On Q&As and Lists

Yesterday ended up being a pretty cool day.

I decided to do TaiBo -- or however you spell it -- from a YouTube video, and now my back and arm muscles are aching. My legs ache, too, but in different places from when I run. So, that was a good workout, I would say. In the middle of that workout, however, guess what showed up? Yep, the sun. The rest of the day was glorious, sunny and not too warm or too cold. That was good because I ended up walking all the way to the place where I gave my talk, and the walk was beautiful and invigorating.

The talk went quite well. There were fewer quotes that lent themselves to any sort of dramatic reading, but I did have slides that helped illustrate some of the extended families involved. Plus, illustrations give people something else to look at other than me or the clock. The audience appeared to be attentive at more points than usual -- although my "usual" involves a half-conscious class of overworked freshman, so my perspective may be a bit off. Since I often get myopic in my writing -- easy to do when working with a small group of people -- the questions afterward always help me step back and look at bigger pictures. That sometimes freaks me out because I sometimes wonder how far afield I should read in order to head off these sorts of questions.

That may be a weakness, or a danger of weakness, in my work. I always try to anticipate any question and answer them ahead of time. If you try to do that, then you can get bogged down in addressing everything anyone could ever possibly ask and you don't get to your own point or get anything at all done. The opposite end of the spectrum is one in which you simply skate along on the surface and leave your audience with only the most basic facts. (Actually, that's what I have to do with the next paper, but that's another story.)

While the questions asked were good, there weren't many. I wonder what that means if you present a paper and then the audience looks at you much like that freshman class -- just a little more conscious. This happened both yesterday and in England. I wonder if I've stunned them and if they are sitting there thinking "dear god! Where to start?" Was it perhaps the timing, with people hoping to cut the question and answer section short in order to get to lunch or the bar? It's almost a let down when they don't have much to say in response. Of course, I'm not sure what I expect -- o.k., I'm not sure what I realistically expect. (Unrealistically, I expect a standing ovation, shouts of "author! Author!," confetti raining down from the ceiling, and maybe a little trophy. That never happens.)

Anyway, I'd say that I gave an A- performance, and I'm quite proud of that. I do like presenting my work like that, too.

The next paper will be in the northern counties. The Grand Dame historian asked me to speak at her college, but she wants a paper for a general audience. As I'm thinking about it and organizing it, I'm realizing that task may end up being more difficult than I anticipate. One thing I can remember about putting it together is that the audience generally knows nothing about the Big Guy, and I don't have to anticipate questions about eugenics and the Moynihan report and so forth. That may help make the task less frustrating. I've also been asked to give a paper down toward the west country. I'm thinking they will get one that I've already given, since I should spend less time on writing papers and more on writing chapters.

Today's first task? Focus. Much like going to the grocery store without a list, if I don't have one for the day, I'll just amble about discovering things that I didn't know that I needed to do and not do what I absolutely must do. So, first item of business. Make the dang list! I'm pretty sure I won't get much writing done today. In fact, now that I think about it, the second item on the list is to make a list of places to research in Ireland. The third item is to list the women and points I want to make for the next paper. It will be a list of lists!

Since the sun has decided to grace us with its presence again today, I may drag the Gentleman Caller on a long walk later. I've been eyeing this hiking trail that goes up into the mountains. That would be lovely.

Eventually, I will post more pictures, but Blogger takes so long to upload that I have to set aside a big chunk of time. In fact, my computer is taking longer and longer to do most things. Maybe that's a sign of its age. One year in computer years must be like 30 or 40 in human years. Jeez, but I hate that. For the price, I expect the dang thing to work well for at least ten.

Now, onward to the lists!

The Mojo is Not Working Very Hard This Week

My trip to London and the conference, followed by the visit of our Lovely Houseguest, was fantastic; but, alas, I seem to have lost my rhythm. That happens, doesn't it. We are headed out to the northern counties later this week, too, so I suspect that I won't get it all back until next week. I just have to not fret about the silly things that I tend to fret about when this happens.

Today, I deliver the paper on the Big Guy's mother. I'm not overly confident about it. I have some Powerpoint slides to show, illustrating different parts of the paper, and I am starting by playing few lines of Paul Robeson singing "Motherless Child," which often runs through my head when I write about this. Still, as I read through I, I sense the weaknesses of the paper. I kept the question, and they will remain as guides for my secondary research. I've been using J-Stor to find articles, rather than books, but I could have really used my volumes of Deborah Gray White, Jacqueline Jones, and Stephanie Camp, among many others.  Still, I'm treating this as a work in progress, and the presentation as a way of getting feedback on what I have so far. I wish conferences were more like that rather than a presentation of finished work and an advertisement for that finished work. At least, that's what conferences feel like to me. I've been told that is what they were like twenty years ago.

Anyway, I'm not as confident about this paper as I was about the one that I gave last week; and this one doesn't offer as dramatic reading material as the one last week -- no one is calling anyone a "Jezebel" or a "Delilah" or a "tool." I must practice before I give it, but otherwise, I'm about as ready to go as I can be.

Meanwhile, I do believe winter has arrived here. The average temperature was in the 60s and now it is in the 50s. Plus, we have quite a bit of rain. I wouldn't mind so much, but my workouts take place outside. I'm going to need warmer workout clothes, and a workout hat; but I'm uncertain as to how to cope with the rain other than to suck it up and go. Yesterday, I gave up and found a kickboxing workout on YouTube and had a good sweat inside. It wasn't as good as running 6 miles, but it was better than nothing, and I feel different muscles today.

I have to workout, not just for the weight maintenance and all of that business, but for my mood and because it seems to have a symbiotic relationship with writing. I especially like working out outside because I can get what little sun rays that seep through the clouds, which also helps my mood. My mood is a big concern because one can only expect happy pills to do so much. They need a little catalyst to work optimally.

I know that the endorphins from the workout keep my mood elevated; but I'm not sure about the connection between the workout and the writing. Maybe the sedentary work of writing, sitting all day inside my head for four to eight hours at a time, requires a counterpoint of rhythmic physical effort to push me into another part of my head and down into my body. Maybe I need the simple change of scenery from my desk to wherever I'm working out (which is the reason that the YouTube workouts are going to be an inadequate but necessary substitute). Maybe working out is a good excuse for productive procrastination when my brain has fatigued. Maybe I can attend to all of my anxieties by doing both and therefore am not plagued by those anxieties. Maybe I like the psychological balance of attending to body and brain. Whatever the reason, I know that this works for me and always has. I'm happiest when I can do both.

Now, I must rehearse my paper. I'm thinking that this will be the chapter that I will work on once I've finished writing the next paper -- the one that I will be giving in December. It will be fairly weak, but I think I can also pull it together the fastest because of my limited sources at the moment. Then, I'll have the problems stewing in the back of my head as I work on the rest of the story. Then, I'll turn to the chapter that will include women in Ireland and England, while I have the resources near me. Of course, maybe I should switch the order, now that I think about it. Ah, well, both will get done. 

Alas, as I look at the rain coming down quite hard outside the window, I don't think a run outdoors will get done.  Kickboxing it is for today. Perhaps my coordination will improve!

On Musketeers and Jammies

The other night, the Gentleman Caller and I went to see The Three Musketeers --  in 3-D. I have to say, it was dreadful. The dialogue, the direction, the mangling of the story; but, more than that, the total defiance of logic, physics and history. Versailles fully constructed before Louis XIII? A "zeppelin" impaled on Notre Dame? A "zeppelin" in the seventeenth century? Trying to shoot down the "zeppelin" and not shooting the balloon part first? A woman surviving a drop from the "zeppelin" into the English Channel (Mythbusters proved that couldn't happen -- I saw that episode a few weeks ago)?Stupid, stupid, stupid.

What did we expect, right? Alas, we did expect the stupid, the incredibly stupid, and the unbelievably stupid. We were not disappointed. We were, however, surprised at the acting, which was acutally quite good. We went to see Titus Pullo -- the Irish actor Ray Stevenson, who played Titus Pullo so deliciously in the miniseries Rome and played Porthos in this -- but we were pleasantly delighted by Matthew McFayden, who played Arthur Clennam in the latest BBC version of Little Dorrit and was Athos in this. That man can act! I don't know who the actor was who played Aramis, but the three of them managed to make all three characters distinctive without verging into caricature. The real revelation was Orlando Bloom. My goodness, but he was fabulous, having a great time playing Buckingham! There was definitely not enough of him on screen. All in all, the four of them made up for the pain of the rest of the film. At least I had my knitting and got a significant chunk of my leg warmers knitted.

Yes, I said "leg warmers." It's cold and wet here, and my socks are nice and thick, but they don't go up far enough to keep my calves warm and dry, so I'm knitting leg warmers to wear under my pants and when I go out to jog. I've also knitted a scarf, and I have some neat, netting stuff to make another scarf that will look like a ruff.

But what I really need, what I really really need and cannot kint, are more jammies. Generally, I don't think about jammies. I just put them on and sleep, and sometimes on the weekends  wear them for most of the day. They are usually cast off bits of workout wear, like warm-ups pants and sweatshirts, because I know how to bring the sexy into bed, let me tell ya. Usually, I don't have too many pairs because they are jammies. For some odd reason, the types of clothes that I wear the most -- jammies and workout clothes -- I put the least amount of thought into, own the fewest number of outfits, and wear until they are shameful rags.

I normally don't notice this situation because I normally I also wear regular clothes, and I'm usually asleep in the jammies. Well, now? Now, I wear jammies for the bulk of the day.

Don't hate me!

O.k., you can hate me because I would probably hate me too. Still, nice work if you can get it.

I wake up, I drink my coffee, and then I write. I don't bother to get out of my jammies until I'm done writing and change into workout clothes. After the workout, I change into jeans and a sweater, but a few hours later, I'm back in my jammies. I have far more regular clothes, and even uniform clothes, than I need and not near enough of workout clothes or jammies.

Ah, the tragedy!

So, I need more jammies. I also need more sweatshirts and warm-up pants. My workouts take place outside and, just as I got used to cloudy weather in the 60s, the temperature drops to cloudy weather in the 50s. Once you get moving, it isn't so bad, and the cooler air is actually quite energizing; but you still need a few more layers than I anticipated when I packed. So, I shall be making a stop at a resale shop sometime soon.

Alas, the troubles of the kept woman!

Anyway, I'm just jabbering here to warm up. I have two warm ups for writing. One is this blog, which simply shakes the words loose and sweeps out some of the clutter in my brain. The other is a Big Guy journal, which focuses my thoughts on him. Sometimes, what I write about here accomplishes that task, as well. Other times, the warm-up includes what I call a "combing through" of what I have written the day before. That's actually a good thing to do because I can hop back onto that train of thought while also untangling my prose from the end of the previous day.

Today, I'm a little at a loss. I finished the shitty first draft of the most recent paper. The first part is not so bad, but the last part -- what I wrote yesterday -- is pretty darn shitty. I want it to stew for a day, and then I will look at it tomorrow. Today, I think I will do two things that aren't exactly writing. First, I'll begin an outline of yet a third paper that I have agreed to do -- asked by the Grand Dame who has been very supportive of my work since my first book and whose own work I have always admired.

Then, I will hop on Ancestry.com and see what I can find in their recently added Irish records about some anti-slavery people here as prelude to visiting the Quaker library sometime in the next few weeks. I should also, at some point, contact the National Library. I'd hate to waste the potential resources here, so I have to work in both writing mode and research mode. Usually, I don't do that. So, this shall be a learning experience in stretching my abilities.

Later, the Gentleman Caller and I hope to visit the Pearse Museum south of the city. We might also get in a good walk, so that could organize some ideas, too.

Goodness! A Guarda car just went by with its siren on. It sounded not like an American siren, but like a torpedo.

Conclusions, Argh!

Yesterday went quite well with the writing. I hit the average of a page per hour; and, as I wrote, I found new ideas lurking about in my head as I arranged some of the pieces on the page. I also had this great paragraph that might get cut, but it was lovely. You can always feel good if you can write something and admire your own work, even if it must go elsewhere. Not bad for a day's work.

Today, I can see, will be a pain. I knew this yesterday, which is the reason I did not get further along in the writing, despite the good average. You see, all I have left is the conclusion, and I really really stink at conclusions. I seldom have a conclusion in my head when I begin because then the conclusion becomes the introduction. I'm finally learning that the introduction is more about setting up the questions and the conclusion answers them. Still, I just have a difficult time being succinct.

To deal with this problem, I have to sit down with a pen and pad and ask myself, "what have you just said?" I have to shush the teenager in my head that says, "can't the reader figure it out from what I just wrote? I mean, sheesh! It should be self-evident!" Then, I ask myself part three of the method, "what is important about her and her connection to the Big Guy?" I list what I just said in the paper, and still that doesn't exactly describe what I do.

My best conclusions actually come from walks with the Gentleman Caller. I drag him on these marathon hikes through the city and start telling him what I'm trying to say. He grins and nods and adds a comment here and there, and I finally figure out how to finish the thing off. Then, when we get back, I sit down right away and jot it down before I stretch out. That may be what has to happen today.

Still, those walks only work if I've been sitting down and wrestling with the material before the walk. My mind remains engaged as my body moves, and then the two help one another. Walking is better for this, for some reason. Running, at some point, becomes hard work and requires more concentration. By "hard work" I mean that it becomes physically challenging and requires a bit more attention to my muscles to make sure that they are moving more efficiently.

The task for this morning, then, is to circle around the material and pounce. I must read over what I have written and start listing what I have concluded at each point, then pull those conclusions together for a grand finale that suggests the next point in the project.

In fact, that's what I should do. I began this particular paper by outlining the main project and explaining where this part fits. I can conclude by explaining where the rest of the project goes from here, much as like the conclusion of a chapter. That should work.

Here goes!

Of Beer and Gaols and Other Such Things

As I anticipated, yesterday yielded no words except my blog post. Instead, the Gentleman Caller, the Lovely Houseguest, and I went to the most touristy attraction in the city:

Yes, the Guinness Brewery. To say it was a tour would be a lie. People still say "tour," but really, it is a museum exhibit that borders on an advertisement for the beer. I don't like beer, never have and probably never will. My taste runs toward sickly sweet. Still, I can understand the reasons that beer drinkers like this beer, and I can also say that it is a magic ingredient in stew.

Despite my disinterest in beer, I did find interesting the explanations, told  in very general and simple, 1st grade science terms, of how beer is made.This was interesting. I can also say that this was related to my research because the Big Guy was a Big Temperance Guy, especially while in Ireland. His hosts in Cork, also big temperance people, sold a variety of soda waters and non-alcoholic beer. I know there is non-alcoholic beer today -- remember the campaign "it's what beer drinkers drink when they're not drinking beer?" (to which a friend said, "if you're not drinking beer, you aren't a beer drinker") -- but we can muck around in all sorts of chemicals to produce that. Now, I know that he was probably a brewer who just didn't add the yeast at the end. Sounds gross to me, but then I also don't like beer. The point being that I can say I did a little research on this visit.

For me, the museum had two excellent parts. First, they have an archive, and they let you know about it right up front as you walk in the door:

If I were a neophyte history student and a beer drinker, this is what I'd study. I wish I had known that you could do something like that when I was a neophyte history student, because then I would have written about the history of chocolate or candy or Halloween or something along those lines. Can you imagine the research!

In fact, now that I think of it, maybe a future book should be on the history of the Cadburys. They, after all, were involved in anti-slavery.

Anyway, the second wonderful thing about the museum was the view from the bar at the top of the building:

That's Christ Church in the foreground and Howth way back in the background. The bar is circular, so you can get an almost 360 degree view of the city and Wicklow hills. Very lovely! If they had wine there, I would have stayed all night. Sadly, they only served your "complimentary" glass of Guinness -- and no stew. Sadly for me, that is. The Gentleman Caller and the Lovely Houseguest were thrilled that they could split my pint, and I was happy to make them happy. Later that evening, I got my Guinness stew, and it was quite tasty!

We didn't just get liquored up. Earlier in the day we had gone to Kilmainham Gaol:

I'll save that for another post because I do have to write something on the Big Guy today. As I walked through the jail, however, I realized that a week ago, I had gone to the Tower of London, which also served as a jail and execution site -- like Kilmainham did -- and at the conference, I had attended a panel on women in prisons in the U.S. I began to wish I had gotten further into Foucault than the description of the regicide (actually, I still need sort of a Foucault for Dummies because I always feel not so bright when I try to read things like that).

The period and people that I study, the period and people that I studied when I first started on this history path, and the period and people in which I like to get my entertainment through trashy historical novels all concern control and punishment -- or liberation from control and punishment -- of bodies in some way. The people that I study now, in fact, want to free people's bodies and were concerned with the humane treatment of bodies, but at the same time they were very interested in getting people to control their behavior -- which is a different way of controlling bodies.

When you study enslaved women -- and the paper that I am writing at the moment about the Big Guy's enslaved mother -- you try to understand how they struggled to control their own bodies and attempt to read their actions in regard to their own bodies as part of that struggle. Stephanie Camp has an excellent book on the subject, showing how enslaved women dressed, fixed their hair, chose or rejected sexual partners, and negotiated their way through a host of forces to claim their own bodies as theirs.

I'm trying to read this behavior in the Big Guy's mother, but so much of what we know of her behavior came through him and was filtered through his own needs to use her life as representative of all enslaved mothers and his own need to understand her in relation to himself and his own sense of abandonment. A very delicate task, and I'm trying to be sympathetic to both when explaining behavior that seems callous or mean. Actually, I AM sympathetic, but I'm trying to express myself sympathetically, to invoke sympathy and understanding for my audience for these two figures as individuals.

Sometimes, I think, it is very easy to forget that abusive conditions do not make the abused behave nobly. Like, say, the girl picked on by the Mean Girls who then turns around and finds someone weaker to pick on and becomes the Mean Girl herself; or the molested pre-teen who turns around and molests a younger child; or the child interred in a concentration camp who steals food from another child in the camp.[This whole section that I've written here disappeared in the publishing process -- my computer is turning into HAL and eating chunks of my writing these days.] Abused people sometimes can seem mean, or self-focused, or neglectful when, in fact, they are attempting to protect their bodies and psyche from abuse meant to destroy both. They are trying to survive, and survival will make you do things that would otherwise seem base or even immoral in non-abusive situations. I think that may be part of survivor's guilt.

The big question is: how to describe those reactions that are less than noble without condemning the victim, without making the victim stand in for his or her whole race or class of people, and allowing the audience to understand the complexity of his or her reaction without condemnation -- and to do that in the absence of evidence from that person. I suppose that is where the artistry of a historian comes in, and the secondary literature and theory.

I'm working on that today. How to explain the Big Guy's lack of curiosity about the fate of his mother and the location of his mother's and grandmother's graves as well as the many other questions that he could have asked about them when he has the opportunity to get answers? Over three autobiographies, including two editions of the third, he explains all of these gaps in his knowledge about his origins. Yet, when he has the opportunity to fill in some of those gaps, he doesn't even ask the questions. I think part of the answer has to do with the fear of knowing the answer, or of not knowing the answer but knowing that he might not like the answer. He had come to the understanding that he writes in his autobiographies, it all fit together in a way that gave him peace. He didn't want to complicate that with any new information because complication would probably be traumatic and that part of his life was no longer relevant to his work.

Well, now I'm not writing the paper! Although I bet I can use some of this -- written more academically, of course -- in the paper. So, onward!

SiteMeter Says: People Consider Becoming Archivists

It's fall, and my SiteMeter indicates that people are considering careers as archivists. I wrote a series of posts several years ago as I was getting out of the archives field after my brief (and expensive) sojourn into it. In those posts, I was just trying to figure out what went wrong. All I can say now about the matter is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out not to be for me.

Still, people find those posts through Google search strings that say something like "becoming an archivist" or "how to be an archivist" and I feel as if they are asking me for advice. I don't like that responsibility, but I hope those posts help them in some way. I can say, that if I could go back and do things differently -- that is, if I had known my range of options and myself better back in, say 1989, when I graduated from college -- I would have probably gone to library school then. There would have been more jobs, then, too, and I would have felt rich on the paltry salary. Then, I would have worked my way toward the PhD, probably with a better sense of what I was doing as a historian and not worrying so much about what I would be qualified to do. I would have also figured out how to do history graduate school correctly too.

Another thing that I would have done differently was to go to a state school, not a private one, and certainly not a private one in New England. I made that choice for some dubious reasons that had to do with trying to "get it right" and "it" was being an undergraduate when I was closer to the undergraduates' mothers' ages than theirs. That was my issue. A smarter choice would have been a state school with a reputable program. Live and learn, and regret every month when you have to pay Sallie Mae.

I also would have ignored the advice of the "advisers" on the library school faculty. What do they know about the job market for archivists and librarians? Like in any professional school, the faculty know the job market for professors but not for professionals. The adjuncts on faculty, they usually know the market for the professionals because they are professionals for the other 8-12 hours each day when they aren't teaching this class in their specialty. I would have talked to them or to librarians and archivists, and then I would have actually listened to them and not to my issues.

In fact, if you are reading this or those posts that I wrote because you are considering this path, go do that -- ask someone who does the job you want, and then ask the person who works for them. Look around at the types of places where you want to work. Does the staff have a director and a bunch of volunteers and entry-level types but nothing in the middle? That's a bad sign. Remember that I was replaced by a volunteer at my last library job, and all of the upper level jobs were being consolidated over and over and over, and the people doing those jobs wouldn't delegate any work because that would mean that someone else could do their job and they could become expendible. If you see that going on, that's a bad sign.

One thing that I think I did do right was that I took every single technology-based class that I could, since I knew that digitization and online access for archival collections was the way to go (and I knew that becuse I was a historian!). Still is. I also tried to get a wide range of experience through the interships and summer jobs so that I could learn as many different things about as many different institutions as I possibly could.

Well, now I'm dispensing advice, and did not intend to do so. Whatever your situation, these are things to think about. It's a rough job market for anyone engaged in any intellectual pursuit -- heck,  for anyone trying to make a living.

As for writing, well, yesterday wasn't so productive; but I didn't think it would be from the start. I did write a whole paragraph. I know I won't get much done today. In fact, nothing at all because we are going out to play tourist today, which will be fun. Tomorrow, however, I will buckle down and finish up this section of the paper, if not the whole paper. I did come across an article that raised some questions that I had not thought of before about male slaves' responses to the rape of female slaves by the masters and about the way that the black women talked about rape and resistance in the WPA narratives. I'll have to look into that further when I have the resources.

Meanwhile, I'm more comfortable with the conclusion of questions, especially since the Big Guy himself was left with conclusions of questions. I'm not too sure that he tried to find out the answers to them either. I think he figured out what he needed to figure out for his autobiographies, wrote that narrative of his mother's life, and that closed the story for him because, to probe further might turn up answers that he did not want to know because maybe they were too unbearable.

Anyway, today we play. Tomorrow, I go back to the regular schedule. Good thing, too, because a break now and then is nice, but if it goes on too long, I start to feel lethargic and aimless, even if I'm doing other things.

Revelations at the Conference

I had a very interesting long weekend -- good in so many ways.

There was a conference in England where not-Clio was giving a paper, so the Gentleman Caller and I went over a bit early to see a play and a bit of London. Those are good things for another post for later this week. Suffice to say that we were total nerdy tourists and had great fun.

I've had some odd experiences at conferences in the past year or two. I'm still not sure how to explain all of them. Many have to do with other people behaving not so much badly -- because I'm not sure that all of them intended to be malicious (two did,  but that's another story) -- as letting their own insecurities and issues creep out. In fact, in a conversation with our lovely houseguest this week, I came to this realization that their behavior was, in fact, not about me so much as about them. The other people were letting their issues out, and those issues clashed with my issues, leaving me feeling very crappy. All of my odd experiences, in some way,  came back to my own insecurities and issues and the ways that I'm trying to understand my professional self and abilities.

For instance, earlier this year, after a big conference, I posted something about a person who was supposed to be on this very panel that I was on over the weekend. This person made me feel very small. Then, this person went on about hir Very Famous Adviser. This was the second time I had met this person and on the first occasion that person had gone on about hir Very Famous Adviser. In talking with our Lovely Houseguest, who knows this person, I came to realize that this person is actually quite sad, and had probably spent hir life competing with everyone close to hir for validation. My feeling small by hir behavior was my own similar issue. So, I don't feel so bad about that incident anymore, and I also don't feel the bile toward hir, and, if I feel bad, I feel bad for not having  more sympathy for her.

At this weekend's conference, I met some people that I knew from graduate school. Now, understand that I had a very very very bad experience in graduate school, and I'm still not over all of it, so sometimes encountering people from those days also brings back the bad expereiences and a lot of shame for the angry, bitter, closed person that I was then. In fact, I think of myself as a tight, little ball of antimatter back then. Well, this time, I felt all of that shame from those days, but then the shame shifted. One of the women mentioned something about how we met and how she thought "damn, this woman is bitter" in those days. That hurt because it was true and I thought, "is that how I'm thought of? Still?"

Then, I realized that, no, that was not what she was saying. In fact, I really like this woman, but I don't think I've every truly appreciated just how great she is. She doesn't just see the good in everyone, she enjoys everyone just as they are. She doesn't take anyone too seriously nor does she see anyone's behavior as personally directed against her (unless it is). She was saying that she recognized my bitterness, but that was just part of the package of me, and she still liked hanging out with me. She's that way with everyone, and that's wonderful to know and to see. I want to be more like that myself. Whatever, tightness that I felt about myself  and the way I was back then, I didn't have to explain or be ashamed of it.

They also relayed a message to me from someone I knew way way way back from my earliest days in grad school, when things really were bad and set the foundation for the really nasty person that I became. That person wanted me to know that someone we both knew had been sent to prison. My first thought was, "this person has not been in contact with me for over ten years, and THIS is the information he wants conveyed to me? Why?" That bothered me for a while, and again I felt shame for my relationship with the convict (and trust me, this guy should have been a convict long before then -- it was inevitable that he would end up in prison or an early grave because he was a total psycho and the one truly abusive relationship that I've ever been in).

Then, I realized that, for the person sending the message, I was frozen in time circa 1994 and that's his reality, or what he chooses for his reality. I'm not frozen in that time. I'm not that same person -- except for maybe having the scrappy ability to survive shitty situations and grow out of them. If that person wants to think of me as the me of 1994, what does it matter? I don't actually have to be the me of 1994 -- thank gawd!

One of the women, who had actually started our graduate program after I did, but whom I met through the others at conferences, then told me something that shocked me, especially since I didn't think she even liked me. She said, "you are my hero."

WHAT?

She said that I had done so many different things and wandered around to so many different places and found my way to my passion for writing. She is at an ambivalent stage. She's on her dissertation,  but she clearly doesn't feel it. She is looking for that topic that will set her on fire, that will remind her why she started down this road in the first place. This is familiar. She said that seeing me and how I had to wander to find it made her feel less anxious about her future and about the possibility that she will have to wander a bit first, too. I told her that, if she can skip the wandering, skip it -- but sometimes that's what you have to do. Still, I have no words to convey to her how important that was to hear: that my muddling about helps other muddlers accept that some good can come from the muddling and that the acceptance actually might help them not have to muddle so much.

Part of the reason that her admiration for that wandering period of my life was so important was because our adviser was there. Now, he is a fabulous guy whom I never really took advantage of as an adviser because he was my third and because the prior two -- especially the first -- had rather scarred me to the experience of an advisor. By the time he arrived and took me on, I just wanted someone who would sign the forms and not fuck with my head or try to fuck my body. I trusted NO ONE. So, I was not the best of students for him, I confess. Thus, it shouldn't be a surprise when he makes scathing comments about or to me.

All of the scathing comments about me have the same theme. That theme is that I wandered. I felt that these comments were about what a screw up I was as an academic, and the first time that he pulled this stunt, he stung. At some level, like the person who made me feel small, I was still fighting for the approval of my academic daddy. This time when he made the comment, I just rolled my eyes, played along and said, "well, I found my way back to the true path" or something of that sort. After all, I know that I wandered, but -- damn! -- in the wandering I picked up another graduate degree, wrote a second book, co-edited a volume of documents, and found the topic for the book I'm working on right now. Again, not a path that I'd recommend for others if they can avoid it, and I wouldn't do it again, but it wasn't as if I did nothing in that time. In other words, there are other ways to spin those years, and the fact that he doesn't spin them that way can hurt a tiny bit.

Well, our Lovely Houseguest, who has known him for years as a colleague, told me that his comments don't have a damn thing to do with me. It's all about him and how, by wandering off, I left him feeling helpless. He likes playing the role of a benefactor, and when I left the realm in which he has the influence, he couldn't do anything to ensure my success. Then, when I returned, and did have success, he wasn't the one who made it happen. So, his response is to make these remarks; but, he will still do anything he can to help me professionally and respects the work that I am doing. Furthermore, as a Grand Dame historian (who has been incredibly influential in my publishing career, without me having to do anything but write) told me this very weekend that he'll change his tune when the book comes out. Knowing all of this means that I know how to handle him in the future.

By the last day of the conference, I had had several epiphanies. First, I realized that I don't have to keep reliving that misery of graduate school every time I come into contact with people from those days. Those days were unfortunate for a million reasons, but the people whom I still know from then are actually really good people who I'm lucky to have known and to know. What's more, they kinda like hanging out with me, too, and don't hold my past against me.

The second epiphany was that my initial response to meeting people from those days was very similar to visiting family. Sometimes, when you visit family you revert to your familial roles or personalities from when you were growing up -- for better or worse. Sometimes, you only know how much you've changed from those days when you feel yourself reverting. I felt that reflex of reversion in encountering these people from this graduate school period, and I realized, like people do with their families, that I don't have to revert. I don't have to in anyway inhabit or resemble that person. To do so just makes things worse.

Third -- and this one is not entirely set, but it's getting there -- I don't have to feel ashamed for the past twenty years of my life. There they are. Nothing is going to change them. I had to learn some lessons from the bitter years and from the wandering years, and I had to struggle and fail and not be perfect in those years. The whole point of that was to not stay that person but to become this person. That person was that person because she had some very basic beleifs that were Very Bad Ideas. She had to unlearn those beliefs and find some new, better ones, which is really the work of a lifetime, isn't it?

This person? She got up in a fantastic panel with two great scholars. She looked out into an audience that included that adviser, those grad school colleagues, her Gentleman Caller, the Grand Dame historian, and historians whose work she respects and has influenced her own, as well as a bunch of other wonderful people who were all attentive on a late Sunday morning. Then, she rocked the room. THAT is this person.

Now, this person has to get down to business and eek out at least one page today before the Gentleman Caller, the Lovely Houseguest, and I all go out on the town. I'm becoming much more confident in writing around the holes and concluding with questions at this stage because -- at least among the women's historians in the audience this weekend -- I can see that more people are comfortable with the raising of questions than I thought, especially if those questions point in new directions. They actually start to get excited about the work and feel engaged in puzzling about the questions themselves. I'll see how this works when I present this next paper.  Except, I have to actually finish writing the damn thing first -- and jabbering on my blog is not getting the job done.

Padding with Process

I have to make this one short since I'm going to England today and still have to pack. That also means, no writing until  Monday. At least I'm at a good stopping point, and allowing it to percolate will probably help.

As I wrote in my comments to Digger on my last post, I decided to write for only about two hours yesterday, then go run errands, then go jog. That allowed me to take all of the silly, distracting thoughts and put them in a container for the first part of the day. The only variable was the weather for jogging, but I decided to accept no workout for the week if we had rain. That lucky penny I found must have been working because I was able to focus so well that I ended up writing for 4 hours and producing 5 pages, then had nice enough weather to run, and I got in a long one. Yea!

Digger also recommended that I focus on the process. I do believe that is some of what I am doing. I like to show my work. I also like when other historians show theirs. That is, I like when they discuss their reasoning and the options that they considered before settling on the conclusion that they are working with.  So, I am doing that.

The problem -- maybe it isn't a problem, actually, but I can't think of a better word for it right now -- is that the evidence itself is so thin. I've covered what historians and biographers have said about this woman, which ain't much. Then, I've stretched back into my days as an English major and analyzed how the Big Guy talked about her, which is actually touching in some ways and parallels the way I have to approach her, using his few memories and an understanding of the system in which she lived. I'm a bit at an advantage with documents and the fact that I don't have a vested interest in the way that she was portrayed, as he did. Still, we both look at this gap where she stood and wonder who was there.

I have a lot of secondary ideas around her, too. That is, I have a lot of patterns and points of comparison and so forth built from what I know from the secondary literature (although I do need the books to deal with the better and a library where I can find answers to more questions).  I can see a range of possibilities to explain her actions and to speculate about her experience, but what I end up with are paragraphs of questions. Questions and questions.

Now, I'm beginning to wonder about essentially having a conclusion of questions. Obviously, I will never know the answers to these questions any more than Douglass would. Maybe some historians or several historians will find more data and come to more nuanced conclusions about women in similar situations that will help me to understand more of the conditions she shaped and flesh out with more eloquence the variety of ways that enslaved women responded to concubinage and their children of serial rape; but how this woman responded will always be a mystery because she left no record in her own voice.

As I work with this material -- what I have of it, but knowing what I will and will not find when I'm able to get back to the documents and secondary stuff -- I have decided that the questions are better than what has come before. The questions are speculative, but openly speculative. Previous writers have abandoned any attempt to understand her for many reasons, but most recently because of the impossibility of knowing her. These questions, to me, are the negative space around her, and they are necessary in order to ponder exactly what we don't and can't know about her. Wiping that part of the Big Guy's life clean, or looking only at what he says without question -- or only the most superficial of questions -- is just not satisfying, as is relying on the trope of the "strong, proud black woman." Maybe she was strong, maybe she was proud, she most certainly was a black woman, but what on earth does that say about her at all? That just tells us that the writer can't imagine anything else, or has fallen back on cliche and stereotype without knowing.

I'm being harsh here, and I confess that I find myself doing the same, although more out of fear of the charge of racism than anything else. Still, cliches and stereotypes move in when there is nothing else. For me, questions are the way to combat cliche and stereotype, to remind myself and the reader of the Big Guy's own experience of this woman and that she faced certain problems -- like rape, like bearing children from rape, like raising children in an environment different from the one in which she was raised, or having her children raised for her in that same environment, but she was removed from it, like having sisters near her, like having her mother near her. I want these problems and the range of responses front and center, even if they lead to a conclusion of questions and a conclusion that recognizes the impossibility of knowing (but without the cop out  or cliche of "we shall never know"), while at the same time pushing the audience closer to understanding both her and her son.

Has anyone else ever done that, written a chapter in which half of the work was raising questions that won't be answered? In a way, this feels almost in the realm of art or creativity, something akin to Milan Kundera or Flaubert's Parrot (but not nearly as brilliant), something that I flatter myself to call "experimental" -- although not at all fiction. I can give examples of historians who went way too far in that direction in an attempt to avoid leaving the audience with questions, and -- boy, it is dreadful! Bold, I confess, and I admire that; but I cringe every time I look at it. I suppose that is the reason I prefer to conclude with questions rather than make up answers.

Anyway, I'm torn as to how to do this: leave questions, or mangle my prose and write questions without questions, or something else. I think I'll get not-Clio to leave a sample on her blog -- actually, she sort of has a sample or two right now -- for an example. Although that may have to wait until Monday. Not-Clio has to go to England with Clio, you know! She's the one actually giving the paper on Sunday.

In the comments to my last post, Feminist Avatar made this observation: "...and don't you think the Irish like to make statues very resemblant of penises- talk about an emphasis on masculinity!" I quite agree, and to prove her statement I offer you Exhibit A, located dead center of O'Connell Street and rising umpteen million feet in the air.:

I took this while standing almost flush against the base because it was the only angle in which I could get the entire prick point into the frame, it is that huge.

Anyway, onward to writing. This past week has not been going well. Some of the problem comes from my easily distracted state that is less of a Smoke Monster and more of a bramble that I'm trying to hack my way through. Errands, laundry, cleaning the bathroom, all of the messiness of everyday life I have generally been able to ignore; but we are having a guest next week, and I realize that, while we don't mind living in our state, it may not make a guest feel quite at home. That triggers my tendencies to become the love child of Martha Stewart and Howard Hughes and I start making up silly things that I just HAVE to do.

Then, there is it the workout. My pattern has been to write all morning and into the afternoon, then head out to run for about an hour. For the past week, however, the weather has not cooperated. Favorable weather appears in the morning, and all sorts of rain appear in the afternoon. That means that I sit here by the window, writing, but I glance up and begin thinking "it's supposed to rain today, but there is no rain now, which means there will be rain later, which means I can't go run, so maybe I should run now, but I have to get this done, but I could do it later, after the run, but then I will be too tired, but not THAT tired..." and so on for too many minutes.

Alas, these are all just excuses for the brambles. The real bramble, the tap root here, is that this paper feels sooo thin. I'm writing about his mother, who has so little documentation that I must rely upon secondary sources in order to sketch out the types of options that she faced. Unfortunately, access to the necessary secondary sources is a bit unreliable if not nonexistent at the moment. Also, as I write, I start to realize that I have more questions to ask the primary sources that I did not think to ask when I was researching in them. So, I didn't take those notes. Since I lived near them, I always thought "oh, I can always come back." Not any more! They are on microfilm, so I can get ahold of them in the Burned Over District, but not here.

I  make do, of course, and this will be my experience for the rest of the year as I write the shitty first draft of the book. Part of writing the shitty first draft involves finding the thin places and the questions that I didn't know to ask of the primary sources at the time. I'm cool with that. No, the problem here is that this is a paper, so I have an attack of performance anxiety, worried that everyone in the room can see the thin places screaming out at them, and will think I'm a complete hack.

Alas, that is probably not the tap root. That is the Smoke Monster; and the brambles are just my way of hiding from it.

I'm almost done with the paper; and more than the last one I think this will become part of the chapter. I'm at a crucial point, too, in that I just realized that a couple of events coincided and their general proximity in time suggests something that I don't think anyone has considered. Unfortunately, all of this rests on a lot of "ifs" and other conditional words. I keep hearing the criticism "speculative" -- as if everything we do as historians doesn't have some level of speculation involved!

Still, when I'm dealing with these periods of time and people who have so little voice in the record and so many gaps around them, I feel like I'm writing something almost experimental -- not history but not fiction either. I'm trying to write around that place where novelists can go but historians cannot. That is the reason I need to have so much secondary literature around it, shoring up the "ifs," and the reason that this paper feels so thin.

In any case, I keep telling myself that I may be using old pieces right now, but I'm putting them together in new ways and I have enough at my disposal to make my audience think, "Oh! You know? I hadn't thought about that before. Have you looked at this book to flesh out that idea?" Except for that last sentence, that seems to be my own experience in putting together this paper -- and, indeed, the whole book. It's quite fun.

I See Dead People

Despite the fact that we are both quite busy with our own respective work, the Gentleman Caller and I have resolved to see at least one site each week while we are here -- more, if possible. Usually, we can get in two, and sometimes we have something interesting available during the week such as the book launch for the person from whom we are subletting our apartment or a get-together of the Gentleman Caller's colleagues or dinner with other American ex-patriates (I like thinking of myself as that, especially while writing. It makes me feel like Hemingway, but without the bullfights.)

This past Saturday, which turned out to have lovely, autumnal weather, we went up to Glasnevin Cemetery, "Dublin's Necropolis." You find very few writers here. Joyce died in Switzerland. Wilde is buried in Pere Lachaise. Yeats out in Sligo. Glasnevin, instead, is where about every revolutionary connected to the city was buried, all right up near the entrance and the museum.

"Dublin's Necropolis" is an apt name, as you can see:

Dead people as far as the eye can see, and buried shoulder to shoulder. Their records show that over a million people are interred there, and a sizable percentage are in unmarked graves because they were poor. In the sections further back from the entrance, where you can see fewer "perpetual care" graves or graves marked as such, but clearly theirs was the discount version, the placement and disarray of the markers made me wonder if, after some time, older graves in which the coffins had sunk further down into the ground made way for newer graves on top.

Like I said, the cemetery is full of revolutionaries and the city is full of statues to the revolutionaries, so finding the grave of someone who had a statue that I had seen was a bit exciting -- more so, oddly, than just seeing the grave of a famous revolutionary, simply because I know so little about the people in question here. I mean, it isn't quite like seeing the graves of people whose letters I had been reading all day. It was more like connecting dots.

The most famous revolutionary in the cemetery, for whom they had an exhibit in the museum, and whose monument dominates the landscape, is Daniel O'Connell, the Emancipator. He lies in a crypt beneath this tower:

Here is his statue in City Hall (I don't think that he regularly work a toga to Parliament):

Here he is at the head of O'Connell Street:

By the way, O'Connell supported the abolition of slavery, and a certain other person took the stage with him in 1846, introduced to the crowd as "The Black O'Connell." Hence, a bit of my interest here.

Charles Stewart Parnell is perhaps not as celebrated a figure as O'Connell. His statue stands at the other end of O'Connell Street.:

I like his outfit.

Here is where his bones lie:

This is a big rock sitting on top of a small hillock and surrounded by a fence. You cannot get very close to it. The Gentleman Caller joked that he wanted me to take a picture of him sitting on it. That sounded like a cool idea and a great story as long as we did not get caught or were only escorted off of the premises by the guards. If we were fined or arrested, however, well that would be one damn expensive story. We choose to admire from afar.

Michael Collins lies in a particularly special place in the cemetery, right next to the museum there in the background:

He has perpetual care.

Funny thing is, his bust is not in the large and central St. Stephen's Green, like other revolutionaries. His is over in Merrion Park, halfway across the park from where Oscar Wilde's statue lounges.:

Note that he was only 32 years old when he died. He was killed by the other revolutionary faction who felt that his faction sold them out by allowing the British to keep the Ulster Counties, now Northern Ireland. This is the extent of my knowledge on the subject, but the Gentleman Caller pointed out that, as with our own Civil War, any discussion of civil war tends to complicate a heroic story of any nation's past.

You will also not that he doesn't look much like Liam Neeson.

One of the American ex-patriates who knows way more about contemporary Irish politics that I care to, said that one of the more liberal parties -- and they actually have several here, all running a candidate in the current presidential election -- is the Sinn Fein, which dates back to those days. He says that the party, however, has the lowest percentage of women supporters and that, for all of its liberalism, it tends to be quite butch. He attributed that gap to the hypermasculinity connected to the rebellion. You see that represented in the number of young men listed on the monuments, graves, and markers about the city. Of course, any woman who has dealt with left wing guys in any political context -- including the current U.S. Democratic party -- wouldn't be surprised at the sort of cult of masculinity surrounding these types of movements that end up in armed conflict.

One or two women, however, to get some recognition.  Here is Countess Markievicz, who was, like the men, both a soldier and politician during and after the Irish uprising:

Here is her bust at the center of St. Stephen's Green:

Anne Devlin is another woman connected with revolution who is buried here:

She died in the mid-19th century, but was connected with Robert Emmett, who attempted to lead an uprising in 1802. That was the Age of Revolution, after all, and the Irish were not to be left out. She was, according to the signs for children in the museum, Emmett's "housekeeper." According to the historian who wrote Emmett's biography, a little bit more than that. When the rebellion failed, she was tortured -- they make a lot of that in her biography -- but did not inform, even when Emmett asked her to in order to save herself. He died a very nasty death, and she died in obscure poverty. The only reason that she has a perpetual care grave is because a journalist interested in the Emmett story went looking for her and found her just after she had died and been buried in an unmarked grave. Money was raised later to have her reinterred with this marker.

She lived in Rathfarnam, which is along one of my longer jogging routes. One day, out huffing and puffing, I came across this:

That is a statue to Devlin in the town center. I also jogged along a suburban street named for her.Please note that her tits are not shiny with the polishing of various hands. The same cannot be said of most other statues of women.

The carvings on many of the graves in Glasnevin are quite lovely and interesting. You can see about every moment in the life of Christ depicted in bas relief. You also see something akin to the Book of Kells depicted in stone. Here are some of my favorites.:

The shamrocks may seem a bit twee, this being Ireland and knowing all of the kitschy crap about such things as sold to American tourists; but the shamrock shows up in lots of designs and I confess that I rather like it, not for the "Irishness" of it, although that is probably some of the sentimental appeal, so much as the shape. I just find the shape and the suggestion of green very soothing and lovely.

Just below the shamrock you see a symbol that looks like a dollar sign, but with three vertical slashes woven through the S. That symbol appeared on quite a number of graves, some more ornate than others. Does anyone know what that means? It doesn't appear to be the same sort of design as the Celtic knot sort.

This design caught my eye and I have to say that I laughed a bit at it.:

This is, obviously, the monument for a priest; but, is that the priest giving communion? No. That is the priest giving the Temperance pledge. The man buried beneath this monument worked with Father Mathew, who was the greatest temperance advocate in Ireland in the 19th century. He issued the temperance pledge thousands and thousands of times, sometimes to the same people (backsliding is to be expected and forgiven, of course). Some people didn't think that the pledge was even legitimate unless he issued it to you.

Father Matthew also has a statue on O'Connell Street.:

His statue stands amid about ten bars or restaurants with bars.

The fingers have been blown off. The story that they tell the tourists is that they were blown off in the Easter Rising of 1916. Some of the Gentleman Caller's colleagues said that is was they say about every gouge in every old building or statue in Dublin. In this case, I suspect vandals because the rest of the statues is unscathed.  Vandals, or very large pigeons.

By the way, a certain important figure known as the "Black O'Connell" also took the stage with Father Mathew.

I shall leave you with two things. First, graverobbers:

The museum had a diorama of sorts in its exhibit on the history of the cemetery, showing how the graverobbers did the deed. They dug a hole at an angle from behind the headstone down to the top of the coffin. Then, they broke open the top to get to the head. They put a noose around the neck -- or a hook! -- and drug the body out. How desperate must you have been to take that for a job?

Second, my favorite monument. This is the grave of an actor, depicting him in the role of Hamlet during the graveyard scene:

Writing in the Streets

I have been writing, and writing about my own writing; but perhaps I should share some of the things that I've seen about this town that so loves its writers.

This was the very first thing that I wanted to see because, way back a million years ago -- not long before this was written, or so it seems -- I took an Irish literature class and learned about the incredible art illuminating this book:

I, of course, could not take any pictures of the book (although I did surreptitiously take this picture of the long room above the book -- that's floor to ceiling books on each side of those alcoves, all the way to the far end!):

and I'm not religious at all, and people who know way more about the history of the Book believe that it actually originated somewhere closer to Scotland; but, still, what an amazing piece of art and letters! No reproduced image can convey the vibrance of the colors, or the precision of the brushstrokes, or even the wonder of the creatures that lurk in the knots and letters. My favorite part, however, was that the monks who produced this depicted each of the "authors" of the Gospels as an author, with pen and ink by their sides. I'm not sure if I had ever noticed that in any religious iconography before.

I also saw that sort of image in the stained glass in the church at the Dublin Castle:

and in the stained glass in Christ's Church Cathedral:

There is, of course, a strong link between the written word and the church, priests being the first people to start writing down Irish lore and language, and bringing writing as we know it to Ireland. In more recent eras, however, there are other ties. Take for instance, St. Patrick's Cathedral (shown here in the Irish weather as I have experienced it):

Jonathan Swift was Dean of St. Patrick's church for a while in the eighteenth century; and, if you walk down the street not even a block, you will find a row of town houses called something like "Gulliver's Terrace" with bas reliefs of scenes from Gulliver's Travels:

You don't see that every day, now, do you? The people who live there probably find the whole concept terribly twee, I think it's rather cool to have images from a biting satire of eighteenth century British politics on your apartment building. Good thing they chose this on and not "A Modest Proposal!"

This is the garden next to St. Patrick's Cathedral. The legend told by the sign at the gate says that St. Patrick -- the real one -- baptised the pagan Irish from a well on this site. That's a bit of lore of one sort or another. I show you this picture because, first, I'm rather proud of how pretty the picture turned out; second, to show you how pretty the gardens are; third, to show you that really cool example of weather wherein we stood in sunshine but the ominous clouds awaited on the horizon; and fourth, to show you that wall there in the distance.:

Those arches contain plaques that commemorate various Irish (male) writers, such Swift, Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, and Yeats:

The National Library has an exhibit on Yeats that I'm hoping to see in a few weeks.

These plaques, however, as just tiny little tributes to these authors. You can find more plaques, statues and busts throughout the city. 

Here, for instance is Oscar Wilde in Merrion Park:

Here is Veronica Guerin outside of the Chester Beatty Library:

You may remember her as looking like Cate Blanchett.

The Chester Beatty Library has an incredible exhibit on the history of books from all over the world; and, when we were there, they had an exhibit of Matisse's art books, including an illustrated version of Ulysses. No, not Homer's. Ulysses the book by Dublin's most favorite author, if the number of statues and markers is to be believed, James Joyce. I could do a whole coffee table book on Joyce in the landscape of Dublin. Here he is in St. Stephen's Green:

Here he is off of O'Connell Street (O'Connell and he fight for the most statues in the city, I think):

Here he is in a little meditation garden on the University College Dublin campus, right next to the James Joyce library:

He went to UCD when it was called something else and located down on St. Stephen's Green. The university is now a few miles away from where it started and looks like your average post-WWII campus in the U.S., so such commemoration of Joyce maintains the connection to a venerable past.
As I was out jogging one day, I passed this:

Here is the context:

I doubt she was born in a bar. Still, it's kinda funny.

How many cities have a museum devoted to the writers who lived there and the literary traditions of the country?

Someone I know joked about what she expected to see there. "A messy desk with stacks of papers and coffee cups?" she wanted to know. Perhaps some overflowing ashtrays? Well, they didn't quite go that far. They had desks, and facsimiles of letters, and first editions, and pictures, and typewriters and so forth. The text was probably more than many museums would have, but everyone there was reading it. In fact, more people opted to read than to listen to the little audiotour handset. We were, after all, in museum dedicated to writers!

Oh, and the funniest thing about this museum? The building in which it was housed was preserved by whiskey money. Yes, the Jameson family restored the building.

The only other group commemorated more than writers, as far as I can tell, are revolutionaries.  I kinda like that. Writers and the act of writing as powerful and enduring.

Now, back to my own. I did very well on Friday, writing five pages in four hours. I had to convey some general biographical details, and they sort of lay on the page like an annotation or encyclopedia entry, doing nothing but boring even me. Then, I figured out what I had to push against to give them some sort of form and make them fit into something that wasn't quite an argument but did say "hey! Look here! Look at these bits all put together on their own!" In the process, I had one of those moments in which you know what you think by writing it out. The revelation came through the act of struggling with the information to make it meaningful.

Yesterday, nothing. We are going over to England this week, and then will have a guest return with us the following week, so we had to clean up the apartment. The main bathroom, which has no ventilation and these rough, craggy tiles, was turning black with mold. I think the person who made the design choices for this apartment never thought through the logistics of cleaning it. Rough tile collects moisture that turns to mold. Gigantic mirrors that hang from a nail ten feet above the ground cannot be cleaned by a 5'5" woman -- or even by a quite tall man.  That ate up the whole morning, but at least both bathrooms and their adjacent spaces smell much better. Then, we went to Glasnevin Cemetery to see dead revolutionaries. Joyce, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats? All buried elsewhere.

Today probably won't be as productive as I would like, given that we are meeting one of the Gentleman Caller's co-workers to see some open Georgian houses that aren't usually on the tourist itineraries. I've got about two hours, so I'd best make the best of them.

Gray-haired Folks Kicking Butt

We have seen two movies in the past two weeks that don't seem to have been released in the U.S., if the lack of reviews are any indication. Is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The Debt out in the U.S.? This isn't a review of either movie because I tend to have a slightly off-taste in movies. Not "off" as in "quirky" or "cool" in any sort of a way. Just "off." I respond to certain elements or parts of movies for very personal reasons, even as other people absolutely hate the movie.

Anyway, I wanted to see both of these movies because Helen Mirren stars in one and Gary Oldman stars in the other. Helen Mirren is my model for aging gracefully. She's gorgeous, fit, her face and hands are age appropriate, and she is a master of her craft. That last is really what makes her so powerful and compelling. She can take any character and make her interesting. I love Judi Dench in the same way. As for Gary Oldman, he's been in so much crap I began to despair of ever seeing him in a movie that was worthy. They are actors, not celebrities.

[By the way, there will be spoilers from here on down. I can't talk about a movie without revealing plot points that others don't appreciate.]

Both of these movies have young actors in them. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, includes the young guy who played Holmes in the fantastic update of Sherlock Holmes. You have to take a minute to recognize him because his hair is straight, short, and red this time, but he also has a much different, energy. The character is not always in control of his every thought. The older characters in The Debt have younger counterparts, and about 2/3 of the movie focuses on them. But, neither of these movies are for a young audience. These are grown-up movies. Better, these are movies for older people. People who remember the Cold War.

Although both films feature those younger characters, the older characters -- and by older I mean that the next youngest character of any importance is usually upwards from 55 and most are older than 60, which is not your typical film hero age -- the older characters are still central and powerful. They are smart, strong, and wise. Not "wise" in the Dumbledore way -- although I do have to give the Harry Potter films props for making grey-haired characters powerful -- but wise because they are experienced.

In one scene in Tinker, Tailor, Oldman's character, Smiley, tells not-Sherlock Holmes that he will be watched and that he should take care of any business he may have. In the next scene, we see that not-Sherlock is gay as he breaks up with his lover; but the look on Smiley's face was not such that he knew that no-Sherlock was gay, just that he was a man who had been around an unsavory block a few times and that he knew that everyone has something that can be used against them. Ah, and the restraint of that expression! That was worth the price of the ticket!

The Debt is a bit pulpier, and not quite as good of a story. The action is physical in this film, whereas it was cerebral in the other, and the characters themselves don't seem quite so smart. That means that the moments in which age and experience come into play take a different shape. Toward the end, Helen Mirren and the bad guy, who is at least an octogenarian, end up locked in mortal, hand-to-hand combat, much as their younger versions had been, earlier in the movie. Now, given the bad guy's background, his ability to be in this position stretched credulity. Still, the two characters have not mellowed with age; and to see two grey-characters, central to the story, able to do this? Maybe not realistic, but certainly a powerful image. In fact, the point at which Mirren's character might have seemed to have mellowed, Mirren projects a steely resolve and her decision comes from her decades of experience and not from any softening toward the decrepit man in front of her.

I like seeing these types of films, with main characters older than myself and still kicking butt in whatever way they kick butt. Heck, I love seeing these actors given roles in which they can kick butt. For the past ten years, I've been looking forward to people, especially women, older than myself to see what can or will happen to me. I'm finding that it isn't so bad and I like anything that celebrates gray hair, wrinkles, wits, experience, and ongoing physical health.

One thing I did not like about both of these films. The criminal under use of Ciaran Hinds, aka Cesar from the miniseries Rome.

We also saw Jane Eyre a few weeks ago, the one that was released in the U.S. last Christmas or spring sometime, with the actress who was in The Kids Are Alright. I read the book in 9th grade. I re-read it in I think my 20s, and I listened to it on audiobook about four years ago. I've also seen one or two other film versions. Every time I reaffirm my initial impression: Rochester is a dick. St. John is a dick. Every guy in the story is a dick, and they talk so much bullshit in the process. At least Jane has some inkling of this. I felt the same about Wuthering Heights. By coincidence, the day after we saw Jane Eyre, Salon featured this comic artist and this particular strip. I laughed like a cartoon dog.

Meanwhile, yesterday's writing went well. I outlined and wrote the historiographical section of the paper and outlined the reconstruction of the Woman's life part, but I am well aware that I am going to have to get to an academic library in the U.S. before this gets anywhere near an audience who are experts in this field. The audience here are all historians and in related fields, but they are essentially a very very well educated lay audience when it comes to my Big Guy and enslaved women. Still, that's kind of what I had hoped to do this year, knowing how little access I would have to the scope of books that I would need. I would write a shitty first draft, and then through next summer and the following fall, comb back over it with the secondary literature at hand.

Today, I'll write a bit on the reconstruction of the Woman's life. Parts of it will work because I'm essentially making an argument. Other parts just kind of lay there and I haven't quite figured out how to make them compelling. Again, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage in sources, because I'm finding questions in the writing that I wasn't asking when I took notes. Now, I need to see the collection again to see if those questions can be answered. I can get the collection on microfilm back in the U.S., but not here. Still, I can work around this for the time being. Much of this paper has less to do with new research than with original ways of looking at existing information; and any analytical or critical look at this existing information is unique. (Not arrogance, just observation.)

I feel much less anxiety on this paper than I did on the last, and much less anxiety in general these days. I'm fortunate in the gift of this year and it is starting to work its magic.

Thursday Morning Ramble

Like everyone knows, Steve Jobs died. I'm not a Mac user, and I confess that I harbor a bizarre suspicion of Mac users because I knew one too many who were such snots about being Mac users and so condescending about pc users. To this day, when someone says they use a Mac, I cringe, waiting for the assault. Fortunately, it usually doesn't come. In any case, it is sad that he died and he did do some pretty amazing stuff that has altered everyday life in ways that historians will write about for centuries. We should all be so lucky!

That is, historians shall write about his impact for centuries if what he hath wrought doesn't make humans obsolete in the next generation.

In similar news, Fred Shuttlesworth also died. Now, this death I feel a bit more. Remember back in the 1990s, during the D-Day commemorations, with all of the "Greatest Generation" celebrations? As a nation, we should be doing the same for this generation because they were pretty damn great, too. They were making justice happen right here in the U.S. They had the courage to face down hypocrisy right in their own towns. They didn't have an army behind them, either, nor were many of them particularly special in anyway. They were just people who were "sick and tired of being sick and tired." Sometimes students are stunned to realize that that was their grandparents, that the Civil Rights Movement was that recent. That generation is fading away in the same way as that "Greatest Generation," and that is something worth remembering.

But, really, like most things in the news, I have nothing interesting or original to add. This was just all over everything this morning.

As for my writing, yesterday went very very well. I plowed right through the bit that I had outlined, and cleared four pages in half as many hours. It helped that I didn't have to look up many quotes, and that most of it was a general explanation of the main project and how the paper that I'm giving fits into that main project. Still, I hit one of those grooves in which I thought, "dang, I'm good!" Being able to just write what you know, relatively uniterrupted, feels great.

The next few days won't be quite so easy, I think, although I still maintain that, by saying anything more than a paraphrase of the autobiography, I am saying something brilliant and new. I'm not being arrogant (much), I'm just making an observation. As I wrote in the introduction of the paper yesterday, very few of the previous biographers have really asked many questions about the women. They just accept that the women are there and will do the things that they do with very little motivation of their own.

Only one biographer actually considers that a woman has a life separate from the subject. I actually think that she really wanted to write only about that woman, but her publisher said no one cared about that woman alone, so she had to play up the relationship with the subject and make the book about the relationship. That biographer is the only female of the bunch. I don't actually think that, because she was a woman she was better at this. I think that, because she considered a woman as a subject rather than ancillary to the subject, and because she understood the relationship as an interaction rather than Leading Character and Walk-on Part, she was able to breathe more life into all of the figures and complicate the Big Man. That's what I'm trying to do. She benefited not specifically from her gender, but from her method and from her imagination (although, I confess, I think she invokes perhaps too much imagination at some points and forgets that a monograph is not a novel, which seriously hurts her argument.)

Anyway, thinking about the Big Man, or, rather the women beyond the Big Man, feels kind of like breathing fresh air. Sometimes I'm astounded that no one has asked these questions before. I'm always of the mind that, if I can think of it, then someone else surely has already discovered that idea. Such is selling myself short; but, that same thinking has me scouring other sources to make sure no one else has, in fact, thought of it and maybe more and better. But to feel yourself put things together in a new way? Well, that is fantastic!

So, today, I have to outline the next bit, which shouldn't be too difficult. The next bit is the historiography of this woman, which is unsurprisingly short. She only lived to be 32 and was generally absent in the Big Man's life. Most historians, including the Big Man himself, dispense with her in the first few pages. Only one guy, a local historian and journalist, really investigated the facts of her life. Thank heavens for him! He, however, had a different purpose than mine in that I want to understand her life and its impact on the Big Man, and the local historian wanted predominantly to verify what the Big Man said and give him more of a genealogy.

When I get to the part in which I reconstruct her life, which will probably be later tomorrow or over the weekend, I realize that have to write about that Woman-shaped hole that contains her. I always say that I'm writing about the female-inhabited negative space around the Big Man. With him, I at least have a good idea about who inhabits the positive space. I have no idea who inhabits her positive space, so the task in this paper and in that chapter, will be to fill in as much of the negative space as possible and in as much specificity as possible in order to close in around that positive space that was her. I think I end with in that Woman-shaped hole are more questions than answers; but I also think that the types of questions, even unanswered, at least give me a better idea of her world than anyone else has been able to do before now.

Oh, and one more related thing: not-Clio has decided that, if Clio starts the day by blogging, then not-Clio might end the day with her own blogging. Clio doesn't entirely trust not-Clio to do this -- heck, Clio hardly trusts herself -- but hope springs eternal, right? So, not-Clio shall begin posting from time-to-time again.