I moved back from Kazakhstan last year, but I still have posts that never quite made it to the blog. Here’s one on the good life: Seven is a popular numbers among Kazakhs, as our language teacher reminded us the other day. First, you listing your seven grandfathers (jeti ata), telling you…
I wrote this a year ago as I was moving across the country. And yet I held it close, because it felt taboo. We’re supposed to get excited about what feels good in our bones, right? Instead, I felt the Wrong Emotion: grief, layered on expat grief.
I started this (too long!) essay about two years ago. Dear reader, feel no obligation. This is imperfect and at times inelegant, but I’m posting to refer to and build upon in the future. 1. Choosing to be a Homemaker I didn’t start out caring about gender, the chromosomes and cultures…
“Do you want seven children?” A few months ago, I stopped by my parents’ church and sipped a coffee while listening to a rather scattered sermon. (Not that I’m complaining—attention-deficit pastors are my *favorite*, because I love watching how their rabbit-trail sermons explore the whole territory of human life….
One year at university, I gave up the internet for Lent. It wasn’t an especially holy move. I was just curious what would happen if I no longer depended on Google for answers to life’s biggest questions: But you wouldn’t believe how complicated it gets when you can no longer consult your…
Below, Murat and his Kazakh family build a yurt in the highland plains of Western Mongolia. I made this draft of a children’s ebook two years ago for the pupils at my school in Kazakhstan. View pictures of how a yurt is built, below, or download the PDF and read it…
This was a long winter. The night snuck in early, and stayed overtime. The snow piled, snow on snow, and I would complain–except I can’t, because Boston. No one got as much snow as Boston (as they like to remind us). And what snow we did get–the mounds, the piles of…
Today when I woke up, I found #talkpay trending on twitter. (Yes, what better way to enjoy your morning coffee than with a thousand astonishing tech salaries and 160-character comments?) Where’d this come from? Well, Lauren Voswinkel wrote in ModelViewCulture that men and women could address salary inequity in the tech sector…
Four years ago (!) I wrote an ethnographic research paper on missionary ethics that was, I like to think, well-written, complex, and faithful to the interviews. But I struggled throughout the research — and I struggle now — with concerns about what writing does to our subjects, with the…
*Checks date.* Nope, this vid of officials quickly covering up an unauthorized statue of Snowden is not an April Fools. That step on the head of an eagle is particularly nice: This is coming to light because the worst part of the Patriot Act (“Section 215”) is up for renewal…