-- Kudos to Pam Noles for this post, responding to an interview with Kevin O'Neill. I realize the possible hypocrisy of me criticizing Kevin O'Neill in this instance, given that my last story also contains a racist doll, but at least I don't deny that when the automaton was created it definitely had racist overtones, regardless of how many other ways it was used or how else it contributed to scientific discovery.
It also bears mentioning that in her earlier essays, Pam never said "Don't use the Golliwog." What she did say is this:
As I've said before, writing is research, empathy and effort; anything in the world is on deck as potential source material. But if you're going to take on something as culturally loaded as blackface or minstrelsy, a footnote needs to be included - you've got to have your A-Game on. Like dealing with a select few other extremely thorny topics, this is not something one should go into without awareness. If you are a current day person choosing to toy with this construct, going into it with scant knowledge of or ignoring the big picture, is so unwise. If you choose to work with this trope willfully blind and you screw it up, you deserve whatever level of invective comes your way. You must proceed with awareness.
And this is why I love Pam's big beautiful brain so much.
I know I've linked to it before, but it's worth the redundancy: go read her full series of essays on the Golliwog in the Black Dossier.
Spent about three hours out skiing today. The weather was very warm for skiing, nearly 40F, and if we'd had to break trail we'd never have been able to move. Good thing for us that the trails were so well tamped down from constant use, and the track was a delight to use.
Last night was a similar story; I rounded up a few friends and we went to Kleinstuck nature preserve, which was icy as a luge track. We only got in two laps because it was misting light rain. Sadly, it was so overcast that we didn't see the full moon, and probably won't see it tonight, either. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I got to put my new headlamp to good use.
Is it just me, or is it very disturbing yet somehow oddly fitting that a telecom company is using a song widely acknowledged to be an ode to heroin addiction as bed music for its commercials?
I think I've started something. In the last three weeks I've convinced three other people to buy kayaks. We're gonna have a flotilla, come spring.
Went down to the kayak shop today so that J could put his boat on layaway and Paul could sit in a bunch of other boats to find one that fits him. He found one that he liked a lot -- ironically, the same one he test-drove a few months ago. When the weather warms up he's going to see if he can borrow it again for another test drive.
When I walked in, the owner of the shop was telling Paul about two creek trips that I had already plotted out with Google maps, and said they were both really fun runs.
I'm currently pricing out dry-tops and wetsuits so that I can get out as early as the end of March.
C'monnnnn, spring.
Skiing tomorrow, maybe twice -- but I so cannot wait for paddling.
I have a guilty-pleasure confession: I love chicken wings. Love them. I love the tactile pleasure of getting every last bit of meat off the bones, and as such, I rarely eat them in public (I have the exact same problem with rib tips, my preferred form of barbecue) because I am such an embarrassing, gnawing carnivore. It's a bit like that scene in Splash, where Madison eats the lobster (sorry, no clip -- The Youtubes have failed me).
So I tend to eat my wings at home. Which brings me to the problem.
There is something in chicken wings that drives our pets completely insane. They will not leave us alone when we eat them. The cats swarm, leaping into laps. The dog shoves her snout directly into the bowl. We cook meat all the time, and nothing has ever produced a reaction like this -- all other meals are ignored as though they don't exist (okay, except for our older cat, who loves yogurt).
So I literally have to throw all the animals out of the room and shut all the doors to eat my wings, unless I want sauce-sticky fingers covered in pet hair from shooing them away. And as soon as I carry the bones to the garbage, they're on top of me again.
The wings are sizzling now -- off to start the kitty-viction.
Soak three cups of kidney beans overnight.
Go to basement and find two quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce.
Wash crock pot. Add beans and soak-water.
Dump in both quarts of tomato sauce.
Fill jars half full with water to remove every last molecule of sauce. Slosh around, prepare to add rinse-water to crockpot.
Notice with horror that there is a crack running the entire length of one jar.
Pause to consider. Both jars still had seal.
Haul out colander. Think about trying to save beans. Rinse beans.
Realize there's no way to get the beans all the way clean. Consider boiling beans. Think about tiny shards of broken glass.
Chuck beans. Wash crockpot thoroughly.
Return to basement, find two more quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce. Carefully inspect jars. Thump seal on both. Return to kitchen.
Dump in both quarts of tomato sauce.
Fill jars half full with water to remove every last molecule of sauce. Slosh around, prepare to add rinse-water to crockpot.
Notice with horror that there are multiple small cracks, previously invisible, around the bottom of one jar.
Invent new swear words. Dump sauce down drain. Wash crockpot again, this time with bleach and boiling water, just to be sure.
Send up a prayer of thanks that this little kitchen nightmare constitutes only an inconvenience, and not a financial disaster. Remember times when losing so much food would have meant cadging dinner from friends. Remember thousands of other families who would go hungry, or make different choices based on fewer options.
Return to basement. Stare mournfully at four empty slots on shelf. Count remaining jars, heave sigh of dejection. Select two more quarts of jealously guarded, organic, home-grown, home-canned tomato sauce. Carefully inspect jars. Thump seal on both. Return to kitchen.
Find black turtle beans that do not require pre-soaking. Rinse, add to crockpot.
Obsessively check quart jars. Thump seals again.
Dump in both quarts of sauce. Add rinse-water. Sigh with relief when both jars are sound.
Fry pound of ground venison until dark brown and add to pot.
Scavenge fridge. Chop and add celery, onion, garlic, sweet corn, green bell peppers.
Add cumin and chili powder to taste, along with fresh-ground black pepper and healthy dollop of Rooster sauce.
Cook in crockpot for five hours.
Makes five quarts; serve with side of gratitude.
Me: Yay women's speed skating!
Announcers: Oh noes! The ice machines are broken! The speed skating track is ruined! Delays! Spare machines brought in from Calgary!
Paul: This is Canada. They had to go all the way from Vancouver to Calgary to find a zamboni?
Me: They should've started with the neighbors' garage.
Paul: Or Home Depot. Cryin' out loud.
ETA: Actually, the better punchline would've suggested Canadian Tire. Our USA is showing.
Speaking of overdue blogging, here's a report that ran back in December about Kalamazoo's Peace House, a place where I occasionally volunteer (though nowhere near enough; I have to get to work on fixing that...) and whose caregivers are friends of mine. These folks are the absolute real deal, and it's a blessing and a privilege to have them in my life.
Man, I am so behind on my blogging; the more posts I write tonight, the more posts I remember I've intended to write for a long time. This one is probably the most overdue: The Beyond Victoriana Project.
This series is so incredibly amazing and I am so, so happy that Ay-Leen is writing and sponsoring them. It's a fantastic resource, and shows the vast, beautiful, fantastic possibilities that the steampunk genre can encompass -- but only if we stretch the fandom to allow room for more than just the basic Brit-centric faux-Victoriana, and be welcoming while we do it.
Here's an index. Go read! It'll crack your imagination wide open.
Here's another amazing essay from BossyMarmalade. It's part of the fifth Asian Women's Blog Carnival -- and since I was a big doof and somehow missed the third and fourth installments, I'm going to be checking all three out over the next couple of days.
If you haven't read these before, please, please go and read them. They're powerful, important stuff.
Had a too-brief skiing expedition this morning, hoping to get some more in tomorrow. Also currently recruiting for nightskiing on the full-moon weekend of the 27th-28th, provided the snow sticks around. If you're in the area, and interested, drop me a line.
Raina Telgemeier has a brand-new graphic novel out this week, called Smile!
Raina and her husband Dave Roman are such wonderfully awesome people, and Paul and I owe them both for our Avatar: The Last Airbender obsession. Further proof of their awesomeness is found in this awesome trailer they made for the book:
and discovering that one of the new kittens likes to watch speed skating. For serious. She keeps tracking them as they run off the edge of the screen. We'll try to get video of it, but as soon as we haul out the camera she gets all shy.
Didn't watch them myself -- and after reading some commentaries, am very glad I didn't -- but I really liked this post from Cat Valente, and this followup from Jim Hines.
Remember that N.K. Jemisin post I linked to a couple days ago? Livejournaler Delux-Vivens linked to one of Jemisin's later comments that I hadn't seen, and I want to make note of it, because I think it's a really excellent rebuttal to "The Tone Argument":
Yes, I think the "quiet reasoning" would've been missed without the "angry" posts. But I'm putting scare quotes around these for two reasons a) because the "quiet reasoning" posts were angry too; very likely every cogent and persuasive post you saw was written by someone trembling with fury and struggling to be coherent. And b) because I don't recall seeing a single "angry" post that didn't make a reasonable point...<snip>
As for the danger of alienating people with good intentions -- well, one of the things that I learned from RaceFail (and also from general experience) was that people with good intentions are the ones to fear most. The overt racists are easy to deal with. You can spot them coming a mile away. But the well-intentioned people are scarier. They might not intend harm, but in most cases they haven't thought about all the racist (and other "-ist") messages they've absorbed from society. They haven't done the basic groundwork necessary to purge themselves of that passively-absorbed "-ism". So they say the most incredibly hurtful, self-absorbed, and utterly useless things, then compound the problem by getting upset when they're called on it. I liken these people to sleeper agents -- they seem OK at first, but then they suddenly "activate" and stab you in the back, and then they come out of their fugue and freak because there's blood on their hands and they don't know how it got there and they refuse to accept that they're the ones who put it there, OMG, OMG. Meanwhile, you're on the floor bleeding out, unnoticed because of their histrionics.
I oughtn't quote the whole comment here, but you should really go read the response in its entirety -- and read this similar post as well. It's yet more proof that Ms. Jemisin is a really smart and very talented writer, and gives you all the more reason to go buy her book. Not convinced yet? She has three sample chapters online at her blog.
Check out these two very sweet reviews from reader Phil M. Knight, who I met at Green Brain Comic's SNAP festival a couple years back:
Readers can also check out Phil's lovely fan art, which he presented me with at the Old Ghosts signing at Green brain.
I'm so honored that you took the time out to post these, Phil. Thank you so much! Fans like you are what keep me going.
Trying to plan a summer trip, involving airplanes. And once again, just like every other time I plan a trip involving airplanes, I ask the universe:
WHY THE CRAPPING CRAP IS THERE NOT PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION BETWEEN KALAMAZOO AND ANY OF THE DETROIT OR CHICAGO AIRPORTS THAT DOESN'T REQURE AT LEAST TWO TRANSFERS AND AN ASSTON OF HASSLE?
Come on, people. Throw us a shuttle bus or something, for God's sake.
Dan: Okay, here's a map. We're here. We can take this trail or that one. That one's prettier, but it's going to be harder; you may have to take off your skis for part of it.
Me: That's okay. The scenery's more important than my dignity.
Dan: In fact, I think I can see on this map where you left your dignity. Back there at the bottom of the hill.
Me: I usually don't fall unless I intend to. It was either that or run into those saplings.
Dan: Yeah. You made the right call, provided you don't mind the bruises.
Me: I don't mind them much, but sometimes they freak Paul out.
Dan: Just tell him to use them as a Rorshach test.
Me: Yeah, but then he'll want to make drawings out of them. When Paul's drawing on my ass with a Sharpie marker, I'll know who to blame. "Hey look, this one's an alien!"
Dan: An alien that gets more jaundiced as the days go by.
Me: ... from the flu we gave him when he tried to invade.
Dan: ...
Me: I am so blogging this when I get home.