Author Archives: Anna Clutterbuck-Cook

nanowrimo: week two update

16 Monday Nov 2009

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I don’t have so much to report this week, except that I’ve decided my own personal goal this year is 30,000 words (1,000 words / day) rather than the competition goal of 50,000. By that measure, I am slightly ahead of the game and having fun to boot! I have two short stories in the works and have been having fun fiddling away at them when I have the odd moment. I’m rediscovering the pleasures of writing for fun and discovering that I am better at incorporating dialog than I was when I last wrote fiction (when I was about fifteen).

More next weekend!

"ghost sex" and other goodies: a links list

14 Saturday Nov 2009

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Not so much commentary on this rainy Saturday links list, but some good stories for those who need procrastination fodder!

Ghost Sex by Chris Blohm @ Skepchick (thoughtful and amusing both)

Bats Have Creative Sex Lives, by Jennifer Viegas @ Discovery News (warning: there is a photograph)

Jeff @ Alas, a Blog, tells us why he’s defending Carrie Prejean in the wake of a sex scandal (I didn’t know anything about this before I read his post: this proves I don’t read enough celebrity blogs)

Whose Team Is It, Anyway?, is the latest of Katha Pollitt’s Subject to Debate column @ The Nation which along with Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling’s Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power are the two pieces I managed to read this week on the Stupak Amendment / health care reform debacle.

The Embiggining by Sweet Machine @ Shapely Prose (the complicated feelings cause by losing weight because of an illness)

TMI by Thomas @ Yes Means Yes (“How many times has someone said something on a thread, followed by a string of ‘I thought I was the only one, I’m so glad to know I’m not alone’?”)

Rambling Musings on YA Books by Spiffy @ hippyish (newly renamed blog of Spiffy from Out of the Locker)

“Men’s Rights” Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective, by Kathryn Joyce @ double x (via pandagon)

A Pro-Life Vocabulary Lesson from EvilSlutClique @ sexgenderbody (“Well, here’s a case of inventing a phrase just to shoot it down, because nobody really says stuff like ‘I’m going to health clinic to have an abortion’. But I think I am going to adopt the phrase ‘morally legitimate health care facility,’ that really rolls off the tongue.”)

In Spain’s Extremadura region, sexuality education includes encouraging young people to explore their own bodies through masturbation.

The Anatomy of a Catalog Record @ the American Antiquarian Society’s Past is Present blog (worth clicking on the image to enlarge; funny and informative!)

Academic freedom update by Michael Berube @ American Airspace (I haven’t watched the video yet Michael, but I am distributing the post to my colleagues — does that count?)


Mormon Make Out, a giggle-inducing video from The Colbert Report @ Killing the Buddha (and yes, the basic story is true although the mormon missionaries kissing in the last scene are, I think, either extremely obliging or actors).

Wizard of Oz: Apocalypse — Now Casting @ Geek Girl Diva (wins for best movie poster of the month; and I think Morena Baccarin should play Dorothy)

Crab Bee is Renee’s latest design @ Threadless

Hanna had two posts up this week that I think are worth linking to: if mine’s mine what’s yours and this is how you remind me . . .

And also via Hanna, Bestill by Jocelyn @ O Mighty Crisis (the most beautiful musings on family and courtship, love and stillness I have read in many a month)

*image north end rain by temporarySPASTIC @ flickr

sexuality education: asking the wrong questions?

13 Friday Nov 2009

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Christopher White, over at the National Sexuality Resource Center, has a thoughtful piece up about the way we assess whether sexuality education is effective here in the United States.

I spend a great amount of time talking to educators, researchers, students, friends, family members, and many others about why I think it is important that we reframe the ways that we think about sexuality education and sexuality research, shifting away from a model that focuses on disease and prengancy prevention that I believe pathologizes sexuality and sexual behavior in a way that is harmful and confusing. One of the responses I constantly receive regards the evidence of such an approach and whether or not it will continue to work; and to be honest, this is a part of the conversation where I tend to flounder a bit. “Chapter Nine” [in When Sex Goes to School by Kristin Luker] allowed me to understand why I have such a hard time answering this question, and I disagree with Dr. Luker about whether or not this is the right question. The problem is not whether or not it works but how we (and I mean everyone from researchers to students to politicians to parents to teachers) decide whether or not it works.

I encourage you to check the whole thing out.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways we do and do not speak about sexuality in our culture — who does the speaking, who does the listening, in what contexts, and with whom. This is largely because I really like talking and thinking about sex — hell, I’m a talker and a thinker, and when it comes to things I take pleasure in, I enjoy talking and thinking even more than usual! — but talk about sexuality that respects personal privacy and social convention (or at least disrespects social convention with knowing intent) is an extremely difficult balancing act!

More on this, possibly, to come, particularly as it pertains to my future in the library/archives profession. But in the meantime, I’m not sure I have much more to say as a direct response to the piece, other than that I basically agree with him: when we focus so completely on disease and pregnancy prevention, and on the negatives of young people being sexually active (thus the equation of “successful” sex education with delayed commencement of sexual activity), we lose out.

We lose out on the chance to have much more holistic conversations about the pleasure our sexuality can bring to ourselves and relationships, and how that pleasure can be meaningfully integrated into the rest of our lives in a whole range of contexts. And I personally feel like our culture is that much more impoverished because of our unwillingness to have those conversations — in school and out of it, with young people, middlers, and elders alike.

"Who ARE these people?"

11 Wednesday Nov 2009

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Yesterday, LISNews linked to a post by self-described “conservative librarian” Bert Chapman, who blogs at townhall.com, in which Mr. Chapman made the “economic case against homosexuality.” For those of you who might entertain fleeting hopes that he was taking the New York Times route, and tabulating the cost of homophobic discrimination against gay couples in our society, I am sad to report that this is not the case. No. Instead, Mr. Chapman tries to argue that “our nation cannot afford the extremely high financial costs of this [homosexual] lifestyle.”

I realize that open-mindedness and empathy for one’s fellow human beings are not legally-enforcible prerequisites for the library science profession — but, damn there are days when I sure as hell wish they were.

The people I am glad to call fellow-professionals, however, are the folks who took the time to post comments on the LISNews item. You are all made of awesome (as Hanna would say) and remind me why I think librarians are some of the coolest people around. A sampling of comments thus far:

“oh, yes, the shopping. I had to give up the lifestyle when I couldn’t afford the clothing.”

“‘Lifestyle’ – really? Really? I can’t believe people still use that word in this context.”

“There are a number of lifestyles I object to. The idiot lifestyle, the bigot lifestyle, the uneducated lifestyle, the fearmongering lifestyle, the use-of-the-word-“lifestyle” lifestyle, the describing someone’s existence as a lifestyle, the vile hate disguised as a scholarly opinion lifestyle, the cowardly bully lifestyle and the sub-literate Townhall columnist lifestyle.”

And my personal favorite: “Who ARE these pathetic bigots and how in Hell did they land in my profession? Get OUT…”

"eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"

11 Wednesday Nov 2009

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Today, November 11th, is Armistice Day, the day 91 years ago when the First World War officially came to an end. As an undergraduate when I spent an academic year at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, I was struck by the omnipresence of the World Wars on the landscape and architecture in Britain. Public memorials proliferated: in churches, schools, high streets, shops, public parks, town squares, train stations . . . name a space and somewhere there will be some sort of memorial plaque or monument or dedication to the fallen. Perhaps it was because of my status as a foreigner (one sees more as a visitor than as a resident in any space), but I did come away with the feeling that Britons co-exist with their collective memories of war and loss in a way that Americans, so often, do not. We remember war, sure, but we are uncomfortable facing the reality of violence, preferring instead to depict war as a triumphant enterprise.


One of my favorite memorials from Aberdeen is this mosaic, funded by a woman who lost three sons during the Second World War, all pilots in the RAF. It is located on the King’s College campus in Old Aberdeen, and I used to walk passed it frequently on my way to and from classes, the library, and errands on High Street.

I don’t really have any Big Thoughts for today other than to encourage all of us to take a few minutes in the midst of whatever our regularly-scheduled plans are to reflect on how often humanity is, indeed, inhumane. And how we live with that reality every day — whether we choose to collectively memorialize it or not.

stuff and things: some links from the week

09 Monday Nov 2009

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As I put this list together on Saturday morning, it’s a crisp, clear, chill autumn day. Daylight savings time last weekend has ushered in early nights (Hanna is happy) and brought us back the earlier sunrise (I am happy), at least for the next month or so. Leaves are turning and falling and we definitely need our heat on overnight, as temperatures are dropping to around freezing. It’s both difficult and easy to believe that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been reading on the internets this week.

Leading off with some good news from last Tuesday’s election day, the town of Kalamazoo, Michigan (not too far from where I grew up), passed an ordinance against discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (I like to think they did it in part so they’d get congrats from feministing :)!).

In similar news, the Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to perform a marriage ceremony for an interracial couple has resigned. I’m really only disappointed he didn’t get fired first. And the couple is still pressing a federal civil rights suit against him.

On a sadder note, Britain’s only Steiner Waldorf teacher training course, at Plymouth University, was forced to close due to lack of funding.

This offensive sign from a doctor’s office in Aspen, Colorado, has been making the rounds on the feminist and pregnancy/birth blogs. The folks at Unnecesarian are holding a photoshop contest to re-design the sign to say more directly what it actually means (e.g. “if you want to have a say in your health care and the health care provided to your children, then fuck off”). Go check out some of the submissions here and here!

Ophelia Benson, over at the Guardian argues that atheism is not, and cannot, constitute a political or religious movement: “Mere non-belief in any X can’t by itself constitute a movement, because it’s merely an absence (or at most a refusal) of belief. If every absence of belief in [your chosen belief-object here] amounted to a movement, the traffic jam would be a nightmare.” Since I’ve been thinking a lot about counterculture activism right now, I appreciate the distinction between criticizing X activity or philosophy and actually articulating an alternative. Living one’s life defined by opposition seems like a very impoverished mode of being to me.

Speaking of believers and nonbelievers, when Hanna and I were in Vermont a few weeks ago we saw a news blurb in one of the local papers about , Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, an organization that offers to care for your pet in the event you are taken up in the rapture and your pet (not being in possession of a soul) remains behind. ClizBiz over at blogher also saw the story and wrote a post about post-rapture pet care.

Following links this week, I discovered a web magazine, killing the buddha, “a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the “spirituality” section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not.” Since I definitely fall into the category of “people made anxious by churches” I’m looking forward to seeing what this magazine has for me :).

Cracked.com brings us the five most ridiculous sex self-help books, which had me in tears on Thursday night. Sample commentary from book #1 (How to Make Love With Your Clothes On: 101 Ways to Romance Your Wife): “Reading the introduction to this book is like reading the panicked ramblings of a man with his dick caught in a Bible while his wife is flapping directly at him on leathery wings holding a Bible laser.” (As a side note, you can see from the URL that the post was originally titled “How to F*** Like a Librarian” and has since been changed . . . I’d like to think a few of my fellow librarianistas gave the poster a piece of their mind because, as Hanna said, “well, we know that’s patently false.”)

From the Guardian again, via Hanna, comes a fun run-down of films in which architecture stole the show. I haven’t seen all of them, but it sure as hell made me want to see Blade Runner again (and my dad had the same reaction when I sent the story to him!)

And on a final happy note, Wallace and Gromit celebrated their twentieth birthday on 4 November! Many happy returns of the day, you two. Hope the cheese was tasty.

*photo credit: Autumn sail, Boston by Kportimages @ Flickr.

nanowrimo: week one update

08 Sunday Nov 2009

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I’ve reached the end of week one of National Novel Writing Month with the first four parts of my “short” story completed. I thought it was going to be a little short story and it’s turning into a novella — a process which is taking me back to my teenage years when novels tended to span hundreds of typed, single-spaced pages with no end in sight. I was aided and abetted by an inadvertent seven-hour wait in the Grand Rapids airport on my return to Boston . . . I doubt I’ll have the luxury of dashing off quite so much silliness in the weeks to come!

I’m still not sharing this story with anyone but Hanna (maybe I should put: “For British Eyes Only” on the top of every page?) but I’ll give you a feel random details to make of what you will.

1) I’m setting the story in Chicago, and a crucial scene takes place at the Field Museum; I chalk this up to early childhood readings of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

2) I’ve appropriated a plot element from “The Stackhouse Filibuster” from Season 2 of The West Wing; those of you who are devotees can have fun guessing which one. (And can I say one more time that I miss that show so damn much?!)

3) So far, I’ve figured out how to get in references to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Dr. Who . . . I’m undecided as to whether having opened the door I’ll need to work in specific episodes of DW, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures just to be clear I’m not playing favorites.

Until next week — wish me continued verbosity. And for those of you who are also participating, hope you’re having loads of fun!

On the Syllabus: The Survival of a Counterculture

06 Friday Nov 2009

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The book I’ve been reading this week for my thesis research, The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards, by Bennet M. Berger (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) was a find on the Brookline Booksmith $1 cart by Hanna while I was on vacation visiting family (thank you H, for thinking of me!). Even though it was published the year I was born, and written by a sociologist rather than an historian, I am still finding a lot of really good observations and theoretical musings that help me clarify my thinking about the interaction of philosophy and practice in human communities.

Berger set out to study the place of children within “hippie” communes, and although his observations range far and wide in this particular book — not focusing on children to the exclusion of other aspects of commune life, he still spends a good deal of time describing adult interactions with young people. The following excerpt is from his third chapter, “Communal Children: Equalitarianism and the Decline of Age-grading.”

In treating the history of the concept of childhood, social scientists have emphasized the differences between [the pre-industrial] status of children . . . where they are regarded simply as small or inadequate versions of their parents, totally subject to traditional or otherwise arbitrary parental authority . . . [and on the other hand] the modern, industrial, middle-class view of children [in which] children are increasingly treated as members of a distinctive social category, their social participation . . . increasingly limited to age-homogeneous groups.

. . .

The prevalent view of children at The Ranch (and other communes like it) fits neither of these models exactly. Rather than being members of an autonomous category of “children” or being inadequate versions of their parents, legitimately subject to their arbitrary authority, children and young people (or “small persons,” as they are sometimes deliberately, perhaps preciously, called) are primarily regarded as “persons,” members of the communal family, just like anyone else — not necessarily less wise, perhaps less competent, but recognized primarily, as my colleague Bruce Hackett put it, “by lowering one’s line of vision rather than one’s level of discourse.”

Berger’s later descriptions of adult-child interactions at The Ranch illuminate and refine this general philosophical approach to understanding young people in the context of the communal structure — obviously there are nuances to each portion of this description (how is the “less competent” aspect dealt with? what does it mean for children to be seen as potential sources of wisdom?). But I was struck by the re-orientation necessarily in a community where this is the starting point for adult-child interaction, rather than one of the first two positions described (and in our modern American society, the modern, industrial, middle-class ideal dominates, whether or not it is upheld religiously in daily practice). What would it be like to interact with kids primarily “by lowering one’s line of vision rather than one’s level of discourse”?