Sunday, May 21, 2006
have you hugged your dog today?
My poor dog. He is such a long-suffering animal. Run from pillar to post to escape the "affection" of our children, he gets so little attention from us (me especially). It's a legitimate grievance. Once upon a time, he was our only "baby", and received all the hugs and love any dog could ask for. Now that three other small beings inhabit the house and take up most of our time and attention, poor little Zathras gets the shaft. As I say, especially from me. I am going to try and make it a priority to hug him at least once every day—his patience, his loyalty, and his position should earn him that.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
book report VI
Read a bunch of new books on my recent trip to Ohio. Starting with Zane Grey, Wild Horse Mesa. This I thought was one of Grey's better works. Less florid and over-written than many, more grounded in plot and action, instead of drifting off into fancy descriptions and long essays on the ideals of western men and women. Just much more tightly written. (And a note on names: if all the prospective parents out there looking for unique names for their sons need a new place to look, I strongly suggest flipping through the works of Grey and L'Amour. Their heroes have some unusual names. This one? Chane. With younger brother Chess.)
Next I read Edna Ferber's Cimarron. I had apparently read it before ... at least, it seemed very familiar. I found it a bit dark this time around. Ferber's view of people left something to be desired. (For fun sometime, try reading the original Show Boat and then watching the movie. Talk about Hollywoodization!) But here was the really fascinating bit. Cimarron is about the founding of an Oklahoma town, and the process by which it became civilized. And I have never before read anything which did such a good job swaying the reader's sympathies to both sides. You could feel the justice and righteousness in Yancey Cravat's deeply held beliefs about the raw deal the Indians were given; you could just as easily feel the justice and righteousness of Sabra Cravat's struggle to carve a life for her family out of the wilderness, and her inability to accept that it was at the expense of someone else's life and land. The two opposing viewpoints—and the strong wills that put them forward—were very compellingly drawn.
Next up, Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison. This is a YA title that I remember reading years ago. (Probably when I was a young adult.) And frankly, I remember it being a better book. This time around I could see it playing fast and loose with the historical facts, and had a rather hard time maintaining my interest. It moved slowly, and just didn't make me care. Of course, in the time since I read it as a young girl, I've read several other very good captivity narratives (John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, and Follow the River, whose author I can't remember and which was fictionalized but still fascinating), and Indian Captive suffers by comparison.
And finally, the second in Jan Karon's Mitford series, A Light in the Window. I had read several of the books in the series years ago, and didn't get much out of them at the time. Interesting characters, but somehow they didn't grab me. This time around, however, I'm finding them much better. Maybe they speak to me more now? I think I prize the setting—the small town, the old-fashioned values—more than I used to. I was a little disappointed in some of the oh-too-typical plot contrivances that made this one read more like a romance novel than I was looking for at times. (You know, hero is made to look as though he's cheating on heroine, then vice versa, and of course neither one actually ASKS the other one what's going on until after they've acted like idiots. This may be common behavior, but as a plot device it's beyond common and well into over-used and cliched.)
Next I read Edna Ferber's Cimarron. I had apparently read it before ... at least, it seemed very familiar. I found it a bit dark this time around. Ferber's view of people left something to be desired. (For fun sometime, try reading the original Show Boat and then watching the movie. Talk about Hollywoodization!) But here was the really fascinating bit. Cimarron is about the founding of an Oklahoma town, and the process by which it became civilized. And I have never before read anything which did such a good job swaying the reader's sympathies to both sides. You could feel the justice and righteousness in Yancey Cravat's deeply held beliefs about the raw deal the Indians were given; you could just as easily feel the justice and righteousness of Sabra Cravat's struggle to carve a life for her family out of the wilderness, and her inability to accept that it was at the expense of someone else's life and land. The two opposing viewpoints—and the strong wills that put them forward—were very compellingly drawn.
Next up, Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison. This is a YA title that I remember reading years ago. (Probably when I was a young adult.) And frankly, I remember it being a better book. This time around I could see it playing fast and loose with the historical facts, and had a rather hard time maintaining my interest. It moved slowly, and just didn't make me care. Of course, in the time since I read it as a young girl, I've read several other very good captivity narratives (John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, and Follow the River, whose author I can't remember and which was fictionalized but still fascinating), and Indian Captive suffers by comparison.
And finally, the second in Jan Karon's Mitford series, A Light in the Window. I had read several of the books in the series years ago, and didn't get much out of them at the time. Interesting characters, but somehow they didn't grab me. This time around, however, I'm finding them much better. Maybe they speak to me more now? I think I prize the setting—the small town, the old-fashioned values—more than I used to. I was a little disappointed in some of the oh-too-typical plot contrivances that made this one read more like a romance novel than I was looking for at times. (You know, hero is made to look as though he's cheating on heroine, then vice versa, and of course neither one actually ASKS the other one what's going on until after they've acted like idiots. This may be common behavior, but as a plot device it's beyond common and well into over-used and cliched.)
Monday, May 15, 2006
authors I enjoy
In discussing things I can do with my time that will be steps toward getting more writing done, my brilliant husband suggested that as I read (and reread) my favorite authors, I start to take notes, keeping track of what it is that makes them my favorites.
With that in mind, I've been reading my favorites more critically, noting every time a passage moved me or stood out in my mind. The first thing I've noticed that I look for in a good author is relationships. The characters' relationships with each other have to be natural, and they have to be deeply felt. Louisa May Alcott, particularly, impressed me with the many shades and nuances her characters display toward each other. (The book in question was Rose in Bloom, sequel to Eight Cousins.) In the case of this book, the relationships were all about love, but all different kinds. Sisters, cousins, friends, lovers, parents and children; good love, tragic love, lost love, love that harmed and love that helped. It was all there. And it all felt real—the people seemed like old friends, and I felt their trials and tribulations along with them.
With that in mind, I've been reading my favorites more critically, noting every time a passage moved me or stood out in my mind. The first thing I've noticed that I look for in a good author is relationships. The characters' relationships with each other have to be natural, and they have to be deeply felt. Louisa May Alcott, particularly, impressed me with the many shades and nuances her characters display toward each other. (The book in question was Rose in Bloom, sequel to Eight Cousins.) In the case of this book, the relationships were all about love, but all different kinds. Sisters, cousins, friends, lovers, parents and children; good love, tragic love, lost love, love that harmed and love that helped. It was all there. And it all felt real—the people seemed like old friends, and I felt their trials and tribulations along with them.
Friday, May 12, 2006
April/May resolutions
A quick note on the state of the current resolutions. April wound up shifting to "keep in touch" month. I felt like I was doing an iffy job, until I had to leave town unexpectedly in early May and had to send out about 12 different emails letting people know I would be out of town and unable to keep to my social calendar! I heard from several people I hadn't spoken with in a while, and feel that I took a good step toward making some new friends. Keeping up my level of staying in touch may be a challenge, but I'll do my best.
This month was initially scheduled as marital bliss month (so to speak), but due to my spending a week out of town/sick and Lou spending two weeks basically living at his office, he asked that this not be "his" month. Which seems only fair. So now it has been transformed to "no yelling" month—my focus will be on finding ways to make my children listen to me and behave themselves without yelling at them. I think it's good timing for it. I've been reaching the yelling stage a little too quickly recently, and it's not fair to them. This past week, I was pretty much forced to not yell, as the combo of sore throat and extreme tiredness had me too voiceless and not energetic enough to yell. I was speaking in monotones ... and found they actually worked better. Who knew?
So here's hoping for a quiet month. :)
This month was initially scheduled as marital bliss month (so to speak), but due to my spending a week out of town/sick and Lou spending two weeks basically living at his office, he asked that this not be "his" month. Which seems only fair. So now it has been transformed to "no yelling" month—my focus will be on finding ways to make my children listen to me and behave themselves without yelling at them. I think it's good timing for it. I've been reaching the yelling stage a little too quickly recently, and it's not fair to them. This past week, I was pretty much forced to not yell, as the combo of sore throat and extreme tiredness had me too voiceless and not energetic enough to yell. I was speaking in monotones ... and found they actually worked better. Who knew?
So here's hoping for a quiet month. :)
Thursday, May 11, 2006
women's roles in history as seen in Texas Ranch House
I just finished watching the recent PBS series Texas Ranch House. I love this series, watching people plunked down in the middle of history and living the way people once did, facing the same (or similar, anyway) challenges. I find it somewhat marred by the continual soap-opera style dramas that seem to take over every installment (at least, the ones set in America) ... while at the same time I'm sure the drama is part of the draw. Gotta love human nature.
Texas Ranch House (TRH) suffered from this drama in a particular way. The show was taken over by the wife of the rancher, who sought to intrude herself into the business portion of the ranch and run the ranch in partnership with her husband, and by the girl-of-all-work-turned-ranchhand, who fought to put herself in a role that would normally have been filled by a man, to prove that she could be a contributing portion of the ranch. Both woman made continual claims that the men on the ranch were "sexist", that they were not respected as the 21st century women that they were, and that women's roles on the ranch were not given their proper weight.
A number of people wrote in to PBS about it, complaining that these two women had not set out to live in 1867, but rather had clung to their 21st-century sensibilities. The executive in charge of the series posted explicitly making it clear (for the first time, to my knowledge) that the women had been charged with going as their modern-day selves to immerse themselves in the ranch, and so their attempts to assert themselves were appropriate to the show.
So much for exposition. Here's my problem: there was sexism going on at that ranch, and the women's roles were not given their proper weight—by the women. The women themselves looked with such disdain on the typical roles of rancher's wife and maid that they did not fulfil them, instead forcing themselves into roles that were not half as necessary to the success of the ranch. I was reading recently an essay by Laura Ingalls Wilder on how farmer's wives of that era were their husbands' business partners in a very real sense. It was the farmer's wife who kept the household running smoothly: she managed the resources; she kept the mouths of the ranch (animal and human) fed and looked to their health; she kept things as clean as possible; she husbanded her own resources (specifically in most cases egg and cream money, but also the fruits of her labors in sewing, canning, etc.) for sale, to eke as much profit out of the farm as she could. It was only with her help that the ranch or farm could prosper, and her job was neglected at the cost of everyone on the ranch in health and prosperity.
On TRH, the ranch owner's wife and maid apparently failed to realize the importance of the roles they were sent there to play. (And we won't even mention the daughters, who seemed to spend most of their time sitting around—I'll assume editing left out a lot of work done by all the women, but no matter how much was left on the cutting room floor, it wasn't enough.) They neglected their garden; neglected basic lessons in sanitation and cleanliness; spent more time beautifying their home than turning their hands to production or trying to aid the running of the ranch. (I'm not saying beautification wouldn't have been on their minds—but I can't imagine any rancher's wife taking a whole day off to make a corn husk doll while her family's very survival was at stake.)
I felt very much that both the adult women, in their desperate struggle to carve themselves a 21st-century niche on the ranch, displayed a disrespect for the vital roles played by women in 1867. And for all their protestations that they weren't respected, I would suggest that had they had more respect for the roles they had been sent there to fulfil, they would have earned more respect (and been more successful therefore in their efforts to expand their roles) from the rest of the inhabitants of the ranch.
Texas Ranch House (TRH) suffered from this drama in a particular way. The show was taken over by the wife of the rancher, who sought to intrude herself into the business portion of the ranch and run the ranch in partnership with her husband, and by the girl-of-all-work-turned-ranchhand, who fought to put herself in a role that would normally have been filled by a man, to prove that she could be a contributing portion of the ranch. Both woman made continual claims that the men on the ranch were "sexist", that they were not respected as the 21st century women that they were, and that women's roles on the ranch were not given their proper weight.
A number of people wrote in to PBS about it, complaining that these two women had not set out to live in 1867, but rather had clung to their 21st-century sensibilities. The executive in charge of the series posted explicitly making it clear (for the first time, to my knowledge) that the women had been charged with going as their modern-day selves to immerse themselves in the ranch, and so their attempts to assert themselves were appropriate to the show.
So much for exposition. Here's my problem: there was sexism going on at that ranch, and the women's roles were not given their proper weight—by the women. The women themselves looked with such disdain on the typical roles of rancher's wife and maid that they did not fulfil them, instead forcing themselves into roles that were not half as necessary to the success of the ranch. I was reading recently an essay by Laura Ingalls Wilder on how farmer's wives of that era were their husbands' business partners in a very real sense. It was the farmer's wife who kept the household running smoothly: she managed the resources; she kept the mouths of the ranch (animal and human) fed and looked to their health; she kept things as clean as possible; she husbanded her own resources (specifically in most cases egg and cream money, but also the fruits of her labors in sewing, canning, etc.) for sale, to eke as much profit out of the farm as she could. It was only with her help that the ranch or farm could prosper, and her job was neglected at the cost of everyone on the ranch in health and prosperity.
On TRH, the ranch owner's wife and maid apparently failed to realize the importance of the roles they were sent there to play. (And we won't even mention the daughters, who seemed to spend most of their time sitting around—I'll assume editing left out a lot of work done by all the women, but no matter how much was left on the cutting room floor, it wasn't enough.) They neglected their garden; neglected basic lessons in sanitation and cleanliness; spent more time beautifying their home than turning their hands to production or trying to aid the running of the ranch. (I'm not saying beautification wouldn't have been on their minds—but I can't imagine any rancher's wife taking a whole day off to make a corn husk doll while her family's very survival was at stake.)
I felt very much that both the adult women, in their desperate struggle to carve themselves a 21st-century niche on the ranch, displayed a disrespect for the vital roles played by women in 1867. And for all their protestations that they weren't respected, I would suggest that had they had more respect for the roles they had been sent there to fulfil, they would have earned more respect (and been more successful therefore in their efforts to expand their roles) from the rest of the inhabitants of the ranch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)