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cija interviews me. If you'd like to be interviewed in return, please comment.

1. Is your icon from an Alice in Wonderland illustration? If not, what is it? I should know, but I don't.

It's from Alice Through the Looking Glass, actually. This is the knitting sheep that the White Queen turns into. The White Queen is quite a lot like me and even more like my maternal grandmother.

2. Is Fire and Hemlock the best Diana Wynne Jones book? If not, why not?

Fire and Hemlock was my favorite in about seventh grade, and I distrust most aesthetic opinions formed during that period. The piece involving the Tolkien rip-off and the rippling back muscles is absolutely brilliant; the very end goes a bit too quickly, I think, but Diana Wynne Jones' books usually have some sort of difficulty with endings. Right this second I like Witch Week better, because it's funnier and because it's a near-perfect school story, but I'd have to read both again to be sure.

3. Are liberal arts-ists who know no math or science really irritating?

It takes about fourteen years of standard schooling to get to the sort of math I like, and I can't fault anyone for not sticking it out when I essentially ditched PE after eighth grade. Liberal arts-ists who can't write coherent sentences are slightly irritating, however, and liberal arts-ists who insist on using science metaphors they don't understand-- particularly those who refer to the Theory of Relativity when they mean the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle-- drive me to self-righteous flailing.

4. Who is an artist or illustrator you particularly like?

There's a really fascinating illumination from a medieval manuscript of apocalyptic prophecies that consists of a beast with a spiral body, with the apocalyptic ranting spiraling along with the beast. I'm also rather fond of the bronze sculptures by miscellaneous impressionists in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and always have to restrain myself from trying to touch.

5. What sort of place would you like to live in (geographically, nationally, architecturally, whichever)?

I'm in Seattle largely because I like the weather. I prefer climates that allow me to wear jeans year-round. I'm terrifically nostalgic about Princeton's architecture, though, despite or perhaps because of the fact that I've only ever spent about three hours there.

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I've been attempting to write poetry for some contest that involves the words peace and justice. This sort of effort is depressing and ultimately doomed.

( what, then, can be saved? )