EdKarshner 🫈

I gave a talk recently about re-enchant as resistance. I didn't put enough mention of the cultural dislocation so many of us feel at the moment or enough mention the things that help resolve that. We are living through a period of engineered disorientation and it damn well needs opposing.

The Hookland diaspora.

I mean this, all letters on county business I send will have this because ephemera and strangeness are core to the county.

My home town has an autumn harvest festival that brings all us wayward people home. While the 2400 pound pumpkin is awesome, the @hookland.bsky.social vibes put off by the gourd poppets is the familiar I see in the strange that makes Hookland feel like home.

This is going to be a blast! And I bet I drop some @cultauthor.bsky.social as I give zero apologies for riding the "woo train"! Also, an even better chance Jess and I debate to best pizza in Kingston, Ohio.

Today was the best bookmail day! A postal dispatch from @hookland.bsky.social itself! My signed copy of @cultauthor.bsky.social's amazing new book. Love the stickers (my daughter took the spicy Norse Gods sticker!) Do you know how long I've wanted a Right to Reside card? Thank you, David

Authenticity is a gatekeeping word used by pisspuffins. But truth, being truthful will always provoke those whose engine fuelled by hate.

The old idea of a familiar wasn't theatrical; it was domestic kinship. The yard dog guarding the gate, the porch cat watching the dusk, or the wild toad returning to the same stone step. How do the animals living alongside your home act as practical guardians and sentinels? #FolkWitchFriday

"AI has not rescued the humanities. What it has done is reveal, with unusual clarity, what happens when societies allow the institutions that cultivate judgement to erode."

Last night were honoured to celebrate the creator and community of @hookland.bsky.social . Christina and David in the subterranean Hades before the main event.

This is such a lovely thing to read, especially from one of my academic heroes.

A good story is always the antidote to a bad day. Lucky to have @cultauthor.bsky.social remind me that even bubble gum cards are foundational texts. In @hookland.bsky.social, it's encouraged that one should have the curiosity of a scholar & the wonder of a child.

Well, shit.

My last talk of the year. It will focus on re-enchantment as resistance and include tales of Woodwosing, being re-enchanted during the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution and waiting on the fetches of the future dead. www.tickettailor.com/events/tread...

My last three published books are available at bookshop.org (and the other place too). #backlistsaturday

#Folklore matters and how we interact with it matters too. We cannot reduce it to ink stasis if we have any hope of enjoying its blessing of re-enchantment.

Last night I tucked myself in & read new "fragments" from @cultauthor.bsky.social's latest literary @hookland.bsky.social Like David, his work is a gentle rebuke/reminder of the personal purpose of lore & enchantment. Stories aren't "collected." Like anything loved, they are pursued w/ devotion.

Oh! They know how to Folklore in the UK and @cultauthor.bsky.social is one of the best! David takes the lore to the folk better than anyone! Congratulations, friend! (The FOMO is real!)

My last speaking engagement this year will be at the wonderful @treadwells-books.bsky.social where I will be talking about re-enchantment as resistance; communities of story and the importance of links between folklore and place. www.tickettailor.com/events/tread.... I hope to see some of you there.

Yesterday, I made a research trip to Braxton County West VA. The Flatwoods Monster Museum was amazing. The WVa Bigfoot Museum has an exquisite collection of Boggy Creek memorabilia. The jewel was the town of Sutton, a @hookland.bsky.social town where the land asserts itself & refuses to be ignored.

@cultauthor.bsky.social, getting fueled up for field work!

John Barleycorn is made of barley.The lyrics first written in 1624 describe planting, growing, harvesting, and brewing as a series of tortures and a symbolic death and rebirth. #Folklore #Lughnasadh

Southern tradition holds that inner corn husks from the first harvest are saved to craft usually faceless dolls. Ritually, these "First Shuck" figures become vessels - bound with intention to guard the hearth, store seasonal virtue, and anchor home protection through the winter. #FolkWitchFriday

I absolutely stand by this description of folklore. #FolkloreSunday

We coat every page of our books with a patented clear resin, harmless in low levels, that activates when a page is digitally scanned, releasing a generational curse on anyone who is using our books to train LLMs. Fear not, scholars and librarians have access to non-cursed editions.

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

Re-enchantment IS resistance. Populist nostalgia is made entirely of boring tired memetics. Take it all back.

The euphoria that follows finding out something you needed to do was already done by past you and you want to give person a hug!

Ed is wonderful, inspiring folklorist and far too kind about my work.

Spotted in the wild. @hookland.bsky.social

After a year of feeling less like my down on his luck folklorist self, I had a weekend that brought me back. A great turnout for my Ohio Brewfest presentation on Mothman and this gorgeous little number in the post from @cultauthor.bsky.social ! (My forward w/in). Let deep summer commence.

Giving myself a one day writing retreat before my Mothman and Mead presentation. I'm staying in a caboose in my own hills and it feels amazing.

Huge congratulations to @cultauthor.bsky.social on this delicious collection of @hookland.bsky.social fragments. I had the great honor of writing the forward. You don't want to miss this!!!! David, so very pleased for you. Well done!

As promised to link to my first actual Hookland book. It is only small, but covers a lot of the ghost soil. If enough of you buy it and like it there will be a Volume Two. www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1068598123 It will also be available in an actual bookshop soon.

Just completed the interior illustrations for Woodwosing by @taliskimberley.bsky.social , so release some time in July (after I pester @comicprintinguk.bsky.social again.)

This is something the reductionist totally miss...the Appalachian dad's affinity for international music. My dad had a vast collection of Peruvian Pan flute music. There was nothing better than hearing it blasting from the garage as he sharpened a lawnmower blade.

There is a similarity between those pisspuffins that say ancient aliens taught man how to make fire and those AI lickspittles who claim LLMs can do things we can’t. Both groups erase humanity’s ingenuity, ability to learn and agency. A pox upon them all.

100% bringing this energy back to Metaphysical studies!

I agree with all the takes about an attack on the humanities being an attack on critical thinking, &c. It’s also about joy, though. ‘Why bother studying that’ is always also a sneer at — why do you think you should get to do something you enjoy? Grow up and be miserable all the time!

I have friends out there doing difficult, high stakes things. Then, there's me discovering a new Mothman/Cornstalk variant.

I'm more than excited to get to represent Dutch Creek Winery for Ohio Brew Week. I'm going to look at how Appalachian Storytelling took Mothman from a "winged weirdo" to our monster. It's going to be fun! (And there's mead!)

We have new fiction for you today from Curtis C. Morgan. Morgan spent four years operating a commercial beekeeping farm in Bradford County, PA, before a 40-year career in IT contracting took him across four continents. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

In a few weeks, I'm giving a talk in Athens Ohio on the evolution of Mothman in place and story. It's at a winery. Not my usual venue. I was feeling skeptical. Then, I went to Dutch Creek Winery over the weekend... it's making sense now.

Yesterday I turned an academic meeting at the Pitt Archives into some archival voyeurism with this beauty. Dad and I used watch The Devil Rides Out when it was in rotation on Night Owl Theater in the late 70s. Funny how grief finds it's expression in the weirdest flashes of time and place.

I've been waiting for this book since I first stumbled into Hookland. I can't wait to order! Congratulations, @cultauthor.bsky.social !

Cover art by the wonderful @mariastrutz.bsky.social, words of support that made me a little teary from @rjbarker.bsky.social; @skionar.bsky.social; @iansimmons1960.bsky.social and @regretteruane.bsky.social. The foreword is by @edkarshner.bsky.social. Ordering details next week.

I promised you a book cover for Hookland Fragments Volume One at Midsummer and here it is: