Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 38
January 18, 2023
Biggles Bingo!
Late last night
![[personal profile]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1491408111i/22407843.png)
sholio
,
scioscribe
, and I created Biggles Bingo!
If you would like a card for Biggles, Worrals, or any fandom or piece of original writing that might feature tropes like Looking good on a horse, Attempting to fly something that doesn't fly, or Electric centipedes, go get your card at![[community profile]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1497869825i/23063418.png)
bigglesevents
.
Here is mine.
Imprisoned in a towerWater landingSearching for lost friend(s)Undercover with the enemyCursed by pirate treasureLost in the desertStood up in front of a firing squadSnakes on a planeDaring rescueGunshot woundMalariaNervesFREE SPACENightmares about war traumaDinner invitationsA mysterious poisonSleeping togetherA quiet holiday for shattered nervesCar crash in a high-speed chaseStaked out for antsLost in a blizzardIslandsGratuitous TowserLooking great on a horseGiant squid
comments
sholio
,
scioscribe
, and I created Biggles Bingo! If you would like a card for Biggles, Worrals, or any fandom or piece of original writing that might feature tropes like Looking good on a horse, Attempting to fly something that doesn't fly, or Electric centipedes, go get your card at
bigglesevents
.Here is mine.
Imprisoned in a towerWater landingSearching for lost friend(s)Undercover with the enemyCursed by pirate treasureLost in the desertStood up in front of a firing squadSnakes on a planeDaring rescueGunshot woundMalariaNervesFREE SPACENightmares about war traumaDinner invitationsA mysterious poisonSleeping togetherA quiet holiday for shattered nervesCar crash in a high-speed chaseStaked out for antsLost in a blizzardIslandsGratuitous TowserLooking great on a horseGiant squid
comments
January 17, 2023
Attitudes toward & treatment of PTSD in historical WWI and the Biggles books
I will be doing a series of posts on Biggles/Worrals-related research I've done, in case it's of general interest and/or usefulness.
They will be linked at
bigglesevents
; if you have also done research to write Biggles or Worrals, or for your own work or just general interest but it's Biggles-relevant, please feel free to cross-post or link posts there. I'm hoping to get a convenient hub of useful and easily findable information there. They don't need to be essays like this! I will have more posts that are just collections of helpful links.
I completely failed to save my sources for this post, sorry; you should be able to find them by searching for key phrases.
Note: I am using the word PTSD for convenience; it's a much more modern word and was not used at the time periods I'm discussing. If you're interested in historical conceptions of PTSD, I have a lot of posts on it if you're willing to plow through my PTSD tag. Also, I'm using "pilots" as shorthand for any flying combatant.
The modern conception of PTSD and its treatment were founded by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at the WWI hospital for shellshocked soldiers, Craiglockhart in Scotland. He pioneered talk therapy as a PTSD treatment. Dr. Rivers was considered an outlier at the time, including in Britain, where shellshocked soldiers were commonly seen as cowards and could be subjected to "treatments" that were essentially torture, such as electric shocks. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is closely based on history and is excellent reading for more on Rivers and Craiglockhart.
Pilots were not treated at Craiglockhart so far as I'm aware. The article linked below has some information on how medical treatment for pilots was organized, and suggests that as airplanes were so new at the time, it was believed by medical personnel that flying itself posed special dangers (apart from the obvious) and so PTSD/combat stress suffered by pilots and other flyers may have been considered differently from that of infantrymen, as a medical condition rather than cowardice. It was not called shellshock, but rather nerves.
The Nervous Flyer: Nerves, Flying and the First World War
Note: I have yet to come across literally any source, nonfiction or semi-autobiographical fiction or heavily researched fiction, in which pilots' nerves are seen by pilots as medical rather than psychological.
The early Biggles books were directly based on Johns' own experience as a fighter pilot and on stories he heard from other WWI pilots. In them, nerves is treated as a normal and common occurrence. It's not seen as a form of cowardice or shirking, nor is it seen as a medical issue. It's consistently portrayed as a normal reaction to the extreme psychological stress of aerial combat and the extremely high casualty rates, which caused grief, the knowledge that you could die at any moment, and the belief you would die eventually.
Biggles suffers off and on from nerves throughout the WWI books. He's repeatedly sent away for leave to recover, though with the understanding that it's not a permanent cure, just a respite that will allow him to return and fight again until the next bout. By the time the war ends, he's drinking heavily and flying so recklessly that everyone around him recognizes it as a form of suicidality, and he's about to be posted home permanently to save his life when events intervene. Through all of this, he's shown (and shows to others in similar states) only understanding and sympathy.
The Worrals books I've read so far, which are set in WWII, don't feature anything we'd call PTSD, but they do show some brief combat stress reactions. Other pilots are sympathetic and explain that Worrals isn't showing any weakness, it's normal for anyone involved in combat, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
The general level of understanding and sympathy for pilots with nerves does seem to be higher than that for ground troops in nonfiction I've read about WWI. However, the general level of understanding and sympathy for ground troops with shellshock also seems much higher in the trenches than once they get sent away from them, unsurprisingly. So I think a big factor there is that pilots may have been more likely to be sent off for short breaks and less likely to be sent away for lengthy treatment where they risked falling into the hands of sadistic doctors. The extremely short lifespan of a pilot may have made it likely that they'd be killed before they had time to get sufficiently far gone that a short break wouldn't cut it.
Now let's go to Germany. There's some really interesting things going on there, primarily that Germany was conceptualizing civilian psychological trauma reactions as the same as ones caused by war. With a few exceptions that didn't catch on, this didn't happen in the US or England until much, much later. In pre-war Germany, PTSD was recognized as a phenomenon that could be caused by civilian trauma such as an industrial or train accident.
Pre-war, Hermann Oppenheim, a German Jewish neurologist, coined the term "traumatic neurosis." This was basically the idea that traumatic events caused physical effects; witness a horrific industrial accident, and you might have tremors, headaches, insomnia, etc afterward. He believed that it was essentially neurological (not psychological) in nature, and had a whole theory on it that is too complicated to summarize here but is NOT the current theory on the neurological aspects of PTSD.
If you were injured in an accident and had a medical diagnosis, you were eligible for a pension. Traumatic neurosis, as it was literally a neurological injury equivalent to a spinal injury, would have been a medical diagnosis. So the entire concept was fiercely opposed by the government as it would have triggered pension payoffs. The government was joined in its opposition by heads of industry, the German medical establishment, and anti-Semites.
So they needed a different term and theory to cover all the people who had PTSD from industrial accidents, one which would not be pension-worthy and would discredit and discourage anyone trying to get a pension. They came up with "hysteria virilis" (male hysteria), aka "pension neurosis." This was defined as post-traumatic symptoms caused by being a hysterical, unpatriotic, effeminate wimp greedily gunning for a pension.
Note that they did not have any alternative to this idea - if you had post-traumatic symptoms, the only possible explanation was pension malingering.
When WWI started, soldiers were eligible for medical pensions. So the cheap assholes in the government and medical establishment again trotted out hysteria virilis/pension neurosis as their equivalent of shellshock. They conceptualized male hysteria due to war as similar to industrial accident hysteria, and decided the best cure was...
... more work! Very convenient for the war effort, too. They funneled shellshocked soldiers into other kinds of work, which... was better than electrocuting them, at least.
If you tried to get a pension for your shellshock, you had "pension neurosis" and were by definition greedy, selfish, lazy, and unpatriotic. Also, "Male hysteria" was conceived of as being proof that there was already something wrong with you, and that whatever happened in the war triggered but didn't cause it. It was literally considered proof that you had a pre-existing mental condition, and therefore you didn't warrant a pension. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
So if you were a German soldier and had PTSD, you would want to hide it if you wanted to stay in service, because revealing it would get you sent home in disgrace and very possibly also financial difficulties due to the lack of pension. After the war, it would still not be something you'd want to talk about because you'd be labeled a lazy coward gunning for an undeserved pension.
(Note: I don't want to make it sound like Germany and Britain were uniquely horrible to veterans with PTSD. France was, if anything, even worse.)
And now, back to Biggles. Erich von Stalhein was a spy in WWI, which at the time was not only a very secret profession but often considered a disgraceful one that a gentleman wouldn't engage in. It's a very lonely life where you can't talk to anyone about anything, and if you reveal the truth about yourself, people will dislike and despise you.
So when Biggles had issues with combat stress/PTSD, everyone around him was very supportive, made sure he was getting rest and leave without him even having to ask for it, and treated it as a completely normal reaction to unbearable stress. He clearly internalized that as how you deal with severe emotional stress in general - be supportive and matter-of-fact, don't treat it anything weird, and reassure the person that it's normal and they'll be OK. This comes up again and again in the series - one example is in The Black Peril, when Ginger is upset over maybe killing someone and not even knowing if he had or not. Biggles is brisk but kind, and in a manner that suggests that he's had this conversation a lot before.
If von Stalhein had any issues with combat/espionage stress, he would have had to hide it, and probably would have internalized the general attitude about it to some degree as an example of how he's deeply flawed and doesn't deserve nice things. Which was literally the official position of his country's government and medical establishment: PTSD is proof that you don't deserve a pension and are also a bad person.
Another thing about von Stalhein vs Biggles is that Biggles' symptoms were very recognizably nerves/PTSD as it was conceptualized at the time: nervous tics, suicidal recklessness, impulsivity, obsession, rage, the belief that he will die. (Regarding the last: yes, reasonable to believe that he probably or likely wouldn't survive under the circumstances, but he was 100% sure of it.) So other people could very clearly see what was up with him and were sympathetic.
I'm not saying all of von Stalhein's issues are PTSD because he has a lot going on, but I do want to mention some lesser-known symptoms: depression, hopelessness, self-hatred, lack of trust, relationship difficulties/isolation, putting yourself in situations that you know are bad for you because you think you deserve it/think you don't have better options/are used to it. Even today, if you have that set of issues, people tend not to recognize it as PTSD and just think you're a fucked-up person. Which just perpetuates the problem.
What I'm saying is that this needs some fanfic.
comments
They will be linked at
bigglesevents
; if you have also done research to write Biggles or Worrals, or for your own work or just general interest but it's Biggles-relevant, please feel free to cross-post or link posts there. I'm hoping to get a convenient hub of useful and easily findable information there. They don't need to be essays like this! I will have more posts that are just collections of helpful links.I completely failed to save my sources for this post, sorry; you should be able to find them by searching for key phrases.
Note: I am using the word PTSD for convenience; it's a much more modern word and was not used at the time periods I'm discussing. If you're interested in historical conceptions of PTSD, I have a lot of posts on it if you're willing to plow through my PTSD tag. Also, I'm using "pilots" as shorthand for any flying combatant.
The modern conception of PTSD and its treatment were founded by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at the WWI hospital for shellshocked soldiers, Craiglockhart in Scotland. He pioneered talk therapy as a PTSD treatment. Dr. Rivers was considered an outlier at the time, including in Britain, where shellshocked soldiers were commonly seen as cowards and could be subjected to "treatments" that were essentially torture, such as electric shocks. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is closely based on history and is excellent reading for more on Rivers and Craiglockhart.
Pilots were not treated at Craiglockhart so far as I'm aware. The article linked below has some information on how medical treatment for pilots was organized, and suggests that as airplanes were so new at the time, it was believed by medical personnel that flying itself posed special dangers (apart from the obvious) and so PTSD/combat stress suffered by pilots and other flyers may have been considered differently from that of infantrymen, as a medical condition rather than cowardice. It was not called shellshock, but rather nerves.
The Nervous Flyer: Nerves, Flying and the First World War
Note: I have yet to come across literally any source, nonfiction or semi-autobiographical fiction or heavily researched fiction, in which pilots' nerves are seen by pilots as medical rather than psychological.
The early Biggles books were directly based on Johns' own experience as a fighter pilot and on stories he heard from other WWI pilots. In them, nerves is treated as a normal and common occurrence. It's not seen as a form of cowardice or shirking, nor is it seen as a medical issue. It's consistently portrayed as a normal reaction to the extreme psychological stress of aerial combat and the extremely high casualty rates, which caused grief, the knowledge that you could die at any moment, and the belief you would die eventually.
Biggles suffers off and on from nerves throughout the WWI books. He's repeatedly sent away for leave to recover, though with the understanding that it's not a permanent cure, just a respite that will allow him to return and fight again until the next bout. By the time the war ends, he's drinking heavily and flying so recklessly that everyone around him recognizes it as a form of suicidality, and he's about to be posted home permanently to save his life when events intervene. Through all of this, he's shown (and shows to others in similar states) only understanding and sympathy.
The Worrals books I've read so far, which are set in WWII, don't feature anything we'd call PTSD, but they do show some brief combat stress reactions. Other pilots are sympathetic and explain that Worrals isn't showing any weakness, it's normal for anyone involved in combat, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.
The general level of understanding and sympathy for pilots with nerves does seem to be higher than that for ground troops in nonfiction I've read about WWI. However, the general level of understanding and sympathy for ground troops with shellshock also seems much higher in the trenches than once they get sent away from them, unsurprisingly. So I think a big factor there is that pilots may have been more likely to be sent off for short breaks and less likely to be sent away for lengthy treatment where they risked falling into the hands of sadistic doctors. The extremely short lifespan of a pilot may have made it likely that they'd be killed before they had time to get sufficiently far gone that a short break wouldn't cut it.
Now let's go to Germany. There's some really interesting things going on there, primarily that Germany was conceptualizing civilian psychological trauma reactions as the same as ones caused by war. With a few exceptions that didn't catch on, this didn't happen in the US or England until much, much later. In pre-war Germany, PTSD was recognized as a phenomenon that could be caused by civilian trauma such as an industrial or train accident.
Pre-war, Hermann Oppenheim, a German Jewish neurologist, coined the term "traumatic neurosis." This was basically the idea that traumatic events caused physical effects; witness a horrific industrial accident, and you might have tremors, headaches, insomnia, etc afterward. He believed that it was essentially neurological (not psychological) in nature, and had a whole theory on it that is too complicated to summarize here but is NOT the current theory on the neurological aspects of PTSD.
If you were injured in an accident and had a medical diagnosis, you were eligible for a pension. Traumatic neurosis, as it was literally a neurological injury equivalent to a spinal injury, would have been a medical diagnosis. So the entire concept was fiercely opposed by the government as it would have triggered pension payoffs. The government was joined in its opposition by heads of industry, the German medical establishment, and anti-Semites.
So they needed a different term and theory to cover all the people who had PTSD from industrial accidents, one which would not be pension-worthy and would discredit and discourage anyone trying to get a pension. They came up with "hysteria virilis" (male hysteria), aka "pension neurosis." This was defined as post-traumatic symptoms caused by being a hysterical, unpatriotic, effeminate wimp greedily gunning for a pension.
Note that they did not have any alternative to this idea - if you had post-traumatic symptoms, the only possible explanation was pension malingering.
When WWI started, soldiers were eligible for medical pensions. So the cheap assholes in the government and medical establishment again trotted out hysteria virilis/pension neurosis as their equivalent of shellshock. They conceptualized male hysteria due to war as similar to industrial accident hysteria, and decided the best cure was...
... more work! Very convenient for the war effort, too. They funneled shellshocked soldiers into other kinds of work, which... was better than electrocuting them, at least.
If you tried to get a pension for your shellshock, you had "pension neurosis" and were by definition greedy, selfish, lazy, and unpatriotic. Also, "Male hysteria" was conceived of as being proof that there was already something wrong with you, and that whatever happened in the war triggered but didn't cause it. It was literally considered proof that you had a pre-existing mental condition, and therefore you didn't warrant a pension. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
So if you were a German soldier and had PTSD, you would want to hide it if you wanted to stay in service, because revealing it would get you sent home in disgrace and very possibly also financial difficulties due to the lack of pension. After the war, it would still not be something you'd want to talk about because you'd be labeled a lazy coward gunning for an undeserved pension.
(Note: I don't want to make it sound like Germany and Britain were uniquely horrible to veterans with PTSD. France was, if anything, even worse.)
And now, back to Biggles. Erich von Stalhein was a spy in WWI, which at the time was not only a very secret profession but often considered a disgraceful one that a gentleman wouldn't engage in. It's a very lonely life where you can't talk to anyone about anything, and if you reveal the truth about yourself, people will dislike and despise you.
So when Biggles had issues with combat stress/PTSD, everyone around him was very supportive, made sure he was getting rest and leave without him even having to ask for it, and treated it as a completely normal reaction to unbearable stress. He clearly internalized that as how you deal with severe emotional stress in general - be supportive and matter-of-fact, don't treat it anything weird, and reassure the person that it's normal and they'll be OK. This comes up again and again in the series - one example is in The Black Peril, when Ginger is upset over maybe killing someone and not even knowing if he had or not. Biggles is brisk but kind, and in a manner that suggests that he's had this conversation a lot before.
If von Stalhein had any issues with combat/espionage stress, he would have had to hide it, and probably would have internalized the general attitude about it to some degree as an example of how he's deeply flawed and doesn't deserve nice things. Which was literally the official position of his country's government and medical establishment: PTSD is proof that you don't deserve a pension and are also a bad person.
Another thing about von Stalhein vs Biggles is that Biggles' symptoms were very recognizably nerves/PTSD as it was conceptualized at the time: nervous tics, suicidal recklessness, impulsivity, obsession, rage, the belief that he will die. (Regarding the last: yes, reasonable to believe that he probably or likely wouldn't survive under the circumstances, but he was 100% sure of it.) So other people could very clearly see what was up with him and were sympathetic.
I'm not saying all of von Stalhein's issues are PTSD because he has a lot going on, but I do want to mention some lesser-known symptoms: depression, hopelessness, self-hatred, lack of trust, relationship difficulties/isolation, putting yourself in situations that you know are bad for you because you think you deserve it/think you don't have better options/are used to it. Even today, if you have that set of issues, people tend not to recognize it as PTSD and just think you're a fucked-up person. Which just perpetuates the problem.
What I'm saying is that this needs some fanfic.
comments
January 16, 2023
Biggles Takes It Rough, by W. E. Johns
"The skunk who sank my boat must have scoffed my beer."
I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.
Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.
One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.
Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.
Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."
Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"
And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.
"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."
What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.
His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.
It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!
A delightful entry in the series.
[image error] [image error]
comments
I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.
Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.
One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.
Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.
Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."
Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"
And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.
"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."
What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.
His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.
It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!
A delightful entry in the series.
[image error] [image error]
comments
Help for Ukrainian friends
I have copied below a redacted-for-privacy message from my friend who works with Ukrainian refugees. A Ukrainian family is in desperate need of help; if you can help out, please email me and I will give you my friend's PayPal address.
The writer of the message is a close friend of mine - I actually lived with her for a while - and I vouch for her absolutely.
Here's her message:
"dearests, we need help for our ukrainian friends again. do you remember the place where I go volunteering? the de-facto leader, guardian angel, coordinator and brain of the entire base is a brave and unstoppable ukrainian lady who ferries everybody around, finagles documents, helps everybody with disabilities who's stationed there to communicate with doctors, social services, et cetera - in general she keeps this place running, and runs herself ragged in the process.
the day before yesterday, in ukraine, her niece Z--, gave birth prematurely and, following a string of accidents and shortage of timely help, normal for a country under siege, suffered severe eclampsia and stroke. the child lived, but Z-- is now in ICU and the doctors are trying frantically to save her.
it's a nightmare all around. the drugs the doctors are trying to work with are around 100$ per dose; everything else is also complicated, fucked up, and expensive. the family already pooled and gave more or less everything they have, which, given that half of them is in ukraine and half is refugees, was... not much.
so. if you trust me, personally, and have something to spare, could you help Z-- out?
(and, ugh. ghastly as it is; if you donate, specify, please, what do you want the family to do with the money if Z-- dies despite all they're trying to do. send back to you, use as general donation for the base, use for funeral, etc.)
the doctors are waking her from medical coma bit by bit, and she recognized people around her and talked a bit, which can mean nothing, can mean good things. cross your fingers and hope for a really good miracle with us.
(if there ever was a family who earned their miracles...)"
If you would like to help, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com, and I will give you my friend's PayPal address.
Thank you!
ETA: Feel free to share this message.
comments
The writer of the message is a close friend of mine - I actually lived with her for a while - and I vouch for her absolutely.
Here's her message:
"dearests, we need help for our ukrainian friends again. do you remember the place where I go volunteering? the de-facto leader, guardian angel, coordinator and brain of the entire base is a brave and unstoppable ukrainian lady who ferries everybody around, finagles documents, helps everybody with disabilities who's stationed there to communicate with doctors, social services, et cetera - in general she keeps this place running, and runs herself ragged in the process.
the day before yesterday, in ukraine, her niece Z--, gave birth prematurely and, following a string of accidents and shortage of timely help, normal for a country under siege, suffered severe eclampsia and stroke. the child lived, but Z-- is now in ICU and the doctors are trying frantically to save her.
it's a nightmare all around. the drugs the doctors are trying to work with are around 100$ per dose; everything else is also complicated, fucked up, and expensive. the family already pooled and gave more or less everything they have, which, given that half of them is in ukraine and half is refugees, was... not much.
so. if you trust me, personally, and have something to spare, could you help Z-- out?
(and, ugh. ghastly as it is; if you donate, specify, please, what do you want the family to do with the money if Z-- dies despite all they're trying to do. send back to you, use as general donation for the base, use for funeral, etc.)
the doctors are waking her from medical coma bit by bit, and she recognized people around her and talked a bit, which can mean nothing, can mean good things. cross your fingers and hope for a really good miracle with us.
(if there ever was a family who earned their miracles...)"
If you would like to help, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com, and I will give you my friend's PayPal address.
Thank you!
ETA: Feel free to share this message.
comments
January 15, 2023
Biggles in Borneo, by W. E. Johns
A WWII novel in which Biggles & crew are sent to establish a base on Borneo from which to harass the Japanese forces.
Unsurprisingly, this book has a big racism issue. The local people on Borneo are stereotypical but at least they have agency and significant, sympathetic roles. Ditto for some Chinese characters. My biggest problem was more the very high level of generalized background racism.
I read this one largely because I was promised Biggles flying a plane while he has malaria, and that does happen, but between the amazing bit with Biggles flying a plane with a concussion in Biggles Sweeps the Desert and the utterly horrifying description of malaria in Little House on the Prairie, I was expecting something spectacular. Biggles flying with malaria is good but it's not in the league of either of those.
However, Biggles in Borneo does feature some actually spectacular sequences, including 1) a deadly snake in the cockpit, 2) Biggles piloting a barge like it's an airplane, 3) a rampaging mad elephant. Also, Ginger has a really great bit toward the end. Those parts were great, but overall the book was not a favorite.
In conclusion, Biggles fandom needs more malaria that's more dramatic. I recommend reading Little House on the Prairie (the single most racist Little House book, are the mosquitos also transmitting racism?) for inspiration. Also more of Biggles attempting to fly vehicles that do not fly. More dangerous animals loose on planes would also be good. And much as Dashiell Hammett suggested having a man with a gun enter if your plot is getting tedious, this book proves that another thing that really brings the excitement is a rampaging mad elephant.
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Unsurprisingly, this book has a big racism issue. The local people on Borneo are stereotypical but at least they have agency and significant, sympathetic roles. Ditto for some Chinese characters. My biggest problem was more the very high level of generalized background racism.
I read this one largely because I was promised Biggles flying a plane while he has malaria, and that does happen, but between the amazing bit with Biggles flying a plane with a concussion in Biggles Sweeps the Desert and the utterly horrifying description of malaria in Little House on the Prairie, I was expecting something spectacular. Biggles flying with malaria is good but it's not in the league of either of those.
However, Biggles in Borneo does feature some actually spectacular sequences, including 1) a deadly snake in the cockpit, 2) Biggles piloting a barge like it's an airplane, 3) a rampaging mad elephant. Also, Ginger has a really great bit toward the end. Those parts were great, but overall the book was not a favorite.
In conclusion, Biggles fandom needs more malaria that's more dramatic. I recommend reading Little House on the Prairie (the single most racist Little House book, are the mosquitos also transmitting racism?) for inspiration. Also more of Biggles attempting to fly vehicles that do not fly. More dangerous animals loose on planes would also be good. And much as Dashiell Hammett suggested having a man with a gun enter if your plot is getting tedious, this book proves that another thing that really brings the excitement is a rampaging mad elephant.
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January 14, 2023
Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity, and Masculinity, by Thomas Page McBee
A well-written and thoughtful memoir about how McBee, a trans man, trains as an amateur boxer and observes how he and the cis men at his gym navigate masculinity. He doesn't tell any of the other men at his gym until after he fights the big match he's preparing for, a public match for charity, so he gets to see how they relate to him when they think he's a cis man and how they relate to him afterward.
McBee is a journalist and all else aside, this is a good piece of sports writing on boxing. He got interested in it as a quintessentially masculine sport, but in fact there's some women at his gym and his own sister is also an amateur boxer; one of the more honest and upsetting aspects of the book is his discovery that once other people perceive him as a (white) man, he's listened to more, he's not interrupted, no one takes credit for his ideas, he's deferred to, he's assumed to be competent and correct... and he not only sees all the women around him getting none of that, but he finds how easy it is to fall into doing what all the men around him do, and ignore women's input, talk over them, etc. He does try hard to stop that and also address other men doing it, but he only realizes in retrospect that he literally didn't even let his sister, a more successful boxer than him, finish her sentence about boxing in favor of listening to his brother who has never boxed.
That's just one small piece of the type of exploration of masculinity and social performance of gender that McBee explores in the book. Another aspect I found very interesting was how the male boxers were able to touch each other and express emotion within the context of boxing, as if the sport gave them such proof of masculinity that it became okay to do things that would otherwise be seen as dangerously feminine. (McBee mentions a survey which found that American men tended to definite "man" as "not a woman," while Danish men defined "man" as "not a boy." You can see how one of those tends to go in a much more toxic direction than the other.)
Along with the thoughts on gender and gender politics is a good and moving story of McBee's relationship with boxing, how he uses it to explore his self as a man, and his relationships with other men, his girlfriend, and his family. His family is fraught in ways and has some traumatic history but is overall very supportive, and there's a lot of sweet and positive relationships in the book.
Content notes: McBee was sexually abused as a child and his mother died of cancer, but there's no graphic details of either.
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McBee is a journalist and all else aside, this is a good piece of sports writing on boxing. He got interested in it as a quintessentially masculine sport, but in fact there's some women at his gym and his own sister is also an amateur boxer; one of the more honest and upsetting aspects of the book is his discovery that once other people perceive him as a (white) man, he's listened to more, he's not interrupted, no one takes credit for his ideas, he's deferred to, he's assumed to be competent and correct... and he not only sees all the women around him getting none of that, but he finds how easy it is to fall into doing what all the men around him do, and ignore women's input, talk over them, etc. He does try hard to stop that and also address other men doing it, but he only realizes in retrospect that he literally didn't even let his sister, a more successful boxer than him, finish her sentence about boxing in favor of listening to his brother who has never boxed.
That's just one small piece of the type of exploration of masculinity and social performance of gender that McBee explores in the book. Another aspect I found very interesting was how the male boxers were able to touch each other and express emotion within the context of boxing, as if the sport gave them such proof of masculinity that it became okay to do things that would otherwise be seen as dangerously feminine. (McBee mentions a survey which found that American men tended to definite "man" as "not a woman," while Danish men defined "man" as "not a boy." You can see how one of those tends to go in a much more toxic direction than the other.)
Along with the thoughts on gender and gender politics is a good and moving story of McBee's relationship with boxing, how he uses it to explore his self as a man, and his relationships with other men, his girlfriend, and his family. His family is fraught in ways and has some traumatic history but is overall very supportive, and there's a lot of sweet and positive relationships in the book.
Content notes: McBee was sexually abused as a child and his mother died of cancer, but there's no graphic details of either.
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January 13, 2023
Book review of interest
This was buried in comments, but I thought many of you would be interested: Arabo-Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality: 850-1780 A.D.
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January 12, 2023
Biggles Takes a Hand, by W. E. Johns
Post-Biggles Buries a Hatchet, Biggles gets a mysterious letter asking him to come to lunch. Who can it be from? He doesn't give out his address to anyone!
...anyone except, apparently, his favorite ex-spy, who skulks in wearing a fake beard and sunglasses for ~reasons~. I mean, he does have reasons, but there were ways to accomplish what he wanted without sending anonymous letters and wearing a fake beard. It seems pretty clear that von Stalhein missed Biggles and missed being a spy. They're on extremely friendly terms in this book, though not as intimate as they get later on.
Von Stalhein explains that notorious assassins have been spotted in his favorite German restaurant, and he thought Biggles should know. Relatedly, he's concerned about the Roths, the family of a German official he knew, who was recently executed in a purge; he had a wife and two children, who will certainly be killed if they don't manage to escape, but there's nothing von Stalhein can do to help them. Biggles proceeds to ignore all orders, entreaties, and naysaying from British intelligence in order to pursue the lead and protect the people von Stalhein wished could be protected.
Unusually, this book doesn't involve any piloting and all flying is done by getting tickets on commercial aircraft, which means there's a lot of action around dealing with customs, being picked up at the airport, spies buying tickets and following them onboard, etc. Biggles justifies this as "It isn't worthwhile [to fly myself]. I might as well let someone else do the work." But it causes them so much trouble that it absolutely would have been worthwhile to use their own planes. I think Johns just wanted to mix it up a bit.
Biggles flies straight to Berlin, fails to find the Roths, but does locate Anna, the fiancee of older son Moritz Roth, and takes her back to London. The rest of the plot proceeds as a thriller version of a comedy of errors, as everyone runs around searching for people and missing the people who are searching for them. There's some nice action but no spectacular set-pieces. The best bits are character moments, like Algy getting a little caretaking after he gets roughed up and the crew interacting with Anna.
At one point Anna has a letter sent to her father which might or might not contain useful information; she's hesitant to open and read it as that's clearly a thing that is not done. Biggles wants her to open it, and she'll do it if he outright tells her to, but he refuses to do so. He'll lay out for her why he thinks she should do it, but says it's ultimately her choice.
In such a huge and not always internally consistent series, one thing that comes up a lot is how insistent Biggles is on allowing people to make their own choices. He'll try to persuade them, but he won't force them. We see this with von Stalhein over a very long period of time. It even comes up very early on, when Biggles is a teenager and way less mature in many ways, he deals with a young pilot who panicked, fled a battle, and says he can't fight again. Rather than telling him he has to or to push through his fear, Biggles talks to him very kindly and says it's ultimately his choice.
The letter, when opened, does have important information but is also a very touching character moment.
( Read more... )
I was pleased to see a very sympathetic, non-stereotypical Jewish character in a small but key role; I strongly suspect that at some point before writing this book, Johns met an actual Jew. Relatedly, this book is extremely sympathetic to refugees and persecuted people in general.
Other than that, my favorite bit was von Stalhein in a fake beard, giving Biggles a tip like a cat presents its favorite person with a mouse. I wish we could have gotten the scene where von Stalhein meets up with the Roths. It happens but off-page, and I'm sure it's quite touching.
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...anyone except, apparently, his favorite ex-spy, who skulks in wearing a fake beard and sunglasses for ~reasons~. I mean, he does have reasons, but there were ways to accomplish what he wanted without sending anonymous letters and wearing a fake beard. It seems pretty clear that von Stalhein missed Biggles and missed being a spy. They're on extremely friendly terms in this book, though not as intimate as they get later on.
Von Stalhein explains that notorious assassins have been spotted in his favorite German restaurant, and he thought Biggles should know. Relatedly, he's concerned about the Roths, the family of a German official he knew, who was recently executed in a purge; he had a wife and two children, who will certainly be killed if they don't manage to escape, but there's nothing von Stalhein can do to help them. Biggles proceeds to ignore all orders, entreaties, and naysaying from British intelligence in order to pursue the lead and protect the people von Stalhein wished could be protected.
Unusually, this book doesn't involve any piloting and all flying is done by getting tickets on commercial aircraft, which means there's a lot of action around dealing with customs, being picked up at the airport, spies buying tickets and following them onboard, etc. Biggles justifies this as "It isn't worthwhile [to fly myself]. I might as well let someone else do the work." But it causes them so much trouble that it absolutely would have been worthwhile to use their own planes. I think Johns just wanted to mix it up a bit.
Biggles flies straight to Berlin, fails to find the Roths, but does locate Anna, the fiancee of older son Moritz Roth, and takes her back to London. The rest of the plot proceeds as a thriller version of a comedy of errors, as everyone runs around searching for people and missing the people who are searching for them. There's some nice action but no spectacular set-pieces. The best bits are character moments, like Algy getting a little caretaking after he gets roughed up and the crew interacting with Anna.
At one point Anna has a letter sent to her father which might or might not contain useful information; she's hesitant to open and read it as that's clearly a thing that is not done. Biggles wants her to open it, and she'll do it if he outright tells her to, but he refuses to do so. He'll lay out for her why he thinks she should do it, but says it's ultimately her choice.
In such a huge and not always internally consistent series, one thing that comes up a lot is how insistent Biggles is on allowing people to make their own choices. He'll try to persuade them, but he won't force them. We see this with von Stalhein over a very long period of time. It even comes up very early on, when Biggles is a teenager and way less mature in many ways, he deals with a young pilot who panicked, fled a battle, and says he can't fight again. Rather than telling him he has to or to push through his fear, Biggles talks to him very kindly and says it's ultimately his choice.
The letter, when opened, does have important information but is also a very touching character moment.
( Read more... )
I was pleased to see a very sympathetic, non-stereotypical Jewish character in a small but key role; I strongly suspect that at some point before writing this book, Johns met an actual Jew. Relatedly, this book is extremely sympathetic to refugees and persecuted people in general.
Other than that, my favorite bit was von Stalhein in a fake beard, giving Biggles a tip like a cat presents its favorite person with a mouse. I wish we could have gotten the scene where von Stalhein meets up with the Roths. It happens but off-page, and I'm sure it's quite touching.
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January 11, 2023
Hang Gliding Update
I might be able to have another lesson on Friday, when we'll have a brief break from storms, but it depends on my knee/foot. They're much better but it's questionable whether they'll have healed enough in the next two days for me to want to repeatedly run down a rocky slope on them while balancing a 50-60 lb glider on my shoulders.
Let me rephrase that. I TOTALLY want to. I should say, would it be a good idea. To which I suspect the answer will be no. The devil on my shoulder doesn't say "Do drugs! You're just a little buzzed, you can drive! Say something mean!" It says, "One more set! You'll learn better the closer together the lessons are! You're a woman in a male-dominated field, show no weakness!"
While I was going over lesson times with Dan, I texted him: "Please tell me I'm not the first student to conclude a first lesson by banging themselves up."
Dan texted back: "Nope. Sometimes they wait until you think they have it wired then Blamo... major mayday."
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Let me rephrase that. I TOTALLY want to. I should say, would it be a good idea. To which I suspect the answer will be no. The devil on my shoulder doesn't say "Do drugs! You're just a little buzzed, you can drive! Say something mean!" It says, "One more set! You'll learn better the closer together the lessons are! You're a woman in a male-dominated field, show no weakness!"
While I was going over lesson times with Dan, I texted him: "Please tell me I'm not the first student to conclude a first lesson by banging themselves up."
Dan texted back: "Nope. Sometimes they wait until you think they have it wired then Blamo... major mayday."
comments
Glimmering, by Elizabeth Hand
I love Hand's fantasy and mystery/thrillers, but vaguely recalled bouncing off her science fiction and feeling that it was impenetrable and had a hallucinatory quality that I didn't like. Having run through most of those genres by her, I thought I'd give her SF another try. I didn't bounce off this one, but though it wasn't impenetrable, it certainly was difficult to penetrate. Also, it had a hallucinatory quality that I didn't like.
Glimmering is near-future SF with an odd history. It was first published in 1997 and was unsettlingly accurate about a number of things that came to pass in the 2000s. Hand then revised it in 2021, apparently to correct some scientific errors and give it a more hopeful ending. (Having read the revised edition, if that's the hopeful ending, then the original one probably ends with everyone dead.)
An environmental accident that I guess is more scientifically plausible than whatever the original cause was creates the Glimmering, a fiery rainbow sky like a permanent aurora. This blocks a lot of sunlight so plants don't grow well. Meanwhile, everything is in a slow slide into dystopia, with pandemics and terrorism and uncertain electricity and so forth.
The main characters are Jack, a gay man who has AIDS (Hand did not predict modern anti-virals, so in the books it's a terminal condition) who is given something that's supposedly a cure, and Trip, a young man of indeterminate but very repressed sexuality who's become a megastar evangelical Christian singer. Their plotlines are completely separate for most of the book, and only intersect at all toward the end. I liked Jack and was pretty engaged with his storyline; he lives with grandmother and a housekeeper, he has friends and relatives, he has relatable problems and desires. I did not care about Trip and his creepy sexual encounter with a weird teenage refugee girl.
For most of the book, Jack takes the drug and finds that most of his symptoms improve, though he sees strange visions and continues to lose weight. Trip has sex, freaks out, takes drugs, freaks out, does other things, freaks out... I did not care about Trip.
The climax and ending go full hallucinatory. I'm cutting for spoilers but maybe what I write won't be spoilery because I'm not sure how much of it actually happened or what it meant.
( Read more... )
I could see what Hand was doing here. The themes are ones I like: a small-scale, slow-moving apocalypse; how people deal with mortality and love in the midst of both a global apocalypse and the small, personal apocalypses of their lives. But the book felt jumbled and incoherent, and it didn't make me terribly enthused about seeking out more of Hand's science fiction. (There's an SF trilogy she wrote a while back, and reviews often use the word "hallucinatory.")
Of her remaining novels I haven't read yet, one is Black Light (dark fantasy or horror) and one is Hokuloa Road, a mystery thriller. These sound much more up my alley.
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Glimmering is near-future SF with an odd history. It was first published in 1997 and was unsettlingly accurate about a number of things that came to pass in the 2000s. Hand then revised it in 2021, apparently to correct some scientific errors and give it a more hopeful ending. (Having read the revised edition, if that's the hopeful ending, then the original one probably ends with everyone dead.)
An environmental accident that I guess is more scientifically plausible than whatever the original cause was creates the Glimmering, a fiery rainbow sky like a permanent aurora. This blocks a lot of sunlight so plants don't grow well. Meanwhile, everything is in a slow slide into dystopia, with pandemics and terrorism and uncertain electricity and so forth.
The main characters are Jack, a gay man who has AIDS (Hand did not predict modern anti-virals, so in the books it's a terminal condition) who is given something that's supposedly a cure, and Trip, a young man of indeterminate but very repressed sexuality who's become a megastar evangelical Christian singer. Their plotlines are completely separate for most of the book, and only intersect at all toward the end. I liked Jack and was pretty engaged with his storyline; he lives with grandmother and a housekeeper, he has friends and relatives, he has relatable problems and desires. I did not care about Trip and his creepy sexual encounter with a weird teenage refugee girl.
For most of the book, Jack takes the drug and finds that most of his symptoms improve, though he sees strange visions and continues to lose weight. Trip has sex, freaks out, takes drugs, freaks out, does other things, freaks out... I did not care about Trip.
The climax and ending go full hallucinatory. I'm cutting for spoilers but maybe what I write won't be spoilery because I'm not sure how much of it actually happened or what it meant.
( Read more... )
I could see what Hand was doing here. The themes are ones I like: a small-scale, slow-moving apocalypse; how people deal with mortality and love in the midst of both a global apocalypse and the small, personal apocalypses of their lives. But the book felt jumbled and incoherent, and it didn't make me terribly enthused about seeking out more of Hand's science fiction. (There's an SF trilogy she wrote a while back, and reviews often use the word "hallucinatory.")
Of her remaining novels I haven't read yet, one is Black Light (dark fantasy or horror) and one is Hokuloa Road, a mystery thriller. These sound much more up my alley.
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