More comments I've posted elsewhere and want to keep:
A tangential response to a post by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
liv about changes in LGBTQ culture over time: :
I happen to be wearing my rainbow "QUEERVILLE" shirt today, and a hospital staffer complimented me on it. I thanked her, and she said she also has that shirt, and we both probably got it from the Somerville High School GSA*. I also said that I wished I'd had anything like the space for queerness that those teens do--but part of what my generation fought for was precisely that things would be easier for younger people.
*The shirt is a portmanteau of "Somerville" and "queer," and this probably says a thing or two about Somerville. GSA in this context usually stands for Gay-Straight Alliance, but as of a couple of years ago, Somerville High School's GSA was the Gender and Sexuality Alliance.
In reply to a friend who said she wsa "starting to feel like spouse and I are the only people still taking covid precautions" and asked to hear from other people who still are, to help her feel less weird:
The "new normal" does feel rather like "here's a vaccine booster, and you can mail-order good N95 masks, but otherwise you're on your own."
I am still taking precautions, not as much as a year ago, but I'm masking on transit and in shops, and I'm not eating inside restaurants. I haven't been to a museum since they made masks optional, or a play since before the pandemic.
On the other hand, I am taking transit to get to medical appointments rather than a cab or Lyft, and we're doing most of our own shopping (cattitude and adrian_turtle are doing more than I am, in part because I'm the one with the weird immune system).
This random comment on a place named Kandahar in Saskatchewan, with digressions, was from a comment thread inminoanmiss's journal:
Definitely weird: it's part of a "rural municipality" called "Big Quill No. 308," where the "Big Quill" appears to be a lake and I have no idea what the "308" part signifies. There is no "rural municipality of Big Quill No. 307," or "no. 1," or indeed any other municipality with "quill" in its name.
Most of a century ago, George R. Stewart wrote an odd and detailed book called Names on the Land: an historical account of place-naming in the United States. There's a sequel, Names on the Globe, from 1975, but I don't think it went into that level of detail, and I don't think anyone else has gone into that level of detail. (Stewart's bibliography is an interesting mix of detailed nonfiction, things like that and books on specific bits of history like battle in the US Civil War, and fiction, including science fiction.
In reply to a locked post:
This is the second place recently I've heard someone suggest moving the clocks forward a half hour and leaving them there. I like the idea, personally, but that's partly because that would put clock noon in Boston close to local solar noon.
The same article mentioned an American poll, asking people whether they would like permanent daylight time, permanent standard time, or the current twice-a-year switch. About a third of the people surveyed like the current system, and two-thirds wanted to stop changing the clocks--but half of the people who wanted to stop changing the clocks (1/3 of the total) wanted to keep daylight time, a quarter (1/6 of the total) wanted to keep standard time, and the final quarter (1/6 of the people surveyed) just wanted to stop changing the clocks, with no strong opinion about where to leave them.
A tangential response to a post by
liv about changes in LGBTQ culture over time: :I happen to be wearing my rainbow "QUEERVILLE" shirt today, and a hospital staffer complimented me on it. I thanked her, and she said she also has that shirt, and we both probably got it from the Somerville High School GSA*. I also said that I wished I'd had anything like the space for queerness that those teens do--but part of what my generation fought for was precisely that things would be easier for younger people.
*The shirt is a portmanteau of "Somerville" and "queer," and this probably says a thing or two about Somerville. GSA in this context usually stands for Gay-Straight Alliance, but as of a couple of years ago, Somerville High School's GSA was the Gender and Sexuality Alliance.
In reply to a friend who said she wsa "starting to feel like spouse and I are the only people still taking covid precautions" and asked to hear from other people who still are, to help her feel less weird:
The "new normal" does feel rather like "here's a vaccine booster, and you can mail-order good N95 masks, but otherwise you're on your own."
I am still taking precautions, not as much as a year ago, but I'm masking on transit and in shops, and I'm not eating inside restaurants. I haven't been to a museum since they made masks optional, or a play since before the pandemic.
On the other hand, I am taking transit to get to medical appointments rather than a cab or Lyft, and we're doing most of our own shopping (
cattitude and adrian_turtle are doing more than I am, in part because I'm the one with the weird immune system). This random comment on a place named Kandahar in Saskatchewan, with digressions, was from a comment thread in
minoanmiss's journal:Definitely weird: it's part of a "rural municipality" called "Big Quill No. 308," where the "Big Quill" appears to be a lake and I have no idea what the "308" part signifies. There is no "rural municipality of Big Quill No. 307," or "no. 1," or indeed any other municipality with "quill" in its name.
Most of a century ago, George R. Stewart wrote an odd and detailed book called Names on the Land: an historical account of place-naming in the United States. There's a sequel, Names on the Globe, from 1975, but I don't think it went into that level of detail, and I don't think anyone else has gone into that level of detail. (Stewart's bibliography is an interesting mix of detailed nonfiction, things like that and books on specific bits of history like battle in the US Civil War, and fiction, including science fiction.
In reply to a locked post:
This is the second place recently I've heard someone suggest moving the clocks forward a half hour and leaving them there. I like the idea, personally, but that's partly because that would put clock noon in Boston close to local solar noon.
The same article mentioned an American poll, asking people whether they would like permanent daylight time, permanent standard time, or the current twice-a-year switch. About a third of the people surveyed like the current system, and two-thirds wanted to stop changing the clocks--but half of the people who wanted to stop changing the clocks (1/3 of the total) wanted to keep daylight time, a quarter (1/6 of the total) wanted to keep standard time, and the final quarter (1/6 of the people surveyed) just wanted to stop changing the clocks, with no strong opinion about where to leave them.