Tag Archives: domesticity

in praise of do-nothing days

29 Monday Nov 2010

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Hanna and I spent Thanksgiving vacation at home this year, in Boston. We didn’t travel and for the most part we didn’t plan to do a lot of stuff. Between last Tuesday afternoon and Sunday night we just … spent time together. And it was good. It’s the first vacation of that kind I’ve had, really, since moving to Boston. At least for that duration. It can be hard, sometimes, to purposefully do “nothing” … nothing that counts as productivity, that is. Of course we did stuff. And even in those moments when we weren’t baking, reading, cleaning, talking, watching movies, surfing the ‘net for pretty pictures … even in those moments of true idleness, we were doing something: we were being. Together. And it was good.

Hope y’all had a good vacation as well; I’m sure I’ll get my hand back into blogging soon enough.

UPDATE: For more photographs from our long weekend, see Hanna’s most recent post at …fly over me, evil angel ….

happy thanksgiving day, one and all

25 Thursday Nov 2010

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Mostly, this year, I’m thankful for a long weekend at home with Hanna and Geraldine. As I’m typing this, we’re hanging out on the couch with half an eye toward the Thanksgiving day parade, catching up on our leisure reading and looking forward to the arrival of our friend Ashley for tofurky dinner.

And ’cause this is the Future Feminist Librarian-Activist, I wanted to note that I woke up this morning to the voice on WGBH (our local NPR station) saying, “It’s Thanksgiving morning, and your work in the kitchen is almost done Moms!” ’cause clearly “Moms” are the only people capable of putting together a Thanksgiving meal. (As Hanna said, “Well, in my house it was always my dad!”)

And it might just be because I don’t often watch network television, and rarely morning television — not to mention on a treacly American holiday — but wow. The narratives of consumption, “family,” all revolving around gender roles, is front and center. In a train-wreaky sort of way.

Not that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has ever been about anything but consumption. But it’s fascinating to see how that’s all packaged in the mainstream, completely bland-yet-powerful cultural frames of family (Victoria’s Secret models gushing about the newfound bliss of motherhood), nationalism (yes, for those of you who were listening, Colin Quinn did liken the parade to the Nuremberg Rallies) and relentless consumption. Also, this is the first time in a while I’ve actually been witness to a critical mass of commercials aimed at the twelve-and-under set and crivens! It’s one thing to read about the aggressive gender-segregated marketing of children’s toys (see booknote on Delusions of Gender)? It’s another thing entirely to actually see it first-hand for three hours. I think on some level it’s the sort of stuff I believe intellectually is out there, but I don’t believe-believe people are really that actively and nakedly endorsing stereotypes.

But no: it’s there, front and center. Amazing. I feel like I should be taking notes on the language used to shape meaning of the day and the way in which the parade (apparently) perfectly “captures the essence” of whatever this day is about in our collective imagination.

Huh. I didn’t start this post as a rant. So I guess I’ll stop there and go back to enjoying the day. Particularly the work of Sir Terry Pratchett, whose existence in the world has brought us passages such as this, from his latest Tiffany Aching novel, I Shall Wear Midnight.

And what are my weapons? [Tiffany] thought. And the answer came to her instantly: pride. Oh, you hear them say it’s a sin; you hear them say it goes before a fall. And that can’t be true. The blacksmith prides himself on a good weld … We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told.

And I also have fear — the fear that I will let others down — and because I have fear I will overcome that fear. I will not disgrace those who have trained me.

And I have trust, even though I am not sure what it is that I am trusting.

“Pride, fear, and trust,” she said aloud. And in front of her the four candles streamed fire, as if driven by the wind, and for a moment she was certain, in the rush of light, that the figure of an old witch was melting into the stone. “Oh, yes,” said Tiffany. “And I have fire.”

Enjoy your rest, wherever you are, and then carry on with pride, fear, trust, and fire. Doing whatever it is you are called to do.

monday morning madness (a few random things)

25 Monday Oct 2010

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Hello and welcome to the week!
Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes
Hanna and I were up late with friends last night drinking tea, eating biscuits, and watching the first installment of Stephen Moffet’s new venture, Sherlock. I shall resist spoilers of the plot-related sort, but would like to observe that Martin Freeman is an excellent Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch sparkles as Holmes, and Rupert Graves plays a charmingly rumpled Lestrade. And the slash is really text, not subtext. Incase the previews left you in any doubt. We’re already looking forward to the second installment (and prematurely in withdrawal following the end of the third and final episode of the season).

It was awesome and then we were up ’til after midnight talking graduate school and fan fiction. Which was delicious, and we’re already looking forward to doing it again next week. But it left something to be desired on the good-night’s-sleep front, which means we rolled out of bed feeling a little bleary-eyed.

Something like this.

photograph by hanna (2010-10-24)
Although I imagine we’ll get over it with enough coffee and intellectual puzzles to occupy our minds.
The all-too-short “weekend” (which for me consist of Saturday night through Sunday morning) was spent 1) shopping for my fall wardrobe at Goodwill, 2) discovering Rosenfeld’s Bagels, 3) reading the first chapters of my ARC of Jennifer Pozner’s Reality Bites Back (booknote to follow when I’ve finished it), and of course watching Sherlock.
Rosenfeld’s is located out in Newton Center, about four miles west of where we live in Allston. We walked out there yesterday morning past Boston College, through Chestnut Hill and other old villages-cum-suburbs of Boston. Startlingly, this walk included passing the gothic-looking estate of Mary Baker Eddy’s historic home. For some lovely photographs from along the way, see Hanna’s blog post today.
The bagels were also very tasty.
We also ran into a teeny-tiny political rally outside the bagel shop; the Republican challenger to Barney Frank (who wants to dump Barney Frank?? seriously!) was on the corner in a bow tie and cream suit. I had a nearly overwhelming urge to conspicuously make out in front of them, just to be irritating. Hanna tells me this was perhaps a little mean-spirited of me. Is it really so bad that I get off on proving a point?
This has been a very eclectic post, and now I really must quit blogging and get some serious work done. Have a lovely week, everyone! Regular feminist-y blogging will resume as soon as I locate my brain.

i promise i won’t become one of those bloggers…

20 Wednesday Oct 2010

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…who posts incessantly about their pets.

(*kof*kof*)

But the thing is, I just discovered that Black Cat Rescue, the shelter through whom we adopted Verity Geraldine (formerly Marie), made a video of our kitty when she was a mama cat with her kittens not so long ago.

And who doesn’t need a kitten fix mid-week? I mean, really.

The folks at BCR are so happy that mama cat has finally found a home, following in the footsteps (paw-steps?) of her kittens, who were all adopted back in June.

some monday links

18 Monday Oct 2010

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‘Cause it’s apparently one of those periods when blog posts aren’t so easy in the writing.

Hanna has some photos up from the past couple of weekends over at …fly over me, evil angel …, for those of you who follow this blog at least in part because you know us in not-net-life and would like to see what we’re up to when not blogging.



Me reading, by Hanna E. Clutterbuck, 2010-10

She also wrote a wonderful two-part post (part one, part two) on Dr. Who for a friend of mine who recently requested some good introductory episodes from the earlier incarnations of the Doctor.

If you’re on tumblr (or even if you’re not), there are some awesome blogs to follow. Namely beautiful portals if you (like me) are in to liminal spaces; fuck yeah tattoos if (like me) you are in the process of considering how to design the tattoo of your dreams — or you just like beautiful ink; and lesbian outlaw because her tagline is “separate from the government, beyond the police.” And also ’cause she posts lots of great stuff.

Via our friend Rebecca came this great illustrated explanation of the four levels of social entrapment (“This person is seemingly immune to awkwardness and once they latch onto you, you are not allowed to leave until they are done with you.”) at the blog Hyperbole and a Half.

For those of you who are at all familiar with the site Feministing and know that Jessica Valenti and her husband Andrew recently became parents through a pretty traumatic pregnancy and birth experience, I hope you’ve seen that their daughter Layla finally came home from the neonatal intensive care unit (warning: pictures of incredibly tiny baby human after the jump). I really hope they’re getting some quiet time to be together as a family.

There’s been a flurry of posts up this past week or so in the feminist blogosphere on “fucking while feminist”: what that means, exactly, and how people live out their own particular iterations. I may or may not have an actual post in my about this (I actually think being feminist in my political identity and using feminism as an analytical tool has a pretty profound effect on my sexuality and sexual related-ness … but I’m not sure how to talk about it yet). In the meantime, one of my favorite responses has been by Garland Gray guest-blogging over at Tiger Beatdown on how his feminism informs his experience of fucking other men:

Over time, I realized that if I was committed to working toward a world where gender variance was celebrated, where getting fucked wasn’t viewed as something shameful or disempowering, I was going to have to start voting with my dick.

This isn’t simply high-minded “the personal is political” sexual activism. If a dude thinks that he is powerful because he doesn’t get fucked, and you are weak and shameful for getting fucked, you really and truly don’t want to let him fuck you. Sex is about respect, and letting someone inside you without respect is a bad idea. No matter what position I am in, I follow this cardinal rule: If someone needs to be in control, it should be the person getting fucked. I fuck while feminist by insisting that there is nothing submissive about getting fucked. Accepting the standard bullshit narrative of “penetration as dominance” or “penetration as corruption” is ridiculous and arbitrary. It is just as easy to see penetration as submission. A part of your body is inside of me. If you don’t play by my rules, I MIGHT NOT GIVE IT BACK.

 And finally, Tenured Radical and Historiann had a series of thoughtful posts + comment threads up recently at their respective blogs about single-sex (women’s) colleges. I haven’t had the time nor been in the mental space recently to really sit down and digest them, but here are the links.

Thirty-second commentary: As someone who 1) worked at a men’s college for a semester, 2) attends a graduate school attached to a women-only undergraduate college, and 3) is a feminist and historian of feminist activism and education, I find the question of single-sex education incredibly complicated. There are compelling (mostly, to my mind, historical and individual) arguments for the worth of women-only space, but I can’t get away from the question of sex and gender varience, and the problem that once you start policing the boundaries of space by saying “women only” or “men only” you’re reinforcing a world in which the gender binary is a fundamental organizing principle … a principle that I believe is antithetical to the values of feminist theory and practice.

And because it’s out there and thus needs to be shared: Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson has contributed to the It Gets Better project. I’ve linked before to a lot of really good commentary on the problems with the project, but none of those problems erase the fact that people are telling their own personal stories of Growing Up While Queer, and that each individual story is a powerful testament to the infinite possibilities that exist for each of us as we grow and change.

Enjoy the week ahead!

from the neighborhood: cat blogging

14 Thursday Oct 2010

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Despite — or perhaps because of? — the fact this was a short week here in Massachusetts (they take their federal holidays seriously in the commonwealth!), I feel like I’ve been running perpetually behind the last few days and don’t have much energy or inspiration for serious blogging. So when in doubt — post photos!

Here are the latest snapshots of the newest member of our family, a two-year-old kitty who has so far refused to tell us her true name. Front-runners thus far include Maida, Zia, Romana, Sarah Jane and Lucia. So far, she seems to have a slight preference for Sarah Jane … but stay tuned for updates.



Under the tablecloth is a good place for lurking.



She seems to be picking up wicked
meditation skillz from Hanna



And of course the most important task of any cat is
to meet their daily quota of nap attacks!

Have a lovely weekend, and I’ll try to come up with something feminist-librarian-activist to rant about come next week!

from the neighborhood: non-humans center stage

29 Wednesday Sep 2010

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Hanna and I have been talking about adopting a cat for several months now, and this weekend we went to visit the first candidate — a two-year-old female, Marie, who is currently living at a lively foster home in Haverhill. Her foster family patiently allowed us to sit with her for about an hour and despite the lack of sardines in our pockets we did not seem to offend her. Stay tuned for further developments!

Marie having her supper. Photograph by Anna 25-Sept-2010.
Haverhill, Massachusetts

In unrelated news (besides being in the realm of cool photographs and animal photography), Hanna finally succeeded in capturing a decent photograph of our resident spider, Charles, who resides outside our kitchen window on a beautifully-constructed web.

Charles the Spider in our kitchen window. Photograph by Hanna 24-Sept-2010
Allston, Massachusetts

Have a good rest of the week everybody!

work+school+life: launching year four

09 Thursday Sep 2010

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The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (Boston, MA), by garreyf.
Made available at Flickr.com.

It’s the week after Labor Day and thus that time of year again … to look back and look forward and wonder when that third year (that seemed so speedy-fast and incredibly filled with eventfulness at the same time) slid by and to wonder what the year ahead is going to bring.

Hard to believe this is the third anniversary, already, of my move to Boston. (See my post from the end of year one and from year two here). With the hectic nature of the last two weeks (punctuated by several severe migraine-grade headaches), I can’t say that I’ve had a lot of time to reflect meaningfully on the question of whether I feel more authentically “Bostonian” now than I did at this point last year, when I was still very much on the fence. But here I still am, and here Hanna and I are likely to stay for at least the medium term (job opportunities willing!). I admit, in my heart of hearts, to longing for the Pacific Northwest now and again, since it has always felt like something of my second home — and both of us have close friends and family ties there. But the possibility of such a cross-country move is in the distant world of future possibilities, alongside Hanna’s equally important lifelong desire to live, for at least a time, in England. For now, our life is here.

And a jam-packed-full life it is at the minute!

Hanna, who graduated with her MA (History) and MS (Library Science) last December, is working as a processing archivist at the Countway Medical Library at Harvard and as an archives assistant at Northeastern (a position I now share with her). She’s working on studying for her GRE, with plans to pursue her PhD in Irish History, and in her spare time can be found blogging both at …fly over me, evil angel… and her recently-created companion tumblr feed, evil angel. I suggest to any of you reading this that you check out both if what you’re looking for are all the most entertaining links on current events in Britain/Ireland, in the world of books, libraries and archives, and genre fiction/film. As she regularly points out, Hanna’s RSS feeds are way more diverse than mine, and I always end up learning the most random and interesting things!

I’m in my final semester of work for my Library Science degree, and taking two classes: one on archives management and the other on the curation of digital materials. While both classes promise to be useful for my future work as a librarian, I’m definitely ready to be finished with formal schooling. Being a student makes me claustrophobic, prone to migraines, and depressed; it also tends to sap the pleasure out of the pursuit of learning, which I adore, and on the whole seems to be an unhealthy sort of thing for me to engage in. A bad match, personality-wise, I’ve discovered. Ironically even more so when the learning is intended to be of professional use rather than something I do because I find it intrinsically valuable (as with my history research).

To celebrate the completion of my degree, I am making plans to get my first tattoo. While I have yet to settle on a design, we discovered a kick-ass artist at Chameleon when Hanna got own inaugural tattoo (a Dr. Who question mark) over the summer, a joint birthday present from me and our friend Diana. I have two or three conceptual ideas in the pipeline right now, although I think for numero uno it might be one of the boats from Swallows and Amazons. My friend Ashley counsels that tattoos should be symbolic enough to be re-interpreted over time, wise words that make me hesitate to use something so pictoral. But I’m sitting with the image for the next few months to see how it feels, and then we’ll go from there! (If it all goes well, I’ll have to start thinking about what to get when I turn in the final draft of my thesis!)

Speaking of my thesis, the draft is away in the hands of my readers and will likely not be completed until next spring, although final deadlines are still in high-level negotiations. There are some arguments for finishing it this fall, but for quality-of-life reasons, and for quality-of-thesis reasons the handwriting is on my own personal wall that this isn’t going to happen. I don’t want to be miserable and over-extended for four months, which in turn will make my girlfriend feel miserable and over-extended as she tries to mop up my tears, soothe my migraines, and manage all of the things I simply won’t have time for. So we’re shooting for May, 2011 presently. Which is actually the term I originally projected I’d graduate (I’m making progress: it took my seven years for the B.A., so four years for the double Masters’ degrees ain’t shabby!)

Meanwhile, I’m working at my beloved Massachusetts Historical Society (from whence I am writing this) and also at Northeastern, as previously mentioned, where I tag-team a position as archives assistant with Hanna. My latest project is 20.65 cubic feet of records from Northeastern University’s cooperative education program, dating from the mid-1970s to the present. Lots of folders of interdepartmental memos and committee meeting minutes, not to mention all the internal dramas to which any organization is prone. I should also (fingers crossed!) finally be wrapping up, this October, the Marjorie Bouve scrapbook digitization project. We still don’t have a firm idea for how to display the images and information for users, but as soon as we have anything up and running I’ll be sure to link it here.

That’s all going to keep me more than busy enough, although I’m definitely looking forward to an October visit from my parents, over the Columbus Day weekend, and to some new blogging projects (i.e. the continuation of reading the (lesbian) classics with Danika the Lesbrarian; my copy of Beth Goobie’s Hello Groin arrived in the post just this morning!). Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to staying in touch with y’all via the usual modes, posting here when I can, and tumblr when I can’t.

And maybe, some time later in the fall or early next spring, you’ll see that we’ve finally taken the plunge and adopted a cat like we keep talking about doing. If we do, you’ll be some of the first people to know (’cause who can resist cute cat photos; I know I can’t!)

Best wishes for a lovely early autumn to you all, wherever you may be, and you’ll be hearing from me soon enough.

Peace,
Anna

friday fun: indigo magic!

16 Friday Jul 2010

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Last weekend, when Hanna and I were visiting her parents up in Norridgewock, Linda was experimenting with some indigo she had grown in the garden to use as a dye for her spinning fibers. I got to watch the whole process of making the dye and using it on the wool. It’s a multi-step process in which the water first turns a sort of greenish-grey and then yellow, at which point you put the fibers into the vat. Then, you take the fiber out and — like magic! — when the dyed wool hits the oxygen in the air, it turns a gorgeous blue. I filmed the process in action on my digital camera, and you can see the video below.

(Note: about a minute into the process, Hanna comes out onto the deck to watch and her foot goes through a rotten plank. She sustained some scrapes and pulled the ankle a bit, but was perfectly fine after a bit of ice!)