We Are American and So Can You

In the words of the immortal Tennyson:

So many worlds,

So much to do

So little done

Such things to be!

Which means I’m going to give you the week in digest.

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Cheider teachers in costume: Cowboy, Cleopatra, PJs

Revisited the English graduate students’ Work-in-Progress seminar for funsies. The first guy had written a thesis that was the critical equivalent of Tender Buttons. Ball-bashing professor Randi socked it to him hard: “… raises the question of, is this a valid and interesting thing to do? If your angle is ---, well, isn’t that fairly obvious already?” The poor man attempted a defense: “I’m mapping out his reading, isn’t that the aim of literary texts?” but she would have none of it: “but what do you do with that reading? Why did you struggle with the text?” The question every literary scholar grapples with, and fears. What exactly is your intellectual worth? Yes, the tools you’re using are solid, you’ve got some impressive brains, but why the hell did you waste them on this? Anyhow, then the second guy presented, and his thesis was so solidly constructed, reader-friendly, intelligence-evident, it redeemed the room of literary academics sitting around that table from tipping over the edge into utter bootlessness.

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Brann comes to Shushan: Wouldn't be Purim without soccer

Had an impromptu and lengthy discussion with my high schoolers in honor of International Women’s Day. Interestingly, a show of hands indicated that they do not all identify as feminists. Baaad Scandinavians. I ran the discussion by repeatedly letting them heat up around a question until enough of the room was sitting tush-half-off-the-chair in that must-speak posture, then slamming the room with a new idea. They’re going to write about it, so I wasn’t concerned with cutting thoughts off so much as getting juices flowing. Perhaps most interesting were the different nationalities’ approach: Kid Russia gave a rant about “people coming in from the South and raping Russian women,” which was awkward to work with, and Kid Vietnam said that in his country, there are no feminists, everyone’s too traditional and have specific roles, and Kid Somalia came up to me quietly after the lesson with a little smile on her face and asked if she could write a journal entry on this. The two AUFniks (both strongly active members of the political party that was targeted on July 22) spent most of the class twisting around in their seats, hands furiously pawing the air in their desire to educate their classmates. My favorite moment was when one young lady said she agreed with Kid Vietnam in that there are certain things only men can do and only women, and I interrupted encouragingly with, “Yes? Like what?” and she fell silent for that deep thoughtful second that means you’ve rewritten someone’s life framework. I  wantz to bez Socrates.

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Starting the play

Fantoft fun: Pub quiz night with Ruth (Arizona) and Rachel (New Jersey). Our team name: “We are America and So Can You!” A guy I’d met earlier in the week came over and asked if he could join our team, so we became “We are America and So Can You Even Though the Italian Guy Has No Idea What That Means.” Italy teaming up with America was pretty powerful, until the “cars” category, when Ford fought Fiat to the detriment of both. But boy did we cream when it came to spaghetti Westerns! 

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Purim: Yep, I dressed as a cowgirl all day. Gave my high schoolers chocolate as well as the surprise knowledge that I’m Jewish (had to make sure they didn’t think this was some American holiday), for which they cheered (probably more for the chocolate than the religious unveiling). The Jewish community had its party-cum-carnival, at which our play went off outstandingly and I rendered my lines in Norwegian suitably. Or at least to enough comedic effect that it fit with the genre. Afterwards, those of us left to clean up were caught by Na'ama's (one of the leaders of the community, picture loud, opinionated, super-organizer, knows-everything, all-out-there typical Israeli woman) zumba bug and started gallivanting around the room, dancing with each other and the mobs and brooms we held.

Cutest thing ever: little Queen Esther finds a popgun

The schlichot stayed by me for the night. We have this ridiculous comfort with each other that always shocks me because it highlights my strangeness here. I’m pretty used to being the only dati Jew in town. Before I left for Norway, people asked me if I’d be lonely without a Jewish community, but it was part of what I wanted, to figure out what it’s like to live in the world outside. I once asked a friend who is a baal teshuvah (a guy who became religious towards the end of college) what non-religious people do, since their energy and time isn’t so completely consumed by religion. He paused a moment, and said, “well, I smoked a lot of weed before.” But I couldn’t help but believe there must be something more. And this year has let me figure it out, let me become really close friends with people who have proven to me the depth of meaningful passionate living that exists outside my bubble, let me gain a comfort in the world in which people sit in coffee shops and argue about politics and literature, bake cookies, dance, study, travel, talk, flirt, hike, and play practical jokes on each other. Yeah, just like I do. Because personhood extends across the board.

The thing is, that even as I do all this, there’s still always a little Jewish tune playing in my head (No, it’s not “yubba-diddy-diddy-dye” from Fiddler. Think Chava Alberstein meets Idan Raichel meets Synergia). Judaism touches my life and history in so many ways, that keeping it bubbled up within me is conscious and intentional. So having Racheli and Inbar over, flipflopping through Hebrew into English and back and examining the sefarim on my shelves and not asking if that’s the Israeli flag hanging from my wall or why my knife has blue tape on it or venturing into cultural interrogation when I play music and getting excited about the Pinuk-brand shampoo in my shower, well, those things make them the two people in the country with whom I’m not one whit a freak. So despite the comfort I’ve gained this year, being with them relaxes me hugely. Even committing the classic blunder of asking whether they wanted “לקחת מקלחת?” was more a sign of connection than distance (to their infinite credit, they did not reply, “take it to where?”). My brain was a bit frazzled after a night spent jumping through three languages.

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Anita, my Katten contact-teacher, heard about my computer problems, and came running over to Fantoft with an extra mac charger! She is so amazing. And has been wanting to do something like that to help, all year. I keep thinking how lucky I am to be the first in Bergen... four years from now it will be “ugh, now I have to take care of the ETA again.” Or maybe not. Anita’s kind of awesome that way.

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I’m going to London in three weeks. Beginning to plan my pilgrimage. To re-read Woolf and Trollope and Dickens and Doyle. Honestly, a student of Victorian literature visiting London feels a bit like a Muslim on their way to Mecca. I might drop by Bath too, or Dover, or York… Got to cram it all into one week. Any advice?

Lunch with the Rektor

The UiB rektor. Nah, just kiddng. There is no possible way
Faulkner could look like more of a clotpole in this picture.

I had a great session with my students today on Faulkner. There were, of course, moments where I checked on simple plot points to get “uhhhh…”s from everyone, but since Faulkner buries his key action deep in parenthesized side points, that was the very reason I was checking. Towards the end I allowed some of my vitriolic hatred of him to seep out. The truth is, it’s as much directed towards the professor who first taught me this book as to its author. I have plenty of “static, impotent rage” towards the guy who was such a man’s-club kind of jerk, he used to invite a select couple of the guys (the ones who said maybe Eudora Welty’s heroine wanted to be raped) back to his office for drinks. And who actually said “she’s a mature feminist” of Toni Morrison. Afterwards I could have kicked myself for not sneering, “I’ve never yet met a mature misogynist, why must we needs be mature feminists?” I’ve sneered it a thousand times in my dreams (yes, my best dreams are of repartee unrealized). Anyhow, I offered the students Beloved as a panacea to all Faulkner’s offensive yet intricate assholery (the man who wrote that woman lead lives "not only divorced from, but irrevocably excommunicated from, all reality" can be nothing but a jerk) and was proud of setting aside my rage for most of the discussion so we could play with all his brilliance instead of dissecting his woman-hating.

One of my high schoolers wrote a facetious comparison of the US and UK and, at the end, apologized “for being troll.” I’m not sure if that’s a Norwegian expression, or if he meant “droll.” Either way, it earns a =) -plus.

Today the rektor (equivalent of president) of the University in Bergen had all us Bergen Fulbright folk over for lunch. I was exhausted, having skyped late the night before and then planned my lessons, which started at 8am this morning. At midnight, reading an entire chapter on the concept of “the uncanny” just doesn’t mean a whole lot, and even now I’m still inclined to exclaim at the surprising amount of nothing the author fit into a whole lot of words.

Me in a week. 

Anyhow, all eight of us Bergen Fulbrighters met up for the first time since orientation. Embarrassingly, there was a setting with a bright yellow card with “obs” printed on it for me, to clue in anybody who hadn’t noticed my strange eating habits. At first our American instincts commandeered the conversation, as we all cheerfully chatted and caught up on the past few months. Then the rektor took control and steered the conversation back into an introduction routine where we explained where from, what doing, what the university could fix for us…  I meant to give a simple review of my activities (ETA in Bergen, love it, thanks so much, Mr. Rektor, sir) but somehow got us all sidetracked into a discussion of the pros and cons of equality in education (Norwegian egalitarianism versus American competition). It was actually kind of fascinating to sit in a room full of academics and listen to their perspectives. Also, normally with that many smart people in one place, someone gets peacocky and struts their stuff. But we all have Fulbrights, so everyone pretty much pleasantly assumed we’re all tops and just enjoyed themselves. It was a nice preview of the Fulbright seminar next week—I’m starting to look forward to it. They’re taking us to Lillehammer to ski. Winter Olympics, anyone?

Not Going Home.

Betrayal.

That's it. I've had it. America can fuck its women over as much as it wants, I'm never going back. They'll have to bundle me kicking and screaming onto a plane to expel me from Norway.

I think what hurts the most about this is that it is such utter betrayal of one woman's organization by another. I've cheered for Susan G. Koman and all the work they've done alongside Planned Parenthood, and this hurts more than any blow congress can strike in the war against women in America (I used to put that in scare quotes. No longer). I am so angry right now, I'm writing through a blur of tears. Not sure how I'm going to teach in half an hour. All that about leaving one's emotions at the door only works when the emotions aren't brought on by a targeted decision to deny an entire demographic healthcare. How could this... who could... and what in hell am I going to tell my Norwegian students when they ask about the state of America's healthcare?

As I wrote on fb, this is actually really clever of Koman: if more women are dead of breast cancer b/c they couldn't access the preventative healthcare Planned Parenthood offers, less of them can have abortions. Solution to freedom of choice: kill off the choosers.

Here's your link to help provide one more woman with a breast exam: Donate to Planned Parenthood.
Or sign a petition to Komen to keep funding Planned Parenthood.

The Magic Trek

bootlegged photos

I was in the 9C kitchen at Fantoft on Saturday night, and had a hilarious moment while meeting a Spanish guy. As I put my hand up to shake his, he said, “no. Cheek, cheek.”

“What?” I asked, as he zoomed his face towards mine and kissed either cheek. “Oh.” That’s how it’s done in Spain. My French friend, Perle, laughed, and showed me the French variation. I must admit that it bugged me a bit. That kind of forced intimacy with a stranger… Fergus explained that women and men kiss, women and women kiss, but only men shake hands. “And intersex folk?” I asked. Everyone laughed, and he said he’d ask. I guess I’m too wired to think about liminalities.

Bergen in the snow

But truthfully, who wants to kiss strangers? I don’t think it’s just my prudish American upbringing, or the fact that I was in Israel for six months before Europe and not allowed to really hang out with guys, let alone kiss them in greeting… It may just be my naturally reserved way of showing affection… But that’s not so, because I have no problem cuddling with my sisters and hugging my best friends, and I’ve become somewhat of a casual hugger while in Norway. As I sat there, pondering, I became much more aware of all of the touching going on. Of the guy next to me whose feet were propped up comfortably on my chair, of pats on the back to get my attention and the hug that my male friend gave me as he left. That hug was nice. Some guys just hug really well, and there’s a different quality to a good guy’s hug than a woman’s, something that says “I know we’re just friends but I will protect you if anything tries to attack, and I smell nice to boot.”

I’m down with that friendship hug. And with all the casual fist bumps and high fives and reassuring shoulder pats that come along with it. Because it says, “we don’t think too much about touching, we haven’t heightened physical contact into some sort of evil thing, we are natural and comfortable with our bodies and with other people’s” (wow, touching is doing a lot of talking here). There was something so nice about that room and its comfort with bodies moving amongst people I know. It’s the stranger’s kiss that freaks me out. God bless undemonstrative America.

I found a new trek in Bergen—Låndasfjell, the mountain in back of Fantoft, was hitherto unknown to me. Friday morning I slipped up it, shimmying along an icy path compacted into utter smoothness by a myriad of hikers. Finally I reached the peak with the sunrise, and looked out across the low grey and salmon and indigo clouds to where the sun sparkled on the fjords beyond reams of mountains. On either side of the pristinely white swath on which I stood pine trees thrust up into the sky, saluting the brilliant morning light. As I continued towards Ulriken, the path disappeared, and I was merely trumping through footprints in the snow, aiming towards the glowing spire atop Ulriken’s peak. Any sign of solitary runner or dog walker vanished. Great glassy malachite iced-in lakes sank in the snow on either side of me, and I was reminded of the pearly whorls on seashells. As I clambered through the glimmering, snow-silent winter, sun beating down on everything beneath me, I beamed to have forgotten my camera. I don’t know that I’ll ever find a morning as glorious as that again, and I was ecstatic to have it all to myself.

As I continued northward, I began to hit deeper snow. Sometimes I would skim along the crust, practically snowshoeing along, and then I’d suddenly fall in snow up to my knee and lurch forward against its cushioning. At one point, the footsteps vanished entirely, the light dusty layer of snow grazing the plain and, even as I took steps, filling them in with the wind. I pushed on towards Ulriken in unbroken peace, and found my path again. As I came down the path from Ulriken, I once more hit the well-trod trail. It was a sheet of ice. I began to ski down, sliding casually as though I were surfing. Then, I hit a bump. As I shimmied down on my tush, unable to stop or gain any traction, I was straight on trajectory for a woman walking her dog. She looked at my calmly, and stepped aside at the last moment as I barreled down. Ah, the calm of the Norwegian. 

Mother-Daughter Talk

My mother and I were interviewed for an article on mother-daughter Jewish feminists in Na'amat USA's magazine : here's the link. We're on the third page. Check it.

Versions of Virgins

Ever stand in front of a group of people, all of whom are listening intently to you, and say the wrong thing? Today while teaching my high school class about how to evaluate internet sources, I responded to one of them by saying, “yes, exactly, sometimes you need to check a different virgin.” They laughed, and I closed my eyes for a second, grinned, and repeated, “version. A different version.” As I searched for the thread of my thoughts, my mind stumbled a moment, and I realized this is the exact kind of moment where it’s so easy to get sucked into a whirlwind of recriminations about Freudian slips instead of just continuing on. I wanted to sit down on my teacher’s dais and laugh and laugh. But instead I kept going, and either they all forgot about it or they’re telling their parents about it over dinner right now.

To test their ability to properly evaluate sources, I had them google “September 11^th Conspiracy theories” and check different websites for facts. Then I made em all line up at the blackboard, ranging themselves along the spectrum of “utterly convinced that 9/11 was actually an alien invasion” to “the US government told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” to the American people. They had to explain what websites they visited and why they gave them credibility. Then sat back down for a long discussion, jumpstarted by my use of Abraham Lincoln’s quote that “most of what is written on the internet today is misquoted.” Actually, it was kind of hard to get them off the topic of conspiracy theories, but I managed. One girl mentioned the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, made by “you know, that famous fat man, I can’t remember his name.” That’s what I call Michael Moore, too.

Once again, Islamophobia came up—I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with how often American prejudice towards Muslims has made its way into the conversation. Norway has a large Muslim recent immigrant population and is grappling with difference for the first time (probably ever), and so the sensitivities that an American feels are echoed here, without the practice at political correctness that Americans have down pat. But I think part of my discomfort is an uncertainty with how I feel. One part of me wants to make it incredibly clear that Muslim fundamentalist terrorists are very different from the Muslim Americans who are just as much citizens of the US, just as patriotic, just as much people, as anyone. The other part of me wants to fight with all my strength against the incredibly anti-Israel, dismissing-terrorism-as-political-flummoxery that Norway seems to engage in so gleefully. I have to sort it out before I figure out how to talk to the class about it, but while I stumble through words about how “Muslims were also killed in 9/11,” there’s a Somalian girl who sits on the left side of the classroom and shrinks into her hijab when we mention Muslim terrorism or American Islamophobia.

I gave them a pep talk at the end. They’d been worried about a recent journal assignment based on a film we’d watched to talk about their responsibility, as Norwegians, to global democracy. “We’re just high schoolers,” they said. “Yeah,” I told them, “but you are some of the smartest high schoolers in Norway. People will listen to you. If not now, later. So start thinking about this stuff.” Hopefully it made a dent.

We talked turkey in my adult class today. I made them write essays from the perspective of the Native Americans upon first meeting Europeans, which I think may have been useful since the textbook didn’t get beyond the preschool version of “and then Squanto gave us food and we all sat down for a cheery meal wearing stupid hats.” No smallpox blankets in that storyline.

I’m going to be a guest lecturer at another Katten class on Tuesday. Apparently the oldest high schoolers are doing presentations on different states, and I was asked to come in and model it for them using Ohio. I’ve decided I’m going to wear a plaid shirt and braids. If I could find a cowboy hat, I’d do that too. Now’s when my pictures of incredibly fat people at the Ohio State Fair, in front of signs saying “deep-friend kool-aid,” will come in handy. I've been saving them up for just this moment.

The teacher I’m lecturing for told me how stressed she was with her class before the English one. It’s religion, and apparently they’re starting monotheism next week, but Judaism was taken out of the course plan and she doesn’t know how to teach about Christianity and Islam without it. So now I’m going to be a guest lecturer there, too. I’m going to have to change out of my plaid shirt and braids, and into a tilboshet and cute blue hat. Touting my many personalities, sorry, no, I meant identities.

Speaking of, today in the masters’ thesis workshop we read a guy’s work on the masculinity and Jewishness of Robert Cohn (which all the Norwegians pronounced Norwegishly “Cune,” instead of the “Cone” that anyone who knows a few Cohens would automatically move towards) in Hemingway’s Sun Also. I was pretty well distracted by the delicious language the guy had used in writing it up—can we introduce “smudgeoned” and “indignated” into the regular vernacular? Then I spent the next five minutes wondering why in hell the guy down the table from me was talking about countertops. Took me that long to decipher his British accent into “counter types” and understand his ideas about the text.

It was a bit of a disturbing session, as somehow I’d always just given Hemingway dramatic immunity from scrutinizing the anti-Semitism in his book too closely. He’s such a good writer, my brain clicked off at the bit about Judaism. I’ve examined his gender ideas many a time, but somehow this has never been allowed into my consciousness. The writer of the thesis had the usual Norwegian diffidence. I want to stand up at that table sometimes and shout “just say it! To hell with the critics, what’s in your brain?” I have only two shots left; two more sessions and the semester's over.

I now have a reflector band to put around my arm when I go on walks at night. It’s pretty dangerous; I feel automatically safer with it on, and am sure I’m more careless as I cross roads (I think my mind thinks my reflector band repels cars). Also, whenever I see someone else with one, which is all the time because let’s face it this is Norway and they take the dark pretty seriously here, I want to hold my arm up and bump fists or something in a gesture of solidarity. Which makes me think—let’s get some human rights insignia on there, or mothers against drunken war, or something— and make some political use out of these things rather than just advertising for Aker Solutions. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Woman Finishes Grading Papers, Whole Town Celebrates

Two missionaries knocked on my door one evening as I was preparing dinner. They were quite friendly, and almost shy, so as I cooked, I told them pleasantly that I was already part of a congregation (okay, so I didn’t tell them which). One pushed a pamphlet about Isaiah into my hands, and I looked at it and gently informed her that I had already read Isaiah. If I’d had more time, I would have enjoyed some missionary-baiting, and seen which of us knew more about the contents of the bible, but dinner awaited.

The expression, “goes down swinging” came up with my high schoolers, and nobody knew what it meant. So I asked students to guess. One of the students, who moved to Norway from Russia and is having a bit of trouble getting accepted into the class, but is full of energy and always ready to volunteer an answer, made a wild guess.

“Excellent guess,” I told her, “and creative thinking, but not the answer.” The “cool” boys in the back of the room (the ones who once tried to come in through the window and secretly love to write) chuckled.

“M!” I called out to one of them. “What’s the answer?” He stopped laughing, his face blank. “Erm, I don’t know,” he said shyly. After a little more give-and-take with my class, H, a laidback yet clever fellow, offered the right explanation.

“Right. To go down swinging is to fail, but fail while trying. For example, to attempt to answer a question, even if you have no idea, is to go down swinging,” (encouraging smile at E), “while simply giving up” (I looked pointedly at M), “is failing without even trying.” I’m not sure what the ethics are behind using students as examples, but I checked with M later and he seemed cool with it, and said I should absolutely please call on him whenever I want (subtext: he’s too cool to raise his hand but really wants a shot at speaking). Ah, the complexities of high school!

An upsetting headline in the Washington Post: “Three Women Win Nobel Peace Prize!” Imagine a headline that read, “three men win Nobel Peace Prize.” Everyone would be like, um, yeah, duh, give us more. But apparently being female is enough of a distinction by which to designate the three Nobel Peace prizewinners. Not “Three Activists,” which shows what they did, or “Three Africans,” which is how other winners are usually designated, by nationality. Of course, to some degree their gender is really relevant to their peace work. Still, that choice of description seems telling in a world in which sexism is often called a thing of the past. But congrats to them! 

While grading paper after paper for my American literature seminar, I noticed myself struggling increasingly with the word “unnecessary.” For some reason, by the millionth time I’d written it, I couldn’t spell it properly. An extra a and c kept sneaking their way in. I also got snarky in the margins: a student wrote, “one could ask if it is possible for human beings to become perfect,” and I responded, “but one shouldn’t ask. Not in the middle of a paper on Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography as an expression of the Enlightenment.” Ugg. I might get fired. Still, it’s more interesting than the “how is this relevant?” and “connect this to your main point” I’ve been slamming all over the papers.

On the other hand, grading these papers makes me realize just how much of my professors’ language I’ve swallowed. I find myself regurgitating things like “deft incorporation of …”, and “methinks this needs…” and the oblique “say more,” all trademarks of former teachers of mine. Sometimes I feel like there’s a tiny little me in the back of my mind, waving its hands and trying to be heard through all the other people who have colonized my brain.