heliopausa

New planets!  I'm excited and agog, and also (is there anything I can't find a downside to?) thinking somewhere alongside the excitement that this discovery could foster up a feeling that now we don't have to worry about wrecking this planet because we've got somewhere else we can go.  (Of course there's no such real suggestion; I just mean how it might change people's mood about things.)  So... mixed feelings.  But still... seven planets, under a huge, cool sun.  Wow!  Oh, we live in amazing times!

So does everybody, of course - I mean, so everybody always has, whether they knew it or not.  Today's also, more or less, a hundred years since the stunning, out-of-nowhere (ha!) end of the Romanov rule over Russia, on the back of the chaotic butchery of WW1 and of riots over incipient (or actual?) famine. 
Coincidentally, on Nirvana in Fire, talk has turned to how a failure to provide relief in such crises leads to rioting and thus to regional (at least) instability - true enough, and I'm sorry Nicholas II hadn't better advisors, or (if he had them) that he'd listened more.  A sad ending for an amiable family.

Great sonnet, isn't it, by the way?  :) 

The stuff that's happening in the US - I don't know what to say.  There are so many things happening so fast - and as twistedchick  posted some days back, behind the smokescreen of the more publicly outrageous things, other very damaging things might be happening, like the proposed sell-off of public land, where according to the Guardian, "the sale does not [even] have to make money for the federal government".  (I added the "even" because I think it's a staggering aspect.)

editing to add:  this link spells out the scenarios, much more informedly than I could, what might be behind the "smokescreen" I was talking about.

All honour to those who are making a stand against unethical, illegal or immoral acts, especially the former Acting Attorney-General, who is one of those described in last Sunday's psalm, about those who can't be moved or shaken, who stand by their undertakings, (as she, Sally Yates, stood by her oath to uphold justice) and don't sell out the innocent - for money or a career move or for anything else.  
I said especially her, but I suppose there are others not in the public eye, in humbler positions who dare not go public, but are quietly not selling out the innocent.  All honour to them, and may they one day get their due as people who upheld humanity when the system around them went the other way.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to trawl through mainstream media for good news on a daily basis, following megpie71 's lead.  Not always easy to find things, but I find it useful, to keep afloat.

February means that halfamoon has opened - fourteen days of celebrating women in fandom.  


I'm not feeling any fiction nudging to be written by me, but I'll be contributing by posting about some women characters, anyway, and maybe about a TV series which is crammed with women characters.

Lovely to read of so much exhilaration and hope on the many marches.  I'd been anxious - about communications systems, amongst other things - and it was so good to find that it wasn't necessary at all, in the event!  :)    (But it was interesting to see it confirmed by some people involved, that mobile phone/cell phone coverage does indeed falter in large crowds - something to be aware of, going forward.)

In more local news:

The Tet goldfish have all been released into waterways, to become celestial dragons for the three kitchen gods to ride back to heaven.  I mentioned last year that student groups and other young volunteers were asking people not to toss their fish-carrying plastic bags in when they released their fish - this year that's become a campaign, with posters and more volunteers and council workers, stationed at the likely places (where there are steps down into the water, mostly).  



The poster says: Let loose the fish, hold onto the plastic bag!  

I have new glasses, and the world is crystal-clear.  (Or as close to it as my eyes allow, anyway.)   I am being amazingly conscientious about putting them back in their case, but I expect it won't be terribly long before they're being slung around casually, and ending up as battered as all previous pairs of glasses have been.

Yesterday I made crumpets from scratch!   I used this recipe, which weirdly doesn't reveal that the crumpet so made should be toasted later - i.e. that it's not intended to be eaten in its flabby original first-cooked state.  The dough/batter was really strange - very gloopy and gluey - but the result on cooking was instantly recognisable as crumpets, though not exactly round due to my not having the poaching rings to make them in.  They toasted up well this morning, but were regrettably doughy inside.  :(  If I do it again, I'll cook them longer at lower heat, in the first cooking.

Thanks to a tip from puddleshark, I've been looking at and enjoying Nirvana in Fire, a 54-part series (I'm up to part 9) set in eighth-century China.  ( Read more, if you like... )

Well, "all this"  is probably false advertising, but here's two things which caught my eye in the morning's news:

Horse-snowboarding!  A new snow sport. (link goes to German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, with link to video, 1 min 40 seconds.)

This one doesn't reflect well on me, because the article is about serious stuff (refugees in Belgrade) but I was distracted by the photo that went with it.  It struck me as very Caravaggiesque, in the bold perspective as well as in the light-and-dark of it. At first I didn't understand what the main figure was doing; his lifted hand seemed to me to be raised in recognition of significance, or maybe sheltering/shielding the other figure - which was my misreading entirely, of course, but I thought I'd share the picture with you nonetheless.  (And the article's good, too.)

Okay! Resolutions - ( How did I go in 2016? )
and

( So what's the plan for 2017? )

There!  The long-delayed New Year's resolutions post is done - and now to make a sticky post to record books I've read, as I read them, in 2017

I've seen the furore about the change in the LiveJournal server's location, and note that some friends have in response either moved to Dreamwidth completely or decided to duplicate their posts there.  Of course I will subscribe to and allow access to anyone to whom I've given access on LiveJournal, but I don't myself see much to panic about in the change. 

Recently I saw on tielan's journal a meme, which involved asking for a letter, and, being given it, thinking of five fiction characters for that letter, and offering comments and ideas about each one.  I liked the idea, so I asked her for a letter - she gave me... F: 

Fanny Price (Mansfield Park):  I love how her strengths shine in adversity - the Portsmouth scenes are just brilliant, showing her coping wonderfully with a shamingly (and deeply disappointingly) rowdy, quarrelsome, slovenly family.  And I like her steadiness when she's the more-or-less downtrodden nobody, too, and her clarity of vision.  Oh, and I really like the genuine affection between her and her brother.  I guess constancy and a kind of gallantry could be the words that come to mind.  But in prosperity she loses some of her virtues, I think - she is never guilty of any charity to her cousin-sisters that I can see - and she and Edmund end up, after all, replicating the pettily smug life once led by the Norrises  - safely ensconced in a family-held living, close to the big house - and profiting from plural benefices as well, despite the earlier high-minded talk about how only an on-the-spot clergyman can hope to do his duty adequately.

Friedrich Bhaer (Little Women series): Awfully worthy, of course, and I take the author's word for it about their long and happy marriage, but as a matter of fact, I can't really come at him, for Jo.  I try hard to explain it as the lure of a great mind - I could see that all right, easily!  Jo is just the sort of person whose mind could be set ablaze by great new ideas, brilliant intellectual debate, new worlds opening... except he doesn't ever actually show it.  (He gets argued to a standstill in the one philosophical debate we see him undertake.)   I wish the author had written him more compellingly intellectual, actually.  I wish she'd written him as revolutionary, as political refugee.  Ah well - he is what he is - lumbering, inelegant, beery, good-hearted, Jo's perpetual moral leader and guide (bleugh - I would like her to straighten him out, for once!)  .

Falstaff (Shakespeare): The most terrifically multi-sided supporting character in the whole of Shakespeare.  We see him roistering, cunning, cowardly, despicable, pitiable, using, used, rejected, despised, resilient - he's Blackadder and Baldrick both - and like them, suddenly inside-outs the comedy to end in grim death.  Liking him, not liking him - doesn't apply.  He blasts past like a windstorm.

Fantine (Les Miserables): I hate how much she loses and loses and loses, to the extent that it starts to seem wilful.  She seems to go out of her way to have the most horrible time she can.  Yes, devoted mother, but (sorry about this) stupid.  I mean - when her looks are her one great asset, to sell her teeth?!  So not bright, Fantine!  The first betrayal is pretty intolerable, though - I mean that rich men's stunt at the restaurant.  But come on, Fantine!  Take a bit of control for a change!

Miss Flite (Bleak House): She's a most unsettling character.  Her sudden, stabbing insights, and fluttering ways make her seem one of her own birds - her name's not accidental, I guess - and of course she's as caged as they are, fluttering against the bars, and will be freed, like them, when Judgement is delivered (ha!).  A caged bird, or a captive blind prophetess, maybe - a Sibyl, who spells out dark truths in riddles, or Cassandra, dismissed as mad by those around her who cannot hear what she believes she is saying plainly.  All of which makes her a tragic figure as well as an unsettling one.  (But then I find the whole of Bleak House unsettling.)

If anyone would like to play, I'll gladly give them a letter!

(I'm abashed to see, on reviewing what I've written, that I'm not wholeheartedly admiring about any of them.  Oops.)

...and a lot of travelling, and flights getting tighter as Christmas nears.  Still, everywhere I go is beautiful - at least, the sky is always beautiful, and there's often so much else.  Today was glorious; I do love the sharpness of the light here, and the clear, clear air - trees and the sea and animals are an added bonus, when they turn up.  (A horse! lots of seagulls, pigeons and cockatoos! Rabbits! A strange, striped caterpillar unlike any I had seen before!)

I have finished Sock One.  :)  I had no actual trouble until I got to the decreasing for the toes part, when I lost track of my stitches, and didn't see where the decreasing was meant to be happening anyway.  Still, I bashed ahead, and got there in the end, even if the sock in question looks a bit boofy (ie boofheady).  I hope Sock Two, now on the needles, is a more polished production.

I have watched the whole of Class, and especially like Miss Quill, and the Quill-centric seventh episode.  I deplore the ( spoiler ).  I have also watched several episodes of Rosehaven, and while it's a bit mixture-as-usual in its Small Town with Characters set-up, still, I liked the relationships, and how they developed, and did once actually laugh out loud at a scene.  And the language is good - recognisable, which is more than can be said for the appalling Upper Middle Bogan.

Finally, a word from Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin.

I know I promised Shakespeare, but... ah well.  Life's too glum right now to write much of that light-hearted sort of thing.  I did have fun, though, two-three months back, drifting through the plays and through the byways of mildly associated history as I got ready to write, and in particular enjoyed learning about the Carey family, two of whom were patrons of Shakespeare's company over several years.  The story I wrote featured them, tangentially, as footnotes to supposed missing scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream - scenes in which I tried to address the whole disquieting plot point of two very powerful* figures quarrelling (ruinously) over possession of a child - a stolen child - that neither of them seem in fact to care very much about, in himself.
Bonus points for anyone who spots the reference to a Steeleye Span song.

* Especially Titania - Shakespeare filched the name Titania from Ovid, who used it to name one of Titanic power and heritage, as for example, Circe, who says "behold! I am a goddess, and I am the daughter also, of the radiant Sun."

In other news:
I'm trying to be productive - and in pursuit of that objective have actually started knitting a pair of socks!  That is, I've got as far as casting on the first of them, and am finding knitting on multiple needles very very very tricky.  :)

Something pleasant in the animal world - puggles!

Reading Shakespeare for the stageoffools fest was terrific fun - of course I'd read most of the plays before, one way or another, but reading for a story exchange gave a different perspective. 
For starters, there was reading to decide which plays I'd ask (or offer) stories for.  For both, I felt I had to stick to plays I knew fairly well  - though I was very tempted by The Merry Wives of Windsor (one of those I hadn't read before) and may yet return to it one day.  And the fest rules precluded the history plays and the Roman plays, so in the end it came down to Macbeth, Hamlet, Tempest, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream - I think that's all I offered   And then I had to read those even more intensively, to be ready for whatever might be asked - and my, but I found Hamlet  an interesting read! full of new (to me) directions and possibilities.

( Read more, if you like! :) )