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Sep. 2nd, 2015 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7So a DW/LJ exclusive, I guess--
I need to find more people on these two platforms. I've found a number of lovely people on Tumblr, though at the moment I have a post that has gone very mildly viral and am therefore getting a bunch of spam followers (mostly accounts with nonsense names and pornographic photos as avatars). Mostly, there are people on there I enjoy and wish I could get to know. Tumblr does not really allow for that, and the ones I've tried, I keep getting confused with one another because there's so little individuality in that space.
Anyway. I've been very active on Tumblr for the last, like, uh, couple of years, that's how long it's been, ugh-- but it's not meeting a ton of needs and they just keep making the site harder to use. And so when Mhalachai posted the IFTTT recipe I thought, that's what I need to do!
And then I was totally shitty at it. But M saw my notifications and followed me and that made me sort of squee internally and I suppose that, along with all the nice messages many people sent me and other expressions of support, surely makes it worth it.
So I apologize in advance if crossposting makes this space weird, or obnoxious. I take criticism poorly but I will try to be receptive to people telling me if it's really awful, and do something about it. So far it's just made me post to Tumblr less, but that's probably for the best; I hate the whole reblogging culture and sort of tend to go easy on it anyway.
Anyway-- if anyone knew me from before and missed me, it's lovely to be in touch again and I will try better to be around. Sorry if my surface interests have shifted slightly; Tumblr has broken me of my earlier habit of being very shy about posting fanfic, and so I'm a lot more prolific about it now. Lately I've been obsessively in the Captain America fandom, mostly polyshipping Steve and Bucky because OMG how can you not, plus Bucky and Natasha, and pretty much everyone with everyone except for some reason for my very short list of NOTPs.
So I have a huuuuuge Stucky/poly epic up on AO3, and am more done than I can quite admit to myself with a fairly complicated and weird Bucky/Natasha thing, and I have my eye set in the future on working on some original stuff.
Partly the barbarians novel from like 2003 (remember that, anyone?) and partly, I am super intrigued by this book my mother just self-published about the Civil War. It's nonfiction, exhaustively researched-- she looked up everything she could find about every man she could find who fought in the Civil War who either 1) served with our county's regiment or 2) had some other involvement with our town before or after the war. This included going to the sites of battles, visiting graveyards, and in general a great deal of personal expense and trouble to write the stories! They're fairly dry but comprehensive reportings of facts, as well as well-labeled speculation and some cultural context.
Here's a random sampling:
"James Mabb enlisted in Schaghticoke on August 1, 1862 in Company K of the 125th. According to his record card, he was a 34-year old farmer, born in Malta, Saratoga County. He was 5’7” tall, with blue eyes and light hair. Unlike many of his comrades, he was a married man with a family.
James E. Mabb N.Y.S. Record Card [scanned image]
James started out his service well, making it through the surrender at Harpers Ferry and the parole camp in Chicago, but he was reported sick on July 2, 1863. That was the date of the battle of Gettysburg, so I wonder if he was in fact wounded. He was also reported sick in hospital in June of 1864, and in April of 1865, and was ill enough that he was discharged from Campbell Hospital in July 1865, after the rest of the regiment had been mustered out.
He applied for an invalid pension on February 7, 1880, and reported in the 1890 Veterans Census that he had been wounded in the shoulder and leg, and that he was a prisoner in Richmond, Virginia for ten days. There is no reason to doubt either of those events, but they are not reflected on his record card. He must have been disabled in some way to have applied for a pension before they were available just based on old age. It certainly confirms that he was wounded at Gettysburg.
I could not find James in the census before the war, but he returned to Schaghticoke after the war. In the 1865 census, I found him plus his wife Eliza, 30, and three children: Harriet, age 13, and twins Eugene and Loren, age 6. There ages would indicate that he had been married since about 1851. James and family stayed in town at least until 1870, when he and his wife were both listed as 42 in the census, and just the twins were at home, now listed as 12 years old. James was a laborer.
By 1880, James and family had moved to Milton, Saratoga County, where James worked in a tannery. Sons Eugene and Loren, 21, worked in a collar shop. James reported that his parents had both been born in Ireland. The family remained in Milton. Wife Elizabeth Adams died in 1898. The 1900 census reflects this, listing James, 71, as a widower. He and son Loren boarded with the family of Cyrus and Cora Webster. Neither listed any occupation. Find-A-Grave states that James was born in 1828 and died October 16, 1907 and is buried in Section 5, grave 106 of the Ballston Spa Village Cemetery next to his wife. His service is noted on his tombstone. He lived a long life despite disability. "
I want desperately to flesh some of these out! It's such a fascinating resource, but as-is, is so dry! I think it would be really neat to fictionalize some of these profiles. I'd love to collaborate with her on some of it. Maybe with our own ancestors instead of local people, as I know we've a couple of candidates in our own family tree-- just so nobody thinks I'm a weirdo stealing their 5-greats-uncle or whatever-- but I love the idea. Anyway.
I probably couldn't resist either putting in magic or making it all an "id-tastic" porn-fest. (A fellow-Tumblrite summed up all my writing as "idtastic" and I am rather fond of the phrase, but a bit resigned about the implications.)
Anyway. That's the state of the me. Just had my 36th birthday, and got my toenails painted by my 1.5-yr-old niece, and so on. Life is good, if complicated, and continues apace, as it does.
I need to find more people on these two platforms. I've found a number of lovely people on Tumblr, though at the moment I have a post that has gone very mildly viral and am therefore getting a bunch of spam followers (mostly accounts with nonsense names and pornographic photos as avatars). Mostly, there are people on there I enjoy and wish I could get to know. Tumblr does not really allow for that, and the ones I've tried, I keep getting confused with one another because there's so little individuality in that space.
Anyway. I've been very active on Tumblr for the last, like, uh, couple of years, that's how long it's been, ugh-- but it's not meeting a ton of needs and they just keep making the site harder to use. And so when Mhalachai posted the IFTTT recipe I thought, that's what I need to do!
And then I was totally shitty at it. But M saw my notifications and followed me and that made me sort of squee internally and I suppose that, along with all the nice messages many people sent me and other expressions of support, surely makes it worth it.
So I apologize in advance if crossposting makes this space weird, or obnoxious. I take criticism poorly but I will try to be receptive to people telling me if it's really awful, and do something about it. So far it's just made me post to Tumblr less, but that's probably for the best; I hate the whole reblogging culture and sort of tend to go easy on it anyway.
Anyway-- if anyone knew me from before and missed me, it's lovely to be in touch again and I will try better to be around. Sorry if my surface interests have shifted slightly; Tumblr has broken me of my earlier habit of being very shy about posting fanfic, and so I'm a lot more prolific about it now. Lately I've been obsessively in the Captain America fandom, mostly polyshipping Steve and Bucky because OMG how can you not, plus Bucky and Natasha, and pretty much everyone with everyone except for some reason for my very short list of NOTPs.
So I have a huuuuuge Stucky/poly epic up on AO3, and am more done than I can quite admit to myself with a fairly complicated and weird Bucky/Natasha thing, and I have my eye set in the future on working on some original stuff.
Partly the barbarians novel from like 2003 (remember that, anyone?) and partly, I am super intrigued by this book my mother just self-published about the Civil War. It's nonfiction, exhaustively researched-- she looked up everything she could find about every man she could find who fought in the Civil War who either 1) served with our county's regiment or 2) had some other involvement with our town before or after the war. This included going to the sites of battles, visiting graveyards, and in general a great deal of personal expense and trouble to write the stories! They're fairly dry but comprehensive reportings of facts, as well as well-labeled speculation and some cultural context.
Here's a random sampling:
"James Mabb enlisted in Schaghticoke on August 1, 1862 in Company K of the 125th. According to his record card, he was a 34-year old farmer, born in Malta, Saratoga County. He was 5’7” tall, with blue eyes and light hair. Unlike many of his comrades, he was a married man with a family.
James E. Mabb N.Y.S. Record Card [scanned image]
James started out his service well, making it through the surrender at Harpers Ferry and the parole camp in Chicago, but he was reported sick on July 2, 1863. That was the date of the battle of Gettysburg, so I wonder if he was in fact wounded. He was also reported sick in hospital in June of 1864, and in April of 1865, and was ill enough that he was discharged from Campbell Hospital in July 1865, after the rest of the regiment had been mustered out.
He applied for an invalid pension on February 7, 1880, and reported in the 1890 Veterans Census that he had been wounded in the shoulder and leg, and that he was a prisoner in Richmond, Virginia for ten days. There is no reason to doubt either of those events, but they are not reflected on his record card. He must have been disabled in some way to have applied for a pension before they were available just based on old age. It certainly confirms that he was wounded at Gettysburg.
I could not find James in the census before the war, but he returned to Schaghticoke after the war. In the 1865 census, I found him plus his wife Eliza, 30, and three children: Harriet, age 13, and twins Eugene and Loren, age 6. There ages would indicate that he had been married since about 1851. James and family stayed in town at least until 1870, when he and his wife were both listed as 42 in the census, and just the twins were at home, now listed as 12 years old. James was a laborer.
By 1880, James and family had moved to Milton, Saratoga County, where James worked in a tannery. Sons Eugene and Loren, 21, worked in a collar shop. James reported that his parents had both been born in Ireland. The family remained in Milton. Wife Elizabeth Adams died in 1898. The 1900 census reflects this, listing James, 71, as a widower. He and son Loren boarded with the family of Cyrus and Cora Webster. Neither listed any occupation. Find-A-Grave states that James was born in 1828 and died October 16, 1907 and is buried in Section 5, grave 106 of the Ballston Spa Village Cemetery next to his wife. His service is noted on his tombstone. He lived a long life despite disability. "
I want desperately to flesh some of these out! It's such a fascinating resource, but as-is, is so dry! I think it would be really neat to fictionalize some of these profiles. I'd love to collaborate with her on some of it. Maybe with our own ancestors instead of local people, as I know we've a couple of candidates in our own family tree-- just so nobody thinks I'm a weirdo stealing their 5-greats-uncle or whatever-- but I love the idea. Anyway.
I probably couldn't resist either putting in magic or making it all an "id-tastic" porn-fest. (A fellow-Tumblrite summed up all my writing as "idtastic" and I am rather fond of the phrase, but a bit resigned about the implications.)
Anyway. That's the state of the me. Just had my 36th birthday, and got my toenails painted by my 1.5-yr-old niece, and so on. Life is good, if complicated, and continues apace, as it does.
