kady's blog

My first meeting with a Sikh profoundly changed my life for the better. I was new to the city, and he was the first person that I had met wearing a turban and an elaborate curved dagger. We were both volunteering at an event for the homeless and struck up a conversation.

I admired his knife, or kirpan, but also thought it strange that he could carry a sheathed dagger on his person, in full view. I had moved from Arizona, where guns were the norm, but knives were unseen. He then told me of its significance. 

He told me that he would fight to the death for my religious freedom. Mine. He would fight for the religious freedom of every person at that carwash. I learned later that a person carrying that dagger will fight to the death on behalf of any oppressed person. The caveat caught me up short. The dagger is used only after every peaceful means has been exhausted. The pacifist in me was honored to have met him. 

Tweets of the day by @TPEquality (Think Progress)

MT @thinkprogress: BREAKING: Following Obama's lead, Sen. Reed announces his support for same-sex marriage http://t.co/7D87eBqk 

RT @NancyPelosi: A great day in our fight for civil rights-President Obama adds his support for marriage #equality. #BeautifulDay

@LogCabinGOP: Obama Announcing Support For Marriage Equality Is 'Offensive And Callous' - http://t.co/pnTb4lc8

OBAMA: "I think same sex couples should be able to get married" http://t.co/K5zVupEL

Tweet of the Day: @Urrealism: Hey! RT @Aunt_Feather: "Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem" by @Urrealism for #PoetryMonth http://t.co/wnuhjm3c via @Latinopia

What goes into choosing a Twitter name? My name is Kathleen Michelle McGregor. I have been Kathleen since the day I was born. Not Kate, Kay or Katie, nor Kathy or Kat, Kathleen is my name. As I was named after my great-grandmother, my family would not have it otherwise. Secretly, I wanted to use a shortened name. As an adult, I began to like Katydid. Never mind that it is a bug. I liked the way it looked in print. On the Internet, Katydid added an aura of mystery. What did Katy do?

Each of my names have eight letters. This made for long email addresses so in the early days of the web, I made up a nickname: kadymac. Kady stood in for katydid, and Mac because I loved Mac computers, and as a nod to my last name. Almost everyone started adding an "a" to my last name after that: MacGregor. Oops.

Waking up is hard to do.

I awoke from a seminarian nightmare. Perhaps it was simply a school nightmare. I dreamed that I needed to finish four classes to complete my b.a. in order to complete my divinity degree. Thus I was back at the university. The campus resembled my high school in Arizona, or a high school of my dreams. It was familiar. I was involved with a group of Latino students for which I was the only one qualified to be the treasurer, an anxiety in itself. Running from that meeting I missed the scholarship deadline that would pay tuition. The registration lines were so long, I was reduced to searching through the school looking for a teacher, any teacher, to sign my registration form. I finally found an old wood shop teacher to sign the paper even though the classes were Mexican studies. He made a joke about being his signing of the form being providential, and I revealed that I was taking these classes to complete my m.div.

Update tweet, later on April 4: Nearly 40 years after the government defined #Hispanic and #Latino, Hispanics still have not fully embraced the terms http://t.co/cex9SDCc via @PewHispanic

I find this tweet very interesting. My question to this statement is why should Central and South American people adhere to the U.S. government imposed labels, let alone embrace them? I just realized that use of those terms give credit to Spanish colonialism. However, a colonialism discussion is far beyond the scope of this blog post. Food for thought.

Tweet of the Day: When Labels Don’t Fit: #Hispanics and Their Views of Identity #latinos http://t.co/Ugav1WeY

My relationship with government surveys is complicated at best. Pew Research tweeted a report on the Latinos yesterday comparing 2010 census data to their own survey. The census, more than anything, reveals the social construction of race in this country. Starting with the 2000 survey, the government made the act of pigeonholing oneself even more convoluted. There are now fifteen racial categories in the census.

Latino or Hispanic? White or ?

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Where - do - we - come - from? 
Mystery. Mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery.
Where do we come from? Where are we going?
Singing the Journey, Hymn #1003