When I jump off the edge, I float right back up again

Whatever else I may have wanted to do with it, today went almost entirely toward recovering from our marathon. I did some capitalism before dinner and lay on the couch afterward. spatch took a picture.



I have a zillion problems with my body and all its works, but I like my asymmetrical face. Don't jinx it, face.

I have been re-reading Lloyd Alexander's The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain (1973) in the later edition that includes the texts of Coll and His White Pig (1965) and The Truthful Harp (1967). I read the latter for the first time as the original picture book illustrated by Evaline Ness; a previous reader had defaced the copy in the Cambridge Public Library by writing in simpler synonyms for a peculiar percentage of the vocabulary, of which the only example I can remember is "legs" for "shanks." I was indignant, especially since I knew all the contested words and felt insulted by the stranger with the red (or black—at this distance I don't remember and it seems unwise in this context to make up the detail) pen who thought I didn't. It is no longer part of the library's collection, according to the online catalogue of the Minuteman Library Network. I'd have bought it in a sale if I'd seen it, unwanted glosses notwithstanding. Those books still mean so much to me. I feel unjustifiably smug about the fact that my godchild seems to be liking the set I gave them.

To find there but the road back home again

And then last night I slept ten hours. I hope I haven't broken something. Have some links.

1. Courtesy of a friend who is not on Dreamwidth: Unleash the Archers, "Northwest Passage." Otherwise known as a female-led power metal cover of Canada's unofficial national anthem, wherein Stan Rogers is surprisingly well served by blast beats. I kind of want to hear them take on "Barrett's Privateers." I like the many-worlds band-tour video, too.

2. I knew of several female scientists of the Manhattan Project, but somehow I had missed Elizabeth Rona until her insistence on buying her own PPE—and surviving more than one radioactive laboratory explosion because of it—came up relevantly elsenet. I'd love to get hold of her professional memoir, but I suspect that was a project for the days when I had access to academic libraries.

3. Courtesy of moon_custafer: an important PSA about left-wing anti-intellectualism. Includes a nice recommendation for an Egyptology blog.

4. To be honest, since he had been involved in the premieres of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960) and War Requiem (1961), I had no idea until his obituary that harpist Osian Ellis had still been around, but I was absolutely delighted to learn he had also played for The Goon Show (1951–60).

5. Courtesy of spatch: regarding the death of Rush Limbaugh, it's time once again for these valuable words.