Back Home [August 2023, Days 7-9]

I’ve only been an uncle for under 1.5 years now. It’s an acquired identity

"Come on Mimi. It's too hot outside."
*slow wallet aftermath*

 At the time of writing, it’s past midnight here in Louisiana, but it’s a different day in Washington. I scheduled a few emails and deliveries ahead of time. I still have to hear back whether my conference presentation moved to a later timeslot to avoid a schedule conflict with my Saturday teaching.

At the risk of misapplying some philosophical idea, I’m supposed to always already be a teacher, learner, and lover of wisdom. That’s what the PhD, doctor of philosophy, means.

This reflection fits more of a pre-sleep, pre-travel collection of connecting thoughts situated within the last few days. I’m also on a streak that I will allow myself to break tomorrow in order to get some sleep over in Seattle. I will also edit this by adding to it. I think this one will act as one of those hub posts.This trip has been fun, and it was good to witness my nephew growing up, live, instead of via text.

 

Choosing

Before he was even born, my first gift to my nephew was a choice between Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. In the end, he’ll always wind up with all three, like Ash from the anime or Yellow from the games, but his initial preference is probably contextual. The predictions I heard were Charmander because he’s orange, or Squirtle because he vaguely looks like a baby. I didn’t really hear anyone predict Bulbasaur, reasoning something like “Bulbasaur looks the most edible of the three.”

"That one."

Bulba-bulba.

Bulba-saur!

 

Your turn.

By the way, my first starter Pokémon was Pikachu, since I played Yellow Version first.

 

Learning Theory

Na’ilah Saud Nasir, a top scholar in my field, former AERA president and current Spencer Foundation president, describes three kinds of resources for becoming or practicing an identity:

• ideational resources – self-concept of relationship to a practice and what is good in the world
• relational resources – relations which reinforce becoming part of a practice
• material resources – ways in which the physical world shape our relationships

Learning is a part of sociocultural practices, or being part of a group, organization, or community. Onto-epistemic heterogeneity (see Chapter 16 in The Handbook of Cultural Foundations of Learning), a fun term, really has me thinking about what the atoms of an education would be, in the Deweyan sense of “Education is life itself.”

I looked at the mouse flashcards, a pack of A to Z and 1 to 10. This is a material resource to be used by a teacher. I doubt my nephew, as smart as he is, couldn’t learn the alphabet or counting through the resource alone. It would require mama, dada, mimi, or papa, or someone at his daycare, or someone else with prior knowledge of the canon order of the alphabet, or the counting relationship between these positive integers. That relational resource pairs with the judgment that the learning of the content was worth it for my nephew at a time when he’s younger than 18 months old. The pack says pre-K.

A very important question:
Why does that mouse have pecs?

I will call it now that if Common Core State Standards still exist when he reaches kindergarten, homework sessions between my nephew and brother would be worth watching. That prediction is based on the fact my brother shares math memes that usually have ambiguous order of operations or some other gimmick, with the accompanying text to ‘splain.

When evaluating the educational value of the flashcards, the cartoon mouse on the box was kinda random considering all the other products of the same brand. Was it just to differentiate the packs? Were the drawings on the cards supposed to be a form of associative learning? The flashcards cost $1, so there really wasn’t too much of a downside to picking them up.

 

Collecting

My brother has a lot of stuff. Someday, the collection will have to pass on, right?

That's just the half of the room that fits in the picture.

He also has a lot of toys.

I did zero cleaning or de-cluttering in my ten days here. Before I get back to Seattle, I have an air fryer, a Sodastream, and a long comic box headed for my apartment. My thoughts on those purchases were they’ll make it so I’ll keep more organized.

On the plane ride back, I plan on reading Nimona. I have a backlog of low-commitment reads on my shelf back in Seattle, but I think I’ll get through it.

 

Cooking

My studio apartment doesn’t have a dishwasher, and the convection oven seems inefficient; I cook a lot of food on the stove, so I hope the air fryer expands the ways I heat food and make meals. The Sodastream is an experiment to see if I can get personal value. I could just drink water, but this seems to make some economic sense for me, assuming I use it and spend less on getting soft drinks. It's a way to better titrate my caffeine intake instead of coffee and tea, assuming I'd drink them ad libitum.

 

Whipped cream into Shaq face.

Louisiana does have great food. I’m going to miss the “slow wallet” phenomenon of getting my mom to pay for some meals. It’s when you hesitate or pretend to get the check, fulling to be too slow for the other person to get it first. I did cook more than usual on this trip though.

General Tso's Bean Curd (GTBC) with
air fried mushrooms and quick pickled onions.

Discussion

Overall, I do feel recharged after this trip. It was a good break after my summer teaching and before my fall dissertating.

Other Parts of This Trip [August 2023]

• Visit Days 1-3.
• Visit Days 4-6.
• Visit Days 10-11.
  
• View a Stylized Reimagining of this trip back home using DALL-E.

Back Home [August 2023, Days 4-6]

My brother and I ate at Taste and See Sushi and Hibachi near LSU’s campus. Originally called Kaminari during my master’s program at LSU, my cohort would eat there each semester to celebrate. We didn’t have to walk far or wait in line with the buffet items sitting there partly chilled or warmed. This is the one style of restaurant that wouldn’t make sense in Seattle, since the costs to run it outweigh the margins.

The name is a reference to Psalm 34. *shrug emoji*

We saw Blue Beetle, a superhero movie with elements from Fast and the Furious, Transformers, and X-2. It was a good movie, and the hit it’s taking from not promoting it due to the writer’s strike will hurt its box office performance. I didn’t see Flash, Shazam 2, or Black Adam, but the DCU always has a challenge promoting its movies; nevertheless, full page ads instantly date whichever run of comic books they appear in.

When we got back to my brother’s house, I played with some Duplo, and then picked up some Taco Bell on the way home.

Architectural genius. No blocks of the same color touch.

I think I forgot to write about something.

 

The next day, my mom and I met my aunt and uncle for lunch at a Golden Corral, and then we saw Barbie. They didn’t get it. My mom liked Ryan Gosling’s performance though. A Seattle friend thought it was too preachy, but I think most of us thought it was the right amount of silly. I, of course, went full Barbenheimer a month ago, and I think the crew deserves its billion dollar box office performance. I compare it to Lego Movie, Toy Story 3, and Anchorman.

Monday was less eventful with a drive around to go shopping. My mom made almond milk pancakes for breakfast and I ate some pickled onions with my Impossible meatball alfredo dinner.

 

On Traffic

Like New Orleans, you must drive everywhere in Baton Rouge. Concrete sound barriers separate neighborhoods from the highways. We passed the lakes around the LSU campus to go from one main street to another.

Many of the roads around here are eternally under construction. New Orleans streets constantly crack from the heat while flooding in almost any amount of rain. It’s too hot to walk around anywhere. After Blue Beetle, the inside of the car reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit. With lows in the evening around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, I just walk on the treadmill.  

I appreciate the idea of roundabouts, but they aren’t the solution at every intersection. I’ve learned enough urban planning playing Cities: Skylines to know that they shouldn’t be placed too close to each other, and a bigger diameter is better. They make good movie set pieces like in John Wick: Chapter 4 around l’arc de triomphe.

Louisiana’s population density isn’t very high, so interstate traffic usually flows. Local streets clog up since there’s an over-reliance of driving on shoulders rather through arterials or connectors. Neighborhood traffic, stuck behind a sub-optimal school bus route, usually winds up being stop-and-go in both the evenings and afternoons.

 

Louisiana’s Future

My parents usually watch the local and national early evening news block before switching to Jeopardy at 6:00 p.m.

While passing through to the kitchen, I saw a Louisiana gubernatorial election ad from Jeff Landry about being the son of a teacher, implying axiological expertise in reading, writing, and math. He didn’t say ‘ritthmetic.

I tend to stray away from talking about politics, but I do vote. I’ve been registered as an Independent since 2008. 2008, 2012, and 2020 felt right. I remember in 2016 going into work the Wednesday after Election Day, reading the email from the principal, and then wanting to go to graduate school.

My Take

Jeff Landry is not a serious person. He appeals to the hoi polloi by playing on their fears. He unironically calls teachers using professional standards the woke mob.

Two of the other Republican candidates, Hewitt and Nelson, hail from nearby, but they aren’t serious people either. They can claim some STEM background, but that doesn’t go very far, brain drain and all.

Shawn Wilson, on the other hand, has a PhD in public administration. He has a civil service, non-political background.

I would imagine the door knocking campaign strategy simply doesn’t work well in Louisiana, especially going into October. Perhaps by November areas in New Orleans and Baton Rouge can rally, but it will take intentional effort to inspire disaffected young voters.

At the time of writing, Landry is more likely to win. Still, I will mail my ballot from Seattle with a vote for Wilson.

 

Other Parts of This Trip [August 2023]

• Visit Days 1-3.
• Visit Days 7-9.
• Visit Days 10-11.
  
• View a Stylized Reimagining of this trip back home using DALL-E.