Seven Things Meme
This meme was set for me by wendelah1 , who picked seven things from my list of interests, to comment on or explain:
Okay, then. I pick feminism, gardening, poetry, science and Star Trek.
Wait. I left out Arthur Ransome and Babylon-5.
If you want to play, ping me in comments and I'll pick some from your list. Divided up for length and skipaboutability (which really should be a word.)
Feminism
I was a feminist from an early age (it apparently runs in the family; we're a bit matriarchal.) I have two sisters, and my mother had always told us no exceptions, no options that we would finish high school, go to college, have jobs, and preferably careers. It wasn't until later that I thought maybe she'd regretted giving up working to stay home with us. Even later I learned she had a chance to go to college but no money. When we reached high school age, a second income was needed to help with upcoming college tuition. Back into the workforce she went. Probably whistling happily.
My first encounter with actual Feminists was in college, at a science fiction convention. I was the usual smug clueless young thing, full of contempt for women who relied on men, who wouldn't leave abusive men, who didn't take advantage of what I saw as boundless opportunity for women in the Brave New World of (gulp) late-Seventies America. They told me enough stories to lead me to research facts and statistics; it was rather eye-opening. As I rubbed along in the male-dominant world o'science, I found we weren't quite as far along as I'd imagined. When I was interviewed for graduate school, I was told that the best science grad student was a married man, then a single woman, then a single man, and last, a married woman. Can you guess why? The distractions of everyday life wouldn't hamper the married man cause he had a wife to deal with all that. The single woman could take care of herself and her work, but was always at risk of getting distracted, or worse, married. The single man would neglect himself, but not his work. The married woman had two jobs, and would of course neglect her science for her man.
This, of course, still goes on. And on. Societies take a long time to change, and even longer to adjust to change. It's generational work. Balance must be maintained as well. My son told me once that since girls were smarter than boys, he couldn't be expected to do as well as they did in school. Sigh. The zero-sum game strikes again. So I'm a feminist. My husband's one, too, although I'm not sure he'd cop to the title. Can't speak to how the boys will end up, but we're trying. It's all we can do.
Gardening
My maternal grandparents were truck farmers on a small rocky farm high in the West Virginia hills. They moved down in to town when I was small, and I only have vague memories of the farm. My mother hated living in the country, but she can't stop growing thing, and neither can I. My grandparents lived in a small two bedroom cinder block house in town, but they still had a large garden (corn and tomatoes and beans), a grape arbor with a Concord vine, a smokehouse where they smoked a half-pig each year, peach and cherry trees, and a rhubarb patch along the house. My mother always had a garden, all the years I was growing up. My sister grows raspberries and tomatoes and cucumber and herbs in her tiny small-town yard.
I've recounted before my re-discovery of my gardening self when I lived in Boston. The woman who lived in that house before me had been institutionalized due to severe mental illness. She left behind her furniture and even her clothes in the basement. But she also left a lovely garden, or series of gardens. They had gone to rack and ruin, but I brought them back. I've kept up gardening everywhere I've lived since, taken classes, helped with library's and school's gardens and landscaping. Sometimes it's house plants, sometimes flowers and trees, sometimes vegetables. I had a lovely rock garden in Cleveland. This year I plan a larger vegetable patch in the front yard (It's the only sunny spot!)
Gardens are life and renewal and persistence. They teach you to strive against the odds, to try everything, and sometimes to just give up cause things don't always work out. There is nothing like the feel of dirt and the thrill of green shoots appearing where everything was dead and cold.
Poetry
Poetry is words, and I love words. When things in life get too rough, poetry can offer a clarity and directness that is tremendously appealing. It peels emotion down to the essence of meaning. And even when the meaning is obscured, the rhythm and beauty of the words shine through.
I tend to like individual poems rather than poets, so I favor anthologies. One of my favorite books as a child was The Golden Treasury of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer. I had it out from the library almost permanently, then finally got my own copy. What a great book...my favorite section was the story poems, like Lochinvar ('So daring in love and so dauntless in war') and The Highwayman ('I'll come to you by moonlight, tho' hell should bar the way') and The Song of Wandering Aengus ('And pluck till time and times are done, silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun') and La Belle Dame Sans Merci ('And this is why I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering') and Incident of the French Camp ('Smiling, the boy fell dead.') I memorized dozens of lines and some whole poems from that book. It held all my secrets; pressed leaves and flowers, postcards and programs and pictures. Lines still flutter through my brain, serving both to illuminate and distract me when I need it most.
Science
I went from wanting to be a veterinarian when I was six, then a doctor when I was in high school, then a scientist in college. The appeal is the combination of knowns and unknowns. There are rules, there are variables, there are results, and there is interpretation. It's easier to control things on the bench and in the lab; chemicals and cells and even animals are easier to understand than people. You can repeat things if they don't work, and while you don't always get an answer, there's always another question waiting. Sometimes you get a glimpse into the wonder of the universe. Sometimes you add a drop of fact to the ocean of understanding. Science is the building of collective knowledge, with tiny pieces of information brought together by thousands of minds over years and years. It's a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. It suits me.
Star Trek
I actually watched Star Trek when it first aired. There, I've confessed. It was on at the same time as something or another my parents watched, so if I got to watch it (and I had to have been good that week) I watched it alone on the little console set in their bedroom. Wowza.
I think I became a fan of the show when I watched the re-runs that aired after school, the year I was in 6th grade. It was the only year I took the bus to school, and there was a girl younger than me who also liked the show. I kept a notebook, listing titles, who wrote and directed the episode, guest stars, a brief synopsis, reviews, and the infamous McCoy rating system (how much screen time the good Doctor got, and if he was integral to the plot. I'm pretty sure I could list most of those episodes still.) I used gold stars. My friend and I would discuss the episode on the way to school every day (it was on every day.) I can't remember who she liked best.
Paying attention to the writers led me to Harlan Ellison (City on the Edge of Forever), which led me to the short story anthology Dangerous Visions, which led me to Arthur C. Clarke and Fred Pohl and Samuel Delany and Larry Niven and Ted Sturgeon and John Brunner and Phillip K. Dick and Lester Del Rey and Fritz Lieber and Roger Zelazny. I think my brain exploded. One of the local librarians saw me with the book and she led me gently through the SF section with recs and discussions and suggestions.
My first year in college I met people; people who liked science fiction, and even people who liked Star Trek, though Star Wars was The Big Thing at the time. I worked on my first convention. I met Harlan Ellison. I discovered Darkover and Rocky Horror and re-discovered Marvel comics. I had friends who wrote fanfiction and made fanvids (on actual videotape, and even some on reel-to-reel, people!) I met my first love (he liked comics) and made at least one good friend I still have.
Star Trek opened a door wide that I'd only peeked through before. I stepped through it into another world, and found my second home. It's very important to me.
Arthur Ransome
I can no longer remember where I first encountered the author of Swallows and Amazons. It was an indirect reference in another book, I think. In any case, I started to collect the Puffin paperbacks in NYC at Eeyore's Books (I loved that store.) Later I bought the hardcovers, and I picked up a few editions in England too. (Raving bibliophile back in the day.) Children's books are a passion with me, especially older ones, and in particular English ones. Ransome wrote a series set mainly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads, about children who had believable adventures mostly in boats (the 'Swallow' and the 'Amazon'). They were published from 1930-1947.
As you read the adventures you learn tons about sailing and birds and astronomy and map-making and making charcoal and mining gold. They are very practical children, and it always seemed that if you wanted to, and had the time and the gumption, you could use the books as a manual for all sorts of esoteric skills, but also for life. I think the attraction, beside the setting and timeframe, was the detail and down-to-earth nature of the adventures. It was such a lovely contrast to my usual highly imaginative reading fare. They are also marvellously evocative. You can feel the sun on your neck and feel the crack of the ice beneath your feet. I used to re-read all twelve once a year; the winter ones in summer, and the summer ones in winter.
Babylon 5
My headlong rush back into fandom after years away, my discovery of online fandom and my first foray into writing, a feeling of connection with people all over the world, old and young; that's what B5 means to me.
Babylon Five is a narrative that dances through space and time, weaving interlocking tales of loss and love and guilt and redemption, telling histories of choice and consequence and responsibility, and delineating characters that I love quite fiercely. I love how they grow and change, how their stories are personal and political, tragic and full of hope. The scope of the series lets you see how the characters dissolve into caricature and diffuse into myth, depending on the point of view and the point in time.
Many of the individual parts of the story resonate personally, and that has helped weld them to my creative consciousness. Sometimes I look to a future where B5 has faded for me, when it's become a vague and pleasant memory stored along with other enthusiasms that have come and gone. That time may yet come, but we're not there yet. And somehow I don't think I'll ever forget the spark of pure magic that has made B5 part of my personal mythology.