So I've been using ping.fm to update all my social networks.
Unfortunately, I didn't read the manual... So all the stuff I intended for twitter and Facebook also ended up on my blogs. I should go back and fix that sometime (but not tonight).
I also realized that I was losing the connection with other folks, because while I would get responses to my posts, I wasn't commenting on other people's posts. Made for rather one-sided conversations.
So in a few days I'll look like I always knew what I was doing, with all the untitled status updates removed from my blogs.
6.29.2009
6.24.2009
My Own Bitter and Sweet
I couldn't help but be glad that Jaime Ford's Japanese Keiko and Chinese Henry fail to find married love in the 1940s.
As a half-white child of the 1960s (back when such things were illegal in many states), I recall the hatred and torment I received from my peers (though my peers never physically beat me). The pain a Chinese-Japanese child would have endured during the 1940s is mind boggling.
Even as late as 1963, my Chinese aunt was driven from her marriage, her church, and her adopted country because of inter-racial hatred (daring, as she had, marry a white man).
My aunt even attempted suicide, as Jaime Ford's characters never do.
But in real life, as in fiction, time heals much.
My aunt and her first husband are remarried Death and time have freed them from pain, bigotry, and the second marriages that followed their 1963 divorce.
They are happy now, and I am glad of it.
As a half-white child of the 1960s (back when such things were illegal in many states), I recall the hatred and torment I received from my peers (though my peers never physically beat me). The pain a Chinese-Japanese child would have endured during the 1940s is mind boggling.
Even as late as 1963, my Chinese aunt was driven from her marriage, her church, and her adopted country because of inter-racial hatred (daring, as she had, marry a white man).
My aunt even attempted suicide, as Jaime Ford's characters never do.
But in real life, as in fiction, time heals much.
My aunt and her first husband are remarried Death and time have freed them from pain, bigotry, and the second marriages that followed their 1963 divorce.
They are happy now, and I am glad of it.
6.23.2009
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - review
The local ladies book club had assigned Kate Atkinson's "Case Histories: A Novel." And I gamely volunteered to lead the discussion.
Alas. We are a group of Mormon ladies. And Kate Atkinson's engaging tale involved quite a bit of sordid gore and guilty sex.
So I suggested a last minute selection switch, recommending Jamie Ford's bestselling "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet."
"Hotel" is the 1942 story of star-crossed lovers who, unfortunately for them, are younger (12) than Romeo and Juliet and not merely from warring families, but warring nations (Keiko is Japanese and Henry is Chinese).
To complicate matters further, Keiko and Henry live in Seattle, a city whose citizens of Japanese origin are about to be rounded up and shipped off to internment camps.
Keiko is a child of American-born parents, making the internment that much more confusing and senseless in the eyes of the reader.
Henry's father wages his own one-man battle against the Japanese - raising money to help the Chinese fight Japan abroad and peddling away local Japanese properties at pennies to the dollar. When he discovers the perfidy of his son (loving a Japanese girl), he disowns the child.
Unlike Romeo and Juliet, no one commits suicide in this tale of forbidden love. And the love is about as innocent as forbidden love gets.
For those of us who lived prior to 1980, however, the tale is clearly fantasy. We remember when marriage between whites and asians was forbidden. The state didn't have to forbid marriage between Japanese and Chinese because the animosity ran too deep, particularly for Chinese children orphaned by Japanese aggression, as was the case for the father of our fictional Henry.
But even though I knew it was impossible for Henry and Keiko to be together, I still wanted to know how he lost Keiko and ended up with the Chinese Ethel. I was surprised how Jaime Ford kept the story and tension going long after Keiko has been taken from Seattle, and how successfully he weaves together the WW II story with the 1986 life of the widowed Henry, searching Japanese artifacts left in the basement of the Panama Hotel hoping to find something Keiko left behind.
My older book group fellows found anachronisms I overlooked (e.g., online support groups in 1986?), but I enjoyed the book.
My only irritation was when Jaime's afterward claimed he was had not imputed his own values to the tale. Alas, I knew I was in the hands of an author who decried the US actions against residents and citizens of Japanese descent and who believes all races are valuable.
So, Jaime, your biases are showing. But they are beautiful biases, so perhaps I shouldn't point them out, lest you hitch them up out of sight.
Alas. We are a group of Mormon ladies. And Kate Atkinson's engaging tale involved quite a bit of sordid gore and guilty sex.
So I suggested a last minute selection switch, recommending Jamie Ford's bestselling "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet."
"Hotel" is the 1942 story of star-crossed lovers who, unfortunately for them, are younger (12) than Romeo and Juliet and not merely from warring families, but warring nations (Keiko is Japanese and Henry is Chinese).
To complicate matters further, Keiko and Henry live in Seattle, a city whose citizens of Japanese origin are about to be rounded up and shipped off to internment camps.
Keiko is a child of American-born parents, making the internment that much more confusing and senseless in the eyes of the reader.
Henry's father wages his own one-man battle against the Japanese - raising money to help the Chinese fight Japan abroad and peddling away local Japanese properties at pennies to the dollar. When he discovers the perfidy of his son (loving a Japanese girl), he disowns the child.
Unlike Romeo and Juliet, no one commits suicide in this tale of forbidden love. And the love is about as innocent as forbidden love gets.
For those of us who lived prior to 1980, however, the tale is clearly fantasy. We remember when marriage between whites and asians was forbidden. The state didn't have to forbid marriage between Japanese and Chinese because the animosity ran too deep, particularly for Chinese children orphaned by Japanese aggression, as was the case for the father of our fictional Henry.
But even though I knew it was impossible for Henry and Keiko to be together, I still wanted to know how he lost Keiko and ended up with the Chinese Ethel. I was surprised how Jaime Ford kept the story and tension going long after Keiko has been taken from Seattle, and how successfully he weaves together the WW II story with the 1986 life of the widowed Henry, searching Japanese artifacts left in the basement of the Panama Hotel hoping to find something Keiko left behind.
My older book group fellows found anachronisms I overlooked (e.g., online support groups in 1986?), but I enjoyed the book.
My only irritation was when Jaime's afterward claimed he was had not imputed his own values to the tale. Alas, I knew I was in the hands of an author who decried the US actions against residents and citizens of Japanese descent and who believes all races are valuable.
So, Jaime, your biases are showing. But they are beautiful biases, so perhaps I shouldn't point them out, lest you hitch them up out of sight.
6.21.2009
Facebook urls
You can now get a custom facebook url by clicking on http://ping.fm/RODPn I'm now at http://ping.fm/vbErS
6.18.2009
Back on land
On land again after 10 days at sea (without internet or e-mail - horrors). I did get a lot of reading and writing done. Coincidence, surely.
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