Gillian Polack's Blog, page 248
May 23, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-23T11:34:00
I have just sent four BiblioBuffet articles to cover my time way. They still need to be edited (which is why they went in so early) but it's good to see them gone. I want to finish two and possibly three more before I actually leave, because when I get back we'll be into Conflux and Jewish New Year, but the important thing was covering my absence.
Speaking of BiblioBuffet, my latest interview has just gone up): Rowena Cory Daniells, James Maxey and Juliet McKenna being interesting about fantasy.
I have lots of messages today and don't want to do them! I want to curl up in a corner and sleep some more. My wish to hibernate never actually coincides with my capacity to do so.
If I find what I lost yesterday, I'll post again today. If I find anything interesting, I'll post again today. Otherwise, just send chocolate after me if I get lost in the morass of messages. Dark chocolate, please. With coffee.
Speaking of BiblioBuffet, my latest interview has just gone up): Rowena Cory Daniells, James Maxey and Juliet McKenna being interesting about fantasy.
I have lots of messages today and don't want to do them! I want to curl up in a corner and sleep some more. My wish to hibernate never actually coincides with my capacity to do so.
If I find what I lost yesterday, I'll post again today. If I find anything interesting, I'll post again today. Otherwise, just send chocolate after me if I get lost in the morass of messages. Dark chocolate, please. With coffee.
May 22, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-22T17:15:00
I might have overdone things today, with the editing thing. I have done one article and one cookbook. Not much. Really. I have three more articles to go, but am not going to be near the computer for at least two hours. My eyes have told me that I must have a rest. The weather has told me I must have a rest. I am going to obey these firm instructions.
gillpolack @ 2011-05-22T13:14:00
My morning was swept aside by the Conflux cookbook. My part in it has to be done before I leave, so this is a good thing, I think.
The reason there is doubt is because it's all fiddly stuff at this stage. Fiddly stuff (mostly making sure the formatting of recipes doesn't differ too markedly from one to the next) leaves my mind just enough alone so that it actively seeks mischief. My most recent thought is that I need to find my distant London kin. They so need to to make contact with my family. I won't tell them about all the good things we've done over the last one hundred and fifty years, but I will certainly wax enthusiastic about Lemon and his convict soul (even though he was never transported and even though he died a free man, in his own bed, three years after the trial). In fact, I shall make a collection of family stories that will make these theoretical distant cousins of mine hide themselves and pretend that they have no Australian kin.
Fortunately for these distant relatives, I don't know them. Also fortunately for them, I won't have much free time in London. And unfortunately for me, I am perfectly respectable, if one excepts my sense of humour, so even if they met me, they would probably survive the experience. I shall wear black all today, in mourning for non-existent opportunities to upset perfect strangers.
The reason there is doubt is because it's all fiddly stuff at this stage. Fiddly stuff (mostly making sure the formatting of recipes doesn't differ too markedly from one to the next) leaves my mind just enough alone so that it actively seeks mischief. My most recent thought is that I need to find my distant London kin. They so need to to make contact with my family. I won't tell them about all the good things we've done over the last one hundred and fifty years, but I will certainly wax enthusiastic about Lemon and his convict soul (even though he was never transported and even though he died a free man, in his own bed, three years after the trial). In fact, I shall make a collection of family stories that will make these theoretical distant cousins of mine hide themselves and pretend that they have no Australian kin.
Fortunately for these distant relatives, I don't know them. Also fortunately for them, I won't have much free time in London. And unfortunately for me, I am perfectly respectable, if one excepts my sense of humour, so even if they met me, they would probably survive the experience. I shall wear black all today, in mourning for non-existent opportunities to upset perfect strangers.
May 21, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-21T19:26:00
I was going to blog just now, but got distracted by a conversation on Facebook. Now I don't know what I was going to blog about. I suspect it was excruciatingly intelligent and witty. Otherwise I wouldn't have forgotten.
Today I haven't been focussed and so have spent large chunks of time doing stuff that feels frittery. Mostly workings to do with my travel. I encountered one big quandary, which is what to do in terms of accessing money overseas. The choices are pretty straightforward, but everyone's reports vary to such a degree that I'm not sure what will work for me. The big question seems (oddly) to be how much Mastercard and Visa are accepted in the UK and France (relative to each other).
Also, I'm aggregating messages for Monday. So many silly little errands to do!
One day I shall remember the insightful and useful post I meant to make today. On that day I shall forget to post it.
Today I haven't been focussed and so have spent large chunks of time doing stuff that feels frittery. Mostly workings to do with my travel. I encountered one big quandary, which is what to do in terms of accessing money overseas. The choices are pretty straightforward, but everyone's reports vary to such a degree that I'm not sure what will work for me. The big question seems (oddly) to be how much Mastercard and Visa are accepted in the UK and France (relative to each other).
Also, I'm aggregating messages for Monday. So many silly little errands to do!
One day I shall remember the insightful and useful post I meant to make today. On that day I shall forget to post it.
May 20, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-20T17:40:00
I have my passport and my filling. For the record, the filling cost three dollars more than the passport, but the passport will last longer.
May 19, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-20T09:02:00
I just realised that I get to do five whole hours work before I go to the dentist. My brain says "This is good - how about some nice time in the Middle Ages? You spent ten minutes looking at architectural stuff last night, and that's hardly enough to feed an addiction." My other brain says "You're snarky because of the tooth - review a book." Except that I'm all caught up on the book reviews with snark potential. (Also, I don't really write snarky reviews, except in very special circumstances.) And the Middle Ages must wait.
I have about an hour's editing and all the rest is small stuff - a chapter here, a thought there. It's a bits and pieces day. This is probably very good for me, but I'm in the mood to make sweeping statements and pretend that I engage in deep thought and it's not a day for either sweeping statements nor deep thought. After dinner (late tonight) I get to sort some notes, though, which means that maybe, maybe I'll be permitted to actually write fiction tomorrow. My characters are definitely getting up to mischief in my absence, so I hope so. Two of them want to turn the waterways of Languedoc red and blue. Also, maybe there's some thoughtfulness in my weekend. If I'm lucky. Tomorrow - that's for tomorrow. Let me sweep the scrappy stuff out of my lists first.
I have about an hour's editing and all the rest is small stuff - a chapter here, a thought there. It's a bits and pieces day. This is probably very good for me, but I'm in the mood to make sweeping statements and pretend that I engage in deep thought and it's not a day for either sweeping statements nor deep thought. After dinner (late tonight) I get to sort some notes, though, which means that maybe, maybe I'll be permitted to actually write fiction tomorrow. My characters are definitely getting up to mischief in my absence, so I hope so. Two of them want to turn the waterways of Languedoc red and blue. Also, maybe there's some thoughtfulness in my weekend. If I'm lucky. Tomorrow - that's for tomorrow. Let me sweep the scrappy stuff out of my lists first.
gillpolack @ 2011-05-20T08:34:00
One thing I can say about my teeth is that they're persistent. I have lost a chunk of a filling and a bit of tooth and have an emergency visit to the dentist this afternoon. Until then, I am not very comfortable. At least this afternoon was supposed to be all about messages anyway. Now my messages take me all over town, is all. I get to travel.
gillpolack @ 2011-05-19T15:37:00
Today I have unexpectedly caught up on some sleep. It was unintentional, and I will still do all my work (just after my very, very late morning cup of coffee - if my morning were any later, it would be tomorrow) but obviously the downside of those marvellous three days is the sheer amount of physical and emotional energy they took. Add that to one of the most impossible phone calls of my entire life, late last night (I could have attended the CSFG meeting after all! I would have used the same amount of energy and I would have enjoyed the evening a lot more) and, after I got out of bed and sorted what I had to do with my day, I went straight back to bed again.
I had a really nice phone call today, from ArtsACT. When the paperwork is done, I will talk about it. The paperwork may take a little, because there is a change of minister happening at the same time.
I also had really interesting dreams today. And my breathing behaved as breathing should, not as it has recently. This is good. Also good is the sheer number of tasks I shall get done between now and 8.30 pm (when I get a TV break). First up, is finishing that second interview (I finished the first one on Sunday. After that, I have four books awaiting my reading pleasure. All must be returned to the library tomorrow afternoon, if I wish them to remain pleasures and not get in the way of What Must Be Done. They're all good and cool and wonderful - this is a col and good and wonderful way of spending an afternoon and early evening.
I had a really nice phone call today, from ArtsACT. When the paperwork is done, I will talk about it. The paperwork may take a little, because there is a change of minister happening at the same time.
I also had really interesting dreams today. And my breathing behaved as breathing should, not as it has recently. This is good. Also good is the sheer number of tasks I shall get done between now and 8.30 pm (when I get a TV break). First up, is finishing that second interview (I finished the first one on Sunday. After that, I have four books awaiting my reading pleasure. All must be returned to the library tomorrow afternoon, if I wish them to remain pleasures and not get in the way of What Must Be Done. They're all good and cool and wonderful - this is a col and good and wonderful way of spending an afternoon and early evening.
May 18, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-05-18T23:10:00
I completely forgot to say that I took a printout of the board game that was never quite finished - the Medievalish one that I use sometimes in history classes. It was such a big hit. It occupied a whole evening and quite displaced card playing. Quite possibly I ought to do something about it, one day.
I shall have it with me in the UK, at any rate, simply because it's with other stuff I'm taking on my computer. If any friends feel impelled to test it and to offer up a critique, then they will need a die and some game pieces and a willingness to print it out. (Llyn, we used your holy meeples and everyone chose one to take home. They love their meeples.)
I shall have it with me in the UK, at any rate, simply because it's with other stuff I'm taking on my computer. If any friends feel impelled to test it and to offer up a critique, then they will need a die and some game pieces and a willingness to print it out. (Llyn, we used your holy meeples and everyone chose one to take home. They love their meeples.)
gillpolack @ 2011-05-18T20:37:00
I want to ask, archly, "Did you miss me?" This is mainly because I have been having so much fun (with no computer!) and done so much stirring that I don't want to stop annoying people. being arch annoys people, I'm told, so I want to be very arch indeed.
I was at Tuross Head (NSW South Coast) as one of three staff members for a creative arts camp. It was part of the ACT's mental health program and was just the most amazing event. About two thirds of the campers were my Wednesday students, and some of the remaining ones had been checking out my Wednesday classes recently, just to see if they wanted to camp with me. They thought I hadn't noticed...
Tim-the-Artist and I kept poaching each other's students and each other's students' work and we all ended up creating a huge installation on the lawn and then walking through it, acting out the poetry and explaining it. I started it - because my people were working using the five senses and I said that the five senses involved the ocean a couple of blocks away and the green grass below us and the wind in our hair and the smell of the breeze - but we all made it work.
Alas, it had to be dismantled at dusk, because dew really wasn't a component in the charcoal and pastel on paper elements. That worked out well, though, because that left us the right amount of time to traipse down that slope to the beach and watch the full moon rising over the Pacific. After that we donned masks and glad rags and had a bit of a banquet. By "a bit" I mean a very big bit.
In the evening, the card players competed with the story tellers. I'm afraid Evil Gillian put in an appearance, and almost everyone learned a Goldilocks clapping rhyme normally taught to five year olds. We played parlour games and we refused to tell ghost stories. I refused to tell ghost stories in such a way that poor Tim started to get very jumpy. (Evil Gillian was quite active, alas.) All one has to do is say, "I won't tell you a story about the glass in that door, for instance, and how it will suck your soul after dusk. And you don't want to know what's buried under that tile." I was being very mild, actually, because I know the sensitivities of my students and didn't want to cause nightmares, but Tim was so convinced that ghost stories would be good and he is so unused to being given quite specific information about the evil trapped in the far corner of this very room, just behind the table...I am an evil stirrer and possibly deserve all that is coming to me.
I worked very hard, and all the campers worked harder. We made origami (lots!) and wrote notes to the sea and wrote sonnets and so much more. Fifteen backpacks were full to the brim with their creations by 2 pm this afternoon, when we left the campsite behind. Each of us was much fatter, too, because Laura and her assistant cooks did a superlative job.
This was the first time most of these people have been on any sort of camp. A couple had done camping as kids (in tents, though, not school camp buildings) and three had been in the Boy Scouts. They wanted all the experiences that they knew of through other peoples' memories. We gave them that, from singalong to walking along the beach, but we also did a lot more. It was full-on - I had fifteen minutes time out from rising in the morning to going to bed at night (not fifteen minutes every day - fifteen minutes in total ie one rest period) but it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.
Teaching intelligent adults who want to learn is always a pleasure - giving them the things you've loved to do is even better. Best of all is seeing an adult woman jump for joy (not in any metaphoric sense) as she explains about seeing the sun rise on the ocean and tells you that she's just waiting a few more minutes before she finds herself a companion (we insisted that people go offsite in at least pairs) and sees the high tide reach over the ledge and to the base of the sand dunes. Or the quiet and very private smile of the woman who discovers that she *can* make masks and that the ones she creates are divine. Or the satisfaction on the face of the man who is watching a group giggle at the cartoon he has drawn me. Or the deep silence on the beach when I explained to one woman that the sand can tell a story. She was digging the sand with her restless feet, so I said to her "What if we made up a story about a woman on the beach, dragging her toes backwards through the cold sand, lonely..." It wasn't my best example. As teaching, however, it was magical. She had a moment where she understood so completely what we were doing with the five senses and she explained it back to me, so very excited, and she read everything anyone wrote for the three days and now she reads differently. This morning she joined the writing group and we all wrote letters to the sea and to each other and folded them into elegant origami envelopes and sachets.
Multiply these moments by twenty and you have the number on each of the three days I was away. There were so many special moments.
I was at Tuross Head (NSW South Coast) as one of three staff members for a creative arts camp. It was part of the ACT's mental health program and was just the most amazing event. About two thirds of the campers were my Wednesday students, and some of the remaining ones had been checking out my Wednesday classes recently, just to see if they wanted to camp with me. They thought I hadn't noticed...
Tim-the-Artist and I kept poaching each other's students and each other's students' work and we all ended up creating a huge installation on the lawn and then walking through it, acting out the poetry and explaining it. I started it - because my people were working using the five senses and I said that the five senses involved the ocean a couple of blocks away and the green grass below us and the wind in our hair and the smell of the breeze - but we all made it work.
Alas, it had to be dismantled at dusk, because dew really wasn't a component in the charcoal and pastel on paper elements. That worked out well, though, because that left us the right amount of time to traipse down that slope to the beach and watch the full moon rising over the Pacific. After that we donned masks and glad rags and had a bit of a banquet. By "a bit" I mean a very big bit.
In the evening, the card players competed with the story tellers. I'm afraid Evil Gillian put in an appearance, and almost everyone learned a Goldilocks clapping rhyme normally taught to five year olds. We played parlour games and we refused to tell ghost stories. I refused to tell ghost stories in such a way that poor Tim started to get very jumpy. (Evil Gillian was quite active, alas.) All one has to do is say, "I won't tell you a story about the glass in that door, for instance, and how it will suck your soul after dusk. And you don't want to know what's buried under that tile." I was being very mild, actually, because I know the sensitivities of my students and didn't want to cause nightmares, but Tim was so convinced that ghost stories would be good and he is so unused to being given quite specific information about the evil trapped in the far corner of this very room, just behind the table...I am an evil stirrer and possibly deserve all that is coming to me.
I worked very hard, and all the campers worked harder. We made origami (lots!) and wrote notes to the sea and wrote sonnets and so much more. Fifteen backpacks were full to the brim with their creations by 2 pm this afternoon, when we left the campsite behind. Each of us was much fatter, too, because Laura and her assistant cooks did a superlative job.
This was the first time most of these people have been on any sort of camp. A couple had done camping as kids (in tents, though, not school camp buildings) and three had been in the Boy Scouts. They wanted all the experiences that they knew of through other peoples' memories. We gave them that, from singalong to walking along the beach, but we also did a lot more. It was full-on - I had fifteen minutes time out from rising in the morning to going to bed at night (not fifteen minutes every day - fifteen minutes in total ie one rest period) but it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.
Teaching intelligent adults who want to learn is always a pleasure - giving them the things you've loved to do is even better. Best of all is seeing an adult woman jump for joy (not in any metaphoric sense) as she explains about seeing the sun rise on the ocean and tells you that she's just waiting a few more minutes before she finds herself a companion (we insisted that people go offsite in at least pairs) and sees the high tide reach over the ledge and to the base of the sand dunes. Or the quiet and very private smile of the woman who discovers that she *can* make masks and that the ones she creates are divine. Or the satisfaction on the face of the man who is watching a group giggle at the cartoon he has drawn me. Or the deep silence on the beach when I explained to one woman that the sand can tell a story. She was digging the sand with her restless feet, so I said to her "What if we made up a story about a woman on the beach, dragging her toes backwards through the cold sand, lonely..." It wasn't my best example. As teaching, however, it was magical. She had a moment where she understood so completely what we were doing with the five senses and she explained it back to me, so very excited, and she read everything anyone wrote for the three days and now she reads differently. This morning she joined the writing group and we all wrote letters to the sea and to each other and folded them into elegant origami envelopes and sachets.
Multiply these moments by twenty and you have the number on each of the three days I was away. There were so many special moments.
