anna genoese

Wow, hello, journal platform people! It's been almost a year! You can always find me at annagenoese, and right now I'm doing tumblr at dngrcpckwithmurdericing, although that's in no way professional at all and mostly hockey players doing hockey and shoving each other. (Insert joke about how that's the same thing here.)

Today I am here to recommend a great book I read on the bus this morning: Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains

This is the autobiography of a Ukranian Jewish woman who traveled from Ukraine to the United States in 1894 to marry a (Jewish) man she'd never met and start a life with him. She tells about how they decide to homestead in rural northeast North Dakota with his family, and the perils and successes. This is not a Jewish Little House -- this is much more stark, and much more to the point about poverty and privilege. It does not read the way current autobiographies/memoirs do -- it's much more like a letter Rachel Bella Kahn Calof wrote to her descendants so they would know about her life and struggles, so they would be able to know what her life had been at the turn of the century.

The autobiography itself is bookended by an "acknowledgments" that discusses the way the autobiography was discovered in historical archives, written in Yiddish on a "Clover Leaf Linen" writing tablet and translated into English and typed by children and grandchildren and then an "epilogue" written by the youngest son, who tells of what his mother leaves out about the rest of her life, giving an "ending" to the story, so to speak. At the end of the book are also two great, if much more academic, essays about Jewish homesteaders in the history of the United States, which I very much enjoyed reading.

I know a lot of you are interested in Jewish history the way I am, so I thought some of you might like to read this!


( TW: Pet death )


I hope everyone is having a good Friday! Have a great weekend! Read some good books!

It was pointed out to me the other day that I am extremely difficult to buy for. I completely disagree. Just pay a little bit of attention. You can always buy me a book!

Like, the number one thing I want from any person is a book. A book you love. If you have time, annotate it. A book you love that you've annotated ("And this is the part that I thought was perfect when I was 15...") is precious.

This kneejerk reaction had me listing off things as I fell asleep the other night. What other stuff do I always like from people? What do I collect? Example: My mom likes horse stuff, and she wears a lot of pins. So I might buy her a pin that is a stylized gold horse. What do I have that's like that? What have I "settled into" as I've grown older?

Here's the other stuff I came up with:

- pine. Anything pine. People on a budget can buy me the cheapest pine-scented tea light candles from the dollar store and I'll be thrilled. I own tons of pine candles, actually, I am never tired of them.

- malachite. Anything malachite. Just the stones, big rocks of the stuff, jewelry. I'm a silver-tone person, my ring sizes go from about 12 to about 13, and kimbaandjane custom-makes my necklaces and knows what I like.

- cat toys. I have three cats! Anything for my cats -- cat toys, snacks, whatever.

- yarn. From fingering weight to bulky, whatever, 400 yds or more of any yarn in any fiber, pretty much. I even like acrylic. I like purples and oranges and greens.

- donations in my name. I am big on anything that feeds children or helps people get abortions for the most part. I also really love food pantries in general. I don't really care how much the donation is. $1. There, you've given me a gift.

- a nice card that says "I love you." I mean, if that's appropriate. (Sometimes it is really not appropriate. Sometimes it's creepy. But that doesn't stop some people. And those people really need to stop, wow.)

And, I mean, money, of course, but it seems gauche to put it out there. But I just did, oh well.

I think about gifts a lot, actually, because I like to think of myself as someone who is good at giving them. But I am bad at giving them on a timetable. Give you a great gift for your birthday? Not so much, I will probably take you out for a meal instead. Give you a great gift in the middle of the week randomly? Yeah, I'm on it. I think that's mostly because I am often thinking about the people I love, and that means I often see things that remind me of them. And I tend to impulsively buy or make those things, and then I cannot wait. I cannot. I cannot wait to give my loved ones these gifts. So it's Hanukkah in October!

What gifts do you like to get?????

For the last three years, I've been volunteering with the Organization for Transformative Works, and for the past year I've had a seat on the Board of Directors. I know I don't talk a lot about that here, but I want to for a moment just so that there's a public record somewhere. Because I've just resigned, and I want to make sure there's a place people can go to see why.

I have resigned because even though the Strategic Planning Committee is amazing, and they are working hard to bring the organization in a direction I'm more comfortable with, ultimately the OTW is not organized in a way that I find personally comfortable.

Mainly, though, many of the other board directors and I just don't have the same values around work, professionalism, and the way organizations should be run. That makes trying to get things done very frustrating for me, and interactions become fraught with tension even about the most innocent of subjects. The professionalism issue isn't just about getting work done or meeting deadlines or putting in the necessary time to make sure issues are handled properly -- it's also about having to deal with outright rudeness and disrespect.

With jobs, some of these issues are things to "suck up" and handle because there's an exchange of goods/services; with a volunteer organization, the volunteering itself is the exchange, and I'm not coming out with enough things in my "pro" column to justify to myself this use of my time.

I want to make it clear that I'm not burned out on the work -- I'd happily put in 40 - 50 hours per week of volunteer time for the OTW's mission (and some weeks indeed I did!). This is about not being able to work with the other Board members and not being able to work within the unhealthy and unsustainable structure that currently exists for OTW volunteers.

It sucks, but that's the way it is right now. Hopefully the org can right itself. I wanted to help with that, but after three years, I'm done. It's work for other people now, and I wish those people the best.

Last week, I rather unexpectedly adopted a cat. Back in January, my beloved Shiksa died of a heart attack. I thought to myself, Two cats is enough. But Vincent and Theodore have been rather lost without a third -- without an alpha female bossing them around. And one of my close friends found a post about a DC-area alpha female who needed a home.

Just a few days later, I'd adopted her.

I named her Queen Esther, but have ended up calling her Hadassah all the time. (I have had to explain to a lot of people why Queen Esther and Hadassah are interchangeable names to my mind. Even Jewish people. ngl, that is very surprising.)

Here are some pictures:

• The moment I realized I was going to end up calling her Hadassah even though I named her Esther


• Vincent trying to make friends.


• Theodore trying to make friends.


• Hadassah exploring my bookshelf.

She is tiny -- she weighs about 7 lbs. To give you a sense of scale, Vincent weighs 19. Shiksa weighed 26.


...Now. Book log.

I am still struggling with Ancillary Justice. It is just really not for me.

Last night I read the new Tana French - The Secret Place. I thought she did an amazing job with the voices of the teenage girls, but I did not understand at all what the hell the paranormal elements were doing in there.

The mystery was okaaaaay but I am tired of books narrated by dudes that are books about women. The book would have been plenty interesting if it had been narrated by the woman who was the lead detective investigating the case. I didn't have any empathy or interest in the male narrator observing all the women who he continually reminded us he could never understand because he's a man. Tedious.

Over the weekend, I was in NYC visiting my nephew:



While there, I read... The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.

Basically it is a zombie novel but about real life, because it's the story of the emergence of Ebola. And everything about Ebola is like a zombie novel (especially the Mira Grant Newsflesh trilogy). I took immense glee in reading about the way the virus works and all the science-y stuff.

(When I told my mom, "I don't know, I'd rather die from Ebola than Spanish flu," she shifted her chair away from me.)

(Last year, I read The Great Influenza, and it scared the shit out of me. Ebola seems awful, but less painful for everyone involved.)

Somehow I ended up with only non-fiction on my ereader, so I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I do have some nice fiction paperbacks at home, but I don't like to carry those around. My train ride on the way home from NYC was 100% fanfic and editing a YA sf novel, so maybe I'm due for more non-fiction. Or maybe I should finally read Ancillary Justice, which I bought when it came out and then never read because someone I hated posted about how much they loved it. Yes, I am small and petty and probably that was cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Just look at the picture of baby feet again:



Also, look! The Humble Bundle Book Perk bundle is mighty tempting.

First! I would like to apologize to anyone who tried to access www.annagenoese.com or email me at anna@annagenoese.com in the last month -- there was a confusion with my hosting service, which has now been sorted. Please come email me and hire me to edit your awesome work (or just chit-chat, I am becoming a chit-chatter in my thirties).

So, I did in fact read Other People's Houses by Lore Segal. And... I did not really like it. For a multitude of reasons, starting with the fact that it has the pretension so many literary fiction novels have of being told from the point of view of a young girl. In this case, the narrator is six, seven, eight, nine -- but, of course, the real narrator is much older, and just affecting the tone of a young girl, and sometimes will break the narration to interject notes from the future. I found that very annoying and disruptive.

The other big thing I didn't like was that throughout the book, the narrator seemed extremely disinterested in romantic relationships with men (and kind of obsessed with other women, which I was into). Toward the end, she started having somewhat romantic relationships with men, as she got older, and still seemed like she didn't enjoy herself, and thought they were kind of boring and dull (or maybe I thought they were boring and dull because she wrote them as such?). Then, last page: suddenly she is married! And happy! Okay, sure.

Then, last few paragraphs: but nothing is ever good because the world is and always will be terrible, what are you going to do about it, everything is awful but the world keeps spinning and people keep living their lives, so what.

That was a very abrupt and depressing stop. (It was not an ending by any stretch of the imagination.)

The cool thing about this book was actually how much I enjoyed reading it. I stayed up late to finish it one night, actually, because I did enjoy the prose so much.

In my quest to read more literary fiction (sponsored by Garret Weyr, who gives me all these books and makes me tea; you will recall that in the past, I have had a lot to say about Garret's books too)... um... Right.

In my quest to read more literary fiction, I have started Regeneration by Pat Barker. It's set during WWI, exploring the experiences of British officers being treated for shell shock. It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and also horrifying and sad. I am reading basically two pages a night at this point, so I might need to swap it out and read it during the day instead of before bed.

Genre reading, my true love: I am rereading The King's Name by Jo Walton (woo!), reading some Nora Roberts single title romances that I apparently skipped over in the early 90s, and I am finally reading Contact by Carl Sagan after seeing (and loving) the movie five or six times.

Now here is a story about life in Maryland: I went to Midas to have a professional put my MD license plates on my car (in addition to not owning any tools at all, I have very long fingernails and also don't like to touch my car unless absolutely necessary). The person behind the counter at Midas had a lot of opinions he felt compelled to share with me, including that he hates 4-H because he thinks it's "handouts" !!!!!! And his favorite president was Reagan, because "when Reagan was president, everyone had a job, but you're probably too young to remember." Wow! Also, by the way, he really likes the Girl Scouts. (Why Girl Scouts but not 4-H? Amazing. I am so sorry he hates joy.) And, to cap it off, he told me he thought I should get married so I would have a husband to put my license plates on.

That is an A+ reason to find a male-identified person to marry, don't you think? It should be the plot of someone's next romance novel, or a totally not weird at all Craigslist ad.

Hello, it has been forever. I mostly hang out at annagenoese these days, feeling like I'm never quite pithy enough for the cool kids and their 140 characters.

The past few months, c_katherine and I have been working diligently to get the sequel to Salt and Silver out. We've self-published, but as two professional editors, we did not skimp on the editing, proofreading, book design, etc.... We're extremely proud of both the content and the book production, and we're thrilled that the book is finally available. We think people who liked Salt and Silver will enjoy it, and I hope that even if you didn't read Salt and Silver, you'll give this one a shot.

Gaby has always felt a little too big for her small town -- but once she moves to New York City, she realizes she's a little too plain and a little too nerdy for anything really exciting. Then she meets a geeky-cute guy who insists he's a "blood demon" and there to save her. That's less exciting and more scary -- and it gets scarier when it turns out he's telling the truth, kicking off twenty-four hours of mayhem, adventure, doppelgangers, snobby demon hunters, and a mermaid who likes to gamble.

And death. So much death.

The hero and heroine of this book are both asexual (but not aromantic); the heroine is plus-sized. They run around north Brooklyn, and run into vampires, demons, witches, a cranky diner owner, demon hunters, doppelgangers, and a gambling mermaid who might be a trickster god. There is minimal gore; most of the fighting is done with salt and tricks. Oh, and sometimes Doors talk and lead you to Hell dimensions.

We hope you enjoy it!


Buy Blood and Salt from Amazon!

I will admit that The Great British Bake Off kind of frustrates me (along with the Irish one and the Austalian one... etc.) because I want to shake some of these people who don't know how baking soda works. I still find British enjoyable to watch, though, because it's a cooking competition show with hugs!

And watching it has led me to........ The Great British Sewing Bee. Fantastic. So fantastic. It's Project Runway for British home-sewers!!

It makes me dearly miss my sacrificed-to-the-flood sewing machine, but I've been steadily hand-sewing fun stuff. I hand-pieced my first quilt block a few weeks ago (look!), and just the other day I made one of my friends a pretty Kindle pocket with a lining and everything (pretty!).

Another needlecraft I just learned is tatting -- taught myself from YouTube videos! I am sometimes pretty decent (see!), but it's really hard (a mess!). It's easier when I use fingering-weight yarn instead of size 10 cotton thread (prettyyyyy). I did start learning on a shuttle, but I found it nearly impossible, and so swapped for a needle -- suddenly, magically, it was super easy! But the patterns are still difficult.

Can you tell it's my slow season? Please, someone, give me something to edit before I cover my house in doilies and quilts while watching British crafting TV!

Content notes for this entry: discussion of an eating disorder (restrictive), doctors, weight, fatness, confronting oppression.

Assumption: You are body positive and have read most of the materials linked here. Do not comment on this post to tell me that fat people are disgusting and going to die of heart disease or whatever. Keep your bullshit to yourself.

--

Let me tell you about a trick I know.

It is only in the last couple of years that I've had health insurance and started going to doctors and taking stuff pretty seriously. (I basically hit my wall of feeling crappy, to be honest.)

I read a lot of material about going to the doctor as a fat person, with a lot of advice. The advice always boils down to giving the reader two choices if the doctor is a jerk about fat people:

1. Leave
2. Confront & educate

I've done the first one more than once. I'm also the caretaker of a person who sees a lot of doctors, and I have walked that person out on more than one occasion as well.

I think #2 is pretty important -- doctors need to be educated about their bullshit if indeed they have some bullshit happening. I mean, I once went to a doctor who told me to "keep it up" when I told her I was only eating 230 calories every day. Then she added thoughtfully, "Try to eat less fat." That's bullshit.

But sometimes "confront and educate" isn't something you can do, for whatever reason -- and don't even get me started on the idea that someone should educate their oppressor!

With that particular doctor is actually where my advice comes from, because I left her office -- in complete fucking crisis, having left work early the day before because I was hallucinating from not eating enough calories to keep my body going -- and cried in my car, then got a smoothie, then asked for help from people I trusted. In this case, I ended up going to Michelle Allison, the "Fat Nutritionist" and signing up for sessions with her.

That's where I learned this trick.

Tell whichever doctor giving you a hard time, "Oh, I'm dealing with this, thanks, my nutritionist and I are working on it."

Seriously.

I have never had a doctor ask for my nutritionist's name or contact info. I've never had a doctor accuse me of lying about having a nutritionist (although I have totally had them accuse me of lying about exercise and calorie counts!). I've never had a doctor continue the conversation about size after that statement.

Without fail, the doctor always says, "Oh, in that case..." and goes on to give me what I am sure is pretty much the same treatment they'd give a thin person.

It's been about 18 months since my last session with Michelle, and I still tell doctors (like, you know, my eye doctor, who has no business commenting on my size in the first place) that I appreciate their concern, but my nutritionist and I are handling it.

It is okay to not always be the perfect fat person with the perfect educational response. It's okay to deflect instead of confront. It's okay to let the doctor keep thinking their bullshit thoughts. Especially when you have a problem that needs treatment and the doctor is focusing on your size instead of your problem.

I wish I were better at writing about media. I usually end up getting distracted, or just rewatching what I want to write about, instead of finishing my blog posts-slash-essays.

I just read "Watson, I Need You: Thoughts on Elementary's First Season" by Abigail Nussbaum, whose thoughts about media I always enjoy even when I don't agree.

NB, Elementary is the only show I watched this past season. Well, I also watched Best Ink, but mostly I fast-forwarded through to the parts with Pete Wentz's face, so I'm not sure that counts as watching.

Anyway, Abigail says something in that piece that I've seen in a couple of places -- that even though Elementary does a lot of stuff really well...

...the fact remains that she enters Holmes's life as his caretaker, and that despite becoming his partner in detection she still plays a caretaking role in his life, worrying about his sobriety and even assuring Gregson that she will manage him when his pursuit of Moriarty threatens to fly out of control. While this is not an uncommon role for Watson to play in Holmes's life (again, see House), it takes on a very different meaning when Watson is a woman.

(Do not get me wrong -- this is not the thrust of the article, it's just what I zeroed in on.)

So the thing is, to me, that while I do agree with this, and, in fact, it was a huge problem for me on House, that Cuddy was this kind of killjoy "Mommy" figure, it's actually not a problem for me with Elementary. Here's why: Joan has her own problems and issues.

There is clearly some stuff going on with Joan. We see her being not very interested in sex or romantic partnership. Her outfits are never meant to be read, in the Watsonian sense (as opposed to Doylist, see here for an explanation of these terms if you've never heard this before), as traditionally "sexy". Even though her boots have high heels on them, they're clearly actually meant for practical things -- comfort and height. She wears them almost literally every single day, and when she wears snow boots in the episode with the blizzard, those snow boots are the same style as her daily boots, with the same heel. (That's very New York-y, a heeled snow boot.) She has feelings about the people who are murdered, even when they're bad people.

I actually have a lot of thoughts about this show based on costuming -- you'll note that when Joan feels confident in what she's doing and/or pleased with herself, she wears bright colors. In the beginning, you could think that she's wearing greys and blacks to be professional, but it becomes clear that she wears greys and blacks because she's sad and unsatisfied. When she's solving cases herself, she wears flowered skirts, or brightly colored pants.

(In the last episode of the season, her sweater kind of matches Holmes's sweater -- she's wearing a solid bright color, and he has patches of the bright color on his sweater.)

(I told you I get distracted.)

Okay, focus: I think Joan has her own issues, and a couple of those issues are control and caretaking issues. Let us not forget her addict ex-boyfriend and her dead patient! As opposed to seeing Joan as something of a Cuddy/House figure, as the stereotypical (in our society's media) woman-taking-care-of-a-brilliant-man, I see Joan as a flawed person who may not realize she's working out (or taking out) her own issues by being Holmes's caretaker in a lot of ways.

I also think that a lot of credit needs to be given to things like, for example, when Watson calls out Holmes's misogyny, he stops what he was doing. He apologizes to her. He is very focused on consent. He knows he's flawed and doesn't understand feelings, and relies on Watson's people skills and knows it, appreciates it. Thanks her multiple times.

(Also, it appears he kind of wants to be her service submissive. BRB, writing 200,000 words of fanfic.)

I love Elementary, in case that's not clear. I've watched the whole season all the way through several times at this point. I'm thrilled with it. (Dade Murphy and O-Ren Ishii solve crime!) Even though I have my issues with it, I genuinely believe it's the best show on tv in years.

Also, I find it very comforting that I can always solve the crime/puzzle quickly. Get that out of the way, then enjoy the rest of the story.

(That is also what I like about Lehane books!)

I can't wait for season 2.


In other media news, a few days ago I watched Born in Flames, which is a documentary-style (but not in an annoying way) movie. It's feminist science fiction that is basically a lot of different types of women talking about how to have a revolution. Like, pretty much it's a movie about intersectionality. But it's from 1983, which is before that word even existed! I loved it so much. I thought it was really wonderful. If you like feminist science fiction, feminism, intersectionality, or terrigreat movies from the '80s, you might like this. After it was over I felt exhausted and had to watch, like, episodes of Castle to deal with my "feels hangover" (what I called how I felt on Twitter). If you do decide to go for it, trigger warnings for violence against women, sexual assault, pictures of dead women, and bombs in the Twin Towers. I thought it was a really incredible film, especially when it dealt with and discussed the different ways race and class (and sexual identity) impact the way women feel they can participate in revolutions.