Robert and Gracia Fay Ellwood
Jul. 1st, 2025 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sartoriasI think one or two old Mythies might still be reading here; at any rate, these old friends had been on my mind this spring. Came back to discover that they died a week apart at the end of May/beginning of June.
They met in the very early sixties at the U of Chicago, where both were studying. Robert was a bit on the spectrum; he said, and he stuck with it, he would never date anyone who couldn't read and love Lord of the Rings, which had blown him away when it came out. In retrospect I don't even know how he stumbled across it because to my later knowledge of him he didn't read fiction. Maybe he thought it was a northern saga when he stumbled on the first volume? Anyway, his field was religion and Japanese literature, and I remember him sitting in his rose garden reading copies of ancient Japanese texts for pleasure.
She was also blown away by it, but not especially by him. But he'd fallen hard for her, and when she also loved LOTR, he wasn't about to give up. They married around 1963, I think; by the time I met them in 1967, they were living in West LA, he a professor of Religious Studies at USC. They used to host many meetings of the early Mythopoeic Society; he'd disappear while she socialized with us gawky teens. She was a great role model for us; she was a scholar, married to someone who respected her brains, which was tough to find during the mid and late sixties.
I was on hand to deliver both their kids, now middle-aged. He married my spouse and me in 1980. They became Quakers later; they were firm pacifists and human rights advocates.
Time is just so relentless! But they used theirs well, living gently and kindly, always loving beauty, grace, and laughter.
They met in the very early sixties at the U of Chicago, where both were studying. Robert was a bit on the spectrum; he said, and he stuck with it, he would never date anyone who couldn't read and love Lord of the Rings, which had blown him away when it came out. In retrospect I don't even know how he stumbled across it because to my later knowledge of him he didn't read fiction. Maybe he thought it was a northern saga when he stumbled on the first volume? Anyway, his field was religion and Japanese literature, and I remember him sitting in his rose garden reading copies of ancient Japanese texts for pleasure.
She was also blown away by it, but not especially by him. But he'd fallen hard for her, and when she also loved LOTR, he wasn't about to give up. They married around 1963, I think; by the time I met them in 1967, they were living in West LA, he a professor of Religious Studies at USC. They used to host many meetings of the early Mythopoeic Society; he'd disappear while she socialized with us gawky teens. She was a great role model for us; she was a scholar, married to someone who respected her brains, which was tough to find during the mid and late sixties.
I was on hand to deliver both their kids, now middle-aged. He married my spouse and me in 1980. They became Quakers later; they were firm pacifists and human rights advocates.
Time is just so relentless! But they used theirs well, living gently and kindly, always loving beauty, grace, and laughter.
Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
Jul. 1st, 2025 07:59 amosprey_archerThis week I’m doing Wednesday Reading Meme a day early, as tomorrow is MY BIRTHDAY and I will therefore be frolicking through birthday festivities.
Books I Quit Reading
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I’ve meant to read for ages because it’s been recced to hell and back. It’s an excellent example of literary fiction, which unfortunately means it’s reminding me why I don’t read much modern literary fiction, which is that I find it depressing. Olive is just so mean?? She’s so contemptuous to her husband in chapter one that I was actually rooting for him to ditch her and run away with his pharmacy clerk, and I never root for male characters to leave their wives.
I read a few more chapters, but then I realized I was actively dreading picking it up again, and life is simply too short.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Nothing this week! The birthday festivities have already begun, and I spent the weekend in Bloomington, meeting a friend’s new baby and having cocktails at a speakeasy, where we had the best seats in the house watching the bartender make the drinks. He had a wonderful contraption for blowing a giant smoke-filled bubble over a drink, which clung to the rim of the glass until you popped it, and then the smoke wisped away in the dimness of the bar.
What I’m Reading Now
Hilary McKay’s The Time of Green Magic, which is a magical house children’s fantasy, and I LOVE a magical house children’s fantasy. Gorgeous. The heroine is already slipping into the books she reads, tasting the sea salt on her lips. Excited to report back.
What I Plan to Read Next
Blue Balliett’s Out of the Wild Night.
Books I Quit Reading
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I’ve meant to read for ages because it’s been recced to hell and back. It’s an excellent example of literary fiction, which unfortunately means it’s reminding me why I don’t read much modern literary fiction, which is that I find it depressing. Olive is just so mean?? She’s so contemptuous to her husband in chapter one that I was actually rooting for him to ditch her and run away with his pharmacy clerk, and I never root for male characters to leave their wives.
I read a few more chapters, but then I realized I was actively dreading picking it up again, and life is simply too short.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Nothing this week! The birthday festivities have already begun, and I spent the weekend in Bloomington, meeting a friend’s new baby and having cocktails at a speakeasy, where we had the best seats in the house watching the bartender make the drinks. He had a wonderful contraption for blowing a giant smoke-filled bubble over a drink, which clung to the rim of the glass until you popped it, and then the smoke wisped away in the dimness of the bar.
What I’m Reading Now
Hilary McKay’s The Time of Green Magic, which is a magical house children’s fantasy, and I LOVE a magical house children’s fantasy. Gorgeous. The heroine is already slipping into the books she reads, tasting the sea salt on her lips. Excited to report back.
What I Plan to Read Next
Blue Balliett’s Out of the Wild Night.
Actors who Sing: Christian Kane (Leverage)
Jul. 1st, 2025 12:57 ammxcatmoonI was just talking about Leverage, and the subject of Christian Kane's singing came up and made me realize I neglected to include him in my "Actors who Sing" series. Absolutely unforgivable, so I had to rectify that immediately. I'm not a huge country fan, but I enjoy listening to his singing voice.
First is my favorite of his songs, "Thinking of You." And I tossed in the Leverage fanvid to "House Rules" too, just in case there's someone who hasn't seen it. It was a bit famous because Christian himself tweeted about it when it came out (which was 15 years ago btw). And if you want to see the others in the series, just search the tag: music: actors who sing
First is my favorite of his songs, "Thinking of You." And I tossed in the Leverage fanvid to "House Rules" too, just in case there's someone who hasn't seen it. It was a bit famous because Christian himself tweeted about it when it came out (which was 15 years ago btw). And if you want to see the others in the series, just search the tag: music: actors who sing
Recent reading
Jun. 30th, 2025 11:36 pmtroisoiseauxFollowing a conversation with sovay about formative mermaid media, spent the evening re-reading The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler - a 2003 middle-grade novel about a girl who discovers she can turn into a mermaid - to see how it holds up as a recommendation for a young reader 20+ years (oof) later. Emily's mermaid adventures include but are not limited to befriending another tweenage mermaid, exploring a sunken ship, and discovering that her long-lost father is a merman and sneaking into the underwater prison (!) where he's been languishing for the past 12 years (!!) for breaking the law against fraternization with humans (!!!). (Also, that her mom's memory of their relationship was wiped (!!!!) and their family friend the creepy lighthouse keeper has been an agent for the anti-human-fraternization king of the merfolk the whole time. (!!!!!)) So, yeah, the plot is kind of bananas, but it's charming and, most importantly, the descriptions of how cool it would be to swim in the ocean as a mermaid and explore kelp forests and sunken ships, etc., are great. Verdict: it holds up! I don't think I'd noticed as a kid how many of the throwaway minor (human) characters had punny or otherwise nautical names like "Sandra Castle" and "Mrs. Brig"; I definitely had never realized that the author is British and therefore the book presumably takes place in England rather than, like, Florida (as I'd pictured as a kid) or Maine (as I imagined it this time).
Made some progress in the Dune audiobook over the weekend; I'm through Book One (of three). Unfortunately, so far Book Two has mostly involved Paul being rude about his mom not being able to follow along with whatever Space Jesus logic-connections-as-revelation thing he has going on, which I'm finding less interesting than the Space Medici politics and backstabbing of the first third.
sovay about formative mermaid media, spent the evening re-reading The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler - a 2003 middle-grade novel about a girl who discovers she can turn into a mermaid - to see how it holds up as a recommendation for a young reader 20+ years (oof) later. Emily's mermaid adventures include but are not limited to befriending another tweenage mermaid, exploring a sunken ship, and discovering that her long-lost father is a merman and sneaking into the underwater prison (!) where he's been languishing for the past 12 years (!!) for breaking the law against fraternization with humans (!!!). (Also, that her mom's memory of their relationship was wiped (!!!!) and their family friend the creepy lighthouse keeper has been an agent for the anti-human-fraternization king of the merfolk the whole time. (!!!!!)) So, yeah, the plot is kind of bananas, but it's charming and, most importantly, the descriptions of how cool it would be to swim in the ocean as a mermaid and explore kelp forests and sunken ships, etc., are great. Verdict: it holds up! I don't think I'd noticed as a kid how many of the throwaway minor (human) characters had punny or otherwise nautical names like "Sandra Castle" and "Mrs. Brig"; I definitely had never realized that the author is British and therefore the book presumably takes place in England rather than, like, Florida (as I'd pictured as a kid) or Maine (as I imagined it this time).Made some progress in the Dune audiobook over the weekend; I'm through Book One (of three). Unfortunately, so far Book Two has mostly involved Paul being rude about his mom not being able to follow along with whatever Space Jesus logic-connections-as-revelation thing he has going on, which I'm finding less interesting than the Space Medici politics and backstabbing of the first third.
perspective.
Jun. 30th, 2025 06:39 pmserafaerywhen I feel an impulse to feel repulsed by everyone who does weed, I try to think of Willy Nelson. I like him, he's cool, he can do all the weed he wants. When I get hateful rage at all children after watching a group of them tearing up dozens of stalks of bear grass at the summit of a beautiful mountain that people travel far to see and beating each other with them and throwing them aside like garbage just to rip up more, while parents walk away obliviously, I think of Ragnar, who I love, and would probably think that game was fun, too. Also flying private jets to a wedding is way worse for the world than wrecking a field of wildflowers. sigh. This post brought to you by a random non-alcoholic beer that was supposed to be my after-work relaxation treat but for some unforgivable reason smells like weed (which to me is nauseating).
anxious monday morning.
Jun. 30th, 2025 08:56 amserafaeryfeeling a bit better today. whatever physical/chemical ailment that was causing that intense emotional discomfort has seemed to ease off a bit. it's not gone. i don't think i've felt it totally leave for more than a fleeting moment here or there in a couple of years, at least it seems that way. that hot tight ball of discomfort is still there in the center of my body, but it's less intense, today.
dragged my husband up a beloved trail yesterday. i was giddy from the get-go. trails just make me happy. i was miserable in the morning, Avalanche was sneezing so I finally swept the floors, despite the terrible timing, and have never seen so much dust and fur. Josh actively gets in the way of this chore but I just pushed through this time, I can't leave Avalanche in a dirty apartment like that. Or us. I felt much better when that was done.
I got my beargrass fix on Silver Star mountain. I'll post pics later.
We got a late start on a hot day but I was happy anyway. Josh ended up pretty melted, but I fed him lunch at the top, and on the way home we saw a girl on a street corner with one of those fabulous fruit carts that are all over the place in Venice Beach, so we got one of those and it was heavenly and perked him up quite a bit. We also got ice cream and n/a beer and n/a wine and drinks on the way home so I will never lose this stubborn extra 7lbs but oh well lol.
Need to try to get some office work done before I leave and I have not much time, I am nervous about seeing a new Ob/Gyn tomorrow and hope at least I'll have someone I can consistently get hormones from who won't argue with me about it.
Pondering chelation surgery and running. I miss it so. It's the only thing that stabilized my mood consistently. Not sure if cutting into my body is the right way to go. The last surgeon I talked to about it told me to just do whatever I want and when it's bad enough I can get the joint fused. But it feels bad enough now. I don't want to hobble myself at age 50. I hate that I can't even do push-ups without shoes on, it hurts my toes too much with the bone spurs in them. I'm down to only 10 push-ups after having 30 last year. But. I so desperately want to run. I am so miserable without it. It's been almost two and a half years and I have not found a way to deal with not being able to run, yet. I keep trying things but nothing is the same, or there are barriers that I can't seem to overcome. Maybe I just haven't found the right alternative, yet.
...
On Silver Star, we saw a pika! I've heard them many many times while hiking in rocky areas, including on our way up this trail yesterday, but this is the first time I actually laid eyes on one - they are pretty shy. It was the cutest aaaaaagh! They are related to rabbits. Josh spotted it before I did, on our way down.
(We did not get a photo, but this was taken in the same general area, this is what they look like, squeeeeeeee! They live in rocks and make funny little nests full of plant fluff and they make a cute little Pi! barking/squeaking like sound.)
BBC Earth did a silly little profile of them years ago:
dragged my husband up a beloved trail yesterday. i was giddy from the get-go. trails just make me happy. i was miserable in the morning, Avalanche was sneezing so I finally swept the floors, despite the terrible timing, and have never seen so much dust and fur. Josh actively gets in the way of this chore but I just pushed through this time, I can't leave Avalanche in a dirty apartment like that. Or us. I felt much better when that was done.
I got my beargrass fix on Silver Star mountain. I'll post pics later.
We got a late start on a hot day but I was happy anyway. Josh ended up pretty melted, but I fed him lunch at the top, and on the way home we saw a girl on a street corner with one of those fabulous fruit carts that are all over the place in Venice Beach, so we got one of those and it was heavenly and perked him up quite a bit. We also got ice cream and n/a beer and n/a wine and drinks on the way home so I will never lose this stubborn extra 7lbs but oh well lol.
Need to try to get some office work done before I leave and I have not much time, I am nervous about seeing a new Ob/Gyn tomorrow and hope at least I'll have someone I can consistently get hormones from who won't argue with me about it.
Pondering chelation surgery and running. I miss it so. It's the only thing that stabilized my mood consistently. Not sure if cutting into my body is the right way to go. The last surgeon I talked to about it told me to just do whatever I want and when it's bad enough I can get the joint fused. But it feels bad enough now. I don't want to hobble myself at age 50. I hate that I can't even do push-ups without shoes on, it hurts my toes too much with the bone spurs in them. I'm down to only 10 push-ups after having 30 last year. But. I so desperately want to run. I am so miserable without it. It's been almost two and a half years and I have not found a way to deal with not being able to run, yet. I keep trying things but nothing is the same, or there are barriers that I can't seem to overcome. Maybe I just haven't found the right alternative, yet.
...
On Silver Star, we saw a pika! I've heard them many many times while hiking in rocky areas, including on our way up this trail yesterday, but this is the first time I actually laid eyes on one - they are pretty shy. It was the cutest aaaaaagh! They are related to rabbits. Josh spotted it before I did, on our way down.
(We did not get a photo, but this was taken in the same general area, this is what they look like, squeeeeeeee! They live in rocks and make funny little nests full of plant fluff and they make a cute little Pi! barking/squeaking like sound.)
BBC Earth did a silly little profile of them years ago:
Civic Duty: Done
Jun. 30th, 2025 09:55 amgreen_knightThe EHRC consultation on their code of practice closes today. I learnt about it yesterday, which is not ideal, and have just spend around 2-3h hours filling it in.
https://transactual.org.uk/equality-act-campaign/responding-to-the-ehrc-consultation/
has guidance and talking points. You don’t need to fill out everything, but every voice helps.
It’s a transphobic mess. Their stance is basically that it’s fine to get trans people coming and going; they believe in the the ‘trans women are better athletes’ myth and don’t believe that trans women should see gynaecologists.
It’s ugly. I have little hope to have made a difference, but I am spitting mad.
https://transactual.org.uk/equality-act-campaign/responding-to-the-ehrc-consultation/
has guidance and talking points. You don’t need to fill out everything, but every voice helps.
It’s a transphobic mess. Their stance is basically that it’s fine to get trans people coming and going; they believe in the the ‘trans women are better athletes’ myth and don’t believe that trans women should see gynaecologists.
It’s ugly. I have little hope to have made a difference, but I am spitting mad.
Hope
Jun. 29th, 2025 09:03 pmmichaelboyI'm supposed to start volunteering in the ER by late July. Honestly, I'm excited but also a little nervous. It has been almost eight years since I've been in that environment and being a bit older makes me a little unsure of myself. Oddly enough, I especially want to make those who are gone from my life, proud of me. I guess it is a way of honoring them (since words are no longer possible) by doing my very best.
This simple little tune in its words -- reminds me and describes love lost, love kept, my weaknesses, my fears, hopes and failures and so many things I tried to be but couldn't or didn't always. It is both good and very hard for me.
* * *
Gardening Tips
In each unspoken sound and every unwritten word
the preponderance of unreckoned silence is deafening
I may not see the shadows that encumber your heart
(during your everyday life)
or a grow a garden tomato from one of your vines
yet the same sun that brings such consternation,
equally brings warmth, desire, joy and hope.
* * *
Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.
~ From: Shawshank Redemption, excerpt from "Andy's" letter to "Red"
This simple little tune in its words -- reminds me and describes love lost, love kept, my weaknesses, my fears, hopes and failures and so many things I tried to be but couldn't or didn't always. It is both good and very hard for me.
* * *
Gardening Tips
In each unspoken sound and every unwritten word
the preponderance of unreckoned silence is deafening
I may not see the shadows that encumber your heart
(during your everyday life)
or a grow a garden tomato from one of your vines
yet the same sun that brings such consternation,
equally brings warmth, desire, joy and hope.
* * *
Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Andy.
~ From: Shawshank Redemption, excerpt from "Andy's" letter to "Red"
Another Update
Jun. 29th, 2025 06:16 pmmxcatmoon( Talk of the world situation and depression... )
Things at work are going well for me; it's a huge relief off my shoulders to no longer be responsible for everything that goes wrong and fixing every problem in a department where I was working with someone who couldn't carry their own weight/responsibilities. I really like my new supervisor; she's the type I can really work alongside as we are alike in a lot of ways and see the job duties the same way.
Anyway, here's a new feel-good video from Jared Halley. Now I want to go listen to some Chicago. It reminds me of the pleasant summer days of my youth when the world seemed brighter. I should swap out the playlist I listen to in the car, too.
Things at work are going well for me; it's a huge relief off my shoulders to no longer be responsible for everything that goes wrong and fixing every problem in a department where I was working with someone who couldn't carry their own weight/responsibilities. I really like my new supervisor; she's the type I can really work alongside as we are alike in a lot of ways and see the job duties the same way.
Anyway, here's a new feel-good video from Jared Halley. Now I want to go listen to some Chicago. It reminds me of the pleasant summer days of my youth when the world seemed brighter. I should swap out the playlist I listen to in the car, too.
Theater review: Dead Outlaw
Jun. 29th, 2025 03:35 pmtroisoiseauxI managed to swing a last-minute day trip to NYC to see Dead Outlaw yesterday after it was suddenly announced (last weekend) that the show was closing early (this weekend), making this the second time in six months I've caught one of the last performances of an unfairly short-lived folk-rock musical at the Longacre Theater that's more or less based off of a real event involving weird things happening to a corpse. (The other was Swept Away; seriously, is the Longacre cursed or something?!) (ETA: ...apparently yes??)
Dead Outlaw is based on the weirder-than-fiction true story of Elmer McCurdy, a train robber killed in a 1911 shootout whose preserved corpse ended up being displayed as part of various carnival sideshows and movie sets throughout the 1920s-40s, until eventually rediscovered in the funhouse of a California amusement park in the 1970s. (Yes, really.) The musical spends approximately equal time on McCurdy's life - a childhood unmoored by a family revelation, a teenage descent into hooliganism and attempt to restart out west, a near-engagement to a nice girl until he self-sabotages, a short and wildly unsuccessful career as an outlaw - and afterlife, which the musical fills with sort of one-song vignettes: the Oklahoma coroner and subsequent series of carnies who displayed McCurdy's body to make a quick buck; the Cherokee runner Andy Payne, who won the 1928 Trans-America Footrace at which McCurdy was displayed as part of the sideshow (only a tenuous connection, but such a cool story I see why they included it); the daughter of a movie director who purchased McCurdy as a film prop, who treats him as a sort of confidant; the 1970s Los Angeles County coroner with a star-studded "client" list.
This show slapped unbelievably hard, as the kids say. I loved the format! It wasn't quite a full-on "concert with a plot" a la Six, but had an on-stage band that was kind of the focal center— literally, in that the main set piece was this sort of movable, patio-style stage where the band played while the action/narrative scenes played out around and occasionally on top of it, as narrated by the band's frontman; a friend who saw the show before I did described it as "feeling like you were watching a podcast." Some - most? - of the characters' songs are staged... diegetically, as it were, but sometimes they'd join the band "on stage"(-within-a-stage) and take over the frontman's microphone, such as Elmer McCurdy's rock-star-tantrum crash-out ("Killed A Man in Maine", which the narrator informed us afterwards is probably not even true), or more poignantly, as McCurdy's girlfriend's song ("A Stranger") shifts from the in-story action/conversation - identifying his body - to imagining the future they could have had together when she steps up to the microphone alongside the band. Other than Andrew Durand as Elmer McCurdy - whose athleticism in the first half of the show and ability to remain disconcertingly corpse-still in the second half were equally impressive - everyone in the cast played a bunch of different characters; even the narrator doubled as the outlaw who recruited McCurdy, thinking that he was an explosives expert. (He... was not.) The music was actually not as consistently folk-rock as I had expected from the couple of songs I'd heard beforehand— particularly in the second half, with its rotating cast of one-off characters, the styles ranged from more typical Broadway numbers to barbershop quartet vibes (the carnival promoters who buy McCurdy off the first coroner, claiming to be his brothers) to nightclub-crooner jazz (the LA coroner). It was also SO clever and SO funny— the set-up and payoff of the humor was just brilliant. (In particular, utilizing the under-tapped comedic power of letting the audience stew for a bit: at one point, the narrator is like "and then Elmer was stuck in a closet for 20 years" and then there's a solid minute or two of just... a completely dark stage except for a spotlight on Andrew Durand's motionless face, the audience stifling giggles like elementary schoolers told to behave at an assembly.) Very glad I saw this!!
Dead Outlaw is based on the weirder-than-fiction true story of Elmer McCurdy, a train robber killed in a 1911 shootout whose preserved corpse ended up being displayed as part of various carnival sideshows and movie sets throughout the 1920s-40s, until eventually rediscovered in the funhouse of a California amusement park in the 1970s. (Yes, really.) The musical spends approximately equal time on McCurdy's life - a childhood unmoored by a family revelation, a teenage descent into hooliganism and attempt to restart out west, a near-engagement to a nice girl until he self-sabotages, a short and wildly unsuccessful career as an outlaw - and afterlife, which the musical fills with sort of one-song vignettes: the Oklahoma coroner and subsequent series of carnies who displayed McCurdy's body to make a quick buck; the Cherokee runner Andy Payne, who won the 1928 Trans-America Footrace at which McCurdy was displayed as part of the sideshow (only a tenuous connection, but such a cool story I see why they included it); the daughter of a movie director who purchased McCurdy as a film prop, who treats him as a sort of confidant; the 1970s Los Angeles County coroner with a star-studded "client" list.
This show slapped unbelievably hard, as the kids say. I loved the format! It wasn't quite a full-on "concert with a plot" a la Six, but had an on-stage band that was kind of the focal center— literally, in that the main set piece was this sort of movable, patio-style stage where the band played while the action/narrative scenes played out around and occasionally on top of it, as narrated by the band's frontman; a friend who saw the show before I did described it as "feeling like you were watching a podcast." Some - most? - of the characters' songs are staged... diegetically, as it were, but sometimes they'd join the band "on stage"(-within-a-stage) and take over the frontman's microphone, such as Elmer McCurdy's rock-star-tantrum crash-out ("Killed A Man in Maine", which the narrator informed us afterwards is probably not even true), or more poignantly, as McCurdy's girlfriend's song ("A Stranger") shifts from the in-story action/conversation - identifying his body - to imagining the future they could have had together when she steps up to the microphone alongside the band. Other than Andrew Durand as Elmer McCurdy - whose athleticism in the first half of the show and ability to remain disconcertingly corpse-still in the second half were equally impressive - everyone in the cast played a bunch of different characters; even the narrator doubled as the outlaw who recruited McCurdy, thinking that he was an explosives expert. (He... was not.) The music was actually not as consistently folk-rock as I had expected from the couple of songs I'd heard beforehand— particularly in the second half, with its rotating cast of one-off characters, the styles ranged from more typical Broadway numbers to barbershop quartet vibes (the carnival promoters who buy McCurdy off the first coroner, claiming to be his brothers) to nightclub-crooner jazz (the LA coroner). It was also SO clever and SO funny— the set-up and payoff of the humor was just brilliant. (In particular, utilizing the under-tapped comedic power of letting the audience stew for a bit: at one point, the narrator is like "and then Elmer was stuck in a closet for 20 years" and then there's a solid minute or two of just... a completely dark stage except for a spotlight on Andrew Durand's motionless face, the audience stifling giggles like elementary schoolers told to behave at an assembly.) Very glad I saw this!!
Book Review: Bibliophobia
Jun. 29th, 2025 01:28 pmosprey_archerAlthough I got Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia: A Memoir for the book talk, in fact it’s a mental illness memoir with some books in. Chihaya is pondering about the stories we tell ourselves - in her case, her certainty that her story would end in suicide, and the concurrent certainty that this could only be averted if she found the exact right book to save her.
Also about her relationship to her Japanese-American identity, her feeling that as a person with ancestors who were in Japan during World War II she doesn’t really belong in the Asian-American community (because of the whole bit where her ancestors were brutally invading other Asian countries), the effect of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye on her own sense of racial identity, A. S. Byatt’s Possession as a book that shaped her understanding of what it means for “reader” to be a load-bearing identity, the fact that she doesn’t usually relate to characters in the way that many readers do as the point of a book, for her, is not to see yourself in it but to become an invisible eye experiencing things without having to be perceived…
Until she realizes upon rereading The Last Samurai that she actually does identify with one of the characters in the story, and maybe that was why she found herself able to read this particular book after her hospitalization, when for a time she found it impossible to read anything. Not just in a “I’m psychologically blocked on reading” kind of way, but in the sense that the text generally appeared to be swimming.
And it’s about the writing of books, the fact that what precipitated her long-awaited hospitalization (because she’d been waiting for this to happen for years) was, in part, her failure to write the book that she needed to write to get tenure. She didn’t write it and didn’t write it and then she lost the tenure-track position and therefore the need to write it and then wrote this book instead.
And she ponders: does that make this book the one that saved her? Or was it unrealistic all along to expect any one book to bear so much weight?
So, although it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, an interesting read for sure.
Also about her relationship to her Japanese-American identity, her feeling that as a person with ancestors who were in Japan during World War II she doesn’t really belong in the Asian-American community (because of the whole bit where her ancestors were brutally invading other Asian countries), the effect of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye on her own sense of racial identity, A. S. Byatt’s Possession as a book that shaped her understanding of what it means for “reader” to be a load-bearing identity, the fact that she doesn’t usually relate to characters in the way that many readers do as the point of a book, for her, is not to see yourself in it but to become an invisible eye experiencing things without having to be perceived…
Until she realizes upon rereading The Last Samurai that she actually does identify with one of the characters in the story, and maybe that was why she found herself able to read this particular book after her hospitalization, when for a time she found it impossible to read anything. Not just in a “I’m psychologically blocked on reading” kind of way, but in the sense that the text generally appeared to be swimming.
And it’s about the writing of books, the fact that what precipitated her long-awaited hospitalization (because she’d been waiting for this to happen for years) was, in part, her failure to write the book that she needed to write to get tenure. She didn’t write it and didn’t write it and then she lost the tenure-track position and therefore the need to write it and then wrote this book instead.
And she ponders: does that make this book the one that saved her? Or was it unrealistic all along to expect any one book to bear so much weight?
So, although it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, an interesting read for sure.
vignettes
Jun. 29th, 2025 10:59 ammarycatelliThis week's prompt is:
staking 🧛♂️
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
staking 🧛♂️
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
Book Review: Max in the House of Spies
Jun. 27th, 2025 08:04 amosprey_archerA few weeks ago, I was browsing the children’s section at the library, and I sent skygiants a photo of a book. “It’s about a Jewish boy who is evacuated during World War II and becomes a spy! Also he has a kobold and a dybbuk living on his shoulders!” I said. “You should read it!”
I was hoping hereby to offload the book onto someone else instead of adding it to my ever-growing to-read list, but of course this backfired and instead we both had to read Adam Gidwitz’s Max in the House of Spies.
Max, a child genius with a special gift for radios, escapes Germany on the Kindertransport in 1938. He ends up living with the Montagus, where he slowly realizes that Uncle Ewen Montagu is a spy, and sets his little heart on becoming a spy too so he can go back to Berlin and rescue his parents.
(“That Ewen Montagu?” some of you are saying. Yes, that Ewen Montagu, and this book also includes Jean Leslie, Cholmondeley, and Lord Rothschild who keeps blowing stuff up. I didn’t realize at first that these were real people, butskygiants and genarti clued me in, and now at last I’m going to read Ben McIntyre’s Operation Mincemeat, which Gidwitz mentions in the bibliography as the book that inspired this duology.)
(Also I didn’t realize going into it that this was a duology, but I just happened to see the second book on the processing cart when I was processing library books with my mother, which is fortunate because otherwise when I reached the cliffhanger ending my scream might have been heard round the world.)
Because Max is the plucky hero of a children’s adventure novel, he does in fact manage to finagle Ewen Montagu into recruiting him, and ends up going through a thrilling training regimen at Lord Rothschild’s manor, where he meets the aforementioned Jean Leslie, Cholmondeley, and Lord Rothschild. Fun training exercises ensue! (Fun for the reader, not for Max.)
Meanwhile, the kobold and the dybbuk are sitting on Max’s shoulders providing color commentary, which during the spy training mostly becomes focused on “I can’t believe they are sending an ACTUAL CHILD to spy in NAZI GERMANY.”
Now on the one hand, they certainly have a real-world point, but on the other hand, we’re not in the real world here. We’re in a children’s adventure novel, and it’s a convention of the genre that children can and should have deadly adventures, just like it’s a convention of cozy mysteries that one quirkily charming small town can have 50 murders in an indeterminate but relatively short time span without having any impact on that quirky charm.
No one reading this (well, no child reading this, adults can be spoilsports) is going, “Gosh, I hope they don’t send Max on a spy adventure.” We’re all rooting for him to go forth and spy! “Children shouldn’t be sent into deadly peril” is merely a killjoy obstacle to the adventure we all crave! The emotional dynamic here undercuts the moral point.
I also don’t think it quite worked to saddle Max with two mischief spirits who get up to no mischief beyond serving as a sort of mobile peanut gallery. I enjoyed Stein and Berg, but I also felt that the book would have been stronger without them, actually.
Criticisms aside! I really enjoyed this book, and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t get the sequel before I finished it, because it ends on a cliffhanger and now I will have to WAIT to find out what HAPPENS and the suspense is killing me.
skygiants a photo of a book. “It’s about a Jewish boy who is evacuated during World War II and becomes a spy! Also he has a kobold and a dybbuk living on his shoulders!” I said. “You should read it!” I was hoping hereby to offload the book onto someone else instead of adding it to my ever-growing to-read list, but of course this backfired and instead we both had to read Adam Gidwitz’s Max in the House of Spies.
Max, a child genius with a special gift for radios, escapes Germany on the Kindertransport in 1938. He ends up living with the Montagus, where he slowly realizes that Uncle Ewen Montagu is a spy, and sets his little heart on becoming a spy too so he can go back to Berlin and rescue his parents.
(“That Ewen Montagu?” some of you are saying. Yes, that Ewen Montagu, and this book also includes Jean Leslie, Cholmondeley, and Lord Rothschild who keeps blowing stuff up. I didn’t realize at first that these were real people, but
skygiants and genarti clued me in, and now at last I’m going to read Ben McIntyre’s Operation Mincemeat, which Gidwitz mentions in the bibliography as the book that inspired this duology.) (Also I didn’t realize going into it that this was a duology, but I just happened to see the second book on the processing cart when I was processing library books with my mother, which is fortunate because otherwise when I reached the cliffhanger ending my scream might have been heard round the world.)
Because Max is the plucky hero of a children’s adventure novel, he does in fact manage to finagle Ewen Montagu into recruiting him, and ends up going through a thrilling training regimen at Lord Rothschild’s manor, where he meets the aforementioned Jean Leslie, Cholmondeley, and Lord Rothschild. Fun training exercises ensue! (Fun for the reader, not for Max.)
Meanwhile, the kobold and the dybbuk are sitting on Max’s shoulders providing color commentary, which during the spy training mostly becomes focused on “I can’t believe they are sending an ACTUAL CHILD to spy in NAZI GERMANY.”
Now on the one hand, they certainly have a real-world point, but on the other hand, we’re not in the real world here. We’re in a children’s adventure novel, and it’s a convention of the genre that children can and should have deadly adventures, just like it’s a convention of cozy mysteries that one quirkily charming small town can have 50 murders in an indeterminate but relatively short time span without having any impact on that quirky charm.
No one reading this (well, no child reading this, adults can be spoilsports) is going, “Gosh, I hope they don’t send Max on a spy adventure.” We’re all rooting for him to go forth and spy! “Children shouldn’t be sent into deadly peril” is merely a killjoy obstacle to the adventure we all crave! The emotional dynamic here undercuts the moral point.
I also don’t think it quite worked to saddle Max with two mischief spirits who get up to no mischief beyond serving as a sort of mobile peanut gallery. I enjoyed Stein and Berg, but I also felt that the book would have been stronger without them, actually.
Criticisms aside! I really enjoyed this book, and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t get the sequel before I finished it, because it ends on a cliffhanger and now I will have to WAIT to find out what HAPPENS and the suspense is killing me.
The World of Tasha Tudor
Jun. 26th, 2025 08:07 amosprey_archerA couple weeks ago, I was browsing my favorite local bookstore when I happened upon a book about maintaining a kitchen garden. I picked it up and idly flipped through it, began to consider buying it because the advice seemed so well-suited to my garden and also the illustrations were so charming… and strangely familiar… so I flipped to the title page and shrieked like a tea kettle when I realized it was illustrated by Tasha Tudor.
Tasha Tudor, for those who don’t know, wrote and illustrated Corgiville Fair. She is also responsible for the iconic illustrations for Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, as well as a lovely illustrated edition of Emily Dickinson upon which I doted in my youth. She also put the core in cottagecore, living in a classic New England farmhouse atop a hill in Vermont with her Nubian goats and chickens and corgis and her many, many gardens.
So of course I bought Betty Crocker’s Kitchen Gardens. And it reminded me that there’s a book about Tasha Tudor’s lifestyle, which is called The Private Life of Tasha Tudor, so I went to put it on hold… and it was gone! The library had weeded it! (The library is forever weeding things that I’m intending to check out as soon as I have the time.)
I consoled myself with Tasha Tudor’s Garden), which is full of gorgeous photographs of Tasha Tudor’s many gardens, full of roses and hollyhocks and crabapple trees. The focus is on the photogenic flowers, of course, as well as her lovely bouquets, but she also had a kitchen garden with plenty of fruit and vegetables and herbs… and also plenty of flowers, because why not? That made me feel better about the fact that my current herb and cherry tomato plants found homes on the theory of “Well, there’s some space between the flowers here…”
Anyway, fortunately the OTHER library has The Private World of Tasha Tudor, so you’d better believe I put a hold on it. They also have Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts, Tasha Tudor’s Dollhouse, and a documentary called Take Joy!: The Magical World of Tasha Tudor.
There’s also a Christmas documentary, and quite a pile of Christmas books, and of course Tudor’s many children’s books… but I already have so many books out that I’d better stop myself for now! There are so many books in this world and it’s both a blessing and a curse.
Tasha Tudor, for those who don’t know, wrote and illustrated Corgiville Fair. She is also responsible for the iconic illustrations for Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, as well as a lovely illustrated edition of Emily Dickinson upon which I doted in my youth. She also put the core in cottagecore, living in a classic New England farmhouse atop a hill in Vermont with her Nubian goats and chickens and corgis and her many, many gardens.
So of course I bought Betty Crocker’s Kitchen Gardens. And it reminded me that there’s a book about Tasha Tudor’s lifestyle, which is called The Private Life of Tasha Tudor, so I went to put it on hold… and it was gone! The library had weeded it! (The library is forever weeding things that I’m intending to check out as soon as I have the time.)
I consoled myself with Tasha Tudor’s Garden), which is full of gorgeous photographs of Tasha Tudor’s many gardens, full of roses and hollyhocks and crabapple trees. The focus is on the photogenic flowers, of course, as well as her lovely bouquets, but she also had a kitchen garden with plenty of fruit and vegetables and herbs… and also plenty of flowers, because why not? That made me feel better about the fact that my current herb and cherry tomato plants found homes on the theory of “Well, there’s some space between the flowers here…”
Anyway, fortunately the OTHER library has The Private World of Tasha Tudor, so you’d better believe I put a hold on it. They also have Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts, Tasha Tudor’s Dollhouse, and a documentary called Take Joy!: The Magical World of Tasha Tudor.
There’s also a Christmas documentary, and quite a pile of Christmas books, and of course Tudor’s many children’s books… but I already have so many books out that I’d better stop myself for now! There are so many books in this world and it’s both a blessing and a curse.
how the summer arrived
Jun. 26th, 2025 12:13 ammarycatelliThe road, covered with snow melt, is patches of blue, reflecting the sky in puddles too shallow to fill all the cracks.
A gull soars, catching the sun, and the light pours white through its wings.
( Read more... )
A gull soars, catching the sun, and the light pours white through its wings.
( Read more... )