iamb the walrus

Crafting!

2011-12-30T15:18:00.047-05:00

It feels so good to get back into the studio :)

First up, a work in progress: vintage gold birdy Christmas ornament reinvented as a fabulous fascinator!

One of birdy's wings has a little hole, but that lends to the charm. Besides, I have nothing to fix it with and I dare not start taking this bird apart. I did add, tho. The beads on the back (and the "nest") are from a Pier 1 napkin ring I've been saving for years.

These are some more "crazy quilt" earrings. Every so often I make a pair - bright, dangly, and extra colorful! This time there's triceratops charms on them - hurray for my favorite dino!

Action shot! I'm glowing with crafty goodness.

In the late summer, I went on this cobalt blue/bright red kick. I never made anything with those colors that I want to keep, but I did make some merry looking pieces that are sure to find a buyer.

My other summer love was a palette of browns, bones, and shell tones, influenced in no small part by the bone and shell collecting James and I did! Here's the leather and bead strand I made yesterday, and the shell/tuttlebone pendant I made months ago, finally happy together.

This beauty was only a pendant for the longest time, until the delicate strand of silver and brown glass seeds bopped me upside the head yesterday:

The clasp makes it!

This one I'll have trouble selling :) Plastic centerpiece, what I think is a snake or turtle vertebra, and shell and tigereye dangles.

Finally, something from this collection that's less fussy, a simple shell and glass bead pendant on a leather cord.

I'm still not over cobalt, though. This one is a sort-of lariat on a long silk ribbon. I don't think it's quite done - I'm going to add some more fabric bits around the rings to even out the rough edges. The pendant was inspired by a recent Ornamentea tutorial with lovely carefree bunched baubles.

The matching earrings will be ready soon as I order antiqued brass ear hooks.

This is an old, old piece that I had stuck in my scavenger drawer, but never had the heart to take apart. I used to worry it was tacky, but now I think it's pretty cool!

Finally, some odds and ends...the irresistible face of Gobi!

...the Ganesh statue my Sweetie gave me on Christmas!

...and me, very tired from all the beading!

After this, I'm planning a massive destash to make some room in my craftorium. I keep drooling over pictures of Jen Parrish's new studio and I want to use them for inspirations in making my madwoman's workshop a little less mad. That means less unessential clutter, more decor on the walls, and a comfy place to sit. I'll let you know how that one goes!

curator

2011-12-20T20:03:00.000-05:00

According to M-W.com, "curator" comes from the Latin "curare", to care. Caring as a concept has been all over my life lately, from a recent spate of caregiving narratives to my own care for the artifacts that have risen to the top of the household.

This fall, I was seized with a notion to clear out our basement, get it a little tidier. Lots of trash went out, and, even better, there's lots of good stuff to donate. A pickup was duly scheduled, and I await the charity truck. There were a great deal of photos down there in all sorts of conditions. I kept "inheriting" these informally, mostly passed along by relatives uninterested or unsure what to do with the things. Thankfully, now I have both a scanner and a computer that can handle heavy use, so I have begun the archives.

I'm sitting on (well, metaphorically) a boxful of late 60s/early 70s snapshots, another box of 20s-40s photos, a handful of earlier prints, a box of WWII memorabilia and letters, and transcriptions/xeroxes of Civil War letters. Whoo!

Time has left its mark on many of these items, since they were not carefully stored. Some of the snapshots I found today were stuck together and would not be separated. Most I was able to pull apart with minimal damage, if any. I scanned Christmases, Confirmations, birthdays, Easters, and all manner of everyday life in the American middle class. About an hour in I discovered the tag function in the Windows pictures folder, and things went swimmingly after that, since I could scan and save in batches, instead of painstakingly naming each photo with a small summary.

Wonder what I'll do when I scan everything...many of these really should go into albums, but there's hundreds of photos and cheap albums aren't much better than leaving them in boxes.

The little white flecks are from being stuck for years to another photo. Tho they look like snowflakes!

So I'm tagging, labeling, and preserving these images the best way I can at the moment. Since this is a pretty big project but not too taxing, it leaves me time to puzzle out the other nice collection of family artifacts somehow in my possession: the linen stash.

I'm not sure how, but I'm in possession of a selection of linens - tablecloths, napkins, handtowels - that tells the story of the women in my family. This one was for a wedding, this was hand embroidered for a new house, this one was for a baby....and so on. But they are folded in an old toy chest for the moment. What to do, what to do?

It hit me today when I was walking the dog: A Chuppah! A secular Chuppah! This should be pretty simple to prepare, and there's plenty of time to figure out where to find/how to make 4 identical poles. Plus, it's an easy setup/take down item for the place we're getting hitched :)

So when I'm done with the scanner, it's off to the sewing machine.

Having projects lined up has cheered me up considerably!

Winter again

2011-12-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

. . . Soon, soon shall fly
The glorious vision, and the hours shall feel
A mightier master; soon from height to height,
With silence and the sharp unpitying stars,
Stern creeping frosts, and winds that touch like steel,
Out of the depth beyond the eastern bars,
Glittering and still shall come the awful night.

(from Archibald Lampman's "Winter Evening")

I'm ready for yet another winter, but this time it feels so different. A lot has happened this year (and all during the semester, of course!) and I need a break. Desperately. But I don't feel that sense of relief I was looking for. Am I just exhausted?

I don't feel the creative optimism of last summer, and I don't feel the industriousness of fall. I'm having a somewhat melancholy early winter, sustaining myself with poems:

And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone,
As I sat reflecting there,
In a world so mystically fair,
So deathly silent--I so utterly alone (Lampman, "Winter Solitude")

Lampman has a visceral wonder in his winter poems, such a keen sense for sense! I'm not sharing this now, however - what normally moves me on reading these isn't doing it this time. It's the melancholy, the isolation.

One of the contributing factors to this is watching the political circus roll by... the continued assaults on education, healthcare, marriage equality, reproductive rights, safer sex, science...and then there's SOPA and the "Indefinite Detention" bill, protestors getting the shit beat out of them at every turn, and on any screen, a readily available well-paid, well-polished talking head to spit out some facile talking points and pump up lingering superstition and ignorance. As moral support I've been reading a lot of Carl Sagan. Sagan passed in 1996, 15 years ago. I watched some "Cosmos" as a kid, was too little to have read him during or close to the time he worked.

As fun as this is, it's not helping. Looking at the state of things now, and recalling what I can from the small chunk of the 20th/21st centuries I'm living in - and then contrasting that with the material Sagan produced in his career - it's depressing. Form my perch, I cannot fathom a time where these sort of musings and questions could be on primetime, or printed in magazines without death threats and hysteria (which he certainly may have dealt with, but I missed due to, well, being a toddler). I can't picture science popularization as a *thing*, as a feature of a career (outside of Bill Nye, Mr Wizard, Beekman - which I like, but i'm looking for adult-aimed things). I can't picture public skepticism and freethought without immediate cacophony from the fundamentalist contingent. I can't picture any positive reception of rational thought and optimism like I am picking up from Sagan's writings. And *that* is what's giving me the blues. I cannot wrap my head around optimism. What manner of bull is that, eh?

Anyway, it's time to begin my Saturday. Things will turn around again as they always do, and I'll be back in my season, "A nameless and unnatural cheer,/A pleasure secret and austere" (Lampman, "In November 2").*

*even though that poem's about autumn - it works because I say it works :)

Love Letters from Washington Park....

2011-07-31T21:09:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you need to visit a familiar place with someone to see it as it really is. Today, himself and I visited a museum, where I've been many times. We took a detour through a small park near where I used to work, and damn if I didn't see so many new details I never noticed in all my days of to-ing and fro-ing thru it.

Loveletter to Washington Park

The painting continues....

2011-07-18T14:14:00.000-04:00

Dunno what's happened here...maybe it's joy from the Boy moving in, maybe it's just a desire to stay indoors in the heat, but I'm wild about painting!! I'm redoing just the accessories from Ma's old Pfaltzgraff collection to match my esthetics. There's a pair of salt and pepper shakers and a couple of mini pitchers that have now seen the business end of my brushes. Can't...stop...decorating!!!

And then there's the botanical madness that has struck this summer. Last year, I lost almost all of my plants, full grown and seedlings. This was doubtless due to my noobishness, but also to the "bright idea" I had to buy end of season sale plants to cut my teeth on. My seedlings fell prey to the wicked rainstorms we had last summer, and all of them drowned before reaching maturity.

This year, however, I planned ahead and sought out low-light, low-water houseplants, and kept 'em indoors. I had marginal luck with some lavender and pansy seedlings, but they grew right out of the soil, so I'll have to reset. As for outside, there's a modest array, bought on advice from much more experienced growers, and research (eg my coleus, which flourishes almost unnervingly).

This success led me to consider a proper garden in a small patch in front of the house for next year, as well as some container "crops" out back of the house. We have two or three large recycling barrels laying around unused, since our town switched to some automated system that uses one giant container for everything. So...I thought planters! Soon I'll measure them and see if I can find plastic tubs/whiskey barrels that will fit at least halfway down, so I won't have an entire barrel to fill with soil. This would also make them a lot more portable in case of storms, or for later winter storage.

Going nuts with this...money and weather permitting, I'd love to put tomatoes, peppers, and garlic at the front of the house, perhaps with a tea rose or two for James to tend. In the barrels, I see sunflowers (not the huge kind), strawberries, peas or beans, and maybe some dahlias. Or more roses - I'm enchanted with Albas and as of late, due to their antiquity. Don't know yet if they can be containered, though!

Alba Rose from Wikipedia

I'm fairly certain I cannot grow them in my current circumstances, but oh, the Bourbon roses! Such a dream!

Bourbon Rose from Wikipedia

Then there's the Hybrid Teas....

Wikipedia again

I will rein myself in, due to budget and sanity concerns, but it's so much fun to window shop! Must get a handle on the rose lingo, though, since it's really easy to mix up my damasks with rugosas and musks.

Kitchen Redo part two

2011-07-17T22:24:00.000-04:00

Last week, I ordered two small posters for my kitchen, since I must have art to rotate. The spicy one with the peppers is for summer, and the Chocolat for the rest of the year when I want things quieter.

The problem is that the frame I wanted to use was so much bigger, and I didn't have a suitable mat, so I decided to spraypaint instead, using up the last of my beautiful blue from the shelf project. I concentrated on the edges to get the most pigment where I needed it...

And ta-da! This is its new home, high up enough above the stove to miss any splashes or spots. And there's room for a tiny, tiny trivet underneath. The kitchen desperately needs this color and decorative TLC, so I'm doing it bit by bit, so I won't shock anyone's system :)

Bonus: Find the ShihTzu:

Hint: he's the cute part.

The nerve of me boiling water in this weather...

2011-07-11T17:36:00.000-04:00

So it's dreadfully hot out, but I feel the need to cook. What is wrong with me?! At least I was able to listen to sense and throw together some Refrigerator Soup in the crock pot:

Some leftover spaghetti's going in as well - not enough left for a base on its own, but perfectly fine along with all those other goodies. There's....

leftover taco-seasoned ground beef
canned tomatoes
a bit of onion
frozen basil from my patio
a single black bean veggie burger
rice
celery
green pepper
tomato soup
and one of the better aspects of the human condtion: olive oil

Later on, I'll add the last of the spaghetti and serve with melted cheese on top. Sometimes if you keep adding ingredients, they will magically work! Recipes are irrelevant tonight!

And for dessert, there's a sweet-sweet "peachberry mango" salad. This may have to go into yogurt parfaits to calm it down. The fruit salad recipie called for lemon juice and brown sugar to go with the fresh melons and berries that one's supposed to have on hand. I, however, had only blueberries, a few frozen peaches, and a few spoonfuls of mango sorbet. So in they all went with a little brown sugar to tease the blueberries. It's delicious, but definitely a treat item.

The Kitchen Shelf

2011-07-11T16:41:00.000-04:00

There's a law somewhere that I will never have vast, empty expanses of countertops. I can deal with that, though, since I make what's *on* the counter work for me. Like this plain-jane mini shelf we normally use for mugs and bricabrac:

It's old, a little creaky, a little bow-y, and more than a little dingy:

Or at least it was! I decided to run with the rather groovy 70s yellow counters in the kitchen and embrace a bright, summery palette. Extra inspiration came from the lid of this old tea can lid and my new tablecloth which is a riot of citrus tones:

After hours of spraypainting, hand-painting, and a final few moments of shellac application, here it is!

And here's a close-up of the motif on both ends of the shelf. This was the second end I did, when I decided what the heck I was doing and got it down to a process, so it has fewer mistakes ("character"):

It even sort of goes with that day-glo tablecloth! I estimate I saved about $30 facelifting this shelf, rather than chucking it and getting a new one. If it gets more wobbly, I'll just shore it up with some brackets or screws, now that it's a lovely part of the kitchen and not a utilitarian piece.

My reward to myself for finishing this in one day is to brew some more iced tea and put a movie on to keep my mind off the heat. It's 90-something today in my area, but thankfully I have a new pretty thing to keep me distracted :)

New digs....and dogs!

2011-07-02T18:26:00.000-04:00

So the major shift of my summer is all but complete. Himself has moved in, bills are up to date or slated to be paid, groceries are in, and we're planning an Independence Day soiree for our friends. Life's going well!

The most important part of this is the release: we let go of so much junk and donate-ables that we both feel much lighter. Speaking for myself, this was especially cleansing, since I donated or sold a lot of my late mother's leftover things. Being sentimental and the self-appointed guardian of family history, I have informally archived a magpie's nest of things. Old photos and letters, linens from Grandmothers past, cookbooks from my own Grandmother's young-lady years, as well as unicorns, select record albums, and furniture from my Mom. But there is a point where too much really is way too much and you just have to let go.

So, through strict purging and a rummage sale, James and I ended up unloading barrels of *stuff* and made a bit of cash in the process. Today saw a trip to Goodwill to donate the remains from the rummage sale. This leaves us now with an old TV, a boxy old-style computer monitor, and some record albums that we know we can at least get a few dollars for. Our visit to the back of the goodwill store to donate vases, bags, blankets, and so on was followed with a visit to the front of the store, where I found these beauties:

Vintage, vintage vintage! What a statement these make! I was going to take them apart and make 2 pairs from them, but I think I like them as-is. Only problem is they are clip-ons, so I'll have to convert, and they may be a little heavy on pierced ears. I'll sort it out at some point.

Action shot:

Next, there's the ornamental "thingy". Due to the odd lighting in the craft room, it's a little hard to make out in the photo, but it's really pretty. Heavy old marble and brass with 4 surviving glass dangles. Those will be repurposed, and the thing itself will become a jewelry holder.

Love those old-style details:

That was the second half of our journey, though. The first was a trip to a used bookstore to divest ourselves of a bin full of old paperbacks. This resulted in 17 bucks worth of store credit, so naturally I had to see if I could find some goodies. I did!

I've been doing some light reading about the Symbolists, Decadents, and their occult leanings lately ("light" is a relative concept....) so I thought it was time to bring Oscar back into the mix. This 1944 book was the perfect opportunity:

Mr. Wilde, looking smashing as ever:

There's a section toward the end dealing with art versus morality, and I'm always up for a good re-tread of that area...do aesthetics have a moral component (yes!), how do we suss this out, and what do we do after that? That sort of thing. And it's Oscar!

In addition to the rest of the house, the craft room is now set up for 2 prolific occupants! That meant a radical rearrangement of my previous setup, but I like to do that once a year anyway, to keep things fresh. The whole place is looking better now, and it's more homey, and more decorated.

Here's Aunt Hazel peering down from her new wall (can't tell from the photo, but trust me!) She was a Zigfield Follies girl in her youth, then went into theatrical costume design on her retirement and made a nice living. I like to keep the only other creative type in the family around my art space :)

I finally hung a tiny shelf for some little figures. My mini gargoyles look happy in their new home:

A general idea of one of the walls. Sadly, not the prettiest one, but that will be a later photo. It's so nice to have more things on the walls and out of my work surfaces!

And speaking of work surfaces, Himself reassembled a 100+ year old oak table for my use in here. He's got his own desk on one side of the room, and I have this lovely antique all to myself! Of course, it's piled with jewelry stuff, but using it is better than leaving it empty!

Things are moving so well that I laid out a new project this week, for later stringing. Hopefully this one will sell when I get it done...It looks really pretty, if I do say so myself.

We're also babysitting dogs this weekend. James' mom is away, and we're watching her mini schnauzer Stella and her chihuahua Gypsy. Both are getting along well with our little Gobi (tho he's a little bowled over by two other dogs in his space). That means a full, noisy, cuddly house! Although everyone's pretty quiet at the moment:

Gypsy and Gobi chilling in the living room

Gobi enjoys the quiet time

Stella says cheese!

Gypsy strikes a pose

Rainy Day Fun

2011-06-17T16:55:00.000-04:00

So.....

The heavens above my house have decided to open up and pour on us all day. This doesn't bother me much because all the action is indoors this weekend: Himself is going to be joining our crazy little house as of tomorrow, and there's much to do! Fortunately, there should be a break in the rain long enough for him to grab his furniture and run here.

In the meantime, with all my creative stuff, books, and life in boxes (in preparation for moving alllll the way across the house to the master bedroom), the dog and I have had to make our own amusements:

Gobi surveys the watery road outside:

He ponders the awesome meteorological forces at work:

I clown around while he thinks Big Thoughts:

We attempt a "mommy and me" shot, but he gets distracted as soon as the button clicks:

Oh what on earth am I doing?

2011-06-08T08:24:00.000-04:00

So Himself is going to move in here in a few weeks, and I'm all a-flutter with preparation. The day after we announced our decision, I threw myself into a frenzy of basement-cleaning (for a sale and some extra space). The next day's forecast was much hotter, so I decided to switch to indoor cleaning temporarily. This meant purging my craft room to make space for his art stuff, too.

Oh, my. This room is actually a tiny, tiny bedroom. Interior, so there's no windows, little light, and warmth from all sides when the heat's on. A fan or two helps a lot in the summer, but we're still working out the ventilation. I didn't feel like I had a lot in there, as I clean the thing routinely and do what (I will now laughingly call) a "major" clean every 6 months or so. HA! Yesterday, in the space of several hours, I had pulled out more *stuff* than I ever thought was in there. And it was "clean" beforehand! Hauled everything out of the closet, off shelves and storage units to force me to really evaluate each item's usefulness. This is the "before photo" below. From the outside, this looks like a miserable little closet, but apparently it's much bigger on the inside.

(yes, there's a trope for that)

And a detail shot of my poor craft table, which is really a beat-up, 50s era card table. Normally I believe in keeping vintage in the everyday living spaces, but this one may have to retire to the cellar.

One of the first things I did after emptying the closet was cut down on the sheer amount of hangers. Wasteful it may be, but there's such a thing as far too many of something, and that's what I had. You'd be surprised how nice a closet looks, and how easy to navigate it is when deprived of its rat's nest of wire hangers. Later on, these were covered in a great pile of junk

The aftermath: this is how I left it last evening. Still a lot of *things* around, but I know what these things are, and I can store them more properly now. Eventually, there will be an old vanity for a jewelry table where the mirror is, on the left there, and a good draft table where the card table is on the right, for Himself's artwork. And some sort of ceiling fan. I'm going to insist on a ceiling fan.

Oh, to have it finished!

Presenting....Bonne Maman!

2011-06-01T21:36:00.000-04:00

My first foray into dollmaking.....I'm pleased, but I can't see myself doing this too often, as it's rather labor-intensive! But it's nice to know I can whip up a rag doll from scratch. I even did the pattern myself, inspired by this paddle doll from Egypt. I was aiming for something that looked very basic, that looked like it could've been held and loved by generations of children. So I went with a very simple one-piece body and tube arms. Little fuss....must remember to give myself more stuffing room if I make another one, as the arms got skinny quickly.

Pretty basic, and easy to do on the sewing machine I'm still learning to use. Here it is, dutifully pinned, with plenty of wobble room in case I make a mistake.

I decided to sew right over the lines, and tear off the paper as I finished pieces. The pattern was a freehand sketch on copy paper, so I can afford to loose it.

I opted to paint her face and hair in, since I have neither the floss nor the patience for emboridery. By looking at this shot, I can see poor Maman has an awfully lumpy jawline. I can tack that up tomorrow, and give her a nice "facelift"!

Here she is, with apron and bow, posing pretty with a mini Eiffel Tower print!

Papermaking

2011-05-31T10:26:00.000-04:00

Sometime last year, or even before, I ordered a kiddy papermaking kit from arnoldgrummer.com, and tucked it in a drawer to play with later. "Later" took a damn long time, so I made up my mind to add this to my crafty grimoire the summer.

Basic and addictive!

This is designed for classroom use, far as I can tell, and advises using 2 large coffee cans to help with the support and molding of the pulp into a nice, pretty shape of paper. As I'm quick to stick all recyclables outside for pickup, I have a dearth of cans and cardboard and other crafty supplies around my house. Enter the tupperware!

Turns out a pitcher works just as well to catch the squeezed-out (squoze? squozen?) water from my pulpy messes. This photo is actually from the third sheet. I started with a torn-up cover of an old issue of The Nation to make a pretty light green sheet, seen drying below.

It didn't take long for things to get fairly fabulous, as I added sequins to the second batch. Fittingly, the two sequinned papers are made from an old AC Moore ad. Craft stores tend to have really colorful inserts, so they pretty much beg to be recycled into something fun.

So I now have three irregularly shaped pieces of home-made paper to play with. As I get better at this, they may become fun inserts for the journal decorating kits I was thinking of getting into. Making these three pieces took well under an hour, so this especially fun for me - jewelry often has a much longer turnaround time. It's nice to get instant gratification once in a while :)

Preparing: For what? How much? Why?

2011-05-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

Probably because of the rapture-looniness cherry on top of the environmental/econo-political sundae, many people have been talking about disaster preparedness. Some of these discussions range from fairly far-fetched survivalism to what I see as sensible calls for increased self-sufficiency.

Readings

I've been batting around this idea a lot this weekend, because of two things I've read recently. One, was a comment thread on Pharyngula, on the subject of (increasingly embattled) abortion rights in the US. One commenter referenced The Woman's Book of Choices as item number one in her emergency stock, in case things get *that* bad, choice-wise, that abortion and reproductive health services simply stop existing in her area. She also mentioned she was going to keep an extra "Plan B" pill on hand, just in case. As I said later to Himself, this *should* sound far-fetched, I *should* consider this paranoid. But my first thought was "That's a good idea, I should do that." I live in a fairly metropolitan, fairly blue area, but the right to choose is so imperiled, I'm almost worried about the status of choice where I live. What if I'm caught in an impossible situation and I have to terminate my pregnancy? Abortions are expensive, and health insurance is not nearly as accessible as we'd like to think it is. What if a friend, or a neighbor is in similar straits? I'm not going to go as far as the authors of this book did, and learn how to literally perform an abortion, but it may behoove me to get some knowledge about the procedures, various abortifacients, etc. If nothing else, I'll be better informed.

This line of thought wasn't developed to disregard actual medicine, science, practitioners, since western medicine isnt' anything to sneeze at (ha!) and there are many wonderful doctors, nurses, clinics, and so on out there. But access isn't nearly as equal as it should be, especially for such hot-button issues of women's autonomy. Given the choice, I want a legitimate clinic/office for any manner of procedure, for myself or another person. But.....just in case...I keep thinking "just in case", what if it gets "that bad". What if I move some place where pharmacists refuse to do their job, where clinics and their staff are harassed or worse? So that was the start of my self-sufficiency fixation.

The next leg of this meme was a little more lighthearted. At a bookstore, I was browsing the crafts/domestic section (oh, how bourgeois! love it!) and I came across Wendy Brown's Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: The Thrivalist's Guide to Life Without Oil. Brown recounts a conversant's challenge to an imagination game: pretend the world is ending in 21 days. What would you do to prepare? What should you do?

She makes some good points, such as lessening one's dependence (and more importantly, one's children's dependence) on oil-dependent activities, goods, and so forth. Her thrust seemed to be one of re-imagining homesteading in the context of existing suburban communities, rather than rejecting society outright in a stereotypical commune. Stop spending as much, try to grow some food on your property, rely more on creativity and craft to amuse yourselves rather than constantly going out and spending, explore alternative energy options - all sound so far. These are things I aspire to, and many I already do to some extent. Be frugal, be creative, and re-direct domesticity as a source of power, not restriction. Ok, cool.

But she did go off-rail for me in two points. One is homeschooling, and the other is anti-vaccination. That second one, which I'll address first, made me close the book and put it away. I refuse to buy it on that point alone, as I cannot morally support someone who rejects one of the greatest medical achievements. I'll give Brown props for many other things in her book, but this I protest. At the very least, the anti-vax movement is too precious by far*, and at the very worst It Kills People. You endanger your own child for diseases we've all but done away with, and you endanger whoever comes in contact with your child.

The first point, the home-schooling, is a complex one. I actually like the idea, provided the parents:

Observe curriculum standards for their area
Maintain active contact with their local board of ed - and have that board be proactive in checking in on home schools
Socialize the kids early, often, and creatively.
*Not* use the method as brainwashing for lunatic philosophies/religions. This would be hard to enforce, I know, but I'm in hypothetical land.

I don't recall Brown advocating any of these, so she managed to somewhat pass my litmus test. But, even with my admiration of the idea, I still have some reservations. I know that public school in my country is nearly as (or *is* as) embattled as reproductive freedom. There are myriad problems with public education, and where (and who) you are makes all the difference in the schools and ed services your kids get. However, that should not be the reason to bail out. Even though I've found myself admitting I want to homeschool my (hypothetical) kids if I have no better choice, my better angels tell me to eat my words, and enroll these imaginary kiddos in the nearest public school. People leaving the system provides no incentive to the powers that be to improve the system. Staying and agitating would be far more effective.

In the interests of fairness, I think Brown was projecting for a temporary or long term major melt-down of infrastructure which may physically prevent education as we know it. In that case, then knowing how to homeschool would be a good idea. But if there's an option, I think we should take it, and supplement on our own time.

Well, what now?

As much as the US is going through right now, and as gloomy as I get projecting into the future, I doubt we're going to have some Mad-Max style breakdown. Things are going to change, and I would not be surprised to see some sort of watershed moment, but I think we'll be able to manage after. Even though I'm now thinking in semi-preparedness terms, and tossing these ideas around with my circle of friends, I'm not looking for anything dramatic. I challenged one of them for small, simple ways to put this into practice. One of the best ways would be not eating out. Trading off all our kitchens each weekend, doing potluck or cooking together.

We already save bundles on not going to theaters much (netflix!!!!) and none of us are particularly acquisitive in terms of gadgets, clothes, or toys (our nerdiness is all within our means). Nearly all of us have some sort of artistic/creative bent, so we can amuse ourselves and make mini-artists colonies/salons. So that's quite a bit taken care of right there. Any remaining expenses can be pared down gradually - noone has any Coach Bags or iPad habits to quit cold turkey! But the dining - ah, that's our achilles' heel! We're all students/grads and currently only one has been able to move out of her home. This makes life a little awkward if we want an evening in. But the dining out, even once a week, even "cheaply", does tell on the wallet and the waist. Really, this isn't sustainable, so we've got to switch to something better.

I suppose the next way to make "preparedness" practical is to reduce the general amount of "stuff". In my case, this means as much recycling as possible, and actually keeping a lid on the usual suspects: things that tend to accumulate too much. Books (there is such a thing as too many!), craft supplies (oh don't we all have studio overflow?), and tchotchkes (inexplicable *things* that keep turning up...salt and pepper shakers, souvenir keychains, old photo frames I really don't like). The time is right for a blitz of listing books on ebay or half.com, and maybe a garage sale.

As for the craft stuff, I got the idea to take things I *know* I'm never going to use and making kits. One book I was perusing earlier had a section on DIY bookbindings - the author stated that she often had trouble actually writing on her nearly bound signatures. I know how she feels - the blank page is beautiful and intimidating! So how about this: I make a few blank journals, gather scraps, bits, and found objects of varying palettes and textures, stick 'em all in a baggie and sell! As much as I'd love to hand-make the journals myself, there's not enough time to do them full justice, but there is a mountain of *things* that's not getting any smaller. I need the room more than I need the chance at a higher price for a pre-made art journal. If I move a few kits at a lower price, I get the priceless gift of space.

Postscript

This entry is literally all over the place, but it has a point. I'm feeling that way myself - wandering with a general idea! Getting practical is wonderful therapy for me, keeping my mind off the summer doldrums and perennial worries. Taking care of the "mundane" and the domestic enriches my more cerebral pursuits, too, as I simply can't do a thing with my mind unless I move my body in some fashion. (Glad I came to that realization early on!). So, maybe this will be a theme for my summer, find the simple things I can do to make my live more creative, frugal, and independent.

* - I'm all for being conscious and educated in matters of health care, and for *not* going overboard on medications, tests, treatments, and for exploring reasonable alternatives as much as possible. But I will not reject proven science! This movement is not only silly, it was based in large part on a fraud, a publicly outed fraud. And people gamble with their children's safety to follow him.....

Brag Brag Braggity Brag

2011-05-24T16:59:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I cooked (salsa chicken, "sauteed" carrots) then went into the craftorium to finish a few projects:

Paper earrings - one on display here. They should be laminated or something, but they were done on a lark. And then there's the matching paper fascinator:

Action shot below! I need to paste the flaps a bit so they don't move around when it's on my head. If I can get this to work right, I'll be able to make more.

Ahh, these....my favoritest pair of earrings in a while. They're ridiculous but so pretty! Still need to hide the hot glue dots on the back of the lace, so they're not for sale. If they hold up, I will clone/improve them to make sellables, though.

More more more!

2011-05-24T13:23:00.000-04:00

french country style!

the lariat from hell - 3 yards, 7 inches of beads, beads, beads!!!!

ahhh, vintage-look glamour

minimalist piece, inspired by the plethora of robins now showing up in my neighborhood

an older piece, but a pretty and easy to wear one that needs relisting.

I think I've earned my lunch now after making, photographing, and listing these on Etsy!!

Things completed, and one in progress

2011-05-17T16:40:00.000-04:00

This one's been around for a while, but I'll be relisting it on etsy today:

Here's a new piece! I suppose I was thinking steampunk, but ended up with a lot of metal and chains, and an unusually cool palette, given my recent yen for warm colors and metals:

Started this one over the weekend, and finished it today - for such a simple piece, it gave me quite a lot of design trouble. I'm glad it made up its mind what shape it wanted to be!

This one is still in progress. It started this morning as an asymmetrical bib necklace, but changed itself several times. I like it where it is now, but there's still some "proofreading" to be done, like making sure the chain segments are even, and whether or not I'll keep that filigree piece. I so wanted it to be in this necklace, but looking at it on the bust, I think it needs to go to a different piece.

This one I did late last week. I suppose less really is more. An art glass pendant I've had for *years* finally found a suitable home on bright orange ribbon from Ornamentea. This included a chain strand with a green fabric bead which worked *on the bead board*, of course, but felt sour when I draped it on the bust. The ribbon shall fly solo!

Container Garden Day!

2011-05-16T09:00:00.001-04:00

Sunny weather is preferable for potting things, but since I've never seen any rules against making container gardens in the mist, I got out on the front porch and busied myself.

Step one was banging a bunch of holes into an old, unused recycling container to make a planter. These are African Marigolds, a whole lot of them:

That process was mercifully un-photographed, as it was far from efficient, glamorous, or sane-looking. While I did like having an occasion to use my grandfather's old tools, I will *demand* an electric drill for my birthday to facilitate future hole-puttings-in.

I added a pair of little vincas to my Begonia pot. Hope that works out! Most of the Vincas went with a Henna Coleus in a smaller planter, which will be moved to a sunny spot with the marigolds when the weather breaks.

The Coleus pot and my mini-veggie and herb pots are taking temporary shelter farther under the cover of the porch roof. When the sun comes back out, I'll nudge them forward.

Indoors, the kitchen is plant city, so here's the array by the sink. It makes getting mugs an adventure, but what's life without a little adventure? From L-R, mint, yet more Vincas, a vase with leftovers from a mother's day bouquet, a Fittonia, a Moses-in-theCradle, and a Sanseveria.

Two little Vincas await a suitable container, and the grocery store mint is hanging on rather well....I think next time I get any live plants from the produce section, I'll just pot them like normal, instead of the little plastic cup they come in. They're cheap enough to play with.

Some of the spare Vincas in their new pot, with little spindles that will hopefully turn into pretty magenta blossoms soon!

I think it's time to feed and water myself now! Got this all done in the morning, so I feel up to more writing and quieter things this afternoon. Hopefully these plants will have a good season, and gift me with a few seeds before they go.

Green Man's Footprints

2011-05-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

I followed the Green Man today,

For a little while.

I snuck along his path,

And kept watch from the corner of my eye.

I took home small mementos,

Tucked now between pages

Days of sun and rain now hidden in my books,

Or in pretty glasses and pots.

He clung to me still in echoes of musk and rot,

In the coolness of shadow, calyx and meristem.

I followed the Green Man today,

But only for a while.

Well, now what?

2011-05-12T10:20:00.000-04:00

Finished up another semester, one grade in, one more to go. Joined a roundtable last night, was embarrassingly praised after by friends, and now I dunno what to do with myself! The dog will have to be walked, trash taken out, dishes put away, but where's the big project now? I'll find something soon enough to keep busy, since there's 2 things I want to turn into articles over the summer. But for a day or two, I probably should not do anything academic.

BWAHAHAAHAA!

Seriously, I'll just work it into my other plans. Like adding back to my etsy shop, turning an old recycling bin into a planter for my porch (veggies or flowers? both?), and carrying on with my ambitious plan to read 50 books this summer. (see sidebar on right, "Summer Reading") For the moment, I don't feel reflective, I don't feel charged up or demoralized, I just feel even keeled. Which is a good thing, I suppose.

Coolest Thing This Week

2011-04-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

McPherson College in Kansas has an awesome library. How do I know this, despite being from Jersey? From the magic of the internet! BoingBoing posted an item about the library's new guidebook, in the form of a zombie comic book.

Behold! The Zombie Guide to Miller Library!

The PDF!

The comic portion is followed by a good how-to for college research, from navigating the stacks to sizing up online resources. Also, (and this probably speaks more to my reading habits than the artists' intentions), I found the bear-ish librarian a nice touch:

(art by C. Michael Hall, color by Dustin Evans)

('cause i'm that paranoid i cite everything)

I will be saving this for any future tutoring/teaching, since it's so cool. There's even a nifty paper-writing flowchart!

Moss Gathering

2011-04-19T10:26:00.000-04:00

So I've been fixating on moss terrariums lately...even though a manicured, domesticated, miniature "natural" space should be too precious by far, it's in keeping with my growing love of houseplants, so domesticity wins out over environmentalism.

Besides, it's frickin' moss. It'll grow anywhere, on bricks, wood, whatever. It'll be ok.

This morning when I took Gobi on LongWalk (tm), I bought a tiny tupperware container and spoon along. As he sniffed through the leaves, twigs, and got all dewy, I dug out little moss nuggets. Kept all this to the hidden parts of the path, so noone would notice my doings, or see little teaspoon sized divots next to tell-tale clog prints and puppy paws.

I kept it simple and bought home only three mosses, the names of which I don't know yet, but I'm bound to have fun botanizing. I cleared out a glass globe which formerly held some of my rock collection, and situated the mosses with a little moist potting soil, and an assortment of green and earth-tone stones for decoration.

It's water-tight, so I feel safe leaving it atop my PC tower. The effect is really pretty, and I'm happy to have some sort of plant that can survive in my bedroom! I face east, so I'm flooded with morning light, but I also face the highway, so I'm obliged to close the blinds often, which isn't good news for sun loving plants. And, let's face it, there's barely enough room for me, with all the books, gadgets, and ephemera, so the other plants have nowhere to go in here....those live in the kitchen and living room.

This is a cool one - looks like tiny palm trees.

And this one is sprouting something! Are these a permanent feature? Is this just a stage? I can't wait to find out on the next episode of "as the moss grows"....

Later on, if this works, I'll graduate to even cooler terrariums, like this one by MadebyMavis on etsy (sadly, the shop's empty for now)

I can see these as centerpieces on the kitchen table - lovely things for regular meals, and conversation starters for guests. Or proof of my eccentricities for finicky guests.

And what could be cooler than this for winter celebrations? This *must* be done, especially for our Christmachannukyule fest. That and my idea for secular advent calendars with scientific, feminist, or historical trivia. It would be labor-intensive, but wouldn't a tree decorated in terrarium-ornaments be gorgeous? Seed pod garlands, a bouquet of holly, ivy, and mistletoe for the top....and, if it's not too hazardous, old school "real live" candles instead of electric lights?

And, since I'm daydreaming, handmade greeting cards from Rima Staines, a dinner made of rustic, neo-medieval dishes on handmade pottery, and, oh hell, Loreena McKennitt coming over to hum softly for a while.

Actually, most of that is do-able...Ms. Staines is known to do custom work, and I'm known to find beautiful handmade household goods for reasonable prices, and lord knows I have how many Loreena McKennitt albums?

Anyway, time to snap out of it - there's papers to write and laundry to dry!

Art Museum Goodies

2011-04-17T12:25:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, Himself and I headed out to Princeton University's art museum. Neither of us had been, so we grabbed a couple sandwiches and headed down in a grey drizzle. This turned into quite a downpour, which was awesome, since one of my Official Favorite Things is silvery, rainy skies through windows in museums. Specific, I know, but so atmospheric. This is a small museum, perfect size for a single outing. There were all manner of gems, and thankfully we were able to get to damn near everything.

Link to the Picasa album

Now for some highlights!

Here's a gorgeous Venus and Cupid, German, I think. Absolutely stunning, with great jewelry details to pore over.

And here's a Flemish (?) St. Jerome, with lush colors and detail that belies its ascetic intentions.

Finally, after the museum, we visited Labyrinth Books, where I indulged a bit and picked up a copy of Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies and a postcard of the other sexy man in my life, E. E. Cummings. ;) This'll be a nice accessory when I work on article submissions over the summer.

Generalized Goodwill

2011-04-14T12:16:00.000-04:00

By all rights, I should be a bit depressed, but oh, it's SPRING!!!

I interviewed monday for a position I didn't get, but that's ok. There'll be more. Yesterday I had a "difficult" conversation with a family member regarding my grandmother's care. But that's also ok, 'cause about a day before, I got a wholesale blessing from one of Gram's sisters to pretty much go forth and prosper. Apparently, the consensus down there, with the rest of the family, is that I've done more than my fair share, that I'm a good kid, and I deserve to move on and be happy.

(Not much of the context for that has hit this blog, but it's been a protracted crisis - distant family, aging grandmother, increasing demands on me from school, life, etc. - and *no* help from her other child)

So, I feel like I have a pass from both the weather today, and the matriarch of the clan! Wish I had some income, too, but what're you gonna do?

when peacocks and bright flowers exist - i have a noticeably hard time feeling depressed

So, now what? I continue like before - school work, resume sending, careful budgeting, homecooking, crafting, Gobi-walking, and the other fun gerunds that I like.

I think I'll be ok living with more possibilities than definite-s right now...

Kitchen Witchin'

2011-03-29T16:01:00.039-04:00

After taking apart my fridge shelves and scrubbing everything to within an inch of its life, I made scratch polenta and cornbread. There's not much left aside from those two dishes, so it's grocery shopping time for me.

Oh, this I love. I recall the days of stocking up, especially near the holidays. I'd often trudge thru the supermarket with my mother, pushing not one but *two* overfull carts. But things have changed, and that's not my way. I'd rather go marketing each week, getting ingredients rather than "items". In that perfect world, there'd be a regular farmer's market, a good old-fashioned baker, a jolly butcher, and a dry goods store for thing you can't get elsewhere.

Yeah, I got a rich inner life.

yeah, yeah frugality ain't romantic, but damn if i'm not eating

better since i've gone all old-fashioned! it's just *nicer*....

Lacking all that, I've taken to twice-monthly jaunts to refresh produce, and buying as little in the way of pre-made food as I can. Meat's minimal due to cost, which works out well since I've had fun recently with alternatives, or meat-light dishes. I've perfected my spaghetti sauce, for instance.

I'm actually excited about going to the store later. I can't wait to get my hands on some pretty peppers, pears, and herbs, a stout can of oats, and some more odds and ends. Maybe I'll treat myself to a fresh-baked croissant for tomorrow morning if I can find one.

Future plans include DIY veggie stock and granola. Yes, I've turned that corner - I'll be baking oats, dried fruit, and nuts into my own hippie-dippie confection. The next step will be home-made yogurt, but I need a good thermometer for that so I can experiment.

Later on, as a diversion from schoolwork, I may take some unneeded but lovely photos of veggies and fruit. I love the look of a plate of oranges and lemons in the kitchen, or a basket of tomatoes above my sink! Why do do this? Why do I I talk about this inane stuff - because I can! And because who hasn't admired a tray of mushrooms, or a sprig of parsley from time to time?

oh yes. home-made granola. just look at it.

I've been thinking hard about food lately. Where it comes from, what it does, what it means. Food's a hot topic right now, especially in (and I loathe this phrase) "these tough economic times". A specific example of this fascination would be the weird class-ing of food. Apparently, fresh foods, the ones with understandable "provenances" are a sign of elitism. "Oh, I have cash to burn so I can afford to buy 8-dollar tomatoes and talk to the artisinal cheesemaker!" Which, on first blush, I would have thought might repel me. But no - I'm tired of "poor food" and "rich food". I'm tired of snobbery and reverse snobbery, and I'm certainly tired of moral judgments based on grocery carts.

While I'm the first to poke fun at my polenta, my granola, and such, and my own latter-day Antoinette frugality fetish*, I really do find something rejuvenating in preparing home made things. There's nights when a PBJ and milk is dinner for me, and that's fine, but for the most part, I'm fixing a fresh meal each time, or reheating remains of previously-prepared feasts. And if The Boy is here on the weekends, we'll do at least one meal together, getting in each other's way in the kitchen, grousing until we sit down and pour the cheap pinot.

This is a quirk of my country that I can't stand. The idea that syrup-laden, sodium-overdone, packaged and marketed stuff is "real", and anything different, fresh, or creative, is snobby. This is an insult both to good cooks and the people that really have no access to fresh/creative/whatever and are obliged to rely on whatever gets them through.

There's a place for "junk food", certainly, but there's something deep within that can only be filled with something from "home". The meals I remember are from my kitchen, from my mother's, from my friends'. Rice and beans and pastelas at Christmas time....Rice Krispie Meatloaf from Gramma....My Mom's spaghetti sauce, (this was in her hands entirely - pity she took it with her!)....these were class-less moments, flavored with different cultures and holidays, never slick and well-photographed.

At this point, I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. Just indulging in continued woolgathering about foodways in this decade.

*of course, the big difference is she had an alternative to her Petite Trianon lifestyle...and plenty of servants to run the place. My typical monthly grocery bill is 200 +/-, maybe about 30 extra if I'm in the money that month and I can refresh my fruit supply before the calendar changes, and there's no cooks, maids, etc! 200 bucks, incidentally, is the monthly allotment for a single person on food stamps (SNAP - supplemental nutrition assistance program in modern parlance) and not too far from what my mom was alloted to spend on the entire house when I was coming up. So, I'm keeping to some sort of frugal baseline, oddly enough. My luxury is that I have no children to worry about, so I can make room in that budget for a few "snob" things.

Keeping House: a domestic theater of the absurd

2011-03-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

Just had the living room carpet cleaned. Having plumbers/cable persons/cleaners in the house to do business is a ballet of awkwardness for me.....I keep feeling like I'm supposed to be helping them, or fixing lunch or something, not just doing my thing while they toil. It's like I'm constitutionally unable to be a snob. It went well, and I now have a beautifully steamed/deodorized living room for 80 bucks, and a half-hour of my time.

I waited far too long to do this, but now I'm glad that's out of the way...all the puppy mess is finally out of the carpet, and I feel like I can now invite people over. As usual, this is making me think of other things that need doing in the house. I'm pretty good with routine things like washing, dishes, dusting, general chaos-prevention. But I feel sometimes like I really should do more - like get at the ick in the windows, do something about the mildew in the bath (resistant to regular cleaners and the homemade hippie stuff I concoct!) Much as it galls me, I may need a professional here to deal with the things that won't budge for my efforts.

Periodically I get the idea to look into an inexpensive maid service to come in once or twice a month and spruce things up, do the heavy-duty things like I mentioned, but then my class anxieties get the better of me and I start overthinking it and giving myself a headache:

"Who do I think I am, paying other people to do what I should be able to do for myself?"

"Then again, it's perfectly normal in many countries to hire cleaners - and these are professionals, paid, insured, and probably better off than me!

"Housework is just a task - you identify the problem, do things to fix it or at least work around it, and boom, onto the next thing. You hire people to fix your computer and your washer, why not for your windows?"

"No, no, housework is a heavily symbolic series of rituals, fraught with meaning! It's been a burden for so many people for so many years, how can I impose this on someone else, to literally clean up after my own mess?"

"Liz, the damn mildew is not *your* mess! It's a natural consequence of living! You've poured, sprayed, and scrubbed till you're dizzy with fumes! Let someone help!"

"BLLARGH!"

"BLABLEBLAHH"

....and it dissolved into the different sides of my mind fighting for a while.

See, I actually like keeping house. It doesn't have that either/or quality it seems to for many people (eg that you have to choose between school/work/feminist principles *or* a tidy home). I admit to a certain level of "blah" if I get neglectful for a few weeks, but it's not like my self-worth is tied to the cleanliness of my counters or folded towels. I just like having things neat, is all. I'm into other aspects of that, like decor and crafting, so this is natural. A comfortable home, a more or less orderly space, and pleasure for the senses is absolutely necessary - main ingredients for maintaining a private sphere, which I consider the height of luxury nowadays.

Eventually, I'm bound to somewhat cave in and at least buy one of those mini-steam cleaners to get at whatever yuck resists my usual efforts. But I'm still locked into that middle-class American ideal of DIY. Often, DIY's a good thing, but I can see where one can go overboard. Somewhere inside me is still a small pioneer woman, smirking at those too precious to chop their own wood or milk a cow. But that's absurd - not only did the historical pioneers pretty much have to rely on each other (there should be no shame in communal labor!) I'm in a totally different world, and living in unimaginable times for those women. Apples and oranges - I should quite worrying and do what needs doing, I guess. Even if that "do" requires calling Merry Maids or something.

Either way, I'll feel far better in about an hour, when the rug's dry enough to move all the furniture back in. That I can easily do on my own and stem the silly parade of anxiety ;)

It's been a while since I made stuff

2011-03-24T13:33:00.003-04:00

The last two will be hitting the etsy store later this afternoon. The first pair is a jazzed up version of some store-brought earrings I've had for a while, and the keys were sort of floating around from one jewelry box to another, their locks long gone. Too pretty for me to part with :)

Also, there was LongWalk today!

enjoy the photos....

This is what I see atop my PC at the moment - shiny, shiny things!

PS: cuteness

2011-03-21T18:23:00.001-04:00

Melancholy Mondays/More Booksleuthing

2011-03-21T18:18:00.001-04:00

It's a grey drizzle outside my window today, so all amusements must take place indoors. That means a lot of time at the desk, the kitchen table, or the bath for me. It's alright, I've got quite the to-do list to stave off any excess gloom:

put the finishing touches on a paper - this one uses fairy tales in conjunction with Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho
start a mini-presentation on critical reception of Poe's work - I'll be sticking to the French Symbolists largely, as the only direction for this assignment is (more or less) to not bore the professor. I think I'll be safe :)
Repair my "heirloom" Poe book. This volume was the first "big-L" literature, and first Poe I ever read, so it's quite special to me. Photos are, of course, posted below.
Do away with the last of the folded towels in my basket. For some reason, I'll do load after load of wash without complaint, happily fold it, iron and repair, but the actual putting it away part baffles me.

Other than that, continued apartment-browsing for me and Himself, and plots for scratch rice pudding. Oh, dear gods, this is my actual fixation as of late. I've taken a weird fancy to making rice pudding. I have no idea why, I just know my life will be complete once I have a pot of it in the fridge. Of all the damn things - rice pudding! At least it's easier than finding an apartment convenient to school/work that doesn't cost a strapped young couple an arm and a leg!

I'm sure my repairs have totally erased any possible value the book might have had - but the covers were literally holding on by strings! So I glued paper to the inside of each cover and its facing blank page. Not very sophisticated, but it's stable. Later, I'll just run with it and add some sort of ornament to the supports - if they're going to be obvious, they can at least be fabulous, too. Maybe prints of old photos or Victorian baubles to hide the glue marks. Given enough time, that'll re-up the value for the eventual grand kids - a family antique *and* granny's youthful craftage!

Apparently this was one of a set published in the mid-30s. There's no ISBN, no publisher's info, but a couple clues:

"Manufactured in the United States of America, By the Cuneo Press, Inc" in the frontmatter
"The Spencer Press" introduction - which describes the process of selecting titles for this "World's Greatest Literature" collection....replete with fun anachronisms like "The next problem was to select those twenty books which would form the cornerstone of a fine home library for people of discriminating taste..." - also describes the selection of binders, and the apparently exquisite Spencer binding which this takes after
The sign-off for that intro: "Reading, Pa. 1936 Leonard S. Davidow

Googling reveals more on these. The actual binder consulted for this project, Leonard Mounteney, was also consulted for the Extra Bindery, along with other craftsmen, for his skill and understanding of "European Traditions", as found in the U of Chicago's special exhibit Printing for the Modern Age: Commerce, Craft, and Culture in the R. R. Donnelly Archive.

Mr. Davidow passed in 1989 (NY Times obit here), had a long career in publishing. The obit mentions he was "president of the Berkshire News Company of Reading, Pa., from 1922 to 1938" - which was when my Poe book was printed, but there's nothing in the book about Berkshire News Co.

As for the Cuneo Press, there's a 1945 Time article on John Cuneo, Cuneo Steps In, which describes the man as the "cold-eyed, round-faced owner of The Cuneo Press, Inc., biggest U.S. printers as well as "angel" of Liberty and a string of other magazines"...also his takeover of the National Tea Co.

The quick research was fun, but damn if it's not weird to read an article from 1945 with Facebook and "flat belly" ads on the side. Archives shouldn't have to be decorated with such annoying things. But at least I now have a sense of what went into making the collection I have a volume of. Now if I could trace its provenance in my family, I'd be happy. Far as I know, it was my Grandpa's, but before that is a mystery. I bet it's another survivor from his father's library. Grandpa Matt was a lawyer, and would've had the money to stock up on books. And both men were great readers. Either this or someone got lucky at a used bookstore at some point.

This is taking time away from my Poe presentation research, but at least I feel productive :)

Time traveling books!

2011-03-15T12:06:00.001-04:00

Ripped shamelessly from my facebook wall:

I just found an old Longfellow collection with my Great Grandpa's signature, dated December 1935 - bet it was a Christmas present from one of the kids. I unstuck a few pages and found the following: "From my Brother, March 14, 1894, Maurice F." and I can't make out the surname. I'm mending the volume as we speak, having glued the floppy covers back in place and keeping it squashed under a volume of Cummings...enlisted the help of one old Cambridge boy for another: "Hey, Estlin, gimme a hand here *SMOOSH*"

Book Ogling - snapshots of the Longfellow collection

I love my books, even the cheapy paperbacks, but the old ones have a special place in my heart. This is the closest, most intense connection I have to those before me. The few books that have made it into my possession from family were well-used by several generations of great readers, so I like to think some small bit of them stays between the pages, just as some part of me will linger for my children and theirs and so on.

The Longfellow is only worth about 12 dollars, probably less now that I've repaired it with non-binding glue. But still, imagine a time when there were "household editions"! I'm glad that enough work was done to expand and destabilize literary canons, since they have been used to exclude and judge works, artists, and whole cultures....but, I still give some credence to the ideas of touchstones. Things you should know, things you should have in your home at least. The omnipresent Dead White Male Writer is not the only entry in this category, but it's a place to start.

What should one have on one's bookshelf? They say when Americans started going west in the 19th century, they'd being 2 books, the Bible and Shakespeare. The Bible and I, like surly ex-spouses, fare better the farther apart we are. William stays, though! A Shakespeare collection was the standard prize for contest/scholarship wins at one of my undergrad schools, and Shakespeare classes demanded specific editions of plays and poems, so I had more Wills than I could count at one point. I gave most of them away, keeping only a mammoth volume stuffed full of useful analyses and footnotes, and the more manageable "onionskin" collection Ma always kept in her room.

So, that's a must, but what else? Got a lot of Dickinson and Cummings, too. And folklore of all sorts. One thing necessary is more female writers, so my mission now is to find go-to ladies and publicize them as much as I can.

Spring's coming!

Other than that, my mission is to continue with spring cleaning - everything from laundry to virus scans on the computer! I've already mopped the bathroom, straightened the bookcases, put out fresh seed and suet for the birdies, and had my ailing laptop fixed at the uni computer repair center.

Extending this to my own body, I popped a vitamin this morning and suffered the consequences, so I'm now in a weird realm of energetic yet nauseous. I think I'll stick to my usual fresh fruit and veg.

My corner of the world's still chilly in the evenings, but the days have a fresh, scrubbed clean quality. Went sprout hunting over the weekend and saw evidence of returning crocuses, daffodils, and tree buds. Amateur birding has given me glimpses of lots of robins, sparrows, finches, even woodpeckers, a bluejay and what may be a bluebird. On comparing notes with James' mom, a dedicated "morning coffee birder", the bluebird is pretty rare round here, with populations diminished but returning. That's a good sign if there ever was one - brighter days, clearer skies, and little feathery travelers!

On Naughtiness

2011-02-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

So I've been thinking a lot about eroticism, pornography, culture, countercultures, etc, thanks to the Cummings thing I'm presenting on (this saturday! whee!).

For a break, I've also been thinking a lot about Alan Moore's work and other writings since I came across a pro-library video he made, which someone posted to BoingBoing. Surely, I thought, these two streams of thought would never meet.

Wrong!

25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom by Alan Moore

Turns out I'm not the only one thinking of how boring porn can be, how interesting historical expression of the past was, and how prudish we've become. Tho' I hold that US pop culture beats UK pop culture for its "sex" saturation/prudery combo. We gotcha beat!

So, another book I *must* own (my poor nearsighted eyes cry for mercy!). I knew about "Lost Girls", and it's on the list, but I thought maybe it was just a one-off for Mr. Moore. This seems to be the start of a whole 'nother thread of quasi-academic inquiry into "eccentric" writers. Nice to have a living one this time. My literary table is getting a little spooky: Nin, Colette, Cummings, E. Dickinson, so on.

In other news, fate has produced some nice-looking flats in a nearby town I hadn't considered previously. This Sunday, James and I will go look at a community near our campus we found last week, and I'll busy myself with making appointments to the new ones. One has to shop around, but I'm deliberately limiting us to a smaller area. In our neck of the woods, apartments and condos and such abound in the middle of god's country, but I can't abide not having some civilization nearby, preferably in the form of bookstores and cafes, to keep up my brioche habit. As he tends to, James agrees :) Not many of the places we've looked at so far seem likable - many are marketed to students and apparently students are "supposed" to be able to live anywhere. Not so - even with our modest budget, I will find us a nice, sunny, safe flat (with a terrace if the real estate fairies are kind) that we can stuff full of bookcases and dog toys and houseplants.

I'm eager, but guarded, as I don't have much patience for real estate agents. Trying to be all noncommittal and suspicious when dealing withthem but daaaaaaaaaaaanggggg I want a place soon! I'll attempt to contain myself and not start buying tea towels and curtains before we even sign a lease. This impulse makes an interesting combination with my other fixations (see above!) - am I insufferably bourgeois, am I a snarky neo-academic and freethinker, or am I complicating *both* streams by wanting coordinating trivets and collector's volumes of vintage pornography on my coffee table (which will most likely be thrifted)?

Later on, I'll polish off La Cazzaria and take a bigger bite out of Pamuk's Snow for Thursday. In the meantime, it's time for more tea and a good laugh at myself :)

Whoaa!

2011-02-18T18:00:00.000-05:00

Feels like it's been a busy week...
Volunteered to gather sidebar articles for next novel in demanding-but-fun spy novel class (god, I love my abbreviated titles)
Started a record of my biblio nerding with a gothic lit biblio (in right column here - on top)
Got cyber-introduced to a psychologist whose concentration is *exactly* what I'm presenting on in April

Doesn't sound like much, but these are contributing to a really nice optimistic feeling this week! I'm sure some of it's just chemistry shifting to the new light patterns and lovely weather, but things feel really good.

The Boy and I are resuming our apartment hunt. Yes, for those of you not listening, we've decided to make it official, and look for someplace that will take 2 budding academics and a shih tzu mix. Wish us luck!!!

Cthulu Redux - oops, I forgot the actual article!!

2011-02-14T10:53:00.003-05:00

Still having fun talking to myself about Lovecraft...after this, I'll take in a little Radcliffe, and go back to Modernism and the Theater of Censorship. I'm still curious about the Cthulu cult, and I wanted to examine why I'm so fascinated, aside from the baroque imagery and delicious buttery layer of adjectives in the stories.

Here, primarily for the benefit of James, are my thoughts on the Price article "Apocalyptic Expectations":

"It puts me in mind of..."

"The prospect of Cthulhu's advent inspires the dread once evoked by the medieval expectation of "Doomsday" when Christ would return to destroy sinners." (Price)

Well, now that makes sense - the longing for annihilation crops up many times in various religions, whether explicitly, as in the middle ages, or implicitly, as in the more extreme sects and their endorsed policies and values right now. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call the present "medieval", but something about those nutty Chtulu-thusiasts reminds me of something very familiar to early 21st c. US life.

I'm thinking here of course of fundamentalism, especially Christianity, and its love affair with the right. The values they both push (eg neglect of public schools, infrastructure, environmentalism, family planning, LGBTQ rights, and so on) all smack of a yearning for "end times". If you use these values neglect a certain group, say, the working poor, gutting schools, welfare, local economies, etc their standard of living is going to slip lower and lower, and money-sucking problems that middle and upper class folks can deal with (say, a medical problem) become insurmountable. No structure, no protections, neglected education - that's how you keep people in place and eventually destroy them, at least metaphorically. It takes a while, surely, but certain groups are considered "disposable" in our culture (at least by certain elements).

Now, there's (hopefully!) no evil cabal of far right schemers (like the omnipresent Cthulu cult), rubbing their hands, and drooling over the idea of people of the wrong class or color dropping like flies. But too many ideas either in action now or under consideration are not designed to nurture the populace, they're not designed to consider how things will unfold in 5, 10, 20 or more years. Instead, this mode is designed for the moment, to pander to the correct demographics, and fuck all to the future. There is also such a strong presence of extreme Christianity, which carries ideas of judgment, social conservatism, and end-times ideas (The Rapture, anyone?) that I can't help but think it does carry weight with at least some policy-makers. Someone powerful has gotta be buying this, somewhere, because the moral judgments keep sneaking into law!

"Closely related to the above, apocalyptic literature, both ancient and modern, has the notion that 'in the last days, perilous times will come' (II Timothy 3:1), not alone because of natural catastrophes and disasters, but also because of an epidemic of savage lawlessness and perverse hate" (Price)

Yeah, the moral judgment thing....you don't have to go too far to find someone blaming any number of groups for our problems....of course this occurs in many cultures, but I can only really answer for my own!). Sex, single mothers, divorce, abortion, overpopulation, overeducated "elites", horrible schools, gays/lesbians/transfolk, lefties, righties, white, black, brown, christian, atheist, jewish, feminist, and (if you live in NJ and like the governor) teachers and their unions (the "Drug Mules" comment). I've spent this post heartily judging people whose actions and beliefs I disapprove of, so my hands aren't clean. But I'm fascinated by the vitriol coming from right-leaning elements at the moment. I mean, "drug mules"! Come on! And that's nothing - take a look at what Frances Fox Piven has been going through lately. And consider the tenor of the Tea Party, the hysterics it encourages in its followers. (side note: it's now being given facetime on news programs like actual political parties. I'm embarassed for my country!)

So, back to the decadence, the "perverse hate". One of the most popular scripts at the moment is that liberals, feminists, gays, socialists, whatever-it-is-this-week are chipping away at the foundations of decency and culture, upending "traditional" values and institutions, that they hate America, God, law, whatever. I find it interesting that most of the "savage[ness]" I hear doens't come from the left, or left-aligned causes. It tends to come from those fond of wielding their bibles like cudgels (but do they read it?).

So, right now, we have top notes of rage, entitlement, and myopia in the air, and a base note of "us/them" to buttress the theatrics. This is another reason why the ficitonal cultists amuse me so much at the moment. They're off their rockers for a start, they have decided the world as it is needs to go, and their fingers are on the button (or the text) to summon unimaginable destruction. Because they, in their limited worlds, have decided enough's enough.

I doubt Lovecraft could have anticipated the Teabaggers, and their ilk, and I don't know too much of his personal politics (that's coming down the pike, though!), but surely he was satirizing something!

"In making use of the apocalyptic expectation motif Lovecraft achieved much of the same atmosphere of tension and dread that works so well in The Omen. He may have intended "The Call of Cthulhu" as a satire on real apocalyptic faith. As an atheist Lovecraft would surely have found such belief one of the most implausible aspects of religion."(Price)

Well then, maybe he was :)

From the enacted policies to the tenor of rhetoric, I consider broad swathes of my culture enamored with the apocalyptic. There's no other reason I can see for letting so much shit go down in recent years that harms so many people, and that my grandchildren will still be dealing with. This "apocalyptic thinking" sounds a bit histrionic, but if you believe in "punishing" certain groups and you don't want to plan for the future, outside of your own lifetime, you want some grand "reckoning", some dramatic endgame where all the people and stuff in your society you don't like just fall away, leaving the core of people, entities, structures, etc. you like remain.

Sum up?

Apocalyptic lore and literature is rife with ideas of "purification", letting the "rotten" parts fall off. "Purification" scares the shit out of me, because it's been a pretext for so many horrors, and so many smaller-scale "banal" evils, day to day wrongs that should be fixed, but not enough of the proper people care. Now, to come back to the topic, perhaps this is why I'm pretty much devouring Lovecraft lately. It resonates with so much I'm seeing. And it's fun, but that's beside the point right now!

The problem with all the stuff I just bought up, is that (for the adherents) it imagines the annihilation of other people and the saving of their own skins, while Lovecraft's cultists (who put me in mind of right/fundie groups) seem perfectly ok with knowing they're going to be Cthulu-chow, too.

It logically follows that if a giant space octopus-thing is going to take over the world, and if it is so unimaginably old and alien to human beings, then it probably doens't care about you, your life, and so on. So why worship and sacrifice, if you look like a chicken nugget to this thing? At least with the Rapture, or similar beliefs, the chosen get to go to heaven. Their butts are saved by a deity that cares enough to snatch up his yes-men. But Cthulu doens't quite work that way....I still don't see a motivation for the cultists, unless it's all solely for the effect, and the drama of an all-consuming destruction. Which very well may make it sublime. That's probably the whole damn point, but I live for this kind of over-analysis and I am this pedantic, so I'm really getting my money's worth here!

This week's enthusiasms

2011-02-12T15:58:00.001-05:00

As if countless treatises, tracts, and books aren't enough, my 2 cents on the sublime:

Did a small presentation on Burke's "A Philosophical Enquiry..." for class, and I just kind of went crazy with the research!! The theorizing that he started (restarted, technically) on the experience of the sublime just touches upon so many of my bonnet-bees I was worried I'd take over the floor. First, there's the fun of historical investigation - who started talking about "the sublime", how did the word evolve, who was publishing what on aesthetic theory....Then there's the concept itself -how is "sublime" different from beautiful, what may be sublime, and (importantly) who may produce/appreciate sublime art or writing. This is one area I wish we had time to get into. Eventually, somehow, "sublime" because somewhat masculine, eg men could produce art that was sublime, talk about things that were sublime, while women's art (provided it got published/seen) could be "beautiful", usually "pretty". More often than not, it was only the women's appearance that entered into the conversation, so they were relegated (often) to object, able to have but never create or explore the qualities of beauty.

"The Sublime" is often beautiful/terrible, grand in scale...many artists and writers located it in nature (think the Alps, or a roiling seascape) - not just the outdoors, but the *wild* outdoors - men's territory, at least to an 18th-19th century mindset. And yet, there's wonderful examples of sublime outdoors in women's writings. Think the Alps and the Arctic tundra in Frankenstein, or the wild moors in Wuthering Heights.

ArtMagick's Caspar David Friedrich Gallery

As the 19th century progressed, I think the sublime mutated, especially with the approach of Modernism, Futurism. Once more, it became a boy's club - at least as far as I've found. (check out Marinetti's juvenile misogyny in the Futurist Manifesto!) What is it about the overarching, compelling, terrible, seductive experience of the sublime that made it so easy to classify the proper genders, classes, etc. able to appreciate it? This is simply fascinating!

Diversions:

As for the rest of this academic dim sum, I'm (actively) reading

Adam Parkes' Modernism and the Theater of Censorship

This is primarily for a presentation I'm giving on E. E. Cummings' erotic poetry - I wanted to investigate the climate of censorship as he was publishing his raciest stuff (roughly 20s-30s) - and figure out why the censors pretty much left him alone. I suspect they found him too weird to matter :) Which probably pissed him off a little, as it robbed him of a chance to stick it to the man buuuut it means we now have scads of sexy material undamaged by censorship! Aside from all that, Parkes is turning out to be a good read. He really begins at Wilde's trial, and rolls up his sleeves investigating the theoretical objections to Oscar's work and life, tracing the "descendants" of those censors and their thinking into later decades, when they "hassled" (to put it mildly!) Joyce, (Radclyffe) Hall, and others.

Antonio Vignali's La Cazzaria: the Book of the Prick (ed Ian F. Moulton)

Vignali's strictly for fun right now :) It's light, it's funny, it's dirty, dirty, dirty! Moulton's endnotes are fascinating glosses and have lengthened my reading list. In addition to the sex, it's fun commentary on class distinction, sexual identity, and what-could-be-gotten-away-with in 16th century Italy.

and various Lovecraft tales

More happy-fun time reading. Although I'm getting my brain tickled by the similarities between Cthulu mythos and early Christian eschatology (what a fun word). Weeks ago, I asked The Boy "what's the point of the Cthulu cult?" Strictly for effect, the tentacled horrors and the crazy cultists work - but I wanted to overthink this for a minute. What would a character get out of summoning a demon-octopus-thing that would horribly kill it and the whole world? Boy pointed out that it's "the hope that it'll eat you first, so you don't have to deal with it". Time passes, and he emails me this article: "Apocalpytic Expectation in the Call of Cthulu" by "Laban Shrewsbury", writing for "Crypt of Cthulu, perhaps one of the most well-known and longest running literary magazines devoted to Lovecraftian scholarship". That such a thing exists pleases me mightily, but the fact that he did a bit of research for me makes me all mushy :)

Research Nerding:

As is my wont, I background checked "Apocalyptic Expectation", which is listed on the "Crypt" page as copyright Robert M. Price. (whither Shrewsbury? it's a character in "The Trail of Cthulu" RPG). Price's home page, linked off the main Crypt, has him listed as working for the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary (couldn't find that in my handy dept. of Ed accreditation database) but also a fellow with the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the founder/editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism. This journal is affiliated with Drew University, which makes me feel a bit better.

I hate to be an institution snob, and I am positive on the idea of independent scholarship, but I like seeing a known, accredited place somewhere along the chain. Price doens't seem like he's talking from his rear (high praise, eh? but online I have to be skeptical of everything!!**). Rather he seems like a fun, combative, Bible scholar. And he pokes holes in evangelistic tactics, which is always a short path to my good side. Christianity isn't my cup of tea, but I like open inquiry into the Bible itself, as well as everything based off it. So I'll investigate Price more, see what he's done, and if I like what he says. And he's also a massive Lovecraft nerd!

So yeah. This is what I'm doing for fun. YAAAYYYY! (no, seriously, I'm enjoying myself)

**oh would I be embarrassed to have the man read that!!! But my statement must stand - I have a good, if guarded, impression of many things online.

Hell is other people's unfathomable algorithms

2011-01-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

This facebook friend-suggestion gizmo is a barrage of one of my frequent, if lower level fears....face after face I "may" know, that all have some sort of connection to me, but I can't for the life of me remember what that connection is. Is it a friend of a friend? Did they like the same books as me? Did they hit upon some esoteric combination of buzzwords, albums, tags, and random junk that makes the Facebook elves think we'd get alone swimmingly? Did I date them? (god forbid)

Who are these people? And why does it keep suggesting I friend this dude with the umlaut in his name? Apparently we share a mutual friend, one of James' college friends. Is that reason enough to foist him on me?!

"Dear sir - I have no idea who you are or what you're about, but I'm friend-ing you because I like umlauts, and because facebook keeps plugging you at the top of my list. I'm somewhat afraid of new people, but I'm more afraid of facebook, so do me a solid and friend me to keep it happy, ok?"

Such is life at the top of the century....

Talking to myself with pretty pictures

2011-01-30T22:19:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is Monday, and I don't have work or class, so I've got time to actually prepare for things. A symposium next month, a roundtable in April...and as for things closer to me, discussions on gothic literature for Wednesday, and a Joseph Conrad novel for Wednesday. Then I start the whole week over again!

I'm excited about this coming week, especially the Gothic class, as I've only been preparing in one way or another since grade school ;) Gothic literature, art, culture, and more all have a long-term home in my life, not diminishing with more "mature" interests as I once thought they would. (That means I still swoon at flying buttresses and Cure songs, folks).

this quasi-academic inquiry is still undead!

This expands from the 18th-early 19th century novels on the syllabus to All Things Goth. Always had a soft spot for goth kids, esthetics, and so forth. Actually did a fair bit of "research", reading goth sites, boards, and other online ephemera as soon as I realized I really liked wearing black. Since I was just starting my teen years at that point, I thought that this is something I should look into. Not the facepaint and foodcourt kind of goth fashion, but the hand-created costumes and dramatic flairs that *still* seem pretty cool to me.

This was the days long before I realised I could talk back to people online, so I marveled over handmade top hats and petticoats from afar, and frequently consulted Trystan Bass-Dowrie's Gothic Martha Stewart site. Oh, and also the sadly-long-defunct Suffering is Hip 'zine, which, while not declaring goth status, sure seems mordantly funny and weird enough to qualify for me.

I didn't club or party as a teenager - I was fairly bland. And when the 20s started (oh jeepers I can say that now, ugh!) I still didn't do much in the way of typical "scene" stuff. I was just a fan, and off doing my own thing. I did develop a unique fashion sense, but nothing of the theatricality I admire. Mostly I dorked out over the stuff I loved, and was lucky enough to earn some money while going to school to continue to dork out, but with the professional guidance of faculty (official dorks ^_^). The art, art history, cultural history, horror lit, and more that formed my own semi-goth matrix are large parts of my life, and it's served me well. And now that I'm a pretentious grad student (ha!), I can get away with wearing all the black, burgundy, and purple I want, as well as some funky jewelry, and no one bats an eye or thinks I'm a weirdo. That may have more to do with the addition of a certain "crazy cat lady lite" aesthetic in my wardrobe.....eccentric but harmless is what I'm going for, and if it takes fake flowers pinned everywhere and paisley scarves, then so be it!

But wherefore all this Gothtalk, Liz? This is mostly because I'm going down memory lane to unwind, and because I found some high school friends on Facebook and had a nostalgia shot this afternoon. Ahh, high school. Adding as many sword necklaces and dangly earrings to my uniform as I could, reading as much Poe and Anne Rice as possible, and enjoying the warmth of an incredibly nerdy tribe. These were hardly lonely or disaffected years, no more so than your average kid, and I weathered HS pretty well. So why keep up interests that delve into/surround a subculture allegedly "about" alientation, disaffection, solitude, and so forth?

Ehh, I dunno. I don't like labeling myself, so I'm not trying to claim some sort of "cred" here. And this class is neither the first time I've made a formal study of gothic literature, nor is it in any way about the things I was just discussing. I guess I got lost briefly in a series of personal associations :)

Maybe this cropped up because historically "gothic", as a label, has been applied to willfully misunderstood times/works/cultures (eg the "dark ages" stereotype of the Middle Ages), much the same way "goth" is/was used as a label for current social elements. Tho one doens't hear it as much as one used to.....maybe it's cause I'm out of the loop, or maybe it's cause the US has new and different things to prattle about on infotainment segments?

Well, if anyone needs me, I'll be reading Vathek and listening to Misericordia (it's recreated straight from the 14th century, so get your ribbed vaults and plague remedies on, cause that's big-G Gothic, baby!)

Maybe I'll even throw on some eyeliner just to be droll ;-D

GET ME OUT OF HERE!

2011-01-26T16:54:00.001-05:00

See the big red L on the right? The lower one? I'm right above it. A big, fat band of snow and rain is decorating my state right now.....again.....

I understand that the northeast US has very little to complain about, weather-wise, in historical terms. There's much worse, I get it, but I've not seen crap like this in years! And I'm just sick of it!!!

But there's not a damn thing I can do, other than salt the paths I shoveled, then wait for the plows. At least I had the good sense to move my birdfeeders to the front porch so I can more easily tempt my finch and sparrow piggy-birds.

Now it's back to slogging thru a large and dry article, carefully annotating. Ah, me.

Whoohoo!

2011-01-21T17:12:00.000-05:00

Got a pitch accepted for the first departmental grad student symposium....an in-house, please-submit-we-need bodies, accepting-all affair for now, *but* I made it ;)

Gram has no idea what this is, but she seems proud. It's 2/26, so I have quite a few weeks to remind her and explain again just what the hell I'm doing with all these books and papers.

Here we go again!

2011-01-21T14:45:00.000-05:00

A gentleman named Haakon Solaas playing the hardanger fiddle. New favorite instrument, y'all! This sounds like a fairy tale, a woodcut, and a dried sprig of herbs rolled into one. Love it!!

So, the semester has started (one day I'll make an end of this degree!), I've had both new classes, and I've put my mind towards domestic matters even more to balance the work with the rest of my life. Last term, I really pulled things out of the fire, but it was at the expense of a lot. Housework piled up, my shoulders developed semipermanent kinks, I couldn't relax, didn't exercise, and so on. Not good. Not good at all.

I'm setting up the borders even more firmly this time around. Don't want to fall prey to that head-on-a-stick lifestyle that's *still* valorized in grad school. "Oh, I only slept 4 hours last night"..."Well, I only slept two!" Humm....yeah...I'm in love with my studies, and I have definite ideas about what I want to pursue, and how I want to join theory and practice BUT dangit, it's only part of my life! There simply must be time for outside interests, long walks, hikes, chocolate, fresh linens, lattes with friends. All the good things that make life beautiful - good food, good wine, good sex!

**********

Today's doings are quite down to earth - a vet visit for Sir Gobi, then some babysitting so a friend and her husband can have an adult dinner at a quiet restaurant...at the same time...without diaper bags and macaroni and cheese orders splattered across the table. I love watching the kiddo - she's a handful, but so smart and funny!

Yep, there will be a meeting of the Local Ladies' Elmo, Yogurt, and Storybook Society tonight!

In other news, I think I've got a community of sparrows living near my house. I put out a feeder weeks ago, and they've been pigging out. They probably recognize me now, so it's a committed feeding post. I at least deserve to know what species they are ;) James puts his money on finches, but I think they're roly-poly sparrows of some variety. May have to have his mom over here, as the resident armchair birder, to settle the score.

No craftage at this moment, because I simply don't feel it. I've learned to stay away from the studio unless I'm hot on a design. I may get back in this weekend to finish some ornament repair and stringing. I think the stringing can (and should) be done with netflix streaming something long, involved, and amusing.

Till the next time I feel like talking to myself - ciao!

January is a clean month, plenty of room to wander

2011-01-18T15:19:00.000-05:00

Casting about

New Year, new calendar, new snow (check out reports of northeast US weather for updates on *that*), new ideas.

Each year, I try to make a nod towards an older year pattern, positioning my new year closer to the autumn, year-wheel style....but my roots are too close to the Christian liturgical calendar and latecentury US culture. So my new year is firmly in January, right after my birthday :) I start my own year, apparently!

So here's to January, already in its middle. I'm starting a new term tomorrow, and looking forward to many new beginnings. The Boy and I are starting to apartment hunt, I'm looking to change jobs, and I'm seriously considering selling my TV.

One may say an apartment hunt is no time to start shaking up your finances, but for the moment, I'm doing student work, which, while low-paying, is flexible. With any luck, the school itself will have an opening I'm a good fit for, and I can know the joys of tuition remission ;)

That's my ideal - working for my school, even part-time, and working my my degree and my baby CV. Then going home to a cozy little flat full of craft supplies and artwork and batches upon batches of Salsa Chicken!

The deal with The Chicken

The joys of salsa chicken are new in this household. In a fit of inspiration, I simmered chunks of freshly cooked chicken breast in delicious mango-peach salsa (mild, as I can be a weenie), served over cous-cous with a little extra garlic. Melt some cheese on top, and serve with a nice white wine or some lemon/lime water! This is one of the scant two dishes I can produce with routine quality. James and I spent the whole weekend eating it, quibbling over leftovers in the pan, and dodging a certain greedy puppy. I think it's a hit!

The Television

So I've switched to a standing setup for my laptop. I believe in popping up and doing something every 15 minutes, but if I'm standing I'm moving, and if I'm moving, I'm doing away with the remains of the Four Friggin' Christmas Dinners (yeah, 4 in 2 days...oof) that I'm convinced linger somewhere in my system. I don't mind moving it back to the desk if I need to do some protracted typing, but if all i'm doing is reading Joe.My.God. or ooh-ing over Rima Staines' latest work, I should be moving around more.

The next target of my pro fidget campaign is the TV. Not anti-television here, but I watch so little, and I'm not tied to any series, so it's basically a big lump on my dresser. Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, the occasional House Hunters: International, and Bones, comprise my normal viewing, and does the world stop if I miss an ep, watch some out of order, or don't finish an episode? Nahhh....I'm not married to arcs, so I can watch willy-nilly on Netflix for the stuff available there and easily do without the rest. And dvd's work just fine on the computer!

See, if I turn that TV into cash, I can get more book space, and add to the Security Deposit Pig living on top of my filing drawers.

provided it doesn't get eaten first...

Oh, by the way...

2011-01-07T22:43:00.000-05:00

Did I mention how cool my boyfriend's mom is? She gave me *this* for Christmas!

A brand new sewing machine...from the size of the box, I was expecting a behemoth, but this little guy looks sturdy and portable. I haven't had the free time to read and fully set it up yet, but it looks like it's going to be the start of some beautiful crafting :)

Maybe I can now finally make that beefcake apron I've been wanting!

Yippiee kay-yi-yaas courtesy of Jando Fabrics

In other good news, behold the happiest accident I've had in ages:

I was trying to mimic another design I saw somewhere, piecing it together from the finished photos (not for selling, of course! just for me!). I fought with the filigrees and other elements for weeks, when it came to me: listen to the demands of the supplies! I arranged the filigrees on a single plane as opposed to the "basket" I originally wanted, and voila - pretties!

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou...

2011-01-01T21:19:00.001-05:00

...a Twilight Zone marathon, an order of takeout, and my boys! :D

Hello and welcome to 2011! We've finally dug out from the blizzard that hit the northeast and although there's still plenty of snow drifts around, life's beginning to thaw. Right after Christmas, I was snowed in with my boyfriend and grandma. As soon as we could, we went over to check on his mom, who weathered the weather solo (well, with her chihuahua and schnauzer anyway). All of us fared well, but next year, I'm calling her a plow service!!

The adventure continued, but without crafting. I fell prey to some winter blahs that were rectified by shoveling at first, but pop up now and again. Holiday prep work and end-of-semester pushes really wore me out. It paid off - I got A's and made a lovely Christmas dinner for the family, but oh, man, it's been up and down.

Gobi's first real snow. It was soon far too bitter to stay outside and take photos, but there were some very cute scenes of him trying to climb hip-high (human hips) snowdrifts!

Right now, I'm digesting takeout and listening to poor James sneeze and sniffle his way through a New Year's cold, which I'm fairly certain I avoided. Tomorrow, I'm disinfecting the house and washing everything to keep the germs to only one person this season.

The 30th was a high mark, as I attended my first opera! James' mother is a theater/opera aficionado (aficionada?) as well a world-class bargaineer, so she managed to find some very affordable matinée tickets for the Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera. The video below is from an older production, but we did see the same Pappagano, Nathan Gunn:

Magic Flute videos and extras from the Met

We rang in 2011 with a screening of "Labyrinth" with friends, as well as some lovely berry infused vodka. Merriness abounded! I never saw the movie as a kid, and I somewhat regret that, since it was just the sort of fantasy material I lived for when I was younger. Fortunately, we're all big kids in this circle :)

A couple of birds consulting in the pre-blizzard morning.

Even though there's been a lot of highlights, I feel blue. Too much to do followed by sudden down time, hampered by the laziness of being literally snowed in!! No exercise, little daylight, and I'm a horrible couch potato... Since the thaw, I've been fuddling with plants, organizing stuff for the new semester, and hitting up some after-sales with the boy. But....blues are winning out tonight. The mall was depressing - strident adverts and rude people. Family is wearing on me (stresses of the season are testing me and my grandmother something fierce). I'm trying to keep my spirits up but it's harder. Hopefully the new year will feel like it soon as I throw open the windows, air out the linens, do tons of laundry and find a few moments to re-center myself.

Zomg!

2010-12-21T16:31:00.001-05:00

Ok, so in this ongoing project of "talking to myself with pretty pictures" (blogging) I may have mentioned a slight interest in traditions, reinventing, and meshing creative and "mundane" life. A slight interest ;) I also may have related a certain fixation on handcrafted objects, such as Christmas ornaments.

portraits of my ornaments? nahhh...never!

Imagine my delight when my Grandmother agreed to let me restring some 60+ year old glass bead garlands! She's had these things in her collection forever, and we've trimmed them down as years passed and damage has occured. Now, in 2010, I'm looking at them, and while they maintain all the magic they held for me as a kid, they really need to be protected. The string is weak, some beads are broken, sharp edges to catch my clumsy fingers....or shards to fall and entice a curious puppy...

So as Gram finishes her shift at tree trimming, I'll be carefully deconstructing the chains and getting them onto bead boards for re-assembly. Wheeee! Other people hit the eggnog, I hit the craft room - gotta love that holiday hedonism ;) If i'm lucky, there'll even be a Dirty Jobs marathon or something later to drool over as I string.

Ecstasies of Blue!

2010-12-20T11:19:00.000-05:00

Today's theme is blue! Chartres Blue! I'm craving cathedrals, and that glorious color. Chartres has a special place for me - I did a paper on it in high school and fell in love completely. Yes, yes, show me a cathedral I *don't* like, but this one's special to me.

Chartres' Zodiac Window: Capricorn

The masonry alone is enough to make me swoon.....everyone looks at the glass work, and of course I'm digging on that today, but the stone is where my heart is. I grew up on the side of a mountain, and developed an early fascination with medieval things - large expanses of stone make me feel grounded and safe!

SacredDestinations.com: Apse with Flying Buttresses

And I'm also an incurable romantic, heartily susceptible to tracery, arches, verdigris, and moody skies ;) This weekend was pretty artistic all around, with the making of jewelry, Christmas decorating, and catching this by surprise on PBS:

Modernism has started to share the table with medievalism in my house as of late. A fairly successful seminar paper I wrote for a science fiction (!) class caused me to revisit the world of salons, deco, jazz, and doughboys...and naturally more nefarious institutions in the early 20th c. I'm finding a fluency in symbol and mood with this period I would never have thought would be there.

I still prefer the timeless world of gothic style, romanesque, and the like, or their Victorian revivals, but it's novel to deal with Modernism and trace its tendrils into my own time. It's at once amusing and saddening to brush the dust away and read old "futures".

Ahhhhh

2010-12-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

The term's over, my stuff's graded, and I'm back in the studio! Took 2 days to clear it of all the junk that had accumulated and now it's usable again! I celebrated by finishing a project I envisioned long ago: a royal blue dragon-themed set. Here's the necklace laid out on the beadboard. Half of it is blue silk ribbon, the other half the beads.

And here's one of the earrings. It's a real challenge to not keep these for me!

Finally, here's my assistant, still spruce from his pre-Thanksgiving haircut. We went on our usual walk today and discovered a heretofore unsniffed portion of the local park - complete with rustling leaves and a bridge over the creek! Adventure time indeed!

Huh?

2010-12-17T16:13:00.024-05:00

It's so weird to see my own blog as a google result O_o

Even though I understand the logic of this, that I was doing a casual search, just to see what the interwebs regurgitate (books? videos? what?) about this subject, it freaks me out to see this little blog in with "official" writings about caregiving+academic life. Apparently so few people are writing about this particular string of symbols that *I* am deemed a worthy result by some blind string of code somewhere.

Other than that, there's at least 2 books now to come out of this task that I want to own. It's like puppies or beads - just seeing them makes me want to take them home!

Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America - Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Women of academe: outsiders in the sacred grove - Nadya Aisenberg, Mona Harrington

Glenn's book, from the previews on Googlebooks (ahh, what a sketchy academic practice!) is more about the historical and political aspects of caregiving. Perhaps it's too big a tangent, but surely it helps my project somewhat to know how and when salaried workers replaced family, and when the domestic caregiver (angel at the hearth, "true woman") was reified, dislocated, and then re-reified as the "proper" changer of diapers, spooner of mush, and handler of schedules, medicines, and sacrifice.

Aisenberg and Harrington's tome is much older (copyrighted for 1988, but I always add at least 5 years previous to account for inception, drafting, and twiddly little edits on the galleys), but still hair-raising. Logically, I know that things Were Not Always This Good, and that women were expected to be the mothers/lovers, and never the researchers, authorities, or administrators, but good lord my heart went out at a few vignettes: the woman grad student who married another grad, and proceeded to keep house and study for him, while her own books were in a box - moving from place to place, cut off from the academic resources she needed too.

Things have changed (I hope - or I'm blind in my luckiness) but sometimes it staggers me to think how much work had to be done to get to this point (today) which I still consider the primordial era of any workable notion of gender equity.*

The lace of perspectives, the constant fracturing and resplitting of self and symbol is fascinating....women, women caregiving, women caregivers ("free" work) subsumed into masculinized, profit-driven structures, women academics keeping or trading their self-senses, women's work, women's work as burden, women's work as privilege (!), women's academic work as minor key, women's academic work as burgeoning superpower, women's work as "women's", women's work as a "thing" outside gender, unfairly assigned to one gender...my head, it spins!

*Academia is one of the friendlier frontiers for this, I believe - it ain't perfect, but it's a big enough privilege that you can pretty much find good solutions to healthcare, childcare, flexible schedules, etc, etc. than in something less...."enlightened".

It's that time again.

2010-12-14T15:16:00.000-05:00

Every few months I feel the need to shake up my craft room. Because it's closed off (actually a tiny bedroom...no windows!!) it tends to become a catchall. During the busiest parts of the semester, I don't have time to think about creativity, let alone clear and beautify my space. It was horrible before I got in there this morning.

I made a promise to myself to pitch 50 things from it. Then maybe 50 more. I got up to about 44, when I made my way over to the stuffed garbage can, which I think counts for at least 10 things ;) What I really want to do is get some damn space in there, put in some nice lighting, burn a few candles, and make it a lounge area. A haven. Sometimes I need a haven. Especially now with the holiday coming - so much to do!

Half my books are now on the floor in the corner in there (long story), and while I can deal with the piles for now, I want some sort of neatness. Enter LibraryThing, and its android app, which is a barcode scanner+database builder. This is my new toy! I can scan the barcodes of all the books, know what I have, and better organize them for sale. I'll always have "too many" books, but sometimes there's way too many, and I want to try to unload some. The problem is that going thru them manually, I start to read, or recall the circumstances when I bought them...and not much gets done. But if I have a list of titles and tags, perhaps I can be a little more stringent.

So that's that for the moment. I have many cool creative ideas, a little break now, and a rapidly improving space. But I'm pretty damn tired, too. The weekend will bring at least 2 holiday parties, and the housewide decorating, general maintenance, and Tree Raisin' (oh lord). I want a nap, but I can't let myself loaf! Apparently this is how I relax - AAGUGH!

Even though I love winter, I'm feeling a yen for summer! It's hard to remember walks without nipped ears and poor frozen puppy paws!

Ah, well. More photos incoming when I turn the house into a celebration of Winter. Right now I'm going to revel in the Gothicism and pagan echoes of Advent before I set my sights on the sun again :)

Catchup, Falldown

2010-11-17T17:59:00.000-05:00

One day, there will be a word for the post-apologizing-for-the-lack-of-posts, and a similar word for its subgenus, the post-apologizing-and-referencing-stress-or-health-issues-as-the-cause-of-silence.

Yeah, as if anyone was hanging on my every word, or my every silence ;)

I've been pretty fretful lately, but this week I'm more optimistic. I have my next semester's classes locked down, and some interesting academic/work related ideas on the horizon. Also, I registered for the NeMLA 2011 convention, at which I'll be sat at a round table, goading others into responding to my ideas. The topic is caregiving and academia, which, though not exactly scholarly, is damn timely and the source of some of my obsessions. How do you balance the roles of student (instructor, whatever) with your caregiving? Is this possible? Are institutions doing enough (I suspect not) - what more can they do?

It's a cliche that academic life is designed for the single young well-off male. Since cliche's are cliche's for a reason, I have to acknowledge the truth behind this idea. But I'm getting tired of this old saw - since when is the "normal" student anything like that? The "face" of academia, if it can be said to have one (HA!) hasn't been exclusively male/white/upper class for a while. Or has it? I've been immersed in semi-urban/urban campuses, used to rainbow faculty and student bodies. Am I missing something, or are we already in that warm, fuzzy, diversified future? I like to think we are, because I would like to think we don't have to reinvent the wheel and do ABC's level diversity discourse - "some of us are women...some of us are black or brown....some of us are gay...." and so on. Can we please now talk about what unites us?

Tho it's a bit morbid, this is the future, inside the world of higher ed and without. We're already older longer than our ancestors, and when we get sick, we are certainly sicker longer before we heal (if we do). Who gets to give the meds, change the diapers, make the calls, budget the social security, plan the funerals, carry on family traditions? Very often that's women (I think I'm safe in that generalization), but what if those women (like me) are trying to get their place at the table? I can't just ignore the duty, love, and guilt of my own situation and attack my academic work "like a man", as I suspect many of my foremothers had to do in their day. At the same time, I realize that the world cannot revolve around me and my family. So what do I do?

I *know* I'm not the only one having these thoughts. Anyone trying to get a grad degree, work on faculty, etc. has been there. What happens if you have a kid? What happens if your spouse is sick? What happens if your parent passes? What happens....?! This is a real "Here Comes Everybody" issue - caregiving is hardly the province of women (in reality, not sterotype!), not any more than parenting is. So I'll be researching and interrogating as many policies and (good) commentaries I can find between now and April.

Other than that, I'm plugging along at classes, at work, and in general. This has been tough this year - more pressures on the home front - more need to police my boundaries. I'm putting my foot down more in a number of ways and while this is healthy for me, I still have many misgivings about saying "no". No I can't come in on Saturday, I have a paper. No I can't call this company for you right now - I'm on the phone with work. No I can't stay out till umpteen o'clock in the morning. Classic good-girl dilemma, eh?

Aw, Man!

2010-10-23T14:34:00.000-04:00

Looks like Vox went to the great beyond, so now my blogger blog is affiliated with the Hive. Lucky for them, I had been using this one for ages as a part craft blog anyway! To that end, here's my latest creation:

I was throwing together a quick grapevine wreath (aren't those fun and nearly addictive?) and swag for my cinnamon broom when little pumpkin and pinecone fell off some stems I was arranging. I snipped off mates for them from the stems, as well as two leaves for some length, and voila! I believe I'll wear these all over the place and make people wonder about me :)

October Doings

2010-10-10T11:13:00.003-04:00

This year, I'm absolutely insistent on building me-time into my schedule. Not just time with friends and family, but actual dates with myself. Yesterday, I took myself to the Dodge Poetry Festival and had a marvelous time! I attended a couple of panels and saw some of the formal reading, and wandered around the neighborhood for a while. One that really charged me up was "Poetry and Class". I saw Martin Espada, Bob Hicok, and Doriann Laux reading and discussing the intersections of socioeconomic class and poetry. Some of this concerned the perennial difficulties of writing from/about classes that are not "elite", that are seen by others and even themselves as not entitled to a "luxury" like poetry. However, much of it, especially Espada's segments, revolved around the responsibility of the poet, the urgency of telling stories normally left untold - like poetry about work, or poverty, or anything else not in the "gilded lily" camp. Wonderful stuff! This was right up my alley - I often wish we could incorporate more poetry and art into tutoring sessions at work, but there's often not enough time or other resources. Eventually, I'll make that happen!

Next was "Poetry and History" with Kwame Dawes, Rita Dove, and Tyehimba Jess' marvelous panel/reading on poetry concerning historical subjects. Each poet chose African or Black American subjects as well as methods. Dawes invoked incantation from his African and Jamacian roots, Dove invoked the historical rigor of black scholarship with a poem about George Bridgetower, and Jess invoked the syncopation and intricacy of jazz. Jess only read one, but it was a "syncopated sonnet" about the McCoy sisters, and it read like a braid....my heavens, I wish I could've recorded it. The McCoys were conjoined twins, born in the early 1850s, who survived life in slavery to become famous musicians (Their Wiki). The poem Jess created was arranged in layers, with two main columns, read down each side separately, alternating lines, and even up from the bottom, creating a contstant back-and-forth collaboration like the McCoys themselves.

A while after that I hit the NJPAC bar and ended up having a lovely conversation with a lady of a certain age about poetry and economics. On the state of American finances and life, she advised me to "batten down the hatches and don't take out any loans!" It was brief, but quite rich....she, too, is involved with a nonprofit concerned with education and community building. Although we did quite a bit of commiserating about the problems (economic and cultural) plaguing the US, she was quite reassuring - I love to see the "we've been here before, we can get through this with some creativity and strength!" attitude from the "silver set". That's where I want to head....some day I'll be the old lady at the bar with a mini teapot, wearing a funky hat, and dispensing wisdom to kind strangers.....

Bah!

2010-09-01T17:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the deal...I've lost a significant deal of weight in the last couple-a years. This has made my clothes shopping (mis)adventures even harder, since I don't have the frame for tiny sizes, and I'm rapidly sliding out of plus sizes. And, with current fashion trends, the "garlic bulb" silhouette and overpriced cheapy-chintzy tunics are in style. I refuse!

Today, I spun by Sears, which netted me a couple clearance tops, and a flash of aggravation in the pants department (dont' get me started). BUT - the thing that kept me sane was this little gem:

"Jewelry always fits!"

More goodies!

2010-08-31T18:45:00.000-04:00

Today's doings are posted at Hugs, Cupcakes, and Pie, the craft blog, to keep the amount of photos on here manageable :) There are many delights!

Cookies, Crafting, and yes, more fluffbutt

2010-08-30T12:14:00.001-04:00

Today I'm fully recovered from the first RenFaire I've done in *years*! I have no idea how I used to be able to open and close the things....I was beat! So, a good 48 hours later, I'm back on track, and I feel like doing things! I decided to make shortbread - above are the little "patties" I made instead of proper cookies. We have no parchment paper to line proper baking sheets, so I used cupcake pans instead. Makes everything cuter.

A little someone snuffling around, hoping for crumbs...

The finished product! A shortbread cookie with cinnamon, sugar and crushed almond/walnut mix. They're delicious!

This one was a bit overdue, my St. Lucia pendant. I've been dying to do this for ages, and last month I had the leftover cash to order a couple of dolls' eyes (from Soft Glass Eyes) to make this happen! i'm very pleased with the piece, but I may add some more charms here and there, especially to the chain (too plain to photograph). Maybe some old rosary bits or saint medals - something weathered and tarnished. Until then, it's a beautiful addition to the collection, and I'm inclined to keep it!

How to experiment with Omni-Gel

2010-08-23T18:57:00.000-04:00

Get plain white candle ready.

Print and prepare vintage beefcake image! (source: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/vintage-beefcake)

Photograph Shih Tzu during drying intervals

Naked men! The transfer came out really light, and slightly pink....I don't mind, but next time I'll get a more boldly colored source image....

Liz’s Bookshelf – Mid-August Meanderings

2010-08-20T15:23:00.003-04:00

I work (more or less) in a library. A big, beautiful one, with a long history, with Victorian architectural details, stained glass (if you know to look up at the skylight!) and marble stairs. It houses a wonderful collection, that gets more and more awesome the higher you go, into the 3rd floor/6th stack, with a high roof like a barn and creaky, too-beat-up to be fashionable hardwood floors. The front lobby has various nooks and tables with the newer offerings, slick plastic covers and bright colors to draw in the supposedly lazy reading public. it's like a candy and antique store in one! So here are two of the items in top rotation on my reading list, the subjects being Provence (surprise!) and techno-life...

A Year in Provence

Last week, my lunch hour wanderlust took me to the top stacks to find Peter Mayle’s A Year In Provence, and a few other titles devoted to the region. I’ve been getting further into lavender recently, and started to grow some, which of course made me research it, and you can’t learn about the plant without learning about Provence. I’m in love! I’m aware of the polish and filters applied to travel writing, and the swift changes in social climates (does local character exist anymore in our supposedly “global world”? did it ever?), as well as the dreaded status of “tourist”, but Oh - mushrooms, wine, Artisan cheeses, sunlight, fields of sunflowers! I saw Mayle’s name come up a lot in my superficial searches, so I figured he’d be a good place to start.

This morning on my commute in, I began A Year and I’m thoroughly enjoying my time with the author and his wife, “settling in” along with them month by month. This is my fun reading for the time being. I’m not having any deep philosophical thoughts or intellectual battles with it – I’m (mentally) hunkered down by the fireplace, waiting for the Mistral to exhaust itself*, a glass of something fruity and fermented in my chilly hands.

Hamlet’s Blackberry

     I’m a sucker for lifestyle books. This causes me some shame to admit. I’m a grad student, an English major – I should be quoting Donne and taking long walks in the woods instead of poring over pop-psych books on how we’re “disconnected” and “yearning”. Ah, well, I’ll never live up completely to either the tweed stereotype, or the self-helping suburbanite one. So I get the best of both worlds, whether its entertaining ideas or looking down my nose at them!

     When it comes to Hamlet’s Blackberry by William Powers, I’m not sure what to think. I just picked this thing up, and as of writing this, I have not checked it out, and will not start reading it till then. The subtitle is “a practical philosophy for building a good life in the digital age”. Oh, I thought, Mr. Powers, I see what you’re doing – you’re referencing Shakespeare (and one of his most famously weighty plays at that), and by extension all things “cultural” and longstanding, placing them in sharp (cheap) contrast with the very emblem of wired life, the ‘berry.

     You’re tugging on the contemporary anxiety about living substantive lives, and the near-eroticized cycle of obsession and disgust with all things vapid, digital, web 2.0, millennial, and taggable. We’re *supposed* to be slaves to our devices, *supposed* to be unable to stop posting our every unedited thought and activity, *supposed* to be too anxious to spend an hour to ourselves. HA! I am suspicious of these memes and I am here, standing in the lobby, holding your book, ready to argue with you! En garde, sir!

     Except, I’m not sure how much I’ll actually be disagreeing. I will credit the core ideas of our early 2000s memes regarding digital obsession and connectivity/disconnect, ideas which it seems Powers will be exploring. One thing that leaves me (cautiously) optimistic is the jacket flap, which declares that the book provides “an everyday philosophy for life with screens…a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years”. Another is the table of contents, wherein I find headings such as “Little Mirrors: Gutenberg and the Business of Inwardness”, “Inventing Your Life: Ben Franklin on Positive Rituals”, and (cutely) “Disconnectopia: The Internet Sabbath”.

     Even with all that said, I refuse to fall into a tizzy over the ideas that vapid tweets, posts, and sites exist, crying about the end of culture every time someone posts something about their lunch (which many “disconnect-happy” tracts I come across do). Hell, look at what I’m doing now – this *is* utterly self-absorbed, likely to reach no eyes but my own, even if I write like I’m talking to someone. I’ve made my peace with that – at least it’s got content I tell myself – at least it’s not a mere aggregation of links. So I’m on the lookout for doom-ridden pop-prophecies about alienation, depression, and the erosion of identity into “profiles”. I’ll be watching you, Mr. Powers!

     Before I close this, let me just say what and interesting position I’m in. Here I am, of the generation, the resources, and the mindset to live “wired”, and yet I can bite the cable that connects me (oh was that ever a stinker! ;) ). I can indulge in these services and critique them – as well I should – but its tickling my brain a little. Is connectivity good for me, but not for others? There are people and “performances” that I’d like to kick offline, so I don’t have to hear about them (one gets bombarded with the flotsam of pop culture even if one tries to ignore it), but I can post on my little blog about thoughts and crafts, and put pictures of my dog and the biscuits I bake on Facebook and still look down my nose at the people spilling their every bleeding thought and action online?

     You know what, yes. Yes I can. I’m going to champion mindfulness and moderation here. Obviously I enjoy these things, and I use them frequently, and yet I can choose not just how much of “me” but specifically what parts of “me” go out there. I reserve a modicum of snobbery, just enough as a “quality control” on that which I watch, read, discuss, et cetera. So that’s that! I’ll post more when I read the dang thing.

Ta!

*Mayle’s book goes month by month, and I’m still in February. Apparently, the Provence region is prone to a wicked blast of Siberian (!) winds called the “Mistral”, which bring freezing temps and blankets of snow. At least they did in 1989 when the Mayles set up housekeeping – with things now, who knows!

Transition, Anticipation

2010-08-18T19:53:00.000-04:00

As a grad student, my life is still run on academic time. At the start of a new semester, there’s a push to reflect, organize, prepare….especially for the fall. This has been a lovely summer overall, and now I feel the need to prepare myself for September. It may be premature, but this is work I like to do every year. So where am I left at the close of this season? I keep thinking of things from my childhood autumns.

Autumn. One of my lost seasons. Perhaps it’s nostalgia-goggles, but I recall, as a kid, a prolonged transition from heat to cool - bright and lazy to crisp and quick - over the course of several weeks. I was able to smell leaves, and that special morning chill. We’d go apple picking and I loved to stick my head in bins of apples, breathing deep. There are other smells and other scenes, too: cinnamon in the kitchen, shiny books and pencils, light sweaters in the mornings and an extra blanket at night.

But now I’m a woman. It’s up to me to create the sensory patterns I treasured when I was little, as well as new. I have to author my own world, and be the “inventor of my own tradition” (Sophe Lux lyric!). I’ve made a glorious summer, finally breaking the pattern of warm-weather misery the season used to bring. I feel so good and whole, even when there’s a problem. I’m not without moods, but I feel like I’m bouncing back better. Would’ve been nice to bounce back with more money in my pocket, but I’m alright. So, what am I going to do to craft a beautiful Autumn, and plan for a similar Winter? What did I do this season that made it so different?

This summer I consciously stopped. I devoted time to myself, to my environment. Sometime mid-July I suddenly started cooking and baking. Lately, I’ve been cooking every day, whether it’s a simple omelette for lunch or an involved dinner. (“Involved” is relative here - I barely cooked at all before!). I had a piece of dark chocolate every day, a glass of wine a couple times a week, stopped “working out” and simply moved more (That paid off well – I lost a few). Developed a routine with the dog, with my plants, touched nothing academic, and started heading to bed around 9:30. And I managed a hot bath nearly every day. Even though there have been a few curveballs, I really feel like I’ve been to a spa. I feel great, look good, and have become better acquainted with myself.

Now, looking forward, what can I include that will keep me mindful of the season, of my responsibilities, and my self? Obviously, the cooking and the baths, the wine and rest will stay. But I want a small ritual. Perhaps a candle every night, some cinnamon simmering on the stove – scent seems to move me most. Décor is no problem – I keep a stock of seasonal items and rotate often. I have the physical things down pat, but I need something more…

Webster’s Unabridged tells me that autumn is the season of fullness, the very beginning of decline. I reject “decline” for its negativity, and prefer “transition”. The tendency to view an end as a “bad thing” keeps annoying me. The year progresses and things close, other things open, and we keep going round and round. Give me a year wheel rather than this straight, strict calendar!

Viewing fall as a “decline” necessitates viewing winter as a problem. Sometimes it is. I live in a more temperate region, and I’m not dependent on agriculture, but I will not say cold and rough weather is all sweetness and snowflakes. But for me, in my environment, it’s an inconvenience at worst. I happen to like the season – I’m a winter baby (Jan. 3)! Anyone who thinks it’s a dead season is looking at it the wrong way. Dormant is not dead, and dead is not forever. I love knowing that under the snow, and deep underground, little plants are biding their time, or the birds are on “vacation”, or the half wild cats out back are battening down their kitty hatches. I like knowing that I’ll be in a cocoon of warmth, with the choice of running out my door for a quick hit of the dramatic weather changes.

Back to fall, then. Preparation, organization, and anticipation. Squirrels gathering nuts and all. Harvest. Bounty. Abundance. Cornucopia. Isn’t it great how all these late-summer early fall words really work out the mouth? And they have wonderful connotations of agriculture. That’s all very picturesque, but part of bringing the harvest in and preparing for the lean months is taking stock. It’s not just a matter of strewing my home with leaves and pinecones. What can I take stock of?

I have a chair-ful of donation-clothes in my craft room that has been sitting there for an embarrassing period of time. I missed the last clothing drive at my family’s parish and they’ve just sat there, piled to the heavens. It’s time. That’s part one of my close-of-summer, coming-of-fall ritual: donation. This year it’ll be clothes and shoes, and I’ll figure out next year when it comes.

Part two: literally taking stock. I’ve been hearing variations on “count your blessings” a lot lately, so I’m going to do just that. September 1, I’m going to do what I have to do, and when I get a free (quiet) moment, I’m going to open a window, light a candle, and literally make a list of all the blessings in my life. And if I have time, I’ll decorate it. It will go in a special place, not tucked in a journal, but some little box or drawer. A time capsule of gratitude and joy.

That sounds like a plan. I actually can’t wait now! I have a small anxiety at starting new traditions, half-afraid I’ll get busy with daily concerns and abandon them instead of nurturing the ideas and the processes. But something tells me this will be different. I’m more in charge of my life now, and it’s time for deeper things. And it’s a great excuse to burn a candle and decorate something!

Sculpture Sunday

2010-08-16T15:08:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, James and I had an impromptu date - we went to the Grounds for Sculpture so he could knock out a quick museum paper for an art class, and so we could have a mutual respite from a pretty rough week. The admission was pretty reasonable ($12 per) but no student discount for those over 17...ah, well. We had a wonderful afternoon, frolicking among the art, and getting drizzled on. Our part of NJ has been having a rainy fit lately, but I like moody overcast skies, especially if I have to be under them for long periods of time!

Below the lovely lady in the photo is the link to the picasa album:

Grounds For Sculpture album

After that, there was a much-needed dinner at a favorite diner and some cuddling with the resident shih tzu:


Aggressively Cute!

And that was the close of the day. We both needed that. Things have been rough, but with patches of sunshine....Earlier in the weekend, I saw "Eat, Pray, Love" with a friend - we left the menfolk at home and had a ladies' night out - all the better to swoon over food, clothes, and beach hunks! It's not normally my cup of tea, but it was a fun, frilly fantasy, and we (of course) had the loveliest dinner after. And now, for any US readers - if you're at a Macaroni Grill (at least on the east coast) you *must* have the lemon passion cake for dessert. This is not up for debate!

At this point, I'm feeling ready for fall. It's been a lovely summer, warts and all, but I feel the need for a new season coming very slowly to the edges of my awareness. This time I want fall to stay for a while. Lately, in NJ, we seem to have bake-or-freeze weather, and I miss the gentle transitions of Spring and Fall. So, whether or not I get my meteorological wish, *I* will have my own private autumn, with cinnamon on everything, and a woodsy palette for my clothes, and candles sprinkled round the house. Yes, it's frilly and froofy, I know, but I'm in that kind of mood lately :)

Plants and new crafting

2010-08-08T21:04:00.000-04:00

Oh, it's been a great weekend. Went to the shore with friends, slept in, went plant shopping...great way to ease into Monday.

Thanks to an end of season sale, I have a small ivy for my plant rack - it still needs a pretty pot, but I'm holding out for one I really like.

From the left is my peony, then an angelonia (one of two - the other's awaiting more topsoil), rosemary, and celosia. They may eventually be repotted, if I can find a large planter I really like. Plastic ain't my speed, but it'll do for now.

Great news on the seedling front! I have about 7 lavender sprouts! So excited!!!! And the herb garden is coming along nicely:

I have no idea what these herblings are yet, since I forgot to label. Half the fun is waiting to see some recognizeable plants.

Lastly, there is a step by step on my latest attempt to Frenchily decorate my bathroom on a shoestring:

Frenchifying My Loo

Today's Doings

2010-08-02T13:37:00.000-04:00

What a glorious weekend!

2010-08-01T20:33:00.000-04:00

Saturday I went to the Lilith Fair, had a delicious and relaxed Thai dinner, curled up with the beau after....Slept late today, cooked a nice lunch with him, and went plant shopping. Beautiful!

To date , I now have a peony (squee!), one of those little window herb gardens, a tiny "lemon button" fern, and two celosia plants.

Hopefully, these will all flourish, as I'm trying to develop a green thumb. I've had success with basil/parsely and such in the past, as well as string beans, but I have managed to kill cacti. We shall see. Either way, it's fun!

Oh my goodness....

2010-07-30T09:21:00.002-04:00

All yesterday, I thought it was Friday, and acted accordingly. Noone noticed, so noone corrected me, until I come home and look at the newspaper I didn't read that morning. I felt like a fool, but I have a whole extra day now! Whoohoo!

Recent Work

2010-07-15T14:33:00.001-04:00

This is the album where I'll be dumping this month's goodies before the "laborious" etsy process. There's reprints of a couple pieces I've already posted - the new ones are for show. Also, there's images of my "keepies" so I can toot my own horn some more ;) The link's below the photo

July's Jewelry

July's Tinkerings!

2010-07-09T10:37:00.002-04:00

I think I'll be greedy and keep the necklace! The big earrings on the blue bottle are already mine - "crazy quilt" earrings. I think I'll do a shorter/lighter version to sell because they're so fun.

Illiterate America by Jonathan Kozol

2010-06-29T12:41:00.000-04:00

I’m pouring through IA and I’ve reached the end of part one. I should not be reading this at work as it’s not helping my spirits. I’m bothered. I should be bothered. Many should be bothered.

Kozol published this in 1985, and, minus a few administrative changes and statistic adjustments, I feel like I’m reading something published last week. The problems he’s identified in here are still there, still at the same pitch they were 25 years ago. How the hell is this possible?

At the beginning of ch. 8 (in the hellfire-and-brimstone section of the book), Kozol discusses a 1981 cut to school funding by Regan, and describes the administration’s emphasis on “state and local, volunteer and private-sector obligations” as remedies. A bullet list of problems with this gem comes next, and those range from “overcrowded classrooms, teacher layoffs, and the other crises that accompany financial cutbacks” to tenuously financed corporations to exhausted, criminally under-funded libraries. These are the same problems and talking points. 25 years later and absolutely nothing has changed. I’m sure there have been small victories – successful volunteers, the countless “little” moments of joy as individual learners get that spark and start building. But no massive push? No formal actions? I’m familiar with the usual buffet of organizations, initiatives, campaigns, acronyms, politicking, and slick brochures designed to address the issue – but how much is talk? Have I missed anything? Someone please tell me my vision is clouded, that I’m ignoring some bigtime, well-funded, well-staffed movement on the part of literacy advocacy. Please tell me it’s not all just gate-fold pamphlets and posters of celebrities carefully posing with books.

Early on, Kozol rails against the “comfortable detachment” (19) the fully literate employ when they turn their thoughts to the problems of illiteracy. He speaks of apathy on the part of people unaffiliated with literacy advocacy, as well hinting darkly at the inherent racism/class-ism that allows the crisis to flourish. Here and there he even tackles the benignly misguided tactics or exhaustion of well-meaning advocates and volunteers. But I’m overwhelmed. I feel like shouting “I know all this! I see it every day I’m here, and I’ve barely got my toes in this water! Stop telling me!”. I think that deluge is the point, though.

One thing that concerns me about that “deluge” tactic, though, is the fact that its too radical. If your opinions match his, even somewhat, all this is doing is confirming. Whether that confirmation is shared fears, anger, or hope doesn’t matter. If you agree, you can’t agree *more* at the end of part one. If you disagree with Kozol, however, all this is doing is feeding vulgar fantasies about people of low literacy: “oh yes, they are powerless, yes they are ignorant, lookit that, they really don’t have a clue…”. If you’re inclined to apply all the blame to the low-lit people themselves, this is like a cheap thrill for you!

Issues with the first half

Kozol’s obviously a crusader, and the world needs those. But I really think that palpable changes have to be finessed (although, like K, I fear the morass of politicking and inevitable pollution of purpose with personal agendas). I can’t run up to city hall, or the White House and go “what the hell is wrong with you, don’t you know what’s going on out here?” because (a) they do know and (b) my outrage and others’ isn’t reason enough to care.

It may sound too docile, but I’m in favor of “bribing” those with the power and resources to get them to pour some of that into our pot. Want to bring a business to the area? Want to move more product? Want more income from it all? Well you can’t do that if a chunk of your potential customers can’t read/access/find a use for your thing or service. Sink some regularly-donated dough into creating the kind of market you’re looking for.

The Starbucks Solution

Around Christmas, I spied a new Starbucks in the area, and complained to a friend that works here. Now, I like Starbucks, and yes, I will patronize it, but I don’t necessarily want to see one on every damn corner – I’d like a few mom-n-pop’s as an alternative. She surprised me with a retort to my groaning – Starbucks’ is a sign that the area’s coming up, since you don’t go there for the coffee, you go there for the name, for the atmosphere. Name and Atmosphere are very important commodities for a city that’s trying to rebuild its reputation. I hadn’t considered it that way before, so I was intrigued by her perspective.

Later on, I got in a discussion about coffee with one of my students and I mentioned that exchange. He confessed to me he didn’t know what to do in a Starbucks, what to order and how. It wasn’t just a literacy question – he can read menus. This was a lack of experience with the Name and Atmosphere. A Latte, for instance = café con leche, which many know = coffee and milk….which he orders all the time at Dunkin Donuts and makes in our office in the winter months.

Anyway, if I was opening a Starbucks, I’d want to make sure that the people in the area surrounding my location knew what to do with me. Are they curious enough to try new flavors, mixes, and concoctions? Are they savvy enough to decode the pretentious “grande/venti” business? Are they willing to spend a few moments in my store and look at a CD, a stuffed animal, an overpriced waterbottle? Or will they get the most familiar thing and scurry away?

Our local Starbucks is doubtlessly catering to the student demographic (it’s near 2 uni’s and a county college). Ok, pretty sound – it’s a safe bet that a 20-something will want to run around clutching one of those ubiquitous cups (God knows I do!). We will also (most likely) come to the place not just for a quick fix but to study, date, chill...

But us students are all temporary – local residents are the customers you really need for this, or for any business. Literate populations bring up business, are able to participate fully in civic life, travel more, bring in new, fresh, and exciting ideas/things/customs, and promote continued high-literacy behavior like that…investing in adult literacy seems like a sensible thing to do. Yes, it’s the *right* thing to do, but if you have fistfuls of cash, you want business sense rather than altruism. I’d rather not wait for altruism alone – I want an “in the meantime” to tide us over until the machinery of local, state, and federal governing bodies get it through their thick heads that improving the literacy of their populace is not just “nice” but an absolute necessity.

Crafty Thoughts

2010-06-18T09:43:00.000-04:00

I want to learn to use (play, control, ???) marionettes. Yep, those little stringed puppets. And then I want a harp to play with. And I want to make fabric roses and things with ostrich feathers, and relearn soldering and basic metalwork.

What I might do instead (at least until I can afford all that) is to do a "Lover's Eye" brooch, a la Ulla Milbraith:

Her old post about the pins

It'd be so cool to be on the west coast and sign up for one of her classes! Even though her posting has dropped off lately, I'm still a big fan. Looking though her old lessons and previews, it seems she never has a bad idea. Sure, there's some elements I'd change here and there, but I'm never bored with her stuff.

Similarly inspiring are the ladies of Ornamentea. Again, they and their wonderful classes are too far away from me. How about some crafty ladies in the Northeast?!

Either way, it's off to the "home spa" for me. It's going to be a long day...

Fun things Happen when the Chronicle unlocks its premium articles

2010-06-15T09:42:00.001-04:00

I see its headline in a mouse-sized email on my phone...I go to the Chronicle's site. It's locked. Premium content. Damnit. But I discover all I have to do is bide my time! All the Dead are Vampires

Whoohoo! Have I mentioned how much I love icky monsters? Vampires, zombies, and so forth (never really got into werewolves tho) fascinate me. And here's a musing on the appeal of vampires that doens't rail against Twilight, bemoaning the un-death of the figure. Michael Sims offers a few personal recollections and musings on the subject. He feels the appeal is not so much the relatively modern sex, but instead the "classic edition" vampire, the clotted, foul, and ravenous beast of folklore and its resemblance to a decaying corpse. Historically, dead bodies had a hard time staying interred:

"Few bodies seemed to rest peacefully even in the ground. Often people in the 18th century had an opportunity not only to see corpses but also to glimpse them again after they were buried. Urban cemeteries were densely overcrowded, sometimes with the dead stacked several graves deep, causing horrific spillage during floods or earthquakes..."

He cites public torture, execution, ravaging plagues and so on as reasons we were a hell of a lot closer to death and the process of rot than now. Since embalming and the growth of funeral industries, in America alone I bet we have many people who have never seen a freshly dead body. What we get (if at all) is the embalmed, prepared, and carefully guarded artifact, soon to be locked in a worm-proof casket and buried.

This is not to poo-pooh the idea of preservation, since often families have to be gathered from miles away for services, and who wants decay to begin while they wait? It's probably healthier, too, to head off the messy business of rot while people are still required to touch/be near the body. I still think we've lost something, though. Even with all of this. Funerals are of course for the living, but we're missing memento mori that I really think we need, to process the realization that bodies stop working through age, disease, violence, etc. and so will ours.

Anyway, the article was apparently spurred by a book Sims was given to edit, titled Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories. It's coming out this month and I can't wait to get my mitts on it!

I've done my thinking for the day!

2010-06-14T18:33:00.002-04:00

Link to my alter ego, which is a lot like my normal one:

Good Reads

Go forth and enjoy! Good Reads is my "homework" - my fun work will be either cracking into Always On: Language in and Online and Mobile World by Naomi S. Baron, or something fictional. Depends on what the dog lets me finish :)

My Familiar, Gobi

Things I've read this month

2010-06-12T12:13:00.000-04:00

Dirty Jobs is on (woof), the four footed furry kid is napping (awww), and I have a moment to talk to myself about what I've been reading.

Item the first, Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude M. Steele.
Norton Writeup
Harvard's Project Implicit Test

This one attracted me first by the title, a nod to Brent Staples' youthful method of neutralizing racial fear when he was a student. When walking alone in the evening, in casual clothes, the young Staples realized his mere presence scared the insulated white residents of his area. He started whistling Vivaldi, among other "non-thuggish" music to put them at ease. This always struck me, and troubled on a number of levels. Granted, this was a while ago, and perhaps it was an excessively prissy community, but the sense of a young black man always being *that* first and never just a man became clear. Also, the fear of the white people being so deep they read a mere presence as a threat. Imagine living your life like that - in either position. Logically, I know that was and still is a reality, but it never ceases to amaze me.

So, I took this home and ripped through it. Steele, being a professor, seems to relish relating every detail of his sociological/psychological experiments. I admit the explanations of the methods were a little dull for me ("Come on, let's see the results! Who did or said what?") but I recognize the importance of his dwelling on "lab" details. What he's discussing here, the myriad obstacles set up by racial stereotypes, is often heady, sometimes abstract, consisting of several layers of mindgames played among groups or in the individual's own skull. So, to give this sort of thing "weight", especially for audiences unacquainted with the nature of psychology/sociology, Steele and his cohorts needed to test rigorously. And test they did. So I plodded through some passages and kept my eyes on the larger message when he had a technical moment.

What I truly relished in this book was Steele's suggestion for applying the insights gained from his research. At work, I'm intent on not just practicing literacy skills, but doing my own tiny part to break down the walls of stereotypes that prevent the multilayered, inquisitive, inclusive attitudes that actually mark a literate individual. The fact that I am a chirpy white child and my students are older people of color neither escapes me, nor rules my interactions. I can put the colors and the baggage aside when needed, but can my students? And how does that impact their quest and my job?

Steele calls for "interdependent, communal learning to mitigate stereotype threat" (102), to counteract the wagon-circling tendencies of some minority (racial, gender, etc. "minority") students which prevents them from fully availing themselves of resources and the nebulous-but-important sense of belonging in that particular place. That's not just warm fuzzies - Steele points out, supplemented with the next quote, that the reality that an individual's sense of belonging builds/enriches social connection with others, and "opportunity travels along the synapses of these social networks" (Lowry 196). Should opportunities be based on "who you know"? I'm not sure. We all support people we think of as our allies - that's natural - but when it gets carried away it's not just supporting allies, it's screwing over non-allies. And there's your problem. Steele, by advocating increased community in make-or-break social settings, is asking the minority students to step up despite cultural "programming", and nonminority students to get out of their ruts. Lucky he said this, because pushing the former and never mentioning the latter is a quick way to get me to disregard your arguments, no matter how much they orginally appealed. It should not be the exclusive task of the "other" to do all the community-building, nor is it the "majority"'s job to chase people unwilling to be involved.

Since none of our hands are clean in this (goodness that's negative!), we are all charged to be more conscious and diverse. Should be easy enough on an interpersonal level - Discounting the rabidly racist outliers, I'd bet most people discomfited with "mixing" would be fine if they gave it a shot. (people tend to hate groups, not people). But institutional changes will take so much effort and patience. Making sure that structures, materials, practices, etc. are mindful without falling into the traps of paranoia or "X-blindness" (wherein the racist/sexist/etc. doth protest too much) is crucial to truly reshaping norms. I truly doubt we'll ever be "postracial", but actual diversity and conscious exposure *** among groups socially, academically, and professionally is the gradual, comprehensive solution to the tiny tensions that pile up and pile up over the years, eating away at the soul.

All in all, I loved Steele's work, and look forward to more! I'm not sure exactly what I can apply in my tutoring, as his solutions are more suited to formal education, but it was inspiring and gently provocative - just the way I like my non-fiction!

***not the tokenism, race-tourism-"ooh look at us, we're eating chicken and saying y'all too!" nonsense...and for the record, also no self-limiting "stuff white people like" business, either! It cheapens all of us, really.

Item the second, the "Death and Life of the Book Review" by John Palattella in the latest Nation

Palattella article

As much as I love a good grouching, I remain suspicious at the numerous "death of the X" articles and rants that cross my gaze. Palattella's on target here, though, because book reviews are hard to come by. The ones in my local paper have shrunk to blurbs (as has the paper), and apparently the larger publications' reviews are suffering, too. Amazon "reviews" are not, and god knows what you get when you google.

Palattella points out that "information has never been stable", and each age has bemoaned the death of its intellectual activity when looking at incoming technology. People have been bewildered, worried, and cranky before. Papers have never been bastions of serious and rational discourse we think they were (they had to make a buck, too!). He excerpts from Anthony Grafton's "Codex in Crisis" to illuminate: '"the world of writing has not so much been transformed' by the web as restored to a ghostly, hyperactive version of the newspaper world of the early twentieth century".

He insists that the internet itself is not the reason book reviews are declining in amount (printed) and apparently quality (online). His culprit is print media's poor response to "new information ecologies" and their dash to capitalize on the mythic benefits of exposure and linkage. Exposed, linked, and crossposted nonsense is still nonsense. Palattella also blames the "culture of free" (I love his phrases!) which denigrates the positions of writers, editors, etc. and chases the qualified people away from the arenas (newspapers, mags, the like) that they would have flourished in, had they been able to make a damn living at their job. Reviews have become "content" - filler and fluff, relegated to the imaginary tweed crowd, of no import to the "average" person. (Sidebar: I'd love to meet an actual "average person" one day, since I've heard so much about this picky, demanding, everywhere-and-nowhere individual)

Another point to raise - Palattella's remark that"speed is king". Quickly exposed-linked-posted-and so on nonsense is still nonsense, just moving faster. I don't think that we're going to abandon the instant gratification and grazing behavior that online reading seems to encourage, but I believe it is going to be more balanced as tech-literacy education hits the schools and the great American living room. Palattella's solution is to soldier on, keep reviewing, keep striving for quality and intellectual appeal. Great, but not enough. Learning (re-learning?) how to slow down, read, retain, evaluate and argue is crucial, especially for us kiddos.

And that's about it! It's time for lunch, and home-spa recipie preparation. I'll be blogging the latter later!

What's the Plan?

2010-05-31T09:28:00.000-04:00

I got up at seven on the dot this morning, and stumbled off for my morning routine. The last part of that was getting the paper inside and the coffeepot perking. This has to be a better day than yesterday. I've got the windows wide open, a gorgeous day, and a general idea of what I want to accomplish, since apparently I have to have set activities or I go loopy.

Anyway, I go for the op-ed section in my local paper and I find a joint article between a rabbi and imam about promoting peace and (as I inferred) general civility in Newark. (Link coming later- I don't think it's hit the paper's site yet).

Ok, I'm all for it, and I have a soft spot for interfaith initiatives and such, but one of the main things they cited *after* their desire to decrease violence was a trashy billboard advertising jeans. I never saw the thing, but apparently it was pretty naughty so it was taken down. Ok, fine - I find billboards more offensive than sexual advertisement, but I concede (no, I live by the idea) that there is a time and place for everything. A busy street with kids too young to realistically process sexual adverts is not the place for your sauciness!

But why bring this up in the context of violence in the city? Sure, a common level of decency and privacy, but is that really "the problem"? I don't live in Newark, and I've never lived in a large city, but I believe I have a bit of common sense about me when it comes to large collections of humans living cheek by jowl. No billboard is to blame. No commercial. No magazine. If you are concerned about violence and the attendant despair in your locale, there are far more deep-set causes to blame.

Criticize any big pockets giving schools the shaft, making actual education a low priority, thereby limiting the options and even the emotional life of children. Criticize the racism and class-ism that keeps businesses and families out of the area*. Criticize the betes noir of our species - greed, waste, apathy. Criticize pervasive, invasive advertising if you want - the manufactured needs, the creepy targeting, the artificial intimacy of brand/product/consumer group. But why target the sexual content?

Sure, I thought, they're religious, leaders of two ancient Abrahamic faiths. Abrahamic faiths, despite any affection I may have for their individual practitioners, are notoriously unhealthy with sexuality. Yes, unhealthy. I can't dress that up any nicer and still get my idea across.

It's a small thing, perhaps. A small article in a small paper about what is (somehow!) a small town, despite the metropolis you see in news broadcasts. But this little instance of seizing on sex, even a tacky use of sex, as contributing to "the problem" of violence angers me. The sex in that billboard is not the issue here. It is a distraction that is patently easy to get people riled up over, and, if you're not careful, it is a highly efficient tool to impose your own morals on other people to the extent that you damage their lives and psyches. Blaming sexuality or sexual content instead of the context over and over makes it far too simple to conflate the two and denigrate sexuality itself. And once you start doing that, you make it easier to do all number of things. They don't have to be big, flashy, "oppression" style activities - but simple, subtle things. Cover, deny, obfuscate, forbid - deny the body, deny the possibilities for pleasure and action, deny the knowledge of tools to keep it safe, instill shame, and so forth. These men are hardly advocating some morality crusade, but lines of thought like this (one of several in the article) contribute to a culture of shame surrounding bodies and sex that has real effects. Whether its one person's private torment or a grand gesture against, say, teaching teenagers to use condoms - it matters.

I've left the original article here. I'm speaking in "meta" now. I know nothing about the authors except for their byline blurb, and their earnest wish to improve the city. I share that wish, but I disagree on some of their reasoning. I wish I had a handful of powerpoint slides and bound reports on how to argue in the positive - I'd love to not just disagree with them, but to supplement their call for peace with some practical talk.

In the end, even with qualifications, I like what they're advocating. Why not? Every town can do with little reminders about civility, (secular) grace, and patience. Make those little doily-words a part of your every day life and watch the stress and conflict not only go down, but become more manageable when it visits you as it must. Sounds a little bland, a little naive, but it does work. Being polite and all will certainly not fix the deeper problems, but no one approach can. I think the authors have a good plan, though.

*actually, "gentrification", for all its provocative effects, is steadily moving into the area of the town I'm most familiar with. It's a stretch between 2 large uni's and a county college. You can't have a "college town" without making it nice and pretty to attract the parents of undergrads looking to dorm, or the cranky ol' grads like me who want to stroll around and cafe-hop between work and class. Just like NYC, however, for every pocket of culture (or at least Starbucks) there is a pocket of broken windows-style life.

Would that I had the money!

2010-05-26T22:48:00.000-04:00

RIT Future of Reading Conference

I may have the cash right now, but I need it for other things, so I'll be watching that like a hawk!

Mmhmm and alright

2010-05-26T22:29:00.000-04:00

Navigating summers is an interesting process in my house. I get all fired up first, make to do lists, and tentative plans. And usually some of it happens. It's like New Year's but with the AC on! It's comforting to me to plan and plot, and yet it reminds me of those lean long days when things were a lot different. Since Ma's been gone, I don't think I've had a break, an actual summer. Working would be ideal, certainly, but I'm looking forward to some idleness.

How to honor this idle impulse? Yes, I have all this potential free time and ideas of what I may like to do in it, but I don't have a landscape for this time yet. This freedom is frightening yet heady. And it makes me want to shop! Alright, that's probably just my hungry-for-change side, because there's little I actually *need*. But there are a couple necessaries - like a bookcase. Gonna have to break down and get another. Other than that, I think a day or two of intense cleaning and furniture moving will take care of some of that acquisitive impulse. I'd love to start that right now, but it's awful late and I do have work in the morning. So first empty day, oh good lord will I be busy :)

It's rather lame to write a filler post, and also somewhat odd that I'm really looking forward to cleaning, but this gives me the illusion of communicating, and keeps me busy till bed....

The Humbling

2010-05-25T13:05:00.004-04:00

This is the most adult of our selections so far, and I’d like to start some discussion on that aspect of the work. We meet Simon Axler, Roth’s protagonist, in the middle of a suicidal crisis over his fading acting career. Paralyzed with doubt and self loathing, Axler checks into a hospital, subsequently returning to his home to start an affair with a woman he’s known since her birth. The jacket writeup gives us an interesting jump-off point here:

Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counter-plot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for a bereft life so risky and aberrant it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a darker and more shocking end.

I’m willing to entertain some pretty unhealthy psychologies in characters – I don’t trust one unless I can identify at least three major knots in their psyches.“Risky and aberrant” behavior simply makes for better storytelling, however, I found myself annoyed with Axler. Did I not read deeply enough, did I approach this novel as too much of a “beach read”? Or – as I suspect – do I just not have the Roth gene? If that’s the case, he’s now in good company, with authors like Austen, Steinbeck and Twain I’m apparently supposed to like but just don’t. Though I’ll read Twain’s quips and quotes with relish - I think of him as our answer to Oscar Wilde. But I digress.

Axler’s a ruined man, whether by his own hand or the simple and devastating decline some paint age to be, I’m not entirely sure. What intrigued and irritated me is his use of sex to fill this devastation. With respect to the polite company we’re in, I would like to delve into this for a moment and explain my issue.

I’m about to discuss adult matters, and possibly spoil the book.

I have no problem with erotic content in literature, explicit or implicit. I also – in theory – have no problem with a character using sex for some reason or another. An old English major joke is that everything in literature is about sex – except the sex. But Axler’s affair, so close to his recollections of seeing his paramour as an infant, and so concerned with buying her frilly, feminine gifts, and the prolonged focus on “turning” a lesbian, rankled me.

And yet, and yet, and yet….the paramour, Pegeen, consents all along. In fact, she kicks the seduction off. And Simon does stop to think here and there about whether this affair is “right”: “Is this something you really want, Pegeen? Though we’ve enjoyed each other so far, and the novelty has been strong, and the feeling has been strong, I wonder if you know what you’re doing.” Of course, that comes a mere paragraph after “…with the passing months, she seemed to him, slowly but naturally, to shed the last visible signs of what she now referred to as ‘my seventeen-year mistake’.” (61). Those “visible signs” in Roth’s world are short hair, plain underwear, and practical clothes – tired shorthand for “lesbian”.

Not every single moment must be political, and what’s right for a character should never be conflated with what’s right or at least accurate for real women. I can ascribe all sorts of complexities and contradictions to Simon, but why do I bristle when Pegeen makes an erotic choice for herself? Maybe she is straight, maybe she is bisexual, maybe she’s experimenting – any of those would be satisfying. What I’m worried about is that maybe Roth used the old “real man” formula to render an erotically independent woman safely heterosexual, and tied to a sugar daddy at that. I’d have to read more of his works to gauge how he writes women in general, and gay women in particular. I’m going to leave this for the moment, lest I end up theorizing a character into a cardboard cutout with no agency, even if I’m conflicted over the choices she makes with that agency.

Some of the dialog, I’m snickering at. I can’t help it! It’s too theatrical – perhaps that’s the point. Early on, when Simon is recovering in the hospital, one of the women in his group therapy delivers, over dinner, the line “I have lived so long in the constraints of causation…”. This, an abused woman who is about to tell the story of her husband sexually assaulting their daughter! Of course, why shouldn’t she throw out a few ten-dollar words. It’s not like abuse is limited to lower-educated people, although our literature seems to say otherwise. It’s not like I expect a female character to be so distraught as to be unable to speak with sophistication – I know real women that can do that, so it rings true – but this line coming out of this character at this moment made me smirk.

Later on, Pegeen’s former lover Louise encounters Simon at his home to poison the well/warn him about Pegeen’s apparent MO of emotionally ruining lovers. Their exchange should be a little more dramatic, I think. Simon is an unstable man, he brandishes a rifle at intruding Louise (who, by the way, is her own package of weird – leaving harassing messages on the phone and trespassing at Pegeen’s new love nest)…The conversation reads as overly cool and formal. I could take the “formal”, but “cool” between two sexual and emotional rivals? “Madam, it isn’t I who was the Peeping Tom….” I’m hoping it’s not just me, but rather that the high tone (which feels like a stage performance) is meant to say something about the character and his profession.

However, now that I’ve finished the novel, I can move beyond my nitpicking over matters of sex and sexuality into the arc of Simon Axler himself. In the course of 140 pages he comes completely undone. He looses the job, Pegeen, the potential for rebirth. He blames Pegeen and her caprice, he blames his eagerness to spoil her, to recreate the erotic and emotional landscapes of youth, with their optimism and possibility. He blames her parents, accuses them of turning Pegeen against him, as well as their partner in a lackluster ménage-a-trois.

Quickly, he comes to the conclusion that he has only himself to blame for his hubris, and shoots himself. And yet I’m still not very satisfied. It was clear that he only had one direction to go in, and in the space of such a short novel, a reader can only expect so much. Is Pegeen a manipulative force or just an individual entitled to change her mind? Is Simon a victim of conspiring forces or has he just failed to make peace with his own human vulnerability? If nothing else, this has produced some fun tangents and meta-questions. I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks.

The bookshelf

2010-05-24T18:05:00.000-04:00

I had to do it. I had to start with this again.

At work, we've been working on a loose bookclub-type idea with a cyber arm and "classic" arm (paper newsletter) to raise awareness of the place. The tiresome library sprite in me thinks this is a great time for me to do my own parallel project and knock out some of the "meaning to reads" that have been sitting in my room. Or, you know, the ones that catch my eye at work. Or that I order from Amazon.

So not only am I going to be reading along with the official list, I've got 4 of my own between this month and the next. And of course I'm going to talk about them. Can't help it! The sprite says its good practice and I need to keep the gears grinding over the long summer months.

Good god, why do I do this to myself? :) It's a better version of eating a second fudge brownie - it's taking on a lot, but you know you'll love every piece of it.

So, the list as it is now:

The Humbling - Philip Roth - it's August's selection for work, but I'm doing them out of order. I don't really like it. Even though the protagonist is an actor, it's too theatrical. The dialog is hammy and the sex is joyless, and the protag is tiresome. Was that the point? Am I too thick? Eh, not so sure. But I'll wrap it up this week and see if I revise my opinion.
There's More to NJ Than the Sopranos - Marc Mappen - I love this! I like non-fiction better anyway, and this one is a nice mix of corny, smartass, and nerdy. Story after story about NJ history, well presented and amusing - and he not only has a cover blurb from a professor at my "alma mater", he did a lot of his work at the Newark Public Library. Nice to see local color!
Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us - Claude M. Steele - I'm fascinated with perception, class, and stereotype, so this caught my eye today. Haven't started yet, but the jacket blurbs look like Steele steered his book largely towards discussion of education and its interactions with race/ethnicity/class/etc.
Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World - Naomi S. Baron - Reading about linguistics is like eating my peas. I feel I must dutifully slog through charts and whatnot to get to the juicy cultural-studies territory I love. However, Baron's book looks to be pretty interesting. I do like to see studies rather than judgements about digital communication and its effect on language and society. Another one I picked up just today.
The Poe Shadow - Matthew Pearl - fiction, but so far a good summer read. A young lawyer's adventure through 19th century Baltimore and Paris to discover the real mystery behind Poe's death and restore his reputation. This one has been sitting on the shelf for a long time, so I damn well better like it! So far so good - a little checklist-ish on some of the historical details, but I'll forgive.

And that's all for the moment!

May crafting

2010-05-22T14:36:00.001-04:00

New Listings at the store!!!!

Hugs, Cupcakes, and Pie

I keep meaning to guilt trip myself about not making anything lately, but before I could get that old machine creaking, I went ahead and "did". There's 3 new listings at the store (which is badly in need of a makeover, but that's for later) and 2 new for me to be selfish with:

First, there's the "Patrick and Bridget" set. My mother was an on again/off again Catholic, but that didn't stop her from amassing quite a collection of saint medals. I can't bear to use them in a selling piece (most of her costume jewelry has been parted out - at least the stuff I didn't like!) so I've kept them around to make the occasional for-Liz treat.

Then we have tiny books! I was playing with some scrap "parchement" ande got the idea to make little books to incorporate into pendants, brooches, etc. But then I managed to go super tiny and these resulted. I don't want to wear them until I think of something nice to write inside. "Everyone has a story" may fit, but I have to practice fairy-scale writing first!

Next up - dinner and "bopping around" with the beau. Not quite sure what that entails, but I expect fun.

Summer has begun!!!!!

2010-05-16T10:30:00.001-04:00

It's a beautiful Sunday, and I'm watching the manpet draw from my perch at the desk. The windows are open, the breakfast dishes are washed, and everything's nice and quiet. There's nothing really useful to say yet, but I have a great feeling of "ahhhhh" :)

Looks like I’ll be battening down the hatches for the summer and embracing "idleness". Really, I deserve this rest, at least for a month or two. I’ve got quite a few writing projects, jewelry projects, and books to catch up

I’ll have time to sleep in, stay up late,clean the house, hang out with friends…grad school really was a drain on all that.No one really warned me, but I’m a quick study. I survived.

Oooh, I’ll have time to really go over the Newark Museum with a fine tooth comb….think of all the photos I can take! I can go into the city! I can work on my *own* art – if I have a few spare pennies, maybe I can paint a bit again. But we’ll see. The important part is that I am looking at a few months with no deadlines, classes, and few (if any) obligations

Instead of pissing and moaning over the current economic clusterflock, I’ve decided to gently ignore it. Ignore may not be the correct word here, but I’ve made out my budget, figured what I’ll need to get by, got my plan A, B, and C, and fully intend to enjoy myself instead of worrying.

One of my latest bonnet-bees is to "meet" a new poet each month, living or dead, I'm not picky. But someone I've never read, and really get into their work and bio. This will have to cohabit with my "read the books you've been looking at the spines of for the last year!" project (itself a parallel course to the "readathon" we're starting at work) all serving to make a very busy me.

Then there's my own writing to work on - last month I started a new suite of poems, and this month another one with a more "inclusive" reading level. So that's two collections to grow over the summer. And blogging to do....I do so love talking to myself with pretty pictures and a scrollbar.

So that's that! Time to enjoy my weekend!

April is the cruellest month

2010-04-04T12:42:00.000-04:00

Is it? I've been all over the map lately. Most of that's due to a bad cold/sinus thing which took a week and change to get out from under. A week and change before I could function! I may joke that I'm part pug dog, but I really don't take well to laying around all day and not being able to do anything constructive.

This has left me a lot of time to think. I rush around all day, work, to work, to class, and then back home to "collapse". And I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm feeling isolated, though, especially in terms of family. I have friends here and a sweet boyfriend who'll do anything for me, but there feels like there's so much on *my* shoulders and so many times I'm falling short.

Still, as I said to a friend earlier, the sum of things are good. I guess. I'm not sure if that's platitude or truth. Am I doing right by going for my MA? Am I slacking off by only going half time? What about publications, networking, etc.? Am I doing right by my man-pet? Should I be doing more? How can I flick faster between the roles of student/employee/granddaughter/household adult/vixen? There's so many people to answer to all around. Am I doing right by me? I should have a career/apartment/living wage/health insurance/etc all by now. Have I lost weight? Is my posture slumping? Have I taken enough time out for me? When was the last time I tried to write creatively, to make something, to go out and have fun? Many nights I plop in front of the TV for an hour before I fall asleep in the middle of South Park. Am I being spoiled? Whiny? Yes, I am whining for a moment. These are wonderful problems to have, most of them. But good god, I need a break, some sort of advantage!

And then there are good days. Even when I'm doing really well I have, in the corner of my mind, a small me hyperventilating into a paper bag. Augh.

Ada Lovelace Day!

2010-03-23T15:01:00.000-04:00

Finding Ada

I pledged to blog about Ada or related matters today in honor of Ada Lovelace Day. This is an awareness-raising project to support women in the Sciences and Technological professions. Even though I'm a humanities person through-and-through, I don't want to miss an opportunity to support my more technical sisters!

Ada Lovelace herself is credited with the first computer programs, written for Babbage's analytical engine. her biography's an interesting one, and you should google/wiki/good old fashioned library-raid for it. Her position has been reclaimed in recent years; there's been a big dusting-off of her work, and freeing it from the "Gentileschi Effect" (wherein the personal dramas/traumas of a talented woman's life get top billing while her actual achievements are written in fine print).

Because there are many fine online resources about Ada, such as her wiki, or the Finding Ada page I linked at the top of this, I wanted to extend this idea towards other women involved with maths, sciences, engineering, etc.

*My Mom, Ann Marie - Ma had a head for numbers, and got her Associates' in accounting while working full time and raising me solo!

*My Grandma, Marie - Before she retired, Gram worked in a corporate bank in the loans department, drawing on her previous experiences in book-keeping and great mathematical skills!

*My Boyfriend's mother Janet - She has had a long career history in math, engineering, biology, and education, and is close to her PhD in Neuroscience!

*Sofia Kovalevskaya - She was a mathematician in 19th Century Russia, and a woman's rights advocate. She received her PhD in 1874 from University of Gottingen! (Kovalevskaya article from Agnes Scott College)

*Rosalind Franklin - She was a Molecular biologist in 20th century England, and is (now) credited with the discovery of the structure of DNA! (San Diego Computer Center's Franklin bio)

*Mary Anning - She was a proto-paleontologist in 18th century England, collecting and documenting fossils - she's credited with the initial discovery of several dinosaur species! (San Diego Computer Center's Anning Bio)

This is a brief and biased selection, and needs to be added to more and more. If anyone stops by here and has names/bios of other women in the (any of the) sciences, mathematics, engineering, computer science etc. leave me a note.

Have a great Lovelace day, and go learn something about a woman who has made a famous, or not so famous contribution to scientific/technical fields!

Why I do what I do

2010-03-16T11:29:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's from the Chronicle again, and yes, it's an opinion piece, but dadgumit I feel validated now:

"Employers want 18th Century Skills", sez Mark Bauerlein

Ahhhh, some random person in the world succinctly communicates what people actually look for in college graduates - not so much a head full of info, but the ability to process and communicate that info.

Most fun I've had all day

2010-03-15T20:50:00.000-04:00

What I just read: "Edna Millay, Muriel Rukeyser, and Adrienne Rich: political poetry, social protest, and the place of the woman writer"
Artemis Michailidou, European Journal of American Culture, 22.1 2003

So this is what the Continent has been up to! When I picked (as one of three choices) Millay for my semester presentation, I thought, ehh...figs, candles, love affairs. And, well, yes, her reputation is still largely based on her love life and minxy persona. However, I didn't realize how political she got!

I confess I find political writing tiring. Sure, if it's done well, and it still resonates, sings, or bleeds years and decades after its publication, I'll be fine. But some of it I find poetically lazy - the diction feels like conversation, the tone is ranting, and sometimes it seems to hate its own reader. It remains to be seen how I'll feel about Millay's political poems, but Michailidou posits that Millay was

a) a good political poet, in addition to the lyricism she's still known for
and
b) a prophet for cadres of woman poets to follow, such as Rich - who can be tiresome as often as she invigorates! But still - I respect the forerunners ;)

Michiailidou discusses many themes within Millay's political and war poems, such as her antifascism, a concern shared with a number of my favorite artists/writers. For instance, all the Milosz I've been reading, and the Calvino I dipped into last term. Even tho he's far removed timewise, I wonder if you can pin this concern onto, say, Del Toro's films.

Millay has suffered from what I like to call the Artemisia Effect, where a creative woman's entire life and corpus is boiled down to her crotch: what happened there, what didn't, what did or didn't have her consent...On one hand, I love to investigate the sexualities of persons and ages past, and I believe wholeheartedly that shame should be blasted, and, if the person consents, their stories of abuse (if that's the case) should be discussed as part of a larger agenda of ending silence on the topic.

However, it's too easy for the armchair misogynist or even the well-intentioned feminist to restrict artistic inquiry into the boudoir. You can read reams on Eliot while barely touching his intimate self, while the first thing you hear about Millay or HD is that they were considered sexy. Yes, very nice, what else?

Perhaps I'm sensitive to it because of my gender - though I (hope I don't) have to worry about being seen as T&A first and a writer second, no matter how femme I may get. There are so many just-plain-cool writers and artists we either dont' get, or don't get a fair shake on because of the "lady-fication" of their work, or tititillating focus on their intimate lives at the expense of their work.

Aside from gender, I'm still preoccupied with the meeting of theory and reality, and the responsibilities of the scholar, artist (scholar-artist!) with regards to the world they're immersed in. To that end, I want to skew my presentation towards the political Millay. Millay's proto-activist poetry was divisive, but Michiailidou presents a small taste of some contemporary sympathetic criticism. Millay hit up not just the reading circuit but also the airwaves to disseminate verse as well as opinion pieces - one of the many that did but you wouldn't know it from her late treatment.

So, I guess I've got something sufficiently original, now I just need a "script", handouts, and maybe an audio goody or two.

"Myth of Academic Meritocracy" - Thomas "William Pannapacker" Benton

2010-02-16T14:06:00.002-05:00

Ahh, finally I'm thinking about an article that's got some meat on it! And by meat I mean cyber-debate about it. Benton's "The Big Lie about the 'Life of the Mind'" has hit the Chronicle of Higher Ed as well as a grad listserv I'm on. I've been chewing on this thing since the 8th and I'm finally ready to pronounce my opinions. I may even post to that 'serv, who knows.

Intellectualism:

First off - who the hell talks about "the life of the mind"? Am I lucky to be surrounded by pragmatists, did I resist/ignore some sort of higher ed programming about this? Even when I told my most loopy, insulated undergrad professors about my grad school ambitions, they never got as woo as that. This isn't blaming Benton/Pannapacker, but rather asking just where are the bright young things told they can fill their bellies and pay their rent with that "life"? I'm glad he's trashing it because even though I treasure intellectualism, I believe idea needs to be critically examined, especially if achieving it requires such a big rearrangement of your life as does grad school.

Magic Charm Degrees:

He presents an interlude about a fictional grad student who becomes a family celebrity for going to get her MA, her PhD, but ultimately winds up alienated, depressed, and a burden on her family because her humanities degree won't land her a job. Hmm. Knowing B/P's famous advice on higher degrees in the humanities ("Just Don't Go"), I see some level of exaggeration in the misfortunes of this near-Victorian doomed heroine, "again and again passed over", victim to "increasingly paralyzing self-doubt", and emotionally starving on the weak "consolations of teaching [which are] fewer than she ever imagined". Maybe this is how it is for people, even when you strain out the exaggeration. This is all to examine, on intimate terms, the "talisman" view of higher ed and its negative effects on students.

He disrepects this view, as well he should, but doens't examine it much outside of his fictional depressed student and her bewildered family. This is my favorite point of his article, the "myth of academic meritoctracy", that class and money differences that make life so difficult for you can be ironed flat if your kids get the piece of paper. Part of me is sympathetic, coming from a similar background. For some, "School" is a magic word - to such an extent in some familie that it doens't matter if the kid's pissing their way thru a 4-year, doesn't matter that the family may have no clue what a degree is, the kid's "in school", and the rest of the family has to worship accordingly. Of course, there are also families that have a more balanced view, but they're a limb on the same tree. Why shouldn't we respect the work put into a degree, even an undergrad one? (Provided there was actual work put in!)

On the other hand, shouldn't the mystique of college be challenged by realistic examinations of what one can expect with X GPA or X degree in X field? Considering it from this angle disrespects the families mentioned above, but, well, they're not entirely right. They're duping themselves. Time was, you could get in doors and gain respect for your efforts, but somehow those pieces of paper got devalued to the point where BA's look like high school diplomas. You almost *need* an MA or higher to get somewhere, but that somewhere is fickle at best.

Synthesis?

I believe we should take apart that romantic view, but only if we address that inflation problem. Make the paper mean something. Make it so you can get in the academic/corporate/whatever door with an AA, or a BA. If it's academe, teach your way up - with a livable salary, comparative to what you'd get in an "outside" job. Make it work. You want "us" to get our degrees, make the benefits tangible, investigate the abuses of younger faculty/students, open more TA positions for us "kids" - as a matter of fact, start "co-teaching" on an apprentice model even once we pass a certain level. Rearrange the departments according to issue and gather strength from cross-curricular interaction. This will infuse a sense of purpose for us mushy-wushy humanities people, tackle real-world issues, and also highlight opportunities outside of academia for those who want them. Research and publish, yes, but dont' stop there - cross the streams, damnit!

Yeah, I'm just a second-semester English grad talking out of my rear, yes, yes yes. But if this mill-like atmosphere I keep hearing about from other students, from faculty, from articles like this is the norm - I'm out! Higher ed can and should be so much more. I'd like in, but not at this expense.

Omissions:

I wish he had taken into account the working grad, the one with a job (or career) *outside* of academe. Again, maybe that's not "normal" on a broad level for grad students, but who really has the luxury of not working for years and years at a job outside the school? I'm consciously choosing to keep the academic half of my life broad and inclusive, as well as the working part. There's not a lot I can do in my state, with its lovely brain drain and reverse snobbery about students, but I am fattening up that resume. I am still scanning those anemic classifieds (this morning's selection was literally half a page. Half of the front side of a page of newsprint. Take out the cute graphics and the formatting, and it's barely a sizeable article!)

I wonder what he has to say about those of us that are working our way through. Is he only talking about insulated PhD's when he paints that draft garret picture, or does he mean the broader swath of grads that are in routine contact with the outside? If I can come up with a more cogent phrasing than "oh yeah, what about me?!?!", I may email him my question and see if it ever hits bottom!

Vigilance, guilt, and how they mix with green culture

2010-02-11T19:15:00.037-05:00

"French Feminist Blames Green Movement for Guilting Women into Old-Fashioned Roles"

As presented by Jaymi Heimbuch on treehugger.com, Elisabeth Badinter is of the opinion that green-culture is a way to coerce women into more restrictive roles. The reasoning goes that modern childrearing conveniences such as disposable diapers and formula are not nearly eco-friendly enough, and so mothers should be home, washing the diapies and nursing, basically living for their infants.

Ah. Hmm.

See, I'm not a mama, I'm not French, and I'm critical of the eco-wank threads I see in pop cultures. I can't speak for just how France is doings its sustainability drive, but if it's anything like ours, I can see where it'd inspire disapproval.

"According to the Telegraph, Badinter's new book, Conflit, la Femme et la Mere (Conflict, the Woman and the Mother), argues that green politicians and extremists in the environmental movement are "burdening mothers with intolerable guilt unless they stay at home and breast-feed for as long as possible."

I'd like to get my hands on Badinter's book ASAP, as it looks like she's more vigorous than a lot of what passes for feminist discourse in my country's bestseller lists - unless that's my bit of European fetishism talking! What I'd like to know is who makes up these bodies, the "green politicans" and "extremists"? How much pull do they have in French life? Are French mothers being marched back to the nursery wholesale? I doubt it.

One of Badinter's other points showcased by Heimbuch is "She [Badinter] goes as far as to liken the situation with women devolving into female chimpanzees". Mistranslation in language or nuance? That seems a bit much, but this is the first I've heard of Badinter, so for all I know she has a penchant for such hyperbole.

My next issue is one I can talk about, as I'm doing it myself right here - Heimbuch hasn't read the book yet. Ok, fine, she's doign more tangential discussion. A discussion of a review, and who knows if that source-reviewer actually read the thing or did the ol' skim and pick on it. Of course, I feel quite intimately acquainted with a number of books I haven't read (thank you, Bayard), so I won't make too much of this.

My real interest is with the themes Heimbuch invokes in her article:

"The green movement has its extremes too, but it's a tough call to say that it is to blame for sexism in society. Returning to more environmentally friendly practices for raising a child doesn't mean that the green movement is guilting women into roles they don't wish to fulfill.

Rather, that's sexism using the green movement as cover."

Ok, I'll give her that. "Green" encompasses everything from the person who feels spiritually touched by buying a single pack offair trade coffee to the person who has composted their shit since the 70s. It makes for weird bunkmates. I'm inclined to believe the assertion Heimbuch makes, as she doesn't blame the movement(s) which, after all, has done some good. But sexism/misogyny does like to lurk under progressive politics a lot of times - it's an ugly beast with at least a toeprint in each psyche. It can travel farther in this guise, the attendant memes convincing more people who may be on the fence about the roles and identities of women if they're coated with something friendly and otherwise beneficial.

Vigilance

But how many of us are slaves to memes? Or sexist blowhards? If someone's urging you to run your life a certain way, stop a moment and consider who they are, who pays them, what they have at stake, why they're so concerned with your choices. That shouldn't be too much trouble for a person, especially if they have a family to consider. By employing a little critical thought, you can assess whether or not you want to implement certain measures (eg those washable diapers) and furthermore, how you want to make them a part of your life, shoudl you choose them.

As an example, H quotes Duflot, who heads the Green party, "She [B] blasts washable nappies as an extra burden for mothers without thinking for a second that a man could put them in the washing machine. Yep, you can make the Dad (Dad, Dad #2, Mom #2, or other variant parental unit) do their share of the work. You don't *have* to be chained to some The Way We Never Were fantasy of female domestic limitation.

Feminism and ecological movements have a long history, and it heartens me personally to see them "getting along". For me, feminism is not just "about choice" (as I've been hearing since the early 90s - in my embryonic-feminist state!), but it's about human rights. And one of those human rights is to dwell in and pass on a healthier planet. But I think that skepticism should be maintained: are those "sustainable" yoga mats just a money grab? (yes) will this donation actually encourage recycling in that neighborhood? (possibly). Is this speech from a Green politician a threat to my personhood, my autonomy as a woman and as a parent? Or is it hot air?

I like that H dragged the papas into the whole thing, quoting green-dad bloggers. Too often men get left out of considerations of parenting, and certainly of feminism. If they are there, they should be contributing their thoughts as well as labor/funds/time. I'd have preferred more meat on identifying and combating sexism in green causes, but I guess that's for the rest of us to argue about!

B is quoted at the end of the piece, saying "If we don't watch out, we can say goodbye to women's freedom of choice and to the struggle for sexual equality" - and you know, I'll give that credence. I doubt there's a secret cabal of sexists, workign on a blueprint to eradicate feminist progress, but I do not doubt that the best way to eliminate freedoms is to erode them bit by bit, so by the time people realize it, they're already being conditioned away from the original goals of the freedoms. So, yes, I find it worthwhile to "watch out"- to critique, argue, and examine. To maintain civic activity. To maintain voice and intellectualism. Go green if you must, but do not go blindly.

Guilt

I find a lot of green ideas, products, and services to speak to a current of guilt about modern living: too many ads? dress them up with pastel colors and leaf graphics. Too many sweatshop toys? Buy a sustainable bracelet from Wegman's*. Likewise, within feminist circles there's a lot of conversation about guilt over having too much/not enough, or of who you are, how you do what you do. That's not my issue so much as the marketing of that guilt. Greenwashing is an actual issue, and it plays so well on many of our feelings, getting us to spend where we don't need to. Pop "feminist" and pop culture has made millions off the false "mommy wars" and the image of the miserably successful 2nd or 3rd waver - I offer these as examples of the marketing of guilt.

H doens't take up much with *guilt* itself - she dances around it much like I did in the first half of this post. I'd like to dwell for a moment. How powerful is guilt? How deeply do "we" (whoever the hell we are!) take the idea that "we" are supposed to be guilty over one thing or another? I doubt that there's any feminists, French or not, eating themselves up over the decision to rear their children (if any) as they see fit. Sure, they must get some of the guilt rays from TV, 'net, magazines, etc. Noone's impervious. But is anyone really in crisis mode? Many are probably doing what I'm doing here - scoffing at it, and examining it on their own time.

But - and I must contradict myself for a moment - a constant, massively funded, cunningly crafted message of "you should feel bad!" can have some level of influence, getting into the cracks of even the most liberated psyche. Are all of "us" capable of flipping off (say) TV adverts 24/7? I'd be lying if I said I never saw one and felt a little guilty over my figure, my work, my home. Normally all it takes is a deep breath and a step back and things are back to their skeptical normal. However, linking something with such large positives as green culture to a guilt imperative gives me pause. Is this something that can genuinely erode someone's self-confidence when it comes to choices, actions, and that unspoken necessity of just plain living with yourself?

Again, I think that sharp, deep critical examination is a necessity - especially wherever "green" is sold.

*Which I love. The bracelets I can leave, but give my my Weggies!

Craft dump

2010-02-06T09:13:00.000-05:00

Necklaces have been elusive lately, but I've had good earring luck.

And there are two pairs that are still being "drafted":

Nothing I'd wear myself, but it might sell! Needs a tin dangle at the bottom instead of the empty loop.

This one I'm in love with until I get to the watch hand there. I like the idea, but I think this particular pair of hands is too fragile for the project. So back onto the worktable it goes.

I intend to get in there later after a strenuous Saturday routine of tea, reading, and maybe a movie!

I - wait...what?

2010-02-03T19:34:00.001-05:00

If there's one thing in this world I approve of, it's masculine beauty, and the showcasing of it. And if there's one thing I disapprove of, its the abuse of masculinity in service of some misogynist/homophobic agenda. So fortunate for me to find them together as I flipped thru the blogs today!

Joe My God's "Jesus didn't tap out"

Mixed martial arts are being used as a recruitment tactic for certain Christian churches. Ah. Yes. Where to begin?

I don't get the appeal of MMA any more than I do boxing, or that waxed-pec soap opera that uses the term "wrestling" - but if that's your bag, so be it. Sure, MMA dudes look appealing (if rather hairless), until they're all bruised and limping, but alright, some people like a good fight. It's a natural human thing, and the controlled/stylized violence isn't the problem

What worries me is the equation of manliness with aggression, with derision of "feminine" things, with obedience (as in doctrine), and with domination of "lesser" people. Package and sell that to impressionable young men with some rugged graphics, with some studly dudes whose bodies they can aspire to/lust after, and retell the biblical Christ from a similar standpoint. Dress up the dogma with some grit and buzzwords - wind up the already antsy teenagers/post-teens looking to solidify their identities and gain a sense of community - and it spells trouble to me.

Yeah, we're going to have violent impulses. Yeah, we're going to have times and places where we need a warrior aspect, if you will. And that needs to be honored. But not with empty posturing.

"Flock Is Now a Fight Team in Some Ministries" (NYTimes)

Reading the source article above touched me. One of the pastors mentions the dearth of present fathers in his congregants' childhood. One one hand I'm thinking "don't have a dad? take a number" and on the other, yes, my heart bleeds a bit because I know that wound. From men I love, from men I admire, I know a few dimensions of that wound from an absent or disinterested or abusive father. This is not to say mothers or other parental arrangments are bad, but when you take away one parent, the kid fees it in a place he or she can't grasp fully. And later on, the adult does. I can get what the "fatherhood crisis" crowd is saying, even if many of them append some mother-hate to it. But if you want to handle that pain, is it necessary to link yourself with a charismatic, dominating take on spirituality? One that's wonderful at pushing psychological buttons, as we can see with these MMA matches?

"Fighting as a metaphor has resonated with some young men.

'I’m fighting to provide a better quality of life for my family and provide them with things that I didn’t have growing up,' said Mike Thompson, 32, a former gang member and student of Mr. Renken’s who until recently had struggled with unemployment and who fights under the nickname the Fury. 'Once I accepted Christ in my life,” Mr. Thompson said, “I realized that a person can fight for good.'"

I find it hard to argue with Thompson here. Until he gets to the Christ bit. There's not a single part of his plan he (or whoever) can't accomplish with a rational secular approach. But I know what it's like to be in a struggling family, what its like to watch a parent have the same drive to improve as he does. It's painful and intense and inspiring for the kids and the parent. But is he "fighting for good"? What is he doing? He's in service to some ad campaign! If he wanted to fight as a workout, a discipline, an art, ok - but how is he bringing the messages of Christianity* into actual lives? I'm not just being an ass here - I'd like to know how he gets from A to B, and what it means to him as a man, as a father (presuming that "family" he wants to provide for is his own)

'“This whole generation is raised on the idea that they’re in a culture war for the heart and soul of America,' said Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University."

Ah, here's the part that deeply worries me, succinctly phrased by Prothero. Framing this as some sort of "war", as a certain set of ideals and institutions that are "natural" and "sacred", but are "threatened" by The Other in all its scary multiplicity. This is an apocalyptic mindset fueled by adverts, schemes, and misguided glorification if not eroticizing of violence and domination. And not the fun kind, either.

With any luck, this'll burn out as an evangelical fad, and they'll be selling their message in another form, which I'll probably disapprove of. But this one I'll keep my eye on, and not just for the man-meat.

*some of which I actually approve of