"No 'Poo, Sherlock."

Enjoying Janet Stephens' demos recently has me thinking, as I am wont to do, about the history of personal beautification.  I still want to take a look at ribbon styling, a popular weave method used (to my current knowledge) most prominently in Renaissance Europe, but likely going well beyond what I know today.  But first, I accidentally ran across the marketing history of shampoo, and the way this product has changed the way we live during the past century.

The No 'Poo movement comes out of multiple motivations - the desire to get away from chemical exposure, the wish to go "more natural", simple curiosity, frank economizing on a product which can lead to a lot of expense when used at the rate currently encouraged in the mainstream ... and, even more frankly, a certain vintage fashion trendiness which goes in for Mad Men, mid-century longer-wearing hairstyles, a little dab of pretension, and the kind of moral or cultural seeking that leads us to try new - or old - things for one sort of benefit or another.

The Great Unwashed
(New York Times)

I've always been vaguely aware that hair-washing is its own reward, at least for the "lather, rinse, repeat" crowd of the beauty industry.  In my usual, non-confrontational and conformist (lazy) manner, I have always also agreed to go along with what I've been taught, and so I am a regular shampooer.  I used to be every other day or even every three, but the haircut I got four years ago left me with a LOT less hair to hold the oils, and I had to become a daily washer.  Once my hair grew back to its former length, I kept in the daily habit as much because it had just become exactly that as because ... well, to be frank, with age, we get a little smellier in general, and I do like to do what I can to minimize what may debatably be thought of as "natural" body odor.

Another recent haircut, while less radical than the one four years ago, has reminded me once again:  six inch strands seem to look dirtier more quickly than fourteen inch locks, which either hold oil with more aplomb, perhaps using it - or just hide it better.  So it goes.  I like my shampoo, and use it these days as much for its scent as I do for the squeaky-cleanliness.  At least I can use less, with so much less hair to deal with.

Death Star

The most cogent statement on the Death Star petition I have seen!

Book Cravings

This week in my free time, I've been cruising Amazon's network of booksellers, looking for copies of texts for my research.  I came to this method after the demise/swallowing-up of Bibliofind, one of the grand old tools of Teh Intarwebs, and one which brought me to one of our finer family moments many years ago.  After his terminal diagnosis, my dad conceived a desire to read a well known series on the history of Wester civilization, authored by husband and wife Ariel and Will Durant.  My college creative writing prof had told me about Bibliofind for one reason or another along the every-year-or-three communications we've had over the years, so I found a good set and bought the lot, with input and of course pooled financing from my brother and mom.  Come Christmas morning, dad could not have been more pleased to open a giant Hammermill paper box filled with volume after volume - all in very good condition, still bearing even their mylar dust jackets, we figure from their library home.

Dad made it as far as the Renaissance before he died.  The photo of him receiving this gift, though it shows him wearing his canula I think, is as so many pictures of my dad were:  beaming with satisfaction.  He was wonderfully surprised, and lived up to the gift with gusto.

Even run by The Demon Amazon, I remain dedicated to the booksellers who open their business to the internet, offering books I'd have a hard time finding - or paying for, brand new, from Demon Amazon - and keeping in circulation books which have been previously loved, used, read, ignored, and fortunately recycled rather than discarded.  What you can find, buying used books, is an almost magical treasure trove compared to staying only on the path of new books, major retailers, chains in malls, mainstream recommendations and outlets.  It may not be Bibliofind any more, but the ease of use and access remind me EVERY time I use it of that long ago excitement, as my whole family planned and purchased this set for dad.

I have those books now - it was far too much for my brother to include in belongings carried across a continent, several years ago - and more than my mom wanted to bring into a second marriage.  I have not "read" them recreationally, not sitting down and just enjoying them for themselves, as dad so avidly did.  But I've dipped into them (there was precious little to be said for Clovis I, sad to say) and have that irrational, materialistic attachment to them as an artifact of my dad which we sometimes conceive even where the one remembered was not materialistic nor even emotionally attached to the object we prize once they're gone.


***


This week's used-book cruising has been a game of choose-and-cart or save-for-later, trying to find the right balance of subject matter and how much to spend (and of course losing my chance as a book is bought from a particular seller, too), wondering how much to get all at once and considering what is most important right-now.  Considering, really, how much to spend.  I spent too much, but I did whittle my way to a core set of texts last night, and already the email "your order of (fill-in-title) has shipped!" notifications are pouring in.

From a standpoint where histories of Byzantium, especially texts on Justinian (and Theodora), histories of the Goths, and examinations of Ravenna and the 6th century rage of Plague, I carved away the Byzantine Empire and finally Justinian, his plague, and (most reluctantly) "Ravenna - A Study", and saw my way clear to focus on some of the Goth works (particularly one wildly expensive textbook I found used for an acceptably discounted price in good condition) and Theodoric the Great.  Even narrowing down this far, I still came away with five texts, which - being core to the work (I will work my way outward from my characters) - should keep me busy for some time.  As it stands, I need, too, to revisit the research Clovis brought to me, which introduced me to Audofleda, Amalasuntha, and Matasuentha in the first place.  My system in that first round of research was to use yellow highlighter for Ax when it was my WIP, and to highlight in pink the passages to go back to for Matrilineage (again - working title, and (I am aware, yes) not working all that well).

Right now, I'm not even sure whether Amalasuntha will end up being my sole main character.  I resist, somewhat, putting Audofleda very close to the center of my concern.  She was Clovis' sister, and though this work is born out of my creating The Ax and the Vase, I don't see them as necessarily related, and don't want to create links which could make the new work anything but an independent piece.  Her daughter, Amalasuntha, almost represents a divorce from Ax, because  she would have been as alien to the Franks as this work itself will be from the last.  This novel, whatever else it may or may not become - is first and foremost a novel of women, whereas Ax was entirely focused on men.  One man, of course.

As for the third generation of this matrilineal line - Matasuentha - so little is said of her in some ways she may be a letdown compared to her mother.  Amalasuntha's story is so marvelously bizarre, so bracing, she compels me as powerfully as her uncle did before.  Daughter of Theodoric the Great.  Married at fifteen - to a *slave* - executed for his trouble.  Married off again, to a cousin, and mother to Theodoric's grandson and heir.  Queen regnant in that prince's minority.  And (... SPOILER ... ???) murdered in her bath in 535, the year of Justinian's Plague - the year the (so-called) Dark Ages *began* ...

That alone makes the beginnings of a back cover blurb, of the pitch.  So I do tend to focus on her most.

Like Clovis, again, Ama has been sparsely - if at all (though I've researched Clovis' place in American publishing, I haven't looked into Amalasuntha, at least lately) - invoked in English-speaking novels.  She may be more popular than the Frank - ass-kicking Ostrogothic women being what they are - but even if so, the low mileage on my characters means they're showroom new compared to the Tudors or even Plantagenets.  Mind you, I do love me a Plantagenet or two, and as long as we don't tittle-tattle of Boleynian incest, I'll still take in the redheads for entertainment's sake, especially if Keith Michell or Glenda Jackson have anything to do with it.  But it's beyond my hutzpah to try to recreate those stages again, as if I had anything to add to their oft-told tales.  I'm interested - but not captivated to the point Clovis and that fascinating Ostrogothic tangent have had me for years now.

And so - the research, again, begins, even as sketches (not real scenes, apart from that opener I still enjoy after all these years) play in the margins, as they're wont to do.

And Amazon Bibliofind lives on, in books my dad will never read.  Not in exactly the way I remember, the way he read Will and Ariel.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Says

She writes best in the mornings, and finds ways to make that work before spousal and breakfast tasks come a-calling.  They break for breakfast together, then each works until one, and again for a couple hours in the afternoon.

Tony's writing ritual is to get up in the morning and send an email to Steven to apologize for being late.  He and his wife just got a puppy, so that has caused some disruptions as well.  Tim Reid sums up:

Don't get a dog, and find a good bar.

Doris speaks, at last, of the collaborative experience of working on a film as distinct from the solitary experience of pure writing.  "And that's what the country's all about ... that's what the film is about ... Lincoln was able to make these people do something that they couldn't do individually.  That's the mystery of leadership, and they performed together, and the country *can* perform together," she says, "and for God's sakes, if there's anything in this film that can be a symbol for the future, it is we've got to do it again."

Amen, Doris.

The Essential

Giving full faith and credit to the artist, Donnie Green, I feel a certain right to post this image - as I happen to own the original painting myself.

Donnie's reason for calling this The Essential was that it included all the elements which, at the time of its creation (2000) he needed in his art.  The boy whose face peers out from the sun, not precisely sunny, but certainly a representation of innocence (oft-repeated by a man and a muse with little innocence intact).  The small, elongated rabbits - an early-ish appearance, which in later paintings reached almost Harvey-like (Donnie Darko-like?) proportions.  The bats, the foetuses ... and centrally, enduringly ... The Creepy Old Lady.

COL came to a new level of refinement at the time of this painting; I had seen her before in Donnie's astonishing output, but she had always been nothing but a head, always been a putty grey-green, incomplete and disembodied.  Here she steps forth fully formed (but for that heart-shaped - mangled? or unfinished? - cranium and the minimal number of digits), dressed in a print which always reminds me of the guy in the Bugs Bunny cartoon who walks up a set of stairs and the pattern of his loud check jacket scrolls by, unmoving, as the man moves up the stairs.  Her Chuckie Taylors are astonishingly rendered, as is the mouse.  The cats' nose piercings are gleaming and actually creepier by far than the bats and the foetuses.

The Essential is basically a koan, a blacklight poster, the sort of thing you can stare at and either lose yourself in it, or lose it in yourself.  Its meticulously colored and twisted knotwork owes as much to Persia as the Celts, Donnie studying these designs assiduously and incorporating them in his - essential - playing-card inspired proportions and compositions.  Nothing about it seems strange nor even creepy to me, much as I refer to it as I do (the epithet COL above), and from the first time I saw it I wanted it.  It took me years to pay Donnie for it, even at the wildly generous discount he gave me on its price, and I will never forget the gallery showing where I gave him the last money, and took it away with me.  When she became mine.


I actually posed for Donnie two times, and he painted me thrice.  I have all three - he used me for practice in capturing realistic skin tones at that time he was shifting from painting strictly unrealistic monsters to portraiture and more intimate, but still strange, works.  If I could take a good photo of two of these portraits, I may post them some time; one is in black-and-white, and maintains some of the extreme austerity of his pieces before focusing on people and their faces.  The second he painted from a polaroid, and though some aspect of the nose and perhaps a somewhat rosebud-ish mouth remind me of "Kelly from (the original) 90210", there's also ... something.  Something he definitely captured, of me - at least, at that time (1997 or so I think).  The second is my favorite, and is in color, and is the real experimentation with skin tone - and was painted at lightning speed, with no model but one of the photos he'd taken of me when I was actually there.  One day he painted the black and white - the next day I came back and he'd painted the color portrait, without my even posing nor being available.

The third portrait, the second I actually sat for, wasn't a sitting but a standing, if I am honest.  It is the weakest, and was the one he did "for me" - the one which was a realization of my ideas, not Donnie's own.  Its face looks like an ex girlfriend of his, not like me, and its theme is so pompously embarrassing to me now I dare not even repeat it, though I had him spell it out pointblank on the canvas.  Poor guy - but he was generous to offer to paint for me to order.

I've had these four works of his for so many years, and three of them may never ever be displayed.  For me to hang them would be vain even by my standards, and it is beyond comprehension anyone else on the planet would ever want to.  I can't even imagine any time in all the years of our long separation(s) Mr. X. even would want to have them around.  And so this artist's work, even if it is "only" practice work, lies hidden in my guest room, not even seen nor remembered for I can't even say how many years.

I used to look at those portraits sometimes, wonder what their fate could be - how they could be seen.  And yet, then, what they had to show was only what I was, every day.  Dorian Grey's contrarian cousin am I - now that they might show a face nobody can hope to see anymore ... the youth and beauty lie hidden, and the middle-aged broad with decayed vanity issues goes out into the world.

Steven Spielberg Says

On the historical language of "Lincoln":

"Trust the language of the time, of the period."

Also chiming in, Tony Kushner, screenwriter - his advice is to go to the OED for any possible anachronisms in language (this may not work if your period is as early as mine, the 5th/6th centuries, when really no functionally recognizable form of our language yet existed).

Doris Kearns Goodwin mentions Erich von Stroheim (a very well known director of silents, for those who do not know the name from "Sunset Boulevard" ... or any of his own films), whose philosophy on acting was that, though only the dress might be seen, his actresses should wear silk underwear and period layers, to *feel* what the women in another age would have.

No word on what he expected of actors.  Maybe discussing starlets' silk undies made for a better quote ...

Oh, and Thaddeus Stephens' wig?  *Supposed* to look like that, yes.

Tim Reid Says

Tim Reid to Steven Spielberg at The Richmond Forum, on “Lincoln” and location shooting:

“Your decision to cast Richmond (VA) in the role of Washington, DC was, let’s say, ironic - to say the least - a few people are spinning...”

He is a remarkably funny guy for someone as impeccably elegant and dignified as he is.  I'm grateful he made up such a large part of my formative expectations of race and diversity, in a world which was, at that time, so very very white (flight).

Also, Spielberg apparently lost his pocket knife (we call them pocket knives around here, but he referred to it as a penknife) in Petersburg.  If anyone finds it, please let him know, it was his Boy Scout knife!

Thunder Snow

I'd never even heard of Thunder snow before I was thirty-five or so, but I swear every year lately we seem to have it.

Weird-but-cool-that-I'm-blessed-with-cheering-shelter.

Culture of Blame

Cultures across the globe and across time have found ways to blame women for their own rapes and harassment, but this is absolutely outlandish.  Iowa has ruled that it is LEGAL to fire attractive people.

Tell me how many men you think could ever lose their jobs, when acting perfectly correctly and professionally, for posing a threat to a coworker's marriage.  How many judges would CONDONE such a termination.

See also here, for further elaboration such as this paragraph:

When Stuyvesant says that women’s dress and bodies are distraction in a learning environment, for example, what they’re really saying is that they’re distracting to male students. The default student we are concerned about—the student whose learning we want to ensure is protected—is male. Never mind how “distracting” it is to be pulled from class, humiliated, and made to change outfits—publicly degrading young women is small price to pay to make sure that a boy doesn’t have to suffer through the momentary distraction of glancing at a girl’s legs. When this dentist in Iowa can fire his assistant for turning him on—even though she’s done absolutely nothing wrong—the message again is that it’s men’s ability to work that’s important.

Yankee Doodle Food

Between Two Nerdy History Girls and Isis' Wardrobe/Toilette and American Duchess, this week has been a fascinating ride indeed.  Check out the girls' post on macaroni, circa 1774 (or not - read the discussion in the comments section for details on the date/cookbook noted), and how to knit a king's stockings.

For all that I sometimes lament the ephemerality of experience and, yes, even knowledge (I'm a thoughtkiller, remember) - sometimes, the availability of fascinating studies in those areas of history old folks such as myself didn't get in history books limited by the old paper-and-binding technology and a less-diverse society and dynamism can still be exciting.

Not New Hair!

My fifth grade teacher used to make much of us kids when someone got a haircut, gleefully greeting us with "New hair!" if we came in cut or curled or the like.  Today, let's take a look at *old* hair - and styling.  From the link here, it's possible to find not only ancient Roman earring styles (DIY!), but also still more forensic archaeological hairstyling theories and demonstrations.  My personal favorite, ironically made impossible for me just today by a *new* hair(cut), is the Aphrodite Knot, and Agrippina the Younger's is also very nice (if also for longer hair than I have , as though I've kept the overall length, I'm now all full of layers).  Be sure to look a the "you might also like" tiles if you're interested.

Thank you, Leila, for leading me to this place by way of the Vestal Virgin hairstyle link!

These links, by the way, lead mostly to somewhat long-for-YouTube instructional vids for very intricate and ancient hairstyles.  At 9 to 17 minutes, they will mostly be of interest to the *very* curious, or those with a particular interest in hairstyles from the ancient Roman, Renaissance, and 18th/19th-century Western eras, or cosmetology and its history.  As many require hair from waist to even THIGH length, these aren't going to be for most of us - yet the ideas are fascinating and could be adapted.

One aspect of many of these is how common actual sewing is in hairstyling.

Having long hair myself, and a brother who carves, I've long used hair sticks (what Janet Stephens, the hairstyling archaeologist refers to as bodkins).  When men or women who would never use this method ask me how I make them "stick", I usually note that it's something like sewing - use the point to pick up hair on one side, cross over the twist of hair to be secured, then pick up another section on the other side.  Hairstick styles generally depend on some similar form of "stitch" or others.

The extent to which I've used stitching in my hairstyling is NOTHING compared to the actual needle and thread methods theorized/shown in Ms. Stephens' demonstrations, and it's kind of gratifying to watch clear, simple instructionals on methods I never would have figured out, but which both fascinate me and also bear out some of the nebulous ideas I've had about "how it's done" ... or how it *was* done, once upon a time.

Image found at:  tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com
(c) trendstop

I might have to get into some of the ribbon-lacing and woven hairstyles I've known about and studied a little bit in the past.  Some of it not such distant past (or, perhaps, actually the future ...):

Day of the Dead Horse

If it were not for the wee beasties in my life, I would not laugh even a quarter as often as I get to.  Penelope's fairly stressful introduction period has reached a much smoother spot (though she still does wee a bit when certain people come in the house ...), and she and Gossamer have come to several working understandings.  If I ever shoo them into laying off each other, it's probably more about me at this point than either of them (okay, the kitten) having real distress.  I have a little fun from time to time piping up with "Pen, stop biting the cat's butt" or "Please stop eating the cat" or, an obscure favorite, "Touch not the cat" (which is the title of a novel written by Mary Stewart, who wrote my much-beloved Arthurian novels - no, it is not one of the Arthurian novels).

Laughter is good right now - after a slump at work, the holidays, a week's illness, and not the re-influx of all the people who took off over Christmas and/or New Year's, I've been very positively productive - and seriously busy.  One of the things about working with a team who aren't all sitting around in one big cube farm:  sometimes the day is just getting started at my 5:00 p.m.  Last night, I kept going until 6:15, and it's hard not to be glad this comes at this point, rather than when Pen-Pen was still so insecure a bit of OT might really have set her back.  As it was, I got home last night and she was okay, but somewhat higher strung than usual.  But it was the cat who fell in the toilet bowl.

*Hilarity ensues*

Today was the kind of day at the office where I got four expense reports set up in the morning, published our most recently updated org charts, was able to semi-competently make my way through most calls and questions, and more than once things which should have taken a minute dragged on rather, because deeply, DEEPLY helpful people are slightly like puppies with bones.  As inefficiencies go, though, I'll be happy to admit those are preferable over the sort that make me want to *punch* puppies.

(I never punch puppies, least of all my own, who was not harmed in the writing of this post.)

The Poetry of Physics

Another charming post from Kim Rendfield's dad, this time on the poetry of Brownian motion - and Lucretius of Epicurus - and non-Epicurian morality in history ...

Anyway - a nice read.  Brownian motion is so cool (and *not* just because of Douglas Adams!).  Maybe we all like watching dust dance in golden light ... as long as we can keep ourselves from thinking about the particulates we're not seeing, going up our noses!

Dickie III - Well, It IS January ...

... but apparently, the CONFIRMATION that the car-park bones actually are those of Richard III has been around for a while - and I missed them.  Boo!  And yet - sort of yay, too.  I love history geeking.

Image from Daily Mail
c.Alamy

It IS sticking in my craw, though, the obsessive coverage of the scoliosis of these bones.  I've read any number of debunkings of the "Richard was a hunchback" stories, pretty much as long as I've been reading history at all (and remember, kids:  I am old!).  So this being trotted out as "proof" now just still seems so bizarre to me ...

Bram Stoker: Cultural Landscaping

Breaking out this (public domain) passage of Bram to take a look at something I actually meant to write about yesterday.

This garden in front of my room is the old Italian garden.  It must have been done with extraordinary taste and care, for there is not a bit of it which is not rarely beautiful.  Sir Thomas Browne himself, for all his Quincunx, would have been delighted with it, and have found material for another “Garden of Cyrus.”  It is so big that there are endless “episodes” of garden beauty I think all Italy must have been ransacked in old times for garden stone-work of exceptional beauty; and these treasures have been put together by some master-hand.  Even the formal borders of the walks are of old porous stone, which takes the weather-staining so beautifully, and are carved in endless variety.  Now that the gardens have been so long neglected or left in abeyance, the green staining has become perfect.  Though the stone-work is itself intact, it has all the picturesque effect of the wear and ruin wrought by many centuries.  I am having it kept for you just as it is, except that I have had the weeds and undergrowth cleared away so that its beauties might be visible.

But it is not merely the architect work of the garden that is so beautiful, nor is the assembling there of the manifold wealth of floral beauty—there is the beauty that Nature creates by the hand of her servant, Time.  You see, Aunt Janet, how the beautiful garden inspires a danger-hardened old tramp like me to high-grade sentiments of poetic fancy!  Not only have limestone and sandstone, and even marble, grown green in time, but even the shrubs planted and then neglected have developed new kinds of beauty of their own.  In some far-distant time some master-gardener of the Vissarions has tried to realize an idea—that of tiny plants that would grow just a little higher than the flowers, so that the effect of an uneven floral surface would be achieved without any hiding of anything in the garden seen from anywhere.  This is only my reading of what has been from the effect of what is!  In the long period of neglect the shrubs have outlived the flowers.  Nature has been doing her own work all the time in enforcing the survival of the fittest.  The shrubs have grown and grown, and have overtopped flower and weed, according to their inherent varieties of stature; to the effect that now you see irregularly scattered through the garden quite a number—for it is a big place—of vegetable products which from a landscape standpoint have something of the general effect of statues without the cramping feeling of detail.  Whoever it was that laid out that part of the garden or made the choice of items, must have taken pains to get strange specimens, for all those taller shrubs are in special colours, mostly yellow or white—white cypress, white holly, yellow yew, grey-golden box, silver juniper, variegated maple, spiraea, and numbers of dwarf shrubs whose names I don’t know.  I only know that when the moon shines—and this, my dear Aunt Janet, is the very land of moonlight itself!—they all look ghastly pale.  The effect is weird to the last degree, and I am sure that you will enjoy it.

My maternal family line include a number of diggers and gardeners, and go back in a line of farmers whose memory makes me blush.  My brother, especially, is the living branch (you must excuse the fancy) of this in our generation, probably more than anyone.

It was from him I first heard about planting for the long haul.  Beyond the locally inevitable crepe myrtle, azaleas, and boxwoods, few people put much thought into landscaping.  Their own, or the increasingly corporate variety which surrounds us.  My own yard owns all of two trees, and some very rare and beautiful camellias and azaleas which predate my tenure, and are kind enough to get on with what they are do without much input nor attention from me.

When Mojourner lived closer by, in the days even before our dad died - there was a greenhouse in my front yard, and a richly interesting garden in the back.  I did nothing for them, but let it be said I did benefit from them.  The back garden was more for food than artifice's beauty, but it was a wonderful sight in its day.  Peppers, and these amazing marble-sized tomatoes, positively *blooming* - and in such profusion even the birds never got them all.  Sweet, and delicious right off the vine.  Lettuce lived in the protection of the eastern wall of the house, a spot with enough sun to thrive but enough shade not to wilt - and popular with mockingbirds, who were not shy to strafe (and, indeed, even touch) you should someone venture out for a little greenery for a sandwich ...

In the greenhouse out front, there was a once-huge collection of ti plants (for Virginia!).  Some had slender, inky-dark leaves, with the reddishness and greenness deep and mingled into an almost raven-wing iridescent purple.  I used to have many of these inside, but none survive today to grace the place.  Others had larger, richly green leaves.  For a long time, I still had two of these.  By now, only two ti's with these wonderful, verdant leaves still lives.  At less than 24" tall, each of them would be considered "cute" by Island standards - and shockingly small, at probably eleven years of age now.  Mojourner has laughed with his friends before, about the stunted growth of transplanted ti's.  But for me, these two plants are the only Hawai'ian life my home has seen since he moved so far away, and I am protectively in love with it.  The cat catches, if possible, even more grief than when he meddles with the memorial plant I bought after Siddy La died.  (And he does meddle with that one, and it's lost two of its major shoots, too - little bugger.)

Obviously ... I am not the family botanist.  The garden is a vague, disappearing hump along the east side of my backyard.  The lettuces are long since gone.  Even the greenhouse - what, once, our mom thought looked like a big plastic coffin in front of my home - is no longer, its denizens distributed long ago.

Mo knew the magic of planting for years' growth, for putting together trees or bushes or flowers which, ages down the line from his involvement, would still relate to one another, to their environs, in the way Bram Stoker describes so richly, above.

My family - my grandmother, my mom and dad - my brother - have all known the richness of nurturing and growing.  But I never have.  Like the bone-deep urge for procreation, it's one of those things I simply lack.  Unlike The Baby Itch, though - I do, from time to time, regret this omission in my makeup.  It disconnects me both from my family and my earth - particularly from an important experience in the kind of stewardship of my blessings, my literal *estate* on Earth, which I do think is important.  I remember my mom's mother - one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen in my life, a photo of a blue bucket, filled with her potatoes, tomatoes, squash, whatever it was she had grown and one of her kids had collected.  I remember helping Mo collect from our own parents' garden, when we were kids.  The year he grew that huge musk melon.  My dad's father, who cultivated tall asparagus and roses and almost certainly corn.  The berries I've eaten with my nieces, and the snow peas, sweet as those tomatoes - as fresh - as beautiful.

I'm not the sort to make New Year's resolutions, and I'm to aware of my weaknesses to become a person who thinks about shoring them up.  It's unlikely I'll *ever* plant for food - or for the ages - or for the almost melancholy, evocative beauties above.  My creative outlets ... are the most passive and undemanding kind.  I write.  I put together the occasional stylin' outfit.  I revel in a laugh from someone who thinks I am momentarily clever.  I do take pride, always aware it may be disproportionate, in my own accomplishments and talents - and I don't regret those I have not (hah) cultivated enough to feel I'm truly "less" as a person.

But I know that ... I've missed out.  And so, I fancy - I sit back, arms crossed like our dad, and watch with pride what my bro does and I do not.  What my mom and dad planted a long time ago.  Planted by other generations.  And I think we've grown, as a clan, to a mellow, fascinating balance.  To ... perhaps ... the right composition ...

Quote

18th, 19th, and 20th century literature often refers to older literature, and Through the Wonder of Teh Intarwebs, sometimes you find fun things.  To wit, this quote (hunted down after that reference to Sir Thomas Browne's "Quincunx" from that passage I quoted in the last post):

"Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself."
--Urn Burial

I adore the oddments of archeology and the capricious preservation of history - and that's just a damn good quote.

Bram Stoker - Not Dracula

I haven't read Stoker since middle or high school, though exposure to adaptations of course is hardly slim.  The thing, of course, is that all the adaptations focus on That One Novel, and the resultant sensibility, that there's really not much need to *read* him (admittedly this may only be my issue ...) leaves him as an author whose work, oddly enough, is far less regarded nor considered than the movies and other works inspired by it.

Which is a shame, because his ability to construct, using the epistolary and other "documentary" indirect storytelling forms than straighforward omniscient or POV narrative is very good.  He's also interestingly observant of his times (the interest is not least in the lens of a century's time and social sensibilities' having gone by).

I have been going about for the last few days amongst the mountaineers and trying to make their acquaintance.  It is a tough job; and I can see that there will be nothing but to stick to it.  They are in reality the most primitive people I ever met—the most fixed to their own ideas, which belong to centuries back.  I can understand now what people were like in England—not in Queen Elizabeth’s time, for that was civilized time, but in the time of Coeur-de-Lion, or even earlier—and all the time with the most absolute mastery of weapons of precision.  Every man carries a rifle—and knows how to use it, too.  I do believe they would rather go without their clothes than their guns if they had to choose between them.
***
I do not think I have seen a single man (or married man either) without his rifle since I came here.

The passage above (please note that the "..." line indicates that there is a passage omitted between one paragraph and the last) comes from The Lady of the Shroud, in the public domain an available at Project Gutenberg.  Reading this just now, after the tragedies ending 2012, tends to underline how deeply provincial This Great Country can be.

Literarily speaking, though, I do recommend Bram for a read.  Every time I go back to novels 100-250 years old, I'm struck by their wit.  It's unfortunate and deeply trite, that 18th/19th/early 20th century work has a reputation for being dusty and lame, because its survival isn't merely a function of age, but of the nature of storytelling itself.  Beyond a story's own interest, its telling brings along with it humor, the quirks of language and contemporary culture, and observations which are necessarily singular in some way.  These are the ingredients which leaven the whole, which make stories memorable and worthwhile.

And Bram, in particular, is a breezy read.  His works aren't lengthy, even by *our* contemporary standards, and they move along nicely - which is a trick, given that the conceit (epistolary, documentary - *indirect*) might by nature almost be distancing.  In Lady, he manages to create stretches of more familiar POV storytelling, but the opening "book" sets up the whole with an ingenious series of pieces put together not only to explicate our scene, but even "Easter egg" some callbacks which the novel itself refers back to.  Take a look - and come back here and let me know what you think, too ...

Unconscionable

One in five children in our country goes hungry.  The wealthy in power DO NOT CARE.

School shootings generate an almost queasy level of excitement and attention in our nation - but, as often as we hear the statistic that twenty percent of our children suffer from deprivation, the excitement (the outrage) just isn't there for headlines without the perverted appeal of gruesome and random barbarity.

But hunger is NOT unpredictable.  It is NOT random.

And the wealthy in power are more concerned about THEIR PERSONAL WEALTH than other people's children (or other people at all).  There is no tenderness for children suffering in ordinary ways.  Hunger doesn't have the shock, commerce, or (let's be frank) entertainment value extreme violence does.  And it doesn't make anybody a buck, not reliably.

So bills like this week's watery soup get passed, and we try to consider it a triumph.

It is not.

And the kids aren't mine, so perhaps I am the perverse one.  Because I do care - and I know I don't do more than work the food bank on rare occasion, or the Salvation Army holiday charity event, or sign petitions (the link is a petition focusing on gun violence, not on hunger) ... an otherwise just go to my job, pray in thanksgiving and in supplication for those in need, and giggle about my new pets in my nice warm house.  I suck.

As the wealthy in power work hard to sin outright against everyone but themselves.

Well Behaved Dogs ...

... and so on.  Aww!

2013 - the Best Part

It's that beautiful time of year when people wish each other temporarily (or perhaps just hypocritically) well, condemn the old year with all the smarm they can muster, and speak with hope about All The Stuff they intend to accomplish in the new.

While I do wish people well, this isn't my chosen forum to do so - and while I have hopes for the future, none of them is particularly tied to the calendar.  I have a reverence for anniversaries and commemoration, but commemorating the new year continues to be fairly meaningless to me for the most part - and, having spent 100% of my new year's holiday SICK (a perfect record of non-productivity - whee), I'm feeling snotty, cynical, and negative.  Also contrarian - but I'm always that.

Which brings me to my incomprehension about *others'* negativity - to wit, the annual social habit of complaining about the year just past.

2012 went by so damn fast, apart from the irritations of Tea Party economic saboteurs, I'm not sure how there's been time for anyone to accumulate enough to complain about.  Even my friends who've been HOSPITALIZED multiple times aren't kvetching - but turn on the computer, and I see more "oh it was so *awful*" in all the anonymous well-wishing than it's safe to stomach, as dizzy as I have been for four (and a half, actually) days now.

Yes, sure - I am old (and selfish), and old people think years go by faster - but *everyone* I know seems to be saying 2012 rushed by at top speed.  Those I know who could actually lay claim to "a bad year" aren't doing so, either.  Just marveling at this year and its brevity.

This year, I want to see Ax agented - hey, even sold.  Not something I can set as a goal, as if I have final control over it.  But a hope.

This year, it'll be intriguing to see what comes next at my job.

This year, watching my fur-bearing little-uns grow will be beautiful and fun.

This year will hold surprises I can't name, dream of, nor ask for today.

And that is the best part.

Have a lot of unexpected best parts, my friends.  And be well.  I certainly recommend that much, after this week!

Yes

Yes, the dizziness has gone into day 3.  Yes, I did finally let my mom take me to the doc.  No, this didn't really yield any useful result - *and* it was a horrible, miserable, unnecessary experience.  Followed by a trip to the grocery store so I could find something other than toast to eat ... and I ... apparently bought $68 worth of sandwich fixin's, dog food, and - erm - yogurt.

Never shop while dizzy in the head, fella babies.  I *still* feel like I have no food in the house.

Because, seriously - sourdough, ham, and cheese - just not doing it for my appetite right now.

Yes, I am an idiot.

Happy New Year to all.  I'll probably be in bed by nine.

Angry Sick

Day two of this (or even day three, really - if we count the attack on December 4) and I am just sick with frustration at the lost time of this weekend.  Getting NOTHING done.  Just pasted lamely to my couch.  I need a bath - but sinking that far down means getting UP again ... and up is very, very, very bad indeed, with the dizziness.  Never mind that this was a mini vacation I'd hoped to enjoy with friends, and is instead a whole lot of lost productivity and physical misery.

This all also nixes the likelihood of my going out and having fun tomorrow night; proximity to quite this much lassitude and wooziness reduces the attraction of loud music, crowds, and certainly staying up late.

I just wish I could get cleaned up (myself *and* the house - which is ugh right now), dressed, and out for a simple run of errands.  Maybe tomorrow.

For now, I am sick and tired of *toast*.  Blah.

Hell, Oh Kitty

Ten meclizine in my gut has but dented the severity of this whirling illness - and perhaps not even that.  I'm still so dizzy that, trying to put the harness on Pen earlier, I ended up in angry, miserable tears because she was distressed by my distress, and was leaning on me to be in close.  When a dog with enough size, who is frantically wagging and wiggling, leans on you when you are dizzy:  that is hell.

I did get her out, though, and she is on her tether, so it's me and Gossamer.  He seems to be largely behaving in my illness, but he has several times used me as his high ground for games of King of the Mountain with Penelope.  He has also apparently discovered what a soft place to stand a breast can be.  But at the moment, he's harmlessly stowed alongside, sleeping like me at my worst.

I'm nauseated this time, which along with a headache is contributing (along with my whinging and, it may be admitted, very shrill frustration) to making this instance of hell far worse even than the first time, which is the worst sick I've been in what feels like a long time.

So happy times at the ranch today.

Times it SUCKS to be alone.  Times it feels so profound.

Hell II - If I Boogaloo, I HOPE It Kills Me

I have been struck once again with labyrinthitis.  Just cannot express how angry and frustrated I am at having to endure this hell TWICE in less than a MONTH.  It makes you want to die having it once.  A second bout with dizziness this severe, and all I can think is how this is not fair.  I am utterly disgusted.

Have dosed with meclizine (hey, turns out I have a non-drowsy supply; didn't find that blister pack last time) and gotten the pets fed and dog out for a wee.  That she chose to come inside and poo is my own fault; I didn't go out with her and she needs to venture at least as far as the front yard for that event.  That I believe she's already eaten the result is just not contemplatable in my state.

And so we nix the idea of getting together with the charming Cute Shoes, or my friend T who still hasn't met the babies.  Of balancing the checkbook.  Of loading up all those clothes and getting them donated.  Of getting, essentially, ANYTHING done.  No writing nor querying either - typing even this is awful, but I'm angry enough to be stubborn and spit out an ugly post I should probably think better of but am too mad to clam up.  In some ways, maybe the sleepy-meclizine would be better.  Because the un-sleepy kind, unless it CURES me, doesn't make these things magically doable.

Seriously.  So mad and so utterly physcially miserable death would seem like an improvement.

Gah.  This isn't any fair at all.

"Anna Karenina"

On Christmas Eve, a friend and I saw the new "Anna Karenina" and I followed up by streaming Leigh's 1948 turn in the role as well.

Wikimedia Commons
Cover page, 1878

2012's outing does a very fine job of conveying the real toll of the situation, and indeed the foolishness of the risks taken.  Being made outside The Code period, too, it is able to handle certain things honestly (in a couple of scenes, frankly more honestly than I would, say, want to recommend for my nieces - ahem), but for a contemporary telling it is remarkable how well it conveys a social horror many today simply cannot know nor experience.

I was surprised to discover how archly theatrical the new production is, as well.  This works in the story's favor, and oddly enough is not distancing.  It also serves a self-consciously visual, lush, almost sensually lustful production.  The thing is GORGEOUS in every detail.

The cast, too, are excellent.  While at times the two "romantic" leads make you want to just shake them for their decisions (and I feel might be young, particularly Knightley), the entire rest of the film is peopled with remarkably well-rendered characters.  Very engaging.

Leigh was exactly at the point a woman should be to play Karenina - mature, but having lost not one scintilla of her fascination nor beauty.  But she is in a production constrained by the morality police of the time, and
the tension suffers as a result of what could not be said.  Yet the 1948 does improve crucially on the 2012 in one detail - the meddling messenger friend to Alexei Karenin.  This production makes crystal clear the sexual tension between this woman and Karenin, and that unrequited parallel to Anna's sin deepens the story to its benefit.

Leigh and Sir Ralph's telling also benefits from its economy in some ways.  Working within constraints can enhance a story, and it's possible over time I'll come to find the 2012 more excessive than exuberant - but I would say, its first watching doesn't feel overblown given its own terms.

Both are good storytelling, lovely in different ways (seriously, the theatrical contrivance of the new production is very overt; the magic is that it is not distancing).  I expect I will get the DVD when 2012's is available, but probably not Leigh's.  As moviegoing goes- recommended.  Enjoy!

Let's Not Do the Time Warp

With Tom Cruise and The Governator both premiering new films within like a month of each other - it's almost like the eighties just will not end.  Much as I enjoyed the 80s, these ... gents' ... filmic ouvre were no part of that.  Sort of like the politics of the era, it was more "in spite of" than "because of" Tom and Arnold.

Clearinghouse

Today has been less an exercise in housecleaning than in house-emptying.  Yes, three loads of laundry (and apparently I can still dress just fine with that much out of commission - itself a commentary on the excess of a single-person homeownership situation ...) - but a nice stack of trash and recycling out and to-go-out.  For some reason, during a period when I was selling a lot on eBay, I developed a mini obsession with keeping EVERY box in the house, which means the entire dormer nook in the front of the guest room is stacked with useless cardboard.  RECYCLING IT.  I'll never ship that much to my brother, and - everything this year I was planning to sell on eBay I have decided to give away.

The Jones sheath dress I wore only one time (for my confirmation at church, actually).  Someone needs that, and I'm self-conscious about the slit in the back of the skirt.  I am never going to wear it again.  It goes.

My aunt's leather trench.  I miss her deeply, I loved her so much - but as an artifact goes, this one is not a beloved memento, it's just an ill-fitting vintage piece I'm cheating some very cute (short-armed) girl out of rocking to pieces.  It goes.

The quilted tapestry jacket with marvelously soft, long mongolian wool trim.  It's adorable - but it's too trendy for me.  Its sleeves, also, are a bit slim for my granny arms.  It goes.

The SIZE SIX London Fog trench my mom and dad bought me 24 years ago (I still remember where, remember the day, remember we went to a show that night; I remember how that coat fit when I cinched in the belt).  But it is a size six - and I am not, and don't even want to be.  It goes.

The beautiful red wool suit I bought last time I was unemployed - and have never worn even one single time. The heck - that's several inches of closet space.  It goes.

Even the flattering twinset mom bought me two or three years back.  It's comfortable - but I really have worn it as much as I will.  It's *just* outside my real preferred style.  So.  And the satin blazer I've gotten more than my bargain-money's worth out of.  The wonderfully soft, velvet-trimmed suit jacket my coworkers have never seen because I busted the back seam out of it once (and I thought that jacket fit fine) - which, though it's been beautifully repaired, I fear to wear for doing that again.  Good grief, it goes.  The skirt that wasn't a set but that goes with that, I should give up too - need to get that one out of the closet.  I haven't worn it in too long.

The jewelry I never wear.  The pieces from mom.  The one or two miscalculations from eBay, too.

The amount of stuff going out of this house - I already have two HUGE shopping bags of stuff out in the trunk as it is, and the list above is on top of those things, and will cram the trunk chock full - is pretty serious.  It will feel good.

On top of this, I've done a lot of just organizing.  The guest room, for two months, has been a riot of clean sheets waiting to go back on the bed my friend used when she came for the JRW Conference in mid-october, of summer clothes not put away, of Christmas decorations and their boxes, of the hair moved for the tree's spot in the living room.  It's oppressive, living in a house otherwise sort of nice, but knowing THIS ROOM was lurking silently upstairs.

It goes.

If these things don't go, I will be mired in them.  And so much of it would be so nice for somebody else.

The edifice of cardboard boxes - well, maybe they will just be nice for the Earth, for me to take them out of the realm of waste and excess ...


***


Christmas, of course, will bring More Stuff into the house - but one great advantage of middle age is that every year there is less of that to manage, for me.  Heh - some years, hardly anything at all ... but that is an amusing set of stories for some other time.  *Grin*

So it is the right time to lighten my home's load.  Just yesterday I resisted the temptation to buy a new sofa for *such a deal* (seriously - nice, clean, comfy piece, and I'd have paid $55 for it).  But I don't need to take advantage of every deal out there.  Today I am gladder to have the sofa already here.  Another day, it will be time to let it go, to find a new/old one in its place.  But not this week.

Today is my day of solitary worship - steward to the material blessings given me.  And part of that is knowing when to give those blessings to others.  Tonight, I will revel and relax, nothing more than a bath and early bed.

Tomorrow, one last piece of shopping, then a friend for the evening.

Christmas Eve - for the first time, perhaps, ever - I have taken time off.  Time with another friend, and probably the nighttime service, a joyous celebration.  The exquisite sound of my priest's voice, singing.  Her love, all our love.  And, yes - Christ.  A worship in fellowship.

Then Christmas day, just me and the fur-bearing kidlets, relaxing (... heh ... ?) at mom and my stepfather's house.  I plan to make my dad's coffee cake.  We'll eat, we'll open gifts, we'll laugh and share and just be, pretty quietly.  It is a small holiday, just the three of us.  Penelope and Goss will liven it up I am sure.

Then home.  A quiet night.

And back to the real world.

Merry Christmas from the Wee and Timorous Beasties

World's End

Massive

When I was fifteen or twenty (though those ages seemed far apart back then, they don't make much odds to me now in my old age), I had a brief period of time when I said "massive" if something seemed good to me.  Yes, Virginia, Paris Hilton did not invent the would-be-catchphrase-now-defunct phenomenon.  Today, for some reason, twenty-five or so years after its demise, the word bubbled out of my wee, paltry little brain, and popped at a good point in the day.

This week has been spent making every effort to do my job, and - on two extremely key tasks - being utterly unable to.  The real kicker is that the two things I have been unable to do (reconciling my purchasing, and creating a new hire ID) are STUPIDLY quick and easy jobs ... and it is now officially a week I've spent trying to manage each of them.

Thank technology.  Due to an UPGRADE (raise your hand if you've ever been functionally screwed by tech improvements which set you back by decades, kids!!), my computer has instituted the silent treatment against key sites and tools.  Fantastico.

And so, jobs which should be the smallest part of my day, but which are (I may have noted this ...) fundamentally important tasks, have (a) remained incomplete, in one case and - vastly more humiliating and frustrating still - (b) been done by OTHER PEOPLE.  Yes, the extremely competent woman whose responsibility it is to herd an entire resource system's worth of card-holders has personally, twice in a row (we have to reconcile daily at year-end) managed my transactions.  Now, this has been a total of five items in two days - yet it is disgusting to me to put my work on ANYONE else's desk.  And mortifying to put it on hers, of all people's.

The beat goes on, with my finally gaining access to the ID system today, which I suppose is good news.

As to the accounting side - I have called our help desk (their scripted instruction is to reach out to the very woman who's been stuck doing my job twice now - and, not for nothing, but she is also working from home and managing not only the holidays but a family hospitalization as well - so I'm EXTRA happy to be another problem for her).  I have called her, of course.  She has been extraordinarily generous, competent, forbearing, and as helpful as humanly possible in the face of inhuman technology and its inscrutable faults.  I have reached out personally and directly to one of the tech guys at my site, who has also been generous - but, being alone on deck here, he too is stretched miles too thin.


***


Five bluebirds appeared outside the office window while I was rebooting, after yet another workaround attempt (it did not work).  I watched them in wonder - bluebirds aren't typical around here in any case, but I don't know that in my life I've ever seen so many at once.  At one point, three of them aligned with almost revoltingly excellent composition in a tree by the lake.  A bloody Christmas card, that.  Or maybe Chanukah, actually!

I remembered my dad telling me not to let the bluebird of happiness poop on my windshield.  And remembered the random little rubber bluebird eraser or toy he found some time in the year or so before he died, and gave to me (long since petrified, but indeed still around).  Dad was someone who could find the bluebird of happiness, maybe attracted it - more likely, just preferred his perceptions calibrated to the good.  If I am a lucky human I'll someday be half as wise and half as sanguine as he.  If I am exceptionally lucky and blessed ...


***


The reason this blip on the dizzying readout of linguistic quirks I have adopted and abandoned through my life happened to repeat is this - frustrating as this past week has been, with roadblocks and embarrassing offloading, toward the end of the day I looked around and found that some of the most important things on my desk have been eliminated, and not by throwing them at other people either.  It's a hopeful uplift I have hopes will inform tomorrow and next week, making the new year a little easier.

Bluebirds and all ... it's the little things, sometimes.

Grinding

Alec Shane sent me a rejection on Friday ... but I've also done this, so the beat goes on.  Interesting note from an agent on Twitter this weekend, so I'll be researching her!  And the list isn't exhausted yet, and there will be revisitations of certain pre-revision queries.  I have some interesting ideas about hopes for the new year.  We shall see - but maybe 2013 will be the year it gets representation, and even sells.

We shall see.  It's getting to be time.

Grief Highjacker

This is the phrase my brother used when he said something to me about having a powerful response to the events of yesterday's news here in the U.S.  I don't want to post about that devastation, because this is not a current events blog, and because out of respect and a perfect lack of comprehension there is NOTHING I could possibly compose which could be worthy to say and which would not in some way be about me, my feelings, my perspective, which is utterly irrelevant to the mourning of the families and friends of those lost in Connecticut.

I pray for peace, not only for those so brutally bereaved - but between us, within our broken, desperate nation - and for those who, without it, turn derangement and rage into punishment for the rest of the world.

Self awareness is key for anyone who doesn't want OTHER people to be aware of their faults *for* them.

If you get there first, you can do something about it.

Lit

Okay tree is up, lit, even my old string of lights is re-fused and working now.  Animals curious, but not misbehaving badly.  But Penelope is being a complete loon.

When my elder niece was very young, the family lived in Hawai'i.  When she ate poi, she became sleepy.  I'm thinking I want to get some poi for my dog.  Because drugging her would be extreme - but wow do I wish she would lose the habit of wigging, particularly when large trees and electricity are so prominent in the living room!

Buffy Frustrates Me ...

... as do my Christmas lights.  $33.88 with shipping, two BRAND new strings, I plugged them in and got 45 seconds of light.  I spent that much because these are supposed to be the "one bulb goes out, the rest stay lit" - but NONE are currently lit.  Gah.  Stupid freaking Christmas lights.  (The inquiry is in, yes with the eBay seller.)

But while I am cleaning and putting up decorations, I'm watching Buffy.  Once again, I am struck by the artificial and irritating elasticity of her intellect/education.  In one moment, she says to Xander, "Thank you for the Dadaist greeting" because that is a funny reference.  But three minutes later, he says something about going on reconnaissance and she wrinkles her nose and asks "where we paint and make pottery and stuff" and he has to explain, "That was the *Renaissance*" ...

Because Buffy is selectively dumb, for excessively weak and dumb jokes.  *Sigh*

Felt Like Freedom

Mojourner, speaking as someone who *was* a punk - and on the subject of dancing like you don't give a hang who's watching.  Because that is what dancing is for.  I'm struck (not for the first time in his remarkable explorations of the punk scene he let me spectate from time to time) at how clearly, how freshly, I remember some of these faces.  The spiky mullet in front.  The fro to one side.

What he describes comes back, too.  The chicken fights, the on-the-spot made-up dances, the getting on stage.  He hasn't mentioned the time he was one of the "aweem-awep" dudes for a spontaneous rendition of "The Lion Sleeps" - and, in fact, how frequently spontaneous classics like that came up.  Sometimes sped up to 78 (as Mo said recently, an hour or so could hold thirty-eight thousand punk songs - or something far funnier, frankly, but to that effect ...).  Sometimes screamed, sure.  But sometimes, and not infrequently, pretty much in their original arrangement.  The guys on those stages were musicians, after all, as much as rebels.  Sometimes, rebellion could be performed with respect for music unlike their own.  Punk had a lot more taste than exclusively for irony, and it's easy to forget, in the post-'net world which has come to so intensely depend on snark - not everything even the strident anarchist had to say back then was said with a sneer.

Anyway, amazing photos once again, and remarkable memories I am enjoying very much.

(Also of note:  "history, brought to you by women."  In and of itself, a fascinating phenomenon of the dynamics of - at least "our" little corner of - punk.)

I Did

This.

That is Not a Pubic Hair on My Coke

Once again, in the "we did not invent (fill-in-the-intellectual/cultural/sexual-blank-here) yesterday" department, we have a really fascinating look at women's body hair (and its absence) through the centuries.  As, during this election year of misogyny (BUT THERE IS NO WAR ON WOMEN ... even as, at this very writing, Cantor tries to maim the Violence Against Women Act), we learned that "vagina" is not a dirty word, for today's post we'll have to accept that "pubic" isn't either.

The idea that there was a pre-modern era of “anything goes” in terms of normative bodies is a commonplace.  --Jill Burke

No Supreme Court justices were harmed, nor even sexually harassed, during the production of this post.  (As to Cantor:  only certain women are worthy of any protection at all - and we all know who the privileged are in this scenario.)

The Quote

Following up in a way on the Historically Accurate Sexism post, I want to take a look at the single sentence from my research - found years ago, actually, while working on "The Ax and the Vase" - which forms the basis and informs the context for Novel #2.

The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them.    --Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers

I've been calling the thing "Matrilineage", for the record - though I have zero attachment to this title, and would surmise no agent nor publisher in the world will go for it.  As I get more into the work, a new one may present itself.  And in any case, not all titles are allowed to stand (I will even accept it if "Ax" is changed).

The novel will follow the lives of Audofleda, Amalasuntha, and perhaps Matasuentha.  Audofleda was the sister of Clovis I - so it is perhaps obvious how I came across her.  She married Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king who killed Odovakar - famed, himself, for putting an end to the Roman Empire.  Unlike "Ax", this work will focus on female characters.  It also isn't told in first person, which I am relishing quite a bit.

The quote above goes beyond much of the wisdom of research I've found up to this point, in that it takes the snapshot of "ass-kicking Ostrogoth women" and puts a frame on a greater context.  Amalasuntha bore the grandson of Theodoric, and when that child died, she became queen regnant in a time during which, shall we say, if not sexism, a certain lack of feminine monarchical opportunity marked the period.  Ama was educated, no beauty, a great nonconformist, and a woman with her own mind.

So the challenge not to write a Mary Sue is fascinating.

And the quote above is my guidepost.  Her education is irrelevant to everyone around her.  Her ABILITY is irrelevant.

But she is the child of Theodoric, and was mother of a king.

Her charisma will, I suspect as I work to build her character (at this point I am still in her teenage years), build on the same basis as her father:  Her Amal royal heritage, her lineage, her right - not by gender, but by charisma of the blood - is the glue by which she binds herself to the throne.

Austerity Costing Posterity

The bitter cost of what the 1% has done to the whole world's economy goes far beyond a few miserable poor folks' incessant griping.

We're losing world history now, because archaeology and preservation are no longer worthwhile to governments in economic straits.  Imagine the prospect - 40% of Italy's sites ALONE are at risk today.

Scholarship, culture - the world must bite the dust, because the wealthy of the world refuse to break out the Pledge and a dustrag.  It is revolting.  And it is the stuff revolts are made of, not for nothing.

Historically ... Authentic (Sexism)

As much trouble as I have, as an author, with anachronistic Mary-Sue feminism, there is a flip side to the coin.  This is a good post about how counter-productive it can be to lean on "but history was sexist" as an excuse to write chauvinism instead of *character*.  I'm madly in love with the graphic, too:

Tansyrr.com

Not to mention this quote:

History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.  --Tansy Rayner Roberts

It's as true of histfic as it is of fantasy, the authenticity of an overarching principle is (a) not necessarily beyond question, but (b) no reason to sacrifice *writing*.

NPR, Voice of the Tea Party

Lately, I keep noticing a completely bizarre and biased tone on stories NPR is airing.  Thursday night, it was the piece about how Camden, NJ is falling apart 100% thanks to the wildly overpaid and prone-to-outrageous-absenteeism police force.  A more ludicrously anti-union and anti-worker piece of propaganda I can't even think of right now, it was deeply mystifying.

I can think of MANY occupations which are objectively overcompensated.  "Cop" is not one of those.  Maybe the mixed these public servants up with "CEO", another job description of three letters and starting with a C ... ?

Punk Nostalgia

This post is going to be a bit of a bouillabaisse of memories - mostly really my brother's, but he was nice enough to share a bit with me back then.  He and I have been enjoying - of all things ... - "good times" memories of that least of all "aww"-inspiring things, the hardcore punk scene of the early 80s.  And yet, if not "aww" - there are some very good feelings with these memories.  (For me, the surprise and excitement of cool stuff shared with my bro.  For him, a youth not spent wearing alligator shirts and worshiping Reagan.)

Kind of loving my brother's memories.  I won't go back to edit the post about being at White Cross shows, but here is the vid that woke me from the malaise of my illnes:



It'd be impossible for me to go back to that time and place, even as sick as I was on Tuesday, and not feel some resurgence of the energy they held.

The POV of the video camera (I still can't get over someone having such a rare and expensive thing at one of these shows!) is pretty much exactly where I would have been.

Mojourner has more to say about those days here and here.  He also appears in the Mini Mag I linked before, but I ain't sayin' which dude with attitude he was.  Though he does match one of the guys in this vid!  Maybe he collected all his archival fame in one night (apart from that White Cross album cover he was on - I'll tell you this time, he was the guy in the striped shirt).



There was an immense amount of anger at that time, but what people may not understand is that it was not a scene of menace and cruelty.  The anger was a shared thing, binding kids deprived of privilege (and those of us who had a little bit, but hardly lived in Reagan-era Greed-is-Good-ness or Dynasty wealth), expressed in voices raised as loud as those who were socio-politically very very small could be.  But within the scene, there was a lot of laughter, much loyalty and trust.

I showed up at these things wearing what I hoped was ironic and cool - a pink CIA t-shirt given to me by a relative who at that time, oddly enough, was an expert on the Russkies and (though no more on the Blake Carrington level than my brother and I) had a lot more interest in Reagan - and a hippie-ish white flowered prairie skirt, with little black cotton Mary Janes.  Amidst the Marks-A-Lot'ed jean vests and black tees, nobody was mistaking me for one of them - pink and white!? (though, for the record, yeah, it was pretty intentional; apparently my nonconformity among nonconformists began earlier than I've ever really thought about) - but they were nice to me.  The guys there would have protected me from any harm - if it had actually been likely, in the not-so-wilds of our downtown of that era, danger were really likely.  But the circle of punks, spilling out of the bar and up the block to that 7-Eleven, was big enough to contain, and cohesive enough not to break.  Nobody broke inside - nobody wanted to - and in that group it was safe.

I probably learned a lot which still serves me today.  I frequent a very different scene when I get out socially, but the effect is in its way similar.  Outcast and underprivileged people might seem scary on their margins, from the mainstream, but the marginalized keep an eye out for those they claim, and those they welcome.

Sure, the force of a brother who didn't exactly invite violence and violation to his person - nor his sister's - had its power.  But the fact was, the larger dynamic within that angry and alienated world wasn't one of anger nor alienation actually aimed inward.  The anger was never with those sharing it, and so the dynamic was of the adopted-erzats-gang-family variety popularized in everything from The Outsiders to Penelope Spheeris' "Suburbia" (itself a veritable goldmine of who-was-whom and pop-cultural trivia of a remarkable variety).  So that anger, that terrifying rebellion and defiance, was not the attractant - it was the repellant.  Stay away, preppies, stay away, established authority, stay away if this scares you.

But, if you come in, you'll be in for some laughs, the shows, the friends, the people.

Big or Little, It Doesn't Matter ...

... it's what's inside that counts!




How am I going to even TRY to resist?  Even as a Trek nerd, LeVar's BEST role ever.

Letters to a Young Lady

Here's a great post from The History Girls, including some quotes from a surprisingly long-lived perennial seller of the late 18th/early 19th century, and a bit of commentary I can't disagree with either.  If I actually worked in this period, it'd make pretty amazing research and character building material.

Button Fly ...

I can admit, it's entirely true that American Duchess, Isis' Wardrobe, and Isis' Toilette are my new addictions.  For the inimitable Cute Shoes, here's a follow up on the details of late 19th-century button boots.  I love the scalloped fly, but the rounded toe on the 1910-15 boot is the best shoe shape.

Pileup

I'm moving slowly but remembering all these hardcore acts I saw back when my brother let me hang around with him and his friends.  Honor Role, YFA, Graven Image, Pledge Allegiance - even just the local legend, Dirt Woman ... who looks so YOUNG to me now.  Terrifying!  Names of the bars - I love the name Going Bananas.  Need to open a place called Going Bananas and be the old lady everyone finds inexplicable.  Don't I?

No?

Yeah, possibly the illness talking.  Must be time to stop flipping my way down memory lane.  It's already run me into pics of The Exploited (gah) and Henry Rollins.  That cannot be good for my poor brain.

Would it be un-punk to cite issu.com and RVA Mini Mag as sources for this lot of pics?
For the record: INKWELL DESIGN LLC
Howzat for punk, man?

I Have Achieved ... Toast

This morning, I woke with some dizziness, and thought (as I am wont to do), "I will try to sleep this off and go in late."

The luck, it has not been quite so good.  Much of this day, I've spent sleeping the sleep of attempted-escape, but with an unfortunate lack of oblivion.  I used to get this sick in college - labyrinthitis isn't unusual for me or for my mom, but today has been the worst attack I've had in memory.  It's a miserable thing - something like the 24-hour death, but at least without any actual biological eruptions.  Only the hideous spinning and lassitude.

So my point is, it's taking a pretty hefty inspiration for me to get on my laptop at all.  I got on this morning to email my management, when it became clear going in late wasn't an option, and left the thing sleeping most of the day.  But a little while ago - I achieved toast.  Eating is helping more than I would have expected (so now I am irked I didn't try it sooner - but, so it goeth).  I also turned on Netflix, and wouldn't you know my luck - we're up to "Space Seed" on the TOS ep count.  Ahhh, Khan, you are perking me up.

However, that is not enough to make me turn to Blogger and attempt to type (which ain't easy, dear readers - I had to correct three typos in the word "Blogger" alone just now).  No, THAT took the interruption to TOS I found when I opened two emails from my brother.  I won't post the vid unless he gives permission - but, thanks to The Wonders of Teh Intarwebs, he came across the most astounding piece of our history.

My brother was the cool sibling, but for whatever reason (and, what's odd is, I don't know that parental pressure actually played into this) he actually included me sometimes in outings with his friends.

This of course is how I SAW ALL THE COOL CONCERTS.  Including perhaps the White Cross show now archived, and which he found online.  Minor Threat.  The Exploited (not even one iota cool - tools to the last minute of their obnoxiousness, those posers).  Ten Thousand Maniacs (yes, with Natalie Merchant - and the source of my first internet meme, actually, though the worthwhileness of digging through that link is dubious).  Even some arena tours - my very first was The Clash's Combat Rock tour, the same week they appeared on SNL with Little Opie Cunningham (who drank a BEER on live TV!  Woo!) - and second was Bowie.

Granted, that second one was only Serious Moonlight - but kids, I saw Bowie live from the front row of a General Admission show, so shut up until you can outdo me.  (And when you do I will not care, because braggin' rights, as fun as they are, mean remarkably little to me.)

Watching the vid of the White Cross show, I could remember so clearly the space of that little dive.  I never drank, and couldn't even smoke successfully, back then.  My brother was sufficient presence to keep me from misbehaving with boys, not that I had any very great urge to misbehave, as many crushes as I liked to have.  I remember the girls, even when I was only sixteen, asking me how I got so pale.

I wasn't one of them - I was a privileged little girl playing with the cool kids, riding on the coattails of my brother.  But they were sweet.  I remember the Andys.  I remember a girl named Honey.  I remember the night we left a show at one or two in the morning, I had something like 73 punks in the backseat, and maybe three bicycles, I was at the wheel ... and my brother meowed at a police dog in the cruiser next to us.  The officer had just come from a homicide and wasn't finding us hilarious.  But I got no ticket, to go with my healthy dose of Official Sternness.



But watching that clip, it was the SHOWS that came back, so strongly.  Mr. X has, over the ten years of our acquaintance, occasionally "warned" me, of his music, as I came to absorb it, that it might be a little hard or heavy for me.  If he watched that clip it might be clearer - knowing I was consuming this life from the age of sixteen - why I go "aww - that's cute" when he does that.

The music and atmosphere may no more be truly extinct than any of the "why when I was a child" memories any old fart uses to disparage The Present compared to one's own Past.  But punk - that Punk, the actual real stuff - has certainly been beaten to near death, emblem of long dead fashion for so long even the emblematic BS is now out of fashion itself.

Look at the people.  There's one guy with a standup mohawk, and I can tell you he almost certainly didn't wear it twice, or went on to become either goth industrial or (more likely) yuppie.  The people who were THERE, the regulars at shows - you can see them.  Guys in jeans with fairly boring short, or cropped, hair.  Ordinary shirts, or none at all.  Just guys.  Sweating.

The whole POINT of punk - real punk - was to reject fashion and affectation.  These guys couldn't afford leather jeans, and would not have worn 'em.  The one common style was army surplus (REAL - not insanely expensive Doc Martens; which came along to make money well after punk itself was dead) combat boots.  Other than that, jeans.  Torn, not torn, probably blue, maybe written on.  White tees, black tees, button ups, whatever.  A shirt that fits.  Maybe one that doesn't stink.

It'll stink by the time the night is over.

The guys got in the mosh pit.  It wasn't a systematic swirl of violence, particularly.  It was intermittent.  The guys could fight, I'm sure, but I really don't remember it.  The only bloodshed I ever recall at a show was when that utter twit of a lead singer for The Exploited SWUNG HIS MIC (of all disco-tastic, foolish show-boy rockstar idiot-hole flourishes, really) and hit his own bass player in the face with it.  I think the guy lost a tooth.  And the singer was a tool about it.  Jerks.

That bar was used as the location for a polka bar in the Robert Preston film "Finnegan Begin Again."  I remember watching that movie obsessively, dying every time RP and Mary Tyler Moore danced in that brick-lined punk dive.

It eventually became a coffee bar, at least in the 90s.  It may still be one, or may be a cafe' - it may be a dang Starbucks or a McDonald's by now.  But, then, it was the dark place I was exposed to coolness so potent that, almost thirty years on, I can see this post has gone far beyond my ability to really function.

I'ma finish watching the clip.  Finish watching "Space Seed".  And, someday, maybe I'll come back and tell all you kids about when I was not a middle aged cat (and dog) lady.

But first, another little lie-down, becuase hell if staring at this screen isn't killing me.

This Is Our ... Culture ...

Ford Not Prefect

A good post on the relationship one man has with his truck - but, really, I just love the title.  Heh.

Elastic

The American Duchess on one more thing we didn't invent in the 1960s.  Elastic gussets for your boot.

American Duchess sells this boot

Stop.

Four ibuprofen in, and the headache so bad the pain has me nauseated is only getting worse.  I see an early night tonight.

Which is probably not going to be true.  Which is a shame.

"Tomorrow is Yesterday"

Starting off the day with some Star Trek, it's the first ep on 20thC Earth.  I don't feel like logging on to Twitter, so shall make my inane observations here, for my own entertainment.

• I think this is the first time in my chronological viewing of TOS where I've seen the "blank screens" looking wrinkled.  Oops!
• Question to self:  "Self, is there a particular statement in the fact I am watching Star Trek instead of going to church ... ?"
• Ahhhh, the sexist "personality of a woman" issue with the computer.  Le Sigh.
• Did Scotty really just say "everything's jury rigged" ... ???
• Ethics be damned, we've got an episode plot to resolve!

Ew

The way things appear to be going in my tum, and with some sdubby codjesjun, once again there shall be no church for me this morning.  I don't feel Actually Sick (there is a line drawn by my mother in my mind, heart, and soul, only beyond which do I stop feeling guilty for calling in sick), but two things prevent fellowship - one, the prospect of having to dab through an hour and a half or so of time I'd rather be dignified, and two, the what-if-I-am-sick transmissibility issues.  Catholic-lite is no less rife with opportunities to hand over your germs than the full-calorie Church, one of those times the human-soup of existence opens the door to sharing.

Though I intinct instead of sipping, the obvious vector of course is the Eucharist,where we all get to share wine in succession.  But there's also The Peace, which is the part we all reach out and touch, shake hands, etc. (though we had a moment of polite greeting in the denomination of my childhood, it never involved looking at more than maybe two people, and certainly no physical contact).  The full minute or two or three of Peace-ing is a far more engaging sport!

So no for me again this week, but yes I believe to some housecleaning.  As this was my worship for many years before I found fellowship, so it remains, and though usually I don't do it on the actual Sabbath day anymore, it's hardly inappropriate to take it to this day.

But first ... a little TOS.

Snoot

Gossamer and Penelope just had a gentle snoot with each other.  Good lord, I die of cute when they do that.

Glum

I got to use the word glum on Friday and it made me so happy I negated myself.

*Eyebrow* At My Stats

550 hits today, mostly from Canada, Spain, and the Netherlands.  Odd, that.  Odder - usually bots don't go to my pages; the excerpts etc. - but today, two and three hits apiece to all of those pages.

I find this not a gratifying uptick, but a depressing sign that even the one indicator of actual human visitation (hits on those pages) is no longer reliable.

*Blah* for monster day stats.