I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

Posted on November 27, 2010 by Misty

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie SmithI wish I had found this book years ago, when I was twelve, and writing endlessly in a diary, and wishing I lived in the pastoral British countryside, or that my life were in other ways more exciting and romantic than it was.  Or perhaps my first encounter should have been at sixteen, when I began writing novels about love affairs, though I had never had a love affair of my own.  I would have identified instantly with Cassandra, the heroine of this novel, a charming writer and a sharp observer of life.  I would have loved everything about the novel whole-heartedly, without the ability to critical, and the book could have been a comfort and a recourse and a haven to me, like all my other alternative identities (just call me Jane Eyre) that sustained me through those crucial formative years.

Instead, I discovered the book this summer when I was stranded in yet another airport and worried I would run out of reading material (a fear that plagues me in airports; that and the fear that I will run out of pens, and so for that reason usually stash half a dozen in various zippers of my bag, along with refills).  I remember being all alone in the bookstore, a little cubby in a long concourse dotted with coffee vendors and fast-food stores, and feeling glad to be able to indulge, in an airport of all places, in one of my favorite activities: browsing the literary fiction shelves, gleaming under the golden lights, and touching all the pretty covers whose names were as yet unfamiliar to me.  Better yet, this cubby had its designations of Fiction and then two whole shelves preening under the name of Classics, which made it easy for me first and nonchalantly to act as though my literary tastes of course veer to the classic (for the benefit of myself and the saleslady) and second to trust that I would encounter a book I could actually enjoy, or at least love, or at least deeply appreciate–because along with the fear of running out of reading material is the fear of being stuck on a plane for three-plus hours with a bad book, and then what will I do?  I can’t write on planes for fear that the person next to me is slyly glancing at my page, and judging me.

Part of the scholarly quietude of the cubby was due to the fact, much to my gratitude, that the saleslady was neither chatting on a phone, nor chatting to a co-worker (she had none), either of which activity makes me feel embarrassed and awkward about approaching the cash register, interrupting a private conversation.  No, this saleslady was reading, and this lent such an encouraging atmosphere to the whole place that I took my time browsing, smiling with familiarity as well-known and well-loved works met my eyes.  It is a truth universally acknowledged by all bibliophiles that just being near books is therapeutic, with its promise of delicious pleasures and uncharted territories in store.

The difficulty was, those works with the eminence to be marked Classics were, by and large, works I was already familiar with, or I was sure I did not want to undertake (hello, War and Peace, I am passing over you once again) while on a plane and forced into an uncomfortable position, not just cramped but also queasy (this trip coincided, as it would later turn out, with my first month of pregnancy).  Smith’s book jumped out at me for several reasons: the title was attractive, it was not a recent book and therefore not subject to the same degradation of taste, or of prose, that so many contemporary novels suffer from, and all the reviewers said, with an air of reverent astonishment, “I absolutely love this book.”  I knew I had to have it.  And when I shyly slid it onto the counter by the cash register, the saleslady noted with surprise and delight that she had never heard of it, either, but we both agreed that it looked eminently readable.  Sharing my treasure–because that is the other thing bibliophiles do–I informed her that there was a second copy on the shelf, if she wished.

The final verdict: I loved this book.  I loved everything about it: the sly and precocious voice of seventeen-year-old Cassandra, who is quite wise in some ways and endearingly naive in others.  I loved the premise that she is keeping a diary and reporting on things that happened, so she is allowed reflection and commentary on her own experience while, at the same time, Smith manages to craft vivid and absorbing scenes.  In fact it’s quite wonderful the way Smith maintains the device of the diary while still delivering so much of a novel: suspense and foreshadowing, brilliant and vivid characterization, lively and pitch-perfect dialogue, and a roundness, a sense of fullness and completion, to each entry/scene.  Not only did this book completely absorb me, but it actually made me resigned to the news that my flight was canceled, I would have to be rebooked for the next day, and the airline was putting me up in a creaky, cramped, and musty hotel room, as airport hotels inevitably are.  There is no greater testament to the power of a book than to be able to say of it, when I learned my travel plans were unfortunately extended, I immediately though, “Oh, goodie, I’ll have time to read.”

The story charts the fortunes, of lack of, the Mortmain family, whose patriarch wrote one brilliant book some time ago and has moved the household–three lively children, their eccentric and artistic stepmother, and a morally upright, defiantly generous, and incidentally very wonderful young man named Stephen–to a decaying old castle where he can pretend he is writing again, though everyone knows he isn’t.  The two princesses, locked in their tower, have different responses to their fate of poverty and obscurity: lovely Rose is defiant and moody, while Cassandra cheerfully resigns herself to making art, being the sly observer, and also serving as the self-nominated linchpin of sanity that holds everyone else together.  Stephen nobly sacrifices himself for the family, the petted son Thomas contributes the occasional line, and the eccentric Topaz, who loves the idea that she gave up her own modeling career to devote herself to an unacknowledged genius, takes advantage of the time to prance naked about the countryside and to paint.

Enter the princes, one for each girl: Simon and Neil, the new landlords of the nearby estate–incidentally very rich landlords, both appealingly good-looking in their own way, and who introduce the novelty of sexual tension into the proceedings.  The plot unfolds with mystery, suspense, love affairs secret and overt, midnight bathing, some dancing around a fire, overheard conversations, the swilling of liquor, picnics, more dancing, music, dinners and balls, beautiful clothing, and a long-awaited engagement which turns out to create more complications that solutions.  Throughout the characters, and the writing, is lively, charming, curious, interesting, sometimes surprising, and never dull.

In fact my only quarrel with the book–one endorsed by my twelve-year-old self, but formulated by the inner incurable romantic–is that (spoiler alert!) the tangled love affairs never resolve themselves as they should.  That the book should come in the end to be about little more than the observation that the human heart is a rebellious animal and a fragile thing misses the beautiful opportunities opened by all the other threads the clear-eyed and witty Cassandra had been weaving into the stories she tells: history, fashion, art, longing and desire, class, wealth, dreams, and how to make sense of it all.  My chief complaint, I suppose, is that Cassandra in particular does not end up with character I was fully in love with throughout, and thought was destined to be hers.  I presume Smith wanted to leave me with a slightly ashen taste in my mouth, to resemble the hard truths that Cassandra learns, and the heartbreak she is left with.  But I had a harder time swallowing this truth because it seemed to me that the Cassandra I had grown to love would never be so silly as to hang her heart on the moon for a man clearly not right for her.  It was a disappointing character turn, and a disappointing end to the book.

Nevertheless, the story as a whole is so compelling–and the writing, really, so good–that I still love the book.  I will keep it, I have and will recommend it to others, and someday when my daughter is twelve and scribbling all the time in her diary and not to be found without a book (that is to say, if she inherits any of the tendencies of her mother) I will hand it to her and say, “Read this.”  Better than raising her on Disney princesses, any day.

I Capture the Castle filmIncidentally, the 2003 film I Capture the Castle is one of the few book-to-film adaptations that actually does the book justice.  It was worth watching it to have the looks and mannerisms of the characters I had conjured in my head overlaid and replaced with that of the actors’ in order to soak in the beautiful cinematography, the lushness of the presumed English landscape, and the delicious costumes of the times.  Plus, the film offers the benefits of Marc Blucas, Henry Thomas, Rose Byrne, Romola Garai, and Bill Nighy–all stellar actors, in my opinion, and quite a joy to watch.  It did not appease me to see that movie stuck with the book’s ending rather than giving it the romantic rewrite for which I longed, but that I suppose means my imagination will have to step in.  It was quite a habit of mine, when I was younger, to refashion beloved books and stories as I wished.  Being able to revisit that former power, which I thought forgotten, leaves my current and my twelve-year-old self quite content.

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Babies, the documentary

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Misty

So, I am just as big a sucker for babies as the average person, and seeing as how I am currently 21 weeks into the gestation process myself, you would assume I’d be a bigger sucker than usual.  Babies, the documentaryBut the beauty of this documentary is that it doesn’t play up the cuteness of its stars for big sentimental value, at least as far as I could see.  An interesting concept, really: pick four families from around the globe, put a camera as unobtrusively as possible on the babies, and just record.  There is no narration, no voice-over, and very rarely full scenes that build in a dramatic way; there is just a bouncy soundtrack that cues in every once in a while, and shot after thoughtful shot of the four young children as they grow and mature from being newborns to toddlers.

The beauty of this shooting and production style is that it doesn’t make judgments for you, and it doesn’t lead the viewer to make judgments, either.  The filming is so unobtrusive that in many shots, I had to remind myself that the child actually wasn’t all alone, though he or she might appear to be.  I read other reviews of the film that remarked on how audiences tended to “ooh” and “aah” all the way through, but that wasn’t my reaction.  After a brief bout of tears at witnessing the live birth of the little boy Bayar (it is my custom to cry when I see a baby being born; it’s a reflex, probably pathological, and I can’t stop it or make it go away), I found the film remarkably, and refreshingly, unsentimental.  The camera angles–sometimes from straight overhead, but more often from the side, and about the same level of the baby–as well as the general absence or out-of-frame presence of the parents and other adults, invite the viewer to assume a kind of anthropological curiosity about the subjects, rather than start to engage in a virtual parenting role.  One of the things I wanted to see more of, in the beginning, was the mother–or indeed both parents, or the whole family–bonding with the baby.  But the parents were limited to cameo roles, because the film seems to consider the larger social unit of the family or community as incidental to its focal point, which is to observe how babies interact with and respond to the world.

And in capturing that, this film has captured an amazing wealth of detail, most of it surprising, touching, enthralling, and highly educational.  I was fascinated to see inside of cultures I have no other contact with and, in the case of Namibia and Mongolia, know next to nothing about.  I appreciated that the juxtaposed style of the edited scenes and the way that the similarity of so many of the activities–washing the baby, dressing the baby, changing the baby, feeding the baby, playing with the baby, watching a parent soothe the baby or a sibling provoke the baby–stressed the common humanity of all of the subjects, and made the differences seem simply matters of lifestyle and culture.  I did note that while I watched the babies from Tokyo, Mongolia, and Namibia with a curious and (I like to think) open-minded interest, the times I was prone to start evaluating child-rearing activities was with the San Francisco couple.  I was judging in the sense of asking myself, would I do that with my child? should I do that with my child? and for the obvious reasons that because their lifestyle is closest to mine, the points of comparison are closer.  But it was fascinating to watch all four babies having such similar experiences in the world, and a little startling to realize that no matter the very different climates, regions, lifestyles, and resources, the basic arc of child development is the same.

At times it seemed the film spent more time on the Namibian baby and the Mongolian baby, and I even caught myself wondering, what’s going on with the other two?  I wondered if this extended coverage might be because these two cultures, and these two lifestyles, are those with which a large percentage of film-goers are likely to be least familiar.  It was endearing to see inside all of these little families, and to see how the system of women’s work in Namibia kept the women close to the village, with their babies nearby and under supervision, while the demands of the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongolian parents seemed to mean that the child stayed alone in the hut for stretches of time, sometimes tethered to the furniture for his own safety, or sometimes crawling about on his own, outdoors, among the goats and the cows.  That was when I had to remind myself that he was, in fact, supervised.  It was also interesting to see that, while the camera didn’t swerve from its subject, there wasn’t an awful lot of time, proportionately speaking, spent on crying babies.  For the most part, these babies seemed calm, happy, well-cared for, and well-adjusted.  Which, let’s face it, is what the audience would really prefer to see, since vulnerable or neglected or abused babies would tend to arouse hostile reactions in most of us.

And that, perhaps, was the most appealing part of the movie–it’s hopeful message that, whatever the world’s ills (and there are many), there are happy babies growing up in all its four corners, and somehow–in their own way–they might themselves be the solution.  Excursions of anthropological interest aside, it was nice to see the silent yet clear message of this film: people are people, parents are parents, families are families, and no matter what our cultural differences and other barriers to understanding, this we share at our core.  We all want to raise happy, healthy babies.  And we can all cherish the moments both big and small, from the first time you get to meet the little critter to the first time you see him (or her) take those first wobbly steps.  But I see another effect of this film, possibly intended, possibly not.  Perhaps we can all manage to be kinder to one another if we see that small, chubby, adorable baby, those first early shared beginnings, in each of us.  Perhaps, if we remember that we were once that innocent (and joyful, and cute), we can manage to be kind to ourselves.  And what a difference that would make.

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The Kite Runner, by Khaled Housseini

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Misty

So it sounds like everybody else has read this book and since I have finally read it too, there might seem little point in posting a review.  But this is the most sensitive, painful, moving, heartfelt, and well-crafted book I have read in a long time.  It hit me like a freight train.  In fact I made the mistake of reading it on planes while flying to different conferences, so there I was, crying in front of a bunch of strangers.  This is the only the third piece of literature I can recall reading (as an adult) that made me cry.  The other two are “People Like that are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore and “In the Cemetery where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel.  So there you go.

The Kite Runner, by Khaled HosseiniReviews that are just a summary of the book are boring.  But I have to say that the structure of this book, with its three movements–the first section, Afghanistan circa 1975, when Amir commits his crime and the tragedy hinted at from the beginning unfolds; the second section, of distance and denial, when Amir and Baba come to the U.S. and try to establish a life there; and the third section, of return, reconciliation, and ultimately redemption–it’s just smashing.  And the way the suspense is handled, with enough hints, foreshadowing, and reminders of tragedy to weave a bitter thread even into the happiest scenes, is marvelously done.  The entire book is a balance of bittersweet.  And each scene is so well done, with emotion and detail and character and nearly pitch-perfect language, that I found myself admiring Hosseini’s craft even as I was drawn into the story.  I am normally highly annoyed by books where the main character turns out to be a novelist or in some other way a writer–it’s just too precious, or a little self-conscious, somehow.  But in this book, it made sense that Amir would turn out to be a writer, because he viewed the world exactly as a writer does–constantly evaluating and providing editorial on his experiences even as he’s having them.

And this is a book that will entirely transport you to another place and time, if you’ll let it.  Afghanistan pre-civil-war was a place I knew next to nothing about, but this book made me so curious that I did my own hunting.  I knew about the communist coup and the muhjadeen and the Taliban takeover in a historical sense, but being put in the middle of these painful events made me take them much more seriously.  I was fascinated by everything I learned about this book, and it sent me into doing hours of my own research (partially due to my own curiosity, and partially because I had agreed to lead a book group discussion on the novel).  I learned that the Hazara make up anywhere from 9 to 20% of the population of Afghanistan–the official numbers seem to vary.  I learned that the infamously bombed-out Buddha statues, toppled by the Taliban, were in the middle of the Hazara heartland.  And I have never been to an Afghan wedding–or funeral–but this book put me there.  I have a whole new respect for the plight facing Afghan women now that I’ve learned not just about Taliban violence against women but the culture of honor and family relationships that insists on a restricted realm of influence for women.

This book haunted me well after I closed the covers (wiping the last tears from my eyes) and it’s made the current news take on a new relevance.  News like Philadelphia Inquirer’s columnist Trudy Rubin’s reports on Afghan women, which more or less supports what the Half the Sky movement tells us, that one real way to improve the economic and other indicators of a society is to increase education, family planning, and other basic freedoms for women.  Another real way to improve life for the citizens of Afghanistan is for them to have other economic options rather than poppy-growing and opium trade.  Freeing them from the crushing hand of the fundamentalist Taliban, who have proven that their idea of social stability comes at far too high a price, is, as people much smarter than I have been saying for a long time now, only part of it.  Perhaps the smallest part of it.  Perhaps a people who have a measure of prosperity, education, and hope for their future will not turn to militant theology and an agenda of widespread destruction as a way of making a statement about whatever.  I’m not a sociologist here.  I’m just guessing.

But in the meantime, Hosseini’s book and, I hear, his next novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, does the most important work that literature possibly can do.  It raises awareness, it humanizes, it spurs us to compassion for another.  More than the incredibly painful material, even more than the incredibly talented way that Hosseini puts that material together, this book forces us to face difficult truths about the ways that humans interact with one another.  What greater accomplishment could there be for an author, to create something with such monumental impact?  If I weren’t so impressed by the way he handled his material, I’d be jealous as all get out.

Incidentally, as part of my “research,” I checked the movie The Kite Runner out from my college library.  But I couldn’t bear to watch it, because the book had so vividly imprinted its major images on my mind, and with such pain, that I actually didn’t want to relive so fresh a tragedy.  I figured the only thing the movie could do was fill in my complete ignorance about the landscape of Afghanistan.  And since the Afghanistan locations were actually filmed in China, I saw little point.  Instead I let the world I had created in my head stand.  Yet one more triumph of the written narrative over the visual–what it leaves to, and what it demands of, the imagination.

I hope I get to teach an international literature class sometime so I can put this book on the syllabus.

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why we should cut higher education

Posted on November 20, 2010 by Misty

My least favorite local columnist weighs in on why higher education should be cut:  http://www.lmtribune.com/story/opinion/520729/.  The gist, as I read it: institutions of higher learning don’t do enough to produce graduates who engage in wealth-creating careers.  Careers like “activist” or degrees in “women’s studies” (pish!) or just generally being an educated, concerned, informed citizen with the ability for rational and critical thought doesn’t produce wealth, people.  And wealth–not a more educated, thoughtful, etc. citizenry–is what our state/country/world needs!  Dang it!  Let’s get our priorities straight here!

Would Costello be willing to throw his own job as “research technician” out the door in order to slim down that too-large public sector?  I mean, really–how many wealth-producing jobs has he created with his research?  People should be held accountable here.  I don’t care what degree you have framed on your wall.  If you’re not directly contributing to the GNP–the more millions, the better (and we’ll do our best to make sure that as your net worth increases, your tax burden decreases, too, you lovely wealth/job producer, you!)–we’ll–uh–well, we can’t exactly take away your voting rights, but we’ll just cut the legs so far out from under state-supported education that you had better get out there and create wealth so you can afford to send your kids to a private school.  Where, let’s hope, they won’t waste too much time on education in the humanities or sciences but will instead actually learn vocational skills.  Like how to be hedge-fund traders or stock speculators or mortgage brokers or nuclear arms dealers.  Something useful like that.

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um, yeah . . . we kinda have to talk about this

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Misty

A few weeks ago, my local newspaper reported the murder-suicide of a young couple.  They shared the facts, which were essentially these: the couple had an argument.  Family, including children, were in the house.  She went downstairs to cool off.  When she went back upstairs, he shot her.  In the back.  Then he turned the gun on himself.  Fatal shots, both of them.  There had been no history of police calls for domestic abuse, though family did report they had been arguing recently.  This happened–love the irony–during Domestic Violence Awareness Week.

Today, the Opinion page in my local paper ran a letter by a citizen deploring the newspaper’s report as intrusive on this family’s privacy, nothing but tabloid-gossip-rag trash, not remotely resembling real journalism.  They should be ashamed of themselves, this citizen wrote.  They should publish an apology to the family for intruding on their grief.

Beautifully enough–and perhaps, not ironic in the least?–the front page of today’s Sunday paper carries a full-spread article on domestic violence in the Valley.  It talks about recent cases, it talks about frequency, and it reports on what family, neighbors, and community can do to help victims and prevent abuse from turning into murder.

My response?  UMM, YEAH — WE KIND OF HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

Ms. “Respect the Family’s Privacy” would probably call me all sorts of intrusive names for this, but my response to her is, briefly and unkindly: take your squeamish etiquette and shove it.  You and your silence are part of the problem.  You, counseling shameful silence about this couple’s “private” problems.  I’ll bet you pull down the curtain when the couple next door is arguing.  I’ll bet an abused teenager could run out into the street in front of your house and you wouldn’t open the door to let her in.  I’ll bet you think it’s ‘none of your business’ and ‘what happens in the family should stay in the family.’  And when the gunshots go off, you sit there and wonder, “But how?  They seemed like such a nice family . . .”

You, and your kind, are the people who tell a victim to stay with her abuser, aren’t you?  I’ll bet you tell her that as a good and dutiful wife, she just has to be “understanding” about her spouse’s controlling, violent, and verbally abusive tendencies.  I’ll bet you tell her he “doesn’t mean it,” “that’s just how men are,” and a good wife is a support and a prop to her husband, blah blah blah.  I’ll be you make her feel bad about herself for wanting to leave him.  For wanting to flee to safety.  I’ll bet you tell her, “think of the children.”  Well, what do you think of the children who are in the house when Dad shoots Mom, then himself?  I’ll bet you are actually blaming the victim.  Yes, I bet you are saying to herself, “Well, she probably pushed him over the edge.  A man can only take so much.  A man likes to have control in his own household.”

I’m being mean, but I don’t think unnecessarily so.  If I read one more person preaching at me about how a “good Christian wife” sticks by her man thick and thin, I am going to vomit.  This brainwashing of women in our culture makes me want to bite paint off walls.  First we tell them, from about age 3, that they’re not attractive until a man loves them.  Then we evaluate the success of their whole life by the quality of male they attract.  Then we judge them–secretly, and unkindly–when we create needy, desperate women who have no boundaries and have no idea how to love and cherish and respect themselves.

And when we create violent, abusive men who can’t control their impulses and hurt the people who most love and depend on them, we claim no responsibility at all.

Here’s the short list, sister.  If he doesn’t listen to you, respect you, show concern for your well-being, and exhibit basic compassion and a sense of decency for every person in his life, you don’t need him.  You don’t need to try to reform him: you don’t need him.  Plenty of other good guys out there who ought to get to reproduce.  If he runs you down, makes jokes at your expense, belittles your friends or your job or your interests or your family, call him on it.  You don’t need to be treated like that, and no caring person will do that.  If he needs to know where you are at all times–if he starts trying to control your time, or your money–if he appears threatened by your independence, or your connections to other people in your life–these are not signs of abject devotion, sweetie.  These are red flags.

And if he gets verbally abusive with you, it’s a short and fast decline into the physical.  My advice?  The exact opposite of Ms. Concerned Citizen’s.  Leave him.  Pack your bags.  Tell him you’ll be willing to talk with him when he’s gotten into counseling.

Leave him, and possibly get a restraining order in case he’s one of those cases that will track you down with the shotgun and find you wherever you’re hanging out with a new guy friend and try to shoot you both.

Yeah, my advice is terrific, I know.  How do we stop this?  I mean really?  The only solution I see is, fix our culture so we stop creating needy, dependent women and impulse-control-deficient men.

Got any ideas?

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to the military chaplains . . .

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Misty

. . . who fear that repealing the don’t-ask-don’t-tell ban will cramp their “religious expression” in being able to preach that homosexuality is a sin:

You’re kind of in a bind already, aren’t you?  Because we already know there are gays in the military–they keep getting discharged–and all you’re doing, in preaching to your fellow conservative bigots to hate “homosexuals,” is undermining the very kind of coherence, loyalty, and ability to rely on one another that a successful unit needs to succeed.  You aren’t teaching anyone “not” to be a homosexual, just to hide who they are and hate themselves for it, and probably, in the end, transfer that aggression and pain onto another innocent person.  Besides all that, in creating and shaping your baby conservative bigots, you’re confusing them, because they’ve signed up to defend the United States of America, and at my last count, that included plenty of openly gay, bi, trans, and questioning people.  So really, you can’t ask these men and women who have bravely and with a great deal of sacrifice promised to defend their country to only defend the other conservative bigots in their country, can you?  Because the Constitution says that we’re all Americans–whatever our color, whatever our gender or sexuality or handicap or religious leaning or taste for lawn design.  And we are all subject to the same laws and privileged to the same rights, no matter who we are (or are) not sleeping with in our spare time.

So, I have an idea that will get you out of your bind, while still side-stepping the question of whether hate speech counts as “religious expression.”  It’s simple, really.  You won’t even believe me when you hear it.

Stop preaching that homosexuality is a sin.

You heard me right.  Just quit.  Quit seeding this hatred, trouble, fear, distrust, and false judgment.  Stick to the Word of God that came straight from His mouth, paying particular attention to the part where He says, “Love they Lord God with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy spirit, and love thy neighbor as thyself.”  And the part where He says, “What you do to the least of my people, you therefore do to me.”  And the part where He says, “Suffer the little children,” because He doesn’t just mean little children, does he?  He means all the ignored, denigrated, oppressed, and damaged people, and I’ll bet that includes homosexuals, too.

In fact, I’ll bet you anything that if Jesus shows up at your door these days to knock at your heart, it won’t be in the form of a white, wealthy, successful businessman who wants to open a new mega-church with you.  It will be in the form of a scared, bullied, gay youth who has been taught that what he feels is a crime that keeps him from God, and he’s confused as all get out because the Spirit in His heart says just the opposite.  WWJD?  He would get on the side of Spirit and say, “I love you anyway, come here and share my table, and let’s be friends.”

Try to make that what you preach and practice.  It’s just a thought.

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Why I shouldn’t read letters to the editors

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Misty

I have just about had it with the politics around here.  First, the bond to finance a new high school, was defeated–the bond to replace the old, leaky, broken-down high school that is so overcrowded most students have their classes in (uncomfortable, unheated, also overcrowded) portable trailers with a new, energy-efficient, room-for-growth building with appropriate facilities for learning.  Defeated by 38% of the population who believed the blow to their property taxes (for the mid-range home, like mine, about $12 a month) was too much too bear.  That’s right: giving up $12 a month to support the education, welfare, and well-being of students now and to come was just TOO MUCH TO ASK.

The short-sightedness of this dumbfounds me.  I mean it.  I feel dumb with disbelief.

Now I’m reading letters to the editor telling me that the last two years of Democratic government have been just intolerable with rising debt, sagging economy, healthcare and financial legislation, and it’s time to vote Republican to get the country back to “sane” and “controlled” leadership.

I beg your pardon?

Here’s what I remember happening, for 8 years, under the most recent Republican President: terrorist attacks on American soil, two wars, ballooning debt from the get-go due to unwise tax breaks and unlimited government spending, the complete and utter collapse of the economy, the almost total loss of my personal privacy due to the so-called Patriot Act, torture in prisons, loss of environmental protection laws along with encouragement for corporate waste and greed, a huge loss of international esteem for the U.S. (to the point when, traveling abroad, anti-American sentiment was so high that I pretended to be Canadian), and the daily embarrassment of having a leader who couldn’t string two words together properly, even when they were written down for him.  The one piece of legislation that looked like a good idea–strengthening our schools with No Child Left Behind–turned out to be a failure in implementation, producing standardized dummies rather than a leading-edge next generation.

Add to that what I’ve witnessed under two years of Republican leadership in the state I moved to: scaling back of women’s reproductive rights under the law, such massive cuts in education that I feared for my own job as well as the future of my students, my friends’ children, and my own future progeny, enthusiastic support for “business” to the point of giving tax breaks and other loopholes that prevented the collection of taxes that might have staunched the massive amputations to the education budget, cuts to Health & Welfare departments that serve and protect our most vulnerable citizens, and the misuse of (my!) public lands by citizens who are anti-government and believe the rules shouldn’t apply to them.

In the meantime, under an all-too-brief two years of a Democratic presidency, I’ve enjoyed: tax credits for buying a home and upgrading its energy efficiency, which was a huge financial help; the stabilization of the economy so job loss has at least not continued to increase; regain of international esteem because of the administration’s preference for diplomacy rather than neo-imperialistic military action; a commitment to environmental preservation and developing sustainable communities; protection from credit-card and other financial companies who would otherwise prey on me; and the promise that, should I ever lose my job, I can’t be denied health coverage because of my pre-existing medical condition.  Not to mention the peace of mind of knowing someone intelligent, informed, surrounded by sound advisors, and diligently dedicated to recovering the security, prosperity, and future hopes of this country was at the helm.  A Nobel-peace-prize winner, no less.

And this guy writing the letter to my local editor wants me to vote Republican.

Forgive me if I fail to see the logic in his argument.  I’m blinded by the hard evidence of my own personal experience.

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Waiting for Daisy, by Peggy Orenstein

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Misty

The past few weeks have been a lot of prepping for the start of the fall semester, reading every pregnancy book I can get my hands on, and riding the up-and-down of pregnancy hormones.  I seem to have morning sickness all day.  Every day.  I am so tired my bones feel weary.  When it gets too hot, I want to throw up–and the weather is averaging above 80 degrees.  When I go to the grocery store or try to gas up my car, I want to throw up.  When I start cooking dinner, I want to throw up.  The only time my husband has eaten well in the past month was the week his parents were visiting us–they took us out to eat, I think, almost every night–and the days he cooks.  He will probably shrink while I continue to expand.

And I didn’t post to this blog, frankly, because the state of my own mind was frightening me.  Everything I read in the pregnancy books terrified me.  The estimated rate of miscarriage is one in five pregnancies.  (1 in 5?  Are you kidding me?  How did the planet get so overpopulated, in that case?)  The estimated rate of miscarriage for confirmed pregnancies in 1 in 10.  Complications are greater among women age 35 or older (me), women who have thyroid disease (me), women who don’t engage in regular healthy exercise (alas, me).  I spent every day fighting the fear that I am doing or have already done half a dozen things to irrevocably damage my child.  I spent every night writing in my journal: “Surrender.  Surrender.  Surrender.”

One of the least wise choices I made during this time, or so it would seem initially, was to pick up a memoir (in fact, more than a memoir) by a woman who struggled to get pregnant and ran into virtually every complication that you can imagine.  I wanted to read Waiting for Daisy because the author is a feminist as well as a mother, and I was yearning for wise, feminist, mother-voices to instruct and guide me.  But in this book Peggy Orenstein recounts her tremendous and astonishingly heart-breaking struggles with pregnancy and fertility.  Breast cancer.  Three miscarriages.  Two failed IVF cycles.  One failed egg donation.  Even, unbelievably, a failed adoption.  As I wailed to my partner about every excruciating turn this book took–including the episode where the author spends time with her friends who have 15, count ‘em, FIFTEEN healthy children–he kept saying to me, “Put it down!  Put it down!  Back away!”  But I couldn’t.  I had to keep reading.  Somehow, as I read about every harrowing loss, I could only imagine heart-break as the end of my own pregnancy.  And for the same insane reason, I was certain that once I got to the end–once Peggy had won through to her happy ending–then a happy ending was assured for me, as well.

It’s no spoiler for me to point out that the author now has a beautiful, healthy daughter named Daisy.  That information is in the biographical note on the back cover.  I won’t tell you how Daisy comes to her; that is the book’s mystery and delight.  But once Daisy had actually arrived, I put the book down with a huge sigh of relief . . . and found that my own fears about my pregnancy had more or less disappeared.

Yes, there are still things to be concerned about.  The nurse at my OB’s office gave me a whole bag of information to read and learn–what to eat, what not to eat, when to call the hotline, what to look foward to, when I should worry, when I should not.  Daily nutrition is a battle since I feel daily like a seasick fever victim and, now that teaching has begun, I basically have to snatch snacks–and five minutes in which to rest and close my eyes–in between all the classes, student advising, and committee meetings that have suddenly cropped up to fill my time.  It’s hard to compel myself to do the prenatal yoga video when I just want to collapse in bed, and so far I haven’t yet made good on my promise to sign up for a membership at the aquatic center, so I can go swimming.  I’m near the end of Week 8 and hanging in there for the end of the first trimester and the promised “pregnancy honeymoon” of the second trimester, when my energy comes back, the nausea settles, my enthusiasm for life (and for intimacies with my partner) returns, and I start having a real bump to show for my efforts, rather than just a slight roll of fat.

But somehow, Peggy Orenstein laid my demons to rest.  I’m no longer in constant fear of miscarriage or constantly worried that I will damage my child.  Maybe meeting with the nurse and being on their calendar made it feel more real.  Maybe my calm is due to my hairstylist’s sister, who was 10 weeks pregnant when I went to get my hair cut and was full of helpful advice; just knowing of another woman going through the same thing, right now, was an enormous relief and support.  Maybe I’ve finally started listening to my own intuition, which tells me that this little embryo is strong, healthy, and here to stay.  After all, she didn’t waste her time getting here–our window between the first “try” and actually conceiving was all of one month, which suggests to me that she is already a determined little thing.  But Orenstein’s book, more than that, reminded me of a universal truth that I had overlooked.  Statistics don’t describe humans.  Nature, God, Spirit–whatever you want to call it–is wiser than we think.  So are our own bodies.  The stories of other people are not, after all, my own experience.  My path is mine.  I’m ready to walk it–my path–not anybody else’s.

I also can’t wait to start telling other people, besides my nearest and dearest (and my hairstylist, and my pharmacist, and my OB), that I’m pregnant.  I feel like I have this big, fat gift for the world and I want to let everyone know it’s coming.

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pregnancy books are not necessarily pro-woman

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Misty

The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki IovineNow, this book’s copyright is 1995.  A lot has changed in 15 years, so maybe it’s not even fair to throw raw eggs at what, in 1995, was probably a really good idea.  But I seem to recall looking over this book at a bookstore about eight years ago when a friend of mine was pregnant.  I saw the title and thought yes, just what I need: by a woman, for women, and it won’t endlessly harp on the husband/partner role, which my friend did not have in a supportive capacity.  But nope, this book made the same assumption as every other: that every woman reading it has a husband, has a planned (or at least longed-for pregnancy), and someone else who will financially and emotionally and nutritionally support her (as well as, in the case of the author, driving her to the psychiatrist when pregnancy hormones make her act like an infant herself).  In addition, this book is aimed at those women whose main pregnancy concerns are: 1) just how fat will I get?  2) just how ugly will I look?  3) what can I possibly wear to make myself look better? and 4) just how much is labor going to hurt, exactly?

I did actually spend money to purchase the book for myself, though, a couple of days ago, and now I’m rather sorry that I did.  I starting reading in the bookstore and the funny, breezy tone appealed to me more than the “you are about to spawn new life, what an amazing, beautiful experience that is the ultimate fulfillment of your womahood!”-toned sorts of books.  The other (real) reason I selected this one was because it was the only one marked used and therefore at a bargain price.  Now I have made the connection that “used” means “somebody didn’t think it was all that great, and brought it back.”

Vanity Fair cover featuring Demi MooreTo try to be fair, again, there is lots of information that is useful here.  Pregnancy is a whole-body experience; my body will not likely look like a pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, nor like a twin-bearing Angelina Jolie at the Cannes Film Festival.  The discussion of physical changes was actually quite useful, since it was all new information to me–first pregnancy, first pregnancy book, remember.  The advice on how to choose an obstetrician and what to be aware of was helpful, and the chapter on prenatal tests was very educative.  Also useful was the list of things to take to the hospital with you when you deliver.  Four or five times I laughed out loud at Iovine’s witticisms and, if my husband was within earshot, let him in on the joke.  I also read with interest the chapter on what husbands think about pregnant wives, because I whenever I ask my husband what he thinks of this whole business, I get a low, inarticulate mumble in response which is enough to say, let’s not talk about this right now.

The polish wore off rather quickly, however.  I found myself resenting the assumption that pregnancy only happens with a husband.  Yes, I understand that is the audience to which the book is aimed, but even though I happen to be pregnant with a husband, I have plenty of friends who found themselves pregnant via IVF, pregnant and abandoned, pregnant and widowed, pregnant with a spouse overseas, or pregnant and quite young.  So Iovine’s profile of Girlfriends (all slim, married fashionistas) struck me as rather limiting from the first.

Second, what sold me on the book–the breezy, funny tone–soon turned to shallow superficiality.  As I do not share the author’s concerns about my weight and shape, the constant joking referral to the idea that facing the scale would present a bone-chilling horror wore a little thin.  It so happens that I had my first check-up today and watched the number on the scale with interest; I’m curious to see how fat I’ll get, quite honestly, since I see no shame in being curvy even when you’re not pregnant, and when you’re someone else’s breadbasket, as far as I’m concerned, you have a free pass to waddle and wallow as you wish.

The book, overall, is aimed at the same people who enjoy Sex and the City without an amused distance, who in fact identify with the SATC girls and their weight/looks/sex/attractiveness/fashion concerns.  The author’s obsessions with same started to bore me after a while as I simply don’t relate to that.  I have no worries about whether I will be a stylish pregnant woman and I don’t need anyone telling me what to wear, so that was one chapter I skimmed.  I’m pretty sure I will figure out how to dress myself, continue to have intimate relations with my spouse, and try on a maternity bathing suit all on my own.  Perhaps because I am already lucky enough to have my own Girlfriends, it wasn’t a news flash to have Iovine bluntly tell me that my body will never get back to what it was.  And this is actually not a concern.  Last night I had my husband take pictures of me (at 4 weeks) so we have, later, a visual reminder of what this body once looked like, since, as I told him, we’ll never see it again.  But I said this (at the time, at least) in a playful mood, and without regret.  I’m actually not that attached to the way I look and therefore the Guide’s persistent obsessions with this topic spurred me to turn pages rather quickly.

Trying to be fair, yet again, I think the book merits a 2.5 out of 5 stars.  Half of the chapters were helpful.  But the truth is, the bulk of this book just annoyed me.  Most of the reasons are personal: I think I would feel much kinder towards the author and the book if I’d felt, just once, I felt Iovine was actually speaking to me–if she could step outside of the weight/looks/attractiveness obsession and say, “but you might be a bit different.”  Or, “I need to exercise like a maniac to feel I’m doing anything, but you might actually enjoy yoga, or swimming, or walking,” or what have you.  It was just so clear that she was talking not as an understanding Girlfriend but to people Just Like Her.

The other beef I have is that I think assuming your readership (a) has a husband to go with the pregnancy and (b) keeping that breezy, SATC-ish, attitude that all women really care about is fashion, their weight, cocktails, and their sex appeal and it’s all very funny is anti-feminist, anti-woman, and anti-Sisterhood.  (C) and most severe, I felt a bit insulted by Iovine’s repeated assumption that I would become nothing but a shivering, screaming mass of pregnancy hormones.  I have yet to meet a woman whose reactions to pregnancy hormones was as dramatic, pronounced, and prolonged as Iovine’s seemed to be, so maybe I should cut her a little slack.  In addition, she pumped out 4 kids in 6 years–as if in a race, or on a treadmill–and those successive pregnancies are very hard on a body, which might account for why she writes as though the whole time she was pregnant she needed strong meds and couldn’t have them.

But all of my Girlfriends have managed to remain functional adults for most of their pregnancies.  Most of them continued working, teaching, or going to school throughout.  Sure, some spouses will admit to a few “difficult moments.”  I can already attest that I feel like crying six times a day; just imagining holding a fully-formed infant makes me choke up.  I expect it will be an emotional roller-coaster some or even most of the time.  But I also expect that I will still be able to adhere to certain standards of self-respect and self-control, nevertheless.  I have friends who went through this alone and were terrified by it, so crying and screaming at my husband because he didn’t bring the ice cream fast enough is, I hope, something which I will be too ashamed of myself to do.

Perhaps I am simply missing the point and I, too, just need to relax and have more of a sense of humor.  It’s funny to picture women as just really worried about our figures and the latest fashions, right? As my husband said several times, when I registered a gripe with him: “just stop reading the book!”  But I read it so I could make a fair analysis, and the fair analysis is this: I actually don’t find it funny when women treat each other like the ultimate secret of the Sisterhood is that we’re all just hormonal dummies at the mercy of our own biology, and the reason we get together is because, since no sane person wants to listen to us, we can cry and scream and bitch and complain to one another.

I’m going to keep this book for the list of things to pack for the trip to the hospital, and then it will probably get sold back to the bookstore.  On the other hand, since the other books I’ve since begun reading not only have given me the same or even better information, and seem a little bit more pro-woman to boot, maybe I won’t even need to keep it that long.

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pregnancy politics

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Misty

So, the little plastic pee-stick tells me that I have just joined the ranks of reproducing women.  I’ve accomplished what 17-year-olds across this grand country achieve every day: I’ve gotten myself impregnated by a virile man.  Although in my case, the event was hoped-for, I am in a committed relationship, we’re both educated and have sound health histories, and we have jobs that put us solidly in the middle-class tax bracket.  Plus we don’t smoke or do drugs, and I’ve stopped enjoying my occasional glass of wine, so I like to think this embryo has some advantages already.

In the two days since the pee-stick confirmed what I had already suspected, I’ve noticed that my politics have changed.  Not that I’ve gone from ultra-liberal to anything else; I still consider myself a radical feminist, pro-socialist (some days peaceful anarchist), pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-liberty and justice for all, regardless of class race religious persuasion sexual orientation etc.  Let’s make that clear.  But two things have changed about my behavior.  Now, when the charities call asking for donations, I feel the clutch of possessiveness.  Instead of saying yes, which is my policy as often as possible (because all of the major spiritual traditions encourage charitable giving), I now say, I’m afraid I can’t give at this time.  My reason, which I don’t tell them, is that I intend to channel all my available resources to the support and health of this baby.

How quickly me and mine have occluded my vision, when I know darn well that separateness is an illusion, that that disabled child or injured firefighter or woman fighting breast cancer is me, belongs to me, is part of the universal body just as much as I am.   And yet how odd the complete lack of guilt I feel at reassigning my priorities and deciding that all I have to give to go will this little prospective being first, and then I’ll share what’s leftover.

The second change in my behavior is that, right now at least, I feel kinder and gentler towards everybody.  The annoying habits of my cats now charm and amuse me.  (We’ll see how long that lasts.)  I smile and wave at the neighbors I pass while taking my daily walk.  I feel warm and compassionate even toward the tattooed, pierced boy in the flame-painted car who starts a shouting match in the gas station parking lot, then quickly drives away, gunning his souped-up engine.  He is just a boy, somebody’s baby, and he’s trying to figure out how to best live in the world, just as I am.

So already I am entertaining two conflicting or contradictory impulses at once.  I suspect this is the general state of incarnation– of life on earth school, as Caroline Myss calls it–as well as the defining state of parenthood.  The third contradictory impulse is that, much as I feel kinder towards people in specific at this moment (even though I will only give them my love and kind thoughts, not my money), I feel an almost desperate urge to move away where I currently live.

I live in a city where people on bikes get whacked in the head with a crowbar by people passing in trucks who don’t care to share the road.  I live in an area where groups have to post billboards telling kids not to do meth because the kids apparently aren’t smart enough to figure this out for themselves, or don’t have proper guardian figures giving them this message.  I live in a place where citizens get insanely protective of their right to bear arms but don’t protest much when the state government slashes funds for public education, protests the federal health bill that seeks to get care to the poorest and most struggling of its citizens, or passes laws restricting a woman’s access to birth control.  In this state, it seems, taxing the wealthy or businesses to try to save disappearing public services is equivalent of a trespass against God.  “Don’t redistribute my wealth” is the sign people hold at Tea Party rallies, while cheering on speakers who make threats to hang, or assassinate, or otherwise harass elected officials who are trying to represent the best interests of the general populace.

I try hard to remember that I like people around here individually.  I like the neighbors I chat with on the street, who introduce me to their dogs.  I adore my colleagues at the institution of higher learning at which I teach.  There are many, many people in this community and surrounding areas who are civic-minded, who lend their time and money to make a better quality of life for all, who do protest actions and legislation that seem to do more harm than good.  Those people are out there and, I like to tell myself, they are probably the quiet majority.  Yet when I read the discussions in the daily paper, or the bumper stickers and other expressions posted around the town, or have one more person cut me off in traffic because he feels he is more important than I am (certainly too important to be a courteous driver), I feel appalled by the general lack of anti-community-spirit and I feel this pressing at me, like it is trying to spit me out.

Because it’s not just me that can be bummed out by attitudes that education is a luxury, and health care is a service that can’t be mandated rather than a basic human right, and sexual orientation or other religions are aberrances from one right way, and everybody who doesn’t agree with you is a worthless idiot who should get called names in your letter to the editor.  I don’t want my baby to grow up in a place where she could get whacked with a crowbar for riding her bike on the street, where her public school system will fail her, where instead of funding services to increase the health and education of the general populace, the state government spends its time debating legislation to restrict citizens’ rights (in the name of Christian values) and spends its money trying to lure businesses . . . to a state that has undercut education, essentially abolished academic tenure by giving college presidents the right to fire at will, doesn’t have enough money to maintain its road, and slashes welfare programs rather than taxing businesses or abundant income.  (I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.)  Before I felt it was a type of service to live in this environment and do my best to educate my students.  I thought of it as my personal Peace Corps.  But now, carrying around this embryo and looking at the world into which I want to bring her, I just want out.  I want her to be in a different world.  The best world possible, rather than this one.

But is it really any better anywhere else?

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