This came up on shuffle this morning. It really highlights how far we have fallen since one of our political parties has embraced the racist elements in its midst. – America by Neil Diamond 🎵

Finished reading: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 📚 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Took far too many years to get around to reading this one, but it was worth it.

Finished reading: The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce 📚 Reread this for the first time in many years. It was the first proper fantasy novel I remember reading. I loved revisiting it.

🔖 if only this would make a difference here in the US. We can hope. – The Spectacular Collapse of Putin’s Disinformation Machinery

I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but I love SturDrinks’s all-natural flavorings for water or soda. We use them with our SodaStream mostly, but also with straight water too. This referral link will give you $10 off your first order. 🥤

Finished reading: These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann 📚

What an incredible book about my all-time favorite poet.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I enjoyed doing this short interview with Lucy Turns Pages. I hope you’ll check it out. 📚✍🏼

By way of a series of coincidences, I am rediscovering my love of Emily Dickinson’s work after many years. It’s rather like being reacquainted with old, missed, and much-loved friends. 📚

🔖 DRAFT2DIGITAL TO ACQUIRE SMASHWORDS - Draft2Digital | Blog ✍️😲📚

I’m in the midst of rereading The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce. It’s the first proper fantasy novel I remember falling in love with–right around age 8. (I always read far above my grade level.) Although I read this book countless times growing up, it’s been many years since the last time I picked it up; it’s out of print, so you really have to hunt to find a copy. Nowadays, The Darkangel would probably be considered Young Adult, and it is written somewhat like a fairy tale with both sci-fi and fantasy elements.

There are two things that have struck me most in reading it again now. The first is surprise that I read this book at such a young age. It is by no means extraordinarily sophisticated, but even for the way I devoured books as a kid, I’m amazed I latched onto it as much as I did. Some of the themes, and most certainly some of the vocabulary, had to have gone way over my head.

But the second (and more interesting) thing that has struck me is just how influential this book turned out to be in retrospect. In it, I see elements of the types of novels I grew to love as I got older, as well as themes and story elements that have informed my own stories. I did not remember the book that way; I’m only seeing it now when something like a quarter of a century has passed since the last time I read it. There are allusions to old mythology and folklore; there are elements of sci-fi in a predominantly fantasy setting; there is a young heroine who takes matters into her own hands and tries to help those worse off than herself. Is it any wonder that I love Divergent or The Hunger Games? There are vampires who are more human than monster; there are terrifying creatures of night who feel and suffer as we all do; is it any wonder I love Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles or anything by Stephen King?

This whole affair has made me want to dig out other books from my youth and see what other stories informed the reader and writer I’ve become–apart from the most obvious ones, of course. I’d been wanting to reread The Darkangel for a long, long time, but I never expected the journey to be this fascinating.

It is sad and ludicrous in this digital age how many albums, books, TV shows, and movies are just not available legally in any way. It’s infuriating. 🎵📚📺🎥

Those who are trying so hard to drag us back into the past are also the ones who are awfully desperate to keep us from learning what things were like back then. 🤔

I Think I’m a Clone Now is an underrated Weird Al parody. Discuss. 😂🎵

I just discovered, hidden away deep in Settings, that you can assign keyboard commands for Shortcuts on iPadOS, and now nothing will ever be the same. I’m not sure how i missed this. 🎉

It’d been a while, so I just updated my Toolbox page with the tools I’m using these days for various things. I’m testing a couple of new things at present that may be added soon. I hope you’ll find these useful.

🔖 If only more companies put in half this much effort. 💜 Rogue Amoeba » Making Digital Confetti Accessible

🔖 This is a great piece. – Alabama’s capitol is a crime scene. The cover-up has lasted 120 years.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"–Isaac Asimov

Making your own crunchy taco shells in an air fryer is my new favorite thing. 🌮😋