(no subject)

What happens when there is a big thing on the internet is that often I don't have anything to say - anything beyond reflexive side-taking, anyway - until the dust has settled and people have moved on to the next big thing. But I'm going to talk about appropriation.

Because I was in Barnes & Noble last night, and I saw this book, which is the second public-library-memoir that I've noticed in the past year (following Free For All last November).

Of the people in my library classes, of the people in the library blogosphere, the people who work in the library systems I've worked in, perhaps 75 to 80 percent are women. It's the men who got the book deals. (Obviously I would be remiss in not mentioning Nancy Pearl, who is THE rockstar of public librarianship, but she writes book recommendations, not "Hee hee, patrons on drugs" memoirs.)

And this brings to mind two years ago when I went to a handful of D&D sessions at a local games store, and I found that if I had an idea, it would generally get ignored, and then a man would have the same idea and this time people would listen. And when I was meeting up with some Japanese-as-a-second-language students last year, of varying levels of proficiency, I would have to fight real hard to get acknowledged as one of the People With Expertise.

So I find it unbelievable - I mean, sadly believable, but I'm still kind of shocked - when feminists, who are feminists probably partly because they have seen this dynamic in action - utterly fail to see this dynamic in action.

But then, I can understand it somewhat, too. Because during those D&D sessions and those Japanese meetups, I learned to get loud. I learned to not shut up when I had an idea that I thought should get a fair hearing. That was good; it was high time I learned that lesson. But when you learn that, you have to learn - all over again - when you should just shut up and listen, so that other people can have their turn to be heard. Which is not an excuse, but just an observation.

Knitting and Museum-ing!

There were two exhibits at MoMa that Meaghan and I wanted to see, and after a month of unreasonable work demands we managed to go; we saw Design and the Elastic Mind and Color Chart.

Design and the Elastic Mind was FANTASTIC. It was a very multidisciplinary show, drawing on technology, biology, sustainability, sociology, etc; there was everything from a look at the history of video game controllers to a graphical representation of the entire text of Alice in Wonderland to a lot of utopian futuristic designs, especially focusing on renewable energy. The show left me energized and hopeful, although there were also many pieces drawing attention to the alienating possibilities of new technology. I was less enthusiastic about the Color Chart exhibit, but there were some interesting pieces there too.

As we were leaving the museum, on the fourth floor, I noticed that the ceiling was lit up with bright yellow-orange light, and I couldn't think of a reason for it, so I kept looking around until I realized - we were in black and white. It is hard to overstate how weird this felt, how disoriented and giggly it made me feel - and even more so when I looked over at another area, lit up in more natural light, and watched as people went from color to black and white. I think that was part of another show, but by that point we were getting tired (Meaghan had gone out for a run earlier in the day) so we hit some of the famous paintings and called it a day.

( Cut for knitting pictures )