Gillian Polack's Blog, page 101

gillpolack @ 2013-09-09T14:54:00

Right now, I'm a bit browned off. I've read two dull novels in a row. Life is too short to read two dull novels anytime, much less two in a row. At least they're quick reading. And maybe my next novel will be amazing. I start it just as soon as I've finished blogging.

Two books and one chapter and a big shopping trip and a meeting and 1000 words of my own writing (NF today) are my quota for the day. That and lots of twiddly things in between, bills and forms and suchlike.

I've got until next week to catch up with myself, for next week is when teaching gets a bit busy. I've finished about a half of the twiddly things, plus one book and one chapter.

It's all very slow because an idiot neighbour left the security door open and there is burning off outside. It's closed now, and I can breathe again. I was wondering where the daft typos were coming from yesterday and today and they were coming from a perpetually open door. This happens every time I get new neighbours. We all shut the door for them until they finally realise that the security door is not their private entrance. I don't want to be the one who explains it this time round, for I'm the one who did it the last two times. And the smoke inhalation has made me tired. And...

And I'd better go do some more work before I forget where I'm up to.

Understanding others

I was faced with a clear statement in my in-box this morning. Apparently Jews in the 18th century believed that the world was created in 3774 BC. This means that Jews in the 18th century defined the birth of the world according to the birth of Christ, because otherwise where does that 'BC' come from? I would have thought it was a simple translation into Christian terms of the Jewish calendar, except that it was made as a correction of an actual (and accurate) statement of the Jewish year. All the writer had to do was write "According to the Christan calendar, then, Jews believed..." and the statement would have lost all capacity to offend. But they didn't. The Jewish calendar without a Christian context is obviously something not to be borne.

On Thursday I was faced with another statement. Someone had used a culture foreign to them to build a novel. I didn't have a problem with this. Cultural borrowing is very common. I do it all the time when I put people other than myself into my fiction. We all do. This writer took it one step further, though. When one knows that one might not be accurate with one's borrowing of a whole culture and one says in an author's comment words to the effect that one didn't check any of this with anyone who actually belongs to this culture, then there is a problem. The problem is exacerbated when the author added words to the effect of this was done with so much love, though, it it will all be fine, then the author is tending towards cultural appropriation (but with much love).

If one loves this culture enough, maybe send an email to a cultural body or an individual from that background saying "Is there anyone who could read this through to make sure I've not done anything daft?" Or find a better way of saying that the culture has been used for inspiration and any depiction is a creative invention? Both are fine. "I am right because I am in love with this culture" is not. Taking it back to my own background (for it's still the High Holy Days) many people have loved Jewish culture and used it as an excuse for all sorts of interesting things that were better left undone.

True love requires understanding*, and understanding of someone else's culture or religion often needs a bit of a reality check. One of the problems Jews face is when the invented culture (used in non-Jewish circles) replaces the reality, after all. When Ikey Solomon (with all his mixed values) is replaced by Fagin. OK, so that may not have been done with love but with an eye to a character who would sell a serial. But the principle remains. Being inspired or influenced by something enables one to invent something new based on that original. Name-checking the culture as the source without checking with the traditional owners, is a recipe for hurting the original owners when the interpretation goes awry. As Dickens discovered.

Anyhow, that's one scholar who doesn't know what BC means and one writer who doesn't understand that it helps to talk to the beloved to get an understanding of the culture one is borrowing.

On the other side, I got through the whole of Rosh Hashanah without other people laying claim to my time for their work. Wait. That's not the other side at all. I had to issue threats to make that happen.

All this helps explain the cultural background to yesterday's election result. It has been building for a while. Humans don't instantly fall into the position where they don't know or care about their neighbours. It develops over time.

Now I really want us to devolve to the nicer Australia, please. It just happens to be the wealthier Australia, with fewer people dealing with horrifying situations. Fear drives people into doing the stupidest things. Fear of women. Fear of refugees. Fear of other peoples' calendars. In Rupert Murdoch's case (for he tweeted something that indicated this last night) fear of dole-bludgers and public servants.

And on that note, I'm returning to the Middle Ages for the rest of the morning.




*Love is not all you need. The Beatles were wrong about paperback writers, too.

gillpolack @ 2013-09-07T14:07:00

I have voted. I promised Sharyn I'd vote at Old Parliament House if I could, and I really wasn't up to vast amounts of walking today, so when Rachel rang me last night I asked "Are you interested?" It's good that I went with Rachel and Mia, though, for everyone else decided that OPH as a good place to vote and they were not prepared for such numbers and so the queue was long. How long? Well, we arrived there over two hours ago. Still, the queue snakes around the back corridors and I had my camera and so I finally got some photos of the features of courtyards and doors. My reference library has been improved *and* I got to spend time with friends.I have a button that says "I voted at Old Parliament House 2013" and I have a pencil that says the same. I also discovered that I totally suck at "I spy..."

The best t-shirt of the election was worn by a Liberal Party volunteer. I actually saw a candidate (called Ezekiel) though I didn't get to speak to him. I let the volunteers know about the lack of leaflets for all their parties, though I doubt that this will change anything. Apparently we were supposed to get leaflets... "Supposed" doesn't change someone's vote, though.

What interested me was how slowly the queues moved. I strongly suspect that a lot of Canberrans are voting below the line for the Senate, and had to number every single box. This will affect how quickly results are known.

I used to be one of the few people I knew who carefully sought out the most undesirable candidate so that they could have the honour of being at the bottom of my ticket, but so many people chatted about doing precisely this today. It's become a local hobby.

For me, having a special home-printed How to Vote guide (courtesy of www.belowtheline.org.au ) made the actual voting easy. I admit to a sense of the world fitting together when I put Zed at 26. Such a name is a political burden...


PS Sorry about all the typos. I think they're now fixed. I am a little the worse for wear and might rest before I get back to what I'm supposed to be doing today.

gillpolack @ 2013-09-06T22:57:00

I just realised: if I get to vote where I hope to, tomorrow, out-of-towners will be there. I wonder if I can get a look at the State Senate ballots and find out if one really needs a magnifying glass. I wonder if all out-of-town voting booths will have them and if they'll be attached by string*.

I have my own magnifying glass, in case of need, but the ACT ballot is quite small compared with most (for we get to elect a piddling number of senators compared with Giant States of Big Population like Tasmania). I have my magnifying glass, therefore, because I'm a Medievalist with poor eyesight, not a voter with a giant ballot printed in tiny type.

I think the biggest ballot I've had to number from beginning to end had 87 candidates. But I may be misremembering.

All this thought about elections means that I shall start watching TrueBlood now.

I've finished sorting all my books. I have 5000 in boxes and just over 100 still to box. In a few days time I shall be able to work *so* much more efficiently. Finding things is handy.

This extra post was brought to you by magnifying glasses. And the Middle Ages, for those are the books I've been sorting. I discovered I don't have nearly enough on medieval optics. And the oldest glasses I possess are nineteenth century. So I'm not nearly as obsessed by vision as my mind encourages me to think.


*magnifying glasses, not ballots

Voting, election night and vampirism - a very Canberra post

This election is even stranger than it was a week ago, and a week ago it was the strangest election since 1975.

Because I've been out and about a lot this last week due to Rosh Hashanah preparations, it surprises me somewhat that I have still not met a single election candidate. Unless the bloke who said "Hello, lady" as we walked past each other today outside the library was one. He didn't stop and he wasn't wearing any labels, so I doubt it. I've tried really hard to meet one since I discovered a real person standing for Senate in Sydney. I've gone to all the usual places and asked around. I've checked three of the major shopping centres and three of the minor ones and two garbage recycling places. I wasn't really expecting candidates at the latter, but I now have enough boxes (thanks, Naomi!).

Today I took honeycake with me, as a lure. Surely honeycake would bring candidates out? Half the cake went to a very bemused (and slightly embarrassed) bloke selling legacy badges. I may take some more cake tomorrow, and I may not. I still have a great urge to present some to a local candidate with the comment "You're the first local candidate I've actually met this time round."

My conclusion from this? Everyone assumes we are a shoo-in for the standard candidates.

Except Simon Sheikh. Simon Sheikh thinks the Senate seat may swing and has posters suggesting that soundness of this all over the highways. And I happen to agree with him. Other candidates have posters on some highways only - and again, my part of Canberra is destitute of them, thus giving Mr Sheikh's blue prints sole sway. "Abbott-proof the Senate. Vote Green." is the only slogan I actually know this election. Sheikh's signs along the highway mimic the rabbit-proof fence. They extend for miles. I don't know if it will win him the seat, but the historical reference and the joke pushed him up two places on my ballot.

All the media think that Zed is going to get that seat, for certain. For we need him. We are told this. This would be because he's Liberal, the party that finally told us most of their policies yesterday, and within hours changed their mind about one. In fact, their shadow minister for communications said "This is not our policy." Even though it was. This is the party of many thoughts and much opting-out. Originally we could opt out of compulsory internet censorship, but later in the day Turnbull opted out of the whole policy.

I don't know where Labor fits into all this poster-ing and campaigning. They're being very silent in my vicinity. Mind you, so is the Rise Up Australia Party, which turns out to be the offshoot of the Christian group that exorcised us some time ago. Yep, they have candidates standing for a place they feel is demon-infested.

This election should have been a lot more colourful: the Sex Party should have confronted the Rise Up Australia Party in debate, for one thing. Only they didn't. The press was too busy telling us that we were all voting Liberal.

More seriously, the parties are spending all their campaign money and energy in quite specific locations. Mine is obviously not one of them. This expenditure could affect the outcome as much as Murdoch's domination of the airways. Whichever party has been cannier in targetting swinging seats may well win, regardless of the poll numbers this last week.

I discovered yesterday that a whole bunch of voters are so bewildered that they're planning informal votes. Up to 15% of voters. What if even half of these people discover sites like Below The Line, and change their informal vote into a vote that expresses their dislikes and distrust and general confusion? Where they can totally ignore preference deals and order candidates the way they think fit?

I've been asked a lot about this, and my advice has been (to simplify it) to vote above the line for the Senate if you're clearly a Labor, Green or LNP voter and want their preferences to be yours. In every other case, we should all be voting below the line, giving a number to every single candidate. It will annoy all parties, because the outcome will be slower. It will, however, be an outcome that actually reflects what we want.

This isn't as hard as it sounds. Put all the candidates you hate* down the bottom and get them out of the way. Order the ones at the top to reflect the candidates you actually care about (in a positive way) and then fill the ballot in order down to the end of the two leading major parties in your personal view. The rest of the ticket can be filled in in any order you like, for you've sorted the bit that counts and you've made sure you're not give *any* votes to those you dislike, distrust or despise. You've pretty well got your views covered once you have covered two major parties (and all the independents and small parties before/in-between). It isn't nearly as big a task as trying to sort it all out in perfect order, and you can print yourself out a personalised how to vote form using Below the Line. And, lo, your vote is not wasted. (My suspicion is that a wasted vote this election is actually a vote for Abbott and if you want to vote for him, why don't you just do it, rather than faffing around?)

And I'm having pizza for dinner tomorrow and there will be some spare if anyone wants to watch the election count with generous sprinklings of TrueBlood (season 5)**. I thought this was a desirable combination. There is, of course, also honeycake, chocolate, coffee. This is not an election party, though, it's just me at home wearing my comfy slippers and having enough food in case a couple of friends cannot go it alone.



*Should we hate candidates who are involved in public exorcisms on Red Hill, for instance? This is, perhaps, a personal decision.

**I nearly chose Thunderbirds, until I realised how very much one particular candidate looks as if he could be a puppet and started considering who was pulling strings and so forth. Vampires were a better option, because I'm more likely to remember which program I'm watching. If the teeth show, it's a vampire and if they don't, it's a pollie. And if TrueBlood doesn't work, I have 40 episodes of the original Dark Shadows. My election commentary is not that of others...

Erev Rosh Hashanah

I'm a bit behind on things. This always happens when Erev Rosh Hashanah is on a week day and I haven't taken off for southerly climes. It just wasn't possible this year, with work this morning and everything happening around me.

Teaching this morning was rather cool. We talked about election ads and the stories they tell. Inevitably this led to exercises on how to colour stories. My favourite one was when I told my class they had to convince me (through stories) that my pen was evil, using the techniques they've noted during the elections. They failed (but only just), and their homework is to write strong and more convincing stories for homework. The downside is, of course, that none of us trust election ads any more. I don't think we did anyhow, however, and they really are a handy source of narrative techniques. I have visions of my students watching them with pens in hand saying to themselves "I see what they did there - now let me try it."

We also talked a lot about dumplings, which led to a bit of the background to certain fairytales that feature dumpling and, inevitably, to personal rewrites of the fairytales. I nobly refrained from singing and dancing the "Nimmy nimmy not" rhyme to demonstrate denouements. I pointed everyone to Eleanor Farjeon's The Silver Curlew. I also passed around two of the new YA Aurealis books. We used the latter to talk about how we all actually do judge books by their covers.

Our words of the day were all of Hebrew origin. We made many Abbott jokes, for Tony Abbott has a name of Hebrew origin and has been making comments about the wonderfulness of his offspring, and his name derives from the Hebrew word for 'father' - jokes were inevitable.

We talked about calendars (only three).

My class got through a half of a honeycake. This means I have just under one and a half left, and the festival hasn't begun. If friends want to drop in and sample some, it might have to be tomorrow afternoon or Friday evening. Or sometime. I'm very partial to sometime.

Right now, I'm very partial to cups of tea. I still have nine things on my to do before dusk list. ten, because I totally forgot to put 'clean candlesticks' on that list. At dusk all work magically disappears, however, and will simply not get done. This is the joy of the festive season. And I have done almost all the food preparation and there are chairs for everyone to sit on. This is better than recent years...

Have a good and sweet year, everyone, and for those who keep it, well over the fast.

gillpolack @ 2013-09-03T12:54:00

I just found a heap of my early writings. My first publications, in fact, in print when I was nineteen and twenty. One of them was illustrated by Nicholson, which was very cool. It also paid me a vast sum of money, which went into a term deposit account and eventually became part of the deposit on my current residence, which was even cooler. The surprise was that for my first SF publication I shared a table of contents with Sean McMullen. All of this was before many of my current writing friends were born. I've never been very certain of my writing abilities, and I dropped out of sight for fifteen years, convinced that the only person I should be writing for was myself. My ego is healthier these days, but still not as robust as some.

There are many morals of this story, but the main one is that I probably should not have mislaid those early publications. I could have asked Sean for his signature when I got to know him, some years ago, just to get a reaction...

I'm only missing two of my early short stories now. The rediscovered ones are now safely with my other publications. I'm missing rather more of the NF publications. But those I have (both fiction and NF) take up three and a bit feet of shelf in my library-that-now-fits-things.

All of this was instead of the medieval householding I was supposed to do. I shall make some more coffee and get back to the Middle Ages. It's nice to be more sorted, though.

Tonguetwisters, work and offers of cake

Does anyone know if Greens' candidate Simon S keeps sheep? I can't ask him unless I see him and, as I pointed out yesterday, I do not seem to be a candidate-magnet. Maybe someone else could ask him? And then ask him if his sixth sheep is still sick? It makes such a good tonguetwister "Simon Sheikh's sixth sheep is still sick." (I wonder if he has many siblings, for then it could be "Simon's sixth Sheikh's sixth sheep is still sick."

My work-of-this-hour is all to do with householding in the Middle Ages (mostly in England) and if I had found any good jokes in it, I would have shared them instead of modifying tonguetwisters. My personal favourite tonguetwister is all about plums and peaches and is mostly one syllable repeated: all the best tonguetwisters are in Japanese.

My real news of the day is that I've decided to use sweet potatoes and heritage carrots and honey and fresh lemon and olive oil to make an alternate tsimmes. My contribution to tomorrow's dinner will be tsimmes-facsimile, ginger mushrooms, coffee, tea, chocolate and appallingly large amounts of honeycake. And apple and honey, of course. Pink Lady apples, picked last Saturday. Tested for crunch.

The honeycake this year has sultanas and whole glace cherries and Pfeiffer's muscat, and single origin arabica coffee and dark chocolate melted and stirred through and orange juice from Riverina oranges that were picked on Saturday (not from the same farm as the apples) and Australian honey and a touch of buckwheat honey and pullet eggs from the farmers' market and whatever else I decide to put into it in about an hour. If anyone wants some, I can bring it with me to Woden during my messages/candidate trawl and we can have a cuppa together and you can take home cake. I do need to not work Thursday, after all. In fact, I am totally supposed to not work Thursday, so am entirely open to meeting friends for a cuppa.

gillpolack @ 2013-09-02T16:16:00

Not only is this Australian election unhappy and contentious, it's also downright peculiar. My personal experience of the downright peculiar is that I still haven't seen a single candidate for any of the many parties contending for my vote. In fact, I've only met one candidate at all, and she was a Greens NSW Senate candidate and so has no interest in me whatsoever. Even in Sydney, where I was downtown and in the suburbs and lots of places, I only met that one candidate. NSW voters - she exists. I forget her name, but she exists.

I've been all the places other voters congregate. I've been to three of the major shopping centres and two of the minor ones just in the last week. I've been to libraries and to sports facilities and to doctors and dentists. Everyone tells me "They were here yesterday." My friends have been doorknocked and letterboxed and yet I get neither appearances nor paper.

I have to conclude that they're avoiding me. Me, a swinging voter. Or that they don't really exist.

Tomorrow I'm making my annual honeycake. I shall go in a few minutes early on Wednesday, perhaps, and see if there are any candidates at Tuggeranong this week. If there aren't, my students get all the cake. If there are, then the first candidate I meet (even if they're racist right and hate me for existing - in fact, especially if they're racist right and hate me for existing, since it's Jewish New Year and a time of love and sweetness) will get a piece of honeycake to celebrate the fact that they actually exist.

Until I meet a candidate in real life, from here on I'm assuming that they're all make-believe. There is, after all, fine piece of mind in pretending.

I'm trying to think of another election where all I've seen are billboards and the only phonecall was a single poll. We're in the land of make-believe this year, for certain.

gillpolack @ 2013-09-01T17:01:00

This morning was lovely. I edited a chapter. I went to the market and watched Orphan Black* and we grabbed more boxes for books. I ate bagels.

This afternoon was less productive, for I forgot about the burning-off and I opened a window to let the nice warm air in. About all I've done is sort books for two of the boxes. I'm almost finished my standard non-fiction shelves, which means I only have 6 bookcases to go through and then I'm done and everything that needs to be in boxes will be in boxes and everything else will be actually visible on my shelves. My current estimate is that I'll have about 5500 books in boxes, which is crazy. No wonder I was lost in my library.

My task before dinner is to finish with the bits of Beast I had intended to do before smoke took over my lungs. This is harder than it sounds, for I just want to sleep. If I don't do it, though, I'll be in trouble, for I have five more chapters to check things out for tonight. When all these chapters are done, the notes for them will not be littering my loungeroom and it might be possible to sit on one more chair. This is a conclusion devoutly to be wished: I have six friends coming round on Wednesday and only two empty chairs. Tomorrow I have to deal with a whole new pile of notes, but these ones will clear a corner of the coffee table. That leaves me three chairs and the rest of the table to clear - no worries! Well, no worries if I do the tough bits today and tomorrow, which are these three stacks of six by four notes.

My deadline for everything is Wednesday lunchtime, for I have new year, new deadlines but not, alas, a new brain. Not the right day to be breathing bushsmoke. Mind you, I have nice crisp apples for Wednesday, and navels from the Riverina for making my grandmother's honey cake on Tuesday. And I might be a bit short on chairs and table, but there's already floor visible. And I have 20 episodes of Dark Shadows to watch tonight, as background vampirism.




*The people who worked on this series are my new favourite human beings. They showed that it's perfectly possible to have female agency and write a totally dynamite SF series. Knowing that the reasons so many people give for making their female characters secondary or negligible or objectified are not universally applicable isn't nearly as satisfying as seeing a creative team prove it, episode after episode. I must admit, it was fun seeing this take place in surroundings I knew and with jokes I (mostly, I think) got.