Samantha E Thompson

Michaelmas bee

Register now for a free advocacy webinar with John Chrastka of the EveryLibrary Institute @everylibrary.bsky.social on October 13 at 3:00 pm ET. archivists.ca/event-6826891

Two of multiple tornado warnings via my phone yesterday (including of an actual tornado?). Looking for a country I can blame for this.

Vast Lake Ontario was still as a pond this morning.

🗞️ A new song by Ralph Vaughan Williams has been discovered! ‘Before the Mirror’ is a setting of part of a poem by Swinburne. It was recently unearthed in a box of odd manuscripts in the archive of Morley College by Learning Resources Centre Manager, Elaine Andrews. 🧵1/3

One of my favorites among her renditions. youtu.be/qqXk7Fgxbtk?...

Big loss to the folk scene.

Week 14 of my stitch-the-news daily news diary included: A Waffle House A Pope hat A devil's pitchfork A Michigan logo A white flag A Polymarket app A penguin

St. Jude's, Oakville, Ontario.

Yeah me too.

Doctors have a remarkable ability to make you feel like an imposition no matter what you do. Test comes back negative, why are you wasting their time. Test comes back positive, sigh, now you're really going to waste their time.

I just suddenly recalled an entire Gregorian chant I learned 24 years ago and didn't know I knew. Unfortunately I can't remember what I had for breakfast today.

Flowers from archival colleagues. 🥲

Old piano for sale at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Somehow very touching.

Worst time of winter and and a long way to go yet. Brits and their snowdrops can buzz off.

Surprising how many people were out taking a walk last night at -15C. All of us grimly nodding as we passed one another.

Pressing tofu. Yes I still have a dictionary. Sometimes I even read it, not that you'd know by my spelling.

I am sad that this is so personally familiar.

Oh well.

Bloody Teams notifications are an ice pick to my brain. God it was nice to have a break from the peck peck peck peck peck...

Just finished processing new purchases for the parish library. (I tend to emphasize accessible books the public library likely won't have.) I miss working with books. They're so mellow compared to archival records which resist corralling at every turn.

Still recovering from a horrible realistic dream in which the US carpet-bombed Toronto. That kind of dream where you're thinking "this has to be a dream but it isn't."

Hot tip: my elderly, very skittish cat was really calmed in the car on the way to the vet by the Hilliard Ensemble’s ECM recording of ‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah.’

Not embarrassed that some of these were mine.

A somber motet for tonight. Apt for the times.

My Hudson's Bay biscuit tin from just a few years ago. Too nice to throw out.

We don't get many manicules in this archive. Small Christmas present.

The bank phone has the same on-hold musak that my old veterinarian used and it's reminding me of sad times.

The night is far gone; the day is near.

Why is it so all-fired hard for me to get back to the UK given I am already a blasted citizen?

I'm not used to seeing actual books in a clinical context anymore.

Random church shot. Embroidered chasuble draped on the altar rail during preparation. Beautiful work, almost always by women.

"Please do not use Yamaha recorders for any other purposes besides musical performance."

Got an ALTO Yamaha recorder at a thrift store for $2. Not a professional grade instrument but all Yamahas are good. It can be dunked in the sink to clean it. Now I just need time and energy to learn the wretched F fingerings. Tenor was easier for an ex-flutist.

Chinese-Canadian anesthesiologists ways treat with deadly seriousness my concern for protecting the vocal tract during intubation. "She is a singer" at the top of my chart. Might have something to do with every Chinese-Canadian doctor I know being an accomplished musician.

Monkey!