Book review/rant

We're unpacking books. Okay, my husband is unpacking books. We have boxes and boxes of them since we moved about a month ago and these things take time, especially when you're chronically short of bookcases, and we had sixty boxes of them

This means that as he shelves, and as we go through each box for a final weeding, we discover books we'd thought we'd lost or forgotten we'd owned. This is, of course, very cool, because it's like discovering all new books - and we didn't even have to buy them

So, the book I just discovered and reread was Earthsong by Suzette Hayden Elgin.

Earthsong is the third chapter in the "Native Tongue", which postulates a universe where language rules. It's also a world where women are legally minors and have been since Reagan-Bush. The first two, Native Tongue and The Judas Rose, are good books, I've worn out my copies - enough that I can also catalog their flaws in great detail. And they do have flaws, but at this point I don't worry about them.

Earthsong was written a decade later. A woman in this oppressive society is told by her dead greatgrandmother to end hunger. After extensive research, the woman comes up the solution - "audiosynthesis." After all, if plants can use light to create their own food, why shouldn't humans use sound for the same purpose? After all, perception is perception, whether it be sight, hearing, touch or taste, right?

She bases this on the idea that some religious communities dedicated to chant eat practically nothing.

As you can imagine, this was a difficult hurdle for me to get over. I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them, but I simply had to consider this magic to do it this time. Sound waves are very low energy when compared to light, They are also mechanical and produce mechanical reactions. Light is made of photons as well as waves and produces chemical reactions, and it is the chemical reactions we need to live. More than that - it's possible that one's own singing is sufficient for a snack at least, and that smacks of perpetual motion.

The rest of the story leapfrogs over centuries and over planets. It works, but barely, and the men are particularly stupid or venial or, at best, clueless. The smarter ones know to listen to their wives or let themselves be manipulated. The earlier ones maintain a much more consistent storyline and the action takes place over someone's lifetime. Not perfect, but better.

New picture

The picture on the page is thanks to Basingstoke. All I did was sharpen it a bit and resize it to fit. I think it's really cute.

Yes, I am a dragon. Dragons hoard treasure, such as books and friends.

Trembling Before G-d

I went to the movies tonight. I went with friends and with strangers and with people I respect greatly and the movie I saw was tremendously important.

The verse in Deuteronomy says that male/male anal sex is an abomination (not those who practice it - the only people who are called abominations are those who use fraudulent measures). The law in the Code of Jewish law says that lesbian sex is liable for lashes, although it is not mentioned at all in the Torah.

This movie was about people who were born into the Orthodox tradition but who are also gay. Some hide this from themselves and marry, even have children. Some know it and still marry and have children and are never with anyone they can love fully, which causes equal pain to their spouses who therefore do not get the spouse they need. They have decided you can't be frum and gay, and they want to be frum. This doesn't work very well.

Equally painful are those who decide in the other direction. Yes, they may well have companionship and love, if not children, but you can hear the longing in their eyes and in their voices even as they cry out that they cannot be religious. Since the first group was closeted - seen only in silhouette and shadows if at all, we couldn't see their faces. With the second, we could see sometimes years of hurt. They were rejected by something they'd held precious, and by their communities and their families, and in return they rejected it, but you can tell they lost a big piece of themselves as well. I will never forget Israel, who claims to want nothing of his old beliefs, but who sang Shalom Aleichem when the Sabbath siren sounded.

Then there are those who want both. They want to be able to love whom they can love, and still be part of the greater Orthodox community. And for them, life is a tightrope between truth and rejection - rejection by family on one side and friends who don't understand their need to be religious on the other, with rabbis across the spectrum of understanding and knowledge. Some are wishing, some are asking and some are demanding acceptance. And some are just trying to be who they are - a religious lesbian couple who help other women in sexual crisis - married women having affairs with other married women but who don't want lose their marriages and children - while struggling to maintain a relationship with their parents.

The discussion afterwards was also amazing. My husband's school principal, a highly respected Modern Orthodox rabbi, showed up as a sponsor. More - when he was told that one side of the room would be filmed, but not the other, he got up and moved to the filmed side and spoke on camera - and he wants to show the movie to his congregation and his faculty, and possibly even his high school students. Amazing man.

All in all, a worthwhile movie and evening.