![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The weekend was sort of mixed, with a dark contractor cloud hanging over our heads. The fencing job is "done" except for the parts that aren't or need to be fixed. Christine's anxiety spikes when she thinks of the done poorly, done stupidly, and not done bits. I am holding space for the owner to take a look and see immediately what needs attention. We did have my Dad look at it to help me assess the level of pickiness we were at. Christine worries that as two women, contractors see us as easily taken advantage of.
I also tried setting up the camera for some "studio" shots. I couldn't find my "green screen" felt or much of my equipment for a while, because i was looking for the plastic box it was in when we moved. Eventually, i found where i had concentrated most of my photography equipment. I still didn't see the green felt -- which may still be packed from the move -- and i have misplaced the most recent lens cap, and generally feel a sort of entropic misery. Happy news is that i was actually using the still new camera, and put on my old macro lens. It's a budget rig of tube extensions that remove any camera control over focus (use the manual focus ring) and f stop (paper wedged in the lever about mid stop). The new camera seems rather cranky about lenses it can't "talk" to. And i recalled my irritation at the change in location of all the controls, many to digital menus. Fie. So, i took photos, yay, and just sitting with the camera outside in the screened deck i became totally soaked with sweat. The air was saturated. I loaded 1001 photos into Lightroom, the application i manage and "develop" my photos -- i think i hadn't imported any images but a few of the camera trap from this year.
Photos were of the purple corn -- we'll see if i get them developed. The ideas i had wait for it to be temperate enough for me to stand working outside. I imagine making patterns out of the kernels and using the photos as the basis for fabric pattern designs, but fussy nudgig around of small bits needs a bit more comfort.
Overnight 1.71 inches of rain. That puts us at 11.87 inches in a month we normally have 4.76 inches.
I identified four new-to-me plants, and happily three were natives. Two were in the genus of St John's wort, little shrubby plants with little yellow flowers. One was in the lobelia genus: Lobelia inflata (Indian tobacco, puke weed). It's not terribly showy, but i'm glad to have preserved some colonies of it. The fourth was a singular plant out among the buckwheat: i got it before it set seed. Chinese Senna (Senna obtusifolia)
Oh no, despite the name it *is* native. Oh fiddlesticks. It was kind of attractive. Fie. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15616930 Maybe i'll get another chance.
Saturday night we stayed up late to watch the entire Amazon (or BBC One) miniseries, Ordeal by Innocence. From wikipedia i gather enough of the plot was changed that my wondering about a particular detail seems moot.
That particular detail is that, between this mystery and a Father Brown episode, i've two data-points of a fifties period depiction showing wealthy white British families adopting non-white daughters. The white son and the non-white daughter then develop a sexual relationship. Sympathetic others don't show any horror, concern, or disgust at this. My eyebrow raises at the gender and race dynamics there. I'm of the impression that sexual relationships between siblings by adoption have usually been considered "creepy" and problematic. The racial difference in these two cases underscores that there isn't a genetic issue with the relationship; would it play so easily if the siblings were of the same race? And then what if the brother had been of Chinese or African descent and the sister white? I'm used to the BBC pieces having a bit of The Society of Creative Anachronism's principle of righting past injustices (and thus the complete anachronistic non-worry about mixed race marriages is welcome), but something about these two plot lines seems ... problematic.
I also tried setting up the camera for some "studio" shots. I couldn't find my "green screen" felt or much of my equipment for a while, because i was looking for the plastic box it was in when we moved. Eventually, i found where i had concentrated most of my photography equipment. I still didn't see the green felt -- which may still be packed from the move -- and i have misplaced the most recent lens cap, and generally feel a sort of entropic misery. Happy news is that i was actually using the still new camera, and put on my old macro lens. It's a budget rig of tube extensions that remove any camera control over focus (use the manual focus ring) and f stop (paper wedged in the lever about mid stop). The new camera seems rather cranky about lenses it can't "talk" to. And i recalled my irritation at the change in location of all the controls, many to digital menus. Fie. So, i took photos, yay, and just sitting with the camera outside in the screened deck i became totally soaked with sweat. The air was saturated. I loaded 1001 photos into Lightroom, the application i manage and "develop" my photos -- i think i hadn't imported any images but a few of the camera trap from this year.
Photos were of the purple corn -- we'll see if i get them developed. The ideas i had wait for it to be temperate enough for me to stand working outside. I imagine making patterns out of the kernels and using the photos as the basis for fabric pattern designs, but fussy nudgig around of small bits needs a bit more comfort.
Overnight 1.71 inches of rain. That puts us at 11.87 inches in a month we normally have 4.76 inches.
I identified four new-to-me plants, and happily three were natives. Two were in the genus of St John's wort, little shrubby plants with little yellow flowers. One was in the lobelia genus: Lobelia inflata (Indian tobacco, puke weed). It's not terribly showy, but i'm glad to have preserved some colonies of it. The fourth was a singular plant out among the buckwheat: i got it before it set seed. Chinese Senna (Senna obtusifolia)
Oh no, despite the name it *is* native. Oh fiddlesticks. It was kind of attractive. Fie. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15616930 Maybe i'll get another chance.
Saturday night we stayed up late to watch the entire Amazon (or BBC One) miniseries, Ordeal by Innocence. From wikipedia i gather enough of the plot was changed that my wondering about a particular detail seems moot.
That particular detail is that, between this mystery and a Father Brown episode, i've two data-points of a fifties period depiction showing wealthy white British families adopting non-white daughters. The white son and the non-white daughter then develop a sexual relationship. Sympathetic others don't show any horror, concern, or disgust at this. My eyebrow raises at the gender and race dynamics there. I'm of the impression that sexual relationships between siblings by adoption have usually been considered "creepy" and problematic. The racial difference in these two cases underscores that there isn't a genetic issue with the relationship; would it play so easily if the siblings were of the same race? And then what if the brother had been of Chinese or African descent and the sister white? I'm used to the BBC pieces having a bit of The Society of Creative Anachronism's principle of righting past injustices (and thus the complete anachronistic non-worry about mixed race marriages is welcome), but something about these two plot lines seems ... problematic.
Tags:
no subject
For people who are very into their ethnicity (a.k.a. racist), it is considered "sort of" okay for a man of their race to have sex with someone of another race ("boys will be boys," "sewing his wild oats") but not the reverse (even when not actual lynching him for it). Although everyone is polite, I know some of Nom's family doesn't really approve of her marrying white.
no subject
I like your family tree icon!
no subject
Speaking of icons, are there specific meanings to the different parts of yours? Did you develop it yourself?
no subject
I'd had a pendant as a teen of a stylized bird silhouette with a heart cut through the silver and a small eye. For me, wrestling with undiagnosed depression, that was a comforting symbol. I thought of it as a phoenix and that i would be able to survive the destruction i felt. This is an echo of that pendant, with a far more pronounced eye balancing the heart, witnessing-seeing-observing seeming important as well as love to who i am.
no subject
no subject
I know that around 1850-1900 my Swedish* ancestors were servants in Sweden. Whether they were descended from Vikings or servants to Vikings is as yet a mystery.
* One family line is from land that used to be Norway -- i haven't really gotten the history of Sweden clear in my head.
no subject
They didn’t keep accurate records back then, so no way of knowing if kings, or lords, or peasants, or slaves. My general feeling is that if one were upper class, one stayed back in Europe; most of us are descended from riffraff.
Sweden owned Norway at one point. I don’t recall when it became part of Sweden and later again independent. Anyhow, might not be a difference between your “Swedish” and your “Norwegian” ancestors.
My ancestors most immediately came for Lithuania and Latvia, but being Jews, probably got kicked out of half the countries in Europe. (Mark Twain once said about Americans, that “our ancestors got kicked out of ever decent country.”) Also, although those countries have a distinct identity today, claiming something based on “history” always depends on WHEN in history you pick as your starting point.