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May. 20th, 2009 02:48 pmMy Wednesday students had our last class by the lake today. As one of them said, from next week the scenery becomes exotic: red brick wall. We're moving to a stadium, I'm told, and I was given a map.
In the meantime, I snuck in a lesson about fonts. Our word of the day was 'font' and gave me an excuse to give a little history of early printing presses, and each class member analysed 15 fonts. They worked out good and bad and indifferent aspects from the point of view of reading their own work. Unsurprisingly, they liked Times New Roman because it felt familiar, and Palatino Linotype similarly. The one they chose for their work (since we're doing a compilation, specifically so we can tackle some publishing skills) is Book Antiqua.
I only have the Wednesday class right now and my hot water crisis of 2 weeks ago will take a fortnight's income from it (or 1 week's teaching income plus all my I-can-fix-my-washing-machine savings). I give you this useful piece of information because someone sent me a Washington Post article on how expensive it is to be poor.
Sometimes I feel poor. Sometimes I don't. I'm not convinced it's all a matter of money and time. It often is. I spend more on groceries than I would if I had more options open to me, but that's the ill-health and the unwillingness to be a nuisance to friends as much as the actual lack of money. Dignity and choices are also important, perhaps.
I need to think about the poverty thing some more. It keeps being derailed by the antisemitism thing and the misogynist thing and the chronic ill-health thing.
Big issues that hurt people were a lot easier when I did policy stuff. I had the luxury of making a difference. Now I'm thinking them through for myself and for my fiction. It's much harder because it's much more personal.
In the meantime, I snuck in a lesson about fonts. Our word of the day was 'font' and gave me an excuse to give a little history of early printing presses, and each class member analysed 15 fonts. They worked out good and bad and indifferent aspects from the point of view of reading their own work. Unsurprisingly, they liked Times New Roman because it felt familiar, and Palatino Linotype similarly. The one they chose for their work (since we're doing a compilation, specifically so we can tackle some publishing skills) is Book Antiqua.
I only have the Wednesday class right now and my hot water crisis of 2 weeks ago will take a fortnight's income from it (or 1 week's teaching income plus all my I-can-fix-my-washing-machine savings). I give you this useful piece of information because someone sent me a Washington Post article on how expensive it is to be poor.
Sometimes I feel poor. Sometimes I don't. I'm not convinced it's all a matter of money and time. It often is. I spend more on groceries than I would if I had more options open to me, but that's the ill-health and the unwillingness to be a nuisance to friends as much as the actual lack of money. Dignity and choices are also important, perhaps.
I need to think about the poverty thing some more. It keeps being derailed by the antisemitism thing and the misogynist thing and the chronic ill-health thing.
Big issues that hurt people were a lot easier when I did policy stuff. I had the luxury of making a difference. Now I'm thinking them through for myself and for my fiction. It's much harder because it's much more personal.