This was not very good on horses, and not very good on the war. So, um. He seems like a nice person?
Also! That’s a Western (as in cowboy) show halter on the horse on the cover! I just. Gnnrh.
The bloodlands lie between Berlin and Moscow. You’ve read parts of this history before, but Timothy Snyder’s contribution (a great one) is to change the frame of reference. His subject is the decade and a half of mass death in these lands, considered as the outcome of deliberate policies on the part of both Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany. Snyder’s story thus transcends national and ethnographic boundaries and the ideological differences between Hitler and Stalin to discuss how institutional genocide was allowed to take place. In Europe. And no one cared.
It is, as you might imagine, depressing. Parts of it are heartbreaking. Parts of it are nauseating.
It’s amazing.
It’s effectively the sequel to Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919 and a companion to both Deathless and The Hare With The Amber Eyes. The other book that keeps nagging at me is Helen Darville-Demidenko’s The Hand That Signed The Paper (no link love for you, lady: you know why) which considered the Holocaust as some sort of legitimate revenge for the Ukrainian famine… of course she was a liar, as it turned out. But that’s my country for you: people lying about genocide for notoriety. (Hi, Keith Windschuttle!)
I’m listening to it in the car, which is a good way of forcing yourself to keep going. The narrator has a very particular diction, with clipped enunciation and a downward inflection. I couldn’t place it for a while, then I realized who it reminded me of: Paul Darrow as Kerr Avon. Which is downright unsettling.
Is this the future where it turns out I am actually a replicant too? I can never remember.
ETA: Jeremy says “I always just assumed you were a replicant.” (That’s okay; I quite like boys with robot fetishes.)
1. It turns out that the reason it’s taken me this long to try to download audio books to my phone is because libraries have been tragically afflicted with an evil crippleware proprietary standard! Luckily there is also MP3, but establishing the extreme wrongness of WMA took a couple of hours of my life I will never see again. REVENGE.
2. Finally got off my ass and gave blood this morning. There’s a center right near Montgomery Station, and this morning I was the only donor there. They’ll disqualify you if you’ve ever so much as given the stinkeye to a British cow, which is ridic, but if you are as un-tattooed and monogamous and straight-acting and only-travelling-in-the-First-World, that is to say, if you are as BORING as me, go bleed into a bag. They give you muffins.
3. Last Friday morning I got to have a look at Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard’s offices, preserved exactly as they were when H and P retired, all Mad Men with wood panelling and windows onto a Japanese garden. Then I drove back to the city, where Liz gave me a guided tour of the Noisebridge hackerspace and I examined a Makerbot that was busy making new Makerbots. San Francisco is amazing.
4. The photos of Queen Elizabeth in Ireland are very strange to me for lots of reasons. The Queen looks more and more like my mother as she ages, to the point that the picture of her speaking in Dublin Castle actually raises recognition-hackles on the back of my neck; I have my own very vivid memories of the Book of Kells and Croke Park and the National Stud, and I don’t think I have ever seen the Queen in a place where I have been before; and I know enough history that my entire sympathies are with the protestors, with the security guards and the police, and with the Queen.
5. This week I like this Janelle Monae song, this Janelle Monae song (with a surprise cameo by Claude Debussy), this Olof Arnalds song (with a surprise cameo by Bjork), The Comic Book Guide to the Mission, Inside Wikileaks and, always, the great Ta-Nehisi Coates.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl in possession of a retirement-level liquidity event must be in want of a tax shelter.
Saturday was epic: wushu, then Fairmount Fiestaval, then a dentist’s appointment, then the library. We were received with amused delight everywhere:
…which was great fun right up until their swim lesson, when the paint got washed off but on the bright side, Julia earned her red ribbon. Their swim school is wonderful at providing these regular positive reinforcements for swims well swum. As part of my program of feigning maternal competence, I have all their ribbons pinned to a notice board in the living room. The new ribbon was pinned up with great ceremony.
Then I abandoned the children with their father and put on a little black dress and went to Writers With Drinks with Rebecca and Yoz and Gilbert and Heather, which was fab. I picked up milk on the way home and was interrupted from complaining bitterly about Safeway only ever having two registers open, even when there are thirty-eight people in line, by Rocky, who is making Indian tacos at El Rio and wants to open his own place. “It’s all good,” said Rocky. “You’re right,” I said. “I totally have to seize more day.”
“I just like giving pink cupcakes to Goths. It’s a very specific fetish.”
“So when you get the opportunity, you HAVE to indulge it.”
“Exactly!”
“You totally just Googled ‘pink cupcake Goth’, didn’t you.”
It turns out I am a sucker for little girls who just lost their grandfather. Required to amuse the children for three hours this morning, I took them to Centennial Stables, where they had pony rides on Benji and Bonnie. Afterwards we went to a fantastically well-appointed and well-maintained playground and sat in the sun and ate ice creams. In short, I spoilt them like a freakin’ aunt or something. (Sydney turned into Paradise while my back was turned. One side-effect of the resources boom is a state that can spend mouth-watering amounts of money on its infrastructure. The very bathrooms in Centennial Park are sleek and modern and clean.)
Later, when the clouds rolled in and the wind grew chill, Claire searched the apartment in vain for her favourite striped cardigan. Jeremy, Janny and I joined in the search, but it was nowhere to be found. I get very anxious about lost things these days. In the evening, after I had retrieved my mother from Central Station, I borrowed a [torch|flashlight] from Jan and hiked back to a different playground that we had visited yesterday, after lunch with Kay and Kelso. On my second circuit of the park, the torchlight picked out the cardigan carefully laid out on the brick wall, waiting for me to find it. The world is full of people who are thoughtful and kind.
Since we were last here, Jan has had the awful teal carpet taken up and replaced with golden wooden floors, and has redone the kitchen. We collectively agonized for one million billion years about what colour the kitchen should be, and eventually settled on… white. It looks fantastic. The house is far lighter and more pleasant to hang out in. Net win.
All this work got finished in the last week or so, just in time for the wake on Friday, although this was not part of the plan, and the contractors cut a lot of the wood out on the terraces, which are surrounded by planters. The plants got covered in sawdust and needed to be cleaned before all the people come over…
…which is how I came to spend the last hour dusting a large aspidistra.
Do you want to hear a silly-me story? ‘Course you do, why else would you come here? In January Qantas cancelled its direct flights between Sydney and San Francisco. I took this as a personal affront and sulked for a day and a half. And now Virgin has announced that it is taking over the route, so all the emotional energy I put into that sulk went down the drain and I can have my direct flights anyway. Someone remind me next time, or don’t, since I find that sort of thing annoying.
I loved Richard very much.
Architect, raconteur, bon vivant. I don’t think any woman has ever had a better father-in-law.
They are gone and I am bereft. They are among the least high maintenance of all the people to whom I am related, so there is not much narrative to impart, because all we were was happy. We looked at interesting and pretty things. We laughed. We ate delicious food.
They have promised to come back.
Radiant
Obedient, Your
Highness
Intelligent
Nice and
Infinitely lovely!
Al and Kelly are miffed that I haven’t mentioned them in my blog yet. So! Al and Kelly are here, and it is lovely. Al is my brother so close in age we are practically twins, and Kelly is my sister’s kickass daughter.
We’ve eaten at Samovar and Angkor Borei and Tacqueria Cancun and Spicy Bite and Noeteca and Tuba and Pancho Villa and In and Out Burger, and had coffee at Ritual and Nervous Dog and cocktails at the Royal Cuckoo, to the point where Kelly finally said “Don’t you ever eat at home?” So Jeremy made lamb chops and cheese pie tonight, which was delicious. We’ve thrift shopped and been to House of Air and Crissy Field and Talbot’s Toyland and Robogames and the Lego Store. I want to show them all of San Francisco all at once. I am a little manic when it comes to hostessing. They escaped with my car and saw the redwoods and Berkeley.
They’re lovely guests, easy-going and ever willing to be pleased. When I took Alain out for drinkies with my girlfriends, they all declared him charming and delightful. When I pointed out a mass of aloe vera, Al and I said, in unison, “‘Allo, Vera.” We walked past Mitchell’s late at night with the fog rolling in, and Kelly said “Are all those people in line for ice cream? At this time of night? In the cold?” And I said that they were and she said: “That is awesome.”
It is. It is.
Really ace weekend. Dinner at Brenda’s Friday night – crawfish beignets zomg – and then Source Code, which was epically popcorn. And then drinks at Yoz’s, where he pulled out his phone and said, “About this blog post: is Juniper Arwen Anemone Sagan Donner Hermes really a real name?” and we said “Oh my God, haven’t we introduced you to the Ximms yet? You’ll love them, they are lovely!”
Saturday I mostly slept. I slept late, went to the farmer’s market with Salome, which these days is mostly sitting outside Sandbox eating beef piroshki and drinking De La Paz coffee and talking about our lives. Then I went home and napped for hours. Then we took the girls swimming and Jules went to Azucena’s party and Claire and Jeremy and I had yummy vegetarian Indian. When I got home Bebe lay on top of me purring and saying “You remember how you slept late and then had a long nap and I got to snuggle with you all day? That was aces.”
This morning I rode Omni with Toni and Colin and jumped VAST FENCES, possibly as high as 2 foot 9. I have undeniably improved. I visited Salome on the way home and played with the boys while she tidied up, then we went back to my place and collected J and the girls and walked up the hill and had lunch in the garden behind Progressive Grounds, and bought books at Red Hill where I took a picture of a job ad for Rose, and visited Good Prospect Community Garden and picked lemons, and met Kathy and Martha out for a walk, and went to Holly Park, and picked up dinner at Avedano’s and now we are home and dinner smells awesome and I am fond of my life.
This morning, driving to work on 280. Olof Arnalds on the radio. Three Canada geese flew over me in formation.
Chinatown retold with lizards, which is nice for those of us on permanent hiatus from Polanski. I admired this film for its commitment to its own deep weirdness.
That said, I read a book about Bruce Davidson winning the 1974 World Championships on Irish Cap. He was pretty green himself at the time and humble with it, so he watched the great riders of his day to figure out what they did right and he did wrong. He noticed they rode with short stirrups and crouched over fences.
I think I’ve told you that I’ve been riding shorter lately and that my lower leg has greatly improved as a result. It turns out that for human corgis like me, long-bodied and short-legged, the mythical straight line from head to hips to heels just isn’t. Your leg needs to sit further forward. So I wondered what would happen if I tried crouching as well, to get my weight in my heels and stop anticipating fences.
What happened was that Dez said: “Oh my God, I love your position over fences today! What are you doing that’s different?”
It was a brilliant lesson. We ran over the hour and I wanted to keep going. I’ve been in a warm and happy haze ever since, which has made me much more patient with errands and children, which is nice because I was pretty awful to the kids all day yesterday. Got myself caught in that horrible cycle of disliking myself for being snappy, and then immediately turning around and snapping at them again.
I’ve actually been stricter today, giving them only healthy food and refusing to turn on the TV so they have to go do imaginative play. But it’s been mellow because I haven’t felt the need to excuse or defend my hardass-ness. I simply make decisions and refuse any further engagement. A curious game, bickering with the kids; the only winning move is not to play.
preoccupations
