culture consumed (March, 2023)

[hermionesviolin]

theatre

• [ASP] Seven Guitars (part of August Wilson's Pittsburgh/Century Cycle)
  
  I didn't like it as much as the other plays in that cycle I've seen (Gem of the Ocean live at Tufts, and the Fences film -- both back in 2016), but I do appreciate that ASP is doing the ~sequel next season ("Nearly forty years after the blues of Seven Guitars, the American Shakespeare takes on the Reagan Era."). Gonna be hella depressing, but...

books

• read Abby ~5 picturebooks
• [work book club] Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid 
  
• read on the flight to California: [feminist sci-fi book club] Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden (I liked it less than I had hoped -- though it's doing some interesting stuff, and I did enjoy a lot of it -- so I'm likely to skip its sequel, Symbiosis)
• On the return flight, I finished:
  • A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with Our Past and Driving Social Change by Dolly Chugh
  • Queer: A Graphic History written by Meg-John Barker & Jules Scheele (which is more a graphic history of queer THEORY, to be clear)

movies (who's surprised we saw 2 trans movies?)

• Naomi Campbel [part of the Harvard Film Archive's program Remapping Latin American Cinema: Chilean Film/Video 1963-2013 -- "Chile’s cinema remains the least internationally known of Latin America’s major cinemas. Often overshadowed by the historically larger and more widely distributed cinemas of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the rich history of Chilean filmmaking has also been obscured, paradoxically, by the long history of political documentary to which Chilean cinema is all too often reduced."]
  
  This was okay?  I appreciate that a 2013 film treats a trans woman very matter-of-factly. She wants bottom surgery but is generally happy with her life and resists the narratives of tragedy from the gatekeepers. But the blurb about the film feels to me like it really over-states much of what it's doing (also, despite the blurb, I did not read the woman who wants plastic surgery as trans at all; I very much read her as cis).
  
  
• Framing Agnes [Emerson Bright Lights -- Co-presented with Wicked Queer: The Boston LGBT Film Festival and GlobeDocs; independently, Abby had heard about it on Twitter]
  
  This film was so good!  Lots of interesting stuff about the history of trans people, their interactions with the medical establishment and the media, the tradeoffs of visibility, etc.  Highly recommended.
  
  Available to rent or buy on (at least) AppleTV and KinoNow. Also Kanopy (which you can probably access through your local library).

tv

• Ted Lasso's 3rd (and final) season started, and we're currently caught up (3.01-3.03)

art exhibits

• "For The Love Of Birds, featuring original artwork with the subject of birds, real or imaginary, wild or not so wild for a juried exhibition that takes place during Chico’s 2023 Snow Goose Festival, which celebrates the glorious migration of snow geese on the Pacific Flyway." at the Museum of Northern California Art -- with Abby and Sarah, during our trip out there for Abby's dad's memorial service
• Portraits of Pride: A Celebration of Queer and Trans Lives in Boston (Abby wanted to go for date night).  It turned out to only be 3 portraits, which was disappointing -- and there was a panel we didn't know about, which we missed most of because we arrived about halfway through the 4:30-6:30pm window. (You can see some of the original portrait project here.)
  

live music

• Ezra Furman at the Sinclair with Abby (opener: Alex Walton -- the opener went on at 8! on a weeknight! I am Old ... but I love my partner, and went to this show that ended ~11pm)

***

Currently reading: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano -- which I started reading during the week of the #TransRightsReadathon. 

It first came out in 2007 and I read it in, idk, 2008? 2013?  A second edition came out in 2016, which I learned about maybe a few years ago?  It turns out to be basically the first edition with an added Preface, but since I remember very little from the first time I read it, that's not too bad.

Reading next: Microcosm Publishing's The Autism Relationships Handbook by Faith Harper and Joe Biel.

After sending my partner various Twitter threads, saying, "I'm not autistic, but this resonated with me," we've leaned in to, "An actual diagnosis doesn't matter; but if there's stuff that autistic people find helpful that you also find helpful..."

So (at my ~suggestion) she recently Kickstarted The Autism Partner Handbook and backed the tier that comes with: "The Autism Relationships Handbook - The counterpart of the Partner Handbook, this book guides autistic people through how to succeed in relationships." So she's gonna read the former and I'll read the latter and then we'll swap. Or maybe we'll totally bounce off them like we have other Faith Harper productions. Who can say? The future is vague and uncertain.

Comments

[lunabee34]

My condolences to Abby.