The “Inspiration Derived from Disabled People” Checklist

15th March 2012 By 2 Comments

While writing my previous blog post, “On ‘Transcending Pain’”, I came across this article in The Globe and Mail. It contains a recurring theme in the media when writing about disabled people, and especially, disabled children.

 

Ian Brown, fhe author of the Globe and Mail article has hit all of the necessary components:

1) Parent(s) “coping” with raising a disabled kid? CHECK.

Bonus points awarded if parent is single. Extra special SPARKLY bonus points awarded if parent is widowed.

2) Kid is a “disruption” in the family (an extension of #1)? CHECK.

3) Kid is “inspiring” despite #2, and is there to elevate able-bodied parents’ self-esteem/increase understanding of humanity/enlighten people lucky enough to spend time with him/bless with presence/teach us ______? CHECK.

4) Parent invents cutesy patronizing name for disabled kid (not as bad as “pillow angel”, but bad enough)? CHECK.*

The Ashley Treatment promulgated for these “pillow angels” makes me sick (and thankfully, is not yet mandated by law). I probably didn’t need to explicitly say that; if you read my blog regularly, you will have discerned my feelings about such things.

Thanks to the Disabled Feminists for referencing stuff. 

Inspire THIS!

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The Works of Vincent Bugliosi

6th February 2012 By Leave a Comment

Vincent Bugliosi is the American prosecutor who put Charles Manson, and three of his followers, behind bars for the murders of Sharon Tate, her houseguests, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on two broiling nights in August, 1969. The case was said to be so untenable that all the prosecution had was “two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi”. In other words, diddly squat.

Eat your words, Mister District Attorney!

 

I have 4 of Mr Bugliosi’s books:


 

I really enjoy rereading them, because there is so much complex information that it’s difficult to retain all of it each reading. The detail of explanation is not difficult for a layperson to understand. Particularly, “Outrage” does feel, as Bugliosi intended, like an extended personal conversation with the reader, which makes it that much more enjoyable to read.

Does this qualify me as an obsessive fan?

I haven’t yet read And the Sea Will Tell – possibly because I am as yet unfamiliar with the case. But it’s sitting on our bookshelf.

I haven’t read his books about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, yet. I had to cease and desist reading Reclaiming History because of its physically gargantuan size. Its heaviness made it painful to hold for long periods.

However, his Four Days in November, a smaller volume that deals only with the four days around the assassination, is lighter in weight and might be more comfortable to hold.

I haven’t finished The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder yet, and I’ll have to start it over because it was a long time ago that I read it. Very sad, from what I remember. I’m a Canadian living in the UK, so my perspective of events is likely a little different from American readers. I have no love or loyalty for the former American president – indeed, he made a hash of his tenure. The book merely confirms and explains the reasons behind my suspicions. It is rather hard going because of my lack of extensive knowledge of American jurisprudence…

But that’s why Bugliosi is a great writer. He has that rare ability to make complex legal issues and matters readable, even enjoyable to learn about – for the lay reader. A good sense of humour generates the unexpected laugh while reading about very serious events. 

For example, in “Helter Skelter”, Bugliosi related the question an inept defense attorney asked one of the witnesses during the Manson trials:

Paul Fitzgerald: Have you, or any member of your family ever been the unfortunate victim of a homicide?

The judge interrupted this scintillating line of questioning to remark that, if the witness had, they probably would not be sitting on the witness stand.

Read and enjoy!

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Putting a New Book about Mahatma Gandhi on My Reading List

27th January 2012 By 4 Comments
I must admit, I haven’t heard this one said about Mahatma Gandhi before. I came across it in a Wikipedia article.
Some people who have read this book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld
are claiming, or at least asking, whether he was gay, just because he had a close friendship with Hermann Kallenbach.
Um, people of the same sex can be friends without getting into each others’ pants!
That said, I am interested in what the book has to say. Leave it to some people to jump to odd conclusions based on their own obsessions with who does what to whom, and how they do it.
His experiments with challenging his celibacy in the 1940s were way over the top and extremely creepy to boot; those experiments ceased in 1947. I do not know how old the women were that were involved in the experiments; even if they were adults, it’s still creepy particularly because of the age difference between the participants. Because of Gandhi’s stature as a historically important figure at the time of the events, I have to wonder: if they were adults, did they freely give consent to these activities, or could they have felt they had no choice because of Gandhi’s social status as Indian’s national hero?
It doesn’t make it all right that he did it, but at least he had sense enough to listen to whoever told him to stop. I just wish he’d never done it at all. It’s something Richard Attenborough’s film conveniently overlooks. It really doesn’t look good for your hero to admit he’s an ephebophile.

Further Reading

  • The biography by Ved Mehta is a short and small book, but packed with lots of interesting information. It is told from various points of views of the people who knew Gandhi during his life. I was drawn to it because of the first chapter, which describes a typical day in his later life.
  • The biography by Louis Fisher is what inspired Attenborough to make his film. Another small and readable book. I don’t think I’ve read it all the way through yet.
  • Richard Attenborough’s own book about his research and making of the film. I read this as a library book sometime in the late 1990s, and would like to have another look at it sometime if I can get a copy.

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Books into Film: “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Atonement”

16th January 2012 By 5 Comments

Lights...camera...turn the page!

Watching The Other Boleyn Girl while tying product tags onto Shivanaut scarves. I have the book by Philippa Gregory, but couldn’t get into it. From what I have read of the book, it’s “supposed” to be good (but it rankles me that she rewrites history and takes far too long to say things that could be written much more succinctly when they require it).

Ordinarily, I really enjoy big, meaty historical novels of subjects I like (for example, The Bronze Horseman* trilogy by Paullina Simons). But they watered down The Other Boleyn Girl so much from the book that I can’t keep track of everything in the book.

On the flip side, I’m really enjoying reading Atonement after having watched the film, and I’m not disappointed in the least by comparing McEwan’s book to film. A big part of me thinks that, had it been the case that the movie had come before the book, I could have done a much better job of writing the novel for The Other Boleyn Girl myself, and not just a dime-store movie novelization, either!

*There is currently a movie of  The Bronze Horseman in pre-production as of 2012. Given the huge scope of the novel, tither it will be fantastic, or it will be terrible. 

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Book Review: “The Escape of Alexei, Son of Tsar Nicholas II: What Happened the Night the Romanov Family Was Executed”

1st January 2012 By Leave a Comment

This book was ghostwritten by someone hoping to make a name for himself, and he tells the story of one Vasily Filatov, who claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.

The Tsarevich Alexei died, along with the rest of his family and their servants, by firing squad in the basement of the Ipatiev House on the night of 16-17 July, 1918.

There’s only one word to describe this travesty of a book:

Ridiculous. 

…especially in the light of discovering the remains of the last two missing Romanov children – Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters in 2007.

Although this book was written before that discovery, the premise that a sickly haemophiliac thirteen-year-old boy could have survived being shot several times and then finished off by a shot directly into his ear (see Robert K. Massie’s “Nicholas and Alexandra” or his follow up “The Romanovs – The Last Chapter” for further, infinitely more accurate information*) could have survived the massacre of his family in the basement of the Ipatiev House defies credibility and common sense.

I hope that the authors feel significantly chastised, or at least regret being pulled into ghostwriting this nonsense. There have been many pretenders, over the years, claiming to be one or more of Nicholas’ children that “survived”, and now, at last, those stories can be put to rest. This book only adds fuel to the fire of the extremely bad taste of people who have wanted to capitalize on fame at the expense of historical accuracy.

Here is a picture of where the Romanovs’ bodies, along with that of their faithful servants and doctor, were thrown down into a mineshaft on the night of 16-17 July 1918. Five churches have now been built there in memory of them, all without the use of nails.

It’s pretty hard to claim you’re still alive when your bones are lying buried in a shallow grave.

Alexei Nikolaevich’s remains, and those of one of the missing daughter’s (I believe it was Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna), have been re-interred with the family’s at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.

I’ve been there, and it’s a moving place to visit. All of the tsars and tsaritsas (empresses) are buried there, beneath the floor. Over each grave is a massive marble block that resembles a coffin. When I saw them, I assumed first that the bodies were actually inside those structures, but I was told that the bodies are under the floor.

Here is a photo I took of the tomb of Peter the Great.

He was seven feet tall. You did not mess with this tsar.

Something amused me greatly while I was there in 2003: I noticed that Tsar Peter III is buried next to his wife, Empress Catherine the Great.

They hated each other in life; she is rumored to have ordered his execution soon after she seized power from him. Now, alas, they are lying next to each other for all eternity. I wonder what they'd have to say about that?

Nearby is the tomb of Empress Elizabeth, aunt of Peter III, who doted on Catherine.

Nicholas and his family are interred in a separate room from the main hall; you can’t actually go in because it’s cordoned off, perhaps out of respect, or perhaps because the room is so small.

The plaques on the wall list the family members' names and perhaps also some religious dedication or blessing. The servants' names may also appear; I remember reading somewhere that it was decided that since they died together in the service of their sovereigns, it was deemed appropriate that their remains stay with them.

(*So far as I’m aware, when “The Romanovs: The Last Chapter” was written, Alexei Nikolaevich’s and Maria Nikolaevna’s remains had not yet been discovered, and at the end of “Nicholas and Alexandra”, Massie addressed the “Anastasia controversy” as well. Since all the remains have now been identified, we can now say for certain that none of the children ever survived. Anyone claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, or any of the Imperial children, was either delusional or a liar.)

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How Knitting Behind Bars Transformed Maryland Convicts

11th December 2011 By Leave a Comment

Today, I picked up this article from Tara Swiger’s Facebook page and went, “Wow!”

http://www.good.is/post/prisoners-transform-through-knitting-behind-bars/

 

Excerpt:

In late 2009, Lynn Zwerling stood in front of 600 male prisoners at the Pre-Release Unit in Jessup, Maryland. “Who wants to knit?” she asked the burly crowd. They looked at her like she was crazy.

Yet almost two years later, Zwerling and her associates have taught more than 100 prisoners to knit, while dozens more are on a waiting list to take her weekly class. “I have guys that have never missed one time in two years,” Zwerling says. “Some reported to us that they miss dinner to come to class.”

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Sex and Tolstoy

28th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sexual repression and excitation is a theme in Tolstoy. Bet you never guessed that before, eh?

Kiera Knightley is one of those actresses who has become known more for her looks, her breasts (or lack thereof), and her southern genitalia than her talent. I happen to respect her acting talent first. Having found out that she’ll be starring in a certain film next year, I managed to give my husband (who is not a Russophile) a decent summary of Anna Karenina without having read this book, but I have studied others of Tolstoy.

Anna Karenina

Boy (Vronsky) meets girl, (Anna Karenina), who is stuck in suffocating marriage. Girl falls in love. Boy is a devastatingly handsome count (ah yes, we all go weak in the knees for guys with titles, don’t we?), but utterly unworthy of her love, and totally self-absorbed. Girl refuses to acknowledge this, and instead pines away and eventually throws herself under a train, leaving her only son and stuffy husband alone. Vronsky goes off into sunset, oblivious and unremorseful at the pain he caused Anna, presumably to get more skirt.

Tolstoy’s Novellas

Olenin…I wrote an essay about “The Cossacks”. This protagonist is so self-absorbed it’s enough to make anyone want to just chuck it all, abandon living in society and go live alone. Which, incidentally, is exactly what Tolstoy did!

“Family Happiness” – it’s about a man and a woman, who are discussing their brood of five or six children. It seems a very ordinary story at first…until you realize that the point of the story is that the husband’s children aren’t really his. They are all children by different men, with whom his wife has been having affairs with over the years. She knows, of course. He doesn’t. He doesn’t have a clue.

“The Kreutzer Sonata” – This piece of music caused a man to kill his wife and her lover because he heard them playing it together in the next room. It aroused such a fiery passion, sexual jealousy and hatred in him that this was all he could do.

Here is what the Kreutzer Sonata sounds like. Listen as you read the story, and you might feel what the protagonist felt. Just keep all the sharp knives far away, OK?

“Father Sergius” – a celibate priest is unable to cope with the repressed sexual urges he feels. He goes bonkers, sleeps around with various women, and we go bonkers with him.

“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” – Reading this is like going along a roller coaster of black, depressing, massive illness. You think about everything your body is doing, everything that could possibly kill you. The last page is like the longest, steepest drop, and when you hit the bottom it pulls you faster and faster, and you can’t escape. There’s no way out. The last sentence is almost finished, and when you’ve reached the last word, you’re DEAD! Except you’re really still breathing. Or are you? I had to check a few times to make sure I still had a pulse after I was finished reading this story.

Given how Tolstoy ended up living the life of an ascetic, I have to wonder why sex pervades and impregnates so much of his work.

*feedback whine*

Paging Dr Freud to the communal farm…Dr Freud…

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Say What You Mean And Mean What You Say

28th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Arguments over use of language continue. It would be much simpler to invent new words for these concepts. This Wikipedia article discusses the use of the adjective “Polish” in reference to the Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_death_camp_controversy 

Offense has been caused because Polish officials are (rightly, in my opinion) dismayed to be referred to in media as the architects and purveyors of the “Polish death camps” that were located within the borders of their country. However, they argue that these camps were conceived of in Nazi Germany, and run by the Nazis, while the Nazis occupied their country.

It’s a no-brainer: Poland itself wasn’t responsible for genocide. But it’s still less of a mouthful to say “Auschwitz” than it is to say the more politically and ideologically correct “Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).”

Then there’s the trouble with the word “German” and the stigma attached to the country and its citizens because of the two World Wars. Not all Germans were Nazis. Not all Nazis were Germans. Hitler was Austrian. There are good and bad people everywhere – it makes no difference what country they are from.

(And what was with Hitler’s “Aryan, blonde hair, blue-eyed” obsession? That’s still something I don’t understand. Hitler was dark-haired ad dark-eyed. Wouldn’t that mean he’s effectively sending himself to the gas chambers because he doesn’t fit the arbitrary mold of idiotic physical perfection that his Party has cooked up? But sanity is not what was going on there. Maybe he’d taken too much meth to make any sense to himself. Too bad all those assassination attempts failed. But Valkyrie is still a good film.)

English is a particularly problematic language when it comes to adjectives and demonyms. There is often only one word to describe both – which makes them visually identical – but they mean quite different things.

English language

English literature

English people

English cuisine

An adjective is a word which describes, or qualifies, a noun or noun phrase.

A demonym is the name for the resident of a locality. A demonym is usually – though not always – derived from the name of the locality. Thus, the demonym for England is English; the demonym for Italy is Italian, but the demonym for Netherlands is Dutch. [source: Wikipedia: "demonym"]

Russian, on the other hand, has different words for these things. Let’s look at the adjective “Russian”.

(Now, I’m going to assume that some of my readers can’t read Russian, so bear with me, and I’ll talk you through it, OK? This is the language I studied for my undergraduate degree, so it’s the one I feel most qualified to use as a tool for demonstration. What you’ll be able to see is that the letters of the different words in Russian – which uses the Cyrillic alphabet – don’t look the same. It would be like me writing two English words: house and catastrophe, and even if you didn’t know the language, you could probably suss out that these words aren’t the same.)

Russian language  = русский язык

Russian economics = российская экономика

Russian citizen = россиянин (Russian man); россиянка (Russian woman)

See how those words are all different? 

 

One last thought. from the film The Last Emperor (1987):

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston (played by Peter O’Toole): ”Words are important.”

Emperor Pu Yi at 15 (played by Tao Wu): “Why are words important?”

Reginald Fleming ‘R.J.’ Johnston: ”If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman should always mean what he says.”

 

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Hamlet Takes Medication

27th October 2011 By Leave a Comment

Oh, that this too, too brittled flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-medication. Oh God, God,
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the ERs of this world
Fie on’t, fie, tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and painful in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this:
But two months in pain, nay, not so much, not two,
So excellent a painkiller, that was to this
Gravol to a Tylenol, so soothing to my headache
That he might beteem the winds of heaven
Visit my forehead too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, he would hang on my eyes
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: yet within a month -
Let me not think on’t; frailty, thy name is Advil
A little month, or ere those pills were old
With which I drugged myself,
Like Sleepy, all yawns, why he, even he -
Oh God, a pill that wants discourse of pain
Would have worked longer! – mixed with my Tylenol,
My Advil’s supplement, but no more like my Gravol
Than I to an athlete. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most pained tears
Had left the twitching in my pale face
Gravol increased. O, most wicked speed to post
With such dexterity to mixed medications!
It is not, nor it cannot come to relief.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

I wrote this in February, 2006.

 

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Review of Laura Kalpakian’s “Cosette: The Sequel to Les Misérables”

30th September 2011 By Leave a Comment

I love this much-maligned “sequel” to Les Misérables, because I do not look at it strictly as a sequel. Yes, it contains many of the same characters in name, who in the original novel act in certain ways and have recognizable traits of personality, and in Kalpakian’s book do not act in the same way.

It also contains a rehashing of old characters metamorphosed into new ones (Gavroche becomes the Starling; Javert becomes Clerons). That’s what has formed a lot of the criticism of her novel. Well, that’s called maturation and growing up, though there are better ways to go about writing this.

In Hugo, Cosette is ten, and then fifteen to seventeen years old. In Kalpakian, she grows from eighteen through thirty-two and beyond. Of course people are going to behave differently as they age and are assaulted by the experiences of life. If you want to read Victor Hugo, then read Victor Hugo. He is most enjoyable in a chaste, reserved way, when you prefer that your passion be kept under lock and key, firmly bridled and kept quiet until the wedding night (until and unless you have read Notre Dame de Paris and the scene where Phoebus is murdered. Half-nude gypsy girl Esmeralda, anyone?).

Well, there is that scene in the Luxembourg Gardens, where Marius, never having once exchanged a word with Cosette, sees her leg, in a white stocking, revealed because an errant wind blows her black skirts up. Then, at that moment, a young officer walks by at the same moment and also gets to see Cosette’s leg, which throws the gallant Marius into a rage which he cannot express at that moment. (Cosette, of course, is oblivious to all of this in classic nineteenth-century female fashion) That counts as erotica for Victor Hugo.

If you want to read another book, then read another book. Both are enjoyable for different reasons, and there is no reason to malign either one. For similar reasons, Susan Kay’s Phantom is hailed by readers as the prequel to Leroux’s classic, yet it has never officially been published or touted as such. Yet it Phantom is stylistically far superior to Cosette.

The less said about Cosette or the Time of Illusions by Francois Ceresa, the better.

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