Amanda French
@amandafrench
PhD in English Lit. Villanelle = poetic form, not serial killer. Currently @ror.org at @crossref.bsky.social. Formerly COVID Tracking Project and THATCamp. Views my own. Folk, Americana, roots, oldtime, bluegrass.
This is a cat check point. Relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone #ProofOfCat
Nah, I’d have to buy them, whereas I already had Ziploc bags. I did buy a special plastic box to hold all my spools of thread recently, though. That too entailed a lot of disentangling and was incredibly satisfying
Also today on a whim I untangled the enormous knot of cables in the Electronics Drawer and sorted them into plastic bags and labeled them. Look on my works ye mighty and despair
This is a judge who knows what “anaphora” means. She might have learned it from someone who was a @modernlanguage.bsky.social member.
The local #NoKings protests are top of the scroll in the Raleigh News and Observer, which is good, and the same “thousands of people” phrase is used. My first thought on seeing it was that “tens of thousands” would probably be more accurate, and that’s just for one single major metro area.
There were (and still are!) far more people at #NoKings in suburban Cary, NC than I expected. People lining the street on both sides for a solid mile, I’d say.
Got my first print copy of @theonion.com and one of my favorite bits is lower-case @jstor.bsky.social as a fake band name
Nice water tower venue for @tressiemcphd.bsky.social passionately defending libraries as third spaces at Biscuits and Banjos in Durham. #biscuitsandbanjos
The spice cookies came out fantastic. Nice and spicy. I used butter (of course) and also went rogue and did half dark Karo and half molasses. This recipe is pretty similar to the Mark Bittman molasses spice cookie recipe I was going to use before I came across this one.
I’ve wound up keeping about 1/3 of Mama’s recipes from the rusted metal index card box: mainly things I remember eating and interesting Things like these two. Am now going to make these spice cookies because I was going to make some today anyway. (The “or butter” is my own addition from today.)
More evidence of Mama collecting recipes at work. This hamburger roll (??) recipe must be from the late 70s when she was working in social services
Here I was intending to be ruthless about clearing out my mother’s mess of a recipe box, just as I did with so many of her things after she died, but then I come across things like this 1989 purple-inked printout of an electronic message from Mama’s work terminal with a recipe for Broccoli Salad.
Grateful for my every-Sunday bluegrass jam at Bond Brothers Eastside — great musicians and great friends
This thing is a beast and had been overgrown for a long time. I pruned it some earlier in the year, too. About 3/4 of this large brush pile is from this dang arbor.
I pruned my muscadine grape arbor today. Not really correctly, mind you, since it’s too early in the winter and also I can’t figure out how to safely prune the top even with a ladder. But maybe this will keep it somewhat in check next year. I also restaked it so it won’t fall over, I hope.
Every year Hank Smith does a live version of Alice’s Restaurant and it’s one of my favorite things ever. When I first heard it was stunned: we listened to that song every Thanksgiving when I was growing up and I ever ever expected to hear it live. This year the 1969 movie was on silently too.
Either this is my neighbor’s clever recycling trick for marking where they’ve planted things in their garden or it’s an avant-garde Halloween display depicting hungry corpses beginning to emerge from their graves
Half a head of cabbage, a habanero pepper, and a small red onion sautéed in butter. YUM.
Most people would probably post Exile in Guyville but I came to Liz Phair late so to me this is the perfect one
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but some subset of cats love hammocks. Whenever I hang out in my hammock Willa always comes and joins me. Perfect fall day for hammock hanging.
Second crop of peppers from my container plants. Think I’ll get a few more before the year is out.