I'm resurrecting my account after a long hiatus. It looks like the community has grown so much over the last two years and I'm excited to connect with some new OPWs.

Interesting that the "inspiration" for today's post is the question, "What's your favorite country, other than your own?"  That's a tough question because countries have so many different beautiful things to offer.  The country I'm most connected to is Jamaica because that's where I do my research, which brings me to my next thought...

I am on research leave for the first time this semester.  This is a huge opportunity that rolls around once every 6 or 7 years based on merit. Truthfully, I'm a little burned out from working toward tenure in a contentious environment, trying to support and enrich my students, trying to maintain a research agenda without the time needed  as an ethnographer to truly conduct the kind of fieldwork I was able to while working on my dissertation research, and balancing family life, feeding myself, etc.

At the moment, I am technically still on January break and allowed myself time to do nothing guilt-free for the week after New Year. Now I'm trying to stave off the flood of thinking that leads me down the path of "you might squander this semester if you don't pay attention".

This is, in part, one of the reasons I'm rekindling my account.  It's a space of simplicity, whereas Facebook is a space of over-stimulation and Twitter is a space I only visit to witness users trolling The Donald. I think this might be a good space to think through and track life on research leave. To the other academics out there, this is my "low stakes writing assignment" where I can freely regroup and freely think outside of evaluative structure.  Here we go...

Goals for leave:

IRB

Revise and submit two conference papers as articles

Launch new research project by making contacts, preliminary interviews, sussing out who will be willing to participate and who might not be.

Based on the ease of the "launch" dig into deeper fieldwork or rethink strategy

I haven't posted in a little bit, so let me say a little about Wellfleet Oysterfest.  I look forward to this event every year and even drive 6 hours each way for the weekend just to attend.

It's an outdoor festival in "downtown" Wellfleet on Cape Cod and basically you go from vendor to vendor eating plates of fresh oysters on the half shell, drinking oyster stout beer, checking out nautically oriented crafts, and listening to NRBQ. There is also a highly anticipated shucking competition.

The lemon on the oyster (teehee) for me is that many of my friends from college convene every year in what has become somewhat of an annual tradition.

It was awesome and now...back to work.

On my commute home today I saw a white Rolls Royce (not a common sight on the BQE, and eeeesh are new Rolls Royces TACKY LOOKING) with dark tinted windows.  The vanity plate read, "MR LOLLI" and was framed with a custom plate frame- "I'm Hiring".  I peered in the obscured window as I passed the car, but all I could see was sunlight glinting off of an enormous gold watch.

Looking for a job?  Follow the link below and you can thank me later.

http://www.anthonylolli.com

I didn't realize how much mental space and emotional energy tenure took up (I guess I did in theory, but didn't recognize the real toll of it) until I came back to work this month not having to think about it.  It's pretty amazing how much more focused I feel on mentoring students without the crazy pressure, and publication balls in the air. I have three students working on independent research projects with me at present and two of them are carried over from last year.  Being able to sit with drafts of their papers and focus on one thing at a time this week has been a revelation! I hope settling in to this new phase continues to create more normalcy.  I was commenting to a colleague that in academia we all spend so many years clawing our way through (grad. school, field research, dissertation, job market, tenure process, etc.) that now that I've finally come out the other end it's hard to rest with the concept of just "being where you are" rather than continually struggling for what comes next.  Phew.

In my social media "folly" I've (the Married White Progressive of the post title) been attempting to reconnect to my roots in small town Connecticut in part as a way of having conversations with people who have totally different political views from my own.  This experiment has blown up in my face over the past week.

I'll admit that I may have been overzealous in my attempts to engage on political posts from my "friends" but I did always try to be polite when pressing for clarity on some stances that appeared innately inconsistent.

This anthropologist learned that a large number of people who post political content don't actually want to talk about it (I guess it's more emblematic to them than interesting) and aren't interested in adding to or adjusting their views beyond what they already think they know about the world.  I find this troubling because it doesn't bode well for democratic process (whether the people are progressive or conservative).  The people I've been speaking with seem to base their conservative politics largely on the "character" of people they feel haven't earned help because they are lazy or undereducated.

Here is where the bear trap snapped on my foot... I'm a social scientist.  We are a misunderstood lot of rag-tag academics.  We aren't scientists, per se. Social Scientists have done a poor job of convincing the public that you can actually study human behavior, culture, and society and come up with "facts". Additionally, since everyone makes observations about people in their day to day lives, people assume their experiences are as representative as the research of Social Scientists.  They're not.

This is where I began to feel like an a-hole. People I was engaging with I don't think understand that college professors are also researchers, not just "teachers". As I said to a friend in a heated and unsuccessful moment of weakness, "It's like me telling you that I know as much about nursing as you do because my mother has a long-term illness". Anthropologists are trained to think about their social position in relation to others they are interacting with.  I am way over-educated in relation to the folks I was engaging with.  When I spoke of the "facts" I have studied, they took it as me thinking I was telling them they were stupid or uneducated.  We were in the gray zone where social science analysis of patterns of poverty and poor communities was being looked at as my opinion as a progressive, just like their idea that poor people are poor because they are lazy was their opinion.  Frustration set in for me. There are things that are provable if you look closely at them.  My assertion of proof was taken as an attack on intelligence.  I had been called out with comments like, "you paid too much for your education" from folks who had joined the military and never completed college. I couldn't respond in kind because I think it would be wrong to tell this person that our public school had failed him and he never learned to make an argument where evidence built upon itself to a conclusion.  He was all over the place when we talked politics.  I always liked him as a person when we were in school together.  He was kind in a school full of pretty mean people. But it turned into a trap.  This social scientist's disciplinary insecurity (but these are FACTS!!! Why won't anybody LISTEN TO ME?!?!) turned into what I wanted to avoid (Anne has become an over educated, Brooklyn elitist who thinks she knows more than anybody else). I will say that through it all I never resorted to the name calling that was hurled at me, but in all this has been a failed experiment. If anyone knows an "over-educated" conservative who actually likes to talk about politics, send them my way.

I always make fun of my husband for putting on a movie he's already seen 500 times.  It usually involves hunting for Russians in an adrenaline filled submarine, or some catastrophic weather event. I rarely repeatedly watch a movie if I can still remember the plot.  The exception to that is two John Hughes movies.  16 Candles and Pretty in Pink.  Ridiculous.  I know. 

What is it about Molly Ringwald that made her such an appealing adolescent "every woman"?  She didn't fit the 80s blond bombshell mold, the characters she played were always vulnerable but principled, and at the end of the story she always got the boy and he was a better man for it.

I was realizing that when my students see Molly Ringwald it may well be the equivalent of seeing "Gidget" when I was a kid.  What?  That middle aged lady was a teen surfer dreamgirl?  What?

This got me thinking about the 80s and the pop culture I consumed in the 80s. I can remember how important the word "individuality" was to me then.  Self expression was a crucial concept to 16 year old me, who had little else to really concern myself with. Looking back, I realize that I had a limited context within which to understand the idea of being an individual.  To me it was rebellious. It was punk rock. I had no idea how well it fit in with what it means to be an American and that long history that can easily take people down the path to libertarianism.  Punk rock.  That transition point where Anarchy and Libertarianism still coincide.

Back to John Hughes.  His movies were always set in mansions and on "the other side of the tracks".  Class was upfront and center in most of his romantic storylines. It was the barrier to true love in place of the grudges of feuding lineages. The feuds were between the popular kids and the outcasts- the kids with money whose parents appeared to be chronically out of town versus the kids whose dad was Harry Dean Stanton. And the subtheme of "being yourself" was always part of that plot line (and everybody was white too). His movies may have also paved the way for series like My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks, which I also consumed hungrily and with a sense of identification. Some of the resonances I see are an uncertainty about what will happen in the future, unrequited adolescent desire that seems like it will end the world, parents that don't understand, and life in the shark tank of high school.  Class issues creep in to the extent that teenagers ever really have an awareness of class at all beyond "my family doesn't have the same things that their family has".

Given the way the 2000s have gone, I'm surprised there isn't a revival of the working-class, oppressed teen, struggling against conformity theme in pop culture. I don't feel like I'm seeing it.  I wonder why that is. It strikes me that the 18-21+ year olds that I teach have a vastly different perspective on the world. The ones I interact with as a professor tend to be "joiners", but the ones that identify with me most tend to be the "change the world joiners" who participate in creating on campus recycling campaigns and who want to go on to study public health.  They are much more realistic about the world than I was at that age, but also frequently much more privileged in terms of what they feel entitled to.  They seem less alienated in the middle class way that I felt alienated as a kid.

I don't really know how all of this fits together, but I guess my question is- Is there contemporary pop culture that's as teen-angsty as those 80s movies?  The Perks of Being a Wallflower might come close. In 2014 what drives teen angst and what are contemporary teenagers rebelling against?

That's my book ranked one ABOVE Clive Davis's biography in the "Music Business" sales category on Amazon. I can't stop laughing.

Last month I bought a car for the first time- a car that I chose for myself. Having grown up in a "frugal" (crushingly cheap) household, and having been a broke graduate student well into my 30s, I have driven hand-me-down Toyotas since the day I qualified for my Learner's Permit.  I have a relatively anti-consumerist streak in me. If the car has wheels and a seat, it's good enough, right? Well...

Back when I was courting my husband he would often talk about his Porche 911. During the "sussing out" phase that kind of talk qualified as a red flag.  I thought he was trying to impress me with things- until I actually saw the car.  The 1980s 911 too was really just an engine with wheels and seats. That 911 is purely about the joy of driving for him. The state of the interior signals his lack of concern with prestige- the funky ripped up leather seats, the removed a/c unit that unloaded "extra" weight. You get the idea.

Two years ago yesterday I married the Porsche man. He didn't grow up in a "frugal" household.  His parents worked their asses off to move out of Bed-Stuy and into their own suburban raised ranch on Long Island.  They worked opposite shifts for years- his father as a court administrator and his mother as a nurse during nights so someone would always be home to care for my husband. Now retired, they enjoy what they have. The difference being that in my own "frugal" upbringing, the idea was you needed work for what you have (an adequate home, an adequate car, adequate clothing, and probably too much savings for a "rainy day") so you won't have to worry. But you still do worry- and, even in your rejection of materialism, a concern with squirreling away money for its own sake comes to dominate all aspects of life. 

By now I have been working as a college professor for quite a few years and have paid off some of the things that needed to be (still working on the student loans, unfortunately). Out of pure pride I announced to my husband a few months ago that I would drive my 1997 forest green Rav 4, which my father had passed on to me with 120,000 miles on it, until it rusted to bolts on the roadside- smell of long deceased dogs romping through saltwater be damned! He grinned and shook his head.

My husband was an only child.  His parents taught him to earn what he wanted in life, but they were also generous with him when it came to having things. Anyone remember the LaserDisk? He continues to be an expensive toy collector even as an adult (Hello vintage sail boat, BMW motorcycle, Airstream trailer, old friend 911, second hand M3 convertible, and beat up Land Rover). If it goes, has an engine, a sail, or wheels of any kind, he is likely on Craig's List looking for it. We are opposites.  He enjoys first and worries later.  I worry first and enjoy when it seems appropriate for whatever my present circumstances might be and only after significant and careful budget consideration.  He's an optimistic extrovert and I'm a realist/pessimist introvert- between the two of us we would be one relatively well-balanced human being. We have a good time together.

Last month, staring at some standard but hefty older car repairs, I was finally worn down. I picked out my own car for the first time at age 42 and I didn't choose it out of pure practicality. It took some psychological gymnastics to get over the guilt of that- Should I really have something that's more than just adequate?  Boy did I go way beyond adequate this time.  I bought a 2008 BMW 335XI coupe.  Is it a family car?  No. Can I haul compost in it? Not really.  My three dogs and husband can all fit inside though, so good enough.

I'm happy when I drive it! I have never had a car (and have rarely even driven a car) with such good design and spectacular engineering. When I drive it I'm comfortable and I feel in control!  When I commute I know I can pass safely (and with a PURR) on the manic Brooklyn Queens Expressway.  I have a cup holder that offers me a beverage at an appropriate height rather than the one that required rummaging through a front seat storage bin in order to rest my coffee cup. I have a navigation system that keeps me from fumbling with my phone to access a map.

I have come around to the idea that some things are expensive because they're well made. Driving is less full of mental clutter.  I am safer because I'm less distracted. I'm happy listening to music through excellent speakers and listening to the engine growl. I'm happy when my car sticks to a curve.  I love driving my new car- it's way beyond adequate.