Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

1. Favorite Things:

• Favorite new YouTube Channel, 2019: "Journey to the Microcosmos"
  
• Favorite radio show (not new): From our own correspondent (BBC)
  
• (Current) Favorite poem (By Sarah Kay, as part of a TED Talk) A bird made of birds

2. What I'm most proud of, in 2019: designing a Disability Pride Flag, and registering it, officially, as Public Domain (It came up, once, in a search on the Creative Commons website, when I was actually looking for a different image. But it's not coming up now, that I'm actually looking for it :-/).

3. The Saddest thing of 2019: having a dear friend leave the Internet entirely, because of personal safety reasons, with no other way for me to contact them.

4. What I'm most worried about, in 2020: Donald Trump being acquitted, without any consequences, when his impeachment trial finally happens.

5. What I'm looking forward to accomplishing, in 2020: Making videos of each of the poems in my 2016 chapbook: The Monsters' Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity. I've already made a video of the first poem in the collection:


But with YouTube's new Terms of Service, and their dodgy, algorithmic, response to the recent COPPA decision against them from the FTC, I may shift to posting the series on Vimeo, instead.

Snagged from davidgillon, which he snagged from legionseagle who got the list from this blog post over at Tor.com: 100 SF/F books you should consider reading in the New Year.

Italics = read it. Underline= not it, but another by the same author. Strikethrough = did not finish.

---

( Read more... )

---

So, going by this list, it looks like I'm not very well-read at all. Though what this list really shows me is that I haven't read much of any SF/F published after 1980 -- I think that's because my main access to the genre was through school libraries and public libraries, which tend to have more older books on their shelves than book stores.

Some of these book titles (and their summaries on Wikipedia, when I look them up) ring very faint, foggy, bells. I very well could have read them, but I'm not confident enough to actually italicize them....

I'm glad Patricia McKillip is on this list. Although I read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, the book of hers that kept me up all night until I finished it was The Changeling Sea ... I had such a fiction-crush on that wizard (*blush*). And although it is not SF/F, I also really liked The Night Gift, though I acknowledge it's not a "Significant piece of Literature" of the sort that gets on lists like this (the pop culture references, put in to ground it firmly in the present, real, world, end up making it terribly dated), but it's a bittersweet exploration of how mental illness affects a close-knit group of teenage friends, and how they band together to try and help the one who's suffering.

Anyway, all that means is that I have a whole lot of good first time reading to look forward to.

All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year,
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor as the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend,
That doth but the best that he may;
Forgetting old wrongs, with carols and songs,
To drive the cold winter away.

Let Misery pack, with a whip at his back,
To the deep Tantalian flood;
In Lethe profound let envy be drown'd,
That pines at another man's good;
Let Sorrow's expense be banded from hence,
All payments have greater delay,
We'll spend the long nights in cheerful delights
To drive the cold winter away.

'Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined
To think of small injuries now;
If wrath be to seek do not lend her thy cheek
Nor let her inhabit thy brow.
Cross out of thy books malevolent looks,
Both beauty and youth's decay,
And wholly consort with mirth and with sport
To drive the cold winter away.

The court in all state now opens her gate
And gives a free welcome to most;
The city likewise, tho' somewhat precise,
Doth willingly part with her roast:
But yet by report from city and court
The country will e'er gain the day;
More liquor is spent and with better content
To drive the cold winter away.

Our good gentry there for costs do not spare,
The yeomanry fast not till Lent;1
The farmers and such think nothing too much,
If they keep but to pay for their rent.
The poorest of all now do merrily call,
When at a fit place they can stay,
For a song or a tale or a cup of good ale
To drive the cold winter away.

Thus none will allow of solitude now
But merrily greets the time,
To make it appear of all the whole year
That this is accounted the prime:
December is seen apparel's in green,
And January fresh as May
Comes dancing along with a cup and a song
To drive the cold winter away.

This time of the year is spent in good cheer,
And neighbours together do meet
To sit by the fire, with friendly desire,
Each other in love to greet;
Old grudges forgot are put in the pot,
All sorrows aside they lay;
The old and the young doth carol this song
To drive the cold winter away.

Sisley and Nanny, more jocund than any,
As blithe as the month of June,
Do carol and sing like birds of the spring,
No nightingale sweeter in tune;
To bring in content, when summer is spend,
In pleasant delight and play,
With mirth and good cheer to end the whole year,
And drive the cold winter away.

The shepherd, the swain do highly disdain
To waste out their time in care,
And Clim of the Clough hath plenty enough
If he but a penny can spare
To spend at the night, in joy and delight,
Now after his labour all day;
For better than lands is the help of his hands
To drive the cold winter away.

To mask and to mum kind neighbours will come
With wassails of nut-brown ale,
To drink and carouse to all in the house
As merry as bucks in the dale;
Where cake, bread, and cheese is brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.

When Christmas's tide come in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away.

When white-bearded frost hath threatened his worse,
And fallen from branch and briar,
Then time away calls from husbandry halls
And from the good countryman's fire,
Together to go, to plough and to sow
To get us both food and array,
And thus will content the time we have spend
To drive the cold winter away.

(A few of the verses sung by a choir, so you can hear what it sounds like)


(And if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, you can always change the lyrics around -- maybe to "To drive the old year(?) away."

...And performed by Raymond Cooke.

I just heard this for the first time a few minutes ago. And considering my circles, I couldn't think of a better "Holiday Greeting Card" to share with you all:

( In Memoriam (Ring out, Wild Bells) by Alfred Lord Tennyson )

And the other day (Yesterday? or was it the day before?) I got the idea in my head to write my own poem, following these sentiments-- but from a Humanist/Agnostic/Atheist perspective, instead of a Christian one.

Something about how, although, strictly speaking, picking one day as the New Year is arbitrary-- there's really little difference between one minute and the next, even if we give those minutes, days, years, different names.

But-- But -- BUT -- the very act of collectively, as a society, to agree to let go of the past and take a deep breath full of hope-- this is still and always be, a moment and an action of profound Grace. And, like anarchy, it has little meaning done alone, but a great deal of meaning when done as a society.

I don't think I will complete this poem before midnight, my time (little more than three hours from now). But maybe I'll complete it before the passing of Orthodox Christmas...