Jessica Smith

@thedaybooks

🏳️‍🌈Poet, Mother, Southerner 📜Archives, Material Media Studies, American Poetry, Artists’ Books 🎓MA, MLS, MAE, MFA, ABD PhD (C&IS) 👩🏼‍🏫Teach: Typography, Games, Poetry, Gender Studies 🌐 🤐Posts don’t reflect my institutions

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Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· 16d

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Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· 18d

This books is really interesting. The sheer volume of volumes that were lost, stolen, burned, saved, and redirected during wwii is mind-blowing. I moved a library of 14,000 volumes once. I didn’t even have to re-catalog them. Imagine that but times 1,000 and you gotta catalog it all.

The cover of

THE
BOOK THIEVES
THE NAZI LOOTING OF EUROPE'S LIBRARIES AND THE RACE TO RETURN
A LITERARY INHERITANCE
By Anders
RYDELL

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· 20d

I told my son to buy a watermelon and he came back with a 27 toddler

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· 23d

Anyway this is a surprisingly interesting book and a quick read

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 12

Started a few books but landed on this one, which has a good audiobook reader and is interesting, if niche

The cover of “when the Irish invaded Canada” by Christopher Klein

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 8

Can anyone tell me more about this carved wooden (?) wallpaper in the room off the Esso Great Hall at the Toronto hockey museum? Any museum curators or interior design historians on here?

A close up of intricately carved wooden wallpaper panels with an oak leaf (?) theme

Slightly further off shot of the same wallpaper with a bit brighter lighting

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 7

The donut game in Evansville is on point

A half dozen donuts from Parlor donuts in Evansville IN; clockwise maple bacon, French toast, blueberry, strawberry shortcake, coconut (filled), lemon. The lemon was amazing

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 7

3300 miles later and we’re almost home (one more day of driving); I already miss them

From the top, panoramic views of the Great Lakes: Erie, Ontario, Superior, Huron, Michigan

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 5

We drive through a storm of something I assumed was black flies but it was whatever these little orange dudes are. Sorry little orange dudes!

Grill of a car covered in orange butterfly parts

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 4

We visited the Toronto Islands, which I’ve never been to and which were beautiful and felt like a different world. I got to see my friend and teacher @peacehearty.bsky.social .

A sailboat on Lake Ontario with a seagull in the foreground and no hint of being within spitting distance of a major city

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jul 4

Toronto popping up in my life at random intervals

A woman standing in front of the Toronto skyline

Little boats in a traffic jam in front of the Toronto skyline

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 29

I had this insanely beautiful little shale cove all to myself this morning (Lake Erie)

A panoramic photo of Lake Erie, which is very clear Crystal Blue, a bright blue sky with low hazy clouds far away, each side of the photo shows shale walls topped with trees

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 29

If you live near Cleveland or Buffalo, or in between, and you haven’t yet been to Headlands Dunes State Park, it is freeeee and gorgeous

Sand-pebble beach at Headlands Dunes state park — the sand is tan and the water is blue and the sky is light blue and cloudless

The grassy dunes at Headlands Dunes state park, bifurcated by a wooden walkway

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 26

I like this comparison in a thread about why college students even bother to go to/pay for college if they’re just going to use AI the whole time

From @BranchLatter4294 on Reddit:
It's like someone buying an expensive TV, then throwing the TV out on the curb and keeping the box. So many students are paying a lot for college, then throwing away the actual education.

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 21

The way this sentence is written and the article’s photo made me think bearpeople encounters (we are encountering bearpeople due to declining populations? This is the next evolutionary step?), not bears and people encountering each other 😂

A vintage cover of Marian Engel’s BEAR, featuring a scantily clad woman being embraced from behind by a bear who kind of looks like a cat

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 21

I feel like there was something in the water here, if you will. Viral replacement for Pantone color of the year: phthalo green Sherwin Williams’s “loneliest color” of the year: “offbeat” green Reflecting pool: American flag blue

A post that says, “historical.anachronism
i don't give a shit what pantone says, my color of the year is phthalo green,” with a color sample of a super saturated dark blueish background green

From USA Today, a photo of the reflecting pool that is a slimey green color almost neon, but also almost the “offbeat green” from Sherwin Williams

From USA Today, a different angle of the reflecting pool shows various shades of green from Offbeat to Phthalo

An ad for “the loneliest color” of the year from Sherwin Williams, “offbeat green,” which is the color of split pea soup if you used old canned peas

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 21

Post one (1) photo of a painting that you took with your very own hands. This is a detail from Clara Weaver Parrish’s “Night.” I thought she did a really good job on the hands. (Sorry for the reflection)

An older white woman’s hands leaf through a book that has fabric-like consistency while she looks away from the book

Night
About 1896
Pastel on paper
Clara Weaver Parrish
Born Dallas County, Alabama 1861
Died New York City, New York 1925
With her fingers tucked into the pages of a book, an elderly woman looks up as if lost in thought. The detailed depiction of her skin through a range of subtly blended colors demonstrates Clara Weaver Parrish's skill in using pastels. Raised in Selma, Parrish spent her career in Alabama, New York, and Paris.
Parrish drew inspiration from Art Nouveau, a style influenced by natural forms as well as Japanese art. The figure in this work sits in front of what is likely a Japanese screen decorated with flowers and birds. The same screen is seen in a photograph of Parrish from around 1900.
Birmingham Museum of Art

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 21

Advertise your BlueSky account with a Simpsons image

Lisa Simpson eagerly considers a wrapped gift, saying, “could it be some kind of book?”

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 18

TIL about the CEBL and I’ve chosen the Winnipeg Sea Bears as my team b/c their mascot is the cutest, although due to my personal history I should probably be for the Niagara River Lions. How cute is this logo though?

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 14

“Marking Time,” a poem by Christopher Gilbert (1984)

Jogging out in the morning
against the few high clouds the blue
sky is a memory like a sheer silk fabric
held so far back I can't see through it
when I breathe the new air my body
is young all over, a smell reminds
how the two pear trees are white
again, their flowers ephemeral
as the words I recite to pass time
in repetitious wheezed breath-
squirrels, blue jays, downed trees for markers
to say how far I've gone, to be used
in their brief names to crowd my mind
with anything I can count on.
Today as I struggle against the wind
up the hill I watch a small butterfly
wavering with spread wings, and remember
dreaming of my sister who called
last night when I was sleeping, and how
twenty years ago she gave me from the held darkness of her brown palms
a black butterfly with yellow specks.
What it was she said is immaterial,
there is the gesture though:
and watching a bird overhead fly
past the disk of sun, there is a flaring shadow fanned down from above
that flickers like a rustled page
with a poem on it; it is that quick
flute darkness of a sister's voice
a brother will hear in his heart
when he's breathing deep enough.

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 13

I’ve been keeping a diary since 1987(?) … mostly by hand, but since ~2007 I’ve also kept one on the computer. This is what part of it looks like printed out. (From Lulu.com) — I can’t afford to print all of it at once. Each of these books is around 600pgs.

Stack of white books with blue edges, 8” tall, labeled with diary years 2007-2016.

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 11

My cats saved me from what I assume is a baby garter snake

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 9

This is from one of her 9th grade biology lab reports (she saved all of them and they are all intense)

A very detailed lab drawing of a crayfish

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 8

Two good nonfiction audiobooks I’m reading; library & info studies people will see the connection

A Mind at Play
How Claude Shannon
invented the
Information Age
JIMMY SONI
ROB GOODMAN
READ BY JONATHAN YEN

WOMEN'S WORK THE FIRST 20,000 YEARS
Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
ELIZABETH WAYLAND BARBER
READ BY DONNA POSTEL

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 8

That’s not her name btw. I stg Siri is biased against Southerners.

The transcript of a voice message reads, “Hey, this is Lasagna NoHow. I’m running…”

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 8

A picture of me with my aunt that I had never seen before

2/3 of the photo is of a wooden china cabinet, but in front of the cabinet there’s an adult brunette woman leaning toward a child and the child is cracking up

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 6

A friend of mine from graduate school in Buffalo rescues dogs in MS (and is a professor) and she and her crew found a litter of puppies in a cage in a ditch filling with water during a thunderstorm. I wasn't looking for a dog, but Lane's face reminded me of a GSD I had as a child (Duchess)

A very sympathetic-looking tiny black and tan puppy

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 6

My dog recently died, and I would like to please hear your story about your favorite pet who has died -- something good you remember about them or something you did to mourn them that helped you. Tell me about them. This is Lane. She was a lab/GSD mix(?) Rescued by Small Mercies in Starkville, MS

A very clearly black and tan dog, with her tongue out, sitting on a wooden deck.

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 5

I have no idea where time goes after midnight.

Ursula K. LeGuin's writing schedule, which is as follows:
5:30 a.m.—wake up and lie there and think.
6:15 a.m.—get up and eat breakfast (lots).
7:15 a.m.—get to work writing, writing, writing.
Noon-lunch.
1:00-3:00 p.m.—reading, music.
3:00-5:00 p.m.—correspondence, maybe house cleaning.
5:00-8:00 p.m.—make dinner and eat it.
After 8:00 p.m.—I tend to be very stupid and we won't talk about this.

Jessica Smith@thedaybooks· Jun 4