Periphery

On Nex Benedict and Collective Grief

This essay discusses homophobia, transphobia, and violence against LGBTQ+ people. Earlier this month, Nex Benedict, a nonbinary, Native American student in Oklahoma, died after an altercation with schoolmates. The fight was the culmination of over a year of bullying. They were 16 years old. Comparisons have already been made to Matthew Shepherd. The natural question…
Bluesky Basics

If you are familiar with The Other Place (the website formerly known as Twitter), Bluesky can take a little getting used to. On the surface, the interface is very similar, but some things are just different enough to be confusing at first. I have put together a series of Bluesky How-To’s that range from getting…
Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

This review contains some minor spoilers. Portrait of a Lady on Fire remains the last film I saw in theaters. I saw it there twice: Once in February of 2020, and again on March 1st, several days before we went into pandemic lockdown. I’ve seen it several times since then. It is one of those…
Hello again!

After a brief hiatus, I’m back! You can continue to expect what I was blogging about before: pop culture (book and movie reviews and the like) and what I get up to (during the pandemic, mostly trying out a few new hobbies). I’ve also started a research-focused blog, where I will be sharing my thoughts…
Craft Time! Pandemic Edition

It has been a while since I was feeling ~crafty~, but a rainy day seemed like the perfect time to pull out my sewing machine and my little bin of fabrics I’ve been accumulating. A couple years ago, I bought a bunch of these crafting squares when they were on sale. (I might have had…
Review: Holly by William Aime

When I saw that the cover of this book features a giant axe, I was hoping I knew what the title of this murder mystery refers to. Holly is a retelling of (or at least inspired by) the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. If you haven’t read it, don’t worry: there is…
Adventures in Breadmaking

The saying goes that if you’re stuck at home during the pandemic, there’s a 50/50 chance you get into sourdough. I got into sourdough. A quick summary of my breadmaking attempts as of August, 2020. July 19, 2020 Making sourdough bread for the first time. Wish me luck!
Garden Phase 1: Operation Onion

I am not an experienced gardener. My experience with growing anything edible before this was limited to basil plants, which I grew for a few years in a row. (More on that another time.) What I learned from that experience was that plants, in general, want to grow. All you have to do is give…
So You Want a Worm Bin

I recently wrote a post detailing my adventures with a worm bin. Here are some questions I maybe could have asked myself before I leapt straight in.
Worm Bin: The Beginning

In early March, I met a friend at her local community garden to help her and her husband plant a vegetable garden in their newly acquired garden plot. I arrived to find them unloading a wheelbarrow full of flats of vegetables and flowers, small packets of seeds, and a Tupperware container of ground egg shells…