CAR CRASHES AND TRAIN TROUBLES

I was sitting in the back seat of the car, idly playing with my phone, staring out the window at the receding town of Marion, Illinois, and breathing a sigh of relief at having escaped the family reunion without having been forced to renounce my support for the pinko policies of our president. I definitely wasn’t paying a lick of attention to what was happening in front of the car.

“Uh-oh, this isn’t good,” came Rick's voice from the front seat.

I leaned left to angle for a view of the front windshield. A gray Cadillac with a smashed hood was swerving wildly and heading straight towards us. While I’m not sure if I registered that the driver was slumped in his seat I somehow knew he wasn’t conscious.

The muscles in my neck constricted. Zombies arose in my mind as one possible explanation. I should have braced for impact but I stayed stock still as Rick drove on and then veered right at a crucial moment, pulling the car up on the sidewalk between two telephone poles as the car sped by us. Safe, we turned to see the Cadillac smash into a telephone pole about 100 feet away.

We all heaved massive sighs of relief and Rick made a U-turn to check on the condition of the driver. When we got there two guys had already stopped to open the car door and try to rouse the man. He was an old guy, late 70s-ish, unconscious but alive. The airbag had deployed but there was a thin stream of red technicolor blood down one side of his face. It seemed that the poor fellow had suffered a heart attack or stroke and lost consciousness with his foot on the gas. He seemed to have first hit a business that sold memorial headstones and then veered towards us before the second collision stopped him.

Rick got a blanket out of the guy’s trunk and found some ID to give to the paramedics who arrived within minutes. I put my head on my mother’s shoulder and cried a little.

On our way out of town I remembered to take a picture for Sarah, who shares her last name with the town. Most of it was quite a bit nicer than this sorry place.

The reunion was pleasant and it was good to see the extended family, a big bunch of very friendly people with political views completely contrary to my own. I sobered up with fear on the first night when one of the cousins turned to ask me what I thought about the direction the country was going in. I wouldn’t attribute malicious intentions to anyone – quite possibly they were just curious about probing the logical capabilities of a real live liberal in their midst – but I did feel quite alone and rather under attack. Thankfully it didn’t last long. The next day I identified one group unlikely to debate which party was to blame for the econopocalypse: the under-12 set. I spent much of Sunday bent over coloring books and browsing the more hilarious options in the Mac photobooth with the kids.

My cousin Nora knew something about imovie and suggested we make a film, which, after hitting on voice-overs as our filmic stamp, we did. Here is a cropped version, featuring Danny voiced by sheep, Amanda voiced by Nora, and Dustin voiced by Danny:

I spent the next week in St. Louis with the fam and my giant stack of books. (For the record I read about 8, far short of the goal of 2/day). Meals were eaten, garage sales were perused, floors were sanded. I spent a particularly delightful day and night in the town of Washington, a little old town on the Missouri river where Rick is fixing up a stately brick house built in 1926.

There was some sadness in the trip too. I got the news that a good friend of my fathers passed away from a stroke and on Sunday attended the memorial for my uncle Dave. It was a good time to remember that these functions serve a positive purpose, ritualistically and socially. There were many reunions of people who hadn’t seen each other in decades and much laughter and fond memories.

I boarded the Texas Eagle last night at 8pm, and watched the sun set over St. Louis (and railcars heaped with coal) before the train left the depot.

Once the windows returned nothing but my own dark reflection I turned to drink and book, buying a wee bottle of Dewar’s in the lounge and drinking it on ice while reading contentedly from George Saunders’ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. I spent a few pleasant minutes trying to decide how to describe the sound and feeling off the train (eventually deciding on rattle/scrape thump-a-thump) and then drifted off to sleep, curled up on my two seats and raised footrests.

I love Amtrak, I really do, but the rails in this country are in a sorry state and it is a rare trip that doesn’t encounter some problem or delay. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when a group of loud and pissed-off travelers came tromping through my carriage at 3am on their way to the observation lounge. It took me quite a while to get back to sleep as I could hear them loudly venting (“they better give us a whole hell of a lot more than free snacks for this”) and reviewing the nights’ events. Turns out the last carriage had come loose and separated from the rest of the train shortly after we left Little Rock. The passengers were trapped inside without air-conditioning or explanation for almost an hour. Finally they were picked up and added to our carriage. In recognition of the inconvenience, there were free snack packs and unlimited free drip coffee in the lounge for the whole next day. Personally I would have given them scotch instead.

This event narrowly beat being briefly woken up by a conductor yelling at the couple in the seats in front of me around midnight: “I SEE what you doin’ there. You betta stop that or you’ll be gettin’ off at the NEXT stop – there are CHILDREN here….. I SEEN you get up when you saw me come in” – apparently my neighbors were trying to join the rail equivalent of the mile high club.

The next day was tremendously pleasant. I moved back and forth between my seat and the adjacent observation car reading and eavesdropping on conversations. Two Texan women with big hair, copious make-up, and genteel manners talked about being trapped in the disconnected train carriage, laughingly recollecting the deep discussions about life they had had during that dark hour. A burly man with tattoos and gold jewelry sat by himself with a large bottle of iced tea and a bag of Werther’s Original’s candy, looking over an Amtrak rail map and swearing aloud. Two boisterous little boys climbed over the seats and swarmed their patient grandfather while engaging in verbal one-upmanship.

“I’m smarter than you”

“No, I’m smarter than YOU”

“grandpa is the smartest person in the world”

“Unh-Uh – GOD is smarter than EVERYONE”

[pause]

“No, I am smarter”

“Not not not not not not not not not…”

“QUIT IT!”

I also observed one of the boys chewing half-heartedly on one of his arms and arguing “We can drink our blood, but we can’t drink our arms.” His companion agreed, adding sagely “we can drink our guts.”

But my very favorite had to be the absurd but strangely compelling “that scared me to my donuts.”

I also enjoyed watching the awkward courtship between a cute hippy girl and a young hipster who spent our layover in Fort Worth smoking outside of my window. Pictures are below.

The observation car:

Temple, Texas:

The surprisingly Indiana-like landscape of the state:

I arrived last night at 7pm in Austin, the new home of the amazing Ryan Dobosh. It promises to be quite the week.

"SO JUST WHAT DO YOU STUDY ANYWAY?"

The end of the academic year always brings with it last-minute paper writing, the sweet smell of springtime, and that favorite of thirsty graduate students everywhere, the departmental party.  After everyone has raided the hors d'oeuvres and gotten a few drinks in their belly we all tend to feel less embarrassed about the fact that we've been going to school with someone for three years and still have no idea what they study.  It's easier than you think in a four-field department. My archaeologist and bio-anthropologist friends speak totally different academic languages than I do (I once visited Georgia in the Bone Lab and saw a list the bioanth kids had made titled "words from cultural anthropology that we don't understand").

I've also found myself doing a little more explaining about my plans for next year ever since the bestowal of grants and monies on my person worked to finally convince a few people (I'm talking to you Matt Dunn) that I might be doing something interesting and possibly even important.  In all honesty I usually avoid bringing up my research outside of my academic circle; I'm more than aware that compared to the exciting artistic endeavors of my friends, the things I spend my days thinking and writing about aren't exactly fun party topics. But if you are curious, I'm happy to share. And since both of my grants are from the federal government, you might as well know what you paid for. Below is a summary I wrote for the NSF on my planned dissertation research on "Consumer Protection and Citizenship in China." I should add that I was required to specifically address the "intellectual merit" and "broader impacts" of my research, else I probably wouldn't have sounded like such a self-impressed prat. Enjoy.

In present-day China, state-sponsored consumer organizations serve as the primary channel for citizens seeking redress for injustices encountered in the marketplace, the only arbiters who can engage the state and the market on issues of “fairness.” Although these organizations and the legal framework for the protection of consumer rights that justifies their existence were designed by party-state bureaucrats primarily as a means of self-preservation, they have laid the institutional and legal groundwork for a new activism grounded in the belief that empowered citizen-consumers can challenge state and market actors who infringe upon their consumer rights. This research will show how Chinese citizens are creating new political identities and changing prevailing ideals and practices of citizenship through consumer activism. As a participant observer in a Chinese consumer organization, the Co-Principal Investigator [that's me] will investigate contested conceptions of consumerism and citizenship at a critical moment in state-society relations to see if efforts by the Chinese state to buttress its authority will arm people with the tools to challenge that very authority.

The intellectual merit of this project derives from the creative approach it takes towards understanding the changing relationship of ordinary Chinese to their government. Research on contemporary China influenced by theories of development which highlight the importance of a civic sphere has frequently concluded that a lack of non-state civic associations coupled with pervasive corruption and insecurity in the marketplace makes for a fragile state-citizen relationship which could undermine future economic growth. Such predictions ignore the possibility that state-sponsored institutions and officially promulgated ideologies calling for the protection of consumers could become tools used by citizens to engage with state and market actors, leading to a transformed civil sphere. This research will examine whether this transformation is occurring within consumer protection institutions, providing a new perspective on development and social change in one-party states. The relationship of consumerism to political activism is also central to this research, which will ask whether the discourse of consumer rights impedes civic engagement or presents possibilities for empowerment. By exploring the ways in which individual citizens articulate their consumer rights and how the state seeks to channel this discourse, this project will challenge the argument that consumption negates class and worker identities and neutralizes political engagement.

The broader impacts of the project lie with its contribution towards answering a question central to understanding contemporary China: is it possible to have a prosperous consumer society without representative democracy? Product scandals in China have garnered a great deal of media interest but almost no scholarly attention. Images of disgruntled and angry citizens in the international media do not speak to how individual consumers are taking advantage of state resources to protect their families from dangerous products. If consumer identities have become central to what it means to be a citizen in present-day China then shifts in structural relationships between citizens, markets, and the state will be captured and embedded in the language of consumer protection, which foregrounds ideas of safety and fairness. This research also has vital ramifications for the safety of consumers around the world. Chinese consumers are the largest market for Chinese-produced goods, including the fakes and counterfeits, unsafe toys, and tainted foodstuffs that have entered numerous overseas markets. If Chinese citizens can utilize consumer protection organizations to make political demands for a stronger domestic regulatory regime, they will transform the global marketplace for the betterment of all of its consumers.

LITTLE 5

Last weekend was Bloomington’s Little 500, an annual bicycle race precipitated by the biggest party week of the year. During the week undergraduate attendance drops by nearly half, the school newspaper publishes op-eds about why Little 5 is the greatest college party in the whole U.S. of A., and kiddy pools and beer pong tables materialize on every block in preparation for the weekend. As early as Tuesday it is not uncommon to see sloshy teenagers slip n’ sliding on hefty bags or playing a beanbag game known as “cornhole” in their front yards. There is an almost constant level of squealing. At about 11am on Friday I was riding to campus and passed a house party spilling out into the street. Girls in fluorescent shorts and matching sorority-designating purple t-shirts milled about and a guy on the porch wearing an empty Natural Ice box on his head did a robot dance to Kanye West. Did I mention that Ludacris performed at one of the Fraternity houses at some point?

I spent most of the weekend getting work done on the deserted campus and puppy-sitting for the charming but spoiled Oscar (below), who refused to walk like a normal dog and insisted instead on being carried everywhere.

On Friday the anthropology department held its Skomp Lecture, featuring a fascinating woman who studies human skin color and argues that it cannot be used to classify people into groups or races because similar colors have evolved many times in many places. She spoke optimistically of our first “moderately pigmented president.” Afterwards there was a departmental reception (baby quiches, wine, and awkwardness!) and then a graduate student party that I wanted to escape from the second I arrived. Though I am not looking forward to packing my bags I am ready to leave again. A good thing, as my summer travel plans promise to feature Austin, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, D.C., and possibly South Carolina and Alabama and that's all before I leave for China early in the Fall.

More on all of that later, but first, for all of you that don't enjoy the rare pleasure of living in a college town, a few pictures of the Little 500 festivities (and their aftermath). I tried to take them surreptitiously with my phone, fearing drunken reprisals and harassment. Collective inebriation emboldens college students to yell insults and provocations at total strangers, and after a week of riding my bike around town and being honked at, directed to the race location, and repeatedly regaled with "go little 5 woo-hoo!", I didn't feel like encouraging them.

MATRIMONY, MARYBETH STYLE

I do realize that technically, matrimony takes two, but for me, the trip to NYC was all about MB. Long one of my most treasured and most admired friends, Marybeth is one of those people who is just too good to be true, except for the fact that she is. Brilliant, charming, principled, loyal, and eternally stylish, Marybeth is one of those friends that makes you feel better about yourself for the mere virtue of knowing that she thinks you're cool too.

I have all kinds of fantastic memories of our times at the LSE, but as those days, thank god, were not digitally recorded, I will happily start here, at the bachelorette party. You can't see it here, but all of us had recently been baptized in penis and testicle-shaped confetti.

A girl after my own chinky heart, MB brought an animatronic panda to the hotel pre-party.

Jason had something to say about being included in the festivities.

From Tribeca, we moved to on to the tranny-tastic decadence of Lips NYC.

Jason proved very popular.

Like all of us, Marybeth was captivated by Mary J. Blige, in addition to being moved by the signature frozen cosmopolitans.

On Saturday afternoon I made my way to Jersey City, where I was greeted with this marquee upon my exit from the PATH train station at Journal Square.

The interior of the theater, built in the 1920s and perpetually in the process of restoration, was phenomenal.

The bride and groom dance their first dance to The Cure.

Hanging with the bridal party.

I'm not sure why, but judging from his hand gestures, Cy appeared to feel that something at the wedding was "wiggety wiggety wack".

Quite possibly my very favorite picture of the night.

Oh open bar....

The following afternoon, a few of us met up in Central Park. It was a gorgeous Spring day.

And it didn't take us long to polish off the rotisserie chicken that Ursula and Donnie brought. Oh the innocence of those happy hours before I knew the fate that awaited me in Terminal A!

Mrs. Christiansen, in a white trench coat, takes a stroll to call her mister.

This is what soulfusion looks like, my friends.

$$$!!!$$$!!!$$$!!!$$$!!!$$$!!!$$$

A very obtusely worded e-mail arrived in my inbox today and from it I slowly deduced the news that I have won a grant for my dissertation research next year from the National Science Foundation. It is less money than the Fulbright but more social capital, and y'all know how I prize social capital over shekels any old day. 

HOORAY! I HAVE BEEN FUNDED!!! 

ADDENDUM:

On Monday I received word that I have also been granted a Fulbright. The news continues to be excellent though as a friend recently noted, if ATM machines start suddenly spitting out cash at me as I walk by I might start to wonder if that deal with the devil that I made didn't work a little too well.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Guarding my precious outlet at the Newark airport

Well I didn't exactly wish for more time spent at airports, but after looking at the last 24 hours in light of my recent posting on my love of the places I'm feeling a wee bit superstitious.

Checking in at Newark yesterday afternoon I was informed by the computer that my flight had been cancelled and rescheduled for first thing the next morning. I sought out the help of an airline employee but nothing else was available. I made the quick decision to stick it out instead of heading back into the city, not wanting to bother my friends again and figuring it would be a huge hassle to make the trip back out again at 3:30am. I now feel that was a poor decision. I'm sure I could have worked something out that was superior to wandering around Terminal A from 1pm to 11pm, squeezing in a few hours of sleep on a large luggage trolley (the only place warm enough), spending a further 4 hours at Chicago/O'Hare on a layover this morning, then squeezing into the back row of a tiny 2-engine next to a morbidly obese man on the flight back to Indy. I tried to feel compassion for him, primarily to keep from feeling resentment, but he was asleep almost the whole flight and while I was squeezed as far against the wall as possible, his arm kept dropping into my space; elbow in my waist, weighty forearm pressing limply against mine, and hand brushing my thigh. I would try to push the offending limb away but it kept falling back as he fell straight back to sleep. Eventually I settled for a childish solution, building a defense composed of my book and an in-flight magazine. This at least limited actual contact.

Now I am back again at the Indianapolis airport, waiting for the next Bloomington shuttle bus. I'm really tired. New York was excellent but I spent too much money and slept too little and now my nerves are shot and I'm trying to remember what it is I like so much about travel. I went to the restroom right after my flight landed and promptly burst into sudden tears. I want to go home.

NO ONE DOES IT LIKE YOU

Emmy sent me a link last night to this strange and wonderful video by one of my most favorite bands. I just watched it again in the Indianapolis airport, which is currently crowded with Army reservists in fatigues, crewcuts, and sand-colored boots eating breakfasts from McDonald's. I want to ask one of them where they are headed but I won't; I'll just worry about their fates from the steel and glass sterility of this shiny new airport.

I'm off to NYC today for Marybeth and Cy's wedding and wedding-associated activities. I've been looking forward to this for ages but right now I am so perfectly comfortable and calm that I feel little of the excitement I expected. Such is the effect airports have on me. Give me some cavernous lobbies with windows onto runways, bad art mixed with surprisingly good art, coffee, a scone, and a few minutes to browse the magazines, and I'm happy as a clam. At least I am until I get on one of those infernal flying machines.