Gratitude: 2024!

Folks,

Life continues to be dingdong nonsense (in a mostly-positive way, personally!) and so this blog has been moribund. I'm fixin' to get a better handle on my schedule in the new year - some better boundary-setting around work, some better habits in my down time, less "setting up a home AND 20 hours of language study a week AND cultural adaptation, AND big old research project" and more "sometimes listen to music and journal and cut together video and blog and whatnot." But y'know, this blog is a testament to intentions gone unfulfilled, so we'll just see about that.

Til then, though, it's time for my favorite tradition over the past 8 years or so, which is: a year-end list of moments or articles of gratitude that linger with me! As always, it's a not terribly organized/methodical "what comes to mind" list (sometimes prompted by glances at my calendar or book-of-days, sometimes just what emerges when I let my mind wander freely) but I like the annual marker of things for which I want to retain my gratitude even when, as in 2023, a year can be truly awful as much as it is anything else. After the jump: many things!

bad

There's not much of value to say today. The worst people won this election, and all the "what country do I live in" sentiments people had in 2016 have been reactivated, somehow both more disheartening and less surprisingly than last time. The below is a ramble, more because I need to write words somewhere than because I think I have anything original or productive to say. Feel free to ignore; do what you need to get through this awful time!

Morocco: looping da loop

One last Morocco post, written in an upper-respiratory-non-COVID haze on the eve of the 2024 elections in America! Hooray/augh!

Back when I planned the Morocco trip the first time, aiming for December/Jan 2020-21, I had schemed it around my hubristic notion of "it'd be nice if every other New Year's Eve I celebrate somewhere I haven't been before!" So hey, we already did a temple on a mountain in Japan, what if this New Year's got rung in... in the Sahara??? Great plan for 2020! Ha ha ha, in my opinion, although in a way I still held to the plan... I had never celebrated a NYE in my Rogers Park apartment prior, and I certainly had never steamed my own crabs and made homemade pasta had champagne and fancy little treats at the kitchen counter while occasionally Zooming with other friends isolating in other locations. So um. ANYWAY.

 Flash forward to Christmas 2022 and the vagaries of academic scheduling plus the availability of the operators who organize trips into the desert, and it quickly became apparent that New Year's would have to be rung in elsewhere (in Fes, as it turns out, which was still mega-lovely!) but that I could head into the Sahara shortly after. And so I did! Deets after the video, and after the jump!

MORE rocco???

 FRIENDS!

As promised, a smidgen more Morocco! I am taking a break from prep for a Very Important To Pat conference here in Spain next weekend (big whoops to proposing a workshop and a research presentation without realizing they could both be accepted, double big whoops ahoy!!!) because I love all you squirrels and chipmunks far too much to leave you without at least a monthly update in the limp, struggling attempt to catch up to the present day with this blag. As such: time for Asilah and Marrakesh!

Voting: Hey, voting!

Just a quick note (I think next week we'll see another Morocco post, I really do!) that if y'all Americans reading this blog don't make sure you cast a vote against every Republican on your ballot this November, you have a very depressing update to make to your mental map of "what I woulda done if I had been in Germany in the 20s and 30s." Look, I get it - lots of very valid reasons to hate the choices we have, though I think Hamilton Nolan gets at the right idea here (ultimately you need a party that isn't opposed to democracy to have any hope of pressuring a government to change its policies). 

But ultimately, one party this election (that would be the GOP) is totally fine letting their closing arguments be, no-exaggeration take-it-from-a-historian a replay of the Nazi rhetorical playbook, and if you aren't working to destroy that party, you are replaying the mistakes of the center/left in the Weimar Republic, of several waves of attempting-a-republic pre-Franco Spain, of every historical coalition that couldn't set aside their perfect-ideology dreams in favor of harm reduction at a moment of crisis. Particularly if you're white, particularly if you're not a target of the violent anti-trans rhetoric that's being shoveled into the mainstream media, particularly if you're not in the first waves of people who will be attacked if these thugs seize power, I think you have an obligation to vote to minimize harm, not to cast a vote that gives you a pleasant feeling. There's no excuse, and this very much defines who you are.

(As a side note: if you're stateside and you have a chance to canvas or assist in election-day get-out-the-vote efforts, I think that's MEGA swell and hope you will do it! Being over here I'm limited to remote-canvasing opportunities and donations, so y'know, live out my dreams of being boots on the ground resisting this stuff.)

Anyway, that's this little nugget! I can't imagine anyone reading this has so little humanity or empathy for other human beings as to need the encouragement, but on the off chance that you do... please do! If you are balking, hit me up and let's chat. Aroo!

A lifetime ago: Morocco!

Ah, pals! The only way I'm gonna ever get up to the present moment on this here blag is to chomp on ahead and blitz through the past, so here we go! Yes, things are afoot in Spain, and I'm loving it (and overwhelmed and homesick and all the other things) but we'll talk about that later, first let's race back to almost two years ago, when I was bound for Morocco, a trip I'd booked in 2020 and insisted on re-booking at the end of 2022 to reclaim... something, I guess! After the jump: early days in (mostly Spanish) Morocco!

Viva España

Pals,

What a whirlwind the past two months and change have been! As always, I've proven myself a liar and a fraud when it comes to my sporadic promises that this blog will start having full posts catching up on my travels of at least 18 months ago, so I'll hesitate to repeat them... but I write this on a blissfully cool (23° C/74° F) morning as the sun comes up in Barcelona, having cleared the pre-orientation hurdles of my summer and with two weeks of relative calm on the horizon. So, if nothing else, it's a moment to catch up on now, so let's do that after the jump! Aroo, y'all.

IS IT NICE TO BE WELCOMED HOME WITH CAVA AND FLOWERS AND A SIGN AND BALLOONS??