As an undergraduate, I worked as a coach in the Michigan Tech Writing Center. It was pretty much the greatest place on earth I could possibly have worked and I’m relatively certain that I learned as much from working there as I did from every other class I took and experience I had during those four years combined. It was a truly incredible experience, thanks in large part to the most amazing boss and leader I could every have imagined– Sylvia Matthews. She is a quietly brilliant and beautiful woman, inside and out. Her inability to be anything but genuine and sincere was, quite frankly, breathtaking, and I enjoyed every single moment I spent working for her.
My senior year, Sylvia took a couple of us coaches to the Midwestern Writing Center Conference in St. Cloud, MinnesOta, where the theme had something to do with water. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but we put together a poster-style presentation where we discussed what we termed “The Ripple Effect” and shared some of the resources we had developed for working with international students in our center.
The ripple effect was essentially what it sounds like– like you drop a pebble in a pool of water and watch the waves spread out from that central point, making a change, even in yourself, will spread out from you in every direction and change the minds, hearts, and lives of those around you. It was such a beautiful and simple idea and we really made it our mission in the Writing Center that year– to continually effect and be affected by change in others.
When I went to grad school, I moved away from writing and focused instead on infectious disease for 6 years, and interestingly, microogranisms seem to promote change in the same sort of way– primarily horizontally. True, there are some infections that can be transmitted vertically (especially STDs!– gonorrhea? check… chlamydia? check… herpes? check… HIV? check… need I continue?), or from parent to offspring, but the most effectively spread pathogens spread horizontally from person-to-person-to-person… think the common cold, influenza, or norovirus on a cruise ship. (Or even the primary spread of STDs– its horizontal, no matter how you look at it. Ha!!)
And I heard the same sort of idea again when I heard Sister Miriam Therese Winter speak at the CTA conference a couple weeks ago. She talked about ideas moving most effectively through the world in a spiraling pattern… not so much from the top down or the bottom up, but from person to person to person from the center out in a spiral pattern.
Recurring life theme? I think so.
Sr. Miriam’s point was so beautiful. She talked about how the divine, the Holy Spirit, the good, whatever you want to call it, is inside everything and everything is simultaneously inside the divine. Those good things inside you can spiral outward to others, and the good things you are part of can simultaneously spiral back in to you. Lovely, right?
It’s especially lovely when I think about how this has happened in so many ways throughout my own life.
Let’s start with the Writing Center, shall we?
I met my friend Ming in the Writing Center. He was a brilliant mechanical engineer working toward his PhD… yet we spent most of our time talking about vegetables. Vegetables! Because he knew all the English words for building materials and other fancy technical terms, but he couldn’t match the produce he was seeing in the grocery store to the names on the signs above and therefore, couldn’t tell how much something cost… which was troublesome for a grad student on a budget. So I brought in pictures of vegetables and we talked about their names, among other things. It was so much fun! He told people I saved him from starving to death (ha…), but he taught me a whole lot more than that. Ming became my friend and accented English stopped bothering me in the slightest. In addition, I dropped my prejudice against Asian accents, which was important for me… I had a preconceived notion that Asian accents were harder to understand than European accents. How wrong I was! (Finnish was definitely the toughest for me, by far.) And that, for me anyway, is true to this day. Ming and I were both changed. And I never miss the opportunity to work on understanding a new and exciting accent, foreign or otherwise. (I live in Wiscahnsin now, dontchaknow!)
Likewise, things changed me and I like to think that I changed things in grad school. No, I didn’t spread STDs (to any humans, anyway), but I did try to spread my thoughts about the importance of studying STDs for the sake of women’s health. I remember sitting on the end of a dock on Clear Lake in Tomahawk one summer day with my aunt-in-law whom I barely knew at the time– we were chatting and catching some rays when she asked me about my work. I talked (at length, of course) about gonococcal and chlamydial coinfection and my model and what it meant and blah, blah, blah and infertility blah… when she stopped me and said, “But if someone had gonorrhea and chlamydia maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to have kids– what kind of mother would they be?” Or something along those lines… I explained that it doesn’t seem quite right for a responsible woman ready to start a family to have to continue suffering from an unfortunate mistake made at the age of 16. Everyone makes mistakes, after all. She liked my point, and I felt really good about making it.
And most recently, Sr. Miriam reminded me to keep it up– to keep dropping pebbles in the pond, to infect infect infect, and to send my love spiraling outward at every opportunity.
Seth helps me make waves these days!
(Don’t worry– I left the STDs behind in Maryland…)
I’ve probably done more than my fair share of over-sharing with this blog as my platform, but I must say, your responses– the laughter, the encouragement, the kinds words– are amazing. My beautiful friend Melissa left the above as a comment when I fessed up about binge eating on Thursday. How true? And my friend Dawn mentioned a similar idea when I showed you my shroom cut a while ago. Neither of those things feel quite so embarrassing or shameful to me anymore– power? Poof! Be gone!
If you’ll excuse me please, I’ve got a book club list to generate, I made some promises that I’ve been bad about keeping!
Here we are, friends! It’s finally Wednesday and today is the day I promised you Under the Tapestry’s first Profile in Awesome! YAY!
Today, I would like to introduce you to my friend and yours: Aimee Rathbun. Aimee was my next door neighbor in the dorms at Michigan Tech and I loved her instantly. She is basically the definition of awesome and I want to scream it from the roof tops…
This blog is my roof top!
When I asked Aimee if she would be my first profile, her response was, and I quote, “Oh my fish, I’m so flattered!” The fish was an autocorrect, but I like it so much better than gosh. Let’s go with that.
So, here she is, Aimee in her own words– oh my fish!
***
Hi, Aimee! Thanks so incredibly much for agreeing to be my awesome guinea pig. I’m really excited about this little segment and you have been on my mind for a profile in awesome since the idea first started taking shape in the back of my mind. To start, why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself… how do you typically describe YOU?
Well, I usually describe myself as slightly nerdy, I like to read and swim and ride bikes. I like photography and quilting and working on my house. I live in Alaska and I love it, but I miss the Great Lakes. I miss my family and friends too, of course. I bought a house, got a dog, joined a church, a swim club and a polo club– feels good to put down some roots!
One of the things that I find most awesome about you is your incredibly bravery. A few years back, you embarked on a huge journey when you packed up and moved to Alaska. Where did that kind of bravery come from and what was it like when you got there? Tell us about the adventure!
I know you’re going to tell me I’m eating too much “humble pie”, but I don’t feel like the move up here took as much bravery as people think. Part of the story of me ending up in Alaska has to do with moving to Flint, MI after I graduated from Tech. I don’t think I need to go into the exact reasons I hated living in Flint, but I hated it. I felt so trapped there. I disliked it immediately and was looking for a new job (in West Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota) for an entire year. Looking back, I was depressed. I think I was down enough that Alaska didn’t seem that scary, at least not compared to staying in a city I disliked, at a job I disliked and without any friends. I had to make a big change.
I had ended up in Flint because I was looking for a job in Michigan and Flint’s in Michigan. I was able to spend more time with my parents than I did while I was in Houghton and I was even close enough to watch some of my youngest brother’s swim meets during his senior year of high school. A few months after I started I met another new engineer, Katie, who happened to have moved in across the parking lot from me! Eventually she introduced me to one of her friends, who lived in Alaska and ended up sending me a job posting for a job up there. I went “ha ha, yeah right” and then immediately thought “wait… I guess… maybe… why not?”
Anyway, it turned into the most amazing 6 months of my life– interviewing and visiting Alaska for the first time (in the winter!), quitting my job and leaving Flint, taking a few months off to travel, driving to Alaska with all my worldly possessions in the back of my Jetta and starting a new life up in Fairbanks. There are so many things I could say about that time. It was just such a blessing to be able to spend time with family and friends– I spent a week in Mexico with Adriane, a week in Houghton for Winter Carnival with my brothers and friends and a week in Florida visiting my grandma and aunt. And everything fell into place so marvelously. I ended up in Fairbanks with neither a map nor a place to stay (my first stop was a Wendy’s with wi-fi) and a week later I had an apartment and a bike. One day I even thought “I wish I had a pull chain for the ceiling fan, I wonder where you even find those in stores.” Thirty seconds later I parked the car, opened the door, and sitting in the packed snow of the parking lot, between my door and the car, was a pull chain. Whether it was coincidences, gut feelings or God, I’ve never felt more blessed or more like someone was looking over me than I did those 6 months.
When you moved to Alaska, you didn’t know very many people. You are super lovable and I’m sure people took to you right away, but how did you go about putting yourself out there to make friends and develop a social network in your new home?
So I knew one person in the state when I moved up here, and I ended up dating him. And then we broke up… and I was sad and lonely and quickly realized I was at least 4000 miles from my friends and family. Earlier I said I didn’t feel that brave moving to Alaska… well, this is what took some serious bravery. I let myself mope for a week or two and spent some time at open swim (when the going gets tough, I swim). I started trying out churches. I found a masters swimming group, tried it and loved it. During the announcements I heard about the water polo club. So I went. I visited a church I loved. After church I drove to a quilt shop in town and signed up for a beginning quilting class. I was totally uncomfortable in these new social situations but I’m a firm believer in “fake it till you make it*.” (*I don’t generally think people should be “fake”, but I mean smile and be friendly even if you’re nervous and feeling awkward… soon enough you’re not even faking it.) Even though I didn’t make any lasting friendships in quilting class, I’ve amassed an amazing support network of friends through swimming, water polo and church.
Tell me about adopting your sweet pup, Bentley. What does she mean to you?
Bentley brings so much joy and love into my life! I met a few dogs at the Anchorage shelter but Bentley was so soft and calm and quiet. All she wanted was a belly rub! I think she sleeps in my bed most of the day and I’ve heard “I’ve never seen a dog sleep so much” so I think she’s the right fit for my quiet life and small house. She’s covered in big and small scars. Her vets and I don’t know where they came from, but I have a feeling it was a run-in with a car or other dogs (or both!). She cracks me up and makes me smile all the time. When I have a bad day and am feeling road-ragey or crabby, I walk into the house, hang up the keys and look at this sweet dog wagging her tail so hard that it’s whipping her eyes and she’s squinting up at me… and my heart just melts. When I feel like the worst person, she looks at me like I’m the best. She’s taught me about unconditional love and how to take care of someone other than myself… all very important things.
Bentley (gorgeous girl! AND Aimee took that beautiful photo!)
I know you love to read and I always enjoy your recommendations (I’ve read Peace Like a River twice now and adored The Snow Child). How do you choose what you’re going to read next and what do you like most about reading? What are some of your favorite books ever? Do you ever re-read books?
I’ve always loved to read– my mom used to panic when it’d take me 30 minutes to walk 3 blocks home from elementary school because I was reading the whole way! My parents read to us a lot when we were little, and I think Mom recommended Peace Like a River to me in high school. I loved the story when I read it back then and really valued the relationships between the siblings and their dad. When I re-read it again a year or 2 ago, I was able to focus on the religious part of it. Another favorite is Life of Pi, just because there’s so much to think about in that one too. I generally don’t re-read books (though I’ve read Peace Like a River and Life of Pi twice each) unless it’s an accident. There are just too many I haven’t read yet! Now I’m in a book club, so that helps a ton with finding things to read. Often they pick books I’d never choose for myself, and I love that. I think my favorite books are ones where I can totally picture the setting or the characters… I’m an engineer so I’m not good at describing literary things but at the beginning of the Time Traveler’s Wife, the author describes a meadow in southern West Michigan. I was reading it in an airport and I swear I could SMELL that meadow! Most of the books I like are more uplifting and magical. I feel depressed when I read too many sad books in a row.
One of my favorite things about you is your family– you Rathbuns are so fascinating and super fun! I’ve never met a happier family! Tell me about your mom and dad (best love story ever!) and those brothers of yours! What was it like growing up a Rathbun and how did your family impact the person you are today?
Well, my parents met when they were both student janitors in McNair Hall at Michigan Tech. We grew up visiting the UP, wearing Tech clothes and talking nerdy around the dinner table. I have 2 younger brothers and despite my parents’ best efforts to un-brainwash us, we all ended up going to Michigan Tech too! My middle brother is an amazing geological engineer with people skills I’ve always been envious of. He lives in Vancouver, BC with his lovely wife (my new sister!). My youngest brother is a computer whiz who used to count binary with my mom at the dinner table. He’s living on the east side of Michigan with his boyfriend. Our family has always been full of love and laughter. In the past few years we’ve gone through lots of transitions– kids growing up and moving away, my youngest brother surprising us when he came out, adding a spouse into the mix, my parents moving out of my childhood home, etc.– but through it all nothing’s changed. OK, so we travel a lot more to see each other and we need a few extra chairs at family dinners, but wherever we are still feels like home when we’re together and we love each other unconditionally.
Pretty please brag a little bit about your quilting… (and photo evidence would be awesome, if you wouldn’t mind me sharing some!) How did you get into quilting and how did you learn? From your mom? What is your favorite quilt? And what do you enjoy about it?
My mom had taught me how to sew and she learned from her mom (my dad’s mom sewed a lot too!). My Grandma J is a prolific quilter– she made a quilt for each of her 30-some grandkids and then many, many other ones. Mom made all of our halloween costumes and used to hem my pants for me but wasn’t ever really a big quilter. In Fairbanks, I found a Singer sewing machine at a garage sale (“I’ll give it to you for $15 if you take it before my wife gets back.”) and actually put it in a pannier on my bike and rode it home! About a year later I took a quilting class and found my current machine at an estate sale and I’ve been unstoppable since then! I even taught my mom a few tricks (rotary cutting and lots of starch!) and she’s enjoying quilting a lot more. Every time I am making a quilt, I’m thinking about my Mom and Grandma and the recipient of the quilt. I think it’s a lot like praying!
My favorite quilt is a quilt my mom, grandma and I made for Walt and Leanne’s wedding. We asked all their friends and family to send us a scrap of fabric and Mom, Grandma and I sketched out ideas on the back of a Big Boy placemat. We ended up making a patchwork background of 6″ squares with 5 or 6 bigger applique blocks of flowers. Finally, we appliqued vines, leaves and flowers over the patchwork. The white flowers on the vines are apple blossom (For Walt, Michigan’s state flower) and pacific dogwood (for Leanne, British Columbia’s provincial flower). The flower blocks have meanings too! Grandma and Mom did most of the applique (I have no patience for hand sewing!) and Mom came to AK to help me put together the top. So many people sent such sweet notes with the fabric that I actually scanned and cataloged the notes and fabric from each person, and starched, ironed and cut each square (and there are a lot of squares!). I even made a book– it has pictures of us making the quilt and then the back is the fabric and notes. I love knowing where each fabric in a quilt came from so I wanted them to be able to have a reference.
Look at that gorgeous quilt!!
Tell me about your love of nature and passion for photography… I definitely remember Copper Country Cruising with you, my hands on your steering wheel as you leaned out the driver’s side window to snap pictures. And even now, my office features eight of the gorgeous pictures you took of the UP. Is that part of the draw in Alaska– the great outdoors?
Ha! I don’t remember that but I don’t doubt it either! Probably better than what I do on the Mackinaw Bridge though (stick my head out the window to look down the grate WITHOUT anyone grabbing the wheel!). I don’t know what my draw to photography is but I do know Sunday I drove to church wearing hot pink sunglasses (with rosy, polarized lenses) and I thought “I wish I could capture this and share it!” Bright sun and fall colors against dark clouds and everything was extra intense with those sunglasses! Sometimes I wonder if I should just enjoy it, instead of working so hard to try and capture it to keep it forever… who knows. I love capturing patterns and colors and things most people don’t stop to look at. I can also totally tell my state of mental health based on the pictures I take. I took very few pictures in Flint and the ones I did seem brown and gloomy to me. In good times the colors are vibrant and bold (I’ve taken some awesome ones this year!).
And, of course, as a woman in STEM I can’t help but talk up your career a bit. Civil engineering is clearly your professional calling. I’ve never met a person more excited about sewer systems than you! What attracted you to civil engineering? What do you enjoy about your day job? Do you ever feel like it matters that you are a woman on the job?
I benefited greatly from “Take Your Daughter to Work Day!” I spent the morning watching my mom working on a computer and playing with a label maker. I spent the afternoon traipsing through a construction site with my dad. My Dad’s a civil engineer too, so I think I was just kinda always around it. Now that I think about it, my first sentence was “why man put dat dirt dere?” so maybe it was always meant to be. And the last time I was home I got a tour of my dad’s latest project– basically they’re building a building INSIDE a building I remember visiting when it was built!
I guess I’ve gotten used to being in the minority as a woman. I have 2 brothers and no sisters, I was the only girl in my section in band, I was one of 3-5 women in my civil classes (of about 50) in college… so it doesn’t feel weird or unusual to me and I’ve learned to hold my own. Also, I was raised to believe I could do anything I set my mind to, so I’ve never really felt limited by being a woman. I’ve come across supervisors who believe women can’t be engineers (you know, because our brains are different) but I’ve been fortunate that they’ve never been my direct supervisors (or I didn’t know it!). Actually, half of the civil department here is female.
This year I had someone (not at my company) say to me “yeah, you’re a woman, I know how you are, I’ve married 4 of ’em.” I couldn’t even take it personally– in fact, it makes me laugh. He has no idea what I’m like! (Also, maybe he doesn’t know women as much as he thinks considering his track record!)
Finally, tell me about five things that you love, excluding Under the Tapestry, of course 😉
My loving and supportive family and friends
My dog
Chocolate
Good beer
Wool socks
***
Seriously. Do you see how awesome Aimee is?!
In addition to the brilliant responses she provided, Aimee also added this quote:
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger, something better, pushing right back. (Albert Camus)
Beautiful, right?
Aimee was recently in Madison for a special course in super secret sewer stuff. (Ok, maybe not super secret, but it was sewer-related.) Since a trip to Madison is much more manageable than a trip to Alaska, a third friend from Minneapolis (our RA, Adriane!) swung through Marshfield to pick me up and we headed down to Madison for a weekend of fun. But not just fun…
On Saturday morning, Aimee, Adriane, and I went to a super cute little diner (Daisy’s, maybe?) and had breakfast followed by homemade cupcakes… because even breakfast should come with dessert when you’re with girlfriends. We had a blast catching up and I think even our waitress was excited about us getting the chance to catch up because our cupcakes were on the house! Icing on the (cup)cake, as they say!
In the 12 years that I’ve known her (whaaat?! 12 years?!), Aimee has reminded me time and time again of how important it is to follow your heart. She reminds me of the beauty in this world, even in the dead of winter, and that fun that can be found even in the mundane (it was Aimee’s pink plastic bunny, after all). So, Aimee, thank you for being a friend (a la the Golden Girls theme song) and thank you even more for sharing your awesomeness with my blog friends!!!
This is one of the oldest pictures on my Facebook timeline– good stuff!
What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ear and I’ll sing you a song, and I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Good song, better message:
I get by with a little help from my friends.
(Are you thinking of The Wonder Years right now?)
Because don’t we all get by with a little help from our friends? That support system? I posit that the answer is yes.
I tend to think of my life in terms of distinct phases, defined primarily by where I was in school… because until recently, I was always enrolled in one kind of school or another. So the way I think of my life is a lot like the way we (you know, we, like me and all the real paleontologists) classify dinosaurs based on when they existed.
Everything through the end of high school was essentially precambrian… early, unformed, and frizzy. I wasn’t really sure how to have curly hair yet and many pictures exist to remind me of that. (Many… frizzy… photos… Want to see one? Too bad! It’s far too awful and I’m not that secure.)
College was my jurassic period, and I think that’s fitting considering that hearing the word jurassic tends to conjure dinosaurs. I learned a lot, but when I think back on it, I feel like a lot of the time I was more or less stomping through the jungle trying to learn how to open door handles. (And if anyone points out that velociraptors actually lived during the cretaceous period, not the jurassic period, I’m going to tell you to get over it– it’s my metaphor and the visual of a stegosaurus trying to use a door knob is just absurd.)
Grad school was the start of my cretaceous period, mammals were just starting to evolve, but they were angry and confused… certainly not human yet.
Fast forward just a couple years to life as I know it now and it’s amazing how quickly this person has evolved. Fully Homo sapiens at this point. Good deal.
In each of those time periods, there was one constant– amazing friends. Friends that were there for me in the toughest of times (remember, what feels like a tough time is relative to the toughness of the times you have experienced to date, so no judgement for what someone else considers “tough”). Now that I’m living what I finally consider real life, I can truly appreciate how important the support of those friends was then and is now.
When I skipped a grade and life was kind of hard (because things feel tough when you’re 8!), Emily was such a constant.
Emily, the precambrian princess…
When I was dumped and heartbroken my freshman year of college, Aimee lived next door and held me up through all of that (and 17– that’s another time in your life when things feel really big).
Aimee, the jurassic giant…
When slogging through grad school took it’s ugly toll, Jess ran mile after mile after mile with me (and she didn’t even like running then! ha! now she’s about to run a marathon! hard core!) and talked me through the tough stuff.
Jess, the triassic talent…
In my current job, my co-workers are like that– more than just people I work with, but friends who offer support and encouragement on a daily basis. (Also gems like this video of poo pourri… too awesome).
My coworkers, queens of the quaternary…
Now, every single time I need to get away, Melissa is waiting for me in a safe, supportive, and happy place (seriously, I can’t even tell you how many different cities we’ve had pedicures in).
Melissa, the angel of all ages…
And finally, the friends that I thought may be friends of the past, but have surfaced since I began this blog to add so much more to my life than I could ever have hoped.
For a long time, I’ve been ok with being an introvert, a person who needs some alone-time, some quiet-time, and who has trouble with new social situations. But when I really think back on my life– starting with that precambrian period– I can see how insanely important a social network and meaningful friendships have been. With few exceptions (the exceptions being those impressive homesteaders living “off the grid” that you see on tv… dang, good for them, but I’d be pretty darn lonely with nothing but trees for friends), none of us can go it alone.
And someone out there can’t do it without you or me. Kind of a neat thought. And I hope I can be… that I am… the friend for someone else that so many people have been to me.
(How’s that for dinosaur references? Not all Jurassic Park this time– had to consult Wiki for this one!)
Pie is deeeeelicious. And under normal circumstances, I would certainly encourage seconds… seconds with whip cream. (And that’s wHip cream– emphasis on the H.) Especially if that pie is pumpkin.
Yes, I made this.
Humble pie, while metaphorically pie, is a different beast. And it is the one pie situation in which seconds are most certainly not encouraged. Just a sliver will do.
According to the Wikipedia page, humility is generally considered a virtue and I can see why. To be humble is to recognize that you’re not perfect, and that’s an important thing to recognize. (Unless you are perfect, but then we ought to talk about your God-complex.)
What concerns me about humility is that, at least among many of the women I know, humility has been taken to the extreme at the expense of confidence. And that makes me sad because I know some amazing women who really can’t seem to give themselves the credit they deserve.
The indispensable editor and all-around do-gooder concerned about not having “the” degree… the incredibly talented writer and animal expert who doesn’t think her experience counts for a dang thing… the mother, activist, and author who thinks no one cares about the children’s book she wrote… the nurse with over 30 peer-reviewed publications, a doctorate, and good ideas coming out of her ears who thinks she may not be qualified to lead her own research program……………..
Need I go on? Because I could. Easily.
I want so badly for these women to see themselves through my eyes. To get even a brief glimpse of how amazing they are. And not just because of the external accomplishments described above. But also because of the beautiful people they are, inside and out.
So maybe, just maybe, we could cut ourselves a smaller piece of that humble pie next time. Try to be ok with who we are, what we’ve done, and the good we add to the world. Because I can tell you, without a doubt, that you add good to my world and I am so grateful for that.
Living life by the golden rule is important– treat others how you would want to be treated. But for so many of us, I think we forget to treat ourselves with that same kindness. Perhaps you could start today. And let me know if you need some help. I can tell you why you’re awesome– easy as pie!!
If you went to a typical American high school, you’re probably familiar with Homecoming. (If not, please see the movie Greasefor a pretty accurate description– you know, the Rydell High pep rally.) At my high school we also had something called Coming Home and it wasn’t until I moved on and sounded like a confused weirdo talking about Coming Home that I realized that wasn’t exactly normal. Coming Home is essentially the basketball equivalent of Homecoming… except instead of a parade with floats for each class, we decorated halls in the school (on account of I grew up in Michigan and it was cold and snowy during basketball season). Every year there was a different themes for hall decorating and each class chose a theme within the theme to decorate their hall. Tons of fun, in my opinion, way to go LHS! (Although, despite the hours I remember spending drawing, cutting, painting, taping, etc, etc, etc, I literally cannot remember a single one of the themes… all I remember is a large, cut out Spiderman. I wonder if that memory is real…)
Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about high school, homecoming, coming home, or pretty much anything I’ve mentioned so far. What I do want to talk about is recurring themes. And the fact that sometimes I feel like my life in general becomes suddenly inundated with one. I come here to share words with you, friends (see what I did there?). Therefore, the theme du jour: WORDS.
Words are obviously a big part of my life. I’m a science writer by day and I spend the majority of my time at work reading or writing… putting words together to make other people understand science. And more recently, with the beginning of this blog, words became even more important to me. Writing, sharing these words with you, has become so incredibly cathartic. A powerful dream come true. A release every night as I put my thoughts down on the page.
Of course, two things don’t make a theme. A theme is something so much more. And I’m getting to that.
“…all these negative words are bad for us!” Then she committed to “using the power of words for good.”
Love, love, LOVE! Dawn is so right, I highly recommend reading her post. She says some really thought-provoking things about the way we use social media. And I love the idea of using our words to spread good.
Next up in this theme of words was a blog post by Bridget at Stumbling Towards Perfect where she describes her knee-jerk reaction to some extremely negative words and the beautiful way in which her daughter responded. Again, it was a negative post on social media and her daughter chose to respond calmly, to explain to the person who tried to use words to hurt the power of those words, and in the process, taught a lot of people an important lesson.
And still, two more things to go to complete my theme…
I just finished (tonight, actually) reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It was a beautiful book. And so much of it is about the power of words, for both good and evil. There were several passages throughout the book that described the power of words that I thought were just so interesting.
“‘Don’t punish yourself,’ she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”
Wow. Yes.
In my experience, writing is cathartic. Sometimes it is hard, it can be painful. But it is so rewarding, and sometimes I even make myself laugh out loud. (Because, as you already know, I am so funny. And humble, too. Hmmm… humility. I have a LOT to say about that. But one thing at a time.)
And then the last line of the Book Thief’s book. She writes:
“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
Dang. Yes again.
Words can be so personal. They can be so personified. Seriously, I find myself falling in love with the words I put on the page. And when I find that magical turn of phrase, I simply can’t imagine it any other way. But then sometimes the words don’t come out right and they don’t sound like I want them to sound and I hate them for not being just so. Writing. It’s complex.
And in the midst of all this, because of all these words, I reconnected with an old friend who is now an English teacher. (Oh, I am going to say some things about what I consider the vocation of teaching someday. So important.) She told me she like reading along (so nice! she made me feel so good!) and we talked for a while about the power of words and she told me that people don’t think of English as a powerful subject and write it off as “touchy-feely.”
Ugh. No.
Words are crazy important. And the people that teach us to use those words are the people who give us power… yes, they give us the power to express our feelings to one another, but they also give us the power to inspire, to persuade, to share, to reason, to communicate. There is immense power in all of that. Think of just a few extreme examples: of Hitler persuading his countrymen to kill millions with words, of Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy persuading thousands and thousands of parents not to vaccinate their children against deadly and debilitating diseases with words… but on the other hand, Martin Luther King, Jr. used words to inspire thousands to take to the streets and march for equality and John Stewart uses funny words to make serious points about systems that are very broken. Do you see how powerful words can be? (Do you also see how italics and heavy use of parenthetical statements and elipses (that’s the dot-dot-dot) make you read my words in the same way I would speak them to you? Cool, huh?)
So that, friends, is my thing with words. (See, I did it again… yes! title for the win!) It’s a recurrent theme, these words, and I hope you like the way I’m using them. I also hope that someday my teacher friend will take me up on my offer to share her words, too. Because I know she’s got some good ones inside of her dying for an audience!
Update 9/9/13: SoMeOne, who shall reMain nameless (seriously, how clever am I?), pointed out that there are several typos in the post above– ironic considering it’s all about words. Dang! I was going to read it again, find them, and correct it, but… when I actually got here that all seemed like an awful lot of work. So, the typos remain. Please accept my apologies!
