birthday week photo no. 2: baby anna sleeps like a cat

Mark and Anna take a nap (circa April 1981)

Every time I look at this picture, something about the posture of baby me reminds me of our cat Geraldine. Something about the way my arms are all out in front of me on Dad's belly (although with the cat it would be her favorite wool blanket). Since I was five weeks early I had very little body fat; note my frighteningly skeletal fingers. Most of the bulk you see in under the onesie is actually the infant diapers, which covered me from butt to armpit. Thankfully, I quickly started growing ... and didn't really stop for the next eighteen years!

happy birthday mom!

Today is my mother's birthday. Happy birthday Mom!


Anna Jane and Janet Ann (circa April 1981)

 Thirty years ago on this day, when my mother Janet celebrated her 31st birthday she was still pregnant with me. Five days later, I got tired of waiting and decided to make my entrance into the world, a full five weeks before my anticipated due date. (I always did like to get ahead of myself).

As a special birthday request this year, I asked my mother to pick out some of her favorite photographs from my early childhood years to be scanned and posted on my blog during "birthday week." So between now and next Friday, look forward to some incredibly dated and fun family photography! (Why else were blogs invented by for embrassing onesself in public, yes?)

Meanwhile, wish my awesome mother many happy returns of the day and another 61 years of kick-ass living, learning and being part of this wacky and wonderful family she helped create.

in love with new blogs: born this way

Okay. I don't know about you folks, but this week has really knocked me back a few paces in one way or another. Can't believe it's only Thursday. Looking forward to the weekend. But! In the meantime, what does one do to de-stress?

Well, there are lots of options, but the one I'm going to share here is my new favorite blog: Born This Way!

In its own words, Born This Way! is "A photo/essay project for gay adults (of all genders) to submit childhood pictures and stories (roughly ages 2 to 12), reflecting memories & early beginnings of their innate LGBTQ selves."

Heather, age 1

Quite simply: How could you not become addicted to a blog devoted to posting adorable pictures of queer folks when they were children, alongside stories of their early memories of growing up not-quite-straight? Sometimes the snippets of life are hard, sometimes they're heartening. I know not everyone will agree with me, but I find every single one of the photographs completely compelling -- no matter how awkward they might be, particularly when read alongside stories of childhood marginalization. I think the thing I love most about them is that, almost by default, every single child in these photographs has grown into a self-possessed adult who believes in themselves enough to submit their story to this blog. They are, by definition, all resilient survivors.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures and memories from the last couple of weeks' worth of posts.



Heather, age 1 (Guam, USA)



"I first learned that openly admiring girls was 'wrong' when I was 4, and saw an episode of 'Beverly Hills 90210.' It was a beach scene, and the girls were in bikinis. Several times, I mentioned how pretty the girls were, and my aunt told my mom I was going to be gay. Oh, me and my mouth."

Clarissa, age 4 (Bronx, NY)



Clarissa, age 4 (Bronx, NY)

 "I loved being a tomboy! I wanted to be tough and dirty, and would go to work with my dad the mechanic. I didn't always wear coveralls, though. My mom found a way to get me to wear dresses by making them herself, patterning them after Lucy Van Pelt of the 'Peanuts' cartoon. I acknowledged Lucy's toughness, and felt tough in those dresses, too!"

Isaac, age 4 (Lodi, WI)

Isaac, age 4 (Lodi, WI)

"This is a picture of me dressing up in the pre-school that I attended. It was actually published in the local paper, for a feature story about the pre-school. I loved to put on that tutu and dance around the play area, and pretend to be a princess. I loved making the other students play princess with me, especially the boys."

It's interesting to me, reading these submissions, how often gender-atypical behavior (being a girl who resists dresses, a boy who likes makeup) gets identified by the author of the post as one of their earliest signs that they were "different" ... even though gender-atypical behavior doesn't actually correlate with a non-straight sexual orientation. I wonder if these narratives of being gender-atypical are a product of adults looking back into their own childhoods in search of confirmation that they were queer from their earliest memories -- long before they would have had conscious feelings of adult sexual desire. I certainly know that since realizing (as an adult) my fluid sexuality, I've caught myself looking backwards into the past for signs of queerness in my childhood. Sometimes I question whether that's the most accurate or valid approach to self-confirmation!

But that's enough metaphysical speculation for today! If you yourself identify as queer and want to participate in the project, check out the submission guidelines page. It's definitely on my own "to do" list once I have a little space to breathe around here. If/when I end up submitting something and if/when it gets published, watch for the link to appear right here at the feminist librarian.

ficnotes: the student prince

I know, I know ... last time I did one of these I promised more femslash! And now here I am bringing you more yaoi. What can I say? My friend Minerva encouraged me to check this one out and it was so totally and completely charming that I simply have to share it with you.

Title: The Student Prince
Author: FayJay
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin (AU)
Rating:G to NC-17 depending on chapter.

Length: 35 chapters (navigable through drop-down menu)
Available At: Archive of Our Own and Audiofic(swoon!!)

So I don't know how many of you have seen any episodes of the new BBC series Merlin but Hanna and I caught about half the first season two summers ago, back when we were still getting the channel that broadcast the show here in the U.S. and...yeah. This was a show that frickin' wore the slash right there on its sleeve. The whole show played like a massive in-joke between the actors playing Merlin and Arthur, who were clearly egging one another on to make every single interaction between the two characters be so brimming full of subtext that the subtext just gave up the damn ghost and became text.

Every person I've informally surveyed about this show agrees with the above assessment. And if the fanfic and fan art are anything to go by? This state of affairs totally meets with fan approval.

So what can I say about "The Student Prince"? Broadly speaking, it's an AU ("alternate universe") fic set in modern-day England, largely at St. Andrews University, the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, where all the major players are first-year students at university. Arthur is the only son of the nation's ruling monarch, Uther Pendragon, whose mother died in childbirth. Merlin is a scholarship student from Cardiff studying Physics and (a bit more covertly) Magic. Gwen, a fellow first-year Merlin meets on the train to Edinburgh, is an Engineering student who is nursing a major crush for third-year student and kick-boxing instructor Lance. Morgana, reading Magic alongside Merlin, is Arthur's cousin the Duchess of Edinburgh and next in line after him for the throne.

There's a dragon. There's a kitten. There's Raisin Weekend, evil plots, skipped lectures, stolen kisses, not-so-stolen kisses ... as Minerva succictly put it in an email, "The Student Prince is quite adorable most of the way through, then it gets smokin' hot, then angsty, then adorable again."

Oh, and have I mentioned that the Great Dragon wants an iPod?

Have fun everyone!

from the neighborhood: gratuitous geraldine pics

Geraldine helps with thesis revisions

Geraldine takes after her cousin Toby by sleeping in the napkin basket

Gerry gets sneaky (if she can't see you, you obviously can't see her)

from the archives: links round-up

MHS (front view)

I've done a handful of posts for the Beehive recently about activities going on at the MHS and I thought I'd share them here for interested readers.

In February, we welcomed our third new library assistant of the year, Dan Hinchen, a former MHS intern. Thanks to the speed with which our new folks are learning, the library staff will be a well-oiled machine by the time our busy summer season rolls around.

I was lucky enough to recieve an advance review copy of Neil Miller's book Banned in Boston, which tells the story of the New England Watch & Ward Society -- a privately-funded organization that, throughout the early 20th century, had tacit permission from local, state, and federal officials to police "obscenity" throughout the Northeast.  Some of Miller's primary sources are held here at the Society and I wrote a post about one of those collections, the Godfrey Lowell Cabot papers. I'm also planning a future Object of the Month display around one of the items in this collection I didn't talk about: the deposition of a woman named Nellie Keefe who describes being sexually assaulted by a doctor whom she had sought out to treat her "nerves."

I attended two brown bag lunch talks during the first week of March. The first was a presentation by staff from the Adams papers about the Adams family's response to the French Revolution. The second was delivered by short-term fellow Mary Kelley, from the University of Michigan, who discussed her current research into how reading and writing practices operated to mediate kinship and friendship ties in the Early Republic. Post link to come in the next "from the archives" installment (since I was dilatory in writing it up).

As Mary Kelley was leaving us, another short-term fellow, Brian Gratton, arrived from Arizona State University to begin his work on Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and immigration restriction during the early twentieth century. Watch for a write-up of his brown bag discussion in the next round-up.

harpy week: driving, dorothy day and barruguets

Two posts by yours truly this week, and a few by other Harpies.

• On Monday, I blogged about the pleasures of driving -- and how I miss being behind the wheel now that I live in the city and don't own a car. In the comment thread, readers wrote about their own driving experiences and what they miss (or don't miss) about previous places they have lived and worked.
• Thursday was the inaugural Thursday Night Trivia thread in which I posed the question "work or food?" to our readers (click through to find out why!)
• On Friday, I contributed to the series we Harpies are doing on women in history (in honor of Women's History Month). My first contribution was Dorothy Day (1897-1980), journalist, social justice activists, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Other Harpies wrote posts about Vera Wang ad campaigns, the politics of terrorism, International Women's Day (March 8th if you missed it) and Dolores Huerta.

Next week, I have posts lined up about Sylvia Pankhurst, a new report on bisexual invisibility, and (if you're lucky) a report from the graduate conference on gender, sexuality and urban spaces that my friend Minerva and I attended this weekend at MIT's Stata Center.