So Says Green Weaver

Gold Plated Mercedes

2010-08-18T21:14:00.002-04:00

I spent today in surgery. 95% of this time was anus-related. When my preceptor left for clinic and handed me off to another surgeon, he looked at her next case on the board and said with a smile, "Oh, this can be your butt day!"

Among the lower GI tract things I saw was a colonoscopy preceding another operation. It was the first time that I've experienced the amazingness of all that gas they pump in you coming back out again. W.O.W. My wife and her brother on their worst days combined could not rival those amazing sounds. The human body does not cease to amaze.

But I digress. As the title suggests, what was most on my mind today was this other aspect of life in surgery: money and prestige. The dear safety-net hospital where I'm spending my third year is not exactly a hotbed of stereotypical egomaniac fancy-car surgeons. The attendings are by and large nice, even if their unanticipated questions can be scary, and with few exceptions actually seem to realize that they treat human beings rather than body parts.

But our residents are not from the dear little hospital. Indeed they are not. Now we've had nice residents, residents who like to teach, residents who send you home when they can. And we've had grouchy residents, apathetic residents, residents who say nasty things about patients or the medicine team. But before today I hadn't hung out with a cares more about money than people resident.

His reputation preceded him, having told my classmates that a gold-plated Mereceds was in his future. Needless to say, I went in with some trepidation, but I was still thoroughly dumbstruck. First I was put off when he returned from a consult saying "that patient was being an idiot so I had to put a nasogastric tube in him." Which is not only crappy and dehumanizing, it doesn't even make sense. Then, while closing up after a gall bladder surgery, he started telling me how he's really not sure what kind of surgeon he wants to be yet.

Him: I mean, realistically, you have to think of the money. The way things are going, you have to go into something you can count on. Really plastics is the only thing that makes sense.

I try to figure out what to say to him. Something like, "I'm pretty sure that all full-time surgeons are wealthy by any reasonable measure," might have been appropriate.

Him: But I really value being the best, and the best surgeons are really the transplant surgeons.

This sounded somewhat better to me... I mean even if he doesn't care too much about patients, I appreciate that he cares about doing a good job. But, of course, before I could say anything...

Him: But you know, different kinds of people need transplants. There's just no money in it, you end up having to take care of all these people without insurance and poor people.

So much for medicine being a service profession. This is when I was wishing that thinking, suturing, and speaking weren't so hard to do all at once.

Him: Or I could do GI. It's just a one-year fellowship so I could be making money right away. But you have to be on call. Really nothing makes as much sense as plastics. Even if Obama screws up health care more and reimbursement falls off, you can just do more cosmetic cases.

At this point I was in full-on medical anthropologist mode, taking mental notes on how not to be. Plus it was about his third nonsensical Obama dig of the morning, but in the moment I was more fascinated (car-wreck style) than pissed.

I'm not sure what bothers me more, that he seems to be more interested in money than patient care, or that he's so blatant about it. It's been said time and again, that going into medicine for money just doesn't make sense. Getting into a to business program is a much better return on investment by far. That knowledge just serves to piss me off further that people take up room in medical schools and competitive training programs when their end goal could be better served elsewhere and their spot could be filled by someone who wants to make peoples' lives better. When you have that value set, money over people, becoming a doctor strikes me as a cover. You can be an ass, but still get some social cred for doing good.

Not to mention that the idea of wanting a gold-plated Mercedes is totally outside my understanding of reality. I am more effected by the consumer culture than I would like to be, but I can still recognize that money and stuff won't actually buy me contentment. Money doesn't buy happiness, we know this. It seems like someone steeped in the culture of evidence-based medicine ought to delve into some sociology research and reexamine life choices.

Visiting

2010-08-17T19:56:00.002-04:00

Through an incredible giftfromthegods type fluke, four of my outpatient clinic preceptors are on vacation this week, leaving holes in my schedule that even our incredible schedule populating program coordinator couldn't fill completely. What this means is that not only am I left with very few items on my "to-do right now" list, but also when an elderly patient I was on the phone with asked "couldn't you just come over?" I actually could.

For the people who know me and don't think of me as "shy," it might surprise you to learn that there are some things that indeed I am shy about. Visiting an old person in chronic pain at their apartment isn't exactly in my comfort zone. But much like cold calls to hospitals I've never seen and patients I've only met for 10 minutes, I'm trying to build a new comfort zone.

She lives in one of the many high-rises for older folks in the area, a drab construction with a surprisingly difficult to find front door. I managed to navigate the elevator conversation and complicated door-knocker situation. She steered her walker to the door to let me in, smiled to see me, and launched into a description of her current symptoms. She's feisty, but trapped in a cycle of chronic pain, with ever elusive solution. We talked for an hour, mostly restating the same problems differently. We made sure she had the right phone numbers to call for appointments and I cut some of her pills in half. In the end, we left with the same conclusions as the previous conversations we've had over the past two weeks. But if her resolve has moved only by inches, my ease of stepping across bounds I never saw before is growing by miles.

When I was a girl scout, I absolutely dreaded cookie drop off. Once the mountain was piled in our living room, it meant I had to call everyone I had sold cookies to, even my parents' co-workers, to tell them they were ready to be delivered. I can still feel the sense of cold foreboding that would fill my belly as my mother complacently handed me the phone. But these days my to-do list is increasingly filled by "call..." at first these were suggestions from others, but now I've found how easy it is to say "how about if I just call That One Clinic and find out what they think the plan is..." or whatever it may be. And it's not hard anymore.

For some people, it's over-stepping social bounds like touching others' naked bodies that really jar the ingrained sense of normal. For others it's asking deeply personal questions, talking about death or even just poop. We all have barriers in taking on this doctorish role. Today made me realize how much having assumed this new role has given me this space where pushing past my own fears is so much easier.

Change You

2010-03-13T14:17:00.002-05:00

Back during the first weeks of med school last year, there was much talk of how medical education "changes you." It is something I still feel many ways about.

I can embrace being changed, when I view it as a sort of "change lite." This is the process of expanding knowledge of human function, emotion and disease, growing manual and relational skills. The most significant one here is control of affect, learning to convey empathy while withholding disgust, devastation, fear, etc.

The real change, though, the one that many seem to undergo in medical education, is one that I want to avoid. This is the evolution from to someone who doesn't just suppress emotions in front of patients until they can be experienced safely but who no longer feels many things. It is the process of replacing human patients with bodies and disease processes. I have been told that I cannot continue to feel the normal sadness I would have felt two years ago upon learning of the cancer diagnosis of an acquaintance or friend's child and survive in this profession. But I want to continue to believe that that isn't true. I think that these emotions are at the foundation of true empathy. There are these moments, when day after day of memorizing disease names and processes out of textbooks without attachment to the real people's live they impact, that I see that staying connected to my former self will require vigilance.

Last week, I sat with some students and a preceptor as we watched a video of a patient relating the devastating story of losing one of her twins in utero. As she spoke, I fought back tears, telling myself it wasn't the place. At the same time, a nagging fear crept up in me. If this wasn't an OK time to demonstrate sadness as a medical professional, when was? But as the clip ended, I turned around to see my instructor, suit-and-tie clad man in his 50s, had made no such effort at self-restraint. He audibly sniffed and tears tracked down both cheeks as he turned to us to open the discussion.

Being a Doctor=Not Gay Disneyland

2010-03-02T21:02:00.005-05:00

Shall we resurrect this blog? Indeed.

Tonight the LGBT student group at ye' olde med school hosted an "Out in Medicine" panel. It featured several faculty members who direct courses or lecture in the clinical years in addition to attendings and a resident. The ranged both in age and medical interest. They shared anecdotes and insights and answered questions. It was, among other things, good to remind myself that we are a plentiful enough bunch. Though this bunch had primarily spent time in the "Gay Disneylands" of Boston, San Fran and LA, they carried experiences from many kinds of environments.

It was, on the whole, an optimistic evening. All have had the luck of good careers and supportive colleagues. It is generally agreed that medicine is at least perceived as a conservative institution. That perception is all too often a reflection of reality and is one piece of the root of disparities in health care quality for LGBT people. Even so, it really isn't my colleagues in medicine that I worry about being accepted by. One can choose colleagues. Though it may be hard to really understand the culture of a hospital or practice before you get there, some insight can certainly be gleaned and changing jobs is not impossible. What I worry about, are homophobic patients and my own emotional resilience.

As a second-year student, I am not yet tasked with any real responsibility for patients' health. Every Wednesday, I meet with bored patients in the hospital and practice taking a medical history and performing a physical exam. My instructors grade presentations and patient notes that I write, but no one who actually cares for those folks will ever see my work. This is strictly practice and principally for my own benefit.

Several weeks ago, I interviewed an elderly gentleman. As he began to relate some of his health history to me, the middle-aged daughter of his roommate said good-bye to her father and headed home. Not five seconds after she closed the door behind her, this fellow smacked his hand down on the table and said "Well, let me tell you about that one." He went on to relate to me, in melodramatically shocked tones, that his roommate's daughter was gay, and had come to visit with her "girlfriend, or boyfriend or whatever they call it." What followed was the longest homophobic tirade I've been subjected to since being harassed by passers-by while protesting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in Times Square a few years ago.

And I absolutely did not know what to do. Though I subject myself to hearing such things in the news, I have been blessed to generally avoid similar confrontations in my personal life. I know that in this moment I maintained a pretty flat affect, and inwardly I laughed that laugh of dark humor and discomfort. For days I blew it off as unimportant, but the more times I shared the story with friends, the more I realized how much it had affected me emotionally.

So tonight, I went to this panel with just one question: what do you do about homophobic patients. Not the ones who don't want to see you if they know you are gay, the ones who do see you, whether they know or not. And the answer was what it so often is in this field: self-sacrifice. Redirect to the task at hand, point out that whatever they are saying, be it homophobic, racist, sexist, is not what we are talking about right now. "Maybe, just maybe, and only after much later," I was advised, you will be able to address it in the future when you have an established relationship. This is a hard pill to swallow. For years, I have embraced being visibly out and I have worked to find ways to call out homophobic speech and attitudes in those around me. And after all that, it's hard to accept the idea of anything other than a direct confrontation of homophobia. But, things are changing in my life. The best health care I can deliver, that is becoming my new goal. Now, to complicate that a little bit, I am stuck on the knowledge that inequality, discrimination and disparities are all detractors from the positive health of our community. Part of me thinks that in confronting such attitudes in patients, doctors can do positive work. Yet the more time I spend with physicians I respect and their patients, the more I come to understand that the doctor-patient relationship can be a delicate thing. And it seems unlikely that any such positive work could be done in the moment or on a first encounter. The resident on the panel seemed, to me, most astute: treat the tirade as information. People at the doctor, especially in urgent situations, are vulnerable. This can bring out many things, including the worst of people. He suggested that an impulse to change that person's mind in the moment is more for you than the patient. The information you have learned can help you care for this patient.

So I asked myself, "am I obligated to treat homophobic patients?" And I wasn't sure. So I asked myself a moral extreme: "Am I obligated to treat murderers?" Yes, I really think that I am.

I Love My Friends

2009-09-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

When I was figuring out where to go to school, something that HMS students kept saying was that their classmates were the best part of medical school. Even so, I was pretty wary of who my partners in medical education would be. Until I met E, who has indeed become one of my best friends, at revisit weekend, I didn't click with a single person connected to this school. So I really just didn't expect to really get close to people I met in med school. Maybe because I have continued to be at least some what suspicious about my own reasons for going into this field, I was just kind of suspicious about my classmates.

But my fears were largely unfounded and not only have I met a diversity of genuine and down to earth people, I have made incredibly good friends. It's exciting, even after a year, to be still getting to know these people better, but already trusting and loving them. I'm feeling particularly gushy right now because we just had this fabulous bonding weekend. Four of my friends came out to our house yesterday for a perfect day of peach picking, swimming in the lake and incredible barbecuing. We ate tons of veggies: peppers, onions, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, with breaded tofu, and chicken sausage. Plus home-made guac and a fantastic peach cobbler for dessert. Icing on the cake is that these friends helped to clean up.

Then, because we are super-cool medical students, we cleared the table and returned with cups of tea and our weekend take-home quiz. Hey, who doesn't like some scintillating saturday night group study? After having our fill of that lovely activity, we talked into the night over cups of decaf and delish liquor provided by K and then had PJ cuddle time and a sleep over. This morning was pancakes followed by dance party to late 90's pop and then I sadly escorted them out the door. Partly it was just wonderful to get to seem them outside of school.

Sigh. I love my friends.

My Friends Just Can't Stay Out of the News

2009-09-02T01:32:00.002-04:00

Maybe I would be in the news too if I didn't come home to walk my dog after school instead of rabble rousing all the time. Anyway, go them! Maybe it will make Howard Brody blog about the hallowed institution again.

In The Thick of It

2009-09-01T19:57:00.003-04:00

Seems like if I don't have a headache from too little caffeine, I have one from being dehydrated. And despite my best efforts over the summer and sticking to half decaf in the morning. Here I sit, jittery, headached, sleepy. And content.

It's days like today that make me look ahead to May and the beginning of my full-time clerkships and think "Dear golly, we have got to move into the city." It's the having such an abundance of work and commitments that I can't get home to see Lion before she's gone off for the evening that gets to me, and all I want is for us to live blocks from everything that takes us out of the house.

But then, I bike home from the train station through my wooded neighborhood. Harriet greets me with excited tail thumping and we run upstairs to the yard. There I discover that our lovely neighbors/landlords have gone to the trouble of installing for us a fantastic pulley-style clothesline to replace the one that I hastily stuck up in the shade without thinking twice eight months ago. And wonder how we'll ever bear to leave. There may be short commutes in Boston. There may be more action and there could even be other nice neighbors to be had. But there are not our neighbors. There are not our woods and our yard. Our house is not there. I only have eight more months before my schedule burgeons out of control, and I can't fathom that that could be enough time for us in what has become such a home.

That paler side of leaves

2009-08-24T08:12:00.003-04:00

Here, this week, leaves all around me are turning over. That duller underside is maybe something special, but less pretty and harder to like. School. Once again, I am passing my days (oh, such long, long days) in a lecture hall. Two weeks ago I could barely catch my breath as I watched the end of summer, my last summer off ever in my life, whiz by at acela express train speed. The thing about school is that I know it is good. And there are lovely friends around me, who make it really quite easy to slide back in and feel right about the world.

Rolling down the last hill into the Sharon train station each morning last week on my bicycle did wonders for spirits. So did that first sip of coffee from my most perfect travel mug. And lunch with friends in the grass of the quad. (Question for the group: What is your favorite part of medical school? Easily agreed upon answer: Recess!)

I think that it is just good to feel grounded. To have plans and routine. I am, as they say, on top of things. That is about the newest leaf I could ask for. Being not super stressed is a priority for me in medical school. Not least of all because stress wrecks havoc on my ability to interact usefully with the important folk in my life, and being mean to Lion is not on the list of "things that are OK." Last year my approach to being stress-minimal was to not worry about things very much re: school. I'm going to say that I squeezed by just fine with that attitude. My Pass/fail classes were passed and I managed to "bring it" for the ones I considered most important. But I'm not sure that I can approach the coming year with the same surfer dude type approach. So I am turning over that leaf to it's matte green underbelly. Dull, but satisfying.

On Death

2009-05-13T15:58:00.000-04:00

Sorry, it's a long one...

My first patient was a gaunt and scruffy man in his fifties. Six medical students and three physicians crowded into his hospital room. We watched as one of our preceptors demonstrated the patient interview, asking the open-ended questions we would learn to emulate, expressing empathy, finding points of connection to this man’s life. He answered each with an affect so flat he seemed less than human. A nearly imperceptible moment of anger, a half smile to acknowledge enthusiasm for the Sox, these were the windows into his emotional life. The medical details of his case hardly mattered, advanced cancer, failures of compliance. After the interview we speculated on his personality, his attitude around his illness, the effectiveness of the interview strategy. And that night I summarized him into three boxes, chief complaint, history of present illness, and the more amorphous “patient as a person,” a place holder for more boxes to come. A few weeks later, debating the relative utility of silent pauses, clarifying language or casual posture that first interview came up again. As the conversation turned, our preceptor said casually, “He died, by the way.”
Months later, an unusual afternoon left me alone in for over an hour with a vibrant woman in her eighties. If one thing has become clear, it is that all lives that long carry some burden of personal tragedy. She spoke with zest, and a warmth that conveyed gratitude, about her work as an artist. She countered each mention of her illness with the assertion that she had lived a full life, that she had been lucky. When she stated that she would be dying, “maybe not the day after tomorrow, but three days, I think,” it was matter-of-fact. She seemed the picture of a perfect death, beyond denial, grateful for a life well lived. Two weeks later, I saw her again, being wheeled by slowly in the hallway. I greeted her, smiling to this women I now felt I knew so well. She had further thinned and paled. She did not acknowledge me, her eyes focused somewhere beyond the tangibles around us. Then again I saw her, still not dead, two weeks after that being taken from the lobby. This time I made no effort to say hello. She clutched at the thin blanket gathered around her legs, somehow appearing wholly gathered into herself.
“You can’t ask a person that when they’re dying.” He said in response to only my second question: “How are you coping?” My first, the standard “What brought you to the hospital?” he had answered with: “Well, I’m dying.” This was only a few weeks ago. I put my pen and notepad away. It is obvious that no one life, or “history” as we like to call it, can fit into the neatly categorized summary we have learned to create. But he in particular seemed uninterested in leading me through any discussion that would translate to a standard write-up. I have started interviews with patients who did not want to talk to me, and seen others do the same. These end fairly quickly and we move on to someone more willing. But this fellow resisted my questions, but not my presence. He was quick both to anger and apology. “How can you ask me about my family?” he would ask. “You do right all your life and then out of no where… how did I deserve this?” And then, “I’m being rude. I know. I shouldn’t be rude.”
Death may have much more to do with why I am in medical school than life. Not for the heroism that apparently medical students as a group tend to misperceive as their destiny, but for the experience. The sheer, visceral stimulus of standing nearby death. Yes, I hope to be part of keeping those not ready from the edge. Maybe it is our overly virtual existence or a sheltered first-world life, but there seemed to me to be something about death coming home. I saw it as a great and palpable event, the one thing that can fully remind us that we are alive.
And yet, death has not been what it seemed. Even to death, I begin to apply one-word labels. My first patient: denial. The second I mentioned: acceptance. The third: anger. But how could it be that that first petite, dull-faced man could both ignore the inevitable and then pass so casually? His death merited a mention but no fanfare. Looking back at my notes from this first interview it is barely noted that his cancer “was now considered terminal.” Here it was, September 18th, and I had already become steeled against even noticing that the person in front of me was actually going to die. I am no weak chicken. I don’t think that I needed to put up an emotional wall against such reality. And I don’t that’s necessarily what was happening either. I think I just didn’t know what death might look like. My grandfather died when I was sixteen. We were very close and my tight-knit family responded only as our irreverent selves could. We cried, laughed, hugged each other and found ways to remember. Anger and outright denial, while not a response I’ve experienced personally, still seem to me emotions fitting for the profound nature of death. And so from this first man I learned that death can be profound but it can also be blasé. That this man’s life, while it surely mattered greatly to him and to others, had reached a point where it did not need to matter to me.
My second patient seemed at first to be the picture of a respectable death, a life well lived. She expressed messy regrets that humanized her so completely. On what she named her deathbed she related to me her life story, her medical history only an aside. I felt a real connection with her. But she was not dying, not imminently. Her physician in the hallway suggested that she had months if not years, not days. I still don’t know what this can mean. The common knowledge is that people know themselves, that like cats who supposedly find somewhere warm to curl up when their time has come, the elderly make peace and bed down. Did her seeming readiness to go and surety that death was near make her suicidal? Certainly not, but what was it? And what could be the meaning of her blankness in the next weeks? Perhaps she and her physician were both wrong, and I just can’t know what she is really experiencing.
The angry man was the first patient who came close to my expected experience. While he began the interview with mostly quiet two-word responses, his anger showed through and became increasingly more articulate. And finally he turned the tables: “How would you deal with this situation?” I dodged and returned the question to him, but he called me out and threw it back. I still dodged, saying what I do now know, that “death is different for everyone.” And then, “how can I know what it will be like before I am there?” But what I really wanted to say to, and perhaps could have albeit stated more carefully was this, “I would be a hell of a lot better at this than you are. I would do what I could with the time I had left.” And that would be true, even with the details of his story that render his anger so justified. I would be inspirational, but now I’m not so sure that I wouldn’t also be full of it.
When he first told me I could not ask my questions of a man on his deathbed, I was not nervous or uneasy or excited. I was interested. I would have spoken with him for hours. I never wrote-up that interview. I never asked for his HPI beyond “cancer.” I don’t know what CC brought him in that week. The details on his social history are sketchy and tragic. He brought home to me that there are so very many things that I do not yet and cannot yet know about myself. He showed me that try as I might, there are also many things that I will not understand about others. But he did not ask me to leave, and I left his room with the clear sense that it still makes sense to try.

I DID IT I DID IT

2009-04-27T20:41:00.002-04:00

I finally cleaned out my email inbox! OMG this has been weighing down on my for maybe two months. So totally absurd that I could be weighed down by my email inbox, but true nonetheless! As my number of unread emails bounced between 200 and 400 I was starting to go slowly insane and constantly anxious that those messages held important information that I was just simply ignoring.

In the end, I didn't miss much by reading only the subject lines. After a valiant struggle, I have zero unread emails. ZERO.

Ok, whoa. I got two emails while writing that short paragraph (see why this is so hard for me??). I have now dealt with those two emails and I am back to zero. WHEW.

In other news: I finished our wedding invitations today. For whatever reason we have ended up sending them out in waves as we finished gluing them together. The final batch is enveloped and stamped. Another huge weight off of our shoulders. To be totally fair and with the giving credit where it's due stuff: Lion did the vast majority of the work.

It is always amazing to me how good it feels to accomplish tasks you've been putting off. Why is it that I can be smart at some things and yet rendered so miserable by procrastination?

Similarly, there are about 100 pairs of scrubs bound for a medical school in Nepal currently hanging on my clothesline. When was I supposed to get those washed? Hmmm.... December?

Medical School? Check.

2009-04-21T15:15:00.002-04:00

I finally began feel like I am in medical school about six weeks ago. Before that I had certainly felt like I was in school. Make no mistake, there was a lots of studying and a veritable mountain of molecule names and body parts to commit to memory.

In terms of intellectual stimulus, the whole thing had been underwhelming. Intellectually hard, yes, by nature of the sheer and insurmountable volume of information to commit to memory, but infrequently inspiring in an academic sense.

And then came physiology. I should have known that I would like it. The physicsesque prefix, the geeky "ology" suffix all added up to the most fun version of "The Way Things Work" I've engaged in. Unlike tinkering with my bike or pulling apart old telephones, considering physiology was about the machine that is always with me. Though a lot of the inner workings were what you can't see, things like respiration and heart rate I could feel in myself. Suddenly I was reading notes on the train with one finger on my carotid and holding my breath or thinking about the catecholamine release and resultant speeding of my heart brought on a sudden blaring announcement over the loud-speaker. There was just something about it. Like the inside of a clock, it's just plain neat.

Physiology came as a relief to my overly self-analytical self. A relief to the constant question: should I be doing this? I haven't wondered if I really want to take care of patients, to be involved in the nitty-gritty of people's lives at their moments of encountering illness, life and death, in solving the puzzle of maintaining their own health. Each Wednesday afternoon we tromp out to one of the myriad of hospitals in this flagship city of health care to practice our patient interview skills. In those moments, the act of doctoring has clearly presented itself as a good path. But here I was, months into school, and I kept thinking "didn't I used to really dig science, too?" It's OK, I believe now, that cell biology, molecular biology and anatomy, weren't awe-inspiring to me. The study of how our body works on a macro scale has the most clear relevance to the practice of medicine, and so I was thrilled that I liked it the best. The last month we've sauntered into immunology and pathology. Though In some ways a step back into molecule hell and the tyranny of three letter acronyms, it is made up for by the fact that we are now learning about diseases. And diseases always feel relevant.

NAME THAT CLOUD

2009-02-07T15:59:00.002-05:00

That's right, everyone, this is what I was actually doing when I told Lion on the phone that I was "studying."

How much do I rock?

Dear Mr. Obama: We're Still Hurting

2008-12-18T19:02:00.002-05:00

At this moment I wish very sincerely that Barack Obama could have felt the way I did on election night. I don't now believe that he has any real understanding of what it meant for LGBT Americans, so many of whom worked tirelessly to put him in office, to watch the passage of Prop 8 in California. To see not just rights denied as in the many other states that have passed similar measures, but rights taken away from those to whom they had been granted, that was just crushing. We are still licking our wounds, even those of us who watched from across the country unable to do much more than send a bit out a medical student's living allowance to help the cause. If anyone reading this wants to get a better sense of that pain, go over to Lesbian Dad and read pretty much any entry from the last three months. And so, to choose Rick Warren to speak at your inauguration in the name of inclusion, just pretty much redoubles the pain we had barely begun to heal from. Why is it so important to include those who campaigned against Obama, but not those who worked for him? It is NOT OK for Rick Warren, a man who has equated Lion's and my upcoming wedding to a grown man marrying a child, to speak at inauguration, I don't care how eloquently the man talks about climate change. Look, I know that Obama doesn't openly support gay marriage and he hasn't been awesome on all of the the LGBT issues, but he opposed Prop 8 so it's not like this man is representative of his position. We are still hurting, Mr. Obama. It was disappointing enough for you to tease us with the possible appointment of a lesbian for labor secretary, but please don't give a national microphone to someone working to invalidate my life. DAMMIT. It's personal.

I guess what matters is that people who think with Warren hold a great deal of power in this country.

For some good analysis, see Bilerico, Pam's House Blend,

New Arguments

2008-12-11T19:17:00.006-05:00

At this point in the game, I am sometimes shocked when I discover a new argument for gay rights or any other position I've been engaged in mulling over for some time. After many years as Captain Gay of many a gay club, and far too much blog reading it's just not expected. And of all sources, I hardly expected it to come from Jon Stewart. In the video below, which I stumbled across via feminsting, he takes on Mike Huckabee on same-sex marriage. Most of the discussion is old-hat, though interesting to hear played out face-to-face. What struck me was the point that Jon makes that one is much more likely to choose their religion than to be gay and that we protect people's religious practice as a right.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Now, I'm not really one for the "is it a choice or not" debate. A good liberal arts grad knows that the answer is unlikely to be either/or but rather both/and. BUT I often hear that things such as sexual orientation and gender identity do not deserve to be protected classes because one can't prove them to be inborn and unchangeable in the same way that skin color is largely inborn and unchangeable. While I've always rejected the premise of the argument that rights ought to be doled out on the basis of provably inborn and unchangeable-ness it never plum occurred to me that one could counter that so very simply and elegant with the example of religious choice. Holy rebuttal, batman!

Moms and Forgetting

2008-12-07T21:11:00.002-05:00

Something adorably funny and oh-so-typical for our family happened to my mother this week. Dad reports in smatters:

“[My Mom] was doing an on-line recertification quiz late last night. It was one of those things where they ask you the question, immediately tell you if you’re wrong, and if so, they give you references to the right answer. She got one wrong and looked at the reference. It was a paper she had co-authored herself.”

Oh, the comfort I draw from such stories!

I’m just going to get it out there: I have a horrific and unreasonable Mommy complex.

1. I antagonize my mother at strange times for no significant reason.
2. I love, respect, ask for, value and am interested by her advice. And yet I am unthinkably skeptical the moment she offers it.
3. I am afraid that she’ll direct my choices for me even though she’s always encouraged me to be strong and independent (see 2).
4. I am afraid that I’ll become her, because we went to the same prep school and did some of the same things and now I’m in med school and interested in basically the same field of practice that she’s in. I’m worried that I choose these things because I already know what they look like from watching her, not because they are what I really want. At the same time I'm afraid I can't live up to her.

What’s crazy about being worried about being so much like her is that she is awesome as a role model and a mom. She is awesome in all ways! I mean, she is actually the kind of person that I do want to be. She is a great doctor. She’s very well respected in the community where I grew up as well as in her field. In fact, I had no clue how impressive and unusual her practice was before I started med school. She is a family physician who provides a huge range of care even beyond what the majority in her field do, such as c-sections. When I tell my classmates about her, they usually respond with “I had no idea that was even possible!” For the most part I’m probably more worried about living up to her example than anything else. This is why my dad's story is so awesomely comforting. I have always thought that I learned things best when I had to really articulate them to someone else. Thankfully, the educational method at this med school of mine makes me do that quite a bit. Hence, it has been really frustrating to realize that I can explain something quite well to a friend and then see it on an exam a week later and not really remember what it was. Knowing that not only do my mom and I share an amazing ability to underestimate how long things will take, over schedule, forget meetings, leave important items in restaurants/on trains, double-schedule, repeat conversations we’ve already had… but we also share the awesome ability to forget information we taught to others.

A Final-y Post

2008-11-26T08:11:00.002-05:00

My Anatomy final is in twenty minutes.

And so this may seem like a strange moment for a post to a blog that has been sparse for many months. But I am feeling a bit zen. Or may it's "in the zone." Upon reviewing my note cards from early in the class, I discovered that I no longer have any trouble keeping the cephalic and basilic veins straight. I am always certain which is the zygomatic and which is the sphenoid. Also that the scaphoid is in your hand and sphenoid in your head.

And of course, last week on the phone with my mother, I used about fifteen words that I have never ever used before. Thusly, I believe that I have officially become conversational (that's the one before fluent) in medicalese. The kinds of sentences that flew out of the mouths of so many in my parents' social circles as I kid that I reacted to rather disdainfully are now wandering from my own mouth.

I knew it would happen. They tell you that medical school changes you. They urge us with worried eyes to hold onto our ideals. Be humble, they say. And we try! But then, here we are, talking in this high falutin' language. Arm will never again be arm, and leg no more leg. How appalling to discover that it isn't actually called a "hamstring."

Wedding Dresses

2008-11-23T13:43:00.002-05:00

Yes, this is a post about wedding dresses.

On the prosected-cadaver viewing sandwich that was my yesterday, watching Lion try on wedding dresses was the bread. My anatomy final is on Wednesday, and so she used the excuse of my cadaver-viewing to schelp into Boston for some over-the-top dress exploring.

Yes, she's planning to wear a wedding dress. Like a white one. This is because she is a virgin and wants the world to know that true love waits. OW! Ok, that's not why. Actually, despite the ridiculous patriarchy juice flavor of many traditions that swirl around marriage we're swallowing, even wanting some of them, and it's been hard to know why. The dress was something I sort of resigned myself to, not wanting one myself but knowing it was part of her vision I figured, "why not, she'll look real pretty?" Now I get it. I even get why it is that even people like us sometimes spend more on wedding dresses than I did on my lovely used Subaru.

We had said that the schmancy schmance Boston shops (one of which was Vera Wang) were just for fun, you know, so that she could get a good idea of cuts and colors and lines and whatever it is that makes for a wedding dress. I expected to be vaguely bored but appreciative of watching my honey try on pretty dresses. But then, four dresses or so in, she walked out of the dressing room and suddenly I was almost crying. This is a way that I have felt occasionally in museums and at plays. When I read poetry. Things like that. It's art. It's for your body. And it is beautiful and damn classy. And suddenly I'm wondering if it's stupid to sell my car to buy clothes for Lion to wear for six hours.

Vera Wang came after I spent a couple of hours in the anatomy lab studying. I think the helpful dress wrangler person smelled the formaldehyde on me because she seemed to keep a distance. Lion floated in and out of the dressing room, and I looked on with a visiting friend from college. We nodded and smiled mostly, but with one or two dresses our breath caught and we found ourselves "oohing" against our will. Beneath the layers of meaning and the unwieldy traditions there is this glowing in-love person ensconced in art.

We ended the day at David's Bridal, hoping to talk ourselves down from the illogical afternoon couture. And really, she tried on some gorgeous dresses there. I'm sure she could fashion a mumu out of duct tape and I'd appreciate it. And she really did look beautiful, even under the harsh lights of the Wal-Mart of weddings. But, I had to admit a sense of resignation when she looked down from her little block in front of the mirror and said, "you're not crying, though."

All sorts of ideas about consumerism and values and how we value what and where we put our money are filling me in a whole new and interesting way. Is it definitely better to spend $600 on a pretty ivory-colored dress than it is to spend $6000 on a piece of stunning well-crafted art you can wear? When it comes to the sad state of overspending on this tradition and widespread pressure to go over the top on everything, which is worse? In the scheme of things, this wedding shin-dig we're having is very much on the cheap. My grum's backyard, mostly doing the food ourselves, etc. And my outfit costs like $60. Buying cheap badly-made things because they are cheap is part of the problem, right? And obsessively cutting costs can be a kind of greediness that I don't find palatable either.

The reality is that we live off of student loans and a TA stipend. Yes our parents are helping pay for the day, but the economy sucks and we don't equate special, personal, important landmark with spending a buttload of cash. If you had asked me Friday how much we'd spend on Lion's dress, I probably would have said $300, tops, and even that would feel like a lot. But then I saw her in that blush Badgley Mischka. And it changed my world.

Cuz She's in Doctor School

2008-10-24T11:14:00.002-04:00

The words of our 8-year-old neighbor to her friend, as I shooed them away so that I could "do homework." This is an increasingly popular scenario at our house as our neighbor scoots down to play with our dog (a welcome distraction) and I inevitably have to toss her out to hit the books.

Because, indeed, I am in doctor school. And this is something that I have many thoughts on. It is busy, it is a lot of work, it is messy, complicated. Suddenly I feel like I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. On the train home today I found myself making lists of my values and interests, trying to keep track of what I get passionate about. I may have put a bit too much caché in the ability of medical school to define my life trajectory. There are still oh-so-many choices.

The best and hardest part about school is having found a wide number of people with genuine interest in social justice and health and how that all comes together. I say hard because between the exposure, in lunchtime talks sponsored by student organization and in our required (hooray!) social medicine and global health class, to reading and lecture after reading and lecture about just how dismal the state of health is in this country and the world it all feels about overwhelming. Suddenly the idea of how to shape the kind of medical practice I would like to have and how to ensure that it fits with the overwhelming need I am feeling to be part of the solution of widespread health disparities is constantly in the forefront of my mind.

I feel so full of statistics and measures that outline the problems. Today's lovely tidbit highlighting part of the impact of life as a Black woman in this country: infant mortality rates among Black women with a college degree is higher than that of white women who did not graduate from high school. There's one to chew on. I've also been stuck on the knowledge that Native Americans have about the worst population health in this country, and yet we have about the least amount of measured data on that population to really assess the problem. Perhaps the real kicker has been realizing more fully how little the actual health system does to address the health of the USA. Even when you're insured and well-insured and you have great doctors, our society is just set up to make us unhealthy. Here's what's on my mind. Perhaps I will begin to actually blog again.

Home Differently

2008-08-13T15:00:00.002-04:00

Here we are, barely a day away from leaving Xela. I am so not ready! Not only do I feel that I have not quite so much exactly had a vacation these past five weeks, I am going to start La Escuela Medicina on Monday.

MONDAY! Less than a week! Have I paid my termbill? Have I read that biochem book? Sent them my transcripts? Filled out that mini-survey??? No, no, no, no, no.

But, indeed all that is far off on distant shores and I refuse to feel stressed about it until at least Sunday.

Meanwhile, Guatemala. It has been mad fun. My Spanish is way better (for about the 10th time in my life) and I swearrrr that I'm going to keep practicing at home. I will not lose the subjunctive again! Well, I might. But I really am going to get me a volunteer gig that involves hablando. This country! This town! I want to stay. And I want to go home, too. Turtle says that a big reason to travel is to experience home differently when you get back. And I suppose it is true. The difference between here and the HV or Boston, which I suppose is home now, are striking and yet not so striking at times.

This is a shockingly beautiful country. Especially the mountains, from which we have not strayed far for fear of malaria. Though the bus rides have been insane and nausea-inducing at times, the vistas were almost always worth it. Lion and I spent the last week doing a little circle through the middle of the country. We lounged on the shores of Lake Atitlan, spent a quasi-terrifying night in Guatemala city (scary movie, only people in the theater, late show, appallingly bad sound quality, ominous guidbook warnings, bedbugs) then cruised through the friendly town of Jalapa, where Lion's mom lived when she was in the Peace Corps 40 years ago. After that we went up to see Semuc Champey. Champey is frequently described as "the most beautiful place in Guatemala." But people are almost always at a loss to explain it. Don't worry. We took video. Soon enough YouToo will experiene its badly-filmed greatnes. It was a magical day, to be sure. Followed by zip-lining through a coffee plantation.

What could be more quintessentially eco-touristy than zip-lining through a cooperative, shade-grown, organic coffe plantation? I dare you to come up with something.

We spent an eye-blink in Nebaj, notable for its annual festival gearing up last weekend and insanely over-priced laundry service. We actually almost cried when she told us how much she wanted for cleaning our clothes. Actually, Lion probably did cry, as is her way.

Now back in Xela, we're chilling out at CBA and getting somethings done on the "Proyecto" we're helping them with. This has included sign-painting and shakey video taking, among other things. This has been a good month, especially for reflection. On human rights, on what one needs, on what constitutes being poor, being happy, being friendly, being thoughtful. Hugo and ElBia graciously tell us that we're not like other USAers. From the gringo conversations we overhear somedays in cafes, I dearly hope we're not. But then there are also many more dedicated and interested and thoughtful as well. Ah, well. More serious stuff later.

Guatemala Loves Lesbians!

2008-07-21T19:49:00.002-04:00

Ok, that is probably just blatantly untrue. But, so far, Guatemala seems fond of this odd specimin of sapphic gringa. In some ways this is the first time that I have really come out to people in the direct "I have a novia" kind of way. My maestro, Roberto, as well as a few other folks it´s come up with have been somewhat curiously delighted. None of them seem to have ever been aware of a lesbian in their midst before. I´m enjoying it. Roberto seems intent on being overtly accepting. Last week he told me that he was also a lesbian because of his significant affection for women. Though his jokes are frequently problematic and he´s not quite able to understand why they´re sexist when they´re "only a joke," I appreciate that he´s trying. He delights in using Lion in sentance examples and asking questions about when she´s getting here. Marcos was his personal brand of energetic and relaxed about the whole thing. He reported later to DHM that I was his first, and like a pro she corrected him, "first you who knew about." She also took him to task later for his off-hand comment that he didn´t like it when women spoke. Boy did I enjoy watching himself try to dig himself out of the "but women are delicate" hole. Tee-hee! And Julio! Well done, despite his quite Catholic ways! He even copped to know some gay dudes at his Universidad.

Lion and Turtle should be here in less than an hour. I can´t wait. I have received some news related to the impending doom that is medical school (buy this book and re-learn biochem, or else!!) which has set me on edge differently than I have been since we got here. Bueno. Necesito hacer mi tarea.

In this other place

2008-07-20T16:53:00.004-04:00

Hello, World from Xela, Guatemala.

I hardly know where to start. Is it people or places? In my recent musings on the HV, I've stuck to places. Though in my own journal last night, it was all people. How about some background and then we'll have some of both.

I'm here with DHM (my formerly downstairs housemate). and her sister. Lion and Turtle come tomorrow! Hurrah! I am pathetic mess trying to get along sans Lion. Xela, if you're not familiar, is in the Western highlands of Guatemala (which, if you're really unfamiliar is just South of Mexico). It's a big, but not huge, dirty, beautiful, chaotic. Brightly colored then drab. There are many more gringos than I remember from a visit three years back, but not the city doesn't cater to them in the same overwhelming way it does in some places. We passed the last week quietly. I've been pouring a healthy amount of WD-40 across my quite rusty Spanish skills at CBA. My maestro, Roberto, could have come directly from the stock on my high school math team. So very familiar is his personality, complete with engineering school, awkward jokes, a passion for Beavis and Butthead, and a slightly hesitant and very genuine friendliness. I feel a heck of a lot more confident speaking than I did six days ago, though a big stack of vocab flashcards would be useful. At CBA, we're tended to by the director Hugo and his wife, Elbia. They are just the sort of kind, thoughtful and open people you'd want to find yourself tended by in an unfamiliar place. Or in any place, really. I am nurturing a hope that friends here can stay friends for a long time. After several visits over the last few years, DHM has compiled a healthy bunch of friends here. DHM has a healthy disdain for the rest of the gringo population, and it leads us well into hole-in-the wall restaurants. There is a funniness in watching the bevy of Guatemalan male devotees that she and her sister have acquired. Nery, Julio, Marcos, Oswaldo, Javier. Marcos is my favorite, a student, musician and laundromat attendant, he is gregarious, thoughtful and really dang fun. Plus he managed to cut off at the pass a couple of viejos trying to hit on us the other night. This culture is, I am constantly reminded, quite different than the one I'm used to. The sexism on the streets is more overt and among even DHM's enlightened friends, an active mental struggle. There seems to be a way in which we, as women less culturally trained to be reserved, are easier to befriend for them. And for us it has been more difficult to make friends of women at least partially because they are less willing to join in on late night (Claudia, who runs our hostal refers to DHM, her sister and I as "las vampiras") outings to cantinas and dance joints. And then there is the flirting. I have not felt like I was flirting with men in a very long time. With all men, here, I seem to be flirting though I have made it a point to connect myself to the word "lesbiana." This gender interplay is something I'm just starting to process, really.

Still on NY time, I started out waking up a few hours before the others. I passed my mornings wandering the streets and trying (often failing) to get my bearings with the tiny map torn from Lonely Planet (Roberto calls it the Gringo bible). We have a great restaurante down the block which serves up a typical breakfast of eggs, beans, tortillas, platanos with crema, coffee and chips for 15Q or about $2. Though we have a kitchen here, I've found myself drawn down the the restaurante to watch the owner's children play in and out of the kitchen. The coffee is terrible, though so I prowled around various coffee shops until discovering Dante, which really does cater to gringos, but its proprietor, Maria makes a mean latte. Plus she's incredibly chatty and doesn't seem to mind the syntax-confusing pauses that riddle my spanish. And she has a cute baby. Cute babies everywhere, money nowhere. Lack of family planning and sexism going hand in hand, what a surprise.

I'm going to take this as a sign

2008-07-10T10:23:00.002-04:00

That med school is the right choice

Your results:
You are Beverly Crusher

Beverly Crusher		75%
James T. Kirk (Captain)		70%
Will Riker		70%
Chekov		60%
Deanna Troi		55%
Mr. Sulu		50%
Uhura		50%
Spock		47%
Worf		45%
Geordi LaForge		45%
Mr. Scott		45%
Jean-Luc Picard		45%
Data		41%
Leonard McCoy (Bones)		40%
An Expendable Character (Redshirt)		25%

A good physician and a caring parent.
You are devoted to your children
and to your occupation.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

Also, my next best ones bag a lot of ladies... so...

Moooving

2008-07-08T12:11:00.002-04:00

Life is a-changing in such huge ways. Just the sheer conceptual overwhelmingness of recent months has made me gun shy when it comes to this blog.

Here. I'll bullet it.
-We're moving to the Great State of Massachusetts, that fresh-faced home to gay marriage, the Red Sox, Sam Adams and my extended family.
-Lion and I are gettin' Hitched. To which I say, Hoorah! This is old news, but due to scheduling and geographic constraints the actually doing of the deed is just shy of one year off.
-We're headed to Guatemala for a month.
-Two days after we return from Guatemala, I'm starting Medical School.
-I'm starting Medical School, let's just repeat.
-Lion is starting grad school. We only have one desk. But plenty of bookshelves.
-We're leaving the place we've been for the last five years.

The Hudson Valley. Sigh. This is the first place I have made my home as an adult. It's the first place that was unconnected to my family that I really have called home and felt was home. The fact that we're leaving it has left me feeling this really profound kind of sad that is a totally new feeling for me. I've gone away from places before, several times, and it has just never felt like this. Even with all we have to look forward to, I'm struggling to get excited about our next steps. Our lives in Poughkeepsie and friends scattered up the Valley have been so many kinds of wonderful. I think part of my difficulty is that it isn't just the people I'm sad to leave. We have the best kinds of friends here and I am confident we'll keep in touch and visit back and forth. I know from my past that it is plenty possible to stay close with those who leave your day-to-day or week-to-week. As sad as it will be to leave the likes of UP and DHM, Turtle and the crew on the other side of the river, our Roller Derby teammates (ok, that's a whole other post), and Pok neighbors, it is the leaving of this place that really gets to me. How do you stay close to a place when you are not there? How do you keep it as a part of you. Our sometimes housemate, the prodigal Farmboy/Devout environmentalist of our lives, gifted us a set of white oval bumperstickers with the initials "PKNY" to commemorate our love of this funny town forever on our cars. I feel like part of some club available only to a select few. The people I know I will not lose. And the ways in which I depend on them in the here-and-now will be filled by the old friends we'll be closer to and new friends we'll be making. But the Hudson River cannot come with us, nor can Waryas Park, Main Street Poughkeepsie, the crazy lady at the top of our hill, favorite little restaurants and bakeries, chance encounters with Pete Seeger, or the shared experience of this place. The Hudson ties people together geographically, across town boundaries. It defines this region apart from others and gave birth a grand history of art, folk music and environmentalism.

Part of what's hard for me personally is that we're moving to a place that many people find easy to love. Lord knows there's nothing unique about going to school in Boston. It seems to be in many ways the country's biggest college town. And while I'm grateful to be going to a great school and to be closer to family and old friends, Boston is not much of a challenge. Poughkeepsie has laughed, "you just go on and try to like me if you can" to me since I wandered here as a college freshcat and got hopelessly lost downtown in search of the Unitarian Church. It's a place much easier to write off than Boston or Providence and the growing ranks of those of us who have grown to love it share some pride in our different ways of seeing it.

I'm Baaaaack

2008-05-16T18:00:00.002-04:00

No, no, not in creepy horror movie way.

Seriously. GW is having some growing pains as a blog. Clearly we over extended ourselves with the "I'm going to post every day" thing. Now we can't even decide if I'm "I" or "we." See how things are?

I have recovered from the trying to post all the time and failing induced whiplash and guilt and have decided once again to make something of this her blog. I've also gotten my own blog reading a bit more under control. No gone are the days of hours-long archive binges! Gone are the days of trying to read everything on half a dozen political blogs.

Substantive post coming soon, stay tuned.

One Thing at a Time

2008-03-13T13:52:00.002-04:00

I multi-task. I multi-task, A LOT. I'm a multi-tasker. I used to think, "Hey, I'm such a good multi-tasker!" But recently I've realized that I actually must multi-task. I'm now a multi-taking addict.

Exhibit A: The browser tab. I never ever ever have only one browser tab open. Minimum is probably four. One for email, one for pandora, one for calendar, one for blackboard, one for Google reader, one for the local paper or the NY Times or a google search for "public sewer department, NY," one for the episode of House that I'm listening to illicitly in the background while I work. You get the idea.

Exhibit B: The Lab. I used to think I was extremely efficient in lab work. Back in college I was almost always one of the first people done precisely because I multi-tasked. I seem to have taken this too far. Sometimes I am: doing a titration with one hand and eyeball, reading feministing.com with the other eyeball, making calibration solutions in between and also listing to streamed mpr.org I think my lab technique is suffering.

Exhibit C: The home. Laptop on lap, seven browser tabs open. Excel spreadsheet behind. Father on Phone. Attempting to communicate with Lion via facial expression. The latter usually backfires resulting in me getting in trouble for not paying attention to her. She is always right about this.

When I wait for a website to load, I get jittery. I think it feels like what it used to feel like to drink too much coffee, back when drinking too much coffee felt like anything. I can't seem to focus on just one thing. I suspect this might cause me trouble in med school. So, starting now, I'm instituting a one-thing-at-a-time policy. At least for a few weeks until I get a knack for it and can trust myself to find a better balance. Maybe this means that sometimes that one thing will be this blog. It's much easier to focus on when it's the only thing open in my web browser.

It's Fixin Time

2008-01-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

So, three days in DC at the NCSE did not leave me feeling all doom and gloom. I mean, it goes to reason that days and days of "hockey stick" graphs would leave you in a serious funk. A hockey stick graph is, if you haven't heard this clever lingo, is like the one below that shows global temperature cruising along steadily for hundreds or even thousands of years and then BANG shooting up over the last 200 or so. (The particular one I've shown via a paper by Micheal Mann, et al).

But I didn't leave feeling horrifically depressed.

And, yeah, I saw a hell of a lot of "yikes" figures. Like pictures of the appalling record arctic ice melt. Or stats like unchecked we could see 50% of the species on this planet become extinct. But as much as my feeling on climate change is now even more that we are at an incredibly crucial tipping point, I'm also full of hope. Because public opinion is changing incredibly rapidly on this issue. Because even though it will be incredibly hard work, we can have the strength. Because so many climate change solutions are win-win for our country and our economy.

I'd like everyone to gear up with me for Focus the Nation. Make a plan for 8PM on Jan 30 to watch the 2% solution. I'll add more on this later, but first I do want to say that it gives me hope that it's my generation who is tasked with this effort. I know that we are oft-maligned as the "me generation" or whathave you, but this is the generation that I know. And I trust my fellows to be the ones to rewire this nation and every city on the planet. Because I know us better than I could know any other generation, I do believe that we will fight free of the fossil fuel economy and work out a new food system.

Martin Luther King Day, for which I'm sad to say the SLAC did not release me from its clutches, is a day for hoping high and believing the the world we ought to have. It is a day for acknowledging the immense complexity of that which blights the ways we treat one another and because it is often so similar, the way we treat or environments.

The Schmooze

2008-01-17T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, it turns out that meetings of this variety have substantial schmooze component!

Ok, I knew that, but somehow I imagine climate scientists and policy folks as largely unable to schmooze in the tradition of the socially capable non-nerds. Anyway, not only do these people schmooze, but they schmooze with delish wine, organic beer, organic vegetarian pizza, pumpkin ravioli etc, etc, etc! They do it while balancing these things in their hands and managing to shake each others. It's highly impressive. I suppose in an effort to initiate the young'ns, they organized a "social outing" for students and young professionals last night. It was, uh, dear. Some person from the NCSE escorted us to a pub and there we ate and mingled. It sort of smacked of a "children's" program, but I guess was nice.

Anyway, my lovely compatriots are more hardcore schmoozers than I expected. By which I mean to say that I'm exhausted. A true recap, I promise, for tomorrow.

Singing to the Scientists

2008-01-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

Today was a whirlwind of climate scientist, policy geniuses and generally just loads of people who are out of my league.

But I just first want to tell you about one person. Right in the middle of a bunch of gray-haired white dudes giving wild climate change lectures, they had one presentation from a Caribou woman.

She talked about the history of her people and their beliefs. Their conviction that the creator gave them their little piece of Alaskan arctic to protect. She talked about sliding down snowy hills in a caribou skin snowsuit. And then she sang.

For about three seconds I watched the too-serious about some kinds of things audience not take her seriously. There were half smiles and averted eyes all over the place. But when she finished her prayer song for us the applause was more enthusiastic than for any lecture. Then she told us about the here and now first hand effects of climate change that her people are already feeling in incredibly tangible and painful ways.

My colleague, a librarian, turned to me afterwards and said, "you know, in five years, she's the one that I'll remember."

Going All Over the Country To Fight Global Warming

2008-01-15T22:51:00.000-05:00

I'm fighting global warming again! Sort of. Actually, I'm at the annual conference of the National Committee on Science and the Environment (which could use a better website). In Washington DC. Me and a couple of gray-haired rockin women are representing the SLAC.

Since it's DC, the pub we had dinner in was blasting the Democratic debate in Nevada tonight. The candidates looked... tired. Really just that more than anything else. They just stumbled a lot more than I'm used to. Especially Obama. I think I've come to expect him to be calm and articulate all of the time. And man, Clinton needs a nap. And Edwards just looks bummed that he already lost this one. Again.

Also, I'm extremely jealous of Alison who is at Macworld. I want I want! Oops, I mean consumerism is BAD.

BMIzz No More!

2008-01-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

CELEBRATION! I have finished, finally, after months and months, the counting and tabulating of the BMIzz! If history is any indication of the future, it will only be about another three weeks before I stop seeing little creepy-crawlies every time I close my eyes. What an amazing improvement to my quality of life.

IN OTHER NEWS: It turns out to be an extremely bad idea to clean your keyboard with acetone. I was tidying in my chemistry lab today and spotted the charming red-topped acetone bottle. It reminded me that I have intended, ever since I started this job, to remove the grime on my office keyboard left by my predessor. Well, erm, under the grime there is apparently an acetone-soluble coating. Oops. I removed a large amount of that coating from several keys and actually smeared some of the characters. On the upside, the grime is now gone. My space bar seems to have suffered some drippage. It doesn't space quite like it did ten minutes ago.

D'you know?

2008-01-11T23:52:00.000-05:00

My mom is going to love the movie Juno. Lion just took me to it as a surprise (as in I was forced to cover my eyes until we were actually inside the theater so I didn't even know what we were seeing). It totally rocked. Well, it mostly rocked. My mom is going to love it, I believe in part because she is a frequent deliverer of teen mom babies. Or at least it felt that way when I was in high school. I'm positive that she called me up to inform me (in a stern tone) of the types of unwanted struggles faced by the accidental mother every single time a pregnant teenager came within 1000 feet of her. This, and the relentless encouragement of birth control use, led her to the fear that such well hammered-in advice may have turned me gay. She swears it was a passing fear.

In any case, as attendee to the health and humor many a predicament laden high schooler, I'm positive she would love it. Plus it's set in Minnesota--though filmed way too much in Vancouver. Ellen Page is snappy and hilarious and fab. Imdb tells me that Kate Winslet is her favorite actress, a fact that I approve of completely. I hope this means she's going to make period movies that I can obsess over with my dad. And, on top of that, she's apparently making a lesbian werewolf move. Or at least there are "metaphorical" werewolves. Allison Janney totally rocks my party in this movie, as ever. And it's a non-tragic story about teenage pregnancy.

Here's what sucks: the women's health clinic is junky and they really really don't deal with abortion as an issue. It felt to me like they had decided to make this movie about an indie kind of girl who finds adoptive parents for her child, but didn't ever decide exactly why she was having the child in the first place. The make it sound both vaguely altruistic (she suggests she'll give it to "a couple of lesbos") and as though she's personifying her fetus (freaking out about its fingernails). Anyway, they really gloss over it. It's not horrible, but it's there. And the clinic scenario really reinforces the concept that women's health clinics are primarily abortion providers and that they aren't places that care thoughtfully for their patients. I think it's a pretty dangerous stereotype to reinforce in the current political climate is all.

Anyway, that pesky issue aside, it is a great movie as a movie, and does provide a pretty refreshing view of the teen pregnancy idea. It also does a pretty good job of staying away from calling Page a slut. Or, at least it makes you mad at the idea that other kids in school are probably calling her a skank. And it gets mad props for making fun of the term "sexually active." Also it made Lion and I cry. And want babies in that weird stereotypical lesbian way.

The Gay=Philosophy part II

2008-01-10T10:29:00.000-05:00

And now, while I wait for some my stream monitoring probe readings to stabilize during calibration, I'll continue on last night's ill conceived metaphor.

Ok, my point about philosophy was not really a point. Plenty of philosophy majors don't become philosopers. They go to law school. Or so I hear. But this guy's mom's conception of philosophy that it was a self-contained field. Without the assumption that it was inherently worthwhile, in her view, it wouldn't exist.

This is true of the idea that being gay just ain't OK. I'm pretty sure that there isn't an argument for why one should not be the gay (or why society shouldn't recognize the gay as a-OK) that doesn't boil down to a fundamental assumption that it's just wrong.

Take the big one:
It's bad for kids to have gay parents. Well, no, that's not what the social scientists say.
And then there was this woman, who made the point pretty well at some fundy-type "family" conference.
And pretty much the rest of the parental-type "it makes your life harder" type arguments wouldn't exist if not for the fundamental homosexual menace assumption.

I guess this is pretty obvious to yee small crowd of GW readers. But I do keep coming back to it.

The thing that makes me the most frustrated in talking about controversial issues (particularly queer issues and choice), is that people on different sides really forget that their co-arguers are also people. People forget that we all have common ground. Most of those arguments consist of this scary smoke-and-mirrors game where people skirt around their disagreement and never make it to the base assumptions that divide them. The blogosphere and internet in general seems to make this so much worse. People score these cheap, anonymous shots. They act inhuman and so easily treat others as inhuman.

If you know me, maybe you can tell that I've been reading the online message boards in the letters to the editor section of our regional paper again.

The Gay=Philosophy

2008-01-09T21:58:00.000-05:00

Senior year of high school, my friend Lee, who was headed to the hallowed halls of Yale the next year, announced that he was going to be a philosophy major. We were out to dinner with another friend's mother. I shrugged at the idea, philosophy to me suggested little more than old, dead Greek dudes. Our other friend's mom, however, had a very clear concept of philosophy. "A PHILOSOPHY major at YALE!?" she cried, shaking her head, "what a waste." An awkward silenced was followed by some strange grunts on her part and than an explanation of how philosophy, like so many academic pursuits, was just useless.

"You know, she explained, you'll learn all this stuff [about old, dead, Greek dudes] and then go to graduate school and learn more and than just teach other people about it. Philosophy is only good for itself."

Which, of course, is not true. But Philosophy, as a discipline, is dependent, I think on the assumption that it is useful or valuable in some way.

Next, I will explain why I remembered this today and it struck me that the assumption that homosexuality is an evil menace functions in a similar kind of way.

Saved By Word Games

2008-01-08T22:43:00.000-05:00

After usurping my buddy Turtle's TV for the Iowa caucus, and the state it put me into, I was definitely not suffering through that much Wolf Blitzer again. (Wolf Blitzer? I know, I know, the funny of his name was beat to death in 1991, but I'm not over it). My not watching of tonight's NH primaries got a little help-along by the fact that Tuesday is stone soup night at our house, the brainchild of my darlin' (who is also known as Lion, in some circles). Our family of friends comes on over (or we head to one of them sometimes), everyone armed with potential soup ingredients. The results have been, uh, varied since this tradition came into being, but overwhelmingly edible. Tonight brought us vegetable soup with beans. It was pronounced bland, but like pretty much everything, a little bit of added cheesed dressed it up nicely.

Hm, veggie-bean-cheese soup sounds kind of weird, I think.

Weird or not, soup and friends took my mind off of the primary. And there is little in my mind that feels more like contentment than the steamy air of a soup-in-progress kitchen.

I only thought to look at the results a few minutes ago. And so it looks like McCain and Clinton in this round. Ooh, I like very much that it's an across the board different result from that in Iowa. Now I guess it's ten more rounds of crazy campaigning before South Carolina and it looks like Obama and Clinton are neck in neck! It's like watching a rugby match.

And just for kicks- to bring it back to, uh, this blogs loosely connected themes, Healthline has a little sum-up of Obama's universal health coverage plan. It's interesting. And complicated. I'm definitely all for a single-payer system, myself. Simple! That means cheap! If you don't know how that stuff works, go watch the animation that Graham at Over My Med Body put together.

Whew

2008-01-07T15:42:00.000-05:00

Well, this is really silly but I've made it to my goal of five med school interview invites.

The number five is not based on anything reasonable, like I read somewhere that five was a good number to do. It's just the number that the med student I met at a wedding in October had had. Seemed like a good number. Though it's a strange thing to have a goal about since it's not as if I really had any control. I'm more amused at this one than completely thrilled as I was with the others, I mean, I already got in. But I'm one for keeping my options open, so I'll head on up to MA again to see what they've got.

Old People! Hooray!

2008-01-07T09:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I missed yesterday. Alas. I did, and I think this counts, considering posting on what I'm about to post on, but there were major distractions in trying to finish my darling's xmas etc. present before she got back from an extended stay with her parents in North Carolina. And then there was the distraction of her being home.

Yesterday something pretty amazing happened in my life. My mother, actually, did something amazing.

In the spirit of "It takes a village" my brother and I were raised by a bevy of folks outside my parents. Among them are Ethel and Lorraine. And they are as old and interesting as their names make them sound. They were our day care, our baby sitters, our nannies. It's been years, of course, since they carted us to piano lessons, but I see them when I'm home. I stop by as you would with any grandparent. And until yesterday I hadn't managed to come out to either of them. There are some excuses. I live on the other side of the country. They're old. And then there were those sideways whispers from intermediaries that "They won't understand." An 83-year-old, old-fashioned, mid-western farm girl is not going to get on board with your crazy lesbo thing, I mean, she calls "lunch," "dinner" for pete's sake!

But them, my mama wanted to do something as yet unprecedented in our family. She wanted to give my darling a cameo in the annual february letter. (This is like a holiday letter for procrastinators). And of course, no one displays the grainy inkjet photos and winter cheer than Ethel and Lorraine. Just like that, it was time. Mom asked how I wanted to tell them, and I could feel that old fear of rejection lump bubble up out of my stomach. And that's when the first bit of amazing-ness happened. My mama stepped in just like you imagine a parent can and took the burden right off my shoulders. She suggested that she do it for me.

Really, it couldn't have been any other way. I'm not about to fly to Minnesota in the next couple of weeks just to go, "poof, I'm gay!" and the advent of hearing aids hasn't actually made it possible to have a conversation that consists of more than "Yes, we're coming by in ten minutes," with them. But I thought I might have to ask her to do it, and then coach her. It turns out that she's one of those cool moms who's gotten all hip to your world.

I'm glad that I trusted her because yesterday brought news of the go around with Lorraine. And you know, just like pretty much every coming-out I've been through, I should have trusted her. She wiped my snot as a kid and went to my soccer games and drilled good manners into me. Who knows you better than the people who know about the naughty things you did as a child? My 83-year old, old fashioned, mid-western farm girl of a nanny is a-ok with me being gay. And was, as reported by my mother, was quite dismissive of my worry that she'd be anything but. Mom showed her a picture of me with my darling, whom Lorraine pronounced to be "pretty." Hey, it's 2007, she might be old but it turns out that she already knows some kid-raising lesbian moms. Anyway, lesson learned.

Things I don't know how to fix

2008-01-05T23:29:00.000-05:00

I was interested, though not shocked to read about this recent study published in JAMA which found that Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to be prescribed heavy pain meds in the ER. This is no slouch sample, either, they looked at 150,000 visits and found that only 23 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Latinos received opioids compared to 31 percent of whites.

Ok, not shocked, I'll repeat, but totally appalled. This is what sucks about modern racism. It's not your local neo-nazi making a scene, it's everyone either subconsciously or quietly treating people differently based on race. No, wait, that's making it nice, it's not treating people differently, it's treating people of color worse. The discrepancies found by this study are huge even for complaints such as kidney stones and long bone fractures.

Now, I understand that most ERs contend with a certain amount of drug seeking behavior in patients and that it's something to be wary of. I can only assume that there's a Doctor race auto-pilot that says Black=drugs. Here's the kicker: Blacks are actually the least likely group to suffer from opiate addiction.

All the while I'm reading about this and making this post, in some other tab an episode of House, MD is playing. And he makes asinine racist jokes all the time. The jokes seem to carry the assumption that he's a stand in for society when he makes them. But hell, half the show's success rests on the dark humor of House being a jerk to people. What's the impact of what he says on the viewing public? When House jokes about race, is he reinforcing stereotypes and helping us bright-eyed doctor hopefuls (who can still watch these shows only because we don't know a dern thing about doctoring yet, I'm told) become people who will only continue the problem? Or is it so deep down already that maybe he can bring it to the surface? Maybe, but I'm guessing that reports out of JAMA might do a better job of that. On the other hand, despite the numerous medical blogs I read, I picked this story up first while glancing through the news and the only blog I saw mention it was Pam's House Blend. Not exactly a medical blog, so who's paying attention?

So, I'm gonna be a doctor

2008-01-04T20:19:00.000-05:00

It's true, dear reader, I have been accepted to medical school. The secretary, who made it feel as though she was one of my friends' moms by the end of my interview day, gave me a call last week as I was heading to my Grum's house for the holidays. Just like that, one day I was obsessively checking my email in hope of some kind of sign and the next it was decided, written. Needless to say I made quite a scene as soon as we hung up. I had pulled into a crowded gas station parking lot to take the call, so at least twenty pairs of confused eyes took in my party-of-one in the drivers seat as I whooped and banged on my Subaru's ceiling. I almost want to get a tattoo in celebration.

Apologies for not sharing the news sooner, but, you know, what with holidays and my former non-committed blogger status, it didn't dribble out until now.

I'm feeling now, however, that I should turn sober and introspective. Here, let me consider the weight of my chosen career and all of the implications therein. I should... but maybe I'll save that post for the first day of actual medical school. Which I can say. Because I got in. So I'm going. Which is, uh, mad cool. It's funny how I'm not really nervous about all the work and pressure and how hard the actual school->residency->practice part will be. Mostly because that's on me, I can handle that, but man does it suck to have faceless admissions boards holding your future in their hands. I'd like to thank them, for giving it back. Actually, I almost sent them a card with my deposit check that said something along the lines of "Holy Crap, I'm So Excited!" but it wouldn't fit into the envelope.

Caucus, THIS

2008-01-03T22:29:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks after I turned four, my grandfather sent me a letter. I don't now remember the first time I read it, but I do remember finding it again a few years later. The letter is written on Dukakis/Bentsen Stationary, and dated Election Day, November 1988. Grampa's jagged scrawl filled the page with dark black ink.

Dear Granddaughter,
At the top of this page are the names of two good people who were just not elected to the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. As good Democrats, they advocated for strong education, affordable healthcare and programs to help the poor. Unfortunately, George Bush and Dan Quayle with their promise of no new taxes were able to sway the election. What this means is less healthcare, less education, and lots of people without jobs. I am writing to you because it is extremely important that as you grow up you pay close attention to the views of politicians and cast votes for those that care more about people than money. I hope you talk this over with your parents.
Love, Grampa
P.S. Kelley and Stephanie [two sheep I had named a year before] have not had their lambs yet, if it happens I will send you pictures.

While my mother assures me I was much more interested in the sheep at the time, I can't remember ever not caring about the political process. Though I frequently mixed up the words "liberal" and "conservative" and was unable to match them correctly with "left wing" and "right wing," I have always known where I stood when it came to Republicans and Democrats. I will never forget, and neither will my best friend from grade school, the conversation we had as eight-year-olds in which I demanded she choose a party loyalty. Her answer being not so satisfactory, I demanded, "You mean you would have voted for NIXON?! Don't you know that he resigned?!"

Keep your comments about brainwashing to yourselves.

Anyway, now I feel like some kind of politics junkie. I cover my local podunk journal, New York Times, BBC websites, a smattering of blogs and all of my car radio pre-sets are for the regional public radio station. Firefox's tabbed browsing is really a killer because as a member of the multi-tasking generation, I get twitchy if I don't have all of these sites open at once. Which brings me to the primaries.

I just got home from watching the coverage at Turtle's house (CNN, MSNBC for commercial breaks, peaks at Faux News for kicks) and I'm having trouble feeling any emotion at all. Well, ok, I'm pretty psyched about Huckabee because there's no way in heckles he can win, but if he does, I'm moving because then we really are a fallen nation beyond hope. But over on the democratic side, I never got around to really picking. It's like when my uncle finally put that inground pool, he agonized over what to choose for surrounding patio surfacing. Too much research lead him to an impasse because he was so thoroughly versed in the drawbacks of all of his options. The Hillary/Edwards/Obama trifecta is sort of the same deal. Heck, I like all of them better than the front runners last time around, but the excessive reading and comparing has left me in a funk. A few days ago I said I was rooting for Obama, but then felt as guilty as the time I lost my stuffed bunny "bunny" under my bed a didn't notice for days because Snowy the bear was my favorite. So I kind of like Edwards, but then I feel guilty for not wanting to be dedicated to breaking the white male stranglehold on the presidency. And gosh, that Hillary Clinton is trying so hard. It just kills my inner Nice Minnesota Girl to root against her.

I'm going to bed. We'll let those crazies up in New Hampshire decide.

Whatever Made Me Think?

2008-01-02T13:30:00.000-05:00

New Year's resolutions have never gone well for me. Never. Except last year. Every year's thought of "I'll write a letter every month" "I'll call an old friend every week" and the absurd "I'll make huge biceps!!" failed miserably. But last year "no buying new things" and "no soda" went remarkably well. So well that I forgot that my keeping of New Year's resolutions is really about 4%. In any case. It is January Second, 2008. And I have already messed up this year. Because I didn't post in my blog yesterday. Alas.

New Year's Resolutions, or Why I'm a Bad Blogger

2007-12-06T16:30:00.001-05:00

This post could also have started with a question: what's worse than working thirteen hours on a Friday? Returning to work at 7:30 AM on Saturday, or why I'm a bad blogger.

Maybe bad is pushing it, but it was a couple of weeks ago now when my darlin pulled up the front page of this humble pot of blogular slooge, pulled her cursor to the date of my last post and gave me the look that also means "it's your turn to empty the dishwasher and you didn't and you don't plan to either and that really makes me cross."

It's not that I suck at writing, I'm ok. It's more that thing where I want it to be good all the time so I sort of choke when I'm not ready to spew greatness at you. Then, when I do post it's more because the non-posting guilt has built to an unbearable level. This also makes me forget what great thing I thought of to post about two days earlier and the result is a post like the one you are now reading.

All this brings me to my New Year's Resoultion. In 2008, I will post every single day. I think I will get better at expressing myself if I do it all of the time. I think that I will process half-processed ideas better if I make myself write about these gayenvironmentmedschool things.

But the really great part about this resolution is that I can still procrastinate posting for twenty-five more days! What freedom that will be.

This feels like a good resolution because it is weighty, but also do-able. In that way, it is similar to this year's resolution, although decidedly less beneficial for the world in general. This year I vowed to not purchase newly made items and dragged my darlin along for the ride. And I'm almost there! Nothing new! We made exceptions for the gray area of food and anything directly related to health. I am now a serious garage-sale pro. I am a knower of all things Salvation Army (aka Pier 2) ((Wednesday is half off!!)).

Anyway, as impact-lite as last year's resolution was, out the window it goes for this jaunt into the blogosphere. Also going is last year's no-soda resolution. I think I'm replacing it with no soda except for root beer in a bottle and anything in a mixed drink.

When I saw out the window concerning last year's resolution, I don't really mean that. What I really mean is that I've learned its lessons and made it a part of my life now. I'm just never going to buy something new when I can get it quality used. It's so obvious when in this consumer culture, my neighbors, or rather those folks who live several neighborhoods over, throw away everything I need. Also less plastic, more glass!

And Here's What I Did Last Weekend

2007-11-07T13:31:00.000-05:00

I have mountains of data and piles of backlogged water samples. Thusly, I'll direct my fine readers (All Three of You!) to treehugger for a summary, of how I spent my weekend. The me-specifics you'll miss are: I drove a van of 12 college students six hours to get there. The charming conversation I shared with my shotgun freshdude, who already has some pretty serious hippie cred, filled me up with hope for the future. I felt darn old and kept wanting to tell him how "full of promise" he was. Weird. Weird. Weird.

Also what you won't find out is that I spent Saturday night with my dearest friend from cough, prep school, cough, and got to test some of the lovliest of Dupont circle area drinking establishments. I was delighted to find that her apartment still sports some artifacts from her boarding school dorm room and we got all caught up on life's happenings.

Klutzes Need Not Apply

2007-11-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

This is what should top the job description for my replacement when they post it in the spring.

I am accident prone. It's not pretty, it's not horrible, it's just true. If I were one to cry over spilled milk, well, let's just say that I'd be pretty dehydrated most of the time. Anyway, being a Very Serious Water Ecologist like me involves fine motor skills sometimes and also a large amount of expensive glassware. Yes, it's true that I've broken the occasional volumetric flask or seperatory funnel. Yes I've broken the frequent test tube. But today just really took the cake. I broke the bulb on my sonde's pH probe. I was cleaning it gently with a q-tip. Everything about today seemed great, perfect fall weather, crunchy leaves, delicious english muffin at breakfast and then my new q-tip probe cleaning technique was working so well! It deschutzified like nothing else. Until the probe shattered and then it didn't really matter, did it. All of the big-kid type scientists who have been doing this for a while have been sympathetic. My boss just blatantly made fun of me for being uber klutzy, but still. This does suck. Not in a small way because half of the other probes on the instrument rely on the pH reading for their readings. I took out the broken one and capped its port. It still thinks that it can measure pH, but the readings are insane. It said 2 sitting in sink water and then I grabbed its housing and the reading jumped to, uh, 37. For those not pH saavy, the scale only goes to 14. I don't know how much it costs, but the entire instrument, which I just rendered almost useless until we can get it replaced, costs $9000.

SIGH. And tonight I am planning to clean our room and the bathroom. Maybe we can watch Heros and eat ice cream. Probably I'll just be in that kind of mood that makes me start analyzing the show and I'll totally ruin it for myself. Oi, I'm quite the Eyore right now.

Grammar!

2007-10-24T16:04:00.000-04:00

Despite many more interesting and curious ideas and happenings to blog about. I am simply providing this delightful link, which has has captured my attention away from analyzing the results of alkalkinity titrations.

Miss Steaks!

Interrorogated

2007-10-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

Yay! It's over! I did an interview! So why don't I feel all chilled out and relieved it's over? Eh... who knows?

I looked way spiffy. I was the only person not dressed in black or gray. Who knew brown could be so revolutionary? The morning started at an unspeakable hour with a perky little info session. It was, uh, too hilarious for words to come in to the mini-conference room spectacle of 30 freaked-out pre-meds. Everyone did that thing where they leave a space between every two people in the seats and eye their neighbors before trying to make awkward conversation. I made one buddy with a cheery dude from San Diego who I quickly discovered was an incessant question-asking kindred spirit. Also there was a kid named Ricky Martin. I mean, his name tag said "Richard" so he could have been a "Rich" or "Rick" or even "Chard," but no, he introduced himself as Ricky. By Choice.

Then came the actual interview part. Now, I like talking about myself. Kind of too much. So much that I spent the four hour drive from home to my Grum's house north of Boston talking out loud to myself about myself. Really, I was practicing. Which was a little stupid because I nearly practiced myself hoarse. This led to some awkward coughing during today's actual time designated for talking about myself. The Old White Guy Doctor from The South was my interviewer, and boy did we bond. I mean, kind of. He gave a little pat on the shoulder as I left, which I think is an excellent sign. Our chat went well, but not amazingly so. I answered his questions well, elaborated some, gave him a bit o' my charm and wit. But, I think he was kind of not so adept at interviewing. There were just a whole lot of things I would have wanted to ask if I was the interviewer.

The plus side of the whole day was the amazing discovery that their med school is a very cool place. Like one I really would like to go to! Much in the way that I eschewed medicine for much of my life because my independent childness made me eschew it, I have somewhat eschewed her alma mater. Until Now.

FUN FACTS:
Almost 40,000 individuals are applying to med school right now!
There are about 18,000 spots in next year's med school classes!

Sexist? Jealous of my Infinity MPG?

2007-10-01T21:52:00.000-04:00

I am very proud of the fact that I bike to work almost every day. It's about 18 minutes to the SMLC from my lovely home in Terebithia, and about 12 to get back (more downhill). There have been post-work errands that necessitate busting out Meriweather, my trusty Subaru.

Yes, I drive a Subaru. Yes I'm a big giant dyke stereotype. Rugby? Check. Softball? Check. Men's clothing? Check. Cats? Check. Serial Monogamist? Check. Best Friends are Exes? Check. Primarily listen to acoustic folk music with female vocalists? Well, you get the idea. I blame the last one on my dad, by the way. He would have done well as a lesbian, but I'm really just as glad that he, uh, was a dude. (Thanks for the genes!)

Anyway. I am very much in love with my ride to and from work. I get to ride up Main Street from our home in the heart of downtown until I hit the residential neighborhood that bumps up against the college. I always see the same older woman, who wears lots of sweaters and eats beans straight from the can. Last week she tickled me a bit by saying "Hey, you're the bike girl" when she ran into me walking by the bank. I always see the same crowd of Hispanic men lingering around the corner with the Citgo station waiting for a construction job.

Oh, Re: Citgo Stations, Love this shirt at threadless:

This is, by no means, a biking town. The DOT folks think a VERY occasional "Share The Road" sign and the suggestion that you "just get off and walk across the crosswalk" are sufficient bicycle infrastructure. " Sigh. For the most part, motorists deal just fine with me in the road. Often, they're so freaked out if I'm making a left at an intersection that they all just freeze and motion for me to go.

Some of the best bike-car interactions I've had:
A woman followed close behind me for a couple of blocks until there was enough room for her to pull all the way into the other lane get around me and yelled "SIDEWALK!" as she passed. Ten seconds later, I caught up to her car at a traffic light. Since her windows were down, I took the opportunity to do a little public education.
"Actually, it's illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk."
"Really? "
"Yeah."
*Woman scowls and glares* "Well, it's still better than riding in the road."
The next day I had the EXACT same experience with a different person, but her reaction was better:
"Actually, it's illegal."
"REALLY!!?? To ride your bike on the sidewalk!??"
"Yeah."
"REALLY? Shit.." *Woman shakes head in wonder and disbelief*

Then there was the guy who pulled up next to me at a traffic light, revved his engines and looked over all like "Wanna Race?" I, of course, took him up on his challenge. Which, I maintain that I won. That is, if the finish line was the other side of the intersection.

Then there was the scary time that a car, for no reason, swerved in front of me and slowed down as I came up behind them. And stayed there. And then did it again a while later after they sped up and then came up to a light.

Those were all pretty funny, but a couple of days ago I had a less good experience. I passed a black pick-up pulled over on the other side of the road. The scruffy man in the front seat, who must have been about 60, stuck his head and shoulders all the way out the window to make friggin kissy noises at me. My first reaction was to flip him the bird, but my inner "nice Minnesota girl" politely pointed out that the car coming toward me might misread my gesture. And then she noted that I could have misinterpreted his expression. I looked back again and learned that I was in no way mistaken, but his light changed and he cruised off. Though part of me is impressed that he recognized my gender under my manly garb and focused bikin' posture, I am so friggin pissed off. I hate that so many men think this shit is ok. That somehow we are here for them to look. That most of society tells them it's ok. Hate it. Dang that patriarchy!

Of course, I have to consider rising gas prices, his crappy miles per gallon and consequential sinking financial resources and male ego. This was probably his way of coping with overwhelming jealousy of my infinity MPG.

Into the NEXT STEPS

2007-10-01T21:40:00.000-04:00

Well, shuck-ee. I have passed another med-school torture, scratch that, application hurdle and some has actually asked me to interview.

What I should be worried about: Why exactly do am I interested in Boston University? "It's in Boston...." is probably not a good answer.

What I'm actually worried about: What the hell am I going to wear?

Full Disclosure: This is, amusingly, where my mother attended med school. And where my father attended engineering school. And where my aunt went to dental school. I don't think they have any way of knowing that. Or rather, I don't think they'd waste time running my parents' names through their magic system. But still. It doesn't help with the whole wanting to be accepted on my own merits thing.

Regarding the second concern: I'm not one to be hung up on clothing. I'm really super not. But I haven't gotten any clothing in more than a year from anywhere besides Salvation Army or Goodwill and, uh, none of it exactly fits me correctly and none of it is exactly formal. My mother has graciously offered to buy for me the interview suit,* or what I hope will become my mad hardcore powerlesbian suit. Think Bette. Ok, I'll never be that hott. Or that femme. Hrm. "Suit" Doesn't exactly answer my question. I mean, I have the suit I got from Target a while back. And it looks rather hott on me, but, uh, it is noticeably too big. It's too big because I intended to be able to use it for all manner of cross-dressing purposes and it need to be big enough to hide my gazingas. (Thank you to Dad for that particular brestical slang term). Sigh, anyway, now I'm in the how do I find a suit that actually fits, like, um, one made for women, that doesn't debutchify? Maybe I just wear it with a tie.

*Ok, technically I asked for that as my birthday present. But it was such a cute way to tell her I got an interview, right? "Hey mom, I thought of something you can get me for my birthday!"

Done!

2007-09-24T13:14:00.001-04:00

The very very last piece of mail that I needed to send for med school apps is USPS priority mailed (with delivery confirmation!). Did I go to all of that trouble for the rest of the apps? No, but these last ones seemed more urgent. Besides I didn't have envelopes so they're wrapped in pages from my HSCESMLC alum magazine. And they seemed safer put inside of those special priority window envelopes. And then maybe they'll get closer to the top of the stack when they come through the admissions office doors. You just never know.

Nude Yoga, Hot Corners, and Casper

2007-09-21T00:18:00.000-04:00

Whew! My last two weeks of frequent early mornings to scramble a few hours of work before 8 or 9 am meetings are officially over. Tonight was the official public forum to discuss the state of Poor Casper with the local watershed residents and some folks from other watershed groups in the county. Five of us spoke, with me playing MC and "save the whales" promoter. Making a PowerPoint with five people who refuse to get together all in one room at one time until the day before the presentation blows goats. That's all I have to say about that.

It's over, it went well. I've already gotten email from some folks who want to jump on board.

There were really just a couple of hang ups. Due to PowerPoint and every other dern product that microsoft produces, we decided to use my computer to make the presentation and to present it. This would have been a good idea if, well, if I hadn't left my laptop charger in Seattle last January. DHM has the same Mac that I do, and she is too gracious for words, so sharing has been pretty much fine for the general evening and weekend use that my laptop experiences.

But the really overly-wonderful DHM gave me free use of the charger this evening, so that wasn't really the hang up. The first problem arose about five minutes in when I discovered that gmail notifier is so very determined to notify you that you have a new message that it's ghostly ten second window appears even in front of an ongoing slide show. So the audience got to read the subject and first lines of any and all email I received during the presentation. Ooops.

The second hang-up revolved around my dear colleagues inability to keep away from the corners of my screen with the mouse. Granted I should have warned them, because I do have the corners set to do all sorts of wooshy things with application windows. Maybe the wooshing helped folks stay awake through the darkened room/comfy chair shebang.

About half-way through, the hang-ups had happened and they weren't much of a big deal. Two emails had shown up. One from The Nation, confirming my change of address and the other from MoveOn. Seeing as how it was an environmental science presentation, I doubt there was much shock at the revelation of my political tendencies.

And then I remembered that for the last few days Turtle and I had been exchanging emails with the subject heading "Nude Yoga?" And we have been known to exchange several emails in a day. I became convinced that at any second the next email that popped up on the screen would not only obscurey dramatic photos of raw sewage spewing into the stream, but also would scream "NUDE YOGA!!" It was a slow thirty minutes that followed, I assure you. Turtle came through, and did not send any ill-timed emails.

Well, it's off to sleep with me. I'm waiting impatiently for my darlin to return from an exciting excursion to see "Roller Derby: the Musical." Yeah. Read that again. I can't wait for the report.

Contentment

2007-09-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

I'm always thinking that what I really want out of life is to acheive something or make the world a better place or inspiration or or or, something.

My new friend Turtle told me that he neither believes in nor understands ambition last week. I met him a couple of months ago and am gluing our lives together as best as possible because our bubbling friendship is feeling like the kind that pop up few times in life. This little comment of his, which was attached to why he dislikes DC, really gave me pause. I think that in many ways the last five years or so of life have been a big process of detaching myself from the confused ambition that I mistakenly picked out of family encouragement toward academic pursuits, which was amplified by the three years at snotty prep school.

That time in college when I went abroad and wrote hundreds of pages in my journal, I thought I learned the important lesson related to this. At the time, it was "it doesn't matter how long things take in life" and "make sure you enjoy life now, dude." But I never framed it in terms of questioning long term ambitions.

Enter med school applications. I am afraid that I might not have stopped to make myself really confront how much of this doctorly driven desire is based in 1. fear of financial difficulties, 2. ambition toward respectability, 3. it makes my mother happy.

Anyway, what I said to Turtle today is that I keep realizing that what I'm really after is contentment. All those other things are just what I do because I think it will get me there. As much as 1, 2, and 3 play some part in me wanting to be a doctor, so do a whole heap of other things. I do have to work hard to become a doctor. I don't have to be miserable I don't have to get the best grades or be the most cutting edge. I want to take care of people. I want to help them be healthier. I want to be good at it and I want to work hard at it. But I also want to do other things and this doctoring path doesn't have to consume me.

These thoughts are jumbled, I apologize. Well, back to Casper. Connections are the thing. Casper=Health.

Of Chaos

2007-09-11T17:26:00.001-04:00

So who knew I would start off as such a hiccoughing blogger? Well, I'll try to be better, I swear. This is a mighty whirlwind of a week. Every time I think that I'm finally starting to be on top of things at work, I discover that, no, actually, I'm not at all. My laundry list of what I want to do is so long!

Poor Casper is being neglected. The BMIzz are so far from being counted and some of the time dependent lab work is far from finished. Egad!

This would all be easier if professors were easier to find. They could do this in several ways:
1. Move into their offices.
2. Respond to my emails immediately, ignoring others if necessary.
3. Carry a pager to which only I have the number, or a cell phone.
4. Rearrange their schedules to attend meetings that I call.

Not so hard, eh? On the up side, they are hard to find because they are all working very hard to educate the future and other vaguely important work.

With one exception, ahem, Chemistry who up and disappeared to Cape Cod on me. To be fair, he is on leave this semester....

They are quite fabulous as a bunch, and I'm lucky to have them. Just difficult to coordinate. Well, all that said, and I'm just going to leave you haning for actual content and head home for dinner.

Caffeine Vs. Eyelids

2007-08-30T09:19:00.000-04:00

Who would have know that it mattered so much whether you put the NED reagent in before the sulfanilimide? Maybe if I bothered to find out what NED is other than, uh, "Ned" I might have realized that if I put it in first it would mean three additional hours in the chem lab.

Yesterday was nutrient day. It's a very cruel follow-up to Tuesday, which was sampling day. Oh sampling day! now only joyous carefree moments of my past. What could be better than spending a hot day outside in rubber pants? Despite the sweat, rampant poion ivy, creek scuz and mysterious orange ooze, saying "Hi" to Casper's 21 sample sites (ie filling 105 bottles with water) is actually something I love to do. The amazing highlight of sample day was the discovery of tomato plants miraculously growing out of the rip-rap behind K-mart. That particular site is by the side of a US route and between K-Mart, Blockbuster and a Valvoline station. Casper is completely channelized and most people--even those who live in the residential areas much further downstream--think of it as a drainage ditch rather than a creek. But there they were, aided I'm sure by the runoff-induced high levels of nitrogen and phosphate in the creek, a cherry tomato and your classic Big Boy. I can't wait to digest the one I brought home in acid and run it through our ICP to check out if it did any heavy metal uptake!

Anyway, as for the cruel follow-up. Classes at this "Highly Selective Co-Educational Small Liberal Arts College," which has been so kind as to provide to me full-time employment hanging out with Casper, begin today. Significance? I have lost all of my summer research students. And all of my jolly professor helpers have lost their spare time. Sad Face. We have to run the nutrient analysis within 48 hours lest some stray organic material break down and deplete our numbers. Thusly, I was stuck with the job of four people in one day. Add that to the whole screw-up with Ned and you get 12.5 hours in the lab. Hello biking home at 10:45.

Oh, but wait, first I had to beg security to let me into my office. (The HSCESLAC claims to care about the enviroment, but my research labs are in three different buildings none of which are the same building as my office). This request was met with an incredulous look and "Are you a STUDENT?" "No," I replied, "I am approximately three months older than students, but I am actually an employee." I'm pretty sure the security guard is still debating whether or not I was actually just trying to steal my bike out of the office. And here I thought I was going the legit route by not just climbing in the window.

End of the story: had a breakfast date with an old friend at 7am. Am tired.

The Skirt Thing Again

2007-08-27T12:43:00.000-04:00

This weekend provided for many delightful experiences, including a visit from my parents. As a Recent College Graduate co habiting with my darlin' in our very own apartment w/ guest bed, I am right on the cusp between the life stages when your parents could not possibly stay with you when they come to visit and when it would be pretty douchey to ask them to stay somewhere else. Thankfully UP (Upstairs Housemate) and DHM (Downstairs Housemate... not "deep hidden meaning," though she has plenty) were into hosting the parents and so in came their traditionally excessive luggage. I hope that I continue to be young and poor enough so that the gift of a free meal out providing two additional meals worth of leftovers will be a feature of these visits for years to come.

As is often known to occur, the visit did allow for several wardrobe comments from the Mother.

Offhandedly: "or you could wear a skirt once in a while." "I really think it's men who lose out in fashion, they're just so comfortable." "If you're making these decisions for comfort, fine. If you Really think boxers are more comfortable.." And etc.

They usually take the form of awkward joking or unnecessary vocal support for feminine attire. Sigh. This manlywoman genderblender is a little sad. I should take this opportunity to point out that I have been overwhelmingly lucky throught the whole "Mommy, Daddy, I'm A Homoqueerlesbidyke" process. Never was it suggested that I was lesser in their eyes, never did I fear losing their love. And they have graciously made a substantial journey in knowledge accumulation.

Mom and I got a chance to talk about the whole thing.

Me: So, the skirts and boxers comments are you just teasing me or a little bit serious.
PAUSE
PAUSE
*Appearance of vaguely frustrated expression on her face*
Mom: Oh, I guess a little bit serious.

She went on to admit a "secret" fear that I'd someday want to become a man. The ol' slippery slope theory. And so what to say? My immediate sense was to assuage her fears, because, well, I wouldn't identify as "trans," nor do I expect to. And while I'd say I definitely identify with the idea of "genderqueer" and seriously value non-binary gender roles and presentation, I don't not identify as "woman." But how to tell her this without making it OK for her to ignore her own transphobia?

What I can say is "No, mommy, I don't want to be a man."

(Left Image is from Kate Bornstein's Gender Workbook, if anyone ever reads this I suppose I'll have to get rid of it)

She used the word "devestating" to describe what it would be like for her if I did want to transform my gender. And then handed out the typical of her generation-even for lesbians-sense that not wanting to be "woman" is a betrayal of feminism.

I had an inner panic, but I shouldn't worry so much, because she actually does get it, when I take the time to talk these things through. Trans identity and trans politics are complicated, vast and not unified and there are certainly trans views that I don't understand or agree with. But me wearing men's clothing, donning short hair, and not freaking out when people call me sir are reflective of a desire to expand what it can mean to be woman-bodied. It's co-opt not adopt. I'm honoring, and building on this feminist tradition that she tried to steep me in as a child. Transgressing woman is not being man, gender is not binary, breath in, breath out. But, if I did need to transition, she would have to learn to be OK with it. Devestated parents is devestating for their kids, I've got enough trans buddies who can attest to that one.

It was one of those hard-but-good conversations we tend to have. The ones that always leave me wishing I'd been more articulate and a little worried about how these ideas would get repeated. Of course maybe the whole teasing thing was really just because I forced her and Daddio to sort bugs with me for a few hours on Friday. "This totally microscopic white thready thing isn't one of them, right? OH, really?"

Bugs in my Sleep

2007-08-22T12:56:00.001-04:00

I have been having trouble sleeping. This is primarily because whenever I close my eyes I see tiny little bugs behind my eyelids. Mostly I see caddisfly larvae:

And midge larvae, which pretty much look the same but with orange heads and fewer legs.

This is because I have spent all day, every day, for about a week and a half with my face about two inches from a petri dish of bug-and-creek-sludge surprise.

It is actually a pretty cool technique, I suppose. We collect bags full of the bottom sediments in the creek then drown whatever might be living there in ethanol and take em home. After that, GW here gets to sit around in a borrowed lab and sort the little critters (or Benthic Macro Invertebrates, or "BMIs" as those in the know call them or "BMIzz" as those cool kids in the know like to call the) from the sludge, count them, pull out 100 at random, ID them and tabulate. Repeat. Forty times. Start to finish it takes at least a day per bag.

It is about the best way to assess the "health" of the stream, I mean, the little critters do live there. And since we know which ones are more sensitive to bad water conditions, like Stone Flies, and which aren't, like leeches, we can get a sense of the creek's health and biodiversity.

I'm about ready to say screw Casper (this is the creek, the Casperkill or Casper's Creek) and its unhealthy water. At first I thought I just had to put up with the vague intoxication of inhaling ethanol all day long, but then visions began. Sleep used to be so pleasant and now I shudder to close my eyes. I'm going to get in trouble with my darlin' too if I keep trying to kiss her with my eyes open. YOU try to get romantic with visions of clumped larvae floating in front of you.

Of course, maybe I'm just having trouble sleeping because I've developed a nasty cough. Is it the ethanol? I mean, really, who gets a "cough?" An English professor friend of mine pointed out that women in Victorian novels are often prone to getting coughs. Of course, that usually means it's close to the end.

Lumpy

2007-08-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

Let's discuss, shall we? Med school applications are mad un-fun. Here I am within reach of completion and I can not focus.

If you're not savvy, the process goes like this:
1. Starting early June you can submit a common-app type first round called AMCAS
2. Then you wait for all the millions of schools (13 for me, though that's lower than average) you applied to to send you secondary applications. These have ranged from Mayo's "send us $85 bucks then we'll talk" to UMN Duluth's 15 odd essay question behemoth of an application.
3. Then you make sure you got all the random pieces in an spend the next eight months hoping someone will interview you and let you in.

It is honestly hard to say if that whole making the world a better place/saving lives thing is worth all this, not to mention the $2000 it's costing just to apply. Not to mention that, oh, you know, med school is supposed to be hard and the er $90,000 odd dollars worth of debt most kids peace out with.

In any case, the essay I'm not writing today, and indeed haven't been writing for a couple of weeks, is Brown's charming "what is your best attribute?" question. Despite my absurdly high self-esteem, I do feel somewhat douchey trying to answer this question. Not to mention the amount of work it's taking to appease my desire to be clever about the whole thing.

Resources

2007-08-19T16:59:00.001-04:00

I'll put links and stuff in here

Contact

2007-08-19T16:27:00.000-04:00

To contact me in a non-public forum, email so says green weaver at gmail dot com.

If I figure out how to get a lil contact form in here, I will do it, just to save you from having to open your email software.

About Green Weaver

2007-08-19T16:23:00.002-04:00

Green Weaver is written by a dykey, crunchy, almost med student. My background is in environmental studies and I try to keep that eye on the world. My other eye usually has some kind of gender-related lens on it. And from there we head off to medical school. I'm an optimistic kind of kid and looking forward to a world where love beats fear.

Yes, it's an ER reference. Stop laughing.

A bunch of little rocks!

2007-08-09T23:40:00.000-04:00

High Five, make that ten, goes out to Senator Gravel for his darling grandfather+I heart the gays performance in the LOGO channel's presidential candidate debate/chit chat about LGBT issues. Turns out that his name is not pronounced the same way as the pervious road surface. Gravelle. Ah.

And thus begins my welcome post to blog world. I have graduated from cushy lj world and into this here place o' bloggin.
The Upstairs Housemate (UP) was tiredface, so we didn't see everyone. I am sad to have missed Hillary. Really just for this reason. Ok, not really. (My main problem with that video, take it or leave it, is that she keeps talking about seeing "Hill on Capitol Hill." She's a senator oh hott4hill slice, the womyn works on Capitol Hill) I have to admit that I haven't gotten my heart set on a primary candidate yet. I'm in the pros-and-cons with all of them phase. I did really like how the debate highlighted the intersection of LGBT issues and healthcare issues, which are really just access issues.

But Gravel! What a fabulous dude. Even Kuchinich responded to the "Are Obama, Clinton and Edwards tools on gay issues?" question with, "Er, I support gay marriage." Mr. Badass Iheartthgays Grandad Gravel quite plainly called them tools, or actually just "not leaders." Edwards sounded like he had just learned about gay people yesterday at his charming visit to the "Gay and Lesbian Center" in LA. Note the conspicuous BTQ absence.