Blogging on the Powwow

Everyone said that coming to Washington and being a Congressional fellow would change my life. I have mentioned this many times in my blogging this year. It's true. I have made more professional contacts than I thought possible and when I return to Massachusetts in July, I'll have a new job, with a step-up in rank, at a university that is more closely aligned to my professional goals. But, what I didn't anticipate is that coming to Washington would reinforce my age to me. Don't get me wrong, as I have blogged before, I love finally  being in my 40s , but I have never been in a situation where my age has defined me so much. Let's start with the fall, when I was beginning my fellowship. It was pretty clear to me from the get-go that the vast, vast major of fellows in my program were newly minted PhDs. Most are in their late 20s to early 30s. So, I had a few more years of experience under my belt, which I think has served me quite well here. The professional societ...

I returned to Washington today, rested, reflective, and ready for what comes next in my fellowship. But, logistics dominated my schedule and I was adjusting to being back in my apartment, unpacking, and the like. Just as I love to get to know neighborhoods by running through them, I love to get to know Washington by walking as many places as possible. So, I was off to the grocery store, which is less than a mile from my apartment. As I approached the corner of 5th Street NE and H Street NE, I heard a cacophony of sirens coming from the east. I looked in that direction and witnessed a helmetless man, driving a four-wheeled ATV, at 40-50 mph, who was being chased by four or five police cars, sirens blaring. I blinked. I stared. I laughed. I witnessed the crazed driver where the red star is located.  Of course, driving a four-wheeler in downtown Washington is really no laughing matter. It's a safety concern and apparently the reckless use of ATVs and dirt bikes inside the city a...

It was mid-March in 2006. I was four years out of my PhD program. I had completed a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship, which is a position for new PhDs, but I'd been floating, looking for a job for two years. I had steady employment, health insurance, and a book that was slatted to come out soon, but I had not secured the most coveted job in academia - a tenure-track position. (For those who don't know, this "coveted" job comes with a license to work someone nearly-to-death until s/he applies for tenure, when supposedly things can slow down. Three years post-tenure, I have not found that to be the case, however.) The phone rang in our kitchen in Saco, Maine and the caller ID read: Bridgewater State College. "Bridgewater," I thought to myself, "I think that I applied for a job there." I'd applied for dozens of jobs in the northeast and had only been offered one position, which I had turned down. My degree, in public policy, was not an a...

Technology doesn't come easily to all of us. I feel competent dealing with most of the technology that I encounter, but I certainly don't consider myself an expert. My husband, Neil, however, struggles mightily with technology. We've been working on how to save a file on his computer (not the same computer) since 1995. I think that it got it a couple of years ago. Despite the many challenges that technology presents to him and his tendency to want to be a Luddite, he sits in front of his computer every day - throwing himself into the work that technology presents him, struggling to master what he wishes to accomplish...email, Word documents, web searches, YouTube, photo editing, music notation software and the like. It's rough work, but here's there everyday, mastering technology, which can only be done with the assistance of some curse words and regular threats to throw the computer in the river. Neil was fascinated by smartphones long before he ever had one. We ...

Can you believe it? I wrote this post on Thanksgiving weekend and before I knew it, Christmas was here and over. But, since I wrote it, I'd like to post it, even if it is late...and it's all still true! -------------------------------------- It has taken me a while to get around to writing a blog post about being thankful. I am thankful. Of course, I am thankful, is my most common response. I am thankful for all the things that I should  be thankful. I love and I am loved in return, by humans and my canine. I have a home, and even better, a home that I like and cherish. I am warm. I have a job and an income to cover my basic needs, and then some. I am healthy and no one in my life has a chronic or life-threatening health condition. I can go about my business without interference from law enforcement or government. This is the condensed version. The expanded version addresses the aspects of my life for which I am most thankful weekly, if not, daily. I am most thankful f...

What an odd week - one that started with love, admiration, and glory in Idaho, and that ended with disdain, confusion, and despair in Las Vegas. The true purpose of my travels was to attend/present at the annual conference of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children , which was being held in Las Vegas this year. I took a brief detour and visited a childhood friend and neighbor, Heather , and her family, in Idaho. It has been my sincere pleasure to reconnect with Heather through the wonders of Facebook. It was such a delight to visit Heather and her family. I study child maltreatment and other forms of family violence, so it is very important to remind myself of all of the healthy parent-child relationships that exist in the world. There's no better place for me to start than with Heather and her family. Her children are happy, healthy, thriving, and are supported through life's challenges by their parents, larger family, and community. It's a beautiful thi...

I'm not sure if other people use this phrase, but I definitely use it and I like it. The phrase just like magic  is reserved for events and happenings which yank me away from my present state of mine, which take all of my troubles and cast them aside, and grab me by the collar and hurl me into the present...to observe, enjoy, and breathe easy. Community band; our home when the wind is blowing the leaves on the maple trees over the Powwow; miles of corn crops in Nebraska; an abandoned home in North Dakota, ducks soaring down the Powwow -- these are the experiences that take my breath away and cause me to declare, Wow. It's just like magic. I ask you, is this not magic or what?  

Yes, Plogging on the Bowwow. ( Thanks, Matt, for the great title suggestion.)  What a few weeks it has been! The title of this post says it all. I really cannot complain though. Many of my friends, students, co-workers, and fellow Bay Staters have experienced significant loss and trauma in recent weeks. I've just been working my fanny off - something that is expected by those of us in academia, especially at this time of year. I have just plowed through three very busy weeks of teaching, grading, and a multitude of campus-related responsibilities. Here are my last few weeks in pictures.     My desk on campus...reading articles for class and prepping questions for my students. The topic in this child welfare class was "The Long Arm of Child Maltreatment." After all my worry about what I would do in class, all was well.  I've had to stay over at a hotel near campus a few times recently. Here I am prepping for my Tuesday class at the hotel...around 11:00pm on a...

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, so I might as well just write this post and get it over with. One of my main areas of specialization as an academic/researcher is children who die from maltreatment. I've been thinking that I should write a post about this topic for a while, awful as it is. I spend a lot of my time thinking, reading, writing about, researching, teaching, and presenting on fatal child maltreatment. I know it's not an easy topic. I'm with you. Even I need to take breaks from it from time to time. I hope that you can endure this post. There is so much that both the public and professionals need to know about this issue. I'll just give my readers some basic information and refer you to resources, if my readers are inclined to learn more.  Official statistics tell us that about 2,000 children a year die from maltreatment, but we also understand that this number is under-counted. Despite what is covered in the media, most children die from ...

It started happening when I was 15 or so. About every month or two, where ever  I happened to be, people would mistake me as an employee and ask me questions. Grocery store: "Where can I find the olives?" Department store: "Where can I find children's socks?" Hospital: "Where is the Cardiology Department?" Library: "Where is the book return?" Restaurant: "Where's the bathroom?" At first I think that I was annoyed by this and probably threw some less-than-polite teenage attitude at my fellow shoppers. When I realized this was a common problem, I just started saying, "I'm sorry, but I don't work here." Sometimes people are apologetic. Sometimes people are angry with me for looking like  an employee -- as if I was actively seeking to deceive them. My favorite example of this happened in the Saco Reny's about 7-8 years ago. I was making May Day baskets for all of my neighbors. I was short on time and ...

I really don't like going to the gym, but I go. Almost every day. I dislike it even more when I have a running injury. I greatly resent exercising indoors next to many other people. I feel deprived of sunlight, vitamin D, fresh air, solitude, and keeping up the with going's-on in my town that I usually monitor on daily runs. And, of course, I just feel deprived of running, which can make me slightly miserable. The running injury has gone on so long this time that I have had a chance to "get over myself." Once I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I started to take in the larger scene: dozens of people, sweating it out on machines that run for most of the day, so that we might achieve what nature had in mind for us -- the muscles, heart rate, flexibility, and endurance of a hunter-gatherer.  Now, when I am panting along with everyone else, towering above the stinky masses on one of the two, old stair machines with steps that run on a belt, I see the irony of this...

I think that it all started with the "penny bowls" - you know the ones: "Take a Penny - Leave a Penny." When did that start...20 years ago? I think that I was a teenager, so maybe 25 years. You're at the register and your tab comes to $3.31. You have $3.30 and don't want to break a new bill, so go ahead - take a penny to bring your total to $3.31. And, when you get 1 penny back from handing the cashier a 5 dollar bill for something that came to $4.99, you leave the penny in the little bowl. When this tradition started, I remember liking it, thinking that it was a nice gesture. It somehow seemed supportive - a common recognition that we all need a penny from time to time! Looking back, I'm not so sure that it was about helping your fellow man or woman...I think it was just a sign of the truer coming trend - the limited value of the penny. The more recent trend has surprised me, though. Somewhere in the past few years I was a penny short and there was...