My Factory of Extravagant Marvels

I'm entering my last year of PhD now. It is scary. I've shared this feeling with my friends who are in the same situation and I've learned from some of them that they also feel like this, which is a bit of consolation. But despite the butterflies in our stomachs, we have to keep on putting words down on the page, and putting them out there for people to read. That is the hardest part, of course. That part where people actually read what we write. Once they read, they can think whatever they want about it and there is nothing we can do. We have no control anymore. And that is friggin' scary! I've been worrying about publishing lately. I say worrying because that is often my modus operandi  regarding academic stuff. I don't always plan , I don't always wonder , I don't always think about it. I worry about it. It is deeply emotional. And my favorite way to sooth this worry is reading (which is also, as we all know, a wonderful procrastination technique...

Once or twice a week Jon and I play basketball in the morning at park close to home. It's a good way to jump start our sleepy brains. We often meet daycare teachers and the babies they care for in the playground beside the basketball court. This morning they got me thinking. Our relationship to the urban public space is shaped by habits we acquire very early. Right from an early age, the kids in my neighbourhood learn that it is OK to go to the park to play. The teachers take their groups of toddlers there. In fact, they usually walk there, sometimes carrying the kids on a cart, other times, the kids walk holding a line so they don't go astray. They never drive! No way this would happen in São Paulo. When I was a kid, I played in the playgrounds in the daycare yard, surrounded by tall fences with spears on top. My teachers never took the students outside the premises. Trips only started to happen when I was older, in primary school, and they usually required the parents t...