It’s really hard to decide on what I should post about today. I have diversions.
The first is that I’m in the final throes of revising my thesis to meet the examiners’ comments. I thought it would be a much bigger task than it was. I’ve sent my revisions and comments to my supervisors and then I send the final in and, hopefully, by the end of the week it will be done and dusted save for graduation. I submitted the thesis over a year ago – even for Australia this is slow. I don’t know why it was so slow, but career-wise it doesn’t matter to me (this is not my first PhD and I’m in my sixties) so it’s better the admin slowness doesn’t apply to young students than it does apply to me. Also, between submission and graduation, my first PhD took 3 years. It was not my fault, but it cost me my first career. By me a drink and I’ll tell you the story.
It’s rather nice that lateness doesn’t always carry such costs.
The second is that the submission period for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion closed yesterday. Many of us are a bit overwhelmed. On 4 June (10 days before submissions closed) there were over 14,000 submissions, which was a record for Royal Commissions. No-one knows the final number yet.
The staff serving the Royal Commissioner is obligated to read every single one of them. And those of us keeping track are wondering what this means. That Jewish Australia matters? That haters have put in many thoughts? We know that haters have oput in some thoughts. We also know that Palestinian Australia put in a 259 page submission. I’ve seen the outline and need to read it because I cannot make sense of it. Or rather, I can make sense of it in and of itself, but not how it helps Australia handle antisemitism. It seems to be arguing that we’re making things up. This is why I have to check. I’ve been told by quite a few people this last week that antisemitism is fictional, but there are so many incidents right now that this is not a claim so much as a misdirection. I need to know why APAN feels the need to spend 259 pages backing that misdirection if that is, indeed what they’re doing.
What I’m supposed to be doing is writing fiction. I lay in bed last night working out things that needed working out, but today have only written a couple of hundred words. We’re in a weather trap and my bones hurt and I keep procrastinating and worrying about Jewish Australia and other groups being confined by wagon trains circling hate.
Let me leave you and go back to my big writing decision for this week: Lincoln or London in the twelfth century for a section of the novel. I want both, but I don’t think both will fit. I also want Cologne and Speyer. Both! Actually, writing this out has made me think: people travelled in the Middle Ages. Why don’t I have someone travelling to Cologne from Speyer? That would give me the words for Lincoln and London. I just need to check concepts and characters and plot and… all the things… except the history. I have most of the research for that at my fingertips because of the non-fiction I was working on recently and that still has no home. All this research pays.