quinnish

I was feeling nostalgic, so I pulled up Road Not Taken and played it for a little while earlier. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but I started to remember some of the hidden details and combinations after a while.

It's been ages since the last time I played, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. It's so helpful if I want to turn off my brain for a little while. I can't believe it's been over a decade since it was first released.

Current Mood: nostalgic

musesfool

Today's poem:

I Have News for You

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

--Tony Hoagland

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Phillies on tv

likeadeuce

DC, Open (2844 words) by likeadeuce
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Challengers (Movie 2024)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Art Donaldson/Patrick Zweig, Art Donaldson/Original Female Character(s), Patrick Zweig/Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Tennis, Missing Years, watches and other status symbols, Patrick Zweig's POV, tashi haunting the narrative
Summary:

Patrick is trying to get his tennis career together when he runs into Art again at a tournament in Washington, DC.

Are they so back, or is it so over?

musesfool

Monday miscellany:

- So what are the odds we get an antipope this time in addition to a pope?

- Sepinwall gave season 2 of Andor a good review (minor spoilers, I guess) - the first 3 episodes drop tomorrow and it sounds like they are doing 3 episodes a week for 4 weeks, as each one comprises a mini-arc. Trying not to get spoiled on the internet is sure to be a nightmare.

- I haven't done the AO3 stats meme regularly since 2018 because not much changes in my top 10. In 2021, however, I made note of some up-and-comers in the 11-20 slots, and it turns out that as of 4/20/25, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (i.e., the one where Dick convinces Jason to stop killing through the power of hugs) has crept into the top 10 by hits - it's number 9! (It looks like Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough) (the Steve/Bucky remix AU where Steve finds Bucky working as a barista) is the one that fell out of the top 10.)

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc also made inroads into the top 10 by kudos, landing at number 5! Additionally, 2 Star Wars stories also found their way into the top 10 by kudos: There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (in which Anakin time travels to the post-RotJ era and meets his kids) at 6, and deep as a secret nobody knows (AU where Leia tells Vader she's Padme's daughter and it changes everything) at number 8!

The 3 Avengers stories that dropped are again, Our history is just in our blood (history, like love, is never enough), plus Even a Miracle Needs a Hand (Clint/Darcy fake Christmas boyfriend), and with the lights out, it's less dangerous (Steve/Bucky, then and now).

According to these posts, I did not previously do the full list by comments, but I will note the appearance of deep as a secret nobody knows at number 3 on the comments list, and another Vader-and-Leia AU, Just a Little Bit of History Repeating, at number 10, with the VMars/Avengers crossover we travel without seatbelts on sitting pretty at number 7.

So I guess given enough time, these things CAN change.

- Today's poem:

Nothing Will Warn You
by Stephen Dunn

Nothing will warn you,
not even the promise of severe weather
or the threats of neighbors muttered
under their breath, unheard by the sonar

in you that no longer functions.
You'll be expecting blue skies, perhaps
a picnic at which you'll be anticipating
a reward for being the best handler

of raw meat in a county known
for its per capita cases of salmonella.
You'll have no memory of those women
with old grievances nor will you guess

that small bulge in one of their purses
could be a derringer. You'll be opening
a cold one, thinking this is the life,
this is the very life I've always wanted.

Nothing will warn you,
no one will blurt out that this picnic
is no picnic, the clouds in the west
will be darkly billowing toward you,

and you will not hear your neighbors'
conspiratorial whispers. You'll be
readying yourself to tell the joke
no one has ever laughed at, the joke

someone would have told you by now
is only funny if told on yourself, but no one
has ever liked you enough to say so.
Even your wife never warned you.

***

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Good Times, Bad Times = Led Zeppelin

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

musesfool

I made these confetti cookies from Smitten Kitchen this afternoon (pic), but unfortunately, they are way too sweet for me. They are really easy to put together though, especially with the food processor, since you don't need to soften the butter and cream cheese before you get started, and there's no need to chill them before baking.

In other news, I watched the 3 available episodes of season 3 of Leverage: Redemption and enjoyed them, though there was some cognitive dissonance in seeing Noah Wyle as Harry Wilson after 15 intense episodes of The Pitt. Aldis Hodge gets more handsome every time I see him, and the gloves have come off in terms of the writing - they are not even playing anymore about how stuff that is legal still isn't right. Plus, there have been some fun guest stars: ( casting spoilers ) I look forward to the rest of the season!

***

I haven't posted any Neruda in a while, so here's today's poem:

Sonnet XLVI

Of all the stars I admired, drenched
in various rivers and mists,
I chose only the one I love.
Since then I sleep with the night.

Of all the waves, one wave and another wave,
green sea, green chill, branchings of green,
I chose only the one wave,
the indivisible wave of your body.

All the waterdrops, all the roots,
all the threads of light gathered to me here;
they came to me sooner or later.

I wanted your hair, all for myself.
From all the graces my homeland offered
I chose only your savage heart.

-Pablo Neruda
(Trans. ???)

***

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

musesfool

I decided to make the King Arthur pretzel rolls again today (well, half the recipe to make 4 hero-shaped buns) - they only require a first rise of 1 hour and a second of 15 minutes so I could start them at 3 pm and be eating by 5:30. I proofed the dough in this nice bowl I have that has its own lid, and I did it in the unheated oven with the oven light on (I've never done it like that before but I've seen it recommended a few places), and about 50 minutes in, there was a loud popping sound, and it turned out that the carbon dioxide produced by the rising dough popped the lid right off! That had never happened to me before! I figured if that was happening, the dough was proved and it was. They turned out delicious. Definitely recommended.

Here's today's poem:

Singe

I read the tops of the poems, ten or twenty lines down.

In the beginning of the book, a man is leaving his wife
for a lover. By the end, the lover is tired of the man, who wonders
if he made a mistake. The book has the quality of a diary,
the beginnings of poems imply the ends of other poems, other days,
this is a man to know in the morning.

It's raining here, where the book lives for now, and the mood
of fog fits the sadness of the book, I hold it out the window,
bring it back and dry it off with my shirt.

I know a woman who knows the poet. I call her and ask
which tops of poems are true. She wants to know why I don't
finish the poems. I tell her I dreamed last night
I work inside a steam shovel, that the tops of the poems
are my sky, my white clouds. It's impossible to talk
to just one poet, and I'll feel the ears
of people I don't know floating behind me for a week.

There are two children in the book. They must be in college by now,
married or incapable of marriage. I believe the poet was honest
about their names, I consider finding and e-mailing them,
asking if they felt betrayed or like rock stars, some other kind
of celebrity, I suddenly want to know if they play tennis
or like Pop Tarts, if either drove up to see their father
and threw the book at his head, the stab marks on the cover
making him break down and apologize for the hurt, not the poems.

Calvino had an idea for a book that appeared to have been pulled
from a fire. What wasn't there would be as much of the story
as the little bells, the indentations of eye teeth in a pencil,
the shape of wind against a sheet. The bottom of this book
is on fire, is where the lies have fallen, where someone
tells someone they were never loved, where a body is rhapsodized
as the font of renewal, and eight pages later, deplored as snare.

I devise solace for the book: we should count birds, I tell it,
should ride a horse, you and I. Some other time I'll read
the bottom only, read this life and turn each page
with both hands, carry the words in the basket of my flesh,
carry them over, carry them safe, some other time, nor was it ever
too late.

—Bob Hicok

***

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Mets vs Cards on tv

muccamukk

Watch on YouTube

settiai

Since a number of staff at Unnamed Nonprofit are either Christian or Jewish, they've announced that they're closing the office at lunchtime today. Which, you know, as someone who isn't celebrating a holiday at the moment? That's still a nice little treat for me.

I finished my fourth Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough last night, so I think that I'm going to pick back up with my fifth one (which is in Act 2 right now) for a bit and then maybe switch to Baldur's Gate 3. D&D is cancelled again tonight because it's the DM's spouse's birthday, so I can properly settle in to play for hours which is something I haven't had the time to do in ages.

Current Mood: hopeful

musesfool

Today's poem:

The Game
by Lorna Crozier

So many conversations between
the tall grass and the wind.
A child hides in that sound,
hunched small
as a rabbit, knees tucked
to her chest, head on her knees,
yet she's not asleep.

She is waiting with a patience
I had long forgotten,
hair wild with grass seeds,
skin silvery with dust.

It was my brother's game.
He was the one who counted,
and I, seven years younger,
the one who hid.

When I ran from the yard,
he found his gang of friends
and played kick-the-can
or caught soft spotted frogs
at the creek so summer-slow.

As darkness fell,
from the kitchen door
someone always called my name.
He was there before me
at the supper table;
milk in his glass
and along his upper lip
glowing like moonlight.
You're so good at that, he'd say,
I couldn't find you.

Now I wade through
hip-high bearded grass
to where she sits so still,
lay my larger hand
upon her shoulder.

Above the wind I say,
You're it,
then kneel beside her
and with the patience
that has lived so long in this body,
clean the dirt from her nose and mouth,
separate the golden speargrass from her hair.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Homewrecked - Empires

seekingferret

Ha! A couple years ago I ranted about Emily Hanford's Sold a Story podcast, which I thought perpetuated some misleading myths about how science works even though she was probably at least partially right about some problems with American reading education. Now Hanford is back with a three part followup series. I feel vindicated.

In my previous essay I questioned why we didn't see a magical school bucking the educational winds, where they used the science of reading and every student was an expert reader. Even if Hanford were wrong, I argued, one would typically expect outliers. Here Hanford shows us a school bucking educational trends and every student is an expert reader- and it doesn't exactly use the science of reading!

The premise of the new miniseries is that there is a school in a poor district of Ohio that has consistently delivered far better reading test scores than would be expected- nearly every student in this school district can read. And yet! Ohio state law changes inspired by Hanford's podcast were threatening to force this school district to make changes that might disrupt its educational model.

The Ohio school district's main innovations seem to me, based on Hanford's descriptions, to not actually be about the pedagogy, because I've been insisting since the beginning that probably the pedagogy is not the most determinative factor and nobody has convinced me otherwise. Hanford of course disagrees with me. She claims that it is things like an emphasis on teaching students lots of verbal language at an early age, and giving them significant time to practice. But while discussing these strategies and others, she plays recordings of the teachers and what their strategies seem to have in common is that they are extremely high touch, they are being implemented in classrooms with small class sizes, and the teachers are enthusiastic and engaged. My entirely unbacked by science intuition is that these factors matter more than pedagogy. This is why I've always referred to schools like this (ironically) as magic. These are of course the most expensive and difficult strategies to scale, so it's like saying, we've figured out the way to get every student to learn to read! Get more engaged teachers and don't overwhelm them with too many students! But this school district actually does have some clever ideas about the economics of teaching reading, such as enlisting gym teachers and music teachers as auxiliary reading teachers and giving them training, to allow the school to teach reading in small classes without having to add additional reading teachers. And also putting resources into solving problems of truancy so that you aren't wasting teacher time while students aren't there to benefit.

Hanford's starting point in the first series is that the science of reading says that three cuing is harmful and phonetic decoding is helpful, but this time around her theme is that implementation matters, not pedagogical theory, and again I must repeat that I am not an expert on teaching reading and I am talking without any authority, but I am so here for the new Hanford. She spends a lot of time on the intersection of new educational ideas and government's limitations, like the fact that federal law actually prohibits the Department of Education from endorsing specific programs, for fear of government overreach, putting schools in a funny position where they're required to meet specifications in laws like NCLB that can't actually be communicated, pushing them towards unreliable private organizations with unclear ideological objectives for guidance.

The whole thing was way more satisfying than the original series, and since I much prefer praising things to criticizing them, I had to note the improvement.

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: sleepy

skygiants

For many years I have been saying 'I must reread the Narnia books,' a thing I somehow have not done in the seventeen or so years I've been actively keeping track of my reading habits. I said this in the late 2000s when the new movies were coming out, and I said it again a couple years ago when I read Til We Have Faces for the first time, and then I said it several times over the past few months while I was rewatching all the 1980s BBC Narnia adaptations with local friends, and then last week my friend was doing a blitz reread of the whole series for a con panel and I had finally said it enough times that I decided to join her instead of just talking about it.

For background: yes, the Narnia books were some of my favorite books when I was a child; they're the first books I actively remember reading on my own, that made me go 'ah! this thing, reading, is worth doing, and not just a dull task set to me by adults!' (This goes to show how memory is imperfect: my parents say that the first book that they remember me reading, before Narnia, was The Borrowers. But they also say that I then went immediately looking for Borrowers behind light sockets which perhaps is why I do not remember reading it first.)

I also cannot remember a time that I did not know that the big lion was supposed to be Jesus. This did not really put me off Narnia or Aslan -- I had a lion named Aslan that was my favorite stuffed animal all through my childhood -- but I did have a vague sense As A Jewish Child that it was sort of embarrassing for everyone concerned, including the lion, C.S. Lewis, and me. My favorites were Silver Chair, Horse And His Boy, and Magician's Nephew. I reread The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe often simply because it was the first one; Prince Caspian didn't leave much of an impression on me and I only really liked Dawn Treader for Eustace's dragon sequence; The Last Battle filled me with deep secondhand embarrassment.

Rereading, I discover that I had great taste; Silver Chair simply stays winning! The experience of reading the first three Pevensie books is a constant hunt for little crumbs of individuality and personality in the Pevensie children beyond their Situations and how willing they are to listen to advice from Big Lion; Jill and Eustace and Puddleglum, by contrast, have personality coming out their ears. I cherish every one of them. The dark Arthuriana vibes when they meet the knight and his lady out riding ... the whole haunted sequence underground .... Puddleglum's Big Speech .... this is, was, and will ever be peak Narnia to me. For all the various -isms of Horse And His Boy, it feels really clear that Lewis leveled up in writing Character somewhere between Dawn Treader and Silver Chair; Shasta and Aravis and the horses and Polly and Diggory all just have a lot more chances to bonk against each other in interesting ways and show off who they are than the Pevensies ever do.

However! I also had bad taste. I did not appreciate Caspian as it ought to have been appreciated. Now, on my reread, it's by far my favorite of the Pevensie-forward texts -- and partly I suppose that, as a child, I could not fully have been expected to appreciate the whole 'we came back to a place we used to know and a life we used to have and even as we're remembering the people we used to be there we're realizing it's all fundamentally changed' melancholy of it all. It's good! The Pevensies also just get to do more on their own and use more of their own actual skills than they do in either The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, where they're mostly led around by the nose, or Dawn Treader, where they're mostly just having a nice boat trip. Just a soupcon of Robinsoniad in your Narnia, as a treat.

I also came away with the impression that Dawn Treader -- which really is primarily about Eustace and Reepicheep -- would be a better book if either Edmund or Lucy had gone on that trip but not both of them. The problem with Dawn Treader is that Edmund/Lucy/Caspian all kind of blob together in a cohort of being Just Sort Of Embarrassed By Eustace -- Edmund and Caspian particularly -- and don't get a lot to individuate them or give them Problems. Edmund and Caspian's dialogue is frequently almost interchangeable. But an Edmund who has Lucy's trials at the magician's tower and has to deal more with his existing/leftover issues from the first book is more interesting, and a Lucy who is stuck more in the middle of Caspian and Eustace without Edmund to over-balance the stakes is more interesting. I expect people will want me to fight me on this though because I know a lot of people have Dawn Treader as their favorite ....

Other miscellaneous observations:

- obviously I am aware of the Susan Problem but man, reading for Susan and Lucy through the later books it is clear how much the gradual tilting of the scales to Lucy Good/Susan Bad does a disservice to both characters. This is especially noticeable IMO in Horse And His Boy; it makes no sense for Lucy to go to war with a bow while Susan stays behind in context of anything we know about those characters from Lion and Caspian, it is so purely an exercise in Lucy Is The Designated Cool Girl Now. Anyway, what I really want now is an AU where Susan does marry out of Narnia sometime in the Golden Age and instead of becoming the One Who Never Comes Back becomes the One Who Never Leaves

- it is very very funny that every King or Queen of Narnia talks like Shakespeare except for Caspian, who talks, as noted above, like a British schoolboy. My Watsonian explanation for this is that the Pevensies were like 'well, kings talk like Shakespeare' and consciously developed this as an affectation whereas Caspian, who met the Pevensies as schoolchildren at a formative age, was like 'well, kings talk like British schoolchildren' and consciously developed it as an affectation --

- if you are on Bluesky you may have already seen me make this joke but it is so funny to be rolling along in Narnia pub order and have C.S. Lewis come careening back in for Magician's Nephew like 'WAIT! STOP!! I forgot to mention earlier but Jadis? She is hot. You know Lady Dimitrescu? yeah JUST like that. I just want to make sure we all know'

- Last Battle still fills me with secondhand embarrassment

musesfool

I was doing so good with reading books again but alas, I have had the 2nd Finlay Donovan book open in the same spot for a week and instead have been reading fic or watching tv. So have some quick thoughts on TV I have watched:

Silo: I enjoyed this - the first season is better, but the second season has its moments! Unfortunately, Steve Zahn is like a BEC for me, so that put a damper on parts of season 2. Like, he's a decent actor or whatever but he makes me want to turn off my TV every time I hear his voice.

The Residence: I enjoyed this a lot and I hope they make as many seasons of it as Uzo Aduba wants, perhaps in really fancy buildings every time, though I hope they are slightly tighter in terms of story telling - 8 episodes was slightly too much imo.

Abbott Elementary: this season has been a lot of fun and I will be watching the finale tonight!

Elsbeth: still enjoying this also, though I've been doling out the episodes more slowly now that I'm like only 1 behind the current episode.

Severance: I have avoided saying much about this show since for me it's a very mixed bag (great acting, beautiful cinematography, wonky pacing, questionable writing) and I know a lot of people love it, but I hope Tramell Tillman has a long, highly decorated career as a leading man in action movies, musicals, rom-coms, and whatever else his heart desires. I am also always happy to see Dichen Lachman on screen!

Wheel of Time: I have been enjoying this as well, though 8 episodes feels too short given everything that they are covering (note: I haven't read the books and currently don't plan to). ( spoilers ) Let them all sing more! The singing has been GREAT.

And lastly, here's today's poem:

Object Permanence
by Hala Alya

This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice:
drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones.
It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I'd stop
at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do?
I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You're
three years away. But then I dance down Graham and
the trees are the color of champagne and I remember -
There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs
a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man's gaze on the L
and don't look away first. Losing something is just revising it.
After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest
of sheets to pick up a stranger's MetroCard. I regret nothing.
Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late.
Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not
the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything
but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held
the crown of my head and for once I won't show you what
I've made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine.
Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic
and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose
the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it
you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse?
The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them,
when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I'll write down
everything we've done to each other and fill the bathtub
with water. I'll burn each piece of paper down to silt.
And if it doesn't work, I'll do it again. And again and again and -

***

Current Mood: thoughtful

mrissa

Chaz Brenchley, Radhika Rages at the Crater School, Chapters 23-24. Kindle. Catching up on the latest installment, the rage is back, don't start here, obviously.

P.F. Chisholm, A Chorus of Innocents. Back to the Scottish borderlands, and I am relieved--the books in this series that were in the London area were fine, but they lacked a lot of my favorite elements of the series. Which have come roaring back here, with more ahead promised. Hurrah. But yeah, don't start here, this one expects you to know who's who and what's what.

Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table, Crooked House, Death in the Clouds, Murder on the Orient Express, Taken at the Flood, and The Body in the Library. It's not that these are indistinguishable from each other--there's a reason Crooked House and Murder on the Orient Express were on the author's favorites list. I'm skipping the ones that are appalling on page one, I'm being appalled by the ones that are appalling on the last page only (seriously, Agatha, you can get through a whole book and then--!!!). But for the most part I'm just reading them as a continuum. They deliver what it says on the tin. I did this with Georgette Heyer when Grandpa died, and now with Grandma gone it's apparently Agatha Christie. Nor am I done yet.

David C. Douglas, The Norman Fate, 1100-1154. Counterbalancing the urge for reliable mystery, I have had very little urge to read nonfiction lately. This also happened when Grandpa died, it went away, it'll go away this time, it's fine. This was one of the few pieces of nonfiction this fortnight, and I was disappointed in it, because it wanted to talk about the Norman spheres of influence in this era but not what the Normans brought to those areas culturally, what was concretely different because a particular region or island was ruled by a Norman ruler instead of someone else. Ah well.

Dan Egan, The Devil's Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance. Egan's previous book about the Great Lakes was on my list to give several people a few years back, and he's quite good about phosphorous and its social and ecological implications as well. Hurrah.

Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's. About the vaguely squalid adults involved with running a theater school for children. If you feel like you're still a little starry-eyed about child actors from reading Noel Streatfeild's children's books and you would prefer not to be, well, here you are.

Amity Gaige, Heartwood. If there's a third mainstream thriller that has a cover and title to make it look like a fantasy novel, this can be a genre with that and Liz Moore's God of the Woods. In any case I liked it for what it is rather than resenting it for what the cover made it look like. This is a book about a woman lost hiking the Maine section of the Appalachian Trail, and about the people searching for her, and about mothers and daughters, and a number of other things. It's quite well done, but my absolute favorite character is Santo, everyone else can sort of make there be enough book to be a book but Santo was my reason for wanting to go on with it.

John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. This is basically a TED Talk about why you should keep caring about tuberculosis and how it affects real, vivid people. There's historical background, sure, but it is very much a call to arms--or, as Grace Petrie puts it, not a call to arms but a call to helping hands. It's short and, for its subject matter, quite light.

Elly Griffiths, Now You See Them and The Midnight Hour. Two more in the mid-century British murder mystery setting with the characters who were stage magicians and dirty tricks people in the Second World War. One of the things I'm noticing about mystery series is that the ones that are attempting to be contemporary seem to have to scramble to stay put in time, but the ones that are consciously historical are extremely likely to skip blithely forward through time, changing their characters' personal as well as social circumstances. I think that's great, I love it. But I see how it's easier when you have control over the thing.

Christina Lynch, Pony Confidential. This is a murder mystery with two main POVs, one of which is a vindictive pony. Team Vindictive Pony all the way. The ending made me roll my eyes a little, but honestly, once you've signed on for an entire book of vindictive pony, sure, yes, do the thing. I had a lot of fun with this.

Rose Macaulay, The Shadow Flies. A novel about early 17th century English poets and their turbulent world. Its ending was not cozier or more comfortable than any of Macaulay's other stuff. Gosh I love her.

Colleen McCullough, The Ladies of Missalonghi. As though someone wanted to write The Blue Castle set in Australia, with some historical distance from the period they were writing about. And with the triumphant ending shared out more generally, and...honestly with a better mom, which was a surprise. I still think The Blue Castle is on the whole a better book, but this is worth having too if you like that sort of thing.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems. I have loved her since I was four, and somehow I have not ever read the Collected? Inconceivable. It was time. There were some wonderful things I'd never read before and some wonderful things I've had memorized for decades. There were also...let's say that long public occasion poems were not her forte. But I'm still glad I read the whole thing.

Naomi Mitchison, Beyond This Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction. This is a lesser Mitchison collection. It was put together as an introductory sampler of her work for teaching, rather than because she really loved these short stories and thought they formed something wonderful as a whole, and you can tell--there's a sense of outtakes from her more famous novel work. Did I still generally enjoy reading it, sure, but it's not going to become a go-to Mitchison rec.

Sebastian Purcell, Discourse of the Elders: The Aztec Huehuetlatolli, a First English Translation. This is a translation of Aztec philosophy recorded by a Spanish monk very early in the Conquest. The discourse in the title is very literal: this is discussion of various philosophical questions about life, in a framework that is very much not the Western one. Very cool thing to have and read and think about.

Emily Yu-Xuan Qin, Aunt Tigress. Extremely syncretic Chinese-Canadian fantasy, and prairie Canadian specifically. Love to see a completely different frame on some elements of story I've enjoyed before. Will definitely be adding this to several gift lists.

Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia Parts I-III (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage). A trilogy of plays about Russian utopianism in the mid-19th century, featuring Bakunin, Marx, Turgenev, all sorts of familiar names. This sequence is not my favorite of Stoppard's historical plays, but it still has some classic Stoppard moments.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Days of Shattered Faith. The third in its series, and by far the most conventional: this is a political fantasy of a type that I like very much but have also read before. As compared to the previous book in the series, which was not quite like anything else. Ah well, still very readable, not sorry to have gone on with the series.

settiai

I found a perfect place to do some banter farming in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I settled in to max out all of the possible conversations between various pairs of characters off-and-on over the past almost-a-week before starting endgame in my most recent playthrough.

There was so much dialogue that I've never encountered before. Even with characters who I've frequently had together in my party in previous playthroughs, I was getting to conversations that I never heard in previous ones. There's just so much potential banter that's never played for me because I didn't have two specific characters in the party together for long enough, and it was lovely to hear it all. And I'm sure there's still more banter that I've missed that's only available earlier in the game.

( Nothing really spoilery, but under the cut to be safe. )

It definitely makes some of the potential choices in the game even more bittersweet, hearing just how close some of the team members are to each other based on their conversations and teasing of each other.

Current Mood: amused

musesfool

I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay home for Easter this year, so now I need to decide what I'm going to cook. I thought about making the fancy French chicken, or maybe a traditional ham, or I could make crepes for breakfast and then manicotti for dinner (though that seems like a lot of work). I also want to bake something but what? A strawberry galette? Some other strawberry tart type thing (using frozen strawberries)? Strawberry sticky buns? Clearly my brain has focused in on something strawberry but it doesn't have to be! Small batch cheesecake? Confetti cookies? or maybe I will bake some more bread? I'm off both Friday and Monday, so there's time to do several different things, but I just need to decide what and then tailor my shopping list accordingly.

Work continues to be super busy thanks to the search committee stuff on top of all our other work, but aside from some scheduling that is going to be a nightmare, we should have a couple of weeks off from dealing with meetings with them.

Here's today's poem:

Water on Mars
by Clare McDonnell

for Susan

Mars has the memory of water
carved into her parched rock.

Does she remember rivers;
their silkiness, their languid drawl,
their flux and gush, their roar,
clots of frogspawn, green weeds waving?
Did she understand the pebble talk of water,
delight in the twinkle of sun and shade
and the sudden shimmer of fish?

Was there once someone there
who saw a lake as flat as a polished table,
the surface so tense that insects hardly
dented it, darting between lily pads?
Did he notice how wrinkles halo out when
a swallow dips for flies, or how the breeze
strews handfuls of sparkle over the water?

Was there an enormous ocean there
whose curled tongue was shredded on rocks?
Did it suck the sand from beneath a poet's feet
leaving him in unsteady wonder?
Did his child cup handfuls of spilled sun
from its surface, let it seep through her fingers
to become water again, licking her ankles?

In winter, did rain slap him with glass hands?
In summer, did it finger his face softly,
bring back aromas to dryness,
plump up the wall's cushion of moss?
And when it stopped, did each lupin leaf
hold a diamond between its fingers,
was the fissure a stream, did the red rock steam?

***

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Mets vs Twins on tv

musesfool

Today's poem:

The Five Stages of Grief
by Linda Pastan

The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief.
Go that way, they said,
it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast—
you sat there. I passed
you the paper—you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles of sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it. After a year I am still climbing,
though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green in a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards: Acceptance,
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance,
its name in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I've ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.

***

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Twins on tv

settiai

Let's try for two positive posts in a row, shall we?

I meant to post about this when I found out a month or so ago, but I completely forgot due to all of the chaos going on at the time. It turns out that Unnamed Nonprofit is doing an experiment this year where we get the entire week off for July 4. Once we close on Friday, June 27, we won't be back until Monday, July 7, so we'll have a whole nine days off in a row.

We always have that week-and-a-half off at the end of the year in December, where we're closed for the holidays before the super busy season starts at the beginning of January, and apparently the new president was impressed by how much it seemed to increase productivity at the beginning of the year. So because of that, he's testing to see if giving us a paid break twice a year instead of just once a year seems to give another mid-year boost.

I'm probably still going to be working a little, just to keep an eye out for emergencies like I did at the end of the year, but the summer tends to be significantly slower so I'm hoping it won't be more than an hour total over the course of the entire week - and it would five minutes here, five minutes there, etc.

Considering my Wednesday D&D group has chosen that week for our in-person D&D game, the timing is perfect. I'll have a whole five days of hiding from human contact to help build up my spoons before the long weekend of lots and lots and lots of human interaction.

Current Mood: cheerful

musesfool

I have not yet been able to gather my thoughts about The Pitt's season finale, but

serrico has some great thoughts here and

siria has some here.

I also have a bunch of links (spoilers everywhere!):

+ The Pitt’s Noah Wyle & Co. Talk Taking Robby to the Very Edge in Finale and ‘Getting Mentally Healthy’ in Season 2

+ The Pitt’s Shawn Hatosy Loved Abbot at First Sight

+ ‘She Just Needs Therapy and a Hug.’ The Pitt’s Isa Briones doesn’t need you to like Dr. Santos but hopes you can empathize with her.

+ The Pitt Season 2 Premise [spoiler] and Premiere Month Confirmed

+ ‘We Try to Keep the Sensationalism to a Dull Roar’ As The Pitt shuts down season one, the next shift is taking shape for creator R. Scott Gemmill.

+ The Pitt’s Next Shift

I really need to get some icons for this show.

***

And today's poem:

Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild

after Matthew Olzmann

Oh button, don't go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.

We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.

Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?

The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.

You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
because they conjured thirst. We didn't. We thanked

them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,

most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
like you to water them, whenever they went away.

And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up

our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.

He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced

too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars

we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.

--JP Grasser

***

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Mets vs A's on tv

Profile

quinnish

October 2022

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Mediterranean Peach for Modular by branchandroot
Resources: Nantes

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Apr. 23rd, 2025 01:47 pm

Reading

Road Not Taken

in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha

(no subject)

this picnic is no picnic

Titansfall D&D: Summary for 4/20 Game

the indivisible wave of your body

the shape of wind against a sheet

Music Friday

Long(ish) Weekend

the patience that has lived so long in this body

Hanford Returns

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 4/16 Game

(no subject)

After this love there will be more love

Books read, early April

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Banter

their flux and gush, their roar

in the suitcase were bandages for the eyes and bottles of sleep

Unnamed Nonprofit

and sometimes we drove just to drive

Profile

October 2022

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags