Sunburn!

I've done the thing I thought could not be done. No, not finished the manuscript (I know that can be done). No, not won a Prize (I know that cannot be done -- can it?). No, not become a rock star (please!).

I have gotten a sunburn. In Ireland.

What a spectacular string of sunny days we have had here, complete with warmth! Fresh, green, baby leaves have popped out on all of the trees. The yellow fireworks of forsythia have erupted at the same time as the lush pink cherry blossoms and purple -- I don't know what they are but they are bright clusters like mini-lilacs -- and bright orange buds of another sort of tree. We never had a month in which some sort of flower wasn't in bloom, but now they all seem to be everywhere. In fact, yesterday I passed a holly tree with forsythia branches pushing their yellow happiness up through the dark shiny holly leaves. Such a surprising, gorgeous combination!

Sun here must not be wasted. So dark and grey for so long, and who knows if the dullness shall return tomorrow? I pulled a chair out into the brightest part of the parking lot in front of the apartment, and sat all day, reading work and outlining, storing sun in my cells. I hadn't been so thoroughly warm -- hot, in fact -- since last August in the U.S..

Now, my skin is bright too. Bright red.

Later, I went for a run -- wearing shorts! Then, I took a shower and got dressed. The temperature in the apartment had dropped, as had the temperature outside, feeling as if we had an air conditioner on. The feel of my clothes, prickling my fried skin, the tightness of my sun-baked face, and my wet hair all reminded me of being a kid after swimming. I'd wash off (sometimes -- when you are a kid, you think swimming in the pool equals a shower or bath, and I've known more than one kid who, were it not for swimming, would probably have been surrounded by a cloud of pea green funk during the summer months ). Then, I'd dress and sit my body down in front of the t.v. or with a book, the icy a.c. pushing against the heat emanating from my fiery skin (when I was really young and lived among the Catholics in New Orleans, we used to joke that we were turning into the Devil, and if we were really bad we would stay red, like him). Not a care in the world at that moment in time, thoroughly comfortable in my body and what it could do.

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While baking, I worked, returning to one of my old, tried and true techniques for writing. Back before Windows, before cut and paste, before a mouse, when my computer screen was half the size it is now, and the computer took up half of my desk, when my computer itself was just a high tech typewriter, I tended to start all of my writing by hand. I'd sit on the stoop of my apartment with a yellow note pad and start writing down everything that I knew about my subject in a list. I called that "barfing out my ideas onto the paper."

Gradually, order would appear. I would draw circles and arrows. I start the list over on another page, but with groupings. Then, I'd do the same thing again on another page, but with more groupings. Words became phrases. Phrases became sentences. The number of arrows and circles decreased while the number of things that might be paragraphs decreased. Eventually, I'd feel the paper begin to write itself. Something about writing on paper feels impermanent, less committed, than writing on the computer.

I've tried the technique on computer, and it works, but sometimes it just lacks the fun of doing it by hand. Maybe the outlining by hand reminds me of when I was little and would climb a tree with a notebook, or sit on my window sill, or hide somewhere to escape the vague sense of doom always about our house, and tell myself stories on paper. Maybe just the sitting elsewhere and not at my desk -- particularly in these hideously ill-designed Ikea chairs which I just know were meant for sitting misbehaving children in the corner -- helps the process.

Whatever the case, over the past three days, I have made the chapter less intimidating, particularly the part in which I scrap most if not all of the paper from which it originates and start from word scratch. Now, to place myself at the computer and turn the detailed outline into actual prose (but not fiction!).  That's always the hard part, switching gears from paper to screen. The fun becomes serious. That is, the fun becomes serious until I get into it, then it becomes its own thing. Really, it's just switching gears, like switching from sleeping to wake or waking to sleeping, sitting to working out (but, oddly, not the reverse!), goofing around to business. 

The sun is only trying to emerge today. The clouds seem to want to return, so I suppose the clouds are working in my favor, as is the sunburn, keeping me inside. Maybe I'll move my computer to the other side of the room, too, so I don't have to sit in this godawful chair.

Soon, this chapter will be done, too. That will put me at about half way through a full, shitty first draft. It's only half as far as I had hoped to be by the time we get back to the U.S.; but I've decided to say that half is better than none and I've had a damn good time in the meantime. Life, after all, is about more than just work and no one is keeping score on how I use my time here except me, no one is actually saying "always be working! Always be working! Coffee is for workers!" and punishing me for failing. The only person doing that is me. As I've discovered, I don't have to be that person anymore.

What a Spy Novel Had Me Think about Writing

Dang it! I've found another goal for which to strive in writing this book. As if I didn't have enough!

I confess: I have begun to read John LeCarre'. Blame Gary Oldman. Finally, he starred in something worth seeing, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I saw it. I loved it. The story was so complex and intriguing, and, of course, movies leave things out in the transition from book to screen, so I read the book. One of the things left out of the movie -- although perhaps you could say that Oldman's subtle performance and some of the silent scenes conveyed a sense of this -- was LeCarre's style. You have to pay attention. You have to be able to flip back and check things (which makes the codex a much more suitable format than the e-reader). He reveals information carefully and, for lack of better word, quietly or implicitly. The story engages you, but you can also relish the language of the telling.

I finished the book with some sadness, as happens when you finish a great book that completely absorbed you. Yet, I did not turn immediately to another LeCarre' book. Had I been in the U.S., but here, purchasing books isn't quite so blithe. Had I been in the U.S., I might also have run down to the public library; but here, I can't. So, I moved on to another book, one that was actually available for download from my public library back in the States. This one covers the loves of H.G. Wells.

By the way, what a randy ass! At least the author is kind enough, and smart enough, to allow his readers to see past his Wells's self-absorbed sexual narcissism, to the clearly very unsatisfied women whom he fucked. At least, I hope that is the conscious doing of the author.

Anyway, I like the e-book format, but I don't love it. Sure, it's light, convenient, and much easier to read while lying in bed, but the goddamn thing craps out so quickly and so easily for no discernible reason. Twice while on trips, after having ensured that it was fully charged before leaving, the thing just wouldn't wake up when I slid the switch. You know how you turn a codex on? You open it! You know what it doesn't do? Run out of power or refuse to show you the words for some unknown reason. So, e-book, I will accept you and enjoy you, but you pale in comparison to the old school, pages between covers book. Clean up your behavior and maybe you can earn my love.

I digress.

The other night, I opened my e-book to find that, yet again, it had decided to withhold words from me. Maybe it was hurt that I had cheated on it with a paperback while in London. Maybe in a fit of pique, it became angry that I stacked it on top of the next paperback I planned to read. Maybe it wanted to exert a little authority because it thought it had the upper hand in that I was already committed to the Wells book and therefore would not abandon it for that next paperback.

It thought wrong. When it again refused to give me the words when I slid the switch, then I let it remain asleep for the rest of the evening, and picked up that paperback, another LeCarre'

In this one, he starts the story by speculating on the beginning of the story. Some people said it all started here. Others, wizened old agents, thought it started there. Still, others, drinking in the pub, said that you had to go way back to the 1800s to understand where it all started. This reminded me a bit of the way that John Demos started The Unredeemed Captive.

That started me thinking. Is there a way that I can have a strong, storytelling voice in this book without drifting into fiction? We historians, and perhaps most non-fictions writers, cultivate a writing style in which our voice simply gets the hell out of the way so that the evidence can do the work. Our voice should be a bit like a newscaster's, without a strongly discernible accent, withing a certain range of octave and timbre, and distinctive in so far as it conveys authority but not any interfering personality. I don't object to that, and that in and of itself is a skill to be mastered.

My academic style is pretty darn good. I've never really doubted that since 10th grade, and that was a mere blip brought on by a not very good high school English teacher. Still, my own style sometimes bores the hell out of me. If I, who am creating this, am bored by my prose, why would anyone else want to read it? I want more vigor to my writing.

LeCarre' made me think more carefully about that vigor. How can I arrange the words on the page in a unique fashion that makes the reading enjoyable not simply for the information, but also for the words? At the same time, I don't want to drift into fiction. Seriously, I have seen that temptation of writing up a scene or an incident, in explaining an exchange, and becoming so enamoured of your own storytelling ability that you start to add a little bit here and a little bit there and, the next thing you know, you actually have historical fiction on the page, not an account of events as told by the evidence. I've read that in some critically acclaimed monographs, too. "It reads like a novel," the audience might say. Well, if you start to look closely at the notes, it pretty much is. I don't want to do that.

I'm also pretty sure that this connection between the ideas and the prose, and in pushing the prose to be more vigorous, stronger, more like storytelling but without actually making anything at all up, if done correctly, will also force the ideas to become more sophisticated.

Now, there is only one way to accomplish it: invoke the Nike doctrine and just do it.

In 2052, What Will the "Mad Men" Gender Discrimination Stories of 2012 Sound Like?

Mad Men, Season 5, begins tonight in the U.S. Alas, I cannot watch it -- although I'm working on a way to get it online. (Did you know that most streaming online video sites do not allow you to watch if they detect your computer is in another country?)

This post, however, is not about the show. Instead, as I read as much speculation as I can about the upcoming season, I dip into the comments sections and see that many viewers turn to their moms or grandmoms to ask them is life  "was really like that" for women. Most find out that, yes, women did face that sexism and harassment "back then."

I remember my mom and the expectations placed on her in the 1970s. So many complex messages and desires that she did not begin to understand converged upon her in her twenties. Like so many characters on the show, she was essentially conservative, with some liberal leanings, and lived in an essentially conservative environment, but the whole world shifted about her. If I step back from her and relate to her as another woman, then I can see just how confusing this was for her, especially since she really loved to work outside of the home and fell into deep, dark, angry depressions when she could not, as after she had my youngest and unplanned baby brother. She was not a very good mother on so many, often important, things, but -- damn -- I have to say that I rather admire the way she ultimately absorbed the changes and found her own way. Sadly, as with my grandmother (who, by the way, did die two weeks ago, but that's another post for another time), she would have been so much better off if she never had children or waited much later to have children and she was much more easily admired from a distance rather than as the person in charge of my upbringing and that of my brothers.

Throughout grad school, young women, only about a decade younger than myself, used to come up to me after the classes that covered the history of women -- actually, the history of middle class white women, much like themselves -- in the 1950s through the women's rights movement. "My mother went through that!" they told me. "My mother was fired when she got pregnant with me. My mother wasn't allowed to have her own credit card. My mother was never promoted but all of the men hired after she was were." You probably know the litany. You probably have lived it. These students were so excited because the history had just connected to their lives in a very real way and had validated something that they had observed or heard as they grew up.*

That took place in the 1990s. In the mid-section of the first decade of the 2000s, shen I was taking the road less travelled and thrown much among young women whose mothers were closer to my age than they were, I still heard similar stories. Since then, I've been in a slightly different or very different milieu. The students come from different countries, or they and their mothers face a more complicated intersection of oppressions that take into account race and immigration status. Fewer have brought their stories of recognition to me on this particular point. (I think I've developed a bit of a prickly shell about me for my own emotional survival which works with my obvious privilege and position of power to create more distance.)

My next job will put me among young women who more closely resemble myself at their age. I've often wondered if I might me more effective in pushing that group along in the broader sense of education than I ever could be with the students that I have had. I have often thought that the students that I have had over the past four or five years would be better served in seeing someone who looks like them in a position of education and authority. I know that seeing women professors, especially woman professors who had lives beyond their professional life, always made me much less afraid of the world and much more aware of future lives that did not involve a cubicle and servitude to white men and general misery.

But that's not my point. My point is this. I am wondering what stories those young women have -- or even the ones that the young women of this past half decade have had but did not tell me -- and how they differ from the ones told to me before or my own experience. The young women coming out of grade school today could be my daughters and their mothers are roughly my age, and entered the workforce in the 1980s and 1990s. They had jobs during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. They grew up in a world with Title IX, legal abortion, access to affordable birth control, parental leave policies, delayed marriage and childbearing, and even the possibility of avoiding both.

Still, what stories do they have? What gender discrimination did they face, and how did it intersect with other parts of their identity? How did they tell their daughters of this, and what did their daughters observe?

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* "But what about the menz? Didn't they observe this in their moms?" Only few young men have ever shared such stories with me, and if you talked to my brothers, they would probably have an entirely different understanding of our mother in the 1970s and 1980s, if they even noticed the gender discrimination and issues she faced at all. What I have found is that most of the young men, if they noticed the subject at all in their own and their mothers' lives, tended to individualize or particularize that situation. "Oh, well," they would say, "sure my mom stopped working when I was born, but that was because she worked for a real asshole. Sure my mom couldn't have a credit card in her own name, but it wasn't like it really mattered since she and Dad shared the money equally and she was buying things for the whole family." That sort of thing.

Dear Angry White People

Dear Angry White People,

Have you ever read about Emmet Till? Way back in the middle of the 20th century, a group of Angry White Men lynch Till, a 14-year old black boy, because he supposedly whistled at a white woman. The law tried to hide the lynching, but his mom made sure that did not happen.

When I teach that story, I want to peel my skin off my body right in front of the class because that boy was killed by people who look like me and over a body that looked like mine. I want to peel off my skin right now.

Peeling off my skin would do nothing to help anything, reduce racism, or address my own white privilege. Instead, I try to delve into my own past, my own history with people like you, and understand your rationale so that I can explain to you, in terms that you will understand, just how you are wrong headed. So, let me see if I understand you correctly by repeating back to you what I seem to hear you say.

1)  It's not about race. It's never about race. The only people who make it about race are the people who have race, which is to say non-white people, and that is because they like playing the victim, something white people never do. In which case, you and your kids and your family and your friends and your neighbors -- all of you "correct" or "right" and untouchable people -- should be very afraid because you are just as much a mark as those "undesirables" who you find undesirable for everything except, of course, their race.

2) It is about race, but that is o.k. Because some black men wear hoodies, and because some of those men who wear hoodies commit crimes, then you should be able to gun down all black men wearing hoodies. It's much the way that enslaving only black people devalued the lives of all black people, even free people (but, of course, that wasn't about race, either, was it?) Or maybe it is more like saying that women in short skirts are "asking for it" when they get raped? In any case, that's all o.k. because we need to sort people out into the good and the bad. In which case, maybe you ought to investigate the profile for domestic terrorism, "white collar" crime, serial killers, child molesters, and domestic violence . You might be surprised at the picture looking back at you.

3) It is about race, but it's about the white race. White people's lives are cheaper because the black president said that a young black man, the victim of a vigilante's gun, could have been his son. Or, is it that white people have to be protected from those undesirables and it isn't white people's fault that most of those undesirables are not white? Or something like that. I don't really get this one, but it seems to be along the lines of "reverse racism." (If racism were reversed, wouldn't that actually mean there is no racism?)

Whatever the case, the final message that I hear from this is that you think that your body is of greater human value, your property is of greater human value, and your fear (wherever it comes from) is of greater human value, than another actual human. (Do you know those guys who think that their morality or the morality of an institution that protects serial child molesters is more important than women's bodily autonomy? You two seem to have a lot in common. I can't talk to them at all because they just look at me as if I am not quite human or have only half  brain, and a soft one at that.)

But, you see, I don't think I can show you that this is about race, and that the racism is so embedded in the society that teasing it out and putting it on display might cause the whole society to shift, like a kaleidoscope.  I don't think I can show this to you in any concrete way aside from some sort of science fiction, body-switch in which I put you into a black body that retains the memories of growing up in that black body. So, I become frustrated and angry at the futility of asking you to empathize.

I'll keep trying. I will use the privlege of my white skin, of my non-hoodie dress, of my patriarchally-approved appearance, to sneak under your radar and point out what I can. You hardcore types may not be the ones who will listen, but maybe some who aren't honestly narcissists will.

Sincerely,
Clio Bluestocking, the Bitter

Gift Shoppery

Over the past several months, I've visited England twice. Let me tell you, I LOVE London! I love its parks, I love its history, I love its museums, I love how eclectic and cosmopolitan it is. I love that it has energy, but not quite as frenetic as New York. I love that it is so short, having very few skyscrapers, and therefore feels expansive. I would love to be able to stay there for a semester or so, like we have here in Dublin so that I could wander and see more of it than just the main tourist stops. Fantastic!

Anyway, since I did see many of the main tourist stops, gift shops were high on  the list. Here is a collection of some of my favorite items.

First, a fine selection of tchotchkes in the Sherlock Holmes gift shop.:

I failed to take pictures of the tea pots because I was not aware that tea pots are a thing in England. Boy! They are a thing!

Here is Teddy Bear Sherlock -- or would that be Sherlock bear?:

My suspicion is that Sherlock himself would not be amused. He seemed rather devoid of that sort of whimsy, especially the more recent, 21st century Sherlock.

Here is a Sherlock finger puppet.:

Yes, he is now in my possession. Did you have to ask? He joins Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and William Shakespeare. I must write a show for them. Perhaps they should all pursue Jack the Ripper, who would also be a slave trader, while staging their exploits for public consumption afterward?

I kinda wanted this guy.:

Alas, I must keep my purchases to a minimum.

How could I skip the Tower of London? They keep the Crown Jewels there, and I must say that I was rather disappointed in the whole lot. Perhaps I lack the discerning eye to appreciate good gems. Perhaps the reality could never meet the standards of the anticipation? Perhaps I've seen one too many Mardi Gras crowns? Perhaps some of them -- particularly the later Stuarts -- just had a taste too gaudy for me. "Bringing the bling back with the king" was what I called it. In any case, they did, of course, sell many a crown in the gift shop:

Alas, none looked like any of the crowns actually in the museum.

Nonetheless, take a look at this center row.:

Chocolate crowns! Ahhh, it's good to be the king!

Crown tea towels, coin purses, and shopping bags:

Crown crap.:

Still, none quite had the flare that I was looking for.

This, however, puts rather a fine point on the concept of grilling sausages.:

It's even funnier if you've just seen this:

Yeah, we always knew that Henry VIII was big dick and proud of it.

Meanwhile, you could express your desire for religious reform and beheading by wearing this:

Now we know where Ugly Betty bought hers! I confess, I kinda liked it and, had they had a much cheaper, plastic version, might have bought it to wear when I cover the Protestant Reformation in class.

This charming set was at Hampton Court:

What an excellent representation of the way coverture worked! The wives disappear into the husband.

By the way, did you know that the gift shops at Hampton Court don't allow photographs? Something about licenced images. I'm curious how they enforce that in the summer when the place is packed.

We'll be going back to England again in a few weeks. Part of me stresses about these trips because that's valuable writing time, dammit! I haven't come close to finishing a full, shitty first draft of the book, and will be lucky to have half of it done when we leave. Then, I think, fuck it! I'm in Ireland, I'm visiting England! I'll be visiting Paris! When am I ever going to do this again! Besides, writing is getting done! A lot less than I hoped, but then, the project is becoming more complicated than I originally anticipated -- and therefore, better.

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Speaking of which, now to dive back into Chapter 1, which I had abandoned for Chapter 3 because I was so frustrated at my desperate need for secondary sources. Now, I'm seeing that I can get a draft out of it without those sources. This is a rework of a long paper that I gave back in the fall, but the content of the paper really covered only about 1/3 of the chapter, and parts have to be significantly reworked. In the first attempt at reworking, I think I made a mess. So, I outlined what I had as it appeared on the page and, sure enough, spotted specific location of the mess.

Then, I continued the outline for the parts that aren't yet on the page and realized that I have two significant problems. The first is that I feel profoundly uncomfortable in attempting to write about black women's experiences. Rather, I feel profoundly uncomfortable in attempting to write around black women's experiences because the evidence is so slim and slanted. By writing "around," I don't mean exclusion but, by using the existing research (hence, the problem with having no secondary sources at hand) to get as close to these particular women's experiences as possible. I fear my own racial privilege and unexamined prejudices will make me insensitive or blind to particular ways of understanding. At the same time, I don't want to fall into a trap of sentimentality and cliche.

That last leads to the second problem. I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to say in this chapter. I mean, the story is there, and what evidence exists is there to support the story, and I have small points along the way that I consider and argue and all; but, right now, this is a collection of related ideas that aren't sharply focused. They don't seem to actually say anything as a whole. Now, I do know that much of these related ideas in and of themselves are rather original (if I must say so myself), but that isn't enough. In trying to make them fit together beyond pure narrative, I go through various stages of evaluation that often embarrass me. One involves the old compare and contrast, which easily leads to a simplistic "good and bad" sort of dichotomy. One involves vacillation between harsh judgement and sappy sentimentality; and one involves a "Behind the Music" trajectory, but without the inevitable drug addictions and recovery or exploding drummers. Sometimes, I have to reset and go back to straight narrative of the facts.

This, of course, it all part of the effort in writing and the way that writing forces a writer to make herself better by figuring out exactly what she knows simply by writing. Lots of people ask me about parts of my subject, and I sometimes say, "I think I will know more about what I think about this when I start writing about this." That produces funny looks, but it is true, at least for me. Also, this process of working through those simplistic organizational structures also brings me closer to understanding those women I am writing around, so that I feel less discomfort and more connection with them as women living in this set of circumstances rather than as symbols of stereotypes or anything but what they were.

So, I am in the midst of using the writing, and outlining, and re-reading the evidence, to dig deeper into what I know about this chapter, how its pieces fit together, and how the whole of the chapter works with all that follows. I am also reminding myself that I can never actually know any of the people I write about, I can only attempt to understand them within the context of the evidence. They are separate and foreign to me in my time.

A Hypothetical

Let's say I took a steak knife to one of those guys who wouldn't take "no" for an answer on a date. Let's say I shot the guy who raped me, or the professor who sexually harassed me. How about if I bludgeoned to death that jerk outside of Planned Parenthood who got in my face and demanded to know why I was escorting women from the parking lot to the door (or what if the woman shot him for shoving his head into her car when she rolled down her window mistakenly believing that he was there to collect a fee for parking when he flagged her down)? What if I went to the office of every politician who thinks that he can force a doctor to rape me with a transvaginal ultrasound, or deny my insurance coverage for contraception, or otherwise indicate that his "morals" are more important than my uterus, and let them know just how much I feel threatened with bodily harm by their heinous actions -- and use violence to do so?

Let's say any of those scenarios were true? Do you think that I could get away with it by claiming that I "Stood My Ground"?

What utter, tragic non-sense!

That poor young man. His poor family.