The Mandelbear&#39;s Reading

I honestly wish I edited better than I do.

It was rainy so I sat and wrote on my next

getyourwordsout Yahtzee story. These two are STILL arguing for another 2080 words

Let me know what day you’re reporting in for. If I've missed you on the tally let me know. Feel free to jump in at any time.

Day Eight

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

brithistorian,

cmk418,

nafs,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

goddess47,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

( other days )

Mood: sore
Music: Death in Paradise

scrubjayspeaks

[CW for frank discussions of body changes and sex. Discussions of surgical recovery. Discussions of sexism. I'll be putting these updates fully under cuts, as they are less general interest on the topic of gender/transness and more "what do I personally have going on with my bits these days." Niche interest and all that.]

Holy shit, how has it already been two years? I didn’t get to celebrate at all, but happy boy day to me.

( Read more... )

dialecticdreamer

Location, Location, Location
By Sarah Williams
Part 2 of 3
Word count (story only): 1116
[Landing #7, day 3, 2 p.m. local time]

:: Thalassian representatives arrive to offer options to the Asher family, and Backstep recovers under their watchful eyes. Part of the Sidestep Travelers universe. ::

The dozen files roamed around the room, passed hand to hand in no particular order or direction. Eventually, Grandmama tapped one file against her knee, then laid it on the coffee table. Wrinkled hands aligned the file perfectly parallel to the edges of the table, then nudged it an inch to the left to put it in the exact center of the surface. “I’ve already got opinions and preferences. Why don’t we each pick a location that we’re interested in, which will cut the list in half, at most. If more than one person really likes the look of a property, it jumps to the top of the list.”

Zipper ambled into the living room, carrying an oval wicker bread basket full of bread, kept warm under a red and white dishtowel with a narrow plaid. “Are you ready for a proper snack, Backstep?”

She beamed. “You sneaked off to get me aish baladi?” One hand automatically reached for the basket.
( Read more... )

Mood: anxious

billroper

The weather has twisted into something resembling early summer and I have decided it is time to embrace it.

One of the fellows that I used to coach softball with came by to pick up the items we had to donate to the league. We had fun catching up. His team has a big game coming up on Wednesday. One of the other coaches that I worked with has talked about going to catch a game, so I texted her and if plans hold together, we'll both be at Wednesday's game to see how things are going. It's been a while. There are definitely days when I miss coaching softball, but I have to admit that I enjoy the additional sleep. :)

K starts her summer job (her *first* job!) tomorrow. Today, we went out to lunch and then I took her over to Walmart to pick up additional summer camp appropriate work clothes. She also used the gift card that she'd gotten for graduation to grab some more games for the Switch, which seems like a fine idea. (We gave her a pair of additional controllers so that four person games are now possible.)

While both cars were out of the garage temporarily, I took advantage of the access to do a bit of minor rearranging so that things fit better. My side of the garage now seems fine. Gretchen's side may need another tweak or two. We'll see. (The branch chipper that we acquired in the interim is taking up a bit of space that I'd rather it not, but the options for where to put it are limited.)

Yesterday, we had grilled hamburgers and sweet corn for dinner. Today, Gretchen made some grilled onions for me which I added to some pan-fried Polish sausage. Gretchen had boiled stadium brats. Dinner was simple and tasty.

And I spent some time down in the studio hunting for an ADAT tape for a project that a friend is working on. The ADAT tape has not turned up and I have run out of places to look, so I've sent off an email apologizing. I have a *lot* of ADAT tapes in my basement, but apparently not *this* one.

*sigh*

Recording is resuming shortly. *Very* shortly.

http://alpennia.com/blog/american-men-writing-sapphic-characters-19th-century

Before I get into my writerly ways let me just say, diabetes is going to steer me around the bend. Today I was bad. I ate fries for lunch and pizza for dinner. My sugar is 90. Two days ago I ate nothing but proteins and my sugar was 360.... WHY?

So into the writing crap. I have been thinking about timing of scenes this week. Early this week I watched The Night House and finished reading The Witch's Orchard. Let me start with House. This was a horror movie and without spoiling too much, she is learning terrible things about her dead husband (while dealing with what she thinks is his ghost). After learning this, when the ghost wants to get frisky, she's into it.

And I'm thinking what woman who learns her husband might have been murdering women who look like her is going to want him touching all over her? Had this scene come before she learned this about her husband, maybe it would have hit they way they wanted it to (unless disbelief was their goal)

Same thing with Orchard, it went a place SO many stories have gone. The protagonist nearly gets killed, does get injured and then in spite of having her leg torn open and breaking in meth lab explosion fumes, feels like having sex. If there is one thing you'll see in my sex scenes, they don't tend to come after times like this because it makes no sense to me. I suppose the whole 'nearly died celebrate life' thing is a trope. It's just one that has me rolling my eyes. Having had some serious injuries, I can tell you sex is the last thing on my mind in those times.

In my novel (still need to get more betas on this) I DID mess up the timing. I ended up having to reorder things and expand some of the beginning in order for the timing to not feel off.

How do you handle timing? Do you find timing issues that bother you?

OPEN CALLS

Anomaly July 2025 Window Science fiction stories under 300 words in length

Brink Literary Magazine July 2025 Window Hybrid fiction with the theme of Obsession

Fraidy Cat Quarterly Volume 7 Rage

The Quiet Ones 2025 Window Quiet Horror and Intimate-Scale Dystopian Fiction

The 13th Floor 30,000-50,000 word stories that take place on the mysterious 13th floor! (details in the post)

The Orange & Bee July 2025 Window Original and contemporary short stories, poems, and essays that explore, expand on, and subvert the rich traditions of international folklore, with a strong focus on fairy tales (though we also sometimes dabble in other forms of folklore, such as fables, myths, and legends)

Ten Manuscript Publishers Open to Direct Submissions in June 2025

Fish Barrel Review: Now Seeking Submissions

36 Themed Calls and Contests for June 2025.

star crossed

From Around the Web

Advance to Adaptation

Three Strategies for Creating Progressively Escalating Complications

The Art of the Twist: Adding Surprise to Your Story Structure

How to Publish a Novel in 2025

Unusual Writing Formats: When Your Story Demands Footnotes, Letters, or a Series of Haikus

Tim Weed: Five Things I Learned Writing The Afterlife Project

From Betty

Six Important Differences Between Filmed and Narrated Stories

Ten Easy Jokes for Your Dialogue

Why the Mysterious Badass Hero Is a Trap For New Writers

Seven Ways to Create Rifts Between Close Characters

The Strategic Author's Guide to Amazon's Kindle Unlimited

Dual Protagonists

Communication is the Key to Critique Partner Success (still looking for new members for mine)

Three Strategies for Creating Progressively Escalating Complications

The Importance of Beginning a Book with Publishing End Goals in Mind

Your protagonist’s plans are useful, especially when they don’t pan out

How Do I Deliver My Self-Published Book to a Reader?.

Adventuring in Utah Gave Me Insight into Important Writing Truths: Part 1 The Brutal Beginning

Six “Soft Skills” To Make You a Better Writer

Be All-Seeing By Writing Third Person Omniscient

Mood: busy
Music: Midsomer Murder

alpennia_feed

Posted by Heather Rose Jones

Sunday, June 8, 2025 - 18:00

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

By what appears to be random coincidence, I have a handful of articles coming up that are preliminary versions of material I've already covered, or in one case, material more thoroughly covered by another article I'm about to blog. So there's a certain amount of "for completeness' sake" happening on the blog in the next week or so.

But hey! I've finished the substantial revisions to the Skinsinger stories. Only a couple of technical editing passes to go plus figuring out book formatting. How hard could it be?

Major category:

Tags:

emotional /romantic bonds between women

LHMP #482 Faderman 1978 Female Same-Sex Relationships in Novels by Longfellow, Holmes, and James

About LHMP

Full citation:

Faderman, Lillian. 1978. “Female Same-Sex Relationships in Novels by Longfellow, Holmes, and James” in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3: 309-332

[Note: Keep in mind that Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Man was published in 1981. This article is part of the ongoing research she was doing that eventually contributed to that work. For that reason, I’m going to skim a bit, since I’ve covered that publication extensively.]

Faderman considers the portrayal of women’s same-sex love in three mid-to-late 19th century novels by well-known (male) American novelists: Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849), Holmes’s A Mortal Antipathy (1885), and James’s The Bostonians (1885). The main thesis of this analysis is the inappropriateness of applying post-Freudian sexual theories to the characters in these works, and rather considering them in the context of normalized women’s same-sex intimate relationships in the 19th century, as explored for example by Smith-Rosenberg (1975) (https://alpennia.com/lhmp/lhmp-292-smith-rosenberg-1975-female-world-lov...).

She sets out four reasons for 19th century American tolerance for these relationships.

Women’s lack of economic independence which meant that their same-sex relationships would not interfere with marriage. [Note: While this may be an accurate high-level generalization, increasing economic opportunities for middle-class American women in the later 19th century created the context for phenomena like “Boston Marriages” which clearly overlapped the era when such relationships were considered acceptable.]
People did not seriously consider the possibility of f/f sex, and assumed women “merely tolerated sex” and only for procreation. [Note: This dodges two inconvenient considerations: that the myth of the sexless woman has many heterosexual exceptions, and that f/f erotic activity was not always considered to be “sex.”]
Medical professionals did not recognize female homosexuality until the end of the 19th century. [Note: I think this only holds if you restrict it to “homosexuality by that name” because there are certainly earlier cases that were considered to be medical conditions.]
In the 19th century it was assumed (once recognized at all) that female homosexuality was limited to those with a masculine physical attributes. [Note: I would quibble again, but I’m getting repetitive.]

The underlying consideration regarding women’s relationships was “does this threaten society” and the answer to that question changed around the turn of the century and became very different in the period after WWI.

There’s a brief historical review of laws and attitudes toward f/f sexuality, including colonial era laws against sodomy, only one of which included women. In contrast, you have individuals like Deborah Gannett who fought in the Revolutionary War as a man, had romantic relations with at least three women during that time, was honorably discharged on discovery, and even was granted a Congressional pension for her heirs after her death. Similarly two women both serving in male dress in the Civil War had an “intimacy” but this aspect was not disparaged when their gender was discovered.

The article also cites an 1863 publication referencing four cross-dressing women serving in the Civil War including one who was married to another woman for 34 years, however the description of the case is that of James How, who lived in 18th century England, not 19th century US, so I’m skeptical of the accuracy of this particular citation. (And a bit disappointed that Faderman didn’t spot the error.)

Lucy Ann Lobdell is cited as the first case of such a woman being classified as “sexual perversion” (in the 1880s), supporting the position that earlier cases were not so classified. Faderman quotes a 1896 article from the American Journal of Insanity that states that until recently (i.e., the 1890s) insinuating that there was anything improper about women’s intimate relations would have been considered an outrage. The article goes on to note that the author was aware of a case somewhat earlier but had not recognized it as a type of perversion.

Faderman cites Smith-Rosenberg’s argument that whether or not 19th century women had genital relations is asking the wrong question, because that was not a dividing line between categories of relationships at the time. But Faderman continues with the assumption that grated on me when reading her book , that “it would probably be safe to assume that most of these relationships seldom involved genital contact—simply because the middle-class Victorian woman seldom engaged in genital contact outside of marriage.” I have always thought that Faderman bought in too deeply to the myth of the sexless Victorian woman.

But she notes that the concept of “being in love” was focused on intense emotional responses, rather than sexual desire. So there was no stigma attached to being “in love” with someone of the same sex and, indeed, given homosocial forces, the type of emotional intimacy associated with being “in love” was far more available with someone of the same sex than the opposite one.

[Note: we then get the old error of taking the OED at face value in asserting that the word “lesbian” in the sexual sense didn’t exist until the 20th century. Take my rant on this as given.]

Anyway, now we move on to analysis of the novels themselves, which illustrate the principles discussed above. Each of them depict a female couple who are clearly in love with each other, and where that relationship was socially acceptable or even praiseworthy. The apparent exception in The Bostonians, where the male character clearly views his target’s same-sex relationship as problematic becomes less clear when—as Faderman points out—the male character is rather clearly depicted as a controlling anti-hero whose victor over his rival will result in his future wife’s misery, not a happily ever after.

Literary critics of the 20th century, she asserts, who find Freudian character flaws in these three novels are bringing in anachronistic interpretations and assumptions that distort the stories that are actually on the page. (I have condensed down a great deal of detailed analysis here into only the conclusions.)

Time period:

19th c

Place:

USA

Misc tags:

romantic friendship

Event / person:

Kavanagh The Love of Parson Lord (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

A Mortal Antipathy (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

The Bostonians (Henry James)

Deborah Gannett

Mary East (Mr. How)

Lucy Ann Lobdell (Joseph Lobdell) & Marie Louise Perry

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http://alpennia.com/blog/american-men-writing-sapphic-characters-19th-century

31 Ideas To Take Action & Celebrate Pride Month In 2025

June is Pride Month! This month-long celebration is an opportunity to celebrate the very human and very beautiful spectrum of gender and sexuality, all while coming together to fight for widespread equality and justice in the LGBTQ+ community.

Mood: busy

kaberett

Reading. FINISHED:

Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson. I can see why people like her! I have also remembered why I wound up unsubscribing from her blog. Very interesting proof of concept in re audiobooks, though.
Prophet, Helen MacDonald and Sin Blaché. Very enjoyable reread in which many things landed differently, in service of...
a word you've never understood, rydra_wong. EXACTLY the post-canon follow-up I wanted but would have absolutely failed to articulate. Have already tried to lure one more person into reading the book so I can then make them go read the fic. Now I just selfishly want Even More Of It.
Pain is really strange, Steve Haines. Reread for the purpose of making notes, this time. Sparked at least one useful thought. Following up references is a work in progress.
How to cook... Desserts, Leiths Cookery School. Read all the way through for the purposes of EYB indexing first pass! Go me.

STARTED:

Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. Borrowed from library on a whim for low-brain non-fiction.

Writing. First pass through indexing a cookbook on EYB!

Some Actual Notes re pain for The Book, including (and I am very proud of myself for this) actually writing down my questions alongside the bare "here's what it contained".

Watching. Murderbot S01E01. I am dubious but expecting to keep watching. If you encourage me I might say more when it is not past curfew.

Cooking. ... apparently I have not managed Much Of Note this week.

Eating. POTATOES at the ALLOTMENT courtesy of ALLOTMENT FRIENDS. Also finished my choi sum and had my first AMAZING broad beans and nibbled kohlrabi speculatively, all on Tuesday.

Today I have nibbled: a cherry; the first few redcurrants; a pod's worth of Kelvedon Wonder peas; half a tiny tomato.

Making & mending. Made some progress on A's left glove. Realised, belatedly, that I'd done the same thing with picking up stitches unevenly along the two sides of the palm. Ripped back most of the way to where I started from and Sulked. BUT HEY I've remembered the pattern and where I'd stowed all the bits for it!

Growing. See Eating for my biggest excitements. Sugar Magnolia (purple sugar-snap pea) now setting pods; my main intention with it this year (given that I planted a whole packet of seeds and have wound up with ...fewer plants than that) is just to get myself sorted with a significantly larger number of seeds for next year, but hey, maybe they'll all be super productive and I'll actually get to eat some too.

Stockings now at the plot to go onto the cherry tomorrow, hopefully.

Tomatoes planted out when tiny not doing so great (i.e. have mostly disappeared). Tomatoes planted out when larger Actually Flowering. Desperately need to stake the lot of them.

Tiny single solitary surviving oca has started to Go.

V grumpy about how poorly the squash I got started A While Ago have coped with getting put outside given that they are in biodegradable fibre pots so I'm not even disturbing their roots. Getting the rest of them in the ground AND THEN SOWING MORE very much also high on tomorrow's priority list. (And the beans, augh.)

Observing. Met a neighbour!

http://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-316-shelf-june-2025

Today is mostly sunny, humid, and warm. It rained yesterday and last night.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I dropped the Java moss into the trough pond. It floated. If it doesn't sink after absorbing water, I may need to find a rock to put on it.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I did a bit of weeding in the septic garden and new picnic table.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I did some work around the patio.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I sowed cypress vine seeds around the support wire and in the septic garden. Some of the earlier ones have sprouted, but I plant extra because they often get eaten.

I gathered a few poppy seeds.

The first Asiatic lilies are blooming, white with pink tips, around the telephone pole. :D Daylilies have buds.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

Lots of things are sprouting in the septic garden. \o/

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I picked half a bag of mulberries in the south lot and along the front fence.

I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I picked half a bag of mulberries along the front fence and in the savanna.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I pulled weeds from the tulip bed.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I pulled weeds along the strip garden.

The sky clouded over in the afternoon and feels like it might rain again.

EDIT 6/8/25 -- I pulled weeds around the edge of the house yard.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Mood: busy

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Mood: amused

scrubjayspeaks

So I think the sound card on my computer died last night. Now I have to figure out how to get it to the shop I work with, which is back in my hometown. I really didn’t need the expense of computer repairs this year. I just can’t seem to catch a break lately. It’s not as bad as it could be, I guess--not compared to some of the computer deaths I’ve had in the past. Still...

This was the last “normal” week of the month for me. After this, it’s doctor’s appointments and trips out of town. ( ╯□╰ )

The weather chilled out, apart from a random cloud burst with thunder. It’s still not pleasant, it’s just not meteorological murder. While driving home from work, I spotted an oriole in a residential area.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 43.5 hours, which was surprisingly chill for a week with overtime

Gardening: continuing to add data to the club’s inventory for sales

Reading: Strangers in Paradise #11 & 12 (normally, I would get frustrated by watching people ruin their own lives over misunderstandings, but I just find this so popcorn and candy munchable)

Watching: more Murderbot TV :3, finished season 4 of my slow Leverage rewatch

Listening: OUT THERE by Hiromi (I think this was another rec from John Darnielle, it’s got some more experimental, chaotic jazz, as well as more city pop type jazz, “Balloon Pop” is a very fine song indeed)

Aftermarket Parts: two years of T today! 💉🎉, attended a local trans pride event

Clock Mouse: 1341 words, and I’m actually having a very good time

scrubjayspeaks

Welcome to the June edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

As for myself...

( Read more... )

alpennia_feed

Posted by Heather Rose Jones

Sunday, June 8, 2025 - 08:32

lhmpodcast.jpg

Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 316 - On the Shelf for June 2025 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/06/07 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for June 2025.

I’d say something about Pride Month, but here at the Lesbian Historic Motif Project, every month is Pride Month. Even so, I’ve committed to blogging a publication every day this month, just because.

Publications on the Blog

I’m still in the middle of a thematic series on research relevant to US lesbian history. After my somewhat distracted time in April (when, if you’ll remember, I was frantically preparing for retirement), May saw me covering three books and one article on that theme. Michael Bronski’s A Queer History of the United States was mildly interesting, although it was primarily interested in situating queer history within larger social movements. Wendy Rouse’s Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement was absolutely amazing and I’m recommending it as essential background reading for anyone interested in lesbian history in the late 19th and early 20th century. Peter Boag’s Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past looks at cross-dressing (broadly defined) in the “Wild West” and how those individuals were erased or explained away in the popular understanding of American history. I also blogged a journal article by Boag discussing how that book came to be written and some of the logistical difficulties of the research.

Stuck in the middle of this thematic series was Judith C. Brown’s Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, as background for a podcast last month.

I don’t know if I’ll have enough American material to continue the theme all month, but it’s a good excuse to get caught up with that set of topics.

News of the Field

As one of my retirement projects, I plan to put up more bonus content for Patreon subscribers. This will largely be content only available to paying patrons, because I want to see if I can grow the support for the Project in a meaningful way. Currently I’ve put up the outline for the book project and am brainstorming for other material patrons might be interested in.

I’ve also re-started my author newsletter, which will have interesting news and maybe even some special offers related to my own fiction writing. You can sign up through a link on my website, which you can find in the show notes, assuming you didn’t find the podcast directly through the website in the first place.

I’m still settling into my expanded activities, now that I don’t have a day job. Or at least, now that I don’t have another day job besides writing and the Project. So expect things to pick up gradually.

Book Shopping!

In May, of course, I went off to the annual Medieval Congress in Michigan, which used to be a good opportunity for book shopping, but we seem to be in a several-year lull in queer history publications—at least, in terms of what the publishers have on display at the Congress. I did pick up the latest volume of Medieval Clothing and Textiles, plus a book on Tudor and Stuart cookery, but nothing for the Project.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

Fortunately, there’s no lull in the release of new lesbian and sapphic historical fiction. This month I saw another dozen or so books in cookie-cutter series that I suspect are AI generated and have chosen not to promote. Plus one book that not only smells of AI-generation but where other books by the same author are non-fiction about using AI for writing. I mention this so that listeners are aware of what’s going on out there in the publishing world. Be aware of what you’re consuming and how those choices are supporting or undermining the field.

Having gotten that out of the way, I want to mention a February book that almost slipped past me. When I interviewed Margaret Vandenburg about her recent release Craze, she mentioned that Cleis Press would be re-releasing her previous book, An American in Paris. This part of the story gives the background to the main character in Craze.

“In the States, celibacy had never been my strong suit. In Paris, it was a crime against nature—a mortal sin.” With this cheeky response to her new city, Henri Adams—recently released from the tyranny of Prohibition and freshly appointed as an art correspondent for En Vogue magazine—sets out to discover the literary, artistic, and more unmentionable pleasures of Paris during the Roaring Twenties. Welcomed with open arms by Gertrude Stein (and somewhat more soberly by Alice B. Toklas), Henri hobnobs with expatriate luminaries—Natalie Barney, Picasso, Colette, Romaine Brooks, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes—and unleashes her Yankee curiosity, only to find herself entangled in an avant-garde art theft ring and the shackles of Paris’ sapphic underground.

Several April books only just came to my attention. First up is Whispers of Love Beneath the Hidden Manor by Aiyo Sa.

A forbidden bond. A deadly secret. A journey toward freedom.

In the grand, shadowed halls of a noble house, Pinfa arrives as the fourth wife—on the very day the first wife mysteriously dies. Behind the perfumed tea and silk-draped corridors, whispers of betrayal and poison weave an invisible web.

Amid suspicion and hidden grief, Pinfa meets Lalin—an elegant wife with a smile like soft rain and eyes that conceal unspoken storms. As their hearts begin to entwine, Pinfa finds herself torn between uncovering a killer and surrendering to a love she was never meant to have.

When trust shatters and death creeps closer with each passing day, Pinfa must choose: Expose the truth and destroy everything, or grasp the fragile, forbidden happiness that blooms even in the darkest soil.

Set against the haunting beauty of old Siam, Whispers of Love and Poison is a slow-burn, girl-love historical thriller of yearning, secrets, and a love fierce enough to defy fate itself.

Caitlin Crowe offers us a high-society romance in The Ladies.

Lady Emily, a wealthy young woman in Victorian England, is expected to marry advantageously to secure her family's fortune. She unexpectedly finds herself attracted to Lady Victoria, a bold and unconventional woman who defies societal expectations. Their secret courtship begins with stolen moments in secluded gardens and hidden corners of London, their love blossoming despite the rigid social norms of the time. However, their relationship faces significant challenges as gossip spreads amongst London's high society, threatening their reputations and the standing of their families. Lady Emily is pressured to marry a suitable man, while Lady Victoria grapples with her own desires and the fear of public condemnation.

Just as I sometimes have to make my best guess on sapphic content, I sometimes have to make guesses to track other types of representation. The Eye of the Water: Between Creek and Roots by Stephanie Hager-Lyons appears to feature Black characters, based on the cover illustration.

When Jo McBrayer steps into the creek behind her family’s Louisiana farmhouse, she doesn’t expect to step back in time. But that’s exactly what happens—just long enough to see a house that shouldn’t be standing, fields full of workers long gone, and a woman with eyes full of recognition.

Her sister Liz, a practical academic, dismisses it as one of Jo’s wild tales—until Jo brings back a journal. Leather-bound. Dated 1906. Written by a woman named Marcella McBrayer who, according to family records, never existed.

As Jo slips deeper into the past, drawn back again and again by the mysterious pull of the land, Liz begins to uncover long-buried secrets—of love and erasure, of bloodlines severed and rewritten. At the center of it all is a child named Clara, hidden from history, and a symbol carved into oak, stone, and memory: an eye surrounded by crescent moons.

There’s one new May book that I found: A Soft Place to Land by Kelsey Kranz.

After an unexpectedly intimate encounter in the fall of 1950, best friends Virginia and Elaine part ways to each follow their dreams—Elaine to medical school, and Virginia to find a husband. When Elaine returns, and Virginia turns up in the middle of the night, the two realize their mutual youthful crush has evolved into much deeper romantic feelings. But in an era when widespread fears of communism produce immense pressure to adhere to rigid social norms, there is no path for two women to fall in love. Together, they must learn how to protect their relationship—and each other—from the consequences of choosing love.

As usual, the new releases for the current month of June are dominated by books from mainstream presses, which tend to have better advance publicity than indies. This month, they’re also a bit heavy on the historic fantasy, starting with Lady's Knight by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner from Harper Collins.

Gwen is sick of hiding—hiding the fact that she’s taken over her father’s blacksmithing duties, hiding her attraction to girls, hiding her yearning for glory as a knight.

Meanwhile, Lady Isobelle of Avington, queen bee of the castle, has never once considered hiding who she is—until now. She’s been chosen as the grand prize in the Tournament of Dragonslayers, to be given to whichever knight can claim her hand. And for the first time in her life, she can’t talk her way out of trouble.

When Isobelle discovers Gwen’s knightly ambitions, they hatch a scheme together—Gwen will joust in the tournament, disguised as Sir Gawain. Winning means freedom for Isobelle, and glory for Gwen. Losing means… well, let’s not go there.

One thing’s for sure: Falling in love was never the plan.

But the best laid plans…are often trampled all over by dragons.

I’ve heard very interesting things about Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race from Little Brown, which is set in an alternate Tudor England.

The king has been appointed by god to marry six queens. Those six queens are all that stand between the kingdom of Elben and ruin. Or so we have been told.

Each queen vies for attention. Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be Henry's favourite. And if she must incite a war to win Henry over? So be it.

Seymour acts as spy and assassin in a court teeming with dragons, backstabbing courtiers and strange magic. But when she and Boleyn become the unlikeliest of things - allies - the balance of power begins to shift. Together they will discover an ancient, rotting magic at Elben's heart. A magic that their king will do anything to protect.

I’m not sure whether Daughter of Doom by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem from Levine Querido has overt fantasy elements or simply includes period-appropriate belief in gods and fate.

Denmark, 870 AD. Yrsa knows her place in the village of Mimir’s Stool. Though she was born with a crooked foot, she’s never let anyone underestimate her; after all, she’s the daughter of Toke the helmsman and granddaughter of the fearsome warrior Gudrun the Torch (who, according to legend, stood before the walls of Paris, splattered in the blood of Frankish warriors). And no one else in the village shares her ability to see what the Norns, the three weavers who live under the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree, and craft people’s fates, have in store for them.

One day the men return from a raid with a high-ranking hostage, Sister Job, and though the two girls couldn’t be more different, they look out for one another. And when one of the villagers viciously assaults Sister Job and she and Yrsa mortally wound him in self-defense, they’re forced to take to the sea to escape the wrath of the warriors of Mimir’s Stool, and worse, the wrath of the gods. Can either of them escape their fate? Do they even want to?

The next book up is by this month’s featured author. A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell from Berkley Publishing Group is a charming Regency romance involving amateur archaeology and with a non-binary love interest.

Elfreda Marsden has finally made a major discovery—an ancient amulet proving the Viking army camped on her family’s estate. Too bad her nemesis is back from London, freshly exiled after a scandal and ready to wreak havoc on her life. Georgie Redmayne is everything Elfreda isn’t--charming, popular, carefree, distractingly attractive, and bored to death by the countryside. When the two collide (literally), the amulet is lost, and with it, Elfreda’s big chance to lead a proper excavation. Now Elfreda needs new evidence of medieval activity, and Georgie needs money to escape the doldrums of Derbyshire. Joining forces to locate a hidden hoard of Viking gold is the best chance for them both.

Marsdens and Redmaynes don’t get along, and that’s the least of the reasons these enemies can’t dream of something more. But as the quest takes them on unexpected adventures, sparks of attraction ignite a feeling increasingly difficult to identify as hatred. It’s far too risky to explore. And far too tempting to resist. Elfreda and Georgie soon find that the real treasure comes with a steep price… and the promise of a happiness beyond all measure.

Rachel Ford’s Meredith and Alex Thatch mystery series has a third installment, Murder by Proxy. The cover copy focuses on the mystery and takes for granted that you know that Alex Thatch is in gender disguise for the sake of her marriage.

Murder is one thing, but quiet Fenwood-On-Sea is simply not prepared for Aunt Anne and her love affairs. After an unexpected revelation from her latest paramour, Aunt Anne’s happy world is thrown into disarray. In despair, she seeks refuge in Fenwood-On-Sea with Alec and Merry. Unfortunately, murder follows her. Or so it seems. Someone is killing, seemingly without rhyme or reason – and the only link between the victims is their connection to Anne herself. As the bodies start to stack up, Alec and Merry race to find the killer – before he or she gets to them.

I had to wait for some early reviews to confirm the sapphic content in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab from Tor.com. The early reviews were also my first clue that it has vampire content. As a general tendency, vampire novels don’t tend to fit my parameters for historical fiction, unless the historic setting is a strong part of the plot, as in this case.

This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love. 1827. London.

A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage. 2019. Boston.

College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

Other Books of Interest

I’m putting two titles in the “other books of interest” section. The first one, Damsels and Dinosaurs by Wren Jones, gets classified here because it sounds like the sapphic content may be restricted to an ex-girlfriend. But hey, at least there are dinosaurs?

The Fletcher family honey business teeters on the brink of bankruptcy as shipments from their eccentric matriarch's farm grow scarce. But Poppy refuses to let her family become destitute and she will do anything to get to the bottom of the mystery. However, on her aunt’s strange island, Poppy finds more questions than answers. The bees defy expectations, the farm is full of ancient creatures, and her aunt’s secrets run deeper than she originally suspected.

Meanwhile, her imminent arranged marriage to the heir of a prominent tea company, Giuseppe, jeopardizes her investigation. Their meddling families are relentless in making the marriage a swift reality – even if that means sending Giuseppe and Poppy’s grumpy ex, Athena, to retrieve her.

Athena knows the reunion will be awkward, and getting the stubborn Poppy to do anything will be difficult, but she can’t resist the promise of the island. If she can win over Poppy’s mysterious aunt, she might finally get the opportunity to pursue her dreams.

Giuseppe just wants to draw, drink tea, and avoid all the drama. But he supposes he must go along too. It is his future wife, after all.

On an island where the scandals are bigger than the dinosaurs, a group of Regency aristocrats search for their second chances and rewrite history as we know it.

The second title is placed in this section because, although it’s clearly sapphic, it isn’t clear how much of the content would count as historic. But I figure my listeners might have an interest in sword-lesbians in general, which are the main theme in By Her Sword: A Sapphic Fantasy Romance Anthology edited by Erin Branch from Sunset Wave Press.

A fiery mage tracks down the swordswoman who escaped with more than just a magical relic. Across the stars, ex-lovers get a second chance on a dragon-infested planet. In a different galaxy, a confident gladiator must melt the frozen heart of an ice princess. During the distant past of feudal Japan, a traveler with a Jinn inside her faces the challenge of her life. This fantasy collection features twelve swashbuckling adventures spanning a variety of settings, from the distant magical past to the speculative galactic future.

What Am I Reading?

And what am I reading? Despite all my new free time, I haven’t managed to finish a single novel in the last month, though that was largely due to getting sucked in by Ada Palmer’s history book Inventing the Renaissance. Palmer is also a science fiction author, but this book comes from her primary career as a historian. It’s a delightfully readable (if very long!) explanation of why everything you thought you knew about the Italian Renaissance is probably wrong, but that the reality was far more fascinating.

Author Guest

As mentioned previously, we have an interview this month with Joanna Lowell.

(Transcription will be added when available.)

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about:

Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Bronski, Michael. 2012. A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning American History). Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807044650
- Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
- Boag, Peter. 2011. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0-520-27062-6
- Boag, Peter. 2011. “The Trouble with Cross-Dressers: Researching and Writing the History of Sexual and Gender Transgressiveness in the Nineteenth-Century American West” in Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 112, No. 3: 322-339
- Brown, Judith, C. 1986. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-504225-5
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Other Titles of Interest
- Damsels and Dinosaurs by Wren Jones
- By Her Sword: A Sapphic Fantasy Romance Anthology (Sunset Wave Sapphic Anthologies #2) edited by Erin Branch
What I’ve been consuming
- Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer
This month we interview Joanna Lowell and talk about:
- Working with historical language and issues around characters who don’t fall neatly in the gender binary
- How her previous books connect together
- Actor Charlotte Charke as an inspiration for the character of Georgie
- Theater as a place for queer themes
- Avoiding being locked into incorrect historical tropes
- How the novels of Alexis Hall and Sarah Waters work differently with gender
- The difficulty of getting away from modern identity categories
- Books Joanna has recently enjoyed:
  - A Gentleman’s Gentleman by T.J. Alexander
  - Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti

Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online

Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
Twitter: @LesbianMotif
Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon

Links to Heather Online

Website: http://alpennia.com
Email: Heather Rose Jones
Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)

Links to Joanna Lowell Online

Website: https://www.joannalowell.com/
Instagram: @joannalowellauthor

Major category:

Tags:

http://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-316-shelf-june-2025

podcast

solarbird

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.8.0 – 8 June 2025 – is now available on github, along with MEGAMAP 1.7.1. This version is mostly, but not entirely, about Seattle.

Seattle DOT have dropped a new bike map for 2025/2026, but have chosen to show several incomplete and/or entirely unstarted projects as completed. We respectfully disagree with this decision, as it will direct map users to infrastructure which is not actually present for most or all of this year.

Therefore, we have chosen to stay with Seattle 2023 as our Seattle-area base map. We will take on the additional work of updating it over the next year, continuing work we have already been doing. In addition to not showing incomplete/nonexistent infrastructure, this means we will continue to group “Neighbourhood Greenway” and “Healthy Street” under the same common green colour, rather than separating them into green and blue markings.

(Seattle 2025 breaks them out into greens and blues, but unfortunately at the same intensity, meaning there’s no difference for those with colour vision limitations.)

As additional Seattle projects are completed, we will add them to our maps. Once all projects shown on Seattle 2025 are completed, we will most likely transition to Seattle 2025 as our Seattle base map.

There’s only one change since 1.7.1 for outside Seattle, but it’s big:

Juanita Drive bike lanes are finally open (again) in Juanita! There’s still a little construction on sidewalks, but functionally, they’re done

I’ve been looking forward to that finally being finished since they started work! The bike lane standard is meaningfully higher than it was before. It’s not consistently up to Kenmore’s standard, but it’s a significant and welcome improvement.

Note that sidewalk construction isn’t quite complete, but there’s very, very little left and should not interfere with biking the route.

Updates since 1.7.1 in Seattle include:

1st Ave NW neighbourhood greenway north of Greenwood to Broadview added
S. Walden/Della neighbourhood greenway added
Ashworth Ave mix of neighbourhood greenway and ped/bike shared path added
N. 120th St. neighbourhood greenway from Ashworth Ave to Corliss Ave added
N. 130th St. bike lanes north of Haller Lake added
W. Marginal Way SW bike lanes extended north to 17th Ave SW
6th Ave NW steepness indicator in Fremont corrected
6th Ave NW Neighbourhood Greenway corrected (was marked as bike lane)
Alki Drive/Beach Drive SW Healthy Street in West Seattle added
Maple Leaf Reservoir Neighbourhood Greenway and related ped/bike path added
Pike Street bike lane hillclimb over I-5 updated to reflect upgraded status
21st Ave Greenway/Health Street from Columbia to Yesler added
Greenway/Healthy Street connection between 30th Ave S east of MLK to Mountains-to-Sound Trail added
39th Ave South Greenway/Healthy Street from south of Othello to Kenyon added
One block of Neighbourhood Greenway on 27th Ave NE north of Lake City REMOVED
Several small corrections/adjustments, carrying forward Seattle map corrections/adjustments

Rather than the usual MEGAMAP preview, here’s a comparison between on section of Seattle across the two maps.

The same area of map from Seattle 2025 and Greater Northshore/MEGAMAP 2025 June 8. The Seattle map shows a Neighbourhood Greenway which does not yet actually exist. It also inaccurately describes on-the-ground conditions of the Ashworth Ave N Greenway in ways which cause confusion on the ground. The Greater Northshore/MEGAMAP corrects both of those, but fails to distinguish between "Neighbourhood Greenway" and "Healthy Street."

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

... so I still haven't done a full con report -- it's been almost a week -- so in the interim I'll just refer you to last week's "Done Since 2025-05-25" (posted on Monday) and "Thankful Thursday" posts. The only parts of the trip it doesn't cover very well are the songs we sang ( "Millennium's Dawn" deserves full S4S treatment), the hotel (the breakfast and dinner buffets, included in the room price), were noteworthy), and the travel.

Right. The travel. Tips:

Don't leave anything in (travel guitar)Plink's case -- it could delay inspection (and did, at Hamburg).
On arrival, stay in the plane until somebody tells you that your wheelchair is ready. Hamburg again.
If you don't look disabled (like m, for example), take a cane and hobble out of the plane with it. This is especially true for Schiphol -- the Dutch tend to be ablist.

Yesterday N, m, and I had a good band practice/conference, including more tweaking on "Millennium's Dawn", scripting for several songs that still had only two-person arrangements, and harmony arrangements because we finally have someone in the band who can reliably sing harmony. We're also going to want a keyboard. Or two, since m is leaving tomorrow for Seattle.

Health-wise, I don't think I'm doing all that well, so it's a good thing I have an appointment with a cardiologist soon, as well as with an oncologist.

If you're interested in word origins, check out the Online Etymology Dictionary, which includes some fascinating articles as well as the dictionary entries.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Mood: mostly worried
Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Music: some band practice

gingicat

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irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2789.html

...

2025-06-08 Rerun commentary: I dunno about you, but if several of my party had been turned to stone and I saw a strange woman from behind, I would not be calling attention to myself in a way that might make her look around.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2789.html

3,500-year-old graves reveal secrets that rewrite bronze age history

Around 1500 BC, radical changes occurred in people's lives: they ate and lived differently, and the social system was also reorganized.
Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ideas about nomadic Tumulus culture herders.

Mood: busy

azurelunatic

I got the standards and brackets for that shelf system, and we are currently at Home Depot, after buying what I sincerely hope is the right configuration of board feet for eight shelves. It's secured to the roof and we're using surface streets.

It's too close to bedtime to start on repair plating the 8 foot boards to the 2 foot boards, probably.

Making this quick as the nerves in my back are causing that restless leg nonsense and I need to go walk.

I did manage to know out 1400 words on my next

getyourwordsout Yahtzee story. These two love to argue.

If I've missed you on the tally let me know. Feel free to jump in at any time.

Day Seven

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

badly_knitted,

goddess47,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

nafs,

the_siobhan,

cmk418,

yasaman,

brithistorian,

( other days )

Mood: busy
Music: Midsomer Murder

Today we went to the Fairy Market in Effingham. :D

( Read more... )

Mood: excited

siderea

2025 Jun 7 11:40 am:

benjalvarez1 on Twitter:

WATCH THIS: https://x.com/BenjAlvarez1/status/1931375699786334704

Click through to see the video. You really, really should. Sound is irrelevant.

Text: "Tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers arrive in Washington, D.C. ahead of next week's military parade. They departed from Texas on June 2." Two minutes and forty seconds.

Allegedly that train is a mile long and is transporting:

• 28 Abrams tanks (M1A2 main battle tank)
• 3 armored recovery vehicles (M88)
• 28 Bradleys (M2A3 infantry fighting vehicle)
• 5 Paladins (M109A7 self-propelled howitzer), and
• 28 Strykers (infantry carrier vehicle)

Source: 2025 Jun 6: @USAMilitaryChannel on YT [not official military channel]: "1-Mile Military Train -Texas to D.C. with Tanks, Armor, and More for Army's 250th Parade". I do not know if that source is reputable or if that inventory is accurate.

USA Today is reporting that "The military vehicles will be joined by 1,800 soldiers". (Source: 2025 Jun 6, USATODAY on YT: "Watch: Tanks, fighting vehicles head to DC for Trump's military parade", CW: face full of Trump, alt: screenshot).

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking that maybe the guy who attempted one coup already bringing a well-armed military force into our capitol city and, crucially, within artillery-range of the Pentagon, is just throwing himself a birthday party, but also maybe not.

ETA: For those of you confused by this, thinking, but doesn't he already control the military? You might want to watch this video about the rise of Xi Jinping.

Now, obviously, Trump would never play a long game like Xi did. But, 1) there are other ways to achieve the same end and 2) he doesn't have to, because his buddies, the Dominionists, did.

Abney Park did an acoustic online concert tonight, in part because the lead singer's daughter was in a serious hit and run earlier in the year, the guy drove off and she and her friends ended up with serious, slow to resolve concussions. In the last few concerts they had other people running the lights/sound etc instead of her but she wanted to help again so they did acoustic so she could handle the sensory input.

Regardless, it was one of their better concerts. Occasionally the sound mix gets off but this more simple concert that didn't happen. It really sounded great.

I also went to the Italian deli today for some good gabagool and the pasta that doesn't jack my sugar up. Went to a non-associated Italian restaurant which was good but SLOW.

Visited my cousin in her assisted living home which has taken a serious downturn since Christmas. At Christmas it was clean and neat. Today the place reeked of piss so bad I was glad we were sitting outside. It got worse at dinner so I think some of that are the elder wandering around in wet adult diapers because damn. (not a surprise these places are criminally understaffed)

something stole one of my tomatoes and one flower. Didn't bite them off or anything. They're just pulled up and are gone. I'm unamused.

Mood: drained
Music: Jaws

billroper

Both cars are finally parked in the garage again. It has been a bit more than nine years since a pallet of books for ISFiC Press needed to be stored in the garage, which meant that one of the cars had to stay in the driveway. It is remarkably hard to get a pallet of books to go away once it arrives.

Gretchen parked in the driveway during a variety of miserable weather for most of that time. Winter, of course, is the worst with snow and ice. It was very good of her. We replaced her van in December 2023 and the new van, being a PHEV, took the space in the garage so it could be charged.

I did not like parking in the driveway. I think I liked frost less than I liked snow.

At various times in the intervening nine years, we attempted to clear out the garage. We finally got the books moved out to the storage locker, which made it possible. But at one point, I decided that I needed to clear the mass of boxes that had been stored in the library as we had the kitchen remodeled out to the garage so I could get the library back. Then *more* boxes got stored in the library. Oops. Now I had set back the garage cleaning *and* still didn't get the library back.

Eventually, the boxes in the library were dispatched once and for all, along with the boxes that had gone to the garage. There was hope! Except that we had tossed a variety of things into the garage in the interim, because it got them out of the way. This was true. Inconvenient when trying to clean the garage, but true.

When it looked like we were going to fix the fence ourselves, I bought the lumber in preparation for this and stored it in (chorus) *the garage*. Then we hired someone to fix the fence, but I now had all of this perfectly good lumber occupying too much of the garage. Gretchen noted several times that we could not clean out the garage successfully with all of that lumber out there. Gretchen was (as usual) correct.

About a month ago, I found myself with some time to kill and Gretchen's van was not in the garage. I *found* places to tuck all the lumber where it was out of the way. I now have a partially cedar-lined garage with all the pickets that are tucked away in between the studs. But the lumber was out of the way, so Gretchen's precondition was satisfied.

Over the last three weekends, we have (with varying numbers of kids) spent some time out in the garage. Two huge boxes full of unread Chicago Tribunes went into the recycling bin over successive weekends. I saved enough to use as charcoal starter for some indefinite period of time. Shelves were rearranged and boxes shoehorned onto them. Broken things were disposed of. Useful things were either kept or boxed up for Goodwill. The back of Gretchen's van is *very* full with three outgrown bicycles that will be leaving tomorrow.

Thursday, I put out the pallet that had once held up Mount McGuire and the old Oriental rug that the mice had gotten to for the garbage collection. Happily, they took both. The garbage bin and recycling bin were *very* full.

Today, I decided to finish it up. I went out and collected the donations for the girls' softball league that will be picked up tomorrow: two helmets, two sets of cleats, my lineup board from the season when I was a head coach, and a batting tee. The last of the stuff for Goodwill went into the car. Things were tucked into corners.

Then I went in and got the remaining magnetic hooks, attached them to the big metal shelves that hold up my tool bag and the small sound system, and draped the cord for the charging plug for Gretchen's van over them so that she wouldn't drive across it trying to get in. I swept things into a pile, then recruited K to help me bag the mess for the trash.

And the floor was empty.

I rolled the trash cans and the dolly off onto the grass for the moment and pulled my car out of the driveway, parking it on the street. I had already gotten the key to Gretchen's van, so I backed it out of the garage, got a running start, and pulled it into the freshly cleared space where it fit nicely. There was even space to plug it into the charger.

I put the dolly and the cans back into their space on my side of the garage. Then I went across the circle, got my car, and pulled it in.

There was much rejoicing.

There are still a great many cleaning projects to finish up around the house, but this one, at least, is finally finished.

grimmrow posting in

crowdfunding

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Mood: chipper
Location: ohio
Music: why do you get all the love in the world - nine inch nails

dialecticdreamer

Location, Location, Location
By Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 3
Word count (story only): 1073
[Landing #7, day 3, 2 p.m. local time]

:: Thalassian representatives arrive to offer options to the Asher family, and Backstep recovers under their watchful eyes. Part of the Sidestep Travelers universe. ::

Backstep sat up on the same sofa where she’d been sleeping. A salad bowl sitting beside her right foot held three empty packets of energy gels, while the teen squeezed an inch of gel into her mouth. Even the act of masticating and swallowing could not muffle the heavy growl of her stomach.

Everest giggled, reaching one pointing finger toward Backstep’s stomach. “Mons’er!” he declared, giggling even more loudly.
( Read more... )

Mood: amused

kaberett

goslings! (Canadian; one still very yellow and fluffy, several more rather larger.)
SNAILS. so many excellent snails. we went out on a couple of stupid little walks and saw MANY snails.
ate the last of my birthday cake, with discounted raspberries courtesy of one of said stupid little walks. <3
the post brought Several more books for me (two pain-related, ...some cookery) and I am very pleased with them. particularly looking forward to warm bread and honey cake, though given that I've still not actually read Salt Fat Acid Heat I don't rate my chances of getting to it any time soon...
current borrowed-on-a-whim-from-the-library book: Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. First chapter was paperclips; current chapter is a whistlestop tour of The History Of The Pen, including a much more loving biography of the BIC Cristal than I am normally exposed to via fountain pen fandom!

minoanmiss

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Mood: the OPPOSITE of nostalgic

fayanora

I am currently reading the audiobook version of "The Hollow Places" by T. Kingfisher. It is horror; cosmic horror and body horror, but mostly a quiet, creeping dread. The main character of the book finds a hole in the wall of her uncle's house, a hole that leads to another world reminiscent of the Wood Between The Worlds from the Narnia series. Only, this place is far scarier. She and a friend of hers go inside it to explore. It looks calm and beautiful at first, and there's evidence that the various entryways lead to other universes, though they don't go all the way into these other doorways (yet; I'm not done yet), and as beautiful as the main world they're wandering through is, things keep moving around when they aren't looking. Mostly the willows. They get lost in there, trying to find their entry point, running out of food as they keep looking for their way back. They have to take refuge in openings leading to other worlds when sleeping, because the willows that are everywhere can move. The willows are servants of something so horrifying that one of the entryways has the words "PRAY THEY ARE HUNGRY" because you do not want to know what they'll do to you if they're not hungry. Along the way, the two of them find some of the evidence of the kinds of things "They" can do to people they catch.

The scariest part? These two characters aren't stupid, like you find in a lot of horror stuff. They are both pretty smart, and both are well aware of the impossible geometry of the place they initially find, the bunker that leads to this creepy land of fog and grassy islands with wandering willows. Their conversation shows they're aware of horror movie tropes, but also at first they're unsure if they're in a horror situation or if this is just some harmless Narnia situation. So they keep resisting urges like the urge to scream or make other noise. They're also reluctant to eat the food there, aware of the stories about Faery. But the place was beautiful and there weren't any clear signs of danger at first, so they got drawn in by curiosity. Then they got lost, and now they're just trying to survive and avoid "Them" long enough to find the door back to their world.

If it sweetens the deal for any of you, her friend is a gay man who was clearly written by someone who knows actual gay people, so it's not apparent at first he's gay, just a little odd -- but then again, her uncle is an eccentric fellow too. So it's only from bits of their conversations and her narration that reveals he's gay. Oh and this man is a friend of her uncle as well.

Anyway, so far it is an amazing, creepy, scary story. Even knowing it's a horror, I still got swept up in the beauty of the place and in the adventure of it along with our two main characters.

Oh, also, the blurb for the story, at least the one on Goodreads, is misleading. The blurb makes it sound like they found the scary writing on the wall and went in anyway. Nope, not what happened. They don't find the words "PRAY THEY ARE HUNGRY" until after they've been lost for about half a day. Their initial entry point had some minor warning signs, but nothing you'd clock as an obvious red flag if you were in the situation yourself, apart from the impossible geometry involved. I saw the signs because I knew it was a horror story, but I could easily see myself getting into the same situation if I had been in their place. I mean, it's kind of obvious if you know how I treat the multiverse in my Ravenstone series: some of the places you can go in it can be scary or extremely creepy, and one character is trapped in the Ravenstones' universe from a different universe, but on the whole, traveling the multiverse is depicted as a wondrous adventure one can have if one knows how to do it. That in mind, even with me knowing "The Hollow Places" is a horror story, I naturally got drawn in by the initial charm and weirdness of the place, so I would totally have gone into that hole and explored that backrooms/Wood Between The Worlds type place. Unlike them, I would probably very quickly die there.

EDIT: I would also like to add that I'm 84% through the book, and so far neither of them have clocked the Obvious Horror McGuffin that's likely causing all this, despite the fact I clocked it right away as Capital-T Trouble the instant it appeared. Then again, I suppose with all the weird stuff in the building the main protagonist lives in, the Obvious Horror McGuffin was not so obvious to her; to her, it's just another bit of weird junk in a whole building full of weird junk. Though the fact that the Obvious Horror McGuffin keeps showing up in weird places should have been a whole parade of red flags with blaring sirens to them, even if half of these instances occurred prior to their initial trip into the other world.

EDIT 2: FINALLY! She FINALLY clocked the McGuffin!

susandennis

About 5 last night, the facilities coordinator sent out a note that the pool was fixed and it should take about 6-12 hours to reheat. I swapped some texts with Steve and we agreed to give it a go today. Turns out 12 hours was a hair optimistic. It was warmer but it was still pretty cold. In hindsight...

But, we had a good time and a nice crowd and it was fine and fun.

Elbow coffee was its normal nothing but harmless today. Also a good crowd. It's really a nothing gathering but also a painless way to touch base with neighbors and make sure everyone is fine. Without Myrna, we really don't even see each other much any other time.

I'm still working on my utility room. I have one more item coming from Amazon (Monday) which will take care of the final issue. But it does look much nicer now and is easier to find shit.

I got the invitation to my nephew's wedding today. The wedding is in the middle of October. This is June. Clearly wedding rules have changed. At least I don't have to go. And, according to their website, one of their top two most wanted gift requests is money. Whew. That takes a load off. Also their wedding website let me RSVP so I don't even have to hunt down a stamp and mail this little card back. I like these new wedding rules. In my day...

Last night they had fried chicken on the buffet and I loaded up. So now I have fried chicken for lunch. Yum. Then baseball. My perfect afternoon.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Mood: determined

Today is cloudy, mild, and damp. It rained yesterday, and probably more last night.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen much activity though.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/7/25 -- I did a bit of work on the patio.

It's been spitting or drizzling for much of the day, and is picking up again now.

EDIT 6/7/25 -- I put out more food for the birds.

I've seen several sparrows and house finches, a catbird, and at least one mourning dove.

The 'Mr. Stripey' tomato has green fruit. :D

.

Mood: busy

andrewducker

My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up to 95 degrees and hold it there"

(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

http://alpennia.com/blog/related-publication-boag

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Would the world be a better or worse place if everyone looked the same?

Much worse. It would be difficult to tell people apart. That would require doing something to make artificial distinctions, which has a lot of drawbacks. We know that problems occur when people are difficult or impossible to distinguish, because those things happen under conditions where people's normal distinctions are obscured. One of the most common is that it runs up the crime rate, because people are more likely to misbehave when they can't be punished because nobody can tell for sure who did it.

Mood: busy

alpennia_feed

Posted by Heather Rose Jones

Saturday, June 7, 2025 - 08:55

The Lesbian Historic Motif Project

It's common to discover that my publication database includes preliminary versions of research that are later incorporated in a book. I often cover these out of order. (To the extent that I have any order at all.) But in this case, the present article discusses some of the background considerations for Boag's book and adds to understanding it, rather than being redundant. (I have a few articles coming up that ended up being redundant and I've largely simply cross-referenced them to the more complete versions.)

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http://alpennia.com/blog/related-publication-boag

LHMP #481 Boag 2011a The Trouble with Cross-Dressers

About LHMP

Full citation:

Boag, Peter. 2011. “The Trouble with Cross-Dressers: Researching and Writing the History of Sexual and Gender Transgressiveness in the Nineteenth-Century American West” in Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 112, No. 3: 322-339

This article came out almost concurrently with Boag’s book Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past, and serves to some extent as an expanded discussion of what led him to write the book, and some of the issues he had to consider during the research and analysis.

The general topic is “women who dressed and lived as men and men who lived and dressed as women in the nineteenth-century American West.” One of the central questions he wanted to address was why, given the number of such cross-dressers, the popular imagination does not include them in its understanding of the West, beyond superficial images such as fictionalized versions of Calamity Jane. Even as historians have begun looking under the surface of Western myths, they have largely been silent on this topic.

One of the issues Boag addresses is his search for appropriate terminology, given that some—but not all—cross-dressers would likely be classified as transgender today. But given changing conceptions of sex and gender, applying modern terminology is not only anachronistic, but can be as inaccurate as using terms like “sexual inversion” that were actually in use at the time. The classification of certain behaviors, emotions, and social presentation as uniquely “masculine” or “feminine” led sexologists to create theories that assumed the presence of one gendered attribute necessarily presupposed other gendered attributes. Hence the blanket term “inversion” to cover a wide range of situations that today would be distinguished as separate identities. Just as social theories had gradually shifted from viewing cross-dressing or same-sex desire as isolated moral failings to viewing them as personality traits, so in the 20th century, there was a gradual shift from viewing same-sex desire as being caused by an “inverted” gender identity, to distinguishing between gender identity and orientation of desire. Boag explains why he settled on “cross-dress(er)” as the most neutral term for the phenomenon he was studying, as well as clarifying his approach to pronoun usage in the book.

While there has been increasing interest in collecting archival data on gender and sexuality, it is focused primarily on the 20th century. Research in the 19th century faces many hurdles, especially in terms of identifying the records of interest in the first place. Arrest records (which unfortunately are some of the most prevalent for the purpose) will sometimes blur the nature of the concern, as when a record that originally cites “sodomy” is visibly changed to “indecent exposure.” Prejudices that result in higher arrest rates for marginalized people skew the apparent incidence of queer behaviors. For various reasons, women’s same-sex encounters rarely came under official scrutiny unless at least one of the women was also transgressing gender presentation, again skewing the understanding of the topic.

Newspapers are another rich source of data about queer history, with caveats. And increasing digitalization is making more sources easily available—as well as side-stepping the gate-keeping of manual indexers (as well as the bias toward indexing only major papers, while smaller local papers were more likely to have queer “human interest” stories). This shifts the research expertise to figuring what keywords to search for.

Historical writing, even while increasing the focus on women’s and gender history, has not kept pace on the examination of gender identity and sexual orientation among cross-dressing women in the West. Anthropologists have analyzed cross-gender systems in Native American populations, but rarely connect this with similar phenomena in the white population.

Overall, the collective memory-erasure of the presence of cross-dressing in the history of the West connects (per Boag) to two phenomena around the end of the 19th century: the perception that the “frontier” no longer existed, and the development of sexological theories of gender and sexuality. Boag’s book focuses closely on how these forces worked together to re-categorize and explain away cross-dressers such that they were no longer part of the central myth-making of the American frontier.

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madfilkentist posting in

filk

OVFF has a new hotel: the Airport Marriott Hotel in Columbus. They say room rates and a reservation code will be available soon.

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2788.html

It's tough writing little loopholes like this into an ongoing story arc, since given a large number of readers it's almost guaranteed that some of you will have worked it out before this strip and be wondering why it hadn't been mentioned earlier. If you did, then well done.

2025-06-07 Rerun commentary: The above was a clever ploy to make you think that writers write loopholes into stories deliberately, and don't just try to patch them up or make them plot-relevant and pretend they were planning that all along.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2788.html

Now this quote is easier said than done.

I managed to finish and post my

intoabar story. I’m not 100% happy with it but it’s a worthy sequel to the first one. Got about 1000 words accomplishing that.

If I've missed you on the tally let me know. Feel free to jump in at any time.

Day Six

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

ysilme,

goddess47,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

goddess47,

nafs,

the_siobhan,

lilly_c,

brithistorian,

cmk418,

badly_knitted,

( other days )

Mood: exhausted
Music: Doctor Strange

billroper

Gretchen spent most of the day driving a long loop to the Loop and back to pick up K after her trip to Ball State for orientation. Like, five hours, which is absurd. She was a bit late getting to the Loop bus station, but the bus was a bit late too, so it sort of averaged out. Meanwhile, it seems like all of the other drivers on the road were intent upon "interesting" maneuvers. But everyone is home safe now.

I spent time looping at work too. Happily, I was able to sort out one problem and characterize another so that someone more familiar with that particular area of the code can do the further sorting that is required.

And then on Monday, I hope to be able to code in a straight line again. :)

ericcoleman

A wonderful school is in danger of closing. Everything is explained here. Help them out if you can! Spread the word if you can't!
https://www.gofundme.com/f/saving-dreamflight

Today we ran errands and went to a flea market at the local mall.

( Read more... )

Mood: busy

dialecticdreamer

Wishful Thinking
By Sarah Williams
Part 15 of 15, complete
Word count (story only): 1103
[Landing #7, day 3, a bit before six a.m. local time]

:: After a long day, the Ashton family, and Backstep, are sitting down to dinner. Conversation turns to longer term plans. Part of the Sidestep Travelers universe. ::

Rubin eased onto the floor, putting a milkshake into Zipper’s hand with a warning, expectant look. The younger man rolled his eyes, grumbling through a grin. “I’m eating,” Zipper declared. He made a point of slurping through the straw noisily.

Sitting on a footstool, his legs crossed at the ankles and guitar balanced on his leg, Smashup didn’t bother to hide his smirk. “Come on, Backstep, you’re going to miss Rubin hauling out the ‘Dad voice’ on Zipper!” the teen crowed. Worry knotted in the creases of his foreheads.

Across the living room, Anita held up a strangely subdued paperback book with a dull, olive green cover printed with glossy black ink and a simple line design. “I could read for a while, Zipper, and give your voice a rest.”
( Read more... )

Mood: amused

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3099/

The installation of the pipes on the inside of the insulation can be challenging, especially when the neighbor could come home at any minute.

https://xkcd.com/3099/

This poem came out of the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by

janetmiles. It also fills the "activism" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem belongs to the series Monster House.

( Read more... )

Mood: busy

This poem came out of the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by

janetmiles. It also fills the "community" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem belongs to the series Clay of Life.

( Read more... )

Mood: busy

This poem came out of the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by the "unlabeled" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. It has been sponsored by

janetmiles. This poem belongs to the series A Poesy of Obscure Sorrows.

( Read more... )

Mood: busy