Gillian Polack's Blog, page 136
December 6, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-12-07T13:47:00
Putting the Fine book together with my meltdown the other day...
Much of the time Australia keeps religion out of public places. Now, everything blares Christmas. Some of those who accept notice it and some don't. Some link it to their private festivities and smile. Some see it as a burden to be got through but as something that's part of their culture.
For me, it's like moving through the private lives of others. I can't switch off the religious aspect of it as some do, for I've studied the history of that religion. I also carry with me the baggage of Christmas bigotry past - this is personal baggage. Every time someone has told me I have killed Christ or am not Australian or have a 'special' relationship with money, or am dirty, or should have been killed by Hitler, that stays with me. Mentally, I prepare for those statements and visible changes to the Christianity of the landscape is, unfortunately, one of the warning signs. I didn't realise it, but Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is closely tied to comments about all Jews having big noses. And it happens often enough so that I'm prepared for it to happen. This is not good.
What is also not good is that others don't tend to see that the world outside my flat has been transformed into a slightly different universe, one which at best, others me, and at worst, threatens. Because it's Christmas and a time of goodwill, I am expected to exhibit all the signs of goodwill, and using the wider-accepted codes (not, for instance, using my own festivals). Many other people have the experience of Rudolph as secular and don't associate Christmas with loneliness and mild bigotry.
So I take on uncomradely behaviour at a time when only those who don't belong take on those traits and I make myself belong even less. Not only do I get blamed, but I blame myself. I joke about it and call it Scroogitudiness, but it's like walking into someone's living room and knowing one is a guest and is breaking the good china out of clumsiness. I'm full of apology. I'm also the poor cousin in the living room, which makes the apology a trifle humiliating.
I do big shopping trips early in the season (mostly already done!) and avoid the public parts of the living room where I can. I seek out places with fewest garlands and Santas and "buy this!" I go to Christmas parties of friends when invited as a guest of a family - this has no discomfort attached, for I know the rules for guest of family. I feel uncomfortable at Christmas parties by many groups or the public because they *do* exclude me, even when I am a member. The exclusion is because Christmas not a universal festival and because I'm one of those for whom it's not universal. The problem with this exclusion is that, all my life, it has had certain tags attached and one of my warnings that I might get the usual comments is that people insist on calling it a Christmas party when they're really thinking of it as an end of year party. If they can't distinguish between the two, then they almost certainly can't see that I'm in their living room and being treated as a poor cousin.
Oddly, it's some of my most religious friends who understand best. They send me home made cards and sometimes give me presents and make me feel comfortable in their living room. Because they're clear about their own religious response to the festival, they're very clear that they're inviting me in, out of love. Those who haven't sorted out the complexity of Christmas don't even realise I'm in their living room, which is why I'm treated as a poor cousin - they think I belong even as their language excludes me.
So, what am I doing this Christmas? The good is that I have Christmas Eve with some close friends. In their living room, as an invited guest, with presents and goodwill. I'm taking some 21 year old Rutherglen vintage port to aid in the jollity. These are very good friends and I do not feel any less than treasured when I'm with them.
On Christmas Day, I'm alone. On Boxing Day, I'm alone. In fact, all the rest of the silly season, I'm alone (except that another alone-friend and I plan to chat online at some stage). I can't turn on the TV until after Boxing Day, for that's still part of the Christmas public living room. I shall be doing things like sorting papers and working and (if I can borrow enough DVDs) watching movies, for there are few choices for a single Jewish non-driver in Canberra (Chinese restaurants are not open here on Christmas - nothing much is open here on Christmas). I am not visiting family, for we are Jewish and do not meet up around Christmas and that would be extending the public living room into my family life, which hurts (although a dozen people suggest it every year). Also, it's my father's birthday on December 26 (he would have turned 90) and Mum doesn't need things made more difficult.
The PhD was wonderful, for it obliterated everything like this - I just did lots of work and finished the degree early. If I had a regular job, I could enjoy the break. But this year is back to normal and so I develop bristling tendencies.
Now I can go back to considering gender, but it was rather interesting to discover threat and how it affects who I am at this time of year.
Much of the time Australia keeps religion out of public places. Now, everything blares Christmas. Some of those who accept notice it and some don't. Some link it to their private festivities and smile. Some see it as a burden to be got through but as something that's part of their culture.
For me, it's like moving through the private lives of others. I can't switch off the religious aspect of it as some do, for I've studied the history of that religion. I also carry with me the baggage of Christmas bigotry past - this is personal baggage. Every time someone has told me I have killed Christ or am not Australian or have a 'special' relationship with money, or am dirty, or should have been killed by Hitler, that stays with me. Mentally, I prepare for those statements and visible changes to the Christianity of the landscape is, unfortunately, one of the warning signs. I didn't realise it, but Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is closely tied to comments about all Jews having big noses. And it happens often enough so that I'm prepared for it to happen. This is not good.
What is also not good is that others don't tend to see that the world outside my flat has been transformed into a slightly different universe, one which at best, others me, and at worst, threatens. Because it's Christmas and a time of goodwill, I am expected to exhibit all the signs of goodwill, and using the wider-accepted codes (not, for instance, using my own festivals). Many other people have the experience of Rudolph as secular and don't associate Christmas with loneliness and mild bigotry.
So I take on uncomradely behaviour at a time when only those who don't belong take on those traits and I make myself belong even less. Not only do I get blamed, but I blame myself. I joke about it and call it Scroogitudiness, but it's like walking into someone's living room and knowing one is a guest and is breaking the good china out of clumsiness. I'm full of apology. I'm also the poor cousin in the living room, which makes the apology a trifle humiliating.
I do big shopping trips early in the season (mostly already done!) and avoid the public parts of the living room where I can. I seek out places with fewest garlands and Santas and "buy this!" I go to Christmas parties of friends when invited as a guest of a family - this has no discomfort attached, for I know the rules for guest of family. I feel uncomfortable at Christmas parties by many groups or the public because they *do* exclude me, even when I am a member. The exclusion is because Christmas not a universal festival and because I'm one of those for whom it's not universal. The problem with this exclusion is that, all my life, it has had certain tags attached and one of my warnings that I might get the usual comments is that people insist on calling it a Christmas party when they're really thinking of it as an end of year party. If they can't distinguish between the two, then they almost certainly can't see that I'm in their living room and being treated as a poor cousin.
Oddly, it's some of my most religious friends who understand best. They send me home made cards and sometimes give me presents and make me feel comfortable in their living room. Because they're clear about their own religious response to the festival, they're very clear that they're inviting me in, out of love. Those who haven't sorted out the complexity of Christmas don't even realise I'm in their living room, which is why I'm treated as a poor cousin - they think I belong even as their language excludes me.
So, what am I doing this Christmas? The good is that I have Christmas Eve with some close friends. In their living room, as an invited guest, with presents and goodwill. I'm taking some 21 year old Rutherglen vintage port to aid in the jollity. These are very good friends and I do not feel any less than treasured when I'm with them.
On Christmas Day, I'm alone. On Boxing Day, I'm alone. In fact, all the rest of the silly season, I'm alone (except that another alone-friend and I plan to chat online at some stage). I can't turn on the TV until after Boxing Day, for that's still part of the Christmas public living room. I shall be doing things like sorting papers and working and (if I can borrow enough DVDs) watching movies, for there are few choices for a single Jewish non-driver in Canberra (Chinese restaurants are not open here on Christmas - nothing much is open here on Christmas). I am not visiting family, for we are Jewish and do not meet up around Christmas and that would be extending the public living room into my family life, which hurts (although a dozen people suggest it every year). Also, it's my father's birthday on December 26 (he would have turned 90) and Mum doesn't need things made more difficult.
The PhD was wonderful, for it obliterated everything like this - I just did lots of work and finished the degree early. If I had a regular job, I could enjoy the break. But this year is back to normal and so I develop bristling tendencies.
Now I can go back to considering gender, but it was rather interesting to discover threat and how it affects who I am at this time of year.
gillpolack @ 2012-12-06T23:35:00
Thank you, those friends who recommended the book by Cordelia Fine. It's so useful and so thoughtful and makes sense of why the cultures I look at work in the way they do. It also makes sense of why I work in the way I do, which is a worry. I borrowed the library's copy, but it's obviously a book I will have to own, one day. Add cultural history and analysis to the work she pulls together concerning gender and things like stereotype threat and a whole host of things make sense.
December 5, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-12-06T10:49:00
One of the side-effects about attending critique groups and teaching is that you get to see some of the assumptions that other writers make about their work. My big insight for this term is that quite a few writers (at various levels of experience) are quite happy to splatter blood everywhere or create a zombie-infested rainforest, but they want the core characters to be nice and, ideally, a perfected version of themselves. I was criticised last night for creating a negative point-of-View character, but I was writing about fear and there aren't nearly enough stories where the person who is scared gets a happy ending without being 100% sympathetic. In other words, in many recent stories, fear has been made pretty. And it isn't pretty. The moment a work of fiction becomes a character study (and not all fiction is about characters) then the results of the fear should start to manifest, however unpretty they are.
The same desire has appeared in three recent writing classes as well as in the crit group: so many writers I'm encountering want main characters to be sweet or adorable (or both!). They're investing too much into this desire for niceness and not thinking of the consequences to the story. In the case of this draft story by me, the consequences of 'fixing' my main character would have been a complete breakdown in the credibility of the disfunctionality of the family that's at the heart of the tale: you can't have an abusive family and not pay prices for it. Also, a person who is scared is not nice. From inside their head they can look appalling: self-centred; passive; accepting of the unacceptable; full of pain; full of complaints; unable to deal with ordinary events. My tale is too complex for the length, currently, but that's a different matter and I'm working on solving that. I'm not going to change my scared main character.
I do need to think about ways of teaching, however, that the world is not a safe place and that some stories require not-safe character choices. Also, I'm wondering if this reaction I'm seeing so regularly is related to the increase in sexism and racism I'm also encountering. We're supposed to be nice and some people are taking on those values as a way of dealing with the hostile universe (if we're nice then people won't hurt us - I've seen that a lot elsewhere - it's a sort of mantra for dealing with anti-Semitism in some circles - the problems don't diminish but one can hope to be the Jewish best friend whose life the bigot saves) rather than asking "Why?"
It's not readers demanding niceness in this case, nor is it publishers, it's writers. They become unintentionally complicit in repressing conventions for representing anger and difference and challenge.
If we can't make damaged human beings the centre of our stories, then where do the damaged human beings find stories about them and where do we find our cultural narratives for understanding these people and their lives? Where does our society find its healing? How do we all move on from this bad place?
I'm not saying that all characters need to be hurting and damaged and not easy to get on with. I am saying that "I don't like this person" or "I don't want to extrapolate this subject fully because then I'd have to write a damaged person as point-of-view character" are really bad reasons for writing niceness. Targetting specific groups of readers or writing to a specific genre are arguable. Wanting writing to consist of unicorn chasers is not.
The same desire has appeared in three recent writing classes as well as in the crit group: so many writers I'm encountering want main characters to be sweet or adorable (or both!). They're investing too much into this desire for niceness and not thinking of the consequences to the story. In the case of this draft story by me, the consequences of 'fixing' my main character would have been a complete breakdown in the credibility of the disfunctionality of the family that's at the heart of the tale: you can't have an abusive family and not pay prices for it. Also, a person who is scared is not nice. From inside their head they can look appalling: self-centred; passive; accepting of the unacceptable; full of pain; full of complaints; unable to deal with ordinary events. My tale is too complex for the length, currently, but that's a different matter and I'm working on solving that. I'm not going to change my scared main character.
I do need to think about ways of teaching, however, that the world is not a safe place and that some stories require not-safe character choices. Also, I'm wondering if this reaction I'm seeing so regularly is related to the increase in sexism and racism I'm also encountering. We're supposed to be nice and some people are taking on those values as a way of dealing with the hostile universe (if we're nice then people won't hurt us - I've seen that a lot elsewhere - it's a sort of mantra for dealing with anti-Semitism in some circles - the problems don't diminish but one can hope to be the Jewish best friend whose life the bigot saves) rather than asking "Why?"
It's not readers demanding niceness in this case, nor is it publishers, it's writers. They become unintentionally complicit in repressing conventions for representing anger and difference and challenge.
If we can't make damaged human beings the centre of our stories, then where do the damaged human beings find stories about them and where do we find our cultural narratives for understanding these people and their lives? Where does our society find its healing? How do we all move on from this bad place?
I'm not saying that all characters need to be hurting and damaged and not easy to get on with. I am saying that "I don't like this person" or "I don't want to extrapolate this subject fully because then I'd have to write a damaged person as point-of-view character" are really bad reasons for writing niceness. Targetting specific groups of readers or writing to a specific genre are arguable. Wanting writing to consist of unicorn chasers is not.
December 4, 2012
Courses first semeseter next year
You already know I'm teaching in Queensland one rather wonderful weekend in March. I'm teaching a workshop at the Writers' Centre in Canberra a couple of weeks earlier. I'm teaching my wonderful Wednesday students.
This is what else is on:
I have a course all about novels (lots of tools that will help write novels - not walking someone through writing one of their own): http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/literature/Writing%20anovelapproach.pdf
I have a brand new you-beaut course on the Middle Ages, which will be copiously illustrated and full of charming anecdotes. I may well have some rather interesting show-and-tell material to illuminate this course -:insert evil laugh here:. The typos on the course outline are not part of the course - I'm realising that sometimes they just happen, but they do annoy me when the get through - if people want, though, I can take a brief detour via typo-equivalents for the Middle Ages: http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/history/Medievalplaces.pdf
And because people have been casting longing looks in my direction and dropping heavy hints, a food history course is in the program. There will be recipes. This one of all of them would make a rather good present, for then you get your sister/brother/evil relative to cook dinner for you and tell you about the origins of margarine (there will be no recipes for margarine): http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/history/Thetasteofhistory.pdf
PS I'm getting five bits of bad news and then one of good right now. Could someone please switch those ratios round?
This is what else is on:
I have a course all about novels (lots of tools that will help write novels - not walking someone through writing one of their own): http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/literature/Writing%20anovelapproach.pdf
I have a brand new you-beaut course on the Middle Ages, which will be copiously illustrated and full of charming anecdotes. I may well have some rather interesting show-and-tell material to illuminate this course -:insert evil laugh here:. The typos on the course outline are not part of the course - I'm realising that sometimes they just happen, but they do annoy me when the get through - if people want, though, I can take a brief detour via typo-equivalents for the Middle Ages: http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/history/Medievalplaces.pdf
And because people have been casting longing looks in my direction and dropping heavy hints, a food history course is in the program. There will be recipes. This one of all of them would make a rather good present, for then you get your sister/brother/evil relative to cook dinner for you and tell you about the origins of margarine (there will be no recipes for margarine): http://www.anu.edu.au/cce/cecourses/outlines/history/Thetasteofhistory.pdf
PS I'm getting five bits of bad news and then one of good right now. Could someone please switch those ratios round?
gillpolack @ 2012-12-05T13:36:00
Since yesterday was so very difficult (not without redemption, but difficult) I pushed my writing students one step closer to the short story by making them write narratives about my day. They mourned (with smiles) that Evil Teacher was back and wrote me developing tree roots and my tree self being attacked by manic axe-wielding chimpanzees. I also fell down stairs and was attacked by pterodactyls. We remembered that it was Pickled Children's Day tomorrow and so we talked about Nicholas, about Smyrna and Bari and the development of the Santa story. I totally demonstrated my evil credentials when I pointed out that while we had just proved that Santa existed, we had also proven he was dead. They consoled themselves by learning about the role of Devil's Advocate.
We did much more than that. Our poetry today was writing in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, for instance, which most of the poets in the class really hated (which I found interesting). It's not a form that's terribly comfortable for English, I suspect. Metre is easier, for one can get into a rhythm and use the underlying beat of the language.
Word of the day was 'polyglot', which gave me an excuse to explore where whole groups of English words come from and how some groups are more prestigious than others.
And now I'm eating rice steamed with artichoke hearts, tabasco and some of the turkey broth I'm making.
We did much more than that. Our poetry today was writing in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, for instance, which most of the poets in the class really hated (which I found interesting). It's not a form that's terribly comfortable for English, I suspect. Metre is easier, for one can get into a rhythm and use the underlying beat of the language.
Word of the day was 'polyglot', which gave me an excuse to explore where whole groups of English words come from and how some groups are more prestigious than others.
And now I'm eating rice steamed with artichoke hearts, tabasco and some of the turkey broth I'm making.
December 3, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-12-04T13:42:00
I want to give friends a honey cake recipe for Chanukah less than most people want to receive their Easter eggs under the Christmas tree. My calendar says I make honey cake for Jewish New Year and for special occasions (like engagements and weddings) and all the rest of the year it doesn't fit. So I don't care how many friends ask me for the recipe (which I last posted here a few months ago, anyway), they are not getting the honey cake recipe for Chanukah. It's not on the list of eight things. It's not seasonal. It's very inappropriate. The whole idea of a festival is to do things that fit that festival, not to make all the year into one big honeycakefest. The food you should be eating from Saturday night is all the deep fried stuff, not the stuff with fruit and sweetness. You could have asked me for a doughnut recipe or a fried pastry recipe, though I'd really rather people asked for things I've already sorted - that's why I offered a choice from a prepared list, after all, because I'm very busy and things keep going wrong and I don't want to turn something fun into a burden.
You can have eight bookmarks (one for each day of the festival), because bookmarks are on the list. My Scroogitudiness, however, has now reached an advanced stage (I admit, I'm having a seriously bad day in other ways, financially, physically, and by someone throwing a casual anti-Semitic remark in my direction, the last of which is not uncommon at this time of year) and I refuse to add presents to the eight I've listed and I specially refuse to add unseasonal recipes to the presents.
Perhaps I shouldn't be giving presents at all? Is this what people are trying to tell me? Or that I should keep all my festivals private and offline? I guess I'm trying to work out the reason behind friends asking me for Easter eggs at Christmas when the presents have already been put under the tree - it just doesn't make sense to me.
You can have eight bookmarks (one for each day of the festival), because bookmarks are on the list. My Scroogitudiness, however, has now reached an advanced stage (I admit, I'm having a seriously bad day in other ways, financially, physically, and by someone throwing a casual anti-Semitic remark in my direction, the last of which is not uncommon at this time of year) and I refuse to add presents to the eight I've listed and I specially refuse to add unseasonal recipes to the presents.
Perhaps I shouldn't be giving presents at all? Is this what people are trying to tell me? Or that I should keep all my festivals private and offline? I guess I'm trying to work out the reason behind friends asking me for Easter eggs at Christmas when the presents have already been put under the tree - it just doesn't make sense to me.
gillpolack @ 2012-12-04T08:44:00
I'm starting to develop Scroogitude again, it seems. It was funny forty years ago when someone called an end-of-year party a 'not-a-Christmas' party. These days it tells me that I'm wrong to be different. One person makes the joke each and every year - some years everyone makes the joke - and some years the deciders-of-such things decide that it is a Christmas party and we others must just deal. Yet they are the ones who resolutely refuse to deal when I have my own holy-days and parties.
I've been invited to my friends for Christmas this year. I love celebrating it. I love it when I get to be a visitor in someone else's culture. I don't like it when it's expected that I'll find my own otherness funny.
I am fighting Scroogitudiness with all my heart. I and my headcold are both fighting it, in fact. I think the best way of fighting it is to give presents. It doesn't matter where you live, if Australia Post can reach you, then you may have presents. I'll post them next week and will give them all away (ie if only one person wants a present from a certain class, they get a lovely bundle containing them all). The tone of my presents this year is somewhat Colonialist. This is the closest I ever get to making a subtle point.
1. National Library of Australia postcards, reproducing a page from a c1500 Book of Hours
2. Banksia pods (only two) from plants from very close to where the First Fleet landed (Sydneysiders may not request these, for they can collect their own)
3. Fridge magnets containing Middle French proverbs (titles available on request)
4. Bookmarks containing Middle French proverbs (titles available on request)
5. My usual really daft version of the Chanukah story, posted to this blog
6. One of my family's Jewish Christmas recipes (either cake or pudding, whichever I find first)
7. A dredel (cheap and plastic)
8. A recipe for latkes (blogged)
You may ask for as many as you like. I will use the magic sparkly black* sorting hat if I must, or allocate fairly, or spin a dredel to determine who gets what if an item is in high demand.
All requests must be in the comments on LJ or on FB by the time I wake up on Sunday. No correspondence may be entered into, but bad jokes are fine. Also, Christmas presents and cards are fine (I thought I ought to make this clear since people seem to assume they can other me verbally but that I'll be offended by cards and presents).
Chanukah doesn't start til Saturday night, so you have heaps of time to develop anti-Chanukah Scroogitudiness if you feel so inclined. Although it looks a bit daft to develop anti-Chanukah Scroogitudiness, since it's such a minor festival. What you should do is next year strike against honey cake.
*Scroogitudiness demands black
I've been invited to my friends for Christmas this year. I love celebrating it. I love it when I get to be a visitor in someone else's culture. I don't like it when it's expected that I'll find my own otherness funny.
I am fighting Scroogitudiness with all my heart. I and my headcold are both fighting it, in fact. I think the best way of fighting it is to give presents. It doesn't matter where you live, if Australia Post can reach you, then you may have presents. I'll post them next week and will give them all away (ie if only one person wants a present from a certain class, they get a lovely bundle containing them all). The tone of my presents this year is somewhat Colonialist. This is the closest I ever get to making a subtle point.
1. National Library of Australia postcards, reproducing a page from a c1500 Book of Hours
2. Banksia pods (only two) from plants from very close to where the First Fleet landed (Sydneysiders may not request these, for they can collect their own)
3. Fridge magnets containing Middle French proverbs (titles available on request)
4. Bookmarks containing Middle French proverbs (titles available on request)
5. My usual really daft version of the Chanukah story, posted to this blog
6. One of my family's Jewish Christmas recipes (either cake or pudding, whichever I find first)
7. A dredel (cheap and plastic)
8. A recipe for latkes (blogged)
You may ask for as many as you like. I will use the magic sparkly black* sorting hat if I must, or allocate fairly, or spin a dredel to determine who gets what if an item is in high demand.
All requests must be in the comments on LJ or on FB by the time I wake up on Sunday. No correspondence may be entered into, but bad jokes are fine. Also, Christmas presents and cards are fine (I thought I ought to make this clear since people seem to assume they can other me verbally but that I'll be offended by cards and presents).
Chanukah doesn't start til Saturday night, so you have heaps of time to develop anti-Chanukah Scroogitudiness if you feel so inclined. Although it looks a bit daft to develop anti-Chanukah Scroogitudiness, since it's such a minor festival. What you should do is next year strike against honey cake.
*Scroogitudiness demands black
December 2, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-12-03T11:43:00
I'm going through tapes still and am rediscovering my time in Canada. The tape says "Monty Python" but it's mostly my sister. My kid sister met the man of her dreams and was told to tell me about it because I'd missed the whole engagement thing (since they couldn't wait the few weeks before I returned, which probably set the pattern for me not getting to major family events since then). At any rate, Suzie sent me a tape, telling me all about everything. Mum and Dad and Grandma were in the background, making sure that Suzie didn't forget anything. They covered Rodney's height and weight and computer and car. "Skinny as a bloody beanpole" interjected my father. My sister pointed out that the beanpole is only skinny, not bloody.
The wonder is Dad in the background, and Grandma saying "Hi Gill, how are you. We'll see you soon." Grandma is in seventh heaven over the wedding, which was old-fashioned.
Grandma made a honey cake and gefilte fish for the engagement party, and Auntie Joan made chocolate (which they had sampled). Grandma is now giving prompts and telling Suzie what to tell me. Right now they're telling me that one of the bomb blasts targeted at Australian Jews got Rodney's cousin (I had forgotten this - it was a letter bomb, from memory) and Australian doctors could do nothing, but an Israeli hospital saved him, so they asked for donations for the hospital instead of pressies.
Dad's a bit cheeky and very cheerful. He made sure I knew my brother-in-law's weight and height. He'd just turned 60 and was about to be diagnosed with cancer. Or he had just been diagnosed. I'm not sure. He was throwing out papers in the background, which Suzie commented was unlike him.
I rather suspect my mother will want a copy of this. Maybe my sister, too, and my nieces.
There are very few recordings with Dad. This is a special find. It's a shame Suzie threw Dad out of the room partway through, so that she could tell me something. It was such a special moment to hear his voice.
ETA: I'm guilty of wishful thinking. This tape was from 1986 and Dad died in 1988 - he was already suffering and was diagnosed by then. He had turned 60 when I was elsewhere overseas. I need to sort out my chronologies for the 1980s - somehow they've all got tangled.
The wonder is Dad in the background, and Grandma saying "Hi Gill, how are you. We'll see you soon." Grandma is in seventh heaven over the wedding, which was old-fashioned.
Grandma made a honey cake and gefilte fish for the engagement party, and Auntie Joan made chocolate (which they had sampled). Grandma is now giving prompts and telling Suzie what to tell me. Right now they're telling me that one of the bomb blasts targeted at Australian Jews got Rodney's cousin (I had forgotten this - it was a letter bomb, from memory) and Australian doctors could do nothing, but an Israeli hospital saved him, so they asked for donations for the hospital instead of pressies.
Dad's a bit cheeky and very cheerful. He made sure I knew my brother-in-law's weight and height. He'd just turned 60 and was about to be diagnosed with cancer. Or he had just been diagnosed. I'm not sure. He was throwing out papers in the background, which Suzie commented was unlike him.
I rather suspect my mother will want a copy of this. Maybe my sister, too, and my nieces.
There are very few recordings with Dad. This is a special find. It's a shame Suzie threw Dad out of the room partway through, so that she could tell me something. It was such a special moment to hear his voice.
ETA: I'm guilty of wishful thinking. This tape was from 1986 and Dad died in 1988 - he was already suffering and was diagnosed by then. He had turned 60 when I was elsewhere overseas. I need to sort out my chronologies for the 1980s - somehow they've all got tangled.
gillpolack @ 2012-12-03T10:06:00
I had a list for today, but I've been so busy tidying that I've put it somewhere safe. Today is an at-home day and I have lots of things to fill it. I've already listened to Smetana and Bizet and those tapes are now out (they weren't hiding anything) and very early this morning I found a cassette that claimed to be Mussorgsky but turned out to be a reading by JRRT. If that reading's still commercially available then my tape will go, but if it isn't then I don't know what to do. Likewise I'm not sure what to do with the Canadian radio comedy from the 80s. Friends sent it to me, for we used to go to recordings together. They recorded it straight from the radio - it's never been available commercially. The classical music is easier: they were copies of records we had at home, made specifically for me to travel. So I can listen to them one last time, then aim to buy new recordings on new media, when my life settles.
I have some edits to do today, then a final of an article to be emailed. Then I have a solid review to finish reading for, one review to write and a BiblioBuffet essay. Plus I have that pile of papers...
The problem with sorting and tidying is that I always get left with *that* pile of papers... It's not a bad one, as things go, it's just that the weather is finally comfortable and my body is declaring sleeptime. Sleeptime tonight, work today. Also much coffee.
I have some edits to do today, then a final of an article to be emailed. Then I have a solid review to finish reading for, one review to write and a BiblioBuffet essay. Plus I have that pile of papers...
The problem with sorting and tidying is that I always get left with *that* pile of papers... It's not a bad one, as things go, it's just that the weather is finally comfortable and my body is declaring sleeptime. Sleeptime tonight, work today. Also much coffee.
December 1, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-12-02T17:56:00
kitzen_kat
picked me up late this morning and I finally met Pepe. Pepe is a gentle, funny and very lively British shorthair who has a foot and shoe fetish. He wanted to creep right into my crocs (swollen day requires big shoes) but didn't fit. We had a cuppa, Mia made me a picture for my fridge and then we went shopping and to the library. I'm now equipped foodwise for the next week or so, and I also have batteries so that I can diminish my youth.
'Diminishing my youth' sounds more drastic than it is. When I left home, I had a small but marvellously good cassette player/radio (which I called the gecko-blaster). It got me through a winter in Toronto, a winter in London and a summer in Paris. It was my stalwart friend for four years in Sydney. It was a wonderful companion. One of my sisters borrowed it and tied it to a luggage rack on a fast car. It ended up spattered over the Hume Highway somewhere. I couldn't find a replacement (and had no money), so I bought a cheap cassette recorder from Target and almost forgot my cassette collection. I'd look through it when I taught courses that required the teaching player (which is what I'm using now), but other machines had superseded it.
I never threw any of my cassettes out, however. I had so many of them! The commercial recordings of things I knew I wouldn't miss have already gone to one of my students (who expressed a very strong interest in any classical music I could spare). I now have just a drawer and a half, and the labels are unreliable and they cover the music of the first twenty-one years of my life.
I bought batteries for the player today when shopping and am determined to listen my way through my tapes. Most of them will go out (or to my student) but illegal recordings of my high school orchestral attempts will hopefully be turned into electronic matter. Then I shall get rid of cassettes and player and have more space without a diminution in lifestyle.
The cheap replacement player isn't as good as my gecko-blaster, but it's got an oddly fine tone. The music sounds as if it's being played on a 1960s record player.
What's very cool about listening to this is that I get to hear the music of my youth. Right now it's a piano concerto by Grieg and in a moment it will be Peer Gynt, which has always been a favourite (since I was about ten, which is long enough to be always) and which is presumably why I have this tape.
Expect updates on my listening until this process is finished! If any tape appeals to you, shout out as you hear it, for all but the very personal will be gone, in just a few days.
