I read most of Chapter 3 today: Prenatal Development, Birth, and the Newborn Baby. I felt a little weird sitting in Panera, eating, with pics of fetuses in front of me. Luckily it wasn't very crowded.

First I came to the conclusion that poor people should not be allowed to breed. According to the book, poverty is pretty much the leading cause of bad things happening to developing babies. Well, poverty and the stress, lack of healthcare, poor diet, and drugs that often go along with it. Also according to the book, a lot of these developmental problems could later be improved by nurturing family/caregivers. But most poor people aren't nurturing caregivers because they're too worried about how to make ends meet and have issues of their own that haven't been taken care of. (Gross generalization, but, I believe, generally true.)

The second conclusion I've come to is that black people are really badly off in this country. I never knew that before. Growing up in rural Illinois there were no blacks. Then, in a military community, all races were equal and there was no poverty. After that I did live near urban centers with poor black populations, but I thought they were just more visible than the poor whites. (Tom, you might remember this line of thinking from the hurricane evacuation post.)

According to the US Census Bureau, African American and Native American babies are twice as likely as white infants to die in the first year of life. That shocked me. I had no idea things were that bad. We are grossly failing a segment of our population. I'd love to go read something authoritative on why such a high percentage of blacks are poor. I'm assuming because of slavery and then segregation. And now they're stuck in neighborhoods with horrid schools so they can't even use education to get out of the cycle.

Horrible, absolutely horrible.

At USC this past weekend, I snuck into the textbook section and bought an anthro book. It's called Field Ethnography. I'd been meaning to get an ethnography manual for a while now. In fact, I'm really surprised I don't have one already. (I'm thinking really hard to make sure there isn't one on a shelf somewhere...) 
Anyway, I didn't look too hard at this book before I bought it, so I was really pleasantly surprised when I started reading it and saw that it contains five observations/writing exercises! How awesome! I'm planning on doing all of them and, of course, doing them on mil peeps! (Yeah, you heard me, MIL PEEPS; not military members.) So exciting! 

((After the directions for each exercise, there are "model papers," to use Mr. Minette's term. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, they were written by some pretty shoddy students. Seriously, Mr. Minette's models were better. The guy who wrote the book taught at Colorado College, Grand Valley State U, and Pikes Peak CC and that's where the model papers come from. Not exactly academic power houses. I find myself wanting to edit the papers as I read them. Ugh.))

The first exercise is an observation of a block. I think I'm going to do a "court" in enlisted housing. I think it will be very fun. And my paper will be much better than the ones in the book! :)

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On Monday, Sara was playing in a Navy Blue soccer game for the first time. She's really quite good, especially for being such a little thing, and was being a pesky defender to the opposing team's star player. She was on the side of the field nearest the opposing team's "bench" and the people on the sidelines started yelling stuff at her. She got SO angry. She said they were calling her Waldo. (Presumably after Where's Waldo, since she had a striped shirt on.)  I don't know if they were using other names as well, because I don't think that "Waldo" is a huge insult. (They could have used much worse.) I think it was pretty general hecking. But she was SO upset and she says something like, "You'd think that being in the military they would have a standard of decency and respect for other people!"  Of course from the other Navy players, this elicited a round of, "But they joined the ARMY!"  I found her comment interesting, because a lot of my friends would have less of an expectation of "decency and respect" from military members than the general population. Definitely a duality there.

Right, so, I have a small idea about possibly doing (mil-)anthropology in my current job and using it to better stuff.
(Don't you just love how tentative that sentence sounds?)

Our workforce is composed of a lot of junior enlisted people. They tend to generally be unhappy at work. That surely cuts into productivity. I think I could interview them and figure out where the unhappiness is coming from and put in suggestions to fix it. My guess is that at least some of it comes from not understanding the value of their work. (But maybe I think that because it's something I struggle with.) I'm sure some of it's military garbage that I can't change. 

I'd be like a labor activist. :)

Granted, I have no background in this, besides a general cultural anth major, but I think I could do it. I'd like to talk to Gary S, an anthropologist who works for the agency (and friend of Nate's dad, remember?) 

Now, to do this above or below the radar? Hmmm. I really don't know. I could start below and see where I get, but the site is so small that word of a girl asking probing questions would get around. Heck, security might even haul me in. Really, I mean it. 

Obviously I need to think some more. Maybe call Gary. I wonder if I could do it in conjunction with some sort of degree program. So much to think about! If I were still in Maryland, I could possibly work it into one of the military/war college programs. But those aren't offered down here. Something online? I wonder if I could get it approved. (I mean, I can't use my work site for subjects without someone's approval.) Probably not. Probably a security violation. I'd have to keep the study in-house. Too bad.  

I feel good about this. Which is good. And somewhat surprising. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Today I learned about Air Force "combat dining in." Hee hee, it's so funny.  I even donated $2 towards it in the form of a cake auction. (The cake auction is a whole nother story. It was a great distraction for most of the day. Lisl was doing the bidding for our office. We put our $ together for a cake. She was trying to get us this chocolate mocha one. I wasn't actually too excited about it, so I was happier with the "Black Magic" we ended up with, for much less money I might add. I also had a bid in on some other sort of chocolate cake, but was outbid by the skinniest guy I've ever seen in person. Anyway...)

According to Amanda in my office, a combat dining in is restricted to service members. (That was the first thing I asked.) The members can wear their uniform all torn up and crazy any way they want, as long as it includes their name and rank. There are a bunch of crazy rules you have to follow at the event. If you break one you have to walk a gauntlet that (I think) involves water balloon and water guns. Of course there are also various grogs. I'm imagining quite the ruckus of an event. Too bad I'm not allowed in. Maybe I can stand at the door with a camera. :)

HOLY CRAP, I just saw a commercial with a talking bed that said, "I can be filled with cheese." That's like my dream. A bed and cheese, aaahhhh.

AUGH! How did this happen????? I busted out my photo albums from high school to try to find something (to be discussed later) and *somehow* I go from Homecoming '96 to Homecoming '97 to 1998 with nothing in between. How can this happen??? There must be other pictures somewhere, right? I didn't go for a whole year without taking pictures. There MUST be pictures of Ibiza. I remember a beach picture from Ibiza. There were pictures... but where are they now? 

How this whole thing started...
One of the news channels was running a story on how it was dangerous to spend spring break in Mexico, because there were kidnappings going on there. It sparked the idea of me going to some spring break hot spot to do some anthro. I've never been anywhere like that. I college I went to Ohio, Utah, Germany, and Michigan/Ohio. Ha ha, yeah, that's right. My Junior year of HS, I did go to Ibiza, Spain. It's a party island, so it's probably the closest I got to a spring break hot spot. It was, however, sponsored by a "Christian" youth group and were were in a secluded hotel, presumably with a curfew. We had a beach, but I don't remember any teeny bikini wearing. That's where the pictures would have come in. *sigh*

Then that evening there was a CSI: Miami about a girl who got murdered on spring break in Miami. Lots of footage of partying teens. Icky. So many girls exploiting their bodies--I hated it. I don't think I could handle doing anthro on it. It would make me sick and depressed. What are these people doing? I never had an urge to do that. My friends never did that. I was afraid for any potential future children of my own. 

Some guy on Fox News was ranting that men are becoming too feminized. He was citing American Idol as an example. I didn't really get the whole story. The person interviewing him didn't seem to understand what he meant either. If it means that men can show emotion and not be stoic lumberjacks, I think it's a good thing. 

This made me think about how Mormons are worried about men and women losing their duality/uniqueness/masculinity-femininity. (Forgive me if I'm getting this wrong. It's something I've not fully understood.) The thing is, for a minute, I thought I had a glimpse of understanding of that worry. In my glimpse I equated it with worry about rampant sexual behavior, like so much of what goes on during spring breaks. The sexuality that was purely lustful not loving. 
It's hard to describe, especially since I had just a brief flash of possible understanding. I do know that I don't want to live in that spring break world. I want no part of it. I am all for love and respect. If I didn't think it would hurt my chances of finding a guy, I would take the hijab. (Veil, tops to the wrists, bottoms to the ankles.) Yes, I would do it. I don't like men looking at me. I don't like comparing myself to other women. Hijab solves it.

Last year's Army-Navy Spirit Week event is nearly impossible to top, but I did have quite a nice experience today! 
I arrived at work today to find that the Navy was allowed to wear their (unofficial) PT uniforms to work. So they were all in Navy shirts and pants. The a guy appeared with his head painted blue and yellow. He roamed the building for a while, creating a stir. 
We had our site holiday party at noon. It was pretty awesome to have an outside buffet and dining. When the chaplain prayed, he referred to God as Master of the Universe. The people I was with thought that was hilarious. Except for the guy who is too young to remember He-Man. Laura thought he ended the prayer with "in the name of Greyskull." 
Then, at 1500, I left work early to go to our very own Army-Navy game! I got there after it already started and there were a LOT of spectators. More for Navy than for Army. I actually stood on the Navy side, because I could blend in there. There were only ACUs on the Army side and I just couldn't face all the Navy people staring at me. I intuitively rooted for Army though and I'm sure my tiny squeals and grunts revealed that to the people around me. At least they didn't say anything about it. The Army actually got the Signal Corps band out to play for them. They best part was when they played "Popeye the Sailor Man." It made the Navy people grumble. ALSO, all the football players were officers, but many of the fans were enlisted. It was SO funny to me to hear people shouting at players and then tacking "Sir" on to the end of it. "Feint to the left, Sir!!" Absolutely hilarious. Cracked me up. There were a few women that played, but I didn't hear anyone yelling to them. The game went into overtime and Navy won.

After the game, the Army people had a pie-in-the-face event. One of those things where you pay money to pie someone. Our site commander was good enough to go first, so a Private got to cream a Colonel. I think he paid $80 for it. During this event, I was standing closest to the black people group. It was really interesting to me how they were pretty much like, "Heck no, I'm not giving up my money for this." I agree with them, even though it was totally against the spirit of the event. It's just funny, the whole self-segregation thing. There were an equal number of black and white pie victims. The Commander is black. But it was the white people who were doing all the bidding. So very interesting. 

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Confession: There was a guy I should have talked to. He was a tall Army officer who spoke German. He had a big black lab named Dunkel. How cute is that? At first I rolled my eyes at the name, because I assumed that the dog was named after beer. But then I gave the guy the benefit of the doubt that the dog might actually be named the German word for "dark" because it was black. And I believe that was correct, because the guy then actually gave the dog a command in German! Also, I think he was single, because if he were married, he could not have been *that* into the dog. I'm pretty sure that dog was his #1 companion. I did note the name on the back of his shirt, but when I got back to work, I couldn't find him in the directory. So that must not be his name and I'm stuck. Not that knowing his name would have done anything but help me e-stalk him. If I do ever see him at work maybe I'll have the guts to say something to him. We'll see how I'm feeling that day. Should've said something today. But I SO did not know what to say. I petted the dog a little, hoping that would spark a word, but the dude ignored me, possibly because the dog was trying to sniff my crotch. Anyway...

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After that I DID get brave for some reason. I saw two guys kicking around a soccer ball and went up and asked them if they knew of any coed teams. They told me the base has leagues and asked me what service I was in. I said I was civilian. Then they asked me what service my spouse was in. I ammended that I am an unattached civilian. I don't think they digested that too well because they told me they sometimes let spouses play on their teams. I told them I could certainly pretend to be military. One of them is actually the organizer of the Navy teams, so I made him give me his email address. He also gave me his room number at work, so now I can hunt him down! Ha! So, I may be playing on a Navy soccer team this spring. I'd rather play with Army, but I have no idea how to find their POC. It was a stroke of pure luck that I found this guy. Now I need to start looking at buying some sort of Navy t-shirt to wear to games. I wonder what our colors will be? Hmmm.