May 30, 2023
Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer starts June 17 and the Slack is hopping right now, in case you want to join in on the fun. 📝
Finished reading: Demon in the Wood Graphic Novel by Leigh Bardugo 📚
Gorgeous graphic version of the Darkling’s origin story.
May 29, 2023
It was hard finding time to write while traveling, so I didn’t do all the travel blogging I would have liked. But I have consistent childcare for the next couple weeks, then for several more weeks after a one week break from now, and I’m hoping to write up some travel stuff during that time. 📝
🌊 Today is the first day of the 10th Annual 100 Days of Blue Mind challenge. As often as you can between now and Labor Day, “get near, in, on or under your wild, domestic, urban or even virtual waters.” Today I took a shower and hung out with my kid on some rocks near South Ellerbee Creek.
May 28, 2023
🔖📚 Read “I think, like marriage, home is a fantasy” - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Amanda Montei
Here are all of my intellectual intentions and here is this adorable, smiling, chubby baby, swallowing it whole.
When writing real life, there is always going to be a connection between what is happening at the breakfast table and how you are showing up on the page.
🔖📚 Read This Is Dedicated To Anyone Who Ever Left - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Lyz Lenz.
Where have I been?
I like Manton’s Where have I been post and have had a pretty significant change in where I’ve visited since the start of the year, so I thought I’d make my own list.
As for what counts:
If I simply passed through in a car, train, or bus, it doesn’t count. If I was only there at an airport for a layover, it doesn’t count.
Everything else counts.
7 Countries:
- United States
- The Netherlands
- Germany
- Scotland
- Ireland
- England
- France
14 States:
- Arizona
- California
- Florida
- Georgia
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Virginia
May 27, 2023
📺 Watched Velma. The two primary criticisms - that it relies too heavily on meta-humor and that the characters are selfish & don’t grow - are spot on, and yet I still found it compelling enough to watch all 10 episodes.
🔖 Read Monkey House: Strange Reflections at the Singerie by Kate Zambreno (VQR).
📺 Me, watching Bridgerton: How can anyone tell these Bridgerton brothers apart? They all have the same coloration. I guess two of them are a little taller? But I’m not sure.
May 26, 2023
🔖 Read The Winter Zoo by Kate Zambreno (The Yale Review).
For a few years when M. was a toddler, our family went to Knoxville - the place of my mother’s birth - for The Collective library conference. W. would present and M. and I would wander about town, exploring the best haunts and generally enjoying the adorable downtown and the home of the 1982 World’s Fair.
One of the places I took M. was Zoo Knoxville. We were there in mid-March so it was pretty much a winter zoo like Kate Zambreno talks about here, and our experiences there were very similar.
May 25, 2023
🔖📝 Reading Revision can be fun. No, really. by Charlie Jane Anders.
…revision can actually be kind of exhilarating at times. Because instead of thinking of the revision process as fixing my garbage draft, I’ve started to think of it as unwrapping a series of presents that I wrapped for myself before.
🔖 Read How to Scale Back, Even When It Seems Impossible.
Do you need to lose something else to find yourself? Katie Pryal writes about how she had to let so many things go to create space for herself to thrive.
Just learned that it would cost £22 to have 100g of Tchai-Ovna’s Faeries Blood Tea shipped to me here in the US. Yikes.
📚 Purchased 2 different books from museums to be shipped directly to my house rather than carrying them home myself:
- Sarah Bernhardt - Et la femme crea l’etoile exhibition catalog (Petit Palais, Paris)
- Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination exhibition book (Science Museum, London)
Time for a needs assessment! Micro.blog community, what resources do you need in the Micro.blog Community Library?
Want to read: The Light Room by Kate Zambreno 📚
📚 Here comes the BBC with a list of the 100 Greatest Children’s Books of All Time. Maybe when I’m recovered from jetlag I’ll see how many are on both this and Time’s 100 Best Fantasy Books list.
🍿 Watched Howard.
It’s always striking when you realize the outsize influence an artist has had on you, and watching this it really hit home what an influence Howard Ashman has been on me. I think tomorrow is its lady day on Disney+. I hope they’ll release it for purchase after that. I’d buy it.
May 23, 2023
May 22, 2023
Last full day in Europe and I’m spending it alternating between packing and lying down. Don’t underestimate how much stuff you can acquire in 4 months, even when you’re doing your best to be really selective.
I’ve created playlists on YouTube for all 3 Micro Camps, in case you, like me, have a long flight and might want to download and watch them all on the plane (if you have YouTube Premium, that is):
Happy World Goth Day!
Tomorrow I will go home, where I will have access to all my goth perfumes and jewelry.
Today, I give you this photo of Sarah Bernhardt wearing her bat hat, which I hope to recreate with a needle-felted bat.
