This was a week with a lot of extroverted work. I tried to prepare as much as possible but still ended up more exhausted than usual. It was fun to present some of my linguistics-based opinions on readability. Inhabiting one’s past self in a current work space can be tricky, but also worthwhile.
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It’s been a wintry week. Resisting the urge to hibernate, I drove to the post office after work Tuesday and saw a beautiful sunset on the way back. The urge to photograph anything beautiful is so innate now that it’s just a reflex, and I felt frustrated that I was driving and couldn’t take a picture. But no picture ever does justice to phenomena in the sky anyway. It was lovely, take my word. Queen’s “Somebody to Love” came on the radio and cheered me up even more.
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In semi-hibernation, I’ve catalogued quite a bit of my sewing stuff on Threadloop in hopes of organizing my stash a bit better. It’s also a great way to discover new patterns and ideas, although I do wish people would share more finished projects the way they do on clunky old Pattern Review.
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Finished Fox. The murderer was who I suspected, although others were involved in ways I had not expected. There are already early reviews calling the book “Joyce Carol Oates’ Lolita“ and while there are parallels, she certainly wasn’t pulling a Dorothy Parker here. The book needs alllll the CSA trigger warnings, but you can feel the author’s compassion for the victims and rage at their abuser(s) at every moment. And as an editor, I can’t help but hope that in final editing they realize that JCO means “amused” every time she says “bemused.”
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Also came across an interesting quote from Edward O. Wilson:
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.
The old issues of Harvard magazine are quite interesting and not paywalled, which is nice.
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Whenever a storm is expected, there is lots of fretting among the locals. The local news interviewed an Ace Hardware manager about selling salt, and then a reporter showed a stick encased in ice. I had to laugh in Michigander at the latter. The grocery store was packed yesterday, school was moved back online or canceled, and the mail never came. The snow didn’t even start until 1 p.m. and we ended up with maybe an inch this morning. It’s melting already, but NC will be shut down for a few days more.
