Gillian Polack's Blog, page 45

gillpolack @ 2015-01-03T17:00:00

I have two posts of interest for you that are elsewhere on the interwebz:

http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/guest-post-gillian-polack-medieval-military/

and

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/william-of-orange-by-gillian-polack.html

This will make up for my day being about careful thinking (which will no doubt erupt into writing at some point) and much feeling under the weather. It didn't even reach 35 degrees today, but it was/is one of those days that feels very warm.

In an hour it will start to cool down and in two hours I will feel entirely up to dealing with things. In two hours, therefore, my day's work will begin. Or rather, the second and third parts of my day's work. I did some things this morning, before the heat struck. Not nearly enough of them, but some.

Speaking of work, I'm taking an afternoon break tomorrow because it may also be hot (not as hot as today, so I can walk up the street and do messages - I refuse to carry heavy things when it's too hot and I have to walk) so if anyone would like to meet for a cold drink, ring me before midday. If I don't hear from anyone and if the heat isn't as soporific as today's then I may just work through the afternoon and do my messages on Monday. On Monday the heat will matter much less, for on Monday there will be buses (one an hour! Oh, miracle!).

gillpolack @ 2015-01-02T17:11:00

Today is warm* and I'm roasting stuff. This means that, in about a half hour, I will be longing fora cool change. By tomorrow morning I will have a heap of food to eat over the next few equally-warm days, however, and days on which I have an awful lot of work to complete. This means I'm guilty of strategic baking.


*For my UK friends, 'warm' is between 35 and 36 degrees.

Welcome to 2015

So far 2015 is warm and humid and conducive to gentle thought. Also to reading three books at once and to completing projects.

Part of my gentle thought has been about 2014, of course. Some of the highlights of my life happened last year, but overall it wasn't really an easy twelve months. 'Slow sorting of big lifestuff,' is how I characterise the year as a whole, punctuated by the most amazing people and the most amazing experiences and the signing of those seven novels.

I think a lot of the good in 2014 will show up in 2015 and 2016. What I have now (apart from the really awesome memories of those six SF conventions and spending more time than I've ever been able my whole life entire with people who speak my language) is one novel that people seem to like and the realisation that if I don't find that job soon I'll have to give up more than I thought. I didn't quite realise how rich my life was becoming until a bunch of people in a bunch of countries let me know. It was an astonishing moment of truth.

I have a moment of lucidity now. I can see what my life can be if I find the job that will allow it to continue in its current direction. I can see how to make it bearable (but only just) if I have to give up most of my dreams. And my health is on track for either direction.

Not what I was expecting at my age. It's the same decision as I faced when I was 26, with the same job market. Instead of short stories, I have novels and non-fiction. I've come a long way since I was 26, but I still might have to choose to lose chunks of my life if I want to continue. Money is a tough limit. Anyhow, I can make the choice again. This time, I'm double the age and know myself a lot better.

I'd rather not make the choice. What I want 2015 to bring is a job where I can teach the subjects I love and work on my research (and my little corner of changing the world) and publish much and entertain readers and attend SF cons. I want to be more political, for Australia's not in a place where one should sit back and wait for things to improve. And I want to spend time with my friends. And cook. I want to cook. Also to do a cookbook for fandom and help out with various projects (worldcons, translation - some very cool stuff lurks in my interstices).

If 2015 is going to be a watershed year for me, then it's going to be as rich and as amazing as 2014, with fewer downsides and possibly not quite as many world-shattering moments. It'll be a challenge, from any direction.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-27T15:23:00

With the quiet time, I'm catching up on things. I've just done five chapters' worth of indexing suggestions (very exciting stuff).

I have ten more things on my to-do list for today, some of which I could have done yesterday, if I had not been engaged in a mega LoTR marathon (extended version! with Dr Who and The Almighty Johnsons!). I made really bad puns the whole way through, as the day was in celebration of my father's birthday - I told the best jokes to Mum today and she agreed that Dad would have liked them and that she didn't, which was about right for puns. I'm still not up to Chanukah presents, for sending the last few emails will mean the holiday season is properly finished. Mind you, it's already properly finished (finished, in fact, several days ago) but I like the lingering taste. I've sorted out that everyone will get something: I just need to send them the somethings.

When I put the rubbish out I ran into my next-door neighbours. We sorted a longstanding confusion in the most delightful way.
"What did you do for Christmas?" she asked me.
"I worked - I'm Jewish, I don't get Christmas."

It turns out they not only had no idea I was Jewish, but no idea what Judaism is. We talked about it and also about Australian varieties of bigotry: they're much more relaxed about it than I am which I partly put down to growing up in a place where one is the dominant group. I think that kind of confidence is important.

Anyhow, it was rather fun establishing the relationship between the two religions with Christians who know not Judaism and have no prejudgements and to introduce them to their first mezuzah (which they'd seen for years and just not noticed). We established that I was an ancestor, in a half-joke.

A handy side effect is that I think I may be able to start giving the children presents for Purim and Chanukah. I stopped because the boys had no idea what I was doing and I thought I'd offended them - it turned out the boys had no idea what I was doing and forgot to tell their parents and their father just said yes and thank you and didn't pass on the explanations. No contexts, you see. No idea that I was not Christian.

I am, however, a creature of lists and I have until 7 pm to finish at least 6 more items. En avant!

gillpolack @ 2014-12-25T11:53:00

Because Chanukah edged very near to Christmas this year and because most Australians totally don't get that the two festivals are entirely unrelated, I've been wished a record number of Happy Chanukahs late last night and this morning. I dreamed of wishing all these people a Happy Advent, but in the end I just sighed and whinged a little. Chanukah begins on 25 Kislev every year, without fail. Any link between 25 Kislev and 25 December is entirely coincidental in Australia, where we don't even have the common ground of winter. One date belongs to a lunar calendar with solar adjustment and the other belongs to a solar calendar.

I have managed to damage my foot in a minor way (I fell down some steps last night, for it was dark, being night and all), so Chanukah presents are not quite distributed yet. That is to say, the physical ones have been given (all except three) and the electronic ones have not. When I've done a few more hours of work - for 25 December is an ordinary working day for me - I shall catch up and fill peoples' in boxes. I promise!

Gillian's classic telling of the story of Chanukah

Once upon a time there was war in the Middle East (a). This is a rare and unusual occurrence. As a result of that rare and unusual occurrence, Israel (1) was overrun by rather pagan invaders. This led to some interesting history being written, down the track. It also led to the establishment of a festival which can be technically classified under "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." Unlike other festivals in this category (2), the story is not about death. Also, the invasion was more about freedom of religion than about mass murder and eliminating Jews from the face of the earth. This qualifies Chanukah as a cheerful festival.

Permeating the Jewish tradition about the reign of Antiochus in Judea are many exciting tales. They include histories of patience in adversity and of blood and gore (b). There are stories of alcoholism, preceded by patience in adversity and followed by blood and gore, and of weaving cloaks from those odd bits of wool that get caught on brambles when sheep walk too close (3).

Of all these stories, the most famous one is how the Maccabees (4) won back the Temple. They won back a lot more than the Temple, but the Temple was the important bit. The straw that broke the camel's back were the pigs, apparently. Pigs in the Temple. And straw. And camels.

No, only pigs. Sorry. (c)

Still, the problem with the Temple was that it was being used for worship of a rather interesting Hellenistic pantheon. The pigs were the symptom, not the problem.

The Maccabees were a strong Jewish family. They could have been role models for Che Guevara, because their preferred type of politics was charismatic, and their preferred form of warfare, guerrilla. They had not, however, read Karl Marx. They also didn’t speak Spanish. (d) They did, however, practise all those heinous acts forbidden under Antiochus' enlightened pagan rule, namely Torah study, keeping Sabbath holy, keeping a kosher kitchen, circumcision... They didn’t like the obligatory nature of Antiochus’ intriguing variety of paganism. Other rebellious souls who kept kosher suffered martyrdom for their efforts (e). But then, those other rebellious souls weren’t charismatic guerrilla leaders.

After long and bloody trials and much hiding in the wilderness (5), the Maccabee family and their followers won back Judea and most importantly the Temple (6).

Let me remind you that Antiochus had insisted that all Jews worship his own, not-at-all-Jewish, deities (7). This worship was enforced everywhere, including at that holiest of holies, the Temple. It was used for worship that looked decidedly unsavoury to the pure-minded revolutionaries. (Revolutionaries are always pure-minded.) When the Temple was won back, they wept because it was defiled (putative pigs! (f)).

The solution for the defiled Temple was simple. Firstly came a big spring clean. After that, re-sanctification.

Re-sanctification was somewhat of a problem. Not that re-sanctification in itself was a difficult procedure, but there was no holy oil. The Temple had, after all, been defiled, and that went for most of its contents, too. After much searching, extra virgin olive oil (8) was found, but only a small amount. In fact, there was only enough holy oil for one day, instead of the required eight. But one little lamp of oil lasted eight days, and the ancient Judeans declared that “A Great Miracle Happened Here (8a)” and threw a party to celebrate. Jews ever since then have spent 8 days of the year enjoying the miracle.

The Hebrew acronym describing the event became the basis of gambling using a spinning top, probably around the eighteenth century. It is pure co-incidence that the annual Jewish gambling and gift-giving stint is between Melbourne Cup Day and Christmas.



(a) Australia existed. It was appearing on some maps, maybe. We know it existed, though, because the people living here actually lived here (i), but no-one asked them. Those-who-write-these-things-elsewhere had developed a nice theory of its existence (derived mathematically, which is how it came to possibly appear on maps) and would soon define it officially as the Anti-Podes. There were no sheep in the Anti-Podes. Nor were there sheep jokes.
(i) Really. And they’d been living here a long time. And still no-one thought to ask them. Life is strange that way.

(1) Or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE

(2) Other key categories for Jewish festivals include "Let's be miserable together" and "Something important happened on this day, but it was thousands of years ago and we will spend the whole day trying to remember, and half the night too" and "Three thousand years ago or so we probably planted/harvested/rioted around now" and "We haven't overeaten for a few days, time for a festival" and "Let's do no housework."(ii) All Jewish festivals fit together under a general heading of "Let's read." The genre of the reading ranges from religious to the historical to the speculative, even when the book read is precisely the same. In an ideal day, some time is always spent arguing genre and literature and interpretation of the world. Given this, why aren't Star Wars t-shirts compulsory Jewish attire? (This is one of the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism.)
(ii) “Let’s do no housework” is canonically Jewish – if it’s possible that anything’s canonically Jewish, given that the Canon refers to Christianity. It just looks made up.

(b) No zombies. No zombie sheep. They belong to other people's stories. No vampires, either, not even sparkly ones. Our stories lack these things. Deal with it.

(3) To visualise this, think of scraggy sheep (iii). Dismiss all merinos from your minds. A modern merino would be caught up by a tangle of brambles and might die of thirst or be turned into lamb chops. Ancient Jewish stories do not encourage trapping sheep in tangles of brambles. With ancient scraggy sheep, the wool comes off in tatters anyway. It really can be collected from bushes in the wilderness. If you live in the Canberra region and want to meet the descendent of such a sheep, visit Mountain Creek Farm. They also had a Wessex saddleback pig called Beyonce, but they ate her.
(iii) Horror writer friends, I need scraggy zombie sheep in a story, forthwith. Not a Jewish story though, for it would clash profoundly with my sense of kashruth.

(4) You are advised to turn your spellcheck off at this point. The MacAfees were not major players in ancient Jewish history.

(c) I'm only apologising so that I can put another footnote in. I shall not mention sheep in this one.
(iv) not even zombie sheep.

(d) Is Karl Marx's history any less troublesome in Spanish translation? Inquiring minds need to know. Maybe only one inquiring mind. And maybe the need is more a vague and passing curiosity.

(e) These days I suspect that keeping strict kosher is its own variety of martyrdom, but that's because I've developed bad habits. If this were truly a spec fic story, I would have developed bad hobbits, rather than refusing to check cheese labels for the type of rennet. Bad hobbits are a lot more interesting than cheese labels. JRRT's missing tales.
(v) And suddenly this is topical. I shall watch to make sure that there is at least one bad hobbit in the forthcoming film. If there isn’t, I shall sic zombie sheep onto the makers thereof. They’ll go nicely with those strange rabbits in the first Jackson Hobbit film.

(5) Scraggy sheep!

(6) The hiding in the wilderness is where the cloaks came in. Public nakedness is seldom encouraged in Judaism. No, this footnote is not in the right place. The scraggy sheep got in the way.
(vi) But not the zombie sheep, for their wool is of a different quality entirely.

(7) I know, I told you a few lines ago. This system of footnotes makes a few lines seem like a long time. Someone should study it to see if footnotes really slow time down or if they just confuse people.

(f) I haven't met anyone who has evidence of pigs, just of defilement, so it might have been hobbits. Bad hobbits and their bad habits. There's an academic paper in that.

(8) For Christians, extra virgin olive oil was probably the standard in the early days. This means that Mary cooked with…no, I'm not going there.

(8a)* These days most of us say "A great miracle happened there." If you live in Israel you get to celebrate locally, though, and use the words of the ancients. That reminds me, one day I must try making the alcohol of the ancients. My family liqueurs went down very well last year and that was only the alcohol-of-the-near-moderns. Imagine how good it can get with older drinks!

*This footnote is 8a because otherwise it would be 9 and Chanukah only has 8 nights. My other option was to create 36 footnotes or 64 footnotes, or… let's stick with 8a.
(vi) and my footnotes and the footnotes of my footnotes have officially run out of footnotes.


Of course, Chanukah is a mainstream Australian festival. Writers have an obligation to churn out popular pieces, usually following the most widespread narrative (the one you just read, which is a tad antiquated now and which belongs to the borderline period when Chanukah could be celebrated openly but before it became – to quote the advertisers – everyone’s favourite Australian holiday). Not all of the writers enjoy those never-ending assignments on a festival that belongs to a religion other than their own. For example, this just crossed my desk:



Re: Insights into Everyone’s Favourite Festival

I know you thought this assignment would be a delightful one, but I’m afraid I have to refuse it.

I know it’s too late for you to assign it to anyone else, but you must know that no-one’s going to read it anyway. Christmas ought to be the season (and most people get through December and January without even knowing it exists – damned philistines), not this trumped up Jewish thing which I experience mainly through my neighbour’s experiments in frying. I’m not Jewish, and you ought not make me suffer so.

My neighour should lay off, too. I can take canned versions of Dreidl, Dreidl (I heard the chipmunk version four times when I popped out to buy milk – I have come to dread dreidls) and I can replace Ma’ot tsur with my own Rock of Ages (singing in my mind, because it wouldn’t do to offend the masses) but I’m not sure I can take any more of my neighbour’s cooking.

She fried a turducken last week and still pops around every day with parcels. Eventually she thankfully ran out of deep-fried turducken and so she fried chocolate yesterday, with eleven different herbs and spices and a breadcrumb coating (Kentucky fried chocolate, she named it, but I can guarantee you that no-one fries chocolate in Kentucky) and yesterday she pulled eight (apparently random) items from her pantry and refrigerator and has just given me a basket of what she claims to be her ‘Special Milchig Chanukah Selection.’ The basket is stained with grease and so is the list that tells me what’s what. I would tell her what’s what if I dared, but instead I’m waiting for rubbish collection to take away the dregs of her pantry. She has fried me olives, cream cheese, pickled cucumbers, chickpeas, acidophilus capsules, Graham crackers, avocado dip (which she kindly notes is past its use-by date) and pistachio nuts in their shell.

Excuse me, but there’s someone at the door.

It’s my neighbour again. She explained that I needed a non-dairy basket, since it’s the last day. It’s apparently traditional. Now I have chicken drumsticks, duck, roast turkey (that turkducken in disguise), egg, chicken salami, beef strips, kangaroo meatballs and emu pastrami, all of which will grace my rubbish bin just as soon as I can waddle out the door. Fried emu pastrami is a culinary abomination.

I wish Australia were one of those countries where Jews were in such a minority that she didn’t dare to be neighbourly in this way. Or to fry emu pastrami.

None of this is why I can’t write you that article. The truth is that I’ve developed a phobia of sheep.

I’ve applied for a job in Antarctica (where the only sheep are for eating or wearing) but until that comes through, I need to avoid sheep in all their manifestations for the sake of my mental health. I especially need to avoid zombie sheep which, I understand, are a special element of the bush Chanukah. I could move to the US, where they never developed the celebration to the extent of smearing blood over the mouth of fake sheep; they’re more interested in presents than baskets of fried foods, too. I know all this because I did my research before starting this email to you.

I did my research and the zombie sheep gave me nightmares and I promptly applied for that job in Antarctica. I didn’t apply for the US job, for they have sheep in the US (just not zombie sheep). I found an excellent article proving that Jews spoke Spanish before they spoke Hebrew and that modern Jewish footnotes came from Medieval systems of glossing.

It would have been a very impressive article. I would have delved into how one maintains the virginity of olive oil in a corrupt society and the history of the move of the Melbourne Cup until it reached its current date of the first Tuesday in Chanukah. I was researching the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism when I discovered that three of them have sheep lurking behind their innocent faces and the sheep and the fried food overwhelmed me and it’s all too much and you can just manage without “Insights into Everyone’s Favourite Festival” this year.

To appease you, I attach the final of my story into the bad habits of hobbits. I found some eye-opening behaviour in the hobbit community, I can tell you. I have another version I can send, if you want, but it will only do if we have a sealed section this month and if our legal advisor thinks the hobbits won’t sue. It’s accurate, but the little ones cultivate such a prissy public image that I’m not certain how they’ll react to certain elements of their private lives being revealed. One of the elements I left out of even the racy version was their Chanukah habits. Let me just say (without going into detail) that hobbits fry more than mushrooms for the festival. They are genuinely terrifying.

There are no hobbits in Antarctica, are there? I need to move there permanently.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-23T00:39:00

I think I've missed a night. This means that tomorrow you get the story of Chanukah.

Work is the main trouble, for it's being impossible. Also, I took two hours off today to be with friends, just because. I intend to do this throughout the next few weeks, even if it means pulling some late nights. Just because.

My present to you today, therefore, is a recommendation of a book that will make up for all the possible presents and historical tidbits I could have given you and didn't, due to lack of time. It's c1240 pages long, which is usually a good thing. It was written by Thomas Webster and Mrs Parkes and has the acutely modest and self-effacing title of "Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy: comprising subjects connected with the interests of every individual; such as the construction of domestic edifices; furniture; carriages, and instruments of domestic use. Also, animal and vegetable substances used as food, and the methods of preserving them by cooking, receipts, etc. Materials employed in dress and the toilet; business of the laundry; preservation of health, domestic medicine &c., &c" What more does one need? Especially when you look at the very elegant and accurate use of the ampersand? Well, you might want to date (1855) or the fact that I found it free on the internet, so you can obtain your own copy after a mere several hours of downloading.

And now I have to catch up with more various other things. This week is that, plus a social life. Normally when I'm like this, I tend to skip the social life. If I could only fit a bit more sleep in, I'd be 100% happy.

Chanukah - second to fifth nights

The trouble with Chanukah so close to everyone else's silly seasons and with so many work deadlines is that I forget to blog. To make things easier for me, then, I'm going you your presents for the missing nights plus the nights right up to and including my Chanukah At Home. From Sunday 'til the end, you'll get the posts with snippets of interesting things and maybe the Chanukah story. Until then, it's actual presents. Still electronic this year, but actual presents.

Night Two: two copies of my Rethinking History article, on how fiction and history work together
Night Three: three copies of a short story (I shall draw one at random out of my sparkly sorting hat)
Night Four: four copies of another short story (because my sparkly purple sorting hat needs workout)
Night Five: five copies of the cookbook I made for friends way back in the 1990s The closest I've been to self-publishing, I suspect)

How will this operate?

You can put your name down for as many gifts as you like, but please give me your email address. I won't use your address for any purpose other than emailing these presents. I will need it even if you think I already have it (because too often I discover I don't have it and we all waste previous time). Then I'd like you to list the items you want in order.

You can email me, list things here, send me a message through LJ or through my website contact form (since obviously quite a few of you won't want to make your emails public). On my Sunday afternoon, I'll take all your names and wishes and allocate the gifts as fairly as I can.

You don't have to know me to receive a gift this Chanukah - but it would help your enjoyment if you liked my writing.

Happy Chanukah!

Chanukah - first night

Happy Chanukah!

I had a present all planned, but fate intervened. Fate is named "Satalyte", and Satalyte is the publisher of my new novel. They've decided to give a hefty 30% off to anyone who buys direct from their website. No special codes. No secret handshakes. It includes e-books and paper books, but no discount on shipping. Just go here: http://satalyte.com.au/product/langue-dot-doc-1305-gillian-polack/

Not only is this special on til then end of the year (East Coast Australia time), but there are other books involved. Jack Dann's magisterial Jubilee is one of them.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-15T14:38:00

Today is bizarre. Anyone watching the news will know why. I'm focussing on work and on finding out if my friends and family are OK.

Two moments I want to mention, just because. First, the kind of people who talk about the Jewish language ("Was Jewish your first language?") are now talking about an Islamic writing (it looks like Arabic to me) ie they're much more universally ignorant than I expected.

I guess I don't need to remind anyone reading this that the language I am writing this in is the most common language of Jews worldwide. I hereby announce, therefore, that English is Jewish (the language). I don't know what the actual numbers for languages in the Moslem world are, but I know for a fact that English is the language of Moslems in Australia. I'm all geared now to play with the mind of anyone stupid enough to make either mistake in my vicinity.

My other moment was a parcel for the Aurealis awards. Four more books to read. Except that they came from a few doors down from the siege and were delivered during the siege. Publishing folks, I hope you're all home now, watching things from TV.

ETA: A third moment., I forgot that they were turning the water off for the whole afternoon and was putting off getting dressed until I'd done enough words. I hope no-one actually wants to see me today...