The official list:
1) The "L" train. Also, my Upass.- It is a huge perk to live in a city with an extensive public transportation system like Chicago and it is THE BEST to have a Upass, which is a $97.00 pass included in Chicago college's tuition. I can go anywhere, anytime... I have probably tripled what I paid for it.
2) Not living in Champaign, IL. I hated that place.
3) My job on the staff of a local political campaign. I am learning SO much and it's been really worth it.
4)Feminism. Where would I be without it?
5) Cowboy boots. I'd save my cowboy boots if there was a fire. They're my updated version of the 80's power suit/shoulder pads.
6) My Papa's famous sweet potatoes. More marshmallow than potato and that's alright with me!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
"There's so much more room for activities!"
While the title of this post is a quote from the movie Stepbrothers, it also defines my life right now. I live at the center of Chicago, right downtown, and it seems like the whole world is at my fingertips. Before, I tried going to school and living in the middle of no where and it felt claustrophobic and I lost the passion to do good in the world that I had always carried before. The second I got to my new university that changed, I was invigorated, and I began to get involved. And then a little more involved. And then some more.
Now, I have managed to fill up every single one of my days from morning until night (with the exception of regularly scheduled times to watch Mad Men, The Office, and Glee) with feminist and political activities. Suffice to say (to use a phrase favored by my history teacher) that I am having the time of my life.
I don't know how to talk about my life without sounding cheesy and insincere. However, I mean every single word. I mean it when I say that I love the pulse of the city, that I am happier than I have ever been, and that I feel useful to the world. I used to joke that I was coming up on quarter-life crisis any day. Now I feel like I could remain in this quarter of my life forever.
Now, I have managed to fill up every single one of my days from morning until night (with the exception of regularly scheduled times to watch Mad Men, The Office, and Glee) with feminist and political activities. Suffice to say (to use a phrase favored by my history teacher) that I am having the time of my life.
I don't know how to talk about my life without sounding cheesy and insincere. However, I mean every single word. I mean it when I say that I love the pulse of the city, that I am happier than I have ever been, and that I feel useful to the world. I used to joke that I was coming up on quarter-life crisis any day. Now I feel like I could remain in this quarter of my life forever.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Missing.
Two years ago this month, a very close friend of mine disappeared. I have never written anything about him so publicly before but I think that it will be cathartic and maybe help others who are missing loved ones. His name is Lee Cutler and this is his "America's Most Wanted" profile. This is a missingexploited page. His name is very googleable. Never in my whole life did I think that something like this would be the reality my friends and family would face as we graduated high school. NO ONE ever expects to see their best friend's name tossed around by Nancy Grace between segments about Madeleine McCann. No, those TV segments are for someone else's child, someone else's friend...from another city, another country, another universe.
But it wasn't someone else's reality at all and it was very, very real. October 20th was the last time Lee was heard from. His car was found in Baraboo, Wisconsin, a couple hours from home, shortly after that. The following Wednesday, a blanket, a backpack filled with letters, half eaten apple, and a nearly empty bottle of Tylenol PM were found near a river where the car was found. It wasn't long before a large scale search of the river and surrounding area was held, to inconclusive results. For all intents and purposes, this case is now closed in the eyes of the law.
It isn't the facts of this story that make it sad or frightening. Rather, it is reverberating consequences of the dissapearance that continue to haunt everyone involved. Seeing Lee's mother, a true woman of unimaginable strength, plea to cameras was heart wrenching. When his girlfriend turned into a skinny, pale shadow of herself, it killed me because she is my friend too and I would have given anything to stop that hurt.
My own personal realization that what was happening was terrifying and real came to pass the Wednesday after he went missing. It was my Grandmother's 65th birthday and my family had gone to dinner to celebrate. I clutched my phone in my hand that whole night, waiting for a phone call to bring news of Lee. We already knew that the car had been found, at this point, and now we were waiting to hear what the search of the area had warranted. The call came, telling me to drive to Dan's house, the friend of Lee's family who was acting as spokesman, where my friends had set up camp. Leaving the restaurant, taking the family car, and driving to the house are fuzzy memories to me now but I will never forget arriving to that dark street with so many of my close friends waiting for me at the curb.
I knew something was wrong. I stopped the car before I pulling it into the driveway, barely remembering how to put it in park. Opening the car door, I pleaded with my friends not to tell me bad news. I tried to get out, crying and dreading the worst from the looks on the faces of those around me, but my knees buckled from underneath me so I ended in a crouched position between the open car door and the ground. Refusing to hear the news that I knew was bad and crying too hard to listen to what anyone was saying, my friend Anna took my face in both of her hands, looked into my eyes, and said the following, "You have to hear this, listen to me, okay? They searched the area and they found his pants with the wallet inside attached to a branch near the river. They found a bottle of Tylenol PM with one pill left inside. And, Haley, they found a note. Shh, listen to me because you have to hear this. It is to his mom and it says 'my head is too big for my body, I want to sleep, I love you'." That moment, of my knees buckling and Anna holding my face steady in her hands, is one of the most powerful, surreal experiences of my life.
There are several things that I have learned pertaining to Lee's disappearance:
1) People grieve in different ways- One of the hardest things was going to school everyday and seeing the pain in others eyes. Some people go silent, some stop eating, some cry a lot, some act really happy, and some travel between the extremes with frightening fluidity. All of these different and unexpected emotions come up when you are faced with a unique experience like the one we were dealt. It wasn't uncommon for me to wake up in the morning and feel inexplicable anger towards Lee or the police or my friends. It also wasn't uncommon for someone to catch him or herself laughing at a joke and marvel at the validity of humor.
2) Sometimes you are going to be helpless- When people grieve, they just need to get it all out of their system. It's unbearably hard to let others do this. Eventually, all of us had to succumb to the fact that the case had hit a dead end and there was very little to be done about it.
3) Healing happens, if you let it- It is easy to hide behind the pain and let it take you in like a refuge. It is easy to shut everyone out and stop doing school work, going to your job, and talking to your family. Healing doesn't happen that way, however. You heal when you try to go back to what was normal. Life after tragedy will never, ever be the same again but if you live your life as much as you can, you can reach a semblance of normalcy.
4) Find and cherish support- You can't grieve alone. You can't. There was a time when I thought that no one else could understand what I was going through. I pushed people away and I fought violently with my parents. I wanted to sit in my room and not leave until the world was fair again. In retrospect, this was bad and it wasn't until I began to see a therapist/counselor and started reaching out to friends that life got any better.
Today, October 2nd, is Lee's twentieth birthday. October will probably be a hard month for a long time. Lee and I share a birth month (my birthday is on the 8th) and would often make plans together to celebrate. Additionally, the end of October marks the date he went missing. All around, October is rough stuff.
So, I am going to look forward to November. I look forward to spending more time with my family and friends. I look forward to concerts I am going to see and art museums I am going to look through. There are a million things to be thankful for, despite everything. Even though there hasn't been much closure, I can take solace in the fact that I won't ever forget about Lee, in the hope that he might come back into my life one day.
But it wasn't someone else's reality at all and it was very, very real. October 20th was the last time Lee was heard from. His car was found in Baraboo, Wisconsin, a couple hours from home, shortly after that. The following Wednesday, a blanket, a backpack filled with letters, half eaten apple, and a nearly empty bottle of Tylenol PM were found near a river where the car was found. It wasn't long before a large scale search of the river and surrounding area was held, to inconclusive results. For all intents and purposes, this case is now closed in the eyes of the law.
It isn't the facts of this story that make it sad or frightening. Rather, it is reverberating consequences of the dissapearance that continue to haunt everyone involved. Seeing Lee's mother, a true woman of unimaginable strength, plea to cameras was heart wrenching. When his girlfriend turned into a skinny, pale shadow of herself, it killed me because she is my friend too and I would have given anything to stop that hurt.
My own personal realization that what was happening was terrifying and real came to pass the Wednesday after he went missing. It was my Grandmother's 65th birthday and my family had gone to dinner to celebrate. I clutched my phone in my hand that whole night, waiting for a phone call to bring news of Lee. We already knew that the car had been found, at this point, and now we were waiting to hear what the search of the area had warranted. The call came, telling me to drive to Dan's house, the friend of Lee's family who was acting as spokesman, where my friends had set up camp. Leaving the restaurant, taking the family car, and driving to the house are fuzzy memories to me now but I will never forget arriving to that dark street with so many of my close friends waiting for me at the curb.
I knew something was wrong. I stopped the car before I pulling it into the driveway, barely remembering how to put it in park. Opening the car door, I pleaded with my friends not to tell me bad news. I tried to get out, crying and dreading the worst from the looks on the faces of those around me, but my knees buckled from underneath me so I ended in a crouched position between the open car door and the ground. Refusing to hear the news that I knew was bad and crying too hard to listen to what anyone was saying, my friend Anna took my face in both of her hands, looked into my eyes, and said the following, "You have to hear this, listen to me, okay? They searched the area and they found his pants with the wallet inside attached to a branch near the river. They found a bottle of Tylenol PM with one pill left inside. And, Haley, they found a note. Shh, listen to me because you have to hear this. It is to his mom and it says 'my head is too big for my body, I want to sleep, I love you'." That moment, of my knees buckling and Anna holding my face steady in her hands, is one of the most powerful, surreal experiences of my life.
There are several things that I have learned pertaining to Lee's disappearance:
1) People grieve in different ways- One of the hardest things was going to school everyday and seeing the pain in others eyes. Some people go silent, some stop eating, some cry a lot, some act really happy, and some travel between the extremes with frightening fluidity. All of these different and unexpected emotions come up when you are faced with a unique experience like the one we were dealt. It wasn't uncommon for me to wake up in the morning and feel inexplicable anger towards Lee or the police or my friends. It also wasn't uncommon for someone to catch him or herself laughing at a joke and marvel at the validity of humor.
2) Sometimes you are going to be helpless- When people grieve, they just need to get it all out of their system. It's unbearably hard to let others do this. Eventually, all of us had to succumb to the fact that the case had hit a dead end and there was very little to be done about it.
3) Healing happens, if you let it- It is easy to hide behind the pain and let it take you in like a refuge. It is easy to shut everyone out and stop doing school work, going to your job, and talking to your family. Healing doesn't happen that way, however. You heal when you try to go back to what was normal. Life after tragedy will never, ever be the same again but if you live your life as much as you can, you can reach a semblance of normalcy.
4) Find and cherish support- You can't grieve alone. You can't. There was a time when I thought that no one else could understand what I was going through. I pushed people away and I fought violently with my parents. I wanted to sit in my room and not leave until the world was fair again. In retrospect, this was bad and it wasn't until I began to see a therapist/counselor and started reaching out to friends that life got any better.
Today, October 2nd, is Lee's twentieth birthday. October will probably be a hard month for a long time. Lee and I share a birth month (my birthday is on the 8th) and would often make plans together to celebrate. Additionally, the end of October marks the date he went missing. All around, October is rough stuff.
So, I am going to look forward to November. I look forward to spending more time with my family and friends. I look forward to concerts I am going to see and art museums I am going to look through. There are a million things to be thankful for, despite everything. Even though there hasn't been much closure, I can take solace in the fact that I won't ever forget about Lee, in the hope that he might come back into my life one day.
Monday, July 20, 2009
These Photographs.
So tonight my Pandora station came up with a song by Joshua Radin that I have not heard before and instantly loved. It tickles all of my feminist fancies... ;)
The songs invokes four of my favorite women; Sylvia Plath, Simone De Beauvoir, Nina Simone, and Mary Cassatt. This is what a true love song feels like to me...instead of making irrelevant comparisons to summer days or some such thing (I'm looking at you Willy Shakespeare!), Radin is drawing strong but not sickeningly sweet comparisons to feminine powerhouses.
Stylistically, I love the clapping and the happy-go-lucky rhythm. I think they complement Radin's whispery voice that sometimes comes off as too sleepy. I wish the song were even longer but now I must just satisfy myself with listening on repeat.
The songs invokes four of my favorite women; Sylvia Plath, Simone De Beauvoir, Nina Simone, and Mary Cassatt. This is what a true love song feels like to me...instead of making irrelevant comparisons to summer days or some such thing (I'm looking at you Willy Shakespeare!), Radin is drawing strong but not sickeningly sweet comparisons to feminine powerhouses.
Stylistically, I love the clapping and the happy-go-lucky rhythm. I think they complement Radin's whispery voice that sometimes comes off as too sleepy. I wish the song were even longer but now I must just satisfy myself with listening on repeat.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
What I Wore.
Right before Spring Break, I took a picture of myself for a few days to see if I liked posting outfits that I wore. I am still learning how to take a good self portrait, though. So far, I have managed to put my camera on my bathroom counter, put it on self timer, then run backwards until I can see my entire body in the shot in the bathroom mirror. This has proved effective but a little ridiculous.
My favorite blogs are fashion blogs (post about which ones I like later) so we'll see how this goes...
This was my favorite outfit for such a long time. I love wearing that skirt because I was on Michigan Avenue in Chicago late at night when a (drunk) woman rolled down her car window and screamed "THAT IS A F***IN UGLY SKIRT." Thus, it became my favorite.
I need to work on the lighting, I think. Also, I looked around in many places for the perfect white sweater and this is what I came up with.
I wore this on one of the first days that it was nice outside. Please ignore the extreme mess in my room. The picute on the right is the detailing on the dress. Also, you can't really see but I am wearing my cowboy boots, which are my favorite item to wear out of anything I own.
My favorite blogs are fashion blogs (post about which ones I like later) so we'll see how this goes...
This was my favorite outfit for such a long time. I love wearing that skirt because I was on Michigan Avenue in Chicago late at night when a (drunk) woman rolled down her car window and screamed "THAT IS A F***IN UGLY SKIRT." Thus, it became my favorite.
I need to work on the lighting, I think. Also, I looked around in many places for the perfect white sweater and this is what I came up with.
I wore this on one of the first days that it was nice outside. Please ignore the extreme mess in my room. The picute on the right is the detailing on the dress. Also, you can't really see but I am wearing my cowboy boots, which are my favorite item to wear out of anything I own.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Image of a President
I have been collecting some images of Obama for some time now. One of the things that is most compelling about our president is the way his very likeness has become synonymous with certain ideas, dreams, and, yes, hopes. His pull on contemporary art is palpable as well. The angry pieces of many artists have become more contemplative and far lighter than in years past.
Here are some of the things lurking around my hard drive.
The likeness in sand.
A watercolor. I love this one because it is faceless. Just a hint of a shadow.
I have posted this one before but I love the idea of "shaking hands with America." It really gives a scope and a feel to the thing, I think.
This one is my favorite, by far--apparently Obama has joined the cult of the Snuggie.
Here are some of the things lurking around my hard drive.
The likeness in sand.
A watercolor. I love this one because it is faceless. Just a hint of a shadow.
I have posted this one before but I love the idea of "shaking hands with America." It really gives a scope and a feel to the thing, I think.
This one is my favorite, by far--apparently Obama has joined the cult of the Snuggie.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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