Friday, November 17, 2017

#87 - Visit 3 New Museums

Yet another list item that just fell right into my lap. The first two museums were field trips for a course I was team teaching this quarter and the last was during my visit to Austin.

1. I served as a staff professional for the Explore Chicago program at DePaul, a first-year experience course that has components of an academic course with a theme, opportunities to learn more about Chicago, and about 10 hours of material focused on supporting students in their transition to college. Our first field trip as a class was to the Chicago History Museum, a museum I had been planning to visit, had even bought a Groupon for, years back.


We only had about an hour there, and I hope to return. The museum was fascinating, which makes sense, as Chicago is a fascinating city. The visit reminded me to get outside of my Chicago bubble and experience what this city really has to offer. It also reconnected me with my intention to learn more about this great city and all of its bizarre origins and history.

Effing weird ass tickets from the World's Fair


2. Later in the quarter we took a trip to the Jane Addams Hull House. I find this piece of Chicago history to be fascinating as it is at the intersection of true service to a community in need and the White savior complex. Jane Addams built a settlement to serve one of the poorest, most under-served areas of Chicago. She took the time to integrate herself into the community and earn its trust. But she also maintained her White, upperclass lifestyle and appearance, insisting that to change herself to better fit the community she served would be at best pandering and at worst pathetic and insulting.

Only two buildings of the original settlement remain, as the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) purchased the entire property. They had planned to tear down the entire settlement, but protesters eventually convinced them to keep the original house and dining hall, which now stand as a museum. The change in the area is another fascination I have with urban areas, particularly Chicago: urban redevelopment and/or gentrification. As a higher education professional, I generally assume real estate used in the service of education is a positive thing. I often forget that universities, like any other organization, search for the cheapest, easiest real estate, and so frequently target low-income communities who do not have the funds nor political power to fight back. They are forced out of their homes and must relocate. As someone who has relocated and is also White, perceived as upper middle class, very well educated, heterosexual, and currently able bodied, relocating has been incredibly stressful for me at times. Those with less privilege in any of those identities not only struggle more with the expense of relocating and also must worry about whether or not they will be welcomed into a new neighborhood or even by a landlord.


3. While in Austin for my birthday trip with UMCSD friends, I was generally just going with the flow with a stated preference for being outside. The last day, we ended up in the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. It wasn't until I left Austin that I realized, oh, that was a museum, that counts. It was definitely my style of garden, winding paths around wildly, unkempt greenery and unusual sculptures.

It was also family day, so there were approximately a million children as well as some interactive activities. My favorite was the option to become a musically inspired sculpture, though I did enjoy the snapshot I took of a balloon artist explaining balloon artistry to a very attentive child. My second favorite was when Da Jung insisted we take a path up some stairs to another area, which was a beautiful path... to nowhere. My third favorite was a sculpture of a tiny horse.
Saddest statue

Actually, my first favorite was spending time with my lovely friends.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

#47 - Kayak on a River

Selfie lessons on the river
While it's certainly gratifying to complete a big list item, one that requires a lot of planning, commitment, and work... It's also really lovely when something off my list happens naturally.

Lately I've been feeling that I'm at a place in my life where though I have financial, mental, emotional worries, I feel as if I'm thriving socially. Not only do have intelligent, kind, fun-loving, ambitious, beautiful people in my life whom I can call friends, but because of them, I constantly get to do things I want to do. I have regular plans with the Zanns twice a week. Masters is always organizing some fun, new experience with other fantastic people. I get to have long conversations over wine and weird liquors with my parents. And sometimes I have the good fortune of being able to connect with friends who live hundreds of miles away and they take all the work out of planning my birthday trip by planning a trip they want to go on and choose things to do that happen to be on this list.

Beautiful backdrop for a paddle

2009 - Las Vegas, NV
2010 - Louisville, KY
2011 - Kalamazoo, MI
2012 - Hollywood, CA
2013 - San Juan, PR
2015 - Kona, HI
2016 - Portland, ME
2017 - Austin, TX

This year as I contemplated where to go, some friends of mine from San Diego started planning a trip to Austin... in November. Perfect. 

I met Da Jung, Karl, and Jon through the University of Michigan Club of San Diego (UMCSD). I'm so thankful for the people, including Karl, who put so much work into that club, and I hope they know how important their work is. Through UMCSD I was able to make friends outside of school while working on my PhD. We played kickball, went on hikes, went to happy hours, and eventually planned things on our own with each other because we were actually friends. When things were tough academically, I had a group of friends who were supportive, kind, and fun. As moving makes friendship very inconvenient and a lot of work, I'm thankful that I've stayed in regular contact with several of my UMCSD friends, including these three.

Since I left San Diego, Da Jung moved to Austin, so here we are in Austin, just over a year since I've last seen any of them, and it's so nice to be reassured that I have lasting authentic relationships from San Diego. It's also nice that they did a lot of research on what to do and like to do things that I like to do. One of those things just so happened to be kayaking.

I like turtles.
What a deal at $10/hour at the boathouse. Jon, Da Jung, and I took a paddle down Lady Bird Lake, a part of the Colorado River. The weather was perfect, the views were lovely, and there were so many turtles.

While this wasn't quite the river kayaking I imagined, I'm counting it as it's much different than the sea kayaking I've done previously. I much preferred river kayaking as I didn't get seasick. I definitely need to look into some paddle sports on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

Thanks, friends, for a lovely weekend.