Isn't this supposed to be a season of love and giving?

I shouldn't be surprised, I really shouldn't, and yet I am.

A divorced mom in Tennessee was denied the right by a family court to have her lesbian partner and her daughter sleep over at her house at the same time. She and her partner have been together for TEN YEARS. If you'd like to continue to be outraged, read more here.

Oh, America. You continue to astonish me with your combination of awesomeness and rage-inducing absurdity.

Best. Break-Up Song. Ever.

Okay, actually: Best. Let's Not Break Up. Song. Ever. But that just looks weird. Readers, I give you a sample of why this song is amazing:

I was thinkin'
about Abraham Lincoln
and how he made our union right

I started drinkin'
dipped my head in the sink and
cried out "why aren't you hear tonight"

Yes, a break-up song having to do with Abraham Lincoln. It's called "The War of Northern Aggression" and its by the wonderfully-named Two Man Gentlemen Band. In case you need more convincing, here's the chorus:

I ain't satisfied
if you've got secession on your mind
like the Mason-Dixon line
running between us

Screw it - just take a listen here: "The War of Northern Aggression," by The Two Man Gentlemen Band.

And then check out them out at Serious Business Records and buy their records at iTunes or (preferably) your local record store. Believe me, you will not regret it.

Austenbook

http://www.much-ado.net/austenbook/

Well, it is certainly shorter than any of her books, but I think it lacks a certain something. Also, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is not nearly so awesome when her lines are written entirely in status updates.

Judging without experience is my forte, after all; hence: museumist.wordpress.com

In keeping with both what I'm best at (judging without any sort of experience or knowledge to back me up) and what I hope to get good at (museum curating/material culture exhibiting) I'm going to be maintaining a blog where I write about museum exhibiting and review new exhibitions. I'll still be keeping up with Shoshana Writes as my personal blog, but if you want to hear about local museum shows, my thoughts on museum exhibiting philosophy, and why I love early Federal style furniture, be sure to check out www.museumist.wordpress.com.

The art of dodging culture...

The Onion AV Club (a website that all right-thinking people should be reading) just did a Q&A with their writers about what artifact of pop culture (seminal or otherwise) they had determinedly managed to avoid consuming over the course of their life, and why. Seeing as how I am consummately capable of avoiding important cinema and television while still managing to deliver a verdict as to their quality (what can I say, ignorant judging is a skill), I thought I'd explain some of my bigger cultural gaffes:

1. Shakespeare in Love: this one is more for my family, because I'm sure a lot of my friends have never seen it and don't feel any shame or bizarre pride over that fact. But it came out when I was in my "devouring the classics, maybe if I read smart books no one will notice that I have zero social skills" period, and that coupled with my drama club tendencies made me something of a Shakespeare freak. My mom, my aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, the homeless guy down the street: it seemed like everyone was seeing Shakespeare in Love and raving on and on about how great it was. I was going faux-rebellious stage (confession: if I'd had access to a mall, I'd probably have been shopping at Hot Topic, so I think we should all take a moment to thank Berkeley's quaint anti-mall zoning laws) and at a certain point I reached that stubborn "if everyone says it's good it must suck, because everyone is actually stupid" threshold. I refused to see it and now it has become something of a badge of honor. Every time I see a family member one of them has to mention renting Shakespeare in Love and I have to protest loudly and angrily against it. It's tradition. Also, now that my vague dissatisfaction with Gwenyth Paltrow has erupted into full-on dislike, there really is NO reason for me to sit through it.

2. Battlestar Gallactica: the funny thing is, I saw the four hour miniseries that the new Sci Fi show was based on. I even liked it! That might have had as much to do with the AP Latin exam I was avoiding studying for at the time as it had to do with its quality, but still! The guy who played Lee Adama was cute, I loved the idea of the Secretary of Education being made President because everyone else was simply too dead to do the job (hooray for presidential succession!), and the Cylons were pretty awesome... but then I took the AP Latin exam, got distracted by other stuff, and one day woke up to realize there was this whole backstory and two seasons of show I'd have to get through to even begin to understand what everyone was talking about. Too much effort for not enough crazy laser beams. Don't worry, though, I still get the Cylon jokes.

3. The Wire: I know, I know, it's the greatest drama of the last five years, the last decade, the last half-century, since Philo T. Farnsworth invented television, since Shakespeare, since Aeschylus, since Adam and Eve, etc. And yet, I really can't be bothered. Maybe it's the buzz, or the convoluted story lines, or the fact that if I want to be depressed by man's inhumanity towards man I can just read the New York Times, but I simply don't want to make the effort required to get into this.

4. Sex and the City: Okay, so I haven't intentionally avoided watching this - I've even forced myself to sit through a few episodes. Every time I try, though, I walk away feeling a little dirty and really, really depressed. I just don't get the claim that this show is some hilarious and witty view into the mind of the modern career woman; the whole show is a downer, as far as I can tell. I mean, here are all these gorgeous, smart successful women with lovely and glamorous lives and yet they are simply incapable of being HAPPY. It drives me crazy! They have this supportive friendship, impossibly beautiful NYC apartments and the best collection of shoes I've seen outside of a fashion institute exhibit at the Met but they keep on bitching and moaning about men! Do you know what I could DO with their lifestyles?! A lot more than they do, I can tell you that. Sex and the City depresses me and makes me righteously furious at the characters every time I try and watch it, which is why I stopped trying years ago. Also, Carrie and her stupid voice-over makes me embarrassed for freelance writers across the globe.

5. Pulp Fiction: this is something that truly does embarrass me. I don't know why I haven't gotten around to watching it - it just keeps on floating somewhere around the middle of my Netflix queue. Whenever it gets close to the top, I end up put something trashy and stupid (27 dresses, anyone?) in front and tell myself that I'll get to Pulp Fiction eventually. Let's be honest, though - I probably won't.

6. Ulysses: I have never read it. Not because I don't have access to it, mind you: there are currently three different battered and used copies of this epic literary masterpiece sitting on my shelf, taunting me with their convoluted sentence structures and endless pages. It's rare for me to leave a used bookstore without a copy of Ulysses in hand. Every time I buy a new-to-me copy I think "this will be the one I read. This will be the one I carry in my bag and pull out on the train, impressing all the other riders with my grasp of lit-rah-cha. This will be the one that I cover in marginalia, writing pithy little remarks and underlining the passages that Changed My Life in blue ink so that years from now some young thing will find my copy of Ulysses in a junk shop and be amazed by my ancient brilliance. This will be the one!" And yet it never, never is.

7. My So-Called Life: I'm sorry Acree, I've failed you! You and V are going to kick me out of the pop-culture club! I clearly don't love the 90s as much as I claim to! I've been faking all these years! I secretly hate flannel!* No, but in all seriousness, it's strange that I've never gotten into this show. I mean, I'm one of the few people alive who still LIKES Claire Danes! I enjoy her wooden acting and the voice that is simultaneously strident and whiny. And you'd think I'd be all over something that was critically acclaimed yet dropped way to early (like Arrested Development! And Veronica Mars! And my dear, soon-to-be-departed Pushing Daisies!). But I think something about Angela Chase's adventures in hair-dying and her undying love for the terminally terrible Jordan Catalano drove me crazy and made it impossible for me to sit through an episode of this show without wanting to throw something at the screen.

There are more (tons more), but I'm sick of writing this. Anyone have anything they want to get of their chest, pop-culture wise?


*This last one is a lie - I love flannel like Blair loves Chuck... wholeheartedly but with a pinch of hate and a soupcon of disgust.

No desert island is complete without Austen

V listed her DVD picks for when she gets stranded on a desert island, and as it is always good to be prepared I figured I'd chip in my list:

1. Singin' in the Rain: I can watch this at any time, anywhere. Also, I figure that if I'm on a desert island, all that rain is sort of like porn.

2. Good Night and Good Luck: I have a ridiculous infatuation with Edward R. Murrow, and it has now extended to David Straithern. I mean, I even watched "We Are Marshall" for him.

3. Rocky and Bullwinkle, every season: TV show, not crap live-action movie. Boris and Natasha? Dudley Doo-Right? That show taught me everything I've ever had to know about Mounties.

4.First and third Indiana Jones: Antiquities. Bow-ties. Harrison Ford. I don't really have any need for number 2: Temple of Doom, but Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade? Yes please. As I've tried to explain to many friends, movies are almost always better with Nazis.

5. The recent BBC/PBS adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion: okay, so because I'm a huge gibbering girl, there obviously was going to be some Austen on this list. But I couldn't go with P&P without worrying that Acree would cut me in my sleep for stealing her pick. Besides, Persuasion is underappreciated, and this adaptation was wonderful. Captain Frederick Wentworth. Swoon.

6. Hackers: Oh, you knew this was coming. If I'm on a desert island with no one else to keep me company, I'm damn well going to watch all the crappy movies I want. No company, no judging, right?

You know what to do

OMG

Ummm... I LOVE AMERICA.

One man's trash is another man's castle, one man's castle is another man's outrageously-decorated monstrosity

I'm feeling a little weird about the fact that I'm leaving Milford in less than a week; I'm exciting to be heading home (my big bed! my lovely sheets! cable! INTERNET!) but also sad to be leaving Grey Towers (my rustic farmhouse! work I really love! old objects!) and I am really, truly, wholeheartedly terrified about not having a job. So, because my whole brain is consumed by this mixture of excitement, wistfulness, and full-fledged panic, I don't have many words to spare for this blog post. What I do have, though, are pictures!

This post has been a long time coming. How can I write about Grey Towers if I never post a single picture of the building? So here it is, in all its goofy, fake-castle-y glory.


Of course, I've written about the turrets - I've even, dare I say it, waxed poetic about them. But what about the interiors, say you? Well, Grey Towers is used by the Forest Service as both a museum and meeting center for conservation conferences, so its multiple floors are put to multiple uses. The first floor is made up of the historic museum rooms and offices (in the servants' wing, of course), and the second and third floors are conference rooms and more offices. The interesting rooms, therefore, are all on the first floor, and that's what I have pictures of. My office is actually on the third floor, tucked under the eaves, but while it sounds super-romantic that mostly means that I occasionally hit my head on the sloping ceiling.

But anyway, the interior! When you enter the house from the front door (which we never do... staff/servants' entrance, dontchya' know) you step into the great hall, a huge wood-paneled room filled with heavy Dutch and Italian Renaissance furniture. It is very, very dark. The most interesting part of the great hall is the inglenook, which sits to the left of the main entrance. Here it is:


Like I said, dark. Also, yes, that is a stuffed owl clutching a stuffed squirrel in its sharp little claws. It is pretty strange. On either side of the owl are stag heads mounted to the walls. Here is the one to the right of the owl (who I call Hooty, of course):


I can't tell you much about the sailor's cap, except that it is entirely historically accurate. The restoration, done in the 1990s, used historic photos to recreate the furnishings and look of every room. Every historic photo of the great hall dating back to the early 1920s showed the sailor's cap sitting on top of the stag's antlers. We don't know how it got there, but I like to think of it as further proof of the fact that Cornelia Pinchot was a hilariously tacky but amazing decorator.

The library is probably my favorite room. You enter it from a door on the right wall of the great hall. Originally two very small rooms (a billiards room for the gentlemen and a sitting room for the ladies), Cornelia tore out the wall between the rooms when she married Gifford and paneled the walls in wooden bookshelves to make it a library. Here is the part of the room that used to be the ladies' sitting room:


We have a number of lovely empire sofas in the house, but this one is my favorite - the arm rests are high enough that it almost feels like a box.

Across from the sofa is a huge painting of Mary Pinchot, Gifford's mother, sitting with Gifford and his little sister Antoinette. He had another sister, Lucy, who died as a baby and a younger brother, Amos, who wasn't yet born when the portrait was painted. I consider the official family painting that is missing Amos to be further proof that Amos was really the black sheep of the family. Certainly Gifford got the better house and furnishings, and even though Amos was quite accomplished (he founded an organization that was the precursor to the ACLU, and was a noted lawyer who worked for equal rights and fought to free Sacco and Vanzetti, among others) the whole family clearly had the highest hopes for Gifford. My housemate Shannon and I would often hear something really complimentary about Gifford and say to each other, "sucks to be Amos, though." Anyway, the painting was done in Europe and cost $12,000 which is more than half of what the entire house took to build.


There is a door to the right of this photo that leads to the sitting room. The sitting room is arguably Cornelia's greatest contribution to the house (or at least the interior of the house - she was also responsible for the entire landscaping project, as well as the addition of multiple outbuildings to the property) and you can get a good sense of her design aesthetic from a look at the sitting room:


And by "design aesthetic," I mean "her way of throwing crazy colors on the walls and stuffing a room full of mismatched furniture and calling it "decorated."" I mean, really, this woman was AWESOME. I can sort of imagine her stomping through the house, a team of assistants behind her coughing as they inhaled the smoke trailing from her thin french cigarette as she claimed in her patrician voice, "Nooooo, sea green walls are nothing without red velvet drapes and some lovely fake marble trim! Nothing, I tell you! Have you no imagination? No joie de vivre? You must think of this house as a caterpillar, and we are the chrysalis process that will turn it into a beautiful butterfly! Be the chrysalis!!" Or something to that effect.

The large expanses of walls in the sitting room not covered with mirrors, candelabras, or mounted fish are papered with huge murals of Dutch seascapes and farm scenes. The murals were painted onto canvases which were then plastered like wallpaper onto the walls. Cornelia found the paintings in the Hague and insisted that they be brought over to line her sitting room walls, completing the maritime theme she had going. When the Forest Service took over the house in 1963 they claimed that most of the paintings were too damaged to restore, so they just painted over them. I've since heard conflicting stories (that the Forest Service just didn't want to pay for them to be fixed, or that they didn't feel they were appropriate for the house, etc.) but whatever the reason, most of the paintings had to be re-created for the restoration. One wall was saved, though, and the mural on it is original:


So those are the three main historic rooms. There is also Gifford's office, which sits in one of the towers off the corner of the library - I mention it because it has one of my favorite pieces in it, a lovely and strangely delicate Federal-style desk. Also, the wallpaper is goofy:


Gifford's bedroom is the only historic room on the second floor, but I couldn't be bothered to document it. It is a small tower room, and his bed is bizarrely little, especially when you consider that he never lived there as a child. He and Cornelia had separate rooms, as was the style of the times, but still... weirdly tiny bed.

So yeah, that is the interior of Grey Towers! I guess I had more to say than I thought, but hopefully the photographs made up for my senseless babbling.

I'm leaving Milford in six days, so if you're in the SF Bay Area and want to see me, I'm home November 7! Otherwise, stay tuned - I'll try to post some more before I leave.

Im in ur forestz, preventing ur firez

Fun fact: Smokey Bear, contrary to what many of us were taught during Junior Ranger activities at national parks during family camping trips*, is NOT a creation of of the National Park Service but rather of the Forest Service. Smokey was created as a public service mascot on August 9, 1944 (his birthday!) and was eventually physically embodied by a black bear that was rescued from a fire in 1950. He is actually the longest running public service campaign in American history. Take that, Scruff McGruff.

Second fun fact: Smokey Bear's name is Smokey Bear - there is no "the" in it. Funny, right?

Third fun fact: at sites like Grey Towers, where a lot of what goes on is conservation education for both adults AND children, the Forest Service often supplies a "Smokey Suit" to create a real-life Smokey for activities. And sometimes, miracles happen and interns are required to wear the suit. See below for proof:

Smokey, yes?


But who can that be animating our one true forest protector?


WHY YES I DID GET TO DRESS UP AS SMOKEY BEAR AND PLAY WITH FOUR-YEAR-OLD KIDS. YES IT WAS AWESOME, WHY DO YOU ASK?

Of course, I couldn't move my head with the head-part on and I couldn't see through the eyes so I had to be led around by another ranger, but still, it was quite possibly the most awesome thing ever.

*Don't lie, I know at least some of you did junior rangers; if your last name is Resnikoff, it was practically a right of passage. Endless campfire activities with some goofy chipper Ranger learning to identify bird calls and practicing your safe-camping rules. Good times, mosquito bites and all.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

A day late, but happy St. Crispin's Day!

Interesting fact: St. Crispin's Day, which is October 25, is the feast day of the saints Crispin and Crispinian, twin brothers martyred in AD 286. It also seems to attract battles: the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War, and of course the Battle of Agincourt (St. Crispin's Day Speech! Henry V! Shakespeare!) in 1415 all happened on St. Crispin's Day.

The irony of the St. Crispin's Day speech, of course, is that St. Crispin and St. Crispinian were removed from the liturgical calendar by Vatican II rulings because of insufficient proof that the twins were actually martyred. So when Henry inspires his soldiers by shouting that St. Crispin's day will be remembered as much for what they do there as for the saints it was named for, he is more correct than he knows.

And so, in honor of this not-saint-day saint day, I give you Sir Kenneth Branagh:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvmLDkAgAM

They fight crime!

I'm sure I'm, like, the last person in the world to stumble upon this, but look! A time waster!

www.theyfightcrime.org

"He's a war-weary bohemian romance novelist with nothing left to lose. She's a violent Bolivian museum curator with only herself to blame. They fight crime!"

Violent Bolivian Museum Curator is my new career goal, FYI.

Apologies for the delays

This is just a quick post to apologize for the lack of posting and to promise that more posts will be forthcoming, post-haste. I've been sort of freaking out about my lack of post(!)-internship plans while shuttling back and forth from Milford to NYC for the high holidays, which is my only excuse. And yes, I know, it is no excuse at all. But I swear that I will write about something interesting soon. For instance, the leaves are turning colors here and whoever doesn't like autumn needs to head out to the Poconos as soon as possible because man, they put on a good seasonal show out here.

So yeah: the posts, they are a'comin'. Until then, I leave you with this confession: after writing my snotty Extreme Makeover: Home Edition blog entry, I've been unable to stop watching that show. Just last night I cried and cried as a well-deserving family in Charlotte, NC that ran a daycare center for low-income families was rewarded with a freaking HUGE new house. Seriously, I felt dehydrated by the time it was over. Oh, sentimentality. You get me every time.

Exploring the spectator sport of charity, one makeover show at a time

"Turning a charity event into a spectacle — and allowing donors to see recipients weep with joy — was a fairly common practice at the turn of the last century. In 1891, the Christmas Society organized an event at Madison Square Garden where the wealthy were invited to buy tickets to watch poor children open Christmas presents on the floor below. Around this time, in New York and elsewhere, there were Bowery Christmas dinners, where the wealthy paid to watch the poor eat a sumptuous feast. There were even specialized events for watching groups of orphans, African-Americans or even newsboys get their fill."

This quotation is from a New York Times article about the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The show, in case you don't watch it, is a reality television show in which a team of crack interior designers and builders, led by too-chirpy carpenter Ty Pennington (sidebar: are people actually still named Ty? Seriously, and not as some kind of nod to Britanny Murphy's iconic character in Clueless? Wow) appear at the run-down house of some deserving needy family and whisk them away for an all-expense paid vacation while their house is torn down, rebuilt, and completely transformed. The show is goofy, unabashedly sentimental, and faintly religious - the family members and community supporters who come out to watch and volunteer often talk about how this is "God's doing" and that the show's stars are "angels come to help" them.

In fact, in the article one of the cast members of the show says that it is a perfect "red-state" peice of television. "There are probably seven people in New York who watch the show - and I know them all personally." I have a confession to make: I do not live in New York, but I flatter myself into thinking that I maybe, sort of, kind of, might be representative of the type of person who could live in New York, and I do watch this show. Not always - not even often. But if it is on and I am channel surfing, I tune in. And, of course, promptly start bawling.

I'm not proud that I watch it, nor do I like to ponder my reasons for tuning in. Sometimes I feel like watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is sort of like listening to arena rock: your heartstrings are being tugged and even as you realize, intellectually, that the music is crappy and the violins are being played to intentionally manipulate you, you find yourself responding. But while I hate that effect in arena rock music (I'm looking at you, Creed, and even sometimes Coldplay), I don't feel as manipulated by Ty and his merry band of house elves. Maybe it is because they really are helping the families, or maybe it is the outpouring of support from local volunteers, but something about this show gets to me and I don't really have a problem with it.

Or at least, I didn't, until I read the paragraph that I quoted to you above from the NYT article. Because that, dude, is just plain weird. People in the late 1800s actually PAID to watch poor kids unwrap presents? That is so... reverse Dickensian, or something. It's like A Christmas Carol (which, by the way, I HATE) but without all the character growth. Instead of having to learn why the way he used to behave was wrong and ultimately destructive, Scrooge just skipped ahead to force feeding Tiny Tim the world's largest turkey. And also, apparently, replacing his crutches with state-of-the-line prosthetic legs.

And the fact that there were specialized events, so you could watch orphans, or African American children, or newsboys eat their dinner... that, I can proclaim with certainty, is gross. It's like charity porn. At that point, the act of charity is so completely not about the person you are giving it to that they have merely become actors in a play performed entirely for the givers' benefit. The receiver of the charity has no agency, no power - they are literally objects for the giver to visually feast upon. That it is possible for an act to exist that can be called charity even as it further disenfranchises the receiver of said charity... well, all I can say is "ew."

The writer of the NYT article mentioned these historic practices to place Extreme Makeoever: Home Edition in the timeline of charity spectatorship, but highlighting those earlier practices and their connections to today's makeover charity show has just turned me off the entire concept entirely. Thanks, NYT, for ruining my go-to-hour for hanky-clutching by pointing out its sickly exploitative nature. What next: fashion makeover shows destroy individuality? Say it ain't so.

Not really a political post

Ummm... tall attractive man who happens to be a top contender for Big Man on Campus* + babies = AWESOMENESS.

Case in point: http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com/

*with Big Man on Campus (BMOC) = President of the United States of America (POTUS).

"Everyone responded with an ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation."

Sorry I've been AWOL - Rosh Hashanah sort of gets in the way of regular blog updates. It was great seeing everyone back home, even if my time spent in transit between Milford and Berkeley sort of killed my soul. As usual, though, the high holidays are a great opportunity to catch up on socializing, sleep, and reading. And keeping that in mind, I feel compelled to recommend an amazing and terrifying book to you all.

A lot of you have probably read And the Band Played On, or at least heard of it. Those of you who were living in the Bay Area during the '80s (shout out to my mother!) likely read the articles that Randy Shilts wrote in the SF Chronicle and later used as the basis for his book. I had never read it before this weekend, though, and so I picked it up with only the understanding that this was a huge book on the history of HIV/AIDS, and since I had some time I might as well give it a try.

And the Band Played On is more than just a comprehensive history of AIDS, though - it is a story of the spread of a killer epidemic because of the failure of an entire society to act. The book serves as a chilling witness to the deaths of hundreds of Americans and as a rebuke of the systems (medical, governmental, communal) that we depend on to protect us from disasters of this proportion.

I grew up in a time when AIDS awareness, education, and prevention was a given. From the first sex ed class I took in sixth grade, the importance of safe sex and the extraordinary dangers that STDs presented were drummed into me. I can't remember a time when I didn't know that AIDS was an epidemic ravaging not just this country but the whole world. To imagine a time before AIDS is difficult, but to think that there was a period of time when people were dying of this disease but no one cared enough to help is almost impossible. And the Band Played On is amazing not only for the incredible act of investigative journalism it represents, but also for its ability to convey to someone like me, who didn't live though those first years of the epidemic, how it was possible for so many people to die before we woke up to the disaster facing our communities.

I haven't finished the book yet (it is enormous), but it's not like I don't know how it ends. I mean, we're all living the epilogue. Shilts was a talented journalist and writer - the book reads like fast paced thriller, all plot and cliffhangers. So much of it is dramatic and disturbing, but two things stand out as particularly upsetting, especially to someone like me who puts so much faith in our democratic system: first, while Shilts repeated again and again that there were many, even countless, reasons why the disease spread so far and so long without any intervention from the medical community, he identified a particularly damning one. The Center for Disease Control (CDC, also happens to be right next door to Emory University) is the nation's first line of defense against any kind of disease or potential epidemic, and while the CDC was one of the first organizations to recognize the danger of AIDS and did their best under the circumstances, they found themselves facing a serious lack of funding. Why? Because the newly elected President Reagan had promised the public smaller government and filled that promise by slashing the CDC's budget in half.

Now, clearly we can't blame Reagan for an entire epidemic, but there is something so utterly tragic about a budget being more important than the health of a nation. Moreover, the naivety of government, to believe that in our modern, civilized society we had no fear of disease and thus no need for a well-developed national response center to them, is astounding.

The second thing that has really hit me while reading And the Band Played On is the response of the medical community to the disease. Shilts wrote about the few doctors who recognized the magnitude of the disease and fought fiercely and often in vain for funding and national attention, but the majority of the medical community was depressingly quick to write the disease off as a "gay issue," one not worthy of their time or energy. They recognized that working on "gay cancer"would gain them little glory or respect, and some of them even felt that maybe the people who were dying were "getting what they deserved." After all, they were living dangerously, engaging in deviant behavior - what did they expect?

Now, my dad was a doctor. My uncle is a doctor. I mean, I'm Jewish. Most of the people I know are doctors. They are all fantastic human beings who do amazing things on a daily basis. THEY SAVE LIVES. And so it is especially scary and terrifying to think that members of the medical profession were out there, looking at this disease, and couldn't see past their own prejudices and self-interest to recognize that what they were facing was the most terrible epidemic of their time. Yes, we all have our own blinders and sore points, things that keep us from seeing clearly. But as someone who thinks that doctors are some of the most important people in our society, it makes me so terribly sad to think of all the death that could have been avoided if more people in the medical profession had managed to look beyond themselves and face reality.

Of course, that has to be said about everyone involved in the crisis. Politicians, community activists, public health officials, friends, lovers, family members - people were either too uninformed, self-centered, prejudiced or scared to think about the wider implications of AIDS, and so instead they buried their heads in the sand and waited for the storm to pass. Part of what makes And the Band Played On such a great book is the expansiveness of it: Shilts covered just about every aspect of the disease, addressing all the different communities it affected and all the types of people who interacted with the virus one way or the other. The book is epic in its scale, and also in its refusal to let anyone off the hook.

Okay, so believe it or not, this wasn't supposed to turn into a long rant about the evils of societal non-action and the dangers of apathy and budget cuts. Rather, I hope that my run-on sentences and internet capslock yelling will persuade those of you who haven't read And the Band Played On to check it out. Despite its age, it is still a highly relevant book.

Sure, we've got a better handle on AIDS than we did in the past, but the disease is by no means defeated. Also, there have been recent reports that in the '90s, AIDS awareness campaigns did such a good job that the numbers of people infected with AIDS dropped dramatically. That drop, coupled with more effective AIDS treatment, made people feel that the disease no longer posed a risk, so they began engaging in unsafe sex and other dangerous activities that have now lead to a marked INCREASE in the incidences of AIDS in this country. Do you see where I'm going with this? Moreover, 25% of all HIV/AIDS diagnoses today occur in women, and women of color account for 75% of those. Clearly, AIDS is still an issue, one that crosses the lines of sexual preference, gender, and race.

Anyway, if you managed to make it this far through my public health screed, good on you. Up next in Shoshana Writes About Depressing Diseases: my long-held irrational fear of the Ebola virus! (Thanks, Isaac, for that one.)

"If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

I have a long-standing love affair with print journalism. It hasn't always been easy, being in love with the news media: I've experienced the highs of late-night high school paper production meetings and the lows of trying to stay loyal to the increasingly lousy San Francisco Chronicle. And then there is the ink that always, always gets on your fingertips and your clothes. Still, I love the smell of that gray newsprint, the look of the seraph font, the drop caps, the photo captions and of course, the awesome, sometimes ridiculous headlines. Especially now, when the Internet is so clearly kicking print media's butt, when it seems like online news is increasingly the best source for up-to-date information, I feel a nostalgic pull for the feel of the morning paper in my hands.

My intense love of all things print makes me wonder, then, how I never heard of this woman. Nancy Maynard was the first black female reporter for the New York Times. She founded an institute to train minority reporters, editors, and publishers. She freaking OWNED the Oakland Tribune for nine years. OWNED. I don't think I've heard of a single person (as opposed to a corporation) owning a newspaper since William Randolph Hearst. Not only was Maynard obviously an awesome feminist hero, she was a damn good reporter too. She was famous for her adherence to journalistic objectivity and accuracy, saying, "if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

Now obviously this blog isn't much for journalistic objectivity and accuracy, but I just wanted to bring your attention to this amazing lady. Maybe y'all already knew about her - I am often late to the party when it comes to social heroes. And speaking of heroes, I wonder if Nancy Maynard and Helen Thomas knew each other?

V! For Victory!

The Poconos do strange things to me. I've stopped agonizing over what I wear every day. I sometimes go outside without mascara on. I go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I go to football games.

Okay, one football game. But it is my first! Ever! I had honestly never been to a football game (pee-wee, high school, college, or professional) before, but housemate Shannon and I ventured to the local high school (Delaware Valley High School, to be exact) to watch the local Warriors kick East Stroudsburg High Cavalier butt. Which they did, quite beautifully.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The people, the food (Pizza! Funnel cake!), the cheerleaders (hi Acree!) - it felt like some crazy carnival. Also, I had a lot of fun watching the various teenagers in the stands, trying to figure out which girl was cheering for which player, who the school outcasts were, etc. Shannon and I tried to guess which of the cheerleaders was dating the quarterback. I guessed the pretty blond perky one in the front row, but then Shannon spotted the bitchy looking one with perfect hair in the middle and we agreed that she'd won.

It almost made me wish that I'd gone to some games at Berkeley High. Until, of course, I remembered that the police always showed up for games against Richmond to try to head off any gang violence and that we'd lost the homecoming game senior year because the quarterback had been wasted. Ahh, Berkeley High. I think I miss you.

I can see Russia from my house

Everyone needs to watch THIS.

I swear, I really am going to stop talking about Sarah Palin. And really, this isn't about Sarah Palin! It is about how if the real Hillary Clinton had been half as awesome as SNL's Hillary Clinton, she totally would have gotten my vote! (Thanks, Ben, for the link!)

I have yet to see all of this episode of Saturday Night Live, but I LOVE that it was hosted by Michael Phelps. Not because Michael Phelps would be any good at it, of course, but be because he would suck at it. And I love the idea of America being fanatically obsessed with this guy, this goofy-looking kid, because he can swim really well. So we keep on getting him to do other things, like endorse products, or act, or drive while drunk, and he sucks at it all because really, all he can do is swim. Swim really really fast. Faster than anyone else on earth, and most fish.*

*It should be noted that I am one of those Americans fanatically obsessed with Phelps. He and Nastia Liukin made the Olympics for me. My only excuse is that I was into Phelps way before everyone else - I watched him at the 2004 Olympics and when the FINA world championships were in Melbourne in 2007 (where I was, of course) my roommates and I watched every race he swam on TV. We would go out to bars trolling for the US swimming team, but we only ever found the Slovakian team, though, so no luck. One day I was on the tram in Melbourne and overheard these angry Australians bitching about how "that damn Yankee Phelps is stealing our swimming medals! How dare he!" And I turned around and gave them a big smile, thinking "damn right." Also, I was on a swim team for, like, a month in middle school. I remember how hard butterfly is.

** Apologies to Ben, because this entire post is basically lifted out of an IM conversation I had with him. Sorry for the repetition!

This is not a post about Sarah Palin

Is Camille Paglia still relevant? I ask because she has somehow managed to get me UTTERLY PISSED OFF with her self-righteous attitude toward feminism and patriotism. No, wait. Scratch the "somehow." I know how she did it - she wrote an article for Salon.com about Sarah Palin, feminism, and what it means to be a macho woman. And then she went and wrote this little gem:

"One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones -- nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days."

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? People, I am sick and tired of being informed by various members of the media that because I live in a primarily liberal city, I somehow have revoked my American citizenship without realizing it. I'm sorry - I didn't know that the coastal cities of America had actually seceded and were forming their own little country called Bleedingheartliberalstan. City dwellers are just as American as rural folk, and for that matter, Camille, the "leafy suburbs of Philadelphia" are not exactly the heartland.

Moreover, how did we ever get to the point where geography defines our patriotism? The money that yuppies spend at Whole Foods is just as green as the dollars Paglia drops down at Wal-Mart for their peerless birdseed. And FYI - I LOVE FAST FOOD. I don't eat it because I don't want to die of a heart attack, not because I hate America. Why does "the mainstream of America" have to be so damn narrow? Why can't we have a "main-river" of America where lots of different eddies of lifestyles come together in a rush of cultural water? Or am I getting to eco-hippy-dippy for the mainstream?

And WTF? Paglia hates on liberal cities like San Francisco (the leftiest city that ever did left, obviously) but earlier in the column she's all smiles and compliments for Diane Feinstein, SF's former mayor and California's current senior senator. What is up with that? I thought people from San Francisco don't "value independent thought these days." BOO.*

Finally, I want to make this clear: if Paglia thinks shopping at Wal-Mart is what defines a person as American, then fine. I shop at Wal-Mart because I can't afford to shop anywhere else. I'm pretty sure Paglia's beloved "mainstream of America" shops there for the same reason, so I guess that means I win this round of "Who is More Patriotic, You or Camille Paglia?" Who is ready for round two? I call foul for Paglia's use of the word "nonpareil." After all, it's French. That's like an automatic out, right?

*And BTW, I adore Di-Fi. If she weren't even older than John McCain, I'd be writing her name in for President. Of course, unlike John McCain, she recognizes when her time has passed. Thanks Di-Fi, for being made of AWESOME.

An open love letter to Sarah Haskins

Dear Sarah Haskins,

Please be my new best friend. Your wit and cleverness are beyond amusing, and your method of couching your incisive commentary in approachable language is enchanting. Also, you have a very flexible face, and I love people who can make funny expressions with the power of their buggy eyes.

XOXO,
S

p.s. for those of you who don't know who Sarah Haskins is, check out Target: Women and enjoy. Also, Daily Show? Please hire Sarah Haskins. Samantha Bee needs some girl backup.

Twilight: Harry Potter vampire soap opera? I think not.

So, Twilight. For those of you who have been a) living under a rock for the past year and a half, b) busy with better things to do, or c) not a 13 year old girl, Twilight is the first in a series of novels about a teenage girl, Bella, and her vampire boyfriend, Edward. It has taken the middle school set by storm and publishing wonks and booksellers see in the series the second coming of Harry Potter.

I didn't plan on reading Twilight. At 22 I'm obviously beyond the target demographic of the book, and while Harry Potter transcended age barriers and is, without a doubt, one of my favorite book series of all time (and I can say this without even a blush of embarrassment, so I'm not sure what that says about my taste), teen vampire love just doesn't really do it for me. But then I started reading all these articles about the book, both pro and con: hooray that it was getting young people to read again, boo that it promoted this absurd vision of teenage love and supported a till-undeath-do-you-part attitude toward relationships that just wasn't healthy. But when I heard it compared to my beloved bespectacled boy wizard, I knew I had to read it, if only to refute those claims with personal experience.

But how to go about reading it? There was no way I was going to spend my precious greenbacks (made all the more so by my current internship position) on a teen vampire book, and to get it from a library I'd have to get in line behind hundreds of screaming pre-teens wearing too much eyeliner. When I stumbled ("stumbled") across an audiobook version of it online I downloaded it, thinking I'd listen to it on the plane ride to PA. I didn't actually get to it, though, so it sat taking up precious space on my harddrive, until this week.

I spend a large portion of my days sorting through very old documents, rehousing them in protective cases and assigning catalog numbers to them. It can be interesting, such as when the document in question is a letter from Teddy Roosevelt or an invitation to a wedding in 1885. Lately, though, I've been trudging my way through the administrative documents of Grey Towers from the 1960s through the 1980s. Nothing very old, nothing very interesting: just a lot of internal Forest Service memos and work order forms for reconstruction projects. After my third day of almost nodding off over a debate over what type of lumber to use for maintenance on the property (the conversation spread out over ten letters), I pulled out my iPod and, on a whim, scrolled over to the Twilight recording.

So, now that I am 2/3rds of the way through it, I have compiled some reactions. First off, OMG apparently most teenagers feel a lot more intensely than I ever did in high school. If the characters in Twilight are anything to go by, teenagers feel intense mood-swings very five minutes based on whether the love of their life has their collar popped or not. Also, in Twilight land, apparently EVERYONE is gorgeous. There are no ugly people, or even mediocre looking ones. Our heroine, of course, is self-deprecating: Bella's insecurity is so oft-mentioned and omnipresent that I began to feel bad about myself in reaction. She thinks she's "ordinary-looking," clumsy and unattractive, but EVERY guy in a five mile radius has a crush on her and Edward tells her on an almost hourly basis that she is the most enchanting creature he has ever encountered. And given that he is one hundred years old, he's encountered a lot of creatures.

And that is another thing: I don't care how attractive Edward is, (and author Stephanie Meyer loves to remind us that he is devastatingly, undeniably, intolerably attractive), he is just plain creepy. And its not the blood-sucking undead thing that gives me the willies: no, its his stalkerish attitude. He starts watching Bella sleep a week after he's met her. Barely a day into their actual relationship he tells her that he wouldn't want to live without her. Before they even kiss he's declaring that she's the only thing that will EVER matter to him. It is intense and weird and I kept on waiting for Bella to snap out of her love-struck haze and mace his ass.

Of course, that is expecting way too much of our little Bella. She falls instantly in love with Edward, and even though she knows he wants to drink her blood and that the relationship CANNOT end well, she insists that it doesn't matter. After all, she muses, if she can't be with Edward she'll die anyway. DIE OF A BROKEN HEART. It's like Stephanie Meyer took all the angst of the O.C. and the original 90210 combined and thought: "you know, this is good but what it needs is more melodrama."

I haven't finished reading (listening to) the book yet, but I predict that the werewolves (the Native Americans on the local reservation, obvi) will start to play a bigger role and Bella and Edward will continue to be as nauseatingly in love until the end. I've read that by the fourth book they are married and Bella is about to become another teen mother statistic as she gives birth to their human/vampire hybrid love child. Like a Prius, but with bloodsucking abilities.

And this is where even more criticism of the series emerges: in the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, the vampire fetus is actually killing the (still teenaged) Bella while she is pregnant, but she refuses to give up the baby. She becomes the perfect wife and mother, caring for the newborn child (apparently the murderous instincts are dealt with before birth) and catering to Stalker Edward's every need. Some critics see it as a politically conservative story, with Bella and Edward's timeless love and refusal to abort the killer teen pregnancy as a morality story with family values at the core. And, of course, the fact that one of the werewolves gives the vampire fetus a promise ring and swears to remain true to the child until they are old enough to marry is creepily moralistic.

I can't even get that far in my critical thinking, though, because something else catches my judgemental eye first: this book is very poorly written. I have a feeling that Meyer must have every adjective in the dictionary memorized because she cannot let a single noun go by without attaching at least three descriptive words to it. Edward doesn't just have eyes: they are "smoldering, passionate topaz orbs." Seriously. And Edward's vampire sister never walks or runs; instead, she "danced upon the air, sliding and gliding to the lunch table." I have been in a cafeteria. It is impossible to slide and glide to your seat, undead or not.

The clever broads over at Jezebel wrote a piece about this, but I think their point merits repeating. I'm not concerned by the idea of children's books with a conservative agenda: The Narnia series is all about Christian might and right and the entire Lord of the Rings series can be read as a white supremacist tract. That's fine, because the books are so well-written and constructed that they end up teaching kids to think critically and use their imaginations, giving them the ability to consider or reject the ideological message built into the books. I read a lot of Roald Dahl but I never once bought his anti-Semitic physical descriptions of evil-doers as accurate. My problem is that this series seems to be so poorly written that it doesn't promote critical thinking or even imagination, and it certainly won't elevate the quality of it's readership's writing. When I think about the 13-year-old girl who is currently devouring Breaking Dawn while she bites her black-painted nails to a quick in anxious sympathy with Bella and Edward's love that dare not speak its name, I'm less worried about her ideological development than I am about her writing skills. I'd hate for her to one day turn in a term paper describing Stalin's eyes as "burningly sharp obsidian orbs."

Of course, I can't stop listening to the book. It is addictive in it's craptitude. And I hate myself a little when I write this, but I'll probably shell out ten hard-earned dollars when the inevitable movie version of Twilight comes out in theaters this year. I'm not so worried about myself: after years of exposure I've developed a strong resistance to the crap that pop culture can shell out. But won't anyone think of the children? And if not the children, then at least of the poor belabored English teachers who will have to grade countless creative writing projects featuring bronze-haired Adonis vampire lovers for the next few years?

And finally, I have just this to add: Bitch, please. I know Harry Potter, and this ain't no Harry Potter.

Sarah Palin, Vice President?

So, John McCain announced his running mate, and it is Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska. Huh. I'm not quite sure what to think about this. On the one hand, hooray for a potential lady VP, but on the other, more truthful and accurate hand, BOO. I mean, "boo" to the whole idea of John McCain as president, obviously, but also, WTF? She is crazy-anti-abortion. She wants to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for more drilling. SHE HATES POLAR BEARS AND WANTS TO KEEP THEM OFF THE ENDANGERED ANIMALS LIST SO SHE CAN STILL HUNT THEM. Seriously, America? We're going to elect a polar bear hater to the office of vice president? I don't think so.

Also, for all those thinking, "yes, those are reasonable arguments, I don't agree with polar bear haters, but be realistic - she'll never have any REAL power, as VP she'd be a figurehead at best..." just remember that John McCain is older than the Crypt Keeper. John McCain is so old he doesn't EMAIL. And if John McCain got elected, then dropped dead during his term, we'd be stuck with a polar bear hater for the next couple years. A crazy, beehive-wearing, choice-denying polar bear hater. Think on that, America.

On the plus side, I guess this totally undoes John McCain's "Obama is too inexperienced to lead" argument. Obviously experience isn't as important to him as he led us to think, if he's willing to take on a woman as VP whose most extensive political experience has been as the mayor of a town of 800 people.

P.S. I'm not totally sure about this, but I think I heard that she's under investigation for firing Alaska's public safety commissioner when he refused to fire her ex-brother-in-law at her request.

P.P.S. I do, however, think she deserved props for a)being the first Republican female nominee and b) giving birth to a child with Downs syndrome and being back to work some ridiculously soon time after. This doesn't mean I like her, or that I want her to become president and kill all the polar bears. I just have to be fair and acknowledge that those are impressive feats. As isbeing an Alaskan beauty queen, which is something she is also famous for.

P.P.P.S This is the last of my blog posts that will be sent to your email addresses, folks. I've been trying to find a way to just automatically send you an email every time I update without sending the whole post, but I can't seem to figure it out. Instead, I'm going to start sending a big email from my own email address to you guys when I post. If you don't see an email from me in a while, though, check back here - I'll probably be posting blog entries and just forgetting to email you.

Baby, you can drive my car (except you can't, because it is government property)

So the nice folks here at Grey Towers have been utterly fooled by my suspiciously capable attitude toward cars and have actually decided to let me operate government vehicles. Crazy, right? And I even told them about the time I hit the $90,000 Mercedes two hours after I had gotten my license and they weren't fazed! I didn't, however, mention my talent at bursting tires - that seemed like a discussion for a later time.

Still, yesterday I was tooling around back and forth from the mansion to the archives storage in a snazzy Jeep Patriot (and have you ever heard of a more jingoistic car? Why don't they just call it the Jeep "I love America more than you, pinko commie terrorist!"?), and I felt very powerful, and also a little like The Man. I had my uniform on, my big government SUV even had the Forest Service seal on it, and I had keys jangling at my hip that could unlock every door in the park. And a radio! It doesn't get more The Man than that.*

I kept hoping to come along some kids graffitti-ing something so I could park my truck, slowly get out, and saunter coolly over to them, all the while peering out menacingly over the rim of my aviators. And then I'd say authoritatively, "you kids know you're messing with government property, which is a felony?" Of course, I don't know if it is or isn't (I'm thinking isn't), and of course I couldn't speak authoritatively to a chipmunk, much less a human being, so this is where the fantasy starts to fall apart.

I don't think I'm actually cut out to be The Man, if only because my 1960's counter-revolutionary high school teachers would be appalled. Still, the car is pretty neat.

*Okay, so a gun would have helped the image, but no one here would be stupid enough to entrust me with fire arms.

Coming soon to a tv set near you

So today I might, just might have been scanning photos of Gifford Pinchot and his various forestry activities for a noted public television documentarian. Yes, that noted public television documentarian.* Who is doing a documentary on the national parks. And needs photographs. Of Gifford Pinchot. Photographs scanned by me. I'M FAMOUS.

No, but really, I'm inordinantly excited by my brush with intellectual-Americana fame. When you see the national parks documentary on PBS (and I know you will, you Teddy Roosevelt fans) just remember me and my tiny insignificant role in bringing it to your television set.

*You know who I'm talking about: he directed The Civil War, and Jazz, and Baseball, and The War, and is the king of PBS.

Down home on the farm

As I've mentioned before, Grey Towers is located in the cute little hamlet of Milford, PA. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere so charming, and having been in both North Berkeley and Decatur, GA, I think that is saying something. But really, this place is amazing. Beautiful historic houses, shady streets, friendly neighbors... the works. What makes it even better, though, is that it isn't all gingerbread trim and well-groomed lawns. Yeah, there are a lot of summer residents who raise the value of the property and bring things like organic free-range eggs and absurdly expensive restaurants to town, but there are enough locals with dirty pickups living in crumbling Victorians with Mets flags outside to make the town feel real and alive. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to take pictures of all the buildings and neighborhoods (all 1 and 1/2 of them) that I love, but here is a preview:


Cute sign, right? Also, the town was officially founded twenty years after America declared independence. I'm not sure, but I think that might make it the oldest place I've ever lived.

While I do not have pictures of Milford just yet, I do have a couple of Grey Towers and my farmhouse. Here is Grey Towers from the path that winds from the parking pavilion to the house. (To get from my house to the mansion, I trample through the woods until I hit the pavilion, and then I join the footpath and make my way up. It is a pretty easy commute, but sometimes the traffic gets ugly when the squirrels start going at it.)


The angle of the picture keeps you from seeing it, but that ivy covers the wall that forms the moat. Yes, Grey Towers has a moat. It doesn't go all the way around the house, unfortunately, but still... a moat! Also, that weird brown blob in the middle of the second story is a bust of Lafayette. The Pinchot's were French - Gifford's grandfather and great-grandfather were huge supporters of Napoleon who got out while the going was good once they saw that the Bourbons were going to be restored. The design of Grey Towers is actually based on Lafayette's chateau, Le Grange.

As to why it is called Grey Towers, find out for yourself:


WHY YES, WE DO HAVE TURRETS. My favorite architectural feature EVER, probably due to too many viewings of Beauty and the Beast as a young child. The third floor tower room is right near my office, and when I need to do some reading, (you know, like a historic structure report, or the historic furnishings list, or maybe a complete account EVERY item Cornelia Pinchot ever purchased - your usual light entertainment reading) I like to hide out up there in the big easy chair. I've only nodded off once.

When I'm not vacuuming historic furnishings or reading old receipts in a turret, I spend my free time in the farmhouse on the property. It is apparently the oldest structure still standing in the park, and it predates Grey Towers by a good fifty+ years. It isn't worth taking pictures of the inside, which was gutted 20 years ago and re-done in industrial-housing chic, but the outside is pretty great.


Here is the large porch. The window on the left is my bedroom window, and to the right is the kitchen. My housemate Shannon has the upstairs bedroom.

And here is the side that you see (sort of) when you come up the road:


And this is my BACKYARD:


The creek runs right behind the house, and for the first couple days I always thought it was raining outside because of the noise.

Finally, I want you to meet the newest resident of the farmhouse, Sadie:


Sadie is shiny and red. Sadie is beautiful. Sadie is also a piece of crap bicycle. But she's MY piece of crap bicycle, and considering that I walked five miles to the closest Wal-Mart to buy her, I'm feeling pretty attached. Which is actually a shame, given that she doesn't seem too attached to me. Or at least that is what her unwillingness to shift gears and tendancy to try to throw me off of her rocking seat when we go over the smallest bump seems to say. Still, old men always compliment me on my "neat ride" when I take her into town, so I guess there is a silver lining to the bicycle debacle.

Shoshana vs.The Insects, round one

Old houses set into expansive well-manicured grounds surrounded by rolling hills and verdant forests attract a lot of things. Retirees, school-children, antiquers, minivans, the fanny-packed: these are all examples of the types of creatures who are drawn inside of Grey Towers by the allure of old furniture, older stone, and the chance to look at a rich man's water closet. But do you know what else is attracted to old houses? BUGS. All that delicious wood and textiles, the lovely nooks and crannies that are just perfect for setting up a webbed house, the dark hulking furniture and hugeness of the structure, the fabulous damp that rises up through the flagstones; these and more are all good reasons for the creepy-crawlies of the world to migrate to Grey Towers and play house. A large portion of historic housekeeping and preventative conservation is battling bugs. Today, I was on the front lines.

My first skirmish was with two spiders I found lurking in the fireplace of the Great Hall. Large and thin, they were hiding out under the grate. I went at them with a plastic cup and a peice of Grey Towers paper paraphanalia (all I had near me at the time, and time was of the essence so I couldn't run to get better equipment.) Fittingly, the newsletter was about invasive bug species in the area. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough, and one got away completely while the other crawled to an area I couldn't get at.

Then there was the large beetle-like creature that scurried past me on my way to the visitors desk to drop off the bug-catching materials I had borrowed from them. I yelped when I saw it and dove to get the little bugger, but he was too fast. I was disappointed, but reminded myself that he was on the visitor's office side of the carpet and thus technically not crossing the border into historic room territory, where he could do real damange.

My final encounter was with a moth, who was fluttering weakly on the old oak staircase leading from the Great Hall to the second floor. As his wings flapped lethargicallyI saw my opportunity and pounced, catching him in the plastic-cup-grave I had intended for the spiders. Feeling accomplished but strangely sad (I suppose I feel some sympathy for my fallen enemies), I carried him up to the curatorial office on the third floor for my boss to see.

So, here is the count: Bugs-2, Shoshana-1. But never fear... they'll be dropping like flies (pun!) on Friday when I bring out the VACUUM.

In other animal notes: I saw a black bear yesterday! He scampered across the parking lot in front of the curatorial storage building while I sat in the government SUV next to my boss, who pointed and yelled, "BEAR!" It was probably the highlight of my day.

And the job begins

This morning I started my first real curatorial/historic-upkeep job, by dusting. Yes, dusting. Still, dusting is important to historic collections. In fact, it can be argued that regular cleaning can do more to preserve historic objects than any preservation attempt made after the damage. I dusted in the Great Hall, the main entrance to the house and the room that is probably most prone to dust. The dangerous combination of visitors tromping in and out (and touching things they shouldn't and adjusting knick-knacks AND SITTING ON THE ANTIQUE CHIPPENDALES, arrgghh!) and heavy dark wood furniture that shows everything means that it requires the most work. It was surprisingly fun - working my way around the very valuable furniture. duster in gloved hand, being extra careful and precise so as not to damage anything. I felt like I was doing Important Work, when really I'm just a glorified housekeeper.

I imagine that it will become boring after a while, though, even if I only have to dust and swiffer every couple days, so I have taken to naming the furniture I work on. So far I have Balthazar (a big 19th century European chest/hutch thing, hulking and intricately carved), Armando (named so because he is an armoire of sorts, matching in style to Balthazar) and the Bobbsy Twins (two elaborate throne chairs with velvet upholstery and faces of important historical figures carved into the wood around the back. ) I'm still working on a name for a blue-green painted cabinet brought back from the South Pacific in the 1920s, so any suggestions would be welcome.

My girl Cornelia

I'm spending the next three months working as a curatorial intern at Grey Towers, a national historic site in Milford, PA. Grey Towers was the summer home and personal headquarters for Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service and twice-elected governor of PA. You'll be hearing a lot about old Giff and his lovely home (and it is truly lovely) from me over the next three months, but for now I want to talk about my newest best friend: Gifford's wife, Cornelia Bryce Pinchot.

Cornelia Bryce was the type of girl people (generally old genial grandfathers with pipes and smoking jackets, at least in my imagination) would have referred to as a "firecracker" one hundred years ago. They would have said, gleefully yet still patronizingly, that she had "moxie." I'm free, however, to call her what she was: one bad-ass lady on a mission.

Born in 1881 during a time when women were elevated on pedestals of purity even as they were denied basic democratic rights, she resented her parents for denying her an education, talked politics and smoked cigars with the men, and refused to marry until she was 33. She was also a suffragette - on Friday my job was to sort through and scan old photographs of Cornelia, and one of my favorites is her at the front of an army of women carrying American flags and signs reading "Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association."

When she finally did marry it was to Gifford Pinchot, a man 15 years her senior who respected her intelligence and was more than happy to let her use their collective wealth (a great deal of it hers) to further her political and social goals. And further them she did. She campaigned heavily for her husband when he ran for governor, and as first lady of Pennsylvania she got involved in policy issues concerning child labor and sweatshops. In fact, during Pinchot's second term as governor (interrupted by a break because in PA governors were banned from succeeding themselves) she even traveled to New York to take part in a labor strike against a factory that refused to let its employees (mostly women and children) unionize.

Cornelia wasn't nearly as successful as she was enthusiastic. She ran for Congress twice, losing both times both because she was a woman but also because her campaign was more idealistic than it was political savvy. Still, a lady representative in 1925ish? Awesome. She also founded her own free experimental school for Pennsylvania's children, adamantly campaigned for child labor laws, and was the tackiest interior decorator ever. The majority of the Grey Tower interiors that we have conserved (or reconstructed to the best of our ability) in the house are interiors that she designed when she moved in, and man, are they silly. Every time I walk past the painted-marble treatment on the walls of the sitting room or duck under one of the enormous elk heads that she mounted at the entry, I giggle and imagine Cornelia crying out at the movers or painters in her posh East Coast accent, "NO, I want them to look MORE noble, more impressive - make them appear HUGE!" And then she probably kicked them out of the house in frustration and just did the job herself. She was delightfully tacky, and her heavy-handed approach to interior design pops up unrepentantly throughout the house.

So, Cornelia Bryce Pinchot. Feminist, rabble-rouser, unapologetically brash and unsubtle, and my favorite thing about Grey Towers (so far.)

All This Could Have Been Avoided If Only You'd Have Listened to Me

This is an old post from when I got back from Australia. I found it in my drafts folder, so I guess I never got around to publishing it. It is pretty ancient but it has some gems, and since I might not be posting anything for a while (there is apparently NO internet in the backwoods of PA... also, we can communicate with other people and towns when the visibility is good enough to see the smoke signals. And we gather around the town square to listen to the one Victrola play ragtime music) I figured this might be fun to read. So here you go: a belated edition of "All This Could Have Been Avoided if Only You'd Have Listened to Me:"

I think its time for me to make a list (as I am wont to do) of all the things I'm not totally okay with here in the U.S. This list will only include changes that occured while I was on a different continent, because listing all the flaws of my great country is a much more laborious task than I am currently up to. So here it is, Mistakes America Made While I Wasn't Watching:

1. Veronica Mars - or rather, the cancelling of it. Yes, it had some rough patches. And sure, it didn't get the best ratings. But let me tell you, when it was good it was great. Teen noir? Nancy Drew with an attitude problem? Extraordinarily emo biker gangs? Does it get any better than this? We'll never find out, of course, because the scrooges over at the CW didn't care enough to try to revive what might have been the only quality show on their network.

2. No Universal Health Care - so I know that when I left America we didn't have it, and so I shouldn't be surprised that we don't have it now. Somehow, though, I forgot all about our tortuous health care system while I was abroad. I got to tell you, though, that it sure was wonderful to know that I could waltz into any clinic anywhere in Australia and not have to pay a cent for my treatment. Unfortunately, though, the rest of the citizenry of the great U.S. will never get to experience that wild sensation. No, they'll have to go through the complicated process of referrals and reimbursments and the never-ending phone conversations with insurance carriers - that is, of course, if they're insured to begin with.

3. The New Cheeseboard Pizza - Yes, I know its bigger. I know it can accomodate more people. I know it can be a more pleasant place to eat. But damnit, half the point of going to Cheeseboard pizza was for the experience of waiting in the cramped line, sweating from the heat of the ovens and worrying that your eardrums were going to pop from the volume of the live jazz band playing in a space approximately the same size as your closet. That long, hot, drawn-out process made the feeling of picking up your pizza and settling down into the busy traffic-median greenway so much more enjoyable. Without it, I'm just not sure if its the same place.

4. Driving - So here is the thing: every time you get behind the wheel of your enormous hunk of moving metal and turn on the ignition, you are reaffirming the social contract. This contract is long and complicated, but at its most simple it means that you will respect the rights of other people to exist and get to where they need to go and that to do that you will make eye contact, acknowledge other cars, and generally act like a considerate human being. In return, other drivers agree to do the same, ensuring that the social contract is fulfilled and the circle of life moves forward. But this doesn't work if some people don't bother with it. OH MY GOD PEOPLE RESPECT THE SOCIAL CONTRACT. Seriously! I know I'm not a fabulous driver but if one more jerk in a giant SUV tries to run me off the road or honks at me for stopping at a freaking STOP SIGN, I will cut a bitch. DO NOT TEST ME.

5. Scooter Libby - did Bush really commute his sentence? Really? So not only was he the administration's fall guy, but he didn't even have to fall that far. Thats so messed up.

Of course, there are lots of things I love about America: our rocking Constitution, democracy (I still believe in it!), turning right on red lights, choosing from eight million brands of peanut butter in the grocery store, and so on. But really - lets get our act together on the health insurance. And the social contract. And if someone could find a way to resuscitate Veronica Mars, I'd marry them.

I attempt to keep up with technology, even amidst the panic of packing

See Shoshi move. See Shoshi freak out about packing. Pack, Shoshi, pack! See Shoshi worry about packing too much, and then panic at the thought of only bringing one pair of boots. See Shoshi start an internship in the glorious backcountry of Pennsylvania. Cling to your guns and your religion, Shoshi!

See Shoshi video-blog:

Would you like some letterpress with your handmade paper?

I've spent the last six (?) weeks working at an awesome place, run by awesome people, and I've decided to tell the internets about it.

Twig & Fig is a custom letterpress studio in Berkeley on Vine and Walnut (they are kitty-corner to the goofy cupcake place in Walnut Square.) We design and print custom wedding invites, bar/bat invites, do personal stationary, business cards, etc. We letterpress almost all aspects of the copy and images on the product, which means using a lot of old and supercool machinery. And I say "we" when I write all this because until three days ago, I worked there. And it was the most enjoyable summer job I've ever had.

No, really - paper is interesting, and letterpress is beautiful, and working with interesting and beautiful materials in a pleasant environment with fun and engaging people can apparently make being employed so much more enjoyable than I ever would have imagined.

I'm leaving for Pennsylvania for three months tomorrow, so I thought I'd post a few pictures (and a little surprise) to remember T&F by:


This is the design studio/kitchen/break room (that is my Coke Zero on the table!) and also a great shot of Suzie's back as she does important design-y work. Suzie is a co-owner of Twig & Fig with her husband, Serge. They are both very neat people (neat as in cool, not neat as in organized, although they are).


Below is where T&Fers meet with clients to discuss jobs or show off the pretty, pretty things they have made.


Twig & Fig's primary business is making beautiful custom invitations and stationary, but they also have a storefront that sells a mishmash of things—mostly letterpressed materials and other stationary-related goods. When I wasn't working on production for a job I sometimes manned the store. We got a lot of customers coming in and getting huffy because maybe we didn't have the exact Moleskine they wanted or perhaps I was on the phone with a client and couldn't help them immediately. There was always the temptation to look them in the eye and go, "listen, pal, you are small potatoes. The person on the phone wants two hundred wedding invitations encrusted with crystals and printed on paper woven from the wool of a baby lamb, and you want to buy a five dollar card. Surely you see the difference?" But, of course, I said nothing of the sort. Because, as we all know, I am the soul of sweetness and light. The store really is fun, though, and the stuff in it is beautiful:


Behind the storefront is the print shop, where the actual production of a job is done. There are two printing presses - one from 1890 and one from 1973. Surprisingly, Serge does most of the printing on the 1890 press, and it is a beauty to watch in action.


I spent a lot of time back here, working on all manner of projects. I have become the master of the adhesive gun, and midieval scribes cower at my wax-sealing skills. Also, I am a mean envelope maker:


The printing press makes quite a racket in the print shop, but it becomes soothing after a while, the steady chu-chunk chu-chunk of the machine setting the pace for the room. Here is Serge, running the press (hint: this is a moving picture):


So that was my summer, spent frolicking among the response cards and "directions to our special events" sheets. Thank you to Suzie, Serge, Holly and Michelle for making sure I had an amazing summer. Everyone else, be sure to visit T&F sometime soon, if only to nag the girl at the counter about Moleskine notebooks.