- Ukraine's Radio ROKS: Heavy metal (and hackers) for brothers in arms - Click Here is one of the podcasts I listen to and one of their recent episodes was on the role a particular rock radio station is taking in the war. It pivoted from being solely a music station to helping out with the war effort. They became a source of information, worked with fundraising for soldiers and civilians, let people know what kinds of skills the military was looking for. And they take calls from soldiers in the field, who dedicate songs to their loved ones. Music is powerful - it can be a political statement, it can bring people together. This is an excellent piece and if you don't have the time to listen, there is a transcript available. Slava Ukraini!
- The Rise of the Dinosaurs, Written in Poop - The Abstract is a section of 404 media that has small, bite-size cool articles. This week's description is, "This week, we explore the digestive products of dinosaurs, the sartorial skills of prehistoric peoples, the superpowers of a supreme squirter, and the effects of “repeated social defeat” in fish." The dino poop lead story was pretty interesting! TIL - I knew about coprolites but I didn't know they were part of a bigger family, bromalites.
- You can now download over 33,000 sound effects from the BBC archive - Do you need a sound clip? You can probably find it here. From the article, "Indexed into categories, the sounds span everything from footsteps and transport to nature and machines. Among the plethora of sounds covered are reindeer grunts, rain, clocks, horses walking in mud, common frog calls and crowds at the 1989 FA Cup Final. And that barely scratches the surface."
Normally I'd be fretting about the work week starting tomorrow but I took Monday and Tuesday off. I also took last Wednesday off and had Thursday off for the holiday. I both feel like I haven't been into work in forever but also like when I do go back it will be too soon!
One thing I've been working on in my time off is sorting through family papers and photos that I inherited from my mom. These have been sitting in boxes in the closet for 20 years. I've half-assedly tackled them a few times in the past but it's just so overwhelming. There is so much and I don't know who half the people in the letters or the photos are. I don't know what I should keep or throw away. Or where I should put everything once I get stuff sorted.
That's the current state of my dining room table. One of those papers is a note that my granny left my grandpa, telling him that there was dinner on the stove. Like, why did my mom save that?? And what should I do with it? Do I need that? No. Will it add to the family history? No. But it's my granny's handwriting and a very mundane connection to the past. Gah! I have very few spoons and little executive functioning at the best of times and this is just killing it all off. But I also don't want this mess to be my son's inheritance because he'd be even more lost than I am.
Some of these letters are from my aunt, my mom's older sister who died a few years ago. I am vaguely in touch with my cousin's husband and I reached out to him tonight asking for their address (they recently-ish moved) so I can pass these letters onto my cousin. So that will take care of some of that pile.
My mom kind of broke off from the rest of the family when we moved out here to Arizona. I was only 12, I didn't know or understand everything that was going on. But I do know there were reasons not to keep in touch with some of the family but I also think other family members ended up being collateral damage. My uncle, her younger brother, was also basically cut off and he was very hurt by that. We e-mailed sporadically over the years but it had been 4 years since I last heard from him. I've thought about him and wondered if he was even still alive but I never actually did anything beyond wondering. Going through these family papers and photos got me to feeling a kind of way. Nostalgic and kind of sad about how things turned out. I got a quick response from my cousin's husband so I dug out the last known email address I had for my uncle and wrote a quick message, asking if this was still a good address. And he wrote back to me within the hour! Said I'd been on his mind the past 2 weeks.
So in the midst of feeling frustrated with the papers and photos, I'm also kind of jazzed about hearing back from him.
Reading
I still haven't picked up a "real" book. Still making my way through my back issues of Clarkesworld. There are some really good stories in those magazines! I'm so glad I subscribed to it! I am getting kind of itchy to start something else, though. T. Kingfisher had a couple of new books out this year, one of which I'd really like to read - A Sorceress Comes to Call, which is a reimagining of the fairy tale, The Goose Girl. But I'll try to at least get current with the magazines. Oh, and I still have Terrible Lizards but I kind of have to be in the mood for dinosaur horror gore so I haven't been reading it as much as the magazines.
Watching
I finished watching Scavenger's Reign on Max this past week. That was so good! I loved the planet and all the uses the people found for the native critters. Intrigued by what happened with the robot. Kind of ultimately mystified by the whole thing with Kamen and the Hollow. Lovely animation. I said last week it reminded me of Wizards but it also reminded me of a Romainian animated film I saw last year, Delta Space Mission. That was trippy and if you'd like to watch it, it's available (with subtitles) on the Internet Archive here. Anyway, Scavenger's Reign was really great and I'm very sad (although not surprised) that it was cancelled. They clearly left the door open for follow up!
Til next week!