Greer Gilman's Blog, page 4

Fortune's fool

Sigh.  It was being a perfectly lovely Readercon until halfway through my one panel, when my signal died in mid-sentence,  By the time I'd fought my way back, it was all over.  And then it took fifteen minutes of the hallway after-chat to make myself heard, or to hear anything but random wheeeps and static crackling.  And then the con was over.

I count on Readercon to renew me:  It's like a yearly immersion in a swift cool sparkling element, from which I emerge writerly and witty and reborn.  And I'm crushed.

So dispiriting.

Nine

The best in this kind are but shadows

This weekend will be Readercon 31—my thirtieth.  Good gracious.  Even on my tiny screen, it was lovely to see the old, familiar faces—Delany is looking quite Jove-like, and spoke from out of a thunderstorm.  It will be even better to hear them all on panels.

I have just one, with some excellent people.  The upside is that I can actually listen to most of the program. Luxury!

Darmok and Jalad and Merriam and Webster
Sunday 6 pm, Main Track 2
Leah Bobet, John Chu, Francesca Forrest, Greer Gilman, Sarah Smith

At the "Decolonizing the Imagination" panel at Readercon 30, Cadwell Turnbull observed that linguistics as an academic field is restricted and distorted by underrepresentation of marginalized groups. How does that affect the ways languages, including constructed ones, are used in speculative fiction? What can authors do to overcome biased notions of what makes a language sound "magical" or "alien"?

Nine

Tolleshunt D'Arcy, May 1940

Having found* The Oaken Heart, Margery Allingham's memoir of the early days of WW2 in rural Essex, I've been enjoying its vivid immediacy:  Invasion was in the wind and the advance air attack was expected every second.
I took the precaution of putting my only valuable, my manuscript (which represented, if nothing else, at least six solid months of my living time), in a biscuit tin, and Christine, who felt we ought to bury something, began to look about for some silver or some china we could hide. She gave this up in disgust in the end and was cool with me when I suggested we bought something for the purpose. I thought the sort of things which would be valuable if the worst happened were pails and blankets and tinned beans and soap, but none of these things seemed suitable for burying.
That manuscript must have been Traitor's Purse—the one about amnesia, paranoia, and a vast, shadowy conspiracy that would destroy the island kingdom.
 Nine


*It's on FadedPage.  Thanks, sovay ! 

Helter-skelter

Fooling around with corpora on CQPWeb, before I knew how to limit commands, I tried searching *l*k*l*, (instead of [,un,vn]l[e,ee,i,ie,y,ye]k*l* ) and got a glorious babble of burgeoning English, helter-skelter:

Love-killing, lurking-holes, Gospel-knowledge, helter-skelter, Larks-heels, Hell-Kettles, Milking-pail, Looking-glass-maker, black-Hellebore, Black-Velvet, Pine-apple-kernels, holy-water-sprinkle, Basilisk-like, Bullocks-liver, Ecliptick-line, frolickely, lank-bellied, Logick-rules, fellow-suckling, Loue-kindling, Bloudsprinkling, skulkingly, Telescopick-Ruler, truth-likeliness, Candlestick-metal, Chollerick-Melancholly, crinkle-crankles, gentleman-like-fellow, made-like-almonds, Placket-Politiques, Soule-knell, black-Angel-Bands, Black-pear-plum, blackishly-red, Clod-skul, cluk-clucking, cold-black-lands, flowry-kirtl, Fly-killer, frolikly, Funeral-Knell, Hickletee-Pickletee, Hyperbolick-Glasses, larks-claw, Lick-wimbles, London-Cuckolds, long-black-rebel-Parliament, lukewarme-gospellers, Lunatick-child, lurking-Lions, Milk-Clysters, Pearl-Necklace, Politick-and-Ecclesiastick, Publick-Library-Keeper, Queen-like-Closet, reddish-long-bill’d-stork-like-scrank-legged, Sculking-holes, Silk-worm-lodgings, Soul-Killing-Sins, spleenatickly, Suffolk-gentlemen, Talkative-Insolents, Toad-like-swelling, universally-acknowledged, Venice-Looking-Glasses, Walking-library, able-worke-folkes, Ale-kilderkin, Aleekam-sallam, Alembick-Idolaters, Alkalizatenesse, all-naked-Flesh-and-blood, Ally-Koli-cawn, Anger-Looking-Glasse, Bearlike-whelps, Black-a-more-Child, Black-Bartholomew-Day, blacke-clowd-gathering, blackish-pale, blacksliders, Blew-Book-Fellows, boylecockles, Cacolicke-complotted, Calue-skin-cobbled, child-like-love, Cholick-Dolours, ClinkClinkDrink, cloak-bag-sleeves, Clock-work-Fellow, cloth-stockin-heles, Cold-wrinkled, Delphick-Oracle, dunghill-Cockrell, Eel-skin-gloves, eg-yolk-colored, egregiously-unskilful, elf-knowledge, Elk-skin-sleeves, Endlesse-Kalendar, Esculapian-skill, fellow-stickler, Fennell-finkle, Flegmatick-Melancholly, Flint-rock-relenting, foule-maskt-Ladie, Funeral-knel, Gentleman-like-like, Gospel-pickle, Gospel-unthankful, hacster-like-insulting, Heavenly-knowledge, Hells-dark-Lanthorns, humble-meeke-peaceable-lovefull-fearing-joying-strongly-confident, ill-kindled, King-self-killing, lack-Latine-Country-Clergy, Lack-learning-Parliament, lacke-Linnen-Mate, Law-booksFelons, lazie-Hierarchick-non-preaching-lubbers, lembeckemelted, liberall-knowledge-coueting, Lock-Tabacco-Chevalier, long-bill’dstork-lik’t-scrank-legged, long-black-Thumb-nail, Look-like-agoose, Looking-glass-stale, Louse-killer, Love-killing-Principles, loving-lucklesse, lowd-crackling, Lunar-Buckles, Lust-enkindled, malignant-blood-sucking-rebellious, Mallard-killer, Mallytickle, Mamaluke-Sultans, Melchisedeck-like, Mercuriall-kindled-fiery, Milk-chocolate, milke-sop-like, milkemaid-lasses, Milky-periwinckle, nightwalking-Cudgellers, Nitro-vitriolick-Sulphurous-steams, Old-Cockpool, Olympick-play, parabolick-Glass, parcelain-winkle, Parcell-Wickliffite, pearly-trickling, Philo-katoptrono-klastes, pick-lock-tools, Pismire-like-Phalangie, pitch-black-blazes, Placket-wheedling, Platonick-Love,Plummet-like-smooth-sliding, Politickwould-bees, Polypragmatick-Male-contents, Prolifick-Clove, Pyneapplekernelles, rambling-Bookseller, raskallike-rabblement, raw-silk-color, Ruffian-like-Souldier, Sallet-cockle, Scarlet-colour’d-silk-and-gold, selfe-tickling, Sherlockian-Providential-Archbishops, shittle-corke-heels, silke-lascivious, skimble-skamble, Skulking-places, sleepe-killing, Soul-killing-Errors, Star-like-flower, state-lying-Kalender, Still-King-killing, Stumbling-Block-Thresholds, Suffolk-Gospellers, swilling-tankerd-tinkerly, Telescopick-Dial, thred-bare-grogran-worsted-lack-Latin, Thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletoby’d, Tickle-me-quickly, Trumpled-cockle, two-legged-walking-Hovels, Typhon-like-inuincible, un-lookt-for-evil, Veluet-cambricke-silken-feather’d, walking-dunghill, walking-librarie, Waspe-like-Phalangie, Wedlock-Clog, well-anckled, Which-their-dull-skonses-cannot-eas’ly-reach, white-milken-christall-siluer...

In all, I got about 85,000 solutions to a crossword-puzzle clue with an unknown number of letters.  Best party game ever!

Nine

"We know by the sky..."

Could I possibly resist the Northern Lights? "The Sky Was Beautiful on Fire," painted by Steve Driscoll, comes from a little company named Stumpcraft, out in Calgary. (Prices are CAD.)





"The stars and constellations one would typically see around Algonquin Park in November act as the backbone to the pattern of whimsies woven into the puzzle."

I found this on Rebecca's puzzle blog, reviewed as "truly oneiric." If puzzling were an Olympic sport, I think she'd make the team. She's done thousands of wooden jigsaws—apparently one or two or even three a day—and reviews them.  Her taste in images does not completely Venn  with mine, but her knowledge of cutting and of whimsies is both wide and deep.  She gave this one of her very rare 5/5s.

I've had a couple of Stumpcraft puzzles—"Soft Maple in Autumn" and "Malédiction" high on my puzzle club wait list for many months, but the queue must be very long indeed.  Their "Tea from the Void" (like "Sky," not in the Club library) has some fabulous Wonderland whimsies, but has to be one of the weirdest Mad Hatters yet depicted.  Ideal service for the misanthropic, I must say.

Nine

Habeas corpora

I have a new toy. CQPweb at Lancaster University is awesome!

You'll need to register, but once you're in, you have access to huge linguistic corpora: millions on millions of texts in multiple languages, all searchable in many ways. I've been playing with the Enhanced Shakespearean Corpus (First Folio). You can search his canon for a certain word by part of speech, or the status or gender of the speaker, or the genre of the play. Does he use "witch" as "verb"? "Ghost"? Yes and yes. You can search by lemma (dictionary headword) for all forms. You can search how he uses "-ing" or "un-" (I need to figure out how to exclude "uncle," of which there are many in his plays).

Next, I want to work on collocations: what words appears in what company?

Nine

Rabbit, rabbit!

Frolicking around my front door, as they should.




It was a lovely July, despite all that rain.  (Thirteen days straight, nearly 10 inches total.)

Moonwise is thirty [!] this year. To mark the anniversary, the marvellous Sofia Samatar has asked to interview me. She and I are working on a conversation on the origins of Cloud. How glorious that she remembered! My heart rejoices.

I wrote a scholarly paper [!] on Gabriel Harvey's 1578 address to the Earl of Oxford, long supposed to be a panegyric, in which I trace multiple allusions to to some wicked Roman satire. My beloved Cambridge teacher and several of my academic friends think it's publishable.

I got to play Liza Doolittle [!], Banquo, Macbeth (Act 5), the ship Master, Adrian ("Widow Dido?") and Prospero [!] (Acts 4-5) on the Scintillation Discord, and give a talk there on wooden jigsaw puzzles,

Speaking of puzzles, I had passed this one over as pleasantly cute, but I've just found out that it converts into a working 3-D ferris wheel [!].



On the playground, I deepened my characterization of First Dragon, which Fox finds deliciously scary, and as his assistant hydraulics engineer, helped release four spectacular floods and waterfalls onto a system of aqueducts, and ephemeral great rivers and lakes. The Common has a fabulous sandbox.

I had a lovely long conversational birthday dinner with rushthatspeaks , to which I brought Tatte's perfect stone-fruit galette and the first new cake from Burdick's that I've seen in ages. The last was their Euclidean triangle filled with passion fruit mousse, and I think the Earl Grey spotted with blueberries came before that. The Georgetown is deep dark sour cherry compote on an ethereal cherry mousse on almond sponge, and clad in dark chocolate. It's not iced but enrobed, so there's that slight brittle resistance of biting into a soft-centered chocolate. Sublime!




Writing all this, I realized I have some things to celebrate. So I had another slice of cake.



Nine

Ironmongery

So I just discovered this nail in my shoe. How even...?





I mean it went straight into the sole, turned a sharp right angle, and came out through the inside edge, protruding a good inch.  Never felt a thing.  I can't imagine where I picked it up, or how it got in there without my noticing, or (indeed) got in there at all.  It took some tugging with pliers to lever it out.

I suppose if this were the 17th century I'd say a witch had done it...

Nine

Central Park Fifth Avenue

Oh hey! Isn't this a lovely set of whimsies from Artifact? Kathryn Flocken's really got the play between puzzle image and silhouette: the tree in the hansom cab, the sweep of Lady Liberty's robe, the outfit on the baseball player, pants, shoes, stockings and all. When I was looking for scattered bits of him, I found myself singing "Where have you gone, Joe Di Maggio?" I like the confident girl with the scarf, Patience (or is she Fortitude?), the teeny-tiny Washington Square Arch (seen from a distance), and of course the carousel. After I took this picture and had well started the puzzle, I found the Wall Street bull, but feh. Now if only there were a row boat for Randy Melendy to fall out of!





Working on this wakes blissful memories of my last trip to the City, to visit Henry Wessell's “A Conversation Larger Than the Universe,” to see myself feted at the Grolier Club, and my books displayed along with first editions of everyone from Mary Shelley to Hope Mirrlees to Tiptree, Delany, Russ, Crowley, and Wolfe. Be still, my beating heart!

Really, it was all so wonderful, I would made the journey even if I wasn't in the show.

It was a fine day in early spring, so beforehand, I walked about admiring the Olmsted landscape and some fine brisk turn-outs among the hansom cabs, and browsing the bouquinistes. Afterward, I walked all the way up the Park from the Plaza corner to the Met, and passed a mad dowager in more furs than a Conan movie. There was so little time when I got there, that I just let myself get lost, and (speaking of jigsaw puzzles) ended up in that gorgeous intarsia Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio.  How could I forget it was there?





On the way back, I talked to a guard about her favorite painting, a Virgin she watched over because that Virgin watched over her, as all of us should do for one another.  I wish I could remember more of her theology.

Then I had to catch a train out of Penn Station.  Remember trains?

Gosh, I miss travel!

Nine

Why, grandmother!

So my glasses are on their last legs.  Literally.  The frames are bent, the lenses keep dropping out, and the specs themselves keep sliding off my face, leaving me to grope about for them without my glasses, trying not to step on them.  I dread that fatal crunch.  As for me, the wearer, I am  very much aware of the ills attendant on old eyes, and was nearly two years overdue for a checkuo

So today I ventured cautiously to my doctor's (taking the med school shuttle bus with three or four of the widely spaced, heavily masked and health-conscious).

So glad I did.

My doctor has an awesome new camera that simply takes a picture of the retina—no drops—and the images, blown up like saucers! like mill-wheels! like towers! are amazing.  Like an apocalyptic sunset over the fairy-tale forest of my lashes.  That alone was worth the venture. 

I don’t need a new pair of prismatic specs, thank heavens.  Those lenses cost a fortune., even with insurance.  But I do want some new reading glasses, as the old ones are on the point of dissolution.  They've been sat upon too many times, and the threads on the screws are going.  While having my old specs tightened and straightened, pro tempore, I looked at frames. Lovely light frames are in, it seems, after all those scowling CEO designs in heavy black plastic. I picked up an elegant pair, such as might be worn by a lady scholar in Susanna Clarke.  Very pretty on me.  They were $500.  Gleep.

Nine