I think that getting a haircut may give me endorphins.
Due to a potent combination of my inner stinginess, my massively heavy hair, and my predilection for changing my look, I have become something of a Great Clips devotee. No appointments, no pinch on the pocketbook, and absolutely no guarantee that you’ll like what you get. Having sat through a couple of really awful, fairly expensive haircuts as well as some really wonderful, fairly cheap ones, I decided that I rather like the thrill of the inexpensive unknown.

The uncertainty of the outcome is framed ironically in a strange ritual of certainties. The stylist will always tell me that I have a lot of hair. I will always ask the stylist to razor the ends of this abundance. I will always ask for the back to the be stacked. The stylist will always reinterpret that request according to her own particular sense of geometry. The stylist will always reiterate that I have a lot of hair. I will always assure her that I am aware of this fact. In the end, some amount of my hair covers the salon floor like a sad rug. The stuff remaining on my head is appraised, and I pay $15 plus some indeterminate tip.

It’s a $15 hair lotto, and when I win, it rocks.

As much as everyone in academia tosses about the grand idea that graduate students should be doing ‘original work’ and ‘finding their voices as scholars,’ dreams of being an academic renegade are quickly shot down. In order to ascend to the pantheon of senior art history scholars who publish about “the history of string” or present papers that sound like modernist poetry, the lowly grad student must first demonstrate an ability to confuse mere mortals. For my department, this means writing really, really long papers that use phrases like “transgressive materiality” and “abjection-based subjectivity.” These are strange academic hoops to leap through, an acrobatic feat necessary to prove to established scholars that you understand confusing ideas well enough to confuse other people with them. It’s relentless, really.

Still, I am excited to try my hand at this long-and-original-scholarship thing. I have a topic and idea that I’m passionate about. I’m eager to prove that this barely-known Japanese American artist has something relevant to say about current issues. I’m tickled that I arrived at the crux of my thesis through theological considerations which led to some solid research questions. I’m ready to write:

The thesis I am proposing suggests that Lynne Yamamoto’s ‘Chiyo’ pieces are more complex than the binaries of gender and race established by the existing scholarship. While Yamamoto creates installations with highly specific references to an unfamiliar history, she simultaneously allows for an intuitive response from viewers through her use of the abject. I will argue that Yamamoto’s work thus participates in two major theoretical conversations of American art in the nineties: the emphatic creation of personal identity through autobiography and the dissolving of identity through abjection. The ‘Chiyo’ pieces embody a tension between these positions, and new scholarship is necessary to explore the rich interplay between two seemingly opposed strategies.

Academic hoops, here I come.

So, some friends from Hawaii, Gavin and Hannah, recently moved to Ames, Iowa so that Gavin could attend vet school. To be perfectly frank, there’s not a whole lot going on in Ames, so the Ganzers took a Labor Day road trip to the Gateway City.

Now, if you have ever thought, “Self, why would I want to spend Labor Day weekend in St. Louis?” the answer is embarrassingly simple: Japanese Cultural Festival. And as if it wasn’t already a fabulous idea to get thousands of people together to celebrate my ancestral culture, the good folks at the Missouri Botanical Gardens decided to take things one step further.

They added sumo.

Longtime readers will remember that I have a (necessarily large) warm spot in my heart for sumo. Having it at the cultural festival is seriously a stroke of genius.

And so, there we were. Three Hawaii kids and one supportive Oklahoman/Texan, sitting on the lawn at the botanical gardens, watching the Hawaii-born sumotori be introduced to the 800+ crowd. After the wrestlers cracked a few fat jokes, they asked for a brave volunteer from the audience. And, of course, Gavin offered. What followed was, quite possibly, one of the most magical things we’ve experienced since moving to St. Louis. Consider:

Thankfully, there was a rematch.

So, pretty much it was awesome. Make your reservations now if you want to come with us next year. If you promise to wrestle the sumotori, we’ll pay for your entrance fee.

Pinsky has been here for five days now, and I am realizing just how unusual and ridiculous our experiences with Whittier have been. Pinsky’s approach to life and social integration could not be more different than Whittier’s.

Consider:

When Whittier first arrived in our home, she slunk out of her carrier and hid under a chair for two days. Growling.

When Pinsky first arrived in our home, she bounded out of her carrier and immediately began exploring the guest room with youthful enthusiasm.

Whittier has only occasionally deigned to play with toys, and then only when they’re white.

Pinsky immediately began wrestling her fuzzy-ball-and-spring doohickey. It’s green and blue.

Whittier responds to visitors — especially young children — by crouching down, growling throatily, and occasionally hissing.

Pinsky responds to visitors — even a three year old — by bouncing around their feet.

Whittier responds to mirrors by… well, by doing nothing. Perhaps this is a sign of hidden intelligence.

Pinsky responds to mirrors by dancing in front of her reflection and attacking herself with a flying leap.

Whittier responds to meeting her new companion by bristling, rumbling, and running away.

Pinsky responds by cheerfully following the fleeing bundle of white fur.

This will all end tears in me doing a lot of vacuuming.

Most of you know are familiar with our cat, Whittier Anique, that fluffy, fully-declawed ball of terror who has a beautiful appearance and an ugly personality. Though the previous owner named the cat after the Quaker (read, ‘pacifist’) poet John Greenleaf Whittier, Whittier has never really evidenced much of a commitment to peace.

We adopted her as a teenage cat, but the relative solitude of her kittenhood had prepared her poorly for our frequent house guests. Her petulance is widely reported upon; visitors exchange tales of derring do regarding how close they were or were not able to get petting Whittier. She has bitten younger siblings, hissed at inquisitive neighbors, and once, upon her untimely escape from our Chattanooga home, dispatched a bigger alley cat by sheer fierceness of personality.

We told her that a change was in order. That she was not participating in our family vision to be a warm and hospitable home. That she needed to make an effort at sociability. Thus far, she has not responded. She remains a privately lovable, publicly cantankerous, ridiculously good looking cat.

And so, after some reading, we decided that it was time to introduce someone new to the mix. A cat with a resolutely amiable personality that will hopefully unleash Whittier’s inner social butterfly.

Pinksy will be joining the Weichbrodt household this weekend.

Pinsky hails from a corn farm in Iowa, the childhood home of one of my fellow grad students. Her parents had a single abandoned kitten from a recent litter and they wanted to send her to a good home. After being assured that the kitten (a) had an extraordinarily people friendly personality and (b) color-coordinated with Whittier, we agreed to adopt.

You may be wondering, “Pinsky? Have the Weichbrodt’s no taste in cat names?” The answer may still be affirmative, but the choice is not without its reason: we were simply trying to thematize. Since we already have one female cat carrying the somewhat androgynous last name of a male poet, we thought we might as well keep things going. Robert Pinksy is the former Poet Laureate of the United States and the recent academic adviser for poet-laureate-in-the-making, R. David Macey. You may also recognize him as the moderator of the Colbert Report’s Meta-Free-Phor All.

It will be an exciting week of cat isolation, monitored visitations, and home exploration. There will be pictures. And stories. For what’s the point of having a house full of poets if you don’t get stories out of their residencies?

Today, I was ‘oriented’ to my new position as Teaching Assistant. Yes, I, Elissa Weichbrodt, am about to be partially entrusted with the minds and grades of WashU freshmen whose parents are paying extraordinary amounts of money for their child to attend a top twenty school.

I’ll be TAing for our so-called “Intro to Western,” that strange beast of a survey class that covers everything in the west from cave paintings to last week in a semester. Yep, a single semester. Depending on the faith you do or do not place in radiocarbon dating, this means that we are covering 32,007 years of art in about twelve weeks.

As a scholar-in-training of contemporary art and theory, I find it hilarious to note the similarity between the cave paintings that we begin with:

And the paintings we end with:

I realize that thinking this is funny rather than proof that culture has died simply underlines the fact that I am, indeed, a hopeless nerd. And that formal teleology is silly. Also that I’m a hopeless nerd.

While Noel and I sometimes joke that we are of that ‘rare breed’ of Covenant College alumni who move to St. Louis without plans to attend Covenant Seminary, the almost magnetic force of STL for CovCol grads is actually much appreciated.

For example: April has just made the big move for seminary purposes. While April and I were good ‘group’ friends in our college and Chatty years, I am now excited to forge a real I-like-you-by-yourself-too friendship. We spent roughly half an hour hanging a really heavy mirror in her new bedroom. And, it was level. I feel like trusting someone to help you hang a really heavy mirror is a pretty significant relational step; she even let me use my fingers — rather than a ruler — as a measuring implement. Like I said, trust.

Now, while Suzanne did not move to St. Louis for seminary per se, the seminary is responsible for her husband’s enduring commitment to the city and their recent return. Suz and I were vague acquaintances in college and only really got to know each other in our post college Chatty years. Last night, the Chapells accompanied us to a wine tasting hosted by friends where we were instructed in the fine art of describing wine. Several sips of wine later, Suz and I decided that this particular variety smelled like band-aid. While this was one of the choices given to us on the tasting wheel, I’d like to think that this is, again, a sign of trust. One can’t just tell any old joe that a glass of wine smells like a band-aid. Clearly we’re moving forward in our friendship.
So, thanks, Covenant Seminary. Mirrors and band-aid wine are promising starts to new old friends.

Prior to moving to St. Louis, I probably would not have announced any particular love for cities. I would certainly have told you that rural Idaho was not my schtick. I would probably have even proclaimed that large, mainland suburbs freak me out. Still, I would not have thought to tell you that I wanted to be an urbanite. Now, a year later, I have grown to love living in this city.

(Loving a gargoyle at the City Museum)

I had a list of reasons for loving the city: the art, the food, the diversity of people, the energy, the accessibility. But those scattered perks had yet to coalesce into a coherent theology of living and investing in a city. Today, our assistant pastor (pulling from some of Tim Keller’s ideas on urban evangelicalism)gave me words for that.

A city, by its nature, is a place of refuge. Cities began as places of refuge, a place to be safe from the elements, enemy attacks, or hungry animals. Those who flock to the city today tend to be the impoverished, the homeless, the hurt, and the addicts, the refugees, immigrants, welfare recipients, and low-wage earners. They come because they need the city. They need a grocery store and a laundromat that is two blocks away. They need the concentration of minimum requirement jobs. They need wheelchair accessible curbs. Often, those who despise the city are those who are powerful enough to get along without it.

The city magnifies cultural development. Keller says that cities function like magnifying glasses, enlarging and intensifying all that the human heart contains. This, of course, includes both our divinely given, culture-making impulse and our inherently sinful nature. Cities thus become testaments of what God has called us to do and what he has forbidden.

The city is a place to meet God. The city is a place of spiritual restlessness. The crush of ideas and cultures packed so tightly together is unsettling. Rather than seeing the city as a place of spiritual decay, perhaps we can instead see it as a place of spiritual longing, a field ready to be sown and watered.

In Jeremiah 29:5-7, God tells His exiled people to invest — to make a home and a life — in a city they despised:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

It is in this context that He promises to give us a future and a hope. I want to think about the city — and our life in it — this way. Our little house, our mostly black neighborhood, the Eritrean restaurant owner who thinks Noel is a technological wonder, the Chinese architecture students who spent Thanksgiving with us, the university down the road, my friend Amy who lets me drop in her house just to visit, the black single mom that gives me fashion advice, the metro full of slightly smelly people, the workers who recognize me at the local coffee shop… this is our investment. It’s easy to romanticize the city, or to romanticize the impact that our daily, simple life has in the city. But all of this reminds me that I need other people. I am not — I cannot be — self-sufficient. And only when I am weak, does He make me strong.

Yesterday we were met with an unpleasant surprise: The Hole had reappeared. Jonas had not, as previously hoped, taken the hint and left. No, instead, there he was, scuttling beneath the neighbor’s hedge. Aggravated, we tossed a few chunks of honeydew melon into the cage before heading out to see some friends.

When we returned home, our hopes temporarily soared — the trap had been sprung!

But it was not Jonas. It was Boris.

Boris looked a lot like Maud, only bigger, smellier, and possibly meaner. Boris was loathe to leave the trap but, after some firm encouragement, he tumbled out and scuttled down Jonas’ hole. “Are they in cahoots?” I wondered bitterly. We reset the trap with more honeydew and went to bed.

This morning, the trap sat empty as did, unfortunately, my flower pot; Jonas had removed the last leaves from the plant I had struggled to keep alive during his tenure below our porch. Discouraged, I left for my German class, sure that Jonas was destined to live as our perpetual nemesis.

And then:

At 1:41 pm, July 19, 2007, four squirrels and two possums later, Jonas plopped himself down into the trap and…pow. Now we just need to figure out what to do with him. Suggestions?

There is a new wrinkle in our groundhog saga.

Four squirrels and no groundhogs later, we have decided that Jonas saw the writing on the wall and bailed. We have not caught glimpses of him scuttling beneath the porch when we check the mail. He has ignored the veritable buffet of fruits that we have placed outside the hole and inside the trap. Most tellingly, he has not re-excavated the holes we have spitefully, partially filled. Yes, it seems that Jonas has departed.

This does not, however, mean that we are wildlife free.

When I went out to check the trap this morning, I was greeted by a creature even more despicable than a twenty pound groundhog:

This is not Jonas. This is Maud, a possum. This is uncomfortable for all involved.

It’s uncomfortable for Noel because he has a long, troubled history of vehemently loathing possums. While you may dislike possums, Noel hates possums with a kind of murderous passion. Really. It’s uncomfortable for me because I have a weird, conflicted attitude towards possums. For the first twenty years of my life, I thought opossums were cute, quirky little things that hung upside down and had cool tails. I blame this grossly erroneous conception on Bambi. After finally seeing a ‘real’ possum during my junior year at Covenant, this lovely childhood delusion crashed and burned. They’re gross. They’re really, really gross. And, of course, this is uncomfortable for Maud because, well:

Farewell, overgrown rodents. You need not return. Thanks.