Ellen Hokanson

@ellenhokanson

She/her. Writing a #HistoricalNovel about cross-cultural friendship and misunderstanding in 1824 London. Alt text: A white woman on a seashore. A 1950s photo of a mom reading a book (unseen) to 4, 2, and 6-year-old kids.

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Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 1

Happy June, a few hours later

A lawn is dotted with hail. Judging from the photographer’s toes at the edge of the photo, the larger hailstones are golf ball sized.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 1

Happy June!

A stone path through a garden where an iron butterfly on a stake hovers over a patch of Penstemons with heartbreak-blue flowers.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Apr 8

Happy Spring, Bluesky.

A front yard is scattered with blooming daffodils in clumps of yellow or white. All around are grape hyacinths blooming purplish-blue among grassy leaves.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Apr 2

Daffodils! Those were the early ones. Now they’re mostly done.

A xeric garden in Denver is blooming with daffodils (both yellow and white) and blue grape hyacinths.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Mar 3

A clump of small daffodils, one about to open.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Mar 3

Map of most of Montana has the entire western side shaded red, the 1st Congressional District.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Mar 2

A loaf of bread sits on a cutting board with one slice on the board.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Dec 13

Mine was Darby O’Gill (later …and the Little People), a Disney horror movie for kids with a banshee in it. I spent a lot of it on the sticky theater floor between the knees of my big brother. I was six. Early clue to my autism.

Wikipedia article title says Darby O’Gill and the Little People. The illustration appears to be from a theater poster and it’s titled: A touch o’Blarney… a heap o’Magic and A LOAD OF LAUGHTER!
There’s no hint that this is a horror movie.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Dec 4

Good morning, Denver!

A view from an upstairs window in an old house in an old neighborhood, looking over a garage and backyard fence to the rooftops and trees across the alley. Every twig is coated with snow and the sky is heartbreaker blue.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Dec 2

The thing about this graph is how it connects to our own lives. For example, my grandmother was the only one of six children to survive to the age of two.

A scatter plot with a best-fit line. The dots are child mortality rates for various countries and societies over time. The average mortality rate across them was 48%. It plummeted in the 20th century to 4%.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Nov 22

What on earth is Gmail doing here? Slapping a Phishing warning on the daily news analysis columns of historian Heather Cox Richardson! Don’t click those links to primary sources she always provides! Someone’s reporting, targeting her loud mouth.

Screenshot of my most recent email from historian Heather Cox Richardson (a free letter analyzing the current situation in US politics), with a bright red warning box over it from Gmail. The text in the box says “This message might be dangerous. Many people marked similar messages as phishing scams, so this might contain unsafe content. Avoid clicking links, downloading attachments, or replying with personal information.” Then there’s a toggle: Report dangerous /Looks safe.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Oct 21

Lucky enough to marry someone who’ll do a tedious task to make your beloved dining room a little less dinged-up by its long life.

The not-square corner of a room with a curved wall painted a pale golden color. Sunshine comes in a tall white-painted window, multi-paned in the Craftsman style. There’s a step stool, a taller oak stool, a piece of sandpaper on the windowsill, a whole lot of white patches up both sides of the corner line, and more patch marks on the ceiling.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Oct 21

The last half cucumber of a great cucumber season. Sweet in more ways than one.

A half cucumber, peel still on, awaits its fate on a cutting board.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Sep 23

New book came in the mail. 💙

The title page of an open book. The title is 107 Days. The author, Kamala Harris, has signed her name elegantly in blue ink.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Sep 23

Sharing my captured advice

A bluesky member says “Don’t use StickerMule. They do great work but the owner is MAGA. Instead use StickerGiant.” He shares the website, www.stickergiant.com.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Aug 10

A map of the 2024 Texas presidential election results by county, showing the whole state red except the major cities and areas in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley, which voted blue.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Aug 5

Hawaiian pidgin is using definition three. The Brits have definition one in mind.

A screenshot from the Merriam Webster dictionary shows three definitions for bugger as a noun.
1 is sodomite.
3 is a small or annoying thing.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Aug 1

One more! As she walked the aisle cleared through the crowd, a girl dropped her program. Senator Harris picked it up and returned itqwith a happy laugh that must’ve made the embarrassed girl feel fine. August 2019, Denver All three photos by Ellen Hokanson

Third in a series. Gym and crowd described in Alt Text for the first image.
In this photo, Senator Harris is very close, laughing.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Aug 1

Denver, August 2019

Another photo of Senator Kamala Harris in Denver in August 2019. See prior photo for full description. In this photo she is laughing and clapping.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Aug 1

Denver 2019

A relatively close up photo of Senator Kamala Harris speaking in Denver in August 2019. She wears a white blazer with slacks. Behind her are about 10 layers of bleachers full of people (Denver VIPs) and in the foreground are the tops of a few diverse heads. The wall is painted with of other high schools that compete against Manual High School, whose gym this is. In this photo, her expression is solemn.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jul 30

Thanks. In Hilo, a town built on a mountainside with a coastal plain, the evacuation map looked like this an hour or so ago:

Shot of a news screen showing a map colored pink along most coastal edges of Hilo, HI. Pink indicates a tsunami evacuation zone.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jul 28

I’m real like the Velveteen Rabbit! Wait until my relatives see this!

A screenshot of the top of historian Heather Cox Richardson’s bluesky page, with the words “Follows you” circled in yellow highlighter and followed with an exclamation point.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jul 16

I found a relevant recent message from him.

Text message to me (the aspiring author boasting of my progress):
Your timing is most propitious, for I have the means to give you a vicarious good day. 14 years after I closed my store a woman just said didn’t you used to own the bookstore over there? Well…my boyfriend says that guy changed my life, I never knew what a joy reading could be till he steered me to a couple books. It’s why I’ve been reading ever since.
Now THAT will make a man’s day, and hopefully his sister’s too.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 29

A guy with a throbbing pickup paused to ask old epidemiologist husband what the flag meant. OEH: Pride in LGBTQ folks. TPG: Is it specific to trans people? OEH: Nope. Pride in everybody. TPG: Okay. (Drives away.)

Morning sun shines on a flower garden where an old man in a ballcap bends over, working. In the background, a string of little flags in a spectrum of colors hangs over an iron glider bench in a lattice-backed arbor. Behind the fence is a brick house. In the foreground, a large pride flag hangs over the flowers. It’s a rainbow flag with the triangular insert in stripes of black, brown, pale blue, and pale pink with a triangle of white. (Unseen is an equally large US flag mounted on the other corner of the porch.)

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 12

I did some serious momming for myself on my birthday. Baked the cake and it tasted right.

A woman with long white hair is smiling over a layer cake with white frosting and lit candles that say 72.

A slice of layer cake on a yellow plate. It’s two layers of yellow cake with a thick layer of lime filling in between. The frosting is buttercream but I ran out so the middle is lime curd. Is your mouth watering yet?

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 10

As you say, boomers remember My Lai, with strong emotions. Courts treated the scapegoat for the massacre as a murderer, initially sentencing him to life in prison. From Wikipedia:

YS District Court for the Middle District of Georgia granted him a new trial, but that ruling was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His initial life sentence having been modified to a term of 20 years and then further reduced to ten, Calley ultimately served three years of house arrest for the murders.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· Jun 7

Hey, it’s summer

The side of a old gray house is lined with blue-flowered catmint, a tumble of deep red roses and a tall Black Lace elderberry bush with maroon leaves and pale pink flowers. In the background is a wooden fence with an arched gate.

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· May 21

Tell us more about how Harris’s failure belongs to her and the party, not us white Americans. Be sure to explain how it relates to the data here.

Two graphs show the voting performance of Black and White Americans in presidential elections since 1960. Harris got 42% of the white vote, better than any recent candidate except Obama 2008 (43%).

Ellen Hokanson@ellenhokanson· May 16

My firstborn son, the one who followed his heart to New Orleans, is almost middle-aged! I’m far away so I’m grateful to his beautiful co-worker for this.