Category: culture

DCC open mic night

Posted on by Liz Henry

First of all I am vastly sad that Alice has died. Hilarious, witty, insightful, compassionate, she was amazing to talk with. I admired her more than I know how to express for her writing and work making spaces for us all to be heard, and I will miss her and am aching for our community and all the people who were her nearest and dearest ones. My heart feels like it is just flying through space somehow in a spaceship alone as I think about her and about death and mortality.

It sounds like while Alice was living her last, the DCC open mic night that she funded from the Disability Visibility Project was happening. I wish she had not died and that she had been there. I wondered why she wasn’t there but didn’t want to bother her and didn’t know she was critically ill at that moment.

Well, I am going to just do my post and write up my notes from the wonderful community event that was a strong manifestation and celebration of disability culture. It was very clear that sparks were flying around the room and through our screens as people were excited and artistically charged up by everything we were hearing! I think that writing about others’ work from last night is a good way for me to honor Alice.

Our open mic was hosted by local luminary King Lotus Boy. There were about 40 people attending online and 20 or so in person in the space. All three of our founding leaders of the DCC, Emily, Mika, and Dagny, were there to make things go smoothly and they were fabulous hosts as always! A note, when I am not sure if people have a public presence online as a writer or artist, I will just put their first name and not link. (But if it’s you, and you want me to name you and link, let me know.)

an instagram post flyer for the hybrid open mic with a photo of king lotus boy in full drag looking magnificent

First up was Max L. who read a delicately structured piece called “Shine”, a sort of battle of images of light shining out through holes and (abusive) people trying to plug up those holes, about ARFID and neurodivergence, the food forced on them trying to plug the light burning through their mouth. The complex web of these images worked so perfectly as they kept building and circling to convey the complex experiences of being beleagured and suffering, while being so powerful and fierce inside, and coming to be able to live & shine in that power. I am not sure how this poem looks on the page but I was thinking of it as a prose poem – a difficult form to sustain and Max pulled it off.

Leche read a beautiful poem of houses falling apart, houses with no safety net, of longing for complex webs of care and love, passion and comfort, basically, a queer artist polycule. I wish my notes were better on this one, but I was vibing. Hell yeah!

Fern was on the signup, but didn’t make it. I hope to hear from Fern next time!

Avra showed up for us reading two poems that kind of snuck up on me as they started off feeling a bit prosaic, built up momentum steadily, and then hulked up to pack a punch. The first one started off with cornfields and maybe moving cities and I got the impression of a family and then it kind of became about being refugees and it was carefully not delineating exactly what from, but I certainly thought of the trans migrations I am watching my friends go through now. “We need to believe there’s less evil here.” That was a great line that made my nostrils flare.

Avra’s second poem called Walk This Way hit me the same way as it was a description of her walking with her granddaughter and noting her toe-walking and then going back to her own grandmother who I think raised her, and criticized her, then talking about her own experiences of ambulation class (at which I had to give a little beatnik snap of recognition… how many times I have had to do gait training PT over the years!) This wound up to the start of that amazing punch I mentioned — The poem talked about the criticisms she (the narrator of the poem) faced of her own disabled gait as a child. (“These days, grandmas know to keep that shit to themselves”) And we returned to the talking books she listened to at her grandmother’s knee and how those talking books made her a poet. It worked as a story, it worked as musing across generations, and it got across that disability culture exists — that we “do” cultural transmission across generations, that it’s a living thing that we can decide to change, like Avra (or the narrator of the poem if it isn’t plainly autobiographical) decides not to be a bitch to her granddaughter. These were poems that were often plain talking — as you can see in the lines i noted and quote here — in a way that worked well as poetry, and that stick in my mind.

Masha Aleskovski then got up to the mic. She talked a bit about TBI and hemiplegia and then sang two poems – her own songs and her composition. Her ethereal voice echoing through the cultural center and the atrium, about moonlight, trees, spirit – just incredible. I need to go into all caps because THERE WAS ALSO MEOWING IN ONE SONG. The meowing and howls and inchoate calls to the sky worked so well done with her gorgeous voice. (clear to me, classically trained) Everyone was so blown away listening to this spiritual night fairy taking us to the fucking stars!!!

Alex, from online, then sang us a very sweet folk song with ukelele (or was it a guitar? my memory fails) The song was called “If the world was ending” by Julia Michaels. There was a big round of applause for this touching song!

Nicole B. then read a scene from her novel, Creating Love, which is about a woman who is a wheelchair user and creates an embodied AI, maybe a cyborg, I think to be her lover. In the scene we heard, our narrator was about to take Edmund on a flight, and was coming up to the TSA checkpoint deeply worried that they would catch that Edmund’s ID was faked. This might traumatize Edmund badly! The TSA agents start to question Edmund. The narrator realizes she needs a distraction quickly.

At that point I started to laugh hard because it was clear what was about to happen!! The narrator cripped out fully , acting confused and loud about how she could not stand up for the xray and demanding to know what was going to happen and then I think also started dropping things and spasming. (I can’t remember, because I was giggling so hard.) The TSA agents assume that Edmund is the airport attendant wheeling her to her gate (despite him having a boarding pass!) Edmund then gets offended and says “I’m not her attendant, she’s my girlfriend!” While the narrator has a lot of emotions about this since he never called her that before, and the TSA agents die of guilt for assuming things.

It is very hard to pick a scene from a novel and read a short excerpt to a crowd and have it both make sense, and not be boring as fuck, and I know this because I have been to a shit ton of literary readings. This reading was perfect – clear, entertaining, and enticing. Nicole is one to watch here, because this novel is fire. The room burst into applause and everyone started demanding where can they buy this book. We all felt deeply invested in what happens next and what in the world happened before as well. The novel is finished, but not yet published as Nicole is just starting to talk with agents.

TextaQueen then read us two poems and kindly posted their full text in the chat as well. The first poem, return, describes a cameraderie from behind glass. Maybe a hospital stay, maybe a train trip, maybe a space ship, – maybe just commuting to work in a weird metal box hurtling forward at 60 miles an hour — it is left beautifully ambiguous. Though I saw most clearly, being home, with chronic illness and in protection from illness, the extra isolation that came to us with COVID. The glass of screens and the cameraderie of the chat, the longing and loneliness.

group chat alert vibrates
somewhere under blankets pets pills
phone as hard to find as spoons
our connection untied to consistency
we send each other ease we wish to feel
our choirs meet on screens
wormholes to let us warble
there is no path to light
no A to B to Z

This poem worked well aloud and holds up well on the page as well. I love a densely packed poem that fucks with language and structure! And yes — take us to space, please. The loneliness and isolation that is part of a lot of disabled people’s experience, taking us to a deep human longing for space travel, freedom, and the hope alien contact, crops up a LOT.

Texta’s second poem explored everyday experience (drinking some boba tea, looking at a flower, going to work) but the boba is like, deeply weird as a physical experience and the flower is like, a sort of crawly robot bug and goes on the bus with her to work and crawls inside other people’s brains. Texta is a virtuoso at getting embodiment and emotion and particular vision — a visionary – into the poem.

my clever friend returns to me
sits up on my shoulder
reporting its research
whispers clicks and whistles
slides back inside my shirt

if only i understood its language

Justin Archuleta then read a poem that was structured like a quiz, a multiple choice quiz of him quizzing himself and speculating about in what ways his disfluent speech or stuttering is impairing and how it is or isn’t disabling or being disabled. His exploration was deeply thoughtful, viscerally described, I could almost taste the dry glass and panic, the unpredictability, and appreciated his soul searching. You can read this poem online “Is Your Stuttering a Disability” in Carte Blanche magazine.

Deidre then performed / told an ASL vision-story. She mentioned Adrienne Maree Brown in connection with this story but I didn’t catch how she was involved and I think the story was by Deidre. It describes the year 2050, the smoke and crisis, but then bounces to a 2050 with clear skies, beautiful trees, seeds in the ground, picking a cherry and popping it in her mouth, a child asking her, how did you survive the hottest years on record back in 2025? Graceful and expressive, she painted this future world we could have, so close, almost within our reach, and I felt deep sadness at the state of the world but also hope that we can work and fight for our visions of a better future.

Ayelet sang a song, about the ocean, unmasking, hiding and then “coming out”, the awareness of developing trust, looking deeply into others with understanding and wanting to know more about a person. It was a love song of neurodivergence and queerness!

I’ve lived my whole life
Hiding the signs
Hiding my light
Until my voice takes flight
Then I’m alive
Then I’m alight
But somehow in the silence you and I

I read two poems, one my poem to Mel Chua and all of the community around her in her last year or so, online and in person. I miss Mel very much. She is on my ofrenda with Beth, Eno, Stacey, and so many others. I also read a new poem called Wry Crips (which is a call out to Patti Overland) but isn’t about her, it’s more about that experience when you meet another disabled person’s eyes and share a look or a nod and you feel seen and feel in community.

A bit from my poem to Mel, “To put it in context”

as you move
to a beat
unhooked
from the sun
the lines of juice
& power
trace that
space ship
harness
to your body-pilot
cockpit,

limit
& cradle,
sustained
and fed
the fierce
light in your
hands
that roll out
in manifesto
cadence – as
in the club
a dancer

caught
by other dancers’
arms, flexible
listeners
staunch
as redwoods
check
the screens’
sight lines,

I cannot help but think of Alice reading these lines and I hope she was surrounded by love and had a peaceful exit. As Mel did.

Ash was our last performer with storytelling and comedy, talking about unhinged things they have said. (I actually missed a bunch of this – I had to pee – sorry!)

There were more people on the list but we had to wrap up the event.

Themes running through much of the work I heard last night — lots of embodiment, complexity, longing, love, and compassion — those science fiction themes coming through SO strongly – and centrally, how can we communicate our perspectives and experiences across a distance that can be so alienating. We have stories and novels and fiction to convey inner lives and complex experiences, we have poetry and song to anchor our emotions and thoughts from embodiment to language – And we turn strongly to speculative elements, surreal, fantastic, or science fictiony threads to push out the ways that things do not (have to) make SENSE or the ways we are alienated and alien (or that others are, from us). I think of the ways we experience dehumanization for example in that TSA line or in encountering any institutional setting, and how disconcerting it is, how hard to convey. Putting your cyborg/AI frankenstein lover into the TSA line with you really hammers it home. It means a non disabled reader can catch a glimpse of that experience and ways that we have to cope. Including a dry and bitter humor and sense of the absurd, that I always appreciate seeing in others.

This was a long post but I wanted to honor all the performers and people who showed up last night as I think of Alice and my other friends. Thinking of Alice writng and talking about her own death (https://time.com/6960765/alice-wong-muscular-dystrophy-essay/). I am thinking of Freddie Baer who just died this week and the work we will do to preserve and honor her work as well. I remember going to work on Alice’s very early Wikipedia article in 2016? 2018? and fixing it up with whatever I could find. It is so important for us to document our work and existence. Love you all. Over and out!

Thoughts on disability representation and images

Posted on by Liz Henry

I was thinking this morning about the problems of making images that somehow represent concepts of “disability” in general, activism around disability justice and solidarity, or just wheelchair stuff.

You may recognize the problem. It is a challenge to find cool disability related stuff. If you want 9000 boring variations on the blue disability parking / bathroom symbol, great. But we need to go way beyond that!

In addition to running a nonprofit (Grassroots Open Assistive Tech) and creating logos and cover images for my small press zines, I love stickers and posters and all that stuff. In my backpack and in the side pocket of my powerchair, I carry a little pouch of stickers to give away to people. Some are for my own projects, some are random, some tech related, some fun cartoons or animals for kids. And I like to have cool queer, trans, and disability related stickers to share too!

To that end I regularly go trawling through Etsy doing keyword searches like “wheelchair + punk” and see what pops up. “Cripplepunk” is remarkably fruitful! I especially love the dynamic, queer coded pastel knuckle tattoo-ed manual chair “crip punk” sticker from ChaosCripples, and really want that on a tshirt or an iron on patch!

head on, fists forward, art on a sticker, of a wheelchair user with knuckle tattoos spelling crip punk

This one is nice too! “Mobility Aids Are Freedom” from SnailTrailStickers!

art on a sticker of a rollator, wheelchair, crutch and cane, that says Mobility Aids Are Freedom

If you go do some image searches for “wheelchair user” most of what you find will be kind of boring. “wheelchair user punk” used to bring up ALMOST NOTHING but lately, has been kind of good! Some kind of cultural shift (and maybe a technical shift as well) happened for that to be the case.

It’s not like we haven’t been around! Witness this pic of me from around 1993 taken by my sister! There was a version of this pic also photoshopped by her to make it look like the wheels are on fire. Note my amazing, youthful wheelchair-given triceps! Anyway I was a punk in a wheelchair and I would have really loved to see any kind of representation at all.
photo of young liz in a cambered sporty red quickie in 1993, leather hat and gloves, also huge muscles wow

My own drawing skills are OK but have a finicky, scritchy, lynda barryeqsue aesthetic that is not always what I want in a sticker. So I had a try at AI generating images a while back and came up with the seed of the Burn This Press logo I’ve been using on the back of some tiny zines. I lost the prompt but it was something like “nonbinary genderqueer punk, doing a wheelie in a modern dynamic sports wheelchair with electric sparks flying out” (developed over many iterations of bad prompts with bad results). I got something close to the current BTP logo which I then got my sister to re-drew a bit for clean up, and then I did more edits to mess with the hair, neck, lap, leg position, and so on.

Have a look at the Etsy and other online shops where people are making this kind of cool art! Buy their stuff and support them!

I surely have blogged before to lightly mock the wheelchair users we see in murals. They are in a terrible hospital chair, pushed by someone helpful, and everyone is looking up slightly with a beatific smile for maximum Inspo. Barf me out!

(edit: I can’t find that post, maybe it’s in draft somewhere, but here’s an example from the mural by where the J and N Muni trains stop at Church and Duboce. Note the ridiculously transcendent facial expression of this lady despite that she is riding the world’s crappiest wheelchair)

(further edit, i am only mildly cranky about this and like to make fun of things and it is a pet peeve, don’t get me wrong, i also appreciate ANY sort of representation for disabled folks and wheelchair users in particular, because it’s so damn rare)

(Also also, as the CEO of Digression, adding that I can wrench my mind from irritation that the one wheely person in this giant, pretty good and weird mural, is in a crappy chair being pushed, and direct it to the actually good fact that the care worker can also use a representational shout-out? though this is a struggle because what I personally want is a wheelchair user who “looks cool”)

detail from a mural showing a wheelchair user looking oddly ecstatic

Another problem with disability activism images is trying to represent as nebulous and huge of a concept of disability in one image. Using a wheelchair as this symbol is super lame! j/k!!!
This is how you end up with somewhat awkwardly drawn cartoon people where one is in a wheelchair, someone has a white cane, there’s an older person, somehow they try to work Deafness into it, they will be several different races, someone is in a sari and someone in a headscarf, and so on. Usually they are standing awkwardly around together as if posing for a stock photo! Maybe with protest signs if you are lucky but more often they aren’t doing anything other than Representing. I love this, and it is SO HARD TO DO in a way that looks good, and has some actual solidarity and joy in it rather than coming off as totally cheeseball!

(NOTE: I HAVE POSED FOR THIS PHOTO OFTEN – on request – feel free to put me in your pic – yes, if I work at your company or speak at your event, I absolutely will be in the front row or in your web site photo about Diversity – fuck yeah (but maybe with a little eyeroll))

I think these images, while lovely and well meaning and managing to do Representation, can come off as kind of bad art, or maybe we can be less snobby and call it folk art style, but I wish for artists who can draw the anatomy of human beings more competently than I can, to have at it on stickers, murals, tshirts, posters, logos, you name it. I want some cool socialist realist art of this Representation Group! Some art nouveau dandy versions ! Be in a park! Go to a music show! Be playing dungeons and dragons! Be doing something, omg.

Really the main problem is that none of these Group Photo Representation images, no matter how nice, work super well as logos as they are complicated and you have to draw a lot of bodies and faces and a background. When they are the best (to my mind) they become much more like narratives than logos! And that is good actually! That means they are MORE TRUE.

Here’s a pretty good one I found while writing this article from a report called “Resourcing Disability Justice: Our Feminist Journey Toward Centering Disability Justice“! These disabled people are having an ecstatic experience while feministly weaving together, and also representing some kind of super punk-ass rhizomatic concept, in space, on top of a damn rainbow! You see that it is trying to solve all the problems I describe in this single image. It is OVERCLOCKED. Really quite a challenge. Actually, my deep respect to everyone who has tried to meet this challenge, and a shout out to this artist, Abi Stevens!

(Note this report title is ALSO doing the most! “Toward” implies a proper humility, in that you are not done, or objective, or definitive, you are adding your little yawp to the collective chorus over time! We aren’t even defining or creating, we are Centering it. It’s also so disability justice that it has to say it TWICE.)

group of disabled women and girls in outer space, on a rainbow, weaving something collectively and joyfully

Another option is to have something kind of abstract – but what ?! I like ADAPT’s burst chain, in this category! There are many that are just like, a shape, or some shapes together, for maximum safety and boringness and when I see those I always imagine the ten painful committee meetings that produced them via painful hashing through everything else I just described. Thus, you may imagine me for years muttering “Oh, look, a SHAPE” and snorting to myself, whenever I encounter these logos, a mutter and snort that should be taken to convey the entire contents of this blog post, but 30 years of it.

For GOAT I worked both with poking some AI generators and also paying a friend who is a graphic designer to walk through a bunch of these concepts. Rather than human figures I thought it might be nice to have cute, colorful little icons of tech things. That way we get the variety of cross disability solidarity and the idea of tech stuff. The DIY vibe that I was going for is like the whole earth catalogue, sierra club how-to, 70s-ass hand drawn illustrations you might have in a step by step DIY instruction. So, my human designer drew me a whole set of icons, and I am combining and using them in different ways. There isn’t really a canonical “logo” yet but maybe one will evolve as I play with these images! I went with a tablet or ipad looking thing for AAC, a stylized ear with hearing aid and sound waves, and so on. The gear and tools, rather than the people.

colorful hand drawn icons of a powerchair, wrench and screwdriver crossed, spool of thread and needle, robot hand shaking a human hand

I was also going to say a word about stickers and patches and posters. They are usually very hand made and “folk art” feeling, they may or may not have “good” production values ie they may look a bit shitty or like they were created by raccoons in a back alley. That is fine actually. But what we want in our punk stickers etc. is a clear message that is legible to both our in group (other punks) and maybe to a lesser degree to our out groups (especially if we are telling them to fuck off). There’s a lot more I could say about that!

And the point of having these cool ass stickers to give to people is to bring joy to them unexpectedly – there is something so nice about, another disabled person complimenting my stickers a little bit wistfully and then I pull out a whole sheaf of stickers they can pick through & take! People really light up! Of course it is always interesting to see what they will choose when offered a wide selection! Bringing this tiny bit of happiness and crip joy to random strangers is also useful activism to do in daily practice.

Skibidi Megalon

Posted on by Liz

I went off to see Megalopolis excitedly knowing that a lot of people think it sucked, because even if it sucked I figured it would have some interesting thing to say about “the Future” and would also be something of a spectacle, part “neo Rome” and part art deco. But mostly, I am one of those people who often think about the Roman Empire! Danny, Mikayla and I escaped from the heat of this week at the Alamo Drafthouse, buckled up and ready for THE FUTURE.

It was ridiculous from the beginning. The signifying lesbians in the club (Girls licking each other performatively = Decadence!) The strange attempts to convey SCIENCE, the power hungry vamp, things that were like, vaguely Roman (?) And then the power to STOP TIME.

I complained to Danny that they did not lean in at all to the time stop power or any of the magic. “It’s because it’s meant to be ART – it’s like the power of ART!” OK fine…. it would be nice if the ART contained more artiness.

Aubrey Plaza leaned in hard to her part of the money and power hungry vamp “Wow Platinum” and I thought Adam Driver also did as good as could be done with his weird caricature of a Tortured Genius. They just played it as hard and cartoony as they could.

Things I liked: the trippy montages were embarrassing and pretty good at the same time. The dumb Megalon substance, never explained, that makes a beautiful 1920s World’s Fair park thing in the razed (and satellite-bombed) former slums. TBH I also liked the decadent performative-for-the-male-gaze lesbian gaggle. (I think it was Mikayla who pointed out that the first time they appeared it was like, oh they’re symbolizing decadent empire – but the 2nd and 3rd and 4th times you start thinking maybe Francis Ford Coppola just likes watching cute girls lick each other.)
The science startup montage in the office in the art deco skyscraper penthouse was so ridiculous it was good, at least at making me laugh, as they did a sort of trust exercise and spinned dramatically in spinny chairs while bouncing a basketball and unrolling scrolls on a drafting table. Maybe… maybe… the city planning aspect (while dumb as hell) kind of connects to how Rome would do very deliberate city planning??!

Every time Adam Driver referred to his Nobel Prize (often holding it up in its little case!) was a riot.

Another good laugh – when Adam Driver is partying because he’s upset (I can’t remember why – because his mom is nuts maybe?) And Julia mutters into her bracelet/smartwatch: “10:17pm. Drunk AND high.” The Caesar/Driver being drunk AND high montage is so silly! I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what it’s like to be drunk AND high!!!!

Best, was when we got permission to laugh harder at the vestal virgin in her post-scandal, hellfire joan jett haircut & eyeliner phase. OMFG best scene of the whole movie.

I loved being in a theater with other people who were also bursting into laughter and kind of groaning during the Serious moments. It was irresistible to me during the last half of the movie to attribute everything to Marcus Aurelius. All the quotes made me kind of hit my head and groan. It was all so sophomoric! Even the things I kind of liked I also didn’t like! Or I thought they were badly done in some way.

BUT then I was thinking, well, it is not a “good movie” by what we expect to be happening in a good movie, or in its narrative style fitting what we think is good, but that doesn’t make it invalid artistically! No one is (now) telling Herman Melville to “show don’t tell” so maybe I can kind of treat these plonking philosophical bits and the entire speech from Hamlet as Melville-ish digressions. But did it achieve those digressive glories? No. Not quite enough for me.

Things that made me go hmmmmm:
– The basic horrible elitism and “great man” theory infusing it all.
– The mob scenes are all about “the people” being manipulated and used by a few unscrupulous elites. It chilled me to the bone to have “power to the people” be shown in that way by someone who was around for the civil rights movement. It felt deeply racist and also like a racist dog whistle. We can see it as FFC’s commentary on Rome I guess. But none of the Rome stuff went that deep. “The people” don’t have any agency or politics or thoughts or even art (the whole fucking theme of the movie presumably, “Art”)
– None of our (in the U.S.) actual cultural connection to Rome and the various myths of Rome were really touched on. Coppola’s take on Rome and Caesar and everything felt like it came from having read some very outdated historian’s fusty 1890s perspective on the OG sources.
– The hideous sexism. Does anyone go, hey, does Julia also have this magic time stop power since she sees you do it and sees through it? No. no one asks. She is just there to be a muse and to BELIEVE IN HER MAN, who is a GENIUS.
– The more hideous sexism of the mayor being like “can’t you just be daddy’s little girl?” and trying to cockblock her whole relationship
– His original animosity towards Caesar/Driver very much unexplained. Why did he hide his dead wife’s body etc? What??
– Though I guess Julia does have the power with her one year of medical school to surgically reconstruct an entire eyeball and brain and face with Megalon ™. (But maybe just by girlishly Believing. Unclear.)
– that bit at the end where they are entering the world’s fair ass looking park where apparently inventing shiny escalators has solved all world problems, but the same mob who was grimy and looking through a chain link and barbed wire fence a few moments ago is now dressed in their best holiday party gear. Are they stepping merrily into the world’s fair? no! they are looking UP at the platform of famous pop star/politician elites step onto the shiny escalator in the sparsely populated theme park.
– just a nitpick, but if Adam Driver didn’t know his dead wife was preggers when she died, how?! since she was VERY pregnant including maybe an entire baby growing inside each enormous boob

I also thought, maybe this would have been a better movie if it had been made when he first thought of it! I don’t regret seeing it and I kind of like it better the further I get from being in the actual theater watching it and hitting my head groaning or shrieking with laughter. it did make an impression!

Maybe it wasn’t for ME… maybe it was for that 14 year old who is only starting to think about history and art, and looking for something to hook those thoughts on!

Well, anyway, I still love art deco curvey futurism.

But you don’t get to a place where the future is better and art is healing and the ecological interconnectedness of the Earth is respected, by looking to a Lone Genius Science Man to invent a magical substance that fixes everything and then having a bazillionaire donate a lot of money to fund it! And anyone sensible would know that because they would have thought about something that wasn’t the shallowest possible sophomoric Boomer-assed, Fountainhead-brainrotted, literary canon! They might have READ SOME SCIENCE FICTION which is literally a whole genre of people writing about the Future! Maybe even some feminist science fiction which deliberately writes about collective action, people’s relationships, people actually caring for each other day to day instead of giving an occasional speech about Love while totally forgetting birth control might exist, ETCETERA. The Earth / planet not even mentioned till the very last frame of the movie – I guess there were ecological problems (that weren’t fueled or caused by corporate/elite greed??????????????) that are all solved by MEGALON. Whew!

There is my review!

I definitely enjoyed the movie!

Conversational power

Posted on by Liz

Up till now the voice versions of “AI” have given me the same irritated feeling I get while listening to an automated phone menu. I feel frustrated or impatient listening to the voices of things like Alexa or Siri. I don’t trust them on some fundamental level.

The other night I watched a video clip with Danny, where someone asked ChatGPT to chat wiht it in a Cockney accent. I had watched it earlier and thought, Huh that’s convincing, it sounds very much like Danny’s family. When we watched it together I saw his face go through a very complicated sequence of emotions. It was just wild.

Then the next day I tried asking it for a chat in a Rhode Island accent that was from someone Italian-American. It answered, “Sure,”and with that one word I felt my face do what Danny’s did the day before. I felt surprise, shock, fascination, fear, vulnerability. In the short paragraph it then generated, which was a normal thing for someone to say from where I was born and where the core of my family was from. I got a sort of homily, an offer of coffee milk*, and was told, “Mangia!”. That sounds so stereotypical but the personality and conversational subject felt as correct as the accent (if maybe a little bit of a stereotype). As the hair on the back of my neck stood up I had a strong memory of my grandmother (who I was estranged from for much of my life) singing “A You’re Adorable” and tenderly reading to me while I was in her lap.

The evoker of the Cockney accent, the video maker, appeared in their short chat to bond with the ChatGPT generated personality, at the end saying goodbye with a warm “love to the family”.

It is interesting we both experienced such powerful emotions. I think that even without our particular contexts of alienation or distance, people’s relationship with “AI-ness” is going to change, because it feels very different to talk with an entity that expresses a personality. It feels grounded, rooted, and has at least the warmth level of making small talk with an affable stranger who you might meet in daily life.

The veneer of culture and personality may be thin right now. It’s likely that when I go back and try this exercise in more depth, ChatGPT will cycle through a fairly short list of stereotypical “Rhode Island Italian” things it can insert into the conversation. But that level was enough for casual chat. It is far from the phone tree voice or robocall that you want to throw across the room. Definitely worth a handshake.

—–

*

“What the hell is coffee milk?” Danny asked me. “Um. I have some in our fridge right now is what.” (I special order it from Rhode Island is what. It’s delicious! “A swallow will tell you!”)

“And (looking at the text of our chat) what does m-a-n-g-i-a” mean?” he asked, Britishly.
Me: [!!!!! (laughing uproariously)] Only a thing I was told every single day a million times!

a plastic bottle of coffee syrup made by Autocrat, with a bird logo

Bop Spotter

Posted on by Liz

I love this project, the Bop Spotter! This is my neighborhood and I love its musical landscape.

Sometimes I add to it myself from a bluetooth speaker on my wheelchair, but more often I’m surreptitiously shazaming the music around me from others’ speakers, from cars, from businesses I’m going by on the sidewalk.

This is a cool use of a old/low end phone – hooking it up to a little solar panel on a utility pole. The web page shows the community’s culture to the community. It’s community data collection that’s positive, approachable, and fun. We are also invited to listen along on Apple Music or Spotify!

You could expand this project out in different ways, like log all the music, make it searchable, count the times we hear particular songs or artists, make it possible to, in the future, reconstruct the public musical soundscape of this corner!

It’s beautiful just as it is of course, but I get kind of excited about the archival aspect of communicating with the future!

Oct 8: Zine-making workshop with the SF Disability Cultural Center

Posted on by Liz

I’ll be giving a free workshop on how to make a tiny zine, coming up in a week or so, hosted via Zoom with the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center. It’s happening Tuesday, October 8, 2024, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM Pacific time. Please register to get the link and more information!

Mini-zines are easy and fun to make – something about their tiny form is very freeing! Liz Henry, poet, literary translator, small press publisher, hacker, and maker of innumerable zines, will facilitate this hands-on workshop. We’ll look at a few zines for inspiration and construct our tiny zines together. We’ll hang out and chat while we all start – and maybe finish – our own! Zine-making kits are available for folks in the Bay Area.

If you are in the Bay Area, you can also check out some other zine making communities and events!
– The DIY Museum is doing neat work and hosts a ton of events!
– SF Public Library’s monthly Zinething: https://sfpl.org/events/2023/10/17/activity-zinething
– Tiny Zine Library‘s Zine Club – 2nd Sunday of the month at Szygzy Coop in the Haight
– periodic events at Double Union makerspace in the Mission

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I know about!

two zines on a colorful tablecloth

Take the 49 indeed

Posted on by Liz

Tonight on the bus I met a really nice lady named Lulu who was reading a Mayan/ English phrase book and had some stunning eye makeup. We chatted about antifascist things and she was telling me stories about the 60s and I dunno, hanging out with Jefferson Airplane and all that sort of thing and I guess she taught herself some Mayan back then because of trying to work at a fancy bookstore where they didn’t hire her but did give her a free book on Mayan?! The one that the Mexican government published in the 1930s. I can’t remember all the things we talked about and have forgotten interesting details like the name of the specific bookstore, but I did give her a tiny zine while also saying with regret that I have no time to a) actually learn Mayan b) come to a labor organizing thing in North Beach of Mayan and Mam speaking restaurant workers! So maybe we will meet again. I thought of inviting her to the Soiree (since she had a walker, she would fit right in) but she was on her way to the labor thing. I also felt a nice feeling like OK maybe when I am 75 I will be riding the bus still with all my flamboyance and reading interesting books and meeting people. I hope so!

Onward to my event which was the “Wine and Chocolate Soiree” fundraiser (a criperati thing) where I got to have nice conversations with some of my friends who work for that org while drinking champagne and dipping tiny creampuffs and chunks of poundcake into a chocolate fountain in the Green Room above the opera house. THAT IS JUST HOW THEY ROLL. once a year they splash out and have a little gala. Maybe nonprofits get to rent it cheap. So I’m hanging out with Vince and his friend Ben and they told me about an accessible “ninja” course they made at some school in atherton (?) and then we were coming up with the best ideas for a wheelchair driven remotely with a glow in the dark life size Halloween lawn decor skeleton and a sign that says STILL WAITING FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE or whatever, that we would drive around town. Vince said to look up something from brooklyn called Devil Baby where they haad some sort of prank stroller where you go look in and YAAAAAAAH DEVIL BABY pops out. OK!!! Time for another glass of free champagne!

Then this lady comes up to me and goes Oh is that a Pansy Division tshirt! Yes it is. Oh I played with them once! Oh really what was your band. Well do you know who I am, I’m J* L*R*y! I started laughing uproariously! I am sure my face was doing many strange things that I had zero control over.

Anyway, I blurted, Oh, that’s so highlarious!!! Because, I’m like, a micro niche famous hoax identity debunker! Hahahaha!

I was treated to some backstory which I mostly knew anyway because I do have a little side hobby sometimes of being interested in people’s (literary/blog) hoax identities!

So, that happened….

A few creampuffs later I dipped to return to the 49 bus stop where unfortunately a man was laughing to himself insanely with his pants down, jerking it in the middle of Van Ness and MacAlister right across from City Hall. I had some conflicted thought such as, well, he is just a sad and unhinged person who really doesn’t seem to know much about what is up, and he isn’t like, LOOKING at anyone, hes just like staring off into space in the other direction and guffawing? But I don’t really want to ride the BUS with him tho? I decided it would not help to go to a different stop and I’d just be rolling the dice for something weirder and more bad to happen! So he got on the bus near the back, and I got on with the ramp at the front, and I kept an eye peeled and sat on my folding cane in case I needed to physically block anyone, and all was well (he got off at 16th and the rest of the bus was peaceful)

The end!

Bathtubs and books, hippies

Posted on by Liz

I had a relaxing and luxurious bath this morning in our new clawfoot tub, which is blowing our minds after some years of only having a shower in the house. While I was in there I read a good way into a book someone left on our sidewalk bench, Polaroids from the Dead by Douglas Coupland. I liked the title and was curious what Mr. “Gen X” inventor had to say. (For accompaniment, I put on Lou Reed’s album Transformer.) So far, Polaroids strikes me as mostly accurate in mood and content. I moved to the Bay Area in 1990 so it was all very familiar. It did feel a little more like the late 80s but still, accurate.

Part of the mood that I enjoyed was that it conveyed our (us being people roughly of my age in 1991 or so) attitude towards hippies and the 70s, which was that they seemed to have had all the fun and excitement but that there was a little left for us; they would kindly sell us blotter acid, and we could still go see them in concert.

I thought less about California in the 90s while reading this book and more about Austin in the 80s. I lived in or hung out at various co-ops (and yes it was pretty much exactly like the movie Slacker which captured the vibe perfectly (ofc I knew half the people in there) in that it was possible to live on your part time minimum wage job and go to school and fuck around doing art and music or whatever. ) So tempting to keep nesting parentheses, but no.

Here’s me with a guy I briefly “dated” (if you can call it that) from Arrakis Co-op and then a little after I moved into 21st Street Co-op in late 1986 or early 1987. He was a Deadhead and very nice, and had cases and cases of taped Dead concerts carefully labelled & often with very lovely art and handwritten liner notes. (I remember being impressed with this and also with how he would diligently do all his engineering homework, then hit the bong with equal diligence afterward.) But my point is that hippie culture was not at all dead in 1987, or 1990. It was alive and kicking. I was so relieved that I hadn’t missed my chance after all to experience it.

two white young people, me in sleeveless crop top, guy with mullet in a Woodstock tshirt

There was a guy who would come by the Loud Suite (where I lived at first in 21st St) named Motorcycle Michael, who had long white guy dreads done up in a crocheted hat, drove a van, and always wore pretty much the same outfit made of that gorgeous oaxacan or guatemalan woven cloth and a tie died tshirt. He seemed to be the most obvious dealer hanging out there and I don’t think I bought anything from him (I did not need to ; see above photo of me; do you think I got free bong hits or??! It didn’t even occur to me, and besides, I had no money) It did not have any sort of creepy feel (Drug dealer or pusher hanging out with teenage students) but rather, a sort of benevolent uncle and friend vibe. (Trust me I have seen the creepy, gross, skeevy ones and know; or maybe i just am overly impressed with any older guy who was decent enough not to hit on me) Like, his life was bopping around between Mexico and all over Texas maybe, living in his van, hanging out with people who were pretty chill, listening to good music, being super generous with his time and energy, telling funny stories, helping people out, going to Dead concerts. He was part of the culture! I heard a while back through a co-op FB group that he died, and then I just looked him up again and found this interesting memoriam.

Pic below of Loud Suite life:

several young people sitting on dilapidated couches, looking happy

Lest you all think of me as a drug addled fool, I can reassure you I was not much into excess, was a complete lightweight, would cut blotter acid into quarters, etc. etc. (We won’t even talk about where the other drugs like X came from, *cough* *Rice chemistry students*) It was occasional! And social! I swear! Anyway, I still graduated and I appear to have a reasonable amount of brain cells left.

A more wholesome photo, of a bunch of us cooking in the industrial kitchen – I learned to cook here, and was dinner cook (for 100 people) and menu planner for many years. Here, Ethan, Paul Macafee, Karen, Mike LeFebre, and I are drinking Old Milwaukee and cooking dinner. Ok, mostly wholesome. I blame Paul for the cheap gross beer choice.

several young people gathered around a giant bowl of steaming food. they are drinking old milwaukee beers

ANYWAY. Because of prepping to go see The Way to Eden in Star Trek Live tonight we watched the original episode yesterday and laughed our asses off at the space hippie children! (Their drug use is implied only, but their vibe is impeccable!) Star Trek tried hard to come to grips with how the future might see hippies. Were they wrong?!

There were really lovely hippietastic moments I remember, like about 40 people from the co-op all tripping and going to see Koyaanisqatsi together. It was fine! We were a lovely social amoeba moving across the town and into the movie theater! The point was not the drugs so much as it was being gorgeously social and also experiencing and creating music and culture together!

I have forgotten my point. I have more to say about hippies, drugs, and the internet, which we all talked about at DWeb Camp and which I kind of go into in my long poem “Whole Earth Catalog”. But here, I think my point was that I have found it funny and a little sad sometimes to see people now worrying that they missed raves, or grunge, or riot grrrl, or zines, or whatever, and then I absolutely fucking love it when they realize they can JUST DO THOSE THINGS. Nothing is stopping you! You are in history, too! You can make an entire scene happen, and also, whatever else you are doing now, someone is going to look back on with fondness and longing, in some way that you are not even aware of as a Thing! You are in your own Thing right now!!!!!

So many shows!

Posted on by Liz

I am trying to remember all the shows and concerts I’ve been to in the last couple of months, all of which I had resolved to blog about. Maybe I can go backwards in time a little and this is going to be a mix of punk shows and opera. It has been a fabulous summer of having TICKETS. (I LOVE TICKETS!!!)

cameron diaz saying TICKETS! I *LOVE * TICKETS

Last week was for opera as I went with my friend Lisa the music critic to a winery in Napa to see Abduction from the Seraglio, which was fluffy and kind of adorable in a beautiful setting. The two sopranos stood out to me the most (which must be common in amateur enjoyers of opera) as Brenda Rae awed me with her technical skills & I also just really dug Krista Pape’s voice which never, ever sounded strained. The guy singing Osmin also had a spectacular bit in the last act. I’m not very familiar with this operam but Lisa mentioned they cut some bits out for length. The other thing of note was that the singing was in German while the talking bits (not really recitative, just talking!) were translated to English. At intermission we met some adorable young people who liked my hair and the stickers on my powerchair. The one in the suit reminded me of young Annalee; she and her companion were both so cute and liked that I gave them stickers and zines. I think we may have also met one of their aunts (their “chaperone”).

We then stayed for a super fancy dinner and some great musicians. I realized we were surrounded by people who like, own entire wineries, which was a bit weird but interesting, and that everyone at our table was drinking tremendous amounts but was still coherent. I did taste some of every kind of wine offered (3 kinds through the various courses, plus port, plus another one) but could not actually drink all of it, or began to falter midway through glass 3. All of the wine was delicious. I was pretty tipsy on the way home!

Another opera jaunt to the Italian Cultural Institute, with Astrid and our friend Dracaena Wolf to see the sneak preview for the upcoming Ars Minerva production of La Flora. Swooned as usual over Celine Ricci’s description of research in dusty libraries or laboriously scrolling through microfilm. BTW if you get on the Italian Cultural Institute’s maling list they often have great events for free. The songs by the cast of La Flora were good ! I’m looking forward to that show in November! Also I am burning to someday get to play on a harpischord. I could see the guy playing’s hands and I could imagine playing what he was playing as accompaniment – I am sure I could even sight read it, slowly and badly – We had dinner afterwards at Cafe Macaroni (or something?) which was delicious and so instantly homey to me (Sicilian family side of things) I wonder why I do not go more often to that neighborhood for actual italian food. I will be back to that spot for sure tho. Dracaena played me some short clips of her music, which was wild – doing very strange stuff technically with rhythmic variations and i think different … scales? that was over my head but i could glimpse and yet also being clearly danceable. I can’t wait to hear more from her.

Mosswood Meltdown was great as usual – lots of low key lying on our picnic blanket feeling happy – drinking weak margaritas, smoking dope, and admiring everyone’s outfits – I especially loved Go Sailor and their pop punk joy – Pansy Division made me all starry-eyed – and the B52s of course were fantastic performers. I also bought a black and white checkered sweatshirt and a ridiculous neon pink and green mesh crop top.

Team Dresch show was probably the highlight of my summer show going (so far) as they were perfect in every way – it was (like i mentioned with Hanna’s book talk) like seeing them as mature adults rather than flailing, fellow damaged kids in their early 20s when I was also – Donna Dresch 100% admirable as she rocked out and competently messed around with the guitar pedals (I was right at her feet). Kai(a?) Wilson on point – Jody Bleyle very adorkable in a pokemon hat – entire dynamic of the band beautiful. Oceanator was impressive – more to the rock side of “punk” which I could appreciate though it is not my preference for genre – and Eddie & the Heartbeats touching folk punk that sometimes made me tear up as bits of the songs and stories made me think of my own stories – At some point I accidentally imposed (?) on someone who is some kind of scene queen of SF punk, but she was nice and helped my friend Gina get a chair and made way for me right at the front and also went ot get me a drink, implying it would be the work of a moment as she knows the bartenders, then miraculously reappearing with my beer – I have forgotten her name but maybe it starts with an M. She had an entertaining back story of being a fucked up girl in her early 20s and being hired by some specific (beer?) company to buy people their “first” beer (Black Star?) and she had a corporate credit card to do so and so was Very Popular at all the early 90s lesbian bars of the entire Bay Area. Also before that show I was way too early by accident & ended up inviting a girl named Tessa (“girl” but … probably only a bit younger than me) who loves robotics (Maybe teaches it) to get ice cream, and we had slightly too sweet but delicious “instragrammable” artisanal ice cream sandwiches before the show, but then I lost her to the smoking patio and she left early. I like Bottom of the Hill a lot as a venue! Lovely.

Commando, charming emo noise band Godgifu ( who kind of made me think of cheerfuler Bliss Blood/Pain Teens) , and Boyswitch at the Ivy Room – Boyswitch was TIGHT and great performers. I bought their cassette tape and all their merch! I love Commando and am always there to cheer on Lynnee’s poem about Prince – and their metally funk goodness & chaos in general – and feel kind of stabbed in the heart in a good way from Juba’s incredible poetry & rapping – A great show. You should BUY and READ Juba’s excellent book Son of Byford. A great poet with a far-ranging mind, my favorite sort of complicated poetry.

There is more but that will have to be it for now. All very short because I want to catch up a bit to the Now.

Weird SF and a kids’ book binge

Posted on by Liz

I did a lot of trying to say no to things and step down from things I wasn’t doing (well enough, or in some cases, at all) which was kind of my therapy homework and which was very difficult. Why is focusing so difficult? Why can’t we live 6 lives at once??? Why am I getting older and more tired? It just has to be.

More centrally (the therapy part I suppose) What if I didn’t feel like I was somehow failing all the time and disappointing people? I think last time I said this in semi-public a little group of my friends stared at me silently, looked around the table at each other and then one of them as spokesperson explained that when I said things like that with all the things I actually do manage to accomplish, I was insulting them. Like if I thought that harshly of myself, when I had a job, was in grad school, had a toddler, and was still also doing extra projects, then… how was I judging them? Years later I still think of this (thanks elaine) and how helpful it was at giving me a kick in the ass. (Not an instant fix obviously, but a useful insight)

Dealing lots with architects/contractors. There is some little thing every day and a bigger meeting once a week. Construction continues under our house. Someday, someday! we will live in that bit of house, it will all have wheelchair access, I will have a REAL BATH and soak and read in the tub, without the noise of power tools, and I will get to fix up the garden again to enjoy it.

Last week and this week, I’m focusing in on work for DIFxTech and on GOAT. I even got a little help from M. in discussing how to catalogue and tag some of the GOAT archive – how useful to have another librarian in the family! And both kids were here last week and are now back at school while Danny is in Europe till the end of the week.

Annoyingly I not only got a cold (not Covid thankfully) but also got my period for the 2nd time in the past year, resetting my menopause clock so I will still be officially “perimenopause” till at least next January. Mother of God, I was so fucking pissed, it was so great to have it over with, but no. Fuck!!

I took a sewing lesson in the Mission, making a striped velvet zippered throw pillow with fabric that reminded me of one of my grandmother’s couches that had similar colors and how I would lie on it and pet the velvet one way & then the other. Got my sewing machine out resolving to practice on it on some scraps but then realized the pedal was missing which led me to clean out the entire row of cabinets.

Will I actually learn to sew and finally complete the blue jean blanket of my dreams – modeled after that crazy quilt bed cover I slept under once in the 90s at Harry and Daffodil’s house, made of I think Daff’s former lover’s favorite jeans, with all the pockets and rips on top and the underneath soft with the texture of the inside-out frayed bits. It was comfy and comforting and so bittersweet to think of his love for this dead young man and all the ways the radical faerie & other community had come together & was grieving so hard. I have forgotten his name but not the love that whoever made the quilt had for him. I think he must have been an amazing person.

In reading this week and last:

Loved the Christopher Rowe books and short stories, tons of Weird Kentucky, the wonderful Navigating Fox, and I hope maybe there could be more about the detective dog. (Maybe a prequel so we also get the crow friend?)

I also loved Tuf Voyaging, which somehow I have never read. It’s a great read that comes off like light space opera, but which is actually kind of a complicated moral fable. The Portmaster was so interesting – like Martin trying to write in a super valid critique of his too powerful main character and what power does to him – I am always saying this so I warmed to it. It was like seeing him in dialogue with the ghostly hand of feminist science fiction, so I enjoyed that. Plus of course I warmed to the (too powerful) nerd hero and his cats and his (too powerful) spacecraft (as the youth say, he is “a bit acoustic” in a charming way.) Having the down to earth feministsf Portmaster tell him off repeatedly did not stop the OP MC one bit. But she wasn’t treated badly in the story, and she gets some kittens, and she had her own problematic behaviors; I liked how Martin treated her as a character.

Damiano by R.A. MacAvoy. Readble but not my favorite, a little too fetishy of a certain type of anguished christian man that just annoys me. I did like the witch Sara from Fennland for a moment, and then didn’t again (bad boyfriend, whinges too much about age) I also don’t think much of Damiano. Oops I accidentally slaughtered more people with my magic ™ waah waah oh my little doggie is so pure oh also my literal angel who i definitely don’t lust after, wahh wahh but also women are purty. Goth cosplay and a broken lute! The end. (Sorry everyone.)

Very, very, very annoyed by Rome of One’s Own, which I feared was going to annoy me. I had some hope it might be a nice overview, since “forgotten” women of history of basically anywhere and when is one of my very favorite things to read. Maybe I would learn something about women of ancient Rome. BUT NO. It’s so, so bad y’all. The most annoying kind of “history” book.

I want to just blast it with my scorn for a moment but let me set a background first. At best, the book is trying to explain that historical interpretation can change over time. But it fails to make that clear and usually ignores the historical context of it sources. Instead it messily conflates truth, what the authors of those sources (Livy, Ovid, or whoever) thought was true, what later generations thought, or may have thought, was true and how they interpreted a story about a particular woman, and then what the book’s author and apparently, her (British, women) readers will read into that story. Often kind of (and only kind of!) attributing agency, empowerment, or historical importance to the woman in the story.

If you want an example of this done incredibly well, I love how Margaret Reynolds approaches it in The Sappho Companion.

Rome of One’s Own did not do it well. It was like I was nonconsensually shunted into a wine o’clock mumsnet party who were all incoherently yelling “You go, girl!”

Please just go read some primary sources! OMFG!

There could have been a fine book here that clearly outlined, here’s some things that particular writers said about particular women who may or may not have been semi-mythical, and exactly when that was, and what else was going on, and then, what other people in England/Great Britain then said about those women in subsequent centuries and how they reinterpreted things in their own context! And then you could add your own Liberated Ladies perspective onto that but make it clear what you are DOING. you could write a popular audience history book that lays some coherent groundwork and is still readable!

And, only talking about what Livy and Ovid and like 3 other dudes said about some mythical women of Rome’s founding, does a huge disservice to all the cool history of regular people and women’s daily lives that we can look at from the past… century that puts it into actual context including with archeological sources!

Here is where I should recommend something better as an antidote and I do have examples but the first thing that comes to mind is Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s “Women’s Work” and of course Prehistoric Textiles. (Way too broad in scope, not actually Rome, but gives you actual information! that! is! organized!)

I then bounced hard off a detective thriller, Zero Day. It started OK promising a married pen testing duo and a competent hacker heroine and then went quickly to some places I did not want to go: a background of what sounds like violent/life threatening/maybe rapey abuse by her cop ex boyfriend, and her nice hacker husband murdered by chapter 2. I can’t read that shit while D. is out of town! Fuck no!

Not to mention, after the murder, she gets a mysterious email saying that there is a mysterious 1 million dollar life insurance policy and she CLICKS THE PDF IN THE EMAIL.

Nope nope nope! Must we?! NOT going to finish that one. If there is a less violent novel by Ruth Ware, with less dwelling on women’s fear, trauma, and fucking up, please let me know.

To clear my mind of all that, I went on a Project Gutenberg spree and downloaded a lot of dumb Angela Brazil books (The Jolliest Term on Record; Madcap of the School), an equally ridiculous Cherry Ames book, and Clematis by Bertha Browning Cobb which is a lovely book about a neglected orphan and her beloved kitten. And some things off the 19th century list of classic kids’ books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_children%27s_classic_books that I haven’t read.

So in short, BRB, gonna play some jolly field hockey with my chums and then go back to my digs for tea and spiffing rock cake (wtf is that, i’m still not sure but it does not sound nice). Why is diggings, or digs, school slang for where you live? mining and miners? archaeology? something else?)