May. 30th, 2025 09:44 am
May. 29th, 2025 06:58 pm
(no subject)
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flemmingsFinally got out to the super when the lying weather forecast said it would stop raining from 6 p.m. Of course it rained on the way back but at least I have soy milk now. On the way to, I passed Joti's house down the block and thought, 'Gee, that's a big squirrel', hiding amongst the deep greenery that our Irish weather of the last month has encouraged to run rampant. Only it wasn't a squirrel but either a large rabbit or a small hare-- not that I've ever seen many of either in this burg. I must assume it's someone's pet because, well, rabbits aren't native to downtown AFAIK. Skunks, raccoons, and coyotes, yes: but rabbits would fall prey to any of those, not to mention our urban hawks. It was either gone or hiding when I came back.
But equally, as I was watching the leporid amongst the greenery, the pure white cat who struts around from time to time was coming along the side street, stalked by a Korean family who I assume owns it. Cat consented to join them on the sidewalk across from me but dashed away the minute younger daughter made an attempt to pick it up. I don't see white cat very often, unlike Barton Cat who owns the corner a block down from me and lies, like Old Deuteronomy, in the exact middle of the sidewalk and Will Not Move. But clearly Snowy gets out from time to time. And shouldn't: the urban fauna mentioned above also attacks cats.
But equally, as I was watching the leporid amongst the greenery, the pure white cat who struts around from time to time was coming along the side street, stalked by a Korean family who I assume owns it. Cat consented to join them on the sidewalk across from me but dashed away the minute younger daughter made an attempt to pick it up. I don't see white cat very often, unlike Barton Cat who owns the corner a block down from me and lies, like Old Deuteronomy, in the exact middle of the sidewalk and Will Not Move. But clearly Snowy gets out from time to time. And shouldn't: the urban fauna mentioned above also attacks cats.
May. 29th, 2025 07:16 pm
It's the kind of additional info I might offer that bothers me, is this SALACIOUS GOSSIP....
oursinMy attention was recently drawn, as we say, to an early C20th composer, and I thought, that name sounds familiar, so I pottered off to look at my database of notes, and yes, they were hanging out in sex reform circles, interesting, no, especially as they seem generally to be described as 'reclusive' -
So anyway, I went to look up their entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and it is all about The Music (they were also apparently a top-level performer as well as prolific composer) and nothing about this other aspect.
And some while ago I perchanced to look up the ODNB entry for an early C20th lawyer whom I had come across in those same circles, and he was all about anti-censorship, and reforming the divorce laws (and we suspect also handling these sensitive matters for his mates in his professional capacity, no doubt) -
Very worthy.
He was also, I have come across indications in correspondence and biographies, rather a Not Safe In Taxis kinda guy, or at least, the handsy menace of the 1917 Club.
I don't actually know if there's a procedure for saying to editors of ODNB 'Hi, I have Further Info', let alone 'by the way, it's dishing the dirt'.
May. 29th, 2025 08:13 am
Letter From the Past Me
mallorys_cameraIn a Mood—chiefly because of the weather, which is all opaque white sky & rising ground mists. Since I know The Mood is entirely due to the weather, it seems to me I should be able to control it, force myself into a better mood, and the fact that I can't contributes to my general sense of failure: Like if I were a Real Human Girl, I would have planned better! I wouldn't be in this place I so clearly don't want to be.
Yesterday was filled with small frustrations. The propane tank ran out, & the wrench I've used before to change it didn't seem to want to fit over the joint—initiating a testy email exchange with Icky. At the gym, the spinning bikes were all occupied, so I didn't get to do a complete workout. Mabel has this enormous mat on her back near her tail, which she won't let me loosen with detangler & brush out even after I try calmly to explain to her that it will be a lot more traumatic if I have to take her to the vet to get it shaved off.
None of these things would bother me if it were sunny out.
###
RTT has been logging on to his father's FB account, which is weird because I see Ben's name popping up on the list of People Now Online, & I think, Wait! Aren't you dead? And haven't you been dead for—what? Six years now?
This inspired me to look back at some of the many, many Messenger chats I'd had with Ben, preserved for all eternity in Facebook amber.
We messaged each other often between 2009 and 2019. I'd forgotten all about that. And I suppose if I really wanted to go all archeological, I could exhume all our texts—I have the same phone account now that I had back then.
###
In 2010, I wrote him this letter:
Afterwards I turned on the radio. And you know what was playing? The end of Prekoviev’s Romeo and Juliet. That strange effect with the bassoon breaking through the violins that’s exactly like the sun rising after a night where you imagine everything’s changed but really nothing’s changed because there’s the plow horse, there’s the torturer’s dog and for them it’s just another day above ground.
I used to snoop around quite a bit when we were together. I never found out anything much. Once I ran across a letter you’d written to Shari. I will always love you, you’d written. Nothing’s changed for me. Words to that effect only much better written. It was a very romantic letter. That hurt. Not because you loved her – did you use the word "still?" I don’t remember. But because I didn’t know you loved her.
Another time I found an email you’d written to a friend describing an imaginary day we’d spent at the Skywalker Ranch. (Did you have a long conversation with George Lucas about cigars? I can’t remember now. Maybe I’m embellishing.) That one made me laugh. That one was more your garden variety confabulation, akin to your career as a keyboard player for Flipper.
It was Lucius who first used the word. “Ben,” he chuckled and shook his head. “That guy is just the King of Opaque.”
You remember different things than I remember. You remember me sinking into despair. Calling Cynsa. Calling Andrew. What should I do? She wants to kill herself. But that was after Reno, wasn’t it?
I remember driving to Reno. Your storyline unraveled bit by bit and each change in the script did things to my heart I didn’t know could be done. The cliché turns out to be the best description after all. Your heart literally sinks. The elevator stops and you get out. “Welcome to hell!” says the greeter.
I didn’t understand it. You were supposed to be my redemption. I was supposed to be yours.
And it kept happening.
It kept happening.
Kept happening.
Here’s the thing: you probably did me the biggest favor anyone’s ever done for me in my life to leave me. Because I was the man with my arm in the bear trap. The only way I was going to survive was by cutting off my arm. But I couldn’t. It was a part of me. I was miserable but I couldn’t cut off a part of me. So you did it for me. Surviving’s easier than being miserable. It’s hard to be that miserable.
I’ll never forget how you followed me into my labor with Robin. I don’t know what it was like for you really, I suppose, but for me it was like you were walking right there beside me listening to the wolves howling on the dark side of the moon.
But I could never trust you.
I couldn’t trust you because I knew you’d shaft me given the slightest opportunity. At first you’d shaft me just because you could, I suppose – the Reno thing with the stolen license, the novel contract you never bothered to pursue, that whole web of deception around the Time Warner remuneration.
Was it then that I became such a bitch? I suppose it was – our survival was at stake and that pronoun “our” included two dependent children. Once I became a bitch, there was a reason to lie to me, I suppose. I was such a soul-sucking bitch, wasn’t I? I probably deserved it.
Thing is, I still feel with the arm that’s been hacked off. I still hear your voice in my head. It stopped for a while. But it’s back now. Though I suppose you’ve found your next redemption. My guess is that you’ll marry The Girlfriend in another month or two, when the divorce comes through. What jolly trips the two of you will make in the Girlfriend-mobile – whoops! I mean the Spouse-mobile. And she’ll pay for you to get your teeth fixed too because otherwise how’s she gonna introduce you to all her family and friends?
You have some serious fence mending to do with Robin.
###
Whoa! I thought upon reading this letter. You wrote so good back then, girlfriend!
And that was really my only reaction.
I don't love Ben or his memory anymore, and the 17 years we spent together are actually an embarrassment. Like: What were you thinking? How damaged were you?
Which means, I suppose, I'm considerably less damaged now.
And that's a good thing.
Yesterday was filled with small frustrations. The propane tank ran out, & the wrench I've used before to change it didn't seem to want to fit over the joint—initiating a testy email exchange with Icky. At the gym, the spinning bikes were all occupied, so I didn't get to do a complete workout. Mabel has this enormous mat on her back near her tail, which she won't let me loosen with detangler & brush out even after I try calmly to explain to her that it will be a lot more traumatic if I have to take her to the vet to get it shaved off.
None of these things would bother me if it were sunny out.
###
RTT has been logging on to his father's FB account, which is weird because I see Ben's name popping up on the list of People Now Online, & I think, Wait! Aren't you dead? And haven't you been dead for—what? Six years now?
This inspired me to look back at some of the many, many Messenger chats I'd had with Ben, preserved for all eternity in Facebook amber.
We messaged each other often between 2009 and 2019. I'd forgotten all about that. And I suppose if I really wanted to go all archeological, I could exhume all our texts—I have the same phone account now that I had back then.
###
In 2010, I wrote him this letter:
Afterwards I turned on the radio. And you know what was playing? The end of Prekoviev’s Romeo and Juliet. That strange effect with the bassoon breaking through the violins that’s exactly like the sun rising after a night where you imagine everything’s changed but really nothing’s changed because there’s the plow horse, there’s the torturer’s dog and for them it’s just another day above ground.
I used to snoop around quite a bit when we were together. I never found out anything much. Once I ran across a letter you’d written to Shari. I will always love you, you’d written. Nothing’s changed for me. Words to that effect only much better written. It was a very romantic letter. That hurt. Not because you loved her – did you use the word "still?" I don’t remember. But because I didn’t know you loved her.
Another time I found an email you’d written to a friend describing an imaginary day we’d spent at the Skywalker Ranch. (Did you have a long conversation with George Lucas about cigars? I can’t remember now. Maybe I’m embellishing.) That one made me laugh. That one was more your garden variety confabulation, akin to your career as a keyboard player for Flipper.
It was Lucius who first used the word. “Ben,” he chuckled and shook his head. “That guy is just the King of Opaque.”
You remember different things than I remember. You remember me sinking into despair. Calling Cynsa. Calling Andrew. What should I do? She wants to kill herself. But that was after Reno, wasn’t it?
I remember driving to Reno. Your storyline unraveled bit by bit and each change in the script did things to my heart I didn’t know could be done. The cliché turns out to be the best description after all. Your heart literally sinks. The elevator stops and you get out. “Welcome to hell!” says the greeter.
I didn’t understand it. You were supposed to be my redemption. I was supposed to be yours.
And it kept happening.
It kept happening.
Kept happening.
Here’s the thing: you probably did me the biggest favor anyone’s ever done for me in my life to leave me. Because I was the man with my arm in the bear trap. The only way I was going to survive was by cutting off my arm. But I couldn’t. It was a part of me. I was miserable but I couldn’t cut off a part of me. So you did it for me. Surviving’s easier than being miserable. It’s hard to be that miserable.
I’ll never forget how you followed me into my labor with Robin. I don’t know what it was like for you really, I suppose, but for me it was like you were walking right there beside me listening to the wolves howling on the dark side of the moon.
But I could never trust you.
I couldn’t trust you because I knew you’d shaft me given the slightest opportunity. At first you’d shaft me just because you could, I suppose – the Reno thing with the stolen license, the novel contract you never bothered to pursue, that whole web of deception around the Time Warner remuneration.
Was it then that I became such a bitch? I suppose it was – our survival was at stake and that pronoun “our” included two dependent children. Once I became a bitch, there was a reason to lie to me, I suppose. I was such a soul-sucking bitch, wasn’t I? I probably deserved it.
Thing is, I still feel with the arm that’s been hacked off. I still hear your voice in my head. It stopped for a while. But it’s back now. Though I suppose you’ve found your next redemption. My guess is that you’ll marry The Girlfriend in another month or two, when the divorce comes through. What jolly trips the two of you will make in the Girlfriend-mobile – whoops! I mean the Spouse-mobile. And she’ll pay for you to get your teeth fixed too because otherwise how’s she gonna introduce you to all her family and friends?
You have some serious fence mending to do with Robin.
###
Whoa! I thought upon reading this letter. You wrote so good back then, girlfriend!
And that was really my only reaction.
I don't love Ben or his memory anymore, and the 17 years we spent together are actually an embarrassment. Like: What were you thinking? How damaged were you?
Which means, I suppose, I'm considerably less damaged now.
And that's a good thing.
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May. 28th, 2025 05:24 pm
(no subject)
flemmingsThe only way I will not drink is simply to have no alcohol in the house. OTOH if it weren't raining and I didn't ache from vaccines and gardening, I might not need alcohol at all.
Have several books on the go and don't much want to read any of them. Discover that yes, I did read Network Effect and Exit Strategy in dead tree last year, is probably why they made more sense then. Sent Meddling Kids ebook back to the library because it was clearly heading towards Lovecraft Land and I have very limited patience (read: none) with abominable eldritch horrors and elder gods and whatever else horripilated that very unpleasant man's skin. Also The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, because it was set sort of this-world, not the pleasant otherworld of Waggoner's first two books.
Have KJ Charles' Think of England which is clearly heading towards disaster! before I presume happi endo, and I don't want to be there for it. The mystery set in ancient Athens with a playwright is pedestrian, because anybody writing theatre in ancient Athens is up against Mary Renault, even if I *know* Renault was cheating. She cheats so plausibly, is all. The Path of Thorns is growing tedious for no good reason, just it is. Have yet to start The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, simply because Perry and I are a bad fit. So I read Paarfi instead, and even Jhegaala, because I am loose-ended in the extreme.
Did dream pleasantly last night, or rather this morning, of cleaning up at daycare with Daycare Hugh who in RL is as retired as I, and about to become a grandfather. Which segued into me buying a dress at a dress shop on the second floor of a nondescript outlet, sort of hidden from the masses behind a special door. Dresses turned out to be hand-decorated by the middle-aged woman who let me in to the large room where the special dresses were.
Other reason I can't get out is that my feet crack deeply and constantly unless I pumice and moisturize them before the cracks get too deep. I have a crack across the instep of my right foot which is hard to get at, what with pumice, elbows and ticklishness being as they are, so I have essentially a deep cut on the sole of that foot which is taking its own sweet time closing up, in spite of first aid cream and bandaids and all. Have bolstered the bandaids with panty liners to cushion it, but it still hurts to step on. So yeah, couch potatodom it is.
Have several books on the go and don't much want to read any of them. Discover that yes, I did read Network Effect and Exit Strategy in dead tree last year, is probably why they made more sense then. Sent Meddling Kids ebook back to the library because it was clearly heading towards Lovecraft Land and I have very limited patience (read: none) with abominable eldritch horrors and elder gods and whatever else horripilated that very unpleasant man's skin. Also The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, because it was set sort of this-world, not the pleasant otherworld of Waggoner's first two books.
Have KJ Charles' Think of England which is clearly heading towards disaster! before I presume happi endo, and I don't want to be there for it. The mystery set in ancient Athens with a playwright is pedestrian, because anybody writing theatre in ancient Athens is up against Mary Renault, even if I *know* Renault was cheating. She cheats so plausibly, is all. The Path of Thorns is growing tedious for no good reason, just it is. Have yet to start The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, simply because Perry and I are a bad fit. So I read Paarfi instead, and even Jhegaala, because I am loose-ended in the extreme.
Did dream pleasantly last night, or rather this morning, of cleaning up at daycare with Daycare Hugh who in RL is as retired as I, and about to become a grandfather. Which segued into me buying a dress at a dress shop on the second floor of a nondescript outlet, sort of hidden from the masses behind a special door. Dresses turned out to be hand-decorated by the middle-aged woman who let me in to the large room where the special dresses were.
Other reason I can't get out is that my feet crack deeply and constantly unless I pumice and moisturize them before the cracks get too deep. I have a crack across the instep of my right foot which is hard to get at, what with pumice, elbows and ticklishness being as they are, so I have essentially a deep cut on the sole of that foot which is taking its own sweet time closing up, in spite of first aid cream and bandaids and all. Have bolstered the bandaids with panty liners to cushion it, but it still hurts to step on. So yeah, couch potatodom it is.
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Jun. 1st, 2025 09:22 am
Welp, they've cast the main trio for the Harry Potter tv show
conulyWhich, I'm told, has prompted all the usual gross comments about the girl playing Hermione. Ugh. Why are people so disgusting?
(Also, fuck JKR, but she's not the one being awful inside this complaint. Not to fear, I'm sure she'll find a way to outclass them soon enough.)
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(Also, fuck JKR, but she's not the one being awful inside this complaint. Not to fear, I'm sure she'll find a way to outclass them soon enough.)
( Read more... )
May. 28th, 2025 06:03 pm
Wednesday has had more equestrian-products-related spam
oursinWhat I read
Vivian Shaw, Strange New World (Dr Greta Helsing, #4) (2025): somehow did not like this as much as the preceding volumes in the series.
Anthony Powell, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (A Dance to the Music of Time #5) (1960).
Latest Literary Review.
Discovered entirely by happenstance that Robert Rodi's scathingly irreverent comedies of manners set largely in Chicago’s gay demimonde' are now available as ebooks at exceedingly eligible prices (I read them in the 90s/early 00s from the local library) so have downloaded all those and also:
Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen from the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps (vol 1) (2014), which collects and expands on his blogposts on Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. which was quite addictive, the sort of thing I thought I'd be dipping into and in fact read end to end, even while dissenting from his take on Fanny Price and muttering that he was not exactly au fait with the discourse on JA's views on the slavery question.
On the go
This was perhaps at least partly motivated by coming to the point in Dragon's Teeth where we get the Reichstag Fire and its consequences, and Lanny is caught in the middle of a whole mass of cross-currents while trying to save those of his friends who think that they will surely be all right....
Bitch In a Bonnet vol 2 (2014): covers Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Up next
Well, KJ Charles, Copper Script is allegedly due to drop tomorrow....
May. 28th, 2025 10:21 am
Mundane Happenstances of a Small Existence
mallorys_camera
The Wall Street Journal has an absolutely fantastic article on AI movie-making this morning (which I think I am offering to you unlocked!)
Apparently, on VEO & Runway, you can get AI to model video characters after real-life people if you subscribe at the very highest tier ($200 a month.) As someone whose disposable income is prone to disappearing acts, I have been experimenting with the lower subscription tiers that don't offer all the features, so I always assumed there was a blanket prohibition against using real-life people. As a safeguard against Deep Fakes & revenge porn!
I am very tempted to splurge for a single month, though, to see what I might be able to create!
Maybe I should have a long talk with the cats: Do you really need to eat? And what's up with all those catnip toys? They always end up under the sofa!
###
Meanwhile, the sky is rapidly darkening even as I type, and a quick look at the weather forecast affirms we are in for five fuckin' days of rain! So! Do I kill myself now, or do I subject all 4.3 of my faithful readers to five days of angsty rants before I step in front of that speeding bus?
Also, the New Paltz Community Garden finally offered me a space! After I'd already started gardening again at the Hyde Park Community Garden.
I drove to New Paltz to check the garden out. It is really spectacular: five acres, 150 plots, right along the Wallkill River, which floods the garden regularly, providing the garden with that ultra-rich river silt. The whole garden is surrounded by an electric deer fence & an obliging hawk keeps the vole population in check:
There are something like 200 gardeners, a real community. So, I thought, Okay! If you really want to connect with other humans in the real-life here & now, this is your chance! New Paltz reminds me so much of Berkeley circa the 1980s, I figure it's gotta be teeming with sympatico souls.
The extremely nice Plot Coordinator showed me around. The full plots are huge, 20' x 10', and the three he showed me were completely overgrown with (ugh!) deep-rooted nettles that would take me a solid week of hard labor to clear out. So, I settled for a half-plot:
This one, I estimate, will take me three days to clear out. That's doable.
Because of the driving distance involved, I'd already set up the Hyde Park garden to be as labor-free as possible. Planted tomatoes & chili peppers inside a marigold border. Piled on lawn-mowings over the plot to reign in moisture & keep down weed growth. Self-sustaining was my goal!
This garden I'll use for veggies that require a bit more nurturing. Basil! (Gotta guard against premature bolting & aphid infestations!) Cucumbers! (There's a weird kind of fungus that always seems to attack mine.) Flowers! (I ❤️LUV❤️ bouquets in the Patrizia-torium, so consider flowers an essential crop.)
It'll be a summer of hard physical work.
Assuming it ever stops raining.
Apart from all these mundane happenstances of a small existence, I have this sense that things are changing very fast. Planetary collapse? Nuclear annihilation? Dunno. But something.
I can't do anything about what might be going to happen.
So, the feeling is unsettling.
May. 31st, 2025 07:29 am
It's turkey o'clock.
conulyThat, or we have a new dog on the block that sounds a lot like a turkey and which will not shut up.
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May. 27th, 2025 06:00 pm
(no subject)
flemmingsProperty tax bill comes in yesterday and I opened it with resignation because city council voted in an increase of same. Except that, as ever, my second half set of taxes is something like $50 a month less than the first set. So I am content. So today I went out and clipped my hedge, what I could reach of it, as well as the English ivy I now read is an invasive plant. Certainly it's taken over the front yard and its springy mass is impossible to walk on with my precarious balance and spasming back. Is why I couldn't clip all of my hedge. But I do need to wade in and pull it off the trees that it's in the process of choking.
Meanwhile Oliver stood at his gate down the walkway and barked whenever he saw me. I suppose that makes him a good watchdog and that's why SND doesn't train her dogs out of the habit. Or he could have been barking at the little dachsund who passed by twice with his little owner and her mum. Little owner is maybe three or two and change, and very reminiscent of the Mighty Helen at the same age. Turned around to say hello to me, and then asked her mum what I was doing.
Equally, the fir at the corner of my front planter is dead. I should take it down, or rather, pay someone else to take it down. Just, dead or not, it blocks the view of my porch a little, and I am loath to lose it. I wonder if Prof Medieval Studies might like to take his power saw to it, seeing as he lopped quite a few branches off his own magnolia.
Meanwhile Oliver stood at his gate down the walkway and barked whenever he saw me. I suppose that makes him a good watchdog and that's why SND doesn't train her dogs out of the habit. Or he could have been barking at the little dachsund who passed by twice with his little owner and her mum. Little owner is maybe three or two and change, and very reminiscent of the Mighty Helen at the same age. Turned around to say hello to me, and then asked her mum what I was doing.
Equally, the fir at the corner of my front planter is dead. I should take it down, or rather, pay someone else to take it down. Just, dead or not, it blocks the view of my porch a little, and I am loath to lose it. I wonder if Prof Medieval Studies might like to take his power saw to it, seeing as he lopped quite a few branches off his own magnolia.
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May. 31st, 2025 03:58 pm
Geez, maybe today is not the day to hang out at /r/whatsthatbook....
conulyOP: Hey, looking for a board book series from when I was a kid! It was traditional fairy tales and fables, and the part I really remember is the illustrations! I'm sure if I see those illustrations I'll know it's the right book!
Me: Care to describe these illustrations? Even a little? Were they brightly colorful or more muted, or maybe black and white? Were they realistic or cartoony?
OP: Oh, they looked similar to the hare and the tortoise board game! Like, when I saw that I first thought it was the books!
Me: Oh, I guess you're gonna make me google that instead of providing a link, cool.
Guys, it turns out there are at least five different editions of this game, each one with a totally different art style.
Meanwhile, on a different thread on the same post:
Other Commenter: Could it be Aesop's fables?
Me, silently: WTF, buddy? That's not a suggestion.
OP: Oh, no, it was more colorful than that!
Me, a bit less silently: WTF? Like... what edition are we talking about? You need to help us help you!
All comments are paraphrased, but seriously.
Edit: I am absolutely dying at this point to ask who, exactly, OP thinks Aesop is, but that conversation is not going to go anywhere productive. I'd really better forget the whole thing.
Me: Care to describe these illustrations? Even a little? Were they brightly colorful or more muted, or maybe black and white? Were they realistic or cartoony?
OP: Oh, they looked similar to the hare and the tortoise board game! Like, when I saw that I first thought it was the books!
Me: Oh, I guess you're gonna make me google that instead of providing a link, cool.
Guys, it turns out there are at least five different editions of this game, each one with a totally different art style.
Meanwhile, on a different thread on the same post:
Other Commenter: Could it be Aesop's fables?
Me, silently: WTF, buddy? That's not a suggestion.
OP: Oh, no, it was more colorful than that!
Me, a bit less silently: WTF? Like... what edition are we talking about? You need to help us help you!
All comments are paraphrased, but seriously.
Edit: I am absolutely dying at this point to ask who, exactly, OP thinks Aesop is, but that conversation is not going to go anywhere productive. I'd really better forget the whole thing.
May. 27th, 2025 06:06 pm
Saying, what no flagellants - then thinking, actually, might be preferable
oursinWas alerted to Zoom seminar I must have signed up for ages ago and not put into my diary, with link, approx 30 mins before it was due to happen.
Well, that was interesting and informative: 'Protest and Identity Formation in the Time of Covid: The UK in Historical Context', if ultimately rather grim.
Given that I am in the cohort that thinks the response of The Powers That Be was very much in the Day Late and a Dollar Short ballpark and marked by gross ineptitude even where corruption was not in play, I had not realised how much there was resistance based on the belief that it was an excuse for the imposition of The Iron Heel (and this crisscrossed a wide spectrum of beliefs).
And a lot of the evidence for that was actually not widely reported.
And one observes that there are doubtless differences between the overall picture and the impact of immediate local policing practices.
But looking at what one might consider the wider penumbra of the panic (the torching of 5G towers e.g.) I was reminded (I would be, wouldn't I) of some of the episodes in Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millenium, especially as the speaker invoked the Black Death as a comparison point for epidemic + social upheaval.
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May. 27th, 2025 09:48 am
The Catskills
mallorys_cameralifeinroseland & fam braved the Holiday Catskills last weekend.Is this not the most beautiful nuclear family you have ever seen?
My first time meeting her children in the flesh. Her little son has the most amazing vocabulary for an 18-month-old, and Princess Star is as fiery & independent as she is beautiful & intelligent—which I suspect presages difficult teenage years but a mega-successful adulthood:
It was so good to see them!!!
###
GPS decided to give me a complete tour of the Catskills on my way to Phoenicia. The Catskills were insanely beautiful on this, the unofficial first day of summer.
An abandoned barn:
The Ashokan Reservoir. They drowned 10 villages to make it when they dammed Esopus Creek in the early 19-aughts. My fantasy is that cottages, church spires, & apple orchards are floating around beneath its waters. (Probably not, though.) It supplies 40% of New York City's water:
Today, I have a shitload of errands to do in addition to the usual Remuneration & gym workout. And no desire to do any of them! But it is gorgeous out! So, you know. I'm cheerful.
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May. 30th, 2025 03:53 am
I woke up today with "Video Killed the Radio Star" inexplicably running through my head
May. 26th, 2025 06:42 pm
(no subject)
flemmingsGot my Covid booster today so arm which has been aching with the damp is now aching with the shot. OTOH something like three people today remarked on how nice it was to see the sun finally. Even if it didn't rain Saturday it was grey, and Sunday of course did rain. Spent the weekend drinking and eating sugar, so now we begin the dry out, water, and veggies routine. Have cancelled Wednesday's physio from an abundance of caution re: side-effects, and am moving a bit more, either from exercises or housekeeping. That I've been doing little of the latter is indicated by having to empty the vacuum's canister twice just from vacuuming the front hall and living room.
Since I was up at Dupont I got a xerox of my water/ property tax rebate form in case I screwed it up when filling it out. Asked for two copies, forgot to say it didn't need to be double-sided, and was a bit stunned when he charged me five dollars for same. I mean it got me some five dollar bills for tips if I want to order take-out this week, but next time I'll do it at the library.
Otherwise I struggle to get out of bed these mornings because even with the heating coming on, it's still cold. So much easier just to go back to sleep and have comforting forgettable dreams.
Since I was up at Dupont I got a xerox of my water/ property tax rebate form in case I screwed it up when filling it out. Asked for two copies, forgot to say it didn't need to be double-sided, and was a bit stunned when he charged me five dollars for same. I mean it got me some five dollar bills for tips if I want to order take-out this week, but next time I'll do it at the library.
Otherwise I struggle to get out of bed these mornings because even with the heating coming on, it's still cold. So much easier just to go back to sleep and have comforting forgettable dreams.
May. 26th, 2025 07:23 pm
TIL
oursinThat the place I was very glad to leave in my youth is now The Top Place to Visit in the UK, though I think 'visit' may be the operative word there, after all back in my day the foreign language students and other summer visitors had an entirely different vision of it. Street foodstalls and trendy bars, not to mention galleries, Not In My Day, though we did have the walks in nature and seascape.
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(The person who asked about this could have found the info themself, it was really easy to find.) Stillbirths only had to be registered in England from 1927.
(This was the person who had found me as A Nexpert in a field I don't consider my main field of xpertise via Google AI. I was, in fact, able to provide quite a bit of information from the depths of Mi Knowinz. )
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How to decode the less than intuitive citations in footnotes to Gould and Pyle, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1898 edition).
(Though I think the person asking the question to which this was actually the answer could possibly have given the matter a little thought and worked it out themself? Maybe not: maybe they have not had the years of dealing with Weird Citation Practices that are under my belt.)
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Still got it for telling people Where To Find Archives....
May. 26th, 2025 10:07 am
Social Isolation
mallorys_camera
This was a difficult week.
It rained every single day, & then my only two pals in the area were MIA for various reasons.
And I ended up experiencing SOCIAL ISOLATION (intoned with a kind of echo chamber effect), which is different from garden variety lonesomeness: Lonesomeness feels like a temporary condition that is not your fault; SOCIAL ISOLATION is a disease of the elderly brought on by their own bad habits. Socially isolated people do not proactively build social connections! They do not join clubs, volunteer, wave the Stars & Stripes at community events! They don't strike up conversations with the harried checkout clerk at the Shop-&-Drop. If they do finally manage to capture the attention of a real human person, they natter on & on about some obscure rock star from the 1970s or their bursitis or how much stuff has changed in the last 50 years.
The absolute worst habit of the elderly, though, is that they are old.
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I suppose no one ever feels old, though when you look at them, you wonder: Why the hell not?
That person I catch a glimpse of in the mirror when I'm not mugging it up self-consciously? That's not me, that's my grandmother.
And I'm one of those old people who's in pretty good shape.
Thing is I probably have more friends than most people. Friends with whom I resonate on an intimate level and who have my back.
They just don't live here.
But, of course, I live here.
I make my most important social connections online, which is kind of an ageless milieu. My prose is sprightly; sprightly signals "young." I meet a lot of the people I bond with online, and those meetings often turn into friendships. I won't say "age" doesn't influence those friendships, but it's just one factor in a whole lot of factors: I am X years older than you, and now let's chatter about books and movies and music and the meaning of the Universe, your children and my children, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages.
But here, I must make social connections the old-fashioned way, face-to-face. And whatever delusions I may have about my age-defying demeanor, I am clearly a member of the pariah tribe, the Senior Citizens.
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The irony about SOCIAL ISOLATION is that it feels like something you oughta be ashamed of, which, of course, is even more isolating. SOCIAL ISOLATION is sticky and heavy, and that weight makes it difficult to cleave to all those wholesome routines—exercise, engagement, good nutrition—that make you feel good about yourself.
All moot points today because (finally!) it's gorgeous & sunny out. And warm! And so, I am perfectly content.
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May. 29th, 2025 05:22 am
Looking out my window at Venus and the crescent moon
conulyThe Wikipedia article on the motif of the star and crescent gave a lot more information than I'd expected, but I still don't know why it's so associated with Islam in the present day.
Speaking of symbols made literal, here is a snake saved from eating its own tail. I don't know anything about snakes, but this does look like a vet's office, so if the vet thinks that hand sanitizer is the way to go then it's probably the way to go. (Also, I strongly suspect most of the people in the comments talking about how hand sanitizer to make a snake not eat itself is animal abuse or that the fact that the snake did this is a clear sign of animal abuse don't actually know any more about snakes than I do. If they're right, it's not because they really know.)
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Speaking of symbols made literal, here is a snake saved from eating its own tail. I don't know anything about snakes, but this does look like a vet's office, so if the vet thinks that hand sanitizer is the way to go then it's probably the way to go. (Also, I strongly suspect most of the people in the comments talking about how hand sanitizer to make a snake not eat itself is animal abuse or that the fact that the snake did this is a clear sign of animal abuse don't actually know any more about snakes than I do. If they're right, it's not because they really know.)
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