Note: This post originally appeared on Wordscience, a now defunct writing-focused blog of mine, on March 15, 2009. I was recently flipping through that blog’s archives and came across this post, which I thought would be neat to share here too. I’ve recently shared another post from that blog, “Weather, history, and the origins of words,” which […]
Secret Lives of Great Authors Read More »
I found an old post from a different blog (called “Wordscience” – not to be confused with another, more talented Samantha!), written in 2010 as I was reading the second volume of Doris Lessing’s autobiography. This excerpt has always stuck with me, and I thought it worthy to share here too: Impossible to describe a
Doris Lessing and wool-gathering Read More »
The early days of home computers and video games has always been a particular interest of mine. In fact, it’s my stock answer for the “if you had a time machine” question – while I would love to visit all sorts of historical periods, I’d probably fare a bit better in the early ’80s as
So, I did it! I finished the first draft of my novel! I finished it a couple of weeks earlier than anticipated, and I’m still not really feeling like it happened, despite the printed-out evidence above. Evidence, by the way, that looks way more daunting as a thing I can hold in my hand than it did
Novel draft finished! Read More »
Recently I went down a Sisters of Mercy-induced nostalgia spiral, and this particular nostalgia spiral was of a different sort than usual, because it led me to a time period I’m not used to feeling nostalgic for. In high school I used to listen to the Sisters of Mercy, but I also listened to all
Some girls wander by mistake. Read More »
Recently, it struck me that 2017 marks 20 years I’ve been blogging. I’ve written about those olden times here before. I started my first website in 1997. I used a pseudonym. There were rotating ankh gifs on it. I was obsessed with it. One day, my boyfriend at the time wanted us to go out somewhere, and
Between my recent Instagram post about Gibson girls and revisiting a favourite article detailing how the ideal woman’s body has changed over the past hundred years, I’ve had the 1910s on the brain a little bit. I’d remembered an episode of Edwardian Farm where Ruth and her daughter were demonstrating the calisthenic exercises that became
Exercise for women in the 1910s Read More »
One of the reasons I love reading Victorian/Regency novels is that I get a glimpse of the everyday rituals, strange to us now, that were so important to the people performing them. One of those rituals that always seemed at once charming and terrifying to me was the obligation of the morning call 0r social visit.
Etiquette of morning calls and visits of ceremony Read More »
In 2010 I visited York, England. I’d always wanted to go there, primarily because I was excited about all the historical sights in the town. My site’s header comes from that trip – it’s a small bit of what remains of St Mary’s Abbey, a Benedictine abbey established in 1088. As a Canadian, finding a
Ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, York Read More »
When you move back to your hometown, nobody warns you about the absence of time. The way you can hold your palm to things that have happened. You can watch them happen again, they do happen again, it’s so easy, and makes so much sense. You don’t even have to try. You remember, and you forget again. You
And feet that run but they come back home Read More »
