I'd say on the whole things are improving, but locally they are still not as pleasing as I would look.

Improvement the first: Ken's wrist is definitely getting better, and they are pleased enough by his progress that he has two different splints instead of an enormous heavy cast. He is even allowed to take off his splint for showering purposes, so the plastic bag & rubberbands can be removed from the bathroom. He'll get X-rayed again in about 10 days, and if all has continued to go well he should be splint-free at that point.

Improvement the second: My cold is on the mend, such that this weekend I was able to return to sleeping horizontally instead of semi-vertically. My neck and shoulders are pleased.

Sadly, I am now entangled in a huge confusing pile of beauracracy about my car, which is at the very least going to involve a DMV appointment, and might involve much paperwork, faxing things to & from Florida, and all sorts of other hassle. I am hoping, though, that the single DMV appointment next week will cover it. And at least I get to feel virtuous about attempting to untangle the confusion.

There are good things, many of them; there is a soft warm cat in my lap right now, and another one sleeping in the living room. I had homemade clam pasta for lunch, and I get to see friends for dinner, including some I don't see very often. I have made minor progress on cleaning out the library so that another bookcase can be added to it, and in doing some had the chance to luxuriate in my piles and piles of books. There is no shortage of things to read in my apartment, not even if I never go to the library again, except of course I go to the library all the time. I'm currently reading The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young, and an early 17th century poetry anthology (England's Helicon), plus a few issues of The New Yorker because I'm always behind.

In the to-read pile... well, that's another post!

I've been thinking about Tolkien lately, in large part due to kate_nepveu's chapter by chapter reread of LoTR that she's blogging about on tor.com. And thus, while reading John Buchan on Sir Walter Scott's novels, I was struck by this:

I am willing to go farther and argue that, without some such salt of the pedestrian, romance becomes only a fairy tale and tragedy a high-heeled strutting. The kernel of romance is contrast, beauty and valour flowering in unlikely places, the heavenly rubbing shoulders with the earthly. The true romantic is not the Byronic hero; he is the British soldier whose idea of a beau geste is to dribble a football into the enemy's trenches; he is some such type as the Georgian sea-captains who wore woollen underclothing, and loved food and wine and the solid comforts of the hearth when they were not about their business of fighting; or some warrior like old Sir Andrew Agnew at the battle of Dettingen, who thus exhorted his regiment: 'My lads, ye see these loons on yon hill there; weel, if ye dinna kill them, they'll kill you.' All romance, all tragedy, must be within haling distance of our humdrum lives, and anti-climax is the necessary adjunct to climax.

(From: Some Notes on Sir Walter Scott, The English Association Pamphlet No. 58, March 1924.)

I can say nothing about how this applies to Scott, and I don't share Buchan's dismissive view of fairy tales, but it nonetheless struck me that this is something I now love in Tolkien that, when I was a teenager, put me right off of his novels. I couldn't figure out how to understand that mix of the mundane and the exalted; how could a book have both elves and Gaffer Gamgee? My ideal fantasy novels in adolescence were Guy Kay's Fionavar, in which (as I recall from quite a distance now) everything happens at a fever pitch all the time and there's absolutely nothing ordinary about anyone or anything. It's my impression that most modern Tolkien-imitating fantasy fails to imitate that part of it. And from there I was reminded of Pebbles on the Shore a 1916 book of essays by Alfred George Gardiner (writing with the lyrical pseudonym Alpha of the Plough) that I read a few years back. In response to someone claiming that the prime minister isn't taking war seriously, Gardiner writes:

But all the same, so far from being shocked to learn that Mr. Asquith can talk about poetry in these days, the fact, if it be a fact, increases my confidence in his competence for his task. I should suffer no pain even if I heard that he took a hand of cards after dinner, and I hope he takes care to get a game of golf at the week-end. I like men who have great responsibilities to carry their burdens easily, and to relax the bow as often as possible. [...] There is nothing more mistaken than the view that because a thing is serious you must be thinking about it seriously all the time.

Which when I first read it put into sharp focus for me a lot of the humour in LotR, as well as the moments in which some of the characters (in my memory it's most often Sam & Frodo) have a chance to slacken their metaphorical bows, drink deep of pure water, and refresh themselves in body and spirit before returning to their task. My adolescent self did feel like serious things must be taken seriously All The Time. Now, in my early 30s, I am glad for moments of respite, however brief they might be.

G-d, I hate being angry.

I mean, I just hate it. I hate the way it feels in my body, I hate the adrenaline, I hate the way my brain circles around & around the thing I'm angry about, unable to let go of it and think of something else. When I get angry when I'm fighting (in the professional teaching/learning self-defense sense) I can do something about it -- defend myself -- and it goes through my body and dissipates. When I'm angry personally, though, there doesn't seem to be any way to process the emotion.

Writing this it occurs to me that 'hate' and 'anger' are clearly not the same emotion for me, which I find somewhat surprising. But hate feels like a mental judgement, whereas anger is something my body decides.

But now I am distracted both by a rush of physical exhaustion & the need to get ready to take my husband to his appointment with an orthopedist, so --

Life is being rather complicated.

Yesterday on his way to work my poor husband hit a patch of gravel on his bike & had to jump off to avoid slamming into a metal barrier. This led to much, much time spent at the doctor so that the nasty cut on his chin could get cleaned up and stitched, and then (because the radiology department at our local branch of PAMF was closed, and all of the computers for all of PAMF apparently down) a trip to Palo Alto to get inconclusive X-rays of his left arm (we'll know more sometime today), and then a lengthy wait at the pharmacy to get the antibiotics he needs to take to make sure nothing gets infected. By the time we got home we were both very tired, so pizza was ordered, and I flopped about playing Persona 3 (thank you caelano!) while Ken read on the couch, and eventually the pizza arrived and there was food and I went to bed very early wondering why the heck I was so sleepy....

And then I found out -- I have come down with the cold that has been ravaging my social circle! So I am tired and cranky and full of snot, and even more tired because every time the cat jumped on the bed last night I woke up worried they would walk on Ken's arm. Ken is home at least for today and possibly for longer, but we don't know because his doctor hasn't called him yet, maybe because their computers are still down and so the X-rays are having to be brought over by carrier pigeons. It is a Mystery.

Anyway, things here are okay, but man all of my energy and excitement and desire to write here has been massively derailed, although as always in writing about my derailment I start to remember why it is I want to write here again. I don't know if I'm going to make 35k on my novel before Sunday, though.

How are all of you?

ETA: The doctor has finally called, and Ken has a fractured wrist. Off to another doctor's appointment!

ETA2: We just got a call from the orthopedist, who told him to keep the splint on 24/7 (instead of removing it to ice or shower), and to come in on Friday afternoon (instead of today) so they can see how it's healing & make further decisions. I am relieved to have more of an idea of what's going on.

As you all know, I read LJ extremely irregularly, so it wasn't until yesterday that I came across the complex and often painful discussion about cultural appropriation that's been going on in various journals these last 10 or so days. But when I did I started to read, and then I read, and read, and read some more, and tried my hardest to listen and understand, since this is one of the many (many) things I struggle with fear around in my own (so far completely unpublished, and indeed almost entirely unseen by others) writing.

I'm white. Lots of people didn't believe this when I was growing up, which is another post, but nonetheless I'm quite thoroughly white. The characters I write are also white, because that's my comfort zone, and because I can't really figure out how to do race in subcreation, and finally what is really the core of the other two: because I am absolutely terrified that if I tried to write someone who wasn't white, I'd get it wrong.

I used to feel this fear even talking to people who weren't white, the fear that I'd do it wrong, offend, harm, damage, and that the person I was talking to would get mad at me and think I was a bad person -- and they'd be right. I'm grateful to SFSU for changing this; being one of the only white women in my counselling classes caused me to realise that I could screw up in good faith and learn from my mistakes, even when people were angry at me. Still, in my writing I feel an enormous sense of helplessness. I see the anger that gets expressed when a white person does it wrong, and I am horrified to think of that anger being expressed towards me.

Yesterday I read deepad's post: White people, its not all about you, but for this post it is, in which she addresses some of the comments white people brought up during these discussions. One of her answers had an enormous impact on me, and so I'm quoting it in full:

Statement: I'm a white male, and this suggests that I'm not allowed to write anything but white males.

Response: Physically--White males experience less censorship than any other demographic on this planet. They have easier access to more resources including paper, pens, computers and dictaphones. Not only do they have more ability to access the internet to publish online; they also have the world's strongest publishing industry statistically supporting them more than any other group. Nobody is less prevented from writing whatever the hell they want to.
Intellectually--When you imply that POC are disallowing you from writing something, what you are really saying is their their disapproval affects you to a degree that you are willing to pretend that they have the power to alter your choices. This is disenginous.
Morally--I realise this is hard to understand sometimes, because it is a very fundamental difference between post-colonial and imperial nations, so I'll try to be clear.

When you are part of the dominant culture, you are in a system that rewards your default way of living as being termed 'right', and you grow up thinking that being 'wrong' is bad, and therefore a serious enough offence to either paralyse you, or invoke anger at the name-caller.
When you are a minority or a survivor of an oppressive system, you are used to your identity being termed 'wrong', and you work on the assumption that the systems are all broken. You do not trust power to not be used for oppression, opportunity to not be used for selfish advancement, intelligence to not be used against justice, and discernment to not be used to create bigotry.
We are not used to throwing our abusers in jail after three strikes--we negotiate with our abusers being our bosses and television hosts and school teachers and peacekeeping forces and our clergy. When someone tells us we are wrong, we can't run away or banish them, we learn to live with them, and with ourselves.
Try to put yourself in this mindset when you hear someone saying you were wrong.

I am amazed to realise very deeply that, yes, my fear of standing out -- and my ability to fit in -- are part of my white privilege. It's a privilege I was sometimes challenged on as a child, which might be why I've been guarding it so jealously this last five or ten years, but it's certainly one I have now. Unlike many other people, I have the ability to do it right simply by keeping my mouth shut.

As I told deepad:

[...] I've always taken it for granted that being wrong is horrifying, even deadly. That being told I'm not blending in is dangerous unto death.

Your 2nd response above (to the 'I'm a white male') has given me a new way to look at my own fear, and to see how much of that fear comes from the privilege I enjoy as part of the dominant culture. Your suggestion to "try to put yourself in this mindset" is terrifying and exhilarating to me both at once. I'm going to try it.

And so here I am, trying it. I'll no longer be locking all my (fairly rare) journal posts, although there will probably be the occasional TMI physical condition post that is locked out of a sense of privacy rather than a sense of fear. Imagine my surprise to realise that they might not be the exact same thing!

Attention local people with daughters age 12-16!

If you'd like to put your daughter into a self-defense class in San Francisco this weekend for free, contact me by 10pm tonight (via LJ comment or email) and I will gift you one, as I've just found out that I temporarily have that power. No previous martial arts experience necessary, and girls with disabilities are welcome.

This is the class that I have taught many times, although I'm not teaching this particular weekend. I am happy to answer questions about what we teach & how it works & why it's so very cool.

The class is:
December 13-14, 2008
Saturday December 13: 1:30 - 5:30pm
Sunday December 14: 12pm - 5pm

Feel free to spread this information to people you know who might benefit, but I do need to be involved for them to get the class for free, so make sure that they contact me before the deadline!

HAPPY HAPPY TRIP-DAY!!!!

You are my favouritest Trip-chan ever, and I am so glad I know you!

I know I hardly ever post, and I'm sorry about that, really I am.

But!

Ken and I are going to be in London for 8 days in September, and I would love to hear about cool things to do there, especially things which I am not as likely to find in my Lonely Planet guide, like bookstores and yummy local not-famous restaurants and things like that. We're already planning to do lots of museums and an afternoon trip to see Charleston and maybe Battle Abbey or something like that. I am rereading Eleanor Farjeon, which makes me want to wander around Sussex. We might go to Hay-on-Wye overnight, if I can manage that level of organisation, but since we're going to be relying on public transit to get everywhere I'm not sure how feasible that'll be.

I'd also *really* love advice on where to stay, both specific places and more general ideas about which bits of London one might want to live in for most of a week. When we stayed in Vancouver (BC) for our honeymoon, we lucked out by finding a neighbourhood with a beautiful Victorian B&B from which we could walk to organic bakeries and Greek restaurants and bookstores. Surely there's somewhere like that in (or near) London? (Near is fine, I think, since starting the adventurous part of the day with a short (20-30m?) train ride into London and then going to museums all day and then training back seems perfectly reasonable to me.)

Any and all thoughts are most gratefully welcome!

Happy New Year!

If anyone is interested in the self-defense stuff I do & would like to see some of it live, Impact is having its big annual fundraiser this Saturday:

http://www.impactbayarea.org/impact.php?Mugathon2005/Mugathon2005.html

The fundraiser is designed as a big party & chance to practise fighting for the people who've already taken our classes, so if you want to hear explanation & discussion of what we do & why we do it in these particular ways, this might not be for you.  But if you're interested in seeing a demonstration of self-defense for children, or simply in seeing some Impact-style fights, please feel free to drop by!

http://www.impactbayarea.org/impact.php?Mugathon2005/MugathonSchedule.html

I'm going to be there, coaching fights and drinking hot cider (ooh, I hope there really is hot cider; there has been in past years!) and I'm always happy to answer questions.  If you do show up feel free to ask for me & introduce yourself if I don't already know you!  You can drop in & leave at any time & nobody will expect you to give them money, unless you're buying a brownie or something.

Happy Birthday papersky!

Happy Happy liralen day!

I hope it's wonderful for you!

AB849, Gender-Neutral Marriage in California, moves to Arnold

Speculation is that The Governorator may veto the bill. If you want to express your opinion on the bill, you can dial his office at 916-445-2841, where a fairly simple phone tree will let you express your opinions even outside of office hours.
(Press 2 to indicate that you want to register an opinion on legislation, then 1 to indicate that you want to register an opinion on AB849, finally 1 to indicate support of (or 2 to indicate an opinion against) AB849. It'll take less than a minute.)

[copied from neko_san, who got it from joedecker]

Happy birthday beloved husband yessod!

Happy birthday lcohen and cija!

Congress is moving to cut all funding for PBS & NPR in the next two years:

A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

(quotes from: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=745 -- it redirects to a Washington Post article).

http://www.moveon.org/publicbroadcasting/ has a convenient online method of sending email to local Congresspeople.

Our commercial is up on the web!

Here's the high-bandwidth version.

Here's the low-bandwidth version.

Those are both in .wmv format, which I know WinAmp can handle.  Hopefully we'll have it available in other formats soon.

I just watched it twice, which made me cry and also really, really made me want to teach again.

treasure trove of Greek and Roman writing finally decoded.

It's enough to make me want to major in Classics instead of English -- but really in the end all desires on my part to major in Classics can be traced back to pameladean's Tam Lin.  Still, would just one Greek class at SFSU (once I get there, which won't be until 2006) hurt?

Today is the first day I've had to simply sit and poke around online in weeks.  I'm really enjoying it.

Happy Birthday jonquil!

I hope you have a fantastic day!

Right now Impact has an advertisement running at the Parkway theatre in Oakland.  This in itself is very cool; a lot of people donated time & effort & money & skills to make it happen.

Today I found out that our ad made Best of the East Bay in a magazine!  We won Butt-Kickingest Low-Budget Ad.  Woo hoo!

It's also really fascinating reading the description of the ad; I've been around this work for so long now that I tend to take what we do for granted, and reading about someone seeing it for the first time ... it gave me chills.  I love being reminded that our students really are just that cool.