January 2017

#amreading

One of my favorite perks of librarianship is that people ask you to read books and write about them! While I have long reviewed titles in exchange for a free copy of the work, 2016 marked the first year in which I was actually paid for my reviews -- I made just over $500 writing for Publishers Weekly in the areas of religious history and gender/sexuality. I am looking forward to continued work with them, as well as Library Journal, in the year ahead. 

To that end, I read and reviewed two works for PW over the holidays: The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by journalist and historian Francis FitzGerald (Simon & Schuster, April 2017) and Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by historian Rosalind Rosenberg (Oxford University Press, April 2017). I also finally made time to read Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst (Balzer & Bray, 2016) -- a fantasy YA novel featuring two princesses who fall in love with one another! -- and a "new adult" f/f college romance, Out on Good Behavior by Dahlia Adler (Smashwords, 2016), that I forgave for being a little heavy-handed with the romance cliches in return for some excellent sexytime scenes. 

In the first weeks of January, I've been reading Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era by Laura Free (Cornell, 2015); on my reading list since its publication, this history on how voting citizens were constituted before and after the Civil War has much contemporary resonance as we wrestle with notions of citizenship and voting rights in the United States today. And I am super excited to have Ben Aaronovitch's The Hanging Tree (DAW, 2017) dropping at the end of January -- if you love London and magic and detective fiction and have not yet discovered the Peter Grant series, I highly highly recommend them. Ben Aaronovitch is possibly my tied-for-first-place favorite "new" fiction writer of 2016 alongside Courtney Milan.
 

#cats

#church

In recent years, I've come to describe myself as an "unchurched agnostic" who grew up in the Christian tradition; Hanna is similarly disinclined towards organized religion apart from meditation and yoga practice. So it was surprising to both of us that a strong impulse we independently experienced in the wake of the November election was to find a local faith community.

After polling our friends and being repeatedly nudged toward the Unitarian Universalists at Arlington St. Church, I began attending Sunday services around Thanksgiving. Hanna joins me on some Sundays, and we are slowly getting involved with the congregation through meditation workshops and social action committee meetings.

ASC makes Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie's sermons available in podcast form, and I found her meditation from December 4th -- Love and Fear Cannot Coexist -- particularly meaningful for this political moment.

#fanfic

I made a promise to myself in December 2015 to write more fanfic in 2016 ... but I didn't quite realize how much fiction I would end up writing. At 163,534 words, my fiction-writing output for last year far outpaced the previous five years and came close to doubling my word count on Archive of Our Own, where I post my finished pieces. Most of this burst of writing energy is due to a charming little webcomic known as Check Please! by Ngozi Ukazu, which follows the adventures of a pie-baking, hockey-playing, gay college student named Eric "Bitty" Bittle. Little did I know when I started a 49-day writing challenge that the resulting work would grow to nearly 75k words and be loved by so many. The process of writing for such a community, and at such a pace, was a treasured part of my year that I hope to carry with me into 2017 and beyond.

The autumn saw a dramatic slow-down in creative writing, due in large part to the emotional and intellectual drain of jury duty, but over the Christmas holidays Hanna wrote me a "fix-it fic" for Death in Paradise --bringing a beloved character back from the dead -- and her work inspired a (sexually explicit) sequel. I also continue to play in the Grantchester world that Hanna and I have collaborated on. Although fanfic has always been a shared passion in our marriage, the past year brought a new level of collaboration on stories and world-building that I am excited about (and hope she is too!).

#amsewing

During the final week of December I finished a quilted hanging that had taken me many days of cross stitching in the grand jury room to complete. The piece is a gift for a seven year old friend, Amelia, who loves Sarah & Duck as much as Hanna and I do.
With the hanging done, I am returning to a queen size (90" x 95") quilt project I began in the fall of 2015 and abandoned around this time last year. It is a self-designed patchwork quilt in vibrant oranges, purples, and greens, that make for excellent color therapy in the dark winter months.

With an artist friend, Hanna and I are also talking about ways to use quilting in resistance to the incoming Trump administration ... stay tuned for more! 
 

#amwatching / #amlistening

Doing handwork means I listen to and watch more "hands free" media than I might otherwise.

This month I re-watched Angels in America (2003), renewing my appreciation for its poetry and reconfirming my crush on Mary-Louise Parker. I've decided her Angels in America character -- the deeply unhappy, troubled Harper -- moves to Washington, D.C. and reinvents herself as Amy Gardner (West Wing). That's my new headcanon folks. 
 

#librarylife

#food & #drink

food of the month: whoopie pies from Clover Food Lab

drink of the month: Smoking Loon Cabernet Sauvignon
 

#resist #StrongerTogether

If you read one essay about the politics of now in January, make it Laurie Penny's "Meltdown of the Phantom Snowflakes," in The Baffler (4 January 2017), a searing meditation on strength, courage, feelings, and the future:

To demand “strength” from an oppressed person is to excuse their oppression, to label them weak for voicing anything that looks like dissent. That’s what we see when young people organizing for change are labelled “generation snowflake.” Dissent is called outrage, whining, crying victim, virtue signaling—unless it’s angry white neoreactionaries bravely fighting back against basic decency, in which case it’s called “legitimate concerns.” The concerns of women and minorities can never be legitimate—still less their pain.

... The new right might feel strong, and be in power this season, but theirs is a fragile, ugly strength. They have exoskeletons, but no backbone. They allow their hearts to rot inside a carapace of denial. Their strength is the strength of invertebrates, of impermeable things that can bite and sting but cannot stand upright when it counts.

I’ve got no time for that sort of strength. Not now, not ever. Give me courage instead, the courage to remain permeable, to remain open, the potential for empathy and learning. Make me brave—I don’t care about strong.

This coming Saturday (1/21), on the first day of the Trump administration, Hanna and I will be marching with a group of friends in the Boston Women's March for America. As citizens who count ourselves among the 81% of American residents who did not cast a ballot for Donald Trump, we will stand in community -- snowflakes gathering together to make a mighty and beautiful glacier -- as resistors.

I will be marching with pink swatches pinned to my coat bearing the names of friends and family who cannot march for themselves due to distance, age, or the fact they are no longer with us. If you have a person you would like me to add to my coat please email me by Thursday 1/19 and I will add them to my collection.

#BostonWinter