On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:10:46 -0700, Veronique wrote
(in article
<fe26227d-4244-4f05-abf8-2681410904b2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):
> On Mar 25, 7:27 pm, UaNe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>> On Mar 25, 9:02 pm, Dover Beach <moon.blanc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I'm looking at the list of 100 books, and I'm thinking that although
>>> I've read some of them (I couldn't be arsed to count) I read them a
long
>>> time ago. And you know why?
>>
>>> Because I can't focus on anything anymore. Here is my reading so far
>>> this afternoon, after I got the taxes to the CPA. I started by
>>> wondering about the book S**** Pit. Can't remember what triggered it.
>>> Oh, yes I do -- I heard a recording of Sylvia Plath reading her poem
>>> Daddy on some XM channel. So I started thinking about crazy chicks and
>>> political analyses of crazy chicks.
>>
>>> So I used one of my gray-market library cards and found a 1979 article
>>> about the difference between the movie and the novel (S**** Pit, that
>>> is), analyzed in political/feminist terms. The woman who wrote S****
>>> Pit was sort of lefty and it was unclear whether that was partly why
she
>>> had been committed. That article made reference to the Children's
>>> Bureau publication from 1914 called Infant Care. So I read that.
Well,
>>> partway. It got boring about how to fold diapers. I got through at
>>> least 10 pages, though. I noticed that Julia C. Lathrop was the head
of
>>> the Children's Bureau. In 1914? A woman was head of a gov't agency
in
>>> 1914? So I looked her up and it turns out I really should have known
>>> about her because she was in with the Jane Addams/Alice Hamilton
>>> Hull-House crowd.
>>
>>> So back to my online library account. I looked up Julia Lathrop and
>>> found some correspondence between her and a working class woman from
>>> right around 1914-15 and it was just riveting, and heart-breaking,
>>> because I swear conditions for poor women in Chicago have actually
>>> gotten worse in the last 100 years. Then I got led off into a puzzler
>>> about the Progressive Movement and the conflict between the radicals
and
>>> the reformers, and found some material that described the criticisms
of
>>> the Settlement House programs, which were assimilative and promoted
hard
>>> work and sobriety and a bunch of other conservative, unpopular stuff.
>>
>>> Then I needed some M&Ms and I thought about how I really probably
would
>>> have been better off if I had just sat down and ground my way through
>>> some more of Plath's poems, and just thought about those, but my head
>>> just constantly explodes and with teh Intarweb being universally
>>> available I now cannot stay focused on anything.
>>
>>> I'm sorry, what were you saying?
>>
>> Yes. I'm not much for abstaining from anything in an organized way,
>> but lately I've been staying offline for the bulk of the day, just
>> checking email and surfing a bit once in the morning. It's been a
>> great victory. Though I've been feeling more like being outside in
>> the sun, doing some sort of physical something rather than reading a
>> book. The other day I spent the whole damn day driving around not
>> buying a boat, which was another great victory, of a sorts.
>>
>> Huh. I wasn't even trying to ramble, there. It's worse than I
>> thought.
>
>
> I planted tomatoes. Did I mention that?
>
I thought you talked with a nun.
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