Sewell Done Gone Global: The First Post

-
Welcome to my travel blog site! So as not to bombard people, I will not be uploading tese automatically to facebook or any other social networking site. You've just got to be here to experience it. So, bookmark me now! Or follow me with Google Friend Connect (look left). Through Google Friend Connect, you can stay in your social networking space (twitter, facebook, google, yahoo!, aol, etc...) and still be connected with me on mine!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Mannheim, Germany
My first view as I leave my apartment building in the morning for a run

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Yep, you read it. Sewell done gone global! Haha...I just had to say it -- it rhymes in a funny way. Well, folks I am out here in Mannheim, Germany. "Mannheim, Germany!" You say, "What's there?!" Me! And Ivan, my colleague from IU. And the University of Mannheim, where I am teaching a graduate-level seminar in quantitative methods to assess the social construction of race, the social causes of racial inequality, and the societal consequences of racial diversity.

So, that's the boring stuff. The interesting stuff is that body is in such haywire that I have taken to napping in the middle of the day, usually early evening but sometimes late afternoon. I am getting up from one of those naps right now, so I will be up for a bit more before I settle into a work rhythm. Now, those who know me are raising an eyebrow here because Abigail never naps in the day. Crap, Abigail rarely sleeps. Well, Mannheim is changing all that. My sleep patterns have been arrested by the traveling gods, and I feel like a 15 year old again. Haha!

Tomorrow, at 8am, will mark my first month in Mannheim, so I wanted to put some words out there in cyberspace that would commemorate this moment. For this first month, I will throw out the words, "make it simple". Yes, a professor-friend of mine is infamous for saying this to me. But Abigail, stuck in her esoteric mind, just never fully got it.

Well, now, my entire life is making it simple. From teaching to an international audience that has a very non-American framework for processing issues of race. To figuring out how to carry 24 Liters of mineral water (without bubbles) and apfelschorle (apple juice with bubbles) home in a bookbag designed to carry a notebook computer and some leaflets. To talking slow, inserting exaggerated pauses in my speech, and refraining from slang, humor, and mumbling (which are all classic Abigail linguistic styles) because the Germans were taught British English, not American English. And lastly, to saying the phrase, "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" [Do you speak English?] a lot, so that I do not get a migraine at the end of the day from trying to share my broken German to the world.

So, this month has been a lot about just making my life simple. I now have:

*** a simple way of waking up in the morning (i.e., drawing the curtains from all my windows, so that the bright sun (or gray clouds) greets me cheeringly in the morning; no more alarm clocks);

*** a simple routine in the morning (i.e., eat a banana, exercise, shower, sift through some work, rush to lunch before a hunger headache sets in);

*** a simple way of gauging how many layers to put on (i.e., stick head out the window; no more news, can barely understand it anyways, not because of the language, but because converting Celsius to Fahrenheit doesn't come naturally for me yet)

*** and a simple way to meet new people (i.e., "Hallo, Ich komme aus Bloomington. Wie heiss du?" = Hello, I come from Bloomington. What's your name? = well, this only works with the university folks. for the rest of the Mannheimers, I just tell them I am an American. that tends to get things rolling)

So, basically my life has become a lot more simple and a lot more complicated all at the same moment. So is living!

Until next time!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Acts of Omission et al: Prop 8, Racism, etc

-
Acts of Omission I am typically not one to speak of anything political publicly. However, in the back rooms, I have been privy to a conversation that sympathizes with the highly-publicized fight for gay marriage but finds itself unable to overlook the acts of omission that have come with it. As a person who has lived the predominant part of her adulthood in rural areas as a triple minority, I find several things lacking in the modern gay rights movement that if addressed would assert a more inclusive and progressive agenda. First , I would like someone to take more seriously the prosecution of hate crime statutes that already exist, statutes that have been unable to cease the physical brutality enacted against gay bodies, particularly racialized ones. Second , it would also be nice if someone attended to the spread of AIDS to previously-uninfected communities, an epidemic spread that is exacerbated by the inadequate screening practices of prisons, the patronizing attitudes of scient
Read more

Honoring Our Queer Mothers

-
Image
Today, I am paying a tribute to my Queer Mother, Robin G. White (Bobbie). She is the sole reason I became a co-principal investigator of the National LGBTQ+ Women*s Community Survey ( https://www.lgbtqwomensurvey.org/ ) -- the first-ever large scale study of women who partner with women. I met Robin as a budding runaway dropping in at Vox, Atlanta's teen newspaper. She was the creative writing director then, where I would eventually find a tactile way to use my voice. As I aged through young adulthood, Robin was a constant source of the I'm-gon-come-get-you! kind of love. She fed me, gave me a job, published my first poetry chapbook, let me drive her car, and eventually would just save me over and over and over again.  In September 2015, I asked her to sit my house until I was able to figure out to do with Atlanta. She did, and in so doing, she began a process of discovery for me to identify why the corner my house held in the neighborhood was so sick. We were able to source th
Read more

Urvashi Vaid, A Long Legacy Long in the Making

-
Image
Rest in Power, Urv.  Urvashi Vaid passed Saturday, May 14, 2022. I am lucky she took me under her wings as a fellow Co-PI of the National LGBTQ+ Women's Community Survey. Overseeing the analytical responsibility for the survey, I was also lucky to have the remainder of my comrades-in-arms with me in Atlanta for a long-awaited in-person research meeting when we learned Thursday morning that she had been moved to palliative care.  We were all supposed to meet in-person at the Creative Change conference in New Orleans this past Spring, where she was to be awarded the Susan J.Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. However, covid got the best of all of us -- and, it was clearly safer for us all to meet online.  Nonetheless, below is a small tribute to Urvashi Vaid -- the world starves for her energy.  Just like the community organizer she was, Urvashi Vaid invited two of her Co-PIs for the National LGBQT+ Women's Community Survey -- J'aime Grant and myself -- to join the stag
Read more