crooked house

The New Domesticity

I am feeling a lot like this woman today, and I especially find myself reflected in her glassy/crazed-eye expression. Thank god March Break is almost over.

Recently discovered: Emily Matchar's blog The New Domesticity, through The Hairpin. I have been loving it. Matchar, who is 29 years old and childless, is writing a book about the current "fascination with reviving 'lost' domestic arts like canning, bread-baking, knitting, chicken-raising, etc." In her book, she plans to tease out the answers to questions like "Why are women of my generation, the daughters of post-Betty Friedan feminists, embracing the domestic tasks that our mothers and grandmothers so eagerly shrugged off? Why has the image of the blissfully domestic supermom overtaken the Sex & the City-style single urban careerist as the media’s feminine ideal? Where does this movement come from? What does it mean for women? For families? For society?"  (You may have read Emily's article Why I Can't Stop Reading Mormon Blogs.) Her blog is a sort of scrapbook of her research and her posts have been both thoughtful and informative. Today she linked to Is It Safe to Play Yet?, an article in the NYT that sort  of poo poos the current movement to keep children safe from dangerous chemicals that may (or may not be) in all the stuff that surrounds us. I have always downplayed the danger to our kids from toxins in the environment until I recently did some research about the effects of BPA on development and  freaked out a little bit and wrote the Campbell's Soup letter, and then did more research (see Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things )and freaked out a little more.

I am also fascinated by the work of food historian Rachel Laudan, to whom Emily linked. In her article In Praise of Fast Food, Rachel reminds us of the sheer work historically involved in making food from scratch -- I was shocked to learn the  fact that until the 60s Mexican women had to spend FIVE HOURS A DAY grinding maize in order to make tortillas. Does anyone really want to go back to that kind of labour? (I should get to work on my business plan for a healthy fast food restaurant version of McDonald's, complete with non-toxic happy meal toys.)

Anyway, there is plenty of good stuff to read on The New Domesticity  for those who enjoy embracing traditional domestic tasks and those who would hire a full-time housekeeper if they could. (Like me.)

I would write more but must go referee an ongoing battle today between Luke and Vivi. Vivi insists that today is Luke's birthday and Luke insists that it is not. You'd think this would be resolved by a two-line exchange but they have probably exchanged  more than two hundred lines on the topic today, accompanied by storms of tears from both parties. And by "parties" I do not mean birthday parties.

Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies

Arthur recreates 12 Angry Men.

Arthur recreates American Beauty.

Arthur recreates Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There are more at Studio Arthur. Thanks @sue_oz!

Children's Story Posters

Children's story posters by Christian Jackson. (There are lots more. Go take a look.)

Zoku Pops

Aren't those popsicles gorgeous? We've been eating so many "store-boughten" ones lately that the Zoku Quick Pop Maker would pay for itself very quickly. That image is from the Zoku blog, which provides lots of tempting recipes.

A Baby Bird and Names from Children's Literature

This Christmas ornament can be personalized with names and dates -- found at This Fine Day.

Elizabeth Bird over at A Fuse #8 Production has just announced she is brooding... I mean, pregnant. With a baby Bird. Congratulations, Betsy! Betsy is a children's librarian at the New York Public Library and a published author herself in addition to being a master (mistress?) of the blogging universe so her child is unlikely ever to run out of great reading material. No backs of cereal boxes or tubes of toothpaste for him or her. (That is, I am sure he or she will eat cereal now and then, and certainly he or she will learn to brush the teeth he or she will one day have, but he or she won't have to rely on the text on household objects for diversion when all the books are finished.) (Wow, my fingers just cramped. I'd really like to know the sex of this baby.)

Elizabeth has dropped a few hints in the comments section of her announcement about possible names. While she says her chosen name for a girl is not really a literary one, specifically, I am intrigued by her remark on the name for a boy: "One is perhaps the most iconic male name in children’s literary history."

Hmm. Whatever can it be? Max for Max of Where the Wild Things Are? Charlie for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Jack for Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack Be Nimble and Little Jack Horner? Prince for all those Prince Charmings? I can't wait to find out. Perhaps we should start a betting pool.

(By the way, if you haven't one already, Betsy, I am going to send you the cloth version of Are You My Mother? It's always been a big hit around here.)

Meg Rosoff: How I Write

Meg Rosoff, author of How I Live Now, an arresting book for young adults -- although why exactly it was marketed solely to teens I do not know -- has some interesting things to say about how she writes. If you want to know how writing is like riding a horse, go read it. Her blog is terrific, too.

Spots and Stripes

When I recently developed a slight obsession with stripes -- that's a brand-new rag rug in the photo -- I thought it was because of those gorgeous striped blankets I saw hanging from a neighbour's clothesline back in July. Then I realized that I personally already owned at least four striped shirts and sweaters and that I've always been drawn to striped stuff for the  house and for the kids.  You know how once you notice something, you start seeing it everywhere? It's been like that. I've got a folder full of stripey bookmarks and nothing to do with them. So I've started a new blog, devoted to both spots (or dots) and stripes, because once I started noticing stripes everywhere, I also started noticing their purest complement everywhere, too. Please come see them over at spots and stripes. And if you have any photos featuring spots and/or stripes of  your own that are too good not to share, please do email me at stephka at eastlink dot ca.

Aw Shucks, I'm No Angel.

While browsing vintage images today for a new project, I became enamoured with this image of two angels from a vintage Italian postcard found on The Graphics Fairy blog:

Sara pointed out that the one on the right looks like Luke. I didn't initially make the connection but wow, does it ever. His father made it immediately. Luke insists it looks nothing like him "because it's a girl." He also insists he never sat up and announced "Roast beef! Roast beef!" at 3 a.m. the other night -- but he did. And it does.

I was also very taken with the title of this old book:

 

What do you think Shucks: A Story for Boys could be about?

Family Crest: Attacking Baby Swans

My cousin Tonya (of Pauline's Cookbook, a blog devoted to our grandmother's cookbook specifically and Slovak food, family history, and culture more generally) is in Eastern Europe doing a little research. Recently she visited Orava Castle* in Slovakia, where she found this Medzihradne family crest. Our great-grandmother's sister married into that family. So the crest is not technically ours. But the image of those baby swans attacking their poor mother (apparently a symbol of sacrifice)... well, it sure does feel somehow familiar some days. 

I'm not at all sure what to make of that bodiless head impaled on a sword brandished by a floating arm. But it's giving me a headache.

*Cool fact: Many scenes from the 1922 film Nosferatu, thought to be filmed in Transylvania, were actually filmed at Orava Castle.

Kelly Link's Blog Tour

Okay, here's something you really shouldn't miss. One of my favourite writers, Kelly Link, author of the critically acclaimed -- and very fabulous -- story collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners, is doing a blog tour for her Young Adult collection Pretty Monsters. She is doing guest posts for a number of blogs and they are riveting. Link recently had a baby girl, Ursula*, who was born at 24 weeks and therefore had a long and harrowing stay in the NICU. Start here:

I could hardly stand being in the NICU at first. We knew that Ursula’s situation was precarious. Almost half of babies born at 24 weeks don’t survive. (Before my pregnancy became high risk, I didn’t know that any babies could be born so early, so small, and go on to thrive.) A majority of those babies that do survive end up with serious complications of one kind or another due to the therapies that keep them alive as well as due, simply, to their extreme prematurity. The gregarious nurse assigned to Ursula that first day told us immediately, well, it’s good that she’s a girl. Girls have a better chance of survival. The next day when we went up, he said, well, she’s still alive. The first twenty-four hours are really crucial. The next day he said, she’s still alive — that’s good. The first 48 hours are crucial. After a week had passed, when a nurse told us that the first week was the period of greatest danger — and so it was a good sign that she had made it through — we weren’t surprised.

Then go here:

I didn’t write any stories during this period. Maybe this is because the kinds of stories that I write don’t have the kind of happy, conclusive ending that I longed for, so badly, for so many months, in my own life. Maybe I didn’t write because it was always going to be hard to write while you are a new parent.

Then here:

I was never the girl the vampire fell in love with. Or the girl who discovered her destiny was to kick vampire ass. For that matter, for a long time I was sure that I would never find love. I was fairly sure I would end up an old maid, living in a house full of cats. Except even cats were never as smitten with me as I with them. I would have been the old maid living in a house full of iguanas. I’ve had a pet iguana: it doesn’t break your heart that your iguana doesn’t love you. You don’t expect love from an iguana. But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that many of my characters are faint of heart, like me. They aren’t especially heroic. If they get involved in dramatic situations, let’s say, with werewolves, it tends to be a terrible mistake: maybe they did something stupid. Or maybe someone else dragged them in. Me, I’ve always been concerned about the fact that I can’t drive stick shift. Come the zombie apocalypse, or the werewolf attack, I’ll be the one sitting in the driver’s seat of the getaway car, crying hysterically while I flood the clutch.

And here Kelly provides lists of her favourite romance and paranormal romance novels and favourite paranormal romance in other media. I'm bookmarking those, so I can work my way through them.

*Kelly's baby daughter's name, Ursula, means "Little Bear." The Little Dipper is also known as Ursa Minor or Little Bear and it contains within its constellation Polaris, the North Star, which is the most well-known and widely used directional star. Clearly Ursula is a very good name.