Y'all don't think I forgot that Star Trek's birthday was Sunday, did you? Nope. Just late. Also: I agree - the animated series is fanfoogootastic. "(W)e've got tribbles on the ship, quinotrintacali (sp?) in the corridors, Klingons in the quadrant--it can ruin your whole day, sir!" Plus, Doohan as Koloth!
Crazy old cat lady? Crazy like a healthy fox. Or something.
From Trek to Aristotle - how accurate do we really need to be in histfic? Opinions - obviously - vary on this point. Consider historical paintings throughout the centuries, depicting biblical figures in dress and settings contemporary and local to the artists who created them. Here's what Aristotle says, courtesy of David J. Cord. Do you write or read poetry, or history ... ? (My take is here.)
I failed to get to this when Mojourner told me about this over the weekend - and now I'm wracking my brain to remember the OTHER cool thing he told me about. Well, here's one: more parasites in archaeology - ahh, the history of gastrointestinal distress and disease is such fun. Richard III had roundworms. Yum! Not bad reading if you want to skip a meal ...
Oh, but wait - there's more Dickie to enjoy! How about a 3D model of his skeleton? He had such an INTERESTING skeleton, after all. I'm trying to be nice by not linking directly to the full PDF article, but don't think for a second that won't be my leisure reading when I can scrape up the time.
More from the History blog (of course) - this time, pre-Reformation tombs in England. By pre-Reformation we seem largely to be focused on Tudors, but hey, Tudors are always popular!
Elizabeth Chadwick giveaway, y'all! I may have linked this a few days back, but am too lazy to check and it belongs in a collection post anyway.
Vintage shoes at American Duchess - or - reasons I'm so glad 1930s inspired styles are so popular right now. I have about five pair of shoes harking back to these shoes, and at least a few 50s type styles as well.
And, finally: one of the most fascinating (and, apparently, wildly successful) ad campaigns ever conceived. Courtesy the intriguing blog of Jeff Sypek, I give you: medieval maiden Maidenform. If you don't click on this one, you truly are missing out.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Fashion, Frivolity, and How Clothes Matter
I’ve had a few rants lately about designer labels and clothes, the latter post linked actually garnering the reaction I look for when posting about costume on this blog – a bit of enthusiasm from a decidedly non-style-obsessed quarter.
The thing about the human tendency for self-decoration is that we take it too far, of course. Yet, as much as any other anthropological study - and, in rare preserved instances, archaeological as well – human costume and beauty are a fascinating discipline. As little use as I like to admit I have for fashion, that’s not because I am ignorant about it. I have favorite designers, from the haute level on down (from century-plus-old Worth couture to modern Balenciaga and even Calvin Klein, I find fashion and design to be a fascinating art and an enormously respectable craft). Among the most astonishing costume closets on earth is the BBC’s collection of period pieces, from Elizabeth R to Blackadder, a treasure trove of some of the gorgeous, best made recreations on Earth.
Equally absorbing to me is a look at Otzi’s tattoos and garb, along with the technical aspects of how ancient clothing was made. We can see that certain techniques have been with us for millennia, but over time there have been remarkable innovations. Seams were one – inset components were another. Imagine one-piece-of-textile clothes – the utility and beauty of the toga, or the astonishing longevity of the tunic – then look again at a sleeve, created separately and connected to a body piece; perhaps by ties, as once they were (sleeves were extraordinarily expensive, and provided opportunities for sumptuary excess, in their early days); perhaps permanently, as they are now. Cap sleeves, flutter sleeves, bell and balloon sleeves, puffed detailing swelling to leg-o-mutton proportions, or even the humble, cuffed workaday arm on a polo shirt. There was a time such things did not exist.
In more recent centuries, innovation has been heavily focused on dyes, synthetic fibers, and (more and more) unexpected materials. PVC, latex, even the notorious meat dress Lady Gaga once wore, which has (I kid you not) been preserved in a jerky form. Do with that what you will, there are obvious jokes aplenty, kids – but that dress has its own Wikipedia page. And its implications *are* interesting, no matter how resistible the model’s need for attention may be. Yet we still also like to hark back, either spectacularly (feathers and fur) or with more understatement (silk, wool) to those materials which have served to clothe our bodies since time immemorial.
Synthetic dyes I have discussed before, and at the “clothes” link in paragraph one I do go on a bit about what plastic will do to your garments, but synthetic textiles themselves I haven’t engaged with much enthusiasm here.
If I could afford to dress exclusively in naturals, I still probably would not – but it is an irony that naturals are by far the most expensive means by which to cover ourselves and/or express ourselves anymore. Even cotton can cost more than a polyester piece – and, of course, it’s easy to prefer clothing which we not only don’t have to care for so meticulously ... but which, frankly, we can use up and get rid of without thinking about it.
I read recently a questionable statistic I’d love to see some sourcing for, that the average American owns a particular piece of clothing for six months then discards it. The discarding method is not explored by the info-bit I saw, but he implication was “trash”. I believe discarding may be in the form of donation, selling, or “handing-down” – one form of exchange or another – for a significant percentage of clothing in circulation. Some probably just languishes in closets until a move or a death, and may no longer be viable clothing by the time it’s unearthed again. Still, it’s certain that far more often than we care to look at, the discarding of clothing takes the form of throwing something in the trash.
In the current economy, I find the six month period quoted above easy to doubt. Even so, I do recognize – as do a growing movement – that there IS a massive segment of the population who treat all products (not just clothing but also appliances and cars and all manner of goods we once used to call “durable”) as disposable.
Insert obnoxious older lady phrase here: When I was a kid, the only reason to throw something away was actual damage. Outgrowing, out-moding, just never wearing something: these were reasons to fill up a few bags and give your kid’s clothes to the somewhat younger/smaller neighbor’s kids (I *loved* these days, especially with that one girl across the street – and I know we regularly received hand me downs like this from at least two neighbors), or to take a load to a charity shop. We shopped regularly at consignment stores, and I still find almost all Goodwill stores to be great resources, and the rather high-end one in the boutique shopping area not far from me is always a fun trip. And, as you might guess, I don’t trash my clothing either.
Yet, for every item I eBay or secondhand-find, we all know there are people emptying their closets into a landfill instead. I do it with pantyhose (but did you know that No-Nonsense now has a recycling program?), we all do it sometimes. We all create exceptions for every best intention, and as unpopular as I know they became in the 90s, I can’t become a non-pantyhose-wearer, for a hundred reasons. I ought to become a pantyhose-recycler. I’ll try to get there.
But I’m not there.
And, as a nation, goodness knows America’s not there. We whip up tens of thousands of tons of chemical clothing every single year (okay, and we import most of it, but that’s another screed, and how many of us are thinking about the fate of what we wear? How many, of those who are even thinking about it, actually do anything about it? Again in the 1990s, there was a popular move to “DIY” (do it yourself) in many areas, and wardrobe was a prominent part of this trend. Since then, recycled textiles and “green” fibers have gained visibility as well. Raise your hands if you’ve seen bamboo clothes and bags.
But not until we think about it is it going to make the difference it must.
I think a lot about fashion, about style, and about clothes. That’s not entirely a frivolous pastime.
It is a fascinating skein in the tapestry of history, and humanity itself. It’s both a revelation ... and a symptom.
The thing about the human tendency for self-decoration is that we take it too far, of course. Yet, as much as any other anthropological study - and, in rare preserved instances, archaeological as well – human costume and beauty are a fascinating discipline. As little use as I like to admit I have for fashion, that’s not because I am ignorant about it. I have favorite designers, from the haute level on down (from century-plus-old Worth couture to modern Balenciaga and even Calvin Klein, I find fashion and design to be a fascinating art and an enormously respectable craft). Among the most astonishing costume closets on earth is the BBC’s collection of period pieces, from Elizabeth R to Blackadder, a treasure trove of some of the gorgeous, best made recreations on Earth.
Equally absorbing to me is a look at Otzi’s tattoos and garb, along with the technical aspects of how ancient clothing was made. We can see that certain techniques have been with us for millennia, but over time there have been remarkable innovations. Seams were one – inset components were another. Imagine one-piece-of-textile clothes – the utility and beauty of the toga, or the astonishing longevity of the tunic – then look again at a sleeve, created separately and connected to a body piece; perhaps by ties, as once they were (sleeves were extraordinarily expensive, and provided opportunities for sumptuary excess, in their early days); perhaps permanently, as they are now. Cap sleeves, flutter sleeves, bell and balloon sleeves, puffed detailing swelling to leg-o-mutton proportions, or even the humble, cuffed workaday arm on a polo shirt. There was a time such things did not exist.
In more recent centuries, innovation has been heavily focused on dyes, synthetic fibers, and (more and more) unexpected materials. PVC, latex, even the notorious meat dress Lady Gaga once wore, which has (I kid you not) been preserved in a jerky form. Do with that what you will, there are obvious jokes aplenty, kids – but that dress has its own Wikipedia page. And its implications *are* interesting, no matter how resistible the model’s need for attention may be. Yet we still also like to hark back, either spectacularly (feathers and fur) or with more understatement (silk, wool) to those materials which have served to clothe our bodies since time immemorial.
Synthetic dyes I have discussed before, and at the “clothes” link in paragraph one I do go on a bit about what plastic will do to your garments, but synthetic textiles themselves I haven’t engaged with much enthusiasm here.
If I could afford to dress exclusively in naturals, I still probably would not – but it is an irony that naturals are by far the most expensive means by which to cover ourselves and/or express ourselves anymore. Even cotton can cost more than a polyester piece – and, of course, it’s easy to prefer clothing which we not only don’t have to care for so meticulously ... but which, frankly, we can use up and get rid of without thinking about it.
I read recently a questionable statistic I’d love to see some sourcing for, that the average American owns a particular piece of clothing for six months then discards it. The discarding method is not explored by the info-bit I saw, but he implication was “trash”. I believe discarding may be in the form of donation, selling, or “handing-down” – one form of exchange or another – for a significant percentage of clothing in circulation. Some probably just languishes in closets until a move or a death, and may no longer be viable clothing by the time it’s unearthed again. Still, it’s certain that far more often than we care to look at, the discarding of clothing takes the form of throwing something in the trash.
In the current economy, I find the six month period quoted above easy to doubt. Even so, I do recognize – as do a growing movement – that there IS a massive segment of the population who treat all products (not just clothing but also appliances and cars and all manner of goods we once used to call “durable”) as disposable.
Insert obnoxious older lady phrase here: When I was a kid, the only reason to throw something away was actual damage. Outgrowing, out-moding, just never wearing something: these were reasons to fill up a few bags and give your kid’s clothes to the somewhat younger/smaller neighbor’s kids (I *loved* these days, especially with that one girl across the street – and I know we regularly received hand me downs like this from at least two neighbors), or to take a load to a charity shop. We shopped regularly at consignment stores, and I still find almost all Goodwill stores to be great resources, and the rather high-end one in the boutique shopping area not far from me is always a fun trip. And, as you might guess, I don’t trash my clothing either.
Yet, for every item I eBay or secondhand-find, we all know there are people emptying their closets into a landfill instead. I do it with pantyhose (but did you know that No-Nonsense now has a recycling program?), we all do it sometimes. We all create exceptions for every best intention, and as unpopular as I know they became in the 90s, I can’t become a non-pantyhose-wearer, for a hundred reasons. I ought to become a pantyhose-recycler. I’ll try to get there.
But I’m not there.
And, as a nation, goodness knows America’s not there. We whip up tens of thousands of tons of chemical clothing every single year (okay, and we import most of it, but that’s another screed, and how many of us are thinking about the fate of what we wear? How many, of those who are even thinking about it, actually do anything about it? Again in the 1990s, there was a popular move to “DIY” (do it yourself) in many areas, and wardrobe was a prominent part of this trend. Since then, recycled textiles and “green” fibers have gained visibility as well. Raise your hands if you’ve seen bamboo clothes and bags.
But not until we think about it is it going to make the difference it must.
I think a lot about fashion, about style, and about clothes. That’s not entirely a frivolous pastime.
It is a fascinating skein in the tapestry of history, and humanity itself. It’s both a revelation ... and a symptom.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Twelve
"Diane, you don't understand! You don't understand! There's no Towers!"
I will never forget. And, Zuba? I really do love you.
Monday, September 9, 2013
THINGS I Know About Clothes, With a Side of Advice
In some ways, I know more about clothing than most people do (to be explicit, this is as distinct from fashion and design). Not long ago, I had a fun little wigging-out on Twitter, that Rachel Zoe, a celebrity stylist/designer who has a reality show, apparently keeps all of her clothing in its dry cleaning bags. Her assistants were going through her archive of past wardrobe, and every bit of it was plastic bagged. Then there were several shots in her home closet, showing her whole family’s clothing, all in bags and (YEP) on wire hangers still sporting those “WE HEART YOU” paper hanger covers unique to drycleaning shops everywhere.
Now, I’m no snob, but this woman is, and she also puts money into fashion like few people in the history of the planet have ever conceived of. I know that one of the first rules of your schmanzy label clothing (and, indeed, of many lesser beings, who simply prefer to take care of their clothing properly) is NO WIRE HANGERS. We all think of that wretched film I won’t steal a still from, nor name, nor quote – but the thinking behind no wire hangers is that a wooden or padded hanger does not cut into the textile and seams of a garment, and therefore will both keep it shaped properly and not cause it damage. The secondary effect of no wire hangers is the forced spacing of hung clothing in a closet – preventing a certain amount of wrinkling and simply being able to see everything, while everything has room to hang as it was designed to, and allowing the textiles all to breathe.
Which brings me back to those saran wrap bags.
On Twitter, I was all faux-shouty that Rachel Zoe (she is, by the way, the final poser – heh – here at this post) keeps her clothes in plastic bags. Deliciously, so as to prolong my absurdity, one of my “fella babies” online asked me why that was a bad thing.
Much as it is with babies, so it goes with textiles: plastic cuts off the air supply. Nothing breathes inside a plastic bag. This traps moisture and heat, which both have their deleterious effects upon fibers. Also: plastic bags are born of petroleum products and chemicals, and chemicals play with each other and perform that oh-so-fragrant game of chemical decomp: outgassing. Even if this were not terrible for the fibers of your clothes ... why would you want your garments to SMELL like that? And finally, there is the simple practical matter of identification. I can’t see anything so clearly as when it’s unimpeded by unnecessary packaging.
And so, though I wire hang and mush my clothes, that’s largely a private affair between me and my very odd closet – but, when a woman who makes millions based on her supposed expertise with clothes stores them in plastic bags, she’s opened herself up for critique on her total lack of care of her obscenely priced wardrobe.
***
The problem, of course, with the knowing-of-stuff is how frustrated a certain type of extreme twit such as myself can get when other people louse up a day not-knowing-stuff. Trying to search online for a boat neck dress or sweater, it can get you a little crazy the number of vee-necks you have to slog through. Don’t even try searching “bateau” – what few people are aware of the word invariably misspell it. Likewise exotic shades such as “burgandy” and features including “sequence” (sequin is the singular, my little drag queens; sequins is the plural) – and one I ran across recently, “prolonged sleeves” ... I have to assume this is some sort of special long sleeve my paltry expertise does not encompass.
The sole justification I hold for getting uptight about this brand of ignorance is that, if you want to sell something, and you actually do make an attempt to describe it (surprisingly few actually do ...), then getting the description flat out wrong is irritating and will lose you sales. If you list something as having long sleeves, and I buy it, and it turns out that they are ¾, your ignorance may well have been innocent – but I despise wearing ¾ sleeves. HATE them.
This is, of course, one of the reasons that when I do buy online, I prefer to find measurements of a particular garment (size charts are worse than meaningless; they tend to actually be misleading). Sellers who don’t automatically provide these, or who won’t answer the question of particular measurements when asked, I won’t buy from. Your loss, kids – my money. I don’t give it to the slipshod nor recalcitrant.
When I accidentally give it to the ignorant (see also: ¾ sleeves), I generally forgive, but when I give it to the actually deceptive (people who pin garments to fit in ways the garment actually cannot hang in reality) I get mad. So does every buyer on earth. The skirt with the long side slit – I don’t like those, they make me feel cold on one leg, and they look stupid and can be inappropriate for work. The apparently fitted sweater dress you snugged up on the mannequin, which in reality fits like a bag. Tell me it’s a 42” waist or expect me to neg you at feedback time because you altered/hid the nature of your product.
And try, at least try, to categorize your items sanely.
All these bullets are to say ... yeah, the occasional misspelling or omission, or even inaccuracy is forgivable, sure. But there’s no way to justify listing fuschia leopard print pony-hair “do me” shoes under “dresses-->wear to work-->silk blend” (or, for that matter, under “shoes-->flats”). There’s no reason I should be cruising the pants category and have to look at your antique porcelain kitten lot, MUST SEE PLZ VISIT STORE. Kittens are all very cute, but when I have 158 returns on a clear and specific search I’ve built, I don’t feel much but antipathy for anyone wasting my time on stuff so far outside the parameters.
Likewise, black is not white, wool is not chiffon, and – oh – juniors are not misses. Let’s just get that one straight right here. If the hips are the same width as the waist, I’m not going to be able to wear it, and I’m not going to thank you after I click through to find your product doesn’t even remotely conform to my size. It doesn’t happen a lot – most juniors styles, I *am* far too old (and know it) to mistake as appropriate – but poor photos sometimes lead to poor choices, and if I like your fabric or the impression the blurry pic leaves on my mind, when I look and find you’re hawking a “skirt” smaller than most of my own sleeves, I’ma be ticked. More to the point, if I find the same seller doing this sort of thing a lot (it does happen – particularly with Asian sellers, who winkle their way into “US Only” searches by having an awful lot of outlets on the West Coast), I’ll get to know you and skip you in future without so much as a clickthrough. Shop online enough, and that gets surprisingly easy – your brain recognizes the mannequin/set they use, or the style of photography or titling, and goes, “oh that’s the seller with the cruddy feedback for selling way-too-small clothes” and so on.
If you want anyone to find your items – know what they are, and describe them. It takes all of thirty seconds to verify that that thing you’re calling a crew neck is in fact an extremely low cut scoop neck – and it matters, even to those who don’t see the difference plainly by looking. If they searched “crew neck” it might be because they wanted that, rather than a chest-baring extravaganza of a sweater.
If I searched “long sleeves” – it’s probably because I don’t like ¾ sleeves. Nor, even, prolonged ones. Nobody wants a sleeve to overstay its welcome ...
Now, I’m no snob, but this woman is, and she also puts money into fashion like few people in the history of the planet have ever conceived of. I know that one of the first rules of your schmanzy label clothing (and, indeed, of many lesser beings, who simply prefer to take care of their clothing properly) is NO WIRE HANGERS. We all think of that wretched film I won’t steal a still from, nor name, nor quote – but the thinking behind no wire hangers is that a wooden or padded hanger does not cut into the textile and seams of a garment, and therefore will both keep it shaped properly and not cause it damage. The secondary effect of no wire hangers is the forced spacing of hung clothing in a closet – preventing a certain amount of wrinkling and simply being able to see everything, while everything has room to hang as it was designed to, and allowing the textiles all to breathe.
Which brings me back to those saran wrap bags.
On Twitter, I was all faux-shouty that Rachel Zoe (she is, by the way, the final poser – heh – here at this post) keeps her clothes in plastic bags. Deliciously, so as to prolong my absurdity, one of my “fella babies” online asked me why that was a bad thing.
Much as it is with babies, so it goes with textiles: plastic cuts off the air supply. Nothing breathes inside a plastic bag. This traps moisture and heat, which both have their deleterious effects upon fibers. Also: plastic bags are born of petroleum products and chemicals, and chemicals play with each other and perform that oh-so-fragrant game of chemical decomp: outgassing. Even if this were not terrible for the fibers of your clothes ... why would you want your garments to SMELL like that? And finally, there is the simple practical matter of identification. I can’t see anything so clearly as when it’s unimpeded by unnecessary packaging.
And so, though I wire hang and mush my clothes, that’s largely a private affair between me and my very odd closet – but, when a woman who makes millions based on her supposed expertise with clothes stores them in plastic bags, she’s opened herself up for critique on her total lack of care of her obscenely priced wardrobe.
***
The problem, of course, with the knowing-of-stuff is how frustrated a certain type of extreme twit such as myself can get when other people louse up a day not-knowing-stuff. Trying to search online for a boat neck dress or sweater, it can get you a little crazy the number of vee-necks you have to slog through. Don’t even try searching “bateau” – what few people are aware of the word invariably misspell it. Likewise exotic shades such as “burgandy” and features including “sequence” (sequin is the singular, my little drag queens; sequins is the plural) – and one I ran across recently, “prolonged sleeves” ... I have to assume this is some sort of special long sleeve my paltry expertise does not encompass.
The sole justification I hold for getting uptight about this brand of ignorance is that, if you want to sell something, and you actually do make an attempt to describe it (surprisingly few actually do ...), then getting the description flat out wrong is irritating and will lose you sales. If you list something as having long sleeves, and I buy it, and it turns out that they are ¾, your ignorance may well have been innocent – but I despise wearing ¾ sleeves. HATE them.
This is, of course, one of the reasons that when I do buy online, I prefer to find measurements of a particular garment (size charts are worse than meaningless; they tend to actually be misleading). Sellers who don’t automatically provide these, or who won’t answer the question of particular measurements when asked, I won’t buy from. Your loss, kids – my money. I don’t give it to the slipshod nor recalcitrant.
When I accidentally give it to the ignorant (see also: ¾ sleeves), I generally forgive, but when I give it to the actually deceptive (people who pin garments to fit in ways the garment actually cannot hang in reality) I get mad. So does every buyer on earth. The skirt with the long side slit – I don’t like those, they make me feel cold on one leg, and they look stupid and can be inappropriate for work. The apparently fitted sweater dress you snugged up on the mannequin, which in reality fits like a bag. Tell me it’s a 42” waist or expect me to neg you at feedback time because you altered/hid the nature of your product.
And try, at least try, to categorize your items sanely.
- Things that are not blazers: cardigan sweaters of fluid cut and fabric; jean jackets; winter outerwear coats; any coat made of plastic; blouses.
- Things that are not “wear to work”: strapless dresses; lame’ anything; micro minis; bridesmaids and/or mother-of-the-bride suits; anything made of PVC, or more than 5% leather (if it is not a shoe).
- Things that are not dresses: two piece skirt sets; cardigans (those things show up in EVERY dadgum category on eBay); lingerie; boots.
- Things that are not size fourteen regular women's clothing: size XS junior; size 22W; jewelry; purses; shoes; car parts; vintage lamps.
- Patterns that are not accurately described as “solid”: plaids; stripes; leopard prints; paisleys.
All these bullets are to say ... yeah, the occasional misspelling or omission, or even inaccuracy is forgivable, sure. But there’s no way to justify listing fuschia leopard print pony-hair “do me” shoes under “dresses-->wear to work-->silk blend” (or, for that matter, under “shoes-->flats”). There’s no reason I should be cruising the pants category and have to look at your antique porcelain kitten lot, MUST SEE PLZ VISIT STORE. Kittens are all very cute, but when I have 158 returns on a clear and specific search I’ve built, I don’t feel much but antipathy for anyone wasting my time on stuff so far outside the parameters.
Likewise, black is not white, wool is not chiffon, and – oh – juniors are not misses. Let’s just get that one straight right here. If the hips are the same width as the waist, I’m not going to be able to wear it, and I’m not going to thank you after I click through to find your product doesn’t even remotely conform to my size. It doesn’t happen a lot – most juniors styles, I *am* far too old (and know it) to mistake as appropriate – but poor photos sometimes lead to poor choices, and if I like your fabric or the impression the blurry pic leaves on my mind, when I look and find you’re hawking a “skirt” smaller than most of my own sleeves, I’ma be ticked. More to the point, if I find the same seller doing this sort of thing a lot (it does happen – particularly with Asian sellers, who winkle their way into “US Only” searches by having an awful lot of outlets on the West Coast), I’ll get to know you and skip you in future without so much as a clickthrough. Shop online enough, and that gets surprisingly easy – your brain recognizes the mannequin/set they use, or the style of photography or titling, and goes, “oh that’s the seller with the cruddy feedback for selling way-too-small clothes” and so on.
If you want anyone to find your items – know what they are, and describe them. It takes all of thirty seconds to verify that that thing you’re calling a crew neck is in fact an extremely low cut scoop neck – and it matters, even to those who don’t see the difference plainly by looking. If they searched “crew neck” it might be because they wanted that, rather than a chest-baring extravaganza of a sweater.
If I searched “long sleeves” – it’s probably because I don’t like ¾ sleeves. Nor, even, prolonged ones. Nobody wants a sleeve to overstay its welcome ...
Caustic Cover Critic - Interview
The CCC has a very interesting interview, with a remarkable array of images, with editor John Betram. Bertram discusses Lolita - the Story of a Cover Girl, which takes a look at the remarkable breadth of cover designs for this novel.
One of the remarkable things about the covers is the division between those which avoid exploitation and those which go for it with, quite literally, cartoonish gusto. The interview discusses the character of Lolita, too, versus the popular image of "a Lolita" (not a Goth Lolita, but the more generalized cultural assumptions) - and thank goodness. It's been so long since I read the novel that even I have forgotten what the girl herself was like. The false image, instead, of the willing and precocious coquette has thoroughly papered over Nabakov's original writing, the character; it is an injustice almost as cruel as that described by the novel itself.
Much could be said about the culture which so reveres and obsesses over child rape. I'll leave it to the interview, and the images, and for you to consider.
One of the remarkable things about the covers is the division between those which avoid exploitation and those which go for it with, quite literally, cartoonish gusto. The interview discusses the character of Lolita, too, versus the popular image of "a Lolita" (not a Goth Lolita, but the more generalized cultural assumptions) - and thank goodness. It's been so long since I read the novel that even I have forgotten what the girl herself was like. The false image, instead, of the willing and precocious coquette has thoroughly papered over Nabakov's original writing, the character; it is an injustice almost as cruel as that described by the novel itself.
Much could be said about the culture which so reveres and obsesses over child rape. I'll leave it to the interview, and the images, and for you to consider.
One Good Thing Deserves Another?
At last, the Unleaded Writing post will go up on Thursday! I've had some setbacks on all those good things from a month and a half ago (ugh), but we're getting there. Stay tuned for that much vaunted interview with Elizabeth Chadwick (who has a giveaway of her own up now!) ...
American Duchess Giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Those of you who follow me much (and Cute Shoes, with whom I've admired their shoes before), know American Duchess is one of my favorite sites - and they're giving away a pair of the Claremonts which, if I had this kind of shoe money, I would have in both colors and be pestering them for more.
Those of you who follow me much (and Cute Shoes, with whom I've admired their shoes before), know American Duchess is one of my favorite sites - and they're giving away a pair of the Claremonts which, if I had this kind of shoe money, I would have in both colors and be pestering them for more.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Dead Men's Limbs, Flumps, and Eggs - Oh My!
My elder niece has said that, if she had to have a health condition and could choose, she would choose synesthesia. This is the sort of thing we discuss in my family.
One Londoner, blessed with the condition himself, has mapped the fruits (and veggies) of his crossed wires. Voila! I give you the synesthesiac map of the best tasting Tube stations in London.
Mojourner and I agree, though - recipes beginning with suet are for the birds ...
One Londoner, blessed with the condition himself, has mapped the fruits (and veggies) of his crossed wires. Voila! I give you the synesthesiac map of the best tasting Tube stations in London.
Mojourner and I agree, though - recipes beginning with suet are for the birds ...
Last of the Unemployment Wine
It's hard to believe that it has been the better part of three and a half years since I was laid off from my last employer (along with a whole lot of other folks who were surprised to be part of such a move by one of the most legendarily "secure" employers in our whole state). At the time, one of my managers was so outraged I was cut, he reached out to me personally and asked permission to come by. We talked, and it was nice - we'd always had good conversations - and he even brought three lovely bottles of wine in thanks for all I had done. He felt my job loss was an injustice ... but, the fact was, I had never felt a good fit at that place, and by the time they laid me off I had been looking for three months. My loyalties at a place of work run deep, but a bad fit is a bad fit.
The wine, of course, coming on the occasion it did, got me a couple of jibes - "nice! you're unemployed, now you can become a wino!" - but I *have* always been grateful for the sentiment behind it. I've been laid off many times (I might make quite the case study in our economy, since embarking on the embryonic idea of a career in 1986), but only a couple of my bosses have made a point of reaching out *personally* after the fact. LinkedIn is all very well, but of course I mean something more substantial.
Anyway ...
This week has been oddly chopped up, and sad. A neighbor and friend who's been fighting a pretty good fight for a long time indeed, has accepted a job in another state, and our whole neighborhood is sorry - we are losing her.
On Wednesday night, I went to her place for a "packing party" after work, and brought with me the last bottle of the unemployment wine. It is, though I am no aficionado, a delicious red, with a clarity and lightness, almost a coolness about it - but not too dry, and very pleasing lingering flavor.
Yesterday, I took the day off of work to help her shrink wrap furniture, sort through the last of the pack-able items, roll up and bag rugs, and assist with the young men she'd hired as truck loaders.
Around three or three thirty, my mom came over; she has always liked Neighbor. She knows how generous she has been, and we have shared a few holidays with her, too. Mom found herself admiring Neighbor's home enormously. It *is* a beautiful place, lovely and comfortable. Mom started off by running an errand I had been slated to take care of, but was so grubby I could not take myself out in public to do it. Then she stayed for hours. Another friend came to help, after her own work day, and the three young men helping to move items into the truck were there for probably at least four hours themselves, well into the evening.
As a way to say farewell until we meet again (we all still hope for Neighbor's eventual return, including the lady herself), it was good for those of us there. Sweat equity in friendship is emblematic of Neighbor's own generosity and the contributions she's made to our little community and to those around her. It was also, very quietly between me and mom, the most appropriate way in the world for the two of us to spend the day that was my dad's seventy-sixth birthday. Hard work in the name of helping someone we care for so much. Dad would have been there too - and barring that, I know he would love to see "his girls" working as mom and I did.
I was pretty proud to be her kid yesterday.
Mom is a machine when it comes to a big job like this. She and I have on a few occasions tackled things like pruning and trimming work at my house, or basement cleanup, and even as a lazy little underachiever, she taught me well - I do work like my mom. Already hours in even before she came into the picture yesterday, I didn't let up until about eight o'clock, and I thought to provide us a nice lunch as well. But mom, at seventy-four (this month anyway), certainly had Neighbor and the other friend impressed. She didn't hoist heavy tables nor exert too ambitiously, but she bagged and wrapped and devised "how should we do this piece" over and over, often ingeniously, and improving on the ways we were considering doing things. She helped me finish off the shrink-wrapping of a gigantic painting, using the "excelsior" from a shredder as packing material to protect it. Not all trash is trash ... And more hands are always a treasure, for things like this.
I tried to remember to take a lot of pictures, and got some pretty shots of the gorgeous garden Neighbor has always cultivated. Evening light in dazzling halo around glossy green berries. A view through green leaves to my own little Pen-Pen. The tiniest fragment of the progress as we made it.
This evening, I mowed my grass in the dazzling golden light of September then went over again to empty her fridge. I sit in the dark now, and it is quiet, so quiet.
The wine is quiet, too. But somehow it is bittersweet - even if it is still delicious. Not the same, un-shared.
It isn't a bad thing ... but I feel the solitude of my life right now, as perhaps I haven't since Neighbor (and her handsome, wonderful dog) have lived here. Not because we spent so very much time together. But because she embodies community and neighborliness like nobody else I know. With her gone, our little corner of the city really won't be the same.
The wine, of course, coming on the occasion it did, got me a couple of jibes - "nice! you're unemployed, now you can become a wino!" - but I *have* always been grateful for the sentiment behind it. I've been laid off many times (I might make quite the case study in our economy, since embarking on the embryonic idea of a career in 1986), but only a couple of my bosses have made a point of reaching out *personally* after the fact. LinkedIn is all very well, but of course I mean something more substantial.
Anyway ...
This week has been oddly chopped up, and sad. A neighbor and friend who's been fighting a pretty good fight for a long time indeed, has accepted a job in another state, and our whole neighborhood is sorry - we are losing her.
On Wednesday night, I went to her place for a "packing party" after work, and brought with me the last bottle of the unemployment wine. It is, though I am no aficionado, a delicious red, with a clarity and lightness, almost a coolness about it - but not too dry, and very pleasing lingering flavor.
Yesterday, I took the day off of work to help her shrink wrap furniture, sort through the last of the pack-able items, roll up and bag rugs, and assist with the young men she'd hired as truck loaders.
Around three or three thirty, my mom came over; she has always liked Neighbor. She knows how generous she has been, and we have shared a few holidays with her, too. Mom found herself admiring Neighbor's home enormously. It *is* a beautiful place, lovely and comfortable. Mom started off by running an errand I had been slated to take care of, but was so grubby I could not take myself out in public to do it. Then she stayed for hours. Another friend came to help, after her own work day, and the three young men helping to move items into the truck were there for probably at least four hours themselves, well into the evening.
As a way to say farewell until we meet again (we all still hope for Neighbor's eventual return, including the lady herself), it was good for those of us there. Sweat equity in friendship is emblematic of Neighbor's own generosity and the contributions she's made to our little community and to those around her. It was also, very quietly between me and mom, the most appropriate way in the world for the two of us to spend the day that was my dad's seventy-sixth birthday. Hard work in the name of helping someone we care for so much. Dad would have been there too - and barring that, I know he would love to see "his girls" working as mom and I did.
I was pretty proud to be her kid yesterday.
Mom is a machine when it comes to a big job like this. She and I have on a few occasions tackled things like pruning and trimming work at my house, or basement cleanup, and even as a lazy little underachiever, she taught me well - I do work like my mom. Already hours in even before she came into the picture yesterday, I didn't let up until about eight o'clock, and I thought to provide us a nice lunch as well. But mom, at seventy-four (this month anyway), certainly had Neighbor and the other friend impressed. She didn't hoist heavy tables nor exert too ambitiously, but she bagged and wrapped and devised "how should we do this piece" over and over, often ingeniously, and improving on the ways we were considering doing things. She helped me finish off the shrink-wrapping of a gigantic painting, using the "excelsior" from a shredder as packing material to protect it. Not all trash is trash ... And more hands are always a treasure, for things like this.
I tried to remember to take a lot of pictures, and got some pretty shots of the gorgeous garden Neighbor has always cultivated. Evening light in dazzling halo around glossy green berries. A view through green leaves to my own little Pen-Pen. The tiniest fragment of the progress as we made it.
This evening, I mowed my grass in the dazzling golden light of September then went over again to empty her fridge. I sit in the dark now, and it is quiet, so quiet.
The wine is quiet, too. But somehow it is bittersweet - even if it is still delicious. Not the same, un-shared.
It isn't a bad thing ... but I feel the solitude of my life right now, as perhaps I haven't since Neighbor (and her handsome, wonderful dog) have lived here. Not because we spent so very much time together. But because she embodies community and neighborliness like nobody else I know. With her gone, our little corner of the city really won't be the same.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Dull, Boring, and Orange Sheep Taking Scotland Postmodern
The History Girls are up to some wonderful hijinks, check 'em out (complete with photos)!
There's Aplomb and then There's Aplomb ...
This weekend, in addition to house cleaning, I finished several mending projects, arranged some assistance to someone I care about who's in need, and lobbed a couple of balls into other people's courts. Today I had a reasonably good and productive day at work, and have finally set up my profile at Unleaded Writing. If I can clear my mind long enough, I'll find new questions for Elizabeth Chadwick (I gave up the idea of resurrecting the original ones, sadly lost) within a day or two, and y'all will finally begin to see some of the fruits of those Good Things I've been on about for a month or more now.
It's a silly sort of nice evening; the earrings came today, and with a polish will be *perfect* (an exact match, and I'm pleased, because I missed this pair!). My mom's birthday present also came, on Saturday, and as dippy as the idea was I'm looking forward to making her laugh. I provide her enough stress and negativity, giggles are worth anticipating.
The seasons are changing, and so is life. A Great Egret visited the manmade lake near our office last week, several times - and I learned that this beauty is a symbol of self-determination, guiding one's own future.
I learned, too, from Mojourner, that it is invasive. But as self-determination goes, that isn't unpredictable.
I seem to be determining my present reasonably well these days. As to the future, I'll have to see the bird in flight to know. We'll see.
It's a silly sort of nice evening; the earrings came today, and with a polish will be *perfect* (an exact match, and I'm pleased, because I missed this pair!). My mom's birthday present also came, on Saturday, and as dippy as the idea was I'm looking forward to making her laugh. I provide her enough stress and negativity, giggles are worth anticipating.
The seasons are changing, and so is life. A Great Egret visited the manmade lake near our office last week, several times - and I learned that this beauty is a symbol of self-determination, guiding one's own future.
I learned, too, from Mojourner, that it is invasive. But as self-determination goes, that isn't unpredictable.
I seem to be determining my present reasonably well these days. As to the future, I'll have to see the bird in flight to know. We'll see.
 |
| Image: Wikimedia |
Monday, September 2, 2013
Literalism versus Favoritism
Growing up in my family, it didn't do to be reductive. Superlatives and absolutes tended to be greeted with deconstructive comments (not un-constructive, but rather debunkingly analytical), and so I learned early to avoid stating many extremes.
Well, I didn't learn not to state them. But I did learn that if I took anything to a descriptive limit, there would always be someone standing by that boundary to prove it was far more distant than anything I could quantify, or that the very boundary itself was imaginary.
So I began at a young age to take the concept of "favorite", for instance, to its illogical conclusion, and to avoid the idea assiduously. I can actually recall taking my idea, that green was my favorite color, and lying in the backseat of my parents' very green indeed Plymouth Fury station wagon, peering at the physical greenness of my surroundings, and imagining green as the ONLY color I could ever have, and being disappointed.
It's one of the million ways we affect one another as humans, this sort of tiny influencing commentary of a family, which becomes a very silly part of someone's being, far far beyond any real intention or even expectation. My parents and brother might have wanted me to become a critical thinker, but to provide me a mild neurosis about favorite things could hardly have been their point. It means (per my blog's very headline) that I contain multitudes, but it also means I make a rotten interview, because I snark on about how reductive questions are instead of answering them.
And so I am aware that people are capable of feeling that one color is best, or one food is peerless, but the idea of choosing gives me the distantest echo of Sophie's dilemma, in that I despise to pick one superlative because everything apart from "the best" still creates the richness and variety and context that makes anything truly shine. Intellectually, I can know that loving one thing most doesn't doom all else to destruction - and yet, the only context in this world in which I can honestly say I have a favorite is in Mr. X, who is my most favorite person in the world with whom I don't share DNA. I peek around from time to time, just to be sure, but at almost eleven years knowing him, it seems reasonable to state he really did ruin me for all the other boys.
It can be bewildering, though, to run across other people's favorite things, because there can be hard lines in this world it's trickier to negotiate if you don't draw your own. Other people can put you on a path or hem you in with their ability to hold absolutes - in religion and politics, of course, this can get dangerous. And, at times, it can be more comfortable to be persuasable ("where do you want to eat?"), but of course there are those who see a certain type of flexibility as waffling.
I have my convictions, but I keep them pretty close and refuse to hand them out to anyone I am not pretty intimate with. Most of my own hard lines took me decades to draw - and, as I have grown older, I have discarded some of those things I thought were non-negotiable when I was a younger person. Few of my deepest ... expectations (beliefs can be a different thing) ... have ever actually changed - and yet, I have seen my methods of managing their presence adapt in amazing ways over my lifetime.
This calendar year has seen some of the profoundest philosophical changes in me - without compromise, and yet without radical outward alterations. It is at the deepest level I've let go of certain boundaries, and in the quietest solitude of my soul I have found liberty it astonishes me to have given myself and my heart.
Relinquishing certain expectations has only solidified the power of what drives and matters to me most. Letting go of certain ideas of practical living, of faith, and even love, has only deepened these things by providing clarity. There is great peace in the understanding this can give, and such emotional power, and all over again I find myself grateful with the blessings that seem to provide themselves to me, all undeserving. Paths are easier to follow, fears are fewer.
I don't know a lot of people who can claim the assurance I feel, simply by letting go of certain ideas about conviction, by questioning those things which are supposed to be "given" for us as human beings.
Question something you hate, or love, or fear. Really let yourself be wrong ... or, more terrifyingly, right. There's almost no liberty like it. Almost no power at all. It is joyous.
Well, I didn't learn not to state them. But I did learn that if I took anything to a descriptive limit, there would always be someone standing by that boundary to prove it was far more distant than anything I could quantify, or that the very boundary itself was imaginary.
So I began at a young age to take the concept of "favorite", for instance, to its illogical conclusion, and to avoid the idea assiduously. I can actually recall taking my idea, that green was my favorite color, and lying in the backseat of my parents' very green indeed Plymouth Fury station wagon, peering at the physical greenness of my surroundings, and imagining green as the ONLY color I could ever have, and being disappointed.
It's one of the million ways we affect one another as humans, this sort of tiny influencing commentary of a family, which becomes a very silly part of someone's being, far far beyond any real intention or even expectation. My parents and brother might have wanted me to become a critical thinker, but to provide me a mild neurosis about favorite things could hardly have been their point. It means (per my blog's very headline) that I contain multitudes, but it also means I make a rotten interview, because I snark on about how reductive questions are instead of answering them.
And so I am aware that people are capable of feeling that one color is best, or one food is peerless, but the idea of choosing gives me the distantest echo of Sophie's dilemma, in that I despise to pick one superlative because everything apart from "the best" still creates the richness and variety and context that makes anything truly shine. Intellectually, I can know that loving one thing most doesn't doom all else to destruction - and yet, the only context in this world in which I can honestly say I have a favorite is in Mr. X, who is my most favorite person in the world with whom I don't share DNA. I peek around from time to time, just to be sure, but at almost eleven years knowing him, it seems reasonable to state he really did ruin me for all the other boys.
It can be bewildering, though, to run across other people's favorite things, because there can be hard lines in this world it's trickier to negotiate if you don't draw your own. Other people can put you on a path or hem you in with their ability to hold absolutes - in religion and politics, of course, this can get dangerous. And, at times, it can be more comfortable to be persuasable ("where do you want to eat?"), but of course there are those who see a certain type of flexibility as waffling.
I have my convictions, but I keep them pretty close and refuse to hand them out to anyone I am not pretty intimate with. Most of my own hard lines took me decades to draw - and, as I have grown older, I have discarded some of those things I thought were non-negotiable when I was a younger person. Few of my deepest ... expectations (beliefs can be a different thing) ... have ever actually changed - and yet, I have seen my methods of managing their presence adapt in amazing ways over my lifetime.
This calendar year has seen some of the profoundest philosophical changes in me - without compromise, and yet without radical outward alterations. It is at the deepest level I've let go of certain boundaries, and in the quietest solitude of my soul I have found liberty it astonishes me to have given myself and my heart.
Relinquishing certain expectations has only solidified the power of what drives and matters to me most. Letting go of certain ideas of practical living, of faith, and even love, has only deepened these things by providing clarity. There is great peace in the understanding this can give, and such emotional power, and all over again I find myself grateful with the blessings that seem to provide themselves to me, all undeserving. Paths are easier to follow, fears are fewer.
I don't know a lot of people who can claim the assurance I feel, simply by letting go of certain ideas about conviction, by questioning those things which are supposed to be "given" for us as human beings.
Question something you hate, or love, or fear. Really let yourself be wrong ... or, more terrifyingly, right. There's almost no liberty like it. Almost no power at all. It is joyous.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Collection
There's a reason Venice has its reputation for beauty. Click here for vintage photos, if you're romantic about this city - a great variety, and so much beauty. Passion of Former Days strikes again!
An interview with Elizabeth Chadwick I DID NOT DO ... because I suck and life is obnoxious, too. "I know what I'm worth." I wonder whether it's worth *her* time to waste more time on my belated interview.
Margaret Beaufort. Hey, I gave credence to the shedunnit theory like twenty years ago, trend or no trend.
I did not even know there were egg globes, and here's one which may date to 1500. It's got to be a task of extreme will and control to carve an egg.
Taking testing from the lab to your smart phone - a billion Lycurgus cups and nano sensor technology. Woo.
Thinking about that phrase - "an heir and a spare" - and why it mattered so much.
Readers never have given any feedback/comments - should I keep doing these collection posts, or no ... ? I want to know whether y'all like these. It'd be lousy of me to publish useless flotsam at you!
An interview with Elizabeth Chadwick I DID NOT DO ... because I suck and life is obnoxious, too. "I know what I'm worth." I wonder whether it's worth *her* time to waste more time on my belated interview.
Margaret Beaufort. Hey, I gave credence to the shedunnit theory like twenty years ago, trend or no trend.
I did not even know there were egg globes, and here's one which may date to 1500. It's got to be a task of extreme will and control to carve an egg.
Taking testing from the lab to your smart phone - a billion Lycurgus cups and nano sensor technology. Woo.
Thinking about that phrase - "an heir and a spare" - and why it mattered so much.
Readers never have given any feedback/comments - should I keep doing these collection posts, or no ... ? I want to know whether y'all like these. It'd be lousy of me to publish useless flotsam at you!
Brand Labels
There was a time it was not only tacky, but would have even been outright baffling, to wear an advertisement on purpose. When I was a kid, the only labels you could ever see on someone's clothing would have been the Toughskins patch on the back of someone's jeans - and that was not a statement of status, wasn't meant to be a brag.
I've been thinking about this because recently I had the experience of how omitting a label can give you a great deal on something which otherwise would be pretty ridiculously priced.
The eighties brought us alligator shirts, and eventually Izod skipped the non-explicit logo and went straight to putting its name on things. Then came juggernauts along the lines of Tommy Hilfiger, and paying for the privilege of becoming a marketing tool for a brand was de rigeur.
I've been thinking about this because recently I had the experience of how omitting a label can give you a great deal on something which otherwise would be pretty ridiculously priced.
Some years ago, my sister-in-law found a pair of earrings for me, which I kept in very regular rotation all the time. They were a simple sterling design, a slender cone with filigree. A few months ago, one of them came out while I was working downtown, and it never cropped up again.
I've missed those earrings, but because they were made by (apparently) a schmantzy designer, in looking for a replacement I was finding that a few grams of silver were costing forty-seven to fifty-three bucks. This, for me, is kind of stupidly high, particularly for a replacement pair of earrings.
Over the course of a few months, I kept looking now and then (eBay - and, yeah, I still capitalize it that way, I'm a Virginian after all), and recently I found a pair which had a starting price of ten bucks.
The seller also omitted the schmantzy brand name. They probably didn't know it, and the failure to suck the teat of status lost them something on the order of thirty or forty bucks. (And, no, I don't feel I chiseled this seller; they set their own starting bid, so they determined the lowest comfortable price at which to sell.)
Obviously, I won the baubles with no other bidders. I'm pretty pleased, not only to have gotten my earrings back, but of course for doing so without having to pay half a hundred dollars for 'em.
My dad used to express bewilderment that people were eager to become advertising billboards. I tend to feel the same, and mostly own vintage purses (one of the favorite logo items for a women's designers) and clothing which is not easily pegged in terms of makers. I did once buy a dress with a label on it, but because the dress was navy blue and the logo was cotton, I just used a magic marker to stain the little white box, and it disappears pretty completely. Nearly all my jewelry is vintage (even the earrings from schmantzy designer probably date back a decade, and I count on their simplicity not screaming out some irrelevant brand which you'll notice I have not named in this post). If anyone recognizes a Coro piece from the fifties to the seventies, fine, but it'd take a pretty different sort of connoisseur to spot and identify vintage jewelry, than someone really dedicated to today's "status" advertising.
So it's a nice little grin, looking forward to having back a gift someone chose for me, which I really liked. And getting it for about 20% of the schmantzy maker's asking price.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Life
Did you ever have one of those lives where things get tricky, and you weather it with aplomb - but the whole aplomb thing takes up SO much of your energy and resources that lovely wonderful other things are neglected? Geesh, a month since I was on about all those good things. Not good.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Trek Post ...
... just because it's been a while since I geeked out on Trekkery. From an email I wrote to Mr. X this week - I won't rewrite it for the blog, just edit as needed. If I rewrite, it'd never be posted. Right now, I'm too busy being lost in that comic.
Over the weekend I caught the 3-episode arc of Brent Spiner guesting on “Enterprise” (directed by LeVar no less), as Dr. Noonien Singh. Though of course there’s no appearance by Khan (Noonien Singh), there’s a serious tip of the hat to Wrath in the costume design and hairdos for the “augments” (genetically enhanced human beings the Dr. is working with/”fathering”). Nobody wears a fake chest, though, of course. Well maybe the women ...
Of course the whole thing ends with the doc musing about artificial life forms – “it would take a generation or two, but ... cybernetic life forms ...”
It’s remarkable to me how little of “Enterprise” I have recalled, re-watching that series. It was still on the air when you and I started dating, and I seem to recall deprioritizing its space in my life for other interests at that time. But I am having a few “oh yeaaaahh - that!” moments. It’s a good series, but it is interesting to see the gender roles really thrown back to TOS in a lot of ways. At first they were clearly having a go at the amorous captain thing, recapturing some Shatner fun, and in season one the whole cast’s prettiness is *much* exploited, but it’s fairly strange watching what they did with, of all characters, the Vulcan science officer. T'Pol ends up reduced to breathy chick status an awful lot of the time as the series goes on. They even went so far as to explicitly weaken her and make her a drug addict, so as to put her together with another cast member (because, in Trek, outside of DS9, a woman owning her own carnal interests is still impossible to countenance). The only other female officer, the token Asian, and the one African American man on the crew, have been all but abandoned as I cruise through season 4. Very subtly, too, the design has slowly crept backward in sophistication from the cinematic look which was so popular at the time production began, as the show swings focus back onto The White Guys (and one horny Vulcan chick).
I recently read, and have been meaning to refer/respond to, an interesting essay about how gender progressive Voyager was, but in a lot of ways (revisiting this series as well) I’m not sure I’m persuaded of that premise. On the surface, I see the points – female captain, strong focus on female characters who aren’t a bunch of pansies – but my recollection of frothing fanboy-dom over the super sexy avatar of abuse survivorship, Seven of Nine, is still bothersome. That’s what men remember about that show; if there was a real message about the evolution of women in/and power, it is not what stuck with a significant portion of the audience. Not to mention, I’ve seen one too many eps of Janeway pining to disappear into the Victorian era – and just watched one where ensign Harry Kim is kidnapped by a planet of women right on the heels of The Lorelai Signal, which doesn’t exactly speak much for the evolution of Trek’s writing/enlightenment over a THIRTY year period.
That post will probably still come; I want to address the points of the essay just to deal with them myself. For now, this quick infusion of Trek is the offering of the day.
Over the weekend I caught the 3-episode arc of Brent Spiner guesting on “Enterprise” (directed by LeVar no less), as Dr. Noonien Singh. Though of course there’s no appearance by Khan (Noonien Singh), there’s a serious tip of the hat to Wrath in the costume design and hairdos for the “augments” (genetically enhanced human beings the Dr. is working with/”fathering”). Nobody wears a fake chest, though, of course. Well maybe the women ...
Of course the whole thing ends with the doc musing about artificial life forms – “it would take a generation or two, but ... cybernetic life forms ...”
It’s remarkable to me how little of “Enterprise” I have recalled, re-watching that series. It was still on the air when you and I started dating, and I seem to recall deprioritizing its space in my life for other interests at that time. But I am having a few “oh yeaaaahh - that!” moments. It’s a good series, but it is interesting to see the gender roles really thrown back to TOS in a lot of ways. At first they were clearly having a go at the amorous captain thing, recapturing some Shatner fun, and in season one the whole cast’s prettiness is *much* exploited, but it’s fairly strange watching what they did with, of all characters, the Vulcan science officer. T'Pol ends up reduced to breathy chick status an awful lot of the time as the series goes on. They even went so far as to explicitly weaken her and make her a drug addict, so as to put her together with another cast member (because, in Trek, outside of DS9, a woman owning her own carnal interests is still impossible to countenance). The only other female officer, the token Asian, and the one African American man on the crew, have been all but abandoned as I cruise through season 4. Very subtly, too, the design has slowly crept backward in sophistication from the cinematic look which was so popular at the time production began, as the show swings focus back onto The White Guys (and one horny Vulcan chick).
I recently read, and have been meaning to refer/respond to, an interesting essay about how gender progressive Voyager was, but in a lot of ways (revisiting this series as well) I’m not sure I’m persuaded of that premise. On the surface, I see the points – female captain, strong focus on female characters who aren’t a bunch of pansies – but my recollection of frothing fanboy-dom over the super sexy avatar of abuse survivorship, Seven of Nine, is still bothersome. That’s what men remember about that show; if there was a real message about the evolution of women in/and power, it is not what stuck with a significant portion of the audience. Not to mention, I’ve seen one too many eps of Janeway pining to disappear into the Victorian era – and just watched one where ensign Harry Kim is kidnapped by a planet of women right on the heels of The Lorelai Signal, which doesn’t exactly speak much for the evolution of Trek’s writing/enlightenment over a THIRTY year period.
That post will probably still come; I want to address the points of the essay just to deal with them myself. For now, this quick infusion of Trek is the offering of the day.
I Was Lost ...
... but now you know where I can be found.
It may be necessary to fire the coworker who sent me this link; it is deadly dangerous. Oh, sure, I could make excuses about how my time of late has been occupied with work, and I don't do personal stuff at work, and it seems to be a pattern that no matter how well I manage my time, someone is pinging me at 5:30 with a fire drill.
But clearly I am sunk in mires like "why are there squirrels" and the painfully engaging philosophies of life's many questions. Click through because everyone I know who reads here will kind of love this, and for those of you I don't know, I have my suspicions this is still good stuff. Don't ask why. You'll find that has been well taken care of ...
It may be necessary to fire the coworker who sent me this link; it is deadly dangerous. Oh, sure, I could make excuses about how my time of late has been occupied with work, and I don't do personal stuff at work, and it seems to be a pattern that no matter how well I manage my time, someone is pinging me at 5:30 with a fire drill.
But clearly I am sunk in mires like "why are there squirrels" and the painfully engaging philosophies of life's many questions. Click through because everyone I know who reads here will kind of love this, and for those of you I don't know, I have my suspicions this is still good stuff. Don't ask why. You'll find that has been well taken care of ...
Quotations
Just because I like them, and felt I should make an appearance in here ...
I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.
--John Steinbeck
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man almost nothing.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Monday, August 26, 2013
"(W)riting Is an Act of Love"
Sometimes, an author you don't always love can still give an interview well worth the reading. Here is one such from Umberto Eco, with the Paris Review.
It is not a quick read, but a fine one and well worthwhile. Take a little time over a few days, maybe. But savor it. It's pretty good.
 |
| Image: Wikimedia |
(A) good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.
I like the notion of stubborn incuriosity ... You cannot be totally greedy. You have to oblige yourself not to learn everything. Or else you will learn nothing ... For you and for me it is enough to know that Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. But an absolute understanding of the theory we leave to the specialists.
To believe in the end of something is a typical cultural posture. Since the Greeks and the Latins we have persisted in believing that our ancestors were better than us. I am always amused and interested by this kind of sport, which the mass media practice with increasing ferocity.
It is not a quick read, but a fine one and well worthwhile. Take a little time over a few days, maybe. But savor it. It's pretty good.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Snowballs and Life-Saving Musical Pigs
This may be the most interesting Titanic survivor story I've come across - how a pig saved lives, complete with the music it played.
I knew that tune when I was little. My cousin and I used to sing a song to it - "My mother gave me a dollar, to buy a collar, I didn't buy a collar, I bought some chewing gum. Chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chewing gum, how I love chewing gum, I'm crazy over chewing gum, what shall I do?" It had verses for nickel/pickle and quarter/soda water, but you get the picture.
And now I'm going to go to bed with that song running through my head, but at a slightly slower tempo and far more pingly. Could be worse, as brain-worms go ...
I knew that tune when I was little. My cousin and I used to sing a song to it - "My mother gave me a dollar, to buy a collar, I didn't buy a collar, I bought some chewing gum. Chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chewing gum, how I love chewing gum, I'm crazy over chewing gum, what shall I do?" It had verses for nickel/pickle and quarter/soda water, but you get the picture.
And now I'm going to go to bed with that song running through my head, but at a slightly slower tempo and far more pingly. Could be worse, as brain-worms go ...
Time Pieces
Eleanor Updale has a great point in this post, one I've discussed myself in the past. Here I sit in a home furnished with chairs dating back generations - my grandmother's rocker, my dad's leather chair - looking at paintings and even photographs ranging across almost a century.
Not all artifacts in a scene written nor production-designed are anachronistic if they are out of period. Only if they are post-period. And a home designed without history does not look like human habitation ... it tells no story.
Not all artifacts in a scene written nor production-designed are anachronistic if they are out of period. Only if they are post-period. And a home designed without history does not look like human habitation ... it tells no story.
 |
| MS Public domain image |
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Collection
On the way we slept before the 19th century came along - an interesting look at a two-sleep-cycle system! It's odd to me, though, that the examples of activities people might take part in between first sleep and second sleep (reading, smoking, even praying, which here seems not to see beyond the Christian world in which smoking/reading would have been possible) are extremely limited in period/geography ...
As always, Elizabeth Chadwick has good thoughts on writing - this time, a look at the language of a historical novel. I tend, as she discusses, to keep it simple, though one always has to keep an eye out for anachronisms. The fun part is making a reader do a little looking - as with blankets!
As always, Elizabeth Chadwick has good thoughts on writing - this time, a look at the language of a historical novel. I tend, as she discusses, to keep it simple, though one always has to keep an eye out for anachronisms. The fun part is making a reader do a little looking - as with blankets!
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Helen's Daughter!
It is not news to me to know that Laura Gill, whom I'm acquainted with via the Historical Fiction Online fora, is a dedicated artist of Etruscan subjects, but a painting she posted this week is the sort of beautiful thing I could enjoy getting lost in for a good while. Take a look at Ariadne at the Grove - or here for the full size image, it is one of those detailed glimpses of a world, every flower of which is unique and entrancing.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Happy Late Birthday ...
Gene Roddenberry shares a b-day (yesterday, yes – I’m a day late) with Jonathan Frakes and Diana Muldaur, but also Bill Clinton, Fred Thompson, Ginger Baker, Mary Matalin, and Tipper Gore.
So there ya go.
So there ya go.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Love and Market Boundaries
Tom Williams is sadly correct in a brief surmise about the limits of the market, as a reflection of the limits of our minds and hearts as consumers. The bit about "Splash" is particularly depressing - but it is a worthwhile read. So go read it, it'll only take a couple minutes. I finally bought Cawnpore just to snub the damned market (and because I *am* interested - no matter how huge the TBR pile is!).
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Entertainment for the Mood
Entirely consciously, thanks to the offense I was nurturing earlier today, I finally gave a long-lurking film on my Netflix queue a chance this evening. And so I'm watching The Trojan Women, with Genevieve Bujold, Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Blessed (I love Brian Blessed!) and Irene Papas ('71).
I'm just old enough that being able to simply pull up programming like this on my TV is almost like living in futuristic sci-fi, and I'm grateful that 'flix bothers with productions like this and many of the classic BBC series I grew up with on this side of the Pond in Masterpiece Theater.
This production is the best sort of cinema that came out of the 1970s - realistic looking by dint of being a bit bare-bones (the production design doesn't dominate nor overwhelm, and in some ways even evokes live theater), a little self-conscious in a way I don't really think we see anymore (slow, arty monologues), and both faithful to its source and innovative. It can take some patience if arch readings and intentional theatricality aren't your bag (to use as seventies a term as I can think of), and Bujold's performance is exhausting precisely because it's good. Hepburn is as stripped-down as she ever was, one of those rare actors who could shed stardom and still do justice to a role even as you never forget for a second who she is - which, in this case, does serve the story in the end. What director could object to an oak tree for Hecuba?
Of course, the cast, even extras, though the production was filmed in Spain, tend pretty heavily toward a white-girl sort of homogeneity (Papas is a glittering exception - the personification of that legendary beauty, Helen - and it's a pleasure to get to watch her in a role of some substance). Her introduction is astounding and compelling (one easily believes this woman launched a thousand ships - even with only a glimpse of her, part by part, starting with penetrating eyes). This role is the introduced as the villainess, so perhaps it is a pity it's also the only one not cast pretty much lily-white, but Irene Papas is to powerful in herself to suffer much by being the token accent. More to the point, Helen here is vulnerable, and even (... perhaps? ...) a rape victim. Then again, Hepburn gives the villainess, as she sees Helen, a tongue lashing as only Hepburn could, and it is joyous viewing, her best moment among a lot of good ones. And through it, Papas' confidence and irony are exquisite. Her exit is just as fabulous as her entrance; if I were a man, I'd despair of ever finding a woman like Irene Papas - *or* her Helen.
As an aside, Papas and Bujold also both participated in "Anne of the Thousand Days" a few years later, as Katherine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn respectively. From Helen to Aragon, an interesting pair of roles so close to each other.
There is a great deal of beauty on display, especially including the arty line-by-line speeches delivered straight to camera by many women - and it's nice to see as much beauty in real women as in luminous girls. The seventies was a decade between the airbrushed and candy-coated prettiness of the Classic Screen Siren age and the mass-produced pneumatism and narrow confines of the 80s and into today. Sure, directors still required having a pretty, pretty Regrave around, but at least her looks have the appearance of being her own. She isn't the processed, vetted, and fully packaged focus-grouped image of beauty that's put paid to any hope of another Streisand making a movie career.
The film manages that wonderful balance of bringing an ancient play closer to accessibility by making it immediate and excruciating (in a "good" way, for a movie about the bitterness of war) and keeping it stylized and very much of its period. As arch as the readings may seem, one never quite feels removed from the period we're meant to be set in. As howling an outrage as the statements of the film's, and play's, themes are, they never feel like modern sentiment applied to ancient Greeks inappropriately.
Some of the emotional conclusions, brutal to a contemporary mindset, are played as they should be - dramatically, yes, but with faith to the expectations of honor and sacrifice which would have prevailed in their time. "You little thing" is a devastating moment, even as it is inevitable and tragic.
One of those things we don't seem to have in movies nor television currently is the dramatic cruelty of shame on honor. This film lays it out pitilessly. Redgrave cannot be faulted for failing in this scene. Nor Blessed - who performs it deadly quietly.
The print is not bad, though it is cropped for pan-and-scan, and the sound quality is at times typically tricky. Particularly with Blessed, the Loudest Actor in the World (G-d bless him, seriously), it's easy, at least for an old broad with much-abused hearing, to lose lines here and there. That's a fairly major failing in a production like this - it is a wordy, talky play - but one imagines that with ever-improving accessibility and tech, they may iron out these issues at some point.
As historical fiction, of course it transcends the period of its setting without ever leaving it. As legend - and starring modern celebrity legends - it satisfies and surprises.
I'm just old enough that being able to simply pull up programming like this on my TV is almost like living in futuristic sci-fi, and I'm grateful that 'flix bothers with productions like this and many of the classic BBC series I grew up with on this side of the Pond in Masterpiece Theater.
This production is the best sort of cinema that came out of the 1970s - realistic looking by dint of being a bit bare-bones (the production design doesn't dominate nor overwhelm, and in some ways even evokes live theater), a little self-conscious in a way I don't really think we see anymore (slow, arty monologues), and both faithful to its source and innovative. It can take some patience if arch readings and intentional theatricality aren't your bag (to use as seventies a term as I can think of), and Bujold's performance is exhausting precisely because it's good. Hepburn is as stripped-down as she ever was, one of those rare actors who could shed stardom and still do justice to a role even as you never forget for a second who she is - which, in this case, does serve the story in the end. What director could object to an oak tree for Hecuba?
Of course, the cast, even extras, though the production was filmed in Spain, tend pretty heavily toward a white-girl sort of homogeneity (Papas is a glittering exception - the personification of that legendary beauty, Helen - and it's a pleasure to get to watch her in a role of some substance). Her introduction is astounding and compelling (one easily believes this woman launched a thousand ships - even with only a glimpse of her, part by part, starting with penetrating eyes). This role is the introduced as the villainess, so perhaps it is a pity it's also the only one not cast pretty much lily-white, but Irene Papas is to powerful in herself to suffer much by being the token accent. More to the point, Helen here is vulnerable, and even (... perhaps? ...) a rape victim. Then again, Hepburn gives the villainess, as she sees Helen, a tongue lashing as only Hepburn could, and it is joyous viewing, her best moment among a lot of good ones. And through it, Papas' confidence and irony are exquisite. Her exit is just as fabulous as her entrance; if I were a man, I'd despair of ever finding a woman like Irene Papas - *or* her Helen.
As an aside, Papas and Bujold also both participated in "Anne of the Thousand Days" a few years later, as Katherine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn respectively. From Helen to Aragon, an interesting pair of roles so close to each other.
There is a great deal of beauty on display, especially including the arty line-by-line speeches delivered straight to camera by many women - and it's nice to see as much beauty in real women as in luminous girls. The seventies was a decade between the airbrushed and candy-coated prettiness of the Classic Screen Siren age and the mass-produced pneumatism and narrow confines of the 80s and into today. Sure, directors still required having a pretty, pretty Regrave around, but at least her looks have the appearance of being her own. She isn't the processed, vetted, and fully packaged focus-grouped image of beauty that's put paid to any hope of another Streisand making a movie career.
The film manages that wonderful balance of bringing an ancient play closer to accessibility by making it immediate and excruciating (in a "good" way, for a movie about the bitterness of war) and keeping it stylized and very much of its period. As arch as the readings may seem, one never quite feels removed from the period we're meant to be set in. As howling an outrage as the statements of the film's, and play's, themes are, they never feel like modern sentiment applied to ancient Greeks inappropriately.
Some of the emotional conclusions, brutal to a contemporary mindset, are played as they should be - dramatically, yes, but with faith to the expectations of honor and sacrifice which would have prevailed in their time. "You little thing" is a devastating moment, even as it is inevitable and tragic.
One of those things we don't seem to have in movies nor television currently is the dramatic cruelty of shame on honor. This film lays it out pitilessly. Redgrave cannot be faulted for failing in this scene. Nor Blessed - who performs it deadly quietly.
The print is not bad, though it is cropped for pan-and-scan, and the sound quality is at times typically tricky. Particularly with Blessed, the Loudest Actor in the World (G-d bless him, seriously), it's easy, at least for an old broad with much-abused hearing, to lose lines here and there. That's a fairly major failing in a production like this - it is a wordy, talky play - but one imagines that with ever-improving accessibility and tech, they may iron out these issues at some point.
As historical fiction, of course it transcends the period of its setting without ever leaving it. As legend - and starring modern celebrity legends - it satisfies and surprises.
MY Body. Not Your Decor.
Our culture is loaded with things like this - The 9 Weirdest Facts About Boobs ...
The term "boobs" is, in this context, calculated to distance readers from the FACT that these body parts are attached to human beings (who, by the way, are indeed more than these appendages). All but one of the "facts" cited are about men: these "facts about boobs" in fact only involve women's breasts insofar as they affect and/or interest MEN (straight ones, of course - because gay men don't exist any more than women do). The solitary fact about women indicates what suicidal morons we are if we get fake boobs.
Here is the news: my body means more to me than its appeal to or its effect upon ANYBODY who doesn't live in it with me. Men, women, wombats, brickbats. You're not in here with me. So you aren't invited to judge, fact-check, analyze without consent, nor consider my body like any sort of exhibit. Period.
My breasts are NOT ABOUT YOU.
This. Is what. It is LIKE. To be a woman.
The term "boobs" is, in this context, calculated to distance readers from the FACT that these body parts are attached to human beings (who, by the way, are indeed more than these appendages). All but one of the "facts" cited are about men: these "facts about boobs" in fact only involve women's breasts insofar as they affect and/or interest MEN (straight ones, of course - because gay men don't exist any more than women do). The solitary fact about women indicates what suicidal morons we are if we get fake boobs.
Here is the news: my body means more to me than its appeal to or its effect upon ANYBODY who doesn't live in it with me. Men, women, wombats, brickbats. You're not in here with me. So you aren't invited to judge, fact-check, analyze without consent, nor consider my body like any sort of exhibit. Period.
My breasts are NOT ABOUT YOU.
This. Is what. It is LIKE. To be a woman.
Oldest Color Film!
I haven't done a vintage clip post in a while - so it was handy that this just happened to show up! Oldest color film discovered, restored. (Apologies it's not embedded, their copy function appears not to work.)
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Collection
I've been meaning to link to this interview with Mark Patton for ages, but as most regulars know my posting has been less steady of late. His novel, An Accidental King, shares some elements in common with The Ax and the Vase, and it'll top my electronic TBR pile as soon as I finish Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Looking forward to some meaty lunchtime reading!
German badgers, not content to let young boys and carparks in Britain have all the fun, have gotten into the archaeology business (be sure to click through to see how Hadrian's moles did last year). It's hard not to admire the time the badger took - a five year dig. One hopes he screened everything properly ...
German badgers, not content to let young boys and carparks in Britain have all the fun, have gotten into the archaeology business (be sure to click through to see how Hadrian's moles did last year). It's hard not to admire the time the badger took - a five year dig. One hopes he screened everything properly ...
When is Laundry More Than Laundry?
When the History Girls take a good long look at the politics of hanging your things out to dry. This is a great post, with a look into the past, and a look into current civic issues which touch on class, economy, and living space.
I have four clotheslines of my own, two outside, two in my basement. And I smile quietly to myself, even as this morning I pulled fresh sheets and tops off of the two indoor ones.
I have four clotheslines of my own, two outside, two in my basement. And I smile quietly to myself, even as this morning I pulled fresh sheets and tops off of the two indoor ones.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Baiting the Past
People are quite taken with the idea that The Past is home not only to ghastly tales of What We Do for Beauty (or fashion – though it’s often the same thing), but that ONLY in the past was there ever any danger in what we do for beauty or fashion. Much as we like to gawk backward at (GASP!) ancient medicine as being brutal and wrongheaded (see also ...), there’s long been a fascination with just how far the darn stupid people of The Past would go with corsetry, chemicals, or self-mutilation for fashion and/or beauty.
The truth, as it is wont to be, is far more complex – and we shall get to the facts of our modern-time bigotry as well. The article no longer appears to be available, which is a shame, but Madame Isis did a great article some time back investigating just how poisonous the cosmetics of the 18th century actually was. Her findings, though further investigation may be worthwhile, do go a long way at least to nullifying perhaps the favorite modern scapegoat trotted out to exemplify The Stupid, Stupid Past – “they wore LEAD MAKEUP” ... It’s a shame this post is gone, it was meticulous and sourced, and even without that, it was good reading. So here is another of her well-compiled pieces (also sourced), guesting at American Duchess this time, and at least touching on the same theme.
As for the contemporary bigotry in sneering and peering at the past, perhaps those holding these prejudices feel they're safe, knowing that bigotry against other cultures' practices and simple, generalized racism are less socially acceptable or normal than once they were. I'd argue that, when it comes to bigotry, there's no such thing as no harm/no foul, and the preening superiority we like to feel over centuries (and even just decades) past breeds dangerous ignorance.
I would not ask hagiography as an alternative - that way madness lies. When we went in for fake and faint praise racially speaking, we came up with the Noble Savage and "boy can't those black folk dance" - which, as a means of reparation for centuries of slavery, I think we can all agree is embarrassing reparation.
One of the remarkable features of jeering at The Stupid, Stupid Past, particularly in this context, is the apparent absence of awareness that we do idiotic things to our bodies now. I don't mean just faraway foreign folk we can judge bitterly for things like female genital mutilation or one-child rules, but the glaringly plain practices of the society we all live in in the mainstream, pop-culturally inclined Western world. I also don't just mean the scary ubiquity of laws against bodily autonomy, but ("obviously!" thinks every reader by this point) the equally terrifying acceptance of fake lips, fat sucking, perpetual masks of standardized makeup, and standards of beauty not just unrealistic and irritatingly expensive ... or cheap.
As a feminist, duh, I find the now-canonized Unrealistic Standard of Beauty justifiably bothersome, but as a woman of age and prodigious style, it gets to me even beyond the standard-issue (... see what I did there ... ?) feminist outrage. Frankly, even as it's unrealistic, the current pop-culturally mainstreamed standard of beauty is INCREDIBLY BORING. Women are expected not only to maintain an unremitting mask of acceptable makeup, clothing, jewelry, and shoes, but to keep it up all the time - and keep it prescriptively, and bizarrely, narrow.
For my money, as joy is made the deeper by knowing sorrow and as glorious days are the more dazzling for the occasional rainy days ... style and beauty are nothing but enhanced by actually being special. Because I know what it is to maintain very different standards for Saturday afternoon grub work, a day at the office, and a Saturday night out dancing, the heightened primping of Saturday night out means more.
All this said, though - that primping I go in for is a subscription to the clearly artificial standards of our time. Here is the thing: it's all artificial. The minute a man *or* a woman stops using mud as sunblock and begins using it as paint - the minute we find a pretty shell and put it around our necks - the minute even a talisman of power is fashioned into an artifact we keep on our bodies visibly - we've crossed from the natural state of our person into some form of alteration. And anything visible, even if it isn't "meant" to be cosmetic, is a part of the visual story we tell of ourselves, the signals we send to strangers and friends alike, is in one way or another a statement about what we believe to be beautiful.
Not all "beauty" is a matter of sexual attraction.
But all personal adornment - ALL of it - is about beauty by one definition, one expectation, or another.
Find the beauty. And find fascination in the myriad ways we seek it, express it, and memorialize it.
The truth, as it is wont to be, is far more complex – and we shall get to the facts of our modern-time bigotry as well. The article no longer appears to be available, which is a shame, but Madame Isis did a great article some time back investigating just how poisonous the cosmetics of the 18th century actually was. Her findings, though further investigation may be worthwhile, do go a long way at least to nullifying perhaps the favorite modern scapegoat trotted out to exemplify The Stupid, Stupid Past – “they wore LEAD MAKEUP” ... It’s a shame this post is gone, it was meticulous and sourced, and even without that, it was good reading. So here is another of her well-compiled pieces (also sourced), guesting at American Duchess this time, and at least touching on the same theme.
As for the contemporary bigotry in sneering and peering at the past, perhaps those holding these prejudices feel they're safe, knowing that bigotry against other cultures' practices and simple, generalized racism are less socially acceptable or normal than once they were. I'd argue that, when it comes to bigotry, there's no such thing as no harm/no foul, and the preening superiority we like to feel over centuries (and even just decades) past breeds dangerous ignorance.
I would not ask hagiography as an alternative - that way madness lies. When we went in for fake and faint praise racially speaking, we came up with the Noble Savage and "boy can't those black folk dance" - which, as a means of reparation for centuries of slavery, I think we can all agree is embarrassing reparation.
One of the remarkable features of jeering at The Stupid, Stupid Past, particularly in this context, is the apparent absence of awareness that we do idiotic things to our bodies now. I don't mean just faraway foreign folk we can judge bitterly for things like female genital mutilation or one-child rules, but the glaringly plain practices of the society we all live in in the mainstream, pop-culturally inclined Western world. I also don't just mean the scary ubiquity of laws against bodily autonomy, but ("obviously!" thinks every reader by this point) the equally terrifying acceptance of fake lips, fat sucking, perpetual masks of standardized makeup, and standards of beauty not just unrealistic and irritatingly expensive ... or cheap.
As a feminist, duh, I find the now-canonized Unrealistic Standard of Beauty justifiably bothersome, but as a woman of age and prodigious style, it gets to me even beyond the standard-issue (... see what I did there ... ?) feminist outrage. Frankly, even as it's unrealistic, the current pop-culturally mainstreamed standard of beauty is INCREDIBLY BORING. Women are expected not only to maintain an unremitting mask of acceptable makeup, clothing, jewelry, and shoes, but to keep it up all the time - and keep it prescriptively, and bizarrely, narrow.
For my money, as joy is made the deeper by knowing sorrow and as glorious days are the more dazzling for the occasional rainy days ... style and beauty are nothing but enhanced by actually being special. Because I know what it is to maintain very different standards for Saturday afternoon grub work, a day at the office, and a Saturday night out dancing, the heightened primping of Saturday night out means more.
 |
| Natural? Not for one second. |
All this said, though - that primping I go in for is a subscription to the clearly artificial standards of our time. Here is the thing: it's all artificial. The minute a man *or* a woman stops using mud as sunblock and begins using it as paint - the minute we find a pretty shell and put it around our necks - the minute even a talisman of power is fashioned into an artifact we keep on our bodies visibly - we've crossed from the natural state of our person into some form of alteration. And anything visible, even if it isn't "meant" to be cosmetic, is a part of the visual story we tell of ourselves, the signals we send to strangers and friends alike, is in one way or another a statement about what we believe to be beautiful.
Not all "beauty" is a matter of sexual attraction.
But all personal adornment - ALL of it - is about beauty by one definition, one expectation, or another.
Find the beauty. And find fascination in the myriad ways we seek it, express it, and memorialize it.
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year ... ?
The James River Writers conference is coming again sooner than we think - and registration is open! This isn't my sort of thing to say, but: I cannot recommend this event highly enough. Check out the events, this year's agents and guests, and think about it ...
Anne Westrick
Between Leila and Anne Westrick, I know two authors debuting within the next few weeks! Anne is beginning to pull in great reviews for her novel, "Brotherhood":
Oh, and - the worthwhile small print: The Library of Virginia loves educators! All educators who show a current school badge/I.D. will receive a 20% discount off the purchase price of BROTHERHOOD.
"... an impressive debut ..." Publishers Weekly
"The constant sense of danger evoked will keep readers interested." Kirkus
"Great historical fiction always feels like a gift... All the characters, dialogue, and action support each other deftly and with no filler." VOYA Magazine
Book Launch Party
BROTHERHOOD by A. B. Westrick
From: Viking (Penguin Young Readers)
Thursday, September 12 ... 5:30 - 7:30 pm
The Library of Virginia
wine & cheese, book talk, sales & signings
Oh, and - the worthwhile small print: The Library of Virginia loves educators! All educators who show a current school badge/I.D. will receive a 20% discount off the purchase price of BROTHERHOOD.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Age Eleven
In 1979, I was eleven years old, and went to see The Muppet Movie. This was a little bit strange because at that age, I was too old for the Muppets, and even today I look back on the show and the film not as a pleasure of my childhood, but perhaps my first introduction to an experience we come to know as adults as a guilty pleasure. Seeing the movie may have been more acceptable than watching the show because, at eleven, and in the seventies, there was essentially no entertainment meant for me.
Between Francis Hodgson Burnett and Judy Blume's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" there was no transition. Back then, eleven went somewhat unregarded. Hollywood was aware of what Kids Today may still be calling little-little kids, and had gotten an inkling or two about teenagers, but "tweens" were not yet invented and the millennial arrangement by which medium-aged children would become a goldmine had not been drafted.
There were G-rated movies and there were PG ones, but there wasn't much for double-digit-but-not-teens. Likewise, there were Golden Books and there were paperbacks stuffed with compilations of B.C. comics or excerpts from MAD Magazine, but this was a time when publishing was not dominated by - indeed, not even interested in - the youth market.
And so, eleven-year-olds who understood themselves to be too big for the Muppets went to the Muppet Movie anyway, enjoying it in spite of their maturity - and in spite of the fact that we mostly didn't give a hang about Madeleine Khan and all the other cameos either.
The Muppet Movie is available on Netflix streaming now, and I am watching it. And, by now, I think I may be exactly the right age to enjoy it without guilt.
Between Francis Hodgson Burnett and Judy Blume's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" there was no transition. Back then, eleven went somewhat unregarded. Hollywood was aware of what Kids Today may still be calling little-little kids, and had gotten an inkling or two about teenagers, but "tweens" were not yet invented and the millennial arrangement by which medium-aged children would become a goldmine had not been drafted.
There were G-rated movies and there were PG ones, but there wasn't much for double-digit-but-not-teens. Likewise, there were Golden Books and there were paperbacks stuffed with compilations of B.C. comics or excerpts from MAD Magazine, but this was a time when publishing was not dominated by - indeed, not even interested in - the youth market.
And so, eleven-year-olds who understood themselves to be too big for the Muppets went to the Muppet Movie anyway, enjoying it in spite of their maturity - and in spite of the fact that we mostly didn't give a hang about Madeleine Khan and all the other cameos either.
The Muppet Movie is available on Netflix streaming now, and I am watching it. And, by now, I think I may be exactly the right age to enjoy it without guilt.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Is One Link a Collection?
Doesn't matter, I'm not editing the last post, but had to share this item. For me, this is the sort of science to thunk my jaw right on the floor and make me say "GEE WHIZ" when I can scrape it back up again.
The Day Before Death - how to learn what the soft tissues might have told us about a body even when they have decayed and broken down. Poignant, fascinating, intellectually wonderful beyond description.
With thanks to The History Blog, where I found this item.
The Day Before Death - how to learn what the soft tissues might have told us about a body even when they have decayed and broken down. Poignant, fascinating, intellectually wonderful beyond description.
With thanks to The History Blog, where I found this item.
(Collection Post) We Now Resume ...
... some programming, at least, if not "your regularly scheduled" ...
The past week has been a bit much, but it is time to make myself do some normal writing, reaching out, etc. Starting off with a collection post so limited in options it's really just a pair. But it's something.
Off we go:
First off, a discussion of the human concept of ancestral "descent" I would find rather wonderful if I weren't such a jaw-clenching jerkweed about use of the "word" millenniums. The not-at-all-incidental sideline to this piece is a spiffy deconstruction, if not precise debunking, of the Merovingian Heresy. I always love those!
Secondly, yet another extremely charming example of the ridiculous "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" school of gender understanding (I'm sorry - that's contamination, actually) which still - and more than ever - informs and downright rules our culture thanks to advertising. The Mad Men were and still are bastards. Even the ones working from the thriving advertising industry outlets within my own community ... where that dadgum lizard was born, y'all. Gender conatmination - because, even without millennia-obsolete male-dominated religion to keep us in order, women are still ritually unclean.
Le Sigh.
(Edited to be completely disgusted that Blogger accepts the non-word millenniums above with no problem, and marks the correct term, millennia, with a jagged red MISSPELLING underline. Speaking of bastards.)
The past week has been a bit much, but it is time to make myself do some normal writing, reaching out, etc. Starting off with a collection post so limited in options it's really just a pair. But it's something.
Off we go:
First off, a discussion of the human concept of ancestral "descent" I would find rather wonderful if I weren't such a jaw-clenching jerkweed about use of the "word" millenniums. The not-at-all-incidental sideline to this piece is a spiffy deconstruction, if not precise debunking, of the Merovingian Heresy. I always love those!
The risk of today's genetic genealogy tests is that they tend to divide people into groups, whereas the real message that emerges from genealogy is one of connections. ... In the 18th and 19th centuries, they pounced on the idea of race and used it to formulate hypotheses about human differences that had disastrous social consequences.
Secondly, yet another extremely charming example of the ridiculous "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" school of gender understanding (I'm sorry - that's contamination, actually) which still - and more than ever - informs and downright rules our culture thanks to advertising. The Mad Men were and still are bastards. Even the ones working from the thriving advertising industry outlets within my own community ... where that dadgum lizard was born, y'all. Gender conatmination - because, even without millennia-obsolete male-dominated religion to keep us in order, women are still ritually unclean.
Le Sigh.
(Edited to be completely disgusted that Blogger accepts the non-word millenniums above with no problem, and marks the correct term, millennia, with a jagged red MISSPELLING underline. Speaking of bastards.)
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Medieval Pet Names
Not sweet-nothings-style nicknames, but actual names for dogs and cats. A delightful piece on animals' names from the medieval and early modern period. Click through to find out about Anne Boleyn's punny puppy! And another similar item with Greek dog names, along with possibly the most shocking method of choosing a pup you'll ever read. Still - it's fascinating how old names like Blackie and Killer actually are. I like Pell Mell myself. Well, or Pell-Nell-o-pe.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Small Collection
Eighteenth century women shipwrights. Fascinating history I had never heard of before.
Intriguing possible TBR fodder - the cover design is beautiful. Hard, as a costume/period snob, not to take a little exception to the glamour model and her fake eyelashes, in the trailer, but the subject matter is exotically interesting. If it's done without exotiCIZing the female characters, could be good stuff. Given that it's written by a woman of color (which is, sadly, almost surprising in this genre - though I have become a bit acquainted with Lisa Yarde's work online), hopes are high. Certainly the review is promising. And the research looks delicious.
Finally, an exploration of sibling marriage in history including a great look at the Ptolemies, in service of Nyki Blatchley's new fantasy, The Triarchy's Emissary.
Intriguing possible TBR fodder - the cover design is beautiful. Hard, as a costume/period snob, not to take a little exception to the glamour model and her fake eyelashes, in the trailer, but the subject matter is exotically interesting. If it's done without exotiCIZing the female characters, could be good stuff. Given that it's written by a woman of color (which is, sadly, almost surprising in this genre - though I have become a bit acquainted with Lisa Yarde's work online), hopes are high. Certainly the review is promising. And the research looks delicious.
Finally, an exploration of sibling marriage in history including a great look at the Ptolemies, in service of Nyki Blatchley's new fantasy, The Triarchy's Emissary.
Editing
I used to do word count count posts, but have not been systematizing reports on my progress in the most recent edit. For one, this is a far less profound revision - and, for two, while my productivity in a lot of areas has been up, I've fallen away from the social networking habit of keeping myself honest by telling anyone where I stand. Tweeting the occasional #AmEditing brag is a useful option, but putting up a permanent post (even if on a very old-fashioned blog) is one of those indicators (and motivators) of progress you "feel" more substantially.
So I've completed about twenty percent of the current round of edits. There are two items to revisit - the first is a question about "is this bit necessary?" (There is, of course, the instinct that having to ask answers the question "no", but for one thing I have no readers to request objective feedback from right now, and for two, the resistance to deletion is strong enough I don't distrust it yet. As willing as I am to kill my darlings, having doubts about doing so is a reasonable informant against doing so without feedback.) The other backtrack I'll need to make is a sense that one character needs punching up. In the previous edit, his earliest presence was drained of a bit of blood, so I need to make him more obtrusive and important. It doesn't require lots of new scenes, a return of shed bulk - but some judicious description and exposition will contextualize how vital he is to a story in which I reduced him a hair more than I should have.
The work, pretty generally, has a very good weight to it now as I read it, and increasing experience in this process is great education. Many authors dislike, or at least have a hard time, with editing and revision, but my main issue with it is the aforementioned absence of readers and canny, objective feedback. One part of my education is the role readers play, and the loss of mine is pretty painful.
Oh, for an agent who'd shake me by the shoulders and show me where and how to edit. (Yes, I know - selfish dreamer. I'm allowed that sort of dangerously stupid freedom ... for the moment.)
So I've completed about twenty percent of the current round of edits. There are two items to revisit - the first is a question about "is this bit necessary?" (There is, of course, the instinct that having to ask answers the question "no", but for one thing I have no readers to request objective feedback from right now, and for two, the resistance to deletion is strong enough I don't distrust it yet. As willing as I am to kill my darlings, having doubts about doing so is a reasonable informant against doing so without feedback.) The other backtrack I'll need to make is a sense that one character needs punching up. In the previous edit, his earliest presence was drained of a bit of blood, so I need to make him more obtrusive and important. It doesn't require lots of new scenes, a return of shed bulk - but some judicious description and exposition will contextualize how vital he is to a story in which I reduced him a hair more than I should have.
The work, pretty generally, has a very good weight to it now as I read it, and increasing experience in this process is great education. Many authors dislike, or at least have a hard time, with editing and revision, but my main issue with it is the aforementioned absence of readers and canny, objective feedback. One part of my education is the role readers play, and the loss of mine is pretty painful.
Oh, for an agent who'd shake me by the shoulders and show me where and how to edit. (Yes, I know - selfish dreamer. I'm allowed that sort of dangerously stupid freedom ... for the moment.)
Printing Money
Who needs gravitas when it comes to the dollar? LeVar Burton takes us on a Reading Rainbow field trip - RR is my favorite thing he's ever done, and that's big news coming out of a Trek nerd.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Prey About It - Again and Again and Again ...
Most of the men I know who read my blog, or at least these posts about what it is like to be a woman, have asked me what exactly triggered what essentially appears to them to be an outburst. Triggered is an interesting word choice, given its increasing association with the post traumatic stimuli of violative assault (I repudiate the term "sexual" assault, as rape is not and never has been about SEX - which is a sacred and blessed part of our humanity), and - yes - there was an incident recently that got me thinking about just how little most men understand the experience of womanhood - and, sadly, of girlhood.
The trigger, for me, was not something to get upset about.
And, the more I have let it sit and the more I have thought about it, THAT is precisely what upsets me so much and has got me talking. The fact that an incident of personal violation, because it's "just" verbal, is not "worth" getting upset about in our world.
If it were a man, or a boy, people would smack foreheads and freak out. But the thought of a woman's being inappropriately approached, in public, is quite literally "nothing" to us. To men, *and* to women.
Which is simply an outrage.
There are a lot of other things going on in the world, too, which are worthy - indeed, demand - upset. The boys club of the Texas legislature. The depravity and intimate brutality to which a woman must be subjected by strangers because she has the temerity to create a professional career in sex education (this link is the story of a woman first verbally assaulted with vulgarity and insuperable presumption by a stranger with sexual advice for her to take with her own husband, and it is perhaps the finest written piece of meticulously reasoned, and REASONABLE, outrage I've read in months). And it's not all sensational stories about ass-grabbing, either. Sometimes it's disguised in terms like "gravitas" as we dismiss the (imaginary - and faultily reasoned) specter of the "gender backed" "female dollar."
We live in an excessively screwed-up (terminology and entendres quite entirely intentional, yes) world, society, and culture, and the rapidly increasing control exerted by every aspect of it upon women is frightening and angering an awful lot of us.
But, yeah - I began talking, began my personal version of "activism" by airing out the things I have to say and participating, well, actively in this "conversation" because of those things - and because of the recent thing - which have happened to me. These things MUST be exposed to the light of day. The intrusive consequences of simply being a woman are immoral, and these things must be said. Again and again and again.
I regret, to an extremely small and not particularly uncomfortable degree, minimizing what has triggered me most recently - and yet, I also feel that, as Jill McDevitt points out, there's an awful lot about the experience of my gender and my body which are flat-out nobody's business but my own. I may privately backtrack somewhat and explain what I am discussing here, for those extremely few men whose concern I actually give a rat's behind about managing - because I care about them and The Unknown, particularly when so archly published on the internet (after discussions dismissively saying "nothing happened") is sort of a wench move. It may lead to clinical and substantive conversations which aren't all about me, and for those men I care about who have daughters, it could be worthwhile to take the instructive posts I've already written and contextualize them in the current events of a woman they care for in return.
As for the rest of you - given the disturbing and intimate personal information I've already shared, I don't feel it's appropriate nor necessary to go on about more. This doesn't bear further actual explanation, no matter how strongly I feel that "these things" need to be said again and again and again. Please understand that no new sexual (again there's that inappropriate terminology) harassment at work has occurred. That physically I am intact and untouched. That, depressing as it is, "It's really no big deal" is all it deserves, in terms of public discourse.
That my privacy is as much my own as my body.
Sometimes, I look at the extent to which my parents emphasized for me my bodily and spiritual autonomy, beginning way back in the wee hours of the 1970s, is almost miraculous. That is the people who raised me - human beings of such dignity. Who put a premium on their children. Whose ultimate goal, whether it was religion or politics or personal experience of violation, was to protect and preserve and always to VALUE their daughter.
My sense of self wasn't something they taught me with tedious explicitness, by rote, even by words. It was their inimitable example.
I am incalculably grateful for their lesson.
The trigger, for me, was not something to get upset about.
And, the more I have let it sit and the more I have thought about it, THAT is precisely what upsets me so much and has got me talking. The fact that an incident of personal violation, because it's "just" verbal, is not "worth" getting upset about in our world.
If it were a man, or a boy, people would smack foreheads and freak out. But the thought of a woman's being inappropriately approached, in public, is quite literally "nothing" to us. To men, *and* to women.
Which is simply an outrage.
There are a lot of other things going on in the world, too, which are worthy - indeed, demand - upset. The boys club of the Texas legislature. The depravity and intimate brutality to which a woman must be subjected by strangers because she has the temerity to create a professional career in sex education (this link is the story of a woman first verbally assaulted with vulgarity and insuperable presumption by a stranger with sexual advice for her to take with her own husband, and it is perhaps the finest written piece of meticulously reasoned, and REASONABLE, outrage I've read in months). And it's not all sensational stories about ass-grabbing, either. Sometimes it's disguised in terms like "gravitas" as we dismiss the (imaginary - and faultily reasoned) specter of the "gender backed" "female dollar."
We live in an excessively screwed-up (terminology and entendres quite entirely intentional, yes) world, society, and culture, and the rapidly increasing control exerted by every aspect of it upon women is frightening and angering an awful lot of us.
But, yeah - I began talking, began my personal version of "activism" by airing out the things I have to say and participating, well, actively in this "conversation" because of those things - and because of the recent thing - which have happened to me. These things MUST be exposed to the light of day. The intrusive consequences of simply being a woman are immoral, and these things must be said. Again and again and again.
I regret, to an extremely small and not particularly uncomfortable degree, minimizing what has triggered me most recently - and yet, I also feel that, as Jill McDevitt points out, there's an awful lot about the experience of my gender and my body which are flat-out nobody's business but my own. I may privately backtrack somewhat and explain what I am discussing here, for those extremely few men whose concern I actually give a rat's behind about managing - because I care about them and The Unknown, particularly when so archly published on the internet (after discussions dismissively saying "nothing happened") is sort of a wench move. It may lead to clinical and substantive conversations which aren't all about me, and for those men I care about who have daughters, it could be worthwhile to take the instructive posts I've already written and contextualize them in the current events of a woman they care for in return.
As for the rest of you - given the disturbing and intimate personal information I've already shared, I don't feel it's appropriate nor necessary to go on about more. This doesn't bear further actual explanation, no matter how strongly I feel that "these things" need to be said again and again and again. Please understand that no new sexual (again there's that inappropriate terminology) harassment at work has occurred. That physically I am intact and untouched. That, depressing as it is, "It's really no big deal" is all it deserves, in terms of public discourse.
That my privacy is as much my own as my body.
Sometimes, I look at the extent to which my parents emphasized for me my bodily and spiritual autonomy, beginning way back in the wee hours of the 1970s, is almost miraculous. That is the people who raised me - human beings of such dignity. Who put a premium on their children. Whose ultimate goal, whether it was religion or politics or personal experience of violation, was to protect and preserve and always to VALUE their daughter.
My sense of self wasn't something they taught me with tedious explicitness, by rote, even by words. It was their inimitable example.
I am incalculably grateful for their lesson.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Free Reading - Women of Science Fiction
This is a great piece about female authors of science fiction. The best part at this link is an excerpted list of links to those stories, out of the 100 best, which are available online for free.
Because if you're like me, you don't have NEARLY enough material in your TBR pile ...
Um. :)
Because if you're like me, you don't have NEARLY enough material in your TBR pile ...
Um. :)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
50K
And that, my friends, was the night I hit 50,000 pageviews on the blog. And, given Blogger's own bizarre under-reporting of stats, that probably means nothing - but I'll take an underestimation that high and the knowledge it's even mostly-human readers, though bots do prowl around here and there.
Good night, all.
Good night, all.
Getting Good Things Done
At last, I have gotten the interview for Elizabeth Chadwick put together, and reached out to Day Al-Mohamed about writing for Unleaded. Editing is still going well, and I have to say I quite like the last post I put up.
Work isn't going badly either, right now, and with August's final approach, the weather is still lacking for 100+ temps and years-long droughts. I don't miss those one bit. The leaves are already debuting a few late season changes, and the mornings have been something approaching what could be called cool. I've even put off ten pounds; that's still a good thirty more than I was carrying a year ago in springtime, but the direction is at least preferable to me.
There are some significant stressors, but at least right now, at least today, I am managing them without turning into a beaten dog.
Life could be worse. I'm guardedly, but honestly, grateful.
Work isn't going badly either, right now, and with August's final approach, the weather is still lacking for 100+ temps and years-long droughts. I don't miss those one bit. The leaves are already debuting a few late season changes, and the mornings have been something approaching what could be called cool. I've even put off ten pounds; that's still a good thirty more than I was carrying a year ago in springtime, but the direction is at least preferable to me.
There are some significant stressors, but at least right now, at least today, I am managing them without turning into a beaten dog.
Life could be worse. I'm guardedly, but honestly, grateful.
The First Queen
Clovis’ mother was the Thuringian Queen, Basina. Famed for the scandal she caused in leaving her first husband, Bisinus, to marry Clovis’ father Childeric, she was clearly a woman of remarkable power in a society not poor in the exploits and strength of women. It was Basina who gave Clovis his name, a rare fact preserved in a history full of men. Of course, a very great deal of what composes “history” in this period is stitched from legend and half-truths, propaganda and hagiography.
Clovis, I would say, was highly interested in propaganda, and I make it an explicit point in The Ax and the Vase that he depended heavily upon it in his quest to increase his kingdom from the Roman province of Belgica Secunda into a vast Frankish power standing in its own right. The legend of his vengeance concerning the Vase at Soissons was only one of many tales which have a distinctive flavor about them, of making a public point for the sake of display. His conversion, and fairly worthwhile evidence that he modeled himself on Constantine, follow a pattern of propaganda it was impossible not to manipulate intentionally, as I believe the king himself must have done, in the writing of his story. He wrote it himself first, after all.
It’s not impossible he could have had an example in legend-making from the mother who gave him life, gave him his name, and gave him, even, the legend of a Merovingian dynasty (unnamed at that time, of course) itself.
Basina is said to have used King Childeric, Clovis’ father, to make a point upon their wedding night. Before she will consummate their marriage, she sends Childeric outside thrice to look about him and tell her what he sees each time. The first time he steps out, he sees a lion. The second, he sees bears, wolves, or leopards. The third, he reports seeing marmots or dogs, “lesser animals.”
Each iteration of Childeric’s investigations illustrates a deterioration, first shown in Gregory, which must have been perceived by contemporaries, of the dynasty Clovis founded. The Merovingians started out strong, to be sure – Clovis’ conquests, his wealth, his production of princes, his career and his rule were in many ways the paragon of monarchical success. He was the biggest thing the Franks had ever seen, and there was pride, fear, and resentment both within his life and beyond it. The epochal developments of his reign – Clovis became the first Catholic king in Western Europe; he set forth the famous (infamous) Salic Law – were themselves the stuff of legend, and could have been no accident as such. Yet when his kingdom passed on to his four sons, divided as patrimony between them, the power held by one lion was compromised by the division, and the Merovingian legacy (far from being Christ’s bloodline) became a famous litany of family squabbles.
Of course, the likelihood that the tale of the lion and the lesser beasts, told a generation or so after Clovis’ own death, was really told before even his birth, is slender at best. This doesn’t stop me from using the story in any case. In telling certain stories, those who are familiar with the attendant legends expect to see how this piece or that part may be handled; and the story reflects and fits so well with Basina’s character it would have been unthinkable to leave out this story.
Then, as tends to happen – I cut so much of her out that the tale was lost. Indeed, Basina herself lasts only a few pages now, and is sacrificed very early in the going indeed; victim of an arbitrary but nagging need I had to be rid of her. She ends by suffering much the same fate of Morgause at the hands of her son Agravain, but without the bloodshed. Basina, instead, is shut out of society – the worst punishment a Frank could suffer, in a culture utterly bound by family ties.
In some ways, the loss of this powerful feminine presence may be a great loss for the novel, but as a woman writing first-person from the POV of a decidedly male character, I could not abide her presence. Perhaps instinctively, perhaps even jealously, as the feminine author of this legendary king, I could not brook the presence of any other feminine force which brought him into being. Indeed, until the advent of Queen Clotilde, the novel is notably unbalanced by female characters; even Clovis’ friedelehe, Evochilde, dies with little more accomplished than bearing his first son, Theuderic.
The French remember the end of the Merovingian dynasty, in particular, with the epithet they gave those kings known as do-nothing kings: the roi fainéant. The story of the dynasty goes much as the story of Basina’s animals goes, and by the end little boys and ineffectual heirs have most people all but rooting for the advent of the Carolingians, who had ruled from behind the Merovingian throne for generations, as Mayors of the Palace. Yet the individual stories of Merovingians, and certainly their women, do not suffer from the same tarnish, the same flagging vigor as the tale of the dynasty as a whole.
Radegund, whose uncle betrayed Clovis’ eldest son Theuderic (this story is alluded to toward the closing chapters of Ax), and who herself was apparently close with Gregory of Tours. She was a poetess and another saint, and one of those women along the line who was closest to Clovis’ sons.
Aregund, one of six wives of the notorious Clotaire I (son of Clovis), whose tomb’s discovery in 1959 shed much light on Frankish craft, society, and burial – and, not incidentally, whose state of preservation was good enough that her DNA was able to provide proof, in 2006, that her line carried no characteristics of Middle-Eastern extraction. This has been put forth to put paid to the Merovingian Heresy, though of course there is no real way to destroy the allure of conspiracy theories for those who love them.
Waltrude, one of the many sainted wives of Frankish nobility of the Merovingian period, exemplifies the flux in which marriage and monastic vows still existed as late as the seventh century: after a fruitful marriage, both she and her husband, Count of Hainault chose to retire into the church. Like so many Frankish/Merovingian saints, she founded a convent. The city of Mons arose around this holy site.
Waltrude’s possible sister, Aldegonde, is remembered both for her founding of a hospital, which became Maubeuge abbey. Her fortitude in the face of terminal breast cancer is remembered 1300 years later.
A favorite Merovingian queen, Balthild, started her life as an Anglo-Saxon child of nobility, sold into servitude, and finally married to a king who loved her. She is alternately described as ruthless or as humble and modest, but what remains clear and true of this sainted queen is that she held, and used, real power. She endowed many religious institutions. Her seal matrix (a fascinating two-sided design for use in official and personal documentation) survives to this day, and it is she who is credited with the abolition of (at least) Christian slavery, as well as guiding the minority rule of her son Clotaire. Three of her sons eventually became kings in their own right, and she too retired to an abbey, where she is said to have spent the rest of her life in service to those in poverty and suffering illness.
Of Frankish women, the matrimonial tales can rank among the most fascinating glimpses both of their character and the society itself, in which they lived. There are raging legends of women who stood up against betrothals they did not desire, the scandalous remembrance of Basina, of course, who left one king and wed another, becoming mother of a dynasty herself – and the stories like Balthild’s (not unique in the annals), of women who suffered servitude either by birth or by misfortune, and who then rose to become queens with influence and indelible places in the history of this maddening, fascinating line of rulers. With the place family held in Frankish life, the mothers’ and wives’ prominence is undeniable and noticeable. Basina may have been a scandal, but she was not, I think, regarded with actual surprise; women in this society were not reduced to ciphers in their own time nor down through the generations. A certain Itta, called Merovingian herself by some sources, indeed came to Basina’s own role for the Carolingians, as mother of the new dynasty – once Basina’s marmots had run their deteriorated course.
There is so much drama in these characters – in these players of our world’s history – you can’t help but see that they must have been on the stage. Any one of them – or their sisters, their mothers, their daughters – might make a hundred novels’ worth of inspiration. I have my list set, for at least three novels of my own. Still, it would be fascinating to see someone take these stories and tell them, restore them, weave them anew for the rest of us. Let me know if you are inspired!
Clovis, I would say, was highly interested in propaganda, and I make it an explicit point in The Ax and the Vase that he depended heavily upon it in his quest to increase his kingdom from the Roman province of Belgica Secunda into a vast Frankish power standing in its own right. The legend of his vengeance concerning the Vase at Soissons was only one of many tales which have a distinctive flavor about them, of making a public point for the sake of display. His conversion, and fairly worthwhile evidence that he modeled himself on Constantine, follow a pattern of propaganda it was impossible not to manipulate intentionally, as I believe the king himself must have done, in the writing of his story. He wrote it himself first, after all.
It’s not impossible he could have had an example in legend-making from the mother who gave him life, gave him his name, and gave him, even, the legend of a Merovingian dynasty (unnamed at that time, of course) itself.
Basina is said to have used King Childeric, Clovis’ father, to make a point upon their wedding night. Before she will consummate their marriage, she sends Childeric outside thrice to look about him and tell her what he sees each time. The first time he steps out, he sees a lion. The second, he sees bears, wolves, or leopards. The third, he reports seeing marmots or dogs, “lesser animals.”
Each iteration of Childeric’s investigations illustrates a deterioration, first shown in Gregory, which must have been perceived by contemporaries, of the dynasty Clovis founded. The Merovingians started out strong, to be sure – Clovis’ conquests, his wealth, his production of princes, his career and his rule were in many ways the paragon of monarchical success. He was the biggest thing the Franks had ever seen, and there was pride, fear, and resentment both within his life and beyond it. The epochal developments of his reign – Clovis became the first Catholic king in Western Europe; he set forth the famous (infamous) Salic Law – were themselves the stuff of legend, and could have been no accident as such. Yet when his kingdom passed on to his four sons, divided as patrimony between them, the power held by one lion was compromised by the division, and the Merovingian legacy (far from being Christ’s bloodline) became a famous litany of family squabbles.
Of course, the likelihood that the tale of the lion and the lesser beasts, told a generation or so after Clovis’ own death, was really told before even his birth, is slender at best. This doesn’t stop me from using the story in any case. In telling certain stories, those who are familiar with the attendant legends expect to see how this piece or that part may be handled; and the story reflects and fits so well with Basina’s character it would have been unthinkable to leave out this story.
Then, as tends to happen – I cut so much of her out that the tale was lost. Indeed, Basina herself lasts only a few pages now, and is sacrificed very early in the going indeed; victim of an arbitrary but nagging need I had to be rid of her. She ends by suffering much the same fate of Morgause at the hands of her son Agravain, but without the bloodshed. Basina, instead, is shut out of society – the worst punishment a Frank could suffer, in a culture utterly bound by family ties.
In some ways, the loss of this powerful feminine presence may be a great loss for the novel, but as a woman writing first-person from the POV of a decidedly male character, I could not abide her presence. Perhaps instinctively, perhaps even jealously, as the feminine author of this legendary king, I could not brook the presence of any other feminine force which brought him into being. Indeed, until the advent of Queen Clotilde, the novel is notably unbalanced by female characters; even Clovis’ friedelehe, Evochilde, dies with little more accomplished than bearing his first son, Theuderic.
The French remember the end of the Merovingian dynasty, in particular, with the epithet they gave those kings known as do-nothing kings: the roi fainéant. The story of the dynasty goes much as the story of Basina’s animals goes, and by the end little boys and ineffectual heirs have most people all but rooting for the advent of the Carolingians, who had ruled from behind the Merovingian throne for generations, as Mayors of the Palace. Yet the individual stories of Merovingians, and certainly their women, do not suffer from the same tarnish, the same flagging vigor as the tale of the dynasty as a whole.
Radegund, whose uncle betrayed Clovis’ eldest son Theuderic (this story is alluded to toward the closing chapters of Ax), and who herself was apparently close with Gregory of Tours. She was a poetess and another saint, and one of those women along the line who was closest to Clovis’ sons.
Aregund, one of six wives of the notorious Clotaire I (son of Clovis), whose tomb’s discovery in 1959 shed much light on Frankish craft, society, and burial – and, not incidentally, whose state of preservation was good enough that her DNA was able to provide proof, in 2006, that her line carried no characteristics of Middle-Eastern extraction. This has been put forth to put paid to the Merovingian Heresy, though of course there is no real way to destroy the allure of conspiracy theories for those who love them.
Waltrude, one of the many sainted wives of Frankish nobility of the Merovingian period, exemplifies the flux in which marriage and monastic vows still existed as late as the seventh century: after a fruitful marriage, both she and her husband, Count of Hainault chose to retire into the church. Like so many Frankish/Merovingian saints, she founded a convent. The city of Mons arose around this holy site.
Waltrude’s possible sister, Aldegonde, is remembered both for her founding of a hospital, which became Maubeuge abbey. Her fortitude in the face of terminal breast cancer is remembered 1300 years later.
A favorite Merovingian queen, Balthild, started her life as an Anglo-Saxon child of nobility, sold into servitude, and finally married to a king who loved her. She is alternately described as ruthless or as humble and modest, but what remains clear and true of this sainted queen is that she held, and used, real power. She endowed many religious institutions. Her seal matrix (a fascinating two-sided design for use in official and personal documentation) survives to this day, and it is she who is credited with the abolition of (at least) Christian slavery, as well as guiding the minority rule of her son Clotaire. Three of her sons eventually became kings in their own right, and she too retired to an abbey, where she is said to have spent the rest of her life in service to those in poverty and suffering illness.
Of Frankish women, the matrimonial tales can rank among the most fascinating glimpses both of their character and the society itself, in which they lived. There are raging legends of women who stood up against betrothals they did not desire, the scandalous remembrance of Basina, of course, who left one king and wed another, becoming mother of a dynasty herself – and the stories like Balthild’s (not unique in the annals), of women who suffered servitude either by birth or by misfortune, and who then rose to become queens with influence and indelible places in the history of this maddening, fascinating line of rulers. With the place family held in Frankish life, the mothers’ and wives’ prominence is undeniable and noticeable. Basina may have been a scandal, but she was not, I think, regarded with actual surprise; women in this society were not reduced to ciphers in their own time nor down through the generations. A certain Itta, called Merovingian herself by some sources, indeed came to Basina’s own role for the Carolingians, as mother of the new dynasty – once Basina’s marmots had run their deteriorated course.
There is so much drama in these characters – in these players of our world’s history – you can’t help but see that they must have been on the stage. Any one of them – or their sisters, their mothers, their daughters – might make a hundred novels’ worth of inspiration. I have my list set, for at least three novels of my own. Still, it would be fascinating to see someone take these stories and tell them, restore them, weave them anew for the rest of us. Let me know if you are inspired!
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Good Things
Elizabeth Chadwick agreed to let me interview her, and the bronchitis sidetracked me for too long, but I hope to take time in the next several days to GET ON that so I can bring you something exciting.
Day Al-Mohamed asked me on Twitter tonight to write for Unleaded. That would be pretty exciting - their platform is such a nice variety and view, with very engaging writers contributing. I'd love to be a part of that, even if just for one shot.
And, of course, there is this. I'm still an awful interview. But maybe I can learn.
This is the sort of thing I'm supposed to do, as I refine and perfect the work itself. It's gratifying and encouraging, and it's bouying me through a period of doubt and difficulty, as I edit again when I didn't expect to get back into that and am still working alone. Feeling like I'm proceeding without a net these days, I'm very grateful for these things. I have a lot to be thankful for - now to do it all some justice.
Editing is going quickly - if I had readers, I'd know better how *well* I was doing. But I'm doing what I can to put into the world what it has been giving me. I hope it's good stuff I am giving back ...
Day Al-Mohamed asked me on Twitter tonight to write for Unleaded. That would be pretty exciting - their platform is such a nice variety and view, with very engaging writers contributing. I'd love to be a part of that, even if just for one shot.
And, of course, there is this. I'm still an awful interview. But maybe I can learn.
This is the sort of thing I'm supposed to do, as I refine and perfect the work itself. It's gratifying and encouraging, and it's bouying me through a period of doubt and difficulty, as I edit again when I didn't expect to get back into that and am still working alone. Feeling like I'm proceeding without a net these days, I'm very grateful for these things. I have a lot to be thankful for - now to do it all some justice.
Editing is going quickly - if I had readers, I'd know better how *well* I was doing. But I'm doing what I can to put into the world what it has been giving me. I hope it's good stuff I am giving back ...
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