I stand corrected.

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Pat Greene

As the Red-Headed Menace and I drove along this afternoon, I began musing on language.

“I was looking at the xkcd cartoon about The Martian.  The rollover text said ‘I have never seen a piece of fiction so perfectly capture the out-of-nowhere shock of discovering that you’ve just bricked something important because you didn’t pay enough attention to a loose wire.’ You do know what ‘bricked’ means, right?”

“Sure. It means to turn your computer into a paperweight.”

“That’s just it. Everyone around here knows what it means — it’s in the culture. I’m not a geek, but a lot of the people I know are. I mean, what if you were in the building trades, or real estate? ‘Bricked’ would have a different meaning. Or if you were a fan of Edgar Allen Poe stories.”

“There might be some overlap between that one and geeks.”

“True… or what about the verb ‘Macgyver’? Do you  know what that means?”

“Yeah… it means to use random crap you find laying around to solve problems.”

“Exactly! But have you ever seen the television show that it comes from?”

“Once, to see the word’s origin.”

” You know, there might be another term… ‘sciencing’!”

“Sciencing? What? No. It’s too vague.”

” Did you see the trailer for The Martian? In which Matt Damon says he’s going to “science the shit” out  of stuff? It would be using science and math to solve problems. Kind of ‘scientific Macgyvering.'”

“To hell with that. Scientific Macgyvering already has a name — it’s called ‘engineering.‘“*

*Later in the conversation, he opined that engineers were inherently arrogant, pointing to the people in the engineering club at his school — of which he’s the treasurer — as evidence. When I repeated his father’s claim that all engineers had nightmares about designing something which failed and people died as a result, he replied “Yes, but I’m just beginning engineering. I’m still young, so naturally, I’m still arrogant.”

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QOTD

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Pat Greene

From the trailer of The Martian:

“It would take over four years for another manned mission to reach me, and I’m in a hab designed to last thirty-one days. So, in the face of overwhelming odds, I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”

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Letters…

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Pat Greene

Dear owners of American Pharoah,

I am so happy for you.  Delighted. Amazed. And you are right, the sport needs heroes, and your horse has claimed a title that seemed like it would be forevermore out of reach.  Fantastic.  However…

You do know that millions of American children will now not know how to correctly spell “pharaoh,” right?

******

Dear Entertainment Weekly,

I do not read Vogue for a reason.  Or Elle. Or Marie Claire. Or Vanity Fair — Caitlin Jenner notwithstanding.

But you? Perfume ads? Seriously? I know that Chris Pine looked hotter than July in Kansas, but that’s no reason to permeate your pages with the overwhelming stench of Giorgio Armani cologne.

I do not want to cancel my subscription, but I may be forced to.  Migraines are too high a price to pay for winning award show betting pools without being having seen (or heard) any of the nominees.

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise), Sports | Leave a comment

Hollywood has got to stop sending these messages.

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Pat Greene

Spoiler Alert: This concerns the movie The Age of Adeline. I will be going into specifics, so if you are planning to see the movie, you may not want to read this.

Last Friday, I saw The Age of Adeline. Nice performances, cute guy, pretty woman, Harrison Ford (who still looks damn sexy), plot holes you could pull Pluto through, and total scientific implausibility.  Not bad for two hours; Independence Day did worse. However, ever since I saw the movie, every time I think about it I become more outraged.

The protagonist, Adeline of the title, stopped aging as the result of a freak accident (see: scientific implausibility), and after a nasty encounter with the government who wants to study her scientifically, begins changing her name and location every decade so people won’t get suspicious when they notice that they are getting older and she isn’t. She deliberately avoids emotional attachments for what would seem obvious reasons. (A.k.a. the Doctor Who dilemma.)

Ellis, a hot (and as it turns out, brilliant and rich) guy sees her across the room at a New Year’s Eve party. (Cue obvious symbolism.) He jumps into her elevator and hits on her. She rebuffs him.  She gets into a cab, he prevents the cab door from closing by placing his hand in the door, and again asks for her number.  She again politely but firmly says no. (I, on the other hand, would have said “Get your damn fingers out of the door before I break them.” Then again, I have never been a beautiful woman who had guys hit on her.)

Ellis appears at the archive where Adeline works.  As it turns out, he belongs on the board of directors, and has seen her after a meeting, and has always wanted to get to know her. He donates a large number of books, and insists that she appear in the photograph accepting the donation, even though she is not the director.  When she refuses, he threatens to take back the donation, and goes so far as to say he will burn the books. Faced with this horrible maneuver, she caves. She still refuses to be photographed, but agrees to lunch with him. (Why her bosses — who saw the entire exchange — did not step in and state that they would not allow their employees to be harassed in this way, and that they would not accept the donation with such strings attached, mystifies me.)

Ellis cajoles her into dinner at his place. They have sex. Adeline leaves the next morning without  telling him her address or phone number.  When she arrives home, her dog has collapsed and she needs to put him down.  As she approaches her apartment after leaving the vet’s office, Ellis appears, flowers in hand.  The library had given him her home address. (Whether or not this is illegal in California — where the entire movie took place — I do not know; but it is sure as hell unethical.) She yells at him to leave her alone. He stands on the sidewalk looking after her, frustrated but clearly determined to get her to love him.

Okay, thus far we have the beginnings of a pretty good stalker film. Hot guy fixates on woman who repeatedly tells him to get lost, escalating the level of his creepy behavior as time goes on. But then the movie goes off the rails….

Adeline goes to Ellis’s apartment and apologizes to him for HER behavior.  She agrees to go with him to his parents’ place, more plot ensues, and  (after more scientific implausibility) in the end she stays with him.

So, in the end Ellis wins. After repeatedly being rebuffed, after repeatedly acting in ways that should get you kicked out of your board position, after no after no after no, Ellis gets what he wants.

So, boys and girls, what is the movie trying to tell us?  That ignoring a woman’s stated wishes is acceptable if you are wealthy? That a woman doesn’t really mean it when says no? That a woman who says no really does not know her own best interests?

Once Adeline said no the first time, that should have been the end of Ellis’s pursuit of her. Could she change her mind? Sure, but that ball should be squarely in her court. As it is, Adeline never really has to do the seriously hard work of finding someone. And Ellis’s actions as a board member of an organization where she is an employee clearly constitute illegal sexual harassment, something the movie seems to hand wave away.

Was Adeline happier now that she found love? According to the movie, yes. And, according to the movie, this was only possible because Ellis was a persistent pain in the ass. See, men who stalk you really love you!

We live in a culture where all too often what a woman says she wants is ignored. Stalking and sexual harassment are both part of the rape culture we live in, and part of Ellis’s operating manual.

Remember Elliot Rogers? He believed that women should fall at his feet because he was rich. When they didn’t, he indulged in an orgy of misogynistic violence that left six dead and fourteen injured. Given movies like this, his behavior becomes more understandable — Ellis is just the nice end of the women- devaluing spectrum on which Rogers occupies the evil end.

As I said, the more I think of this movie, the madder I get. We need Hollywood to fight rape culture, not subtly encourage it.

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise), Feminism | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Voice wraps up tonight..

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Pat Greene

Note: This post is about The Voice.  If you really don’t care about the show. Don’t bother reading.

It’s been a good season on The Voice.  There are two artists who I would be happy to win, which is unusual.  Since one of them, Sawyer Fredericks, is far and away the front-runner, that works.

Two type of contestants enter The Voice: singers and performers. All performers have to be at least decent singers — or they don’t make it past the blind auditions — but unless the singers become performers they don’t last.  Joshua Davis, my favorite, came in clearly as a seasoned performer.  It showed once he got to the live shows:  he was able to connect with people, and clearly felt quite comfortable — joyful, even, at times — before the audience. Sawyer Fredericks, a sixteen year old phenom, came in a singer: he would stand in front of the mic with just his guitar and his voice. Over the course of the competition he came out of his shell, and started interacting with the audience, becoming a performer.

Performers excel on television, singers in the studio. Deanna Johnson, a woman with a remarkable voice who suffered from extreme stage fright, never got to performer mode, and went home earlier than she might have otherwise.

Most extreme example of this is Michelle Chamuel from Season 4.  I like her studio recordings, but I love watching her televised performances on YouTube.  Her version of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” makes Swift look like a wimp.

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You get what you pay for.

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Pat Greene

A friend of mine makes exquisite jewelry.  I make jewelry myself, and part of me looks at her earrings (not her pendants so much) and says, I could do that.  I could do that for less than she charges.

Except I couldn’t. Nor could you.  Nor could any of the people that tend to dismiss the work of artisans as not being worth what they charge for it.

The reasons I can’t do the work of my friend is because she designed these earrings. I would not have thought to put that particular arrangement of stones together. I have the know-how to copy her designs, but that would be unethical.  I don’t pirate music; much less would I pirate the work of a woman who creates beautiful jewelry.

Nor do I begrudge what she charges for them.  She is an independent businesswoman, who has expenses beyond the actual silver and gemstones: her time, for one, and the overhead needed to run a successful business. (Like many things, jewelry making requires bulk materials on hand — you do not go to the bead store and buy individual beads.)

The craft explosion in America has resulted in far too many people who trivialize what  it takes to be an artisan. It takes more than skill, it takes determination and love of craft.  There is a world of difference between knitting a sweater for your boyfriend and selling hand-designed pieces for a wider audience. I tried to sell my work for a while, but came to the realization that I lacked the doggedness necessary to make a go of it.

Gifted amateurs exacerbate this problem. They undervalue their own work, undercutting prices for more experienced professionals.  The rise of Etsy and other online marketplaces give them a forum for this. A few years ago I was selling jewelry to people at church and my workplace, and I was fortunate to have customers who were knowledgeable and insistent on paying what my work was worth.  In one case, I showed one of my Christmas trees to a professional artist.  She loved it, and asked me a few questions about its construction, and then what I would charge people for them. I told her, and she bluntly replied that I would be charging half of what I should be.

I was reminded of all of this recently by a John Oliver rant about “fast clothing.” We look for cheap, rather than good, and the result are workshops in Bangladesh and Vietnam. Then when we view artisan goods, we are shocked by the prices, when we should instead be appalled by how our acquisitiveness damages not just those who would make a living by their craft here, but the poor people in other countries. (There is another rant about the dropping purchasing power experienced by the 99% in this country, but that is for another day. There are poor people for whom buying cheap is a matter of necessity, and I do not begrudge them, any more than I think poorly of people who shop as Walmart because they need the low prices.)

The “locavore” movement needs to apply to more than food.

By the way, the friend who makes jewelry is Rain Hannah, and her website is Honey and Ollie, and her Etsy shop is honeyandollie. Check her work out. Oh, and members of my family? There are these lapis lazuli earrings….

Posted in Beadwork | Tagged | 2 Comments

A good deed done, as far as I am concerned.

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Pat Greene

The paper cup did it.

I saw the preacher as I crossed the street on the square in front of the train station in Old Sacramento.  I could hardly have missed him: a crowd ringed the square as he yelled his poisoned theology through a cartoonish black megaphone with “Director” painted on the side in yellow capital letters. He looked cut from the same cloth as most street preachers: better dressed than most, perhaps, in black khakis and a loosely draped black and white bowling shirt, and slightly long black hair with gray streaks, but with the commanding body language and fierce tone of voice common to such men (and they are invariably men).  His assistants (or should I call them acolytes?) passed out slips of paper with a Bible verse to passersby. (I think it was from Revelations, but I refused their offerings so I am not sure.) A name and address was underneath the verse, no doubt for whatever fire and brimstone ministry The Reverend represented.

Our car was parked behind him, in front of the gangplank leading to the Delta King Riverboat Hotel  where The Rocket Scientist and I had spent the night. I walked behind the street preacher, frowning, down the gang plank to retrieve our luggage while the Rocket Scientist went to argue with the manager about the lack of air conditioning in our cabin last night. I gathered the bags and dragged them back to Frank, RS’s red and black Mustang convertible. I dropped the bags next to the car, then turned to watch The Reverend.

Sacramento keeps the streets in Old Sacramento pretty clean. Not quite Disney World clean, but well enough that the paper cup from Round Table Pizza slowly rolling across the street caught caught my attention.  The Reverend marched over  to the cup and stomped it flat. “God will crush you like I crushed this cup!”  He strutted (no other word, really) away, leaving the flattened cup lying on the ground.

I had had enough. I walked behind him, picked up the cup, and dropped it in the trash can that was no farther than a few yards from where the preacher was exhorting the crowd. “At least I have the decency to pick it up,” I snapped at the preacher.

He turned around. Still talking through the megaphone, he replied “I wasn’t done.  I would have picked it up when I was done.” He turned back to the crowd, and started into his “You are all damned unless you believe the same sort of vindictive crap I do” routine.

I don’t argue with street preachers, as a rule. There’s no percentage in it. I’m not going to convince him, he’s not going to convince me, so what’s the point? But I couldn’t back down from this fight. “That’s a really horrible God you believe in,” I yelled at him.

Still talking through that ridiculous megaphone, he turned around and said “He’s God over both of us, whether you recognize him or not.” The crowd’s attention was drifting now: he was facing me, after all, not them. “Well, my God is a God of mercy,” I yelled back.

“Well, yes, God is merciful but he also punishes those…” At that point a silver car drove up.  A bald-headed man wearing a black t-shirt with an official looking logo leaned over and asked in an authoritative voice, “Is he bothering you, lady?”

At first I thought if he was asking if I was harassing the street preacher. The Reverend started to protest that he had done nothing wrong, and the man in the car commanded “Be quiet. Lady, is this guy harassing you?”

Well, no, he wasn’t harassing me.  I had chosen to engage with him, after all, and if I had kept my mouth shut he wouldn’t have said boo to me. Smiling slightly I said “No, I’m okay.” The man in the the car nodded and drove off. The Reverend turned face the square. Still talking through the silly megaphone, which might as well been surgically attached to his lips since he never removed it from them, he started talking about the First Amendment and how this was a free country…

At that point, the Rocket Scientist walked up. As I got in the car, I noticed that much of the crowd had turned its attention away from the square to a man on the sidewalk who was dressed as an Old West banker, with a vest and a bowler, who was making marionettes dance. The Reverend had lost most of his audience. I smiled broadly as we drove off, and when we were well clear of the square I punched the air. “Yes!!!!”

I wish I could have told him “Yes, it is a free country.  Yes, you can stand in front of a square spouting your vision of a dark and angry God to the tourists, and nobody will wrest that stupid megaphone from your hand and drag you away. But that First Amendment right to speech and religion you claim to treasure doesn’t insulate you from me yelling back.”

Posted in God faith and theology | Tagged | 3 Comments

Fifty things…

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Pat Greene

It’s been a while since I did one of these things. I am thankful for:

1. Starbucks Venti Decaf No Whip Mocha made with Coconut Milk and Sugar-Free Hazelnut Syrup.

2. That I have a couple of weeks free.

3. That after that, I have work for another couple of months.

4. The Voice, even if my favorite two contestants have been eliminated.

5. New music: “Down to the River to Pray,” by Deanna Johnson (from The Voice), “Budapest,” both the original George Ezra version and The Voice‘s Joshua Davis’s cover. Also “Toes,” by the Zac Brown Band, “‘Til Love Runs Out,” One Republic, and “Take Me to Church,” by Hozier. I realize these are not new to most of you guys…

6. My friend Joe Decker, who responded to “The Sodomite Suppression Act” proposed by an Orange County bigot, who explicitly refers to Leviticus in the initiative, by plunking down $200 and filing “The Shellfish Suppression Act,” likewise explicitly referencing Leviticus. (In addition to being an activist and all round great guy, Joe is a nature photographer. Check out his work. Buy his work. You’ll thank me later.) Joe once again demonstrates that one of the best weapons against bigotry is mockery. This also demonstrates the insanity that is the California ballot initiative process.

7. The insanity that is the California ballot initiative process, for hours of gallows humor. Also, for providing regular citizens an opportunity to participate in the legislative process. Yes, the process often gets hijacked by corporate and other interests, and sometimes awful things happen, like Prop 8, but there is also gold among the dross.

8. Representative democracy.

9. For having fewer demands on my metaphorical spoons, at least for a few days.

10. The Southern Poverty Law Center.  I just read their latest newsletter, and boy is it scary, but I find knowing that someone is keeping track of these horrible people reassuring.

11. Elizabeth Warren.

12. Bernie Sanders.

13. That the Not-So-Little Drummer boy seems to be happy and healthy in New York.

14. That Winter Quarter is over.

15. The Bosch dishwasher we installed in November which is quiet.

16. Elmore Leonard.

17. The dearly departed Sir Terry Pratchett.

18. Hymns, especially “Seek Ye First” and “Be Thou My Vision.”

19. Pine trees against a stark blue sky.

20. Smithsonian magazine (a Christmas present from my kids.)

21. Spain, where I am going again this year. In fact, just knowing that Spain exists makes me happy.

22. That the DBT skills group just started again.

23. Public transportation, so that at least one of the non-drivers in the household gets around without any help from me.

24. Swarovski crystals.

25. Eva Cassidy.

26. Facebook, even if I do spend way too much time there.

27. Rachel Maddow, who manages to be humorous when appropriate, and outraged when appropriate, and totally human all the time.

28. Connie Willis, who in addition to being hands down my favorite science fiction writer (and for a long time the only SF writer whose works I would read — I have a cat named for a cat in one of her books!), for being a thoughtful and principled human being as well. (Poor David Gerrold.)

29. John Scalzi and Whatever.

30. Mike the Mad Biologist, and Fred Clark’s Slacktivist, for giving me things to think about.

31. Scrivener, which I am hoping to learn, and even more hoping to write the book I want to write.  Blogging is all well and good, but I want to do something more substantive.

32. Good Chinese food.

33. Burgers, preferably with barbecue sauce, onion confit, horseradish cheddar, tomatoes, and bacon on a brioche bun.

34. For that matter, bacon.

35. My doctors. (Who would probably prefer that I not eat bacon, but oh well…)

36. That the anti-vax movement is now being exposed to sunlight, and people are starting to take notice. Of course, there are still idiots out there…

37. All the dedicated science bloggers (i.e., those with actual science expertise) and journalists who fight the good fight to bring scientific literacy to a suspicious public.

38. The Tampa Bay Times, the best newspaper in the country.

39. My computer, which, although elderly by computer standards (she’s from 2011, and I have completely worn off the “N” key, and badly worn the “E” and “H”), is my lifeline to the larger world.

40. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

41. Neal Patrick Harris.

42. BBC America. (New Orphan Black! And they are going to have a third season of Ripper Street!)

43. Wolf Hall, both the television series and the books. (Hilary Mantel, please finish the third book in the trilogy. Please.)

44. That my birthday has come and gone. In spite of nice gifts (and Railman made me a cake!), I find birthdays kind of depressing. All of my Facebook friends writing birthday congratulations on my Wall made me happy, however.

45. My friends.

46. My coworkers, who are also friends.

47. My family.

48. The ocean.  Any ocean.  The idea of the ocean.

49. Blue, in all shades, even powder blue. But mostly cornflower.

50. That I have a home.  Far too many people in this world don’t.

That’s it, that my list of things I am grateful for right now.

Posted in Who I am | Tagged | 1 Comment

On Immunty.

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Pat Greene

Most of you know where I stand on the vaccination debate. I refuse to discuss vaccinations with people who put their fingers in their ears and who ignore rationality and science. I have no patience with them.

Then I read Eula Bliss’s On Immunity.

Bliss does not buy into the anti-vaccination hysteria, presenting the science clearly and without jargon. She writes elegantly; more importantly, she views the world holistically. She places the anti-vaccination movement in a larger historical, sociological, and philosophical frame, discussing among other things the changes that the ideal of “purity” underwent when people began being afraid of toxins rather than infection.

She also writes of fear: the fear that she had for her child (in her case, fear bordering on obsession), that all of us have for our children. (She had a pediatrician when her son was born who told her not to get the HiB vaccination given to children within hours of their birth because it wasn’t necessary for “people like her.”)   In short, even as she dismantles their beliefs, she demonstrates compassion for the parents who oppose vaccinating their children. (The charlatans and professionals who profit off of said parents are another matter. For example, she points out a passage in Bob Sear’s anti-vaccination book which excuses parents who put the welfare of their child above that of society, while in another chapter telling parents not to share their fears with their neighbors lest an outbreak occur.)

She has compassion for those parents; I do not. I cannot. I feel only rage.

Mostly this rage stems from generational perspective and personal history. I was born to a mother who, grateful that the rubella that resulted in my being born six weeks early had struck in the third trimester of her pregnancy rather than the first, was too ill to hold me for days. At the age of one I developed both rubella and chickenpox simultaneously, resulting in high fevers for extended periods, and as a consequence  the formation of my tooth enamel was stunted. (I have suffered from dental problems a lot during my adult life.)  My eldest sister was twelve when the first polio vaccines were licensed. No one in our family got polio, but she can tell of the fear of getting polio.

Even thinking of rejecting vaccines strikes me as lunacy, although Bliss talks about the history of vaccine denial. (Refusal to get vaccines is a lot older than I ever thought, although in the early twentieth century the concern about the purity of the vaccines was far more justified than now.  Forget thimerasol: one vaccine used in an outbreak was contaminated with tetanus. Even so, the death rate among those who were not vaccinated was higher than that for those who were.)

Eula Bliss manages compassion; I need to take a deep breath and do likewise.

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A quick lesson on representative democracy.

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Pat Greene

San Jose, California, had a primary in a special election to fill an empty City Council seat.

On a day-to-day basis, city councils have a greater impact on people than who is in the White House. City councils determine police and fire staffing levels and spending priorities for services. City decisions about housing density can turn traffic from a minor annoyance to a major headache. Regulations can nurture or strangle small businesses.

Special elections usually result in low voter turnout.  Tuesday was no exception, and the eight candidate field fractured the already low number of votes. The chilly weather with threats of rain probably also hurt turnout.  As of Wednesday evening, with 98% of the votes counted, the difference between second place — and a place in the general election — and third — going home — was thirty-eight votes.

Undoubtedly there will be a recount.  Still… thirty-eight votes? For that matter, the difference between first and third was only 318 votes. If all the people who were too busy, lazy, or cynical to vote had turned up at the polls, or mailed in their absentee ballots, the outcome might be very different.

Edited to add: at 99% of the vote counted, the difference between second and third had dropped to twenty-three votes. The difference between first and third increased slightly, from 318 to 321.

And that, boys and girls, is why you ALWAYS vote.

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This is not unreasonable, right?

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Pat Greene

I went to Barnes and Noble this morning, intent on replacing books I had lost in the New Year’s Eve flood. Note that these were books I had read and reread, worn paperbacks that I had loved fiercely, with the passion one reserves for books that come along at the right time and place in your life or which for some reason echo in your soul. Two of them were by Terry Pratchett (I am planning a long post about Sir Terry, but I was sick during the few days around when he died, and so I figure that there is no rush on it), Thud! and my second favorite Pratchett, Thief of Time. (My favorite Pratchett, Night Watch, was safely placed on my bedstead.)  The other was Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which was not lost to the flood but had bent lent to someone and not returned.

Does anyone else find this weird?

Books are meant to be held in the hand, cried over, have ketchup spilled on (but not dog-eared — that ruins the pages) and loved like the Velveteen Rabbit until they become real. And, as the story goes, once a thing is real is can never be not real.

I did buy new books, as well, because to go into a bookstore and come out with only books you’ve read before constitutes an embarrassing lack of initiative.  True, one of the books was another Pratchett, Mort, about one of the best Discworld characters, DEATH, and his apprentice. Reading a Discworld book that I had never read before (there are over thirty in series, and I have read about half of them, mostly the later ones and the books involving the City Watch) seemed fitting, considering I spent last weekend rereading Men At Arms, Feet of Clay, and Night Watch.  (I had read Jingo last month, so had felt no real call to reread it again so soon.) I would have reread Thud! and Thief of Time as well, had I had the books at hand.

I also bought an Elmore Leonard novel, Riding the Rap. I have heard interviews with Leonard, who always seemed like a gruff and slightly crazy guy. The book takes place in Florida, and while I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the criminals Raylan Givens deals with, Leonard has got the atmosphere of South Florida down pat. I am looking forward not just to finishing this one, but going on and reading other in his Raylan Givens series.

Oddly enough, I have not read any nonfiction since I finished The Good Nurse in February.  I am remedying that by starting to reread The Disappearing Spoon: Tales of Love, Madness, and the History of the World told through the Periodic Table. I am embracing my inner nerd.   (The other night, a colleague asked “Stereotypically, I have to ask, have you caught up on Game of Thrones?” After answering that I didn’t watch the series, I thought…stereotypically? What? He explained “I don’t want to say you’re a nerd but…” “…I’m a nerd.” “Yeah.”)

I am still waiting, along with the rest of the world, for Hilary Mantel to finish up the third volume in the Wolf Hall trilogy. The television show will be wonderful, I am sure, but nothing compares to reading her work. (Speaking of television, specifically British television, BBCAmerica will soon be showing the third season of Ripper Street. Yes, I like grisly crime dramas, even when they are set in 19th century London.)

What are you reading?

 

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The Mists of Avalon reconsidered.

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Pat Greene

A few months ago, a friend was over for dinner, and among other things we discussed revelations about the abuse Moira Greyland suffered at the hands of her mother, Marion Zimmer Bradley.  “I tried to read The Mists of Avalon, because it was important to a lot of my pagan friends,” he said. “But I got part of the way through and thought ‘This is feminist?”

I shook my head and agreed with him — after all, excusing the rape of a little girl as the result of an irresistible part of nature is disturbing* — but later I remembered that I thought it was feminist when I first read it. So did a great many women — the book came out in 1982, when I was a senior in college, and it was the rage among my friends, all of whom considered themselves feminists in good standing.  Even today, reviews of it talk about it as an important feminist work.

I unearthed my copy and decided to reread it. I would be more critical this time, and stop and ponder when I come across passages that strike me as non-feminist.  Once past the (short) Prologue, it took me all of a page and a half.

Igraine thinks about when she first was married (at fifteen) to Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, he was kind to her in spite of “her hate and fear.” All women of Avalon have destinies, as priestesses or to be kept virgin for rituals, or to be married to cement alliances. I continued to read, with increasing discomfort. And I came to realize…

Matrilineal societies are not, in and of themselves, feminist.

The recognition, and yes, celebration, of women’s sexuality, is not in and of itself feminist, especially when that sexuality is used to broker power. Morgaine keeping herself virgin at the command of Viviane so that she may give herself in ritual is no different from Gwenhyfar keeping herself chaste for her wedding bed.

The identification of the Divine as feminine is not in and of itself feminist. Maiden-Mother-Crone may be less oppressive than Madonna-Whore, but it is no less reductive.

Women-led spaces that mirror patriarchal power structures, as found among the priestesses of Avalon, are not feminist.**

In short, matriarchy is not in and of itself feminist.

Avalon is not a rejection of Glastonbury, the island of the monks, but an inversion of it. The Mists of Avalon is not the tale of a feminist, women-centered utopia overthrown by the evil forces of patriarchy, but a story of a manipulatively oppressive (albeit women-centered) regime supplanted by a crueler and less subtle one.

I think I need to go read some Ursula LeGuin ….

*”She stretched out her arms, and at her command she knew that outside the cave, in the light of the fecundating fires, man and woman, drawn one to the other by the pulsating surges of life, came together. The little blue-painted girl who had borne the fertilizing blood was drawn down into the arms of a sinewy old hunter, and Morgaine saw her briefly struggle and cry out, go down under his body, her legs opening to the irresistible force of nature in them.”

**Pagan communities have seen controversies erupt in the past few years over “women-only” rituals that have excluded transwomen as not really women. In one of the more offensive quotes on the subject, a defender of women-only ritual stated in 2011 that “But if you claim to be one of us, you have to have sometimes in your life a womb, and overies and MOON bleed and not die… Women are born not made by men on operating tables.” (Aside from transphobia, reducing the essence of womanhood to biological imperatives defines womanhood in ways that feminism worked hard to break away from. I find this statement to be non-feminist in the extreme. And no, I do not think that not being pagan makes my criticism invalid, any more than a pagan’s observation that Catholicism is rife with homophobia would be.)

Posted in Books, Feminism | 2 Comments

Odds and Ends, Movie Edition.

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Pat Greene

We are now in the winter early spring of our cinematic discontent…

On the one hand, February and March are deserts of bad movies… On the other hand, I have a couple of weeks after the Oscars to catch Birdman.

I did see a movie this weekend which had received acceptable reviews.  I knew that Entertainment Weekly had given Kingsman a quite respectable B. I did not check out Rotten Tomatoes, which I should have. I was not sure exactly what the movie was about other than it involved Colin Firth as a spy, and that it had Mark Strong and Samuel Jackson.  Colin Firth was dressed in exquisitely tailored bespoke suits, and Mark Strong (who has been one of my favorite actors since Stardust) spoke in a beguiling Irish brogue, so it seemed like a safe bet to risk 26.50 (two adult tickets plus Fandango’s fees) and two and a half hours on. I forgot to check the level of violence in the film. Mistake.

Even Colin Firth in gray worsted cannot make up for heads graphically exploding, or for most of the victims being people of color and the heroes all white, or Samuel L. Jackson’s ridiculous lisp. The movie also gave me nightmares and cold sweat. I wasn’t screaming when the Caltrain ran over me in my dream, but that’s only because I could not breathe.

I have specific rules for movies with graphic violence (defined to mean any movie with explicit blood and gore): the violence must be unavoidable to the story, must not feel choreographed, and must not be terribly cartoonish. Steven Spielberg’s  Saving Private Ryan, Martin Scorcese’s The Departed, and David Cronenberg’s exceptional A History of Violence, all meet those requirements. And, among recent releases, Selma.

Speaking of Selma, one theory of why the movie was essentially overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences speculates that it was the victim of a badly run “campaign.” Specifically, that the film’s studio failed to get the screening DVDs to voters in time. Seriously, people? I remember when “screeners’ were not sent out, and voters actually had to gasp! go to a theater to see the nominated films.

Screeners undermine the Oscars in a couple of different ways.  First, I am convinced that they lead to lazy viewing. Sitting in your living room (or home theater — this is Hollywood, after all) and watching with a cocktail in your hand is a much different experience that seeing the same film in a theater with other people. I have always felt that Crash was favored over much better movies (Capote, Good Night and Good Luck) perhaps because viewing a movie on your television requires less discipline that watching the same film in a cinema. (Yes, I saw all three of those movies.  Both Capote and Good Night and Good Luck had better writing, acting and directing than Crash; Capote was more far more nuanced and thought-provoking, and Good Night and Good Luck had better cinematography.) I have never seen Brokeback Mountain, so I have no idea whether is is a better film than Crash, though the outcry after the latter won Best Picture indicates a lot of people thought so.)

Also, DVD viewing favors some movies over others. The opening shots of Star Wars, where the Imperial ship goes on and on, is far less impressive viewed on a small screen. As far as this year’s Oscar contenders go, to take the two I actually saw, The Imitation Game loses nothing by being watched at home. On the other hand, the scene of the marchers facing off against law enforcement and vigilantes on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma needs the large screen to really work on an emotional level the way that it should.

Even theaters have come to the conclusion that movies are better shown on a big screen: Fathom Entertainment runs groups of classic films at selected locations.  Watching All About Eve with other movie buffs is more rewarding than simply catching it on Turner Classic Movies. I’ve done both recently. And All About Eve is not an epic movie, the way that Selma or Lawrence of Arabia are.

The Oscars are not the Emmys.  They should reward movies that need to be seen larger than life.

DVDs can also turn a communal experience into a solitary one. Recently, I’ve seen movies at theaters that were empty other than myself and a couple of friends.  While this allowed us to talk during the previews, it also felt… empty.  Being part of a group of strangers laughing or cheering together provides part of movies’ magic.

To get back to the Oscars, Neil Patrick Harris fell disappointingly short of the (admittedly high) expectations that most people had of him. It just goes to show that writing award show material is an art, and that even hosts as gifted as NPH can only do so much to rescue the writers. Some of my favorite moments seemed ad-libbed, such as when NPH observed, following J.K. Simmons’ win for Best Supporting Actor,  “He won an Oscar. [followed by the ending music for the ubiquitous Farmer’s Insurance commercials which feature Simmons].” (The ending magic trick, which explained the laborious ongoing joke about someone watching the box, was cute. It almost made the gag work.)

Simmons, one of my favorite character actors, gave one of my favorite speeches, by ignoring the usual litany of people who get thanked (other than his family) and instead admonishing people to “Call your mother. All of you.” Patricia Arquette’s call for equal pay and opportunities struck a chord (certainly with Meryl Streep, who was shown cheering Arquette on), as did Graham Moore,the screenwriter of The Imitation Game basically providing a live “It Gets Better” video. (Streep has a sense of humor, and was the good natured butt of one of the better jokes of the evening: “The Best Supporting Actress category has four outstanding actresses, and in accordance with California law, Meryl Streep.”) John Legend’s and Common’s performance of and acceptance speech for the song “Glory” were both staggering. And Lady Gaga once again showed that yes, her usual pop material notwithstanding, the girl can sing. In one of the “aw, how cute”moments, she seemed genuinely overwhelmed by Julie Andrews’ reception of her performance.

Turner Classic movies has been running its “31 Days of Oscar.” As a result, I have been able to patch a few holes in my cinematic experience: I’ve been meaning to see Gaslight, The Philadelphia Story, and North by Northwest for years, and now I have. I also saw Gigi again yesterday. Later this week they are going to show Shakespeare in Love and Chicago, and next Monday are going to run the Lord of The Rings trilogy in sequence. TCM is a great channel. Give me TCM, DVR so I can see movies that air when I’m at work, and a rum and coke, and I am a happy camper.

My next quest is to find out which theaters are showing the live-action and animated short films. The only one of either category that I’ve seen is the (winning) animated short Feast, and that only because it was shown before Big Hero 6. (And, boy howdy, was I glad that Big Hero 6 got Best Animated Feature, although I would have been okay with How to Train Your Dragon 2 winning. Also, it was about time that Alexandre Desplats won Best Score for something.)

Is anyone of you up for hunting down a good foreign film? I was thinking of maybe Ida, which in addition to wining Best Foreign-Language Film was nominated for Best Cinematography.

See you at the movies.

Posted in Culture (popular and otherwise) | Tagged | 1 Comment

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Unfortunately.

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Pat Greene

The sky is blue. The air has a lovely crispness, hanging around what feels to be the low sixties. The hills have turned that beautiful emerald green that first seduced me when I visited Stanford, and the buds on the trees are swelling, getting ready to burst into flower.

This is a not a good thing.

Weather happens in patterns. The Northern California weather has given us day after day of clear sunshine.  Some days the thermometer has risen into the high seventies in San Jose and elsewhere in the South Bay. Even days that are gray and overcast, as Tuesday was, produce no rain.

In addition to sunny days, the lack of rain has resulted in “Spare-the-Air Days” which cause problems for people with respiratory conditions such as asthma (which would include me). Some members of my family get migraines on days with heavy pollution.

I realize that to my friends in Boston and Washington this may seem like whining. We’re not having to dig out from snowstorm after snowstorm, or, as is the case in parts of the South, finding ourselves stranded in our house by ice sheets. We certainly do not risk hypothermia when we head out of the house.

I’m looking down the line. Already the highway signs flash reminders that we are in a severe drought. We face even worse. (I do not understand why in the world we have not already been hit with mandatory water rationing.) This summer is going to be brutal; I don’t even want to think about fire season. I would dearly love to have even a quarter of the precipitation of Boston this winter, especially if it fell in the form of snow adding to the Sierra snowpack.

I wish it would rain.

Posted in The Bay Area | Tagged | Leave a comment

We failed him.

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Pat Greene

The first execution of 2015 happened on January 12. Georgia put to death a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had no prior criminal record, and danced around the street yelling “Shoot me!” before pulling out a rifle and killing a twenty-two-year old deputy sheriff, who had stopped him for going 98 m.p.h.

Andrew Brennan was not simply any Vietnam vet. He had been awarded two commendations and a Bronze Star for his service. He was diagnosed with PTSD in 1984, and later, bipolar disorder.

No one can say what Brennan was thinking when he shot the deputy. Clearly, the demons which so often control people with mental illness had hold of him.  PTSD and bipolar disorder take prisoners, and Brennan was one.  Brennan’s attorneys argued that the jury at his trial had not been given adequate information about his military service and his mental illness. (Given that the trial happened in Georgia, perhaps the jury would not have cared in any case.*) The attorneys also argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that veterans with PTSD constitute a special category of prisoners, and should be spared for that reason, an argument that the Court found unpersuasive.

What happened that day in 1998 in Laurens County was horrible, and I do not want to minimize the death of the young officer.  Deputy Sheriff Kyle Dinkheller should not have been shot.  Andrew Brennan should have received the mental health care he so clearly needed.  Dinkheller’s death was, as Brennan’s attorney said, a terrible tragedy.

Deaths involving law enforcement pose more problems than other murders. Society (or at least white, able society, to be honest) often views the shooting of an unarmed or mentally ill person as a sad but necessary event: we want our police, rightly, to be able to defend themselves. Had Dinkheller shot Brennan when he pulled out the firearm, it would have been, as the cop shows say, “a good shoot.” Hopefully, the shooting would have ignited a discussion about the treatment of veterans, and our national failure to adequately provide mental health care for those who need it.

Leaving aside the moral and ethical concerns about the death penalty in general, killing the mentally ill is repugnant.  Killing a decorated veteran whose mental illness was at least in part caused by the very service for which he was decorated verges on the grotesque.

We teach soldiers to kill.  We send them to foreign lands where killing is a necessary skill to survive. We place them in harm’s way, and subject them to the horrors of war.  We fail to give them adequate care, mental and otherwise, when they return.

And then when they turn that training on someone stateside, especially a law enforcement official, we execute them.

God forgive us.

*Yes, I know that that shows a prejudice against Georgia. I feel the same way about Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi. Many people in those states think differently about the death penalty than elsewhere.

Posted in Justice, Social Issues | Tagged | Leave a comment