Gillian Polack's Blog, page 199
March 22, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-03-23T08:25:00
To Nick Evans: I'm sorry for saying the things I said. I didn't realise that it would hurt so much. I was being sarcastic at your expense, because I really hated the name calling in a post you wrote. I will refrain from being sarcastic at your expense in future, and I'm sorry it hurt so much.
What I said originally that hurt him (so that we're clear) is this: http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/871811.html in October 2011: "Also, watch Cranky Nick's blog, for last time I did a post like this he disliked it. This year I'm actively collecting adjectives about me from people who I've never met and so I await his comments with interest. I mentioned my own work in the post I did last year, so let me do that now, for consistency. All my published work for 2011 is non-fiction and not eligible for Aurealis. All my personal favourite essays/reviews are on BiblioBuffet this time around. My personal favourites, however, are of pretty limited use, as they are what I like of what I've written."
And this (on Twitter 21 March 2012) - "Careful CrankyNick will call you vile names!"
And, finally, yesterday, I wrote a third comment. I wrote it immediately prior to sending him that apology and before he wrote me a second letter.
What I said yesterday did not use any names, if you will remember, for I was about to write an apology (which I did) and I was expressing my upset about the whole thing. Just to make it really clear, the only things I said about Nick Evans were the above. In his first email, Mr Evans called me an 'arsehole.' He stands by his language because the below was unacceptable.
"I started today with an email in which I was called names. I'm so not going into it except that I am not guilty of what I am supposed to be guilty of and it topped off my week (and now the person is going to be upset that I mentioned it in public, even though I have not said who it is or what they were talking about - this is, after all, one of those months). Normally I would just bite my tongue, but I suspect I'm a bit closer to the edge than I want to be. My eye and teeth are making my body vulnerable, the thief made my physical surrounds vulnerable and now my character is vulnerable. Also, I have PMT and things *hurt*."
Now you have the whole story from my end, except the private letters. This will make it easier for concerned parties (and I assume that there are concerned parties, otherwise he wouldn't be so upset) to make their own minds up on the issue.
I am sincere about the apology, and won't be posting about him again.
Women's History Month - guest blog post from Thersa Matsuura
by Thersa Matsuura
The eyes. I'm not sure what I was Googling when I first ran across Jodee Knowles. But I remember the picture and I remember the eyes. The piece of artwork was titled "The Vicious Lightness", a woman in a dress, looking back over her shoulder, her hair (turban?) a black upward swoop that matched the black of her dress. And the thing you noticed most, the eyes.
I have lived in Japan for the last twenty-two years and am quite used to those big manga and anime doe-eyes that sparkle as if lit by a half dozen different light sources. And I must admit that at first glance I thought maybe Ms. Knowles' picture was just more of the same. But it wasn't.
Jodee Knowles' eyes, while over-sized, are rheumy and old and behind them lies a world of hurt. Long necks, gaunt faces, frowning mouths and crooked bodies. It's all deliciously dark. But there are also patterns and splashes of color and sometimes you can find something achingly comical or quirky in a piece.
After scouring the Internet for her artwork I learned a little bit about the artist herself. And while I'll admit it wasn't much I did glean some information from the interviews and articles. She's still quite young (early twenties) and yet her fame kind of swooped in, picked her up, and took off.
I can't imagine what that must do to someone's head, to be sharing exhibits with other artists one day and then selling out your own shows the next. I can think of plenty of people who have caved under less pressure than that. However, from everything I've read and seen she's not only handling it all with humility and grace she continues to focus on her art and grow with each new show.
I loved her Chimera pieces in the show she had just last October and now I see she has a new exhibit March 10th entitled "One Flesh". The woman is prolific too. I really enjoy watching her grow and experiment as an artist and look forward to what she'll be tackling in the years to come. No matter how far she stretches I feel confident I can recognize her work at a glance. She already has her signature style and, of course, there will always be those haunting eyes.
*Jodee Knowles' Homepage:
http://www.jodeeknowles.com/jodee_murals.htm
*Jodee Knowles interview and Exhibit on March 10th at the Blank Space Gallery:
http://oystermag.com/jodee-knowles-interview
Thersa Matsuura lives in Shizuoka, Japan with her family. Her book A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories is a collection of short stories about Japanese superstition, folklore, and mythical creatures.
http://thersamatsuura.com/
gillpolack @ 2012-03-22T15:19:00
Such is the joy of the life!
Anyhow, if anyone knows where I can find the following or can help me get the following, I'd be very grateful:
replica coins (Medieval and Roman) - the Museum of London has them, and so does the Richard III Museum in York. I had quite a lot and they are all, all gone. I needed more and now I have none. There's a moral in that.
replica arrowheads and spearheads - only really well attested ones. I got mine at Leeds after a long, long talk with the smith
a medium sized purse (11th-14th century style) - again, I got mine at Leeds
replica pins and needles - these aren't so Medieval - in fact, some of them were significantly later (though none later than the 17th century). I had a paper that contained a lovely row of mixed ones. All were well attested, and I had plans to use one of them this week, which is why the pouch was out and which I rather suspect is why the whole lot has walked.
an old-fashioned poesie ring (not quite Medieval, but close - what I was after was a replica, but someone sent me the wrong thing, many years ago)
a Thomas a Beckett pewter reproduction pilgrim brooch
a replica of an Eleanor timetelling ring (silver) - I miss this most of all
a simple ring-brooch
PS I need to talk to http://togs-from-bogs.blogspot.com.au/ about the needles I suspect.
PPS I have located a source for the replica of that exact-same pilgrim badge, so that's another thing I'll be able to replace easily. Yay!! The badge has a special importance, because it was from Elizabeth Chadwick and part of a really evil set of ongoing jokes, so I'm glad it was so easy to locate.
gillpolack @ 2012-03-22T11:31:00
I've now sorted the very worst of everything and identified some more missing stuff. What did the thief want with my crochet lace stuff? The assessor said that stealing wine is predictable and at least the thief had fine taste - Chambers fortifieds and a Pfeiffers dessert wine. Some things I'll get replacements for, others I get vouchers. I might get a cheque for the remainder - I'm not sure - but only one of the items looks as if it might be outside what I'm covered for at this stage, so it could have been a lot worse. The materials I need to work with will be expedited, and the insurance is going to fix the problems with the curtains and replace the lock on the door. Next week will again be all about phonecalls and sorting, but we're making really good progress.
The AAMI people are really nice. My assessor came straight from Wagga where he's dealing with floods, and he made time to sort my stuff out and then he goes back to floodland (he must handle the region - not a good time to handle this region).
March 21, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-03-22T09:01:00
Intimate apparel that has been flung to all corners of a room is more distressing than papers that have toppled or boxes that need lids on. This is worth knowing. Also worth doing is putting together a profile of the character of the thief. He is appearing in a novel, and dying a nasty death - of this I am quite certain.
I started today with an email in which I was called names. I'm so not going into it except that I am not guilty of what I am supposed to be guilty of and it topped off my week (and now the person is going to be upset that I mentioned it in public, even though I have not said who it is or what they were talking about - this is, after all, one of those months). Normally I would just bite my tongue, but I suspect I'm a bit closer to the edge than I want to be. My eye and teeth are making my body vulnerable, the thief made my physical surrounds vulnerable and now my character is vulnerable. Also, I have PMT and things *hurt*.
Now that I've grouched, I'll get on with things. If I can fix the idiot stuff, then I can get back to things that matter, like writing and research and worrying about my friends (two of my closest friends need much hugging and support this week - our planets are misaligned, or something).
Last night (just to be fair) was very good indeed. I don't often get out for social events, so dinner and a CSFG meeting were quite magic, especially when it meant time with Janeen, who I don't get to see nearly often enough (for we live a long way apart). I get social life again tomorrow, which means that today is the day I have to get everything under control here. And it isn't. It really isn't. But it will be.
Women's History Mo nth - guest post from Kari Sperring
I must have been about 9 when I first came across Ethel Turner and her novel Seven Little Australians. A television adaptation of it – made by an Australian tv station and bought by the BBC – showed up here on children’s television. My mother and I, both of us addicts of the BBC Classic Serial, watched with growing fascination. And, as soon as possible, I bought the book.
It had, I think, been out of print over here for some years. Certainly, it was not in the library with the other children’s classics: Little Women¸ Treasure Island, Anne of Green Gables, Kidnapped, The Railway Children. And yet to my nine-year-old eyes it belonged right there with them. It was the same sort of book – but better.
The fictional children I grew up with lived restricted lives, lives full of duty to family and society. The March girls, Anne Shirley, Katy of What Katy Did, all spent their days studying and working and being good, or paying for it if they were not. Even in the more recent novels, like the Narnia books or the Swallows and Amazons series, girls were either faux-boys or they were Responsible. Boys were freer, but I didn’t like those books so much. There were no girls in them, or, if they were, they were peripheral and silly.
Turner’s Woolcot family were different. They lived in a bigger world, somehow. This was not the restricted canvas of school and gossipy small town, of the safe sailing lake or camping trip. This world encompassed boat travel as a means of going from A to B, huge open spaces on horseback, and, despite the small-town setting, a household that somehow licensed picnics at a whim, wanderings without adult interference, and a clear sense from the child heroes that adults were not Authorities, but unpredictable and sometimes very unfair individuals who could be negotiated with or outmanoeuvred with every hope of the child coming out on top and feeling all right about it. These children had agency in their lives and they were the better for it.
And, best of all, the girls were the dominant characters. In most of the books I’d read with a mixed cast, the boys took the lead. Girls followed and imitated (and were teased for it) or took on the ‘mother’ role. Not the Woolcots. Meg and Judy – and, in the sequel, Nell – took the lead in almost everything and resisted every attempt by their brothers to dominate or bully them. Judy, wilful and inventive, wild and loving and careless and determined, is the heart of Seven Little Australians. She is the planner and the leader, the person to whom everyone, even the older children and their young stepmother, turned. Of all my other fictional girls, only Anne Shirley was as imaginative and brave – but Anne lived in a world restricted by Christian duty and adult chores. Judy ducked punishment, recognising its unfairness, and led rebellion. She was brave without having to be a tomboy. She seemed like someone I could be friends with.
She was a little scary. Some of her plots were wild and she had an instinct for trouble. But I didn’t think she’d bully me for being nervous. She’d encourage and support me, as she did her sister Meg. In the book, she walks 70 miles home from school, almost penniless and unsupported and Turner approves her action all the way (although she does not show it). I loved and admired Judy’s courage. Meg, though, was my favourite. Quieter than Judy, dreamier, she seemed more approachable. She was a girl like me who liked being female, but, unlike Beth March or Susan of Swallows and Amazons, her femininity did not condemn her to being little mother. She could ride and romp with the others, and plot and talk back. She was a real girl, not a baby saint.
I discovered years and years later that Ethel Turner was only 22 when she wrote Seven Little Australians, and that she had set out to make her living as a writer at 18, beginning and promoting her own magazine. She had grown up knowing that women must look after themselves. Her twice-widowed mother had emigrated to Australia with three small daughters and Ethel grew up knowing she must work to survive. Her heroines do not focus on household chores: they, like her, live in a wider world where they may have to run a sheep station or manage a large house or go out to work. Their horizons were wide, somehow: they contained marriage and family, yes, but also the possibility of work after marriage, of exploration, of expansion. As children, they move from their ramshackle, anarchic family house to the hugeness of the outback, from concerns with nursery food to the very real dangers of nature in ways that are very believable.
I admired Judy and loved Meg and envied all the Woolcots their vast skies and freedom to do as they pleased. I admire Turner, too, for her courage and determination and her sense that she could write and write well. I’m glad I found her book. It opened doors for me onto a different kind of childhood.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favourite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of 8 (12 pages long and about ponies). She started writing fantasy in her teens, inspired by J R R Tolkien, Alexandre Dumas and Thomas Mallory. She has published short stories in several British anthologies: Her first novel Living with Ghosts was published by DAW books in March 2009: her second, The Grass King’s Concubine, comes out, also from DAW, in August 2012.
She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. She’s currently at work on her third and fourht novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring .com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_.
gillpolack @ 2012-03-21T16:48:00
It's going to take me a few more days to set to rights. Stuff that didn't look so bad turns out to be strange. I'm doing one corner at a time and taking it easy. I'm making lists of things that are missing (I didn't notice that all my rings were gone, and now I need to remember what rings I had - this is surprisingly hard - was my one ring with a facetted semi-previous stone a topaz, or am I misremembering, did my turquoise/silver ring come from America or Canada?) and things that are damaged (at first I thought nothing was damaged, but looking more closely, things are not that simple).
*because this week caught up with me - between the eyes and the break-in I am somewhat steamrollered
March 20, 2012
Women's History Month - blog guest, Kylie Chan
And I would worship the ground he (had to be a he, right?) walked on. Every storyline was completely new and utterly mind-blowing. Space exploration, aliens, the future – all of this enthralled me. I went to the library and looked for stories by D. C. Fontana and that led me (in a roundabout way) to Fontana Science Fiction, a publishing imprint of the time which had nothing to do with her but was producing leading edge spec fic. In between Star Trek and my newly discovered library books, I was in heaven.
It wasn't until years later that I discovered that the D stood for Dorothy. She started out as Gene Roddenberry's secretary (at that time it would have been 'of course') but went on to write teleplays for just about every show on the television in the sixties, seventies and to some degree the eighties. Not just sci-fi like Star Trek or The Six Million Dollar Man – she worked on Bonanza, Dallas, Kung Fu, Streets of San Francisco, even The Waltons. I watched all of these when I was growing up.
She helped write the first episode of The Next Generation, 'Encounter at Farpoint' (which is being remastered and looks wonderful), and wrote some episodes of DS9. She wrote fiction under the pen-names of Michael Richards and J. Michael Bingham as well.
With the wisdom of hindsight, people have looked back and criticise Ms Fontana's work as being unimaginative, over soap-operatic, 'trite' and 'naïve'. But back then, I was excited and her episodes of Star Trek were the best television I'd ever seen. It was something completely different from anything I'd seen before, and I wanted more.
She led me into the vast world of speculative fiction, and completely changed my life. I wish I'd known at the time that she is a woman; it may have inspired me to start writing much earlier in my own career.
gillpolack @ 2012-03-20T13:44:00
On the phone with my case manager, I explained that I didn't want replacements for jewellery where the story would stop, only for those things that the story would continue.
Addendum: This insurance company is *very* good. They replace things where possible and do all the pricing and stuff themselves. So far, they've also done all the paperwork. And they've worked out which things are a priority for me and which things need time.
March 19, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-03-20T09:58:00
My three things yesterday (in order of appearance) were a cold, the eyething and the break-in. There - I've listed them. Now maybe I can get back to normal life? I miss my usual state of overwork. I like my usual state of overwork!
Except I have to rest. I shall balance bedrest with watching Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is indirectly work, after all. And I can't get to the library to get the next set of books until later.
I should have got those books yesterday, but yesterday was eaten up. I shall apologise to the books when I meet them. I'm up to last checks before the final bit of research, since I rejigged everything when the eye went - today's books are all on the Martin Guerre narrative, just to see how that fits into what I'm doing. If I rest now, I should be able to start reading them later and by the end of the week I won't be impossibly behind. Behind, but not impossibly so.
