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| As many of you know by now, I'm taking back-to-back language courses this summer. I'm almost finished with a six-week intensive course in Latin, after which I'll take six weeks of intensive French. See, English graduate programs have this rather odd requirement that you have reading knowledge of two languages other than English -- preferably one old, one new. So Latin and French were my choice. I was fortunately able to enroll in courses at Princeton, so I not only get to meet students from here, but also get to see a lot of Dean.
A lot of my friends think I must be masochistic to put myself through twelve weeks of intensive language courses over the summer, but I felt that I didn't have many other options. I took Japanese and Chinese in high school and college, and while those languages are probably more practical in life outside of academia, they won't do me much good in the English literature program: I'm not particularly interested in specializing in comparative literature between English and East Asian canons, and even if I were, my level of proficiency wouldn't be sufficient for it. And I didn't want to be taking foreign language classes during my graduate coursework and worrying about my grade in, say, French 101, when I really needed to be taking graduate literature courses. Furthermore, I was actually really excited about this summer: especially after going to Europe, I've felt linguistically impoverished as a virtually monolingual American, and although these courses won't really teach me to speak well, I'll at least have a start. Language-learning is a very different kind of work from literary studies, and it feels wonderful to have a break from essays while keeping my brain busy on other interesting material.
Many people have asked me when the wedding date is. The answer is that we don't have one yet; we're still taking our time, sorting things out, and I believe that is the right thing for us to do. One of our complications is that I will not in fact be going to graduate school in the same place that Dean will be working. If all goes well with the bar exams, he will be starting work at a law firm around the Princeton area. I, on the other hand, will be starting at Harvard for an English Ph.D in September. We plan to commute for visits, perhaps every other weekend, but this does inevitably slow down any wedding plans somewhat. The other complication is that graduate coursework involves Qualifying exams after the first year and Generals after the second. We will have to work hard together to plan a ceremony that accommodates our schedules. For better or worse, so to speak, there is life to consider apart from the knot.
Time to hammer some new vocabulary into my head and really learn the difference between the uses of participles, periphrastics, and infinitives. Funny how Latin has taught me more about grammar than I ever knew before!
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| http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/05/23/child.rape.ap/index.html
Louisiana's Supreme Court holds that a rapist may be sentenced to death for his actions because his victim was a child. The rape of an adult woman would not procure a death sentence. What, I would like to ask, is the difference? How is raping a child substantively crueler than raping an adult woman or man?
Is it because "a child cannot defend herself, while a woman can?" If a woman suffers rape in the first place, it should be clear to all that she was unable to defend herself from her attacker. Rape victims are victims, no matter what age they are. (Moreover, if the victim were not a child, but an equally weak and defenseless eighty-year-old woman, her suffering would not be recognized as "special" under this ruling.)
Is it because "it hurts more for a child than for an adult woman?" Rape hurts in all cases; it is always extremely physically and emotionally painful for the victim, no matter what her age. Since when do we presume to measure physical pain? And are we going to start penalizing rapists based on the virginity or non-virginity of the victim at the time of the rape?
Or is it because "women can 'invite' rape, while children cannot?" It is nonsensical to say that a woman can invite someone to force her against her will. Yes, there are rape cases between adults that are ambiguous and difficult to decide. But this ruling of Louisiana's Supreme Court implies that there is something about full-grown womanhood (or manhood, when the victim is male) that makes rape more understandable, less terrible than the rape of a child. I would like to challenge that idea. The visibility of her breasts, the development of her sexuality, do not make any woman "less" of a victim than a child.
We should not flirt with applying the death penalty to "extremely cruel" rape cases. If we do, we risk developing a callousness to the "more common" cases of sexual assault and rape that occur every seven minutes.
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| I am looking soggy around the midsection. This must be dealt with.
Why can't I like exercise more? | | |
| Tagged by Amidah,
a friend whom I met through Dean's blog. After two years of
corresponding only via Xanga and e-mails, I finally had the pleasure of
meeting her this past fall. The twenty-first century is an incredible
time, isn't it?
1. I can scratch my head with my toes. I lie
on my stomach, then lift and stretch a leg back so that my foot dangles
over my head. Not that I do this very often.
2. One of my ancestors was an opium addict. My mother resents that this fact was printed in our family genealogy, along with a description of him as a "parasite" -- "I don't think genealogies should express opinions," she once huffed -- but I think this makes our family history all the more interesting.
3. When it comes to words, I have been blessed with a good memory. If a phrase, line, or even a short poem happens to strike me, I'll often retain it after hearing or reading it just once or a couple of times. But with people's names, I'm terrible. I even forgot Dean's when I first met him!
4. At age seventeen, I had been to Malaysia, Brunei, and New Zealand, but never to the mainland U.S.
5. I was a major nerd in high school and never, ever, ever thought of myself as being in any way "cool." Actually, I went through much of school feeling awkward. Fortunately, my friends often helped me to feel comfortable in my own skin.
6. The first words I ever wrote were "HAN MEAN," to tattle on my older brother when he picked on me or ignored me.
I tag Logan, Donna, Dean, Karlyn, Kelly, and Mr. Dwyer if he still reads this.
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| I'm ceded - I've stopped being Their's -
The name they dropped opon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I've finished threading - too -
Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, Of Grace -
Unto supremest name -
Called to my Full - The Crescent dropped -
Existence's whole Arc, filled up,
With one - small Diadem -
My second Rank - too small the first -
Crowned - Crowing - on my Father's breast -
A half unconscious Queen -
But this time - Adequate - Erect,
With Will to choose,
Or to reject,
And I choose, just a Crown -
He asked, and I said yes.
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