Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed Plus

Today is my birthday. 31 years old and not much to show for it, however you measure. But that's okay! Before me came the likes of Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed. I often think about the woman's uniform, and how strange it must be, if I could realize it, to not be skirted my whole life - unlike the daughter of Captian Sir St Vincent Hawkins-Whitshed, 3rd Baronet, who mountain climbed in style (From the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum):

And aaah, such elegance! When you are thirsty, you're thirsty. From National Geographic, by Kenneth D. Smith. Taken in New Hampshire, and not Mzzz. Hawkins-Whitshed.

Coldest day of this half of the year, so far.  Gonna go check on my pumpkins, and then cuddle up in my blankets and read a book make a spreadsheet for comparing different LIS programs (Royal School of LIS in Denmark, University of Western Cape, and University of Toronto) for a presentation next week.

I guess I can't really complain.

Happy Equinox

I love autumn the most.  The first picture was taken yesterday on my way to the grocery store, the other two from previous years, although that mushy is a late august mushy, but that is basically fall here.

Winter is coming.

Seriously though, where I live, winter lasts almost 8 months, and just a few days into September you can feel that the man who lives in the sky and controls everything has flipped the switch.

The phrase “winter is coming” is also the motto of the House of Stark, the family of Winterfell, for those who do not yet know the craziness that is Game of Thrones.  I say that with a touch of sarcasm, I do.  I am an avid fantasy/sci-fi reader, and although I like GofT, and am amused by it, it doesn’t have the depth of character analysis that I prefer.  On the other hand, although the characters are all quite thinly described, they are done so in a rather defined way.  There is an economy to Martin’s writing that is pointed and which moves swiftly along, but somehow still seems to be… thorough?? I guess I have a hard time describing what I mean… it is an effective style, that does not feel empty, despite it’s thinness.  Maybe that is why he is so popular?  

After the big hubbub caused by What’s Her Name, from the NYTimes, (aka Ginia Bellafante) who wrote a universally-accepted-as-lazy/stupid review of GofT, (the tv show), I was found myself in a long discussion with a man in my town known as “The Bull.”  He hadn’t seen the show or read the books, and I was trying to express the big deal-ness of it, and of What’s Her Name’s comments about the sex scenes in the show and how they are only there to draw in female viewers (and how no women she knows read or watch fantasy/sci-fi).  I, of course, was miffed by that summation, being a female, and being attracted to fantasy/sci-fi for reasons other than sex (although of course, I’ll take anything with a dash of sex on it, or in it).  SO, in a grand gesture for the whole of this weird northern city, which is stuck in an eddy of prudish sex-negative pseudo-radical feminism (imho), The Bull asked:  ”are the sex scenes feminist sex scenes?  like feminist porn?”

LOL.