K.A. Laity's Blog, page 150

BitchBuzz: How to Pack Like a Pro

Does this count as at least thinking about packing for England? I have got as far as realising I need to do some laundry before packing. Today will be for catching up on all grading. I've canceled the play reading for Tuesday: what was I thinking anyway?! It would have been insane. I forgot Monday was a holiday, too. I need minions.



How To Pack Like a Pro

By K. A. Laity



You don't need that and you will regret having to carry it: trust me.



I long for the days when a fleet of servants not only packed your traveling trunks but carted them around for you (sometimes literally). At that time (and in that class) you might have your leather martini case with beaker and matching glasses to ease the pain of waiting for them to unload your luggage and then unpack all the clothes they had so lovingly packed in the first place.



Most of us, however, have to tote our own baggage. Sure, it's a lot easier now with all the wheels and roller bags (oh my, how much easier) but that's also made us lazy about making decisions. People generally pack far too much. Then they regret it when they find they've bought too much stuff and now their case won't close. You should have room in your case when you leave so the inevitable additions can go somewhere without busting your seams...



Read the rest at BBHQ: less than a week before I vault off across the pond. Yikes! Much to do; at least all the medical folderol has been completed and the form giving me medical clearance should have been sent. Despite the look of it, my TB test was negative -- just bruised (and a lump for the first day).

Publication: Finnish Charms

I had nearly forgotten about this: the Mythic Journeys folks have been going through some interesting transitions (which seems entirely appropriate) but the journal is back at last. I gave this paper at the Forging Folklore Conference at Harvard University in May 3-5 2007. Great conference! Peg and Hannah put together a terrific bunch of presenters including Ron Hutton (whom I teased about Kyrie as on Historyonics), my mentors Steve Mitchell and Joe Harris, and the fabulous Byron, whom I met for the first time there. Before I gave the paper, I played the kantele and sang. Yes, me -- I wasn't sure I'd do it until I opened my mouth. Good to do things that terrify you now and then. Love the image they chose.







Finnish Charms:

Appropriating Folk Magic from

the Kalevala and Kanteletar



By K.A. Laity



Kylä vuotti uutta kuuta,

miero päivän nousendoa.

Miepä vuotin minjoavani,

miepä vuotin minjovani.



The village waited for the new moon.

They said my brother would return

empty handed when he was off hunting.

They were wrong. The eagle caught the duck.



Värttinä, "Kylä vuotti uutta kuuta" Truly they lie, they Talk utter nonsense

Who say that music

Reckon that the kantele

was carved by Väinämöinen…

out of  a great pike's shoulders…

no, music was made from grief

molded from sorrow…

so my kantele will not

play, will not rejoice at all…

for it was fashioned from cares

moulded from sorrow.                                               



My Kantele, Kanteletar 1:1



One of the least well known of modern reconstructions of folk magic must certainly be the realm of Baltic magic found in the ancient texts of Finland, but it has found a perhaps surprising popular resurgence in  recent years. The reprinting of Kati Koppana's Snakefat and Knotted Threads has brought a handbook of folk magic to a new generation of reconstructionists, but the nineteenth-century collections The Kalevala and The Kanteletar continue to provide a rich supply of magical practices.  While originally the outgrowth of a rising sense of nationalism in nineteenth-century Finland, the two collections of myth and folklore also record a number of magical charms that give some insight into the ancient practices of the Finns, since lost in the (relatively) late conversion to Christianity and the long-practiced denigration of the indigenous tongues particularly by Swedish and then Russian political control...[read the rest and check out Anya's essay on Egypt, too]

Connecticut Adventures + Publication

Well, I ran off on Friday early enough to get to the Punk Rock Jukebox and have a good time aggravating Marko during his show, including decorating him and annotating the walls. Mostly I just giggled in the background while he was trying to talk. Then we ran off to the pub to have some lunch and yak. Marko terrified me with an introduction to the amazing phenomenon of the Shake Weight (O_o). Guess it's a good thing I don't watch much TV.



I had a lovely dinner with Sue Crowley and her husband in their home which I managed to find despite the Connecticut habit of not putting street signs at corners. When I first moved to the state it was one of the first things to get used to -- that and getting directions using landmarks that no longer exist: "Turn right where the old Beaumont farm's barn was before it burned down..." Ah, New England. A world unto itself.



Then it was off to Elena's. She and Rod were busy meeting with Desmond Tutu (yes, really!) so I let myself in and greeted the happy puppies. We all went outside and sat on the back porch for a bit until they got home. In the morning I was a visitor at Elena's cartooning class. She does an amazing job with these young kids.



She has an early class with young kids, but I came for the later class (pre-teens) and I told them the story of "Another Metamorphosis," my swipe of Kafka plus dinosaurs and with more than a little silliness. Now I should be clear: I am not a storyteller, I am a storywriter. I was a bit nervous about trying to tell the story, but I interpolated parts and cut others and it seemed to go okay. I figured dinosaurs at least would be appealing to the audience.

It seemed to do the trick; boy, they sure worked hard on the drawings! It was cool to see how much they were captivated by the ideas, although each on different aspects. There were a couple who really wanted to focus on the car accident, others who wanted to show the transformation and others who wanted to draw the theme park. All of the illustrations were wildly different.

Elena scanned in all the pictures and I've added them to the story and uploaded it to Scribd. I love the internet! Idea to execution in no time. I didn't so much love inserting the pictures and captions in Word. Can anyone explain why each caption came up in a different format?! Some had boxes around the words, some didn't -- one even had a partial box. WHY?! I don't know. Very irritating -- and that's exactly the kind of thing that drives me mad. Maybe I should have been a model instead...

Happy Birthday, Joey!

If I had remembered in time, I would have sent a card :-( Without my computer to remind me I remember nothing. Shall I just get you this? Hope your day is wonderful.

Waiting for the End of the World

Feel free to sing along as we perish -- or not. On the plus side, it would save a lot of paperwork; on the other hand, I know I have a lot of things to do yet.

Publishing News & Connecticut Bound

Over at Night and Day, The Spectator's Arts blog, I have an introduction to erotic fiction that will give you some  steamy reading for this rainy day. Simon always gives me such interesting assignments; I find it amusing that the newspaper is so conservative and its Arts blog so liberal. Of necessity, this is only a taste of the genre. As I write in the preamble,



A beginner's guide to erotic fiction cannot help but be incomplete. One cannot do justice to such a broad body of literature, so I have selected a bouquet of offerings that will provide novices with a sampling of the breadth of the field, from which they can explore further...



I've neglected to mention also having a story accepted for publication, "The Wyandotte Haunting" which includes...



ghostly chickens?



Could it be true? Yes, perhaps. That's a couple of Wyandottes in the photo, whom I snapped at the Altamont Fair last year, or was it the year before? There's a little nod to one of my inspirations, Ramsey Campbell. More info as it becomes available: a collection from Pill Hill Press (home of my zombie Western "High Plains Lazarus" too). The essay on Gilliam's Tideland has finally settled into place (ay yi yi, there's a story), but the main thing I'm hastily working on at present is The Triumph of the Carpet Beetle, my non-fiction collection. More as that gets closer to release (soon, soon -- we all know how pleased I am with tedious and painstaking tasks 9_9).



I'm off to Connecticut today, lunch with M. Marko, dinner with Sue Crowley, then evening at Elena's (assuming they get safely home from their travels). In the morning Elena's cartooning class, then a visit with the QoE before returning to Elena's. I wanted to be sure to have a chance to see everyone before I headed off to England. Life is a bit of a whirlwind lately (only lately?!). So little time, so much to do!

BitchBuzz: Sarah Angliss/Spacedog

Looking forward to catching some of these performances in London: I find her work absolutely fascinating.

Sarah Angliss and "Spacedog"By K.A. Laity

Musician, engineer, writer Sarah Angliss has embarked on a round of performances under the aegis of Spacedog. Her unique combination of nerdy science knowledge, inspired music and automata brings together technology, history and the spirits of the dead, including the titular dog, Laika the canine cosmonaut.



I think I first came across her work while researching puppetry. Her essay on the "Uncanny Valley" led me to exploring the fascinating compositions and videos she has created. Angliss characterises her work as a heady mix of unexpected elements:

Trained in electroacoustics, music and robotics, I specialise in creating original sound installations, exhibits and live performances that mix cutting-edge technology with curious or vintage sound equipment and little known stories from the history of science. I'm particularly interested in creating sonic art that enables people to generate or manipulate sound using novel physical elements (e.g. robots; motion sensors). Whenever possible, I try to avoid compositions that generate music entirely through software – I find algorithmic music is richer and more delightful when it's coupled to the real world in some meaningful way...

Read the rest: http://culture.bitchbuzz.com/sarah-angliss-and-spacedog.html#ixzz1Mo7LSS3a



Today's film in the horror class: the original Night of the Living Dead, which means I need to explain the 60s -- mostly that it wasn't all hippies and the Grateful Dead which seems to be the association my students usually make with the time period.

Today's Film: The Haunting (1963)

Here's an interesting combination of trailer and music video (because yes, I can find a connection to The Fall who covered this song, too). I'm looking forward to seeing this fine film with a bunch of students who have never seen it. It's such an effectively spooky movie!

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Cat People

Simone Simon stars in the Tourneur/Lewton frightfest Cat People from 1942. I'm teaching this today along with a first toe-dipping into Freudian theory. Old Siggy had a lot of hang-ups from his time and misapprehensions about human nature (as opposed to its particular manifestation during his particular and odd time) but there were enough astute observations in his work to keep its currency high even now.



The Lewton/Tourneur film makes much of its atmosphere. The oddly iconoclast Simon portrays the Serbian woman Irena who piques the interest of architect Oliver Reed (?!) despite her odd obsession with the panther in the zoo and her faith in the effects of an old Serbian curse which dictated that -- should she show the least interest in sex -- she will immediately turn into a ravening beast herself. The gorgeous cinematography and effective moodiness of the film make this a real pleasure to watch and the deft nature of it will keep you guessing up until the end about whether Simon's fears are real or not.



The remake with Malcolm McDowall and Nastasia Kinski is also fun. For the round up of Tuesday's Overlooked A/V, see Todd's blog.

Ms. Russ & Horror

Lesson: this is what happens when you complain about something to generally nice people -- you get asked to share your opinion, too. I commented on Ms. Magazine 's initial post on Joanna Russ' passing by expressing my disappointment that the piece was so cursory and written by someone who said she didn't really read the genre (always distressing). So here's my piece:

When Joanna Russ Changed UsMay 15, 2011 by K. A. Laity · Leave a Comment

[image error]Michele Kort's vivid remembrance of Joanna Russ (who died April 29) based on a single encounter with Russ's short story "When it Changed" is a testament to just how far this woman's influence continues to spread. Few have come away from reading Russ without a strong opinion. Ideas she posed as many as 30 years ago—a world without men, kick-ass action heroines, feminist romance—continue to vex and inspire us.The Russ's unflaggingly popular novel The Female Man and its development of the world known as Whileaway—a place devoid of men for centuries—will long be part of her fame. This imagined future is an agrarian reverie filled with hard work but little advanced technology beyond the ability to merge ova to make babies. People tend to refer to Whileaway as "utopian" but I doubt that Russ would agree. Simple answers never suited her....



Read the rest at Ms.



Today I begin the summer intensive,  Three Weeks of Terror -- or a sort of abbreviated history of the horror film. It's always a bit of a breathless run which tantalises more than it teaches, I fear. As a boot camp in the genre, at the very least it usually introduces the students to films they've not seen and a way of looking at familiar films that makes them completely new. It also funds my travels in England for June, so whoo hoo! Doubtless I will have much to say about the class in the coming days.