tag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922Inside the Little Plastic Castleadventures with Jesse the KJesse the K2023-10-24T20:57:08Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:378275help: Take My Library, Please2021-07-03T21:01:08Z2021-07-04T19:33:38Zpublic35<p>I’ve got around 400 books I no longer want to dust. (I'm saving my vision for new graphic novels.)</p>
<ul>
<li>100+ science fiction or fantasy, dating back to <em>Again Dangerous Visions</em> from the <a href="https://www.sfbc.com">Science Fiction Book Club</a></li>
<li>100 fiction, non-fiction, poetry standards found on the bookshelf of every 65-year-old feminist</li>
<li>40+ art topics including architecture, type, books, Celtic patterns, beadwork, songbooks</li>
<li>160+ disability related: theory, history, memoir — in print or graphic novel formats</li>
</ul>
<p>I’m not interested in making money, and shipping them out would cost a lot as well. Almost all these titles are already available in my municipal and UW-Madison libraries, so donation seems unlikely.</p>
<p>MyGuy has volunteered to scan the titles into a database. That gives me a list, but what do I do next?</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=378275" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:376661Reading mrissa Improves My Life2021-06-07T19:41:20Z2021-06-07T19:41:20Zpublic12<p>Marissa Lingen <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/MarissaLingen'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/MarissaLingen'><b>MarissaLingen</b></a></span> writes <em>really</em> lovely short stories — more than a hundred so far. She's disabled and her fiction generally includes the mundanity and creativity of disabled living. She lives in the Twin Cities. She's funny. She studied math and physics before turning to full-time writing — as of this writing she’s got 20 stories <a href="https://www.nature.com/search?author=Marissa%20lingen&order=date_asc">published in NATURE</a>. </p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a>
She’s an internet old — her blog <a href="https://marissalingen.com">https://marissalingen.com</a> began before Livejournal and is now mirrored on DW: <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/'><b>mrissa</b></a></span></p>
<p>She also posts a monthly newsletter — you can preview and subscribe at <a href="https://tinyletter.com/MarissaLingen/archive">https://tinyletter.com/MarissaLingen/archive</a></p>
<p>I've got three recs:</p>
<p>Uncanny published an eerily prescient horror story from 2018, "This Will Not Happen to You":</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because you have never been sick and you have never been too late and you have never been permanently damaged and you have never been through two prior generations of prosthetics for all the things that the newfangled tech, slipping in along the fungus-damaged neurons, can’t quite do for you. The last set, the set that lets you walk and see and breathe evenly, it will not keep you cold at every moment. You will not have a flask of tea like a lifeline. You will not wear a ski vest in May, a cardigan in July.</p>
<p><a href="https://uncannymagazine.com/article/this-will-not-happen-to-you/">https://uncannymagazine.com/article/this-will-not-happen-to-you/</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>"Flow," in Fireside, breaks my heart every time I reread it. She wrote it as her own Dad was dying. I love that her character’s atypical body movement becomes the link to fairyland (and as you know Bob, I'm not big on fantasy).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am two and a half years old. The half is important at this age. I have gone from staggering along like a miniature tipsy sailor to having my own real person walk—you can see it in family videos.</p>
<p>My own real person walk is my dad’s walk writ small.</p>
<p>I am fifteen, and I have walked into the woods by myself to try to stop being angry at the world. There is a stream that isn’t too choked with leaves, even this time of the year. I sit by it and give in to the temptation to stick my fingers in, even though it’s prematurely cold, much colder than the autumn air. The chill distracts me from my anger. I only pull my fingers out when they’re numb.</p>
<p><a href="https://firesidefiction.com/flow">https://firesidefiction.com/flow</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>She’s also written poetry I can understand(!) about the pandemic <a href="https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/tag/covid+poems">https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/tag/covid+poems</a></p>
<p>Here's the first one, recognizing how COVID closing libraries alters the rhythm of readers' lives</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What Remains: the COVID Checkouts
Mar. 18th, 2020 06:31 pm</p>
<p>Give and take is the way of the library <br />
Now a breath held, a moment frozen, <br />
And I remain with this: mosquitos, <br />
Bulgaria, the poems of Jane Kenyon. <br />
An awkward freeze-frame, mid-conversation, <br />
Not the self-portrait I'd have chosen. <br />
But here we are together, mosquitos. <br />
It's you and me now, Jane. <br />
We're gonna do this together, Bulgaria. <br />
Last week I could dip into fancy, <br />
Ponder another in a series, <br />
Reject what didn't suit, on a whim; <br />
Now you share my distance, Bulgaria, <br />
Jane--even you, mosquitos. <br />
I clutch your binding close and wonder <br />
What I'll have learned by your pages' end. </p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=376661" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:372990Finding #DisabilityReadathon Books to Read from DSQ Reviews2021-04-01T23:34:16Z2021-04-01T23:34:16Zpublic5<p>Hats off to Erin Hawley <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/geekygimp'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/geekygimp'><b>geekygimp</b></a></span> and Anna Goldberg <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/nymeria941'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/nymeria941'><b>nymeria941</b></a></span> for rustling up the <a href="https://www.disabilityreadathon.com/how-to-join-in">Disability Readathon</a>, running for all of April 2021.</p>
<p>I don’t Twitter, but I can bring my listserv wrangling skills to bear.</p>
<p>Disability Studies Quarterly, a free open-access peer-review journal, always publishes a few reviews in each issue, AND they’ve done two <strong>all-review</strong> issues:</p>
<p>Thirty-eight reviews in the Winter 2020 issue <br />
<a href="https://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/234">https://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/234</a></p>
<p>Eighty-one reviews in the current, Winter 2021 issue <br />
<a href="https://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/256">https://dsq-sds.org/issue/view/256</a></p>
<p>While most of these books are published by academic presses, the reviewers always take into account whether the works are accessible to those of us outside the academy.</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=372990" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:371422Kim Nielsen writes Anna Ott’s Life from historical voids2021-03-16T23:28:07Z2021-03-17T15:13:17Zpublic13<p><cite>Money, marriage, and madness: <br />
The life of Anna Ott</cite> <br />
Kim E. Nielsen</p>
<p>Nineteenth century feminists battled patriarchal definition. Learned men asserted that women's bodies were constitutionally subject to weakness and madness. This is sexism and it's also ableism. Men asserted our defective bodyminds disqualified us from public education, voting, and many kinds of work. </p>
<p>Nielsen writes about Anna Ott, an early 19th century Swiss immigrant. Ott married and divorced a doctor in Ohio, gaining enough money to move to Madison and purchase property just as the town was booming into Wisconsin's capital city. She married again and practiced medicine. Her violent husband committed her to the local insane asylum, where she lived for 20 years until her death. A handful of "newsy" facts about her can be found in local newspapers: her divorce, that every room in her house had two doors, her alleged deathbed confession to bank robbery. </p>
<p>Nielsen writes as an historian of feminism and disability. I found her prose, midway between popular and academese, to be quite understandable. She always recognizes Ott’s peculiar social status: negatives include woman, immigrant, "mad" while positives include: property owner, doctors, whiteness. Even Anna Ott, who was remarkable for several reasons, is more clearly seen by her absence from the historical record. Before I read this short work that statement would have mystified me. That most of the events are set where I live makes this an engaging read, even though it’s full of physical and emotional violence and repression. Content notes: forced commitment and treatment in 19th century asylums; domestic violence; children disappearing.</p>
<p>ETA: Thanks to <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://tarascon.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://tarascon.dreamwidth.org/'><b>tarascon</b></a></span> for getting the book's title right!</p>
<p>425 words capture Nielsen’s style and philosophy:</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The very legal processes that created legal and stone walls around Anna Ott for the last twenty years of her life generated the limited paperwork by which I first stumbled onto her life. In the initial stages of a project on adults placed under guardianship, I found her file—but as simply one, and not a large one, of over two hundred such files from Dane County, Wisconsin. The file caught my attention because of Ott's status as a moneyed female physician, a not-unheard-of but unusual individual for the late nineteenth century. A good historian is a stubborn detective, and I dug further. The financial consequences of her marriages and numerous divorce filings and her medical career allowed me to follow her trail. Her twenty-year institutionalization provided scant but vital medical records and a cemetery in which to be buried. Amid a pile of historical sources I found an intriguing thread, pulled at it, traced another, then another, and then another. Eventually I even discovered that Ott's son-in-law lay buried only a few miles from my home.</p>
<p>.....</p>
<p>In multiple ways, this biography also adds complexity to scholarship regarding U.S. medical history and reflects the ways by which medical history and the growing field of disability history both overlap and are distinct from each other. Anna Ott served as a physician's wife, a physician, and a patient. She is a part of and inseparable from medical history. She lived her entire adult life imbedded in medical frameworks of expertise, power, privilege, and risk that echoed through all she did. The medical field offered her respectability, status, financial wherewithal, and incarceration.</p>
<p>....</p>
<p>This archival void, like many archival voids, is not simply random or due only to family scandals. It is no accident that it is easier to write the biography of an individual who has power and high status. In this case, as in many cases, the lack of historical records indicates the existence of devalued human beings rather than the lack of human beings. Supposed unimportance due to race, class, gender, or ability resulted in limited evidentiary trails and archival omission. Marriage and property laws, for example, often wrote white women and all those peoples legally barred from accessing marriage or property out of the archives. The resulting archival voids make biography difficult and directly determine which biographies historians construct and which they do not. It is vital that historians consider these methodological dilemmas; otherwise, we, via our craft itself, either replicate the power structures of the past or present them as natural and inevitable.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Get yours here: </p>
<p><a href="https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/money-marriage-and-madness">ebook</a> - <a href="https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/3478612">Bookshare</a> - <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/money-marriage-and-madness-the-life-of-anna-ott/oclc/1237769571/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br">Find in library</a> - <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/67kfd3bk9780252043147.html">U of I publisher</a> - <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctv137971j">JSTOR</a></p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=371422" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:364809Three Interests Meme: Shortwave, Office Supplies, Primo Levi2021-01-14T00:00:05Z2021-01-14T00:14:05Zpublic14<p><a href="https://sasha-feather.dreamwidth.org/1241128.html?replyto=8102440">Thanks to <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /><b>sasha_feather</b></span> for these prompts</a></p>
<p>Happy to carry the meme along -- let me know you want prompts and I'll trawl your interests and offer you three to discourse upon.</p>
<h4>Shortwave</h4>
<p>I spent a long time in bed between 1988 and 1991, with limited attention span and no assistive technology to help me read. My favorite companion was the <a href="https://radiojayallen.com/sony-icf-2010-an-all-time-classic/">Sony compact shortwave radio</a> on my bedside table. <a name="cutid1"></a> Before the internet, many countries funded education/cultural/propaganda broadcasts, bouncing these shortwave signals off the ionosphere and around the world. Programs were short, and I could follow cultural or scientific or travel stories that were 15 or 30 minutes long. 1989 was a busy year in the world, and I loved triangulating what was happening from various sources. Broadcasters shifted frequencies to ensure better reception with changes in daylight and solar weather. Learning the geeky details was the kind of puzzle I enjoyed and could still actually solve, supported by the dense listings in the <a href="https://swling.com/blog/tag/passport-to-world-band-radio/">Passport to Worldband Radio</a>. Favorite programs include BBC (African and World Service); Radio Netherlands, Radio Canada International, Kol Yisrael, the Voice of America, and lucky catches like Finland.
</p>
<h4>Office supplies</h4>
<p>My father sometimes let me play in his study where I could bang on the manual typewriter. <a name="cutid2"></a>I loved to fondle the typewriter eraser — <a href="https://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/gallery_item/ghostdove/109761">a hard rubber disk spinning from a small brush to tidy up the rubber shreds afterwards</a>. There were small dishes with paperclips, binder clips, flags (a precursor to post-it notes), several piles of softly folded galleys. Small materials which helped keep the grand Snowpiercer of academic publishing in motion. In sixth grade I discovered the magic of Letraset transfer lettering. I’d spend hours making little posters and booklets with different font designs. And this is why when I feel stressed, browsing an office supply store is a guaranteed pleasure. The staff aren’t pushy, and there’s actually thousands of things to admire.</p>
<h4>Primo Levi</h4>
<p>Introduced me to the lived experience of the Holocaust. <a name="cutid3"></a> Levi was an Italian Jew, born two months after my mother. He finished a university chemistry degree and was able to work until 1943, when he became an inept (by his own admission) anti-Facist partisan. On capture he avoided immediate execution by admitting that he was a Jew. He was sent to Auschwitz. His lab skills permitted him to work indoors, which helped him survive. Levi’s books — <em>If This Is a Man</em> and <em>The Truce</em> — detail his time in the camps and the year he spent wandering all over Europe on his journey back to Turin. His writing is a vital witness that survivors were often mendacious and cruel; that religion isn’t always supportive; that strangers can create a better world. </p>
<p>My favorite of his is <em>The Periodic Table</em>, 21 short stories/essays linked to 21 elements, from argon to carbon. Each is informed by Levi’s experience as a child, as a prisoner, as a chemist working with German colleagues after the war. The BBC is currently hosting a six-part audio presentation of eleven chapters from the work, including the exquisite conclusion, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07kstl4">Carbon</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bookshare.org/search?libraryToSearch=bookshare&authorFilter=Primo%20Levi&author=Primo%20Levi&sortOrder=RELEVANCE">Bookshare has seven of his works</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=primo+Levi+periodic+table&dblist=638&fq=ap%3A%22levi%2C+primo%22&qt=facet_ap%3A">Your public library probably has it</a></p>
<p>English translations of these three works are available at the Internet Archive</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=primo%20Levi&and[]=creator%3A%22primo+levi%22&and[]=languageSorter%3A%22English%22">https://archive.org/search.php?query=primo%20Levi&and[]=creator%3A%22primo+levi%22&and[]=languageSorter%3A%22English%22</a></p>
<p>If none of those work for you and you're interested in reading <em>The Periodic Table</em>, I'd be happy to give you one in your preferred format.</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=364809" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:362056Sonya Huber is a Marvelous, Disabled Writer2020-12-11T23:46:27Z2020-12-11T23:47:10Zpublic14<p>Reading her work is looking in a mirror that's also a magnifier that's also a portal. She captures the experience of chronic pain, midlife disability, fighting insurance companies, raising her son, loving teaching, wrangling with doctors — all in exquisite language: precise, funny, smooth. She has rheumatic disease (often misnamed as <a href="https://rheumatoidarthritis.net/living/rheumatoid-arthritis-vs-rheumatoid-disease/">rheumatoid arthritis</a>) and teaches creative non-fiction at Fairfield University. Lots of good reading at her site <a href="https://sonyahuber.com">https://sonyahuber.com</a> as well as on <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/sonyahuber'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/sonyahuber'><b>sonyahuber</b></a></span> Twitter. Her most recent published work is:</p>
<p><em>Pain woman takes your keys and other essays from a nervous system</em> <br />
<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803299917/">https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803299917/</a> <br />
<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pain-woman-takes-your-keys-and-other-essays-from-a-nervous-system/oclc/974017025/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br">Library</a> – <a href="https://www.roomofonesown.com/ebook/9781496200839">Ebook</a> – <a href="https://sonyahuber.com/books-2/pain-woman-takes-your-keys/">Paperback</a> – <a href="https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/2022604?returnPath=L3NlYXJjaD9tb2R1bGVOYW1lPXB1YmxpYyZrZXl3b3JkPXBhaW4gd29tYW4gdGFrZXMgeW91ciBrZXlz">Bookshare</a> </p>
<p>Her stuff is so good I had to sample 1000 words from four sources.</p>
<h5>Her experience of COVID</h5>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a roiling surge of irritation, the anchor of my meditation cushion, the frustration at daily tasks, the irritation of noises, the desire to curl into myself and be as quiet as possible. </p>
<p>There was an ache across the back that crept up within the first few weeks and stayed and stayed, and I didn’t know whether it was my lungs or my kidneys. Then I knew it was my kidneys, and around that time I found a graphic from a researcher on Twitter that showed with a map of the researchers’ symptoms where I was: kidneys at 10 and 11 weeks. Whenever I moved, it felt as though my swollen and bruised kidneys were slamming against my ribs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.howweare.org/post/sonya-huber">https://www.howweare.org/post/sonya-huber</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<h5>How It Feels When Your Body is Weather Sensitive</h5>
<p><a name="cutid2"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sky has its way with me. As clouds lower their shoulders against the horizon, a warm front’s humid body slides along my skin, lifting the hem of my dress to curl around my waist and stretch along my spine.</p>
<p>Closer still, the atmosphere enters me soundlessly. Barometric pressure squeezes my joints, each a tiny fishbowl of synovial fluid that cushions the space where two bones pivot and swing.</p>
<p>My immune system loves and defends me too diligently. I am one of the joint-diseased and chronic, we who have lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. If we could map our pain, the constellation of joints would glow on the map, lit to follow storm fronts and hurricanes. A joint-sick friend and I trade texts: Rain coming—Got bad at 2 PM, now flat on the couch. You?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/grip-sky">https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/grip-sky</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<h5>What Pain Wants</h5>
<p><a name="cutid3"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pain wants you to put in earplugs because sounds are grating. <br />
Pain has something urgent to tell you but forgets over and over again what it was. <br />
Pain tells you to put your laptop in the refrigerator. <br />
Pain runs into walls at forty-five-degree angles and ricochets back into the center of the room. <br />
Pain resents being personified or anthropomorphized. <br />
Pain is a four-dimensional person with fractal intelligence. <br />
Pain wants to be taken to an arts and crafts store. <br />
Pain likes to start big projects and not finish them. <br />
Pain wants to clean one countertop. <br />
Pain asks you to break itself up into neat, square segments like a chocolate bar. <br />
Pain makes a hissing, popping hum like high-tension power lines. <br />
Pain has ambition but is utterly unfocused. <br />
Pain will get its revenge if you ignore it but sometimes forgets what it was angry about. <br />
Pain wants to watch a different channel than you do on tv. <br />
Pain looks at you with the inscrutable eyes and thin beak of an egret. <br />
Pain stubs out the cigarette of your to-do list. <br />
Pain will first try to do some things on that list but will end up with socks on its antlers. <br />
Pain demands that you make eye contact with it and then sit utterly still. <br />
Pain folds the minutes into fascinating origami constructions with its long fingers. <br />
Pain leaves the meter running. <br />
Pain asks you to think about the breath flowing in and out of your lungs. <br />
Pain will ask you to do this 307 times today. <br />
Pain does not mean any harm to you. <br />
Pain is frustrated that it is trapped in a body that is ill-fitting for its unfolded shape. <br />
Pain has been born in the wrong universe. <br />
Pain is wild with grief at the discomfort it causes. <br />
Pain wants to collect bottle caps to show you the serrated edges, which mean something it cannot explain. <br />
Pain keeps pointing to serrated edges and scalloped patterns but cannot explain how these will unlock it. <br />
Pain emphasizes that it is not a god, but then makes the symbol for “neighbor” over and over, and you do not understand
what it means. <br />
Pain puts its beaked head in its long-fingered wing hands in frustration and loneliness. <br />
Pain winks at you with its dot-black eyes and tries to make the sign for “I love you.”
Pain folds up its wings and legs and spindles quietly and blinks up at you when you say, “I know.”
Pain understands that you cannot say “I love you” back but that there is something bigger behind “I love you” that you do not have the words for. <br />
Pain also understands that the background to “I love you” is something like a highway. <br />
Pain licks at its hot spots like an anxious dog. <br />
Pain, when held in place, spirals down into drill bits, so it has to keep moving to prevent these punctures. <br />
Pain asks you to breathe deeply so it can zing about and not get caught on the edges and corners of calendars, books,
and electronic rectangles. <br />
Pain’s favorite music is the steel drum, and its favorite flavor is fig. <br />
Pain prefers any texture in which tiny seeds are embedded. <br />
Pain shakes its head—no, it says, that is you who likes that texture—and will have nothing to do with spheres. <br />
Pain wants only for you to see where it starts and you stop, but you are a transparent bubble. <br />
Pain and its kind have waited patiently for humans to evolve into the fourth dimension, but they are worried the project is failing. <br />
Pain feels as though Earth’s gravity is as strong as Jupiter’s.
Pain has something metallic in its bones and is captured by the magnetic core of our hot planet. <br />
Pain envies flesh and its soft strength and ease of movement. <br />
Pain inhabits curved, soft bodies in hopes of fluid movement and then cries when it breaks them. <br />
Pain would like french fries and Netflix.</p>
<p>From <em>Pain Woman Takes Your Keys</em> <a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1375&context=unpresssamples">https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1375&context=unpresssamples</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<h5>The Shadow Syllabus</h5>
<p>The teacher may not say this out loud. She’s still also the person who was a university student.</p>
<p><a name="cutid4"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li><p>I’ll tell you exactly how to get an A, but you’ll have a hard time hearing me.</p></li>
<li><p>I could hardly hear my own professors when I was in college over the din and roar of my own fear.</p></li>
<li><p>Those who aim for A’s don’t get as many A’s as those who abandon the quest for A’s and seek knowledge or at least curiosity.</p></li>
<li><p>I had bookmarked a citation for that fact, and now I can’t find it anywhere.</p></li>
</ol>
<p><a href="https://sonyahuber.com/2014/08/20/shadow-syllabus/">https://sonyahuber.com/2014/08/20/shadow-syllabus/</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=362056" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:357256boost: flash fiction; pondering selling out; beauty without artists2020-09-24T23:22:25Z2020-09-26T18:28:14Zpublic13<h4>Mary When You Follow Her</h4>
<p><a href="https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/mary-when-you-follow-her">https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/mary-when-you-follow-her</a></p>
<p>Holy wow can Carmen Maria Machado <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/carmenmmachado'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/carmenmmachado'><b>carmenmmachado</b></a></span> write!</p>
<p>This 1200-word story was written, oulipian-style, to a restraint. It’s so successful you won’t even notice. Can’t summarize; it does contain: Dominicans, teenagers, runaways, night, summer, love, kidnap, danger, neighborhood, work, poverty, harassment.</p>
<hr />
<h4>Abstract Art without Artists</h4>
<p>Visual delights abound at the Reddit community devoted to unstirred paint — that is, what you see after you pry the lid off house paint.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/unstirredpaint/">https://www.reddit.com/r/unstirredpaint/</a></p>
<p><img src="http://mltshp.com/r/1JT7M" alt="Shape similar to limp head of cabbage unfolding in blue-grey-green-white-swirls" /></p>
<p>Shape similar to limp head of cabbage unfolding in blue-grey-green-white-swirls</p>
<hr />
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/jessamyn'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/jessamyn'><b>jessamyn</b></a></span> is an internet elder, former MetaFilter mod, activist librarian, and originator of the <a href="https://www.librarian.net/technicality">warrant canary</a>. She communicates a lot in this short essay examining selling out and/or compromising principles:</p>
<h4>Compromising your Principles</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>This list could also easily be titled “Five ways to console yourself when you’re a sell-out.” I see it both ways at the same time. My ideals need to be made real through an existing imperfect system if I’m going to get anything done at all.</p>
<p>Sometimes you can’t just <em>be</em> there, you have to <em>get</em> there. That takes time and possibly doing things that feel less important along the way. Be okay with that time. It’s necessary.</p>
<ol>
<li>Everyone’s hardest struggle is their hardest struggle.</li>
<li>Be tactical. Realize you’re playing the long game.</li>
<li>Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.</li>
<li>Everyone, everywhere, is in some sort of compromise position with their values.</li>
<li>Sometimes there are problems that money can solve. Know which ones those are.</li>
</ol>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/message/on-compromise-4fe1a41ecc7d">https://medium.com/message/on-compromise-4fe1a41ecc7d</a></p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=357256" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:351857Hooray for CoNZealand Fringe2020-08-03T20:24:43Z2020-08-03T20:26:03Zpublic6<p>CoNZealand Fringe was a project of many genre-fiction fan communities, including book tubers, online-zinesters and podcasters.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the tradition of Edinburgh Fringe and other international collateral events, CoNZealand Fringe has been created as a complementary programming series to the annual science fiction convention Worldcon. All our livestreams take place outside core CoNZealand programming hours and are not official CoNZealand programming items. CoNZealand Fringe is not endorsed by CoNZealand.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For their 15 panels, details of topics and panelists <br />
<a href="https://www.conzealandfringe.com">https://www.conzealandfringe.com</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy4IrWj0K5NiFI-P7YUSWlxIxFMr4SaWd">CoNZealand Fringe YouTube Playlist</a> <br />
Autocraptioned, but YT is closed to 97% than 90% with these particular speakers. </p>
<p>Media queries were directed to Claire Rousseau, Adri Joy, Alasdair Stuart and Marguerite Kenner, Cheryl Morgan and Cassie Hart, so I assume they ran the show. I was impressed by the smoothness of their panels -- the mods were well prepared, they started on time, they handled the time-zone issue more deftly than the official WorldCon. I'm sure that WorldCon planning is like steering a battleship: these folks were a racing catamaran.</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>2 August <br />
3-4AM NZST (NEXT DAY) • 4-5PM BST • 11AM-12PM EDT • 8-9AM PDT</p>
<p><strong>Sensitivity Reading: What is it, who does it, who needs it?</strong>
Panel: Cheryl Morgan (M), Mike Carey, iori Kusano, Yvonne Lin, Corinne Duyvis [coiner of #ownvoices hashtag]</p>
<p>Sensitivity reading is a hot topic these days, on the one hand being seen as a must have, and on the other as part of “cancel culture”. But what does a sensitivity reader do? What skills does the job require? What should the sensitivity reader, author and publisher expect from the relationship?</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/teyGcOHAOBI">direct link</a></p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/teyGcOHAOBI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I learned a lot about the on-the-ground realities of sensitivity reading, which can be lost in the scornful discourse mocking people who want their writing to reflect lived reality. Corinne Duyvis's point that the gaping absence of autistic characters in her reading growing up meant she'd never thought of her self as autistic until her later-life diagnosis. She highlights the importance of research and exploration in the area in addition to lived experience.</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=351857" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:348530Four Local Boosts: Hamilton, Anti-racism * 2, short story recs2020-07-05T23:47:23Z2020-07-05T23:47:23Zpublic4<p>If you happened to watch the Hamilton movie recently, you can share your enthusiasm at <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://hamiltunes.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png' alt='[community profile] ' width='16' height='16' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://hamiltunes.dreamwidth.org/'><b>hamiltunes</b></a></span> where we've been squeeing for five years.</p>
<hr />
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/'><b>runpunkrun</b></a></span> <a href="https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/849356.html">summarizes why it’s time to talk reparations for slavery</a>, provides some good background reading, and a sample letter for your Congressional representatives.</p>
<hr />
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://sonia.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://sonia.dreamwidth.org/'><b>sonia</b></a></span> rounded up <a href="https://sonia.dreamwidth.org/266389.html">five particularly good links</a> for white people engaged in anti-racist reflection</p>
<hr />
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://jedusor.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://jedusor.dreamwidth.org/'><b>jedusor</b></a></span> has created a comm that’s right up my alley: <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://therooftops.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png' alt='[community profile] ' width='16' height='16' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://therooftops.dreamwidth.org/'><b>therooftops</b></a></span> is the place to alert the world to great short fiction</p>
<blockquote>
<p>under 25,000 words that has a strong speculative component. Speculative means the story explores a reality different from our own in some crucial way; this includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, alternate history, slipstream</p>
<p><a href="https://therooftops.dreamwidth.org/463.html">Full how-to</a></p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=348530" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:348190rec: Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote2020-07-04T23:48:19Z2020-07-04T23:49:39Zpublic3<p>The <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/tomboy-survival-guide/oclc/1103141757/editions?editionsView=true">Tomboy Survival Guide</a> by <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/IvanCoyote'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/IvanCoyote'><b>IvanCoyote</b></a></span> explores growing up a tomboy AFAB and then transitioning. Coyote treasures the support they did get from their family, as well as detailing how strange it feels when everyone around you expects something you simply can't deliver. They spent a lot of time growing up in the Yukon, so there's lots of delicious Northern detail. Coyote's description of their tech-school harassment while studying to be an electrician brought back my experience as a "non-traditional student" in the 1970s. I'm very glad nobody pissed in my toolbox, though.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You are going to need to find your freak family. Your misfit soldiers and their weirdo army. Keep your eyes open. That little boy at school that the bigger kids are picking on. Ask him if he has a secret name he wants you to call him. Tell him yours. Tell him he is beautiful. Tell him you see all the ways that he is strong like you and it has nothing to do with throwing a ball. Tell him you will be there at the other end of the string between you, listening into that tin can if he needs you.</p>
<p>The world will be full of messages telling you to be something other than what you are. Telling you that you are too skinny or too fat or too dark or too hairy. Too poor for pretty. Low fat hide your belly quick loss how to love less and find a man maps to time machines that only ever go backward. The magazines are full of this nonsense.</p>
<p>Save those magazines. They can be very useful. You can duct tape them over your jeans to make shin pads for street hockey and quick, cheap armour for fencing or general swordplay. Touché.</p>
<p><a href="https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/T/Tomboy-Survival-Guide">https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/T/Tomboy-Survival-Guide</a></p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=348190" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:339592Foz Meadow’s Docile Review and Insight on Fanfic Tagging2020-05-17T21:39:48Z2020-05-17T21:39:48Zpublic2<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/fozmeadows'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/fozmeadows'><b>fozmeadows</b></a></span> reviews <em>Docile</em> by K.M.Sparza. Do read the complete essay, where Foz addresses the stunning absence of American slavery in a near-future Baltimore chock full of sexual slavery, as well as the book’s conversation with E.L.Grey. and other important topics.</p>
<p><a href="https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/book-review-docile/">https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/book-review-docile/</a></p>
<p>Context for this quote is why fanfic tropes feel different in a published work:</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>K.M. Szpara’s <em>Docile</em> is a complex, incredibly pacy book about which I nonetheless have mixed feelings. </p>
<p>Partly, this is the result of tagging, which works to reassure me that the author knows the dynamic or context they’re writing is fucked up and is exploring those themes on purpose; but mostly, it’s that fic, for me, exists at an extra level of remove from reality. A dark fic about a particular pairing isn’t the defining story of their relationship; it’s just one extrapolation among many. If it makes me uncomfortable, I don’t have to invest in it, because a plethora of other, gentler stories about the same characters coexist alongside it. And no matter how good or bad they may be, I don’t have to pass critical judgement on the themes and worldbuilding of such stories, because that’s what the canon is for: the fic is an escape from that, which means that I’m primarily here for the feelings.</p>
<p>[… snip …] </p>
<p>Though structured like a romance, with different chapters showing us the first person POVs of Elisha and Alex respectively, the ending isn’t a [happily ever after]; nonetheless, the main sexual, emotional relationship is functionally master/slave, and while that’s not the Patron/Docile terminology used in the book, that’s functionally what it is. That the vast majority of the book is spent interrogating the fuckedupedness of this relationship in particular and the nature of consent in general is certainly important – tags or no tags, Szpara understands exactly what he’s writing about, to the extent that the book itself has a trigger warning on the back cover – but even so, that doesn’t obligate anyone to be comfortable with it.</p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=339592" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:338722Speaking of Arboreal Point of View2020-05-15T22:19:52Z2020-05-15T22:19:52Zpublic9<p><a href="https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/338485.html">E Lily Yu’s story about a sentient hemlock</a> was particularly relevant to my interests because I just finished a pair of novels by Sue Burke:</p>
<h4><em>Semiosis</em> and <em>Interference</em></h4>
<p><a href="https://semiosispax.com/">https://semiosispax.com/</a></p>
<p>Significant chunks of these books are told from the POV of an alien plant, interacting with the idealistic colonists fleeing Earth to create Pax, a utopian alternative to what they left behind. </p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a>
The first book was <strong>great</strong>. As I learned from Sue Burke’s site, the fictional plant’s ability to manipulate humans is based on actual Terrestrial botany. It’s delicious watching the humans finally realize that they’re being recruited as service animals to a huge patch of bamboo named Stevland (yes, after Stevie Wonder). </p>
<p><em>Semiosis</em> features a conflict often found in generation-ship narratives: how do descendants maintain the values which impelled the founding generation? I love this trope even more as I age, watching folks move through from youth to adulthood. Providing a vision and value system that resists time’s corruption is hard.</p>
<p>I was disappointed by <em>Interference</em>, however, mainly because there was a lot of people-running-around-fighting, which wasn’t very interesting. (Well, except when Martha Wells does her outstanding job of positioning conceptual and tangible creatures in 3D without gravity. Go read <a href="http://www.marthawells.com/networkeffect.htm">Network Effect</a>)
</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=338722" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:338485The Ongoing Wonder of the (New) Decameron Project2020-05-14T18:31:51Z2020-05-14T18:31:51Zpublic5<blockquote>
<p>Even while quarantined, isolated, sick, or anxious about COVID-19, we can still tell and share stories! The New Decameron project plans to post a story every day, to share art and aspiration during this crisis and bring our community together. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/projectdecameron">https://www.patreon.com/projectdecameron</a></p>
<p>Although it’s hosted on Patreon, all the content is free to read. Organizers include Jo Walton, poet and author Maya Chhabra, and librarian, singer, and SF/F fan Lauren Schiller.</p>
<p>Since 16 March they’ve published 57 short stories in the science fiction/fantasy genre, including many authors on my insta-buy list: Naomi Kritzer, Marissa Lingen, Rosemary Kirstein, Laurie Marks. </p>
<p>Decameron has also introduced me to some wonderful new writers, for example:</p>
<h5>The Hemlock That Was Afraid of Heights by E Lily Yu</h5>
<p><a href="https://elilyyu.com/">https://elilyyu.com/</a></p>
<p>The full story is a quick sip, less then 1400 words, and I totally believed that it was a tree-point-of-view story.</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>This ought to have been the fate of the hemlock that was afraid of heights, except that the slope was so steep, and its neighbors so obliging, that shafts of sunlight penetrated even to its low and anxious needles. And so it lived, bark steaming in the rainy springs, roots digging down, and was content.</p>
<p>For the hemlock that was afraid of heights was not half so afraid of depths. It wove itself into the mycorrhizal network, mixing root hairs with mycelium, and listened to the forest’s gossip and warnings of fire and deer. It drank from aquifers and fresh-filtered rain. And when it could, it passed sugared sips of the best vintage to its neighbors and the fungal lacework that fed them all.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-decameron-e-36796847">https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-decameron-e-36796847</a></p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=338485" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:337746Help! ExplainToMe.file — Spoil Murderbot Ending2020-05-12T15:02:17Z2020-05-12T15:02:17Zpublic4<p>I got confused by the ending.
<a name="cutid1"></a>
From the start of HelpMe.file Excerpt 4 in Network Effect, chapter 13 and on, I'm totally unmoored as to who, where and what. </p>
<p>I understand that Murderbot has outsourced itself and there are three iterations, but not when these new processes were spawned and who initiated them. </p>
<p>Diagrams & explanations welcome!
</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=337746" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:323404Reading Support2020-02-23T23:29:17Z2020-02-23T23:29:17Zpublic17<p>I have difficulty reading print books. Holding them and turning pages are painful. My optimal reading distance is around 2 feet (any closer and my eyes cross). Here's how I cope:</p>
<p><strong>When I’m seated:</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bookandcopyholders.com/standardatlascopystand.html">Atlas book stand</a>, which handily supports anything from a piece of paper to a dictionary. I use this for newspapers, comics, paperbacks, hardbacks and my iPad for when I read the web and ebooks.</p>
<p><strong>When I’m reclining.</strong> </p>
<p>The <a href="https://levostore.com/products/levo-g2-deluxe">LEVO G2 tablet stand with dual clamp tablet cradle</a> holds my iPad. The clamp is strong enough (and the adjustment flexible enough) that I can read it overhead when I’m lying down. I've finally updated to iOS 13, and I can now read hands-free: once I'm in a book, I can announce "swipe right" to get to the next page.</p>
<p><strong>When my eyes are tired.</strong></p>
<p>I read with my ears! What my library doesn't have, <a href="https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/275180.html">Libro.fm</a> can usually supply me.</p>
<h3>What are your reading hacks?</h3>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=323404" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:318425rave: Have Dog Will Travel -- Stephen Kuusisto2019-12-08T17:13:42Z2019-12-08T17:45:04Zpublic0<p>I really loved <cite>Have Dog, Will Travel</cite>—Stephen Kuusisto
<a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/have-dog-will-travel-a-poets-journey/oclc/1039425493/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br">print, ebook,</a> <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/have-dog-will-travel-a-poets-journey-with-an-exceptional-labrador/oclc/1107682699&referer=brief_results">commercial audio</a>, <a href="https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/login/download%252Fdetail%252Fsrch%252FBR22283/NLS">BARD brf</a>, <a href="https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/download/detail/srch/DB91578">BARD audio</a></p>
<p>A lovely memoir of midlife transformation generated by the mutual love affair between human poet and skilled Labrador guide dog. Kuusisto captures the grace of service-animal team dignity and pride. He narrates facing barriers with compassion. He taught me the better word for disabled people when we do something truly "inspiring": <em>righteous</em>.</p>
<p><p><i>Read if</i> ... You want to learn about human-dog bonds, service-animal training, healing from abusive childhood</p>
<p><p><i>Content notes</i>: One dog dies from old age, alcoholic abusive family, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, rampant internal and external disablism</p>
<p><a name="cutid2"></a></p>
<p>Gently framing the inevitable performance of disability:</p>
<p><a name="cutid3"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Civic life with a disability is theatrical. I hadn't fully known this. I'd been so busy trying to play the role of a dashing nondisabled lad, the impossibly healthy boy of American imagination, that I'd failed to appreciate what being myself would be like. Corky had brought me into the land of Prospero, where the world was a stage, where each location was nuanced and required negotiation in ways I’d not imagined. Sometimes we were accepted and sometimes not. I found my reception could change in an instant. I could be admired as a blind traveler and in the same hour face opposition. I discovered this upside-downside drama was consistent, and whether I liked it or not, I now had to perform with mixed emotions on a very real stage. </p>
<p>I wrote in my journal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m right here and I’m immensely inconvenient. A blind man at a garden party. Blind man in a comic book store. Built environs are designed to keep our kind out. Our kind includes those who direct their wheelchairs by breathing, amble with their crutches, speak with signs, type to talk, roll oxygen tanks, or ask for large-print menus. We are here. And our placement is insufficiently understood in public.Which came first, these blues or the architecture that keeps us always inconvenient?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To perform disability meant affirming its place in the village square. Whenever possible it also meant the cultivation of irony.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This passage on the joys of doing nothing much at midnight explain why I find browsing office supply stores so soothing.</p>
<p><a name="cutid4"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even in the middle of the night Corky was ready for adventure. I felt the lure of the all-night drugstore and we headed through the half-sinister streets of Ithaca in search of vitamins, Mars bars, bubble bath, a styptic pencil. But we were really walking just for the walking. There were no goods we needed to buy. </p>
<p>We entered the twenty-four-hour pharmacy. I swiveled my hips, turning my back to the opened door, to make sure it wouldn't close on Corky’s tail, performing the maneuver just as the guide-dog school had taught me. Always protect the tail. Then we were across the threshold, standing in the unforgiving fluorescent light of an average drugstore amid the soaps and ten thousand plastic bottles. Pastel shades assaulted me; there were the odors of newsprint and nail polish. We went up and down the aisles. I didn’t want anything. And yet what a curious thing! I liked doing this—just being in a common spot with its useless products was a sort of empiricism. I was awake and grateful in a vulgar commercial space and though I couldn't properly see the products, I toured every corner of the store while praising Corky. No one spoke to me. There were three^ four other customers and one cashier. I circled and left. </p>
<p>"You see?" I said, "you’ve taught me to relish easy things Corky, just a few turns around a drugstore.</p>
<p>"Our life ahead," I thought, "would be about moments of common release—not climbing the Alps but walking an ordinary Walgreens." </p>
<p>It was nice doing what other people did when they couldn’t sleep.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<p><a href="https://cpa.ds.npr.org/ipr/audio/2019/10/toi180409.mp3">45-minute audio of author interview with Charity Nebbe, Talk of Iowa public radio</a></p>
<p><a href="https://stephenkuusisto.com/category/have-dog-will-travel">Scores of guide-dog related posts from Kuusisto’s blog include early drafts of the book</a></p>
</p></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=318425" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:316704Toppling the To-be-read Pile2019-11-25T00:12:09Z2019-11-25T21:39:45Zpublic20<p>Bright blessings to <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://sonia.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://sonia.dreamwidth.org/'><b>sonia</b></a></span>, who linked me to <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/1225b00cee13/-/s.wordpress.org/about/images/wpmini-blue.png' alt='[wordpress.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com'><b>drakkinabrarian</b></a></span>'s excellent essay, "The dreaded TBR pile"</p>
<p><a href="https://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/the-dreaded-tbr-pile">https://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/the-dreaded-tbr-pile</a></p>
<p>It's <strong>just</strong> what I needed to read right now. </p>
<p>I’ve been fretting the loss of my bookworm identity. I appreciate the writer’s point that making reading an obligation triggers anxiety. Also, when I developed my bookworm self-image, I didn’t need a TBR — I couldn’t afford to create a personal stack, and I read so fast that the library loans turned over in a week. </p>
<p>Considering <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/1225b00cee13/-/s.wordpress.org/about/images/wpmini-blue.png' alt='[wordpress.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://drakkinabrarian.wordpress.com'><b>drakkinabrarian</b></a></span>’s points:</p>
<p>Many of the items on my TBR are things I <em>should</em> be reading. I want to support the author, who’s part of my extended community. I want to want to understand the topic. In short, aspire, not desire. The good news is that I can support writers by buying ebooks and then never reading them.</p>
<p>I decided that I could declare myself "retired" after my 64th birthday. In the time I have left on the planet, it’s okay to focus on fun, not work.</p>
<p>I don’t have infinite resources to dedicate to reading. Pain & meds & double vision & depression do limit what and how long I can read, <a href="http://www.bookandcopyholders.com/standardatlascopystand.html">even with my awesome new reading stand</a>. In my bookworm days, reading provided safety and certainty. While doing something valorized by my family, I could be transported away from them. </p>
<p>This excellent essay concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Remember that a To Read List just represents a list of titles you don’t want to forget – not a binding contract where if you die with these books unread you will be damned for all time.</p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=316704" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:305566Why I loved Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet2019-08-22T19:25:05Z2019-08-22T19:25:05Zpublic13<ul>
<li><a href="https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/200174.html">she explains what the ~swung dash~ aka ~mid-line tilde~ signifies</a></li>
<li>her prose is accessible and insightful -- I read it through twice!</li>
<li>she confronts academic snobbery and doesn’t blink</li>
<li>she installed several entirely new thoughts, among them:
<ul>
<li>that humans have been sharing oral culture for 99% of our time on the planet. The net is now someplace where humans can communicate orally, except we do it with unedited text (and images).</li>
<li>locating the source of the disconnect between very early adopters (who began pre-web, myself among them) and Kids These Days. Before the web, getting online required some technical sophistication. We’d already passed through a number of gates. For most people online today, the net has always existed. They no more think of the underlying technology than all folks now alive care how landlines work.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/GretchenAMcC'><b>GretchenAMcC</b></a></span> is highly networked, so there’s lots to sample online <br />
<a href="https://gretchenmcculloch.com">https://gretchenmcculloch.com</a></p>
<p>Gretchen's daily blog "All Things Linguistic" <br />
<a href="https://allthingslinguistic.com">https://allthingslinguistic.com</a></p>
<p>The monthly Lingthusiasm podcast, coproduced with Laura Gawne — full transcripts available <br />
<a href="https://lingthusiasm.com/">https://lingthusiasm.com/</a></p>
<p>This essay makes it into the book almost intact: LOL funny meditation on "Summoning Benedict Cumberbatch" <br />
<a href="http://the-toast.net/2013/12/02/a-linguist-explains-the-rules-of-summoning-benedict-cumberbatch/">http://the-toast.net/2013/12/02/a-linguist-explains-the-rules-of-summoning-benedict-cumberbatch/</a></p>
<p>All of Gretchen's essays for now-dormant and still nutritious site, The Toast <br />
<a href="http://the-toast.net/tag/gretchen-mcculloch/">http://the-toast.net/tag/gretchen-mcculloch/</a></p>
<p>Here's the rousing finish of the book:
<a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>When we thought of language like a book, we thought of it as an unruly mess of words that had to be kept in order, like a Victorian gardener constantly retrimming the hedges into spirals and globes. When we think of language like a network, we can see order as a thing that emerges out of the natural tendencies of the individuals, the way that a forest keeps itself in order even though it doesn't get pruned and weeded. </p>
<p>When we thought of language as a book, we thought of it as linear and finite. A book can only have so many pages, so you have to decide what to keep in, what to fence out, and how to order what remains. If you and I buy the same dictionary, we read the same exact words, making it seem like there is a single, finite English language that everyone agrees upon, which can be contained between two covers. But the internet has no beginning or end, and it's growing faster than any one person can follow. Sure, it does technically take up space, in the form of fiber-optic cables running under oceans and chilled rows of hard drives in data centers, but while a book is always telling your hands how many pages it has left, an internet device is a portal to a universe bigger than you can fathom. </p>
<p>A single human mind can come up with a sentence that's never been said before in human history, and it's not even hard. Here's one: "The hesitant otters enjoyed the moon floating above the purple forest." In fact, even "The otters enjoyed the moon" was enough to get me zero Google hits at time of writing. You can do it yourself: make a sentence containing an animal that would be unwise to keep as a pet, a verb with at least two syllables, a color or texture that you re wearing, and something nonwearable in your immediate environment. Your odds are really good that no one's ever said it before. But you don't even have to go surreal: try googling in quotation marks the last message you texted that was longer than ten words. You'll probably get zero hits.</p>
<p>When we know language as a network, we realize that any portrait of it is incomplete, and that's a marvelous thing. Many webpages are dynamic, generated only as we reach for them by searching for or posting something brand-new. So, too, is the creative capacity of language greater than its entire recorded history. Any one of us can coin a word or compose a sentence that has never been said before, and it now exists in the language as soon as we utter it, whether it winks in and out for a single moment or whether it catches on and endures in the minds of people yet unborn. When you lay a book down and come back to it, you expect all its ink to stay where you left it, but the only languages that stay unchanging are the dead ones. When you step away from a living language, or a network made of human beings, you don't expect it to fall silent and still without you. </p>
<p>A language with people but no books is a living language that can always create books, but a language with books and no people exists only in pale, shadowed, ghostly form. Johnson and his contemporaries found English "energetick without rules" by the standards of Latin because they were comparing a living language with a fossil. Fossils can teach us a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that living animals are only worthy of study once they've been stripped down to their bones and footprints. Rather than thinking of books as a way of embalming language, of rendering it fixed and dead for eternity (or at least of trapping and caging it so it doesn't move around quite so much), we can think of them as maps and guidebooks to help people navigate language's living, moving splendor. Every atlas eventually becomes a history book, but a globe is still a glorious thing to feel spinning under your hands with potential.</p>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=305566" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:302286rave: Dryer's English2019-07-20T22:54:02Z2019-07-20T22:54:02Zpublic8<p>I’m stumbling along at 40% power. You may have heard it’s been hot in these parts. I am so grateful for air conditioning and MyGuy Taxi. Yesterday I did <strong>nine</strong> laps and was in the pool for 28 minutes. That was at least two minutes too much. </p>
<p>Luckily today I just inhaled <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/dreyers-english-an-utterly-correct-guide-to-clarity-and-style/oclc/1096342911/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br">Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style</a> by Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, known as <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/bcdreyer'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/bcdreyer'><b>bcdreyer</b></a></span> online.</p>
<p>It’s not a standalone reference. As per his advice, use Words Into Type, Webster’s Collegiate, and the Chicago Manual of Style for actual reference. This book is an amusing rant by an experienced copy editor, and I recommend getting it from the library right now. </p>
<p>He contemplates the delicate task of making authors sound more like their best selves. And he has tons of quotables. </p>
<p>Therefore, tidbits re: misused, misspelled, and extraneous words:</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>INCENTIVIZE
The only thing worse than the ungodly “incentivize” is its satanic little sibling, “incent.”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>ONBOARD
The use of “onboard” as a verb in place of “familiarize” or “integrate” is grotesque. It’s bad enough when it’s applied to policies; applied to new employees in place of the perfectly lovely word “orient,” it’s worse. And it feels like a terribly short walk from onboarding a new employee to waterboarding one.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>REDDI-WIP
I’m trying to imagine the meeting in which someone inquired, “How much can we misspell two perfectly simple words?”</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>ASSLESS CHAPS
The garment, that is. Not fellows lacking in dorsal embonpoint. I’m not sure how often this will come up in your writing—or in your life—but chaps are, by definition, assless. Look at a cowboy. </p>
<p>From behind.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>END RESULT
I can appreciate the difference between a midprogress result and an ultimate result, but “end result” is cloddish.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>FETCH BACK
To fetch something is not merely to go get it but to go get it and return with it to the starting place. Ask a dog.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>LESBIAN WOMAN
Come on, folks. Think.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>RISE UP
If you think I’m going to pick a fight with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who uses the phrase “rise up” repeatedly in Hamilton’s “My Shot,” you have another think coming</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s a fun weird thing: The word “namesake” works in both directions. That is, if you were named after your grandfather, you are his namesake. He is also yours. Who knew.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>Back in the 1990s, it seemed as if I couldn’t turn a manuscript page without running into the words “inchoate” and “limn,” and I began to shudder at their every appearance. Oddly, I can’t recall the last time I ran into either. So, by all means, please start using “inchoate” and “limn” again. I rather miss them. [Then a footnote, reading:] <em>Copy editor’s addendum: “For me, it was candles ‘guttering’ and ‘tang’ used for smell; both were used so often in literary fiction, I’d begun to think they were handed out with the MFA.”</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The book is available in print, audio <a href="https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780525639954-dreyer-s-english">(amusingly read by author and helper)</a> and electronic formats. <a href="http://www.benjamindreyer.com/sallie/">And his site features 14 pictures of his lovely dog.</a></p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=302286" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:298436rec: Margaret Killjoy Writes Queer Anarchist SF2019-06-06T19:02:41Z2019-06-06T19:02:41Zpublic8<p>Tor.com hosts the first chapters of two Killjoy novellas I really enjoyed: </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.tor.com/2017/07/10/excerpts-margaret-killjoy-the-lamb-will-slaughter-the-lion/">The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tor.com/2018/04/02/excerpts-the-barrow-will-send-what-it-may-margaret-killjoy/">The Barrow Will Send What It May</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Both feature trans anarchist Danielle Cain solving crime in a near-now infused with death, hope, and magic. A stone SF fan, I generally find magic too twee. Killjoy addresses the tricky power dynamics magic engenders in a satisfying fashion. <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy'><img src='https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico' alt='[twitter.com profile] ' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' width='16' height='16'/></a><a href='http://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy'><b>magpiekilljoy</b></a></span> has mined the years spent living in her van to make a silvery, diesel-coated landscape, realistically evoking the rootlessness and solidarity needed to survive as our world falls apart. </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.tor.com/2016/10/19/231037/">Everything that Isn’t Winter by Margaret Killjoy</a> is a short story at Tor.com. She addresses solidarity, competence, violence, anxiety and tea. Do the skills that enable us to survive post-apocalypse render us unloveable?</li>
</ul>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The band played war songs on guitars and fiddles and drums. The handsome men of the choir sang the songs I’d fought to, songs I relish. Songs that transport us from the world of the living to that liminal place of both battle and sex, where we make and take life. My bare feet were in earth, the mountain wind in my hair. My boyfriend’s dance partner wandered to the edge of the crowd, and I went to stand beside her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much more reading, and music, and crafts on her site: <br />
<a href="http://birdsbeforethestorm.net">BirdsBeforeTheStorm.net</a></p>
<p>As always, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120203152322/https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-posterity/">Bertolt Brecht’s poem "To Prosperity"</a> comes to mind:</p>
<p><a name="cutid2"></a>
[… snip …] <br />
For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes. <br />
In the class war, despairing <br />
When there was only injustice and no resistance. </p>
<p>For we knew only too well: <br />
Even the hatred of squalor <br />
Makes the brow grow stern. <br />
Even anger against injustice <br />
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we <br />
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness <br />
Could not ourselves be kind. <br />
[… snip …] <br />
</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=298436" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:294430nonfiction review Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity2019-04-24T19:32:40Z2019-04-24T19:32:40Zpublic1<p>Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity
by Arlene Stein (Author)</p>
<p>four of four stars</p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/unbound-transgender-men-and-the-remaking-of-identity/oclc/1050869925/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true">print, ebook</a></p>
<p>Appreciated this book, aimed at cis folks like me. <a name="cutid1"></a> Author is a Lesbian sociologist who shadows four people getting top surgery in a Florida clinic, then digs into academic research and interviews many people from the transmasculine end of the gender spectrum (a 3D space). For me, answered questions from second-wave anti-TERF lesbian standpoint. What does our animating experience of challenging the importance of gender mean, now, in this brave new world?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am relieved and also, quite frankly, a bit bewildered by it all. My generation of feminists tried to tamp down gender as a way of minimizing its oppressiveness. We emphasized the similarities between men and women, embracing androgyny and unisex style, giving boys and girls the same toys, changing the language we used to refer to men and women as well as the messages we gave young people about what kinds of jobs are appropriate. My generation believed that gender is imposed on us by advertising, scientific experts, parents, teachers, and other influences. By taking control of how society defined gender, we believed that we could create a world where gender differences would play an insignificant, or at least minimal, role. We thought we could undo gender's hold on our lives. </p>
<p>Most of the younger people I interviewed for this book, in contrast, seem to have little interest in obliterating gender altogether. They acknowledge, quite rightly, that gender is institutionalized through norms, routines, and laws; and that it is shaped by those who have the power to define those norms, routines, and laws. Societies define gendered possibilities, affirming certain ways of living in the world and diminishing others, making some ways of being men and women more acceptable than others. They provide a template for imagining how we should or could live. Biological processes rooted in the body also help make us who we are. In addition, we also draw from a rich storehouse of unconscious fantasies, memories, and feelings, some of which we learn in our families, as well as from widely recognized cultural values. "Each person personally inflects and creates her 'own' gender,' as the feminist psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow has written. Individuals are not simply reflections of the culture. We push up against it, adopting some of its values, resisting others. The people I write about in this book find the courage to defy the rules, challenging authority figures and undergoing painful, expensive body modifications, often at great risk to themselves: they feel that they need to be true to themselves, and they know that society isn't necessarily going to accommodate them. </p>
<p>My generation of feminists thought we could undo the constraints of gender by casting off high heels and constraining bras, and refusing to abide by "gender roles" in the family and without. We tried to conjure a world, through talk, through community building, and by passing civil rights protections, in which women and men would become more fundamentally similar to each other. We made it sexy and fun to be lesbians, whom we often saw as the vanguard of resistance to "the patriarchy" Today's generation continues some of those projects. It, too, is acutely aware of the limitations of the ways we organize gender, and the ways the powerful have the capacity to define what is and isn't normal. But the younger people I met in researching this book are much more willing to let a thousand genders bloom, and to see the modification of bodies, and language, as the foundation for such projects. For them the struggle for greater freedom of gender expression is the focus.
Language is changing at a breakneck pace, describing new, previously unknown forms of identification. Lee Naught, who identifies as mixed-race, Chican@, and genderqueer, writes: "I live in a space of gray, which is what queerness is all about to me: defining oneself rather than being trapped within unchangeable categories." A younger generation of gender activists, who have come of age in a consumerist society of seemingly endless choices, is developing new words to describe how bodies, selves, and feelings collide.
</p>
</blockquote>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=294430" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:291946Serena Williams' Compression Garments, Disbelief, Writing Realistic SF that Challenges Stereotypes2019-04-02T23:02:00Z2019-04-02T23:02:00Zpublic2<p>...and quantum physics and cooking too!</p>
<p><span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://mrissa.dreamwidth.org/'><b>mrissa</b></a></span> has written another wonderful essay, informed by her years writing great SF and coping with disability.</p>
<p><a href="https://uncannymagazine.com/article/that-never-happened-misplaced-skepticism-and-the-mechanisms-of-suspension-of-disbelief/">That Never Happened: Misplaced Skepticism and the Mechanisms of Suspension of Disbelief - Uncanny Magazine</a>
<a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is literally no writing, not even <em>Middlemarch</em>, that appeals to everyone, that makes sense to everyone, that satisfies everyone. At some point the knowledge that reality breaks suspension of disbelief not just for the stranger reaches of quantum mechanics but also for your own personal everyday life is freeing. The people who can’t be convinced of your experiences on your walk to the grocery store may well read speculative fiction, but they’re unlikely to read your speculative fiction. Building common ground with these people or even getting them to acknowledge that your ground exists, that you are not hovering in midair, is worth doing—but it won’t happen overnight, and it definitely won’t happen if you restrict your stories to the things they already find familiar and comforting. The best we can do is more stories, more variety of stories, more sources of stories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you haven't read any of her fiction, please fix that right now:</p>
<p><a href="https://firesidefiction.com/flow">Flow</a>, published at Fireside, deserves the Hugo it's just been nominated for.</p>
<p>She's compiled <a href="http://www.marissalingen.com/bibleo.html">a long list, with links, of all her writings at her pro blog</a>.
</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=291946" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:291265book rec: Faking It is The Real Deal2019-03-28T17:12:11Z2019-03-28T17:15:54Zpublic5<h3>Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex and the Truths They Reveal</h3>
<p>Lux Alptraum, 2018 <br />
<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/faking-it-the-lies-women-tell-about-sex-and-the-truths-they-reveal/oclc/1078527404/editions?editionsView=true">ebook, print, audio (Overdrive)</a> </p>
<p>five out of five stars</p>
<p>I enjoyed this educational screed about Western patriarchy. Alptraum examines misogyny through the lens of lies women tell to cope, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>faking orgasm</li>
<li>the (fake) concept of virginity</li>
<li>faking 'natural' appearance through makeup</li>
<li>claiming a fake boyfriend to minimize harassment</li>
<li>'fake' rape claims</li>
</ul>
<p>Alptraum’s accessible prose is bolstered by footnotes to science as well as the popular press. She strategically deploys current media images, and she’s writing directly to the reader. <strong>I think it would be an excellent gift for any person on the threshold of sexual maturity.</strong> (Opinions from actual parents most welcome!)</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lies can be roughly divided into one of two categories. There are the lies we tell out of politeness, to spare someone’s feelings, and there are lies we tell to uphold and adhere to a social fiction we’ll be punished for transgressing. Most of us assume that the lies that women tell their partners fall into the former category, but I’d argue that, just as often these lies are of the latter type.</p>
<p>Despite existing at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum, older virgins and sexually experienced women feel compelled to lie for the exact same reason: they're told that there's a very narrow path to happiness and healthy relationships, and openly acknowledging you fall outside it can feel like an admission that you're somehow unworthy of your own happy ending. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Audio excerpt <br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudio/faking-it-by-lux-alptraum">https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudio/faking-it-by-lux-alptraum</a></p>
<p>Text excerpt <br />
<a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/fake-orgams-women-sex-story">https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/fake-orgams-women-sex-story</a></p>
<p>content notes: no explicit discussions of violence or assault</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=291265" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:289000Genevieve Valentine Gives Great Red-Carpet2019-03-04T20:57:00Z2019-03-04T20:57:00Zpublic29<p>This shouldn’t surprise me, since her fun SF thriller novels <em>Persona</em> and <em>Icon</em> <a href="https://www.tor.com/2016/06/28/flashbulb-diplomacy-image-fashion-and-politics-in-persona-and-icon/">posit a world where the United Nations has morphed into a celebrity reality show</a>. Every Persona is managed by a crew of fashion, romance, and (er, yes, well) political advisors.
<a name="cutid1"></a>
Valentine delves into this decision at Tor.com:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But that level of image fascinates me. <a href="https://www.tor.com/2016/06/28/flashbulb-diplomacy-image-fashion-and-politics-in-persona-and-icon/">One of the reasons I wrote Persona and Icon was to make the subtext of celebrity politics literal</a>, and then use it to surround a character who recognizes exactly what the image machine asks of her. Everyone in the International Assembly is a product. It’s technically a diplomatic coalition, but there’s a reason so much of it overtly hinges on the internalized language of celebrity. Public image is a living thing. Hollywood current operates as a celebrity free market, largely without the control of the golden-age studio system (though actors in franchise movies might beg to differ). If every actress is her own studio, she has to plan accordingly. Technically the red carpet is a small part of the job, but it’s also an open audition—the right dress and a perfect sound byte will nudge her public image a crucial degree toward whatever part she’s aiming for next.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.genevievevalentine.com/category/red-carpet-rundown">https://www.genevievevalentine.com/category/red-carpet-rundown</a></p>
<p>Valentine’s commentary begins in January 2009 and comes right up to last week’s Oscars. Each post is heavily illustrated, and yet this may be a case where image descriptions aren’t really necessary, as Valentine’s snark is actually the point.</p>
<p>For example, the last item in her first post, <a href="https://www.genevievevalentine.com/2009/01/golden-globes-totally-random-red-carpet-rundown">https://www.genevievevalentine.com/2009/01/golden-globes-totally-random-red-carpet-rundown</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>However, the outfit I was happiest with was Renee Zellweger’s, because I think she sucks mightily, and now when people ask, “What has she done that’s so bad?” and I don’t have a clip of her acting available, I can just show them this and say, “This is what her soul looks like.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a name="cutid2"></a>
<img src="https://mltshp-cdn.com/r/1FNV8" alt="described below" /></p>
<p>Description: Blond actress with pixie cut hair straightens her shoulders in two-part black dress. Above the waist is see-through-mesh, elbow sleeves, cut out "cold" shoulders, gathering to a low mock neck. "Nude" strapless bra is clearly visible through the top. Tight waist to very fitted satin pencil skirt which flares into unwalkably-long train all around. Renee has 2-in wide gold bracelets on both wrists and shiny gold clutch in right hand. </p>
<hr />
<p>As <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://ljwrites.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://ljwrites.dreamwidth.org/'><b>ljwrites</b></a></span> points out <a href="https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/2019/03/02/alt-text.html">in her excellent synthesis re: alt text creation</a>, "context is everything" and "know when <em>not</em> to use them."</p>
<p>Does my description add to the content?</p>
<p><div><a href="https://www.dreamwidth.org/poll/?id=21509">View Poll: Context Obviates Alt Text?</a></div>
</p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=289000" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2009-05-01:145922:280914Why I Love Instapaper for Reading Fanfic2018-12-31T23:42:19Z2023-10-24T20:57:08Zwell-readGleefulpublic6<p>I've been reading fanfic for twenty years! I started reading on desktop computers with CRT screens. Upgraded to a Palm OS device with the lovely iSilo reader. This showed me the magic of offline fanfic: I could read while reclining. When I finally got a laptop, I backslid a bit. I would download web pages and read them offline in my browser, but I was still tied to the upright posture a laptop requires.</p>
<p>I had a brief flirtation with a Kobo e-ink reader, but it wasn't bright enough for me. That did teach me to appreciate ereader software—I got an iPod Touch basically just to read fanfic on the bus. I stepped up to an iPad for the larger print--things got really swell when I got a <a href="https://levostore.com/collections/all-tablet-stands">LEVO iPad Stand</a>*</p>
<p>I've tried <em>every</em> reader program there is, and mostly I use Instapaper on my iPad/iPhone.</p>
<p><a name="cutid1"></a>Reasons I love it:</p>
<ul>
<li>Its native language is web pages, and almost all fics live on the web. </li>
<li>Vastly simplifies commenting. Instapaper has built-in highlighting & note taking. At the end of each file, it offers a "share these notes" in HTML, markdown, or text. The shared info automagically includes the Title and URL along with whatever I've added.</li>
<li>In addition to a single level of named folders I can organize as I wish, it offers "liked" and "archived" collections.</li>
<li>It's a delightful reading experience: many fonts, great colors, switches between dark and light interface based on sunset.</li>
</ul>
<p>Drawbacks:</p>
<ul>
<li>no searching within the fic</li>
<li>no native bookmarks within a fic (I leave a highlight note as a workaround)
</li>
</ul>
<p>Instapaper is available for iOS, Android, and Kindle as well as the web</p>
<p><a href="https://www.instapaper.com/apps">https://www.instapaper.com/apps</a></p>
<p>and the basic service is free!</p>
<p><small>* I got the older one with bungee cords which is not very 21st century but it works.</small></p>
<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=jesse_the_k&ditemid=280914" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments