K.A. Laity's Blog, page 152

RIP: Joanna Russ

I can't add too much to the fine encomium that Todd wrote; I'll just say that bringing The Female Man to a bunch of students at UHD, while definitely a challenge, offered a real eye-opening (and mind-expanding) experience to them as well. I've been talking about Russ a lot lately with folks in the romance field, but it seems she doesn't have the same cachet with the spec fic audience that other elder statesmen have. Just too hard to pigeon-hole. For that I have always admired her: a true iconoclast. If you haven't read her, do. I highly recommend How to Suppress Women's Writing as well. As I have spent my afternoon with some particularly awful academic writing, I appreciate once again Russ's clear-sighted ability to convey complex ideas with verve and style. She refused to be anything but herself in every way: a very out lesbian and an unapologetic feminist. Raise a glass to her name: more importantly, take her books off the shelf, read them and talk about them.



Update: The Locus obit (thanks, Todd).

The Passing of Poly Styrene

Or as Brazill suggested, "Poly Gone."

The Passing of Poly Styrene By K.A. Laity
Punk icon Poly Styrene (given name Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) has died at the far too young age of 53 after battling advanced breast cancer. She'd been on Twitter for weeks getting the word out about her new album  Generation Indigo  with its catchy single "VIrtual Boyfriend." With the too-early death of The Slits' Ari Up still fresh in mind it's beginning to feel as if some contagion of the poisonous years of Thatcher and Reagan worked its way into their very flesh and given them cancer.

The raucous saxophone of X-Ray Spex and its iconoclast singer inspired many during the formative days of punk. From the braces on her teeth to her unconventional looks and wild attire, she found a freedom in the wildness of punk rock that changed her life. But like most revolutionary movements, it quickly became regimented and stylized into fossil-hard rules.

As Billy Bragg wrote on Facebook...

Read more: http://news.bitchbuzz.com/the-passing-of-poly-styrene.html#ixzz1Kq8HqHXO



Knee deep in deadlines. Coming up for air after the first, I swear. I got my ticket for Britain -- yay! Trying to restrain myself from buying tickets for everything I want to see. I don't want to come back broke.



Again.

Little Girls Should Be Seen and Heard

Well, I had to stop eventually...

Snapshots of Pop Culture

Here's a little taste of the trip to the Popular Culture Association Conference: we stayed at the Marriott Rivercenter which is a combination mall and canal, chock full of tourists and cheap Texas trash, er, souvenirs. I lived in that state for three years, eleven months, six days, five hours and fifteen minutes and I never understood the arrogant Texas chauvinism. I lost count of the number of Tejas tattoos I saw. I don't think I've ever seen anyone with Connecticut tattooed on their skin.







I had to take a picture of this because I couldn't decide if it was genius or the most horrible thing ever; I wish I'd taken a picture of the guy who was in it with his two tiny daughters. Scarred for life or prepared for the worst? In case you're wondering, it costs $2 for a "ride" in the machine.





We spent most of our time in panels seeing papers on all kinds of topics. Of course what everyone really looks forward to is chatting in the bar which is far more relaxed (though often just as thoughtful). Miss Wendy and Paul and I started things off on the right foot the first night.









It was my last year as chair of the Medieval Popular Culture area: we're combining with the Arthurian area (strength in numbers), so next year I have no responsibilities but writing my own paper. Naturally I've already come up with an idea for a special panel: anyone interested in a Romance & Comics, let me know. I attended the open forum on  Romance scholarship which was quite interesting: not surprisingly, there were only two men there. You gotta admire the chutzpah of a guy who'd bring this cup to that room full of women (or maybe it was just obliviousness):





PCA is a rather laid back conference, but there are still moments that people find stressful. Someone must have been trying to encourage a friend with this note that first appeared in one of the elevators, then on a painting in the hallway where I snapped it:





Saturday Miss Wendy wanted to wander around a little and see the sights after she gave her awesome presentation on Moto Hagio. Last time we were in San Antonio, the only touristy thing we did was the Ripley's Believe it or Not! "museum" which was amusing at least. So we headed over to the Alamo which is now classified as (no, I'm not kidding) "The Shrine to Texas Liberty."







I liked this shirt and the lotteria paintings in this store, but everything they had was unbelievably expensive, so I didn't feel too tempted to add to my belongings as I'm continuing to divest myself of things.





I'm always intrigued by weird stuff that other people don't seem to find interesting. I have odd tastes, I guess. But I loved the way electricity was anthropomorphised in this sign. It looks deliberately malevolent.





I was lucky on my flight out: after the unexpected overnight stay in Chicago a week ago, I was pleased to find that because my flight was overbooked, they bribed me to change flights with $400 in travel coupons -- and I didn't have to go to Chicago (Atlanta instead) and got there only an hour later than I would have anyway. On the way back, not so lucky, but that's okay. I had plenty of time to check out the new trends according to W:



What's more "punk" than an airbrushed model in a corset? Sigh. And I'm hoping the rumours that punk rocker Poly Styrene has died are just that, though she has been battling cancer for a while. I've been following her on Twitter and the new album is getting a lot of good press. I hope it's not true.

On the Road Again

Assuming all goes well, by the time this posts, I ought to be on a plane from Chicago to San Antonio. We shall hope for there to be no prolonged visit like Friday. If I had time to actually see the city, it would be different. I have many potential duties to accomplish in Chicago. But they are for a planned visit, not an accidental touristing. Best of all, the other end of this journey should reunite me with Miss Wendy and the AbFab duo will be on the rampage again. Much fun us anticipated.



One of the lovely things that has made travel much nicer lately is the advent of curated art in airports. In the Albany airport, there are exhibits from many of the museums in the region, including my fave EMPAC, to give you an idea what's at each museum.





You can step into Van Gogh's bedroom and other sights at O'Hare (if you know where to find them). Anything to make the experience less ugly is appreciated.





More anon!

Converting Monks with Slides in San Antonio

I was hoping to have time to write up the NT Live Frankensteins I saw for Tuesday's Overlooked A/V but I'm still working on my presentation for PCA, so it's unlikely to happen. I did upload a version of my speech with the Powerpoint slides embedded (very hastily, so it's a bit clunky) so they will make a little more sense in context.



Converting Monks Into Friars With Slides

Converting Monks into Friars in Iowa

So, the trip to Iowa included an unscheduled night in Chicago. A bit irritating to spend all those hours in O'Hare, but the truth is the seasoned traveler needs to be prepared for this kind of inconvenience. I had books to read, things to write and social media at my fingertips where I could complain to my friends. I'd have rather been in Iowa having dinner with folks as planned, but there are worse things than the quiet solitude of an anonymous hotel room. I love hotels. I think it would be terrific to live in a hotel in London with room service and the whole city before me.



More later, but here's the Powerpoint slides from my talk.Consider them an attempt to intrigue you. Forthcoming: the paper with these images embedded and a video of the images with the narration recorded there (assuming it sounds okay). Time's tight: I'm off to PCA in San Antonio on Wednesday. Much to do, so I'm writing this while my students are watching a film. Multi-tasking is the word du jour.



Converting Monks into Friars

Iowa with a Big Question Mark

Powerpoint is Evil

I used Tufte's piece in my own PPT presentation, which as folks on Twitter know, has almost 80 slides. I've described it as being sort of like "The Word" on The Colbert Report. Will this work? Who knows. Still tweaking. But I printed my boarding passes. If you're on Facebook, I'm now having a contest to guess how many gratuitous pop culture references I make in the forty minute speech. Go on, have a guess.

Euro Punks Exhibit

Wednesday already?! Eek! Madness -- this entire week has been, will be, is. Yesterday after the Glass Ceiling talk organized by the Women's Initiative, I jumped in the car and headed down to Kingston for a reading of a new play at the Arts Society of Kingston. The play was on the life of Margaret Fuller and has a lot of potential: the audience offered a lot of good feedback. I hope I'll get a lot of the same on my play.



Two panic moments after the play: first, being horrified to find that my car was missing, afraid it had been towed. No, I had simply walked two blocks past where it was. Can we say distracted? Driving to Bertie's for dinner I had an owl fly right over my hood on the backroads, which initially made me gasp in alarm and then think, "wow, how cool was that?" Great dinner (of course) and then back home again (after midnight).



Finishing the slides for the talk; tomorrow is polishing both. Out with friends Thursday night, on my way to Iowa Friday. Phew! And then next week is PCA. I can relax for a day on the 25th. >_< At last, here's the photos from the Euro Punks Exhibit at the Villa Medici in Rome. A lot of them are awful, but I was snapping away hastily, having fun. At least you get a flavour of the exhibit. If you want to see better pictures, take a look at the catalogue. I know a certain punk rock DJ who might let you take a look at his copy...