All Blogs All the Time...

...can be hazardous to your sanity.  Since late last year, I have been spending the vast majority of my day in cyberspace, and many of those hours blogging and reading, responding to and thinking about blogs.  When I wasn't doing that, I was reading texts in philosophy and sociology that relate to my network theories of communications.

When we decided to postpone the Forum, I decided to take a break.  My brain simply couldn't absorb any more information...total overload!  That is why I haven't been blogging too much these days.

It is always like this for me -- I dive into a topic and disappear inside of it for months, then have to take some time off to let my brain digest.  After a few weeks, I am ready to go again, and always have new ideas, new insights, new enthusiasms.

So, what have I been doing lately?   

Well, besides client work (yes, I have to make a living!), I have been reading biographies of the queens of Europe of the 15th and 16th century.  I read about Jeanne la folie in the book Un Amour Fou (yes, I read it in French!  I am very proud of myself.)  She was the queen of Spain after Isabelle (of Isabelle and Ferdinand) and was imprisoned at 30 years old after her husband died (he was planning to imprison her anyways...and it is possible she poisoned him).  She stayed in prison for 46 years, kept there first by her father (Ferdinand) and then her son (Charles).  While a strange woman, she wasn't necessarily crazy, as most people like to think.

Now, I am reading the biography of Catherine de Medici (in English this time).  Fascinating woman.

There are a wide variety of biographies of powerful women that have been published in recent years that re-examine their reputations (generally horrible) in a new light.  Antonia Fraser specializes in these, and I have read her bio of Marie Antoinette and am looking forward to reading Mary Queen of Scots in the near future.  In history, powerful females were generally denigrated and slandered by those who resented and feared them.  These books offer an alternative look, based on historical evidence, but that, while presenting them as humans with all of their foibles, don't take the standard reputation as given.

I have a long plane trip coming up to Philly and will probably finish the book on de Medici then.  Maybe I'll pick up Mary Queen of Scots for the trip back!

Comments

[Pat Hejny]

Just got introduced to your blog this morning and have added it to my Favorites list. You are in the age range of my grandchildren and it is for all of you that I have tried to be active. I hope you will check out my Pat Political blog to see what is bothering me for all of you. I like your present reading list. Have you also read Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman which is very much an alternate history and explains very well why women have been so denigated in recent years. And Descent of Woman (Elaine Morgan?) gives some real meaning to an alternate theory of our evolution. On womansvoice.org, the Pat's Page button, is an expansion of this alternate theory, which you might find interesting. Don't get too drowned out in our Puritan work ethic which still exists mainly for the benefit of corporate higher-ups and tells us that work is our life. We need to come around to what has been the European approach, that work is to help us live...Good luck with your projects and keep blogging when you can....