Gillian Polack's Blog, page 319

gillpolack @ 2010-03-19T14:46:00

I do the administration on a couple of dozen mail lists. This is partly a relic of the whole Beijing process. From about 1995, local and regional women's NGOs have needed a place to discuss issues and mechanics and to share news and to monitor progress. My lists were where it was all happening for the first few years. Discussions hae mostly gone elsewhere, but the lists are still being maintained (by me!) and are still used from time to time. A decade ago there were hundreds of messages ...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-18T23:01:00

Life is rollercoastering again.

One of my closest and favouritest family members was caught up in the earthquake in Chile and has emerged very shaken. We spent a very long time on the phone tonight.

I've halfway sorted out Passover and I'm halfway to sorting out all the big things happening this year. Just two more stages for each and I'll be able to step out bravely and do things. Slowly, since I keep getting pulled up by my own health still.

There are two new years in the next two weeks. ...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-17T21:58:00

Simon Petrie's book Rare Unsigned Copies was launched tonight, at the CSFG meeting. After Simon had personalised our copies he announced that he hadn't actually used his signature so as not to put the lie to the cover name. I asked Tycho to sign mine (using a real signature) - the dedication is to him, so it was a fair request.

I now have the only signed copy of Rare Unsigned Copies currently in existence.

It's a very funny book. I can say this without any bias, since Simon's probably not...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-17T13:49:00

I just tallied up next week. It was a mistake.

I have everything I usually have (except my gentle folkdancing - I just rang to cancel that), plus my echocardiogram on Monday, five hours at the eye clinic straight after teaching on Wednesday (a friend was worried about the fact that I only just had time to get from teaching to the eye clinic and she thinks that lunch ought to come into my day, so she's picking me up and we're going to hospital via a cafe), my next root canal appointment on Thu...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-16T20:58:00

Tonight I told my "Life in Medieval London" class the story of Brutus' foundation of Britain (one of our sources referred to it). I am such a sad, sad person. The way I told it, it sounded exactly like a Hollywood movie. Fallen angels. Wicked maidens. Evil offspring. A hero fleeing disaster and encountering the evil offspring.

Has Hollywood turned it into a movie? If not, why not?

gillpolack @ 2010-03-15T18:54:00

My lounge room has an unnatural life cycle.

It gets tidied. Books self-propagate mysteriously or migrate even more mysteriously from the safety of the shelves. The books scatter until all flat surfaces are occupied. Someone trips over a book or moves a book away from its flat surface of choice. The consequent sense of lurking evil alerts me to what the books are doing. I start piling them. I finish piling them. I sart diminishing the piles by writing about the books or reading them (s...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-14T10:22:00

Look what I found! I've been in love with George Gissing's writing since I was a teen. Now I can catch up on the bits I missed!

The last thing I read of his was his diary, where teh sad fate of a couple returning from their honeymoon, lighting a candle and causing a gas explosion still looms large in my mind. Candles and gas are an uncommon combination these days. Also, domestic gas is scented in Australia. We have electric lighting. If I keep adding reasons then I shall distance myself ...

Thinking about Great Women and Heroines (and writing using capitals)

There are some really interesting posts around the traps right now due to women's history month. Sometimes it's the ones that make a brief note of something and have a picture (for instance, this one) that get me thinking.

Our heroic women tend to be beautiful, don't they? Or glamorous? There's always some sort of description of their looks or their clothes or their poise. No wonder the Mitford sisters tangled their lives in such interesting ways. They were being heroes. Beautiful and ch...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-13T10:38:00

Lots of small health updates in no particular order:

Yesterday I promised a friend that I'd do much resting today and tomorrow.

Progress in my life right now is two steps forward and one step back.

I can't stop thinking about the cardiologist's comments that there were three likely outcomes for me (when my eye went kablooey) and that he was happy that I chose the least bad (my body chose half-blindness above full blindness or death, it seems - an odd turn-the-wheel-of-fortune game).

All that ...

gillpolack @ 2010-03-12T21:44:00

Australia is a nation for the 21st century. Twenty one million people crowded into seven major cities; a modern technologically advanced society that sits perched on the perimeter of a vast dry interior occupied by an ancient, alien aboriginal culture.

One of the things I fret about a lot is otherness. The other day, when I posted about the link between the existence of Jews in England and the notion of terra nullius, beneath the posting lay fretfulness about people defining an individual ...