Various & misc
Jun. 13th, 2025 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Don't think I've previously either come across this or posted it, but who knows: Out on the Town: Magnus Hirschfeld and Berlin’s Third Sex: 'Years before the Weimar Republic’s well-chronicled freedoms, the 1904 non-fiction study Berlin’s Third Sex depicted an astonishingly diverse subculture of sexual outlaws in the German capital'.
***
Something else suitable for Pride Month: Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (review):
provides an original and stirring account of a non-commodifying queer love between two women and nonhuman nature—a love that was the defining relationship of Carson’s life and yet has been downplayed in heteronormative tellings of her story. So, too, is Maxwell’s work a convincing argument for this queer love’s formative role in the writing of Silent Spring, as well as an empowering message about how embracing queer feelings might function as a catalyst for “political and personal power” in contemporary environmental politics.
***
I think I have some copies of The Pioneer journal associated with this club, but they are somewhere in the maelstrom (I am gearing up to Doing Something About this, having acquired intelligence of a body that will collect books for charity): The Pioneer Club (1892-1939): A ladies' club at the forefront of late Victorian social reform, which suffered a long, slow decline in the early 20th century.
***
Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP:
[S]ources suggest that McLagan’s mother was probably of Black Caribbean or Black African descent.... McLagan’s father, Peter McLagan (1774-1860)... enslaved over 400 people on his plantations and personal estate in Demerara.
In fact there is strong evidence as mentioned in that article that he was by no means the first Black MP. Issues of class and family connections clearly played a significant role up to the mid-C19th.
***
An ancient writing system confounding myths about Africa:
'How come a country that did not have a colonial past in Zambia had so many artefacts from Zambia in its collection?'"
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and foot.
....
The Swedish museum had not done any research on the cloaks - and the National Museums Board of Zambia was not even aware they existed.
***
Artist's work to restore damaged shell grotto (I put this in a short story once.) (My own theory is that it was originally A Folly. Doing things with shells was as I recall quite A Thing in the C18th and Mrs Delany and her mate the Duchess of Portland had a rather less concealed shell grotto?)
In which there is a priceless collection of embarrassing splurging
Jun. 13th, 2025 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Why would I own anything I'd be embarrassed about? I mean, I have some things on display in my house that other people might find disconcerting but if fossil horse teeth or whatever bother you then don't come to my house. XD
2. What is something you splurged on just for you?
Everything I own, lol, but I'm willing to share my preciousess with people provided they play well with Others. I do own one rock sample that I bought rather than collected myself, but it only cost about £10 including cutting and polishing and delivery from India. To be honest my taste in material objects, apart from art, is practical and based on performance. I suppose the splurgiest things I own are original paintings but the most "valuable" are all by artists I know so I bought them at mates rates.
Re Q1. I do have an expressionist nude on the living / sitting / drawing room wall, and I did have it up when both the subject and the artist were my neighbours but to be fair a lot of us had naked paintings of those neighbours on display and mine is much less realist than most (ETA: another of my neighbours has some extremely detailed drawings by / of a different artist / model pair whom we know but the owner has them tucked away somewhere, which is probably for the best as we also know the model's mum socially).
3. What is something that you own with no real world value that is priceless to you?
My own time technically has a real world value but is worth infinitely more to me than its market price. I think this would be true for most people? A lot of my rocks / fossils / archaeological artifacts have happy memories attached, and most of those would have minimal resale value (although various museums or educational collections might think they're priceless acquisitions?). My Lego too, obviously, although that probably does have resale value. Mostly memories, especially of showing children (and occasionally adults) a wonder for the first time: wildlife, plants, weather, fossils, rocks, art, whatevs.
4. Do you collect anything?
Dust? Micro-meteorites set in dust? "Weeds" in my garden. Snobby bee: "I'm not visiting those flowers for essential nectar because they're weeds and only tasteless / scentless over-bred flowers count... x-x ". I don't intentionally "collect" anything but I will admit my rocks are carefully curated and labelled (for when I die).
( And y'all? )
Dept. of Small Victories
Jun. 12th, 2025 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I needed this. A judge told That Man that he was being an illegal POS in two separate ways. Even though I'm perfectly aware that this administration's playbook is "Ignore the courts," I know this one is probably like a cockleburr under his saddle.
As I said, suck it.
Indivisible #WhatsThePlan meeting of May 12 2025
Jun. 12th, 2025 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This is pretty much just C&P from my bluesky liveblog, plus links.
( cut for length, US politics )
I really admire people who can write *most* of what happens in a meeting while they liveblog, Ezra & Leah both talk *really* fast & I just pull out highlights, really. whoosh.
Please reblog, signal boost. We are, as Leah says, in a time of autocratic breakthrough, and one way we fight back is to have as many people as possible, in as many places as possible, out peacefully on Saturday. We need to be *everywhere*, with *everyone*. Take American flags, they belong to *US*, not him.
Think the rot set in with spell-check, honestly
Jun. 12th, 2025 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -
- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.
That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.
Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.
I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .
This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???
(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)
In which there is a rhapsody that was bohemian
Jun. 12th, 2025 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So...
Time Bandits!
Jun. 11th, 2025 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I am desperately trying not to get stressed out about The Omnishambles, but it's kind of hard.
Be safe, y'all!
Dept. of Music Says Goodbye
Jun. 11th, 2025 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It's tempting to say they received the gift of creating music from the angels. That's not the case. They made that music all themselves. They worked at it, struggled to get it right; just right, as they interpreted "just right." They worked with others. They worked alone. They got it wrong. They swore. They fell down. They got up. They won and they failed. And they won again.
They both were visited by demons. They fought them. Sometimes they lost. Sometimes they won. They did a lot of falling down and getting back up again. And when they could, they went back to making that music.
And the angels were just a little shocked; just a little jealous. A little glad the music had come into being.
I hope they're somewhere, exchanging notes about how they made some celestial bangers even before they got there.
(Don't mind the spotty visual - it's live and it's dynamic, and it's him and his family, so it's just right.)
bikeshare rant, and library stuff
Jun. 11th, 2025 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Nothing deep here, just griping about today.
Avi and I set out to the Drexel Museum of Natural History. I took Indego ebike, to not worry about leaving my bike out locked, and to keep up with him. That was mostly okay, though my bike started making rattlings sounds on the way, and 20th has so many potholes, and manholes that are deep enough to potholes. I am once again baffled by how the US goes all-in on car dependency, yet can't keep the streets smooth.( Read more... )
To leaven the negativity: the museum was decent. Nice hall of dinosaur fossils (or their casts), and a lot of good dioramas. OTOH even making a second pass, I'd basically squeezed it dry in 2-2.5 hours, and our first pass took just 1.5 hours. Is that good value for $22 full-price ticket? I doubt. Fortunately we weren't paying full price.
Logan Square was kind of nice, with its flowering bushes and water fountain, and I finally checked out the main library of Philadelphia. Was nice to be in a big library again, and I accidentally found a shelf full of bicycling books, several of which I checked out.
But Philadelphia hasn't gone in on the sort of checkout technology where you can 'turn off' a book after checking it out, so that it doesn't set off the detector. At my branch library (which has no self-checkout), the librarian gives my books to me after I've gone through the detector. At the main library, you need to have brought your printed receipt with you; I ran into a bit of trouble because I'd actually turned in some other books I checked out, to make room in my backpack for the bike books, and didn't keep the first receipt for the remaining book from the first set. Fortunately the guard decided I probably wasn't doing an elaborate scam to steal one book.
Wednesday somehow agitated the feelings of a small dog in the park
Jun. 11th, 2025 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
What I read
Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.
Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.
TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.
On the go
Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).
Up next
New Literary Review.
The three books for the essay review.
I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.
In which I read therefore I am
Jun. 11th, 2025 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
63. Faith Fox, by Jane Gardam, 1996, 3/5: her most depressing novel? My favourite Gardam novels are Bilgewater then Crusoe's Daughter then The Flight of the Maidens (but Old Filth is probably her most popular work).
64. The Geographer's Map to Romance, by India Holton, 2025, fantasy romance novel, 3/5
A "marriage of convenience" romance novel set in a fantasy version of Victorian Britain (supposedly 1890), peopled by characters with 21st century sensibilities and international English language. The plot, such as it was, would have been enough for a much shorter story, and the magical trappings are arbitrary, but the prose is lively and full of in-jokes and meta-humour about romance and fantasy tropes which entertained me enough to read on. I was excessively pleased that the solution was to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, lmao. Warning: if you dislike "only one bed" scenes then be aware that's a running joke and Holton crams in as many examples as possible.
( Quotes and commentary )
P.S. Can confirm Much Marcle is the sort of place where a rain of frogs would seem normal.
65. [Redacted: acquaintances kept telling me this novel is "not good" but that I should read it, with the same delivery as, "This smells terrible... go on, sniff it!" They were correct. 'nuff said.]
Aurora Australis readalong 8 / 10, An Ancient Manuscript
Jun. 11th, 2025 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Text of An Ancient Manuscript by Shellback (Frank Wild):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Ancient_Manuscript
Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html
( Links for next week, this week's vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary )
The power of one-lane streets
Jun. 11th, 2025 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I want to talk about one-lane city streets: streets with only one travel lane (and are thus also one-way, at least for cars.)
Advantages:
- They're great for pedestrians, with only 3 meters to cross to get out of the active car zone. (A pedestrian refuge between each lane would give similar benefit; in reality you'd likely only get that in a one-lane-each-way street.)
( Read more... )
two-lane street: Christian
Jun. 10th, 2025 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I previously talked about different bidirectional two-lane streets in Berkeley/Albany. Gilman, which was narrow, and annoying and crossable; Marin, which was wide (parking, bike, wide travel, plus turn lanes), and a high-speed stream of death. Tonight I'll talk about Christian, also two-lanes, and even narrower than Gilman since there is parking on only one side[1]. It is objectively much more crossable than Marin, but has felt more annoying than Gilman, such that on my casual walks with no destination, I will often avoid crossing it. Why should this be the case? I don't know, but some ideas. ( Read more... )
dispossessed, aside-thrust, chucked down
Jun. 10th, 2025 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In the meantime, there's plenty of tasks that need to be done before we go live, and I'm only avoiding some of them... some tasks are just freakishly intimidating and I can never tell why; half of them only take ten minutes once you actually face them.
The buses took a long time to recover after COVID - there was a phase where it felt like I was waiting 25 minutes every time I caught a bus - but the last year or so things have been much more reliable. Of course, sometimes that doesn't work in my favour, like how my bus home from church reliably arrives three minutes too late for me to catch the bus that stops by my house instead of having to walk ten minutes home. But the other day I was waiting for a bus which was twelve minutes away when I got to the stop... five minutes later it was thirteen minutes away... seven minutes after that it was fourteen minutes away... after that I stopped checking, because I was a little bit afraid of what might happen, and walked home instead.
Mum's started chemo now, and is doing OK-ish. I'm going over to see them on Sunday for Fathers' Day, possibly along with my brother and his tribe, but we'll see. Ticking along!
This is one of my longstanding grouches and you are all probably used to it
Jun. 10th, 2025 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
My attention, as they say, was drawn to this: Why Have So Many Books by Women Been Lost to History?
The question itself is reasonable, I guess, but what is downright WEIRD is they actually namecheck Persephone Press's acts of rediscovery -
- and one of the first books in their own endeavour is one that PP did early on and being Persephone is STILL IN PRINT.
And one of the others has been repeatedly reprinted as a significant work including by Pandora Press.
Do we think there is a) not checking this sort of thing b) erasure of feminist publishing foremothers?
Okay I pointed out that even Virago were not actually digging up Entirely Forgotten Works (ahem ahem South Riding never out of print and paid for a lot of gels to get to Somerville).
However, this did lead me to look up certain rare faves of mine, and lo and behold, British Library Women Writers have actually just reprinted, all praise to them, GB Stern's The Woman in the Hall, 1939 and never republished. Yay. This to my mind is one of her top works.
Also remark here that Furrowed Middlebrow are bringing back works that have genuinely been hard to get hold of, like the non-Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons, and the early Margery Sharps, and so on. (Though Greyladies had already done Noel Streatfeild as Susan Scarlett.)
Confess I am waiting for the Big Publishing Rediscovery of EBC Jones. Would also not mind maybe some attention to Violet Hunt (unfortunately her life was perhaps so dramatic it has outshone her work? gosh the Wikipedia entry is a bit thin.)