Another reason why I love my wife

Don't worry,there's nothing icky here.

Nalan and I have a division of labour in shopping as in other areas. I do the day-to-day shopping (bread, milk, eggs, cigarettes etc.) and she generally does the once-a-month big shop, since she's much more competent and confident with a car than I am. What I love is that in addition to buying vegetables, rice, olive oil etc., she remembers to buy raki, and usually returns with a few CDs. In this case it was two albums by Fuat Saka (a Black Sea folk musician) and one by Laço Tayfa, an amazing Turkish folk-jazz band with a bass player who sounds just like Trev, the bass player in my old band.

Marriage was probably a big mistake for both of us, but at least we have the consolation that we made that mistake with the right person.

Rhythmic gymnastics and embodied gender

Yesterday I made a lightning tour of the library looking for books on fashion history for Nalan. As I was about to leave, I noticed I was in the sports and games section, and quickly grabbed two books on go and a couple on self-defence, the latter because I may be teaching the self-defence course again next semester (this was a course I co-taught at the local high school last year). One of them was by Yang Jwing Ming and was largely based on White Crane and Long Fist; the other, Martha McCaughy's Real Knockouts: the physical feminism of women's self-defence is a piece of feminist ethnography which I thought might be useful in giving me a better understanding of what self defence might mean to a bunch of teenage girls (it's a mixed class, but last year we had twelve girls and only two boys, and I expect the ratio to be the same next time).
You may well ask what this has to do with rhythmic gymnastics. ( Read more... )