Virginia

Ralph Northam didn't get my vote in the primaries, because I found his past appreciation for Dominion Virginia Power's finances problematic, but I voted for him for Governor. In January of 2017, when he appeared and marched with us at the Women's March, I was impressed, and more on board with him than before. He is a former Republican, and the voices deriding him as a present Republican, given that party's increasing lockstep behind the racist-in-chief, are perhaps hard to hear, but not 100% off base.

He has to go. Why he refuses to is bewildering in a painful way.

I don't want to bog down in a long post about all this, because frankly, the personal impact of Virginia politics right now is a fresh bruise. It's painful to live here these days.

When, in 2008, Virginia went presidentially blue for the first time, I didn't quite believe it. When we went Obama for the second time, I began to feel used to it. To tentatively own that I finally didn't live in a backward, reactionary state. And then we did it again, in 2016. There was still Dave Brat to contend with (I signed the petition to get Abigail Spanberger on the ballot at that march mentioned above), but I finally felt like Virginia was breaking away from the all too recent past of White Flight and reactionary thinking I had grown up surrounded by.

In 1982, when I entered high school, it was the Reagan years. Helped by a punk rocker in the house, who was having none of it, and the fact that I was the child of a scientist and the taunts on the schoolyard, "YOUR DADDY CAN'T BELIEVE IN GOD, HE'S A SCIENTIST!" I came to a different sort of politics than have been common here for most of my life. (My daddy, as he told me all his life to take away the sting those kids gave me, was a scientist precisely because he had such awe in the workings of a universe he believed to have been brought to us BY that God those kids underestimated so cruelly. Not an Intelligent Design guy by any means, dad's enthrallment in workings of all sorts was a major part of his faith in anything; and he did have religious faith.)

So I was extremely aware, in 1982 at the age of 14, and have been ever since, of the fact that my preppie high school was the product of White Flight, and the entitlement I saw all around me was not earned. I didn't know the phrase white privilege, but it was instantly recognizable once it appeared.

(W)e lay claim to a wisdom that people just a few years ago lacked, and accuse the recent past of deep ignorance.

I've been loath to actually look at old yearbooks this past week or so. Sure, the only thing that HAS brought me to look at them in about thirty years was the death of my best friend of 38 years, but even then my glances were pretty cursory. But now, the *apathy* of memory, thanks to a life of much greater richness after my K-12 years, has become an *agony*. From having no interest in looking back at the snobs I went to school with, I now have real fear of looking back at the well to do white kids I went to school with. Heck, the school itself.

I went to school with kids who absolutely would have donned blackface, as quickly as the Key Club (so enthusiastically) donned cheerleader outfits at every opportunity. Crappiest drag show ever. There were guys who drank, plenty who probably went on to become frat guys who sexually assaulted drunk girls, entitled asses who think they're nice guys and entitled asses who care not one bit about being good, decent, or anything else tolerable to the human race at large. They weren't my crowd (obviously), they weren't the whole of the student body, but they were crowd enough and then some.

Think I hated my school because it was so preppy? I hated my school because it embarrassed me. It embarrassed me then, and no less so now. They went with naming the place for a Massive Resistance spearhead instead of Edgar Allen Poe; this exposes the taste level - and "judgment" - of decision-makers in our community at that time.

So there doesn't even need to be blackface in my yearbook. The very name of the school said aplenty, and without a doubt some of us knew and despised what that name said. He himself was deplorable then, and I deplored him most especially on the occasion my best friend (a model student often trotted out to meet important people) was obliged to shake his hand, and I was introduced too, looking every bit as unimpressed as I was unimpressive to principal and politician alike, I'm sure.


The link above ...

The link above. I offer it without much comment, and not even necessarily endorsement, though it would be soothing for someone like me right now. There *is* a spectrum of ugliness, but for me as a privileged, relatively well-to-do white woman Of a Certain Age ... growing up where I did ... it is beyond my scope to say "this is right."

Oh, how I wish it could be knowably right, though. That would ease my liberal guilt.



Based on what I clipped for the quote highlighted, the real resonance for me is this: the sentiment accords powerfully with my general rantings about The Dirty, Stupid Past. By this, I'd love to absolve myself of all my own privileged complicity. There are stories I have debated recounting in public for years now - and, when I think about how I have aired out the most sensitive things on this blog, it's extremely plain that some of what I have held back owes to the same privilege Northam and Herring have had. So I should open that up, unpack that.

But that first link ... I'll lean OUT for a moment, lean back, not go all in. Not make anything about myself which absolutely is not. Not come up with any judgments.


I'm as fraught as the history of my state, these days. And ashamed as I was during the Reagan years, going to Beautiful Suburban White Flight High. So very ashamed, and frustrated.



Edited to add ...
Then I remembered our production of West Side Story, which I do think was in 1984. Teen after teen in brownface. Ugh.


THE CLICK BEYOND - good coverage of multiple aspects of this morass, for your analysis.

DRAG, the Series: Costume

I have decided to leave this series of posts, intentionally, in a very draft form. This owes to the upheaval of the past month of my personal life, yes ... but it also feels fitting, as the entire point of this discussion of drag is about construction and challenging assumptions. To smooth it all into coherent, long prose might obscure the various parts, and thoughts, I have put into this, and they perhaps should stand out starkly. In honesty, much of what I say is just intros to the links embedded. And so, here is this series. Unfinished. Challenging - to me, in one sense, and to the audience in another. Seems right ...


We began sewing at least 50,000 years ago. Clothing and textile ever since have been used not only for practical purposes, but symbolic ... and, if you think you are not dressed symbolically, even if you're reading this in your jammies, think again. LOOK again.

Most of us choose our symbols out of prefabricated options, sometimes with more consideration than others. But think about a drag queen; as often as not, she has created her own "look" - not merely in terms of painted features, but also in costume. A queen is a seamstress, a model, a performer - wearing a thousand themes through a thousand nights, and generally conceiving and creating every aspect of a look and a performance all on their own. A queen is inspired to a theme, but also has to look to practicals - is the piece I'm making utilitarian for me to sing, or lip synch, or dance, or all of the above? What are the optical principles in presentation - in a dark hall or bar, in front of this crowd or that, in front of dozens - or hundreds - or thousands?

Dressing outlandishly is an art. Indeed, *many* arts. From design to performance, from choosing materials to deploying them, drag is head-to-toe ... inflatables, headpieces, shoes, unexpected materials. There is engineering to consider - will this prosthetic makeup hold up to the movement of my face, will the paper gown survive sitting down, or a long meet-and-greet with fans?


Makeup AND costume



fashion history and what's old is new again ... The study of the history of costume is the study of history itself, and perhaps a more insightful one than strictly reading direct sources. Looking at modes and methods of dress can tell the story of social priorities - even scandals - and deepens our understanding of the times in which surviving textiles or portraits were made. Oh MY!


what is appropriate to wear where. Clothing as instruction: this is for girls, this is for boys ... the eye it takes not just to see these distortions, but then to parlay them into art, beauty, and commentary.

Our culture is about choosing an identity and sticking with it so people can market shit to you
--RuPaul Charles

You hear often that drag is an "armor." The thing is, this is true for everyone, every day. The importance of costume exists for EVERYBODY, even those who think they're not doing it, not paying attention. If you dress yourself at all - and if you don't (there is no escape, Major Major) - we present ourselves to the world, even when we're not dressing up for other people. Even when all we present is what we prepared just to manage the physical act of living.

If humanity as a whole is constantly evoking, demolishing, reimagining, and retrieving our fashions, even as we feel the need to just-as-constantly make fun of what is old. Sometimes, those among us creating the real rules by which we actually live are those of us destroying what, ideally, we might like to be the rules. Drag is destruction, and simultaneously it is creation. That's a hellaciously difficult magic trick, and it is one of the keys of beauty itself.

Self-decoration is older than homo sapiens itself; in the ochre of ancient hominid burials, we see the urge to beauty - to self-presentation - in the deepest history of what we are. It is tied to religion and death, and without it there is no culture, no society at all.
............ "The only thing I didn't like was the makeup" ... "You don't need makeup"


"Fake it till you make it" ...

Grand Guignol
We use exposure to our fears to get over our fears, but also for the *thrill* of the fear.


Not long ago, I was watching an episode of "Lucifer" in which an immortal character is costumed in a completely innocuous sweater with a peter-pan collar. She's in no way presented with fantasy color or extreme style, but her sweater is embroidered with dozens of bees. It wasn't a design choice 99% of viewers would even register, but for the very few who would, it was meaningful - and quietly gratifying.

All our clothing is projection. Drag is projection. Projection of wishes, projection of feelings, projection of fears - thrilling, and inuring. And beautiful

Collection

How much fun is a good debunking? Particularly one that goes after those clickbait farms that so adore spreading BS which, unfortunately, people seem to lap up like creature-milk. Please enjoy ... the true history of gruesome Victorian photography of the dead! Not. Heh. (The click beyond: tear catchers and the phrase "each of us can choose our own belief." Maybe meant to be funny; but YET another symptom in the hardening American resistance to *facts*. And now sigh.)

Ummmmmmm(ami) - women's emansoupation - here is a tale of tasty seasoning, which I now feel the need to go buy so I can put it in my new spice rack.

Dominick Tao, an American veteran, is a great writer ... with a meaningful story.

Do you remember Powers of Ten? Here's another great animation, graphically representing just how far humanity has gone into the Earth.

And finally, the old two-space. I trained myself out of this habit over the space of a few days just in the past four years or so. My resistance to change (apart from being a Virginian) was seething irritation at the single-spacers' screaming insistence that ye olde River of White was apparently horrifying to them, and that has always struck me as a ludicrous stance. My feeling is, what is so damn gorgeous about a giant, unbroken wall of text? Ahh, but: count on the Arrant Pedant to produce a detailed, and MUCH more cogent discussion on the subject. (Also: yay, he is back!)

Collection

Look. I don't do the online crush thing, I really don't. But scrap the romance attached to "crush" and give me some leeway to crush away, because John Davis Frain just came up with the BEST TITLE EVER for a flash fiction piece, AND it all hinges on an Oxford comma. Glorious - go and enjoy this spiffy, quick read. And the click beyond? Special bonds with Mr. Schroedinger. Dead or alive. So. Many. Science jokes. Loving it!

(And, John? I swear I started this Collection post days before you stopped by and commented!)

We do not want to make public health recommendations based on five sponges from Germany

Who else loves to read the latest science or health/medicine headlines while indulging in many grains of salt? Have you ever joked about how eggs are healthy now, but used to be vicious little cholesterol time bombs? Or fat is good, but bad, but what'll it be next week? Welp, here's the latest - on "regularly cleaning" your kitchen sponge ... or not. Thanks go to NPR for actually looking at the science without taking too long a trip into the deep weeds.

Prayer where the gods moved the Earth. In another blow to the myth of The Dirty, Stupid Past, we find that ancient Greeks not only could identify tectonic zones, but may actually have sought this real estate as a sort of direct conduit to the worship. To caveat the point: this is another one of those may have done theories. I encourage anyone reading the link to do so critically (and not just because it's Newsweek), because correlation is not causality.

... and just a little more of the not-so-dirty, not-so-stupid past - a map drawn in the 1500s, which turns out to be accurate to modern satellite mapping. So, nearly half a millennium ago, we were not utter morons. Only our tools have changed. GO SCIENCE!

Still. It's an intriguing theory, and I am sometimes more interested in intriguing ideas than empirical proof, when it comes to history. Even those ideas I tend to dismiss, I can still enjoy thinking about. Even writing about. I mean: how irresistible, for a writer? To contemplate the characters, the place, the time - where earthquakes and the fear they engendered were manifestations of the divine? And this, fella babies, is why I say I am not an historian. It gives me the out to indulge creativity ...

Collection

Because I need MORE painfully addicting things to read online (don't we all - not): random history; how about the history of hookless fasteners? Because - neato! What's nice about this site is that the research is solid. Not perfect (the history of wigs calls Elizabeth I Mary Queen of Scots' "predecessor", which is an imprecise use of a term with specific implications - and in another article it discusses flour used as wig powder, which we all know was Not a Thing, thanks to American Duchess, right?), but above average for online history, and sources are included, which is great for research AND history dorks!

Image: Wikipedia, of course
(Original? No, but I hate to be a thief!)

One of the great pieces of received wisdom in the United States is that fat people in poverty are chubbier because they eat so darn much fast food. Challenging one angle of the theory that poor people eat more poorly - it is in fact the middle class who eat the most fast food. That said, differences across the board, demographically-speaking, are not wide in the U.S. The findings seems functionally obvious to me; those of us who spend the most time in cube farms live lives all but tailored to eat McFud the most. I keep this to a minimum, but there ARE times it's just easy. (But no: I have not had fast food during the past three weeks ...) The click beyond: on the possible ineffectiveness of fast-food bans in lower income areas. Because, really? Fast food is NOT actually cheap. Hmm.

American independence and personal responsibility for being poor. This is quite a good read, one that de-fuses emotion and contextualizes things in a way Americans don't always stop to do. Poverty is not a static, unchanging state; we move in and out of it (I have myself). And its victims do not have the control we as a nation like to ascribe to each of our individualist individuals.

Many may have read about Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who was arrested in Michigan for performing FGM/C (a good interview, and explanation of the nomenclature here). A quote at the first link - "The practice has no place in modern society" - and this insightful essay both point to the way white America distances itself from ritual or behavior we either do not understand or wish to disavow. But these stories brought me to mind of the embrace Jeff Sypeck and Amy Kaufman see in our current culture, of "medieval" stereotypes, and the consequences. The fact is, we perform some damned indefensible procedures on ourselves, and no I do not mean body-obsessive plastic surgery - I mean "the husband's stitch" (see the second link), most "routine" circumcision, even some dental practices which may not truly be necessary for our health. Highly worth remembering: FGM/C in the modern world is NOT a Muslim tradition - one more reason to "other" this faith or mark them out as archaic, backward. It is performed across religions and cultures. And includes Christians. Clitoridectomy was covered by Blue Cross until 1977.

Going MEDIEVAL

Sometimes it's refreshing to realize how many smart people (a) also hate the whole "oh the dirty stupid past" foolishness we like to bandy about a bit too much, and (b) also know better than to accept the most commonly held generalizations about the Dark Ages, barbarians, medieval/fantasy/The Dung Ages and so forth. Jeff Sypeck is one of those who reassures me that not everyone thinks uncritically about historical stereotyping. He's also introduced me to Amy Kaufman, whose paper he discusses above is easy reading, free, not so long as to scare one off a scholarly work, and accessibly written and reasoned. It's highly worth the click beyond.

The ideas under discussion - our "romanticization" of some of these ideas of The Past, and the consequences (ask Mark Twain) of ... well, what frankly is often called "branding" these days. Specifically, Kaufman looks at the same dynamic as embodied in the so-called Islamic State (side note: it's nice to see ANY use of the "so-called" anymore; even mainstream media seems entirely to have forgotten that ISIS is a made-up title and self-bestowed, and that using it straightforwardly confers legitimacy). It's a pretty chilling look, not least in the gender politics* involved.

*I refuse to call rape "sexual".

Readers here know, I have plenty to say about women's treatment in this world - doesn't matter "when", we are prey, and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply ignorant. But I don't consider things worse than they once were ... and I do not consider them BETTER, either. Like bubbles in wallpaper, the position may be pressed out of shape or shifted around, but one look at human trafficking, slavery being perfectly alive and well no matter its perceived absence in our own personal worlds, the lives of children across the globe - and the regressive state of nationalism and politics worldwide - leaves no doubt: human beings don't really change very much.

So just as bad as chronological snobbery - the idea that we have evolved beyond what we think we used to be, that the past was populated by morons and we today are educated and therefore actually more intelligent - is the offensive mistake of chronological romanticization. The good old days never were, and the bright new tomorrow isn't, at least so far.

As I grow older, the irony is that this view of humanity SAVES me from much of the fear so many of us find overwhelming. Knowing that we did not really clamber up from darkness and ignorance to a more enlightened place provides perspective that we're not about to fall off a cliff.

Hopefully.

Okay, I won't keep going on. But your thoughts would be most welcome. And please do read Sypeck's post, and Kaufman's Muscular Medievalism.

Collection

A "well-healed" amputation and a prosthetic toe (no actual heel present) - on the most ancient prosthesis ever found in-situ. Or in-sitoe, if you like to draw out the punnery. So many chortles, so little time while reading this cool post from The History Blog.

An illustrated guide to writing PoC for the white author. Perspectives, and more perspectives! I think "cudnt spel to sieve her lyfe" is the perfect detail. Nicely done indeed, with a lot of Teh Funnay too. Fair warning, though: there are a LOT of tasty links here in addition to the observations and comics!

Just who gets to play in which cultural sandboxes?

"Columbusing." I guess this is what the kids are calling it now. Back in the 80s, all people said about this kind of thing was, "I remember my first beer." I remember when our year-younger-than-we-were friend discovered feminism for me and another friend. (I remember the phrase recency illusion as well.) ... and now I feel a little conflicted, because I was in the mood for Mexican for dinner, and my mom has a few "things" about PoC from south of the US border ...

I don't see what humanity has done over those 200 years that would make anyone have a softer view of humanity.

Need some more for your TBR? Well, I sure do. This revisitation of Frankenstein - now with a new revenant of a very different sort added to the old Monster - looks absolutely stunning, and maybe more terrifying than ever for some people. This may be my "I need 37 copies of this" release this year. Even just the interview is so beautiful and striking, linguistically. Voice, kids. Voice.

Collection

Science Daily has a great piece on the reward mechanisms in our brain relating to making art. This article focuses on the study of visual arts in this, but I would expect any writer to pipe up and say, "me too!" on this phenomenon.

(Bonus question for the novelists: is this a new meaning for the term SCIENCE FICTION? Heh.)

Sorry.

Regular readers here know, I love me a good debunking of The Dirty, Stupid Past - and American Duchess is serving up an epic takedown of the old 18th-century-bugs-in-the-hair routine. Along with quite a lot of good info, and a little period experimentation. Their podcasts are not short, but SO cool. And the very depth is what I am digging.

I have family in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the first local uniquenesses I remember hearing about was the wooly dogs. The mention of separating the dogs connects to hearing about their island breeding; this was a precious animal (as indeed all dogs are). So these Salish dogs fascinate me in a similar way to Carolinas.

Unscented flatus and original sin. A very interesting piece indeed on Augustine at The New Yorker. I am intrigued by the many quotes here, most uncited - and the very contemporary-versa vulgata translation of his Confessions mentioned at the top.

200 legitimate voters may be impeded from voting for every double vote stopped.

Finally, from The Atlantic - an in-depth look at the extensively documented relationship between white supremacist organizations and the GOP's voter-fraud initiatives. To anyone who feels "just having to show a driver's license" is not a coded method of racist targeting, look again. Or just look once. And consider the emphasis on data which purges tens of thousands of legitimate voters in a single state. Alfred K. Brewer could tell you a story.

Collection

Ever notice how hard it is to find a supermarket in a city's downtown? But easy to find a McDonald's or other fast food? It's not just a happy coincidence.

There's a fast-food restaurant within walking distance in many low-income neighborhoods, but nary a green leafy vegetable in sight.

Do you know who Maggie Walker was? Find out here and especially here - it's nice to see her getting some attention.

A brief history of children sent through the mail. Bees, bugs, and babies, y'all. Thanks, Smithsonian Magazine, I am well and truly squicked. (And how many of you are now wondering what the weight limit on modern drones is ... ? Yeah, I thought so. Same as a Europran swallow.)

Also from Smithsonian, here is a cool look at Wonder Woman's origins ...




American Duchess talks with Cheyney McKnight on a range of things, including a nuanced look at slaves' clothes in America. The post alone is interesting, but the hour-plus podcast is highly worth the listen. Never say what we wear - what YOU wear - sends no message.

Yet again, researchers have looked to the yucky/bizarre medicine of the ancient past, and found it was not so bizarre after all.

One of the problems with the modern concept of The Dirty, Stupid Past is that we no longer understand the most basic mechanisms of our world. We judge crazy old plant medicine without understanding plants in the slightest, nor allowing for the possibility that what we now call chemistry was for millennia the mere result of observation and implementation. The scientific method was only named in recent centuries; but the need for experimentation and innovation go back as far as humanity itself. Contemporary society considers itself very advanced, but hardly any of us understands the workings of anything we use, from our technology to our environment. Whereas, in times past when people were dependent upon their environment, and had no vast networks of text-bound research or even vast networks of other people's observations and experiences, communities (a) worked together and (b) knew their world intimately. Small as those worlds may seem to us today, the individuals living in them knew them better than we even know our own bodies anymore.

Collection

At NPR online, Margaret Atwood discusses the next big form. I know from the moment the election was decided, MANY writers were vocal online and everywhere else about how they were already inspired to new dystopian work. To look at the form those works may take is a great exercise; and I think she may be right. The pace of traditional fiction cannot do justice to the creative juices flowing right now.

The evidence from Pech IV and Roc de Marsal clearly shows that the Neanderthals at these sites lived without fire not only for long periods but also during the coldest periods.

The Atlantic has a cool look at fire (hah). I've always been fascinated by the concept of the human hearth; hearth rights, the earliest human domesticity, the social contracts born of our control of and sharing of flame for warmth, protection, and cooking.

When a question is asked perfectly, it doesn’t need a tidy answer.

TA also has a wonderful link for writers (and readers!), just with its opener (well, or Faulkner's) on this article about asking the right questions. I have talked about the problems I have with creating tension on the page; as a writer of historicals set in known events and amongst characters who actually lived, it's too easy for me to think the (hi)story itself is enough. But it's necessary to know both WHY anyone else would find that enough, and to entice them to want to know. What gifts do we as authors bring to our characters ... ?

Which gets me thinking about my WIP's first line ...

The heat had begun to feed upon the red tile roofs of Ravenna, as if with a hostile will, when Amalasuntha was born more than eight days late.

Now, the CLOSING sentence (currently) is a literary in-joke. I love it, though it may not survive. It's worth reading the whole to get to it. Let's hope I'm getting the hang of this tension thing ...

(Confidential to my nerd readers: anyone else watch Caprica?)

Yeah, and it's a lot from The Atlantic today, but bear with me; they have some excellent writing!

Who else recalls Mike Mulligan and The Little House? Staples of my own childhood, I was thinking of the beautiful art for The Little House just a couple of days ago; the way it depicted time, especially; the way the house had a face, filled with emotion. This essay picks up those memories, and finds the relevance right now, with a powerful punch at the whole idea that innovation was invented recently. Y'all know how I love a good recency illusion and a The Dirty, Stupid Past refutation! (Want to get away from The Atlantic? Worth a click is the New Yorker story about Virginia Lee Burton.)

(S)uccessful in eliminating hair, and also in causing muscular atrophy, blindness, limb damage, and death.
Hoo baby!

Okay, back to The Atlantic, for another of my obsessions, hygeine! On the industry, social and cultural implications, and pain of feminine hair removal. Evolutionary racism, and Darwin's culpability. Ow.

Collection

Costume nerd alert - that thing you see on the back of this seat? The "cracked" appearance in the silk? This is called shattering. Also, is that a stain I see on the front upholstery, under the cushion?

After all my television viewing reviewing of late, I'm interested in others' ethical takes on popular entertainment. Here's an interesting piece from Vulture.com on the fascism of The Walking Dead. I couldn't watch that show past one episode because of the violence, myself - as compelling as even just one show was, but being aware of its force, it's pretty arresting to see who has chosen to advertise with them - and why.

Curiously, and (ahem) blood-related to the diversity issues touched on in the TWD article above, here's a story about Trek's first Woman of Color as a main character. Sad that it's taken 50 years since Nichelle Nichols' turn as "ain't no maid" to reach this point, but Trek has always had a reputation for progressive inclusion and has had POC and women at the fore before. And now for intersectionality.

Today in "calling it Medieval means it's a relic of The Stupid, Stupid Past" news: our American junta. The thing about the stupidity of the past is? Like many artifacts, we DIY things back to life. Just because a dress doesn't fit anymore doesn't mean some asshat isn't going to recycle it as a scarf.

YAY! The Plague!

That glass? It's half full. Why?

From the vantage point of "seven hundred years later", the Black Plague is a safe little tragedy to examine. We may wince, we may even feel for individual stories of towns utterly ghosted - perhaps it's even scary, in a way. But overall, the plague is an object of study rather than the inspiration for deep personal feeling. It's not "our" horror.

In a new time, with different horrors, there are of course a lot of people feeling deep personal feelings, direct fear, and actual threats. Who needs medieval barbarity? We unquestionably have our own.


One of the received lessons of history is that after the Plague, society changed for the better - with the decimation of the population, "upwardly mobile" became a thing, the middle class was born, prosperity prospered, and ironically the general state of human health actually improved, along with innovation. Eventually, the feudal system died, democracies and republics were born ...

Oh, wait.

It's a complex question, and the happy ending here is neither unquestionably happy nor even remotely an ending. Even if human progress did occur (and I am not the Whig to comment), was the price worth it?

It doesn't matter.

Let us not forget: democracy existed centuries before the plague, as well. And died then, too. Tragedy is the nature of life, just as much as joy. There's no avoiding it, even when its particulars might be headed off in one way or another. Sometimes it's manmade, sometimes not, sometimes humanity gives an assist to a virus and what was a natural disaster is exacerbated to staggering proportions.

Good and evil are constants. Not cycles.

For all those republics born after the population shift, for all those inheritors a generation after 1348 who owned more and were able to leverage it, for all human innovation - there exist crimes great and small, there are oppressions, there is theft and cruelty and utter, pigheaded stupidity.

The older I get, the more I believe, humanity honestly does not change.

Unfortunately, I've also begun to believe humanity honestly likes to be stupid, as well. It's easy, it transfers responsibility to those who feel they must think, it absolves us of even understanding the consequences of our own slovenly communal behavior. It is also an act of will.

I can put quite a few faces of people I know to the sentiment "I just don't know that much about politics." And it does kind of make me angry, but more than anything it makes me despair, because that is a choice.


And yet, and yet. And yet.

For all we endure shock on an international scale at Brexit, at Trump, at what-have-you outrage of the day, I am the kind of researcher, burrower, study-er, learn-er, need-er who must find the other side of a coin.

"Nearly a quarter of the population of the world died in a pandemic? Yeah, but look at what happened next."

We're not going to survive if we don't contemplate what might happen next.  Humanity can't NOT look to tomorrow, it's how we are wired. It's the mechanism of both how we hope and how we fear. "Even if not for me, there will be a tomorrow - for someone, for almost everyone."

This is how causes are born; we fight today in the name of tomorrow, and we fight for ourselves in the name of everyone else. It's not altruism: it's a relay race. Someone must carry the baton of hope, of dissent, of anger or righteousness. The baton becomes the thing, and we carry it for ourselves but we don't fail to pass it along so it can keep going.



I don't believe evolution - history - has been a progression from ignorance to enlightenment. But I don't believe it's a cultural decline, either.

I don't believe in the end of times, I don't believe in complete human degradation, even when so many examples can be found.

For many, religion is the tool to manage fear that humanity's going to end someday. For me, it is entirely the opposite. It's the tool with which I grapple up and down the eternal landscape of mankind's own eternal good and evil, right and wrong. They are always with all of us, always options. So I have to daily make the choice - today, right, or wrong. Today, goodness or wickedness.

Because: the sun's going to come up tomorrow. Even if it doesn't come up on me.



What hope is there for our fears today? Bipartisan cooperation reborn? That could be good. Indeed, a redefinition of the terms that even give rise to the idea of "bipartisan" - the end of the two-party system? As tired as almost everyone is of negative campaigning and candidates who fail to engage us (American voter turnout is horrifyingly low), that could be an improvement, if a bit giddy-making for those of us codgers used to easy (hah) duality.

Let's find out, shall we?

"Dark" Times ... (?)

This morning, a thought wandered around in my head a bit, and I'm curious what some of you might think.

As a researcher and writer of a period in history at which the so-called Dark Ages were born, one of the issues I have with my work is the dearth of primary sources. It's difficult in the extreme to research some of the key aspects of my plot: could, or even *would*, a community's midwife become a nurse to a single household? At what age did children begin to to to Christian services? At what age would a king's child have begun to go, and was that earlier? What did the Arian service look like?

I can structure a day around liturgical hours known beyond Catholicism during sixth century Christianity. I can provide the shape of a night's segmented sleep. I can hear the echo of the hushed voices in the palace at Ravenna.

But I'll always be up against the damned Dark Ages. The lack of voices to tell me what they thought, had to say, even did, in most contexts of their lives.

The lack of primary sources.

There are not a few folks who fear we are tipping into a dark age right now. Brexit, perhaps, is worrisome. Name-the-outcome of the U. S. election looks to folks of all persuasions like the invasion of the Barbarians.

But my readers know, I don't believe in Barbarians. I don't accept that the whole world went dark and stupid for a thousand years. I don't believe there are, as a bloc, genuine heroes and villains at the national/imperial/tribal level, one entire nation of people good, another evil.

And the thing is: even the most partisan believer in these things will agree. The entire reason we call them "The Dark Ages" is because we don't know as much about the period.

That we know humanity was actually dumber for one thousand years ... I don't think any honest lover or student of history can say that with integrity.

So here is the thought that came picking about my brains today.

Whatever comes on November 8, whatever we despair of the loss of privacy and the uprising of technology that takes away our autonomy, even (perhaps) our individuality ...

Nobody will be ignorant of what we thought about these times, any century any time soon.

Nobody will look back at the early twenty-first century (or whatever era they name us to be in future - The Antrhopocene has some traction, but it's a self-given nickname, and those don't always catch on) and WONDER WHO WE WERE.

We are going to be a hard lot to lose in time, is what I am saying. We are not opaque.

Indeed, one of the possible tragedies of this age is its vomitous ubiquity. There is a wide swath of our culture right now dedicated just to photographing food before we actually eat it, reporting on it, commentating it.

Which either fascinates somebody I've never met, or reflects something deep and internal about the current generations of living humanity in a way that tells us about a lot more than that tasty churro shot.

Heading for destruction?

I don't know.

But I do know this: Rome never burned in a way catastrophic enough her legacy was obliterated. And my society, my culture - whatever it is, with all its good and its bad and its laughability and its heartbreak - is not a relief cut into the Earth that is going to erode easily.

What is beautiful about humanity right now is not going to disappear.

What is ugly, we've ensured will endure, too.

Do you think there can ever be a Dark Age again? Do you even believe there ever truly has been a descent of mankind, ever a period in history marked by the absence of redemptive qualities?

Weird Illusions of Recency

The big problem with this post, opining that Stephen King basically invented cultural weirdness, is that the only comparison this writer is REALLY making is their own assumptions about, say, their own experiences growing up (and how King seems weird to HIM based on what he’d seen before) or perhaps some idea that the Eisenhower era really was what it looked like on Happy Days or something and that the whole world before it was a drab and colorless fantasy of Victorian purity and boredom.

Stephen King’s breakthrough was Carrie, in 1973.

Life and the pop cultural landscape before 1973 just were not a bounteous, homogenized world of normalcy. Sorry, folks.

Colin Smith linked this piece, and here is my comment from his blog:

Looking at the article, I am just not persuaded he’s that *fundamental* a force, culturally speaking. A great force, yes – but this writer clearly hasn’t sampled a wide variety of entertainment before the 1980s. The name Rod Serling leaps nimbly, if not actually aggressively, to mind here. The Outer Limits. Heck, even The Monkees, Lost in Space, and the Batman television show were cradles of pop cultural weirdness, and even a certain kind of horror, especially the latter. Torture was the order of the day in that cartoonish, camp outing. Even in the article itself, King’s own citations of his inspirations – which the writer clearly has not actually read – display plentiful weirdness and off-kilter obsessions.

I’m always annoyed at the idea that any given cultural/social construct was invented recently. The 20th century is particularly rife with illusions of recency, and it’s all predicated on the idea that (a) humanity actually changes and (b) evolution itself is heading toward some sort of Whig-historical idea of greatness.

Balderdash.

People have been bizarre since we’ve been people. The weirdness of our psyches is plain to see going back thousands of years, with even a casual acquaintance with history and the arts.

It's hard to think of anyone who has injected so much strangeness into the pop culture consciousness, and no one else has done it this long.

Again: Rod Serling.

Noël Carroll writes that for King, "the horror story is always a contest between the normal and the abnormal such that the normal is reinstated and, therefore, affirmed."

So: anti-weird, in the end?

The truth is, if we look at pop culture and weirdness, frankly we’re a lot LESS weird now, especially in cinema and in music, than 40 years ago. Some of what came out of Hollywood before I was even born, and through the 1970s, would never be made today, because: corporatization and money. Take a look at major studio productions like Tommy (you want weird? Two words: baked beans), Myra Breckenridge, Zardoz … even 2001, which was not presented as any sort of oddity, features as its centerpiece an extended, trippy stretch of special effects and curious philosophical imagery the like of which really has not been matched since. Kubrick’s first film, by the way, came in 1951, and he wasn’t waiting around on Stephen King to get weird.

The literature inspiring many films predates them by decades, in some cases. Some literature, too, going back to the eighteenth century, easily gives King a run for his money. Oh wait, and did I mention millennia? Yeah, read some ancient mythology for human eyes on death in the most stunningly … hey, *human* way.

In music, the 1960s gave birth to progressive rock, an experimental form borrowing from its own predecessor, jazz, and frankly from a lot of heavy drug use (also not invented in the 20th century; read a little bit of Louisa May Alcott’s lesser-known ouvre for some serious looks into tripped-out drug use and supreme weirdness

Ever heard of the Grand Guignol? Look it up, kids.

Sensation novels? Well, see above; their seeds go back three centuries previous to this one. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus was an eye-popper in the weird and horror departments, both (and Julie Taymor’s adaptation is a shocker featuring Alan Cumming AND Harry Lennix, whom I admire to little bits all over the floor. Greek and Roman drama are filled with the most stunning human behavior.

“We live in increasingly bizarre times,” the blogger says.

Only if you have never studied anything about the past.

Collection

This is a GREAT piece from NPR on fun that's no fun for some - but if you listen, please also read. Because this piece is monochromatic.

Okay, and in the what is old department, we have irony … which, like anything else, is STILL not new again. Does anyone remember the scene from Name of the Rose, where Brother Jorge argues against the idea that Christ ever laughed? It’s a more important question than most of us are really able to comprehend. The turn-of-the-millennium context is strong, but I might quibble with one or two points on the Protestant history in this essay. But the overall point is: one generation ALWAYS complains about the next. (This one is for Jeff Sypeck, as we were so recently discussing the subject of hand-wringing elders!) I would argue the statement that people are especially self-aware these days. And what we’re dealing with nowadays is less “irony” than a couple of decades of SNARK, which has become exhausting.

Walt Whitman, recognized, in 1871, that "the aim of all the litterateurs is to find something to make fun of."

Enclothed cognition has been getting a great deal of attention. NPR’s recent piece by Invisibilia included the issue of feeling in control – a test subject who participated in one study protested that she preferred to feel like she was more in control – but, of course, we take control over this in the choices we make out of our wardrobes in the first place, right? I have had countless discussions with others at the office in any one of my squillion different jobs and offices, about how multiple people seem to be dressed the same way on a given day, or about wearing bright colors to wake or emotionally perk ourselves up.

I personally feel I exert a great deal of control over my emotional state and my readiness for a day based on how I choose to dress. It’s one part of the reason I set out my clothes when I come home rather than trying to choose something in the morning. Planning saves me time and pre-caffeinated “thinking”, and it gets something done I won’t have to manage in a stressed-out state. I also have a little fun with it – ooh, what jewelry will I take out on the down, what style will I deploy? And I go to bed knowing it’s one less thing to deal with. It’s also a decompressive time at the end of a work day. I come home, feed the kids, put Pen in her yard, and Goss and I go up to the quiet bedroom, where I shuck the day literally and figuratively, and plan the next one. It is a peaceful ritual, and gives me quiet time with The Grey Poobah, while Yellow Poobah enjoys some decompression of her own in her beloved yard.

On August 8, as I languished in the Atlanta airport with thousands of other victims of the Delta outage,  one of the things I noticed was the number of people who were dressed WELL. I was not one of these people. When I travel at all, I tend to dress not merely for comfort, but actually for invisibility. When I was young, this was a mechanism to deflect attention to whatever attractiveness I possessed, and to make my way with the least resistance. Flying or driving, I did not want to be approached - traveling alone, nobody wants company at the rest area or sitting tightly packed on a plane. A woman doesn't want to be subject to her own appeal. With age, I continue the comfort-lack-of-style as a matter of practicality and owing to how sick I get.

There is a freedom (hah) in ageing-woman invisibility, but for a lot of us it is also painful. If your figure has also changed with the years, it can be difficult to survey a crowd of thousands and to feel invisible. Or, worse, to think of being seen - for the dowdy old thing you have become. No longer caring.

Mr. X is coming in my direction at some point in the next several months. Invisibility is a problem, and frumpy is a not-having-it deal breaker. So I have invested in some comfort clothes that are less ... beige.


Okay. Enough of that.

Now on from enclothed cognition to ... well, how about literally another way of thinking?

… that Botox thing, where empathy is constrained by the paralysis induced by the botulonum toxin? It’s called embodied cognition. Huh.

Collection

In need of a good short story? Do I have one for you. Well, Paul Lamb has a good one for you; but I will point the way. Travel Light.

... and, on the Hilarious Email Cockup front, we have this ...


Two more quotes from Ursula K. LeGuin, because City of Illusions is full of good ones ...

Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies.

Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself.

I do not understand. How does this help? How is it okay to say this? I haven't seen a whisper of comment on this judgment.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, whose district includes the area of the massacre, suggested to reporters that "more likely than not" the shooting spree at the nightclub was ideologically motivated. "Let me put it this way," he said, "the nationality of family members is indicative."

Image: Wikipedia

Y'all know how I feel about adverbs. I am not alone! “There is nothing whatsoever intrinsically wrong with adverbs. In fact, avoiding them leads to bland, forgettable writing. You can and should use adverbs.”

Butter for the gods. I know this story is ubiquitous, but this link goes to the article I thought was the best.

So, Father's Day is coming, and you are fortunate enough to have a dad? Here are some books he might very much enjoy, courtesy of Tom Williams. My dad would I think have liked any one of them.

And finally, once again we learn that supposedly-new ideas aren't so new. Why would we think people wanted their foods to stick to pans in the ancient world? Because some chemical company wants us to think Teflon is cooler than it really is. Anyway - ancient Roman nonstick pans.

Collection

Pour La Victoire has a lovely post this week on the poupee de mode. Today's fashion puppets tend to be taller, and to have reality shows, but the idea remains the same - get the images out to the public, on trends and fashions ... in the cheapest way possible. Ahem.

Many people have heard of the hypocaust, the ancient system of whole-building heating perfected and made most famous in the West by the Romans. I expect fewer of us have run across ancient air-conditioning: so enjoy a quick virtual trip to Kuwait, where a centuries-old evaporative cooling system has been unearthed at the island of Failaka.

Elsewhere on The History Blog, our author says "An old, damaged tin can may not seem like much of an archaeological discovery" - clearly, this guy hasn't met my pal Mojourner, an archaeologist himself and a tin-can enthusiast since way back. Still, the link above makes for an interesting look at high-end tins of the 19th century, a curious bit about onanism, and a whole lot of info about turtle soup. Ya know, in case you were curious whether there'd ever been such a thing!

Okay, and I really have to pause, because - nineteenth century dietetic magical obsessions with "aching sensibility" (a term I find hilarical) are sort of fascinating in a way. Don't even ask what Dr. Graham would have served out of a tin. (Hint: not turtle soup, he was vegetarian.)

But how many are there in Blackburn Lancashire ... ?

... It's been a long while since I linked to Isis' Wardrobe, but a recent post has a GLORIOUS array of images ... of holes! Centuries of simple to sumptuous design and function: the holes in our clothes.


The name Leaphart is plangently evocative.

Collection

Let's start off today's Collection post with several members of Janet Reid's community ...

Paul Lamb takes a look at one particular anachronism (interpolated spectacles) in a piece of art, and I am brought to mind of the way people like to go all guitarist and whinge about modern anachronisms in drama, art, or writing, like it's some sort of newfangled SIN. Which: sigh. No, we've always brought ancient tales into our own worlds. (I'm also of the opinion that Interpolated Spectacles would make a great name for a band.)

Julie Weathers, possibly the Head Reider at Janet Reid’s blog/community, has a nicely in-depth post on the mid nineteenth-century riding habit (and her work!). With a variety of images, for my fellow costume nerds!

I want to thank E. M. Goldsmith for this link … Chuck Wendig, Huffpo, cake-eating, and monetizing Stockholm Syndrome. On the ethics and economy of a billion-dollar enterprise and unpaid writers. (Worth a click beyond for The Tale of the Depends Duping.)

CarolynnWithTwoNs, or 2Ns as we call her at Janet’s world, has an insightful post about those who provide service every day. I’ve never been a restaurant server nor worked in retail, but as a secretary, and especially in my job now, customer service is my bread and my work was for years something I apologized for, so: yeah. Before preppies, yuppies, and the Reagan years, it was a point of PRIDE to be a union member, a factory worker, a person who actually produced something or served people.

To go along with Julie's historical costume research, The History Blog has a post on an 11,000-year-old engraved  shale pendant, found in Yorkshire. I always love the theoretical decoding attempts of prehistoric artifacts.

Speaking of decoding, in my ongoing fascination with Ötzi the Iceman, the recent mapping of his sixty-one tattoos has struck me with the significance of the tattoo as talisman/healing magic. His ink marked the spots, where he suffered various painful ailments and injuries. The simple lines - incisions pigmented with charcoal - were not drawn as art, but represent the work of prehistoric medicinal practice. The mention of correlation with acupuncture points is an excruciatingly intriguing entre' to the eventual discovery we'll make, that ancient tattoo practices do present modern scientific value.

DIY, repurpose, upcycle - it's the new "Reuse, Recycle, Reduce" - and the old, old reason a fifteenth-century panel survived the Reformation, Also the reason I love palimpsests.

... and back to the Reiders. One of the things about her community is that, if you click on the commenters' profiles, you find the most devastating array of great blogs and pages. And so I share two posts from J. J. Litke: on primate skulls, and traffic, sorta. PLEASE do yourself the favor of clicking both of these: she's a great read, and a better writer. Be it on your own head if you miss the gift shop link in there somewhere.

Finally today, a blog I've been meaning to share for the movie lovers, and love-to-hate-rs (ish), Dreams are What le Cinema is For. I ran into this when looking for an image to use on a recent post where I mentioned the literal grace of Grace Kelly and got a bit schmoopy about memories of my dad. (Or I may not have posted that one; sometimes posts do shrivel and waste away.) Anyway, I quickly became addicted to the archives, and bookmarked it, because: camp! movies! a little cattiness! SHEER FUN! Woo!

Collection

Big data, Black Twitter, and the linguistics of real speakers, not just academic grammar. A fascinating look at questions of legitimacy, linguistic stigmatization, and the beauty and art of language as it is really used. Once again, I am utterly absorbed at the ingenuity of human thinking, in the way we speak, write, communicate. Super extra bonus content: maps! Wonderful, informative maps!

I make one point about this National Geographic article before putting down the link: Egyptian use of cosmetics predates Ptolemaic GREEK ruler Cleopatra, who lived only a little over two thousand years ago, by millennia. Hanging everything Egyptian on the occupying ruling house of Greeks tires me out. (Good lord, can't we at least invoke the immortal beauty of Nefertiti?) BUT anyway - here we have a look at the antibacterial and immuno-building qualities of  ancient Egyptian eye makeup. Extra bonus feature: one more nail in the coffin of the old "EW LEAD MAKEUP - POISON! - HOW GROSS AND STUPID WERE PEOPLE IN THE PAST!?" trope.

In other fascinating ancient-chemical-knowledge news, The History Blog brings us a look at the possible ancient solution to a very modern problem - can First Nations clay help us to manage antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

This is not "new-news" as it were, but I'm struck by the thought of how often writers use so-called brainwashing, and how wholeheartedly it is accepted ... and yet, like the misconceptions we have about dirty, stupid history and so many other things that limit us both as humans and as authors, it's complete horsefeathers. On "The Brainwashed Defense" - from Patty Hearst to Moussaoui.

And finally, I have to admit an almost comically knee-jerk response to this piece. The House of Lords is moving to replace vellum with archival-quality paper for the recording of Acts of Parliament and other government documentation. Given that all my life I have heard the so-called "Dark Ages" referred to (by Brits as much as anybody else) as a period of time during which literacy was constrained to a few lonely monks scratching on animal skins ... and being a foolish American ... my first response was astonishment they were still USING vellum in the first place. My second reaction was mixed; a preservationist question arises, wondering how long other forms of documentation can be expected to last, and a traditionalist strain can see how this is a cultural loss of a kind. But the practical side of me goes back to the "Really? Still using animal skins?" surprise - and, at the end of the day, mine is not to judge. So I end with no firm opinion about this; there are too many ways right now for me to expend my opinion-forming energies. What do you think?

Finally, an interlude. Join Lilac Shoshani at table seven (and one or two other places) for a worthwhile few minutes. Just don't distract her from her writing, please ....

Collection

"Trying to get that music out on the page is just absolute hell, so you fail." A great writing clip from Unleaded - Fuel For Writers, with Ta-nehisi Coates.

For my Asian art loving nerd readers ... The British Museum blog has three interviews with manga artists - Nakamura Hikaru, Hoshino Yukinobu, and Chiba Tetsuya.

Unleaded also has a GREAT pie chart - How Shakespeare Killed off his characters. Some of the more obscure methods are kind of hilarious, taken out of the usual obligatory sober literary context. "Baked Into Pie" ... eep! Hee.

The history girls has a phrase I love for what I usually rant about under the "popular misconceptions" and "oh the dirty stupid past" tags - recency illusions. I love this way of putting it, and hey - I love 40s platform shoes, too.

And ... because I *was* historically inaccurate ... when a picture speaks a thousand words. (The much later artistic rendering of) the coronation of Pharamond - a Frankish king very close to my period, and indeed a name I chose to use in The Ax and the Vase. From People of Color in European Art History.

Also from the POC in European art blog, an image of St. Maurice - one of my favorite saints, actually.

Dena Pawling has a look at the treatment of women attorneys. It's not pretty ... so to speak. Sigh.

From the Portuguese machete, to its little-known political symbolism, to Tiny Tim: the ukulele has a rather remarkable history. Its *present* includes some virtuoso work by one of my nieces, but its past is interesting too. Thanks to If It Happened Yesterday, It's History.

Courtesy of medievalists.net, Seven Myths of the Crusades - a nice look at historical scholarship, though sadly it's not as nice a look at Terry Jones as a lot of Python fans might hope to see. I own his The Crusades series - and, like a lot of tele-history, it suffers ... some weaknesses. This is a good start to looking at the much more complex realities of this series of religious wars and battles.

For a lighter-hearted Python allusion, you could wander by themarysue.com to learn about cocunuts in medieval England. "(M)edieval England was lousy with coconuts" - OSUM.

Playboy’s hackneyed idea of what a nude is, and who it’s for, seems increasingly narrow in the selfie age. When Kim Kardashian is celebrating her own body in superabundant selfies and many less famous people are doing the same, the nude is neither oppressive nor commodified – it’s a part of how human beings communicate with one another.

The last point here is what arrests my attention ... The Guardian has an extremely curious take on the abolition of nudity from Playboy's pages ... I'm not sure I'm persuaded by its argument that this is in fact a culturally dismal move; given the wider picture of our culture, it's not as if the objectification and sexualization of women is (a) on the decline, or (b) something I can accept as wholesome and positive. But the point about shame is one to pause upon, even if Kardashian selfies make a challenging argument for cultural elevation. It's worth a ponder, at least, to contemplate the wider ideas on display in this article. The reference to Indian and Shunga art helps, for me, to take it out of my personal moral context and look at art (erm) objectively.