WordFlix

Teach Me Tonight: Guest Post: K. A. Laity on Joanna Russ on Slash Fiction

B

via teachmetonight.blogspot.com

By HD Silversmith

Really interesting post over at the blog Teach Me Tonight. Well worth reading for fans and scholars of romance, slash fiction, Star Trek, and popular culture.

All That Fairy Tale Nonsense

One of the many criticisms levelled at romance novels is that they’re a poor model for women when it comes to real-life relationships. All that fairy tale nonsense, detractors say, will make women want the wrong things from their partners. I could list a dozen things wrong with that assumption, but I’ll limit myself to three.

via www.theculturalgutter.com

By HD Silversmith

Spot-on post by Chris Szego about the romance genre and fairy tales.

Given my recent NaNoWriMo endeavor, this piece hit home.

Never give up

By HD Silversmith

Wow.  What a week it's been.

It was the first week of the new school year at a state university whose system has been ravaged by budget cuts and will be further decimated a year from now (that's the word coming down from on high). The campus at which I teach is particularly hard hit, for various reasons. 

Meeting huge classes, turning away weeping, frustrated students, and wondering how in hell I am to teach effectively in such an environment ... that was pretty much what I did all week.

Oh yeah -- and go to meetings.  Grim meetings.

Still, as I watched the televised memorial (last night) and funeral (this morning) for Teddy Kennedy, I was reminded: never, never, never give up (Winston Churchill).  Do the best you can with what you have where you are (Teddy Roosevelt). To whom much is given much is expected (John Kennedy).  It's all true.  Live in hope, live in expectation, and work your ass off (um, that's just me).  It's the only way that one can truly make a difference in one's own life and the lives of others.

(Can you tell I'm an Irish-American of a certain generation?  And Catholic by birth as well, though not necessarily by practice any longer?)

Declaration of Independence

Today's example of fine writing.  (How often do we read the actual full text of this document?) Thomas Jefferson done good.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

1970s icons

Two key pop icons from my youth died today.

 

Anniversary

For anyone interested in series romance, check out today's blog entry at Teach Me Tonight, where there's a really interesting commentary on Harlequin cover art over the years, described in the press release below:

"As part of the 60th anniversary celebrations Harlequin is sponsoring an exhibition of original cover art that will focus not only on the changing shape of desire and fantasy but also on the social meaning and context of these images. THE HEART OF A WOMAN: Harlequin Cover Art 1949—2009 debuts at the Openhouse Gallery in New York City on May 29, 2009, and will be on view until June 12, 2009. By presenting 60 years of cover artwork, the exhibition offers a unique insight into the profound transformations that have occurred in women's lives over the past six decades. These changes have been captured and reflected on the front of Harlequin novels—from shifts in private desires to shifts in the politics of gender. [emnphasis mine] Although it is the stories of romance that charm the hearts of so many women, it is the artwork on the book covers that offers the first tantalizing hint of the pleasures that await between the covers." (Harlequin Press Release)

My guess is that academics interested in the romance novel are already crawling all over this one!

Bookstores

What is the deal with bookstores these days?!

I walked into Borders this morning, hoping to find a copy of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.  I'm reading Hard Times right now (somehow I missed both books when I was an English major and then again when I was doing an M.A. in literature), and I'm enjoying it so much that I thought I'd line up the next Dickens read (I'm like an alcoholic: I like to know where my next novel is coming from).

Well, good luck with that, is all I have to say (well, not so much -- the truth is, I'm about to go off on a rant).  Because not only did Borders not have a copy of the former (it seemed to stock only the three titles read most frequently in secondary schools in the U.S. -- i.e., Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities),when I shifted gears and decided to look for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the store featured exactly one edition and it was $15 (since I expect to dislike it -- I'm not a Fitzgerald fan -- that struck me as exorbitant).

Few titles by any single author (particularly if he or she is not currently on The New York Times' best seller list or featured by Oprah) and pricier editions of the titles they do stock? I flung my hands up in disgust and walked out, thinking, "I'll just order what I want from Amazon!  At least they'll have a selection!"

Therein lies the irony, of course.  I do realize that it's those choices to go to Amazon (or Starbucks ... or Target ... pick your retail outlet of choice) that has perpetuated the homogenization of bookstores, cafes, and all manner of outlets that have put independent businesses ... well, out of business. It seems as if the only two easily accessed bookstores anymore are Borders and Barnes & Noble, and although I like spending time in them (I prefer the former to the latter, but that's simply about ambience, to the degree that there is any), it's only because I'm a lover of books, not a lover of either brand. 

I let it happen, though.  Not single-handedly, no, but by participating in mall culture and in opting for the concept of convenience, I enable the reduction of choice of all manner of things.  Yes, I go to second-hand bookstores (there are two good ones within 10 miles of me), and I enjoy prowling through them, and I go to independent cafes, too -- but not as frequently as I do the others. 

Not nearly.

I've really only myself to blame.