Weekend fragments

[dolorosa_12]

It seems ridiculous to say that the highlight of the weekend was getting a new kettle and toaster delivered (but we got them for 'free' on the basis of credits earned by Matthias through using direct debits for certain payments; also I am enough of a millennial to appreciate that they have rose gold trim), walking to and from Grantchester as the sun rose, and eating crêpes for breakfast, but such is lockdown life.

*

Matthias and I finished the final season of Black Sails on Thursday, and I'd been planning to write a longer review of it over at dolorosa12, but in the end I lacked the mental energy. I will probably get around to it next week, but suffice it to say that my review, in summary, is oh, my heart. I love these ridiculous people, and how fiercely they fight for survival, and for each other, and how they come to realise that these things are worth fighting for. I knew from the start that Max would be my favourite character, and I rejoice at the ending she got.

*

Yesterday was sunny and warm, and I spent the morning repotting my radish seedlings from tiny pots in the kitchen windowsill into large planters outside, and planted some rocket seeds as well. I'm hoping May is now warm enough for them to thrive. My tomato, chili and bean seedlings remain indoors for now, but in general the garden is bursting into riotous life: the unkillable mint and chives have resurrected themselves after dying back in winter, and the unkempt rosemary and thyme plants have new shoots. I miss getting hand-delivered squash, onions, and beetroot from notasapleasure and her husband's allotment, but I'm doing the best I can at home.

Today was colder — it kept threatening to rain, and other than the early morning walk along the river, and dashing out quickly to post some recipe letters (anyone who requested a letter in the most recent post as of 5pm on Sunday should have a letter winging its way towards you as I type), I stayed indoors. I attempted to dry bed linen outdoors (I just love how it smells!) but this had to be rescued from the rain after several hours, frustratingly.

*

My morning was occupied with a long restorative yoga session, finishing off Tessa Gratton's rural folk horror gothic novel Strange Grace (you were right, of course, merit, I adored it), and watching an epic hour-long Youtube video about the Msscribe saga. I was not in fandom (indeed I was barely online) when all this went down, but I can remember avidly reading (and rereading) the Fandom Wank posts about it (and the equivalent post about Cassandra Cla(i)re's plagiarism), and boggling at the sheer level of energy all the various participants would have had to have invested not in fannish activities, but in all the feuds, deceptions and drama. And these weren't teenagers — that's what always shocks me — they were adults, many of whom with responsible jobs, children and presumably some degree of life experience. It never ceases to amaze me, and is kind of entertaining to revisit (in the sense of watching a trainwreck) with the distance of time, in a way that rubbernecking on current fandom feuds and drama is not.

Regarding Strange Grace, if you like folk horror, sentient forests with ancient mysterious forest gods, idyllic rural villages whose inhabitants have made terrible bargains with said forest gods, and plucky teenage heroes whose problems would be solved by both polyamory and heading into the dark heart of the forest to commune with the mythical creatures within, you will like this story. I still prefer Gratton's King Lear retelling, The Queens of Innis Lear, but Strange Grace is also great.

*

I always feel around this time on Sunday afternoons that the weekend has somewhat run away from me, but given I have much more control of my time while I'm working from home, I feel less stressed about potentially wasting available free time and not 'using my weekend properly'. Normally by this point on Sunday afternoons I'm already switching gear into work mode, but today I'll be cooking something slow, and warm, and nourishing, drinking a bit of red wine, and curling up with Matthias to make a start on the next batch of backlogged Netflix shows, without feeling any of the tense anxiety that I normally begin experiencing as the evening shifts closer to Monday.

And then the week will start again.

Comments

[lirazel]

The one time I was in Cambridge back in February, I walked to Grantchester and it was lovely. I can only imagine how beautiful it is now in spring!

my review, in summary, is oh, my heart. I love these ridiculous people, and how fiercely they fight for survival, and for each other, and how they come to realise that these things are worth fighting for.

Amen!

[dolorosa_12]

It's a gorgeous walk. I like it even in winter — there's a kind of crisp starkness to the landscape. My husband and I live just on the edge of Cambridge before it bleeds into Grantchester Meadows, and during the lockdown we've been either walking or running there pretty much every day. We're really fortunate to live in such a pretty part of the world.

In Cambridge during the spring and summer months local farmers are permitted to let their cows loose to graze on the commons — various bits of parkland in and around the city — including in Grantchester Meadows, and it's wonderful to be dodging between herds of cows when you're on your morning run.

Black Sails is so, so good. I'm kicking myself for not getting into it when there was a more active fandom!

[lirazel]

I was only there for four days, but I really liked Cambridge. It really was lovely! It's so nice that you're in a position where you get to soak in nature during these hard times. I'm finishing up my MLIS in Aberystwyth right now and very grateful for the beauty of the area I'm in.

My Airbnb host had told me about the cows and I was sad that I didn't get to see them while I was there. Here we mostly just have sheep--I enjoy seeing them on my walks!

I'm kicking myself for not getting into it when there was a more active fandom!

I don't know if you're on tumblr, but it's still fairly active there. Not as much as when it was airing, of course, but there's still a lot of people with a lot of feelings!

[dolorosa_12]

My husband and I are both librarians, and he did the same course as you at Aberystwyth (as did a lot of people I know), although he stopped before the dissertation and therefore just has the Postgraduate Diploma rather than the full master's degree. (For various complicated reasons that I'm happy to explain, both of us have good library jobs but do not have proper library/information studies degrees.)

I've never been to Aber myself, but a lot of people I know studied there (prior to becoming a librarian I did an MPhil and PhD in medieval Irish literature, and a lot of people I met during those years were pursuing PhDs in medieval Welsh language or literature and had done their undergrad degrees at Aber) and it seems a really beautiful place, especially the seafront.

I used to be on Tumblr, but I left around the end of 2018 with a great sigh of relief. I wish I could like it, but I just can't do fandom (or the internet in general) on Tumblr or Twitter (though I'm still grimly hanging on on Twitter). I'm glad to hear the fandom is still rumbling on, though.

[lirazel]

There are so many librarians in fandom! I never noticed it before I started working in libraries about six years ago, but now I feel like I meet more and more all the time! If this is more personal than you feel like answering, that's fine, but do you work in one of the college libraries? My background is in public libraries, but I'm emotionally exhausted by it so I'm looking to make a shift and I'm really considering academic libraries. (My preferences of course may be completely irrelevant; I wouldn't be surprised if, after I finish my degree in September, I'm just happy to get any kind of job at all.)

prior to becoming a librarian I did an MPhil and PhD in medieval Irish literature

Oh cool!

Tumblr is a legitimate mess, but I keep hanging on. It's Twitter I couldn't deal with. I can't imagine how people do both.

[dolorosa_12]

Fandom is full of librarians (or librarianship attracts those who are in fandom) — I know so many people in fandom who also work in libraries or are studying to become librarians!

So, my story of how I got into librarianship:

I moved to the UK to do the aforementioned MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge after doing undergrad in Australia and a half-hearted attempt at becoming a newspaper journalist. I was initially intending to go into academia and be a Celtic Studies/medieval literature academic. In the second year of my PhD I got a weekend job in my faculty library (in Cambridge pretty much every faculty has its own library, as does every college, plus there is the massive university library which is one of five legal deposit libraries in the UK and Ireland). That faculty library normally employs PhD students to work as invigilators — the job is fairly basic (shelving, processing books, doing a bit of scanning and photocopying, and working on the enquiry desk).

By the end of my PhD, I realised I enjoyed working in libraries a lot more than academia, so I started looking for library jobs. I didn't want to do another degree (as an international student, apart from anything else I couldn't afford to pay for it and it would have caused a lot of visa issues) and I really needed to start earning money as I was about to lose the income from my PhD scholarship when I graduated. Thankfully, my manager at the faculty library really liked me and was a good advocate for me within the Cambridge library network. She arranged for me to get a temporary part-time job as a junior library assistant in another faculty library while I was doing my PhD corrections, and later another temporary invigilator job in a third library. By the time I graduated I was working in a cobbled together patchwork of three libraries in entry level jobs. I just kept applying for better jobs until I got the one I have now.

This is a teaching/research support job in yet another faculty library. I got it on the strength of having a lot of teaching experience in a university context (during my PhD I had taught medieval Irish language/literature to undergrads), rather than having a library qualification, which was not a requirement. The job is about 60 per cent teaching/research support, 30 per cent enquiry desk, and 10 per cent managing the library's social media and website. The official title is Assistant Librarian, although I was originally just a library assistant (I got regraded/promoted last year after making the case that the work I was doing deserved a different job title and higher pay). I still don't have a library degree and have no intention of getting one, although I now have a teaching in higher education qualification, which I got last year through a programme at the University of Cambridge for its teaching staff.

My husband's background is similar to mine: he moved to Cambridge from Germany nearly 20 years ago and did his undergrad, MPhil and PhD in the same department where I studied. He, too, had been intending to be an academic. We met when I was an MPhil student and he was doing his PhD. By the time he'd graduated from his PhD (I was still studying mine), he was drifting around fruitlessly in the kind of temporary, precarious adjunct work that a lot of recent grads get stuck in, and also working part-time as a school librarian. The faculty library where I worked needed more invigilators, and he ended up working there with me too, and then drifted into the same cobbled-together part-time work in four different faculty libraries in entry-level jobs. On the suggestion of one of his managers, he started doing the Aberystwyth degree in the hopes of it helping him get a good higher level library job. He did this part-time and by distance.

His first 'good' job was in the university's Office of Scholarly Communication (dealing with open research, the university's open access repository, research support etc), and he got it before he'd finished the Aber degree, on the basis of having research experience rather than library experience. This was a temporary job, so as soon as he was able he applied for a permanent position in one of the faculty libraries — his role there is a split between research support (he's somehow ended up being the university's expert on open access monographs) and collection management for that library.

Once he got that job, all his desire to do the Aber degree fell away — because he had got the kind of job that everyone had said you needed a library degree to be able to get, without having the degree. (He also was very unimpressed with the curriculum.) So he finished the coursework to get the diploma, but dropped it after that and graduated without the dissertation. There's a lot of tension in UK academic librarianship about whether librarinship MAs are necessary or whether having PhDs and teaching experience in unrelated fields is better, and the two of us appear to have landed on the right side of that argument in terms of our career paths.

We were both supremely lucky in this regard, and I don't think we'd have fallen on our feet so easily if we hadn't been trying to get jobs in Cambridge where we were already well known in the library community, and where there happened to be a move away from valuing the librarianship degree in favour of valuing research experience at just the time we were looking for good jobs. I've never worked in libraries anywhere else, so I don't know how anomolous Cambridge is in this regard. (I was also lucky in terms of visa status because I was able to apply for a spouse visa through EU law on the basis of being in a relationship with a German citizen; no library will ever sponsor people for Tier 2 visas unless you're applying for, like, upper management level jobs unfortunately.)

Sorry, that ended up being very, very long!

Tumblr is a legitimate mess, but I keep hanging on. It's Twitter I couldn't deal with. I can't imagine how people do both.

I have friends on Dreamwidth who now seem to be doing the bulk of fannish activity through Twitter and I just couldn't. Not enough words, and not enough permanence!

[lirazel]

Thank you for taking the time to share your career journey with me! I'm always very interested in how people end up where they are in the library world. One trope I've noticed is that most of us end up stumbling into library work by getting a part-time job and sloooowly working our way up.

I started out in the most entry level of part-time public library jobs, shelving and running errands. After about a year and a half, when someone retired, I slid into a part-time clerical assistant job, and after about a year and a half of that, got a full-time job as a library assistant in a small town library near my hometown. I was there for three years and pretty quickly figured out that public librarianship is too emotionally draining for me and that I couldn't spend the rest of my life trying to help people who have literally never used a computer before figure out how to apply for welfare benefits and such. I'm glad I put in that work--I learned so much about public librarianship as social work and came to appreciate public libraries even more than I already did--but I knew if I ever wanted to shift into academic/research/cultural heritage librarianship I needed to get my master's. It's both cheaper and a whole year shorter to do it in the UK, which is how I wound up here. At this point I have no idea what's going to happen when I graduate though! I guess I'll just take whatever I can get.

no library will ever sponsor people for Tier 2 visas unless you're applying for, like, upper management level jobs unfortunately

Well, that kind of broke my heart! I had been hoping to maybe be able to get a job here for at least a few years before going back to the US, though I know that since the corona recession is upon us that that was a slim chance. I am pretty sure at this point I'll be going back to the US, but at least since I'm single and childless, I can go pretty much anywhere in the country that will offer me a decent job.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you for sharing your journey as well! I agree with you about sort of stumbling into librarianship as a career — almost everyone I know fits that pattern.

Public librarianship sounds emotionally harrowing for exactly the reasons you've explained, particularly as librarians are expected to take on more and more responsibilities that would previously have been fulfilled by social workers, council workers, or staff in welfare/unemployment centres. It's vital, important work, but it must be exhausting. In the UK a number of public libraries are now responsible for processing visa applications, which has been a debacle and extremely distressing to all involved.

In terms of the visas, it might be different now! I was applying for these kinds of jobs in 2014. All I know is that I was applying for job after job and saying I would need sponsorship (both in Cambridge and outside it), and never got called to interview, whereas as soon as I had a spouse visa (and thus didn't need sponsorship because the spouse visa gave me the right to work already) I got interviews, even though I had no new qualifications or experience. The only non-EU migrants I know who work in libraries in the UK either have dual British nationality, or have a spouse visa.

It is awful and the UK visa situation is a nightmare and is deliberately designed to force people who have built their lives here as students to leave the country unless they are going to work for the NHS, or in prestigious and well-paying fields such as law, finance, academia or IT. I really hope you will be able to stay here (and I can certainly offer advice about jobs that come up in Cambridge), but I mention the situation with Tier 2 visas so that if you are met with a wall of silence, you know it's not your own failings, but rather the cruelty of the system which is preventing you from being shortlisted for those jobs.

It is always shocking to me that it is cheaper for US citizens to get degrees in the UK and pay international student rates than to do the same degrees in the US. My undergrad degree in Australia (admittedly this was some years ago) cost less than 10 per cent of what I paid in international student fees per year in the UK. It's a disgrace how much people in the US have to pay for their education.

In any case, I hope the remainder of your degree goes well, and that you find yourself in a good and personally fulfilling library job in a place you're happy to call home.

[lirazel]

particularly as librarians are expected to take on more and more responsibilities that would previously have been fulfilled by social workers, council workers, or staff in welfare/unemployment centres. It's vital, important work, but it must be exhausting.

Exactly this.

You're almost certainly still right about getting sponsorship from an employer. The international officer told me it was difficult but not impossible, but she also admitted that she didn't know much about my particular field. You'd know better about that! I'm still going to apply for things (if things are available), but I'm not getting my hopes up.

My own country is just as bad if not worse (probably worse) about immigration, so I'm not totally surprised by how bad it is in the UK (even getting my study visa was more complicated than it needed to be). I do appreciate the perspective and I will keep it in mind.

My undergrad degree in Australia (admittedly this was some years ago) cost less than 10 per cent of what I paid in international student fees per year in the UK.

That's incredible! If had stayed at home, done the course online and gotten in-state tuition and stayed in my own house, it would have taken me at least two years to do it (longer if I was working full time) and probably would cost about what I've spent coming here, having places to live, having the foreign experience and it was all in one year. So it was definitely the right choice for me and I'm so glad I did it. Thank you for your good wishes!

[schneefink]

Black Sails is great! When I first watched it I wasn't entirely happy with the ending, but later I liked it better.
Though oddly it's one of those shows where even though I liked it a lot, I have very little desire to rewatch it. Maybe later.

I also enjoyed that video about the msscribe saga (even though I was familiar with it before). about an hour after watching it on ff_a people talked about someone creating a Tumblr blacklist of people who write smut and noncon in TMA fandom and I had to facepalm and resist suspecting everyone on the list of being a sockpuppet immediately.

[dolorosa_12]

Black Sails really is excellent. I liked most things about the ending (there's one small thing I think they should have changed slightly, but other than that it's fine). I mean, obviously it would have been more satisfying if they had completely overthrown British rule, but the show gave us the best possible compromise that still fit vaguely with the historical reality.

I knew about the msscribe saga before, but it was nice to see it laid out clearly in video format, especially since the old write up is a bit inaccessible these days.

The difference between the situation with TMA fandom and the blacklist, and what msscribe was doing is that in the former fandom climate, the majority of fans reacted to such blacklists with horror and gleefully went about continuing to do whatever had put them on the blacklist to begin with, whereas now there is a receptive environment for the creation of such blacklists and a sizeable number of fans who applaud their creation.

Msscribe was able to garner sympathy and BNF status because fandom at large was so horrified that she was, apparently, being attacked by prudish creators of blacklists, whereas in certain segments of fandom these days the sympathy would be with the person who made the blacklist. It's pretty awful.

[lirazel]

Yes, it's absolutely fascinating to consider how the Msscribe Saga would go down these days. I'm constantly being reminded of all the ways that fandom has changed.

[corvidology]

Thanks for the link to the vid. I'm definitely going to watch that when I get a chance as I've always been curious about it!

[dolorosa_12]

It's such a convoluted and weird saga. To be honest I think it's a little easier to follow in the old written up format, but I'd be interested to hear what you make of it in video format having no familiarity with it previously.

[merit]

I'm happy you enjoyed Strange Grace! Folk horror is a good term for it. I tend to stick to certain horror subgenres.

I think embracing 'small pleasures' is a part of the times. I planted some radish seeds the weekend before and it has been a delight watching them germinate and start to grow.

[dolorosa_12]

I can't do really scary or harrowing horror — Strange Grace is about the level I can manage. I really loved it.

Radishes are such a great thing to grow at the moment — low maintenance, and they grow relatively quickly.

[st_aurafina]

Black Sails did have a great finish. I was very satisfied!

[dolorosa_12]

It's such a satisfying ending, and I was so happy with where my favourite characters of the bunch (Max, Jack, and Anne) ended up.