Category: Uncategorized

biweekly links 2-12-2020

Y2K: 20 Years Later: on December 31, 1999 I was but a lowly HTML janitor but nonetheless I was on call just in case… something happened. Which it didn’t, but only because of the huge and largely quiet efforts of many, many programmers.

Jules Verne’s Most Famous Books Were Part of a 54-Volume Masterpiece, Featuring 4,000 Illustrations: See Them Online: I’ve not read much Jules Verne (bad geek me, I know) so I didn’t realize 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Voyage to the Center of the Earth, etc. were just parts of a greater whole.

black and white woodcut of a 19th century idea of a lunar spaceship headed towards the moon
From Verne’s “Autour de la lune” (1868-69). Of course I show you the proto-spaceship. Via.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Identify Thousands of Unknown Civil War Soldiers: I’m leery of facial recognition software but Civil War Photo Sleuth is actually a pretty cool use of it. Rather like various genealogy websites, more data equals more accurate connections, so if you have any Civil War-era photos you’d like to upload here’s the place.

The Bermuda Triangle, Fake News, and a Steven Spielberg Movie: The Bizarre True Story of the S.S. Cotopaxi: the ship “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” depicted as having been picked up in the Bermuda Triangle by aliens has been discovered underwater ~30 miles off St. Augustine, the victim of a bad storm and worse repair. Sometimes it’s anticlimactic when a mystery is explained but as a (very amateur) shipwreck history buff I’m not disappointed.

biweekly links 1-29-2020

2020. 2020. My first link dump of a whole new decade*:

Monty Python’s Terry Jones (RIP) Was a Comedian, But Also a Medieval Historian: Get to Know His Other Side: I caught the tail end of Jones’ presentation at the 2008 (!) Kalamazoo Medieval Congress. Standing room only, but not just because he was a Python – his presentation was a sober academic one, arguing that Richard II was actually a pretty good king. I also highly recommend his Crusades [DailyMotion] and Medieval Lives [YouTube] series.

Hans Holzer at 100: America’s First TV Ghost Hunter Still Haunts Paranormal Community: I most likely encountered Holzer through the 1970s incarnation of In Search Of, and agree with this article that most likely made the current rash of ghost hunting tv shows possible. I’ve not read him lately but given that Potential Future Book 1 revolves around 1970s paranormal research perhaps I’d best revisit him.

How astrology paved the way for predictive analytics: yeah, it sounds like a stretch, but hear (read) it out. For all it’s incorrect conclusions about celestial influence human lives, the need for accurate data to make predictions led to mathematical advances that led to all kinds of scientific advances – including the “if you liked this you might also like that” algorithms used/abused by almost every online retailer and social media outlet.

*Yes, I know that technically it doesn’t start until 2021, but the readjustment of having to put a “2” after 20 on my checks is startling enough that I feel like we’ve already started.

so…

My mother died on January 6.

There really isn’t any way to soften that news.

I could go into detail about her health: the repeated hospital visits, her last emergency and decline. I could reassure that she didn’t suffer, that she went out on her own terms, that it was peaceful.

But I’ve told so many people the same details over the past two weeks that it’s become just a story I repeat to convey information. I’ve been sleepwalking between relative normalcy punctuated by reminders and realizations that hit like a slap to the face. And in some sense it’s amazing and unjust that the world keeps going on, as though this thing hasn’t happened at all.

The good memories are perhaps hardest of all, because they remind me that she won’t make any more. She doesn’t see the days getting longer, and won’t see spring start. She won’t get to vote against Trump.

This latter point was on her mind in her last days. She asked me to write something about how important it is to vote against Trump, and to vote in general—and I will, once I have something that I think does her last wishes justice.

The memorial service was just the end of the beginning of this new normal. There’s so much administrative stuff that follows a death: credit cards to be closed, mail to be stopped, so many entities that have to be told and managed and dealt with. I’ve never sold a house before. Going through her things is going to pick emotional scabs that haven’t even formed yet.

My family and friends have been wonderful and supportive throughout it all. But it’s still hard, and weird, and wrong-feeling.

I’m still so stunned I don’t think I can even write her a proper tribute, and besides, I can’t top what my sister wrote for her obituary. Yes, it’s humorous, Mom would have wanted it that way. Mom liked to laugh, and she was more patient and accepting than I realized or deserved. And I miss her terribly.

Have yourself a creepy little Christmas

Why are there not enough Christmas ghost stories?

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.

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
Via.
So it was with great joy that I learned that the Victorians had a tradition of Christmas-themed ghost stories.

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?

cartoon of the Addams Family, Morticia and Gomez peeking at Wednesday and Pugsley from around a corner. The kids are stoking the fire in the fireplace. Text: The little dears! They still believe in Santa Claus!
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:

So what will you be huddled around the fireplace (and looking over your shoulder) with this season?

side project update

So remember that sewing project I last posted about in August? Yeah, these things take more time than you’d expect. As of late September I finally had all of the fabric gathered:

lengths of fabric gathered with thread at 4" intervals
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:

long, long strip of blue cloth draped around a basement
8 yards baby!

Into a kneesock:

kneesock stuffed with something, knotted at the opening
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:

tightly pleated scrap of silk
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.

my childhood hero

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.

Except one.

cycling superhero logos: Superman, Captain America, the Flash, Green Lantern, Iron Man, Spiderman
Via.

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!

 

biweekly links 11/6/2019

I think I got off schedule over the past few weeks but it’s been a while since I did one of these, so:

The David Bowie Book Club is old news but the book of essays about Bowie’s top 100 reads doesn’t come out until later this month. If I were to join a book club it’d probably be this one.

Just stumbled across Betsy Gordon’s Psychoactive Substances Research Collection so haven’t had a chance to peruse much but the list of other repositories almost interests me more, especially the inclusion of Duke’s Parapsychology Lab’s records. Ever since I learned that J. B. Rhine did peyote with Timothy Leary I’ve been curious about the story behind that.

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.

Nineteenth century black and white photo of a wall of embedded skulls surrounding a sign too small to read
Ca. 1861, courtesy the Getty Library.

There’s a haunted river cruise of Jamestown Island in VA’s Historic Triangle. Could I write this off as book research?

flat

It’s been a rough couple of weeks.

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.

summer sewing project

my Remember that fabric I posted a few months ago? This is what I’m doing with it:

closeup of threaded needle in fabric, very small stitches
By hand. It’s the only way. These photos don’t do the color justice.
rows and rows of gathering stitches on wrinkled fabric
Every 4 inches. 8 yards to go…

I’m trying to make a mock Fortuny Delphos gown, this time out of silk. I made one years ago out of polyester because heat-set pleats stay in synthetic fabrics, but it’s rather stiff and doesn’t have the same flowing drape as silk.

coiled and twisted green fabric with many tiny pleats
Pretty, but just not the same. Photo author’s own.
old Threads magazine article on how to make mock Fortuny pleats: Gather fabric at both ends, pull gathering threads taut, soak the fabric, twist, and dry in the microwave
My technique, but I’m taking it up to 11. Via Pinterest.

It’s time consuming because to ensure the gathering threads won’t catch the fabric they have to be done by hand, and to ensure tight pleats throughout I need more gathering threads than just the ends. This costumer gathered every 4 inches or so and got fantastic results, though I think she used a drying technique that involved hair perm solution, to make the pleats stay. I think this would irritate my skin so I’m doing it Fortuny’s way (or what we think was Fortuny’s way – the patent images are vague, probably deliberately) – which means if I ever wash it I repleat, by hand, every 4″.

I’ve loved Fortuny gowns since I was a teenager. I’ve even “visited” garments behind the scenes trying to figure out how they were pleated and assembled. The theory I’m working with was that the pleating was performed first, then the fabric panels sewn together by hand.

I’ll let y’all know how it goes.