femilicious.com

I’m spending a lot of time on campus lately. I have a wonderful workspace in the History Research Lab and I’ve made it cozy with some comics, postcards, and other decorations. I also leave articles I’m reading on the desk so that I have to come back to continue working. Since I bought a parking pass it’s been a really great system.

I sit next to a large window and have a beautiful view — of the Ambassador Bridge and all the bridge traffic making its way to and from Detroit, Michigan. My desk is covered in grit, my keyboard is filled with grit, the monitor has a layer of grit on it, and my books and papers are coated. The rest of the room is covered too so it makes no difference from desk to desk. I wipe my space down every morning to keep up with it.

At home I have this grit on everything in the yard as well. No wonder Windsor residents have such a high rate of breathing problems. I’m sure my lungs are full of the grit by now.

Today it’s cold so I’ve got the window closed. I wonder if it will cut down on the daily grit…

Irony on campus today at he University of Windsor:

on one hand, the Environmental Pinnacle.

on the other hand, pesticide signage across the lawn and the smell of freshly sprayed poison filling the air.

It’s time for a check-in and one of those posts that I can look back on to gauge state-of-mind when one day in the future I reflect back to this time and wonder what in the world I was thinking. so:

Some things that made me happy today:

• spreading dirt for a garden in the backyard. I’m hoping to plant the weekend after next
• super cheap ceramic tiles at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I’m going to set them in the ground between the dirt and the fence = cheap and non-toxic weedblock!
• last year’s shorts fit. No further comment.
• I got to play with an Asus Eee PC at Staples of all places (I’d give you a link but the site irritates me because it won’t let me browse without entering my postal code). The Eee is as awesome as I imagined — and even lighter. They’re stocking the black one with the 4GB hard drive and 512MB of ram for 399$ Cdn.

Some sad things:

• The rest of the dirt for the garden is in the front yard. I estimate it will take 20 billion and a half trips with the wheelbarrow to get it to the right place.
• It’s raining and cold so I don’t want to work out in the garden anymore today
• I have a meeting with my adviser tomorrow so I can’t work outside in the garden anymore today
• I don’t need an Asus Eee PC.

Isn’t that an awesome list of sad things? I realize there’s nothing major there and I think that’s a wonderful reason to celebrate. Life is good. :)

I’ve got a hideous paper due Friday and yesterday I realized (for reasons that I won’t go into now) that my topic is all wrong. Unfortunately, there’s no time to start over so I’ll have to make do with the research I’ve been doing all semester and salvage what I can when this semester is over.

I’m having trouble focusing on what to say in this paper (what with the premise being all wrong and stuff) so I’ve decided to break it down more than the usual outline. I did the outline last week — and it isn’t working. It’s too vague maybe for a long paper and I don’t know how to make it more detailed (yes the paper is due in two days).

So the new strategy? I took everything I’ve written so far and separated each section and made each into its own document. I now have 13 independent documents open plus another with notes that haven’t found their way into the paper yet. My strategy is to complete each of these 13 documents as its own mini-paper and then assemble them as a complete work (by this time tomorrow). :)

It was too confusing trying to keep track of where each piece of research fit into the long document. This should be much easier as I’ve saved each with a meaningful title.

Forget asking how did people write before word processors — how did people ever write without hyperlinking? I’m going crazy trying to write my final essay of the semester without hyperlinks. Aaarrrggghhhh!!!

It would be so sweet to go beyond footnotes, to be able to include a link to a photo or a text or a discussion or another essay. Alas, when your professor is a historian of print and publishing it just ain’t gonna be happenin’ here.

When did a B become a bad mark? (omg I hope I don’t get a B on my assignment.) It seems this is what happens moving up into graduate studies. Everyone is stressing over grades. Nothing below an A is good enough and a B is required to pass a course. I hate having that kind of pressure. I did well in my undergrad but even though I stressed over my grades I don’t remember this kind of dread. In my undergrad I wanted high marks but I didn’t need them in the same way I do now. Knowing that good work is a fail and that very good is barely a pass I am paralyzed for fear that my work will be mediocre – or worse — adequate.

There’s been some weird power flickers here today and my desktop keeps shutting down. If it wasn’t happening to the clocks on that side of the house as well as to Rob’s desktop I might wonder if my power supply has finally given up. Since the machine is off anyway I’ve decided I should let things cool down and take this opportunity to replace that power supply. I bought my new one - a 430W Seasonic - at Canada Computers when I was in Toronto last weekend for Mitch’s birthday shindig. The visit with K & Mitch was wonderful, the staff at the computer shop helpful, the curried vegetables at King’s Cafe were amazing but the stress from almost missing the train home because I miscalculated how long the Spadina street car would take to get to Union Station…gulp…that I could have done without.

So anyway, can you tell when blogger-students have papers due? There’s always a flurry of posts. Instead of writing the assignment, we blog. Or maybe blogging is the warm up? To prove to ourselves that we can still put words together and we may as well write the ones our professors want to read instead of the ones that make our significant others/friends/families wonder if we’re/they’re really going to survive our education.

I hate limbo. I like to have a general idea of where I’m headed, what’s next, where the groceries will come from next week. So I’m getting anxious because I haven’t heard yet if I’ll receive the funding I applied for to finish my master’s. I had planned to do this degree in one year but when all hell broke loose last fall I had to rethink that timeline. Now I’m sitting here, in need of two more courses and a major research project but funding for only one more semester. There are no courses offered in the summer so if I really and truly don’t receive funding I need an alternate plan. I’m considering taking a leave of absence, gearing up, and finishing everything in the fall somehow (umm, just as my daughter begins high school. Sounds like fun). It would be nuts — more work than I’ve probably ever attempted to tackle. School at this level just doesn’t mix with family. Or at least it hasn’t for me yet. Generally I feel like I’m barely keeping up so the thought of adding more school responsibilities on top of what I had these past two semesters really worries me.

The challenge then becomes how to support my family this summer — oh right, while finishing up my incompletes from last fall. Aarrgh… This degree has certainly not worked out like I thought it would. I dream of a simple life where during the day I go to class, go to the library, think about Big Ideas and write with clarity and grace. Nights are filled with deep films and philosophy and sangria. I go to the gym and eat salad with blueberries. On the weekends I code amazing and tidy projects that combine all of my diverse interests so that when school is all over I have a career path to pursue. A few months like that and everything is caught up, my soul is richer than it’s ever been, and the degree is complete. Sweee-eeet.

Of course, maybe a letter will come today saying I’ve got the funding and I can just keep on going as I’d planned. Then there’s no decision to make.

Last night I attended a talk held at the University of Windsor given by Dr. Shahnaz Khan. The topic of the presentation was entitled: Veil Talk: Examining the Many Facets. Dr. Khan is the author of Aversion and Desire; Negotiating Muslim Female Identity in the Diaspora and a professor in Global Studies and Women’s Studies at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

As she was discussing how the veil takes many forms and waiting for some technology to catch up with the presentation she took questions from the audience. A man criticized her for confusing all these Westerners. He said that what she was showing the group were not in fact veils, that there was a difference between veils and head coverings. He told her that He Would Now Teach Her That Difference.

It was an unbelievably arrogant and dismissive comment. Dr. Kahn is an expert in her field. She has written and lectured on this topic for many years. She had just finished describing and showing pictures of some of the many ways women veil and explaining that where a woman lives has much to do with the form the veil takes and that there are many reasons why a woman veils. She showed pictures of hijab, niqab, burka, obaya and chador and as all are used to cover a woman’s body they come under the category of veiling. She discussed the relationship between veiling and class — in the past, veiling beyond a head covering for protection from the sun — worn by both men and women — was practiced by upper class women. Those involved in physical labour were unable to work effectively with their movement restricted. We were much too polite to him. Instead of telling him where to go we rolled our eyes at each other, grimaced, and groaned. The idea of waiting for one person to finish talking before speaking should have been replaced with heckles and boos.

A few minutes later another man criticized her for not taking the talk to a different level — that we need to go beyond the talk she gave. Her response was that his idea is a different talk than the one she gave — an idea for another day. Judging by the number of people in the room who turned up for her presentation I’d say there was an interest in the talk that was presented. Not to say there isn’t more to say — but we have to start somewhere.

The first man tried taking the floor a second time at the end of the presentation but the moderator cut him short with her closing remarks — several times. This man did not want to stop — he was determined to re-educate the group. Dr. Kahn handled it all beautifully. It looked as though she’d dealt with this before.

Some of us were saying that it was really wonderful that these men turned up to tell us how to talk about women’s bodies. Because, you know, how could women do that on their own?

flickr photo by aymanshamma

I want to go to this very very badly. I could even say it’s for school! And for people who like to take pictures/pictures of birds this is the perfect opportunity!

More details here.

Seeing as how Vincent Lam’s book about history and medicine (on my way to pick it up at the library now!) is totally connected to my research project and the event is on Pelee Island, don’t you think I should totally go? Do you think anyone would want to go with me? I know the perfect b&b too and it might not even be full yet…

Next week I have to hand in a comprehensive annotated bibliography for my major research project. I’m finding out there are trickier citations to write than books with editors but no authors, self-published books and websites with hidden authors. Until now these have been the toughest. Now I’m finding I need to cite primary sources including birth and death records and personal interviews. Or at least I’ll be doing this before I’m done.

Here’s what I’ve found so far in case this is useful to anyone or if anyone has any better source that might be helpful to me:

Most of the citation tips are coming from genealogy websites like this one. Here are their examples for Vital Records:

Death Certificate for Jacob F. Rost, 24 September 1924, File No. 28093, Missouri State Board of Health. Certified copy in possession of author.

Certificate of Marriage, Edward H. Wigal to Velma G. King, 12 June 1912, Wood County, West Virginia. County Recorder’s Office, Parkersburg, West Virginia. Copy in possession of Kelly Collier, Arlington, Texas.

From about.com I found these instructions and examples for Birth & Death Certificates:

When citing a birth or death record, record 1) type of record and name(s) of the individual(s), 2) the file or certificate number (or book and page) and 3) name and location of the office in which it is filed (or the repository in which the copy was found - e.g. archives).

1. Certified transcription of birth certificate for Ernest Rene Ollivon, Act no. 7145 (1989), Maison Maire, Crespières, Yvelines, France.

2. Henrietta Crisp, birth certificate [long form] no. 124-83-001153 (1983), North Carolina Division of Health Services - Vital Records Branch, Raleigh.

3. Elmer Koth entry, Gladwin County Deaths, Liber 2: 312, no 96, County Clerk’s Office, Gladwin, Michigan.

From an online index:
4. Ohio Death Certificate Index 1913-1937, The Ohio Historical Society, online , Death certificate entry for Eveline Powell downloaded 12 March 2001.

From a FHL microfilm:
5. Yvonne Lemarie entry, Crespières naissances, mariages, déecs 1893-1899, microfilm no. 2067622 Item 6, frame 58, Family History Library [FHL], Salt Lake City, Utah.

I’m not sure yet which and how many records I’ll end up using in the project. I’m still looking for a style guide that tells me how to cite the archive of vital records without naming a specific record. Maybe something like about.com’s #4 above.

flickr photo by rhonamccallum