Snowflake Challenge, day 2

snowflake_challenge day 2:

Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

Many over the years, but I'm going to say Ursula Le Guin in general, because she did that to me twice. The first was The Tombs of Atuan, which I read when I was... probably eight? Could have been seven or nine, but eight sounds right. I picked it up at random in my school library, and while I wouldn't necessarily say it knocked me for a loop (I was a bit young for that), it was, I think, a very lucky early counter-argument to the reams of male-centric swords-and-horses stories I read subsequently: a quiet voice always there in the bedrock of my mind, saying, "There are other ways."

Some years later (I think I was twelve or thirteen), I read The Dispossessed and that one DID knock me for a loop -- less for the anarchist stuff than for the structure of the thing and how it balances and tie in to the themes and the emotional arc, plus the richness of the worldbuilding in general, and also of course the characters and the very believable-feeling descriptions of alien science as a lived experience. I walked around for a couple weeks with a good quarter of my brain constantly chewing over that book, while I tried to stumble through the rest of my life and not give away how utterly distracted I was.

five refinished picture frames :)

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I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was stripping and repainting some picture frames as a birthday present to my mom. In the event, I was able to finish five of them before I headed down to NJ for New Year's. The sixth is kind of broken, in the sense that its support wire both snapped and tore out of the frame, so we agreed I'd do that one last; Mom will pick it up in February.

Today Mom sent me photos of the pictures rehung on the walls of the upstairs hallway. I think they look pretty good. :)

(The pictures themselves are various scenic parts of Rome, which my grandparents purchased on a trip around 1950. I am not entirely sure of the medium, but I think it may be a combination of colored pencil and some kind of paint -- watercolor, perhaps.)


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