palmerpink

My grandmother passed away about 2 weeks ago. I hope to write about her more soon, but for this moment, I want to speak briefly about where I'm at overall: Her passing has led me to reevaluate aspects of my life because I'm realizing that the status quo amounts to just wasting my life away. (This is another "quick post," which means it's a short update that I likely didn't edit and revise quite as much as the more "thoughtful" pieces I aim for. I say this because I'm self-conscious and worry that you, my reader, will judge me!) I'm up in Boston and have today and tomorrow off, and I want to spend at least a portion of each day figuring out (some of) my life. I say this fully aware how often I've variously done so before: asserted a need for change, described how I was going to do it, made an attempt, then fallen off in the follow-through. I'm honestly not sure what to do about that, though. It frustrates me now just as much as eve...

When creating a new character's backstory, one often dashes up a little backstory. A few sentences, a paragraph, or maybe a bulleted list. I wrote a 9-page short story. Oops. It was fun at least! (This is another "quick post," which means it's a short update that didn't receive the kind of editing or revision that other, more thoughtful posts would get. Don't worry about it if you're looking for something deeper, but feel free to read on if you don't mind!🧡) I'm really proud of what I wrote for this character. I put a lot of thought into it, and it's gotten good feedback, too. That said, I'm mostly enamored of the pleasure in writing and crafting it. But—I'm also obviously eager for positive feedback; I crave that shit. Haha. I may even post it here on the blog or on the socials! It's got me wondering about getting into writing again. Maybe fiction isn't so impossible for me? Maybe a little diligence is all I need? ...

So I read Mrs. Dalloway in high school, and it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I'd ever read. One passage in particular, very early in the book, hit me hard with my first experience of the sublime, and stayed with me—and led at last to my first tattoo. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June .  ( Emphasis added; full paragraph included below. From the full text of the novel as made available by the University of Adelaide. ) The paragraph this is from, the 4th paragraph of the novel, is the 1st passage with the stream of consciousness the book is famous for; although self-limited here, the flow is no less gorgeous. In the passage, Clarissa is walking on a street to get those famous fl...

I mentioned in a recent post  that even hybrids of the same species can demonstrate disparate variety. Which is the case with the other cultivar I discovered. Yes; there's another. I could go into how this variety among hybrids should surprise no one, but I'm not here to teach you genetics (poorly). No, I want to talk about my other big cultivar-related excitement: Sarracenia 'Ennui,' or so it's being called for now. I guess it's semiofficial now that I've "announced" it in a blog post. Welp. (My main hesitation in calling it this is that the name may already been claimed. But I think it's an  awesome  name for a plant and peculiarly kind of perfect for this one: It's got this muted glamour that feels not only somehow French but also weirdly existential...?) I found this beauty at Meadowview Biological Research Station . The other half of the main plant can still be found there, by the way, and that nursery has a gorgeous array of o...

I decided I want to dig in and take this blog, and more broadly the "Palmerpink Brand" as it were, more seriously. Ok, maybe not that  seriously, but yeah. I wrote up a larger exploration on my other blog of initial questions to lay out some basic considerations regarding a revamp, asking things like the What, Who, and Why of this blog. Some of these things I'd explored previously , but I wanted to dig into deeper this time around. In short, I want to use this blog to share things I find meaningful and hope others will be interested in, as well as reflections and updates about my life; I want to write for myself, but also people who care about me and/or the sorts of things I share about (eg, reviews about culture and such); and I want to commit to my voice mattering, to deciding my blog matters to whatever little degree it can. (I also floated the possibility of culling posts that are no longer representative of what I want in this blog, as well as any stupid lab...

I recently got to spend a few days at the lake house my family used to visit through most of my childhood; we no longer own it, and it turns out I missed it more deeply than I realized. Anthony and I both got the week before NYC Pride off this year, so I contrived to get us a little time there. The cousins who own Greenshore gave Anthony and me permission to relax there for several days rather than just the 1 or 2 I had expected. Good god, I'm grateful for that. I missed this place. Standing on the balcony, the porch, or the dock and looking out over the lake, I was reminded of the beauty and tranquility this lake represents for me. The meaning and memories, too. This was always a place of solace and stability for me. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, but we always came back to this place. It had been in our family for generations before I was even born—if we'd been able to keep it, it would have been a solid 4 generations including mine. This was where I figured ...

So I've been playing a lot of Dead Cells, and while it's been crazy fun, it's also been crazy frustrating. Dead Cells  is a roguelike or rogue-lite metroidvania from Motion Twin... Basically, you explore and battle through this ever-changing, randomly generated castle, and when you die you start over. But it's never the same twice, and you improve as you go—new weapons, new tricks, and so on. I know part of the problem is I lack or am at least weak in some of the basic skills necessary, such as timing and strategy and such. I keep forgetting to dodge or get hit by stupid attacks and all that, and it gets really frustrating. Re my thread on #DeadCells : I do love it, but I am also struggling. I suspect weak eye-hand coordination and forgetfulness make most action games difficult for me; I tend to rush in swinging blindly, and I'm having to unlearn that here. But maybe this game can help? 🤔 — Tophie Palmer (@palmerpink) June 25, 2019 Frustration asid...

So I posted the other day about my rekindled carnivorous plant obsession—I mean, hobby . I mentioned, in passing, that I had "discovered" a possible cultivar, so here's the lowdown on what that means and what I meant. The term "cultivar" is short for "cultivated variety," and signifies that a particular plant is so desirable and interesting that people want exact copies of it rather than simply seed from it. Some famous American pitcher plant (Sarracenia) cultivars include the legendary Adrian Slack , the massive Leah Wilkerson , and the classic  Judith Hindle . Part of how these come about is that, unlike horses x donkeys = mules and certain other hybrids, Sarracenia hybrids aren't sterile and can be crossed and recrossed without limit. Further, random chance can create crazy combinations of genes such that even hybrids between the same species—heck, even the same parents —can demonstrate quite the variety. More on that elsewhere . Dependin...

I recently got back into horticulture after a bad moment of burnout, and wouldn't ya know it, I'm back at it with carnivorous plants! Despite tweeting about it endlessly, I haven't actually explained how or why this started. Back in middle school, I helped my science teacher set up a carnivorous plant display. Nothing elaborate, mind you; a terrarium with a bunch of sphagnum moss and some pitcher plants, a sundew or two, maybe a Venus flytrap? Didn't leave much of an impression, except maybe that they died and that sucked.  shrug . A couple years later, I was in a bog near my grandmother's lake house, when things changed forever. I was in the back end of the canoe, and as my dad pulled the front end out of the water, I glanced to my right and spied, on a stump with some moss, sundews ( Drosera rotundifolia , to be precise). Drosera rotundifolia. Of course I recognized therm instantly—they're hard to mistake, with those the sparkling tentacles an...