Jiaozi

Living 4:3 in a 16:9 world

Well, we did it. We bought a new widescreen TV and signed up for HD service.

I didn't want to do it. I resist any technological "advance" that requires all of us to spend a lot of money. It took me a long time to switch from cassette tapes to CDs because I had all my favorite music on cassettes. (Much of it recorded off LPs that I checked out from the library.) I wouldn't have made the change in TV services at all, except that (1) the cable company keeps doing this thing where they price the low-tech offerings higher than the high-tech offerings (for the first six months, anyway) to force you to upgrade, (2) I could see that I was missing the left and right end of the screen in some TV shows, which meant I was missing most of Harry Shum's scenes on Glee, and (3) our old CRT TVs were heading into their second decade and were not as responsive as they once were.

We're all in now. We've got the HDTV, we've got the DVR, we've got the fancy premium channels (they were "free" with the upgrade, which I'm smart enough to be suspicious of). We've got everything except the time to watch TV, which is a separate issue.

And, as I feared, it is messing up my mind. At first, the clarity of high definition really jumped out at me, and the screen proportions seemed odd -- too wide for the height. Now I look at the remaining old TV, which is now in the living room, and the picture seems small and fuzzy and really square. The TV that seemed huge and crystal clear 10 years ago now looks so quaint, like it should be showing test patterns and Howdy Doody. I've been watching 4:3 TV for decades and now suddenly it's not good enough.

My brain has adapted, but my heart has not. I don't like this. I don't like how quickly we become dissatisfied with things that seemed state of the art not so long ago. I don't like that the cycle of obsolescence is becoming shorter and shorter. My two older girls have had their current cell phones for two years and already they are dying for new ones. In 2008, they squealed with delight when they opened the boxes; in 2010, they toss their phones around like old rags and complain about how sloooow they are. Our wireless provider helpfully offers a "free" phone every two years, which makes it hard for me to use the argument that we can't afford new phones. The girls don't quite hear me when I say that there are activation fees and accessories that we do need to pay for, and that the system requirements of new phones demand that we upgrade to a more expensive plan. I thought I was being pretty cool when I gave them unlimited texting. Now they want unlimited data.

I am trying not to be a square -- ha! that expression has new meaning for me now -- but sometimes technology just seems to be a big time and money suck. I am happy with my old washing machine that does not have a computer inside it to go awry. I like analog clocks. I liked my old Volvo. I like machines I can open up and tinker with. And I don't like replacing machines that still work just because they're outdated.

On the other hand, Harry Shum's abs really are fabulous.

E. B. White: In a class by himself

I have been re-reading E. B. White lately. My copy of Essays of E. B. White went missing a while back, and I finally had to concede defeat and get another copy. This is a little disorienting, because the type in the new edition has been reset (and apparently retyped, judging from the typographical errors), and the pages don't look the same to me. But the content is as sublime as ever.

Reading White is a tonic for writer and reader alike. His writing has never been equaled for charm and clarity. Look at this paragraph from his 1957 essay "A Report in Spring" -- not a word is wasted.

The smelts are running in the brooks. We had a mess for Monday lunch, brought to us by our son, who was fishing at two in the morning. At this season, a smelt brook is the nightclub of the town, and when the tide is a late one, smelting is for the young, who like small hours and late society.

When I want mental refreshment, I turn to White's essays. Though he is better known today as an author of children's books, he wrote scores of essays and casual pieces for The New Yorker and Harper's. Sometimes he wrote about life in New York, sometimes about his childhood or trips to Florida, but most often he wrote about daily life on his little saltwater farm in Maine. He had a micro-farm, I suppose, before the word even existed -- just a few geese and chickens and pigs, enough production to feed his family with some left over to trade with other farmers.

White was a curmudgeon, but the gentlest of curmudgeons. He loved the simple life and railed against such modern "improvements" as tarred roads, outboard motors, and electric stoves, But he was not completely old-fashioned; he also decried warmongering and racism. In "On a Florida Key" in 1941, he expressed his discomfort with the segregated movie theaters of the South:

I saw a patriotic newsreel there the other day which ended with a picture of the American flag blowing in the breeze, and the words: one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Everyone clapped, but I decided I could not clap for liberty and justice (for all) while I was in a theater from which Negroes had been barred. And I felt there were too many people in the world who think liberty and justice for all means liberty and justice for themselves and their friends.

An observation, alas, that is still true today.

Every summer, when the weather turns hot, I have a yearning to re-read White's essay "Once More to the Lake," a memento mori disguised as a nostalgic vacation story about returning with his young son to the lake where he went on holiday as a child. Reading his prose, as clear as lake water, I can smell the musty odor of an old lake cabin and hear the dragonflies buzzing over the reeds.

Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp....

White wrote about topics great -- war, the arms race, pollution, racism -- and small -- the joys of finding a new clutch of goose eggs, the delicate step of a mother raccoon making her way from tree to earth -- with clarity and compassion, but I think I like his small, everyday stories best. His aims as a writer were simple:

As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.

The safekeeping of items of enchantment -- that is reason enough to engage in the work of writing, isn't it? It's good to be reminded of that.

Lost

Sorry. BlogHer is reminding me that I haven't posted in two weeks. I'm in a bit of a blogging slump (that has lasted for, oh, the past year).

It's not that I don't have things to say, it's just that I don't have time to focus and get them written properly. I'm working, still doing all the household stuff, driving kids to end-of-year activities, and dealing with middle-age brain muddle. I want to find my Blogging 2.0, but I'm stumped as to what direction to take.

Plus the finale of Lost undid me. I cried and cried. It was cathartic. And when all the smoke had cleared, I found that the character I identified with most was Ben. I know. It's alarming. There's a message here. I'm just not sure what it is.

Halloween [self-]promotion

I've put a few new posts on my costume blog. If you are stumped for Halloween ideas, check it out!

The poetry of everyday things

Where was I, before work/housework/homework distracted me?

Oh, yes. How to succeed at dual domestic and professional occupations. I am indebted to a couple of readers for pointing me in the right direction. Tracie commented:

I keep coming back to the idea that we need to redefine our ideas of success.... I can't help but think of all the women I come across in the art world ... that make wonderful art and share it with their families and friends and art communities. Thousands of them share their photographs and crafts, recipes and stories on blogs and in books and galleries. ... They reach out to women all over the planet and encourage creativity and confidence. That has to be considered success on some level, doesn't it?

Along the same lines, Maia said:

I think that when you have children, especially young children, unless you have already managed to find financial success ... you can only hope to work in bits and togs and pieces. And that our art reflects that - and is a (not really recognized) school of its own.

Bingo!

If we measure success in terms of fame or financial success, very few of us -- male or female, parent or non-parent -- will succeed. We may make small, satisfying steps -- publish a book, have a gallery show, get reviewed -- but it's less likely that we will be able to support ourselves and our families through creative work or see ourselves on the cover of a magazine.

If, instead, we define success as having our work seen and appreciated by people, especially people who are smart and discerning, then we stand a much better chance. In fact, by this definition, we have already succeeded. Thanks in large part to the Internet, those of us who blog and social-network and run little online shops are making art, and we are reaching other people with our work. Maybe a dozen people, maybe hundreds. But the people whom we reach are choice.

Some of the best writers I’ve ever read are bloggers. Most of them are probably not even making enough money from their blogs to pay the hosting bills. That’s okay. Very few books ever turn a profit. Through the Internet, I have gotten to know artists whom I never would have known existed otherwise. I've found a community of creative women who support one another's efforts with encouragement and, often, patronage. We are creating our own sort of salon here on the Internet, in between sessions of baking bread and wiping snotty noses. The kitchen table is not exactly the Algonquin Round Table, but we can pretend.

It took me a while to "get" social media such as Facebook and Twitter. When I figured them out, it was a revelation. I am amazed at how, given limited time and space, women can make poetry out of everyday things. I turn on my computer every day and revel in these beautiful glimpses of domestic life, each one a poem in itself:

Crow funeral. September raspberries and roses.

Sesame spinach and roasted beets, carrots, turnips, potatoes and cipollini onions, with broiled corn on the cob.

In southern California, we throw open the doors and windows for gray skies and wind and fog.

Sunday morning. Cooking pancakes with honey. Loving light rain. Playing with cats and dogs. Watching hummingbirds. Morning lessons. Flash cards. Reading poetry aloud from an old Childcraft.

Bread is in the oven. Rain on the roof.

Kitchen tables, head wraps, ear-piercing, dog walking, coffee drinking, box packing, Shrek.

Made-from-scratch blueberry pancakes with toasted walnuts and iced tea. 

Potatoes, fresh from the garden.

Rosemary focaccia, broiled eggplants and zucchini with basil lemon vinaigrette.

As in Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day," these snippets celebrate the rhythms of everyday life. As Maia suggests, we are indeed creating a new genre -- the Facebook poem, the Flickr gallery, the Twitter memoir -- each chapter complete in 140 characters or less.

I used to have a boss who closed our staff meetings with the command "Now go and make beauty." It was an odd thing to say at an aerospace company, yet it made perfect sense to our group of designers, artists, writers, and editors. We took what we were given and we really did try to make beauty out of it. We polished every technical report as if it were going to appear in The New Yorker. I doubt that the recipients appreciated our craftsmanship, but we took satisfaction in our work just the same.

It is easy to get discouraged about the business of creativity. The huge market for "reality" television shows and ghost-written celebrity tell-alls does not bode well for originality. A system that does not take women's subjects seriously hampers our efforts to be respected. Fine. The Internet is a legitimate medium. We are here to provide each other with encouragement and support. Let's start by respecting ourselves and our work. We'll figure out the money part later.

Now go and make beauty.

Chick lit

Oh, dear. There I go being discouraging again. I have to find a happy ending for this thread.

Here's my situation this week. I have four writing assignments on the table, plus another possible client, I have the usual housework waiting for me, and I am getting hit with homework this week. All three kids want help at the same time; mostly what they need is to be talked down from their panic, but sometimes even I can't figure out what the teacher wants. Also: why are fourth-graders talking about associative, distributive, and commutative properties in math? Most of them hardly know their subtraction facts. Anyway, things are a bit hectic here.

If you haven't read the comments on the last two posts, please do, because Tracie is one step ahead of me and keeps bringing up things I wanted to talk about...later. But since she got me thinking, I'll go ahead and get it all out now. (I'll try to break it up so the posts aren't unbearably long.)

Tracie mentions money. I deeply resent the tyranny of money. I resent that the housing market became so inflated in our area that we, along with almost everyone else we know, are house poor. After paying for a place to park ourselves, there's little money left. We are not really materialistic people, so I can do without having a lot of fancy things, but there are valuable experiences that require money, too -- extracurricular classes and sports and travel and higher education.

But money has always been a problem for families and artists, regardless of era, gender, or medium. Not everyone is as lucky as James Joyce and Vincent van Gogh, who had younger brothers who rescued them financially (a lot). Many artists in history found wealthy patrons (for which they paid a price), but most just struggled along, and this is still true today. Nobody goes into the arts to make money. I once worked with several writers who had each published a number of moderately successful books, but still worked days as technical writers so they could support their families with regular income and health benefits.

I am fortunate to have a partner whose stable income enables me to work only sporadically these days. I can't complain if that means I'm the one here when the kids get home or the washer starts to leak or the cat throws up. Like Maia, I dream about having a wife myself. (A mom retreat is a great idea.) But really, just being able to avoid a 9 to 5 job is an incredible luxury, and I want to be mindful of that. Despite what I may think about the current math curriculum, it is a privilege to be home when my children get off the school bus. I wish I could have been home this much when they were babies.

So. Time is a hurdle. Money is a hurdle. But perhaps the biggest hurdle is the one Tracie refers to as "the guidelines imposed by a patriarchal culture that determine the standards of successful art." Starting with subject matter, women artists and writers are often at a disadvantage. Why is bullfighting a worthy subject for literature, but not childbirth? Why is the death of a soldier on the battlefield a noble subject, while the grief of his widow is not? Why is baseball taken more seriously than cooking?  Is it talent that puts Claude Monet on the A list and Mary Cassatt on the B list, or subject matter? Like men, women make art and literature out of the big issues -- life, death, love, meaning -- but from a different point of view. It should not be seen as a lesser point of view.

Which brings me back to the issue of money. Men, having controlled the flow of money throughout history, have also made the determination of what constitutes great art. Art made by women is too often labeled as sentimental, trivial, or even childish (e.g., "chick lit," "mommy blogging"). Women have more economic power than ever before. Is it possible to use our clout to redefine art in such a way that women's interests and perceptions are considered art-worthy? (I don't want to overdo the stereotypes. There are women who write about sports and men who write about their children, and both women and men paint nature. But -- you know what I mean.)

Of course, in order to make art for people to support, we need time. So I seem to have come full circle. Okay, happy ending coming up, I promise.

To be continued...

Mom art

Sorry. I did not mean for that last post to sound so discouraging. I don't share Emily Carr's conviction that it is impossible to manage both art and home. As I tell my kids, "Difficult is not the same thing as impossible." (You can imagine how well that goes over with them.)

But. The outlook isn't promising. Women have been grossly underrepresented among the ranks of artists, writers, and composers throughout history. There are many reasons for this, but let's consider just the distractions of home and family, which affect women's creative output to a much greater degree than men's. Emily Carr, Mary Cassatt, Louisa May Alcott -- unmarried, no children. Virginia Woolf, Georgia O'Keefe, Ayn Rand -- married, no children. Sylvia Plath -- married, with children, and we know how that ended.

In this supposed age of equality, we ought to be able to find more examples of successful mother-artists. And, indeed, I could name Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Tyler, Sally Mann, and Meryl Streep. (Obviously, I am more familiar with writers than with other artists.) But it's still an uphill struggle. Who do you think did the grocery shopping, Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo? Who made dinner, Alfred Stieglitz or Georgia O'Keeffe? I don't know for sure, but I can guess. And they didn't even have children to take care of.

There is hope. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she published her first book, and Anna "Grandma" Moses was 79 when she had her first exhibition. So we have plenty of time to catch up after the kids leave home, right? That's what I keep telling myself.

Unfortunately, finding the time to make art is just one of many hurdles we face.

To be continued...

Artist cookery! Artist housekeeping!

I've been reading about Canadian artist and writer Emily Carr lately. This summer we took a trip to her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. I read an article about her in the onboard magazine on the boat ride up and became intrigued with her.

Carr was born in Victoria in 1871. She studied art in San Francisco, London, and Paris, and eventually returned to British Columbia to live. She painted in a postimpressionist or fauvist style; her work was strongly influenced by the art and culture of the First Nations people of the Pacific Northwest. 

Carr never married. However, from 1917 to 1928, feeling discouraged by reaction to her work, she all but gave up painting and made ends meet by raising dogs and rabbits, growing vegetables, creating small pottery objects, and running a ladies' boarding house. She loathed the boarding house; even the boarders criticized her paintings that were hung around the house. But she had to make ends meet somehow.

In her book Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr (published posthumously in 1946), she wrote of this period:

When I started the boarding house people had said, “Artist cookery! Artist housekeeping!” and rolled their eyes. I proved that an artist could cook and could housekeep; but that an artist could paint honestly and keep boarders simultaneously I did not prove.

Later, Carr began to think of painting again, realizing what she had lost.

At long last I learned, too, to surmount the housekeeping humdrum which I had allowed to drift between me and the painting which I now saw was the real worth of my existence.

An American artist came to visit at my house.

“Come, let us go to Beacon Hill or the sea, while morning is still young,” he said.

“The beds! The dishes! The meals!” I moaned.

“Will wait—young morning on Beacon Hill won’t. Don’t tether yourself to a dishpan, woman! Beds, vegetables! They are not the essentials!”

Suddenly I realized brag and stubbornness had goaded me into proving to my family that an artist could cook, could housekeep. Silly, rebellious me! Hadn’t I for fifteen years bruised body and soul, nearly killed my Art by allowing these to take first place in my life?

She returned to painting, with a measure of recognition this time. Later in life, after suffering a stroke, she turned to writing, ultimately completely seven books, most of which were published after her death in 1945. Today she is among the most beloved Canadian artists and authors.

Though Carr was not a mother, I was struck by her descriptions of how domestic work gets in the way of art. Of course, caring for our children, home, and family are not "unessential." We signed up for that job. But it's incredibly difficult to do creative work -- and really, all work requires some creativity -- when you're constantly being called away to deal with domestic obligations.

And, more often than not, it's the woman of the house who has the majority of the domestic duties. During the course of writing this post, I stepped away to wash the dishes, do three loads of laundry, exercise the dog, scrub the coffeepot, and spackle some holes in a door. Plus I did a bit of paying work. And that's a light day. Soon the children will be home and I'll be on snack and homework duty. Is it any wonder I keep losing the thread?

The interruptions take a toll. Anyone who does creative work knows how important it is to get "in the zone" -- the state of being completely absorbed in your work, to the point of becoming unaware of the passing of time and oblivious to the need for sleep or food. That sort of concentrated effort is impossible if there are children and animals around. When I am working, I deeply resent having to stop to make dinner. I'm not hungry, so why should anyone else be? It's hard to put the brakes on the thoughts racing around in my head and slow down long enough to slice tomatoes and boil pasta. But the children must be fed.

There is no escaping the housekeeping humdrum just yet. Children are not boarders, but they will leave us someday just the same. We have to make the most of our time with them. So we do the best we can -- we care for family and home, try to earn some money, and make art when no one is looking. That will have to do for now.

To be continued...

The man in the mirror

Even the kids knew it was kind of a big deal. Their friends texted them about it, but they'd already been watching the updates over my shoulder. May said, "I'll always remember that I got a manicure the day Michael Jackson died."

They hardly knew who he was. They'd seen him on TV in the past and asked, "Who's that weird old lady?" I told them that old lady used to be the coolest entertainer in the world. I showed them pictures of him when he was a cute young black man. He had a great smile then, and a beautiful Afro. And he could really dance. "Remember in 13 Going on 30," I said, "when they were at a party and played "Thriller," and everyone just had to dance? Didn't it make you feel like dancing too? That was Michael Jackson." They nodded their heads.

I liked Michael Jackson. Everyone liked Michael Jackson. I don't think I ever owned one of his albums, but I didn't have to. He was on the radio and MTV all the time. I had to explain to the kids that MTV used to play music videos, back before it went to an all-scripted-reality-programming format. Michael Jackson was the first black performer to get any kind of airtime on MTV. He invented the moonwalk, I told them. They think Napoleon Dynamite invented the moonwalk. They don't know it used to be cool.

Still, they had a vague sense that something big had happened. I felt the same way when Elvis died. I knew him only as the sweaty, bloated has-been in a white jumpsuit. It wasn't until after he died that I saw footage of him as a young man and realized what a sensation he had been. Thats the Elvis we remember now.

I hope it will be that way with Michael Jackson. I hope the news stations stop running footage of the frail, emaciated, troubled man whose handlers failed him (as they failed Elvis, and Judy, and Marilyn). I want show my kids the old videos and performances so they will know, and we will remember, why he was the King of Pop.

More life lessons from Charlie's Angels

I let the girls watch Charlie's Angels because Lucy Liu is in it, and because they are into slapstick action since we got on our Jackie Chan kick. Boy, is that ever a silly movie. Way sillier than the original series. And it definitely sends mixed messages about femininity. Lots of material for discussion with my preteens and teens.

The girls like Lucy Liu; May has taken a special interest in her since I told her she resembles Liu. They know she was Master Viper in Kung Fu Panda, Silvermist in Tinkerbell, and Jackie Chan's love interest in Shanghai Noon.

After we watched Charlie's Angels, May asked me, "Has Lucy Liu ever starred in her own movie?" I told her that Alex in Charlie's Angels was probably her biggest screen role, and she was one of the stars, but she has never headlined a movie that I know of.

When she asked why, I had to tell her that most movies in America have white stars. She asked about Jackie Chan. I explained that he is the star of his Hong Kong movies, but in all the American movies he is a sidekick or a partner. She noted that Chris Tucker is black, and I pointed out that (1) he was Chan's co-star, not the star, and (2) there are a few black actors who can headline a movie in America (Will Smith and Eddie Murphy, perhaps), but no Asian stars. I could have added that there are also very few actresses of any race who can "open a movie" (guarantee a big take opening weekend). So Liu, who is a very talented and appealing performer, has two strikes against her.

I want my kids to see Asian Americans in the media, of course. The problem is that most Asians on TV and films are tokens, sidekicks, or sages. Even when the star is Asian, he is usually surrounded with white friends and mentors, as if he couldn't possibly make his way in the world without white guidance. In the TV miniseries version of Samurai Girl, which features a Japanese teen who fulfills her destiny to become a warrior, the heroine's teacher/boyfriend is a white man (a departure from the book series) and her kind and funny friends are all white, while her Japanese parents and fiancé are depicted as evil and uncaring.

That's why we love Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior at our house. Much like Samurai Girl, Wendy is a Chinese-American teen who fulfills her destiny to become a warrior. Her teacher, Shen, is a handsome young Chinese man. Wendy dumps her lame white boyfriend to be with Shen. Wendy's Chinese-American family is portrayed warmly, and there is a poignant scene in which Wendy's father tells her mother, while eating mooncakes, that he regrets having turned his back on Chinese traditions. When was the last time you saw an Asian American family portrayed respectfully in a mainstream film? Certainly the movie isn't free of stereotypes -- it is a martial arts movie, after all. But Brenda Song (who is Thai-Hmong-American and a black belt in taekwondo) rocks.

I never know if I'm doing the right thing, discussing racial stereotypes with the girls this way. It feels odd to talk about differences, real and stereotypical. But it just doesn't seem right to have them grow up identifying as white or thinking of white as the "default" race. If they were being raised by Asian parents, they would learn that as a matter of course. I'm at a disadvantage here. But I'm trying.