An apologia
I underestimated yesterday and so your WHM post is a half day late. I'd exculpate myself and say 'mea culpa' but I'm still Jewish (and besides, if one exculpates oneself then the mea culpa is quite wrong).
How did I underestimate yesterday? I blame the Purim writing. It's almost done. It took longer than it ought to add a few names. By 'a few' I mean 15. This is how many names you and FB friends gave me to put in. Dobby has his own plotline and Conan is somewhat of a barbarian and looks very much like the person who suggested that he had to go in. The hardest to fit into the narrative were Katniss Everdeen and Princess Leia. There are already two prima donna women in the Esther story, and there really wasn't space for a third and a fourth.
In real news, I'm precisely halfway through my book on how fiction writers relate to and use history in their fiction. I'm putting those interviews into wider perspective and it's turning into...something. Not enough bad jokes.
That's the trouble with the more scholarly side of me. I suspect that if anyone asked me for fiction right now, it would have bad jokes in it... I was looking at the Cranky Ladies project and thinking "If they'd asked me, I'd have written about Liquoricia*" and then I thought "Puns!" Also "Medieval paranormal!" It's just as well they didn't ask me. What they did ask was if I was interested in doing a blog post for the book fundraising effort. That's when they discovered their fundraising effort was in Women's History Month. It's good, because it means that more people get to think about history (always good) and about women's history. And it meant I got to write about someone quite special. The post is here: http://fablecroft.com.au/books/cranky-ladies-of-history/cranky-ladies-guest-post-helen-leonard And the book looks really cool.
The trouble with writing a blogpost when one has about 40% of lung capacity is that fragile memories become fractured and one pastes bits together unintentionally. I conflated the first two years of Australia's Women's History Month in that blogpost: I was the one who did all the tech backup that first year, and it was on Blackboard. It was the second year that we did the big global thing and that the amazing and wonderful Trivium Publishing designed us a purpose-built website and etc.
That very first year had its own problems. The well-known feminist activist who really wanted to lead a chat on her subject and said, right up to an hour before, "I'm fine with computers" and an hour before rang me and said "What's a mouse?" The poor lady started panicking when she realised that she was programmed to do something she had no capacity to do, so I sent her to find a young relative with skills and said young relative worked to her dictation and I was on the phone to the participant the whole time to allay her concerns and generally be there, and all was well.
I did site visits all over the place to help give people the tech capacity. That was one of the bribes Helen gave me to get me involved in WHM, you see. "We have so many powerful women whose voices aren't being heard because they can't use these kinds of programmes." I think my women's stuff and my Jewish stuff were for the same reason - I had to teach people so they could follow their dreams. I spent years teaching Jewish kids how to write Purim plays, for instance. That is, however, another story.
I visited Marian Sawer in her home office to walk her through what she needed to know - that was all she needed - she was one of my best experiences. Kate Lundy just needed to ask a few questions, so we never even met up - she's very tech savvy. Possibly one of the most tech savvy of the politicians. I never understood why the previous government didn't take advantage of this, but no doubt there was a deep, internal reason. Eva Cox was someone else who just dealt with whatever techstuff she needed.
My favourite incident of all time was the second year. Three senior government officials did (from the audience's point of view) one of the best live panels we ever had during the online years. Pat Turner offered her office and arranged food and drink and asked if I'd mind actually being there, in case something went wrong. Her tech person assured her it was fine, but I came anyway, for she wanted me to. No-one thought to check firewalls until I got there. The firewalls for certain government departments are absolutely brilliant. This was tested by several people. We could reach the WHM site, but we couldn't use a chatroom. And the session was live chat. And it had begun...
In the end, all we could do was use someone's laptop and get to the site through dial-up (thus avoiding the firewall entirely). I opened a screen for each of the panelists, and typed what they told me to. I suspect that this - and the fine white wine we were drinking - was one of the reasons the panel was so very good. The three panellists sat on the couches and exchanged stories and jokes in between telling me what to type. Much wine was drunk. We were all the kind of women who get amused by this sort of incident, so we were all very merry, and the three women knew each other well, so I just typed and typed and typed. We started very late and we finished very late, and it was a very wonderful evening.
It's odd that a few days ago this part of my life was buried so deeply that I conflated two years. It's odd that now, even though I have book to write and so much else to do, I can't stop writing about it.
The good news is that the current WHM committee has the archives, for I kept all these wonderful chats and most of the email correspondence that went into setting them up. I delivered them just the other day. The bad news is that I still miss Helen. The Evil Gillian news is that I was speaking quite literally about the smallness of my life in the post about her. But I am still that woman who taught the Australian women's movement (select portions thereof) how to use computers and social media to get where they need to be.
My life is a lot bigger than the physical footprint suggests. So, for that matter, is my waistline.
*The lady whose divorce gave the excuse to dismantle the highly functioning Jewish legal system in England. She reminds me of someone in modern politics, actually. Possibly a mining magnate. Liquoricia's life wasn't all glorious, though, despite her once-vast wealth, and she had a miserable death, so I'm mostly sympathetic to her - just not about the Beth Din thing. Think of current female mining magnates as persecuted other, whose sense of entitlement is constantly battling with the reality of being Jewish: that's Liquoricia, I think.
How did I underestimate yesterday? I blame the Purim writing. It's almost done. It took longer than it ought to add a few names. By 'a few' I mean 15. This is how many names you and FB friends gave me to put in. Dobby has his own plotline and Conan is somewhat of a barbarian and looks very much like the person who suggested that he had to go in. The hardest to fit into the narrative were Katniss Everdeen and Princess Leia. There are already two prima donna women in the Esther story, and there really wasn't space for a third and a fourth.
In real news, I'm precisely halfway through my book on how fiction writers relate to and use history in their fiction. I'm putting those interviews into wider perspective and it's turning into...something. Not enough bad jokes.
That's the trouble with the more scholarly side of me. I suspect that if anyone asked me for fiction right now, it would have bad jokes in it... I was looking at the Cranky Ladies project and thinking "If they'd asked me, I'd have written about Liquoricia*" and then I thought "Puns!" Also "Medieval paranormal!" It's just as well they didn't ask me. What they did ask was if I was interested in doing a blog post for the book fundraising effort. That's when they discovered their fundraising effort was in Women's History Month. It's good, because it means that more people get to think about history (always good) and about women's history. And it meant I got to write about someone quite special. The post is here: http://fablecroft.com.au/books/cranky-ladies-of-history/cranky-ladies-guest-post-helen-leonard And the book looks really cool.
The trouble with writing a blogpost when one has about 40% of lung capacity is that fragile memories become fractured and one pastes bits together unintentionally. I conflated the first two years of Australia's Women's History Month in that blogpost: I was the one who did all the tech backup that first year, and it was on Blackboard. It was the second year that we did the big global thing and that the amazing and wonderful Trivium Publishing designed us a purpose-built website and etc.
That very first year had its own problems. The well-known feminist activist who really wanted to lead a chat on her subject and said, right up to an hour before, "I'm fine with computers" and an hour before rang me and said "What's a mouse?" The poor lady started panicking when she realised that she was programmed to do something she had no capacity to do, so I sent her to find a young relative with skills and said young relative worked to her dictation and I was on the phone to the participant the whole time to allay her concerns and generally be there, and all was well.
I did site visits all over the place to help give people the tech capacity. That was one of the bribes Helen gave me to get me involved in WHM, you see. "We have so many powerful women whose voices aren't being heard because they can't use these kinds of programmes." I think my women's stuff and my Jewish stuff were for the same reason - I had to teach people so they could follow their dreams. I spent years teaching Jewish kids how to write Purim plays, for instance. That is, however, another story.
I visited Marian Sawer in her home office to walk her through what she needed to know - that was all she needed - she was one of my best experiences. Kate Lundy just needed to ask a few questions, so we never even met up - she's very tech savvy. Possibly one of the most tech savvy of the politicians. I never understood why the previous government didn't take advantage of this, but no doubt there was a deep, internal reason. Eva Cox was someone else who just dealt with whatever techstuff she needed.
My favourite incident of all time was the second year. Three senior government officials did (from the audience's point of view) one of the best live panels we ever had during the online years. Pat Turner offered her office and arranged food and drink and asked if I'd mind actually being there, in case something went wrong. Her tech person assured her it was fine, but I came anyway, for she wanted me to. No-one thought to check firewalls until I got there. The firewalls for certain government departments are absolutely brilliant. This was tested by several people. We could reach the WHM site, but we couldn't use a chatroom. And the session was live chat. And it had begun...
In the end, all we could do was use someone's laptop and get to the site through dial-up (thus avoiding the firewall entirely). I opened a screen for each of the panelists, and typed what they told me to. I suspect that this - and the fine white wine we were drinking - was one of the reasons the panel was so very good. The three panellists sat on the couches and exchanged stories and jokes in between telling me what to type. Much wine was drunk. We were all the kind of women who get amused by this sort of incident, so we were all very merry, and the three women knew each other well, so I just typed and typed and typed. We started very late and we finished very late, and it was a very wonderful evening.
It's odd that a few days ago this part of my life was buried so deeply that I conflated two years. It's odd that now, even though I have book to write and so much else to do, I can't stop writing about it.
The good news is that the current WHM committee has the archives, for I kept all these wonderful chats and most of the email correspondence that went into setting them up. I delivered them just the other day. The bad news is that I still miss Helen. The Evil Gillian news is that I was speaking quite literally about the smallness of my life in the post about her. But I am still that woman who taught the Australian women's movement (select portions thereof) how to use computers and social media to get where they need to be.
My life is a lot bigger than the physical footprint suggests. So, for that matter, is my waistline.
*The lady whose divorce gave the excuse to dismantle the highly functioning Jewish legal system in England. She reminds me of someone in modern politics, actually. Possibly a mining magnate. Liquoricia's life wasn't all glorious, though, despite her once-vast wealth, and she had a miserable death, so I'm mostly sympathetic to her - just not about the Beth Din thing. Think of current female mining magnates as persecuted other, whose sense of entitlement is constantly battling with the reality of being Jewish: that's Liquoricia, I think.