As usual, I am wasting my day off by wandering around on the internet. Sometimes that feels like the worst way to waste time because it is so unfocused, but in the moment, I am always interested by things I come across.
Here's an article I've read this morning. It's from the New York Magazine a couple of years ago, and it's written by Naomi Wolf about Harold Bloom, who was a lecturer at Yale while she was a student there. She uses an odd phrase, 'sexual encroachment', to describe an incident from over 20 years earlier in which he put his hand on her leg. Reading the article, there certainly were many cases of sexual harassment of others that she came across in her research, but her own situation entirely failed to elicit my sympathy. She described a meal at her house with him which ended with his hand reaching out to rest on her inner thigh. She got up and vomited and he left, with no other interaction between the two of them ever occurring.
I wanted to feel sympathy for her as a woman, but I just think that she's making matters worse. She details the ways in which she has, over a couple of years preceding the writing of the article, tried to somehow get Yale to acknowledge that they were accountable for the action.
I can't bear the way that she portrays herself as someone betrayed by the university that somehow should have protected her. She is making a passive victim of herself by blaming a grand educational entity for putting her in the proximity of Harold Bloom. She was the one who agreed the have him over for a candle-lit dinner at her house, and though it wasn't exactly gentlemanly for him to reach over to touch her leg, he didn't pursue anything when she made it clear that the romantic-looking dinner was not what he thought.
I certainly don't think that it's right for men to push themselves on women, but I don't believe that the university had anything to do with it when Bloom 'sexually encroached' upon Wolf.
I think that a number of the other people mentioned in the article are far more worthy of coverage than Wolf's fear of some big bad man touching her leg. Unfortunately, the actual tales of people being harassed and even raped by their professors were relegated to anecdotes that were somehow intended to bolster Wolf's claim that the university should have fired Bloom for touching her leg.
Women can be powerful and strong, but they cannot do that if they run to others all the time to blame them for not being controlling enough. I actually think that it's fine for students and professors to be close and have relationships if they should choose to do so. But a student would be a fool to not expect that to have an effect on their reputation in the academic circle they hope to run in. You make your own choices, that is all part of sexual empowerment. It does nobody any good if a woman runs to some daddy-figure as soon as a man shows interest in her.
Monday, 22 March 2010
Well, winter's gonna end, I'm gonna clean these veins again
I am almost, but not quite, ready to return to this.
I thought earlier that I was finally back in a place where I could come to the page brimming with ideas - it's that feeling of running to find a pen before you forget the thing in your head and it's replaced by something else that's wonderful. I had a fleeting glimpse of that sensation earlier, and it's coming on the heels of a few days of feeling sociable and alive, but it didn't stay. I can't get any good feelings to stick around these days. Everything gets quickly swallowed up by worrying about what I'm doing with my life.
I watched An Education after the feeling had gone away. I borrowed it from work, and hadn't known too much about it, just watched it on a recommendation. But it turned out to be the best of films and the worst of films for me. There's a section when she's talking about how everything in this country is so flat and lost in its own dull self, and it's just how I feel. It is all too easy to get lost within this society, and to start to believe that jobs and marriages and families and money are all that matter....I really thought that everybody was just going along with this model because it was for the best and after a while it would start to feel good - a little like learning anything, it's hard to begin with but in the end it's worth it. But suddenly I realised that I was the only one faking it, and I just wanted to cry because I realised that I've been the only person holding me down. I have just been too foolish until now to understand that everybody is doing all of those things because that's what they want to do, and if they don't make me happy I should just go off and do any other thing in the world.
In An Education, that whole idea is ruined a little because the girl seems to only have the choice between a man and an education. There's no other way for her to be happy it seems....Everything is so diametric in this society, everything is always portrayed as a matter of one path or another - forks in the road like babies, marriage, university etc are made out to be a one or the other thing, and it's been making me sick to wander around in the wilderness without even a path in sight.
Well, no more. I'm just going to choose to do the things that I want to do and not fret about whether they're the right steps along some imaginary path or not.
Linked to the idea of getting back into this blog is getting back into writing in general. I was on the train today, going along the beautiful Hope Valley line in the sun, and thinking about writing and how it makes things more real to me.....maybe not real, but significant. When you look at something, you're viewing the whole of it, and appreciating it based on how you feel at the time. I think that a closer examination maybe comes with taking a photograph. When I take a picture, I spend time thinking about the composition of a scene and how all the parts of it fit together. But writing is the closest of all - you make the thing again for yourself, and to do that you must know it through and through. There are these trees in that area which are rust coloured all along one side of their trunks, and it is only when I really try and describe that in words that I come to fully appreciate the beauty of it. I am inside each speck of colour and shaft of light that makes up the image of the rusted tree, and I notice all of the shades of the scene because I need to find the exact right words to describe them. The wrong words ruin a description, whereas looking at something lazily doesn't ruin anything because you don't even notice you're doing it.
I don't have this all clear in my head yet, but that is the essence of what I was thinking today about writing. And obviously, I've only described my thoughts from the point of physical descriptions, but that's only because my thoughts sprang from looking at these pretty, rusted trees.
I can only hope that things are clearer soon...though there seem to be so very many things to get clear and never enough time to think enough about them.
I thought earlier that I was finally back in a place where I could come to the page brimming with ideas - it's that feeling of running to find a pen before you forget the thing in your head and it's replaced by something else that's wonderful. I had a fleeting glimpse of that sensation earlier, and it's coming on the heels of a few days of feeling sociable and alive, but it didn't stay. I can't get any good feelings to stick around these days. Everything gets quickly swallowed up by worrying about what I'm doing with my life.
I watched An Education after the feeling had gone away. I borrowed it from work, and hadn't known too much about it, just watched it on a recommendation. But it turned out to be the best of films and the worst of films for me. There's a section when she's talking about how everything in this country is so flat and lost in its own dull self, and it's just how I feel. It is all too easy to get lost within this society, and to start to believe that jobs and marriages and families and money are all that matter....I really thought that everybody was just going along with this model because it was for the best and after a while it would start to feel good - a little like learning anything, it's hard to begin with but in the end it's worth it. But suddenly I realised that I was the only one faking it, and I just wanted to cry because I realised that I've been the only person holding me down. I have just been too foolish until now to understand that everybody is doing all of those things because that's what they want to do, and if they don't make me happy I should just go off and do any other thing in the world.
In An Education, that whole idea is ruined a little because the girl seems to only have the choice between a man and an education. There's no other way for her to be happy it seems....Everything is so diametric in this society, everything is always portrayed as a matter of one path or another - forks in the road like babies, marriage, university etc are made out to be a one or the other thing, and it's been making me sick to wander around in the wilderness without even a path in sight.
Well, no more. I'm just going to choose to do the things that I want to do and not fret about whether they're the right steps along some imaginary path or not.
Linked to the idea of getting back into this blog is getting back into writing in general. I was on the train today, going along the beautiful Hope Valley line in the sun, and thinking about writing and how it makes things more real to me.....maybe not real, but significant. When you look at something, you're viewing the whole of it, and appreciating it based on how you feel at the time. I think that a closer examination maybe comes with taking a photograph. When I take a picture, I spend time thinking about the composition of a scene and how all the parts of it fit together. But writing is the closest of all - you make the thing again for yourself, and to do that you must know it through and through. There are these trees in that area which are rust coloured all along one side of their trunks, and it is only when I really try and describe that in words that I come to fully appreciate the beauty of it. I am inside each speck of colour and shaft of light that makes up the image of the rusted tree, and I notice all of the shades of the scene because I need to find the exact right words to describe them. The wrong words ruin a description, whereas looking at something lazily doesn't ruin anything because you don't even notice you're doing it.
I don't have this all clear in my head yet, but that is the essence of what I was thinking today about writing. And obviously, I've only described my thoughts from the point of physical descriptions, but that's only because my thoughts sprang from looking at these pretty, rusted trees.
I can only hope that things are clearer soon...though there seem to be so very many things to get clear and never enough time to think enough about them.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Lanterns
A friend of mine got married this summer, the reception went through the afternoon and into the evening. One of the many lovely things she had to decorate the grounds of the place she had the reception at was a labyrinth lined with jam-jar lanterns.
Before the wedding, a few of us got together to decorate the lanterns, but I could only stay to do one. I got a taste for making them and did several when I got home. I was in the midst of a pickled onion addiction at the time and so I had plenty of large empty jars to cover in glue and tissue paper.
I've not posted the pics yet so I thought I'd get some on here. I did make 5 or 6 jars, but I've only taken pics of the ones I took to the caravan last time I stayed. They photographed really well, I especially like the one with the foil confetti stuck between the layers of tissue.
Before the wedding, a few of us got together to decorate the lanterns, but I could only stay to do one. I got a taste for making them and did several when I got home. I was in the midst of a pickled onion addiction at the time and so I had plenty of large empty jars to cover in glue and tissue paper.
I've not posted the pics yet so I thought I'd get some on here. I did make 5 or 6 jars, but I've only taken pics of the ones I took to the caravan last time I stayed. They photographed really well, I especially like the one with the foil confetti stuck between the layers of tissue.
Friday, 5 February 2010
Bookshelves
Oh oh this is the most wonderful blog in the history of the universe. Yes, this is my most geeky thing - an absolute love of bookshelves and libraries. I spend a little bit of most days book-shopping, but that's usually work related. I only wish that my department looked as beautiful as some of the libraries on the blog. But there's really only so much you can do with science books.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Diversify Your Reading
Following up from a previous post on diversifying my reading, I've also been recommended this site which collects together 'blog reviews of books by authors underrepresented in English-language publishing today.' It looks like a really good site so I thought I'd pass on the recommendation.
Another thing to recommend is a new exhibit starting at the Imperial War Museum North soon. It runs from 6th Feb to 13th June. It's called Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin. It looks really interesting.
Another thing to recommend is a new exhibit starting at the Imperial War Museum North soon. It runs from 6th Feb to 13th June. It's called Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin. It looks really interesting.
Friday, 29 January 2010
Deforestation of Madagascar
Can anybody who reads this please follow this link to a very important article about deforestation in Madagascar. The governmental instability caused by a coup that occurred about a year ago has allowed logging take place at an unprecedented rate. Recently the new head of government (Rajoelina, who took the country by force in the coup) has legalised the export of rosewood - very old trees which form the backbone of the little remaining primary rainforest.
If you read the article and feel that you want to do something, there's a link at the end to Climate Ark, who will e-mail a protest letter from you to 79 recipients who are all implicated in the deforestation of Madagascar. You can personalise the letter if you want to, or just send a well written stock one they've created for you. It goes to 'President' Rajoelina as well as all the relevant embassies, the UN, the financiers, the protectors of the parks and so on.
It's only five minutes and it's really important.
If you read the article and feel that you want to do something, there's a link at the end to Climate Ark, who will e-mail a protest letter from you to 79 recipients who are all implicated in the deforestation of Madagascar. You can personalise the letter if you want to, or just send a well written stock one they've created for you. It goes to 'President' Rajoelina as well as all the relevant embassies, the UN, the financiers, the protectors of the parks and so on.
It's only five minutes and it's really important.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Travel by books
The Rejectionist is still crusading to bring to light the racist actions of major publishers. As part of their most recent post on the issue they put in several links to sites promoting books by and about people of colour. For some reason though, a lot of the links were aimed at YA readers so I asked for something similar that's meant for adults. One of the comments led to a really great blog - the author's 2009 wrap-up post made a map of the world and all the countries in it that she'd visited through books that year.
It's so easy to read in a very narrow vein, you want to read books similar to other ones you like and you're friends with people who have common tastes. But I'm going to be doing some more travelling by books this year and try to read outside of my norm.
It's so easy to read in a very narrow vein, you want to read books similar to other ones you like and you're friends with people who have common tastes. But I'm going to be doing some more travelling by books this year and try to read outside of my norm.
Excellent photoblog
Seriously???
I really wish this video was sarcastic, but I'm pretty sure it's meant seriously. If the word 'iPad' was replaced all the way though with the words 'world peace', then maybe their reactions would be appropriate....though possibly not even then.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Giving away Intimacy
Go here, quickly, for Jenn Ashworth is giving away copies of her novel, A Kind of Intimacy. Hurry on down to her blog and get your own lovely free copy. I'd go too but I already have a copy (of course), and mine is signed in purple, scented ink...maybe if you ask nicely she'll do the same for you.
Wordswordswords
I've just been perusing Alphadictionary's 100 most beautiful words in English. It's a lovely list, just nice to sit and read the words aloud. What's interesting about it though, is that from just a very brief scan through I can see a couple of French words and one Italian word, and one that drops almost directly from the Greek.
That's not a bad thing at all, it's probably what makes the language so very beautiful - all those different sounds each with their own incredibly precise connotations. I'm working my way through the Paris Review Interview books at the moment (I now have volumes 1 to 4, joy of joys), and one of the recurring themes is the beauty of the English language and how wonderful a language it is to write in. Chinua Achebe was discussing his writing, and he said that he writes very particular things in his own Igbo dialect, but for most things he uses English. There are particular feelings and emotions that his particular Igbo dialect can convey, and things it can't.
What I found most difficult when learning Malagasy was its simplicity. That sounds ridiculous, but I did actually find it very hard to express myself in a language with so few words. I kept feeling as though something was missing. There's no verb 'to be', there are no plurals, and there are just genuinely very few words. The word lava means tall as well as long. Ambony and ambany are the words for up and down, but they also mean things like high and low, and top and bottom. Tsara is beautiful as well as good, ratsy is bad as well as sinful and evil. The hardest thing is that verb tense is denoted by the first letter of the verb, therefore nandeha, mandeha, and handeha are the past, present and future forms of the verb 'to go'. Verbs are learned in the present tense, but I'd try to remember a verb and all I'd know was that it started with an 'm'.
Malagasy is most closely related to a group of languages spoken in Borneo, and it has some influence from Bantu languages and Arabic, but that was a very long time ago. The most recent changes in Malagasy have been in the past couple of hundred years, with some slightly altered English and French words, but really it's stayed the same for an extensive period.
I really liked learning Malagasy, and it has a huge number of interesting compound words that made me think about the meanings of words (my favourite being masoandro, the sun, which literally translates as day-eye), but I couldn't live forever without the complexities and subtleties of English. I love words, their sounds, the shapes they make as you roll them around in your mouth, and the way they fall beautifully onto pages. Mellifluous most of all.
That's not a bad thing at all, it's probably what makes the language so very beautiful - all those different sounds each with their own incredibly precise connotations. I'm working my way through the Paris Review Interview books at the moment (I now have volumes 1 to 4, joy of joys), and one of the recurring themes is the beauty of the English language and how wonderful a language it is to write in. Chinua Achebe was discussing his writing, and he said that he writes very particular things in his own Igbo dialect, but for most things he uses English. There are particular feelings and emotions that his particular Igbo dialect can convey, and things it can't.
What I found most difficult when learning Malagasy was its simplicity. That sounds ridiculous, but I did actually find it very hard to express myself in a language with so few words. I kept feeling as though something was missing. There's no verb 'to be', there are no plurals, and there are just genuinely very few words. The word lava means tall as well as long. Ambony and ambany are the words for up and down, but they also mean things like high and low, and top and bottom. Tsara is beautiful as well as good, ratsy is bad as well as sinful and evil. The hardest thing is that verb tense is denoted by the first letter of the verb, therefore nandeha, mandeha, and handeha are the past, present and future forms of the verb 'to go'. Verbs are learned in the present tense, but I'd try to remember a verb and all I'd know was that it started with an 'm'.
Malagasy is most closely related to a group of languages spoken in Borneo, and it has some influence from Bantu languages and Arabic, but that was a very long time ago. The most recent changes in Malagasy have been in the past couple of hundred years, with some slightly altered English and French words, but really it's stayed the same for an extensive period.
I really liked learning Malagasy, and it has a huge number of interesting compound words that made me think about the meanings of words (my favourite being masoandro, the sun, which literally translates as day-eye), but I couldn't live forever without the complexities and subtleties of English. I love words, their sounds, the shapes they make as you roll them around in your mouth, and the way they fall beautifully onto pages. Mellifluous most of all.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Black Passport
Thankyou Steve Alvarez for the link to this video. It's possibly the best book trailer in the entire world, up there as one of the best videos I've seen on the web. It's for Stanley Greene's new book Black Passport. I have to warn that it's pretty brutal and contains scenes of nudity and violence, but on the upside it's absolutely breathtaking. It's like being strapped into a chair and forced to see what the world's really like. The video is so well done that I just want to make everybody watch it, and I will look them in the eye afterwards and we will all know that we know.
PS crochet
PS for anyone like me who has always wanted but failed to crochet, Meet me at Mikes has a series of posts about how to crochet. There are so far 10 parts of the series, taking you right through from the very start to making a granny square.
This will be the very next craft thing I try, the posts look really good and I've wanted to crochet for ages. It's apparently easy, but my feeble previous attempts have all looked like a ball of yarn that's been attacked by a cat.
Try, try and try again.
This will be the very next craft thing I try, the posts look really good and I've wanted to crochet for ages. It's apparently easy, but my feeble previous attempts have all looked like a ball of yarn that's been attacked by a cat.
Try, try and try again.
Spanish flour
These are two more photos of the abandoned flour mill near Granada. The light wasn't right...a little too bright. It would have been better coming on to sunset - longer shafts of deeper light would have been beautiful. But still, the angles of the (whatever that is that's left behind) are wonderful. The buckling of the floor, the tumbling down of the ceiling beams - the place had an incredibly inspiring feeling....and also quite scary to walk around.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
No Wonder
This is a plug for the absolutely amazing play 'No Wonder'. Everybody should have seen it by now, but if you're unfortunate enough to have missed out, it's on at the Library Theatre this coming week (more info). It's written by Claire Urwin, it's on for just three days, get in there:
Tuesday 26th January @ 7pm
Wednesday 27th January @ 9pm
Thursday 28th January @ 7pm
BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW
0161 236 7110
www.librarytheatre.com
Tuesday 26th January @ 7pm
Wednesday 27th January @ 9pm
Thursday 28th January @ 7pm
BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW
0161 236 7110
www.librarytheatre.com
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