Katyaboggled

Great Zot in drag Heaven. Katya is Annie Lennox.

(Go to 1:00 below for the Lady Herself)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I really, REALLY need some purple eyeshadow and matching lipstick.

Voice Crush

A man's voice has always been one of those things I find deeply attractive. Many people these days go for Benedict Cumberbatch, and I will say, I understand how he's become the thinking person's crumpet. But when he speaks, frankly, I just hear a smoker's voice. It's got more fry than a man his age perhaps ought to have, and is so dry there are times I wonder about the quality of his breath.

For my idea of a classic Englishman's voice: Tim Curry. Much more velvet there. And who ever had a finer sneer? American? Frank Langella, of course. He doesn't even bother sneering.

But the voice I love most is Peter Egan. Perhaps not so well known by many Americans, I first "met" this actor in the BBC historicals I grew up with (introduced by Alistair Cooke). The first one was "Lillie" - and his performance here still all but makes me cry (minute 41). Yes, it's a claustrophobic costume showcase, yes it's basically only the story of a popular girl getting by on her looks. (Francesca Annis, though, is splendid in it.) But Egan's turn as Oscar Wilde is THE best Wilde I have ever seen - and, indeed, I do include Stephen Fry's go at the role.

There is something about Peter Egan's use of his breath that creates some sort of sympathetic response, and I find myself squeezing at oxygen when he plays intense emotion, precisely because he does it so quietly ... but his breath is attenuated and silent and desperate, and it brings me to the place he is portraying. No bombast, no effort. He just has that Thing.

And that Thing, he emanates in his breath. His voice.

Watching him read aloud, I suddenly recognize something else - something itself pretty resonant with me.

Without resembling him, without sounding like him really at all - Peter Egan's cadence, even the way he moves, looking at the book and looking up, making some small gesture - reminds me powerfully of my dad.

Dad was a teacher. As much as any actor in the world, the great job of a teacher is to communicate. To build the sympathy of *understanding*.

Without, perhaps, admitting I have for decades been a bit in love with Peter Egan: I would say, at least, that he is a consummate builder of sympathy.

And seriously: that voice. You could NUZZLE with that voice.

Collection

On the likelihood Henry VIII called Anne Boleyn a trollop when he was courting her - the messages within the song Greensleeves, and who probably would *not* have written such a song.

Multi-layered nerd link! James Marsters' Trek audition. Worth a click beyond for a bit of Tom Hardy, too.

For everyone who EVER didn't want to admit loving a show ...




SNL Drag Race from Nicola Mari on Vimeo.

A wee lexicon for your edifictation: "fish" is feminine beauty - beating your face means doing your makeup well - "beat for filth" is doing it so well you end up giving fishy realness, Erica Jane is a completely synthetic Housewife who also records club music, and Kenan Thompson just watching the competition here is hilarical. Enjoy!

It turns out that the poor often know much better than outside experts how to improve their own condition.

Sigh. When this ↑ is radical thinking, no wonder we don't act in the immediate. On charity versus philanthropy. You know what? A bandage is a good idea when someone is bleeding.

Collection

Donna Everhart celebrates making it halfway through a WIP. I very, very literally have no idea what that is like - because I don't know when it is.

"(B)limey, what's that?" Simultaneously cool and creepy, BBC shows us one of the creative innovations in security, as the global definition and even concept of privacy leeches away. "The ability to choose when and how to divulge information about ourselves is one of the things that make us human, argues graphic designer Leon Baauw"

Also at BBC online, this piece of art and science history took my breath away, but do be warned, for the squeamish there exists the possibility this could take your lunch away. Have you ever heard of dissectable "Venus" waxworks? The art is incredible - but, for a historical novelist like me, the look into the psychology of another age, the attitudes, is INVALUABLE. These sculptures are eerie and undeniably lovely.

More RULES for writers! Y'all know how I love those. Still, analyses like these do yield some intriguing data. Such as: the average published author relies on about 1/4th as many exclamation points as the average amateur writer. (I am not published, but if I had ten exclamation points in both my novels combined, I'd be surprised.)

Ever since learning what vocal fry is, I have become fascinated by the science of speech. Here is a GREAT piece on hating women's voices:





"[By] propagating ideologically inspired amoral theories, business schools have actively freed their students from any sense of moral responsibility." Depressing, but certainly true. Take a look at Newsweek's in-depth piece about the ascendancy of the shareholder - a pretty good history of Wall Street and business education over the past generation.

Have you ever been to a marketplace where haggling is common? Many Americans have not, but I have smiling memories of "special for you!" pricing on a vacation or two. The Atlantic analyses some of the history - and the future - of the way we shop. Hmmmmm.

Collection

Paleoburrowing is perhaps the most winsome new word I have seen in a long time. It has a nice, soft syncopation to it, and lots of my favorite vowels. It is also connected to this neato story about gigantic prehistoric burrowing animals, and I want to see a myth or an allegory to go with the artist's renderings of what these creatures must have looked like! The tunnels they have left us are pretty impressive to see, and the implications make for ... well. Ancient, giant plot bunnies armadillos?

(I)f a 90-pound animal living today digs a 16-inch by 20-foot borrow, what would dig one five feet wide and 250 feet long?

Indeed! Writer pals, you tell me.

Still another story about the perils of The Internet of Things - care to get into potential litigation (or just become the public subject of this sort of discussion) just to open your garage door? I still don't.

Aww. My cat thinks I'm cool. But then, I didn't need Scientific American to tell me that. He's a big old kiss-up, and tells me all the time. (There is this philosophical question, though - given that I am the BRINGER of treats and food and toys, does he really like me better, or does he just cultivate me in order to keep them coming? I am also the bringer of body heat, and that's as good as a sunbeam, when the light is not available.)

Last night, I took "Salem" for a spin on Netflix, and was unimpressed both by the racism and sexism on display. Like, "how did this even get WRITTEN, much less made?" unimpressed. So I turned back to the lesser-explored corners of my queue, and tried different magic, with "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". Much more to my liking, this even provides a fantabulous setpiece fairly early in the going, set in York Minster and starring all my favorite statues. I may need to watch that alone several times just for the myriad overlapping dialogue from every direction.

"Thank you, Eddie Izzard" - or - Tell Me a Story!

Somewhere along August or September of 2015, a work friend and I began making a point of getting some exercise regularly. Weather being what it is at that time of year, we first began by using the walking trails at our office. We work in, essentially, the local swamp. (Well, one of them.) So the walking trails have these awesomely hilarious signs, CAUTIONING the world that this is a WILDLIFE AREA.

The wildlife generally spotted about has consisted of turkeys, deer, and eagles, but one hears tales of snakes and bears (bit of a rabbit), and not far from here I do know there is a finned carp in a pond that'd give almost anyone a bit of a pause, as it is wont to Jaws impersonations. DUH-DUH ...

Anyway.

We started off with walking, but what self-respecting Modern American doesn't eventually retreat indoors, where there is air conditioning and a changing room and nothing but views of the parking lots?

I don't not!

Our fitness room at the office is in fact very nice, with many machines and weighty things and a television I've never used and thermostats that, it is my theory, actually function. (None of the other thermostats in the building would ever dare ...)

So workout pal and I started  using The Room for our "walks", and very early in the going, "walk" really became a misnomer for me. I use the elliptical, and for over a year now I have been attempting this weird thing I like to call actually "meaning it" - and the effects have been overwhelming.

Ohhh no - I haven't lost WEIGHT. That's strictly for amateurs (well, or people who are not women pushing age 50 with a vanishingly short stick). Women who are pushing 50 with a vansihingly short stick and expect to lose weight are mad, I tell you. Mad!

(Okay, actually I have lost roughly 25 pounds. Things still ain't what I'd like 'em to be.)

But what has come of all this work is that archaeologists have discovered traces - the most tantalizing indications - of a long-lost waistline, dating to roughly, oh, seven years ago.

Also, as a person with multiple back and leg sprains to my discredit, I find I am not in incessant pain.

My knees do still make the most comical noises when I take a set of stairs.

But plantar fasciitis and such other wonders have taken their leave of the ruins.

When many people work out, music helps to pass the time. I do well enough with it; Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" was a serious challenge when I began using the elliptical. But to truly lose the time and find my brain absorbed in some experience other than "this is HARD!" and "I am super sweaty!", I have to be told a story.

Words, senator. I need words!

Probably the writer in me - or, at least, the reader (which is all "writer" even means, in my case).

Music can set a beat, but only a story can take me out of the workout and mean it.

There was a long, long series of Gayle Waters Waters to sustain me. Indeed, during her tenure literally talking me through many months of workouts, I went from being unable to complete seven minutes on the machine, at level four, through an incremental progression of bumping my levels slightly and increasing time spent at each level. I went from seven minutes at four to ten minutes at five, then fifteen, then twenty - then back down to ten minutes, but at six - then fifteen - then twenty. By this method, I had gotten up to twenty minutes on twelve by election day here in the U.S.

I took a bit of a tumble after that. And I can attest to how quickly pain will happily return to a body not in motion. Pain rapidly becomes more nimble than thou, and will cut ya soon as look at ya. Pain is a punk, and lies in wait.

These days, I'm at a steady level nine, twenty minutes, and the elliptical tells me I'm getting in three miles a day. (These ten or fifteen or twenty minute increments are, ideally, a twice-daily routine.) It's still enough work I haven't bumped up yet, but within a week I expect, I'll have to go to ten.

Gayle has, sad to say, run out on me. I turned to Looney Toons classic shorts for a bit there. I grew up on these, and do still love them (see also, Gossamer).

Somehow, though, they didn't quite work for me. Spectacle more than story? I'm not sure what it is(n't).

Image: Wikipedia (of course)

Enter, Eddie.

Eddie Izzard's brilliantly educated, daft, beautifully made-up standup has been Just the Ticket for me of late, particularly the closer we get to The Inauguration.

One wants to see a more recent show of his, given history's ... fascinations ... since Dress to Kill.

Plus, he is one of the extremely FEW famous people I am capable of finding attractive in anything more than the most ephemeral, useless way. I love to watch his face, and hear his voice, watch him ranging across the stage as he confirms/denies/confirms/ denies/confirms/denies/confirms/no-really-COMPLETELY-denies the death of Engelbert Humperdinck.

Nummy.

I've always had a weakness for a certain British mode of speech (it's less the accent than the gloriously aristocratic carelessness - and, in his case, a rather foxy heedlessness physically). Izzard modulates through many modes, effortlessly. It's gorgeous to witness. Talent and funny, tasty stuff. I also happen to share a birthday with him, so that's fun.

Birthday cake, or death? I'll have tea. (By which I mean, Stoli and tonic, no fruit - no, NO FRUIT, please. Thank you.)

I know for Brits, gin and tonic would be more the thing, but I am a woman all my own, and long ago realized gin is just wretched. I drink it only on the occasion it is necessary to remember that one crush from college, and oddly enough that occasion is nonexistent. And so.

Eddie Izzard is capable of something perhaps even surpassing storytelling. The casting of Sean Connery as Henry VIII (even though he is Scottish), and occasional cameos from James Mason - his rollicking trips across Western history. Holy Jeff. The guy is something more than just a raconteur.

AND he has helped off with ten pounds of ugly fat!

Bonus!

Whatta guy. I should buy him a drink, in thanks.

Gin optional.

Music, too.

Collection

How the Reformation helped to create the nuclear family model, and how Millennials are retrieving a pre-modern way of life. Perhaps The Golden Girls had it “golden” for reasons other than we thought!

How many of us have a default setting that ancient artifacts are the product of male fabrication?
How many of us realize that that sets an assumption of male gaze in early art? What if the earliest goddess figurines were not made by men in worship … but by women, perceiving themselves? Why not? Women made a great deal of art before we started creating history.

The History Blot has had a couple of good digital reconstructions this week. One, a look at the face of Peru's Lord of Sipan, from the pieces of his preserved skull. You can watch the art of the process in the video in fairly amazing detail. Next, a very nice look into a home in Pompeii. There are THREE videos at the HB on this piece, but I included this one as the most instructive of the two shorter clips, for my fellow history nerds. There is a 10:44 minute one that is even more detailed; the mosaic of a dog at the entry indicating a guard dog, and more in-depth consideration of the architecture.

Setting It Right

Yesterday, I ran across a new old-TV channel on the air locally, and saw that one of the shows coming up for the evening was The Lieutenant. This show was EARLY Gene Roddenberry, before he launched Star Trek. It stars Gary Lockwood, who was in the second TV pilot of Trek (ST's FIRST "reboot" - with Captain Kirk instead of Pike), as the bad guy with the silver eyeballs. He also appeared in a little-known sci fi outing called 2001. Look it up, it's tripendicular.

I met Lockwood and Kier Dullea the first year Mr. X and I were dating. They asked us if we were “in The Business” because we were so good looking. Then we met David Carradine, which was a whole 'nother story. Oh the good old days.

Anyway, one of the eps of The Lieutenant on last night was “To Set It Right” – about racial conflict on a Marine base. It includes Dennis Hopper and Nichelle Nichols. This episode was not aired at the time it was made. Too controversial.

Supposedly, this episode’s shutdown was part of the reason Roddenberry conceived of taking the issues and themes he wanted to explore into outer space. So he could get away with it.

Watching the ep now, it almost feels like something that’d have a hard time even today, and not just because of the 50-year-old linguistics. It really is pretty incendiary; I’m fully impressed with how brave a production it was.

Ms. Nichols is terribly young, wonderfully warm, and absolutely, brilliantly intelligent – and, as she remains even today, just a breathtaking beauty. She has some meat in this part, really difficult dialogue and a couple showcase scenes in which her education is on full display. “He’s been a negro a lot longer than you’ve been thinking about his problem.” She gives the would-be liberal white boy some SERIOUS what-for without a shrill note. Without her scenes, what the script has to say would be queasily uncomfortable - dated in the awfullest way - but she provides relevance that lasts and is meaningful *right now*.

I could not find the whole episode, but if you have Get-TV, look up the schedule for "The Lieutenant".

And, if not: here are a few scenes:

This episode does use the N-word, "negro" and "boy" - but not in the casual "well that was how they *talked* back then" way, but in a pointed way, questioning the way they talked, in what was "now" at the time. It also gorgeously deconstructs the White Guy Saves The Day plan, and avoids becoming a Very Special Episode - or making things easy. It looks at the perspectives of multiple minority characters, each of whom has their own voice, and is an actual *character*.  So by the time it does end with a pair of special moments, it feels more earned than a completely pat TV script.

This gets the "save until I delete" treatment on the DVR. And I'll watch more, to be sure.

Collection

Lennon Faris has a look at the brain tsunami - and the stigma - of mental illness.

No diatribe today. But I am ashamed of the marketing gimmick that is the Trump candidacy.

THIS is how ingrained it is in our culture, to tell a woman she must smile. To MAKE her do it. This is how obnoxious it is.

And how about a little comic relief?

Eddie Izzard Has a Cow

... well, or he gets into some VERY interesting negotiations to buy one:


As if there weren't enough reasons to adore Izzard wholesale.  (Surname pronunciation key - no, it doesn't rhyme with gizzard, but it's not quite a ringer for bizarre, either ...)

For a greater clue about the vid, for those who don't just click through:  did you know that modern, living Frisian and Old English are cognate languages?  Cognate languages are a complete gas to watch in action.  I once had a roommate from Finland, who could speak, in her own native tongue, to another foreign exchange student speaking in her own native tongue:  Japanese.

Never have wicked the relationship between these languages; if you have some insight beyond "people used to sail a lot", please share it in the comments!  I might need to buy a cow someday in Hämeenlinna or Okinawa.

Collection

The History Girls take a long look at a mural and ask, "Who IS that crowned man?"  The answers are scholastically engaging, and the list of other answers tells us so much about the eyes of the beholders.

Gary Corby has an answer about another, more ancient piece of art - it was Persephone.

I found out this week someone I work with is a writer as well.  Who could resist "Nobody Craves Celery" (so to speak)?  I can't.  Bookmarked, perused, approved.

And, finally, please enjoy this charmingly odd, sweet clip inspired by The Rochester Bestiary.  Not your typical interneTV, this.

Collection

Darwin's Barnacles and Dr. Livingston's beetles - the History Blog is on an interesting roll indeed!  All this and Tolkien references - who could ask for more?  Also, "Darwin's Barnacles" is a great title for ... well, pretty much anything at all. Get on that!

Nyki Blatchley on tribe-versus-nation - a worthwhile look at cultural attitudes toward:  other cultures.

Two Nerdy History Girls have a nice post about corsets in the 19th century - the good, the bad, and the mythical.  Be sure to check the comments for a point about the dress movement, which condemned corsets even at their peak.  The thing people often forget when shuddering in horror, or lusting to wear, corsets is this:  they were only very rarely tight-laced, and the sort of corsets people get frothy about in the 21st century were *not* sexy, nor even intended really to modify women's bodies sexually.  Just as today we wear fashions which have nothing to do with fornicating or procreating, FASHION, even in past centuries, had little to do with mating practices.

Finally ... Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.  Just 'accoz.



"Oh, G-d.  I can smell his face."  Hee.

Actually, Marcel represents an EXTREMELY good example of great writing - memorable, clear, and engaging voice.  (By which, though his portrayer does an extremely cute job, I mean writing voice, not actual actor's reading.)  Give it a shot, it's actually highly incisive writing; capturing the tone of a Liddel Kid, and the production includes a wealth of enjoyable peripheral detail.  Marcel is kinda OSUM, y'all.

The Eighties. My Forties.

Lately, the more pungent memories of the 1980s have been percolating around my brain.  I grew up in the fairly quiet swamps of the midatlantic South in the 1970s, and can still remember how bracing and almost frightening the 80s looked to the denizens of my world back then.  It might be expressed in a bit of silliness about “boom boxes” or the slight, benign, almost comical horror with which the less-young faced New Wave (though, to be fair, my completely wonderful grandma did sort of know who “Cindy Looper” was, which I still adore).  It might be the advent of Reagan and preppiness and the bewildering-even-then-to-my-eleven-year-old-self rather shocking backlash against a president once accepted warmly enough as a Christian and a Southern farm boy.  I remember “Thanks, Ron” and “morning in America” and a sense, at his first election, that the eighties were about to begin.

It’s hard to remember the rest of the eighties, around Reagan and Greed is Good and preppies and yuppies, but there WAS so much more to this period when I departed childhood (in some ways, all too abruptly) and began to learn to think, as my mom and dad taught me to, both critically and as an adult.

I remember the sound of the masses across the world, chanting SO-LI-DAR-NOSC, and I remember when Walesa’s name had an N in it in most American broadcasts.


I remember just how real the threat of nuclear war seemed - and how, in the most repulsive fashion, they made a movie about it which, actually, made itself something of a cultural phenomenon at the time.

I remember the music – not just the classic rock which never (even now) seems to have left my life, but the NEW things – New *Wave* not being the least of it – my brother’s albums, Nina Hagen and Oingo Boingo and Devo and even The Romantics.  I remember the very first single I ever bought, “Barracuda” – which makes me proud, that I didn’t buy something cheesy and awful I’d be embarrassed to admit a generation later.  It was the one record I could identify and afford, and I paid forty-five cents.  I could not tell you the B-side, and probably have not owned this artifact for twenty years now, but I know the first music I ever bought, and I know it was a pretty bitchin’ tune.

But even by the time I bought it, music was changing, and we got all Adam Ant-y and Duran Duran-y and Prince-ificated very quickly.  My freshman year in high school saw also the serious encroachment of cable TV into my community, and with it MTV – which, for you young-uns, actually was a REALLY big deal.

Imagine a world so small you’d remember “Video Killed the Radio Star” and that MTV was on channel 33 locally, for the rest of your life.




I expect it’s all but impossible to even quite believe in a world as small as where I grew up (a time when this blog post would have been beyond my wildest dreams - or my Prius), but it was in the eighties that world became so much bigger.  My family traveled internationally in 1982 – to Israel, and to Greece.  Just days after we visited it (as close as we were allowed), there was a shooting at the Dome of the Rock.  I was all of fourteen and still in my first-Christianity (the one inherited from my parents, not the one I came back to embrace so many years later), and I felt a kinship with Israel for a long, long time after we went.  Even now, realizing I don’t feel that sense of “ownership” we forge with places we’ve been is something of a surprise to me, as I think of it.  But my time there was spent in a place that both no longer exists, and is eternal in a way far beyond my paltry grasp.  I presume no claim, and find not only my remoteness, but its living presence now, to be utterly heartbreaking.

Imagine a world so small that you can touch memories of The Clash, Minor Threat, White Cross … and (shamefacedly, she admits) even Shawn Cassidy with the same naïve hand.  I always like to say my first concert was The Clash – but, before the seventies quite died, there was a teenybopper show at the Colisseum in town, and I drove my parents MAD over it, and my dad took me … and I was so actually-SCARED of the loud opening band I made him take me out of the venue before Cassidy ever took the stage.  I repented, of course, bitterly, as Da Doo Ron Ron or something piped its way above our heads, walking away – but dad was, quite rightly, having NONE of my begging him to drag me back inside.  So, in a way, I’m not quite lying …

But it’s symptomatic of the way of the world, of pop-culture, before it really took over and corporatized our whole life’s experience, that a kid obsessed with that particular teen idol would so quickly become a kid hanging out with the little, pale punks, being ooh-ed over by girls who wanted to know “how I got my skin so WHITE” and taking for granted my brother ending up on a classic album cover or Aweem-Awepping before Minor Threat (it was MT, wasn’t it, dear brother?) tore into their standard 30-second thrash songs.

It’s symptomatic of exactly the whiteness and quietness and swampiness and conservativeness of our world that he took to angry music, and that I was allowed to follow him.  Looking back, it seems almost odd my parents let me go with him – and that HE did – but we had expectations of safety, somehow.  The privilege of our quiet, white world, perhaps.  And – indeed – those earliest subcultural kids I hung out with, most of them having almost nothing compared to what I did, were a pocket of protection.  If you were inside that strange bubble, they were NOT letting anyone get at you, and I (and all the other girls) *were* safe amongst the torn tights and plain jeans and black hair and spray dye.  I was always safe with my brother – almost unbeknownst to me, and I suspect even unbeknownst to him, one of the most terrifying boys amongst a lot of kids calling themselves “punk” precisely to put people off.

Some of those kids liked Prince, though.  I know one in particular who got to be a bit of a Dead head, and ended up pretty mellow indeed.

We took what we could get.  There was no homogeneity in practice, not in a world like that.  If something promised to be cool, you crossed your personal genre boundaries, most of the time it didn’t matter much.  I certainly was no punk, but I was entirely part of my brother’s pack of friends – considered them mine – think they returned the favor.  I still hang out with subcultural types, particularly when Mr. X and I were socializing together, and never ever presume to own any given label, but find myself welcomed by all.

I had a hippie phase once identity was all up to me, once out of the house and discovering those early internet geeks on my campus, who combined nerd elitism and computers and a little quasi-mysticism with one or two charismatic and attractive upperclassmen to create an aura of clandestine and exclusive appeal.  I got as far as being a Twaddler, with that, but never made ‘Zard, which may have been as well, given my poor predilection for join-ery.  But:  fun.

Freshman year gone, right out of the gate in year two, I met Beloved Ex, and became not only the girlfriend of a townie, but began a years-long career as a bit of a hair-metal groupie.

Through all of this:  Reagan.  Bush.  Mandela.  The sound of Mutabaruka barely-singing, in horror, “WHAA?  Dem invade Angola again?” and the inevitable horrors of watching those less privileged than I – before college, and beyond, in those friends so much less privileged, less safe – less CONFIDENT – than I.  The little girl punk I will never forget, whose very (supposed) NAME meant “sweet”, and the girls passing out in bathrooms in college.

Always, a girl, worse for wear, reminding me my luck was not my own, and that not everyone had it.  Poor G, that exquisite and vanishingly tiny girl, taken advantage of and ending on the filthy tile in the dorm.  Or L, whom I loved so much, but whose life gave me vertigo and made me worry, even years after I lost her, years after she looked at me and said she knew she’d never see campus again.

Years and years later, the girls in bathrooms – so like the little punk girls (indeed, believing they are such), asking me how I get my skin so white.  Being tiny, tiny, and (when they find out my geriatric age), enjoining me, “Oh, please stay this cool!”

I look at the girls now, the tiny skinny ones, still so young, wearing “The Exploited” t-shirts someone actually made money off of, and all I can hear is the sound of SO-LI-DARI-NOSC and the echoing void where I know the face I am seeing is deaf to the reverberations.

I look at the world I share with them now – born in the nineties, perhaps – and see unions demonized.  That force which once ALL knew to be righteous – reduced to the impingement upon corporate margins.  The music around me – there is much raw reality to be had, but to mine for it has gone beyond my parameters.  I still take what comes, you see.  And what comes is so much less rough-edged, so much more processed.  Extruded.

Solidarity logo ... Image:  Wikipedia

 

I look at my own experience – a public servant who got scared, and ran away before I could be run off without my volition.  I look at those who have not run, and the deterioration of what it is to serve our nation, even without ever carrying a gun, without ever being seen doing it.  It breaks my heart.

I came of age in a recession – made $10,000 a year, my first job.  By the time BEx and I married, I was the breadwinner and scarcely more than that – and temping, no less.  The year we had to ask, “Can we afford toilet paper?” when there was nary a square to spare, and more mac and cheese generic box meals (even without milk) than you could shake a stick at.

I left my marriage and the Midwest, and came home to my quiet, easy swamps, and tripled my income in five years.  From 10k to 30 by the time I was thirty.  And counted that a triumph.

But then, 2001.

And back again.  At the highest administrative echelon, in Risk Management, working with and for and around people I respected and even loved, for one of the largest securities firms in the country.  Back, and proud.

But then, 2008.

I’ve taken 4-digit pay cuts more than once in my life, I’ve learned … when to run.

It’s a paltry takeaway, in some ways.  Along with the fact that I’m corporatized enough, myself, now, to use words like “takeaway” …



I want to shut down the laptop, listen to the quiet neighborhood around my house, this city I’ve known all my life, its interstate humming, its quietness looming, reassuring … and turn on something my ex husband used to sing, to hear someone who once wrote music I actually inspired.

I want to be alone, with Gossamer, and Pen.

And I want so badly – not to be alone, anymore.  The eighties are twenty-five years gone.  The nineties, when I was still young too.  The aughts, or whatever you like to call ‘em.

I’ve got too much to do.  And I am afraid.  And proud.  And wide-eyed.  Peering through fog, at the indistinct and unknown world ahead.  Not knowing it brighter, not knowing it darker.  But here.  Still here.

Videos

I can't say anything about this clip except that it's beautiful ...

... and reminds me of Danny and Annie ...



This is a rerun for this blog, but a worthwhile one, especially after yesterday's anniversary.

Collection

I am late to post this, but please enjoy the book trailer for Elizabeth Chadwick's The Summer Queen.

Gary Corby hosts a post by Stephanie Thornton on the women of ancient Egypt.  And he has a note about one of his own old posts as well ... which leads me to say:  YIPES!

Donna Everhart has some of the best spam.  I have had ones like this, but for me the volume (given the relative traffic here!) is far lower!  I think the spelling one might be my favorite ...

So as to not load up this page with vids for you to load - AND to give credit where it is due (I have not linked Unleaded and/or Day Al-Mohamed for far too long), please take a click here and listen to the wisdom of Stan Lee on how to build a story ...  "You just have to keep interesting yourself while you're writing it."  Too true!

The Passion of Former Days strikes again (... and again?) with a visually arresting series of double-exposed vintage images.  Some of these are metaphorical, some are just interesting juxtapositions.  Enjoy!

And finally, for this lovely evening ... and for those Extra Special nights, when nothing else will do but to smell like a Viking ... Now you can! Yep, this is a thing now.  For reasons.

The 85k Time Suck

... no, this is not a new game show - but it's just as bad for your time management (if not worse, by several orders of magnitude).  British Pathe' has released over eighty thousand clips on YouTube, y'all.  Don't spend all your time on one category.

I'm struck, when libraries and archives release masses of information (this has got to be one of the largest I've ever heard of), first by what an incredible boon it is for research and learning and those of us writing historicals.  In my case, of course, less so - there are so darn few primary vids on Clovis I, resolution in the years 486-511 was such crap - but there is more to be had, of course, than snowball fights in gigot sleeves and poems.  Second, though, I tend to go to the guitarist at the back of the bar, and how much harder it's going to be for so many to get away with some of the *fiction* of historical fiction.

Video Sunday #2: James River Writers!

This is my favorite conference of the year, every year.  JRW is my community.  These are my friends.


I'm so grateful!  I'm so proud.

Video Sunday #1: 1940s Chicago

The History Blog once again has an excellent post about the video below, not least of which is a little investigation into exactly when it was produced.

The clip is not short; it's a full length (nearly 32 minutes) promotional film, extolling the architecture, infrastructure, and industry of Chicago.  The footage is worth taking in the full length, if you're interested.  And, as our friend at HB is, I kind of enjoy the stentorian delivery of a good old mid-century educational film.  We were still watching these in the 70s when I was in school; the style is pretty unmistakable - and everything about this video takes you back!

Three Links

The latest find in British bones, Blanch Mortimer - there was a coffin in her tomb, and she was in the coffin (although, gruesomely "there wasn't much left" ...).  It is interesting, reading about multiple exhumations, reburials, cenotaphs, and lost remains, how unusual this actually is.  Click for a vid of the vicar of St. Bartholomew's discussing the surprising find.

The latest find in German psychiatry - Mad King Ludwig, not mad after all?  Might the monarch have been a victim of homophobia?  Conspiracy?  Poor diagnostic method?

Finally:  courtesy of The Rags of Time, a martial arts demonstration, circa 1919.  Exceptional!




(The hair product here alone is made of the sternest of stuff ...)

LeVar Burton reads 'The Night Before Christmas'

Reading Rainbow is the best thing he's ever given us.  Enjoy!