Author: Eppu

Quotes: You Can’t Unite Woman and Human

Eppu

“There is the vanity training, the obedience training, the self-effacement training, the deference training, the dependency training, the passivity training, the rivalry training, the stupidity training, the placation training. How am I to put this together with my human life, my intellectual life, my solitude, my transcendence, my brains, and my fearful, fearful ambition? I failed miserably and thought it was my own fault. You can’t unite woman and human any more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are designed not to be stable together and they make just as big an explosion inside the head of the unfortunate girl who believes in both.”

– Joanna Russ: The Female Man

A somber view of what it’s to be an intelligent, determined woman in a world run by men who don’t recognize their value.

Russ, Joanna: The Female Man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975, p. 151.

(This quote comes from my 21 new-to-me SFF authors reading project.)

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

An End and a New Beginning for Bede’s World

Eppu

Bede’s World, a small museum in Jarrow, Tyne & Wear, Northumbria, dedicated to the Venerable Bede and 7th-century England, shut down its operations in February 2016.

Bedes World Main Entry

Bedes World Entrance Inside

In addition to indoor exhibits, the museum includes several replica wattle and daub buildings, modeled on structures excavated in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria and built with original materials and contemporary methods. On the grounds there is also a herb garden and a working farm with a small collection of rare breed animals resembling those that lived 1,300 years ago.

Bedes World Collage

The museum issued the following statement:

“It is with great regret that the Trustee Board took the decision for Bedes World [sic] to cease operation from Friday 12 February 2016 due to a lack of funds.

“Steps are being taken to put the company into administration through the appointment of an Insolvency Practitioner.

“The Trustee Board have made arrangements for the immediate care of the farm animals and the security of the site.

“The Board would like thank all staff, volunteers and stakeholders for their hard work and dedication to Bedes World. [sic]”

Fortunately, only a few weeks afterwards better news surfaced: a new operator was found to run the site. At this writing it isn’t clear what their plans for Bede’s World are, though. (Follow this link to read the statement by Groundwork South Tyneside and Newcastle, the new operator.)

Found via Anne Bennett and BBC.

Images: Bede’s World main entrance, outside view via Bede’s World. Other photographs by Eppu Jensen

Tove Jansson to Be Inducted into Eisner Hall of Fame

Eppu

According to Comic-Con International, Tove Jansson, a Finnish visual artist and author, has been selected by the Eisner Award judges to be automatically inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2016. Hooray, Tove!

Tove Jansson Complete Moomin Comic Strip

Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the incredibly popular Moomins books and comics. Besides Jansson, there’s a second automatic inductee: Carl Burgos, Golden Age creator of The Human Torch.

In addition, the judges have also chosen 14 nominees from which voters will select four to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. Visit the Comic-Con International: San Diego Eisner Awards page for details. The ceremony takes place July 22, 2016, in San Diego.

Found via File 770.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Quality Research Resources by Private Individuals

Eppu

I wrote last week about what a fantastic thing it is to have a wealth of primary sources stored in libraries and museums, nowadays increasingly being made available online. For completeness’s sake, it needs to be mentioned that it’s not only library and museum professionals that share quality research or materials online.

nypl-unidentified-woman-reading-a-book
Unidentified woman reading a book via NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division (1913; photograph)

Below I list a (very) few linguistic and historical resources put together by dedicated private individuals. They’re all diligent in documenting their steps and sources, and providing info and links for those interested in finding more. Thorough documentation is, again, not a surefire way to avoid mistakes, but it does allow tracking sources and re-creating the research.

A short list, to be sure, but what better than that to add to. 🙂

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Starships!

Eppu1 Comment

Three years old at this point, but still, oh, so, SO great: Starships!

https://vimeo.com/46927209

Starships! by bironic

“A celebration of pilots, captains, engineers, crew members, and the spacecraft they love to fly. (And race, and crash, and fix, and play in, and fight in, and…)”

– bironic

It’s a great time to be a geek – not only are more SFFnal stories than before being published and adapted to the screen and stage, but making, remixing, and sharing our own content is incredibly easy.

P.S. Be sure to read bironic’s making-of note!

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Museum Materials: Volcano Day in Pompeii

Eppu

Speaking of the excellence of museum and library collections: below are resources on the destruction of Pompeii I found by visiting only two museum sites.

“A Day in Pompeii” is an 8-minute high-definition video on how a series of eruptions wiped out Pompeii over 48 hours, produced by Museum Victoria (Melbourne Museum) and Zero One Animation for an exhibition at Melbourne Museum in 2009.

A Day in Pompeii – Full-length animation via Zero One Animation

It would’ve been more stunning with changes in the POV rather than a static camera, but it was still interesting.

To accompany the exhibit, Melbourne Museum produced a wealth of additional online material.

Melbourne Museum Day in Pompeii Box

Unfortunately there’s currently no index page, but articles are still available on the Museum website (do a search for Pompeii). For example, House of the Vine is a nifty virtual recreation of a beautiful Pompeian house. And did you know that Pompeii had running water and lavatories? There is even a replica of a loaf of bread from Pompeii:

Melbourne Museum Day in Pompeii Loaf of Bread

After Melbourne, the exhibition traveled to other places. The Western Australian Museum also built a helpful site, still fully available, to go with their 2010 version in Perth.

Complementary views can be found from photos of the current state of the city at Pompeii in Pictures, website by Jackie and Bob Dunn. (Getting to the photos themselves takes a bit of clicking through the menus, but they’re there.)

Images: Box, (c) Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei via Melbourne Museum (House of Julius Polybius, Pompeii; original iron and bronze fittings and wood reconstruction). Loaf of bread via Melbourne Museum (bakery in Pompeii; plaster copy of an original, carbonized loaf)

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?

The Glory of Library and Museum Materials

Eppu1 Comment

I really love the Internet for research. It connects us to materials and people around the world. As a visual person, I find the availability of photographs and other visualizations on just about any subject especially gratifying. You can visit places and eras that you physically may not be able to.

NYPL Digital The Drawbridge

One of the invaluable services libraries and museums provide, especially now that more of their collections are being digitized, is access to historical periods and obscure topics. (Like the Peter Parker collection of 80 paintings of Chinese patients with large tumors or other major deformities – that’s not a joke!)

And that’s only the beginning – using library and museum websites and digital collections to find primary sources for research has other benefits as well:

  • Copious metadata: the provenance (origins and history) of documents or items, including details like dates, original creators, owners, and chain of custody, are clearly marked when known, and when unknown, that is clearly stated, too.
  • Materials that physical items were made of are also given, often with information on the techniques involved or links to further reading in connection with museum exhibits.
  • Many libraries and museums group items in their digital collections into more easily browsable subgroups, for example by era, style, type, or topic.
  • Copyright information is easily available: any limitations to re-using the materials are clearly given. There are also collections that concentrate on items that are in public domain.
  • If digital materials are made available for re-using, often there are multiple formats, sizes, or resolutions. That’s great service!
  • Sets of search results are often smaller than online in general. Finding an answer is faster!
  • Digital collections are created by professionals. While this doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility of errors, online materials at libraries and museums are researched, curated, and checked, which increases the reliability of the information provided.
  • If additional information or clarification is needed, it’s the job of museums and libraries to at least try to help. That’s literally why they’re there!

Below are just some amazing digital collections from museums and libraries around the world:

Must. Resist. Internet. Rabbit. Holes!

Image: The Drawbridge via NYPL (The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections; 1748-1751; etching; by Giovanni Battista Piranesi)

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Quotes: She Was Born a Thing

Eppu

“She was born a thing and as such would be condemned if she failed to pass the encephalograph test required of all newborn babies. There was always the possibility that though the limbs were twisted, the mind was not, that though the ears would hear only dimly, the eyes see vaguely, the mind behind them was receptive and alert.”

– Anne McCaffrey: The Ship Who Sang

The opening sentence of the titular, first story in the collection.

McCaffrey, Anne: The Ship Who Sang. New York, NY: Del Rey, 1969 [stories originally published between 1961 and 1969], p. 1.

(This quote comes from my 21 new-to-me SFF authors reading project.)

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Dining in Middle Earth: A Farewell Feast in Bag End

Eppu

“In the evening Frodo gave his farewell feast: it was quite small, just a dinner for himself and his four helpers… The dining-room was bare except for a table and chairs, but the food was good, and there was good wine: Frodo’s wine had not been included in the sale to the Sackville-Bagginses.”

LotR Dinner2Our take on Frodo’s last dinner in Bag End has Sam Gamgee’s fish and chips at the center, accompanied by boiled cabbage wedges with rosemary mint sauce. For dessert there is a simple blueberry soup. And with it all, a glass of wine for toasting the good old hole farewell.

LotR Dinner2 Simple

Since this is quite a small, pre-long-distance-move dinner, the props are mostly simple, too: plain ceramics, plain glass, and wooden utensils on a bare table. Since the “good wine” was explicitly not included in the sale, we went with the spirit of indulgence and picked a fancier glass for it.

LotR Dinner2 Drink

Check out what’s it about in the introduction, or read the how-to!

Images by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!

Two Historically-Inspired Recipes to Accompany PPZ

Eppu

Having seen Pride and Prejudice and Zombies last weekend, Regency England is trying to take over my brain. (Braaaain!) Here are two historically-inspired recipes if brains aren’t your favorite dish.

A Charlotte Riley Flickr Yellow pea soup

Pea soup

Maria Popova at Brain Pickings shares a recipe for pease soup (pea soup) by Jane Austen’s longtime friend Martha Lloyd. It comes from Dinner with Mr. Darcy by Pen Vogler. Inspired by the food featured in her novels and letters, the cookbook takes recipes from Austen’s period and adapts them for contemporary cooks.

Ingredients and directions

Take two quarts of pease. Boil them to a pulp. Strain them. Put 1/2 lb of butter into a saucepan. Celery, half an onion, and stew them til tender. Then put two anchovies, powdered pepper, salt, mint and parsley (each a small handful) and spinach, and heat of each a small quantity. Half a spoonful of sugar. The soup be boiled as thick as you like it and the whole be ground together, boiled up and dished.

The mint sounds interesting, but anchovies…?! Visit Brain Pickings for Pen’s modern version of Martha Lloyd’s pea soup and two other recipes. Or take a peak at Amazon’s preview, which includes a few photos from the book, among them four recipes.

Cherries

Cherry bounce

The exact origins of this cherry-infused drink are not known, but it definitely existed towards the end of 18th century, since Martha Washington (1731-1802) had a recipe for it. According to Wikipedia, the village of Frithsden in Hertfordshire claims to have originated it. Since Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is mostly set in Hertfordshire, cherry bounce would make quite a plausible companion to P&P or PPZ.

This recipe is Emily Han’s version, via Design*Sponge:

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds (680 g) sweet cherries, pitted
4 whole allspice berries
2 whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground mace or nutmeg
3/4 cup (144 g) turbinado sugar
1 bottle (750 ml, or 3 1/4 cups) bourbon

Directions

Combine the cherries, allspice, cloves, mace, and sugar in a quart (1 L) jar. Pour the bourbon into the jar, making sure the cherries are submerged. Cap the jar tightly. Store it in a cool, dark place for at least 2 months, shaking occasionally. The longer it infuses, the better it will be. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer lined with a coffee filter or flour sack cloth, gently pressing on the cherries with the back of a spoon to squeeze out all the liquid. Discard the cherries, or reserve them for another use. Bottle and store in a cool, dark place for up to 1 year. Yields about 3 1/2 cups (823 ml).

A commenter in the Design*Sponge post suggested trying the discarded cherries on ice cream. That does sound yummy! Visit Design*Sponge for another historically-inspired drink recipe by Emily.

Images: Yellow pea soup by A. Charlotte Riley (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Cherries by Eppu Jensen

Geeks eat, too! Second Breakfast is an occasional feature in which we talk about food with geeky connections and maybe make some of our own. Yum!