a flurry of prompts and stories

[heliopausa]

It's all

Comments

[wellinghall]

I really enjoy The Leaky Establishment - and it's now available in ebook form, as well as on paper, from http://ansible.uk/books/leaky.html.

And thank you for the picture :-)

[heliopausa]

Thank you! (It's lovely to have a reason to post such a picture!)

[rthstewart]

Thank you for the rec! I got too busy and never had the opportunity to do anything with Half A Moon. I usually do but it's way too busy. I'm behind on even skimming 3SF by 27 separate email notifications (THREADED).

[heliopausa]

Well, I posted the list, but I didn't ever feel I understood how halfamoon was working, or whether things posted had any impact. :( But at least I put it out there, I guess, that there were marked female-centric stories in the NFE. (and that Narnia allows for some great exploration of female-experience themes.)

[asakiyume]

I did not know about hazelnuts in particular being used to solve problems! This sounds very English to me, but maybe it's because I think of hazelnuts as being very English. Does it come up in fairy tales and things? [Oops, you expressly said it did, in this Czech Cinderella--but in other stories as well?]

This picture is very, very cool.

[heliopausa]

I'm working on the hazelnuts! (i.e. saved for a later post,when I've sorted out my thoughts a little. :) )

The picture is amazing - and it comes with a sad and intriguing tale: Richard Dadd painted The Fairy Feller's Master-stroke between 1855 and 1864, while confined in Bethlem Hospital for criminal insanity*, after murdering his father, and planning (ineptly) to kill many more. Sad - though good that he was encouraged to paint and given the materials etc to do so. He wrote a long explanation of the painting, some aspects of which are noted here.

*It seems probable to me that his illness was the result of mercury poisoning - his father had worked extensively with mercury, and Dadd was not the only one in the family to succumb.

[asakiyume]

The delicacy and realism of the elements (the nuts--including hazelnut!--and flowers) is so striking. His poem of explanation (and the rest of of the explanation at the link) I only just scanned, but he certainly seems placed in a tradition of similar attention to the fairy-minute, as it were.

I'm glad too that the director got him to painting. And mercury poisoning is a horrible thing :(

[heliopausa]

I should have said that he was a painter before the terrible mental upheaval hit him - in fact he was travelling as official artist with an expedition through the Middle East when it struck.