| You Are Boston |
 And quite frankly, you think you are the best. Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O’Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block |
I can’t remember the last time I posted one of these memes, but I liked the fact that I was Boston. If it wasn’t so far from home, I’d probably move there.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent are suing Dan Brown for plagiarism, alleging that Brown stole much of their 1982 book in his construction the plot of The Da Vinci Code.
I’m not normally one to defend Dan Brown’s “work,” but I wonder why the authors waited so long to bring it up. I’ve seen one of them, I know, on Da Vinci Code specials on TV. I smell a money issue. I think perhaps they feel they aren’t getting a big enough piece of the pie.
Brown openly acknowledged the work through the character of Leigh Teabing, whose name is a combination of Leigh’s surname and Baigent’s in the form of an anagram. I have to wonder how many copies of Holy Blood, Holy Grail were sold as a result of The Da Vinci Code’s popularity. I would never have read that farce of scholarship myself if not for Dan Brown’s novel. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a new hardcover version of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, complete with illustrations, appeared in October 2005?
If you ask me, this lawsuit is a case of biting the hand that feeds you. If I were one of the authors, I think I’d be grateful for the attention and new readers. I hope Dan Brown wins, because as Random House’s spokesperson put it, “If the claimants win, it’s the end of John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Robert Harris, Helen Fielding—and Shakespeare.”
For reasons sometimes beyond my control, but mostly not, I’ve moved this blog around a heck of a lot. It used to be on Upsaid, which was a very good host, but had limits as far as size. What could be more limitless than one’s own domain?
Then I purchased planethuff.com, which exists now only as a redirect to my husband’s crime blog. I do hope anyone who was still looking for me over there has figured out where I am.
Around October, I started feeling squeezed out of planethuff.com, and I moved all my writing over to the domain I had purchased for education, huffenglish.com.
When I migrated Much Madness to Word Press, I couldn’t make the switch work unless I changed the file name for the blog, so I moved huffenglish.com/dana over to huffenglish.com/muchmadness.
Finally, my former host screwed me over, and here we are — my own domain with my name in it and everything. And I really like it. Except all this moving around has made me too hard, I think, for some people to keep up with. I tried to cover that base — I put up redirects and tried to e-mail people I knew read me most.
I don’t have any books on successful blogging, and frankly, this blog has never been what most people would define as successful. That’s because I didn’t make it fit a niche. It isn’t a crime blog or a book blog or a sex blog or a technology blog or an anything blog. It’s just my ramblings, and most people (with the exception of friends, I guess) aren’t interested in that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. If this blog ever reached the popularity of Steve’s, I would be scratching my head, wondering what was wrong with these people and why they don’t have a life. I’ve been writing online in some form or another, in different places, since late June 2001. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been that long. Other times it seems like it’s been so much longer, mainly because my life is so different now. In some ways, this blog has stood the test of time, because after all the roadblocks I’ve encountered in the nearly five years I’ve been writing, I still kept at it. Most blogs last about four months. A fairly surprising, but somewhat lesser number of blogs only last a day. So I guess you could say that nearly five years isn’t bad.
Sometimes I wonder if I should count the years I kept an online diary. After all, the entries are no longer accessible. I don’t plan on uploading most of it here. Anyone who read my old diary probably knows why. When I left that place, I was attempting to shut a door on a painful part of my life. But I still kept writing. And the time I spent there wasn’t for nothing. I learned a lot about writing online while I was there. I suppose that’s why I count the time I spent there, even if you can’t read it.
Sometimes I go back and look at certain selections. It is interesting, for example, to re-read my first reaction to 9/11. I forget things, too, and sometimes re-reading is a sort of “Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about that in a while.” It’s interesting to see how that journal evolved, too. In many ways, this blog picked up where the old diary left off. This blog actually hasn’t changed too much in the two years I’ve been keeping it. I don’t know if that means I found a niche after all, or what.
Sometimes I feel I’ve spread myself too thin. I have compartmentalized several interests of mine into different blogs. I’m even considering another blog. I can’t keep up, and I know it. I do have a demanding full-time job and three children!
I really enjoy this, though. Getting my thoughts out there. Publishing. Having some people respond. It’s addictive.
I was innocently surfing the Internet and came across this article from More, a magazine for women over 40. You might remember the famous picture they published of Jamie Lee Curtis sans makeup and glamor.
Anyway, the article discusses the writer’s perceptions of how she is treated differently when she has gray hair. Some of her observations include:
I’ve spent 20 minutes trying to talk myself into leaving my friend Amy’s apartment wearing this wig. Said wig is actually quite fetching, much more so than my own baby-fine mop. Sure, it draws attention to certain lines around my mouth I wasn’t aware I had, but I’m shocked to report that I actually like the way I look.
Well, quel surprise. Gray hair can actually look good. She was also surprised to be ogled by some construction workers:
The closer I get, the less they hammer — they’ve noticed me. Could they be less subtle with their let’s-go-to-the-nearest-cheap-motel stares?… What normally seems like harassment suddenly feels more like an affirmation. If it’s possible, I think I just enjoyed being ogled.
Oh no she didn’t. Did she just say that women with gray hair must feel affirmed — “I’m still beautiful, even if I look old!” — if they are ogled by construction workers? As if we are desperate for attention we never get? Let me tell you ladies, my experience has been that both men and women like my hair.
Next, she talks about working out at a fitness club:
People are checking each other out right and left, but no one even looks at me. I guess it’s true that women become invisible after a certain age. But, contrary to what I expected, being ignored doesn’t bother me. For the first time in months, I’m actually paying attention to my workout instead of worrying that my fellow gym-goers are fixating on my back fat.
It’s the same argument as “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” I am wondering how much of this is her perception and how much is reality. How much does she get ogled — or does she think she usually gets ogled — when her hair is its “natural” blond?
Her sense of shock only deepens when she describes flirting in a bar. I want to smack her and say, “duh.” One of the men she talks to perfectly encapsulates my attitude about my hair: “I liked that you didn’t feel like you had to change your hair. It’s cool when a woman is brave enough to be herself.”
I have never attributed rudeness on the part of any store employee to my gray hair, before, either. In fact, I can’t really remember feeling rejected by store employees because of my hair. I wonder how much of this article is based on experiences the author had because she wanted to have them. What I mean is that her slights may be perceived because she wanted to prove the thesis that she would be considered less attractive by men and ignored by everyone else because of her gray hair.
It might just be my own prejudice, but I like her better in the gray wig. It goes well with her complexion. What bothers me most, I think, is the persistent condescending tone. She keeps referring to herself as looking “older,” and while she thinks she is being positive, it’s really like one of those backhanded compliments — “Wow, that dress doesn’t make you look as fat as the other one.” Maybe that’s a bit extreme. But what she didn’t address is the fact that there are a number of young women, like me (I’m only 34), who are genetically disposed to prematurely gray hair and choose not to dye it. I wonder why it is that she assumes that a relatively young woman wouldn’t be gray — or that she wouldn’t color her hair.
I should probably add that my hair is almost precisely as gray as her wig. This is the best recent picture I have of my hair. I look mad because I was late to my eye doctor appointment, which was subsequently cancelled, and I was kicking myself. For cripes’ sake, Dylan had broken my glasses and I couldn’t see. I had a new camera phone, and I was playing with it until Steve could pick me up.
I like my hair, so I guess that’s why I was miffed by the suggestion that there is something wrong with gray hair.
Have I mentioned how cool it is that my name is domain name now? Dana Huff dot Net. How cool is that?
I have been told by my students that they might actually visit the web site I set up for them if it was on MySpace. Can you believe that? Steve has a MySpace site. He actually seems to be using it, too. Students set one up for me, but I deleted it. There is just something inside me, something compelling, that will not allow me to have a MySpace site, even though I did get a Facebook site. Why I did it, I couldn’t tell you, because I can’t remember the last time I looked at until I just did so I could get the link. Actually, I’m not even sure you can look at until we add each other as friends, so the point may be moot, anyway.
I don’t know why, but I was so insulted by that remark from my students. MySpace sites are generally loud, garish, and revolting to look at. They are so loaded down with graphics and sound files that they crash browsers. And to top it all off, I can’t figure out what the point is. There is a blog feature, but most people I know on MySpace don’t use it. So it’s basically just a photo album where people they see every day anyway come by and make comments. I guess I could see having a site like that to connect to friends I rarely see, but my students’ sites anyway are littered with comments from each other. I just can’t bring myself to sign up for a MySpace account, even if doing so might help me connect with old friends. Speaking of which, each time I try looking for old friends, I am only more grateful that I got the hell out of Warner Robins.
In other news, I have strep throat. Sarah was out of school all week last week with it. It’s amazing that after taking just two pills, I already feel a lot better.
Girls, I want to offer you a bit of… well, you could call it advice, but maybe it’s just “from my experience, this works.” Might not work for you, I don’t know. In an entry that has been lost to the ether since my former host hosed up my site, I mentioned that a cashier at Panera had complimented me on my hair. I am way more than 50% gray at this point (I think), and I haven’t dyed my hair in over five years. This week, the guy who instructs our students in capoeira asked me if it was my natural color. I started to be snarky, because I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t dye my hair (and I wasn’t feeling well, which sometimes brings out the snark) — why else would it be so gray? Anyway, I decided to be polite, as usual, and I said, “yes.” I was rewarded for my politeness when he told me — and I quote — that it was “beautiful, man.” He gushed about it, actually. Then he said that he could see someone trying to dye their hair that color and really screwing it up. It was nice to hear a man say those things about my hair, even if he is a little creepy. I don’t think Steve liked hearing about it. I think he was jealous. Of course, he’s been telling me he likes my hair for over five years. But doesn’t he have to? I mean, as my husband, if he says he’d rather I dyed it because he doesn’t like it gray, doesn’t that make him emotionally abusive in today’s culture? At any rate, I believe Steve does like my hair. Somehow, it’s different hearing it from someone else.
I was wondering if posting that would make him, mad, but he just doesn’t check in here very often for whatever reason, so I decided what the hell.
Is it just me, or does Shaun White look like he could be my husband’s kid?
Here are some pictures of my hubby when he was roughly Shaun’s age:
Still not sure? What about this?
Steve is, of course, the redhead.
What do you think?
By the way, Shaun White is the gold-medalist in Men’s Halfpipe snowboarding.
Is it weird I think this kid is cute because I think he looks like Steve?
My great-grandmother succumbed to leukemia at about 3:00 A.M. this morning. She was 91, and had she lived until her next birthday on March 19, she would have been 92. We have been expecting her to die for some time, and truly, it is remarkable that I was able to know my great-grandmother for so long. Sarah will have memories of her great-great-grandmother, and not many people can claim that.
Granny always used to have Dr. Pepper in bottles in her fridge whenever we visited. She used to offer us one as soon as we walked in the door: “Do you want a Dr. Pepper, Sugie?” She called all of us “Sugie.”
She had a very hard life. A few days ago, she told family members that she was “tired” and she was “ready to see Ted [my great-grandfather, who died of complications related to Alzheimer’s and diabetes a little over two years ago].
I do hope she is resting peacefully. She deserves it.
First of all, I have to explain what happened with my former host, Maxipoint, Ltd. Apparently, they acquired new owners, but did not tell anyone this would happen beforehand. Then, I visited my site and saw a placeholder page for a company with which I was unfamiliar. The placeholder stated my account was suspended. I put in a help ticket with my former host, but as usual, it was ignored for two days despite the fact that it was marked urgent. After this time, I decided I was tired of the problems I have experienced with this host and signed up with Bluehost. I transferred my domain. One of the perks of Bluehost is that I can add on extra domains, so I used that opportunity to create danahuff.net for my personal sites — this personal blog, my Harry Potter blog, and my genealogy blog. My education sites remain on huffenglish.com. I feel good about this. After some rough patches getting WP installed correctly — the images didn’t seem to want to show up — I think I’ve got it. However, Maxipoint is either unwilling or unable to send me the files. I am actually leaning toward the notion that they simply don’t know how. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve asked them to do something they didn’t know how to do. The upshot is that I have lost all the blog posts I wrote prior to migrating to Word Press on Much Madness is Divinest Sense. It could be worse. I have decided I will try to rescue what I can, but frankly, I had to just let it go or else the thought of losing all that writing was going to make me crazy. I lost all the posts on the other blogs. The only reason I have some posts from this one is the fact that when I migrated to Word Press on this blog, I had to extract my blog entries from Movable Type. Sincerely a headache, but not much I can do.
Needless to say, it’s going to take some time to build this site back up to what it was. If you have submitted entries to the Literature Carnival that don’t appear, please resubmit. Most likely, they were lost in the ether when I transferred. Unfortunately, the old carnival posts are gone, unless I can find a cache of them somewhere and repost them.
In other news, I have been having some health problems. I went to the doctor yesterday, and it is most likely either fibroids or a hormonal imbalance. That means either surgery or medication. I think I may be a bit anemic, too, as I have been so tired and everyone tells me how pale I look. I bought some vitamins, so hopefully, I’ll feel better soon. I have an ultrasound on Tuesday, so I may find out more about what’s causing my condition then.
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