lizvogel

I was intrigued to see this report: London's Wellcome Collection returns 2,000 manuscripts to the Jain community given that that is a repository I know well although not a part of the collections with which I was particularly acquainted.

I was also a bit taken aback to see that there is a Centre of Jain Studies at the University of Birmingham, though on a spot of further looking around I find that there is also a Jain Ashram in Birmingham. (Not of as great antiquity as the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, f. 1889, and featuring in HG Wells' The War of the Worlds.)

It is a religious tradition particularly associated with non-violence.

While one might think that this collection of South Asian origin might return there: article points out that there are hardly any Jains left in Pakistan, where a significant tranche of the mss came from. I also wonder - it is not mentioned in the article - what is the position of Jainism at present in India. Some sources I have looked at suggest it is relatively assimilated to Hinduism? The article refers to them as a 'fragmented community'.

The Wikipedia article does suggest that they have a long tradition of being involved in commerce, banking and trade, and founding an array of philanthropic enterprises, including libraries....

the_shoshanna

More about yesterday, and also about today

I (we) didn't blow off dinner last night, in the end; we went back to that Spanish-Asian fusion place and I had scallops and also some of Geoff's duck gyoza and crispy beef tataki roll, which latter was so good (and food had woken me up enough) that we split a second one. Also a pint of Liberation ale, and I also had some of his dessert. We do like sharing food. (Though I eat several things he doesn't care for, and there's almost nothing he eats that I won't, so I generally get the better of the deal! He did taste a bit of a scallop since he'd never had one before, though he usually detests shellfish, and while he didn't detest it he didn't much like it, either. So they were mine all mine.)

We were eating outside -- well, the restaurant had basically enclosed their entire dining patio in transparent plastic sheeting for warmth and against the possible rain, so it wasn't really "outside" any more, but it was certainly better ventilated than inside, and the only people eating out there were a couple who finished and left soon after we arrived, and a woman who sat down a few tables away and had a couple glasses of wine which going through her various bags. The restaurant had draped cushy blankets over the backs of most of the outside seating, for the use of customers who might be chilly, and also had a couple of outdoor heaters going: very civilized! Plus the seating on the side the woman was on was more like couches and coffee tables than chairs and dining tables; it was clearly meant for socializing more than meals. Anyway, by the time we were finishing dinner and she was finishing her second big glass of wine, our eyes met and we started chatting. She was from Ireland but had lived on Jersey for like forty years; she basically told us her whole life story, but I've forgotten almost all of it (look, I was really tired) except for her saying to me, "I lost my virginity here, darling." Oooookay, enough wine for you, maybe? She was yet another person who, on hearing that we're going to Guernsey for ten days, boggled at the idea. She said that Jersey is, like, ten years behind the UK, and Guernsey is fifteen years behind Jersey, but she didn't specify what scale she was measuring on, and I didn't want to ask... Look, Guernsey has decent bus service and wifi in our hotel, it's modern enough for us. (Also, during dinner I did a bit of phone research and turned up this page https://www.visitguernsey.com/articles/2023/local-beverages-tours-and-tastings-in-guernsey/ which looks like it can keep us entertained for a while 😀)

Then we came home and I slept really well, although I had climate-catastrophe dreams. Kind of like living in a disaster movie.

Today we did our last serious hike on Jersey, from Rozel at pretty much the northeast corner to Mount Orguiel castle and the town of Gorey below it, about halfway down the east coast. It took us maybe three hours? More of the same, basically: footpaths through woodland and small roads through residential areas and great views across the rocky and/or sandy tidal flats across the ocean to France on the horizon; one road was scarcely a car-width wide but was officially two-way and had a couple of tiny pullouts marked "passing place", but if you encountered an oncoming car anywhere else, one of you would be backing up a looooong way! I'm also interested by how it's completely unremarkable to park facing oncoming traffic (on what we in the US and Canada would call the wrong side of the road), and the way that parked cars can legally just take up the traffic lane, so that the two-way road functionally narrows to one lane and cars have to take turns going through. I think a lot of Jersey traffic patterns are only workable because there isn't much traffic in the first place.

We walked past the same enormous breakwater we had gone to with

trepkos, but we didn't go out on it this time. The wind and water were much calmer than they'd been on our previous visit, and Geoff got an ice cream and we sat and watched the bay for a bit. Further down the coast we enjoyed a rocky promontory called Jeffrey's Leap (or Geoffrey's; different authorities give different spellings) where a malefactor named Jeffrey or Geoffrey or Geffray or Geffroy was supposedly condemned to death and thrown off the rocks; the story is that he landed in the water, survived, boasted that he could do it again, jumped, hit the rocks that time, and died. Geoff took a picture of the site marker but did not replicate his namesake's foolhardiness.

And that only gets me halfway through today, but it's six-thirty and we have to go to dinner because we have to get up at crack of dawn tomorrow for the ferry. So I will continue this later...

nnozomi posting in

senzenwomen

Makita Raku was born in 1888 in Kyoto, where her family ran a kimono shop. Gifted in mathematics from an early age, her teacher at the Kyoto Girls’ Higher School recommended that she attend the Women’s Higher Normal School in Tokyo, then the highest educational level possible for a girl, and convinced her reluctant father to let her go. She entered its science department in 1907, where she worked with the mathematician Hayashi Tsuruichi. Graduating in 1911, she went on to the graduate department, until 1913 when Tohoku Imperial University became the first university in Japan to open its doors to women (the university-level schools for women at that time did not bear the name). [Tohoku University made the decision all on its own, and received a notice from the Ministry of Education along the lines of “Who gave you permission to do any such thing,” which the president at the time, Sawayanagi Masataro, ignored.]

Encouraged by her teachers, Raku passed the entrance exam and, along with the chemists Kuroda Chika and Tange Ume, became one of the first women in Japan officially to attend a university. There, studying math with Hayashi, she “slept with a math textbook in [her] arms, and walked around the campus by day solving problems in [her] head, passing by people without even noticing them.” She loved it. Although some of the male students protested the “intrusion” of women, and the new women students had been told “not to make their male classmates aware of them as women” by the college president upon entrance, Raku remembered being on good terms with her classmates, who became like brothers to her. She published several research papers (including “The squares in a regular polygon” and “The convex quadrilateral in which an infinite number of squares may be inscribed,” for readers who unlike me actually have a head for math), and upon her graduation in 1916 became, along with Kuroda Chika, the first woman Bachelor of Science in Japan. Interviewed at the time by a newspaper, she stated her intention to balance family life with research.

Raku went back to the Women’s Higher Normal School to teach, until her marriage to the painter Kanayama Heizo, five years older than she and like her from West Japan, in 1919. “I’ve found that I can only do one thing at a time,” she told the media. “School and home at once are too much.” While giving up teaching, she indicated that she meant to continue with her own research, “since you can do math at home.” In 1933 she published (under her married name) a “Bibliography on the theory of linkages” containing 306 works, which was later cited by the Austrian mathematician Anton Mayer (and continues to appear in citations inside and outside Japan today): “I’ve never been so happy,” Raku wrote to her husband, who was away sketching.

Although that was her last publication, she continued to attend high-level math lectures and read on her own time, while supporting Kanayama’s work as a barely earning artist (his paintings were well regarded but didn’t earn him a living; she sometimes joined him on sketching trips, as well as studying Japanese dance together). After his death in 1964, she spent her last years working to make sure his paintings were preserved and visible in museums. Asked if she regretted giving up her career, she said “I chose a path I enjoyed. My husband’s work was fulfilling for me, and I have no regrets whatsoever.” She died in 1977 at the age of eighty-eight.

Sources
https://web.tohoku.ac.jp/manabi/past-innovation/makita/ (Japanese) Pictures of Raku in university and later with her husband

oursin

Happy birthday,

auroramama and

mummimamma!

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Merprise!

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

Well, this is drawn with the Kakimori nib - as a lot of my new inks are, for convenience, because the fountain pens have all been filled up or will need cleaning before reloading. But we'll get there in the end I'm sure. This is the last of the inks from

rdm 's naughty and unsanctioned raiding of Van Diemen's Ink's moving sale.

It's Red Lightning and it brings a lot to the drawing, and presumably writing table, because you know, I understand that these inks can be written with too, who would've guessed?

Aaaany way, I sketched out the outline of this merperson, and then filled in the back with broad strokes. Sketched in lightly with the scales and hair, and then realized it looked better upside down. So there you go.

castiron

After seeing the movie Project Hail Mary twice¹, I decided to read the book. It's a good hard SF story, but when the only character that sounds like a believable person is your alien character, your characterization and voice need work.

The movie was much better, and if you have to choose between reading the book and watching the movie, I'd recommend the movie. The actors make the characters feel like actual individual people. Also, the movie has Carl. (I'm also glad I saw the movie relatively unspoiled; I'm sure I read one of the big reveals back when the book was published, but I'd forgotten it, so when it happened on screen it hit hard.)

¹ I'd only planned to see it once. We don't go to movies much anymore due to cost, but Youngest specifically requested this one, and I figured okay, this'd be worth seeing in the theater. And then I made the mistake that I as a parent of decades should've known better than to make: I bought tickets for the showing the day after Youngest was going to a slumber party. Yeah. The kid conked out half an hour in and could not be roused even during the fishing scene; it took some work to wake them up after the movie was over. I decided that since I'm the adult and should've known better, I'd take Youngest to see it again on an occasion where they'd stay awake. Fortunately, I liked it enough to see it again, and Youngest declared it peak.

the_shoshanna

Took a sleep aid last night, slept pretty well but not long enough. Today we went to the zoo, saw gorillas and capybaras and poison frogs and ducks and cranes and skinks and many other things, but sadly did not see giant otters or tamarins or a few other things that were apparently hanging out in inaccessible parts of their enclosures. Then we came home and I have been struggling mightily to stay awake because if I nap I'll probably just screw my sleep schedule even worse (and we have to be fully packed and out the door at 6:45 am the day after tomorrow to catch a ferry to Guernsey). We may just blow off dinner. I may fall asleep while typing this.

oursin

Happy birthday,

sibyllevance and

themoontower!

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Spirit of The Maelstrom

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

It's MerMay the 14th of 2026 and here we have a spirit of the maelstrom, drawing down ships to their doom. Or perhaps just to have tea and crumpets with the crew and then send them on their way, who am I to say what spirits of the maelstrom want to do?

I'm using the Van Diemen's Ink Azure Kingfisher Ink, a firmly fond favourite.

oursin

Honestly, have we become entirely blase about walruses frolicking in British territorial waters? Because this was the first I had heard about Magnus, who has been making quite the tour of Scotland for the past month before wafting off to Noroway o'er the faem: Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway.

Goo-goo-ja-{YAWN}.

***

However, much more excitement over Choughs reappear at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall after decades of absence:

Choughs are considered Cornwall’s “national bird” and feature in its coat of arms but vanished as a resident from the far south-west of the UK in the early 1970s, largely because of the decline of their grazed clifftop habitat.
Their disappearance was keenly felt across Cornwall but particularly, perhaps, in and around Tintagel because of the bird’s connections to the legend of King Arthur.

Is this A Sign for Cornish Nationalism? Or does it precurse The Return of Arthur?

***

Cockrow Bridge in Surrey will open in the coming weeks to provide wildlife, including lizards and insects, with the ability to move between fragmented habitats:

The bridge itself is a floating patch of nature reserve; its contents were excavated and transplanted from the heathland on either side. Heather, the tough wiry shrub that defines heathland, is already springing up in purples and yellows above the A3’s roar, supporting the area’s insects and reptiles.
“They can feed here, get cover, they can bask, they can breed,” says Herd. Ground-nesting birds, such as nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers, will also benefit from the newly connected landscape.

***

But alas, Camden Highline, London’s answer to New York park, is scrapped. Though it's not entirely clear whether the completed stretch will remain?

One stretch of the Highline has been completed as part of the Coal Drops Yard development, involving a bridge across the Regent’s canal from the Camley Street nature reserve that transforms into a landscaped walkway popular with office workers and tourists.

even if the full Camden Town to King's Cross plan is defunct?

lassarina

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

the_shoshanna

Another walk, this time partly in rain

I slept badly last night for no particular reason, just woke up at 3:30, managed to doze for a while, but was basically awake from 4:30 on. Bah.

Breakfast this morning was the sauteed veggies again, yay, but our host Elena says she'll make pancakes tomorrow morning. A day or two ago she gave us some pre-made maple(-flavoured?) pancakes from Marks&Spencer, which were fine I guess but certainly didn't feel nourishing; but now she's saying she's going to make pancakes with the bananas that are starting to go spotty brown on the sideboard. I am curious to see what they'll be like...

Today the forecast was for intermittent rain, possibly heavy at times, with a fairly strong wind from the northwest. So we decided to do a walk along the west coast, going from north to south so the wind would be at our backs. We caught a bus to our starting point, L'Etacq, about two-thirds of the way up the west coast (our big walk two days ago started at the northwest tip of the island). The bus ride there was almost an hour; taking the bus incidentally also gives us informal tours around! Also, this bus runs northward up the coast, the same route we planned to walk southward down, meaning that we could pretty easily bail out and catch it to go home at any point if we wanted to; worst-case scenario we'd have to wait an hour for the next one, but we wouldn't have to walk far to get to a stop.

There were ominously dark clouds approaching, so as soon as we got off the bus at its northernmost terminus we put on our rain gear: rain jackets and pants (and gaiters for me, because the rain pants I got in Wales last year are slightly too short and dump rain into my boots otherwise), and rain covers on our packs. This time I have a proper pack cover, unlike last year when I had to carefully dry out my passport and a lot of paper currency post-drenching.

I had downloaded a GPS track again, but we hardly needed it, since all we had to do was keep the ocean close on our right. It was about 11 am and the tide was out, although just beginning to start in again, so we went down onto the currently enormously wide beach and walked along it. It was VERY windy, enough to make me wobble on my feet a few times, and I had to put my wool hat on not only to keep my ears from freezing but also to keep my hair out of my eyes; I didn't think to bring any kind of headband on this trip. But thankfully the wind was indeed at our backs, shoving us along! And it did indeed start to rain after ten or fifteen minutes -- not a heavy downpour, but stinging painfully on my face whenever I turned to look to the side, because the wind was so fierce. Rain gear happily doubles as excellent windbreaking gear; thermal layers under it are definitely nice too.

The beach sand was hard-packed enough that walking wasn't difficult, and the views were hazed but dramatic, clouds and waves breaking on rocks and the vast curve of the bay; that whole coastline looks like a closing parenthesis. There are occasional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century towers and other structures, and also frequent German bunkers; the whole coast was heavily fortified against an expected British assault.

One of the buildings we passed was a small, mostly white-painted old stone house with a few windows and absolutely no indication of mod cons after about 1880; a sign outside indicated that (like the Seymour Tower we walked to across the seabed on our first real day here) it can be rented for overnight stays. However, your £400 rental fee doesn't buy you beds or toilets: https://www.nationaltrust.je/stay-hire/properties-for-hire/le-don-hilton/

(Again, we were walking at low tide, across a beach that was maybe seventy meters wide at that time; Geoff will doubtless post some pictures soon. If you want to see what high tide can look like there, go to the page I just linked, click "view all photos," and look for the one with crashing waves! All the coastal walks come with big warnings about not getting trapped by the incoming tide. Trudie, who led our Seymour Tower walk, told us about the rule of twelves: in the first hour the tide is coming in, a twelfth of it comes in; in the second hour, two twelfths, in the third hour, three twelfths; and then back down three, two, one over the next three hours. Which means that if you notice the tide starting to come in, calculate how fast it's moving, and from there assume you know how much time you have before you're cut off, trapped, and drowned, no you do not; it's soon going to be coming in two and three times as fast as you're currently allowing for.)

We also passed a handful of seaside cafes, ranging from fairly swanky restaurants to parked vans; about half of them were actually open. I stopped in to one of the swankier ones to pretend to consult their menu but really just to use their bathroom 😈. We also saw two intrepid and possibly utterly mad people going into the surf, I assume to in fact surf although they were a little too far away for me to see surfboards. We lost sight of them as soon as they went into the water, so I hope they managed all right! Other than them, it was far too rainy and windy for anyone to be on the beach.

After an hour or so the rain stopped and the sky largely cleared (it was still windy, so the clouds were moving at a good clip!); we took off our rain gear and enjoyed the amazing unhazed views. And after about three hours in all we reached our endpoint, the La Courbière lighthouse at the island's southwest tip. Well, not the lighthouse itself; the tide had by now come in enough that the causeway that connects the lighthouse's rocky perch to the mainland was underwater. But the ice cream van parked at the top of the causeway was also worth visiting!

Ice cream consumed, we walked a little further up the road to where a bus home was due in ten minutes. Perfect timing.

What with having slept badly and then a three-hour hike, I was getting really groggy and sleepy on the bus! We pondered stopping for coffee on our way home from the main bus station, and wandered through the pedestrianized shopping areas eyeing various cafes, but weren't really feeling coffee. We did, however, split a very acceptable cinnamon roll from Marks & Spencer's food hall.

Also we realized that we had wandered pretty near a restaurant that Elena, our host, had recommended to us. She's Latvian, and her daughter married a Kenyan man, and they've recently opened this Kenyan restaurant here! So we went by to check it out; it was about 4:00 pm at that point, and the restaurant was closed for the gap between lunch and dinner, but we admired the menu posted outside, and then through the glass door I saw a woman with a child I recognized as Elena's granddaughter, who was here the other day while we were having breakfast. The woman saw me seeing them and came to the door to ask if we needed anything, and I said "Are you Elena's daughter?" and of course she was, and we made a dinner reservation for six pm. before finally heading back to the guesthouse.

Having collapsed for a while, showered, and collapsed for another while, I was pretty stiff when it was time to slog out again to dinner. But it was worth it! We split an appetizer of "Swahili-style" potato croquettes stuffed with minced beef, with a cloud of parmesan shreds on top and tomato salsa on the side, which were excellent. Then I had grilled cod, which came with various veggies in a pool of a smoky tomato sauce surrounded by a hot green herby sauce, and ugali on the side; Geoff had a goat coconut-milk curry and a tomato and cucumber salad dressed with the same hot green herby sauce. Everything was delicious, although I would like goat more if it weren't always so bony. Then for dessert we split a fantastic hot chewy chocolate brownie and vanilla ice cream, which probably isn't particularly Kenyan except in the sense that Kenyans know a good dessert when they see one 🤤 Oh, and we also shared a Kenyan lager called Tusker, which was very good. The waitress told us that if we ever ordered beer in Kenya it would be served warm unless we specified we wanted it cold, but I don't remember how she taught us to ask for it cold.

And it didn't rain on us either going to or coming back from dinner, hurrah!

Tomorrow is forecast to be "rather cloudy with showers, perhaps heavy or prolonged." Thanks for the specificity, folks. We're planning on going to the Jersey Zoo, which is run by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, of which Geoff is a big fan. ("He was one of my boyhood heroes," he says.) That should give us a fair number of indoor things to see, so we're not outside getting rained on all day. But first I'm going to take a sleep aid tonight, and we'll probably take it easy tomorrow. On top of three hours of actual hiking today, Geoff reminded me that we did more than an hour of just going back and forth through town.

For now, we are curled up in our warm room, blogging. And as soon as I post this, it's time to relax with a Heated Rivalry story 🏒🍆😍

oursin

What I read

Finished Platform Decay

Read Jonathan Coe, Bournville (2022), which was a Kobo deal, and I have been vaguely interested in reading something by him since coming across his really rather good intro to that archetypal Sad Girl Novel, Dusty Answer. However, was rather meh and tempted at points to give up on this family saga from VE Day to Covid told as vignettes at various Memorable Dates in History of C20th Britain.

There was a certain amount of picking things up and reading a bit and thinking, no, at least, not now, if ever.

Re-read Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward, #2) (2025), as there is another one forthcoming shortly.

Kobo deals turned up a new Simon R Green, For Better or Murder (Holy Terrors Mystery #4), alas, this was pretty much phoning it in.

Muriel Spark, The Hothouse by the East River (1973), which is a very very weird novella, absurdist, grotesque, is it about something that happened when they were working for Secret Organisation with German POWs in War and is that why the unheimlich frisson (turns out, no).

After that I just wanted the perhaps too simple and predictable pleasures of Robert B Parker, Silent Night (Spenser #41.5) (2013, unfinished at his death, completed by his agent Helen Brann).

On the go

Persuasion, which I began somewhat behindhand of the daily chapter group read on bluesky.

Up next

Well, there's that new Literary Review, but apart from that.

Am being irked by certain writers whose new ebooks are pretty 2x or more what they used to be. (I might have gone for this I suppose had I not been a bit underwhelmed by some recent offerings.)

leecetheartist posting in

drawesome

Title: Getting a Wriggle On

Artist: leecetheartist

Rating: G

Fandom: n/a

Characters/Pairings: n/a

Content Notes:

A pretty odd one for today's MerMay. I was thinking about molluscs and some of those odd nudibranch species - colourful sea slugs and the like, and this guy developed. Drawn with the Kakimori steel nib, and one of the Van Diemen's ink moving day specials, Persian Princess. It is very sparkly.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Eric: I strongly dislike tattoos, as does everyone in my immediate family. I can't fathom why anybody would want to ruin their skin and risk infections. I was hoping this fad would die and fade away like indoor smoking in a restaurant.

I can hardly bear to eat out anymore at just the sickening thought that someone with tattoos would be cooking, preparing or serving the food and taking out all the enjoyment for me. I know it's a personal choice, but why would anyone be proud to show them off like a really ugly piece of art on an ugly or aging body? Beats me. I don’t know what to do about this.

– Ink Free

( Read more... )

oursin

Happy birthday,

caulkhead!

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Eric: When my family's children were young, they mostly traveled the 200 miles to visit for holidays. Now the children are older, and have jobs, friends et cetera. The parents now seem to expect us to do the traveling. We are in our late 70s, and this is getting harder to do.

The change in beds, food, schedules and houses put a toll on our physical body that takes days to recover. This seems hard for them to understand as they haven’t reached this stage.

We now are faced with missing holidays with them to comply with their demands. I have faced the possibility of loneliness that older people seemingly endure nowadays. Is there an answer to this problem or must I endure pain and trauma to see family in older age?

– Sad, Lonely and In Pain

( Read more... )

the_shoshanna

a less physically but more emotionally exhausting day

We started the day with a non-overwhelming breakfast! Just a bunch of veggies sauteed up together, no eggs no bacon no beans no toast (but yes coffee, and her coffee could punch Superman through a wall). We were delighted! Also, when we asked where we could find a laundromat to wash some clothes, she let us use her machine. So Geoff put a load through and hung it to dry before we left for the day; I had surreptitiously been doing some sink laundry and also I don't sweat the way he does, but I too am glad to have been able to properly wash some things. (Still gotta sink-wash a bra this evening, though; I've had too many destroyed by machines to trust one I don't know.)

Then we headed out to the bus station to catch a bus to the Hamptonne Country Life Museum https://www.jerseyheritage.org/visit/places-to-visit/hamptonne-country-life-museum/ . This was one of the things I specifically wanted to see while we're here, but sadly I was a bit disappointed. There was no living-history reenactor guide working today (the guy at the entry selling tickets said she would have been there but she had to go to a funeral, so I'm not going to complain), and the guide who took us around spent more time talking about what it was like to work there, and less about what it would have been like to live there in the various eras it represented (13th, 17th, and 19th centuries), than I was hoping for. (Honestly, a good episode of Historical Farm would have given me more -- thanks for putting me on to that show,

dorinda!) Still, it was interesting to poke around and look at things, and Geoff enjoyed it more than I did, which was good because I was the one who really wanted to go and if he'd been really disappointed I'd probably have felt guilty.

We did see a nineteenth-century apple crusher (which I immediately recognized thanks to Historical Farms!) and got to taste some of the cider they produce there. It was just fermented juice, no added sugar or rum or any of the other things that might be added to improve the taste, and it was like drinking paint thinner, I couldn't even finish my small cup. The guide said it was probably about 5% alcohol, but it felt stronger. So maybe it's a good thing I couldn't finish it!

Interestingly, the average age of the people visiting the museum seemed to hover around 70 that day. "School must be in session," I said to myself.

We finished up in the cafe, where we split an unexciting packaged sausage roll and a jacket potato with tuna mayo and sweetcorn. I don't know if the potato was a local Jersey potato, but it at least was very good! This whole concept of baked potatoes with stuff on them was something entirely unknown to me until a visit to Edinburgh years ago, when we got a number of out-and-about meals from a jacket potato shop that would put any of dozens of salads or sauces or meats or whatnots on them; I remember having to work hard to keep them from also plopping a giant knob of butter inside the potato as a matter of course. I mean, a buttered baked potato is delicious, but if you're topping your potato with a tomato-cucumber salad tossed in a vinaigrette, two tablespoons of butter really does not improve the experience. Anyway, I always think of that place when I have a jacket potato topped with something unusual to me, such as, for instance, tuna mayo with sweetcorn.

The bus we took to the museum was the same line we took home yesterday afternoon and it had the electronic announcement screen, but it wasn't on so I had to track us with my phone again to know when to get off. Ah, well. We had a nice five-minute walk through houses and farms from the bus stop to the museum site, and when we left to go back to the bus stop, the guy in the ticket office told us that if, once we got to the street the bus ran down, we went the other way from the bus stop we would come to an interesting old dovecote. We did walk that way for a bit, but didn't see anything promising, so we turned around and went up to the bus stop.

Rather than taking it all the way back into the capital city, though, we went only three stops (again tracking progress on my phone, for lack of any non-tech way to know where we were or which stop was ours), got off, and walked about fifteen minutes through more houses and potato fields and mildly wooded areas to get to the Jersey War Tunnels https://www.jerseywartunnels.com/.

The occupying German armed forces had this big tunnel complex built, largely but not entirely by forced labor and slave labor, originally as an ammunition store and barracks, later as a potential hospital in case of an Allied assault on the island(s). Now it's been turned into a really excellent museum of the occupation. When we bought our admission tickets we were also given replica ID cards, establishing each of us as an actual Jerseyite whose story we could discover as we went through the exhibits. (I was given the identity of a middle-aged Jewish woman who, when she was arrested a few years into the occupation, managed to escape her guards and flee to someone who hid her until the war ended.)

We made our way through the tunnels, each of which has been set up as a gallery documenting a different aspect of the occupation or part of the war, in chronological order: from the first decision that the islands wouldn't be defended, to the arrival of the Nazi forces, the gradual tightening of restrictions and rations, various people's attempts at resistance, escape, and sometimes collaboration, the arrival of a Red Cross aid ship just as the food situation got desperate, the experience of watching D-Day (remember, you can see France from here!) while still not being freed and while the local German commander was maintaining he would hold fast, until the final surrender and the arrival of the UK troops who raised the Union Jack again, as we saw reenacted a few days ago.

One particularly effective device was life-size human figures with video screens for their heads showing recordings of actors, so that you could imagine actually meeting and talking to the person who was depicted speaking to you. Here's a German soldier, fluent in English, who has bought your child an ice cream; do you let your child take it? Here's another who wants to hire you to do his washing, and you need money desperately; do you take the job? Here's a farm woman talking about food rationing, and how lucky her family is to have some livestock and chickens -- but of course the German authorities closely watch everything, including recording every piglet born, and god help you if you're caught hiding one. Here's a starving Russian slave worker who has escaped his barracks and stolen some carrots from your field; what do you do?

One informational signboard talked about collaborators, including women who went with German soldiers. It did acknowledge that, aside from the fact that the soldiers might be young, handsome, and -- at least in the early years -- friendly and congenial, being friendly with them might also mean extra food and security for the woman (and her family), but no explicit link was drawn between that signboard (which also explained the derogatory term "jerrybags" for such women) and a later one that told the story of a young woman who was "assaulted" (details unspecified but clearly sexual) by a German soldier while she was serving him in a restaurant, slapped him, and was promptly shipped to a German prison camp, where she died. Nor was a comparison made between "jerrybags" and the local workers who took jobs with the occupying forces to help build the tunnel complex. It all reminded me of the way that women's sexual purity so often stands in for and symbolizes all kinds of morality. Why is a woman who accedes to a soldier's demands and blandishments more of a collaborator than a man who takes a job furthering the enemy's projects?

On another note: as we approached the end of the war, plaques on the wall announced various milestones. I was surprised at the strength of my desire to spit upon seeing the one marking Hitler's suicide.

Anyway, the whole thing was A Lot, and very well done.

Eventually we emerged from underground and caught the bus home again. Once again we stopped on our way home from the bus station for an early dinner, rather than go home and then have to leave again; we found a nice sort of Spanish-Asian fusion place on one of the squares we walked through that had pleasant outdoor seating. (For COVID-cautious reasons we prefer to eat outside when we can; we're also masking on the buses and in other indoor public spaces. We haven't seen a single other person masking, but no one seems to give us the stink-eye about it, except possibly for one person on the bus the other day who seemed not to want to sit next to me.) Geoff had delicious lasagna that came with yet more delicious chips, and I, having not yet had any seafood other than some salmon at the arts centre cafe, had a sizzling plate of scallops and veggies in a vaguely oyster-sauce kind of sauce? Also a nice big glass of merlot, and Geoff had a pint of a Spanish beer called Madri, which he liked but I did not care for. And then back to the guesthouse and blogging!

One thing that has both startled and amused me is that several people (including the ticket guy at the Hamptonne museum), on hearing that we're planning to go from Jersey to spend ten days in Guernsey, have reacted with "Ten days on Guernsey?" in a very what-the-hell-would-you-do-that-for? tone of voice. I'm assuming that this is an expression of inter-island rivalry and not a real indication that we'll be bored out of our minds 😂 I mean, we did accumulate a list of things we might want to see there, and hikes we might want to do, and also we'll probably take a day trip to Herm.

But before then we still have three days here on Jersey to fill! It's likely to rain tomorrow and Thursday, so maybe we won't do another big hike, but we would like to see the Jersey Zoo...but for now, it's oh-so-exciting hand laundry for me, and curling up with some internet.

oursin

(Mix and shake that metaphor and pour it over ice and serve it up with a wee paper umbrella!)

Somebody today on Another Site was mourning the Old Days on LJ which made me think of:

All the various Old Days in my life on and offline which were by their nature transient -

- but that transient didn't mean that they didn't have lasting effects/influence.

(I will spare dr rdrz accounts of various short-lived initiatives I encountered among the archives and in the course of Mi Researchez which nonetheless echoed down the years.)

Also that even had things not fallen out the way things did with LJ (hiss, boo, etc) by now it would almost certainly not be the same experience as it was in the 00s - people would have come, people would have gone, our interests and energies would have changed....

So we would probably be nostalgically regetting the glory days before [whenever].

Watch on YouTube

katiedid717 posting in

agonyaunt

I am a social person. But increasingly, I have little time to socialize. I have two young children and a demanding job. Still, some friends text me frequently, even though I reply concisely and keep refusing their kind invitations. Should I be firmer — maybe start ignoring texts?
BUSY MOM

I once had a boss who, like you, was a busy working mother. She taught me a valuable lesson for managing social interactions on text and email: Do not become hostage to your phone or feel compelled to respond to every message as it arrives. Once or twice a day, spend 15 or 20 minutes responding to all of them — and don’t worry about them again until the next time. It beats telling friends to stop texting.

EDIT: LW provided more info in the comments

I am Busy Mom, LW #4. I just want to clarify something.

In my email to Philip, I used the word "acquaintances," not "friend." The texts I am referring to are from former coworkers, parents of my kids' old friends who now attend different schools, etc. - people I really don't know very well.

I know I should count my blessings, and I do appreciate that people are reaching out, but I truly feel overwhelmed by the number of texts I get from these acquaintances. There are a few former co-workers who text me all the time just to chat and "stay in touch," and I truly do not have as much time for them as they have for me. I'm genuinely wondering if it's better to "ghost" them and stop replying, or to say I don't have the capacity right now.

I'm not sure if other young(ish) parents can relate, but parenting right now feels like a constant barrage of communications - medical appointment reminders, school and after-school emails, parent chat groups, parent-teacher meeting updates, mom WhatsApp groups, neighborhood Signal chats, school log-in systems with updates from teachers, I am completely and utterly overwhelmed with information overload. I get so much textual messaging across so many different platforms, it honestly stresses me out, and I can't keep track of everything.

Certain questions linger

Last full day on Jersey (until we leave)!

Makita Raku (1888-1977)

(no subject)

MerMay The Fifteenth

recent reading: Project Hail Mary

I am so so so sleepy

(no subject)

MerMay The Fourteenth

Jaded with walruses

What Are You Playing Wednesday

So sleeeeeepy

Wednesday got caught in a pelting hailstorm

MerMay The Thirteenth

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

a somewhat less ambitious day

But the neiges d'antan melt and stir dull roots with spring rain

Social Q's: One Day, It May Be a Yes

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May 2026

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