I have been taking this anthropology class which is mediocre. It’s a first year course so it is kind of slow and there is a lot of hand-holding designed to help new students adapt to university. For all that occasionally we talk about interesting topics.
Today’s topic was Food and the rituals associated with food. Not surprisingly this got me thinking about food rituals in my own family. The examples brought up in class were holidays like Yom Kippur and Eid and Thanksgiving and the importance of food as a symbol in all of these.
The rituals associated with the food was also and important consideration. At Thanksgiving every year my family goes around the table and each person chooses something that they are thankful for. This is common, many of the other students in my class reported similar traditions – some included prayer but many included a structured way of giving thanks.
On a broad cultural scale this is designed to reinforce cultural values of the importance of gratitude and an awareness of what we have. Then, on a small scale it also reinforces individual family values. For example, when I was young and we were doing the circle of thanks my dad got up and said something along the lines of “I am thankful for nothing you ingrates.”
There are some families where such a thing would be completely unacceptable but in my family everyone erupted into laughter and they still make jokes about it years later. Reinforcing the idea that humour is important and acceptable and not to take things too seriously.
Another family ritual is tea. This one comes down on both sides of my family. When someone comes home and at the end of the night we make a pot of tea and drink it. We spend about ten minutes together – usually sitting in the living room drinking tea. Sometimes it is done just while we are doing other things such as reading or doing homework or other times we spend the time talking.
I remember being young when my grandparents used to take me and some of the cousins to the amusement park on Center Island and afterwards we would have tea with honey and chocolate biscuits on their back porch before going to bed.
It is interesting how something so trivial as a pot of tea is so important to our family environment. It marks our bonding time. When someone makes a pot of tea you take a break from whatever else you are doing and you drink together before going back to work. It goes back probably for generation. When my dad was young his family lived around the corner from the school and the neighbourhood kids used to stop off at the Ashberry house because his mom always had a pot of tea out after school let out.
What are your family rituals?
So I finally go the internet booted up properly here at the apartment. I am actually in the apartment now, I’ve been living here for almost a week now! Great excitement. I’ve managed to set off the fire alarm once (with the oven) and my door lock is a nightmare and a half but aside from that all appears to be well in my little two room world here.
I also had an interview today which I feel went very well. Here’s hoping I get the call back to the second interview, in the mean time I am going to continue sending out resumes.
Classes are also going well. My Intro to Anthro may need to be replaced. It’s a first year that I picked up so I would have the option of adding an anthropology minor (which would be good if I decide to apply for a museum management grad program. It is very much a first year course with reading responses to do and probably research workshops. Which may be draggy. Also I don’t know how much social anthropology will appeal to me. The physical and archeaology streams that we are covering in my second year course are facsinating. I will give it another week before I make a decision.
Text books are a pain in the behind though. I bought just over half of the ones I need and it cost me $400. And I have at least one more course kit to buy which is another 100. All in all, the furniture in my living room costs less than the freaking books. Grr. Argh. Fume, Fume. I do have heavy reading lists but not so heavy writing. More tests, fewer papers. It all balances out I guess.
On a completely different tack, I am pretty much fully furnished for the apartment. I have couch and a bookshelf to pick up at ikea either tomorrow or on Sunday. The bed arrives tomorrow sometime. I have a dresser and a desk and my grandma donated her old breakfast nook table. I can eat, sleep, sit, study, and store stuff. Hmm… to make that sentence better I need a word that begins with “s” to replace eat… ha! snack. Ok. So I shall snack, sleep, study, and store stuff.
Anyway, alliteration aside. I am heading down early tomorrow to start the process of moving in and I am very excited. Kid on Christmas morning excited. 
I was thinking of hosting a ‘Furniture Assembly Party’ with pizza and maybe beer – though that would probably be counterproductive. So pizza and pop then. The desk and all the ikea stuff will have to be assembled and help is always welcome for that sort of frustration.
Wanna see my furniture?
Desk
Exciting eh?
The other day, as I was stuck in traffic trying to get onto the 400, my mind was wandering. This incidentally occasionally gets me beeped by other drivers because I have tuned out too far, but in this case I was aware of the road but my mind was also busy thinking other things.
Probably as a result of some road side sign or something said during a lecture I was thinking about abortion and adoption. Cheery and light topics for a Wednesday night, I know. On some television program that I had watched there was an agency that sought to get extra fetuses from fertility procedures adopted and implanted into mothers. It was definitely on a fictional program which took a flippant view of such a thing (Pushing Daisies maybe?). From whence it came wandering into my brain is beyond me but wander in it did. I have no idea if such an agency actually exists or not, probably not.
I found the whole idea ridiculous. This led to the opinion that I don’t think that fetuses are alive. I have heard this argument made time and time again in the pro-choice vs pro-life arguments but I’d never actually thought about it in those terms. I don’t believe there are many circumstances under which I, personally, would get an abortion personally but I am strongly pro-choice. Not necessarily because of the nature of a fetus as a child or a bundle of cells but because I don’t believe that you could possibly force someone to carry a child to term if they didn’t want to. There is something creepy and totalitarian about taking that decision away from someone.
In a similar vein, I think that in some ways our culture has started to devalue motherhood. Within my peer group anyways, a woman who chooses to stay at home is viewed as less intelligent and less motivated and a whole bunch of other negative superlatives than a career focused woman. I think that being a mother might as well be considered a job. It takes more work than a lot of other jobs out there.
Back when I was an International Development Studies major, we did a section on what was called the ‘informal sector’ of the economy. When the worth of a project in an area was calculated, the question was, how do you factor in people who do not work for profit? If a woman raises her own children, grows vegetables, and cooks, how much money is she putting back into the economy? If she didn’t do that amount of work then how much money would the state have to expend in day care, food importing and restaurants to pick up the slack?
Modern women are expected to go out and get jobs and then try and balance family with that job. Women who choose to do only one aren’t viewed in a positive light. As I said, Pro-Choice, and that extends to pretty much all things, it’s the fundamental building block of feminism, women should have all the same choices as men.
Now in this case, I’m glossing a little bit over the fact that men are faced with the same sort of societal constraints in this regard, “house husband” is a said as a joke when it should be recognized as a valid choice. Men are expected to fall into macho stereotypes and behave a certain way.
I shall now step down off my soap box and let you get on with your lives. Hopefully this wasn’t too much of a tirade. But as I said somewhere, I started the blog for purposes of self-indulgence.
I spent half the summer blogging at work but that was specific and pointed writing with an obvious audience and organized topics. This is a more free-form attempt at blogging. If it turns out to be utter failure well, I hope it will be worth it.
The greatest drawback of a blog like this is that I lack real topics to write about. I’m in the process of moving into my first apartment and I have packing and scheduling woes to complain about but would anyone really be interested in all of that?
If you are interested, you should know that the last tenants were late moving out and now my residency has been pushed back a week. I don’t actually get to move in until next weekend. This isn’t the end of the world of course but it is irksome.
As much as I love my family by the time September rolls around I am ready for a change of scenery. Besides I really like the idea of having my own space, not a corner in a residence but an apartment that is all mine. I’m looking forward to decorating and obsessing over furniture placement and cooking things with the shiny new pots I bought.
I’m also working my way through a job hunt. Unfortunately apartments are pricey undertakings and a part time job will help keep my head above water and food in my pantry. I’ve sent out some applications to excellent positions at interesting places. I am really hoping that I’ll get an interview at the Pioneer Village and the Science Centre, I’ve also got two group interviews lined up.
I shall leave that as my first post.
I spent the last three summers working in the library. Back in Blind River I did any and everything because I was the Katimavik participant. I did such things as wander around town and pick up donations, build a giant bookworm, shelf read, stamp things, pick up mail, etc.
Then in Tay Township I was a summer student so I got to do things like plan and run crafts, help kids find books to read, check things in and out, make phone calls, and entertain children, but there was no giant book worm for Tay.
I also read a lot of books. A whole lot of books. Not while I was at work but just about all the rest of the time. Just as a disclaimer, I’ve read some of the great classics, I even liked a lot of them but for the most part I read things like Janet Evanovich and Laurell K. Hamilton. These are not literary classics but they are still fantastic and thoroughly entertaining (unlike modern literary fiction which has this painful tendency to be miserable).
So I spend a lot of my summers living in worlds created by other people. In some ways coming back to a series is like coming back to an old friend. These people don’t exist but I feel I know them. Which is probably why I tend to read series in batches. Once I made it through the first Stephanie Plum novel I went and I read through the next six in about two weeks.
I like to do the same thing with TV, I own a few box sets and I’ve begged and borrowed others, I prefer to watch television shows in long strings, watching characters and relationships develop in a close series rather than over a long season. Generally this does not work so well with really crappy shows but it works really well with well put together ones like Veronica Mars and Heroes or ones with good character dynamics, like NCIS.
When I’m working my way through a world someone else has created on paper or on film, I’m relaxed. I don’t have to think about the world I live in because I’m not really there. Escapism!
And don’t let anyone tell you escapism is bad (well ok, it would be bad if you escaped so thoroughly that you lost your grip on reality for the long term rather than the short but that probably won’t happen to you or me.)
So anyways, here’s to everyone who’s ever gotten lost in Edward and Bella’s world or spent far too many hours watching Prison Break than might be considered healthy. We all love to live in worlds that are different from our own.
