Gillian Polack's Blog, page 81
February 13, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-14T10:32:00
I'm still thinking about Moore. Anyone who wants my view of him will have to buy me a drink at a con, for I suspect my view is complex.
Also, today is a high pain day (all my underlying stuff is solved - now I get to work on the everyday pain levels) so I'm easily perturbed. Mind you, my being perturbed meant that I retweeted Momentum's grumpy tweet and won myself a package of dark, dark books to read. Next time I'm like this, I shall have fuel...
Also, today is a high pain day (all my underlying stuff is solved - now I get to work on the everyday pain levels) so I'm easily perturbed. Mind you, my being perturbed meant that I retweeted Momentum's grumpy tweet and won myself a package of dark, dark books to read. Next time I'm like this, I shall have fuel...
gillpolack @ 2014-02-13T19:29:00
I finished my two books last night (Jemisin and Nix, for the curious) and I've read two of the three books for today (Butler, Grenville and Moore). They're each for slightly different purposes. I wanted to doublecheck an aspect of Nix's worldbuilding, and to work out the sort of place I could fit Jemisin's book, because it had triggered some memories of French genre and I wanted to hunt them up and see if there was a match (it was only a partial match). Butler was purely for fun* and and because I'm thinking about YA voice (my idea of fun is not always that of other people). Moore is because I've heard so many views of his feminism or lack thereof in Lost Girls (and in his other work, but Lost Girls is the most cited) that it's about time I read it and made up my own mind and the Grenville is for the history-in-fiction project. It's the non-fiction she wrote as a companion to The Secret River.
The Grenville is haunting me for a number of reasons. I might have to write about the two Secret River volumes in tandem one day, or deliver a conference paper, or something, for her history is not what she thinks it is. I can see why other historians are perturbed by the book - what it presents as is not what the research actually ought to be presenting. As I was explaining to a journalist-friend I ran into between the post office and the library, this is not actually a problem. It's curious and worth exploring.
What is a problem (for me, personally) is a throwaway one-liner that Grenville uses in Searching for the Secret River (published less than a decade ago) when she discovers that her background isn't Jewish. She wants Solomon Wiseman to be Jewish because that would mean she had 'near White' ancestry. It's an uncomfortable and rather Australian formulation of the exotic other. Cockneys are exotic other if they're Jewish. It's plagued me all my life, it's how Jews were included in the White Australia policy before I was born, but it's seldom stated so openly. And for her, it wasn't only open, it was an aside.
I'm not going to unpack it now, because I've unpacked it many times before. What I am going to note is that my English ancestors came here 150 years ago last November. For near whites we look rather like colonialists. If we're both, maybe we should be redefined as off-white?
That joke was not funny, for off-white pretty much describes the view of Jew in Australia when we're neither mainstream nor exotic other. I'm off to read Moore. I don't think Moore's going to be more cheerful (for if he were, he would not be Moore) but at least he'll distract me (for if he didn't, he wouldn't be Moore).
Long PS (my post script is a good one):
My leg is not seriously damaged. It's a soft tissue issue. My near future contains physio work. Also, my daring dietary experiment has quite rolled back my incipient diabetes. And the new medical regime for dealing with the bushfire smoke is working - I'm a mess from it currently, but the inflammation from it is lower than it's been in years. This means that the mess is temporary and is unlikely to result in serious problems, like those that emerged from the 2003 fires. My doctor and I were rather pleased with my bloodwork, but will withhold relief about my leg until I can actually walk properly.
*
steepholm
may be relieved to hear this.
The Grenville is haunting me for a number of reasons. I might have to write about the two Secret River volumes in tandem one day, or deliver a conference paper, or something, for her history is not what she thinks it is. I can see why other historians are perturbed by the book - what it presents as is not what the research actually ought to be presenting. As I was explaining to a journalist-friend I ran into between the post office and the library, this is not actually a problem. It's curious and worth exploring.
What is a problem (for me, personally) is a throwaway one-liner that Grenville uses in Searching for the Secret River (published less than a decade ago) when she discovers that her background isn't Jewish. She wants Solomon Wiseman to be Jewish because that would mean she had 'near White' ancestry. It's an uncomfortable and rather Australian formulation of the exotic other. Cockneys are exotic other if they're Jewish. It's plagued me all my life, it's how Jews were included in the White Australia policy before I was born, but it's seldom stated so openly. And for her, it wasn't only open, it was an aside.
I'm not going to unpack it now, because I've unpacked it many times before. What I am going to note is that my English ancestors came here 150 years ago last November. For near whites we look rather like colonialists. If we're both, maybe we should be redefined as off-white?
That joke was not funny, for off-white pretty much describes the view of Jew in Australia when we're neither mainstream nor exotic other. I'm off to read Moore. I don't think Moore's going to be more cheerful (for if he were, he would not be Moore) but at least he'll distract me (for if he didn't, he wouldn't be Moore).
Long PS (my post script is a good one):
My leg is not seriously damaged. It's a soft tissue issue. My near future contains physio work. Also, my daring dietary experiment has quite rolled back my incipient diabetes. And the new medical regime for dealing with the bushfire smoke is working - I'm a mess from it currently, but the inflammation from it is lower than it's been in years. This means that the mess is temporary and is unlikely to result in serious problems, like those that emerged from the 2003 fires. My doctor and I were rather pleased with my bloodwork, but will withhold relief about my leg until I can actually walk properly.
*
steepholm
may be relieved to hear this.
February 12, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-12T23:53:00
My sole aim for the rest of today is to finish the two books I started. Then I can return one on my library visit tomorrow and the other can go away and my stack of reading is a little diminished.
I've finally finished all my scanning. I have to label the last set of photos, and then I'm completely done. All the unsorted papers that were randomly inhabiting corners of the flat are now in the process of being checked and dealt with. This means that I'm within a week of the end of the big intellectual sort, which means I can finish my big projects, for everything will be to hand. Any day now, all this is going to affect the sum of mess in my flat, but right now there's still paper everywhere and random stuff discoverable on many surfaces.
Regardless of this, tomorrow after I've done all my messages (and there is a long list of them) I shall start knocking over the next big slab of work. I'll be in that happy place where I get to combine my fiction writer brain with my historiographer brain with my literary brain with my ethnohistory brain. This is when I get to disentangle the big stuff I've been doing for a decade and translate it for others.
Some of it is already translated and will be out very soon. The forms are all signed and the editing was done a while back and we're onto the very last stages of production. Watch this space, for it's the scholarly part of my last dissertation.
If you will remember, I extracted all the bits about me (which would make a very nice article in quite another discipline, I suspect) and put the deeper analysis into a context with current historiography and lo, it was accepted for publication by the first journal I asked (which is one of my favourite journals - I was pretty happy about that) and now it's coming out. The wheels of academia grind slow, but they do grind, and you will finally be able to read (if you want to) my considered thoughts on the actual relationship of fiction (especially genre fiction) with the writing of history. So it's not my dissertation itself, but stuff from my dissertation turned so that it can reflect and be a part of a larger scholarly picture.
And, in a moment of irony, I pulled out notes from my first doctoral dissertation and they will be used in an article later this year. I do not know quite how this happened, but I never published that first one (for a variety of reasons, one of which included my first academic publication being replaced by a satire I'd written, because the editor had the satire on his desk at the time) so it's kinda nice that a bit of it will see the light of day.
I've finally finished all my scanning. I have to label the last set of photos, and then I'm completely done. All the unsorted papers that were randomly inhabiting corners of the flat are now in the process of being checked and dealt with. This means that I'm within a week of the end of the big intellectual sort, which means I can finish my big projects, for everything will be to hand. Any day now, all this is going to affect the sum of mess in my flat, but right now there's still paper everywhere and random stuff discoverable on many surfaces.
Regardless of this, tomorrow after I've done all my messages (and there is a long list of them) I shall start knocking over the next big slab of work. I'll be in that happy place where I get to combine my fiction writer brain with my historiographer brain with my literary brain with my ethnohistory brain. This is when I get to disentangle the big stuff I've been doing for a decade and translate it for others.
Some of it is already translated and will be out very soon. The forms are all signed and the editing was done a while back and we're onto the very last stages of production. Watch this space, for it's the scholarly part of my last dissertation.
If you will remember, I extracted all the bits about me (which would make a very nice article in quite another discipline, I suspect) and put the deeper analysis into a context with current historiography and lo, it was accepted for publication by the first journal I asked (which is one of my favourite journals - I was pretty happy about that) and now it's coming out. The wheels of academia grind slow, but they do grind, and you will finally be able to read (if you want to) my considered thoughts on the actual relationship of fiction (especially genre fiction) with the writing of history. So it's not my dissertation itself, but stuff from my dissertation turned so that it can reflect and be a part of a larger scholarly picture.
And, in a moment of irony, I pulled out notes from my first doctoral dissertation and they will be used in an article later this year. I do not know quite how this happened, but I never published that first one (for a variety of reasons, one of which included my first academic publication being replaced by a satire I'd written, because the editor had the satire on his desk at the time) so it's kinda nice that a bit of it will see the light of day.
February 10, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-11T13:10:00
My mail today contained just one thing. I am now the proud possessor of a dinosaur-dispenser. The dinosaurs fit into the clear base, and when one holds the base and waves it around and presses the button the gorilla at the top beats its chest and makes strange noises. KJ Bishop knows me far too well, for I adore it. My Canberra friends may expect infliction. I can now terrify the masses.
My mail last week brought me something equally good: a 1950s British SF radio show from
rymrytr
. I can listen to one and threaten the world with the other.
My day is very nice, thank you.
My mail last week brought me something equally good: a 1950s British SF radio show from
rymrytr
. I can listen to one and threaten the world with the other.My day is very nice, thank you.
gillpolack @ 2014-02-10T22:36:00
I'm a bit tired of scanning, but I've done 350 photos. There may be more than I thought... (I have a tendency to underestimate numbers when tasks are big. It means I don't put them off as too hard.) Anyhow, there are only four albums to go, which is good, because my fortnight just did a little bit of a rearrangement. No Beast for a few days, but I have to get the writers and hsitory stuff done before 20 February, because after that things could get funky. They're either going to be interesting or funky and I won't know which until it happens.
Doesn't that sound mysterious? It is. From my end it's very mysterious. I promise to report if anything becomes reportable. If nothing is reportable, I promise to continue make statements that almost make sense.
In the interim, I now have teaching photos for Normandy. They're Medieval and landform, mostly, but with a bit of what happens after war damage when war damage is at various levels and of various kinds. I have quite different photos for Provence - I was looking at land use, mainly, and how wine tasting is conducted, and the relationship between Roman and Medieval and modern. These were all from 1995. None of them are for immediate use. They're in case someone asks or needs or a course demands.
The next two albums are for a coming course. They're from England in 1986. They're also going to be handy for the seventeenth century project. They're all about relationships with the supernatural and the mystical and with stone and wood. I didn't take them that way, but that's what they may well be used for next.
Over the years I've built up pictures that can be used in many, many ways. The problem was that some were in disk and some were old-fashioned prints. It made it really hard to put together what I needed for class. I had a family series that I used to teach at the Canberra Museum, when I was commission to teach a family history course there, and I only ever had them in hard copy, for instance. Now they're scanned, I can extend the family, or create a narrative of that family going to war, or use it to illustrate changes in children's dress over 80 years. That's the point - when everything's in the same format, I get to change my narratives to meet the needs of the class. And I can pack away the hard copy and not lose them or hide them in places I can't find. In two days nearly 14,000 pictures will be accessible. It will save me much class prep time, and help my writing and mean I can play evil jokes on friends. All of these are good outcomes. If I were a normal person, I'd turn them into calendars. Maybe I'll do that, too, one day.
Right now, I just want the last four albums finished. They're slow ones.
And I have an inkling that more photos will appear as I get more of my work papers under control.
Doesn't that sound mysterious? It is. From my end it's very mysterious. I promise to report if anything becomes reportable. If nothing is reportable, I promise to continue make statements that almost make sense.
In the interim, I now have teaching photos for Normandy. They're Medieval and landform, mostly, but with a bit of what happens after war damage when war damage is at various levels and of various kinds. I have quite different photos for Provence - I was looking at land use, mainly, and how wine tasting is conducted, and the relationship between Roman and Medieval and modern. These were all from 1995. None of them are for immediate use. They're in case someone asks or needs or a course demands.
The next two albums are for a coming course. They're from England in 1986. They're also going to be handy for the seventeenth century project. They're all about relationships with the supernatural and the mystical and with stone and wood. I didn't take them that way, but that's what they may well be used for next.
Over the years I've built up pictures that can be used in many, many ways. The problem was that some were in disk and some were old-fashioned prints. It made it really hard to put together what I needed for class. I had a family series that I used to teach at the Canberra Museum, when I was commission to teach a family history course there, and I only ever had them in hard copy, for instance. Now they're scanned, I can extend the family, or create a narrative of that family going to war, or use it to illustrate changes in children's dress over 80 years. That's the point - when everything's in the same format, I get to change my narratives to meet the needs of the class. And I can pack away the hard copy and not lose them or hide them in places I can't find. In two days nearly 14,000 pictures will be accessible. It will save me much class prep time, and help my writing and mean I can play evil jokes on friends. All of these are good outcomes. If I were a normal person, I'd turn them into calendars. Maybe I'll do that, too, one day.
Right now, I just want the last four albums finished. They're slow ones.
And I have an inkling that more photos will appear as I get more of my work papers under control.
February 9, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-10T11:29:00
I found some of my missing photos. This means that I now have 100 more photos to scan than I had this time yesterday, but that when I teach folklife and religion as part of world design, I have a much wider range of real life examples to draw on. I also have pictures of me in various kimonos in a traditional household because the friend I was staying with has a sense of humour and I made the mistake of asking "What does a kimono feel like when it's on? How does it affect the way you walk and breathe?". I got answers to my questions and she got much merriment - it worked. The photos still make me smile, all these years later. They also make me realise what very big bones I have for my height. There's a fairytale joke in there.
Given the sheer number of photos involved (over 400) and the amount of other work I need to complete this month, I've decided to race with myself and see how many I can do today. I'm doing admin work as well, but the writing/research will have to wait until I've made really substantial progress with the scanning, for I need to have it out of the way entirely, the photos labelled and the whole lot copied to my teaching USB.
So far I've done sixty-four, fourteen of them (mostly Bayeux) while composing this post. I'm hoping to do much admin and delayed emails today, in the short interstices between scans. I also intend to rewatch anime. We have bushfire smoke and I'm not comfortable, but I refuse to waste time or to let the smoke get in the way of me progressing all the things that must be done.
Given the sheer number of photos involved (over 400) and the amount of other work I need to complete this month, I've decided to race with myself and see how many I can do today. I'm doing admin work as well, but the writing/research will have to wait until I've made really substantial progress with the scanning, for I need to have it out of the way entirely, the photos labelled and the whole lot copied to my teaching USB.
So far I've done sixty-four, fourteen of them (mostly Bayeux) while composing this post. I'm hoping to do much admin and delayed emails today, in the short interstices between scans. I also intend to rewatch anime. We have bushfire smoke and I'm not comfortable, but I refuse to waste time or to let the smoke get in the way of me progressing all the things that must be done.
February 8, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-09T11:56:00
This morning I marketed. We watched 3 episodes of DS9 afterwards, and had brunch from foods fresh from the market, for it's going to be a bit of a warm day and the thought of food between, say, now and late is disturbing. This is how I had foccacia and pastry and iced coffee with my science fiction.
It's already over 33 degrees and not even midday yet, so I'm very glad I did this.
In my market bags are peaches and figs and nectarines and salad vegetables. Nothing exciting this week - just enough of everything to get me through. And I had so many treats with brunch today that I really don't want anything else. Except sleep. Sleep would be nice.
My work today and some of tomorrow is blitzing the scanning, for I have over 300 photos still that I'll need for teaching and that are not yet scanned. I'm missing two albums (mostly of Japan, which is a right royal nuisance), but at least I'll be finished this week. Also tomorrow is getting all those notes I took from all those articles into the right places so that I can start thinking about chapters and drafting and feeling that there is progress.
Right now it all feels like busy-work and not progress at all. This is par for the course with me and projects. There is a balance point between research and writing that feels as if I won't ever write it up, that I know what needs to be said and that I don't have to share it. In my twenties and thirties, when no-one was interested in my research, this meant I developed a startling amount of specialist understanding without publishing much at all. This is why I still am startled when people want me to write or want to know what I think: it's all in who you know and how they see you.
All that earlier work is paying off now, I think. The writing comes a lot easier and I am less defensive about my uniqueness.
Also, I have loads of very handy background. When I want to write about a single chanson de geste as part of a comparative article, I've already read every single chansons de geste written in Old French and its closest languages. I've read much of the literature written about it, as well. I can cut straight to the chase and collect the precise work and thoughts I need. My vicarious reading also pays off in this way. Other things I'm missing, but still, none of my years of not writing academically have actually been wasted - they're all emerging now, in my current work. If I keep up the pace, my writing may one day catch up with my research and then I'll get the chance to discover whole new vistas.
It's already over 33 degrees and not even midday yet, so I'm very glad I did this.
In my market bags are peaches and figs and nectarines and salad vegetables. Nothing exciting this week - just enough of everything to get me through. And I had so many treats with brunch today that I really don't want anything else. Except sleep. Sleep would be nice.
My work today and some of tomorrow is blitzing the scanning, for I have over 300 photos still that I'll need for teaching and that are not yet scanned. I'm missing two albums (mostly of Japan, which is a right royal nuisance), but at least I'll be finished this week. Also tomorrow is getting all those notes I took from all those articles into the right places so that I can start thinking about chapters and drafting and feeling that there is progress.
Right now it all feels like busy-work and not progress at all. This is par for the course with me and projects. There is a balance point between research and writing that feels as if I won't ever write it up, that I know what needs to be said and that I don't have to share it. In my twenties and thirties, when no-one was interested in my research, this meant I developed a startling amount of specialist understanding without publishing much at all. This is why I still am startled when people want me to write or want to know what I think: it's all in who you know and how they see you.
All that earlier work is paying off now, I think. The writing comes a lot easier and I am less defensive about my uniqueness.
Also, I have loads of very handy background. When I want to write about a single chanson de geste as part of a comparative article, I've already read every single chansons de geste written in Old French and its closest languages. I've read much of the literature written about it, as well. I can cut straight to the chase and collect the precise work and thoughts I need. My vicarious reading also pays off in this way. Other things I'm missing, but still, none of my years of not writing academically have actually been wasted - they're all emerging now, in my current work. If I keep up the pace, my writing may one day catch up with my research and then I'll get the chance to discover whole new vistas.
February 7, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-08T16:39:00
I'm so much more Schroedinger's Gillian than I was two years ago, when I first described myself this way. The health is clearer (and obviously improving) but everything else is decidedly obscure. Except that I'm a meanie - the boys next door say so.
My big news of the day is that I couldn't read an article (still got 13 to go - the heat got in the way of those with fine print and so did an email question that needed a long and considered answer, quite urgently) because of black things crawling across my vision. I didn't panic. I took off my glasses to clean them. It seemed a sensible first step. I could always panic afterwards, if I really wanted to.
Ants are disturbed by this weather. So much are they disturbed, that they now take refuge everywhere. This includes on my glasses. Little black ants. Crawling across my vision. I decided that panic was less to the point than amusement. And my glasses are unbelievably clean...
My big news of the day is that I couldn't read an article (still got 13 to go - the heat got in the way of those with fine print and so did an email question that needed a long and considered answer, quite urgently) because of black things crawling across my vision. I didn't panic. I took off my glasses to clean them. It seemed a sensible first step. I could always panic afterwards, if I really wanted to.
Ants are disturbed by this weather. So much are they disturbed, that they now take refuge everywhere. This includes on my glasses. Little black ants. Crawling across my vision. I decided that panic was less to the point than amusement. And my glasses are unbelievably clean...
gillpolack @ 2014-02-07T21:49:00
I'm whittling down the articles. I should finish tonight. This is because the re-reading has proven an almost-failure. I've got maybe two pages of new text from it. From 130 articles. Since I've saved the best for last and I'm nearly at that best, it should improve from here, but it may not.
The truth is that my argument appears to be covering quite new ground, but using familiar words. I see the words in someone else's work and I think "Finally, a paper I can engage in argument with and test my ideas against." But no, so far, none of them have given me that. I've got a few new notes and a few handy examples to cite, and that's the sum of it.
It means that my outline stands. It probably also means I'm going to be controversial. This is why I put off this project for a while, because I'm very tired of being not in the same room as everyone else for all my big stuff. It almost definitely means that this is just the way my mind works. Which may explain my fiction...
Anyhow, I've two more piles of paper, and then I'm done with this task. If it's not too hot tomorrow afternoon (which right now is looking improbable - like my brain) then I'll get to the multicultural festival. I'm meeting friends there, but only if it's not above about 35 degrees. One thing about travelling by bus - it's very hard to get home if you get heat exhaustion. So I don't do it, if I can help it, when it's over 35. So the multicultural festival may or may not happen again this year. I'll let you know...
The truth is that my argument appears to be covering quite new ground, but using familiar words. I see the words in someone else's work and I think "Finally, a paper I can engage in argument with and test my ideas against." But no, so far, none of them have given me that. I've got a few new notes and a few handy examples to cite, and that's the sum of it.
It means that my outline stands. It probably also means I'm going to be controversial. This is why I put off this project for a while, because I'm very tired of being not in the same room as everyone else for all my big stuff. It almost definitely means that this is just the way my mind works. Which may explain my fiction...
Anyhow, I've two more piles of paper, and then I'm done with this task. If it's not too hot tomorrow afternoon (which right now is looking improbable - like my brain) then I'll get to the multicultural festival. I'm meeting friends there, but only if it's not above about 35 degrees. One thing about travelling by bus - it's very hard to get home if you get heat exhaustion. So I don't do it, if I can help it, when it's over 35. So the multicultural festival may or may not happen again this year. I'll let you know...
February 6, 2014
gillpolack @ 2014-02-07T11:04:00
With writing exercises last week, I used up quite a bit of stationery. Good, I thought, I can buy more! I adore buying stationery. I love the process as much as the actual buying.
I tidied up my remnants and sat back and thought, "How did this happen?" The burglar (nearly 2 years ago now) stole a bunch and I didn't completely replace it. I've been eating steadily into my stash for years, and I haven't done a big buy for several years because I was being terribly restrained and virtuous. I gave a bunch away several times this year, because someone needed a handful of manilla folders or suchlike. I still have eight drawers of the stuff. Eight. They're small drawers, but still. Eight.
I don't think I'll be shopping for stationery this week. Or even next week. Envelopes and folders and pens: I have them.
I tidied up my remnants and sat back and thought, "How did this happen?" The burglar (nearly 2 years ago now) stole a bunch and I didn't completely replace it. I've been eating steadily into my stash for years, and I haven't done a big buy for several years because I was being terribly restrained and virtuous. I gave a bunch away several times this year, because someone needed a handful of manilla folders or suchlike. I still have eight drawers of the stuff. Eight. They're small drawers, but still. Eight.
I don't think I'll be shopping for stationery this week. Or even next week. Envelopes and folders and pens: I have them.
