Dear friends, family, fellow travelers,
For the past twelve years, Labor Day weekend has marked my anniversary of arriving in Boston to begin graduate school. I've now been in Boston four years as a student, then eight years as a non-student, and I am still grateful each Labor Day that I am not returning to school. Still, it was nice to have a four-day weekend (I took the Friday off as well) that felt like something of a transition from summer into the early days of autumn. We took a train down to Pawtucket, Rhode Island to have lunch with a friend, I was able to tidy up the wool room (where we keep our cafting supplies and projects), and there was generally a lot of cat cuddles and reading and naps.
Image: Teazle on my lap on the back porch, in four views.
Image: Christopher practicing cuddles on the bed, in two views.
Also over Labor Day weekend I finished up the cross-stitch commissions I wrote about in the August newsletter and got to turn my attentions entirely to my first chevron-patterned scarf with the wonderful self-striping sock yarn (modeled here by Sebastian the bear)! I was very pleased with how it turned out, and a colleague claimed it directly for $25 donated to No More Deaths in Arizona -- a Unitarian Universalist organization focused on providing direct, emergency support to migrants on the U.S.- Mexico border. I've started on a second chevron scarf that the same colleague has already asked for first right of refusal for.
Image: About six inches of a scarf in browns/yellows/pinks on a circular needle.
This past Saturday, September 14th, Hanna and I celebrated seven years of marriage. 100,000,000/10 would choose her again (as I do every day).
Image: Our hands wearing our wedding rings, from our wedding announcement photo shoot. Photograph by Laura Wulf.
When we exchanged vows in Brookline, Massachusetts in 2012 our marriage was only legally recognized in Massachusetts and a handful of other states. We used to play the (grim) game of, "Are we married here?" when we traveled across state borders. In 2015 the Obergefell v. Hodges decision came down, mandating legal access to marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. I have been reminded, this week, while reading Dying to be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics of how narrowly proscriptive that victory was, serving not only to extend certain citizenship rights to same-sex couples (an important victory!) but also to reinscribe the married couple as a foundational unit in American culture and politics -- a reactionary step backwards that left many queer peoples' citizenship on the margins. The struggle is not over.
Image: Cover art for Corruption by Kim Fielding, Spellbound by Allie Therin, and A Light Amongst Shadows by Kelley York & Rowan Altwood.
Apart from Dying to be Normal (linked above) I've been reading a lot in the past few weeks! In addition to the Ida B. Wells project -- for which I finished Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching by Crystal Feimster and am currently wrapping up Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner -- I enjoyed some new (to me) paranormal-historical queer romance novels recommended to me. Allie Therin's first book, Spellbound, is #1 in a planned series that takes place in 1920s Manhatten. The central romance in book one is between Arthur (the younger son of a high-profile progressive politician, who is a WWI veteran and trying earnestly to do good in the world with the privilege he has) and Rory (a working-class, asylum escapee psychic who accesses visions of the past and present through objects) and they are wonderful. There is also a great cast of secondary characters who embody diversity along multiple axes and whom I am looking forward to knowing better in future books. I also read the four novellas in Kim Fielding's Bureau series (darker urban fantasy feel, set from the Depression era through to the present) and the first book in Kelley York and Rowan Altwood's Dark is the Night series (hauntings at a 19th century British boarding school for troubled young men).
Image: An exhibit panel from the Can She Do It exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society featuring images taken at the Boston Women's March, January 2017.
Coming up in the next four weeks is the due date for my first draft chapter and a full table of contents for the Ida B. Wells biography, the closing of the Can She Do It exhibition at the MHS (how has it gone by so quickly!), that cats' annual visit to the vet (shhhh -- don't warn them!), and our vacation to Brattleboro, Vermont with my parents; a much-needed getaway.
May you be seeing the first signs of autumn,
Anna
For the past twelve years, Labor Day weekend has marked my anniversary of arriving in Boston to begin graduate school. I've now been in Boston four years as a student, then eight years as a non-student, and I am still grateful each Labor Day that I am not returning to school. Still, it was nice to have a four-day weekend (I took the Friday off as well) that felt like something of a transition from summer into the early days of autumn. We took a train down to Pawtucket, Rhode Island to have lunch with a friend, I was able to tidy up the wool room (where we keep our cafting supplies and projects), and there was generally a lot of cat cuddles and reading and naps.
Image: Teazle on my lap on the back porch, in four views.Image: Christopher practicing cuddles on the bed, in two views.Also over Labor Day weekend I finished up the cross-stitch commissions I wrote about in the August newsletter and got to turn my attentions entirely to my first chevron-patterned scarf with the wonderful self-striping sock yarn (modeled here by Sebastian the bear)! I was very pleased with how it turned out, and a colleague claimed it directly for $25 donated to No More Deaths in Arizona -- a Unitarian Universalist organization focused on providing direct, emergency support to migrants on the U.S.- Mexico border. I've started on a second chevron scarf that the same colleague has already asked for first right of refusal for.
Image: About six inches of a scarf in browns/yellows/pinks on a circular needle.This past Saturday, September 14th, Hanna and I celebrated seven years of marriage. 100,000,000/10 would choose her again (as I do every day).
Image: Our hands wearing our wedding rings, from our wedding announcement photo shoot. Photograph by Laura Wulf.When we exchanged vows in Brookline, Massachusetts in 2012 our marriage was only legally recognized in Massachusetts and a handful of other states. We used to play the (grim) game of, "Are we married here?" when we traveled across state borders. In 2015 the Obergefell v. Hodges decision came down, mandating legal access to marriage for same-sex couples nationwide. I have been reminded, this week, while reading Dying to be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics of how narrowly proscriptive that victory was, serving not only to extend certain citizenship rights to same-sex couples (an important victory!) but also to reinscribe the married couple as a foundational unit in American culture and politics -- a reactionary step backwards that left many queer peoples' citizenship on the margins. The struggle is not over.
Image: Cover art for Corruption by Kim Fielding, Spellbound by Allie Therin, and A Light Amongst Shadows by Kelley York & Rowan Altwood. Apart from Dying to be Normal (linked above) I've been reading a lot in the past few weeks! In addition to the Ida B. Wells project -- for which I finished Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching by Crystal Feimster and am currently wrapping up Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner -- I enjoyed some new (to me) paranormal-historical queer romance novels recommended to me. Allie Therin's first book, Spellbound, is #1 in a planned series that takes place in 1920s Manhatten. The central romance in book one is between Arthur (the younger son of a high-profile progressive politician, who is a WWI veteran and trying earnestly to do good in the world with the privilege he has) and Rory (a working-class, asylum escapee psychic who accesses visions of the past and present through objects) and they are wonderful. There is also a great cast of secondary characters who embody diversity along multiple axes and whom I am looking forward to knowing better in future books. I also read the four novellas in Kim Fielding's Bureau series (darker urban fantasy feel, set from the Depression era through to the present) and the first book in Kelley York and Rowan Altwood's Dark is the Night series (hauntings at a 19th century British boarding school for troubled young men).
Image: An exhibit panel from the Can She Do It exhibition at the Massachusetts Historical Society featuring images taken at the Boston Women's March, January 2017. Coming up in the next four weeks is the due date for my first draft chapter and a full table of contents for the Ida B. Wells biography, the closing of the Can She Do It exhibition at the MHS (how has it gone by so quickly!), that cats' annual visit to the vet (shhhh -- don't warn them!), and our vacation to Brattleboro, Vermont with my parents; a much-needed getaway.
May you be seeing the first signs of autumn,
Anna