(no subject)
15/10/25 19:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flemmingsRecycle tomorrow and having gone through most of my surplus manga, I began throwing out paper. Stacks and stacks from the late 80s and 90s, APA articles and Japanese lessons. And no, they will not come in handy some day. I give up on Japanese grammar: kanji are enough to be going on with if I ever get back to them.
But someone somewhere mentioned the book they learned ancient Greek from, a reading course that seems to give you basic grammar at the end of each section but no vocabulary at all. It's on archive.org and delineates the post-mortem adventures of a boy called Themistocles and, well, I discover that google will define the words for me even if Chrome won't give me the Greek alphabet to do it in. Keyboard will only switch to one language other than English, and I need mine for Japanese. But I might take Japanese off the downstairs tablet and see if Greek will work there because downstairs is where I'd be reading Themistocles.
Otherwise have finished only a Charles Lenox, the latest Flavia Albia, and a couple of mysteries by Cyril Ten-names. Have Walpole and Leonardo desultorily on the go and more Cyril on the tablet, though it seems I like Burton more than Rhode, when I thought it was the reverse.
en passant
15/10/25 15:12yhlee
Resumed work on Candle Arc #2 (comic) pursuant to continued 2D animation preproduction, since the comics double as partial storyboards. I just processed the Ninefox Gambit: Prelude: Cheris #1 (comic) files for eventual print-on-demand as well, but it's on the website as well.
Wednesday was complimented on the green hair
15/10/25 19:19oursinWhat I read
Finished Queer Cambridge and the author is very aware that it is a microhistory of a very particular group of gay (if one can define them thus over the several generations in question) men in a very specific place, who had a considerable amount of privilege and protection, even if that was sometimes just 'we do not discuss these matters' and look away. And that not all of them were particularly nice (some of them sound horrid) and also the awareness of how being a lovely young bloke of the disposition could accrue valuable patronage (in a way that has never been open to women) - this was so much so with Dadie Rylands. Of interest, well-done, pretty well-researched but I picked up on what I thought was skipping over something I Haz Knowinz about, and which when I went back and checked my notes, yes, there WAS a connection, hah.
Then on to Rachel Ferguson, Alas, Poor Lady (1937), which is part of that cycle of novels of that period of The Horrors of the Victorian Ladies Who Failed To Marry and the lurking fate of being a Distressed Gentlewoman. It's pretty much downhill all the way - the parents are pretty hopeless in both preparing their daughters for life and actually providing for them, and then there is all the Burden of Historical Events. Ferguson is no Delafield, alas, though on the other hand this lacked the sheer excruciation of Consequences or Thank Heaven Fasting I suppose.
On the go
Some while ago somebody somewhere was mentioning the novels of Susan Howatch and I can't remember if they were specifically name-checking The Wheel of Fortune, but anyway, brought that to my mind as the one which is doing a story based on the late Plantagenets/rise of the House of Lancaster so I picked up the ebook.
This was what had me thinking of the Starkadders. In fact looking back though it is years since I read any of her books - it's a while since I even read the more recent spiritual-angst + sex ones - they tended to involve intricate and lurid family dynamics based on some historical avatar + family estate. Come on down, Flora Poste!
(Also, book for review that I have been longing to get to for months while I did the interminable essay review.)
Up next
Gosh, that's long, though. However, still have several birthday books, plus, latest Literary Review.
larryhammerNdlovu Youth Choir covers Bohemian Rhapsody in isiZulu (ETA: link fixed). Stays acapella for a lot longer than you might expect, but eventually leans into full Afropop for the climax. (via)
Mixing classic art with contemporary UI.
Wikipedia’s collection of pointers for identifying AI writing. (via)
---L.
Subject quote from Not Alone, Patty Griffin.
Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools at the ROM
14/10/25 18:25flemmingsMust say the AGO is much more wheelchair friendly than the ROM, even though both were built when the concept of catering to disability didn't exist. Maybe the AGO's renovation is more recent than the ROM's, or rather the late 80s renovation that preceded the Excrescence. Because if you want to go to the third floor where the Flemish painting exhibit is, there's only one elevator you can take, tucked away around a corner, because all the others involve stairs when you arrive there. And then one goes down these very narrow corridors-- I mean, not wide enough for two people to pass each other-- between the new interior walls and the old outer stone walls to get you to where you're going. My friend the architect's daughter said All architects are assholes (like surgeons, apparently) and while I wouldn't go quite that far, I'll opine that the ROM has certainly hired asshole architects.
However. Did indeed see the Flemish paintings in all their glowing colour and 16th/ 17th century extravagance. I prefer early Flemish myself, but the best we could do here was a school of Bosch copy of details from the right hand Hell panel in the Garden of Earthly Delights, and a rather pleasant Nativity by Hans Memling. Note also Michaelina Wautier, from the mid-1600s, a natural and pleasant contrast to some of her overdone contemporaries. Though the rooms of the exhibit were still pretty small and I had to be careful where I went with my walker: and when a tour group came through, wait for them to pass.
Then did a revisit of the Chinese collection on the ground floor, any number of Buddhist statues and the stone camels from the tomb area. I think we may have climbed on them as children, which people did in those days, and fortunately do not do now.
Having gone nowhere yesterday, I was determined to walk back the four anna half subway stops to get my steps in, and did, barely. The sole of my right foot has been panging me for several weeks now: physio thinks it's bunions, I think it's plantar fascitis, who knows. But I limped along gamely and when I passed Wiener's went in, with no great hopes, to ask if they had ever got the tree lopper in that was on back order since June. And they did! And it was cheaper than at 'we do not deliver' Canadian Tire, and it fit in the basket of my walker, sort of ie it scraped the branches of any tree I passed, so I brought it home in triumph, go me. Of course it also weighs a ton and I hope I can lift it when it's extended, or even when it's not, but that's one itch scratched.
Thinking about reading seems a bit of a theme lately
14/10/25 19:28oursinMaybe reading is having a moment with people going on about it in various places??
Anyway I was beswozzled, bothered and quite boggled to read somewhere - and seem to have failed to have retained a link anywhere - somebody saying they were getting back into reading, and what they found actually helped was taking the time to look up New Words They Had Not Come Across Before.
Which is the sort of thing that I remember we were given as homework once, and you know, I was hard put to it to find words in the chapters of the relevant set text that I did not know already or could work out from context what they meant or fair approximation.
I can't imagine anything more dreary, but hey, diff'rent strokes for diffr'ent folks, I am no better and neither are you, etc etc etc.
On the other hand I think I can quite get behind this, which popped up on bluesky today:
What you read is less important than whether you ever spend time thinking about what you've read.
And while there are things which slip past and leave no mark and I may not even remember I have read them, I do also think about what I read - I'm not sure 'spending time' doing it is quite the way I'd put it, suggests more deliberation than going about my business and spontaneously thinking (as I did today) that characters in work I am currently reading srsly need Flora Poste to do an intervention, and in fact the author pretty much has form for heavily disguised Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm....
And on reading and also writing and not always doing big showing: Say it, don't show it: A contrarian take on exposition:
almost as if the reader is being enlisted as a collaborator, using their own imagination to fill in details that are merely implied in the words of the book.
(no subject)
13/10/25 21:08flemmingsWhatever, I woke up at noon and did manage to do a wash and get it on the line. Where it still sits because the day was cloudy and cool and nothing got dry. Sun tomorrow which may do the trick, or I shall simply hang them from the stair rails.
Otherwise was all couch potatodom all the time. Finished my Charles Lenox hardcover and bought a bunch of Golden Age mysteries on Kobo, all by the same author using various aliases. John Rhode is Miles Burton is Cecil Street, NB.
(no subject)
13/10/25 19:29waterswordI have not accomplished much on my staycation, but I did spend Saturday at the Preservation Society's Festival of Historic House (this year's theme was modernism), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I did not get to all of the houses on the tour, alas, but if this nor'easter ever clears up, I am going to spend an afternoon gawping at the houses which were marked as "outside viewing only" on the map, and which I ignored in favor of looking at interiors.
The stained t-shirt needs to be mended before I can put it away for winter, so that's this week's project. First I gotta suffer through split stitch, then satin stitch, then French fucking knots, and then I get to have fun with fishbone stitch, which is one of my favorites if not my favorite.
I am making rice pudding with the rice I undercooked, with vanilla and dried sour cherries, and there are fresh cranberries at the grocery store, which means it is properly fall, and I am going to make a cranberry ricotta cake and feed it to everyone I know.
Aaaahrting
13/10/25 19:39oursinToday we went and had an Art Experience.
Ever since I saw there was going to be an exhibition of Ithell Colquhoun at Tate Britain I had the intention of going to it but somehow we never got round to it until this final week (and I still have not read the book on her I have).
But at least I did get to it.
'engagement with the surrealist movement... fascination with the intertwining realms of art, sexual identity, ecology and occultism'.
Mix them up, shake and stir. She left the Official Surrealists because they made an edict that you were apparently not allowed to belong to other organisations if you were a True Surrealist and she was not about to quit her various occultist movements -
- of which there were several and one wonders a bit whether they were at all contradictory....
- but her work remained pretty surreal and involving unconscious picture-making and various methods that brought random patterns into the mix.
There was a v early work from her time at the Slade which was Judith and Holofernes, and one wonders how many women artists since Gentileschi have been moved to depict that, eh.
The ticket also admitted to the Edward Burra exhibition - I found it a tad odd that while the labelling on Colquhoun's work mentions eroticism and her involvement with women this element was not mentioned re Burra in spite of the saucy Marseilles sailors, doing designs for ballet, etc, which rather had my period gaydar pinging.
We had vaguely thought of doing the Lee Miller photography as well, but the previous were already quite enough and that has only just started.
We did flaneuse a bit about the galleries generally and spotted a portrait of Emma Hart (later Hamilton) as Circe: nothing like that hideous reconstruction recently posited, hmmmm?
larryhammer“Fall, leaves, fall,” Emily Bronte
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
Contrast with Hopkins’ Spring and Fall. Seriously—hold them both close. It’s worth it.
---L.
Subject quote from Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones.
emotional support spinning: cotton
12/10/25 21:49yhlee
Cotton handspun single from combed top, a "completed" bobbin. I'm spinning threadweight so I don't...feel the need to "fill" the bobbin even halfway (for a planned 2-ply).
I do think I'd probably have a more pleasant time spinning cotton and silk if I had a dedicated treadle wheel for them, someday; but the wheel I own works. :3
(The background art on the wall is a poster of Wonder Woman artwork by Nen Chang.)
(no subject)
12/10/25 17:42flemmingsTheir meal seems to be slightly smaller than usual, but I was still stuffed by the time I finished, and passed on pie and coffee. I mean, I really want pie, but there's still those eclairs to be accounted for, so no.
There was a weird smell in the house last night starting around 10, like someone cooking garlic and spices. Cooking smells do occasionally pass through the common wall here but I can't see anyone cooking at 10, especially not anyone with a kid who wakes up at 6. Sniffed outdoors in case it was something burning somewhere but couldn't smell a thing. Yet when I first went out today there was a lingering tinge of it on the air. Fortunately, by the time I got home it had been replaced by the much more autumnal aroma of woodsmoke. Trees all yellow and red as they should be, but a sweaty 18C because the sun was shining. Same temp this morning was chilly because it wasn't, and the wind was blowing. Thus autumn, always.
music: Windborne Sing "The Grey Funnel Line"
12/10/25 17:01jesse_the_ksonia introduced me to Windborne, the acapella group from Massachusetts. Their version of "The Grey Funnel line" makes my head go sproing in a pleasant fashion.
I’ve loved this 20th century ballad since I first encountered it on Silly Sisters in 1976. I recently learned that Cyril Tawney wrote the song as he was leaving the UK’s Royal Navy, called "Gray Funnel Line" by those who toiled there. Full lyrics at that link.
Culinary
12/10/25 18:56oursinBread made this week (because last week's developed mould, sigh): a very nice loaf of Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour.
Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones loosely based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread, Marriage's Light Spelt Flour, perhaps overdid the raisins a bit, mace a bit too subtle? even though is new supply.
Today's lunch: seabass fillets which I cooked thusly (think this is a bit better with plaice, though): served with miniature potatoes boiled and tossed in butter and dried dill, steamed asparagus with a sauce of melted butter, lemon juice and lemon zest (I now have a zester that actually zests), and cauliflower florets roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds.
LGBT Rainbow Promo.
12/10/25 20:37wickedgame posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_community_promo
Join LGBT Rainbow, a rainbow pass-it-on icon challenge focused on LGBTQ+ characters from any media.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
lgbtrainbowObstetrix, by Naomi Kritzer
12/10/25 08:35mrissaReview copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a good friend.
Thrillers and near-future SF are not the same beast. Naomi has written tons of the latter, but as far as I know this is her first foray into the former. And she nails it--the differences in pacing and focus are all spot-on for a thriller. The general plotline of this particular thriller is: an obstetrician under fire for having provided an abortion to a high-risk patient is kidnapped by a cult to handle their obstetrics (and general medical) needs. If you just went, "Ohhhhhh," this is the novella for you.
Some points of clarity: the cult is not a sensationalized one. It's a very straightforward right-wing Christian compound, not wild-eyed goat-chompers but the sort of people who firmly believe that they're doing the right thing while they treat each other horribly, the sort you can find in some remote corner of every state of the US. Without violating someone's privacy, I know someone who joined a cult like this, and Naomi gets the very drab homely terror of it quite right.
One of the things I love about Naomi's writing is that she never relies on Idiot Plot. You never have to say, "but why doesn't Liz just blah blah blah," because Liz does just blah blah blah--that is, she does try the things a sensible person might try, and there are reasons they don't work, or don't work instantly, or are considered but actually can't be tried for lack of some particular element of the plan. But Naomi's characters not only try things, they keep trying things. I love the doggedness of Liz and of several others who aren't even sure what they're reaching for, who have been in a terrible place to find it, but keep striving all the same.