Raised on a diet of Star Wars, Monty Python, and In Search Of, Allison Thurman has always made stuff, lately out of words. She lives in a galaxy far, far away (well, the DC metro area) with too many books and not enough swords.
This is what I asked myself during another bout of winter/holiday blahs. I don’t hate Christmas (not the way I used to, anyway – long story) but some of the schmaltzier trappings (50s nostalgia, ugly, uncomfortable sweaters, relentlessly cheerful carols) put me off.
And why not? You’ve got everyone huddled around a fire during the darkest and coldest time of year with a pile of mixed Christian and pagan traditions going on. Pre-tv specials and internet memes, what else can you do but tell ghost stories?
Or other things to be done around the hearth. Via Pinterest though certainly not the original source and probably still under copyright. Yes, I’m a bad, bad person.
So I went in search of something in addition to “A Christmas Carol”. My friends (and the internet) did not fail me:
Valancourt has, count ’em, one, two, three volumes of ghost stories gathered from Victorian periodicals.
Bookriot’s list includes Valancourt’s first volume plus many more modern stories.
The Year in Aliens: TL;DR: apart from that silliness at Area 51 in September the 2017 NYT UFO article has been vindicated… in part. Note that no one’s making a hard and fast claim that what the Navy pilots saw are extraterrestrials. But the fact that they’re acknowledging them as something to be taken seriously is still noteworthy.
NOT MINE, credit where credit is due: Check out Least I Could Do. A couple of years old but still makes a good point, IMHO.
Mysterious Phantom Photographed on Ghost Tour in Baltimore, Maryland: a month late, but local (to me) so still relevant. It’s a damn shame I’ve never gone on any of the local ghost tours – these tend to be something I do on vacation, not at home. Perhaps I should rethink that in the new year.
This looks simple, but it has to be done by hand, so it takes a while.
Only this past weekend did I soak the full length in water, stick one end in a door to hold it still, and twist. Then double up and twist it again, etc. Fun fact: silk is so fine that it twists down very, very small, especially when wet. That’s how you fit this:
8 yards baby!
Into a kneesock:
Yes, I used a fencing sock. What else?
And there it will stay for a week at least. I don’t want to toss it in the dryer because friction and heat might damage the fabric, and as tight as it’s compressed I expect it will lake a long time to air dry. My test piece took at least 2 days and it was only 6″ wide:
And it pleated down to about 1 1/2″. Do the math on my 45″ wide fabric.
The fabric will lose a lot of width, but that’s why I got 8 yards of it. Fortuny himself used 4-6 widths of pleated fabric on each dress so I estimated pretty conservatively.
I’ve never really had any heroes. No real reason why. It’s not that I don’t admire people or get inspired by them, but there’s never been anyone I wanted to emulate.
I can’t remember when I first learned about Jane Goodall. Probably from my dad’s massive stack of National Geographic back issues. I devoured them, plus whatever else I found at the library. I learned to recognize her chimps by name and appearance better than my classmates. I knew her story: archaeologist Louis Leakey suggested she study chimpanzees even though she didn’t have a degree because she was a good observer. So she went to Tanzania, sat, and watched.
And being a shy kid, I was good at watching and waiting. Sitting alone and watching animals sounded like the best job ever (mind, I’d not thought through the whole lack of indoor plumbing and mosquitoes thing, but even so).
She spoke at a college when I was about 12. A friend of my mother’s was a dean and managed to get us tickets. This still looms huge in my mind because she entered not from backstage but down the aisle and passed 5 feet away from me and it was the most exciting thing ever!
I may not have fulfilled my second-grade dream of setting up camp on the shores of Loch Ness and finding the monster once and for all (mad respect to those who did), but I still find much to admire about Jane Goodall. She’s polite but direct – she doesn’t sugar coat facts for people, which is still something I struggle with. Fashion nrrd that I am I still gotta respect that she’s worn the same ponytail for over 50 years because dammit, she’s got better things to worry about than the latest hairstyle! She has a sense of humor. She allows for the possibility of Bigfoot.
But most of all, she didn’t let her world be small. The Tanzanian authorities didn’t want a young single woman traveling alone in their country so she brought her mom. She did her study despite the fact that she didn’t have a PhD (though she went on to get one). This was huge to me as a teenager, because at that age I was learning that seemingly innocuous things (traveling alone, being taken seriously by teachers/mentors) are still much harder for women than men.
Years later when I actually met her (!) at a book signing, I’m afraid I fangirled shamelessly. Gushing about what an inspiration, I saw you when I was 12, and thinking OMG she’s so tiny! So kind! So cool-headed in the face of my silliness!
We just got the National Geographic channel as part of Disney+ and I stumbled across this new documentary on it, so I imagine you’ll hear I’ll be squeeing once again, and trying to remember all those chimpanzees’ names!
I’m trying to get back into a regular practice of writing. It’s been a depressingly easy habit to break so I’m pursuing almost anything that catches my fancy just to keep the momentum going. To those ends I’ve got several different writing and writing-related things going on:
Researching:
1970s glam rock fandom in America
19th-century underworld/alternative history (listened to Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets and compiling a list of sources he used)
“discovery writing” characters for both book ideas
this blog post
Though I didn’t get a mentor through PitchWars I found some pre-revision “homework” that I’m applying to Fool’s Gold to uncover any glaring failings I missed because I didn’t know any better a year ago.
Regarding the next book: I’m going to have to pick one eventually as I find that I do my best work if I focus on one thing at a time. I don’t know what I’ll do with the short story – maybe just post it as a download on the blog because I can’t imagine where I’d submit it.
The Paris catacombs are now a tourist attraction but back in the 1860s even photographing them was a trial. The story of photographer Félix Nadar’s efforts to photograph them in the 1860s is almost more interesting than the photos themselves given the technical limitations of the contemporary cameras and lighting, as well as the logistics of dragging everything underground.
The Artist Who Embraced the Occult and Defied the Surrealists: the first time I heard of Ithell Colquhoun was in China Mieville’s “The Last Days of New Paris” and I always meant to follow up but good Google Alert-fu got ahead of me and found this article about her embrace of the occult. Most of the surrealists had an interest in the occult but Colquhoun’s systematic study set her apart and ultimately alienated her from her artistic peers. I’m especially intrigued by her use of automatism – automatic writing, but with art. Now I definitely need to read up on her, along with Doreen Valiente, Rosaleen Norton, and other 20th c. women occultists.
Not an example of Colquhoun’s automatism, but one of the only public domain versions of her art I could find (courtesy Wikipedia). You can find more at Ithell Colquhoun’s officlal website.Archivist delighted to comb through mountain of late UFO researcher’s records: and I’m delighted to discover that late UFO researcher Stanton Friedman had the foresight to donate his records to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. Nothing’s likely to be available for a while, at least online – the archivists have 300+ (!) boxes to wade through – but this means his years of research won’t mildew away in a forgotten garage or similar. Agree with Friedman or not, I’m all for the preservation of historical materials, particularly about unusual topics.
To make a very long story short, someone in my family had a health emergency so I’ve been out of town to help out. It’s been both exhausting and not: the waiting for test results, the not knowing, and the worrying was tiring, but with no ability to plan beyond the next hospital visit I fell into a very simple schedule of just doing what needed to be done. Living very much in the moment, though it was a harsh moment.
Though the crisis is past, [crossing fingers, toes, and everything else in the hopes that this stays true] I’m left mentally and emotionally deflated. I’ve not written, really – maybe a bit of pecking on the short story. The last thing I did before all of this was submit to Pitchwars and while I look forward to learning whether I’m selected or not it’s not as huge a concern as my family member’s health.
So I’m catching up on craft reading. Just completed Take Off Your Pants and am proceeding to…not sure yet. Maybe this blog series about the MICE quotient? ‘Cos I can still train my brain even if my creativity is in the basement and digging.
The X-Files script that was too bleak to air: Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment but as a 90s-era XPhile I kinda want to read it. Not available at the link in the article and a quick Google reveals only expensive printed versions remain, I’m safe for now.
Tyler Gunther’s Medieval Art: there’s more than just the “medieval food pyramid” thing that went around last week.
Greenland Unicorns and the Magical Alicorn: I never knew that narwhal horns formed such a large part of early modern Danish trade. Obviously, the Danes knew unicorns weren’t real but successfully managed to “rebrand” narwhals to keep up trade.
The Occult Remedy the Puritans Embraced: this explanation of the logic behind “sympathetic medicine” reminds me of the seeming illogic of alchemy. Neither work because they’re based on incorrect premises but the assumptions stemming from them are utterly logical.
![Text of tweet from theryangeorge: Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime is about friends practicing witchcraft but then someone walks in and they suddenly have to play it cool. Lyrics: The moon is right / The spirits up / We're here tonight / And that's enough / [somebody walks in] SIMPLY HAVING A WONDERFUL CHRISTMASIME / SIMPLY HAVING A WONDERFUL CHRISTMASTIME](https://i0.wp.com/www.allisonthurman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Wonderful-ChristmastimeWitchcraft.png?resize=300%2C240)
