#east lynne

[howifeltabouthim]

We never know the full value of a thing until we lose it. Health, prosperity, happiness, a peaceful conscience, what think we of these blessings while they are ours? But, when we lose them! why, we look back in surprise at our ungrateful apathy.

Ellen Wood, from East Lynne

[embracing-the-ineffable]

Neil Gaiman's intentionality and possible literary connections with the sign, "DON'T PAY THE GUY IN THE BLUE GLASSES HE DOESN'T WORK HERE" (East Lynne?)

Most people think the sign on Mrs. Sandwich's door is a reference to Crowley, and maybe it is, although he doesn't have BLUE glasses (yet).

So I woke up thinking about the theory that Mrs Sandwich is actually God, plus all the signs at the bottom of her stairs. The God theory could account for most of them, except for (possibly) the one about blue glasses. Neil has said the inspiration for that sign came from historic signs around Soho, but that doesn't mean there's not another layer of meaning. (If there's one thing he's taught me with season two of Good Omens, it's definitely to dig deeper!)

Good Omens is full of references (direct and indirect) to other stories, so I searched around online and found two interesting books:

The first is Boy in the Big Blue Glasses, by Susanne Gervay and illustrated by Marjorie Crosby-Fairall. It's a contemporary children's book about a kid, Sam, who gets blue glasses and feels like no one recognizes him anymore, except for his best friend. He goes on adventures to rediscover himself, his sense of humor, and his confidence - all while overcoming his fear of not being accepted and working to embody his true self (who he sees as a super hero, among other things).

Ok, there are parallels there with both Aziraphale and Crowley and the quest to be seen, understood, and accepted for who they truly are, but it doesn't feel like a strong connection.

More digging brings me to a Victorian novel called East Lynne, by Ellen Wood. Already, I feel more hopeful - this fits more neatly with other GO book references, like Pride and Prejudice.

In East Lynne, the main character is Isabel, and she is seen as being very emotional/passionate, very emotionally perceptive, and having extremely expressive, distinctive, and beautiful eyes.

She marries Carlyle, who is very kind but not nearly so able to read body language or understand emotions, and is able to "circumvent his emotions" and "separate business from feeling".

Because of his poor emotional perception, Carlyle contributes to a breakup with Isabel. Also contributing? Someone named Levison, who wants to use Isabel and tricks her into thinking the worst of her husband and running away with Levison instead.

Eventually, after a good bit of trauma, Isabel dons a disguise which includes blue glasses (which are seen as the primary part of her disguise, as her eyes are so distinctive) and returns home as a governess to take care of her children.

So … That sounds familiar, hmmm? We've already seen Crowley as a governess, and he DOES have beautiful, distinctive eyes and is more emotional and impulsive than Aziraphale. And we could argue that Aziraphale's willingness to "separate business from feeling" was a strong driving force in their separation at the end of s2. Factor in The Metatron as a possible Levison, complete with lies and manipulations to break them up so he can use Isabel/Aziraphale, and I think there's definitely a connection.

Here's a really long but interesting analysis:

If East Lynne is the right Clue, perhaps this foreshadows Crowley wearing another disguise (complete with blue glasses?) and back in heaven in season 3. East Lynne doesn't end the way we hope Good Omens will, although Isabel does finally tell Carlyle everything, and he forgives her. We can hope Aziraphale and Crowley will likewise find the value of better honesty and transparency with one another!

(Disclaimer: I added East Lynne to my reading list, but I *just* had this idea and wanted to share, so the plot and character summaries are only from reading descriptions and analysis online, not from directly reading the book. Yet.)

I'm adding this Clue to my collection of Clues / meta of metas!

[justbusterkeaton]

Buster as Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1906

“In Cleveland, Buster gave an interview to the Plain Dealer denying he ever got hurt onstage and claiming he endured more pain in a Philadelphia barbershop than he ever felt at the hands of his old man. “The barber put the snippers, or whatever you call ’em, on the back of my neck an’ gee! they pulled. I yelled as loud as I could, an’ that’s pretty loud.” The article, headlined “BUSTER LAUGHS AT HIS BUMPS,” served as an announcement of sorts: “In a couple of weeks, Papa an’ me are goin’ to go out in a stock company for a short time. He thinks it would be good trainin’ for me. Mama says probably in some plays they’ll want to put curls on me an’ make me play little girl parts, but just let ’em try it! Not for Buster! Not for Buster!”

The real reason Joe Keaton sought the ease and security of a stock tour at a time when the family would normally be working the summer parks was that Myra was seven months pregnant with their third child. Before long, he was pressed into service for the first time as an actor, nearly fulfilling his mother’s prophecy of having to play “little girl parts.” The play was Little Lord Fauntleroy, and he did indeed portray the title character in shoulder-length curls, red velveteen, and lace. “My part alone was seventy-five solid typed pages,” he said. “In between, when I wasn’t Little Lord Fauntleroy, I was little Willie in East Lynne. East Lynne was four acts long, like most of the tear-jerkers in those days. Little Willie died in the third act. As the curtain went down, I’d rush backstage, slap on a Johnny Ray wig—that’s a bald-headed wig and some galways—and run back on stage again to do a rough and tumble with my father.” Despite the Herculean effort it took to learn his lines, Buster got bored with the role of Lord Fauntleroy and began injecting slapstick into what was otherwise a charming period drama, much to the fury of manager Fenberg”

Excerpt from Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis

[mxcottonsocks]

I shall get in for it, I fear, if I attempt to defend her. - East Lynne (1861) by Mrs Henry Wood (Ellen Wood)

I think about this a lot when reading: about how much the book may be influenced by the author's attempt to navigate the potential real-world consequences of their writing choices, especially in stories by and about women.

It's particularly interesting to think about this in relation to Victorian Literature, partly because the social consequences (especially for women) of not being considered 'moral' or 'respectable' enough were higher than today, and partly because it was much more common then than now for the narrator to attempt to tell the audience how to feel about the characters and events of the story... But I think this quote shows why we as readers cannot necessarily say we know the author's own opinion even if it appears to be clearly spelt out within the text.

[thehappyhippies]

(via "Lynn, Massachusetts - Lynn City of Sin" Pullover Sweatshirt for Sale by ZenDee)

[churchofsatannews]

The Wedding Funeral's Boston-Area Debut at The Middle East

Booking shows since 1987, The Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub expanded into a full-fledged entertainment complex and is now “the nexus of metro Boston’s rock-club scene for local and touring bands,” according to the Boston Phoenix, and “reigns supreme as Boston’s best rock and/or roll joint,” according to the Weekly Dig. Join The Wedding Funeral as they make their Boston-area debut at this…

[joeygallagher]

Far East (1994)

by

RJ Films

Starring: Noah Brandon, Jim Kelly, Ryan Mrachek, Randy Gaetano, Ian Spiro, Brett Smith, Chris Novak, Jamie Lynn and friends

[gonzalezlegalpc]

Immigration Lawyer Services in Lynn, MA - Gonzalez Legal P.C.

At Gonzalez Legal P.C., our skilled team provides comprehensive immigration legal services in East Boston and Lynn, MA. Whether you need an immigration attorney in East Boston or a dedicated lawyer in Lynn, we are here to assist you. Visit us for expert legal counsel and personalized support on all immigration matters.

[vancouvertrueborns]

The Vancouver house where country music star Loretta Lynn was discovered was demolished today. Actually, that's not quite true. The singer was discovered in a chicken coop behind the house at 2541 East Kent Avenue North in 1959. The coop had been converted to a private party space by the property's former owner, Ernest Clare 'Mac' McGregor. The chicken shed was demolished in the 1970s. Full story here.

[howifeltabouthim]

And he soon grew to love her with quite a wild sort of love.

Ellen Wood, from East Lynne

[kismetconstellations]

Troy Bolton & Fawn Lynn

[transmutationisms]

i think you do a really impressive job balancing comprehensive/concise while referencing a lot of complex frameworks(contexts? schools of thought? lol idk what to call that. big brain ideas) but if you have any readings specifically on the institution of psychiatry topic that you would recommend/think are relevant, I'd be interested. it's absolutely not a conversation that's being had enough and I want to be able to articulate myself around it

yes i have readings >:)

first of all, the anti-psychiatry bibliography and resource guide is a great place to start getting oriented in this literature. it's split by sub-topic, and there are paragraphs interspersed throughout that give summaries of major thinkers' positions and short intros to key texts.

it's from 1979, though, so here are some recs from the last 4 decades:

overview critiques

mind fixers: psychiatry's troubled search for the biology of mental illness, by anne harrington

psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness, by bruce m z cohen

desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness, by andrew scull

psychiatry and its discontents, by andrew scull

madness is civilization: when the diagnosis was social, 1948–1980, by michael e staub

contesting psychiatry: social movements in mental health, by nick crossley

the dsm & pharmacy

dsm: a history of psychiatry's bible, by allan v horwitz

the dsm-5 in perspective: philosophical reflections on the psychiatric babel, by steeves demazeux & patrick singy

pharmageddon, by david healy

pillaged: psychiatric medications and suicide risk, by ronald w maris

the making of dsm-iii: a diagnostic manual's conquest of american psychiatry, by hannah s decker

the myth of the chemical cure: a critique of psychiatric drug treatment, by joanna moncrieff

the book of woe: the dsm and the unmaking of psychiatry, by gary greenberg

prozac on the couch: prescribing gender in the era of wonder drugs, by jonathan metzl

the creation of psychopharmacology, by david healy

the bitterest pills: the troubling story of antipsychotic drugs, by joanna moncrieff

psychiatry & race

the protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a black disease, by jonathan metzl

administrations of lunacy: racism and the haunting of american psychiatry at the milledgeville asylum, by mab segrest

the peculiar institution and the making of modern psychiatry, 1840–1880, by wendy gonaver

what's wrong with the poor? psychiatry, race, and the war on poverty, by mical raz

national and cross-national contexts

mad by the millions: mental disorders and the early years of the world health organization, by harry yi-jui wu

psychiatry and empire, by sloan mahone & megan vaughan

ʿaṣfūriyyeh: a history of madness, modernity, and war in the middle east, by joelle m abi-rached

surfacing up: psychiatry and social order in colonial zimbabwe, 1908–1968, by lynette jackson

the british anti-psychiatrists: from institutional psychiatry to the counter-culture, 1960–1971, by oisín wall

crime, madness, and politics in modern france: the medical concept of national decline, by robert a nye

reasoning against madness: psychiatry and the state in rio de janeiro, 1830–1944, by manuella meyer

colonial madness: psychiatry in french north africa, by richard keller

madhouse: psychiatry and politics in cuban history, by jennifer lynn lambe

depression in japan: psychiatric cures for a society in distress, by junko kitanaka

inheriting madness: professionalization and psychiatric knowledge in 19th century france, by ian r dowbiggin

mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill, by robert whitaker

[obsessivevoidkitten]

More talk about situation in Gaza. Keeping it under a keep reading because I know it isn't my usual content.

As seekers of aid are outright slaughtered bu Biden's tank shells it is important to remember that most worldwide famine is occurring in Gaza.

Right after the ICJ trial Israel immediately made accusations against the UN organization called UNRWA to shift the day's headlines from Israel being found guilry of plausible genocide to the UNRWA accusations.

The accussation is that 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA employees were involved in October 7th. With this accussation most western countries immediately and without evidence dropped 100 percent of funding for UNRWA. The employees had already veen fired and an investigation ordered to follow up.

Now it has been dropped to 6 out of 13,000 employees that are being accused but with other claims and allegations that there is no evidence for.

https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-intelligence-report-claims-four-unrwa-staff-in-gaza-involved-in-hamas-kidnappings-13059967

At the same time that starvation is increasing and funding for aid is cut we have a new atrocity. The Israeli government is allowing and even making visits to a protest of aid being delivered to Gaza.

Aid to be delivered has been blocked for days, protesters won't allow it in and Israel is doing nothing to stop the protests.

Between UNRWA allegations and protests Palestinians are getting less aid than ever when they need it most. The death toll will rise exponentially if something isn't done.

And while it happens we have western media outlets making claims to discredit UNRWA.

These images show that Carrie Keller-Lynn was an IDF member. She uncritically parrots Israel's lies.

And this isn't the only time the WSJ has written pro-Israel propaganda. A vote for a ceasefire was given the headline "Chicago votes for Hamas". They have started hiding the authors under the editorial board.

Meanwhile American protestors continue to protest our politicians. Muslim women were uninvited to a Harris event because they were wearing hijabs.

Pelosi said calls for a ceasefire needed to have financing investigated by the FBI because it's "Putin's message." She also screamed at protesters to "go back to China."

The current administration continues to escalate conflict in the Middle East while insisting that all these bombing campaigns and troops on the ground aren't technically a war.

Biden officials continue to say that the ICJ found Israel innocent of genocide despite that not being what the interim hearing was for.

This is a pro-Israel lie. The interim hearing was to find if it was plausible that Israel was committing a genocide, make provisional rulings. And see if the case has standing.

It WAS found that Israel was committing a plausible genocide, provisions WERE made, and the case WAS found to have standing to continue.

And while the court case for Biden being complicit in genocide was thrown out, it is historic that he was the first president sued for genocide and that the judge argued that he needed to re-examine his unflagging support for Israel. It was thrown out on technicalities and the justice department arguing the court didn't have jurisdiction. But they didn't argue the merits.

The judge said, “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza, but it is also this Court’s obligation to remain within the metes and bounds of its jurisdictional scope. There are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the Court. This is one of those cases.”

https://theintercept.com/2024/02/01/gaza-biden-genocide-lawsuit-ruling/

Please keep the pressure up. Don't forget Palestinians. Flock to protests. Call your reps. Leverage your vote. Call out propaganda. Take every action in your power no matter how small.

[eesirachs]

For a school assignment, I'm assembling an anthology around the theme of queer divinity and desire, but I'm having a hard time finding a fitting essay/article (no access to real academic catalogues :/ ), do you know of any essays around this theme?

below are essays, and then books, on queer theory (in which 'queer' has a different connotation than in regular speech) in the hebrew bible/ancient near east. if there is a particular prophet you want more of, or a particular topic (ištar, or penetration, or appetites), or if you want a pdf of anything, please let me know.

essays: Boer, Roland. “Too Many Dicks at the Writing Desk, or How to Organize a Prophetic Sausage-Fest.” TS 16, no. 1 (2010b): 95–108. Boer, Roland. “Yahweh as Top: A Lost Targum.” In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ken Stone, 75–105. JSOTSup 334. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2001. Boyarin, Daniel. “Are There Any Jews in ‘The History of Sexuality’?” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 3 (1995): 333–55. Clines, David J. A. “He-Prophets: Masculinity as a Problem for the Hebrew Prophets and Their Interpreters.” In Sense and Sensitivity: Essays on Reading the Bible in Memory of Robert Carroll, edited by Robert P. Carroll, Alastair G. Hunter, and Philip R. Davies, 311–27. JSOTSup 348. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Graybill, Rhiannon. “Yahweh as Maternal Vampire in Second Isaiah: Reading from Violence to Fluid Possibility with Luce Irigaray.” Journal of feminist studies in religion 33, no. 1 (2017): 9–25. Haddox, Susan E. “Engaging Images in the Prophets: Feminist Scholarship on the Book of the Twelve.” In Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Retrospect. 1. Biblical Books, edited by Susanne Scholz, 170–91. RRBS 5. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013. Koch, Timothy R. “Cruising as Methodology: Homoeroticism and the Scriptures.” In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ken Stone, 169–80. JSOTSup 334. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2001. Tigay, Jeffrey. “‘ Heavy of Mouth’ and ‘Heavy of Tongue’: On Moses’ Speech Difficulty.” BASOR, no. 231 (October 1978): 57–67.

books: Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Bauer-Levesque, Angela. Gender in the Book of Jeremiah: A Feminist-Literary Reading. SiBL 5. New York: P. Lang, 1999. Black, Fiona C., and Jennifer L. Koosed, eds. Reading with Feeling : Affect Theory and the Bible. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2019. Brenner, Athalya. The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and “Sexuality” in the Hebrew Bible. BIS 26. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Camp, Claudia V. Wise, Strange, and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible. JSOTSup 320. Gender, Culture, Theory 9. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter. HSM 62. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004. Creangă, Ovidiu, ed. Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond. BMW 33. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. God’s Phallus: And Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Boston: Beacon, 1995. Huber, Lynn R., and Rhiannon Graybill, eds. The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality : Critical Readings. London, UK ; T&T Clark, 2021. Guest, Deryn. When Deborah Met Jael: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics. London: SCM, 2005. Graybill, Rhiannon, Meredith Minister, and Beatrice J. W. Lawrence, eds. Rape Culture and Religious Studies : Critical and Pedagogical Engagements. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019. Graybill, Rhiannon. Are We Not Men? : Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA, 2016. Halperin, David J. Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. Jennings, Theodore W. Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel. New York: Continuum, 2005. Macwilliam, Stuart. Queer Theory and the Prophetic Marriage Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. BibleWorld. Sheffield and Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2011. Maier, Christl. Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2008. Mills, Mary E. Alterity, Pain, and Suffering in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. LHB/OTS 479. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2007. Stökl, Jonathan, and Corrine L. Carvalho. Prophets Male and Female: Gender and Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Ancient Near East. AIL 15. Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2013. Stone, Ken. Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective. Queering Theology Series. London: T & T Clark International, 2004. Weems, Renita J. Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets. OBT. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995.