I’ve been recently reminded of just how much I love Battlestar Galactica and why it’s my favorite show of all time. Besides being stunningly produced and written, the way it handles theme of religion, redemption, and God’s love surpass most secular sources I’ve seen. No, more than that — I can easily say that I’ve been more moved by Battlestar’s presentation of God than most religious sources I’ve been exposed to. Then again, maybe it just has the pretty to back it up.

Away, away, from men and towns, 

from To Jane: The Invitation by Shelley.

This is something I think I’m only learning how to do while balancing out an intensive academic schedule. This is my basic formula:

1. Keep busy, but make sure there is free time for fun.

2. Break routines. Go downtown on weekday afternoons, eat dinner at funny hours.

3. Get outside. Walk in the woods, escape the campus cage.

4. Dance. Unabashedly and unskillfully.

I’ve eliminated almost all of my procrastinating habits (do I get a gold star?) which means I have a LOT more time on my hands. I’ve been spending most of it reading or shopping in Used Book Stores downtown for more books to read. A vicious cycle. Last night I choose not to read but to finally watch An Education. I loved it and highly recommend it to anyone willing to watch a movie without space battles or epic gun shootouts.

A small glimpse of where I like to walk.

Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What’s good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It’s happy for deep people.

I have gotten into the habit of taking a walk in the woods every Sunday. It’s something that brings me immense pleasure, though I wouldn’t say it makes me happy. It gives me the sadness Sally mentions Blink, a sense of sadness and the passage of time – but in a timeless space. I love the woods; they’re so old and dying and beautiful in autumn. I feel like I can be anywhere and in anytime when I walk under the leaves floating down like faded pictures of fires long past. It has become my weekly confessional, my time alone where I can think about Life and my Thoughts without the constraint of college walls. It may not bring me happiness, but in a life that I find too often overcrowded with nonsense, it brings me Peace.

Yes, I have caught the Robin Hood bug. I’m halfway through Season One and I am in love. I haven’t been so into a show since I started Merlin (hmmm, something similar between them perhaps…?) I’ve found the dark to my Prince Arthur’s light in Sir Guy, whose dark and brooding manner competes even with that of Snape. Television bliss.

Instead, I am making due with the The Fountain soundtrack (Death is the Road to Awe) and a mess of German prepositions to memorize and master.

Ob wir die Wahl haben
Unter welchem Stern wir gehen
Oder ob die Sterne über uns ziehen

Aber was ich, was ich weiß
Alles was du siehst
gehört dir…

About two weeks ago I started the fall of my junior year in college – how on Earth did that happen? I’m trying to get a number of requirements for my majors out of the way this semester, as well as vaguely preparing for my terms at Oxford & maybe that possible future postgraduate program, so I have ended up with this schedule:

Studies in Medieval Literature: Old English Poetry & Prose

The literature of Anglo-Saxon England (ca. 450-1066 AD) comprises the earliest and fullest record of any European vernacular language. Its poetry thoughtfully imagines the lives of men and women (and other creatures) in an earlier era, who have now vanished from the earth, “as if they had never lived.” We will read passages from heroic poems like Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon; retellings of the Books of Genesis, Judith and the Gospels; and several of the Old English elegies, riddles, charms, and proverbs. In prose we will read selections from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede, King Alfred, and others. Prerequisite: ENG 210 Old English.

Aspects of Medieval European History: Magic in the Middle Ages

The course uses magic as a case study for exploring cultural transmission in the middle Ages. We begin by examining Germanic and Greco-Roman occult traditions, and the way in which the medieval synthesis of these cultures effect understandings of the occult. The course follows the influence of the Arabic and Hebrew influences on western occultism of the High Middle Ages, and flowering of the renaissance magical tradition. The course challenges and reshapes some of our basic understandings about Medieval Society. It problematizes modern division between science, magic and religion to illustrate how occult beliefs were part of wider religious experiences.

The Making of Christianity

The formation of Christian thought and the varieties of Christian experience from early through medieval Christian times. Christian images and writings from Palestine and Syria, the Egyptian desert, the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Topics include the Bible and its interpreters; God, Christ, and humanity; martyrs, monks, and missionaries. Liturgical, devotional, mystical, and theological texts; art, music, and film.

Intermediate German

A review of basic grammatical concepts and the study of new ones, with emphasis on vocabulary building. An exploration of contemporary German culture through literary and journalistic texts, with regular practice in written and oral expression.

I’m doing an independent research paper for Magic in the Middle Ages tentatively on some aspect of Anglo-Saxon magic, which I am really excited to get started on. I have a German quiz tomorrow, however, so I ought to go study for that…!

My good friend and hilarious pen pal Betsy wrote a wonderful blog entry on positive body image which I think everyone should read. On the same note, I saw a piece by JK Rowling which I would love to share with all of the girls (and boys, for that matter) that I know and love.

Being thin. Probably not a subject that you ever expected to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking…

It started in the car on the way to Leavesden film studios. I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world’s fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story. This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they’re sticking her on magazine covers instead. All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside.

But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn’t crop up shortly after I got out of the car. I was talking to one of the actors and, somehow or other, we got onto the subject of a girl he knows (not any of the Potter actresses – somebody from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed ‘fat’ by certain charming classmates. (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question? Surely not!)

‘But,’ said the actor, in honest perplexity, ‘she is really not fat.’

‘“Fat” is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her,’ I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach. Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizarre behaviour, like yelling ‘thicko!’ at Stephen Hawking.

His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the ‘fat’ insult is. I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…

I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’

‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’

What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!

So the issue of size and women was (ha, ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day. Once up in the air, I opened a newspaper and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.

Her latest single, ‘Stupid Girls’, is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness. ‘Stupid Girls’ satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models: those celebrities whose greatest achievement is un-chipped nail polish, whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day, whose only function in the world appears to be supporting the trade in overpriced handbags and rat-sized dogs.

Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it’s really not. It’s about what girls want to be, what they’re told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.

-JK Rowling