Who's a book whore?

I'm a book whore.

And I'm OK with that.

Funny overheard statements

My dad to the puppies: "Don't kill the pillow. The pillow is a protected species."

A mark of the despised barbarian

8. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World by Robert Garland

On one of my Amazon skims, I was browsing through a lot of disability literature. Most of it is current (i.e., within the last 20-30 years), with quite a bit even going back to the turn of the century. I was clicking "Add to Wishlist" pretty regularly.

(For those of you who don't know, I use my Amazon wishlist not as a way to get folks to buy things for me but rather as a reminder to myself of what I'd like to read one day. Then I look for one or two at a time at the library or order it through inter-library loan.)

So, I was noticing a pattern of disability literature being not more than a century-plus-change old, when this book appeared. Hmmmm, I know about Hephastus (Vulcan to the Romans), the lame-footed god who was the blacksmith of the gods and cuckholded by his wife Aphrodite, but that was pretty much it. Garland went through as much of the sketchy literature and art available to try to piece together how the deformed and disabled fared in Greek and Roman society. Obviously, there isn't much available, and of course, most of it is bad. Naturally there is the tale of Odysseus's dealings with Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant. Aristotle philosophizes on the deviation from the "ideal form". Pliny goes so far as to describe the "monstrosities" of humanity and animals as almost equals. Dwarves and deformed slaves were bought specifically for the entertainment of the elite, and whomever had the oddest, strangest being was envied by his peers.

Depressing as the actual history was, I still found it interesting and informative. The set of 60-something panels in the center of the book was fascinating. I mean, the way the non-disabled portrayed the disabled just fricking slays me! Because of their low, looooow social status, naturally the gimps weren't portrayed in high art with the expensive media, i.e., they weren't carved marble or painted. Sculptures were created of bronze or more commonly terracotta. Drawings/paintings appeared on the cheapest of vases or water urns. The mentally ill/disabled were not exempt, and their portrayal is probably the saddest of all -- grotesque and twisted faces shaped to supposedly reflect the internal madness.

One practice in a particular village was strangely resonant of today -- that of punishing or even executing "scapegoats" (generally the deformed or disabled) as a means of appeasing angry gods. Garland remarks, "The incident tells us much about the universal tendency to heap blame upon the weak and defenceless in periods of acute tension as a way of re-directing frustration and fear." This puts me in mind of the current state and federal budget issues of cutting money to the programs which help the weak and defenseless (poor, disabled both mental and physical, at-risk) in order to redirect constituents' frustrations and fears from looking more closely at the spending habits of those in power. Those in power call these programs "a drain on resources" which just reinforces the stigma.

Wow. I just realized how conspiracy theory that sounded. I've maybe been watching Hodgins too much on "Bones".

Book #2 for me in the JADRC. I think the kid is still on her first. Oy. I see I'm going to have to sweeten the pot for her.

Grace's 1st birthday party

Last Saturday was Bug's birthday party, so I thought I'd share a couple of pictures.

Here she is offering me a bite of her cake.





Mmmmmmm, cake!





"Are you SURE you don't want a bite of cake, Cousin Dawn?"

The secrets we all have and will never tell

7. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I know I should sit down and write an extensive review, but my brain hurts and I can't think of anything that hasn't already been said by others. The set-up is this: Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his own twins during a freak Kentucky snowstorm in 1964. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy and normal. *insert gimp growl* His daughter, however, has Down Syndrome. Having lived through the early death of his sister at a young age, David decides to "spare" his wife the future loss of their daughter -- he hands her off to the nurse and asks her to take the baby to a home for the "feeble-minded". Instead of telling his wife what he did, he tells her the girl died. What he doesn't count on is that Norah has as much difficulty dealing with their daughter "dying" as an infant as he imagined she would raising a "retarded" daughter. Like the function of the camera Norah gives David the following Valentine's Day, the author gives us snapshots of the lives of the Henrys and of Caroline, the nurse who chose to raise the baby on her own in another city rather than leave her in an "awful" institution. Just as the book is a set of photographs for us, so too do photographs dominate the lifes of the characters.

In sum, I liked it. The overall theme is obvious but not in-your-face obvious. The book was fairly well-crafted, in my opinion. If you can get your hands on an inexpensive used copy (like I did) or if you can get it at your local library, go ahead and give it a read. Or you can borrow mine if you're nearby.

By the way, this is my first book in the Jamie/Aunt Dawn Reading Contest (JADRC). To my knowledge, the mini-redhead has not completed her first book. Sheesh! I stretched it out over two weeks to give her a chance to get ahead of me.

Happy birthday, Bug!

Today is Grace's birthday -- she's a whopping one year old. My first memory a year ago today upon waking from sedation (the doc kept me sedated for 24 hours after my surgery) was my nurse saying, "Your mom just called and asked me to tell you that your cousin had her baby today." I didn't get to see her until she was about two months old (on MY birthday). I love my little Bug!

Want!

After listening to his rendition of one of my favorite songs, "You Raise Me Up", on Celtic Thunder's PBS special last night, I have decided that I want Paul Byrom for my birthday.

It's two and a half months away -- that should be plenty of time for you to make arrangements.

This June 7 is much better than the last one

A year ago today was the infamous Wreck. Aside from extra pain spots and a Foley catheter, I'm pretty much back to normal. Took me a while to get here, but here I am.

Onward and upward!

Holy crap! I can see!

I finally got to go to my ophthalmologist today. My eyes HAVE changed (a little more near-sighted in the right, a little more far-sighted in the left), but not as much as I thought they had. Seems most of my vision problems stemmed from my glasses being so stinking crooked from flying off my face in the Wreck -- I wasn't looking through the center of the left lens like I should. It took my poor doctor a while to straighten them out. I'm also needing bifocals, which didn't surprise me at all. So, new glasses in my future, and they are groovy (even being Medicaid frames)!

The really funny part was that Doc Y. had to take my exam back old school. My knee has been KILLING me the last couple of days (seriously, I was almost in tears getting in bed last night), so I couldn't handle a transfer into the exam chair. Doc Y. had to pull out the "fixed lens" set, a big wooden case with adjustable metal frames in which he then traded lenses of different magnifications. I kinda felt like I would fit in to the steampunk crowd wearing those specs! I should've had Mom take a picture with her phone.

Personally I believe in nature, and I get my spirituality . . . from being in nature

6. Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund

Over the last couple of years, I've become more and more interested in the interface between science and religion. Part of the genesis of this interest came from a "call for writers" for a friend's anthology of animism practices (to which I contributed an essay). But the larger reason for my interest has come from religion itself. Going to church with my parents has made it painfully obvious to me that science is being misrepresented to and by some religious folks. I do not now nor have I ever made blanket judgments about a group based on one person or smaller in-group, but the dissemination of misinformation needs to be addressed by scientists. Clearly, others feel the same way, as books like these from Howard Ecklund (hereafter known as "HE") are showing up more and more frequently in bookstores and libraries -- in fact, I found this book on the featured titles stand at my local, relatively small, library.

Overall, I was impressed by and learned a lot from this book. First, though, I'd like to address three problems I had with the author's approach.

Problem #1 -- HE only interviewed and collected data from scientists in "elite" universities like Harvard, Yale, and UC Berkeley. Therefore, her conclusions are only valid for that small subset of scientists, i.e., it is not representative of all scientists in the US. It would be like me analyzing the reaction to a pesticide of ten fish taken from a population of 10,000 and saying my results are representative of all 10,000 fish. It just doesn't fly. Her proportions of atheists to agnostics to religious to spiritual groups might change significantly if a broader approach is taken.

I do, however, understand her point later in the book about how elite scientists' opinions hold more weight because they have established themselves in terms of research and getting grants. However, I think any scientist can make a mark in opening dialogue between science and religion, both in the classroom and in the community. An elite scientist might get more newsprint or air time, but who will that community college student in Podunkville have more access to when s/he has questions or wants to discuss it further? ALL scientists need to be more open to addressing the public. In my general biology classes that I taught in the past, for example, religious beliefs always bring up questions about evolution. At that time, not possessing what HE refers to as the proper language, I engaged in the "suppression model" of dealing with the questions. I'm not going to do that in the future: (1) I feel I have a better grasp of some aspects of religion and can speaking more intelligently, and (2) ignoring the questions only fuels the misconceptions.

Problem #2 -- HE sometimes draws conclusions from a person's statements rather than asking her/him to clarify. For example, one scientist describes his spirituality as being like putting on his pants every day. HE interprets this to mean that spirituality is useless to this scientist, and there really is no basis for that conclusion. Another interpretation could be that this scientist's spirituality is an integral part of his every day routine, much like putting on his pants. We really don't know what he actually meant because HE did not ask. I've seen a few social scientists fall into the trap of thinking they know what the interviewee means, when what they are really doing is making interpretations through their own social lens.

Problem #3 -- HE mentions a statement by another scientist, and later says that she agrees, that scientists who are "spiritual" rather than "religious" lose their focus on acting within and for the benefit of a community and focus solely on the self. Considering problem #1, I would again argue that this is an unfounded blanket statement. Speaking from my own -- limited -- experience, many scientists I know are very socially conscious. They buy organic foods from farmer's markets. They run in charity events to raise money for breast cancer or HIV/AIDS. They take time out of their schedules to judge science fairs or talk to middle and high school students about what scientists really do. Some of my fellow grad students do the latter in schools with "at risk" students. Again, my experience is only a small subset of the scientific community, but I think my example shows how different conclusions can be drawn when the sample size is small.

What this book did extremely well was make me really start thinking about what kind of professor, researcher, and mentor I need to be. Some of the scientists interviewed in the book, what HE calls "boundary pioneers", stressed unequivocally that we need to be more able to engage in a dialogue with our students and colleagues, both within and outside our respective departments. As people who express their religious/spiritual beliefs become more vocal (not just the loud-mouths but everyone), we need to be able to explain what we do and how it applies within a broader context, and very often, religion and spirituality is within that broader context. Rather than sitting quietly in a church service and seething at a misrepresentation of, say, global climate change, I need to start a conversation with that person to explain it a bit more so that s/he can understand why polar bears would NOT in fact like their homes to be warmer. Scientists need to stop thinking in an "us versus them" mentality. We need to not respond to an attack with another attack.

Incidentally, this book does not count for the contest with my niece because I started the book a couple of weeks ago.