westerling

We were on holiday in North Wales the week before last - a week in Criccieth, followed by two days on the borders on the way home. I'll write up the rest of the week one day, but I have so many pictures of the various comical creatures of Plas Newydd that I thought I'd put them in a separate post.

( Comical creature carvings )

sovay

I screamed in dismay in the middle of the night because I had just seen the news that Kenneth Colley died.

I saw him in roles beyond the megafamous one, of course, and he was everything from inevitable to excellent in them, but it happens that last week

spatch and I took the excuse of a genuinely fun fact to rewatch Return of the Jedi (1983) and at home on my own couch I cheered his typically controlled and almost imperceptibly nervy appearance aboard the Executor, which by the actor's own account was exactly how he had gotten this assignment stationed off the sanctuary moon of Endor in the first place, the only Imperial officer to reprise his role by popular demand. In hindsight of more ground-level explorations of the Empire like Rogue One (2016) and Andor (2022–25), Admiral Piett looks like the parent and original of their careerists and idealists, all too human in their sunk cost loyalties to a regime to which they are interchangeably disposable, but just the slight shock-stillness of his face as he swallows his promotion from frying pan to fire would have kept an audience rooting for him against their own moral alignment so long as they had ever once held a job. It didn't hurt that he never looked like he'd gotten a good night's sleep in his life, not even when he was younger and turning up as randomly as an ill-fated Teddy-boy trickster on The Avengers (1961–69) or one of the lights of the impeccably awful am-dram Hammer send-up that is the best scene in The Blood Beast Terror (1968). Years before I saw the film it came from, a still of him and his haunted face in I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)—smoking in bed, stretched out all in black on the white sheets like a catafalque—crossbred with a nightmare of mine into a poem. Out of sincere curiosity, I'll take a time machine ticket for his 1979 Benedick for the RSC.

He played Hitler for Ken Russell and Jesus for the Pythons: I am not in danger of having nothing to watch for his memory, as ever it's just the memory that's the kicker. No actor or artist or writer of importance to me has yet turned out to be immortal, but I resent the interference of COVID-19 in this one. In the haphazard way that I collected character actors, he would have been one of the earlier, almost certainly tapping in his glass-darkly fashion into my longstanding soft spot for harried functionaries of all flavors even when actual bureaucracy has done its best for most of my life to kill me. I am glad he was still in the world the last time I saw him. A friend no longer on LJ/DW already wrote him the best eulogy.

Current Music: Slumber Party, "Soldier"

sovay

On the normality front, our street is full of cracks and bangs and whooshes from fireworks set off around the neighborhood, none so far combustibly. Otherwise I spent this Fourth of July with my husbands and my parents and eleven leaves of milkweed on which the monarch seen fluttering around the yard this afternoon had left her progeny. My hair still smells like grill smoke. Due to the size of one of the hamburgers, I folded it over into a double-decker with cheese and avocado and chipotle mayo and regret nothing about the hipster Dagwood sandwich. A quantity of peach pie and strawberries and cream were highlights of the dessert after a walk into the Great Meadows where the black water had risen under the boardwalk and the water lilies were growing in profusion from the last, droughtier time we had passed that way. I do not know the species of bird that has built a nest in the rhododendron beside the summer kitchen, but the three eggs in it are dye-blue.

On the non-normality front, I meant it about the spite: watching my country stripped for parts for the cruelty of it, half remixed atrocities, half sprint into dystopia, however complicated the American definition has always been, right now it still means my family of queers and rootless cosmopolitans and as most of the holidays we observe assert, we are still here. It's peculiar. I was not raised to think of my nationality as an important part of myself so much as an accident of history, much like the chain of immigrations and migrations that led to my birth in Boston. I was raised to carry home with me, not locate it in geography. I've been asked my whole life where I really come from. This administration in both its nameless rounds has managed to make me territorial about my country beyond the mechanisms of its democracy whose guardrails turned out to be such movable goalposts. It enrages me to be expected not to care that I have seen the pendulum swing like a wrecking ball in my lifetime, as if the trajectory were so inevitable that it absolves the avarice to do harm or the cowardice to prevent it. It is nothing to do with statues. The door to the stranger is supposed to be open.

The wet meadows of the Great Meadows are peatlands. They were cut for fuel in the nineteenth century, the surrealism of fossil fuels: twelve thousand years after the glaciers, ashes in a night. The color of their smoke filled the air sixteen years ago when some of the dryer acres burned. If you ask me, there's room for bog bodies.

Current Music: Japanese Breakfast, "Picture Window"

asakiyume

My mood improved markedly with a visit from the tall one and his son, my grandkid, little treelet.

Wakanomori brought down a diary the tall one had kept as a kid: here is the entry from July 25, 2000, which includes our visit to Lloyd Alexander's house, where we put on a play for him and his wife Janine. Also included is a visit to the US mint in Philadelphia and commentary on the Delaware River (big!)

Current Music: Naomi Westwater: the empress

jazzfish

In Minneapolis, where it is overly Warm but where there were decent fireworks and a lightning-filled thunderhead last night. Feeling some kind of way about the political situation, for sure.

Have some links.

UPDATE! Breaking News: Everything Is Bad. (This is absolutely worth your two and a half minutes, I promise.)

Edward Gorey’s "Great Simple Theory About Art" is essential reading for writers: "[T]he theory ... that anything that is art ... is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it's irritating." That last bit puts me in mind of James Nicoll's "I don't object to hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."

ICEBlock: "ICEBlock is an innovative, completely anonymous crowdsourced platform that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with just two taps on their phone." US only, and iOS only at the moment. Via jwz, who notes "The cowards at Time wrote a whole article about the app and didn't include a link to it".

methaphone: "methaphone can help you manage cravings and withdrawal symptoms. It can fill that hole in your back pocket. ... methaphone looks like a simple acrylic slab -- and it is." I kinda want one. (I am a sucker for glass and lucite.)

asakiyume

Having some feelings, so ... have some microfictions.

May 20, prompt word "serve"

Directions for serving certain abstract dishes:

--revenge is a dish best served cold
--pornography is a dish best served hot
--satire is a dish best served salty
--mockery is a dish best served bitter
--disappointment is a dish best served sour
--romance is a dish best served sweet

June 26, prompt word "kind"

"May I pay you in kind rather than currency?" the woman asked. The man was selling Dastrian funerary masks, perhaps war loot from the last conflict.

"That depends. What you got to offer?" He was suspicious--she looked Dastrian.

"These magical birds."

Impressed, the man agreed.

As he neared home that evening, the birds suddenly took flight. They plunged through the windows of his house, seizing precious objects in their talons, and flew off.

Payment in kind.

July 2, prompt word "clear"

"I'm not guilty," I insisted. It was true. Sure, I'd taken the bribe and misplaced evidence, but I did NOT betray Pereira. Yet now all I got were angry looks and curses.

"My spell will clear your name," Lady One Eye said. I believed her and didn't notice when she added, "Clear it but good."

The next day, no one knew me. I introduced myself and they looked confused. I wrote out my name, but it was like they couldn't see it.

My name had been cleared into invisibility.

sovay

Because Hanscom hasn't held an air show in years, I have no idea what the hell passed over my parents' yard behind the unrelieved overcast except that it sounded like a heavy bomber, but not a modern one: an air-shaking piston-engined roar like who ordered the Flying Fortress, which were not to my knowledge even tested at the base. It suggested lost psychogeography and worried me.

Japanese Breakfast's "Picture Window" (2025) came around again on WERS as I was driving this afternoon. The line about ghosts and home keeps resonating beyond the pedal steel guitar.

I see we will be celebrating the Fourth of July out of spite this year. So go other holidays. Af tselokhes, John.

Current Music: The Dropkick Murphys, "Who'll Stand with Us?"

nineweaving

Laputa-like, my dear and daunting Readercon has come round again to Burlington. They've given me a delectable set of appearances, and I hope to see some of you there!

Understanding Originals Through their Responses
Thursday, July 17, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT, Salon G/H

Melissa Bobe (m), Greer Gilman, Michael Dirda, Rebecca Fraimow

An expected result of discovering books in conversation with each other is that reading the older book illuminates hidden aspects of the newer one. But what of the reverse case, when reading the response tells you something new about the original? Panelists will discuss the deeply satisfying experience of appreciating originals through the responses to them, including examples they've seen, what they learned from them, and how this shaped their experience of both books.

Reading: Greer Gilman,
Friday, July 18, 2025, 12:00 PM EDT, Envision / Enliven

Greer Gilman reads from Lightwards, her third Cloudish novel.

Crafts as Magic, Magic as Craft
Friday, July 18, 2025, 4:00 PM EDT, Create / Collaborate

Scott H. Andrews (m), Chris Rose, Greer Gilman, Natalie Luhrs, Stephanie Wytovich

To those of us who have never learned such skills ourselves, all manner of crafts from cooking to pottery and from fiber arts to woodwork can seem like magic. In what ways is it illuminating to talk about crafts and magic in terms of each other? What stories have made good use of crafts as magic or magic as craft?

Meet the Pros(e)
Friday, July 18, 2025, 10:15 PM EDT, Salon F

At the Friday night Meet the Pros(e) party, program participants are assigned to tables with a roughly equal number of conferencegoers and other participants, and then table placements are scrambled at regular intervals so that everyone gets to meet a new set of people in a small-group setting. Think of it as a low-key sort of speed dating where you need never be the sole focus of anyone's attention, and the goal is just to get to know some cool Readerconnish people. Please note that this event will include a bar and is mask-optional, unlike most other programming.

The Allure of Orpheus and Eurydice
Saturday, July 19, 2025, 11:00 AM EDT, Salon F

Tom Doyle (m), Constance Fay, Greer Gilman, Gwynne Garfinkle, Kate Nepveu

The tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice — the lover who visits Hades to rescue his love, only to falter at the end — has inspired artists for millennia. We'll look at why the story has resonated for so long, favorite adaptations and whether Orpheus could ever NOT look back.

Cartography and the Imagination
Saturday, July 19, 2025, 3:00 PM EDT, Salon F

Fonda Lee (m), Anne E.G. Nydam, Greer Gilman, Jedediah Berry, Robert V.S. Redick

There are few conventions more ubiquitous in fantasy novels than the map at the beginning of the book. Often, as Diana Wynne Jones memorably put it in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, "you must not expect to be let off from visiting every damn place shown on it." A map can be used to give a sense of place, to make a promise to the reader about which locations will become relevant, even to conceal or misdirect. This panel will discuss how maps can both illuminate an imagined world or conceal its dark edges.

Nine

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Reading

Unbridled woodwork

I'm a mercenary soldier and we all look the same

All of my ghosts are my home

July 25, 2000

welp

a handful of microfictions

Through crime and crusade, our labor it's been stolen

A moveable feast

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June 2021

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