wow.

[highlyeccentric]

this is an amazing story...

Then, in 1952 - a few months after Lee met Charlie - George Jorgensen's transformation to Christine Jorgensen made the front pages and created new possibilities for people like Lee. From then on, Lee said, he knew he had to have the operation.

He had never told Charlie, he said, "Because I was afraid you'd leave me."

Charlie knew how it felt to hate his own body, to want to change it. But this?

"I didn't understand how any man could want to do that, " he says. "But I saw how miserable Lee was. I wanted him to be happy." His voice breaks."I loved him."

Charlie looks up to the box on the refrigerator. He wipes his eyes. Switches pronouns.

"To this day, I love her."

Comments

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

the lists gets longer and longer, doesn't it?

i'm starting to form the opinion that academics have too much time on their hands!

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

And yet they act so busy all the time!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

next time you see one rushing away in the other direction... think "aha, she's thought of a blog post!"

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

I see this as a major advantage, when I'll be working on my thesis next year. If I'm working on a blog I'm still being productive!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

yeah, i try that one. it only lasts so long :( things just have to get done, and no matter how i construe it, blogging is *not* writing essays or translating riddles.

what are you wanting to thesisfy in?

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

I think I will be thesisfying in Prester John and his impact on Levantine mentality- how he reflected societal fears in the Christian East, how he was a source of hope, that sort of thing. I wrote a paper on him already for a Crusade class I took, so I think I'll be expanding on that a bit! What are you working on?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

ooh, that sounds like fun :)

I'm still undergrad. I mess around in Anglo-Saxon, particularly in religious and theological areas.
I'm also taking a course called "medieval cosmology" this semester. Thus the Byrtferth. And one on medieval dream-visions.

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Now THAT sounds fun! I had to read some Hildegard for a medieval bible class a few years back, and it was pretty wonky. I sometimes think I would have liked to be a mystic back in the day!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Hildegaard rocks my socks. I'm sorry I wasn't confirmed a catholic, just because I would've liked to have "Hildegaard" as my saint's name.

D&V is fun :) it has weird cross-overs with the cosmology course, too. I'm ticked off at the moment- for cosmology we have to make up our own Qs, and i was slowly formulating one about medieval dream visions and the insights we can gain into cosmology... I was really wishing someone would come along and write the question for me, but the cosmology lecturer is not obliging.
Got my essay sheet for D&V. Teacher thereof had written exactly the essay question I was looking for. But now I have to think of something else all on my own for cosmology.

Le Sigh.

If you're interested in Prester John, I imagine you'd have read Baudolino? What did you think of it?

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

Oops! I mispelled Hildegaard! Sorry, Miss H. Hope I didn't offend her.

I hate when that happens! I've had that happen once in an undergrad class a few years ago, I had thought of a great paper topic for my final paper, and then that same topic came up for a midterm paper and I had to think of a whole new idea. They're so rare, good ideas, I hate when I have to waste them =)

I have read Baudolino! That is, in fact, sort of indirectly, where the paper idea originated. I read that book two summers ago and loved it, became fascinated with Prester John, and promptly forgot about him. Then last term in my Crusades class his name popped up again, in Jean de Joinville. Academia ensued.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Academia ensued. That, ma'am, is briliant phrase. May I steal it?

I'm probably breaking another law of medieval blogging here, but I fall asleep in Umberto Eco. Even ones which I, in theory, really like, like Baudolino. In my crude young opinion, he's spent too long with medieval epic, he's even better than Tolkien at writing for pages and pages with no apparent plot development.

Baudolino I picked up and thought "oooh, fun", and started wallowing around in the lovely medieval universe he created... and then zzzzzzzz....

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

You may absolutely steal it! Perhaps it will be the next big thing to hit universities all over the world.

I have to admit, if I had started with Baudolino, I would probably hate Eco. I read Name of the Rose first which I absolutely loved! I devoured it in a few sittings. I read Baudolino next, which bored me to tears initially. I was still reeling from Rose, though, and so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and slog through. It's not my favorite, and I haven't really much liked anything else I've read by him yet (The Island of the Day Before, Queen Loana, etc). But I've read Name of the Rose three times now, and to date the only other book I've read that many times is the Hitchhiker's Guide. =)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

I read Name of The Rose first- when i was maybe 15. Liked it but found it a bit much for my brain at the time. I should really go back to it...

I liked Baudolino much better right up to the point where i noticed the plot hadn't moved for two hundred pages ;)

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

Wow! Fifteen. That book would have asploded my head at fifteen. I was still reading Stephen King and other such trashy things back then! =)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

hmm. funny, i started reading some Stephen King over the last summer. A weird sci-fi fantasy sort of trilogy. Didn't like it much.

anyway, yes. I was a precocious fifteen year old ;)
If i said i read it in the second-last year of high school, would that sound better?

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

Haha! Somehow, illogically, it is more satisfying. At any rate, I read it at 22, so I automatically feel inferior. At fifteen I was mainly obsessed with X-Files and Les Miserables =)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

what a strange combination... x-files and Les Mis...

At fifteen I was in the height of my Tolkien Obsessive phase ;) which nicely co-incided with the movie releases.

[blackbuttoneyes.livejournal.com]

That is nice timing! My Tolkien obsession came a bit later, by the time I was already in university. I read the books again before I saw the movie.