February 16, 2008

Just, Wow.

I finally finished Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials triology last night (i.e. The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.) I haven't enjoyed a piece of fiction this much in a really long time. I know the books were immensely popular in Pullman's native UK, but I completely missed their release here. You really have to read all three books in succession; despite the fact that they made it into a movie (which I haven't seen), the end of the first book is really just the beginning of the story. It's just a very emotional, beautifully written fantasy story.

I find the objections to the books due to their "atheism" especially funny now that I've read them. Pullman is an out atheist, and though the villans of the book are the Church authoritarians, the message is so much more beautiful and complex. It deals with individual responsibility, love, the interconnectedness of everything, and God is actually a benevolent (though impotent and deposed) character. The evil in the book is less about religion and more about blind authority and fear of the unknown. It doesn't challenge any specific religious doctrine, so I think much of the outrage over the book is from people who are a) (ignorantly/misguidedly) afraid of atheism in general and b) have not read the books. One aspect I found extremely interesting (and this is probably very threatening to fundamentalist thought) is that there is a shared mythology not only amongst people from different cultures, but also different worlds. The details and interpretations are the different, but the interpretations differ. This sort of ecumenical/universalist outlook is, in my humble opinion, a very healthy thing for kids to grasp.

My favorite character by far was Iorek Byrnsson, the king of the armored polar bears. The book made me cry at least four times, and Adam kept picking on me that I was crying over my drunken polar bear. Wait 'till he reads it...

Posted by mwashburn at 03:56 PM | Comments (1)

December 09, 2007

Weekend Randomness

The Family
We're entertaining the stomach flu this weekend, in a bout of vomiting that seems to be an annual pre-holiday event. All I can say is that I'm glad the Bug waited until after the holiday open house at the new Dean's house to hurl the entire contents of her stomach across the room.

Knitting
Finally got my Ravelry invite! I'm foureyedflygrrl there, so if you're on, look me up.

Reading
I finally started reading The Golden Compass. I would have LOVED this book when I was younger. I mean, I am really enjoying it now, but at the time in my life when I was fantasy-prone and extremely into that sort of fiction it would have really engrossed me. I can't figure out why I had never heard of it. In any case, it's actually quite complicated and dense for a book aimed at children. And however they may have softened up the movie, the book is quite clear in its anti-religion stance, using words like "papacy" and so forth, so the connotations of the Catholic church are there. What I can't figure out is why groups like the Catholic League want to actually ban such books/movies. You'd think that a strong, meaningful, legitimate worldview would stand up to scrutiny and invite examination of counter argument. Oh, wait a minute...

Which leads me to my next item. Trying to make up my mind about throwing myself behind The OUT Campaign. Suddenly finding myself among tons of other non-theists, skeptics, etc. online has made me really examine my own unbelief and what it means in a larger sense. I see a big movement towards "coming out," which I think is important for atheists for a number of reasons, but at the same time I want to avoid the trap of setting up yet another faction, especially one based on supposed intellectual superiority. I think that the point I always want to make in outing myself as an atheist is my similarities to everyone else, not my differences. I think that showing myself to be a loving, caring, concerned, ethical, civic-minded person who is also an atheist does more for acceptance and understanding of atheism than doing the whole elitism thing. But by the same token I think not enough atheists are out, speaking out about the misrepresentation of atheism in the media, combating all the misconceptions out there, and so on. People like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have been doing a HUGE part of this work by writing books and being so available to the media this past year, but it's not enough. In any case, I will probably be posting more about this as I sit around and continue to think through it all.

Posted by mwashburn at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2007

Monsters!

It's been a really long time since I read The Mist by Stephen King. Skeleton Crew, one of his short story collections, was the first Stephen King book I ever read, and I don't remember all the details of The Mist but I remember that it scared the bejesus out of me. As I got older I started to find King a little formulaic at times, but I think some of those first impressions of his writing have really stuck with me. I remember really liking The Tommyknockers when I read it in high school too. The Mist is, if I recall correctly, the first story in Skeleton Crew, and it's quite long. There's a new movie coming out based on that story, starring Thomas Jane (from The Punisher) and it looks pretty darn scary. I don't remember Marcia Gay Harden's character, but maybe I need to go reread the story. Stephen King is great entertainment, and scary in a way where you can tell yourself it's not real. There have been some really good movies based on his books, and some really bad ones, but we won't get into that (giant bat rats indeed...)

We have so little time to go to the movies these days, but I suppose this is yet another that will be much better on the big screen. I've really lost my tolerance for gore as I've gotten older (I simply could not in a million years sit through any of the Saw movies at this point in my life) but I still like a good monster movie. I guess what it comes down to is that ghosts and monsters are scary, but movies about people doing awful things to each other disturb me far more because it's actually plausible that those things could happen. So, hooray for The Mist by Stephen King. Let's go watch monsters eat people until the cows come home! Then again, being trapped in a grocery store (or on any sort of public transit) during any kind of crisis probably is my worst nightmare (and that's part of what they seem to emphasize in the film).

Posted by mwashburn at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

I, at this point in my life, probably should not be allowed to complain. But complain I shall. Though, as a rule, I do not talk about work on my blog, let me just speak in generalities for a moment. Everyone wants everything immediately and cheaply, and don't really care how that impacts the quality of life of anyone else on the planet, economically, environmentally, or otherwise. No one is interested in really paying for design. The first question, before the parameters for a project are even discussed, is "how much?" And, as an aside, I really really HATE being called "sweetheart," "hon," or "honey," and I don't give a damn if it's a man or a woman saying it, I find it extremely condescending.

Other things that annoy me, in no particular order:
1. I'm still sick. This is ridiculous; it's been over a month now. I found out I might actually have had croup, and not bronchitis. I'm still very congested and seem to go from better to worse and back again over the span of a few days.
2. The fact that my idiotic misunderstanding of exchange rates caused me to pay $21 for Radiohead's In Rainbows instead of the $5 or so I intended.
3. The fact that my daughter was one of only three girls in her entire preschool not dressed as a fairy, princess, fairy princess, or whore/witch for this morning's Halloween parade. Even in the realm of fantasy our daughters are proscribed narrow gender-stereotyped roles as assigned by the Holiday Promotional aisle at Target.
4. Every time we pay off some of our household debts, more appear. What's that? You had a windfall and can pay down your home equity loan? Car accident! Oh, catching up are we? Remember that 0% interest retail credit card you used when you fixed your about-to-cave-in roof? Yep. That's due now. Fuck.
5. For the first time in, well, forever, we are probably gonna be alone on Thanksgiving. I don't say that to try to induce guilt in anyone we've invited who can't make it. I totally understand that most people have plans, and our event was usually just a fun and unexpected catch-all of people who were similarly resigned to staying in this part of the country. I just enjoy it a lot. There's just no way for us to travel to see family for it this year either. That will have to wait for Christmas.

And that whole train of thought sort of syncs up nicely with the melancholy induced by my current reading material. I'm reading the heartbreaking Mohawk by Richard Russo, who is from my sad little hometown in upstate New York. It's set in my home town, and though some of the people and places are shifted around slightly and names changed, I can just picture in such a real way these people and places, and it makes me homesick in a very weird way. From what he's said in interviews, I am now really really anxious to read Russo's new book, Bridge of Sighs, as it deals with a lot of the same ideas but looks at people who got out. The idea that staying=failure but leaving means severing family ties and lots of heartbreak too, and what became of those we left behind. It's just weird to understand his work on such a personal level (though he is my parents age, so generational differences apply).

In any case, I think I'll enjoy another beer and some Halloween candy, and try to keep it together until the weekend.

Posted by mwashburn at 06:38 PM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2007

God is Not Great

One of my myriad birthday presents from Adam was Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I finally started reading it last night. I guess it is an apt remembrance of 9/11/2001 to bury myself in indictment of religion. I still haven't read Dawkins' new book (though I have read other of his books and many articles and essays), and I read Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, but lest you think all this atheist drivel is the same, I can assure you that these authors are about as different as you can get, but what unites them is a very reasoned (if not always completely objective) observation of the role religion plays in history, culture, and politics, and what's wrong with that picture. Whatever your state of belief or unbelief, Hitchens is a challenging thinker and an extremely entertaining writer. He has also traveled extensively and interacted with people of all faiths, all over the globe. He's not just some guy sitting in his ivory tower thinking about all this stuff without experiencing it.

Past and present religious atrocities have occurred not because we are evil, but because it is a fact of nature that the human species is, biologically, only partly rational. Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.
—Christopher Hitchens, from "Putting it Mildly," chapter one of God is Not Great

Posted by mwashburn at 06:42 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2006

It's Just a Lot of Paper

We have made the very difficult decision to liquidate our book collection. Adam and I have been clinging to a ridiculous number of books for many, many years now. We are both avid readers, and both worked for some time in bookstores. We even had a little idea for a while that we'd someday run a bookstore. However, a bricks and mortar bookstore just isn't a viable option these days, for the most part. We moved over 30 boxes of books this last move, and it's just getting ridiculous. They were in boxes for nearly three months before the move, and I don't think we missed them one day. I had a conversation with a friend about all of this, and she told me that she'd read and liked the thought that books tie us to old ideas, from another time in our lives. This is definitely true of myself. Why was I hoarding all these books? To look smart for company? Because I will ever read any of them again? We decided it was time to let go. The goal was to reduce the book collection by 30% and I think we've reached that goal. Granted, they are still in the house, but I'm methodically listing most of them on half.com and have been shipping packages on a pretty much daily basis. We kept our favorite fiction, anything remotely art-related, books with true sentimental value, and things deemed "current reading." I have rediscovered the library, which I look forward to sharing with Lily as she gets older.

I still have a stack of oddball books that lack ISBNs, are ancient, weird, or whatever, that I can't list on half.com. This seems to be rich fodder for some sort of contest or giveaway. I think I need to have a contest to come up with a contest. I'll be thinking on the subject, and in the meantime, leave a comment or shoot me an email if you have a good idea for criteria on which to give away misfit books.

Posted by mwashburn at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)

August 04, 2005

See Spot Run

My darling husband brought me a gift yesterday--the new Harry Potter book! I actually read an entire chapter last night. I am so jealous of people who say "oh, I read tons while I was nursing in the early weeks" because Lily is a sprinter when it comes to nursing. There's no way I have time to read anything other than the political cartoons in Newsweek during a nursing session. In any case, HP is the kind of thing you can read in little snippets without losing the plot. It's no War and Peace. It's nice to be feeding my brain again, even if it is junk food.

Posted by mwashburn at 08:41 AM | Comments (4)

October 03, 2004

Now Reading...

I started Holy Blood, Holy Grail the other day. This nonfiction book explores the mysteries uncovered at Rennes-le-Chateau, a small French town in the foothills of the Pyrenees that was once a Visigoth stronghold and home to the Cathars, a group of people with somewhat unorthodox Christian beliefs who were all but exterminated during the Crusades. The town has long been rumored to have something to do with Biblical treasure, the Holy Grail, and a number of other mysteries. I'm just getting into the book, and right now it's detailing this history of the region, but it's very very interesting. A nonfiction account of some similar ideas to those expounded in The DaVinci Code, I believe (though I have not read Dan Brown's book).

The authors also produced three documentary films for the BBC in the 1970s on the same subject, which I may try to track down.

Posted by mwashburn at 10:04 AM | Comments (5)