B side. MLK Jr.’s staunch kindness

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s memorial day I remembered that as a child I didn’t know that some folks were Black and others were White.

At five years old, I didn’t know, and I don’t think that my friends knew, that we were throwing dirt clods against the drying sheets of a family in married student housing because the family was Black.  I didn’t even know it having gone to their door to tearfully apologize to the mother in the family.

We knew that we were being bad but at least I was spared knowing that I was being evil.

Forgiveness is so kind it spares the innocent.  Thus, I would be a Christian to pray for those whom I have innocently hurt and who have knowingly been kind to me nonetheless.

A side. Review in Continuum

A nice one from a publication I’d never heard of–even if he misspelled my name!

Review of Images of Pacific Rim

A side. Some shocked thoughts about Heilbrun’s “The Last Gift of Time”

While I’m not usually a reader of “self-help” or “inspirational” books, a friend sent me an email with the title to Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s “The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty”. Since I have been a bit at sea in this life of a woman of the 60s now in her 60s, I thought I’d give it a look. Initially I was put off by what I found to be her insufferably arch writing style–the same style that made me stop reading her mysteries written under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross. But she won me over in her chapter “Time”, in which she describes the “poisonous atmosphere” for women in many academic settings. It was somehow quite comforting to know that I wasn’t the only woman who had experienced toxic inequality and unfairness in university teaching. She also had some intriguing things to say about relationships, although I think she was just enough older than me that I couldn’t relate to some of her pronouncements–they seemed pretty stuffy and old-fashioned. I must admit I had never heard of her before–a sign, I guess, that I was never much of a party-line feminist, since she seems to have been one of the godmothers of feminist writing and gender studies.
In the book, she does discuss with some detachment her feelings that suicide should be a viable option for women–but I had no idea, until I Googled her after finishing the book, that she had actually ended her life a few years after writing this book! http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/n_9589/
Wow. Suicide as a willful act. As someone who cannot fathom death–yet, at least–I’m just amazed that she could make such a decision. I am really a bit shaken by this revelation, even though it happened in 2003! The book, and this discovery of her death, has made me want to talk to other women over 60, about our search for “worth” in our lives.

A side. Robert Dixon’s review in AAANZ Journal!

A side. AAANZ review by Robert Dixon

 

Finally, I’ve managed to get a copy of the review Robert Dixon wrote of my book in the Australian Art Journal! This is essentially the text of his speech to launch the book in Sydney way back in November 2010. It has taken this long to see it in print!

B side. Notions

Two pleasant notions slipped by tonight — not recorded.

So what?

Well, why else are we here but to send along our notions?

Again, I space out a fun notion.  Whether I write it down or not,  it’s sort of effervescent in reality.  From Bronowski, our being probably isn’t wasted.   Perhaps neither are our notions, making no dent in the physical world despite being engaging.  Suppose dark matter is notions in the physical world.

Here’s a notion:

They talk about change as though it’s not work, as though it’s an inevitable series.  I’ve been there.  It is something like work. It’s an effort to draw and reproduce and write and make copies and go somewhere to hear or listen.  It’s work. Well worth the effort.  Glorious when it bears fruit and, I’ll admit, probably inevitable by the time the effort includes people like myself.  But the expression is work.  The trick is to recognize the next issue to put forward.  There are many inevitable advances.  Each of them requiring diligent effort.