#her astronomy books are from 2008

[earth-wyrms]

crying, wailing, ect

[image ID in alt text]

[solecize]

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 | 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐤𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: every summer on your grandpa's farm was real-life magic to your younger self, who left a piece of her heart in amber valley when the years went on and the town became nothing but a faint childhood memory. soon enough, you become rocked by his death and realize the dead end in your bustling city world. this leads to you making an abrupt decision.

despite knowing nothing but designer purses and the corporate ladder, you uproot your entire life to take over your grandfather's old farm in the town you were desperately trying to remember - alongside a familiar face from your youth that permanently finds his way into your heart.

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: jungkook/reader 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒. inspired heavily by stardew valley, friends to lovers, childhood friends, cowboy jungkook, small town alternate universe, slice of life, grief, growing up, mutual pining 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓. 4.6k 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒. n/a

part three: the letters, the saloon and the second storm  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ   ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ   ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ previous. next. masterlist

  vi. the letters

september 2nd 2008 (age 9)

dear jungkook,

  my mom said i should write you letters. i don’t really know what to say here. you better be visiting marshmallow and be nice to her while i’m gone. i miss her a lot. i guess i miss having you around since i don’t have anyone to play guitar hero with…

p.s. happy late birthday maybe i can visit and come to your party next year if my mom lets me

  from y/n

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

january 19th 2009 (age 10)

dear y/n,

  i learned how to skate for the first time. it’s too bad the ice will be gone when you’re back and we won’t get to skate together. i can’t believe we’ll be in middle school soon. are you scared? hoseok and namjoon say it’s not a big deal. also, i saw your grandpa yesterday and he showed me how to use a tapper on a maple tree. so cool!

p.s. you should ask your mom if you can visit earlier this year

  from jungkook

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

april 23rd 2009 (age 10)

HEY JUNGKOOK,

  look inside the box, i sent you a book with this letter. i told you in my last letter that i would send you one. it’s astronomy for dummies (because you’re a dummy). you better read it before i come back to grandpa’s, okay?? you have a month and a half loser.

from y/n

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

september 30th 2009 (age 10)

hi y/n,

  jimin sprained his ankle during gym class. your grandpa told me to write that because it probably just made your day. i feel a little bit bad for him, the nurse at our school is really mean. also i know it’s a month away but i’m so excited for halloween. my dad got me this really cool goku costume. what are you gonna dress up as?

  from jungkook

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

february 4th 2010 (age 11)

jungkook,

  i’m so tired of my parents fighting all the time. all they do is yell. i can’t wait to be back in amber valley so i don’t have to hear them all the time. i wish i had your parents, they’re so nice. also i hate my class. it’s so hard to be friends with the girls that sit next to me, they always leave me out of things. don’t you miss elementary school?

  from y/n

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

may 17th 2010 (age 11)

dear y/n,

  guess what. my dad got me a skateboard!! it’s so cool. if you’re nice to me i’ll let you borrow it. we should see who can do the coolest trick. it’ll be me of course i’m better than you at everything LOL. you better hurry and come back!

  from jungkook

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

november 25th 2010 (age 11)

hi jungkook, 

  i can’t believe i’ll only be living with my dad soon. do you think my mom doesn’t want me? honestly, i’d rather just live with grandpa all the time. then i could see marshmallow everyday all year! or maybe you can convince your mom to take me in. actually, i take that back, i could never live with you. you’re so messy. 

p.s. i got my own skateboard!! it’s cold now but i’m gonna practice and bring it with me next summer

  ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ    ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ  ***

february 18th 2011 (age 12)

y/n,

  i know you’re super sad and stuff. i’m sorry about your parents. we’re gonna have the best summer ever though and maybe you won’t think so much about it. look at the bucket list i made!

eat breakfast for dinner

watch the captain america movie

ride the big kids ride at the midsummer fair (i’m tall enough now so you better be too)

stay up all night

make ice cream

  if you have any ideas, add on! hope you’re doing okay :( 

  from jungkook

  vii. the saloon

when jungkook mentioned the saloon to you, you thought it was a joke poking at the countryside life. 

  “oh, it’s actually called a saloon. like, unironically. that’s what the text said,” you rambled into your phone, edged between your ear and shoulder, as you stood in your kitchen in front of your laptop.

  on the screen, you were assembling an excel sheet of sorts to assist your navigation through the business side of the farm. thankfully, this was exactly the field you had long worked and studied in and knowing this before taking on your new role made the transition far easier. there was hardly any product to be profiting from, as you had just arrived, and you were preparing the document before the time came to deal with vendors and other local businesses.

  “oh, honey, that place has actually been called ‘the saloon’ ever since i was a little girl,” your mom’s voice chimed in from the other end.

  since the turn of your early twenties, your phone calls to your parents were far and few between and you could hear the surprise in her tone when she initially picked up. but, your grandpa’s letter seemed to be growing truer everyday, as your surroundings made drew you to reconnect with what you thought was to be lost.

  eyebrows furrowed, you continued to scroll through your work. “mom, do you think he meant it as a date? i can’t do a date, i literally just got here!”

  “calm down. it’s that amber valley hospitality. but,” your mom paused, “you did have crushes on each other growing up.”

  “mom, no way - “

  she merely laughed. “it was so obvious! you mailed a valentine’s day card to jungkook every year. one time, he punched little jimin because he called you ‘jungkook’s ugly girlfriend.’”

  “and then he screamed that i wasn’t ugly. huh, i do remember that,” you began to think. 

  spending time reminiscing with your mom momentarily distracted you from the anxiety you felt, waiting for the evening to come. jungkook did end up texting you, asking if you were coming down to the saloon for the birthday surprise. you looked away and closed your eyes when you pressed ‘send’ on the confirmation that you would drop by.

  the idea made you nervous only because it had been so long since you went out and met new people. there was no such thing as free time in your old life and you really only maintained surface-level friendships with your coworkers in your last year of the job.  however, knowing amber valley and the tight-knit community, it was only a matter of time before you got acquainted with everyone, whether you liked it or not.

  by the time it was six, you’d forced yourself to get changed and inspected your outfit several times before leaving. the last thing you wanted to do was stand out too much. so, you put on your favourite denim jeans and a plain long sleeve top, putting away your go-to strappy stilettos for the night. 

  making your way into town was quick and soon enough, you found the pub situated in between the flower shop and the hardware store. it definitely looked like it’d been around since your mom was a little girl, the exterior siding showing age with chips here and there. 

  “hey y/n.”

  you jumped, having not paid attention to your surroundings. turning around, it was taehyung holding a box adorned in magenta polka dot wrapping. he wore a similar outfit to the one from the day before, except a different cowboy hat. you wondered if there was a store in town that specialized in selling just these hats.

  “hi taehyung. is this for jin?” you offered a smile, gesturing to the box.

  a pleased grin formed on taehyung’s face. “yup. i’m pretty sure i got him the best gift out of everyone, but don’t tell anyone.”

  he walked ahead of you and opened the door, pausing. you realized he was opening it for you and you quickly thanked him, going right in. small town hospitality. 

  it was saturday evening, but to your surprise, there were hardly any patrons in the bar. taehyung then pointed to a sign by the door, which you missed completely. it read: ‘private event, invite only.’ 

  “oh, wow, am i v.i.p?” you joked, following him to the back of the room, where a stack of presents were grouped on one table. 

  “of course! you’re jungkook’s friend, after all,” he exclaimed, setting his box down with the others. “you guys go way back, huh? how long has it been since you guys since saw each other?”

  you counted in your head. “i think twelve or thirteen years. a while.”

  “what, no facebook back in the day?” he teased.

  “no, he was never nearly fond of that. after i stopped coming for the summers, we lost contact completely.” you couldn’t recall any attempts for continued communication afterwards, other than your grandpa offering updates here and there about him. “we used to write, but i don’t know what happened. . .”

  for a while, you wondered why jungkook never wrote you again after you stopped coming to the valley. admittedly, looking back, it hurt your preteen self that he never tried. but, eventually, you moved on and left jungkook in your childhood.

  taehyung nodded slowly. “so. . .you didn’t know about what happened?”

  you already knew what he was talking about and squeezed your eyes shut in embarrassment. “no. i felt really bad about it.”

  “it’s okay. since i moved to town, i’ve really admired jungkook. if there’s any sort of pain, he hides it really well for the sake of others,” he said, leaning on the wall.

  that sounded like the jungkook you remembered. he was always the type to put others before himself, no matter how small the issue. then, you began thinking about jiwon.

  “taehyung, can i ask you something?” you suddenly said. “jiwon. she’s only nine. and jungkook doesn’t have any other family. . .”

  the smile at the corner of taehyung’s lips was sad. “yeah. jungkook is her primary guardian and has been since he was nineteen.”

  the answer seemed to weigh a hundred pounds and you had to take a second to take it all in. there were so many questions that formed, floating around your head and you couldn't seem to find the words to articulate any of them. before you could even try, you jumped again at the sudden appearance of two new individuals, one of them being jungkook himself and forced you to put away your thoughts.

  “we’re behind schedule, did yoongi put the cake in the fridge?” this new person was turned to taehyung, carrying a case of beer. “we need - oh, hi! y/n! i totally remember you, i heard you were back!”

  you’d never seen someone with such energy, exhibiting positivity like a ray of sunshine. it seemed like he was genuinely delighted to see you. taking a closer look at his features, you recognized him to be jung hoseok - jungkook’s next door neighbour. he put down the case in his hands and immediately pulled you into a bone-crushing hug.

  “hoseok, hi!” you winced, trying your best to hug him back, but it certainly made you burst into a giggle.

  he was the first person to remember you on the spot, which took you aback. a few years older than you, you weren’t as close with him as you were with jungkook growing up, but he was always around. you remember him as the big brother who showed you and jungkook the cool ‘older kid’ shows and games that your parents would have never let you watch at that young age. 

  “how have you been? you look so grown up! you’re really staying here for good?” the questions were rapid-fire, one after another.

  beside him, jungkook was smiling, but tapped hoseok to bring him back into the main conversation. “hyung. hyung! we’re behind schedule, remember?” he groaned, but grinned wider when you met his eyes. “nice to see you, though, bunny. really glad you came.”

  “oh, right.” hoseok quickly let go and cleared his throat, beginning to point to each of you with authority. “you, taehyung. go help jimin with the slideshow. namjoon has the pinata.”

  pinata? how old was this jin person, was he one of jiwon’s friends?

  “you, jungkook. jin said he’s five minutes away, we need you to distract him for a bit longer.”

  “can i help?” you piped in, feeling a bit out of place. “i mean, i’m here as a last minute guest, i’m happy to help in any way.”

  hoseok clapped his hands together in glee. “thank you, y/n! go help jungkook distract jin, you being there will give him a reason to yap on. let’s go team!” he raised his fist in encouragement and in the blink of an eye, he already dashed off. 

  at this, jungkook seemed unfazed and frankly, so were you. you remember hoseok’s personality to be like this - extremely vigorous and could never sit in one place. on the other hand, taehyung looked perplexed as much as he appeared amused. he only shrugged, picking up the case of beer that hoseok clearly forgot.

  “let’s go team, i guess. i’ll see you guys in a bit!” taehyung chuckled, walking off.

  you were expecting to be asked to move around chairs or help bring out food. this wasn’t quite in your cards. you turned to jungkook in confusion, who chuckled at your expression.

  “come follow me.”

  he led the two of you back out the saloon, hands in his jean pockets. the early summer air was stunningly humid and coming outside was like hitting a muggy and sticky wall. but, there was one thing that couldn’t be replaced.

  you couldn’t help but stare up at the sky, a fixed gaze. “you can really see the stars when you’re in the valley.”

  the stars, dotted across the night, twinkled and smiled down at you. it was a view that others only romanticized and dreamt of in carefully crafted paintings and poems made to move the soul. and now, this dream was your new home. 

  jungkook mimicked the way you tilted your head up, lost with his own gaze. “i’ve lived here all my life and i never get tired of it.”

  “i can’t believe i forgot about this. . .” you trailed off.

  he pointed out to the sky. “that one is ursa major and you can see - “

  “ - the big dipper,” the two of you said in unison, which led to a shared laughter. 

astronomy was one of your biggest interests growing up, having stacks of books and a tapestry of the night sky in your childhood bedroom. your bedroom in the farmhouse also had a shelf full of astronomy books, which your grandpa still kept until his passing. having ignored the task of organizing and arranging your new bedroom, which was the same room you occupied over your summers in amber valley, you made a note to go through this shelf when you arrived home.

  jungkook said, “you’re the one that taught me about that,” he turned back to you. “you actually used to randomly quiz me on constellations, it was really stressful.”

  you could see your younger self sitting on your grandpa’s porch steps with jungkook, who lazied on the hammock across from you. you would compile actual multiple-choice questions and threw pebbles at him whenever he got an answer wrong. eventually, your grandpa scolded you for that, so you changed your weapon of choice to toy balls.

  “i guess my lessons paid off, though,” you bantered.

  following this, you heard a person shout jungkook’s name. you looked over and saw a man walking in your direction. he was tall and handsome and his smile was inviting. a little too handsome, he reminded you of models you’d seen in high fashion ads. his clothes contributed to the image, a patterned short sleeve button down and t-shirt that gave off neat and put-together. he wore jeans like what seemed to be 90 percent of the town, but you noticed the luxury brand belt. 

  “oh, seokjin!” to this, jungkook nudged you, as if signalling for you to be ready for something.

  this was jin? the birthday boy with a pinata? he had to be around hoseok’s age.

  “hey! hoseok told me to meet him here, have you see him?” seokjin began looking around. “he is working tonight, right?”

  “uh, did he?” jungkook’s tone was not convincing and you couldn’t believe the hoseok made such a horrible liar be the distraction. “i think he is, want me to call him?”

  “um, yeah. he said he was returning something he borrowed from me.” seokjin looked at him strangely. “why don’t i just go inside and check? why are you just waiting out here?”

  “this is y/n!” jungkook suddenly blurted out, seemingly having no way around the conversation. his smile was painful and avoided making eye contact.

  your eyes went wide and seokjin turned to you, having not realized there was another person in his presence. “oh, i’m so sorry! i didn’t see you there.”

  “yeah, hi, that’s me. y/n.” this time, it was jungkook looking at you like you were the least convincing person in the world. you cleared your throat and offered a handshake to seokjin.

  seokjin didn’t seem to notice your awkwardness and took your hand. “it’s really nice to meet you. jungkook actually told me a lot about you!” it was subtle, but you could hear jungkook groan. 

  you raised your eyebrows at jungkook. “oh, did he?” 

  “you guys grew up together, right? and you���re taking over the old farm?” 

  although you could tell right off the bat that seokjin wasn’t from amber valley, his deamanour was just as welcoming and friendly. he asked you a few questions about where you’re from and how settling in was. 

  “i’m sure you’ll be a natural. it sounds like you already have a lot of experience!” seokjin exclaimed and his positivity gave you genuine reassurance. “we’re all friends around here, so don’t be shy to reach out if you need anything.”

  “thank you,” you replied.

  jungkook tried to regain his composure. “seokjin runs the bakery down the street.”

  “yeah! my wife and i used to buy eggs from your grandpa all the time, hopefully we can keep doing that,” seokjin winked at you. 

  then, the front door of the saloon cracked open just enough for hoseok to poke his head outside. there was no sign of activity from the inside, with the lights now off and all voices coming to a complete silence. 

  seokjin tilted his head slightly when looking at hoseok. “there you are. are you. . closed? the bar is closed on a saturday night?” he asked.

  “yeah, uh, plumbing issues,” hoseok’s eyes darted over to you and jungkook. “y/n, jungkook! what brings you here around this time of day? you should all come in!”

  despite the growing skepticsm etched on his face, seokjin glanced over to you two and shrugged. he followed his friend’s gesture to come inside. 

  you mumbled to jungkook, “you and your friends are all terrible liars.” to this, jungkook stifled a laugh and playfully jabbed his elbow into your arm. 

  hoseok opened the door wider and seokjin went in first, while you and jungkook trailed after. you were surprised at how well they made the interior appear deserted, with not a single soul in sight. you did noticed that they even stacked the chairs on the tables, as if the establishment was really closed.

  “by the way, hoseok is the manager of the saloon,” jungkook leaned into your ear and whispered. 

  the floorboards creaked with every step, only adding onto the heavy silence in the atmosphere. seokjin looked around, eyebrows furrowed. he cleared his throat, hoping to cut the awkward tension.

  seokjin started, “so, y/n, what happened with you and ju - “

  “surprise!”

  all of the lights flickered on and filled the room. upbeat music turned on suddenly, causing seokjin to jump and yelp. two dozen or so people popped out from random places - underneath the booths, from behind the walls, and from behind the bar. balloons and streamers began spilling out from out of nowhere.

  “happy birthday seokjin!” everyone yelled in unison.

  you awkwardly tried to join in once you caught onto what everyone was saying. despite that, the high energy ended up engulfing you and you couldn’t help but smile. some of the boys started throwing streamers at seokjin, while namjoon appeared from under the bar with a lit chocolate cake and began approaching the birthday boy in question.

  “thanks, y/n!” hoseok nudged you, as everyone began singing to seokjin. “it’s exciting that you’re around again!” 

  as the song concluded and seokjin enthusastically blew out his candles, you cheered along with everyone else. over the cheering, jungkook found his way to you again. he raised his hand, offering a high-five, which you immediately accepted.

  something about the atmosphere unlocked something inside you. within days, you were welcomed into the community and for the first time in a long time, saw people that could become your actual friends. maybe this was what your grandpa was talking about.

  “yeah,” jungkook added, “it is exciting that you’re around again.”

  “real connections. . .” you muttered to yourself, remembering the contents of your grandpa’s letter.

  the yelling got louder, as the partygoers chanted for seokjin to make a speech. “huh, what did you say?” jungkook shouted over the chanting. 

  “nothing!” 

  you weren’t prepared for the next part of grandpa’s wish for you. it was a surprise to you that you were able to ease into the town and become comfortable connecting with the people around you. at the end of the day, though, you had a farm to run and you were about to face the worst of it. 

  viii. the second storm

your grandpa’s last wishes for you were to reconnect with people and nature. nature. you didn’t realize what you were getting yourself into.

  “oh my god! why does mother nature hate me?!”

  the best thing about living in a big farmhouse by yourself was the fact that you could make as much noise as you wanted. you often found yourself yelling at the top of your lungs, shrieking like a bird when you came across anything frustrating. considering you were learning an entirely new job on your own, it happened quite often.

  you screamed into the void after your first phone call with a vendor, who kept on asking you if you knew what you were doing. you swore you almost broke your vocal cords when you sunk into the mud the first time you checked out the fields after a rainy night. at least you walked away several metres from the coop before you screeched in agony after the chickens gave you a hard morning on time. 

  when a soft knock on your front door interrupted your emotional breakdown, your heart stopped. 

  “fuck!” you whispered to yourself.

  who would be visiting you? what if it was someone important, like mayor kim? maybe they didn’t hear - no, they definitely heard. 

  you tentatively approached the door and took a deep breathe before swinging it open.

  “i didn’t know you started tending to hyenas on the farm.”

  it was jungkook with a lazy, shit-eating grin. it was early in the morning, about 8am, and he wore workout clothes. baggy grey sweatpants and a white nike tank-top, you felt like you were straining to keep your eyes on his face and not anywhere else. 

  “oh, shut it. good morning to you, too,” you shot back. “to what do i owe the pleasure?”

  “sorry, i would’ve texted, but i was already passing by on my run,” jungkook said.

  it’d been about a week since you last saw him, though he was nice enough to check in on you every once in a while to see if you were doing okay with the farm. you hardly left home, used to the same routine of working and going right to bed everyday from your old life and the habit was hard to break. 

  he continued, “anyway, i saw your windows hanging from outside and i just wanted to make sure - “

  you opened the front door wider for him to see the state of your front entryway and his jaw dropped. there was water everywhere on the floor. the storm from the night before was aggressive and the age of the house couldn’t stand it. you didn’t anticipate for it to be this bad, having just shoved the windows closed before you went to bed.

  “yeah, they’re wrecked,” you sighed, looking over to what was left of it, considering most of it was on the ground. “actually, that’s why i was screaming.”

  “you know, i take what i said back. totally justified.”

  “thanks,” you rolled your eyes and sighed. he made a gesture as if to come in and you obliged, carefully stepping aside and making sure you weren’t stepping in a puddle. “i’m surprised this hasn’t happened before.”

  he let out a low whistle, as he walked inside and took in the sight of your floors. “honestly, me neither. you would think this would’ve happened already ages ago.”

  you didn’t know what else to do but shrug. “i can handle it.” despite your words, you certainly could not handle it. there were still a million things you had to take care of around the farm and dealing with broken windows and water was an incredible burden that you didn’t know where to start.

  “shit. look, i have to go to work in a bit, but let me help you out,” jungkook said. 

  you instantly shook your head. “jungkook, no. it’s fine, really, i got it.”

  “you’ve never picked up a screwdriver in your life.”

  “hey, you don’t know that!” you wanted to slap him upside the head like from when you were kids, but found the strength to refrain.

  it was only jokes and jungkook’s smirk showed it, but his tone then became serious. “okay, then, at least let me help you fix your windows. dude, you live alone in this big ass house on this big ass farm. just say yes.” 

  at this point, you could tell he was exasperated with your stubborness and you laughed at it. you weren’t one to turn down someone offering to do manual labour for you, but you were hesitant to show any lack of indepdence. though, something told you to say yes and it wasn’t jungkook’s annoyance with your persistence. 

  “okay, fine. you’re real annoying, you know that?” you had to add in the last part, it was only natural. 

  he shook his head. “thank you - oh, how lucky i am for milady to accept my lousy, peasant self to fix your windows!” at that, you shoved him playfully and when he barely moved from your push, jungkook couldn’t help but chuckle. 

  “i know you’re perfectly capable of doing things yourself, by the way. you just shouldn’t have to all the time,” he gave you a pointed look. 

  you nodded slowly, looking down at your feet. “thank you, jungkook.” 

  though it was only 8 in the morning, you decided to take a later start in the day, since you usually woke up at the crack of dawn. you had your entire day ahead of you and what felt like a hundred things to do and the last thing you wanted to add was a trip to the hardware store.

  “of course,” he carefully tiptoed around the water, moving back to the front door. “it’s what friends are for. i’ll come by tomorrow morning, how’s that sound?”

  this is not what you meant when you decided to “reconnect with nature” at all. with your fluffy indoor slippers soaked in rainwater, you were certainly more than connected with it. you made a mental note to visit the beach and call it a day, hoping that would fulfill your grandpa’s wish for you to be one with mother earth and that the forces of nature would leave you alone after that.

𝐓𝐀𝐆 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓. @sstrongstyletyle @wobblewobble822 @seokoutt @firelcrds @taiwan0618

[caroldanversinatardis]

Thoughts on Ahsoka

For context, I've seen all of Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, Andor, Kenobi, Episodes I-IX, The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, Rogue One, Tales of the Jedi, and Visions 1-2. I've read the new Vader comics, but my knowledge of Legends lore is limited at best. Clone Wars is my favorite piece of Star Wars material. Ahsoka has ALWAYS been my favorite character since she came to the screen in 2008 and I was a small mammal of 8 years old, mostly because of how much I saw myself and who I wanted to be in her. I still do. I am excited for the show, a little apprehensive, and overall hopeful to see more new Star Wars content.

Thoughts on Ahsoka so far (spoilers ahead):

This is definitely Rebels part 2, and that's not a bad thing! Don't expect Clone Wars (maybe not yet at least?). There's some awesome cameos from Rebels!

The longer montrals was a good call. I like the casting of Rosario Dawson for Ahsoka.

Right off the bat with classic shots from Episode IV and V?? BEAUTIFUL.

What happened to Ahsoka's reverse grip?!!

I thought I would not vibe with Sabine's actor but she is quickly becoming my favorite. She has the most accurate transition from animated to live action character so far. I like her a lot.

The return of Huyang!! Him and Sabine are quickly becoming my new favorite pair on screen. David Tennant in Star Wars is great.

Loth cats are cute, still not cuter than Grogu. I like the puppetry skills on the Loth cat. Good fluffy addition. Now add Loth Wolves 😁

CHOPPER 🤩 I LOVE THIS STUPID MURDER BOT EVEN MORE IN LIVE ACTION

Hera and Ahsoka feel very different on screen live action than animated, but still are great!

WHY. CAN. EVERYONE. ELSE. WALK. AWAY. FROM. LIGHTSABER. TO. THE. GUT. This is absurd. Either bring back Qui-Gon, Han Solo, and Satine, or kill Sabine. Star Wars needs to be consistent on its wounds.

NIGHTSISTERS!! I want my witches!!!

I am liking the dynamic of "I was a Jedi" going on among the Force users. The galaxy of the New Republic lacks a clear dichotomy between good and bad. Maybe this whole show will be about how people exist in between the two.

I am SO EXCITED for the World Between Worlds connection! I have been waiting for more about this for ages!!

2 GALAXIES??? Are we breaking away from "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away?" Also, isn't the Deneb system....just...Deneb the star in Cygnus? I have astronomy questions!

Did we get ANOTHER Inquisitor?!?!

Sabine is the FIRST MANDALORIAN JEDI since Tarre Viszla?!?!!! I was REALLY unsure from the trailers what the heck was going on with her character whether or not she was all of a sudden going to become a Force user, but I'm not opposed to it so far. What is the extent of Sabine's Force-sensitivity? Will she be a Padawan with little to no Force skills? I want to see her on a jetpack with a lightsaber and slicing away at droids.

Sabine is a genius in art and tech and a badass fighter. Hera is a genius in flying and mechanics and a badass fighter. Two geniuses, two amazing people. 😁

Go give the show a chance. I'm happy so far seeing my favorite in live action.

[seeselfblack]

NASA's Real 'Hidden Figures'

In the 1960s, Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn and others absorbed the accolades of being the first men in space. Behind the scenes, they were supported by hundreds of unheralded NASA workers, including "human computers" who did the calculations for their orbital trajectories. "Hidden Figures," a 2016 book by Margot Lee Shetterly and a movie based on the book, celebrates the contributions of some of those workers.

Beginning in 1935, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor of NASA, hired hundreds of women as computers. The job title designated someone who performed mathematical equations and calculations by hand, according to a NASA history. The computers worked at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia.

Human computers were not a new concept. In the late 19th and early 20th century, female “computers” at Harvard University analyzed star photos to learn more about their basic properties. These women made discoveries still fundamental to astronomy today. For example: Williamina Fleming is best known for classifying stars based on their temperature, and Annie Jump Cannon developed a stellar classification system still used today (from hottest to coolest stars: O, B, A, F, G, K, M.)

During World War II, the computer pool was expanded. Langley began recruiting African-American women with college degrees to work as computers, according to NASA. However, segregation policies required that these women work in a separate section, called the West Area Computers — although computing sections became more integrated after the first several years.

As the years passed and the center evolved, the West Computers became engineers, (electronic) computer programmers, the first black managers at Langley and trajectory whizzes whose work propelled the first American, John Glenn, into orbit in 1962.

Mary Jackson (1921-2005)

Jackson hailed from Hampton, Virginia. She graduated with high marks from high school and received a bachelor of science degree from the Hampton Institute in Mathematics and Physical Science, according to a biography posted on NASA's website. She began her career as a schoolteacher, and took on several other jobs before joining NACA.

As a computer with the all-black West Area Computing section, she was involved with wind tunnels and flight experiments. Her job was to extract the relevant data from experiments and flight tests. She also tried to help other women advance in their career, according to the biography, by advising them on what educational opportunities to pursue.

"She discovered that occasionally it was something as simple as a lack of a couple of courses, or perhaps the location of the individual, or perhaps the assignments given them, and of course, the ever present glass ceiling that most women seemed to encounter," stated the biography.

After 30 years with NACA and NASA (at which point she was an engineer), Jackson decided to become an equal opportunity specialist to help women and minorities. Although described as a behind-the-scenes sort of worker, she helped many people get promoted or become supervisors. She retired from NASA in 1985.

Katherine Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's mission in 1961 and John Glenn's mission in 1962.

Katherine Johnson (born 1918)

Johnson showed early brilliance in West Virginia schools by being promoted several years ahead of her age, according to NASA. She attended a high school on the campus of West Virginia State College by age 13, and began attending the college at age 18. After graduating with highest honors, she started work as a schoolteacher in 1937.

Two years later, when the college chose to integrate its graduate schools, Johnson and two male students were offered spots. She quickly enrolled, but left to have children. In 1953, when she was back in the workforce, Johnson joined the West Area Computing section at Langley.

She began her career working with data from flight tests, but her life quickly changed after the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in 1957. For example, some of her math equations were used in a lecture series compendium called Notes on Space Technology. These lectures were given by engineers that later formed the Space Task Group, NACA's section on space travel.

For the Mercury missions, Johnson did trajectory analysis for Shepard's Freedom 7 mission in 1961, and (at John Glenn's request) did the same job for his orbital mission in 1962. Despite Glenn's trajectory being planned by computers, Glenn reportedly wanted Johnson herself to run through the equations to make sure they were safe.

"When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo's Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module," NASA wrote. "She also worked on the space shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports."

Johnson retired from NASA In 1986. At age 97, in 2015, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Dorothy Vaughan (1910-2008)

Dorothy Vaughan became the first black supervisor at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor of NASA, in 1949.

Vaughan joined the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1943 after beginning her career as a math teacher in Farmville, Virginia. Her job during World War II was a temporary position, but (in part thanks to a new executive order prohibiting discrimination in the defense industry) she was hired on permanently because the laboratory had a wealth of data to process.

Still, the law required that she and her black colleagues needed to work separately from white female computers, and the first supervisors were white. Vaughan became the first black NACA supervisor in 1949 and made sure that her employees received promotions or pay raises if merited.

Her segregation was ended in 1958 when NACA became NASA, at which point NASA created an analysis and computation division. Vaughan was an expert programmer in FORTRAN, a prominent computer language of the day, and also contributed to a satellite-launching rocket called Scout (Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test). She retired from NASA in 1971.

Additional resources:

NASA Biography: Katherine Johnson

NASA Biography: Dorothy Vaughan

NASA Biography: Mary Jackson

[lovemesomesurveys]

5,000 questions survey series--part forty-one

3901. What is the most annoying tv ad? Most of them are. I pretty much just tune ‘em out, but they sometimes sneak their way in anyway. 3902. If you died, how would you hope others would remember you? I mean, in a positive way of course. 3903. Name 2 questions that you will most likely never say 'no' to: 1. Do you want coffee? 2. Do you want to go on vacation? 3904. What is the softest part of your body? I mean, most of it is except for my hands. 3905. What family do you want to see in place of the Osbournes when they finally stop doing their show? I can’t get over how old this survey really is wow. This show aired from 2002 to 2005. :O Anyway, the next big family of reality TV was obviously the Kardashians. They’ve been on since like 2008/2009.

3906. If you could pick 3 bands to go on tour together who would they be? Linkin Park, Coldplay, and The Foo Fighters.  3907. What is a main differance between western and eastern philospohy? Uhh. 3908. Would you be fooled by Joe/Josephine Millionaire? I never watched the show, but I know the premise. The women thought they were on a dating competition show dating this millionaire guy, but turns out wasn’t a millionaire at all and was just some average Joe (literally). At the end he makes his choice and then comes clean about the whole thing. Anyway, to answer the question, I would never go on a show like this or ever date a guy for his money, but hypothetically speaking I suppose I probably would be fooled by it because they did all this outlandish things on the show and he seemed to really have money. I wouldn’t have a reason to think it was all a lie  (though obviously it was). 

3909. Do you believe Michael Jackson does innoprpriate things at his Neverland Ranch? Like what? This was highly talked about and brought to light again earlier this year and based on the documentary, he did in fact do inappropriate things at his Neverland Ranch. A lot of inappropriate things. 3910. What do you think of gov. Ryan who cleared out Illinois' death row? I know nothing about that. 3911. Would you want a $500 gift certificate to: Kmart or Target? Macy's or Hot Topic? Border's Books or Spencer Gifts? (Sadly, Borders no longer exists) Victoria's Secret or Frederick's of Hollywood? 3912. What do you think of this website: www.blackpeopleloveus.com/ I’ve never heard of it and I don’t feel like checking it out.  3913. Man vs Elephant. A zookeeper was treating a constipated elephant. He gave her too much laxitive. Suddenly everything exploded out onto the zookeeper. He was knocked to the ground where he hit his head on a rock and got knocked out. There he suffocated under a pile of elephant dung. True story. Is it a funy story? No, I never find a person’s death funny. If yes, what is funny about it? Why is it so taboo to laugh at death? Because it’s a very sensitive subject and just not something to laugh about, regardless of who it is or what the circumstances are.  3914. What are your favorite five things from this list: alternate realities, animals, astronomy, birds, camus, cats, cheap trick, cocaine, cooking, costumes, dancing, elvis, gambling, greta garbo, james dean, jeff buckley, joy division, marilyn monroe, mixed drinks, moody blues, morrissey, mozart, my bloody valentine, orbital, pizza, playing flute, prince, radiohead, rummy 500, scrabble, table tennis, talk talk, van morrison, writing 

^^^ Only 4 things but oh well. 3915. Do you have to read lots to be able to write well? No? I mean, it definitely helps, sure, but you can still be a great writer without having read a lot. 3916. Vanilla ice. Everyone loved him, suddenly everyone hated him. What was the deal?? I forget what the issue was. 3917. If you could kick one person out of the grammies who would it be (Avril, Eminem, etc)? 3918. Studies have revealed that when sending out a resume a person has a 50% higher chance of getting a responce if their name is white sounding than if it is black sounding. What do you think about this? Why do companies respond this way? 3919. Should Big Fat Greek Wedding really be a Big Fat Greek sitcom? I never had the interest in seeing the movie, so I wouldn’t have cared to see a sitcom either. I don’t remember if there was one or not. I feel like there was? 3920. What are you addicted to? Caffeine. And truthfully, after many years on my pain medication my body has become dependent.  3921. What fascinates you? Psychology. 3922. What is fascinating about you? Ha, nothing. I’m so boring. 3923. Personality wise, is anything the same for all human beings and if so, what? I don’t think so. 3924. What kind of a contest woud you have a shot at winning? A simple one where I just submit an entry in, ha. I’m not doing anything requiring more than that. 3925. You see a dirty punk kid who had a giant cowboy hat on who is rolling his own cigarettes. Your impression? I don’t care. 3926. What would you never want to have more than 2 of? Hmm. 3927. Is there a movie you just could not finish watching? What and why? Yeah, but of course I can’t think of an example right now. It’s pretty rare for me not to finish a movie even if I’m not into it, but it has happened. 3928. Is there anyone that you love and want to be around for no explainable reason? I mean, I love to be around my family. It’s explainable, though. I love them and enjoy spending time together. 3929. Would you go to times square for new years? Noooo. That sounds like an absolute nightmare. 3930. Do you think that there are to many signs blocking up the scenery? In some places. 3931. Did video really kill the radio star? Yep. Video later died, too. I mean, yeah artists still make music videos, but it’s not at all as big a hype anymore like I feel it was back in the day during the TRL days and when MTV actually played music videos all the time. 3932. What was your favorite atari game? I’ve actually never played. 3933. what is your favorite neon color? I don’t have a favorite neon color. 3934. Do you get depressed eveytime it rains? If yes, why? No. I love the rain. 3935. 'The more you admit that all your actions are robotic, the less robotic you are.' What does Tim leary mean by this? Maybe because if you admit it then that means you’re conscious and aware.  Do you agree or disagree and why? How much of your actions do you admit are robotic? I feel like I live on autopilot. 3936. Are we not men? Uh, not all of us. 3937. Is it easy to be you? Would being someone else make it any easier? No, it definitely not easy for me and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever think it was. It’s not easy for anyone; though, despite what it might look like. Everyone has their struggles. 3938. Why are sex religion and politics such taboo subjects? Because people have very strong opinions about it and they’re just very sensitive topics. 3939. Is there really a differance between republicans and democrats? Yeah? 3940. Imagine someone has a great personality, sense or humor, family and job. they also really really like you a lot. Would you consider dating them if they: were fat? Yes. I care a lot more about a person’s personality and I would not reject someone because of something like weight.  limped? Sure? I’m in a wheelchair, so who am I to judge a limp. were a midget? I totally do not mean this in a mean or shallow way at ALL, but I honestly don’t know. That’s only because I think as someone in a wheelchair, I would like to be with someone who would be able to lift /carry me and/or my chair. were paralized in one arm? Yes. Again, I’m paralyzed from the waist down, so. had a glass eye? Yes. That’s not a big deal. had only 6 months to live? I wouldn’t want to enter a relationship, no. I would gladly be there as a friend for support. 3941. What makes you experiance nostalgia? A lot of things. I’m a very nostalgic person. I really miss my childhood and have been feeling more sad about it lately. I think cause I’m turning 30 soon and just feeling old. 3942. What do you remember about these historical figures: Woodrow Wilson? He was a president. Hellen Keller? She was blind and deaf. Was an activist for the disabled.  Christopher Columbus? “Sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” 3943. Out of the above three figures, one is a huge racist, one is a socialist and one is a slave trader. Can you guess which is which? Racist: socialist: slave trader: 3944. Betcha they didn't tell you that in american history. Wilson, Keller and Columbus are painted as heros, impossibly good, ideal people. Why are so many things ommitted from and lied about in american history text books? 3945. Do you drink super caffinated energy drinks? Nope. I don’t drink any energy drinks. 3946. eminem or moby? Eminem.  3947. spongebob or the animanicas? Animaniacs was from my childhood, so I’ll have to go with that. 3948. Why do people rush to grow up only to wish they were a child again? I have no idea. I definitely wasn’t one of those people. 3949. Why do people sacrifice their health to obtain moneya d then use the money to restore their health? Uh. 3950. Jetsons or Flintstones? I watched both as a kid. 3951. What are you saving up for? Nothing, specifically. 3952. Would you rather improve your cooking, creativity, body,logic or charisma? Body. 3953. Is it more important to have stregnth or speed? For me, strength. 3954. What is your favorite thing to do each day? Drink coffee. 3955. When you are driving do you ever feel like turning the car towards someplace unfamiliar and not comming back? I don’t drive. 3956. Have you ever gone to lunch at a job and never gone back to the job? I’ve never had a job. 3957. What kind of a dining room set defines you as a person? Uh. I have no idea, that’s never been something I’ve thought about.  3958. Kiss, with or without the make up? I’d say it’s better without lip gloss or lipstick cause it gets messy. 3959. Madonna or Courtney Love? Madonna. 3960. Are you down with james Brown? Nah. 3961. Do you believe in miracles? Yes. 3962. Are you living a lie? I wouldn’t say that. 3963. If you had to give up one would it be caled ID or call waiting? I like knowing who’s calling. 3964. Are you ready to switch to an electric or solar powered car? I don’t drive. 3965. What is the greatest band of the 90's? That’s too hard to choose. 3966. What's the appeal of Alley Mcbeal? I never really watched it apart from seeing bits of it here and there because my mom watched it. I was just a kid and didn’t care. 3967. Fill in the blank. ___ aint the kind of place to raise a kid. 3968. What song goes: starry eye surprise, sundown to sunrise, we're gonna dance all night to this dj' and who is it by? Starry Eyed Surprise by Paul Oakenfold.  3969. What ever happened to the mtv vj Kennedy? No idea. 3970. if you could sing with one band for a day what band and what song would you want it to be? Probably, “In the End” by Linkin Park. 3971. Josie and the PussyCats or Jem? Josie and the Pussycats. Aw, I remember that cartoon that came on Cartoon Network when I was a kid. 3972. Wouldn't oyu like to be a pepper too? Not sure what this is referencing.  3973. Britney spears, school girl or sexy, which do you prefer? Poor Britney. She’s really been going through it. I think there’s a lot that has been going on that we don’t know about. I don’t know if she’s being treated the right way or that people really have her best interest. It’s sad.  3974. Would you get married on tv? No. Not sure why I would. I’m no one famous. 3975. Where do you go looking for the secrets of life? Uhhh. 3976. What is the fuel for your soul? Coffee. 3977. Why do people watch american idol (I think it's for Simon)? I stopped watching after the OG judges left. I checked it once like 3 years ago and...yikes. It just wasn’t good. I’m into The Voice. 3978. What makes life sweet? Desserts. ha. 3979. What does it take to make a great band? People that can sing,  play instruments, and write music? 3980. What do you think of when you hear the word 'devo'? “I said, whip it! Whip it good.” 3981. What song or movie represents the 80's for you? The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Of course I instantly thought of the song, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. 3982. What song poem or other piece of writing would you want read when you died? I don’t know.

3983. Is a stable job home and family pretty much your goal or do you want more than that and WHAT? Right now I want good health. 3984. What tv show that is no longer on tv do you miss? True Blood. 3985. Remember when Chris from nirvana threw his bass in the air and hit himself in the head with it? Yeah. 3986. What commercial is really annoying you(almonds, want some almonds, you're a big fellow aren't you)??? Currently, there isn’t really one that’s annoying me. Like I had mentioned before, I tend to just tune ‘em out. 3987. Nominate a rockstar for president: 3988. Who amazes you? Hmm. 3989. What's the best musical act to come outta your own country? another country? 3990. Is your life glamorous and exciting? Pffft, no. 3991. Greatest oldschool rap artist: greatest newschool rap artist: 3992. DJ Jazzy jeff or Will Smith, which persona? Both. Summatime will always be a fave.  39993. Ever try yoga? No. 3994. Are you a brick shit house? ..No. 3995. What products do you use? A lot? 3996. How good do you look? Not good at all. I’m a mess. 3997. Tonight you're going to party like_________ someone who is about to go to bed. ha. Okay, okay I know what you’re getting at: like it’s 1999.  3998. Have you ever written a song? No. if yes did you record it? 3999. What would you like to have 999 of? Dollars. 4000. Do you own a metal detector? No.

[sofiaxkrum-blog]

I. Traits:

+ optimistic, friendly, trusting, hardworking There are a lot of rather stereotypical Hufflepuff traits that can be found in Sofia. She’s hardworking and always has been, as a result of her parents’ training when she was younger; they didn’t accept anything less that her absolute best, and Sofia still tries her hardest in anything that can keep her attention. She’s a friendly girl, always happy to chat with anyone, and trusting of nearly everyone she meets. Even as a little girl, she never met a stranger and befriended people wherever she went. Sofia likes to keep a positive outlook; she’s nearly always cheerful and sunny, and doesn’t like to think negatively about anything or anyone.

- absent-minded, pushover, naive, reckless The biggest downfall of Sofia’s life has always been her absent-minded nature. Whether she was wandering away from her parents when they were out in a crowd or tripping down a moving staircase at Hogwarts, she was frequently in trouble simply because she wasn’t paying attention. If she’s interested in a topic or activity, it has all her focus but otherwise, she’s very easily distracted. And while she’s friendly and trusting, she can be too friendly and trusting, and doesn’t always make the best judgment calls on who she trusts. She’s willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Along with not paying attention, she has a tendency to be reckless and simply act without thinking about the consequences, especially when her friends are involved. She’ll go along with any plan they suggest and deal with the fallout later (it’s a problem for future Sofia, after all).

II. Family

Sofia thinks her family is made up of the actual best people in the world. She adores all of them, and would do anything for them. Although she doesn’t really play Quidditch (at all, she doesn’t play it at all), she has always loved flying with her papa. She and Victor get up early in the morning and go out and her absolute favorite thing to do is watch the sunrise in the air with him. They’ve had a lot of very important conversations doing just that. With her mama, Sofia loves going along with her to the atelier and sitting. Sadly, she didn’t inherit any artistic ability - well, when it comes to drawing; Sofia can play the piano and dance, which she counts as artistic. But there’s something about the atelier that’s very soothing, and it was common to see her sitting with her books and summer homework over the holidays.

Her siblings though . . . her siblings occupy a very, very special place in Sofia’s heart. They have always been there when she needed them - and as a little girl, Sofia had a knack for getting into trouble and needing her siblings. That lessened as she got older, to a certain degree, but she still does feel that she needs them frequently. Sofia has always appreciated their help, and still usually does, even though sometimes she feels a little smothered by it.

Being sorted into Hufflepuff with Evgenia made it easy for their close bond to continue in Hogwarts and Sofia has always admired and wanted to be like Evgenia. She frequently goes looking for her older sister when they have free time during the school year.

III. Girl Gang

Sofia has a great capacity for love and loyalty, and this is immensely present in her friendships. Once someone earns Sofia’s trust and friendship, it’s nearly impossible to lose it (which can be a downfall at times, if there is someone who doesn’t really deserve such blind affection). She just has a hard time in accepting that friendships might end and she’d rather cling to the old ones than let them go.

She’s made a lot of friends at school though, from a variety of houses and backgrounds. Honestly it’s hard for Sofia to meet a stranger so even with students she doesn’t know very well, she’ll sit down and talk with them and try to make them her friend as well.

But her main group of friends would be the fifth year girl gang. They occupy such an important place in her heart, right below her family (because family comes first, but the girls have become family). She would do anything for them, and although she’s small and seems so happy-go-lucky, can be very fierce in her protection of them if she thinks it’s necessary. But she knows that is true going the other direction as well, that any time she needs them, for any reason, they’ll have her back and be there for her.

IV. Sexuality and Romance

Sofia is a romantic. She watches sappy romcoms, and has a secret collection of bodice ripper type novels hidden in her trunk, and watches all the couples she sees with big eyes. The concept of falling in love is amazing to her and she wants to experience it, more than almost anything. However, she hasn’t really had any relationships like that up to this point, both because it hasn’t worked out and because she’s a little shy about actually instigating anything. There’s also the concern that someone is only interested in her for her connection to a famous Quidditch player. Still, it’s an ambition and she’s trying a little harder to get involved with people over the summer.

Although she hasn’t really spent a lot of time thinking about it, Sofia is pansexual panromantic.

V. Miscellany

Birthday: June 1, 2008

Height: 5′1″ (she keeps hoping she’ll have another growth spurt that seems unlikely now)

Weight: 115 lbs.

Scars: Sofia’s arms and legs are littered with little scars, the results of her many, many accidents as a younger child (or as a fourth year). She had pretty unfortunate luck with falling off things and scraping various body parts and hasn’t quite outgrown that. But some especially noteworthy scars are: the long one on her upper left arm, from falling off a broom when she was playing Quidditch with Victor (the same accident that has soured her on Quidditch since then); several burn marks on her right hand from the time she attempted to bake a birthday cake for Mama without any supervision; and the scar running the length of her right calf, a souvenir from falling down the stairs at Hogwarts as a third year.

Wand: Hawthorn and phoenix tail feather, twelve inches, springy

Patronus: A lioness

Boggart:

Class list: Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Herbology, History of Magic, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, Muggle Studies, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination

[makingscipub]

Milton and Galileo: Affinities between art and science

I don’t know much about John Milton and Galileo Galilei. However, I have stood beside Milton’s Mulberry tree at Christ’s College, Cambridge and beside Galileo’s chair and lectern at the University of Padua – and felt some affinity with the poet and the scientist. I didn’t know though that there was actually a connection between Milton and Galileo until I opened The Observer on Sunday and chanced upon an article that said: “In preparation for a Radio 4 documentary – In Search of Paradise Lost – to be broadcast next Sunday, Dr Joe Moshenska, an academic at Trinity College, Cambridge, retraced Milton’s journey to Florence in the late 1630s and claims that the legacy of a formative trip can be spotted throughout Paradise Lost. If he is correct, one of England’s most famous works of literature also bears the stamp of the city of Dante.”

In a quote Moshenka says: “It’s such an extraordinary thing to picture, the two of them crossing paths, people who you think of as belonging to two entirely different worlds, especially now, when we tend to separate science from literature so dramatically”.

This post is about affinities, between Milton and Galileo, between art and science, between poetry and technology (the telescope), between England and Italy, between the 16th and the 21st century, us and them, then and now. All these affinities have gradually been or are gradually being replaced by barriers and blockades. That is a great shame. To quote from the article again: “Moshenska believes that discussion of Milton’s Florentine sojourn is particularly timely as Brexit looms. It transpires that Milton, the most English of poets, was a polyglot Europhile whose most famous work is at least partially tinged by Tuscan ochre.”

Reading the article set me off on a little journey of discovery and time travel. I thought: there must be people before Dr Moshenska who have written about Milton and Galileo. And indeed there are – quite a few. I can of course not survey them all. So I just want to pick a few things out here and there. In the process I found one article from 1922 by Allan H. Gilbert for Studies in Philology, which made me smile, as it contains a lot of lengthy Latin quotes without providing any translation! How’s that for accessibility?

In the following I’ll first put Paradise Lost in the context of the lives of Milton and Galileo – very briefly. Then I go on to say a few things about science, technology, and freedom of speech.

Milton, Galileo and Paradise Lost

As people probably know, Paradise Lost is a long epic poem. The first version of this poem was published towards the end of Milton’s life in 1667.  Milton had been born in 1608. The final version consisting of 12 books was published the year he died, in 1664. “The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.” So what has this to do with astronomy and Galileo?

Since his youth, Milton had been interested in astronomy and many of his works contain allusions to this new and exciting field of science. Milton was also interested in maths and while he lived at Horton (his family home in Berkshire), “he was in the habit of repairing to London ‘for learning … the mathematics’” (Gilbert, 1922: 154). However, Milton never really committed to the new Copernican or Galilean view of the world, that is, the heliocentric one, even after his apparent meeting with Galileo; and even after giving Galileo the honour of appearing in Paradise Lost (the only contemporary of Milton to do so).

Milton went to Italy when he was still quite young, at the age of thirty. The Galileo he visited was, by contrast, very old and under house arrest. The Inquisition had found him suspect of heresy because of his views on heliocentrism.

Galileo was born in in 1564 and died in 1642, that is, a few years after his encounter with Milton. 1642 also signalled the start of the English Civil Wars, in which Milton was quite heavily involved on the side of the Commonwealth. After the Restoration in 1660, he spent some time in the Tower of London but was, fortunately, not killed. These were the times, including the 1664 plague and the 1665 fire of London, during which Milton started to write Paradise Lost.

Milton and Galileo met in 1638. That was also the year that Milton published one of his early poems, Lycidas, which was “dedicated to the memory of Edward King” a friend of Milton’s at Christ’s College, Cambridge, who drowned when his ship sank off the coast of Wales in August 1637. Furthermore, in 1638 Galileo published one of his later works, namely Discourses on Two New Sciences. “Although, this book completely overturned Aristotle’s physics, the Church didn’t punish him further” (Bembenek, 2012). 1638 was also the year that John Wilkins published his famous Discovery of a New World in the Moon, in which “he defended the Copernican and Galilean idea that the Earth is a planet by establishing analogies with the Moon”. Overall, this was a rather fruitful time for poetry and science and everything in between.

A few years after Galileo’s death, in 1644, Milton published Areopagitica, his defence of free speech. It was in this work that he mentions his journey to Italy and says: “There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisner to the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy otherwise then the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the Prelaticall yoak, neverthelesse I took it as a pledge of future happines, that other Nations were so perswaded of her liberty.”

It should be noted that while he very much admired Galileo and his work, Milton did not fully accept the new astronomy, it seems. As Gilbert pointed out: “Yet even in mentioning his visit, in the Areopagitica, he does not assert his belief that Galileo was right. However his purpose was not to uphold the correctness of any particular opinions, but to declare that all should be tolerated.” (p. 155). And as Jonathan Rosen said in The New Yorker (2008): “For Milton, the great trial of life was to discover truth through error, but without falling off the pat of good.” And yet, it has also been pointed out that the younger Milton’s cosmology as it appears in poems preceding the Italian journey is decidedly more medieval than the universe of Paradise Lost (see Hunter, A Milton Encyclopedia, vol. 3, p. 120).

Poetry and technology

Let’s now come to the most famous passage from Paradise Lost in which Milton talks about Galileo and his telescope (although he never used that new-fangled word, it seems):

He scarce had ceas’t when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Ev’ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.

Satan’s shield is here depicted as the moon seen through Galileo’s, or rather ‘the Tuscan artist’s, telescope. Milton probably used the word artist to refer to the art of designing optical instruments.

Many articles have been written about Milton and the telescope but I only want to quote from one by Marjorie Nicolson (1935): which claims that Milton never forgot the experience of looking through a telescope and seeing new worlds on the moon. This, she says, “is reflected again and again in his mature work; it stimulated him to reading and to thought; and it made Paradise Lost the first modern cosmic poem, in which a drama is played against a background of inter-stellar space”.

The encounter with Galileo and the telescope left in fact many traces in Paradise Lost: “each of Galileo’s most famous discoveries is reflected in one or more passages in the epic. Among them are the countless newly sighted stars (7. 382-84), the nature of the Milky Way (7. 577-81), the phases of the planet Venus (7.366), the four newly discovered moons around Jupiter (8.148-51), the new conception of the moon (7. 375-78), the nature of moon spots (1. 287-9; 5. 419-20; 8. 145-48), and the nature of sun spots (3. 588-90)”. (Hunter, A Milton Encyclopedia, vol. 3, p. 120-121).

Paradise Lost might be in part inspired by Galileo, science and technology but it basically represents Milton grappling with the new science and its impacts on the fortunes of the humanities and in particular on Christian theology and cosmology – as struggle that continues today.

Science, art and politics

Milton was not only a poet and polymath, but also a politician and Paradise Lost was published in a period of political turmoil – which in fact affected directly its publication and printing. As we have seen, in Areopagitica “Milton recalls his visit to Galileo” but more importantly perhaps also “warns that England will buckle under inquisitorial forces if it bows to censorship, ‘an undeserved thraldom upon learning.’” (Rosen, 2008). One passage of Areopagitica in particular has resonated to this day: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties…Truth was never put to the worse in a free and open encounter…. It is not impossible that she [truth] may have more shapes than one…. If it come to prohibiting, there is not ought more likely to be prohibited than truth itself, whose first appearance to our eyes bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom is more unsightly and implausible than many errors….Where there is much desire to learn there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”

This passage was quoted twice in the British Medical Journal, once in the year 2000 and once in the year 2004. Both times the passage was quoted by Richard Smith the editor of the journal. In 2004 the ‘Correspondence’ was entitled “Milton and Galileo would back BMJ on free speech”. Subtitle: “Arguments, crazy ideas and open communication are the lifeblood of science”.

These are values that still need defending in 2017, on the 350th anniversary of Paradise Lost. It is a strange time, where the people talking most about freedom of speech are not defending new truths, but old hatreds.

PS I am neither an expert on Milton nor on Galileo, so I expect that I have got some things wrong – comments and corrections welcome! And if somebody knows what ‘areopagitica’ actually means, let me know! I also wonder what Galileo might have made of Milton and whether they discussed the moon as a metaphor……

Image: Milton visiting Galileo when a prisoner of the Inquisition. Oil painting by Solomon Alexander Hart, 1847 (Wellcome Collection)

  The post Milton and Galileo: Affinities between art and science appeared first on Making Science Public.

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[newstfionline]

People Are Seeing U.F.O.s Everywhere

By Ralph Blumenthal, NY Times, April 24, 2017

SYRACUSE--Why have sightings of unidentified flying objects around the nation more than tripled since 2001? Why is July the busiest month for U.F.O. sightings? Why did they spike in Texas in 2008, or in New Mexico in September 2015?

And how in the world, or out of it, has Manhattan racked up New York State’s second-highest tally of U.F.O. sightings in this century?

These questions and many others emerge from the first comprehensive statistical summary of so-called close encounters: 121,036 eyewitness accounts, organized county by county in each state and the District of Columbia, from 2001 to 2015.

The unlikely compendium, “U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference,” is the work of a couple in Syracuse, who crunched unruly data on U.F.O. reports collected by two volunteer organizations: the Mutual U.F.O. Network, or Mufon, and the National U.F.O. Reporting Center, or Nuforc.

It is the reference “U.F.O. researchers dreamed of having,” Gordon G. Spear, emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Sonoma State University in California, writes in the foreword.

The book contains no narrative or anecdotal accounts, just 371 pages of charts and graphs that slice and dice the geography and timing of the incidents and the various shapes that witnesses reported: flying circles, spheres, triangles, discs, ovals, cigars.

Many of the sightings turn out to be explainable, the authors say, but a small percentage defy resolution.

The authors are Cheryl Costa, 65, a former military technician and aerospace analyst, and her wife, Linda Miller Costa, 62, a librarian at Le Moyne College and a former librarian at the National Academy of Sciences, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Working on PCs amid sewing tables in the upstairs parlor--the warmest room in their hundred-year-old house--the two spent weekends for the last 16 months extrapolating figures from sightings reports and laying out the graphics.

Cheryl Costa was writing New York Skies, a U.F.O. blog for The Syracuse New Times, when the Costas decided to expand their tallies of U.F.O. sightings nationwide. “We wanted to do our bit for disclosure,” she said. “It’s something the government should have been doing.”

The Costas realize some might find this a strange way to spend weekends. But both say they have spotted U.F.O.s themselves and want to detoxify the subject.

Rebutting a common perception that U.F.O. sightings are on the wane, the Costas’ book shows that sightings have risen in waves, to 11,868 nationwide in 2015 from 3,479 in 2001. Only a small fraction of sightings are actually reported to Mufon or Nuforc.

Their labor of love is about the numbers, just the numbers, and the Costas refrain from speculating on what exactly is happening. “We really don’t know,” Linda Costa said. “But all these people are seeing these things.”

The government officially quit the U.F.O. business in 1968, with the finding in the Condon report from the University of Colorado that there was nothing significant to investigate, although some 30 percent of the incidents were unexplained.

Mufon’s 500 volunteer investigators, however, continue to check out many of the sightings reported to the group. Roger Marsh, a Mufon spokesman, said that of the 270 cases his group investigated in Manhattan from 2002 through 2016, 44 eluded explanation and remained “unknown.”

One of the most intriguing occurred on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2011, when a man on the roof terrace of the New Museum on the Bowery photographed a fast-moving diamond-shaped object with windows and flashing blue and red lights against the TriBeCa skyline.

According to Mufon, it resembled an unknown flying object photographed in Round Rock, Tex., two weeks earlier.

The Costas listed 426 sightings in New York County from 2001 to 2015, second in the state’s tallies only to Suffolk County, on the tip of Long Island, with 554. How so many sightings in the nation’s densest core and around its toniest beach resorts have escaped wider notoriety is just part of the mystery.

The District of Columbia, with 9,856 people per square mile, had the fewest sightings: 154. (A political snub from deep space?) Wyoming, with 5.8 people per square mile, had more than twice as many: 337.

Fireballs made up nearly 8 percent of the sightings in Indiana (230) and fewer than 5 percent in Colorado (157).

California, the most populous state, led the nation in U.F.O. reports (15,836, more than the next two states, Florida and Texas, combined). Los Angeles County alone had more sightings than 40 states, followed by Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.

[treehugginglibrarian]

Life in Library Land

Anecdotes from the cardigan pocket of an angry, bespectacled, librarian 

I’m a librarian. You know, the slightly eccentric person in a long skirt and big glasses with a bun atop her head, who hands you books when you walk into an ancient looking building that houses quiet and the world’s knowledge? Yeah. That person. Except that’s not who I am and that’s not really what I do. 

So, let’s set the record straight, shall we? 

First, librarians look like the rest of the world. Neither the image of us as the miserly grandmother shushing the world, nor the image of us as a pencil-skirted porn star waiting to be bent over a reference desk, are particularly accurate. While there are those of us who fit those descriptions, we also walk the entire line between them and, shockingly, we have men amongst our ranks. We also come from a pretty wide variety of backgrounds. For some, librarianship is a second, third, or fourth career. Others go into it straight from grad school, which they entered straight out of college. Our undergraduate degrees span basically every conceivable major. What individual librarians will end up doing as librarians is pretty varied, as well. Our actual day jobs find themselves affected by the type of library we work in, the location of the library, and the hours we work. 

I’m an ex-military Officer with an undergraduate degree in archaeology. I work in a main branch of a large public library system. The branch I work in, being the heart of the system, is pretty enormous. I’ve been here for almost two years and there are people in my building who I still don’t know because I only ever meet them on our All Staff Days. The branch I am in is located in the inner-city downtown area of a smaller to mid-sized city in North East Ohio. It’s a region that has been pretty hard hit by poverty, having failed to properly recover from the 2008 collapse, and absolutely decimated by the opiate epidemic. The experience I have on a daily basis will be dramatically different even from the experiences had by some of my colleagues in the same system, as some of our branches are in wealthier, more suburban, areas. 

Given all those “caveats,” what is librarianship like for me? 

Honestly? 

A fucking nightmare. 

Dispel with the notion that libraries are quiet. Even as I type this, there is some sort of band performance going on in the auditorium located on our second floor. While the music isn’t unpleasant, it’s loud as hell for a structure that’s historically been associated with silence. Patrons talk on the phone, loudly, often with the phones on speaker, basically wherever they would like in the building. We have a recording studio on the floor I work on that is supposed to be soundproof, but is absolutely not. It tends to be a rotating gamut of podcasts, terrible singing, and cursing hip hop, depending on the day. We get to hear basically all of it. Sometimes the patrons have long and drawn out conversations with each other. Sometimes they have long and drawn out shouting matches. Sometimes they have long and drawn out fights for which security and the local authorities need to be called. Sometimes they just decide the entire world needs to listen to their music. It’s NEVER quiet in this building. Never. If we say “it’s been quiet,” we don’t mean it literally. We mean “it’s been uneventful.” 

Patrons tend to come in three flavors: the ones we like, the ones we hate because they’re raging fucking twat waffles that no sane human ever wants to have contact with, and the ones we dislike because they’re just plain difficult. 

Being a patron your local librarians will like isn’t actually that difficult. Be nice, be polite, say “thank you,” don’t yell at us, don’t call us names, clean up after yourself if you’re actually in the building, don’t curse at us if we “shush” you or remind you that you can’t eat in the library, and try to avoid asking us the exact same question every single day just because you’re too lazy to write down the answer. Being a patron your local librarians will like is, honestly, no more difficult than passing a fair number of kindergarten classes. Easier, even, since we won’t demand you know your ABC’s or be able to count. We really only ask that you queue properly, push in your damn chair when you stand up, don’t be a slob, and mind your basic manners. 

If my job is any indication, the entire fucking world needs to go back to kindergarten at least once a year and relearn how to human properly. Because we’re failing. Epically. 

One of our more basic and commonplace tasks is simply roving through the department with varying levels of frequency. It lets us keep an eye on the patrons in our vicinity and police up any materials left lying around. It also lets us push in chairs, throw out trash, and call the janitor on the occasion a patron has left such a mess a paper towel and bleach is insufficient to fix the matter. While I don’t find myself scrubbing tables on a daily basis, I don’t rove without pushing in chairs. It’s the most basic of tasks, taught to five-year-olds on their first day of school, yet grown-ass adults visiting a public library can’t be bothered to push in their chairs when they get up and leave a table. My record so far is 18 chairs in one rove. 18 grown humans who couldn’t figure out how to nudge a chair until it was back under a table and no longer clogging an aisle. The level of maturity is absolutely no better over the phone. 

From an energy standpoint, 10% of our patrons absorb at least 95% of our energy. This is especially true when dealing with patrons who have placed a phone receiver between themselves and the live human they are screaming at. The overwhelming majority of the patrons who call us on the phone are perfectly pleasant, perfectly reasonable, perfectly sane humans. They’re patrons we “like,” because they haven’t given us a reason not to. About 10% of our patrons, predominantly those on the phone, are either frustrating beyond measure or diagnosable lunatics who have clearly been let out of an asylum recently. 

They will call and yell at us, literally screaming and shouting. They’ll call and tell us we’re stupid. They’ll call and refuse to let us answer the question in the best way possible, particularly if that means using a resource they don’t like or transferring them to a division they don’t want to talk to, forcing us to give them subpar answers to questions we literally don’t have the answers to. They’ll call and refuse to believe the answer we give them, even when we offer to email them proof of the answer. They’ll call and demand to speak to certain librarians, or call and hang up when they recognize a voice they don’t want to talk to. Sometimes they’ll just hang up because they’re bored or don’t like the answer we’ve given. In general, the “raging fucking twat waffles” seem to thrive not on utilizing the services the library offers, but on abusing the personnel the library employs. 

Others will call and ask us the same questions over, and over, and over again. The same phone numbers, the same addresses, the same computer problems, the same magazine articles, they want only a half-dozen things from us and they will call us, repeatedly, for those half-dozen things. These individuals often aren’t rude or mean, they’re just immensely frustrating and, frankly, feel like they’re wasting our time. Write the fucking number down, for the love of God. I did not get a masters degree so I could provide you with phone numbers to the same three stores every single fucking day for two straight years. Get a pen, write it down. Still others call with questions so strange, they force you to abandon an age old adage that we are taught as young children and generally make it into adulthood believing: There’s no such thing as a stupid question.

No. There absolutely are really fucking stupid questions. And I have heard A LOT of them. 

“What is the force and how can I harness it?”

“The force from Star Wars? You can’t harness it. Star Wars is made up.” 

“What do you mean it’s made up? No it’s not. I need a book about the force!”

“Ok. I’ll transfer you to fiction now.” 

“How often do I have to change my underwear?”

*crickets*

“Do I have to change them every day.”

*crickets*

“Because I don’t want to have to do laundry that often.” 

“Let me see what I can find for you.” 

*internal screaming*

“Can I feed my dog white chocolate?”

“No. Don’t feed your dog white chocolate.” 

“But it’s not real chocolate.” 

“Don’t feed your dog white chocolate.” 

“Where do unicorns live?”

*in my head, ‘Scotland, duh’*

“Unicorns aren’t real, Sir.” 

*crickets*

“They’re not?!”

“How can I get to the island with the dinosaurs?”

“Excuse me?”

“The island. With the dinosaurs. And the park. With the dinosaurs.” 

“Jurassic Park?”

“YEAH!”

“Jurassic Park isn’t real. Dinosaurs are extinct.” 

*expletive* “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” 

“My penis isn’t working.” 

“I hate to use these words, but you’ll have to be more specific. Are you having problems urinating or problems with something else?” 

“Something else. Maybe if you talk to me that’ll fix the problem.” 

“Right. That’s not a service we offer here, sir. Good bye.” 

“Do you have a piano?”

“You realize you called the library?”

“What are you wearing?”

“Do you have any books on spanking?”

“For corporal punishment or sexual gratification?”

“Just… books on spanking.” 

“Right. Okay.”

*lists titles*

*two weeks later*

“Do you have any books on spanking?”

“Only the ones we had the last time you asked.”

This is a sampling of the weird, awkward, and often fucking stupid shit we get asked over the phone by people who are likely a few screws short of something. On any given day we also get asked dozens of perfectly logical questions regarding health, astronomy, mathematics, books in our division, or phone numbers that people need. The weird ones don’t necessarily outnumber the normal, they just tend to be quite difficult to ignore or forget as they tend to be really fucking weird. 

I know, absolutely, that not all libraries are like this. I once worked in a smaller library that came with its own set of quirks, but with far fewer questions that made me scratch my head and wonder what the patron was smoking. While we got verbally abused less frequently, I did get hit on more often, which is its own level of head-scratching what-the-fuckery that often makes me want to grab the patron in question and beat them senseless upon the reference desk. Here’s a suggestion- don’t ever, ever, ever hit on someone who is at work and whose job hinges, at least in part, on their being nice to you. I think men (and yes, it’s always been men) often think that because I’m being nice to them I’m inevitably going to say “yes.” Or, perhaps, they mistakenly believe that my job hinging upon my “niceness” means that I simply cannot say “no.” They’re wrong on both accounts. While I can’t be rude about my “no” until they get pushy, I absolutely can use that word. And I do. Don’t hit on your librarian unless you’re looking to experience rejection.  

And do not, under any circumstances, touch us. While a fair number, possibly the majority even, are unlikely to react negatively to being touched, most won’t like it. Particularly if it’s a touch that’s been rendered after you’ve expressed an unreturned interested in us. I’ve been touched by patrons who wanted my attention on three different occasions. Only once was it someone who was trying to get me to give them a phone number. On no occasion did it go well. The assumption that a librarian, being small and frail and likely female, won’t fight back isn’t always a safe bet. Occasionally you’ll meet the likes of me and, after grabbing my arm to prevent me from walking away, you’ll leave the library without my phone number, with a bruise on your chest, and with the knowledge that there’s nothing you can do about it because you started it when you touched me. Don’t. Be. That. Guy. EVER. 

Absolutely one of the most disconcerting aspects of working in libraries, at least the type I work in right now, is the degree to which I am, effectively, an employee at a very fancy day-time homeless shelter. We’re not the only library with this problem, as many urban or inner city libraries find themselves utilized as heating shelters, cooling shelters, and entertainment gateways for the homeless population, during the hours when said population is not authorized in the local homeless housing. As we absorb many, if not most, of the homeless people from surrounding areas, we have an unusually high homeless population for a city our size.  This makes the problem both exceptionally noticeable working here, and significantly more frustrating, though some of that frustration owes its existence to the policies of our administration team as much as the patrons, themselves.

The director in place prior to our current one was so dedicated to the issue of homelessness he not only cultivated an environment in the downtown main branch that was conducive to behavior run amok, he literally changed the library’s hours to ensure the population had somewhere to go when the local shelter was closed. While the situation has improved some since then, with the floor most prone to homeless persons concentration having been rearranged to cut down on the chaos, the damage to library usage was done. Those coming to the library seeking a quiet place to study, or books on particular topics, or even just a computer to use, are not going to come to a space that is dirty, smells bad, and is covered in men who are sacked out and snoring. As that was the case in my library for a multitude of years, that is the image now associated with it. In trying, desperately, to make it into a daytime shelter, the old director effectively told the tax payers funding the structure that  they weren’t welcome. No surprise that a levy failed at least once under his tenure… 

Libraries should be safe spaces for the homeless, but they shouldn’t be any safer for the homeless than they are for anyone else. If we wouldn’t change the hours the library is open to accommodate housed patrons, we shouldn’t be doing it to accommodate those in shelters. The same general rules and standards should apply no matter the housing situation of the patron, yet in libraries with high homeless populations this often isn’t the case. Homeless patrons are often given a pass when it comes to sleeping, eating, disrespect, and generally inappropriate behavior that housed patrons would never be given. Our quest to treat them with the additional empathy and compassion we think they deserve isn’t really helping them, as it’s chasing away the very patrons who make the library possible in the first place. 

That’s not to say that the homeless are the only problem patrons we have, since many of them aren’t problem patrons at all. In fact, most of them aren’t problem patrons. It’s just that the ones that are troublemakers are impossible to shake. Other impossible-to-shake troublemakers include those recently released from prison and those with mental illnesses and/or their guardians. Because both of these populations are often times just as vulnerable as the homeless, the fact that they, like the homeless, are capable of being intensely abusive is often overlooked. I’ve been cursed at by a woman with Alzheimers, all but stalked by a man who probably had autism (alternatively he may have just been that incapable of understanding “NO”), verbally abused by a young man with down syndrome, and spent three weeks dodging a patron who decided that he “knew” me despite having never actually met me. It was eventually determined he was a recent release who had taken a shining to me. All of these are people who would ordinarily be told to “knock it off or be gone,” but because they belong to populations that are often underserved, we’re expected to take it with a smile. 

I’m sure a big part of the problem surrounding these vulnerable populations is that librarians, for the most part, are not adequately trained to deal with them. The list of necessary skill sets we don’t acquire in library school is about a mile long. Most librarians don’t take formal classes in education or large group instruction, yet a fair many of us will spend at least some of our lives doing it. We don’t get classes in dealing with the special education population, yet we’re expected to be experts in dealing with our more unique patrons. We get absolutely no classes in anger de-escalation, social work, or care of the elderly, but we spend a lot of our daily lives assisting with these tasks. I’ve lost track of the number of people between the ages of 40 and 90 that I’ve taught how to use their tablets or their phones, despite the fact that formally educating people is nowhere on my masters. Libraries are considered information spaces, where patrons are supposed to be going to find and consume said information. To that end, librarians are typically formally trained to assist in the locating and assessing of information and resources. We’re not even trained in event planning, yet it’s a staple of our jobs. 

The list of jobs I could be doing with the experience I now have, many of which would pay a lot more than what I currently make, is both remarkably long and remarkably varied. 

The solution to all these problems is likely bound up in changing the direction that libraries are going. From information resource hubs to generalized community centers that employ not just researchers, but social workers, educators, therapists, and possibly even lawyers. The idea of these services being located at libraries sounds crazy to those who haven’t been in one recently, but for those who frequent these buildings it’s not a nutty concept at all. Librarians already serve, formally, as prothonotaries and notaries, in addition to our jobs as researchers, basic info finders, educators, and large-scale party planners. We host accountants every year who assist with taxes for low income patrons. We circulate dozens of types of technologies, almost every form of entertainment out there, artwork, kitchen gadgets, toys, board games, and even clothing in some spaces. We are already one-stop-shopping for a great many citizens, and thus viewed as one-stop-shopping by a great many others for whom we’re not quite there. Yet. 

Crossing that bridge won’t just help our patrons. It will make me, and a great many librarians like myself, many holding onto their sanity by a mere filament, better at our jobs and better able to assist people with the things we’re actually trained to assist them with. I’d love to spend my days helping people find information or do research. Until the great day of the all-encompassing library dawns, however, I’ll be here passing out phone numbers, being harassed for not passing out my number, pushing in chairs, and occasionally telling someone what the square root of 2,564.81 is. 

Wish me luck. I’m gonna need it. 

[patrickjones-blog]

If you are like most people, you are likely to have at least a couple of thousand old prints boxed up and stored in an attic or dark closet. That number is high enough to deter most people from getting their old photo scanning project off the ground. Even if they know that they don’t have to tackle it by themselves; that it’s possible – and even advisable – to rope in a reliable professional scanning service to help with the tedious parts.

But if, like the New York Times, you have something like six million old photos in your archives, then it calls for industrial grade scanning support and strategies to see you through it.

The old photos were stored in the Times morgue, a giant underground repository of old newspaper clippings, images and books. As the digitizing project got underway, a ten person team worked steadily to get photos out of physical drawers and folders, feed them through heavy duty scanners and then, with some help from Google, catalog and archive them digitally.

Why was this effort so important to the Times? Like other legacy publishers, the Times decided to take the plunge and digitize its massive image collection when it realized how valuable these photos were as windows into the past.

As Monica Drake, an editor at the newspaper said:

“We have covered the world for such a long time we just have this vast store of information. The immediate goal is to take advantage of all this material and information we’ve gathered for so long and bring it back to life.

One way the Times is doing this is through an archival storytelling project called Past Tense. Since it was started last year, the Past Tense team has already begun plumbing the Times photo archive for interesting feature stories. These have included recreating photos of iconic New York sites first taken in 1951; an exploration of dance photography, a look at the City during rainy days from the past, and a lot more.

Many of these photos and the stories behind are now part of the NYT’s archival Instagram page, to give us a dose of both history and nostalgia. Here are a few of our favorites….

Scenes of Summer: Road trip ready; A resourceful kid in the city; Coney Island fun ride

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Summer has officially begun, which means families across America will be loading up their cars with sleeping bags and beach towels and setting off on adventures. The soundtrack to the season is a chorus of “How much farther?” and “Are we there yet?” Whether you’re headed to the city or the country, the mountains or the sea, a cherished traditional spot or a destination as-yet-unknown, it’s less about where you and your loved ones are going than how you’re leaving your everyday lives behind, together. This Staten Island family was thrilled to ditch their borough for a pre-Airbnb home-swap on the Canadian border in 1972. “The description of the house seemed to meet our vacation requirements precisely,” the original caption read. “An escape to nature with adequate room for our 6 children in an exotic-sounding spot not more than one day’s drive from New York.” Photograph by Dennis Chalkin/The New York Times (Story by @vvchambers. Link in bio.) #nytimes #nytarchives

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on May 27, 2019 at 10:35am PDT

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Sometimes, a vacant lot is just that: a lonely, forgotten space full of garbage and weeds and old mattresses that long ago lost their bounce. But sometimes, that lot is a playground, each tattered stack a trampoline ready to send you soaring into the sky. In the summer of 1987, #nytimes staff photographer Fred R. Conrad captured this 14-year-old boy as he turned an abandoned corner of Brooklyn into a personal gymnasium, practicing backflips under the blazing August sun. #nytarchives

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on May 30, 2019 at 3:01am PDT

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The hashtag #SundayFunday might be relatively new, but the sentiment goes back decades. You can see it in this photo taken by our photographer Barton Silverman on a hot Sunday in June 1976. “Youngsters cool off by riding the Water Flume at Astroland, Coney Island,” read the caption that was published in @nytimes. Pictured, from front to back, are Fatman Ekinci, 5; her brothers, Kris, 7, and Fevzi, 9; and in the background, Lillian Pacheco, 7. Astroland was first mentioned by @nytimes on September 13, 1962, when the paper called it “the first major project for frivolous purposes in Coney Island in 25 years.” But the park’s final #SundayFunday came in September 2008. The park's owner said the landlord refused to discuss the expiring lease. “This place lets kids trust their legs, they don’t have to worry about cars, and neighborhoods are getting so rough. They’re closing down a legend,” Walter McCoy, a resident of East New York, told @nytimes. And Keyira Serrano told the paper that she spent every summer weekend at Astroland. On Astroland’s final Sunday, she told @nytimes, "we’re going to have all the fun we can, while it lasts." — @adri_ninfa_gio, @nytimes news assistant #ConeyIsland #SundaysInBrooklyn #amusementparks

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Aug 26, 2018 at 8:46am PDT

Perilous pursuits — for fame, or a paycheck, or both

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A worker who’s really, REALLY on his toes does some perilous-looking spring cleaning at the United Nations on April 17, 1953. “Window cleaners are a very, very passionate bunch,” said David Knowlton, president of the International Window Cleaning Association. “Most of all, in the high-rise industry, it’s the allure of hanging off a building.” There are fewer fatalities than you might expect among cleaners like the intrepid man in this photograph — only a handful a year nationwide. “It’s really personal error that gets in the way, so you just have to stay focused,” says Tony Natoli, of Tony’s Window Cleaning Service. “You only get to fall once.” (Link in bio.) Photograph: Ernie Sisto/The New York Times #nytarchives

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on May 16, 2019 at 2:51pm PDT

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Less than a month after he’d walked on a wire stretched between the tops of the Twin Towers, Philippe Petit performed another striking feat of aerialism at Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey. “One hundred feet below him,” @nytimes reported, “the brown, murky waters of the Passaic River swirled over boulders, forming a frothy soup filled with sticks, metal pipes, beer cans and at least three automobile tires.” As Petit made the crossing, “dipping his pole from side to side, as if he were rowing a boat,” a crowd of 30,000 watched. Among them was the Times staff photographer Joyce Dopkeen, who snapped this picture of Petit pausing to kneel in the middle of his walk, which took about eight and a half minutes to complete. #nytarchives #JoyceDopkeen

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Mar 20, 2019 at 5:53am PDT

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Cigar, sunglasses, squeegee — check. Frank Kind, a window washer with over 40 years of experience, was fully equipped for the job when #nytimes staff photographer @Andrea_Mohin snapped his picture through a window more than 40 floors above Midtown Manhattan in July 1995. According to the report that ran with Andrea’s shot, “Tales From the Sky,” Frank didn’t think too much about the risks of his profession, at least not while he was working. “I just pay attention to what I’m doing,” he said flatly. #nytarchives #nyc #andreamohin

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Mar 18, 2019 at 8:55am PDT

Reasons to be out and about in the city

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Our staff photographer Marilynn K. Yee photographed these women and their children skating on Broome Street for a 1978 article in which #nytimes championed roller skating as a “fad revived.” The article claimed that skaters rivaled joggers in Central Park, and continued “New Yorkers are using their skates for exercise, relaxation, socializing or just as simple transportation.” Is that still true today? #nytarchives #MarilynnKYee

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Mar 27, 2019 at 8:20am PDT

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This 1978 photograph is from an afternoon disco party in TriBeCa for single parents and their children. “The little girl in the center stole my heart,” @mistyonpointe told us recently when looking at this photograph. “Music was always on in my house. My mother grew up dancing — ballet, tap, jazz. But I don’t recall dancing with my mother. Dance was my private time. It was an escape from the chaos and traumas of my childhood. My way of expressing myself.” Visit the link in our profile to read more of Misty Copeland’s commentary and to see more dance photographs from the #nytarchives. Photograph: Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Apr 14, 2019 at 6:07am PDT

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Demonstrating questionable eclipse-viewing technique, these “Broadway stars,” as they were described by the @nytimes caption in 1932, “show an unusual interest in the sun.” Along with President Herbert Hoover, who watched in Washington, “New Yorkers Turned Their Eyes Skyward” to take in the eclipse, which occurred on August 31 of that year. #nyc #history #photography #astronomy

A post shared by The New York Times Archives (@nytarchives) on Jan 5, 2019 at 8:08am PST

If you are inspired by what the New York Times is doing with its photo archive, take a moment to see how you can rescue your own valuable old photos from oblivion. They may not be in a morgue, but shoeboxes and dark basements can have the same effect of keeping them trapped and away from the light of day. It’s time to get them out of the boxes and digitize them so that it’s easier to share these nuggets of photo nostalgia with others. The New York Times has shown us that it’s possible to scale even the tallest of digitizing mountains – with a little bit of help.

The post What We Can Learn from the NY Times’s Massive Photo Digitizing Project appeared first on ScanCafe.

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THERE’S A MAGIC TRICK toward the end of Darío Guerrero’s 2017 film Rocío, which documents the death of the filmmaker’s mother, Rocío Meneses Díaz. A magician at a Halloween party makes a few small toys disappear, then reappear in a child’s hand. The scene is a flashback — one of many, all clips from Guerrero’s childhood home movies. The trick ushers in footage of Rocío’s final days, pairing life’s mysteries with death’s realities.

It is rare to encounter such an unyielding portrait of dying in film. Many depictions — when not sensationally violent — can seem cursory or mawkish. But Rocío doesn’t flinch. The film bears witness to the excruciating course of an incurable illness, the cancer steadily killing its subject. Guerrero walks us through the intensely private discussions the family must have about wills, cremation, where Rocío’s ashes should rest, and whether she would prefer to die at home in the United States or in her birth country of Mexico. Rocío herself is warm, funny, fiercely perceptive. It is difficult not to fall in love with her, and it is shattering to watch her fade away. Still, the film manages to revel in wonder, revealing death as a process not just wrenching but also magical.

¤

Death is a topic often skirted in this country, as if denying it is akin to defying it. In the United States, we pay enormous economic and emotional costs for our reticence to speak openly about dying, from a majority of Americans not having their end-of-life plans in place to individuals being forced to face their gravest fears in silence and isolation.

Such ardent disavowals are historically and globally atypical. In A Brief History of Death (2014), W. M. Spellman traces how dying has been a central preoccupation of human civilization. Since at least the eighth millennium BCE, when the inhabitants of central Turkey’s agricultural settlement Çatalhöyük buried the dead beneath their living spaces, we have kept death close to us. By the end of the 19th century, when births and deaths both took place in the home, Americans were far more familiar with many aspects of dying than we are now. Before it became largely confined to hospitals and hospices, death was more like the event in Guerrero’s film: openly discussed and communally shared, its magic celebrated.

Rocío’s magic is not naïve. It is a tool of reflection and engagement. Some scholars have advocated that magical perspectives be taken seriously within professional practice. A nascent field of social research, these inquiries attempt to define what magic actually is. In his 2008 book, The Sorcerer’s Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England, Alec Ryrie argues that magic occupies the ambiguous spaces that science and religion tend to avoid. It conjures the “inexplicable,” the things that happen before our eyes but that we don’t (yet) understand.

Rocío seems to share Ryrie’s view. Sitting in the family room, her back turned to her son, Rocío cautions Darío to be careful with the knife he just dropped on the kitchen floor. “How did you know it was a knife?” he asks. “Because I’m your mother,” she says. “That’s mother’s intuition.” The film captures such everyday enchantment, including unorthodox therapies, the magical touches of loved ones and caregivers, and the uplifting landscapes of familial homes and ancestral homelands.

Magic disrupts. Where conventional wisdom advises us to suppress matters that defy rational thought, a language of magic uniquely illuminates the ineffable processes of trauma and grief. By embracing the eccentric or implausible, magic suspends invidious value judgments, providing a compassionate approach to subjective differences.

Magic is also agnostic. It celebrates ambiguity and acknowledges that we don’t have all the answers. Today, skepticism is often embraced as intellectually sophisticated. But, as Ryrie notes, during the Renaissance — when new continents were being discovered and the Earth was suddenly thought to revolve around the Sun — cynics were scorned. “[W]hen you have adopted a new mathematics, a new astronomy, a new geography and a new religion,” he writes, “why balk at a new magic?”

Magic continues to pick up the slack in areas where reason and faith fall short — deficiencies of which Rocío persistently reminds us. Guerrero’s father, debating whether to go to church to pray for his wife, laments, “You’re supposed to ask some pendejo for help. It’s all bullshit.” Later, while speaking to Darío, his grandfather tells him, “The Earth is round. There’s no arguing that.” “What keeps the water from falling?” Darío asks. “That’s it,” affirms his grandfather. “What mystery keeps all the water in place?” That a scientific answer exists is irrelevant. Outside the house where Rocío is dying, wondering what holds everything together is contemplation enough.

¤

A central theme of Rocío is that impermanence is, paradoxically, the only reality we can trust. Change is a constant to which we are forced to acquiesce. Dreaming, waking, breathing, becoming. Death, Rocío illustrates, is just one more transition in a series. Death — a transformation that breaches our reality — displays magic’s most elemental character. The death of a loved one can appear almost like a kind of tragic trick. Something permanent has been lost, violating the world as it should be.

We have established mechanisms to protect us from the shock of death, sequestering it within certain rituals and institutions. But Rocío reveals the illusory nature of these supposed safeguards and the limits of our capacity for compartmentalization. This becomes particularly apparent in the way Guerrero manipulates narrative time. The film’s seamless slippage between past and present makes it easy to lose your bearings. But there are also times when the cuts can seem quite jarring. The film’s flashbacks work the way our memories do: suddenly prompted by the emotions of the moment.

Guerrero is an especially adept editor. Disparate as they may seem, the clips he chooses connect precisely, each preparing the essential truth of the next. Nestled between footage of a fading Rocío is a video of young Darío playing in the family’s backyard. “The rose has withered,” his father says while filming flowers along the fence. Memory, time, and place are not neatly partitioned but in constant, messy relation with one another. This scene reminds us that the line separating us from death is as thin as the line distinguishing our memories from our present realities.

The film also highlights the role administrative systems play in the regulation of our daily lives. Two social systems emerge as central: immigration and health care. While making the film, Guerrero himself had a harrowing experience with immigration authorities. An undergraduate at Harvard, he traveled to Mexico to be with his mother during her treatment but was uncertain — despite being a DACA recipient — whether he would be allowed to return to the United States. The story made national headlines when he was eventually granted temporary humanitarian parole, allowing him to fulfill his mother’s final wishes: to carry her ashes to the family’s home in Los Angeles and then complete his degree.

As for the health-care system, Guerrero documents what happens when we come face to face with the limits of our medical knowledge. When young Darío tells his mother that she defied the odds, surpassing the “matter of weeks” the experts gave her, she responds, “Those bastards. Now I’m not leaving.” She refuses to succumb, and Guerrero makes a point of showing us the downside of hope. Rocío drinks countless health smoothies and swallows Chinese weevils like pills. “First one to vomit loses,” she laughs. Finally, she enters treatment at a holistic center in Tijuana, where she submits to chelation therapy, a flavorless diet, and hyperthermia sessions. She can barely eat. There are ants everywhere and spiders on the walls. “Maybe if you vacuumed this place there would be less bugs,” Rocío says. “We don’t have a vacuum,” the nurse replies. When Rocío expresses doubt, her husband takes his frustrations out on her. These moments are some of the most painful to watch. In the film’s final scenes, when she is too weak to respond, he apologizes: “Forgive me for everything I couldn’t do.”

The treatment center directs our attention less to the futility of alternative medicine than to the fictitious nature of every promise of salvation. The film examines the immaterial distinctions between prayer, magic, and experimental treatments, the elusive border between future and past, and the imagined margins that separate cultures. In the face of death, such divisions only grow in absurdity. The film suggests an alternative to our death anxieties: if the structural features of our physical and political worlds are contrived, then maybe, like magicians, we can bend time and space to our will, empowering ourselves far beyond our fragile bodies and transient systems.

Rocío opens with a passage from a poem by Nezahualcóyotl, a 15th-century Acolhuan philosopher: “Is it true that we only exist on the earth? Not forever on earth but only for an instant?” If the film is to be seen as a response to this question, it would seem that the answer is “no.” Who is to say we can’t reorganize the chronology of our lives as we see fit, living as if past, present, and future run forever alongside each other? This is what cinematic flashbacks always offer — an alternative construction of time, in which people never age, death is suspended, and return is possible. It is — as hope, magic, and curiosity have always been — an attempt to bend the rules as we know them.

¤

Played over footage of Rocío’s funeral procession is a toast from her quinceañera: “Rocío, wherever you go, near, far, and in between […] from this point on, all the joy that exists in the universe will fall upon you.” Just as we might see the twinkle of a star that has long since faded, Rocío’s light has not dimmed. There is a place where Earth has yet to be, where you and I have not been born, where our loved ones are still alive.

In Rocío, magic references our collective capacity to insist on confidence over doubt, determination over vacillation, optimism over pessimism. Such emotional fortitude is what drives humankind to innovate, create, and discover. Chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine — each was once upon a time ridiculed as “magic.” If — as Ryrie observes — magic, science, and religion are long-lost siblings, then perhaps we could take magic’s sisterly advice “that incredulity and credulity can sometimes be just as stupid as each other.”

Before the final credits roll, we are shown a home video of Guerrero’s parents, newly married. “The enchantment has worn off,” Darío’s father jokes. Hearing these words after Rocío has passed seems a heartrending nod to hope’s end. But we can also hear them as originally intended, in jest. The honeymoon is not over. This family is forever enchanted.

Darío used to sit in his mother’s lap. In the film, she lies in his. “It’s the same,” his father says. From generation to generation, we carry the dead. There is nothing more powerful than feeling our loved ones in our bones, in every word and action, long after they’ve gone, not as faint remnants but as substantive continuations. Rather than half-dying in grief, we become a testament to those we’ve lost. Rocío reveals life’s most exquisite, magical charge: to embody the transcendent by living for our dead.

¤

Meghan Gilbride writes about art and culture. More information can be found at her website.

The post Death and Magic appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Link to our Past, Bridge to our Future

Scottish-American Heritage Month is one of the many month-long celebrations observed in April. It began as National Tartan Day celebrated on April 6 to honor Scottish-Americans’ contributions to American History, and the anniversary of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath (Scottish Independence), a model for the Declaration of Independence.

On April 4, 2008, President George Bush proclaimed April 6 would be Tartan Day in the USA. Many states, such as Texas, Massachusetts, and Alaska honor Scottish-Americans, though there is yet to be a national Scottish-American Heritage Month declaration.

Catherine Wolfe Bruce (January 22, 1816, New York – March 13, 1900, New York) was a noted American philanthropist and patroness of astronomy. She became interested with astronomy as a child, and over her lifetime gave over $200,000 to institutions and causes related to astronomy.

In 1877, Bruce donated $50,000 for a library and books to establish the George Bruce Library in her father’s memory. It was completed in 1888 and located on 42nd St. When it was sold in 1913, proceeds went to creating the library located on 125th St.

She donated money to construct three telescopes, one for Harvard Observatory, completed in 1895, the second for the Heidelberg Observatory, completed in 1900, and the last for the Yerkes Observatory, completed in 1904. The Bruce photographic telescope at Harvard was used when Professor Pickering discovered Phoebe one of Saturn’s moons, on in August, 1898. On September 11, 1898, Max Wolf, special professor of astrophysics and at the University of Heidelberg and director of the Königsstruhl Observatory, the first astronomer to use photographs to find asteroids, discovered his first asteroid, which he named Brucia in her honor.

Bruce also established the Bruce Gold Medal, presented annually to an astronomer for his or her lifetime achievements.

In 1897, Bruce established a fund within the Astronomical Society of the Pacific to award a gold medal annually for distinguished achievements in astronomy. The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is one of the most prestigious and well known awards in the astrophysics community. It has been awarded to scientists worldwide.

Ranald MacDonald (February 3, 1824 – August 24, 1894) was the first native English-speaker to teach the English in Japan. MacDonald was born in Fort George, the primary fur trading post for John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company (PFC). His father Archibald (who spelled his name McDonald, while his children kept the original Scots spelling MacDonald), was an officer in the Hudson Bay Company. His mother Koale’xoa was the youngest daughter of Concomly (Comcomly), a leader of the Clatsop Chinook who lived on the lower Columbia River. Koale’xoa died soon after MacDonald was born and his father married Jane Klyne, a German and Swiss woman within two years.

Eva Emery Dye’s historical fiction and other stories created the myth that MacDonald met the three Japanese shipwrecked Japanese sailors, Iwakichi, Otokichi, and Kyūkichi, known as “the three kichis,” at Fort Vancouver in 1832. In reality, MacDonald spent the winter of 1833-4 there and left in March, around six weeks before the three sailors arrived.

At eighteen, he was apprenticed to Edward Ermatinger, a fur-trade banker, but soon decided to study Japanese. While he explained in his autobiography that he wanted to “instruct them of us,” it may have also been his belief that Japanese were the ancestors of Native Americans that compelled him. MacDonald left his bank job in 1945 and spent three years as a navigator and harpooner on a New England whaling vessel. In a prearranged plan with the captain of the whaler Plymouth, he left on a small boat and arrived on Rishiri Island, Hokkaido, in northern Japan. There the Ainu (the indigenous people of Japan) rescued him on July 1, 1848. He was eventually transported to a thousand miles to Nagasaki, the seat of the government.

In Nagasaki, MacDonald explained that he had been shipwrecked and that his intentions were peaceful, he was placed under house arrest instead of executed for entering the country illegally. For ten months, MacDonald taught English conversation and pronunciation to fourteen Japanese men who had been acting as interpreters between the Japanese and Dutch while they taught him Japanese. One of his students was Murayama Yeannoske (Einosuke Moriyama) who was a chief interpreter for the Japanese when Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Japan to demand that the Shogunate open its door to America in 1854.

MacDonald was not the only American in Japan at the time. In June 1848, around the time MacDonald arrived in Hokkaido, thirteen seamen from the Lagoda had also arrived and had been arrested. All fourteen left Japan aboard the Preble.

For several years, MacDonald worked as a gold miner and rancher in Australia and Canada before returning to the United States. He wrote an account of his time in Japan: Japan: Story of Adventure of Ranald MacDonald, first teacher of English in Japan, A.D. 1848–49, published posthumously in 1923.

MacDonald died on August 24, 1894, and was buried in the Ranald MacDonald Cemetery in Ferry County, Washington. There are also monuments to him in Nagasaki (1964), Rishiri Island (1987), and Astoria (1988).

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992) was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977, which raised the public awareness of African American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history.

Haley was born in Ithaca, New York and enlisted in the US Coast Guard in 1939 where he became its first Chief Journalist. He won many awards, and was the first and only person to receive an honorary degree from the Coast Guard Academy. He retired in 1959 and became a magazine writer and interviewer.

His first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965 and sold over six million copies by 1977. Time later named it one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

After this success, Haley’s next project was to tell the story of his ancestors’ journey from Africa to America as slaves and their eventual freedom. Haley spent a decade researching across three continents, examining slave ship records in the United States, and England, and traveling to his ancestors’ home in Gambia, West Africa. His efforts culminated in Roots, loosely based on his family history published in 1976. It won the 1977 National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize and translated into thirty-seven languages. It was eventually adapted into a TV series.

After Roots, he began working on Queen: The Story of an American Family but died before it was finished. David Stevens completed the novel. Queen begins in 1841 and continues through the post-Civil War era, tracing the story of Haley’s ancestors. His grandmother, Queen Haley, was the daughter of Esther, a slave and James Jackson, Jr., the son of her master, who lived on a plantation in Florence, Alabama. Jackson planned to inherit his father’s plantation but has a crisis when he falls in love with Esther and conceives a child. Another ancestor’s story came down through the generations in family legend. In the 1840s, a Kentucky horse trader named Green Monroe Haley moved to Alabama and established a plantation in Marion County. Haley hired a man named William Baugh (pronounced “baff” in the Scottish dialect) who was a Scottish descent. Baugh had a son with a female slave named Viney, who was of Cherokee and African descent. Alec Baugh, born around 1850, took the Haley name and became Alec Haley, Alex Haley’s great-grandfather. After slavery was outlawed in 1865, Alec Haley moved to Tennessee where he married another former slave named Queen. Like Roots, Queen was also adapted into a TV miniseries, starring Hallie Berry.

Though Haley did not live to see it, in 2007, the family legend was confirmed. Haley’s nephew Chris Haley found that he was distantly related to a woman from south Wales who traced her lineage back to seventeenth-century Scotland.

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5 Bestselling Authors Reveal Their NaNoWriMo Secrets

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So, you’ve toyed with the idea of writing a novel for years, but for one reason or another, you haven’t got around to it. Don’t sweat it. Just spend the 30 days of November writing approximately 1,667 words a day, and then boom! You’ve got yourself a 50,000-word novel, all ready to hit the presses and become the next Great Novel.

Right? …Isn’t that how it works??

This notion of “simply” writing one-thirtieth of a novel each day is part of why NaNoWriMo receives some flack, but it’s of course not the intended message of the month-long writing marathon. The goal isn’t to hit “publish” on whatever you’ve written come December 1st; the goal is to get you to write every single day, and to end the month with some semblance of a novel — whether that’s a first draft or the first several chapters. (Or, as is the case in some of the stories below, the first few books in a series!) To prove that there is worth in just here is a list of bestselling novels that found their roots during NaNoWriMo.

1. by Sara Gruen

You’ve probably heard of this one. If you avoided the New York Times Best Seller list between 2006 and 2012, and didn’t watch a single movie trailer in 2011, then there’s a chance you missed it. But for the rest of us, is a title that rings instant bells.

Gruen used NaNoWriMo to draft three of her novels, including — a historical novel about a young vet who joins a Depression-era circus. She admits that the year she drafted her breakout success, she didn’t “win” the contest: she didn’t pass the 50,000 word count goal. Instead, she accumulated a solid 40,000 word base.

As she said in an interview with Lindsey Rivait, “Those were 40,000 words I did not have before.”

NaNoWriMo thoughts from Sara Gruen: “However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in the same boat, and look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn’t work, set someone on fire. In your book, of course.”

2. by Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell admits that she first thought people just used NaNoWriMo to dump words on paper, and that she would be better off taking the time to write quality over quantity. She had already published two novels, one of which took her five years — so she certainly had the patience to go slow.

In the end, what she found great about the challenge was how the formation of a daily writing habit gave her the freedom to stop second-guessing herself. She discovered that writing with momentum didn’t result in just “words on paper” — sometimes these words could be pretty good.

During NaNoWriMo, I never left the world of the book long enough to lose momentum. I stayed immersed in the story all month long, and that made everything come so much smoother than usual. I got a much quicker grasp on the main characters and their voices. The plotlines shot forward…”

3. by Hugh Howey

In 2011, Hugh Howey prepared for his third consecutive NaNoWriMo by creating a detailed outline of the novel he intended to start writing on November 1st. However, in October, his recently self-published novelette Wool started to gain traction, generating reviews and selling copies by the thousands/tens of thousands. So, Howey swiveled on his heel, dropped his intended writing outline and decided to turn Wool into a series.

That November, Howey had a schedule that makes us wonder if he’s cracked the secret of time travel: he worked full-time, was taking night-classes in astronomy, was volunteering in NaNoWriMo Young Writers program at a local library, and woke up every night at 3am to write. On top of all that, by the end of the month he had solidly smashed the 50,000 word count goal: three stories in the series had been completed, and was edited, the cover was designed, and it was published on Amazon. And it was already generating sales… whew! Today, the film rights to are owned by 20th Century Fox.

“I can say with confidence that I wouldn’t have written the same books if I’d written them any other way. The compressed nature of a NaNo-novel makes for a tighter plot. It reinforces the importance of not taking a day off. NaNoWriMo isn’t a writing exercise for me. It trained me to be a pro.”

4. by Erin Morgenstern

Erin Morgenstern took part in NaNoWriMo every year from 2003 to 2009. Her best-known novel, , started to take form in 2005 and was refined over the next two years with blitzes of writing and re-writing in the 2006 and 2007 NaNos. Then in 2010, Morgenstern took her first break from the writing contest to edit her book, during which she altered significant parts of the story. According to Morgenstern, this is the point of NaNoWriMo: to discover a story that can be excavated and polished over months or years afterwards — until all that is left is a gem of a novel.

Published in 2011, spent seven weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, reaching number two on the hardcover fiction list. The film rights have also been acquired by the producers of the movies.

“Even if you’re an outliner, leave room for the unexpected things to sneak in. Surprises are half the fun, the spontaneous road trips through tangents and subplots. They might end up being more important than you think. And if they’re not, you can always edit them out after November. No one has to know so for now, for this glorious November, you can do whatever you please. It’s your world to create and explore and even destroy if you want.”

5. by Marissa Meyer

Marissa Meyer had been writing Sailor Moon fanfiction for years when she started posting her daily word count as a means of motivating herself. And motivate herself, she did. In the 2008 NaNo, she wrote or drafted the first three novels of series: 70K for 50K for , and 30K for .

As many of her successful NaNoWriMo peers will tell you, most of those words were scrapped, but not wasted. They provided an in-depth roadmap that helped her write the words that stuck. All three of these novels went on to land spots on the New York Times Best Seller list and the series is now on its fifth volume.

“[NaNoWriMo] forces you to silence that internal editor and just get something written. If you’re telling yourself that it’s OK to be writing something bad because you can always come back and fix it later, it takes a lot of the pressure off.”

So, take heart, aspiring authors! Remember that NaNoWriMo is not about writing a bestselling novel. It’s about non-stop. Turning your 50,000 words into a potential best seller comes afterwards — with lots, and lots (and lots) of editing.

There is no shortage of great advice out there meant to help writers through the month-long writing blitz with the makings of great novel (and, for bonus points: their sanity). But, as Diana Gabaldon says: “…no matter how you write, it’s always you and the page. And the page isn’t in a position to tell you anything you do is wrong. Therefore…anything you do must necessarily be the Right Way to Write. Go for it!”

Read more: http://ift.tt/2zreCmj

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2AoTjOO via Viral News HQ

[isslibrary]

New Books (September Part II)

Sorted by Call Number / Author. New books are shelved in the "New Books" Section of the Slaughter Reading Room under the superhero posters. Books marked "On Reserve" are in Mrs VanHorn's office for use by faculty or students in particular classes-- just ask us if you can't find something. Librarians like to help you.

Thank you to the Wiatreks and Dr. Thomas for donating many of these materials!

142.78 B

Barrett, William, 1913-. Irrational man : a study in existential philosophy. Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books, 1990. Addresses existentialist philosophy in America during the 1990s with a discussion of the roots of existentialism and personal views from some of the foremost existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre.

174.28 W

Washington, Harriet A. Medical apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. 1st Anchor Books (Broadway Books) ed. New York : Anchor Books, 2008. The first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. New details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. This book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit.--*** Recommended by Visiting Writer Kwoya Fagin Maples

180 A

Adamson, Peter. Classical Philosophy : A history of philosophy without any gaps. Oxford, UK : Oxford UP, 2014.

180 A

Adamson, Peter, 1972- author. Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds : a history of philosophy without any gaps. First edition. Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of Christian and Jewish philosophy and of ancient science. Chapters are devoted to such major figures as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, and Augustine. But in keeping with the motto of the series, the story is told 'without any gaps, ' providing an in-depth look at less familiar topics that remains suitable for the general reader. For instance, there are chapters on the fascinating but relatively obscure Cyrenaic philosophical school, on pagan philosophical figures like Porphyry and Iamblichus, and extensive coverage of the Greek and Latin Christian Fathers who are at best peripheral in most surveys of ancient philosophy. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition also appears in the shape of Philo of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way.

301 C

Hill Collins, Patricia, author. Intersectionality.

305 H

Hancock, Ange-Marie, author. Intersectionality : an intellectual history. Intersectionality theory has emerged over the past thirty years as a way to think about the avenues by which inequalities (most often dealing with, but not limited to, race, gender, class and sexuality) are produced. Rather than seeing such categories as signaling distinct identities that can be adopted, imposed or rejected, intersectionality theory considers the logic by which each of these categories is socially constructed as well as how they operate within the diffusion of power relations. In other words, social and political power are conferred through categories of identity, and these identities bear vastly material effects. Rather than look at inequalities as a relationship between those at the center and those on the margins, intersectionality maps the relative ways in which identity politics create power. Though intersectionality theory has emerged as a highly influential school of thought in ethnic studies, gender studies, law, political science, sociology and psychology, no scholarship to date exists on the evolution of the theory. In the absence of a comprehensive intellectual history of the theory, it is often discussed in vague, ahistorical terms. And while scholars have called for greater specificity and attention to the historical foundations of intersectionality theory, their idea of the history to be included is generally limited to the particular currents in the United States. This book seeks to remedy the vagueness and murkiness attributed to intersectionality by attending to the historical, geographical, and cross-disciplinary myopia afflicting current intersectionality scholarship. This comprehensive intellectual history is an agenda-setting work for the theory.

305.42 A

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977- author. We should all be feminists. Offers an updated definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. In this personal, eloquently-argued essay -- adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now -- and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

305.896 D

Davis, Angela Y. (Angela Yvonne), 1944- author. Freedom is a constant struggle : Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago, IL : Haymarket Books, 2016. In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."

306.362 D

Diouf, Sylviane A. (Sylviane Anna), 1952-. Dreams of Africa in Alabama : the slave ship Clotilda and the story of the last Africans brought to America. Oxford ; : Oxford University Press, 2007.  *** On Reserve

371.9 B

Intersectionality in action : a guide for faculty and campus leaders for creating inclusive classrooms and institutions. First edition.

428.2 F

Fogarty, Mignon. Grammar girl presents the ultimate writing guide for students. 1st ed. New York : Henry Holt, 2011. For beginners to advanced students, this warm and witty guide to writing includes a writing style chapter and a guide to writing everything from school papers to letters to e-mails.

428.43 D

DiYanni, Robert. Frames of mind : a rhetorical reader with occasions for writing. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning, c2009.

468 M

Marinelli, Patti. Avenidas. Mason, OH : Cengage, 2007.

478 M

Minkova, Milena. Latin for the new millennium. Wauconda, Ill. : Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2008-.

512 B

Algebra 1. [Orlando, Fla.] : Holt McDougal, c2011.

574 B

Biggs, Alton. Biology : The dynamics of life. Texas Edition. Columbus, OH : McGraw-Hill, 2004.

700 B

Barrett, Terry, 1945-. Making art : form & meaning. New York, NY : McGraw-Hill, c2011. This comprehensive introduction to art and design explores making artifacts as a process of making meaning. Making Art: Form and Meaning offers a framework for understanding how all the aspects of an artwork--subject matter, medium, form, process, and contexts--interact. The text's wide array of examples and its emphasis on late-modernism and postmodern art give students a thorough look at the expressive possibilities of traditional design elements and principles and contemporary practices, including the use of computer-based, time-based, and lens-based media. *** On Reserve

700.4145 B

Breckman, Warren, 1963-. European romanticism : a brief history with documents. 1st ed. Boston : Bedford/St. Martins, c2008.

709 S

Strickland, Carol. The annotated Mona Lisa : a crash course in art history, from prehistoric to Post-modern. 2nd ed. Kansas, Mo. : Andrews McMeel Pub., c2007. Presents the history of art from prehistoric times to the present day, describes major artists and movements, and details the influence of art on society through the ages. *** On Reserve

709.03 G

Gardner, Helen, 1878-1946. Gardner's art through the ages : the Western perspective. 13th ed., Backpack ed. Australia ; : Wadsworth Cengage Learning, c2010. *** On Reserve

741.5 C

Coates, Ta-nehisi. Black Panther : A Nation under our feet: Book One. Salem, VA : Marvel, 2016.

770 C

Campany, David. The open road : photography & the American road trip. First edition. The road trip is an enduring symbol in American culture. Ever since cars became widely available, the road stretching over the horizon has represented a sense of possibility and freedom, discovery and escape--a place to get lost and find yourself in the process. The American road trip has appeared prominently in literature, music, and movies, but it has had an especially powerful influence on photography. As photographers have embarked on trips across the United States with the express purpose of making work, they have created some of the most important photographs in the history of the medium: from images by Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Berenice Abbott to Robert Frank's seminal 1950s odyssey, The Americans. From Stephen Shore to Ryan McGinley, hundreds of other photographers have continued the tradition. The Open Road is the first book to explore the photographic road trip as a genre. It opens with a comprehensive introduction, which traces the rise of road culture in America and considers photographers on the move across the country and across the century, from the early 1900s to present day. Each chapter explores one body of work in depth through informative texts and a portfolio of images, beginning with Robert Frank, and including such renowned work as Garry Winogrand's 1964, Joel Sternfeld's American Prospects, William Eggleston's Los Alamos, and Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi. The Open Road is a visual tour-de-force, presenting the story of photographers for whom the American road is muse. *** On Reserve

780.42 P

Poyner, Rick. Oh So Pretty : Punk in Print 1976-80. London, UK : Phaidon Press, 2016.

781 G

Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles History and Analysis : Test Item File. 4th. New Jersey : Prentice Hall, 1991.

781.65 G

Gridley, Mark C., 1947-. Jazz styles : history & analysis. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall, c2003.

786.2 D

Doerschuk, Bob. 88 : the giants of jazz piano. San Francisco : Backbeat Books ;, c2001.

787.6 B

Brewster, David M. Teach Yourself to Play Guitar : A quick and easy introduction for beginners. Victoria, Australia : Hal Leonard Corporation, 2004.

787.6 N

Nelson, Troy. Guitar Aerobics : A 52-week, one-lick-per-day workout program for developing, improving, and maintaining guitar technique. Victoria, Australia : Hal Leonard Corporation, 2007.

787.871 C

Capone, Phil. Guitar chord Bible : over 500 illustrated chords for rock, blues, soul, country, jazz, and classical. Edison, N.J. : Cartwell Books, 2006. This compact dictionary is designed to fit in your bag and is complete with fingering diagrams for each chord and photographs showing how each one is played.

808 F

Foster, Thomas C., author. How to read literature like a professor : a lively and entertaining guide to reading between the lines. Revised edition. What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey? Shares a meal? Get drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface -- a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character - and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you. In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster shows how easy and gratifying it is to unlock those hidden truths, and to discover a world where a road leads to a quest a shared meal may signify a communion and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just rain. Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect companion for making your reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.

808.8 M

The Norton introduction to literature. Shorter 11th ed. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2013.

811.54 R

Rukeyser, Muriel, 1913-1980. Elegies.

811.6 L

Lewis, Erica. Daryl Hall is my Boyfriend : poems. Baltimore, MD : Barrelhouse Books, 2015.

822.33 S

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Romeo and Juliet. 3rd ed. Cambridge, UK ; : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

851.1 A

Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321, author. The divine comedy : Volume 1. Inferno.

891.71 B

Barskova, Polina. Written in the Dark : Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad. Brooklyn, NY : Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016.

909 M

McKay, John P., author. A history of world societies. Tenth edition.

909.09 K

Kagan, Donald. The Western heritage. Combined ed., 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall, 1998. v. 1. To 1715 ; v. 2. 1300 to 1815.

941.067 P

Pincus, Steven C. A. England's glorious Revolution, 1688-1689 : a brief history with documents. 1st ed. Boston : Bedford/St. Martin's, c2006.

942.07 V

Voltaire, 1694-1778. Letters on England.

970.015 S

Symcox, Geoffrey. Christopher Columbus and the enterprise of the Indies : a brief history with documents. Boston, MA : Bedford/St. Martin's, c2005. A general introduction to Christopher Columbus' life and voyages, followed by a series of documents. These include excerpts from the log of his first voyage, his agreements with the Spanish crown, papal bulls concerning the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, and judgments by contemporaries on Columbus and his achievements.

92 Coates

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The beautiful struggle : a father, two sons and an unlikely road to manhood. 1st paperback ed. New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2009. A memoir of growing up in the tough world of Baltimore in the 1980s chronicles the relationship between the author and his father, a Vietnam vet and Black Panther affiliate, and his campaign to keep his sons from falling victim to the temptations of the streets. *** On Reserve

DVD Jaz

Jazz. Narrated by Keith David. 10 episodes tracing the history of Jazz from its roots in the African-American community of New Orleans to its heights and continuing presence.

DVD Mik

The mikado. Widescreen version. [United States] : A & E Home Video :, [2005].

F Adi

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977- author. Americanah : [a novel]. First Anchor Books edition. Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion--for each other and for their homeland.

F Adi

Adiga, Aravind. The white tiger : a novel. Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life--having nothing but his own wits to help him along. *** Recommended by Visiting Writer Kwoya Fagin Maples

F Atw

Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939-. The handmaid's tale. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books, 1998, c1986. Set in the near future, America has become a puritanical theocracy and Offred tells her story as a Handmaid under the new social order.

F Fit

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940. The great Gatsby. Scribner trade pbk. ed. New York : Scribner, 2004, c1953. Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back. This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of a classic of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby.

F Row

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. First edition. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

F Row

Rowling, J. K. The tales of Beedle the Bard. 1st ed. New York : Children's High Level Group in association with Arthur A. Levine Books, 2008. Contains five illustrated moral tales for children from the world of Harry Potter, reportedly discovered and translated by young witch Hermione Granger, with an introduction and commentary from Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

F Row

Whisp, Kennilworthy. Quidditch through the ages. 1st American ed. New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books ;, 2001.

R Test Prep

Teukolsky, Roselyn. AP Computer Science A : Barron's. Hauppauge, NY : Barron's Educational Series, Inc, 2015. *** On Reserve

[baddasshistoricalmadams]

Hypatia

Born: AD 355, Died: AD 415

Hypatia was an Alexandrian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician. 

To truly understand why Hypatia was a true badass, some background information on the period in which she lived is important. Alexandria at the time was the scene for a turbulent political and religious upheaval that ultimately led to the death of Hypatia. 

Alexandria was once a centre for culture and learning but at this time was divided. An amalgamation of Jewish, Christian and Pagan faith was squashed into one city causing many conflicts that resulted in death and destruction. No one side was entirely to blame in the conflicts. One particularly famous example of this religious division was the destruction of the Serapeum, the temple dedicated to the greco-egyptian god Serapis, it housed books from the Library of Alexandria and its destruction was seen as the final nail in the coffin of the great library. Theodisius I reiterated the edict that enforced the prohibition of pagan iconography and worship. Pagans barricaded themselves in the Serapeum and those Christians that were barricaded in with them were treated poorly. The writer Rufinus, recording his account of the event wrote of how the news reached the emperor and upon hearing of the treatment of the Christians; declared them saints. Those defenders within were to be pardoned upon the proviso that the Serapeum be destroyed and so it was. 

Hypatia is known because of two individuals whom she was caught between during the period of this divide. Cyril of Alexandria who became the patriarch of Alexandria and the prefect of Alexandria Orestes. The two became entangled in a bitter political struggle for Alexandria of which Hypatia was drawn into. She was a good friend of Orestes and a respected intellectual in the city.

She was born the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, a well respected mathematician and astronomer; his daughter learnt at his knee and expanded on the learning she had been given. She lectured publicly, her talks garnered huge audiences and some of her students would gain fame of their own with Synesius becoming an influential bishop of the time. Hypatia eventually became the head of a platonic school in Egypt; tutoring in astronomy and philosophy particularly the school of Plato and Plotis. She was an intellectual and influential woman of her time which was ultimately seen as incredibly dangerous. None of her work appears to have survived aside from knowledge of the titles of her work and references made about them. She was described by Socrates of Constantinople in his Ecclesiastical History;

There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.

Hypatias death was not entirely as a result of her being an intellectual woman in a time when women had little in the way of autonomous freedom in the Roman Empire. Cyril and Orestes were already feuding because of the former's attempts to push through ecclesiastical reform and Orestes perceived relationship with the Jewish population of the city. Prior to the death of her former pupil Synesius and of Theophilius, she had enjoyed some level of tolerance to her teachings and how she conducted herself.As Cyril rose to his position, the tolerance was lost and Hypatia became somewhat of a scapegoat in the whole affair. Some believed she was behind the inability for Cyril and Orestes to settle the war they were having over the future of Alexandria and others believed she practised something akin to witchcraft. The dissenters could not assassinate Orestes but Hypatia was an easier individual to deal with.

The picture above is from the movie Agora which shows Hypatias death at its climax. In reality; her death was a horrific affair. Hypatia was a woman in her sixties and met her end at the hands of a mob. Both Socrates Scholalisticus and John of Niklu were in agreement on the manner of her death, describing it as brutal and callous. 

Regardless of her manner of death it is important to remember the scholar as she was, a polymath of a high calibre and a role model for future. 

Further reading:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hypatia

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hypatia-ancient-alexandrias-great-female-scholar-10942888/

M Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Harvard, 1995).

N Russell, Theophilius of Alexandria (Routledge, 2006)

S Donovan, Hypatia: Mathmatician, inventor and philosopher (Capstone, 2008)

Watch Agora (2009), it’s actually pretty good.

[readingcanadianlit-blog]

Five Interesting Nonfiction Books

1.) The Film Club: A Memoir by David Gilmour

"At the start of this brilliantly unconventional family memoir, David Gilmour is an unemployed movie critic trying to convince his fifteen-year-old son Jesse to do his homework. When he realizes Jesse is beginning to view learning as a loathsome chore, he offers his son an unconventional deal: Jesse could drop out of school, not work, not pay rent - but he must watch three movies a week of his father’s choosing .Week by week, side by side, father and son watched everything from True Romance to Rosemary’s Baby to Showgirls, and films by Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, Billy Wilder, among others. The movies got them talking about Jesse’s life and his own romantic dramas, with mercurial girlfriends, heart-wrenching breakups, and the kind of obsessive yearning usually seen only in movies. Through their film club, father and son discussed girls, music, work, drugs, money, love, and friendship - and their own lives changed in surprising ways." (Amazon)

2.) Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail by Carrot Quinn

"Carrot Quinn fears that she’s become addicted to the internet. The city makes her feel numb, and she’s having trouble connecting with others. In a desperate move she breaks away from everything to walk 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It will be her first long-distance hike." (Goodreads)

3.) Acquainted with the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark by Christopher Dewdney "In twelve chapters corresponding to the twelve hours of night, Christopher Dewdney illuminates night’s central themes, including sunsets, nocturnal animals, bedtime stories, festivals of the night, fireworks, astronomy, nightclubs, sleep and dreams, the graveyard shift, the art of darkness, and endless nights. With infections curiosity, a lyrical, intimate tone, and an eye for nighttime beauties both natural and man-made, he paints a captivating portrait of our hours in darkness." (Amazon)

4.) A House in the Sky: A Memoir by Amanda Lindhout & Sarah Corbett

"As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road." (Goodreads)

5.) Girl in the Woods: A Memoir by Aspen Matis

"Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis’s exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled through her first semester—a challenging time made even harder by the coldness of her college’s “conflict mediation” process. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: She would seek healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada." (Goodreads)