Your wrist

That scene
in Pippin.
Where Catherine sings paeans
to the arch of his foot.

In high school, that was illuminating
and silly...
and I liked it and laughed at it,
though not because
I understood.

Today
the picture of you
Your face is always visible from its place
but today
I saw only the line of your wrist
and for a moment
it was unfamiliar
wrong
but I stopped, I looked at it
and was reassured.

Your wrist is elegant. As are your fingers.
Long and lean, immaculate, powerful.

Your wrist.
I miss it.
It held me once.

Missed.

Collection

Archaeogaming. It's a tantalizing word, an interesting idea. As I said to my favorite gamer and my favorite archaeologist, I should figure out how to apply this to writing. But then - "Oh. Wait. I became a writer exactly so I wouldn't have to play nicely with others."

My daughter and I are as different as fire and rain and as alike as ice and water.

Isn't that a glorious sentence? Subtle, poetic, evocative - and yet concrete, communicative. There is a whole essay's worth more here, from Elyse M. Goldsmith, and a shout-out to Bowie. Make with the click, y'all.

The History Blog has a pair of great posts this week. First, footprints not in the sand: an ancient child's tootsies, captured in three millennia old mortar. Also, how cool is the name Manfred Bietek? Second, interested in a project? You can transcribe WWI era love letters for posterity. Cool.

Ego Tripping - Nikki Giovanni

Today, I did not want to make the moment I shook her hand about myself. So instead of telling Nikki Giovanni how she had affected me, I said only thank you.

But the first time I ever read Ego Tripping is still indelible, powerful in my experience. You don't forget moments that change you, that elevate your perspective.

I hope it is forgivable, permissible, for me to reprint her work. It is too important to just hope you will click somewhere and read. And so ...

I was born in the Congo
I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built
The Sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
That only glows every one hundred years falls
Into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
Drinking nectar with Allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe
To cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is Nefertiti
The tears from my birth pains
Created the Nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
Out the Sahara desert
With a packet of goat's meat
And a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
So swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son Hannibal an elephant
He gave me Rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son Noah built New/Ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
As we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
Jesus
Men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
The filings from my fingernails are
Semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the Arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
The earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
Across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
Like a bird in the sky

The line that captured me a generation ago, and holds me to this day is "I am so hip even my errors are correct" ...

As I grow older, though, it is "I cannot be comprehended except by my permission" that comes to mean more and more.

What gets you, in this piece?

Or in any other poem?

Library of Virginia Literary Lunch

Today, I shook Nikki Giovanni's hand and said thank you.

Collection

This travelogue by a gent I worked with, ummmm four or five jobs ago, gave me multiple giggles in a row. If you like limericks (even non-ribald ones), this post is for you. Glorious!

An interesting development in Sweden: a gender rating system for films. It appears to be pretty much a cis system - male and female representation, nothing beyond. But as a member of those privileged to be examined in this,  it is of great interest and a matter for hope that anyone's looking at all. (If you have the stomach for it, a click onward to the Seth McFarlane article is worth a couple minutes as well.)

The History Blog has a couple of good ones - here, telling us that CBS This Morning will be at the National Museum of African American History (not just open for a day, folks) tomorrow morning. And here, with the beautiful tribute to a Jewish woman in Egypt - a third century epitaph.

15. Because we will not forget.

Waxing Moon

Watery, drab spring, and vertigo, and the necessity to make a living keep me inside doors so much. Tonight: a walk, under the moon.

Distinctive scents of home; whiff of honeysuckle along the 4-laner amid storefronts and garages. Moving away from mercury lights, toward the houses - strong spirea, clover, fresh cut grass, exhaust and asphalt.

The sounds; the way live music sounds warm, muffled, emanating from the bar and grill. Not looking in, just glad people are out, are together. Two horns, vying against one another up the road, their engines as angry as their drivers.

Full moon cool, distant, and remote. Sheen of its light on a peaked slate roof.

It is so damned lonesome here. When the walk is already over.

My Letter to you, Damien Echols

It's hard for me to say for how many years I've followed the story of the West Memphis Three, but fifteen years may be about fair, for paying specific attention and actually seeking reading (and the documentaries) about the tragedy.

For those unfamiliar with the story, I won't link Wikipedia, only provide the simple story. The West Memphis Three were Jessie Misskelly, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin. In 1993, amid Satanist panic and public furor, these teenaged boys were convicted of the murder of three young boys in West Memphis Arkansas, in one of the more famous miscarriages of justice in the twentieth century. The details abound, so I will not recount them here, but it is a cruelly fascinating episode, and shameful beyond description.

The most famous, and oldest, of the convicted Three, is Damien Echols. He has become well known both for his past and also for his recovery (I will not use the term rehabilitation), but it is always his writing that clings to me when I look again toward this story. It feels cruel to call it a story, though. Perhaps I should say, look again toward these people.

I wish I had a handful of dust
--Damien Echols

One of the things that always strikes me in the heart about these kids - about this one - is that he reminds me indelibly of two of the three great loves of my life. His melancholy and his coloring are powerfully like Mr. X. And his expression of what a disadvantaged - what a battered - life is like echo sometimes in the communications with my first love, who reappeared almost a year ago, and who still breaks my heart at times (not in the way we once felt, of course).

And, seven years younger than I am, I know he's not a child, but his experience sparks in me something like a maternal outrage. The wish it had been possible to protect him. He was just a boy, barely older than the murder victims themselves really, and so the offense at his wrongful conviction and confinement - on death ROW, no less - is compounded by whatever vestige of protectiveness washing around in my guts.



Humanity is filled with so many who respond so much worse to wounds so much less - or illusory - his is an example of grace.

In recent months, face to face with another kind of grace, reading the link above today was inspirational. And, I will admit it, entertaining. In the sense that art entertains, that great writing does - even as it may elevate, or relieve, or release, or evaporate with no ghost but pleasure had - to understand the experience of solitary, of death row, of imprisonment is ... how to choose a word carefully here ... "stimulating" is accurate, but larded with inaccurate implications ... "educational" is right too, but almost so spare of deeper meaning as to fall short rather than overshoot ...

Enlightening. It lightens the soul to know another soul is not burdened by the worst we can do to one another - or has been set free. And it lightens the world to illuminate corners of it most of us will never see, G-d be praised for it.

Image: Wikipedia

His writing is extraordinary, evocative. The piece linked above reads like engrossing fiction; and the fact that it is not is an outrage. Something beyond poignant, something so much more important.

Certain shade of agony have their own beauty
--Damien Echols

Read his writing at the link. It is life itself.

Penelope, Abigail Adams, and the False Maid

I swear, it is an accident that my dog's name is Penelope. When I first saw her,  the association with her name, as given to her by her foster organization, was by far stronger with my grandmother's dog, whom we called "Penny-Dawg", than with Odysseus' wife.

It amuses me, of course, that the image used on the article I linked above, happens to be of Artemis: or Diana.

But "that" Penelope does have her plangent resonance in my life.

Still, I would hardly name a dog for the ongoing facts of my life, least of all the fact that for double-digit years now, the man who's ruined me for all the other boys happens to be someone who lives thousands of miles away.

Penelope was what she was called before I ever met her, and when they asked me what I was going to name her, I was genuinely bewildered. "She's clearly a Penelope."

It's a bouncy name, and she has always been a bouncy girl. Honestly, I feel like it has a happy sound to it. It has her energy, perfectly.

And she'd make a rotten Abigail, though Mrs. Adams is yet another famed example of a separated, devoted wife.



People find a separated relationship immensely peculiar - not to say, a stoning offense - in the modern world. Because we are short on wild frontiers, and it has become uncommon for people to strike out on their own to make their fortunes to support spouses and/or children, there is, in the contemporary mindset, no reason to hold out for anyone who is far away.

"Geographically undesirable" is a thing - a big thing - I have learned, in the years Mr. X has lived so far away.

And standardized definitions of what comprises acceptable relationships are a huge thing indeed.

"THAT'S not a boyfriend!" someone who barely knew me said upon hearing a bit about Mr. X. Yes, well, I was past forty even then, and the term "boyfriend" is embarrassing in any case. Whatever my relationship is or is not, I don't *want* a "boyfriend" because I am not in school anymore.

But thereby we fall into a linguistic vortex many of us have been swirling around ever since the concept of romantic relationships not firmly on a short course to marriage was invented, and this lies well beside the point of this post.

I quit engaging debates about the validity of my relationships years ago, and leave it with "Find me the man who's better, locally" when it ever comes up at all.


It comes up less, with advancing age. People look at a woman of forty-eight, and if she's single, she fits into a certain tidy box, and pestering her to get a man seems less a priority for strangers than it is when she is thirty-something.



I'm working on some short stories, turning on Penelope and perhaps Melantho, her false maid.

Stay tuned with me ... I'll share if it works out.

Pride and Prejudice and Privilege

Of all the literary scandals I've read in my day, holy heck is this a fascinating ethical exploration.

This cropped up in Janet's blog today, and for once the result was a comments section I did *not* find comfortable to read, so I am not linking it. It is only where I learned of this anyway, so go to the link above if you are curious about the deeper details. Skip over a LENGTHY intro all about rules, and most of a long series of paragraphs beginning with "I" and get to the one that begins with "I chose a strange and funny and rueful poem" and read from there.

The crux of the issue is a white male poet who submitted under an Asian (or Asian-sounding; I am not the one to verify other cultures' nomenclature) name, and whose poem was chosen for the Best American Poetry 2015 ... admittedly and partially because of this.

The examination of the man who made this choice, and both his culpability and the reasons for it, is devastatingly and honorably honest in the rarest way.

(T)here was no doubt that I would pull that fucking poem because of that deceitful pseudonym. But I realized that I would primarily be jettisoning the poem because of my own sense of embarrassment. I would have pulled it because I didn't want to hear people say, "Oh, look at the big Indian writer conned by the white guy." I would have dumped the poem because of my vanity. ...  I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise.

That last sentence had to be an incredibly difficult conclusion to reach, and the conclusion of the post itself, Sherman Alexie's examination of his own identity, is a great example of integrity, whatever else the controversy may have borne for him.


It hasn't occurred to me to blog about this, but somehow it seems relevant in a sidelong way now.

At a very different point on an identity spectrum that spans not a line, but an entire plane and perhaps three dimensions, lies one Caitlyn Jenner. I've found myself watching a good deal of "I Am Cait", the reality show she launched along with the revolution in her own identity. It's the sort of thing I wanted to resist; frankly, it was unformed but in my mind to ignore the whole show attendant upon her transition, thereby proving my lack of prejudice (and maintaining a mile-wide perimeter against anything even Kardashian-adjacent). But, thanks to its ubiquity across many channels and many weeks, I caught the Diane Sawyer interview, and ended up reluctantly intrigued.

The theme of the reality show that has struck me far more than the splashy headline of "ooh, trans person" has by far and away been its examination of privilege.

Note that I do not say HER examination of privilege; because she went into the show with expectations that she would be exploring the process of gender transition, dealing with her family and her identity and the pain and the liberty she now has in her own skin, which has finally come to resemble the sense of self she's always harbored and hidden and lived with all her life.

But the fact is, Caitlyn's role - which she seems eager to adopt and live up to - has become that of an avatar for an entire "community" of transgender people ... and yet, "community" is a foolish term, because inherently the deepest problems with transgender individuals is that of isolation and even self-denial ... and yet, Caitlyn's experience is like NOTHING any other has ever experienced, or probably ever will.

For one, Caitlyn is transitioning at a time in her life which is not, perhaps (I am no judge here) typical of the experience.

She is also essentially chairing a public discourse and her own personal experience from a position of wealth and power pretty much nobody else in her position has ever possessed.

And the show is illustrating, in pretty clear detail, just how powerful Caitlyn's privilege is. The new trans friends with whom she is surrounding herself are keeping her pretty honest at every turn ("Why do you keep saying THEY when you talk about trans people? You are a trans person!" ... "You keep saying how normal we are. This is because you are aware of the freak factor." ... "YES, many trans women turn to sex work; not a lot of us have the privilege you do, and being trans can make it harder to keep a job, or lose you one if you have it." and so on). They are begging her to look at the power she wields, having been Bruce Jenner for as long as she felt she must or could hide - and to use it.

In a year when I've spent so much time examining my own privilege, to watch someone with this much of it trying to do the same, and doing so earnestly, if sometimes imperfectly, has been an unexpected lens through which to examine someone's transition into a physical body that aligns with their sense of self better than the one issued at birth.

Caitlyn has made a hell of an avatar. Statuesque and showing pride as well as vulnerability, gorgeously attired and constantly attended, the chrysalis has opened and someone unexpected and in some ways both spectacular and delicate seems to be emerging.

I don't essentially admire Jenner as a woman, any more than I did before we knew she was, particularly; but I respect her stepping up, acknowledging her power in a position which for most is the opposite of powerful, and trying to do good. Even for her, it cannot be easy; just as admitting his bias has hardly been easy for Alexie, in a situation he could have avoided if he chose to.

Caitlyn Jenner could have avoided this ... and yet, could not. Not while living with the fullest integrity.

Sherman Alexie could have avoided the controversy, too ... and yet, could not. He clearly placed honesty higher than comfort, and that is never simple, never easy.

Collection

The Arrant Pedant on whether we can empirically "prove" grammar. "Just because something is doesn't mean it ought to be." An excellent rule for life in general, kids. (This is one of those times I wish my dad were here, so we could talk about this interesting article. He'd have liked the AP, I think. But I hope I'll be dead before new-kulur replaces the proper pronunciation of nuclear.)

NatGeo takes a look at the unexpected brain science behind London cabbies' "The Knowledge" test. Turns out? Intensive learning changes your brain. Neat!

Fellow Reider Brian Schwartz has a great post on not letting a phone run you. I'm late to link it, but love it!

Jeff Sypeck's poetry inspired by the gargoyles of the National Cathedral itself has inspired music. How cool must THAT be!?

Collection

Congratulations Colin Smith, on being PUBLISHED! By an agent! At this amusing post singing the praises of The Perfect Agent on the BookEnds Literary Agency blog.

Gary Corby points out the interesting and useful fact that The Silk Road was not the beginning of European silk trading. Super handy for him, writing about ancient Greece; and, in that vein, it's also an instructive look into the way historical fiction authors make decisions about what we use and don't from popular sources.

For more on silk, this time its strategic role in WWII, and a wider look at the ingenuity - and national *importance* - of fashion under restrictive conditions, please read Celia Rees' post at The History Girls. It's a great piece of perspective on how we got where we are - and who we once were, compared to who we are now. This is another of those examples of how fashion is more than frivolity and its depth of importance for us as human beings.

Jeff Sypeck has me DYING of Teh Internets, because the idea of someone reading a writer's work and creating music from it is more wonderful a form of interaction and inspiration than I even hope for. But now I'm totally hoping for something like this, some day.

Kim Rendfield posts about the complexities of slavery in a very different time from antebellum America - a world where someone might sell themselves into slavery and freedom had no Railroad. In Ax, I didn't examine slavery in any depth, though it is depicted throughout. In Wippy, I'll be taking a much, MUCH closer look at the institution as it was inherited from Rome, and practiced in Gaul and Constantinople. A slave is a major character. I'm leaving the environs Ax shared with Kim Rendfield's works, but she's not escaping my bookmarks!

The History Blog has its usual worthwhile analysis and excellent links about New York's marker for the Wall Street/Pearl Street slave market. Of the 38 markers in Lower Manhattan ... this will be the first acknowledging the role of slaves in building New York City. Interesting, too, are the comments, which reflect a general consensus that Northern states are absolved of guilt in America's slave history. Not so much - and look where it stood. Wall Street.

The History Blog is also revisiting automata - so if that creeps you out, do NOT click here. Yes, boys and girls, it is a creeping BABY automaton. And so much more. Racialized (that is to say, racist) automata - including a deeply disturbing mockup of a Sojourner Truth by no (other) name at all. And an electric cane which may or may not be good for you for some reason or other, though  “the effect of a gentle galvanic current on the human organization is not in the present state of electrical and physiological science fully explained.” Um.

Images as Sources

Researching the WIP takes more than reading; it takes a lot of *looking* as well.

Queen Amalsuntha of the Ostrogoths
Image:  egyptsearch.com

One of the things this image did for me in stepping beyond Clovis and Gaul, into the lives of his sister, niece, and grand-niece, was to free me from the irksome presumption that the stars of contemporary histfic all have to be beauties by contemporary standards.  What it did *not* do for me was to indicate that the great eyes here were a symptom of, perhaps, Graves Disease, or provide an exact replica of (for one) Amalasuntha’s actual appearance.

Empress Theodora
Image:  Wikimedia

If you take a look at the bust of (most likely) Empress Theodora, she has a similarly wide-eyed look.  It’s not much of a cup of tea for all modern viewers, but the repetition of a feature like this in art is likely less an indication that everyone in a given period of history suffered from thyroid issues than that this was a standard style in depictions of the period.

There may be a degree to which you can let such a portrait inform your description of a character, but there may also be a good deal of freedom from such a source as this, the latitude in which you (or I) can create a character who is of constrained beauty, but perhaps not outright ill a la Marty Feldman.  Or perhaps she is.

Amalasuntha
Image:  romancoins.info

The coin image is perhaps the most curious one, to my eye, because its exaggerated proportions – typical enough, for the tiny and inexact medium – call to mind a very old woman indeed.  The wizened-appearing flesh between bulbuous features, though, is deceiving:  Amalasuntha died at the age of only forty.  Though this was certainly old enough, in Late Antiquity, to put her well beyond the youthful blush of a beautiful princess, it seems unlikely that as queen she necessarily took on the appearance of extreme age.

It’s possible this again was an artistic convention – portraying the queen as aged in order to invoke veneration; downplaying her physical appeal (or delicacy) in order to emphasize her power, position, or charisma as opposed to her charms.

It’s possible, too, that the convention was propagandistic in another way – Amalasuntha was highly unpopular with her own Ostrogothic nobles, and the image could have been minted in caricature, an unspoken insult, by those who must serve her, but had control of the mints.

It’s also possible the limited medium of a coin disallowed realism, beauty, or any of the above theories with highly subjective messages (though we all know, do we not, that the craftsmanship and arts of the time were exquisitely beautiful, and we don’t buy into the whole “people of the past were a lumpen lot of mouth-breathing dullards without skills”, right?).  It’s possible we just had an unskilled craftsman on the job the day they minted coins in the name of the regnant queen, daughter of Theodoric the Great, ruler of the Ostrogoths.  Possible.  But, given Amalasuntha’s own Roman education, the cosmopolitan nature of the world she lived in, the wealth at her disposal and the importance, at this time, of any public statement – particularly one literally showing the face of the monarch, a woman already fighting against prejudices from all sides –

… I’m going to venture to guess there’s something subjective here – whatever that may be.

Amalasuntha
Image:  Wikimedia

One of the other things images of a historical character (or images of other people from a period) can do is to illuminate the style of a period not only in terms of its clothes and headdress and personal decoration, but what was most important societally in the setting.  When I was much younger, I could look at medieval art and see very little detail, and be fine with that.

Now we have not only costume blogs and papers, and those who study and write about not only surviving artifacts, grave goods, and descriptions, but the two- and three-dimensional art of a period, and who write about the minutest of details, who bring to life the way we dressed, the way we carved beads, the way we dressed our hair.  These things are invaluable to understanding the physical manner of life as it was once lived.

Theodora's 'do
Image:  Wikimedia

Susann Cokal, an authoress of my acquaintance, has talked about wearing a corset and eating period food in her research for Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, and many authors and actors make this sort of physical preparation a part of creating a character.

I cannot say I care to do this with, say, garum.  Dedication is one thing, but I see little need to make the research for my novel into a late-period episode of survivor, eating stuff that grosses me out, for the dubious pleasure of being able to minutely describe exactly what rotted-fish-sauce actually tastes like.  I leave the satisfaction of such knowledge (which, let's face it, may be about as “authentic” as the paleo diet) to those who post recipes for garum or what-have-you.

And yet, the level of insight and detail we can find in truly analyzing artifacts and images which appear to the casual observer to have little detail is in fact astonishing.  To those who make a profession of studying ancient hair dressing methods, or indeed cooking – to the costume bloggers who can take a centuries-old portrait practically down to its skivvies by detecting construction methods from imperfect drawings or even unfinished works, I and all authors working in the world of information access owe an indelible debt of gratitude.

It is possible to flesh out the textile or cosmetology of the world we must build, as authors, to a remarkable degree.  Indeed, for all I joke about archaeologists and poop, the mere matter of breakfast does not elude our grasp.  In a scientific age which can pinpoint Otzi’s social status and particular stomping grounds from the last meal in his stomach, scatalogical studies are positive boon.  I can tell you that King Clovis likely ate a great deal of seafood and possibly enjoyed beef (a very high status source of protein, the latter), but probably did not indulge much in pork, which tended to be an inland livestock, more to be found in forests than in the Salic grounds of Belgica Secunda, where the king grew up.

I know, too, that Theodoric’s capital, Ravenna, was in a part of Italy rich in marshes – and it’s possible, from there, to get a feel for the air (I grew up in swamp land), to evoke some idea of the way the marsh grasses might have sounded – to extrapolate from the geography, some of the diet and trade and people of this city.

I can look – truly look – at the relief sculpture above, and study others’ scholarship of course (that debt of gratitude) and consider how important pearls were in the makeup of both costume and toilette – and perhaps even the symbolism of each garment, each jewel.  I can also tell the difference between a chiton and dalmatic, and describe characters’ dress appropriately, from the Roman world to the Ostrogoths – and even create tension in the “other-ness” we can demonstrate in display.

Amalasuntha seems to have used her son’s upbringing to send messages about status and her royal expectations (and prerogatives) – and I can even deduce she may have worn red shoes.  I can make a point of her shoes, in much the same way I once made a point about a character by the way she brushed her hair – or another, in the way he loses touch with the day-to-day and loses touch with the way he sleeps, dresses, and ablutes, over the course of a story.

I can build a world one stitch at a time.  I can cover my characters in a thousand stitches … and draw from them each of their stories.

Collection

Janet Reid takes a couple of good looks at agently idiocy.

Leila Gaskin on the 5-second rule, which takes more fortitude than I have in me.  I'm more a "If the idea really loves me, it will come back" and let it be gone if it wants to be sort of lazy-pants, but she's probably got the wiser method ...

The History Blog once again with the fascinating stories - this time, the foundling Faberge' egg.  I love the commenter who says they want to become a scrap metal dealer so they can drop $14k at a flea market.  Hear, hear!

Edited to add The History Girls' guest, Tansy Raynor, who has a little something to say about women, Rome, and Sulpicia (whom, actually, I had heard of).  The old "She wrote it - but ..." problem.

Collection

Rare shillings and Evil Dead references?  Count me in, History Blog!

The History Blog is going to dominate today, I'm afraid.  They've also got a surprising piece on "new old stock" if you will - undiscovered Sappho poems.  Literature unearthed after long ages is irresistible.

THE archaeological story of the week - and as always, HB's coverage is a good read with good resources.  One of the oldest temples thus far ever found in Rome ...

Finally, a friend and a fine advice-giver.  These two posts were interesting to read within five minutes of each other.  I have writer friends who STILL talk about self-pubbing as (a) their "only" option and (b) something of a shamefaced admission.  Leila, of course, knows better than this.  And yet, as always, the Query Shark has the tough-love's-eye-view.  Publishing is in a fascinating place right now, and indie authorship is exciting IF you are the right author for it, and have the right project for it.  My going traditional (well, or trying to ...) has nothing to do with thinking it's better than doing it myself.  I'm not well educated in self pubbing and have not been drawn to it.

Kim Rendfield welcomes Maria Grace to talk about what little boys wore when they outgrew their dresses, in the Regency era.  I'm a sucker for historical costume posts.

Edited to add THIS:  The History Girls are running a nifty little musico-literary contest.  Have fun!

Kickstart Poe

It is not too late to save The Raven images.  I finally pledged ($45 - I'm intrigued by the book!).

She Covered Me With a Thousand Stitches

"One minute of deliberate choice at a time."

One of the heart-stopping moments from the 2012 Conference, I will never forget this reading.

Camisha L. Jones:



"When it came to me, my mother, she was made of persistence" ...

How wonderful that they preserved this.

Creator of Adverbs ... and Porpoises

Brad Parks' prayer was an excellent appetizer for the weekend:



I really hope Mibi will watch this.  And maybe use it in church.

Quoth The Raven: Kickstart Me

The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia is housed, not in a home of Edgar Allen Poe, but in the oldest home remaining in the city where he did live.  It's a smallish place, whose pretty back garden is sometimes a venue for weddings and receptions, in a busy stretch on the side of a historic hill.  Someone once called me from that place, and I had "EDGAR ALLEN POE" on my caller ID, tenaciously loved and preserved, until the day I moved out of that home.

The Poe Museum is a place I have visited; not as immediately impressive a museum as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts perhaps, nor the Science Museum, the Children's Museum, nor even the Valentine Museum.  It is, however, one of many of Richmond's homages to its favorite son.

Image:  poemuseum.org

In the Poe Museum are to be found some of the most fantastical illustrations for The Raven.  It is a pleasure to see that these illustrations are subject to a Kickstarter fund for their preservation.  I've seen the state of preservation described in The History Blog's article, and to see them saved would be a pleasure.  I may have to learn how to contribute to a Kickstarter myself.

Flostsam of the Day at Work ...

... an unfinished poem by Cute Shoes

blood, guilt, vodka and an ice pick
tears, petulance, whining and bad perfume

We are not having our least stressful times, as you might have guessed.  Le sigh.

The Poetry of Physics

Another charming post from Kim Rendfield's dad, this time on the poetry of Brownian motion - and Lucretius of Epicurus - and non-Epicurian morality in history ...

Anyway - a nice read.  Brownian motion is so cool (and *not* just because of Douglas Adams!).  Maybe we all like watching dust dance in golden light ... as long as we can keep ourselves from thinking about the particulates we're not seeing, going up our noses!