GWENDA BOND

Tuesday Hangovers

• I haven't read the Stephenie Meyer books (I know), but I very much enjoyed the (spoiler heavy) Edward vs. Jacob Smackdown over at Seven Imps.
• Margo Rabb offers a list of YA titles with cross-over appeal for adults.
• Jules Feiffer interviewed at The Onion. (Via Leila.)
• The lovely and ingenious Kassia offers some insightful analysis about the demise of the LA Times Book Review (she also appeared on Jim Lehrer about the subject). I suspect she is entirely right that most book sections haven't done a good job serving their communities. See also: Carolyn comments on the oddness of it all from the vantage point of being an LAT book blogger.
• Max offers a pointer to the fabulous NYRB Children's Collection.
• Kelley Eskridge appears on the Reality Break podcast, and that's sure to be worth a listen.
• Awful studio background maps. Oh, I love this.
• Mr. McLaren gets handy around the house's exterior and mini-catastrophe ensues.
• Pretty.
• Finally: RIP Rosie.

Sunday Hangovers

• Holly posts about the narrative functions served by werewolves. Having just watched Blood & Chocolate a couple of nights ago, I can think of a couple of other nonflattering ones (and I believe all the Readercon team's were represented with the exceptions of 4 and 5). (You know, it actually wasn't as bad as I expected. Clearly nothing to do with the book, but at least they made use of the beautiful European buildings.)
• What do you know? Girls and boys have equal aptitudes for math.
• Superstar-in-waiting Ben Rosenbaum is interviewed by the Washington Post about his new collection, The Ant King and Other Stories, and acquits himself very well. Visit his blog for links to more recent press.
• Gwyneth Jones lists her top 10 science fiction novels by women in The Guardian. This is a solid list, to be sure, though some are proposing to generate a version with more recent stuff, which I also support. Any list with Sarah Canary on it is okay by me though.
• Elizabeth Bear asks if there's a generation gap in SF, in which older writers read their compatriots and vice versa. It's an interesting thought.
• Visit the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton's Water Babies show, of water-themed children's book art, online.
• My new favorite animal, courtesy of Cherie Priest.
• Cassie is embarking on an insane research-related project of reading only novels/books produced during or about the Victorian Era. Lob her some suggestions.
• Some great opening sentences of SF. (Via Scott.)

Lessons to Grasshopper, No. 23

There is but one cure for a slight summer cold: sushi and Batman.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Dark Light

Ooooh. An excellent piece by Ursula Dubosarsky published in the Australian Age awhile ago, looking at Vixen Sharp Ears (aka The Cunning Little Vixen), a novella written by Czech Rudolf Tesnohlidek in 1920, and published for the first time in English in 1985 with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. The book sounds fabulous, and I'm going to hunt it down.

She begins by talking about her experiences of darkness as a child:

My favourite memory of this kind of darkness is from my NSW state primary school in the 1960s. Once a week we girls were parted from the boys and made our way out to an old crumbling 19th century house at the back of the playground, known ominously as "Marshall House". There we huddled together in a shadowy room that smelt as green as a drain, straining to see the needles and threads and our little bits of useless sewing, while we told each other stories.

Unsurprisingly, these were largely ghost stories that revolved around sightings of the apparently doomed Marshalls who had lived in the house, and the various terrible ways they were said to have met their deaths. We were all very impressed, I remember, by the desperate scrawl in lead pencil that one of us discovered down near the skirting board on one of the peeling floral papered walls, "I was dead 100 years ago."

Don't we all have those creepy half-manufactured, half-found moments as children?

Such a smart piece. Read the whole thing. (And read The Red Shoe already, if you haven't. So wonderful.)

Class Warfare

It seems somehow fitting that Colleen brings up the issue of class in middle grade and young adult fiction on the day that we learn Michael de Larrabeiti has died. The Borribles trilogy, of course, is a brilliant study in fictional class warfare, so much so that even his obituary in The Independent discusses this at length:

The plummy voiced Rumbles, who habitually pronounce "really" as "weally" while lacing their dialogue with phrases like "old bean" and "frightfully sorry" are equally horrible, but without the raging envy that make the Borribles such dangerous enemies. Loyal to each other and to the traditional cockney area where they live, the Borribles see changes happening in front of them that echoed the social revolution actually happening in Battersea and other formerly working-class districts during that time. A dark and subversive urban amalgam of Richmal Crompton's "William" stories, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, the novel proved an unexpected critical hit both in Britain and in the United States. But getting it into paperback took some time, with publishers still nervous about a possible public backlash.

In preparation for my first residency in the MFA program, they sent us a reading list with a bajillion books to read before a survey lesson on the history of children's lit. Ramona and Her Father was on the list, and struck me greatly because, as I put it in this entry at the time: "This is the one where her father gets laid off from his job; eventually, at the end, he gets a new one as a check-out cashier. I can't remember the last time I read about a real blue collar family like this, where it was portrayed as okay and a non-issue to not be the Joneses."

And I do think its true that we don't see this so much these days in books for kids (or books for adults, for that matter). What would S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders have been, without the class issues? One of the things I loved most about the first season of Veronica Mars was how it played with these same issues. And, yet, in the following seasons that dynamic became so muted it nearly disappeared altogether.

It makes me wonder if this if this isn't a result of the poor or slightly-less-poor being edited out of our larger cultural narrative. You see this in the political seasons too, right? Where everyone, regardless of their economic status, is convinced by a certain party that doing away with estate taxes, and etcetera, is really in their best interest. I'm hopeful we won't see that this cycle, because so many people who vote really are hurting, but hopeful isn't the same as convinced. Class is always an undercurrent, but it is rarely engaged with in a direct and honest way.

There's a New York Times article today about the proliferation of brand books packaged as chick lit, contrasting them with Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. And the discussion that touched off Colleen's post started by talking about the YA corollaries to this like Gossip Girl. I've been trying recently to become better read in a couple of categories that get carelessly denigrated--one being chick lit-packaged YA and the other paranormal romance/urban fantasy. Having looked at some of the better books? It shows that the people talking about these often haven't bothered to read them.

Being a little obsessed with the omniscient narrator in young adult fiction, one of the things that got me to read Gossip Girl was discovering that it had one. And, it's true, that as one of the adult authors in that NYT article says, these brandful books seem to work best when the authors in some way "acknowledge that they are in on the joke." The omniscient narrator provides the distance necessary to do that, and you do get that at least in the first few Gossip Girl books (the only ones I read; though I did often feel the narrator's distance came across more in time--an older version of one of these girls, perhaps--than in background or offering much social critique). Given the dearth of omniscient POV in young adult works by Americans, it's particularly notable that the series I just read the first three books of, The Upper Class--written by three former prep school classmates, Caroline Says*, Hobson Brown, and Taylor Materne--also uses this POV as a device, but to a more nuanced end than in the Gossip Girl books. (And with far better prose and far less brand-dropping, it must be said. I highly, highly recommend these novels.)

The Upper Class books are interesting for what they aren't. They utilize the native glamour of the ultra-rich teens to show how their lives often aren't very glamourous, especially from the inside. One of the neatest tricks the series pulls off is to honestly portray the life of the privileged rich kids in a way that makes it clear how universal many high school experiences actually are. (I grew up firmly middle class in a supersmall town and, boy, did I go through a lot of the same stuff these fictional rich kids do, just in a far different milieu.) These are also well drawn, believable characters--stereotypes reinvented as human beings, something the best teen stories set in schools have always done. Never once reading these books did I forget there was a wider world out there, with people living with far less than most of these characters, and that's a credit to the writing. To suggest that wealthy characters need always be cast as morally bankrupt villains--and there was plenty of that in ye olde days, for sure--is to miss the point. (Justine Musk has an excellent real-life post on similar issues today, in response to a troll. We ignore the rich at our peril, right? Characterizing them in a thin way does us no favors in terms of understanding them or their impact on the larger society, which can obviously be huge.) If there is a moral to take from this entire semi-genre of books--based on what I know about them, so I could be wrong--it would be closer to: Being rich doesn't necessarily make you happy**. That's actually a good thing for kids to know, right?

We shouldn't dismiss books that focus on well-to-do characters out of hand; it's abundantly clear to me why teens respond to such books, and I don't believe for a second that they are reading them irony-free. The vast majority of characters in middle grade and YA fiction seem to inhabit a middle class where income isn't really a topic of discussion at the dinner table, and I think what I'd like to see is how anxiety about class bleeds into real life more, and more characters for who the dinner table and what's on it is a great anxiety itself. After all, in the books about the rich kids, the influence of wealth on their lives is front and center, which strikes me as more honest than the alternative, where economic situation is barely worth a mention.

Basically, I want more Ramona and Her Father, more first season of Veronica Mars (more Gas, Food, Lodging!). (Yes, I'll stop being annoying and mentioning movies and TV now.) (From a money-where-your-mouth-is perspective: Yes, while one of the novels I'm working on features mainly middle class teens***, the other features ones living on--er, beneath--the streets. I'm finding they can fight dragons just as well as their more well-to-do cousins can fight government corruption.)

Colleen hits on this in her post, so I'll just quote her to finish:

There are certainly some excellent books out there today that reflect the current economic situation for the majority of Americans (and I will be posting on some of them next month), but there are not nearly enough. That is what we should be talking about.

*A pseudonymous adult novelist, as well. And here's another excellent interview with her, where she talks about point of view.
**I still firmly believe that it would make me even happier than I already am, if such a thing is possible.
***One of the main character's friends is obscenely wealthy, and that friend has a lot of crap to deal with because of it.

Punking the Product

I'm sure this circulated ages ago, but I just saw it courtesy of the lovely Erin -- the Amazon user comments on Tuscan Whole Milk by the gallon.

Wednesday Hangovers

• I think the residency and Readercon following right on the heels are too big to do a round-up of either. But it was great to see youse guys who were seen at each of them. If only Readercon could be plopped down in the middle of, say, Madison, instead of one mile from a mall, it'd be giving Wiscon some relatively serious competition in my heart. Still: Korean BBQ was excellent, Thai was all right, and the mafia was as treacherous as ever (you poor trusting suckers! it's good to confirm one's devious side is still intact). Plus, Mr. McLaren secretly delivered me a delicious rumcake to the hotel, which was ingested with glee and bargain champagne in celebration of many birthdays (or at least, mine, Kelly's and Gavin's).
• Speaking of Readercon, here's an interesting write-up of a panel I didn't attend, on revision. And Matt Cheney has an excellent overall report too (that was some reading, huh? and the novel's no slouch).
• I really like today's National Geographic photo.
• There's a fabulous new Meghan McCarron story, "The Magician's House," at Strange Horizons: part one and part two.
• Justine on the first-ever brawl in the WNBA.
• Jenny D tells a research anecdote related to the sequel to The Explosionist. Great post, but more to the point: Yay, sequel! Few books demand them, but this is one.
• Bennett Madison has a typically memorable response to the furor over Margo Rabb's very sensible article in the NYT. Here here for Weetzie Bat changing lives.
• I am very, very happy to see the word spreading about how wonderful Tiptree Winner Sarah Hall's The Carhullan Army/Daughters of the North is.
• J.M. Barrie: Very bad man? (Via Leila.)
• Excellent and entertaining New Yorker piece about famous and infamous librarian Anne Carroll Moore's battle against E.B. White's Stuart Little. Of course, you can't go wrong when personalities like these are in play. Anytime you get to quote Ursula Nordstrom, it's for the win.

Domesticated Animals (Updated)

I've been meaning to make this post ever since Carrie pointed out last month that Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" was published in the New Yorker on June 26, 1948, making this year the 60th anniversary of its appearance. "The Lottery" is wrapped up in strange memories for me that involve a high school production of the one-act play adaptation, one I dropped out of in semi-scandal after a conflict with the director. I could be such a diva back then--although in retrospect, this occasion still justified it.

Despite this debacle, I immediately took to Jackson's work and started making my way through it (my favorite remains We Have Always Lived in the Castle). Last year, I discovered the library had the Folkways album of her reading "The Lottery" and "The Daemon Lover," and I highly recommend seeking it out if you're a fan. (Or just clicking that link and downloading the mp3s.)

Wikipedia offers the following snippet from Jackson about the aftermath of publishing "The Lottery":

Curiously, there are three main themes which dominate the letters of that first summer--three themes which might be identified as bewilderment, speculation, and plain old-fashioned abuse. In the years since then, during which the story has been anthologized, dramatized, televised, and even--in one completely mystifying transformation--made into a ballet, the tenor of letters I receive has changed. I am addressed more politely, as a rule, and the letters largely confine themselves to questions like what does this story mean? The general tone of the early letters, however, was a kind of wide-eyed, shocked innocence. People at first were not so much concerned with what the story meant; what they wanted to know was where these lotteries were held, and whether they could go there and watch.

Anyone else surprised we don't have a reality show based on this concept?

A couple of months ago at a used bookstore I finally picked up the collection of her pieces (some published as short stories back in the day, I believe, though all with at least the sheen of autobiography about them) concerning domestic life, the dual edition of Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. I've found the essays crisp, brilliant little treats, and have been working hard to progress through the volume slowly, rather than in one big gulp. Don't you just love a writer with range?

Here's the beginning of the first essay:

Our house is old, and noisy, and full. When we moved into it we had two children and about five thousand books; I expect that when we finally overflow and move out again we will have perhaps twenty children and easily half a million books; we also own assorted beds and tables and chairs and rocking horses and lamps and doll dresses and ship models and paint brushes and literally thousands of socks. This is the way of life my husband and I have fallen into, inadvertently, as though we had fallen into a well and decided that since there was no way out we might as well stay there and set up a chair and a desk and a light of some kind; even though this is our way of life, and the only one we know, it is occasionally bewildering, and perhaps even inexplicable to the sort of person who does not have that swift, accurate conviction that he is going to step on a broken celluloid doll in the dark. I cannot think of a preferable way of life, except one without children and without books, going on soundlessly in an apartment hotel where they do the cleaning for you and send up your meals and all you have to do is lie on a couch and--as I say, I cannot think of a preferable way of life, but then I have had to make a good many compromises, all told.

Lovely, isn't it? And that's just her warming up.

Updated: Ellen Datlow reminds me that there's a benefit for the newly created Shirley Jackson Awards tomorrow evening at the KGB Bar. A whole bunch of tremendously talented authors will be reading Jackson's work. Check it out if you're in the neighborhood. Oh, and the winners of the first year's awards were announced last weekend at Readercon, too. A round of yays to the deserving winners.

Boring Academic Blather

Quite a few of you gluttons for punishment out there have asked for copies of my critical thesis on the omniscient point of view (especially in YA, though there's some broader discussion too). Herewith, help yourself to this PDF of it.

I'd love any thoughts and reactions, either here or via e-mail. I'd also say enjoy, but this is an academic paper we're talking about here.

Monday Hangovers

• A very incomplete selection of links, as I'm still wayyyy behind on ye olde feedreader and even though there's a couple of substantial(ish) posts I'd like to make, I'm not caught up enough for that yet either.
• Margo Rabb's NYT essay about how publishing as YA (when the book is cross-over and could go either YA/adult) can get you some pitiable looks in certain quarters of the literary universe is very good, I think, although I know there have already been some impassioned responses in agreement and disagreement with some of the points raised. It seems to me this is a piece written for a general readership, who may or may not care about YA, and who might--just might--be more likely to visit that section of the bookstore as a result of reading it. I definitely didn't read it as whining, but as a thoughtful consideration of her own experience and an elegant rebuttal to naysayers. Like Justine, I've rarely encountered these attitudes directly (though I have encountered them occasionally), but I still have no doubt that they exist since people love erecting borders around things and declaring them ghettos. There are still plenty of people who look askance at children's literature as literature, and who do not in any way believe that writing for young people is as important (or can be as important) as writing for adults. I'm not one of them, of course, and I do think we're seeing this change as YA continues to be a home for an ever-increasing number of astoundingly excellent books. Oh, and it's worth mentioning that Margo has an excellent blog where this discussion continues, and she's posting outtakes that didn't make the final piece.
• As someone who is also now in the midst of trying to complete that all-important creative thesis (aka The Novel) and get it approved, I send cheering thoughts in Carolyn's general direction. Nice paragraph. (Why does 'nice paragraph' strike me as vaguely dirty? Must catch up on sleep.)
• Niall has all the relevant (and some just plain maddening) links related to the great Helix blow-up. Nothing like watching a jerk prove that he's an even bigger jerk than you could ever have imagined. I understand the term professionalism played a large part in the early stages of this fiasco, which is almost too shocking to be believed.
• Save Bat Segundo!

Travel Blehs

Presently, we're sitting on the tarmac at the Newark airport (very similar to one of the more unsavory levels of Dante's Inferno), waiting out a squall (hopefully). Hateful air travel. I've officially exhausted my reading material -- and the people will Not Stop Talking. Hateful.

I Miss These Guys.

Working Companions
Originally uploaded by gwenda

And Mr. Hemingway too. Home soon, though, right?

Being Readerly

Late Thursday afternoon, we'll be headed to Readercon. I am blissfully unscheduled, but I imagine I can be found at any of Christopher's stuff (yay for the Sarah Across America reading!) and periodically at the Small Beer table. Just guessing.

Enchanted Evening

We were quite the perceptive crew for the annual Miss Universe viewing party and drinking game -- we had very few repicks due to elimination, and core participants had the final five early on Mexico (Gene), the Dominican Republic (Shawn), Venezuela (Christopher), Colombia (me), and Russia (Allyson). (Micol's USA sadly didn't make it that far, though she did fall during swimsuit, which is worth extra points.)

Miss Thailand won the crowd-pleaser National Costume segment, although the competition was fierce this year. My girl got first runner-up in the Big Show. And, of course, all is right and just in the world because Sunshine's traditional Venezuela took top honors. (I was sad to see Albania not advance, because she did indeed look kooky.)

The only reason we were able to stay awake for this, being zonked at this point in the residency, was because advisor postings were to go up sometime before midnight. They did and I'll be finishing my novel(s?) with...

The fabulous Martine Leavitt, author of several great books, including National Book Award finalist Keturah and Lord Death. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic about this.

And now I need a nap.

Sirens Far Away

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes at Facebook and by e-mail and etc. Y'all rock. Clink, clink, cheers!

Someone Else's Party

My god, how can I be this tired already? Could it be the strangest karaoke night ever? Which involved furtively moving the karaoke set-up to a soundproof bunker after the world's most empowered security guard threatened to call the cops? Maybe. Our class (sans a certain WUSS) did "Mary Had a Little Lamb," which Gene somehow managed to make twisted and scary. Or perhaps that was just the lyrics.

(Why is it that all classic kids' song lyrics can be easily interpreted as double entendres? Why?)

Still, I was in bed by 11:30, so that can't be it, because that would mean I'm OLD.

And I don't get OLD until tomorrow. Well, OLDER, anyway. And I forgot my tiara.

One of the interesting things about low residency programs is that they seem to accrue traditions constantly. Perhaps it's because people aren't together enough to get truly sick and tired of seeing each other, and so have a greater interest in doing nice things when the time comes. One of our school's traditions is that the fourth semester class throws the Saturday night party in honor of the graduating class. My class has seven people in it (only six of who are here -- sob, we miss Kate immensely). We're throwing the party for about 150 people (all the current students and a whole slew of alumni here for a mini-residency over the weekend).

Should be fun. And, yes, I do plan to have a stash of my own birthday champers somewhere.

Tonight there's the big auction though, benefiting the scholarship fund, with co-masters of ceremony Tobin Anderson and Tim Wynne-Jones; my contribution to it was actually the fabulous Sharyn November's contribution -- she was nice enough to send a big bunch of ARCs and books to go as a set. That should be big fun too.

And now off to a lecture, and to continue obsessing over who to choose as my creative thesis advisor. Decisions, decisions, as they say...

Arrived

I'm here in Montpelier at Betsy's -- in a different room than usual, but Micol just came over for a late lunch so it's feeling familiar already. As ever, the wireless seems to be misbehaving, but I'll find a reliable signal and make proper updates at some point. Carry on.

Consumer Report

Note to the deodorant industry: You have gone insane.

Since the last time I bought deodorant, apparently, things have gotten a little crazy. On the crazy scale, we're talking the same level as when someone comes in and pitches "Alf" or "The A-Team" and everyone says, "Brilliant! Let's do it!"* It's difficult for me to believe that there's been a precipitous drop in deodorant sales, economic downturn aside. So I simply cannot understand what would possess a company like, oh, Secret to launch a line with scents like Vanilla Chai, Jasmine Orient, Asian Pear, Arctic Apple, Brazilian Cherry, etc. (And, oh yes, there are more.) And might I add that the company has created "exotic" COMPUTER WALLPAPER for each scent?

If you want your armpits to smell like a vanilla chai latte, please slam your head into the mirror in your bathroom until you Stop Wanting That.

Not to mention that everything has been redesigned to appeal to either my grandmother or a 13-year-old.

My tried and true Soft & Dri conditioning silk hint of aloe (itself a bit crazy with the name) has been replaced with black and fuschia packaging that "pulses" on their site and makes me think of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.

*Except, of course, that without "The A-Team" our world would shine a little less brightly. Also, without the Breakin' series. But jacked-up deodorant? We can live without.

Vanishing Point

But only for the weekend past... Did I say I'd post photos? Oh, I intended to.

Our lovely friend Katherine was even in town, and we went out on it for some perfectly-seared tuna steaks, divine risotto and wine (it is officially the month of my birth, after all). Alas, I have run out of the batteries that actually make the camera work. I then vowed, as we fled the exploding city, that I'd battery up and take photos of the place where I grew up.

No such luck there either. Keeping Emma dog from wedging herself under the bed and managing nephews took precedence. (WALL-E = very good.) Although I believe my mother may have taken a snap of me and nephews with the first official birthday dessert--a little something called Brownie "OMFG" Pie. The rest of the weekend was spent reading the first two books in Ilona Andrews' equally delicious Kate Daniels series. (I'm hooked.)

I make no apologies for my lies about participating in daily photo challenges and such. I'm still finishing up this f-ing draft, after all*. I'll drop in, but until I get to Vermont (hoping for Tuesday late afternoon), I make no promises. Hope the U.S. birthday treated y'all in style, and can't wait to see those of you residency or Readercon-bound.

*Tricksy longer-than-supposed book = grrrr.

Breaking

Best LOLCat in the history of the world:

Yay! (With a hat tip to my in-house cute animal picture guru.)

Thursday Hangovers

• Marc Aronson on the Newbery/Caldecott speeches that are all the buzz, taking exception to one of Laura Amy Schlitz's comments on nonfiction.
• Netflix profiles staying for the win. Thank you, Corporate-DVD-Rental-Company Overlords.
• The latest Mind Meld is about whether there's a gender imbalance in SF -- I was asked to participate but events overwhelmed me and since I didn't participate my thoughts aren't coherent enough to share here. Except to say: Yes, but the fact that there's so much discussion around this topic is an indication that things are finally changing, as is the brilliant work I have no trouble encountering by very fine women writers working in the field. I'd just like to see more of it, and that means more TOCs with more brilliant work by women on them. Anyway, very interesting to read the mostly more coherent comments of those who did respond, especially everyone's "favorite" nutso whackjob John C. Wright. I would excerpt, but what to choose? Just go read the whole thing. See also: Moles on the responses.
• The new Locus is the YA-focused issue.
• King Arthur as propaganda. (Via Ed.)
• Jenny Davidson's The Explosionist came out yesterday. I enjoyed this one a great deal, and bow at the bravery of the audacious ending. Go read it!
• Another This Week in SF Kerfluffles entry is Dave Truesdale being Dave Truesdale about Ellen Datlow's excellent anthology, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Instead of linking to The Trues, I will link to Niall Harrison's excellent discussion of Margo Lanagan's "The Goosle," which came in for the biggest dose of Truesey's scorn.
• And here I always thought hollow books were to hide murder weapons and suchlike. (Via Maud.)
• NPR expanding book coverage. This makes me very happy, as I'm usually pleased by the stuff I catch on la radio.
• A fabulous interview with Lynda Barry, whose new book I really must get immediately. (Via Austin.)
• The Cupertino Effect. I like having names and history for such things. (Via Erin.)

So...

This week has been pretty incredible on the busy scale (somewhat unexpectedly) and I've missed the last two days of the daily photo challenge. Woe! I'll attempt to make up for it later on this evening, with a three picture post.

I might mention, though, that Emma the Dog Girl has been doing some very odd things this week. And I'm not talking about the bug-eating (Emma "leaping" into the air to chomp a bug never fails to crack me up). For instance, last night after I kicked her out of the bed, she managed to wedge herself under the bed. I discovered this at 3 when she started to whine because she was trapped. Don't worry, she's free now, if still not down with random neighborhood fireworks. Or somehow having intuited the fact that I'm leaving for Vermont in a few days.

And, in other news, as I'm sure you've noticed (tumbleweeds!), I haven't felt much like blogging for the last few weeks. I mostly chalk this up to revision (so close!), but also to needing a break. I'm also worlds behind on e-mail and that sort of thing, and I'll be attempting to catch up this weekend before I take off. Blogging will continue apace from the residency.

Indiana Jones in Egypt, Etc.

The NYT has an interesting story about archeologists digging into the work-a-day world of ancient Egypt, as opposed to the traditional big money pyramids and the like:

"This is a really amazing site, at the cutting-edge of recent Egypt archaeology," said Stuart Tyson Smith of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the project. "Digging into towns, you get the full range of life, not the very narrow view of society as seen from the top, from the rich and elite."

Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist who uncovered remains of settlements for workers who built the pyramids at Giza, said that at Dr. Moeller’s site he inspected layers of sediments showing occupation extending back 5,000 years to the dawn of Egyptian civilization and forward to the early Islamic period in the first millennium A.D. The silos are near temple ruins from about 300 B.C.

And I want a pangolin. Unrelated, I know, but so cute.

Oh, and while I'm being random, the NYT also has this story on Jamaican jerk, with the following quote from Zora Neale Hurston:

The American writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston chronicled an overnight boar hunt with the Maroons in 1939. "Towards morning we ate our fill of jerk pork," she wrote. "It is better than our American barbecue. It is hard to imagine anything better than pork the way the Maroons jerk it."

Said story made me want to go back to Jake's and ask around to find the closest roadside jerk that weekend...