I am continuing to work on Middle Ground without being funded. This does not bother me because my current work load with regards to Middle Ground is so light. I do feel, however, that I am not able to do as much as I would like because of my lack of funding. For example, I cannot properly travel unil I find out how to get compensation.
I feel I am forever stuck in the land of the brainstorm. Great things I would like to start doing that I can't because of logistics.
What have I brainstormed this week.
1. Disregarding my feeling towards feminism, I am taking an introduction to woman writers course. Exciting news! There is a whole section of the course devoted to Native American woman writers. Selections for the course include works by Joy Harjo, Paula Gunn Allen, and Linda Hogan. Very, very easy research. This also reminded me: I need to come up with a very specific reading list for the semester. Look for that in the next week.
2. The first essay we are reading is by Virginia Woolf. I haven't read her since I was 15 or 16 and am interested in seeing how my own identity as a "woman writer" has changed. Who am I now? At 15, or was it 16, I felt like V.W. failed somewhat in her asserations, although I cannot presently remember just what those assertions were.
I learned today that VW held her own salons as a young woman in London. Bohemians talking loosely about everyone. I would like to have my a couple of my own salons to use as a research method. I would invite various mixtures of poeple over, provide eats and then let them cut loose on some of the topics I hope to address with this project.
In other news, I am more tired then tired. I go and go, I am a as fuel as efficent as a Yaris. My biggest fear is that I am losing myself under my work load. Who will I be come December? Where is my courage, my heart, and my brain? I am straw, I am metal, I am fur. I really cling to any taste of my former lackidasical self. I find myself in moments of eating sushi, in a kiss on my stomach from a boyfriend, or a good scarf. I find myself in my laughter. The kind that doesn't come from my increasingly forced jokes.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Dust
Going back to the source.
Having trapezed across campus for over a month now trying to get my grant funding figured out, I may actually have a solution.
Basically, I went to NAU Human Relations last week. Here's what they told me: We can't help you. Contact the financial aid office.
Who, as I expected, had never heard of the HURA award.
In addition, HR told me that they could not confirm my present NAU employment without first having contact with the Lumberjack. I then started out to fill out a New Hire application, my fourth, if memory serves.
Luckily, and I write this in the Lumberjack office, I should be able to get the my ambiguity as an employee squared away by Monday evening at the LJ's first ED Board meeting.
I will also probably finish filling out that new hire information.
*
Life feels a bit like camping with my father.
When I was young we would head out after dark. After we had eaten "pocket stews", potatoes, groundbeef, and bell peppers baking over a campfire in tinfoil.
We would head out on foot or in my father's Toyota Forerunner, which exists in my mind, a far off white beacon at the end of our many hikes.
If we head by foot, my father would often stop and attempt to call in owls.
But right now I feel more like those excursions. in the Forerunner. My father would take his spotlight and shine its yellow light out the window of the car and we would the dust swirl in front of us as we drove, very slowly, hoping for an animal that might dart out in front of us.
I feel like that. All night and wind, and one spotlight, a glaring metaphor, shining through the kicked up dust and sand.
Having trapezed across campus for over a month now trying to get my grant funding figured out, I may actually have a solution.
Basically, I went to NAU Human Relations last week. Here's what they told me: We can't help you. Contact the financial aid office.
Who, as I expected, had never heard of the HURA award.
In addition, HR told me that they could not confirm my present NAU employment without first having contact with the Lumberjack. I then started out to fill out a New Hire application, my fourth, if memory serves.
Luckily, and I write this in the Lumberjack office, I should be able to get the my ambiguity as an employee squared away by Monday evening at the LJ's first ED Board meeting.
I will also probably finish filling out that new hire information.
*
Life feels a bit like camping with my father.
When I was young we would head out after dark. After we had eaten "pocket stews", potatoes, groundbeef, and bell peppers baking over a campfire in tinfoil.
We would head out on foot or in my father's Toyota Forerunner, which exists in my mind, a far off white beacon at the end of our many hikes.
If we head by foot, my father would often stop and attempt to call in owls.
But right now I feel more like those excursions. in the Forerunner. My father would take his spotlight and shine its yellow light out the window of the car and we would the dust swirl in front of us as we drove, very slowly, hoping for an animal that might dart out in front of us.
I feel like that. All night and wind, and one spotlight, a glaring metaphor, shining through the kicked up dust and sand.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Braincloud
The clouds part, and behold! A Blog post.
Seems like "middle-ground" is no ground, or at least, no where to be found.
What haev I been working on, exactly? Alot of brainstorming. My brain is a storm.
1.After what seemed to be a miraculous, Lazarus like healing by my Laptop, the thing broke again last Sunday. It appears to be the 8 month problem of a bum charger cord. I am getting a new one as soon as I get paid Friday. Blog will bemore frequent. As many as three times a week, or with multiple posting in one day.
2. I will head down to Kayenta, (Or elsewhere on the Rez) every second thursday of the month. I will spend Fridays in the schools. See what I will be doing below.
3. I started to think about the student assemblies my elementary eduacation was pepper with. I have theorized that I could probably get permission to have such an assembly. Even, possibly on in the S.A.C. center, but more likely, I will present in teacher's classrooms. I know quite a few teachers who probably wouldn't mind if I took twenty minutes out of their class time in order to present my project. And what will I say? I don't neccesarilly want to talk at kids, I want to talk with them. If I aim to truly capture a portrait of you native culture, while at the same time examining my own culture, I need to talk with these kids. I want to hear about the music they like, where they shop, what they think of their grandparents, and what they eat for breakfast.
4. Playing off the idea of above, I have started to think aboiut interviewing groups of three or four at a time. Interaction.
5. If iam interviewing minors, if I am asking to interview minors I will most likely need to get permission slips. I could e-mail copies to the teachers whose classrooms I might be presenting to before hand and they could get them filled up and I could interview people at lunch.
6/. I need to e-mail the entire school district.
Seems like "middle-ground" is no ground, or at least, no where to be found.
What haev I been working on, exactly? Alot of brainstorming. My brain is a storm.
1.After what seemed to be a miraculous, Lazarus like healing by my Laptop, the thing broke again last Sunday. It appears to be the 8 month problem of a bum charger cord. I am getting a new one as soon as I get paid Friday. Blog will bemore frequent. As many as three times a week, or with multiple posting in one day.
2. I will head down to Kayenta, (Or elsewhere on the Rez) every second thursday of the month. I will spend Fridays in the schools. See what I will be doing below.
3. I started to think about the student assemblies my elementary eduacation was pepper with. I have theorized that I could probably get permission to have such an assembly. Even, possibly on in the S.A.C. center, but more likely, I will present in teacher's classrooms. I know quite a few teachers who probably wouldn't mind if I took twenty minutes out of their class time in order to present my project. And what will I say? I don't neccesarilly want to talk at kids, I want to talk with them. If I aim to truly capture a portrait of you native culture, while at the same time examining my own culture, I need to talk with these kids. I want to hear about the music they like, where they shop, what they think of their grandparents, and what they eat for breakfast.
4. Playing off the idea of above, I have started to think aboiut interviewing groups of three or four at a time. Interaction.
5. If iam interviewing minors, if I am asking to interview minors I will most likely need to get permission slips. I could e-mail copies to the teachers whose classrooms I might be presenting to before hand and they could get them filled up and I could interview people at lunch.
6/. I need to e-mail the entire school district.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
update
Three posting for this blog is shameful. And I am unhappy that my internet is still not up and running...
My equipment came in though, which is good.
My equipment came in though, which is good.
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