November 2004 - Posts
I don't know what it is about December, but there's either too much to do or too little. This year I've decided to skip decorating for Christmas AND I've whittled down my activities to just a few. There is still a lot to do on the documentary, but I'm waiting on some images before work can progress.
The good news is, I finally have time to do all that reading I've been meaning to catch up on.
I have a stack of books on my night table... The first to leave just recently is the book by British author Lynn Truss: "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves." It's pretty light-reading, despite the fact that it's about the state of puctuation today. I guess I should have laughed more, but sometimes British humor tends to elude me. I like dry humor as much as the next person, but some things in the book that people (I guess) find hilarious, I found merely amusing. Besides, I'm more of a grammar person myself. I tend to notice blantant grammerical problems more so than puctuation. For example, I see typos in the paper all the time. Once, at a gas station bathroom in southern Georgia, I actually began mentally correcting the graffiti I read on the wall.
"Eats, Shoots, & Leaves" is pretty good. It reminds you of how important puctuation is in our language, and how we should still learn it despite the fact that even experts disagree about how it should be used and that advertisers and marketers don't know much about it. Anyway, Truss' book was a fast read. I finished the second half in one afternoon.
What else is waiting in the stack of books? David Sedaris' "Naked", which a friend tells me is a wonderful way to get aquainted with the author. I've never read his work before, but it seems like, lately, that's all anyone's been talking about. I also have two Stephen J. Gould books. You know, that's the author that religious conservatives hate for writing about evolution. I've already read one of his books, about the Cambrian explosion of creatures. It was really good. It was "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History." The ones I hope to read soon are "The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox" and "Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball." I'm also reading 2 other heavy books, for research: "The Osage and the Invisible World" and "Ancient North America." My brother also just gave me Noam Chomsky's latest, which he said was really eye-opening. Oh, and I've got one historical fiction, which is my favorite genre of literature: Rosalind Miles' second installment of the Guenevere trilogy, "Knight of the Sacred Lake." So far, I've found it to be pretty depressing. The book fuels my distruct of organized Christianity and my feminist side, and it makes me angry with the male-oriented dominance of the Western world. Her first Guenevere book was illuminating. It definetely takes Guenevere out of the side-lines of Authurian lore and present her side of the story from a viewpoint outside of Christianity. In many ways, the customs and sexual beliefs that Miles illustrates as being normal for Guenevere's people are not that far from progressive thought in the Western World about feminine right to control her own body. It shows the struggle between the old religion of the Celts and their worship of the female with the "new" religion of the Christians, with their desire to supress the feminine, and replace the old female gods with one male one. HMMMMMMMM....
A word of advice for couples: if you can avoid long distance relationships, do. It's not that they can't be survived. A relationship can even be stronger after dealing with the long-distance frustration. But it's hard. Really hard. Andy and I are dealing with our second long-distance relationship. The first one lasted three years and ended just before we got married. At the time, we had the luxury of taking turns to drive and see each other every other weekend. We were only 3 hours apart. This time, we're three states apart and more than 500 miles. Fortunately, we have cell phones and unlimited PCS to PCS minutes this time. And with the holidays, time off to fly to see each other. Still, combine the stress of moving with that of the holidays, plus the strain of missing the one you love, and hearts tend to weigh heavy. I thought it would be easy. Only a few weeks and bam! It would be over. As it turns out, it will be a bit longer than we planned. In fact, it sometimes seems as if it will never end.
So I offer one more piece of advice for couples: hang tight, but if you have to be apart, talk as much as you can and let the other person vent, vent, vent. I promise you, they're not mad at you. They're mad at the situation and the stress, and it's better to get out all those emotions. Pent up feelings can cripple you. Take it from someone who knows, and who's been through this a few times herself.
The newspapers are filled with stories of shoppers mobbing stores for early morning bargains, pushing, shoving, and the kinds of behavior Santa would definetely not approve of. Yes, the Christmas season is here. Threats of the fast-approaching holiday season in Old Navy commercials finally full-filled themselves, and that traditional season of buying everything you can for your loved one, decorating to the nigh, and throwing Christmas parties is here. Ahhh, time to crawl in the house and hide.
I'm somewhat torn about how I feel during this time of year. I usually enjoy Christmas, and the decorations, and the food; but, at the same time, I feel loathsome toward the blantent commercialism that has hijacked this religious holiday. Each year I feel less and less jolly as Christmas approaches. I was hoping this year would be better, now that I've shed my mall retail job, in lue for one at a specialty shop. I've also managed to avoid working the entire week of Thanksgiving; however, it hasn't helped much. Oh sure, being with family is great. And, I'm very appreciative of this time I have with them: especially since this is my first Thanksgiving home in years. But I just can't get anymore excited. Am I the only one? Am I the only person who looks out on the yearly rush of the holidays as an incredible bore that merely causes me more stress and weight gain than I need?
This year, with the move to Austin, I've decided not to drag my Christmas decorations down from the attic. I would be the only one there to look at them, anyway, and would they really bring me that much joy?
Perhaps the holiday spirit will strike me in the coming days, when I receive a card, or witness some act of kindness and giving. Or when I realize how to express my love to different family members with gifts I actually thought about and made, instead of handing over my credit card. High hopes indeed.
Victory! Well sort of. I've spent the last month working on gathering images of artifacts and depictions of Mississippian cultural life for the Shiloh documentary. I've finally made some headway. I have permission from two photographers to use their images of artifacts... and the pictures are beautiful... professionally shot. I have yet to have the images in my possession, but permission goes a long way. One photographer is actually a professor at the University of Memphis who shoots artifacts on the side. His work is beautiful and is featured prominently in a catalog that accompanies a current Chicago Art Institute exhibit on Mississippian art. The other photographer works at the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. I should have them all in about 2 months. Meanwhile, I almost did a cartwheel today when I got a message back from an artist who's letting me use his work. Martin Pate painted several pictures depicting what life may have been like at the Shiloh Indian Mound complex. I thought he would ask me to pay, but he didn't! And his work is beautiful, too. I know... you probably don't think it's exciting. But it's a step. It's a learning process. I'm just learning how to contact these artists about using their work. And it's not all cake. I'm still waiting on the National Anthropological Archives to get back to me about who holds the copyrights to several reels of film I would like to use. I need permission to use them if they aren't in the public domain. Locating the images and film clips tends to be easy over the internet, but unfirtunately, many sites do NOT post who holds the copyright. Many libraries offer images readily, but for commercial or video use, you have to secure permission from any third-party copyright holders. I've found there are also a proliferation of websites that offer hefty prices for stock footage or photographs. Generally, for my purposes at least, you don't need them. A lot of archaeological film and photographs are held in federal or state government departments. The way I found out about the photographs in Knoxville and Memphis was just by asking. I met people, found out what was available, and agreed to help them out by giving them on-screen credit and/or recommending them to other people. People tend to be really helpful, too, when you tell them about your project. It helps if they see how excited you are about the project, because they get excited and want to help. It may not work when your budget is high or the project is non-educational, but at this point (no-budget), people understand. That's reassuring, because it helps the learning process, and hopefully, future victories will come along a little easier and faster.
Working on my video has been tough for me lately. With the time change and a husband far away, I'm having a tough time concentrating on what needs to be done. I make "To do" lists and set aside large chunks of time to work, but in the past week, very little has come to fruition. The more it happens, the more frustrated I become, and the worse things get. My mind wanders to the move and to small things that need to be done around the house. Unfortunately, it rarely stays focused on my most important end goal.
I thought that all this time to myself would give me more time to work on the video. After all, the house is quiet. But to make the house seem less empty and lonely, I have fallen into old, bad habits: TV. It is a blessing and a curse. It is the source of vast oportunites for someone like me who wants to create programs for it. But it is also a source of distraction. Before Andy left, I was able to turn off the TV, and I cared little about what was on. Now I find myself trying to read in front of its blaring screen and getting little done.
Fortunately, today there will be no TV. I will get work done because I have to leave town, my house, and my TV to get it done. A video shoot 2 hours away at a museum in Knoxville. The exhibit: Mississippian artifacts recovered in Tennessee. It should yield valuable images for my video. It will encourage me, I hope. I feel like I'm the only one in the world that can't focus on what needs to be done. Maybe I have adult ADD. Or not.
My husband sent me an article to help me feel better. I've posted it in the articles section of the blog. It's about how computer programmers feel the same way. Now if only I could meet a few filmmakers that are scatter-brained like me... it seems like all the ones I know are together and have an incredible work ethic. They are the people I want to emulate, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere close.
Forgive me, but I'm going to rant for a little while... about how RUDE people are when they are looking for a place to rent. A little background... our lease is not up until July, and Andy and I agreed to help our landlord find a new tenant, so that we would be able to end our lease without any further obligations. That's what happened when we moved in... the people before us were breaking their lease... but we didn't sublet. We signed our own lease.
Well, I'm now in renters' hell. I have people calling, getting the address, driving by, and cancelling. Okay, so the place is not as manicured as it could be... BUT IT'S A RENTAL!!!! What do they expect?! I'm just a renter, whose husband is 500 miles away, and can't lift the lawnmower over the fence. ACK!! I had one woman call on behalf of a client (it seemed promising at first) who proceeded to lecture about what I needed to do to make the place more appealing. (Her husband had driven by with a video camera a day before the scheduled appointment) Well, for one thing, lady, you saw the tarp because I was cleaning and didn't expect you today!!! There's no "For Rent" sign out front!! Then she told me her client would sublet from me... Ummm... NOOOOOOOO. I'm going to be 500 miles away when the new renter moves in. There will be no subletting. Because I want nothing more to do with the house. Once the truck is loaded and I'm on the road, the house is history in my mind. She even tried to influence me by implying that I was desperate and should do whatever she says, otherwise I would be locked into the lease forever. Well so be it. I want to be with Andy now more than anything, but if I have to stay, I have to stay. As my mom reassured me... just be patient, and the right renter will come along. There is a reason for everything, and maybe Andy and I just need a little more time to find our first house. I've got friends putting the word out, and other prospective renters calling and setting appointments. So in the words of one of my best friends and boss... fuck 'em.
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