I've just settled in by now. I've exited the phase where I tried to act Minnesota Nice (with a grudge) and I've passed into a phase or existence in which I just am. I think less about how I act, and less about how Minnesotans sometimes act, and I just exist. It's better.
I have this friend from school who grew up in the country of Georgia. She's bold, blunt, often crabby. And fabulously, refreshingly honest. She loves honesty in return. I always feel more like myself after I've been around her.
She's doing an assignment about diversity in which she's pushing the envelope of the criteria and choosing to document evidence of the Minnesota Nice phenomenon and how niceness can increase a sense of societal oppression. I know what she means! I love this idea.
I'm curious to know what comes to mind for you? What could she document/photograph? What is Minnesota Nice, specifically, literally? How does it play out?
p.s. I'm back on the blog! I intend to post some notes about pre-emptive measures I'm taking to brace myself for the winter, which the Farmer's Almanac is predicting to be a doozy again. Until then!
Showing posts with label minnesota nice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minnesota nice. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
9 days
Since you all took the bait, I'll keep on the drinking theme. There's more to the conversation that usually occurs. I'll spell it all out.
someone nice and generous (snag): "Want something to drink? We have wine, beer, tequila?"
sweet me (sm): "No thanks."
snag: "You sure? Just a glass? We've got Oberon!"
sm: "Um, no thanks... I'll have water?"
snag: "You driving?"
sm: "No. Well, yes. And meds. I'm trying to avoid liver toxicity."
snag: "Oh! That's too bad!"
sm: "It's fine. I'll be done in X months/weeks/days."
snag: "And then you can drink!" (raises glass into air) "In time for summer!"
I haven't figured out what to say at this point that accurately communicates my feelings. I usually just say, "Well, I'll wait awhile and let my liver recover from the meds first." That's true. The feeling, though, is about the resistance to drinking just because I can. I can't figure it out. But what I want to say is:
sm: "Multiple family members are/were alcoholics/addicts. So, I'm not a big drinker to begin with. It's the last thing I'm thinking about. The first thing I'm thinking about is how glad I will be to not have to take a freaking antibiotic everyday for a condition that presents no symptoms. And I can also stop worrying about my mood swings being a result of the medications, and I can start believing that it's all in my head instead. Going back to multiple family members being alcoholics - maybe that's why I'm moody. Or maybe everyone's moody and some people just hide it better. What do you think?"
I'm way too nice and inhibited for my own good most of the time. Minnesota nice is doing a real number on me. I'm breaking through, I am, I am.
someone nice and generous (snag): "Want something to drink? We have wine, beer, tequila?"
sweet me (sm): "No thanks."
snag: "You sure? Just a glass? We've got Oberon!"
sm: "Um, no thanks... I'll have water?"
snag: "You driving?"
sm: "No. Well, yes. And meds. I'm trying to avoid liver toxicity."
snag: "Oh! That's too bad!"
sm: "It's fine. I'll be done in X months/weeks/days."
snag: "And then you can drink!" (raises glass into air) "In time for summer!"
I haven't figured out what to say at this point that accurately communicates my feelings. I usually just say, "Well, I'll wait awhile and let my liver recover from the meds first." That's true. The feeling, though, is about the resistance to drinking just because I can. I can't figure it out. But what I want to say is:
sm: "Multiple family members are/were alcoholics/addicts. So, I'm not a big drinker to begin with. It's the last thing I'm thinking about. The first thing I'm thinking about is how glad I will be to not have to take a freaking antibiotic everyday for a condition that presents no symptoms. And I can also stop worrying about my mood swings being a result of the medications, and I can start believing that it's all in my head instead. Going back to multiple family members being alcoholics - maybe that's why I'm moody. Or maybe everyone's moody and some people just hide it better. What do you think?"
I'm way too nice and inhibited for my own good most of the time. Minnesota nice is doing a real number on me. I'm breaking through, I am, I am.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Minnesota pretty nice and pretty insular
Minnesota Nice and other cultural nuances baffle me, as we all know by now, and though I've never been the popular kid, I have always been invited to more social occasions than I've initiated by virtue of being an introvert and truly enjoying the dynamic of being pursued (who doesn't?). Here, I've been initiating connections more than ever before. I've been pushing my comfort zone. Yet not getting many results. I just don't know what to make of it.
Yesterday I chatted with a seasoned social worker about my success making friends elsewhere in the world compared to making friends in Minnesota. Her accent indicated to me that she's from here or been here a long time. She said, "you know, you're not the first person to say that to me." She seemed a bit perplexed and a bit intrigued, like she had no idea what the experience would be like, but replied with a tone of hmm, isn't that interesting? It must be, what... cultural?
Today, a guest lecturer in my bioethics class was talking about the culture of risk. She's from Philadelphia, lived in San Francisco before she moved here, and said she'd never heard more people talking about risk and perceived threats to personal safety than in the Midwest. She's studied this phenomenon. Someone in the class said, "it's because people from Philadelphia and San Francisco move here!" Implying, of course, that newcomers make everything scary. She said she was just joking, but it seemed more like she was saving her ass.
What she was getting at, regardless of how she really feels, regardless of how much of her joke really isn't a joke, is that there really is something cultural here about sticking just to what you know and who you know. Insular = safe = good = Minnesotan. The guest speaker gracefully turned her comment into a talking point without putting her on the spot - an acquired Minnesota nice tactic, if you ask me - and got all academic about how the coasts have a history of trade and immigration, ports and interdependent industry, etc., which creates an environment where non-native doesn't automatically mean scary. Which hasn't happened in the Midwest.
It's kind of rare to find a native San Franciscan. Most everyone living there today has moved there. Seems like half of California speaks Spanish as their first language. Times like this, I miss it. I may, actually, resolve to making friends in Minnesota with people who are not from here. That's strategy one to not set myself up for failure.
Yesterday I chatted with a seasoned social worker about my success making friends elsewhere in the world compared to making friends in Minnesota. Her accent indicated to me that she's from here or been here a long time. She said, "you know, you're not the first person to say that to me." She seemed a bit perplexed and a bit intrigued, like she had no idea what the experience would be like, but replied with a tone of hmm, isn't that interesting? It must be, what... cultural?
Today, a guest lecturer in my bioethics class was talking about the culture of risk. She's from Philadelphia, lived in San Francisco before she moved here, and said she'd never heard more people talking about risk and perceived threats to personal safety than in the Midwest. She's studied this phenomenon. Someone in the class said, "it's because people from Philadelphia and San Francisco move here!" Implying, of course, that newcomers make everything scary. She said she was just joking, but it seemed more like she was saving her ass.
What she was getting at, regardless of how she really feels, regardless of how much of her joke really isn't a joke, is that there really is something cultural here about sticking just to what you know and who you know. Insular = safe = good = Minnesotan. The guest speaker gracefully turned her comment into a talking point without putting her on the spot - an acquired Minnesota nice tactic, if you ask me - and got all academic about how the coasts have a history of trade and immigration, ports and interdependent industry, etc., which creates an environment where non-native doesn't automatically mean scary. Which hasn't happened in the Midwest.
It's kind of rare to find a native San Franciscan. Most everyone living there today has moved there. Seems like half of California speaks Spanish as their first language. Times like this, I miss it. I may, actually, resolve to making friends in Minnesota with people who are not from here. That's strategy one to not set myself up for failure.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
'Minnesota Nice' catharsis
I've been thinking about this post since before I started the blog.
It's easy to write about ice and snow and cold and weather, because it's funny, and because it's a bitch, and because it's easy to take pictures of. But it's not easy for me to articulate my comprehension of cultural nuances, especially because I'm nervous of being offensive... to talk about being nervous of being offensive in... well, just about everything.
I'm not making sense already. Here, let me try again:
Deep down somewhere inside, I'm Texan. Stereotypically, Texan = big everything, beef, bad beer, big beefy beehive-y broads, bragging and bravado, Baptists, and the innate belief that no one else matters. I hate Texas. Texas is where the sperm met the egg that became me, and that reality had a more profound effect on me than I'd like to admit.
Then I migrated west to Nevada, where I came out within a week of crossing the desert, grew out my armpit hair, bought a bike instead of a car, considered anarchy, embraced atheism, learned yoga, and went into the Peace Corps. I became as un-Texan as I could get. When people said, "Where are you from?," I'd always say, "Reno."
Peace Corps in El Salvador deserves volumes, not a paragraph. I'll just mention that I was heavily influenced by late night sinful salsa dancing, a radical socialist alcoholic boyfriend, and white guilt. TONS of white guilt. I planned to live indefinitely in Latin America by way of finding a place where I could make art, and live my life dancing/crying/loving and doing all that delicious life stuff I'd been holding out on previously.
After Peace Corps, I went back west - to San Francisco, and I taught sex ed, counseled rape survivors, got involved in transgender health, thought a lot about outreach to sex workers, and started to pursue medical school to become an abortion provider. In California, this shy girl learned how to talk - about stuff nobody really knows how to talk about - and I hung around really chatty people, people who were way more social than I will ever want to be, people who went out a lot and talked a lot about their fabulous ideas and lives and plans to alter the world. I lived in the Bay Area bubble, the land of liberalism and lewd, lascivious acts of love.
Now, back to my point. I'm here in Minnesota and I just realized the other day that I've just started to not miss mountains and ocean constantly. Which is even sadder than missing them. That's to say, I'm getting used to it here, and I'm liking it for a lot of reasons, and I'm still confused for a lot of reasons about how the hell I ended up here and why the hell is it working out so well when it seems so strange. Huh? Everyday, it seems so freaking strange to me that I'm here.
Even after San Francisco, I'm still really shy. My heart beats in my throat when I talk in front of groups. As a social work student, I have to talk in front of groups all the time about incredibly passion-full and emotionally painful subjects - for me, right now, that means talking about death, and bearing witness to it - about oppression and disparity and injustice and phobias - about my own feelings that come up about hopelessness and despair when a client expresses those feelings - etc, etc, etc.
Doing this emotional stuff around Minnesotans is so different than doing that around Texans, Nevadans, Salvadorans, and Californians. I emote. I describe. I cry. I ponder. I ask 500 questions a day, half of which are bold and blunt. I fluctuate. I hide. I get brave and emote again. I don't acknowledge a God, and the only thing that keeps me getting out of bed every day, I figure, is the hope for more authenticity and growth than the day before.
Minnesotans, by and large, do not emote easily. What I've heard is that the mix of Scandinavian and German ancestry created the cultural notion that it's preferable to have a stoic and unblemished, pleasant and even facade. Something like that? Is that right? Minnesota Nice confuses me.
This is what I've been wanting to blog about forever. I find it so hard to articulate. I don't want to complain, but I feel incredibly tentative and uncertain of how to unleash my wild and wacky internal self. I'm terrified of offending the Minnesotan sensibility. I'm afraid of being the weird kid. And I'm frustrated at myself for being afraid.
There. I said it.
It's easy to write about ice and snow and cold and weather, because it's funny, and because it's a bitch, and because it's easy to take pictures of. But it's not easy for me to articulate my comprehension of cultural nuances, especially because I'm nervous of being offensive... to talk about being nervous of being offensive in... well, just about everything.
I'm not making sense already. Here, let me try again:
Deep down somewhere inside, I'm Texan. Stereotypically, Texan = big everything, beef, bad beer, big beefy beehive-y broads, bragging and bravado, Baptists, and the innate belief that no one else matters. I hate Texas. Texas is where the sperm met the egg that became me, and that reality had a more profound effect on me than I'd like to admit.
Then I migrated west to Nevada, where I came out within a week of crossing the desert, grew out my armpit hair, bought a bike instead of a car, considered anarchy, embraced atheism, learned yoga, and went into the Peace Corps. I became as un-Texan as I could get. When people said, "Where are you from?," I'd always say, "Reno."
Peace Corps in El Salvador deserves volumes, not a paragraph. I'll just mention that I was heavily influenced by late night sinful salsa dancing, a radical socialist alcoholic boyfriend, and white guilt. TONS of white guilt. I planned to live indefinitely in Latin America by way of finding a place where I could make art, and live my life dancing/crying/loving and doing all that delicious life stuff I'd been holding out on previously.
After Peace Corps, I went back west - to San Francisco, and I taught sex ed, counseled rape survivors, got involved in transgender health, thought a lot about outreach to sex workers, and started to pursue medical school to become an abortion provider. In California, this shy girl learned how to talk - about stuff nobody really knows how to talk about - and I hung around really chatty people, people who were way more social than I will ever want to be, people who went out a lot and talked a lot about their fabulous ideas and lives and plans to alter the world. I lived in the Bay Area bubble, the land of liberalism and lewd, lascivious acts of love.
Now, back to my point. I'm here in Minnesota and I just realized the other day that I've just started to not miss mountains and ocean constantly. Which is even sadder than missing them. That's to say, I'm getting used to it here, and I'm liking it for a lot of reasons, and I'm still confused for a lot of reasons about how the hell I ended up here and why the hell is it working out so well when it seems so strange. Huh? Everyday, it seems so freaking strange to me that I'm here.
Even after San Francisco, I'm still really shy. My heart beats in my throat when I talk in front of groups. As a social work student, I have to talk in front of groups all the time about incredibly passion-full and emotionally painful subjects - for me, right now, that means talking about death, and bearing witness to it - about oppression and disparity and injustice and phobias - about my own feelings that come up about hopelessness and despair when a client expresses those feelings - etc, etc, etc.
Doing this emotional stuff around Minnesotans is so different than doing that around Texans, Nevadans, Salvadorans, and Californians. I emote. I describe. I cry. I ponder. I ask 500 questions a day, half of which are bold and blunt. I fluctuate. I hide. I get brave and emote again. I don't acknowledge a God, and the only thing that keeps me getting out of bed every day, I figure, is the hope for more authenticity and growth than the day before.
Minnesotans, by and large, do not emote easily. What I've heard is that the mix of Scandinavian and German ancestry created the cultural notion that it's preferable to have a stoic and unblemished, pleasant and even facade. Something like that? Is that right? Minnesota Nice confuses me.
This is what I've been wanting to blog about forever. I find it so hard to articulate. I don't want to complain, but I feel incredibly tentative and uncertain of how to unleash my wild and wacky internal self. I'm terrified of offending the Minnesotan sensibility. I'm afraid of being the weird kid. And I'm frustrated at myself for being afraid.
There. I said it.
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