People/women, I am mentoring. (Part IV)

People, I am mentoring me some women and girls. I say: Women!/fellow women! I am mentoring. Mentoring, mentoring, mentoring!

But I am essentially mentoring for free, when I should be doing something else. You know?

Why won't you send me some cash?

You know, this makes me think about: it was all about mentoring in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Women were mentoring the heck--the heck, I say--out of other women and girls. They were mentoring them so much that some of them got the creeps! But then what. The Nazis, that's what. And you know why? 'Cause they didn't get that cash. They mentored, but they had no cash.

Think about that, fellow women.

Brain, brain, go--uh--for it!

Why does writing coincide with a sudden, entirely new to me and obsessive interest in the vintage lamps for sale on ebay?

Major in relaxing!

We noticed yesterday evening that in the nice glossy photograph of one of our profs. lecturing to a fancy big lecture hall on the cover of the new propaganda brochure for our major, there's a student apparently sleeping in the front row of said lecture hall.

Touch the future

first day of class

student: My adviser just signed me up for this class, so I do not have the readings.
me: Oh, OK. Your adviser signed you up? Are you interested in the class?
student: Uh, yeah. I asked her to sign me up for a "modern" class.

(note: "modern [discipline unspecified]" is kind of broad.)

next class
(same) student absent.

next class

(same) student: Professor, I downloaded the books for the class onto my I Pad, so if you see me looking at my computer during class for a long time, that is why.

(note: I have banned computers in my class.)

me: Your I Pod? That is not a good way to read the books.
student: No, my I Pad! These are the new times, I downloaded the books.
me: Uh, which book? We did not read any books for today. We read articles.
student: Uhm.
me: Do you mean [name of textbook]?
student: I don't know. My mom downloaded them for me.

Revealed yesterday

Revealed yesterday (unrelated):

The pope is gay.

Humans have an innate longing for fur.

Jane Austen/Mitfords news

Mansfield Park kept me up until 2 am! It's crunching my heart into little pieces. I'm inspired to throw this out there to those of you who obsess about Jane Austen: is Mansfield Park her greatest novel? Because: I've never been so engrossed by a book that had 'so much to recommend against it'--uh, for one, lack of a single likable character.

By the way, come to think of people who might read this: When you said one of the Mitford sisters was an admirer of Hitler, I didn't realize you meant "she moved to Munich for four years and stalked Hitler, to the point of creeping him out."

Shoot

Shoot, I have to teach tomorrow. WTF? Why can't the summer just be, like, at all times?

And look, so I say this every Sept., I say it cause it's the damn truth: German unification is boooorrrrriiinnngggg.


German unification (1871!) is so boring, it's the kind of boring that you want to protect others from, even strangers. You know, like today I was thinking to myself: how I need a new bra, but I was like--hey, I just bought three bras in like, December--and then I was like--gee, what happened to those three bras? Oh, well, one got chewed up by the dryer....etc.

That information about my bras is so boring that I would not tell it to anyone, in order to not subject them to such a boring story. Except for CC. For some reason she is exempt from this and I told her about the bras. We were on a long drive, anyway, so maybe it was just nice to have something to talk about.

But I would not tell even CC about German unification. It is that boring.

The irony is that I have to tell people in my class tomorrow about it because basically, they are paying me to tell them about it, in violation of my own sense of human fellow-feeling.

CBAM returns

CBAM's blog is active and has a bold new look!

Discuss!

Did peoples see The Kids are All Right, the new lezzie movie? I saw it last night with CC. If you saw it, what did you think? I am curious!

I'm out of meadow

Alpine toe story

I enjoyed very much hiking in the Alps with CC and the occasional Ibex (or Chamois) (pictured)
despite dropping CC's laptop on my toe the night before we left for the hike. The toe (pictured), as Tom put it, saved the laptop "from certain smashtastrophe." Happily it turned out that the toe didn't hurt much once I soaked it in a bidé and strapped it into a hiking boot.

Nice to Teriso

Above: The beach in Nice two nights ago (rocks instead of sand!) and the view in Teriso, Italy this morning.

CC tells me that this summer is the hottest in recorded history, according to U.S. NOAA. We are leaving for our hike in the Maritime Alps tomorrow morning.

'Fiche rides off into the sunset

It was pointed out to me by CC that the raging international debate to settle once-and-for-all the question of microfiche versus microfilm is not whipped into "raging" just yet because some people do not have an opinion. Because they do not know what the 'fiche is.

Microfiche is these plastic cards, a little bigger than index cards. On them are tiny photographs of documents.


To read them, you go into a little windowless back room and put them into a giant machine (circa 1990 if you're lucky; 1970 if you're not) that makes a lot of noise and heat and projects the tiny pictures onto a screen.

Can you see why this is much better than microfilm?









Microfilm is the same kinds of tiny pictures of documents on plastic, but on a reel instead of on cards. These reels are very long, maybe 50 feet long. They have many more tiny pictures on them than do the microfiche cards. You put them into usually the same machine that reads the 'fiche.

(In a recent moment of personal victory, when faced with a biatchy archivist, I taught myself to convert the reader machine from microfilm to microfiche reading.)

But the main reason that the 'fiche is the best is that it's so, so much easier to find the document you're looking for on the 'fiche. You don't have to scroll through 500 pages of documents to find your doc. On the 'fiche, it's right there, waiting patiently for you.

That is why I heart the 'fiche.

The sadness is that I think around 1980, someone decided that the films are better. Because they are more durable? (I think the reason they filmed these files anyway was to preserve them, also to save space.) Who knows. Anyway, there are a lot more films out there riding the range than 'fiches. That is why everybody has to get behind the 'fiche!

The Hills are Alive

Walking tour: post-Nazi Munich

The Nazi party was founded in Munich, grew into a mass party there, and kept its headquarters there after it took over the German government in 1933. Architecture and aesthetics were deeply important to the fascists--fascism consisted in them--and the dictatorship had big plans to re-make Munich, but never broke ground on the most ambitious of them. They did, however, build a number of buildings in Munich, many of which survived the war and are still in use today.

What's fascist architecture all about? Are these buildings evil? How do people negotiate the past as they use these buildings?

I went on a walking tour to check it out, with the help of this website along with this book.

First stop: The former House of German Art (Haus der Kunst). Convinced of the need to revitalize German art, by which he meant to get rid of Jewish artists, modern art, and expressionism, Hitler commissioned this museum with much fan fare. Across the street, a temporary exhibition of what the Nazis labeled "degenerate art" (including works by the greats of German expressionism) drew far more spectators than the Nazi-approved art in the Haus der Kunst. Today, it's still a museum, but it purports to display the art that the Nazis tried to suppress.

Above: the doors on the side of the Haus der Kunst. Creepy, huh? The building isn't in great shape right now. When it opened, the stone (granite?) was bright white, and its facade dominated the view from the street (they've let the trees grow up in front of the main facade.)
Above: The Führerbau or Führer building, a major Nazi Party administrative building containing an office and living quarters for Hitler. An integral part of its design was the giant eagle and swastika above its portico, which, like similar garnishes on other buildings, was removed, likely by the U.S. army that occupied Munich. Can you see the spot where the eagle used to be?

Another party administrative building across the street from the Führer building. Although they were built well before the war, a tunnel and air raid shelter connected them. A lot of the building materials for Nazi construction were quarried by concentration camp prisoners in brutal and often fatal work conditions.

These two Party administrative buildings above face a central square that saw the most extensive fascist architectural makeover of any spot in Munich. Here they built two "honor temples" to house the coffins of the Party members killed in the Beer Hall Putsch. The "honor temples" saw an annual pageant commemorating the putsch and expressing fascist aesthetics. Here's a link to see the whole plaza (the gate in the foreground pre-existed the fascist construction.) The U.S. army tore down the "honor temples" and re-buried the putschers.


Above: a party office building, now a Bavarian government office building. Here they just took down the swastika and left up the eagle (the swastika was inside the wreath that the eagle is holding in its talons.)


Above: a fountain that's pretty much the same today as when built. German fascist sculpture can be tough to spot because it's so banal, but you can often spot it because it tends to depict the beautiful, naked male body instead of the female body. The statues I find slightly silly, unlike the buildings. There are a bunch lying around in overgrown Berlin parks, half-forgotten. (Or maybe not forgotten. There's one I used to pass a lot that someone spray painted a message on. The message was, 'this is a Nazi statue.' I wouldn't have known otherwise because it is a statue of a fat baby and a basket of flowers.)

So what's it all about?

One thing that interests me about these buildings is that they're not over the top or campy, at all. Moreover, they seem to have succeeded, in that they express a unique and fascist aesthetic that's about monumentality, a lot of stone and right angles, and a kind of modernist spin on greco-roman tropes (like the square columns).

I feel like they have a dwarfing affect on the viewer. You feel unimportant, and the building doesn't compensate for its monumentality by offering charming ornamentation or beauty. But is that me reading into it? Fascism was all about subverting the individual to the state/nation.

Also, they creep the heck out of me! I sort of can't believe that people go to work in them every day.

What do you think?

Surf Munich!

My heart belongs to microfiche

Microfiche is so much better than microfilm. Only losers would choose microfilm!

Toronto police shoot aparently peaceful protestors with rubber bullets

Even though I know they do this kind of stuff--I have seen the NYC police cart people away in the midst of a peaceful march--this video shocked me. It's long, but try to catch the last two minutes.

It's just such a small march!

Still against it

I still support boycotting the facebook, but I joined it.

I joined it because I said to myself, 'Self: if there were a new technology that let you see a picture of like, everyone you ever knew, including the 60% of those people with whom you are no longer in touch, and maybe learn a little about them--would you struggle to be the only person in the world not using that technology?' And then I said back to myself: 'Self, I would struggle to do that but probably give in at some point.'

Also, I have to spend the weekend alone in southern Germany and I feel lonely. (This may be a better reason.)

Anyway, there you go. I defiantly pledge myself to the blog medium!

That's no giant carpet, that's a man baby.

We've secretly replaced these historic buildings with giant carpets painted to look just like these historic buildings.


Will the tourists notice the difference? Let's watch!

I'm in Munich, capital of Bavaria! I like it here and will stay for at least two more days! Despite the replacement of historic buildings.

Well, you know, in this crazy city, whose to say what's a historic building and what's a giant carpet? The joint was bombed to bits in 1944.* Every historic building you see is a replacement of a historic building.

*Uh, I noticed after I posted that this is in the passive voice. Curious, eh? And just who bombed it to bits? Who's getting in free to national parks?

Judith Butler Declines Berlin Pride's "Civil Courage" Award

Judith Butler declined the Berlin Pride Parade's "Civil Courage" award in a speech here in Berlin less than a week ago in a call for gay pride movements to fight racism and islamophobia.

Butler said that she declined the award in order to distance herself from the explicit racism of the organizers of the giant Berlin gay pride event (known here as Christopher Street Day or CSD) and their failure to deal with racism in their movement, including racism against Muslims here in Berlin. Butler also decried the commercialism of the pride event. Her action has, as you can imagine, caused a kerfuffle here, but sadly hasn't gotten any coverage in the U.S. as far as I can tell.

I say: Way to go, Judy B.!
Butler suggested that the "Civil Courage" prize be given instead to these Berlin groups:

GLADT (Turkish Gays and Lesbians)

LesMigraS (an organization of lesbian migrants and black lesbians against violence and discrimination)

SUSPECT (a group of queers against violence, racism, and homophobia)
ReachOut (an organization for victims of right-wing, racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic violence)

Transgenialer CSD (the alternative Pride parade)

Here is an English press release from SUSPECT and and a video of part of Butler's speech (with English subtitles--she apparently spoke in German.)

Angela Davis's statement of support for Butler.

Transgenialer CSD's 2009 logo:

The Greatest Generation

Me: Wow, me and CC sure had to pay a lot to get into the park at the beach today. It is sure expensive.
Dad: Your mother and I do not have to pay at the national parks--we get in free! Because we have the old man pass.
Me: What? That's not fair.
Dad: It's fair. Hey! It's fair because we won World War II.
Me: ??
Dad: We won WWII!
Me: What? You were six years old.
Dad: I collected cans.
Me: Uh, you definitely turned nine in 1945.
Dad: We bought stamps! We collected cans! We collected tin foil.

Putting the *bad* back in tribadism

Nice, friendly reader may remember the 1000-page book, E.F.W. Eberhard's 1924 The Erotic Foundations of Women's Emancipation (Die Frauenemanzipation und Ihre Erotischen Grundlagen). I took lots of digital photographs of it in 2007 and merrily imagined myself reading it later.

Then it seemed for a long time like in fact, I would not read it later.

But yesterday I started reading chapter 6. And yes, the book is indeed the hoot that its chapter titles promised it would be.

Chapter 5: Masturbation and the Women's Emancipation Movement
Chapter 6: Tribadism and the Women's Emancipation Movement
Chapter 7: Sadism and the Women's Emancipation Movement

You couldn't publish certain descriptions of sex acts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even if you were a scientist of sex. The sexologists got around this by putting them in Latin. E.F.W. Eberhard quotes them a lot.

The thing is, you can often tell what they mean, even if you do not speak Latin (or if your Latin teacher did not go over this vocabulary in high school):

frictio genitalium mutua (p. 538)

Which is good, because the online Latin dictionary run by Notre Dame University is no help.

Lesbian skeletons found by archeologists!

Wars, natural catastrophes, and indeed all situations with great danger and uncertain outcome, will quickly upset regimes of pleasure and desire. “In such periods dreams that have been restrained are quickly realized."

There are countless episodes in history that prove this. A classic example is ancient Pompeii. Many skeletons found there, it’s well known to researchers, are in the act of having sex. In one house: lesbian skeletons. One has its hand on the other’s pubic region.

--Franz Scott (partial paraphrase), Das Lesbische Weib, 1933

Grading

Grading hurts me brain!

Did you know? The functioning of printers is directly affected by their proximity to the survivors of recent car accidents

Student:

"Sorry that I did not print my paper out before class started this morning. My roommate got in a bad car accident last night."

Note: This same roommate's bout of swine flu earlier in the semester showed that the functioning of printers is also adversely affected by their proximity to swine flu.

No additional headline needed

(Thanks to Kid Showbusiness.)

Chalk butt

Sometimes I turn around from writing on the board and people on the right side of my class are laughing amongst themselves. This is when I am teaching.

For the past year I've attributed this to my own (substantial) paranoia, until about an hour ago when after my lecture a student tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You have chalk on your butt."

I waited until most of my students were gone, then I craned my neck around and had a look at my butt. It had a big white line across one cheek. This line could only be from me sitting on the chalk ledge--the part of the blackboard where you store chalk.

At that moment, gazing at my own butt, I realized: I sometimes "rest" on the chalk ledge when I'm teaching. I hadn't consciously considered this before--it's just something I do without thinking while I teach. I feel tired, so I perch or lean on whatever is handy.

But when I perch on the chalk ledge: white line across butt.

Winter goal achieved

I achieved my winter goal, which was to see an icicle growing from the roof of a house all the way to the ground.

It only took me one week to achieve this goal!