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Smoking sweatshirts, the magic passport trick, a riot, and a rifle: My journey to Tunis and the first day

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  I had enough adventures on my trip to Tunis to last for the entire trip. This is a LONG entry, because lots happened. If you don’t have time, you might find adventure three most interesting, followed by adventure one. ADVENTURE ONE Early in my first flight, from Chicago to Frankfurt, I noticed puffs of smoke erupting from the sweatshirt of my neighbor across the aisle. His head was buried in said shirt, but his hands were visible, and I noticed an e-cigarette in his hand. Quite apart from the fact that any kind of smoking is forbidden on airplanes, I am extremely allergic to something in the smoke from vaping (thanks to Sammi Crane whose former vaping habit allowed me to discover this). Shortly thereafter, I noticed my chest and airways constricting and the sensation that someone had run a sharp knife across the back of my throat – yep, his head was in the sweatshirt again. I quickly did some calculations involving the likelihood the plane would have to turn back if I complaine...
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Travel to Tunis

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In a little less than two weeks, I will be leaving for Tunis to present a training institute on gender inclusive leadership for the Association of Tunisian Female Engineers ( ATFI ).  It's a Fulbright Specialist short-term placement. I'm excited and apprehensive, as there's lot to prepare and we've had multiple delays (thank you, COVID!). We will have one cohort each of the first two weeks, and I will play tourist for a few days at the end. We'll be covering much of the leadership information I learned as director of Women's Studies at NIU, especially during our two NSF ADVANCE grants. I'm looking forward to introducing some of the social norms advertising campaign we developed in EWOMS, which aimed to increase women's success in Calculus I (a gateway course to careers in STEM). I will also present evidence from our Catalyst grant on women's career satisfaction. If this is a return to some of the favorite parts of my career, it's also a return to...
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Location: Tunis, Tunisia
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Back in the USA

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, trying not to succumb to jet lag. It's 3pm Central time and 10pm "my" time. I have restocked the fridge and made cranberry sauce. A big batch of chili is next. Eric is napping and firewood is on order. Walking along the Kishwaukee River isn't quite the same as strolling along a canal, but I have Millie for company, and the landscape is open. I feel incredibly fortunate and am signing off this blog until my next big journey.
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Amsterdam windows

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One aspect of Amsterdam I will miss tremendously is the opportunity to look into so many windows - vignettes into other worlds. The most common view is of a front room in a small apartment. The typical layout includes a kitchen area; a seating area with a television and at least one very full bookcase; and a long table for eating, doing homework, completing office tasks, and being a family. Ikea furniture is everywhere, but the rooms never look exactly the same because each one seems to have one unique piece of furniture, often an antique, giving it character. Perhaps that explains the predominance of stores advertising one-of-a-kind items; I can't understand how they stay in business otherwise, as no one one could possibly need or want all these odds and ends. Or maybe they could. . . . Here is a window I passed on the way to the ballet last night. I'll never call myself a hoarder again! (Actually, I think it's intended as an art installation.) This was in the base...
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Christopher Wheeldon's Cinderella at the National Ballet - Not Disney

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  After I returned from seeing Cinderella at the Dutch National Ballet last night, I stayed up reading about Christopher Wheeldon and the choreography. Some moments were spectacular - for instance, the end of the first act, when Cinderella's coach appears to take off into the air on the way to the ball (see it here: https://www.operaballet.nl/en/ballet/2014-2015/show/cinderella). A few were over the top, and if I'd been a child, I would have been terrified by some of the creatures of nature, including one that looked like a perverse Mr. Potato Head. I agree with the reviews that criticize the stereotyping of the Thai, Spanish, and Turkish dancers. We should be beyond that in ballet, even when it's classical. I was disturbed, too, that one of the stepsisters was given glasses to show her ugliness - ugh! I disagree with those who said there was no dancing between Cinderella and the prince at the ball. See the picture above!  There wasn't always a lot of chemistr...
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Feminism and Fashion

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The museum I visited today, the Gemeente (or municipal) Museum in the Hague, had an exhibition titled Femmes Fatales, which claimed to be about feminism . . . . . . . and fashion. I loved seeing the original Mary Quant ribbed turtleneck and the Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress. I also appreciated the reform dress - I'd heard about them and never seen one before. In descriptions, they are always completely utilitarian, but this one was quite beautiful and inspiring. However, the exhibit as a whole left me wondering about feminism and fashion. The curators made an effective argument for the feminism of designers in a male system. Yet I cannot agree that the clothes themselves were all feminist. What is a feminist outfit anyway? Can clothing be implicitly feminist? Would these completely plastic outfits be considered feminist, for instance? Strange things happen when a woman's skin can't breathe . . . This one is molded to loo...
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