Greetings from SNOWMAGGEDON 2010

I didn't own boots for my first three winters in NH. It was only last year I finally bought a pair... and now I don't know how I managed for so long!

Though I'm from the Northeast, I'm always amused at how much people freak out over snow up here. The joke is that we're always prepared for snow (unlike the rest of the US), but in reality a lot of New England freaks out and overreacts to snowfall every year. Like, really, it's going to be okay, everyone.

Valentine's Day: A Haiku

I can care less what you think (all
the single ladies, oh oh oh) - you
shoulda put a ring on it!

To all the single ladies:
if you liked it, then you shoulda put a
ring on it (put your hands up!)

The weekend of many concerts parades on

Tonight, along with every lesbian in the tri-state area, I'm seeing Tegan & Sara in Boston. Oh God.

RE: Thesising

Today I start writing my senior thesis. Sitting next to me is my thesis proposal and a cup of coffee. Time to start working! I took my first personal day of my collegiate career on Tuesday in preparation for this.

I kind of feel like I'm faking it. Like, how did I get here? How is this actually happening now?

The future freaks me out, a lot.

I wish there was a website to collect things that happen which simply don't make sense

For example: days like today, when you encounter a full steel drum band playing "Under The Sea" in the student union in the middle of February while it snows quietly outside.

caught in a bad romance!

I recieve approximately eight emails a day. For the past two weeks, approximately a third of these have been from various departments on campus trying to get me to register for an event.

I do things WITH the Women's & Queer Studies department but not am not actively IN it; as a Race/Culture/Power minor I am actually part of the "UNH Center For The Humanities". (Perhaps you should consider consolidating!) Though I take a lot of classes with the Women's Studies department, not-so-secretly wish I could triple-major in Women's Studies, and know a lot of the people involved with Women's studies, I AM NOT IN YOUR DEPARTMENT. Nice try.

I bring this up because today is the last day to apply for the MLK Leadership Summit, which is essentially a weekend of Social Justice, Activism and Our Campus. Because I just can't get enough when it comes to applications, I was planning to apply anyway.

I got an e-mail from the Women's Studies department recently which was titled "Looking for GLBTQAI+ students to attend the MLK student leadership summit" and reads "NO queer-identified students had applied to attend the summit. It would be a shame to not have GLBTQAI+ voices in this summit related to justice for all groups on campus, so please consider going!". Presumably everyone who was on this email, all 11 of us instead of the usual large-scale departmental email, is LGBTQ+/-/Square Root of 7, Divided by 3, etc identified.

Okay... I know that because I'm gay I am qualified to attend. But really? Do you have to single us out because of our identity and then demand that we apply because of this? I've been talking to a bunch of people about how LGBTQ issues are less of an issue on this campus than it has been in the past. Even if they are still relevant issues, it's not on the forefront of everyone's agenda.

Maybe I don't see the point here, but I'm kind of discouraged by the fact an entire department seemingly devoted to equal treatment as a human being - rather than a figure of something arbitrarily based on any number of other factors - diminished me to my sexuality in hopes of getting me to participate in something. And maybe I'm just grumpy and bitter about having to read the same email, worded a little bit differently each time for two weeks in a row. But I like to think I'm more interesting and doing more than just being A Gay Student On This Campus.

I didn't like orange juice until very recently.

But now I couldn't be more thrilled that I can buy it in superfluous blendings by the handle.


(gratuitous picture of you monday)

I felt so inspired by what my teacher said, said I'd either be dead or be a reefer head

FUN FACT: Martin Luther King Jr Day was not celebrated in New Hampshire until 1999. Prior to that, New Hampshire celebrated "Civil Rights Day". NH is the last state in the union to have a holiday celebrating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a result of going to a large public university, my campus has Diversity Initiatives and Diversity Events and they are sponsored largely by offices with titles like "Affirmative Action and Equity Office", "Center for the Humanities", "The College of Liberal Arts", "Diversity Initiatives Office", "President's Commission on the Status of Women" "President's Commission on the Status of People of Color" "Office of Multicultural Student Affairs", etc. As a result of going to a large public university in NEW HAMPSHIRE, the number of students who fall under the category of NOT-white is supremely low. Conveniently, the UNH community celebrates Martin Luther King Jr in the first week of February, as part of Black History Month.

A major pet peeve of mine is when people complain about how undiverse my campus is. Sorry, but you chose to go here -- I'm fairly certain you knew what you were signing up for when you agreed to attend UNH. Yes, I realize that not everyone has their choice of (undergraduate)programs and colleges, etc. But really, if you wanted a bit more diversity, then the University of New Hampshire is not the place to be.

That said: I attend as many of the Diversity Events that I can. Diversity Events are fun and enriching and overwhelmingly positive experiences. (And, I'm willing to bet, the largest contact most of my classmates might get with People Who Are Not Like Them. I would now like to direct you to Stuff White People Like #7, Diversity, in regards to this paragraph as a whole).

Last year Angela Davis came to campus; this year Nikki Giovanni was our speaker. Apparently this was the 20th Anniversary of the MLK Celebration week. All I can say is that I hope that in the next 20 years people will get to see Jay-Z, Beyonce and Kanye West, our modern-day Black poets and activists.

meta-research

I just stumbled upon AN ARTICLE ABOUT MY RESEARCH.

To quote:
"[Laurie Bauer] with two other leading international linguists [Rochelle Lieber and Ingo Plag], will be putting together a book on English morphology – how words are constructed."

I've been doing this research with Shelly Lieber since June 2009. (In fact, as I write this, I SHOULD be researching.) I'm actually working on a portion of this book: prefixes in regards to location and temporality native to English and adopted in from Greek/Latin. I have been in contact with this guy! My mind = BLOWN.

in which my obscure interests ARE ACTUALLY OF MODERATE USE.

I was alarmed too.

Given my well-documented love of all things Anglo-Saxon/Medieval England (I'm only partially kidding) and the Internet, I (of course) was very pleased when the Bayoux Tapestry meme came to be in existence. The other day I was hitting the stumbleupon button while researching and came across this page. I left this page alone for a few days, too mentally fried to deal with it at the time. Research is taxing. Today, upon further review, I realized this page contains a link to a Make-Your-Own tapestry page.

So, naturally, this is all I have done today:









MAKE YOUR OWN HERE