Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read Interview with Kelly J. Baker: “I can’t push through when I’m stuck.”

“My writing routine became write frantically whenever I had a chance or had the energy to do so.” Dr. Baker knows.

I’m so excited to hang out with my friends for new stories.

I made a menu of Dutch foods for us to try. They’re sort of home food staples, not anything too elaborate or traditional. This is the first thing we tried: hagelslag, which literally means hailstorm. It’s bread and butter topped with real chocolate sprinkles.

Another Dutch meal: stamppot boerenkool. This is smoked sausage with sauce on a bed of potatoes mixed with kale. I really liked the sausage but it turns out even mixing it with potatoes can’t make me like kale.

🔖 Read WE’VE LOST THE PLOT by Megan Garber (The Atlantic). “Our constant need for entertainment has blurred the line between fiction and reality—on television, in American politics, and in our everyday lives.”

Chilling. What now?

My kid made a Kirby and the Forgotten Land fanzine, I am dead from cute.

🔖📺🎮 Read Television Is Better Without Video Games and Video Games Are Better Without Gameplay (Ian Bogost, The Atlantic).

Maybe Ian Bogost should stop playing video games.

Finished reading: Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo 📚

I love it so much. I left the hardcover at home but bought the ebook to read while I’m traveling, which meant I could highlight without feeling weird about it and I highlighted a ton of stuff.

📺🖖🏻 When I watch TNG or Picard, Data is Data, but anyone else Brent Spiner plays is Brent Spiner doing an awesome job. But Data is, viscerally for me, Not A Character Brent Spiner Plays, but instead A Guy (an android guy but still).

Our second week in the Netherlands has been quiet so far. Exactly a week after we got here, I came down with a cough that has developed into a pretty standard respiratory virus. The COVID self-test was negative. This wasn’t a surprise because the rate of infection here is vanishingly small. Aalsmeer has about 32,000 inhabitants. One of them has tested positive this week.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, 13 out of about 903,000 people reported positive tests last week.

For the purposes of comparison, that’s 1.2 cases per 100,000 people over 7 days. At home, there were 153 new cases per 100,000 people last week.

I know ground water numbers are more reliable but I struggle to interpret them, so this is what I use to determine risk.

So, it’s probably not COVID given the low incidence of COVID here and the negative test.

I’ve still felt pretty crappy, so I’ve been sleeping a ton. ME, M, and I ventured out to the Grote Poel (the large pool) of the Westeindeplassen. The humidity outside really helps my breathing but I have to be careful not to overexert myself.

Today both ME & M are feeling poorly.

In the meantime, W has been into the city a couple times and loved exploring. I’m looking forward to getting the whole family there next week once we’re all back on our feet. It always takes at least an hour to get there from the village.

(When we booked the house, there was a bus that went directly to the airport train station but they changed the routes right before we came so it doesn’t run anymore. This adds one or two transfers to every trip.)

I guess people really want to know about what food you get when you travel. We mostly buy groceries and prepare our own food, so we haven’t tried anything extra Dutch besides stroopwaffels. Those are delicious.

The eggs here are super fresh and excellent. They have all the produce you might expect. They have a mix of Dutch brands and other brands. Froot Loops are Unicorn Froot Loops. We eat a lot of Nature Valley granola bars. There is, of course, immense variety in the cheese available.

That’s the latest here. I hope to be more adventurous soon!

📺 Watched Ares.

Brilliant dark academia horror with all the hallmarks: secret society, dangerously powerful young people, gorgeous fashion, a lower class newcomer, with the spirit of LEGENDBORN or ACE OF SPADES critiquing the aesthetic’s Eurocentrism.

Duolingo really emphasizes the importance of learning the Dutch word “krant,” which means newspaper. I was confused at first because it seems like a specialized term now that print news doesn’t have such a big market share but one of these comes to our house each Thursday, so?

In just a bit I’ll be contributing to the live-streamed Pop Culture Dialogue on Inherited Fandoms, hosted by the Popular culture Studies Journal. You can tune into their YouTube channel at 11 am CST/12 pm EST/5 pm GMT/6 pm CET (where I am!) to watch!

The video of the Pop Culture Dialogue I was part of on inherited fandoms is now on YouTube.

Well I guess the jet lag is over because instead of getting a brilliant solid stretch of sleep that didn’t start until 2 am, I was out by 11 but up around 2:45 & now can’t get back to sleep because restless legs so I guess I’m feeling at home in the Netherlands now.

I love your newsletter, whoever you are, but I’ve put it on web-only. Trying to get quiet in here 🧠. I’ll find you when I’m ready.

The other day W pointed out that the way we communicate in memes is basically the same as Tamarians in “Darmok” 🖖🏻. When I say, “Spiderman pointing at another Spiderman,” it’s not that different from “Shaka, when the walls fell.”

We took a walk through the village down to the Westeindeplassen (a lake) today. Here are some photos from that walk.

Me in the Netherlands on Day 3: UGH I can’t believe I haven’t been to ALL THE MUSEUMS, what am I even doing

🔖 Read The Fannish Potlatch: Creation of Status Within the Fan Community by Rachael Sabotini (Fanfic Symposium) via Lori Morimoto’s Introduction to Media Fan Studies.

How has the fandom gift economy changed since this was written in 1999?

🔖 Read The online free speech debate is raging in fan fiction, too by Elizabeth Minkel.

In case you missed it: my husband, W, received a Fulbright award to study European & transatlantic copyright harmonization, especially with respect to fair use/fair dealing. M and I are accompanying him. My sister ME is here as well serving as a mother’s helper for the first couple of months so I can actually do my job. (After she leaves, W and I will trade off childcare time.)

We’re currently based in Aalsmeer, a town closer to Amsterdam than Chapel Hill is to Durham. (That distance means more to people from our hometown than it will to other people but I thought it might be a useful comparison.) The University of Amsterdam is Will’s Fulbright host. He’ll interview scholars there as well as in Maastricht.

Because his award is specifically a Fulbright-Schuman award, his research is international, so we’ll also be visiting Helsinki and Rovaniemi in Finland, Bonn in Germany, and Brussels in Belgium.

In March, we’ll leave Aalsmeer and travel the UK and Ireland so he can interview scholars there. We’ll finish up in Paris and head home before Memorial Day.

…….

We left the US Monday evening and arrived in Amsterdam Tuesday morning, then road a train and a bus and walked about 600 meters to the house where we’re staying.

…….

I already love it here. Harbor cities always make me happy. I’m delighted by all the canals.

Also, the roads: buses have a completely separate set of lanes divided from the car lanes and so do bikes. Aalsmeer is a very walkable town.

…….

Yesterday we briefly went into Amsterdam proper for our appointment with immigration. UvA is used to international scholars sticking around, so they’re following all their normal processes with us including getting us set up with Dutch identification numbers and everything.

…….

Because we are using public transportation, it takes us about an hour to get into town. I already feel disappointed that we haven’t explored more but I have to remind myself that we haven’t even been here for 72 hours yet and I was in immense pain after the flights here.

…….

More to come. For now, have a picture from the chocolate shop near our house.

Woont u in Nederland? Ik ben in Aalsmeer. Wil u afspreken? Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands, maar ik spreek veel Engels.

🔖📺👱‍♀️ Read Sarah Michelle Gellar Returns to Fighting Form: “I’ve Earned the Right to Stand Where I Am”.

“Was it an ideal working situation? Absolutely not. But it’s OK to love Buffy for what we created because I think it’s pretty spectacular.”

🎮 Played the Dragon Quest Treasures demo.

Cute with some fun mechanics and a cool world but not so compelling that I’d purchase without a steep discount.