Category: Life

Identifying bigotry, bias, and poor judgement

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Today’s post was going to be short and simple because today I feel very short and rather simple. Except it’s my least favourite topic and it’s the topic that governs so much of our everyday. So it’s long and complicated.

Because I often encounter prejudice, I have ways of measuring how far it extends so that I can avoid problems and problem people when there are no solutions. I don’t walk away from anything lightly, but I need ways to assess if an event of group has become unsafe for me or if I’ve become so much a second-class citizen that I cannot be certain my voice will be heard when a problem arises. I have walked away from something just this week, which is why this post is so very personal.

These are some of the things I use to look for incoming problems and for current problems. Every one of them relates to experiences from the last month or ongoing issues. They don’t work for extreme prejudice ie I had no way of predicting the Molotov cocktails that were thrown at a building I was in or hate mail I received. I cannot gently walk away before bad things happen. It’s not a complete list in any way. In fact, it’s simply the tools I’ve had to use this last week.

1. Red flags.

Indications that someone doesn’t see things the way I do, and (the ‘and’ is important) may act on their viewpoint in a way that’s, at best, uncomfortable, or at worse, dangerous. I avoid someone who lives locally to me, for instance, because they always want to talk about Israel or money: I’m Jewish, so I must always want to talk about Israel or about money – those are two red flags. There are other red flags for other aspects of my life. Some of them relate to being safe as a woman, some being safe as a person with chronic illness and disabilities. This last week I’ve encountered ten red flags from three people. Red flags often feel creepy to people in the same group. They’re indications of where a path can lead. When I mentioned one of them (the gender-related series) their response was “That’s so creepy.” While they’re not themselves dangerous, they can lead to bad places. One red flag won’t make me walk away from a person. We all make mistakes and we can all be stupid, after all. A consistent display of red flag behaviour, however, is a safety issue.

I first try to address the behaviour, because some of it is copying others. If telling a person “This hurts me” or “This makes me uncomfortable because…” doesn’t change anything, I have to get out.

2. Equality of access

One of the easiest-to-spot evidence of othering is when two people have equal background and put equal work in and one is rewarded while the other has to move on. This has applied to me more in Cnaberra than elsewhere in Australia. I can teach a subject for years and have amazing student ratings and full courses every time and then be dumped from the institution without notice (ask me about why I’m not at the ANU one day) or be told that, while other people are remembered by the organisation, I have to apply as if I’m a new person. I ask about my records with them and they say, “We’re not looking at history.” Except they do… with non-minority writers. Because of my disabilities, I have limited energy and not a lot of income, so it’s very easy to make something impossible for me by making it a two day job to apply for something that will give two hours income. If I weren’t in such a small community and if I didn’t hear that others are not made to jump through the same number of hoops and that their experience is counted and that most of the jobs I have to apply for as if I’ve never been seen locally are given to people whose names have come up in discussions… I’d assume it was a level playing field. There are, in other words, organisational ways of othering and of keeping undesirables out.

It took me a long time to realise this was happening. My moment of illumination came when someone carelessly said “We can’t consider you because you’re not experienced enough. The others have more qualifications, too.” This sounds innocuous. Except… I have two PhDs, a teaching qualification, 30 years teaching experience, ten novels, thirty years organising experience, non-fiction published on the subject. even the occasional award. What did my replacements have? About 1/10 of these things. What works in my favour outside a bigoted community is an actual impediment within one.

3. Fairness of treatment

This is so complicated in real life, but it comes down to “If you have two incidents at an event, are they being treated using the same set of values and the same approach/process and are all people involved in them being treated with equal fairness.” This includes communication about the incident. It’s so very personal at the moment that I’m not going to give an example, because it’s a bit triggery. Triggers are things to be avoided.

4. Being included

Who is at a social event and why? How are they treated? There are some once-close-friends who I will not dine with any longer because they only include me when they want to prove they’re not bigots and when I am at the same table as them they talk down at me. I’m only allowed to speak when spoken to. I have to respect the social order.

Or, from the other direction, is there someone who is continually left out even though they technically belong in a particular group? Are there events that don’t include this one person time after time? And, if asked, do the orgnaisers simply assume someone has asked them? Additionally, if the person is disabled, does anyone even both to ask “What do you need us to do so that we can include you?” or is the assumption made early on that it’s easier to invite everyone and expect that they won’t be able to come.

This kind of thing is very badly recognised and handled in Australia because we don’t like to admit we do it.

5. When specific racist/problematic things occur, how those in charge react?

When there is hate mail or stones or Molotov cocktails or something else, how do the people in charge handle it? For years I was the go-to person for advice on these things. Now I’m told socially, “Look, antisemitic event in Canberra. You should know.” It’s done with apparent sympathy, but no support, and no sense of how I may feel to be told of a Hitler salute and that it was handled with less effort than the amount taken to deal with issues where I was seen as the guilty party. And that’s the caring people. It’s a red flag that the allies only see themselves as allies. This relates to people from majority background, or some other minorities. It also includes people who come from minority backgrounds but do not have the life experience to handle problems for others from that background, but who think that they do – this is a very sticky and thorny area. All of these people can unintentionally compound a problem. It’s also a red flag that the wider community accepts something.

There is one very difficult area here. I said that it was a very sticky and thorny area in the previous paragraph. What is this sticky and thorny area? Passing: ie it includes people from the same minority background who can ‘pass.’ Some of us have knowledge about handling difficult issues, and some do not. Just because someone from a minority passes, doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to make wise decisions… and it doesn’t mean they don’t have this knowledge. It depends so much on the individual.

If I weren’t public, for example, about being Jewish, I could publicly skip all the cultural and religious aspects of Judaism and pass as white in Australia. It wouldn’t negate my knowledge, and I was brought up traditionally and so have a fair amount of that knowledge, and my historical knowledge is mostly relating to Europe, which deepens my understanding. I know stuff, in other words, and can give good advice if asked. (The red flag for me is who rushes into things without asking, but that is an offshoot of 2 – experts who are not seen as experts because they are being othered so their expertise is not acknowledged.)

A very well-known group that has ‘passed’ is those Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews who went into hiding for their own safety. Many Sephardi Jews were killed after Inquisitional interrogation brought out that they ate Jewish-style eggs, or salad on Saturday afternoon ie that they hadn’t relinquished all Jewish culture. Some remained Jewish in secret and a few of them are emerging into the Jewish world now. Most converted to Christianity or Islam and remained safe but lost hundreds of years of heritage.

For anyone who can pass, it can be simply not telling people about your private life and that can save you from so many mean places. I choose not to hide, and these last two years I’ve questioned my own wisdom in making that choice. Anyone who cannot hide, of course, has to deal with a lot more garbage than those of us who can and those of us who do. How those in charge of a place or an event react to problems hurts those who cannot and those who will not hide their minority identity consistently and often.

This is not even close to a complete analysis. It’s based on my experiences, mostly over the past year. There are bigger and much better analyses. The first place I send people who want to get a handle on this is https://nyupress.org/9781479840236/white-christian-privilege/ While Joshi’s book is about the US, the first three chapters in particular apply to Australia. Why is this so important? Many of the people who cause such problems have good intent and are otherwise nice people. They don’t, however, have a solid way of measuring their world view, understanding how it affects their thoughts and actions, and using understanding to handle bigotry. The work is often given to those who are bigoted against, which means that the experts are also the ones who need support. It means, also that those who have to deal with all these things in their everyday have to be willing to take on, as voluntary work, helping privileged people. Step one is understanding, and Joshi’s work is the first step in the path to that. Just the first step. Right now, I really wish more people in my home town would take that first step.

Ironically, I sued to teach these subjects to public servants. I was thrown out of that job without notice and without even a letter saying “Sorry we’re losing you after 20 years.” I found out I’d lost the job because of a notice saying “Your email account is being cancelled.” Manifestations of prejudice are varied and some can only be handled by walking away.

Talks and ducks and coots and swans

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I writing several talks this week. I didn’t used to write talks: I used to simply deliver them. Because of the health issues I have, though, I can’t guarantee that, on the day I give a talk or when the talk is recorded for later delivery (this latter is what happens this evening) I will be able to think effectively and to speak cogently. Most of the time, now, then, I write things down. So many people want to read it as a written word, too, that I often have a small audience (this month through Patreon) that wants to see what I say.

I have two pieces for finish today. One is an academic paper. My academic self is quite different to my fictional self when it comes to talks. The academic self is more intense and only sometimes includes bad jokes. The paper is about where the history comes from in Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver and is for a conference in Melbourne on Monday. I need to complete the overheads today and to do that, I need to know what I’m going to say, so it’s wise to finish the whole paper.

I have written almost all of the paper (and it’s already in the hands of someone who won’t be at the conference on Monday, but who needs to see it). All I need to do today with it is finicky finishing and the Powerpoint presentation. Academic work always contains much finicky finishing.

To do these last bits, I read the written word aloud, over and over. Each time I read a sentence, I listen to discover it makes sense in its place and whether words need switching or the sentence needs moving or if the whole thing has to be crossed out and replaced with something more sensible.

This is why most of my academic papers relate closely to my current research. I used to deliver more entertaining papers, but then I realised that the closeness of the editing for a good paper advances my thought on the research. Often it’s subtle advancement, but it’s always useful. My papers are less fun, but way more useful.

After the conference, I’ll take the paper and compare it to the chapter it relates to and the chapter will suddenly make a lot more sense. Editing today, then, means editing next week and the week after. This is a good thing.

What about the talk? The talk is for Octocon, which is in Ireland over the weekend. On my Monday morning I will technically be in Ireland having delivered the talk and in Melbourne, delivering the paper, mere hours apart. This is why my talk is being pre-recorded. I will have pictures for the Octocon talk, and these I still have to find and put in order. Mostly, though, with the talk, I need to make it make sense for people who have not read the books I’m talking about (by Tolkien, by Australian writer Leife Shallcross, by Irish writer Peadar Ó Guilín, and by Naomi Novik), who haven’t studied the subject I’m talking about and who want a bit of lyricism or humour to entice them to keep listening. The subject is how space and boundaries are important to fantasy fiction. Right now there’s too much lyricism. It’s easy to wax lyrical about forests and rivers and borderlands. However, I don’t want the words to ripple and flow and to create an abstract design: I need them to make sense. I have 800 words to add, then the rest of this talk lies in the edits. More reading aloud. More making things make sense to people who don’t live in my brain.

At 10 pm tonight, I have a long meeting with someone in Montreal. She will walk me through the tech side of Octocon, sort out all the tech issues related to the talk, record the talk and… my day will finish early tomorrow. Tomorrow I have 2 meetings (one for work, one for fun) and need to finish the first draft of another talk. I have five conventions/conferences this month, only one face to face. I’m short on time because all this is as well as my research. It’s work I love, but it’s not paid, also, so other things have to happen to keep me in food and electricity. This fortnight those other things are my research (for which I have funding) and Patreon.

Also, if anyone thinks that chronic illness and disability disappear in weeks like this… they do not. This week is a very exciting juggling act. Furthermore, most of this work is not paid. It’s just part of the life of a writer. Each of us have different things we do. Because I’m partly an academic (mostly unemployed, but not entirely) and partly a writer, much of my life is spent explaining awesomely interesting subjects, but without the support of an academic salary. It’s not always terribly easy.

Welcome to the life of many writers. Some of us are ducks, some of us are coots, some of us are swans, but we all paddle madly just out of sight in order to stay afloat. Many of us (me, for example) battle significant everyday issues as well. Every book of ours you buy, every Patreon you support or Ko.Fi you buy, makes the paddling a little less frantic.

Fairies and Sarcasm

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I misheard someone talking about the fairies in their garden as “I’ve got theories at the bottom of my garden.” And I do. So many of them. There are people who cannot deal with me for more than ten minutes at a time because that’s the limit they have for the way my brain works. I also have friends who love to talk with me for hours because I apparently say interesting things.

I’m not going to do that today. Not so much theory. Just a smattering of reaction that may one day become theory.

Yom Kippur is over and my life is the better for it, but I’m wrapped into how Australian Jews are represented on the public broadcaster responsible for multicultural services in Australia. My latest email from them told me (on Yom Kippur, though obviously I didn’t read it until afterwards) which shows are being moved from their streaming service. One of the two lead shows that is being taken down, as announced on the Jewish Day of Atonement, is David Baddiel’s “Jews Don’t Count.”

This is the same broadcaster that, when I asked what TV programming they had for the High Holy Days last year, sent me to a Hebrew radio show (hint: Hebrew is not the standard language of Australian Jews, English is).

This year, the special show they had just before our New Year was set at (in their regular email about programming), they explained, a Jewish funeral. It may have been a comedy set at a funeral, though the detailed description sounds as if it was set in the mourning period immediately after a funeral. I don’t know for sure because it was, honestly, not something I wanted to start my new year with. I’m assured by a non-Jewish friend that it’s a good show. If they put it on again, I’ll watch it and find out. I’ll watch the Baddiel tomorrow, though, because these programming decisions make me feel very much as if there are fairies at the bottom of the broadcaster’s garden, that Baddiel’s title sums up what needs to be said about it, and that I’m far safer with my theories than watching public television right now.

The good news is that some of my thoughts will be words at a bunch of places in October: at the Irish National Convention (I’ll be presenting online), at a Melbourne academic conference, quite possibly at the World Science Fiction Convention (again online), and elsewhere. I won’t be bored. (And if you want details of where I’ll be, let me know and I’ll post them as they are finalised.) I also won’t be able to see if SBS finally sort out why I wax sarcastic about them. They stopped replying to my emails when I pointed out that sending me to Hebrew radio was about the same as sending Australian Catholics to Latin radio.

I may be full of ideas these days, but I used to be such a nice person. I suspect sarcasm comes with menopause. Just suspect, mind. I now want to read a proper and carefully researched scientific study of the relationship of sarcasm to menopause. I shall go to bed and dream of such a study…

Flowers and garbage and invisible illness

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Very few people wonder how those of us whose bodies are less capable of doing this or that get anything done. I am a very good illustration. I had glandular fever (mononucleosis to my US friends, I believe) in my mid-twenties and developed many of the vile long-term symptoms that people currently associate with Long COVID. In other words, I’ve had similar symptoms to Long COVID for nearly 40 years. This is not the only problem I’ve faced in my life, nor, indeed is it the biggest. It’s certainly the one that has invited the least inquiry. And the least understanding. Today I want to talk about how I’ve achieved anything at all in a life where I cannot guarantee even an hour without fatigue and pain. The physical side of it is one story and I don’t want to talk about that today. Today is, you see, an exhausted day, when I should be in bed wondering when I will improve a bit. It’s not a day I have to be in bed, however – those days when any exertion at all just makes things worse have become rarer as time passes.

I lost my time sense last night. That is, to me, a signal I need to live my alternate life. This post is brought to you from this alternate life. It’s a half day later than usual because I had to wait until I was able to do it.

This is how I handle days like this. If others have needs I fit in with them, but the next day is worse if I fit in. I suspect Friday will be a bed day because Monday night and Tuesday nights are brain fog days (with occasional windows of opportunity, one of which is right now), Wednesday is full of meetings and Thursday is full of unexpected medical stuff. I didn’t expect Wednesday and Thursday to be the way they are, which is how I can predict Friday. One thing I’m doing to prepare is (with the help of a friend) a big shop. One of the things I will be getting is reheatable food for Thursday to Monday. On Saturday I knew that yesterday and today would be a bit of a struggle, so on Sunday I prepared food for both days. This planning is constant. And I don’t always have the energy to do it.

There’s a lot of body-awareness and a lot of planning to get through the everyday and when one of these fall through things are like a deck of cards and I have to stop and start all over again. Currently I have enough income so that if the cards all fall down, all I need to do is drag myself to the computer and order enough home delivered food to get me through. Or open a tin from my cupboard. I lived on dolmades for 3 days recently, then I advanced to chicken and chips, because that was the easiest option and I wasn’t up to more. Then I was through that phase and was able to cook again.

Knowing I’m exceptionally busy on other peoples’ schedules this week means I can plan in advance. When anyone tries to spring something on me, they can set me up for a whole week of not being able to deal and I will hide it, generally, but there are people I really do not like because they never check if I’m able before springing things on me. If I had energy on the worst days, I could explain to someone who says “I have to see you” that it has to wait because I’m unwell. In fact, I do explain “I can’t do it now because…” but I can’t get into detailed explanations. Exertion can hurt and sometimes the little things like explaining (especially if there’s emotion attached) can hurt more than the large. This is why, oddly, the chronic fatigue is more of a problem in my life than more serious problems are.

The other thing that happens when my time sense gets derailed is that I drift off into byways. The path this post has taken is one of these byways. I meant to launch straight into “This is how I get novels and non-fiction written and research done and achieve as much as some people who have never had any sort of debilitating illness.” I think the tide of emotion carries my life forward at these moments. This post is an excellent example, in fact, of how this happens.

I use emotion to get work done at times like this. I sat down at my computer to write this post, having no idea what I’d write about at that point. I saw my research document open on the desk and just took a look before opening a new file. I edited three paragraphs. It wasn’t a lot, but over a week (even a really bad week) this adds up. Then I stopped and thought, “Why did I do this? Why didn’t I go straight to the blogpost?” My answer was, “It’s one of those weeks” and then “But I should tell people”. Because the sense that something is important gives me enough fuel to write. I will sit down quietly for a half hour as soon as this is posted, and then I’ll go shopping with a friend and make sure I have food for the coming life-sapped time.

I’m the sort of person who would rather work methodically, so when I’m less beleaguered, all my work is done entirely sensibly. On days like today, I allow the wind to carry me along, and take advantage of the moments I have. Little things, done when I can. That’s how I deal with the fatigue and the near-constant pain. I factor in the physical work I need to do to keep going and, month by month, I deal. I write whole novels this way, and do my research and when I can’t do anything except sit or lie down, I think things through. Slowly. My brain stutters at times like this. It’s bad for quick thoughts and insights – it’s wonderful for deep and slow unpinning of complex problems.

A few years ago, when I realised my strange lifestyle, I found a way of describing it. That description was more useful to friends who asked “Are you OK?” than to people like the one who emailed me a the start of Yom Kippur last year, and who wanted to meet urgently. It was a week far worse than this and I wouldn’t be up to a face to face meeting for weeks. I lost my Yom Kippur over that email and lost some days after it. The person who emailed would not have understood this from my metaphor. I needed more capacity to explain than I had… some situations are simply impossible, still.

My metaphor is not a new one. I say that life throws me garbage and, bit by bit, without pushing myself into more illness, I turn that garbage into fertiliser and it grows me the nicest garden. All my published novels are flowers, and Story Matrices, the book that has just been short-listed for the William Atheling Jr Award, is a rather nice rosebush. That book was written in a shockingly bad year, but the editor, Francesca Barbini, knew this and worked with me according to my actual capacity. She didn’t try to make me into something I’m not. She helped me create the best thing I was able to create in a year from hell.

Every paragraph I edit and every thought I have transforms this strange life into a strangely interesting life. Chronic illness isn’t the end of things… it does however, change things. And most people won’t ask or won’t know or won’t care. That’s part of the garbage being thrown. That garbage can be isolating and it can be depressing, but it’s excellent fertiliser.

Now all I need to do is find a publisher for the novel I wrote when I wrote Story Matrices. It’s the fictional approach to this isolation and strangeness and is a very different COVID lockdown novel to most. My way of dealing with the difficult is rather like a portal fantasy, you see, where you open doors briefly and visit worlds you can’t remain in because remaining is dangerous. My COVID novel is a quietly adventurous version of the portal novel that is my life. Glenda Larke (a friend with a marvellous new novel) was my beta reader and she told me that it was the best love story that she’d ever read. It needs a home, but writing it was the accomplishment. Just as the publication of Story Matrices was an accomplishment. Just as editing three paragraphs of my research and writing this blog post are accomplishments.

Chronic ill health isn’t the end of things. It does, however, require a series of reinventions of self, and the ability to say “If this is all I can do today then that’s fine.”

Why am I telling you all this? Because Long COVID is not going to go away. Some people will recover and some won’t. It’s quite likely you know someone who needs to know that this kind of chronic illness is not that end of world and that, over time, some extraordinary things are possible. They probably also need to know that the vast majority of folks around them will not see or even want to see what the new life entails.

Adjusting never stops. Seeing your own needs is essential. And once you know what your signals are (in my case, that loss of time and that drifting brain and the need to dump my once-wondrous rationality) and how to handle them (when to push, when to let things slide, how not to live on chips) life can become a lot better. Your garden will be all the better for the fertiliser. It won’t feel that way, however, because no matter what you do with the garbage being thrown at you, it’s still garbage. I’m still learning to celebrate the flowers and not be personally affronted at the garbage that is thrown in my direction.

Old hobbies, new joys

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I have a new essential oil.

I used to make perfumes as a hobby and every now and again I save up a bit of money and get new fragrances for my bath. No-one around me asks about my perfumes and I think everyone’s forgotten them. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I still love creating fragrances just for me. Not perfumes any more. Scents for my home.

As I change with time, the scents I like change, too. I used to love the sophisticated and the swanky, but now I love to be reminded of the bushwalking I also used to do or for my body to be reminded that it’s fine to put tension and pain aside. It’s hard to bushwalk when walking to the shops is beyond me on most days, but it’s easy to lie back in a hot bath and smell tea tree and lemon myrtle and kunzea. It’s also very good for arthritis, when combined with magnesium salts.

The new essential oil is may chang (litsea cubeb). I mistook it for cubebs when I saw it in the catalogue, but the moment I smelled it, I knew it was perfect for me. Cubebs are one of my favourite peppers for cooking, which is why I bought something I wasn’t sure about. Cubebs is still one of the best peppers for cooking. It is properly peppery and has a delightfully fresh aftertaste. And may chang is perfect with lavender and just a drop of diluted Bulgarian rose for an hour away from the world.

Now I have a favourite cubeb for a scented bath and one for cooking and they’re not related at all. The same applies to mint. My favourite mint for cooking is… most mints. My favourite mint for the bath isn’t a mint at all, it’s a prostanthera, a native Australian plant that smells of mint and just a touch of eucalyptus. When I was a child I had a favourite native mint bush which I always used when I needed mint tea. On the essential oil bottle it says “Bush balm mint” but it is still the perfect mint tea bush from my childhood.

Some of my oils help this illness or that (especially the muscle aches and joint aches that are my everyday), but mostly I like to feel as if I’m in an English country garden, or in the local bush or, in this case, I don’t know where, but the new scent is the best ever.

I also use the oils in teaching writers how to built sensory worlds for their fiction. Or I used to. I developed my scent teaching from my hobby of perfumerie, and taste from my food history background (with some help from a sister who is a wine and olive oil judge). The others were easy once I had techniques that worked to teach two of the senses. I also taught writing family history and personal memoirs, which gave me an excuse to bring home-cooked food and favourite family foods and food memories into play, because they use all the senses. The university I taught at closed most of its outreach courses and so I was suddenly unemployed and I’ve not yet found anyone who wants to learn these things.

It’s a real treat to return to my fragrant past and to remember that just because no-one is interested in learning how to write the senses from me any more, that doesn’t mean I have to lose the cool aspects.

I still look at most novels and analyse the writer’s background from how they use their senses. Australians are my favourite, largely because I am Australian. We love using sight, but also use sound to a degree. It’s quite hard to find an Australian writer of fantasy or science fiction who uses all the senses effectively. Historical fiction writers are more courageous in this, especially the ones who want to communicate the grunge and grime of everyday life. If an Australian writer wants to bring a unique touch to their work, learning methods of incorporating the other senses would do it for so many of them.

I so miss teaching this! It was good for my writing as well. Teaching is very handy for skills maintenance. So, it seems, are hot baths.

Science fiction and furniture

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

When COVID was just settling down, towards the end of its first year, I attended one of those wonderful new virtual conventions that have since lightened the lives of many of us. It was in Dublin and it was terrific. This was one of the conferences that helped turn isolation around. Trinity College in Dublin ran it, and it was amazing, even though I was part of it from a very long way away.

One paper in particular set me to thinking. It was about the furniture in Star Trek. Thanks to Trinity HistoryCon the paper is online, so I’ll give you a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf4IaYb_srM&list=PLObDqlLOVXYpRKL-eYDwBi53FkTNMeFqJ&index=6 In fact, here is a link to the whole programme: https://duhistorycon.wordpress.com/

I don’t want to discuss the furniture in Star Trek today specifically: the paper, after all, does this so well. I want to think about why furniture doesn’t fit so many of us and what this says about writers of the “isn’t the future amazing” type of science fiction that doesn’t allow for significantly different sizes of human beings. When we see the long line of chambers made to preserve space travellers in stasis, we expect to see them stacked as regularly as coffins, regardless of the size of the occupant. If all the chambers are two metres long, what happens to the person who is 12 cm longer? What happens to the hookups in the chamber to someone who is dwarfed by the inner tube? What happens with someone whose girth (like mine) may well cause lack of space on either side? When the chambers are mass-produced, it makes great sense that they look mass produced, but when they are supposed to be expensive, designed for the needs of the individual, it makes no sense at all.

This applies to our everyday life. I was chatting with some British friends over the weekend and we compared our experience with furniture. I have short legs and very few chairs are made that allow me to put my feet on the ground. This is not good for a number of reasons. Try sitting for five long days in a chair just a few centimetres too high and “not good” will explain itself. My friends in that particular group are all very tall, and they face the opposite problem. If they were to use my kitchen, they would have to sit down to use the benches, and if I were to use theirs, I’d need a stool to stand on.

This is all very unexceptional. Our different sizes and the way that most furniture is made for a ‘typical’ or ‘average’ person whose measurements have almost nothing in common with mine mean that this topic appears quite often when I chat with tall friends or friends who are closer to my height, to friends who have wide hips or very narrow ones. Modern design allows for some differences in some cases, but we have to look fir furniture and test it if we are not ourselves of standard design.

In dystopian futures or catastrophic ones no-one is expected to be comfortable. Standard design works just fine in these stories. In the science fiction where the technology is amazingly advanced, especially when depicted on television or film, it’s curious that most furniture is designed pretty much the way standard furniture is now. It’s those cryogenic chambers again. Not everyone will fit, and the actor has to adjust. More than this, in those odd occasions where the furniture fits the actual body or the furniture adapts to meet the body’s needs, the camera often fusses over it, to demonstrate how exceptional this is. Comfort is not a thing some of us can ever take for granted, even in the most extraordinary future.

When, on Star Trek, when Michael Burnham and her shipmates travel to the distant future, furniture was shown to be malleable and changeable and adaptable. While this is demonstrated in the early episodes, the effects of that level of comfort are not explored. The idea that human beings do not have to adapt to something designed for a different body shape is difficult even in a show that conceptualises that furniture as almost infinitely adaptable.

I’ll be watching out for furniture of all kinds for the next few years. I want to know which writers and designers see the human body and its needs, and which simply see a set on which action is to tak e place. If you’re interested in seeing what I see, let me know and I’ll write about it here.

Food memories

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

While I was thinking about what I should write this week, I began some chicken soup. Boiling chickens are very hard to come by now, and that sent me back in time to four winters ago, when the bushfires kept me indoors and there was no COVID. I was making chicken soup then, too. The post was for BookView Cafe and when they fixed their website, it came down, alas. So… here it is again. It amuses me that despite my whole life changing over four years, I can still be relied upon to make chicken soup in winter. And I still play with time.

 

Today I’m a bit timewarped. My July and August are basically impossible, so I’m spending a freezing July evening pretending it’s an even more freezing evening in later July or maybe a milder evening in August. I hope to be back to writing a few days before I post later in the year: this means you’ll get timely blogposts then. Everything I write today is influenced by today, even if I try to take my mind into the world of two weeks’ time or a month’s time.

My hands are so cold I can’t even type properly. The heater is on and I’m making chicken porridge and chicken soup and still my hands are cold. Midwinter is midwinter is always, always midwinter.

My own chicken soup is my traditional way of getting through midwinter. I bought a cheap boiling chicken (the label proudly proclaims ‘steamer’ but it knows it’s a chook meant for soup) and I put it in the slow cooker with bone left over from my chicken porridge. That and four litres of water will take me through until this time tomorrow. That’s when I’ll add onion. Saturday I add carrot and take half the soup away. On Sunday I buy parsnip and celery from the market, top up the water by a large amount, and finish the soup off.

The soup I take off will have other things added to it, including tiny dumplings. I bought the wrappers yesterday. I’ve got some vegetables and sesame oil and other nice things and will shred the chicken currently working valiantly to make the soup. I’ll mix all this together for my dumplings. That’s lunch every day next week.

The rest of the soup will be a base for dinner. My next six nights’ worth of dinner, though, is that chicken porridge, with the chicken from it and various vegetable dishes on the side. The chicken is already in a bowl with its sauce, and I’ve made some pickled daikon. It’s a substantial meal, but also not too heavy. Full of garlic and warm tastes.

Just making these things has warmed my fingers up somewhat and I now have a big cup of tea, which makes them all kinds of happy. Happy fingers are a good thing when one has a lot of typing to do. Having most of my food cooked before the week is even better. All I need to worry about is more vegie dishes or salads on Sunday and I will be eating well and staying warm and have every change of meeting my deadlines.

This is Australia in winter. We’re at the start of the financial year and we’re impossibly busy and we turn to food. So many people are talking seriously about food right now, and getting their tax papers ready.

During my busy periods, I usually cook from Thursday to Sunday and then spend a few days finishing everything up. This is what happens in many Aussie households. My days are different because my working week is a bit odd and I have little control over when I get to shop, but a lot of my friends cook for the week ahead rather than cook on the day.

What strikes me is how many Australians cook. We are one of the countries that has farmers’ markets and takes fresh ingredients for granted. This need not have been the case. Our distances our so great and our basic cuisine so English that we could have made quite different food choices.

Not everyone cooks here, but those who don’t can be very apologetic. At functions where we ‘bring a plate’ those who bring a plate of their home cooking are seen as doing the right thing and those who’ve picked something up on the way are not bad people so much as people we look at and hope that this means they were busy rather than that they can’t cook.

I once went to a dinner party where someone had ordered the food in. For casual eating we all do that. We love our food, so we love many kinds of food, so it’s fine to order in for casual eating, but not for formal dinners. The host and hostess didn’t mention what they’d done and everyone was happy for the food was delicious.

The trouble our hosts faced that night is that we all ask questions about food. “What’s in this?” and “How do make that?” MasterChef is one of Australia’s favourite TV programs. I was the first person to cause a problem, for our hosts had no idea if a dish had nuts and I have a severe allergy.

“Try it and see,” suggested the host.

“How far is the hospital?” I asked.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Then I won’t, today. It looks good, though.”

A few minutes later the person opposite me said, “This dessert is terrific. Can you share the recipe?”

The whole table was silent. I looked at the person asking. They had worked out that the food was not home made and that there was a recipe. Their child also had a peanut allergy (we’d chatted about it) and they were making a point… politely.

That was years ago, people are more careful about allergies. I get many fewer dinner invitations because a very few people prefer to avoid the whole issue, which is a funny cultural shift.

The other funny cultural shift is how the tendency for those with income to eat out or send for a home delivery or buy premade food from the supermarket make sense of US movies for us. I’ve noticed that the recipes shared on local fora are more often basic recipes, too, because not as may people know how to cook.

Still, a large percentage of Aussies cook. This still informs our foodways. I am not the only one cooking reassuring food this week to get through midwinter.

 

Parental Archeology

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

In the annals of 1950s cheesy paperback covers, surely Man of the World should feature somewhere. The sell line (“He wanted her for things money couldn’t buy”) drips innuendo, without actually saying anything. The babe on the cover is sultry. The promise that it’s “complete and unabridged” suggests that there are naughty bits that a more timid publisher might have expurgated. I found nothing that by current standards would be considered naughty.

Growing up, this book was among the hundreds of paperbacks from the 50s and 60s that lined the walls in my parents’ house. I read a lot of them, but only recently have I tried to read this one. There’s a reason for that: is is supposedly based on my parents’ courtship.

My father was a graphic designer working for David Selznick in Hollywood when my mother came to interview for a secretarial job. I don’t know that she was actually his secretary (by the time I wanted to ask questions, my parents’ relationship had degraded to the point where neither of them wanted to talk about it) but she caught his eye. And within a year or so both of them had relocated to New York City, and my mother was working as a secretary to film critic Stanley Kauffmann, who (according to family lore) had a crush on my mother. And somehow Stanley decided to make Mom (and therefore Dad) the centerpiece of his new novel. So I had to go digging through it, looking for clues about these people before I knew them. An archeological dig, as it were.

Reading this book is weird. I’m not a big fan of mid-20th century male-angst fiction (which is how I would classify this book). But every now and then there is a sentence or a description that makes me sit up and think Oh My God: These Are My Parents. 

When my parents met my father was married to a woman named Kit, who was a model, Vogue Magazine beautiful, and apparently a… difficult person. According to the novel, the protagonists (Nick and Delia) have a rather chaste thing going on–she lives with her mother, as my mother did–and they go to the movies or out to dinner. Early on in the book she decides this is going nowhere, and moves to New York. Okay, so far it jibes with family lore. My mother moved to New York and lived in a walk-up over a men’s haberdashery across 6th Avenue from the Women’s House of Detention on 9th Street. My father moved back to New York, having split with the beautiful Kit. He had an apartment-and-studio on 11th Street. Somehow they got back together. 

There are the bones of that story in the book (I will confess I’ve read about half of it and only skimmed the rest). It’s the details–particularly about Delia–that are so startling, that hit me with the force of accuracy, even when it was something I’d never considered before.  Here’s one:

With one letter he dictated, he asked her to enclose a memo that his former secretary had typed before she left, Delia retyped the memo.

“Why?” he asked. “What was wrong with it?”

“I–I’m sorry,” she said, and shrugged. She frequently stuttered when she was the least bit disturbed. “I–I know she was your secretary and very nice and so on, but I just don’t call that good typing.”

“Why not?”

“L-look at the spacing. It’s spotty. And some words lighter than others. Like there.”

“You know that you’re slightly nuts?”

“I can’t help it. I like it to look nice.”

And my first thought, after slightly nuts? was Holy crap, that’s my mother, the woman who could type 105 words a minute on a Remington manual typewriter. The woman who was given raise after raise at Bantam books, because they wanted her to keep doing secretarial work because she was so damned good at it. 

The bits where I recognize my father are less startling, but ring almost as true (Kauffmann didn’t have a crush on my father, after all). I wish I’d read this book decades ago, when it was still possible to ask my parents about some of it. Are any of the plot details–beyond the ones I’ve related above–remotely accurate? I’m not certain I would have gotten much out of them–they really didn’t talk about their early relationship even before that relationship started shredding. But with this book as a starting point I could have asked some questions.

My mother died in 1986; my father died in 2011. No matter how carefully I comb through the pages of Man of the World, I’m not going to know the truths about their early years. And yet I keep paging through, looking for clues.

 

Seasonal Joy

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I was going to write you a 4 July post, but I remembered in time that in the US, it’s still 3 July. In Australia, we’d take the Monday off and make a long, long weekend. But not this week. Not any week until our next public holiday in fact, which, for Canberra, is in October.

Winter is different in Australia. Some people assume I’m referring to the cold or lack thereof (they think that all Australia is too hot, all the time), but in my part of Australia it’s cold. Not as cold as Alaska, but cold enough for big coats and snow. The main reason Canberra doesn’t get much snow is because it’s too dry. The best-known snowfield in the whole country (where there is snow even in summer… in places) is close.

Winter is different because we don’t have time out. We deal with the encroaching dark and we do not celebrate the incoming light. We have no public holidays and the only way to get time off work is if one has children. All my teacher friends are on holiday this week, and most of them are down the coast, where it’s less cold. Anyone not at school (as a student or a teacher) just has to deal.

I used to deal by experimenting with different recipes for mulled wine and mulled wine equivalents. Those recipes covered 700 years of spicing wine and were most excellent at keeping the cold at bay. Friends would visit to help me drink it. I can only drink a few sips these days and, because I’m COVID vulnerable few friends visit, so there will be no hypocras, no sangria, no mulled wine in July.

Instead, I’m making portable soup. Eighteenth century style portable soup, to be precise. The ancestral stock cube. A soup that you can cut with a knife and that has so much gelatin you could use it as a building block.

In fact, I do use the cubes as building blocks. I can make much healthier sausage rolls or meat pies with a much better flavour and at least as good a mouth feel as the same dishes made using suet or duck fat. I can chop up some vegies very finely and have a delightfully warming beef broth in minutes. I can build so many dishes with the portable soup.

This is appropriate, because I’m writing about building blocks this week. The building blocks I’m writing about are the building blocks of story, though, not of food.

The closest to the midwinter delights northern hemisphere folks talk about and what I actually experience is this particular harmony between what I cook and and what I write.

A few people celebrate what they call Christmas in July here. If friends asked me, I’d join them as I do for any other Christmas, but… I’m still Jewish. There is no reason for me to set up a Christmas celebration for myself. And the only Jewish holy days in July this year are fasts.

July in Canberra is a good month for work and a very bad month for most happiness. As I tell everyone every year, be nice to me, for my sarcasm is close to the surface throughout July. Also, be nice to me because I’m cold. We’re in the warm part of the day and it’s not a cold day and the temperature outside is hovering just above 50 degrees F. This is the weather for sarcasm, just as December in the Northern Hemisphere is the season for joy and mirth and gifts.

If anyone wants to give me gifts to make me merry, I’ll not say no. In the meantime, I will create building blocks and hone my sarcasm.

Learning About Our Writing

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Sometimes, the best way of understanding our writing is through the eyes of others.

Let’s look first at one star reviews. Some writers read them and fall into a pit of despair. This is not a wise approach to those reviews.

A one star review shows what that reader hates. They’re amazingly good value at telling me that these people are not part of my audience. Five star reviews show the opposite. This is why I need to read all my reviews. I read them to find out where my audience lies and how they read (or don’t read) me.

Let em give an example. The reader who wanted a more obviously Medieval Middle Ages in Langue[dot]doc 1305 didn’t want a Middle Ages that was written by a Medieval historian who specialised in the cultural and social side of things. He (I’m thinking of a particular review) probably wanted one that touched on all the feelings and images of the Middle Ages that popular culture shares. I was explaining, through my novel, that the actual past is infinitely more interesting and complex and often more subtle than the way the public tends to think about the Middle Ages, so my novel was not for him.

This is not a criticism. The views readers share don’t have to be my views. They don’t even have to be within a half a continent of my views. Different likes and dislikes in books are important.

I like expanding my small world, and so I look out for books by writers who are from vastly different backgrounds to me, but… I still mostly read speculative fiction right now, just as I read mostly Russian authors at one point in my teens. We all have our favourite types of story and ways of telling stories, and these inform our book choices and to criticise someone for disliking a book that’s entirely outside the range of things they enjoy is to waste everyone’s time.

What about critical reviews? The ones by experts who are famous for looking under a book’s surface and pulling them to pieces? They carry the same caveat: I have to know whether the reviewer enjoys my kind of writing to know if they’ve tackled it fairly. Even then, even if they’ve written about me because they must and not because they want to, all critical reviews are very useful to writers. They give insights into what others think we’ve done. At their best, those insights can be profound.

These reviews are why I’m pleased with my little academic study, Story Matrices. I wrote it at an impossible time and so it could have been an impossible book. It’s not visible enough because things are still a bit impossible at my end of things. When it’s visible, the analytical reviews of it show me that I did what I set out to do.

This doesn’t mean that they don’t find problems with my work. One complained about the short chapters, but for me, those chapters were to enable general readers to dip in and out of it and not to be intimated by some of the concepts. I give a nod to the criticism, because the reviewer was right in that the chapters were tiny. He loved one chapter in particular (the one about Irish fantasy) whereas other reviewers have loved other chapters. I used a range of examples to explain my research, and some were really obviously science fiction or fantasy and some were not, but all are important to SFF.

The examples I used echo in so many other stories. Each critical reviewer so far has loved a different set of those examples. This one loves the Irish chapter, and another loves the discussion of Regency fantasy, and still another told everyone about how I explain the Potter universe. So far, not a single critic has panned the work (this will change over time – I rejoice while I may) and none of them have been at all negative about the explanations I use to describe world building and writing and shared experience. So… I’ve learned about how my work is seen from a number of directions, and I hear that it is good.

I didn’t think it was. Being invisibly disabled, has, since COVID, carried a huge price in terms of local visibility and even friendships with local writers. On bad days, it feels as if the world is walking over my grave. On good days, it feels as if I’m a beginner writer starting out and have to contact everyone and let them know I exist all over again.

I don’t want to give up my writing right now because, although I can’t even attend a book launch locally. Why can’t I attend? Most people at book events in Australia don’t take tests, wear masks, or even know what the ventilation is like. In Canberra, specifically, not being visible means I don’t get lifts and there is no public transport near me any more and I can’t do what my sister told me “Walk a few blocks further” because I literally can’t walk even half that distance right now. Loads of reasons and I feel small every time I have to ask, again, about any of it. This is what makes me feel small about my writing, not the one star reviews.

What balances this invisibility? Why, visibility, of course. Every time I attend an online SF convention (Octocon, Balticon, Boskone, Eastercon, Konline, Punctuation and more – these are all full of wonderful people and fascinating programmes) I am surrounded by friends and, through being on panels, get a share of the most interesting discussions. This also applies to academic conferences. I attended one two weeks ago where my paper proposal had been rejected, so instead of presenting, I took notes and thought things through and chatted and… it was lovely. One doesn’t have to be the centre of attention to not be alone and to learn.

The centre of attention. This is a rare thing for most writers outside the launch of their own books. This Friday I will be that. The Australian Studies day conference in Germany, this year run by Muenster University, has invited me to give a reading. A long reading. And to be interviewed by a scholar who studies and who teaches my work. I will learn a lot, that day.

I already feel as if I count, that I have not wasted my time in doing what I love. I’m more than nervous, because I’m more used to being forgotten than this, but I’m reading from 2 of my favourite novels and I intend to make these books come alive for my scholarly audience. This is a rare type of learning for all but the most famous of writers, and I shall treasure every moment.

The bottom line, the deep truth, the heart of the matter is that all these types of learning matter for writers. They help us know how we are seen by others. Even when the paths look as if they lead to that pit of despair, they’re still important to us. Giddy heights, pits of despair, even sloughs of despond: they all help us understand who we are, why we’re writing and who our audiences are.

PS Sorry for the bits of Bunyan. I read him when I was eleven and he stuck. The local library at the beachside town we visited every August had a limited library and Bunyan as the only writer in the children’s sector whose work would last me more than a half hour. In some ways this is good and in other ways this is amusing. Mostly, though, it means I lean into certain language when I talk about certain topics.

Despite the language, there is no Christian intent. In my world view, none of us move towards heaven by encountering this or that challenge. The challenges are part of our everyday. They’re the best and worst of the learning we need to get by. The best of times and the worst of times are like the best of learning and the worst of learning and … by another writer I read when I was eleven.