Current CuriositiesReading | Karen Babine's The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo Listening | Houseplant's Houseparty Double LP Watching | The Real Housewives of New York Seasons 5-10 On Pencils and Rhythmic HandsToday is National Mechanical Pencil Day. As an adult, I often use wood pencils for their cedar scent and line variability, but growing up, I loved the precise point of a mechanical pencil.
In elementary school, I worked hard to control my shaky hands (essential tremor). My hands had a rhythm all their own. My hands rhythmed before lunch or after recess, when I was tired or wired. (My hands in this moment are rhythmically moving across my keyboard because I'm slightly over-caffienated.) My handy rhythm is most visible when holding mugs of coffee or something for someone else to read — or when writing. My handwriting was wobbly and unsure, which is challenging for a young perfectionist. A few times I cried angry tears in kindergarten because my hands were shaking and my printing looked impatient, wild, rushed. I only wrote with wood pencils, usually the sports ones put out by Mead every back-to-school season. (I always hoped for a Minnesota Twins pencil in the pack, but rarely found one.) But as the graphite dulled, my handwriting became worse and my frustration rose. One day, my piano teacher, who wrote notes on my scores in Bic mechanical pencils, handed me one and told me to keep it with my piano books. I loved that pencil: the fine, consistent line, that click. On our next family trip to Target, I begged for a package of Bics and got one — black barrels with multicolor clips. Immediately, I began practicing my handwriting with the new Bics, finding that smaller lettering, tighter hand movements improved my writing, giving me more confidence. (This would become an issue later when a high school biology teacher threatened to fail me if I kept using my precise, though small, handwriting. But as a very stubborn Greek, I won the standoff and earned an A.) Cursive, too, with its smooth, connected letters gave me more control over my writing and my hands. As a college educator, every time I lent a book to a student for research, they'd remark on the size and precision of my marginal notes. So tiny! So neat! How can you read it?! God, I love students, especially first-year college students while they still possess wonder and curiosity before the mechanisms of Higher Education and capitalism grind it out of them. Some students will hold onto to these attributes, but you won't find them in the Business School. (I said what I said.) My handwriting is mine, something I've worked very hard on — it's deeply personal. My rhythmically shaky hands are mine, too. (Any other Elder Millennials hearing Jewel at this point in the essay?) And with mechanical pencils I learned discipline and control. Later with wood pencils, I relearned to let go, rediscovering the freedom of imperfection (more on that later). Anyway, in no particular order, here are a few of my favorite mechanical pencils:
Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): Cross Bailey Light [Fountain Pen] | Colorverse USA Sky Tinted Waters [Ink]
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Current CuriositiesReading | Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline Listening | Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter on repeat this summer Watching | Bravo's The Valley because ohmygod cishet relationships are truly dark Natasha "Ariadne" RomanoffOutside of taking a group of INMED campers to see the midnight showing of The Avengers (2012), I had never seen a Marvel movie. I tended to be very picky about science fiction and fantasy — as in, if it wasn't Star Wars, I was not interested. Fast-forward to 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic (and lots of free time). In August 2020, I accepted a position in the Center for Community & Civic Engagement at Carleton College and moved to hella rural Northfield, Minnesota. (The slogan for Northfield is Cows, Colleges, and Community. Uff da.) I didn't know anyone in town, save a handful of my new colleagues. Carleton, to its credit, was navigating the pandemic cautiously, so when I started my new position as Student Experience Manager, I worked from my kitchen table in my one-bedroom apartment in an old Arts and Crafts style house on the St. Olaf College side of town. (Scandinavian Sharks and Jets, baby!) When not Zooming into team meetings or one-on-one virtual coffees, I searched for activities to complement long walks with Diego Dog through our neighborhood. During one of these walks, I remembered laughing uncontrollably with my grad school friend and fellow camp counselor Maggie (a truly stellar human) at the scene where the Hulk picks up Loki, swinging him side to side into the cement floor of Stark Tower near the end of The Avengers. In fact, Maggie and I used to send each other this GIF back and forth for years when students at our respective universities asked silly questions. (Sometimes educators need gallows humor to reach the end of the semester.) Reflecting on the Hulk GIF, I decided to watch everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) had to offer. All I needed was the internet and Disney+. Luckily, I had both. So on a cloudy afternoon after my last virtual meeting of the day, I began working my way through the MCU in order of theatrical release, starting with Iron Man (2008). I've never been a comic book reader, so each character and every plot was new to me. While I find Tony Stark insufferable, I powered through Iron Man II, where I found my curiosity piqued by Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). She started a through line, acted as a kind of MCU guide for me. Aside from Captain America (and! that! ass!), I had not found any of the other Avengers particularly interesting, but Black Widow deeply fascinated me — her darkness just below the surface, her sense of justice, her loyalty. As I worked my way through the MCU, I loved watching Black Widow pop into individual Avenger's movies and every team movie. What I realized is Black Widow, while not having her own standalone movie until after her death in Avengers: Endgame (2019), was stitching together the individual stories of her fellow Avengers. Natasha brings Iron Man and Hawkeye into Nick Fury's fold. She works closely with Captain America in his original trilogy. And she learns how to manage and care for Bruce Banner and his alter-ego the Hulk. As she collects allies, Black Widow leads viewers (or at least this one) through the complicated, labyrinthine plots that when woven together create the MCU much like Ariadne and her red thread lead Theseus through King Minos's labyrinth to save the Athenian sacrifices from the monstrous Minotaur. Sidequest: Growing Up Greek-ishMy whole life I've loved Greek mythology, which I suppose is not all that different from comic books and superheroes. My family comes from the island of Corfu. According to legend, the original inhabitants of the island, the Phaeacians, sprung out of the blood and sea foam, the result of Cronus gelding his father Uranus with a sickle. The sickle is said to be buried under the island, which is why the it's sickle-shaped. With such primordial ancestry, I often joke about being the descendant of Titans. As a child, my favorite myths were Daedalus and Icarus (I really wanted to fly), Heracles (what's not to love — muscles and queerness???), Medusa (I'm with her!), and of course, Theseus and the Minotaur. As a child with anxiety, the labyrinth represented the unknown, with the prospect of danger lurking around every turn, the potential to be lost forever. Knowing that Ariadne provided Theseus a red thread, a guide to navigate the labyrinth safely, provided a small sense of security — if Theseus could manage navigating the unknown, then so could I. Ariadne's thread, along with Daedalus's ingenuity and Heracles's grit, lessened my anxiety and instilled in me a drive to face challenges with creative problem solving. Focus! Find the Thread![Please note, I'm updating this section live as I rewatch movies featuring Black Widow because as I used to say to my research and writing students Where! Is! The! Evidence!]
In Iron Man 2, Natasha Romanoff joins Stark Industries on orders from Nick Fury as Pepper Pots' assistant. Fury reveals Natasha works for S.H.I.E.L.D. (so many periods!) and Romanoff and Happy Hogan team up to find Vanko, the Big Bad funded by a squirrelly Justin Hammer. (While I love Sam Rockwell, even his smooth dance moves can't save Iron Man II for me.) Natasha outperforms Happy (obvi) as she topples goon after goon and hacks into Hammer's system to aid Iron Man's final battle with Vanko. This is our MCU introduction to the Black Widow. She works from the fringes, supporting her teammates as they fight bullish Big Bads to win the day. Next in The Avengers, Black Widow, again on orders from Nick Fury, locates and recruits Bruce Banner to join the newly reactivated Avengers Initiative. Captain America, Iron Man, and Bruce Banner join her on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cloaked sky fortress. (Sometimes, I cannot believe I'm typing words and phrases like sky fortress. It all sounds so silly.) Natasha interrogates and outsmarts Loki and saves her old friend Hawkeye from Loki's mind control. During the final battle over New York City (renters insurance must be astronomical!), Natasha again uses her brilliance and badassery to reprogram the portal to stop Loki's army, allowing Iron Man to redirect a nuclear missile, seemingly sacrificing himself [eye roll]. In these first two Black Widow outings, not only do we see Natasha fighting alongside her male colleagues to save the planet, but we also witness Natasha guiding her male colleagues through the chaos, supporting the collective defeat of their monsters. Then in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Natasha initiates events by pulling up in a sports car. Later while rescuing hostages held on a ship, she yet again hacks into the system, another web of information needed to move the plot forward. (I realize I'm conflating spiders and webs and threads and the MCU with labyrinth, but this slippage is interesting.) Natasha uses her ability to see, to sense the world around her (like a spider feeling silk vibrations) in order to guide Steve through a maze-like shopping mall, secret military installation, and compromised S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. She deftly detangles recursive webs of secret identities and misinformation to, again, win the day against Hydra's Alexander Pierce and Fascism 2.0. (Uff da, The Winter Soldier feels very 2025.) And the team gains an Icarus of sorts in the form of Sam Wilson's Falcon! (Yes, I know there's already an Ikaris in The Eternals.) Admittedly, I don't care for Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's hella bleak. (Is this our AI future???) In an interesting move, Natasha is captured and her Ariadne is replaced temporarily by Agent Maria Hill (and Fury), as Hill traces Ultron's movements and directs the team to Sokovia to destroy Ultron and his AI goons. It seems Black Widow's narrative thread is to be present, as she negotiates her feelings and culpability in what has occurred in the past and what's currently happening in Sokovia. Her relationship with the Hulk continues to grow, well, before you know what happens. Age of Ultron represents the midpoint in Natasha's narrative trajectory, bringing her low before the events of Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. Black Widow's presence is our thread. Next in Captain America: Civil War, ... I love this movie so much. And Spider-Man's lil tukhus could challenge Captain America's bum for superherioc bottom supreme. Then in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, ... Natasha's sacrifice in Endgame is arguably more meaningful than Tony's snap of his fingers. (Fight me.) Black Widow pays Red Skull's price for the Soul Stone in the hope that her death leads to an Avengers' victory, resurrecting trillions of beings. Rebellions are built on hope after all. (I know, wrong franchise.) Tony, on the other hand, knows (with a nod from Doctor Strange) his bejeweled gauntlet will return half of the universe to life and eliminate Thanos, his henchmen and army of death. Tony knows. Natasha hopes. I realize my analogy is probably (definitely) forced. But for me, Black Widow acts as a kind of MCU pedagogy. Natasha gives structure to this unwieldy franchise by leading viewers (okay, me) from movie to movie, creating a web of growing superhero connections. Natasha is a dependable presence, and often she's the calm, level-headed Avenger while the men measure their, umm, powers. Finally, in her solo movie, we witness Natasha hand off her MCU thread to Yelena, who plays a similar narrative role, as she dips in and out of movies and series stitching together a new Avengers team. Only a family of Widows could achieve such a feat! Twice. And I'm looking forward to this new maze of entangled MCU stories led by Florence Pugh. Curiously, Disney+ does not feature Black Widow in their MCU character collections. As of writing this post, I'm fully caught up on everything MCU, except The Thunderbolts*. I enjoyed Captain America: Brave New World because I'm just happy to revisit characters and exist in this universe. (This is also my approach to And Just Like That. If you know you know.) And so far, Ironheart's first three episodes are fantastic! For what it's worth, here are my favorite parts of the MCU:
If you're interested in Greek mythology, check out Let's Talk About Myths, Baby!. Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): TWSBI Go [Fountain Pen] | Colorverse Cat Ink (No. 22) Glistening [Ink] Current CuriositiesReading | One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad Listening | The back catalog of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby Watching | The Mortician on HBOMax Trainings, Transitions, and MapsIn 2022, as a learning partner for a hella conservative construction company, I was sent to Salt Lake City to become a mindset workshop facilitator. My professional objective was to bring this training back to the organization and share its capitalist gospel with internal teams and external project partners.
(The workshop seemed to be heavily influenced by Mormonism in ways I cannot fully articulate. Also, the training lacked any discussion of difference or inclusion in the workplace.) I was excited to travel to Salt Lake, home of the newest Real Housewives franchise, and experience the heart of Mormon culture, which I'd only encountered through Big Love and Nightly News reports on the church's anti-LGBTQ+ doctrine. My personal objective during off-training hours was to become a Harriet the Spy-style anthropologist to better understand these new Bravo women. However, I never actually got the chance because the training was in the northern suburbs far from iconic locations like Beauty Lab + Laser (and the parking lot where it happened!). Anyway, on the first day of the workshop, we were asked by the charismatic facilitator (who looked like the dad from 7th Heaven or a sober Pete Hegseth) to introduce ourselves one by one. Half of the participants came from the same Utah-based anti-LGBTQ+ Christian counseling organization. When it was my turn, I mentioned my corporate role and company, and then pointedly said I'm a freelance LGBTQ+ inclusion and professional development consultant while looking each of them in the eye. I've spent much of my life making myself small for the comfort of the cishets (including at the company sending me to this particular training) and I was not going to tolerate cishet nonsense in this collaborative learning space. As I mentioned in the last post, I will speak up to a fault particularly to support and advocate for queer and trans folks. Others introduced themselves: mapmakers, programmers, social workers, more corporate trainers. I listened with interest and noted who might be fun to have lunch with. Though to be honest, this introvert was exhausted after making my small queer stand during introductions and wanted to sit by myself in the sun. (It had been a frigid March in Minnesota, and honestly, I was happy to be by myself several states away from my corporate colleagues.) When we broke for lunch, I grabbed my catering box and headed outside away from everyone else to recharge. As I ate, my gaze shifted from the nearby mountains to Instagram and back again. Quietly, one of my classmates approached and asked if she could sit with me. She was curious about my consulting work. I mentioned the cancer center where I facilitated a customized Safe Zone for medical providers and shared some of the difficulties leading LGBTQ+ Programs at a conservative land-grant university (a story for another day). She was curious and asked many questions about queer and trans experiences. In turn, I asked about her work as a cartographer because as a former postcolonial scholar I'm fascinated by maps with their encoded histories, shifting borders, and changing place names. It was a great conversation. Then she became quiet. I asked if she was okay, and she responded that her teenager had recently come out as transgender. She was struggling with what this meant for the child she knew and their new gender identity and expression. She wanted her teen to know she loved and supported them, but at the same time, she wasn't sure how to navigate this change. Mostly, I listened, though I asked the occasional question. Sometimes folks just need space to be heard where they can work safely through their thoughts. As with many parents of queer and trans children, she was struggling to reconcile the person she thought she knew with this seemingly new person. I stressed that her child was still her child, that they are the same person whom she's always loved. But now, they were comfortable sharing their whole self with her. And this was evidence she had created a loving and supportive parent-child relationship. This didn't quite convince her, so I switched tactics. I love a good metaphor, especially in learning spaces when grappling with challenging or abstract ideas. My new cartographer friend was from a European country, whose name and borders had changed over the centuries due to shifting empires and war. I analogized the land as the person her child is (and has always been) and the changing borders and place names as the transition. The land and the people are still the same, only the descriptions we use have changed. As a mapmaker, this made sense to her — thank Hermes! She planned to use my ham-handed metaphor when she spoke with her parents to help them become more comfortable with her teenager's gender identity. I was honored she felt comfortable sharing her story with me and happy to help her navigate this new terrain. This is why speaking up, advocating is so important — it lets folks know who you are and where you stand and that you are (potentially) a safe person to talk to. Our lunchtime conversation brought me back to life after a dull morning seated in that workshop in a way silence, sunshine, and mountain views may not have. Over the next four days, powered by thin conference coffee, I asked blunt questions about inclusion and highlighted the importance of difference in the workplace much to the annoyance of the facilitator and the gathered anti-LGBTQ+ counselors. I never heard how my new mapmaking friend's conversations with her child and parents went after she returned home. Occasionally, I think about our lunchtime conversation and wonder, but then I remember I was present in the moment and that's what matters. This experience reminded me of why I'm drawn to the work I do: teaching, coaching, community engagement. I'm built to support others on their journeys, which often means I never actually see the journey's end, but that is the work. Put another, hella clichéd way, I may help to plant the seeds, but very rarely do I get to see them bloom, but that again is the work. So I will continue on my own journey being a happy little gardener, supporting the growth and success of queer and trans folks (and the occasional ally) — while weeding out bigots. Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today's Pen(cil): TWSBI ECO-T [Fountain Pen] | Sailor Shikiori Souten [Ink] Yesterday, I attended a faculty and staff listening session hosted by the campus executive council. What struck me most during this town hall were the many colleagues seeking answers and reassurances (receiving neither) about how to best protect queer and trans students, staff, and faculty from not only the Trump administration, but also the North Dakota legislature — both of which are actively targeting, dehumanizing, and attempting to erase LGBTQ+ communities from society. Again and again, colleagues asked the executive council how the university plans to handle laws designed to discriminate against queer and trans members of the campus community. And each time this concern was raised, the executive council, which is mostly male and mostly white, responded with we will follow the law.* We. Will. Follow. The. Law. We will follow the law landed darkly and reminded me of the good Germans who reported Jewish and LGBTQ+ people to Nazis (original recipe, not our current Trump-Musk variety). Law-abiding Germans looked the other way as Nazis rounded up Jewish and LGBTQ+ people and sent them to concentration camps. Good, law-abiding Germans enabled genocide. Moreover, in the United States, slavery was the law of the land for hundreds of years, and segregation was legal for at least an additional century. At what point do we stop following unjust laws, laws designed to discriminate, dehumanize, and cleanse people from society? We. Will. Follow. The. Law. This response from the campus executive council was bone-chilling and highlighted the limits of allyship. Allyship is rarely unwavering, nearly always conditional. Allies have the privilege of dropping their allyship as soon as they face any challenge, any test of their mettle.
For me, this executive council listening session resurfaced a question I've returned to again and again since the 2024 Election: Are allies worth the effort when allies can and often do sell you out to protect themselves at the slightest inconvenience? I've spent my post-academic life working toward LGBTQ+ equity, inclusion, and belonging — encouraging straight folks to become allies and advocates for queer and trans communities. Over the years, I've received threats and slurs from colleagues on college and corporate campuses. But I continued to coach one-on-one and facilitate workshops on allyship because I believed the work was important and would lead to a better, more inclusive world. But we are experiencing the regrowth of fascism at an alarming rate through Trump's executive orders, general Republican bigotry, and the indifference of good white people — and now I'm no longer sure allyship is worth the time and energy. So in this atmosphere of rapidly rising fascism and waining allyship, I am winding down Creighton Brown Consulting, which offered individual LGBTQ+ professional development and organizational workshops, to focus on Rough-Draft Thinking, which will explore my thoughts on queer and trans inclusion and other curiosities. The next post will be (hopefully?) lighter in tone. Though I will always be me and will to a fault speak up. Here are a few things that have exercised my curiosity, caused me to reflect, and delighted me lately:
I look forward to you joining me on this journey — and would love your recommendations! Thank you very much for your time. If you have recommendations or curiosities, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): Sharpie [Permanent Marker] * The listening session was recorded and distributed via campus email. We are one week out from the presidential election.
The stakes for LGBTQ+ communities are higher than they have ever been in my lifetime. And as a queer professional, I am terrified everyday for my fellow queer and trans folks. Your vote communicates what and who you value. You cannot vote for Trump — or any Republican — and claim to be an LGBTQ+ ally. You cannot vote for the party actively stripping human rights from queer and trans communities and still claim to be an ally. You cannot vote for the party harassing and targeting trans youth, banning essential healthcare and still claim to be an ally. You cannot vote for the party attempting to legislate queer and trans communities out of existence and still claim to be an ally. LGBTQ+ allies vote for candidates advocating for and supporting queer and trans rights. LGBTQ+ allies stand with queer and trans communities in the face of rising Republican fascism and hate-fueled legislation. Ultimately, your conscience is your own — and the consequences of your vote are yours alone to own, but the impacts of your vote will be felt by queer and trans communities. Please exercise your right to vote this election season and stand with queer and trans communities. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. If you have questions, curiosities, or are interested in learning more about inclusion and leadership possibilities for yourself or your organization, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): Black and White Bugle | Musgrave Pencil Company Tomorrow marks the official start of Pride season. And honestly, this year I am more concerned than ever about the safety of my fellow LGBTQ+ community members.
We now live in a post-Trump conviction era — and as a country, we have witnessed again and again what his aggrieved followers do when Trump and his ideology lose. And Trump lost bigly yesterday. The threat of danger to queer and trans folks this Pride is incredibly real. Allies, your role at Pride must evolve past simply showing up in support and celebrating. As allies, you may be called upon to upstand, to intervene when queer or trans people are being threatened, harassed, or harmed. Upstanding for Allies If you witness harassment or violence targeting queer or trans Pride attendees, it’s your job as an ally to upstand.
Safety Reminders for LGBTQ+ Folks
An Additional Consideration Cops do not belong at Pride. Every queer and trans person, regardless of citizenship status, race or ethnicity, deserves to feel safe celebrating Pride. As Roxane Gay wrote in her thoughtful 2021 New York Times opinion piece, police harassment of LGBTQ+ communities did not start with the Stonewall Riots and did not end afterward. And BIPOC queer and trans communities bear the brunt of contemporary police harassment. Fellow queer and trans folks, I wish y'all happiness and love this Pride season. Be safe, be proud, be you. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. If you have questions, curiosities, or are interested in learning more about inclusion and leadership possibilities for yourself or your organization, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): Tennessee Red | Musgrave Pencil Company Words Matter. Lately, while applying for open learning and leadership development positions, I’ve noticed a troubling trend in Human Resources in which these vital organizational departments have rebranded themselves as Human Capital. The term human resources is bad enough as it often connotes humans as resources with the goal of protecting the organization from you and not resources for the actual humans who compose, who give life to the organization. And human capital is human resources’ darker ideological sibling. The term human capital draws on a long history of human enslavement and exploitation, and as a former literature and writing educator, reminds me of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988). In A Small Place, Kincaid travels back to Antigua, her home before moving to the United States as a child. Kincaid catalogs the harms enacted by the British Empire on this twelve-by-nine mile-wide island as she taxis from the airport to her hotel. In particular, Kincaid focuses on how slavery and capitalism (another set of ideological siblings) shaped the island’s culture and Antiguan’s understanding of both themselves and the dehumanizing machinations of capitalism. Indeed, Kincaid writes: You [white North Americans and Europeans] will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, that Gross National Product is one of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t quite bring ourselves to embrace his idea that you think so much of. (36-7) Here, Kincaid deftly links our modern concept of (human) capital with the objectification and dehumanization experienced by Africans violently removed from their homelands, barbarically ferried across the Atlantic, and casually sold like commodities to support the endless consumption of capitalism. Kincaid connects human capital with its lived and entwined histories of enslavement with banking and commerce systems (Barclays, for example). Words Matter. And choosing to name your human resources department human capital draws on the dark histories and legacies of enslavement, dehumanization, and exploitation in North America and throughout the Global South. Words Matter. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. If you have questions, curiosities, or are interested in learning more about inclusion and leadership possibilities for yourself or your organization, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): 600 News | Musgrave Pencil Company If you are curious about my approach to teaching A Small Place, check out “My Favorite Essay to Teach: Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.
And for a look into my former life as an academic, check out “Educational Archipelago: Alternative Knowledges and the Production of Docile Bodies in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place and Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis.” Both pieces were published by the brilliant Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. Fellow inclusion and belonging facilitators, I am begging y’all – please stop using the iceberg metaphor in your DEI workshops. Whether intentionally or not, you are communicating to your audience that those unseen aspects of ourselves, which lie out of sight below the water, are potentially dangerous. A better visual metaphor is prairie grass.
Iceberg as Visual Metaphor Of particular note, Freud (yes, that Freud) is the one who gave us the iceberg as a visual metaphor to understand the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious minds. He mapped onto the iceberg the conscious mind (thoughts and perceptions) above the waterline, preconscious mind (memory and knowledge) just below the waterline where light still penetrates, and unconscious mind (instincts and fears) deep in the darkness below the waterline. As with any novel metaphor, Freud’s use of the iceberg evolved over time into the trite visual aid we see today in too many DEI workshop spaces. As anyone who’s watched Titanic knows, the danger posed by icebergs lies below the water’s surface (where Freud's unconscious mind with its fears is located) with a small piece jutting visibly above the ocean’s choppy plane. In many DEI workshops, facilitators ask participants to map onto a blank iceberg those visible parts of themselves onto the smaller part of the iceberg above the waterline. These observable parts often include race, (apparent) gender, actions, language, style, profession, etc. Then facilitators ask participants to map the invisible, the unknown parts of themselves onto the larger below the water portion of the iceberg. These unobservable parts can include age, disability, religion, culture, sexual orientation, morals and values, etc. By mapping these invisible parts of ourselves, which are meaningful and impactful aspects of who we are, facilitators are intentionally or unintentionally communicating to their workshop participants that these unseen parts of our identities pose a risk to the safety of others and are potentially dangerous. Prairie Grass as a More Meaningful Metaphor A better metaphor for the seen and unseen aspects of our identities is prairie grass. Prairie grass is often as tall above ground as it is deeply rooted below ground – creating a mirror, showing the visible and invisible as equally meaningful and impactful. Unlike the grass in your front (or back) lawn, which has shallow, superficial root systems, prairie grass’s roots reach deep into the earth, grounding each stalk, allowing it to grow equally as high into the air. We can still map the visible and invisible parts of our identities onto prairie grass with the stalks representing what others can easily observe about us and the roots demonstrating what is unobservable to others. And the roots are the key to this new metaphor. Unlike the solitary iceberg floating alone in the ocean, prairie grass roots reach out to each other, interlocking, creating stability and community. The interconnected roots communicate that no one is a lone reed (yes, I am referencing You’ve Got Mail), that we exist in community. We gain strength and nourishment from these unobserved parts of ourselves. And these unobserved parts of ourselves are not dangerous, but instead they ground us and offer opportunities to more deeply connect with those around us. Prairie grass’s stalks and roots work collaboratively to sustain the whole plant – and no part (consciously or unconsciously) of the anatomy of prairie grass (as metaphor) communicates the unseen parts of ourselves are dangerous. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. If you have questions, curiosities, or are interested in learning more about inclusion and leadership possibilities for yourself or your organization, please fill out this nifty contact form. Sending y’all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today’s Pen(cil): My-Pal 2020 | Musgrave Pencil Company Welcome to Rough-Draft Thinking, a blog where I will reflect on the inclusion media and ideas I consume and my experiences as a queer educator, consultant, and engaged community member living, working, and dog-walking in the Red River Valley.
I chose to title my blog Rough-Draft Thinking, a phrase I’ve used with students, friends, and family for years, because it creates space for initial, unpolished thoughts. Rough-draft thinking leaves open the possibility of learning and growth through revision of perspectives and ideas. Rough-draft thinking relies on curiosity over judgment, on closely and actively listening to others. (Yes, like many of you, I’m also drawn to the lesson in that particular Ted Lasso scene.) As a former college educator, I encouraged curiosity over judgment, though I didn’t realize it at the time. When I started teaching in the English Department at the University of Kansas, I made the decision to comment on rough-draft student essays in pencil rather than pen or cumbersome Microsoft Word comments. I liked physically holding my students’ ideas in my hands. I liked responding as a reader in marginal comments and writing a quick supportive endnote to each student in pencil. I like the pretense of impermanence graphite offers. Graphite’s erasability quietly connotes that writing (and learning) is a process, requiring revision, further development of ideas – reminding students nothing is fixed permanently in place. And most mistakes are fixable, are opportunities to exercise curiosity, learn, and grow. By commenting on student rough-drafts in pencil, I also encouraged progress over perfection and practice is the point. Though, as a recovering perfectionist, I occasionally have to remind myself about the importance of celebrating progress and honoring the experience of practice, so I draft posts or outline projects in pencil, first, before committing them to the digital spaces. (For those curious, my favorite pencil for writing is the Musgrave Tennessee Red.) As an organizational learning partner, I actively incorporated curiosity over judgment, progress over perfection, and practice is the point into every workshop I created and during every one-on-one coaching session. And now I bring these lessons into my work as an inclusion and leadership consultant. My goals for Rough-Draft Thinking are to:
Thank you very much for your time and for joining me on this adventure! And I cannot wait to start a conversation with y’all! Sending y'all supportive, well-caffeinated vibes, Creighton Today's Pen(cil): Blackwing 602 | "Half the pressure, twice the speed" |