Dear friends, family, comrades-in-arms,
It often feels so daunting to sum up these four week stretches of time that feel both jam-packed and also fleeting. Since my last newsletter, Hanna and I celebrated both our tenth anniversary of living together and our ninth anniversary as a couple. We also marked Hanna's thirty-eighth birthday, an annual event that has some hard memories associated with it for Hanna -- but which we are slowly trying to reshape into something less potent in negative ways. It was a quiet day this year, with a few gifts and lots of leisurely time with the cats and good books and iced coffee.
Image: Protestors with signs reading things like "Abolish ICE" and "Zero Tolerance for Trump's Policies" fill Tremont Street, Boston, near Government Center.
On June 30th (in the midst of all of these anniversaries), I represented our household in person at the Boston Families Belong Together rally against ICE and family separations at the U.S. borders. Despite a heat wave, thousands of people showed up and it felt important to stand in solidarity with migrants. As has been the case at most anti-Trump events that I have attended since November 2016, I was both struck and heartened by the wide-ranging themes of the protest signs. I think people whose politics puts them left of center increasingly recognize that opposing the GOP agenda is about opposing a comprehensive set of nihilistic policies and beliefs about humanity and the way we choose to live together that is harmful to our most vulnerable. Hopefully this rally was just a single moment in the long-haul of being committed to anti-oppression efforts that begain long before Trump and will continue long after the GOP has lost its grip on our federal government.
Image: Blue and white patterned strips of cloth sitting on the wood-slat picnic table on our back porch, next to my open laptop on a bowl containing thread and a pincushion.
In my own small ways, I am trying to pace myself and think in terms of a distant, rather than short-term, horizon. Persistent Stitches celebrated its sixth month anniversary on July 1st having raised $1,685.00 for resistence efforts. I'm so grateful for all who have been involved; it's been really helpful in the face of the existential and temporal overwhelm that is this moment to have something tangible I can do, in collaboration with other crafters, to help turn the tide. As of this writing, we've reached $1,940.00 raised!
Still. Make sure your voter registration is up-to-date, that your family and friends are registered, that you show up to vote (or vote by mail), and advocate for widespread enfranchisement. We outnumber the opposition. And even with structural barriers we can win elections, and effect political change. Do what you can in your own daily ways to make that happen.
Image: The new little free library at the Massachusetts Historical Society! This was a suggestion of mine back in the winter that I am very pleased has come to fruition.
Some books I've been reading in the past month:
It often feels so daunting to sum up these four week stretches of time that feel both jam-packed and also fleeting. Since my last newsletter, Hanna and I celebrated both our tenth anniversary of living together and our ninth anniversary as a couple. We also marked Hanna's thirty-eighth birthday, an annual event that has some hard memories associated with it for Hanna -- but which we are slowly trying to reshape into something less potent in negative ways. It was a quiet day this year, with a few gifts and lots of leisurely time with the cats and good books and iced coffee.
Image: Protestors with signs reading things like "Abolish ICE" and "Zero Tolerance for Trump's Policies" fill Tremont Street, Boston, near Government Center. On June 30th (in the midst of all of these anniversaries), I represented our household in person at the Boston Families Belong Together rally against ICE and family separations at the U.S. borders. Despite a heat wave, thousands of people showed up and it felt important to stand in solidarity with migrants. As has been the case at most anti-Trump events that I have attended since November 2016, I was both struck and heartened by the wide-ranging themes of the protest signs. I think people whose politics puts them left of center increasingly recognize that opposing the GOP agenda is about opposing a comprehensive set of nihilistic policies and beliefs about humanity and the way we choose to live together that is harmful to our most vulnerable. Hopefully this rally was just a single moment in the long-haul of being committed to anti-oppression efforts that begain long before Trump and will continue long after the GOP has lost its grip on our federal government.
Image: Blue and white patterned strips of cloth sitting on the wood-slat picnic table on our back porch, next to my open laptop on a bowl containing thread and a pincushion.In my own small ways, I am trying to pace myself and think in terms of a distant, rather than short-term, horizon. Persistent Stitches celebrated its sixth month anniversary on July 1st having raised $1,685.00 for resistence efforts. I'm so grateful for all who have been involved; it's been really helpful in the face of the existential and temporal overwhelm that is this moment to have something tangible I can do, in collaboration with other crafters, to help turn the tide. As of this writing, we've reached $1,940.00 raised!
Still. Make sure your voter registration is up-to-date, that your family and friends are registered, that you show up to vote (or vote by mail), and advocate for widespread enfranchisement. We outnumber the opposition. And even with structural barriers we can win elections, and effect political change. Do what you can in your own daily ways to make that happen.
Image: The new little free library at the Massachusetts Historical Society! This was a suggestion of mine back in the winter that I am very pleased has come to fruition.Some books I've been reading in the past month:
- Witchmark by C.L. Polk. A debut historical paranormal with a central m/m interspecies romance, this had some excellent worldbuilding -- WWI-era London(ish), at the end of a grueling imperial war over natural resources, a doctor treating shell shock patients, elite magicians and persecuted hedge witches -- and a really interesting brother-sister relationship. The sister of the protagonist could have been a throwaway character and she turned out not to be multiple times. Fingers crossed for a strong sequel.
- Middle of Somewhere by Roan Parrish. This is a contempoary m/m romance I started and stopped and started and stopped ... until finally it was the right time to inhale the whole thing. Takes place in northern Michigan; a first-year college professor and a woodworker/handyman fall in lust while rescuing an injured dog ... and then inevitably fall in love. Lots of gentle caretaking and just what the past month required.
- Consent on Campus: A Manifesto by Donna Freitas. I just finished this title yesterday, and will be reviewing it for Library Journal. I've read Freitas' previous work and always been pleasantly surprised ... though the frustrations I had with her previous book (The End of Sex) mostly still stand. You can read my lengthy assessment of that here. Aunt Carol: You might be interested in her work, particularly her 2008 Sex and the Soul.
- Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne. I've had this book on my to-read list for over a year and finally made the time. It's a dense work of philosophy, carefully and exhaustively working out the "logic" of misogyny -- which Manne defines as the structural forces used to keep women (and those people and things associated with femininity) in their place. More validating than eye-opening for those of us who've experienced that logic in action, I truly appreciate Manne's insistence that misogyny is a potent and malevolent force in all of our lives -- one that operates to the advantage of powerful straight, white men.
- Unfit to Print by K.J. Charles. More romance! K. J. Charles is an automatic purchase for me these days, Unfit is her latest, and the introduction of a new(ish) setting and cast of characters in early 19th century London. The two protagonists in this story are Gil -- a bookseller peddling in obscene (and illegal) works -- and Vikram -- a lawyer working pro bono in search of a missing boy. Once close friends in school, the two men have been torn apart through the actions of Gil's half brother and Vikram assumes Gil is dead. Thrown back together in tracking down the missing youth, they get a second chance at their happily ever after.
Image: Christopher lying on our back porch, looking up at Hanna who is doing something Very Interesting and Possibly Tasty at the picnic table. In addition to reading this month, I had the opportunity to think about a possible writing project. I was approached by a publisher looking to hire an author to write an LGBTQ "almanac" -- a mix of topical essays and biographical profiles of queer people in history. It was flattering to be asked, I won't lie. I sat with the inquiry for a couple of weeks, mulling over the publisher's answers to my preliminary questions and talking to trusted family, friends, and colleagues. It became clear to me -- once the first flush of excitement had passed -- that this wasn't a project that spoke to my heart. And I chose not to pursue it further. I would have been working with a white, male editorial team; the money on the table would have not been enough to recruit the co-authors I would have wanted to ensure work was robustly intersectional; I have other projects that tug at my heart and require my attention -- including both paid labor, unpaid labor I care deeply about, and leisure time with Hanna, the cats, our friends, and in solitude.
I'm sharing this story of saying "no" because I think it's important to talk about turning work down as well as taking exciting new projects on. I have never aspired to identifying solely with what I do for wages, and I am finally at a place in my worklife where I can be more discerning about where, and on what terms, I labor for others. Speaking of which -- this past Wednesday was my first evening of volunteer work at The History Project! Since 1980, this community-led, all-volunteer archive has worked to document the lives of queer Bostonians. I will be working to develop standardized workflows and what we in the business call "descriptive standards" for their digital collections, so that the information can be more easily searched, tracked, accessed, and exported in future if desired. I'll be using three small-ish collections of material related to early (1950s-1970s) homophile groups in Boston as a test case. This is a period of queer activism that I'm particularly interested in, as a historian, so it will be a pleasure to think through making these collections accessible online for a wider audience.
And with that, I'm signing off to get some embroidery done and some fanfic published to AO3 before the weekend is behind us. Love from me to you.
In persistence,
Anna