the republic of south sudan

There is a new country in the world, right at this very moment. I find it fascinating that we can have mapped the world entire, and yet new countries can spring forth. This country, like so many of her sisters, was sprung forth from the ashes of violence and hatred, brought on by a scramble for Africa that ignored any and all cultural, ethnic, and religious divides.

But from the peace the people got to choose their own destiny, and they chose independence, a way to move on to a continued peace and a free peoples.

Happy Birthday, South Sudan. Hope it's all you dream it'll be, and more.

on census classification

I officially registered as transgendered on the census. The census guy I talked to was AMAZING.

I mean, technically, it's a refusal to answer the question, with an official note at the bottom, but still. It feels surreal knowing that in 70 years, there will be some record, of this time and place, and of who I was at that time and place. I didn't realise refusing to answer the question was an option until the census people informed us that they were redoing the count for the entire house and we basically had to fill it out all over again. And I did it by phone, and I asked him, at the end, to include a note that I wanted to Queer The Census, and he added the note, and then asked me if I wanted to be M or F, and I said I want to be neither, and he said he'd change it to me refusing to answer the question and add the note as to why.

It's a simple story, but I feel like retelling it as many ways as I need to - as I want to - as there can be told.

I feel like of course this is nothing and of course this is everything, all at the same time.

I wish I had a more poetic way to say any of this, but I don't.

is it school tiem soon? Why yes, it is.

And I'm really excited about some of my classes this semester. And then after ... I get to go change the world. How exciting! How do these two classes NOT sound like some of the most amazing classes, ever? And uh, I think we can say that I'm in the discipline of medical geography, as that's what my senior thesis will *crosses fingers* be about. Not to mention I'll be interning at Children's Hospital for the semester as well.

Geog 3371W Cities, Citizens, and Communities

This course is about how structures of class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality combine to produce varieties of urban experience in the United States. The course will also deal with why the city--why urbanization as a distinctive process--shapes those social structures in particular ways. The course centers especially on the city as a crucial locus for capitalism and on capitalism as irrevocably a socially made and contested process. It is a hallmark of capitalism that it leads not only to the making of different kinds of urban environments and histories. It also relies upon and fosters social differences. Through discussion, lecture, case study readings (including two books and a variety of articles), and group projects we will try to come to a more layered understanding of what makes the American city tick.

GEOG 3411W Geography of Health and Health Care

This course surveys medical geography, a subdiscipline which encompasses a broad range of geographical work on health and health care. What distinguishes medical geography from the discipline of geography as a whole is its thematic focus on health and health care. It shares with the discipline a remarkable breadth of theoretical approaches, methodologies and sub-themes. In other words, medical geography does not differ from the rest of geography in theory or method. It is distinctive only in subject matter. This courses uses medical geographic examples to explore three groups of theoretical approaches in geography: ecological approaches, which systematically analyze relationships between peoples and their environments; spatial approaches, which employ maps and spatial statistics to identity patterns of single and associated variables; and social approaches, including political economy and recent humanist approaches, which address issues related to both space and place. Students in the course are encouraged continually to consider the relationships among research questions, philosophical assumptions, and appropriate methods as well as to question the complementarity and inherent tensions among different theoretical approaches.

Yay! Only 24 more days!

[[There's other classes too- they're just not cool enough to mention]]

This city is love.

Mpls is a lot of happiness all rolled up into one. Tonight I walked in a parade on short notice (side tangent: I never get to watch parades any more!), and then afterwards, the Mayor and I were heading the same way, so I got to talk to him and explain 'Atticus' to him. And then after that I thought it was such a nice night out, I would just walk home. I did, and took a few snapshots of my city along the way. And fell in love with it, just a little bit more.

Mpls is the best city in America, I think. I often tell people that half my heart belongs to Hilo, half to Mpls, and half to the Central African region. But there’s a different kind of giving of my heart to each. The Central African region is where my activist heart belongs, where the barest pieces of my humanity come out. It is my passion, and my heart beeps for it. Hilo was the place where I was lost and found pieces of myself, and learnt to love. It was a place to start over, to find some peace. Mpls, on the other hand, is a place to live when you’ve got some sense of the rest. It has infrastructure, skyscrapers, an awesome bus system, more lakes than you can know what to do with, and the river (not to mention a really kick-ass mayor). At some point more than a year ago, I was walking down Nicollet Mall and I had the sense that this city actually belonged to me, in the way that we can get possessive about cities. I think it was the people along the Mall, and the scent of roasting pecan nuts that pushed me over the edge. Every time I leave the city and return to see the skyline, I’m filled with this sense of home, something I hadn’t really felt since Hilo.

It is mine, and it is love.