it's not because I don't enjoy reading you. You're more or less celebrity lj'rs with huge audiences. You don't comment on my lj or respond to my comments on yours. I'm still following you, on RSS feed instead of on lj. Y'all probably won't even notice, but I thought I'd post this note just in case.

I didn't finish NaNoWriMo. I wrote just under 20K, which is not horrible but not the 50K goal, either. I knew when I started that November is not prime writing time for me. There's too much family stuff and home school to do, too many dance practices, holiday planning and other stuff to get in the way of writing time.

So I have 20K of a story I'm really excited about, and I think I pretty much despise 15K of the actual writing. The prose seems rough and wooden to me. Some of the character's voices blend together, even though I have really clear ideas in my head about who they are and what they sound like. Descriptive passages come off like bits of a grandma's travelogue. It reminds me of an awful middle-grade reader designed to educate through fiction. I always hated those.

There are always people who will pounce in with the well-meaning "it's a first draft,just write! Don't edit your first draft!" comments. Please, don't. If that works for you, I think you should go for it and blast on through without looking back until you hit "the end". My own process is more organic than that. I need what I've already written to be sound so that I can build the rest of the story on it. Shitty first drafts do me more harm than good, not even taking into consideration how they depress me and send me into writing avoidance. I don't expect or need my first drafts to be perfect, sparkling, typo-free works of art. But I do need them to not suck.

I don't know what it is about NaNo that elicits sucky writing from me, either. I've written a lot more words in less time, so it's not simply an issue of speed. Something about the very activity of NaNo makes my writing process go haywire. As much as I love the idea of NaNo, the practice collapses for me. If I can't figure out why, I'm going to have to give up on the NaNoWriMo, except as an interested bystander/cheerleader.

As one of the performers described it. There were more people dressed as Jack Sparrow (or other gentlemen pirates) and Elizabeth Swan than there were people in "period" clothing. I also counted about a dozen anime fans, three Stormtroopers, a Princess Leia, two Wookies and two Furries. Son Unit, who takes this sort of thing with a grave seriousness that only a 15 year old can manage, asks: "What next?" My best guess: Steampunk. I did see someone in a beautiful Tudor gown topped off by a Dysfunctional Dolly sort of hat-- those miniaturized top hats with little net poof, and the ritzar's friend's wife, who is a Rennie, says that one of the big clothiers is indeed planning a Steampunk line for next year.

Renfaire men currently come in three main flavors: Pirate, Scot, or Barbarian. Pirates wear 18th century button down breeches, renfair shirts and tricorn hats. The well-off ones add beautiful frock coats. Scots wear great kilts or Utili-kilts and renfair shirts. Sometimes they wear shoes. Always they wear stray bits of fur (which can make one momentarily confuse them with Barbarians) and too many weapons (all peace-tied). Barbarians wear fur and chain mail and too many weapons (all peace-tied) and sometimes little else. The well-off ones accessorize with expensive leather pants or chaps. The really spendy ones wear fantasy armor that would make any Gaia geek or LARP aficionado drool all other themselves.

Daughter Unit and I lived in dread of encounters with the Christmas elf in a g-string. There was a Christmas elf hat, ears, a lot of red and green glittery body paint and the g-string with tinsel or garland or something on it. Nice looking boy, but ewh. Daughter Unit hid her face in my sleeve every time we crossed paths with him. I would have utilized the shelter of my other sleeve, but someone had to navigate while we walked as quickly as possible away, away. Whatever the festival was paying that guy, it really wasn't enough. He didn't look shy or uncomfortable, but neither did he look happy.

Women are still for the most part dressing as wenches. Pirate wenches, Scots wenches, belly-dance wenches. There are always a few people in beautiful Tudor costume, and the stray SCA person wearing something pre-17th century but for the most part it's wenches, wenches and wenches, with a side order of fairies. Pirate wenches wear bodices or corsets with big fluffy satin skirts, and too many weapons (all peace-tied). Scots wenches wear bodices and corsets and bits of plaid fabric and men's bonnets and too many weapons (all peace-tied). Belly dance wenches wear exotic scarves and fluffy skirts and many jingly things (which don't have to be peace-tied). Tribal belly dancers accessorize with a bunch of medallions and feathers and stuff in their hair and a lot of intricate henna. Fairies wear heart-breakingly lovely gossamer stuff with wings, and leave trails of glitter wherever they go, kind of like snails-- only less slimy.

TRF had a giant expansion of Courts, and now there are Spanish and Transylvanian courts (both of which dress in black and stuff, but neither of which seem to contain any vampires, which would be my second guess for next fad at RenFests). There's also a food area called Polonia; I saw a couple of people in period Polish garb to go with it, and a huge Greek food area, but that's mainly another venue for the belly dancers.

The highlight of the festival for me was seeing Istanpitta. I used to occasionally sit-in with Al back in the days when he was this guy arranging bands for SCA dances.

And we're home, the cats have mainly forgiven us for leaving, and there is too much laundry. Life as usual. :)

You know it's the horror awaiting you after Thanksgiving. What are you going to do with it?

Simply Recipes suggests that you make Spicy Turkey Soup with Yogurt, Chickpeas and Mint. Which sounds really eeewwwh to me, because yogurt and mint don't sound like a tasty combo to me, and neither do yogurt and chickpeas. They suggest that it's a similar dish to Tom Kha Gai. So why not make Tom Kha Gai out of your leftover turkey? I'm thinking it might work!

in the only carpeted room in the house. I do hope that this isn't an omen on how the rest of the day is going to go.

According to This Article, the American Academy of Family Physicians were offered a "six-figure grant from the Coca-Cola Company to develop web content on beverages and maintaining a healthy lifestyle". The chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health stepped in and offered the American Academy of Family Physicians a low-cost alternative-- link to Harvard School of Public Health's Nutrition Source a website that already provides information on healthy food and beverage choices in an easy to use and understand format.

I'm sure that the AAFP thought that this grant was just nifty. Because there is no conflict of interest in a multi-million dollar soda conglomerate offering to sponsor a public information page on healthy beverages. /snark

What I really want to know though, is how you spend 6 figures in grant money telling people what to drink. I was always amazed when entities like a certain church I used to attend paid $1100 a year for a "webmaster" to "maintain" their poorly designed and rarely updated website. This is a whole new level of website party money though. Wow!

Bride Jilted at Altar Turns Halloween Themed Wedding into party for Senior Citizens

"She came in one day and said she wanted to make a donation," said Eichenfeld. "I don't think she knew anybody here, and we don't get offers like that. So we were thrilled and so were our residents. It came out of the blue."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/weddings/2009/11/02/2009-11-02_bride_jilted_at_the_alter.html#ixzz0Vq8ZHvHy

I'm impressed when people do totally wonderful things just because they can.

Claude Levi Strauss has passed away. He was 101.

Levi-Strauss was a French Anthropologist/Ethnologist whose works were widely taught and debated throughout the 20th century. If you take so much as a single ANT101 class, you will be exposed to his work and theory. His The Raw and the Cooked is one of those brain-breaking works that are definitely not for everyone, but amazing for those of us who like that sort of thing.

For normal (i.e. not Anthropology nuts) people, I'd recommend Myth and Meaning.

Halloween from my GreenSpot

I think I inadvertently offended someone earlier this week on the subject of early childhood education, and I feel very badly about it. Recently in online homeschooling circles, there have been a lot of discussions about how to homeschool toddlers and preschoolers. This was an issue even back when my kids were little, but the focus was a little different.

When my kids were tiny, the public school system was just beginning to tinker with the idea of mandatory pre-K, something that they haven't managed to implement in most places, mostly due to budgetary restraints. The educational theorists' pet theory was that if they could just get one year of "pre-learning", then kindergarten could be more rigorous, kids would succeed better in school, etc. Part of this was a direct response to the numbers of kids in all day dare care due to two-parent working families.

For those of you who live outside the U.S. or who don't have small children, it might be interesting to know that U.S. daycare for infants to 5 year olds is required to have some "educational" purpose if the kids are in care for more than 4.5 hours per day, but there are few standards and little training as to what that "education" will be. The end result was a lot of middle class kids arriving in Kindie even less prepared for Kindie than their less fortunate classmates who had attended Head Start, a pre-K program for economically disadvantaged kids and kids with learning issues. It's one of many theories about why our educational system is tottering around today, and though certainly not the only reason (or IMO, even a major contributor) it probably has had some effect.

Things that were traditionally taught by the family (colors, numbers, tying shoes, the rudiments of the ABCs,) were being farmed out to minimum wage workers with minimal training. It's still like that. Our major concerns with daycare as a nation are that it be safe (no child molesters) and as cheap as possible. Most parents who send their kids to daycare aren't looking for educational excellence for their toddlers, they're looking for someplace safe to stash their kids while they work. This is totally understandable, as "educational excellence" and "toddler" really shouldn't, IMO, be in the same sentence.

There is a lot of important stuff that you need to get done between birth and kindergarten, but a lot of it isn't stuff that fits well into the paradigm of "school". Imposing a "school" model on younger and younger kids is counter-productive, because the "school" model gets in the way of the very important play that toddlers and preschoolers do. It looks pointless, but every time a small child builds a tower of blocks or squishes a mudball, she's learning something about the world that can not be learned any other way. No curriculum, no lecture from teacher, no guided activity can stand in for the actual activity of experimenting for oneself with the physical properties of the universe.

Not too long ago, there was a high school Physics teacher who made all the girls in his class go play like young boys for a bit before starting his class. It was his theory that the reason girls often lag behind boys in Physics class is because they're often discouraged from experimenting with the physical world in a direct way. To have that inherent, gut understanding of physics, he thought they needed to drop water balloons off the school roof, throw rocks, squirt each other with squirt guns. I don't know how it all turned out because the other reason girls lag behind boys in Physics is that girls aren't encouraged to excel at Math, but it does sound right.

When we try to codify early childhood learning and install it into a curriculum, we lose track of a lot of important stuff that can't be taught, only experienced. Homeschoolers fall into this trap of "more curriculum, more formally" too. I surely understand wanting the best learning system ever for your kids from the very earliest moment. The best advice that an experienced homeschooler gave me when my kids were young was-- relax and enjoy your children. Little kids need involved parents more than they need any curriculum, and homeschool parents are nothing if not involved! I don't mean any disrespect to anyone who's decided they need mega curriculum for their toddlers, nor any disrespect to people who put their kids into the daycare they need and afford. Parenting is full of choices and I'm not even sure I'm making the right choices for my kids. I'd never presume to tell anyone else what to do with theirs!

Tossing food scraps in your garbage can is a crime — at least in San Francisco.

A brand-new city law requires residents to discard food waste in a separate bin.

It's the first program of its kind in the nation, and so far, it's a mandate San Franciscans seem to relish. In fact, many residents and landlords began implementing the law before it took effect, using their city-provided food recycling bins to separate waste.

Unfortunately I fear if they tried that where I live, a lot of people would do like they do with the green recycle bins-- throw whatever they could think of into them to sabotage the system. Because only hippies and liberals compost or recycle. The sabotage doesn't work with the green recycle bins because they're hand-emptied and if you put Bad Things in them, the garbage guys just leave them (if you're not lucky, all over your lawn). And yes, that does mean that the would be saboteurs are idiots who are overloaded with Fail and make work for themselves.

Anyhow, what a great step forward for SF. I've been composting on my own all my life. It is a struggle if you live in an apartment and it's an activity that definitely benefits from economy of scale, so SF's plan is even better than encouraging home recycling.

Steven Barnes, novelist, tv writer, martial arts practitioner and life coach-like guy had this to say today:

How many times have grown adults told you that childhood criticism from family has negatively impacted their entire lives? Or conversely, support from their family set them on a positive path?

Well...what if you didn't have a positive family environment? Then it behooves you to grow up, accept responsibility for your life, become in effect an adult. That adult can then create/provide programming for your "child" self, and that will change everything.

Read the rest of it over at his blog Dar Kush. Although he's way to the left of me on a lot of issues, I often find him an interesting read.

On Monday we went to G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra, which may only be beaten by "Tokoyo Gore Police" as the worst movie I've seen in a very long time. I was absolutely addicted to the 80s G.I. Joe cartoon. G.I. Joe the cartoon and comic had capable, complex women characters. Very few action adventure movies or series treat their women as well as G.I. Joe. This movie pooped all over that as well as being deadly dull in other areas. If your plot depends on your leading man being indecisive and unable to do his duty and you're making an action movie, you are in deep, deep trouble. We like the sensitive mens, but we don't like the sensitive mens who are so sensitive that they don't do what they must to save their comrades and not commit dereliction of duty. Plus. Too many explosions. Never thought you'd hear me say that, but really it is possible to blow too much shit up and "G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra" went there.

Back to the women. Scarlett can still take down the bad guys with or without her nifty crossbow, but she needs rescuing by the boys and is turned into a love interest for Ripcord. Ripcord and Scarlett are cute as a couple, but please do not be making Scarlett into someone who needs to be rescued by her one true love. And it would have been nice if they hadn't turned Scarlett, originally a complex character who had a complex relationship with Snake Eyes, into some kind of sad little genius person with emotional development issues. Why couldn't she have had a complex and authentic relationship with Ripcord if they were going to pair her off with someone new? Bleh, I say. Blech.

The Baroness is reduced from her awesomely complex moral ambiguity to a mind-controlled love interest for Our Hero. The mind control thing existed in the cartoon/comic, but had a different flavor. The Baroness seemed totally happy COMMANDING COBRA (instead of being rescued from teh evul by her once true love) even when she wasn't all jacked up on mind control chip. Really, this turning capable women into love interests in remakes and re-imaginings needs to stop. What's next, a remake of "Courage Under Fire" in which the brave Karen is simply working to save her boyfriend and doesn't die after all, but is instead rescued by said boyfriend at a later moment?

Cover Girl is transformed from awesome tank jockey into an Aide de Camp who gets killed fairly early. We're missing Lady J., Jinx and Snake Eye's pet wolf (I'm not sure the wolf was a girl, but really, I'm in a totally pissy mood about this movie, so where's Snakey's wolf? Huh? Huh!!) and pretty much every other female character. Because an action movie only needs a couple, right?

There will be sequels. Sigh.

I think it's impossible to stay in a bad mood while listening to Pate Pate.


Lyrics from Te Vaka's Website

tu la ki luga ke fai malama
get up stand up let your feelings be known
taimi tenei e fai na hiva
the time has come to perform the dance
tu la ki luga ke fai malama
get up stand up let your intentions be known
lue lue malie te gali o na hiva
swaying ever so sweetly the message in the dance

aue aue Oh! Oh!
tama mimita the boys are very bold
aue aue Oh! Oh!
teine mimita the girls are very bold
aue aue Oh! Oh!
hihiva mimita the dancers are very bold
aue aue Oh! Oh!
kikila mai la fakaakiali atu Watch me now, it’s my turn to show

e a mai tau faiva e a mai
“How is the fishing with you, how is it?” (Girl)
taku ika e fofou ai au
“The fish that I truly long for” (Boy)
e a mai tau faiva e a mai
“How is the fishing with you, how is it? (Girl)


CHORUS
hihiva ki luga hihiva mai ve
dance on up, dance just like that
hihiva malie ki te pate pate
dancing ever so sweetly to the Pate Pate (logdrum)

chant: hiva ki luga hiva ki lalo dance on up, dance on down
hiva malie ki te pate pate
Dancing ever so sweetly to the rhythms of the log drum

Arranged is a little indie movie you probably haven't heard of. It's the story of Rochel and Nasirah, two young Brooklyn schoolteachers who are about to enter into arranged marriages. Rochel is an Orthodox Jew, Nasirah is Muslim. Their shared difficulties with dealing with the demands of their families and cultures in the 21st century is portrayed in a thoughtful and non-judgmental way. It's interesting insight into two American subcultures into which most of us never get a meaningful glimpse.

There's a great Review of it at Jewish Week: The Sheitel and the Hjab

I'm probably setting my feminist and liberal friends' teeth on edge. First homeschooling apologia and then movies sympathetic to patriarchal cultures.

I am of two minds on the headscarf thing. On one hand, I think that veils are a despicable symbol of female submission. On the other, having worn headrails continuously in SCA persona, I know that there's a subtle strength there that we modern females have no access to. For a Muslim or Orthodox woman to wear such things in the US today takes a great strength of character. It does annoy me when it's portrayed as modesty. There is nothing modest or humble about marking oneself in such a noticeable way. But it is a great show of pride in one's traditions, and I do respect that aspect of it a lot.

Arranged marriages, well, Ick. I wouldn't presume to try to arrange marriages for my children when they were of age, but with over half of all American marriages ending in divorce I feel we have got no moral ground to speak from.

When we first decided to homeschool our children ten years ago, there was a constellation of reasons why. A precocious four year old, a hapless school district, lack of decent and affordable private schools, and our then very avante garde lifestyle all conspired together to help make us make the homeschooling decision. This was not an easy choice even so, as it meant deserting my career path and probably permanently compromising my earning potential. Today an article on Care2 reminded of one factor that we don't discuss a lot that certainly was in play ten years ago when we came up with the mad homeschooling idea.

The article discusses how most SAHM today aren't Princeton drop outs, but women in the lower economic strata for whom working outside the home makes no economic sense. I had a late 20's career change going on when my kids were born and it would have been several years before I had any chance of having earning potential that wouldn't have slammed us with the same monetary calculus. I could have put an infant and a preschooler into day care and worked full time to cover the cost of daycare and maybe some of the essentials required to hold down a full time job-- another car, a working wardrobe, etc.

My projected salary would have taken years of working and growing before it was likely to have any positive impact on our family's quality of life and in the meantime, my children would be being raised in daycare, in public school, in after-school latchkey programs. Some people have access to quality day care, good public schools and an extended network of friends, relatives and caring providers. We had none of those things available to us, and I find it interesting that the people who speak critically to me about my SAHM state are people who have a couple of grandmas to take the kids on long holidays, have neighbors to carpool with, etc. It's easy to criticize when you don't have a clear picture of the situation and are assuming based on your resources.

As a family, our quality of life would have been decreased by my pursuing full-time work when the children were young. We wouldn't be the family we are now, with a history of wonderful trips and adventures and projects we've done together if I hadn't stayed home. Financially we might or might not have been better off eventually. In those early years, not at all. For families in lower income brackets than ours, there may be no money at all for that second car and other accouterments to support a dual-income family. On one income, we're able to live a mostly middle class life that suits us. There are some things I'd change (our neighborhood) if I could, but overall we do okay. It frustrates me to no end when women say, "Well, we couldn't *afford* to have only one income". I can't afford to live the career mom, soccer mom, dual income and kids lifestyle. For me it's not only about the money. My honor and sense of duty to my children can't afford it. What other people can and can't afford is up to them.

A few weeks ago I finally found two homeschool groups in the area that claim to be "secular". Daughter Unit and I went to meet the first group. They seemed nice, but there weren't any older kids. When I mentioned (in the interests of disclosure) that we're Heathens and that's one of the main reasons why we're interested in secular homeschooling groups, as religious ones don't want us, the group leader informed me very sharply that she had a faith, she (and most other members) are Jewish. But they seemed sort of friendly, if a bit tepid, which I chalked up to the fact that the nearest kid to Daughter Unit in age was two years younger than she.

Last night the group leader posted a link to some awful Faux News screed. She's very frightened about the scary things going on in public school and thinks we all need to know about it even though our kids aren't *in* public school. The article was all about a presidential appointee to some Education post being pro-homosexual. It's that old "homosexual agenda in our schools" stuff. The appointee in question said something along the lines of he hoped that one day, when people start yakking about a "homosexual agenda", that people will say "SO?!?" because it won't be a big deal. And I'm all "PREACH IT! YEAH!"

I don't believe that you can convert someone into being gay. I believe that sexual preference comes on a spectrum, with the totally heterosexual people on the Kirk end and the totally homosexual people on the Sulu end with most people being along the middle and a few being right in the middle (bisexual). I don't believe that accepting kids wherever they are on the giant, lovely spectrum of human interaction is going to cause them to act out sexually any more than I believe that having decent info about human reproduction is going to cause kids to act out sexually. Nor are adult GBLT people any more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexual people. This stuff makes me cranky, and not only because I've friends who are GBLTT (yes, each and everyone one of those).

In 1998, in my home state of Wyoming, Matthew Sheppard was beaten, tied to a barbed wire fence and left to die in frigid temperatures. The anniversary of his death is just a couple of weeks away. I didn't know Matthew, but I haven't forgotten him. I believe that the "homosexual agenda" stuff is just a far right Boogey Man used to scare prejudiced people into staying on the agenda of the radical right. If there is a homosexual agenda in our public schools and that agenda keeps even one kid from being murdered, I say Bring it On!

So. No more of that group for us. A couple other people bailed on that supposedly secular homeschool group as well over this. Yay other people, hope you're all in the other group! People promoting viewpoints that perpetrate hate-crimes makes me cranky.