January is coming to an end already. And then it’s time for the worst month of the year! At least for New England. There’s just something about the winter in February that just…sucks.
In continuing with my theme of giving things I can look forward to each month, February will be finishing my tattoo! I’ll be getting the color and shading done and I’m so stoked to see what the artist has planned.
Then in March (fingers crossed), I’m going to Germany to visit my brother. I haven’t seen him in three-ish years. If any of the European Bitchery has suggestions, I’ll be there for two weeks and will have plenty of time to bop around to other places.
Enough about me, let’s get into it!
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I love listening to stuff when I go to sleep. Normally, it’s Twitch streams, but I do love a sleep-focused podcast. (Shoutout to Sleep with Me). I recently discovered this one: Sleepy Bookshelf, which has a lovely narrator read classics to you as you fall asleep. They’re on Anne of Green Gables now.
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Look at this adorable interaction between author Kate DiCamillo and a young reader:
Oh my heart indeed! pic.twitter.com/RbgGPSyTlm
— Joy McCullough (@JMCwrites) January 18, 2022
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Sarah: I subscribed to and supported the 28 Days of Black History email series last year and it was powerfully good. Each email features a different artifact with an explanation of the history attached to it. It’s like having a museum exhibit delivered daily to my inbox. I looked forward to reading each one in the evening. I loved it and I’m so excited it’s back for 2022.
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I love discovering new artists on social media and I was immediately taken with these bird-themed plague doctors. Someone make a tabletop game campaign or something because there is some major world building going on here.
plague doctor types 1/2 pic.twitter.com/0hJ8KJGTKD
— Filibusterfrog (@filibusterfrog) January 20, 2022
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This video may be of interest to some of you and yes, I did immediately think of DiscoDollyDeb and her dark romance recommendations!
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Choir! Choir! Choir! sings Meat Loaf. This made me smile more than it made me feel sad, even with the circumstances of why they decided to share it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ppKDr9F_uI
I always love Matt Baume’s Movie/TV/Cultural Queer History Deep dives, but this one on Golden Girls actually made me sob (in a mostly good way) Why do gay men love the Golden Girls?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRL_e94jj18
I think a lot of people in the tail end of Gen X/start of Millennial Generation, Golden Girls brings back a lot of happy memories of watching it with my grandma (who is still with us and a pretty hip chill lady) and I think that coupled with the way that the video talks about how AIDs was handled (or not handled) back then brought back a lot feelings.
Oh my gosh! That video! First I shared it with my husband, then I went straight to instagram to follow this person. Priceless!
I loved the interaction with Kate DiCamillo and the boy,too! So sweet.
The Plague Doctors are so clever and would be a great addition to a tabletop RPG game. I do think I would have made the vulture the “body disposal” one and the Magpie the “spin doctor” given the real life personality of the birds. 🙂
@Amanda: Where in Germany are you going? Recommendations on what to see depend a bit on where you are and where you can get to easily from there.
In regard to the boy and his fear for the mouse, I was talking about a movie I’d watched and, talking to a friend who loves dogs, was able to tell her that towards the end it looks like a dog is in danger but it doesn’t die.
Another good Bedtime podcast is Boring Books for Bedtime. A couple of the latest are Manual of Egyptian Archeology and Farm Engines and How to Run Them. She also sometimes reads the Sears Catalog.
Loved the dark romance video—thanks for the shout-out! Of course she wasn’t going to end up with the loan shark with a neck tattoo: he slammed her head on the table! Even in dark romance, that might be a bridge too far.
Stumbled upon this piece about tsundoku, which is the accumulation of unread books. I’ve always loved etymology and this was a fun (and validating!) read.
https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/tsundoku.htm
@JillQ- thanks so much for link on The Golden Girls and their impact as LGBTQ allies (before anyone really talked about allyship). I cried watching that too.
I agree with you that GG has a special place in the hearts of a lot of us in our late 30’s/early 40’s because we were just old enough to watch it in syndication during the early 90s. At least for me those were really formative years for how I would engage with the world as I grew up, and the frankness about life love and sex, plus the incredibly open loving friendships the ladies showed was so powerful! I don’t think I realized how feminist they were in their way, and how the rest of tv took so long to catch up.
@Barbara: I’ll be there for 2 weeks and my brother lives outside of Frankfurt. I think we plan to go to Berlin, but my schedule is rather open.
I tried using the Kate DiCamillo and the young reader story to get my husband to understand my preference for the romance genre above all others. I introduced the tweet by saying that this youngster was a future Romance reader. I said that like the little fellow, I absolutely need to know my heart can relax as a story unfolds. Sad to say that no comprehension was achieved. Still, it made perfect sense to me.
I have stumbled upon a few channels on YouTube that lull me right to sleep instead of sleepy podcasts that I used for a while. Food Kingdom and Yummy Yammy channels show the making of various foods in Korea. Sometimes it’s a whole factory of machines and sometimes it’s a restaurant. Just the sounds of the people or machines doing work like cracking eggs or a mixer making dough. The other category is people cleaning rugs. Same as the other videos just the sounds of the person working and all the scrubbing along with low volume relaxing music. The channel I found first in this category is Lubuski Centrum (from Poland I think). All of this feels weird to type out but maybe it will help others who need some sleep assistance.
I live in the very far north, so I love February! I live in Anchorage, so you start to see light over the mountains in the morning when you go to work. Then Fur Rondy hits, and the Iditarod is next-before you know it you are in April! January is always the toughest month for me, still very dark and cold. Post holiday blues…
Last comment, I put too many e’s in my name!
@Amanda: Berlin is great! Try to take detour to Potsdam and particularly Sanssouci Palace. Around Frankfurt, there is the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz if you’re interested in the history of book printing. Also Heidelberg is not far, a very old and rather pretty university town. Similarly Würzburg.
Don’t forget your proof of vaccinations, else it might be difficult to get into places.
Oh. We have just started with Kate DiCamillo in our household. The adventures of Louise the kitchen held both the parent and the child completely enthralled! I can see that we are going to be her readers for a VERY long time! Love that you guys shared that interaction!
Germany is awesome! I hope you have fun. I think I liked Berlin the best. We did a walking tour, which was a lovely introduction to the city. The Jewish Museum is excellent.
I love the video. I have nothing but debt these days (grad school) so where is my sexy CEO?
I adore Kate DeCamillo books. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane makes me sob every time.
The Pergamon Museum in Berlin is my all time favorite museum (though, as with many museums in Europe, they have a lot of items that should be repatriated, mostly to Turkey.) The Pergamon altar and the Gate of Ishtar are amazing.