"Can I Get an Update?"

Wow...

You know you're a weblog slacker when your sister--with whom you haven't had a real conversation in weeks--leaves you this one-line comment that gets forwarded to your email. I had no idea you were living so vicariously, girl...vicariously...

Anyway, a lot has been going on in Tanya land. I'll have to figure out a way to post all the snapshots I've been taking at Clark parties, on weekends in Boston, and of the irate geese who crap incessantly on the sidewalk near the pond in front of my apartment. I've been pretty much swamped with reading, writing papers, and grading undergraduate assignments. I've pulled three all-nighters since the end of September and my God has it caught up with me.

I took a little break last weekend and went into Boston to hang out with my friend Preeti (who has sold her soul to an investment bank--we like to tease her). She has a gorgeous apartment in Somerville, a cute little city within Boston. She cooked for me, made chai, and chatted with me as I dozed intermittently on her comfy green couch. We went to see Paul Farmer speak at Harvard on Saturday. He's a brilliant M.D./anthropologist who runs a social justice health organization--www.pih.org. The venue, which housed over 1100 people, was packed and there was a line around the block of people without tickets trying to get in. Several hundred were turned away. It was like a Rolling Stones concert or something. Good old Harvard...

We went to see an all-Indian play called "Bend it Like Auntie" that featured several of Preeti's area desi friends. We went to an Indian party that night, but weren't feeling the "bhangra in a five square foot space" scene and left early.

Life back in Worcester has been fairly insane as we enter the midterm phase. I'm working on papers in all three classes and trying to calm down hyperventilating first-year undergrads (omigod when's the exam? is it going to be multiple choice? can we have a study group? can you do the reading and summarize it for me?). I've been learning a lot about the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico during the course of teaching this class. We showed a moving video about it in class last Friday which literally moved me to tears. I was COMPLETELY embarrased when one of the students caught me sniffling into the sleeve of my Clark sweatshirt. Somebody call the Waaaaahmbulance...

Actually, that was the first in a series of tearful moments I've had in public lately. I tried to casually dry my eyes in class Monday after Professor Enloe read us this quote from Abigail Adams, wife of American history guy John Adams, which has been cited terribly out of context as simply "remember the ladies." She told us that the city of Boston is FINALLY including Abigail Adams in the ranks of the statues that mark famous Bostonians (all have been men until this year). Here's the quote from a letter she wrote him in 1776, just before he went to the Constitutional convention:

"I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

Foment a rebellion? You go girl *sniffle*...you go...

Pictures soon,


TKP