March 23rd, 2026
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Boston locals! Blue Heron, an acapella early music ensemble, is throwing a three-day shindig to celebrate Guillaume de Machaut (died 1377), May 1-3, mostly involving talks about Machaut's works, talks about his lyrics, talks about the illuminations in the manuscripts his works come from, concerts of his music, and also a little ars subtilior tacked on the end just because.

More info https://www.blueheron.org/machaut-weekend/

Affordability note: They have a free ticket option as part of the "Card to Culture program" for people with EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare(!) cards*, and a discounted "low cost" option.

Of note, the "Opening Festivities: Keynote, Performance & Sing-Along" on Friday night includes (emphasis mine):
a keynote talk by one of the world’s leading scholars of 14th-century music, Anne Stone (CUNY Graduate Center), performances of pieces in several of the genres represented in Machaut’s oeuvre, and a sing-along of the Kyrie from the Messe de Nostre Dame.
Which: huh. Huh. The Kyrie, huh? Wow. Now that is certainly a choice. I commend their bravery. Were I in better health, I would consider showing up just to be in on the shenanigans.

If you're curious what the Kyrie from Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame sounds and looks like, here you go.

* There is no separate ConnectorCare card like there is for MassHealth. They mean your regular insurance card, which if it's a ConnectorCare plan should say so on it, or so the Mass Cultural Council, whose program it is, thinks.
posted by [syndicated profile] apod_feed at 05:16am on 23/03/2026
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posted by [personal profile] siderea at 01:01am on 23/03/2026 under ,
The YouTube algorithm pseudorandomly served me this, thereby answering the question I'd had on a distant back burner forever, "Hey, didn't I hear something about colored cotton cultivars once upon a time? Cotton that you didn't need to dye? Like back in the 90s?"

If you are a fellow fiber freak or interested in agriculture or organic crops or the underappreciated problem of sustainable clothing production, you may find this as fascinating as I did:

2026 Mar 7: Good Yarn Bad Knits [goodyarnbadknits YT]: "The Yarn That Almost Saved The World"

posted by [syndicated profile] questionable_content_feed at 09:39pm on 22/03/2026

Emily is my wife's favourite character so this story is basically a little present for her (and possibly...for you???)

March 22nd, 2026
dancesontrains: A white man with brown hair wearing a suit and holding a bunch of blue balloons in a white hallway (Mark S.)
Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the top 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.


I was very stuck on this for some time - hence the lack of updates since January - but then I remembered that last year I participated in the subreddit r/GraphicNovels's tournament of Top Twenty graphic novels (actually any form of sequential art even vaguely applicable, the guy running the Tournament joked that he was waiting for someone to send in a long tapestry as one of their faves)




My matchup - I was very soundly trounced in the first round by one of the most prolific posters there, and rightly so https://www.reddit.com/r/graphicnovels/comments/1o5ssuv/tournament_of_lists_2025_all_time_top_20_comics/ 


The eventual winner, it's a really interesting collection and I had a good time thinking of what to add- https://www.reddit.com/r/graphicnovels/comments/1omr7k3/congratulations_to_americantabloid3_for_winning/ 

The only work I regret not including is Calvin and Hobbes, which I read as an adult and have loved ever since. 
location: bed
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
posted by [personal profile] sovay at 03:21pm on 22/03/2026
I must have slept ten hours. Hestia appears to be watching the rain with almost as much interest as the birds sheltering from it. May it and the recent snowmelt amend the drought. Tomorrow, of course, it is forecast to snow again.

[personal profile] selkie was safely collected from the Penn Station-alike that South Station has done its best to inhume itself into since her last visit, provided with an appropriate quantity of local barbecue for an obligate carnivore, and even successfully checked in to her hotel despite the mishegos attending every stage of her conference even before it started. At no point in this process did we apparently remember to take any pictures of ourselves.

My dreams seem to be branching out in terms of media, since last night's featured a youngish Alec McCowen starring in the radio version of a Tey-like crime novel as the ambiguously poor relation of an upper-class family who is not actually Kind Hearts and Coronets-ing his way through them, but needs to figure out who is before he's so handily scapegoated for the accidents escalating to murder ever since his arrival; he is, naturally, keeping a secret from the family, the authorities, and even the inattentive reader, but it isn't that. I was very pleased to find that a recording had survived, because the original novel had just been reprinted by the British Library Crime Classics. There were images mixed up in it in the way of dreams, but it was definitely on the Internet Archive.

Outside my head, I have been recently listening to Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn (2020), Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin's symbiont (2024), and Huw Marc Bennett's Heol Las (2026), which I found through its ghost-boxish "Cân Gwasael (Wassail Song)." I like that I do not have to dream their remixes of folk and futurism and time.
Music:: Arlo Parks, "Weightless"

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