Thursday, May 11, 2023

London: up, down, and all around

I sleep badly and irresponsibly in every time zone. 

Last night, I stayed up past 2 am GMT reading every obituary I could find for Dooce. I was devastated to hear she had died...  by suicide... the day before... and how little coverage there was. Jezebel.com which used to cover her breathlessly hasn't even mentioned her death. I realize she'd done some TERF-y stuff lately, but the silence is depressing. 

I don't know when I fell asleep, but we were on for a tour around London today. We read landmarks of poetry at various London landmarks. The top favorite, I think, was Patience Agbabi's "London Eye," which cleverly references Wordsworths's Westminster Bridge poem

Nicole and NGS, thank you for your podcast rec of Stuff the British Stole! It's going on my class notes for tomorrow.  

Pic: Our Thames river cruise with the London Eye in the background. I told my students how lovely they were about not complaining when I asked them to pose for pics. (At and Nu would never.)

6 comments:

Sarah said...

I am also so sad about Dooce. My OG mommy blogger friends and I texted about it yesterday-- we all met up in person at BlogHer in 2009, and all the old guard royalty was there. I have been following her still, and it's such a tragedy-- unfolding in public for years. Her writing was so wonderful, especially back in the early days. (This is Sarah, BTW)

maya said...

Unfolding in public for years... that's exactly it. And despite her bravado about internet hate, clearly it left some hooks in her. Too sad.

Have you written about your back-in-the-heyday BlogHer experience? That must have been so awesome!

Gillian said...

Nice picture.

NGS said...

The Dooce news really knocked me for a loop. I'm surprised at how much it has impacted me. I started my own blog because I saw how honest she was on hers. I think her legacy is awfully confusing because she was an imperfect person (remember the Maytag bullying long before the TERF stuff came to light? she was always a bit of a challenging personality), but it's so hard to see the news and think about how much her children must be suffering. (I'm also vaguely worried about her dog, but I can't find any info about what's become of her, so...I just worry.)

Anyway, I hope you are able to still enjoy your time away.

maya said...

"Challenging" is putting it mildly (although if people want to bully multinational corporations, I'm totally fine with it).

I too worried about her children and doggie, NGS. Suicide has such long tentacles--I've been thinking of Sylvia Plath's children a lot.

StephLove said...

I'd heard of her, but never read her blog. It's very sad for her kids.

"I'm a weirdo/doofus/nerd/naif" (Part MXVIII)

I realized during my meditation this morning that my energy for contacting so many people yesterday (the "emotional labor" that St...