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

I think I might be glad when its all over
Topic: Reading
Not that I don't love reading, particularly reading that does not in any way relate to my thesis or other research, but posting about the books I've read gets to be a bit much to keep up with. Yet again, I've got half-a-dozen books to write about, but we are nearing the end of the 50 Book Challenge, since as of today I'm at 43 and currently working on three more.

Blood Music by Greg Bear didn't do much for me. The premise was interesting, and it certainly wasn't a bad book, but it was very much in keeping with the 'mad scientist unleashes uncontrollable havoc-wreaking force on the world' tradition, and I found it unsatisfyingly thin on characterization and relationships. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for hard sci-fi at the moment. Anyway, it's the story of the creation of a new form of intelligence from within human cells, and what that means for the people who harbor this new form of intelligence, and those who don't. It's a quick read, a well-paced race against the clock that also explores identity and collectivity. It was intellectually engaging, and well written, but it just didn't grab me at an emotional level.

So I returned to LeGuin: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions, three brief novels set within the Hainish universe LeGuin created. I enjoyed the way LeGuin seemingly casually interwove the novels with passing allusions to important effects events in each had on their shared universe. As always, relationships and ethics are crucial elements of these novels. Protagonists have to make hard choices, most of which hinge on respect, love, and trust. LeGuin is, here as in other novels, a master of using science fiction conventions (exploration, other worlds, technology) to explore what it means to be human.

Connie Willis is apparently a science fiction author. I say 'apparently' because the only book I've read of hers to date is Bellwether, which is fiction about science (sociology and chaos theory, specifically), but it's more observational than speculative. It's also sharp and witty. Although a bit dated by its 1990s setting, Willis' pointed satire is still enjoyable, and the comedy of errors that moves the plot along is quite funny. If you're fascinated by fads and the human instinct to follow the herd, this is an amusing and educational read.

Most of the books I've read lately have been borrowed from the Good Doctors, who have an extensive library. I suffer from more than a bit of book envy when I'm at their place. I mentioned to Mrs Dr that I was wondering lately whether its possible to read too much science fiction. So what does she do? She gets me started on a fantasy trilogy. No help at all from that quarter. She was right, though, when she said I had to read The Riddle-Master of Hed and it's subsequent novels Heir of Sea and Fire and Harpist in the Wind. I was absolutely engrossed in this series. Although it follows the familiar quest tradition, the protagonists are unconventional. The first book is the story of the journey of Morgon, Prince of Hed, who is drawn out of his peaceful island kingdom by his need for knowledge. The second is the story of Raederle, whose journey is about seeking Morgon and learning not to run away from her own power. In the final book, the two journey together to save their land from a powerful, threatening force. The underlying philosophy of this series values intelligence, curiosity, peace, and deep love for nature, and it results in a beautiful and unusual story about love, trust, and coming to terms with power.

Love and power are also prominent features of Neil Gaiman's children's novel, Coraline. Even if this book had been out when I was a kid, I don't think I could've read it. It would've over-exercised my already overactive imagination. It's so bizarre and creepy, and so real, because it's based quite solidly in children's fears and desires - of being overlooked or ignored by adults, of having to take on more responsibility than they feel ready for, of feeling unequal to coping with the strangeness of the world, yet wanting independence, wanting to explore their world and wanting to feel important. I love Coraline as a character - she's a very realistic mix of intelligence, resourcefulness, independence, wilfulness and mischievousness. I don't know that I'd give this book to just any child, but kids who enjoy Roald Dahl's books or A Series of Unfortunate Events would probably like Coraline.

That's all for now, then. Only seven more to come!

Rosemary for remembrance
Topic: Events
Mrs Dr said, 'You know what this is for, don't you?' as she scattered fresh rosemary from her garden across the coffee table. I do. Rosemary is for remembrance. A delicate haze of rosemary, roses, gardenias, and candlesmoke hung in the air, and Kind of Blue was playing as my friends entered the Good Doctors' flat for his memorial.

Blue is the color I think of when I think of him, so the coffee table was draped in blue fabric. Twenty-eight candles, one for each year of his life, were arranged on the table, interspersed with little things that evoked some aspect of him: dragons, cats and dogs, a charcoal pencil, a teddy bear, a bottle of Jack Daniels. Each of my friends lit a candle to start the memorial.

I had a hard time getting a copy of his favorite songs to go with the slideshow I made of pictures and things that my friends and family told me they remembered and valued about him. Our tastes in music overlapped enough to get us through a day trip, but our favorite artists were very different. So I used the Flaming Lips: 'All We Have Is Now' and 'Do You Realize??' which, as I thought about it, were very fitting. One of the most important things I learned from our relationship is to take happiness when and where it is offered, and to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

The eulogy was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I spent weeks fretting about it, and all day Saturday writing it, and ended up just talking off the top of my head because what I had written just didn't seem right. It was difficult to balance introducing him to my friends, who didn't know him, with saying goodbye to him myself. It was difficult to talk through my tears. But, thanks in no small part to Mrs Dr helping me think through what I wanted to share throughout the course of the ceremony, I got through it.

I was very glad that Little Bear, Chuckles, and Miss C were there with their parents. They were so good, yet as kids will, they provided several moments of unintended comedy before, during and after the ceremony. I can't remember exactly what they said or did, but it was good that there was laughter.

I don't know whether I can say that I feel better after the memorial, but it feels right to have done it. It was important, more important than I realized, to have my friends here together as a community. I found myself singing 'Your Misfortune' as I was getting ready for the memorial, and finally began to understand a little bit just why that was so important. At times like this, the people who love you are a sanctuary.

I am so deeply grateful that I am loved and cared for by so many wonderful people.

If there's something inside that you wanna say
Say it out loud it'll be okay
I will be your light
I will be your light
I will be your light
I will be your light
~'Dry the Rain', The Beta Band

Better
Topic: Events
Yesterday was better and today feels okay so far. Grieving feels so fickle - that one or two days can be absolutely awful, but then I wake up one morning and I'm okay. Mrs Dr says that the more she watches children the more she is convinced that humanity is built for joy - perhaps this is part of that, that I just can't feel bad for too long. Like now, as I'm sitting writing, I'm also watching the leaves of the tree outside fluttering in the breeze, constantly shifting shades of green as they flick in and out of shadow. There is one leaf that is glowing rusty gold in the sunlight - none of the others have changed yet - and it's right at the edge of the vivid patch of blue sky just visible through the leaves. It's utterly mundane, but it's so beautiful.

Being busy helps, which is one of the reasons yesterday was better. I had to give half the lecture in the subject that I'm tutoring for, so I spent most of the day fiddling with PowerPoint and figuring out what I was going to say. For forty-five minutes, I had a captive audience of undergrads on whom to inflict all my knowledge of microfinance. I think it went well. It felt good - I didn't have a script, so I wasn't nervous (writing down everything makes me anxious about losing my place), although I know that I didn't say everything I would've liked to have said. Then again, I probably couldn't have said everything I would've liked to have said in 45 minutes anyway. I was surprised at how quickly the time went, especially considering how it sometimes seems to drag on when I'm running hour-long tutorials. I really admire tutors who are good at getting group conversations started in tutorials, because there are days when it's really hard to get one going, even though I know I'm lucky in having two groups of smart, attentive, thoughtful students. But some days, a conversation just doesn't gel.

I've spent the last five minutes trying to write something else and deleting it, over and over again. I'm not sure if I don't know what to say, or I just don't want to get on to doing my reading for my social theory seminar this evening. Guess I'd better get on with doing something academic before lunch time ...

I will be fine
Topic: Events
It might not feel like it now, but I will be fine.

I could wake up tomorrow feeling okay.

Then again, I might not.

Not knowing how I'm going to be feeling from one moment to the next exhausts me. My moods may swing, but under normal circumstances I can usually tell when that swing is coming and in what direction it's going.

Circumstances, however, are definitely not normal.

But I will be fine. One day. I wish I could say when. But I know that I'll get there. And in the meantime, I muddle through as best I can.

Because this is easier to write about than anything else right now
Topic: Reading
And because I'm ridiculously behind - more books:

I mentioned earlier that I'd been reading Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman, which is a wide-ranging collection of short stories and poems, most hovering around the edges of the fantasy/horror genres. Gaiman does not write reassuring stories, but he writes with a clear eye to all the beauty and ugliness that people are capable of creating. His stories are dark, and true, and fantastic - in every sense of the word.

Also dark, and fantastic, at least in the elaborateness of the world she creates within the book, is Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong, which blends a postapocalypic vision of a deeply stratified and disjointed future society with ancient legends and rituals of death and rebirth associated with ancient goddess-centered religions. However, these elements tend to work against each other, rather than with each other. Hand's writing is gorgeous, though, and she certainly knows how to establish a compelling mood and setting. But even though I was drawn in to the story initially, I finished it feeling rather bemused. It just didn't hang together as a whole.

By contrast, Jane Smiley's Good Faith is seamless and seemingly effortless. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it - I've had it on my 'to read' list for at least two years. Smiley is an amazing, engrossing, engaging writer and she turns the story of a small-town real estate agent who gets swept up in the big dreams and big deals of the early '80s into a nuanced cautionary tale about trust, confidence, and community. The one flaw is that she wraps everything up a bit too quickly, but I'm willing to forgive that because everything that came before was so very good.

In Mind of My Mind, Octavia Butler explores race, community, and symbiosis - themes that featured strongly in Fledgling from a slightly different angle, crafting a novel in which the protagonist and the antagonist are both complex characters that aren't easy to like. The story is of a poor Black girl who is the end result of a millenia-long experiment in selective breeding carried out by an immortal (it doesn't sound like it would work as a story, but it does) who exceeds all her creator's expectations and challenges his power. A profoundly isolated women becomes the core of an intimately connected new society that is fascinating, if uncomfortable. I'm not sure I liked this book, exactly, but I found it absorbing - I could hardly put it down once I started reading.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, also verges on being unputdownable. I first read American Gods a few years ago, and decided it was time to revisit it. I liked it even more the second time around - I was able to appreciate all the detail that Gaiman pours into the worlds he creates, instead of tearing through it to see what happens next, which is what I did on my first reading. American Gods operates on the premise that the immigrant peoples who came to the 'New World' brought their beliefs with them, but that the old gods have found America an uncomfortable place to exist, particularly when they're struggling for space alongside newer gods - Cars, Media, Technology. America is about to become the battleground in a war between the gods, which we see slowly building up through the eyes of a mere mortal who has become embroiled in the whole mess. As a former mythology nerd, American Gods was right up my alley. And Mrs Dr says it's 'good theology', and being a theologian, she would know. And its such a good novel. I think it's becoming one of my favorites.

Another good novel about belief is Ursula LeGuin's The Telling. A far future earth has suffered through domination by a fundamentalist monothestic theocracy that persecuted other beliefs. Although that regime was eventually dismantled, it first managed to export its values - intolerance of other views, progress through consumption, obsession with technology - to another planet, Aka. A young woman who lived through the upheaval of the last days of the theocracy on Earth has been sent to Aka as an observer, and must work through the scars she carries from her past while trying to help preserve the ancient Akanian spiritual and cultural traditions that the modernizers have been trying to eradicate. The protagonist, Sutty, is a compelling character - flawed and self-aware, and her richness and realness is the best thing about The Telling. Overall, The Telling is pretty good, but not as stunning as earlier LeGuin works like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed - although those two established a really, really high standard.

And yes, I have been doing reading for my thesis amidst all of these escapist novels. I just finished Barracks and Brothels: Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking in the Balkans by Sarah Mendelson last night. It was interesting reading - a tightly focused analysis of the organizational cultures of the UN, NATO and the US Department of Defense and how these fed into the problems of sexual exploitation of local women and girls by peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, and the associated increase in trafficking. Mendelson's research is very valuable for its accounts of incidents of trafficking, and its recommendation that organizational change is necessary, but I found myself frustrated by the absence of a gendered analysis of military culture that attempts to illuminate why purchasing sex is so much a part of military culture, and why, therefore, changing that aspect of military culture has run up against so many obstacles.

Finally, LeGuin again: The Lathe of Heaven, a very brief novel about George Orr, a perfectly ordinary man with one absolutely extraordinary ability - some of his dreams come true. This ability makes George very uncomfortable, though - who is he to arbitrarily and profoundly change reality? Dream therapist Dr. Haber ostensibly sets to help George, but finds himself seduced by the power to effect massive change and begins to use George's mind to fix the world's problems. The results are ... unanticipated. Again, this isn't one of LeGuin's best novels, but it's still good. It adopts an unusual perspective for science fiction - it's very clearly Taoist in its approach to change and the use of power, which puts an interesting moral spin on a story that could have just been about all the ways that changing the world can go wrong.

All caught up now. I'm already up to 34 books, so I'm thinking that a) hitting 50 by the end of the year won't be a problem and b) maybe, just maybe, there's a chance that it might be possible that I'm reading too many novels.

There is always a place in my life for poetry
Topic: Events

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

~Mary Oliver, from 'In Blackwater Woods'

(Thanks, Mom)

Housekeeping
Topic: Reading
I'm in no mood to do actual housekeeping, so instead I will catch up on my 50BC posting, because I've neglected it lately.

Reinventing Eve: Modern Woman in Search of Herself by Kim Chernin, is the kind of book I probably would have loved in my early 20s, since it's all about reclaiming goddess images so that women will find their own bodies sacred. I was more Radical a feminist then, and probably would've responded more readily to Chernin's portrayal of women's oppression. Now, though, I am resistant to narratives in which an author extrapolates from her own experience and the similar experiences of some other women to write a story about all women's oppression. I felt like that was what Chernin was doing in this book. That, coupled with some mysticism that just didn't sit well with me, had me keeping this book at a distance while I was reading. I did, however, enjoy the author's account of her discovery of various cultures' goddess imagery and how it helped her establish a better relationship with her body and food.

I checked out Fledgling from the library the day that I heard that Octavia Butler had died. I had read her Xenogenesis series last year, and was fairly impressed with it. My sense upon starting Fledgling was that Butler's storytelling skills must have grown even stronger and more refined over the years, because the story grabbed me from the beginning, whereas I had to give myself some time to be drawn into the Xenogenesis books. What stands out for me in the books of Butler's that I've read is her ability to create alien others that are uncomfortable but not unbearable. Her work addresses the way that people adapt to each other because they need each other - the familiar figure of the solitary, alienated hero is largely absent from her novels. Fledgling has the distinction of being truly unlike any other vampire story I've ever read, and the fact that it's protagonist is a black, female vampire is just the start. Butler addresses race, community, morality and family throughout a page-turning story with lots of action and intrigue. I read this one twice because there's so much going on, and there are so many insightful observations.

No Place for a Woman: The Autobiography of Outback Publican Mayse Young by Mayse Young and Gabrielle Dalton, was a birthday gift from The Good Doctors. Mayse Young grew up in a family that followed the railroad work around northern Australia in the early part of the 20th century. Her accounts of a childhood spent living in camps put me in mind of the 'Little House on the Prairie' books. Unlike Laura Ingalls, though, Mayse Young ended up running a number of hotels, which in small Australian towns would usually be both the only boarding house and the only pub in town (even today, many bars which have long since turned their guest rooms into function rooms still go by the name 'hotel'), and Young offers lots of colorful anecdotes from her long history as a publican.

Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear, is the third book in a series that I started reading last year, at the Good Doctors' recommendation. I'm not into mysteries, generally, but Winspear has created a fascinating detective: Maisie Dobbs, a young woman living in London in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Maisie came up in the world from very humble beginnings, thanks to her intelligence and a generous employer. She has been deeply affected by her experiences of the first world war, in which she served as a battlefield nurse, as have most of the people she interacts with in the course of her investigations. Maisie consciously employs observation, empathy, and psychology in the course of her investigations, an approach that sets her apart from other detectives. In Pardonable Lies, two cases involving young men killed in action in France force Maisie to confront her own wartime experiences and draw her into dangerous intrigues. Winspear is good at crafting plots that don't betray too many clues too early, and surrounds Maisie, who is a rich character in her own right, with a widely varied supporting cast that adds depth and color to her novels.

I fell in love with Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, almost immediately. Her facility with language is apparent from the very first lines, as she swiftly sets the scene: a diva, a smitten, accompaniest, an international audience at a small party in an unnamed South American country that is about to be crashed by a guerrilla group intent on kidnapping the president of the country. The ensuing hostage crisis, in Patchett's hands becomes not a matter of frenzied political and military maneuvering, but a meditation on how people connect, adapt, and create their own worlds, even in the most peculiar situations. This is a gorgeous novel, one that I will be reading again.