read

    In an effort to keep better track of what media I ingest, I started keeping a yearly list of all the movies I watch and books I read. My resolution at New Years was simple: read more books than last year, and watch fewer movies. After giving it more thought I added another component to my goal: non-fiction. Last year I read a depressingly small amount, and only three of the books weren't fiction. Clearly, this problem had to be resolved.
   And so: non-fiction of 2013, so far:

1. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School / Kathleen Flinn - about teaching "real" women how to work wonders in the kitchen.
2. French Milk / Lucy Knisley - a charming comic-format travelogue of a trip to Paris.
3. Under the Banner of Heaven / John Krakauer - unsettling account of radical Mormonism. Honestly difficult to read, prepare to feel physically ill if you pick it up.
4. The Tipping Point / Malcolm Gladwell (abridged) - I was unaware this was abridged when I started it, and was rather disappointed to find out. Read Gladwell if you get the chance.
5. Bossypants / Tina Fey - best takeaways: "yes, and" and "I don't care if you like it". Well worth your time.
6. Blink / Malcolm Gladwell - seriously, go find one of Gladwell's books and read it. This one is about "thinking without thinking": first impressions, snap judgements, assumptions, etc.
7. This Book is Overdue! / Marilyn Johnson - what could go wrong with a book about librarians!? SO MUCH. An interesting chapter about the tension between American libraries and the FBI, overshadowed by a hugely long and boring section about Second Life. It's possible that I was biased by just finishing Blink, Gladwell is a very hard act to follow.
8. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? / Mindy Kaling - in the same vein as Bossypants. Delightful.
9. Nurtureshock / Pr Bronson, Ashley Merryman - turns out the "new science of children" is absolutely fascinating.
10. Enough Room For Joy : Jean Vanier's L'Arche / Bill Clarke - one of the most encouraging books I have ever read.

   (The vast improvement in non-fiction reading is largely due to discovering the audiobooks in the CPL ebook catalouge. Downloading audiobooks directly onto my phone? Yes please. If you have some sort of smart phone or tablet or ebook reader, I highly recommend getting on that train. Free audiobooks and ebooks! At the touch of a button! What's not to love?)

    While I am doing rather well on the literary front, there are still some bad habits I need to mend. NB exhibit A:

    This little pile is some of the books I have started reading this year and never finished. Not pictured are How Did You Get This Number / Sloane Crosley, Jeeves in the Offing / P.G. Wodehouse, Les Miserables / Victor Hugo, and others. It's a bit shameful. I have more than ten books on the go, some of which I haven't cracked for months. I'm working my way through this pile, but sometimes the prospect of a fresh new story is all too attractive. Perhaps I ought to start a book club.

hottest

   I have to admit a couple things before I even start this post. The first is that I, like everyone else, am prone to confirmation bias. The second is that I haven't read the entirety of this study about neural responses to images of people in bikinis for myself.

   Since watching Jessica Rey's video about bathing suits, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking about modesty. First, let's clear two things up:

   1) Rey's video is, at it's heart, an advertisement. Very well thought out and presented, but an advertisement nonetheless. Jessica Rey wants you to buy her swimsuits. Which is okay! It's a very good ad.
   2)  I do not like it at all.

   That second point may come as a surprise. What is there not to like about "revealing my dignity"? While I certainly believe it is important to present myself in a modest and decent manner, I do not think the best way to go about encouraging women to do so is by victim-blaming and fear-mongering.

   Victim-blaming and fear-mongering! No need to be so harsh, right? Let's look at some of the arguments against bikinis presented in the video (nb: there are many more points made in the video, I've chosen to only focus on two):

   1) Your bikini was invented in France and the designer had to hire a stripper to model it, and there was a time that women were kicked off of beaches for wearing bikinis
   3)Your bikini makes men view you as nothing more than an object

    Argument one isn't relevant to my decisions about swimwear, and I could make a list of body parts that have been considered scandalous in the past to back that up but I think I can just say "ankles" and get over it. There was a time that only "loose women" showed off their tantalizing ankles, and just look outside today! Ankles everywhere! What I mean to say is: our ideas of decency don't need to be shaped by what women wore, were made to wear, or were not to wear in the past. (Pants. Bobbed hair. Bare shoulders. Makeup.) Following from there we have a half-hidden second point. This factoid gets tossed into the talk without a seeming purpose: once upon a time, women's bathing suits were measured and if they were too small: no more beach. I think I can safely guarantee that if someone in Victorian times trotted onto the beach in a modest-by-modern-standards swimsuit the reception wouldn't exactly be warm. So am I going to take these things into consideration next time I buy a swimsuit? Definitely not.

   The second argument is demeaning to both men and women; it says that a bikini reduces men to their capricious biology and women to their shameful bodies. As I said: I haven't read the entire study that Jessica refers to in the video, but I can state from reading several commentaries and summaries of it that the only men who did not view women as people but as objects were men who already exhibited high hostile sexism (If you score high on hostile sexism on this test, congratulations, you are more likely to view women as objects). So when I'm told that men think I am a hammer when I wear a bikini, I am not getting the whole picture.

   It's an insidious attitude and one that has no benefit for women or men. Telling women "if you don't cover up men will objectify you" takes the fault from the perpetrator and puts it on the victim. Telling men "you will not be able to see a woman as a person unless she is wearing modest clothes" takes his ability to take his thoughts captive and says "nope, you're an animal".

   Here is where victim-blaming and fear-mongering come in. This is what I have heard many speakers say to me: "if/when you dress immodestly, you are asking to be objectified, discrimiated against, and harassed" and "if/when you dress immodestly, you turn men into lust-filled beasts with no control over themselves". What does that say about men? And what does that say about women? Or victims of harassment or assault? Or our responsibility for our own actions? Or about our free will?

   Do I think that the choices I make, whether they be about clothing or anything else, affect others? Yes. Do I think that each person should still be held responsible for their actions and reactions? Absolutely. Like my mother says: you choose your attitude.

   Our attitudes and biases do not come from outer stimuli, but from what we have learned and accepted and injected into our hearts and minds. People are not born misogynist objectifiers, just like they aren't born racist; they learn these things over time from peers, parents, teachers, the media, and on and on. The primary problem is not that somewhere a woman is wearing a bikini (or a one-piece, or a tankini, or a t-shirt and shorts, or any other combination of clothing), the problem is that somewhere a boy is being taught that women are somehow "less" than he is, that they are objects to be used.

vocabulary

I have a new favorite word.

It happens every so often; I hear someone use a word I haven't thought about before, or haven't made use of, or just haven't heard at all. Last summer it was "skookum" (slang: excellent, spot on), once it was "bizarre", I picked up "reckon" and "heaps" in New Zealand -- as a side note, I am very interested in the idea of words as souvenirs. This time it is a bit of business-speak which I had previously ranked among the likes of "synergy" and other buzzwords.

"Actionable"

It was used in a blog and suddenly a previously inaccessible word was part of my everyday vocabulary. I love this word. I throw it around all the time. I used it at least twice today. I'm planning a camp at Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp and I want the campers to be given "some super actionable things" to take home with them. I have been thinking about my future and am setting out some "actionable steps" towards my goals. Convoluted plans are "not very actionable", which is akin to saying "that's a nice idea but it will never happen".

Lately I've been working on being less of a talker and more of a doer. Too much of the time I allow fear or perceived difficulty keep me back from things; I can talk about them, but doing them is another matter altogether. However, the tables are beginning to turn, and words like "actionable" are part of the process. How could I not do something when it is described as actionable?

All actionable means is "capable of being acted on", but it has proved to be useful and helpful. It reminds me to break things down into manageable steps. I'll give you some examples.

Two actionable steps towards getting my Masters of Library and Information Sciences:

• Contact people in admissions and financial advising at Athabasca University
• Apply for a degree-completion program

Two actionable steps towards being healthier:

• Don't buy junk food in the evening
• Have breakfast

Two actionable steps towards not being a hermit:

• Talk to someone today I didn't talk to yesterday
•  Keep track of mail and reply to it

Two actionable steps to developing my writing:

• Journal at least three pages every day, about anything
• Keep up a semi-regular blog

See? So simple! Actionable takes a goal from being lofty and unattainable to being the destination on a straightforward path, and I've got a map.



Another side note: if you'd like a copy of the little haiku zine I wrote about last post, you can have one. I still have heaps of copies.

written

A couple of years ago I wrote a small collection of haiku which were not very good. At the time I was very proud of them, and I hurried to form them into a little zine and post them on Etsy, ready to stun the world.

Actually, that is a bit of a lie. I did not think they were stunning in the least. They were somewhat embarrassing but I was determined to turn something I had written into something I could distribute, whether or not I thought it would be acceptable to others. It was an exercise in overcoming fear.

At the time I was consistently updating my blog with everything from haiku about movies I had watched to monthly goals to long posts about how to be a good theater patron. Oddly, it seemed like a very large leap from blog posts to a tangible zine. Both are a form of self-publishing, but it was somehow safer to shoot something off on my blog than to type out and photocopy a single-page accordion-fold zine.

In the end I only sent out one zine, and that to a friend.

Recently I have been reading several books about writing. All are adamant about their One Weird Tip for improving your writing: write. Write and write and keep on writing. Write about anything and everything. Write everyday. Write observations, write stories, write a journal, write letters. Just write. Write so much that you forget not to write.

In light of all this encouragement to just write, I've become less embarrassed by my little book of haiku. Who cares if is wasn't profound? At least I was writing.

mold

Yesterday there was a leak in the library ceiling.

As I was not in working and the leak was next to my desk, it went unnoticed until it started dripping down on our collection of Bibles. Kathy heard it and went to investigate, finding several of our Bibles wet already. Thanks goodness for the Librarian's innate alertness to extraneous noise.

In our collection we have a seventeen volume, large format, braille Bible. It is quite beautiful. Since each of the books in quite large, it only fits on the top shelf of the unit containing the Bibles.

Do you see where this is going?

Three of the seventeen volumes were wet, along with two or three other Bibles of a less unique nature. They were still damp when I arrived at the library this morning, and I can't help being concerned about them. For one thing, it seems fairly obvious that an alphabet that relies on embossing is more susceptible to water damage than other books. For another, braille requires a thickness of paper that doesn't dry out quickly as opposed to the hair-thin paper used in a conventional Bible. It absorbs more water and remains wet longer which leads to a bibliophiles worst nightmare: mold.

While I might be exaggerating somewhat in regards to the "worst nightmare" status of mold, it is still no laughing matter. Books hold moisture very well, are made of natural materials, and are often left undisturbed on the shelf for an extended period of time. This makes them a prime target for mold, and it travels. A whole stack can be at risk if one book starts growing.

Next to my desk are two shelf units, one holds our Bibles, and the other holds a large collection of hymnals and other music books. Many of these would be easy to replace. Some: not so much. I have three Welsh Bibles from the 1800s, I have a Bible in a Scandinavian dialect that Google and Wikipedia were unsure about, I have a gorgeous Icelandic Bible from the early 1900s, I have some very old,. very fragile hymnals, I have a tiny leather bound Bible that fits in the palm of my hand. Needless to say, losing any of these to mold or water would be awful.

Here's the thing about water damage: it seeps in slowly and is sometimes hard to detect. How long had the pipes in my ceiling been leaking before it saturated the panel above the bookshelf? How long was that absorbing water before it started dripping? How long was it dripping before Kathy heard it and found the leak? How long were the books soaking up water? How long will it take them to dry out? There wasn't a cascade of falling water, there wasn't even a huge amount of damage done. The sneakiness of it is the worst.

Here's where we turn books and water and mold into a metaphor.

How often does one little thing slide, one small habit get started, or one tiny incident get overlooked that can build and grow and become ingrained and "suddenly" become a huge issue? Maybe communication between friends or family is suffering, maybe someone's health is quickly degrading, maybe a company's practices have become increasingly worrying, maybe there are car troubles, or a churning rumor mill, or deep-set prejudices, or plumbing that leaks. When and where did the trouble even get its start?

I recently discovered that the Calgary Public Library includes audiobooks in their electronic collection, and that I can download and listen to these on my phone (technology!). My most recent "read" is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. A fascinating read at any time, it seemed especially so today. Positing that large and widespread changes in behavior, whether it be crime rates or shoe sales or the results of Paul Revere's Midnight Ride, are very often the results of tiny incidents/qualities/actions, Gladwell makes a convincing argument for the power of tiny tweaks. Small things result in wide ripples.

A slow leak from a plastic joint in a pipe above a bookshelf is a small thing with large consequences, as are hasty words said in anger, or minor dishonesty in a company, or even things like giving up a gym pass or allowing sloth to creep into your morning or picking up a nigh-on harmless habit. One day you realize that instead of just patching a little leak, you have to empty a book shelf and sort through which books are wet and which are dry and make sure the wet ones aren't put back on the shelf until every trace of water is gone. Let it go a little further and instead of just patching a leak and drying things out, you have a stack of books full of mold and made unsalvageable.

So what's the solution? If we had caught the leak earlier I wouldn't be faced with three damaged volumes in my braille set. Better yet, if the pipe had been done with soldered copper instead of chancy plastic in the first place, the likelihood of leaks would have been far lower.

It is important to be aware of the eventual ramifications of our actions. This is especially true when it comes to how we speak to and about each other. James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship, the bit in a horse's bridle, or to the spark that starts a forest fire. If I listed all the Proverbs that talk about the importance of guarding and monitoring our speech, we would be here all day. Jesus said that "out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks". As we know a tree by its fruit, so we know a person by what they say and do. A leak of negative words can start out small but can result in a significant amount of clean up, and affects not only the people around us, but ourselves as well.