Ah, Fame

The best part about making your pledge to public radio is hearing your name on the radio. Now I can listen to Morning Edition guilt free for a year.

Sorting Out the Truth

I'm definitely in the camp of lazy voter. Don't get me wrong, I do vote. I registered to vote in Massachusetts when I got my driver's license and I made sure I remembered to cast my ballot for the Democratic primaries in September (an odd system is in place here, which I don't completely understand: the primary for the governor's election, which occurs very soon [I don't want to say when because I'm pretty sure that if I don't remind Adam--a Republican--to vote, he may forget thereby meaning that for once my vote would count instead of merely canceling out his vote], happened in September, giving the politicians just under two months to campaign. I'm not sure why the Republican candidate had already been selected). What I mean by a lazy voter is in Seattle, I waited until I received my Voter's Guide to the Candidates, read through it, and made my choices. If in doubt, I called my friend Barb, whose political leanings are quite similar to mine, and ask what she thought. If when I got into the booth, I wasn't sure, I either voted Democrat or just skipped that one if I couldn't tell. For the primaries here, I took a "blind test" on the WGBH, which asked my opinion on a bunch of political issues and then told me which candidates held the same views I did. I was in line with two candidates (Shannon O'Brien and Robert Reich), so I did what I always do when in a real political conundrum: I called the Tweedle Twirp (and for those not in the know, Tweeds is currently working toward her Ph.D. in political science), who gave me the wise wisdom of if two candidates are truly equal and you feel they'd both do a good job, vote for the woman. Sage advice.

But now we have the elections coming up, and while my choice for governor has been made, there are other issues that I'm not so clear on. For instance, there's a referendum on mandating immersion English for ESL students (nothing but English in the schools--if school workers continually use another language with students, parents can sue them) instead of creating bilingual classes. I heard the pros on the case, and they seemed reasonable. When the law was instituted in California, ESL students scores on the standardized test went up significantly. Wow, solid case. But then you hear the other side, which points out that the test is brand new. Yes, ESL student test scores went up. But the test was brand new when they first noted scores and over a couple of years all students tested went up, and the non-ESL students had their scores go up by almost twice what the ESL student scores went up. So the immersion program doesn't work. Or does it?

But They're Not CWITs

I think I've figured out what's been bothering me this whole time. I've met a number of CWITs who definitely fall under the stereotype of the CWITs. But I've met a number of partners whom I really like: they're smart, they're working, they're fun and friendly. One's a chemical engineer, one's a nuclear engineer, one's an M.D. And then it hit me. My whole problem--not just with the CWITs, but with Boston as a whole--this place is conservative! And I don't mean politically. This is a "proper" place, and truly, I'm not a proper gal. A woman at my office was telling a story about a bad date and she mentioned that he made a crude remark. After much cajoling, she finally said, "Well, I can give the initials. He made a reference to a b.j." Can you imagine any of the KAG back home not tossing "blow job" out as if they were talking about their new shoes or why their manager sucks (which is probably when the phrase "blow job" would come up)? Then, last night on Friends, there was a story line that had to do with porn and masturbation, but nothing that couldn't be said on network TV. One woman said, "Can you believe that that kind of stuff is on at 7 p.m. in parts of the country" and another concurred, "That's why my kids aren't going to watch TV when I have them." Now, this is not a critique on these women, who are absolutely in their right on this. It's just a comment on the cultural disconnect I feel out here. I've been trying to monitor myself. Now, I don't have a particularly foul mouth (my mother gets credit for the most f-bombs in a single sentence at any given time), but plenty of "hell"s and "oh my god"s have slipped from my mouth. And if I get particularly going on a subject, a few other words might slip. But I've become a "heck" and "oh my gosh" person, because it's so easy to offend people here.

I'm thinking back to my own grad school days, at the University of Washington. There were no married couples. No talk of people wanting bigger rings (truly someone said that when her husband graduated, she wanted a bigger ring from her husband, not that the one she has is small--no one I'm hanging out with, though). No talk of trips abroad or formals. We sat around in divey bars drinking beer and dishing, sometimes about literature and writing and sometimes just about life. And the cursing? It was rampant. And it was good.