#14 Done

I was going to write about the Amanda Pepper/Philadelphia mysteries that Nancy Pearl turned me on to. I finished Philadelphia Stakes the other day. But then I started adding up the number of novels I had read. I was on eight before I started rereading the Potter series, which would have brought me to 15 but somehow the numbers got out of whack. I listed the Friday Night Knitting Club as 14 and both Ella Minnow Pea and Gaudy Night as 15. They were 16, 17, and 18 respectively. So now I am on 19 and even the Harry Potter naysayers have to allow that I have more than met my goal.

# 38 Frame Up

Here they are:

Trio of Hearts
Twisted Threads
Completed June 2004

You Are My Sunshine
La D Da
Completed June 30, 2006
Gift to the dude for our 5th anniversary

My Whole Heart
SamSarah Designs
Completed July 7, 2007
anniversary gift, 6th anniversary

In the Tall Flowers

Liberty Street Designs

Completed February 21, 2008

Six more to go! I'll be bringing the dude's anniversary present in on Saturday, and I think I may take a few more pieces in.

Reading

Things at work are heading south fast. I met on Monday with the evil AVP (former boss's boss) to get a list of my new responsibilities and to find out that they're not even going to start the hiring process until after Labor Day, which means I've gone from being a team of three to a team of one (my junior colleague transfered to another part of the group). My good boss and I went over the list together, and she helped me come up with a figure for my new salary. So on Wednesday when the AVP sent me an e-mail listing those responsibilities, I wrote back thanking her and asking for a meeting to discuss salary. She wrote back basically telling me no; she's taken away some of my responsibilities in addition to giving me the new ones and that everyone's salaries will be reviewed once the consultant finishes their analysis of the group. (Those responsibilities that she took away account for about 4 hours a month. The ones she gave account for about 20 hours a week.) On Thursday I wrote back responding to her "argument" and again requesting a meeting. Nothing.

So when I saw The No Assholes Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't at the library yesterday, I had to check it out. Written by Stanford professor of management, Robert Sutton (PhD), the book defines "asshole" and explains the difference between the temporary and the certified asshole, explains the rule and how to implement and enforce it, knowing when you are the asshole and how to stop being one, and how to survive on "Asshole Avenue"--which is where I work.

It takes two things to be an asshole: 1) people who encounter the asshole almost always feel worse about themselves afterwards and 2) assholes focus their venom on the powerless. So, like the AVP who has actually stuck her tongue out at my junior colleague in meetings with people from different parts of the organization and saying repeatedly, "I know where you're going." Which isn't horrible in and of itself, but it is part of a larger pattern of behavior which includes far too many things to include here. Suffice to say she prides herself on micromanaging and demanding things and using the most condescending tone imaginable. She's a kiss-up, kick down kind of person who sides with everyone but her group. Oh, she's an asshole.

So anyway, the advice for dealing with the assholes is to run*. Which I had sort of figured out on my own. It took me a while to realize the AVP is part of a larger problem that starts at the top and wends its way through the entire organization, not just the group, not just our department. (As Sutton says, "Assholes breed like rabbits" because they hire their own kind.) So in the near future, there might be less money available to do some of the things on this list--though I will have more time to do them...

She's leaving for vacation on Thursday. Would it make me an asshole to hand in my letter of resignation on Wednesday?

*If you can't, you're supposed to float downstream with your legs out in front of you. Which I don't get.

Non-fiction: 11.5

#15 On a Roll

This is the book I took a hike to get. I've enjoyed reading Adrienne's blog and I have a keen interest in maternal ambivalence based on my dissertation. I picked it up on Thursday (6/5), and finished the next day, but it's taken me a while to write this all down.

I wish I had known Adrienne when she was pregnant. Not that I could have "saved" her, but I could have given her a big pile of books to read to let her know she's not alone. (Rozsika Parker's Mother Love/Mother Hate for one.) Because she had all that time for reading when she was in the bin.

Adrienne's book is smart and funny and incredibly self-aware about a time when it must have been hard to be smart or funny. My favorite line, on the birth of her daughter, "It’s like getting the best Christmas gift ever, but Santa decided to kick the crap out of you before you unwrapped it." I particularly liked her analysis of Marjorie Kempe but wish she had found a few more such examples in her history of ppd/pp psychosis. Her portraits of the places she's lived bring them to life, making them another character in the book. And that's not far wrong because, according to Adrienne, there is something about place that has contributed to the madness in her family line.

My work on this subject takes a different tack. Mothers who are violent or ambivalent are usually labeled mad or bad. And I looked at what was behind the impetus to label the problem an individual one. My argument was that if we made it the woman's problem then it wasn't society's problem, that is it's nothing to do with me if a woman can't handle being a mother. There is an incredible pressure put on women to be "perfect" mothers--despite what some reviewers think. (One suggested that Adrienne just put too much pressure on herself to be perfect, that that didn't really exist.) But that same society refuses to create the safety nets (state sponsored day care, anyone?) that would allow women to achieve this.

It's a good book about a horrible time in one woman's life (though she stands in for many more). It's not for everyone, certainly.

Non-fiction 10.5

#15 Sticking with it

I have finished another work of non-fiction: Kentucky Moonshine by David W. Maurer. My dad sent this to us because there were a few things he wanted explained. Fortunately, I didn't have to read the book to figure it out.

I do have to tell you that this may be the second worst book I've ever read. Originally published in the 70s this is an incredibly dull work of academic well, it's supposed to be history but there is an utter lack of evidence. I suppose it is an early attempt at cultural studies but of the worst kind. The book is repetitive, lacks logical structure, and isn't well documented. But other than that...

Here's a favorite passage which gives you the flavor:

Transporters are paid from $1.00 to $2.00 per gallon according to the area, the risks involved, and other factors. Usually the owner of the still makes arrangements for the transportation and pays the driver, the cost being passed on to the purchaser. In some areas, the bootlegger hires and pay the transporter himself. These drivers spend as little time as possible around the still and do not openly associate with moonshiners. They are almost always unmarried but often temporarily live with one of the less conventional girls in their own or a neighboring community. Their prowess with women is well known and their tastes run to the flashier type of girl. Since they are paid by the gallon, any risks they take are usually their own, and they may do time if caught. A considerable number are killed or maimed in high-speed chases and most of them at one time or another have been involved in a serious accident. When they no longer drive the hot transport cars, they tend to degenerate into a kind of soft and slovenly indolence, existing as best they can on the empty memories of their younger days.

Ah, scholarship, you've come a long way.

My other favorite line comes from the section where he speculates about the decline of moonshine drinking among young men: "In addition, teenage girls play more and more of a part in the recreational pattern of young men...Because of the cultural factors and the liquor's taste, few girls drink moonshine whiskey with pleasure. However, beer is usually available even in dry territory and this lighter drink may be shared by boys and girls, resulting in a general upgrading of interpersonal relations."

Euphemism anyone? The first three chapters are given over to describing making moonshine in your pressure cooker, building a still, and running the still. The three longest chapters of my reading life. There is also a long prologue to the glossary that describes the reasons why moonshiners might develop their own argot. On the whole, a tedious treatment of a possibly interesting subject.

Non-fiction: 9.5

#15 Still More Non-fiction

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family is the memoir of Patricia Volk whose family owned Morgens in NYC. I suppose it's a happy family because in a lot of ways it was like mine (If all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways, we must be happy ones, right?) except Volk's family made the papers in New York City more often than mine did in small town New Hampshire. Her family members: introduced pastrami to America, invented the multicolored retractable pen, won best legs in Atlantic City, and one was held hostage for seven hours by a burgular. I'm not going to hold my family up to such scrutiny.

Each chapteris named for a food Volk associates with the person or people featured int he chapter. So Uncle Bob is profiled in "Mallomars" (my uncle Bob would be in the "weed" chapter) and her sister is in "Scrambled Eggs" (my sister might be Circus Peanuts). Each family member's story--which is told with a great deal of kindness--has a moral tale, which, according to Telling True Stories, is desirable. Several people stand out in my mind. Aunt Lil has two embroidered pillows on her couch: "Hope for the best. Expect the worst." and "I've never forgotten a rotten thing that anyone's ever done to me." Wow. (There's more needlework too: her family's housekeeper is a quilter.) Aunt Ruthie (who survived being held hostage) is the master of the biting zinger, one of those offhanded little remarks that can cut to the quick. I had planned to read it at Sunday dinner because it's my grandmother all over. But last night I read it to my sister, and she wants to borrow the book. When I read a little bit of the criticism the mother makes, she wanted me to send the book to our mother. I have a feeling this, like Marley and Me, is going to be a book that makes the rounds in my family.

I skipped another book I've read because I want to think about it more before I write about it.

Non-fiction: 8.5

#15 More Non-fiction

Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide
This is a compilation of five years of presentations from the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. I read it for work, but I think there were lessons even for blog writers. Blog writing is a form of memoir, which is, after all, narrative journalism. Somewhere I wrote this long essay about blogs-as-memoir and the difference between memoir and reportage (and thus between a truth and the truth, or, you know, as close as we can get).

For me this book was useful because there are a lot of things that I know about writing, but not so many that I know about reporting. Well, I know them but I don't always have ways of articulating them. And I certainly think that skill will come in handy when I am interviewing for jobs.

non-fiction: 7.5