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By jamie, November 8, 2011 4:29 am

I stayed up much too late last night reading this book – I read up through page 364 (to Chapter 28). I am officially annoyed that the next book in this series will not be released until next year. I’m not a fan of waiting, but am willing to do so if she keeps up the quality of the writing (as I expect she will). I may have to tackle her non-fiction books too.

One thing has been bugging me – she writes “a historian” instead of “an historian” – this looks wrong to me. What you you think? Is she right? How do you say it when you read these words aloud – is the “h” silent? Grammar Girl agrees with her (as do most style books, apparently) so I guess that’s five points from Gryffindor (sorry – couldn’t resist an HP reference), but her way still looks wrong.

The paragraphs below contains spoilers and speculation about the rest of this book/series, so do not scroll down if you don’t want to know.

If you are still reading, I guess you are either reading the book with me, or you don’t mind spoilers (I’m with you – spoilers don’t bother me one bit!) I have made it to the love story – the witch and the vampire are in love with each other, but their relationship violates a treaty between all non-human creatures, so their lives are now in danger. Diana is a very strong women, but vampires are pack animals, and there can only be one alpha, so things are going to get tricky. From a feminist perspective, what do you think about books that require strong women to become submissive in order to achieve true love?

What is it with vampires? They are physically perfect, but they’re PREDATORS, and they could accidentally kill you even if they love you. At least Diana is a witch, so she might be able to hold her own against them if she needs to. And because the vampires in books are very old, they hold onto ancient traditions, particularly the ones where women must be taken care of and protected, even if this means locking them away from the rest of the world – what is the appeal today? Are women drawn to that kind of chivalry in literature even as we are repulsed by it in real life? Are we repulsed by it in real life? So many questions about gender roles come to mind as I read, particularly given that the lead female in this book is a highly respected scholar who has made a name for herself in her career – does she surrender her career now that she belongs to a vampire? She’s still working in the book, and I’m excited to see where Harkness takes this.

I can’t help but think that Diana is going to become a vampire (I guess we’ll find out in a couple of years when the trilogy is complete). That would make the “Congregation” leave them alone, because they would no longer be breaking the treaty, and it would continue their lovely romance into “happily ever after – ever after” territory. (Otherwise, she alone will eventually die.) Other witches have become vampires at the expense of their powers, but she might be the most powerful witch of all time, so does that mean she gets to keep her powers? Also, her vampire is a geneticist, so he might be able to do something with her DNA to help her keep her powers when/if she becomes a vampire.

I have course prep to accomplish tonight, and many papers/exams to grade, but I’ll to try to squeeze in some reading time too – can’t wait to see what happens next!

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By jamie, June 16, 2011 6:10 am

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter had an epic tantrum in the store, the worst public tantrum she has ever had, the kind where people look at you with varying degrees of “why don’t you control your kid.” She was sitting inside the shopping cart, sharing space with the things we planned to buy, including a tomato cage (several long green sticks). Everything was fine until I had her try on a life jacket (she needed one for our vacation) – she wanted the Dora one but I went with the generic one that fit better. She screamed, kicked the sides of the cart, and writhed about like some sort of angry caged animal. It was horrible. Then she grabbed the tomato cage in a weapon-like manner, so I had to take it from her. Other than that, I chose to ignore her. It took about a million years for me to march us to the check out, where she immediately told the cashier, “I’m mad at my mommy!”

At this point a female shopper approached the line we were in and, smiling, told Little Mama that she could hear her screams from “all the way across the store.” Then she said, “you keep using your voice, Baby. Express yourself and don’t let anyone silence you.” The woman then turned to her attention to me: “We would never even thought of screaming like that when we were kids. Our mothers would have smacked us if we tried!”

This experience was in my head when I read chapters 22-28 of Tiger Mother. I often look at my daughter and think that I would never have gotten away with the tantrums she throws. Amy Chua’s youngest daughter is strong-willed, and becomes openly (and almost shockingly) rebellious in this section of the book. Honestly, I felt a little but judgmental when she describes her daughter telling her that she hates her – I would not allow my child to speak to me that way. Where is the line, though? How much control do I/should I take of her freedom of self expression? I don’t want her to fear me, but I want her to respect me, and I show her respect as well. I don’t hit her, however effective that may be (I suspect that Amy Chua did spank her girls, though she does not say she did). I was so compliant as a kid – I love her so much it hurts, but I’m not sure how to handle Little Mama’s strong-willed personality. I predict I will be reading parenting books for a long time.

Chua mentions in this section that she used to pull her daughter out of school to give her extra time to practice violin. This was at great personal sacrifice, because not only was she teaching at Yale, she was also doing quite a bit of travel for speaking engagements during this period. Her level of determination is almost frightening – she met all of her personal commitments while simultaneously managing the “careers” of her two musician daughters. For extra fun, she took care of the family dog, and, in this part of the book, decided to buy a second dog. As I read, I alternate between horror and admiration.

Scroll down for other posts about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

Review
Part 1: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua
Part 2: Try the Extra Credit
Part 3: Keeping Things Fun
Part 4: Out of Control
Part 5: Do The Work

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By jamie, May 3, 2011 11:45 pm

Did you watch the Royal wedding? I’ll admit that I wanted to see the dress, so I looked for photos on the Internet, but I’m winding down a semester and haven’t had much television time lately. My students were explaining some of the social rules that Princess Kate will now have to follow, such as not being able to eat all of the food on her plate. Things were much different for royalty in Egypt when Cleopatra was the queen. I read chapters 4-5, and learned about some of her typical activities. She acted as judge, settling complaints people had against one another, she oversaw her kingdom’s agriculture and economics (basically, everyone was a sharecropper, and she controlled the seeds, the harvest, and pretty much everything but the field labor. She personally determined how much people should be taxed, and saw to it that everyone was fed. She commanded the military, and oversaw the temples. Oh, and she was the living embodiment of the goddess Isis, so that took up some of her time.

Honestly, I keep thinking of inserting a self deprecating slacker joke in this post but it almost seems sacrilegious to do so. Most of us manage to expand our activities to fill up available time. Also, and this might sound completely ridiculous, but sometimes we don’t accomplish much because we don’t have very much to do. Now hear me out on this one: when I have just a couple of things on my list (even if they are huge, time-consuming things like grade 210 essays in two days), I seem to have plenty of time to check Facebook or Cracked.com. If I break up my list, as illustrated below, I am far more productive.

Productive To-Do List:
Grade 12 exams
Clean kitchen counters
Grade 12 more exams
Mop kitchen floor
12 exams
Internet break (15 minutes)

It’s kind of fun to cross things off of a list, and I try to arrange it so that no one item should take more than one hour to add a “beat the clock” element.

Schiff describes Cleopatra as “intellectually agile.” I love this. When she wasn’t ruling her country, she was learning about science and medicine and spent time learning the effects of various combinations of ingredients (incredible). She was fascinated with, and enjoyed documenting the effects of different poisons, (terrifying). Here is a quote about her skills (good luck trying out her “recipe” at home):

A curious cure for baldness would be credited to Cleopatra; she was said to counsel a paste of equal parts burnt mice, burnt rag, burnt horses’ teeth, bear’s grease, deer marrow, and reed bark. Mixed with honey, the salve was to be applied to the scalp, ‘rubbed until it sprouts.’

[Hmm - should I put spoiler alerts in discussions of history books? If so, Spoiler Alert!] This section of the book describes the assassination of Caesar, which happened while Cleopatra was visiting Rome. Remember the warning “beware the Ides of March” from high school English class? Sadly, I have little memory of my study of this, other than the fact that it occurred in 10th grade, so I guess it means nothing that I have no recollection of Cleopatra anywhere in the story.

One more: A common theme in this book is the Ptolemies’ (Cleopatra’s family) love of excess and their lavish displays of wealth. There is a story that Cleopatra once seduced Caesar with a display of indifference toward her wealth by dissolving a pearl in boiling water and drinking it. Pearls were extremely valuable in her time so this would have been like knocking down a luxury home to use it for firewood. It probably didn’t happen – Schiff explains in a footnote that a scientist actually tried and had to “pulverize” the pearl before it would dissolve in the vinegar, and even then it took several hours.

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By jamie, April 8, 2011 4:56 pm

I have been annoyed this week by the way politicians protect the rich at the expense of the poor. To many of them, it is better to cut programs for those who have the least rather than (fairly) tax those at the top. Those politicians are so smug and self righteous as they talk about all of us sacrificing to improve the economy. At the same time, we have television shows depicting the excess that some of the rich take for granted – fancy vacation homes, expensive car collections, thousands of dollars spent on purses and shoes. I guess a little part of many of us hopes that someday we, too, will have enough expendable income for such frivolities – so we don’t complain too much when the wealthy defend such lifestyles.

Well, the Ptolemies were even more astonishing in their excess than our wealthiest, most ostentatious person. They served dinner on heavy gold dishes with floors completely carpeted with flower petals. They were obsessed with aromas, and servants used to sprinkle (expensive) scented oils into the hair of dinner guests to enhance their dining experience. “Among the greatest hosts in history, the Ptolemies sent their guests stumbling home with gifts. It was not unusual to make off with a place setting of solid silver, a slave, a gazelle, a gold sofa, a horse in silver armor. Excess had put the Ptolemies on the map, where Cleopatra fully intended the dynasty to remain.” That sentence is something, isn’t it? – where is that Egyptian dynasty today? Speaking of today, we are being told that raising taxes for the wealthiest citizens will hurt our fragile economy – really? As opposed to what exactly? I say we should risk it and see what happens.

I read chapter 3, which talks about Caesar and Cleopatra’s trip down the Nile River and through Egypt while she was pregnant with his child. Both royals are referred to as living deities – she was worshiped as a goddess by her people and I guess he was considered somewhat of a god as well. Schiff talks about them as being evenly matched, though history remembers her as manipulative while he was a brilliant strategist – he was much older than she, and it was said that she “captured him with magic.” History seems to have trouble depicting a woman as simply intelligent and capable without also being some sort of deviant (a witch perhaps, or in Cleopatra’s case, evidently a vixen goddess). Sadly, sometimes I don’t think we have come too far from those beliefs.

Here are some other tidbits from this chapter:

In Cleopatra’s time, barbershops were also post offices.

The Nile was believed to have magical properties: it made Egyptian women more fertile – supposedly they had twins and triplets more often than other women. Everything grew better and stronger there, which added to the belief that Egypt was particularly blessed and special.

One of most fascinating things in this section was written in a footnote: the Sphinx was probably completely buried in sand when Caesar and Cleopatra visited, and had been for 1000 years. I haven’t Googled it yet, but I wonder how it got unburied – was it just wind, or was it some sort of excavation? What about the pyramids? So the Sphinx was there during the time Christ was here on earth, but his family could not possibly have seen it?

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By jamie, March 26, 2011 11:43 pm

Last summer I had the opportunity to tour a golf course community in the Bahamas with Geek Boy’s parents. I have never played golf (unless mini-golf counts), but for the first time in my life I was able to see its appeal – the views were spectacular, and I could completely imagine at least walking that lovely course every day. It was also the most solid example of colonialism I have ever experienced: while the development has made some environmental “concessions” (using grass that can be maintained with sea water, not using fertilizer or pesticides, treating the sewage water for everyone on the island, etc.), there is a high gate dividing the property from the settlement (the town where the native Bahamians live) and no one is allowed to play golf there unless either own a home (extremely expensive) on the property or are guests of a homeowner. The only Bahamians we saw there were the workers (not the developer of course): one followed us around making sure my two year old daughter had enough juice and that our every need was provided for (we didn’t ask for anything), while another made our kiddo a huge peanut butter and jelly sandwich since nothing on the restaurant menu was age appropriate for her.

I was reminded of this day when I read about Barack Obama staying with his half-sister, Auma, during his first trip to Kenya (he took time off before starting Harvard Law to visit his father’s homeland) – he wanted to go on a safari and Auma tried to talk him out of it, noting that native residents could not afford to go on safari even though it was their land. I don’t care how often people argue that this kind of tourism is wonderful because it contributes to the local economy – it doesn’t feel right to me that natives of poor countries have to allow themselves to be exploited in this way in order to feed their families. The entire system is just messed up. (I read through page 366.)

Because this book is about race, Mr. Obama talks about how conflicted he feels knowing that many of his race must made do without the opportunities that he has had. He refers to it as “survivor’s guilt” – watching others of his race being poor and struggling when he got educated and “got out” of a lower social class situation. He also shares debates with his sister about the “racial caste system” that exists in poor communities in the U.S., in Kenya, and probably almost everywhere else – people of different races and ethnicities share the bottom of the barrel and discrimination is rampant between groups. No one wants to be at the bottom of the pecking order, so there is a great deal of in-fighting; this is a perfect situation for the wealthy, because they don’t have to worry about the different groups banning together to demand an improvement of their lot.

More on the “women’s prerogative” from the Cleapatra book – women often pay dearly when they change their minds, but this is not generally an adequate justification for remaining silent. One of Obama’s aunts struggled financially and couldn’t/wouldn’t keep a marriage because she didn’t want to be married to someone who turned out to be lazy or abusive. Women have so many reasons for swallowing down what is not best for them because they are afraid to lose. Sometimes it takes a very brave person to exercise that “woman’s prerogative.”

Here is just one quote from this section. When I read it I felt sick to my stomach because it describes exactly how we feel in this country:

I supposed it is not only the government’s fault,” he said after a while. “Even when things are done properly, we Kenyans don’t like to pay taxes. We don’t trust the idea of giving our money to someone. The poor man, he has good reason for this suspicion. But the big men who own the trucks that use the roads, they also refuse to pay their share. They would rather have their equipment break down all the time than give up some of their profits. This is how we like to think, you see, Somebody else’s problem.”
“Attitudes aren’t so different in America,” I told Francis.
“You are probably right,” he said, “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”