Category: essays

Golde and Tevye In Queanbeyan

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

By the time you read this, my thesis is almost ready to be lodged for examination (all going well). This is the last, then, in the exploration of my past writing. If you enjoyed it, let me know, because I have nearly a thousand pieces lurking on my computer, mostly written over 25 years. Tell me what subjects you like and I’ll see what I can find.

Last week I mentioned “a Jewish view of everything.” That’s pretty much my life in the late 1990s. I’d been made redundant from my public service job and hadn’t yet given myself permission to be a writer. I knew I would, but there were two years when I needed to find out who I was after my time as a policy wonk and an activist.

I spent a lot of that time in the Jewish community and in the folk community. This led to my being recommended as historical consultant to a production of Fiddler on the Roof by the choreographer. There were newspaper articles about the production and one of the first requests (for a Jewish magazine) of something by me, myself. This is that something. Another thing is the reason for this particular production of Fiddler on the Roof. We need this attitude right now. The hate has come full circle (again) and it would be very helpful to have more people like that wonderful cast of Fiddler, learning and understanding.

 

Golde and Tevye – to dinner?

Being asked questions always throws a strange light on reality. Being asked questions by sixty actors and various production team members from the cast of Fiddler on the Roof gives the word “questions” a whole new meaning. Especially when the production is by Queanbeyan Players.

Queanbeyan is not well-known for its dynamic Jewish community. The few (very few) Jews who live in Queanbeyan commute to Canberra for their Jewish communal activity. When I say “commute” to Canberra, I mean drive for maybe 15-20 minutes. When I say “Canberra’ I mean the ACT Jewish Community, total membership of about 300, no rabbi, everyone active wearing as many hats as possible without collapsing of overwork. Canberra’s tiny community luxuriates in two congregations: Orthodox downstairs, Liberal upstairs -More than one of us attend both.

This production of Fiddler on the Roof is different. It is Queanbeyan Players’ answer to their immense discomfort at the rise of certain attitudes to a very large number of minority groups. The director, Vivien Arnold, feels very strongly about racism of all varieties, and sees Fiddler as a powerful vehicle for addressing many negative assumptions about culture and cultural difference. This is why they asked me to advise – not because I am an historical expert or a religious expert (I am neither) but because I know what it is like to be Jewish, and I have the research skills to flesh that out as far as the cast needs. I have family help in that endeavour, as you will see.

What this production aims to do is make the audience see that Jews are ordinary and interesting human beings and can lead a full and happy life unless forcibly prevented from doing so. In May, Canberra and Queanbeyan residents will hopefully feel, strongly, that the forcible prevention of normal living can be agonising.

Why Jews and not other groups? Because Fiddler on the Roof is such a very good vehicle. The music is wonderful fun, and the characters still have that very warm feel that is the legacy of the original stories by Sholom Aleichem. It is very easy to relate to good music and delightful people, even when they wear clothes that are different and follow rituals that are alien.

I am learning over and over again that what is ‘normal’ in Jewish life is totally unheard of outside. I am reminded over and over again that stereotypes about Jews can be subtle and often change. Little things like wine on Friday night, like the shape of havdalah candles, like the idea of pareve food, can throw non-Jews remarkably at first. On a daily basis, it is easy to forget this, as the friends and work colleagues we mix with tend to understand a lot about our lives simply through knowing us as individuals. Either that or the subjects do not come up. But when you explain such a wide range of Jewish tidbits to sixty odd people over and again, the sudden blink of the eye and the eager questions begin to mount up. It becomes a joyous task, helping people understand that we are human and non-threatening and that the rules and regulation we often live by have rhyme and reason (well, mostly).

It helps, I must admit, when I admit to ignorance and say, “Do you mind if I ask my Mum?” I had to do this with tsitsis, for example, as I could not describe how to make them for on-stage wear. Mum gave me an answer, but, being thorough, also checked it out. She collared every single Orthodox male in sight one Sunday (for some reason I envisage her doing this in the queue at Glick’s, but it is just as likely to have happened at the Jewish Museum) and asked how much of what showed in what circumstances, and what the costume people should do for the production. If you are an orthodox male and were asked the question, you will be pleased to know that the costume lady still wanted to see what the garment looked like. She could not believe that men would wear a whole garment of which only eight cords were visible. We are still arguing that one.

The differences in the production is not merely in the amount of detail being consulted. The director announced at the first full meeting of the cast that she did not want a ‘Jewish burlesque’. It is still a musical based on Sholom Aleichem’s stories. The script and songs are still old and familiar. The ghost of Fruma-Sarah has developed a love of screeching that rivals none, and Tseitl has a decidedly scornful and sarcastic manner when she answers her younger sisters in “Matchmaker”. All this is straightforward.

What is less straightforward is that the whole cast has been divided into families, given occupations and are responsible for creating their parts of the shtetl. Not just for creating viable backgrounds and raisons d’être for the family, but actually helping build their parts of the set, and furnish it, and behave towards their bits of plyboard as if they have lived there fifty years. Cast members are seldom offstage. The houses spill out into the auditorium, enveloping the audience in the village atmosphere. Even when hearts are breaking in song, the water carrier will continue to fill the water barrels, and the greengrocer’s wife will get the daily round ready for delivery.

This has resulted in such a flow of questions! I cannot answer them all. The historical ones are sometimes easier than the religious ones (yes, there were restrictions on Jewish access to State education, but that did not stop the Jewish community working towards literacy, is one answer that I have had to give over and over again) but I have had recourse to Sonya Oberman where my knowledge fails (a guide at the Jewish Museum in Melbourne, and, purely coincidentally, the mother I mentioned earlier) and to the administrator at Bentleigh Progressive Synagogue in Melbourne when I have an “Ask the Rabbi” question thrown at me (Suzie Eisfelder – she’s my sister and has no objection to acting as a go-between – I keep things in the family wherever possible!). A lot of the questions involve putting my background knowledge together in the most surprising ways. It is really astonishing how much you can find out about how your family celebrated weddings a century ago or what death customs were, when you put your mind to it.

Being an inveterate Net-hound and also a practising historian (so I’m better on Medieval cookery or on King Arthur than on most Jewish history, but at least I know how to research) has really helped. The YIVO Institute has some lovely photos on the Web which have been very useful for the costume and set design people, as have the books my family and I have scraped together. The genealogically-minded branch of my family (making use of their particular addiction has added whole dimensions to telephone conversations) helped the cast find suitable names and produced more photos and descriptions of shtetl life. For anyone interested in shtetl life, in fact, there is a world of information on the Net. Certainly enough for an amateur theatre production with a small budget. My folk studies background has paid off, as it helped me locate material for the choreographer, an Israeli dance teacher of mine, Robyn Priddle, who got me into this mess in the first place. It serves her right that she has to teach dancing to sixty singers with 450 left feet!

Right now I am in the process at tearing out my hair at the inevitable compromises that production dictates. The historian in me is desperately rebellious. We will be using modern yarmulkas, for instance (bought from Gold’s, sent up to Queanbeyan by my devoted mother) and there is a real problem in finding headgear of any sort, not to mention frockcoats. Everyone will be hatted, although the hats may not be the right ones, and all the women will have their heads covered: it was a classic moment when I told the ‘married’ women about shaving their heads. They are not willing to get that authentic. Not even the Rabbi’s wife. Mum and I had this lovely moment when we envisaged Golde’s scarf coming off during the Dream sequence, but, alas, it is not to be. Golde adamantly says that her curls are staying. And the men – well, they are reluctantly prepared to grow beards but are drawing the line at peyot. The costume team is experimenting with all sorts of fake versions. This was just when I was delighting (drat it) in the thought of 16 men wandering around the Canberra region in full turn-of -the century Ashkenazi garb. It would have been so beautiful, and so good for their acting, to be comfortable wearing the clothes. They won’t even do it to make me happy, or to give unbelievable photograph opportunities to tourists. They will practise the hats, I am told, and maybe yarmulkas.

Other things they will practise with much more pleasure. Eating challah was practised very thoroughly the first night the Sabbath Prayer scene was worked on in detail. And proper washing of hands. One cast member is making her own challah cover, to remember the show by.

Some things do not require practice. They do not even require questions. One afternoon I invited anyone in the cast around to afternoon tea who wanted to see a Jewish home in situ and make sensible decisions about mezuzot, candlesticks and so on. Every cast member who turned up was a ‘Mama’ in the production. So we have a cast which is delineating itself very naturally. The mothers do all the work.

Their questions that day went far beyond what they needed for the play. Two admitted that one of the reasons they auditioned for the production was to learn a bit more about Judaism. Ten ‘mothers’ demolished tayglach and biscuits and borrowed my cookbooks. They fell in love with the family seder plate and learned how to light Shabbos candles.

Until that session, questions had focused more on the historical aspect: what regulations were around at the time that affected Jewish life, what was the town water supply, what were houses built of? Then the cast turned to the ritual. Now there is another shift, as most people want to go beyond a formal knowledge of Judaism and understand what it is like to be Jewish.

It is a very positive form of understanding. Instead of asking about Anti-Semitism and various forms of hatred, they are getting to the nitty gritty. What do all these rituals mean? How do they affect the way Jews lead their lives? I have found myself giving practical explanations as best I can of tsedakah and of Jewish attitudes to learning and women. The symbolism of the candles at Shabbos has come up, and the reasons for kashruth. I find myself grateful to my extra-religious sister (I am well-supplied with siblings) whose dedication to Jewish learning and willingness to explain has kept a lot of the information they need somewhere in my life.

Really, this group need a Rabbi with an outstanding historical knowledge as advisor. Instead they have me. This is a worry. What is even more of a worry is that Golde and Tevye are coming to Shabbos dinner on Friday. They tell me they have some questions to ask.

Jewish King Arthurs

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

In 1999 I daringly went to a conference (GrailQuest ‘99) and my two worlds collided as they never had before. I went for the Medieval Arthurian stuff (of which I’ve long had a strongly academic interest and about which I’ve written my fair share), but I wasn’t confident enough after all those years outside academic research and didn’t offer a paper. I was more active in the fiction side, and met many people who became long-term friends. I asked a question from the floor of an academic panel and everyone looked across and asked me a question back. They listened, and one of my favourite Aussie writers of the matters of Arthur took me aside and we talked about the subject for a fair while. The write-up of the conference published my answer. I was also asked for a non-academic version of my answer. This is the one I’m giving you this week.

A Jewish King Arthur?

OK, let me admit it up front. As far as I know King Arthur was not Jewish, not in any piece of medieval literature. I have seen him written up as a fairy, as a warlord, as the leader of a very fancy court, but never Jewish. But while he was definitely not Jewish, Jews wrote about him. How do I know the authors were are Jewish? Well, one work is in Hebrew and another in Yiddish. This is a fairly strong indication.

It is hard to say if any other Medieval Arthurian works are Jewish. Most are blatantly Christian. There is, for example, a wonderful prose romance (just amazingly long) where the Grail becomes a very religious object (which it may not have been originally, but that is another story): this is a decidedly Christian affair. And there are some named authors who belong to one court or another and are more likely to be not Jewish. Most Medieval literature is, naturally, by that prolific author anonymous.

One author is borderline. I have seen it argued that Chretien de Troyes (who first introduced the grail into Arthurian romance) was Jewish. He was one of France’s great poets, so I have always wanted it to be proven that he was, indeed Jewish, but the likelihood is that he was not. He may well have Jewish relatives though, or at least Jewish friends – his place of birth was an important Jewish centre, after all -so there is some consolation. Since Chretien as good as invented the verse novel known as the Medieval romance, even a vaguely possible Jewish link is a nice thing.

Most literature written in most medieval languages, sadly, has to be assumed to be Christian unless there is positive proof to the contrary. We are talking, you see, about a Christian society.

But because we are talking about Christian countries in the Christian corner of the world, we can be 100% certain that anything written in Hebrew or Yiddish is very, very unlikely to be written by a Christian. Hebrew was known by scholars of all sorts, but the one Hebrew Arthurian manuscript we have is purely and wholly and gloriously Jewish. There was no reason for clerics to write German texts down in Hebrew characters unless it was for a Jewish audience, so any Christian reader of a Yiddish Arthurian manuscript would have to be the rather bizarre combination of a scholar whose native tongue was German and who preferred to read a translation into a dialect of their vernacular language written in an odd script. Unlikely, I suspect, especially when there is a lovely German version of the same story (Wigalois). So the likelihood is nicely strong for the writer of Widuwilt (the Yiddish tale) to have been Jewish, and probably the copyists and, almost definitely most of the listeners. It was written originally to be declaimed or sung, so most of the audience were listeners rather than readers.

So we are back to the works themselves. What are they? Do we have any idea why they were written? What is their history?

The Hebrew tale is popularly known as the Melekh Artus, and was written in 1279 by a poor soul in the midst of a very trying time. We know this because he wrote it in his introduction: he was translating the Arthurian tales to cheer himself up, and justified it at great length, citing Rabbinic authority. The author/translator was from northern Italy and bits of Italian have crept in. As he was Jewish, bits of Christianity have crept out. Wherever his source has a mass, he omits it, and he translates concepts into Jewish equivalents. I am not sure that Saints and Tsaddikim are analogous, and I really like the thought of the Holy Grail becoming a dish used to give food to the poor.

Either the text is unfinished or the copyist ran our of steam, because the one manuscript of this amazing text is, alas, incomplete. Very incomplete. It is held in the Vatican, and has been edited and translated and yes, Canberra has a copy (at the National Library). Its literary value is very low, I must admit, and the French sources that were used are much more entertaining (except for the brilliant apologia at the beginning, which is well worth reading) but it is most definitely a Jewish (Italian) version of the Arthurian tales.

The other work is later and exists in several versions in several manuscripts and editions. It was not written down until the very close of the Middle Ages, but made up for this shocking lapse by being popular for centuries. Widuwilt only features Arthur as an aside. It is actually about Gawain and his son. It is from the German that the tale reached Yiddish, hardly surprisingly, from an Old French original. The hero has a different name I the German, though. Unfortunately, we have an early example of Jewish humour (maybe written by an ancestor of Sylvia Deutsch?). Apparently Gawain was not really paying attention when his wife bore him a son (he was just about to desert the poor lady, in point of fact) and so, when she asked him what Gawain wanted to call the baby, Gawain answered “Whatever you want”, so he was called “Whatever you want” or “Widuwilt”. Apart from this, most of the tale follows the German original according to my sources (which is just as well, because the French and the German are relatively available, but the Yiddish is not so none of these comments imply a sighting of the original!) except for some adventures added at the end.

It seems to be a lovely adventure romance, with all the Christian bits left intact (yes, Arthur holds court at Easter, rather than at Pesach!) and lots of good fighting. While the Hebrew tale was a bit more serious (as befitting a scholar suffering form melancholy) Widuwilt is simple entertainment, and very suited to a Spielmann and his audience.

Now for the $64,000 question: why am I interested in these works? Like the writer of the Melekh Artus, it is for sound and moral reasons, although I won’t go so far as to cite Rabbinic authority..

One thing that these Medieval Jews had in common with us was the fact that they were a minority group in a society so very Christian that it took that Christianity for granted. You ask most Australians and they will say that Australia is not a Christian society, that it is secular. Yet Christian holidays, Christian imagery and Christian concepts weigh down the very air we breathe. The relationship between Christianity and society was different in Italy in 1279 to Australia seven hundred years later, and Jews definitely have different status, different acceptance, different problems. But we are still not quite mainstream. We are still outside the norm.

Even in the more restrictive atmosphere of Medieval Europe, Jews could reach out and make sense of the fullness of the outside culture. Unless you translate a romance or read it in its original language, you cannot make any sense of the people who write and read in that style. Widuwilt is evidence that some Jews were enjoying Arthurian romances, and actively coming to terms with all those elements of Western European vernacular culture.

The fact that only two works have been translated or interpreted into Jewish languages, one unfinished and apparently for private use, shows that Jews had very different concerns to Christians. But it also show that there was overlap and a meeting of interests. Not only is this interesting in its own right, but it gives us a neat tool for use in understanding our own society, for understanding the culture we share with others, and those elements that are specifically Jewish.

As Australians we often use the dread phrase “cultural cringe”. It can apply just as much to being Jewish Australians as to being Australians in general. We are neither solely religious nor simple recipients of wider Australian culture. We don’t take the whole of our identity from Chaim Potok, nor from Mary Grant Bruce. King Arthur teaches us that. If there is a Jewish view of King Arthur and even a Jewish grail, then there is a Jewish view of everything.

Learning Needs a Joyful Reason

personby Madeleine Robins
schedulePosted on

I just started learning Italian on Duolingo. Because I’ve already studied French and Spanish (I would not go so far as to say I’ve learned them) I have something of a leg up: Italian doesn’t seem terribly different in many ways from those other two Romance languages, and I know enough about language learning to notice where my weak spots are and work on them (prepositions, how I hate thee). I’m slugging away. I not only like the language, I’m enjoying the process of learning it. My goal is to learn enough to be able to embarrass myself if/when I go to Italy. I wrote an entire book set in Italy; it seems to me I should go and see it for myself. So I’ve got a reason. That helps.

But not all reasons are helpful. Because I’m contemplating self-publishing some of my backlist, I was counseled that I should work on promotion: viz, a newsletter. Which has led me to learning of the sort that makes me want to lie down and howl. I researched newsletter management software–the stuff that will keep your mailing list and provide templates for newsletters. Based on cost, the size of my current mailing list, and various reviews, I signed up for a trial of one. I’ve done newsletters before at the museum where I worked. I was not fearful.

Silly me.

Let’s dive right in, right? I click the button labeled “CREATE YOUR NEWSLETTER.” Before you can design a template or write anything, you have to make the underpinnings of the program talk to the underpinnings of your website.  I created my website more than a decade ago, my recollection of the process is fuzzy at best, and I don’t go wandering the basement looking at the wiring for fun, because I just don’t. But I dig in. Shortly I find myself mired in the sort of technical backstage stuff in which I have no training, outdated information, and zero interest. 

After two hours of trying to fix the SPF and DKIM on my website so that the newsletter manager will accept it as a “sender”–each time coming up with a new and different way to not quite do it, and each time being terrified I would break my perfectly functional website–I gave up, cancelled my trial, and tried not to throw a tantrum.

Today, filled with renewed optimism (who am I kidding?) I will seek out a different newsletter manager and see what I can make of it. But there is nothing about this kind of learning that gives me joy. The best I can expect (aside from a working newsletter) is a kind of bitter triumph of the HAH! TAKE THAT variety. 

Part of the problem is simply that this is a kind of learning that doesn’t come easy for me. And an equal part is that my reason for doing it is of the hold-your-nose-and-just-do-it variety which provides no joy. When I think of  learning Italian, I think of wandering in a city I don’t know, asking directions, having adventures, ordering food and drink and making fun of how dreadful my Italian is, but trying anyway. It’s a joyful imagining. That’s my payoff.

The payoff for figuring out newsletter software is (theoretically anyway) being able to create a newsletter* and send it out with relative ease. That’s it. I appreciate the benefit that will provide. But there’s no joy in the process, and no prospective joy in that benefit, and at this point in my life I suspect I kind of need some joy to grease the wheels and make it easier to persevere.

If y’all will excuse me, I’m going to practice Italian for a while.
__________
*The thought of sending out a newsletter makes me feel rather… squishy? Awkward? Send out regular bulletins about ME! What’s going on with ME! And my work! I have no problem writing ab out what’s going on with me and my work in a “you can read this if you want to” venue like Facebook or Threads, but there, I can just throw something up and people can read it if they want to. When you send a newsletter out you’re assuming that someone will want to see it (yes, I know: you send newsletters to people who have already indicated an interest). It just feels colossally pushy to me. Which may, in fact, be what is required for a self-published author. And yet.

Back in time (again)

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Time to delve further into the past. Not a single year, for the end of this series, but a few years. I was writing pretty much fulltime as a public servant until 1998, but everything was published under the names of other people. I was paid, and they were given the rewards for the writing. Such is the life of a policy wonk who can write. I can’t give you any of this writing, and I wouldn’t want to. It was Terribly Important and rather dull, and is all long forgotten. I do find it amusing, however, that I spent a whole decade writing documents that no-one will ever read.

Instead, over the next few weeks, I’ll give you a small number of miscellaneous bits of writing from the 1990s. I’ll be finished my thesis at the end of this sequence and then you may be back to writing from me, now, or I may have to delay a bit longer. This is a consequential year, full of an enormous amount of work. I’m emerging from being rather ill and have paid work and writing (paid and unpaid) and a whole heap of conferences and events: I want to get everything done. The last few months and the next couple of months are an example of how I do this. I juggle.

Now I’m curious – do you juggle? And what challenges did you face in the 1990s?

My Baycon 2024 Schedule

personby Deborah J. Ross
schedulePosted on

I’ll be at Baycon this year, hooray! This will be my first in-person convention since the pandemic and I’m super excited to see you. Please find me and say hello!

 

 

My preliminary panel schedule with some of my favorite co-panelists (I am told I may be added to other events, like autographing and a reading…stay tuned!)

Writing Beyond Trauma

5 Jul 2024, Friday 10:30 – 11:45, Writer’s Workshop (Santa Clara Marriott)

These are perilous times for many of us. As survivors or the loved ones of survivors, how has our experience affected us as writers? How do our stories transcend and heal? Escape? Educate our audience? Are there times when the pain is so great, the words simply will not come–what do we do when we have lost our voice and how do we use writing to regain it? In this panel, we will strive to listen respectfully and to leave time between each speaker to absorb more deeply what they have said.

Deborah Ross with L.M. Kate, Gregg Castro (Association of Ramaytush Ohlone),  Maya Bohnhoff ,Sumiko Saulson (Iconoclast Productions)

Creating Original Worlds Format: Panel
5 Jul 2024, Friday 14:45 – 16:00, Monterey (Santa Clara Marriott)

When creating environments for speculative genres such as fantasy, science fiction, magical realism or alternate history, what are some essential questions one needs to ask themselves about their world? How can a writer make their worlds as original as possible. We will also discuss how to research, plot, and develop a setting whether you’re creating it out of spare parts or building on an alternate reality.

Deborah Ross, Maya Bohnhoff , Chad Peterman

Beta Readers & Critique Groups5 Jul 2024, Friday 16:15 – 17:30, Sierra (Santa Clara Marriott)

Your story’s done, how do you choose who reads it first? How do you handle feedback from beta readers, writing groups, friends and strangers? How do you know whose advice to take, and how to accept criticism gracefully?

Maya Bohnhoff, Sheryl R Hayes , J.L. (Jim) Doty (Bourgeois Capitalist Establishment), Deborah Ross

 
 
Paying Forward, Backward, and Sideways

6 Jul 2024, Saturday 16:15 – 17:30, Sierra (Santa Clara Marriott)

In the field of speculative fiction, seasoned writers often encourage, mentor, and nurture new and aspiring writers. As those writers come of age, many pass on the gift. Writers at about the same stage in their careers cheer one another on, furnish emotional support, and act as beta readers. Join us for a session of gratitude, hope, and fellowship among writers, both professional and aspiring.

Deborah Ross, Maya Bohnhoff, Cliff Winnig

Women’s History Month from another angle

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Another bit of the history of Australian Women’s History Month. This was first published by Trivium Publishing, who also took on my first novel. They were the single biggest component in persuading me that I could write and should write. I never didn’t write, to be honest, I just assumed that my writing was not terribly good and that no-one wanted to read it. I didn’t know enough about the publishing world nor about how very isolated Canberra was back then from all publishing influences. It’s still possible to talk to editors and agents in some part s of the world and be discovered as a writer. In Canberra, this is now possible, but only because a group of us worked very hard from the early 2000s to change things. I find it fascinating that new writers don’t know this history.

I also find is fascinating that, what was difficult to do as a writer (be seen, be useful, change things) was very easy for anyone in the women’s movement from the 1980s until about ten years ago. Living in Canberra and having coffee with friends was sometimes enough to meet the people with who you’d change the world. Women’s History Month was a case in point. Ten years ago, all this changed and now Women’s History Month is a faded fragment of what it was 20 years ago. Social forces change and people change and those of us involved years ago are exhausted. This is the human tendency to reinvent the wheel plays such an important part in our history, I suspect.

 

I have been asked to write an article about women’s history.

I don’t want to write this article. I don’t want yet another piece of writing on the web by an historian, telling non-historians how to think. I was involved in Women’s History Month from the day it started in Australia until 2004, and I am sick of basic instruction. I want to hear stories; I want to tell stories.

I don’t have a whole story to tell, though. I have been thinking about women’s history and realised that my mind has fragmented my experiences. What I have is a series of half-memories. I am an historian who feels history fading and a writer who can’t tell a tale. It is about time I recorded some of my morsels before they are forgotten and someone invents a glorious past.

The official record states that Women’s History Month was first celebrated in Australia in 2000.

Helen Leonard had planned a launch to end all launches. She had talked the Speaker of the Senate, Margaret Reid, into allowing her and her committee to launch the event in Margaret’s private garden in Parliament House. Very official. Very impressive. The list of acceptances was official and impressive too – Australia must have a real Women’s History Month if it is to be launched in the private garden of the Speaker. The dignitaries were daunting.

I didn’t know about this. All I knew was that I was planning an online educational project on women’s history. To be honest, I didn’t even know about Women’s History Month. I was having a whale of a time obsessing about online teaching techniques and I just wanted to set up a test group to teach some women’s history and some Medieval history using those techniques.

When I obsess about something, I tell everyone, so Helen suffered a dose of bubbling enthusiasm about the possibilities of online teaching Medieval Studies and women’s history for people with no history background. My logic in allowing my enthusiasm to bubble was that it made a change from CEDAW and women’s peak networks. Until then I had kept my historian self fairly clear of my committee self.

The next thing I knew, I was meeting Helen for coffee at Gus’s, a café in central Canberra.

The first Women’s History Month committee meeting in Australia was that coffee. I don’t know if the others knew before they arrived – one day I must ask them. I certainly didn’t know. There is a formal list of the initial committee on Australia’s Women’s History Month somewhere, I believe, but I really don’t know if it actually represents all the people Helen had in mind or had worked with.

The historian in me wants to present you with a clear narrative, telling you every important aspect and giving you crystal interpretations. The writer in me wants to present you with an elegantly articulated truth. And the committee person in me says, “I wish life were that simple.”

I can remember the coffee, every mouthful. We sat outside at a little table that was diminished further by Helen’s overflowing ashtray. I had a cappuccino and took so long to drink it that the last mouthfuls were icy. Lulu Respall-Turner walked out of a radio station where she was interviewing me, late last year and we looked at that table from across the road and asked each other why it was so far in our pasts. Five years is not a long time, but the underlying fabric of life changed when Helen died: that first meeting was aeons ago.

Like that coffee, my images are frozen. I remember thinking, “In the US they had an Act of Congress to create Women’s History Month; in Australia we have a declaration by Helen.”

Of course there was far more to Women’s History Month than a personal declaration and a cup of coffee.

For one thing, there was Margaret Reid and her garden. Now she bears the title Honourable and is retired: her garden has bowed out, even though she hasn’t.

I met her garden before I met her, so it has a very real personality for me. My mind flirted with the greenery as I helped setting up for the launch, and then I became acquainted with her kitchen as I washed the glasses after that launch. These tasks protected me from the dignitaries: I was too shy to tell anyone I was an historian, so I pretended to be the kitchen volunteer.

Until Women’s History Month was launched in that garden and for the full time we celebrated it, all I saw was my computer, and more of my computer. No, that is not true, one afternoon I saw Helen’s computer. It took long hours from all of us to bring that first Women’s History Month in Australia to life.

That afternoon with Helen’s computer is my next image frozen in time, in fact. It must have been a couple of weeks before the launch. I had set up online discussion boards and chat rooms and everyone agreed we would get key women in to discuss their experiences and that we would record what they said and we could archive this for researchers to use. It would be fun. We were totally determined that it would be fun.

Anne Summers and Marilyn Lake were on the committee and did their bit on the program as well, but weren’t a program in and of themselves. I was happy to train people, but we needed More Big Names to grab the general public and in general, we were lacking in people to train. I had emailed Helen and she had emailed me, and we had talked round the committee and explored some possibilities, but we had nothing like a full program.

By this stage it was becoming apparent that the launch was our flagship and that the online program would be the part of women’s history month that would meet all the rest of our goals. The launch would make people aware of women’s history; the online stuff would get women involved, remembering and owning their pasts. Without much ado, my temporary classroom became our main program focus.

That afternoon with Helen’s computer gave us the bulk of our program.

When Helen had said, “Come to my office and we will fix it today” she had been totally serious: I went to Helen’s office. Erica Lewis was there, I think, and helped until meetings overtook her. Wreathed in smoke, drowning in instant coffee, we worked our way through Helen’s black address book.

Soon we had it down to an erratic system. Helen would give me a few names and we would toss about a possible topic, then she would ring or email that short list of friends. Since they were all Great Names, this usually meant her leaving messages. Sometimes she was put straight through and I would hear half-conversations about children and mutual friends and political action before Helen introduced the reason for the call. I was in the background the whole time, which, now I think of it, sums up a lot of my experience over the last five years: Women’s History Month has involved a lot of hidden work.

Eventually Helen had rung everyone and moved onto other things and I had a draft schedule nutted out based heavily on who might ring back and what they were likely to say. Then the phones started ringing. I filed the blanks in on my program sheet: we had our Big Names.

Our first program consisted of a totally terrific array of women. They had all made a huge leap of faith: very few of them had been in a web discussion or chat before, and although we were supported by the Women’s Electoral Lobby (and then by the National Foundation of Australian Women) we were not a formally constituted body with funding and written objectives. We were a group of friends, brought together by Helen, all of whom cared passionately about women and about history.

Now Women’s History Month doesn’t meet at Gus’s. It has a permanent, purpose-designed website. It is supported by the National Library and the National Museum and a host of other institutions. It has a budget. It even has sub-committees. Other women than me do the IT training and support and hidden work. I can go back to being a Medievalist and writer. And I can reminisce pleasantly about that coffee with Helen and where it led.

Making

personby Madeleine Robins
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Cake made in 2001. My technique has improved.

When I was a kid I was at a friend’s house one afternoon when friend’s toddler brother went racing through the room and down the hall with friend’s mother running after him, yelling “Did you make? Did you make?” I looked at my friend. “Toilet training. She wanted to know if he had a BM.”

“Ah,” I said. My friend and I returned to whatever game we’d been playing.

But this morning as I thought out what to do with the day, I remembered my friend’s mother: “Did you make? Did you make?” That’s the question: were you productive today? What did you produce? The family I grew up in was not so concerned with bowel habits, but I did grow up believing firmly that You Are What You Produce.

I’m working on two books and a short story, and not one of them is being obliging. Which is to say, I don’t feel comfortable that I know where any of them are going, and that lack of focus is making it hard for me to engage. Writing, when I”m into it, should have at least an edge of fun–if not fun right now, then the promise of fun down the line. There should be anticipation: “Ooh, if I set this up now, later I can do THIS. And That! And THIS!” Right now I’m lacking that sense of anticipation.

Thus I find myself making other things, in order to live up to my You Are What You Produce programming. There are things that I need, or want, to do: I’m working on learning Italian, which isn’t something with a finished object to be held aloft for admiration, but is still an accomplishment of sorts. There are also the approximately 1,624 chores that need doing: cleaning out the closets, organizing the filing cabinets, putting things away so that they’re, um, away. But those are chores, there’s no output at the end of it (rather the opposite: at the end there should be less rather than more).

But cakes and frosting flowers and bread and beaded necklaces? I do them because I like the process, and improving the process (I just found a photo of a cake I decorated when my kid was in kindergarten, 23 years ago; I’ve gotten better) and because at the end of the day I’ve made something. Because I’m not getting that I was Productive rush from my writing, I have to get it from somewhere else. From the manipulation of stuff to make stuff.

Still, on my To Do list every day is time putting words on the page. Just because I’m not feeling it right now doesn’t mean that I won’t feel it ever. This is not my first time around the Maker’s block. In my experience some word or scene or idea will make my brain go *PLINK* and I’ll be in the zone again. So I keep writing, even when I’m writing in circles. And I make cake and bracelets to take the pressure off the words.

It’s a weird system, but it works. 

 

Richard III

personby Gillian Polack
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Another of the unpublished pieces. I found second homes for many of them, eventually, so only a handful remain unseen.

Certain moments of history are forged into our brains.

The memory of Richard III has been given to us by Shakespeare:  the warped king. It has been left to us by Millais in his pitiful painting of the Princes in the Tower:  the murderous uncle. These judgements have been contested strongly by Richard’s supporters, who see him as a good man. However he is judged and however he is remembered, he was a human being. And all human beings have happy moments in their lives.

One moment of joy we do have for Richard, saved despite the loss of records over time, despite the fact that the Tudors hated him, saved despite the fact that in the fifteenth century less was written down that we would write today. We have a menu.

We know what was served to Richard the day he was crowned king.

So let us surreptitiously reach back to a moment when Richard was new to his throne, his nephews were very alive, and all was well with the world. Even Richard’s worst enemies were given roles of dignity and worth.

The banquet was formal and glorious: the food did not stand alone. There was panoply and display and glory. The King’s Champion would have paid a dramatic visit, for instance. The doors of Westminster flung wide open to admit him and his small procession. The Champion was a-horseback and beautifully armed. He threw down his gauntlet to announce his challenge. The food would have been spiced with moments such as this.

The menu itself was sumptuous. Three courses for Richard, two for his nobles dining elsewhere and one course for everyone else. There were too many people to fit into the Great Hall, and the celebrations spilled over into its surrounds. It took a lot of food to serve 1200 people. In fact, it took 30 bulls 12 fatted pigs, 6 boars, 140 sheep, 400 lampreys, 350 pikes, 100 trout and so on. The cooks dealt with 2200 chickens (of various types), 1,000 geese, and 800 rabbits. The luxury food was less excessive, with only forty eight peacocks.

The first course was full of fowl, from pheasant and cygnet to crane and capon. There was some meat (beef and mutton, for instance) and a little fish. Any of these might have had sauces for dipping, and these sauces could have been anything from sharp orange to a condiment made from sweet currants. For those who liked gentler foods, there was a custard (although we do not know if it was sweet or savoury) and a thick soup. Crunchy battered fritters provided a sharp contrast in texture.

The second course also featured roast meat. Roast meat is still for many people the food of celebration, and the number and generosity of the meats at Richard’s banquet shows that it was a very special occasion indeed. Not all the meats in the second course were roasts, however. A delectable cold savoury jelly done up with a “device”(maybe a boar or a crown?) trapped the eye in its quivery midst. A peacock was cooked, and then its feathers were refitted and it was presented as if it were alive. Venison pieces were served stuffed, and fish was baked whole. The third course was similar, but with a few sweet dishes added to the mix. You can imagine the king nibbling at baked quinces or cinnamon custard, eating more of his favourite dishes, and called up his best friends and good servants to taste something delectable from his plate.

When all the flavours became overwhelming and mingled in the mouth, there were always bread and wafers and sweet nibbles.

With each course, a subtlety was served forth. Not just one, but a special one for the king and his companions and another for the nobles. Subtleties were grand displays – sometimes they were to eat, and sometimes they were simply to admire. Sometimes they were a prank, and sometimes they were deadly serious. The menu from Richard’s coronation banquet doesn’t tell us what the subtleties were, so our dreams are left to roam the possibilities. There might have been a castle, or a pastry boar, or a religious scenes spun of fine sugar. Each one of these would have been brought in with some display and served with great panache.

What did the nobles eat for their two courses? Deep pies and elegant pastries, full to the brim with meats in fabulous sauces. Gilded meats, with egg yolk giving a thin, fragrant crust to a roast chicken and turning it to pure gold. The meats were not all the same as those for the King, but they were varied, and the meat dishes were created to tantalise the palate. The cooks served rabbits served, and pike and veal and capons and geese and beef and mutton. Servers brought forth glorious swans and porpoises – certainly not everyday fare.

This food was fragrant and exotic with the spices of the world. English saffron gave dishes a subtle scent and a beautiful golden colour. A darker brown was given by saunders (a type of sandalwood) and alkanet brought out the reds and browns of the rich dishes. Several types of pepper were used, from the hot pepper we use today to the more complex flavours of grains of paradise and long pepper.

Almond would have subtly fragranced many dishes, with almond milk used in sauces and custards and sweets. Almond was not the only ingredient to make dishes rich and tasty – cheese and cream and butter and milk were all used in vast amounts in the kitchen. So were onions and fresh herbs. Each of these flavourings and colours would have been chosen carefully to make the most of the dish, to make it good to look on, to turn it into something both fragrant and delicious. This was, after all, a banquet for a king.

Delicate baskets were bought to serve food in, and strawberries, dates, oranges, figs, pomegranates, lemons and other fruit sat in the kitchen in enormous piles until they were demolished to feed the guests. Honey sweetened dishes, as did green ginger syrup and sugar. Gold leaf was bought to delicately decorate and rosewater to scent. There was so much rosewater bought in for the cooks to use that it would have been inevitable that a maid would spill some by accident. From that moment on an aura of roses would have permeated the kitchen.

Confectionery was made specially, and specialists created wafers for the notables to nibble along with their spiced wine when all the food was finished.

It was a very merry coronation – a great amount of happiness and and even greater amount of drink. There was some spiced wine for after the meal, but here were also nine tuns of table wine. And this is only the wine used for drinking – there was more wine in the food! A very merry occasion indeed, and a sumptuous start to a reign.

Books for Writing

personby Madeleine Robins
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I am at the beginning of writing a book. I’ve done this before, like, multiple times. The beginnings of books are fun. I start out with something–sometimes an opening line, sometimes an opening scene or chapter or (in at least one case) ten chapters, and I keep adding things in and following loose characters down dark alleys and exploring…

Then I realize that if it’s actually a book it will have to go somewhere, and the process of narrowing and aiming and refining begins. And at that point things often grind to a halt. This has happened before; it should be a familiar process. But every time, every. damned. time, I go through something like this, and every damned time I’m flummoxed.

Generally I have some idea of where I’m going. When I’ve described the process before I say that it’s a little like driving over countryside. I have a topographic map at my side, and there are perhaps some places I know I need to hit–his hill, that river, that quaint village over there. And I have an idea–sometimes quite a clear one–of what the destination is. In Point of Honour, for example, I knew that I was pointed toward a scene at the end at which my heroine and the heretofore unsuspected villain of the piece have a showdown. But when I was writing The Stone War I just knew that somehow my hero had to find a way to bring peace to an embattled New York. So… like that. I don’t have specifics, just a direction. Until the specifics reveal themselves.

But at some point that non-specific approach can make me grind to a halt. When I hit a “where is this going anyway” roadblock I have a number of tricks I use to get things moving again. They don’t always work; sometimes it just takes time, and then one day I wake up and start noodling and the block dissolves. Sometimes if I write a scene closer to the end of the book it helps me figure out that destination point (even if I don’t use that scene in the final book). Sometimes I retype the book up to the point where I ground to a halt (there are books where the first 5-10 chapters were retyped several times, to the detriment of my wrists). And sometimes I make a list of books to read that I feel, in some inchoate way, do something I want to be able to do with the book. What that something is is not anything very clear cut. For example, here’s a list I made this morning of books I need to re-read, in no particular order:

  • The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
  • The War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull
  • I, Claudius, by Robert Graves
  • The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
  • Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, by Beverly Daniel Tatum
  • The Once and Future King, by TH White
  • The People, by Zenna Henderson

Others may occur…as I’m thinking about this, inspirations can spark other inspirations.

Does this give you an idea of what I’m writing about? If I can get this book to behave and decide where it’s going, it will be unlike anything else I’ve written (at least I think so–you don’t always know what your subconscious is throwing into the mix).

If you need me I’ll be in a corner with a pile of books, looking for inscrutable inspiration. And clarity. Ah, clarity.

Imagining History

personby Gillian Polack
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One of the other ‘joys’ of 2005 was that many publications disappeared. Not as many as in the 1980s, where five stories of mine failed to publish after acceptance because the magazines collapsed, in two cases just before my stories were entering the world (they are all now readable in an anthology, Mountains of the Mind). I thought you might like to see a couple of non-fiction pieces that were accepted and then remained unseen. This week’s is:

Imagining history

History is a cultural artefact. It is easier to collect packaging labels or children’s toys or works of art and to display them as cultural artefacts than to think of history this way. Besides, we tend to think of books and articles about history as something intellectual and thoughtful and different, not as products of a time and place, and definitely not a part of our everyday lives. If you dissect the themes of every single work of history produced in a single decade, you could put them on show as the product of that decade. A decade in our lives. A product of our society. This display would help show how we think and how we feel, where we are coming from and where we think we are going to. Cultural artefacts. Our past. Our imagination. Ourselves on show.

The trouble is doing that distilling. It is hard to distil the common ideas in histories without being sucking into belief in them and worshipping at their shrine. How often have you read something by your favourite historian without quoting an idea or a fact at your next dinner party?

The trouble with cultural artefacts is they not only show who we are when we analyse them, they dictate who we are when we accept them. In other words, when you read a history, you start thinking the way it tells you to, unless you are careful. Some of this is the convincing argument put forward by the author, but some of this is the form of the written history itself. It is a sad fact that our forms of scholarly expression simplify how we imagine history: they help dictate how we think.

We need that scholarly description and analysis of the past. Never deny that. History is terribly, terribly important. The way history is written is hard to change, and indeed, may not need to be changed. Some of it comes from the need for written history to communicate clearly and to teach. Some of it is the need of historians to make a coherent argument and state a case. The writing of history has forms that are understandable and can be analysed and put on show, in our theoretical history display case.

What needs to be added to the writing of history is something within our own minds when we read. We need to think about what else is in the work under question besides facts and interpretations about the past, what is not covered by the driving argument and the scholarly analysis. Every single one of is who enjoys reading history should take a long and serious moment to think about history as a form of literature, about history as a cultural artefact. As a form of literature and as a cultural artefact, books of history embody lots of lovely complexities and that simplicity and elegance can ignore the reality of the cultural content being presented. The world of people’s cultural consciousness is not tidy, or logical. And it is not comfortable to think that what you read might dictate how you think.

How do you stop being dictated to? The terrible confusion of semiotics was trying to stop this happening. Semiotics was about unpacking rhetoric from reality, trying to sort out meanings and intended meanings and finding out what messages people took on board when they read. Deconstruction is a fine ideal. Alas, language got in the way of semiotic aims. Word after words after word was defined and interpreted until it became an impenetrable maze of meanings, only accessible by the experts

So if you want to read a history book and find out what you think about it without being trapped by the thoughts of others, what do you do?

There is a very old-fashioned technique, one that some teachers still teach to lucky students. First you read the history book. Then you start thinking about it. You look for its component parts. You unpack them and analyse them and think about them. Then you read the book or article again, with all this information in mind. It is not just a matter of the author using good sources and sensible interpretations, it is a question of what assumptions the author brings to his or her history. Do they use emotional language? Do they build up an argument so slowly and gently that you miss the stages and are convinced without knowing how you were convinced?

Reading history intelligently is like being a jury and instructing judge in one. It is a messy business.

Some patterns are quite clear and there are a bunch of books out there that can point to them. A classic book about how historians think about history is by EH Carr and there is a new study of how history had changed since his writing. These two together make a good manual for thinking about how historians think about the past. The best tool for thinking, though, is the human brain. Historians are human and have their enthusiasms and their failings. Look for those enthusiasms in their work. Look for their failings. Find out how they argue and why they argue.

When you read a history, you are not just deciphering the past. You are using the past as a way of imagining the present and enriching your life. When you see a busker on the street, you don’t ask an expert whether or not you are capable of judging how good the busker is. When you read a book of history you should be able to think for yourself. It is harder than laughing at a joke or cringing at an off-key chord, but it is also more rewarding.

If you accept the history presented by other people you will have a nice tidy world, with nice tidy opinions. This is the easy way out. The tough way out is exciting, challenging and puts you on the intellectual spot. It also brings history back into all our lives, and enriches all of us. History is not just or the academy, after all, since it is the past of all of us.