The Redstar Perspective

UPDATE (10:55 p.m.): Apparently I’m not the only one quitting. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson is expected to resign tomorrow. Wahoo!!! Ok, now I’m done. Read on.

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It’s with some sadness and some relief that I write this post: I will not be blogging anymore at The Redstar Perspective. This has been a difficult decision, and I’m still unsure what it means. I may retire this site entirely, or I may resurrect it at an unknown point in the future. I’m still sorting out the details.

Here’s what led to this decision, somewhat in order of importance:

a) It’s time to write my dissertation. After meeting with two of my advisors recently, it’s clear I can finish this thing in the next 12 to 15 months and GRADUATE!!! Especially since the New Year, but generally speaking, blogging has become my primary activity, and an enormous time suck for me. Yes, my stats are SLOWLY growing, and, according to readers, my writing is improving. But, in addition to feeling like I’m losing my way re: the content of this blog (more on that in a minute), I also feel like I’m investing so much time and energy in this blog and not generating the returns I want to get. It’s not ok with me that my readership grows when I discuss the general election, because that’s not my preferred content focus. The hours I’ve been spending on posts about Obama v. Clinton, etc., is distracting me from really focusing on the writing I need to be doing NOW - that is, on issues of social justice, urban recovery and contentious politics in post-Katrina New Orleans. In other words, my dissertation.

b) I no longer feel comfortable blogging without anonymity in the ’sphere. Given where I’m at in my still-emerging career, I’m not ok with folks’ ability to track down my thoughts and opinions on-line.  I regret not blogging anonymously, and any blogging I do in the future will strive for greater anonymity. For someone with deeply personal intellectual interests, the current context of the Democratic primary and the empassioned and often heated on-line discussions of race, racism, gender, sexism and misogyny, privilege and prejudice have left me feeling that the web is an even less safe space to really grapple with these issues. In our splicing and dicing interpretative world, I know my thoughts and perspectives on the primary, on poverty, on my family, etc. are up for grabs for appropriation and re-interpretation. Nonetheless, I plan to remove some of the content from this site, but will leave the rest up for the history books.
c) The RP has run its course. This blog began in part because of my work in New Orleans, because my buddy Jake urged me to blog rather than send long e-mails to everyone I knew about what I was experiencing in the city beginning in January 2006. With this dissertation, my work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is coming to a close. This blog has grown from that original reporting, to cover topics of development, poverty, housing, inequality, activism, cities, and politics more broadly, but all of this has been mixed up with odes to my boyfriend, Grey’s Anatomy, and random (hopefully amusing) stories about my childhood and roots. Frankly, I’m not interested in writing a general interest blog that’s a mix of analysis and journaling. I need the latter for my mental health, but I’ll find another outlet. My priority is to examine urban inequality, especially as it impacts low-income women, households, and neighborhoods. This is what I want to be blogging about (and working on in my lifetime), and I know there’s a niche audience who wants more of this. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for blogging, but I need a new and fresh venue. That will come in time.

So there you have it. Just in time for what would have been the second annual RP History Month. I’m still figuring out how to keep my original New Orleans posts and select others on-line and available. I’ll probably make an announcement about that in the future.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please leave a note in comments. That will give me an e-mail address for you (remember, others can’t see it) if/when I launch another blog.

Thanks to all my readers and champions over the last two years, especially NYC Weboy, and other blogging allies such as Professor Zero, DonnaDarko, Pizza Diavola and Pocochina. It’s been fun, instructive, exhausting and mostly my pleasure. I have become a blogger. Look at me.

Until we meet again, I leave you with some highly recommended reading:

Please read this disturbing, enraging and graphic coverage of the brutal rape and assault of a woman and her kids in Dunbar Village in W. Palm Beach, FL, and how you can let the NAACP know where their legal, PR and activist resources really belong.

A pregnant man challenges people’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. And shakes up the healthcare profession. (H/t Echidne.) Meanwhile, pregnancy discrimination complaints from women reach record levels.

A refreshing comments thread that asks bloggers to cool it re: their election coverage. Instead of all the collective hyperventilating, let’s all check out Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action. (H/t Corrente.)

Read Brownfemipower’s WAM conference speech about centering feminist activism around questions of citizenship and the problems this creates for advocating for immigrant women. (How I missed this conference - held at MIT, the irony! - is beyond me.)

Be well, have fun, and stay safe.

I’ve updated my blogroll, especially the Politics category, but also some overdue additions in my Feminist links.  Check ‘em out.  Introduce yourself.  Make friends.

I’m spending some time with the fam this evening (currently blocking one of my mom’s dogs from the box of Cheez-its beside me as I type), and will be back tomorrow.  In the meantime, here’s some links to what I’m reading:

On-line:

Who Represents the Progressive Movement?

Periodically Speaking;

Count WHOSE Vote?;

“White” Like Who?;

and

Generation Gap.

Off-line:

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears;

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao;

Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City;

and Justice & the Politics of Difference.

Happy reading.

I’m working off a mac right now, and I don’t know where my icons are for bolding, linking, etc., so bear with me on this rough cut. - UPDATE: LINKS ADDED.  12/16/07.

See the last bunch of posts - and my colleagues in the blogosphere, inc. Brownfemipower, Kai and Cara - re: the literal battle over the future of public housing in NOLA. There’s a stay of execution for the moment, and we should give ourselves a collective moment of thankful pause before resuming the relentless pressure over this issue. But that’s not the point of this post, written during my dept.’s holiday party on this Friday afternoon.

I want to thank the blogosphere for helping me pass my general exams, which I did today, WITH DISTINCTION, a rarely invoked status here in my dept. In addition to my colleagues in the Gulf, who have educated me, often painfully, on framing, power, gender, identity, conflict and struggle, I’m indebted to my virtual peers here. The obvious is NYC Weboy, my unparalleled champion, and Prof. Zero is a close second, for hosting such a supportive environment to share my ideas and the personal struggles that inform my thinking. But it’s the debates of the broader community that I’ve been listening to, and reading, and thinking about, that I feel really helped me here at MIT and this morning in particular, especially when it comes to issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, power and equity/justice. Shout outs go to Pandagon, where I cut my teeth on the feminist blogosphere, Feministe, who’s writing I respect, Feministing, who seems to have the biggest market for throwing one’s hat in the ring, Shakesville, who’s mainstream progressiveness and f***ing hilarious snark never fails to please, and especially, Sylvia and Brownfemipower, for eloquent, provocative writing that truly leaves me thinking. Kai, Black Amazon (who also just met her own academic hurdles - check out this post!), Rachel’s Tavern, Racismreview, the Field Negro, The Curvature, Racewire, Racialicious, the Silence of our Friends and Outside the Toybox are also in my reader and in my mind. The M.A.S. wants to know why I love the blogosphere, and it’s because it’s my real intellectual community, where I shape and test my ideas.

Of course, my peeps keep me grounded and engaged and sane, and they’ll be getting their shoutouts offline. So thank you fellow bloggers. Today is a f***ing red letter day, filled with wine and good cheer and warm praise and proud, humbled tears and I hope you can all share in it with me!!

PS: If you want to add to this syllabus, pls offer your recommendations in the comments below!!

That’s what I’ll be doing this weekend for my exam, typing up some notes, organizing my books and articles, taping key stuff to the walls surrounding my desk (which has been moved to my “foyer” area where my books are).  I’m NERVOUS and the MIKE IS OPEN HERE AT THE RP FOR WELL-WISHES FROM THE AUDIENCE.   

(Prayers for NO SNOW on Monday are also welcome; our amazing and diligent Dept. Admin. Chief has already emailed me concerned that snow on Monday morning will prevent her from getting my exam questions to me at the specified hour of 10 a.m.  When will this end????)

As for today, it was all exercise and retail therapy and now a dinner date with my man.  I’m wearing a cute little jumper of a dress from Michael Kors more appropriate for my 22 yr old NYC cousin, but it was $25 at Macy’s after 3 different discounts, and I’ve got the legs for it, if I do say so myself!!   

Legs that, to Amy’s delight I’m sure, are covered in LEGWARMERS!!!  I have been jonesing for these since they came out last year - who even knows if they’re still in style (Weboy?), but I DON’T CARE!  (Plus it’s Boston, which means they’ll be in style late or never or for too long, and regardless, just bucking the prep trend of which I am typically a part is avant garde enough for me!)

A pair of new gloves, also deeply discounted and with some cashmere inside, and a little make-up and Chaka Khan on the iPod and I am ready to head out.  Hoping to leave the anxiety at home with the misplaced idea that I should be reading The Truly Disadvantaged (again) instead of having some much needed, last minute fun.

Have a Wonderful Weekend!!!

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, one sociologist’s exploration into the “American character,” the “Massachusetts Irish” are “the ethnic group that defines the standard for ethnic groups.”*  (In all our traditional, old world, trusting, close-kin glory)

I’m sayin’.

*From Alan Wolfe, “Democracy versus Sociology,” in Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier’s Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality,”  1992, p. 317.

(Meanwhile, perhaps appropriately, on WWOZ, playing quietly on my iTunes, I can only make out the line in some alt version of The 12 Days of Christmas, “5 ROB ROYS.”)

Back in March, I read Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked.   I wrote a bit about it, but truthfully, the book left me fairly unmoved.  I found it to be a weak journalistic endeavor (though I may have unrealistic academic standards).

The women Stepp portrayed were pretty uncertain about their rights to safety, respect, autonomy and control in intimate encounters, though this may shed more light on her own biases about seeking out what she was looking for vs. an accurately representative sample of sexually active, high-achieving, relatively affluent, college-aged women.  Since it’s release, feminist blogs have been rightfully mobilized around this ludicrious concept of Stepp’s called “grey rape.”  (Click through to see Cara at The Curvature’s on-going coverage of the issue.)  Infuriatingly to many of Stepp’s critics, she considers herself a mentor to the generation of young women she portrays as dangerously hooking up across college campuses today.

What I remember from the book is that at the ripe old age of 31, I couldn’t relate to the hook-up behavior she was describing, even though I could relate to their self-described emotions about men, self-confidence, self-image, etc. that were supposedly fueling their sexual activity.  Raised by an overprotective single mother/nurse, it has been drilled into my head that casual sexual activity with men you don’t know well is risky and dangerous, especially re: one’s physical and social health.   I continue to think this today and can’t imagine Stepp getting out of her own way to set aside her own similar pre-conceived notion in undertaking her study.  It’d be relatively easy to run a large, quant survey of attitudes and behaviors to test her theory that the practice of hooking up will irreparably harm these women relationally in their adult lives.  Christ, I was in three monogamous, serious relationships in a row from ages 15-22, and one of them (with an emotionally abusive adulterer), combined with family history, left me unable to form long-term, intimate relationships with men until recently.  Just because I wasn’t bed-hopping through college or my 20s doesn’t leave me any less screwed up than Stepp believes these women will become.

What annoys me about this book is how it was a missed opportunity to reframe the debate about sexuality, identity, autonomy, equity and women’s empowerment.

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Story of my life!! (See checkbox: “working from home.”) 

* WPG2 Plugin Not Validated *(click to enlarge)

Via.

Credit: “Tale of Mere Existence: Isolation” - Levni R. Yilmaz Esq

From a study I co-authored on gender bias at the boundary of academia and industry in the life sciences/biotech field, here are the 5 KEY FINDINGS:

FYI: We interviewed 56 life scientist professors at one elite university (22 women and 34 men, out of a possible total of 30 women and 118 men) from 2004-06 on their entrepreneurship, what we call “commercial science” (e.g., filing patents, starting companies, sitting on corporate scientific advisory boards, etc. The beauty of this study is in its generational cohort design: We divided faculty into cohorts based on when they received their PhD (”distinguished” faculty prior to 1975; “senior” b/w 1976-85; “mid-career” 1986-1994; and “junior” 1995-2001). We used these cut-offs based on the emergence (c.1975) and establishment (c.1985) of biotech as a new and legitimate field for faculty participation. This allowed us to compare across generations gendered commercial science experience as it “started-up” as a new field for faculty participation. N.B.: It also is an almost entirely white and Asian faculty sample, and race/ethnicity is not treated here.

The first finding is that women were explicitly denied entry into this new field, when venture capitalists visited campus and invited only male faculty to participate in potential biotech ventures. Their actions mirrored current gender bias in academia, a field established in the “male” image of the rational, impartial scientist. The numbers demonstrate this; there were only 4 women and 46 men in the “distinguished” generation.

The second finding is that this early exclusion of women contributed to the new field of commercial science also being structured in a “male” image, and that this shaped gendered, cognitive interpretations of who was a credible entrepreneur (answer: men): repeatedly in our interviews, both men and women described men as being more entrepreneurial, more willing to take risks, more suited for commercial science. Even the majority of the women (and there were few) participating in commercial ventures did so in partnerships with men that they described as men taking the lead with them following behind. (Prof. Cecilia Ridgeway has a great book chapter on how gender bias shapes emerging fields in The Declining Significance of Gender?).

The third finding is that this sharply constrained opportunities for women as the commercial landscape evolved over time, mainly through a lack of role models/mentors and fewer entry points into commercial science. Even as the field became established and opened up for broader participation from all faculty, younger women effectively had only senior male faculty as entrepreneurial mentors; in fact, senior women often were negative role models in this case. Mentorship and role modeling not only offers younger people a guide to practice and behavior, but also access to the networks that build up around the collegial relationships essential to academic - and commercial - collaboration (see especially McPherson et al.’s “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks” ($) in the 2001 Annual Review of Sociology for more on the concept of homophily and connections bred through similarity).

The fourth finding is that - thirty years into the contemporary practice of commercial science - gender bias is shrinking and commercial opportunities for junior faculty are becoming more equal. The important caveat here is that women continue to face additional barriers to access based on their disproportionate responsibility for childrearing, esp. (and obviously!) childbirth. Though working towards tenure tempers all junior faculty’s enthusiasm for commercial ventures (given, for example, the comparable ambiguity of patenting as a relevant performance metric versus the established importance of publication rates), junior women faculty are also often considering childbirth or raising young children during this time. This leads into all of the existing realities of gender inequity in balancing work and family, the challenges for working mothers (see Correll’s recent research on the “motherhood penalty“), and circles back to my earlier point about the lack of strong role models for these young women. It was striking in interviews the cognitive dissonance for young, entrepreneurial women starting families listening to their senior, male mentors - whose typically non-working or part-time employed wives had raised their children, leaving them free to pursue their external commercial activities in addition to academia - encourage them in their pursuits. (See Xie and Shauman’s “Sex differences in research productivity: new evidence about an old puzzle,” in American Sociological Review, 1998, 63(6) for more on the characteristics of spouses of male v. female faculty).

The fifth finding is that institutional support can facilitate women’s entry into commercial science. Technology licensing offices, for example, offer all faculty guidance, training and assistance on taking their research to market. Yet, the persistent lack of institutional clarity and transparency on performance metrics leads to confusion for junior faculty over what matters in building their careers. The racially charged fallout over MIT’s denial of tenure for African-American professor James Sherley, and its past failure to equitably promote and support female faculty, demonstrate some of the worst outcomes from such an opaque, political process. But a more subtle influence is the lower likelihood of women and/or minority candidates to take risks - such as pursuing commercial ventures - if they are unsure of the payoff and already cognizant of uneven barriers to success in their field. (Prof. Mary Frank Fox’s research goes deeper into the need for clear and established performance metrics to ameliorate gender bias in academia.)

This study illustrates in detail the emergence and evolution of gender bias in one professional context over time. It’s a small sample in a atypical environment, but it straddles a range of venues - academia, science and entrepreneurship - and offers many parallels to women’s experiences in other areas, such as medicine, law or business.

Fresh off a wedding weekend in the Hamptons, I’m both inspired by (and all set for now, thanks, on) the quaint and rural-ish charm of eastern Long Island, and surly about being back in my own urban world chock full of assignments and looming responsibilities.  With 16 web pages still opened on my PC as I sort through the news and blog posts from the weekend, my need for commentary eludes me.  Instead, I long to be sitting again with D- on the back porch of her brother’s Bridgehampton rental while the M.A.S. swims and sunburns on a glorious Monday afternoon, or to be submitting to Jake’s teasing over brunch in E. Hampton on Sunday about my “logical” falling for the M.A.S. (this was Jake’s summation of my story of how I “decided” to date the M.A.S. after carefully considering the evidence that I was a) choosing not to date anyone else even though he and I were just “friends,” and that b) though we were only “friends” I was spending all my time with him).   My gorgeous pink and red rose bridesmaid bouquet is drying in front on me on the kitchen table; I can still smell the flowers’ fading scent.  I’ve got a plethora of new freckles and some modest color of my own after a couple hours at the beach with a Vogue and my man on Sunday afternoon.

But I’m compelled to post, to not lose the momentum of last week and for you, dear readers, because I know visiting a blog that hasn’t been updated in awhile is as frustrating as repeatedly checking an Evite to see if those curmudgeonly “Not Yet Replied” offenders have finally decided to RSVP.  Henceforth is my Hamptons-inspired, modified ”link farm,” acknowledging that I’m fulfilling neither the letter nor the spirit of the definition of “link farming,” but am instead just posting a bunch of stuff I enjoyed reading recently in the hopes that you’ll check them out too.  

Obviously, let’s start with his post about gentrification in which Wesley leads in by calling me a genius (ignore those other links that got my hackles up)…

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While relatively quiet on the posting front the last few days (though I’ve more than made up for it with my “State of Emergency” post on New Orleans), I have added some new additions to the RP links.

Check out feminist blog Pandagon, the worldly and eloquent Professor Zero, and the justice work of my frolleague (friend-colleague, if you will) Lydia at Friends of Justice.  (Also take a look at Lydia’s recent post at Foresight about their work in Jena, Louisiana, which spurred some reflexive NOLA commentary from Redstar.)

Also, I have to put a link up to Lisa Belkin’s latest column in the Times on managing our time, not only because I feel totally justified by her findings, but also because she cites one of my favorite childhood books as hers too: Cheaper by the Dozen, about a fictional family of 12 kids raised by an efficiency guru.   Kooky, scientific hijinks ensue. 

Happy reading.

I’ve made what feels like major headway this week on enhancing this blogging business (it’s all for you, my adoring hordes of fans).  Notice:

• Categorized Links! 
• Recent Posts!
• The return of the Virgo’s List of Lists, including everyone’s favorite about running into my uncle the union electrician when we both should be working (this one, alas, is password protected, though my hated function hall anthems is on the open list)!
• I have added little taglines to my categories, so roll that little arrow on over them.  Oooh, that feels so good!

But, before I go blind or develop a permanent squint a la Clint Eastwood, or possibly worse, fail out of school, I need to take a break from teaching myself code and put on hold the other changes I hope to bring about soon:

• Images of Redstar in action!
• Favorite and related posts!
• Re-ordered archives!
• A permanent tagline!

It’s going to be AMAZING, life changing.  Surfing the internet at work will never be the same. 

What a week.  I’m an old woman, beat down from taking on YouTube, html code, and generational gender shifts. 

I’m reading Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both.  This book was released recently with the usual hype about whether this older feminist-mother-journalist was getting it right when she decries the apparently-sexually-liberating practice of hooking up among today’s young women.  As the title indicates, she thinks it robs women of genuine chances to experience love, intimacy and healthy, stable relationships, the latter of which most of her interviewees claim to want later in life.  From the NY Times ($):

“…criticism [of the book] has exposed a generational divide between Ms. Sessions Stepp, whose battles for women’s rights focused mainly on equality in the workplace rather than in the bedroom, and some members of a younger generation who equate feminism with sexual freedom.”

I’m about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I’m processing it on multiple levels - a social commentary on women, sex, and feminism as well as a piece of research aimed at a popular audience.  But, I can say already I observe a lot of generational differences between myself and these women, currently in high school and college.  It’s striking.  A lot of their opinions about love and relationships resonate with me, their statements are not unlike how I justified my own adventurous single life in NYC.  But their actions seem much more wild or cavalier or brazen than my behavior ever was.  I’m certainly not some middle-aged mom, we all know that, and so I’m struck by how I can relate emotionally to these women yet feel absolutely aged by their behavior.  I was amused enough by Stepp’s response to the criticism -

“Ms. Sessions Stepp said that she welcomes criticism, though not from people who have not read the book or who have never conducted research. ‘This is what I love about the bloggers,’ she said. ‘They haven’t been out there interviewing young people for 10 years. They’re talking about their own college experience. Everyone’s had some sort of sexual experience and they all think they’re experts on it.”’

to purchase the book so I could authoritatively weigh in on her findings and analysis. (Apparently she missed that Time magazine thinks we’re all geniuses.) Stay tuned.  Any more sleepless nights like this past week and I’ll be through it in no time.  Because unlike Stepp’s young women or the women they’ll become, the only thing I’m wrestling with at 2 a.m. these days is the meaning of life.  Clearly I’ve been lost these last weeks without the spiritual guidance of my generation.

I’m re-reading Chicago School sociologist Louis Wirth right now, his seminal Urbanism as a Way of Life (1938), and I’m pleased to see that in his first paragraph he writes “…the beginning of what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities…from which radiate the ideas and practices that we call civilization.” 

Yeah Louie.

I bet he would have laughed at my Starbucks joke.

I’m back on my couch beside a snoozing M.A.S., after we got up at 5:45 am this morning to fly from Raleigh,NC home. Of course, in this wintry post-Jet Blue world, our 9 am flight was delayed three hours, and with commuting via T from the airport, it was 4:45 pm before we finally came through my door. I’m not much longer for this day myself.

But of course, there’s a whirlwind of thoughts going through my mind, spurred in part by spending the weekend in an American exurban subdivision, one from which the M.A.S.’s sister has wracked up 83k miles on her car in only three years in her daily commutes between home, work and leisure. I’m not a great navigator in M.A.S. road trips by any stretch (I’m definitely a driver, and not one who’s keen on asking directions), but I was particularly pitiful this weekend with nothing but fields and farms and sparsely dispersed strip malls as my landmarks.

Needless to say, I was out of my element among the highway culture and no Starbucks in sight, even if the M.A.S. clan and friends offer rich conversation on cities and planning and keep me busy trying to keep pace with their family dynamics. But then he and I took a road trip Sunday to Greensboro and, along with my latest academic read, we were back in more familiar territory of exploring urban history, decline, struggle and activism. We also visited with my lovely friend K and her delightful new babe, and I got to give more yummy baby clothes in my role as Auntie Redstar, you know the glamorous one with the retail addiction.

And after seeing his sister’s custom built home with the paint on the walls and the china in the hutch, I am back on my couch confronted again with my own need to paint my condo and renovate my kitchen. Some people find the prospect of design exciting. I dread it, and can only think, irritably, what a hassle.

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but feel free not to join my LinkedIn account…

Seems I was relatively prolific despite being on a pseudo-honeymoon for the last 2.5 weeks.  Take note of the new sub-category in my “Travel” section - “Chile & Brazil.”  Knew I was feeding my blogging addiction while I was away, but didn’t quite tally up that it amounted to almost every other day!  We’ll have to see if I can cut the cord should the M.A.S. make it to an actual post-nuptials vacation!  (Settle down all you romantics out there; we’re goin’ strong as ever, but such an event will be no time soon, if for no other reason than we’ll be paying off this trip for some time to come!  Sadly, the end-of-the-year graduate student performance bonus just doesn’t make the same dent it used to…)

So the photos have gone live, check them out on Shutterfly:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZNWjlq5ZOXEg

You don’t need to sign-up to view them, which is a new(er), and the best, feature of the Shutterfly site (cuz it sure ain’t their upload and organizing functions).  I tried to join the Flickr fabuloso’s, but trying to fit in over there while also trying to learn how to better exploit the features of this blog proved too much, and I just gave up on both.  Better to just hunker down with all the mom’s on Shutterfly and save the hipster free photo-sharing technologies for another time. 

Speaking of mom’s, for those of you following along here, consider the ~100 photos posted as ~6 months of the baby shots I faithfully look through (and enjoy!) each month.  As for the rest of you, I don’t have much to guilt you with, and hope you’re just into snapshots of urban vistas and cheery, slightly sauced Americans cavorting in warm climes while you’re cursing the rapidly falling mercury. 

The trip, once again, was rad.  Accompanying posts to follow. 

I flew Midwest Airlines to Dallas-Ft. Worth yesterday, on board those great planes with no first class and only four rows of wide(r) leather seats, a la the Delta Shuttle.  I managed to go standby on a quick connection through Milwaukee, versus having to hang there for three hours as originally scheduled.  My dad recommended taking in a few PBRs in my down time.  Good thinking, Jack; maybe on the way home on Saturday.