Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read You Can’t Unsubscribe from Grief by Jenessa Abrams (Electric Literature).

This is a gorgeous essay. I really needed it right now.

I’ve had kimberlyhirsh.com for fifteen years today. I had other domains before that. I’m really glad I claimed this one. It’s been great for me both personally and professionally.

📺🍿🎄 In the movie A Timeless Christmas, I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that a man time-traveled from 1903 to 2020, but asking me to accept that his love interest is a shoe-in for a history faculty job simply by virtue of having a PhD is a bridge too far.

Well, it’s taken more than 7 years, but it’s finally happened: my child’s taste has completely eclipsed mine in my Spotify Wrapped.

📺🍿🎄 Watched A Biltmore Christmas.

Mostly for Jonathan Frakes & Robert Picardo 🖖🏻 but I ended up really liking it. There’s a lot of 40s Hollywood glamor. Also, I love Biltmore. I’ve been there only twice but I still love it.

💻 Recently my less-than-alma mater asked, “Remember the 90s at Carolina?

I didn’t get there until 1999 so I had different things in my metaphorical Carolina Jeep.

Darth Vader and I are finishing off the Thanksgiving babka with some cherry Coke.

🍿📺🎄 Watched A Christmas Frequency. A radio producer sets her show’s host up on on-air blind dates to save the show from the slump it’s in because the host is no fun after separating from her husband. It’s not a solid movie but I liked it because the cast is adorable.

📺🍿🎄 I was watching Hulu’s A Christmas Frequency and everything was going great but then it shattered my suspension of disbelief by having one guy give another guy an expense report, printed on paper.

📺🍿🎄 By the way, time travel is a whole subgenre of holiday made-for-TV movie. See:

• Eve’s Christmas (yes, that IS Amber from Clueless!)
• Back to Christmas (featuring Veronica Mars’s Michael Muhney and 1990s Jan Brady!)
• Christmas Comes Twice (Tamera Mowry!)
• A Timeless Christmas

🍿 Saw Wish. A story full of good ideas. Music nice but not as memorable as, say, Encanto. Chris Pine is, of course, a delight. Full of beautifully casual representation.

Anybody know if there are vampire stories, in any medium, that address the question of neuroplasticity? I feel like an animated corpse shouldn’t have it, but it seems like it’d be useful to help you make the most of your potentially very long life.

Today in Year of Making, LEGO set 40658, Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama.

📝 Jami Attenberg in today’s Craft Talk newsletter:

it’s important to write the things you can write.

I just want to be able to feel grief in my heart and also sleep. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask but my body disagrees.

Finished reading: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado 📚

A bunch of excellent and chilling stories. Horror and make it literary. Uncertainty that is maddening but then that’s kind of the point.

CW: Parental Death

My husband, W., has been blessed to have two mothers: the one who gave birth to him and the one who has been a constant presence since his birth as a friend of his parents and who married his dad after his dad and mom divorced. This bonus mom, as I call her, is named Cindy, and she died last Wednesday after a lengthy and unidentified illness.

Her sister wrote a beautiful obituary for her that does a great job capturing her beautiful spirit. It’s especially hard to lose Cindy right around the holidays, as so much of their magic has been fueled by her beautiful energy and hard work.

I know that I’m in the midst of grieving my dead when they come to me in dreams. I had a dream on Thursday night that my little household was traveling with Cindy (a thing we actually did sometimes, whether in Scotland or South Carolina). It was a super normal travel experience and a super normal dream and I woke happy to have had such a boring dream about her.

I’ve been thinking through little moments that make Cindy who she is (and as she lives on in our hearts it’ll be a while before I use past tense to talk about her), and I might write about it later.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking through all the little holiday things I can learn from her to make this time special.

It’s never too late to start a year of making, so here I am starting my Year of Making 2023 on November 20. This is the Goldberry shawl, designed by Michele DuNaier in Lion Brand TruBoo in the Goldenrod colorway. The pattern contains many delightful Lord of the Rings references.

Want to read: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey 📚

Want to read: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson 📚

Want to read: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek 📚

If you’re in North Carolina and interested in having natural organic reduction (aka human composting) available as a funeral option, please consider using this form letter I built with resistbot to contact your NC legislators.

🔖💬 “Your death matters. You can choose something that will reflect the values and beliefs that you held in your life, and translate them into your death. What you choose to do, is your final act, your final gesture on this earth.” Sarah Chavez, The Order of the Good Death

Want to read: Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom 📚

Want to read: Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel by Loren Rhoads 📚