Barbara's Blog

  While questing for a picture to illustrate what I'm reading for comfort and relaxation lately, I discovered, to my delight, that I'm not the only huge fan of Sei Shonagon's Blog From Another World, otherwise known as the Pillow Book. (Evidently there's manga and YouTube versions of her!). It really is like reading a blog from another planet - 10th-century Japan is so alien, and Sei Shonagon's voice (at least in Ivan Morris's excellent translation) is so real and present. Accounts of court ceremonies and conversations (and exorcisms, which were apparently pretty commonplace) interspersed with her opinions: the proper circumstances under which to meet one's lover (summer, and PLEASE no whining about how awful your life is!); lists of subjects for poems (lawns; hail; bamboo grass). Lists of things that give one a nice clean feeling, or elegant things (shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl - presumably a 10th-century slushie), or unsui...

  Happy Birthday Bilbo Baggins! Thank you, and Frodo, and Professor T. for being there way back in the day when I really, really needed you. In other news, just finished reading the final page-proofs of The Iron Princess, and just got the copy-edit of One Extra Corpse. VERY busy times.

Just got the news. Here she is, as a volunteer auto mechanic and driver towards the end of WWII. What an amazing life, and time - the Second Elizabethan Age indeed.  

  Saw this pretty lady - or one very like her (I snitched this picture off the Internet, since I'm beyond lousy with a cell-phone camera) - as I took my walk before sunup this morning. She's the second mantis I've seen in the past month - I saw one of exactly her dust-brown color sitting on a wall in Chico on my road-trip. They were all over the place when I was a little kid, in several colors - usually leaf-green, but often golden, or a darker brown than this. We had them as pets. My sister had a white one. Later this morning when I went to the campus I saw a full-grown and DAMN BIG hawk flap down onto the seat of a chained-up bicycle, and case the surrounding area like he'd paid for smorgasbord there. It's still hot - the temperature plunged clear down to 106 for today, though I'll bet it tops at 108 like it did yesterday (Sunday was 112). I'm still resting between projects (though I admit I'm working on another Further Adventure). The final page-proof...

  My dad used to use the expression, "We're off like a herd of turtles," which was a good description of my vacation last week.  It was my first road-trip in 4 years - postponed from last month. The dear friends I visited I hadn't seen in 4 years, though because I've kept in touch it didn't feel like 4 years - and I hope never to have that long a hiatus again. Both destinations were in the deep woods of northern California. I did a lot of walking, and a lot of endless driving on those miles and miles and MILES of northern California two-lane highways that are completely unmarked ("Am I still on 99? Am I headed in the correct direction?" I had GPS maps but couldn't get Siri to work on my phone, despite coaching from the lovely young lady at Enterprise Rent-a-Car). And once you get into the gold country, a lot of those little mountain trails have no signs on them. And I came home to find my computer wouldn't boot. I spent a couple of days dozin...

Just a little shout-out, happy birthday Mom, on what would have been her 94th birthday. (This is her in the church hall before my wedding).  

Although forced to re-schedule my vacation trip, I DID get to keep my research appointment at the Margaret Herrick Library, i.e. the research library of the Academy of Motion Pictures. And thanks to the advice of a friend about the best way to get there that didn't involve freeways and rush hour (my appointment was from 10-3, i.e. going into downtown during the morning rush hour and leaving during the afternoon rush hour along with several million other drivers going in the same directions), getting there was fairly painless and un-stressy. The library itself is LOVELY. The staff is helpful, friendly, extremely knowledgeable and scrupulous about COVID protocols. And, I got to look at silent film scripts (which showed that my portrayal of them in Scandal in Babylon was accurate, insofar as at that point there were evidently SEVERAL different ways of numbering scenes), and sources that clarified various other small points. When you're writing a murder mystery, or in fact any fict...