Gillian Polack's Blog, page 214
January 4, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-04T21:20:00
I'm editing SF and watching Blake's 7 all at once (and occasionally making public nuisance, obviously). It's very effective. Blake's 7 is the (formalised) speech pattern of my early adulthood and I rather suspect my earliest SF (mostly lost in a computer accident, some published under a pseudonym) sounded somewhat like it. Everyone speaks in careful phrases, and very intelligently. Dialogue contains lots of details, just so that we don't miss anything and the actors work very hard making their lines distinctive. Since we expect different speech patterns now, I get taken out of the reading and can think about what I'm doing. Also, Blake's 7 was never about the special effects - it was always about turning SF into a stage-production, with tensions and ambiguities and one-liners. Right now, I'm listening to it as a radio play, because my back is to the television - it's a lot of fun. Also, it completely works. (And I remember it, which is quite extraordinary, since I haven't seen it since it first came out, which must have been thirty years ago - whole sentences stick, obviously.)
This is a very specific read-through. It pays to have my mind distracted every few pages. Since this novel has a Big Idea underpinning it and it's not the Big Idea that normally goes with SF time travel to the Middle Ages, I really must get the trajectory of the idea right. There's one character in particular who is shaping the paths of peoples' lives without quite knowing it and so her thinking must be crystal clear and her expressions must be, well, the equivalent of telling detail in the matter of daily lives.
I don't know if this novel is going to be my best work or my worst work, but it's teaching me a bunch of skills.
This is a very specific read-through. It pays to have my mind distracted every few pages. Since this novel has a Big Idea underpinning it and it's not the Big Idea that normally goes with SF time travel to the Middle Ages, I really must get the trajectory of the idea right. There's one character in particular who is shaping the paths of peoples' lives without quite knowing it and so her thinking must be crystal clear and her expressions must be, well, the equivalent of telling detail in the matter of daily lives.
I don't know if this novel is going to be my best work or my worst work, but it's teaching me a bunch of skills.
gillpolack @ 2012-01-04T12:25:00
Today is a Friday. I know this because Friday is when minor things go wrong. Lots of minor things. Someone is trying to send me a fax over the telephone. I spilled half a litre of soup. One bag of tomatoes was half rotten and the other not in my grocery order. The ants swarming do not hear me when I threaten them with mirrors. Someone doesn't want to publish one of my novels (I wasn't sure about the fit between the publisher and that novel, to be honest - they normally like more action in their other world fantasies and fewer committees - I need a publisher that can handle committees and strong women). I forget the rest. Too many small, idiot things.
The heat has caught up with me and so the fight has gone out of me. I'm cleaning up messes: my floor is soup-free, I will be refunded for the tomatoes and for the 8 bottles of sugary drink I didn't order and can't possibly use, and so on. Of the many things I had to do yesterday and with which life intervened, I did all but five. Of the many things that went awry this morning, all but two are fixed.
I'm taking 2 hours off this afternoon and doing more messages. Then I'm catching up on yesterday. And then the weather will change and things will go right again...
The heat has caught up with me and so the fight has gone out of me. I'm cleaning up messes: my floor is soup-free, I will be refunded for the tomatoes and for the 8 bottles of sugary drink I didn't order and can't possibly use, and so on. Of the many things I had to do yesterday and with which life intervened, I did all but five. Of the many things that went awry this morning, all but two are fixed.
I'm taking 2 hours off this afternoon and doing more messages. Then I'm catching up on yesterday. And then the weather will change and things will go right again...
January 3, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-04T09:46:00
I've already had three small bits of bad news (very small, two of them) and have decided that the rest of the day will be just fine, to make up. If you would all please join me in ensuring this, we should have international peace and love by lunchtime.
gillpolack @ 2012-01-03T18:07:00
The backlog of mail is coming through. I have three new review books. One of them is dated 2012. I guess those fireworks were serious a couple of days ago.
Two of the new books are mathematical in nature. I was just deploring having forgotten all the maths I learned at school and the world (or Prometheus, the publisher) now conspires to bring my brain to order.
I have only one book to finish for the novel, since the book by Given (the one that has taken forever to arrive) was the fourth book in the mail today and I promptly worked my way through it. It contained nothing new and nothing that will change my direction, but it's good to have checked. It was enjoyable, to boot, which is a good thing on a hot day. Also, it makes a good precursor for that warrior culture book I reviewed a while back. They make sense together. I need to put them next to each other on a shelf and see if tumult ensues.
I have my dental appointment on Friday (not the same day as the funeral) and my big grocery delivery tomorrow. I plan to go to the post office after the groceries have arrived, and I strongly suggest that Chanukah present receivers who have yet to send me snail mail addresses email me or message me if they want their postcards and books.
I'm also watching Jericho. Don't ask me why it's easier to revise writing when watching TV. I suspect it's something to do with being single but having grown up in a large and noisy family. Tomorrow I'm contemplating raising the bar and watching Jason King instead of Jericho, but that depends on the Library.
It sounds very much as if life is mostly back to normal, doesn't it? Although I would be grateful for a snow flurry around about now. It's the exact sort of heat that melts me. It's a graceful melt, but it interferees with my lifestyle.
Two of the new books are mathematical in nature. I was just deploring having forgotten all the maths I learned at school and the world (or Prometheus, the publisher) now conspires to bring my brain to order.
I have only one book to finish for the novel, since the book by Given (the one that has taken forever to arrive) was the fourth book in the mail today and I promptly worked my way through it. It contained nothing new and nothing that will change my direction, but it's good to have checked. It was enjoyable, to boot, which is a good thing on a hot day. Also, it makes a good precursor for that warrior culture book I reviewed a while back. They make sense together. I need to put them next to each other on a shelf and see if tumult ensues.
I have my dental appointment on Friday (not the same day as the funeral) and my big grocery delivery tomorrow. I plan to go to the post office after the groceries have arrived, and I strongly suggest that Chanukah present receivers who have yet to send me snail mail addresses email me or message me if they want their postcards and books.
I'm also watching Jericho. Don't ask me why it's easier to revise writing when watching TV. I suspect it's something to do with being single but having grown up in a large and noisy family. Tomorrow I'm contemplating raising the bar and watching Jason King instead of Jericho, but that depends on the Library.
It sounds very much as if life is mostly back to normal, doesn't it? Although I would be grateful for a snow flurry around about now. It's the exact sort of heat that melts me. It's a graceful melt, but it interferees with my lifestyle.
On Explaining Zombie Ancestry History
If it were a bit less warm, I would present a critical argument here, quoting liberally from the thoughts of people concerning my Zombie Ancestry post. This is because the post was not about the question of whether people ate dangerously decayed food in the Middle Ages. We have regulations to prove that butchers got into trouble for selling such stuff. We have recipes that give us an indication of how flavours were perceived. I'm not going to go into the difference between something with evidence (how much given spices cost, relative to each other and relative to the things that they spice, how much tax on which comestible under what circumstances, what sort of legislation, what sort of cooking and preserving techniques, what sort of recipes) and arguments based on intense feeling but not much evidence because that's the stuff of articles and I have other articles I need to write right now (and books, and dissertations). Also, I've made enough people angry already.
The question that haunts me of the ones raised is the matter of "What if they think something's OK and we think it's not." It's almost impossible to compare subjective taste across time periods without tangible evidence. Would Medieval meat have appeared rancid to us? we don't know without being able to actually taste something cooked by someone who was cooking for their society, not in our society as an attempt to copy theirs.
Zombie Ancestry theory started for me as students and readers putting their assumptions of might have happened ahead of the evidence. When anyone arguing with me on the subject gives me evidence (not rational deduction - which has its place, but that place is to demonstrate that something is theoretically possible, not that something actually happened in a certain way) then I'm happy.
I wasn't arguing the history of mouthfeel of meat, or meat hygiene. I was talking about how people perceive the Middle Ages and how those preconceptions colour their judgement and create the belief in a type of society that isn't the one that actually existed. I was using the meat example AS AN EXAMPLE - and one that has been discussed by scholars in the field for a goodly time and has, as some of you pointed out (here and on FB), been debunked. I could have used chastity belts or flat Earth theory equally effectively.
If I had been looking closely at the subject of meat preparation in and of itself, I would not have talked about ancestors, but about regulations and recipes and pictures and flavour balance and a whole heap of other things. Since I'm taking a break from researching food history for a bit, I'm going to take the easy way out of this one and not really enter into a discussion at all. What I need a good discussion on this afternoon is the role of arbitration in small religious towns in the Languedoc in the early fourteenth century. After dinner, my topic will be the relationship of fiction writers with history (again). Food was not supposed to be on the menu this week - I'm just too busy.
As a sop, here's a present. This is just one example of what a manuscript actually said about meat (Forme of Cury, transliteration by Hieatt et al, with occasional letter changes by me, because I can't work out how to get all the characters into LJ). If you want to use it as a basis for argument, go for it.
This is the complete method as we know it for this recipe, which includes all the dealing with salt and all the drowning in spices and everything else that discussion about the other post has brought forward. If these things aren't mentioned, then they are (as far as we know) not part of the recipe, unless you can demonstrate that this recipe is atypical and that it actually is part of other, similar recipes. It's a lateish recipe, because I thought you'd rather have something in English.
Egurdouce
Take connynges or kydde, and smyte hem on pecys rawe, and fry hem in white grece. Take raysouns of coraunce and fry hem. Take oynouns, perboile hem and hewe hem small and fry hem. Take rede wyne and a lytel vynegur, sugur with powdour of peper, of gynger, of canel, salt; and cast therto, and lat it seeth with a gode quantite of white grece, & serve it forth.
The question that haunts me of the ones raised is the matter of "What if they think something's OK and we think it's not." It's almost impossible to compare subjective taste across time periods without tangible evidence. Would Medieval meat have appeared rancid to us? we don't know without being able to actually taste something cooked by someone who was cooking for their society, not in our society as an attempt to copy theirs.
Zombie Ancestry theory started for me as students and readers putting their assumptions of might have happened ahead of the evidence. When anyone arguing with me on the subject gives me evidence (not rational deduction - which has its place, but that place is to demonstrate that something is theoretically possible, not that something actually happened in a certain way) then I'm happy.
I wasn't arguing the history of mouthfeel of meat, or meat hygiene. I was talking about how people perceive the Middle Ages and how those preconceptions colour their judgement and create the belief in a type of society that isn't the one that actually existed. I was using the meat example AS AN EXAMPLE - and one that has been discussed by scholars in the field for a goodly time and has, as some of you pointed out (here and on FB), been debunked. I could have used chastity belts or flat Earth theory equally effectively.
If I had been looking closely at the subject of meat preparation in and of itself, I would not have talked about ancestors, but about regulations and recipes and pictures and flavour balance and a whole heap of other things. Since I'm taking a break from researching food history for a bit, I'm going to take the easy way out of this one and not really enter into a discussion at all. What I need a good discussion on this afternoon is the role of arbitration in small religious towns in the Languedoc in the early fourteenth century. After dinner, my topic will be the relationship of fiction writers with history (again). Food was not supposed to be on the menu this week - I'm just too busy.
As a sop, here's a present. This is just one example of what a manuscript actually said about meat (Forme of Cury, transliteration by Hieatt et al, with occasional letter changes by me, because I can't work out how to get all the characters into LJ). If you want to use it as a basis for argument, go for it.
This is the complete method as we know it for this recipe, which includes all the dealing with salt and all the drowning in spices and everything else that discussion about the other post has brought forward. If these things aren't mentioned, then they are (as far as we know) not part of the recipe, unless you can demonstrate that this recipe is atypical and that it actually is part of other, similar recipes. It's a lateish recipe, because I thought you'd rather have something in English.
Egurdouce
Take connynges or kydde, and smyte hem on pecys rawe, and fry hem in white grece. Take raysouns of coraunce and fry hem. Take oynouns, perboile hem and hewe hem small and fry hem. Take rede wyne and a lytel vynegur, sugur with powdour of peper, of gynger, of canel, salt; and cast therto, and lat it seeth with a gode quantite of white grece, & serve it forth.
January 2, 2012
Zombie Ancestors and the Popular Middle Ages
I promised my Zombie Ancestry History Theory, for those of you who haven't seen it before. This Zombie Ancestry History Theory has nothing to do with any actual zombie tradition and a lot to do with how the vast public apparently perceives aspects of the Middle Ages*. I'm not talking here about the politics or great literature, but the curious assumptions that people often make to my face about eating habits, cleanliness, lack of common sense and etc.** I remind myself very frequently that these people had ancestors.
When I was doing all that public food history (paid blogging and all) I kept coming across innocents who genuinely believed that covering rotting meat up with spices was an historical reality. We're not talking rituals here. We're talking expensive imported spices as saving people from starvation because they enabled the consumption of dangerous foodstuff. I would love to know if there is a study on how galingale, ginger, pepper and nutmeg prevent botulism and other food poisoning. None of these innocents cited me any such studies. When I was blogging, I reminded myself that the innocents with their assumptions also had ancestors.
Even if the science is good and even if we all should be consuming our decaying viands with much spice, the economics are all wrong. If starving peasants can't get fresh meat (sparrows, for instance) how can they afford imported spices to handle the rotting meat? And if the 1%*** were the ones in so much gustatory agony, then how on earth did the 99% survive?
There is a way… And it includes many ancestors…
People died. They ate that rotting meat and they died. From their loins, after death, were born zombie children who were no brighter than they were. And from these children were born anyone who is stupid enough to believe that intelligence is confined to the post-Medieval West or who subscribes to any of a number of really daft beliefs about the Middle Ages.
My current way of using my theory is in class, of course. When someone says anything that proves an assumption of the theory of pre-Renaissance stupidity, I**** will say, sympathetically, "I'm sorry to hear about your ancestors."
Ascribing stupidity to a student's ancestors to explain a student's explanations is a very easy way of getting students to re-evaluate certain assumptions. They're much happier to ascribe stupidity to an undetermined other than they are to ascribe it to themselves or their own past. This means that I don't really need the zombie association anymore, but a character in my time travel novel does, so it stays in my life.
And now you know. I hope your life is richer for the knowledge.
* The Middle Ages were the time of low intelligence between the extraordinarily clever Romans and the absolute genius Renaissance men. Very curious genetics.
** Much etc. I wax very lyrical on this when I'm angry about cultural assumptions of stupidity, but it's too hot today to wax lyrical about anything.
***Look, an almost up to date cultural reference.
****By 'I' I obviously mean the Evil Teacher aspect of me. I actually say it very seldom, but it's wonderfully reassuring to know that I can.
When I was doing all that public food history (paid blogging and all) I kept coming across innocents who genuinely believed that covering rotting meat up with spices was an historical reality. We're not talking rituals here. We're talking expensive imported spices as saving people from starvation because they enabled the consumption of dangerous foodstuff. I would love to know if there is a study on how galingale, ginger, pepper and nutmeg prevent botulism and other food poisoning. None of these innocents cited me any such studies. When I was blogging, I reminded myself that the innocents with their assumptions also had ancestors.
Even if the science is good and even if we all should be consuming our decaying viands with much spice, the economics are all wrong. If starving peasants can't get fresh meat (sparrows, for instance) how can they afford imported spices to handle the rotting meat? And if the 1%*** were the ones in so much gustatory agony, then how on earth did the 99% survive?
There is a way… And it includes many ancestors…
People died. They ate that rotting meat and they died. From their loins, after death, were born zombie children who were no brighter than they were. And from these children were born anyone who is stupid enough to believe that intelligence is confined to the post-Medieval West or who subscribes to any of a number of really daft beliefs about the Middle Ages.
My current way of using my theory is in class, of course. When someone says anything that proves an assumption of the theory of pre-Renaissance stupidity, I**** will say, sympathetically, "I'm sorry to hear about your ancestors."
Ascribing stupidity to a student's ancestors to explain a student's explanations is a very easy way of getting students to re-evaluate certain assumptions. They're much happier to ascribe stupidity to an undetermined other than they are to ascribe it to themselves or their own past. This means that I don't really need the zombie association anymore, but a character in my time travel novel does, so it stays in my life.
And now you know. I hope your life is richer for the knowledge.
* The Middle Ages were the time of low intelligence between the extraordinarily clever Romans and the absolute genius Renaissance men. Very curious genetics.
** Much etc. I wax very lyrical on this when I'm angry about cultural assumptions of stupidity, but it's too hot today to wax lyrical about anything.
***Look, an almost up to date cultural reference.
****By 'I' I obviously mean the Evil Teacher aspect of me. I actually say it very seldom, but it's wonderfully reassuring to know that I can.
January 1, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-01-01T17:05:00
2011 was tiring. Early in the year friends and relatives kept dying, late in the year, friends and relatives kept dying and stuff just kept on and kept on going *wrong*. I had a totally amazing April to September, however. Those months contained some of the most awesome days of the last five years.
I don't have much planned for this year besides getting this degree done and more writing done and starting to look for an academic-style job. Plus earning enough money to live on. Plus... OK, it's another big year. Just differently structured.
I'm not travelling so much this year because I haven't planned anything. This doesn't mean I won't travel - it just means I told myself it would be a quietly workaholic year. If the finances and the opportunities arise, I will travel.
And now I have 40 pages to look at before dinner. After dinner I get to look at the same number of pages, but non-fiction. Tomorrow I might have freed some time to do a review or two, if I stick to this schedule.
That reminds me, Canberra folks, Hogfather is on next Saturday and I have (thanks to my wonderful niece) some tooth fairy teeth (from the set). If you wish to do a viewing with food, you might want to email me. If you want us to invent Hogwatch food, this can be done. I have medlar liqueur that's crying for decanting. I still have chocolate coins (because they multiply) and my library is open for lending again, thanks to one of my work experience students (which reminds me, I must blog the interview she did with her favourite author - watch this space).
I don't have much planned for this year besides getting this degree done and more writing done and starting to look for an academic-style job. Plus earning enough money to live on. Plus... OK, it's another big year. Just differently structured.
I'm not travelling so much this year because I haven't planned anything. This doesn't mean I won't travel - it just means I told myself it would be a quietly workaholic year. If the finances and the opportunities arise, I will travel.
And now I have 40 pages to look at before dinner. After dinner I get to look at the same number of pages, but non-fiction. Tomorrow I might have freed some time to do a review or two, if I stick to this schedule.
That reminds me, Canberra folks, Hogfather is on next Saturday and I have (thanks to my wonderful niece) some tooth fairy teeth (from the set). If you wish to do a viewing with food, you might want to email me. If you want us to invent Hogwatch food, this can be done. I have medlar liqueur that's crying for decanting. I still have chocolate coins (because they multiply) and my library is open for lending again, thanks to one of my work experience students (which reminds me, I must blog the interview she did with her favourite author - watch this space).
December 31, 2011
gillpolack @ 2012-01-01T00:54:00
Happy New Year, everyone. I've just come back from Mt Ainslie, where I saw the year arrive in the very best of company. I have photos of fireworks to prove it.
gillpolack @ 2011-12-31T13:35:00
I've been working on my novel. I keep thinking about how one Medievalist is sure to have holes in her knowledge at crucial spots. If any of you are specialists in early fourteenth century Languedoc (or thereabouts - Montpellier comes into it, and French politics and Templars) and would like some light reading over the next couple of weeks, I would love to hear from you.
gillpolack @ 2011-12-31T11:26:00
Today is significantly better than yesterday. This is because I am reading Helen Lowe's Thornspell and have accomplished no work whatever. The book is worth taking time out for. She's a lovely writer.
I didn't get a thing done yesterday or most of the day before, unless one counts a load of washing. This afternoon, however, I plan to get back to ordinary life. My NYE dinner got cancelled, so I have from about 2 pm (ish) until about 9 pm (ish) to work. Can I accomplish three days endeavour in this time and catch up with myself? Watch this space.
I didn't get a thing done yesterday or most of the day before, unless one counts a load of washing. This afternoon, however, I plan to get back to ordinary life. My NYE dinner got cancelled, so I have from about 2 pm (ish) until about 9 pm (ish) to work. Can I accomplish three days endeavour in this time and catch up with myself? Watch this space.
