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Jan. 30th, 2013 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* There has been a catastrophic explosion during shift change at the headquarters of the Mexican State oil company Pemex. Twenty Five are confirmed dead with at least a hundred wounded. Rescue workers in Mexico City are very experienced there which very much helps, and they are still searching the rubble for survivors. There is no official statement as to cause as investigations are ongoing. Red Cross joined rescue workers quickly on the scene and they are a good bet if you are moved to help.
* The various sides are arguing over what exactly happened yesterday between Israel and Syria. It's sounding like Israel hit a military research center in Syria, though there is an alternate claim that they hit a military convoy moving missiles to Lebanon. I'll let y'all know more when I hear more. Israel also just refused to turn up for Human Rights Review at the UN in regards to their actions on the Gaza Strip. A UN report understandably accuses them of violating the human rights of Palestinians.
* Yet more attempts by republicans to strip away women's basic rights:
* We need to answer more hard questions about sexual assault in the military:
* Myths about women and guns:
* "Being Fearlessly Out And Trans Is A Revolutionary Act:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/01/being-fearlessly-out-and-trans-is.html
* John Stewart looks at contradictions, illogic, and out right fantasy in right wing arguments against sensible gun regulations:
* Stephen Colbert on the KKK attempting to rebrand themselves:
* Stephen Colbert's comments on the fight against marriage equality:
* We've been having a conversation elsewhere about the need to overhaul our military just generally and put in reality based job requirements and minimums rather than relying on traditional ones that don't fit the needs of a modern force with modern weapons and needs. I'm reposting my remarks here as they may be of general interests. I have made small corrections, mostly for clarity as I was responding to someone else:
The Canadians rehauled their whole system when they decided to open all jobs to women. They decided to go with reality based testing. For example, infantry people don't actually need to do X number of push ups in Y amount of time. Instead they need to be able to carry a hundred pound pack for a long march or jog and the ability to carry a wounded soldier their approximate size to safety. They decided yo base the strength and endurance tests on real world tasks like the latter instead of arbitrary measures like the former and it's not done them any harm as far as units fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I've been arguing for us doing a similar overhaul of our system since the late '80's. What are the actual skills and physical attributes you need for the job? Let's test those.
Re: Disabled folks in the military: I do not see why a stateside drone operation or person doing computer data entry stateside needs legs, for example. We should get realistic about this. Sure, you likely don't want someone in a power chair in front line infantry combat, but I do not see why the same person couldn't do logistical support type jobs. You'd need to reclassify certain jobs as being for non-combatants entirely, but it would really help with the person power issues they are currently experiencing.
Again, this isn't a new idea and historically, various militaries including our own have made use of disabled soldiers and sailors for jobs they were still fit for. The loss of one or body parts was so common in tall ship combat that if they kicked out everyone who'd lost something, there wouldn't be enough experienced seamen to field a reasonable number of vessels. Again, they were sensible about it. You don't want someone with a missing leg climbing rigging, but there's no reason a man missing an eye or only a couple fingers couldn't do it, and there were jobs you could do that didn't involve climbing.
* Do not take the above as an endorsement of our drone program as I have serious problems with it. It is merely a statement that if we are going to have stateside drone operators, there is no reason it has to be a job only for able bodied people.
* "It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being 'It'. Group of Men Have Played Game of Tag for 23 Years; Hiding in Bushes, Cars:" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578269991660836834.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Look, laugh all you want, but part of how I survived my childhood was through skills I learned playing tag and hide 'n Seek. I'm betting the extended game keeps them tactically and strategically sharp in ways that could help in adult life.
* I went to bed way early, hoping to make up some of the sleep I lost. Hector decided about half way through that I needed to wake up. It went on for hours. Of course. By the time I finally convinced him to shut up and sleep, I was too awake to go back to sleep. Sigh. Instead of my hoped for ten hours, I got less than eight. I ended up doing some reading and continuing my rewatch of a beloved movie I will talk about in a bit. I then dragged myself out to get for juice and OTC meds. (I realized when it was much too late, I should have gone to get prescription meds too while I was out.) Anyway, I went to check mail before going in and there was a package of the maximum size that could fit in the package bin. It was also heavy. So I have to balance stuff on tp of the box and carry it down stairs one handed on a day when feeding my fish leaves me winded.
The boys who live above me are the one I think of as Tall Paul Ryan and a boy who is one of those poor unfortunate fellows who got his secondary sexual characters late. I'm not mocking him. It can really suck socially to be in college but to look like a 9th grader, and I feel for him on that one. I haven't interacted with him much, but everything I've seen of him speaks well of him. He has the room directly above mine. This means that every time my head clears the stair top, I am looking into his room whether I want to or not. (I can not navigate stairs with my eyes closed, especially ones that steep and cementy). He's clearly working hard in school, he has an interesting goth girlfriend, and he's got a window decoration suggesting a geeky sense of humor I approve of. He and his roommate are quiet, considerate upstairs neighbors and invariably polite in person. So like I said, I root for him. It makes me happy he's finally losing that unformed look and his adult features are starting to show through. I'm glad he and his girlfriend seem happy when I see them together out and about or doing their homework in quiet compabnionship.
The thing is, like I mentioned, he lives at the head of the stairs and works with the blind up, so he can see everyone who goes past, just like they can see him. He looked up from his homework, likely alerted by the thump of my crutch and my wheezing to see me trying to balance my box and groceries with one hand while trying to navigate the purgatorial stairs without tumbling to my death.
Gentle readers, he was out the door in a flash and reach me as I was maneuvering to attempt the third stair. He asked if he could help rather than grabbing like some people do when they try to help someone with a disability. He carried my gear to my door, making pleasant conversation on the way and waited until I got it open.
I love it when I run into someone who lives up to one's best image of them. Hurray for well mannered, likable neighbors! Some of you may remember some of my past terrible neighbors, including the bad drummer, the meth dealer, the people who were always having fights on the lawn, and the guy who tried to get Squirrel to sell him my meds. The Complex isn't perfect, but it's the nicest place I've lived since I came North. Just saying.
* I am big on mulling. My brain is always doing something one way or another and as I go about my business, I'm usually mulling something if my brain isn't being used for something specific. (I also generally have a soundtrack playing in my head if there is no music externally, but that's a whole other thing.) An example of the sort of thing my brain does when it's left to wander is me, in the course of eating lunch, developing a whole hundred and fifty year alternate history of my family, transposing the real circumstances into analogous Roman Empire situations. It was surprisingly soap opera like. Picture my father as a scruffy Aventine lad, with a huge collection of sisters with complicated personal lives. Picture him scraping pennies to educate himself and his desperate desire to get away from the Aventine and propel himself into the Equestrian class. Imagine My great Great Grandmother as a strong willed British Celt, outliving three husbands, first a local man, then a Germanic auxiliary, and the third a one armed Roman soldier, pensioned off by the military. Imagine my Mother's father the Centurion marrying my thoroughly Romanized Grandmother etc., etc.. It works, doesn't it?
Anyway, today I was mulling shawls for men. No really. Shawls are very sensible and useful articles of clothing. They were also ubiquitous in the mid 19th century. They are rather like blankets after all, a logical variation on cloaks for people who wear overcoats. You can toss them over your coat if it's not thick enough for the current weather, or if your coat is cut too expose more of your chest and neck than is comfortable in the cold. You can toss one over your suit or dressing gown against drafts indoors. Skye's stepmonster gave me a garment rather similar to a 19th century man's shawl, only in black and without the fringe. I don't generally wear it out, but I wear it all the time at home, being cheaper than turning up the heat, less constricting than a sweater, and more versatile than a fitted garment. The fabric has enough friction to easily hold in place around my shoulders ad chest, I can wrap it around by waist if my legs are cold, or drape it over my lap. It does not constrict my neck like a scarf would.
So: shawls are useful garments and used to be worn by both men and women. Here is my question: When did shawls stop being men's wear? Did the shift coincide with the introduction of modern (non-fireplace related) heating systems? If not, what was the cause of the abandonment of shawls for men? I honestly don't know and I'd very much like to.
* The Corsican, by Tina Shelton:
This is a first novel by this author and published by a very small press. It's extremely good for a first novel, but it likely could have used another editing pass and it definitely needed better copy editing. This is not the first time I've encountered this problem with small press publishing and shouldn't be held against the author, who has despite the odds against produced a well written and entertaining YA SF novel, about a sort of combination Underground railroad and school in space. The characters are appealing, the events emotionally engaging and the plot was interesting, even if it could use a touch of tightening. I did have some quibbles, some of which had to do with my professional experience as a teacher which likely wouldn't bother anyone else. The other big one has to do with the martial arts class sequences. Yes, It's a book about ex-slaves in space, so you may think it's silly to be bugged by a couple poorly researched martial arts class scenes, but consider this: No one's flown a ship between stars and the number of people who've flown space ships of any kind is vanishingly small; Many people have taken some form of martial arts in the real world and I'm betting every one of them if shown the first class in this book would say, "That's not how you teach that." It's just not. I can suspend disbelief for all sorts of things, but I've studied four styles, including Akido (which is relevant here), and I just can't believe that an experienced teacher would skip teaching them things like how to roll and fall safely before teaching them throws, nor is it likely she'd show them a throw once full speed and expect them to be able to do it. I just can't.
The rest of the book really does mostly work, and you shouldn't avoid the book because of one poorly written scene. It's got some excellent character arcs, solid plotting, strong female characters amoung the main ensemble cast, I would recommend this book as YA without any reservation, and I would love to read more books in the same world. Bonus points for including a boy with a disability in the main cast, which remains rare in fiction of any kind except that specifically about the disability if that makes sense. The disability is treated as one of many traits the character has and as one of the many challenges instead of the character being all about the disability. I also really like that instead of one or two exceptional women, there are a whole lot of well written female characters that model different ways to be strong.
It makes me sad that this book is not being marketed better, because I would love to see it in libraries and in the hands of readers and it likely won't find the audience it deserves.
* The Diviners: OMG! This book is amazing!
This is technically YA, as most of the characters are seventeen, but it could just as easily be marketed to adults. It is incredibly well researched, mostly taking place in 1920's New York. Seriously, it does a beautiful job of catching the flavour and physicality of the period. This is technically a supernatural mystery, and the plot deals with 19th and early 20th century spiritualism. What I love is that this book also introduces and occasional explores themes such as the wound WWI left in the American psyche in general and in the minds of those who lost people and grief in general; Domestic violence and limited options for women and the impulse to push against that by people feeling trapped by traditional sex roles; and the de facto segregation of pre-civil rights New York and some of it's effects on people dealing with the colour line. The main character is white, straight, and rather spoiled, but the large cast includes people who aren't. These characters each have motives and stories of there own within the book, and there is plenty of room in this well drawn world for more stories by the author with those characters at center stage. Given Memphis' well drawn character and prominent place in this book, I'd love to see another with him as first lead instead of second. I also love the way that Evie's character grows and learns throughout the book and that her bad behavior has it's roots in grief an other serious issues instead of her being a shallow stereotype, which easily could have been the case. I also genuinely want to learn more about the other characters and more about what's going on under the surface here. The book is huge, and I was still left desperate for more.
Do not let the age of the main characters or the supernatural mystery genre put you off. I think this novel has wide appeal and it is both powerful and deep. I expect to spend the next week mulling the way grief and/or abandonment is threaded through all the main characters and the ways the various characters deal with those loses. A++ Seriously, go read this book!
* I stumbled on Totally Biased News by accident. I have only seen two, but I think I'm in love.
* I have this complicated relationship with the movie Another Country. I stumbled on it by accident at a video store not long after it came out, when I was in High School, and I watched it any number of times in High School and college, but could never find a copy for sale. I just discovered the ILL system will let me borrow it, so I'm seeing it for the first time since I came North. It spoke to me on a deep level, being literally one of only two movies I've ever seen that was about a high school similar to mine. Of course I was fascinated. How could I not be? It's not just the setting, which has both similarities and differences. (The story took place approximately 50 years previous to my high school years. The were boarding; we were day. There are differences cultural differences between English public school and American private school. The US dropped the assumption that all able bodied male aristocrats needed to be ready to be officers if the country went to war and we switched to a merit based system much earlier, and as a result we were dramatically less military. Similarly the fagging tradition was less well rooted in the Us and so withered quickly to a vestigial state in US prep schools. Still, there is still and extreme separation between the adults and students in the school, with this weird and abusive system of policing of the younger boys by the older ones who also passed on the school culture.
There's also this separation within the minds and culture between homosexual acts and homosexual identity. It is fundamentally a prison sex situation where you have lots of horny guys with little access to willing women, so that while some guys are genuinely gay or bi, you get a lot of straight or mostly straight guys closing their eyes and pretending they are with a girl. It's a sort of initiation, just like learning the school song, the first drunk, and the traditional forms of ritualized abuse passed down from generation to generation. You get boys who are in long term relationships through most of high school who marry and have children and insist they are straight throughout. You get guys who try it, but genuinely don't like it. You get groups of friends who switch partners amoungst themselves so often they might be square dancers, but who now and then will have one date a woman for real, but never date a man outside the group. You get guys who are in it for the power and dominance so that it's not about sex or gender at all. You get guys who are genuinely truly into guys and come out later and have reasonably healthy adult same sex relationships. You'd think people would use the labels, but they hardly ever did. As long as you were just messing around with guys at your prep school, you could claim it was a phase and use all the straight guys who were pretending a hand was a hand and mouth was a mouth for cover. Despite all the homosexual activity going on, it generally gets heavily compartmentalized from identity in a way that hadn't changed much between the 1930's and 1980's despite the progress in the culture in the world outside. Everyone had a pretty good idea who was really straight, bi, and gay, but it was something people didn't talk about. It was a weird, pre-Stonewall, hell, pre-Oscar Wylde trial sort of throwback. I completely understood the lying to others, especially in that social environment, but the lying to oneself seemed so odd to me, as I'd sorted out the gender stuff before I hit kindergarten, and it was instantly clear to me which side my orientation was buttered on.
Anyway, the underlying psychology and social structure were intimately familiar to me. Then add in the hotness that was young Rupert Everett in all his slender hipped, tousled hair, pouty lipped glory. Add in some pretty amazing acting, not just from Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Carey Elwes, but from a wide variety of other young actors. Add in locations that looked so like my own school. Add in how beautifully lit, decorated, and shot it all was. Seriously, the use of light and shadow here could break your heart if the acting hadn't already. Add in the way it assumes you are clever enough to connect the dots between the story Guy Bennett tells and the thing he did later off screen in real life. Add in the characters, oh the characters. Seriously, Guy and Tommy could be the right and left sides of my teenaged brain. Oh, my politics are and were different than Tommy's but I opted out o the system too; and while Guy's ambition is alien to me, his sensuality, flamboyance, and messed up relationship to authority as well as the fundamental disaffection of them both, made them rare characters I could actually identify with. They were too clever for their on good and too different to bother pretending to fit in with the program. Add in a love story about two boys made in 1984, which was still rather a desert for gay love stories on screen that weren't about AIDS or alternately played for laughs or done movie of the week style. Sure Mr. Elwes hasn't that many lines, but he brings a burning intensity of desire to the role and the way he responds to Guy's complicated and often difficult personality explains why Guy would fall hard for him. How could he not be attracted to James' open personality and unconditional acceptance when so much of the acceptance in his life was extremely conditional? How could James not fall for someone as unusual and as exciting as guy?
Add in a sharp script that put things into words that I'd been coping with most of my life at that point. I could cut myself on that dialog. For example, at one point Guy says something like, "If the parents only knew what goes on here." Tommy responds with merciless clarity something like, "They do, or at least the Father's know." Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Or that thing about how the disaster wouldn't have happened if the masters were all old boys because "an old boy would no better than to go prowling around the changing rooms." Yes, oh yes he would.
Here I am almost two decades after the movie's release and it still fascinate me.
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/278434.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* The various sides are arguing over what exactly happened yesterday between Israel and Syria. It's sounding like Israel hit a military research center in Syria, though there is an alternate claim that they hit a military convoy moving missiles to Lebanon. I'll let y'all know more when I hear more. Israel also just refused to turn up for Human Rights Review at the UN in regards to their actions on the Gaza Strip. A UN report understandably accuses them of violating the human rights of Palestinians.
* Yet more attempts by republicans to strip away women's basic rights:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* We need to answer more hard questions about sexual assault in the military:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* Myths about women and guns:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* "Being Fearlessly Out And Trans Is A Revolutionary Act:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/01/being-fearlessly-out-and-trans-is.html
* John Stewart looks at contradictions, illogic, and out right fantasy in right wing arguments against sensible gun regulations:
* Stephen Colbert on the KKK attempting to rebrand themselves:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
* Stephen Colbert's comments on the fight against marriage equality:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
* We've been having a conversation elsewhere about the need to overhaul our military just generally and put in reality based job requirements and minimums rather than relying on traditional ones that don't fit the needs of a modern force with modern weapons and needs. I'm reposting my remarks here as they may be of general interests. I have made small corrections, mostly for clarity as I was responding to someone else:
The Canadians rehauled their whole system when they decided to open all jobs to women. They decided to go with reality based testing. For example, infantry people don't actually need to do X number of push ups in Y amount of time. Instead they need to be able to carry a hundred pound pack for a long march or jog and the ability to carry a wounded soldier their approximate size to safety. They decided yo base the strength and endurance tests on real world tasks like the latter instead of arbitrary measures like the former and it's not done them any harm as far as units fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I've been arguing for us doing a similar overhaul of our system since the late '80's. What are the actual skills and physical attributes you need for the job? Let's test those.
Re: Disabled folks in the military: I do not see why a stateside drone operation or person doing computer data entry stateside needs legs, for example. We should get realistic about this. Sure, you likely don't want someone in a power chair in front line infantry combat, but I do not see why the same person couldn't do logistical support type jobs. You'd need to reclassify certain jobs as being for non-combatants entirely, but it would really help with the person power issues they are currently experiencing.
Again, this isn't a new idea and historically, various militaries including our own have made use of disabled soldiers and sailors for jobs they were still fit for. The loss of one or body parts was so common in tall ship combat that if they kicked out everyone who'd lost something, there wouldn't be enough experienced seamen to field a reasonable number of vessels. Again, they were sensible about it. You don't want someone with a missing leg climbing rigging, but there's no reason a man missing an eye or only a couple fingers couldn't do it, and there were jobs you could do that didn't involve climbing.
* Do not take the above as an endorsement of our drone program as I have serious problems with it. It is merely a statement that if we are going to have stateside drone operators, there is no reason it has to be a job only for able bodied people.
* "It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being 'It'. Group of Men Have Played Game of Tag for 23 Years; Hiding in Bushes, Cars:" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578269991660836834.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Look, laugh all you want, but part of how I survived my childhood was through skills I learned playing tag and hide 'n Seek. I'm betting the extended game keeps them tactically and strategically sharp in ways that could help in adult life.
* I went to bed way early, hoping to make up some of the sleep I lost. Hector decided about half way through that I needed to wake up. It went on for hours. Of course. By the time I finally convinced him to shut up and sleep, I was too awake to go back to sleep. Sigh. Instead of my hoped for ten hours, I got less than eight. I ended up doing some reading and continuing my rewatch of a beloved movie I will talk about in a bit. I then dragged myself out to get for juice and OTC meds. (I realized when it was much too late, I should have gone to get prescription meds too while I was out.) Anyway, I went to check mail before going in and there was a package of the maximum size that could fit in the package bin. It was also heavy. So I have to balance stuff on tp of the box and carry it down stairs one handed on a day when feeding my fish leaves me winded.
The boys who live above me are the one I think of as Tall Paul Ryan and a boy who is one of those poor unfortunate fellows who got his secondary sexual characters late. I'm not mocking him. It can really suck socially to be in college but to look like a 9th grader, and I feel for him on that one. I haven't interacted with him much, but everything I've seen of him speaks well of him. He has the room directly above mine. This means that every time my head clears the stair top, I am looking into his room whether I want to or not. (I can not navigate stairs with my eyes closed, especially ones that steep and cementy). He's clearly working hard in school, he has an interesting goth girlfriend, and he's got a window decoration suggesting a geeky sense of humor I approve of. He and his roommate are quiet, considerate upstairs neighbors and invariably polite in person. So like I said, I root for him. It makes me happy he's finally losing that unformed look and his adult features are starting to show through. I'm glad he and his girlfriend seem happy when I see them together out and about or doing their homework in quiet compabnionship.
The thing is, like I mentioned, he lives at the head of the stairs and works with the blind up, so he can see everyone who goes past, just like they can see him. He looked up from his homework, likely alerted by the thump of my crutch and my wheezing to see me trying to balance my box and groceries with one hand while trying to navigate the purgatorial stairs without tumbling to my death.
Gentle readers, he was out the door in a flash and reach me as I was maneuvering to attempt the third stair. He asked if he could help rather than grabbing like some people do when they try to help someone with a disability. He carried my gear to my door, making pleasant conversation on the way and waited until I got it open.
I love it when I run into someone who lives up to one's best image of them. Hurray for well mannered, likable neighbors! Some of you may remember some of my past terrible neighbors, including the bad drummer, the meth dealer, the people who were always having fights on the lawn, and the guy who tried to get Squirrel to sell him my meds. The Complex isn't perfect, but it's the nicest place I've lived since I came North. Just saying.
* I am big on mulling. My brain is always doing something one way or another and as I go about my business, I'm usually mulling something if my brain isn't being used for something specific. (I also generally have a soundtrack playing in my head if there is no music externally, but that's a whole other thing.) An example of the sort of thing my brain does when it's left to wander is me, in the course of eating lunch, developing a whole hundred and fifty year alternate history of my family, transposing the real circumstances into analogous Roman Empire situations. It was surprisingly soap opera like. Picture my father as a scruffy Aventine lad, with a huge collection of sisters with complicated personal lives. Picture him scraping pennies to educate himself and his desperate desire to get away from the Aventine and propel himself into the Equestrian class. Imagine My great Great Grandmother as a strong willed British Celt, outliving three husbands, first a local man, then a Germanic auxiliary, and the third a one armed Roman soldier, pensioned off by the military. Imagine my Mother's father the Centurion marrying my thoroughly Romanized Grandmother etc., etc.. It works, doesn't it?
Anyway, today I was mulling shawls for men. No really. Shawls are very sensible and useful articles of clothing. They were also ubiquitous in the mid 19th century. They are rather like blankets after all, a logical variation on cloaks for people who wear overcoats. You can toss them over your coat if it's not thick enough for the current weather, or if your coat is cut too expose more of your chest and neck than is comfortable in the cold. You can toss one over your suit or dressing gown against drafts indoors. Skye's stepmonster gave me a garment rather similar to a 19th century man's shawl, only in black and without the fringe. I don't generally wear it out, but I wear it all the time at home, being cheaper than turning up the heat, less constricting than a sweater, and more versatile than a fitted garment. The fabric has enough friction to easily hold in place around my shoulders ad chest, I can wrap it around by waist if my legs are cold, or drape it over my lap. It does not constrict my neck like a scarf would.
So: shawls are useful garments and used to be worn by both men and women. Here is my question: When did shawls stop being men's wear? Did the shift coincide with the introduction of modern (non-fireplace related) heating systems? If not, what was the cause of the abandonment of shawls for men? I honestly don't know and I'd very much like to.
* The Corsican, by Tina Shelton:
This is a first novel by this author and published by a very small press. It's extremely good for a first novel, but it likely could have used another editing pass and it definitely needed better copy editing. This is not the first time I've encountered this problem with small press publishing and shouldn't be held against the author, who has despite the odds against produced a well written and entertaining YA SF novel, about a sort of combination Underground railroad and school in space. The characters are appealing, the events emotionally engaging and the plot was interesting, even if it could use a touch of tightening. I did have some quibbles, some of which had to do with my professional experience as a teacher which likely wouldn't bother anyone else. The other big one has to do with the martial arts class sequences. Yes, It's a book about ex-slaves in space, so you may think it's silly to be bugged by a couple poorly researched martial arts class scenes, but consider this: No one's flown a ship between stars and the number of people who've flown space ships of any kind is vanishingly small; Many people have taken some form of martial arts in the real world and I'm betting every one of them if shown the first class in this book would say, "That's not how you teach that." It's just not. I can suspend disbelief for all sorts of things, but I've studied four styles, including Akido (which is relevant here), and I just can't believe that an experienced teacher would skip teaching them things like how to roll and fall safely before teaching them throws, nor is it likely she'd show them a throw once full speed and expect them to be able to do it. I just can't.
The rest of the book really does mostly work, and you shouldn't avoid the book because of one poorly written scene. It's got some excellent character arcs, solid plotting, strong female characters amoung the main ensemble cast, I would recommend this book as YA without any reservation, and I would love to read more books in the same world. Bonus points for including a boy with a disability in the main cast, which remains rare in fiction of any kind except that specifically about the disability if that makes sense. The disability is treated as one of many traits the character has and as one of the many challenges instead of the character being all about the disability. I also really like that instead of one or two exceptional women, there are a whole lot of well written female characters that model different ways to be strong.
It makes me sad that this book is not being marketed better, because I would love to see it in libraries and in the hands of readers and it likely won't find the audience it deserves.
* The Diviners: OMG! This book is amazing!
This is technically YA, as most of the characters are seventeen, but it could just as easily be marketed to adults. It is incredibly well researched, mostly taking place in 1920's New York. Seriously, it does a beautiful job of catching the flavour and physicality of the period. This is technically a supernatural mystery, and the plot deals with 19th and early 20th century spiritualism. What I love is that this book also introduces and occasional explores themes such as the wound WWI left in the American psyche in general and in the minds of those who lost people and grief in general; Domestic violence and limited options for women and the impulse to push against that by people feeling trapped by traditional sex roles; and the de facto segregation of pre-civil rights New York and some of it's effects on people dealing with the colour line. The main character is white, straight, and rather spoiled, but the large cast includes people who aren't. These characters each have motives and stories of there own within the book, and there is plenty of room in this well drawn world for more stories by the author with those characters at center stage. Given Memphis' well drawn character and prominent place in this book, I'd love to see another with him as first lead instead of second. I also love the way that Evie's character grows and learns throughout the book and that her bad behavior has it's roots in grief an other serious issues instead of her being a shallow stereotype, which easily could have been the case. I also genuinely want to learn more about the other characters and more about what's going on under the surface here. The book is huge, and I was still left desperate for more.
Do not let the age of the main characters or the supernatural mystery genre put you off. I think this novel has wide appeal and it is both powerful and deep. I expect to spend the next week mulling the way grief and/or abandonment is threaded through all the main characters and the ways the various characters deal with those loses. A++ Seriously, go read this book!
* I stumbled on Totally Biased News by accident. I have only seen two, but I think I'm in love.
* I have this complicated relationship with the movie Another Country. I stumbled on it by accident at a video store not long after it came out, when I was in High School, and I watched it any number of times in High School and college, but could never find a copy for sale. I just discovered the ILL system will let me borrow it, so I'm seeing it for the first time since I came North. It spoke to me on a deep level, being literally one of only two movies I've ever seen that was about a high school similar to mine. Of course I was fascinated. How could I not be? It's not just the setting, which has both similarities and differences. (The story took place approximately 50 years previous to my high school years. The were boarding; we were day. There are differences cultural differences between English public school and American private school. The US dropped the assumption that all able bodied male aristocrats needed to be ready to be officers if the country went to war and we switched to a merit based system much earlier, and as a result we were dramatically less military. Similarly the fagging tradition was less well rooted in the Us and so withered quickly to a vestigial state in US prep schools. Still, there is still and extreme separation between the adults and students in the school, with this weird and abusive system of policing of the younger boys by the older ones who also passed on the school culture.
There's also this separation within the minds and culture between homosexual acts and homosexual identity. It is fundamentally a prison sex situation where you have lots of horny guys with little access to willing women, so that while some guys are genuinely gay or bi, you get a lot of straight or mostly straight guys closing their eyes and pretending they are with a girl. It's a sort of initiation, just like learning the school song, the first drunk, and the traditional forms of ritualized abuse passed down from generation to generation. You get boys who are in long term relationships through most of high school who marry and have children and insist they are straight throughout. You get guys who try it, but genuinely don't like it. You get groups of friends who switch partners amoungst themselves so often they might be square dancers, but who now and then will have one date a woman for real, but never date a man outside the group. You get guys who are in it for the power and dominance so that it's not about sex or gender at all. You get guys who are genuinely truly into guys and come out later and have reasonably healthy adult same sex relationships. You'd think people would use the labels, but they hardly ever did. As long as you were just messing around with guys at your prep school, you could claim it was a phase and use all the straight guys who were pretending a hand was a hand and mouth was a mouth for cover. Despite all the homosexual activity going on, it generally gets heavily compartmentalized from identity in a way that hadn't changed much between the 1930's and 1980's despite the progress in the culture in the world outside. Everyone had a pretty good idea who was really straight, bi, and gay, but it was something people didn't talk about. It was a weird, pre-Stonewall, hell, pre-Oscar Wylde trial sort of throwback. I completely understood the lying to others, especially in that social environment, but the lying to oneself seemed so odd to me, as I'd sorted out the gender stuff before I hit kindergarten, and it was instantly clear to me which side my orientation was buttered on.
Anyway, the underlying psychology and social structure were intimately familiar to me. Then add in the hotness that was young Rupert Everett in all his slender hipped, tousled hair, pouty lipped glory. Add in some pretty amazing acting, not just from Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, and Carey Elwes, but from a wide variety of other young actors. Add in locations that looked so like my own school. Add in how beautifully lit, decorated, and shot it all was. Seriously, the use of light and shadow here could break your heart if the acting hadn't already. Add in the way it assumes you are clever enough to connect the dots between the story Guy Bennett tells and the thing he did later off screen in real life. Add in the characters, oh the characters. Seriously, Guy and Tommy could be the right and left sides of my teenaged brain. Oh, my politics are and were different than Tommy's but I opted out o the system too; and while Guy's ambition is alien to me, his sensuality, flamboyance, and messed up relationship to authority as well as the fundamental disaffection of them both, made them rare characters I could actually identify with. They were too clever for their on good and too different to bother pretending to fit in with the program. Add in a love story about two boys made in 1984, which was still rather a desert for gay love stories on screen that weren't about AIDS or alternately played for laughs or done movie of the week style. Sure Mr. Elwes hasn't that many lines, but he brings a burning intensity of desire to the role and the way he responds to Guy's complicated and often difficult personality explains why Guy would fall hard for him. How could he not be attracted to James' open personality and unconditional acceptance when so much of the acceptance in his life was extremely conditional? How could James not fall for someone as unusual and as exciting as guy?
Add in a sharp script that put things into words that I'd been coping with most of my life at that point. I could cut myself on that dialog. For example, at one point Guy says something like, "If the parents only knew what goes on here." Tommy responds with merciless clarity something like, "They do, or at least the Father's know." Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Or that thing about how the disaster wouldn't have happened if the masters were all old boys because "an old boy would no better than to go prowling around the changing rooms." Yes, oh yes he would.
Here I am almost two decades after the movie's release and it still fascinate me.
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