* Another reminder to self: the scholarship committee at church I am now on meets Wednesday at noon.
* Without going into too much detail, I heard a story of what I would refer to as "petty cruelty" - someone coming back into this country after being in a home country (the individual in question is a permanent resident, with a green card, they are married to a born-and-raised US citizen, they have a job here). They reported that the customs enforcement/immigration seemed to "slow walk" everything and they were quite rude to the person in question.
(In case you wondered: the person is from a South American nation, so I guess you'd say she was Latina.)
I don't know. I mean, on the one hand, yes, I have worked in a bureaucracy long enough to know that there are (a) people who really really love their power and like to make others squirm as they use it, (b) think if they follow some "underlying current" in the culture they think they sense, that they might get ahead, and (c) if they have any prejudices at all, they have enough subjectivity in their jobs to have free rein to make life less pleasant for their disfavored group.
But, even though I've seen stuff like that, even though I've known cases where (for example) someone in the uni bureaucracy holds a grudge against a particular department because of something that happened 10 years ago and so makes the people from that department jump through every hoop possible (when other departments' stuff gets fast-tracked), still....it distresses me when I see it.
And it reminds me of something my father once said, about why he pushed to help students when they came to his office, even when his office wasn't maybe the logical one to help - he would personally call the office that could help and say "This is Dr. Lastname (who was known as a department head); I am sending Studentname over to you because they need xyz to be done, please facilitate this for them" because, as he said "I don't like to see students become ping-pong balls"
And yes. I have had that very experience myself as a student (at schools he was not at) where I wound up running from pillar to post because supposedly no office could do all of what I needed to have done, and it's a terrible and frustrating (and isolating, if you're a college freshman away from home for the first time) feeling.
And I admit: the tiny bit of power I have as a professor? The few times I've actually relished that power it's been when I could do something like call the Registrar and go "Yes, I have a student sitting in my office with a receipt saying they paid off such-and-such bill, so they should no longer have a business hold, but I cannot enroll them in classes because the hold hasn't been removed yet. Could you take care of that right now?" And of course, it always is.
I mean, yeah: it makes my life easier because I don't have to make another appointment with the student, but it's also gratifying to see the relief on the student's face.
THAT'S what a person should use their bureaucratic power for, I think.
And perhaps it's a bit of the old Golden Rule in play here, something I was taught very abundantly in my youth - and my memories of being that sad scared college student trying to fix something all on my own, when someone with a little pull could have called the office in question and gone, "Yes, can you make this happen for this student?"
(And I wonder: in some people, does the feeling of "Wow, I've been there" NOT translate to "Can I make it so this other person doesn't have to be there" but rather to "Heh, so I'm gonna see that they go through the exact same thing"? I dunno. Not that I'm such a noble person but I derive more pleasure from feeling like "this kid doesn't have to deal with what I had to deal with" than "I'm gonna let 'em twist in the wind." I suppose part of it is that it fundamentally makes me feel "useful" to help someone, and I like feeling "useful.")
* I will say I hope that if I am ever in a situation where I am told to "slow walk" stuff, or be unwelcoming, or whatever, to someone who is part of a particular group, that I am brave enough to say "Well, if this messes up my job and I find myself unemployed, so be it" and do what I know to be right anyway. (I don't even care about subtexts of "you will be looked on favorably by powers that be if you do this" because I am often not good at picking up on those kinds of subtexts anyway, if it's something that runs counter to my inclination and upbringing)
(And I hate that I have to even contemplate these things....but I've heard stuff)
* Then again, I also was kind of a bystander-party in an online fight about stuff and I always feel a little bad about it. Someone was being intentionally abrasive but it's also someone I've known in the past to cry "victim!" when they get called out on their abrasiveness, so....I just walked away.
And I don't know. I know the old saying "All that is required for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing" but on the other hand, this isn't really evil so much as it is mild unpleasantness....but yes. I get tired of being called on to smooth and soothe and peacemake at times, because it seems in too many of the cases, the people you're trying to separate and calm down wind up turning on you.
I dunno. People. I can't live with 'em but I get awfully weird if I spend too much time without them.
* I was thinking today for some reason about HGTV, I forget why.....oh, I referred to "The Big Fun Crafty Show," a kids' competition show on what used to be Sprout. And I noted that it was neither as fun nor as crafty as I had hoped....and I was also thinking about how a lot of those televised "craft" shows involve a lot of quick-and-dirty techniques (like gluing up hems on curtains instead of sewing them) which might make for a good quick short-lived product, but you're probably going to have to replace it in six months or so when it starts looking tatty. And, I don't know. I don't have the kind of money to throw around on curtain-sized pieces of fabric very often, and hanging the things is enough of a pain, and....well, I'd rather use "best practices" even if they take longer.
And two other thoughts here:
- I wish my cable lineup had a "slow TV" channel. I have heard of such a thing existing in Scandinavia, where they do stuff like long, slow-paced documentaries on (say) sheep-to-sweater production or similar things.
- Also, HGTV has changed A LOT from when I first started watching it. Back in the day (the late 90s/early 00s), it had a lot of DIY shows. I think they even ran Alex Anderson's quilt show for a while, and Carol Duvall (whom I remember from a craft letter she used to publish AGES ago, and which my mom subscribed to). And Christopher Lowell, who had a very self-consciously "hyper interior designer" persona for his show, but at least he was entertaining and seemed very positive. But now, it seems it's mostly "rich people looking to buy a house" or even "rich people looking to buy a vacation house in addition to the house they already have" and.....that's not as fun. It is funny how things shifted from "Hey, take an old wooden orange crate and do some stuff to it and look! You have a storage ottoman for only a few bucks!" to "Here's a couple with a combined income of $400,000 arguing over whether they can bear to live in a house with only three bathrooms" and....given how squeezed the middle class supposedly is...it seems really strange to me. Or is this all "aspirational," and people actually enjoy watching snipey couples with far more money than they'll ever have looking at fancy houses in places where they'll never live?
(I will admit I like "Stone House Revival," on DIY, even though I recognize the people owning the said stone houses must be ridiculously wealthy, but at least there's a historical angle to it and..... the host is kinda hunky and fun to watch)
But yeah. I suspect that there's a market for a craft-based channel, though it does seem a lot of the publishers of craft books/magazines have gone the webcasting route instead. (And so it's fragmented, and you have to go out and find it, and in some cases pay a separate subscription fee)
* Current state of the Barbie "shelf" (really my piano lid):
Left to right: Gabby, Clawdeen, Rapunzel, Diana (in back with sword raised), Cinnamon, Sam.
I don't think I ever photographed Sam (Samantha) yet, she's the newest one - the Made to Move yoga doll with brownish hair in a bun and a slightly tanner skin tone.
(Confession: I happened across the African-American one - who has slightly darker skin than Gabby - for "list price" (about $16) on Amazon and she's on her way to me now. I love the poseable dolls.. She is tentatively named either Lavinia or Audrey, depending on what name she "looks more like" when I get her out of the box.)
And I probably need to invest in a couple doll stands so I can pose some of them standing up - they don't stand on their own so I have to pose them seated. (Diana came with a stand)
Here's a closer view of Sam, with incidental Cinnamon:
I printed off a bunch of free patterns (both sewn and knitted) for clothes and if I can motivate myself once I finish a few of the other things I have going on, I might have a stab at making some of my own clothes for them, too. (I also bought a "Christmas Sweater" pattern from Ravelry, and if I can get my act together - and can find some oddments of inexpensive dk weight yarn) - I might make them all Ugly Christmas Sweaters just for fun)
* I need to go back to my office tomorrow and do more work but I really don't want to because (a) this is the last full week I have off (the 15th is the start of all the meetings) and (b) I didn't have quite as much relaxation and fun as I wanted this weekend. Tentatively I'm considering going to Whitesboro Friday (the last chance for a while on a day that Lovejoy's is serving lunch) but I still haven't decided. I also want to start another quilt top, and I've got several knitting projects in various degrees of being stalled out, and.....Wednesday will be cut up in two with the noon meeting, and Tuesday (bells) and Thursday (piano) afternoons I have things.....Maybe I take Monday and Tuesday of next week (the 13th and 14th) off and stay home and sew....
It's funny, at a lot of points it felt like the summer was dragging along and I was in kind of a "Groundhog Day" situation where I went into my office and read ecology or biostats or updated lecture material, and I was alone far too much, but at the same time it feels like it moved really fast now.
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