Elizabeth Wein's Blog, page 6

setting the record straight

OOOOOOHHHH I just HATE being accused of anachronisms! :P :P :P

so, just in case anyone really wants to know:

"shag, v. To coit (with a woman): late C.18-20. Very gen. among soldiers in WW1." (Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English)

"twat; in C.18, occ. twait. The female pudend: mid-C.17-20. 2. Pej. term for a fool: low: since late C. 19." (ibid)

"blonde bombshell" in use widely since 1942. It was actress Jean Harlow's nickname before that (she died in 1937):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombshell_(sex_symbol)

BRING 'EM ON.

Which REMINDS ME. The notion that "all caps for emphasis has only been around since the Internet" is terrifically self-congratulatory. Do you think we all went around WHISPERING before the Internet was invented? I will save my typewriter keyboard rant for later, but to be brief, let me just quote Miss Climpson. I don't need to quote anyone else, really, since this passage from Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers dates to 1930.

...

My dear Lord Peter—

I am sure you have been wondering what has happened to me. But at last I have NEWS! I have STORMED THE CITADEL!!! I am going to the house tonight and you may expect GREAT THINGS!!!

In haste,
Yours very sincerely,
Katharine A. Climpson

guest post from Amanda

This was originally an email with the subject line "WHY I DON'T BLOG." I told her I'd blog it for her. Because YES.

(the child in question is 6. the "went to work" entry is too easy to overlook to give an accurate picture. Also, "went to Reno, NV for work" is kind of a throwaway if you don't realize that the writer starts the day in Sacramento, CA)



WHY I DON'T BLOG

MONDAY
Made breakfast
Packed school lunch
Checked backpack
Took child to school
Went to work
Procured school snack
Volunteer at school
Took child home
Played
Made dinner
Did homework
Did reading
DId dinner dishes

TUESDAY
Made breakfast
Bathed child
Packed lunch
Checked backpack
Took to school
Went to work
Picked up child
Karate
Emptied household trash and put out garage cans
Did homework
Did Reading
Did dinner dishes

WEDNESDAY
made breakfast
Packed 32 cliff bars for school snack and checked backpack
Wants school lunch (yah)
Took to school
Volunteer training for school library
Worked from home
Mowed lawn
Filled seven bird feeders
Swept up spilled seeds
Went to DMV
Went to target
Air in car tire
Went to Walgreens (target did not have face masks)
Picked up child
Karate
Did homework
Did reading
Took child and CAT for walk

THURSDAY
Made breakfast
You are having school lunch!
Took car to dealership
Went to Reno, NV for work
Back to dealership to Pick up car (with new tire)
Did homework
Did reading
Did dinner dishes

FRIDAY
Made breakfast
Checked backpack
Put 40 face masks in backpack for sheltering in place box in classroom
Scrubbed bathrooms
Cleaned house, mop, vaccuum
Ironed tablecloth
Made desserts
Went to work late
Went to bank
Picked up child
Re-heated leftovers for dinner
Did reading
Did dishes
Changed litterbox
Put out stuff for guests
Led Girl scouts parents meeting at my house
Cleaned up dishes
Cleaned playroom

SATURDAY
Walked two miles
Took child and doll to funderland
Went to grocery
Made Lunch
Did 7 loads laundry
Folded laundry
Made 3 batches blackberry pie filling
Made batch mint jelly
Cleaned kitchen
Made dinner
Did dishes
Paid bills

SUNDAY
Walked two miles
Bathed child and sat in bathroom while tub play 55 minutes
Unloaded dish washer
Did one more load laundry
Put away 8 loads of laundry
Fell asleep while icing shoulder scored a 1 1/2 hour nap!
Watered plants
Cleaned kitchen
Played
Cleaned child's room
tried to replace batteries in clock and leapster.
Searched for and recharged 15 batteries
Made dinner
Did dishes

MONDAY
made breakfast
Checked backpack
Packed lunch
Took child to school
Went to work
Volunteered for school library
Mailed Hal's mom's birthday present
Took child home
Played
Did homework
Did reading
Did dishes

TUESDAY
made breakfast
Checked backpack
Wants school lunch
Took child to school
Went to work
Went to doctor
Picked child up
karate
Waited for 45 minutes with different child until HIS parents showed up
Oh, tomorrow is apple day and you need an apple? Went to grocery
We are out of milk? Went BACK into grocery
Washed filthy child
Did homework
Did dishes

WEDNESDAY
heard garbage truck, leaped out of bed and raced to put out garbage cans
Put out stuff for goodwill
Wants school lunch
Checked backpack
Took child to school
Went to work
Found and Printed 10 pictures of our cats for school project
Picked up child
Made child snack
Did homework
Washed karate uniform
Did reading

THURSDAY
Packed lunch
Checked backpack
Found karate stuff
Took child to school
Went to work
Picked up child
Karate
Cleaned up cat puke
Did homework
Did reading
Played 6 games UNO

FRIDAY
Cleaned up cat puke
Cleaned up cat poop
Announced that i had reached my lifetime maxium of puke, pee, and poop cleaning to a less than receptive audiance
Made breakfast
Packed lunch
Took child to school
Forgot to check backpack. No homework and in fact no backpack and no lunch
Collected GS paperwork from other mothers in auditorium
Chased down an 18 month old whose mother let her wander out of building (she was half way down the breezeway.) Held child while collecting rest of paperwork/checks from GS parents
Returned child to oddly unalarmed mother (have additional stories re: this mother)
Went to work
Picked up lice kit
Came home and got sick cat (Otis)
Tool sick cat to vet
Collected child from school
Checked child's scalp
Dodged bullet did monkey dance anyway
Made dinner
Did dishes



SATURDAY
Walked two miles
Went to michaels
Post office
Grocery
Got gas
Made lunch
Cleaned play room
Did two loads laundry
Made pumpkin bread with child
Mopped kitchen floor and child
Made 64 mini-muffins for child's turn at class snack
Made dinner
Did dishes

SUNDAY
Walked two miles
Made breakfast
Did dishes
Did pet project with child
Cleaned living room
Vaccumed
Took child to ikea
Made lunch
Took nap with child

Watered plants
Made jelly
listened to practice pet presentation


Wash, Rinse, Repeat

on reviewing

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a good review, and what makes a bad review - I mean, what makes the review itself good or bad, regardless of the reviewer’s opinion of the book. It’s kind of stopped me reviewing books myself this year because I’ve become so much more aware of the power of the reviewer and his or her effect on the author. And I’m not really sure I want or deserve that power. (I stopped giving star ratings on Goodreads a couple of years ago for exactly this reason.)

So here are a few observations I've saved up over the last few months which I’m planning to apply to my own reviews in the future, if I ever get brave enough to start writing them again:

1) I will never qualify my reaction based on other people’s. My reaction to a book is mine, not what my friends think. If I don’t like it, it may be the author’s fault; it may be my fault; but I can’t blame the ‘hype,’ which has nothing to do with the book itself. (‘Don’t believe the hype. Believe the hype.’ Taking sides on book hype??? Since when is ‘hype’ part of the review process?)

2) If I don’t finish a book, I’m not really qualified to assess its overall success or failure - I can only comment on my reaction to what I actually read.

3) Even if a book bores me out of my brain, I will never again use the B word in an online review. Not only is this a powerful turn-off to other readers who may not be bored by the things that bore me, it is also extremely damaging to writerly egos. Which leads me to number 4…

4) I am aware that the author WILL PROBABLY SEE MY ONLINE REVIEW. And I am also aware that there’s a good chance I will meet her someday, and we will have to be nice to each other. More than once I have had an author turn up unexpectedly on my blog and thank me for a review, or elaborate on something I didn’t understand. I’ve occasionally done it to other reviewers myself. Knowing that the author will read my review shouldn’t stop me from applying legitimate criticism or stating my own personal reaction to a book, but it should make me think carefully about framing my argument in a fair and diplomatic way.

5) I fact-check things I doubt in a book before I accuse the author of anachronisms or whatever. Because she probably knows more than I do, and if I falsely accuse her of errors, I’m just spreading ignorance around cyberspace.

6) I will never, ever apologize for liking a book.

7) Also, I am no longer ever going to say ‘I am surprised’ at how well-received a book is. ( I do this all the time.) I am not the ultimate arbiter of taste. If a book does not push my buttons (or pushes the wrong ones), I am not going to disparage the several thousand other people who enjoyed it by implying that they are tasteless morons less elegantly discerning than me.

There you go, my meta-review.

slow on the uptake

My kids have grown up with the story of this exchange I overheard between two old geezers on a bus in Perth, sometime in the past ten years, but so long ago we can't remember when it happened:

Geezer 1: "Upon a hill I saw a coo.
It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

"That's poeyetry, that is."

Geezer 2: "What planet are ye on?"


This story has been around so long that both my kids recite it as examples of 1) funny old guys on buses, 2) amateur poeyetry, 3) randomness. (Often, the "What planet are ye on" response gets quoted out of context.)

Well, last week we were discussing this ditty at length for no real reason, and pretty randomly, Mark counted up the syllables and discovered that it is in fact 17 syllables long, and therefore technically a haiku, especially if you write it like this:


Upon a hill I
saw a coo. It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

So actually (and we cracked up at length over this) it *IS* poeyetry.

Yesterday, Sara commented, "That coo on the hill haiku is about a HIGH. COO."

And suddenly the whole thing clicked - and we realized that in fact the geezer on the bus had been trying to tell a JOKE, not a poem, and he GOT THE PUNCHLINE WRONG ten years ago or whatever it was.

So the joke goes like this! (And you have to be very, very deadpan in the way you tell it.)

Upon a hill I
saw a coo. It's not there noo.
It must have shifted.

That's a HAI-KU.

[thunderous applause]

I think we have set a record for the Longest Time it Takes to Get a Joke.

Also, it doesn't really work in English.

One more from Ravensbrück

location of Block 32. Check out the Soviet graffiti.

One of the conference members turns up this morning with a sticking plaster across the bridge of his nose.

Sheepishly: ‘A door attacked me. I don’t even know if it was an anti-Semitic door.’
Me: ‘It is probably just doing its job as a door.’

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This conference would have been impossible for me without the assistance of a pair of talented translators who have basically repeated absolutely everything spoken aloud in plenary sessions and workshops for the past four days, mostly in English for me, but occasionally in German (from English) for the small handful of European participants who aren’t actually fluent in English. OMG it makes me feel so dumb. But I’m also hugely grateful and impressed at how hard these guys work and how talented they are. I walk around with a little box the size of a carton of cigarettes which hangs around my neck, with my earbuds plugged in — you have to rip them out immediately if you want to say something or if someone else starts speaking English, because the translation suddenly switches instantly into German and then you forget what you were going to say because your words are being turned into German in your ear.

Pretty amazing technology combined with amazing people. (When I close my eyes, as I fall asleep, I hear ‘German’ being spoken in my head. Of course it is not really German. But I still hear it.)

I thought I’d also comment on the exhibit in the cell block here, which is nifty. So what do you do with several dozen tiny empty rooms fraught with suffering? They have given each different nation who had women imprisoned here a separate room in which to construct an individual national memorial. The result is wildly varied and often reflects national character and ethnicity. The displays suffer because as museum exhibits they’re getting a bit tatty; unfortunately or fortunately, because they’re governed by the rules for memorials, they can’t be altered in any way. Despite this it’s a really great use of the space. The memorials are all on the upper floor of the cell block, which is oriented around a central well, so the space that unifies the exhibit is light and airy. Below, on the sub-ground level, are more conventional prison cells.

It’s pretty creepy down there, but it makes an appropriate sobering contrast to the exuberance and intensity of the national memorial exhibits upstairs.

---------------------------------


drawing by Aat Breur, 1943

I'm pretty sure this is the same scene as the one below. The trees in the foreground are probably the actual same trees (many of the trees on site were planted during the time the camp was in operation). The building in the picture below was originally outside the camp walls - the wall there, and the barracks you can see in the drawings, are gone now. The tall pine trees on the bank behind the wall are also gone, and apparently this is something that former prisoners remark on when they come back - they miss the trees. The trees were all they could see of outside.


2012

I am a fan of Aat Breur's drawings, though I have previously only seen portraits she's made which are reprinted in various books. I love these pictures of sleeping women (they look to me like they are sleeping, not dead. The second one is titled 'Silent Hour.')





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After I hauled about a dozen books on Ravensbrück and the Nuremberg trials with me to Pennsylvania and back this summer without opening any of them, Tim asked me as I was packing for this trip: ‘How many books that you don’t read are you going to take with you this time?’ The answer is four. Yup, I didn’t read a single book I brought with me. I go home tomorrow.

Post from Ravensbrück

looking out

It’s the end of Day 2 of this five-day seminar I’m attending, the ‘Ninth European Summer School at Ravensbrück.’ I have often noted to myself how writing about something as it’s happening seems to give it more validity, somehow, than writing about it after the fact, and part of the reason I’m here is to validate my own intentions, my understanding, my authority, my ability as an author. So, I’m validating. I hope.

I am writing this, and posting it, from one of the former female SS guards’ barracks, which is now a youth hostel, and a very nice one too. The youth hostel is outside the camp walls, in case you are wondering. I have 3 roommates, all German students, intense and enthusiastic and exuberant—as are all the student participants, making me a bit envious and nostalgic about being a student. Hum.

I have two ironies I want to share: the food here is astonishingly good, and the memorial site is completely… how shall I put this—unguarded? There are no gates, there are no ‘hours’. Because I am here, I can come and go freely in and out of the camp itself—but anyone could; you wouldn’t have to be staying here. So on several occasions (because I am mad) I have had the entire camp to myself.

The sky was so tremendously glorious tonight, with high altocirrus clouds just barely covering a waxing and gibbous moon, and the translators had gone home because it was so late by the time we finished watching the ‘Women of Ravensbrück’ film so I couldn’t join in the discussion, so I just went through the gates on my own and looked at the sky. It is the same sky.

What makes it different, being in a place at night? Partly, I think, it feels a bit illicit. But being in such a place at night? Alone? It is intense, but not frightening. There are crickets here, which there aren’t in Scotland, and I love the sound of noisy nighttime bugs in summer. It is a very quiet place, apart from the bugs, and an empty place. A clean place. Turning it into a memorial has purified it.


town of Fuerstenberg from across the lake

But the intensity makes me feel as though, like Sophie in The Freedom Maze or Hannah in The Devil’s Arithmetic, when I blink I will open my eyes and be trapped there and the only thing I’ll recognize is the sky.

online resources for teen writers

At the very lovely annual Teen Titles reception in Edinburgh yesterday, I promised a couple of budding writers that if they looked me up on Facebook I'd post a list of online magazines and sites specifically geared for teen writers, and here it is! Feel free to add if you know of others. Hope these are helpful to some of you, and pass them on.

YA fiction for and by young adults:


Merlyn's Pen

http://www.merlynspen.org/



Teen Ink

http://www.teenink.com/



TWFT (Teens Writing for Teens)

http://teenswritingforteens.com/



Figment

http://figment.com/




Forum for teenage writers:

http://www.teenagewriters.com/forum/




Very good advice here (if a little harshly honest) by respected writer and blogger John Scalzi:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/04/27/10-things-teenage-writers-should-know-about-writing/




Tips for teenage writers:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/writing-resources-for-teenagers/

Race for Life & everything else

My "aftermath" post is 4 days late because Life, nevermind racing, interferes with LiveJournal. Can I just say that yesterday was Mark’s last day of primary/elementary school, Sara’s last day of her beloved Guides/Scouts troop who are now DISBANDED because they are all too old, AND our 12-year-old goldfish died. The goldfish was as old as Mark, possibly older, and we have had it since we moved to Scotland. When I left the house to meet Mark at the end of his last day of primary school, Fizz was breathing - when I came home, Fizz was dead. Definitely, all things considered, the end of an era.

We have also been to Mark’s "Leavers’ Assembly," Sara’s senior school play, cricket practice, the supermarket, and the shortlist launch for the Scottish Children’s Book Award. Which Code Name Verity is on, along with (in the Older Readers category) The Prince Who Walked with Lions by Elizabeth Laird and The 13th Horseman by Barry Hutchison. (I am so pleased to have finally met Elizabeth Laird, author of The Garbage King and Crusade . Given that The Prince Who Walked with Lions is a book I wish I’d written - so much so that I actually have a folder labelled "Alemayehu" in my work-in-progress folder - I am extremely pleased about sharing the list with Elizabeth Laird. Also, we had an awesome rushed Ethiopian experience swap and we think she probably crashed overnight with my aunt & uncle (Susan & Rog) in Woldia in 1968.)

But I digress!

Yes, Sara and I completed the Race for Life without incident - the weather was only marginally more cooperative than last year, and I didn’t end up carrying Sara’s hoodie and water bottle like I did last year, either. I finished in 38 minutes and Sara in 34. So we were both slower than we were a year ago. I wasn’t really expecting to be faster as I was much more cautious about training this year, due to an achy knee which I do NOT want to encourage.

lauradi7 discovered that we are in Photo 23 on the Dundee Courier website - we are the woman in blue and the teen in the navy sweatshirt!

But here’s a couple of close-ups.



Here's our cheering section. The beak is from his school play parrot costume from last week:




Late donations still gratefully accepted - our online donation page is here:

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/gatland-girls

Race for Life tomorrow!

OK, we're ready, and the Perth Race for Life is tomorrow. I will post another update when it's over. Sara is hoping for rain because she "likes running in the rain." I confess I wouldn't mind not having fogged up glasses!

Grateful thanks to all of you who put our goal of £200 over the top after my last post - see you on the other side!



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http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/gatland-girls

romeo & juliet

Sara has written lonely hearts column posts for Romeo and Tybalt. She is letting me share them.

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Romeo

Fair, passionate, poetry loving man, seeks beautiful and young man or woman. Enjoys bonding through late nights watching romantic movies and willing to marry at any time.



Tybalt

Cat loving, fiery, protective man looks for powerful woman who is adventurous and fun-loving. Must be interested in karate or fencing, and must enjoy and participate in street fights. Must not have allergy to cats, as he is the King of them.