Save the Scrimshanders

Day 121 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and this is one of those entries following up on previous entries, including random coincidii (made up plural of coincidence, which has its own perfectly good plural) and other whimsy.

Like Emily Dickinson, I love words. And, like myself, I love coincidii. Yesterday I told you about Late Wife, a book of poems by Claudia Emerson. Early in the book, in the "Divorce Epistles" section, is a stunning poem called "Photograph: Farm Auction" that focuses on a hayfork that resembles "a plate of baleen / from the mouth of a whale." So today it is the word "baleen" that I love, a synonym for "whalebone" in one of its dictionary meanings, but specifically the plates in the mouth of the "right whale," the kind of whale it was "right" for whalers to catch because of its abundance (and therefore profit potential), baleen being the whalebone of whalebone stays in women's corsets (for which there is a less of a market these days. Save the whales!) They are also called baleen whales, or just whalebone whales.

Also yesterday, in the bookstore, I handled a book called The Yankee Scrimshanders, by Fredericka Alexander Burrows, about the art of scrimshaw, or carving on whalebone, with images of the carvings on whalebone stays for women's corsets! (Save the scrimshanders!)

The coincidii just continue. We got another copy of The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel P. Maines, a paperback for $5, shelved in Women's Studies, and it sold immediately, as I knew it would, so I didn't even try to talk about it here, or provide a link to our search page.

I had bought the hardcover a while back...then couldn't find it in my house and wondered if I'd hidden it or loaned it out, but it is just that the lettering on the spine is squeezed in such a way as to make it not immediately readable, sort of like camouflage, I think. Anyhoo! I found my home copy. This ties in because the technology of orgasm, those machines doctors could use to relieve the "hysteria" of women, so they didn't have to do it, er, manually, or keep hiring midwives and other female assistants to do it for them, was big in the age of women's corsets! As explored in Sarah Ruhl's new play on Broadway, In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play. (Save the orgasm!)

Speaking of hayforks, my little Poetry at Babbitt's workshop will be reading poems about farming implements and the Farmer's Market and statues of Abraham Lincoln, at "Fresh From the Farm," an event Saturday morning, June 26, 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., during the Bloomington Farmers Market on the square, in the McLean County Museum of History. (Save the small farms!)

I should stop now.

Shakespeare in Love, and a Vibrator

Day 73 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. It's Shakespeare's birthday! Is anybody reading some Shakespeare to celebrate? I put Shakespeare in Love into the machine last night to celebrate, seeing the opening, her audition, the Queen reminding her to bow as Kent, and the shipwreck, sort of a sleep montage.

It's also Vladimir Nabokov's birthday! Is anybody reading Lolita to celebrate? Is anybody Reading Lolita in Tehran?

And it's Kingsley Amis's birthday. (Thank you, Garrison Keillor, Writer's Almanac!) Is anybody reading Lucky Jim? I don't think I ever have read that one, an early campus novel (according to Keillor...'s staff). But I bet it's on my parents' bookshelf, if I want to. I say that to help me resist buying any more used books with my employee discount at Babbitt's. The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson, came into the store yesterday, and, yes, by now you know what happened. And I haven't even read the other one yet! But I figure these will be great books to take on vacation to the beach this summer. And share!

But, speaking of campus novels, who has read Straight Man, by Richard Russo? It's hilarious. I gave it to my department chair when I left a teaching job I loved (had to move) and as he was leaving the chairpersonship, a rotating position. (See him twirling?!) Anyhoo...

As you can see, this is another of my whimsical, hodge-podge entries, and I will also let you know now that I am going on a 2-day retreat, with women, so I will ask them what they are reading, and will post two entries in one someday on Sunday, instead of one on Saturday. Today's Friday, right? This is turning into a sort of 2-in-one, too, or 3-in-one, etc. Anyhoo...!

The theme of the women's retreat is passion. Passion as enthusiasm, passion as love (various kinds: romantic, sexual, or strong feeling, compassion, etc.), and passion as suffering (that kind of strong feeling, as in religious passion). Perhaps I will learn about books on passion, or books with passion in the title. Shakespeare in Love had passion, but I was asleep through most of it.

Franny and Zooey had passion. Of the various sorts.

Also set aside for purchase with employee discount at a future date is The Lost Sisterhood. Not the one by Julia Ingram, about The Return of Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary, and Other Holy Women, which does look like something I'd want to read and will snag if it comes into Babbitt's, but The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918, by Ruth Rosen. It's about the profession of prostitution, about women who chose and developed that line of work, and about it being rooted out as society's major ill at the time, without, of course, rooting out the cause/need of it, as usual. I look forward to reading that, as I enjoyed Sex in the Second City, by Karen Abbott, focusing on brothels in Chicago, and the businesswomen who ran them, the men who frequented them, and the police who protected and/or raided & closed down their establishments.

This is on my mind a bit after a little discussion in the blog of poet Martha Silano about women being able to choose their work and their pleasures, and the complicated history and values attached to this. (Read her book Blue Positive, pictured & available to click at her blog of the same name! After all, it is National Poetry Month!)

And, along those lines, where is my copy of The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel P. Maines, another great Babbitt's find, subtitled "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)? I know I bought it, read it, and did not reshelve it in either Women's Studies or Technology at work, so it's here at home somewhere. Unless I loaned to my mom. Or dad.

Also, I suspect Sarah Ruhl may have read it researching her play In the Next Room, aka The Vibrator Play, and that's what those women are doing in the picture, figuring out what the heck this 19th century medical device is.

Sarah Ruhl is one of my favorite playwrights. And that brings us back to Shakespeare!

Body Surfing & Loose Shoelaces

Day 67 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I have to confess that my Internet access problem was solved by unplugging and replugging the adaptor. Sigh....

Laura is reading Body Surfing because Anita Shreve is one of her favorite writers, strong on storytelling and subtle truths of human behavior. Looks like this one returns to a favorite beach house setting for parts of it, and is more disjointed in the telling, perhaps matching a darker set of human interactions than in some of her novels.

I read The Pilot's Wife because many friends had recommended it (and so had Oprah, I learned) and Light on Snow, which I finished in the car, coming back from a winter holiday trip, with light on snow out the window. Perhaps I will read Body Surfing at the beach this summer, when I do plan 1) to try body surfing and 2) to ask random strangers what they are reading!

Likewise, Rebecca is reading more Connie Willis, one of her newly discovered favorite authors. Rebecca works at a library and claims that these books keep following her home.

I have mentioned that we cannot keep The Catcher in the Rye on the shelf at Babbitt's, but I did snatch up the little red cheap paperback copy that came in the other day, leaving the hardback for some lucky reader. This is a later printing of the same Bantam edition I read in high school. I will read it again soon, after we discuss Franny and Zooey at book group Wednesday night.

I was late to work two days in a row, by ten minutes, because I stopped to talk with my neighbor, Dick. Another day, I stopped to talk to him on the way home, when I can linger without being late for anything except making dinner, which I wish could just be carrot sticks, pita triangles, and spicy hummus. But that's another story, with loose shoelaces. And wine.

Anyway, Dick was telling me that he was unable to finish a painting he's been working on. He's a retired art professor, finally has time to paint, and can't get this particular painting to work and keeps painting over it. Hey, so did Picasso!

To comfort him, I brought up the famous comment about works of writing never being finished, only abandoned. He said he was just reading in a magazine about a guy who only wrote one book and nothing else because nothing after that ever satisfied him. "He kept writing," said Dick, "but he never sent anything else out to be published. And he just died."

"J. D. Salinger?" I asked.

"Yes, that's the guy."

I believe I was breaking in my new red high-tops on these recent walks to and from work and these chats with my neighbor. The red high-tops were a big hit last night in the lobby of Heartland Theatre, where I went to see a sweet & funny & charming production of The Trip to Bountiful by Horton Foote, who also recently died.

My dad is the sheriff in the production, a good guy! My dad is a retired theatre professor, a great director, and a playwright.

Here's a question for you: Are you able to read plays and get a good sense of them on the page?

I confess I am usually not able to get everything I need from the page. I get a lot more from seeing a production. This does not hold true with George Bernard Shaw--fabulous "stage directions" which are philosophical and/or humorous riffs--and Sarah Ruhl--over all poetic construction & stage directions--two playwrights I do love to read!

Soon I will reread Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, and soon also see the Steppenwolf production in Chicago.

And now I have untied many more shoelaces than I have tied up, and must now...fall over.