Those 'book club' books
Topic: Reading
I don't quite know how I feel about book clubs. I was in one at work for awhile and it was sort of interesting. I read some novels I probably wouldn't have read if I hadn't been in it, but clearly, it's not like I need to get involved with a book club to read and talk about books. And I really am not terribly excited about the way the way a certain type of book has come to be promoted as good for book club reading - the type concerned with trials and tribulations that ultimately are uplifting and teach important life lessons. And I really don't care for books that are published with book club discussion guides at the end. It feels manipulative, like the publisher is saying that this book is so amazing that I'm a) going to need to discuss it with seven other people and b) going to be so amazed that I'm not going to be able to analyze it myself. Which is a) usually overstating the case and b) an insult to my excellent liberal arts education.

When I picked up Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks, it set off the 'book club' warning bells - tastefully muted earthtone cover with script font, story about a woman in tragic circumstances, and sure enough - a discussion guide in the back. But I'm a bit of a sucker for historical fiction, and this was a story based on actual events - in 1666, an English village was infested with the plague and the villagers, guided by their pastor, decided to cut themselves off from the rest of the world to contain the infestation. I decided I'd give it a try for a chapter or two to see if it grabbed me.

With very scant facts to draw upon, Brooks has a fairly free hand in creating her characters - the charismatic pastor, his angelic wife, the intelligent but uneducated maid who plays an ever-increasing role in their household, and the local herb women. A fairly stock set of characters, but in the maid, Anna, Brooks creates an interesting and sympathetic protagonist who confronts a year-long crisis of faith caused by the suffering that she and her community go through.

Brooks' creates a convincing picture of what a quarantined community would go through when confronted with a seemingly unstoppable disaster. The community hovers between pulling together and turning on itself, tugged back and forth across this border by the heroes and villains of the story (who are perhaps a bit too clearly drawn). Anna is the most fully realized of the characters, but unsettling secrets abound and are uncovered under the stress of coping with the effects of the plague.

Year of Wonders rewarded my efforts to get past my 'book club book' allergy. It's an involving novel, both researched and written well. Brooks paints a distressingly plausible picture of what living through a long-term disaster would be like, and does so with an awareness of the great range of possible individual and community responses.

It's that time of year again
Topic: Uni
Time for the semiannual examination of the far nether regions of my alimentary canal for scholarly ideas, otherwise known as 'drinking too much tea, staying up way too late, and pulling stuff outta my ass'. Exhibit A being this week's projects: the outline for an essay that's due in less than a month, and the presentation I'm supposed to give in class tomorrow. The outline I made up in about 15 minutes and I haven't even finished reading one of the chapters that's supposed to be part of my presentation. And it is now well after 11 p.m.

Damn it. This semester was not supposed to be like this. I had my long-range timeline and my daily schedule all laid out and everything. Granted, I knew better than to expect them to work out perfectly, but I had high hopes that for once in my academic career, I might not end the semester in a frenzy of research and writing.

But you can't really plan for grieving, especially since you don't know what sort of toll it's going to take. I expected the crying fits and general blues and flatness, but I didn't expect to suddenly feel that everything I was doing was meaningless. One of the ways I got through a previous difficult grieving period - the months following my first major breakup and finding out that my grandmother had terminal cancer - was by immersing myself in schoolwork. That avenue was not available to me this time. At least I had tutoring and babysitting - those helped me pull together on a regular basis. But schoolwork? I couldn't have cared less.

So I find myself on familiar terrain: the realm of last-minute panic. Oh well. Been here plenty of times before and I know I'll get through it. I just wish I could pull all-nighters like I used to. The day after wasn't particularly nice at 21, but at 29 it's pretty wretched. So before it gets any later, I'd best get back to work.

Must stop watching movies with a social conscience
Topic: Raving
They render me uninclined to find anything of value in my social theory reading, which is a problem since I'm presenting in class on Wednesday and should try to find something worthwhile to say. But it all seems so useless and pointless. Blah blah blah nation-state and military power and modernity yadda yadda.

The film that has done this to me is Deepa Mehta's Water, which centers on a widow house in India in 1938. The widow house was an institution for women whose families did not want to support them. Widows were social outcasts, and in order to support themselves often turned to begging and prostitution. Chuyia enters a widow house at the age of seven, a child bride whose husband dies unexpectedly. She is taken in by Kalyani and Shakuntala, two very different women who draw on their faith to cope with the difficulties their widowhood presents. At the time, Gandhi is challenging British rule in India and a range of oppressive religious and cultural traditions. The question of whether the increasing current of change will make a new life possible for the widows runs through the film. Mehta holds out hope and provides beauty and humor, but doesn't shy away from cruelty and tragedy. Water is a powerful movie, and while its not exactly uplifting, neither is it mired in despair. There is a strong theme about the merits and risks of following the dictates of conscience that I found inspiring.

Unfortunately for me, I must now follow the dictates of my class work and get back to social theory.

What I've been reading
Topic: Reading
Australian novels, finally. Bit disgraceful that I haven't read any since I set foot in the country, although I read a few before I got here:

My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin, the author's debut novel, was written when she was a teenager (and does it ever show) and published to great acclaim in 1901. It tells the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a smart, outspoken, ambitious young woman growing up poor in the country. That Franklin was a talented writer at a young age is evident in the fact that she manages to make Sybylla both real and sympathetic, which is a challenge when dealing with a teenaged character. All the adolescent melodrama is here - 'I'm a troll! I'm a freak! No one will ever understand me!' but the aggravation that attitude prompts is tempered by the knowledge that it would have been difficult to be a poor young woman with intellectual aspirations in the late nineteenth century, and by the flashes of insight and maturity that Sybylla shows. The movie is quite good too, and more accessible to a modern audience, but it doesn't capture the details of country life that enrich the novel, and it gives greater priority to a very unconventional courtship that Sybylla finds herself in. The novel is more of a character sketch of Sybylla, and the character sketched is generally an intriguing one.

Miles Franklin's other notable achievement was establishing the preeminent annual award for Australian fiction, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Tim Winton has won it three times, most recently for Dirt Music. I plan to read more of his work soon because I was so engrossed in Dirt Music I could hardly put it down. I don't know where to start describing it - the characters are complex, the relationships are messy and involved, the landscapes are fantastic, the language is gorgeous - it has so much going on. A strange love triangle starts in an insular, tough fishing town, involving the town's favorite son, the last member of its most unwanted family, and an isolated recent arrival. The scars of these people's pasts and the prejudices and politics just under the surface in the town shake up their lives, despite all their efforts to maintain control. Dirt Music a powerful book about music and tragedy and running away and coming to terms with the past.

'friendship, humor, art and music'
Topic: Raving
Sunday night, as my reward for finishing marking essays without pulling an all-nighter involving gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair and many bitter comments about attention to important details like using citations and doing so correctly (and yes, I will shut up about the marking soon, I promise), I went to see I Know I'm Not Alone, which is a remarkable little film. And I want to be clear that when I say 'little', I say it because it's a movie that doesn't have grand pretensions. It's all about small but important moments. It's about ordinary people and their lives. It's about the difference that small groups can make and are making. It's about relating to people as people - hearing their stories, sharing in their lives. It's heartbreaking and uplifting and challenging.

Michael Franti, a hip-hop/funk singer/songwriter (whose music I've just started getting into), took a break from his work with his excellent band, Spearhead, to travel to Iraq, Palestine and Israel with a few friends to find out what it's like to live under military occupation. Franti is interested in individual stories. He takes risks to reach out to people: traveling outside secure areas, performing his outspokenly political music for US soldiers, bringing together small groups of people who might not ordinarily interact. He wanders around playing his guitar, and builds a rapport with people whose language he doesn't speak by writing a catchy little song with one lyric: 'habibi', which means, basically, 'my dear friend' in Arabic.

Franti absolutely succeeds in putting a human face on the conflicts in Iraq and Palestine/Israel. I was particularly struck by the clear intention to produced a balanced portrayal of the people on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli state doesn't come off well (particularly where the land grab of the wall is concerned), and neither do those who support suicide bombing, but the Israeli and Palestinian people are not demonized. In a particularly brave moment for everyone involved, Franti and his group, along with some Palestinians from a town near the wall, have an intense conversation with some Israeli soldiers they had argued with earlier in the day. Both sides discuss their fears, where their fears come from, and how much they don't like the wall. It's tragic to see how the systems and structures that these people have been shaped by separate them from each other, but encouraging to see that, even if only for a moment, some communication can take place across that gap.

I saw it with Ro, and all we could talk about afterward was how much we wanted to drop everything and go somewhere and do something. And yes, I took deep breaths and reminded myself that, in theory, once all this research and writing is done, I will be in a better position to do that something. I might even have a better idea than 'something' about what I want to do. But I don't know. Franti says he wanted to make a movie about the way people cope with the stresses of occupation, a movie about 'friendship, humor, art and music'. And those are seriously missing from what I'm studying, which makes me wonder whether I'm going about this all wrong - am I learning too much about ways to 'help' people that don't really consider their humanity, or mine? Have I learned too well to see people as problems that need solving? Where's the heart in what I'm studying? It strikes me that we've got the 'head' covered around here, but we're seriously lacking in soul.

Will the marking never end?
Topic: Uni
Bored with my marking yet? You've got nothing on how I feel about it. It's an obsession. Glassy-eyed tutors wander the halls, hunched over stacks of paper, trying to find a free computer at which to type their comments, only stopping to ask each other 'Why can't they spell?' 'Why can't they footnote?' 'Why can't the hypenate?' 'Do they really think I can't use Google and will not find out that they plagiarized from Wikipedia?' 'How many do you have left?' 'How glad will you be when this is all over?' The only more popular topic of conversation is how drunk one plans to get upon the conclusion of the marking season.

I have three to go, not counting a couple late submissions. That should feel like an accomplishment - I'll basically be finished tomorrow. However, the last essay I read I have no idea how to mark. There were no paragraph breaks. I know that the argument is lacking, but I can't figure out how because I can't get past the fact that the lack of paragraph breaks makes the essay very visually uncomfortable to read and difficult to comprehend. IT'S HURTING MY EYES AND MY BRAIN AND I JUST WANT IT TO GO AWAY. Seriously, how does someone get to their third year of undergrad without learning how to put paragraph breaks in an essay? Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh
Topic: Uni
As I had anticipated, I am not enjoying marking my students' research essays. Not that they're bad, but I hate the whole concept of grades (possibly because I know my own response to that particular carrot-and-stick system is a bit unbalanced). I'd love to just be able to make lots of comments on their essays and just avoid assigning values to them. And I've got a full day of marking ahead of me tomorrow. Feh. I may need to reward myself with a movie after.

Curiosity satisfied
Topic: Whatever
I have absolutely no idea why this question popped into my head the other day, but I suddenly found myself wondering whether anything akin to the Renaissance Festival happens in Australia. Ampersand Duck just answered that question for me in a post with many entertaining pictures.

Ask, and the internet shall answer, however random the question.

Should be working . . .
Topic: Catching up
but I had a hard time tonight with the local kid I babysit for. He's used to mom and dad sticking around for about an hour or so after I arrive, but we've been trying to do a faster handoff recently. It went fine last time, but tonight he just stood at the door and wailed until I put him to bed (which went smoothly enough, surprisingly). Although by no means an epic tantrum, it was tiring, and consequently, I have no energy for schoolwork. What to write about now? Books? I've got three or four more now. I think I'm only one away from 50. I think that may definitely be an indicator that I'm reading far too many novels. Yes, I read fast anyway, but that's easily an average of 3 books a week, which seems a bit excessive. Or perhaps I just suffer from too much postgrad guilt. No, I'm sure you're all a bit tired of miles-long posts about books. And I haven't written anything yet about my day with the Good Doctors on Monday. We drove out to the Dandenongs to the William Ricketts Sanctuary. The trip was proposed on Sunday, when I was already at the Doctors' flat, so unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me. It's a shame, because the scenery is stunning: miles-high trees, lush tree ferns, and right now, vivid autumn reds and yellows among all the greenery, because the climate in the Dandenongs is cold and damp enough that the leaves change color properly instead of just turning brown and falling off. William Ricketts Sanctuary is an extraordinary place. It was founded by William Ricketts, a self-taught artist and all-around unusual individual. Ricketts lived with and learned from Aboriginal peoples in central Australia and considered himself a member of the Pitjantjatjara nation. A video at the park features Ricketts, who lived and worked in the Sanctuary until the early nineties, explaining his spiritual beliefs. Ricketts intended his sculpture to illustrate his belief that all people need to learn to live in harmony with nature - which is a massive oversimplification, but I found it difficult to form a more detailed impression of his philosophy because the texts that accompany some of his sculptures are more evocative than explanatory. Ricketts dedicated his art to representing his philosophy. He used clay to sculpt his statues, which are of Aboriginal figures, Australian animals, and Ricketts's 'spiritual self'. The sculptures are tucked among the rocks and ferns of the sanctuary, and appear to have grown out of the landscape. Ricketts blended traditional Christian imagery such as angels and crosses with natural and Aboriginal images. I was struck by his Aboriginal angels, a representation that I'm sure once rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Although I didn't find Ricketts's art itself entirely to my taste, the thought and care that went into the creation and placement of each piece, and his incredible dedication to embodying his vision of the world in his art are inspirational, and the sanctuary itself has an otherworldly quality that's charming and restful. I walked away in a pleasant haze, and would be happy to go back again.

Meme again
Topic: Whatever
I've been sitting staring at this screen, wanting to write something, but not sure what. It seems like there should be something amusing to write about yesterday's experience of doing my taxes entirely myself for the first time in years while my laptop froze, shut down, and generally misbehaved all afternoon, prompting me to threaten it with a beat-down, Office Space-style. With the upcoming holiday, I'm also tempted to wax nostalgic about Easter candy of yore, when sweet things came in small, simple packages, and that was enough for us - no messing around with the sugary gifts of the Easter bunny was necessary (however amusing the results).*

Nothing is working out, though. I hate writer's block. Mercifully, I discovered that I was tagged for the 'four things' meme ages ago, so with apologies to k8teebug for not noticing her tag for so long, I'm going to dust it off and see if it helps with the writer's block at all:

Four jobs I've held:

1. Cashier at Burger King (the job from the seventeenth circle of hell)
2. Late-shift cashier Great Adventure burger stand (the zombie job)
3. Papergirl (the 'I'm never ever starting work at 6 a.m. EVER EVER EVER again' job)
4. Data-entry drone at ETS (the 'I hold your college dreams in my underpaid hands' job)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. The Company
2. Bend It Like Beckham
3. Spirited Away
4. Ghost World

Four places I've lived:

1. Rome, GA
2. New Egypt, NJ
3. Baltimore, MD
4. Skopje, MK

Four TV shows I like:

1. Sports Night
2. Northern Exposure
3. Family Guy
4. The Amazing Race

Four Family Vacations I've been on:
Family vacations have a tendency to blur together, as most of the ones I recall were either trips from Georgia to New Jersey around the holidays to visit family, or trips that involved staying a camp grounds and visiting Civil War battlefields. I'll do my best to distinguish among them:

1. The time we took the red-eye flight from Atlanta when I was about six and we had the nicest flight attendant ever, apple pancakes for breakfast, and saw the sun rise over the clouds. It wasn't until many years later when I went on my first flight as an adult that I realized what an accomplishment it was for my parents to get three or four children and all the family's luggage on a plane without losing anything or anyone (including their minds and their composure).
2. There was the time we stayed at a campground in Pennsylvania Dutch country and went to the pretzel factory that was on Mr Rogers (one of the coolest episodes, possibly only topped by the one where he met Lou Ferrigno and showed how he got made up to play the Hulk), and the Lititz chocolate factory and the Strasburg Railroad (link has embedded sound) and this old-fashioned ice cream shop in or near Lancaster City that had the most amazing homemade ice cream. I loved that vacation.
3. I can never remember what went with which vacation, but I'm fairly sure there was another trip to Pennsylvania (staying at a campground, again) that might have involved Gettysburg and Hershey Park. Although one of those might actually have been part of the trip above. Or I could be wrong and we packed all of that into one vacation, and this slot should be occupied by one of the short vacations that was basically a few days' trip to a campground with my mom's family, the highlights of which were the campfires and the jockeying among us kids over who would get to sleep in the platform bed over the cab of my grandparent's motor home. But no, now that I think about the pictures from the Pennsylvania vacations, I have short hair in the one in which I'm wearing the Strasburg Railroad cap, and an unfortunate perm (not to mention the acid-washed stretch jeans and bright pink LA Gear high tops) in the one where I'm standing at a Gettysburg monument.
4. My last family vacation was the summer before my senior year of high school, when we combined tours of colleges I was interested in that were in Virginia and southern Maryland with tours of Civil War sites. I think we went to Antietam and Manassas, and I know we went to Appomattox Court House, because I remember thinking how strange it seemed that a war would end in such a lovely, peaceful place.

Four of my favorite fast food dishes:

1. Fried chicken with biscuits (better when homemade, but I'll take what I can get)
2. Hush puppies
3. Chicken cheesesteak (which although only a new-fangled corruption of the sublime original, is still only worth eating in the Philadelphia area.)
4. Thick-cut french fries bought and eaten on the boardwalk

Four sites I visit daily:

1. Bloglines
2. My Yahoo
3. Metafilter
4. Google

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Friends
2. Portland, OR
3. somewhere in the New York-DC corridor (yes I'm a little homesick today)
4. a beach that's sunny, warm, and quiet

Tag: You're it, if you're wandering through the writer's block wasteland, looking for something to post about.


And in case I don't get back here before tomorrow have a happy Easter, or if you don't celebrate Easter, have a happy Eat (or otherwise interact with)-A-Peep Day.


*Credits: Metafilter and Boing Boing