"Then the long-headed man with care-chiselled face who sat in the White House saw the inevitable, and emancipated the slaves of rebels on New Year's, 1863."

W.E.B. Du Bois, I love you.  That is the best reference to Lincoln that I have ever seen in my entire life.

I'm way behind in fandom stuff - NFE fics to comment on, vids to make, fic to write - but RL has been busy and awesome this week.

I've had one of every class now (and three of Latin), and I think everything's going to be good this quarter.  Philosophy just really isn't my thing, I'm coming to understand, but that's okay - at least the prof seems cool.  History will ROCK; this prof is supposedly quite strict and stressful, but I love him so far, and we're going to be doing cultural history this quarter - studying not the people/places/events but the cultures, the way values and ideals and such shift and drive those discreet events.  Plus it's the Enlightenment and the French Revolution at the end of the quarter, and I looove those. PLUS, I already asked and got cleared to write about Jacques-Louis David for my research paper.  Apparently art-analysis history and lit papers are a thing with me?  I don't even know, but it'll be fun.  I have to choose 4 or 5 of his paintings and analyse them wrt the themes we'll be discussing.  Perfect for David, who moved away from rococo with his history paintings, and was a member of the Royal Academy, and all that jolly good cultural stuff.  And he survived the Revolution, so he'll be good to examine as a continuity through the period. Soooo excited for that one.  Then in Lit we spent the first class period acting out the first 54 lines of Hamlet :DDD It was ridiculous and hilarious and completely awesome.  We're doing Hamlet, Henry IV Part I, and Twelfth Night, also Dr Faustus, Donne's poetry, Paradise Lost, and some of Milton's other poetry. BEST. EVER.  Only 6/12 chapters of PL, though D: BUT STILL. akdhaohrioa guys  I love literature SO FREAKING MUCH.

Latin's cool.  I'm freaking out, but it's cool.  I guess. I should be making vocab cards and practising present indicative active conjugation and memorizing principal parts of verbs, but you know. (THERE ARE 264 FORMS OF EVERY LATIN VERB. Only have to memorise four, though, apparently, and then a slew of rules will teach me how to do the rest. I might die.)

80's dance tomorrow night :D  So tomorrow afternoon we'll probably go to the store, and then down to Pike for various stuff (including el mercado, woot!).  

I want my new sheets.  

TV!  SUPERNATURAL TONIGHT OMG MIGHT FAINT.

Nikita is pretty darn awesome so far.  I didn't expect to like it, maybe just because it took SPN's place?  Maybe because the previews looked a tad lame.  But it's great!  Nikita herself is amazing, and I love Alex, and Jaden, and Thom, and Michael, and Birkhoff, and Amanda...everyone except Percy, yeah.  Also as of 1.03, I want Jill to stick around! She was cool!  But anyway, this show is awesome.  It melds perfectly with SPN, too, because Division kids are totally like angels and also I think a lot of them might be vessels. 

Oh, also! We watched the premiere of My Generation last night, and what a trip! oh man.  It's perfect, it brings back so many memories, and I really like everyone so far.  Want to see more of Caroline annnnd Rolly and Dawn.  And what's his name, the 'rockstar.'  So far he just holds everyone together, and I want to hear more about who he actually is.  OH and I love Brenda!

How, how, HOW does my library have all the Megan Whalen Turner books except The Queen of Attolia?  And even more galling, how does it have the sound recording of the book but no actual book??

On the other hand, what my library DOES have are some of the lecture recordings/videos from The Teaching Company.  I will be getting Herodotus, the Father of History parts 1 and 2, and also one on the rise of great ancient civilizations!  And...that will basically run through the entirety of the ones my library has that I'm interested in, but also that should get me through to the start of school.

AND, I came home from the Oregon trip to find that my copy of The Flowering of the Middle Ages had arrived. Pictures!  Lots of them, very very gorgeous.   Hopefully the quality of the accompanying text will be as awesome.

To-do, fandom-wise:

femgenficathon  due July 31.

Castielfest  due August 9.

Narnia Fic Exchange due August 30.

And then I also just signed up for spnsupporting, which, praise the flatbread, has no specific deadline.  Plus I want to finish my Lucy/Ramandu's daughter, and I still have that half-done Anna fic floating around.  And an Edmund LWW vid, and an end-of-Who5 vid.  And I want to write poetry, too, but I never have time or inspiration for more than a few lines.

Also I bought, when I got The Magicians (arrrgh), Stardust, so I want to read that, and I've yet to finish Good Omens, and my brother got the new Rick Riordan for his birthday so I want to read that, too, and I have to sort through all my family's Pratchett to see what I've not read yet and what I want to steal, and also I am long overdue for a reread of the Madeleine L'Engle books.


I did the friending thing today via an awesome female characters friending meme, which is really cool.  Yay new friends!  I talk about myself and my life and my fannishness all the time here, obviously, but it seems to be the thing to do to put up a little something by way of welcome and introduction, so.

Hi, I'm Meto, I'm a going-to-be second year college student.  American, West Coast, of European-mutt descent.  Only girl of four kids in my family, liberal, mostly-non-political, Catholic.  I'm studying literature and history, and I have no idea what I'll do with it - probably teach? I love reading, and writing, and music; I like to swim and to play soccer though I don't do enough of either anymore.  My favorite fandoms are Narnia, Supernatural, Merlin, and Dr Who/Torchwood, though I can easily get gleeful over any number of tv shows, movies, and books.  My greatest ambition in life is to have a room devoted to my personal library with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling rows of shelves, sliding ladders, and lots of well-loved and also plenty of untouched and pretentious books.  I also like to bake and to paint my nails and to watch Disney movies.  Annnd I've run out of things to say about myself.  Welcome welcome new friends, I love finding other people who love the same crazy stuff that I do!

I got American Gods from the library today, and by page 5 it's quoted Herodotus.  This is going to be GOOD.

...over a few different things.

Firstly, I don't think I've squealed to y'all about this yet - I'm taking Latin next year!  I am so so so so so soooo excited!  This is great for so many reasons.  Firstly, it's looking more and more like at least my history major, if not the lit one as well, will be focused on classical and medieval studies, so having some Latin will be pretty much a necessity.  Secondly, Latin appeals to so much of my geekery - Church, television, literature, um...yeah. I like old stuff. Thirdly, the prof for the first quarter is my history prof from fall quarter this year, and he is basically the coolest old classicist EVER.  So excited.  This is the first of many many languages I need/want to study, and it feels like such a fun and awesome academic step.

( In which I freak out over The English Patient )

Sir Orfeo "lived in Thrace, a mighty place now called Winchester." akshtaoeihhed Sam and Dean are descended from Orfeo and Heurodis and must go fight the evil body-snatching faeries.  This is the real conclusion of my paper; too bad I can't actually write that.

Also, Advil is my best friend ever.  Except maybe for IHOP and its classy music selection and delicious scrambled eggs.

ETA: I just used the word "visage" in my paper.  Clearly, Castiel is on my brain.  I don't think they had tax accountants in Celtic Christian 13th century Britain, though, or radio ad salesmen, for that matter, but no matter.  Orfeo would clearly be better off if Cas was around to raise him/Heurodis from perdition.  Okay, I'm crazy. Back to it.  Supernatural in umm...15 hours.

ETA 2: Of Sir Orfeo, James F. Knapp says "unlike the saint, whose vision teaches him to love God before all else, Orfeo comes away from his journey with a deeper awareness, not of God, but of the fragile beauty of that human world for which he is willing to suffer so much pain."  Anna, anyone?  Cas?

I am tired, sore, my room smells like campfire smoke, my feet hurt, and I may have possibly sprained my ankle - in short, it was the perfect weekend.

Blah blah blah we looked at rocks, made sketches, talked about convergent plates and sandstone sea stacks, let's get to the really important part of this trip.

I CLIMBED A TREE.

Even though our teacher hates biology, she took us down what promised to be a pleasant 0.3 mile detour on Big Cedar Road to see, you guessed it, the Big Cedar. We, uh, drove off the road and had the rear right wheel stuck in the mud, the rear left wheel a good 3 inches in the air, and no way to get ourselves out of it. So while waiting for the tow truck to arrive from Forks (erm, I did in fact hope that Charlie Swan would arrive with it, but no dice), we went to find that darn Big Cedar. And it was big. A very nice tree all in all, and I climbed it in four different places, quite high up, got pictures and everything. I approved of that detour. (Also, although no vampires or werewolves, the Kalaloch sheriff did come by when he heard about our predicament, and it was hilarious. He was a caricature of a caricature of a sheriff, complete with chewing tobacco. We got pictures. Muahahaha)

Then we went and made camp - and by 'we' I mean 'the girls' because all four of the guys in our class were a bit useless - putting up tents, making the fire, and cooking. It was really fabulous, all class-bonding and lovely stuff like that.

And then this morning we went to one last beach before coming home, and while most of the class dithered around the trailhead, a few of us took off our shoes and socks and waded through the (freezing cold, I still can't feel my feet) Hoh River delta to go explore more humongous rocks, and it was brilliant. Caves, tide pools, anemones, mussels, starfish....I love the world!

Now I'm rather exhausted and have a lot of homework to do, but it was SO fun.

I currently have 7 tabs open on my browser - this one, Pandora for music, and then five tabs for Sir Orfeo - a Middle English version, an English version, an introduction to the ME, and two ME glossary type things. This is kind of utter bliss.

So - yesterday for history read the chapter entitled Royal Women of England and France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century: A Gendered Perspective, from Margaret Howell's book (I think it's her book. We only got the pdf with the one chapter) England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III. I don't know anything about the rest of the book, but this chapter was totally fabulous. Howell's ultimate conclusion is that "Gender was not always formal and ritualised, not always trapped in the rulings of canon law or the conventions of secular romance; it was one thread in the web of human relationships.  Among real men and women it was for ever various and individual."  Which is just so very refreshing to me.  The chapter examines the marriages, relationships, and power of 12 royal women - 10 of whom ruled as queens - who were connected to Henry III and Louis IX.  Howell strikes a lovely balance between recognizing that this was a patriarchal society in which men made the rules and held the majority of the power, and indeed notes that one of our queens, Isabella Plantagenet, was not treated well at all by her husband, but also shows us how the majority of these 12 women were both well-treated, even loved, by their husbands and also held a certain measure of power all their own.  She looks at the practice of intercession, showing how although a lot of the formal ritual of it was in place to lessen the impact of the woman's influence, in practice these women - and, she makes especial note of, various men as well; intercession was not a gendered practice, in practice - held great power.  It was a wonderful thing to read and made me super happy.

And then of course we didn't talk about it in class. Whatevs.

We did get to hear the wondrous story of Pope Celestine V, though.  It goes something like this:

Cardinals: Hmm, we need to choose a new pope.

Letter from Peter the Hermit: Y'all are gonna buuuuurn if you don't choose a pope soon!

Cardinals: Crap. *scared faces* We choose you, Peter! You're like, the holiest dude alive! You shall henceforth be Celestine V!

Celestine: No, thanks, I'm a hermit! *runs away* <--- literally.  He ran. They chased him down.

Cardinals: No, for realz. You're pope.

Celestine: ....damn.  Can I abdicate?

Boniface VIII (only not, at this point): *shifty eyes* Yeah, dude, totally!  Here, I'll help you show how legal it is!

Celestine: Cool beans, I'm outta here.

Boniface: Hmm, guess I need to be pope now. Fiiiine, I'll do it!

Cardinals: *chase Celestine down again and put him under house arrest so there won't be a chance of schism*

The papal history rocks, y'all.

Otherwise entitled - Why Does Everything I Do These Days Have To Involve Religion and History?

So. I am composing the prospectus for my final history (high to late middle ages) research paper, and have stumbled simultaneously upon an idea I love and a huge roadblock.
What I am wanting to do is to compare the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with the hajj to Mecca, the idea being that the Islamic occupation of most of Spain, coupled with the prominent political role Compostela took in terms of religious and military propaganda for the Christian kings of Asturias-Leon, might yield some interesting observations re: the similarities and differences in the two pilgrimages.
The issue: my prof, though admitting that Spain is not his area of expertise, does not think that there has been much if anything done with this sort of comparison. So that's an issue.  There's another teacher who specializes in Spain who I can talk to, and I'm of course going to bury myself in books.  But if no one has ever compiled sources about this matter, then I'm stuck, which would be so sad.  (There is also the issue of the fact that I don't have any Arabic, but that's a whole different matter)

I want this paper so badly.  The only other time I've been so excited about an essay was when I wrote about triangle-symbolism in Atonement.  This is like...socio-religious history, with Spanish and comparative religions and freaking awesome myths about St James, and I really really want it to work.  Because falling back onto Plan B, a study of the pilgrimage accounts for Compostela to look at the militant side of it, pales in comparison to how much I want this essay.