Their price was spent in merriment and revel at Whitehall

[sovay]

Tonight I roasted a chicken with apricot jam and made a sauce out of the pan juices by deglazing the roasting pan with the only potable form of alcohol we had in the house, i.e., whisky, and served the whole thing over rice. I feel very smug. Also, full. It was a larger chicken than it looked when I bought it. There are leftovers. Choice bits were given to patient little cats as a treat (and even impatient ones, like Autolycus who tried to introduce himself at every stage of the process, from the initial rubbing with butter, pepper, and salt through the basting with pan juices and spiced jam to the carving and serving, which had to be conducted in the dining room to be sure of keeping an eye on the carcass). Now I want to bake something. [edit] I just made some cinnamon Rice Krispie treats instead, because spite dessert never gets old.

1. yhlee has sent me a copy of Neat Sheets: The Poetry of James Tiptree, Jr. (1996) and a selection of international stamps, including a magnificent underwave mermaid that turns out to have been done by Dave McKean.

2. I didn't even realize we were getting a new gold coin this year—much less with an unambiguously Black representation of Liberty on the obverse—until a predictably racist controversy blew up around it. I think my only complaint is that I don't have a hundred dollars to trade in for one at this time. I've been carrying a Sacagawea dollar in my pocket for some time now, but the MBTA used to dispense those as regular change.

3. Following the SFPA's removal of Tlotlo Tsamaase's "I Will Be Your Grave" from consideration for the 2017 Rhysling Award after listing the poem online among the nominees and the outcry this decision reasonably provoked, I am now hearing that the poem has been reinstated and will appear in the Rhysling Anthology. I am glad. As the editor who accepted it for publication in the first place, I have obvious opinions about its speculative-ness and its right to be in the running for the only poetry award in our field. In the meantime, a new poem by Tsamaase will appear in Strange Horizons later this week, as part of our special issue on resistance that I would have announced earlier if I hadn't been flat on my face catching up on sleep.

These are good things and provide some fortification against other facts of the world, like derspatchel playing me Betsy DeVos' claims that grizzly bears are a good reason not to restrict the availability of firearms in schools or strange_selkie breaking it to me that Trump will lead an invitation-only prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday and presumably not explode in a rain of sulfur as soon as he crosses the threshold or opens his mouth. Personally, on Saturday, I will be joining rushthatspeaks and Fox and I should hope a great many other people for the Boston Women's March for America. Who else can I expect to see there, or at least miss meeting up with in the crowd?

Comments

[sovay]

I'll be there.

Honestly, unless you were going to be out of state, I would expect you to be.

I understand that huge crowds tend to make it impossible to use cell phones

One of my proudest technological moments to this day remains finding quite possibly the last working payphone on the National Mall in order to call a friend after the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear flattened D.C.'s cell networks in 2011. Nobody else seemed to have the same idea!

I'll be glad to see you as and when I do see you.

Likewise! I have no faith in our ability to find anyone short of accidentally running into them, but I figured I'd like to know just in case.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

I followed your link to read about the 2011 rally - fascinating!
And also disquieting, about the cell phones not working in a large crowd. Good for the museum, for still having landline payphones. (But I'm grimly thinking that such facilities will soon completely disappear.)

[sovay]

I followed your link to read about the 2011 rally - fascinating!

It was definitely worth doing. I'd hoped to march on Saturday in D.C., but it turned out that I can't afford to travel out of state twice in one month. So, Boston it is.

And also disquieting, about the cell phones not working in a large crowd. Good for the museum, for still having landline payphones. (But I'm grimly thinking that such facilities will soon completely disappear.)

And shouldn't be allowed to, if it's known that crowds overload cellphone coverage, because people still need to communicate! But I have no idea if the payphone I used in 2011 is still there. I hope so. It was very useful.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I remember a deliberate effort to remove pay phones from the public places of Michigan, back in the 1990s. It was thorough enough that I was startled to see they were still allowed in the airport. It's been a long time, of course, and the War On Drugs may have changed enough to no longer think of pay phones as tools of the enemy.

And shouldn't be allowed to, if it's known that crowds overload cellphone coverage, because people still need to communicate!

It's odd how standards change about how much people need to communicate. How fast the standards have changed.

I'm planning to be at the march with Redbird and Cattitude, but only if I can collect enough spoons before Saturday. I left a lot of them at Arisia.