email 'friend'
Jun. 17th, 2024 11:28 amThere's a woman somewhere in India who occasionally goes through what I assume are manic phases a few weeks long, during which she sends dozens upon dozens of portentous word-salad emails to me and various people at my university, a couple of affiliated universities, and the NIH. Sometimes they're just to me. They're not threatening or scary to receive. I don't respond to them because I don't think that would be helpful (or something I'm qualified to do). I do take the time to at least open and skim them, though. It feels like the least I can do.
sick grumbling
Jan. 5th, 2024 08:49 pmit's time for a mini pity-party for me because i am in a distracting amount of pain right now. i do not want advice.
the Symptoms are mostly gone - I'm still a bit more congested than usual, but I have most of my energy back! Unfortunately the remaining symptoms are:
a) I've completely lost my voice, and in order to speak in anything above a whisper I need to exert as much effort as if I was shouting ... and it still only works every other syllable. It doesn't hurt to whisper but it hurts to talk. I don't mind this nearly as much as the other symptom,
b) big wheezing cough
and I'm pretty sure I cracked a rib coughing this morning.
( Read more... )
the Symptoms are mostly gone - I'm still a bit more congested than usual, but I have most of my energy back! Unfortunately the remaining symptoms are:
a) I've completely lost my voice, and in order to speak in anything above a whisper I need to exert as much effort as if I was shouting ... and it still only works every other syllable. It doesn't hurt to whisper but it hurts to talk. I don't mind this nearly as much as the other symptom,
b) big wheezing cough
and I'm pretty sure I cracked a rib coughing this morning.
( Read more... )
2023 year in review, in brief
Dec. 31st, 2023 08:26 pmI wanted to write in my journal about personal journey/milestones that I reached this year, and I was thinking "yeah, but it doesn't feel like anything major really happened this year?"
and then I remembered that in the past twelve months I:
I also did some more reading this year than I've been able to do in a while!
I'm finishing up the year by being sick for the first time since 2019 or so. So far it appears to just be a cold. I've tested negative for covid for three consecutive afternoons now, and will continue to test for as long as symptoms last. I was still wiped out yesterday, and have been easily-tired today, so I'm not going to be able to stay up until midnight. And trying to remember and type out a list of books I've read or referenced this year feels like an insurmountable task, short though the list might be.
Happy new year!
and then I remembered that in the past twelve months I:
- defended my thesis
- got married
- graduated from my masters program
- legally changed my name, again
- did a fuckton of post-thesis original research for at least one, if not two, academic papers
- drove to Canada to present my masters thesis at a conference
- scheduled a hysterectomy for early 2024
I also did some more reading this year than I've been able to do in a while!
I'm finishing up the year by being sick for the first time since 2019 or so. So far it appears to just be a cold. I've tested negative for covid for three consecutive afternoons now, and will continue to test for as long as symptoms last. I was still wiped out yesterday, and have been easily-tired today, so I'm not going to be able to stay up until midnight. And trying to remember and type out a list of books I've read or referenced this year feels like an insurmountable task, short though the list might be.
Happy new year!
The Pope's Exorcist (2023)
Dec. 21st, 2023 11:20 amFor Horror Night last night, we watched The Pope's Exorcist, a movie in which Pope Paul VI, in failing health, has hours of free time to spend flipping through a redacted church record book in a Roman cathedral with no one else in it.
( cut for spoilers, just in case )
( cut for spoilers, just in case )
building from the plates up
Aug. 21st, 2023 04:23 pmI've taken a turn from local historical maps back into worldbuilding, which I will briefly summarize here because *I* think it's interesting to talk about the process. I love specificity in fiction, and I love the feeling that something couldn't have taken place anywhere else because it is so strongly rooted to its environment, and I'm … not very good at recreating either of those things. Or at least, neither of them are a strong suit of mine, I have to really work at it and it's easy to forget. My characters exist in dialogue-and-body-language only voids in my head. Anyway, I want to try my hand at writing something that is rooted in the landscape, rather than figuring out all the plot details first and then trying to make the scenery fit around that.
(Also, *I* have become much, much more aware of and interested in my own surroundings/landscape in the past few years.)
This is sort of the sequence of events that I've been following so far, with detours into reading about North American megafauna and insular dwarfism/gigantism, because the story is set on an archipelago a hundred miles off the coast of the largest local landmass, so I plan to have Fun With Flightless Birds.
(Also, *I* have become much, much more aware of and interested in my own surroundings/landscape in the past few years.)
This is sort of the sequence of events that I've been following so far, with detours into reading about North American megafauna and insular dwarfism/gigantism, because the story is set on an archipelago a hundred miles off the coast of the largest local landmass, so I plan to have Fun With Flightless Birds.
- what do the tectonic plates and ocean currents look like?
- what kind of rocks and soil are in this part of the world? What kinds are absent? What's the temperature like and what are the seasons? (what's the USDA plant hardiness zone?)
- what can grow and live in that sort of environment on a general scale? What cannot?
- what are the locations where the scenes in the story take place?
- what grows and lives in those specific locations? What are the common sounds, smells, sights during different seasons and times of day throughout the year? Think about:
- mammals
- reptiles
- birds
- insects
- fungi
- wild plants – trees, shrubs, moss, lichen
- what materials are available in the environment for humans to use?
- list categories of objects and what they're made of, where the material is found, and who produces the object.
- what does access to a particular material mean for the supply chain and economy of the story?
- John Josselyn (1672) New England's Rarities, Discovered!
- Jane Strickland Hussey (1974, Economic Botany) Some Useful Plants of Early New England
- Andrew F. Smith (2006, The Turkey: An American Story) "The Call of the Wild Turkey: Or, How the American Turkey Came To Meet A Fowl Ending"
- Emily W. B. Russel; (1983, Ecology) Indian-Set Fires in the Forests of the Northeastern United States
Sewing Notes: Capris
Jul. 20th, 2023 09:44 pmI have a pair of men's capris that I bought in 2011-2012, which makes them well over a decade old. They're super comfortable, fit really well, and the waist is adjustable enough that I've bee able to keep wearing them even though I have less hip than I did when I bought them pre-T. My most recent sewing project has been to create a pattern based on them so that I can make a replacement pair (or three) that DOESN'T have holes in the waistband and the pockets from where the hardware has finally worn through the cotton canvas.
Below the cut are some construction notes - not the steps, just the post-mortem on what I'd do differently, what I made them out of, and what I'm going to do with the next round (will add as I go/alter things):
( Read more... )
Below the cut are some construction notes - not the steps, just the post-mortem on what I'd do differently, what I made them out of, and what I'm going to do with the next round (will add as I go/alter things):
( Read more... )
I have, in the past five years or so, turned into exactly the sort of adult who baffled me as a child: someone who acquires and reads non-fiction books for fun. This one is like, a tiny corner of an already-niche interest, but fuck it, we ball, here are my thoughts about it.
I used to work for one of the historic church museums in Boston, and part of my job involved coming up with, researching, and developing a 15-minute talk that I could give to visitors whenever there were enough of them in the church hall at the same time. I ended up giving two: one was an architectural history of the pulpit, and one was about the religious background of the church (Separatist/Congregational) and why it was founded. So, that's the specific background on why I cared enough about this to buy someone's dissertation-turned-book in the 1960s.
Every time I tried to research anything about the limits and effects of church membership in Puritan New England, I ended up just seeing references to/citations of this book, so I eventually just bought it to read because it appears to be the definitive study on the subject. It's just as thorough and detailed and absolutely boring as I hoped it would be. I cannot suggest it to anyone who doesn't have a pretty strong background knowledge of both the Protestant Reformation and early British colonization of what would become New England, because, again, it's a dissertation, it's starting pretty deep in.
My impression, based on Pope's editorializing in the book, is that his approach and conclusions were contrarian at the time of publication in 1969 ... which makes it funny reading his rebuttals of other scholars because as far as I can tell, he is now the currently-accepted canon and I've never heard of any of these other scholars cited past that date.
The main issues I had while reading this were the proliferation of names that I found hard to keep track of, and the way that the absolute minutiae were arranged. These two things go together. There would be a description for several paragraphs over the details of the Halfway Covenant acceptance/debate at one church, and then he'd move on to the town further west (etc.) and repeat the process. Because of the networks of ministers all talking to and influencing each other, sharing last names, and sometimes switching parishes, it became a little hard to keep track of who held what stance, or to distinguish between examples. I think it would be better to read it the way that I have to read books in Spanish: stop focusing on the individual words (or in this instance, towns) and focus on getting a better sense of the overall flow of the narrative / the tides of public opinion in the 1660s.
It's not a book I would recommend to anyone else, unless they were also specifically obsessed with understanding the Halfway Covenant's origins and how it intertwined with politics in Massachusetts/Connecticut/New Haven/Rhode Island. In that case, it's a great place to get some more information.
There's a weird bit of historical revisionism that happened in how I learned US history - both in public middle school and at a Catholic high school in NY - where the versions that I learned took the religious ferocity out of the Puritans, and Massachusetts in general. We learned that Puritans wanted freedom to worship the way that they wanted, but it turns out that the specifics of “the way that they wanted” is crucial to understanding … anything about them, really. One of the points that I always brought up in my Puritanism talk at my museum job was that Puritans wanted the freedom to oppress others and dictate how everyone else should live. That’s really fucking important!* We learned in school that the vote was limited to white male landowners over the age of 21, but did you know that in the Puritan colonies, civil voting was also restricted to white male members of the Congregational Church who were in good standing and had professed their conversion narrative to their congregation? One of the things that I couldn’t get a clear handle on before reading this book was whether being a “full member” of the church granted the right to vote civilly, or just in church affairs. The answer was both. The reasons for instituting a compromise about who could be considered a “full member”, and what that criteria included, were also more nuanced than I had been aware of.
All in all, a very useful read for me, specifically. More broadly, it’s also kind of interesting to see how much individual humans being individual humans affected historical changes: Pope suggests that a particular preacher might have been pro-Covenant because his preacher father was against it, and it might’ve been a way to make a name for himself, politically. Votes were decided on the presence or absence of big personalities who might’ve swayed people to their side if there hadn’t been a storm that kept them from traveling to attend a particular conference. And most importantly, it’s a reminder of how small White America was at the time. The odds that two people in the same field knew each other was just greater, even though travel and communication was more difficult than it is now, simply because there were so many fewer humans on the planet and in the colonial world! It’s so weird to think about.
---------------
*I understand why this isn’t something that textbooks might focus on, because it undermines the whole narrative that white America writes about itself going from scrappy freedom-loving underdog to The Most Country Ever, but goddammit, I hate that narrative and real life was so much more complicated than that, always.
I used to work for one of the historic church museums in Boston, and part of my job involved coming up with, researching, and developing a 15-minute talk that I could give to visitors whenever there were enough of them in the church hall at the same time. I ended up giving two: one was an architectural history of the pulpit, and one was about the religious background of the church (Separatist/Congregational) and why it was founded. So, that's the specific background on why I cared enough about this to buy someone's dissertation-turned-book in the 1960s.
Every time I tried to research anything about the limits and effects of church membership in Puritan New England, I ended up just seeing references to/citations of this book, so I eventually just bought it to read because it appears to be the definitive study on the subject. It's just as thorough and detailed and absolutely boring as I hoped it would be. I cannot suggest it to anyone who doesn't have a pretty strong background knowledge of both the Protestant Reformation and early British colonization of what would become New England, because, again, it's a dissertation, it's starting pretty deep in.
My impression, based on Pope's editorializing in the book, is that his approach and conclusions were contrarian at the time of publication in 1969 ... which makes it funny reading his rebuttals of other scholars because as far as I can tell, he is now the currently-accepted canon and I've never heard of any of these other scholars cited past that date.
The main issues I had while reading this were the proliferation of names that I found hard to keep track of, and the way that the absolute minutiae were arranged. These two things go together. There would be a description for several paragraphs over the details of the Halfway Covenant acceptance/debate at one church, and then he'd move on to the town further west (etc.) and repeat the process. Because of the networks of ministers all talking to and influencing each other, sharing last names, and sometimes switching parishes, it became a little hard to keep track of who held what stance, or to distinguish between examples. I think it would be better to read it the way that I have to read books in Spanish: stop focusing on the individual words (or in this instance, towns) and focus on getting a better sense of the overall flow of the narrative / the tides of public opinion in the 1660s.
It's not a book I would recommend to anyone else, unless they were also specifically obsessed with understanding the Halfway Covenant's origins and how it intertwined with politics in Massachusetts/Connecticut/New Haven/Rhode Island. In that case, it's a great place to get some more information.
There's a weird bit of historical revisionism that happened in how I learned US history - both in public middle school and at a Catholic high school in NY - where the versions that I learned took the religious ferocity out of the Puritans, and Massachusetts in general. We learned that Puritans wanted freedom to worship the way that they wanted, but it turns out that the specifics of “the way that they wanted” is crucial to understanding … anything about them, really. One of the points that I always brought up in my Puritanism talk at my museum job was that Puritans wanted the freedom to oppress others and dictate how everyone else should live. That’s really fucking important!* We learned in school that the vote was limited to white male landowners over the age of 21, but did you know that in the Puritan colonies, civil voting was also restricted to white male members of the Congregational Church who were in good standing and had professed their conversion narrative to their congregation? One of the things that I couldn’t get a clear handle on before reading this book was whether being a “full member” of the church granted the right to vote civilly, or just in church affairs. The answer was both. The reasons for instituting a compromise about who could be considered a “full member”, and what that criteria included, were also more nuanced than I had been aware of.
All in all, a very useful read for me, specifically. More broadly, it’s also kind of interesting to see how much individual humans being individual humans affected historical changes: Pope suggests that a particular preacher might have been pro-Covenant because his preacher father was against it, and it might’ve been a way to make a name for himself, politically. Votes were decided on the presence or absence of big personalities who might’ve swayed people to their side if there hadn’t been a storm that kept them from traveling to attend a particular conference. And most importantly, it’s a reminder of how small White America was at the time. The odds that two people in the same field knew each other was just greater, even though travel and communication was more difficult than it is now, simply because there were so many fewer humans on the planet and in the colonial world! It’s so weird to think about.
---------------
*I understand why this isn’t something that textbooks might focus on, because it undermines the whole narrative that white America writes about itself going from scrappy freedom-loving underdog to The Most Country Ever, but goddammit, I hate that narrative and real life was so much more complicated than that, always.
the internet is so good sometimes
Apr. 13th, 2023 01:10 pmI’ve had the opportunity to make a bunch of connections related to my research interests lately in some very minor ways that bring me joy!
( Read more... )
My thesis final draft is due on the 20th, which means that I need to finish my edits by the 15th so my advisor can actually have time to read them over before I submit, and I'm so so so close to being done and having A Finished Product!
( Read more... )
My thesis final draft is due on the 20th, which means that I need to finish my edits by the 15th so my advisor can actually have time to read them over before I submit, and I'm so so so close to being done and having A Finished Product!
Assigned Adorable At Transition
Dec. 22nd, 2022 11:49 amAt some point I want to really investigate the mechanisms by which I manage to effortlessly, near-instantly, endear myself to every female colleague older than me, regardless of race or ethnicity, to a degree that I truly do not think is proportional to how competent or charming I am.
( non-threatening white gay best friend vibes, maybe? )
( non-threatening white gay best friend vibes, maybe? )
books to read on my shelves
Nov. 23rd, 2022 10:40 amI made a list a few days ago of books that I have on my shelves that I either haven't read at all, never finished, or read so long ago that I don't remember what was in them. I'm not setting a deadline for myself for when I want to get through all of them, but I figure that it would be nice to have something to refer to, rather than feeling nebulously overwhelmed by the fear of forgetting that I wanted to read something.
I decided to group them by type of book, rather than by subject, because the reading experience is different and there's only like three broad categories of non-fiction books in here anyway.
( 43 books to read )
I think it would be fun (because of course I do) to run some statistics on the original publishing dates of the books that I own. My guess is that there would be publication-date clusters around 1990 (childhood books and Classic Theoretical Texts), 1940 (childhood books from my mom, Literature, and the golden age of Middle-Aged White Dude Archaeological Dissertations), and 1850 (Victorian literature), and then a bunch of points trailing back at consistent intervals until about 1300? And then like two points in the BC region because what if I want to read The Illiad and the Oddysey again. (The problem would come from edited volumes like the Romances of Arthur and The Black Death, which are both compilations of medieval books - do I count all of those separately? Average the publication dates of everything in the book? etc.)
I decided to group them by type of book, rather than by subject, because the reading experience is different and there's only like three broad categories of non-fiction books in here anyway.
( 43 books to read )
I think it would be fun (because of course I do) to run some statistics on the original publishing dates of the books that I own. My guess is that there would be publication-date clusters around 1990 (childhood books and Classic Theoretical Texts), 1940 (childhood books from my mom, Literature, and the golden age of Middle-Aged White Dude Archaeological Dissertations), and 1850 (Victorian literature), and then a bunch of points trailing back at consistent intervals until about 1300? And then like two points in the BC region because what if I want to read The Illiad and the Oddysey again. (The problem would come from edited volumes like the Romances of Arthur and The Black Death, which are both compilations of medieval books - do I count all of those separately? Average the publication dates of everything in the book? etc.)
fanmix: Graveyards Full
Oct. 2nd, 2022 09:11 pmA playlist about necromancers who have spent ten thousand years in horrible, codependent stasis
YouTube playlist here
Track list:
YouTube playlist here
Track list:
- The Warpath - Connor Youngblood
- Graveyards Full - The Growlers
- Empire - Dar Williams
- The Good Ship Lifestyle - Chumbawumba
- Love Runs Out - OneRepublic
- Truth Beneath the Rose - Within Temptation
- No Man Can Find The War - Tunng (Tim Buckley cover)
- No Children - The Mountain Goats
- Kill All Your Friends - My Chemical Romance
- Para el Fin del Mundo el Año Nuevo
Gravity Falls Fic Recs
Jul. 29th, 2022 10:31 amI went through my Evernote account to pull out the Gravity Falls fics that I can actually recommend, per ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aria 's request. Fics are sorted alphabetically. I didn't realize what a large percentage of them are just fics by thesnadger, but you know what? I stand by all of them.
( anthyding can hadplen ... )
aria 's request. Fics are sorted alphabetically. I didn't realize what a large percentage of them are just fics by thesnadger, but you know what? I stand by all of them. ( anthyding can hadplen ... )
Stranger Things S4!
Jul. 23rd, 2022 12:31 pmWe've watched all of S4 except for the last episode which is the length of a goddamn Marvel movie, jesus christ, and I have PLOTBUNNIES and/or fics I want to see in the world:( spoilery thoughts under the cut )
Sword Lesbians From Pluto
May. 30th, 2022 10:43 amI made a Gideon/Harrow playlist! Like most of my fanmixes, it goes in chronological order through the two books we have of them.
Listen here
Song list:
1. Invincible - OK GO
2. Kiss With A Fist - Florence + the Machine
3. Red Hands & White Knuckles - The Bravery
4. Genghis Khan - Miike Snow
5. Accidentally In Love - Counting Crows
6. Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back - My Chemical Romance
7. Bang the Doldrums - Fall Out Boy
8. Alive Alone - The Chemical Brothers
9. Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
10. Afterlife - Nothing But Thieves
I did not include any of the following:
(a) multiple Kate Bush songs
(b) the entire Broken Machine album by NBT
(c) the lesbian necrophilia song by Mirel Wagner
and I deserve praise for my restraint.
In the process of making this I also started lists for the original Lyctors and also Yellowjackets, so possibly one of those will be up next.
EDIT: lol I did not realize when I made this that everyone has been going bananas about this Kate Bush song. I got there first, via the Placebo cover, as is the correct sequence of events
Listen here
Song list:
1. Invincible - OK GO
2. Kiss With A Fist - Florence + the Machine
3. Red Hands & White Knuckles - The Bravery
4. Genghis Khan - Miike Snow
5. Accidentally In Love - Counting Crows
6. Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back - My Chemical Romance
7. Bang the Doldrums - Fall Out Boy
8. Alive Alone - The Chemical Brothers
9. Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
10. Afterlife - Nothing But Thieves
I did not include any of the following:
(a) multiple Kate Bush songs
(b) the entire Broken Machine album by NBT
(c) the lesbian necrophilia song by Mirel Wagner
and I deserve praise for my restraint.
In the process of making this I also started lists for the original Lyctors and also Yellowjackets, so possibly one of those will be up next.
EDIT: lol I did not realize when I made this that everyone has been going bananas about this Kate Bush song. I got there first, via the Placebo cover, as is the correct sequence of events
random thesis-site musings
Apr. 23rd, 2022 11:29 amMiscellaneous Thesis-Related Thoughts:
( black ministers vs. colorism )
( women and kinship networks )
( black ministers vs. colorism )
( women and kinship networks )
I don't vid, I don't have the software and I don't currently care enough to learn how to do so, but if I did, I have a few ideas kicking around in various states of thoroughness:
Hannibal: Abigail Hobbs's Relationship With Adults, set to Liszt's La Campanella
I have wanted this one since well before there was a TV show of them! And since the TV show gave us an entire slow-burn episode, I could pull almost entirely from that episode. There's not much of a thesis to this one besides "hahaha these lyrics fit really well, wouldn't it be fun to make other people see the inside of my head about it?"
.... and a few random thoughts that are even less-formed, plus one that's more thorough that for the life of me I can't remember, I'll have to add it back in later:
Hannibal: Abigail Hobbs's Relationship With Adults, set to Liszt's La Campanella
- Someone put this song on an Abigail Hobbs fanmix years ago, and I fell in love! The careful way that the notes dance, find their footing, and then cascade downwards, over and over again!
- Anyway, there's an introduction, followed by four variations on the same basic structure, followed by the catastrophic ending, and I want to do something about Abigail and the ways in which her various attempted parental figures fail her, causing the teacup to shatter in the final 30 seconds.
- 0:00 - 0:42 introduction to Abigail: her life before, her wariness, the way that she gets blamed for the murders
- 0:43 - 1:17 Garrett Jacob Hobbs
- 1:18 - 1:50 Alana
- 1:51 - 2:42 Will
- 2:43 - 3:25 Hannibal
- 3:25 - 3:59 manipulation by Hannibal & Garrett Jacob Hobbs (she ultimately participates in both of their murder activities)
- 4:00 - 4:28 the teacup shatters, cascade and retrospective, BOOM!
- Would I be able to find enough unique clips and frames to fill four and a half minutes of video? Would I end up having to supplement it with clips from weird avant-garde films or sped-up clips of flowers dying, etc? Who knows!
I have wanted this one since well before there was a TV show of them! And since the TV show gave us an entire slow-burn episode, I could pull almost entirely from that episode. There's not much of a thesis to this one besides "hahaha these lyrics fit really well, wouldn't it be fun to make other people see the inside of my head about it?"
.... and a few random thoughts that are even less-formed, plus one that's more thorough that for the life of me I can't remember, I'll have to add it back in later:
- Hannibal: Will Graham/Encephalitis OTP, Nancy Boy by Placebo
- Our Flag Means Death: Stede & Found Family On A Boat -- Go Find Yourself by Parsonsfield, but shortening the last section because there's not as much to say about that, whereas the rest of the song is about rejecting the cocoon of white upper-middle-class heteronormativity and burning your life to the ground to go be gay.
- I want to figure out a vid for Fear Street, because it was just so much better than it had any reason to be, and possibly that's the one that I'm forgetting. I know we'd talked at Horror Night about the amazing possibilities of a vid set to Come Out And Play by the Offspring ...
