Service?

I have been feeling, on and off, a sense of wanderlust for a while now. I deeply regret not studying abroad. And I enjoy going to school, but it has been a constant in my life for nearly 17 years now, and I think it might be time to shake it up a little.

At one point, Ross and I thought about doing service with the Mennonite church once I graduated, but we were told that the service organizations didn't take couples in their first year of marriage. Turns out they just changed that rule this fall.

So service with MVS is now definitely the backup plan if I don't get into med school this year. However, I keep thinking that a year of service maybe ought to be The Plan after all. I could defer enrollment to medical school, and I think it would be refreshing to devote some time to helping others rather than working toward my own career goals. And Ross and I agree that MVS could be good for us--spending our first year of marriage in simple, communal living would give us a foundation for the rest of our lives together.

On the other hand, it is hard for me to change my plans, and I have always planned to go straight on to medical school. I think Ross is also somewhat anxious to start grad school. Medical training is long and intense, and Ross and I struggle with if and how and when it will be possible for us to have children in the next 10 years or so. Delaying the beginning of medical school may also mean further delaying having kids, which is not really what we want to do.

I don't know what to think about this possibility. This is a time of enormous uncertainty for me. I wonder if this attraction to MVS is born out of a desire to be in control of my life when I feel like my fate is in the hands of admissions committees. I wonder if it is a calling, if it might lead me down a path I need to take. I wonder if it is the right choice for Ross, or a calling for him.

Mennonite DNA

Yesterday at Fall Fest, I discovered the Mennonite DNA Project. This project is using Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA markers to trace paternal and maternal lines and, by comparing DNA markers to genealogy charts, discovering previously unknown relationships between families. It's a pretty cool idea, and an interesting application of DNA haplotyping technology.

As I was filling out my genealogy chart at the Mennonite DNA Project table, I heard a woman exclaim to her sister, "Oh, Mrs. Wiebe has a name! It's Katharina! Her name is Katharina! We've got to tell Mom; she'll be so excited!"

This woman didn't remember an ancestor's name, so she had the volunteer look her up in GRANDMA (the Mennonite genealogy database) and print a chart of her ancestors. Apparently, when her family had been researching their ancestry, they couldn't find any information about a this female ancestor; she was recorded only by her husband's name. But the database had a record of her.

There was something special about that moment to me, and it made me realize that there's something powerful about being able to trace maternal lines. I had them print my mom's ancestry chart (I'm not in the database). I now know that when the Mennonite DNA Project tests my mitochondrial DNA, they will be following a line from me to Helen Margaret Goertz to Margaret Ruth Krehbiel to Helen Ruth Eymann to Maria Franz to Eva Schroeder, my great-great-great-grandmother who was born in 1836. And I don't know; there may be more recorded beyond her (the printout only covers 5 generations).

Even though last names get changed with every generation and sometimes not even first names are recorded, the Mennonite DNA Project will be able to tell my family what other Mennonite female lines we are related to. My DNA will unlock genetic relationships that patrilineal tradition obscured.

As a feminist Mennonite biology nerd, what more could I ask for?

Muslims attacked at Ramadan service in Dayton, Ohio

From the Dayton (OH) Daily News:

[A] suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

(...) The 300 or so inside were celebrating the last 10 days of Ramadan with dinner and a prayer session, but the prayer session was interrupted so those suffering from tearing, coughing and shortness of breath could receive treatment. (Source Dayton Daily News)

According to a personal account I found, the gas was sprayed into a room where babies and children were playing while their parents prayed. This incident occurred as anti-Muslim propaganda DVDs entitled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West are being distributed by mail in Ohio and other swing states by the Clarion Fund.

Hello, world.

Everyone's blogging. Most of my blogging friends are living halfway across the world and are by default doing interesting things. I continue to live virtually the same way I have for the past three years. Nevertheless, reading all these blogs hearkens me back to a time when I had a blog, and so did everyone I knew, and we all did all the same things and then blogged about them. I am going to not do that.

However, I am a bandwagon-jumper, and so I want to blog too. Only this time I'll try to make it a blog of interesting thoughts and stories.