Scarlett Letters

It pleases me that the articles I started on Wikipedia about elongated coins and exonumia have thrived and grown as they have. From such tiny seeds are fully developed Wikipedia entries made. I'm also pleased that the awards section I added to the entry on Slings & Arrows has remained largely untouched. Guess I did good work there, too. One must find validation where one can.

It pleases me to see that attitudes toward animals and animal rights are slowly shifting. When New York Times Magazine covered the work of a lawyer trying to gain personhood for primates under US law, I found myself in complete agreement with his arguments. No, I'm not a vegetarian and I am unlikely to become one. Does that make me hypocritical? Well, OK, then, I can live with that. Still, given all the things we've learned about animal cognition, self awareness, and social structures, a little bit of thought about those with whom we share the planet is long past due.

And speaking of those with whom we share the planet, this story about a bull elephant poached from Tsavo East National Park (close to where I spent my time in Kenya) makes me unspeakably sad. We've got to stop this sort of thing. (Warning: This article includes a couple of graphic pictures of what was left of the elephant when the poachers were done with him. Horrifying.)

Tonight while trying to tidy the house ("trying" being the operative word), I discovered my Rolodex from, oh, at least 15 years ago. Yes, an honest-to-goodness Rolodex-brand phone directory (this style specifically), with little plastic protectors for the business cards I stored on it. It's an interesting walk through the past, with business cards from defunct companies, a couple of cards from people who have passed away, contact information for people I know have moved from the listed addresses or people I haven't spoken to in a decade or more. There are at least a couple of hand-typed contact cards in this thing. I don't know why, but when I tried to throw it away, I couldn't make myself do it. It's not like I need to have it in the house. It's . . . a souvenir from a different life, my full-time publishing life. Kind of amazing to me.

Farewell to author Daniel Keyes, whose "Flowers for Algernon" left an indelible impression on a young science fiction reader 35 years ago. She still hasn't forgotten that work.

This morning in his excellent Link Salad, jaylake pointed to a New York Times article about the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago completing their dictionary of Demotic, the language of the common people of ancient Egypt. It was an excellent piece. But about three-quarters of the way through, the author talks about how Demotic reveals more personal and more human details of Egyptian life. Here's the passage that pissed me off in full:

The translation effort can have its rewards, including a new understanding of what Dr. Allen called an X-rated Demotic story well known to scholars. The hero in the story goes into a cave to steal a magic book. A mummy there warns it will bring him disaster. Soon he is entranced by a woman who invites him to her house for sex, but she keeps putting off the consummation with endless demands and frustrating conditions.

On the subject of sex, Demotic scholars said the lusty Cleopatra, the last of the pharaohs and presumably the only one fluent in the common speech, probably spoke only Greek in her boudoir. That was the language of the ruling class for several centuries.

Dr. Johnson, who specializes in research on the somewhat more equal role of women in Egyptian society, said Demotic contracts on papyrus scrolls detailed a husband’s acknowledgment of the money his wife brought into the marriage and the promise to provide her with a set amount of food and money for clothing each year of their marriage. Other documents showed that women could own property and had the right to divorce their husbands.

Can you figure out what pissed me off so thoroughly? There, that middle paragraph. This is how those three paragraphs sum up to me: Demotic lets us read sexy stuff about Egyptians that we never could before. Remember Cleopatra? She spoke Greek while she had sex. Women all over her country were treated more like people than this journalist will treat the empire's last queen.

What the f*cking hell? I haven't been so thoroughly irritated by a science journalist in a long time. Since I couldn't find a comment button on the article, here's what I wrote to the author directly:

"I was fascinated to read your article about the new Demotic dictionary. Your article is packed with interesting information, and as an Egyptophile, I was excited to understand how much more we'll learn about ancient Egyptian life as a result of this work. I was dismayed and disappointed, however, by the unnecessary sexualization of Cleopatra in what should and could have been simply a factual assertion. Why make a point of characterizing her as lusty and speculating on the language she spoke in the bedroom? Why not just mention that in private life she spoke Greek? Clearly a number of her predecessors spoke the same language, all of whom were men, and you chose not to characterize any of them in the same way. Every time a journalist reduces Cleopatra to the caricature of a scheming sexual vixen, they obscure the fact that in a world where men ruled, she was highly educated and politically canny, charismatic and enormously powerful. It's past time that Cleopatra was given her due as the political powerhouse she was without having to put up with the unnecessary speculations of the male gaze and the prurient peek-a-boo attitudes about her personal life. This one paragraph distracted me unpleasantly and unnecessarily from what was otherwise excellent journalism. As a regular Times reader, I'm very disappointed."

Disappointed doesn't nearly cover it. F*ck.

It's the first sunny Seattle morning in quite a while, and I actually timed my morning activities so I'd have some leisure to write an LJ entry. ::pleased::

Work: This week is the last before our team goes into high gear for three weeks. I'm savoring the slow pace, because come next week, it's going to be early to bed, early to rise, with not a lot of breathing space in between. I'm thankful to be employed.

The Vengeance of the Internets: I suspect that many folks who read my LJ were aware of last week's Internet Kerfuffle of the Week -- the Cooks Source debacle. I followed this train wreck mostly via Twitter, and it really was a case of the event being too awful too look at while being unable to turn away. Watching a publication and an editor shoot themselves in the head so thoroughly was a rare and remarkable thing to see. The latest development is the notice currently posted on the Cooks Source Web site, which is oddly and awkwardly written, continues to display the publication's tin ear for public relations and Internet culture, and still seems to present the publication as a poor-pitiful-me victim of Internet persecution rather than a thief of other people's work. (Psychology Today has posted an interesting push-back against the Internet's swift judgment.)

Completely Frivolous Cat Font: For my cat-loving compatriots, I share the LiebeKitty font, which seems to offer a nod to Simon's Cat, as well as an outlet for human-feline infatuation.

Books: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: I was in Barnes & Noble last week and came across a display of their Classics series, which included this volume. It's a nice presentation, offering not just Douglass' own story, but also a new introduction, contemporaneous endorsements and reviews, footnotes, and a book-club style section with questions and comments to discuss. It was fascinating reading and I enjoyed it. Still processing a lot of the stuff I learned about the era and about the author's story. I may or may not comment about it later. I can't imagine anyone reading this book and not being inspired in some way. It certainly offers perspective.

OryCon--not: And I'm not going to OryCon this year--which is remarkable only because this is the first time in quite a few years that I've actively wanted to go. Why aren't I going? See above re: intensifying work schedule. The work for this cycle actually starts on Saturday morning and I have to be here for a meeting and for prep work. The scheduling doesn't make me happy in the least, and I'm concerned that I may run into similar situations with RadCon and Norwescon. I'll have to examine the schedule and figure things out, because I don't intend to give up my writerly life for my day job. It's a question of juggling and schedules. But if the schedules deeply conflict (as they already do with my brother's wedding, which I'm going to regardless), I'm going to find myself in a personally troubling position. We'll see how it goes. In the meanwhile, to all of you going to OryCon, have a wonderful time, and have a drink for me, will ya?

Developer reprograms "Bejeweled" to display an engagement ring and proposal. Now that's what I call a geek's proposal!

I'm taking a break from the novel to try to resurrect a story that's been in the trunk for a while. Because the story is so tied up with life cycles, I decided I wanted to include a scene having to do with the protagonist's first menstruation (which will play into the plot later). The idea brought back a conversation I had with my mother when I had my first period, about the custom of a mother slapping her daughter when she has her first period. (My mother didn't slap me; she only told me about it.)

I never thought much about this conversation until this morning, but it goaded me all morning, this idea of smacking your kid when she becomes a woman. So I did what any tech-savvy woman would do: I turned to the Internet! I searched on "menstruation, slapping." I discovered this essay (among others): "The Tradition of Slapping Our Daughters".

Turns out that this tradition is a cultural one, specific to Ashkenazic Jews and to populations in some parts of Eastern Europe. The way my mother presented it to me, it was a much more general sort of thing. This, I got the impression, was what everyone once did. Of course, menstruation was such a taboo subject for my mother's generation, and more so for her mother's, that I'm not surprised this ritual was presented as What Women Do rather than as What Jewish Women Do or What Eastern European Women Do.

So much of the other material that turned up in the results was gentler (some was a little woo-woo); this ritual stood out. Now, the reason it came to my mind in the first place is that it's perfect given the relationship between the mother and daughter in this story, but (as such things are wont to do), it makes me wonder what other baggage it might bring to the narrative. Having discovered that this ritual seems particular to my cultural heritage, I wonder how generally known it really is. I've decided I'm going to pass over that for now; there's a point to be made about the mother's experience with this scene so I'm just going to write it.

But I do wonder: How many of you have heard of this ritual? Did any of the women on my flist experience this ritual? Do you have a Jewish or Eastern European background or heritage? Other thoughts on the subject?

Points to those who get my rather obscure use of this particular icon for this subject matter.