Girl Detective

A few weeks ago, in what was either a moment of weakness or bravery, I registered to attend the Loft’s Festival of Children’s Literature, a day of general sessions and smaller workshops led by writers, illustrators, and editors. As I contemplated the eight-hour day, I realized I’d have to take Guppy with me. The logistics of being away from him that long would be complicated. So I planned to wear my Maya Wrap sling and bring along a diaper bag with the essentials*. I figured I would attend as much as I could, and leave any session, or the festival, if things went badly.

As it turned out, Guppy was astonishing. He snoozed most of the time in the sling, woke to eat, then snoozed again, lather, rinse, repeat. He was quiet in his brief waking periods, and I was able to attend almost every minute of every session. And if you’re ever having a low day (as I was–recent nights have had lots of interrupted sleep, and the weather has been bad) bringing a baby to an event can be very cheering. Loads of people want to talk with and smile at you.

As I’ve written many times before, the Loft is a wonderful resource for Twin Cities writers. The festival was full of useful information, and I got a lot out of it. I nearly didn’t sign up, and then strongly considered not attending after I did sign up. I’m glad I overcame my doubt and inertia.

*Wallet, phone, PDA, lip balm, tiny notebook, pen, 2 diapers, wipes, burp cloth, Nuk, extra outfit and socks, book (for me), distracting toy (for Guppy).

Drake has been sick, Guppy insists on nursing every two hours and woke for an extra feeding in the middle of last night, I’m trying to get the baby announcement out the door and put together a mix CD for a music group I’m part of. Things in general are a bit crazed. I’ll post as I’m able; please bear with me!

#30 in my movie challenge for the year was Fever Pitch. (It came into the library with Sky High, a coincidental double feature. Last week’s was The Constant Gardener and Crash, so it was a whiplash change from last week to this.) Like Sky High, it had some good bits, especially about rabid fans, but Barrymore and Fallon aren’t convincing actors. It’s based on Nick Hornby’s book of the same title about his obsession with football (soccer), and there’s a previous English adaptation starring Colin Firth.

#29 in my movie challenge was Sky High. It borrows liberally and unapologetically from Harry Potter and The Incredibles, the latter of which is a much better movie. Sky High has some funny bits, especially around superhero tropes and father/son dynamics, but the main story is a snooze, and the movie itself is probably better suited to kids than grownups.

Back when I lived in the Philly area, one of my favorite rites of spring was to take a walk once the weeping cherry trees began to bloom. There were several especially nice ones in my neighborhood, and I miss them each spring. Minnesota is hardly the frozen tundra that many people imagine it to be, but there aren’t a lot of cherry trees, either. My husband G. Grod sent me this link, which I can’t seem to embed:

http://tarkandeluxe.blogspot.com/2006/04/cherry-blossom-season.html

#18 in my book challenge for the year is Wuthering Heights. I wanted to read this as a contrast to Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s work is bright, sparkly, and romantic. Wuthering Heights is dark, twisted, and hardly romantic–it’s more horrific, in my opinion. There are so many fascinating things about it: the character of Heathcliff, who is cruel and yet difficult to despise; the multi-layered narrative; the Shakespearean mix of tragedy capped by a tidy wedding. Many of its influences are clear, as are its progeny. Yet it stands as a singular work, the only novel by its author, and a novel unlike any other.

#17 in my book challenge for the year, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was an interesting complement to Capote, the film. Capote the author only let himself creep into the narrative in two places near the end. Once, he refers to a friend of Perry Smith, and another time to a journalist who is friendly with both Perry and Dick. It is odd to recognize that this book was the precursor both to true-crime thrillers and the creative non-fiction genre, both of which are so prevalent today.

Toddler won’t listen
My clothes neither match, nor fit
Baby cries and cries

#28 in my movie challenge this year is Crash. When I saw it in theaters last year, I was very moved. Watching it again on DVD, I was less so. In the days before and after the Oscars, many people kvetched about Crash. I found the complaints mean-spirited. On further reflection, having a negative opinion contrary to a popularly held one (as I have had on March of the Penguins and Prep, to name two recent examples) may rquire a little extra vitiol to counteract the prevailing saccharine. After re-watching Crash, I think the nay-sayers have a case. It felt contrived and overwrought in parts, though I again appreciated the dark, O. Henry-esque twists and, as usual, loved Don Cheadle’s performance.

There is nothing my toddler does that is so annoying that yelling at him can’t make it worse.

The speed with which my toddler moves, and his ability to listen to me, vary in inverse relation to how loud the baby is screaming.

My ability to feel like a competent parent is directly related to the amount of sleep I’ve had, and to how nice the weather is.

I spent today and one day last week in an uncharacteristic manner: driving around. I was in and out of the car with both boys all morning, and in the car for a long time. Drake did very well, and Guppy slept the whole time, but it isn’t an experience I want to increase in frequency.

We only have one car that G. Grod and I share. He can take the bus to work or drive. One of the reasons we like where we live is that we’re within walking distance of several parks, a coffee shop, restaurant, two libraries, our grocery co op, and more. I enjoy walking to these places. I get exercise, and my sons get fresh air and a scenic stroller ride.

Running back and forth in the car felt only like it was a means to an end. I know lots of people for whom driving is an everyday event. They live in suburbs and have to drive to everything. I also know people who live near me and drive their kids around to museums, gyms, and other kid venues. I know those has value, but for me and mine, so does avoiding time in the car. The park down the block may be smaller than one I can drive to, but I don’t think Drake enjoys it any less, and I know we’re both better off not having to negotiate getting in and out, and in and out, of the car to go someplace further away.

#27 in my movie challenge for the year was The Constant Gardener. I enjoyed this movie a lot. It was not told in in a linear fashion, which I sometimes have difficulty with, and on top of that I’m sleep deprived, and Guppy was on-and-off fussy while we watched so we had to spread it over two nights, but I nonetheless was able to follow both the mystery and the romance. I thought both were well done. Fiennes was good as the everyman who is pressed by circumstances into becoming a spy/detective, and Weisz deserved that Oscar. She was completely believable as the complex character she portrayed.

BTW, Guppy seems less inclines to hang out peacefully (awake or not) while we watch TV and movies at night, so I think my viewing extravaganza may be coming to a close for now.

Alison Wolf makes an interesting argument: career equality between the sexes has negative repercussions for society. In this article, (link via Arts and Letters Daily) she claims there are three results:

-the death of sisterhood, or an end to the millennia during which women of all classes shared the same major life experiences to a far greater degree than did their men.
-the erosion of “female altruism,” the service ethos that has been profoundly important to modern industrial societies, particularly in the education of their young and the care of their old and sick.
-the impact of employment change on childbearing. We are familiar with the prospect of demographic decline, yet we ignore – sometimes wilfully – the extent to which educated women face disincentives to bear children.

I’m not sure where to begin on how messed up this article is, but I’ll try. (Also, the last sentences of three of the four final paragraphs are strange in tone and seem like mistakes.)

First, her assumption of some prior “sisterhood” in which women shared experiences re-visits one of the key mistakes of early, 70’s era feminism, where “women” really meant “rich, white women” and did not accurately or fairly represent the multiplicity of women’s lives.

Second, she decries the decline in volunteer social services, but only implies a conclusion, and one that’s disturbing at that: that educated women should leave the workforce to resume the unpaid social services of the past.

The final concerning implication in Wolf’s article is that the financial disincentives for career women to have children mean that more poorer, less-educated women are having children. I took Wolf’s concern to mean she thought the “wrong” women were having children.

At base, Wolf’s point is a good one. Society does suffer because women are penalized rather than supported in having children. But penalties exist for all women, not just wealthy, highly educated ones. Wolf doesn’t put the onus where I think it should be–on public policy. By implication, then, (so much of what’s troubling about the article is what’s implied, because hard data and solutions aren’t supplied) the onus falls where it usually does–on women themselves. What Wolf has done is blame the victim.

According to this New York Magazine article (link via Arts and Letters Daily) I’m a Grup. I wear tattered high tops and unconventional eyeglasses, I carry a messenger bag instead of a diaper bag. The bands they mention are either in my collection or in my queue at the library and on my radio station. My kid likes to listen to DJ Shadow.

The author defines Grups as

40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent.

The article is an extended analysis of the current state of Gen-Xers. Apparently, we’re destroying the generation gap because we like a wide range of music. What was embarrassing about the article was the mirror it held up–so many of the people mentioned in the article are so like each other, and so like me. So much for individuality. What was refreshing, though, was the idea that we’re trying to synthesize childlike (NB: not childish) passion with adult responsibilities.

Being a Grup isn’t, as it turns out, all about holding on to some misguided, well-marketed idea of youth–or, at least, isn’t just about that. It’s also about rejecting a hand-me-down model of adulthood that asks, or even necessitates, that you let go of everything you ever felt passionate about. It’s about reimagining adulthood as a period defined by promise, rather than compromise. And who can’t relate to that?

Of course, that’s not a real ending–even the Grups don’t know how this will end. They know they’re making up adulthood as they go.

I’ve waited years for this.

We’ve been chosen as a Nielsen Family for a one week TV survey.

At last, my opinion will matter. Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica will get the recognition they deserve. For years I’ve watched good shows get cancelled, like My So-Called Life and EZ Streets. Perhaps I can finally make a difference.

#16 in my book challege for the year is Dillard’s tiny but powerful Holy the Firm. I finally read the copy I purchased so long ago that the friend who recommended it is no longer in my life. The book is more of a keeper than the friend was. More poetic than prosaic, it’s beautifully written, sometimes painfully so. A wandering, but not meandering, meditation on faith, it plumbs some of the same territory as Anne Lamott’s Travelling Mercies, though in a very different way.

There is no one but us…., a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead–as if innocence had ever been–and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved. So. You learn this studying any history at all, especially the lives of artists and visionaries; you learn it from Emerson, who noticed that the meanness of our days is itself worth our thought; and you learn it, fitful in your pew, at church.

#15 in my book challenge for the year, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell took me over three weeks to read. I didn’t resent the time, in fact, I was sorry to be done. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and its characters and I admired the book for its craft. Both the characters and the story are complex and well drawn. The prose is appealingly Austen-ish, and I was glad to read JS&MN so soon after Pride and Prejudice. Clarke’s homages of prose, humor,and character were easy to see when read in proximity. This book was one I owned, but for a long time I doubted I would read it at all. To a person, everyone I knew who read the book, my husband G. Grod included, merely liked it. No one owned to loving it, and I thought one should love a book that’s so long. But when my friend Becca said she had just finished it, I decided to give it a try, since it’s one I already own.

(Aside: I thought I already noted that this year’s book challenge would be less about the number of books, and more about reading books I already own. Yet I can’t find that in an entry. Perhaps I imagined that I wrote it. But I mean it.)

I am curious why I liked JS&MN so much better than others did. The reviews are so good it’s almost ridiculous. Did the others have high expectations based on reviews, while I had lowered ones based on the non-glowing feedback of friends? G. Grod will offer only that he thought Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle books are so much better that JS&MN suffers in comparison. I haven’t yet read the Baroque Cycle, so I don’t have that potentially unflattering contrast. I entreat any readers who have read JS&MN to comment.

#14 in my book challenge for the year was V for Vendetta. The mixed reviews of the movie prompted me to re-read this. It was one of my “gateway” comics–one that someone else gave me to introduce me to the medium. It worked, where Watchmen and Dark Knight hadn’t. For that alone, it will always have a place on my shelf. V is both dated and less polished than some of Moore’s other, later works. But the creators’ obvious passion for their tale drives the story through the early, more clumsy chapters to its dark, complex middle and conclusion. It’s still a compelling read, and one I enjoyed enough that I’m not going to tamper with by going to see the movie.

#13 in my book challenge for the year is Dylan Horrocks’s excellent graphic novel Hicksville; it’s a self-referential tale, a history of comics, a romance, a mystery, and more. It’s been almost five years between issues of Atlas, Horrocks’s related follow-up project. I hope the wait for Atlas #3 is somewhat less long.

#12 in my book challenge for the year, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is such a polished novel that it almost sparkles. I want to revisit this book more often. The prose and the characters are a joy to spend time with.