Sunday: came home, ate
Oct. 1st, 2023 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutT. skipped track today, and we _were_ going to catch the 11:50, but we wound up getting the 9:50 instead. I used the keurig in the room to make some tea (I brought bags, so I just used the keurig to heat the water) and had a Nature’s Bakery flavored fig bar packet (2 bars). It was fine.
ETA: I meant to mention that MBTA installed fare gates at North Station. T. had to navigate them when he went to the Jonas Bros concert (I think) alone, but he never mentioned it. The fare gates are for entry _and_ exit, so, you know, don’t lose your ticket I guess and have your phone handy for exiting.
When I got home, I pulled the sourdough back out of the fridge and made an english muffin for lunch and followed it up with some apple crisp.
I started laundry, because I did not want dog smell to persist or spread.
There were a fair number of people on that train. Some of the people leaving the hotel this morning definitely also went to the show last night.
More or less as soon as I was out of the room, I started to feel better. Not great, because I still have some kinda weird sinus thing going, probably R.’s cold, but much better. Next time, I am definitely requesting a Never Has Pets room.
ETA:
I finished reading the Tea Princess trilogy by Casey Blair with Royal Tea Service. The trilogy as a whole is surprisingly consistent in tone, character development, magical system, etc. I enjoyed it, but it is very distinctly different from just about anything else I’ve ever read. There is a novella and some short stories that I may also read.
I also tackled Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies. I read the first third or so of it, and then the last two chapters. I hit a point where I realized that while I have read about Whitey Bulger (I know this is fiction, but it’s pretty obvious what it is based on) and South Boston — a long time ago, now, but still — in the interests of having some awareness of what people whose family have been in this area for generations might be referring back to, it just felt kinda gross. On the one hand, it’s probably really great that this book exists, because a lot of people will read fiction and learn from it when it is set in a historical era and based on historical personalities that generalize from actual events in a compelling way. On the other hand, ugh. It’s a pretty relentless depiction of the destructive powers of hate. It is not like I am unaware.
SPOILER PROBABLY
But I guess if you would like to immerse yourself in South Boston / Boston area 1974 when busing was mandated, right before Bulger started his relationship with the FBi, sure, here’s your opportunity to do so in a literary sort of way. The story is largely but not entirely told from the perspective Mary Pat, whose first husband was abusive and part of the criminal enterprise, whose son was drafted and came back and died of an overdose, and whose daughter dated a much older than her member of the criminal enterprise. The daughter has gone missing and Mary Pat has a justifiably bad feeling, and when Mary Pat reaches out to her ex-second husband, she realizes there’s some connection between what happened to her daughter and the 20 year old dead black man who is the son of one of her coworkers at the old folks home. This all builds up to a bloody interaction that Mary Pat does not survive (who would really want to survive this sequence, after all) but she does manage to get some of the criminal enterprise dead as well.
Having _just read_ Casey Blair’s Tea Princess trilogy, I can really see the stark contrast between various conceptions of what it means to be a strong woman character. And I gotta say, I had walked away from the Mary Pat version of being a strong woman character, which is fundamentally a particularly gross version of being a strong man character, but gendered differently, long ago. I _now_ have a much clearer picture of whatI think a strong woman character — or a strong character of any gender — can be. Accept no substitutes.
ETA: I meant to mention that MBTA installed fare gates at North Station. T. had to navigate them when he went to the Jonas Bros concert (I think) alone, but he never mentioned it. The fare gates are for entry _and_ exit, so, you know, don’t lose your ticket I guess and have your phone handy for exiting.
When I got home, I pulled the sourdough back out of the fridge and made an english muffin for lunch and followed it up with some apple crisp.
I started laundry, because I did not want dog smell to persist or spread.
There were a fair number of people on that train. Some of the people leaving the hotel this morning definitely also went to the show last night.
More or less as soon as I was out of the room, I started to feel better. Not great, because I still have some kinda weird sinus thing going, probably R.’s cold, but much better. Next time, I am definitely requesting a Never Has Pets room.
ETA:
I finished reading the Tea Princess trilogy by Casey Blair with Royal Tea Service. The trilogy as a whole is surprisingly consistent in tone, character development, magical system, etc. I enjoyed it, but it is very distinctly different from just about anything else I’ve ever read. There is a novella and some short stories that I may also read.
I also tackled Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies. I read the first third or so of it, and then the last two chapters. I hit a point where I realized that while I have read about Whitey Bulger (I know this is fiction, but it’s pretty obvious what it is based on) and South Boston — a long time ago, now, but still — in the interests of having some awareness of what people whose family have been in this area for generations might be referring back to, it just felt kinda gross. On the one hand, it’s probably really great that this book exists, because a lot of people will read fiction and learn from it when it is set in a historical era and based on historical personalities that generalize from actual events in a compelling way. On the other hand, ugh. It’s a pretty relentless depiction of the destructive powers of hate. It is not like I am unaware.
SPOILER PROBABLY
But I guess if you would like to immerse yourself in South Boston / Boston area 1974 when busing was mandated, right before Bulger started his relationship with the FBi, sure, here’s your opportunity to do so in a literary sort of way. The story is largely but not entirely told from the perspective Mary Pat, whose first husband was abusive and part of the criminal enterprise, whose son was drafted and came back and died of an overdose, and whose daughter dated a much older than her member of the criminal enterprise. The daughter has gone missing and Mary Pat has a justifiably bad feeling, and when Mary Pat reaches out to her ex-second husband, she realizes there’s some connection between what happened to her daughter and the 20 year old dead black man who is the son of one of her coworkers at the old folks home. This all builds up to a bloody interaction that Mary Pat does not survive (who would really want to survive this sequence, after all) but she does manage to get some of the criminal enterprise dead as well.
Having _just read_ Casey Blair’s Tea Princess trilogy, I can really see the stark contrast between various conceptions of what it means to be a strong woman character. And I gotta say, I had walked away from the Mary Pat version of being a strong woman character, which is fundamentally a particularly gross version of being a strong man character, but gendered differently, long ago. I _now_ have a much clearer picture of whatI think a strong woman character — or a strong character of any gender — can be. Accept no substitutes.