Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 45 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1009. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
My check-in: Put the auction story on a back burner for now, because I probably need a long convo hammering it through with someone before I can go farther. Instead got down a couple of sentences of a drabble for my other auction recipient. (She says I can use multiple works toward her fill. I am not, however, planning on making the all drabbles, because there will need to be seventy of them…)
When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!
Nothing beats meeting a friend for the first timetrepkos and I friended each other on LJ waaaaay back in the day, because we had friends in common and I thought she seemed cool and I guess she thought the same of me, and there it might have rested if Geoff and I hadn't come to her island!
We started the day with another huge breakfast and enthusiastic conversation from our host Elena; this time she made us veggie omelets and I fended off the beans and still couldn't finish everything. Then we hopped a bus to trepkos's place -- we caught a slightly earlier bus than I'd allowed for, so when we got off at her stop we had enough time to wander around the little oceanfront park and out along a slipway and a natural sprit of land that would have been under water at high tide but was lovely to pick our way along now that it was exposed. Then we came back to shore and walked up the road to her place, and had a nice chat (and tea) with her and her partner, and then we got in her car and she drove us to see wonderful things.
We started with a stroll out an enormously long breakwater on the northeast coast, just to admire the ocean and the way it was so much choppier and violent on the seaward side than the inner side, which is of course exactly what a breakwater is for, but it's pretty cool to look along its length and see both sides at once. There were several people on their way to swim, even. We could just see France on the horizon. And it was ferociously windy; at one point trepkos picked up a tangle of seaweed that had been flung up on the walkway atop the breakwater and tried to drop it over the side back into the sea on the seaward side, where we were walking, and the wind immediately snatched it up and whipped it over our heads to dump it in on the sheltered side instead.
There was a plaque mounted on the breakwater commemorating a fifteen-year-old girl who, starting and ending there, swam all the way around the island. The mind boggles, but apparently this is a thing that people do regularly!
Then we went on a beautiful walk through a wooded valley of conservation land with a stream running through it, just chatting the whole way about fandom and life and I don't know what-all. I had wondered if ticks were a danger here, which question was answered by a signpost warning of the danger of tick-borne disease, and also by the dog we met that had a tick on its forehead, which its owner flicked off when Geoff pointed it out, shudder. But I don't get the sense that they're the constant glaring danger that they are in some places I've been back home.
*pause to tick-check my lower extremities*
At the far end of the conservation area we looped around briefly on roads before re-entering it to retrace our steps, and we passed someone's "fresh eggs for sale" shed at the end of their driveway, with an honor box for money and also a "smile, you're on CCTV" note posted. However, there were no eggs there to be admired; I mean, I wasn't going to buy any, but I would have enjoyed admiring them. We did see a pheasant and several chicks crossing the road, though!
From there we went to the Faldouet dolmen, a Neolithic tomb and ceremonial site; we didn't stay long but such places are always atmospheric and make me think about the length of human history and culture. This one is six thousand years old.
We also went to La Hougue Bie, another Neolithic passage grave, where history is literally layered on layers. We crept into the Neolithic passage under the hill, and walked through a reproduction Neolithic longhouse; and went through the museum exhibit about the enormous Celtic hoard of coins and jewelry that was found in an undisclosed location nearby, dating from around 50 CE; and went through the underground bunker that the Germans built into the hill, which now houses exhibits and photographs commemorating the enslaved workers whom the Nazis brought to Jersey from all over Europe to build their fortifications. (We forgot, however, to visit the sixteenth-century chapel on the top of the hill.)
We finished up in the on-site cafe, which offered cakes and eclairs of a size that I remarked would make an American blush; Geoff and I shared a latte and all three of us got bowls of really excellent tomato-basil soup with fresh rolls, crusty on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside. It was so much that Geoff and I have decided to skip dinner -- though I might have a handful or two of our trail mix, which I also greatly enjoy!
Trepkos gave us a ride back to our guesthouse, where we are now tucked up blogging. Tomorrow we plan to hike along the northwest coast, which is supposed to be be both gorgeous and quite challenging. We'll start by taking a bus to Grosnez Castle, at the northwest corner of the island, and walking east from there; there's a bus we can take home after what might be a hike of an hour or two, and another one at what might be anywhere from another one to four hours; I'm finding it really hard to get clear information! We'll see how we get on.
I'm not sure when it happened, exactly - maybe sometime in middle school? - but I'll always remember the day Mom told me I was skipping school, and we were going shopping instead.
We spent the morning driving around to Goodwill and various thrift shops, trying on clothes, singing along to the car radio, and later stopping at Subway for lunch - which I remember being a treat, because we got the cookies for dessert.
(This is me around chocolate chip cookies. ALWAYS.)
We didn't talk about school. We didn't talk about my friends or grades or any of those awkward teenage "body-changing" topics. We just told each other which tops looked best, chatted about nothing, laughed, and had fun.
It was the first time I realized Mom wasn't just my mom, she was also my friend.
Mom was an RN while I was growing up, which meant my brother and I got zero sympathy for our scraped knees and boo-boos. Don't get me wrong; Mom was an expert at patching us up - but if we wanted a hearty "You poor thing!", then Dad was the place to go.
I later learned Mom was working nights in the ICU then, and routinely saw the kind of pain and grief I can't even fathom, because she came home and smiled and hugged us just the same.
It was terrible. But Mom loves terrible kid movies, and to this day she'll request we see whatever the latest animated or G-rated flick is, no matter how ominous the reviews, and then she'll laugh and gasp and have so much fun that you'll wind up loving it, too.
In my teens Mom was in a car accident that prevented her from ever working as a nurse again. She had to wear a neck brace for ages, and later had a surgery to wire her jaw shut for a while. Then she got braces... at the same time *I* had braces.
People kept mistaking us for sisters, which Mom REALLY liked, but I just found embarrassing - especially that time an older friend of mine hit on her... with me standing right there.
Today my folks live in a different state, but I'm happy to say they are still my friends. We visit often, and even go to Dragon Con together, where Mom loves dressing up steampunk - with outfits she still puts together from the thrift store.
Lately Mom likes to video chat and show me all the crafts she's teaching during her volunteer work at the local retirement home. And now she and Dad have joined a Harley Davidson group/club/gang(?), so they spend weekends taking long rides together decked out in the most, um, fascinating fashions.
(I could have gone my whole life without seeing my mother in leather chaps, you guys. MY WHOLE LIFE.)
Mom's the most servant-hearted person I know, and has seen and endured a lot of pain, though you'd never know it. Somehow she's managed to keep a sense of wonder and whimsy through life - something I try hard to emulate. She raised me to love reading and Star Trek and fantasy and fun, and taught me that when the going gets rough, you turn up the music and sing along extra loud - and off-key. ;)
For my folks' 40th anniversary a few years back, we sent them to Disney World - mostly for Mom - and I'll never forget her delight.
She's the big kid who makes you remember how great life really is sometimes - even when life really isn't so great. The best moms are like that. And days like today help us remember to thank our moms, and be grateful for the things we just didn't know how to appreciate when we were younger.
So happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks for showing me that when I thought you were being the most embarrassing, you were really showing me how to be the best adult. I love you, I'm proud of you, and I hope we can go shopping again someday soon.
PS - This is a first-time-ever cross-post from my other blog, Epbot. Same text, different pictures. So if you'd like to see the version with pics of my mom in steampunk costumes & on motorcycles & hugging awkward young Jen, click here.
*****
Oh and did you forget to send your Mom/Grandma/favorite parental personage a card today? Because you could make it up to them with a card that transforms into a bouquet:
After spending the winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, Gray Catbirds are back in Vermont!
They're named for their characteristic nasal "mreeennnh!" call that sounds like a cat impatient for dinner. They're related to mockingbirds and can also mimic other birds' songs and miscellaneous noises, but unlike mockingbirds which tend to perform an imitation several times in a row clearly, Gray Catbirds do a chattery stream-of-consciousness jumble of bits and pieces of different things.
The all-gray plumage with a darker cap makes them easy to recognize. In this photo you can also see a glimpse of the rust-red undertail coverts. Males and females look alike. Their bills are black; this one's looks mottled because it's got suet on it. We've had two in the yard lately which are both very into the suet, and they will fly in and rudely body-check the other one off the feeder if they feel like it.
One of the earliest paper on the information behaviour of fans points to the ephemerality of fanworks as why librarians are (yet) uninterested in cataloging them.
The do-it yourself image of this information has also been a factor contributing to its being regarded as ephemeral and not important or a subject for serious consideration.
Hart, Chris, Michael Shoolbred, David Butcher, and David Kane. 1999. “The Bibliographical Structure of Fan Information.” Collection Building 18 (2): 81–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01604959910265869.
That fanworks are ephemeral could and will be argued – first maybe by the fanbinders among other fans and aca-fans (I personally think that when we send out another golden disc of human culture to aliens, it should at least include My Immortal).
Coker, Catherine. 2017. “The Margins of Print? Fan Fiction as Book History.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 25. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.1053.
Buchsbaum, Shira Belén. 2022. “Binding Fan Fiction and Reexamining Book Production Models.” In “Fandom Histories,” edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl and Abby Waysdorf, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 37. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2129.
Jacobs, Naomi, and JSA Lowe. 2024. “The Design of Printed Fan Fiction.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 43. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2024.2547.
Kennedy, Kimberly. 2022. “Fan Binding as a Method of Fan Work Preservation.” In “Fandom Histories,” edited by Philipp Dominik Keidl and Abby S. Waysdorf, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 37. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2107.
But let us entertain this premise just for now, to reveal what other reasons we could have for the preservation for fanworks.
Since we have been discussing fannish taxonomies in earlier posts, too, it must be clear that fans themselves will work to preserve fanworks. Even if we were not interested in fanworks themselves, the practices which are already in use are certainly relevant to information science.
Additionally, fandom signifiers are famously hard to decipher if removed from their primary context. Without detailed work dedicated to preserving this context as intact as possible, the aliens would have a hard time understanding the adventures of Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.
Dym, Brianna, and Casey Fiesler. 2020. “Ethical and Privacy Considerations for Research Using Online Fandom Data.” In “Fan Studies Methodologies,” edited by Julia E. Largent, Milena Popova, and Elise Vist, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 33. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1733.
So what are some other reasons preserving and categorising fanworks can be important?
I’m not sure where to begin. I haven’t closed out my PostSecret tab in over 5 years now. It’s something that brings me comfort to see daily, that the site is not going to abandon me.
As this Mother’s Day approaches, I find myself in a mental world of a mess. I was adopted at birth, and that adoption was a closed adoption. I have tried a couple of times to find my biological mother, but have been shut down by family, extended family, and even the court system here.
I do know that the parents who adopted me, are my parents. They did a fantastic job raising me and providing me with a life I would have only probably dreamed of. But it doesn’t take away the abandonment and rejection I’ve had to deal with time and time again. That hole only gets worse as I get older, my parents age, and I raise my son.
Speaking of my son, he is the only gift I knew I ever wanted in life. To be a mom. I am so blessed to be his mom and that he chose me to fulfill that role for him. But man has this been a hell of a ride. I almost died during childbirth. The pain that I’ve endured is beyond words. I feel so lucky because of my son and the fact I am still alive this coming Mother’s Day, that I am 50% excited to celebrate.
With all the trauma I have had to endure and will keep enduring until I am fixed, I just can’t find a way to express my gratitude for my biological mom. I may never get to meet her, that hole in my soul may never be filled…. But my deepest secret has always been that I want to hear her heartbeat. As an adult I would do anything to hear that heartbeat that I listened to everyday for 9 months. That heartbeat that gave me life. And chose for me to live. I am pro choice, but I am so thankful my mom chose for me to live. I wish I could hug her and thank her.
Since I can’t thank her, and I don’t have the guts to do one of the ancestry tests, I am sending you my thanks for her.
The fact your website is always there and does not abandon anyone, no matter their struggles, is something I’ll always be thankful for.
I sent in the don’t burn a candle. You’ll burn the house down! My mom’s voice echoes in my head. She started saying this to me when I was about 12. I don’t care how nice it smells. It’s a fire hazard.
A couple of years ago my next door neighbor had that happen. The teenager daughter was burning a candle. She fell asleep and kicked the candle over. The second floor of the house was burned and had to be completely rebuilt. 5 bedrooms gone.
I guess my mom did have a valid point. I didn’t tell her that, but I did think it inside my head.
After the neighbors’ fire happened, the postcard showed up on PostSecret. I was laughing. Yep! Mom was right.
My check-in: 500 words or so -- hard to tell, as I deleted some bits and rewrote them. Still waiting to have the revelation about what I'm doing with this section. But, as my revelations normally come through writing it out, I am continuing to plug away at it and see what materializes.
When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!
Today was the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Jersey from Nazi occupation, and we joined the crowd in Liberation Square to watch the festivities! Well, mostly to listen to them. Well, mostly to stand in the sun with no view except of other parts of the crowd and mostly poor audio of the music and speeches and songs and prayers. But we did have an excellent view of a small group of young soldiers (cadets? Some were literal children) reenacting the troops' entrance into the Pomme D'Or hotel facing the main square, where they took down the Nazi flag that had been flying above its portico (that bit was not included in the reenactment) and raised the Union Jack for the first time in five years. We admired many mysterious local dignitaries, political and religious, who gathered on and around the dais we were near, in front of the hotel, and watched the parade of Scouts, veterans, military and ambulance units, and other groups who marched past to close out the commemoration. Overall we didn't really experience much of the ceremony, and I was sorry not to have been able to hear the first verse of "Beautiful Jersey" being sung in Jèrriais (the lyrics were in the program, and I could hear well enough to recognize and follow the English verses, but my ear couldn't pick out and follow the Jèrriais against all the background crowd noise and with the poor amplification from the main square that we were just outside of). Even so, parts of the morning were quite moving, just knowing what it all meant.
Also I saw a lot of locals recognizing and calling out to one another in the shifting crowd and parading dignitaries. It's not a huge community here!
After the ceremonies ended there was music and food trucks and so forth in the next square over, but I was a bit done with crowds at that point. So we wandered a few blocks away to get Geoff an ice cream (it was hot and sunny! I had brought a scarf because I'm always afraid of being cold and the forecast had said it might rain, and I'd ended up draping it over my head to shade the back of my neck; I was worried about sunburn!). Then we went to check out the Jersey Museum, just off that second square.
We wandered through rooms recreating the domestic life and furniture of a (real, historical) Victorian family whose home the building had been, and who had gone broke and done a midnight flit to France, but what was more interesting to me was the exhibit that had been tagged on to it in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, tracing the connections that family, and other Jersey people, and the culture in general both here and in England, had with the Atlantic slave trade. I am now too tired and sun-fried to really write it up -- I think Geoff is saying a lot more, he's next to me also typing -- but I thought it was very well done.
We looked through some other galleries as well, especially a good display on the Neanderthals who lived here off and on for, like, a hundred thousand years, up to as recently as forty thousand years ago. trepkos, we also saw your friend's piece on the people persecuted as witches! But by that time I was really staggering, so we stopped in the cafe in the museum's courtyard and I had a half-pint of that yummy Stinky Bay IPA and also several handfuls of trail mix, the first things I'd eaten or drunk in seven hours. Then we went back to our guesthouse, rested for a while, and had another excellent meal at the same cafe we'd been to before; they're getting to know us there! But our host, who recommended it to us, has also recommended a Kenyan restaurant (run by her daughter and son-in-law) and, when we asked about seafood, a Portuguese place, so I expect we'll branch out eventually.
throwback to 2021 when the exact same player started doing this extended water bottle bincoculars sight gag in the dugout
this is the same guy who also made himself a fruit cocktail midgame. he is The manic pixie dream girl
baseball is actually not a sport it’s just a documentary of human nature and how we battle boredom. the stuff these teams get up to while they’re waiting their turn.
and it’s hilarious when they pull pranks on each other, like attaching things to other people’s caps:
or the beloved hot foot prank:
or when they decided to put a guy’s pants over his head and make it seem like he was walking on his hands:
or when they opposing pitchers took turns playing tic tac toe every time they got on the mound:
i take back everything bad i’ve ever said about baseball these boys can fucking Post
Sometimes you have to entertain yourself out in the field too, like the time Victor Robles made friends with a praying mantis.
Under Virginia law, a month had to elapse before the death sentence could be carried out. Governor Wise resisted pressures to move up the execution date because, he said, he wanted everyone to see that Brown’s rights had been thoroughly respected.
Brown made it clear repeatedly in his letters and conversations that these were the happiest days of his life. He would be publicly murdered, as he put it, but he was an old man and, he said, near death anyway. Brown was politically shrewd and realized his execution would strike a massive blow against Slave Power, a greater blow than he had made so far or had prospects of making otherwise. His death now had a purpose. In the meantime, the death sentence allowed him to publicize his anti-slavery views through the reporters constantly present in Charles Town, and through his voluminous correspondence.
Before his conviction, reporters were not allowed access to Brown, as the judge and Andrew Hunter feared that his statements, if quickly published, would exacerbate tensions, especially among the enslaved. This was much to Brown’s frustration, as he stated that he wanted to make a full statement of his motives and intentions through the press.[54]: 212 Once he had been convicted, the restriction was lifted, and, glad for the publicity, he talked with reporters and anyone else who wanted to see him, except pro-slavery clergy.[46]
Brown received more letters than he ever had in his life. He wrote replies constantly, hundreds of eloquent letters, often published in newspapers,[133]: 43 and expressed regret that he could not answer every one of the hundreds more he received. His words exuded spirituality and conviction. Letters picked up by the Northern press won him more supporters in the North while infuriating many white people in the South.
KING
Just a couple of the quotes about him that I like:
“His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave.”
-Frederick Douglass
“That new saint, than whom nothing purer or more brave was ever led by into conflict and death, — the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
[Image Description: initial tweet by Haymarket Books, at HaymarketBooks. It is dated May 9, Twenty twenty-three. It says “Abolitionist John Brown was born May 9, Eighteen hundred.” Beneath the tweet is a grayscale portrait of John Brown, an elderly white man with a long, bushy beard. In reply, Edward Ongweso Jr, @ BigBlackJacobin, tweets “Happy birthday to this crazy ass white boy. One day we are gonna go back in time and give him power armor.” End I.D.]
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 53 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1009. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is.
Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret.
Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment!
“On December 9, 1979, the disease was confirmed to have been eradicated, with the World Health Assembly making the declaration official five months later.”
“On May 8, 1980, more than two years after the last known case, the World Health Assembly formally declared the world free of smallpox.”
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fandomsecrets
Many bright nebulae and star clusters in planet Earth's sky
