Are you following the protests by University of Cape Town students who want the statue of Cecil Rhodes to come down? You should:
Students argued that the university’s lack of transformation is evident in the naming of structures around the campus. Jameson Hall, they noted, is named after Leander Starr Jameson who was prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1904 to 1908. There are no black female professors employed by the university and the history of black academics such as AC Jordan, UCT’s first black professor, and Archie Mafeje, a senior lecturer at UCT whose removal from the campus under apartheid law sparked outrage and protest from staff and students, has been largely ignored.
The statue of Rhodes, they said, had become symbolic of this lack of transformation and of institutional racism at the university.
I am the nerdiest person in the world but John Renbourn died last week and now he and Bert Jansch are reforming Pentangle in heaven and FOLK ROLK FOREVER. Not just Pentangle, tho, John Renbourn’s solo stuff was great too!
If you missed it, I judged a Zombie Round in The Morning News’ Tournament of Books!
…Station Eleven turned out to be the fiction equivalent of the 121st episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Kamala, played by the luminous Famke Janssen, is an empathic metamorph designed to adapt herself to become the perfect mate for an important diplomat. She winds up adapting to Picard, instead—it’s a great episode, you should watch it. And in this metaphor I am Picard, and Station Eleven is Kamala. It would be impossible for a book to be better suited for me. It is unfair that I have been placed in a position to evaluate its merits at all.
I have to power-pump twice a day on top of breastfeeding to combat my low milk supply, and get a total of two oz from both sessions combined, so I am in awe of people who can donate to others, but I also don’t judge any woman who wants to sell hers, and I would love to see better safety controls.
Robert Durst updates, obviously, we’ll be on this story 24/7 until the heat death of the universe.
Rosanna Bruno, of Emily Dickinson cartoon fame, on her project!
You include a lot of funny elements regarding Emily Dickinson’s entourage. In her Facebook feed, Ralph W. Emerson likes W. Whitman’s status, and two of her siblings are active presences; in her OKCupid profile, ex-minister and soldier Thomas W. Higginson is suggested as a match. How elaborate did you get in imagining not just her interior world, but those adjacent to her?
My favorite pieces of those comics are the various references that can operate on many levels depending on how much of the backstory you know. For instance, a Judge O. Lord is featured as a possible match on OKCupid, too. First of all, I just love the play on his name there—Judge, O Lord! He was a friend of Emily’s father and around his age. It was rumored that he and Emily had a romance and that her infamous “Master Letters” were written to him. Emphasis on the word “rumored.” Scholars have been writing about her possible lovers for ages, and we still don’t know anything for sure. As her relationship status on Facebook says: It’s complicated. I do like reading about these various players in her life and inserting them into different scenarios. The more absurd, the better.
Jess Zimmerman emails me when she runs something on The Archipelago that Toasties simply MUST read, and she is usually right.
The death of Cindy Gladue and the acquittal of her murderer is unconscionable, and this really could not be a more upsetting story, so make sure you’re in a place for that.
the most important lesson of worldbuilding all fantasy authors subsequent to tolkien have basically ignored is how many breakfasts there are
— 100% Genuine Michael (@WarrenIsDead) March 29, 2015
Let’s compare the 1991 and 2014 versions of “Moments in the Woods” now (JOANNA ALWAYS NO COMPARISON BUT EMILY IS FINE):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXdb02DJGG0
