But really the best part of the entire episode (season... show history?!) was Dwight asking Michael if he would like him to give him "the chills". There's an egg on your head and the yolk is pouring down... The last time I heard that I was in fifth grade on a playground in that weird sleep-over day-spa dynamic that little girls have where we were all rubbing each other's backs, braiding hair, and painting nails. I laughed until my stomach hurt, and it's been a while since that happened.
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Showing posts with label women's space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women's space. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Office Episode "The Lover"
"tb" makes a great point that a point about last week's episode of The Office, entitled "The Lover," most certainly deserves a blog post! I will go as far as to say it was my favorite episode in recent memory. The Pam / Michael storyline was hilarious: there is now the potential for Michael to become Pam's stepfather, and that is AWESOME.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Book - The Wet Nurse's Tale
Erica Eisdorfer has written a lovely novel about the life of a wet nurse in Victorian England. Susan Rose is a bawdy scullery maid who ends up becoming a wet nurse after an unexpected pregnancy. Susan faces many heart-breaking challenges, but faces them all dead-on with vigor, spunk, and a tremendous amount of cunning. She acknowledges when she's acting immorally, but always provides a sympathetic excuse. As a Gypsy once told her, "you'll see to yourself, girl." Read on for more.
Eisdorfer's book provides a welcome glimpse into the world of nursing babies. I don't think you'd have to have the experience in order to find these passages charming, although the fact that I was actively breastfeeding my own baby while reading the story probably enhanced my perception of the novel.
The novel is interrupted periodically with little vignettes of women's reasons for giving their children over to a wet nurse (all of them customers of Susan's mother, a woman who wet nursed well into her 40s). There have been some complaints that these asides are distracting, however, I welcomed them. They were not only short, interesting stories; they provided insight into raising children in the Victorian era. There were no bottles and certainly no formulas during this time. If a woman couldn't nurse her baby, her healthy alternatives were limited. These anecdotes were informative and also prevented me from running with my original assumption that any woman who would give her baby over to a wet nurse was a monster.
If I were to have any complaints, it might be about the ending, where Susan's luck trumps her cunning. However, this is a super-fast, enjoyable, moving and funny read that I would recommend to anyone (particularly maternal females).
Read more!
Eisdorfer's book provides a welcome glimpse into the world of nursing babies. I don't think you'd have to have the experience in order to find these passages charming, although the fact that I was actively breastfeeding my own baby while reading the story probably enhanced my perception of the novel.
The novel is interrupted periodically with little vignettes of women's reasons for giving their children over to a wet nurse (all of them customers of Susan's mother, a woman who wet nursed well into her 40s). There have been some complaints that these asides are distracting, however, I welcomed them. They were not only short, interesting stories; they provided insight into raising children in the Victorian era. There were no bottles and certainly no formulas during this time. If a woman couldn't nurse her baby, her healthy alternatives were limited. These anecdotes were informative and also prevented me from running with my original assumption that any woman who would give her baby over to a wet nurse was a monster.
If I were to have any complaints, it might be about the ending, where Susan's luck trumps her cunning. However, this is a super-fast, enjoyable, moving and funny read that I would recommend to anyone (particularly maternal females).
Read more!
Monday, August 31, 2009
Books - Loving Frank, Mary, and Ahab's Wife
I read the book "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan a couple of weeks ago. It tells the tale of Mamah Cheney, a real-life woman who had a long-term affair with the world's most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The book was fine, however, it reminded me of two other novels written in a similar style that I enjoyed much more than this particular piece. So read on for summaries and a brief review of not just this book, but also "Mary" by Janis Cook Newman and "Ahab's Wife" by Sena Jeter Naslund.
"Loving Frank": Little is known about the true nature of Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright's romance. What Horan has mainly to rely on are newspaper articles written in the melodramatic stylings of yellow journalism, which was at its peak during their affair. Horan takes what was described as a salacious scandal and fleshes out these two characters' courtship into an elaborate tale of love overcoming obstacles. The tale has a lot of interesting elements, including Cheney's mission to advance the Women's Movement, which was in full-swing during the 1910s when the book takes place. The down-side to the novel is that Cheney and Wright are fairly unsympathetic characters, and you have to spend a lot of time with them. Wright is pompous and careless with his finances, to the detriment of many. Cheney sacrifices being a mother to her children (let alone a wife to her husband - both Cheney and Wright are married) in order to pursue her relationship with Wright. Horan tries to relay the overwhelming angst Cheney feels leaving her kids, but it wasn't enough for me to excuse her actions.
"Mary" by Janis Cook Newman is similar to Horan's piece, but infinitely more interesting. This is also a novel based on a historical figure whose life was steeped in scandal. This is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and Newman weaves a captivating yarn relaying Mary and Abe's romance, and how Mary eventually came to find herself institutionalized in a mental hospital. In Newman's book, the story is written from the first-person perspective of the protagonist. Mary frankly describes herself as an incredibly passionate woman whose sexual longings get her in trouble with a relatively prudish (but not gay) Abraham and eventually lead her to a life of careless shopping sprees. That sounds dumb, but it's not. Here is an example of a character who does many unlikable things, but can still keep the reader on her side due to Newman's writing skill.
"Ahab's Wife" takes place roughly during the same time as "Mary": mid-19th century. Now Una is not a historical figure. She is the wife of Captain Ahab alluded to only once in Melville's classic "Moby Dick." However, Naslund, like Newman and Horan, saw an interesting character and ran with her story. This book is long and sometimes overly descriptive, but also excellent. Una is smart as a whip, and Naslund has a good time having her heroine encounter many prominent historical figures throughout the 1800s.
All three of these books showcase intelligent women looking for their place in world during the Suffrage Movement in America. None of them jive-well with the cultural norms of their times and fight being outcast from society at every turn. All three were books I'm glad to have read, but I'd read "Mary" or "Ahab's Wife" again before re-reading "Loving Frank," myself.
Read more!
"Loving Frank": Little is known about the true nature of Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright's romance. What Horan has mainly to rely on are newspaper articles written in the melodramatic stylings of yellow journalism, which was at its peak during their affair. Horan takes what was described as a salacious scandal and fleshes out these two characters' courtship into an elaborate tale of love overcoming obstacles. The tale has a lot of interesting elements, including Cheney's mission to advance the Women's Movement, which was in full-swing during the 1910s when the book takes place. The down-side to the novel is that Cheney and Wright are fairly unsympathetic characters, and you have to spend a lot of time with them. Wright is pompous and careless with his finances, to the detriment of many. Cheney sacrifices being a mother to her children (let alone a wife to her husband - both Cheney and Wright are married) in order to pursue her relationship with Wright. Horan tries to relay the overwhelming angst Cheney feels leaving her kids, but it wasn't enough for me to excuse her actions.
"Mary" by Janis Cook Newman is similar to Horan's piece, but infinitely more interesting. This is also a novel based on a historical figure whose life was steeped in scandal. This is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and Newman weaves a captivating yarn relaying Mary and Abe's romance, and how Mary eventually came to find herself institutionalized in a mental hospital. In Newman's book, the story is written from the first-person perspective of the protagonist. Mary frankly describes herself as an incredibly passionate woman whose sexual longings get her in trouble with a relatively prudish (but not gay) Abraham and eventually lead her to a life of careless shopping sprees. That sounds dumb, but it's not. Here is an example of a character who does many unlikable things, but can still keep the reader on her side due to Newman's writing skill.
"Ahab's Wife" takes place roughly during the same time as "Mary": mid-19th century. Now Una is not a historical figure. She is the wife of Captain Ahab alluded to only once in Melville's classic "Moby Dick." However, Naslund, like Newman and Horan, saw an interesting character and ran with her story. This book is long and sometimes overly descriptive, but also excellent. Una is smart as a whip, and Naslund has a good time having her heroine encounter many prominent historical figures throughout the 1800s.
All three of these books showcase intelligent women looking for their place in world during the Suffrage Movement in America. None of them jive-well with the cultural norms of their times and fight being outcast from society at every turn. All three were books I'm glad to have read, but I'd read "Mary" or "Ahab's Wife" again before re-reading "Loving Frank," myself.
Read more!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Book - The Red Tent
My mother handed me "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant to read on a whim, only remembering that she had read it before and enjoyed it. However, this was such an appropriate book for me to read I can't believe I hadn't come across it sooner. No, not because I spend my "moon times" in a crimson tent with fellow females (although I kind of like that idea, in a weird way). I'll explain more in the Read More section, but for now, simply know that if you are looking for a moving book about mothers and daughters and like the idea of "woman's space," you might enjoy this very peaceful read. I certainly did.
Why was this book so appropriate for me to read? For one, it's "historical" fiction, taking a bible story and expounding on just a couple of lines of verse. Historical fiction is awesome, and if you have any recommendations for great books in this genre, please share in the comments. For another, this book is about Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, from the Book of Geneses, and I have been reading the bible off and on throughout this year. (Don't remember why I'm reading the bible? Here ya go.) And lastly, it has a slew of stories about midwives and birthing and I am an absolute birth junkie. If you are into any one of those three things (historical fiction, the bible, or birth stories) then this book would be worth your time.
Read more!
Why was this book so appropriate for me to read? For one, it's "historical" fiction, taking a bible story and expounding on just a couple of lines of verse. Historical fiction is awesome, and if you have any recommendations for great books in this genre, please share in the comments. For another, this book is about Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, from the Book of Geneses, and I have been reading the bible off and on throughout this year. (Don't remember why I'm reading the bible? Here ya go.) And lastly, it has a slew of stories about midwives and birthing and I am an absolute birth junkie. If you are into any one of those three things (historical fiction, the bible, or birth stories) then this book would be worth your time.
Read more!
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