{"id":369,"date":"2006-11-23T23:54:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-23T21:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/?p=369"},"modified":"2007-01-04T04:14:15","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T02:14:15","slug":"thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

be careful what you wish for. after much complaints, sighs of disbelief and exclamations of not-so-friendly things about americans, we end up having two thanksgiving dinners with everything-as-it-should be. the point was: we wanted a dinner with turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and pumpkin pie and all that it should have. we were not willing to cede – the idea of a potluck, with sahar making tahchin, a most decilious iranian dish, was not acceptable (after all the occassions over the past year in which sahar made tahchin for new friends in the new country). we wanted to get invited to a traditional american dinner, nothing more or nothing less. when sahar’s resistance had perhaps started to crumble just a tiny bit, i was still ranting. yesterday in a supermarket in Jackson Heights, Queens, it struck me that we should just get a turkey. sahar insisted on checking with the friend who had invited us – he convinced her not<\/em> to buy the turkey. but perhaps the point was clear enough. when this evening we arrived at his place, everything what we wished for, and more (including setting up the christmas tree, which turned out to be the queerest christmas tree ever), was there for us. and after one party there was still a second one to go (sahar had really been checking out the scene…) to, hosted by lebanese friends, with… turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and pumpkin pie… too much of a good thing.<\/p>\n

~~~<\/center>at one of the parties, i meet a columbia graduate student who spent a good number of years at UCSC. he gets carried away by sweet memories, seminars with donna haraway and angela davis, interesting conversations with jim clifford, susan harding and anna tsing, animated discussions with chris connery about anarchism. and the people of the compound, the people who live in trees. when he got round to ask how i liked santa cruz, i try to get across why i don’t like it (“What?!? You don’t like it?”). clearly there’s a bunch of inspiring people around, but is place is made out of so much more than that. the white priviliged bubble – he doesn’t really get it (beyond an obligatory acknowledgement). the de-politization – he doesn’t really get it (as he quickly moves into political texts). then i mention that i encountered a political community that i like a lot, in Watsonville.”In Watsonville…?” he’s kind of in shock. “And you’re not afraid to go to Watsonville?” i give him a mocking smile. “I mean, i don’t know of many people in Santa Cruz who dare to go to Watsonville,” he says, with a small voice. that is precisely it. six years of studying in Santa Cruz, with amazing people, reading a long list of critical texts, yet the dominant white discourse on “dangerous Watsonville”, the latino city where so many of the nocturnal care-takers of the university in Santa Cruz live, remains an untouched and unquestioned part of his nerve-system. can count as a symptom of what is so terribly wrong with this place that prides itself on its liberal and progressive attitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

be careful what you wish for. after much complaints, sighs of disbelief and exclamations of not-so-friendly things about americans, we end up having two thanksgiving dinners with everything-as-it-should be. the point was: we wanted a dinner with turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and pumpkin pie and all that it should have. we were … Continue reading “thanksgiving”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}