The Mandelbear's Musings

Our garage is about 2/3 cleared out, thanks to a combination of G taking a van-load of his stuff, and a lot of boxes getting moved to the house, the over-garage apartment, and the 7x10 greenhouse tent I got last week. The missing box of the shed is presumably going to get shipped this week. We'll see. Meanwhile, N has ordered a storage pod -- the contractor put us onto a local (Freeland) storage company that recently started renting them.

The first part of the week was a bit rough -- see previous post.

The magic incantation to remap caps-lock to super is setxkbmap -option caps:super. That means that I can now run xmonad on laptops too old to have a "windows" key. It also works with hyper, which might be a good option if I want to keep super as the Logo key for mac, but mostly it makes the older Thinkpads usable. This makes my inner geek very happy.

A lot of my time this weekend has been taken up by reading. In addition to the usual suspects on my reading list, there was this post by tkingfisher (Ursula Vernon) linking to her Hugo winning The Tomato Thief, as well as Ursula Vernon's Short Stories. About halfway through that.

But most of my reading has been around the extraordinary Nathalia Crane, thanks to this post by minoanmiss. There are more links in the notes; for now I'll just leave you with "The Janitor's Boy" set to music by Natalie Merchant, and this, from Swear by the night and other poems:

APHRODITE IN COURT They arrested Aphrodite, lacking homespun, Pressed her finger-tips upon the tattling black ; Wrote the charge in good old English hieroglyphics — Jennie Doe abroad with nothing on her back. Jennie Doe, with brambles clinging to her tresses, Jennie Doe, with eyes of azure flecked by flame, Apprehended as a gipsy scorning gingham — Twenty constables to swear unto the same. When the case was called she suddenly grew sullen, In the court-room hung her head and would not speak Till a gentle little linguist born in Athens After many tries saluted her in Greek. Then she sighed and jurists paid their debts in marble, Sat the magistrate a Phidian recruit; Clerk and crier quaffed the quiet of the quarry At her second word — the ripple of the lute. Near the bar still lies a Parian mantilla, 'Tis a shawl the matron made the prisoner wear When the law arranged to interrupt a goddess And accuse her of exhibiting the bare. They arrested Aphrodite in the morning, Yet the court remains as statuesque as Greece, Each attendant in apparel of the pebble, On the bench a stony justice of the peace. By the counsel table stands the little linguist Where the instantaneous chisel also fell, And so eloquent his ashen consternation Aphrodite may in time undo the spell.

She was 12 years old when that was published. "The Janitor's Boy" is in her first book, published when she was 10.

( Notes & links, as usual )