Gillian Polack's Blog, page 166
July 30, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-07-31T00:37:00
I have some really excellent news: both my ANU classes are going ahead (although they're both also still open for more enrolments). The one on novel writing starts this Thursday and the one on Medieval women begins in a week.
This means, of course, that Wednesday and Thursday are course preparation days (plus bibliography, I suspect, for of this PhD there will be an end). This means, also of course, that I won't have time to judge entries for my Ms Cellophane competition until Friday. THIS means (of course) that I shall not look at the entries until then, so if any just happen to come in a little late, that's fine. Friday morning, though, I enter into judgement.
This means, of course, that Wednesday and Thursday are course preparation days (plus bibliography, I suspect, for of this PhD there will be an end). This means, also of course, that I won't have time to judge entries for my Ms Cellophane competition until Friday. THIS means (of course) that I shall not look at the entries until then, so if any just happen to come in a little late, that's fine. Friday morning, though, I enter into judgement.
gillpolack @ 2012-07-31T00:22:00
That tape is so very cool. A community of three hundred people and somehow it produced enough talented teens (and pre-teens) to put on these spiels. With music and (for the 1992 one) added public servants and an Easter Bunny invasion.
gillpolack @ 2012-07-30T23:42:00
I'm up to my very last VHS tape. Of the seventeen that weren't commercial, I definitely need two and am thinking about another two. All the rest has been rewatched and is going out. The last one (the one I'm about to rewatch) is rather special. I don't know where the other rather special tapes went - the one of my cousin's barmitzvah, for instance, appears to have gone missing. (Maybe I'll do another hunt tomorrow, just in case there is another cache of tapes, lurking somewhere, but I think not, I think that life has intervened.)
This last tape has a story. So much of my life has stories. I should think about becoming a writer maybe, one day.
In the years when I was writing and not telling anyone, between having a bunch of short stories published and being taken firmly in hand and told my writing needed to be seen, I didn't stop writing. I lived narrative then just as much as I do now, but in a different way. I didn't know there were whole communities of people who shared my interests and even my word addiction. I didn't think I could write (despite an award and publications and well over $500 in cold hard cash) but I was still hopeless addicted to story.
Because of my particular background, I had three rather cool communities with which I was affiliated. One - which you know about - was the changing-the-world community. The ones who decided Australia needed a Women's History Month and did solid work to counter racism and gender inequity. I'm still in touch with some rather wonderful friends from those years, and they are still changing the world. Another (which I'm also still in touch with, though life puts restrictions on my dancing and festival attendance) is the folk community, which is and always will be the nicest bunch of people I have ever, ever met. The third is the Jewish community.
The reasons I'm not very active in the Jewish community are mainly to do with the fact that it takes so much time and energy. I can't be a pillar of a small community and active in NCJW and expect to write. When I put the needs of the community ahead of my own needs, however, the need to tell stories chose the Jewish community in which to manifest.
It started as my own private Purim celebration in 1986, when I was doing that first doctorate and was missing my family while I was in London. That's the story I give you here, when there is enough demand. I adjust it to meet the times and add new jokes, but it's my version from London. It was first performed to a group so small we all fitted into a single room quite comfortably in Mecklenburgh Square. The year after was in Sydney, at International House in someone's flat, and we lost our Mordechai so I took out his songs and gave him a sore throat, which he has manifested ever since. Then we tried a stage play in International House, which is the only time in my life I've been Esther, for everyone agreed that if you had only one Jewish woman in the cast, she had to be Esther. And eventually, I was being a very good public servant in Canberra and the Jewish community tried my earlier version (the adults) and then someone had the bright idea that I could teach the kids and they could write a new one. I think the bright spark was me.
For several years I led the children of the Canberra Jewish community astray. A small group came over to my place once a week and I taught them to write Purim spiels. There was much junk food involved and I could tell many stories of derring-do and saving my home made liqueurs from teenage depredations. There were water pistol fights. There was mayhem. And we wrote plays.
I had a fine time. All of the teens I taught are now upstanding adults, so you can ask them if they did. Some of them have found me on Facebook, so I possibly should not suggest this.
Once the play was written (and in the final year it was written by a brother and sister, sans Gillian, over the summer holiday - their mother told me that it was very disconcerting having them practise witticisms while walking up mountain slopes, "Not you, Mum," M would say, when she would turn a mildly surprised look at her daughter's rude remark. "Haman.") The writers were joined by other children and teens from the community and by a few adults and a full scale play was produced. The largest audience we had was 200, I think.
At least one year the Purim Spiel was filmed. Maybe as many as three years. I was given a copy of the tape as a memory, when the community moved onto other matters. I sort of knew I had it. And now I'm about to watch it again.
This last tape has a story. So much of my life has stories. I should think about becoming a writer maybe, one day.
In the years when I was writing and not telling anyone, between having a bunch of short stories published and being taken firmly in hand and told my writing needed to be seen, I didn't stop writing. I lived narrative then just as much as I do now, but in a different way. I didn't know there were whole communities of people who shared my interests and even my word addiction. I didn't think I could write (despite an award and publications and well over $500 in cold hard cash) but I was still hopeless addicted to story.
Because of my particular background, I had three rather cool communities with which I was affiliated. One - which you know about - was the changing-the-world community. The ones who decided Australia needed a Women's History Month and did solid work to counter racism and gender inequity. I'm still in touch with some rather wonderful friends from those years, and they are still changing the world. Another (which I'm also still in touch with, though life puts restrictions on my dancing and festival attendance) is the folk community, which is and always will be the nicest bunch of people I have ever, ever met. The third is the Jewish community.
The reasons I'm not very active in the Jewish community are mainly to do with the fact that it takes so much time and energy. I can't be a pillar of a small community and active in NCJW and expect to write. When I put the needs of the community ahead of my own needs, however, the need to tell stories chose the Jewish community in which to manifest.
It started as my own private Purim celebration in 1986, when I was doing that first doctorate and was missing my family while I was in London. That's the story I give you here, when there is enough demand. I adjust it to meet the times and add new jokes, but it's my version from London. It was first performed to a group so small we all fitted into a single room quite comfortably in Mecklenburgh Square. The year after was in Sydney, at International House in someone's flat, and we lost our Mordechai so I took out his songs and gave him a sore throat, which he has manifested ever since. Then we tried a stage play in International House, which is the only time in my life I've been Esther, for everyone agreed that if you had only one Jewish woman in the cast, she had to be Esther. And eventually, I was being a very good public servant in Canberra and the Jewish community tried my earlier version (the adults) and then someone had the bright idea that I could teach the kids and they could write a new one. I think the bright spark was me.
For several years I led the children of the Canberra Jewish community astray. A small group came over to my place once a week and I taught them to write Purim spiels. There was much junk food involved and I could tell many stories of derring-do and saving my home made liqueurs from teenage depredations. There were water pistol fights. There was mayhem. And we wrote plays.
I had a fine time. All of the teens I taught are now upstanding adults, so you can ask them if they did. Some of them have found me on Facebook, so I possibly should not suggest this.
Once the play was written (and in the final year it was written by a brother and sister, sans Gillian, over the summer holiday - their mother told me that it was very disconcerting having them practise witticisms while walking up mountain slopes, "Not you, Mum," M would say, when she would turn a mildly surprised look at her daughter's rude remark. "Haman.") The writers were joined by other children and teens from the community and by a few adults and a full scale play was produced. The largest audience we had was 200, I think.
At least one year the Purim Spiel was filmed. Maybe as many as three years. I was given a copy of the tape as a memory, when the community moved onto other matters. I sort of knew I had it. And now I'm about to watch it again.
gillpolack @ 2012-07-30T19:03:00
This degree is tumbling by. It feels as if I agreed to talk to Van about the possibility of it just yesterday. Just today, Van cleared my abstract.
For an Australian PhD, that abstract is the big sign that the end is near, for it signals that the research is finished, that examiners need to be discovered, that only tidying up remains. Tidying up is a lot of work, but still. The end is near. I may yet be a timelord.
For an Australian PhD, that abstract is the big sign that the end is near, for it signals that the research is finished, that examiners need to be discovered, that only tidying up remains. Tidying up is a lot of work, but still. The end is near. I may yet be a timelord.
July 29, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-07-30T13:45:00
Courage is my motto. Well, maybe not. I've found three blank tapes, two tapes of TV from the 1990s that I recorded to watch back at a suitable time, and just one tape that needs keeping. That's nearly 1/3 of the total.
I had completely forgotten that, in the days of the VHS, if I were going to miss TV, I could record it for later viewing. I certainly didn't realise that I had kept any of those tapes. One had an old M*A*S*H* episode on it and many ads for gourmet cuts of meat at $5.99 a kilo. The other started with the end of the Movie Show. Margaret P looked a lot younger, twenty years ago - David S hasn't changed as much. The program I was apparently trying to record was a bunch of klezmer musicians strutting their stuff. It's rather good, so I shall save it and watch it when I get back from my messages. It's still going to go out, for I recorded it purely to watch back the once. I didn't know that 'the once' was going to be nearly 20 years later.
So far, only one tape needs copying, though, and I'm hesitant about it, even though it is dear to me. It is of a folk dance party when I was already on the long downhill slide towards that interesting abyss of a few years ago. Still fit, but getting larger and larger from my various disorders. I was very formidable-looking back then. These days, I'm large, but at that time I looked solid as well. It's very strange seeing a person of tank-like build dancing, insouciantly, and knowing that this person is me. I shall think about this one.
I had completely forgotten that, in the days of the VHS, if I were going to miss TV, I could record it for later viewing. I certainly didn't realise that I had kept any of those tapes. One had an old M*A*S*H* episode on it and many ads for gourmet cuts of meat at $5.99 a kilo. The other started with the end of the Movie Show. Margaret P looked a lot younger, twenty years ago - David S hasn't changed as much. The program I was apparently trying to record was a bunch of klezmer musicians strutting their stuff. It's rather good, so I shall save it and watch it when I get back from my messages. It's still going to go out, for I recorded it purely to watch back the once. I didn't know that 'the once' was going to be nearly 20 years later.
So far, only one tape needs copying, though, and I'm hesitant about it, even though it is dear to me. It is of a folk dance party when I was already on the long downhill slide towards that interesting abyss of a few years ago. Still fit, but getting larger and larger from my various disorders. I was very formidable-looking back then. These days, I'm large, but at that time I looked solid as well. It's very strange seeing a person of tank-like build dancing, insouciantly, and knowing that this person is me. I shall think about this one.
gillpolack @ 2012-07-30T13:16:00
I have messages to run, but I'm wimpish about outside today. The only urgent matter is the one of pain killers and I can get by, I think, even on that front. This means I can do exciting things with all that time freed up today (and tomorrow, well, tomorrow I can run my messages, for they will be urgent) like check old VHS tapes to see what can be chucked and like work on my bibliography. I've already done a bunch of things today.
I may check just one tape and then do my messages anyway, for one thing I've learned these past few years is that leaving things until they're really urgent is a sure sign for getting oneself into big trouble.
And so I leave you on a cliffhanger. What is in that parcel I need to pick up from the post office? (the one I haven't yet mentioned - poor, poor plot structure!)
I may check just one tape and then do my messages anyway, for one thing I've learned these past few years is that leaving things until they're really urgent is a sure sign for getting oneself into big trouble.
And so I leave you on a cliffhanger. What is in that parcel I need to pick up from the post office? (the one I haven't yet mentioned - poor, poor plot structure!)
gillpolack @ 2012-07-29T22:45:00
I took a long break this evening for long phonecalls and am now contemplating work. This means I haven't yet started, but I will, just as soon as I have a cuppa. I meant to watch TV and work on bibliography, but bibliography has been upstaged by drafting an abstract or two. My life is inordinately exciting. Or it will be, if I can't get those abstracts written.
July 28, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-07-29T14:52:00
Today started off as a day of the utter miseries. I get these from time to time because of the challenging combination of perimenopause and depression. If I don't take the right vitamins, or get a virus, or things go wrong around me (or all three, as happened this week) then it all becomes a bit of a strain.
I'm much better now, for I asked my mother for a care package.
"What's a care package?" she wondered.
"Whatever you choose it to be," I said. She's still bewildered, but willing to give it a go. So I'm getting one, once Mum has worked out what one is. This helps.
What also helps is food. I have to be careful with food because I need to lose weight (this is not an optional extra - this is for the heart), and comfort foods are not good for weightloss, but I came back from Sydney with truffle and today I did something I have wanted to do for twenty years.
There is a story behind it.
When I was doing my first doctorate, I was in London in a bitter winter (like Canberra, now, in fact) and a nice family offered me a weekend away. During that weekend I got to walk on the North Sea (for it was frozen at that precise point) and was taken to a rather exclusive restaurant where I tasted truffles for the first time.
The chef made me oeuf-en-cocotte and I wondered what the fuss was about. More recently I've been wondering if the problem was not with the truffle, but with the quantity of truffle used in my oeuf. God forbid that the dearest egg I have ever eaten should be rendered ordinary by too little truffle, but there it was, once I started wondering, I had to know.
Sydney had the right sort of truffle (Canberra does, too, for they come from this region, but my ability to get around by myself right now is a bit restricted, and none of my friends currently seem to have time for foodie explorations) and so I bought fully two grams. One gram is busily creating truffle oil and the other I just used, en cocotte.
One gram scraped over three large eggs (for I couldn't find the right equipment* and so had to improvise and the improvisation fitted three or four eggs, but not one or two) and lashings of butter and I had the dish I should have eaten in 1986. .333(repeating) of a gram for each egg gave me at least five times the truffle that the exclusive chef in the UK had used. And it was total magic.
Not only am I much cheered, I immediately emailed a friend asking if she wanted to visit the markets this week, so that I could obtain more truffle. (For those worried about my bank balance, I used exactly $0.50 worth of truffle for each egg. And truffle season is nearly over, so I'm not going to get to do this again often at all. In fact, I was lucky to get to do it once.)
I'm still not happy, but today really isn't a bad day at all, considering.
*If anyone wants to help me sort my cooking equipment, they can score all my unwanted gourmet equipment as a thank you. This is one thing I cannot do terribly easily, so many things I want to use are in hiding.
I'm much better now, for I asked my mother for a care package.
"What's a care package?" she wondered.
"Whatever you choose it to be," I said. She's still bewildered, but willing to give it a go. So I'm getting one, once Mum has worked out what one is. This helps.
What also helps is food. I have to be careful with food because I need to lose weight (this is not an optional extra - this is for the heart), and comfort foods are not good for weightloss, but I came back from Sydney with truffle and today I did something I have wanted to do for twenty years.
There is a story behind it.
When I was doing my first doctorate, I was in London in a bitter winter (like Canberra, now, in fact) and a nice family offered me a weekend away. During that weekend I got to walk on the North Sea (for it was frozen at that precise point) and was taken to a rather exclusive restaurant where I tasted truffles for the first time.
The chef made me oeuf-en-cocotte and I wondered what the fuss was about. More recently I've been wondering if the problem was not with the truffle, but with the quantity of truffle used in my oeuf. God forbid that the dearest egg I have ever eaten should be rendered ordinary by too little truffle, but there it was, once I started wondering, I had to know.
Sydney had the right sort of truffle (Canberra does, too, for they come from this region, but my ability to get around by myself right now is a bit restricted, and none of my friends currently seem to have time for foodie explorations) and so I bought fully two grams. One gram is busily creating truffle oil and the other I just used, en cocotte.
One gram scraped over three large eggs (for I couldn't find the right equipment* and so had to improvise and the improvisation fitted three or four eggs, but not one or two) and lashings of butter and I had the dish I should have eaten in 1986. .333(repeating) of a gram for each egg gave me at least five times the truffle that the exclusive chef in the UK had used. And it was total magic.
Not only am I much cheered, I immediately emailed a friend asking if she wanted to visit the markets this week, so that I could obtain more truffle. (For those worried about my bank balance, I used exactly $0.50 worth of truffle for each egg. And truffle season is nearly over, so I'm not going to get to do this again often at all. In fact, I was lucky to get to do it once.)
I'm still not happy, but today really isn't a bad day at all, considering.
*If anyone wants to help me sort my cooking equipment, they can score all my unwanted gourmet equipment as a thank you. This is one thing I cannot do terribly easily, so many things I want to use are in hiding.
gillpolack @ 2012-07-29T14:02:00
Photos! I need your photos!
Ms Cellophane, of course. You have until Wednesday!
Ms Cellophane, of course. You have until Wednesday!
gillpolack @ 2012-07-29T00:23:00
I did almost everything I planned to, today. No Medieval gravegoods, but a whole other article in temporary lieu. I've read Thursbitch (Alan Garner) and started a novel by Lilith Saintcrow to boot. Never let it be said I overwork! I can read for fun! Mostly, though, I rested today. One day, I'll feel better for all this rest. Until then, I shall do more reading for fun, in between finishing off bits and pieces and writing and sitting at my computer, pretending I know what I'm doing.
I've solved the problem of what my background viewing is going to be over the next few weeks. I went on the library's website and put myself down for vast quantities of DVDs. None of them were on my priority list, but they're all things that I ought to see. This means that, from Monday, Tuesday to Thursday are about teaching and meetings and the rest of the week is writing and dissertation and etc.
That's my next eight weeks all sorted, in theory. Not that they'll stay sorted, but I can try. What this means is that tomorrow I have to do housework. More housework? Housework again? I hate housework.
I've solved the problem of what my background viewing is going to be over the next few weeks. I went on the library's website and put myself down for vast quantities of DVDs. None of them were on my priority list, but they're all things that I ought to see. This means that, from Monday, Tuesday to Thursday are about teaching and meetings and the rest of the week is writing and dissertation and etc.
That's my next eight weeks all sorted, in theory. Not that they'll stay sorted, but I can try. What this means is that tomorrow I have to do housework. More housework? Housework again? I hate housework.
