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Location: Home.
Listening: The wheels of my own little mind turning...

Sleepy weekend. Lost the entirety of Saturday to lazing in bed, which I suppose should give me an indication of how worn out I've been. Peter and I had a late dinner from The Pizza Place of antipasto salads while we watched the first half of the director's cut of Dances With Wolves on Bravo. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that film, especially the scenes in which he is trying to communicate with the Sioux. The Lakota language is very pretty, and I managed to follow along with a little of it after matching up several phrases and repetitions with the subtitles. Yay. After dinner, I returned to one of my three current books, "Between Silk And Cyanide", a memoir by Leo Marks, the premier British codebreaker of World War II (and the son of the Marks of Marks & Co., the bookshop in 84 Charing Cross Road). I've gotten tangled up in code and cryptanalysis again, God help me. I love the stuff.

Woke today around noon, caught up on my "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in bed while Peter was sleeping, and then rallied to do housework. Got a load of dishes done, a load of laundry finished, and then revised my resume and posted it to four different sites (all interspersed with sporadic bouts of Civ III). I've been informed that my job is "safe", at least until the New Year, which is reassuring, but I'm also encouraged that there are several university positions open that I'm qualified for. I'll be printing special application forms and my resume this week for mailing. I realized, after all the transitioning at PAS, that I missed working in academia terribly, so I've decided to begin there in my search. Wish me luck.

Watched the second half of Dances With Wolves while eating a yummy spaghetti dinner that Peter (Sleeps With Fury) made and remembered why I have such a deep-seated hatred of the military historically speaking. I come by it honestly--my great-grandmother was born on a reservation in Oklahoma, her grandparents having walked the Trail. She's listed with her family on the notorious Dawes Roll, which is still used to determine eligibility for citizenship in the Five Civilized Tribes (including the Choctaw and the Cherokee). Another great-grandmother is reputed to be Choctaw and I'm trying to verify that currently through genealogical records. My mother, who is one quarter Cherokee, made the mistake of telling me about the Trail when I was very young, and about the vague numbers of our ancestors who were driven to walk (and, for many of them, to die)on the forced march from North Carolina to Oklahoma. I think I was the only sixth grader in my elementary American History class who regarded Andrew Jackson as a hypocrite and a murderer. When I visited the state capital to argue in moot court proceedings for the Tennessee Youth In Legislature program in my junior year, I gave the finger to the massive bust of Jackson in the entrance to the state legislature every time I passed it. Cosmic revenge came in the form of the hymn sung at my high school graduation--excerpts from a speech of Jackson's set to music (don't ask me where they found that one). My AP American History teacher caught my eye as they were singing it and shrugged sympathetically. To say that I become agitated when dealing with issues of US-Native American relations is an understatement and to say that I should get up off my ass and do something about it is accurate. I'm looking into putting AIM on my monthly donation list with Greenpeace. How terribly yuppy of me *sigh*.

Parenthetically, even though I am a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation by blood and can apply for official citizenship using my great-grandmother's entry on the Roll, I've never done so. I was encouraged to by my college advisors, who told me of the enormous opportunities for scholarship money, but I never felt that it would be right for someone who has never set foot on a reservation to take that money from someone who has. A boy in my class at my brother school felt differently. He applied to several universities, including Harvard, as a Native American, hoping that it would provide him with a competitive edge. His classmates got wind of this and, noting that he came from a fairly well-off upper-middle-class background, teased him mercilessly about it. One of my friends, the yearbook editor at the time, christened him "Dances With Minks" (his last name is Mink), and actually managed to have this printed in the yearbook. He missed at Harvard, but got into several other universities with scholarships. Whether or not they were related to the ethnicity claim I never verified. My mother even argued that I should give it a shot, considering that many Native Americans don't attend college. Remembering the historical reasons why they wouldn't or couldn't, I refused. As graduate school looms closer, I know we'll have that discussion again.

But I digress. All in all, it was a fairly productive Sunday. I once again missed my Sunday Swahili post, so I'll be posting next week--likely a series of four small vocabulary sections to facilitate getting back on track. I haven't abandoned my studies by any means. It's just getting closer to the holidays and when I'm not trying to keep track of bills, chores, and other practical nonsense, I'm basically good for loafing on the sofa with a book.

Oh, the humanity.