#belle of amherst

[travsd]

Dueling Dickinsons

Born this day, America’s great poet, possibly its greatest, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). Whitman has come to mean a lot to me,but I think that she is possibly more significant. Her finicky, profound and bird-like scratchings capture not just the heart and the intellect but the eye. One doesn’t just hear the words, but you kind of walk away remembering the visual lay-out of the poem, they possess…

[dk-thrive]

Instructions for the Journey

The self you leave behind is only a skin you have outgrown. Don't grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming. The world, too, sheds its skin: politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days. It's easy to lose this tenderly unfolding moment. Look for it as if it were the first green blade after a long winter. Listen for it as if it were the first clear tone in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.

And if all that fails,

wash your own dishes. Rinse them. Stand in your kitchen at your sink. Let cold water run between your fingers.

Feel it.

- Pat Schneider, "Instructions for the Journey" in Olive Street Transfer (Amherst Writers & Artists Press; January 1, 1999) (via Whiskey River)

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Do you have any favourite historical unsolved (or solved but v interesting) crimes and mysteries? (Kaspar Hauser aside, this case I am very familiar with)

oooh a fun question!

I mean, the Voynich manuscript is a classic. What the fuck is up with that thing? Who wrote it? What was their deal? I'm anti-hoax theory simply because that is boring.

The poltergeist case of Joasia Gajewski is interesting. In general I find poltergeist cases fun - so Black Monk of Pontefract, the Amherst mystery, Enfield etc. Regardless of what people truly think, for talking about these things it's always more fun to roll with "it's not a hoax" because then there's the fun speculation of what is actually going on. There's also the psychology of the family at play, which I enjoy exploring. Ghost stories and hauntings almost always tell us far more about the people and their relationships than anything else.

Some would put the Bell Witch into the poltergeist category but I think something else is going on there.

For murders, the Villisca Axe Murder is one that definitely sticks out in my mind. Half of it is because of the sheer horror of what happened, but it's also just a very strange case.

Ooh, another fun one is the Belle Island Hag. That's a good Nova Scotia legend/mystery.

I realize I have deviated from unsolved mysteries to straight up legends and folklore. But uuuuuh that's where my interest preliminarily lies, to be fair.

[proton-wobbler]

Masterpost (Round 2)

(Edit: these polls have all concluded)

Bracket: Faves

Pygmy Nuthatch vs Oilbird

Bonin Petrel vs Great Bustard

White-throated Magpie Jay vs African Penguin

Dusky Seaside Sparrow vs Yellow-billed Magpie

Prothonotary Warbler vs Channel-billed Cuckoo

Pallas' Sandgrouse vs American Dipper

Blakiston's Fish Owl vs Pinyon Jay

Common Ground Dove vs Toulouse Goose

Bracket: Pretty Birds

Lady Amherst's Pheasant vs Japanese Paradise Flycatcher

Pink-necked Green Pigeon vs Plumed Whistling Duck

Pink Robin vs Red-cheeked Cordonbleu

Southern Emuwren vs Painted Redstart

Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise vs Bohemian Waxwing

Violet Turaco vs Purple Honeycreeper

Golden Pheasant vs Pompadour Cotinga

Purple-crowned Fairy vs Bluethroat

Bracket: TRUE hipsters

Emerald Starling vs Zigzag Heron

Kaua'i Mole Duck vs Whiskered Auklet

Madagascar Ibis vs Red-crested Turaco

Water Thick-Knee vs Palawan Peacock-pheasant

White-tailed Ptarmigan vs Regent Honeyeater

Invisible Rail vs Cabot's Tragopan

Collared Nightjar vs Kagu

Palau Kingfisher vs Sickle-winged Nightjar

Bracket: FOUR

Bat Hawk vs Hamerkop

Fiery-billed Aracari vs Bell Miner

Ancient Murrelet vs Arabian Babbler

Spotted Forktail vs Groove-billed Ani

Hairy Hermit Hummingbird vs Wedge-tailed Eagle

European Shag vs Short-tailed Pygmy Tyrant

Streaked Weaver vs Oriental Bay-Owl

Bearded Bellbird vs Marvelous Spatuletail

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Artwork: GAO Xingjian

* * * *

"Nothing in this world is without terrible barriers--- / Except, love, but only when it begins.' [. . .] So what is separation's geography?"

— Agha Shahid Ali, from section 12 “By the Waters of the Sind,” in “From Amherst to Kashmir,” Rooms Are Never Finished (W. W. Norton, 2002)

[Belles-lettres]

[littlelodell]

Tag Game!!

ˏˋ°*♡➷ get to know me ༊*·˚

Thank you @happy-mokka for the tag!!

rule: name your favorite movie, character, animal, drink, song, season, book, color and hobby

This is going to be tough because I am highly suggestible & I will bury my favorites for years and then suddenly remember them.

MOVIE(S) It's a tie, and an impossible task because I can name about fifty films whose images float around in my imagination. I grew watching a lot, A LOT, of Westerns, British WWII films and movie musicals, and classic films of the 1940's...but here are two later era movies that I come back to, and influence me as a creative person. Honorable mention to Hayao Miyazaki's entire oeuvre.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, 1989

dir. Peter Greenaway. Michael Nyman score.

with Helen Mirren, Michael Gambon (RIP), Richard Bohringer & Alan Howard. (and Tim Roth and Alex Kingston!)

Terrifying, horrifying, darkly funny and stunningly gorgeous. It's extremely violent in a very specific way to Greenaway, which I have a harder time with now, but it's still worth watching, if only for the scenes between Mirren and Howard, which are virtually silent. Breathtaking.

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) 1987 dir. Wim Wenders

This movie has EVERYTHING. Angels in dark coats, a library, Nick Cave, poetry, pre-fall of The Wall Berlin, trapeze artistry, moody smoking, Peter Falk as himself, did I mention angels? The final line gets me every time; "Ich weiss jetzt was kein Engel weiss." (excuse my German spelling.) "I know what no angel knows." In other words, love.

Character. In my current obsession? Our dear demon, Crowley. He chooses himself, but is honest enough to know he loves someone else. Silly, moody, been to actual hell and back. What's not to love? Plus us redheads have to stick together.

And of course, Kate ~ Taming of the Shrew. The OG bitch you hate to love. Runner up, Ariel from The Tempest. Gotta love a spirit that manages to be both mischievous and compassionate.

ANIMAL: Grey wolf. Canis Lupus. Their reintroduction to the wild is a very, very small pinpoint of hope for our ailing world.

Drink: Coffee. No contest. Black. Unlike Daffy here, I prefer mine iced.

Song: Currently listening to Yebba's "October Sky" on heavy rotation. She's truly gifted.

But, how could I choose just one song? I listen to jazz, 90's RandB, country, West Coast rap, deep 80's cuts, current pop, always Bowie, Prince, Kate Bush, and classical vocal rep.

"Will There Really Be a Morning?" Ricky Ian Gordon comp., set to The Belle of Amherst's poetry - a perfect song.

Season: Winter. But that's because I have to travel to get to a real winter. I love to (visit) the snow. I know, I romanticize it. I grew up in a place with brutal winters but all I remember is the Nordic skiing and playing hockey in figure skates and hot cocoa. Let me have my idyll.

Books, three, in no order, all non-fiction, or I will get too far down a rabbit-hole:

The Hakawati by Rabih Alemeddine

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

My Antonia by Willa Cather (my actual favorite)

Each of these authors have other, equally compelling titles, and you should read them.

Color: Shades of Blue.

Hobby: Reading, traveling, taking pictures, starting yet another language to study.

Possibly cooking, but I used to do it for a living, so it always feels like a dance with an old friend, not a hobby.

I'll tag @reloha and @risingphoenix761 but don't feel obligated at all. If I did this again tomorrow, I would have completely different answers.

[haddycss]

( francesca corney, cis woman, she/her) have you met HADLEY YOONIM  yet? you know, the 26 year old GRADUATE student majoring in MUSIC TECHNOLOGY. ring a bell yet? every time i walk past their dorm i hear MY LOVE ALL MINE BY MITSKI blasting through the door. everyone who meets them say they’re VIVACIOUS but can also be a little IMPULSIVE. guess when you meet them you’ll figure that out yourself.

since i'm afraid of getting blocked by tumblr, please message me on discord (visenyasbitch)

STATS

name. hadley yoonim

age. twenty-six

date of birth. november 18th

hometown. boston

gender. cis woman

sexuality. pansexual/panromantic

MISC

eyes. dark brown

hair. long wavy black

piercings. one in the left nostril, four in each ear, a belly button one

tattoos. too many to count, but mostly spread through arms and back

style. a mess of casual with punk references

school bg. high school, music graduate

sports. swimming team

BIO

oldest of three siblings, hadley grew in boston within a rather privileged family -- her mother a doctor, and father a lawyer, both known in their respective fields. demanding yet absent, haddy's parents often left her and the young boys in the hands of their governess or grandma.

a rebellious spirit caught in a whirlwind of expectations, hadley started acting out early. whether it were disobeying her parent's rules or outright getting in trouble at school or streets, the girl slowly lost herself within her own family.

instead of studying hard to follow on her mother's footsteps, she chose music, a childhood passion turned into vocation during high school. although playing multiple instruments and writing lyrics weren't impressive for the family, such abilities caught the eye of a music teacher -- enough for her to help haddy fill in college application papers in secret.

when the acceptance letters got into the yoomin's home, a fight broke through. both parents yelling destroyed her guitar in a fit of rage, and that was the sign to leave. packing some stuff into a bag she got into her car and left for amherst.

living in between the car seat and a friend's couch, she awaited for college to begin, where she'd finally meet teddy and a couple of other friends, beginning a band called epiphany.

ever since then, haddy dedicated half her time to their band. graduating from music she set a major in music technology, working half-time on a local coffee shop and holding onto the dream of making it as a musician.

[tedhead]

nobody ask me if im watching julie harris in the belle of amherst on pbs you know the answer

[virgin-martyr]

I am obsessed with Emily Dickinson’s description of herself in 1845.

“I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don't doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision. But away with my nonsense. I have written one composition this term, and I need not assure you it was exceedingly edifying to myself as well as everybody else.”

[tennwriter]

"It helps to have some failure, because when I failed--and when I was fired--I wasn't angry or hurt: I wanted to get better, and I wanted to show how much love I had for the work, for the art. I loved more fully all that I did, and all with whom I worked. And I got better--as an actress and as a person. So I'm saying that if you love fully and purely, you cannot help but get better at your work--on stage and off. You develop. And that's what we're after, I think." --Julie Harris/Interview with James Grissom/Photograph of Harris as Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst," 1977, courtesy of Corbis/

[kathleenmarymulligan]

“You didn’t fail—your idea failed. Try something new.”

Last week, David and I were invited to be delegates at a G20 event at Guru Nanak Dev University, which is just up the road from Khalsa College.

One of the panels at this event at GNDU was on entrepreneurship. While this is not exactly my field, I am glad I was compelled (by my status as a delegate) to attend. One of the panelists, an esteemed professor of business from Mumbai, offered the thought that I have chosen as my title.

I would say that my idea—as conceived—has failed.

Without getting into too much detail, I will simply say that several factors have contributed to this: my own naivety at what could be accomplished with a group of actors with whom I do not share a common language (unlike Kerala—where I did my first Fulbright), some particularly nasty departmental politics that became clear to David and me a few weeks after arrival, a lack of communication concerning hindrances to my project work plan, and (what I perceive) as the global effects of COVID on the current college age student. One toxic presence has done more than anything else to dismantle what I planned to accomplish. I have kept quiet about this in my blog and hoped for the best.

I am disheartened, but I also need to look at what my essential goals were for this project:

•     To connect young people with survivors of Partition in order to foster understanding about the experiences of those who came before them

•     To guide a group of young artists in creating original material based on interviews with Partition survivors

•     To provide a way for said young artists to share their original work with an audience.

All this will be accomplished.

•     I have accompanied students on interviews with people in their 80’s and 90’s who survived Partition, and witnessed the effect their stories and these connections have on my students. I have been deeply moved by the experience of sitting in the presence of these survivors.

•     David and I are working with these young actors to create, albeit slowly, original monologues out of those interviews. I understand that students at Khalsa College (and perhaps more widely in India) are not as accustomed to writing their own material, so this is a big “ask” we are making. Many are rising to the challenge beautifully. And some very generous translators have helped us to understand what is being written.

•     And we will have a sharing. It will not be a full-scale production, as we first envisioned. Given the amount of rehearsal time that has been taken from us due to various roadblocks- a full production would not be possible. We have been given a goal of the first week in April (before exam preparation begins). With that date in mind, we had to let go of the idea of a full production last week. But we will have an invited sharing at the college, and I also hope to have a lecture/demonstration at the Partition Museum and a local cultural center. I need to remind myself that if David had not been able to accompany me, these sharings would have likely been all I would have been able to offer.

I am turning my focus to things I can control (and my little living space has been getting daily cleanings-- this seems to be my way of gaining some control.) Following the advice, I am "trying something new."

•     I am booking performances of The Belle of Amherst at several colleges in Kolkata, one in Assam, and (hopefully) one theatre in Nepal.

•     I have been awarded a regional travel grant to spend two weeks teaching voice and speech at an actor training program in Nepal.

•     And I have been invited to serve on the panel to interview Fulbright applicants among Tibetan immigrants in Dharamshala in May.

I have met a lot of great people here. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity. And my students are absolutely lovely people. When I am with them (those who show up) my spirit cannot resist being lifted. So-- I’ll share a few pictures of these exuberant, brave young people—and move on. The idea failed. I did not fail. And I believe these young people will take something meaningful away from this experience—as I know David and I will.

I “owe” you all a post about our wonderful return to Kerala. Maybe now that I have shared the not-so-pleasant, I can go back and share those beautiful memories!

[music-despite-everything]

Happy birthday, Adrienne Rich!

Adrienne Cecile Rich, born May 16, 1929, in Baltimore, Maryland, and died March 27, 2012, in Santa Cruz, California, was an American poet, essayist, and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse." Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum," which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.

Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden went on to write the introduction to the published volume. She famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting the vote by House Speaker Newt Gingrich to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

---

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, 1963

1

You, once a belle in Shreveport, with henna-colored hair, skin like a peach bud, still have your dresses copied from that time, and play a Chopin prelude called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections float like perfume through the memory." Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life. Nervy, glowering, your daughter wipes the teaspoons, grows another way. 2 Banging the coffee-pot into the sink she hears the angels chiding, and looks out past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky. Only a week since They said: Have no patience. The next time it was: Be insatiable. Then: Save yourself; others you cannot save. Sometimes she's let the tap stream scald her arm, a match burn to her thumbnail, or held her hand above the kettle's snout right in the woolly steam. They are probably angels, since nothing hurts her anymore, except each morning's grit blowing into her eyes.

3 A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. The beak that grips her, she becomes. And Nature, that sprung-lidded, still commodious steamer-trunk of tempora and mores gets stuffed with it all: the mildewed orange-flowers, the female pills, the terrible breasts of Boadicea beneath flat foxes' heads and orchids. Two handsome women, gripped in argument, each proud, acute, subtle, I hear scream across the cut glass and majolica like Furies cornered from their prey: The argument ad feminam, all the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours, ma semblable, ma soeur! 4 Knowing themselves too well in one another: their gifts no pure fruition, but a thorn, the prick filed sharp against a hint of scorn... Reading while waiting for the iron to heat, writing, My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun-- in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum, or, more often, iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird, dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.

5 Dulce ridens, dulce loquens, she shaves her legs until they gleam like petrified mammoth-tusk. 6 When to her lute Corinna sings neither words nor music are her own; only the long hair dipping over her cheek, only the song of silk against her knees and these adjusted in reflections of an eye. Poised, trembling and unsatisfied, before an unlocked door, that cage of cages, tell us, you bird, you tragical machine-- is this fertillisante douleur? Pinned down by love, for you the only natural action, are you edged more keen to prise the secrets of the vault? has Nature shown her household books to you, daughter-in-law, that her sons never saw?

7 "To have in this uncertain world some stay which cannot be undermined, is of the utmost consequence." Thus wrote a woman, partly brave and partly good, who fought with what she partly understood. Few men about her would or could do more, hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore. 8 "You all die at fifteen," said Diderot, and turn part legend, part convention. Still, eyes inaccurately dream behind closed windows blankening with steam. Deliciously, all that we might have been, all that we were--fire, tears, wit, taste, martyred ambition-- stirs like the memory of refused adultery the drained and flagging bosom of our middle years. 9 Not that it is done well, but that it is done at all? Yes, think of the odds! or shrug them off forever. This luxury of the precocious child, Time's precious chronic invalid,-- would we, darlings, resign it if we could? Our blight has been our sinecure: mere talent was enough for us-- glitter in fragments and rough drafts. Sigh no more, ladies. Time is male and in his cups drinks to the fair. Bemused by gallantry, we hear our mediocrities over-praised, indolence read as abnegation, slattern thought styled intuition, every lapse forgiven, our crime only to cast too bold a shadow or smash the mold straight off. For that, solitary confinement, tear gas, attrition shelling. Few applicants for that honor. 10 Well, she's long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her plunge breasted and glancing through the currents, taking the light upon her at least as beautiful as any boy or helicopter, poised, still coming, her fine blades making the air wince but her cargo no promise then: delivered palpable ours.

[citrussly]

having friends who do trivia games is so fun. on one hand there's me, someone who cannot get the dead shakespeare women sorted but!! remembers that emily dickinson was called the belle of amherst (there's another amherst person im forgetting- ROBERT FROST) and was able to identify stray (the ps5 game) after five words of the prompt,

my friend who, despite playing all of botw didn't recognize a description of it until two sentences in,

my other friend, who can and has named anything from cities to rivers after maybe a dozen words of blurry geographical identifying information,

my other, maybe-not-friend-but-we-used-to-be who can name composers and pieces from literally just words describing the instruments used,

and then another friend whose knowledge spans from football to niche history to Weird Math Trivia

[laughingblue12]

The Cloistered Damsel Poetess, Emily Dickinson

The gentle Belle of Amherst Wrote carefully pruned poems Like roses groomed and purely bred To take prestigious prizes At flower shows she never would attend. 1,800 poems carefully handwritten And preserved in locked desk drawers While only ten were published in her lifetime. Poems of death and immortality, Art and society, nature and spirituality, After an entire life lived in…