Kate Lingley 龍梅若

@klingley.bsky.social

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Art historian of medieval China; Assoc Prof, UH Mānoa. Feminist; foodie; early-music nerd; Jewish mother; SF/F fan; knitter; Maine native. She/her. Buddhist monuments and women's history in early medieval China. IG @kate.lingley for lace knitting etc

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Early-morning Selenicereus blooms on the way in to work (These are S. undatus, iirc, from the famous Punahou hedge, which is well over a hundred years old.)

OK, I was just posting about a Rube Goldberg machine, and my phone tried to autocorrect it to “Rube Goldsmith.” What gives?

I'm writing up program notes for my chamber group's madrigal concert, which reminds me how my sense of historical time is inextricably embedded in Chinese history, as I can't help thinking of Janequin, Marenzio, Weelkes, and the lot of them as middle Ming composers.

I woke up early and the teenagers were sleeping in and I was thinking about the magical quiet of morning and right then the neighborhood rooster yelled HAY GUYS and woke up the approximately 57 small green parrots who live right outside the window and, well, I guess I’m going to go exercise now

Absolutely my favorite thing about being over fifty

Dear lord how I love my tribe of aging Xer feminists. I see us all over the place, all wearing their sudden, dramatic loss of fucks in different ways, but it’s impossible to miss, and it’s glorious.

I went to the funeral for a friend’s father today (for moral support for her; I didn’t really know her dad) and the lesson was this: live your life so that your auto mechanic shows up at your funeral and tells a story about what a great guy you were.

Meanwhile, I am also writing up notes for my chamber group's madrigal concert and can somebody tell me if there is a modern popular song in which the beloved is compared to an incurable illness? In the "I just can't quit you" sense, I mean. I am trying to find analogies for a line in Arcadelt.

OK, herewith the promised thread, on tomb figurines and how realistic they were (or weren’t) supposed to be: Ancient Chinese elite tombs (of the prehistoric and Shang periods and into the early Zhou) often included two kinds of dead people besides the principal tomb occupant. (1/n)

This is 100% true and it makes me think about one of the great questions of Chinese tomb art, which is how realistic do your little guys need to be in order to ensure that they turn up in your afterlife? This is a placeholder post for a thread to be named later (tomorrow) because it is late.

i love that human culture will be making little guys until the ocean evaporates

The problem was convincing him to cut it properly short back and sides. I finally solved this by telling him, “Look, I don’t mind if it’s a little butch, but I’m really trying to avoid ‘nice little old lady.’”

I am an art historian. I talk/write about what things look like FOR A LIVING, to a wide range of specialist and nonspecialist audiences. So why is it so hard to describe to my hair guy, a perfectly nice man who has been cutting my hair for SEVENTEEN YEARS, what I want him to do?

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若

26 lettered Earths, 1/x Aerth - fantasy historical Earth: the fun parts. pre-gunpowder (it doesn't work) but other than that all your favorite historical eras squished up against one another. Earth-Xena, if you will. Bearth - Earth but populated by evolved bears and other ursines

It has been said before by smarter folks than I, but let me just reiterate that "Someone You Can Build a Nest In" by @wiswell.bsky.social is utterly delightful and delightfully new. You should read it.

My (14yo) twins have come up with a very effective plan to foil my efforts to get them to clean their room - they’re practicing their instruments in there instead. @wendyxu.bsky.social they are in there playing a duet theme from Hollow Knight for clarinet and tenor sax.

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若

The premodern world held possibilities and imagined futures: the physical and metaphysical systems that were actively built and contested then continue to inform the world in the present. Read our statement on the value of Renaissance & Premodern Studies: www.rensoc.org.uk/statement-on...

Flying white 飛白 (a set of beautiful porcelain cups, gifts of a gifted student I worked closely with this year) 🤩

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若

I saw this posted on twitter but I don't think that user is on BlueSky and I wanted to share it here... This interview with Ethan Hawke perfectly describes the importance of art.

I posted this as a reply to someone but this is Bluesky so it’s probably not showing up much… when you buy a chocolate seder plate, of course you have to make meringues shaped like bones and eggs, make some sugared mint leaves and etc. (The “etc.” included some real wasabi, to my kid’s surprise)

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Kate Lingley 龍梅若

THE VERY WORD "UNIVERSITY" COMES FROM COLLECTIVE ACTION BY TEACHERS AND STUDENTS TO (LITERALLY) FIGHT OFF OUTSIDE AUTHORITIES 1/3 --> prof-gabriele.medium.com/the-aims-of-...

Lol to nobody’s surprise, the police really don’t know shit about the bond and duty of care faculty feel for their students. This is what protect and serve actually looks like.

This.

I think it’s a really, really bad idea to tell people that it’s antisemitic to be angry about people starving, children dying, and aid workers trying to solve that being targeted in direct strikes.

A broadcast yesterday about recent discoveries from a Chu princely tomb at a site called Wuwangdun ("King Wu's Hill") had to run a special chyron while discussing the tomb occupant, likely King Kaolie of Chu. It says 武王墩是地名，和“武王”没有关系 ("Wuwangdun is a placename. It has nothing to do with King Wu.")

This is my all time favorite Facebook “On this day” reminder, especially since it has been well over ten years since I could remember what I meant by it.

Someone I follow might enjoy this excellent bugge I found on my lanai. @franzanth.bsky.social or @premeemohamed.com ?

Reposting b/c I want to remember to try this

Hey #skystorians! I went to a “fellows shoptalk” at the American Academy in Rome with a fantastic format. 1. Two scholars talk about their projects for 15-20 min. each 2. Scholars *talk to one another* about connections between their work for 20 min. 3. Q&A Let’s do more of this. 🗃️ #oah2024

BRB applying for funding to spend a semester just writing short stories based on my kids' card game decks

On the way to shul this morning one of them was playing with Great Yu, Wyatt Earp, Josephine Baker, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Cherenkov radiation. The other one had Voltaire, Zhang Guolao, a giant clam, a disco ball, and film noir. The possibilities are genuinely endless.

Saving this for my students -

Just remember: Arts & Humanities are so useless and pointless that Tech Bros were driven to spend billions of dollars to try and get a computer to do something that badly approximates something Arts & Humanities students could do half asleep and wired on coffee the night before the due date.

So my kids are playing Cards, the Universe, and Everything, often on their phones in the back seat of the car. The cards draw from history, natural history, and folklore. This produces amazing mashup decks, some of which would be incredible prompts for speculative fiction writing. For instance:

All Cardswww.cardstheuniverseandeverything.com CUE Cards has more than 1500 cards (and growing) on almost every imaginable subject; from a quokka to Napoleon to Thor to the Witch Head Nebula.

A richer and more detailed memorial article for Diego (than the one that was circulating earlier). What a loss.

In memoriam: Diego Loukota, 38, specialist in Buddhism and ‘once-in-a-generation’ intellectnewsroom.ucla.edu Even among other leading lights in his field, Loukota’s extraordinary talent for learning, understanding and analyzing languages stood out.

Apparently I observed this anniversary by going in to my Tuesday class and delivering the session I'd prepared for Thursday, which I only noticed today on realizing I now had to teach the session I had prepared for Tuesday. 🤦‍♀️

Facebook reminded me that it is the fifteenth anniversary of a major professional milestone 😆

TIL that my kids (who are in the eighth grade) have a classmate whose first name is “Roman.” I already knew that they have another classmate whose first name is “Saxon.” My inner medievalist is slightly boggled 🤔