there must be a word for this feeling
Lucy Kemnitzer
people, etc., etc. An old friend who is an activist in Latin
American affairs heard me discuss this and said "You need to talk
to a nun!" -- he means there are all these nuns who have been
going back and forth to Central America ministering to these camps
and advocating in the US for the fate of the people there, and so
on.
One thing leads to another, and now I have the email address of a
nun who's been doing this work, and other Central American stuff.
She's written a passionate article I just read on the subject of
the appointment of Negroponte to be ambassador to the UN, and his
history in human rights violations (in case that construction is
unclear, _he's_ got a history of human rights violations).
But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
into my fantasy."
How do I make this right?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Brenda W. Clough
"I'm a writer. Could I ask you a few questions about your <horrible
demeaning experience, amazing achievement, prom date, purchase of a
Toyota Tercel, abortive run for dogcatcher, etc.>?" It doesn't matter
what you're asking about, or why, or what you propose to do with it
later. Most people are delighted to talk to you.
If you find that you will be drawing heavily from one interviewee's
experience I would mention it to them and get permission, but if it's
'deep background' I wouldn't worry. I do make a habit of thanking
particularly rare and useful backgrounders in the Author's Notes at the
back of the book. (I'm afraid that in the current effort a number of
folks are going to be startled, at being thanked for supplying period
obscenities...)
Brenda
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
> into my fantasy."
>
> How do I make this right?
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Svein Olav Nyberg
can state that clearly, she might even be flattered.
--
Svein Olav Nyberg
http://www.nonserviam.com
200 million Americans can't be wrong: It is "definately"
Brooks Moses
> One thing leads to another, and now I have the email address of a
> nun who's been doing this work, and other Central American stuff.
> She's written a passionate article I just read on the subject of
> the appointment of Negroponte to be ambassador to the UN, and his
> history in human rights violations (in case that construction is
> unclear, _he's_ got a history of human rights violations).
>
> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
> into my fantasy."
>
> How do I make this right?
Redefine terms. :)
It would seem to me that her struggle is against human rights violations
and to help people who are in refugee camps and the like. They happen
to be in Central America, true, but I doubt that's really at all central
to why she's doing it.
Also, you're not erasing all traces of her reality by putting it into
your book -- you're merely erasing the traces that place it in a
specific time, and a specific place. Minor details, those. The
essentials -- which are the parts that you're asking about -- stay in.
Then, what you're going to do with this is present it to the world as
"this is what a refugee camp is like. It's horrible, and this is why."
And your fictional world is going to be part of some people's
subconscious reference points for what refugee camps are like, when
they're considering how to respond to real ones in the here and now.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "frivolous little book"; being in a
fictional world doesn't mean it doesn't have important things to say
about what it's like to live in this nonfictional world. It can express
truths just as effectively as nonfiction, if not more so, and expressing
a truth about what refugee camps are like is far from "frivolous".
- Brooks
Simon Morden
> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
> into my fantasy."
Remember that Schindler's Ark was _based_ on a true story and
novelised. Yet it brought the horror of the Holocaust home to many
people who never gave it a second thought, despite the abundance of
archive material and survivors living all across the globe.
If the nun wrote a factual account of work in a refugee camp, a few
people might read it. You write a novel about it, thousands (or more!)
might read it.
If you still feel squicky about asking, promise (and we'll hold you to
it :) ) to give a proportion of the royalties to UNHCR.
Simon Morden
--
________________________________________________________
Moving in a mysterious way ...
Visit the Book of Morden at
http://www.bookofmorden.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
*'Taiga Taiga Burning Bright' in Extremes2 from Lone Wolf *
* From Jan 2001! http://www.dm.net/~bahwolf/extremes2.htm *
Lucy Kemnitzer
<simon....@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
>> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
>> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
>> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
>> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
>> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
>> into my fantasy."
>
>Remember that Schindler's Ark was _based_ on a true story and
>novelised. Yet it brought the horror of the Holocaust home to many
>people who never gave it a second thought, despite the abundance of
>archive material and survivors living all across the globe.
>
>If the nun wrote a factual account of work in a refugee camp, a few
>people might read it. You write a novel about it, thousands (or more!)
>might read it.
>
>If you still feel squicky about asking, promise (and we'll hold you to
>it :) ) to give a proportion of the royalties to UNHCR.
>
The Schindler book and mine are quite different. Mine is an sf
tale, just a story, and I envision it as a paperback, something to
read on the bus.
It would be more than a little arrogant and lacking in perspective
for me to say that such a book, set in a fantasized worls far away
in space and time, will tell anybody anything about war and
refugees and peace and repatriation that they don't already know.
But I'm going to write her: I'm going to be taking Brenda's
advice, and pretending that I don't even think about the thing.
Just "I'm a writer, and I need background information on daily
life and the following issues in camps for displaced people: and
so-and-so said you might be able to fill me in? By the way, I read
your piece on Negroponte . . ."
Lucy Kemnitzer
Peter Knutsen
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
> How do I make this right?
You tell her that you'd like to make your portrayal, of living in
a refugee camp, as realistic and vivid as possible. You believe that
the experience of living in a refugee camp as a refugee, having to
worry each day about whether there'll be enough food and water and
when the next epedemic strikes and whether you'll ever be able to
get a real home, is the same whether the refugee camp is in Africa
or on Sirius VI.
Also tell her that fiction is often a method for drawing people in.
If you set down to write a story *about* refugees, a story which
explicitly wants to tell the reader about how horrible it is to be
a refugee, then most people will choose not to read your story.
So instead you choose to write a story about lots of things but
which happens to have a couple of important chapters that involves
the life in a refugee camp. By "sneaking it in" like that, you
might be able to show the reader what it's like to live in such a
camp, because in addition to all the dull and frustrating suffering
the reader also gets an exciting SF story. You can tell her that
it works a bit like if you want a kid to swallow some bitter medicine.
The kid won't eat it, so you dump some sugar on top of it and presty!
Down it goes.
To best illustrate for her (she's presumably SF-illiterate) how
this "theme at a distance" tool works, tell her about the standard
SF-story which explores racism by setting the story on a different
planet and making it about Humans vs Centaurians instead of Europeans
vs Africans.
I use the same method when I have something "political" I want to
get out. I have never written - and I never will write - a story
*about* how much a gifted child suffers in a socialist school system.
But there's a bunch of my stories that happens to feature gifted
people who either did suffer, because their childhood happened to
be in a socialist country, or children who still live in and have
to cope with a socialist society which preaches that everybody is
alike and that it's both a sin and an impossibility to be better
than others. But apart from the fact that a socialist system does it
very worst to cripple those people who have special talents, there's
alot of other content in those stories. A lot of other themes that
doesn't have anything to do with old-fashioned politoeconomical
systems, or what it's like to be special. There's a lot of adventure
and sense-of-wonder, plus a lot of good old-fashioned drama. And any
title, back cover blurb or front cover illustration ought to focus
on those other themes and not on the politics.
> Lucy Kemnitzer
--
Peter Knutsen
Simon Morden
You do yourself an injustice. Fiction is an excellent way of introducing
people to concepts and realities they don't normally think about. Make it a
good story *first*, and they'll absorb the rightness of your arguments at
an emotional level.
A friend of my wife commented after seeing 'Schindler's List': "They'd
never have had lice in the camp. Too over the top." And this from a lawyer.
People don't think about stuff that doesn't directly bother them.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
> into my fantasy."
The battle for human rights is also fought in the minds and
entertainment venues of the rich safe West. Making people aware, here,
goes a long way towards, if not a solution, an amelioration of the
situation. So getting it right, finding the words to convey the horror
and pain, to the complacent readers of a fantasy novel, is not the worst
thing one can do by a long shot. Actually, it may reach a lot more
people and touch a lot more hearts than a lecture or an article on a
journal that only people already aware will read. :-)
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
substitute tin to nit to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "frivolous little book"; being in a
> fictional world doesn't mean it doesn't have important things to say
> about what it's like to live in this nonfictional world. It can express
> truths just as effectively as nonfiction, if not more so, and expressing
> a truth about what refugee camps are like is far from "frivolous".
Let me AOL this with my strong and enthusiastic agreement.
I actually think that putting real horrors in a non-real setting makes
them more vivid, it makes it a lot less easy for people to dismiss it as
something that happened to other people, long ago, far away, and they
are guilty fo [this] and [that] to boot.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> It would be more than a little arrogant and lacking in perspective
> for me to say that such a book, set in a fantasized worls far away
> in space and time, will tell anybody anything about war and
> refugees and peace and repatriation that they don't already know.
You'd be _amazed_ at how little people know about war, refugee and
repatriation. I mean it.
No matter how small or ineffective your effort may sound to you: it's
yet another straw on the camel's back.
And don't feel guilty at dabbling in real pain. Even doing it badly's a
lot better than ignoring it.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dal Dan) wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>> But I'm shy: here's why: I'm embarking on writing a frivolous
>> little book, a novel set in no real world with no real relation to
>> her work or her struggle. How insulting is that? "Tell me about
>> this great horror you've experienced: I want to make a paperback
>> novel out of it. And all traces of your reality will be subsumed
>> into my fantasy."
>
>The battle for human rights is also fought in the minds and
>entertainment venues of the rich safe West. Making people aware, here,
>goes a long way towards, if not a solution, an amelioration of the
>situation. So getting it right, finding the words to convey the horror
>and pain, to the complacent readers of a fantasy novel, is not the worst
>thing one can do by a long shot. Actually, it may reach a lot more
>people and touch a lot more hearts than a lecture or an article on a
>journal that only people already aware will read. :-)
>
Aiee. I am overearnest and invested with an exaggerated sense of
importance about things, but dog forbid I think that the story is
anything but a story, in this case.
Now, Upton Sinclair, he wrote fiction to make a point, and _The
Jungle_ is still read and still powerful, but who reads his
mysteries anymore? I think it takes something special to write a
message book that works on all levels. And I was not moved to
write this as a way of opening the eyes of science fiction readers
everywhere to the plight of refugees and displaced people. All I
want is to tell the story of these two people, a relief worker and
a man without a country.
It's not _The Jungle_. It's not even _The Death Ship._ If
anything, it's _To Have and Have Not_. But it's not even that.
Not that I'm opposed to stories meant to make people aware of
things, or even stories meant to persuade people of things. Some
of my favorite reading is like that. It's just that this isn't,
and I don't feel I'm up to doing it anyway.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Patricia C. Wrede
Kemnitzer) writes:
>Not that I'm opposed to stories meant to make people aware of
>things, or even stories meant to persuade people of things. Some
>of my favorite reading is like that. It's just that this isn't,
>and I don't feel I'm up to doing it anyway.
"If you want to send a message, use Western Union." I forget who said it, but
there's as much truth in that as there is in all the people who are telling you
that fiction has a disproportionate impact on people's minds and imaginations.
Fiction does both things -- messages and frivolous entertainment -- and
sometimes it does them regardless of the author's actual intent. But you are
allowed to intend one thing rather than the other.
You are writing a story. Your responsibility, as a craftsperson and to the
story, is to do the best job of writing that story that you can manage. You
feel that talking (or writing) to this woman about her experiences will make
the story better. Fine; do so. If *she* thinks it's trivial and unimportant,
she can always tell you she has more important stuff to do than talk to a lowly
fiction writer. I'm betting she won't, but pay her the courtesy of giving her
the choice.
I don't know where you got the idea that asking someone for information is an
insult, if you happen to want to use that information in a piece of fiction.
Or is it just that it's *this particular type* of information that you see as
problematic, because it's got such strong connotations? But if you follow that
along logically, it means that fiction writers have no business ever writing
about tough stuff like war or concentration camps or death (unless, perhaps,
they've got A Message and are writing a really big piece of Great Literature).
That's silly. Frivolous, entertaining books have as much reason to be solidly
based on reality as Big Important books -- maybe more, because odds are good
that more people will read them, or at least that they'll reach a different set
of people.
Patricia C. Wrede
Lucy Kemnitzer
Wrede) wrote:
>In article <3b166025...@cnews.newsguy.com>, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy
>Kemnitzer) writes:
>
>>Not that I'm opposed to stories meant to make people aware of
>>things, or even stories meant to persuade people of things. Some
>>of my favorite reading is like that. It's just that this isn't,
>>and I don't feel I'm up to doing it anyway.
>
>"If you want to send a message, use Western Union." I forget who said it, but
>there's as much truth in that as there is in all the people who are telling you
>that fiction has a disproportionate impact on people's minds and imaginations.
>Fiction does both things -- messages and frivolous entertainment -- and
>sometimes it does them regardless of the author's actual intent. But you are
>allowed to intend one thing rather than the other.
Yes. I have nothing against message fiction. Message is as good
a reason to write fiction as any. I'm just not writing it. What
would be the message? "War causes disruption?" "It's hard to
repatriate people?"
I can't think of a single _message_ that would be embedded in such
a story that wouldn't be obvious to the point of drooling.
A point of view, yes, I have that.
>
>You are writing a story. Your responsibility, as a craftsperson and to the
>story, is to do the best job of writing that story that you can manage. You
>feel that talking (or writing) to this woman about her experiences will make
>the story better. Fine; do so. If *she* thinks it's trivial and unimportant,
>she can always tell you she has more important stuff to do than talk to a lowly
>fiction writer. I'm betting she won't, but pay her the courtesy of giving her
>the choice.
>
>I don't know where you got the idea that asking someone for information is an
>insult, if you happen to want to use that information in a piece of fiction.
>Or is it just that it's *this particular type* of information that you see as
>problematic, because it's got such strong connotations? But if you follow that
>along logically, it means that fiction writers have no business ever writing
>about tough stuff like war or concentration camps or death (unless, perhaps,
>they've got A Message and are writing a really big piece of Great Literature).
>That's silly. Frivolous, entertaining books have as much reason to be solidly
>based on reality as Big Important books -- maybe more, because odds are good
>that more people will read them, or at least that they'll reach a different set
>of people.
Okay, I needed this. I think I do know where it comes from: it's
an overreaction to hearing complaints by native peoples that their
history and tragedy has been exploited by too many outsiders for
their own purposes. And it's not a congruent situation, and I
need to know it.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Manny Olds
> Frivolous, entertaining books have as much reason to be solidly based
> on reality as Big Important books -- maybe more, because odds are good
> that more people will read them, or at least that they'll reach a
> different set of people.
This reminds me of part of Sir Philip Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_:
fiction can capture and convey more truth than a non-fictional account.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has
to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and
in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand
them." -- Ruskin
Lucy Kemnitzer
>Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Frivolous, entertaining books have as much reason to be solidly based
> > on reality as Big Important books -- maybe more, because odds are good
> > that more people will read them, or at least that they'll reach a
> > different set of people.
>
>This reminds me of part of Sir Philip Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_:
>fiction can capture and convey more truth than a non-fictional account.
>
I personally don't think this is categorically true: but fiction
does deal in a different sort of truths than non-fiction and I
would hate to rank them with respect to each other.
completely aside from this:
We are having record heat here: nineties in May, and for some
reason it gets to me most in the late afternoon, after it has
already begun to cool off, objectively.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Patricia C. Wrede <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > Frivolous, entertaining books have as much reason to be solidly based
> > on reality as Big Important books -- maybe more, because odds are good
> > that more people will read them, or at least that they'll reach a
> > different set of people.
>
> This reminds me of part of Sir Philip Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_:
> fiction can capture and convey more truth than a non-fictional account.
Aristotele said it first though, I seem to remember. :-)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Not that I'm opposed to stories meant to make people aware of
> things, or even stories meant to persuade people of things. Some
> of my favorite reading is like that. It's just that this isn't,
> and I don't feel I'm up to doing it anyway.
I didn't suggest you to write with a point to make in mind. I just mean
that if you're true to your subject, if you feel as if you were into
your story, if you can convey this feeling to your readers - a point
will get made _regardless_ of anything. It doesn't have to be a
simple-minded point. It may just be "I made the reader feel what it's
like". This is good fiction - and if it happens to be good politics,
well, it's because I don't think one can leave his feelings, opinions,
passions and concerns out the door when one writes.
It doesn't have to be _centered_ on the refugee's problem. It could even
be a comedy. But if the details are right, if they're true, then instead
of exploiting a situation you'll have given it justice. Who said that he
identified chiefly with the semicommas in his work? The details are not
trifles - they're the bones and sometimes the moral framework of
fiction. I think. :-)
Geoff Wedig
> completely aside from this:
I wish we had that here. 90s would be too much, but we've had non-stop rain
(well, only small stops) for the last 2 weeks, about, which is really awful,
because I was really, really sick most of the late half of April and early
half of May, so couldn't mow the lawn, and now with all this water, it's not
only too wet, but the lawn has been growing out of control. I don't need a
mower, I need a machete.
Geoff
Randy Money
>
> The Schindler book and mine are quite different.
Not if you approach your subject seriously enough and truly try to
convey the reality of "war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
>
> It would be more than a little arrogant and lacking in perspective
> for me to say that such a book, set in a fantasized worls far away
> in space and time, will tell anybody anything about war and
> refugees and peace and repatriation that they don't already know.
>
> But I'm going to write her: I'm going to be taking Brenda's
> advice, and pretending that I don't even think about the thing.
> Just "I'm a writer, and I need background information on daily
> life and the following issues in camps for displaced people: and
> so-and-so said you might be able to fill me in? By the way, I read
> your piece on Negroponte . . ."
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy, there's a difference between drawing on the experience of others
to deepen and enrich your fictional construct, and appropriating that
experience as though you alone were the expert. The latter is unethical
and usually produces lies about the experience being described. The
former adds to the knowledge of the world and may do some good by
getting your readers to think about the reality of such things. As
others have noted, that's one of the things fiction does.
Randy Money
Zeborah
> Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
> > We are having record heat here: nineties in May, and for some
> > reason it gets to me most in the late afternoon, after it has
> > already begun to cool off, objectively.
>
> I wish we had that here. 90s would be too much, but we've had non-stop rain
> (well, only small stops) for the last 2 weeks, about, which is really awful,
> because I was really, really sick most of the late half of April and early
> half of May, so couldn't mow the lawn, and now with all this water, it's not
> only too wet, but the lawn has been growing out of control. I don't need a
> mower, I need a machete.
Buy a goat. (My violin teacher when I was a girl -- a lady named Mary
something -- had a pet lamb.)
Be happy, o Northern Hemispherites! Winter has started here. I have to
pile on the layers whenever I go outside, and if it's after dark I also
have to contend with smog, as if the shock of the cold air weren't
enough to trigger a mild asthma attack. The brisk feel of it can be
quite pleasant... for a short time, and then it's "frozen fingers and
frozen feet". I've decided to subject my protag to a couple of weeks of
this, but she's going to be unnecessarily chirpy through it all, so I
must start looking for the good side of it.
Zeborah
--
Semper ad eventum festinet. -- Horace
"Always party hard at social events." <eg>
http://www.crosswinds.net/~zeborahnz
Lucy Kemnitzer
<rbm...@library.syr.edu> wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>
>> The Schindler book and mine are quite different.
>
>Not if you approach your subject seriously enough and truly try to
>convey the reality of "war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
NO! Precisely what I'm not trying to do is "convey the reality of
war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
I'm trying to tell a story in a made-up world. I want to
speculate about entirely fictional people, in entirely fictional
circumstances. I'm doing all this research that I'm doing for the
same reason that I did all the terraforming research. It's so it
won't be stupid, that's all.
Which Miles Vorkosigan book is it in that Miles goes into the
Cetagandan prisoner of war camp? Okay, how many people think that
Lois Bujold wrote that in order to "convey the reality of prisoner
of war camps?" How much reality of prisoner of war camps was
conveyed?
This is the relationship of the story I am writing to the reality
of refugee camps. But a third of the book takes place in two of
them. I'm not _basing_ the camps on real camps in our real world.
I'm not _extrapolating on real camps in the real world. But I've
noticed that speculation is richer and thicker and more full of
juicy details when there's a bunch of good research behind it.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Edward John Schoenfeld
> From: rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
> Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition
> Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2001 23:41:30 GMT
> Subject: Re: there must be a word for this feeling
And this level of "getting it not wrong" *is* sufficient justification for
your asking a responsible source what these places are really like. It
doesn't matter how 'merely entertaining' you think of your book as being --
you want to not foist disinformation about refugee camps upon your readers.
Trust me, someone who works with refugees probably will be happy to give you
real information to work with for just that reason, or point you to someone
knowledgeable who has more time on their hands at the moment.
Ed
Patricia C. Wrede
Kemnitzer) writes:
>I'm not _extrapolating on real camps in the real world.
You don't have to. And you don't have to "approach your subject seriously
enough and truly try to convey the reality" of anything in order to justify
doing research on real-life refugee camps. Or, indeed, to justify writing
about them at all. The *only* justification you need for either thing is "this
story will be better if I do this."
It seems to me that some folks are falling into the same pit you started out
with -- the idea that serious material (like concentration camps) *must* be
treated seriously, and *must* be the main focus of the story if it is to be
included at all. But if you happen to want to write a musical comedy titled
"Springtime for Hitler," there's no reason why you can't, and no reason
whatever why it shouldn't be as historically correct as you can make it. Or if
you happen to have one scene in which the heroine rides past a concentration
camp on the train, and the entire rest of the story is about other stuff, you
are still allowed to spend a lot of time making sure that that glimpse she gets
from the train is *right*.
What your "frivolous little story" does when it gets to other people -- in
terms of whether it provides them with unexpected enlightenment or whether it
is simply amusing -- depends mostly on them. It's not something you have a lot
of control over. Your job is to write it as well as you can...according to
*your* judgement. It is, after all, your story.
>But I've
>noticed that speculation is richer and thicker and more full of
>juicy details when there's a bunch of good research behind it.
Exactly. And that's all the reason and justification you need for doing
whatever research is necessary.
Patricia C. Wrede
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
[...]
>We are having record heat here: nineties in May, and for some
>reason it gets to me most in the late afternoon, after it has
>already begun to cool off, objectively.
Send it to Cleveland! We haven't even managed to hit 70 since early
May, and my idea of good weather starts at 85.
Brian M. Scott
Dorothy J Heydt
Brian M. Scott <sc...@math.csuohio.edu> wrote:
>On Fri, 01 Jun 2001 00:10:37 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>wrote:
>
>>reason it gets to me most in the late afternoon, after it has
>>already begun to cool off, objectively.
>
>Send it to Cleveland!
Perhaps it's on its way to you by now. How it works around here,
is that when it's hot in the Bay Area it's even hotter in the
Central Valley, and the hot air rises and draws in the cold,
foggy air from offshore and, as we say, the natural air-conditioning
turns on again. Now, if that hot air (in addition to going up)
just kept going east.....
>We haven't even managed to hit 70 since early
>May, and my idea of good weather starts at 85.
Funny thing, that's around where my idea of good weather *ends*.
These last several days I haven't been able to get out and dig in
the garden except around 7-8 a.m. when it was only around 80.
However, last night the breeze began moving and the temperature
dropped and it was like a breath of heaven.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Jo Walton
rit...@cruzio.com "Lucy Kemnitzer" writes:
> NO! Precisely what I'm not trying to do is "convey the reality of
> war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
>
> I'm trying to tell a story in a made-up world. I want to
> speculate about entirely fictional people, in entirely fictional
> circumstances. I'm doing all this research that I'm doing for the
> same reason that I did all the terraforming research. It's so it
> won't be stupid, that's all.
>
> Which Miles Vorkosigan book is it in that Miles goes into the
> Cetagandan prisoner of war camp? Okay, how many people think that
> Lois Bujold wrote that in order to "convey the reality of prisoner
> of war camps?" How much reality of prisoner of war camps was
> conveyed?
>
> This is the relationship of the story I am writing to the reality
> of refugee camps. But a third of the book takes place in two of
> them. I'm not _basing_ the camps on real camps in our real world.
> I'm not _extrapolating on real camps in the real world. But I've
> noticed that speculation is richer and thicker and more full of
> juicy details when there's a bunch of good research behind it.
Even so.
I think McHugh's "Protection" is a better way of conveying life in a
Gulag than _A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch_, but if McHugh had
set out to write anything other than a story with the details right
so it wouldn't be stupid it wouldn't be half such a good story, because
message has to be secondary.
Stop worrying about it. As a writer, you're allowed to steal anything
you want from this world, as long as you're true to your subcreation.
There's a bit of my head that's right there with the writer-protagonist
of Goldman's _The Colour of Light_ comforting himself with the thought
that "It's all material" as he hears that his girlfriend saying something
that proves she killed someone.
I'm not a ruthless person, I have empathy to the point of disadvantage,
but I am about this. I'll take my pain or your pain or all those people's
pain and I'll use it for a story. The only thing I won't do is make
someone's real pain worse by writing it, and some people do that. (Martin's
"Portraits of his Children". And actually I do, I just don't show people.)
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk
Locus Recommended First Novel: *THE KING'S PEACE* out now from Tor.
Sample Chapters, Map, Poems, & stuff at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Which Miles Vorkosigan book is it in that Miles goes into the
> Cetagandan prisoner of war camp? Okay, how many people think that
> Lois Bujold wrote that in order to "convey the reality of prisoner
> of war camps?" How much reality of prisoner of war camps was
> conveyed?
A lot, which is why that novella is so affecting.
If you don't believe that fictional people in fictional places can be as
significant and affecting as historical subjects, I think you're
ditching a lot of useful stuff. _And_ you're exposing yourself to this
feeling of unworthiness (what, me little fantasy writer bothering some
authentic pain? Shame on me! - been there, done that :-)) ) which I
think is totally out of place. As you note, after research speculation
is richer and thicker. When you write fiction you're builing a fake
reality - but it must _look_ like a real reality. Like cardboard
builiding facades in movies. The struts mustn't show, and people looking
at it must believe they're real builings - housing real people, people
they can feel for. They know they're not real, of course, but they have
to be able to believe in them.
Unless you are writing a deliberately surreal story, a Borgesian
fantasy, something deliberately detached, cheery, or superficial, a sort
of Gilber&Sullivan of fantasy. In that case, yes, I'd avise against
speaking about refugees _at all_. But it is mightily hard for me to
imagine you writing a chilly vapid thing. :-))
Lucy Kemnitzer
Wrede) wrote:
>In article <3b18257...@cnews.newsguy.com>, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy
>Kemnitzer) writes:
>
>>I'm not _extrapolating on real camps in the real world.
>
>You don't have to. And you don't have to "approach your subject seriously
>enough and truly try to convey the reality" of anything in order to justify
>doing research on real-life refugee camps. Or, indeed, to justify writing
>about them at all. The *only* justification you need for either thing is "this
>story will be better if I do this."
I need to say here that I have sent the email.
>
>It seems to me that some folks are falling into the same pit you started out
>with -- the idea that serious material (like concentration camps) *must* be
>treated seriously, and *must* be the main focus of the story if it is to be
>included at all. But if you happen to want to write a musical comedy titled
>"Springtime for Hitler," there's no reason why you can't, and no reason
>whatever why it shouldn't be as historically correct as you can make it. Or if
>you happen to have one scene in which the heroine rides past a concentration
>camp on the train, and the entire rest of the story is about other stuff, you
>are still allowed to spend a lot of time making sure that that glimpse she gets
>from the train is *right*.
Yes, this is it. Though there's also such a thing as a total
romp, off in, as Anna said, Gilbert and Sullivan country, and that
can be good too, though I would, myself, probably not be able to
write that or enjoy trying.
Anyway, I've already learned stuff that changes how the story
goes, and actually just right now I realized that the conversation
I had in the checkout line today (three stores to find
clothespins, and when I did they were ugly colored plastic! And
then I came home to discover that I did still have them, hiding in
plain sight -- this is why we are now reconciled to buying a new
tape measure every couple of months) relates quite strongly to the
last third of the book, oh yes, the more I think about it, the
more I think I have met the foil's wife-to-be in later life.
Isn't there a better word than foil for the person the protagonist
is operating with reference to (not a love interest and not a
villain)? I keep dropping broad hints that I want to be told
whether antagonist is strictly correct for this, but nobody
corrects me.
My credential is English, but that's not the kind of English I
teach -- I teach "You need to write 'I did it at school,' not "I
didet in the school.' And look -- see my teeth on my lip? That's
the clue that it's spelled V-I-D-E-O, not B-I-D-E-O."
Lucy Kemnitzer
Patricia C. Wrede
Kemnitzer) writes:
>>you happen to have one scene in which the heroine rides past a concentration
>>camp on the train, and the entire rest of the story is about other stuff,
>you
>>are still allowed to spend a lot of time making sure that that glimpse she
>gets
>>from the train is *right*.
>
>Yes, this is it. Though there's also such a thing as a total
>romp, off in, as Anna said, Gilbert and Sullivan country, and that
>can be good too, though I would, myself, probably not be able to
>write that or enjoy trying.
All of this super-serious commentary is making me want to do something silly
like that, about a serious topic. But it doesn't fit anything I'm working on
at present, so it's not likely to happen.
>Isn't there a better word than foil for the person the protagonist
>is operating with reference to (not a love interest and not a
>villain)? I keep dropping broad hints that I want to be told
>whether antagonist is strictly correct for this, but nobody
>corrects me.
Antagonist and foil are about it. I think there are some systems that have
made up some additional terms for different flavors of antagonist, but the ones
I've seen tended to be pretty obscure. And IMNSHO, it's no good having a term
for something if you have to re-explain the term every time you use it -- you
might as well just continue calling the guy "the person the protagonist is
operating with reference to" as "the pseudo-irritagonist -- that's the person
the protagonist is operating...."
>didet in the school.' And look -- see my teeth on my lip? That's
>the clue that it's spelled V-I-D-E-O, not B-I-D-E-O."
Oh, thanks! That's going to be useful. (I'm currently working, off and on,
with an ESL adult learner who is trying to learn to read and write. She has
trouble with sounding things out, and every little trick helps.)
Patricia c. Wrede
Karen Lofstrom
: And this level of "getting it not wrong" *is* sufficient justification for
: your asking a responsible source what these places are really like. It
: doesn't matter how 'merely entertaining' you think of your book as being --
: you want to not foist disinformation about refugee camps upon your readers.
Which is why, I think, a respected hula teacher was willing to spend time
reading the WIP, _Hapa_, and would tell me and my writing partner exactly
what was wrong with a mere "entertaining" romance novel. He understood
that we didn't want to get it wrong. He felt it was in the best interests
of the hula that we NOT get it wrong. The nun might well feel that way
about descriptions of refugee camps.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"I'm different in exactly the same way! Yes." -- K.
Dorothy J Heydt
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I'm not a ruthless person, I have empathy to the point of disadvantage,
>but I am about this. I'll take my pain or your pain or all those people's
>pain and I'll use it for a story.
Yup. Remember in _Gaudy Night_, where Peter suggests to Harriet
that she start writing stories about solid characters instead of
paper cutouts, and she says, "I'm afraid to, it might go too near
the bone." And he answers, "What difference does that make, so
long as it makes a good story?"
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
>of things.
The color of cornflowers.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
TLambs1138
to be called "The Child Specialist", and I believe it's trying to become a
musical. It's on the back burner now, and I have no idea how exactly it's going
to blossom out.
Stupid little "Dance of the Skeletons". Grr.
I will get back to you if and when anything ever come of this. Or possibly back
at you. I don't know yet....
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
"Fun will now commence!" - Seven of Nine
Zeborah
> My credential is English, but that's not the kind of English I
> teach -- I teach "You need to write 'I did it at school,' not "I
> didet in the school.' And look -- see my teeth on my lip? That's
> the clue that it's spelled V-I-D-E-O, not B-I-D-E-O."
Re "I didet" -- are they really interpreting "did it" as one word?
Because if so, that's seriously cool. About time English started
agglutinating. :-)
Lucy Kemnitzer
<mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>:
> gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders) wrote:
>
>> It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
>> of things.
>
>Ha, that stumped me for a long time. I knew the color term, but I
>kept telling myself "corn flowers *aren't* blue, not the corn *I*
>know, anyway". I just hadn't considered the possibility that
>"cornflower" was actually a different thing altogether, and only
>associated to corn (UK meaning, not US) by proximity. I was
>enlightened on a visit to the local botanic gardens, when I saw
>the label "cornflower" on this wonderfully blue flowerbed...
>(they're called "fiordalisi" in Italian, which I suppose comes
>from "fleur-de-lys"...)
I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing, beautiful, which
grows on the tallest iris plants I've ever seen -- tall enough for
an army to hide in.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Sylvia Li
>
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2001 01:34:23 -0400, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders)
> wrote:
>
> >It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
> >of things.
>
> The color of cornflowers.
>
> http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
...she posted mischievously, with a link pointing to a picture that shows
cornflowers in deep and pale pinks, white, various shades of purple, and
not a bloom that I would call cornflower blue!
The canonical cornflower is a clear medium blue with just a trace of
purple. Most of the ones you see self-seeded in the wild are this color,
which I believe to be the original. I would guess that either cornflower
plants with flowers in other colors reproduce less vigorously, or the
gene(s) that produce the different colors are recessive.
A likeable plant, in any case, with many merits, not least of which is its
ability to offer the eye brave little splashes of beauty in a drought,
while everything else is turning brown.
--
Sylvia Li
Sylvia Li
>
> On Sun, 03 Jun 2001 19:37:56 -0400,
> Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> scripsit:
> >On Sun, 3 Jun 2001 01:34:23 -0400, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders)
> >wrote:
> >>It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
> >>of things.
> >
> >The color of cornflowers.
> >http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
>
>
> But if you point at some random blue colour in the enviroment that
> *isn't* a cornflower, or if your interior decorator recommends
> cornflower blue drapes, what colour are they referencing?
>
> That's where it gets tricky, colour perception being what it is.
And of course it also depends on exactly what you mean by 'exactly'.
--
Sylvia Li
Dorothy J Heydt
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
>derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
Well, the *original* fleur-de-lys was a honking (I don't know how
great) FRENCH yellow thing that (liking to grow in shallow water)
showed some Louis or other where there was a shallow place he
could ford a river, thus winning a battle, saving his kingdom,
etc. Could be the Louisiana iris is the same variety. They
might've even imported it.
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>On Sun, 03 Jun 2001 20:11:44 GMT, Anna Mazzoldi
><mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders) wrote:
Original in what sense? The earliest known use of the term is in
Chrétien de Troyes's 'Erec' (ca.1170):
Plus ot que n'est la flors de lis
Cler et blanc le front et le vis.
(He's comparing a damsel's complexion to the fleur-de-lis.)
Brian M. Scott
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>> My credential is English, but that's not the kind of English I
>> teach -- I teach "You need to write 'I did it at school,' not "I
>> didet in the school.' And look -- see my teeth on my lip? That's
>> the clue that it's spelled V-I-D-E-O, not B-I-D-E-O."
>
>Re "I didet" -- are they really interpreting "did it" as one word?
>Because if so, that's seriously cool. About time English started
>agglutinating. :-)
>
They interpret many of those verb-and-pronoun pairs as one word,
and I just figured out why: it's because they are one word in
Spanish. "I did it" is "Hicelo."
Very cool, one more weapon.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
I wouldn't doubt that the ones on the Isle de France could
possibly be cream colored or white instead of the yellow ones
introduced to the slough here. But I can hardly believe that any
of them could be bright pale blue.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <3b1acda9...@cnews.newsguy.com>,
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>
>>I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
>>derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
>>Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing,...
>
>Well, the *original* fleur-de-lys was a honking (I don't know how
>great) FRENCH yellow thing that (liking to grow in shallow water)
>showed some Louis or other where there was a shallow place he
>could ford a river, thus winning a battle, saving his kingdom,
>etc. Could be the Louisiana iris is the same variety. They
>might've even imported it.
>
It is French, from the Isle de France. The "Louisiana" in
"Louisiana iris" is after Louis ( I don't know which one), not the
state of Louisiana.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>On Sun, 03 Jun 2001 19:37:56 -0400,
>Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> scripsit:
>>On Sun, 3 Jun 2001 01:34:23 -0400, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders)
>>wrote:
>>>It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
>>>of things.
>>
>>The color of cornflowers.
>>http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
>
>Sure.
>
>But if you point at some random blue colour in the enviroment that
>*isn't* a cornflower, or if your interior decorator recommends
>cornflower blue drapes, what colour are they referencing?
>
>That's where it gets tricky, colour perception being what it is.
That's why I don't have a decorator. I can match colors by memory, I
don't have to haul scraps around.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>"Marilee J. Layman" wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, 3 Jun 2001 01:34:23 -0400, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
>> >of things.
>>
>> The color of cornflowers.
>>
>> http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
>
>...she posted mischievously, with a link pointing to a picture that shows
>cornflowers in deep and pale pinks, white, various shades of purple, and
>not a bloom that I would call cornflower blue!
I was surprised, too, until I realized the ones that look purplish are
the blue and it's just a bad picture.
>The canonical cornflower is a clear medium blue with just a trace of
>purple. Most of the ones you see self-seeded in the wild are this color,
>which I believe to be the original. I would guess that either cornflower
>plants with flowers in other colors reproduce less vigorously, or the
>gene(s) that produce the different colors are recessive.
That site says the other colors have been bred.
djinn
wrote:
>On Fri, 01 Jun 2001 15:02:14 -0400, Randy Money
Lucy, I've worked in refugee camps and questions wouldn't matter a
bit to me. Go ahead and ask her. Showing interest in her work
shouldn't bother her.
If it does, I can give you contacts for former refugees. they don't
mind. After all, they made it.
LAFF
(Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
As indeed Louisiana (the territory, of which the state is just a
remnant) was named for Louis -- a later Louis, I'm fairly sure. I
think the territory was named for Louis XIV, or maybe XV. Just as a
guess, the flower might have been for Louis IX, also known as St.
Louis. He went on one of the Crusades, and that might have been
where the battle came into the story.
At http://www.harmonyiris.com/infophotos/thumbs/latn.html is a
collection of "Louisiana"-type irises. None of the ones shown is
yellow and none of them is probably the original fleur-de-lys, but
irises come in a wide variety of colors. In my yard right now I have
blue, purple, white-with-purple and white-with-yellow irises. The
blue ones are huge light blue bearded irises, a sky or powder blue.
--
Lois Fundis lfu...@weir.net
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/9377/handy-dandy.html
"I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In
fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to
realise that the job was, in fact, taken."
-- Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
> derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
> Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing, beautiful, which
> grows on the tallest iris plants I've ever seen -- tall enough for
> an army to hide in.
Wasn't the fleur-de-lys on the King of France's coat of arms? And wasn't
blue their colour? That's probably what happened... if all my premises
are right which at this point I sincerely don't know. :-)
Brenda W. Clough
Graydon Saunders wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Jun 2001 19:37:56 -0400,
> Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> scripsit:
> >On Sun, 3 Jun 2001 01:34:23 -0400, gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders)
> >wrote:
> >>It's like colour terms -- cornflower blue is what colour, exactly? sorts
> >>of things.
> >
> >The color of cornflowers.
> >http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/wildseed/23/23.7.html
>
> Sure.
>
> But if you point at some random blue colour in the enviroment that
> *isn't* a cornflower, or if your interior decorator recommends
> cornflower blue drapes, what colour are they referencing?
>
Tch! Always demand a swatch. A large one, and carry it into the daylight,
and lay it out in the room you are planning to use the color in, and meditate
upon it at different hours of the day and night. The -name- of the color is
meaningless, nothing but a label. What the color -looks like- is the only
important criteria.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Dorothy J Heydt
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>Re "I didet" -- are they really interpreting "did it" as one word?
>>Because if so, that's seriously cool. About time English started
>>agglutinating. :-)
>
>They interpret many of those verb-and-pronoun pairs as one word,
>and I just figured out why: it's because they are one word in
>Spanish. "I did it" is "Hicelo."
They do it in conversation? Interesting, because when I was
studying Spanish forty-some years ago we were taught that you
couldn't attach a pronoun to any verb form but the infinitive.
So we were allowed to say "quiero hacerlo" for "I want to do it"
but "lo hice" for "I did it." And when I pointed out (having
read it in a footnote) that there was a slightly archaic style in
which you could use the joined form at the beginning of a
sentence ("Alarmo'se," "He became alarmed," was the example), the
teacher told me not to mention that in front of the rest of the
class, it would just confuse them. And my teacher was a native
speaker of Mexican-American Spanish, by the way. So we've got a
dialect difference, a change in usage over the space of forty-
(count on fingers) four years, or both.
Randy Money
Eh, what the hell ...
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
> On Fri, 01 Jun 2001 15:02:14 -0400, Randy Money
> <rbm...@library.syr.edu> wrote:
>
> >Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
> >>
> >> The Schindler book and mine are quite different.
> >
> >Not if you approach your subject seriously enough and truly try to
> >convey the reality of "war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
>
> NO! Precisely what I'm not trying to do is "convey the reality of
> war and refugees and peace and repatriation."
What I meant, if not exactly what I said, was that by taking the detail
seriously you are being responsible. There is a big stretch of ground
between _Schinder's List_ (accurate as far as I know and deadly serious)
and "Hogan's Heros" (inaccurate and silly and possibly even insulting to
the people who survived such camps). For example, "Stalag 17" managed
some humor but did not glamorize the life of a prisoner or too lightly
depict that grinding experience. As long as you don't replicate,
perpetuate and reinforce lies about the experience, you are being
responsible.
Again, "..., there's a difference between drawing on the experience of
others to deepen and enrich your fictional construct, and appropriating
that experience as though you alone were the expert. The latter is
unethical and usually produces lies about the experience being
described. The former adds to the knowledge of the world and may do some
good by getting your readers to think about the reality of such things.
As others have noted, that's one of the things fiction does." If you
take care not to misinform about what happens -- in a general sense --
to people in such camps, if what you write is plausible, you've done
your job.
One way to botch a piece of writing is by disregarding all facts;
another is to approach your subject as some shrine that must be kept
pure and sacred. There's lots of room between those poles, too.
Randy Money
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> What I meant, if not exactly what I said, was that by taking the detail
> seriously you are being responsible. There is a big stretch of ground
> between _Schinder's List_ (accurate as far as I know and deadly serious)
> and "Hogan's Heros" (inaccurate and silly and possibly even insulting to
> the people who survived such camps). For example, "Stalag 17" managed
> some humor but did not glamorize the life of a prisoner or too lightly
> depict that grinding experience. As long as you don't replicate,
> perpetuate and reinforce lies about the experience, you are being
> responsible.
There is always the serious possibility of actually hurting, insulting
and offending people who have gone through terrible experiences.
Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" did exactely that. Several people I highly
value said with a lot of vehemence that it was an offensive piece of sh\
disinformation. I don't think they were right, but they'd been in the
camps, not me. Benigni was right to risk, IMHO, but I am personally
always very much aware of the risk. Right now I'm quietly agonizing
about this story I'm writing for the Amnesty anthology, and that could
very well be read by someone as a justification or exoneration of
torture. I'm in a very different position than Lucy, because in this
case, yes, it's something approaching militant writing, and written
quite seriously - I dearly hope it will be worthy anyway but I'm not
sure at all. But in a sense, I think both of us take some risks...
...but after all, when you write and dare to offer what you've written
for others to read, you _always_ take a risk. :-)
Anna Mazzoldi
[I should have changed the subject line earlier, but I hadn't
imagined I'd start a discussion...]
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
[cornflower = "fiordaliso"]
> I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
> derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
> Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing, beautiful, which
> grows on the tallest iris plants I've ever seen -- tall enough for
> an army to hide in.
There seems to be some genuine confusion in Italian (and
*possibly* in French) between lily and iris; and I really cannot
see the link between either of these flowers and cornflower
(unless it's what the other Anna mentioned, to do with the
*background* of the French coat of arms -- but it's a completely
wild guess, since I don't have a *proper* ethymological
dictionary for Italian.)
I've done what I was too lazy to do yesterday, and checked my
dictionary. It gives the origin of the word "fiordaliso"
(=cornflower) as "French: fleur de lis, 'lily flower'".
It also gives a second meaning for "fiordaliso", which I wasn't
aware of: (Heraldry) Lily, especially the golden ("or", I
suppose) version, emblem of the Kings of France.
So there are at least 2, if not 3, different flowers here.
Cornflower (It. "fiordaliso"), _Centaurea Cyanus_ (the Latin name
specifies quite definitely that we're talking about a blue
flower!). It doesn't appear to have anything whatsoever to do
with lilies or irises, except for its Italian name being derived
from one (or the other, see below!)
Lily (It. "giglio"), which is in fact *proverbially* white -- the
Chrétien's line posted by Brian makes perfect sense if you read
"flors de lis" as "lily flower". The "classic" lily, the one that
appears in saint's pictures to signify purity, is _Lilium
Candidum_ (Latin names can be good for guessing a flower's colour
;-)), but a good many other flowers are called "giglio" in
Italian (and they're not all white); the vast majority of them
are called _Lilium [something]_ in Latin. However, one is the
"giglio fiorentino", which is in fact an Iris (_Iris
Florentina_): this is interesting for its heraldic implications
-- see below.
"Giglio" is also used for the same heraldic symbol also called
"fiordaliso" -- often specified as "Giglio di Francia".
Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
sword [1]). But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
in English.
Apart from the colour, however, the heraldic "lily" does look a
lot more like an iris (as I understand this word) than a lily
(again, as I understand this word)... And note the bit I
mentioned above about "giglio fiorentino", which is really an
_Iris_ and not a _Lilium_ at all: it's probably called that way
because of the Florence coat of arms, which is, you guessed it, a
"lily".
[1] Confusingly enough, the Italian word "gladiolo" (another
"scholarly" form) is a different flower again, _Gladiolus
Segretum_ -- according to my dictionary, this is called "sword
lily" in English.
Well, now I'm confused. But I *can* tell a giglio from a
giaggiolo from a fiordaliso from a gladiolo if I see them! ;-)
Ciao,
Anna
--
Anna Mazzoldi writing from Dublin, Ireland
Current soundtrack: A set of compilation tapes my brother recorded
for me, collectively titled "Evviva il comunismo e la libertà".
Also, U2 _Achtung Baby_ and Mozart's _Requiem_.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Oh, dog, what have I started? I looked it up, and discovered that
I had everything right about the iris I was talking about but its
name -- sorry, sorry, sorry: its name isn't Louisiana: I've been
wrong about that for a long long time: its name is pseudacorus.
Which I knew once, I can't for the life of me figure out why I
decided it was Louisiana, when I once knew its right name. And I
can't find a white variation, so I don't know why a poem from 1170
would be saying a woman's face is like a yellow iris. Unless he's
saying that it's radiant and well formed, and not talking about
the color, or unless that whole "whiter is better" thing wasn't
well established in France in 1170.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
Or I'm confused. My Spanish is not good.
Or I'm hearing not good Spanish, which I also know to be the case.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Brian M. Scott
Dan) wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>> I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
>> derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
>> Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing, beautiful, which
>> grows on the tallest iris plants I've ever seen -- tall enough for
>> an army to hide in.
>
>Wasn't the fleur-de-lys on the King of France's coat of arms? And wasn't
>blue their colour? That's probably what happened... if all my premises
>are right which at this point I sincerely don't know. :-)
No, the royal fleurs-de-lis were gold on a blue field. The
association with French royalty is early. A single f-d-l figures on a
royal seal of Louis VII, and the semy-de-lis shield appears in 1223.
Rigordus (died ca.1209) in his 'Gesta Philippi Augusti' describes the
royal French banner as 'vexillum floribus liliorum distinctum'.
Brian
Heather Anne Nicoll
I was taught Spanish such that pronouns could attach.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
What's it take to see? What's it take to believe right from wrong?
- Boston, "Walk On"
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
> English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
> as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
> Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
> sword [1]). But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
> yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
> that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
> possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
> in English.
Unless "purple" means something other than I thought, it's not so. The
typical Iris is blue. I have both the blue and the purple in my garden
(not in flower right now, or I'd take a photo and scan it and post it),
but the blue (a light, powdery blue) is by far the most common here, and
it's also found in the wild.
Julian Flood
> But I can hardly believe that any
> of them could be bright pale blue.
Damn, my memory is causing me to miss a 'look at that smarty-pants, he knows
everything ' opportunity. I've got a pale blue iris outside the window,
delicious scent, a yard high(*). Something Wave? Foam? Ice? I'll think.
Sable is in the nursery, velvet purple. Butterscotch Kiss. They come
in all sizes and colours.
Sort of on topic: what's the word/phrase for 'I know this place perfectly
because I've been here before, even though it's fictional'? Deja preview? I
got that feeling as I gazed at Wild Cat Island last week.
*The plant, not the scent.
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
[...]
>Lily (It. "giglio"), which is in fact *proverbially* white -- the
>Chrétien's line posted by Brian makes perfect sense if you read
>"flors de lis" as "lily flower". The "classic" lily, the one that
>appears in saint's pictures to signify purity, is _Lilium
>Candidum_ (Latin names can be good for guessing a flower's colour
>;-)), but a good many other flowers are called "giglio" in
>Italian (and they're not all white); the vast majority of them
>are called _Lilium [something]_ in Latin. However, one is the
>"giglio fiorentino", which is in fact an Iris (_Iris
>Florentina_): this is interesting for its heraldic implications
>-- see below.
In English (resp. French) blazon that heraldic charge is called a
<fleur-de-lis florency> (resp. <fleur-de-lis florencée>).
>"Giglio" is also used for the same heraldic symbol also called
>"fiordaliso" -- often specified as "Giglio di Francia".
In 13th century blazon one finds <flur de glagel> (modern French
<fleur de glaieul>) as an alternative to <fleur de lis>.
Etymologically this <glaieul> is the same as Italian <giaggiolo>, from
Latin <gladiolus> (as you mention below). My French-English
dictionary glosses it 'gladiolus, corn-flag, iris', however!
>Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
>English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
>as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
>Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
>sword [1]).
Interesting. I have two smallish I-E/E-I dictionaries, neither of
which has an Italian <iris>. Both have <iride>; one glosses 'iris',
the other, 'rainbow; (anat., bot.) iris'. The second also has <ireos>
'(bot.) iris, German iris'; presumably that last refers to the _Iris
Germanica_ that you mention below. Going in the other direction,
English <iris> is glossed 'iride' by the first and 'arcobaleno; (bot.)
giaggiolo; (anat.) iris' by the second.
> But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
>yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
>that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
>possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
>in English.
Yes: '[a]ny of numerous plants of the genus _Iris_, having narrow
sword-shaped leaves and showy, variously colored flowers' (Amer. Her.
Dict., 3rd ed.), 'any of a large genus (_Iris_ of the family
Iridaceae, the iris family) of perennial herbaceous plants with linear
usually basal leaves and large showy flowers' (Merriam-Webster
Online). But my mental default color for an iris is purple.
>Apart from the colour, however, the heraldic "lily" does look a
>lot more like an iris (as I understand this word) than a lily
>(again, as I understand this word)... And note the bit I
>mentioned above about "giglio fiorentino", which is really an
>_Iris_ and not a _Lilium_ at all: it's probably called that way
>because of the Florence coat of arms, which is, you guessed it, a
>"lily".
No one really knows the source of the heraldic fleur-de-lis. Everyone
agrees that it doesn't look much like a lily, but suggested sources
include the iris, the lotus, the flowers of the broom or gorse, a
trident, the point of an arrow, an axe, and even a dove! I doubt that
the information is recoverable: the symbol is found from ancient
Mesopotamia to medieval France and in many times and places in
between, often signifying either purity or fertility, and I rather
suspect that it's been borrowed many times as a pleasing and striking
visual motif.
>[1] Confusingly enough, the Italian word "gladiolo" (another
>"scholarly" form) is a different flower again, _Gladiolus
>Segretum_ -- according to my dictionary, this is called "sword
>lily" in English.
>Well, now I'm confused. But I *can* tell a giglio from a
>giaggiolo from a fiordaliso from a gladiolo if I see them! ;-)
I have to admit that the iris is one of the few flowers that I can
reliably identify by eye. (Roses by nose.)
Brian
Lucy Kemnitzer
<mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>[I should have changed the subject line earlier, but I hadn't
>imagined I'd start a discussion...]
>
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>
>[cornflower = "fiordaliso"]
>
>> I sincerely hope that the Italian name for cornflower is not
>> derived from fleur-de-lys! Since the original fleur-de-lys is the
>> Louisiana iris, a great honking yellow thing, beautiful, which
>> grows on the tallest iris plants I've ever seen -- tall enough for
>> an army to hide in.
>
>There seems to be some genuine confusion in Italian (and
>*possibly* in French) between lily and iris; and I really cannot
>see the link between either of these flowers and cornflower
>(unless it's what the other Anna mentioned, to do with the
>*background* of the French coat of arms -- but it's a completely
>wild guess, since I don't have a *proper* ethymological
>dictionary for Italian.)
The lily family and the iris family are pretty close: they get
classified as liliales, in the classification level below a
subclass and above a family. Section? Anyway, a lot of folk names
for flowers are lily if the flower is a monocot at all, and I
wouldn't be surprised if there were some that aren't even monocots
that get called lilies. Just like there are lots of "rock rose"
and so on that aren't roses or even in the rose family. Other
folk name parts that aren't specific but look like they might be
are "cress" and "grass" and "apple." There are more.
But it's depressing when the folk name doesn't even refer to some
sensible feature. The cornflower isn't shaped like an iris, it
isn't colored like an iris, it doesn't grow like an iris.
I bet there's some history involved. Like if somebody took the
cornflower for their badge, and started saying "You know how those
frogs wear their fleur de lys? Well, this flower's _our_ fleur de
lys."
>
>I've done what I was too lazy to do yesterday, and checked my
>dictionary. It gives the origin of the word "fiordaliso"
>(=cornflower) as "French: fleur de lis, 'lily flower'".
>
>It also gives a second meaning for "fiordaliso", which I wasn't
>aware of: (Heraldry) Lily, especially the golden ("or", I
>suppose) version, emblem of the Kings of France.
>
>So there are at least 2, if not 3, different flowers here.
>
>Cornflower (It. "fiordaliso"), _Centaurea Cyanus_ (the Latin name
>specifies quite definitely that we're talking about a blue
>flower!). It doesn't appear to have anything whatsoever to do
>with lilies or irises, except for its Italian name being derived
>from one (or the other, see below!)
Yes, it's typically bright sky blue, but it comes in blue-purple,
purple, pink, and lately, dark chocolate brown-purple.
>
>Lily (It. "giglio"), which is in fact *proverbially* white -- the
>Chrétien's line posted by Brian makes perfect sense if you read
>"flors de lis" as "lily flower". The "classic" lily, the one that
>appears in saint's pictures to signify purity, is _Lilium
>Candidum_ (Latin names can be good for guessing a flower's colour
>;-)), but a good many other flowers are called "giglio" in
>Italian (and they're not all white); the vast majority of them
>are called _Lilium [something]_ in Latin. However, one is the
>"giglio fiorentino", which is in fact an Iris (_Iris
>Florentina_): this is interesting for its heraldic implications
>-- see below.
This use of lily to mean primarily the white lily, with extensions
to a myriad of other lilies (like out native tiger lily) and to
irises and beyond, is typical.
>
>"Giglio" is also used for the same heraldic symbol also called
>"fiordaliso" -- often specified as "Giglio di Francia".
>
>Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
>English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
>as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
>Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
>sword [1]). But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
>yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
>that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
>possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
>in English.
Iris is a pretty cosmopolitan and diverse genus. You have your
Siberian iris, and your Japanese iris, and your Dutch and your
German and your Missouri and (accurate) Louisiana and your Pacific
Coast irises and the pseudacorus, which is what I was calling
Louisiana, and lots of others. And then they naturally hybridize
like crazy, so that nomenclature is difficult even before you get
to human activity.
>
>Apart from the colour, however, the heraldic "lily" does look a
>lot more like an iris (as I understand this word) than a lily
>(again, as I understand this word)... And note the bit I
>mentioned above about "giglio fiorentino", which is really an
>_Iris_ and not a _Lilium_ at all: it's probably called that way
>because of the Florence coat of arms, which is, you guessed it, a
>"lily".
>
>[1] Confusingly enough, the Italian word "gladiolo" (another
>"scholarly" form) is a different flower again, _Gladiolus
>Segretum_ -- according to my dictionary, this is called "sword
>lily" in English.
I have seen that, but I've never heard them called anything but
gladiolus. But that's all natural, given the others: it's in the
iris family, and it looks very much like its relatives.
>
>Well, now I'm confused. But I *can* tell a giglio from a
>giaggiolo from a fiordaliso from a gladiolo if I see them! ;-)
>
Think of it this way: folk names for flowers are more often
lumpers than splitters, though sometimes they split in funny ways.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Beth Bernobich
>
> Tch! Always demand a swatch. A large one, and carry it into the daylight,
> and lay it out in the room you are planning to use the color in, and meditate
> upon it at different hours of the day and night. The -name- of the color is
> meaningless, nothing but a label. What the color -looks like- is the only
> important criteria.
Exactly. I know I look at color designations in clothing catalogs and
think, "Luggage? What the #!@& color is *luggage*?"
Beth
--
newsgroup sff.people.beth-bernobich
http://www.sff.net/people/beth-bernobich
Brenda W. Clough
Beth Bernobich wrote:
> "Brenda W. Clough" wrote:
> >
> > Tch! Always demand a swatch. A large one, and carry it into the daylight,
> > and lay it out in the room you are planning to use the color in, and meditate
> > upon it at different hours of the day and night. The -name- of the color is
> > meaningless, nothing but a label. What the color -looks like- is the only
> > important criteria.
>
> Exactly. I know I look at color designations in clothing catalogs and
> think, "Luggage? What the #!@& color is *luggage*?"
>
Brown.
When we were redoing our kitchen I ran a host of hues past my husband, whose color
sense is of the simplest. Thus I asked him about brown versus blue, etc. Suddenly
he ran across a tile that was terra cotta. What was wrong with terra cotta, and
why had I not suggested it, he demanded. I said, "I didn't ask you about eggplant
or seafoam, either!"
Beth Bernobich
>
> Beth Bernobich wrote:
>
> > Exactly. I know I look at color designations in clothing catalogs and
> > think, "Luggage? What the #!@& color is *luggage*?"
>
> Brown.
Sorry, I was being difficult, actually. I know it's brown from looking
at the color swatch. But my point is that real luggage comes in
different colors. Mine is black.
> When we were redoing our kitchen I ran a host of hues past my husband, whose color
> sense is of the simplest. Thus I asked him about brown versus blue, etc. Suddenly
> he ran across a tile that was terra cotta. What was wrong with terra cotta, and
> why had I not suggested it, he demanded. I said, "I didn't ask you about eggplant
> or seafoam, either!"
<g> My husband has the same reaction, right down to the terra cotta. And
yet, his color sense is good, from his work in photography.
LAFF
(Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
Actually, I was apparently wrong too. After I posted that, I kept
looking at the iris pages and found an explanation there that
Louisiana irises are native to the Mississippi delta area.
(Maybe your version and/or my version is true in an alternate
history?)
LAFF
(Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
> > English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
> > as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
> > Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
> > sword [1]). But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
> > yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
> > that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
> > possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
> > in English.
>
> Unless "purple" means something other than I thought, it's not so. The
> typical Iris is blue. I have both the blue and the purple in my garden
> (not in flower right now, or I'd take a photo and scan it and post it),
> but the blue (a light, powdery blue) is by far the most common here, and
> it's also found in the wild.
There's a species of iris that grows -- supposedly as a wildflower
but I've never seen it in the wild, only in gardens -- in this
region called the "blue flag". It is a sort of medium blue, perhaps
slightly purplish. A picture of one is at
http://www.wellesley.edu/Activities/homepage/web/Species/pirisblueflag.html
We had some in our backyard when I was little and I think that's
where my love of irises began.
Brenda W. Clough
Beth Bernobich wrote:
>
> > When we were redoing our kitchen I ran a host of hues past my husband, whose color
> > sense is of the simplest. Thus I asked him about brown versus blue, etc. Suddenly
> > he ran across a tile that was terra cotta. What was wrong with terra cotta, and
> > why had I not suggested it, he demanded. I said, "I didn't ask you about eggplant
> > or seafoam, either!"
>
> <g> My husband has the same reaction, right down to the terra cotta. And
> yet, his color sense is good, from his work in photography.
>
My husband is possibly a little color blind. All color, design, fabric and aesthetic
decisions are made by me. Left to his own devices he would live in a cardboard box.
Brian M. Scott
Dan) wrote:
>Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Then there's the question of "iris". According to my
>> English-Italian dictionary, the English word "Iris" is the same
>> as the Italian "Iris" ("scholarly" form, i.e. straight from
>> Latin) or "giaggiolo" ("popular" name, from "gladioulus", small
>> sword [1]). But in Italian this is a *purple* flower (whith a
>> yellow center): the Latin name is _Iris Germanica_. I suspect
>> that the English "iris" covers a much larger variety of flowers,
>> possibly all of those flowers that are called _Iris [something]_
>> in English.
>
>Unless "purple" means something other than I thought, it's not so. The
>typical Iris is blue. I have both the blue and the purple in my garden
>(not in flower right now, or I'd take a photo and scan it and post it),
>but the blue (a light, powdery blue) is by far the most common here, and
>it's also found in the wild.
When it comes to the iris, I tend to use 'purple' for a pretty broad
range. I'd probably call both of these purple:
http://www.blitzworld.com/garden/imagesiris/irsbreadedchantillywebSVG045F.JPG
http://www.geobop.com/World/NA/US/TN/Flower.htm
Also the ones in the watercolor at:
http://www.carolthompson.com/florals/irises/FF3-ensign/
Brian
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> There's a species of iris that grows -- supposedly as a wildflower
> but I've never seen it in the wild, only in gardens -- in this
> region called the "blue flag". It is a sort of medium blue, perhaps
> slightly purplish. A picture of one is at
> http://www.wellesley.edu/Activities/homepage/web/Species/pirisblueflag.html
> We had some in our backyard when I was little and I think that's
> where my love of irises began.
Yes, mire are similar, but lighter and thicker. I love them too.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> When it comes to the iris, I tend to use 'purple' for a pretty broad
> range. I'd probably call both of these purple:
>
> http://www.blitzworld.com/garden/imagesiris/irsbreadedchantillywebSVG045F.JPG
> http://www.geobop.com/World/NA/US/TN/Flower.htm
Yes, but both these have a recognizably violet tinge for me. I actually
have a variety like the second (only darker). But my blue irises are a
lot bluer than these. They're by far the most common variety here
(that's why I'm so fond of the purple ones). This doesn't mean much: it
could be that it's a hardier variety, or just more popular in this area.
Geoff Wedig
> On 02 Jun 2001 01:42:32 GMT, pwred...@aol.com (Patricia C.
> Wrede) wrote:
> Isn't there a better word than foil for the person the protagonist
> is operating with reference to (not a love interest and not a
> villain)? I keep dropping broad hints that I want to be told
> whether antagonist is strictly correct for this, but nobody
> corrects me.
Only other possibility I can think of offhand is contagonist, which is a
person the protagonist operates against in a non-confrontational
relationship. A mentor is one example.
But I don't think that's what you want. Antagonist is as good as it gets, I
think.
Geoff
Anna Mazzoldi
ada...@nit.it (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> Unless "purple" means something other than I thought, it's not so. The
> typical Iris is blue. I have both the blue and the purple in my garden
> (not in flower right now, or I'd take a photo and scan it and post it),
> but the blue (a light, powdery blue) is by far the most common here, and
> it's also found in the wild.
Well, the whole thing *did* start from the difficulty in
assessing what a specific colour-word means to the person who
uses it... ;-)
In fact I'm familiar with both blue and purple irises: I tend to
think of the purple first (maybe I've seen more of them than the
blue ones?) -- but the main point, here, was that they aren't
yellow!
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In fact I'm familiar with both blue and purple irises: I tend to
> think of the purple first (maybe I've seen more of them than the
> blue ones?) -- but the main point, here, was that they aren't
> yellow!
Well, they _have_ a bit of yellow at the centre...
(ducking and running)
--
Beth Bernobich
>
> Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In fact I'm familiar with both blue and purple irises: I tend to
> > think of the purple first (maybe I've seen more of them than the
> > blue ones?) -- but the main point, here, was that they aren't
> > yellow!
>
> Well, they _have_ a bit of yellow at the centre...
Not to be difficult, but I have some creamy yellow irises growing in my
backyard. I checked with the previous owner, who worked in a nursery,
and she confirmed they are irises.
Dorothy J Heydt
Beth Bernobich <beth-be...@snet.net> wrote:
>
>Not to be difficult, but I have some creamy yellow irises growing in my
>backyard. I checked with the previous owner, who worked in a nursery,
>and she confirmed they are irises.
Oh, irises come in zillions of color combinations these days,
including all the blues, yellows, oranges, and green, and shading
practically into black and red. But they've been bred to look
like that.
Beth Bernobich
>
> Oh, irises come in zillions of color combinations these days,
> including all the blues, yellows, oranges, and green, and shading
> practically into black and red. But they've been bred to look
> like that.
Ah, so they are bred that way -- I was wondering. Until I bought this
house, I had only seen the blue or purple variety. (And I do like the
yellow ones -- they blend into a creamy white at the center.)
John F. Eldredge
Hash: SHA1
On Tue, 05 Jun 2001 21:34:59 -0400, Beth Bernobich
<beth-be...@snet.net> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> Oh, irises come in zillions of color combinations these days,
>> including all the blues, yellows, oranges, and green, and shading
>> practically into black and red. But they've been bred to look
>> like that.
>
>Ah, so they are bred that way -- I was wondering. Until I bought
>this house, I had only seen the blue or purple variety. (And I do
>like the yellow ones -- they blend into a creamy white at the
>center.)
I have several colors of irises growing in my yard. Unfortunately,
one variety, planted by a former owner, is a yellow-and-wine-red
combination that almost exactly matches the colors of a week-old
bruise. Either color would be OK by itself, but combined they have
unfortunate connotations.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>
iQA/AwUBOx2Y3DMYPge5L34aEQIx7wCgv77iYhK9qTB+QcHy1P5xd4qDjB0An3lW
HojDLPBiYudXdjee6vDhS9y7
=udOi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@earthlink.net, eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://home.earthlink.net/~eldredge/
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace."
Woodrow Wilson
Lucy Kemnitzer
<beth-be...@snet.net> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> Oh, irises come in zillions of color combinations these days,
>> including all the blues, yellows, oranges, and green, and shading
>> practically into black and red. But they've been bred to look
>> like that.
>
>Ah, so they are bred that way -- I was wondering. Until I bought this
>house, I had only seen the blue or purple variety. (And I do like the
>yellow ones -- they blend into a creamy white at the center.)
It depends on the species. Even domestic irises belong to several
species: they take up three pages in the Sunset garden book. Wild
irises native to California take up more than a page of tiny type
in the Jepson manual.
There's a reason why the species is called after the goddess of
the rainbow, after all.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Anna Mazzoldi
ada...@nit.it (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In fact I'm familiar with both blue and purple irises: I tend to
> > think of the purple first (maybe I've seen more of them than the
> > blue ones?) -- but the main point, here, was that they aren't
> > yellow!
>
> Well, they _have_ a bit of yellow at the centre...
>
> (ducking and running)
I used to be a very fast and accurate shot with a sling ;-)
(=catapult, not the rotating thing)
Dorothy J Heydt
Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>:
> ada...@nit.it (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
>> Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > In fact I'm familiar with both blue and purple irises: I tend to
>> > think of the purple first (maybe I've seen more of them than the
>> > blue ones?) -- but the main point, here, was that they aren't
>> > yellow!
>>
>> Well, they _have_ a bit of yellow at the centre...
>>
>> (ducking and running)
>
>I used to be a very fast and accurate shot with a sling ;-)
>
>(=catapult, not the rotating thing)
For leftpondians, slingshot. (We have a few catapults too,
they're generally used for heaving dead pianos about for the
amusement of photographers.)
Anna Mazzoldi
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> In article <3f9shtg8qlno267q9...@4ax.com>,
> Anna Mazzoldi <mazz...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >:
> >I used to be a very fast and accurate shot with a sling ;-)
> >
> >(=catapult, not the rotating thing)
>
> For leftpondians, slingshot. (We have a few catapults too,
> they're generally used for heaving dead pianos about for the
> amusement of photographers.)
Argh. Yes, that's what a "catapulta" is in Italian too, and
that's what I immediately think of when I hear "catapult".
Learning the difference between left- and rightpondian English is
great fun.
Ciao,
Anna
--
Anna Mazzoldi writing from Dublin, Ireland
http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/ (Translation links and more)