Clio Bluestocking Tales

Strange Anniversaries

2012-01-28T12:46:00.001Z

I don't know what Google is celebrating in the rest of the world, but on Google.ie, today is the125th Anniversary of the Largest Snowflake:

The snowflake is actually animated, floating down from the top of the screen.

Before I celebrate, however, I want to know if there is a special candy for it. If so, then this can join the line up as one of the lesser holy days of the Official Candy Season.

Originating as it does from the Guinness Book of World Records, I'm guessing that this is more of a Beer Season holy day.

Cowboy Writer

2012-01-26T12:35:00.001Z

Some days, I don't feel like I'm writing so much as I'm herding ideas. I run back and forth between notes and text, up and down paragraphs, cracking out words like whips, trying to get them all moving in the same direction and moving slowly up the trail. The end is in sight, but still so very far away, and the ideas all want to run in circles or get caught in mud flats or have little calf ideas that will have to become footnotes that will probably just be turned to veal before we roll into town.

So, that is today, right now, why I am procrastinating -- or simply taking a break -- to write this post. My chapter is so close to ending, and yet will not get there. Each day, I begin by reading it from the beginning, cleaning up prose, adding and subtracting and expanding notes, and ensuring that any new subtleties or insights don't just pop up where they occurred to me yesterday but are instead embedded in the argument from the beginning. I'm doing good to get a single page of new material each day. At the end of the day, I'm tempted to beat myself up over my slow progress, but remind myself that any progress is progress. I have one more page today than I did yesterday. My story is packed with a lot of story that overlaps with a lot more story, and this chapter could easily be a book unto itself. It just cannot be cut into two different chapters. I've already done that!

So, yee haa! Back to the dogie ideas.

"I Would Not Be Convicted By a Jury of My Peers"

2012-01-25T20:43:00.000Z

You know those people walking down the street texting? You know how they meander right and left, making impossible any effort to veer out of their way before collision? You know the way that they routinely ignore anything else that should occupy at least a fragment of their attention, like their children, or their pets, or other pedestrians, or traffic? You know how they, through their texting, meandering, oblivious ways, routinely shove other people's children, other people's pets, and other pedestrians into that traffic (or into the bushes or walls or off cliffs on the other side)?

Let's say that one day one of those other pedestrians stops, yanks the offending phone out of the texter's hands, and starts beating the texter about the head and shoulders with said phone. Do you thing there is a cop anywhere who would arrest that incensed pedestrian or a jury who would convict her?

Just asking.

Take it away, Paul (and call me!):

Getting the Enviable Schedule Groove Back

2012-01-23T10:13:00.000Z

Sheesh, how long has it been since I wrote? Well, it doesn't matter, really, does it? I don't have a lot to say; or, rather, I have lots and lots to say about lots and lots of things but have to decide which thing gets to go first and the book has won every time. It even won out over writing about writing the book or complaining about this one secondary source is shockingly silly the more that I become familiar with the primary sources.

Anyway, the drug mule arrived, I was able to get back on my happy pills and within a week or two they started to work. Then, I was able to work rather than sit crumpled in a fetal position going over all of the ways I am am horrible, terrible, no good, and unworthy of the air that I breathe. Now, I can actually put together a thought, put the thought into words, and put the words on a page. Heck, I can even look at those words and thing, "damn! I'm good." I'm getting my groove back, and able to appreciate my coffee, write, workout, wine schedule. I'm having slightly fewer anxiety dreams and waking up fewer times during the night. We even went to see a castle where the tour took us across suspended bridges, around and around narrow spiraling stairs, and up to the very top of the keep and I did not experience paralyzing vertigo.

I confess that I had no idea what some of you all were talking about when you recommended that I see this year as an investment in my personal partnership with the Gentleman Caller. That made no sense to my understanding of relationships and marriages and romantic love and human interaction. My analyst and I used to talk about this. Very early I learned that human relationships, at best, are not worth the effort, so I never learned to put much effort into them. That's one of those Bad Ideas that I have to unlearn. Now that the chemicals are all flowing in the right way, I'm starting to understand what you all mean. I can't articulate it, but I can see the outlines.

I'm very far behind on where I had hoped to be in my manuscript. Fortunately, there are no more papers to write, and the past papers helped give me chunks of chapters. I might even be able to finish a chapter within the week. I started out the month systematically going through the secondary source that I love to hate, ferreting out the quotations and primary sources that I need to order from the archive behind the Iron Curtain (turns out it will be cheaper to order copies than to visit, and they don't let you take pictures of the documents anyway, which I would need to do because Germans had an entirely different script in the 19th century). I did the same from two other secondary sources that use the same set of documents and came to the conclusion that the smoking gun that these documents are supposed consist of a handful of passages from a handful of letters, all written within a context that makes the story that they tell highly suspect.

Then, I started to think about the story that I'm telling in the book up to the point at which I should be introducing the character, and how this character fits in with the rest of the Big Guy's life. Despite a whole book having been devoted to his relationship with this particular figure, I'm coming to the conclusion that she isn't that important and the only reason that I need to engage with her in any depth is because of that other damn book. Perhaps I'm being to glib. I mean, this character -- the German -- fits into the Big Guy's story in such a way that raises a lot of questions about him, his ambitions, and his behavior at home, but her story really doesn't pan out in a way that makes her important to his life in the way that some of the other women are. In realizing this, I realized that I had to dismiss her partly from the current chapter, and then entirely.

Yet, also in realizing this, I found that I could better articulate the point of the next chapter. Sadly, this makes the Big Guy look not as much the woman's rights man as his reputation would suggest. Not that he was a big ole misogynist. Not at all, just that I'm finding ways to make this part of his story more coherent, more complicated, and -- I hesitate to say "more feminist" because that seems to me to imply far more analysis about gender and so forth, which is not the direction this is going -- but certainly present a view of him that is more askew and from a female point of view.

Another thing that I realized, as this chapter started to shift with the removal of this figure, I hadn't flipped the point of view enough. I've describe the events that drive the narrative. I've drawn out some of the women who are important, but not necessarily central enough to move to the center stage as this woman -- the Englishwoman -- does. Yet, I had not really made the Englishwoman a full character. More accurately, I had not quite given her her due by explaining what she was getting out of the events of the chapter -- especially since those events cause her not a little unhappiness and make her out to be a "Jezebel" and a "Delilah." Always fun writing!

So, that's part of the task this week: fill her in. The other task is to turn to Mrs. Big Guy and tease out the tiny little glimpses of her that make her more than a projected stereotype and consider that she had slightly different ideas than her husband.

More People I Don't Have to Be

2011-12-31T10:25:00.000Z

As I wrote before, my drug mule arrived and, now that I've been back on the happy pills for a week, I feel a bit better. The underlying issues are still there, but -- damn! -- I can deal with them better and can figure out solutions. Depression makes you myopic to such a degree that all you can see is the depression. Like I've always said, it's a stupid disorder.

Still, somewhere in my deepest, darkest drear, I could see myself and realize that much of what I felt came from the imbalance of chemicals in my head. That always strikes me as weird and not a little bit frightening. Our personalities, our emotions, our moods, are all governed by this chemistry in our brains. Depression feels like dark blue, almost black, water being poured through your head and turning to a mucky oil in your veins. As I was coming out of the worst part, I had that feeling of having cried for hours on end, although I hadn't.

That's not what I meant to write, however. What I meant to write was how, this time, I remembered all of the years that I felt this way every day. Usually, those memories frighten me. "This is how I really am, isn't it?" I ask myself. "I'm always doomed to return to this." This time, I wasn't worried about staying there. I knew that the happy pills would arrive and, within a week or two, I'd be back to my medicated self. This time, those memories made me sad.

I didn't get on happy pills until my mid-20s. Then, I was on them until I got myself into graduate school. Off for the first half of graduate school, and on for the last half and ever since except when I had problems getting my prescription filled or when I did not have insurance nor money to pay for the pills. That means that some foundations of my personality and career choices and even ability to pursue those choices were built on this oily muck of depression. I made choices, or failed to make choices, in this terrible state of suffocation and impending doom. So, I wonder what my life would have been like, of how it would have been different, if I had access to happy pills when I first started having episodes of existential funk way back in elementary school.

We won't go into the what if I had people around me who had sympathy for this funk and did not treat my depression as if it were an intentional attack on them. Since I've mentioned it, however, I am amused that that person -- my mother -- was actually more accepting of my depression as a medical condition for which I could take medicine than my father was. My father still tells me, "a pill won't solve all your problems." My mother gets that the pills certainly help. I think that may be because she understands about the chemicals and their profound affect on mood. After all, she's been through menopause and had to take hormones.

Anyway, the loss of all of those foundational years to this dank mood makes me sad and makes me wonder how other such things might have altered my life had they been available in my childhood. For instance, I often wonder how my life would have been different if my math disability had been recognized at any point in my education. Although math has not been, nor would have been, a major component of any career that I would have chosen, my inability to do math compromised all of my educational decisions and even my sense of my self as an intelligent person. I couldn't do math, so I wasn't really that smart. I couldn't do math, so my GPA and standardized test scores were lower. I couldn't do math, so I wasn't smart and my GPA and test scores were lower, so I couldn't go to a fancy college and I had to choose a less fancy college. I chose less fancy colleges that had low math requirements. I chose a grad school that didn't look at the math GRE scores.

Anyway, all of this is a mourning for parts of my life long gone, although I see that they had an impact on my life now. I don't know why this bothers me at the moment except that I think that I could have done more in my life by this time, gone more places, known more things, been better than I am. Which is a sad thought because as I am isn't so bad, is it?

I'm thinking back to my revelation at the conference back in October, that "I don't have to be that person any more." That was the real revelation of the year. I think I also should realize that I don't have to be that person who was always depressed and thought that, because she couldn't do math, she wasn't smart and so gave up far too easily on so many things or set her sights far too low. I have been her too long and I don't have to be. I have medicine, I don't have to do math, and smart isn't what I thought it was.

Bah Humbug and Long Live the Grinch!

2011-12-23T10:51:00.000Z

Ah, sweet, relieving Festivus for the rest of us!

Every Christmas is different and I have to find my own way to get through it. My desire to see my family is often directly proportional to whatever else is going on in my life, and usually leaves me preferring to visit at some other time than Christmas. My desire to see, well, any other human being is pretty much the same. I think of Christmas as a time for hibernation, really, and like the hibernation.

I used to hate Christmas with a white hot passion, but learned that the parts I like have to do with sweet treats, pretty lights, and -- most of all -- a rest. Just rest. The semester is over -- and even with a 9-to-5 job, I had a few days off -- and the week between December 25th and January 1st seems like a free week, nothing required after the intensity of requirements from the previous months.

So, what I really hate about Christmas is the requirements -- and requirements coupled with the sense of alienation if you choose to opt out of any or all of the requirements. You don't even have a tribe if you are from a culturally Christian background and opt out.

I hate presents, for instance, and rebel against this present requirement. I'm called a "Scrooge" for it, but if you go back and read A Christmas Carol, the unreformed Scrooge would probably love this orgy of shopping that has become late November and December. Presents are not at all part of the story outside of charity. Yet, there is everybody rushing to the stores, running up the credit card debt, spending out of their means, all to prove their Christmas spirit and show their "love" or "appreciation" to everyone they have come into contact with in their lives, whether or not they can afford it.

About a decade ago, I called a moratorium in my family on presents. "Look," I said. "Most of us have to travel long distances to get together, either by plane or car. Some of us are broke or barely making ends meet, so the travel is an expense. Then, to buy everyone a present costs not just cash, but time we may not have or could better use elsewhere, not to mention the stress of it all and having to transport the gifts, which is a hassle. Why don't we just give each other the gifts of the time and money that would be spent in shopping by not exchanging presents. If you want to give presents to someone in your own household, great, go for it -- especially babies. But, we adults don't really need this."

Everyone was on board and thought it was a grand idea. You can imagine what happened next, especially if you've ever seen an American sit-com. I showed up, no gifts, and everyone else gave presents. I told them, "from now on, this is how I play. I don't give presents except to the children -- and only while they are children. Don't give me presents. Keep the time and money for yourselves."

Even with the kids, I think that they should only get one present from each adult, not fifty big ticket items from grandparents competing with one another for the child's love. Seriously, that's how these things play out in our family.

There is also the requirement of "merriness." Some of us are not particularly merry at this time of year for a million reasons. I have a difficult time thinking of many happy holidays. Not that there weren't any, just that they were a long time ago, or require a lot of concentration and denial in order to disconnect the good moments from all of the shit around them. I can't even go to a holiday at my parents house without feeling as if I'm participating in some kind of farce of a happy family at Christmas. It's not that we are all fighting (anymore), it's just that I have no idea how to act around these people who are essential strangers to me, and strangers for a reason, and figuring out a new way to be -- simply being me -- takes so much effort. There is too much in between now and those bad days when everyone made a concerted effort to be on their worst behavior. There is too much from those days that can't be addressed, for which there is not point in addressing. To address those days would certainly destroy whatever detente exists that allows us to at least carry on the farce. That's why I don't go, or don't go until the spirit of requirement has worn off.

I've, in fact, found that the best moments were often completely divorced from traditional Christmases and involved road trips or beaches and sun or pina coladas and a stack of DVDs having nothing to do with the holiday or really anything having to do with that concept of rest without requirement. Rest without requirement makes me merry, and the shape of it changes from year to year. I like figuring out the shape. We'll see what it is this year very soon, I suppose.

Right now, any possibility for merriness has been amplified by the arrival of my drug mule, whose gift of my happy pills has improved my ability to simply think anything except "life is awful life is awful life is awful" exponentially.

Here's Why I Haven't Bought a Blanket

2011-12-21T17:10:00.002Z

You all nailed it in the comments to the last post. Anxiety, loss of control, stress due to a series of life-altering events (thank goodness no one died!), need for a get away to get a good night's sleep. Need to just buy a goddamn blanket.

Still, I don't buy the blanket. Normally, in my real life, I would; but, you see, I have a problem in going ahead and buying a blanket, or joininig a gym, or doing whatever it is I need to do to make here have some of the comforts of home or to address whatever silly thing annoys me or do just damn well do what I would normally do as an adult to have some sense of control over my own environment and person. The problem is that these things often take money, and money is one of the main sources of anxiety.

Here is what buying a blanket means in my depression-addled brain.

I have five or six comforters back at home. If I buy a comforter here and bring it back, then I am buying something that I don't need and have more than enough of in my real life, so the purchase is a waste. If I buy a comforter and leave it here, then I feel also as if I've wasted the money by purchasing something disposable. I suppose you could argue that a comforter is something that I need because I need it right now because what I have is so inadequate. Thus, the spending is not actually a waste. Still, it seems like a waste because I actually don't have any money, and the price of anything seems much more dear than in my real life.

I have savings and checking accounts, sure. Those, however, are finite at the moment and, in fact, dwindling because I do still have to pay student loans for the road not travelled and for my car insurance and for the privilege of having a checking account and all of the other sundry things that, as I said, don't take unofficial sabbaticals. I'm covered for these, so they unto themselves are not a source of anxiety.

For most of my adult life, I wasn't saving and was working to make ends meet and, at one shameful point, living on credit cards -- a situation that led to the big red B on my credit history (which, now that I think about it, has a birthday right about now -- last week, in fact). The past few years have seen the first since that time between high school and college when I have actually managed my money like a responsible, growing adult. Heck, they've been one of the few times in my adult life when I've had that luxury or made the smart decisions that gave me that luxury. It's not as if I've ever wanted to own a home or anything big like that; but savings represents safety and peace of mind and a certain degree of autonomy to me. It also represents hard work, it represents maturity, and it also represents lost time that I have to recover. Seeing what I have in savings and in the checking account -- which I always ran at as much of a surplus as possible -- diminish feels like a regression.

If you have a job, and some months you find you have spent more than you intended for whatever reason, you can hope to make up the loss in the coming months because you have paychecks replenishing your account. If you don't have a job, then every dollar you spend is gone. You feel the worth of that dollar, the work and effort to get it and to save it, and that is gone too. Wasted if the purchase is something silly like a comforter that is not an absolute necessity and that is ultimately disposable.

Furthermore, there is the immediate issue of my own money. The Irish banks won't let us have a joint account and they won't let me have an account myself because of some complicated stuff that I don't fully understand or remember but comes down to new regulations and fear of money laundering. (Jeez! If only I had enough money to bother laundering!) That means that I have two options should I actually choose to purchase anything.

The first is to use my U.S. bankcard, which means that I'm not just spending the price of whatever I am buying, but I'm also spending the fee that the bank charges to convert my theoretical dollars in their computer system to the merchant's theoretical Euros in the computer system of the merchant's bank. (I use the term "theoretical" because, essentially, isn't that what they are? It's all transferring the idea of cash rather than actual coins or notes.) That means that anything I buy costs more than it actually does because of that fee, even when I use my own bankcard.

Banks are nasty muthafuckas, aren't they? But that's another rant for another time.

The second option is to ask the Gentleman Caller to buy the thing for me or for cash to buy it myself. You can imagine how that feels after living your entire life in control of your own money. I feel like a child. Don't get me wrong: the Gentleman Caller hates this as much as I do, and will get or give me whatever I need. He hates that this situation makes me feel so infantilized and does everything he can to alleviate my feeling that way. This is not him. This is my issue and my situation.

My situation is that, to simply address something annoying like a tiny blanket or shitty pillows or more turtlenecks or an allergy attack or a migraine or the need of a trashy paperback to distract my addled mind (or even an electronic download for the Kindle because all of the e-books are checked out of the library -- ALL the e-books, I swear), I either have to face the fact that whatever I am spending will carry an extra charge and that both represent an absolute negative in my account, which will not be restocked at the end of the month; or, I have to put myself in the position of asking someone for whatever I need (and put him in a paternal position that he does not want). That means that I endure a whole host of stupid things that add up and wear me down and make me feel as if I were a child or like I did back when I was making $15/hour in That Place -- back when I learned that the road not taken was not taken for a reason.

Hence, I spend a lot of time feeling -- or trying very hard not to feel -- like I've regressed and like I'm a helpless dependent. I feel unable to address anything nagging or frustrating, and that only great emergencies (or embracing the vertigo) are suitable uses of the bankcard. That's part of why I tried to stretch my happy pills and why I had an anxiety dream about buying them when I didn't have the prescription card and would therefore have to pay full price.

This money problem is actually just the tip of a feeling that I am afraid to acknowledge because I can hear a chorus of voices chiding me for being a whiny, privileged, little twit. I am afraid to admit that I feel like I am in limbo, between two lives and therefore unable to do anything that either of those lives permit like being able to take care of myself. The worst thing about limbo, the thing that has me sobbing in the shower or on my jogs, is the feeling that everything that was mine is gone. Sure, I have things that will become mine in the future, and this feeling that all of my life is gone will be replaced by the new life, but that point is almost a year away and still an abstraction.

The thing that is concrete and real to me now is the profound feeling of loss for my own life, as if something has died. That's really the deep source of my sadness, even with the happy pills, and the reason that I have bad dreams to the point where I don't even want to go to bed at night because I don't want to deal with them -- dealing with the anxiety while awake is bad enough. It's the reason that I feel like a fraud and wholly alienated from my own sense of myself. It's the reason that I've self-medicated and resorted to eating disorders since May. It is a huge cloud that won't go away and the reason that I sometimes want to go home (although I know I would regret leaving here) -- until I realize that I don't really have a home to go to. Then, I get even sadder.

So, I suppose what I'm going through is, in a sense, mourning. It's a bit like a divorce, maybe, or a widowing. I've left big parts of my life that were important to me, that, in a way defined me; but I haven't gotten to the new one yet. I'm lucky that I have that new one, that I know that it will be there and that things will, in fact, improve. Right now, I'm just in between, unable to enjoy the newness just yet and completely sad about the old one.

In fact, the funniest thing is that I can't see the things that pissed me off about the old life nor do I know the things that will piss me off about the new one. Both are idealized in my head. All I can feel are the things that make me sad right now.

Did I not say that depression was a stupid condition?

The Other Reason for Grumpiness

2011-12-20T09:46:00.000Z

Another reason that I'm so grumpy has to do with my lack of a decent night's sleep. I don't think I have felt rested by sleep in almost four months; but most particularly since I got here.

At first, I blamed jet lag. The first week felt a bit fuzzy in general, and the first month had me going to bed at granny hours. That wore off, but the poor sleeping did not.

Then -- and still -- I blame the crappy beds in this Dormish Apartment. One bed is orthopedic, which means that a stone floor is more comfortable. The other is a glorified futon from Ikea, with a foam mattress and wooden slats. It sits about a foot off of the floor and I prefer to be up higher. I think so the monsters under the bed would have to jump to get me and so might lose interest. Also, there is no sheet or blanket or bedspread or even comforter that covers my entire person well. Aside from the fitted sheets, which don't fit very well, the comforters are all child-sized, reaching from my toes to my chest, and from elbow to elbow if I lay with my arms stretched out like Jesus, but not an inch further in any direction. That means that I wake up throughout the night to find myself half covered, then I have to readjust and go back to sleep, only to wake up again to repeat the whole process. In other words, the environment for sleeping is simply uncomfortable and I can't seem to relax and get into a good sleep.

I also have bad dreams. These dreams are necessarily nightmares, although that has happened on a few occasions, two of which woke me up screaming. Most of the dreams are simply unpleasant, the sort that leave you with a mucky feeling haunting you for the rest of the day. At first, I tried to remember all of them so that I could figure out what my mind was trying to tell me. That exercise tired me and went no where in the absence of my analyst -- god, I miss her. Now, I'm left with the mucky feeling and no plot line.

Some of the plots do linger. In one of the nightmares, a devil character, complete with blood-red skin that turned glow in the dark when the lights went out, tortured people by desiccating them alive or pulling out organs and bones. In others, the recurring pattern of protecting small and helpless creatures appeared, except in the older versions of the dream, I am profoundly upset by my inability to protect them and by becoming a danger to them myself. In this version, I felt remote, cut off from empathy. That last part also appeared in the devil dream and in general has bothered me. Another dream involved a particular, odd recurring motif having to do with my hair and its being shaved off or suddenly growing or not being able to style it. Others are the run-of-the-mill teaching anxiety dreams in which I cannot control a class because of technical difficulties, or a constantly changing room, or constantly changing numbers of students, or students who are unruly, or name your situation.

In an interesting twist on the teaching anxiety dream, I had one in which I was flying a helicopter -- very well, I might add -- but hit some minor turbulence and bailed out, leaving the machine hovering in mid-air. It stayed there, but I realized that it belonged to the school where I will be teaching next year. Then, it crashed. I tried to take full responsibility for the disaster, but the dean wouldn't listen to me and kept insisting that the crash was not my fault.

Last night, I dreamed that I had purchased some necessary item or other online, but the online store did not tell me how much I was spending. This, in fact, is exactly what happened when I ordered my prescriptions online and the store wouldn't tell me how much I would be charged because they had to clear the charge with my insurance company (which, incidentally, was not paying for this refill because I didn't have the damn card because I thought that the pharmacy would have my information in its computer system like it always does -- and that line of thought will take me on another rant). In my dream, however, I looked at my bank account and discovered that, as a result of the charge, I had only a few dollars left. In my dream, I freaked out because I have to keep paying student loans, insurance, and sundry other things that don't take a year long, unofficial sabbatical like myself; but, I am unable to earn an income while living in this country; but I can't return to the U.S. because I don't have a job there for another few months and would have to pay all of the usual cost-of-living bills.

This is clearly another sort of anxiety dream happening here.

At first, I thought that I would embrace all of my unpleasant and anxious dreams, use them to learn and grow and all of that other stuff you do to face the Smoke Monster. Now, I'm just annoyed. I want a good, restful, comfortable night's sleep in which I do not feel as if part of me is still awake, keeping an eye out for those monsters under the bed. I'm in Ireland, for chrissakes! I don't have to grade or deal with students or feel burned out or put together talks or wear make-up or do my hair or be social or do anything but drink coffee, write, run, and drink wine. This is the muthafuckin' life, goddammit! Why is my subconscious fucking with me?

Do you see why I think my next chapter is "How Will I Manage to Royally Fuck It Up?"

[Good gawd! A whole damn paragraph simply dissappeared here in the publishing. WTF! Is this my computer or Blogger? Now, I have to recreate it or the rest won't make a damn bit of sense.]

I've been having vertigo of late, and that scares me. Actually, I've have two feelings of vertigo, one literal and one metaphorical (is that a word?). The literal one surprises me because I always gravitate toward the highest point in a room, I lived on the 20th floor, I've not flown a small plane (because it would be illegal if I had actually taken over the controls and flow it over the Chesapeake and around an airport) -- hell -- I've JUMPED OUT of a small plane. Yet, suddenly, in the past few months, I will get this overwhelming terror that the viewing platform at Victoria Square in Belfast will collapse or that a strong wind will blow me off of the trail at the Giant's Causeway. The viceral fear that I will plummet to my death paralyzes me for no clear reason because I know rationally that these things will not happen, and yet my entire body has convinced itself of the imminent danger of splat!

Sill, I think I prefer this more literally irrational feeling because it is a response to actual, physical conditions and I am completely aware of the irrationality of the feeling. I know that the fear is something concocted out of the lower parts of my brain. Most importantly, the fear is so overwhelming that I know that I won't embrace the thing provoking the fear -- I won't jump off the cliff or the viewing platform. I won't accept the disaster of plummeting to my death in order to escape the stress of vertigo.

When I can see a potential for disaster in my life, I feel something very similar to that vertigo. This metaphorical vertigo frightens me more than what I feel in the real vertigo because, in this imagined vertigo, I cannot bear the anticipation of disaster, so I accept it. I let myself go and fall because the disaster of the fall seems much less painful than the anticipation of a fall and much less exhausting that the effort to prevent falling. I give up and get it over with, whatever "it" may be, and the potential for this terrifies me. I can't trust myself.

Maybe that is the source of all of my dreams and the source for this new, real experience of vertigo.

God, I miss my analyst.

Remember Reverb?

2011-12-16T08:00:00.009Z

In my obnoxiously self-pitying mood of yesterday, I came across this:

December 15 - Chapters.
If you divided your life into chapters what would you call them? What chapter are you in now? What chapter is next?
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/reverb11-time-reflection#ixzz1gcAaiLSs
Inside Higher Ed

So, I submit:

Why Do I Do These Things to Myself?: A Memoir of a Self-Piteous Depressive
(Because if I don't pity myself, who will?)

Chapter 1: "Wait, We Ordered a Child, Not This Squawking, Squirmy Thing!": I Am a Prodigy of Self-Loathing

Chapter 2: Were the Brothers a Necessary Addition?: I Enter the World of Misogyny

Chapter 3: Fake a Happy Childhood and Ignore the Misogyny to Avoid the Beatings Until Moral Improves: I Escape into Books, Learn to Pretend, and Write Novels

Chapter 4: The Ophelia Years: Is High School Really Necessary and Useful to Anyone?

Chapter 5: Minimum Wage Sucks!: O.K., so the Parental Unit Was Right about Something

Chapter 6: Credit for Reading Great Books: Yeah, the School is Sub-Par, but It Opens a World that Minimum Wage Can't

Chapter 7: The Breakdown: I Reach the Limits of Being a Good Little Girl and Collapse for Two Years Straight

Chapter 8: The Miracle of Prozac

Chapter 9: They Can Kill You But they Can't Eat You -- Can They?: Who Says Grad School Isn't the "Real World"? People in the "Real World" Could Never Survive this Beatdown

Chapter 10: The Miracle of Prozac and Feminism: I Become Obnoxious but Awake

Chapter 11: Doctorate Attained: You Earn the Damn PhD from the Shit They Put You Through, but They Won't Give it to You Until You Finish the Damn Dissertation

Chapter 12: Finding The Big Guy

Chapter 13: The Road Not Taken Was Not Taken For a Reason

Chapter 14: Stepping Stones In Something Approximating the Right Direction

Chapter 15: The Miracle of Psychoanalysis: Dismantling a Lot of Fundamental, Bad Ideas - with Peeps!

Chapter 16: Holy Shit! I Might Actually Have a "Happily Ever After"! [Current chapter]

Chapter 17: Now, How Will I Manage to Royally Fuck It Up? [Next chapter]

The End!

FMGetting Prescriptions Filled Overseas

2011-12-15T11:35:00.000Z

I've become a grumpy morning person of late. Not that I ever was a happy morning person. After all, the first thing I do when I wake up is drink coffee and browse the headlines. The headlines will make anyone grumpy. Then, there was the whole getting ready for the day and slipping into a fatalistic swamp of my own imagining in which I know I will either become overwhelmed by or fail at anything that I attempt that day.Usually, that passes once I get moving. Not so much these days.

Right now, I blame two things for this grumpiness. The first is simply chemical. I'm having my usual difficulties in getting a prescription filled in a new place. Depression is really one of the stupidest disorders out there. Not that you are stupid if you have it, but the whole disorder itself -- well, if I believed in a god, I would think he was a petty creature for coming up with such a thing. You are sad and hate yourself for no reason whatsoever.

I will digress here also to explicate on migraines, too. Normally, physical pain is supposed to indicate that something is seriously wrong with your body. "Ouch!" you say, "my foot hurts! What could be wrong? Oh, I broke my toe! Get to the doctor, quickly!" With a migraine, you collapse in agony, restraining yourself from banging your head against a brick wall because that just might provide some form of relief from this excruciating assault on your very brain. Yet, nothing is actually wrong. Nothing is broken, nothing is dented, no little beasties have invaded your body. You have just entered a world in which pain is the norm.

In fact, I recently heard of someone who got a furious headache and ran to the emergency room to find that he was in the middle of a stroke. I wondered how he would know that the pain was bad enough for the e.r. If I were in such pain, I'd just think "shit, another migraine. Another four days I will lose. Please shoot me. Right here on the left side of my head." That's probably how I will die.

Depression is similar, but the pain is psychological. You are just sad, then grumpy, then sad, then hate yourself. Plus, if you grew up in family and a world that was as sympathetic as mine to any sort of pain, you also have these little gremlins running around in your head saying, "Why don't you just get over it? You just WANT to be miserable! You are a weak and useless person! You are doing this to hurt ME! You are a cruel and selfish person!" You start to wonder if those gremlins are right because, after all, what do you have to be so sad about, really? I mean, aside from the fact that you are a weak, useless, cruel, and selfish person who is also lazy and will amount to nothing.

One of the problems in having depression is that you do get overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks. Seriously, you end up sounding like Eeyore, thinking "what's the point? Why bother? It's all going to end up for shit anyway." Except, I don't think Eeyore ever said "shit." At least, she (I decided Eeyore was a "she" because there were not many other girls in Pooh, because my mom was always calling me Eeyore, and because Eeyore wore a pink ribbon.) didn't in the expurgated versions for children.

You become so overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks that any obstacle, no matter how slight, will become an insurmountable obstruction/ Thus, I always hate hate hate hate hate having to deal with prescription refills when I am away from my usual home because there are always all sorts of stupid obstacles that have their own logic and purpose, but just become such a terrible hassle to overcome, especially if you end up in a spiral in which you have absolutely no will to overcome them.

See how stupid depression is? You are in psychological pain, and the lethargy that the depression causes keeps you from doing what you have to do to get relief from that pain.

So, my grumpy mood here is that getting my happy pills has become a major annoyance. Maybe "major" is overstating the case. "Annoyance" is not.

Here I am, in Dublin, running out on my three months' supply of happy pills. Why only three months? Because the damn insurance company wouldn't let me have more on a co-pay. Fine. They have happy pills in Ireland, don't they? Yes, they do. So, I go to the chemist. The chemist says that you have to have a prescription. Well, I have a prescription -- with lots of refills to get me to May. Here is the printout from my pharmacy in the U.S. showing those refills. Here is my quickly emptying bottle showing that I have refills. Here are all of the numbers and names and amounts and whatever the hell you need to just get me the goddamn happy pills. No, that won't work. They need a prescription from an Irish doctor. Go make an appointment with an Irish doctor who will give you a prescription that an Irish pharmacy will fill.

Ah, jeez! In the U.S., they want to "monitor" you. Now, I'm very dubious about this "monitoring" because they want to see you just often enough to be annoying, but not often enough to really determine if the pills are working. Sure, they go down a check list every time, but half of the time I have had to tell my own damn doctor what and how much I am taking, and they are the ones with the chart in their hand. "Is this a test?" I wonder, when that happens. My analyst -- god, I miss her -- is the one who actually monitored my mental health. The psychiatrist just checked the boxes and gave me access to the pills every six weeks or so. I think of the psychiatrist as my "dealer" and the analyst as the mental health professional.

Now, I do understand that the psychiatrists have their own problems with the state of mental health care in the U.S. They have to be the dealers and they have to see you so often but not much more or the insurance company won't cover you; and the cost of running their practice means they have to stack patients' appointments on top of one another with no time for reviewing charts or anything else in between. My understanding of their situation, however, does nothing for me, who must look out for myself. All I can do is not be mean to them when I get frustrated.

Anyway, back to my prescription woes. So, I must go to a doctor in Ireland. If the Irish system works like the U.S. system, then who knows how long I will have to wait until I can see that doctor. Then, I have to convince the doctor that I do, in fact, have depression, and that I don't just need to "get over it." (Yes, I had a doctor tell me that once, despite a deep medical chart on the subject, and I wasn't even seeing him for the depression, he just offered that bit of advice up when I went to see him about a migraine -- which he also openly doubted that I had -- which is also why I refuse to see old, white, male doctors -- call me sexist, but I won't). Every new doctor has to be certain that I'm not just a drug seeker -- as if happy pills will do anything for you if you don't need them -- and I end up feeling like a drug seeker in the process. Then, I have to convince that doctor that I need the prescription until May. Then, I run the risk of having him "monitor" me, meaning more appointments. Then, I have no idea how American insurance will fit with the system here --and, well, now you have a glimpse into my fatalistic thought process and the reason that I am willing to run the risk of a few months of a dark depression so as to not have to deal with this until I return to the U.S., find a new doctor who will, seeing as I will be in an existential funk by then, not make me run a gauntlet of proving that I am depressed and then trying whatever "new and improved, better than" free samples that the pharmaceutical rep has dropped on them. (Yes, all of this has happened in the past.) All of which I understand but -- damn! -- my body and my brain become entirely demoralized by having to cover the same damn territory that they have covered however many times I have had to change doctors in the past twenty years of treatment.

I tell ya, I had less trouble back when I was a grad student with no insurance and could just go over to the health center; but, then, a university health center does take mental illness much more seriously than most institutions outside of a mental health facility because -- well, sometimes college is like a mental health facility.

"Fuck this noise," I thought, when the second pharmacist said I had to go to the doctor and the above scenario ran through my head. "I'll just get my American pharmacy to send me my damn pills."

They don't do that overseas, unless you are a G.I. Now, I had to maneuver around this new wrinkle. I could order my prescriptions, have them sent to someone in the U.S. who could then send them to me. I'm actually at an advantage on this one because the Gentleman Caller's kids -- who are adults -- are visiting next week for the holidays. I am having the prescription sent to one of his kids and they will bring them over here for me. Yes, we've turned his children into drug mules.

But, of course, ordering online can't be so easy can it? I'm using my usual, chain pharmacy, which has all of my prescription and insurance information in their system. Except they don't. They have the prescription part -- thank god! -- but they now want the insurance information. The prescription insurance is different from the medical insurance, but I usually don't have to think about that because of the whole computerized records thing. So, I don't have the prescription card with me. Ah, jeez. Now I have to pay full price and make a claim later on the drug, except they won't tell me the full price because -- get this -- they have to check with the insurance company first on what the insurance company will cover.

Meanwhile, the happy pills have run out. Now, had I started this whole process say, two months ago, I would not have run out. I didn't know that there would be this problem two months ago, so I didn't deal with it then. Now, I'm running on empty. Back when I took the Big P -- god, I miss it! -- the drugs took a bit to work into your system, but they also took a while to work out, so I would have some wiggle room here. This generation, however, goes in and out much more quickly, so I'm blaming it for my grumpiness. Better the grumpiness than a full-blown funk. I can recover from a grump better than a funk.

So, my happy pills will be here in a week -- I'm hoping! There is always the possibility that they won't get to the Gentleman Caller's kid on time (3-6 days for delivery was the fastest they had, and the child lives in a major city); but we will hand that one over to Scarlett and think about it tomorrow.

I know I bitch and moan about this, and that everyone should have these sorts of problems. I wonder about people who have life threatening illnesses, who can't go for a week or so without medication without risking something horrible, who can't afford doctor, prescription, or insurance. I wonder about people who have to advocate for their elderly charges or children. What horror stories do they encounter. Do the people who have created this behemoth of a system have any awareness that health care, which should be as easy to acquire as groceries, is such a pain in the ass in the best of circumstances?

Meanwhile, I just want my damn happy pills because I hate being grumpy.

By the way, Hyperbole and a Half once more says it all, this time in regard to depression.

Running About

2011-12-14T08:00:00.000Z

My blisters have blisters that have blisters:

That usually happens with new running shoes. These running shoes are decidedly not new:

No tread of any use, and some of no real use also gone. You don't want to know how flat the soles are, and even the gel arch supports that I added have significantly less spring than they once did. I shudder to think what an X-ray of my feet might reveal.

Now, I have new shoes -- with tread!:

These are actually closer to hiking shoes, I suspect; but the T.K. Maxx (yes, T.K., not J) had a wide selection of different types of athletic shoes, and these were the only pair in my size. Seriously. I have a very average sized foot, so my size is always out, everywhere.

My feet feel much better after running now, and running itself is less of an effort. It is still and effort -- more so than when I run on a treadmill, but there seem to be physiological reasons for that. After I measured my two-hour route on the map, sure that it must be 10 miles long since I can run at least that many on a treadmill in that period of time, I discovered that the route was only 8 miles plus a few feet. Sure, I go slower, contend with hills, and have to jog in place for interminable amounts of time at traffic lights -- and don't get me started on the obstinant pedestrian obstacle course! Still, shouldn't I have gone further? This was a very demoralizing bit of information.

Last year, I lost about 20 pounds and gained some great fitness. I wanted to keep at least a bit of that here! In fact, in a testament to my own improved mental health, I am more concerned about losing fitness than gaining weight. I feel very butch and powerful, not to mention more than a little bit self-satisfied, knowing that I can run over 10 miles. I want to go more!

Finding that I ran only 8 in two hours -- a pace that is closer to my walking? Well, something must be off or something that I don't know about must be at play. So, I looked up "road running vs treadmill" on the Great and All-Knowing Google. Turns out that I may not be going as far as fast on the road as I am on a treadmill, but I am not getting weaker, I'm getting a tougher workout. A treadmill helps you more than you know, if you don't know. On the street, your hamstrings and butt have to do more work. So, I'm actually gaining strength there, and that is a place where I would like more muscle. That is the opposite of de-moralizing!

Guess the Season!

2011-12-13T08:41:00.001Z

Pretty pink flowers:

Pretty yellow flowers that look like forsythia, but are, upon closer inspection:

not:

Pretty purple flowers and a white rose in front of a funky tree:

The funky tree is called a "monkey puzzle tree." At first, I thought it was a cactus of some sort, but on closer inspection, it also seemed a bit like a pine. The authoritative Wikipedia says the latter.

I took these pictures while walking this past Sunday, wrapped in leggings, warm-up pants, leg warmers (don't judge! You would, too!), a t-shirt, a turtle neck, a thermal lined sweat shirt with hood up, a cat burglar stocking cap, gloves, and a thick scarf. The temperature was in the low 40s (Fahrenheit). My body is sometimes a little confused here because my eyes see the flowers, my skin feels the cold, but my head says "it's Christmas time so the weather should be colder."

Nonetheless, I've grown to like even the dreary days; although I do resist the urge, on those dreary days, to hop on a train with a bag of sugary comfort food, and ride around the country listening to audiobooks and knitting all day -- or at least all of the above minus the train ride. I've learned to embrace the dreary coldness and pull it about me like a wool comforter, which it resembles. In fact, sometimes an actual wool comforter helps! Sometimes, acceptance is the only way to hold off the depression because fighting the grey will only frustrate you and send you into the pit of futility.

The grey also makes such surprises as flowers in December ever the brighter.

By the way, we just had snow. Snow and flowers in December!

Silly Lists

2011-12-05T09:26:00.000Z

I confess that, as much as I love Ireland and am not ready to return to the U.S. just yet, there are some things that I miss. Here is a list.:

My car.
In fact, the whole act of driving. We are not even renting cars here because we intend to keep the roads of Ireland safe.
Being able to go to Target and buy new running shoes.
Being able to find everything you need at one grocery store. I now understand why "shopping" is called "going to the shops" here because that is exactly what you do. You go to several shops. It is more interesting, but sometimes less convenient, even if all of the shops are on the same block.
My own bank account. More precisely, since I do have my own bank account in the U.S., a local bank account that will not charge me a billion dollars in fees to use a non-them ATM and convert the currency.
A local bank account where I can deposit the odd check that washes up from this or that.
A steady income.
My analyst -- oh, do I miss my analyst!
The rest of my clothes.
The rest of my shoes, especially my boots.
Low-fat anything, but especially Ben and Jerry's Low-fat Cherries Garcia Frozen Yogurt.
Netflix, or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days.
Mad Men reruns.
My chairs and sofa.
My office chair and desk.
My bed -- dear god! I miss my bed! With all of its pillows. I haven't had a decent night's sleep since I got here, and every night I have dreams that range from unpleasant to waking up screaming (o.k. that was only once or twice, but still). Hence, number 8.
The gym.
My books.
The Gentleman Caller's books.
Just plain access to books on American history without having to pay huge shipping sums.

Understand that missing these things does not mean that I am unhappy. I feel I must say that because I have been trained to think that a person must be deliriously happy and satisfied with everything or constantly miserable and dissatisfied with everything when, in fact, people are much more complicated than that.

Although some of these things are available in Ireland, like a gym, they are not worth the investment of a few months use. The whole running shoe thing, however, must be addressed soon because I no longer have any real tread on the bottom and my feet hurt more than they should after a run. Indeed, I believe that this particular issue shall be addressed this evening. On the whole, I will return to most of them in a few months, so their loss is a mere inconvenience (except for the analyst).

In a year, I could make a list of things that I will be missing then. That list will probably include:

Weather that is not below freezing and never sweltering.
Oddly enough now, the weather in general.
Being able to run outside, anywhere.
Jogging by castles and places with names that have become slang, if quite old-fashioned, expressions .

Being able to walk anywhere. Seriously, I'm certain that, if you put you mind to it, you could walk from one side of the island to the other on a paved path.
Being able to take public transportation to almost anywhere.
Double-decker buses.
The smell of burning sod. People don't burn firewood in their fireplaces here. They burn chunks of turf, which has a slightly different, tangy scent that has become rather comforting.
The odd feeling of being pegged as benignly curious the minute I open my mouth.
The slightly off-kilter feeling of everything being the same and yet not, and wanting to investigate the reasons for that further.
Small shops.
Smallness in general, or being in what I used to call a "short city" having grown up in one of very tall skyscrapers.
Not teaching and only having to write -- dear god! I will miss that!
Having essentially no responsibilities.
Not having to put on the uniform -- hair, make-up, etc. -- every day. That is, just going natural and in jammies every day.
The feeling of knowing that the sea is not too far away -- I can't explain that one, especially since we aren't near the shore, which is miles away; but for some reason I can feel it. Must be psychological.
A pub on every corner, especially ones that do not play loud music, or any music at all.
The knowledge that you can hop a plane to pretty much anywhere in Europe at a fairly inexpensive price (you know, relative to being in the U.S.).
The constant sense of adventure, even when adventure is a pain-in-the-ass.
Good yarn.

Alas, these will be gone when they are gone, so I will mourn them and maybe seek them out elsewhere when I can. Adventure breeds the need for more adventure, right, even if the"adventure" is quite small and tame?

Dunluce Castle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland (October 31, 2011)

NOT Olivier's Version, THANK GOODNESS!

2011-12-04T08:00:00.001Z

This week, the Gentleman Caller and I decided to go to the Irish Film Institute and see the new version of Wuthering Heights. Earlier this fall, we saw Jane Eyre, the one that was released in the U.S. -- when was it? Last spring? That version erased race from the story by making the "Madwoman" and her brother clearly white.

I never really loved Jane Eyre, although I grew to appreciate the story and the things that Charlotte Bronte was saying. I also admired Jane's flintiness. Still, I just hated all of the male characters, and hated that Jane had to choose to spend her life with one of them. This particular version of the film reiterated my reasons. I kept thinking, "GAWD! These men are full of shit, all tyring to mansplain Jane to Jane. Shut up, Rochester! Just SHUT THE HELL UP!" I suppose that was some of the point that Charlotte Bronte was attempting to make. I think she hated them, too, but Jane was trapped in this world so had to make the best of it. Better to make the richer creep blind and dependant on her, right?

I digress.

But, as long as I'm digressing, I discovered the comic strip, "Hark, A Vagrant" the very day after I saw Jane Eyre when I came across an article about the artist in Salon.com. The very comic referenced in the article was one about the Brontes. Hee!

Anyway, I had come across an article about the actress playing the older Cathy, which made me look up the movie, which led to my discovery that Heathcliff was cast as black. Interesting. This I had to see.

What a powerful film! I have seen the Olivier version and am convinced that he totally did not understand the book. I'm not overly certain that he understood much of the Shakespeare that he interpreted, but I'm not in a position to elaborate with any great knowledge on that. In fact, not having actually read Wuthering Heights in more years that I can even remember -- I may have listened to an audiobook version of it in the past decade in a half -- I'm probably not in a position to say anything with any authority on the adaptation of the book.

Of course, that hasn't stopped me before.

Making Heathcliff black enhanced his isolation and sense of not belonging. Little asides, both vocal and visual, connect him to the slave trade. His back has scars from branding and beating, and someone says something about Daddy Earnshaw having found him in Liverpool. For me, that made any further beatings, such as when he is thrown against a wall and his back thrashed in a way reminiscent of images of slave whippings, more chilling and hateful, connecting this remote location to a wider world of violence and brutality.

I remember reading the book the first time, and I remember wondering why people thought that it was such a great love story when it seemed to be about horrible abuse, and that the abuse begat more abuse, and that all of the characters were ultimately vicious. The director does not shy away from that unrestrained and perverting power. Wuthering Heights is a savage world, and the Grange isn't much better, with only a polished veneer. So, Heathcliff seems a much more sympathetic character and his vengeance at the end seems the logical result of his treatment since birth. You can't be kind and sympathetic in these worlds because you will end up destroyed -- like Isabella.

I had no sympathy for Cathy, and I'm not sure if that is a product of the story or of the actress who plays the older version of her. The actress playing the younger version was a revelation. She was tough and scruffy, a product of the landscape as much as her family. Yet, she could also show affection for Heathcliff through her rough exterior.

The older actress's performance I can hardly evaluate because I was too distracted by the impossibility of this younger Cathy growing into this older Cathy. Not simply the looks -- the two Heathcliffs did not look that much alike, but you could believe that one became the other -- but the way that she played the character had very little in common with the younger version. You couldn't even write the differences off of her change in environment. She just was not the same character. As for that character, she kept saying that Heathcliff had betrayed her by running off. Well, she had become engaged to Linton! What did she think was going to happen? How did she think things were going to work?

Of course, again, I haven't read the book in a while. The book has all of "I am Heathcliff." The film does not. The film is clearly from his point of view, so the film cuts out of that confession when Heathcliff does and I'll have to go back to see what she actually concludes. Still, in the confines of the film, the viewer doesn't know what her side of the story is, so the viewer comes away thinking, "what an irrational woman! Did she expect to keep him on the side in her marriage? Did she think anyone but herself -- or even herself -- would find that acceptable?" That may not be fair to the character.

Nonetheless, this film was haunting. The moors seemed so big and desolate in panoramic views, and yet also teeming with life through extreme close-ups. But the life is also not friendly. It's nasty, brutish, and short. You are either the rabbit in the trap or the one doing the trapping, and there is no reward in being the rabbit. The trapper doesn't have things very well, either. This seems very much like the book that I remember reading.

Is it playing in the U.S., yet? The fact that we had to see it in an art house suggests that it isn't in wide release even here.

Here is the trailer:

Here is "Hark, A Vagrant's" interpretation of the book, parts 1, and 2, and Kate Bush, for good measure.:

That also reminds me, the film keeps most of the story -- and there is a lot of story in the story -- but dispenses with the framing device and the next generation of Earnshaws and Lindleys. Heathcliff wins, but, like the trapper, it isn't much of a victory.

I actually think I may go back and read the book, now.

Hark, Patrick Pearse and John Connolly!

2011-12-03T10:29:00.002Z

My wake-up routine in the morning involves coffee and reading the comics. Thanks to the lovely world of the intertubes, a person can read comics not selected by one's local paper, and among those that I like to read is "Hark, A Vagrant" by Kate Beaton-- comics for history and literary nerds. She doesn't post every day, so I click her "Random" link to see older strips. Imagine my delight to come across this comic. You could probably count on one hand the number of people in the U.S. who get it. I would not have been one of those people except for these artifacts of my stay here.

First, in a restaurant called The Bank (housed in a former bank, and very lovely), the decor includes the busts of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. Right next to one another you will find:

Patrick Pearse and John Connolly.

The bartenders at The Bank also know how to make mixed drinks properly, as in "not from a mix." This is a rarity in this city, based upon the Gentleman Caller's research. He's still scarred from his swamp green martini made with vodka and "martini mix." I don't know much about martinis, but I did take a taste and it was pretty foul, even for a martini.

I digress.

Patrick Pearse with his brother, ran a school for "sensitive boys." The curriculum immersed young men in Irish culture at a time when such was a revolutionary act. (I'm also certain that at least one of the two brothers was gay, but I may be basing that on stereotypes and not evidence.) The school, St. Enda's, is now a museum and I discovered it one day while jogging.:

The South Dublin County history website point out that Pearse rode his bicycle from St. Enda's past the Walled-Up Woman castle on his way to Dublin on Easter Sunday 1916, never to return. The rising failed miserably, although William Butler Yeats -- another poet, but not one in charge of a revolution -- had a different interpretation:

I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Pearse, Connolly, and the rest ended up here, in Kilmainham Gaol, on this block:

They met their end here, by firing squad:

I rather like the idea that a teacher and a poet was a revolutionary. I like being in a city where writers are honored as much as revolutionaries. Two of the candidates in the late presidential election were academics and the winner is also a poet.* That would lead to mockery and homophobic comments about the candidate's manhood in the U.S. (Yeah, sure, I know a certain Gingrich has a PhD in history, but does anyone take him seriously as a scholar of anything? He clearly knows nothing about the Progressive Era or the Gilded Age, otherwise, he wouldn't be trying to return the U.S. to 1880, or thereabout.)

In fact, I'm reminded of something that the Big Guy wrote about the power of words. He wrote, after studying the speeches in the first book that he owned, The Columbian Orator,

The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.

Reading, learning new ideas, learning new ways to express those ideas, helped him to develop his own and his ways of expressing his own. Right there, you have the whole argument for a real education, immersed in ideas, in literature, in philosophy, in history, in the humanities. I suppose that is why we humble, seemingly innocuous humanities professors seem so dangerous and must be outsourced and undermined. Right?

Mostly, I like that a comic artist made up a strip about them. It's not something that you see everyday.

------
*I should perhaps also note that I have no idea about their politics, and I haven't really begun to survey the political parties or their historical and social contexts here. That means I could be making an analogous statement to saying that the U.S. is cool because an alleged historian is running for president.

The Missing Paragraph andOther Stuff

2011-11-29T09:19:00.000Z

Yesterday, in my post, I wrote this:

Yesterday, we visited a castle. The term "castle" actually refers to the building's earliest incarnation. It's last was a Jesuit monastery, but the architecture reflects the centuries in which it was a manor house. Like any respectable manor house, it comes with a story of the macabre. Allegedly, two nobles fell in love with the same woman. At a ball, their rivalry escalated into a duel. Before they went out to draw pistols, they boarded her up in a wall. In the duel, one died from his wounds and the other drowned in the river. No one knew that the woman had been boarded up, so she died there in the wall. According to the guide books and the plagiarized piece on every website about the castle, workers discovered the skeleton during renovations in the 1880s, and estimated that the bones had been there 130 years. According to the woman working the ticket counter, the Jesuits discovered the bones there during renovations in the 1920s.

After that, I went on a little rumination about the holes gaping throughout that story. That little rumination, however, disappeared somewhere between the writing and the posting. Disappearing paragraphs are a frequent occurrence and one, I believe, connected to the mouse pad. I hate mousepads. I bought a regular mouse and attached it to my computer to avoid the mousepad, but the location of the mousepad, just on the edge of my palm, means that the mousepad continues to interfere. My palm will barely brush the pad and -- bink! -- a chunk of the paper will disappear. I can bring it back in Word, but Blogger isn't so kind. --- Oh, what! Blogger does have an "undo" feature. Well, I'm dense. I'm also lazy, otherwise I would have taken the time to disable the mousepad. I also am inattentive, otherwise I would notice when a whole paragraph goes missing so that I could use the "undo" feature.

Clearly, one of my hobbies is complaining about silly things that I could fix easily if I were more focused on problem solving than on bitching. That will be the subtitle of my memoir.

Anyway, the rumination now seems a tad bit silly, too. The story of the duel is clearly bullshit. After all, wouldn't someone somewhere have noticed the girl was missing? Wouldn't someone have heard her kicking and screaming, if she didn't go into the wall dead already? Wouldn't someone have noticed the smell of her decaying body, like in "A Rose for Emily"? Why put her in the wall when there were acres and acres of land on which to hide an inconvenient corpse? All very unlikely.

Also, what about the skeleton? When was it found? By who, really? What did they do with the remains? Why don't the interpreters know, since the story is in all of the guidebooks?

Perhaps most importantly, what is the documentation for all of this? Do the Jesuits have some record? Does the museum or the Office of Public Works, which owns the site, have records? When did the story originate? After all, if the incidents that it described are untrue, the story itself has a history? What are the different versions of the story? How far back can you find a record of the story? Can it only be traced, say, to the site becoming a tourist attraction? Do they not publicize the story because it is less a tourist attraction and more of a feature of the park where children play and might dampen the use of the site for receptions (because not everyone is as macabre as some of us)? What function does the story serve in the local lore?

One of the other odd features of the site is that it has not literature on the site itself. Most people were there to use the playground or the tea room. The house itself contained a new exhibit of toys and clothing (very cool). The pamphlets available at the front only dealt with the exhibit or with the other Heritage Sites of Ireland, but nothing was available to give a brief overview of the house's history and lore. You had to book a tour for a group, too, although there may be more tours available during the tourist season.

I'm sorely tempted to contact the Office of Public Works, just to see if they have any information about the story. I'm also sorely tempted to take a few moments -- or hours -- out of my next visit to the National Library to see what they have in the historic Dublin newspapers. I just might do the first, since all that would require would be an e-mail.

This is the reason that I wish I were a novelist. I would say popular historian, but I'm interested in obscure stories that would not really be very popular. A novelist could make this story interesting. I keep thinking that I should try again in my spare time -- of which I actually do have some right now. I have a file of ideas, simply because I want to write something down. When I was a kid, I used to keep a notebook with me and, when I wasn't reading a book, I was writing my own in the notebook. That's one of the things that I love about my younger self. I also told myself stories before I went to sleep at night. I suppose I still tap into that when I drift into narrative parts of my history writing. The most fun that I had writing my first book -- my dissertation, really -- was the chapter that was almost wholly narrative. I think I finished that chapter in a weekend. I wonder if I could just do that again, only out of my head, rather than out of all of the books and notes stacked around me?

Alas, this is just a distraction. I'm actually quite ready to write chapter 1 -- chapter 2 is done and ready for revision -- part of chapter 4 is done, too, but will require significant reworking before it is actually a chapter. My introduction is outlined. In fact, part of chapter 1 is done, too, from the paper that I gave, I just have to axe some of the overt historiography (trade press, you know) and move it to the notes. Then, I have to incorporate the grandmother (the paper was on the mother) and move forward with the slave mistresses. I know what I want to say, since I worked it out in the other, frustrating paper and in the big picture revelation. Now, it's time to invoke the goddess Nike and just do it.

The Long Weekend

2011-11-28T10:38:00.001Z

Thanksgiving was lovely. We went to a bar in a hotel that had Christmas trees set up and no music and just enough light to make it cozy but not dark. I'm finding that I don't like going places that play music. Places that play music play it about a decibel too loud, placing it just within my notice, in sort of a peripheral hearing, to be distracting. I don't like that. I also hate loud music. Yes, I am too old.

I think I am actually turning into your great-granny. There's the music thing, and then there is the knitting, and then there is the preferring to read or watch t.v. and knit rather than go out in the evenings, and then there is the vague aches and pains everywhere. We aren't even getting into the desire to grab people on the street and tell them how to behave properly. For godsakes, people, when you are with a group of people on the sidewalk, with a wall on one side and busy traffic on the other, and someone is walking toward you, could at least ONE of you step aside to let that person pass?!? Also, pick up after your dog, especially if that dog is the size of a horse! And, pull up those pants! And get the hell outta my yard!

The aches and pains are all ridiculous. My hands are cramped from knitting, would you believe? As are my forearms. Then, somewhere along the line, I think I pinched a nerve in my neck because I have a feeling, somewhere between numbness and pain, running from my cheek, down through my shoulder and into my bicep. I would blame my purse, but I stopped using a purse and switched to a backpack when the pain began. Then, I switched the backpack to one strap on the other shoulder. Now, I think I just sleep on it funny. It only gets worse from here, doesn't it? Like next it will be my sciatica --actually, that happens pretty frequently -- and then I'll break my hip, and then I'll be all stooped over and then I'll get arthritis, and then I'll need a cane, and then I'll start using the can to whack those kids with their baggy pants and their loud music when they start hanging out in my yard.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving, after we went to the bar, we went to a lovely restaurant for a tasty dinner. The company that the Gentleman Caller is working for had a big "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner for its employees on Friday, but we did not go. We figured that they would serve rubber turkey, but mostly we didn't want to pay the $50 for me to attend. The dinner was free for all employees, but any family member who attended had to pay $50 each. We decided to go to the opera instead.

Actually, the opera was on Saturday night. We saw The Magic Flute in a very tiny theater down by the river. The orchestra consisted of the conductor playing a piano, a bassoonist, a flutist, a clarinetist, and oboist and -- oh, I forget -- another instrument, I want to say violinist. The point here being that the orchestra was more of a sextet and it was set off to the side of the stage. They a cctv on the conductor so that they could put a monitor in front of the stage so that the singers could see her direction. The stage might have fit into your living room, and the audience all sat shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip on risers. The singers were maybe twenty feet away and they did not need any sort of microphone.

The opera itself is very sexist, what with the defeat of the Queen of the Night by the "manly" Masons; but the entire creative team from the conductor to the artistic director to the costume designers were all women. The lighting person might have been a man, but everyone else was female. Being aware of the sexism of the libretto, they included a feminist reading of the story in the program. In the opera itself, the costumes showed a historical progression of fashion from the late 1800s to the 1920s. That is, unless you take in the Queen of the Night and her three attendants. They included the Viking (the Gentleman Caller leaned over to me and said, "that's how you can tell it is an opera: women in hats with horns"), ancient Greek, ancient Egypt, and Elizabethan eras. In the final scene, the women all wore "Votes for Women" sashes, Pamina stripped Tamino's masonic apron off, the Queen of the Night ripped off her muzzle, and, as the company sang something about glory coming down from above, a banner rolled down saying "Votes for Women," while a battle of the sexes broke out on stage. You don't see that every day at the opera.

Yesterday, we visited a castle. The term "castle" actually refers to the building's earliest incarnation. It's last was a Jesuit monastery, but the architecture reflects the centuries in which it was a manor house. Like any respectable manor house, it comes with a story of the macabre. Allegedly, two nobles fell in love with the same woman. At a ball, their rivalry escalated into a duel. Before they went out to draw pistols, they boarded her up in a wall. In the duel, one died from his wounds and the other drowned in the river. No one knew that the woman had been boarded up, so she died there in the wall. According to the guide books and the plagiarized piece on every website about the castle, workers discovered the skeleton during renovations in the 1880s, and estimated that the bones had been there 130 years. According to the woman working the ticket counter, the Jesuits discovered the bones there during renovations in the 1920s.

I've been struggling with the Big Guy for a few weeks, trying to find the balance between the brush strokes and the whole museum. Yesterday, I finally found the heart of the story that I'm trying to tell. The whole time I thought I was trying to tell the story of a particular conflict having to do with women, and I was having the worst time trying to fit all of the chapters and characters together to tell that story, but the story lacked something that made it sound authentic, that made all of those chapters and characters fit together into something coherent. I kept reading, and re-reading, and thinking, and hating on myself for being so inadequate, and then reading and, re-reading, and thinking some more.

Then, a quote shook loose. The quote tied together the end with the beginning, and the sentiment of the quote -- the big picture that it described -- ran all through his life. The conflict of the story was about something slightly different than I had originally thought. I had thought it was simply a conflict about gender, with race and class incorporated. I see now that I was trying too hard to separate out gender and make it the center of the story, since most other biographies talk only about race with either very dated or very cursory inclusions of gender; but, you really cannot separate them as much as I was attempting to do -- or the way that those other biographies tended to do.

So, I placed race at the center of the story along with gender -- and then class naturally followed. Now the story has greater tension, greater conflict, greater drama, and more coherence. I'm not just charging ahead. I actually have something like an introduction. Sure, it will be revised, but I think I'm a person who does need to start with something like an introduction, otherwise, I will wander all over and never get to the point. Then, I will get distracted by something -- anything -- else.

The introduction sets up the conflict. I had a method, now I know what that method will draw me toward. I know the conflict that I am describing. The conclusion will bring it all home. I actually did a happy Snoopy dance when I figured it all out!

Thanksgiving?

2011-11-24T09:27:00.000Z

It's Thanksgiving? Again, being in a land where they do not celebrate holidays that have always been a part of my calendar's cycle is quite odd. But, then, my whole internal calendar is off these days. I kinda like it.

I've got nothing to write about today. In fact, another odd thing about my life these days is that I seem to be out of conversational material. I'm not complaining, trust me! The reason that I have no conversational material is that my days go kinda like this: coffee, write, run, wine. My head is somewhere in the nineteenth century most of the time, either with the Big Guy and his ilk, or with the characters in whatever novel I'm listening to or reading. I get the 21st century in the morning, when I read headline news, or at the end of the day, when I read blogs. I get the 20th century after dinner, when I watch t.v. -- usually Friends reruns, because that's really really popular here -- and knit and drink wine. All in all, not bad; but if you try to hold a conversation with me, I will either sound like an undergraduate English major with no life (which, actually, I was in the late 1980s) or one like I'm having some sort of break with reality. I tend to call the latter my Big Guy Band Camp mode, like that girl in those horrible movies who started every conversation with, "this one time, at band camp," except I say, "this one time, the Big Guy said..."

Mostly, I have odds and ends rattling about my brain. These bits of thoughts have no connection to anything and are the sorts of things that shut down conversations -- and I'm really good at shutting down conversations. I am the Conversation Cooler.

One of the odds and ends has to do with the Kennedy assassination. Yeah, I know: huh? While I only vaguely follow news, I am also vaguely aware of certain bits, and the fact that Tuesday was the fifty-somethingith (I can't do math right now) anniversary of the Kennedy assasination was one of those bits. Back during the twentieth anniversary of the assasination -- give or take a year -- one of the networks aired a miniseries about JFK and Jackie. Blair Brown played Jackie. My mom cried and cried like a little baby at the end, and my dad, for once, had sympathy for her "girly" response. (Women's emotions were mocked in our family -- hence, I am fucked up.)

At the time, I didn't get it. Kennedy? Plus, that was a million years ago, wasn't it? Now, I realize that, at that moment, to my parents, who were younger than I am now, twenty years was just yesterday. That moment is now thirty years ago.

On Tuesday, too, I was listening to some old Bonnie Raitt, and what I consider a more recent song came up from her album Luck of the Draw. That album is now twenty years old. I listened to it incessantly when I first got it. In one of the songs, "Nick of Time," she says something about watching her parents age, but they also watch her age, and none of them know how to respond to that. At the time, I understood what she sang about; but I understood it as a description, as if you described to me a house that was two stories tall, brick, with four windows and a door. Now, I understand it as an experience, like standing in front of the house, or even inside of it.

They are spending Thanksgiving alone today. My first instinct was to think of them with pity, as if they were lonely, not being with their grandbabies. My dad in particular is very big on the Norman Rockwell image of family, no matter how fucked up the actual situation is in front of him. Then, I realized that this was probably the first Thanksgiving that they have had alone, as a couple, since before my birth. I try to imagine them as twenty-two year olds, newly married, out in west Texas. They are such babies, and they don't even know it yet. None of us ever do.

Thanksgiving Week Already? How'd That Happen?

2011-11-21T09:51:00.000Z

Is Thanksgiving really this week? Living, for now, in a place that has a different history means that such American holidays sneak up on you. Throw in the rapidity with which time seems to slip away and the fact that, despite my initial bitching, the temperate weather, and you lose your place in the calendar.

Generally, I count the days to Thanksgiving because the holiday is a much needed break in the semester. Not an issue right now. In fact, I feel a sense of panic in that I feel so far behind on my writing because I kept taking time to do papers and write a review. Perhaps I should stop that?

Also, perhaps I should adjust my sense of accomplishment to something more realistic. Some little gremlin in my head keeps whispering, "you should have the whole book done by now, you lazy bum!" That little gremlin is a bit like a gossip monger who takes in one little scrap of information and then blows it all out of proportion. It's like this woman whom I knew in grad school who told me that, in our overcrowded, collective t.a. office, another of the t.a.s thought my desk was too much in his way, got furious, and shoved my desk way across the room. You could see the gleam in her eye as she stirred the shit. I confronted the other t.a. to apologize and he said, "no, I just moved it about an inch to get around. I wasn't mad at all." My little gremlin is the shit-stirrer. It takes in the information that I want to be moving faster on my writing, and it takes all of the times I was told that I was lazy in my life, then mixes them all together and produces a potion that I, of course, willingly drink because I have to do everything the gremlins say (right?). Next think you know, I'm in some fatalist fetal position on the couch, wondering how I ever found the will to get up in the morning because I am just that lazy and worthless. I end up sitting on the edge of some precipice, thinking I might as well jump over because I'm going to fall anyway and the anticipation of falling -- of failing -- is far to enervating.

This is why I drink. The gremlins can't handle the alcohol and pass out after a few sips. Then, they shut up and I can fell o.k. for a bit.

Meanwhile, to write, I have called in the big guns: the Monks. Remember Chant? Some years ago -- jeez, over ten, now that I think about it -- I discovered that the Monks buzz something in my head that shakes loose the words. Actually, I think they mesmerize the gremlins, who sit down in a trance and listen. Then, the rest of my head can devote its energies to getting shit done.

Today, I must wrangle the last paper. I finished the book review over the weekend. The book review was a struggle between frustration that it should be so short and gratitude that it should be so short. I'll give it a clean up later in the week, probably next week. On the paper, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm speaking to people who are not going to judge me for my failure to grasp academic language or to address every theorist on gender or to directly engage with the full body of historiography. It ain't that kind of paper or audience. Thank goodness!

I really have to get over this feeling of going into a paper or a panel or even a casual conversation feeling as if I'm going into an oral comprehensive exam in which the odds are against me because the design of the exam is so dreadful: you have to know everything about everything that ever happened and who said what about it and if you don't you FAIL! LIFE! FOREVER! Eleventy.

Yeep! I just had a flashback to grad school! Guess how our comprehensive exams went? I don't have to be that person anymore.

Anyway, I think the thing that will help me revise this paper the best will be Powerpoint. Yeah, scoff if you will, but I've found that, with Powerpoint, I can fill in some of the blanks for an audience who has no familiarity with the basic subject. I can put up a picture of the Big Guy. I can put up a map showing the location of some of the places I mention. I can put up a brief description of different schools of thought to help the audience keep the differences in mind. Visual aids, plus pretty pictures! Doing that sometimes helps group ideas and events together better, too. It's how I do my lectures when I teach.

Another thing that will help will be when I figure out what the grand big statement is. I am so terrible at that because I do have a tendency to get lost somewhere between the details and the Grand Theory of All History. It's a bit like going into a museum to see a Monet and either standing with your note an inch from the canvas to see only the brushstrokes, or standing across the street to see the whole museum, when I really need to stand about half-way across the room and see the painting. I can never see the painting. I'm either looking at brushstrokes or the museum; and I find the brushstrokes more comforting and interesting.

Onward!

Vistas

2011-11-17T10:00:00.000Z

For some reason, much like my Asperger's nephew, I love going to the highest spot and getting a bird's eye view of the world.

In Belfast, in a shopping center in the middle of the city, you can go up to this observation tower:

From there, you can see a near 360 degree view of the city. Here is one third:

Here is another third:

The problem with my need for a bird's eye view is that, in my old age, I've seemed to develop a touch of vertigo. I am drawn to these places and yet also completely terrified of them. I had to have something to hold, something solid that would overcome my illusion of swaying and falling, and then I had to take a minute and a number of deep, yoga breaths, so that I could find my balance and my reason. That this platform did, in fact, vibrate, did not help in finding that reason.

The Guinness bar at the top of the Guinness "factory tour" (really, just a museum to making Guinness -- not nearly as cool as going to the Bushmills distillery where they take you into the actual distillery) did not vibrate. The number of people there were annoying, but the floor felt solid. I think knowing that the bar was on a solid base and not a pole helped in that regard.

This is the elevator shaft up. The building is in a warehouse, and the architects seemed to have cut a hole through the floors "in the shape of a Guinness glass," according to the welcome "guide" who also doubled as a gift shop attendant.

This is the view of Dublin from the bar:

That's Christ Church -- Or St. Patrick's -- no, Christ Church, with Hill of Howth in the distance behind it.:

I would have used the panorama feature on my camera, but there were too damn many people in the place. Generally, I don't like crowds, and my blood sugar was too low to deal with them. Fortunately, our Lovely Houseguest, who was with us, was hungry, so we stopped at the bakery a few floors down on our way out. You know what they had there? Bailey's Biscuit Cake. Oh, but that is yummy! It's chocolate, Bailey's Irish Cream, and broken up digestive biscuits (which are a bit like Graham crackers, but not as sweet), with an interesting consistency that is not quite cookie but not quite cake. I have fantasies about it and will try to make it because -- ahhhh, yum!

Clearly, I need breakfast.

I've gotten out of my writing groove in the past couple of weeks, writing sporadically and without focus. Partly, I blame knitting. I can read and knit at the same time, and had a book to review, so I read and knit, and finished the book. Yet, I became obsessed with knitting, so I started reading lots of secondary literature in the form of articles or whatever I could get through Google Books so I could knit at the same time. While this is all work, and necessary work, this reading, it also is not moving the writing forward.

I did finish a shitty first draft of the next paper that I'm giving. This is a supremely shitty first draft, and I knew it was going to be all along, which was the reason that writing it was so challenging. The talk is supposed to be 40 minutes long, and I'm trying not only to familiarize my audience with the Big Guy but also the role of women in his life. That's an intricate task. Yet, the paper has essentially become a summary of the whole book. In writing the other papers, which are all parts of chapters, I became so focused on the details, the smaller narratives, and the holes in those discrete parts of the book, that I rather lost sight of the big picture. Writing this paper has forced me backwards to take, well, a bird's eye view of the project. I started to locate the massive holes in my project and see what I would have to read to fill in those holes. Now, I have to fix the paper. Oh, and write the book review, but the book also helped me identify the holes.

I also have another irrational fear: that I will be unveiled as a fraud -- but that's another post for another time, and actually quite the cliche of a fear. Right now, I must turn to the book review and the paper.

Onward!

Occupations

2011-11-16T13:45:00.006Z

Our crack team at the consulate sent registered ex-patriates this travel advisory:

The United States Embassy informs U.S. citizens of reports of a protest to be held in the City Center area of Dublin starting at 1230 hours on November 16, 2011. The protest is anticipated to start in the vicinity of O’Connell Street and march to other locations. United States citizens should avoid any large gatherings and use caution in the following areas: O’Connell Street/Bridge; College Green; Central Bank; Dame Street; Trinity College leading onto Kildare Street; and Merrion Square.

Note the time at which we are supposed to be wary? 12:30. This message arrived at 12:15. Also, I saw fliers for this protest all week long and the U.S. Embassy only just this morning figured it out?

To show solidarity with those kicked out of Zucotti Park while occupying Wall Street, I show the occupations as I have seen them here on the Emerald Isle.

This is what they looked like in late August and early September:

This is a poster from the college across town, not Trinity:

Here is what they looked like in mid-October:

Up in Belfast:

This was in London, across the street from Parliament:

The consulate warns us about violence. These occupiers are pissed at the IMF and their own government, not ours. The violence in the U.S. doesn't seem to be coming from the occupiers themselves, so who might they be warning us about?

I'm just ticked at myself that I forgot what day it was and didn't get down there to take pictures for you.

ETA: Live blog coverage from the Irish Times.

Odds and Ends

2011-11-12T10:26:00.000Z

In an effort to push the last post down a bit, I am posting odds and ends -- mostly odds -- from the past autumn

This is a statue of Molly Malone, subject of a music hall song, standing outside of Trinity University in central Dublin.:

I will have my feminist credentials revoked for calling her "Tits Malone" every time I pass. The guidebook said that there was some uproar over the decolletage, but the artists insisted that women breastfed in public all the time back in the 18th and 19th centuries so, "boobs were popping out all over the place." Yeah. I'm not too sure that hers are going to be popping out to feed a child.

Needless to say, everyone and their brother wanted a picture next to her. Especially their brother.

This I found in the entry to Trinity College:

I have nothing to add to that.

In the vault of Christ Church Cathedral -- have I show you this before? -- you can find this exhibit of a cat and a mouse who got caught in the organ pipes probably back in the 1850s, died and were mummified. Even the little whiskers were preserved.:

Hari Krishnas in St. Stephen's Green:

Also, sun!

The U.S. is not the only one with a problem in the trade of "nostalgic" racist images:

On Grafton Street, Dublin, they also sell American racist "nostalgia." We asked an Irish friend why someone would sell or buy this in the middle of Dublin. He said that the youth here connect it with rock-in-roll rebellion. Lynard Skynard is popular in Ireland? It made sense is a sort of reverse Cracker Culture way (yes, I know the thesis has been discredited).

Later, as part of the American employee orientation for the Gentleman Caller's work, the company took us to a Riverdance Vegas type of dinner and show. The band kept insisting that we shout out with a loud, high pitched "yeeeeaaah" or "yipyip" during the music. The Gentleman Caller, another employee, and I -- all from the American south -- looked at one another and whispered, "Rebel Yell."

And now for something completely different, yet also trading in ethnic stereotypes:

I'm half tempted to visit this, just out of curiosity.

I had to shoot this picture from a moving bus. It was part of an outdoor art exhibit across the city. The wall is painted with chalkboard material, and passers by are encouraged to finish the sentence, "I am afraid____":

"Facebook," "Americans," and "McDonald's" -- yeah, me, too.

In the coffee shop at the Chester Beatty Museum:

Ever since I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I wondered what Turkish Delight was like. Sadly, I did not get any. I'm a little disturbed by the way that some things are unpackaged here. They also sell eggs unrefrigerated. Apparently that's common in most of the world, but it is difficult to get used to when you grew up thinking that eggs should be refrigerated, and candy and bread should be packaged.

This was our t.v. in our hotel in Bushmills, Northern Ireland. We had to move it across the room because the volume would not go above a whisper. Yes, that is an antenna, and the t.v. had only three channels:

It was like travelling back in time. To 1975.

Also at Bushmills, we saw this sign. In fact, we saw this sign in a lot of places in Northern Ireland, but haven't yet seen it in Dublin.:

The punch line to that picture is in the background. This sign is set up in the parking lot of the Bushmills Whiskey distillery.

Across the street, at the convenience store, they sell Tim Horton's coffee.:

Why, for the love of all that is holy about coffee, why?

In front of the post office in Belfast.:

Look closely and you will see that some gang graffiti artist has tagged his crotch. "Because it is important to be an ass," explained the Gentleman Caller.

In a pub in Dunluce, across the street from a castle that dates to the Norman era, we found a tribute to John Paul Jones and Andrew Jackson.:

Jones actually fought and won a naval battle offshore, but Jackson goes back to that Cracker Culture thing. His parents were from somewhere south of there.

Having dated a smoker and been subjected to his incessant smoke, even while suffering from a respiratory infection, I must confess that I get a lot of evil glee in seeing that both the Republic and Northern Ireland have cigarette packaging that says this:

This one is from Northern Ireland. Those in the Republic would say "Smoking Kills" in both English and Gaelic. None of that namby-pamby, "may be harmful to your health" in tiny tiny print on the side of the box. Know what you are getting into right up front, dammit!

Actually, I wonder about the differences in the anti-smoking campaigns in the U.S. and Ireland, because many more people smoke here than they do in the U.S., and the laws about going outside are only observed to the letter. That means that you have to wade through a cloud of smoke to get to a door, and then you have the back draft of the smoke once you get into the door. I also wonder if there are age or class or occupational (which could be connected to class) differences in smokers, because the smokers seem to be either really old or college-aged. The older smokers seem to be working class, maybe because, if they are plumbers or road workers, they can smoke at work while office workers may face the pressure of their bosses not wanting them to take frequent breaks through the day.

-----------------------

Anyway, I'm now procrastinating on my frustrating paper. I'm also trying to decide how to deal with a figure in the Big Guy's life who has had a book written on her, but I'm thinking that the book is not only wrong, but potentially either sloppily researched or academically dishonest. I don't think the figure is as important as the book makes her out to be, and that she may, in fact, have been ultimately inconsequential. The problem is, the book was written on her and said a lot of provocative things, but if you look at the sources -- even just the English language sources -- and how the author uses those sources, you see enormous problems. The whole thing reads as if the author had a foregone conclusion and twisted everything to fit that conclusion without considering other interpretations or even considering if the sources themselves suggested that conclusion. The author doesn't even show evidence or prove the author's own thesis. I'm puzzling through the implications of this, what the sources actually do say, and how I fit this figure -- who, again, I'm realizing was probably inconsequential -- into my own work. But, that's a post for not-Clio or for another time.

Must. Stop. Procratinating. Shitty first drafts don't write themselves!

What is WRONG with People?

2011-11-11T11:28:00.000Z

This week, I must confess, has been slow going in writing. Part of the problem is that I don't really like the paper that I'm writing. It's a paper for an undergraduate audience and is very broad. I, of course, like the subject, it being my own and a boiled down version of my book -- very boiled down. Still, trying to take complicated and detailed arguments and make them very very short and coherent with one another is much more challenging that you would expect. At some point, I get them so short that I myself start to lose interest in them and then I get easily distracted. Still, this is a good exercise because eventually I will have to do the same thing when I try to get people to read the final product, right?

I'm also trying not to read the news. The news in general upsets me, but this shit with Cain and Penn State has turned into a trigger. The stories about Herman Cain's history of sexual harassment came on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas case. Historiann wrote a post pondering the effects of the case, and I was going to comment, but the comment turned into a post, and the post was abandoned because I was working on something that I was enjoying writing. Then, the Cain stories emerged and his response to them, and then the attacks on the women, and that all put me back to the mid-1990s when I was sexually harassed.

That the women were barred from commenting, but he could say anything he wanted in his own defense pissed me off the most. In my case, I had gone in to make the report, talked with the affirmative action officer for about two hours in which she took copious notes filling about half a tablet. Then, she had to boil those notes down to a single page. One page. Including all of the headings and my signature. The report went to the accused and his department head, and he was allowed a rebuttal.

How many pages did he get for his rebuttal? As many as he wanted. He took fourteen. Fourteen pages in which he tried to establish me as someone who serially accused people of sexual harassment, who had entered graduate school with the mission of ending his career, and who was part of a conspiracy involving a job search at another college. This was all on top of a whole set of abject lies that turned me into something akin to a stalker and not someone who was constantly summoned to his office and to locations off campus under peril of being dismissed as his student or losing what little funding the department actually provided. I'm not joking. I'm able to laugh at how ludicrous his version was now; but, at the time, I took every fiber of my being and concentrated them into a steel rod down my center in order to keep from collapsing. I can still feel that rod right now.

After his 14 page rebuttal, the affirmative action office -- going through a completely fucked up scandal of its own at the time -- decided that, between the two versions, there really wasn't anything to investigate and dismissed the case. The woman to whom I had originally reported the case had been interim in her position, and replaced by the time the rebuttal came in. She had already had been looking into some of the things that I had said. She had also contacted some of the women whom I had heard has similar experiences in order to establish a pattern of behavior for this guy, and found that they were true. All of her investigation and evidence was dismissed by her replacement because she had not followed proper protocol. Proper protocol involved the accuser issuing a one page accusation, the accused responding in as much detail as he liked, the office deciding if this was worth investigating, and then investigation beginning.

I wondered what a complaint worthy of investigation would look like. The accuser making a statement and the accused saying, "yeah, I did it"?

After the office decided that I had no grounds, they filed the case. Under my name. That's right, the cases were always filed under the accuser's name and not cross-filed or referenced under the accused's name. I was livid. This meant that they could track serial accusers -- which I get -- but it meant that they could not identify serial harassers. Unfortunately, I got that, too. The whole process from the one page complaint to the "he said/she said" form of investigation for a case to the filing system using the accuser's name did nothing to deal with the problem of sexual harassment. The process was designed to protect the institution. Heck, even the accused was only favored because he was part of the institution. Had I filed a lawsuit against the university in order to pursue the case, they could just say, "this is our procedure and according to procedure, we found nothing wrong." Had I filed a lawsuit against the professor, the university probably would have cut him loose, too.

My cynical lesson from this was that the office of affirmative action was there to ferret out the problems and cover the university's ass from liability, not to deal with the problem. My other cynical lesson from the response to the Anita Hill case was that the victim, if she makes an accusation, will be attacked harder and with less ability to defend herself than the person who did the harassing. My third cynical lesson, in my observations of all of the men who I had encountered who did the sort of things that would be harassment -- you know, the dating students, the sexual comments, the smacking-on-the-ass, and so forth -- they became bitter, and the truly insidious ones just learned where the legal line was so that they could get away with what they were doing. The guy who harassed me could quote you chapter and verse on the university's sexual harassment policy, and would be seen eating lunch with the head of the affirmative action office.

So, the Cain story, with the women silenced through the court order and he and his supporters saying what they want, really pissed me off not just because they were harassed but also because the agreement not to discuss the details of the case was rigged to work against them and open them up to this sort of victimization by the same creep yet again, except this time he has minions.

Then, the Penn State case broke. That was upsetting alone. I began to think about how many people I have know who were molested as children: both of my brothers, a former boyfriend, a friend from college, another friend from grade school, yet another friend from grade school, the child of a former friend. In that last case, the friend became former after her child was molested -- and she walked in on the molesting -- because the molester was the teen aged son of the former friend's boyfriend and she didn't want to piss off the boyfriend. She did tell her sister, who reported her to the authorities, but the former friend told the authorities that nothing happened, and they did not investigate. They said that, if the parent said nothing happened, then they can't investigate. WTF? That's not even true. If the authorities won't investigate, what do you do?

In my brother's case, when he decided to deal with what happened to him through official channels, he had passed the statute of limitations on his case -- it was five years after the last incident in the state at the time. The state later raised it to ten. Had it been ten when my brother made the first report, he could have sued. As it was, he found out where the teacher was working and reported him to the school district. What did the superintendent do? He went to the teacher and asked if there was any basis for the allegations. The teacher denied, and that ended it.

The teacher was later caught, but was not fired. He was asked to leave that school. He went to another school district, where (with help from my mom -- and I will always love and admire her for her role) he was busted by four different parents. How did the state respond? They suspended his teaching license (with help from my brother's testimony -- and I admire the hell out of his courage in putting everything on paper like that). He moved to another state and, last I heard, was getting certified there. My brother reported him to that state, but, last that I heard, to no avail there. The teacher's license was eventually revoked in the original state due to some house cleaning in their department of education.

Again, I see a pattern of the institutions not wanting to deal with the problem, just wanting to make it go away and protect themselves from any legal repercussions. They follow the letter of the procedures, but the procedures are fucked up and made up by the very people who are trying to protect themselves from liability. The fact that a crime was committed is, quite often, ignored simply by not having the police come in at any stage of the procedure.

So, as I thought about all of the children that I have known who have been molested -- and added to that the victims of rape that I have known -- I became very very sad about all of the ways that people are exploited because of who they are and how they are disempowered by the law and the way that society considers their concerns unimportant, be they children or grown women in vulnerable positions. I became very very sad about the ways that, in being victimized, they are considered expendable and then, because they were victimized, more expendable, a problem to be "taken care of" not a person requiring justice.

Then, the students started rioting and I became furious. I remember the sinister energy of the crowds on the Boston streets after the Red Sox won the World Series back in 2004, and all of the ways that energy was stupidly out of proportion to the occasion. I remember how fanatical people in my college became over football. Otherwise smart, rational, even compassionate people cut off friendships over such stupid things as the friend saying, "maybe the football team does take up an inequitable proportion of the university's resources" or even -- and I am not making this up -- "maybe the university shouldn't replace the recently deceased live animal mascot." These are the same people who, today, decades after graduation, used their undergraduate's university logo as their Facebook avatar. THAT is the "society" that I am afraid of, that victimizes victims, and has a seriously fucked up moral compass.

Considering all of the people that I alone know who have been molested, raped, or harassed, I know that there must be hundreds of people -- students, staff, faculty, administrators, neighbors -- at Penn State who have experienced the same. How must they feel in the middle of that mess knowing that a rioting crowd supports a systematic cover-up, an institutionalized passing of the buck, to protect a child rapist? I want to riot against the rioters.

The comments of E. Goldman in response to Historiann's post on the subject made me think, if those were my students, I couldn't go into class because my rage at them would prevent me from seeing them as individuals who need some serious education on the sickness of their thinking. I couldn't go onto campus because I would be afraid of what I might say or do and I would feel somehow unsafe among people who were so baldly and violently dismissive of rape all in defense of fucking football. I wonder how the professors there are managing to work amid this. I wonder how the victims must be dealing with this disgusting dismissal of their victimization.

Tenured Radical put the pieces together much more succinctly, looking at the Penn State case and at the rape-culture climate encouraged at other colleges. "Every time one of these things happens," she writes, "what it exposes is the way social power is expressed through sexual power, and it requires a feminist response." Exactly. The details may change, but the general interaction does not.

Good Gawd, We are Nerds!

2011-11-07T09:24:00.000Z

Aside from being Beatles fans (we did go to the Cavern Club last year, after all), we had gone to see an intersection because it was a nice walk from our original destination. Our original destination proves that we are huge nerds.:

We are such nerds that we know that he never smoked that sort of pipe nor wore that sort of hat (unless he was in the country, because that is a hat for the outdoors, not the city).

We are such nerds that, not only were we thrilled by that mosaic, but that the bits of the mosaic were also silhouettes of the same image:

We were clearly not alone in our nerdom. When you exit the Baker Street Station, the Great Detective himself greets you:

I couldn't get a picture without a tour bus in the background because, as soon as one pulled away, another took its place.

Here was our destination (after finding a coffee shop, of course. The morning was still young and instant in the hotel room is crap).:

That's 221b Baker Street, home of Sherlock Holmes and sometimes home of Dr. Watson!

Enter through the gift shop:

As more than one person has pointed out to us, Sherlock Holmes was, of course not a REAL person. We KNOW that. This is not a historical museum at all. In fact, it isn't even a literary museum or a museum to detecting. If they incorporated that into the museum, that would make it even more awesome! As it was, it was more of a tourist attraction about Holmes. Cool unto itself.

The premise is that this was, in fact, Mrs. Hudson's home, where Holmes and sometimes Watson, rented rooms. The rooms are set up in accordance with the details offered in the stories. Fortunately, I was with a bigger Holmes nerd than myself who had read the stories more recently than myself and could, therefore, point out those neat little details such as the mail nailed to the mantle with a knife, or the shoe filled with tobacco, or Victoria's initials shot into the wall.

They also included other details that I am not certain appeared in the book, such as Watson's toilet:

Mrs. Hudson's carpet sweeper:

The sweeper and the toilet, I thought, brought notes of reality in this virtual reality game. After all, Mrs. Hudson would clean and, as the children's story says, everyone poops. Plus, they add a touch of insight into some of the daily life of a Victorian home. The whole museum is all rather cool. Who hasn't wanted to walk into a story and look around for themselves? Imagine some of your favorite books come to life in this way, like, say, Wuthering Heights or Northanger Abbey or Hill House (ahhh! the Halloween potential for the last!).

Plus, I was looking for decorating ideas (I do that in house museums quite often). Can you imagine a cold, wet, wintry day -- much like the one that we had on the day of our visit -- sitting in one of these chairs, the fire crackling at your feet, with a nice warm cup of coffee and a good book in hand? That sounds like a lovely day, to me. Heck, I wanted to shoo everyone out and kick back for a bit; or, at least return at the end of the day and offer myself up to watch the place overnight.

Also, I like the bookshelves too, with the books all near at hand. I could use that for my own desk, and rotate the books that I'm using for whatever particular project occupies my computer at that particular time.

Yes, you can sit in the chairs, put on the hats and hold the pipe and magnifying glass. C'mon! What Holmes nerd could resist? We couldn't!

The most interesting thing about the museum, however, was the other visitors. People spoke several different languages, and were there in groups that were not on tour buses. Asian, Eastern European, French, American, English. This reminded me of visiting Stratford-upon-Avon last year. So many people wanted to visit landmarks of stories, even when those stories were not told originally in their native tongue and even when those stories are 100 years old.

The Nebulous Creature

2011-11-06T12:09:00.002Z

I wasn't going to say anything on this because I am between institutions and because I am soooo much happier not thinking about this sort of thing right now when I don't have to. Shoot, I don't even read Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle of Higher Education, and skip anyone's blog posting about the State of the Profession these days. It's like that old joke about the guy who goes into the doctor and says, "doctor, it hurts when I do this," and the doctor says, "well, don't do that." I just don't do that. Nonetheless, so many bloggers that I read are writing on this that, even as I tried to look away quickly, my own thoughts began to obsess on them. So, I decided to say something just to get those thoughts out of my head and go back to not being all knotty and fatalist and frustrated -- which is how I get when I think about most things related to teaching.

I used to work at a community college in the near suburbs of a major city. That is not work for the weak of heart, and I am very weak of heart. Despite what the administrations say, and despite what professors try, and even despite what many of the students seek, it is very much like teaching Grade 13.

That's not the endemic problem, however. That's just the nature of the beast, for the most part, especially in an urban area where the public school system is notoriously bad, and especially in an area in which the immigrant population had other things to worry about in the past ten years, like fleeing civil war, learning another language and culture, and seeking political asylum. That sort of stuff. These are the students who then appear in our classes, all woefully ill-prepared for grade school, much less college.

In my years at the community college, I found three insidious concepts that pointed toward the endemic problem of the college. All three were the sort of things that, on the face of it, seem like they could maybe be good ideas; but, when you looked a little beyond the surface, you could see that the ideas were concocted outside of the reality of the institution, of the needs of the institution, and of the needs of everyone associated with the institution, including the students. These three things were outcomes assessment, online instruction, and "completion."

Outcomes assessment -- that is, ensuring that students are learning what they need to learn in order to advance to the next level or in order to have mastered basics of a subject -- is generally a good idea. Some oversight on the process is good, too, especially if it is meant to improve performance not punish the performer. All fine and good, except that we, the instructors and the departments, tend to already do this. It's called "a test" or "a quiz," and "peer evaluation" and "department evaluation" through classroom observation. What seems to be demanded, however, seems to be not what the instructors and department have determined is a good means of evaluation, but what someone somewhere else had determined is a good means -- even if their means has proven to be a patented failure in actually assessing mastery of a subject. The result becomes a huge waste of time in which the whole official "outcomes assessment" becomes a cynical exercise to produce numbers, while the actual assessing of learning and instruction becomes this renegade shadow activity addressing the actual problems we see in our classrooms -- the ones that take time and money to actually fix.

Online instruction -- to serve the needs of students with busy schedules, also seems like a grand and democratizing idea. It can, in fact, be done well, with tiny classes of motivated students and good, experienced, on-site technical support for both student and instructor. The problem is that the dictum seems to not seriously care if it is done well. The dictum is to serve more students and this is an easy and cheap solution. Doing it well will require more staff and therefore more money. As it is, online education is becoming the same as those 600 student survey courses with 3 t.a.s that I was part of as an undergraduate and grad student (except online classes have the added bonus of constant technical problems). If anyone walked into that, they would say "my god, this is NOT education." Community colleges pride themselves on not having those large classes. Put it online, however, and the idea becomes the Next Big Thing because the problems are all hidden.

Completion -- the number of students to graduate, diploma in hand, within a reasonable period of time also sounds like a good idea, and makes sense at universities and four-year institutions. At a community college, especially in an urban area with hundreds of other colleges and universities? Nonsense. Students go to a cc, especially in an urban area, for a thousand different reasons, none of which involve the completion of a cc degree. On top of that, the demands made from this particular "agenda" in no way addressed the reasons that those who do pursue a diploma do not do so in two years. They are always careful to remind instructors that we must have compassion and understand the problems facing students with full-time work, full-time family, and full-time course loads; yet, they do not look at that very fact of the students' lives as an obstacle to advancement. You want completion? Address the real reasons that students don't complete.

Who is "they" in my rantings here? Who comes up with these ideas, thinks they are grand, and demands their implementation in the face of overall opposition from the people who have to do the implementing? Well, I wish I knew. Anyone can be part of "they" at any point on any issue, I suppose, but the main "they" is the real, endemic problem of the college where I worked. The endemic problem went above and beyond the college itself to the people who the decision makers at the college seemed to want to serve. Those people were not the students but this nebulous creature called "businesses" or "the business community." Sometimes this nebulous creature was not even that well-defined. "It's the wave of the future" or "it's the way things are" or some other passively voiced "it," outside, over there, not within the college itself, all demanding "excellence without money," and often capable of providing money, but not really wanting to unless the college did X, Y, or Z.

This nebulous creature and its handlers, however, had very very little knowledge of how education works or the purpose of education. Very few people connected to this nebulous creature had any experience in education beyond their last college course; and this nebulous creature had obviously failed itself in its own education because it could not conceive of anything as being useful unless there was a point-to-point correlation between something in a classroom and a specific skill that might be demanded by an employer. Anything going on in the classroom must directly translate into a student's ability to profit and the line had to be direct. Any questioning of the nebulous creature's demands was met with "if we don't do what it wants ourselves, then it will come in and do it for us."

Now, I don't think it is a bad idea to explain how the Humanities are useful to society or even to individuals who are just in college to get a better job. That's most of the students in a c.c. anyway. It is the reason that college is connected to upward mobility. Humanities exposes people to a variety of ideas, expands their way of thinking, hones their analytical skills (or exposes them to the concept of analysis), and requires verbal expression and communication most often in written form. Sometimes this may not seem so obvious as one tries to wade through the causes of the American Civil War or the intricacies of Hamlet.

Sadly, the nebulous creature seemed not particularly interested in those explanations. It understands "business writing" or Elizabeth I, CEO. It understands, "student will be able to demonstrate the ability to use a comma" or "student will be able to identify George Washington." It understands "history" as "dates and facts and wars and politicians who have no connection to anything happening now." It understands "literature" as "that boring shit in which everything meant something when really the white whale was just a whale and who gives a damn anyway?" This nebulous creature is simplistic and does not take into consideration that education is a complex endeavor that is bigger than the numbers that they want to production -- sometimes even more subjective and not apparent for years. It can sometimes be as traumatic as it is enlightening, if done right, which is why it should not be a series of hoops to jump through or numbers to generate in order to do it right.

The biggest problem in the face of this nebulous creature was the way that it was able -- despite its nebulous nature -- to force complete capitulation and compliance, to draw so many into its thrall. I kept asking, as everyone complained about the "outcomes assessment," and online "learning," and "completion" -- at every level in some cases -- "at what point do we just say 'NO'?" Seriously, at what point do we, those of us actually IN the college, say "WE are the professionals here, we actually ARE competent, and we actually DO know what we are doing." When do we -- and I mean faculty, staff, librarians, counselors, administrators, everyone at the college who increasingly sees these measures as futile, if not cynical wastes of time -- when does that we seize control of our own business as professionals?

Indeed, what would happen if we did? What if we said, "we will decide our own 'outcomes' and how best to determine if they are being met," rather than going through the farce of the current system in place at the college? What if we said, "these are the terms on which we will offer and implement online courses in our departments according to our department's needs"? What if we said, "your definition of 'completion' has no meaning at our institution, so here is our varied means of determining 'completion' at our college"? Seriously, what would happen? I doubt students would stop flooding into our classes. I doubt employees of the college would quit.

Of course, the state and the county might not fund because they are in thrall to their own nebulous creature.
--------------------------
I'm about to go to a smaller, private institution that encourages research. I have no idea what problems I will see there. I'm hoping that the lighter class load of smaller classes -- none of which are online -- will allow me to be the better teacher that I am when I do have fewer students pecking away at me, as it often felt at the cc. Oddly enough, I believe that the research component of the job will also make me a better teacher not because there is a point-to-point connection between the research and the teaching, but because having that sort of variety in my work makes me happier and more effective, even in the parts of the work that are not my favorite.

As my mother used to say, "you have your putting in and your taking out." That is, what you do for yourself -- putting into yourself --and what you do for others -- taking out of yourself. For me, teaching is for others and research and writing is for myself. Too much teaching means too much is being taken out of myself and not enough is being put in. That's how I felt most of the time there and it made me knotty, fatalist, and frustrated and, ultimately, not the best of teachers in my own estimation -- although I gave it my all everyday. I'm hoping my all will be better and have a longer temper when I can also do research. Get back to me in a year, and see if this is the case -- as it most probably will not. I'm sort of a glass is half-empty girl.

Rock-n-Roll!

2011-11-06T08:50:00.003Z

"I staggered back to Underground and the breeze blew back my hair..."

Yes, we were on our way to the brief rock-n-roll part of our day visit. Guess where?

How about now?

Whoops! Wrong angle.

How about now?:

Not exactly the right angle -- I would have had to get to the island in the middle of the traffic circle for that and I was too busy laughing like a cartoon dog at all of the people trying to reenact this:

Not just trying to reenact this, but trying to do it while the people who actually use the road tried to, you know, use the road. I read once somewhere that there is a camera set up, recording everyone who does this, and that this is one of the most cliched vacation photos of all time -- up there with holding up the Tower of Pisa. I did not reenact myself doing this -- again, laughing too hard; but several others did.

I felt as if I should have worn a t-shirt with "TOURIST!!!" written all over it...as if being at this intersection with a camera didn't accomplish the same thing. Then again, I AM a tourist and this it was rather fun. I would have felt like I had misssed something if we hadn't gone, what with it being in walking distance of our actual, Big Nerd destination.

We were there in the middle of the week in the off season. I can't begin to imagine what this must have looked like in the middle of July -- or during the Royal Wedding.

London, Baby!

2011-11-04T10:20:00.010Z

I've been a bit behind on blogging -- if there is a "behind" to be had in a hobby. For the most part, I've realized that you can live life or write about it. You have to have discipline to do both, and I only have so much capacity for discipline in my old age. I have to use it wisely.

For the past near month, I've travelled quite a bit, and the travel has been marvellous. Here are some pictures from the first trip.

Since I was giving a paper at a conference in southern England and had to fly into Heathrow, we decided to take a day and see some sights in London. I have always always always wanted to see London and I will have to go back a million times, for a long time each, to approach anything like satisfaction with visiting. What a huge and amazing city! Much like New York City, but with an entirely different feel and personality of its own. Like in New York City, you feel like you are at the center of the world, in a vital organ of human habitation on the planet. What energy!

Having only a day, we each chose a place that we wanted to see -- and fortunately we have similar nerdy and historical tastes -- and anything else we saw was just lagniappe.

The lagniappe included the bridge that I (and about everyone else in the U.S.) cannot stop calling "London Bridge" but is actually the iconic Tower Bridge:

We walked from one side to the other and back. I tried to imagine what the city looked like from that vantage at various points in history, especially with the Tower looming right where I am standing to take this picture.

When we came up from the Underground to see the Tower (and the Tower is its own post), this was right next door. This is supposed to be one of the original Roman walls of the city. Some men cleaned and preserved it that day -- at least that seemed to be their job. Still, this was one of the reasons that I have always wanted to see a European city.

I grew up in a city that was the definition of "urban sprawl." Seriously! I once turned on PBS to find that city being featured on a show about "urban sprawl." Nothing was over 50 years old; and then we lived way out in the ugly and sterile suburbs, isolated from even seeing those relics of 50 years ago. So, I am always fascinated by places that have their history preserved and embedded in their landscapes; and European cities have so much more of that history going so much further back as it does. Coming out of a subway station to see a building dating to a time before monarchs knew there was a western (to them) hemisphere, a wall going back to the time of Christ, and a modern structure that looked a bit like an egg all in one sweeping view? Well, that is, to me, overwhelming.

After the Tower and after the Tower Bridge, we decided that we should think about dinner and then go see Big Ben and Parliament at night.:

That's the postcard, right? Not literally, just everyone always takes the same pictures that are much like the postcard pictures. I had a photographer friend who, when giving a lesson on how to take interesting vacation photos, said that you have to take all of the usual angles first and get them out of your system. Then, you will start to see different angles that will make your photos look less like postcards. My camera is not very good, and made more for daytime snapshots -- I'm cheap, what can I say? Also, there aren't too many different ways to take this picture, so I'm sticking with the postcard shot on this.

I had the bright idea to try to combine our plan to see Big Ben and eat dinner by going to Big Ben and finding somewhere to eat around there. I think I envisioned exiting the Underground to see "Big Ben's Bistro" or "Parliament Pub." Sadly, that is not the case. So, we wandered around, walking past Parliament, past a small park, across a bridge, and along a river walkway (where I took the postcard picture) and finally found a place to eat near another bridge. Then, we crossed that bridge heading back to the Underground Station.

As we began to cross the bridge, I noticed a big, noble statue of a lion:

I want one for our front yard. Don't you think that would be impressive? I will also be using this guy as my Facebook avatar (yes, not-Clio is on Facebook -- she hates it but she has her reasons). In any case, the Gentleman Caller said that there was a door on the back of the base of this statue and that, in one of the 007 films, James Bond went through that door to find Q (or Y or one of those guys) and his shop of gadgets. Sure enough, we wandered around and found the door. It was locked. No gadgets.

On the other side of the bridge, unlighted unfortunately, I found this statue:

I like when women are commemorated in the landscape. My camera flash was not nearly powerful enough to compensate for the lack of light. Ah well, must go back, right?

Then, we headed back to our very tiny but very comfy hotel room. I must add that this tiny hotel room had the tiniest shower. Had I forty more pounds on my frame, I doubt I could have used it. I couldn't bend over in it to pick up my shampoo (no shelf or even soap dish). I had to do deep knee bends and even then bumped both my head and my knees. That also reminds me that I have yet to see a washcloth anywhere in Ireland or in England. Is a washcloth an American thing?

Anyway, the next morning we had to head off to the conference location via train. I do like trains because you can knit, listen to an audiobook, and watch the countryside go by. Very relaxing for me.

Guess which station we left from?:

Now, off to write -- although probably after a run since we have sun right now, but it seems to want to take a nap very shortly.

On Q&As and Lists

2011-10-26T09:50:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-25T09:56:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-22T10:40:00.000+01:00

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!

2011-10-21T09:47:00.001+01:00

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

2011-10-20T09:48:00.002+01:00

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

2011-10-19T10:25:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-18T11:44:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-12T09:02:00.000+01:00

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.

2011-10-11T09:28:00.001+01:00

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

2011-10-10T10:09:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-09T10:07:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-07T10:01:00.000+01:00

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

2011-10-06T09:12:00.000+01:00

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.

Chunks of a Paper

2011-10-05T13:30:00.001+01:00

The day before yesterday, I actually accomplished my stated goal. The shitty first draft of the conference paper was completed! It has to become unshitty by the Sunday after next. Yes, I got the Sunday panel. Not even the Sunday morning panel, but the Sunday afternoon panel, so I can't even hope for people with hangovers putting in appearances before they fly off to the airport. Ah, well. The truly committed will be there, right?

I finished the shitty first draft; and, as much as I'd love to rest on my laurels because laurels are quite comfortable, I had to press on to the next paper the next day, which was yesterday. I did not get very much done in the way of words on paper yesterday. I typed out a lot of observations and ideas as I read over my notes, and that led to some pretty good insights.

One of those insights was that, if you have any insight beyond the face value of the autobiographies of the people involved, then you've done something terribly original. I'm a bit amazed that people who engage in all sorts of creative readings of some of the other documents and interrogate their meanings and contexts and so forth, just look at the autobiographies and say, essentially, "if he said it happened like that, then it happened like that." They don't even wonder why it happened like that. That's incredibly true of the women.

But, I digress. Getting back to my point, I had some good insights, but I have to arrange them and play with them and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on this paper, and most of next week will be lost at the conference for the other paper. Then, I had to stop having these insights to go to a lecture that someone else was giving. As I was sitting in that lecture, which was a model of organization and the use of PowerPoint, I started to think about giving this second paper, which is part of the same series. I can't really use PowerPoint, although, since I'm engaging with some use of spatial relationships, maybe a map might work; but I did get an a-ha! moment about how to begin my paper. Sometimes, all you need is a good beginning, even if the rest is still lumpy, to help you de-lump everything beyond it.

So, this morning, I sat down and outlined that beginning, which I am writing this afternoon. I shook things up a bit today by working out first. I don't belong to a gym here, so all exercise takes place outside. The sun was out a bit for once, and the weather report said to expect rain later (actually, it says that everyday), so I thought to jump at the sun while I could.

Again, I digress. In outlining this part, I realized that, until now, my process has always been to have the entire paper, or chapter, or even book entirely outlined and in great detail before I begin. Well, maybe not the book, but still, the paper or chapter gets fully outlined and in detail before I set a word on the page for the shitty first draft. For this paper, I'm trying something different. I have a general outline, but it is more of a template or a broad method that I used for the whole book. I don't have the specific arrangement of the ideas nor the arc or the narrative fleshed out. I have the template on one page, the evidence on another, and all of the brilliant insights on a third.

But, I do have those three bits incorporated for this first part of the paper. So, why not write them now? That way, I don't have the panic attack that sounds very much like a loudly ticking clock as I try to arrange the rest of the paper and think "I don't even have a word on the page!" Just do the paper a chunk at a time, much like I have to do a book a chunk at a time. We'll see how it works. I'm beginning to think that each task will have its own process and take shape in its own way. That alone is rather interesting.

Also, the not-Clio blog that is supposed to be dedicated to showcasing specific parts of my research, has been sorely neglected by not-Clio over the last months. Then, someone found it and, based on it, asked not-Clio to give a lecture. There are several factors that may prevent that lecture from happening, since the hosts may have had the travel budget for a train ride, but not a trans-Atlantic flight. Still, I began to wonder if parts of my "thing" (as FeMomHist calls the odd neither paper nor chapter creatures that result from an attempt to do both at once) and even some of my insights might go well there, which was the whole point of it in the first place.

Meanwhile, onward to this section!

Finding the Groove

2011-10-03T08:39:00.000+01:00

The writing goal for each day is usually to write a page an hour and to work for five hours or five pages, whichever comes last. Of course, then I realized that, toward the end of the five hours my brain becomes soft and most of what I write will probably be shredded and rewritten the next morning. At least that gives me a definite starting point the next day, but it also means that I end the day feeling lousy and doubting my ability to write or to have a coherent thought or comprehend my subject and I'm just a rotten historian who only got this far on my good-looks and ability to smile pretty and I'm a loser who will never finish this damn thing and -- well, you get the drift. I start to understand why all the greats drank heavily. That's why I have to work out when I'm done, to get myself out of my head and into my body and a good audiobook.

For a few weeks, when I woke up, I had to fight off depression and anxiety, an overwhelming sense of doom and despair. This morning feeling was different from the evening feeling because the evening feeling could be overcome with the workout, t.v., a novel, and -- I must confess -- a glass or two of wine. The biggest cure for the evening despair, however, was (and is) just the knowledge that I could get up in the morning and make it all better again. The morning feeling was fatalism, a sense that, no matter what I did, I was going to fuck it all up, and end up standing in front of a room of people with nothing to say or with only stupid things to say and someone would come down on me harder than I come down on myself. That fatalism was the Smoke Monster.

The Smoke Monster doesn't attack anymore -- or hasn't for the past few weeks. The evening feeling comes around every other day, but that I chalk up to fatigue. Five hours straight of writing is work, and work fatigues you. Neither work nor fatigue are bad. I rather enjoy this work and fatigue, even on days with the loser feeling, can also feel satisfying.

This morning, I feel kind of good. Instead of a Smoke Monster I have the sort of anxious, pre-performance jitters. I think I might finish my shitty first draft of the paper today. That's the goal, anyway -- or, one of the goals. I'm thiiiiiiissss close to the end and I will feel so much better if I have a shitty first draft done because that means that I won't go in front of the crowd empty handed. That reduces that anxiety. Also, a shitty first draft of this paper means I can start work on the shitty first draft of the next paper. I can't think about that paper right now because those thoughts wake the Smoke Monster. We want to tiptoe past him to start the second paper.

One thing that I think I've finally internalized in the process of writing this paper, however, is the fact that I know my stuff backwards and forwards. I don't have to have my arsenal of evidence all around me. I have it behind me and can pull out what I need when I need it. I think that's called confidence. That may be the reason that the Smoke Monster hasn't visited me in a few weeks. That may be the reason that I could stare it down when it did.

Meanwhile, I've also discovered another daily goal, one that supersedes the page per hour for five hours goal. The goal is to find the groove, that moment when the ideas and the words come together and flow out on the page, when you can look at a paragraph and think "damn, I'm good!" even as you are writing it. The goal is to find the groove and to maintain it as long as possible. The five pages for five hours is no problem after that.

The Rust is Still Clogging the System

2011-10-02T09:59:00.000+01:00

Ever get to the point when you become sick of your own prose? You get in a rut of words and patterns of expression and you can't break out of them and the rut keeps you from even thinking a new idea much less expressing it and even less expressing it with any eloquence and you end up feeling like a wind up toy that has bumped into a wall and just keeps bumping and bumping and bumping until it runs out of power. Or is that just me?

That tends to happen while I'm warming up and again at the end of the day when my brain is fatigued. That happened yesterday.

For the past month I've been trying to accomplish two tasks at once, and I planned to do the same for the next month. I've discovered that I cannot do this. In both cases, last month and this month, I had committed to give papers. One paper would cover part of chapter 4 and the other paper would cover part of chapter 2. See? Write both paper and part of a chapter. Brilliant!

Not so brilliant. Chapters and papers are really two different creatures and I discovered that one started to run in one direction and the other in another direction.

Here is what happened. I started off writing the paper that would be part of Chapter 4. I figured I'd outline the paper, flesh it out and that would make the paper. Then, I'd flesh it out further and incorporate the other parts of the chapter -- the other sections of the orchestra for the symphony -- and then it would be done. Instead, I ended up fleshing out the paper to chapter proportions as I wrote. I explained so much and showed my work to such an extent that my 10-15 page paper became 30 pages. Heck, that may even be too much for the chapter because I do have those other sections of the orchestra that will demand just as much space.

Still, I kept on composing and filling out and adding quotes and showing the logic of my conclusions and the paper got longer and longer and I became ever more anxious because I wanted both the paper and that section of the chapter done by October 1. Then, I wanted at least the paper done by October 1. I do, after all, have to get to work on the Chapter 1 paper (forget making it part of a chapter right now!) This has not happened. This is not good.

I finally abandoned the chapter section and focused on the paper only. Like I said, a paper and a chapter are two different creatures and I can't make a short cut and attempt to cover both. That's what I started on yesterday. At the end of the day, I had to laugh at myself because I had 6 pages done and I was happy because those six pages had started the day as 15 pages. Less was more!

At the same time, I felt the gremlins of self-loathing and doubt waking because I began to worry that, by not showing all of my work in the paper, my arguments will not be convincing. I always hate when historians make generalities based on one quote or one incident. For instance, in my project, historians have said, "and he often tried to disguise his name by reversing his initials." I'm familiar with the documentation. "Often" is actually once.

In another example, every biographer cites the previous biographer about someone who came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Do you know how much time I've wasted trying to trace her down in Newcastle-upon-Tyne? She was nowhere near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She was born and raised in London. I have the documentation.Yet, because every single major, reviewed and blurbed by award-winning, more important than myself historian has said Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I feel I should demonstrate how they were wrong. This may sound like a trivial point, but in teasing out the London bit, I also teased out a whole bunch of other stuff that is relevant to a chunk of the argument (and I've recently learned of a historian who has found even more that will support my argument) that answers a very obvious question that all of those big, important dudes failed to consider.

I have a zillion examples of this sort of thing, and feel as if I should show all of these examples and lines of questioning and evidence that supports my conclusions -- show every step of my work -- because of all of those major, award-winners, blurbed and reviewed by award winners*, more important than myself historians made all of these errors or simply failed to ask pertinent questions or engaged is really shoddy analysis and then all cited each other and who the hell am I (other than an arrogant neophyte)? So, I have to have an arsenal of evidence out there and loaded. As they used to say on The Wire, "when you go after the king, you best not miss."

Which all means that, stripped of every microbe of evidence and explanation of what it shows, I feel rather unarmed in this paper. I'm struggling in keeping the argument sound, presenting my conclusions and showing how they fit together with only key bits of evidence.

That too becomes difficult because, then, I feel I must explain the full context -- all with that arsenal of evidence -- of every move and every incident in order to head off the people in the audience who, rather than engage with what you are saying focus on the bit of context that they know and then hammer you for not including it. I feel I have to explain the full context in order to demonstrate how important this story is in that context. I become rather Dickensian in my narrative, or, worse, Joyceian.

Anyway, stripping down my argument to the bare bones and keeping it under 15 pages (thanks to a cancellation of someone whom I'm actually kind of bitchily glad couldn't make it). I have that much space because there are only 2 people on our panel and no comment. I have a friend who reminds me that I can draw out my evidence through the questions people ask.

As painful as this is, stripping down my argument, stripping away the evidence that I know supports the argument, forces me to look at the argument and streamline it where I can. That's good because, when I return to the chapter as a chapter, I can reverse the process of the past month. I can take the argument, now leaner and meaner, and fit the evidence back in but perhaps with less repetition. Now, when I turn to the paper from Chapter 1, I might be able to do so with more confidence and -- more importantly at this point -- more speed.

I've also decided that I can either write papers and articles (because I still have a "revise and resubmit" waiting to be revised and resubmitted), or I can write a book. My process and pace just seem to preclude doing both at the same time. Doing both at the same time sounds good in theory, but even with all the time in the world here, I just take too damn long to make it happen the way I should. Very frustrating, but it's what I am. Maybe, once the rust gets out, things will change.

------------------------
* Have you ever read a book that was so dreadful, so sophomoric, so poorly argued and supported that, if your freshmen turned it in you would give it a D, if you were feeling generous? Then you read the reviews and blurbs from people who are all important, and well-respected, and at fancy, expensive schools, and their own work is really well respected, and they say that this atrocious book is brilliant and wonderful and a great contribution to the field? Do you loose a tiny bit of respect for those reviewers and blurbers? Or am I missing something about reciprocal back-scratching? I suppose it doesn't matter, really, as long as you can be proud of your own work.

Ikea!

2011-10-01T08:23:00.000+01:00

I just know you were all waiting with baited breath to learn exactly how the Gentleman Caller and I fared in our quest for cheap lamps and shelves.

We first scouted out all of the suggestions that everyone gave us in the comments on my previous post on the subject. Dunnes, apparently, has many different versions: a woman's boutique, a grocery store, a smallish sort of department store and a largish sort of department store. None were really appropriate to our needs. We also looked at the electronics store, but also did not find exactly what we wanted. Most of the Tescos around our neighborhood are small and smaller, so just have groceries (and, by the way, already have out Christmas candy!). The big one out at the mall did not have much of what we needed either. Since what we really need is a Target, we looked Target up on the internet because you never know.

The residents of the Emerald City will either be happy or despair to know that a big ass Target will be opening in October. Where, we don't know, but it will probably be somewhere near where we ended up in this particular quest, since that seems to be the direction of inexpensive expansion.

Finally, we decided that we would just have to go with what we know and head up to IKEA. Heading up to IKEA meant that we had to venture into what we did not know: the bus system.

Remember, the Gentleman Caller and I are not regular bus riders back in the states. So, we stand like kindergartners on the first day of school when faced with bus routes and numbers and pricing and such. The system here, to the uninitiated, is quite odd, too. We asked for a map at one of the tourist gift shop/offices, but they gave us something with a sketch of a map on the city, and bus route numbers scattered about, but they did not represent all of the routes, nor did they show actual routes. Very frustrating. The website was much more helpful, mercifully! In fact, in the absence of a printer, I regret not having a smart phone with a GPS and internet here. In fact, I want a device that has just those two things on it.

While I'm wishing, I'd also like it to be free.

Anyway, we plotted our route, gathered our coins, and wandered out to the bus stop. There are two types of bus stops here. One is just a pole with a round sign on top, like a lollipop. The sign tells you the stop number and the numbers of the buses that stop there. Sometimes the lollipop has a cylinder about halfway down, and the cylinder has the times for the bus. Not the time it will arrive, but the time that it leaves the point of origin. Then, you can sort of guess when that bus will show up, and what the approximate interval between the last and the next bus might be. This, of course, is not exact because the buses must conform to the vagaries of traffic and road construction and Americans who have no idea what they are doing and other such annoyances that slow them down.

Here is a bus:

The statue is of Thomas Davis, except it is spelled in Gaelic and you can't see the name from this angle. I don't know anything about him beyond what the tour guide told us and that he has an interesting hat.

As you can see, the buses are double deckers. I could not wait to ride on top, right in the front, like a dog. Eventually, I did get to do that, but not on this trip. On this trip, I could not even get in as far as the first row of seats because the bus was packed. In fact, all the buses along this route had standing room only. Once a bus has filled, the driver won't let anyone else on until someone gets off. The driver will even cut people off from loading at a stop if the bus fills up with only of few of the people waiting at that stop.

This is a view out of the windshield:

Maybe you can't see very well from this image, but the scene resembles that of an American city highway at rush hour, or a parking lot. From one wall on one side of the street to the other wall on the other side of the street, people packed the sidewalks, bike lanes and streets going both ways.

Maybe this will give you a clue as to why:

Those are sports team colors, and everyone on the bus wore some version of those colors, or blue and light blue check, or red and black check; and this sports event was popular. Painted faces and goofy hats popular. The only people for whom this sports event was not popular were me, the Gentleman Caller, and an little, stooped old lady, who must have been born before the Irish Civil War. That is not an exaggeration, she was easily ninety .

When the little, stooped, nonagenarian lady got on the bus, one of the many young guys in sports shirts -- who must have been twice her height -- offered her a seat. I was rather surprised at how polite he was, since I rather expect young guys in sports shirts to behave like assholes. That's not prejudice, that's experience. I have, however, noticed a slight and subtle difference in attitudes toward the very elderly here, and there seem to be more of the very elderly getting about town than I've noticed elsewhere.

Anyway, the young guy offered her a seat. She gruffly refused -- "no!" -- and held onto the rail with both hands. The young guy looked a bit chastised, and I thought that, perhaps, she took offense at being treated as if she were fragile and unable to get about on her own. You never know. One person thinks "courtesy" and another thinks "patronizing." After all, the seat offered was a fold-up seat provided for the disabled.

A few stops later, an older man came down from the upper level. He must have been in his seventies but still came in under the nonagenarian lady. He took one look at this stooped, cotton-haired woman hanging on to a rail as if for dear life amid all of these robust youngsters, and he offered her the fold-down seat. "Here, ma'm," he said. "Why don't you have a rest."

"Oh, thank you," she said. "A true Irishman!"

The young guy looked stunned. "But," he whispered, "I'm Irish!" She wouldn't take the seat from the young guy because she didn't think he was Irish. She would only accept the seat from someone she deemed Irish enough.

Anyway, she got off a few stops later, and a few stops after that, the bulk of the people in sports shirts got off. By this time we had been on the bus for about an hour or an hour and a half, and travelled maybe five miles. "We could walk to IKEA faster," I said.

Well, as it turned out, we missed our stop to transfer on to the bus that would take us directly up to IKEA's front door. We could catch a similar bus from another stop, but that involved a short hike between the stops. So we got off there.

Now, I am of the mind that, if you are waiting for the bus, and the bus takes a while to arrive, you might as well walk to the next stop and wait there.So, that's what we did. We walked to the next stop. Then, the next stop. Then, the next stop. No bus passed us. Sometimes, you actually can walk the distance faster.

Here is what the path looked like:

Sometimes, when you walk a city, you get to see all of the litter. You also get to see that not everyone abides by the pooper-scooper laws either, but we don't need to get into that.

As we walked down the road, and I bitched about the rain and the trash, I suddenly realized something. Look at that picture again. We were walking along the side of a highway. A highway. Yet, we were not walking in a ditch. We were walking on a paved lane for pedestrians; and that paved lane for pedestrians runs next to a paved lane for bikes. A lane for bikes, not the gutter. This is a city where you can walk or bike from way out in the suburbs on one side to way out in the suburbs on the other on paved sidewalks. This, like the universal health coverage, is such a civilized and strange phenomenon to me.

Ahh, but the rain was dreary, and temperature low, and my feet in their thin, white tenny shoes were wet and cold, and the wet and cold seeped up my socks and jeans. Where was IKEA? Would we never get there?

Hark! In the distance! Is that a big box of a building?

Yes! Oh, lovely blue and yellow, promising warm and dry inside!:

We had already learned the first lesson of the day by this time. That lesson was to not travel by public transportation whenever there is an All-Irish Game event, such as the painted-faces-and-goofy-hats-popular one that we had encountered on the bus. You will spend two hours on a bus ride that normally takes 30 minutes.

When we walked into IKEA, we learned the second lesson. That less was to not shop at IKEA on a Sunday. Good god! The place was packed. Prams and toddlers and people not paying more attention to a debate over the various merits of the throw pillows than to the fact that they are blocking the way for the fifty other people trying to pass them on their way to debate the various merits of throw rugs -- I almost had to curl up in the fetal position on one of the beds, shaking in the throes of a social anxiety attack. Then, I started to feel depressed because those show rooms seemed so cozy and homey and our Dormish Apartment so cold and stark and I was tired of being cold and wet and having a home decor that seemed to match.

Also, IKEA is kind of expensive. I suppose I should adjust my opinion of the proper value of items to fit prices in 2011 rather than 1986. Still. We did, however, find what we needed, and the cost was sufficiently low enough that I wouldn't have a panic attack over it.

Here is the escalator out of the store:

See? No steps. It's a conveyor belt on an angle, and it works perfectly for shopping carts.

The Genleman Caller tried to flag down a cab. They only took cash, and we definitely didn't have enough on us to pay for what would most likely be a very expensive ride home. So, we stood out and waited for the bus, lugging our items like everyone else at the stop.

This was what the weather looked like:

The weather often looks like this. You can have rain and cold and wind and sunny blue skies. Then, you have lunch. Fortunately, that blue sky headed toward us, not away. By the time we got to our transfer stop, we had a perfectly lovely day above us and my depression began to dissipate.

Then, we put together our shelves and end tables and lamps and such, lit a lovely scented candle, and the place felt a touch less Dormish. Now, a month later, it still has a bit of a Dormish feel, but I'm getting used to it. Also, were it my own apartment, I'd be distracted by home decoration plans. Now, I just think "not my place," and don't worry too much about it. That frees up some of that quality procrastination time for things like writing my book.

Speaking of which.....

Fun at the INIS Office, part 4: Conclusion

2011-09-30T09:53:00.000+01:00

As I suspected, yesterday was not terribly productive in terms of getting words on the page. Although, given the averages, it might have ended up being productive since I worked for an hour and produced one page. Not a bad ratio of hours to pages.

Instead, I went up to one of the colleges for coffee with another professor who has written a book directly related to my subject (and we all know who that it -- the subject, that is -- but, for now, I'm trying to keep a little bit of a line between the way Clio and not-Clio discuss writing the book). I confess, my dreadful social skills, embarrassment at not actually having read her book as yet (it's difficult to get in the U.S.), and complete excitement at having someone to talk with about my subject who knows where stuff is over here on him meant that I dominated the conversation. When I returned to the Dormish Apartment, the Gentleman Caller kept asking me questions about where she lives and how long she's worked at the college and her interesting commute and generally the sort of things that people find out about other people in polite conversation and I was at a loss to answer because it never occurred to me to ask. See? Dreadful social skills. In any case, she gave me a couple of good contacts to people who are writing on topics directly related to mine, and then offered to read some of my stuff. Excellent! Successful day in a non-writing way.

Meanwhile, I'm sure that you are all just DYING to know what happened on Wednesday at the INIS office. So, I present to you "Fun at the INIS Office, part 4: Conclusion." The crowd can feel free to go wild, now.

By the way, the title is not a result of my poor numerical literacy. Part 3 was embedded in Part 2. It was the part about them closing while we were in line.

"Once more into the breach," said the Gentleman Caller.

"Under the bridge?" I asked. "But the office is right here." The traffic was rather loud, and I grew up listening to loud music on Walkmans. "Oh, yeah! I get it. Breach," I said. "Once more."

When you get there, as I think I've described, you have to stand in a line, wait your turn to outline your situation to the bedraggled bureaucrat behind the glass, get a number, and sit in the moulded plastic chair waiting area until they call your number to once more outline your situation yet another bedraggled bureaucrat behind the glass. The first line has ropes that organize and confine the people in the line and remind you a bit of Temple Grandin's contraptions in that HBO movie. "Moo."

Well, when we got into the office, there was a line, but it wasn't between the ropes. The posts holding up the ropes had been pushed together to close their ends, so people just lined up in front of the ropes. It was all very orderly, if inconvenient for people trying to pass in front of the line. I, being a good girl and trained to follow directions, went over to the closed off ropes.

"Shit," I thought. "They aren't seeing anyone else today, like last time." Except, we were there early and the place didn't close down until 10 pm. The office was crowded, but not that crowded.

Not to be deterred, I looked about for a sign saying that they weren't giving out any more tickets. None. Then I asked the last person in line, "Are they still handing out tickets?" Yes, they were. So, we put ourselves onto the end of that line.

The person behind the counter kept meeting with each person ahead of us. New people arrived and stood behind us, and the line began to snake back around the side of the ropes. Then, the guy in front of us went up to the counter. The man behind the glass, who, incidentally, had been there the whole time, motioned the guy in front of us toward another counter. The guy in front of us said, "What?" The Glass Guy pointed down toward another counter. The guy in front of us, pointed in that direction and said, "Down here?" The Glass Guy nodded and pointed down toward the other counters. The guy in front of us looked down the way, but so no open space. He walked further that way, looking for the alleged open counter. The Glass Guy disappeared, and a woman showed up behind him and started taking the numbered ticket out of a machine.

"Oh, shit," I thought. "Not again. Not this early."

Everyone in line started to look at one another, whispering, "what's going on? Are the not giving out tickets already? Is this the right line for tickets? What's happening?"

Then, the Glass Guy appeared behind the window again. He gave us the same gestures toward the other counters. The guy from in front of us was still wandering down the row trying to find the empty space and having no luck whatsoever nor finding anyone to help him. I looked down the row, then pointed directly at the next counter. "I don't understand. Here?" I mimed. The Glass Guy kept gesturing, so I went up to the glass and said, "I don't understand, where do we go?"

"You have to get in the queue," he said.

"I was in the queue," I said. I motioned to the line of people behind me. "This is the queue."

"You have to stand in the queue," he said. I stepped back into my place. He gestured to me to come forward again. "You have to stand in the back of the queue," he said.

"But, I was just at the front of it," I said.

"You have to go to the back of the queue over there," he said, and pointed to the ropes.

"But, this is the line," I said, and again indicated everyone standing, in a line, behind me. "The line over there is closed off."

"You have to stand over there," he said, and pointed back toward the ropes. Then, he made a gesture as if to say, "I'm done with you."

"It's closed off," I repeated, "We are all in line here because the ropes are closed off."

"You have to stand in the queue," he said, motioned that he was done with us, and walked away. He was thoroughly institutionalized.

So, I turned around and headed for the ropes. I tried to move the poles, but they were too heavy. So I tired to crawl under them. Meanwhile, the woman who had been getting numbered tickets out of the numbered ticket machine passed by me. "Don't do that, ma'm," she said. Then, she started handing out the tickets to everyone else in the line.

"Wait a minute!" the Gentleman Caller said.

"Wait a minute!" the guy who had been in front of us said.

"Wait a minute!" I said.

"WE were here first!" we all three said together.

"It's wrong to cut in line," the Ticket Woman said.

"We're not cutting," I said, reduced to sounding like an indignant six year old. "We were here first!"

"I'm not going to stand here and argue about who was here first," she said. "You have to be standing in the queue and these other people were standing in the queue."

"Everyone here will tell you we were first," I said. Everyone else in the line kindly nodded their assent.

Ticket Woman pursed her lips. "Here." She handed the guy in front of us and me tickets. I think she perceived that the two loud Americans were going to be a problem. "What are you here for?" she asked me.

Here we go again. "He's working here. I'm his partner. He's financially responsible for me."

"Do you have insurance?"

"Yes."

"Do you have sufficient funds?"

"Yes."

She looked about, saw an empty counter, and pushed us at it, jumping us ahead of the room full of people. Because I was raised in a patriarchal culture that hates bitchy women, I hate thinking that someone somewhere might think that I'm a bitch; and because I am aware that the rest of the world percieves Americans as obnoxious and entitled if not downright bullies, I try hard not to fulfill the stereotype. I should have said, "no, no, ma'm. All of these other people in the chairs have been waiting much longer than us. We shall wait our turn."

I jumped at the counter.

The woman behind the glass took one look at the Gentleman Caller and said, "Oh. You." They had met; but that's his story to tell. I just smiled pretty and handed her my passport, insurance card, and letter from the insurance company. She looked it all over, typed some stuff into boxes on electronic forms, took my picture, and returned the card and letter to me.

"Just wait over there until we call your name," she said.

"That's it?" I said.

"That's it."

So, we sat in the chairs and waited for them to call my name. When they call out people's names to pick up their passports and visa cards, they also call out their nationalities. Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Liberia, Croatia, America, Mexico, Vietnam, Czech Republic, Nigeria, Poland, China. I imagined the globe the way you see it in weather reports, with clouds swirling about it following the currents of wind, except the clouds were people, and they swirled to and fro from southeast to northwest, from south west to north east, around and around the Atlantic clockwise and counterclockwise, and trying to stop it or slow it is just as futile a trying to stop the wind or the water.

"Bluestocking, America," a voice from above mumbled. I got my card and my passport, and we left for the pub.

Fun at the INIS Office, part 2

2011-09-29T09:40:00.002+01:00

I was right. Yesterday was not a good writing day. It was otherwise a good day, but not for writing. Maybe today will be, since I don't have to go to INIS, although I am supposed to meet someone for coffee if she gets back to me to tell me where.

Meanwhile, parts 2 and 3 of my dealings with the INIS.

When we left the INIS office that first week, I called the insurance company and procured a promise of a letter that would say that I was covered in Ireland for the time specified. Then, since the New York t-shirt guy said that I could bring a policy or something of that sort to prove the same thing, I went on line to find such a creature.

U.S. medical insurance companies don't really have policies, do they? They have 159 page PDF documents explaining the coverage of your particular plan, but they don't really have a section that says "X is covered wherever X is in the world, from Day 1 to Day 365."

We weren't too sure when the letter from the insurance company would arrive because they would only send the letter to the house in the Burned Over District (the Irish address tends to confuse people because there aren't the right number of spaces or something of that sort in the online forms, so they just say "fuck it, we'll send it to the Burned Over District and eventually they'll get it" -- that and it's cheaper to do so). So, we printed out a chunk of the PDF explanation of benefits in the hopes that this would satisfy INIS; and, in the hopes we could get this all over with sooner than whenever the heck the insurance letter arrived, we went back to the INIS office.

We stood in line. I got my number. I waited. They called me up.

This time I faced a fire plug of a woman who had been thoroughly institutionalized. By that, I mean that, while on the job, she seems not to have been able to comprehend anything that did not fit in all of the little boxes on the electronic form. I get how that can happen. She spends all day trying to fit situations of odd and unwieldy sizes in all sorts of accents into those little boxes on the electronic form; and, she's had years and years of those days. She had become the job. Her hair, her skin, and her clothes had all taken on the same pallid non-color that permeated the walls, the counters, the floors, and the very light of the room.

I sat down and smiled pretty. She looked at me and I think she actually said, "what fresh hell is this?" I explained the situation yet again. "He's working here." I gestured to the Gentleman Caller, who stood behind me like a German Shepard. "I'm his partner. He's financially responsible for me."

She glanced wearily at him and at me. Actually, she didn't so much glance as point her eyes in his direction, then mine. "Do you have insurance?" she asked. I handed her my passport and my insurance card. I didn't want to confuse her with the paperwork just yet. Some of the Gentleman Caller's co-workers, both native and those from out of the country and out of the EU, had told us that sometimes your case depends on who you get at the counter and what kind of day they are having. Maybe her day was so annoying that she would just want to get us through without hassle.

She took my card and my passport and disappeared into that back room. "Not again," I thought.

Oh, yes. Again. I sat there, wishing that this counter had better graffiti, or any graffiti. I contemplated taking out my book. I envisioned being escorted onto a plane by immigration officials as I was deported in three months. I wondered where I would live back in the U.S. I wondered if I could just go on a trip to France or somewhere at the end of the three months, and then return for another ninety days. I thought that, if I were deported, maybe I could get my hands on the secondary literature for my book that I so desperately needed. I wondered where I could get a good poster for that big empty space over the sofa back in our Dormish Apartment. I wondered what was for dinner.

Then, she returned.

"This doesn't cover you," she said, holding up my insurance card.

"What?" Did they know something that my company wasn't telling me? I held up the PDF printout. "I have the explanation of benefits here."

"No," she said. She pointed to the fine print on the back of the card. The fine print said, "This does not guarantee coverage."

"This card doesn't guarantee coverage," she said.

"That's how American insurance works," I said. "They want the right to deny coverage and they do it all the time. You just have to keep sending the paperwork back. I am covered."

"No, it doesn't guarantee it," she said. "Also, this date on the front just tells us when your coverage started. It doesn't say for the time you are here."

"But, as long as I pay, I'm covered," I said.

"It doesn't say that here," she said. "You see, we can't have you in the Republic using the government health insurance is something happens. Everyone in the Republic has to be covered. You either have to get private health insurance or be a taxpayer."

Wait. This is interesting. "Everyone in Ireland has to have health insurance?" I asked.

She took that as a challenge. "They don't want you using the government insurance," she said. "People coming from outside of the Republic have to bring health insurance."

"No, no, I get that," I said. "I'm honestly curious about this. Everyone in Ireland is covered?"

"Citizens are covered," she said. "People coming into the country have to bring private insurance or buy it here."

"So, everyone -- all Irish citizens -- have health insurance?" I asked. "I'm just curious because this isn't how it works in the States."

She also took that as a challenge. "Yes," she said, "In the Republic, citizens are covered. You are not."

"No, no. I get that," I said.

"You have to have something that says specifically that you are covered in Ireland for the time that you are here," she said. "Then, we can see you again."

Thus ended our interview.

The Gentleman Caller and I returned to the Dormish Apartment via a pub and waited for the letter to arrive.

About two weeks later, it did. The letter told me that I am, as I suspected, covered wherever I am. The letter, however, also said, "this does not guarantee coverage." They are just not going to guarantee coverage. That's the nature of the business. They reserve the right to deny coverage in case I want a boob job, or liposuction, or anything else not health-related. They reserve the right to deny coverage because they think that psychotherapy should only take five session and that you are cured for life. They reserve the right to deny coverage in the hopes that you won't challenge it and they don't have to pay up. They reserve the right to deny because they are a business.

Still, this is what we had, so we went back to the office for the third time.

We stood in line. We waited. We got up to the counter. They closed.

"I hate them," the Gentleman Caller said as we left.

"They hate us," I said. "Not us personally, just as a group. Or, rather, they hate their jobs. Wouldn't you?"

That was last week.

Fun at the INIS Office, part 1

2011-09-28T08:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's writing went very very well: five pages in five hours. That's a little more like it! I'm not sure how good they are, nor am I sure if I'm satisfied with them; but, that's what a shitty first draft is for.

Today will not go so well. I know this not because of any sense of foreboding or the usual attack of the gremlins, but because I have to go to INIS. Again. This will be our fourth visit to what used to be called the "Alien Office," and I do have a sense of foreboding about this. Again, this is not my natural pessimism here -- o.k. not much anyway. This is because the problem has to do with my health insurance.

Let me back up to our first trip to INIS. In our first week, after we had slept off the worst of the jet lag, we hiked halfway across the city to register with the Guarda, which all long-term visitors must do. Here is the office:

Here is the inside of the office:

I've never had cause to actually be inside an immigration office before, but I imagine that it is not too much different that pretty much any immigration office in the U.S. I did expect it to be much more crowded, and I suppose I expected far more people from Latin America and Africa. That's because I've lived mostly in areas with large numbers of immigrants from those parts of the world and because I did once pass outside of an immigration office in Manhattan one morning (god, but I sound privileged!) and the line went around the block.

Whether or not you think this is crowded probably depends upon your own experience. I've been told that this is, for Ireland, fairly sparse because, since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, most of the immigration in this country is out of it. A lot of the people here seem like they come from places that are in worse circumstances. Very few brought children, and there are many interracial couples. I use the term "interracial" here, but I start to realize that the word has almost no meaning outside of the U.S. -- or, at least, it doesn't have the same type of meaning. Lest any anti-immigrant sorts point to that as evidence of what we call "green card marriages" in the U.S., these "interracial" couples could have both been immigrants from opposite sides of the world, or one actually could have been and Irish national, but didn't have the American stereotype of an Irish appearance. What I'm trying to say is that, in this office, the entire American concept of the world broke down. I felt very knocked off center -- which is good -- and very aware of all of the Amero-centric assumptions with which I go through life but never think about.

We had to stand in a line for a bit. No one in the entire room looks happy to be there, least of all the people behind the counter. One guy back there looked like he had just rolled in from a long night at the pub, with long, curly, untamed and unwashed hair, and wearing a beat-up flannel shirt as a jacket over a ratty t-shirt. The agent who served us actually did look like he came from central casting. He had reddish blond hair, cut very close but not quite in a buzz, and a fresh scrubbed face.

We explained our situation. The Gentleman Caller is here for work, and I'm his partner, along for the ride (I've since learned that I probably should be careful about using the expression "ride," if you catch my drift).

"Do you have a certificate?" he asked. He said something between "a" and "certificate" that I couldn't understand because we were talking through glass and the room had a lot of that mumbling, moving, echoing noises of such holding pens as this.

"A birth certificate?" I asked. Oh no! No one said anything about bringing a birth certificate. They just said passport and medical insurance card. My birth certificate is somewhere in one of the many boxes -- I couldn't even tell you which -- stored in the Gentleman Caller's house back in the Burned Over District.

"Yeah, a certificate," he confirmed. Again, the word between "a" and "certificate" was unintelligible.

"No," I said. "I have a passport." I offered it to him through the metal tray at the bottom of the window.

"Oh," he said, "they might not let you say without a marriage certificate."

MARRIAGE certificate! That's what he was saying!

"We aren't married," I said. Ah, jeez, I thought. Am I going to have to go through our whole personal and philosophical position and conversation about marriage and heteronormative privilege and already being privileged enough and patriarchal vestiges and fear of commitment and all of those things that we are working out between ourselves? Is he going to charge us for marital counseling if we do?

"I'm sorry," the guy said, "When you say 'partner,' I assumed marriage." See, I would have thought "business" and some others think "gay so can't get married." Maybe the INIS office is where all of your assumptions get shaken up?

He gave us each a number and told us to wait in the seating area. Here is my number:

That's the last picture that I will show you of the inside of the INIS office because, at this point, I saw a sign that said "no pictures." Since I want them to let me stay in the country, I figured I should obey the rules.

We sat in those plastic moulded chairs for a while, reading our books. I was (and still am) reading Bleak House, which is a scathing critique of another bureaucratic agency in Victorian England. I wondered what someone like Dickens might do with an immigration office. Then, I wondered what sorts of stories everyone in here had that brought them from where they were born to these plastic moulded chairs in this office. I wondered what sort of problems they might face here, and what sort of problems they would face in the U.S., not just in the country but in contact with these clearly unhappy employees of this agency. Then, I thought of the movie Brazil, also involving a labyrinthine bureaucratic process.

Then, they called our numbers. They wanted to speak to us separately. I sat down on the opposite side of the glass from a guy wearing a New York T-shirt. I decided not to engage him about it.

"OK, what is the story here?" he asked.

"My partner is here for work, and I'm along for the ride." I said, again, not yet aware that I should probably not use the term "ride" or he might think that I was some sort of escort, if you catch my drift again. "I'm not employed here, or looking for a job, I'm just accompanying him. We're going back next summer." I handed him my passport and my insurance card.

"I'll be back in a minute," New York t-shirt guy said, then he took my passport and disappeared down toward another counter.

"My passport!" I thought. "Now, I'm stuck." I sat, waiting, wondering what he had to consult about, wondering if my dalliances with socialists back in the '90s was going to get me in trouble, or if my application to visit Cuba during that time would be used against me, or if my rejection from military service might make me look suspicious (also during that time -- let's just say I was a lost soul in the '90s), or if my knowing Babu was a problem (that's a long story, but he knows what I mean).

Then, I started to read the graffiti on the counter. Someone had used a red pen to carve "Fuck lazy Irish! Stupid Fuck You" into the counter. "There is a lot of pent-up frustration haunting this seat," I thought.

The New York t-shirt guy came back and, gesturing back toward the counter where the Gentleman Caller was having his interview, said, "O.k., so he says he's financially responsible for you."

The Gentleman Caller later told me that the New York t-shirt guy asked him, "Are you financially responsible for her?" The Gentleman Caller said, "yes, but don't say THAT to her." Apparently, the New York t-shirt guy didn't get that putting the situation that way was a bit infantilizing of me. Still, it is true, although I do have my own money, but we didn't really need to get into the details with this guy. We just needed to tell him the truth, but in the simplest terms possible, even if it obscured some of the finer points.

"So, he says he's financially responsible for you," the New York t-shirt guy was saying.

"I suppose that is true," I said.

"Are you covered by medical insurance," he asked.

"Yes," I said, and handed him my insurance card.

He scrutinized it for a bit, turning it over and back, and over again. "I'll be back," he said, and disappeared into a door behind him, carrying my insurance card with him.

"Shit," I thought, "this is not going to turn out well." Very little turns out well, or turns out well without huge and extensive aggravation, when it comes to dealing with the insurance company.

He returned. "Are you covered in the Republic?"

I didn't understand the question.

"Does this cover you in the Republic of Ireland?" he rephrased.

"I suppose so," I said. "It covers me and I'm in Ireland."

"We need the card to say that you will be covered in the Republic of Ireland for the time that you will be here." He pointed to the date on the card. "That just gives us a date when your coverage began. Can you bring us back a policy or something that says that you are covered in Ireland for the time you will be here."

"That's not really how American insurance works," I said. "But, I'll try to get something."

"That's all we need," he said. "You have ninety days from when you came in to bring it to us, and he" -- meaning the Gentleman Caller -- "has to escort you wherever you go in the country in the meantime."

They do know how to make a grown woman feel just like little girl, don't they? I know this is not the worst and is perhaps the most privileged treatment I could receive. I wondered what sorts of other indignities and dangers faced other people in less fortunate circumstances than myself. At least I can speak the language of the country, actually do have insurance, and am financially covered. I'm also not fleeing slavery or war or seeking political asylum. I'm just caught between two byzantine bureaucracies: the Irish INIS and an American health insurance company.

The Gentleman Caller got his card, then we went back to our dormish apartment where I got on the phone and called the 1-800 number of my insurance company. They said they would write a letter saying that I was covered in Ireland for the period in question and mail it right away. Then, I sat back to wait for it to arrive and count down the days until I become one of those "illegal aliens" or am deported. It's rather a race at this point.

Not to Gloat, but I'm Totally Going to Gloat

2011-09-27T09:01:00.000+01:00

My schedule on Saturday went like this: drink coffee, write, go for a long walk, drink wine. On Sunday, I drank coffee, wrote, went for a long walk, drank wine. Yesterday, I drank coffee, wrote, went for a run, drank wine. Guess what I'm doing today?

Nice work if you can get it!

Also, I'm clearly not working for any wages, so this has an expiration date. Still, this is awesome in the good way!

Yesterday went quite well. I accumulated four new pages as I revised who knows how many more. I'm not so confident about today. Before I went to bed on Sunday night, I knew what I had to do with the thing when I woke up in the morning. Let me tell you: that's really helps you face the Smoke Monster.

Sunday had been very frustrating. I wrote and wrote and revised and revised, but really only accumulated about two pages in five hours and still, nothing seemed to hang together the way it should or said anything much at all. I felt like all of my evidence was illustrating something, but I didn't quite know what. The parts read as if I were saying, "here is my assertion, and here is my evidence." In fact, I'm not too sure that I was even making a very good assertion. All the paragraphs seemed to say was, "this happened, and this happened, and this happened" or "she said, and then she said, and then she said." That's not particularly strong, and that sort of weakness causes your story to lose momentum.

After five hours of this -- and I'm usually only good for five hours before my brain feels numb and I'm pretty damn sick of these people in my head -- the Gentleman Caller and I went for a long exercise walk. I told him all of this, and then I began talking, almost to myself, about what I'm trying to say in everything I had spit out on the page that day. Sometimes he can help with this simply by saying, "so what is the point of all of this?" or "what does it all mean?" or "what does this have to do with the Great Man?" Hearing these questions outside of my head, and babbling through the answers outside of my head, is enormous help at crucial points.

This was a crucial point; and I figured it out. So, after we returned to the Dormish Apartment, I scribbled down the points.

Then, I drank wine and watched Downton Abbey, after which, I read a few screens of Bleak House(don't judge, the Kindle was a gift and it's proving to be a boon on long trips with little luggage space).

When I woke yesterday morning, I had the ideas all there and just had to put them down intelligently, straighten out the evidence, and then see what else I might tweak out to make the argument more precise. Four pages and five hours later, I went for a good long run. Then, I drank wine and watched the second part of the Glenn Close version of Lion in Winter (god what a great role for an older woman, and god how fabulous she is!).

Unfortunately, as I now drink my coffee, I have no idea what I'm going to say today. I have the vague idea of the next section; but, unlike yesterday morning, this idea is far more lumpy when I look at it all blobby on the page. I'm not even sure this section is as far into the "and then this happened, and she said, and then this happened, and she said" stage as I thought. Perhaps that is today's task: simply to get the lump to that stage and the more precise point will emerge from that work.

Of course, the de-lumping is not going to write itself, so I should probably move on into that now that the words are shaking loose.

Still, it is nice work if you can get it!

Writing and not-Writing because I'm Writing

2011-09-25T09:01:00.000+01:00

Writing a blog post has become very difficult these days because I'm either out doing the things that I would blog about (or tired out from doing them!) or I'm writing my book (and then tired out from writing the book). Since my sleep has not been good since I got here, waking up so very many times throughout the night, and sometimes at such short intervals that I didn't even know I had been asleep until I wake up again, and having such bad or odd dreams, I do get tired out easily. Hence, not much blogging despite having many stories to tell.

Today's is not really a story, but more of a pondering about the pace of the book writing. I've written two other books, and other stuff besides, this blog included. I've developed this concept of being a fairly fast writer. I can pound out the words fairly quickly, given the time and caffeine. I can pound out more if I don't have to cite them, too! They multiply geometrically if I can hop into a stream of consciousness for a little ride. Sadly, that is not really the way academic writing works. I can start that way, sketching out what I plan to say and then fleshing that out; but, as the fleshing out grows, the pace slows.

Even then, I usually can get out a good 5 pages per good day of writing. All of those pages have citations, too! As my writing schedule becomes more regular and consistent, the number of pages per day increases. When I can get into the double digits -- well, there is nothing like that feeling! It's like running in that you have to start slow with shorter distances, and gradually, through regular workouts, you increase your pace and distance. If you are starting a new project, then, like getting back into shape, you start off a bit rusty.

Like getting back into shape, however, getting back into writing can be so very frustrating. You remember being able to run fast and far, and now you struggle just to get through the first quarter of a mile. You see yourself in your mind, sweaty, muscular, and hopped up on endorphins; but here is your sad, aching body, dragging itself to the corner, barely able to get through a 20 minute mile. The same with writing. You remember that, toward the end of the last project, you banged out the pages, ideas flowing onto the page in elegant clear sentences, impressing you with your own eloquence. You are a master! Then, months later, you begin the next big project, and you creak. You can see the multilayers and ideas and a general vague cloud of what you hope to maybe convey, and you can peck out little more than the academic equivalent of "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." That, in fact, may be the brilliant sentence and original insight for the day, and you thank the citation gods that you have to make this first citation the long form because that will up your word count and fill more page space for your daily total. You ignore that you once considered that cheating.

By "you," I mean "me."

So, daily I have had to remind myself that I'm still rusty, so my pace will be slow. Daily, I have to tell myself that only by working through the rust will my pace pick up. Also, increasing the amount of candy that I consume will not increase the numbers of words, much less good words, on the page, so put down the Skittles. Yes, even the chocolate ones.

Sadly, the rust seems to have built up quite a bit in the past several months. The first writing day, I wrote a paragraph. The second writing day, I re-wrote the paragraph, and finished two pages. The third day, I rewrote those two pages and added two for a total of four. The fourth day, I wrote four. "Hey," I told myself, "this is going quite well! I'm doubling the previous day's work." Except, on the fifth day, I wrote one page. That seems to be the rate since then.

Now, I confess, in addition to the one page each day, I've also revised at least half of what came before, and one page is better than no pages. Still, this is a new development in my writing pattern. I sat down to write a full, shitty first draft this month. Instead, revision function of my brain begins to override the shitty first draft function of my brain, slowing the whole process down, much like having two browser windows open on your allegedly ancient computer. I'm not even sure if the revisions are that good, either, since you do need the whole shitty first draft completed in order to know if the revisions are making any sense. You have to have the "vision" before you can "re-vision," right?

Then, I noticed another thing about my writing. The last two books were -- once I got going -- pretty dang easy to write. Sure, I procrastinated on starting them. After all, the scariest thing in the world is the empty screen. Your smoke monster comes out of an empty screen. Once words start going onto that screen, and I go into the material, then the writing isn't that difficult and becomes ever more fun. That process is not kicking in quite so quickly this time. I mean, the writing is fun in the way that challenging and intellectually stimulating work is fun; but this time it seems much much more challenging than the previous two times. This challenge has very little to do with the smoke monster.

My last two books, you see, were very narrative driven. The first was a biography of a fairly traditional sort. She was born, she lived, she died. Being the first book, I was just trying to keep a story going, demonstrating the things that influenced this person and describing how those ideas affected her behavior and reflected the world for women of her race and class. There wasn't that much analysis or theory or argument, really. I pretty much told a story. The second book, being the Tourist Book or the Book Shaped Souvenir and essentially being a lark without any notes, an essentially narrow focus, and a strict order not to include any historiography, was straight-up narrative. This happened, then this happened, then this happened, and so on. I like to think that there was some analysis and other such "boring academic" types of things going on, but they took place off page and shaped what appeared on the page. Still, it was a very very easy book to write.

This book is so much more difficult because I am trying to do something quite different. Sure, there is a narrative and, sure, it is to some degree a biography; but there is so very much more going on in it that was not happening in the other books. The "he was born, he lived, he died" is -- pick your metaphor -- the skeleton or the negative space. The flesh or subject around that negative space involves several, overlapping, "she was born, she lived, she died" stories, all intersecting in the same chapters and all equally important in telling the "he was born, lived, died" story in the way that I'm trying to tell it. The intersection of these various biographies creates that negative space of the main biography. (Does that make sense?)

So, I feel like I am writing something that has far more dimensions than the other two books ever could, and I'm trying to take that multi-dimensional image of the story that I see in my head and cram it into something linear. I'm trying to express a sculpture with a line. No: I'm trying to express the sculpture on its pedestal next to its artist in a room in a museum by drawing a line.

Which is fabulous! I know that I'm pushing myself to be a better writer and historian than I could ever imagine myself being. I have moments, even in this struggle -- heck, because of the struggle -- that tell me that I'm doing something important.

But -- goddamn -- it's slow going!

Invited

2011-09-11T21:07:00.001+01:00

The ceremony was not as bad as anticipated. Really! The Irish were clearly involved, if not in charge, of its planning because the whole event was devoid of most of the things that I anticipated. About halfway through, I realized that much of it had to do with artistic responses and interpretations, not jingoism, crosses, all caps and eleventies.

Dressed appropriately in black, right down to our underpants (the Gentleman Caller consented to wear a tie and appeared dashingly handsome), we arrived by passing a round building that caught my attention. "What an interesting building," I said.:

Turns out it was our embassy. I took this quick picture from the cab. Down there in the bottom left hand corner you can see a tiny Christmas tree. Later -- after my batteries had died -- we passed again and discovered it surrounded by flowers and other expressions of sympathy. Also, a guard told people to move along.

A block away, the cab let us off at the Royal Dublin Society Concert Hall, the location for the event:

Several men in suits, crossed Irish and American flag pins, and swirly wires from ear pieces milled about outside. We had anticipated much traffic, as warned, but discovered none. So, even with my whole routine of hair and make-up and other costuming accoutrement, we had actually arrived quite early. The milling men pointed us to the Insomnia across the street.

"Insomnia" is Gaelic for "Starbucks."

There, we found the place packed with Americans, including our cohort from the orientation. We shared ghost stories (another story for another time) about the place we had stayed over the previous nights and then traded horror stories about various branches of the immigration service. After about an hour, we cleared out with the rest of the shop.

While in line to get into the concert hall, we heard the plaintive, lonely, mournful sounds of the Dublin Fire Brigade Pipe Band:

As for the line, after the saga of the invitations, after the stories of silliness endured by our Emerald-American liaisons, considering the "no loitering" policy outside of the embassy, after being warned about electronic devices, and after being familiar with the security at U.S. airports, courthouses, and government buildings, you would expect that we would each be X-rayed and frisked within an inch of our lives before entering. You'd at least expect a metal detector or a perfunctory bag search.

Nothing. They just checked you off of the guest list and didn't even give you a second glance after verifying that you looked something remotely like the image on your picture i.d. There was a moment there where they could not find me on the list, and I began to suspect that they had me listed as Mrs. Clio Caller. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but my passport says that I'm Clio Bluestocking, so there could be a bit of an issue in letting me in if I were listed as Clio Caller, although I would have yet more fodder for a blog post.

I was almost right. They had my name, as my name, listed with the Gentleman Caller's as his Plus One. Plus Ones were listed with the named invited person and therefore more difficult to find unless they presented themselves as the Plus One. Between immigration, the bank, and this, I really have no idea how I am supposed to present myself to be recognized as official.

Here is the cover of the program.:

Up in the corner there you see the crossed Irish and American flags pin. They handed them out from crystal fishbowls. I put mine on my program because I don't wear those types of things, jewelry as they may be, and because that was veering a bit too much toward that flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies thing that I dreaded.

I had also dreaded lots of bunting and a room draped with flags and red, white and blue. Again, nothing of the kind, except a flag for the U.S. and a flag for Ireland, as you can see in this picture:

Well, you can sort of see it in this picture. Inside, I was a little uncertain about the permissibility of cameras, so I turned off my flash. That meant that most of the interior photos that I took ended up a touch blurry. By "touch," I don't mean a slight brush by a tiny hand. I mean more of a hard slam by a ham-fisted man.

An usher sat our group just behind the wheelchair row because one of our number was in a wheelchair (as I mentioned in my last post -- Ireland, by the way, seems not to have too many disabled people, or at least doesn't seem to have something similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act). That meant we had a pretty good view of the proceedings, although from the front of the back section.

We waited for quite a long time for the event to start. Behind me, two diplomats -- one from Ireland and one from Britain -- conversed quite loudly on the qualities of various embassy chefs, the propensity for western male diplomats to marry Japanese women but the infrequency of Japanese male diplomats marrying western women (something about differences in concepts of masculinity and opportunities for women), the surprisingly lovely translation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice into Chinese, another diplomat's lovely wife who could not speak much English but was a "charming" and "artistic" woman, and the fact that the Irish diplomat's wife "obviously fell for Ireland before she fell for you."

They also made comparisons between the behavior of the Chinese, Russian, and American diplomatic behavior not only among the three superpowers but also between their public and private behavior. Americans, they concluded, will always "get back to you on that" and never do, which makes them seem like "they never seem to be quite sure of what they are doing." The Irish diplomat suspected that the problem stemmed from the State Department's "one size fits all" instructions, which often leave the diplomats in the countries as a loss in responding to anything that does not apply to the instructions. They cited an instance involving instructions about the way to treat Muslims at a Fourth of July celebration that anyone in Ireland found ridiculous and impractical. The English diplomat said, "sitting looking out over the river in Washington this might have seemed like a good idea." It wasn't.

Suddenly, the whole saga of the invitations began to make sense.

Around about this time, a voice from on high asked that everyone turn off their cell phones in order to respect the moments of "solemnity" in the program. The room filled with shuffling, but another conversation behind me suggested that some were too important to comply with the suggestion. If they thought that, they were not found out because at no point did a cell phone beep, buzz, boing, ring, or sing out a pop song. Imagine that!

Then, the officials began traipsing into the room. This is the Irish president, Mary McAleese, entering:

Actually, you can't exactly see her in the image. Her entourage entered from my left and, since I still wasn't certain of the policy on unauthorized cameras, I sat in the second row, and her security guards (women among them!) could see exactly what I was doing, I waited until they passed. That probably defeated the purpose of taking her picture.

In any case, the ceremony began in an Irish accent and without a single invocation of a deity. A color guard from both nations entered at each side of the room in front of the stage, but they did not make a huge presentation of themselves, then soloists belted out the national arias. First the Irish:

Then the American:

I say "national arias" because both soloists sang as if they were in an opera. The opera at least sounded more Mozartian and less Wagnerian, which is so often the case; but, still, never is a song strangled and mangled in so many painful ways as a national anthem. Is it to make sure that everyone is awake?

After the arias, the color guards retreated. The Irish marched a little forward, about faced, and marched off. Quietly. The Americans marched a little forward, with guns, about faced, and marched off. Loudly. Behind me, the two diplomats diplomatically muffled their guffaws.

The American ambassador spoke first:

That's not him speaking. That's him leaving after the ceremony. He and his wife are the elderly couple there. My images of him speaking all look like smudge, so this is the substitute. Also, I didn't get my camera out and on fast enough to take his picture as he passed by, entirely unassumingly, as if he and his wife were off for some coffee and scones at Insomnia after church.

Yes, I am the world's worst photojournalist.

I didn't like his speech because it was full of flags and all caps and eleventies, although refreshingly free of crosses. He invoked the war on terror and evildoers and heroes -- may we banish that word from our language! -- and all of that simplistic forced optimism and chest-pounding cliches that I suspect would characterize a wholly American event.

The Irish president spoke next:

I liked her speech much better. Despite some drift into the usual tropes, she invoked MLK, noted the firefighters in the audience who had been among those at Ground Zero, reminded the audience that people of various nationalities had died in the attack, introduced the idea of agency in defining an event, and called for hope and peace. In other words, she used words and concepts so often absent from the usual language of the American media voices.

Then, we had the minute of silence. Silence is good, to me. During the silence, I realized that I have few memories of that day. My lapses have nothing to do with not caring or because the news was so traumatic for me. I just have so few exact memories that distinguish me from any of the billions of other people who got most of their information from the media outlets. I do remember bouncing among the news that mostly came from the radio and a black and white t.v. with poor reception in our office, concern about the arrival of the remainder of my belongings, laughing at concerns that the state capitol in this mid-western city where I had just moved might be bombed (demonstrating just how distant the attack really felt to those in our office), and getting work done. All of the images that I have been so certain that I witnessed on t.v. I more than likely added in later after seeing them on the internet in the immediate aftermath or elsewhere during the ensuing years. What I knew when, and what I saw when, is really just a fuzz followed by the alienation from the flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies that took over.

Back at the ceremony, the silence ended with a new composition, Termon, for strings and Uillean Pipes, which are like a smaller bagpipe that doesn't involve the player's breath. Heart wrenching no matter what the occasion (and if you like that sort of thing. Apparently not everyone finds the pipes moving, would you believe?). Afterward, someone read "The Names," a poem by Billy Collins, while a slide show of what appeared to be children's artwork using the names of victims. At that point, I began to appreciate the program. No deities, no crosses, no more flags than necessary for a state occasion. This was about artistic expression and sympathy.

Then, the strings played an arrangement called "The Last Rose of Summer," which included a very cheesy spoken word section. This cheese wasn't so bad in intent, however, and included another unused word, "bleak." The rest of the composition, after the spoken word section, was lovely. After the music, the Irish equivalent of a prime minister, the An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, read "Anything Can Happen," a poem translation by Seamus Heaney.

If you go back up to my picture of the stage, you will see something that looks like an ice sculpture in the center. Actually, the sculpture is made of crystal, and was created by Sean Egan, a Waterford Crystal master engraver who, like many of the employees of Waterford Crystal (and, indeed, elsewhere in Ireland), was laid off. He used the crystal and a bit of metal from the Ground Zero site to interpret the survival of a group of firemen in Stairwell B of the south tower.:

Below the sculpture, I found more proof that, for the past two to three years, no one can pass up the opportunity to connect their work with Abraham Lincoln:

Sheesh!

Anyway, Egan had earlier used crystal to depict the removal of Father Mychal Judge from the wreckage. You may recall that Judge was the firemen's chaplain who appeared in the film that unexpectedly became a documentary and record of the World Trade Center attack. The picture of his body being carried from the wreckage became famous. Do not click on the link if you believe images of the dead are disrespectful.

In fact, if you believe images of the dead are disrespectful, don't look at this one because now I am showing you an image of that photo in this one:

The blur at the podium is William Cosgrove, who is a retired NYPD fireman. He is also the man wearing white in the photo with Judge's remains. The other three men were also there. Since the sculpture was named "Miracle in Stairwell B," and since we were now contemplating the photo of a religious man, I braced myself for the crosses. Still, I thought, the man was there, so he can invoke whatever the fuck he wants.

In a rich New York accent, he simply thanked the audience and the organizers of this event, and he too called for hope and peace. Later, I heard a reporter ask him how he felt when he saw that photo. He said wearily that it never gets easier. Every year is just as bad as the one before.

To close down the event, the Soul Steps Dance Troupe took the stage and performed an amazing dance in firefighter boots, which they said were similar to the South African gumboots worn by the people who originated stepping.:

If I can figure out how to do it, I will post my recording of the last part of their dance.

The male dancer sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at about the mid-point, which seemed to keep in theme with hope and peace. They also spoke of the concept of survival, which was also a new word.

After the dance, the master of ceremonies thanked us all for attending, and I was glad that I had gone. The event was so refreshing in its focus on creativity. While there was some mention of shared experience, they did not push the concept as if we all were there. We weren't, but we could all feel sympathy for those actually affected by the attack. Also, the talk of hope and peace -- and peace seems an ever more delusional hope -- seemed to suggest an awareness of a bigger picture and of subsequent developments.

The whole affair felt thoughtful, as if another narrative or interpretation than the ones I am avoiding on t.v. and the one that I feared would be the program for the day could, in fact, be imagined. In that moment, I loved Ireland and knowing that there are other places on earth than the U.S.

Uninvited

2011-09-11T09:55:00.000+01:00

Before we left for the Emerald City, the Gentleman Caller received an invitation to a 9/11 commemoration organized by the American embassy. How very exciting! He responded saying that he and his partner, Dr. Bluestocking, would be happy to attend.

We went through the packing and moving and unpacking and repacking and flying and settling in and so on and so forth over the next two or three weeks. Then, the Gentleman Caller received another e-mail. They were sorry, but Mr. Bluestocking cannot attend. The invitation was for the Gentleman Caller alone.

"How rude!" said the Gentleman Caller. "Who invites someone and doesn't expect them to bring a Plus One?"

"Mr. Bluestocking?" I said.

"Well," said the Gentleman Caller, "now I don't want to go myself."

"Mr. Bluestocking?" I said. "They think we are a gay couple. I bet they made this 'no Plus One' distinction in our case because they don't want an out gay couple doing whatever they think out gay couples do. Fucking homophobes!"

Now, I was kidding on the square there; but it turns out the ambassador is the father of the owner of a sports team and my impression is that the whole macho sports industry isn't exactly cool about homosexuality or feminism or anything but men being real men and knocking the shit out of each other for big bucks. In fact, the Gentleman Caller said that this particular team has a player on the field at this moment (not this particular moment, but during the playing season) who has been accused of sexual assault.

"Fucking homophobes and misogynists!" I said, because I love the taste of sour grapes, although I did tell the Gentleman Caller to go without me and return with a full report. He said, if I wasn't invited, then he wasn't, and he didn't want to go. Besides, he said it would be no fun without me. (Isn't he a keeper?)

Not even a day later, however, the Gentleman Caller received an e-mail from the Emerald-American liaison at the organization for which he is working. She apologized to all of the American employees. The organization had nothing to do with this ceremony, it was all the embassy's affair and, sadly -- or rudely -- the embassy did not allow any Plus Ones. The embassy said something about space. Off the record, one of the liaisons told us that the embassy gives them tons of trouble about even the simplest and regular occurrences like paperwork that goes between the organization and embassy officials, and that even they were not invited to the service.

One of the organization's employees, however, was very pissed. He had asked about access for the disabled, since he has a wife in a wheelchair. That was how he learned that only he was invited. "I'm bringing her no matter what!" he said. I wanted a picture of that. Could you see the headlines?: "American embassy refuses admittance to woman in a wheelchair at 9/11 memorial service." All caps and eleventies!

At this point, I figured the whole Plus One issue was not one of space or homophobia or misogyny, but of security. They would assume that the employees had been vetted. The Plus Ones of the employees, however, could be anyone. Hypothetically speaking, for all the embassy knew, I could be a terrorist disguising myself as some tart whom the Gentleman Caller had picked up in a bar the night before. I could have dynamite tied to my thighs, or hidden in a body cavity. My tits could be implanted explosive devices! They couldn't risk that.

We thought the matter settled there. I just added this to my hyperbolic comedy routine in which I'm suspected not only of being a potential leech on the national health care system, a money launderer, a gay man, and, now, a potential terrorist threat. Not bad for an aging nerd girl! Furthermore, we had to go to an orientation for the American employees that same weekend anyway, and then a party for the Gentleman Caller's particular group, and I was rather looking forward to a free Sunday in which to write all of the posts about all of the occurrences of the past week or two, including this one.

Then, the Gentleman Caller received another e-mail from the embassy. This one revealed the heretofore super secret location and gave instructions about bringing identification, arrival time, and other logistics. The Gentleman Caller, unable to pass up the opportunity to remind the embassy of their poor etiquette, sent a response reminding them that he had declined to attend because "DR. Bluestocking" was also not invited.

Oh, no, no! They replied. "Ms. Bluestocking" is invited. Please bring her along. All Plus Ones were now invited. In fact, during the American employee orientation, a representative of the embassy announced the event and welcomed everyone in the room in tones that said, "bring your family! Bring your friends!" He gave the impression that the event was open to the public, or at least the American public in the Emerald City. Someone else from the embassy did the same thing the next day. All of the Americans in the room just rolled our eyes.

"Oh, this is so going on the internet," I said.

So, here it is. We go a little later today. I think it is coordinated to take place a the time that the attacks occurred. They have warned us that some sort of recreational cycling thing is taking place downtown and that lots of streets will be blocked off to allow people to ride bicycles along them. The bicycle event actually sounds like fun. I think I would rather be involved in that because all of these 9/11 commemoration things just make me mad.

The commemorations all invoke God and country and the kind of language that got us into the big mess we are in right now. They all demand that we never forget -- as if we could or as if maybe others haven't had disasters hit closer to home that might eclipse the 9/11 events (I'm thinking New Orleans and Katrina) or as if we should remember the destruction but forget how it was used to destroy much much more.

They all demand that "God Bless America" in all caps and eleventies, and I never understand the connection there. Is it a plea? Is it a prayer? Is it just damn stupid? Or is it stamping "Christian Crusade" upon the events? All of the caps and eleventies make me feel as if any questioning of those images makes you "against us." It alienates me.

I felt that in the aftermath in 2001: alienated by the flags and crosses. They felt so meaningless and divorced from what I had seen on t.v. or heard from people actually in Manhattan, and from what I saw in Manhattan a few months later. In fact, the flags and crosses, at that time and ever since, also scared me. Used as they are, to me, they seem like bludgeons. They seem like hatred and revenge. They seem like ignorance. I know many people find comfort in them, which is fine when it is private or even smally collective and when it is, in fact, a comfort. When they are weapons, I hate it, because I feel that the force behind the weapon is so narrow that I and the people and things that I value are part of the target -- not necessarily the bulls eye, but certainly acceptable collateral damage.

We are about to get ready, and I will take notes. It may not be as bad as I expect. I hope that it is silent and respectful, because that seems most appropriate. Then, I hope to spend the evening writing about the lesser events of the past few weeks, forgetting flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies in my shallow end of the pool.

Also, I'm sure that I will be extradited for this post -- right after I'm deported for not having sufficient proof of health coverage.

We Share the Power in This Relationship!

2011-09-03T12:49:00.000+01:00

I've not been a world traveller much in my life, having stepped no more than a few blocks into Canada and into Mexico until last year. I did know, however, that the electrical systems overseas are much different than those in the U.S. Something to do with voltage and perhaps AC/DC (not the band) or something all engineer-y and scientific, which means that the numbers and information all slide out of my head two seconds after I think I've mentally ingested and comprehended the facts. What did remain in my head was the knowledge that you can't put your American plugs into non-American sockets. I'm simple that way, and I hope it keeps me out of trouble.

Last year, when I went to the land of the Beatles and Shakespeare, I stopped into Radio Shack to get one of the adaptors so I could make myself pretty for the conference that I was attending. I hadn't yet learned that hair driers are now ubiquitous in most hotels, but I did know that hair irons are not.

A vast array of different adaptors and converters and sockets and outlets and all sorts of related paraphernalia covered a section of the wall at the store. Before the initial reaction of "Oh, shit, I'm way out of my league here" could wear off, a helpful young woman -- almost girl -- in a Radio Shack shirt offered help.

"I'm going to Europe," I told her. "I want to use my hair iron."

She had an accent. Spanish, I think, or perhaps Polish. Clearly, I'm not an expert in European accents, although if she had a Spanish accent and was talking with a person with a Mexican accent, both in Spanish, I could tell the difference. In any case, the fact that she had an accent made me feel a bit better since she probably had some experience with incompatible voltages. In fact, as she handed me one, she said, "this is the one I use when I go back to Europe." So, I bought it and went on my merry way.

Did you know that "Europe" and the "United Kingdom" are two separate concepts? I mean, I know that the UK is its own place, but I always put it in the category of "Europe" based on my 4th and 10th grade geography lessons. Along similar lines, I'm having a hell of a time figuring out when to use "Ireland" and when to use "UK." I assume the two are separate, with the exception of Northern Ireland, based on my limited knowledge of Irish history. The electronics companies, however, seem to conflate the two. I've ended up in conversations that go something like this: "Will this work in an Irish outlet?" "Yes, it's compatible with all outlets in the UK." "Yes, but I'm going to Ireland. Will it work in Ireland?" "Yes, in all outlets in the UK."

Going back to the situation with the European adaptor, in the English hotel room, I discovered, much to my frizzy-haired dismay, that the prongs on my adaptor did not match the openings in the outlet.

On the right, you see a UK outlet:

That's a type of adaptor on the left, left by the prior sub-let tenant. Those are, in fact, switches to turn the electricity on for each socket. Those are all over the apartment. Almost everything using electricity has its own switch; and, contra to American switches, you flip down to turn on. So, the red bit on the right switch means that the outlet on the right has power.

I digress.

This is the "European" adapter:

In trying to force this adaptor into and English socket, I was actually trying to put round pegs into square (or rectangular -- they are squarish, right?) holes. Lesson learned, not just in European and UK adaptors, but also in reading the back of the package to see where the item works.

Radio Shack might have taken the adaptor back, but I didn't try to find out because the back of the package said it would work in France and hope springs eternal. It also says it works in places beyond the ruins of the Iron Curtain, and that location is now on the itinerary for the year. Lucky I have an adaptor for it!

With the adaptor lesson learned, during the packing for this current trip, I stopped by Best Buy to get a proper one. Fortunately, at Best Buy, I got a sales person who seemed to actually know something about electronics. My adorable, pony-tailed, sweet-spoken electronics geek explained that I don't just need an adaptor. Carefully explaining the voltage differences, and the impact of that difference on my hair drier and computer, he told me that I needed a converter. They were, sadly, out of converters. "Lots of people are travelling to England these days for some reason," he said. "We have a hard time keeping them in stock."

After staring at the empty hook, hoping that the appropriate converter would magically appear if I wished hard enough -- or maybe clapped -- I thanked my electronics geek and ventured off in search of another place that sold converters. Other places, however, employed sullen, inarticulate, monosyllabic teenagers who were all clearly collecting a paycheck and didn't know shit about their inventory much less how to use anything not involving a phone. Still, the Gentleman Caller and I muddled through and finally found a converter, despite the mumbly salesboy's lack of knowledge about adaptors or converters or the difference between the two.

We only bought one because we wanted to see if it would work first, then figured we could buy another at our destination. (God, we are Amerocentric, aren't we; and for all of our advanced degrees, not too bright?) We also wanted to find one that had a three-pronged socket. If we could find one with a three-pronged socket, then we could plug in a surge protector strip and my computer. The Gentleman Caller's computer has a two-pronged plug.

We have yet to find the three-pronged converter, although we did find a salesperson who insisted that the adaptor he was selling us was also a converter and wouldn’t let the voltage difference blow out our laptops because laptops are set up to go everywhere. We were dubious, but bought the adaptor anyway because it couldn’t hurt to have one extra and it did have three prongs

Being dubious and not entirely clueless, we decided to try out the adaptor on something other than our computers. We decided to use the surge protector.

Let us all bow our heads in respectful memory of the surge protector, which died with a pop, valiantly protecting us from a barrage of high voltage:

Not as grisly as you would expect, is it? I assure you that it made a loud noise, and I worried that the Gentleman Caller had taken a serious shock. Mercifully, he was fine and felt nothing but surprise.

Now, we have one converter, which we plug into an adaptor. Then, we plug the two pronged computer cord into the converter:

That means that we have power for only one computer at a time. So, the Gentleman Caller uses the power until his battery has filled, while I work on my computer using my battery. When my battery gets low, he passes the cord over to me to juice up, and he works on his battery. Back and forth, back and forth, all day.

We share the power in this relationship.

Meanwhile, we await the arrival of a converter from a friend in the States. We actually have another device that we thought was a converter, and says it is a converter, and was going to be a part of this post; but, as I wrote this post, that device took on a story of its own and half of the electricity in the apartment shorted out.

Tram Adventure

2011-09-01T20:25:00.001+01:00

The apartment that we are staying in is spare, to say the least. We sub-let it from an academic couple who currently have the longest distance in their long-distance relationship of anyone I've ever heard of. They are positioned at opposite ends of the globe and, to make matters worse, have just had twins.

But that is their story. Our story is that we are subletting their apartment, and you would never guess that they were an academic couple about to have children by the looks of it. Not that I would expect them to have left it all homey for us. That isn't the oddity of the place. The oddity is that the place has the stark feel of a better grade dorm room or sparse hotel room. I'm not saying "ugly," just strangely un-lived-in. There are not simply no books, but no bookshelves or evidence of such. There are no end tables nor lamps. The only evidence that anything has been hung on the walls are stray hooks, placed haphazardly. Even the furniture is square and uncomfortable, including the beds.

This means that this couple -- the Gentleman Caller and I -- has to go out and buy things that make it not just homey, but functional for our own living, much as college students must do for their dorm rooms. I started with a poster from our visit to the Book of Kells; but that is just not enough by a long shot. We need lamps. We need end tables. We need converters for our electricity. We need an alarm clock. We need something on which to stow books and something to hold toiletries. We need a Target.

Except, Target is in absence here, as is the Big Ass Grocery Store, K-Mart and -- gasp! Is there a place in the world where this does not exist? -- Wal-Mart. On the one hand, thank heavens there is actually a place in the world where Big Box stores are not on every corner (nor is Starbucks, although there are Starbucks). On the other, where does a person buy these things? More importantly, where does a person buy these things at a low cost because they are only going to use them for a year and then abandon them?

I suggested the resale shops nearby, but they only sell clothing and small housewares like plates. The Gentleman Caller suggested the hardware store, but they seemed a tad too expensive. We found an Ikea on the map, but it is all the way on the other side of the city. How about a mall? Yes! A mall. There is a mall on our side of the city and we might be able to get there and back without much effort or culture shock.

You see, the Gentleman Caller and I are not usual travellers of public transportation in the U.S., where we know the money and the ways to get about. So, public transportation as our sole source of mobility aside from our feet and in a place where we are a bit alien, is something of an adventure. We consulted maps of trams, maps of trains, maps of buses. We consulted the websites of each. We consulted Wikipedia. Finally, we decided that the tram system, LUAS (Gaelic for "fast," according to Wikipedia), was our best bet. After all, we haven't taken a tram before. Plus, it went directly to the mall. So, we put on our coats and packed our umbrellas and headed over to the tram station.

Here is where you buy the tickets:

They are 1.90 Euros, depending on your route. Actually, I think everywhere is 1.90 Euros, but I haven't fully investigated that questions. Also, you go up to the track and buy the ticket. Not outside a turnstile, not to be punched on the tram, but here, next to the track, and no one checks them. A very trusting system!

Here is my ticket:

This is a tram:

My goodness, the inside was clean! And quiet! Plus, the doors don't all open automatically. You have to press a button to open the door. If you are standing, the tram doesn't lurch to a start nor throw you over when it stops. All in all, a fun and easy ride. We took it back, too.

The mall was an experience in "just the same, but different." Some of the escalators were like those moving walkways at the airport, but on an incline. Instead of T.J. Maxx, there was T.K. Maxx. Penney instead of J.C. Penney. They even had a grocery store. The most unusual thing for us -- or most frustrating, actually -- was that the department stores where we thought we could find a housewares department, like T.K. Maxx, did not have those housewares departments. Just clothes. Later, we went to another mall, but their housewares department had nothing electronic. We finally found our alarm clock in the grocery store , which was much larger than the one in our neighborhood, and had something more akin to the housewares department that we were looking for.

"Where do you go to fit out your kids for college," Gentleman Caller wondered, having done so a few times himself.

"Yeah," I said, having done so for myself more recently than I care to remember.

You could buy school supplies for younger children, but nothing like you find at Target for dorm rooms. What do dorm rooms look like here, I wonder? Do kids shop for them like they do in the U.S.? All very curious to us.

We have the alarm clock, and I found a small light to attach to my book so I won't disturb the Gentleman Caller or have to turn on the overheads when I want to read myself through my insomnia. No lamps or end tables. Also, as part of my informal research into the American cultural perception of Irish culture, I have learned that you cannot easily find the kind of cheap tapestry with a Celtic knot available at every single head shop and outdoor festival in the U.S. Not that those are lovely, but they would warm the place up a bit on the wall and take up more space than a poster.

Yesterday's adventure was the bus, also 1.90 Euro. We had help in the form of some Irish colleagues, who also informed me that I don't have to worry about the graffiti that I see everywhere. They say that those are the work of kids emulating Americans, not serious gang work of marking territory. I hope they are right! Especially since they also say that the sun starts setting around 3:30 pm in the winter.

So, now we can ride the trams, and the buses.

Tomorrow, we learn to tie our shoes! Sunday, we go for Ikea.

Fashion?

2011-08-31T08:00:00.000+01:00

Dublin Castle. Centuries of time converging in the architecture. Styles from the Norman period, the eighteenth century, the twenty-first, and all in between.

Alas, I show this image not for the Castle itself, but for a much bitchier purpose. Let's zoom in on the couple at the center shall we?:

Apparently American boys are not the only ones who like to go around with their underpants showing; or, as I can't help but thinking of it, "showing their ass." Americans are also not the only ones to go around with their noses to their cell phones, although you do see much much less of the cell phone fetish here than in the U.S.

Notice the young woman, however. She wears shorts with tights. The first time I saw this combination, I thought it was an oddity, a personal choice or quirk of taste. The fifth time, I thought, "are we doing this now? Is this a trend?" The tenth time and beyond I was certain. Then, I saw this in a display window:

Shorts -- booty shorts, short shorts, walking shorts, cut-off shorts -- any kind of shorts, and tights seem to be a thing among young women. "We," however, will not be doing this. Not only did I do this already for about a month back in 1992 with walking shorts, not only is it silly, but, tights or not, the weather here is freaking cold!