emma_in_dream

Here are the books I read this month. The best was the overview of Opus Anglicanum, very fine medieval English embroidery.




Mary Kelley Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth Century America 1984

Horatio Alger Ragged Dick 1868

Oliver Optic Little by Little: Or the Cruise of the Flyaway 1860

Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola 1883

Joe Bennett Where Underpants Come From, From Check Out to Cotton Fields 2008

Opus Anglicanum: English Medieval Embroidery 2016

Frank Dicksee, 1853-1028 2016

Jan Marsh Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists 1997

The Rough Guide to Travel with Babies and Young Children 2016

Peter Kort Zegers Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad 1941-1945 2011

Detlev Peukert Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life 1982

Jean M Auel The Clan of the Cave Bear 1980

1, Dad has started dialysis. Considering it has been imminent since November 14, this is a huge relief. It should make him feel better and once the timetable for dialysis is set up we’ll have a much better idea what the pattern of life will be like.


2, I got to choose the art from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs for our office. Very exciting.


3, The Stucky Big Bang is out, so there are heaps of new, long stories.

1, We celebrated my birthday by going to the ‘World History in 100 Objects’ exhibition at the museum. It stretched from a 2 million year old stone axe to a 2012 sculpture made from a repurposed gun.


My favourite was a Roman statue of Mithros, showing him sacrificing a bull. It reminded me of Rosemary Sutcliff, my sole source of knowledge about the bull cult god.


2, The girls were ecstatic to see their Nanna at home again. Actual gasps of joy.


3, Pearl is reading my copy of Carol Ryrie Brink’s *Baby Island*. She is enjoying it so much that I think I will try to get her a copy of her own. She went ‘scootering’ yesterday while reading.

I just saw an interesting question of the day at Shakespeare’s Sister: What would you do if you could travel through time?


My top of head answer is that, assuming I could travel without changing the timeline, I would record the private readings Jane Austen gave to her family of her works in progress. Apparently she read with great vivacity. I guess I’d have to fit a small spy camera to her cottage.


Also, I would totally attend a whole heap of plays at the Globe and record them all. We might get to see *Love’s Labours Won*.


Plus, I would like to see a whole lot of performers who received rave reviews but who were never recorded and so are effectively lost to us: Keene, Garrick, Jenny Lind, Sarah Siddons.


My more considered answer is that you could revolutionise the teaching of history if you went about recording stories told in cultures which did not produce written texts.


So what would you do if you could travel through time?

The British Library has put 100,000 images onto Flickr, free to use. They are 17th, 18th and 19th century out of copyright images. Too cool.

Note: It would be helpful if they had been sorted in some way.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/12/british-library-puts-1000000-images-into-public-domain.html

A while ago, Pearl asked about evolution. Actually she asked who the mother of the first, first, first, first person was, and we had a discussion about evolution.

I had a look in the library and the coverage of evolution in junior non fiction is odd. There's tons about dinosaurs but little on human evolution. Or any other kind of evolution. It's like writing a book about the history of sport in which 90% of the pages are about ping pong.

One of the librarians suggested that the range of books was limited because of (some) American attitudes to evolution. Possibly the American market is big enough to distort the global market? I'm not sure if this is the case or not.

Anyway, I could not find a book for kids on this topic, so here is my first draft. It's based on the few adult non-fiction works on human evolution that my library system held and the illustrations are temporary. Very temporary.

I've already figured that it needs to be simplified further, but I would appreciate any technical corrections or literary comments, etc, on my attempt at a picture book on human evolution for the 3-6 market.



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Some of the art I did for the index card challenge.



Redbraids will see I have already used the calendar she gave me.



I also used the kid's crayons and made some negative space.



My busy life.



And a very banal one.

1, Ruby has chubby legs for the first time since she was an entirely breastfed baby. She can even kick herself along in the water (while supported by floaties).

2, Pearl has started school and seems very happy. I am pleased she is in a Grade One/Preprimary class as this is the first time she won’t be the youngest kid in the class.

3, Pearl impressed me by pointing to a Van Gogh illustration and saying she had seen another picture by him of ‘swirly stars’.

On the down side, the hair dresser says that despite months of combing and multiple chemical treatments she *still* has nits.

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.