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June 30, 2007

We Will Mock You

I haven't watched Saturday Night Live in... a really long time. I have been assured that it's still on, and I guess I know that since every so often some new comedian shows up in some movie and I read in various news sources that this person got his/her start on SNL.

Most people in North America over the age of 11 or so have a favorite SNL skit, and most people over the age of 25 have a favorite cast. I am old enough to have watched the original cast and I know those very early episodes are classics and everything, but they're not the ones I remember most fondly. (Except for the skit about the floor wax that is also a dessert topping.) No, my favorite cast was the one about 1988, with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Jon Lovitz, Jan Hooks, Victoria Jackson, etc--you know, the era that brought us "Wayne's World," "The Church Lady"and "Sprockets."

One of my favorite skits--indeed, one of the skits most beloved by my entire family--featured guest star John Malkovich as Lord Edmund, a nobleman who accuses even the crescent moon in the day sky of mocking him. He is shown a very faithful and respectful portrait of himself, and erupts in rage because he thinks the artist mocks him with a "grotesque caricature." "You mock me!" he says to the painter. "You mock me, and I will not be mocked!"

And while all this is going on, his servants, played by Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey, are prancing behind him, mimicking his facial expressions and gestures, and saying, in a nasal falsetto, "You mock! You mock me! You mock me, and I will not be mocked!"

I haven't managed to convey the brilliance of this skit, I know, but trust me: it's pretty fuckin' funny.

It feels cheap to mock the cast of We Will Rock You, because after all, the biggest problems with the production, namely, the plot, the characterization and the script, aren't their fault. But it's hard to resist, because the plot, the characterization and the script heap contempt and scorn on boy bands and girl bands and any band that didn't start out rehearsing original songs in someone's garage. The show mocks musical performers who 1) perform someone else's lyrics and/or music and 2) have to audition to get a role or part in a band and 3) are chosen for their looks and dance moves as much as for their ability to sing, while their ability to play a musical instrument is largely moot and 4) are given opportunity to perform as part of a larger scheme to earn money for backers and producers who do not perform as part of this group and 5) are dressed, presented and coiffed to be seem slightly edgy, but really are marketed to a mainstream audience.

In other words, the show mocks its own performers; the performers deliver lines that mock the type of performers they are. But somehow, you're not supposed to notice or care about this irony.

So anyway, as I was driving back across the border to my home (which was fine except for the driving and the crossing the border part), I couldn't resist tweaking a Queen song or two, just as had been done in the show, in order to critique the show.

Let me first establish a rhythm. It goes like this:

Thump thump BOOM
thump thump BOOM

(and now I will add a few simple lyrics, directed to the lead of the production Dale and I saw:)

Buddy, you're a short guy, French guy
singing on the stage, gonna take on the world some day
Makeup's smudged on your face
You big disgrace
Shaking your ass all over the place
Listen!
We will, we will
MOCK YOU
We're singing
We will, we will
MOCK YOU
Everybody!
We will, we will
MOCK YOU

Oh shit!

(Brief but impressive guitar solo. This next part is dedicated to the surviving members of Queen.)

We paid our fees
We stood in line
We balked at each sentence
We cringed at most rhymes
For bad mistakes
littered acts one and two
Non-sequiturs teemed
and the chorus, it screamed
till your inane pastiche was through!
And the beat was going on and on and on and on
You have become whores, my friends
and you'll keep on selling out til the end
You are complete whores
You are complete whores
No time for scruples
‘cause you are complete whores
in the music world.

Posted by Holly at 11:11 AM | Comments (2)

June 28, 2007

Spare Me My Life From this Monstrosity

Having posted an introduction to the topic, I should provide something to follow it. I am somewhat anxious about this post, because it is where Dale discovers what a blogging whore I am, in that I am going to do to him what I have done for many years to a great many others: rip off something I wrote in an email to him and use it for a wider audience. The people I have corresponded with longest or most often have gotten used to this: stuff I write to them in letters or email shows up in a blog entry or a poem or an essay all the time. A few people have reacted with indignation and told me that it's not cool of me to recycle for wider consumption something I've written in a personal letter to them; I deal with that by refraining from ever telling them anything interesting enough that I'd want to use it over.

Anyway.

The primary thing you should know about what it's like to meet Dale is this: he is slightly less interesting in blog-form than he is in real life. His blog might capture all the Passion of the Dale, but it doesn't capture the magic. (And yeah, I'm saying that both because I'm a suck-up and because it's true.)

I was very excited when he suggested we see "We Will Rock You." I am, of course, a long-time Queen fan, so much so that I would dance alone to Bohemian Rhapsody. I figured it might make such exciting News of the World that even Flash Gordon would have a Sheer Heart Attack, because capping a few days of fun in a foreign city with a night of Classic Queen would be almost as good as a Night at the Opera or a Day at the Races, and all that Jazz. I mean, I hate to make it seem like all I wanted to do was Play the Game, but there it is.

And I was wrong.

But it was terrible. I wouldn't have missed it for anything, because theatre THAT bad is hard to come by, and seldom so laughable, so I'm not saying I am sorry to have seen it--quite the contrary, in fact. It was a fascinating cultural experience. You could easily imagine these old burnt out rockers sitting around one Tuesday afternoon watching some Judy Garland/Andy Rooney film on cable, just for the hell of it. They're sullen and bored at first, but someone starts getting excited when the kids in the movie decide to put on a minstrel show, complete with offensive and outdated stereotypes, a plot so full of giant holes you could fly Flash Gordon's space ship through any one of them, a predictable romance that is supposed to create tension and drama but only underscores how vapid the characters are, all built around a bunch of songs that don't really have anything to do with each other. "Hey!" the burnt-out rockers say to one another. "We could do this! We could do this with our songs...and we could make a hell of a lot of money!"

The thing that really made me crazy is that the show didn't realize that it was exactly the thing it pretended to criticize. The basic premise is that 300 years in the future, entertainment has been thoroughly commodified and is controlled by a large corporation dedicated to A) making money and B) reinforcing the status quo by C) manipulating the emotions and thoughts of large audiences who are particularly undiscerning and indiscriminate in their musical and dramatic tastes, and will therefore consume with pleasure any old schlock the large corporate interests see fit to offer them.

Hard rocking pop music, however, has the power to change all that, to topple the status quo, because "the electric guitar is one of the most powerful weapons of freedom ever invented"–at least, if you're a young straight white guy. Because, as we were constantly told, the reasons REAL rockers made their own personal music was to A) express themselves and B) foster long-term monogamous unions with the bad-ass chick of their choice. (Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I somehow thought the second motive wasn't all that important to Freddie.)

At intermission I said to Dale, "What I love best about the show is its insistence on moral and artistic ambiguity, its refusal to reinforce a simplistic binary of good versus evil. I LOVED the self-critical moment, right after the Killer Queen talks about how she wants to manipulate audiences, make them feel what she wants them to feel, when the cast demanded that the audience chant along with them and wave their glow sticks [yeah, you could buy souvenir glow sticks] and the whole point was for us to refuse! I just couldn't believe that more people didn't get that."

There were other things that really bugged me.... like the fact that the rendition of "Flash" Gordon consisted only of some people undergoing some dreadful electric torture shouting "Flash!" a few times. I always adored the high-flown silliness of the Flash Gordon soundtrack and wished they'd done more with it. I was likewise upset that we didn't get more than the first few lines of "Bohemian Rhapsody."

I was annoyed that a character takes excessive pleasure from the pain of her "daily bikini wax," because the whole point of any type of waxing is that the hair doesn't grow back for a while, so you CAN'T have a painful daily bikini wax, because simply having slightly warm wax applied to hairless skin and then peeled off it doesn't hurt--in fact, it's actually quite soothing, which is why a paraffin soak is a really nice addition to a pedicure. Didn't these people have a dramaturge to say, "Hey, this part doesn't actually make the slightest bit of sense"?

I hated that "global warming" had raised sea levels drastically, but you could somehow travel from Las Vegas to Wembley Stadium in England on a Harley. Again, where the hell was the dramaturge?

I hated that the evil villain's main henchman was made up to look like Max Headroom, because Max wasn't all that evil, and that the evil villain destroyed her henchman without having a clear rationale for doing so, aside from being evil.

Most of all, I hated that although the great evil of the plot was some dreadful corporation controlling seeking to control every aspect of human life, it was personified by a middle-aged fat black lesbian. I am curious: is there a single truly powerful corporation in the world today controlled by a middle-aged fat black lesbian? (If someone can provide me with documentation of one, I will send him/her my ticket stub, a personalize note and a five dollar bill, American.) It could have been an interesting move--to make someone in one of the least powerful subject positions in contemporary society the most powerful person in a future society--but it wasn't reflected upon or analyzed; it was simply played for laughs and for the easy way it opposed and therefore underscored the heroic nature of the young, attractive (albeit too short), straight white guy.

ICK!

read the follow up We Will Mock You.

Posted by Holly at 1:01 PM | Comments (13)

June 26, 2007

Socializing Beyond the Blogosphere

This post is an introduction. Dale has beaten me to the punch by writing an entire account of the magical evening we spent together in Toronto before I even managed to post the first of what I hope will be several installments about the experience. I suppose I could dive right in as he has done, forego the introduction and contextualization, but I like context and clarity, so I'll just have to deal with the consequence, which is that it will take me longer to tell my side of the story. Those of you who read me with any regularity probably are used to that tendency from me; it might even by why you read my blog. Anyway. Here's the introduction.

I have had the privilege--the very great privilege--lately of meeting in real life two people I first met virtually in the blogosphere. One wishes to remain anonymous, and so will be known as "Anonymous Blog Friend," and the other is the ever passionate Dale.

Now, maybe there are people out there who are willing to have dinner with any old person they meet in cyberspace, but I'm not one of them. I'm sure that every single person who reads my blog is a lovely human being, and I am most definitely convinced that the authors of each and every blog I read are all the coolest people in the world (that's why I read their blogs), but still, there are matters of trust and protocol that have to be dealt with when you move from reading all about a person's life on the web to asking really invasive questions when you're sitting across a table.

In other words, I didn't just email someone randomly and say, "Hey! I'd like to meet you! Let's arrange it!" No. Preparations for these recent encounters began, oh, last year. I don't remember who emailed whom first, but the fact of the matter is, I had exchanged a few messages with both of these people in private. In fact, both of them had sent me something tangible through the postal system (a gesture I am sorry to say I did not reciprocate, because I am not as nice as they are).

And the other thing is, we all recognized that emailing someone to say, "Hey, I'm going to be in your part of North America in a few weeks"only entitles you to so much. It's perfectly acceptable to ask someone you've never met if they'd like to meet you in some public space and have a meal with you; but if you ask, right off the bat, if you can spend a few nights sleeping in the spare bedroom of someone you've never seen in real life, chances are good that person will remember that s/he has to attend a family reunion in Uzbekistan the weekend you plan to be in town. (I admit, I felt comfortable enough with my Anonymous Blog Friend that I did offer to let her stay in my guest room should she ever venture out this way again, but she gave me time to make that decision on my own, as good friends should.)

Mercifully the people I met were thoroughly gracious and had lovely manners, so everything went really well. And both blog friends have given me leave to blog about our meetings within certain restrictions, which I completely plan to respect because hey, these people were enough fun that I want to hang out with them again. So if you're interested in reading a few posts on what happened When Holly Met Dale and When Holly Met Anonymous Blog Friend, well, you now have that to look forward to.

Posted by Holly at 9:31 PM | Comments (4)

June 25, 2007

We Have Lingered in the Chambers of the Sea

I don't really like swimming in natural bodies of water--they too often contain creatures that can eat or sting me, and it's too hard to see said creatures through the murky water. If I do end up at some beach, I prefer not to go in over my head--the only reason I ever do is to water ski, which is something you really can't do in a swimming pool. I've never had any sort of large-water-body accident--short of tumbling off the skis and landing on my face or ass--but still, deep water creeps me out, and I remember that each and every boat trip, I was anxious the first few times I jumped off the boat so I could bob along on my butt before being dragged out of the water by a rope.

Beaches often pose another problem you don't face at a swimming pool, namely, a lack of dedicated places to pee. So what's the best solution, environmentally speaking, when you're at the beach with a bladder that must be emptied? Mercifully there's a website that will answer that question for you.

Posted by Holly at 5:45 PM | Comments (1)

June 24, 2007

Reading Like a Sixth Grader

All in all, my current attitude towards reading reminds me, as I said in my last entry, of the summers before and after sixth grade, which I think is when I read more--voraciously, compulsively--than at any other time in my life. Actually I've reverted to sixth grade in several ways: just as I did during summers when I was nine or ten or eleven, I like to sleep late, put on comfy clothes, then settle down to munch cookies I've made and plow through one book after another.

The very first thing I read, when the end of the semester was in sight and I could read whatever I wanted, was Her Little Majesty, a really mediocre biography of Victoria by Carolly Erickson. But even that was kind of like scholarly reading, because I was teaching a class on colonial lit and after all, Victoria ruled over the largest colonial empire in the history of the world.

But the next thing I read all 480 pages of a Life of Elizabeth I by Allison Weir, and I did it in a weekend. I've read more biographies of Elizabeth Tudor than anyone else but she continues to fascinate me, and Weir's biography was excellent. I would have to stretch to make it relevant to my studies, because I don't do anything at all with the renaissance. Fact of the matter is, as a historical period, I much prefer the middle ages to the renaissance.

Then I reread several works by Karen Armstrong--all her memoirs: Through the Narrow Gate, Beginning the World and The Spiral Staircase, because they count as research for a paper I'm presenting in November and because I just plain wanted to. I even annotated them, but I find her work so compelling that it still felt like fun.

And I then I looked at my bookshelf and decided I wanted to read some things I'd be willing to sell to a used book store, because I really need to thin out my book collection. So I dragged off the shelf A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, the first two books of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy, which were given to me last summer by a colleague who was leaving town.

And that's another way I've reverted to sixth grade, because they're considered juvenile fiction, though they're not really the least bit simple or simplistic. Nonetheless I read The Tombs of Atuan when I was in fifth or sixth grade, because it was a Newbery honor book and I wanted to read all the Newbery honorees. And boy oh boy did it freak my shit out. I had always remembered how profoundly that book unsettled me, which is one reason I accepted the books when my colleague offered them: I recalled aspects of that book very clearly, and I wanted to revisit them as an adult and understand better what that book was about.

So I sat down one afternoon and started A Wizard of Earthsea. I finished it after a couple of hours, at which point I refused to let myself pick up the sequel until I washed my dishes because they needed it and went for a walk (my mother and I used to have terrible fights about how I never got any exercise because I was too busy reading, and she wouldn't let me go to the library unless I went swimming at least twice a week) because I'd been so sedentary all day. And when I got home from the walk, around sunset, I curled up on my couch inside and finished The Tombs of Atuan in one sitting. I would have started The Farthest Shore, the third book in the series, that night at 11, but I didn't have a copy and had to be content with ordering it from the library.

The Tombs of Atuan is a creepy book in a lot of ways, about some dreadful cult that worships darkness, and the high priestess of that cult, who begins her initiation into her position at age five, and how she eventually leaves it. And though it freaked my shit out, I think it must have influenced me profoundly on some fundamental level, because it's also about the loss of faith and the cost of leaving a belief system. I reread this passage about fifteen times:

A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy.... She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

Did that ever resonate.... I had to wonder: Was I primed to leave the church in 1989 when I was 25 because of a book I read in 1974, when I was 10? I don't know. I do know I didn't feel the slightest desire to do anything but read. So before I went to bed, I read The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt, one of my favorite books from my childhood. So I read three books in one day. Which was my favorite thing to do when I was ten.

p.s. In finding the links for this entry, I discovered that the Earthsea Trilogy is actually a quartet... make that a quintet, with a couple of short stories thrown in to boot. So I get to look forward to more reading!

Posted by Holly at 2:00 PM | Comments (3)

June 20, 2007

Summer Reading

The summer is racing by, and what have I done? Not nearly what I should have. I was supposed to be halfway through with two book proposals by now. I've barely made any progress on either. Nor have I gone once to the yoga studio I was so desperate to find. Instead, I've merely done a whole lot of yard work, a lot of cooking, a lot of sewing (two skirts, three dresses--two of which I gave as gifts--and a blouse that still needs the finishing touches), a little blogging, and a hell of a lot of reading.

For a variety of reasons, I've virtually no interest in movies and tv right now. An entire week will pass without my watching more than half an hour of TV. Why would I want to be inside watching some movie on the dvd player when I could be sitting on the ugly couch I dragged out to my porch, reading just about anything I can get my hands on?

By the end of my third semester in a PhD program, I had developed what I called "reader's block": I had read so much that semester, so many books and so many papers, that I couldn't bear to look at a page of print. This was not an acceptable state of affairs; I had to cure the condition over the winter break and be ready to start again spring semester. I figured I needed a book I had already read and found agreeable enough, something I knew could keep my interest but wouldn't make too many intellectual demands because I already had the basics of the story down. So I read Jane Eyre for the second time (which was the only time I really liked it--the first time I thought it was OK and the third time I thought Jane was a dreadful snob very deficient in self-knowledge, and I rather disliked her) and it did indeed ease me back into the pleasure of reading.

This past semester was also pretty reading-intensive, so I don't know why it should be that a few weeks before the semester ended, rather than getting reader's block, I developed an insatiable hunger of books, the likes of which I haven't felt since about sixth grade.

Maybe it's because I knew I had some time, and really could do some pleasure reading, provided I was willing to disregard for a while my ever-present sense of duty. As I discuss in this entry from last summer, I have so much reading to do for my job, both the teaching and the research/writing part, that I rarely read something that is unrelated to some aspect of my career. And I like that reading, I really do: I admire, respect and learn from most of the books I read for teaching or research (if I don't, there's a problem). A often, even if I've read a book simply for pleasure, if I REALLY like it, I'll start trying to figure out how to work it into a syllabus, so I can read it again.

But when I read books as part of my academic career, I feel obligated to do two things: 1) read every single word--I don't skip bits in a book I'm going to teach or quote from, and 2) annotate them in some way--most often by underlining very neatly. I mark passages I find important using colored pencils, plain the first time I read a book and red the second, then blue or something on subsequent readings, so I can tell what reading inspired me to make the lines; and a ruler, so the lines are straight. Because I have an excellent memory and can easily locate and remember the gist of many, many passages in a book, I only write comments in the margins of books I really love or really hate, and even then, they're very neat, because I HATE sloppy markings in a book. I just HATE them. I especially hate other people's sloppy markings. Books containing neon highlighting, underlining or notes written in ink, or even lots of margin comments, always strike me as defiled.

And while all that aids in understanding and remembering a work, it can inhibit the pleasure part. Especially if part of the pleasure is derived from sitting on the porch and feeling a breeze, looking up every so often to admire a pretty spot in the garden or watch the cat stare in rapt attention at a bunny eating clover in the neighbor's lawn.

Posted by Holly at 11:35 AM | Comments (5)

June 19, 2007

The One Negative Thought I Still Intend to Think

The other night, as part of an attempt to understand and control my life, I considered the question, "What do I spend most of my time thinking about and wishing for?" I first approached this question by making two lists: one of the positive thoughts I typically think ("what can I sew or knit next?" was on that list) and one of the negative thoughts I typically think.

As you might expect, the negative list was much longer. Well, maybe you wouldn't expect that.... Maybe you are one of the people who is happy, and who thinks a lot about how happy you are. And actually lately I'm fairly happy.... But happy to me doesn't require all that much thought. Happiness, when you're feeling it, is not a problem to be solved. But unhappiness IS a problem, requiring a solution, which must be found.

So I have tended to think a lot about things that make me unhappy, and not always in terms of finding a solution--sometimes just in terms of how much a particular situation sucks. And I resolved to work to curb that impulse. As I wrote in my journal, it's quite true that certain dreadful things have happened or are slated to happen, "but is reminding myself that really what I want to focus my energy on? Well, no, except maybe for the 'global warming is BAD' part."

Yesterday I had coffee with a friend and we talked about some of the measures we take to reduce our carbon footsteps and how people find them ridiculous. There are, of course, additional things she and I can do--the next car I buy will be much more efficient than the one I'm driving now, for instance--but still, after reading an article about how much energy common household appliances use, I started doing things like unplugging my vcr when it's not in use and uplugging my microwave when I leave town so that the "energy bleed" is gone (because things like tvs and vcrs can use as much energy in "stand-by" as when they're operating). And some people think I'm nuts. How can one person make that much difference? Well, one person can't. But one person trying to make a difference times six billion--that can have a big impact.

Whereas, when I meet someone who isn't so concerned about global warming that it occasionally keeps them up at night, I think, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

I admit it: I've ended friendships with people because their attitude to the environment was intolerable to me. I can hardly bear to visit one of my sisters, even though I enjoy her company very much, because her household uses as much energy as some third world countries. And I have friends I email regularly who never respond to my statements about how upset I am about global warming, and I just think, "What planet do YOU think you live on?"

But I am finally starting to figure out that people hate rants, so I've refrained from writing about certain things--like this news story (which you won't be able to read unless you have that "Times select service, because it's way old) about how very beautiful and exceptional parts of Arizona--the "sky islands," fragile and wonderful ecosystems at high altitudes--are being destroyed by global warming. Or this story about how much energy is consumed by meat production. (And no, I am not a vegan, but reading this story did persuade me to persist in my efforts to reduce the amount of meat I eat.) Or this article about the droughts facing large portions of the US.

But this morning I read this story discussing a paper by half a dozen prominent scientists (including James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming) announcing that the earth stands in "imminent peril." The situation is absolutely dire with regards to global warming--we have only a few years to prevent massive and devastating climate change, change so severe that the civilization we have built will not survive, because our infrastructure is designed for THIS climate, which is going away.

How can people not think about this, most of the time, as the basis for other thoughts?

And then there's this whole computer business.... turns out that personal computing devices, including not just computers but cell phones and blackberries (not to mention flat-screen tvs, which use TONS of energy), produce as much CO2 as the aviation industry. Not only that, but the average life for most computers is a mere three years. Makes me glad that I used my first computer for seven years before upgrading, and used my second one for six before upgrading. See? When I want software and such that's compatible with my old computers so I can still use them (because after all, they do still work), I'm not just being a luddite; I'm being a conservationist. And that's not an excuse created after the fact; I have kept my first computer for 13 years because I couldn't see the point in throwing it away when it still works.

But at least there is an effort to get computer manufacturers to go green, to produce machines that use less energy and to build the machines to accept upgrades rather than being replaced.

And then there is this effort in my home state, to make college campuses greener. This heartens and encourages me. But it ain't enough.

Why don't we all think about this, all the time? And not just global warming, but our impact on the entire world. As this editorial from the NY Times on the dramatic disappearance of many bird species in the US states, " The Audubon Society portrait of common bird species in decline is really a report on who humans are.... We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves."

Posted by Holly at 8:51 AM | Comments (15)

June 18, 2007

Email from My Mission President

In her comment on my post about the death of my mission president, Janet noted that it's hard to lose those "rare individuals who embody more than the institutions they represent."

As I mentioned in an entry a few days ago, I'm going through files on an old computer and deleting or transferring everything on it. One of the things I found was a message from President Carlson, written eleven years after he finished his stint as mission president and almost eight years after I left the church, a fact he was very well aware of.

But it's a nice message--warm and honest and caring. I would never do what I'm about to do now with a message from someone whose privacy I might be betraying, but President Carlson is, unfortunately, dead, so I feel at liberty to copy his message here.

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:05:02 -0600 From: Monte B. Carlson To: holly Subject: Goofing Off

It is Friday, and I am not motivated to work today. Nice to hear from you. I attended an eleven stake regional conference in Pocatello two weeks ago and bumped into a former missionary. He and his wife were headed to Taiwan and Hong Kong this Sunday, and were flying out of Boise, which put them on the Freeway right past Twin Falls. We sent a "care" package to [our second daughter] with them, and enclosed a copy of your E-Mail message. [She was ten or so when I knew her eleven years earlier, and I had been extremely fond of her, so I really wanted to know how and what she was doing. Turns out she was serving a mission in Taiwan.] She too has had some wild experiences in Taiwan---from having a girl attempt an actual suicide while on the phone with her, to having a two year old boy take a whizz in her purse while she was giving the mom a lesson. From bike wrecks to being flashed, her mission, like yours, has not been dull.

Things are going pretty much the same for us. I've been the stake president for eight and a half years. The practice of law has actually been fun and productive. While personal injury cases still take up the bulk of my time, I did handle a first degree murder case from start to finish last year, and then another one this year. I do the legal work for the regional newspaper and enjoy the first amendment issues they present. I did write a hunting book mingled with scriptures that no one will publish.

I have lost contact with many of our missionaries. The computer was a mystery to me until about a year and a half ago, and E-Mail is as recent as last week. Your's was the first message I received. If you have the E-Mail addresses for some of the other Taiwan crew, I would love to start building my own address book.

It is good to hear from you. You know I am your biggest poetry fan and would welcome any new additions to my collection of your work. Would you believe I have actually quoted you in some church talks? I don't expect you to give up dissertation time to communicate with us, but keep the door open for messages.

Monte

The fact that he was a fan of my poetry truly meant something, since, as his obituary mentions, he had a degree in English lit. And how many stake presidents would tell an "apostate" "that they quote her in church talks? My impulse upon finding that email was to write to him again, but unfortunately it was too late.

The friend who forwarded messages about President Carlson's death to me made a point of including the "to" headers, so that I could find email addresses for people I'd lost touch with but might want to contact again. I did write to one of my favorite elders, but it was awkward. There are so few Mormons who knew me when I was Mormon who still have anything to say to me--they just don't know how to talk to me about anything without bringing up the Church. Even President Carlson told me all about his calling and meetings he had attended, but, I don't know, the fact that he still thought enough of me and my ideas to use them when discussing his own faith means something. Somehow it's different from what I get from so many Mormons who used to know me. President Carlson might have been afraid for me, as he told me once, but he was never afraid of me, as so many Mormons have been. So I never had to be afraid back.

I know it sounds cliched, but I wish I had found the message a month ago and told him that.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2007

My Neighbor Bernie Is a Nasty Mean Man

One of the many things that shocked and rather horrified me about the Midwest when I first moved there was the lack of fences dividing backyards. Sometimes there weren't even shrubberies or hedges--sometimes there was just a long communal yard, which I suppose was great if you liked your neighbors well enough to socialize with them, but what if you didn't?

The same state of affairs exists here in Pennsylvania. I don't get it. Have these people never realized the truthfulness of one of the mottos of the West, "Good fences make good neighbors"?

Actually, mere "fences" are only for people with really big plots of land--five or six acres--where all you need is something to mark the property line. If you live in some residential area and your neighbors' houses might be within fifty feet of yours, you need not a fence but a six-foot-high masonry wall so that they can't easily see what you do in your yard and you can't see what they do in theirs.

Except for a short stretch behind the garages, there's no fence or hedge or any sort of marker of the property line dividing my lot from my neighbors' on either side. As they are reasonable and nice enough people, this is not a problem, although I don't find it ideal. But the back of my lot is marked by a waist-high chain-link fence with a gate in it. And that is a problem. That is where I need a six-foot-high wall.

Let me tell you about my neighbor Bernie, the jerk with whom I share that fence. It drives him nuts, first of all, that I remember his name when he cannot for the life of him remember mine. He's about 70, lost several of his fingers in some sort of professional accident--he used to be a self-employed house painter and carpenter--and spends most of his retirement, provided the weather isn't dreadful, in his garage, which holds a TV, an easy chair, and a liquor cabinet. (I learned all this when I first moved in and we were on speaking terms.)

Bernie is the kind of guy who likes a yard that consists entirely of a chemically controlled lawn, which he treats himself and waters nightly, and large expanses of concrete, which he hoses off rather than sweeps. He has lived with the same scrawny girlfriend for about two decades, and as a concession to her, he allowed the planting of several nondescript shrubs right by the house. Each summer, they also hang one lonely plastic bucket of red geraniums on the metal arm of the clothesline.

It drives Bernie nuts that I like ornamentals, and that the week I moved in I started digging up the yard in order to plant flowers and foliage. It made him even more irate that I took the old-fashioned approach to composting, and would simply stack plant clippings and such in a corner behind the garage, and bury vegetable peelings in whatever spot I was planning to plant in a few weeks down the road. "You'll attract critters," he told me one day.

"I don't mind critters," I said.

"You should," he said. "Some critter's got a hole under your garage. You need to put back the glass around the hole so it cuts itself when it comes out. You knocked out the glass when you was digging." I'd already noticed both the hole and the glass, which I'd purposely removed.

"I don't mind critters," I repeated, not commenting on my indignation that he felt entitled to enter my yard and inspect the way I maintained it.

"I do," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "You don't have a single thing in your yard that ‘critters' like."

"Critters don't belong around people," he said. "Gotta get rid of ‘em."

I shrugged and walked away.

He tries to find a way to blame me for whatever goes wrong in his yard. One spring his lawn came in with dreadful patches of yellow dead grass. "You killed my grass," he accused without preamble one day when I was out digging and planting.

"How?" I asked.

"By digging," he said. "You dug up grubs, and they ate my lawn."

I stared at him. "That's ridiculous," I said. "First of all, I haven't found that many grubs, and any grubs I find, I kill. Secondly, if grubs from my digging were killing the grass around here, my lawn would look as shitty as yours. Barb's lawn would look shitty. Trudy's lawn would look shitty. But they all look fine. It's just your yard, and the dead patches are all in strips. Admit it: you over-fertilized."

But he turned away.

And then one day I heard an unpleasant metallic scratching. It went on for almost an hour, a frantic, desperate noise that would lull for a few moments before starting up again. I finally couldn't bear it any longer and went out to investigate. It was after sunset and hard to see what was going on in the yard, but the noise was dreadful and persistent enough that the source of it was easy to locate, which is how I found a trap in Bernie's yard right by the back gate, with a desperate little vole in it. I released the vole, replaced the trap, and went back to my house.

It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd attended the trap and taken care of the vole as soon as it was caught. But it was obvious that he was prepared to leave the animal in the trap all night, meaning that the animal had to be terrified and desperate all night, and everyone had to listen to it try to claw its way out of the trap.

A few days later, when he was out in his yard, I asked, "What's with the trap, Bernie?"

"I don't like critters," he said. "They can get into your attic."

"A vole?" I asked. "Because that's what was in the trap. A vole is going to get into your attic? They burrow in the ground."

He didn't reply.

"What do you do with the critters you catch?" I asked.

"I drown ‘em," he said.

"But why?" I asked. "Why do you want to kill these critters?"

He didn't reply, just continued walking around his yard, inspecting things.

"Why, Bernie?" I insisted.

"I don't talk to ignorant people," he announced without looking at me.

"Must be awfully quiet at your house, then," I replied, and continued my own work.

And that's when war was declared.

The trap, which is far too small to contain anything but chipmunks and voles, appears every so often, always baited with peanut butter on bread. I would understand his dislike of the kinds of critters this trap is designed to attract if he had a garden they could actually damage, but as I've already mentioned, the only flowers in his yard are that hanging plastic bucket full of geraniums. One of my colleagues is very upset about a chipmunk that has been eating all her bulbs--there's simply a hole, she said, almost every place there used to be a flowering bulb, and chipmunks are a likely culprit. Earlier this year when I complained to a friend about tulips that just didn't come up, even though my hyacinths and daffodils did fine, she told me that tulips bulbs are apparently quite the delicacy to rodents. But I never saw any holes in my garden I didn't dig myself, and aside from those few lost tulips, things thrive as long as I water them.

I also wouldn't mind the trap so much if Bernie were truly trying to prevent "critters" from getting in his attic or setting up house in his garage, if he put the trap under the eaves of his house or by the garage door he always leaves open. But he doesn't. He leaves the trap at the back of his garage, by my garden--and two feet from the gate. This makes it very easy for me to go through the gate and release whatever animal gets caught.

Yesterday morning I heard the tell-tale metallic scratching when I got up. I didn't bother being subtle: I strode straight out to the gate, opened it, and stood in Bernie's yard while I fumbled to open the trap. Even before I opened it I could see what was in it: a sparrow. I released the poor bird, set the trap back down, and left it. It remains exactly where I set it yesterday morning, still shut, which means I don't have to worry about it.

If I can, I try to set off the trap before a creature gets in it. I can sometimes do this with a garden hose, but while I am obvious and deliberate about freeing a trapped animal, I prefer to be surreptitious about my attempts to disarm the trap. If I'm still up at 11:30 p.m. and the trap hasn't been sprung, I might decide my back garden needs watering.

Bernie has never once confronted me about freeing the animals he traps. I don't know if he has never noticed me in the act (I rather suspect he has, since his kitchen window affords a perfect view of the gate) or if he's too cowardly and lazy to bother.

What it comes down to, in the end, is 1) that Bernie likes killing small wild animals just on principle and I don't (I don't try to kill them unless they come in my house, which is why I once beat a gopher to death with a shovel), and 2) his principles are too rigid to allow him to figure out ways to prevent my interference, like moving the trap, and 3) moving the trap to where I can't see it would defeat a primary purpose, which is to annoy and upset me. But my impulse to save the animals is stronger than his impulse to kill them, and any annoyance I feel is mitigated by satisfaction at freeing the poor things. And while he has probably managed to drown a few before I've rescued them, most likely when I was out of town some time, I still get there before he does more often than not, mostly because he's too lazy and indifferent to check the trap very regularly.

I realize that if a big brick wall separated our yards, I couldn't do any to rescue a critter caught in a trap just on the other side of it. But a wall would prevent Jim from noticing that I've dug up parts of my lawn and put in ornamentals, that I've established beds and borders along the fence and am enriching the soil with vegetable peelings and fruit rinds. I could put some solution scented like fox urine or something all along the fence so critters wouldn't want to climb up it and would instead be content to stay in MY yard. And I would rather look at a brick wall that have a view of Bernie's unimaginative, boring yard.

Posted by Holly at 12:34 PM | Comments (9)

June 16, 2007

An Old "Tell Us All About Yourself" Quiz

I am in the process of reading through and deleting or transferring all the files on my very old computer (I bought it in 1994) so I can recycle it. (Yeah, I know, I should have recycled it long ago. But it was a good, reliable computer and I wrote my dissertation on it, and it has had sentimental value. But I'm planning to get a laptop, and the really old thing has to go.) Anyway, I found this quiz from 1999, and it made me want to party, and then answer the questions. I've updated answers that were no longer accurate, but if the old answer is still true and/or amusing, I left it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF OUIJA BOARDS: They creep me out.

FAVORITE TV SHOW: After Buffy, my favorite show is "The Blank Screen." It's the only show I watch regularly.

WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSEPAD: a mouse

FAVORITE BOARD GAME: Twister

FAVORITE MAGAZINE: Anything with writing by me inside it.

FAVORITE SMELLS: jasmine, hyacinth, orange blossoms, lilac, bergamot, rosemary, sandalwood, the desert after a thunder storm

WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD: Believing that God hates me, that there is a hell, and that God is going to send me there

BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD: When I first took this quiz, I wrote that I was going through a period of feeling happy a lot of the time, which I defined as "an awareness that I feel healthy, capable and content on a fairly consistent basis." I claimed to like it a lot. I can see why I would enjoy that feeling.

FAVORITE SOUNDTRACK: I love show tunes. I couldn't pick a favorite.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? It's almost always one of two things: 1) Must pee, or 2) Why the fuck is my cat yowling like that and how can I get her to stop?

DO YOU GET MOTION SICKNESS: I used to get it on my mission when I was lying absolutely still. It sucked.

ROLLER COASTERS--SCARY OR EXCITING: I'm not particularly fond of roller coasters, but from what I understand, isn't the scare part of the excitement?

PEN OR PENCIL: pens for writing, pencils for underlining in books

HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE: however many it takes for me to get to the phone, unless my caller id reveals that it's someone I don't want to talk to.

FAVORITE NAMES FOR ACTUAL OR FUTURE DAUGHTERS: I don't plan on having any daughters, but if I did have one, I would name her Grace. It's my favorite name in the world: it's a beautiful word, just in how it sounds, and it means something beautiful too.

FAVORITE NAMES FOR ACTUAL OR FUTURE SONS: I don't plan on having any sons.

FAVORITE FOODS: Chocolate in just about any form (especially dark chocolate), rum cordials, marzipan, mangos, raspberries, avocado milkshakes (I drink them all the time), fresh squeezed orange juice, a good mocha, hard cheeses, whipped cream, and of course, a red chili burro enchilada style with guacamole and sour cream from El Charro in Safford, Arizona.

DO YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR PARENTS? At times. These days I find my mother easier to get along with than my father, a reversal of my earlier life.

CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? chocolate.

FAVORITE ICE CREAM: Ben and Jerry's

DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE: I'd rather be driven.

DO YOU SLEEP WITH STUFFED ANIMALS? No, just furry mammals who drool all over my pillows and insist on curling up right next to me so that I can't roll over in the night--and when they're not around, I have my cat.

STORMS: COOL OR SCARY? scary storms are cool--that's why there cool--I've always liked the aesthetic of the sublime.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST CAR YOU DROVE? I learned to drive in a 1972 green Chevy pick up that had been owned by our next door neighbor, who was a hog farmer. When he retired, my parents bought it. They still own it. For many years when I went home for Christmas, if I wanted to get around, I still had to drive that truck.

IF YOU COULD MEET ONE PERSON, DEAD OR ALIVE, WHO WOULD IT BE? God

WHAT IS YOUR ZODIAC SIGN? Sag sun, Sag moon, libra rising

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE POET? Me

DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? No.

GUYS--IF A GIRL ASKED FOR THE SHIRT OFF OF YOUR BACK, WOULD YOU GIVE IT TO HER:

GIRLS--WOULD YOU EVER ASK A GUY FOR HIS SHIRT? I once took my dress off in "the biggest damn bar in the Big 10" so that I could put on a shirt that some guy had offered me because it was too hot and I was sweating too much in the dress I was wearing. It was a very ugly shirt. It had geese and hunters and hunting dogs all over it. I gave it back eventually.

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED WHAT WOULD IT BE? On the old quiz, I wrote, "guru, faith healer, or mystic." Today the answer is, "writer."

IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR WHAT WOULD IT BE? I can dye my hair any color. I HAVE dyed my hair any color. Duh.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE? Yeah. I've also had my heart broken.

WHAT IS ON YOUR WALLS IN YOUR ROOM? hats, photos of people I care about and/or am related to, mirrors, needlework by each of my three sisters

IS THE GLASS HALF-EMPTY OR HALF-FULL? Is the question trite or banal?

FAVORITE SNAPPLE? The ones in the bottles

FAVORITE MOVIES? check the movie archives or this post about my taste in movies.

ARE YOU A LEFTY, RIGHTY, OR AMBIDEXTROUS: Right

DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? Yes, and I do it really quickly and accurately.

IF YOU COULD BE A GARDENING TOOL WHAT WOULD YOU BE? If I could be a gardening tool, I'd have amazing prodigious powers and would elect to be something better than a gardening tool. Nonetheless, I really love a good shovel. I like to dig.

WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? Not a damn thing. All the feng shui books say this is very important if you are going to sleep well. For a while I had a couple of bowls of salt under my bed because I read that salt absorbs negative energy and that it was a good way to suck an ex-lover's energy out of your bed, so that you wouldn't continue to dream about them. But now there's nothing.

FAVORITE NUMBER? a lot

WHAT'S YOUR DREAM CAR? anything that gets me where I want to go in ease and comfort, requires little to no maintenance, and uses as little fuel as possible. In other words, I have enough of a personality that I don't need to fantasize about an automobile that would help me express it.

FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? The Olympics. When they're on is really the only time I watch sports.

SAY ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU [because when I answered it, it was an email--you can write, "say one nice thing about who ever tagged you"]. Saviour Onassis sent me this--how can I only say ONE nice thing? He's my favorite artist, after myself, and he is who taught me that all artists need to be their own favorite artists. He's a muse and he's amusing. He teaches me things. I love him very much.

I tag everyone who feels like answering these questions.

Posted by Holly at 12:02 PM | Comments (2)

June 13, 2007

It's a Tool, Not a Toy, and If It Ain't Working, I Ain't Playing

I've been planning since, oh, October or so, to get a laptop. I never really thought about getting one until my mother asked me if I'd accept as a Christmas help in buying one, and then I said, "Uh, sure!"

And after Christmas I went to buy one, but I didn't know what to get, and the IT guy at school came very close to talking me into buying a Mac, which I was willing to do because I hate Microsoft. But the problem is, I still use Word Perfect as my word processing program (believe me, it's SO much better than Microsoft Word), and I was going to have to run Windows on the Mac (which you can do) to use Word Perfect. And there were going to be Mac innovations and I was busy and the semester was hectic etc etc and there was always a reason to delay actually making the order, but then the semester ended, I was less busy, and it was time to buy.

So I consulted my friend and blog host Jim, asking him for specific advice about what to get. He's also a university IT guy, and he said, "Given what you want to do, you don't want a Mac. You want a highly rated PC laptop." He suggested a few makes and models.

About two weeks ago, I ordered a highly rated PC laptop, and a bunch of peripheral stuff, including a really great backpack to carry the damn thing in, and a printer, and so forth.

A week ago, everything arrived.

I let it sit in the box for a couple of days, because, well, just because. Because I knew it would be a pain in the ass to figure it all out. Because I had other things to do. Because sometimes I resent the accommodations and concessions technology requires.

Finally, Saturday, I got the laptop out of the box and turned it on.

And discovered I could do next to nothing because I didn't have a high-speed internet connection for it.

That's right: Windows Vista does next to nothing without an internet connection. And what little it does, it does SLOWLY. I got all this extra RAM or whatever it's called, and the damn thing was still just so freakin' SLOW because Vista is just SO complicated.

And most of the software I use all the time wasn't compatible, and the logic of the entire operating system seemed to have changed but not for the better, and I hated and resented the whole thing, and wanted it to go away, and wished I could just get a laptop with XP on it, because that would let me do what I wanted to do.

So my IT guy suggested I call the company and see if I could get a laptop loaded with XP, and guess what?

About a month ago, this particular company started selling XP again, because people if the only option people had was Vista, they didn't want it.

When I said I wanted to return my laptop, the customer support guy offered me $250.00 to keep it. (Remember that when you buy a computer.) But I didn't want the $250.00; I wanted to be rid of Vista.

So yesterday I boxed up everything but the bag (it's a very nice bag) and mailed it all back.

I had to spend over $50 at UPS to send it off, and the whole experience, from start to finish, was a nasty pain in the ass. But I suppose I've made more expensive mistakes in my life, and at least by buying that unsatisfactory one and trying to do stuff with it, I have a better sense of what I really want and need.

But I can't buy another until my credit card is debited.... Blah blah blah.

And part of me thinks I should just get a portable typewriter.

Posted by Holly at 11:51 PM | Comments (8)

June 12, 2007

Something Else I Found in My Closet

A few months ago, as I was browsing the shoe department of some corporate department in my corporate mall, I came across several pair of high-heeled pumps with open work through the body of the shoe. "Those are pretty," I thought. "I would like to own shoes like that."

Then I thought, "Wait a minute. I used to own shoes like that."

And then I thought, "Actually, I am pretty sure I still own shoes like that."

So I went home and checked my closet and sure enough, up on the top shelf, housed in the box they came in, was a pair of blue open-worked high-heeled pumps that I was entirely smitten with when I first bought them--after all, just look at their graceful proportions! Just look at that cool color!

I know that the most common colors for shoes are black and some shade of brown, largely because those are the most practical colors. (I wonder if they're also the easiest to achieve? If black cattle are used to make black shoes, or if leather is always dyed and treated, no matter what the hide of the animal who gave up its skin looked like when the animal was alive?) But given how much I enjoy colorful shoes, like this pretty red pair or this unusual green pair, I wonder why I don't buy them more often.

Or, why, after I buy them, I so often let them sit in my closet. I didn't wear this pair for about a decade, because A) they were fairly out of style and B) they're a somewhat unusual shade, and I haven't always had clothes that matched them in both shade and style; or C) even when I've had dress-up clothes that looked right with them, for much of the past 15 years I've lived places where I have little opportunity to wear rather delicate shoes like this, needing instead sturdy boots most of the time.

But I was so happy to rediscover them, discover that they still fit, discover that they were still flattering, discover that shoes just like this perfectly serviceable pair I already owned were appearing in stores, that I resolved to find an outfit they looked good with and wear them right away.

And I did. I've worn them to a couple of functions lately, most recently to the wedding of a student whose thesis I'd supervised. It was both a lovely wedding and a really fun party (which made me think, just as the wedding in Belgium had, about how joyless and utilitarian Mormon receptions usually are, but that's a topic for another post). The bride was beautiful; the setting was lovely; the food was good; the alcohol was plentiful and free; and while the DJ was fairly lousy, people (including me) danced anyway.

It was such a fun party, in fact, that people found it hard to leave, and stuck around even after the bar closed and the DJ packed up. The weather had not been ideal--it had sprinkled during the ceremony, which was in the morning--but by late afternoon it was simply a cool, slightly overcast, pleasant day. A group of people were enjoying the garden while waiting for the bride to finish changing out of her dress so we could say good-bye, chatting about nothing in particular. As there had been an entire group of women who'd had to shed their shoes when the dancing started, to avoid injury either to ankles or the shoes themselves, the topic moved soon enough to tired feet and the footwear that causes them. Compliments on shoes were exchanged. When someone praised mine, I said, "Thanks. I dragged them out of hibernation in my closet not too long ago. They're really old."

"How old?" one of my students asked. He sounded skeptical, though I couldn't imagine why he wouldn't believe me.

"Older than you," I said.

"Really?" he asked. Again, there was a skepticism I didn't understand. "When did you get them?"

"1984," I said.

He laughed. "Yeah, they really are older than me."

And that's what I was left with: the fact that even though many of my students are adults who are old enough to buy alcohol, I still have shoes older than they are.

Posted by Holly at 12:40 PM | Comments (4)

June 7, 2007

I'm Not Lost

Since I don't have cable and my reception via antenna is so lousy I can't stand to watch my television unless the picture on it comes from a vcr or dvd player, I generally watch the tv shows I'm interested in a season behind. Lately I've been reading about the season 3 finale of Lost, and apparently there's still all this concern about the "others."

But why? Seriously, why? I'm currently about two-thirds finished with season 2 thanks to Netflix, and it's bleedin' obvious who the "others" are. I mean, you've got Gavin Park pretending to be some Korean doorman who doesn't speak English, and Holland Manners pretending to be the devoted husband of a saintly middle-aged black woman. So what if Holland was killed by Darla and Drusilla while locked in his own wine cellar? So what if Gavin was turned into a zombie by The Beast and eventually decapitated by Gunn? We all know how cunning those lawyers and conjurers at Wolfram and Hart are at bringing people back from the dead. I'm telling you, if the secret cabal of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart is powerful enough to have offices even on savage planets like Pylea in some alternate dimension, they're powerful enough to take over some savage island depicted on an alternate network.

I'm just waiting for the twist in season 4 where we find out all this to-doing about "the children" is a way to secure playmates for the preternaturally strong and wicked sextuplets Cordelia Chase (because she was the most fertile character in the entire Buffy-verse) conceived with Logan Echolls during Cordy's stint on Veronica Mars.

Mark my words.

Posted by Holly at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)

June 6, 2007

Someone Who Was Really Good to Me

My mission, as anyone who has read my blog for very long knows, sucked for the most part.

But one part that didn't suck was my first mission president, who was as good a man as I ever knew. He was extremely kind to me, and I loved him and his family very much.

I found out last night that he died Sunday. I hadn't spoken to him in at least a decade (though he did stay in touch with me fof a good while after I left the church, just call me up every so often to see how I was doing, which tells you something about why I loved him), and I'm really bummed.

Posted by Holly at 9:37 AM | Comments (6)

June 5, 2007

Look into My Irises

A couple of years ago a friend gave me some irises that just weren't thriving at her house. I planted them in my front yard and they've done pretty well if I do say so myself. I don't generally like to cut my flowers--I like to leave them on the stem where they can do their flower thing and everyone who walks by my yard can enjoy them. But this year the stalks were so heavy with blooms that they fell over into the mud, which meant pretty much no one but some insects enjoyed them. So I cut them and stuck them in a vase, and here they are.

Posted by Holly at 5:14 PM | Comments (0)

June 3, 2007

His Big Gay Belgian Wedding

By the way, remember that wedding in Belgium I mentioned attending? I never said who got married, because I wanted to write all about it. And I did write all about it--I wrote a great little piece which I sent off to the NY Times Modern Love column, because it's edited by a friend of mine who asked me several times to write something he could use. So I finally did, and wouldn't you know, it never even got a response.

I'm not going to post here the essay I wrote, but I will post something I didn't send the NY Times: a photo, of me with my dear friend Matthew, one of the grooms. That's right: the wedding I attended was a gay wedding--and not just a commitment ceremony either, but an actual, valid, legal ceremony performed by a government official and recognized by the state, without any nasty judicial challenges or threat of constitutional amendment to render it invalid.

And not only did I attend the ceremony, but I took part in it: I was one of the legal witnesses--in other words, I was one of the "best people."

I'm including a photo of me and Matthew instead of Matthew and his husband because Matthew has already appeared on my blog, so I figure he's fair game. As for the partner, well, I don't want to invade his privacy. But they looked fabulous together and I was very, very happy and proud to be part of their wedding.

View image

Posted by Holly at 10:30 AM | Comments (7)

June 2, 2007

As Opposed to a Pleasant One

The first Medici pope was Giovanni de' Medici, who, as I mentioned last time, is reported to have written to his brother, "God has given us the Papacy--let us enjoy it," when in 1513 he learned he'd be able to change his name from Giovanni to Leo X. (Leo X just doesn't sound as good as Malcolm X, does it.)

But Leo had to help God a little along the way in getting Him to give him the papacy. The pope before Leo was Julius II, a particularly bellicose and belligerent man who shocked absolutely everyone by riding out before the armies of the Vatican and who, in the words of Tuchman,

is ranked among the great popes because of his temporal accomplishments, not least his fertile partnership with Michelangelo--for art, next to war, is the great immortalizer of reputations.... He achieved important results in both these endeavors, which, being visible, have received ample notice as the visibles of history usually do, while the significant aspect of his reign, its failure of concern for the religious crisis, has been overlooked as the invisibles of history usually are.

After Julius II's very martial papacy, many were glad to have a lazy hedonist on the papal throne, particularly one who might die early and so give all the other cardinals a chance to be pope before too long. According, once again, to Tuchman, Leo's

health was a major concern because, although only 37 when elected, he suffered from an unpleasant anal ulcer which gave hm trouble in processions, although it aided his election because he allowed his doctors to spread word that he would not live long--always a persuasive factor to fellow cardinals.

Now, the fact that letting everyone think you'll die soon could aid your chances of being elected pope is interesting, but what really caught my attention in that passage is the phrase "unpleasant anal ulcer." Maybe it's just my lack of experience with anal ulcers, but I have trouble imagining a pleasant anal ulcer. The "unpleasant" there seems superfluous, about like mentioning a "tall giant" or a "short dwarf."

But in 1517 the story of Leo's ass gets every weirder, and here it is:

The Petrucci conspiracy was an obscure and vicious affair that has baffled everyone from that day to this. Leo professed to discover through betrayal by a servant a conspiracy of several cardinals to assassinate him. Led by the young Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci of Siena, who nursed a personal grievance, the plot depended on poison to be injected by a suborned doctor in the course of lancing a boil on the Pope's buttock. Arrests were made, informers tortured, suspect cardinals grilled. Lured to Rome on a safe-conduct, Petrucci and others of the accused were imprisoned, the violation being condoned by Leo on the ground that no poisoner could be considered a safe risk. Hearings produced awful revelations; confessions were induced; whispered reports of the proceedings bewildered and terrified Rome. Forced to plead guilty, Cardinal Petrucci was executed by strangling with an appropriately red silk noose at the hand of a Moor because protocol did not permit a Christian to put to death a Prince of the Church. Faced with this example, the other accused cardinals accepted pardons at a cost of enormous fines, up to 150,000 ducats from the richest, Cardinal Raffaele Riario, yet another of the nipoti of Sixtus IV, in this case a grand-nephew.

So far-fetched was the plot that the inference could not be avoided that the Pope, perhaps seizing upon some informer's tattle, had promoted the whole affair for the sake of the fines. Recent investigations in Vatican archives suggest that the plot may in fact have been real, but what counts is the impression made at the time. Coming on top of public indignation at Leo's war on Urbino, the Petrucci conspiracy further discredited the Papacy, besides alarming and antagonizing the cardinals. Whether to nullify their hostility or to fend off bankruptcy, or both, Leo in an act of astonishing boldness created 31 new cardinals in a single day, collecting from the recruits over 300,000 [which is simony, or selling a religious office for profit, a very great sin]. The wholesale creation is said to have been conceived by [Leo's cousin] Cardinal Guilio de' Medici as a paving stone on his own path to the Papacy.

Leo died in 1521; he was succeeded by Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, a Dutch-born reformer who actually wanted to be a proper pope and a true religious leader, and therefore got no cooperation from the cardinals. His death in September 1523 was unmourned, and made way for Guilio de' Medici to become Pope Clement VII. Clement's major claim to fame is that he so mismanaged what was already fucked up, failing to respond at all to what was obviously a crisis, that the sack of Rome occurred during his reign.

And all of that is really interesting and good to know, but I still find myself horrified and fascinated by the idea that people would try to assassinate a pope by injecting poison into a boil on his ass.

Posted by Holly at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)

June 1, 2007

Put a Bad Guy in a Tiara and a Dress, and See What Trouble Ensues

Last weekend I watched a thoroughly inadequate documentary on The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. A major problem was the acting, which was simultaneously too restrained and excessive, in that the actors never spoke, so they had to resort to over-emoting to convey any sort of inner state. I like cheese as a general proposition but that was just too much.

But an even bigger problem was that the whole thing was carefully sanitized to avoid offending Catholics. The discussion of Savonarola, the Dominican ascetic who persuaded people to renounce materialism and riches by casting their paintings, statues, books, jewels and fine clothes onto raging "bonfires of the vanities," makes it sound like his gripe was all about the fact that Lorenzo de' Medici paid Sandro Bottecelli to paint naked depictions of pagan goddesses instead of clothed depictions of Christian saints. In other words, there was absolutely no mention of the fact that at the time Savonarola began railing against the established church, the dude wearing the papal tiara was Alexander VI, a.k.a. Rodrigo Borgia, a licentious, scheming son of a bitch who became pope by buying the papacy outright at age 62 after fathering at least seven acknowledged illegitimate children. (I say at least seven because he acknowledged seven of them very clearly; then there was an eighth, who was legitimized first as Rodrigo's grandson and then as his son, by two successive papal bulls; one of the elders son, Cesare, whose paternity was never in doubt, was supported and protected by his father in his very successful career as a murderer and general extremely nasty bad guy.) You'd think that given that the documentary was about a family of Italian merchants who eventually became some of the most important art patrons in the history of the world before becoming very bad ecclesiastical leaders, there would be room to point out the failings of a family of Spanish scofflaws.

But no, because more important than an accurate account of much of anything is the requirement not to say anything negative about a church, which is one more reason organized religion sucks and people who follow it are so often unable and unwilling to have a clear grasp of the truth. Thus, the Borgias are not even mentioned. Nor was there any reference to mistresses kept by Medici popes (there were two popes, and god only knows how many mistresses). The famous (and perhaps apocryphal) comment by Giovanni de' Medici (a.k.a. Pope Leo X) to his brother Giuliano upon Giovanni's accession, "God has given us the Papacy--let us enjoy it," was treated as a remark that was irreverent and indecorous rather than greedy and rapacious, although Leo managed to empty the papal coffers in record time.

So I turned to The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, a book about why governments insist on pursuing policies and actions that are contrary to their interests, even after the policies are shown to be flawed and the actions mistakes. Tuchman attributes part of the problem to "wooden-headedness," which is

the source of self-deception [and] a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived or fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian's statement about Philip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns [though perhaps not of all presidents]: "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence."

I read this book in the spring of 2003 as we were gearing up for the war in Iraq. The section on Vietnam was enough to persuade anyone with a brain that what we were preparing to do was the height of folly, but we went ahead and did it anyway--just as Tuchman might have predicted.

Anyway, there's a section in Tuchman's book about all the ways the Renaissance popes really, really screwed up. And the point of this post was not really to talk about the crappy documentary--that was just to introduce my real subject. But I have barely gotten around to that, and this post is already really long, so I'll finish up with my real topic tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 11:11 AM | Comments (1)