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Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover.

The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. All donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive a receipt for your gift.

https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201

And Kerrville Pets Alive! is taking donations for rescue and fostering lost pets.

https://kerrvillepetsalive.com/?link_id=3&can_id=588b5a597b5d30fd7e36b213e5ba6987&source=email-freedom-is-fought-for-not-given&email_referrer=email_2803907&email_subject=how-you-can-help-texas-flood-victims&&

oursin

Reading this, I'm very much reminded of certain sff stories I read - late 60s/early 70s - that were either directly influenced by this research or via the population panic works that riffed off it: review of Lee Alan Dugatkin. Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity. Does this ping reminiscence in anyone else? (I was reading a lot of v misc anthologies etc in early 70s before I found my real niche tastes).

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What Is a 'Lavender Marriage,' Exactly? Feel that there is a longer and (guess what) Moar Complicated history around using conventional marriage to protect less conventional unions, but maybe it's a start towards interrogating the complexities of 'conventional marriages'.

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Sardonic larffter at this: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'

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Not quite what one anticipates from a clergyman's wife? The undercover vagrant who exposed workhouse life - a bit beyond vicarage/manse teaparties, Mothers' Meetings or running the Sunday School!

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Changes in wedding practice: The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Wedding Days:

After the Reformation, Anglican canon law required that marriages took place in the morning, during divine service, in the parish of either the bride or groom – three features which typically elude modern weddings, which usually take place in the afternoon, in a special ceremony, and are far less likely (even if a religious wedding) to take place within a couple’s home parish. The centrality of divine service is the starkest difference, as it ensured that, unlike in modern weddings, marriages were public events at which the whole congregation ought to be present. They might even have occurred alongside other weddings or church ceremonies such as baptisms. A study of London weddings in the late 1570s found that, unsurprisingly given the canonical requirements, Sunday was the most popular days for weddings, accounting for c.44 percent of marriages taking place in Southwark and Bishopsgate. (By contrast, Sunday accounted for just 5.9 percent of marriages in 2022).

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Dorothy Allison Authored a New Kind of Queer Lit (or brought new perspectives into the literature of class?) I should dig out my copies of her works.

oursin

No bread made for reasons.

Friday night supper: I was intending having penne with bottled sliced artichoke hearts, except did not appear to have these in store cupboard: did a sauce of blender-whizzed Peppadew Roasted Red Peppers in brine instead.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 50:50% strong white/white spelt flour, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: diced leg of lamb casseroled in white wine with thyme with sweet potato topping, served with buttered spinach and what really were quite tiddly juvenile baby leeks vinaigrette in a dressing of olive oil, white wine vinegar, and wholegrain mustard.

badfalcon

today was a hard one. everything felt heavy and off-kilter, and finding glimmers wasn’t easy — but it felt important. small anchors, even if they’re a little wobbly.

🛏️ I had a proper lie-in this morning. Didn’t rush, didn’t feel guilty. Just let myself rest, and it felt right.

🍃 My Isabelle plushie was soft and solid and there when I needed grounding during a panic attack. Small comfort, big anchor.

📝 Coming back to blogging has felt really good — like reclaiming a piece of myself. Even better, I’ve been getting some lovely comments that have made me feel seen and appreciated.

That’s me for today. If you feel like sharing your glimmers, I’d love to read them 💛
Be gentle with yourself, especially if the good things were hard to find.

conuly

Eirenicon: A proposal to resolve disputes and reconcile differences in order to advance peace, strengthen or establish unity, or foster solidarity.

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( Read more... )

badfalcon

Title: “I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you”
(still uncertain if I'm going to run out of plot bunnies or Taylor Swift lyrics for tennis rps fic - all but about 5 fics so far have her lyrics for titles)

Chapter 1 is already posted at https://archiveofourown.org/works/66563692

This one started because I fell asleep watching a booktuber absolutely eviscerate the worldbuilding in romantasy — like, full destruction with timestamps and citations - and dreamed up two booktubers who get into a feud over it. Duelling videos, increasingly petty reading challenges, and unsubtle one-star reviews. It was meant to be a joke, and then, of course, it turned into a slow burn.

Carlos is the chaotic romantasy lover with warm lighting and overexcited hand gestures.
Jannik is the dry fantasy purist who edits his videos like he’s building a cathedral.
Their video styles hate each other.
They are, obviously, soulmates.

It’s still early days - I've written and posted Jannik's opening video, I'm editing Carlos’ first response - but I’m having so much fun with the format. It’s another one where I’m playing with a different style: mixing prose with video transcripts, comment threads, DMs, and maybe even playlists later on. It feels like a multimedia fic without quite going full AO3 PowerPoint mode.

( this is a little snippet from chapter 2 )

Current Music: Sabalenka v Mertens

scripsi

This is a spoiler-free post.

The Hollow was first published in 1946, during Agatha Christie’s Golden Age. It’s not one of her more well-known mysteries, which I always thought was a bit strange, because it’s my favourite Christie. On the surface the plot is typical for her: A murder in a stately home where several guests have gathered for the weekend. Hercule Poirot investigates. Personally I think this book is rather invisible because it belies a very common statement about Christie, that she only writes cardboard stock characters with no depths and complexity. In The Hollow we have plenty of complex characters and I would say the main theme in the book is obsession. Obsessive love, obsession for science, the artist's obsession towards their work, and so on. If you wanted a stock Christie, you may be disappointed. There is also the fact that even if this is a Poirot novel, he doesn’t enter until halfway, and he is actually not the first to figure out who the murderer is. In fact I’ve always felt this book may have been better liked if there had been no Poirot in it at all. Checking the publishing order, this was the first Poirot since 1942, and Christie had written five books in between. I wonder if the publisher put pressure on her to include Poirot in this one… You also get the POV from more characters than usual. I have never read any of Christie's Mary Westmacott novels, but I’ve read that The Hollow is more like them in writing style.

( Read more... )

scripsi

What I finished reading in June was the first four books in the YA Lockwood & Co series by Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull, The Creeping Shadow and The Hollow Boy. Husband wanted to rewatch the Netflix show, and as I hadn’t seen it, I joined in. I liked it, and as it ended after one season, which covered book 1 and 2, I promptly started to read the books.

The concept is that the UK is suffering from a spreading ghost infection, and as being touched by a ghost is fatal unless you get medical aid, it’s not a good thing. It doesn't help that only children and teenagers are able to actually see the ghosts. So gifted children work for ghost hunting agencies, which is a pretty nifty device for putting teenagers in the forefront of the action, while still not always being very sensible, because teenagers. The narrator is a girl, Lucy, who starts working for the very small agency Lockwood & Co, and gradually they are getting closer and closer to why this ghost infection has started.

I find the books very enjoyable. Lucy is a pretty engaging narrator, if not always a stellar character. But my favourite character is Skull, a ghost trapped in a jar that only Lucy can talk to.

I also actually counted the books I’m in various stages of reading… Yikes! I think I should focus on finishing some of them this month. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century.

Never Flinch and Fairy Tale by Stephen King

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (A re-read.)

A Better Man by Louise Penney

Furstinnan (The Princess) by Eva Mattson. A biography over the 16th century Swedish queen Catherine Jagiellon.

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

The Treasure by Selma Lagerlöf

This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles

oursin

Happy birthday,

tree_and_leaf!

badfalcon

three tiny joys, glimmers, or moments of soft comfort from today

💇‍♀️ Got my ( hair dyed magenta! ) Bright, bold, and very me — it’s always a bit of a transformation, and it felt good to see that vivid colour in the mirror again.

🎾 Jannik Sinner, Ben Shelton, Grigor Dimitrov, and Mirra Andreeva all won their Wimbledon matches today — every one of them brought something joyful to watch.

🍔 Takeout burgers for dinner. We were completely wiped — two hours at the hairdresser left us sore, dysregulated, and done. The burgers weren’t fancy, but they were warm and easy and enough.

That’s me for today. If you feel like sharing your glimmers, I’d love to read them 💛
Be gentle with yourself, especially if the good things were hard to find.

Current Mood: full

oursin

Is it OK to read Infinite Jest in public? Why the internet hates ‘performative reading’

You know, I was completely unaware that 'The Internet' hated upon this (whatever it is) until I came across this article and I think we are probably well into a realm similar to journo constructing a phenomenon on the basis of '6 people I spoke to in the wine-bar last week'.

Or maybe I just don't do TikTok and am missing this, but in my experience, few forms of social media are entire monoliths, what?

Why shouldn't people read in public? They're not doing it AT other people, honestly.

Can't help thinking that those who get aerated at people reading on public transport or while sitting quietly in a restaurant or coffee-shop are very likely those who think you should 'rawdog' long planeflights, sad gits.

Okay, these days I am pretty much always reading on ereader when out and about, so nobody can see what I'm reading. But back in the day I have read a lot of things that I daresay some miserable so-and-so would have considered 'performative', like Remembrance of Things Past on the Tube.

And among other things Marx and Rousseau on the train when I was commuting in from suburban Surrey.

Which phase of my life I was reminded of by a review headed 'A darker side of Lawrence Durrell' - I was not aware that there was any other side, actually - I habitually got in the same compartment of the same train each morning and there was the same young man making his way veeeeery slowwwwly through the volumes of The Alexandria Quartet. Months and months of Balthazar.

badfalcon

Challenge #2
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.

☀️ The Romance of Summer: A Love Letter to Tennis
When I saw the prompt What do you love? My first instinct was to be clever. Say something seasonal and tidy. Ice lollies. Sea air. The feeling of sunlight on your knees through the window. But the real answer is louder and messier and always true:

I love tennis.

Not just in summer. All year round. In slow January slogs and awkward 4 a.m. matches because they're in Australia. In rain delays and early exits. But in summer, on the clay at Roland Garros, on the grass at Wimbledon, it blooms. Everything gets bigger. Brighter. Louder. The highs hit higher. The heartbreaks sting sharper.

I love the weird rhythm of a tennis summer. The shift from clay to grass. The way I measure time by who’s still standing on a Friday afternoon. I love the ritual of it: cold drinks, strawberries & cream & prosecco, the particular way sunlight falls across the floor during a 5-setter I wasn’t planning to get invested in. I love the commentary, the chaos, and the wild narratives we build between matches. I love players who break my heart and players I can’t stop watching.

I love how tennis reminds me I still feel things at full volume. That I can cry over a match I knew they were going to lose. That I can believe, right until match point, that maybe this time it’ll be different.

Tennis is stupid and beautiful and exhausting and sometimes the only thing that cuts through the fog in my brain.

It doesn't always love me back. It overwhelms me. It distracts me. It makes me anxious and angry and euphoric and sleepless. But every season, every surface, I come back. I love it wildly. I love it anyway.

Every summer, I fall in love with it again. Even when I swear I won’t.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Dimitrov v Ofner

conuly

Holy fuck that’s awful :(

scripsi

Tunnel of Love

Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.

Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like

I love the light. Living in Sweden, summer means white nights, and there is something special walking outside at night, with the stillness and the scents, but no darkness. I love soft summer rains, like today, when the air smells wonderful, and the sounds of raindrops on the roof makes me feel sleepy and content. I love spending time in the summer house in the archipelagio outside Stockholm, in the house my grandfather built, and my grandmother filled with art. Now my mother is adding her own. There is no better place in the world for me to be.

I’m not poetry minded, so no poem.

scripsi

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Journaling: I will try to actually write the posts about the Agatha Christie books I’m currently rereading. As well as continue talking about books that have special meanings for me.

I have lots of things to sew. Currently a Regency petticoat, and after that a Regency ball gown for a ball at the end of August. I’m also working on a Liberty of London aesthetic dress. I also need to change a couple of everyday clothes that don't fit me anymore.

Creativity: I’m still trying my way in making paper flowers. Here, have a tulip.

oursin

Happy birthday,

stillsostrange!

conuly

( Though, upon reflection, it's surprising that this hasn't happened before in 30+ years of menstruation )

I'd say that was the worst thing to happen this weekend, but then I glanced at the news, and how do things keep getting worse? I thought we might at least get a reprieve over the holiday weekend, Congress would all go on vacation and not pass any terrible bills in the interim, but I guess not.

I'm not linking to it, not today. I know how to take a break, even if they don't. Take this article on amenorrhea instead.

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Bearshorty's musings

tv and books and Bears, oh my

July 4 Flood Relief

Beginning on clearing up some open tabs, etc

Interesting Links for 07-07-2025

Culinary

✨glimmers and good things - day 3 ✨

Oh, I like this word!

📚 Fic Snippet Sunday: Booktuber AU Edition 📚

The Agatha Christie reread: The Hollow

What I have been reading, June edition

(no subject)

Interesting Links for 06-07-2025

✨glimmers and good things - day 2 ✨

I don't think there is any 'The Internet' in this sense, really

sunshine_revival Challenge #2 - Tunnel of Love

When I made my previous post I hadn’t heard about the flooding

Sunshine Challenge #2

Sunshine Challenge #1

(no subject)

Interesting Links for 05-07-2025

Well, that was unexpected and unpleasant

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