Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 26

From Up On Poppy Hill

From facebook:

We got our own copy of From Up On Poppy Hill a couple of days ago. A very sweet movie. Not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, but he was involved in the planning and co-wrote the script.

One of my faceboook colleagues commented that the backgrounds were fabulous, as they always are in Studio Ghibli movies. I replied:

It isn't just a question of backgrounds. The settings in Ghibli movies surround the characters and become characters themselves. I love the bugs and fishes and flowers, like Japanese scrolls. The skyscapes are amazing. The cityscapes are equally amazing. The mining town in Castle in the Sky. The port city in Kiki's Delivery Service. Yokohama in Poppy Hill. Miyazaki loves planes, of course, but there are also trains and ships and buses, especially the cat bus. And I love the importance of work and working people.

Kiki is about getting a job. So is Spirited Away.

Poppy Hill is about fixing up an old house. There is more scrubbing in a single Ghibli movie than in all of Disney, except maybe Cinderella.

Reminder

Reminder that I have a new collection coming out this summer: Hidden Folk, stories based on Icelandic literature and folklore. I am currently proofing the galleys and getting an author photo taken. The photo is going to be difficult, because I always freeze up when I am photographed, and I am recovering from a cold. I will be the person with the frozen expression and the red nose...

Big Mama Stories

Eleanor's Big Mama Stories...http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/BigMamaStories.php



Go get this beautiful collection of Big Mama stories..... because: wonderful.
This is a post Lyda Morehouse put up on the Wyrdsmiths blog. I like the image and the sentiment.

Infrastructure

13 million x 3.6 is 46.8 million. The US labor force, employed and unemployed, is 156 million. We could employ everyone who wants a job and have jobs left over. This does not count the new construction needed to deal with global warming. I read articles about how robots are going to make everyone unemployed. Long term this might be true. But short term we have to rebuild the world. After that is done, we can worry about unemployment.

Some of this is probably high-tech skilled work, but a lot of it is stuff like insulating houses and planting wind breaks. CCC work.

All the pine forests being destroyed by warm winters and pine beetles are going to have to be replaced with trees that are heat and beetle tolerant... That's a lot of CCC work.

Thought from Facebook

How does one remain aware of the injustice and evil in the world, without becoming consumed with anger and/or despair? My role model in this is Howard Zinn, who was a civil rights activist and anti-war activist, the writer of The People's History of the United States -- a man with an acute sense of what was wrong with the world, but also an optimist and a man with a good sense of humor. Maybe part of the answer is The People's History, which describes what ordinary people have achieved. The dominent culture tells us either (a) everything is fine or (b) the struggles of ordinary people have never achieved anything good or (c) as bad as things are, there is no alternative. We need to be able to see struggle does result in achievement and there is always an alternative.

I don't like anger. Carol Tavris wrote a book many years ago on anger, in which she argued that the purpose of anger is to make us act -- if we don't act, then anger consumes us. Short term it is good as a motivator. (She said anger is our response to injustice, which is interesting.) But if we don't find a way to act, long term it is damaging.

I also don't like despair. Not a useful emotion. Don't mourn. Organize.

Also, pay attention to what is good. Today is lovely, bright and mostly cloudless with a touch of coolness in the wind. The peonies are blooming. Cottonwood fluff is floating in the air.

Wiscon

I'm making a list of what I enjoyed about Wiscon, so I can keep the experience. We got out Friday and went window shopping at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which has a lovely shop, and the Fanny Garver Gallery. Then went over to Monana Terrace, a Frank Lloyd Wright building on the shore of Lake Monona. It was a bright late spring day. The sky and lake were blue. We like FLW buildings and wandered around, then went to the shop, which was full of FLW mugs and scarves and key rings. Bought nothing. A day or so later, I bought a necklace from Elise Matthesen in the dealer's room. Elise names her jewelry, and this one is named "The Hidden Folk Consider the Matter of Churches." Since my new collection is titled Hidden Folk, I had to have the necklace. It's silver, agate and red abalone shell.

I don't make many panels at the con. However, I took part in a pleasant panel discussion of the Tiptree Award and attended a very useful discussion of how to organize time for writing. Heard a good paper by Sandy Lindow on my Big Mama stories. The Swedish pancakes with lingonberry jam at the Concourse restaurant were excellent. Had a chance to talk with people I really like and see only once a year. Also missed the chance to spend time with other people I really like and see once a year. This year Wiscon and the annual Science Fiction Research Association convention were running in adjoining hotels, so there was a lot of walking back and forth. Good for exercise.

One lovely sight. On Sunday morning, as were were walking from one hotel to another, we passed an Episcopal church. The priest was outside. The various layers of his vestments were cream, pale blue and pale green. Everything was brocade and gleamed in the morning sunlight. He looked like a garden. I wanted to say, "What a great costume!" But I said, "Good morning."

Ragamala

I went to a performance of Ragamala on Sunday, which meant I had to skip a meeting of my poetry writing group. But I had the ticket... Ragamala is an Asian Indian dance company and school based in Minneapolis. They do South Indian classical dance. The company's founder (who is from India) and her daughter studied with a famous teacher in India. But they add non-traditional elements. This time, the music was composed by an Indian-American jazz musician and played by a group of five musicians; the composer, who plays a fine alto sax, a guy on electric guitar, a guy on karnatic flute, and two women, one playing a traditional Indian drum and the other playing karnatic violin. (Karnatic refers to style of music. The violin looked like a perfectly ordinary violin, though the player got unexpected sounds out of it.) The dance and music was inspired by an 8th century Tamil woman poet. I liked it.

Packing Stuff

I have packed up five boxes of manuscripts to go the SF archives at Northern Illinois and am now collecting books to send to my college reunion, which is going to do a display of books published by members of the class. The woman organizing this says most of the books are scholarly, though there's a fair amount of poetry. She figures science fiction will attract interest. I am not attending the reunion, due mostly to Wiscon, which is a week or so before. The idea of racing from one large gathering to another does not appeal.

I want to take more trips, but to quiet places, by myself or with Patrick. The Black Hills... The North Woods... My brother's house... The Walker Art Center to see the Hopper show...

Frozen 2

A friend with mid school age children says kids love Frozen and don't see it as a coming out movie. Rather, it's about the kind of differences that make childhood painful. You are too smart, too bookish, too geeky, too nerdy...

It works as that, too.

While we talked about this, I began to think about how deep the wounds of childhood can be. The 19th century psychoanalysts focused on the harm done within the nuclear family. This is important, of course. But teachers and peer groups and the general community can also do harm.

If Frozen helps kids deal with being different and not fitting in, the more power to it. The kids may grow up to be happier adults.

Bad Dream

Yesterday must have been a day for bad dreams. Several people described them on facebook. Mine came during an afternoon nap. I was with my brother. We were both younger than we are now, and we had two cats, the ones our family had when I went away to college. (Though we were not that young.) We were on some kind of trip. Instead of having cat carriers, like sane people, we had the cats on leashes and -- most of the time -- were holding the animals. They did what cats do in this situation, struggled like crazy to get free and run away. It was raining heavily. The streets were full of water and water covered lawns. We were trying to get to our car and get back on the freeway and keep hold of the cats. But we were not entirely sure where the car was...

I blame the dream on a combination of the hamburger I had at lunch and all the cute cat photos on the Internet...

I plan to give up hamburgers, but not cute photos of cats.