Dichroic Reflections

Today’s theme is auctions. There’s a long post on my races yesterday at the expat life blog, including the rowing club’s auction where I bought some old boat parts. And I need to post a heads-up:

Bidding starts tomorrow on the fandom auction at Live Long & Marry! All benefits go to the fight to keep same-sex marriage legal in CA.

I don’t think the word “fandom” here means anything but “lots of fanfic is on the offering list” and “this was the brainchild of two people heavily involved in fandom”. Stuff offered ranges from original fanfic to jewelry (custom or already made) to signed books (I expect the bidding to be hot and high on the signed copies, directly from the author, of Tam Lin) to services ranging from wardrobe advice to editing. I’d have offered beadwork myself, but shipping is difficult for me so instead I have offered two original poems, a sonnet and a terza rima, on a topic of your choice. All offering posts are tagged by subject (like offered: original poem) and offerer, to make it easier to see what’s available, and bidding is in comments.

This is not my fight, in particular. I don’t care much about laws specific to CA. I’m straight and already married so the results don’t affect me directly. The do affect me indirectly, as part of the freedoms and attitudes of my country. What *is* my fight is civil rights in general in the United States and in the world, and this is a battle in that war. Go look. If it’s your war too, or if you’re just interested in snaffing some of the cool stuff on offer, I hope you will do what you can in the matter of either offering or bidding.

The other night I had a wonderful dream. I was about to start work on a PhD in Astronomy. I think it was at my undergrad alma mater, or one of the schools near it. I would be working with one of my favorite professors from my undergrad days (one who doesn’t exist) and I thought fondly to myself of how he and my Fluid Mechanics prof were the two who had really kept in touch, the latter even coming to my MS graduation ceremony. (Not true of course; we weren’t close - it didn’t help that though I liked him I hated his subject, and anyway *I* didn’t even get to that graduation. Or the one for my BS.)

For some reason the PhD thesis subjects were assigned rather than chosen by the candidate, so I was at a big ceremony where, among other things, I would be told my subject. When they finally announced it, I was thrilled to hear that I had been assigned to study mentions of the moon in song and liturgy, from a historic perspective. I remember thinking, “This will be great! Especially if I’m working on it in Philadelphia, because I’ve got connections in both folk music and synagogue circles here.” Still, I was a little unsure that I could really get a hard science degree in something so humanities oriented. So I was waiting around after the ceremony until the professor finished talking to all the undergrads who were hanging around, but unfortunately Ted rolled over and woke me just then.

Damn. I was so disappointed. Didn’t get to work on the degree at all, either.

Two bits:
My boat will be delivered! The very day after I return home! Now I just need to write down the pronunciation of its Chinese name, because I keep forgetting it. Here’s hoping nothing on it’s been broken in its arduous journey.

I’ve offered up a sonnet-to-order over at Live Long & Marry, which is “is a fandom auction to raise money for the fight against the California initiative which will legally destroy existing same-sex marriages and ban any further ones.” Winning bids are paid by being contributed directly to one of several organizations. Bidding runs from July 1, 12:01 Pacific Time, until July 15, 12:01 Pacific Time, 2008. If it’s a cause you’re at all interested in supporting you should go look, because there are way cooler things than my sonnet on offer.

And a review:
Mr. Darcy and Me, by Alexandra Potter
If you’re looking for some light romantic reading with lots of Jane Austen references, if you loved the Jane Austen Book Club and want something else like it, if you love stories of bookish Americans exploring England, this will fill that bill. If you want something that transcends the chicklit category to become something more, then not so much. The main character Emily Bronte Hemingway Albright is a likeable bookish New Yorker, and the supporting characters are something beyond straw figures - they never quite become entirely real, but they can easily be distinguished from each other and the two men in Emily’s life can never be confused. The parallels to the plot of Pride and Prejudice will please Austen fans, and they’re reasonably well done - blatant enough to be unmissable, but they don’t actually beat you over the head. At least, not until toward the end when Emily herself notices them, at which point the reader might want to duck cluebats. There’s also a nifty bit of is-it-or-isn’t-it magic running through the book to add connection to Austen and her characters, and a satisfyingly hapy ending for everyone.

On the other hand, American Emily’s dialogue reads like it’s been written by an Englishwoman who’s spent a fair bit of time in the US, but never reviewed by an actual American. The story is told in first person, and throughout the whole thing Emily enthuses so often about the new Briticisms she’s learned whenever she speaks of “fancying” a man for instance, yet at the end she can casually say “I realized he was winding me up” with no cross-cultural comment. When she first arrives in England, she’s all excited to see a robin - but we *have* robins in America. They’re not the same species as English robins, just red-chested birds the colonists gave the same label to. But most people don’t know that, and at most an American who did would say “I saw an English robin!” or even “…a real robin!” Those are small things, but they don’t help make the character believable.

More important is where Potter allowed the parallels to P&P to lapse. The whole point of of Austen’s novel is that Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy both change - she abandons her prejudices and he his false pride before they can meet in understanding. In contrast, Emily, like Elizabeth, is given reason to believe she’s been wrong - and this parallel to P&P is quite nicely done - but we never are shown that the man in question makes equivalent changes of his own. It feels like Potter was humming along with her storyline until about 2/3 of the way through P&P, then realized her book was getting too long and wrapped it up in a hurry. Or else she lost the courage to continue with her parallel, which is a shame because I think she skipped a crucial part. In P&P Elizabeth’s words have as much effect on Darcy as his letter and change of manner do on her, and that’s why we believe that he’s not an unbending snob, and that she has misjudged him. In M&MD, we only get half of that equation.

Also, maybe it’s just me, but I have trouble believing that a guy with a belly big enough to rest on a pool table has pecs firm enough to inspire such notice. I find it believable that she’d be bothered by the belly, that she wouldn’t be bothered, or that she’d be bothered only while she didn’t like him anyway. Any of those are fine, if you’re consistent about it. But don’t go changing a character’s shape halfway up his ribcage!

Arrgh. The mad social whirl is having consequences. Saturday we went to see a regatta outside Amsterdam -Rudder’s rowing partner coaches a girl who was racing there, so we went and hung out with them, spent a bit of time on her parents’ boat nearby, and lusted over the Olympic course (dug by hand as a works project in the Great Depression).

Yesterday we rowed in the afternoon against a ferocious wind that turned around in time to be a headwind both ways (they do that here), then scraped ourselves up and went out to a dinner party given by one of my colleagues and his boyfriend. That’s where the arrgh factor comes from: his back garden was apparently far more infested with mosquitoes than I realized at the time, and I’ve been scratching all day.

Either that or his three bunny rabbits had fleas, but I don’t see any black hopping spots and I do see lots of red bumps, so I’m going with mosquitoes.

I suppose that least I performed a public service. Other peopledon’t get bitten much when I’m around. Mosquitoes like me.

I keep hearing reports that a substantial number of Clinton supporters now plan to vote for McCain. I hope that the news is wrong, or that hurt feelings fade; I keep getting the impression that the difference between Clinton and Obama supporters stems much more from the natural high feelings engendered by opposing each other, and not from substantial differences between the candidates. I was hoping Clinton and Obama could both manage to stay on the high road during their campaign, but both campaigns descended to regrettable levels in the heat of battle. I get the impression, from this distance, that the Clinton campaign actually slung a bit more mud than their opponents, but I miss enough news from here that I could possibly be wrong. However, I’ve been able to follow closely enough to make it crystal clear that anyone who claims that either campaign is blameless is deluding themselves. I hope the Democrats can unite and get back on the high road, and Obama and Clinton themselves certainly seem to be working hard to foster healing.

Nonetheless, there are upset people and hurt feelings and some real issues of principle. I’m not callous enough to tell anyone to “get over it”; your vote is a serious decision and anyone who doesn’t take you seriously has no business telling you how to vote. I am doing something I very rarely do: I am going to ask you to change your mind here. Please, please, if you supported Hilary Clinton, if you believe in what she stands for, please, do not vote for John McCain. I still won’t presume to tell you who to vote for; if you can’t bring yourself to vote for Obama, find a third party or independant candidate you can believe in. Work to convinvce one of the several independants who are talking about it to give it a shot. Whatever your conscience dictates. But please don’t vote for McCain. He is not a moderate.

If you want real data, and if you have the time and patience to plow through it, McCain’s voting record is here. If you want to know how various groups think of him, that information is helpfully collected here. Myself, I coundn’t stomach voting for someone who supported the ideals of the Christian Coalition 83% in 2004 (most recent year listed), the League of Conservation Voters 0% in 2007, and the ACLU 33% in 2005-66.

And of course he supported the interests of Planned Parenthood 0% in every year. There’s no mystery here, McCain is against a woman’s right to choose and has said so in so many words. He’s not among the worst in this respect, in that he does make the “rape or incest” exception; still, I’d have thought this would be an important issue to Clinton supporters. As an Arizona State Senator, he made it clear that he supported a state ban on same-sex marriage; he disapproved of the Federal ban, but only as a states’ rights issue.

Why do I care so much? It’s the usual reason: I’m a disillusioned former McCain supporter. I lived in Arizona for ten years. He was my state’s senior Senator. I voted for him; as I’ve written over the years, I believed that while he and I disagreed on many issues, he could be trusted to think them through and vote his conscience, without bending to the pressure of party politics. Even when he did knuckle under on some smaller issues I rationalized that he was only choosing his battles: a Republican Senator can be seriously hamstrung if his party entirely disapproves of him. And then came the torture issue. He stood up and said, “No, this is not what America does. We don’t torture our opponents.” I was so proud … until his party told him to vote for continued torture and after some argument (no waterboarding was involved!), he caved. Here’s the NY Times article on it, in case you forgot that one; here is the Boston Globe’s perspective. He lost me with that vote.

I believe that McCain, as a former member of the military, believes that it is his responsibility to support his Comander in Chief and thus also the party that commander leads. It’s possbible that if he were the CinC, he would act only accoding to his own morals, but I haven’t seen anything to convince me his morals are such as to withstand pressure. So: he disagrees with me - I think with most of Clinton’s supporters - on civil rights in general and women’s civil rights particular, on freedom to choose, on the environment, on the Iraq War, and on and on. He’s a conservative and says so proudly. And I can’t depend on him, after all, to choose his position on each issue based on principle rather than party politics. How could I possibly ever vote for him again?

And supporters of Hilary Clinton, how can you?

Back in the Netherlands. I always forget how boring lunch is here - my colleagues all talk in Dutch and don’t bother to translate. The only good point to this is that it really annoys the Taiwanese people visiting, and so when we’re back in Taiwan of course they talk in Chinese over lunch - but they turn to me every few minutes and say “We’re talking about…” or else someone will talk in English, at least part of the time. It was at least nice to recognize all the food, and I think the choices are healthier in the cafeteria here.

The giddy social whirl has started already. Rudder was rowing after work yesterday and so I went go out in a single; after that his rowing partner has invited us to dinner. Today I’ll go out in a double and he may take a single. We already have conflicting invitations for this weekend, as well. It’s a bit overwhelming after Taiwan, where we have so little social life!

Today’s rowing may involve lots of hand tape - even though I only rowed about 6km, I’ve got a bunch of blisters. I could definitely feel in m legs and abs I haven’t been in a boat for 6 weeks, even though I have been erging. Oh, well, once I get back and get my own boat hopefully I can get out a little more. Or maybe not, depending on how hot it is.

And as always, it is good to be with Rudder again.

Stuff I hurried to finish today before leaving. (So I could take it with me!)

Sock pattern is Waving Laces, from the book Favorite Socks. The yarn is hand-dyed, from Spritely Goods. It was soft and nice to knit with, not splitty at all. The yarn seems very thin - I might have used 0 needles if I’d had them - but 64 stitches made a sock plenty big for my size-8 foot and the fabric seems to be dense enough, so that effect is deceptive. I think it probably seemed that way just because the sock took so long to knit, as lace patterns with a 20-row repeat are apt to do.

I’m calling it Blue Yonder, hence the colors and the wings. Taipei rarely has good skies, so that’s one thing I’m looking forward to on this trip. The necklace is somewhere around 6′ long, so plenty long enough to wear as three strands.

Lots of good news, some bad.

Yesterday I went to the dentist - this time to get Stuff done, not just cleaning and checkups. Their recommendation was to replace every filling in my mouth with gold or ceramic inlays. I think they’re either being unnecessarily cautious or hoping for big fat fees. However, they showed me pictures and X-rays so I had enough info to make my own decision; I could see that the amalgam fillings in some of my back upper molars were blackened around the edges, and I think those are pretty old (I also think I have my dental records from the US, so will check those). I’m getting them replaced with composite fillings, though. Inlays cost about $600-700 US. The place here only takes cash and I have no dental insurance; the composite fillings are supposed to last 5-10 years and I figure by then I’ll be back in the US with insurance. Besides, who knows what dental wonders they’ll have invented by then? They also want to put composite fillings in the sides of my upper front teeth, where there are stains they say have turned to decay. I’m a bit leery about this, never having heard of such a thing, but they showed me the shadows on the X-rays so I’ll probably go ahead.

The boat can be stored!!! And that will cost a whopping NT$100/day, so if I store it for a month it’s NT$3000, or under $100 US. Totally worth it - now I can deal with getting it when I have time and Rudder to help. Whew. The colleague who’s been helping on ths rocks - maybe I’ll bring her back Dutch chocolates *and* make her a wire tree.

On the taxi ride to the dentist yesterday I noticed a luggage store, so after my appointment I went and bought a bigger suitcase. The one I had is nice, because it’s got 4 wheels instead of two and so is easier to move, but it’s only 24″. On that two-month trip I ended up sending some things home with Rudder (books I’d read and yarn I’d bought), postng a box, and leaving a few things there. This trip starting Saturday is for three weeks, and I find you need about as much clothing for that period as for any longer trip, really. The advantage is that while I do need some warmer things, given the vagaries of Dutch weather, I don’t need any real winter clothing. However, I just listed [what I can remember of] what I’ve packed so far, and I have one pair of jeans, one pair of capris, one pair of slacks, and three skirts, not to mention some shorts in case of warm weather outside work hours - in other words, 6 bottoms suitable for office wear. Add in 11 tops, and I think I need to take some out. 5 bottoms and 10 tops seems reasonable for 20 days, though it’s more than a Dutch person would wear. Plus I have jammies and workout gear, not including workout gear already in the bag I’ve left there. At the very least, I’ll wear some of that instead of wearing a whole additional outfit. I haven’t decided what if anything to take in the way of a jacket; I have a light fleece there and a rowing jacket that I ordered a while ago and Rudder picked up on his last trip. (Just checked the the Weather Underground for Eindhoven: oh, yes, I believe I will be bringing a jacket. It’s 50F / 10C there right now.)

I called my brother this morning; he’d been to the hospital with Mom to visit Dad and he’s a bit better at the medical terminology than she is. That’s where the bad news is. He said that what they’re doing will definitely fix the clogged arteries (and he established that Dad’s been having chest pain for months but just didn’t bother telling anyone because it wasn’t that bad, stupid stoic menfolk!) but may not help the brain issues or the recent kidney function issues. He says they’re more or less doing triage, treating one thing at a time, worst ones first. Sigh. I’m glad he’s there, at least.

I’m also glad, if I haven’t mentioned it before, that I found out I don’t after all have a limit to how long I can be in the US before I have to pay tax on all my earnings. (I do pay taxes, but I pay them here where I live rather than in the US.) so now if I have a two-week trip for work I don’t have to be worried about not being able to go in case of family emergencies. That’s a relief, anyway.

A fine example of dancing bear poetry. This is not exactly “Do go quietly into that good night”, but I’m quite proud that the bear dances at all; villanelles are hard.

Expatriate Life
I stand alone, in doubt to act or rest,
Adrift and plunged deep in the utter east
As I persist in bridging east to west.

A feted, yet at times uneasy guest.
In throng’ed crowds alone as when crowds ceased:
I stand alone, in doubt to act or rest,

I knew these years would be adventure’s crest,
That at their end, my self would be increased,
As I persist in bridging east to west.

I knew they’d be uneasy years at best,
So much to learn, of words and ways not least.
I stand alone, in doubt to act or rest,

And as I knew I’d be, at times I’m stressed,
Yet at its best, this life is a fat feast
As I persist in bridging east to west.

I love it, though at times it’s been a test;
I chose adventure over easy peace.
I stand alone, in doubt to act or rest,
As I persist in bridging east to west.

OK, I cheated once. But I think I should get extra credit for using antonyms for the two major rhymes, and also for managing to quote both A. Pope and C.S. Lewis within the space of one stanza.

Boat continues to be major source of anxiety; thank all the gods for the coworker (an expert in global shipping and customs) who is helping me with this. She’s asking if they can possibly store it in a warehouse until I come back; if not it’s also still possible it can be delivered Friday. If I have all that day to deal, I can definitely manage. Still, urg. Am rather annoyed with the companhy (Wintech) since initially it was supposed to be here in mid-May (in other words when I was at home for a month straight) and then they told me the shipping could be postponed until I got back. (This was last Saturday; on Monday I got the call that the boat was at sea.) This kind of thing happens when ordering rowing shells, because they’re large, fragile, deceptively complex to make (and row!), expensive and low volume, but it’s much more annoyng just now than it was last time I bought a boat.

The worst thing about being an expat is the feeling that you have no backup, no plan B. If this were the US, I would call one of the many rowers in Tempe and they could help me - probably She-Hulk, who combines utter integrity, utter reliability, a need to be helpful, and good boat-handling skills, but even if she were unavailable there are others who could manage. Here, I can ask some of my Dutch coworkers to help (Dutch rather than Taiwanese because they live in Taipei instead of closer to work) but I don’t know any of them well enough to ask them to manage the whole thing if it happened after I left, and anyway none of them are rowers so they wouldn’t know how to. I will ask them if I just need someone to carry the other end of a boat, though. But right now, kind as my coworkers are, a few rowing friends would be awfully nice to have around.

Another part of this, of course, is just not understanding how the (local part of) the world works well enough to create Plan B. And then there’s the part where Rudder and I are both traveling all the time, because having two of us here would also make it all much easier - two to carry boats, assemble racks or whatever.

This better be a good boat, is all. It will be worth it if it turns out as lovable as Sunset (my Hudson) is.