Reading

some good things!

Got libgourou working ~~(link to follow)~~, with thanks to simont for bringing it to my attention and me_and for making sympathetic and encouraging noises while I stared muzzily at the documentation this evening. Happy to report that I have successfully downloaded Adobe DRMed ebooks from my command line without any Windows install or emulators at all.
I am enjoying A Physical Education so much - SO much - that I have gone out and bought a book it recommends (Starting Strength; very wordy descriptions of which muscles one should be using for what, apparently, i.e. exactly my kind of thing). Acquiring my own copy once I've given the library's back is a definite possibility. It's really interesting in terms of both the pain Project (memoir about embodiment!) and in terms of my own movement-related special interests (e.g. the gulf between my experience of largely self-led Pilates vs the version available via mainstream contemporary classes embedded in diet culture). Lots of content notes but I'm really really liking it. Gratitude to buttonsbeadslace for posting about it ~~(... link to follow...)~~
Stupid Little Walk yielded both very cheap pistachio croissants (MORE BREAKFAST NONSENSE) and a very cheap "cinnamon danish with vanilla fondant icing" I've been vaguely eyeing up but was also very suspicious of. I am glad to have tried it and probably won't get it again, even if it is only 19p.
This evening's tofu was particularly cooperative with being cooked. (Thanks be to evilsusan for the specific combination of courgettes, tofu and garlic that I still make regularly lo these many years later )
I hit refresh on Oxfam Online and discovered that the rotating sale has migrated back around to "30% off 3+ books". Thus now on their way to me I have: the first edition of Explain Pain for an astonishingly reasonable price (I want to do the deeply nerdy thing of a side-by-side comparison with the second edition, and also to revisit its structure while the second edition is on loan to a physio friend...); a book entitled Science of Pilates, which I'd previously eyed up but that time it sold before I got around to it; a book about allotments and cooking; and a probably questionable out-of-print 1980s cookbook...

Entry tags:

reading,
writing

Yu know the world situation, which adds its mite ( for definitions of "mite,"watch out for falling pianos) to the stress closer by. The worst of it is feeling helpless to do much besides donate money to the outer stresses and listen as I can to the inner. Which I have been doing, in spite of our income dwindling. But this is a common plight.

My brain did go into revolt, and a bit of OT3 fantasy comedy of manners unspooled itself over the past month and a half or so. I wouldn't mind that happening again because it keeps me busy--besides various books and TV shows. But none of those have lit my fire quite as much as having a brainmovie again.

I do have Katherine Arden's latest here, and it looks good. But it's called The Unicorn Hunters and appears to be based on the tapestries so splendidly displayed in New York. Very handsome tapestries, but whew. Those boys strutting their tight breeches and little short jackets and perfect hair were a bunch of brutes. The tapestries illustrate an exercise in human cruelty, and the news is kind of overflowing with that, so I'm waiting for the right mood for the book.

II've done some rereads, and some new reads, I continue to listen to audiobooks while trudging my daily steps.

Oh! edited to add: I watched the Plympics ice skating and ice dancing. Some really lovely stuff, though they do seem to be obsessed with the quad spin.

Current Music: Chalk, "Can't Feel It"

Never tasted anything like you before

I was supposed to spend the afternoon with my husband and instead I am about to spend it at the doctor's. The one is obviously much preferable to the other. Have a photo I took yesterday when I was out and walking and thought I had a decent chance of doing something human with the end of my week.

Entry tags:

linkage,
poetry

“this is my desire / consume me like a fire / ’cause i just want something beautiful / to touch me”

A few things that people might want to know:

AO3 has 18 works for Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost.

“The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto,” a 70s automobile that put the “car” in “exploding car”. (via)

A better shoelace knot. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from Something Beautiful, NEEDTOBREATHE.

Entry tags:

Snowdrop Day

I went to the cemetery today and it was the first warm day of spring - even the wind was warm, and all the birds were going absolutely nuts, they were so loud. The snowdrops are in full bloom everywhere and they look so incredibly lovely against the leaf litter.

( Read more... )

batiste

batiste (buh-TEEST, ba-TEEST) - n., a fine soft sheer fabric of plain weave of linen or/and cotton, cambric.

Some authorities claim it's a few specific kinds of cambric, while others that in French the two are synonymous, implying that it ought to also be so in English. Both terms come from Picardy (the region bordering Belgium and the North Sea), cambric after the city of Cambrai but batiste is a little more obscure: stories that it's after 14th century weaver Baptiste of Cambrai have no historical basis -- instead, going by its historical Picard form batiche, it's probably from bat-, stem of battre, to beat/separate (fibres), which is what you do to prepare linen for spinning.

---L.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Photos: House Yard

Today I took some pictures around the yard and did a couple of garden crafts. These are from the house yard and savanna. (See the Worm Bin and the Water Garden.)

( Walk with me ... )

Current Music: Jenna Russell, "Red Dwarf"

There's no kind of atmosphere

I hope Rob Grant would take it in the intended spirit that when I heard the news of his sudden death, all I could think was "All most of us get is 'Mind that bus!' 'What bus?' Splat!" The first six and a half series of original flavor Red Dwarf (1988–99) were a social staple of my sophomore year of college, watched primarily in my case from the top half of a bunk bed occupied by a structurally unwise number of students who would shortly branch out into whatever British television comedy we could get hold of the tapes for. It became an immediate and ineradicable part of our language. Decades later, the number of quotations from especially the first three series that have worked themselves into my present household lingo would be difficult to estimate without a rewatch. In storage with the rest of my library, I still have some of the tie-in novels, including at least one of the separately authored parallel continuations, which unfortunately for this memoriam may have been Doug Naylor's. I cannot find that I ever saw another project of Grant's except for the first series of The 10%ers (1993–96) and I am still stricken to lose yet another artist while Kissinger's heirs don't even seem to be in this machine. Not everybody has to be dead, Dave.

some good things.

Ridiculous indulgent breakfast situation (though having now looked up Culinary Strata because A asked, I am extremely unconvinced that pistachio croissants with raspberries)... counts.
Therapy session, spent entirely talking about One Thing (with tendrils), has left me feeling distinctly more settled.
Today's primary Make Numbers Go Down project has been working my way through some of the short fiction I've had open in tabs since [mumble]. Highlight thus far is Naomi Kritzer's The Thing About Ghost Stories (cn parental death, dementia).
The other New Thing I started consuming today is A Physical Education, which is extremely and often graphically about diet culture and disordered eating, but which 11% of the way through the audio file I am Very Much Enjoying. Further updates to follow. (The library only has audio, I apparently put a hold on it seven weeks ago though I can't at this point remember where I came across it, and The First Headphones I Have Ever Tolerated remain excellent. Shokz OpenRun Pro.)
The Child liked the replacement mock cherries; spring flowers are excellent (we are firmly heading into daffodils now); Routine Dinner tonight DID work even though the app initially Frightened Me by claiming first available pickup was tomorrow morning.

eprouvette

eprouvette (ay-proo-VET) - n., a fixed-elevation mortar formerly used to test the strength of gunpowder.

Used from the 17th to mid-19th century -- put in a standard shot and standard charge, and see how far the standard mortar flings it. Also done with small-arms powder with a standard pistol, but the mortar is better known form. From French éprouvette, from éprouver, to test, from Old French esprover, reconstructed Vulgar Latin form *exprobare, from Latin ex- + probare, to try/prove.

---L.

Current Mood: hopeful

Entry tags:

books,
read26

2026/029: Bread of Angels — Patti Smit

2026/029: Bread of Angels — Patti Smith

How can we leap back up? Get back on our feet, grab a cart, and start gathering the debris, both physical and emotional. Crush it into small stones, then pulverize them and as the dust settles, dance upon it. How do we do that? By returning to our child self, weathering our obstacles in good faith. For children operate in the perpetual present, they go on, rebuild their castles, lay down their casts and crutches, and walk again. [loc. 2494]

Another memoir from Patti Smith, author of Just Kids and M Train (the latter of which I have not read). Bread of Angels (the title refers to 'unpremeditated gestures of kindness') covers Smith's childhood, her years as a pioneering punk artist, and her 'walking away' from success to have a real life, marrying Fred 'Sonic' Smith and having children.( Read more... )

Entry tags:

how do your gardens grow

some good things

Made it to the plot! Brought home more salad than we actually wanted to eat this evening! Mostly lamb's lettuce but some bonus baby beetroot and spinach leaves :)
Also, the broad beans are starting to emerge (well, the ones that didn't get partly dug up and then abandoned on the surface unmunched, anyway; those have now been reinterred).
In the course of Making An Effort to Close More Tabs I rediscovered Standard Ebooks, and downloaded a bunch of things I'd apparently been interested in for Some Time: Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
I spent some of the evening doing minor crafts with supplies A acquired, to make replacement cherries for a children's board game, using red wooden beans and green cotton string. I am mildly concerned that the Child might disapprove of the string being green rather than red, but We Shall See...
Cleeeeeeeeeen hair.

Entry tags:

the farm

Duck update

Our flock of twelve ducks now number thirteen and occasionally fourteen. Duck #13 is the neighbours' sole surviving duck after the others were taken by a fox (probably). He was keeping them outside. Ours are in a polytunnel inside an enclosure, but I think a determined fox could still get inside. Augh, I hope they survive the winter. Duck #13 is white and looks a lot like our Elsa, but smaller and with a more orange beak; we call her Lill-Elsa (Little Elsa). She has seamlessly merged with the flock.

The occasional #14 is a female wild mallard who seems to be considering the advantages of domestication: free food, water, and shelter! But she comes and goes. One might think our ducks would correspondingly be hearing the call of the wild from her, but no. They like their comforts now. The snow is thawing and I thought I'd make them happy by breaking up the ice in the small pond for them, but when I herded them outside to see it, they just stood there and looked at me like I was committing animal abuse, and hurried back to the polytunnel as soon as I got out of the way. Sigh.

As for me, I am too busy and am looking forward to things calming down a little soon. At least I hope they will.

Current Music: The Pack a.d., "Take"

Anything you crave, a certain curse

Stepping out of the house for a short walk around the neighborhood, I discovered that a friend had sent me a surprise gift in the mail and that between their post office and my doorstep it had been stolen. I received a gutted envelope slit down the side containing brown paper from which the gift had been shaken out. The stiff paper of the accompanying note had wedged hard enough into the envelope that after some stricken searching it was still in there; the handmade buttons and the picture were not. I assume the thief was looking for checks or more conventionally defined valuables, but it seems unspeakably cruel to let the envelope continue on its way and arrive to tell me what kindness I had been robbed of. I still have the note. The kindness itself did travel the distance. But I still want the thief to fall in front of a freight express.

dacryphilia

dacryphilia - n., a paraphilia in which one is aroused by tears.

First reaction: um, ick. And indeed this does come up in BDSM circles, but it also ties into hurt/comfort scenarios. Coined around 2000 from Ancient Greek dákru, tear + -philia, abnormal liking (from Ancient Greek phílos, loving).

---L.

Current Mood: sad

Entry tags:

books,
read26

2026/028: The Kite Runner — Khalid Hosseini

2026/028: The Kite Runner — Khalid Hosseini

"There is only one sin, and that is theft... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.”

This novel, by an expatriate Afghani author, explores guilt, betrayal and redemption in Afghanistan. The narrator is Amir, son of a wealthy Pashtan father ('Baba'), whose mother died giving birth to him. His closest friend is Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant Ali: his mother ran away when he was little. The Hazara (the ethnic group to which Hassan and Ali belong) are oppressed, discriminated against and mocked. Baba, to young Amir's horror, treats Hassan as well as he treats Amir himself. The boys enjoy the traditional Afghan sport of kite-fighting, and Hassan is Amir's 'kite runner', pursuing the conquered kites with preternatural accuracy.

( Read more... )

some good things make a post

inCompleted White Puzzle!!! We were right about That One Piece being the missing one, and now that I'm not worried about spoilers I have poked the internet and it (mostly in the form of reddit) confirms that Those Are The Missing Bit.
one (1) orchid flower is all the way open!
supermarket had discount fancy croissant, so we are most of the way to prepped for Fancy Breakfast tomorrow morning :)

Current Music: The Pack a.d., "Seasick"

None of us are traitors till we are

In the wake of the blizzard, the temperature rose a degree above freezing in the blue-and-white brilliance of sun and the local topography of snow-walls to shoulder-height compressed and calved like ice shelves. I had the impulse to visit the Robbins Cemetery on Mass. Ave. while out running errands and was prevented by absolutely nobody having shoveled within a block of the gates. I took a picture of a leftover slam-dunk of snow instead.

Tickets have hiked considerably in price since the last production of theirs I attended, but I am intrigued that the Apollinaire Theatre Company is currently doing Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge—I assume it was proposed last season because of the topical-political of the undocumented immigrant angle which has only gone Mach 10 in relevance since. I have never seen the play; I read it in 2016 because Van Heflin originated the role of Eddie Carbone in the original 1955 one-act version. I am wondering how I convince their box office that I am actively pursuing a professional arts career.

Entry tags:

fiction

“all we have to do now / is take these lies and make them true somehow”

(I’ve no idea how much sense this will make if you don’t know the book in question.)

I’ve read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home many times—annually from when I was 16 till my mid-20s, and at least six times (probably more) since then. This time I made an experiment and read it out of order: I skipped Stone Telling’s first two sections until I reached her final section, then with greater social context read it all together, in a single day, before continuing on to the end.

I expected this to not work, but I was curious just how badly it wouldn’t work. The answer is, nowhere nearly as badly as reading chapters of The Dispossessed in internal chronological order, which utterly fails—that story is built around experiencing events in the order given. There is some loss of experience, as between her first and last sections there are pieces expecting you to have read her story beforehand (including a poem by Stone Telling), but it’s not as catastrophic as with The Dispossessed.

And now I know.

One thing that struck me this time: Pandora’s informant about Kesh medical practice is Alder of Chumo and Sinshan—the name Stone Telling’s husband had when she was still Woman Coming Home, who presumably found his third name, Stone Listening, at the same time she did. We don’t know exactly how long Pandora spent on her field studies, but that she has just the one informant suggests it wasn’t years upon years. And yet, the Archivist of the Madrone, when Pandora had only experienced enough of the Kesh to find their concepts of time confusing, knew of Stone Telling’s written narrative. Not a gotcha, but a hmmm.

I want to know more about Giver Ire’s daughter and Ire herself. They reappear more than anyone. Along with Thorn of Sinshan, they may be enough to constitute a reasonable Yuletide request.

(I still wonder how homosexual marriages, which are mentioned in passing only twice, work in practice in a tightly matrilocal culture.) (Pro tip to readers: the soundtrack of music and songs of the Kesh, which was included with the original publication on a cassette tape, is still available on Bandcamp.)

---L.

Subject quote from Freedom! ’90, George Michael.

Entry tags:

bookses precious

The Language of Liars, by S.L. Huang

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a novella with a whole range of aliens with different language features, wildly different environments, etc. Several of my friends just stopped reading this review to go pre-order or request that their library do so. You are correct, if that is the sort of thing you like, this sure is that thing.

What it does less successfully, I think, is the twist ending. I feel like this is a book that is for people who like science fiction about aliens, but for me, as soon as I knew the premise, I knew the ending, and I was correct. So if you're reading for the aliens, come on in; if you're reading for a clever twist you did not see coming, this is not that novella, that is not where Huang spent time and energy.