The last few days have been spent entertaining out of town family, attending National Women’s History Month events, and hanging out with friends.
Yesterday, I met up with the husband’s family and we headed to Union Square. I led us to the fabulous Strand bookstore where I browsed through the Americana and history sections. I finally decided to give up a search for the book I left on the airplane last week and bought some Margaret Atwood books for under $25. I purchased
Cat’s Eye
Oryx and Crake
Wilderness Tips
I forgot how much I loved going to the Strand and exploring the different shelves. You definitely cannot go in there expecting to buy a certain book but have to be open to the possibilities of what is in store for you.
Today I went to a national women’s history month celebration at the Puck Building in collaboration with the A.I.R. Gallery and the National Women’s History Project. We had a high tea where we celebrated and honored eleven women in the Arts. Full list here.
I went to see my funny friends who’s regular gig is Delusions of Spandex do their improv show Hot for Gym Teacher. Good Stuff! We went out to a wine bar afterward where I managed to spill a glass of $8 Malbec. I went home soon thereafter. I know when to call it a night!
Politics break to bring you some library love!
A new exhibit at the National Library in Paris offers a look at an archive of erotic art. I wonder if this exhibition would ever make it to the States hmmm.
“In an era where sexual images are a product for popular consumption, the library has decided to lift the veil on this world of imagination and fantasy,” Bruno Racine, the library director, said in an interview. “The library is a very serious institution, and the project was done with gravity. But we also perhaps are different from what you think — and there is humor here too.”
The items, on display through March 22, are drawn from a permanent collection created in the 1830s when the library isolated works considered “contrary to good morals.” They were put in a locked section with its own card catalog and given the name L’Enfer — hell. Many pieces have been consigned there over the years by the police for safeguarding, perhaps, and posterity. via
And the NYTimes also offered a great travel idea for people who love books, A Bookworm’s Holiday, right here in NYC. I never knew there was a hotel that was organized by the dewey decimal system right here in my own city. How cool is that! I definitely have to stop by the Library Hotel and check it out one of these days. It would be awesome to spend a night there.
over the weekend. The book was solid Krakauer and the movie adaptation was good if not a little long. Both Krakauer in the book and Sean Penn, who directed the movie, approach both projects as though they have personal stake in it. Both seem to personally identify with Christopher McCandless, aka Alex Supertramp. The story falls into the usual rugged individualism storyline and both writer and director seem defensive of their main subject/hero.
The book and movie also got me thinking about how the storyteller situates its relationship to the content and subject of the story and how important it is to make the connection clear or unknown altogether. For example, is it necessary to know that Krakauer spent several weeks in Alaskan wilderness and considers himself to be a headstrong youngster like McCandless? Or is that too suggestive? Sean Penn doesn’t necessarily insert himself into the film but if one knows anything about his personality, it is safe to see why he chose to make the film. Rejecting the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Penn chose to live in a simple trailer (that burnt down in the recent fires last fall) outside of Hollywood. Long known for opposing conservative tradition, Penn has orchestrated sometimes outlandish demonstrations against current politics. His narrative is not too far off from McCandless’s own outsider tendencies.
I don’t have a concrete answer for how I feel about Krakauer and Penn’s involvement in both narratives. Krakauer does state from the beginning of the book that he does try to maintain outsider status from the story but cannot help but disperse some of his own experience throughout. I don’t know Penn’s direct stance on this, but after watching the movie and reading the book it is easier to see how Penn was influenced by Krakauer’s stories.
It would be interesting to see what others though about this angle.
I don’t know if it was the travel all day on Sunday with a horde of other travelers or the combination of a flu shot and giving blood on Monday or some food I ate but I got sick last night, very, very sick…and it was horrible.
I’ve been in bed all day reading Momzillas (total chick lit.) which I picked up at the library on Monday. It’s about super rich, competitive stay at home moms on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It provided the perfect distraction from my sickness. The book is ok, itself. A lot of shortened versions of words like ‘convo’ are dispersed throughout. The language of the book is definitely influenced by instant messenger speak. In fact, instant messenger is used as a tool in the book to convey knowledge behind the narrator/protagonist’s back. It was also about a woman going through an identity crisis after finishing graduate school, getting married and having a baby. That was the much more interesting part of the novel and one that the author Jill Kargman could have delved into more. Well, hopefully, I’ll feel better soon and be able to post about books more!
This weekend, I decided to head to the New York Public Library, Mid Manhattan branch. I usually dread going here with a specific book in mind, as I can never find what I’m looking for. Even if the website claims to have it in stock, its just…not…there. The library in NYC is like a huge, labyrinthine abyss that things just disappear into and never emerge from.
HOWEVER, this time I used worldcat.org to look up some of the books and authors I wanted to read. I was secretly hoping some of the books would be at my beloved Brooklyn Public Library, but, alas, they weren’t there. But they were at the NYPL. One of the books was at the research library, which in all my years of living in NYC, I have never used. So, I decided to go for it and headed to the library on Saturday.
Lo and behold, all three books I wanted to check out from the Mid Manhattan branch were there. I was shocked.
Then I walked across the street to the main research branch and after a few bureaucratic twists and turns, I was reading what I came for.
Yeah! I think the next time I decided to go to the main NYPL branch, I will definitely be using worldcat!
The books I checked out:
The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South edited by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie
Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape edited by Robert Orsi
In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s by Michael Sherry
on saturday, I came across these two stories:
- The use of the word vajayjay to describe vagina or vulva. Ever since it was uttered on Grey’s Anatomy back in 2006, it has been getting more and more popular. This is mostly because Oprah thinks it sounds like a “nice word.” Yeah.
- Elizabeth Wurtzel goes to law school and we care enough to write a whole article a
bout it because….?!?!?! I think its cool and all that shes starting a new chapter of her career but I’m failing to see how this warrants a NYTimes article. Her book More Now Again did really move me when I read it after attempting to read Bitch. And I certainly did like it more than Prozac Nation. Whether she likes it or not, she is one of the leading founders of the confessional chick lit movement in literature/memoir. With that, it would be intriguing to see if she does decided to write about the law school experince as a returning student at age forty. Now that would have been a worthy article.
In September, I read The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A by Lisa Fine. The book is about the old Reo plant in Lansing, MI, a place very close to my heart because its in the vicinity of where I grew up and where my family continues to live to this day.
Fine did an apt job of painting the picture of what is was like to work at Reo in the early twentieth century until the plant closed in the 1970s. What really moved me about this was how she addressed race and class right away by referencing a Malcolm X quote about the difficulties of growing up in Lansing.
Furthermore, Fine was not afraid to really go after the good stuff here and deliver a sometimes-chilling portrayal of inherent racism in a mostly Caucasian blue-collar workplace. Her depiction of masculinity via describing the different activities “Reo Joes” engaged in as part of the plant was revealing about larger trends toward women and men’s separate spheres. In the world of gender history, it is rare to find a study that so closely examines masculinity in the same way that women’s history is looked upon, naturally and deserving of attention. I definitely think this is a must read for anyone interested in labor history, the Midwest and auto history. I look forward to reading more of her work.
My husband and I went to see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich at the Tenement Museum in New York. He bought me her new book which I, of course, had autographed.
There was some very intriguing points made:
- Idealization of women in the past. Having to live up to those who came before us.
- Public records, such as a census, determining and informing what history is.
- History is not created by action alone.
- Feminist activism made women’s history as a field of scholarship possible.
Professo
r Ulrich also shared the panel with Deborah Siegel of Girl with Pen and Pamela Thompson who wrote Every Past Thing (Great video link here too.) It was a great talk that I really appreciated, having been out of academia for awhile. Also, I am reading Siegel’s book Sisterhood Interrupted. Such a resource! I wish I had this when I was writing my MA thesis about women’s history as an academic field and its relationship to women’s studies!
I first came across Laurel Thatcher Ulrich when I read A Midwife’s Tale for a gender history class in college. And then I came across her again when I took another gender history class. However, it was not until recently that I realized that Ulrich was Mormon and that she came up with the saying “Well behaved women seldom make history.”
Via the NYTimes about the release of her new book Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
“The pervasive theme is rebellion.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich begins her new book, “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” struggling to explain — understand — the appeal of an aside she made in the spring 1976 issue of an academic journal, a comment that has become a popular slogan printed on T-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers, usually without her permission and often without attribution.
I recently read a book entitled Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah a collection of historical writing and research by a group of Mormon women in the 1970s. Many of these women were not professional historians. Ulrich was one of these women. Even then, in the beginning of her career, her work was spot on.
Rock on, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.