Current t-shirt: actually a gray sweater (went to church this morning)
Current music: Abba (blame my husband)
Yes, you read right. I got up and went to an Episcopalian service this morning. Dad says' Episcopalianism's a great religion 'cause it doesn't interfere with your politics or your religion. Actually his dad said that, too. But the family was Protestant back when it was badass. Got kicked out of France for it. (Actually, our venerable ancestor dressed up in many disguises, including as a woman, to protect himself. He thought he made a good woman.)
The peace talks were held in my home town. Was down there at the time, but thought nothing of this except that a)there might be roadblocks, which is difficult in a town on a penninsula and b) I might not be able to get to one of the two pubs worth frequenting in the town. (Reynold's Tavern and Middleton Tavern. People say the Ram's Head is good. Don't believe them.)
Mostly I was bothered by the brand spankin' new Starbucks in the basement of the building where the Treaty of Paris, the document ending the Revolutionary War was signed. Something's wrong with that.
But with an article in The Guardian today about Al-Zawahiri (Taliban - scary) saying that the Annapolis talks will do nothing, I realized something frightening. Thanks to George Bush, Al-Qaeda now has my home address.
Before this, I could always think to myself "New York might be blown up, riot itself to death, or die spiritually of a sort of cancer due to exponential real estate prices, but my home town will always remain. I'll always have a place to go back to.
Now, maybe not.
Thanks, George.
(I used to like the name George. George Plimpton. George of the Jungle. George the Third thinking he was a teapot. It was a sound, wholesome name.)
Love and a different zip code,
The Red Pooka!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Day of quiet
Current t-shirt: green with tentacles
Current music: Sleep Station "After the War"
My internet went out yesterday. Time Warner sent someone out fairly quickly. They don't know why things go out. I believe that, had I suggested fairies or acts of God, the cable woman wouldn't have disagreed.
But it was so quiet. Mentally quiet. I got things done. I was aware of where I was. I went to bed that night and slept.
I think I'm going to restrict my time online to specific blocks. Some surfing, because I need to, but to do it in blocks. It's like something's picketing my mind, having the internet always at my fingertips.
Dean Young and Mary Jo Salter have books coming out. Dean Young's book is good, (January). I haven't seen the Mary Jo Salter yet (March).
NY Anime fest is this weekend. Anime overlaps with what I do, but I'm far from an expert. So I'll have to do some research, see what's up. The horrible thing is that, while I don't know anime as well as I should, I know conventions. Looking on the schedule, I see the usual suspects. I'll know how to talk to them. This knowledge feels like false knowledge. Something that lets you coast through the world without being real. It's not real, I'm not real. Ghosts all around.
Love n' silent spooks,
The Red Pooka!
Current music: Sleep Station "After the War"
My internet went out yesterday. Time Warner sent someone out fairly quickly. They don't know why things go out. I believe that, had I suggested fairies or acts of God, the cable woman wouldn't have disagreed.
But it was so quiet. Mentally quiet. I got things done. I was aware of where I was. I went to bed that night and slept.
I think I'm going to restrict my time online to specific blocks. Some surfing, because I need to, but to do it in blocks. It's like something's picketing my mind, having the internet always at my fingertips.
Dean Young and Mary Jo Salter have books coming out. Dean Young's book is good, (January). I haven't seen the Mary Jo Salter yet (March).
NY Anime fest is this weekend. Anime overlaps with what I do, but I'm far from an expert. So I'll have to do some research, see what's up. The horrible thing is that, while I don't know anime as well as I should, I know conventions. Looking on the schedule, I see the usual suspects. I'll know how to talk to them. This knowledge feels like false knowledge. Something that lets you coast through the world without being real. It's not real, I'm not real. Ghosts all around.
Love n' silent spooks,
The Red Pooka!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Thoughts about fat... and other things.
Recently finished "Big Fat Manifesto," by Susan Vaught, for a review. It's about a teenage girl who writes a column, Fat Girl, about the way society treats you when you're overweight.
I don't know what to think of the book. The author has a point, and it's well-written, but it's supposed to be a YA book for and about kids. These kids don't talk like kids. They don't think like kids. They think like grownups - wish - they had thought when they were kids. Plus, Vaught, whom the book publicist assures me has had weight issues herself, makes the lead character come off like some brassy, opinionated, loud stereotype of a fat person.
I don't have an either way on the issue. I'm fairly thin. Breathing has always been more of an issue for me. I know about discrimination (translation: people acting like asses because something about you disrupts the way they think the world should be) from having learning disabilities and having to advocate for myself in grad school.
It got kinda funny when I was teaching and had a pregnant student who wouldn't fit behind the chair desks. The professor I answered to said something like 'pregnant women shouldn't be in school,' and when I finally got a chair that fit her, some other prof stole it from me for an AV presentation to prop up something.
Meanwhile, I was going to the same people asking for special recs for myself and, except for a few eye rolls, had no problem. Then I went Ivy League. Ivy League means you're supposed to be perfect. The moment I said 'learning disability accomodations,' they looked at me as if I'd escaped from a mental asylum.
I hear it's better now. I mean for LD people in grad school. I hope careers of administrators were damaged in the process. (If they haven't, and someone needs an aggressive ax behind the passive voice, I'll volunteer.) I received some first class hell over the issue.
But the book. It had a nice pace, but is a bit formulaic. Plus, the author is obviously from an era before iPod, and probably before personal computers. If the subject means so much to her, I wonder why she didn't do the research/soul-searching/google-searches necessary to make the book credible. I'm not sure God is in the details, but when novelists sweat the small stuff, they've usually sweated the large stuff, too.
So the book feels more like a personal rant, perhaps a necessary venting session, than a work of art, or even of activism. The personal has to take a step or two to be effective politically. She may have an agent, and Vaught can write a decent sentence, but it feels as though she's never left the therapy session.
I've a close friend whose girlfriend is overweight. R suffers horribly because of it, and she's a nice person. Excellent writer. Sweet lady. But then, I have the feeling fat women rarely dare to be other than sweet, the world already hates them so. R is a nuanced person. One problem with politics in books is that it often strips people of nuance. Some people lack nuance—perhaps the author is one—but stripping people of nuance is one of the things discrimination does.
I remember struggling to get into the disability office at Columbia (on an upper floor, with a non-motorized door that even I had trouble opening) and having a mean woman in owl glasses with a scowl that would sour not only milk, but an entire cow, look at my paperwork, and attempt to turn all my hopes dreams, struggles, and reasonable writing samples into a heap of unnecessary bother that she could write away. "We have standards here, you know." So why haven't they fired you yet?
But of course, I'll give the book a good review because it's for a certain sort of magazine, and that's what is required.
Love and that fuck-you attitude,
The Red Pooka!
I don't know what to think of the book. The author has a point, and it's well-written, but it's supposed to be a YA book for and about kids. These kids don't talk like kids. They don't think like kids. They think like grownups - wish - they had thought when they were kids. Plus, Vaught, whom the book publicist assures me has had weight issues herself, makes the lead character come off like some brassy, opinionated, loud stereotype of a fat person.
I don't have an either way on the issue. I'm fairly thin. Breathing has always been more of an issue for me. I know about discrimination (translation: people acting like asses because something about you disrupts the way they think the world should be) from having learning disabilities and having to advocate for myself in grad school.
It got kinda funny when I was teaching and had a pregnant student who wouldn't fit behind the chair desks. The professor I answered to said something like 'pregnant women shouldn't be in school,' and when I finally got a chair that fit her, some other prof stole it from me for an AV presentation to prop up something.
Meanwhile, I was going to the same people asking for special recs for myself and, except for a few eye rolls, had no problem. Then I went Ivy League. Ivy League means you're supposed to be perfect. The moment I said 'learning disability accomodations,' they looked at me as if I'd escaped from a mental asylum.
I hear it's better now. I mean for LD people in grad school. I hope careers of administrators were damaged in the process. (If they haven't, and someone needs an aggressive ax behind the passive voice, I'll volunteer.) I received some first class hell over the issue.
But the book. It had a nice pace, but is a bit formulaic. Plus, the author is obviously from an era before iPod, and probably before personal computers. If the subject means so much to her, I wonder why she didn't do the research/soul-searching/google-searches necessary to make the book credible. I'm not sure God is in the details, but when novelists sweat the small stuff, they've usually sweated the large stuff, too.
So the book feels more like a personal rant, perhaps a necessary venting session, than a work of art, or even of activism. The personal has to take a step or two to be effective politically. She may have an agent, and Vaught can write a decent sentence, but it feels as though she's never left the therapy session.
I've a close friend whose girlfriend is overweight. R suffers horribly because of it, and she's a nice person. Excellent writer. Sweet lady. But then, I have the feeling fat women rarely dare to be other than sweet, the world already hates them so. R is a nuanced person. One problem with politics in books is that it often strips people of nuance. Some people lack nuance—perhaps the author is one—but stripping people of nuance is one of the things discrimination does.
I remember struggling to get into the disability office at Columbia (on an upper floor, with a non-motorized door that even I had trouble opening) and having a mean woman in owl glasses with a scowl that would sour not only milk, but an entire cow, look at my paperwork, and attempt to turn all my hopes dreams, struggles, and reasonable writing samples into a heap of unnecessary bother that she could write away. "We have standards here, you know." So why haven't they fired you yet?
But of course, I'll give the book a good review because it's for a certain sort of magazine, and that's what is required.
Love and that fuck-you attitude,
The Red Pooka!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Torture book
Current t-shirt: Narwhale, red and cream on gray.
Current music: Tilly and the Wall (yes, I'm obsessed).
I'm doing Darius Rejali's book, "Democracy and Torture" for the LAT (Princeton U Press, Dec.). Rejali is a political sci prof at Reed and rather canny. Because governments tend to open their more embarrassing archives sometime after the twelvth of never, you're never going to get the full story on torture according to the paper trail.
Well, we know a lot about peoples who didn't leave a paper trail: the Celts, Powhattan Indians, the Maya. We know these things because we use anthropology to examine and trace traditions, which tells us what comes from where and who was influencing whom.
Rejali does this with torture.
Creepy, eh?
Never knew anthropology could be so bad-ass.
Love and enemies of the state,
The Red Pooka!
Current music: Tilly and the Wall (yes, I'm obsessed).
I'm doing Darius Rejali's book, "Democracy and Torture" for the LAT (Princeton U Press, Dec.). Rejali is a political sci prof at Reed and rather canny. Because governments tend to open their more embarrassing archives sometime after the twelvth of never, you're never going to get the full story on torture according to the paper trail.
Well, we know a lot about peoples who didn't leave a paper trail: the Celts, Powhattan Indians, the Maya. We know these things because we use anthropology to examine and trace traditions, which tells us what comes from where and who was influencing whom.
Rejali does this with torture.
Creepy, eh?
Never knew anthropology could be so bad-ass.
Love and enemies of the state,
The Red Pooka!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Evel Knievel dies
He did Ninja Warrior years before anyone else thought of it, and he did it on a motorcycle:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2220208,00.html
His father taught my grandfather how to drive. For the record, grandpa was a safe driver.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2220208,00.html
His father taught my grandfather how to drive. For the record, grandpa was a safe driver.
Japan n' stuff
Current t-shirt: Skull and cross-bones with hearts
Current music: George Crumb
I have a friend who's half Japanese, Anne Ishii—please check out her excellent blog, http://ill-iterate-anne.blogspot.com/—who writes a great deal about Asian issues, etc. Recently she linked to a piece about the Canadian government asking for an apology from Japan over Japanese comfort women.
I'm in my thirties, and back reading (and reviewing) comics, which means lots of manga. I love the freshness of the medium. And Japanese culture is huge in design and art now. Ok, that's the sort of over-arching statement Anne rails against, so apologies.
While I was home, I got to talking w/Dad about my Uncle Fil, or Fillipus Ishmael Goeltom, an Indonesian nobleman who married Dad's sister, Fontaine. Fil and Fontaine died a few years back, but their son recently went to Indonesia, and returned with pictures of the dozens of Goeltoms and of the Batak Lutheran church Fil's Dad built. I remember Fil and Fontaine explaining to me that, according to Batak rules, I and every other Maury niece, nephew, and cousin was now a Batak relative, and considered family. That's a lot of white Southerners with a lot of acknowledged brown relatives, but when my aunt and uncle said it, it seemed warm and real. When my cousin H went back, they treated him like a cousin, even requiring his very blonde and Western wife to be silent during dinner like a good Batak woman.
Fil spent time in a Japanes concentration camp. They hanged his Dad in front of him. He was nearly nailed into an airplane against his will to be a Kamikaze. We believe he was tortured.
Then he came to America, met a pretty young and very opinionated brunette at an inter-faith social, and married her. Fil was very dear to my Dad and to my Grandpa, and we like to think the Maurys gave him some happiness, or at least a sense of peace. There are a lot of us, and we tend to be bookish and boisterous. But as a teenager, I knew he was sad. Which made me sad. He was one of the gentlest people I've ever known.
So I've got a squicky internal relationship with Japanese culture. I admire many Japanese artists, but then I know a bit about what Japanese soldiers did to the Batak. I know the generation who did those things is dying out, but the silence still knaws at me.
I have no idea how to talk to people about this, especially the Asians who are my friends. (Hell, I'd like to talk about it to any of my friends, but they don't get how moved I am by my uncle, and for many people I know, anything before 1969 might as well be Victorian.) And for all I understand the racial dynamics of the South, I'm still a neophyte to the social dynamics of Asia. But I loved Fil, and I love my cousin H a lot, and need to understand.
I imagine many people feel this way about America.
Love and confusion,
The Red Pooka!
Current music: George Crumb
I have a friend who's half Japanese, Anne Ishii—please check out her excellent blog, http://ill-iterate-anne.blogspot.com/—who writes a great deal about Asian issues, etc. Recently she linked to a piece about the Canadian government asking for an apology from Japan over Japanese comfort women.
I'm in my thirties, and back reading (and reviewing) comics, which means lots of manga. I love the freshness of the medium. And Japanese culture is huge in design and art now. Ok, that's the sort of over-arching statement Anne rails against, so apologies.
While I was home, I got to talking w/Dad about my Uncle Fil, or Fillipus Ishmael Goeltom, an Indonesian nobleman who married Dad's sister, Fontaine. Fil and Fontaine died a few years back, but their son recently went to Indonesia, and returned with pictures of the dozens of Goeltoms and of the Batak Lutheran church Fil's Dad built. I remember Fil and Fontaine explaining to me that, according to Batak rules, I and every other Maury niece, nephew, and cousin was now a Batak relative, and considered family. That's a lot of white Southerners with a lot of acknowledged brown relatives, but when my aunt and uncle said it, it seemed warm and real. When my cousin H went back, they treated him like a cousin, even requiring his very blonde and Western wife to be silent during dinner like a good Batak woman.
Fil spent time in a Japanes concentration camp. They hanged his Dad in front of him. He was nearly nailed into an airplane against his will to be a Kamikaze. We believe he was tortured.
Then he came to America, met a pretty young and very opinionated brunette at an inter-faith social, and married her. Fil was very dear to my Dad and to my Grandpa, and we like to think the Maurys gave him some happiness, or at least a sense of peace. There are a lot of us, and we tend to be bookish and boisterous. But as a teenager, I knew he was sad. Which made me sad. He was one of the gentlest people I've ever known.
So I've got a squicky internal relationship with Japanese culture. I admire many Japanese artists, but then I know a bit about what Japanese soldiers did to the Batak. I know the generation who did those things is dying out, but the silence still knaws at me.
I have no idea how to talk to people about this, especially the Asians who are my friends. (Hell, I'd like to talk about it to any of my friends, but they don't get how moved I am by my uncle, and for many people I know, anything before 1969 might as well be Victorian.) And for all I understand the racial dynamics of the South, I'm still a neophyte to the social dynamics of Asia. But I loved Fil, and I love my cousin H a lot, and need to understand.
I imagine many people feel this way about America.
Love and confusion,
The Red Pooka!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Fairly large apology
Hi,
A few blogs ago, I said something about the South being about as racist as the North. Well, I ate crow along with my turkey a few days ago.
An article appeared in the Washington Post about hate crimes being more prevalent in the South. It had that horrible ring of truth, that oh-shit bell tone to it. I'm guessing they're right.
I've found a lot of racism in New York. I'm not sure what to call the 99 44/100 % pure white offices at The New Yorker. I've also found a lot of classism. Kinda blows my mind when I hear a person dressed as an unwashed E. Village hippie start on the tacky evils of the middle class. For those of you who live outside NYC, the translation is that the young man is a trust-funder slumming it, but this phenomenon is confusing the artistic scene to no end. Translation: I don't trust the well-off to save the world through money, art, or good deeds.
But yes, racism is in the South. I only have to hear my mom talk to her black house-cleaner to find it. I love my mom, and I love Ms. M, and it's vaguely entertaining to hear them do a Jeeves and Jim or rather a wily-black-servant and gracious dim massa routine. Ms. M. gets huge amounts of furniture from us each year, donations her partner, Mr. F. would rather not arrive "She's a damn pack-rat, I'll tell ya!" And mom feels more comfortable having an older black woman around. Some white people in the South, if they're of a certain age, the only tenderness they received was from black people. And the line between love and pay discretely buried.
Love, clean floors, and a guilty conscience,
The Red Pooka!
A few blogs ago, I said something about the South being about as racist as the North. Well, I ate crow along with my turkey a few days ago.
An article appeared in the Washington Post about hate crimes being more prevalent in the South. It had that horrible ring of truth, that oh-shit bell tone to it. I'm guessing they're right.
I've found a lot of racism in New York. I'm not sure what to call the 99 44/100 % pure white offices at The New Yorker. I've also found a lot of classism. Kinda blows my mind when I hear a person dressed as an unwashed E. Village hippie start on the tacky evils of the middle class. For those of you who live outside NYC, the translation is that the young man is a trust-funder slumming it, but this phenomenon is confusing the artistic scene to no end. Translation: I don't trust the well-off to save the world through money, art, or good deeds.
But yes, racism is in the South. I only have to hear my mom talk to her black house-cleaner to find it. I love my mom, and I love Ms. M, and it's vaguely entertaining to hear them do a Jeeves and Jim or rather a wily-black-servant and gracious dim massa routine. Ms. M. gets huge amounts of furniture from us each year, donations her partner, Mr. F. would rather not arrive "She's a damn pack-rat, I'll tell ya!" And mom feels more comfortable having an older black woman around. Some white people in the South, if they're of a certain age, the only tenderness they received was from black people. And the line between love and pay discretely buried.
Love, clean floors, and a guilty conscience,
The Red Pooka!
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