Category Archives: Thorsday
A Beautiful Whatsit
Do you ever have one of those moments where you step on the scale and go, “Whooaaa, Nelly. You’ve officially gained fifteen pounds since the wedding.”
Nelly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I had a one of those this morning. It comes from several things. First, a permanent state of denial about my metabolism’s ability to do its job. Some people can eat till the cows come home and manage to be scrawny forever. Me? Not so much. Second, I have a difficult time saying no to burgers. Thick, juicy, medium rare prime Angus meat? Yeah, throw some pepper jack cheese and avocado on there with some pico, and I’ll give you anything you want. Third, whatever hormone it is that convinces women post-birthing that labor wasn’t really that bad seems to work in me to make me forget how good I feel when I’m working out regularly.
What I really feel like with a regular exercise regimen ^^^. What my brain remembers: iron maidens and thumbscrews. (Cover of Bliss)
So that leaves me waking up today with the scale rapidly approaching the highest number its ever seen. Yikes.
And I realized that there is a nice little metaphor in there, in spite of the weight I’ve accumulated. Ready?
Dreams are like weight loss goals. They’re there, each New Year sees them getting a cursory once over and a few weeks of renewed striving only to dive into that chocolate box sometime around Valentine’s Day. You forget how good it feels when you’re working toward them and succeeding, because dizzam, does that burger taste delicious. And you really need to catch up on The Bachelor, because you missed the last two episodes. So whatever it is you’re doing can wait.
They’re both a source of guilt. Each time buttoning your “fat jeans” feels tighter, you think, “Okay. Tomorrow something’s going to change. Tomorrow I gotta get on this for real.” Same thing with opening a Word Document and realizing it hasn’t been modified in three months when you said you were going to work on it every day. Both might see you with your face in Edy’s (or Dreyer’s if you’re west of the Rockies) Butterfinger ice cream while the tears of self-recrimination drip onto the candy swirl.
Pure, liquid Kryptonite.
We don’t like to admit that it’s all us. There is precisely one person and one person alone who muddles up the water of your goals. That’s you. We, as humans, like to have scapegoats. “American food is all so full of calories! How do I lose weight eating this stuff?” “My dog ate my manuscript. Woe is me!” But really, what we’re saying is that we lack self-control. I lack self-control. Hell, sometimes I self-sabotage. We all do.
The other day, I said that reaching goals is about vision, plan, and discipline. You can’t have the plan without the vision, and discipline with no end goal doesn’t accomplish much. So whatever it is that gives you focus, use it. For me, it was seeing a number on the scale I thought I’d never in my life see again. It snapped me out of the denial of thinking the scale was just wrong (sometimes it fluctuates wildly — by like ten pounds) and made me realize that as usual, my mental and physical state corresponds to how productive a writer I am.
I need focus. I need structure. Most of us do, to some extent.
So today I’ll wrap up with an award I got last week from Amanda Leigh. It’s both a humbling reminder to myself to get some focus back and a nod to the work I’ve already done.
I’d also like to say that I am tremendously grateful to this community of bloggers here on WordPress. Yesterday I woke up to a very, very generous gift from a fellow blogger who I have never met in person. We have a great group of people here, and all I can say is that I will pay it forward when I am able.
Ms. Amanda graced me with the Beautiful Blogger Award!
Here are the rules. Thank the giver (thank you Amanda!), share seven things about yourself, and pass the blog along to seven people.
Okay. Seven things about me…
1. I make killer guacamole.
2. I tend to tear up when I hear Gaelic, which may or may not make it a difficult language for me to learn.
3. I want to learn Welsh.
4. I have plans for some very serious tattooage.
5. When I got my ears pierced, it took three years for them to heal properly (I had difficulties with certain metals).
6. As a teen, I loved Marilyn Manson, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Limp Bizkit, Fuel, and Rob Zombie. (And to be honest, I still do.)
7. My first big concert was Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill tour, and she used to star on my favorite Nickelodeon show, You Can’t Do That on Television!
Alrighty, seven bloggers. These are some blogs I always enjoy reading. Sorry if you all have gotten this award before!
3. Anna Meade
These seven women are people who are not only beautiful outside and in, but they make an effort to help others, whether in improving their writing, supporting important causes, or simply encouraging creativity and a spirit of wonder. They’re all truly magnificent women that YOU should get to know.
So today, I’m going to set a couple of goals.
1. Learn from others.
2. Drink at least eight glasses of water.
3. Write at least 2,000 words.
4. Dance about.
What little goals will you set today to help you regain (or maintain) focus on your goals? What wisdom helps you stay disciplined?
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The Lot of the XX
Cover of Rob Roy
Last night I began watching Rob Roy. It’s one of those movies I’ve meant to watch for quite a long time and simply hadn’t gotten around to. One thing I noticed was that Jessica Lange‘s performance was superb. Another thing I noticed was that there seems to be a trend in the treatment of women in these hero-legend films.
Let me clarify. I don’t mean treatment in regards to people’s behavior toward them (though that is a by-product of what I mean). I mean the portrayal of them. Their roles. The words that come out of their mouths and the way the writers decide what is going to happen to them. I’ve noticed a couple specific common threads:
1. Family focus: Most of these hero-legends involve some real or perceived threat to the wider scope of the protagonist’s life. The woman is the one who says, “No, your priority is your family.” To which the hero says something about duty and honor yadda yadda, which leads directly into…
2. Sexual violence: Murron in Braveheart is nearly raped by a particularly disgusting English soldier. Mary in Rob Roy is raped pretty brutally by Archibald Cunningham. This is usually used as a plot device to push the hero into the Big Bad Conflict with the antagonist. Murron is killed for even trying to fight back, and Mary screams at Rob Roy’s friend when he says his honor requires him to tell Robert MacGregor, “If I can bear it happening, you can bear the silence!”
Historians doubt the veracity of these claims — whether or not Marion Wallace (renamed Murron for the film) or Mary MacGregor were raped — and to that I would say that I think many people would prefer to think of the past as having some honor, to hope that rape would not have been as commonplace as I think it must have been. They may have dubbed it “ravishment,” but if it’s as common as it is in a time where women can vote, work, and hold public office, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt that it would have been a much more normal occurrence in a time where women were thought to have little intelligence and hardly any rights over their person and livelihood.
3. Martyrs: The women in these hero-legends are often depicted as martyrs. The Princess in Braveheart is a good example — she’s forced to marry Edward the II against her will, and her little form of rebellion is to sleep with Wallace. Murron flat out dies, and Mary has to bear her rapist’s child — yet the men (who generally also die) are considered the heroes and go to their graves only to have history make legends out of them.
The women are made into bait, martyrs, or even stumbling blocks for the heroes. You tell me what is more heroic: leaving your home open to raiders with no protection or being violated and then choosing to bear it in silence to prevent additional violence and the destruction of everything you love. The problem is, the latter doesn’t make for a spectacular film in the Hollywood rite.
This isn’t to say I dislike William Wallace or the legend of Rob Roy MacGregor, only the portrayal of the women in the films about them. We all know that Hollywood takes license with stories that have any basis in history, and it’s that I take issue with.
I would like to see a film where the women are not beaten, raped, and made into martyrs when the heroes are portrayed almost equally in a negative light because of their utter selfishness that destroys their women in its blindness. William Wallace refused to wait to marry Murron against her family’s wishes (which were for the decent reason of wanting to make sure Murron wouldn’t be widowed at an early age due to the rising tension in Scotland), and his carefree amorous glances drew the English’s attention. Rob Roy refused to listen to his wife and protect his home, leaving it open and unguarded when Cunningham arrived to burn it down and violate his wife.
These are both rather poor decisions, but the women bear the retaliation for their folly.
And this is why, since we’re on the topic of Scotland and legends, that I cannot wait for the movie Brave.
Some brilliant person in the Pixar world got the idea (or optioned the rights from a Ray Ban shaded author who is forever too cool for school) to turn the entire above stereotype on its head. Young Merida gets to be the one who wants to change her lot in life — and in her ignorance sparks a curse and has to undo it herself. The formula of a hero not listening to family and thus endangering everyone, then having to fix it? This time Merida isn’t the bait or the martyr, she’s the hero.
Bravo, Pixar. Bravo.
What this post really means, what these stereotypes of women in period films really say, is that growing up I looked around to see female heroes in my movies and TV shows and books and found very few. It was only men being the ones to save the world. In the past twenty years, this has begun to change. Buffy opened the door to it, but it’s really the creators of art that have control over where it goes from here. Having Joss Whedon in charge of The Avengers made me happy — Black Widow was in all ways a superhero — but the Wonder Woman movie couldn’t even get off the ground. It tried, but it ended up flailing around like a little kid in a cape. What does that tell us?
It doesn’t tell us that there’s no story there — it says Hollywood doesn’t think it can sell a female superhero.
So here’s to all of us who write — it’s our duty to show young women female heroes who are complex, strong, and flawed. It’s our job to show them that women are more than martyrs, that our lives have value beyond how we handle sexual violence, and that our voices matter. If we keep writing it, eventually we’ll see it happen.
Let’s change the lot of the XX.
Check out the Brave trailer:
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Scotland the Brave: Part One
A quick note: this post is not intended to be an exhaustive history of Scotland — I glossed over some things for brevity’s sake and summarized where I could.
When the average person thinks of Scotland, they usually picture something like this:
Plaid and poofy red hair.
Or this:
Mmmm…. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Or even this:
Whoops. Irish Flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For all of Braveheart and Mel painting himself blue, most people don’t know that much about Scotland. I’ve had people tell me it was part of Ireland and/or ask if it was its own island. D’oh.
Some people will brighten at the mention of Scotland and say something about castles and golf, whisky or mountains — or they’ll burst into their proud version of a not-so-Scottish brogue and beam. When this happens, I usually sit back on my heels and wonder how America became a world power for a moment. Then I remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bite my lip, say a small prayer to the FSM for the US school system, and go about my day.
In case you’re wondering, Scotland is here:
It’s the bit at the top of the big island! Location map of Great Britain and Ireland, without national borders. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The truth is, Scotland has a long and fascinating history. People have been there for a rather long time. When the Egyptians were building their pyramids, the ancient settlers of Scotland had already erected massive stone circles like this one:
The Ring of Brodgar, Mainland Orkney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For the last 10,000 years, there have been people there. It wasn’t until the times of the Roman Empire that the rest of the “civilized world” noticed, however. The Romans took heed when they ran into crazed, naked barbarians whilst attempting to bring all of the island of Great Britain into their empire, then prudently opted to instead build a wall to keep said barbarians out.
Those crazy Picts are the ones who would paint themselves blue with woad and go naked into battle screaming at the tops of their lungs. They had discovered, and rightly so, that yelling like banshees startled even regimented soldiers. I’ve no doubt that the Picts returned to their hearths and had a few laughs about the look on their opponents faces. Around the 5th century, the Gaels (Scoti) arrived from Ireland, and with the charming vikings graciously bestowing their red hair genes along the coastlines of Scotland, the various tribes of the land eventually settled into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.
Gaelic became the language of Scotland — not to be confused with Irish, which is the language of Ireland. They are discrete languages, though they share some common vocabulary and grammatical structure. They bear similarities that can be approximated by the relationship between French and Italian — they’re not mutually intelligible, but knowing one can help you learn the other. Capiche?
The Gaelic language became an integral part of Scottish culture. By the time Scotland became a kingdom, Gaelic was the vernacular of the country. Scotland was also a tribal, clan-centered society. Contrary to common beliefs, clan did not always correspond to bloodlines, but people could be adopted into clans by their allegiance to the laird of the clan. Early (prehistoric) Scotland seems to have followed an interesting form of matrilineal succession — something that I’m curious to research more.
Music and stories (both in Gaelic) were the cornerstones of their culture. Prior to the Roman invasion, Scottish history was seldom recorded with the exception of a few remnants of ogham writing carved into stones and trees (a rather cumbersome way of marking territory). The tribes and clans of Scotland followed oral traditions for thousands of years, passing down legends and stories from generation to generation.
And so Scotland progressed for several hundred years until the folks in London decided they fancied ruling the entire island and that those yokels in the north were in their way. I’ll let you watch Braveheart to get the gist of it (or you could read a history book and learn it for realsies), but we’re going to skip ahead to the 18th century when the genetics of the royal world skipped around in a circle, did a twirl, and plunked King James VI of Scotland on the English throne. You might know this guy better as King James I (apparently the previous five generations of his name didn’t exist to London), known for getting that big religious book translated into English and printed into perpetual bestseller-dom.
I’m sure a lot of head-scratching ensued when the two countries realized they now had the same king. And if you know your 18th century British history at all, you’ll know that James’s son Charles had some head-keeping issues to deal with later.
Back on the farm, however, there were a great many Scots (primarily in the Highlands) who didn’t take too kindly to their Catholic king governing a Protestant and historically hostile nation to the south. In 1715, these Scots (called Jacobites, because they supported James II of Scotland’s claim to the thrown after the Scottish parliament deposed him — they were rather a divine right, direct succession sort of folks) staged an uprising protesting the 1707 Act of the Union. This uprising was squished, but it paved the way for what happened thirty years later.
After the religious turmoil that took over England during the reign of Cromwell following the execution of King Charles, the Jacobites wanted to place Charles Edward Stuart back on the throne. The son of the exiled Prince James III, the Jacobites preferred a Catholic monarch (and one of the Stuart bloodline). To make a long, bloody, and painful story shorter, the Highland Scots were outnumbered and out-gunned, and at the battle of Culloden in 1745, the English defeated the Jacobite cause. Bonnie Prince Charlie fled back to France, and what happened to to the Highland Scots is one of the more nasty periods of Anglo-Gaelic interactions.
The immediate retaliation against the Scots was swift and brutal. Homes burned, women raped, livestock butchered, children killed. Many highlanders fled the country for America, Canada, and Australia. Those who remained were subject to the Disarming Act, which forbade Scots from owning weapons, and the Dress Act, which forbade Scots from wearing tartans or kilts. In addition to this, their gatherings were limited to no more than six people, and the Gaelic language was outlawed. In the last three hundred years, the speaking of the Gaelic language has receded into only the northwest highlands and islands of Scotland.
What does all this have to do with me? Why does it matter? It matters because these are my people, and their history is also mine. It matters because with the loss of the Gaelic language, the music and the stories that had been passed down for generations evaporated. The storytelling culture of Scotland has all but been eradicated.
It matters because there is a growing desire in me to not only learn the Gaelic and Welsh languages of my predecessors, but to seek out the stories, the music, the memories and the history of our people. Because if there is anything I have learned from my own family, with both sides adamantly claiming Scottish ancestry when I had to go back nearly twenty generations to find it, it’s that stories have power. And that even after generations, those stories can remain, sometimes surfacing as the only tantalizing clue to the past.
And besides, a Scot is a Scot, even unto a hundred generations.
What stories have you learned from your family? What has been passed down to you?
Related articles
- Scottish independence: Debate is ‘no bad thing’ for investment (scotsman.com)
- Scotland Moves Forward – While Ireland Goes Into Reverse (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Scotland: An independent nation? (4b2012.wordpress.com)
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Who Do You Think You Are?
The first time I remember actively hunting around to find information about my ancestry, I was in sixth grade, and a school project demanded it.
When I asked my mom’s side of the family, the response was Scottish, German, and English. When I asked my dad’s, it was Scottish and Welsh.
I’ve spent the last month or so paging through the painstakingly researched information that two great aunts (one on either side of my family) sent me long ago. I got a two week free trial to Ancestry.com a couple months ago and forgot to cancel before it charged me, so now I have a year to use their resources to further that information. In some cases I have more than Ancestry does — for instance, that one of my ancestors, farmer called Oliver Mears, named his son George Washington Mears. This son was born just after the Revolutionary War. An act of pure pride? One of my ancestors fought with Washington at Valley Forge — could it have been Oliver Mears, inspiring him to beget our nation’s first president a namesake?
I spent a long while last night researching my mother’s side of the family, tracing back the Mears name as far as my great aunt Dottie had gone and then some. There have been some funny little discoveries, some almost creepy, others mystifying. Aunt Dottie traced the Mears line back to Caledonia County, Vermont in the early to mid eighteenth century, to the same Oliver Mears. She scribbled notes on the page indicating that the land had been deeded to him possibly by a Boston Mears.
My research on Ancestry.com confirmed that — imagine my surprise when I stumbled across not one or two, but ten family trees that share that common ancestor, and the name Robert Mears which repeated every other generation for about a hundred years. Several generations of my family lived in Boston as far back as the early 1600s, which is astonishing to me. Could they have taken part in the infamous tea party? Who were these people, and when did they arrive?
I nearly moved to Boston five years ago with a friend. I’ve always wanted to go there, and though I’ve never been, I’ve always been a Red Sox and a Patriots fan — finding out my family lived there for over a hundred years made prickles raise on my arms.
My family has always been quite adamant that we were Scottish. On both sides. The Mears name was supposedly the Scottish branch of our lineage, but the Mearses that extended backward from Boston came from London. Of course, it’s possible the family originally came from Scotland, but I don’t know how much farther back I’ll be able to follow them without an extended sojourn in the UK. Scotland in the 1500s and 1600s was very different from London.
Through this research, I wonder. The oral traditions of a family are strong. My German ancestors came over a mere two hundred years ago, but my purported Scottish and English ancestors arrived long, long before.
Some of them seem to have been among the very first settlers of America — Boston in the early 17th century wasn’t exactly a blazing metropolis. If the family has maintained their insistence on their Scottishness for that many centuries, they must have come from Scotland at some point — and that kind of dogged ethnic stubbornness hints that perhaps leaving wasn’t their idea. Any number of reasons could have pushed them from home. Famine, sickness, economics, even the Highland Clearances (though timing-wise, the latter is unlikely).
Even in this dark picture, if you look at the center-left, you can see her name.
Even more eerie is the ghosts of the women who cling to the branches of my family tree. One name stands out among the lines of Mears, Layton, Hurst, Bennett, Spanagel, and Schweinfurth, Unterwagner. Her name was Inez Viroqua Bennett, and all her siblings were called George, Ann, James, Robert, Thomas, and Frank. It’s likely that no one ever will know how a distinctly Spanish name wound up in a sea of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Germans. Her name draws my eye over and over when I look at the lists of my ancestors. There’s a direct line between us, and yet I know nothing about her or what caused Robert Bennett and Eleanor Milner to name their daughter so differently than the rest of their children.
When I search through the records in Ancestry’s databases, it’s harder to find women. It is a reminder that they were not as valued. Their names would not show up on deeds for land, and often not in wills. They are even less likely to appear on death records — the only death records I’ve found for my family’s women have been from the last hundred years. So Inez Viroqua Bennett will remain a mystery to me, her name a reminder of stories lost to time.
I’m not done searching yet, on either side of the family. The Taylors on my dad’s side who settled in the Scottish-populated mountains of North Carolina are a mystery as well — people who share my common ancestor Moses Taylor have said they were English, but a many times removed cousin I met several years ago at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games — a Taylor from the same region who is also descended from Pvt. Moses Taylor — has been raised knowing he was Scottish.
John Swilly Camp and his favorite horse — thankful to my Great Aunt Doris for this one.
It’s tough to track people into the past, to follow the footsteps of bloodlines and names and hope to strike family among thousands of faces. In many cases, you can never know for sure when you get back far enough that Social Security numbers were nonexistent and almost all countries had kings in lieu of prime ministers and president, parliaments and congresses.
And yet the drive to find them is still strong. On my father’s side, it’s the Powells I want to find the most. We know they came from Wales, but that’s all. They are, like the ghostly Scots, but ghosts in a murky and distant past who sought a new life in a new world. They say a Scot is a Scot even unto a hundred generations. I haven’t had to go back a hundred yet, and I know who I am.
Great Aunt Doris herself is in the top picture with Uncle Dickie, Uncle Rip and Bops, my grandfather who passed in 2001.
I want to know who they were. I want to know where they came from and why they came here. I’m an historian, after all. And history is all about the people and the why — it’s how the psychology of a human being becomes the psychology of nations. So I’ll keep reaching my fingers back into the folds of time before this country was a country. I’ll see if I can find the people who helped birth it, and who birthed me hundreds of years after their struggles.
Wish me luck.
Have you ever tried to track down your ancestry? What oral traditions have your families left you about your history?
Related articles
- Tracing the Hamilton family (hamiltonfamilytree.wordpress.com)
- Finding a Family’s Jewish Ancestry (spittoon.23andme.com)
- THE PATH OF MY ANCESTORS….I am Scottish mainly (fanniesyouraunt.wordpress.com)
- Scotland’s DNA: Descended from lost tribes… and related to Napoleon (scotsman.com)
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Let the True Blood Flow
Logo from the television program True Blood Français : Logo original de la série télévisée True Blood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Warning, here be some spoilers. Arrrrgh. Enter at yer own risk, matey.
It’s getting to be that time again.
I can tell when the premiere of True Blood is imminent, like a scent on the breeze. Well. Sort of. Really I can just tell by the number of people who stop me to say:
“Hey! Has anyone ever told you that you look like that girl from True Blood? Jessica?”
If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that in the last four years, I’d seriously have like $157. That’d be enough to buy me a bike. A rather crappy bike, but a bike nonetheless.
I’m very flattered to be compared to Deborah Ann Woll. She is quite lovely and she and I share the L’Oreal gene of red hair. It’s nice to be compared to someone that beautiful, and more so than the time someone said I looked like Tracy Lords not expecting me to know who that was. (She is most known for having falsely represented her age as a teenager in order to do porn — incidentally, anything with her in it from that time period is now illegal to possess, as she was a minor.) I actually quite like Tracy Lords in the mainstream films she’s done, but I have a feeling the comparison wasn’t meant as a compliment.
I’ll leave it to you to judge, gentle viewers.
C'est moi en rouge.
And here is the lovely Ms. Deborah Ann Woll:
Deborah Ann Woll at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles on January 23rd, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My purported doppelgangers aside, I was surprised to find how not enthused I am about the fifth season of True Blood. The first two seasons killed it — witty writing, an attention to plot, and great characterization made a show worth watching. But then it started to go downhill, in my opinion. I kept watching, like not being able to look away from a painful recitation of teen angst poetry.
That and because looking at Eric Northman is never unpleasant.
Eric Northman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I mean, really.
It began to annoy me how they treated the African-American characters on the show. Lafayette is three-dimensional and fascinating, but Tara has to be one of the most obnoxious and insufferable characters I’ve ever seen, and let’s not forget that her boyfriend Eggs, who was rather interesting, got killed off before he could really take on a solid role. Other than that, there are no main characters who aren’t white — that don’t get dead faster than your fangs can come out, anyway.
I have the same criticism of The Walking Dead — we’re supposed to believe that in the South, all they come across are white people? Oh yeah, they fed the one new black guy to the walkers the moment he walked onscreen.
I found myself rooting for Tara to just bite the dust already halfway through season three. I’d like to see some more sympathetic characters from different racial backgrounds (no, I did not forget Jesus — but is he still alive?) this season. I was reading several articles about the response to Rue and Thresh being black in The Hunger Games — a fact which, if you read the books with any kind of attention whatsoever, you’d already know and thus wouldn’t be surprised by their casting the lovely Amandla Stenberg as Rue and Dayo Okeniyi as Thresh. That some people were outraged by Ms. Stenberg’s beautiful performance as Rue purely because they expected a little blonde white girl sickened me.
We still, it seems, have quite a long way to go.
So as season five of True Blood looms, I don’t have very high expectations. Last season they jumbled so many elements (and did it rather poorly, to boot) from Sookie‘s fairy-ness to the bizarre witches to Bill’s power-hungry demeanor to Eric’s memory loss and kind of contrived relationship with Sookie, season four disappointed me over and over again. The one redeeming quality I saw was in Sookie finally choosing to not be with either Bill or Eric, if only for her demonstrating some real inner strength for once.
I found throughout the season that it’s Jessica, Lafayette, and Jason I care most about, and they are probably the only reasons I’ll even watch season five.
What I hope most is that the writers get a clue and keep it fresh, make intriguing story lines with compelling characters and don’t overload us on subplots. There’s nothing worse than old blood.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll watch just to see more of this:
Image via true-blood.net and property of HBO. Visit true-blood.net for True Blood news, predictions, spoilers, and photos! 
Any Truebies out there? Are you excited for season five or do you share my apprehension? What do you think of season four? Do you wish you could have an Eric of your own? Will Tara come back to annoy like the wind, or is she gone for good? Will they give us more than a token sympathetic black character…ever?
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I Can Show You The World
Okay, so I can’t. I’m not Aladdin, and my puppy ate my magic carpet.
Not gonna happen. Disney - A Whole New World (Photo credit: Express Monorail)
I’ve been thinking so much about travel lately that I have decided to make a “bucket list,” as it were. Places I want to go, that will burrow regret into my heart if I don’t make it there. Some of these places may be a little strange, some of them will be top tourist traps, some will seem outlandish to anyone who knows me (specifically the arachniphobe part of me).
These are also places I want to go while I’m young. Some are places I want to take my children. I want my children to feel that the world is an approachable place, to associate faces with dots on maps. To hear names and music in the languages of other nations and respect the rich history and culture of the earth and its people. I want to live a life of abandon and adventure. So without further emotional pyrotechnics, here be my places:
Gwynedd, Wales. Image via whywales.org (which is not a travel site, oddly, but a missionary site?)
Wales
This is the side of my heritage that I first felt connected to, and it’s the one I know the least about. I know my last name is Welsh, but my family history on that side has disappeared, wiped away by poverty in the new nation my ancestors settled. In all my trips to the island of Great Britain, I’ve never made it to Wales. Scotland took a firm hold of my heart, and it hasn’t yet loosed its grip. Wales is number one on my list of places I will forever regret missing.
I want to learn Welsh. The language is undergoing a serious revival — to the point that to be a marketable employee in Wales, you must be bilingual. That is a feat in and of itself.
Worship the forge-master! The temple of Hephaistos, Athens, Greece. Français : Le temple d'Héphaïstos, à Athènes, en Grèce. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Greece
My ninth grade English class sparked and nurtured a love of Greek mythology. When I taught in inner city DC, my kids adored our unit about it. We discussed Prometheus stealing fire for the humans and the nature of Hera and the awkwardness of Zeus raping Leda in the guise of a swan. (Really, Zeus?)
I want to visit ancient temples and see the evidence of the Classical Age with my own eyes. This historian has always wondered what would have happened had that age come to fruition instead of being overshadowed by the advent of religious zealotry that stamped out original thought wherever it found it. (Sorry, but it’s true. You can try to argue that the RCC didn’t persecute scientists, but you can also wear poo on your head and call it high fashion. Doesn’t make it right.) Just ask Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Martin Luther.
Walk like an....Photo credit: Wikipedia
Egypt
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled by pyramids. In fifth grade, this was where I chose when asked where in the world I wanted to go. Cleopatra fascinated me (surprise, surprise). I thought the pyramids held magic. And that was just at age eleven.
Now I want to learn the culture. Wear linen. Feel the throng of the markets. Cough the smog. I want to eat with my hands and see the expansive sands. I want to let those pyramids dwarf me with their age and immensity. And yeah, I kind of want to ride a camel.
What, were you expecting a picture of an impaled Turkish army? What am I, a gore-hound? Don't answer that. Photo credit: viajes-romania.es
Romania
Don’t worry. It’s not all about good ole Vlad the Impaler. Romania has a rich history, a fluid and melodic Latin language, and stunning scenery. The people are hospitable and warm. I love Central Europe. I love everything about it. I love the cultures and the food, the zest for life and the dogged determination that has allowed these lands to survive dictators, oppressors, and invaders century after century.
Yep. Hawaii. Photo credit: cbrconnection.com
Hawaii
Kana will be happy to see this one on here! Honestly, it’s not the beach that draws me to this tropical archipelago. Emmie and beach are sort of non-mixy things, as I tend to become a lobster when I look at the sun. I can get burned in the shade. I can get burned on a cloudy day in Scotland. No one believes me. But it’s true.
Not the beach. It’s the land. It’s the color of the water and the burning volcanoes that keep mutating the islands, changing them and bringing life and humility. It’s the wildlife and the foliage. I want to see colorful bird life and hear really noisy tree frogs. I want to swim with dolphins again and see white and black sand beaches from a safe vantage point under ten layers of SPF a billion and a large, unbecoming hat. I want to pounce coconuts and fall off a surfboard and eat whatever I can stuff in my mouth. And most of all, I want to do the island thing and just chill.
Holi, the Festival of Colors (as an English speaker, I find the name of this festival to be satisfyingly appropriate). Image via tourismontheedge.com
India
Were you expecting the Taj Mahal? I would love to see it. I would. But ever since I first saw images of Holi, the Indian Festival of Colors, I’ve wanted to be a part of it. What a glorious mess! What a stunning surge of life!
There are elephants and tigers in India. There is food to build a fire in your belly. There is barter and silk and smiles and beautiful colors and a country pushing forward with a massive portion of the world’s humans. It’s impressive and humbling and unmissable.
Say it with me: fjord! Photo credit: avidcruiser.westhostsite.com
Norway
I’ve always rather fancied fjords. Just saying the word is rather fun. And you can cruise through them! Mountains, lakes, trees — it’s a recipe for a happy Emmie right there. (Can you tell the Food Network is on in the background?) Plus, Norway has one of the highest standards of living in Europe (and the world), and I’ve wanted to try my hand at a Scandinavian language for a while.
Although I don’t reckon I’ll be trying lutefisk any time soon, there’s a lot to be found in Norway!
Can I move here? Image via bluemtnlodge.com
Banff, Alberta
See above, re: mountains, lakes, trees. Aside from being named after a town in bonnie Scotland, you can’t beat the Northern Rockies for their serenity and beauty. Plus, I could possibly drag my two lovely best friends along with me to their own country for once, though Jordan lives closer to the Scottish Banff than the Canadian one.
People and light. Photo credit: Wikipedia
Thailand
Aside from the food, Thailand boasts some stunning islands and beaches, crystal clear water for me to stare at from the shade, and one of the best light shows on the planet. Every year in Chiang Mai, the residents release the paper-thin lanterns into the sky for good luck, symbolizing the release of their worries and cares into the air.
Thailand is also home to a beautiful elephant sanctuary where you can spend weeks interacting with and caring for their guests up close and personal. For an elephant lover like moi, this is a big draw.
So. If I want to go all these places, where’s home?
Home is, first of all, here:
Spouse-face. Image by Tigran Markaryan of Calypso Digital.
Someday soon, though, I hope the two of us and our fuzzy little critters will make our home somewhere like this:
I'm nothing if not predictable. Image via vacationrentalpeople.com
The world is a big place, but it is increasingly an approachable place. You can get to the other side of it in a matter of hours where before it took months and probably a dollop of scurvy. I want to see what it has to offer. It’ll take a lot of money and some time acrobatics, but we’ll make it happen. Till then, there’s the dream.
Where do you want to go? What places must you get to to satisfy the itch in your soul?
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Where the Magic Happens
Bam.
Sometimes I’m writing along, writing along, and then wham. Bam. Wall.
It’s not something you can predict. Writer’s block just happens. I can be on a roll and have a NaNoWriMo-esque month only to find myself scratching my head, wondering what happened. It doesn’t happen to me often, but it happened to me this week.
Whenever I used to get writer’s block, I would stop writing for a few weeks. Or months. It happened when I plowed through the end of my first novel and halfway through the second — and again when I plowed through the end of the second and halfway through the third. The difference between those two moments was that I learned how to deal with it.
Stopping writing? Not the right answer.
If you stop, it’s that much harder to start again. Writing is like working out. Sometimes you have to start with baby steps. Just a few pushups, just a few reps, building up to those long workouts. And if you stop for a while, those muscles atrophy.
What I learned in the three and a half years between finishing my first novel and starting my third was that letting those muscles atrophy stymied both my creativity and put my dreams on hold. Writer’s block is a hurdle to be sure, but it’s one you have to refuse to give in to.
If you get burnt out on the big sprints, go back to the little stuff. Try a short story. Write some non-fiction. Write anything. Poems, articles. Change it up. Each time you thumb your nose at your writer’s block even in a little way, you start boring through that wall. Eventually you come to find that somewhere under all that brick, there’s this:
A spark, lit fuse, holy hand grenade.
You never know what it could be, the thing that blows that wall to smithereens. For me on Tuesday, it was a tweet from a fellow writer recommending the book Save the Cat! If you haven’t heard of that book, it’s a guide for screenwriters about structure. And it wasn’t the book that blew up my block. It was the title.
What had gotten me stuck was trying to take a character who is dealing with something traumatic and huge and paranormal that she doesn’t understand and show how it begins to wear on her life. How her goals begin to crumble around her. How everything she’s been working toward now sits on a ledge, waiting for gravity to shift it over the side.
In this new draft, I gave her a kitty. It’s sheer coincidence that the name of the book is Save the Cat! It just so happened that my protagonist had something I could use with that. If you want to find out what happens to furry little Piggles, well…stay tuned.
The point is that writer’s block is a straitjacket we put on ourselves. When at first we’re stumped, we have a choice. We can throw up our hands and go play Fruit Ninja, or we can put fingers to keyboard or pen and paper and keep writing. Keep pushing. Keep tunneling for that spark that will blow the block to hell and back — that’s where the magic happens.
Because I think we all know that blowing things up is fun.
When was your last experience with writer’s block? If you’re not a writer, what’s stymied you lately? It could be a project or fitness or even a phone call to family.
I haven’t had to say it yet, but apparently it does need to be said after Tuesday’s post — keep all comments civil and respectful. I encourage discussion and disagreement, but if it’s not respectful, it’s not welcome. This should be a positive environment, and if my family members can get along when they have different religions and political views, we can discuss other things without being rude to one another.
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Women Make Music: Celebrating International Women’s Day
Until I moved to Poland in early 2006, I had no idea such a thing as International Women‘s Day existed. Here was this holiday characterized by lots and lots of upside down bouquets of an odd number of flowers (in Poland, everyone carries their flowers upside down and even numbers of them are considered an ill omen — so I wouldn’t buy your Polish girlfriend a dozen roses). I learned a little more about it that year. It was a day to make women’s issues known, a day to celebrate women for our strengths and beauty — both inside and out. But in America it’s a little-celebrated day, and if I was 21 before I heard about it in another country, I think it’s safe to say it’s seldom even acknowledged.
So today I’d like to celebrate the many faces of women, a true mosaic of intelligence, beauty, strength, fortitude, perseverance, passion, compassion, determination, and resilience. I’d like to candidly discuss how our freedoms in America have evolved and continue to change, and I’d love to have your input.
I’m going to start with the woman who gave birth to me.
That's me as a baby! First birthday.
My mother had me at age thirty-four. She and my father had been told that she probably couldn’t have kids, but they kept trying, because they wanted me more than anything in the world. Sometime around Valentine’s Day in 1984, they got lucky, and I was born on November 18 in Austin, Texas. Shortly after, we moved to Arkansas and then to Anchor Point, Alaska, where my parents divorced. My mom worked as a bartender and socked away money so she could leave my dad. I remember our tiny cabin we had right after we left, and our big galumphy St. Bernard, Chow, and Lab mix dog Sonny.
I don't have a picture of Sonny, so you'll have to make do with Mt. McKinley. Image via Wikipedia
My mom raised me alone for a long time. We never had money, but we saw Alaska. We saw grizzlies in Denali, moose galore. We met chatty squirrels and camped together. We moved to Portland and went to the Oregon Coast. My mom overcame a lot to raise me — addiction, previous abusive relationships, thousands of miles between us and our nearest family. She gave me a great childhood — I never realized how poor we were until I went to college.
My mom told me I could be anything, even when that meant I wanted to be an astronaut or a hang-glider. She told me I could marry anyone I loved. She taught me that all human beings are equal and worthy of respect and dignity. If there were more people like my mother in this world, it would be a better place.
There have been so many women in my life, so many wonderful people who shaped me and changed me over the years. Neeshonee, my mom’s longtime girlfriend with whom we moved to Montana, taught me to bead and to cook. She taught me more spiritual things about honoring the earth and respecting animals. She was and is my other mom. I spoke to her on my wedding day, even though I haven’t seen her in a decade.
There were the women of the Portland Lesbian Choir, all these aunties who loved and adored me. There was Jean “Bean” and Al (Alison), and the wonderful musical women of the Alaska Women’s Music Festival in Fairbanks. There was Ms. Harris, my sixth grade teacher, and Ms. Wright who told me I could write well. Professor Annamaria Orla-Bukowska at Jagiellonian University in Krakow who always involved me in her work of Holocaust remembrance and who had some of the most kind and encouraging things to say about my academic work I’ve ever heard.
Women have always been the biggest source of strength and inspiration in my life. Women can change the world.
Today is a day of celebration, but it is also a day that exists because of inequity. As Lois Alter Mark wrote in her article today, International Women’s Day exists because every other day is International Men’s Day. In my post last week, I mentioned the outrage I felt seeing that panel of experts discuss contraception without a single woman. What I didn’t know was that the panel refused to even accept a woman’s presence along side them. They disallowed Sandra Fluke from inclusion, and they also snubbed the Catholic Health Association (which is headed by a woman).
The anger about the situation centers mainly around the issue of contraception, but I’d like to bring up another point: the panel members insist that the issue was about religious freedom, not contraception. My question is: how does that make it more acceptable for them to bar women from the conversation? Can women have no voice in religious matters? There is wrongness there, and it sits ill with my soul.
It is International Women’s Day. Turkey is celebrating by passing laws to further protect women and children from abuse — both by increasing penalties against abusers and providing shelter to victims. Around the world, people are celebrating women today. And in America, the rights that have been painstakingly won over a century are quickly becoming the center of this year’s presidential election.
I will not stand for that. And neither should you. Where women are equals, societies improve. Celebrate your strength, your innovation, your intelligence today.
Ask a woman you care about her life today. Ask her how she got here. Listen. You won’t regret it.
I would like to share the lyrics of a song with you — some of you were here for my V-Day posts last month, and you might recognize Libby Roderick‘s name. The song is called “When I Hear Music,” and it encapsulates the feeling I want to celebrate today. The feeling of possible, of movement, of ability.
Women make music;
Women make love;
Women make babies;
Women make visions of…
Women make peaceful worlds;
Women make dreams;
Women make music, music, music music!When I hear music, music sets my heart on fire!
Magic soars upon the wind; it fills me with desire!
When I hear music, music makes it all worthwhile.
Sorrow bursts into a song, and I remember.Women make progress;
Women make change;
Women make trouble;
Women make memory and rage;
Women make dancing;
Women make do;
Women make music, music, music, music!When I hear music, music sets my heart on fire!
Magic soars upon the wind; it fills me with desire!
When I hear music, music makes it all worthwhile.
Sorrow bursts into a song, and I remember….That women’s arms hold up half the sky,
And women’s voices sing out half the song
That if this world is ever going to ring with hope
Then we must make a right to more than half the wrongsWomen make clothing;
Women make steel;
Women make nations;
Women make visions real;
Women make healing;
Women make time;
Women make music, music, music, music!When I hear music, music sets my heart on fire!
Magic soars upon the wind; it fills me with desire!
When I hear music, music makes it all worthwhile.
Sorrow bursts into a song, and I remember….
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- This year let’s celebrate … the US backlash against sexism | Jessica Valenti (guardian.co.uk)
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Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition
Everyone needs a mission. Whether it’s torturing heretics or saving kittens from croctopus rex, the mission is what matters. What are you trying to do, and how are you going to get there?
In case you don’t have eight minutes handy to watch the Monty Python boys at work, here’s the exchange I’ve always liked the most:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise. Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Our four…no. Amongst our weapons…. Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I’ll come in again.
[The Inquisition exits]
Chapman: I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
[JARRING CHORD]
[The cardinals burst in]
Ximinez:Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms – Oh damn!
Sometimes I feel like that. Not like torturing heretics or busting out an iron maiden any time soon, but that sometimes my plans get a bit lost in the execution. (No pun intended.)
There’s got to be a mission and a plan.
It’s for that reason that I’m starting a shiny new schedule. For the next month, I will be posting Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I may occasionally throw in a Monday or Wednesday if I’m feeling saucy.
All missions start with a goal or objective. Mine is to get published. That objective becomes the target of your mission, but the mission is so much more than where you want to be when you get there. The mission is more than the end game — the mission is how you will get from beginning to end.
Say you want to buy a house. That’s your goal, your target. Unfortunately for most of us, you can’t just waltz into a home with a For Sale sign in the yard and buy it right there. There are any number of other things that have to happen first.
I like to work backward when I’m planning. Sometimes if you start at what you think is the logical first step, like getting a real estate agent, you realize that you don’t have a down payment or that your credit isn’t good enough to secure an interest rate below 30%.
If you’re going to buy a house, the step backward from getting those keys is closing with the bank. What do you have to do to close with the bank? Well, you need to be financially solvent. It’s not the 90s anymore — you should have a down payment and purchase within your means. (I know. Foreign concept.)
That might mean you don’t get the five bedroom, four bath home with a bonus room and a pool just out of the gate. That means you might have to go for the two bedroom two bath with the squeaky stairs and a fireplace that you can’t even use.
Whatever is within your means, you have to get your down payment. Which means you have to save up. That can take years.
When you work backwards to plan out your mission, you find things that you might not have counted on. If you want to be published like I do, perhaps the first part isn’t running up to New York publishing houses and asking them to buy the book you just thought up. There are a myriad of steps to go through before you can get to the end game, and if you don’t figure out the mission and the plan before you start, you might end up bursting through the door rattling off nonsense about your lovely red robes.
Much like the house metaphor, finding your way to published-dom is a process that requires a lot of writing, a lot of waiting, a lot of editing, a lot of tooth-gnashing and days when you want to set your manuscript aflame — but it is still an attainable goal if you work toward having a great down payment (manuscript), solvent credit (a platform), and an excellent agent (…agent). Each step takes time, and I think in the end, buying a house is easier. Too bad that’s not my mission.
And frankly, no one cares.
The flip side of this is that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Even the best laid plans can crumble into floundering, but if the mission means that much to you, it’s worth the effort.
What’s your mission? How do you plan to get there? Ever feel like bursting through doors and speaking in silly accents?
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Bring on the Drama: How NOT to Have a Relationship
Conflict.
As a writer, I love conflict. It’s what makes the words jump from the page and launch themselves at my throat. It’s what can make a 1,000-page behemoth of a story interesting.
But let’s face it. What makes good fiction doesn’t make a good relationship.
If you’ve got conflict on every page of your relationship, you’ve also got something called a problem.
Hilarity and mayhem? Check. Good role modeling? Not so much. Image via wikia.com
How did those four get where they are? Love. And great writers.
While we might sometimes feel that getting a bazooka out to wipe out our love interest‘s arch nemesis is a great idea, in this murky real world of ours that idea could land you in a federal prison for, you know. Ever.
One of my favorite television couples is Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls. Logan starts out as the obnoxious, somewhat cruel rich boy with a home life like something out of a social worker’s nightmare. Veronica is a fledgling private investigator who gets in a lot of trouble with style and aplomb after the dual personal tragedies of her best friend’s murder and having been roofied and raped at a party. What better combination of lovebirds?
True love begins at...the dance.
Even with their spectacular personal issues, Logan and Veronica might stand a chance — except Logan’s aforementioned home life steps in via his criminally insane and disgusting father who installed cameras in their pool house to film his trysts with women (not, I might add, Logan’s mother). Ah. Conflict.
Veronica discovers the cameras and blames Logan. Over the seasons, they make increasingly bad decisions about one another, which keeps the tension high, but the chances of a successful relationship somewhere below ground zero.
In this the season of loooove — and I was born as a result of this season, so I can’t knock it — relationships spring to the center of attention. Who has them, who doesn’t, who wants them but doesn’t want to admit it — ah, February.
What makes fiction intriguing is that we see mirrors of ourselves. We see the shoddy communication efforts. We see the bad choices. The strange thing is that these examples often show a happy ending, when we know deep down in our gut that relationships that are that tumultuous don’t end without ending badly.
Wondering how to keep your relationship from being a conflict-driven tragedy? Here’s some tips!
1. Listen. So you had a misunderstanding that led to a fight — maybe even a breakup. Your significant other calls and leaves you a voice mail. Don’t pull a Veronica and delete it without listening to it; hear it out, then make a rational decision. That goes for arguments, too. Listen to what your partner has to say. If they’re screaming obscenities at you, the message you should hear is, “I’m very wrong for you. Go snuggle a puppy, eat some Ben and Jerry’s, and get out of this freak show.”
2. Define break. Are you on a break? Decide what that means going into it. Remember Ross and Rachel? Misunderstanding is born of a little seed called miscommunication, or that nothingness that exists where communication dies. Save yourself several seasons years of angst and be clear about your expectations. Honesty might be painful, but it cuts through a lot of er…stuff.
3. Don’t cheat. Aside from the abiding level of betrayal this entails, cheating doesn’t do much for your karmic accumulations. If your relationship is failing, talk to your partner. With your words, not with the body language of a forbidden encounter. Believe me, that is one message that gets across loud and clear, so head it off and use your words like a big kid.
4. Talk. Where’s the beef? You got a beef? Air it out. Get it off your chest, and various other cliches. As much as 4 a.m. infomercials like to pretend to the contrary, people aren’t mind readers, and they generally don’t know what you’re thinking if you don’t tell them. You can fix most things with words and judiciously applied actions.
5. Trust. The final tip here is to leave the suspicion to the soaps and sitcoms. Successful relationships are built on trust — if you go sprinting to the worst assumption your brain can concoct, you’ll do nothing but sabotage any chances you had with your significant other. Just remember, it could be a murderous and perverted father who planted those video cameras.
Okay, if you find fiber optics and tiny Bond-esque cameras, you’ve probably got a problem. Luckily, that happens more often in fiction.
Good relationships will inevitably have conflict, but unlike fiction, that conflict does not have to exist on every page to keep things moving and happy. I’m lucky to have a husband who understands those two foundation stones of communication and trust — if you’re single, this is me giving you permission to hold out for someone who doesn’t just plunk you on a horse and trot westward, but someone who’ll be there on the other side of the sunset.
What have you learned not to do from your favorite books or television shows? Have you ever thought your significant other was taking lessons from a derailed plot? Entertain us!
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