One small grouchy request

I will preface this gripe with two disclaimers:

1. I have been irritable lately, I think in part because we've hit the crazy-busy time of year.
2. I can't remember what the second one was.

It's tenure and promotion time, and now that I have tenure I'm assessing other people's work. I'm currently reading a published article by a colleague (and I won't specify which department this colleague is in, because I'm on two T&P committees this fall). In the article this colleague refers to a character as "a Down Syndrome boy" and later as "a Down's child."

My small, grouchy request is this: if you are writing about people with Down syndrome, please call them people with Down syndrome, not "Down syndrome people." What is "a Down Syndrome boy" anyway? Not only does it not make sense grammatically, but it implies that a particular diagnosis is the primary characteristic of a person, rather than implying that this is a person first and foremost, with a diagnosis that's secondary. If you were writing about a character with heartburn, would you call him "a heartburn boy"?

I won't be bringing this up in the tenure interview because I suspect it would just make my colleague get all shamefaced and apologetic, but I'm putting it out here on the blog for you lovely readers to carry out into the world.

Slouchy professional

One of my colleagues recently decided that, for her, thirty-six is the year of pretty. She's coming to campus dressed up, with hairstyles and jewelry, and she really does look good. If you click on the link to her post, you'll see that in the comments, I shared the following story:

A student told me last week, "Alison, you always look so...comfortable!" I was gracious and said "Thanks, that's what I'm going for," but inside I was thinking, Comfortable? Doesn't that just mean I look like a complete slob?

Perhaps not a complete slob, but probably not too far from that. The other day my brother sent me a link to this article, with the subject header in the email "Dressing like an adult." If you click on that link, you'll see pictures and descriptions of 23 "staples for every woman's wardrobe," none of which I own. Well, I take that back--I have a pair of black pants, a pair of jeans, and a daily purse. But on the whole, according to this article, I don't dress like an adult. I wear Chacos or Birkenstocks most of the time. I have a number of button-down shirts that languish in my closet because the thought of ironing them in the morning is just too much. Perhaps I can play my backpack off as my "signature accessory," but honestly I think you're not supposed to be carrying a 15-year-old backpack when you're an adult. And let's not even talk about my hair, which hasn't had a good cut since I was in DC in March.

Fortunately, I'm in a profession where being sartorially challenged isn't that much of a detriment. Being a faculty member means that there's no expectation that I'll ever get dressier than khaki pants and a t-shirt. Some professors on this campus wear Hawaiian shirts and shorts every day, and it hasn't hurt their careers (although let's be clear that these particular people are men, and I do think that makes a difference).

Earlier this week a student was in my office, and she mentioned her own style, which is very polished and feminine. I commented that my look is more slouchy professional. This made her laugh, and honestly, I think it's pretty accurate. So for me, thirty-six is the year of slouchy professional.

Buddy Walk 2009

Today was the day for the annual Buddy Walk nationwide. I was pretty nervous before last year's Buddy Walk. It was going to be my first encounter with people with Down syndrome, other than Maybelle, and I was afraid that the event would confirm all my worst fears. Of course, it did the opposite--it showed me how slim the differences are between typical kids and kids with Down syndrome. It was a great day.


Today Biffle and I got a sense of how far we've come in a year. Last year, Maybelle was in her baby sling, asleep--Biffle kept having to peel back the cloth to show her to people when they'd ask. We knew almost nobody, and we spent most of the walk watching everyone around us--it was a research trip.

This year, we attended the walk with a bunch of friends and their kids, some of whom have Down syndrome and some of whom don't. The only anxiety we had was wondering if Maybelle would wake up from her nap in time for us to leave for the walk, or if we'd have to wake her up (she woke up at exactly the right time, after we'd packed up all our gear). Maybelle was an active participant, playing with the other babies, expressing strong preferences about the foods we offered her, and laughing her head off at the dance that ended the day. She had a great time, and so did we.

The cutest thing I've ever seen

I wish I had known Ruby when I was seven.

Blogging advice

Today a friend emailed and said, "We're good, tho. busy... and somehow I have to (want to) figure out how to fit blogging into all this madness! (Advice?!?)"

It seems to me that I'm the worst possible person to give advice about blogging, seeing as how, counting this post, I've blogged a total of three times in the month of September. Blogging is a terrible idea for a busy academic, for so many reasons. It can't help me professionally, but it could certainly do damage if I inadvertently wrote the wrong thing here on this very public forum. It takes time that I seem not to have, and that I should probably be spending either on professional endeavors or on my family. It's self-indulgent. If it doesn't do damage to my career, it could easily make me seem ridiculously obsessed with baby pictures and bean pie.

And yet, I do really love having a blog. I love the fact that it's a nonprofessional public forum where I can say what I want to say. Part of the reason I went into academia, of course, is because I have things to say and I like getting to say them, and the blog provides a different venue for that. I enjoy being self-indulgent. I love the continual gratification and feedback that the comments provide--it was such fun to see what you all had to say about the idea of a class about anti-feminism. I like getting to practice non-academic writing.

So, despite the potential drawbacks, I not only continue to blog here at Baxter Sez, but I've agreed to be a blogger at Girl with Pen. Once a month--on the third Tuesday of the month, in fact--I'll be coming up with something intelligent to say about women's bodies: reproductive rights, representations of women in the media, violence against women, or the demands of motherhood and career. I think this is going to be a fun challenge, and I'll be joining a great group of bloggers. I'll be sure to post links here. And I promise there will be no mentions of bean pie.

Anti-Feminist

For reasons that I won't go into here, the Women's and Gender Studies Program where I work may start offering a class in something like Anti-Feminist Rhetoric, or Anti-Feminist Cultural Discourse--something like that. I actually think this could be a very lively class. It would be interesting, and certainly very educational, to read texts by folks who either don't believe that inequality exists, or don't believe that it's a problem--or even folks who argue that women aren't fully human.

Thoughts on must-read texts?

The food of my people

Although I was raised in a puritanically healthy household, I feel that the food that defines my cultural heritage is only partly whole wheat carob chip cookies, quinoa, and lentil casserole. The other part of my food heritage is the kind of thing we've been eating this weekend. We're in Cookeville, and the Fall Fun Fest is happening. So here's what I've eaten in the last 24 hours:

• Barbecued ribs
• Brisket
• Funnel cake
• Two Ralph's butter twists (seriously the best doughnuts anywhere in the world)
• Polish sausage sandwich with peppers and onions
• Part of a crazy tater (an entire sliced up deep fried potato)
• Funnel cake (another one)
• Bites of Trey's deep fried Moonpie and my dad's deep fried Twinkies

I was remembering that when I was a kid, when we went to the fair, we were allowed to pick one sweet thing to eat. I would agonize over what to get, since most of the time sweets were strictly rationed. Sometimes I'd opt for the cotton candy (big, but not much substance), and other times I'd pick the funnel cake (smaller, but denser). One unfortunate year, for reasons I can't remember, I picked a caramel apple. I quickly realized that this was a rip off: there was an apple in there, and I was allowed to eat apples any day of the year!

This is a story I've told many times, but when I was recounting it today, my dad said, "You forgot the ending. When you ate all the caramel off and discovered the apple, you gave it to me, and I bought you a funnel cake."

Of course he did. I don't know why I didn't remember that, because it's entirely characteristic of my dad. And so this weekend that's the part of my heritage I've been celebrating.