At first glance, what I'm about to tell you has nothing to do with Minnesota or about being crazy. However, I've learned a few things over the last six months and have made some connections that I wasn't expecting.
Four years ago I had to have a TB test because I was working in the Oakland public school system and it was required. It was positive. Multiple subsequent tests were positive as well after a second false negative test. Chest results were negative: I had latent TB, not the active, quarantine kind.
I didn't have health insurance and I'd just returned from three years of one health problem after another (aka Peace Corps) so I was way put out by the whole diagnosis. I heard from multiple public health nurses that I was supposed to take 6-9 months of antibiotics to decrease my chances of developing active TB. The side effects sounded atrocious. I chose not to take the meds.
Six months ago, I decided to start the meds. I don't know why. I just knew that if I was going to do it, I should do it before I got too much older and my liver was less tolerant.
Every day for the last 6 months minus 10 days, I've taken an antibiotic.
Side effects were supposed to be: fatigue, depression, jaundice, weight gain, nausea, gastrointestinal distress, and, possibly - though less likely - delusions. I was counseled that if any of these side effects actually occurred that I was to plow through and continue to take the meds. I dreaded my first winter in Minnesota even more because of this news.
I'll count down the days until I'm done. Today is 10.
The biggest, strangest observation I've made is that people offer me alcohol. I decline. People sometimes persist. I decline more. Then I say, "I am taking a medication that prevents me from drinking." It feels like a weird violation of privacy, but it shuts them up. If I just say, "no, thank you," believe it or not, some people will not let it rest or they look disappointed that I will not be drinking their home brew or joining them in their drinking habits.
What if I was pregnant and didn't want to tell them? Even more, what if I was a recovering alcoholic? This experience has made me have a TON of compassion for recovering alcoholics. Oh God. What they have to go through is just awful. Denial after denial after denial.
Funny thing, too, is that this is a cultural thing. An American thing. Some people who aren't pushers have told me after awhile that they just thought I wasn't a drinker. They noticed I didn't drink but had the thoughtfulness to not be an ass about it, and just assumed I had *reasons.* I just can't say that I've ever really noticed that someone doesn't drink.
I had way more to say about that than I thought I did.
I'll save the rest for the last 9 days.
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
monumental moment in month 9
I actually got invited to my first party in Minnesota. THIS IS A BIG DEAL!
Remember, Minnesotans generally hang out with their best friends from high school and need 25 weeks of advance planning to make a date.
And it was a spontaneous "we're calling you today for a party tonight" invite.
My ego was spinning!
It was a fabulous party, too, with a manageable number of lively and lovely attendees. The gourmet dinner was thoughtfully planned and expertly executed and we grazed on grilled tomatoes, salmon quiche, beet bacon salad, and mushroom bruschetta for three hours. No one really knew anyone else, which made for a fair playing field for getting to know each other.
Upon leaving, L. said, "that's where all the coolest people are hanging out right now in Minneapolis!" And then she said, pensively, "I think perhaps no one there was actually Minnesotan." She's right. I can't think of a single person there who didn't move here.
OMG! My conclusions about having more success in finding non-Minnesotan friends and her conclusions about Minnesotans not being spontaneous might be right!
Remember, Minnesotans generally hang out with their best friends from high school and need 25 weeks of advance planning to make a date.
And it was a spontaneous "we're calling you today for a party tonight" invite.
My ego was spinning!
It was a fabulous party, too, with a manageable number of lively and lovely attendees. The gourmet dinner was thoughtfully planned and expertly executed and we grazed on grilled tomatoes, salmon quiche, beet bacon salad, and mushroom bruschetta for three hours. No one really knew anyone else, which made for a fair playing field for getting to know each other.
Upon leaving, L. said, "that's where all the coolest people are hanging out right now in Minneapolis!" And then she said, pensively, "I think perhaps no one there was actually Minnesotan." She's right. I can't think of a single person there who didn't move here.
OMG! My conclusions about having more success in finding non-Minnesotan friends and her conclusions about Minnesotans not being spontaneous might be right!
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
