Lions, Tigers, and Bears
There was a refrigerator crisis last night. I could tell it was coming. The milk in my cereal two days ago was disappointingly luke warm, and yesterday, my cold brewed coffee was tepid. I tried not to admit it, but when confirmed by Debbie, who had also turned up the refrigerator temperature setting, there was no avoiding it. Something had to be done. We emptied the freezer of its tightly packed contents, and after referring to several YouTube tutorials, disassembled the door, drawer rack, ice machine, and back panel exposing a completely frozen over evaporator coils. I brought up a work light and my heat gun and set to work.
While I waited for the last of the ice to melt off of the freezer's compressor coils, I had a video conference call with two of my kids and my parents. My mom went through each of our names and talked about the meaning behind them. I've heard and imagined some aspects of my name over the years, but it was great to hear the story retold.
When my mother was pregnant she had a dream of a tiger leaping from balustrade to balustrade, across a great hall. She watched in amazement as it leapt across the hall and could tell it was a kind and friendly tiger, and when she woke, she realized that I was that tiger and thought that would be my name, Tiger.
She sent her idea to her father, who was still in Korea, and he consulted a name doctor, who warned that it was dangerous to name a person after a tiger because the person could have a very tumultuous life. Korean names, like many things Korean, have Chinese equivalents or roots, and so the name doctor found characters that sounded similar, but had a different meaning. He picked, Amber Pear Flower, and felt that gentle poetic phrasing might offset the potential for aggression or turmoil. And then my American name, Leo, in a moment of cross cultural linguistic homophoneity, brought back the original evocation of tiger/lion to the Chinese/Korean Leeho.
I have an Asian pear sitting in the drawer of my fridge. It has been there for too long, but now I wonder if I could plant it. I feel like it is my duty to find an Asian pear tree to plant.
These are trying times. I think most people are existing with frayed senses of self. The cumulative 87 days of a mostly isolated existence; the move from violent xenophobia, to police killings highlighting the state of racial injustice in our nation; and the failure of the presidency to bring any sort of leadership, has left everyone unmoored. It is hard to figure out how to exist, if it is even acceptable to think about anything outside of the immediate tragedies and traumas (and some successes too!) of the moment.
In the midst of all this, it was a reprieve to be forced to disassemble a refrigerator and splay all the parts, frozen burritos, blueberries, and English muffins all over the kitchen floor like a dissected animal. And then to stop that to listen to my parents talk with my kids and tell their origin stories. It was beautiful.
I hope you all find such things to bring special moments to your day.
Take care,
Leo Leeho Hwang
From Our Friends:
From National Geographic:
From Sharmese Gunn at MWCC:
I want to THANK Mount Wachusett Community College for hosting this discussion. We had a total of 288 attendees! I would like to thank Jim Vander Hooven, Arthur Collins, Shelley Nicholson, Dax Murray-Bayard, Marketing Team, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team! We had participants from all over Massachusetts and New England. In addition, colleagues from all over the United States joined in from Texas, Colorado, New York, Oklahoma, Vermont, Michigan, Connecticut, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Georgia, Maine, and New Hampshire!
Attached: Resources from the chat.
| The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team at Mount Wachusett Community College hosted a call to action dialogue for community members and leaders on White Fragility:… |
From the American Association of Geographers:
Thousands of scientists -- including organizations such as AAG and scientific journals -- paused on Wednesday to reflect on racial inequalities in science and on how to improve STEM representation and opportunities for black people. The demonstration followed widespread protests over the recent killing of George Floyd and other black Americans who were killed in police custody.
Full Story: CNBC (6/10), Nature (free content) (6/9) From ACE:
| The Let's Talk About Race interview series, from ACE's Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education project, captures the voices of higher education scholars and leaders such as ACE President Ted Mitchell, Sylvia Hurtado, and Kevin McDonald as they share their perspectives and experiences on race and ethnicity in higher education. Read more. |
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From the College for Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst
During these uncertain times, many of us have become increasingly aware of how the food supply chain operates, and the desire to support local farms and businesses has become more apparent than ever.
But the conversation about farming and sustainable agriculture is bigger than that. Sustainable farming is now connected to social and economic justice for communities, as well as long-term health. And, modern agricultural practices and advances in farming technology prioritize healthy ecosystems to reduce environmental impact.
From It Gets Better:
#BlackTransLivesMatter. #BlackQueerLivesMatter. We're talking about Indya Moore using their platform to highlight TWOC, Justice Smith's powerful coming out post, and more.
From the Hampden Gallery at UMass Amherst:
Hampden Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst announces "SOS (Summer On-screen Series)" curated by Sally Curcio, on view and in circulation from June through August 1, 2020.
This digital exhibition features new works by artists created during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 that both respond to and reflect on these uncertain times. Seemingly overnight, methods of communication have shifted dramatically across the globe, traditional venues have closed, and uncertainty rules. Artists, undeterred, use Zoom and other digital platforms as their medium and their venues.
Featured artists are Yasin Aribuga, Chenda Cope, Hannah Duggan, Avery Forbes, Cima Khademi, Nima Nikakhlagh, Abbey Paccia, Claire Sianna Seaman, Elizabeth Sobieski, and Jenny Vogel. SOS curator, Sally Curcio, has exhibited her work in galleries and museums throughout the US and internationally.
View the exhibition, along with curator and artist biographies, at fineartscenter.com/SOS.
From Simon and Schuster:
In this transformative and emotional new video series, Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us, our authors share the moment when they were able to connect with a character that reflected their own personal narrative. For diverse authors, this meeting of a literary kindred spirit may have occurred in childhood, but for many, it wasn’t until they were adults. Seeing themselves reflected in a book had a powerful impact on their sense of self and shaped the writers they would later become. Please join us in celebrating diverse authors. |
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From the Northampton Jazz Workshop:
Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
"Every Fall Syllabus Needs an 'Or' Option"
Christina Katopodis, a doctoral candidate in English at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, laid that out nicely in a recent blog post. Katopodis, who’s collaborating with Cathy Davidson on a related book project, describes working with a class several years ago to co-create an American-literature course at CUNY's Hunter College, where she is an adjunct professor. A survey course can’t possibly cover everything, Katopodis said in an interview. So she designed a process in which students worked in small groups to help decide what the class would read.
There was a refrigerator crisis last night. I could tell it was coming. The milk in my cereal two days ago was disappointingly luke warm, and yesterday, my cold brewed coffee was tepid. I tried not to admit it, but when confirmed by Debbie, who had also turned up the refrigerator temperature setting, there was no avoiding it. Something had to be done. We emptied the freezer of its tightly packed contents, and after referring to several YouTube tutorials, disassembled the door, drawer rack, ice machine, and back panel exposing a completely frozen over evaporator coils. I brought up a work light and my heat gun and set to work.
I have an Asian pear sitting in the drawer of my fridge. It has been there for too long, but now I wonder if I could plant it. I feel like it is my duty to find an Asian pear tree to plant. 
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