mawage is wot bwings us togethow to-day.

surely anyone reading this knows the source of the title, but just in case... go

okay, but mawage.. marriage - it has been bringing some folks together lately in my world. some of my dearest friends have been tying the knot. In reverse chronological order (drum roll, please)...

Nate and Laura!


The groom has been a good friend of mine since the end of grad school, I guess, and at times has felt like an extra brother. His bride is a beautiful, gentle, wise, warm ... perfect! ... complement for him. They were married in an outdoor ceremony under the sunshine, and the whole day spoke beautifully of their love for each other, their love for Christ, and the love of the Father for His children.




it was really great fun to be at their wedding with the whole gang. (this is not quite the whole gang in the photo, but a goodly portion thereof...)

We were starting to feel a little de ja vu, though, because exactly one week before, we had all been around for (second drum roll, please...)

Matt and Jamie's wedding!!

(but first we must back up to Jamie's bachelorette party...)

The bride is the one between the V and the E... I'm perched up in the L. There were four bridesmaids (2 sisters and 2 friends), and the 2 friends got to plan the party.
We went out for Thai food with two other girlfriends and then for bubble tea. The tiny tapioca balls in the bottom are perfect for...
TARGET PRACTICE! we had lots of fun with this (i have to give credit to the other bridesmaid, miss Joy, (who also took these photos), for the pea-shooter idea. actually, the bride herself had been known to take aim when bored with her bubble tea, so it seemed an appropriate activity for her last night out with the girls. (c; that's me standing in the background, evaluating the shots. We live in a college-y part of town, and so after getting the tea right next to the university, we wandered on to campus to find a spot where we could play bachelorette's bull's-eye.
so after the party came the PARTY - the wedding! and the more i think about that, the more it deserves its own post. and there's another wedding after that...

Oh, Mr. Burns, I do apologize...

(pardon the caps lock... it just seemed to fit the mood at the outset of the post...)


i’VE BEEN INVOLVED, FOR THE LAST TWO HOURS, IN A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MY COMPUTER SCREEN. ACTUALLY, I’M RELOCATING THE LOVE/HATE FEELINGS THAT ARE ACTUALLY DIRECTED TOWARD THE PAPER I AM TRYING TO WRITE THAT SIMPLY ISN’T SHOWING UP ON MY COMPUTER SCREEN. BECAUSE I’M NOT ACTUALLY WRITING IT. THE WORDS ARE NOT COMING OUT OF MY FINGERS. BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT IN MY HEAD.

WHY ARE THE WORDS NOT IN MY HEAD??

I’VE BEEN WORKING ON A CONFERENCE FOR WORK, AND I LOVE GETTING THE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH LOCAL INSTITUTIONS, GATHERING SPEAKERS, FIGURING OUT LOGISTICS, ETC. ALONG WITH ALL THAT, MY BOSSES GRACIOUSLY INVITED ME TO PRESENT A PAPER. ME. PRESENT. A SCHOLARLY PIECE OF RESEARCH TO ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES WHO HAVE BEEN STUDYING THIS MATERIAL FOR MORE YEARS THAN MY LAST BIRTHDAY CAKE HAD CANDLES. HECK, SOME OF THEM HAVE WRITTEN MORE PAPERS THAN THE AFOREMENTIONED NUMBER OF CANDLES.

AND YET HERE I SIT, TRYING TO COME UP WITH A PAPER THAT WILL SEEM NEW, EXCITING, INNOVATIVE – AT THIS POINT, I’LL SETTLE FOR ANYTHING VAGUELY COMPETENT – TO MY FIRST REAL ACADEMIC AUDIENCE. I’VE PRESENTED A PAPER BEFORE, BUT IT WAS TO A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE – PEOPLE ARE KIND. THE EVENT WAS EVEN CALLED “EMERGING SCHOLARS SYMPOSIUM.” E-M-E-R-G-I-N-G. BY NOW, IT’S EXPECTED THAT ONE HAS FULLY EMERGED. I’M NOT ANY TOO SURE THAT I HAVE!!

I THINK IT WILL ALL COME TOGETHER, AND I THINK I WON’T LOOK HORRIBLE, AND I THINK I WILL NOT BRING SHAME TO MY FIRM. BUT HERE’S THE THING: I DON’T WANT TO SQUEAK BY, BARELY ESCAPING THE SHAME-CAUSING. I WANT TO DO THIS VERY WELL. I WANT TO LEAVE MEDIOCRITY IN MY DUST. I DON’T NEED TO BE THE HIT OF THE CONFERENCE – I DO HAVE A SHRED OF REALISM LEFT – BUT I WANT TO MAKE A GOOD, SOLID DEBUT – LIKE CATCHING THE BRONZE MEDAL AT THE OLYMPICS WHEN I’VE ONLY JUST QUALIFIED FOR THE NATIONAL TEAM. I WANT TO WRITE A PAPER THAT IS A SLEEPER HIT – LIKE ONE OF THOSE LITTLE, LOW-BUDGET INDIE FILMS THAT SUDDENLY COMES INTO THE TOP FIVE AT THE BOX OFFICE ONE WEEKEND AROUND THE FOURTH OF JULY AND MAKES EVERYONE SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE.

BUT TONIGHT I DO NOT HAVE A SLEEPER HIT. I DO NOT EVEN HAVE COMPETENCE. I HAVE MICE.






YES, MICE – PLURAL. I HAVE SEEN THREE TONIGHT IN MY APARTMENT. There is one stuck on the trap under the tv stand, one very small one that’s been running around under the dining table, and one that’s been running around (ick) in the kitchen. We currently have eight traps set and one box of poison laid out. In the last eight months, we have caught six mice – seven, if you count the little one that bit the dust tonight.

In the small apartment that my roommate and i share, the living room (which is also the dining room) is directly adjacent to the kitchen; in fact, from where i lounge right now on the loveseat, i have a direct line of sight to the pantry shelves (we have just enough cupboard space to keep the eating and baking dishes; the dry goods sit on two snazzy wire shelving units from Ikea (think Metro Shelves at Scandinavian DIY prices). I have, then, had a front-row seat for all the mousie action tonight.

All of the mousie action that has taken place, I should emphasize, while I’ve been trying to write a more-than-mediocre-emphatically-competent-sleeper-hit-of-the-summer presentation. Now I ask you, how can inspiration strike in the presence of so much rodentia?

I keep thinking of the poem by dear Robbie Burns…with apologies to the dear Scottish bard, I offer a counterpoint to selected stanzas of his
“To A Mouse..." (the link also translates the Scottish words)
(please do read the real thing - the following notwithstanding, it truly is one of my favorite poems).

“Wee sleekit cowrin’ tim’rous beastie
O, what a panic’s in tha breastie!
[ha! Mr. Burns, may I introduce to you the fearless Philly mouse? neither d-con, nor snap traps, nor glue traps galore can keep these urban rodents from their appointed rounds of my apartment. No panic evident here].
tha need na start awa sa hasty
w’ bickerin brattle!
I wid be laith to rin an chase thee
w’ murd’rous pattle!
[but i’m not a bit laith to let my traps catch you as you run past! nor am i above bringing in a cat…]

i doubt na’ whiles, but thou may thieve.
what then, poor beastie, thou maun live!
[no, no, no – they maun not live, robbie! they maun not!!]
a daimen-icker in a thrave’s a sma request
[but it’s my daimen-icker! and i don’t like you chewing through the box to get to it, mousie!]
i’ll get a blessin’ with the lave, and ne’er miss’t.
[oh, but i will…]

thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin
[good!!]
it’s crazy, wha’s the winds are strewin.’
[the high temperature today was 85 degrees. OUTSIDE. and yet, the mice want to live in a non-air-conditioned city apartment. That’s what’s crazy!]
An’ naethin’ left to big a new ane
of foggage green
[or whatever you want from my pantry, mr. mouse, take your pick! it’s how you do…]
An bleak December's winds ensuin'
baith snell and keen.

[…stanzas excerpted…]

but mousie, thou’rt no thy lane
in proving foresight may be vain
[Me, yesterday: Thursday night is my paper-writing night!”]
the best-laid plans of mice and men
gang aft a-gley
[Me, tonight: Grrrrr, mouse. Grrrr, paper].
an lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
for promised joy.

Still, thou’rt blessed compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee.
[Until thee toucheth a trap, wee mousie]
But och! I backward cast my eye
at prospects drear.
[the ghosts of papers past]
An’ forward, though I canna see
[the ghosts of future presentations]
I guess and fear.
[Unoriginal scholarship, PowerPoint errata, A/V snafu…and... more mice.]

PS: as i was finishing this post, caught another one. gah. it's on, mr. mouse. i know you've got friends. it's on.

The Symphony Comes to West Philly; or, The Grand Sociological Experiment

Soooo... the Philadelphia Orchestra played the bowl at Clark Park last weekend. Throughout the summer, local bigwig corporations sponsor these free neighborhood concerts, which never fail to bring out hordes of neighbors with old blankets, lawnchairs, and pic-a-nic baskets. My neighborhood is no different... but it is so very unique.

before the grand event, i trotted over to my friends ben, ben (yes, two different bens), and meagan's to make goodies for the picnic. we had standard sandwiches, but also veggie/feta pitas and trader joe's finest... dark chocolate covered raisins (soooooo tasty!). with an old table cloth and a worn bedsheet, we made our 10-minute way to the park. g o r g e o u s weather out... couldn't have asked for better.

we got there, set up camp on a slope (Clark Park features a large, natural bowl, perfect for outdoor performances of many sorts. i think it used to be a pond, way back when). then things got interesting....

we quickly noticed we were in a pack of smokers. not a biggie, but a l,ittle unusual in the nearly smoke-free city that philly is becoming. then we realized that the guy behind us was burning incense. and we wondered what sort of scent this might be intended to cover. hmmm...

looking around, of course, we counted not a few folks devouring harry's latest adventures while the band played on (who can blame them?? i'll be joining their ranks soon - am forcing myself through book 6 again before indulging). there was a band of punk/anarchists who started heckling the bank sponsor representative as soon as he was introduced. poor fella - i'm not a fan of big corporate America, either, but they were actually doing a good thing by sponsoring accessibility to the arts. lots and lots of dogs wandered through (when there's not an orchestra playing, that particular part of the park is the dog run - careful where you sit.) but i gotta attempt to describe more of the human demographic, though, as that was the truly interesting bit...

it was a beautiful cross-section of the folks who inhabit our neck of the woods. i've already mentioned the anarchists... they're commonly identified visually by black-based clothing, multiple (and creative) tattoos, and patch-covered bike messenger bags, often in black-and-some-other-color designs. there were the neo-hippies... girls wearing funky european shoes and loose sundresses, funky plastic-rimmed glasses and slightly-askew hairstyles, guys who wear skinny thrift-store jean cutoffs and chuck taylors with a faded plaid button-down. there are original hippies, too -- see above for incense guy. there are international families, often living in philly for a few years while one or both spouses complete doctoral degrees at the university of pennsylvania. some of these families are Muslim, and the women are covered to varying degrees with either vibrantly colored hijab and abaya or solid black versions of both. then there are young families, where one or both spouses graduated drexel engineering programs or wharton business school and just never left the area. they push hip strollers and feed their kids organic baby carrots while they drink a nice bottle of red wine with their stone-ground wheat crackers and sheep's milk manchego.

then there's the random assortment of single college graduates, most of whom have banded together in pairs or trios to occupy the rental properties that fill the area... most of us are transitioning from college student to husband/wife/father/mother - or, at least, we hope we are. we look a like a little bit of everyone above. my crowd was eating the food of the yuppies, dressing a little like the hippies, and scrapping together picnic supplies as though we had just arrived in the city. it was marvelous.

simple pleasures

Tonight i went out for food. i was spending an evening alone and have been putting off grocery shopping (so no food to speak of in the house) and was craving a burrito... so off i went to qdoba (mmm...). parked the car (wasn't feeling well so didn't walk) and walked the half-block to get my dinner.

but!

on the way, i turned into the open, well-lit doorway of a shop stacked STACKED with books. i never even noticed it before, to my shame, but i have in my neighborhood one of those really wonderful used-book-stores that is well-organized and yet nearly-overstuffed with previously owned, reasonably priced BOOKS. this is a treasure - i had just been bemoaning the combined facts that a) i'm running out of books to read on my own shelf; b) new books are prohibitively expensive to buy on a regular basis; and c) my wallet is unfortunately thin. then, eureka! used books in every possible category for which one could hope.

and...

there's a lovely black cat with a white face-blaze and three white feet who will rub against your legs while you walk through the "true crime" section and will happily purr while you rub his chin. i'm not sure why he showed up in the 'true crime' section and i wondered, as i enjoyed his attention, what sort of odd cat-loving-conspiracy-theorist-type i might seem to be if anyone walked past to see me crouched over a big, purring cat in front of the true-and-unvarnished stories of murder-in-a-small-town-or-some-such .... but aside from that, heaven!

i'm very pleased with this new discovery. it was one of those things that is remarkably soothing on a night that, for no particular reason, was not outstandingly ... well, outstanding. thank you, God, for simple pleasures, and in my own part of the world, too!

and how

[i know i'm not a great blogger - i post when the mood strikes. in an effort, though, to post more regularly, i've been thinking about post topics... as i rode the train/trolley/bus yesterday, i was staring out the window and thinking about posts, and was distracted by everything i saw. this will be a little repetitive, i think from the themes of other posts, but this is what's on my mind, so here y'go...]

when i walk around, i keep looking around. i look around the city and i see broken systems - people who are angry - and i would be angry, too. the society in which we (me and them) live has given me more opportunity from birth than it has given them. i am white and middle-class. i see people in my neighborhood who have been born into single-parent families in a poverty-stricken, violence-ridden urban community. and their skin color, as much as i want to deny it blindly, has made it harder for them to find the same opportunities that i have found.

i have struggled, since leaving iowa, to reconcile my cultural majority status with the difficulties facing cultural minorities that i encounter here. i feel guilty about it, to be honest. it's almost like a survivor's guilt: why did i get to go to the good public school, to win the scholarship, to earn the degree, to land the fellowship, to get the job that pays me enough to support myself? that was an apparent accident of birth: God's sovereign choice that i can't understand. there are kids who ride my bus every morning who hop off at the corner for a school with more than 50% dropout rate. more than once, the police have been called to that high school this year to put out trash can fires and/or arrest disruptive students (for assault). teachers are beat up and burned out, and these kids are trapped in a system that can't help them.

out my living room window, there's a brick apartment building. most of the tenants are young men from west africa - immigrants from countries whose peace has been torn, top to bottom, like the sackcloth garments of those who mourn. why has that happened in their towns and not in mine? why have i not had to leave my home, my family?

it's springtime now, in philadelphia - evenings are warm, and the ice cream truck has started its usual circuit. is the ice cream truck in your neighborhood still circling at eleven at night? in mine, it is. you think they're still selling bomb-pops to eleven-year-olds? really? how have i been protected from things that hold so many in the vise-grip of addiction?

i am an adult white female, supporting myself through my own work, living comfortably in my own apartment, driving my own car. my family is safe and healthy; i don't worry for the lives of my friends. i am indescribably blessed! but how, how, do i reconcile these blessings in my life with the brokenness all around me?

'b[urban]

i was walking home today, through my urban neighborhood of tightly-packed twins and rowhouses, and found a bona-fide garden - in a bona-fide backyard! the large house that fronted it must have been a hold-over from when my part of the city was a brand-new, upper-upper middle class streetcar suburb to center city philly - but there it was: a backyard. with flowers, even!

last weekend, my roommate and i went to a friend's house for dinner (two midwestern fellas had offered to cook us, natives of illinois and iowa, pulled-pork sandwiches with sweet corn on the side - true taste of home!). our host lives in the 'burbs, and as we got out of the car in front of the house, we both slowly turned around and tried to absorb what we were seeing - and hearing! birds were singing in trees that stood in yards that separated free-standing houses with driveways and garages which meant that there was no loud SEPTA bus declaring "welcome to [pause] route xx [pause] service to [pause] xxx" every ten minutes outside the bedroom window.

we had forgotten about the suburbs! i doubt either of us would trade our cosy little third-floor walkup tucked in the middle of philly for a roomy colonial outside the city, SEPTA bus notwithstanding, but it was like being on vacation for an evening - quite novel!

i grew up in a neighborhood like my friend's, but now is the time to live in an urban neighborhood - to see people who look very different from me on every street i cross. now is my chance to buy fruit from the back of the truck permanently parked two blocks away; to get my cheesesteak from another truck parked by the train station. when else will i get to walk to a trolleystop for my daily commute, or hop off three stops early to pick up fresh veg at the farmer's market in the neighborhood park? and how else would i get to learn about things in the city that could be better - systems that need fixing - and to think about how to help fix them? yah, this is the time for me to be in the city. the suburbs will always be open for visiting hours, but home is still here.

better stories

i am itching.. my mother calls it the "three year itch" - i've been in one city, at one job, for nearly three years. is it time to ditch the stability i so craved four and five years ago??

am i crazy?

i don't know. there are bits of me that are ready to see what's next this year, and then there are parts of me that sense that God may be planning to keep me where i am for a little while... which makes me wonder: why am itching?

is it because i'm being stirred by His Spirit to follow Him elsewhere? or is it because i'm growing discontent with the stories i can tell... am i fidgety to flit to the next thing, whatever it may be, just to gather better stories to spin at dinner parties? because that's just not a good enough reason.

i've been reading in John's gospel lately, and a recurring theme could be labeled "things that Jesus does that i just don't understand." example: judas complains when Jesus is anointed with perfume before His death, because he (judas) wanted the money for said perfume to go to the common money bag (en route to judas' own pocket). surely Jesus knew that judas had been stealing money like this - but it doesn't say that He did anything to stop the crime.

surely Christ knows about the suffering i just read about online - how appalling numbers of children in India have been abused by trusted adults (thank you BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6539027.stm). and surely He knows how horrible genocides happen. how water runs out in Yemen (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6530453.stm). how the guy in my neighborhood was pushing that girl around on the sidewalk last week. He, our omnipotent God, knows about these things... my heart cries out with the psalmist who begged God to see and to act, knowing that He is never unaware, never less than sovereign (Psalm 10)! in my limited understanding, i can't bear the juxtaposition of injustice in this world and a just God in heaven. but this last week, as His church celebrated His Son's crucifixion and resurrection (for our salvation!), i was reminded of how His glorious, beautiful plans make little sense to my finite, earth-bound eyes. surely i would have been right there with the disciples, questioning everything Jesus did, exhibiting little-to-no faith that God's plan was being carried out in His way and His time. i would've been with Peter, who tried to stop Jesus from washing his feet, only to hear Jesus say, " 'You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.'" (John 13:7). (i love that.)

seeing a piece of His plan for salvation, i gotta trust, for all things big and small, that He has plans bigger than i can see or imagine - designs that transcend my understanding - big plans for justice for the oppressed, for mercy for the suffering, and small plans for my life tomorrow, and the day after that. i chafe at the not-knowing, but by Christ's grace and intercession, i want to come to the Father and ask Him to raise my earth-bound eyes to faith for heaven's plan. He promises in James 1:5 to give wisdom to those who ask for it, and I want His wisdom -- because His stories are the best stories, and the ones i want to learn to tell.