Damek.

I had a dream where I was going on a date with a girl – I wore black nylons and a skirt, one of Alex’s, white with a curvy-line design, except mine was in red while hers is.. purple, I think? I think I thought the girl would like it, but she turned into a guy and wasn’t too happy. He/she said she preferred me in jeans. I prefer me in jeans, too. Then I was sad I hadn’t just been myself.

I also had other dreams. A new resident in an apartment in the building right next to ours (new building? not our current, that’s for sure) was showing off her new apartment to a few of her friends. One of them saw me in our window and knew me so she called out to me. Strange, communicating with neighbors in next-door buildings through windows. They invited me over but it was late at night; Alex & I were both trying to sleep. But more and more people started showing up – it wasn’t just a housewarming, it slowly turned into a block party, person by person – but all in their building – and hours as there ended up being spillover. Our apartment was full of hipster professionals. It was a nice time, but also got strange with some arena line-dancing and parades and people going off in pairs to secluded bathrooms…

You can divorce in NY over “physical or sexual abandonment,” but not over “social abandonment,” new ruling determines. Court Rejects Bid to Extend Grounds for Divorce in New York (Gotham Gazette, Jan 2010) – “Social interaction between spouses, while certainly important to a healthy marital relationship, receives less legal recognition and protection.”

Food Deserts Could Bloom if City Hall Helps (Gotham Gazette, Jan 2010) We need to move from encouraging better food choices to improving the food access to enable and empower those choices… better food market planning (not big chain displacement), urban agriculture, better greenmarkets, CSAs… “The new [supermarket zoning] initiative can pave the way for giant retailers to move into low-income areas that are in transition to upper income communities, helping to push out the very people that are most in need of access, and thus not solving the problem of access.”

Related, the Five Borough Farm project is interesting – it will partner New York City’s most successful urban farm – Brooklyn-based Added Value – with New York’s largest landowner – the City itself – to create the nation’s first citywide plan for urban agriculture. It will inventory existing agricultural activity in the five boroughs and assess underutilized arable land in order to identify opportunities for City agencies to support urban agriculture.

I find this “why is there no anthro journalism” post amusing since, as I prepare to go get formal computer training & switch careers, but read anthropology voraciously as a hobby of sorts, my mind has toyed with the idea of “writing about anthro for the general public” as something I might do. Hmm…

…on a feminist website. (Well, sort of, it’s more just etymology with a cultural dimension, but anyway.) I love her run-through of trying to explain “Damn” and “pardon my french” to a non-native speaker. And the concluding paragraphs:

…if there are words and phrases that I use, but haven’t actually thought about — idioms that may be so common that I don’t have a clue about their etymology, but which I find are undeniably rooted in discrimination and oppression when I use the “explain it to a non-native speaker” exercise above (such as the phrase: “I got gypped” — a slur against Romani people that I’m often surprised people don’t know about) — if I continue to use these words and people are offended by them and I say: “Hey, it’s common usage! I didn’t mean it like that” . . .

Well, if I do that, I think that what I’m really saying is:

“I want to use these phrases because they are an easy short-hand for me, and/or they make me sound hep, or edgy, or current — and I want that more than I want to effectively communicate and connect with you.”

Which, when I put it like that, sounds really shitty of me.

Unrelated, this post on “mansplaining” is also good – I’ve definitely been guilty of it.

Actually, I think this attitude, on both sides, is entirely appropriate.

Since the rise of the social sciences, and the elevation of universities to special status, is something of a strangely Western statist/classist/imperialist phenomenon in general, anyway, the whole notion of intellectualism vs. idiocy is questionable anyway.

In fact, for me it’s been rather liberating recently to realize more and more that smart people are dumb, too. Or, intellectuals are human, too. When you publish the good stuff and ignore the rest, it’s easy to think someone can do no wrong. Then, once celebrated, it’s easy to think the bad stuff is good.

I will say one thing: practicing good note-taking, record-keeping, and writing skills, is definitely a benefit to good thought and expression. But not necessary. How many good poets do?

This dovetails with thoughts on Neil Gaiman, who I was reading about in the New Yorker this morning. In response to the old question of “where do you get your ideas,” he points out that everyone imagines, everyone has ideas. The unspoken addition there is, “but I write mine down, constantly.”

I’m increasingly convinced that’s all there is. And then you get noticed, respected, acknowledged, etc. …or you don’t.

Universities are just structured social systems for nurturing certain forms of knowledge-production and acknowledgment.