Just another time we're caught inside

[dolorosa_12]

I started the day by running to Grantchester and back. I left the house around 6.30, and it was cold enough that there was frost on the ground, mist rose up from the river, and the cows loomed eerily on the empty fields. I followed the run with a long, slow restorative yoga session, and what with all that exercise I felt simultaneously strong, stretched, and relaxed by 9am.

Today is the last day of my strange, languid holiday at home — I'll be 'returning' to work tomorrow. I spent the morning cleaning the internal windows in the house, moving my seedlings around on the windowsill to ensure that they got maximum sunlight, and sat outside in the courtyard for an hour or so, drinking coffee, eating a few remaining Easter eggs, and writing in my paper journal and bullet journal, surrounded by a pile of washi tape and fountain pens.

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I've been reading free short stories online. I've found them to be a bit of a mixed bag.

'To Balance the Weight of Khalem' by RB Lemberg is about being a refugee and a migrant, with magical onions, crossing oceans, and food as a metaphor for loss, grief, alienation and home. I found it to be gorgeous, gorgeous work, although I think readers will get more out of it if they know anything of Lemberg's personal history — if you do, the metaphors and allusions in the story are very obvious.

'The Time Invariance of Snow' by E. Lily Yu is packed with allusions to myths and fairytales where women speak but their words have no power. I found it an interesting twist on the Snow Queen story, but possibly a bit darker than I was looking for in the current climate.

'Little Free Library' by Naomi Kritzer was a little bit twee (and as a librarian I have mixed opinions about little free 'libraries') — about a woman who opens up a little free library and strikes up a strange relationship with an unseen borrower of her books who appears to have come not just from outside her neighbourhood, but from outside this world altogether. I enjoy stories about the uncanny and strange brushing up against our world, so it was satisfying, but a bit slight.

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I received a nice treat in the post today — a beautiful Pippi Longstocking postcard from gingicat, to go with the recipe postcard I received a week or so ago from schneefink. I'm really enjoying this uptick in physical mail, and hope it continues beyond the pandemic.

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I will leave you with some photos of cherry, apple, and plum blossom from around my neighbourhood. The trees here are absolutely gorgeous at the moment, and I feel very fortunate to still be able to go outside and be among them. Here's the photoset on Instagram, and here it is as a Twitter thread if you prefer.

Incidentally, if you are on either of those platforms, I'm always happy to be added (and add in return) Dreamwidth people. I'm ronnidolorosa and ronnidolorosa. Instagram is very much the clichéd range of photos of flowers, trees and food. Twitter has a few more ranty political retweets and outraged grumpy threads about being a migrant in the UK and how dreadfully the UK government treats migrants and refugees.

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I hope you all are having as restful a time as possible.

Comments

[montfelisky]

This sounds like a lovely way to spend a not-working day. <3 Also I know I said this before, but if you ever feel like talking about your bullet journal, I am all eyes and ears!

[dolorosa_12]

<3

Amusingly, one of the things on the list I made in my bullet journal of things I want to achieve this month is 'write post on bullet journalling for montfelisky,' so it's definitely going to happen!

Posts that involve uploading images always take me ages to get around to, just because it's so fiddly.

[torachan]

If you don't mind, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Little Free Libraries. I don't see them as being in competition with actual libraries at all, but as a completely different thing.

[dolorosa_12]

They are a completely different thing to actual libraries, but that's the entire problem: they are not libraries, but they are called libraries, and that contributes to a perception in the mind of the public that 'library'=collections of books, rather than 'library'=paid professionals with qualifications and/or professional experience.

If little free libraries were called 'little free book exchanges' every problem I have with them would evaporate!

In the UK where I live and work as a librarian, the result of a decade of austerity has led to the closure of many public libraries, the lack of funds for libraries which do remain open, and subsequent job losses for paid public librarians/library assistants. Frequently, all library staff will be fired and, after public outcry about the loss of the library service, paid professionals will be replaced by volunteers (frequently older retired people who lack IT skills or customer service experience). This is then portrayed as the 'library service being saved' in the press, and in the mind of the public — whereas what has happened is that the library building remains open, and the existing stock of books remains in circulation, but the community has lost the expertise and information literacy (i.e. the ability to locate information on all sorts of subjects and ensure it is relevant and reliable and in a format that the library patron can understand and utilise) of the library.

This is, perhaps, why I'm unduly critical of little free libraries — in my opinion, their existence leads to an erosion of what a library means and provides, and contributes to an environment in which librarians' skills are devalued and their jobs are lost. If they were named something else, I wouldn't feel this way.

[torachan]

That makes sense!

I'm not sure if there have been library closures like that in the US, but definitely not in my area (in fact, they just built a new library in my neighborhood a few years ago, in a city which already has four other library branches), so that's not an angle that I had ever considered.

[dolorosa_12]

That's fantastic to hear about the new library. The key thing is not just that library buildings and collections of books continue to exist, but that these are staffed by paid library professionals. I try to emphasise that libraries=librarians and library assistants, not libraries=collections of books.

[monanotlisa]

Love the flower blossoms. <3

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you! I'm glad you like them — it's great to have so many beautiful flowering trees in my neighbourhood.