What's in a name?

If onomaphile is a word, I am one. Thinking about names is part of my everyday life. But the thinking about names that I've been doing for a while is much less fun than considering what despicable or lovely names people give their children.

I have pretty much decided that when I get married I'll change my name to Allison Margaret Boehm Lehman, with Boehm as a second middle name. I'll introduce myself socially as Allison Boehm Lehman and professionally as Allison Lehman. It will be fine with me if people continue to call me Allison Boehm. But I know that people will drop the Boehm because it will not be attached by hyphen to the Lehman, and I am trying to come to terms with being Allison Lehman because of that.

The problem is that, ideally, I would be Allison Boehm-Lehman. I prefer when women hyphenate their names. The shared last name is practical because it indicates a familial connection to a spouse and children if there are any, but the birth surname being part of a woman's married name also means she rejected the idea that she should give up her established identity and be absorbed by her husband's. (I am happy when couples reject the traditional naming system, too, but most don't--but I do feel that children should be given only one last name or it can turn into a nightmare later). So hyphenation is a feminist issue to me, and I feel like I am a bad feminist for not hyphenating since that is what I actually want to do.

So why don't I hyphenate? For one, Boehm-Lehman is really singsongy and I don't like the sound of it, and I want the option of not having to use it (although I plan to use Boehm Lehman anyway). As a physician, new patients will be more likely to choose me out of a directory if they can pronounce my name, and Boehm is impossible for people to pronounce or spell while Lehman is not difficult.

Also, I do like Lehman. Boehm does not indicate that I am culturally Mennonite to those who find that significant; Lehman does. The mispronunciations of Boehm are boundless; there are limits on the ways you can screw up Lehman. I am not close to the Boehm side of my family, and I adore the Lehman family, am excited to be marrying into it, and feel a part of it already.

But I am Allison Boehm. Many of my friends prefer to call me by my last name only. I like the way it looks in print and in my signature. I have been feeling a sense of loss when I type or sign my name, knowing that in less than five months it will no longer be the same. I get upset when friends change their Facebook pages to a new name when they get married--even though that has nothing to do with me! It is just really hard for me to come to terms with this change. I am okay with being known as Allison Boehm Lehman, but Boehm will inevitably be dropped, and I really don't want to be known socially as just Allison Lehman. It is like 22 years of my identity--all the things I did under the name Allison Boehm--will just be gone.

Interterm

It's January, and here that means one thing: Interterm. Interterm is a beautiful time. Last year I spent it in Mexico, which was especially awesome because it meant I got to skip 1/3 of Kansas winter. But here on campus, it means lots of free time. Sure, the homework load is a little heavier than an average normal-semester day, but having afternoons and evenings pretty much free of scheduled activity creates so much time. I don't have to deal with the Collegian, or evening classes, or tutoring, or those useless 1-hour-between-classes periods during the day. Awesome.

Knowing that, I decided I would finish my seminar over Interterm. Poor choices. I have avoided classes with real workloads in past years (Critical Writing and Public Speaking aren't exactly demanding), but this year I'm taking Media Analysis, which involves plenty of reading and writing each night. So once I expend my academic energy on that, it's hard to work on my seminar, which is also difficult to write because I actually have no idea what I'm doing writing a scientific paper. They should really train you to do that when you are a science major, but I digress. And I can't skimp on the Media Analysis because I love both the subject and the professor, so I am not interested in letting Christine down or losing out on the knowledge. I'm scheduled to present my 'nar on February 5, though, so let's hope I get in gear on that front.

Bohemian!

You may have noticed the title of this blog, which is a play on the title of the story "La Vie de Boheme" (from whence the opera La Boheme came, from which the musical Rent was adapted). I don't know if you knew this, but Boehm (really Böhm) means Bohemian. As in Czech, not an artist-hippie type, but whatever. It is only neat because of the second connotation.

Speaking of Bohemian things, I discovered Bohemian Highway wine recently. I saw it on the shelf and thought, "Bohemian! Like my name! Six dollars! I must try this!" I have tried the chardonnay and pinot grigio and enjoyed them both, especially the chardonnay. It was not too dry, and the pinot grigio was not sickeningly sweet. I like my white wine to be not too dry or too sweet, so I'm a fan of this wine now. Clearly I am not that discerning, but Reba's marks it up from $6 to $21 a bottle and apparently people buy it for that much, so it must be decent. Bohemian Highway also has a merlot which I have not tried.

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.