led to her becoming destitute at 17 years old.  Several people in the subway card handed her money or food.

Suddenly a nicely dressed, middle-aged woman asked the homeless teenager a question:

Woman: Why did you get pregnant?

Girl: I don’t know.  It just happened.

Woman: Why didn’t you have an abortion?

Girl: I believe abortion is murder.

Woman: Well, there is a time and place for it.

It was then when my husband’s stop came and he got off the train.  The next day before he told me about this exchange, he prefaced it by saying it was the most “outrageous” thing he had ever seen or heard on the subway.  From a regular New York City commuter that is saying a lot.

What he told me immediately had my mind wondering.  Here are two women– one is presumably not homeless and makes a decent amount of money to live in NYC while the other one is apparently lacking shelter, a regular income, and access to food. Did the seemingly more privileged woman believe she could question the teenage mother because she was in fact more privileged?   Because the young woman announced to the subway car that she needed food make her more susceptible and deserving of a public ridicule?  Or was the older woman just having a bad day?

I believe this older woman crossed a horrible line.  We live in a city where we are always in each other’s faces.  By living in this city, we are relinquishing the choice to live completely private lives.  Levels of privacy are possible but in one simple second this can all fall a part. A spill of a purse or briefcase can result in a whole subway car of people knowing you carry around a pill bottle of Valium and a twelze pack of condoms.

Clearly, this homeless woman was taking a risk in not having anyone offer her any sort of food or money.  I am going to go out on a limb and that this woman was not expecting  that her choice to have a child was going to be up for discussion.  I could be wrong.  She could be completely used to this routine .  But as my husband pointed out, while women are adamantly fighting for their right to choose why should it be deemed “OK” to interrogate a needy women about her choice to have a child.   It was perhaps the only choice she felt grateful to be able to make.

At the end of the day, the subway is a public place shared by many people treating it as their private space.  Maybe neither of these women are that affected by their clash in the subway car.   However, based on their “conversation,” it is obvious that New Yorkers are not about to stop publicly airing their opinions no matter how rudely ithey are stated.

Last weekend, I flew to Little Rock, AR for the National Women’s History Project’s networking conference. Not only was I attending this conference as a member of the board of directors but as a presenter. Saturday morning, I woke up early and presented a paper along side other women like Gwynn Cassidy of Girls in Government and the the Real hot 100, Alicia Daly of Ms. Magazine, Kim Salter of California NOW. The panel was entitled “Moving History Forward - 21st Century Strategies and Issues”–the biggest theme from the panel was discussion of how to engage more young women in women’s history through the internet and grassroots movements.

Afterward, I attended a few more workshops which included hearing Zoe Nicholson talk about her experiencing fasting for the ERA in 1982. In all the conference was a success and then I set out to do some sight seeing with my traveling companion.

(1) Of course, our first stop was the Clinton Presidential Library. I was very impressed with how much information was presented in such an aestheically pleasing and non overwhelming way.

I was impressed with how they handled the Monica Lewinsky incident by calling it a lapse in “personal judgement.” Before I entered the library, I wondered out loud whether or not it would be addressed. Some may think that it has no place in a presidential library but the history of Clinton’s impeachment was presented along side his major accomplishments–reminding us that he is human.

I wish they would have included some more of Hilary Rodham Clinton’s personal life and achievements. Perhaps they are saving that for her own presidential library?

(2) Next, we went to the Old State House Museum which I was thoroughly impressed with. Upstairs there are two large rooms that used to be legislative chambers at seperate times. One was restored to the way it used to be in the 1980s. The second one featured a coherent and straightforward historical account of politics in Arkansas. The sections on slavery, Jim Crow, and Black politicians did not shy away from addressing Arkansas’s racist pass and did not offer any irresponsible explanantions for the treatment of African Americans.

The bottom floor offered a wonderfully comprehensive exhibit of significant women and their accomplishments in Arkansas history. One of these accomplishments was from the early 1900s when many women’s volunteer groups came together to save the Old State House and turn it into a museum. Women from different political backgrounds including Daughters of the Confederacy and Daughters of the American Revolution came together to petition the government to preseve its history. Finally, women’s groups in the 1950s finally suceeded into renovating the Old State House.

The woman at the front desk of the museum said “it was pretty advanced for women in the 1950s to come together like that.” I couldn’t help but think that women have been coming together for years in the shape of volunteer organizations to improve their societies and in turn change history.

Old State House Museum, October 23, 2006.

(3) I hate to admit this but I was sadly disappointed with the Little Rock Central High memorial because we couldn’t properly find it. It turns out they turned an old gas station into a resource center about integration and other civil rights issues. There were not many signs pointing you in the right direction and when we finally found it we did not have time to stop. I think this place deserves more than an old gas station. Hopefully, I’ll learn more about this soon!

I was pleasantly surprised by my weekend in Little Rock.