Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

It's funny the things we remember, and how we remember them.  A decade ago I remember getting the email for my first book.  It was about this time of year, and Tanfer--my co-editor--wrote me with nothing more than "Yes! Yes! Yes!" It was our first book each and together.  We were younger then, that's for sure.  Ironically, I think I'm slightly smaller now . . . Usually, that proverbial comparison goes the other way.  That meander aside, I remember culling those pages, corresponding with the authors, doing the next to final press review of the chapters at a professor's house in Port Jeff, and in September and October I did the index in Virginia.  I had left NY, and I was in Virginia on a Visting hire.  My parents were delighted to have me around, even when I sat on the couch eating Kit Kats ticking off index terms and numbers.  There was a sense of hope and happiness then.  In the middle of those ticking numbers, I picked up a couple of p...

Even though I spend much of my life teaching and tutoring various forms of history, I still find the notion of knitting as resistance fascinating. Back in the '90s, in angstful high school days, I first learned of knitters and codes during the French Revolution. It was while reading A Tale of Two Cities for English that the portal of knowledge came to life. The tid bit has stuck with me, and the modern pins and symbols one wears for cultural resistance have manifested on me. Somewhere, in the back of a jewelry drawer, are the remnants of DIY Riot Grrrl feminism of the 1990s. Rusted with age, forgotten from wear, pins denouncing the patriarchy, demanding power for the people, and declaring women's rights... trinkets of a life's work, a long held passion, and the thrust and drive of much of my life's work reside in the images and memories of those tchotchkes.   And, then in an assaulting shock of night I--with the world--found myself awoken to a new world order. An ...