Collection

Fella babies, today we start off with the direct line from representation to racism. (The click beyond.)

Marketing ten thousand steps for fifty years. Man, what a triumph - but not of healthcare information.

It's been my policy to view actual moving/sound footage of Trump as little as possible, so I rarely end up seeing Melania either. However, during his recent visit to the U.K., I caught a little of their welcome to Charles and Camilla ... and was car-wreck fascinated. Go to about :45 and watch her attempts to maintain a smile. It's eerie.




And then there's the light FIST she makes as she turns to enter the house. Yikes.

Welp, and if like me looking at those two (not meaning Charles and Camilla, but hey, YMMV) makes you feel dirty ... maybe it's a good thing. On the relationship of microbial bacteria and depression - not what you might think! (Or: hooray for pets!)

And here we have the final nail in the coffin as to my old argument with my bro: I am NOT a(n) historian.

History Lessons: the Strange Mix of Memory and Forgetting

This is a marvelous post about a nation's history curriculum and how unnatural selection in what we teach, and what therefore comes to pass as "common knowledge" is shaped.  Religion, race, nation itself.  Knowing sources.  Thinking we know any answers is the point at which it is impossible to truly understand.

Nuanced understanding, even when new and unexpected perspectives don't persuade, is the most important part of any discipline.  Read Katherine Langrish's post if only for the quote from Robert Bellah.

I'm reminded forefully of this piece of Frankish myth-making ...

“Let us set out the beginnings of the kings of the Franks and their origin, and also the origins of the people and its deeds ...  Priam and Antenor, two Trojan princes, embarked on ships with twelve thousand of the men remaining from the Trojan army.  They came to the banks of the Tanis River.  They sailed into the Maeotian swamps, penetrated the frontiers of the Pannonias, and began to build a city as their memorial.  They called it Sicambria, and lived there many years, growing into a great people.”
--Liber Historiae Francorum, author(s) unknown.

Okay, now, go!  Read!

Homework

Okay, so watching The Borgias now qualifies as homework for history.  And not even in Big, Dumb America (being facetious, don't beat me up ...), but in the UK.  And for A-LEVEL history, at that.  This, for those not in the know as to the British educational system, is short for ADVANCED level.

Please stand by while I nip off to go shoot myself in the neck.

I promise, I’ll be very humane …

Why I Love James Burke - and Why Shouldn't You?

I've talked before about teledons, but James Burke stands out for me, above all the others.  Oh, golly yes - even Carl Sagan.

Dad took me to an interdisciplinary class once.  It must have been a summer session, or maybe it was an introductory session during fall semester, early enough I wasn't back in school myself.  I was about fourteen perhaps - young enough to care, old enough to actually get something out of the day.  The bulk of the class consisted of watching an episode of Connections - and my little mind was efficiently blown.  "All that ... because we used touchstones?"

Heavy.

Dad bought the Connections companion book (I still have it, and not so archaeologically long ago my big brother was stealing moments between gardening, trimming his beard, and mapping, to peruse it), and I think we must have watched the series, too.  Not as religiously as that year mom had her weekly date with "Lillie", but that was just the sort of programming our family did watch.  (Kids:  this was back in the day when a single-television household was typical; any other tube was an "extra" and fairly rarely actually on - and our evenings were spent watching the three broadcast channels or PBS as a unit!  In black and white!)

The year I got married, B. Ex and I had cable, and at some point Bravo or History or some network no longer recognizeable today (kids:  Bravo was once a channel dedicated to snooty art programming, old BBC, and Max Headroom.  Erm.) began airing "The Day the Universe Changed".  Less, or perhaps simply not, familiar with this series, I really enjoyed it.  The weekend they ran a marathon of it, I taped it avidly (hitting pause at every commercial break; I was ... a little manic) and caught something like 8 hours worth.  I still have the VHS of these shows, and they were great.

Burke, of course, has the obligatory avuncular British educational presence - but he also contains a streak of mischief and obvious excitement which lifts him a bit above the Starkeys and, yes, even Sagans of this world.  Burke, basically:  reminds me a little bit of dad.  The looks aren't unnervingly alike, but not starkly dissimilar either (dad didn't have a halo of curls even in 1978, but their glasses might have been the same model - heh).  A physicality born of enthusiasm was something of a shared trait - the unthreatening push-forward of the face, slightly nodding, in eagerness over a point of data which excites them - a kind of gestural inclusionism, inviting, always inviting an audience to join, to partake, to participate, to share.  Good teachers often have this, I think my sister-in-law does too.  My family are a long - and wide - line of teachers; and, while the Majors might not necessarily be the kissy-est relations on record, I can remember this bobbing language of mannerisms in many different incarnations.  I can see my dad, my grandfather, inviting me up on their knees, to read to me, to *talk* with me.  To listen, and to share some story, some word, even some admonition - lovingly, so gently.  I've seen it in my elder niece with my younger, I've seen it in the younger, when she reads to *us* - in each of them, with their wonderful dog.  The gentleness, the inclusion, the invitation to an infectious brain in need of a good spilling.

Burke has this, and he has also the mischief which belies the lull of gentleness, and reminds:  this is not a fool, this is not a pushover.  This is a mind, reaching out.  Take.

Take, eat, this is my mind - or something of the kind.

"Connections" and "Universe" aren't available on my little Roku box.  Even if they were, I'm not sure that would wipe the DVD box sets off my wish list at Amazon.  They're voraciously watchable, and not just one single time.  Burke's expositions keep on giving, and "reruns" repay - you get something new every time you watch.  And this, with shows produced in 1978, and 1988.  THAT is timeless programming.

Sure, there's some cute age on the neato-whizbang montage ending with ... a LASER COMPACT DISC ... but the underlying history can't be repackaged better nor more relevantly (see also:  Connections 2 and 3 - redux isn't always delux; though those were fine, they were not on the level of the original series, and may be considered superfluous even by *this* neurotic completist).  The history doesn't change, and though some of what he's said has been frankly borne out already, the relevancy doesn't.  How many historians and philosophers age so well through thirty-plus years of altered context?



I finished the maddening, literally addictive hurtling progress of Battlestar's reboot not so long ago, and have been hanging a little, tele-entertainment-wise (reading, these days, is very good indeed!) since.  Ahh, what James Burke could do to more than make up for it.  That guy makes "addictive TV" like BSG, or Lost, or Heroes, or any one of those parade of heroin-like series pale by comparison.

Confirmation

I had wanted to write about my confirmation in the church this past Sunday, but seem to have let myself get distracted.  It's the sort of thing you want to think of as important, but "no big thing" in the sense of epochal personal development - sometimes, it's too hard to contemplate the magnitude of the spiritual, and for me it is just too presumptuous.  It is hard enough for me to give myself up to guidance.  Harder still, when the power of my own emotional experience asserts itself - and my emotional assertion tends to take the form of attempts to control my life.

When I started to look for a church (my gracious, it'll be three years ago in spring), I was on guard against exactly the emotional experience I think some people hope for in this sort of a search.  Being a drama queen, I found I wanted something else to take me where I needed to be, rather than to turn this into A Very Special Episode in the mental narrative I tell myself as the story of my life.  In the end, it was fellowship and prayer which  bound me to my congregation, and the beauty and sense of comfort I felt in our sanctuary.

When the search for a leader yielded the Priest In Charge, getting to know her, I felt the blessing of her coming, and have been as grateful to know her as if I had been a "real" member of the church family.  So "getting my papers" now, so to speak, it is like a confirmation of something more than simple congregational validity.  And, to my honor, I was blessed by our Bishop on the same day she herself was named Rector.  We get to keep her; the ministry is hers, and that is wonderful.

Against those early wishes against being dramatically swept up in the moment, on Sunday I did feel a bit of that impulse.  The bishop's hands on my head as he prayed over me - a sensation I will remember, clearly.  And he meant it to be memorable - his hands were firm and direct, not avoiding really touching me.  His fingers moved, his pressure wasn't impersonal.

It was a little hard, this high-churchy-ness, on my mom.  A lifelong Baptist, there is a mild sense of her giving me over to another team, and as much as she wanted me to find a church home, she did hope I would find one more familiar to her.  The maternal dynamic of confusion at a child's rebellion was in play.  But she was there for me; as was a friend, my dear and generous B.  When the service was over, I got a "mazel tov" from her - and then from the priest.

Another step, and a blessing both in the religious, AND in the personal sense.  I am confirmed.  It feels good.

Still Obstinate

One of the "musts" of being a writer in 2012 - apart from "must" be on FB and "must" be on Twitter and even "must" do some things I am actually willing and EAGER to get into in support of my novels - is that one "must" read what is out there now, know the market, be educated both in my genre and in what is likely to sell.  Stylistically, one "must" study contemporary lit and mass market.  Professionally, one "must" understand how to become a part of it.

I've gotten over my Special Snowflake phase, in which we ALL, every damned one of us, presume exemption from the work that is querying, polishing, shilling, meet-and-greeting.  I've gotten over my initial reluctance to create a presence (under my real name) online, and joined genre discussion boards and, yes, gone on Twitter to get myself some low-hanging follow action.  I've learned to enjoy and clearly respect the function of these activities (in the case of Historical Fiction Online and Absolute Write, this has hardly been a chore, though putting myself out there has always been difficult).

I still can't get over the fundamental feeling in my heart, though, that reading is such a deeply intimate experience, and so essentially a form of *entertainment*, that to forgo consuming what I want in it is still anathema.

This isn't to say I don't dig Iggulden's Conqueror series, or failed to notice Cornwell's latest Saxon release, nor that I'm not excited about Ben Kane and Spartacus (I need to ping the local bookstore to see if we can even get him to come visit!).

Oh, but it so IS to say that the Charles Major I have read recently, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs I am reading now, I would not trade, I would not give up.  There is only so much time for reading, and I am still a pouty and petulant child, obstinate in my believe that It Is Not Fair to ask me to follow any sort of scholastic reading program when ... I am a big girl.  I have earned the right to read what I wish to - not what I "have" to.  Not what I "must" ...

At its heart, reading is entertainment.  Part of entertainment is that it takes place in a space and time of personal autonomy.  We decide what we enjoy.  Entertainment fails when it's imposed on us by someone else (as opposed to inspired by someone else, shared with someone else, or SUGGESTED by someone else, and then catches fire for us personally).  How many times has someone pressed a book into your hand, sweaty with passion over it, told you you MUST read this ... and you just hated it?  Openmindedness is all very well, but without personal identification - and therefore personal motivation - the entertainment aspect of the picture is lost.  Time spent reading for anyone but yourself (or watching a movie or whatever you do for diversion) is a chore.

Even the research reading I did was something in my control, and though I became so absorbed in it I actually realized at some point a few years ago that I had not "read a book" for the sake of enjoyment for a period of months, that was because I became absorbed.  It was an act of will on my part to dunk myself into reading for work rather than pleasure - but of course even that had immense pleasures too.

Someday, perhaps, I will consider the "must" of reading the market an equal pleasure.  It isn't as if contemporary publishing is of no interest to me.  It's only that the loss, for me, of the incredible autonomy and intimacy, magnificent experience of reading, which for me is necessarily independent, rather nonconformist, perhaps a trifle contrarian and definitely antiquarian ... seems too much to ask.  And of a writer, of all the ironies.

Still obstinate.  But my mind is not utterly closed.  Only afraid.  I've lost enough of my childhood.  It doesn't seems sporting to kill off those ruins still standing.

Thank You, Dr. Georges

This week brought perhaps the most interesting Christmas card I have ever received.  Given that my ex husband sends one every year, and I get all manner of cards, from the phamily-foto-newsletter annual to the gigglingly profane to the extremely religious, this is actually something of a feat.

It came in a large white envelope, and felt several pages thick.  I didn't know it was a card - but, from the return address (Dr. Corwin Georges, in the Theatre and Dance department - my major - at my alma mater), I half thought to myself, what is this, are they returning that wretched play I wrote in 1990 or something?  He was chairman of the department, though not my advisor, and I was surprised to hear from them.  My association with the University pretty much ended at graduation, because life has held my attention by force, starting with the recession I graduated into.

So when I opened the envelope, and in fact there was an exam I had taken in 1990 - purple ditto paper, my barely post-adolescent scrawl and all, I was actually kind of blown away.

The card commemorates more than the holiday - it is Dr. Georges' 40th year at the school.  He writes about never thinking this year might come - and about how he has always saved papers, and thought one day he would do exactly this, and reach out to students (I hope he kept it to departmental majors; in such a span, surely there are an abundance of US!), and share some piece of our mutual past.

My own story since then, of course, is that majoring in theater is why I became a writer.  I snarkily say how preferable it is to work alone than with Actors (guys, I actually love ya) - but the fact is, I was as close to a Technical Theater major as the size of the program provided for such specialization.  I worked in the shop the whole time I was there.  I never got cast.  I thought I was a good actor, but the fact is I was simply not.  Though I once performed a scene from The Runner Stumbles, and no less a figure than Milan Stitt told me I should apply at the Yale School of Drama, my failure to figure onstage in any of the productions we mounted during my four and a third years there (we were on terms; not semesters, so - yes - 1/3, not 1/2) was no accident.  I still can't behave naturally in front of people who are there to watch me pretend to do so.

So I tell people I was a technical theater major, though there really was no such thing in my day - I happily recall my memories of casien paint, trying to impress the guy who ran the scene shop, and getting to use the band saw - and I largely push memories of my college years into shadow.  I had a townie for a boyfriend, and I married him.  College, particularly after I met Beloved Ex at age nineteen, was almost as deniable an experience for me as my far-too-preppy high school had been.

***


And yet.

Dr. Georges' rather wonderful idea filled me with exactly the warmth he had intended.  It reminded me of how kind his colleague, my advisor, was when I was a freshman.  It reminded me of my bosom friend, who shared the program with me during that first year.  It reminded me of the way our ballet instuctor admired the arch of the top of my foot, saying even she didn't have a curve that good, and how dancers want to have that curve.

Certainly, it reminded me of the shop.  That smell of sour milk, the casien paint.  Fresnel lenses, and Lekos.  The dance concerts I ran lights for, and helped to design too.  The old proscenium designed in his earliest years by Kennedy.  The black box theater we used the most; and how hard it was to light, because its ceilings were fairly low.  The drawings I still have, of costume designs for a sort of fantasia faerie for a ballet, and of Banquo's ghost.  Of set designs, or flats, never to be realized (and, as much as my performance, really not that good).  Of my friends.  Yes, I had them.

It reminded me of that last project - a perfectly execrable one-act I wrote, which I pray is LOST to history regardless of that 40 years of saved student work - and how disappointed my advisor and Dr. Georges both were in me.

It reminded me of how much that theater degree serves me in my work every day, and how it informs and shapes my writing.

It reminded me of those chants we used to do - because theater kids need chants and in-things, verbalisms special to ourselves.  Good blood, bad blood, red leather yellow leather.  Or, what a to do to die today at a minute or two to two, a thing distinctly hard to say, but harder still to do, for there'll be a tattoo at quarter to two, a rat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-too, and the dragon will come when he hears the drum at a minute or two to to (repeat - louder, and faster, every time) ...

It reminded me how fortunate I am, to have the education I did, and where I got it, and when.

It even reminded me of the day we found out I was not getting even the smallest amount of tuition exchange - a benefit of teaching my father had always counted on - a mere six weeks before I matriculated; and how terrifying, and financially hideous, that was for my family.  Twenty-five years later, that is no less fearful than it was then.

I'm nostalgic.  But not altogether forgiving, or forgetful, it's true.

But.  That was not a decision of this man's making.

I am a professor's kid.  So this card means more to me even than my own little memories.  It reminds me of the briefcase, just eighteen or so feet away from me right now, where resides a collection of dad's pay notifications dating back to the early-mid sixties, when he started with his own University.  It reminds me of the professorial side of the equation - of students remembered, and remarked upon, and so proudly admired. I look at my giant portrait of Einstein, painted by a Physics major, and know its secret; that the Class Notes on the artist are tucked behind the canvas, within the frame.

The return of my ancient test paper (I did score an 89; it was good of the Doctor to think to choose a decent grade) is a unique and winning idea.  I can imagine the effect it would have had on my dad's graduates.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I went to the dentist - a man who had taken a class with dad - and he told me once again the story I know, but never tire of hearing:  how brilliant my father was, and how wise as well.  How good a teacher.

Above all, he would have valued the final compliment.  As his daughter, of course, I am most fascinated by the first.  Reportage of my dad always includes commentary on how remarkable his intelligence really was.  It was part of my life from the first, and so its extremity - and impressiveness - was lost on me, growing up.  We knew him as interested and interesting, a mechanic and carpenter and instructor, a loving parent, a warm and funny man, someone with a streak of mischief ...

Also someone capable of discoursing and maybe even running off on the occasional tangent.  Gee, wonder whether he gave that talent to any of his kids ...