Dear friends and family,
In what seems to be a recurring theme for this year, it's hard to believe spring has arrived when a chilly wind is blowing outside. We had snow on Sunday (!!) and wind and driving rain on Monday. But the forsythia, the crocuses, and daffodils are blooming, and Monday was the Boston Marathon, so the seasons are slowly changing even as the weather continues to be somewhat forbidding.
Image: A cluster of yellow daffodils in dry, brown grass.
A couple of weeks ago, on March 30th, I celebrated my 37th birthday! Hanna and I took the day off from work and we enjoyed a weekday brunch at the Veggie Galaxy diner in Cambridge, then walked over to Gather Here in Somerville to pick out fabric for a piece I am planning to submit for the Crafting Democracy art exhibition.
Image: Hanna (left) and Anna (right) take a selfie outside the Gather Here store as they wait for it to open.
Image: The five fabrics in gold, purple, and blue tones, that I selected to make the Crafting Democracy wall hanging, along with the unfinished Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign logo (forward arrow in an H, in a heart) stitched in gold and purple.
It's been a whirlwind few weeks with obligations in library land. The weekend before my birthday I attended the New England Archivists / Archives Roundtable of Metropolitan New York Spring 2018 Joint Meeting (#NEAARTSp18) in New Haven, Connecticut. It was the first NEA meeting since 2014 that I attended without board responsibilities -- a treat! (I wrote a bit about my three years as NEA's inclusion and diversity coordinator here.) I participated in a roundtable discussion about political advocacy in the archive and also presented the findings of our 2016 contingency employment study -- but mostly enjoyed the luxury of not being "on" for three full days of conferencing.
I was also thrilled to attend a session on labor organizing co-led by two colleagues and comrades, Emily Drabinski and Jessica Farrell, as well as take in Emily's keynote. As a librarian with faculty status at Long Island University, Emily lived through the first-ever lockout in academia when the university administration made good on threats to lock out the unionized faculty at the start of term rather than negotiate a contract. Emily has lots of good thoughts to share about what it means to be a library worker and how library staff can "organize for power." I'm looking forward to learning more from her this July when she is in Boston for the 2018 Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium, presented by Litwin Books and hosted by Simmons College. This year's colloquium is on the theme of work -- "how do gender and sexuality work in library and information studies"? -- a focus that fits nicely with my self-directed explorations of critical librarianship. Along those lines, I've also enrolled in a Library Juice Academy course on critical theory for librarians this month, and have been using the assignments to think about the intersection of queer theory and library/archive work.
Image: The four volumes of Women in American History stacked on my desk with a Vastra/Jenny mug on top and a photograph of Hanna in the background.
Another cool thing that happened this week was the arrival of the four-volume encyclopedia Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection at the MHS. I contributed twelve entries to this project back in 2013-2014 and at long last I get to see my name in print! The task of writing encyclopedia entries is a very unique type of writing -- huge topics (e.g. "Lesbians, 1877-1899") must be summarized and condensed in 750 or 1000 words.
What have you been reading and listening to lately? In the past month I haven't been able to make a lot of space for books (nonfiction or fiction) that weren't work-related in some way. But I did start Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey (July 2018) and am falling into the world of Alpennia with the quasi-historical lesbian romance Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. I also listened to Sexing History's powerful podcast episode on the Metropolitan Community Church of San Franciso ("A Church with AIDS"), read the transcript of Ezra Klein's "debate" with Sam Harris about white privilege and racism (and felt like I needed a shower afterwards), and really appreciated this piece at The Cut about mental health stigma and long-term use of anti-depressants. I am also stoked that this week marks the release of Cat Sebastian's Unmasked by the Marquess (SQEEEEEEE) and Noah Berlatsky's Chatterig Class War. So many books, so little time.
Image: Spools of thread in many colors, lined up in a box.
And hey! PersistentStitches has raised $915.00 so far this year (!!!!!). You can read our April 1st report here. I'm so grateful to my Persistent Stitchers Hanna, Janet, and Molly, and to everyone who has donated and/or worked with me on a partnership or commission. There is so much to feel hopeless about in the world right now and it has been an incredible bulwark against the evil drag of helplessness to have something tangible I can do with my hands to make the world a little bit better.
Image: Teazle drinks from the bathtub faucet as Christopher watches and learns.
In cat news, Christopher continues to learn how to cat from unreliable teacher Teazle, whose latest lessons involve showing Christopher how to drink from the trickle of water that comes out of the tub faucet when you yell at the humans loudly and imperiously enough that they come into the bathroom and work their magic on the plumbing. He took his turn solo just this morning as we were getting ready for work!
Image: Daffodil tattoo on myleft shoulder
And finally, on Monday I got my fourth tattoo! The work was done by Melissa Baker at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo here in Jamaica Plain. I'm very pleased with her work. The piece is a daffodil inked after a watercolor my grandmother, Jean Cook, painted and is paired with the juniper spring I had done a few years ago in memory of my other grandmother, Marilyn Ross.
Image: Watercolor daffodil painted and signed by Jean Cook
Image: Juniper branch tattoo, inked on my right shoulder by Thomas Gustainis (2013).
Talk to you in May!
Love,
Anna
In what seems to be a recurring theme for this year, it's hard to believe spring has arrived when a chilly wind is blowing outside. We had snow on Sunday (!!) and wind and driving rain on Monday. But the forsythia, the crocuses, and daffodils are blooming, and Monday was the Boston Marathon, so the seasons are slowly changing even as the weather continues to be somewhat forbidding.
Image: A cluster of yellow daffodils in dry, brown grass.A couple of weeks ago, on March 30th, I celebrated my 37th birthday! Hanna and I took the day off from work and we enjoyed a weekday brunch at the Veggie Galaxy diner in Cambridge, then walked over to Gather Here in Somerville to pick out fabric for a piece I am planning to submit for the Crafting Democracy art exhibition.
Image: Hanna (left) and Anna (right) take a selfie outside the Gather Here store as they wait for it to open.Image: The five fabrics in gold, purple, and blue tones, that I selected to make the Crafting Democracy wall hanging, along with the unfinished Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign logo (forward arrow in an H, in a heart) stitched in gold and purple.It's been a whirlwind few weeks with obligations in library land. The weekend before my birthday I attended the New England Archivists / Archives Roundtable of Metropolitan New York Spring 2018 Joint Meeting (#NEAARTSp18) in New Haven, Connecticut. It was the first NEA meeting since 2014 that I attended without board responsibilities -- a treat! (I wrote a bit about my three years as NEA's inclusion and diversity coordinator here.) I participated in a roundtable discussion about political advocacy in the archive and also presented the findings of our 2016 contingency employment study -- but mostly enjoyed the luxury of not being "on" for three full days of conferencing.
I was also thrilled to attend a session on labor organizing co-led by two colleagues and comrades, Emily Drabinski and Jessica Farrell, as well as take in Emily's keynote. As a librarian with faculty status at Long Island University, Emily lived through the first-ever lockout in academia when the university administration made good on threats to lock out the unionized faculty at the start of term rather than negotiate a contract. Emily has lots of good thoughts to share about what it means to be a library worker and how library staff can "organize for power." I'm looking forward to learning more from her this July when she is in Boston for the 2018 Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium, presented by Litwin Books and hosted by Simmons College. This year's colloquium is on the theme of work -- "how do gender and sexuality work in library and information studies"? -- a focus that fits nicely with my self-directed explorations of critical librarianship. Along those lines, I've also enrolled in a Library Juice Academy course on critical theory for librarians this month, and have been using the assignments to think about the intersection of queer theory and library/archive work.
Image: The four volumes of Women in American History stacked on my desk with a Vastra/Jenny mug on top and a photograph of Hanna in the background.Another cool thing that happened this week was the arrival of the four-volume encyclopedia Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection at the MHS. I contributed twelve entries to this project back in 2013-2014 and at long last I get to see my name in print! The task of writing encyclopedia entries is a very unique type of writing -- huge topics (e.g. "Lesbians, 1877-1899") must be summarized and condensed in 750 or 1000 words.
What have you been reading and listening to lately? In the past month I haven't been able to make a lot of space for books (nonfiction or fiction) that weren't work-related in some way. But I did start Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey (July 2018) and am falling into the world of Alpennia with the quasi-historical lesbian romance Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. I also listened to Sexing History's powerful podcast episode on the Metropolitan Community Church of San Franciso ("A Church with AIDS"), read the transcript of Ezra Klein's "debate" with Sam Harris about white privilege and racism (and felt like I needed a shower afterwards), and really appreciated this piece at The Cut about mental health stigma and long-term use of anti-depressants. I am also stoked that this week marks the release of Cat Sebastian's Unmasked by the Marquess (SQEEEEEEE) and Noah Berlatsky's Chatterig Class War. So many books, so little time.Image: Spools of thread in many colors, lined up in a box.And hey! PersistentStitches has raised $915.00 so far this year (!!!!!). You can read our April 1st report here. I'm so grateful to my Persistent Stitchers Hanna, Janet, and Molly, and to everyone who has donated and/or worked with me on a partnership or commission. There is so much to feel hopeless about in the world right now and it has been an incredible bulwark against the evil drag of helplessness to have something tangible I can do with my hands to make the world a little bit better.
Image: Teazle drinks from the bathtub faucet as Christopher watches and learns.In cat news, Christopher continues to learn how to cat from unreliable teacher Teazle, whose latest lessons involve showing Christopher how to drink from the trickle of water that comes out of the tub faucet when you yell at the humans loudly and imperiously enough that they come into the bathroom and work their magic on the plumbing. He took his turn solo just this morning as we were getting ready for work!
Image: Daffodil tattoo on myleft shoulderAnd finally, on Monday I got my fourth tattoo! The work was done by Melissa Baker at Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo here in Jamaica Plain. I'm very pleased with her work. The piece is a daffodil inked after a watercolor my grandmother, Jean Cook, painted and is paired with the juniper spring I had done a few years ago in memory of my other grandmother, Marilyn Ross.
Image: Watercolor daffodil painted and signed by Jean Cook
Image: Juniper branch tattoo, inked on my right shoulder by Thomas Gustainis (2013).Talk to you in May!
Love,
Anna