Melbourne

personby Gillian Polack
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Right now, I’m dreaming of my childhood. At an unholy hour tomorrow morning (6 hours from now, in fact) I will take a bus to Melbourne and … that’s where I will be on Monday, when you read this. I could finish packing, or I could tell you all about my childhood. I choose to finish packing. This is because my mother will give me a Look if I appear without clothes.

Why have I not finished everything at this hour on this day? Because I was very silly and fell over and damaged myself. Not badly, but sufficiently so that everything has been slow this week.

What will I be doing right now, on Monday US time? Some research at the State Library of Victoria. I have a list of books and every one I read is a tremendous help. Dinner will be with a group of old school friends I’ve not seen in forever.  Melbourne is the most European of Australian cities and I have the tough choice of eating well or eating very well. I will pack very loose clothes. My excuse will be that it’s summer.

Now you know where I’ll be and what I’m doing… I’d better go prepare.

Learning to Look at Nature

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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A sketch of a crow sitting in the sun on the street.I took up drawing this year. I’m still very much a beginner, but I am getting much better at really looking at something and seeing it at the level necessary to draw it.

One of the things I do is take pictures of things I think would be interesting to draw, so the sketch accompanying this post was made from a photo I took of a crow standing in the street on a sunny day.

My sweetheart and I feed the neighborhood crows, so I’m always looking at them. And, as with drawing, I find that the more I look, the more details I discover.

Years back my sweetheart started carrying some cat kibble in a small pouch so he could try to make friends with the crows. However, this was a hit-or-miss system and it didn’t really take off until during the pandemic, when he joined me on my regular walks around the block. The crows took note of us because the pattern was more regular.

After awhile, I had to start carrying treats, too, because they associated me with my sweetheart. They come to our bedroom window most mornings. We now feed crows within a four-or-five-block radius of our place.

Today, though, when we went for a short walk, none of our crows were nearby. However, there were large numbers of them in the sky, all flying the same general direction.

I’m pretty sure there’s a big crow meet-up somewhere downtown. I know crows have meetings from time to time. Sometimes they have them in a big tree in our neighborhood, but whatever they were doing today involved more crows than that.

Crow business. I’d really like to know more about crow business, but I don’t speak Crow, more’s the pity. Continue reading “Learning to Look at Nature”…

In Troubled Times: Facing the Problem Squarely

personby Deborah J. Ross
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Back in 2016, I posted a series of blogs entitled In Troubled Times. Today it seems fitting to remind myself that I survived then and will survive now. These thoughts are from Monday, December 5, 2016.

A few days ago, John Scalzi wrote in his blog, Whatever, “…the Trump administration and its enablers are going to make a mad gallop out of the gate to do a whole bunch of awful things, to overwhelm you with sheer volume right at the outset.”

Pretty shocking statement, huh? That was my first reaction. My second was that Scalzi is very likely correct. All the signs are there…all the signs that in my panic-stricken moments, I want to ignore so hard they go away.

My next reaction was to surrender my mind to a gazillion chattering monkeys, each with her own idea of What Must Be Done Right Now. I can work myself into a downright tizzy in no time this way. Not only that, I can paralyze myself with too many alternatives and no way to prioritize them, jumbling actions I might take with those that are impossible or unsafe (crazy-making) for me.

Any of this sound familiar?

It’s all based on a false choice. I don’t have to either prepare now for the logically impending “awful things” or play ostrich on the river in Egypt. But in order to see other, saner alternatives, I must first evict the Monkeys of Panic so I can regard the situation calmly.

We’re in for some hard times, and knowing that is a relief.

At first, it seems counter-intuitive to say that acknowledging we are in for some dark times comes as a relief. The relief is because instead of nebulous fears running rampant, bursting into exaggeration and melodrama at every turn, vulnerable to any sort of fact-free hype, I’ve stepped away from the emotional storm. I’m facing the problem squarely, as my tai chi teacher used to say. We’re in for some tough times, and likely there will be a whole slew of bad news in the early months of 2017.

When I’m no longer trying to deny or distort the way things are (for example, Trump’s cabinet choices and what is known about them, or what he has said he will or won’t do) I not only become calmer, but better able to see things I might do, alone or in solidarity with like-minded folks.

This is based on a simple truth that in order to act effectively, I need to be sane. I can’t be sane if I’m bouncing off the walls at every headline on social media. I could, of course, disengage entirely from social media and refuse to read or listen to any sort of news. But I don’t want to do that. I want to stay engaged, but in a mindful way. I want to know what I’m up against. Once I stop fighting the reality of what that is, I free myself to use my energy and time in productive ways. I don’t know exactly what form these tough times will take, but I don’t need to prepare for every twist and turn. I can trust my ability to respond appropriately and creatively.

 

Some Days

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m writing this late on my Monday evening because I was so worried about what was happening in my hometown. Not where I live now (Canberra) but where my family has lived since 1858. Outside a synagogue not at all far from my own childhood one, and half a suburb away from where my mother lives, there was going to be a pro-Palestine demonstration. Given what happened in Montreal over the weekend, I did not like this at all. Given what happened a few minutes away last year, during a Friday service on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, where my mother’s first cousin was one of the people ‘evacuated’ into a violent anti-Jewish crowd… I was very worried.

I’ve just seen the video clips of what transpired and Australia can sometimes be quite uniquely itself. Before I saw the video clips, however, I realised the angry crowd might be a bit smaller than last time. This notice was circulated on the interwebz shortly before the event:

Protesters still came. They were thoroughly covered, except for their eyes, and while this might have been sensible to hide their identities, it wasn’t such a good idea. Melbourne was not as hot as Canberra today, but Canberra was in the thirties… so these poor blokes must have been seriously uncomfortable.

I saw a bunch of clips of what happened after they arrived and there was no violence. Two of the pro-Palestine protesters were gently ushered into a police van and I’m pretty sure I heard someone say “Have a good day.” The angry violent Jews shouted “Go home. Leave us alone” in unison. well away from where the protesters stood.  I interpreted this (since I come from that community, I trust my interpretation) as “You’ve driven half an hour or an hour to be a pain, now just turn around and drive back, please.” They waved Israeli flags and Australian flags. They sang Hatikvah (mostly off-key) and several of them used the great Australian salute to the group of protesters.

No-one was hurt. Everyone got their point across, including the police. The worst loss was to the dignity of those who were scared of the young woman who led the “Go home” shout.

I wish more protests were like this.

Living in Margaret Atwood’s Future

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Cover of the first edition of The Handmaid's TaleHistorian Timothy Snyder keeps telling us “Do not obey in advance” even as more and more people appear to be leaping up to kiss the ring (or perhaps a part of the anatomy) of the grifter now apparently headed back to the White House in the ultimate triumph of the January 6 insurrection.

This week in his newsletter he is looking at Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in a three-part series. The third should be available the same day this post appears; the first is here and the second here.

In the first part, he critiques The New York Times’s summary of the book on its current trade paper bestseller list (where, I am glad to note, the book, which first came out forty years ago, has appeared for 139 weeks). The Times’s 16-word summary reads: “In the Republic of Gilead’s dystopian future, men and women perform the services assigned to them.”

His whole piece is worth reading, but he sums it up here:

Christian Reconstructionism is now at the edge of power in the United States, and the attitude of the relevant people towards the female body and indeed towards rape is an essential element of what is happening and what is likely to happen.  Both-sidesism, prudery, and euphemisms are keeping much of the media from bringing this story together in time.  We will need clear language in general, and this novel in particular, to see the whole picture.  I will develop this in two posts to come.

In the second essay, he makes this point:

The Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale is not a purely invented world based on the law and culture of one religion or another.  It is a well-drawn post-America.

Prof. Snyder thinks this book is important to understanding where we are today and I certainly don’t disagree, though perhaps the most disturbing thing about what an accurate picture it paints of where we are is that the country did not take appropriate steps to head it off.

We can all argue about what those steps should have been, but I’ll leave that to others. I’m tired of dishing out blame. I’m more interested in fixes.

Alas, The Handmaid’s Tale, while an excellent description of one of the places we could be headed (the others being a utopia for certain tech bros and no one else or just the grifter’s unparalleled corruption accompanied by significant foreign influence) is not the best book for fixes. Continue reading “Living in Margaret Atwood’s Future”…

A Small Responsibility

personby Madeleine Robins
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Watch any medical drama (of which there are many–and I admit I’m a sucker for them) and you will doubtless come upon the one where the next of kin struggles to make a decision for the patient who cannot speak for their/him/herself. Should the patient be resucitated? Given a potentially lifesaving treatment despite their prior expressed disinterest in said treatment? Should the patient be taken off life support? High stakes, high drama.

But sometimes the stakes are high but the drama is a little less so.

About fifteen years ago my aunt made me her medical power of attorney. At that time she was a spry young thing of 85, still traveling with her husband, meeting weekly with her French conversation group, cooking in her beautiful small kitchen, reading voraciously, holding ferocious opinions about the world and politics (she would not have been pleased with the outcome of the most recent election). So when she asked, I said “of course.” My brother and I are her closest living relatives, I live nearer than he does–and it’s my aunt. Of course I would do anything she asked, because I adore her.

In the abstract I knew what the job entailed (after all, I have watched a lot of medical dramas). We had a discussion about what amount of medical interference she wanted should she become incapacitated. And then we went back to talking about all the other things in the world, as we always had done.

In the 15 years since then, her husband died after a long and miserable illness, and without that tether–being the organized one who took care of him and saw that everything–appointments, home-care attendants, bills and arrangements and repairs to their home–was organized, she has drifted into dementia, a little like a boat drifting slowly out to sea. The day-to-day business and organization of her medical care is handled by a trust. My responsibility is to visit, to love her… and when the time comes, to make decisions about just how much care is enough.

Last week, just after the election, I flew down to LA for an emergency visit. My aunt had a sudden cascade of health problems. Chest pains proved to be pneumonia, which was leapt on with the power of modern medicine (which is to say, antibiotics–totally permissible under the letter of the power of attorney). The next day her Nurse Practitioner got results for a blood test which said that my aunt’s potassium was low. The level wasn’t critically low yet, but decreasing potassium can be an end-of-life sign, because significantly low potassium can trigger cardiac arrest. I was told to come down from San Francisco ASAP; it was implied that I might be coming to say goodbye. Continue reading “A Small Responsibility”…

Some Thoughts on Gender and Community

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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One of the many things my sweetheart and I bonded over when we first got together was a love of Whileaway, the place where people live in Joanna Russ’s story “When It Changed.”

We’d both like to live there – that is, in the there before it changed.

I should point out that my sweetheart is a man and, for those of you who haven’t read the story, only women lived in Whileaway.

But he would, in fact, fit into that world rather well, despite being essentially and comfortably male.

It was, in fact, by being around him that I realized the most accurate statement of my gender is “not male.” That’s despite the fact that I’m the one with a sword and a black belt and, even though I know better, much more likely to end up in a physical fight.

I’m not talking about the kind of masculinity we often discuss as “testosterone poisoning” (though testosterone is not nearly as powerful as many believe) or the toxic masculinity of the fascists who just got elected.

It’s not as easily defined as that. It’s a maleness that is not uncomfortable in an all-female setting while still being itself.

I wanted to do many things in my life that were coded as male, but I never wanted to be a man. I am resolutely not girlie, nowhere near as feminine in interests or appearance as many of the trans women I know, but I am still comfortably a woman.

I set my pronouns as she or they because I don’t have a lot invested in my gender identity, but I would, in fact, correct you if you called me “he.” I am not male. (I wouldn’t be offended, but then I am not someone who gets subjected to intentional misgendering, another issue entirely.)

It isn’t likely to happen. I may be big and aggressive and loud, with a black belt and a law degree and an unwillingness to let people walk over me, but people don’t ever seem to take me as male. I don’t know if it’s the hair or the way my body’s shaped or just my presence, but something about me seems to say “female” to most people in much the same way that my quieter and calmer sweetheart’s presence seems to say “male.”

In fact, I suspect it’s my apparently obvious womanness that makes some men get very angry when I don’t turn tail or apologize profusely when they try to walk over me (or run me down with their cars). Women are supposed to quail before men like them, and I do not.

I often put that attitude down to years in martial arts, but as I reflect on it, I think the attitude was there long before I started training. Training made it safer for me to stand up to such men because it gave me tools to use in response, but I was always going to demand my rights.

Funny, though, while those men scream at me and clearly want to hit me or grab me, they never do. That might be because even as they are dismissing me as a girl and showing their contempt for me, they can read something in my presence that tells them it would be a bad idea to lay a hand on me.

I hope that’s the case. I make every effort to convey the attitude that messing with me is a bad idea. I may look like an old woman, but don’t assume I’m harmless just because you have some stereotypical idea of old women.

Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Gender and Community”…

NaNoWriMo Thoughts

personby Deborah J. Ross
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National Novel Writing Month is upon us. It’s an international month-long event in which

folks pound out the first draft of a novel, posting the progress, getting lots of cheers every step of the way, and exchanging writing advice. Lots of friends will be doing it, many of them regular participants.

Alas, or perhaps not alas, not me.

I always have specific reasons. This year, I’m very close to finishing a revision of an on-spec novel that I’ve been working on for some years now, in the time gaps between contracted projects. I’m on the brink of the climactic scene, which spans 4 or 5 chapters and brings together everything that has gone before with a bang and a few nifty twists. If I nail it, the book works. Needless to say, this book not only haunts my every waking hour but has inveigled itself into my dreams. Not the story, mind you — the writing and revising of it.

I began this book back in 2013 on a lark, one of those what-if ideas that just takes off on its own. It had been a long time since I’d embarked upon an unoutlined, unplanned, seat-of-the-pants story, especially one of novel length. I had not realized how much my creative spirit needed what I call taking a flying leap off the cliff of reality. Working on my netbook, I continued the draft while taking care of my best friend as she died of cancer. The story, with all its open possibilities — and it had quite a few surprises for me — gave me an emotional refuge so that I could return, “batteries recharged,” to be present with my friend and her family.

Am I going to set this aside and lose all the momentum I’ve regained during this revision?

Don’t get me wrong. I think NaNoWriMo can be a wonderful thing. I’ve done writing challenges before, way back when, and learned a lot about JustKeepWritingNoMatterWhat. I also think I could use a reminder course from time to time, when I slog through a period of stopping every 5 minutes for another round of online Scrabble. The community support, the exhilaration posting each day’s progress, is wonderful.

But every writer works in different ways, and I feel my hackles rise — not a lot, just a tad — at the “everyone’s doing this, don’t be left out” feeling. Maybe I’m creating that in my own mind, or it’s an echo of being in the “out” crowd during my formative high school years. I need to remind myself to pay attention to what works for me, and that posting daily word counts does not fit most of the time. For me, daydreaming that leads to a deeper story, a connection between characters, a surprising turn of events, is time well spent. Sometimes, a single insight means a solid day’s work, even if no words appear on the page. Other times, if I force that daily page or word count, I end up with something superficial and green, which is not necessarily bad as much of the real work for me happens in revision. But by working well, no matter how slowly, I can nurture that depth as I go along and be sensitive to the openings and connections that I might miss in my haste.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, more power to you, and may its many gifts be yours! But if not, join me in writing “deep and true and slow.”

Continue reading “NaNoWriMo Thoughts”…

Travelling from Australia

personby Gillian Polack
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People are asking me “Are you going to Belfast next year?” and “Are you going to Seattle?” and “Will you return to Germany?” and “Do we get to see you in person in Baltimore?” I always explain to European friends and North American friends that the airfares are large and more and more often they reply, “Well, it’s difficult for me, too.” And it is.

Yet the obstacles appear, to me, higher than they were.

I wondered if I was shouting about fire when it was merely a match that was burning. I know that my recent trip was difficult because I needed more physical help than I could afford. Several friends stepped up and made it happen, but there were too many times when I was nearly stranded with no recourse, simply because of the health issues. I still have nightmares about 5 moments that were well-nigh impossible.

For any future trip that takes more than 8 hours, I will need help at the other end and along the way. I have to accept that I cannot do things alone easily, even things that look perfectly straightforward to other people.

Shouting at me, “Get a scooter” when I’m struggling at a science fiction conference does not help, and (what happened a lot in Germany) someone walking by stopping to pick up my bag and get it over the hump or up the steps helps immensely. Neither of these are standard for any trip, but they’re what I experienced. Five times in one day in Glasgow I was told to get a scooter or a wheelchair, when, in fact, if I’d done that I’d have been unable to walk at all long term (or even a few days after).

This is not the first time that strangers and friends alike wanted to treat me in the way they thought chronically ill and disabled people should be treated and not consider (or even ask about) my actual circumstances. Because I can walk a little, most friends would say, “Come with me” and leave me at the other end with no thought that, since I had not planned to get to that place, I had no way of getting back in time for programme or for transport: I have to plan.

All this means is that I have to plan more when I travel. I need to be able to see what I can do and then achieve it.

I had to cancel visits to key sites in Germany because the world and my health simply did not permit it.

I had to cancel a half day at Glasgow because there were problems with a room for the panel I was on. All I needed to do to make everything work, was to sit. Not to sit and move and sit and move and sit and move – just to sit. Standing had fewer after-effects, so I stood and awaiting until the re-assigned room could be replaced with something else and the missing computer could also be replaced. All this happened, and was a miracle of reorganisation, but I had not sat when I had planned to. I could have done it on a panel or in a lounge chair, but intermittent movement with that particular pain meant that after that panel, I missed everything that didn’t take place in a single comfortable chair. I was not even able to walk back to the hotel and lie down. I was very lucky that afternoon because a friend stayed with me and we had a lovely evening and she got drinks and found mutual friends and… listened and paid attention to what I was saying about what I could do. She also made sure I got safely back to the hotel at the end of the evening, which was not a given because my direction sense fails when I am at that point of pain. Also, she did not treat me as a charity case, but as a delightful friend and who she was happy to spend time with. This friend resulted in there being no sour taste in my mouth from my incapacity. She’s wonderful. I did miss 8 hours of programming I had intended to enjoy, however.

All these are reasons for being careful how I travel, not avoiding long-distance travel entirely.However, I’ve now acquitted all the grants I was given to get to Europe. I took a moment to do some calculations after the last form went through.

In future, I don’t think I can get further than New Zealand without financial help. The recent trip cost the equivalent of 45% of my annual income. That was without adding enough assistance to make the trip at all comfortable, (which is what I was unable to do this time) and I’m still paying physically for the return journey. I could only pay that amount with help from the friends I stayed with and from the bodies that gave me grants, and, if I wanted an equivalent trip to anywhere in Europe or North America for a conference or for research without as many problems, it would cost me 60% of my annual income.

Without grants it’s just not possible. That’s easy to explain. What is not easy to explain is that many non-academic programmes and some academic programmes are pulled together at the last minute in these days of everyone working with too much pressure. If I’m not giving an academic paper or on programme, I cannot claim that amount on taxes. If I do not know about programme early enough, that adds $1,000-3,000 to the total cost of the trip because airlines play games with last minute travellers who need to arrange things carefully so that they don’t hurt for weeks. That brings the cost potentially to over 55% of my income if I go the route that hurts, and over 70% if I plan to hurt much less.

I will miss everyone, but I can’t travel long distances under these circumstances, however much I adore being with people and researching and discovering amazing things and listening to brilliant people. Also, the next person from Europe or North America who claims the same experience will be sympathised with, because over 45-70% of one’s income for one journey is quite scary.

If anyone has solutions and would like to see me in person, I would love to talk. In the interim, please just say “I’m sorry – I wish you could do these things” rather than telling me “I suffer just as much as you” while planning your next trip.

Post-Election Rant

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I am, by nature, an optimist.

By that I do not mean that I emulate Pollyanna. (Do kids still read that in this day and age?) Nor do I agree with Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide that things are all happening for the best in “the best of all possible worlds.”

While I am well aware of the many negative things in this world, I have tended throughout my life to assume that we will muddle along and things will work out more or less all right. There will be suffering and great evils and progress will be uneven, but we will stumble forward.

The election has shaken my optimism to its core. I don’t seem much path for muddling forward after that.

Dave Karpf, a professor of political communication and a very interesting thinker, had some good observations on the day after the election. His thoughts aren’t particularly comforting – “I did not think American Democracy was in any way perfect, but I did believe we were at least better than this” – but they’re in keeping with my own and also not big on trying to fix blame on political decisions.

His focus is the future and his answers are bleak, but he does think the country will eventually come back. He observes, “This will get very bad for a great many people, and many of the effects will be locked in for decades.”

I don’t have decades. I look at the same things he’s writing about and think “this is the rest of my life.”

Continue reading “Post-Election Rant”…