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Even in a little thing  One of my students found a 1958 6d piece at the bus stop and gave it to me. We wasted a bunch of classtime talking about the pre-decimal system in Australia. Mind you, we also spent an hour working on identifying Latin roots of words and playing with prefixes. All the rest was writing movie reviews. I had to politely dissent when one student identified a certain Lucas film (the title contains the word 'clones') as a brilliant work of art. That was this morning. This afternoon was thunderstorms and coffee and me wondering what it would be like to live in a different body. We have more storms in store, if I go by my innards. That last paragraph was not actually a complaint. I gave up on work, you see, and pretended to still be on sick leave. I rested and slept for two hours. Thunderstorm dreams are always totally fascinating. Today's was Stargate in Narnia, which amused me muchly. I especially liked it when fire darted from my fingertips, my right shoulder and I could kick it long distances using hotspots in my legs. I half woke up at that moment and realised that the storm was at its most thundery and that every bit of me from which fire darted was hurting. It wasn't worth worrying about: I went back to sleep. I have a bit over an hour to catch up on things, because tonight I'm spending with friends, watching anime. My task for the next hour, should I choose to accept it, is to finish Going Bovine and start writing a review. Or I could catch up on email. Paid work will wait till tomorrow - I promised myself last week that 3 hours of deep focus will be enough in a day for the next few weeks. I was right to make me give that promise. Teaching this morning left me so tired I nearly skipped lunch. It was worth it, though. My Wednesday class is so very cool. Which reminds me, I'm going to weigh my 6d against a 5c piece, using my jeweller's scale. I told my students that 6d is heavier. How much heavier is it, though? I ought to admit that the reason I was thinking about Bluestockings the other days is because I keep getting reminders about the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Jane Austen Festival in April is booking out fast. I'm talking about food, of course. I'm missing not doing a Conflux banquet this year. And there may not be much testing for next year's. So it's just as well I'm talking about food to Jane Austen fans, in April. This isn't a "how to avoid Gillian" post, truly. I hope some people enrol, because I'm missing the Middle Ages and want an excuse to teach them. For writers: There will be a goodly amount of writing technique and some research technique in the family history course. The other three would all work well as background history for writers using the Middle Ages or - in the case of Our Edible Past - anything from Ancient Rome to the Blitz (though you'll only get an hour or two on each period of food history) - they're full of telling detail and understandings. The reason there are no worldbuilding or other writing classes from me at the ANU this semester is because I thought I was teaching them elsewhere - I'll see if I can sneak something in next semester, but I can't promise. If you're in Canberra and not running and hiding, then please feel free to book early and book often. Writing your family ’s history 6–8pm on 8 Tuesdays from 18 February All families have great histories: the problem is finding out what they are and preserving them. This course gets you started, with the basic skills you will need to research and to write. Living in London in the Middle Ages 6-8pm on 5 Tuesdays from 23 February Life in London from the 11th to 14th centuries. Occupations, food, clothing, street hazards, gossip… Medieval women 5.30–7.30pm on 7 Tuesdays from 6 April Women in the Middle Ages get a very mixed press. During this course you will meet some very interesting women and find out exactly what made them tick and how they led their lives. Our edible past: food in history 5.30–7.30pm on 8 Thursdays from 22 April The best and worst of historical food, from Ancient Rome to the 20th century. Discover the joy that was Medieval pastries and things you really didn’t want to know about early margarine. Learn about famous chefs and their recipes. Maybe even sample some historical cooking (if the class is willing). You can find out more from the university's website and you can book directly on the phone (ring 6125 2892). If you are an addict of advertisements and this isn't enough, I'm sure I can find more. Ever since I wondered at a fantasy hero's incipient sex-change when he suggested he might be turning into a 'bluestocking' through reading to his dragon, I've been watching out for modern use of 'bluestocking.' It seems to have a fuzziness of meaning attached these days. I haven't done a proper study of the word, though, so I can't be precise as to what it means except that it's associated with intelligence and reading. I also can't find my copy of the book that raised the question of words shifting in meaning in the first place, so I may well be misremembering the context. This is the only instance I can remember, however, where 'bluestocking' was used by a man, referring to himself. It bugs me, and I guess one day I shall have to trace shifts in meanings. I'm reluctant, however, because I rather suspect that it would be depressing. What if the shifts in usage in modern novels are from a lack of understanding of who the Bluestockings were and why they were important? It's not just an ignorance of the achievements of a group of women - it's a lessening of their accomplishments by making the word almost generic in nature. I understand slippage and change in use of words, but I wish it could be done without forgetting the original contexts. Besides, there is a good half century (at least) of excellent studies of these women. I don't want to find out that the general public doesn't care a jot. This is called hiding my head in the sand. Many years ago I read bunches of writing by the Bluestockings and other women writers of that time. They grounded me for a lot of my thinking about the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Without them, my brain would have been shaped entirely by Whig history, I think. They're important to me. What prompted this post? Well, I just found a rather cool webpage with a bunch of links. It doesn't have an extensive literature available through the links, but it's a neat summary and has enough of a literature to get one thinking. The reason I've posted about it here is so that I can find it again, next time I'm bored. Quite by happenstance, the works linked from the page are mostly ones I didn't read during my mid-twenties. I was into novels and political tracts, mostly, and not always the most obvious of either, which is a great nuisance now I've forgotten all the titles, so many years on. That's the trouble with reading for fun rather than reading to write a monograph: I have no amazing tables and summaries, the way I have for the Medieval literature I read at about the same time. And I remember them by their covers (my favourite series was all purple/mauve), which is not much use at all, when one isn't near the right library. I'm singing the vegemite song. This is because all the various test-results are in and they're lovely. My thyroid is working perfectly and my blood sugars are perfect. I'm at the later stages of perimenopause and my blood pressure should be within reasonable levels in a week or so. The bad news is mostly what I knew already. My eyesight is now funky, my heart is no longer perfectly proportioned. I have a smidgeon of kidney damage and elevated cholesterol. My cardiologist-to-be will apparently get to the bottom of this. I narrowly missed out on really evil stuff. I consider myself to be very, very lucky! My source of luck is my optometrist, who picked up on it before I lost a lot more than some eyesight. Have I said how wonderful my friends are recently? Late last week I had a special treat from my things-that-make-me-happy-or-less-stress narrelle, full of goodies - I instantly devoured the book by Gerry Bartlett and the one by Narrelle Harris - they were so what the doctor ordered!), then the universe gave me another thing from the invisible list I haven't written down lest it blow away in the wind (a visit from my mother), and today Donna and Matthew and James gave me a trip to Collector. This means that tomorrow's diagnosis by the doctor hasn't been preceded by a long weekend alone. I wasn't going to say that it would be a tough weekend, because I've done tougher, but, thanks to my friends, I only have to get through tonight. I needed that trip to Collector for so many reasons. Not just because I'm a tad easily stressed right now, nor only because I really get tired of four walls on days I can't walk much. That's just life right now. I needed to get past life right now. I was after, for instance, a street map with the important buildings - the bookshop was selling them for $3, with photos. The photos meant I didn't have to walk up to the lookout (which was good, because I couldn't) and the paragraphs describing each location and picture give me exactly what I need for later on. I have all the key terms I need for more research, quite simply, should I need to do that research. I don't know when 'later on' is or of I need to do more - that depends on other news this next month. I may not need it for three years. It was bugging me, though, that I didn't have the material now. My brain is fretting things into place now, you see - and it's when one's making sense of things that one needs more material. It also gives me the material to think about a different way of teaching people how to interface with their pasts, both through history and fiction. I strongly suspect I have a really cool course. I might suggest it for the ANU for next semester. I also might use it with my Wednesday students. It's a very simple idea, but should be powerful. I shall ponder it while you wonder what on earth it is. I know - I'm evil. I now have photos of the Dreamer's Gate for myself (for writing and teaching) and for any of you who want more lures to come to Australia for Aussiecon4. (I have pictures of Melbourne and some outback too, from my last trip, but forgot to tell anyone about them). This is the Australia of fantasy and dreams, so please ask. Lots of friends have taken photos for me, but they (photos not friends) seem to get lost en route, which is why I wanted to take some of my own. The more I have, the better. I do love the Dreamer's Gate. I had lunch at the Bushrangers' Hotel (where John Dunn from Ben Hall's gang shot Nelson, a policeman) and admired the monument. I've wanted to have lunch at the hotel for a fair while, but transport to Collector isn't terribly handy. Besides, friends taking me to lunch gives me so much more joy than me going alone. We ate chips and hamburgers (Aussie hamburgers - with beetroot) and other healthy food. I'm still full! The bonus was a bunch of bikers ordering lunch just before we came. We were asked to come back in 45 minutes. Somehow Donna and Matthew managed to persuade the owner of the bookshop-gallery to open. I'm now the proud owner of the trial record of Mary, Queen of Scots. I blame Alison Uttley for my interest in this. And now that I'm thinking about new courses, I wonder if an evening one on famous trials wouldn't be a bad thing. Mary, of course, and Charles, since killing kings is sexy to many history buffs. Joan of Arc. I wonder who else? Six to eight trials, with a 2 hour session devoted to each. It would be very good for a branch of history muscle I haven't flexed in a long time. This is one of the reasons I put visits to country towns on my list of things that make my life better. They free the cobwebs from my mind. Ever since I was a kid they've done that. And this is why I love my friends. I can deal with a lot of things if I'm not trapped and going in mind-circles. Today is dedicated to fatigue. I'd hate to destroy this solid appreciation of the art of exhaustion by saying anything useful here. I've just been fixing some of the typos I liberally dosed my writing with in the first few days after my eyesight went funky*. When eyesight is funky, certain letters next to each other create confusion. I found I was reading what I wanted to read and not what was on the page, simply because what was on the page was too hard for my new eyesight to digest. What's totally cool about this is that the worst letters of all are letters which create a sequential array of minims. This means that when I write words with i,n, m, l i make the identical errors that a host of Medieval scribes made when faced with too many minims. I always assumed it was mostly language error or fatigue, but maybe they, too, had funky vision? As I adjust, this too shall fade. Right now, though, it's amusing. If I laugh in the middle of a dramatic scene in an old French romans, it's probably the minims. *I can't fix all of them yet. I'm adjusting, but it's slow. Take this as a warning and do not get funky vision, or, if you must, allow adjustment time. It was inevitable. Have little creature, will play. A moment ago it was a zombie. Right now it's a very debonnair gentleman from the Renaissance, in the middle of an Italian dance. Getting from one to the other wasn't nearly as difficult as it ought to have been. On my way home just now, I stopped off at the art shop. I finally gave into temptation and bought something I've needed for years: a jointed figure. I need it for two things, one teaching/research and the other fiction-related. I might use it when I'm in need of an intelligent conversation as well, but that's peripheral. It's a little androgynous creature, about six inches high. It has enough joints so that I have a fair choice of postures. I wanted one that was more articulated still, but this was the best that I could afford. I want to use this little creature to help with worldbuilding. My Thai and Japanese friends tilt their heads differently to me and balance themselves quite differently. When we slump forward, we slump forward in diverse ways. We hold ourselves differently partly due to cultural reasons. If I'm building a culture (even an Aussie one) I need to know the language of that culture. What tilt of the head is correct and what core balance and what slumping forward. I need to understand this in a dynamic way, not just nod my head and say "They're not us." If I'm building a non-Earth world, I need to understand how someone striding forth to deal with problems strides and why one culture's body language can lead to silly assumptions by someone from another culture. I've always done this sort of thing in my mind and my own body before. Pilates and folk dance gave me some of the tools I needed. I need to go further, though, if I want to understand my characters from inside. If we are what we eat, we are even more what we present to the world. Knowing how a character presents to the world is, for me, a large part in finding out how the plot is going to ravel and unravel. Body language also helps communicate personality. Once I have it sorted, I can add cues in for readers to show which it is without having to say every single time "X looked brave but inside was a rabbit." What else will I do to my creature? I intend to sit with many pictures, all from Medieval manuscripts, and to check my assumptions about Medieval posture. This means I can fix some work I as doing earlier on it for the Beast, and it also means that I can teach my history classes more effectively. I shall take my little creature into class and use it for demonstration and also for students to work with. I'll do my usual making people stand up and adopt postures, but this has limits. For one thing, men and women really do have different centres of balance. For another, I can't show as many effects working solely within peoples' knowledge of their own bodies as I can with a jointed figurine. Many years ago I used a real 3/4 skeleton for some of these purposes, but George/Yorik (he had 2 heads) had too many limitations. Also, he had mould. He was my mother's and she sold him to an enthusiastic medical student. |
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