books

So Reading Rainbow is being canceled after 26 years. That makes it one of the longest running children's shows in history, bested only by Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street.

What's strange about the decision to cancel the show is that economics are only partly to blame. Another factor is that of shifting missions in educational TV. Essentially, Reading Rainbow taught kids the 'whys' of literacy, not just the bare bones of letters, words, commas and spelling.

I am going to call it the Taco effect. Which is to say, I am imbued with a hormonal capacity to sit on a couch on a rainy Saturday with my clean laundry still unpacked in it's bags, no groceries purchased and no thesis defense notes written, devouring The Time Traveler's Wife in four hours, and weeping about every 100 pages. That's a Saturday well spent. If you asked me I would say I *enjoyed* my rainy Saturday.

Once a month I'm an emotional masochist. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Sum it up in point form:

• Finished written portion of thesis dropped it off at the office in 2 boxes and one internal mail service envelope for my committee. At the copy centre the very enthusiastic employee gave me a celebratory lollipop.
• Am still finishing the website part of the thesis, should be done tomorrow, working slower then a tortoise on Qualudes, would it be disingenious of me to say I just don't give a flying fig anymore. I don't know what magic part of my self I am using to do the last part of the work, but when it runs out I am screwed.

Here is the song I will use to introduce 2009 musically to the blog.

Why? Mostly because I have been really into learning about mental health lately (okay maybe forever, natch). Currently I am reading Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present and it's a page-turner, seriously. "Crazy chicks" are fascinating and the subject of a great deal of cultural material, also often the objects of a great deal of affection. Why is that? I am digressing a bit here, but no matter how interesting the book is, it really strikes me that the author is more comfortable sticking to a very objective and cursory description of the gendered history of mental health. Rather then trying to analyze or suggesting any patterns or recurring themes in terms of social relations with, or community reception of the mentally ill. I keep hoping for a richer more textured narrative of the relationships and experiences that take place in (and out of) asylums and through outpatient care, but I keep getting stuck with stuff like. "After an apparent full recovery she was returned to her family and died at the age of 76". Okay... that's a bit vague. I guess that's why I read novels, things like Bedlam may be fiction, but they seem to provide more deep insight then the real histories are able to.