Reading

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Well, they did make a slight change

I recently went slightly spare at the blurb for the reprint of an obscure (if interesting for non-literary reasons) dystopian work of the 1920s (on which I have writ myself in chapter of volume of which I have lately received my advance copy) as describing someone in a rather misleading fashion -

- and looking at it this evening I see that they have very slightly tweaked it.

But on reflection, why, in the first place, are they mentioning the HUSBAND of the author and their ideological position (which I will still contend was a whole lot MOAR COMPLIK8ED than they want to make it)?

(Possibly, over here, just a slight touch of the miffs that, if they are doing a line of dystopian works of the period in question, Y U NO ask meeeeeee to do critical intro to any of them?)

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Geography lessons

After various excursions which I hope to write about later, we left Pitmedden this morning. We lunched very happily in Perth with

fjm, Chilperic (as he once was, in another place), their other house guests (who announced that in fact we had met once, long ago: they had been staying with

desperance and he had brought them to

durham_rambler's birthday party) and the more sociable of their two cats.

We are now in Culross, looking out across the rooftops towards the Firth of Forth; very soon it will be time to go to th Red Lion in search of dinner.

I am taken aback by how easily these three places are within reach of each other. It seem that Aberdeen is not where I thought: or rather, it is more or less (I might have swapped it with Peterhead) where I would have marked it on the map, but that turns out not to be as far north as I thought. The length of the drive from Scrabster to Pitmedden may contain a clue - though that includes a fair distance east as well as south.

We were driving, as we were during most of our week in Aberdeenshire, through the harvest, golden fields of grain (some of it was certainly barley, but maybe not all). There were rolling hills, but not really even distant views of mountains. Before leaving home I checked my Lonely Planet to the Highlands and Islands, and was quite surprised to discover it did not include Aberdeenshire. This was ignorance on my part.

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recs

August recs: Battleship Exchange, 18 fanworks

Getting some

battleshipex recs out before the anon phase ends soon.

I got two great gifts:

Next Time, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Etho & Decked Out 2
Summary: Prickles made it to the new season. Someone else didn’t.
The worldbuilding in this is fantastic, and I also love Etho here. Rusty <3

The Dead Hills, Hermitcraft
0.9k, Joe Hills/ZombieCleo, fantasy AU
Summary: Prince Joe of the Hills travels to meet his new spouse, Cleo the Zombie Queen
Great Joe voice, very him, and a very fun scenario.

And I have only read a small fraction of the other works in the collection, but under the cut are recs for some I especially enjoyed.
11 fics: Life Series, Dungeon Meshi, Naruto, Murderbot Diaries, Cthulhu/Taskmaster, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hermitcraft, Nirvana in Fire, Dream SMP
5 artpieces: original work, Murderbot Diaries, Spirit, Pokémon, Temeraire

( 15 fanworks )

Entry tags:

cooking,
recipes

Culinary

This week's bread: the Collister/Blake My Favourite Loaf, strong white/wholemeal/einkorn flour, turned out v nice.

Friday night supper: grocery delivery came so early that I had time to whip up dough, etc, for sardegnera (with Calabrian salami).

Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones loosely based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread, with Marriage's Light Spelt Flour. I think the current mace is a bit underpowered? I thought I had sprinkled on a fair amount but it didn't really come through.

Today's lunch: smoked haddock with butter beans - using Belazu Judion Butter Beans since actual dried butter beans are still being hard to come by - the haddock seemed a bit bland? - maybe I need to add further seasoning when mingling the poached fillets and the beans; served with slowcooked tenderstem broccoli (not bad considering it boiled dry a couple of times), and the whomping adult courgettes I was sent instead of baby ones (at least they weren't actual vegetable marrows) cut into batons and white-braised with sliced red bell pepper.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

loligo!

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Flurry

August is supposed to be this winding-down/wound-down month, right?

Well, for reasons which I concede are not particularly seasonal, the last week or so has been a bit of a flurry.

Getting next volume of The Ongoing Saga ready for publication in near future.

My tech person having issues with the website: it transpired that they had been upgrading some software which had had knock-on effects, but this involved a lot of three-way emailing about what was going on.

And I decided, for Reasons, to start putting together my talk for conference at end of September (rather than leave it until later I'd rather at least rough it out now and leave it to percolate) and this has so been the thing where the writing is the process and I am now actually feeling that I might have something a bit more original than I thought, and it has more of a shape to it. But the thing with this was that I kept having Ideas and going and adding bits and moving bits around, and realising I needed to go and Look Stuff Up, rather than just collate bits from my notes, so it was more of a vortex than I'd anticipated, and still ongoing.

Plus, the new physio exercises for hip/lower back and incorporating them into the routine, and, er, something or other was causing flareup of the Old Trouble, so there was working around that.

(Also, flurry of spam/phishing emails claiming to be 'support tickets' with deeply implausible references and origins.)

Mood theme

I can't figure out where / how I can select a mood theme. Could somebody help me? Thank you :)

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I really, really would lay odds it does not say 'it's all more complicated'

People on bluesky have been sending up the claim that GPT-5 boosts ChatGPT can provide PhD-level expertise.

After all, if you ask me for Mi Xpertise, you are likely to get 'it's complic8ed' and your ear bent with perhaps TMI on the subject, and what the areas of uncertainty are.

Do we not think that it would be more like having an overconfident mansplainer in one's pocket?

This led me to the teasing memory of a quotation, which I have tracked down and found has been researched in considerable depth here: Quote Origin: I Wish I Was As Sure of Any One Thing As He is of Everything.

It's fairly reliably attrib. to Lord Melbourne about the historian Thomas Macaulay (not, we fear, a member of the discipline given to declaring IAMC, sigh). Though it's been ascribed to various about various (funnily enough, all blokes) over the years.

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scotland_25

Waves in passing

We are spending this week at Pitmedden Garden, in Aberdeenshire. The garden is magnificent; the house, a nineteenth century for an earlier one which burned down, is also very splendid, but to no-one's surprise its internet is shaky. So much so, in fact, that I'm going to park this here as a placeholder, and go and do something more profitable.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

chickenfeet!

More from Okanagan Backroads Volume One

Old Fairview: White Lake Observatory

Mile 12.1 (4.4) – Half a mile further along, the access to White Lake Observatory turns right. (White Lake itself is the alkali pond opposite the Twin Lakes turnoff.)

Because of their electrical systems, which interfere with the operation of the radio-telescope, cars are not allowed on the road to the radio telescope. The big dish itself towers above the other installations, listening eternally to signals from outer space. The maze of poles and overhead wiring back towards Oliver are another form of radio-telescope, which pick up very long radio waves. The observatory is well worth walking the three-tenths mile; what's happening is completely incomprehensible to the layman, but fascinating nonetheless.

(1975/77)

* * * * * *

This observatory still exists, under the rather grander name of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. It is, so the government website tells me, "an internationally renowned facility for radio astronomy and leading-edge instrumentation." Until just now, I had no idea that it existed.

DRAO is still, naturally, a radio-quiet site, which must be more difficult these days than in 1975.

Dave Stewart, author of Okanagan Backroads, is quite right about its fascination. I am absolutely a lay person, and yet statements like this are weirdly thrilling: "The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is Canada's largest radio telescope. ... CHIME has no moving parts, but the Earth's rotation allows the telescope to map all of Canada's visible sky every day. CHIME was designed to survey atomic hydrogen from the largest volume of the Universe to date." No real idea why that would be important to do (feel free to explain!), but I'm glad it's happening here.

They have a Perseids viewing party next week!

§rf§

Source: https://nrc.canada.ca/en/research-development/nrc-facilities/dominion-radio-astrophysical-observatory-research-facility

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The historical inaccuracy here is at a very high level

Okay, I suppose that maybe the model is 'Disney princess' rather than any princess in history ever, but even then, don't they display a certain degree of agency?

This is A Thing where apparently women display princessiness by performatively giving up agency - sitting in restaurants with castdown eyes being ordered for, not speaking until spoken to - also certain forms of helplessness which suggest they actually need a team of Ladies of the Bedchamber fighting over whose hereditary right it is to put on their stockings and whose to lace their stays....

This boggles the mind of someone raised in an actual monarchy in which there were two princesses around who did not, actually, model docility - I don't think Princess Margaret conceding to the strictures of the day and Giving Up The Man She Loved because he was divorced really qualifies as she'd been going around with him, as far as I can recall WITHOUT A CHAPERONE for some time.

Historian is obliged to point out that for centuries princesses - apart from bearing necessary heirs - quite often had to undertake regnal tasks, either as consort or regent, or at least aid in the general work of Being Royal, even if they did not actually take the throne themselves. Note here conference paper I heard on the preference for female regents in medieval Europe when there was a minor heir.

If you're going to Be a Princess, perhaps do not take Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst as your model, though on another hand, why not? Girl-Bossing It to the Max!

but we commend Princess Sophia Duleep Singh to your attention.

Observe also the daughters of Queen Victoria: e.g. Princess Alice, who married Louis, the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, was known for her commitment to philanthropic work, interested in nursing, met and befriended Florence Nightingale, and also set up military hospitals; Princess Louise who attended the The National Art Training School and designed a full-size statue of her mother as well as a memorial sculpture for the Boer War. No meek sitting about for them.

(I will cop to have read Alot of historical novels in my misspent youth very much contradicting the notion that princessing was sitting still and being silent.)

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

glinda,

haloquin and

wordweaverlynn!

Entry tags:

Wednesday is hopeful that the website issue has been resolved

What I read

Well, Presidential Agent kept me going for quite a while - boy, Upton Sinclair chucks a lot in - this one was particularly gripping.

I decided not to go straight on the next one - needing a break from the grim extension of Fascism over Europe - and therefore read Jessica Stanley, Consider Yourself Kissed (2025), which was a considerable disappointment. What I'd read about it led me to expect something fresher, more original, sparkier - I found this meh and towards the cosy women's fiction end. We note that back in the 60s/70s women were trapped like woodcock in springes by getting pregnant prematurely and thus stuck in unwelcome marriages or finding themselves tied down, and the gen X/millenial narrative is Biological Clock is Ticking On, so the trajectory is a bit different. The other thing I noted is that, as with All Fours, I feel Lessing's 'To Room 19' is somewhere in the DNA and it's a bit like the Omelas revisionism thing?

On the go

I've been wondering about Elizabeth Bear's The Folded Sky (White Space #3) (2025) and there was a very tasty deal on UK/European sites for the ebook - I found it a bit slow-starting but then we got the 'murder-mystery in enclosed setting' while a whole lot of other shit goes down.

Up next

New Literary Review.

Read a review of Andrea Long Chu, Authority: Essays on Being Right, which made these sound intriguing, and I read the preview sample on Kobo, and fell to the temptation of preordering. Should turn up this week.

Volume in which I have a chapter has arrived - I ought to at least riffle through the other contributions.

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life

Some reading!

This replacing of the floors is turning out to be a long project, since most of the grunt work has to be done by us, two olds. It's basically packing to move sans truck. I'm doing more culling, noting my own inconsistencies in regard to what I keep and what I toss. What seemed a ream of letters from one person went out, except for a slim batch of early ones when X visited a country they felt strongly about. But the rest had begun so well, with many book and writing discussions, then became a long downhill slide over the years until I reached the point when I dreaded seeing their handwriting on an envelope. Out those go--those letters served their purpose at the time, but are not worth keeping to revisit.

And yet, I cannot toss old letters from relatives, which are largely reports on their daily doings. Some of those letters are more than fifty years old, so they've become curiosities, little reminders of what life was like in the late sixties/early seventies. But mostly I won't toss those letters because to do so is to silence those voices forever. Sorry, kids, you'll have to toss them when you toss whatever I leave behind.

Not much time for reading as I tear this place apart, and also cull more books. So far I've completely emptied three tall bookcases, and there's a lot more to go!

I've begun reading Emily Eden, whose writing shows influence from Jane Austen. Also, there's the monthly Zoom discussion of Anthony Powell's twelve volume roman fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time; I missed the August live discussion due to conflicting appointments, but they record it, and I'm listening in pieces. So far the talk re this book, The Valley of Bones seems to be circling around how much it's a roman a clef.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

batrachian!

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Assorted stuff

More monks behaving badly: Head of Shaolin Temple in China under investigation on suspicion of embezzlement: plus'violated Buddhist precepts by maintaining relationships with multiple women over a long period and fathering at least one child, according to a notice from the temple’s authority on its WeChat account'.

***

How unlike our own dear Cardinal Newman, St. John Henry Newman: The First Openly Gay Catholic Saint? (actually an older post, I think floating about again because he was recently declared A Doctor of the Church). Quite separately the other day I was thinking of Newman's Description of a Gentleman, and how certain recent converts fail to match up to this ideal (I think they would also - no names, no pack drill - be destroyed by early C20th convert Dr Letitia Fairfield, who unlike most of those in that category was leftwing and feminist and in a lot of respects not totally unlike sister Rebecca West for all their quarrels).

***

A nice article on Barbara Hepworth - A revelatory new view of Barbara Hepworth: The Fondation Maeght’s stunning show brings the British sculptor into dialogue with European modernists. '“If the ‘Winged Figure’ in Oxford Street gives people a sense of being airborne in rain and sunlight and nightlight I will be very happy,” Hepworth said.' Bless.

***

I feel this is Already Known, or perhaps not, because this sort of thing seems to keep needing being rediscovered, sigh: Darwinist feminism: Dismantling the myth of female sexual passivity: The arrival of researchers like Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Amy Parish transformed not only the study of primates, but also our understanding of evolution, sexuality and gender roles in general.

***

Students make one of the most subversive and experimental women writers of the Romantic era accessible for all (and kudos for not mentioning what she is probably best known to history for, being Prinny's 'Perdita', that he was financially mean towards). Having read that bio of Mrs Barbauld, suspect Robinson also had the problem of Georgian dude-bros being critically condescending if not outright dismissive with knock-on effects for reputation.

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The further adventures of Storm Floris

Not a fairy tale prince, it seems, but the grandson of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. I hope he's proud of himself. I was right, too, in associating the name with a superior brand of chocolate: Floris was the Hungarian chocolatier who made Fortnum & Mason's own brand chocolates.

The rest of the story, briefly, because I am uncomfortably perched on the sofa in order to catch the wifi; also, must clean up to go out to dinner. Northlink cancelled our midnight ferry: it sailed from Lerwick to Aberdeen, but didn't call at Kirkwall. We managed to book on the 6.30 am sailing today, and by booking a cabin got bed and breakfast before the sailing.

So instead of a last day in Kirkwall, we had an extra day in Stromness, about which I do not complain. We walked down to the museum, and back along the street which was beautiful in the late afternoon milky sunshine. We dined at the Ferry, on scallops and crab tart, and I marked the end of my stay in Orkney with a glass of Scapa 10 year old. Our cabin on the Hamnavoe was perfectly comfortable (I didn't sleep all that well, because I have toothache, but that's another story) though they woke us up at 6,30 to announce we were sailing - after which it got bouncier.

So the only real downside is that instead of being deposited in Aberdeen, near our destination, it was the short crossing to Scrabster, and a four hour drive away. But we're here now; in our strange and palatial accommodation, about which another time.

Entry tags:

books

Coda Read

I love me a ghost story coda. Their general purpose of course is to disrupt the border between the story world and our own by suggesting, explicitly or not (not being the classier option), that we can't simply shut the book and pack our fears safely away - that some may leak out.

Often codas take the form of reversion to a frame story, in which the main narrative has been related as a diverting fiction or country tale, only to have some unexpected evidence of its truth appear once all seems safely concluded. That device has probably been overused, though.

My favourite coda will probably always be the final paragraph (or really, sentence) of M.R. James's 'Casting the Runes', which has an austere minimalism that would have made John Cage proud:

Only one detail shall be added. At Karswell's sale a set of Bewick, sold with all faults, was acquired by Harrington. The page with the woodcut of the traveller and the demon was, as he had expected, mutilated. Also, after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him.

That said, I also like the far more garrulous use of the frame story in Lafcadio Hearn's retelling of 'The Romance of the Peony Lantern', under the title 'A Passional Karma'. It ought not to work, because unlike the slightly trite device of discovering some evidence that the story was true after all, it does quite the opposite - seemingly mocking the narrator for having been drawn in by the fiction. And yet, this still manages to give a creepy effect, at least to me, for reasons I can't quite formulate. Perhaps you can?

Anyway, I recommend the story, coda and all.

Entry tags:

culture,
links

PBS

On their ongoing mission to reserve the entire national treasury to themselves and their suck-ups, the orange excresence and fellow scumbags have axed PBS.

But! For a few bucks a month (before they thieve those, too) you can view PBS's entire backlog, plus other goodies. And do some general good at preserving our culture while at it.

Okay, back to dismantling this entire house so we can replace the disgusting floors.