Giving Thanks and Thank You Gifts

As I roll pie dough and partake in the annual familial celebration of food and fighting, I find myself appreciating my time in Chicago more than I ever anticipated. Before arriving home, I found myself unconsciously humming "Wayfaring Stranger" and Edward Sharpe's "Home" among the early holiday shoppers of Chicago's sidewalks, but, now that I am, in fact, home, I miss that place that I made home. Though sometimes overwhelmingly isolated, at least the CVS at State and Division is open 24 hours. Here in Westerville, theoretically the Steak 'n' Shake is open all night, but I drove past at 10 PM only to encounter an empty dining room and one sleepy waitress/chef/drive-thru attendant. Things certainly are slower away from the city.

Everything seems slower. Hours crawl, cars barely travel faster than bicycles, and self-check-outs are just a lost cause. Of course, this is my Home with a capital H, and I feel calmer and less anxious among the smiles of people who know me and the Christmas lights of suburbia, but I miss the streets of the city. All I want is a small order of fries from Five Faces and an Earl Grey Vanilla Creme from Argo Tea, preferable consumed on the Red Line, headed to the steps of the Art Institute or maybe to Myopic Books for a $3 Virginia Woolf paperback. I never thought it could happen, but maybe Chicago is partially my home now, too.

In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," Yates' speaker proclaims, "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow." I found that peace in Chicago, and, like leaving Kenyon, I only realized it when I was gone. How am I supposed to spend six weeks here in the cornfields, where the corn is dead and the heat of the summer I left has frozen into November's infamous grey?!? LSATs and preparation for senior comps and summer research can only last me so long. I'm ready to return to Kenyon, but I'm also very thankful I have two more weeks to enjoy my adopted home.

I'm also thankful for Kingsley. As I edit edit EDIT, I am so very glad she poses such a difficult problem for me to puzzle over. Without Kingsley's complex relationship with her multiple social environments and the associated gendered expectations of each, I'm not sure I would have figured quite as much out about my academic future nor my current values.

And, so, I give thanks for restrictive gender codes, Argo Tea, the city of Chicago, and the people I have met there. What better way to fill the grey of Ohio Thanksgiving than with baking cornbread and writing thank you cards? Hold your breath, Chicago. I'll be back soon.

Research, Writing, Wrapping Up

As I become more and more entrenched in my project, few things are explicitly clear to me anymore. One thing has increased in clarity the entire time, however:

Mary Kingsley = Bad Ass.

Proof? Plenty. I've learned so much from Kingsley. For example:

SASS: "he incarcerates my revolver, giving me a feeling of iniquity for having had the thing. I am informed if I pay 15s. for a license I may have it--if I fire French ammunition out of it. This seems a heavy sum, so I ask M. Pichault, our mentor, what I may be allowed to shoot if I pay this? Will it make me free, as it were, of all the local shooting? May I daily shoot governors, heads of departments, and sous officiers?" (107)

STYLE: "you have no right to go about in Africa in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home" (19)

INDEPENDENCE/SASS: "as for the husband, neither the Royal Geographic Society's list, in their 'Hints to Travellers' nor Messrs. Silver, in their elaborate lists of articles necessary for a traveller in tropical climates make mention of husbands. If they did, by the by, they would say he was to be green, but they don't say a word about one" (167)

There are few intellectual crises that can't be solved by a cup of Earl Grey and bad French dance club music.