Madeleine E. Robins's Blog: Madeleine Robins: Journal, page 13

Planned Obsolescence

A billionyears ago (actually 24) I worked as aghost-writerfor a psychiatrist whose specialties were 1) working with women with serious psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar depression, etc.) who were the mothers of infants, and 2) infant depression (you will be unsurprised to know that they are frequently linked).About the time my older daughter was six months old, I quit–having my nose that deepinto psychiatric dysfunction in infancy meant that every time my daughter hiccuped I was a...

Blog-Hoppery

Hoppery is perhaps a word that would not be legal in Scrabble(although the NY Times crossword puzzle might permit it). Through the kind offices of the talented and astonishingly busy Jennifer Stevenson, writer, roller-derbyist, fellow Book View Café member (and a powerhouse, I might add), I’m part of this blog hop. (I love living in the Future: I can beon tour and still be sitting cross-legged on my couch in my bathrobe.) If you’re here, you’re quite likely from Jen’s blog, or from Katherine...

Education =/= Panic

This is apparently true: a Long Islandelementary schoolcancelled the annual-year end kindergarten show because it would distract the kindergarteners from preparing for college.

I’m not as surprised by this as I might have been twenty years ago or so. At that time, when I was living in New York City and my husband and I were looking for a preschool for our older daughter, we were told–with a straight face–by the head of a Montessori school that my kid couldn’t hope to get into Harvard without t...

Bad Attention

When you’re a kid, and later, if and when you’re a parent, you sometimes hear the term “bad attention.” As in, “We know you like attention, Lochinvar, but setting Mary Lou’s braids on fire will only get youbad attention.”

Bad attention: the sort of attention that goes down in your permanent record, that possibly keeps you out of a job or the college of your choice, the sort of attention that maybe comes with media attention and perhaps a lengthy jail sentence.

There are those, I know, who belie...

The World is Full of Small Weird Miracles

There was a day, a few years ago, when I was walking Emily, the household dog, across the overpass that spans the highway near our house.  We were on the far side, starting down the ramp to the sidewalk, when I observed a middle-aged woman on the street below us.  She was walking her dogs, two affable looking German shepherds. When one of them stopped to do what a dog stops to do, the woman picked up the leavings in a plastic bag, as one does.  And then she did something curious: she went...

Why Can’t You Just Watch the Movie?

There are two kinds of people in the world: the people who divide the world into two kinds of people, and the people who don’t. (**Rimshot**) Among the many binary categorizations of humans, one that I run into a lot is: people who want to figure out why a story works, and people who don’t. And these two kinds of people can really get up each other’s nose. From my perspective, there I am, having a swell discussion about why the film we just saw worked (or didn’t), when someone says “Why do yo...

Why Can't You Just Watch the Movie?

There are two kinds of people in the world: the people who divide the world into two kinds of people, and the people who don't. (**Rimshot**)  Among the many binary categorizations of humans, one that I run into a lot is: people who want to figure out why a story works, and people who don't.  And these two kinds of people can really get up each other's nose.  From my perspective, there I am, having a swell discussion about why the film we just saw worked (or didn't), when someone says "Why...

Balance, Juggling, Life

[image error]This year's biggest accomplishment may be that I found a job.  A 9-5 gig.  After 14 years away from the "salaried workforce" (it isn't like I haven't been working for all those years, just that I was freelancing). There were persuasive economic and personal reasons to do this (and to the person in my social circle who seemed to believe that by taking a job I was somehow either betraying My Art or giving in to The Man–chill.  Really).  And in fact I can confidently say, after four whole days o...

It Must Follow, as the Night the Day

I had a perfectly splendid time last weekend, making cake for Tachyon Publication's 16th birthday party (it was a Sweet Sixteen cake.  With a rhinoceros.  In a tiara) and attending the party.  And as a nice add-on, I wound up getting to hang out with writers Nancy Kress, Jack Skillingstead, Pat Murphy, and Ellen Klages, all of whom are really smart people, funny, and know lots of stuff.  At dinner, apropos of something or other, Nancy said despairingly that in her writing classes she often...

How Story Saves Our Lives*

Once Upon a Time, I worked with a man who did not believe in fiction. He admitted its existence, he just didn't get it. In every other particular, Justin was a lovely man: charming and funny, sharp as a tack, and very successful. He was visually handicapped but a huge consumer of the written word. But what he liked to read were how-to books, essays, commentaries on real estate law, history–things factual. "Fiction is a lie," he said. "Why do you want to read things about people who don't...