moving on

My new blog is here: charlottakratz.com/blog. I've also created a homepage for photography: charlottakratz.com. It's been great, blogger.

guess the city?

big city big color

who doesn't love the chrysler building?

Went back to New York for a week between quarters. Loved every freezing minute of it.

what you will remember is not the words of your enemies, but the silence of your friends*

After class was over yesterday one of my students sat crying at her desk. When I walked over she handed me her phone and said, "Can you read this?". So I read.

What she wanted me to read was a message from a friend of hers who is studying abroad in Eastern Europe right now. The friend had taken a trip with some other friends to see one of the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. And at that site, the very spot where thousands of people were murdered, the young Americans had played. They had enacting killings. For example, they had pretended to cut each others' throats.

American juniors (third year students at four year universities) are 20-21 years old. Current juniors were born around 1992.

My student is Jewish. And, according to her friend, so were some of the young Americans playing at the concentration camp.

It took 70 years, but we let it happen. We let it happen that they didn't learn.


*quote by dr King, as I remember it

it's work, this life

An old friend told me the other day that she was totally expendable. There was nothing she did, she said, that couldn't be carried out by someone else instead. I'm sure my face signaled surprise at that point, because she looked at me and said, "And the same goes for you".

No one has ever told me anything similar before.

My friend is a middle-aged woman just as I am. But she lives in Sweden, not in the US. And I think her, in my mind, depressing outlook stems from the fact that you get "old" earlier in Sweden than you do here. No one will hire you if you're over 50, the saying goes. At least not if you are a woman.

I've taught at a Jesuit university for almost exactly 13 years. The Jesuits are big on vocation - the idea that as a person in the world part of your job is to find the place where "your greatest talent meets the world's greatest need."

I am sure there are hundreds of people who can teach my classes or take my photos. But I don't think of my work that way. Instead I tell myself that where ever I am at any given point, that's exactly where I'm supposed to be. I, no one else. And: Wherever I am, I have to stay open and sensitive to my surroundings so that I can see clearly what it is that I'm needed to do.

this girl, whoever she is, was in a hurry

I've made plans to go to New York for the opening of the show where I, surprisingly, will have a photo on the wall. I don't know what's more exciting, the opening or the prospect of taking pics in the big city.

the wanderers

I was in bed with a migraine most of today. Twice I woke up, checked my phone, and had really good news. First I learned that one of my photos had gotten an honorable mention in the landscapes category in the Mobile Photography Awards. The next time I woke up I learned that the same photo had gotten second place in the black and white category! This means the image will be printed and framed, and part of a traveling show that opens in New York on February 22. Excited? You bet.

with three hours to go, I couldn't resist

you really should know better

I had to have a minor medical procedure done yesterday, and had been told I needed to have someone drive me home because of the local anesthesia that would be required. Dan promised to take me there, and drive me home. I had to give his name to several nurses, and I wrote it on forms, including what he was wearing so they'd find him in the waiting room when it would be time to leave.

So, when I was done, lucid, and dressed, the recovery room nurse went to get Dan. She came back, twice, and said he wasn't there. The second time she came back without having found him I got the slightest bit irritated, repeated the information I had written down (black fleece jacket), and added "Mexican-American, in his 40s". She looked startled.

Not that she admitted it, but it was obvious that she had been looking for a white "Dan". Because I'm white. He had been sitting there the entire time. He told me later that she hadn't even bothered to say his name out loud. Or mine. So sure was she that he wasn't there.

yet again, it was bound to happen

I fought the impulse to say this all day yesterday, but what do you do when it's true? Click to read the evidence. People are idiots.

the fury, and the frustration

So now, with 20 little children dead, we begin to consider the access to mental health care. What will it take for us to consider access to health care? A medieval plague?

Because, let's be honest, we don't consider the access to mental health care out of concern for those suffering from illness. We discuss it because of the threat they may pose for everyone else.

the irony

The MSNBC commentators say that the way they personally "deal with the tragedy" in Newtown is by avoiding all news coverage. (Yeah, glad you asked. They said it on-air, of course.)

what has to happen, seriously

We've heard a lot of disrespect towards women, and, frankly, a lot of sexist stupidity, this election season. I think the fact that there isn't a serious discussion about gender equality on the national level in United States is going to set the country back. How? According to my colleague Barbara Kelley, who, with her daughter Shannon, has written extensively about young women entering the workplace, young women are being disenfranchised. Women do really well in school, but see themselves be bypassed in professional settings that generally are more conservative than higher education.

It's embarrassing to hear and read how American men talk about women, and it's an embarrassment to the country that the drive and skills of young women are going to waste.

Of course, not all men are sexist pigs. But, never do we hear the decent respectful men who are out there speak up against their sexist pig brothers.

The truth is that we won't see any real change until men speak up, publicly as well as privately. We won't see any real change until men are willing to do the work of changing attitudes and behaviors in others. People of color can't fix racism, they're just at the receiving end of it. White people have to fix racism, because they are the ones to perpetuate it.

We will have to get used to the idea that women can't fix the inequality that is based on gender. Men will have to do it. They're the ones to perpetuate it, and they're the ones who benefit from it.

In doing this work men will free women as well as themselves. Because equality isn't just about lifting up the group that has been kept down. It's about creating a world that is just, and a world that allows everyone to make choices based on who they are, not based on what others expect of them.

We're waiting, guys. See you outside the box, yeah?

the fair trade iphone

If a regular cup of coffee costs $3, for a few cents more we can buy fair trade coffee, and make sure that local workers and growers of the coffee get to keep more of the profit. Besides fair trade coffee there is fair trade tea, rice, chocolate, and other products. In a world where the little guy is often overrun, buying fair trade is an easy way of doing the right thing.

Apple's products, the iphone, the different ipods, the ipad, and so on, are manufactured in China. When I turn over my iphone on the back it says, in silver letters, "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."

Thousands of workers were on strike today in one of Apple's facilities in Zhengzhou in north-central China. Why? Workers assembling the iproducts are under a lot of pressure: long days, little pay, no time off, and "impossibly strict standards". "Employees could not even turn out iphones that met the standard", said the widely cited organization China Labor Watch.

The new iphone, the iphone 5, costs from $199, with a 2-year contract. What would you be willing to pay for a fair trade iphone? $299?

and then someone called me a racist. and stupid.

Today I put the following as my Facebook update:

there are some asian accents that are really hard for me to understand. it makes me irritated and embarrassed at the same time.

And, someone called me racist, and stupid. For reals. So, if you point out differences you are a racist? In this case the differences have to do with phonetics, that some sounds carry meaning in some languages, but not in others. And the fact that I, as an immigrant with an accent, sometimes have a hard time figuring out other people's accents. It has happened to me many times that I've had a native American English speaking friend with me, and they have been able to explain to me what the Asian person was saying. Not difficult for them to figure out, but difficult for me. Racist? I don't think so.

the day(s) I made it to the front page of the huffington post

My colleague at Santa Clara University Barbara Kelley wrote a fun and interesting piece for the Huffington Post about fashion, feminism, and how we communicate with the world around us using what we wear. Barbara was nice enough to include quotes from me alongside quotes from Shira Tarrant, a scholar who actually study these things. A link for the story is here. Was I ecstatic when The HuffPost pulled one of my quotes and used it on the front page two days running? You bet.

our sins of omission

I saw a middle aged woman hit a middle aged man outside of Costco not long ago. She hit him with her fists on his upper body while calling him stupid. Her English wasn't great, but it was clear what she said. The man didn't hit her back, he just took the abuse. I wonder how much she hits him at home, if that was her treatment of him in public. Had it been a man hitting a woman the police would have been called. And I didn't do anything.

happy memorial day

How many of my Facebook friends are or have been members of the armed forces? Four. Happy Memorial Day to Scott, Paul, Loribelle, and Kelly. (I'm sure there are more, actually, only I don't know about that part of their lives.)

more on death, and social media

One of our former students died over the weekend in a motorcycle accident. She and I were Facebook friends, and I've kept reading the comments on her Facebook wall as it has turned into a wall of condolences. It's very touching. She is loved.

Alice and I also followed each other on Instagram, the photo sharing app. The last photo on her Instagram feed is a picture of the three wheel rental motorcycle that she traveled on when they had the accident. Her comment under the picture: "What did I get myself into?"

Alice's death is heartbreaking. I don't have words for what that photo does.