sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2016-11-29 11:57 pm

It's amazing what a girl can do with half a heart

I thought I was over this weekend's illness, but then I walked home from Union Square in the rain this evening and I was wrong. Assuming I do not feel like a damp rag tomorrow, I am still planning on the afternoon's protest, which is proceeding despite the withdrawal of Steve Bannon on the grounds that having Kellyanne Conway speak at the conference as if she were just another campaign manager is one of those things that is not normal and should not be treated as such, and then if I continue to be mobile, I would like to hear what Mayor Curtatone has to say about Somerville in the age of Trump; in general he has said pretty awesome things in the past. So that will be a very political day. Or I'll feel terrible and get to neither of these things and will find something else to do with my time. On account of the ACLU having matching donations today, I gave them money. That's something a person can do while stationary.

In straight-up good news, Jane Yolen has been named the newest Damon Knight Grand Master of SFWA. Her Commander Toad in Space (1980) was not the first non-picture book I read as a child, but it's one of the earliest I can remember and I loved it decades before I got any of the in-jokes. Sister Light, Sister Dark (1989) and White Jenna (1990) shaped a lot of the ways I think about narrative (and almost certainly influenced me to study archery at the earliest possible opportunity, along with T.H. White and various retellings of Robin Hood). I don't believe The Devil's Arithmetic (1988) was the first Holocaust literature I read, but since I associate it with third or fourth grade, it must have been early. The film of Merlin and the Dragons (1991) was definitely one of my formative pieces of Arthuriana. And I get to say all of this while she's alive, which is the really nice part. The thing where I have poetry in some of the same magazines she does still blows my mind.

I really like these photographs.
jesse_the_k: silhouettes of Hamilton’s Schuyler sisters holding hands high, dancing (HAM 3Schuylers)

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2016-11-30 03:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I was 30 when Jane Yolen started published but I loved her as well.

As someone who has read altogether too many Holocaust memoirs, histories & fiction, I was impressed by The Devil's Arithmetic. Didn't varnish events with happy.

Those photos are better than any romance/fantasy novel cover ever.