Review of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whoa...finally finished a book though I stayed up until 3:30 reading the most intense part. The sexual assualt featured throughout the book and the theme of women's issues are what bring it from standard, good mystery novel fare to actually substantive reading. I shouldn't have read the most intense parts at night - I tend to be extremely sensitive to accounts of physical and emotional abuse, and there were a few moments I actually had a physical reaction to what I was reading (trembling, starting to feel sick). I don't think anyone could read this book without having a new take on, or at least fresh reminder of the brutal violence that happens to all kinds of women the world over, every day.

The characters aren't very complex, with the exception of Lisbeth Salander, the main woman character with a mysterious past (sounds like we get to find out about it in the sequel, "The Girl Who Played with Fire").

One notable recurring line (but not a spoiler) from Salander is "woman-hater" or "he just hates women". I guess since it was written in Swedish, I can't be sure this was the author's intention, but in English it's a nice retooling of the "man-hater" meme that is used to dismiss feminists and feminist convictions.

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The Kids Are Alright (Review...sort of)

Just caught this film finally, after wanting to see it for weeks. I saw it at the Lagoon Theater in Uptown Minneapolis this rainy evening. Of course the moment I got my jacket on and locked the door, the rain started coming down hard.

But if I learned anything on RAGBRAI, it was that indeed, rain is just water. And since I was sitting by myself in the theater, I figured the soggy, faint wool smell from my fave Smartwool shirt wouldn't offend anyone if I sat far enough away from others.

I was sort of in a comfort food/romcom mood this evening, so I was almost leaning towards seeing something else, but I knew I had to see this after all the anticipation and the great NYT review.

I went into it wary of the storyline (semi spoiler alert) - it didn't seem very original or very appealing that one of the moms had to get involved with the sperm donor, because that smacks of the idea that all a lesbian needs is the right hot guy to turn her onto the right path. Similarly, the method of arousal in the couple's intimate moment towards the beginning of the movie hinted that the male physique is really the thing that gets ladies going, even if they are lesbians.

But the dialogue and interaction of the family members - Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, and their kids, an older, by-the-book, reserved daughter and a younger teenage son, maybe starting to get involved with the wrong kind of friend - redeemed most of the pieces of the plot that leaned towards mainstream treatment of a lesbian couple. "Human sexuality is...complicated..." offered Jules in response to her son Laser's question about finding his moms' porn video of gay men.

For me, the best quality of the movie was that it treated a subject that I don't think I've ever expected to come out of mainstream Hollywood. While not my favorite movie ever, it touched some chords for me just because it made me realize no film or television has ever even come close to representing a family remotely like mine. Highlights for me included the embarrassment the daughter when her mom, Nic, interrogated Paul, their sperm donor at dinner, and when Nic squeezes Jules' hand in the car after dropping their daughter off at college.

Something about finally seeing a gay couple in a long-term, loving, and yes, complicated and bumpy relationship means that people who aren't friends with gay people (or who don't know they are) are going to have a chance to see what we've seen in heterosexual relationships in mainstream art forever. And it's just going to be harder to demonize and other-ize "those people" and their families.

My family was different from the one in the movie by a lot, but it's the first time anything has ever come close. And the character of the older daughter as over achiever who has fulfilled everyone else's wishes resonates with me, as does the younger brother who's trying to figure things out but keeps to himself and is hard to draw out (my younger brother, anyone?).

The sperm donor character was kind of a likable surfer type, with good intentions. But luckily, he didn't get to win the girl and ended up on the receiving end of both kids' anger, justifiably. It was gratifying that just because he was charming and cute, he still couldn't get away with carelessly wiping out a family in harmony and getting off the hook.

Overall, I highly recommend this film just for the experience of seeing a non-traditional family depicted in a very traditional Hollywood way, but with integrity. Do it for us sperm donor kids.

FCC Hearing Report from S Minneapolis

So, it's been ages since my last post. I'm not going to spend time apologizing for that.

Tonight I went to the FCC Hearing/community meeting on "saving the internet", the free and open internet, that is.

There was great public testimony from community organizers, librarians, business owners, unemployed folks, non-profit advocacy types, and others still. Walking into South High School in South Minneapolis with so many other people, talking to each other with conviction, exuding determination and really, most clearly, a readiness for civic engagement on this issue, was invigorating.

Working at the meta-level of the community organizing field (okay, fine; update: yes, I'm still at PTP, now I'm a full-time staff member with bennies and I even get to do trainings along with the grant-writing, event logistics, and data collection and analysis that's also part of my job!), I get to hear about inspiring ways that organizations are moving citizens to reclaim their own power and demand what's just all the time. And I can't help but experience impostor syndrome in my job. For full disclosure, I'm not a community organizer. I wish I could claim that experience, but I can't. So coming to a town hall meeting about net neutrality, "the first amendment issue of our time" is a step towards the higher degree of civic engagement I'd like to practice. (That link, by the way, is video taken during tonight's FCC meeting, and opens with Franken's comments about net neutrality, followed by a community panel, and Federal Communications Commissioners Mignon Clyburn's and Michael Copps' comments).

I would have liked to hear from more women and more people of color and more low-income people at the hearing. But we know why that didn't happen. Those 60-some community folks who did speak up spoke eloquently and represented a variety of interests, none of which included Googizon's or Comcast or AT&T's bottom line. So let's hear it for the people. And as I step towards a greater degree of civic engagement in my own life, including becoming a more active part of various community dialogues, I want to be aware of why this is starting now in my life, and what barriers there were to my willingness to participate more fully before now. Because that is an essential question. Why would someone who is privileged and educated withdraw from this kind of public engagement? And what has it taken to get me to a place where I'll inch back towards the town hall?

Il freddo di febbraio

Hurry, a post before February is over so I can at least maintain my one-a-month pace. This is not about how cold February is. Sorry for the false advertising. I'm just freezing right now as I write this, so think of it as the backdrop to this post.

Today was a day for kudos. (Let me start with a shoutout to our dear birthday girl, Nancy! She deserves her kudos for being alive and being a wonderful, effervescent person).

And the kudos I got today? I think I deserved them after the work I've put in.

I've been apprenticed to our grant writer-former funder extraordinaire so that I, too, can have the ever so marketable skill of grant-writing. And so that I too can suffer when we get the call from one of our funders: Quick, your report that we never told you about was due a week ago. Send it to us yesterday!

This apprenticeship is extremely exciting. I want to have this skill. It's simultaneously terrifying and painful, because it's like writing a college paper except some disgusting amount of money is depending on it, which, if nothing else, makes cramming even less desirable.

This is a combined proposal and report for a foundation that is near and dear to us and took part in the founding of PTP. So after a number of weeks of chipping away at it fruitlessly (or perhaps it was fruitful in a way, because it all led me to today), I finally arrived at a draft that GW-FF extraordinaire says is "really, really excellent". Oh stop! I'm blushing. Well, my genius all lies in taking notes verbatim, fleshing them out slightly, and then turning them around to her. So I'm a little more than a fancy speech-to-text machine, but not much. Either way, all this pain has been very good for me. I'm internalizing our language and organizational culture (nod to Lubeck and his field notes lecture) in a way that I wouldn't be able to without actually writing it down myself. So yay! I think I'm making progress. I even feel the difference in the way I'm writing this post. Short, meaningful, unflashy, NON-ACADEMIC, sentences. Maybe the narrative arc is not quite as perfect, but that's because I haven't been working on this post for the last four weeks.

In other news, I'm taking a slew of classes and doing lots of new activities to continue the trend of exploration and adventure that Minnesota has inspired in my life. (Did anyone catch the NYT travel article about MN, Trekking with Wolves? Disclaimer: don't expect wolves).

After going salsa dancing with my UCSC linguist friend (he wouldn't admit to it) E who is here on a temporary work contract, I realized I wanted to actually learn how to dance. So I signed up for Salsa I through Minneapolis Community Education, a great resource. While I was at it, I thought I'd sign up for Sewing I as well, and then the Learn How to Make Money Recording Audio Books workshop caught my attention. So I'm doing all of the above. I'm also playing indoor soccer on Sundays at Powderhorn Park (my neighborhood community hub) which is keeping me active. And for anyone who's considering Zumba, I highly recommend it. I just started going at my local YWCA - it's an "aerobics" class, but really, it's hyped up dancing to Latin music with a crazy, non-Minnesotan who knows how to move named Bernice.

The challenge is to maintain balance and get enough sleep. Which is where I'm headed now. Last kudos before I go: my sweet former Italian language student, Celeste, is studying abroad in the adopted motherland this semester. She has a beautiful blog and actually posts regularly and has recently made me as famous as I'm ever going to be by posting about her tour of Bologna (and my recommendations) in it. Check it out! (She also may be the only one who reads my blog, so more kudos to her for her attention!)

Home Away From Home Away From Home

Hello, New Year.

I just got home to Minneapolis from my other home in Berkeley, where I stopped after spending time at home in my original hometown. I thought about other Christmases I had spent in Bologna, Cork, the Bay Area, and once in Portland. Luckily I didn't have to be weighed down by the memories of all the Christmases I spent where I was this year, at home home, because I was there, creating another iteration of that version of Christmas with my little family and our little stockings by our little fire.

Funny how a love of travel and a willingness to transplant myself often gives me multiple homes and constantly pulls the rug out from under me, leaving me feeling ungrounded and sometimes lost in an existential sense. Where is my home? Or often the more useful question: who is my home? Will I ever find a place I can't feel at home in? Does everyone have this experience after staying in a place for a long time?

I'm just getting my bearings here in the Cities in terms of friends, community, support, knowledge of the area, opportunities. But does this mean I'm letting go of some other home(s) that are dear to me? I don't think so. Seeing so many people (thank you all for your time and love) from my hometown, from my college experience, from my family reminded me that it's possible (or at least it was this time, again) to pick things up where they were left off, in spite of time passed and distance traveled. I hope that this is a pattern - that other relationships I don't actively maintain with people I've met abroad and afar are not necessarily over either.

It's 8:07 in California and 10:07 here. Luckily, I'm dog tired and am going promptly to bed with my new book, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain. To all a good year!

Face Coverings in Minnesota: A How-To

'Tis the season where my 25-block walk to work becomes increasingly difficult. Some may be following the headlines about a bit o' frozen precipitation hitting the Midwest - true indeed.

The snow is like a fine dust - I can't help but think it must be akin to the dust that covered Oklahoma in the 30's during the Dust Bowl. It's very, very light but covers everything and is so dry that it's not icy but blows around and amasses in big drifts that are knee-deep in some places.

'Tis the season of a spilled drink on the sidewalk whose ice cubes stayed frozen and the drink inside froze in a puddle around it. And as for face coverings...

I suited up this morning for my walk (it's not even really cold yet, they tell me). I covered the bottom half of my face with my scarf and in a move of brilliance, remembered to grab my sunglasses for eye protection. Once I got outside and started stumbling around in the snowdrifts, my glasses immediately fogged up because I was breathing into my scarf. Then, of course, the fog on my glasses froze and I couldn't see anything, at which point my next step plunged my foot into a mid-calf deep snow drift. Luckily, not being Minnesotan, or at least not hating the winter with passion yet, I found myself laughing uncontrollably at myself. I quickly learned that it just takes the right technique. One must breathe into the lower fold of the scarf and the glasses stay fog free.

'Tis also the season of neighbors! So many people were shoveling their walkways. I said hello, buenos días, and thank you, to at least 6 people this morning. (Normally, I'm lucky if I exchange a greeting with one other person on my way to work.) And it's fitting to thank those who shovel their walkways - I realized it's like parking kindly or letting someone with fewer items go ahead of you in line - it's a contribution to the public good. We were in solidarity together, making our way through the snow: at intersections, people taking their turn preemptively were kindly tolerated - once you start, you can't really stop easily driving in the snow. This all lends credence to my theory that people in more extreme climates are kinder to each other. Or maybe just Minnesotans are nicer than SoCal-ians. (Have you noticed my love for sweeping generalizations about large populations of people? Now matter how ill-advised and unscientific they might be, I just love making them. Bear with me.)

Ta-ta for now, stay toasty!

Something to write home about

There have been so many reasons to blog...many a blog entry has been composed in my head and then washed away by the lapping of everyday to-dos and "I'm late"s and the like.

I've been to Chicago and New York, two significant stops on my Great American Cities tour. And we've had Halloween and Thanksgiving, two significant holidays in the autumn-winter holiday accumulation of spirit and festivities.

And I've also just been informed this last week that my internship is indeed ending when I go home to California in late December. So the Great American Job Search also commences.

But the real thing I'm writing home about - the real piece of edgy, newsworthy news is that my stuffing was a hit. Of course it was a hit by virtue of a combination of factors that were largely out of my control (J lent me slivered almonds and cranberries, L lent me walnuts, the Midtown Global Market didn't have any sage, and Ze Chef let me use all this delicious salty, olive oily French bread left over from a crostini event). But all that aside, Ze Chef said he tried mine and then ate more of the stuffing left over from the K family Thanksgiving, and he said the latter didn't even taste like stuffing anymore. Wow. Big compliments from Ze Chef. I also made tiramisù (wrong culture) for Thanksgiving, on par with the challah (wrong holiday) that I made for our office potluck to welcome in the new environmental lawyers that moved in.

So again, the horizon spans in front of me, open, waiting. (It bodes well for higher frequency posts here, if nothing else.)