Kenneth Sutton's aide-mémoire
Mark Turner in The Observer: Welcome to the cruising capital of the world
Whether he was careless, reckless or foolish, as some have claimed, really isn’t very interesting. I also don’t care if he takes drugs (‘Shock! Horror! Pop Star Smokes Dope!’). I don’t care if he’s a well-adjusted homosexual. I don’t care about his pending ‘wedding’.
The article includes not only a defense of George Michael but also brief reviews of some London cruising locales.
H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine had been on my to-read list for a very long time. Since I’ve enjoyed so many novels in which time travel of one sort or another has played a role, I thought I really should read the granddaddy. Well, now I have, and I don’t have to do that again.
Nope, I didn’t much like it. Too heavy-handed, and I don’t agree with what seems to be his political philosophy.
It didn’t help that the edition I was reading (and to which the link will take you), a “Barnes and Noble Classic”, was atrociously footnoted and end-noted. Some of the footnotes are moronic (they explain the metaphorical use of the word “tentacles” and the plain use of words like “acacias” and “tree-bole”), yet the editor lets “In the matter of sepulture...” go undefined. But the worst offense of both the endnotes and the footnotes is to reveal information about the plot and characters in advance. Avoid this edition at all costs!
Here’s the NYT’s coverage of the big religious news of the weekend: Woman Is Named Episcopal Leader Amongst the reporting is this nugget from one of those who is unhappy:
“In many ways the election speaks for itself,” Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. of Pittsburgh said in a statement. Bishop Duncan is the moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, a theologically conservative group of Episcopal dioceses. “For the Anglican Communion worldwide, this election reveals the continuing insensitivity and disregard of the Episcopal Church for the present dynamics of our global fellowship.”
So the Episcopal Church should deny the truth it knows (that women can be priests and bishops) for the sake of fellowship with those who still haven’t got it? Let them turn to Rome.
And this from the other side of the pond: The Guardian.
Julie E. Czerneda’s Regeneration was eagerly awaited and eagerly read. My hopes were exceeded. (This is the book I was reading at Dance Camp instead of dancing).
It would be nice to have another story about Dr. Mackenzie Connor, but this trilogy was fully resolved with this volume. There was plenty of tension, both in plot and in character relationships, which was satisfyingly resolved by the end of the book.
I’ve had a month of not always knowing if I’m coming or going. It started off the second week of May with a visit to Fry Communications, which prints and mails UU World, to meet our account rep, see the magazine on the press, and get a tour. Fry is located in Mechanicsburg, Pa., so I flew to Philadelphia, had a lovely visit with my friend Barbara and dinner at Vortex House, then drove west. The press visit started early and went right up until I had to start back to the airport.
As interesting as the press tour was (and yes, I guess I really have become a thorough magazine editor, because I did think it was fascinating), the best thing about the trip was the countryside. It’s nothing like what I grew up with, but from my first visit to Philadelphia I loved the countryside of SE Pa. The rolling hills and plentiful open space and vistas raise my spirit. There’s a lot of hayfields and cattle, which supply two odors from childhood that somehow make me feel like all is right with the world. And mechanicsburg is a small city. All in all, it renewed my disattisfaction with living in a city.
The weekend of that week was the biannual Lavender Country and Folk Dance (LCFD) dance camp. It was at a new place for us, a YMCA camp in Connecticut. That was the weekend there was so much rain and flooding in Mass. It was pretty wet at the camp, but not terrible. It was on a lake, lots of trees, very picturesque. I didn’t do a whole lot of dancing, but there was a fantastic hambo workshop where I really got the woman’s role down–not with everyone I danced with, but with three of the guys especially. I also finished a good book while there. Very satisfying weekend.
The I went back to Pa. (by car) to facilitate the Quaker Workers Gathering the following week. It was held at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center in the Poconos. I had had mixed feelings after having accepted the invitation, but it was a good experience. And the participants liked it, too, so that turned out well.
And then the next week I was at a two-day Certified ScrumMaster training. (You may now say “sir” when you address me.) Scrum is a management method used in software development, but my colleagues and I will be giving it a try with magazine production. (We started our first sprint on June 1.)
Then the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair was a must-do on Memorial Day weekend, combined with a visit in Amherst with my friends Jan and Ken. I tried (briefly) a spinning wheel at the fair, but ended up buying two more drop spindles (so I can have more than one spinning project at a time, of course!), some raw fleece (because I’m curious to see how it spins. I’ve felted raw fleece and loved it.), some laceweight yarn, and a locker-hook rug kit (because you can never have too many hobbies).
Jan and I also went to the National Yiddish Book Center (ייִדישע ביכער-×¦×¢× ×˜×¨×ַלע), where I bought a great yiddish alef-bays poster and several books. (Sonja and I have agreed to learn yiddish together.)
For those keeping score, that adds up to the coming week being my first full week in the office in a month!
A very nice article about cosmopolitanism and globalisation written by a man from Ghana (via Arts & Letters Daily).
People who can afford it mostly like to put on traditional garb — at least from time to time. I was best man once at a Scottish wedding, at which the bridegroom wore a kilt and I wore kente cloth. Andrew Oransay, the islander who piped us up the aisle, whispered in my ear at one point, “Here we all are then, in our tribal gear.” In Kumasi, people who can afford them love to put on their kente cloths, especially the most ‘traditional’ ones, woven in colourful silk strips in the town of Bonwire, as they have been for a couple of centuries. (The prices are high in part because demand outside Asante has risen. A fine kente for a man now costs more than the average Ghanaian earns in a year. Is that bad? Not for the people of Bonwire.) Besides, trying to find some primordially authentic culture can be like peeling an onion.
Librarianna has an interesting little exercise on her blog. How many of the The TIME 100 | The People Who Shape Our World can you identify?
I knew forty-five, and I misidentified one. (I was a little vague on some: “politician” for instance.)
Michael Wex’s Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods is entertaining, informative, sometimes uncomfortable, and uneven. I’m glad to have read most of it and skimmed the rest.
Faint praise, huh? But it really wouldn’t be in the spirit of the book to praise it, now would it?
Wex ranges widely through Yiddish, covering life from birth to death, including everything in between and beyond. There’s usage, etymology, and culture. I particularly enjoyed chapters four, “Pigs, Poultry, and Pampers: The Religious Roots of Yiddish,” and five, “Discouraging Words: Yiddish and the Forces of Darkness.” The chapter on curses is pretty good, too.
Parts aren’t really written for a popular audience; part way through chapter three, Wex writes:
If you’ve never wondered about the difference between kugl and kigl or meshuge and meshige, the remainder of this chapter could prove a little heavy going. You might want to go on to Chapter Four and return to this section after reading the rest of the book.
And much of the reality of the world and way of life in which Yiddish evolved is harsh. Unsurprisingly (but no less uncomfortably), the Yiddish language and mindset reflects its birth in oppression.
Finally, the structure and pacing, in my opinion, could use a lot of work. And the author photo? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse one.
Interesting article over at the New York Times, Growing Unease for Some Blacks on Immigration. (The article also reports on black civil rights leaders who support the immigrant efforts.)
Some blacks bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the immigrant demonstrations, pointing out that black protesters in the 1960’s were American citizens and had endured centuries of enslavement, rapes, lynchings and discrimination before they started marching.
Funny, that’s the same sort of thing some blacks say about gay rights or gay marriage.
As an editor, I consider “civil rights movement” standard usage for the specific efforts beginning in the 1950s to eliminate segregation and Jim Crow, to gain voting rights for African Americans, and generally to make a course correction in American race relations. However, I reject the notions that the civil rights movement was/is the only movement for civil rights or that its unique characteristics make it impossible for any other civil rights struggle to be compared to it.
Some of the concern seems to be self-interest:
But nearly twice as many blacks as whites said that they or a family member had lost a job, or not gotten a job, because an employer hired an immigrant worker. Blacks were also more likely than whites to feel that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens.
This disparity represents part of the unfinished work of the civil rights movement. But I don’t believe that civil rights will be won one at a time. I think they’re connected. (And the article reports on some of those connections.) Sentiments like this make it clear how immigrant activists must continue the civil rights movement even as they build upon it.
The article also quotes statistics that “In 2004, 72 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.” I don’t doubt these numbers per se, nor that they represent dire problems. But having grown up in Southern California, where racism was defined as white and brown, I wonder why Hispanic dropouts are more likely to be hired than whites or blacks. And having lived in Philadelphia, where I began to become more aware of African American concerns, I wonder to what extent incarceration affects the numbers.
Warehousing young black men in prison is an outrage. Why does the Times obscure the problem as one of unemployment?
OK, so I finally gave in and bought “the #1 worldwide bestseller, now a major motion picture,” Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code
What did I think? Well, I bought it, and I stayed up very late one night to finish it. So by the standards of the book publishing industry, it was a great success.
And I did enjoy it. But when I read “A dark stubble was shrouding his strong jaw and dimpled chin” on page 8, I thought I was in danger of embarking on a romance novel. And there continued to be moments of purple prose. But not to fear! The moments of turgid, faux-academic exposition more than compensated.
Not an unqualified success, but on the whole a good yarn.