First off:

dragonknitter, it tells the size of the models and what size they're wearing. The Asian model is a size four, the other model is a size 2. As you might expect. (They're both 5'9", an inch or two taller than I am. That takes a big bone-structure difference (let alone the muscle/fat differences) to be a bit taller than me and that much smaller).

I dunno. I'm so used to having to "guess" how things will look on me that I don't really even think about it any more.

And Bess: the fabric is actually the upholstery of my big comfy chair. The one I usually sit in to knit.

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Last night I was talking on Twitter about the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf. This was an "Everyman's Library" like project - the editor of it actually said in his introduction that he planned the collection so that a person not able to go to college (for a Humanities degree; I think when this was developed in the early 1900s, that was what one mainly went to college for) could get the "best part" by reading the Five Foot Shelf.

I thought of it because I just started reading a book about one man's experience with reading the entire Five Foot Shelf. (I thought he did it in order, but now I see he picked and chose and read from different volumes).

And that idea kind of appeals to me. I investigated the availability - not that I'd probably buy it, I figured it would be expensive. Apparently it's not currently in print. I don't know if that's because this Canon has come under the attack that many Canons have (the argument being there is a surfeit of Dead European Guys and not enough other people...) or if it's just not used any more.

Apparently it CAN be had online, through Bartleby (But as I said: what's the fun of that? I really don't like reading off of a screen, all eyestrain issues aside.*)

In calmer retrospect, I probably actually already own - or at least, have read - many of the things on that list (Phedre and Tartuffe for example: High School "Advanced" French IV. Even wrote essays on them. In French. Something I probably couldn't do today.)

(Though there are also a lot of obscure things I haven't even heard of).

(*I think I dislike reading off of screens because of something I was subjected to in grade school. I don't even know what the thing was called, and I don't even know how widespread its use was. It was this projector - sort of a heavy, WWII-era looking thing, that was designed to show one line of text at a time, and then click on to the next line. We'd have to read essays and stories and things like that, off the screen, one agonizing line at a time, and then we were tested on it. It was a way they either (depending on who you asked) increased our reading speed or tested at what point we're having to read so fast that our comprehension tanked.

I remember going through story after story some days, as they kept ratcheting up the speed. It was like some kind of Industrial Era nightmare, like Charlie Chaplin in Reading Class.

I HATED it. Of the many ways educators have derived to get kids to hate reading, I think that it's one of the most diabolical. For naturally anxious types, like me, that "click" was like the fall of the guillotine: if you hadn't digested the previous line, you were sunk. There was no chance to go back. Also, because I'm a little compulsive in some ways, only seeing one line at a time bothered me. I mean, it bothered me in a Rain Man sort of way - a "this is wrong, this makes the world wrong" sort of way and I found it distinctly uncomfortable.

I still don't know why they did that to us. One thing I've learned over the years is that there's no "best" reading speed: some things you have to read more slowly than others to understand. And some people just naturally read more slowly. It doesn't mean they're stupid. (I'm kind of a slow reader, myself).

I wish I know what it was called. And I wish I knew that there were other people out there subjected to it as kids. Now, I'm sure it wasn't as horrific as I remember it - when something bothers me in the way that only being able to see one line of text at a time bothered me, it can really color the rest of my experience. But I remember the stuffy, overheated second floor classroom, sitting in the dark room with the blinds drawn, and struggling to keep up with that stupid machine. (Oh, and some of this happened RIGHT BEFORE the school nurse divined that I needed glasses to see the chalkboard properly. So having to squint to make out the words was an addition to the discomfort).

I'm not sure why I have this sudden burst of wanting to "read the hard stuff." (My taking on of reading more Shakespeare, for example). Is this my version of a midlife crisis? (If so, it's pretty par for the course for me: "OH NOES I AM GETTING OLD! I better start learning stuff!")

Or maybe it's a sort of snobbery. I realize I never had - never will have - the "looks" or the money or anything else that passes for superiority in this culture. But Knowledge - for however much it counts - is something attainable by me. And I admit it, it's a form of snobbery and elitism (I cringe, reading back over what I wrote before; nearly took out the comment about having written essays about Phedre IN FRENCH. Yes, that's boasting. I think I do it rarely enough though that I can be permitted to do it here.)

I think also it's a knee-jerk response to the "humanities vs. science" divide. As a person with a degree in the sciences - who works in the sciences - but still loves the humanities, this frustrates me. I admit, some of the comments on it I've read recently sound to me like an attempt to manufacture drama. ("I am in the humanities and I think the scientists disrespect how hard I work" bla bla bla...) But still, I admit the existence of the divide frustrates me: I have seen both science-people who who rolled their eyes and made snide comments about "not needing" to know certain things in the humanities, and humanities people who claim to know nothing about science - and seem proud of that claim.

(I do think - though I recognize this may be my own prejudice - but I think the Humanities types who say, "Oh, math is just not something I do!" get more of a pass than the science-types who claim not to care about literature do. Though I think in both cases: they are admitting stupidity about something, and seemingly being proud about it, and being stupid about something is never something to be proud of, in my mind)

I don't know. I do find that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know, and I admit a certain distress that I probably don't have as much time to rectify What I Don't Know than I would like to have.