Change of Perspective

Change of Perspective Is Moving!

2010-03-05T06:53:00.001-06:00

New URL:

http://blog.marydanielsbrown.com/

New RSS feed:

http://blog.marydanielsbrown.com/?feed=rss2

The Backstory

Blogger will be discontinuing support of its platform for blogs not hosted by its companion site, Blogspot. I have therefore changed to using WordPress, a version of which is available through my hosting service, Dreamhost.

Since the old and new blogs are in different subdirectories, this blog will remain in place here, at least for a while, but it will be static. All new posts will go to the new blog. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope to see you at the new location.

The Official Susan B. Anthony House

2010-02-15T15:32:00.001-06:00

The Official Susan B. Anthony House:

Today is the birthday of foremother Susan B. Anthony, who changed America's perspective on a lot of issues, particularly a woman's right to vote.

A Different Perspective on American History

2010-01-28T11:40:00.001-06:00

Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com:

Professor Howard Zinn is probably best known for his revisionist history book A People's History of the United States, published in 1980. When my daughter was in high school about 15 years ago, I was quite impressed that her history class was reading this anti-establishment book, which offers a perspective on American history decidedly different from the standard fare.

In the late 1960s I was an undergraduate at Boston University, one of the most politically active campuses in the U.S. Prof. Zinn was a standard fixture at just about every protest march and rally, so I was not surprised to find the following in this obituary:

Professor Zinn retired [from Boston University] in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses’ strike. Over the years, he continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket lines.

Yep, that's exactly how I remember Howard Zinn.

Knowing Is Better Than Not Knowing

2010-01-11T11:54:00.001-06:00

John is a friend of mine from college. We haven’t seen each other in nearly 40 years, but we have annually exchanged Christmas cards, letters, and photos. Last week the card I sent to John this past Christmas came back with “deceased--return to sender” hand written on the envelope.

Stunned and saddened, I cranked up Google and searched for John’s full name and the city where he lives. Near the bottom of the results page I found a link to a Facebook page for people who had formerly worked at one of John’s past employers. On that page was a posting about John’s death, followed by information about his funeral. I sent a message to the poster, and he kindly replied with the details. Through Google I was also able to pull up John’s obituary from his home-town newspaper.

Lots of people complain that we’re living in an age of TMI (too much information) and erosion of privacy. On occasion I am one of those people. But in this situation I was grateful for the ability to find something out. Granted, my knowing how John died does not change the fact of his death. But somehow, just knowing how he died made me feel a bit better. If there were no Internet, I would just have known that John had died, and that would have been all. So, at least in this case, I appreciate all the information that’s floating around “out there.”

Because, sometimes, knowing is better than not knowing.

Quotations of the Day

2010-01-02T09:47:00.001-06:00

"You have to start by changing the story you tell yourself about getting older... The minute you say to yourself, 'Time is everything, and I'm going to make sure that time is used the way I dream it should be used,' then you've got a whole
different story."

--Diane Sawyer

"I shall not grow conservative with age."

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

01/02/2010: Backward and forward, this date is lining up as a rarity

2010-01-02T09:14:00.001-06:00

Local News | 01/02/2010: Backward and forward, this date is lining up as a rarity | Seattle Times Newspaper:

The date 01/02/2010 is a palindrome: A rare confluence of month, date and year that reads the same backward as forward.

The last palindrome date was Oct. 2, 2001. But before that, more than six centuries passed since the numerals last aligned on Aug. 31, 1380.

'They are very rare,' said Aziz Inan, a numbers-obsessed professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland.

Read more about this numbers-obsessed professor here.

Marilyn French, Novelist and Champion of Feminism, Dies at 79

2009-05-04T19:21:00.001-05:00

Marilyn French, Novelist and Champion of Feminism, Dies at 79 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com:

Marilyn French, a writer and feminist activist whose debut novel, ‘The Women’s Room,’ propelled her into a leading role in the modern feminist movement, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 79 and lived in Manhattan. . . .

With steely views about the treatment of woman and a gift for expressing them on the printed page, Ms. French transformed herself from an academic who quietly bristled at the expectations of married women in the post-World War II era to a leading, if controversial, opinionmaker on gender issues who decried the patriarchal society she saw around her. ‘My goal in life is to change the entire social and economic structure of Western civilization, to make it a feminist world,’ she once declared.

Photo of the Day

2009-02-08T19:15:00.002-06:00

This is Fred, a Royal Palm Turkey, in full strut. Here's what the sign says about Royal Palm turkeys:

Meleagris gallopavo ssp.

Bred for ornamental feathers, usually not for meat
Are rare and listed as a critical domestic species
One of smallest species of turkeys
Are active, good flyers, and excellent insect foragers, making them great pest controllers

Fred was strutting his stuff this afternoon at the World Bird Sanctuary in Lone Elk Park, St. Louis County, Missouri. In all his finery, he reminded me of a wedding cake.

Quotation of the Day

2009-01-25T17:15:00.002-06:00

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life; they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our byoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again."

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, p. 237

2009-01-13T09:12:00.000-06:00

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

--Julian of Norwich, Christian mystic
(ca. 1342- ca. 1416)

‘Conversations With God’ Author Accused of Plagiarism

2009-01-06T18:42:00.001-06:00

‘Conversations With God’ Author Accused of Plagiarism - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com:

Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series ‘Conversations with God,’ recently posted a personal Christmas essay on the spiritual Web site Beliefnet.com that was nearly identical to a 10-year-old article originally published by a little-known writer in a spiritual magazine. He now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually happened to him.

Oh dear. People who do this are always sorry--when they get caught. I stand firmly with Candy Chand, the woman whose work was lifted:

“I have strong issue with anyone who would appear to plagiarize my work and pretend it is his own,” said Ms. Chand. “That takes away from the truth of the material, it takes away from the miracle that occurred, because people begin to question what they can believe anymore. As a professional writer, when someone appears to plagiarize, they damage the industry, they damage other writer’s credibility and they hurt the reader because they never know what to believe anymore.”

And the fact that the man who got caught doing this is supposedly a man of God--well, I stand with Candy Chand on that point, too:

She added that it was ironic that Mr. Walsch in particular had been the one to appropriate her writing. “Has the man who writes best selling books about his ‘Conversations with God’ also heard God’s commandments?” she asked. “’Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not covet another author’s property?’”

With ‘Angel at the Fence,’ Another Memoir Is Found to Be False

2008-12-31T14:34:00.001-06:00

With ‘Angel at the Fence,’ Another Memoir Is Found to Be False - NYTimes.com:

In media circles, there is a joke about facts that are too good to check. This week Oprah Winfrey and the New York publishing industry stumbled on yet another unverified account in the form of a Holocaust survivor who said his future wife had helped him stay alive while he was imprisoned as a child in a Nazi concentration camp by throwing apples over the fence to him.

And so another memoir is pulled from publication. This is getting to be such a common occurrence that it's almost not worth pointing out. Really, where does the blame lie for this kind of thing? You could lay it on the agent, who should have made sure of the manuscript's authenticity before she shopped it around for publication. Or you could lay it on the publisher, who should have checked out the manuscript's veracity before agreeing to put its imprint on it. But I place the blame squarely on the writer. It may be a good story, but if it's not true, it's fiction, not memoir.

Photo of the Day

2008-12-24T15:36:00.002-06:00

Happy Holidays to all,
And to all a good night

Photo of the Day

2008-12-21T12:34:00.002-06:00

With best wishes to all our friends in New England, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest. Stay safe, happy, and warm.

Olympic swimmer treated for cancer makes a splash with return

2008-12-08T09:59:00.001-06:00

Olympic swimmer treated for cancer makes a splash with return - CNN.com:

Michael Phelps was the swimming star at last summer's Olympics, but a more low-key competitor was American breaststroker Eric Shanteau, who postponed treatment for testicular cancer in order to compete in Beijing.

After successful surgery in August, Shanteau recently returned to competition at the U.S. Short Course Nationals, where he swam personal best times in the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard breaststroke.

"This experience gave me a very different and new perspective on life -- it's a good one," he said.

Things I'm Thankful For

2008-11-30T15:04:00.001-06:00

Instead of the Sunday Summary, here’s a list of some of the things I’m thankful for as this Thanksgiving weekend winds down:

family and friends, even though they’re scattered all over the country
the Internet, which, in addition to enabling us to learn anything we want to know, also allows us to keep in touch with family and friends, even though they’re scattered all over the country
thick, warm wool socks, which I wear all winter long
the election of Barack Obama
the abundance on my Thanksgiving table and in my refrigerator
glucosamine and chondroitin, which--at least so far--are keeping my 60-year-old joints working painlessly
libraries
the next generation, which is turning out very nicely, if I do say so myself
the approaching end of George W. Bush’s Presidency
music
human resilience, especially in children
flowers
audiobooks for listening to while exercising
the handiwork of my massage therapist and personal trainer (see above reference to glucosamine and chondroitin)
fuzzy warm pajamas and fleece-lined slippers
Excedrin
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center
the fact that Sarah Palin is not going to be the next Vice-President of the United States
hot cocoa
the aroma of turkey soup simmering in the kitchen

6 Reasons Why Writing Your Life Story Matters « Dan Curtis

2008-11-28T15:07:00.001-06:00

6 Reasons Why Writing Your Life Story Matters « Dan Curtis ~ Professional Personal Historian:

Professional personal historian Dan Curtis has created a list of 6 compelling reasons why people should write their life stories. Which one are you hiding behind?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T09:00:00.003-06:00

Here in the United States we're celebrating Thanksgiving today. We've taken a proprietary hold on this holiday, incorporating it into our national myth and folklore, by portraying it as a unique event involving Pilgrims and Indians that commemorates the founding of the country.

In reality, though, harvest celebrations are as old as agriculture itself. Throughout time cultures have offered thanks to their deities for the fruits of autumn. The cornucopia, or horn of plenty, has become the ubiquitous symbol of these celebrations. Although now we most often see the cornucopia portrayed as a woven basket holding produce, the original cornucopia, as the word's Latin root tells us, included an animal's--probably a bull's or a ram's--horn.
One autumn an Asian man participated in a life story writing workshop I was presenting. He is now an American citizen, and his children were born here in the U. S., but he wanted to write about his childhood experiences so his children would know about their Asian heritage. When he read his narration of how the residents of the village presented offerings of rice to the gods and visited relatives on a day in autumn, the other workshop participants commented that this sounded a lot like our American Thanksgiving.

It would have been more accurate to say that our Thanksgiving sounds a lot like the ancient Asian tradition of giving thanks. We don't have a monopoly on autumnal thanksgiving, even if we do spell it with a capital letter and get a paid day off from work. Sharing life stories with people from another culture can broaden our perspective on our place in the world and in history.

Sunday Summary

2008-11-23T18:56:00.002-06:00

Sleep makes room for memories

Sleep not only refreshes the body, it may also push the reset button on the brain, helping the brain stay flexible and ready to learn, new research shows.

Whether it is slow-wave sleep or rapid eye movement (REM), sleep changes the biochemistry of the brain, and the change is necessary to continue learning new things, suggests research presented November 18 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Memory loss: Special report

This page collects a series of articles from this fall in the Los Angeles Times about memory loss (e.g., Early Warning Signs of Alzhiemer's Disease, Tips for Preventing Memory Loss).

Art as Visual Research: 12 Examples of Kinetic Illusions in Op Art

Scientists did not invent the vast majority of visual illusions. Rather, they are the work of visual artists, who have used their insights into the workings of the visual system to create visual illusions in their pieces of art. We have previously pointed out in our essays that, long before visual science existed as a formal discipline, artists had devised techniques to “trick” the brain into thinking that a flat canvas was three-dimensional, or that a series of brushstrokes in a still life was in fact a bowl of luscious fruit. Thus the visual arts have sometimes preceded the visual sciences in the discovery of fundamental vision principles, through the application of methodical—although perhaps more intuitive—research techniques. In this sense, art, illusions and visual science have always been implicitly linked.

Related Posts:

We See What We Expect to See
We See What We Expect to See (Part 2)
Perception Deception

Video: Natalie Goldberg on "Old Friend from Far Away"

Related Post:

Book Review: Old Friend from Far Away

Book Review: Writing a Woman's Life

2008-11-23T09:51:00.000-06:00

Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman's Life (1988)
W.W. Norton & Company, 144 pages, $14.95 hardcover
ISBN 0-393-02601-9

Highly recommended

In the "Introduction," feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun explains the topic of her book:

There are four ways to write a woman's life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiography; she may tell it in what she chooses to call fiction; a biographer, woman or man, may write the woman's life in what is called a biography; or the woman may write her own life in advance of living it, unconsciously, and without recognizing or naming the process. (p. 12)

Heilbrun says that she will focus on three of these methods, omitting fiction.

Men have always had narrative stories, such as the quest motif and the warrior exemplar, on which to base their lives and within which to tell their life stories. But, Heilbrun argues, such stories of action and accomplishment have been denied to women; the behavior praised by these stories has always been branded "unwomanly":

above all other prohibitions, what has been forbidden to women is anger, together with the open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life (which inevitably means accepting some degree of power and control over other lives). (p. 13)
* * * * *
Because this has been declared unwomanly, and because many women would prefer (or think they would prefer) a world without evident power or control, women have been deprived of the narratives, or the texts, plots, or examples, by which they might assume power over—take control of—their own lives. (p. 17)
* * * * *
Well into the twentieth century, it continued to be impossible for women to admit into their autobiographical narratives the claim of achievement, the admission of ambition, the recognition that accomplishment was neither luck nor the result of the efforts or generosity of others. (p. 24)
* * * * *
The concept of biography itself has changed profoundly in the last two decades, biographies of women especially so. But while biographers of men have been challenged on the "objectivity" of their interpretation, biographers of women have had not only to choose one interpretation over another but, far more difficult, actually to reinvent the lives their subjects led, discovering from what evidence they could find the processes and decisions, the choices and unique pain, that lay beyond the life stories of these women. The choices and pain of the women who did not make a man the center of their lives seemed unique, because there were no models of the lives they wanted to live, no exemplars, no stories. These choices, this pain, those stories, and how they may be more systematically faced…are what I want to examine in this book. (p. 31)

In subsequent chapters Heilbrun offers George Sand, Willa Cather, and particularly Dorothy L. Sayers as examples of women who tried to mold their lives into patterns other than those traditionally allowed to them. However:

Only in the last third of the twentieth century have women broken through to a realization of the narratives that have been controlling their lives. Women poets of one generation—those born between 1923 and 1932—can now be seen to have transformed the autobiographies of women's lives, to have expressed, and suffered for expressing, what women had not earlier been allowed to say. (p. 60)

These poets, all American, are Denise Levertov, Jane Cooper, Carolyn Kizer, Maxine Kumin, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and Sylvia Plath.

Finally, Heilbrun argues for what she calls "reinventing marriage," for a new kind of marriage in which husband and wife both recognize and nurture the other's strengths. "Marriage is the most persistent of myths imprisoning women, and misleading those who write of women's lives" (p. 77), she says. As an example of this new kind of marriage she cites the relationship between Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

One of the more interesting aspects of Writing a Woman's Life is Heilbrun's explanation, in chapter six, of why she chose to use a pseudonym in the 1960s when, as a young college professor, she started publishing detective novels: "I believe now that I must have wanted, with extraordinary fervor, to create a space for myself" (p. 113). "But I also sought another identity, another role. I sought to create an individual whose destiny offered more possibility than I could comfortably imagine for myself" (p. 114).

My problem with any type of literary criticism based on a particular ideology is that it often ends up reducing complex issues to dismissively simple statements, such as this declaration by Heilbrun: "Marriage, in short, is a bargain, like buying a house or entering a profession" (p. 92). Nonetheless, in general, Writing a Woman's Life offers a compelling view of cultural and social conventions that are currently undergoing change.

National Day of Listening

2008-11-14T15:16:00.001-06:00

National Day of Listening:

This holiday season, StoryCorps is asking everyone across the nation to take an hour on Friday, November 28, 2008, the day after Thanksgiving, to record and preserve a Do-It-Yourself interview with a loved one. It can be a grandparent, sibling, friend, or a familiar face from the neighborhood.

All you have to do is visit nationaldayoflistening.org and download your free Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide, complete with simple step-by-step instructions for recording and preserving interviews at home, watch our new DIY video, and find the person's story who you want to hear.

'American Widow Project': The Healing Power of Stories

2008-11-11T10:16:00.001-06:00

'American Widow Project' Born From Grief : NPR:

Taryn Davis was just 21 years old when her husband was killed in Iraq. As a young widow, she felt bereft and very alone. She channeled her grief into the American Widow Project. It began as a documentary and transformed into a national support group for other widows.

This morning National Public Radio (NPR) aired a story about the American Widow Project, started by two young wives whose husbands were killed in Iraq. The project turned in to a documentary and now is a Web site that provides a place for military widows to tell their stories. As the Web page indicates, one person's story is often just what another grieved person needs to hear.

Feminism, post-election

2008-11-09T12:56:00.001-06:00

Feminism, post-election - Los Angeles Times:

For a second-wave feminist like myself, this election year has been a roller-coaster ride: exciting, and sick-making, and yet again exciting. We have seen an eminently qualified woman contend for a presidential nomination and fail, at least in part because she was demonized as a dragon lady; then we have seen a shamefully unqualified woman handed a vice presidential nomination, at least in part because she was a walking advertisement for Mrs. America. Taken together, such unforeseen events have been remarkable, especially insofar as they remind us of where we are, as a culture, in the centuries-long struggle to normalize equality for women.

In this piece in the Los Angeles Times feminist and writer Vivian Gornick laments that "The second wave of American feminism is now in a period of quietude, even of setback." She looks at the treatment of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin during the recent election as "evidence that high-level sexism persists in the United States."

Along the way Gornick traces the history of the modern women's movement, which began with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" in 1792. Gornick says that about every 50 years since that time the women's movement has raised its head, always with the same underlying message: "The conviction that men by nature take their brains seriously, and women by nature do not, is based not on an inborn reality but on a cultural belief that has served our deepest insecurities."

Sunday Summary

2008-10-19T11:09:00.001-05:00

A Boy's Life

This long article in The Atlantic treats the difficult subject of transgender children: children, some as young as 3 or 4, who want to be the gender opposite from their physiology. Should parents treat their young children as members of the other gender, or should they seek treatment to help their children adjust to the gender that matches their biological sex? The existence of such transgender children raises the age-old questions of nature vs. nurture: Are transgender children born that way or made that way? Is gender a biological given or a social construction?

Writer Hanna Rosin has done extensive research into this complex topic and does a good job of presenting both sides of the issue. Her presentation of the stories of several children, and their parents, who have experienced transgenderism gives her article an air of poignant reality.

Think You're Multitasking? Think Again

Don't believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren't as good as we think we are at doing several things at once. But it also highlights a human skill that gave us an evolutionary edge.

Multitasking Teens May Be Muddling Their Brains

Doing several things at once can feel so productive. But scientists say switching rapidly between tasks can actually slow us down.

Even though modern technology allows people to perform more tasks at the same time, juggling tasks can make our brains lose connections to important information. Which means, in the end, it takes longer because we have to remind our brains what we were working on.

The Ties That Bind

In this New York Times blog Allison Arieff considers what kind of legacy our dependence on technology will leave for our children.

First Person Plural

In this article in The Atlantic Paul Bloom looks at the definition of happy:
Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another. This theory might explain certain puzzles of everyday life, such as why addictions and compulsions are so hard to shake off, and why we insist on spending so much of our lives in worlds—like TV shows and novels and virtual-reality experiences—that don’t actually exist. And it provides a useful framework for thinking about the increasingly popular position that people would be better off if governments and businesses helped them inhibit certain gut feelings and emotional reactions.

Book Review: The Midnight Disease

2008-10-16T13:50:00.000-05:00

Flaherty, Alice W. The Midnight Disease (2004) Houghton Mifflin, 307 pages, $24.00 hardcover ISBN 0-618-23065-3

Trained as a scientist, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty always enjoyed writing. But after the birth and death of premature twin boys, she had a mental breakdown that made her write nearly constantly, a condition known as hypergraphia. She took medication and was hospitalized for her mental state; the medication curbed her compulsion to write but also took away most of her emotion and passion about life. Her purpose in this book, subtitled The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, is to examine hypergraphia, writer's block, and creativity as brain states. In looking for scientific explanations of these states she discusses the functions of different areas of the brain and the role each area plays in creativity or blocked creativity.

Most writers have experienced writer’s block at some time and know that almost everything written about overcoming writer’s block consists of exhortations and exercises to help squelch their inner critic. Yet experienced writers who have been successful in their writing before often know that an inner critic is not what’s keeping them from producing. These writers may find some new insight from Flaherty’s discussion of block as a state associated with both anxiety and depression:

Writer's block that is linked to anxiety is often also tied to procrastination--the process that leads you to suddenly clean out your basement the week before a writing deadline. Procrastination of a different sort can accompany depression. For at the most fundamental (or simplistic) level, there are perhaps only two types of writer's black, high energy and low energy. Unlike low-energy block, high-energy block may worsen as your deadline approaches; it makes you sweat, makes you sit down only to jump up again. [. . .] In low-energy block, the desire that makes you sit down to write is a dull sense of guilt. Instead of ideas, you have only sterile ruminations on how things used to be when you could write, when the world had color. (p. 135)

Although scientists are still discovering how the brain works, Flaherty does have some suggestions for summoning the muse and avoiding writer’s block. "Three ingrained cycles are important for both mood and creativity: sleep, the seasons, and hormonal cycles" (p. 125). Many people, she says, sleep later than usual on weekends, then wake up on Monday with something like jet lag. "The treatment, studies have shown, is to keep the time one rises as constant as possible. The time one goes to sleep is less important" (p. 126). About the relationship between fatigue and writer’s block she says:

A short (less than fifteen-minute) nap during such a lag may be much more effective than coffee. The length of your nap, however, is important. Naps longer than fifteen minutes usually allow you to transition into dream sleep (rapid eye movement or REM-stage sleep), and you will wake up much groggier than if you had remained in nondream sleep. [. . .] sleep deprivation itself seems to decrease creativity, rather than increasing it. (p. 129)

It’s hard not to appreciate advice from a writer who declares, "I don't write to forget what happened; I write to remember. There are worse things in life than painful desire; one of them is to have no desire" (p. 205).