Thursday, June 5th, 2025 10:45 am
Ideally something I can get through the NYPL or the Queens Public Library (I haven't yet re-upped my Brooklyn Public Library card. I ought to go do that this weekend or the week after.)

I suppose I should set a good example and rec something to all of you first. Lemme see....

I did recently enjoy both Long Live Evil and How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying!

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Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 10:04 am
Happy birthday, [personal profile] starlady!
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 11:18 pm
We went to Walgreen's; which was surprisingly quiet, because every food and drink item in the place is labelled not to be sold. Apparently a glacially slow inventory after a corporate acquisition. Barmy. Then we went to Costco, which was bedlam. Got bananas and jam and the housemate got frozen teriyaki chicken.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 10:27 pm
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I guess this is a fallback theme for me - growing things and rows of growing things.

The documentary tonight was good. People are resilient. If there are kind people around them, a person can withstand and overcome anything.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 11:00 pm

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up by four o’clock and to my business in my chamber, to even accounts with my Lord and myself, and very fain I would become master of 1000l., but I have not above 530l. toward it yet.

At the office all the morning, and Mr. Coventry brought his patent and took his place with us this morning. Upon our making a contract, I went, as I use to do, to draw the heads thereof, but Sir W. Pen most basely told me that the Comptroller is to do it, and so begun to employ Mr. Turner about it, at which I was much vexed, and begun to dispute; and what with the letter of the Duke’s orders, and Mr. Barlow’s letter, and the practice of our predecessors, which Sir G. Carteret knew best when he was Comptroller, it was ruled for me. What Sir J. Minnes will do when he comes I know not, but Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember him while I live.

After office done, I went down to the Towre Wharf, where Mr. Creed and Shepley was ready with three chests of the crusados, being about 6000l., ready to bring to shore to my house, which they did, and put it in my further cellar, and Mr. Shepley took the key. I to my father and Dr. Williams and Tom Trice, by appointment, in the Old Bayly, to Short’s, the alehouse, but could come to no terms with T. Trice. Thence to the Wardrobe, where I found my Lady come from Hampton Court, where the Queen hath used her very civilly; and my Lady tells me is a most pretty woman, at which I am glad.

Yesterday (Sir R. Ford told me) the Aldermen of the City did attend her in their habits, and did present her with a gold Cupp and 1000l. in gold therein. But, he told me, that they are so poor in their Chamber, that they were fain to call two or three Aldermen to raise fines to make up this sum, among which was Sir W. Warren.

Home and to the office, where about 8 at night comes Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Batten, and so we did some business, and then home and to bed, my mind troubled about Sir W. Pen, his playing the rogue with me to-day, as also about the charge of money that is in my house, which I had forgot; but I made the maids to rise and light a candle, and set it in the dining-room, to scare away thieves, and so to sleep.

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Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 04:54 pm

In June 1868 the University of London's Senate had voted to admit women to sit the 'General Examination', so becoming the first British university to accept female candidates:

Women's higher education in London dates from the late 1840s, with the foundation of Bedford College by the Unitarian benefactor, Elisabeth Jesser Reid. Bedford was initially a teaching institution independent of the University of London, which was itself an examining institution, established in 1836. Over the next three decades, London University examinations were available only to male students.
Demands for women to sit examinations (and receive degrees) increased in the 1860s. After initial resistance a compromise was reached.
In August 1868 the University announced that female students aged 17 or over would be admitted to the University to sit a new kind of assessment: the 'General Examination for Women'.

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Sexism in science: 7 women whose trailblazing work shattered stereotypes. Yeah, we note that this was over 100 years since the ladies sitting the University of London exams, and passing.

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A couple of recent contributions from Campop about employment issues in the past:

Who was self-employed in the past?:

It is often assumed that industrial Britain, with its large factories and mines employing thousands of people, left little space for individuals running their own businesses. But not everyone was employed as a worker for others. Some exercised a level of agency operating on their own as business proprietors, even if they were also often very constrained.
Over most of the second half of the 19th century as industrialisation accelerated, the self-employed remained a significant proportion of the population – about 15 percent of the total economically active. It was only in the mid-20th century that the proportion plummeted to around eight percent.

and

Home Duties in the 1921 Census:

What women in ‘home duties’ were precisely engaged in still remains a mystery, reflecting the regular obstruction of women’s everyday activity from the record across history. For some, surely ‘home duties’ reflected hard physical labour (particularly in washing), as well as hours of childcare exceeding the length of the factory day. For others, particularly the aspirational bourgeois, the activities of “home duties” involved little actual housework. 5.1 percent of wives in home duties had servants to assist them, a rate which doubled for clerks’ wives to 11.7 percent. For them, household “work” involved little physical action. Though this may have given some of these women the opportunity to spend their hours in cultural activities or socialising, for others it possibly reflected crushing boredom.

Though I wonder to what extent these women were doing something, more informally, that would be invisible to the census and formal measures generally that contributed to the household economy - I'm thinking of the neighbour in my childhood who cut hair at home - ads in interwar women's mags for various money-making home-based schemes - writers one has heard whose sales were a significant factor in the overall family income - etc

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And on informal contributions, Beyond Formal and Informal: Giving Back Political Agency to Female Diplomats in Early Nineteenth Century Europe:

[H]istorians such as Jeroen Duindam show that there were never explicitly separate spheres for men and women when working for the state in the early nineteenth-century. Drawing a line separating ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ diplomats in the early nineteenth-century, simply based on their gender alone, does not do these women justice.

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And I am very happy to see this receiving recognition, though how far has something which got reprinted after 30 years be considered languishing in obscurity, huh? as opposed to having created a persistent fanbase: A Matter of Oaths – Helen Wright.

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 12:05 pm
It's funny, because I feel like I'm spamming about Ghost ALL THE TIME, but I looked thru my dw to figure out the last photos I posted of her so that I wouldn't repeat pics again and it turns out the last Ghost Post was in February. 🫠

SO! Ghost backlog! With bonus green yard transformation, lol.

March: the dead time )

April: last snow, first green )

May: fully and abruptly GREEN )

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 08:29 am
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I like pictures. And I like that LJ hosts pictures - for free. Here's a picture of the start of today's artwork. After this dries I'll add some lines with white, gold and silver uniball impact pens. I just discovered them and I'm really liking them.

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Watercolor pencils. I've had these for quite a while, used them a few times and then they fell away under the clutter and were forgotten. It exciting to find an art supply that I had forgotten about. It's like getting a brand new thing but without the cost.

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My present marker box. I love looking at art supplies, thinking about using art supplies and thinking of new ones I want to try. That's why maybe getting myself down to the basement and looking at my OLD stuff will be like going to the store and finding NEW stuff. And as far all the old stuff from mom, dad and John that I need to deal with I'm just going to put it all in a sturdy box. Don't even go through it with the idea of getting rid of anything unless it is totally broken trash. I certainly can handle that. It's when I think I have to get rid of things that I get stopped. But today is a new day and I'm telling myself if I can just spend 10 minutes (!!!) it will be enough and I'll see how much can be done. Yesterday I took 4 of Dave's truck tires on their rims (surprisingly heavy) out of the garage part and stacked them outside, created a space for the old dresser from Chloe's house and swept the floors. I have to give myself credit for an accomplishment and it really didn't take that long. Maybe I will surprise myself in how much I get done today if I work down there again. Hope, hope...

Lots to do today: fold lots of clothes, get dishes done, work in the basement (10+ minutes), shower, go with Dave to his eye shot appointment in Meadville, go with Jan to a show in town. It's a documentary called, "You. Sleep. Stay." about a 70 year old deaf man who lived at Polk his whole life. He had to move when they closed Polk Center down recently. I hope it has a happy ending somehow and he liked where he ended up going.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 09:23 am
 
You can now get the complete and official book Fenrir at Amazon and other retailers!
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025 09:43 am
Happy birthday, [personal profile] pennski and [personal profile] threeringedmoon!
Monday, June 2nd, 2025 09:21 pm
Mama Violet managed to eat today. And Monty requested and got food at the top of the driveway. Now where is Prudence ... hope she's ok.

We have the central a/c on now. And the dog has apparently decided that makes the hallways perfect for sleeping, much better than my bed. I feel rejected.
Monday, June 2nd, 2025 09:53 pm
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Neurographic.

Other pictures from the backyard and lake today:Read more... )
Monday, June 2nd, 2025 11:00 pm

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up early about business and then to the Wardrobe with Mr. Moore, and spoke to my Lord about the exchange of the crusados into sterling money, and other matters. So to my father at Tom’s, and after some talk with him away home, and by and by comes my father to dinner with me, and then by coach, setting him down in Cheapside, my wife and I to Mrs. Clarke’s at Westminster, the first visit that ever we both made her yet. We found her in a dishabille, intending to go to Hampton Court to-morrow. We had much pretty discourse, and a very fine lady she is. Thence by water to Salisbury Court, and Mrs. Turner not being at home, home by coach, and so after walking on the leads and supper to bed. This day my wife put on her slasht wastecoate, which is very pretty.

Read the annotations

Sunday, June 1st, 2025 03:35 pm
Taken on 21 June 2024 at 20:33 US Eastern Daylight Savings Time, as I hurried up the street through the break in the rain.





My limited equipment does the scene nothing even remotely resembling justice: neither the gauzy rainbow-sherbet luminosity nor the grand theatricality of the skyscape, with the air of a vintage book illustration or a meticulously painted film backdrop. A detail I particularly like is the small dark cumulus cloud at bottom center that suggests a person astride a charging (pig? bear? huge dog?)
Monday, June 2nd, 2025 02:37 pm
And I may have noticed that I need something new to listen to.

Now, I've said this before and I'll definitely say it again, but audiodramas are, hands-down, the gayest media I have ever consumed. So, in honor of the occasion, three lists:

The End's collection of LGBTQ+ audiodrama with at least one completed season

A search of Audiofiction.co.uk's entire catalogue for audiodrama with LGBTQ+ creators

A search of Audiofiction.co.uk's entire catalogue for audiodrama with LGBTQ+ characters