I've been down with the flu that past two days, and I'm still not quite right yet. But slowly, my chest has stopped burning, and that counts for something.
Recently, on the Etsy blog, a posting by Etsy member chaps676 brought forth some forgotten photos from the Sydney Police Museum. (You can read all of chaps676's blog posting here.) The photos feature men and women who'd had some run-in with the Sydney police force and were photographed and, very likely, fingerprinted.
The photo that I found to be the most arresting was that of Fay Watson, apparently snapped on March 26, 1928. There she is in her low-waisted, voile flapper dress, bobbed hair, long-strand knotted pearls, big fabric flower pin, and those heels--dare I say red?...could they be red? We'll never know, I guess, since the photo is in black and white--whose thin straps wrap around the ankles with more fuss than a Roman sandle. But it's her face that is most arresting (pun not intended). She's a woman with a story, sort of like Marlene Dietrich. But it's funny that, in none of the pictures, does she look directly at the camera. She consistently casts her eyes skyward in a gesture plucked directly from silent films or perhaps a publicity still...."Look to the sky, darlings!" I am assuming that the reason Ms. Watson is sitting for the portrait is because she's been had up for prostitution. Or perhaps she's been publicly drunk, but I suspect the former is the reason.
I think her name, "Fay", is so perfect for her particular look. I, too, once had an Aunt Fay, who was apparently both beautiful and wild, and after she ran at my uncle with a knife, was no longer welcome in the family. Or so the story goes. She was gone before I was born. Another woman had taken her place. Also, the word "fey" means behaving in a wild and unnatural way due to supernatural forces...or according to Scottish tradition, it can also mean the supernatural ability to make prophecies (Think of the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, Arthur's half sister). The French expression, la fée, also means fairy, the loose expression for anything supernatural. Morgan le Fay is a fascinating figure, who is perhaps unfairly vilified by later medieval literature.
So here is an image of a Australian woman who might not be entirely human, but maybe a little fey. Doesn't it look that way?
Plath's life was fairly unhappy, despite her achievements. Often, she wrings out this unhappiness and distills it into powerful, sometimes shocking poetry (I still remember the gasps of my students when we read "Daddy" out loud). And while I sense her desire to be empowered and destructive on her own terms (something she achieved in her poetry, since Ted Hughes is largely hated by feminists everywhere, and has been widely blamed for her suicide), I also sense a deep and abiding dissatisfaction with life. And this is blame that is not Ted's to own, but likely due to some deep unhappiness that Plath's psychological treatments never healed and maybe even exacerbated, given the technology of the period. Still, Plath's story and angry poetic confessions are the battle hymn of the wronged woman, and Hughes certainly did her wrong by fathering a child with another woman while still married to Plath (with whom he fathered two children, Frieda and Nicholas)
Once, when I was going through the poems I was teaching my Comp II students, I mentioned Plath and then Anne Sexton, whose poem "Cinderella" I often use in class. There may have been another poet mentioned as well, but I don't remember specifically who it might have been. I was putting my lecture together and making some casual comments as I worked, when Michael stopped, put his hand on my arm, and asked me, very solemnly, "Maybe you can include some uplifting poems?" He was right. It seemed like every poem I had in my lecture for two solid weeks involved grim disillusionment or outright references to annihilation. Sometimes, though, these have the most powerful language and strongest realizations about humans and about life. Nevertheless, I included some Ogden Nash and some happier Robert Frost (not the "lovely dark and deep, mind you....and definitely not the poem about the clattering saw) to keep things light.
I suppose I use the darker poems because I want to impress on students that poems are usually not about butterflies and flowers and cherubs floating on clouds. They can be serious and emotive (like Wendy Rose's "Three Thousand Dollar Death Song", which floored me when I read it the first time).
I have to say that, of late, I have become somewhat fascinated by Emily Dickinson. The picture of Dickinson (below, right) is purportedly the poet years after the iconic portrait taken at Mount Holyoke...and unless I am mistaken, the picture featured here has not yet been confirmed to actually be of Dickinson. To my knowledge, the only accepted portraits of the poet are a painting done during her short-haired girlhood and the aforementioned college photo.
I believe that Dickinson was what has now come to be known as a "Highly Sensitive Person." Visitors to the Dickinson's Amherst Homestead noted that Emily was witty but tense and sometimes quiet during social gatherings. A family friend and literary critic of the period, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, indicated that his visits with Emily drained him, largely because she was so openly unnerved by the interaction. In her late twenties, after returning from Mount Holyoke, she became increasingly reclusive and eventually retreated to her bedroom, which became the Sanctum Sanctorum where her 1,700 poems were written.
This morning, I wrote another article about Emily Dickinson, an interpretive guide to the poem, "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant." You can read that article by clicking here.
Something this article does not broach, simply because it's off topic, is that Emily is reported to have had very passionate correspondence with the widowed Massachusetts Judge named Otis Lord, a man more than twenty years her senior. Some scholars speculate that this is what the poem "Wild Nights!" is about. You can see some of the correspondence here, at the Emily Dickinson Museum, where some of Dickinson's letter drafts have been digitized for view. Apparently, the two had considered marriage, but perhaps Dickinson's introverted nature (and likely fear of the emotional incursions that her new life and role might entail) prevented this from ever coming to pass.
These letters, however, are amazing to see. (How have I seen them? Just click on the yellowing sheet at the top right hand corner of the museum's web page, once you access the link posted above--the link is associated with the words "here, at the Emily....") Her script is like a briskly shaken string that winds wildly over the page in short bursts. Here and there, she has crossed things out, found another word to sharpen her meaning. It's simply amazing to see this frank expression of the writing process.
I have a new article up at Suite 101, a site for which I've written on and off since early 2009. I generally write about literature, especially those poems and stories I teach in my courses. Today's topic is Emily Dickinson's "The Soul Selects Her Own Society". You can read the article by clicking here.
Another article, written in 2009 and titled Understanding Thomas Hardy's Ruined Maid, seems to help students, since I get comments of gratitude on the interpretation page frequently at the end of each academic semester. And it is this article's success that encouraged me to reapply to write for the site, in conjunction with my appreciation of the section editor, Julie Burtinshaw, who has a careful and kind eye.
The wonderful Hope Clark, whose weekly email leads I receive each Friday, recently wrote an article about these content sites, like Suite 101 and About.com. She indicated that they have helped to impose a disquieting industry standard; that is, writers produce an enormous word count and apply hard-won subject knowledge for little or no money. To make clear what she means requires more explanation. At Suite 101, revenue is generated not by page views but by ad clicks. That means, you might visit an article page, but the writer only earns a portion of a cent when someone clicks on those (somewhat annoying) hyperlinks advertising belly blasters and whatever else stands beside or interrupts the article text. And so, over the past two years, with a year-and-a-half-long intermission, I've made about enough money to buy half a tank of gas for my large, green, yet not-very-eco-friendly behemoth.
However, I look at it this way: I'm supplying content for the possibility of making money. And believe me, there have been many more times in my life when I've supplied content and made nothing at all, without even the prospect of making anything ever on the words supplied. At least, at Suite101, I know that my words are read (and apparently prove helpful to someone) while I get, albeit slowly, some jingle for my pocket. Plus, I get to geek out on one of my favorite subjects: literature. What could be better? Well, okay. Two hundred dollars per article. Sure, that would be fantastic, but with the way the industry is right now, I'll take what provides that jingle in between working on larger writing projects.
While I'm on the subject, I'd like to give a shout-out to an excellent site I found while reasearching today. Check out Clattery MacHinery's blog. (Cute name, by the way.) There are some amazing photos and interesting poetry considerations there.
Exciting news! My review of DIY: A Revolution in Handicrafts, an exhibition that appears at Pittsburgh's Society for Contemporary Craft (SCC) is now in the Feb/March issue of the gorgeous American Craft Magazine.
<-- (pictured: "Migrant", 2009 by Kate MacDowell)
Happily, the excellent Society for Contemporary Craft (SCC) has a pdf-accessible version of the article on their website. Check out the whole review, with images, by clicking here. I'm excited to be part of this magazine, especially since I remember sitting in my college library, back in the mid-1990s, reading it with awe. This was one magazine I aspired to be in, and I'm grateful to be there this month.
In the meantime, check out the DIY for yourself, via the virtual tour on the SCC site. (Scroll past the description to see the lovely pictures!) Or better yet, get down there and check it out for yourself. It's up until March 26, 2011.
In searching for some info on the New Yorker's slushpile, and whether stories submitted there ever emerge in the magainze, I found this page, and the following Q & A (you'll find the question below about mid-way down the page):
Q: What was your reaction to [the Swedish Academy member] Horace Engdahl’s comments that American writers are “too isolated, too insular” and “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture”? Do you know of any writers who defy this characterization? --Philip Bestrom
A: I would hope that writers everywhere are sensitive to trends in their own culture. We rely on them to notice, to dissect, and to record social behavior so that we can learn from it, build on it, or improve it. As for insularity among American writers, I have yet to encounter any." -- Deborah Triesman, for the New Yorker
Horace Engdahl's diatribe (you can read it in its entirety at The Guardian by clicking on the word "comments" above) is a generalization--certainly not every American writer is exclusively introspective...looking into his or her own personal, regional, or national concerns, although this exists, I think, among younger writers. But, but, but....I qualify this statement with the idea (expanded below) that this tendency towards personal (and as Engdahl calls it, "insular") interests also has the potential to teach humanity, at large, something about itself and where it stands...perhaps also where it is going, if it continues on the current path. But more on this in a moment.
First, I want to say that I like Deborah Triesman's answer, and I've inadvertantly used a version of Triesman's idea to justify and explain the value of studying fiction to my more reluctant Gen Ed literature students. Through reading fiction, poetry, and drama, they (hopefully) learn how to analyze and understand themes--the underlying meanings that are intended to teach something about life, about ourselves. Often, literature reveals (for the students who take the time to read and understand the works presented) a similarity of experience. And important to remember is that stories, poems, and drama are frequently the avenues by which a writer deals with his or her own experiences (right now, I've got The Glass Menagerie in mind as an example) or helps to make sense of the seemingly inexplicable. Writing is catharsis for both writer and reader (Now I'm thinking of Sophocles and Aristotle...tragedy as didactic catharsis....)
Certainly, these characteristics are true of literature from decades before, when we, the readers, recognized in dynamic characters a similarity of experience: We were not alone in our difficulties, our inability to pay the rent or to find happiness. And I admit that this perception, too, is a generalization. And even as American storytelling has become filled with microcosmic cataclysms and personal neuroses that seem significant only in their trainwreck-worthy ability to fascinate, this fiction--this contemporary literary expression--reveals a great deal about the state of the human condition now. We are in a particular mind-set that informs how and what we write about.
So, this brings me back back to what I promised two paragraphs ago. What does America's contemporary fiction--meaning the fiction of right now, in all its fragmented and shortened formats--tells us objectively about our mental state now? Well, for one, we are obsessed with crime and disaster. We are frequently giddy with schadenfreude, and we are subject to short bouts of concentration. Contemporary flash--as it is coming out of online writers now--is, in broad terms, a portrait of our disaffected culture. Our 180-degree view of the world (like that of the 19th-century) is considerably narrowed, even as our everyday expectations are higher. This is what fuels contemporary literature, and by contemporary, I mean work appearing in online literary journals, from which indie and sometimes mainstream books are later born. Here the most prominent indie voices reveal our world view, which seems to be getting smaller, more concentrated on the dark, showing us to be less optimistic. We no longer seek solutions or life prescriptions, like Thoreau and Emerson. We don't hitch our wagons to stars. We don't necessarily seek political engagement. We appear not to be a hopeful bunch, but one focused on human weakness in its myriad forms.
So what are we now, if contemporary literature gives us a clue to our identities? I'm open to discussion.
In this week's edition of Pittsburgh City Paper, my review of the exhibition Scale appears. Here's an excerpt:
"Prefaced by a square of empty pint jars (referencing moonshine), "Guffey Hollow" is a loose interpretation of a noted McKees Rocks speakeasy, where Italian anarchists gathered in the years before and after McKinley's assassination. The walls are filled with newspaper facsimiles detailing violence committed against immigrants, including intimidation techniques enacted by gun-toting Klansmen. The installation is studded with other artifacts like dusty 45s, belt buckles and hooks for closing high-button shoes.
The effect is haunting. The mixture of period and contemporary music brings the installation out of the early 20th century and into the 21st, spurring visitors to consider contemporary parallels to the immigrant anarchists' plight. What similar oppositional forces do grassroots revolutionaries and independent thinkers now face?"
I know, I know....I promised a discussion of movies today. And I did watch Red last night, and maybe I'll get to that because it was good. Very good. Full of symbolism. But, through a series of events I don't exactly remember, I rediscovered the following article by Chris Hedges, whose political and social commentary I've always found especially astute...dark, but astute. The following passage struck a nerve in me because of personal experience, past and present. First, check out Hedges' passage. A link to the full article, published in 2008, follows his text:
"The elite schools, which trumpet their diversity, base this diversity on race and ethnicity, rarely on class. The admissions process, as well as the staggering tuition costs, precludes most of the poor and working class. When my son got his SAT scores back last year, we were surprised to find that his critical reading score was lower than his math score. He dislikes math. He is an avid and perceptive reader. And so we did what many educated, middle-class families do. We hired an expensive tutor from The Princeton Review who taught him the tricks and techniques of taking standardized tests. The tutor told him things like “stop thinking about whether the passage is true. You are wasting test time thinking about the ideas. Just spit back what they tell you.” His reading score went up 130 points. Was he smarter? Was he a better reader? Did he become more intelligent? Is reading and answering multiple-choice questions while someone holds a stopwatch over you even an effective measure of intelligence? What about those families that do not have a few thousand dollars to hire a tutor? What chance do they have?" -- Chris Hedges, "The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff"
I'm an adjunct, a very poorly paid adjunct. I spend 16 weeks each semester doing a great deal of work for far less than minimum wage, and that's with three or four classes and their relevant office hours, prep time, grading time, and dealing with the whitewater churned by abusive students. Believe me, I've had them. And at community colleges, especially as an adjunct, you are on your own. Get tough, girl, or go home. But, putting that aside, the issue I mean to get to here is that I spend a great deal of time in my composition and rhetorics classes on "critical thinking." I tell my students that this is one of the most important skill sets that you can leave college with. I often say, "Knowledge of statistics and factual details is extremely important to your future professions, but critical thinking is something you will use in every facet of your life. Consider critical thinking to be equivalent to freedom of choice--the freedom to make an informed decision. Look for the deeper message: what are they really saying when this author or commentator tells you something? Or, what is the real agenda? What does this word mean in light of what you already know?"....etc, etc. I tell them that the words "should" and "must" and the phrase "have to" should make red flags go up in their minds because each of these signal an imposed opinion, including the statement I have just made. If they are aware of these "watch words" and their implications, they then have the choice to follow the prescription or ignore it. There are some students who pay attention, and for this, I am grateful. But many of them could give a rip. So, I teach to those who (I think) do care. That's all I can do.
Lately, I've been having trouble getting any of my work published. I'll call it creative non-fiction because while it is embellished, it is largely based on truth. One of these works is about the education system, a system that makes it hard for adjuncts to give the grades students actually earn, grades that would fail out most of these students who do not invest the appropriate amount of effort. The schools themselves are worried about retention numbers because high numbers means earning power and access to government allocations.
An adjunct, whose pay is never assured from one semester to to the next, who must often smilingly accept the cancellation of and non-payment for classes they've spent weeks preparing for, fears the loss of work if the administration must become involved in too many students appeals. And I'll tell you, students will appeal everything with more might than they ever applied to their course work. By and large, they will not accept a C, even if their work really has consistently warranted a D or worse (we're often talking one-page, hand-written submissions on notebook paper, when it was supposed to be a two-page typewritten assignment). They will not accept being told they cannot take the final exam even if they failed to show up for it. The list of student expectations goes on. All of these students, who receive a grade commensurate with their lack of effort, travel directly to the administration and file a complaint, against which said adjuncts must mount a defense to justify the grade awarded.
Many of these students are going into the healthcare field, which I find relatively frightening. Some of them manifest such a lack of engagement that I wonder what kind of healthcare workers they will become. Their desire seems only to text during class (either furtively or sometimes openly), to watch the glowing smart phone screen instead of the information being presented on the board. Some of them are so high when they get to class, I can see their expansive pupils all the way at the front of the room, or I can tell that they can't keep their eyes open. Many openly sleep as soon as class begins. And I wonder why they bothered to show up. Often, they do not. Combine this with their combative nature over having to write a 5-7 page paper by the end of the semester, and I realize that, if this is the new student--the future of this country, or at least this region--we are in serious trouble. This behavior and this failure to engage in anything but social experiences, suggests that our nation will simply continue to decline. If they do not develop their critical thinking skills, these students will continue to be lead by whoever looks good, whoever has the most superficially 'persuasive' speech (I use the word 'persuasive' loosely), or whoever can blow the thickest smokescreen. Some of these students, I would wager, won't even participate at all. It's like an opium den in so many of my classes, although the opium can be anything from weed to dilaudid (I'm guessing on this from the slurred speech and closing lids) to texting to Facebook for the iPhone --they're hooked on things that have little value to real life and its true issues.....
...and then, I realize that I, who studied extremely hard and graduated at the top of my class and went abroad on a relatively prestigious scholarship, am teaching for less than minimum wage and taking abuse for it to boot. And I wonder if these kids don't have it right after all. Maybe everything I'm teaching them is completely irrelevant to the new society we appear to be moving into. Isn't celebrity gossip and mean-spirited talk the common currency, replacing constructive debate and the critical thinking I hold in such high regard. And this is why I wrote the last two paragraphs to a story that has not found a home and likely will not find a home at any publication I currently know of:
"And your life lesson is that thinking is neither profitable nor fashionable. It is not even very highly valued. And so, to a large degree, it is avoided. When you teach a segment on how to analyze an essay, how to deconstruct and understand an idea’s expression, eyes glaze over, brains switch off, heads go down to gaze at the glowing screens held behind purses or under desks—the screens illuminating faces with that ghoulish glow that says everything about their hypnotic effect. You say nothing because you’ve stopped believing in what’s coming out of your own mouth. You follow your notes, you make jokes because that is how you get through it. And then you administer the final test, the test they are all stumbling through now.
When the students depart, handing you their completed exams, some avert their eyes, sheepishly. Nearly all of them go out of the room with their heads down, looking into the shining oracle that beams more important data into their brains than you’ve ever given them. They scroll through Facebook updates, YouTube postings, dynamic pop-up ads, celebrity gossip. And you wonder if they’ve had it right all along, if they actually know more than you do. You wonder: is anything I’m teaching them really of value in this world after all?"
-- me, from "The Value of a Community College Education" (submitted under a pseudonym to protect the innocent, but in reality, who's innocent here?)
And so this is my two cents for the day, a day when I go back into the trenches (that is, the classroom) to fight the good fight. What I write here may seem ridiculous to some people, but I think it reveals everything about where this region--no, this entire nation--is headed. Students now are social bellwethers. So, where exactly are you leading us, kids?
Many years ago, in college, I saw this movie. I remember the landfill scene, where poor protagonist Karol (holding the improvised comb-instrument above), is pulled from a trunk-style suitcase he used to sneak back into Poland without his passport. He is beaten by the airport baggage handlers, who believed the trunk was filled with saleable items. As you can probably imagine, they were somewhat disappointed to have found a man inside. The funny moment, of which there are very few at the beginning, is when Karol, his forehead bloody, lies flat against the earth and, looking out over the snowy ruin of the landfill, says, "I'm finally home." We know he means Poland, and Warsaw specifically, but here 'home'--in the context of the dump--has implications of a personal, political, and social nature. His life has been pretty unpeasant up to then. But more on this later, when I have time to expatiate (read: geek out) on the symbolism. Also, tonight (or maybe tomorrow night), I'll be watching the last of Kieslowski's Tricolor Trilogy, Red, which supposedly ties Blue and White together. I saw Blue back in...oh, 2005....maybe 2004. Can't remember exactly. It was before I moved back to Pittsburgh. I even brought the DVD with me when I came to WV. So, so, so...more on this all tomorrow. Right now...work calls.
Thank you to Lemmy Caution for telling me about the most recent Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie, Micmacs! Jean-Pierre Jeunet is six kinds of amazing (what, I wonder, lives inside his mind...what kind of furniture, for example...steampunk, perhaps? Maybe not...there'd be some Victoriana for certain). Dig the trailer here:
So, while we're on the subject of film...well, in this case, it might be more aptly defined as "media-related interests," I just posted an editorial on the new USA program, "Fairly Legal", which debuts next week. You can read the whole posting here. And in the meantime, here is a paragraph excerpt:
"Let’s talk about USA’s new program Fairly Legal. It reveals something significant about our culture, something we should be more attune to. Of course, it takes a crack at the supersaturated law profession, from which ridiculous cases inevitably precipitate. And this precipitate matter is what “fairly legal” is supposed to be about. However, it’s not really about the cases because they merely form a chaotic swirl around the central character and become a vehicle for her determinedly charming quirkiness. Important to note, too, is that the program is also offering an alternative to the nation’s surfeit of lawyers. So, instead of another lawyer, we are offered a mediator, one in stiletto heels, pencil skirts, and (I would wager) false eyelashes. She is a woman very likely just a nudge over 100 pounds, which makes her a potential flight risk on windy days."
I start teaching again next week, and I have, as my German professor Klaus J. used to say, "ein volles Program." Seven courses at two different institutions. I'm building my World Lit online class right now. This morning, I finished constructing a test on the Popol Vuh. I also have a column deadline at the end of the week, so really, I should be reviewing books right now. Where did this month go, exactly?
Hopefully, later this week, my review of the exhibition SCALE, currently on view at SPACE Gallery in Pittsburgh's cultural district, will appear in CityPaper. I feel like I wrote it a long time ago. It's an interesting show, definitely worth seeing but closes February 6th.
Soon, the February/March issue of American Craft should be available. There, a review of the exhibition DIY: A Revolution in Craft, currently on view at the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh's Strip District, will appear.
Now that I think of it...whatever happened to Liza Lou, who was Smithsonian American Art Museum's darling when I worked there back in the early 00's? I know she earned a MacArthur in 2002, but there hasn't been anything since 2008. Maybe she is working on something big....I know the beading can be tedious....we shall see, we shall see....in the meantime, let's reminisce:
There were strawberries from Florida in the grocery store this afternoon. They came home with me and took a dip in a double boiler filled with semi-sweet chocolate, soy milk, almond extract, and powdered coffee. *she sighs* Yum.
Well, I have to admit that this looks kind of awesome.....might be a bit hard to see around these parts, but it might land in Pittsburgh. (Pun certainly not intended). I'm assuming Adele is the lovely Edwardian clad woman (of, apparently, many other guises) and not the pterodactyl.
I have to say that I miss watching Jean-Pierre Jeunet movies. My favorite was A Very Long Engagement, which appeared in 2004. Sometimes I show the movie's opening scenes to my students to demonstrate how absolutely horrible trench warfare was, even when mortar fire was not falling. The scene during which soldiers are blowing off each other's thumbs (so they might be sent home) at the minute-strike of a chiming pocket watch usually gets an expression of shocked disgust from the audience. Of course, it follows that none of the soldiers who did this got sent home, but were instead court marshaled and condemned to fend for themselves in the no-man's land between enemy trenches. Ooo...ooo...even though I think Jean-Pierre Jeunet is worth his weight in large gold ingots, let us not forget that A Very Long Engagement was actually based on a novel by the so-called "Graham Green of France," namely the late author, screenwriter, translator, and director Sébastien Japrisot.
Yes! Let's not forget the writers in this world. Without them, where would so many movies come from? And I'm talking screen plays, too of course, not just novels. I've heard that writers get the shaft pretty frequently in Hollywood. A cousin, who wrote the TV series Moonlight (no, no, I am not related to Stephanie whatever-her-name is. No, this is a small-screen show about a vampire detective whose wife turned him in the 1950s and now he is in love with a blonde cop. Sort of like Angel, but slightly different. Yeah? Well okay, that show.) Anyway, Trevor once said that even though he lived in Hollywood, he tries not to be a douchebag. Very telling comment there. From all accounts, the studios gave him a pretty rough time. But I see Moonlight has gone into syndication of SyFy, so hopefully he's making a bit of money from his work.
Anyway, I like to geek out of period films. Yes, I'm one of those kinds of girls. I love the costumes, the set, the antiques, the mystery. While I have to say I enjoyed the new True Grit (Rooster is much darker here, less heroically hokey, more realistic...sorry, John. If it's any consolation, Michael still prefers your performance to Bridges') and all it's genuinely flawed characters (except for the new Lucky Ned Pepper, who was too strange to have lived so long on the lam), I really, really dug looking around at all the pretty set pieces. Maybe no one else pays attention to the color of the shades on the gas lamps or the coarseness on the ticking of the wool coats, but I do. There's beauty and believability in those details. I know the movie makers know it, but sometimes we forget.
I mean, look at these stills (from A Very Long Engagement), for example. Look at the wide mirrored walls, the pressed glass cruet set, the woman's hat piled high with fabric flowers, and tell me that this wasn't a gorgeous period to be living in (freakin' scary yes, but away from the Western fronts, the cities are literally filled with functional artwork...almost everywhere). We live in the Age of Plastic, which to me, is dull by comparison. But look, look, look at this crystal and silver magnificence here:
This is why I go to auctions. To see this stuff, which has gone the way of the Dodo, I'm very sorry to say. Still, it lives on in Europe...it lives on in the everyday life of Germans, at least. Parisians, too. I know it does only because I saw it. They use glasses, real glasses. They serve their coffee cups on silver trays with little wrapped sugar cubes that I ate like candy.
But also, there is this. As opposed to the opulence of the cafe above, of life outside war, outside prison, there is this grim scene. Grim but also magnificent. And Marion Cotillard in her quiet, anguished sensuality, wears it well. A kind of wayward Magdelene. (And if only I could find a picture of her weapon, which was somehow rigged to her corset and stockings...fantastic!).
These are the kinds of things that make me want to write stories. To recreate these strange and gorgeously detailed tableaux of historical life and emotion in the extreme, like this story...this one about the radium girls...keep reading, scroll to the end. The details, they get better for you, worse for poor Beverly, who puts her lost molars next to her confirmation pearls in her jewelry box.
The day before, she’d had her final surgical consult. The doctor had not been present, only the nurse practitioner. It had become so common now that the doctors no longer came for the final meeting before the procedure. In fact, she was told that there was every likelihood she would see only the anesthesiologist and be out cold before the surgeon even entered the room.
“You have no worries,” the nurse practitioner said warmly, passing the last pink triplicate form over for Becca to sign. Becca looked at it for a moment before the woman hastened her on, “Just a formality. Consent and all.”
“But I don’t consent to this,” said Becca, looking up at the woman, whose starched white coat gave the impression that she was a doctor. “I was told I had to.”
“No, that’s right,” the woman said, nodding and then looking down at another sheet of paper. “What you’re signing there is a consent for payment coverage. This means you won’t have to pay for the procedure.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Well, you can pay for the procedure out of pocket, but I don’t think you want to do that when the system will pay for it.”
“No, I meant, do I have to go through with this?”
“Well, by law you have to. And really, thinking in compassionate terms, I don’t see why you wouldn’t. The child will never be able to live a normal life. And, frankly, Ms. Mehl, you can’t delay much longer without the procedure being inhumane. You’re at 22 weeks. Quite honestly, you should have seen a doctor sooner. As I said, by law, this has to be done when test results come back positive, like yours have. So, if you’ll sign the papers, we’ll get this finished up.”
Dying birds and fish first in Arkansas and now in Louisiana? Hmmmm....that sparks a half dozen conspiracy theory stories in my little brain. But, in the meantime, here's a little something I wrote back in 2008. Of course, we know the current situation isn't West Nile, but perhaps it really was 1,000 screaming spirits in a possessed body. Hey, you never know. Here's the excerpt from the unpublished novel (<--oh how I disdain the word novel...it just sounds, well, hokey, I guess, but it's the word that best fits the piece of writing this excerpt comes from):
"....David’s consciousness, his memory—whatever he had become now that he was in this new observer’s vantage point—was unsure of his own capabilities. He was doubtful of his capacity for movement, but, by concentrated force of will, was able to catch up to and stay with the body. It was already in the garage by the time David got there, already putting the car into reverse and backing out. When David drew close enough to the driver’s side window, the body’s elemental magnetism pulled him towards it with such force that he was sucked in, through a filter of glass and fabric, which ruffled his atomic structure and gave him a weak electric charge. Inside, David saw his spinal column glowing with a phenomenal light, and on each vertebra, there was the faintest suggestion of a human face, of a screaming human face. The sound they made was piercing, above any auditory range perceptible to humans. It subdued him instantly and the rest of the ride became a velvety, but irretrievable darkness.
The car—Roger’s car, which sped along Route 30 and down 15 towards Frederick, Maryland—awoke masses of roosting birds with the piercing acoustic dissonance emitted by the spiritual core of its solitary human passenger.The next day, more than two dozen birds were found dead beneath their nighttime perches. The discovery was interpreted by authorities as a confirmation that the West Nile Virus was indeed spreading north." -- from The Davidian Odyssey
I'll admit I've been watching Twilight Zone reruns late into the night on the Syfy network, and I had a nightmare about "Talkie Tina" before I woke up this morning. *shuddering* Is this where Chuckie came from, I wonder?
So, the most important news: At Gently Read Literature, a review of Jim Meirose's Crossing the Trestle, a collection of short fiction published by Cleveland-based Burning River Press, is live. Read the review here. Meirose's book is wonderful, filled with carefully considered portraits and strong symbolism. You can buy Meirose's book directly at the Burning River storefront.
In the meantime, an excerpt from the review (referencing the story "Stellazine and the Mudpies"):
"The title character is a lovable misanthrope, an aging woman, not friendless but ecstatically cynical, who is stuck inside a dilapidated gas station off an interstate that facilitates the high-speed disregard of what her store offers (although it should be mentioned that Stellazine gets quite a few customers over the course of the story). The woman creates a physical manifestation of her disdain in the form of small tarts apparently filled with mud, which she sells to the unwitting and easily persuaded."
Q: "What are you doing New Yeee-ar's...New Yeeee-ar's Eve?" A: Well, for our part, we worked, hiked, and cooked. C'est ca:
Savannah loading the pressure cooker after a long hike with the boyz. Nope, I absolutely cannot fit one more appliance on my counter.
Man, the place looks like a serious mess in this picture.
It's not that bad in person. Honest.
Beef stew in the pressure cooker, with Guz-grown potatoes.
Mmmm.....cornbread out of the oven.
And, the finished product: beef stew with a cornbread hat (at a jaunty angle).
Today I finished an article about 
