Beautiful

 

 

Collection

But our stories are about resistance, resurgence and badass MMA fighting congresswomen, reconnecting with our grandparents, fighting for future generations, building pathways for our fish, our children and our more-than-human relatives to thrive. It's time to represent our stories, our voices, our insights, our languages and our words for ourselves. In most of our Indigenous languages, our terms for ourselves translate to "the people." "Who are you?" someone asks. "What is the name of your tribe?" Our word usually translates to "We are the people. We are people, human beings." It's how we have represented ourselves since time began. It's about time for the media to catch up.

Once again, I'm confronted with a scientific expression of that system/spirit intuition I've been working within for the past two years at least. This article is a beautifully put ... sense of self, if you will.  "‘you’ are more than the contents of your chromosomes. The human body contains at least as many non-human cells (mostly bacteria, archaea and fungi) as human ones. Tens of thousands of microbial species crowd and jostle over and through the body, with profound effects on digestion, complexion, disease resistance, vision and mood. Without them, you don’t feel like you; in fact, you aren’t really you. The biological self has been reframed as a cluster of communities, all in communication with each other." This is worth the click for the writing, too, which is wonderful.

Banana. Plastic. Cool.

Edited to go beyond the bananas.

We all need hope, and I am willing to be persuaded it's worthwhile. So - yes, the environment as it existed before human intervention is in TROUBLE ... but the rate at which we're recognizing and seeking to rectify our errors is increasing every day. That is a good thing.

We're figuring out strategies to capture CO2. We're insatiably curious, even as we're scared, and that means we're fighting the consequences of our own blunders. Because homo sapiens are innovators.

Yes, there will be more unforseen consequences. Yes, there will always be greedy bastards who don't believe and don't care what has been manifest for decades - and is exponentially dangerous with every year that passes. Yes, it's sad we all look to (my niece, whom I shall not name here), Autumn Peltier, and Greta Thunberg - and feel stupid and scared and ineffectually guilty. The stupids *are* real.

Those who contemplate the groceries and trash we use are often paralyzed by the solutions that make their way into our attention - out of reach financially and/or geographically. When even the solutions aren't solutions, some, overwhelmed, just throw out plastic when nobody's looking - the new "throw up our hands and give up."

But there is HOPE. We are more than the contents of our chromosomes. And we're more than the consequences of our hubris.

And we're smart. And we're fascinated. And we're thinking about this. There's never been more focus on the problems stemming from and leading to climate, ecological, specie-al change.

Hope. Hope. HOPE. And learn.

The Collection of Happy-making-ness

I just subscribed to Nature's daily briefing. Best idea I've had in ages; it's already brought me joy, and that's worth dusting off this old blog, even though I know it's not exactly The Bullhorn of Teh Intarwebs 'round here ...



Happy birthday to Trillian & company.

“Zachary Taylor was there. George W. Bush was there. Jimmy Carter was there,” Jacoby said, and then paused to think. “Oh, uh, Hillary Clinton was there! I believe Chelsea Clinton was there. I think Alexander Hamilton was there, too.”

Not merely non-horiffic news about something happening in the environment, but teeming, JOYFUL news. With dolphins (failing to say so long and thanks for all the fish, which is a good thing).

Okay, moving on from the links I got from Nature - but not stopping with links to provide hope and the-happy ...

Coral farming. It's slow, but even just seeing that humans *try* to bring back this habitat and life and beauty is hopeful.

Repatriation stories always make ME happy, how about you?

One last link, again from The History Blog ... would you like to actually DO something to preserve America's unique history? Welp, because I have been remiss in checking the HB, we're too late to donate to this particular cause ... HOWEVER ... the saving has been DONE (see comments section - one of the few comments fora on the internet where it's always safe to keep reading)! One of the last Hopewell sites in Ohio has NOT been sold for McMansion development. A win for all of us, and one I am so glad to see.

And, if it were not obvious: The Archaeological Conservancy did not go *poof* with the gavel bang above. There are other opportunities to participate in saving material cultural heritage, and for some things it may become "too late" at any time. Consider donating, becoming a member, or learning more. I'm definitely adding this to my special lists of give-to organizations.

Collection

You don't need to know what Tisah B'Av is, if you just know that America is suffering. Find an event this weekend; I have found mine. And I plan to wear mourning, go, be quiet ... and, most likely, weep. Where is your event - or would you like to plan one?


... and, should you need an antidote to American atrocity ...
 

High comedy? Or low - as in that personal space we so often call "down there"? Medieval satire, or: when a lady breaks up with her down-there amid arguments with her. Some satire is evergreen. Or ever-rosy! Never accuse The History Blog of being dry and boring ...

This week in Trek tech - that sun ship I first heard of on DS9, and found bewildering, turns out (like so much Trek tech!) to be a thing. Sailing on a sunbeam. COOL.


But, seriously. Recognize where we are. If that means joining communities of faith this weekend. If that means choosing to give to those who are suffering. If that means prayer, or just reflection. Understand the world, and that it is filled with humanity. And, if you can, if there is an event near you: go. And do.

INDEPENDENCE Day

While thunder rumbles and rain roars, I am glad to be "unable" to participate in any quasi-happy jingoism today. I spent time with my mother, and now am getting down to the most patriotic activities for the day. Doing something with my privilege, to share it with those being punished by our country for the temerity to wish to become a part of it.

I am embarrassed by my federal government. That we are run by bigots and charlatans.

This is what we can do.

Here is where I am going, to share the smallest pieces of my American Dream.

• International Rescue Committee
• Al Otro Lado Border Rights Project 
• La Raza Centro
• Refugee Transitions
• Immigrant Legal Resource Center
• Immigrant Justice Fund

At the top link, there are these and MANY other ways to provide support to those on our borders who are in need.

3.5%

I have never read better news than this. As the United States slinks into democratic decline and incipient dictatorship, this is something to remember, repeat, to cling to. To act on.

It takes 3.5% of a population to TOPPLE A DICTATORSHIP. Nonviolently.

We don't need pitchforks. We need to care, and to stand up for our concerns - for our fellow people. We need to stop this dictatorship at its beginning, not listen to the myth that "this can't happen to us"  and "we are a democracy."



Tools (not weaponry).

Nonviolence.

Commitment.



3.5%.

It makes the job we have as citizens - as decent human beings - seem within our grasp.

(Edited to add an important paraphrase/link: nonviolence can be militant.)

Collection

This is a short, but achingly clear essay about the forced intimacy of disability (author's word choice). It's both obvious and something most of us probably never think about. And it's heartbreaking. Go read it - please.

Shrew are you? Super neato-spedito piece about the winter shrinkage of the shrew. Because shrews' heads were not NEARLY small enough. Amusingly written, and may provide some excuses for human seasonal lassitude as well.

Why do men who have never experienced this form of attack get to define what an attack is?

Like great writing? Funny, but honest - the humor that comes not merely from that certain kind of anger that engages us, but also reaches out to consider the anger together? Click here. Yes, it talks about sex. It also talks about things that definitely are not sex.

I have neglected this blog's penchant for fashion, style, costume, and beauty of late, so here is a curious look at (sniff of?) Commes des Garçons' strange brews. Personally, I love sandalwood. But did you know that concrete is absolutely devastating to the environment? Won't buy. Might sniff ... if I ever actually go to a department store.

Question for my writer pals, Reiders, readers, and anyone generally a nerd for a word: HOW COME NONE OF YOU EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THE OED BLOG??? Because I am mad at each and every one of you. Y'all going to make me caterwaul, I'm all tears and flapdoodle I never saw this site before. Another sample: litbait. Hee.

Eclectic Music

I often have reason to recall the time I went to a music store in California and bought Billie Holiday, Judas Priest, and Leonard Cohen CDs. The clerk smiled something about me buying gifts, and I said no, these are all for me - pretty sure I got a gleam of respect for the breadth.

It may be a reasonable sample to illustrate just how wide-ranging my tastes are. When I was younger, I'd say, "I grew up in a house with a dad who loved classical, original Broadway musicals (circa 1940s and 50s), and used to wake us up with Switched-On Bach at top volume. My mom was into country and church music. My brother was a punk rocker."

I mean, yeah - of course the elastic broke on whatever bag it was that should have contained my musical tastes.

But I think there's a lot more to it than that. I am intensely easy to bore. Always was. But ...

I'm also easy to interest, if the right odd thing comes along. I still recall the ease with which I could become utterly absorbed in staring down the pattern of the pebbles and mica flecks in the asphalt on the playground, when they had me playing the outfield in kickball. You can get a LOT of absorption-time in when you're not the popular kid, and just what falls in front of your eyeballs (when your eyeballs are perfect and young and can focus or defocus with alacrity).



There was a time in my life I spent almost entirely with musicians. I was still in college, but dating a TOWNIE (gasp - but then, an awful lot of the frat boys were entitled, molest-y jerks), and he was in a band. The music scene where we lived in the Midwest was pretty tight, and very talented, and it was a big interbreeding soup of interesting people I still miss and think of often.

But as dynamic a crowd as we were, we were predominantly white, and pretty much centered on a certain docket of Acceptable Music. Oh sure, they felt it was varied - and I did too, as far as I had forgotten my dalliances with the Dead and disco and the soundtrack from Breakin'. But I can recall the extreme prejudice with which, say, Beloved Ex regarded rap.

Rap and hip-hop (a term we really didn't know, honestly - rap was a blanket for an awful lot of Black music) were NOT music, he felt. All he/we saw was guys posing with their arms crossed. Maybe the unfortunate white-suburban perspective on Flava Flav. Scratching.

Scratching, and sampling, were just STEALING. That wasn't music - it certainly wasn't creation.

And this from a man who was a musician himself. His feeling sprung from a common theme amongst our friends - that "music" involves playing instruments.

Last night, I was struck (not for the first time) by the thought that ... not all instruments have strings, keys, or sticks ...

Episode 6
(No Empire Required)

PBS has been running a series - as so often is the case, excellently researched and peopled, with one hell of a soundtrack - called Soundbreaking. For almost anyone who cares about where music comes from creatively and practically, how it is actually made, its history and impact and the impulses that lead to new music and the ones that come from hearing it, Soundbreaking is immensely, essentially, worthwhile. And I'm not big on the whole "you HAVE to read this/hear this/see this" as a rule.

Last night's episode centered on hip-hop and rap quite a lot, and I was reminded of my periodic obsessions with Rakim, or Tupac, or Nas - of the enjoyment I got as a kid out of Run DMC - of an awful lot of music that wasn't supposed to be interesting to me.

And I realize, one of the million reasons I have never quite been able to lay claim to being a punk, or a goth, or a classic rocker or any one subcultural or pop-cultural thing that strongly associates with any music is that there is no music I'd be happy LIMITING myself to. Sure, I'm not the only person in the world who LOVES combinations like Grandmaster Flash and Warren Zevon and Southern Culture on the Skids (I once dated a guy who was both a huge KISS fan and also Color Me Badd - at the turn of the Millennium, no less, talk about past the sell-by date). But I'm actively, constitutionally incapable of committing to any one music above all others, because I have this stupid fear it'll define me, or I'll lose everything else.

Blame my family for raising me not only eclectic, but literalist. Bastards! :)

So last night, some old white woman bounces around her bedroom thinking, good gravy I am so wrong for this particular bouncing, and just incapable of caring.

I'm like Michael Bolton (not. that. one.).



There is something important, to me, in not accepting the music I'm supposed to be into - not limiting myself to the role of bland, frankly-past-middle-age (I do *not* wish to live to be 100, so I'm not in any sort of middle anymore) suburban woman. And I think, right now, reaching beyond boundaries is perhaps the best thing any American can do.

Where do you cross the lines, or blur them? Where can you bleed out of expectations, and understand a perspective that's not supposed to be yours?

Watch Soundbreaking and realize - or remember - one or two of the places you push your own envelope, break the bubble your everyday life leaves you in.

And maybe get a heck of a laugh at the bit with Sean Puffy Combs. Because that is a cackle-worthy damn DISS, y'all.

This Week

This week, I've seen those who are horrified at the United States' election outcome galvanized, all but instantly.

I'm not one of those people.

That first reaction I had, of gritting my teeth and practicing gratitude, didn't come easily, but it came unbidden. It was unexpected. I might have expected anger (I do have anger, but it is secondary with me), but perhaps I was too tired, too shocked. And anger is not my go-to. So gratitude and determination are not natural to me, but outrage apparently is less so. So.

The comments section at Janet Reid's blog is not a homogeneous slice of like-mindedness. The "Reiders" (I came up with that name thinking it was a bit on the nose, but it seems to have stuck) don't like the same things, we don't do the same things, but the people there - those who comment, and the many who read and seldom speak or never do - comprise a community.

The conversation there has always been one place I recommend as the one place on the internet you can - and *should* - read the comments.

This week, it has been one of the few places into media/social media/Teh Intarwebs I have not been afraid to go. It was impossible for me to listen to punditry or analysis of any kind. Until today, the actual physical pain of what has been done has been too much; being alone at night has been devastating. (Sometimes, even Gossamer the Editor Cat is not enough.) But the Reiders have been my reminder, COMMUNITY is what we come down to. (Okay, the Reiders and Jeff Sypeck, who commented on that post above with such sensitivity and insight.)

The open communication there - from the silent majority, from those who voted Trump but unhappily, and from the many who have shared something of my own horror, has been intelligent and reasonable. Utterly constructive.

I'm grateful for the Reiders, this week.

Monday's post - memories and hope.

Tuesday's discussion - little post, but so many there to speak.

Wednesday's continued management of the situation - and hope - and such a wave of creative galvanization.



Me, I'm still working through. I haven't really begun to act. I'm cutting some things out of my life - shows that are "edgily" wrong to be funny, and normalizing homophobia (bye-bye, Big Bang Theory) and even racism (Archer). Those that don't even think they're edgy, but propound reductive, retrograde gender roles (any reality TV other than RuPaul's Drag Race) and feminine lack of education/intelligence.

Once I'm less afraid of where the economy is going to go from here (augh), if I have money, I'll put it where my principles are more than I do now.

I will speak.

And, Janet: I will write.

"Dixie Dupree is eleven years old and already an expert liar"

For my Reider readers and beyond, many of you have seen me mention The Education of Dixie Dupree, Donna Everhart's upcoming debut novel. For those who have not: I've been eagerly awaiting this book for a LONG time now. Eagerly!

Well, I am not alone ... and pre-order is always an option.

Donna knows I have a "thing" about the intimacy of reading, but I also have a thing about supporting good authors, and without a doubt she qualifies. The struggle to wait is real.

COOL cover, right?"
You know you're curious.

But now ... the wait is but a couple of business days!

Collection

Stephen G. Parks and his partner on whether or not salt can expire. I love this post!

Feelin' flossy? Okay, much as I'd love to cite a classic Simpsons joke, I won't comment on the fact that the Brits are the ones finding that flossing is not efficacious. As for me, I do it less as a health concern than just because it makes me feel like my teeth are cleaner and out of  very minor concern that what I clean out of there could cause bad breath.

(W)e’ve trapped ourselves behind glass. We’re so bewildered by real life that we’ve had to invent a hashtag for it, and IRL – in real life – is now a state that is removed from the way we actually spend our days.

Okay, y'all have me dead to rights. I can't pretend I am not obsessed with The Drumpf's hair. But so many people are! Anyway, how am I not going to share this headline: The Citrusy Mystery of Trump's Hair? The plot thickens (even as the hair thins). This writer, though, misses the fact as obvious as my sixth grade teacher's ever-changing locks. She left every Friday with faded color, and returned to class Mondays with bright red hair. It was just a temporary rinse, and regular maintenance was for the weekend. Okay, now who's going to monitor Donald's mood-hair-color schedule? (BTW, "chromatic symphony with his face" is brill.)

Americans have a situation of overdue justice, wherein a male candidate is finally drawing as much sarcastic, snickering attention for his appearance as so many female candidates have long endured.

Also political wives, daughters, celebrities, athletes, any victim of anything which is covered by the media ... and, indeed, even the reporters, anchors, and commentators themselves, if they have the misfortune to be women ...

Speaking of women ... it is not only the problems we face, but the eloquence with which sometimes those are addressed, that makes it impossible for me to keep this blog from turning, at times, to the social and political struggles in the world. It is important *for* our world that, for instance, people should read the extraordinary and harrowing statement of the plaintiff (I refuse to call that woman a victim) in the Brock Turner case. It would be good, too, to click on the link above ... when the simple fact of a victim's gender can make murder "understandable".

Let's have a lighter note. Have you been following Janet Reid's blog as it goes to the dogs? It's also going to piglets, horses, and of course cats as she takes a month off babysitting her reiders to get in some good reading time. Her community's pet photos are a lovely way to while away an August day.

Y'all know I enjoy a good "oldest" artifact, and Cute Shoes knows I love jewelry - how about two for one? The oldest gold bead - inevitably, courtesy of The History Blog.

Also at The HB, on the road to hell with good intentions. The kids who tried to fix an ancient petroglyph ... It makes your heart just hurt, really.

And hearth rights - in a different way than I usually conceive of the phrase, as in the rights of a team to excavate and learn. The US Air Force and an archaeological team in Utah have brought to light a hearth dating back more than 12,000 years. And proof the area was once lush wetlands. And the oldest known human use of tobacco seeds. Huh!

Oh ... what do I usually mean by hearth rights? It's an ancient principle - basically, the concept of domicile and the precept of hospitality, manifest in the concrete. The hearth is the center of manmade fire, and it was a physical heart to humans' daily lives for millennia, throughout the world. Tending the hearth, the right to be warmed beside it, to enter its protective light out of the darkness, to be fed from the food cooked upon it - these were core to human experience throughout history, and hearth rights were not to be trifled with. The hearth gave us community, sustenance, security from the night. This is why hospitality, enshrined in so many cultures, is such a great gift.

But the archaeological right to explore is perhaps as important. It is the way we record how we once lived - and reflect that upon how we live now.

And finally, from The Washington Post - better passwords aren't nonsensical, they're LONGER. This also marks the first time I've ever failed to cringe at the phrase "all intensive purposes".

Collection

Stephen G. Parks and his partner on whether or not salt can expire. I love this post!

Feelin' flossy? Okay, much as I'd love to cite a classic Simpsons joke, I won't comment on the fact that the Brits are the ones finding that flossing is not efficacious. As for me, I do it less as a health concern than just because it makes me feel like my teeth are cleaner and out of  very minor concern that what I clean out of there could cause bad breath.

(W)e’ve trapped ourselves behind glass. We’re so bewildered by real life that we’ve had to invent a hashtag for it, and IRL – in real life – is now a state that is removed from the way we actually spend our days.

Okay, y'all have me dead to rights. I can't pretend I am not obsessed with The Drumpf's hair. But so many people are! Anyway, how am I not going to share this headline: The Citrusy Mystery of Trump's Hair? The plot thickens (even as the hair thins). This writer, though, misses the fact as obvious as my sixth grade teacher's ever-changing locks. She left every Friday with faded color, and returned to class Mondays with bright red hair. It was just a temporary rinse, and regular maintenance was for the weekend. Okay, now who's going to monitor Donald's mood-hair-color schedule? (BTW, "chromatic symphony with his face" is brill.)

Americans have a situation of overdue justice, wherein a male candidate is finally drawing as much sarcastic, snickering attention for his appearance as so many female candidates have long endured.

Also political wives, daughters, celebrities, athletes, any victim of anything which is covered by the media ... and, indeed, even the reporters, anchors, and commentators themselves, if they have the misfortune to be women ...

Speaking of women ... it is not only the problems we face, but the eloquence with which sometimes those are addressed, that makes it impossible for me to keep this blog from turning, at times, to the social and political struggles in the world. It is important *for* our world that, for instance, people should read the extraordinary and harrowing statement of the plaintiff (I refuse to call that woman a victim) in the Brock Turner case. It would be good, too, to click on the link above ... when the simple fact of a victim's gender can make murder "understandable".

Let's have a lighter note. Have you been following Janet Reid's blog as it goes to the dogs? It's also going to piglets, horses, and of course cats as she takes a month off babysitting her reiders to get in some good reading time. Her community's pet photos are a lovely way to while away an August day.

Y'all know I enjoy a good "oldest" artifact, and Cute Shoes knows I love jewelry - how about two for one? The oldest gold bead - inevitably, courtesy of The History Blog.

Also at The HB, on the road to hell with good intentions. The kids who tried to fix an ancient petroglyph ... It makes your heart just hurt, really.

And hearth rights - in a different way than I usually conceive of the phrase, as in the rights of a team to excavate and learn. The US Air Force and an archaeological team in Utah have brought to light a hearth dating back more than 12,000 years. And proof the area was once lush wetlands. And the oldest known human use of tobacco seeds. Huh!

Oh ... what do I usually mean by hearth rights? It's an ancient principle - basically, the concept of domicile and the precept of hospitality, manifest in the concrete. The hearth is the center of manmade fire, and it was a physical heart to humans' daily lives for millennia, throughout the world. Tending the hearth, the right to be warmed beside it, to enter its protective light out of the darkness, to be fed from the food cooked upon it - these were core to human experience throughout history, and hearth rights were not to be trifled with. The hearth gave us community, sustenance, security from the night. This is why hospitality, enshrined in so many cultures, is such a great gift.

But the archaeological right to explore is perhaps as important. It is the way we record how we once lived - and reflect that upon how we live now.

And finally, from The Washington Post - better passwords aren't nonsensical, they're LONGER. This also marks the first time I've ever failed to cringe at the phrase "all intensive purposes".

Scent of Bread and Onions

... today's headline comes from the moment I stepped through the door from my side of the office building, and emerged into our atrium, where the fragrances of lunch open your nose.

The phrase kind of takes you places, doesn't it? I like the shape and feel of it. It might need a The. It might not. I can imagine places it might take us.

Wouldn't it make a great title?

Wouldn't it make ... a great prompt for flash fiction?

I'd love it if you agreed - and decided to take us places, in the comments.

"Not In Front of My Students!"

It would mean a great deal to me if anyone who reads this blog would read this account of a terrifying moment at the Iowa caucuses this week. This piece is not about politics, it's not about the candidates. It is, purely and urgently, about fear. And fear has its place at this blog. And I want people to understand why that is.

Why it must be.

And also to see the other thread ... which is perhaps the most perfect testimony of what it means to be a teacher that I have ever read.

The affirmation. The shining, life-affirming reasons for gratitude.

Collection

It is rare, if not unprecedented, for me to contemplate the phrase "everybody's talking about it!" without scoffing, pinching salt, or otherwise having no patience with the entire concept. But Harper Lee has brought us as close as I've ever seen, with the Go Set a Watchman epochal event publication. Mostly discussion seems to center on the disconcerting combination of darn-near-prurient curiosity about the manipulations involved in making public a draft work, and a general condemnation of the work as "should've been only a scholarly curiosity, really isn't a saleable novel, hey I'm only reporting the facts, and isn't it terrible they've done this (so I can buy in and then blog about it)?" There is a lot that's ghastly. So it was even more quease-inducing to read this. Apparently, Atticus - the great American symbol of moral rectitude and crusadership - turns out to be a big old bigot.

Sigh.

So let's look at racism in a different way. Nyki Blatchley provides a truly EXCELLENT post on the Aryan fallacy and all its little malformed fallacious babies. A linguistic/historical/cultural must-read, because it's incisive and important on multiple levels. It's good storytelling, it's good teaching, it touches on varied aspects of those ways we seem to love to come to wrong-thinking, and it's *sourced*, which is more than I ever do for y'all. So go. Now.

Collection

It's all History Blog all the time for today, but quite a variety of linky interesting-ness to share ...

Let's kick off with Robert Cornelius, perpetrator of the first daguerreotype self-portrait. And then left dabbling in photography to look into alternative fuels for his family's lamp business. Strangely, pig lard did not take off, at least not long enough for pigs-flying jokes. (I had a crush on a guy named Bob Cornelius freshman year of college - so extra oddness points here for me, because this Cornelius is cute in a very modern way.)

Conveniently dovetailing with my recent reading of H. G. Wells, here we have the sale of the illustrations for the 1897 edition of War of the Worlds almost, but not quite, drawn by a guy called Henry the Dead. All images at the link are worth a click and closer peering. I'd pinch one here, but honestly I'm never clear on the HB what the public domain status of the images is, so just GO! Neato-spedito!

Inevitably, I'm a TCM lover as it is, but a summer full of noir ... is a summer I can get into. Yaaay!

And finally - as if the world needed ANY more examples of the fully OSUM splendiferosity that is George Takei brings to his masses the Japanese American History: NOT For Sale campaign. Historical education *and* preservation from the guy who literally piloted us into the future half a century ago. He's done rather a lot more than that, and almost all of it is fanfooogootastic. More neato spedito, y'all.

Collection

Jeff Sypeck at Quid plura has several very good shots (and some thoughts and stories about them) taken with the fascinating limitations of a Polaroid Land Camera. The images comprise a really interesting variety, and are beautiful - well worth the click - so enjoy!

Woe is not to me, the Arrant Pedant has a great new post explaining cases, datives, and this wonderful phrase. Read and learn.

Personally? I think American Duchess is wrong, that their new flats aren't quite the modern thing. More options to consider.

Madame Isis once again provides excellent information about authentic eighteenth-century hair styling - and she has some truly lovely candlelit photos of herself modeling some very pretty curls. (She also gives away a secret I've known for many years - long hair does not need to be washed every single day ... even for us modern constant-washers!)

Tom Williams on researching a novel after the fact. I need to do some of that!

And, finally, just because this pic is so good my dear Cute Shoes said it looked professional:

Even Just an Interview ...

... with the Arrant Pedant is erudite, openminded, engaging, and worth reading.  So go.  I'll still be here.

There are ways to love language that don’t involve being lecturing people on their mistakes or otherwise being an insufferable pedant.

(I)t’s sad that people assume that being an editor or a grammar expert means you’re a jerk.

--Jonathon Owen

Am I Blue?

So, the blue-screenery of life appeared only Sunday, and has ramped up with rather ostentatious ominousness, but Safe Mode is a wonderful thing (if not purty purty purty).  So posting will continue sporadically until I can bring myself to do something about that.

In the meantime, go read Janet Reid, because she is more awesome than I, and you got on here to read, didn't you?  Go.  Do.

Meat

Of the most recent four requests-for-a-full I had out (for those of you who aren't querying authors, a "full" means those agents who have asked to read the entire manuscript), I did not get any feedback from three of them.

One is a very very lovely woman I've met before whom I knew probably was not the right match for me, but you don't not-submit when someone gives the go-ahead - you never do know, in this world.  One seemed to me not really a personality match - and, indeed, I never even heard from her after submission, which from *my* end is a write-off.  Another was the ridiculously delightful Victoria Skurnick, who agreed to an interview on my blog as well (I need to get on that) but who, in the end, really doesn't do my genre, so as much as I adored her I knew it wasn't a good bet, and she was just as kind in letting me down as she was in opening the option to begin with.

The last one, though, whose name shall remain un-mentioned for now as I'm not convinced that book is closed, so to speak, provided nicely specific requirements and the salutation, "Back to work!"

The good news is, I agree with the feedback.  Indeed, during the last revision, cutting tens of thousands of words out of a completely ridiculous draft, I had thoughts cross my mind which reflect similar expectations.  So I'm going back to work - taking the butter knife back to the dragon's lair - and doing what I can to spread a bit of oleo.

The even better news than that is that this should not be a very big job.  It's a matter of some restoration, but not masses of new writing - nor of new cutting.  It's a matter of set dressing, essentially, and - of course - it does mean suspending any new querying for the time.  I won't pretend an excuse to suspend querying isn't welcome - even as sanguine as I am about the process, I don't think *anyone* would call it a pleasurable one.

And so today, back still hinky and kinky, enjoying my clean house, the open windows, a bout of laundry-doing, and the occasional nestle, I'm perusing scenes to see which ones are too free-floating--and SWEATING about my thoughts on which ones are "there" enough.  And, of course, dealing with the impulse to get into other things as well.  "Oh, wait, that character needs ..." and so on.  Some of it I should probably indulge.

But some of it I need to restrain as well - because here is the major thing:  this is not something I have endless time to fool around with.  An editorial agent (SQUEE) *might* care enough about my work to consider it twice.  The last time that happened, I took far too long, and the world changed by the time I got back to the interested party, and it transpired that there no longer was interest by the time I finished with the butter knife.

Part of the process of being a "potential" (published) author is learning, and learning-how-to-do at that.  I learned a lot, losing what I wanted to hope was a Dream Agent.

Not interested in losing another.