July 2010
Angela Steidele, Geschichte einer Liebe: Adele Schopenhauer und Sibylle Mertens
Adele and Sibylle and Annette and Ottilie: Women in Love in 19th-Century Germany
Review of Angela Steidele, Geschichte einer Liebe: Adele Schopenhauer und Sibylle Mertens (Berlin: Insel, 2010), Hardcover, 336 pages.
By Joey Horsley
Frauenbild
Angela Steidele has written a beautiful, exhaustively researched account of the intimate friendship of Adele Schopenhauer and Sibylle Mertens Schaaffhausen, two brilliant but little-known Germans who lived in the first half of the 19th century. Through extensive use of largely unpublished letters and diary entries Steidele sensitively reconstructs…
June 2010
Lesbian potpourri: Law and Order SVU’s latest caper
I have to confess: I’m a “Law and Order” junkie. Despite the ever more contrived and sensationalizing plots, I find myself watching again and again. I especially liked the recently ended original version, with Epatha Merkerson as the drily understated Lieutenant Anita Van Buren. But I’ve even become a follower of the “Special Victims Unit” series that deals with sex offenders, in which “an elite squad,” the dazzling Detectives Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) – aided by their more rumpled colleagues Fin (Ice-T) and Munch (Richard…
May 2010
Of Words and Women: Dictionaries and Their Discontents
Each morning my Inbox greets me with a new word from A.Word.A.Day; it's my vocabulary-building bulletin from Anu Garg of Wordsmith.org. Through these daily missives I have gained passing aquaintance with such interesting terms as “prandial” or “ploce” – passing because they always pass out of my mind before I can apply them against my sister in our weekly contest for superiority at Scrabble or UpWords.
Yesterday’s word, “tabby,” was not so new to me, but the list of meanings gave me a jolt. Here’s the mail:
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--tabby Date: Friday, May 28, 2010 12:19…
Two from Argentina: “The Secret in their Eyes” and “The Headless Woman”
Last week we saw two films, both from Argentina. One, “The Secret in Their Eyes,” (“El Secreto de sus Ojos,” director Juan Campanella) received the Oscar for the best foreign film of 2009. A sort of high-class combination of “Law and Order,” “Cold Case” and a long-thwarted romance, it revisits via flashbacks the 1974 investigation of the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman. Criminal-court investigator Benjamin Espósito (Ricardo Darín) originally solves the case by means of a group photograph showing the suspect gazing at the victim with an obsessive look – the…
August 2009
Nordic Walking II: Marching in Boston, USA
August, 2009.
In an earlier blog I described my experiences in Germany learning about Nordic Walking, in which you walk briskly using special walking sticks similar to cross-country ski poles. Among the advantages: burning more calories, getting an upper-body workout, taking stress off creaky hips and knees. But while many walkers in Hannover have since added the activity to their fitness repertoire, I’ve not seen another Nordic Walker in all the months since I brought my poles home to Beantown. The sport just hasn’t caught on – at least not in my walking territory, the various…
