Blogelstein!

Montreal, je t’aime!

Sat, 26 May 2012 15:57:03 +0100

Montreal, je t’aime!

On sitting like a lady

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:54:00 +0100

It’s been so long since I have used the tube with any regularity that I forgot the phenomenon of American Tourists On the Tube, which is a phenomenon I suppose that I notice, because they are loud and because, of course, we are one, in a sort of a way.

These particular American tourists were a family of four, on their way to the Tower of London, and even though it was quite early in the morning it was clear that things were really not going well: the couple were sitting on obvious sides of the train, the wife angrily reading a tabloid, wearing a backpack with a fat-legged baby stuffed into it, who she was ignoring.

The husband sat diagonally across from her, even though the seat next to her was available, and their older child, a four-year-old girl, dotted between them with the fretful look of a kid who knows something’s wrong with her grown-ups and wants to fix it but can’t. It looked like a terrible family moment, like in years to come they would say, ‘remember that time we went to the Tower of London?’ and then they would all feel a bit grim.

The train juddered and the little girl knocked into my laptop bag and her mother gave her a warning look and her father made her sit down next to him. She was tiny in the chair and splaying her legs about and it really made her father angry. He grabbed her by the shoulder and shouted at her: ‘sit like a lady! Sit like a lady!’ and her mother continued to angrily read the tabloid, and I tried to figure out what sitting like a lady even means when you are four years old, or even when you are thirty years old. I wanted to say, ‘act like not a jerk!’ to the dad, as if that would stop him from spending the next few decades making his daughter feel bad for failing to meet his expectations of how a woman should behave.

But I didn’t.

And that was three hours ago, and I still feel sad.

brianwhelan.net: Setting the record straight

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:03:00 +0100

brianwhelan.net: Setting the record straight:

bwhelan:

You may recall my tweet from a number of weeks back in which I announced that my tenancy was being terminated at the height of the unfolding Olympic missiles story. The timing seemed rotten and the letting agent had claimed to my partner that the landlord was unhappy with our media appearances and…

This is so dispiriting.

"I am these legs and arms and back and bum and spleen, and I remain determined not to feel bad about..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:23:00 +0100

“I am these legs and arms and back and bum and spleen, and I remain determined not to feel bad about any bit of it, even in spite of the plenty of things about my body that people have now and then pointed out to me as things that are wrong, because that’s just something that people feel they can do to women.”

- On not feeling bad about my body, for DailyLife.com.au.

On three more nice weekend things

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:44:00 +0100

1. Maybe I will write about three nice weekend things every Monday!

Thing one is that I wrote my bike a great deal this weekend. Here is a photo of her snuggling with a twin Pashley. These days I ride my bike so much, and so exclusively, that I find taking public transport troublesome, counter to my previous romance with all things TFL. These days, I hate waiting for vehicles to arrive and I hate being surrounded by people. And when I ride my bike I can persuade myself that it’s OK not to quite leave on time for things because I’ll make up the time with fast pedalling, even though I am always just as late as I’d be if I took a bus or train. Plus a bit sweaty, plus with messy hair.

2. Things two is a hen do that I went to for a friend who is getting married next month in Israel. It will be my first trip there. Excitement!

3. Thing three is the the half loaf of rye bread that Laura, my friend in half-Jewishness, gave me when she met me for brunch at a slightly unfriendly hour on Sunday morning. It’s not very photogenic, but a half loaf of rye bread says a lot, as does a drink, a dinner, a hug, a text message, a phone call, and every other little way that my friends looked after me this week.

How to carry out the perfect snub

Thu, 17 May 2012 18:09:11 +0100

How to carry out the perfect snub:

Because it’s a life skill.

somethingchanged: Australian Labor Finance Minister Penny Wong,...

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:51:54 +0100

somethingchanged:

Australian Labor Finance Minister Penny Wong, who has a daughter with her same sex partner, delivers a dignified and emotionally powerful response to (conservative) Liberals’ Joe Hockey after a question about same-sex parenting on the live ABC TV show Q&A. (video via tasmarshall)

Penny Wong forever.

“I know what my family is worth.”

On three nice weekend things

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:46:48 +0100

1. Another ceilidh, another fingerprinted arm, another representation of my own personal culture clash: a penchant for the war-like dancing of my mother’s people; a mild blood disorder inherited from my father’s side that makes me bruise like a peach.

2. Playing basketball for the first time since I finished high school, or to be more precise, since the last time I was made to play basketball, which I presume was in high school. When Serious Players came on the court, the three of us agreed to have a best-of-three competition and then carry on with our day. It took us 21 tries before one got sunk.

3. Sunshine. Sunshine. Sunshine. SUNSHIIIIIIIIIIIINE. Noting how it illuminates dust in dormant corners of my flat. Finding even that delightful.

pinkindiaink: jeanhannah replied to your post: the shirt comes full circle oh the memories! i lost...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:23:00 +0100

pinkindiaink:

jeanhannah replied to your post: the shirt comes full circle

oh the memories! i lost the DARE essay contest even though i was the best writer because my essay was about DARE being stupid.

Ha! If it makes you feel any better, I won the D.A.R.E. essay contest with a heartfelt condemnation of all things Drug and have been deeply ashamed ever since at how willingly I drank the kool-aid.

DEVASTATING. However, I made up for it in my junior year of high school, when I was selected to be a ‘D.A.R.E. role model’ and we were taken to an elementary school to talk about our exemplary drug-free lifestyles and then one of the kids asked ‘have you ever used drugs or alcohol?’. Out of the four or five of us who were there, neatly dressed in our best role model outfits (pretty sure I had on nude hose), I was the only one to say ‘no’.

RUN HOUNDS RUN! (via)

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:32:05 +0100

RUN HOUNDS RUN! (via)

On conservatism, and narratives of change

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:53:00 +0100

When I was in high school, in the mid-to-late 90s, I was not in favour of marriage equality. I wasn’t out manning ramparts against marriage equality, but if someone had asked me what I thought of it, I know I would have said, ‘um, I think that’s a bit weird’.

In the town in which I grew up, people’s attitudes towards homosexuality tended to run along a spectrum from ‘neutral’ to ‘extreme bigotry’. Pretty standard. There was an LGBT club at school, but it was regularly and viciously attacked by right-wing parents who believed it had an agenda beyond supporting young people who were growing up different in a society that challenged their right to exist.

While my views certainly were far left of most, marriage equality still seemed extreme to me, inasmuch as I was giving thought to it. I wasn’t much, because as far as I was concerned it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Because I was a heterosexual 16-year-old. Because our community operated a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, and that was relatively liberal, compared to many. Because I didn’t want to risk being on the wrong side of the intolerant people (they were scary; I have the greatest admiration in the world for my classmates who didn’t let this stop them from engaging in gay rights activism). And I thought it didn’t have anything to do with me because my friends who were gay didn’t come out until they escaped.

I changed my mind two years later, after I’d gone to university, when I learned (in an AOL chat, because it was 2000) that one of my best school friends was gay, had gone away to college and decided to be himself. It came as a bit of a surprise, and it jerked me out of my complacency: why on earth had I ever thought that my friend, or anyone, didn’t deserve the same rights as anyone else? Just because I’d grown up in a community where that line of of thinking was embraced by the majority? That, in fact, was what was weird. Not just a bit weird. It was absolutely gruesome.

Yesterday I felt delighted when Obama finally admitted that he was in favour of marriage equality; one of those moments that made me feel that rare real swell of affection and pride in America. I read it on Twitter and then my friends and I, sitting around a table in a pub, did a round of happy applause in honour of a new frontier of civil rights in America. But then I also felt a little sad, thinking about how this is going to become another issue that ‘divides’ America, between red states and blue states, bigots and non-bigots.

But then Jessica made a good point: as liberals, there’s no advantage to writing off everyone who disagrees with us as intractably, irredeemably bigoted. Instead, our best strategy is to share narratives of change: to demonstrate how it is possible for all of us to learn more about the world and come to understand where we’re being close-minded and stupid and wrong. So. This is mine.

"I feel so relieved to be at the stage I’m at in my life right now. Because you know if I want to..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:16:25 +0100

“I feel so relieved to be at the stage I’m at in my life right now. Because you know if I want to wear my glasses I’m wearing my glasses. If I want to wear my hair back I’m pulling my hair back. You know at some point it’s just not something that deserves a lot of time and attention.”

- Hilary Clinton addresses ‘au naturale’ moment | CNN <3 (via somethingchanged)

So true, and I think also worth noting that the point doesn’t even have to be when you are the Secretary of State; it can be long before that.

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people...."

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:12:00 +0100

“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.””

- RIP and thank you, wonderful Maurice Sendak (more, via Fresh Air)

I’m at a May Day festival in Hastings. Here’s a tree...

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:44:17 +0100

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

I’m at a May Day festival in Hastings. Here’s a tree doing a stately dance.

Would anyone object if I turn Blogelstein! into a home for dog...

Fri, 04 May 2012 14:09:02 +0100

Would anyone object if I turn Blogelstein! into a home for dog memes? Dogmemelstein!

Photo

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:09:25 +0100

There’s a lot of serious fussing today about how long the...

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:02:00 +0100

There’s a lot of serious fussing today about how long the immigration queues are at Heathrow. They ARE long. Once, after a 13-hour flight, I had to wait for an hour with my American passport behind a group of about 40 schoolchildren from Kazahkstan; when I got to the front of the line the immigrations officer went on a tea break and another official said I had to go to the back of a different line. I cried.

Anyway, British people are really good at queuing. They love queuing! They do it quietly and respectfully. And they obviously aren’t good at preventing queues at immigration, so I think that they should rebrand long queues as a cultural experience. Here’s a campaign poster!

That's a very long list of books your book club has read! Which books were the most and least enjoyable to read and why?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:36:00 +0100

That could be a very long answer! We discussed this in great detail during our meeting (for a special treat, we held it over afternoon tea at The Delaunay; it felt like a really amusing company AGM).

For the purposes of brevity I will say that my favourite books were…Injury Time and Shakespeare’s Kitchen and Legends of a Suicide and In Love. But I loved many of the other ones, too (obviously White Noise remains my favourite book of all time but Book Club read it before I joined).

Injury Time because it is hilarious and really BRITISH and I’d never read Bainbridge before.

Shakespeare’s Kitchen because it’s a beautiful slow burner, a fluid novel-in-short-stories.

Legends of a Suicide because it is written so tightly and with such emotional intensity.

In Love because I discovered it quite whimsically and it is spare and wonderful and a bit cruel.

I think my least favourite book was Moll Flanders, because I abandoned reading it after forty pages. I am a philistine but I found it dull and strange!

However, this also prompted one of my most favourite book club meetings, as no one else read it either, which we all confessed with varying degrees of shame.

On a 50th anniversary

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:12:00 +0100

Today is the 50th anniversary of the book club I belong to (that’s 50 books, not years).

It is a wonderful book club: an interesting mix of erudite readers (and talented cake-makers). I was not a founding member (I joined around the twelfth book, I think). Being asked to join was extremely flattering! And it’s a wonderful opportunity to read books that I’d otherwise be unlikely to come across — particularly by twentieth-century British writers who I didn’t learn about when I was a student in Canada.

Here is a list of all of the books that we’ve read (after the cut, because it’s long). Hurrah Book Club!

The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark

Favourite Of The Gods by Sybille Bedford

Exquisite Corpse by Alfred Chester

Adam Bede by George Eliot

White Noise by Don de Lillo

Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene

Wake In Fright by Kenneth Cook

The Heat Of The Day by Elizabeth Bowen

Armadillo by William Boyd

An irresponsible Age by Lavinia Greenlaw

My Life As A Man by Philip Roth

Age Of Iron by J M Coetzee

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

In Love by Alfred Hayes

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

Young Hearts Crying by Richard Yates

Continental Drift by Russell Banks

Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Trouble With Lichen by John Wyndham

The Price Of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

The Weather In The Streets by Rosamond Lehmann

The Memoirs Of A Survivor by Doris Lessing

Imogen by Jilly Cooper

In Youth Is Pleasure by Denton Welch

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Legend Of A Suicide by David Vann

London Belongs To Me by Norman Collins

The Outsiders by S E Hinton

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by M Shaffer

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

A Scarcity Of Love by Anna Kavan

The Group by Mary McCarthy

The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Women In The Wall by Julia O’Faolain

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien

Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge

Goodbye To Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

Pastors And Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lore Segal

The Hollow Man by Oliver Harris

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

The Tortoise And The Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler

The Sense of an ending by Julian Barnes

On five things I enjoyed today

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 19:25:00 +0100

1. Eating tortilla chips for breakfast.

2. The squelch of running shoes in muddy puddles.

3. Petals on a wet, black bough.

4. The Poisonwood Bible

5. This photo of a dog.