Apt. 11D

57,000 dead. 1/3 were children. Whole villages swept into the sea. Dan has assembled links to relief organizations. Please do something.

Taking Time Off

I'm taking a week off. Well, probably more. Maybe four weeks. OK, it's February 1st and that's it.

The place is littered with family responsibilities, career goals, half finished projects, good intentions, and self improvement regimens. I need to sweep all this debris into managable piles. Blogging has to stop for a short time.

Anybody got some gum that helps cut the need to blog? Blogerette, anyone?

UPDATE: I'll be back blogging on January 17th.

OK, OK, Now I'm really done

I have a couple of quick links that must be entered, and then I'm really on break.

A few days ago, I got into yet another discussion on women bloggers at Crooked Timber. Allison Kaplan Sommer has another response. And, Clancy at Culture Cat, responded to my call for a bibliography on the women bloggers. Please refer to it everytime you have the urge to beat that dead horse again.

12 Fish

I'm half Irish and half Italian. The Irish side is responsible for my last name, my hair, and a recessive gene for alcoholism and depression. But the last ancestor from the old sod stepped off Ellis Island so long ago, that we have no Irish family traditions. The only Gaelic I know is a curse. Singing "Fairytale of New York" in the Dublin House on 79th Street is as close to Irish as I get. (Thanks, Kieran, for the link.)

The Italian side dominates our holidays. My mom is Italian. Her father was raised in Abruzzi before emigrating to Canada and America.

For Italians, it's all about Christmas Eve. We get dressed up in our best clothes. The cousins fly in from Florida. There's a sickening mound of presents that are unwrapped that night.

And then there's the food. We have 12 types of fishes in honor of the twelve disciples. My grandfather took food very seriously. He was the maitre d' of the Waldorf in the 50s. After he died, the second generation stopped doing it all. Now the grandchildren have taken it up as a mission to see if we can make 12 different kinds of fish appetizers. Salmon spread. Crab cake. Tapenade. Lobster tail. Shrimp cocktail. ... We like a challenge. Mom makes a tuna and olive mariana sauce also, just in case anybody is still hungry.

It's all about excess, joy, and style.

I'm taking the rest of the week off. The flu has reared its ugly face. There's a cousins dinner tomorrow. On Thursday, we're taking the kids on the train into the city for a party at Steve's work and for viewing the city splendor. On Friday, I'll be making fish cakes and smoked salmon dip. Too much going on to feed the blog this week.

I hope you all have a joyous holiday. For my non-Christian friends, enjoy the empty theaters. I'll be back next week.

Books, Links and Stuff

A reader pointed me to this book: The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children. I couldn't quite tell what the political bent of the author, but the reader said that NPR liked it. Might have to check it out.

Stephen Karlson reads more of the comments in the Colloquy section of Chronicle discussing women in the social sciences and finds much dissatification. Not just with women receiving hiring priviledges, but with everyone looking for a life outside of academia.

More interesting discussion on that post from New Kid and Laura, Geeky Mom

One of the continuing problem with affirmative action programs is the resentment that it creates. I would like write more about that in the future.

For those of you that get The New Republic, check out this funny article on Dr. Phil.

At the Table with Grandma

There are certain topics that continue to pop up on the blogosphere. Over. And Over. And Over.

It's like getting stuck at the dinner table next to Grandma with Alzheimer's.

"Honey, did I ever tell you that academics are very liberal."
"Uh, yeah, Grandma, you did. Just earlier today."
"Yes, dear. They are full of what I call "group-think."
"Oh, I never heard that one before. Could you pass the mashed potatoes?"
"And there are not enough women political bloggers. Did you know that?"
"News to me."
"Did you know that academics are liberal."
(Let the self-mutilation begin.)

I've been very down on academic writing in the past. I've felt that blogging was a much more creative enterprise, and the rules of academic writing were squelching original thought.

But you know what is lacking in blog writing? A bibliography. These recurrent topics need some sort of back reference, so that we don't keep repeating ourselves. i.e. If you think that women don't like politics, then refer to Matt Ygelsias's post from last year (just as Kiernan did). There have also been many other posts exploring alternative reasons for women not doing the political blogs (they are writing them, you just don't know about them; women don't want to waste their time; ol boys club; older blogs were male oriented; women don't like conflict).

I've been continuing to follow the chicks in the blogosphere discussion, and I might put together a bibliography of my favorite posts on the topic. The liberal academic discussion lost me awhile ago.

UPDATE: No, it's not going to happen. Too lazy. But if someone else has compiled a list of the best blog post on women in the blogosphere, I'll be happy to link to you.

The Weekend -- Once a Year Friends and Everyday Friends

I'm not much for the holidays. All the work involved with just three weeks out of the year seems out of control. All the Santa stuff and excessive lighting and decorative sweaters just isn't for me.

But I do get into Christmas cards.

This year, we sent out 100. Mostly because I'm insane and hate losing people. I have friends from different eras of my life. Though we don't talk anymore, I still want to know where they are and the bullet points of their lives. Are they married? Do they have a job? Kids? Have things turned out like they planned? I enjoy getting cards from them once a year and even reading those cheesy newsletters. I like the pictures of their kids dressed in their finest posed in front of a tree or at the Sears studio. Though we no longer speak, these once-a-year friends are still very much alive, and I imagine that if we got together, they would be very much the same.

Also, because I'm insane, I can't just send out a box of pre-made cards. We have to make them. All 100. This year, a photo was glued to a card. A border was made with pastels or stamps or poster paint, with the help of the kids. After much debate, we finally decided that labels weren't tacky, so we keyed in all the names into the computer. Notes were enclosed. Individual messages. Stamped. A whole weekend activity.

This morning, some once-a-year friends came by for brunch. Joy and Lawrence were in from London visiting family. Joy has a money job, Lawrence teaches at London School of Economics, and their son attends pre-school. Over quiche and bagels, they told us of their adventures in London. It's very expensive, because the lenient tax policies attract shady, rich people from around the world. It's no longer hip, because only shady, rich people live there. So, they're moving to Shanghei which is the new hip place. After they said good-bye to the suburban Jersey dwellers, the house felt very heavy.

But not for long, because I took a bus into Manhattan to visit my everyday friends, Margie and Susan. We only see each other every few weeks or so, but still talk on the phone everyday. I bought some $10 lamp shades with the picture of Vishnu at an outdoor bazaar. Then, the rain chased us into a cafe for the rest of the trip.

We dined on wine and potato pancakes. A lovely combination, I know. But Margie assured me that it was very Jewish, so we went with it.

Margie said that she started having Shabbat on Fridays for her girls. When she was growing up, her mother had married and remarried several times and hadn't had any consistent traditions or religions. She wanted her girls to have what she missed. Susan said that her cousin, the daughter of two older academics with no interest in holidays, also craved yearly rituals no matter how mundane.

As much as Christmas in Shanghei sounds fantastic, I might pay closer attention to what I take for granted. Like the 12 types of fish on Christmas Eve.

I caught the 8:15 bus back to New Jersey. I could have stayed later but I was missing my every minute people.

Where are the Women?

The Chronicle examines why there are so few women in academia.

While women have made inroads in professions like English and psychology, over all more than 70 percent of professors teaching at the country's top research institutions in the 2001-2 academic year were male. Even at the entry level, men made up nearly 60 percent of the assistant professors that year at research universities, according to a survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Women don't self promote? The family problem? Old boys network? Check it out.

One commenter in their Colloquy section gave this bit of useful advice:

Publishing

Right after college, I landed a job at Simon & Schuster. It was a glorious time. For the first time in my life, I met other people who read as much as I did. We formed an instant bond over our love of the Brontes and Austin and our enthusiasm for the night life of the Village. I remember staying up until 5 am, sleeping on someone's floor for an hour, and then putting in a full day of work. Something only a 21 year old can do.

Publishing in the 80s was booming. Though our salaries were pitiful, we took our authors out to the great restaurants of the city. Sfuzzi's, Shun Lee, the Saloon. Those lunches were essential, because for dinner we would eat toast or pretzels. $15,000 a year was tough to live on, even in those days.

So much was published in the 80s without regard to the bottom-line. As much crap as quality, I'm sure. Tiny publishing groups were putting out interesting things.

All that has changed. When the economy took a downfall in the early 90s, the smaller, guppy publishers were absorbed by medium sized ones. Later, the medium sized ones were absorbed by the bigger ones. Now, only the big shark publishers exist and keep strict control over costs. Books are referred to as "products," and the gentleman editor has retired.

Most of my old friends have left publishing. Three of us got PhDs. Another an MBA. Only one friend, Susan, remained and now is a bigshot editor.

Anyhow, that is a long introduction to what I was really going to write about today.

Susan and I exchanged several e-mails yesterday about the Times article about bloggers getting big advances to write books.

Wonkette got a $275,000 advance for a novel about naughty Washington activities. Jessica Cutler and Belle de Jour also received a six figure advance.

Lesser-known bloggers are also peddling books. Julie Powell, a Queens secretary who blogged about trying to make every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 1)" during the course of a year, signed with Little, Brown to write about the experience.

Gordon Atkinson, a minister and blogger known as Real Live Preacher, published a collection of his work this fall with Eerdmans Publishing Company, a leader in religious books.

My reaction when I read about Ana Marie Cox's advance? Some information should not be included in a blog post.

Susan and I agreed that the transition from a blogger to a novelist is tricky. Some bloggers are quite talented at describing particular events and characters, but building an arc to a novel is something different. The essayists and expert bloggers might have an easier time making the transition. Non-fiction might be the way to go.

What Susan thought was significant is the audience that bloggers bring to the table. They have a built in audience. Most books need to sell at least 10,000 copies to make any kind of profit. Many bloggers have kind of an audience during a good afternoon.

One author was able to demonstrate the interest of her audience to publishers.

"I turned to readers of my blog," she said. "I asked them to comment on whether a book like mine would be relevant to them. Readers wrote back expressing why they wanted to read about the experience of maternal anger. I stuck their comments into my proposal as pulled quotes."

Her readers were convincing. She and her agent, Jim Hornfischer, sold her memoir, "Inconsolable," to Seal Press in August, she said. "The blog showed publishers she was committed to the subject matter and already had an audience," Mr. Hornfischer said.

Having numbers and reactions in hand can be just the thing to cinch a deal. When editors pitch ideas in a meeting, they can show those numbers to hostile directors. In these times, numbers are everything. Publishers can't take risks, and bloggers have an edge over untried authors.

I would love to see some more bloggers make the transition to publishing. If you're interested, I could have Suze as a guest blogger one day and she can tell you how to do it.

2 Links

The child howls in the next room. He will not nap. He will not nap. Why do kids fight the nap so fiercely? I should love a rest in bed for an hour or two. So, the post will be short.

Here's what I'm reading right now:

Bloggers who become authors.

Eggers on Monty Python. What's your favorite Monty Python sketch? Confuse a cat? The ministry of silly walks?