-
I was living in Berlin, had been working steadily towards my dreams of finding my place in academia. I was exhausted between teaching at three different language schools in order to stay afloat, the stresses of applying to and preparing for grad school with no guidance, and the details of the everyday of negotiating life…
-
What a time to be alive. For me covid days have meant looking longer and harder at things both outwards and inwards. The collective pause has brought a space to stand back into, to assess in ways one usually reserves for the change of year either annually or personally. When covid started, I was embarking…
-
For better or worse (I think largely better) the covid-19 interval has spurred such a plentiful offering of online arts, cultural, and intellectual events. For someone like me who exists on some plane outside of large institutions but who holds interest and curiosity, and who is also in an active phase of attempted self-integration and…
-
Why is and isn’t the right question to ask. Why there is abuse in the academy. The resources are few and competition is fierce. There is no incentive to collaborate. The path to recognition and reward is primarily independent research and production. The system is an indisputable hierarchy, built to support those at the top…
-
Last week I went to see the Mount St. Helens exhibit at the Portland Art Museum during the typically – but that evening especially sparsely – attended Friday evening open hours. Just afterwards, the museum closed for at least a month but now probably two in order to help flatten the curve. Because this means…
-
The truncated 2020 Portland International Film Festival featured a film by Patricio Guzmán called Cordillera of Dreams. Though I had planned to go, I didn’t due to a cold and Coronavirus isolation. However, I was able to find his two other documentary films which began his trilogy capped by Cordillera: Nostalgia for the Light and…
-
How did I become interested in German? I’ve never been one of those savants who have an “ear for languages” or accents, though I’ve always been able to assemble strong vocabularies. Nor do I thrill to the hard work of constant repetition and drilling. Nonetheless, German drew me. This started with my Oma. My great-grandma,…