I’m sure this definition is familiar to many, but I heard it for the first time in a student presentation during an assembly on neurodiversity. I don’t know the original source, but here’s how the student presented it: disability is one’s ability + a barrier. Their example was a wheelchair user. Getting around via a wheelchair is the person’s ability + the barrier of steps without a ramp = a disability. I really liked this positive perspective on a person having certain abilities and the dis- part is not inherent in them but external barriers set up by societal norms and expectations (such as steps).
Category: Uncategorized
Introvert or Extrovert
Time once again for Long and Short Reviews Wednesday Weekly Blog hop, this time asking ourselves to answer whether we are an introvert or extrovert.
My brother years ago, self-identifying as an introvert and identifying me as an extrovert, explained the difference as being that he recharged by being alone and I recharged by being around others. I’ve always liked that definition. And his identifications weren’t without merit.
But I think we are all more complex than that.
Through much of grade/high school I was probably introverted in the sense of being shy and withdrawn socially. I only found my voice at the end of high school and in college when my family moved to Mississippi and confronted with overt racism, I found that silence = complicity, so I couldn’t stay silent. I would say I’ve acted extroverted since then, but friends/colleagues have noted they can see the introvert within me when we’ve discussed this past.
And since the pandemic, I do find myself happily a homebody a lot of time. Big, crowded events don’t appeal. Indeed, I’ve never liked huge crowds period. And, in the words of my brother, sometimes I just need to be alone to recharge. But it’s also true that being around others can really life my spirits.
So to answer the question are you an introvert or an extrovert, I say yes.
A moment I wish I could relive
It’s once again time for Long and Short Review’s Wednesday Weekly Challenge. I’m always a little late responding to folks’ postings for this because our firewall at school keeps me from reaching Long and Short Review’s site. (There are a lot of weird little sites that I can’t reach at school, such as the Wirecutter reviews on NYTimes). But I look forward to yours after I get home.
This one is easy. All week long I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the 2017 total solar eclipse I saw in Oregon and wishing I could’ve seen the totality this year. As I noted on Monday, this episode of The Pulse really took me back there as one of the interviewees described the total eclipse experience. And here again is one of my photos from that 2017 experience
You can see photos of Monday’s partial (where I was) eclipse on this post from Monday.
Eclipse day!
Happy eclipse day! Congratulations to anyone who gets to see the totality. I’m sad I won’t get to see the totality today. I will get to see the partial and my school has a special schedule so that all can enjoy it. A neighboring school I know actually said we don’t have time to do the eclipse, we need to do sports. 🤦♀️ I’m especially jealous of those who get the totality because I got to do the totality in 2017. And it is mind blowing. I was listening to this episode of The Pulse and it made me quite nostalgic, reminding me of all the little details, like the temperature drop, the crickets coming out. There won’t be another total eclipse in the US till 2044, but maybe I’ll find an occasion and a way to travel to one elsewhere in the world. One of my colleagues is making it to the total today, as she’s from a location where it’s happening and it’s just popping home to see it. Here are a photo from Oregon in 2017 – not of the actual totality, I think, but close. I think I was just looking at it during the totality and not taking photos [edit: further reflection I do think that’s the full totality. I don’t think I would’ve gotten that photo that well if it wasn’t]. We were in the city, so you’ll know that the street light had already come on in reaction to the beginning of the darkness.
Book trope I wished would would happen IRL more often
It’s time once again for Long and Short Reviews Wednesday challenge. This is a good one. I had to really think about it. But I think I would go with enemies to allies/enemies to friends/enemies to lovers or any such variation. It seems these days that it is hard for people who have different ideas to cross those divides. Ideas that might contain possibilities for mediation are turned into absolutes, leaving no room for understanding and compromise. Those who support ideas different from one’s own are demonized, that they are operating from a place of good will is rejected. So the tropes where one sees in an enemy or opponent humanity, goodness, and/or a potentially useful working relationship seems like something that would make our society more functional if it happened more often.
How I amuse myself in waiting rooms
I wish I had a brilliant answer to this, but mostly I just scroll on my smart phone. I think at times, however, how the phone has gobbled up those quiet moments of just being with one’s self. Standing in line in various places. Sitting in a waiting room. One week, on NPR’s Wait…Wait… Don’t Tell Me, they discussed a video of a woman just sitting on a plane doing nothing – it went viral because people (including the woman’s daughter who filmed it) thought it was so weird for someone to just sit quietly. I teach at a Quaker school, so once a week I do have the chance to sit quietly with myself (and several hundred other students, faculty, and staff) during Meeting For Worship. And sometimes I just sit quietly in a waiting room. But there’s a certain beckon of my phone and all the things I can read on it. (EDIT: Oops, forgot to link to Long and Short Reviews, the hub of the challenge)
Pets I used to have or wish to have
Time again for Long and Short Reviews Wednesday blogging challenge. Last week’s was a challenge for me. This week’s is easy: I’d love a dragon. Well, I live in a small condo, so perhaps a fire lizard. I’ve always loved dragons. I consumed McCaffery’s Pern Books when I was a kid. I love Novik’s Temaire Series. I see my cat Circe in Toothless. Plus flying. Who wouldn’t want to go flying on the back of a dragon?
What’s New in My Life Lately
Hmm…This is a tough one. Last week, I mentioned crocheting. That was new as of January. But beyond that, I’m a teacher and thus deeply in the swing of the year. Not a lot of new comes up. Classes are all just past the half way point. Not even my free reading (I’m reading Furious Heaven, which is a sequel, so not really a new thing – but excellent). I’m writing my sequel to my novel I’m querying, so that’s not really new (and I’m about 91K in, so definitely not new). I’m back to querying agents again after a bit of a break, so that’s kind of new. And it is the (Lunar) New Year. So Happy Year of the Dragon! That’s new.
Things I like to do on stormy days
Time for Long and Short’s Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. The topic is, well, things I like to do on stormy days. Writing is the obvious choice. And drinking tea – big fan of the Murchie’s Storm Watcher in loose and bags (and so many of their other teas too; they make great green-black blends like the No 10). A new activity, however, is crocheting. I picked it up during January intercession, when I taught a course on flow activities. What are flow activities? From Wikipedia, the characteristics of flow are:
Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
Merging of action and awareness
A loss of reflective self-consciousness
A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
A distortion of temporal experience, as one’s subjective experience of time is altered
Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding experience
Here’s a Ted Talk on Flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term.
Writing is certainly a flow activity for me and I’ve lost more than one day to writing. I hadn’t expected crocheting would become one for me, but thought it might be a good contender for some of the students. My mother came as a guest teacher and a few of them (and my co-teacher) got into it, but it also hooked me (pun intended).
My first project was the hat that was the class project. Mom had started us off with a little circle. Mine, however, turned into more a beret than than the beanie intended 🤣. Now I’m working on this scarf project. I found the pattern just googling and loved that it came with a YouTube video, that helped me with the new stitches. I’ve been working on it on rainy days (ah for more snowy days!) while listening to Kate Elliot’s Furious Heaven.
New Word(s) I’ve Learned Recently & meaning
Another tough one for me. My vocabulary is pretty expansive. I once played FreeRice (the original vocabulary version) until I reached the top level and could stay there. Fortunately, there are always neologisms. And the OED brought me “rizz” as their word of the year. From a news article on “rizz”:
Rizz, a widely used word online, is defined as style, charm or attractiveness, or one’s ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.
The word is believed to be a shortened form of the word charisma, taken from the middle part of the word. Rizz can also be used as a verb: to “rizz up” means to attract, seduce or chat up a person.
…
OUP said the word reached its peak popularity in June of this year after actor Tom Holland was asked in a Buzzfeed interview about his rizz, to which he said he had “no rizz whatsoever.”
I’ve never had occasion to use rizz, perhaps because like Tom Holland (or perhaps unlike Tom Holland) I have no rizz whatsoever 🤣
Ramblings 
