Collection

Here is a plot bunny giant enough and strong enough for me to want to saddle it up and gall-hop away: on "crones" in sci fi. YES, PLEASE.

(N)o person inherently deserves to have a larger psychological piece of the universe than another person

I would add: or physical piece. Walk like a man, talk like a man - get crashed into by men, my friend! This phenomenon is the WORST in grocery stores, and it's always white men.

the brittle tedium of being yourself in a foreign place

This is an exhibit I might have to visit, Hopper and hotels. (Initially, I used the term "go see" in that first sentence, but changed it to "visit" ... both because my brain insists upon certain rhythms - but also because it seems, in the dingy gradation of color words have for me, a better choice for the picture.) What Sebastian Smee reviews as problems are part of what I see as the strengths in Hopper. The unfinished stories these pieces evoke. The "clunkiness" of his female figures strike me as, in fact, similarly honest to the rest of his images; celebrating bodies which are not artistically or aesthetically perfect. The strands of hair, the skin tones and shadow are impeccable. I can see muscles and bones where Smee apparently cannot.

Collection

I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.

A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.

Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.

My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.

Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.

Ahww, man. Guilty ...

In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”

Collection

The Lady of the Lake, in her own words. Yes, I have been slow to get to this story - but tell me this is not the best plot bunny ever - Nyneve becomes an actor in Paris ...

Aieeeee! Stephen G. Parks has a writer's worst nightmare. Sigh - but he probably did the right thing.

Ahh, the beautiful standards of art - where a woman's nudity is all but mandatory, but a man's is the time for censorship. Imagine actually thinking, "Okay, now I wish I'd seen naked Batman."

Reckoning.

(T)heir guy isn’t well known enough, that the stories are now so plentiful that offenders must meet a certain bar of notoriety, or power, or villainy, before they’re considered newsworthy.

I told you it's not just powerful, rich men. Here's a reporter to tell us that those're the only guys who'll get any ink.

Here is the thing about this lengthy piece, about what we "all" have to reckon for: I've reckoned before. When I worked at The Federal Reserve, and a contractor who knew I worked till 5:30 p.m.  himself stayed late one dark evening, and held out to me on a napkin a cherry stem, tied in a little knot, and said only "No hands" ... I was revolted. The next morning, first thing, I spoke with a manager - not mine, and a woman at that. And she essentially dismissed me as a hysteric. I chose to put the issue to bed, moving forward, concerning myself only with my future and my feelings.

Much later, when I saw from a strong physical reaction to him, by a woman with less power than I, it was clear to me that I was not the only person he had "made uncomfortable" (see also: repulsively harassed). I thought about the issue again, and discussed it with one or two trusted people.

Later still, when The Stem decided to apply for a permanent position, I instantly - I mean, within five minutes - went into my boss's office and phoned him while he was travelling. HE took me deadly seriously, and HR had an executive meeting with me almost immediately.

I thought about this guy's kid. Yep. But I also thought of that woman I had seen squirm. The Stem took his risks, knowing he had a kid. He behaved execrably, knowing he had a kid. Oblivious as he was socially (this is a man who discussed with me on scant acquaintance the extreme gruesomeness of his ex-wife's labor in bearing said son; he was ALL kinds of awkward, this guy). If, in his book, the "no hands" approach seemed even POSSIBLY valid - never mind potentially impressive - he needs a new book, and I'm not responsible for reading the text he was working from. Nor am I responsible for his son.

I was, in my knowledge, responsible for that woman I had done nothing to help. I was, too, responsible for the reputational risk to my own employer, who would have been exposed to legal risk by allowing a serial harasser on board. My employer: who kept me in mortgage payments, and that woman's family as well.


The woman manager, who dismissed my concerns? She didn't dismiss me because she was covering for a valued or powerful colleague, she shut me down for thinking what he'd done was an issue at all. His power, in the moment he flummoxed my pungent personality to the extent of an awkward joke and sheer befuddlement, was transient. And, in the end, mine was greater: my report had more power than his resume.

I have often thought about the background and experience that leads to attitudes like that manager's, though. These days, I imagine she's scoffing a great deal about all the precious little daisies enduring Weinstein's casting couch, so-called "consenting" to Louis C. K.'s displays, and on and on and on. Blaming them for being so sensitive. And maybe she has dismissed other women, too. Very possible.

I pity that woman more than myself. But, for her initial reaction to me and my opting for silence, I am GUILTY: about the other woman who worked there, who transferred away from our location I suspect to get away from The Stem. Whose price to pay I do not know, and is among the debts on my own soul. I pity the manager, whom I did not name but did talk about in that meeting with HR. But the other woman lives with me in a much more direct way.

I will leave this post with the following excerpt from the link ...

I struggled a lot internally about whether to name the Harasser at my former job. I decided not to, largely because I understand something about how things have turned out. In a rare outcome, I — along with some of the women he pestered — now have more power than he does. He is, as far as I know, short on work, not in charge of any young women. And so I decided, in consultation with former colleagues, not to identify him.

But here’s a crucial reason he behaved so brazenly and badly for so long: He did not consider that the women he was torturing, much less the young woman who was mutely and nervously watching his performance (that would be me), might one day have greater power than he did. He didn’t consider this because in a basic way, he did not think of us as his equals.

Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them.

This is not a gotcha. This is: manning up.

Collection

Rest in peace, Wallace.

This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.

Revisiting the shareholder-first business model - courtesy of The New Yorker.

On the unexpectedly morbid history of ribbons as adornment. Naturally, this piece brings to mind the Beresford Ghost, and other stories.

To my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death.

I have to say, this makes more sense to me than fear, perhaps *especially* in the direst of circumstances - precisely because those people are facing deliverance from suffering.

The real point of this article - or, really, the research it discusses - is the guiding force in American healthcare: avoidance of death. I have known more than one person who would have been happier had they not been treated not-to-death, honestly. I do not intend to become the dying person constantly snatched back from the brink, either, and I don't wish to die in a hospital. This morning, I said to someone who said, "Getting old sucks!" "Yeah, but it beats the alternative." The fact is, sometimes death beats some of the medical alternatives, too. The trick is to know when to choose what. At some point, perhaps I will have the grace and blessing to choose not to incur obscene debt for life"saving" measures which prolong my agony and deplete my earthly resources. If I get there, I don't expect I'll face the end with horror or regret.

To people furious over the Kathy Griffin photo I ask, where were you when effigies of Obama were lynched and burned across the eight years of his administration...?

The Boston Globe has an EXCELLENT piece looking at the outrage surrounding the Trumpian Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar. And I say: um, yeah. Anyone who thinks this play is a celebration of assassination is ... well, let us use the term "uninformed" to be kind.

Throwback post - because it needs to be said. Again and again and again.

And again. Because we KNOW it's about power, not sex.

Collection

Haha! Here's the thing about the medicine beat in journalism. By nature, it goes for the shiny and the positive. "NEW BREAKTHROUGH" is a headline. "FURTHER TESTING QUASHES HOPES" is not. I recently included an NPR headline in a Collection post, even saying then that I tend toward skepticism. Here we have NPR explaining how headlines like that can be misleading. Which: exactly.

Because shiny. And sigh.

Teach your children well, fella babies. Critical consumption is, well, critical.

Image: Google image search, Labeled for Reuse
The Blue Diamond Gallery

Here is a piece on what it's like for perfectly legal people of Mexican heritage to live in the United States these days. If you don't want to read the whole piece - if you can't take the politics of it all - scroll down to "On whether her life has changed after the election of President Donald Trump" and take in the STORY, because it's a terrible and a great one. Here is how the disadvantaged are forced to work around the bigoted. I don't care how much you think this doesn't apply to you: please click.

It's a good thing sometimes to view the news from outlets outside of the United States. Hindustani Times has a look at a video from Ohio and a website lamenting the "Indian IT Mafia." But for those described, it's wrong to feel creeped out or threatened, of course.  Because throwing the words mafia, notorious, and outrageous at a group is totally friendly!

So, has anybody else heard of the "farewell address" from the leader of the so-called Islamic State? Yeah, me neither, until I pulled up news outlets outside the U.S. Do a Google News search on his name, and I don't even see any American outlets appearing in the search results - none current, and note covering this story. Shouldn't a retreat like this from the "supreme leader" of the so-called Islamic State be kind of big news? I could not find this on NPR, CNN, Newsweek, or the New York Times online.

Now Who's the One Percent?

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.
--Gotthold Lessing

So now we're looking at the defunding of the NEA, and killing off Big Bird. Again. I began my recurring donations to PBS about two minutes post-election-results, y'all.

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 shot up TEN THOUSAND PERCENT this week, thanks to Kellyanne Conway.


Ya know. Because facts are relative .... to your position of power.


I suspect that "getting people to read more" has not been any part of the GOP's radical agenda.



What the current Powers What Be's seem to have forgotten is that they have no mandate. When ONE PERCENT* of the entire population of the United States comes out on Day One to remind them of our power, it is the people who carry the mandate, and the power.

We do still have power, you know.

Let's exercise it thoughtfully and consistently - before we are forced to exercise it with cudgels.





*"(T)he low estimate for turnout on Jan. 21 was 3.2 million, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut and University of Denver--leaving aside the demonstrations on every other continent, including, thanks to an expedition tour, Antarctica." Current US population: 3.23 million.

Censorship

When I was a kid, Richard Scarry’s books drew me in and kept me, hours on end. His scenes of life were endlessly absorbing, cornucopias of detail and interesting tidbits; when an entire picture is marginalia, you can spend an eternity finding new stories, new characters, new points of interest.

My attention span may not be what it once was – either longer or shorter, and I’m not sure my position on the spectrum is fixed day to day or moment to moment – but my interest in finding stories, characters, points of interest is intact.

So the painting at the heart of this story (and I do hope you will click to it; I don’t want to keep stealing images and justifying it as fair use) naturally arrested my gaze. More than once.

Controversial art
If we refuse to allow people their own perceptions of the things they see – and if we refuse to see how the world appears to anyone but ourselves – we cheat everyone of the opportunity to understand one another. Not just US (white people with privilege) understanding THEM, but  individual people of disparate experience understanding one another.  I am no more “us” than anyone else, and the idea that anyone is is a fundamental problem, perhaps THE fundamental problem – of the moment, and of humanity itself.

I am struck by this painting’s style, because it is strongly similar to the Richard Scarry-esque jam packed street scene of a painting I have (it is not “mine” but my mother’s, but has been at my home for years now) by Fritz Camille, a Haitian artist whose works are brilliant and bright, often contain crowds and buses or trucks – and social terror. Here is a work typical of what I have seen of Camille’s paintings. Here is the one my mom has given into my care.

The point of David Pulphus’s painting, at the NPR link above, is hardly that law enforcement officers are animals; it is that too many people are treated as such; it is that Pulphus wants to hold a mirror to those he perceives as treating himself and people like him as subhuman. The figure in the foreground, on the same plane as a weapon-wielding officer, has a head as inhuman as the officer’s.

Interestingly, like medieval art, the Christ-figure is outsized, proportionately larger than all the others. Nothing in this painting can be seen realistically, and yet this scene is the hardest form of reality. Foreshortening and perspective are distorted in the most distinctive ways; and THAT is the point. We can’t see this scene in a naturalistic way; everyone in it is an “us” or a “them”, inevitably, tragically. “Justice” is the least clear word in the entirety of this picture; actually obscured and broken in half by a figure carrying the word HISTORY, which is stark and clear even as it is also distorted; even bleeding. The musculature and skeleton of every last figure in this painting is painstakingly depicted; the physical strain on each striving or bent or straddling body is palpable. Even the shadow and highlight on a black bird in flight illustrates its body’s work in the act of a plummeting dive, and though the white bird’s body is all but robed like an angel, its wings are reaching. Even the jeans and the clothes, highlighted and creasing with teeming movement throughout, are like modeled sinew and flesh. The energy is incredible.

Look at the PICTURE, look at the scene and its denizens, and take it all in without imputing your implications to it first. Considering the art can put you “there” … and there, the us and them can take a turn, depending on where you stood before you stopped to see.

There is so much more to confrontational art than the confrontation – the point at which all the wrong people will stop, just to be offended. They miss the *invitation* … and the opportunity for more than just more anger.


Update
I created this post as a draft several days ago, and now the news is that the painting will be removed from the Capitol. I have not added the image of the painting I own, but cannot delay this post given the news. (I take note that the piece is described as being "hanged" there. Do with that what you will.)

What do you think of censorship in the arts? In politics?

Television Watching

Television Without Pity was a bit of an addiction of mine in its day, and after re-watching Battlestar Galactica a year or so back, I hit up TWoP for its recaps.

Reading about an awful lot that happened in that series, written in the shadow of 9/11 but perhaps more resonant still right now, is something almost eerier than "timely" ...

The most stunning aspect being its two Presidents, Laura Roslin (who attempted to steal an election) and Gaius Baltar, a celebrident possessed of superb un-self-awareness, psychological projection, and delusional urgency.

(H)is new plan is to strike a chord with the common man, which is funny because he totally had that, by virtue of being a sexy smart celebrity, until he put everybody in concentration camps.

Now is not the real seat of this post, but it's a good time for it.

Now has been a time of examining at my entertainments categorically, and eliminating some of them. Not my first time doing this (it's been *years* since I could stomach the "special" part of Special Victims Unit - namely, the weekly rape/exploitation/murder of women and children, or the darkness of "Criminal Minds"), but right now my focus is less on darkness than a different kind of cruelty. Right now, I'm eliminating normalization from my life.

Normalization of sexism, racism, homophobia, and anti-intellectualism.

Normalization of trivial and frankly unfunny gay "jokes" such as Big Bang Theory is rife with. That show made me laugh during one of the worst years of my life, and I hung in with it from its earliest days - but the stupid humor about Raj and Howard always annoyed me and never worked. And now I'm flat done with that show. It bends over backward by GENERATIONS to make outdated, stupid, mean jokes that don't work. No more.

Normalization of retrograde gender roles and/or The Stupid Girl (who may be well past 50 years of age) imagery. This ditches almost any reality show not starring RuPaul, and means my slowly-developed habit of allowing anything with Housewives in the title to run while I was doing other things, because it really doesn't require watching, is over. It means Two Broke Girls, not something I can deal with for long given the idiot-plots and buzzy voices, is something I won't deal with at all anymore. Any dating show, ever, in which telegenic fodder proudly displays a profound lack of education or interest in it. Any appearance of Jessica Simpson, not so long ago one of the more powerful vectors of The Stupid Girl in pop culture.

Normalization - indeed, aggrandizement - of stupidity more generally. Not that I consume these things, but shows about Bigfoot, the Merovingian Heresy, popularizations of the ludicrous, demonizations of study and thought. This stuff is EVERYWHERE. It overwhelms critical thought and even taunts the very idea; and I grew up valuing critical thought, by way of being raised by a pack of relentless literalists picking me apart at every turn. (Bless 'em.) The Doctors, gleefully shilling for products they get sued for on a regular basis. Paranormal. Reality. Let that one sink in. Every dating show sustaining the (heteronormative) narrative that women ("girls", almost invariably, in these things) are desperate and stupid and need a sexual relationship to be valid. Hell, even HGTV shows with 30-ish couples featuring young women actively annoyed by homes not featuring granite counters and/or white cabinets, because Maud Knows paint is not something they are equipped to grapple with.

Normalization of all of the above: Archer. A show I ate up with a spoon a couple years ago when it was recommended to me, which I could NOT accept as reflecting - or influencing - actual, functioning human beings, but which so relentlessly flogs its edginess that ... I wonder whether it's edgy or actual, anymore. So much bigotry IS clearly actual, I can't skate anymore, I can't consume what I don't know is really free from harm.


None of my minuscule boycotts means a damn in the wider world, but it's one more attempt of this old lady not merely to woke up (no, that's not a typo) and quite honestly, just to feel better. Funny as Archer was to me, it's essentially mean. Not letting that inside my head eases the tiniest bit of psychic pain in my brain, just as not watching SVU has for so long, refusing to witness rape and cruelty as entertainment.

I watched one single episode of Walking Dead, found it extremely interesting, and will never watch it again, because I just can't take the violence.



Mr. X and I talked about this very recently (probably the birth of this blog post; you'd be surprised how often discussions with him get me writing), and he said, about his own viewing/gaming, "I’ve always been super-resistant to messages in the (non-news) media affecting my views. That probably engendered a certain insensitivity on my part to how others are affected or how views are perpetuated. ... your saying all this makes me wonder if I just didn’t find some of it distasteful and unworthy of support for conscience reasons."

I have always liked that boy for his brainmeats.



The whole basis of some of these entertainments gives new meaning to the term diversion.

I don't want to be diverted anymore.

Collection

Every week at the very *least*, I am struck with gratitude for a couple of things in my upbringing - one, I grew up at a time when popular entertainment was thinner on the ground, so we had 3 networks and PBS to choose from until I was like THIRTEEN and, gasp, a whole *fifth* channel showed up (what eventually became Fox). PBS being a great place to visit, its programming made up a hearty chunk indeed of my up-growin', and I still gravitate to its offerings, some of them as old as I am, but always intriguing - and, to boot, with parents like mine a great way to learn critical television watching.

Our Earth is a master chef. She really knows how to cook!

All this intro is apropos of the neato-spedito NOVA now playing. Shiny gems! How do opals come to be? What can we learn from so-called "flawed" diamonds (now I want one; I've never given two hoots about a dang diamond before, but - five billion year old geology, preserved in a beautiful uncut stone? GIMME inclusions!)? I am enchanted by how excited these scientists are, it's funderful to watch. The thing about learning the science of things we romanticize is this: sometimes, understanding the properties that lead us to emotional conclusions actually *deepens* the fascination and mystic feeling.

Glamour, I admit/protest, is not generally a source I think of when it comes to news. Yet somehow, in my wanderings around the intertubes, at some point this week I bumped into this piece about Uber's discrimination against minorities and women. (Yes, the info here points specifically to discriminating against Black people; do you think they're better with other POC? I don't.) It's sad, and it is a good article.

This post from Ann Bennett made me happy if only for using the term "messes" in my favorite way, but it's also a neat agricultural/cultural/foodie piece. On the health benefits and history of 8 messes of poke salad. (Bonus content: in the comments, she uses "victuals.")

Okay, SUPERMOON! Who doesn't love a supermoon? I don't not! Pick your link here.

A 49,000 year old human settlement in Australia? Linkyness from the Sidney Morning Herald, because I kind of love that their domain is SMH.com. Most news'll do the SMH to you. (The posture in this picture? That doesn't remind me of anyone I know, at ALL. Except totally.)

You can adapt through mutations, but if you interbreed with the local population who are already there, you can get some of these adaptations for free.

Click for the story behind the quote: the genetics behind Neanderthallergies. Hmm!

For centuries, nobody batted an eye at singular they...

I'll pause with this quote and say this: honestly, in my nearly 50 years on the planet, I had never even heard of anyone objecting to "they" (or ... thinking it is new!???) until a year, maaaaayyyybe two, ago. What rocks do the people live under, who protest against this as politically correct tyranny? What language do they speak? As The Arrant Pedant says: this complaint is not about grammar.

Collection

Washington, DC's public library system is sponsoring a banned book scavenger hunt, and if you find one, it's yours. How. Splendid. Is that? #UncensoredDC

"(A)n indescribable alchemy of kindness and intimidation" puts it so well - on what it's like to guest on RuPaul's Drag Race, and the ineffable ness of his presence. Oh so very yes.

Quite a few of my JRW friends are represented in River City Secrets: Stories From Richmond. Here is an anthology I look forward to sampling and savoring!

I am, as usual, grateful and impressed with the community of Reiders at Janet Reid's blog. Today, we discussed trigger warnings, sensitivity, thought ... and even feelings. The one place on Teh Intarwebs where reading the comments is a GOOD idea. (Extra bonus: I found this poem along the way, because I click on commenters' IDs. A lovely moment, captured ...)

John Davis Frain has an excellent collection of quotes for writers; Carl Sandburg's #9 on this list is a classic!

Here is another, from my recent reading of The Serpent's Tale, by Ariana Franklin:

“Oh, I have a high regard for hypocrisy,” the little nun said. “It pays lip service to an ideal which must, therefore, exist. … In its own way, it is a token of civilization. You don’t find hypocrisy among the beasts in the field.”

Collection

This will be a long and cluttered post; some things I've had in my pocket and not blogged for a good while. So, my apologies in advance for a lack of organization (and, as usual, timeliness).



Let's start off by revisiting another story that hasn't been front and center lately. Following up on headlines that fall away after their seven-minute news cycles are over - who remembers Rachel Dolezal? Here's what happened - first - and next ... "I would never make a mockery of the things I take most seriously."

The #WhenIwas hashtag makes difficult reading, but it is important, especially for those who want to believe that these things are ‘one off’ incidents. While many men have tweeted their shock at the stories being shared, many women remarked that they could identify with almost every single one.

(H)e refused to jail her, saying: “It would be a disgrace to send a survivor … to prison."

"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" Parts of women in movie marketing ... For the record, it’s not just movies. Looked at a book cover lately?

The ways and means of contemporary - well, let's *call* it journalism: “On some level, I thought that if what Charter was telling me was that big a deal, it would already have been reported” ... "The problem is that despite the struggle and innovation that has been taking place in the news media since the internet disrupted its business model, no one has come up with a profitable way to provide information about government to average Americans in ways they care about." ... "That vacuum provides an opening for outlets that peddle in the kind of bias, treachery, and quackery that we have always been afraid of … misleading or conspiratorial ideas about government activities can spread more easily when the public lacks credible information to counter it."

If there’s anything I love in this world, it’s the intellectually considerate takedown of rudeness (see also: Miss Manners, who could do this like nobody else). Here we have a stellar example in the “Don’t be THAT -ist” manner, but with a much deeper and wider message. “(D)enunciations of other people’s 'stupidity' are a particular temptation of our age”

Slow hope … the punishment for a pedophile …

This detailed piece on mental health and society blew me away. On being a psychopath and knowing the right thing to do…

(E)ven the most hardcore, cold intellectual wants the romantic notion. It kind of makes life worth living. But with these kinds of things, you really start thinking about what a machine it means we are—what it means that some of us don't need those feelings, while some of us need them so much. It destroys the romantic fabric of society in a way.

A few pieces on the curious phenomenon of victim worship - and exploitation for entertainment - in today's pop culture and society.

Collection

Today in "this motivates me to learn more about self-pub" - sigh, it's actually Janet Reid. On the ass-kicking that is the publishing industry.

JJ Litke's blog is stealing into my brain. First it was how being in the traffic jam means: you are the traffic, and now DRAGON CAKE! The post is great, but click through even if only to look at the pictures of the coolest birthday cake I've ever seen. Worth exploring well beyond these two links, I promise.

JK Rowling, whose name has for so many pre-published authors, simply become a synonym for blockbuster success, turns out to have a nimble mind and a way of expressing herself I have to admire. “If my offended feelings can justify a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral grounds on which to argue that those offended by feminism, or the fight for transgender rights, or universal suffrage, should not oppress campaigners for those causes.”

Because, sigh.

On the provenance and price of Thomas Jefferson's hair. ("And now, INTRODUCING the new band: The Fourteen Hairs!!!") The History Blog knows how to have fun, y'all.

See also: the fascinating bit about preservation of WWI graffiti by conscientious objectors at Richmond Castle. Huh.

Tools

There are times it frustrates me when people say they are atheists because of what people have done in the name of religion. PEOPLE do dunderheaded things in the name of all sorts of things, and though religion does have extreme examples, there are also extreme idiots (Richard Dawkins) screaming passionately about their atheism. He's as dangerous as any other zealot; and that is the issue: zealotry in human hands is the problem. Not G-d.

To withdraw belief in G-d because of human behavior honestly bewilders me.

It's like me and not having kids.


I never had children because I never experienced the bone-deep desire - the *urge* (so named because of its *urgency*)  to have a child.

This seems to me the very best of reasons never to have them. There have been other thoughts on the matter that have been a part of my life, but at bottom it's the simple absence of need to procreate or adopt, to be a parent, that has been ultimately responsible.

So I can see, very easily, the absence of need for G-d ... and for faith.

But many of the atheists I know once HAD faith - and lost it, because of other people. They experienced disillusionment and shame in religion, because of the jerks who espouse it (whether their own or not) and decided against G-d, because of man.

I suppose this is overwhelmingly arrogant: but this bewilders me.


Anything hideous ever done in the name of religion came about by the hands, and the tongues, of human beings.

Religion is a tool. It can be a poor tool, misused, No doubt about it. So can science and history; my blog is filled with examples of the wrongheaded invocation of history, the way we think it's some sort of plotline leading ever-onward to betterment, and how that must mean humanity now is the best humanity history has ever seen, because: history equals evolution.

Which: no.

So I ABSOLUTELY concur, that there are a hell of a lot of people out there blunting their blades, hammering with a tool meant to cut through confusion, or mistaking the philosophy and questioning of faith for final, firm truth.

But the idea that we then throw out all the tools, instead of sharpening or learning how to use them (for those interested in what those tools have wrought, or could) ...

Isn't that the very last word in Luddite behavior? "It's of no use to me and it scares me, so HULK SMASH!" ... ?



Again: yes. The tools of religion have hurt many people. So have the tools that created the thing we call culture, or advancement. Innovation requires tools.

For me, it is an innovation of the highest order to grow spiritually.

I tried to do that without tools, without a congregation, without inspiration. I ended up making up a lot of religious tools for myself. Offerings, prayers, little personal rituals.

And it got me to a point where I felt I wasn't really that good an innovator, and I needed the help of something outside my own wee and paltry brain.

I reached for religion. My church.

There I found the literally-angelic voice that perhaps inspired me most, but I also found Miss B., with whom I sat at yesterday's services. She was the first who ever welcomed me in the congregation, and she is the very, joyous definition of Christian fellowship. Not because we sit around quoting bible verses at one another. But because she saw me alone as a guest, and made me a member, as fully and as lovingly as education and confirmation and that bishop who laid hands on my head.

Religion, for me - as filled with ritual and script as my church is - is far less about dogma, and so much about communion: the communion of souls. Of just nice PEOPLE. Of congregation. Coming together, and sharing the sunshine yesterday. That is a religious act as profound as the eating of an intincted wafer.

I may still not be the craftsman, with my tools, that (oh, say) Jesus, who was a carpenter, was. But I am part of a team now, a crew, a congregation. Of people I honestly do love, though I spend little time with them of late. And appreciate and respect.

I found the phrase, "Okay, we're past the angelic robes and the beard and the penis, and we're onto something BIGGER!" one day over lunch ...

Faith and hope and growing spiritually? Yes, go big.

Why try for faith, without exultation?



What else is faith for but to bring us together as human beings, and what else, at bottom, does ANY religion foster? Even those religions we condemn as perverted - geared toward exclusion as much as inclusion - geared toward WINNING, and punishment of sin - still require one heart and mind to link to another, and another.

We're only human. We don't always do that well. We don't do it well in business or in study, in reaching goals or explaining them. It's not religion's fault.

And human behavior is human behavior - and flawed, as often as it is beautiful - in the pursuit of whatever it is we do to connect ourselves to others.

An ass in a choir robe is just as much of an ass once the robe is doffed and hymns are suddenly to blame for all that is wrong in the world. The robe didn't sin, neither (perhaps) did the hymn. They were there before disillusionment, and they'll be there after.



If I am a poor painter, I don't blame the brush; not even the paint. It lies within me to learn, or not. Perhaps it lies within me to know I'm a better writer than I am an artist.

But it's not the tools' fault, if I don't sell paintings for stunning pricetags.

The Rhythm of the Boogie the Beat

Janet's community has been at its best today, and inevitably it's all got me thinking. Thinking things like this ...

What a lot of us fail to see through our privilege is that "white is the default." I place that in quotes not for sarcasm, but because the words are not mine; they are at the base of #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the issues with diversity (not just in publishing, but I'm trying not to go off the rails here). I grew up understanding that whitneness is the signifying quality of American-ness, and never thinking about that. I lived in a suburb that was the product of white-flight, and went to a school named for a proponent of segregation and massive resistance. So-called "genteel racism" was (and even remains) not hidden.

THE major reason I decided to shelve The Ax and the Vase was that, no matter how good the writing is, nor even how interesting the story is: American publishing is not suffering from a dearth of tales of white dudes in power. There isn't a single POC in that novel, and I thought that was completely valid, and I WAS WRONG. I guilted about it, but didn't change it. The WIP is an entirely different matter.

... and this ...

Diversity is not an agenda.

Diversity is the reality of our world - in the past, where I write, in the present, in every part of the world, no matter what. There is diversity of age, of gender identification, of color, of religion, of tastes in ice cream, of economic/relationship/educational/class/intellectual status. We don't all have the same resources. There is no world without differences: yet many of us grew up not seeing that. Many grew up feeling invisible because "white is the default", and faces and voices of color were not proportionately seen and heard - even still, there's no money in it, as far as certain industries are concerned.

Dis-inclusiveness makes for poor writing. 

I write precisely because I want to see something of the word other than where I live. The inside of my navel would make an awful setting for a story. Story is for many readers not merely an escape, but a venture OUT - out of the day to day, out of what they already know, out of their own skin.

And diversity is not all about skin. Remember that it's much, much wider than "political correctness" or complaining about old white dudes. Old dudes need representation too, in cultures obsessed with youth.

Diversity is not a punishment for privilege, and it's not even the political rectitude so many who fear this punishment find so abhorrent. It's just the real landscape of the world we live in.

... and this ...

And too: diversity is not (only) about color/ethnicity.

I am mystified by those who can stomach Pandora bracelets or licorice or team fitness challenges. These things horrify me to a point it's hard not to think "You are doing it wrong" about those people who love this stuff. And I left out a lot - diversity in our health (mental illness and its challenges have been much on my mind of late), and stigmatizations that do not relate to ethnicity even tangentially. We "other" people for as many reasons as there are people marginalized or brutalized or CELEBRATED.

... and this ...

(D)iversity is not a quota system. There is no magic number to get all the people we're not to stow this talk of diversity.

Failure to include is the failure to reflect the world. ... I grew up in Downtown White Flight, but one of my closest friends was a Black girl named Holly. She wasn't invisible; she introduced me to the concept of Michael Jackson outside of The Five, and when she did Rapper's Delight, I damn near fell over in awe at the speed of her singing-speech.

Diversity is not a didactic directive that we all have to write about POC/disabled/young/old/mentally ill/poor/disenfranchised/licorice-loving/religiously alternative/gay/differently pinky-toed people. It's the distillation of the point that if we're writers, and if we pretend that non-us people are invisible, we are failing in our WORK - failing to reflect the abundance of the world we live in, or the one we're trying to build.

"I came that they might have life, and have it in abundance." Why would we want to revel in limitation?

***


My own final comment above brings to mind something that has always bothered me in production design most particularly, but does happen in prose.

Historicals are especially plagued with this - prop masters get so carried away finding JUST the right clothes or home furnishings or cars, or location scouts just the right place to shoot, that any other period than the exact year of their story is neglected. Nineteenth century homes contain nothing from the seventeenth or sixteenth; girls in 1970s productions wear only Dorothy Hamill haircuts and wedgies;

The picture-perfect past is only ONE single slice of the past, one instant's place on a timeline: when, in life, we all have a lot of our own past around us right now. Why would not *our* past have had *their* past about them?

It's a silly view, and it's poor world-building. It misses out on the beautiful English Georgian portrait hanging in the home of an early twentieth-century Australian. In my own home alone, thirty percent of my furniture would be gone - and the home itself - if someone reconstructed my "set" strictly in 2016 terms.

And so it is a silly view, that the world had no black people in it, just because I wrote a novel set in ancient Gaul - that only one woman was club-footed, and maybe there was like one miscarriage as a sub-plot, and everybody was intelligent and overall healthy and all the same color.

And so it is a silly view, that all the Black people in America were offstage in the 1950s, waiting for the Civil Rights movement and Jimi Hendrix and Oprah to give them stories to tell. It is a silly view, that Black people exist only in the context of cotton fields and The Cotton Club.

It is no view at all, and no voice. It is the brutality of non-seeing, of rendering people and lives invisible. Some of those people might be white, or rich, or men named William. Diversity is many things.

But a lack of it is only one thing: a bloody bore to read.


***


Edited to add this: PLEASE consider going to the link to Janet Reid's blog. It is not a short read, because today we commented unfettered, and the discussion was long. But the conversation is a glorious example of the best of human interaction, debate, conversation. It closes with thoughtful words from the lady herself, our hostess, Queen of the Known Universe (QOTKU) - and comments are closed. So the thoughts it will provoke: bring them into your world. Bring them here, too, I would love that.

But, for now, Lord, it is night. G-d rest you all.

On Vocal Fry, Bitterness, and Being a Woman

Oh squee, we have another recency illusion! On the evolution of the valspeak vocal fry: a LONG podcast, but a most interesting one, including as it does such an intensity of apparently unironic white male self-congratulation and feminine condemnation. For shorter, written pieces with a more interesting and scientifically useful bent, take a look at the debunking of the habits of vocal fry and uptalk as a privileged little American girl fashion (from the NYT – a really good look at the phenomenon and its *strategic* [defensive] utility), and here, the personal story of a woman who took a stab at rehabilitating her vocal creak – and then didn’t.

Full disclosure: I am EXTREMELY guilty of judging young women by their voices. I have ranted alone at my television and even talked with my mom about the buzzy, baby voices younger women use – the very picture of the judgmental old lady in my hatred of the sound. There will be a long and serious review of how much of my prejudice is born of self-hatred (my own tendency to valspeak as a kid, and many years of self-training to get over the noise) and how much of it is the bigotry born of age and the privilege that my own voice is so often *heard*. From the NYT link … "young women were generally interrupted more than men and so it’s a defense mechanism" …

In a mental review of the voices of the women and some of the men I love, there appears little creak among them, but uptalk (rising terminal inflection) is very common. My mom has a strong voice, and just on Christmas, I heard once again what I have heard since I was nine or so, that I sound just like her. I take this as a compliment; my mom has a jolly way of speaking. My oldest friend, TEO, has a soft way of speaking, but not lacking for authority; she is a mother and a teacher, and speaks smoothly and gently, but is not breathy. She uses lilt in the strategic ways noted in the New York Times article, and may not always assert dominance with her voice, but her confidence is complete.

Cute Shoes has a particularly beautiful voice. Low but never nasal and buzzing, she uses uptalk inflection with precision – again, a mother, and a professional manager, she nudges vocally with great effect.

My brother sometimes uptalks – he is a father of two girls, and guides them with a questioning voice, prompting them to display what they know, rather than telling them as if they don’t.

Mr. X, a man of six-feet-four and an impenetrably dour resting expression, can appear physically intimidating in a way, but has a manner of speech that focuses on his breath in a way that makes it more noticeable to me than I find it to be in other people. His speech most often is quiet, modulated. Modulated or even regulated. His breath is plosive, strong as Rowan Atkinson speaking the letter “B”, if he’s pressed to humor or surprise or passion. But most of the time, his voice is held back; he speaks with what I’d describe almost as another kind of “creak” – the softness of restrained pressure. I think of the way he says “Hello” on the phone, or the first time I really heard him speak, and am struck by the idea he often seems almost to be holding his breath. It’s not an unnatural sound – he doesn’t seem strained – only holding in reserve; typical of him psychologically too.

My dad had a warm and gravelly voice. No creak there, just the patina of a man of great experience, some years of smoking, even more of teaching, many of parenting, and all of loving. Like the satin-ing silver sheen of wood handled and handled again over long ages, it was strong and beautiful and deep and weathered. I can’t remember my dad’s voice at thirty; but, by sixty-five, he had a distinctive, soft growl.

Even dad used upspeak, though. He prompted his students, pulled his kids along on the upturned lilt of the inflection of his sentences, not all of them interrogative. His rising terminal was unlike that we think of when the term “uptalk” crops up – a promontory, not a steep rise. A place inviting you out to its tip, to take a look at the vista.



In 1981, still in middle school, I had left the small world of grade school behind, and came across people with the early-80s Eastern hippie inflected speech that seemed to me then and now to share a lot with what we soon were calling valspeak. Then high school, Zappa’s daughter, horizontal-striped shirts with puffed sleeves … and my own regrettable teenage speech.

Maybe I don’t really regret it.

But I did spend some years in remediating it.

I was never raised to be a woman out to form myself in the shape to please a man, but one or two points my dad made about the appeal of a woman did strike home (eventually). The major one was that a woman walks with grace, not a bounce. I feel like I saw Grace Kelly swiftly descending a long staircase, a long gown hiding all evidence she owned legs and feet, her head smooth as if on a gimbal, yet clearly RUNNING down, to catch a Cary Grant perhaps, in “To Catch a Thief” – but the image stays with me, real or imagined, transplanted from the wrong movie or not – that was grace the thing, in Grace, the woman.

Grace was one of the few things dad exhorted upon me as his girl child, and it’s not one I ever resented – and another measure of grace, aside from movement (which I cannot generally do so beautifully) is a womanly, beautiful voice.

I may not have attained any more beauty in my voice than in my physical comportment – but it is true I treasure the compliment once received, that my voice sounds like brownies baking.

It used to be I’d get joked at, “You should have your own 976-number.” This was a thing, kids, twenty years ago when porn was performed live by phone – and presumably I had a SENSUAL voice, which may or  may not have been typical of real sex-operators’ voices, but the general idea was meant to convey that I sounded good. (Or quite naughty …)

And, of course, the oldest comment of them all, “You sound like your mother.”

At work, in particular, I cultivate a variety of voices – for “my kids”, a warm and southern style – for new calls, professional and modulated, lapsing easily into laughter and friendliness where possible – or occasionally slipping toward interrogative-inflected passive (aggressive) voice, depending on how things need to be guided.

With my friends, mom, and brother, I like to think I am most often laughing or listening. We like to think a lot of positive things about ourselves, I suppose …

What about you?

#WeNeedDiverseBooks

There is a movement in publishing which has gathered a great deal of momentum just in the past six months, and which is gratifying to see - and which I have DECIDEDLY failed (with The Ax and the Vase, that is) to participate in. Ax is not only about a royal white dude, but it's self-absorbedly told in first person POV, *and* includes a long and inextricable subplot about, essentially, hating and punishing homosexual behavior.

I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.

The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.

There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.

How to do that ...

• Avoid exoticization - turning someone's entire culture into a Hallowe'en costume (or, even worse, a sexy Hallowe'en costume) to dress up my book.
• Avoid appropriation - imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery; sometimes, it's just a reductive presumption, and can lead to a loss of perspective. Not good for writing about something.
• Don't impose myself on a character or a culture - researching a world to build it, without demolition in order to reface it. Storytelling is not a wasteful home design show out to impose a fresh new face on an old house, it's an exploration of structure and style which should be true to intent. I don't jam 21st-century feminists into my works, and I don't fetishize the worlds into which I want to bring my readers.
• Follow the story. If the characters are allowed "their own truth" so to speak, everything will work better. I love to be led, as an author.
• Keep #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the great diversity and voices *in tune* all the time. I find inspiration in Twitter all the time for this, connections and perspectives not only keeping me honest about my privilege, but affecting the way I live and write, and how I think about approaching everything.
• FIND THE HISTORY. There are more and more people every day seeking to illuminate sources beyond the powerful white men. Researchers are amazing people, and they share - it would be madness not to take advantage of that, as a writer.

The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.

Wish me luck ...

Blood Runs Cold Again

At my job, I take a special pride in some of the more difficult parts. I don’t take great RELISH in them, but when we get a call from someone who’s mad at something that happened with an employee, I have a fair record of satisfying the disgruntled. I take a very real stake in our reputation, and being part of the operations of our business means I am, as they say, “customer-facing” in a unique way from time to time – when people have a problem with us.

Most of those who call with a complaint, it must be said, aren’t calling in a highly emotional state, and even those who are unhappy tend not to begin by taking things out on me. We’re all in the transaction together, and I do everything I can to explain what I’ll do next, to answer for my company’s reputation, and to take people seriously. And they know they’re not calling the person who upset them, really, so more often than not once I’ve gone through a complaint with someone, they are happier once they hang up than when they called.

Only a very few times has someone called me actually angry. Once it was someone in a contracting position of sorts, mad he couldn’t find our location, and when I (nowhere even near the state in which he was lost) was unable to help him (this was in the very beginning of my tenure, and I was not issued street directions to sixty-three offices when I started here) my vice president told me, “Give him to me. Nobody yells at you.”

Once it was a woman so wildly abusive that once she’d cursed at me violently several times in a row, I actually did hang up. There was exactly nothing I could have done to satisfy her, and as much as I care about our reputation, there was no remediating that (nor, frankly, was that really the problem – just a raving maniac). And I don’t get paid to take instruction on the gruesomely biological suggestions being made.

Today, it was someone who may well have had a very real reason for her upset. But I honestly don’t know. Something in a communication from somewhere in our company offended her, and I am sick about that if we said something that caused hurt or anger. But it was impossible for me to triangulate either the nature of the offense, or its source. I attempted a few reasonable questions, was called a disgrace, and requested to twist a fastener of the non-nail variety off before she hung up.

This was upsetting for me, but as problematic as anything in the exchange was that I could not complete the transaction. I couldn’t help – indeed, was outright prevented, by the petitioner herself.

Far more upsetting, though, was that this woman also abused our receptionist. Not only because our receptionist is very good at her job, AND a nice person for whom I feel loyalty and now some protectiveness, but because I’ve had that job before, and I know all too well what it can be like.

I’m no fan of a holler-er, but I can take that and go home and snoodle my beautiful furbabies and marinate in the magical potion of moral superiority (and I can vent at my brother and/or friends). But holler at someone with whom I share a vested concern for my employer, and someone I LIKE? Bite it, caller, I’m not on your side when you scream like a coward at someone you KNOW cannot respond.

As it was, no matter how much I said, “I want to help you” the woman was the rage-version-of-gleeful in accusing me of being angry with her too.

Um. No. You’re not important enough for me to get upset about lady – until you’ve hung up on me and then I find out you’ve abused my coworker.



The night is rain-into-snow, and I brought home my laptop, though our neck of the woods is not in for the brunt of the big snowstorm on its way to a spectacular pummeling of the Eastern Seaboard. It’s not beyond me to think happy thoughts of sleeping in and enjoying a commute only as long as the distance to my home office, wearing warm, comfortable boots. I’m home and I’m safe now, warm and well-fed with the animules (spelling intentional, yes; a dad-ism, and those are warm too).

That execrable human being can’t get me.

But man did she make my BLOOD RUN COLD for a minute there.

Hoping your Monday was a wonderfully dull day. But, if not, please throw in your own “vent” in the comments!

Researching Agents

Old as I am, I’m not exceptionally naïve, and yet … every now and then, I find myself a wee stupefied when I inadvertently stumble upon laundry that’s not merely dirty, but borderline offal, and of course being flapped about in public (Teh Intarwebs) by those professing themselves laundresses. Such is the peril of researching agents.

When it comes to actual querying, I’ve become jaded enough that research is not as maximal as it once was. I verify they rep my genre, decide whether or not their website is intolerable, pay attention to submission guidelines, and read any interviews readily available. (The sad, but not to-the-point fact on these latter is that they tend to date to 2011 and earlier in the vast majority of cases; I truly need to ask some agents to let me interview them here.) If they’re not a gross mismatch, and especially if they appear to have some sense of humor, I personalize and query. The entire process can take less than fifteen minutes; but then, at the query stage, I suspect their side of the transaction often occurs far more speedily, though the time it takes for them to read my blood, sweat, and tearjerking introduction can be weeks and even months.

It’s when I get a request I’m going to re-read and more deeply research an agent, and my can that be edifying.

Not about the agent.

But about the kinds of special snowflakes who query them, and the extreme umbrage taken when Mr. or Ms. Agent shirks the obvious moral duty to fall into transports of wonder at the offering before them. It happens at the query stage and beyond, once requests have been too-long ignored, or follow-ups not responded to, and so on. And, yeah, maybe it actually is useful for me as another querier, to learn that someone with whom I may consider a business relationship might be a poor responder or the like.

But when an entire website is built around broadcasting theoretically-polite complaints about rejections which are not (right or wrong) actually outrageous, or when indeed SIX entire websites appear to have been generated to literally campaign against the usefulnes of another site often used as a queriers’ bible (and which is, in fact, littered with twits and bullies, but does contain bits of useful info) … It just gets weird. And distasteful.

I researched Janet Reid once, because I read her site (uh-DUH), and because I was curious the experience people have with her. This led me to one of the six shrill sites screaming about that parenthetical site alluded to above, and some extremely specific and veeeeeerrrrry angry particulars about her relationship there.

If I were researching her as a querying author with no previous experience of her (and, remember, Gossamer is her dollbaby and has become one of the known “mascots” on her blog/FaceBook etc. – he got his “the Editor Cat” sobriquet from her!), this coming as high as it does in the search results might put me off quering her in a trice. If I didn’t read enough to see the sparks flying off the ax being abused on the polishing stone.

As hard as it can be to face 5 rejections in 3 days (and, in case my regular readers have not guessed – finally got a full request today … so nine more to go!): damn. I don’t get the luxury of watching my entire reputation slagged on a regular basis by angry writers who may not have followed the rules, who have an inflated sense of the Sooper Sooper Specialness of their work, who really had their heart a bit too set on Mr. or Ms. Agent, or who are, frankly, batsplat crazy. I sincerely hope never to see six websites built by one angry rejectee, vigorously seeking recruits to the inexplicable cause of b*tching and moaning.

As difficult as it is to face editing and revision with no beta readers, and to allow myself to become paralyzed for a YEAR while facing the dragon with a butterknife: (so far) I’m not being publicly slagged for the temerity of Doing my Job.


The fact is, it’s a necessary truth that there are some slacker agents out there. Just as there are slackers everywhere else. However, I’ll learn more about them during the querying/full-requesting/prospective stage from ARTICLES they have written, interviews, their Publishers Marketplace and Agent Query and so on profiles, and fulsome blogs by clients discussing working with them than I ever can learn about them from whinging, no matter how pretend-politely it is couched.

Or how batsplat crazily it is spewed. Ahem.

From the complaints, all I *really* learn about is the complainers. It’s possible to get some ideas about the way an agent works, and form some questions, but until I have the privilege or trial of working with someone myself, even if only on a first-read (or second-read) basis, it’s not only premature to get het up about that one person they once kept waiting in 2008, but pointblank pointLESS.

It is, too, extremely quick to go “off” and become distasteful. It doesn’t feel helpful and informative, as would “this agent charges reading fees” or expects exclusive consideration before even requesting a full (I’ve seen agents – just within the past week – who “required” exclusive QUERIES, which is … sputter-inducingly ridiculous), or has left agenting, or has never made a sale despite claiming 10 years’ experience …

Reading the complaints of others, about an agent, especially where there is a group dynamic, or at least the clear desire/campaign to create one, gets me all QPF(*) in a big hurry, these days. It feels like research in the wrong order, like I’ve accidentally stumbled into that ever popular millennial quagmire: Doing It Wrong. It kind of feels mean, too – as mean as any given agent must seem to the many, many authors of such complaints, for giving them the HIDEOUSLY PAINFUL AND UNJUST cause to complain.

Erm.

Cart, horse, submit.


(*QPF: quizzical puppy face)

Collection

Let’s take it as given that everyone reading this considers themselves above reading “list” posts or anything ever written for Buzzfeed.  Let’s assume we all know this is reductive silliness with no real importance nor even validity (… maybe!).  I won’t tell anyone if you click through – but  if you do, don’t feel bad; because #25 is perhaps the best time I’ve had with words since “immaterial”, and I didn’t even have have to produce the keystrokes.  28 “Favorite” Books That are Huge Red Flags …  Enjoy! We’re all friends here.

Everyone knows disgust and politics are closely related.  But did you know disgust actually underlies formulation of our politics?  Figures.

Because my TBR pile is not tall enough to topple yet, somehow - Religion and the Decline of Magic.  For me, the title alone is catnip, but its depth of content looks entirely absorbing.  Research on antique *mindsets* is so difficult, and this, even though it's not my period, would be illuminating!

Janet Reid relieves querying authors of the burden of research - or, at least, of the pitfalls of the databases most of us create.  Truth be told, I'll still keep personalizing - I'm an inveterate researcher, and I *have* had the best luck with the best-personalized of my queries.  It makes *me* feel better.  But, in keeping with the new directive - I did quit keeping spreadsheets and bookmarking interviews etc. a good while ago.  I read, I refer, I send, I quit.  Queries stay in the "query" folder until response is clear, and then go to the "completed" archive.  That's it.