A reminder that on Saturday afternoon 28 fine, fabulous and friendly local writers will be gathered in one place with a delicious selection of our books for sale—a perfect opportunity to buy gifts for family, friends, and yourself, and to get them signed and personalised.
Time and Place: 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM. Phinney Center, 6532 Phinney Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103
Event: Me and 27 other local authors—see the image below for the list—will gather for the annual neighbourhood Holiday Book Fest, with cookies, and conversation, and lots and lots of wildly different books to buy as holiday gifts and get signed and personalised for friends and family (and, of course, yourself!), all while chatting with favourite authors or meeting new ones
There will also be select author readings, so just drop by and listen to some lovely storytelling.
This is an absolutely free community event, no registration required.
Just come on down to the Phinney Center and bask in books and conversation.
There are a few remaining copies of the 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big or, The Fairies' Parliament, by John Crowley, with art by Peter Milton. More information here.
While you are there, there is also a 15% off coupon for the trade edition and/or posters, as well as an invitation to make a donation in support of horticultural conservancy.
Regular readers know I occasionally get focused on natural history and life science issues, anything from post-viral syndromes to ‘2019-nCoV, the new coronavirus‘, screwfly to bonobos, and tiny cats to sex-chromosome syndromes. Last autumn and early this year, I wrote extensively about highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), that is, bird flu, because I found it interesting. Like all flus, though, bird flu is seasonal. As the virus waned, so did news and therefore my interest. But, well, it’s baaaaaack….
Yes, as predicted, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is on the upswing again in the US. (If you’d like to refresh yourself on all things bird flu, feel free to read my Avian Influenza Basics post.) Most of it, also as predicted, is our old friend H5N1, slightly different variants of which infect wild birds (mostly waterfowl), backyard flocks, commercial flocks, livestock herds, and wild mammals.
I won’t bother listing all the different increases in various flocks and herds here in the US since September. If you’re curious, you can follow the USDA’s reports. But I will mention one recent report on one particular mammal. Communications Biology documents the die-off of half the breeding population of a key population of elephant seals from H5N1. By ‘key’ this population represents more than half the total numbers of southern elephant seals: over 53,000 seals were wiped out. This will affect the numbers of elephant seals through the end of this century, a massive blow. I would not be the least bit surprised to find there’s a lot of this kind of thing happening off the radar—that this report represents the tip of the iceberg.
Here in the US, there have been scores of human cases of bird flu, mostly mild, with one fatality in Louisiana—though none since February. Until now. Right here in Western Washington, in Grays Harbor, an older person is hospitalised with the virus. This is not only the first human bird flu infection in the US since February but, notably, the first-ever known human case of a different HPAI: H5N5. The hospitalised and severely ill patient older and suffers several underlying conditions. Health officials who have modelled the behaviour of the two different HPAIs think H5N5 poses no more of a risk to people than H5N1. Which is great. As far as it goes. The problem with flu models is that because influenza viruses mutate so fast, with both HPAI and the more usual seasonal influenzas on the rise, the odds of a combination of both and/or a novel reassortant of either that behaves in dangerously unpredictable ways increases.
To be super clear: right now there’s zero grounds for anxiety. I’m merely pointing out that it’s probably time to start taking some simple, sensible precautions. And please do get vaccinated.
Today is the Feast Day of Hild of Whitby,1 patron saint of learning and culture (including poetry), who died on this day in 680, having spent 66 years kicking ass and not bothering to take names. We believe she was originally buried at her main foundation of Streoneshalh, now known as Whitby, but sometime after Whitby was destroyed by Viking raids, her remains were, apparently, translated to…well, somewhere else. No one knows. Various religious foundations have claimed her—not unlike Arthur; saintly relics were (and still are) big business—but no one knows for sure.
There are several grave markers from Whitby though I have images of none of them (and none are for Hild). However, there are also several from Hereteu, or Hartlepool (where Hild was abbess for a while before founding and moving to Whitby). One intriguing stone, dated ‘mid-seventh to mid-eighth century,’ was found under the head of some skeletal remains. The runes spell out hildi þryþ, that is, the feminine personal name Hildithryth:
As we don’t know Hild’s full name, it might be tempting to assume this is our Hild’s stone.2 But I doubt it. For one thing it was part of a group of similar burials, and as abbess, saint, and royal advisor I doubt she would have been buried among others. Plus, of course, she was more than likely buried at Whitby. And as Hartlepool was also most likely destroyed by Vikings (as with mos records of this time and place, much was lost in the Viking raids from the late eighth through ninth centuries—all we know is that, after Hild, Hartlepool essentially vanishes from history) no one in their right mind would have transferred her there.
You’ll see I’ve made her cross round-ended and equal-armed, more like the kind of cross I think she would have worn, rather than the more traditional long upright and shorter crosspiece of the Hartlepool marker.
Enough about her death. Back to her life: Why is Hild patron saint of learning and culture/poetry? Learning, because she trained five bishops who became renowned for their own erudition—one of whom, John of Beverley, was the one who ordained and mentored the Venerable Bede—the only British person ever to have been learned enough to be honoured as a Doctor of the Church. Poetry, because she pretty much midwived Engish literature: the earliest surviving piece of Old English is Cædmon’s Hymn, composed at Hild’s behest at Whitby.
I’m not religious but I mark the day because Hild—and Whitby, its abbey, and ammonites—marked my life, in particular my writing life, indelibly.
My first novel was Ammonite, which was published when I was 32. The author photo I used for that book was taken at Whitby Abbey when I was 30. You can tell from the look on my face how much the place affects me. (And in fact I like this photo so much it forms the basis for the cover of my upcoming book, She Is Here.)
Nicola Griffith, Whitby Abbey, 1991. Photo by Kelley Eskridge.
In my third novel, The Blue Place, Aud talks longingly of Whitby—now mostly known for the abbey founded by Hild in 657. In Whitby you can commonly find three species of fossil ammonites, or snakestones—the beach is littered with them. A whole genus of ammonites, Hildoceras, is named for Hild. This is Hildoceras bifrons. It’s what I think of when I think of ammonites.
Ammonites fascinate me. Their shell growth—developing into that lovely spiral—is guided by phi. And phi (Φ = 1.618033988749895… ), the basis of the Golden Ratio or Divine Proportion, has all sorts of interesting mathematical properties. The proportions generated by phi lie at the heart of myriad things: the proportions of graceful buildings4, the orderly whorl of a sunflower, ammonites, Fibonacci numbers, population growth, and more. (If you’re interested, a good place to start is Wikipedia.) Phi is what creates the underlying pattern in much of nature. I think phi is responsible for what Hild may think of as God.
There is a legend that ammonites result from Hild getting pissed off one day and turning all the local snakes to stone. The legend was so well-established after her death, that, in the later middle ages and even up until Victorian times, enterprising locals carved heads on the stones and sold them as the snakes she petrified.5
Here’s what H. bifrons looks like as a snakestone:
H. bifrons as snakestone
And here’s a much more finely carved specimen:
Victorian snakestone—not sure which species of ammonite
When I was working on my black and white zoomorphic series, I tried to draw a snakestone. It turned out to be remarkably difficult to get the proportions mathematically pleasing. I started with a different genus, a ceratite, with a kind of wavy division to each of its segments, because they seemed to grow in more mathematically predictable ways. They’re just not what I think of as a classic ammonite; they seemed a bit, well, boring. I tried jazzing them up a bit—make them look as though they’re dancing to form a kindof ammonite triskele inside a Lindisfarne Gospels style interlace wreath. Better—but not great.
So then I tried yet another genus, a…well, actually I forget what it’s called, maybe a baculite? Anyway:
You won’t find these in Britain, but I like the crinkly look. It had possibilities. So I copied that, and then turned it into a snakestone. Much better!
Crinkly baculite snakestone
Earlier this year we were at Worldcon, where we bumped into a friend, Wendy, aka MaudPunk, and got talking about all things metal work—Wendy loves to forge Early Medieval replicas from bronze, silver, copper, etc. (She’s made me several things, including this brooch.) She was wearing a great pendant she’d made, based on the Fairford Duck. Kelley really wanted one. No, she wanted two—one silver, one copper.
I like the duck well enough, but that’s not what fired up my neurones. Ever since Tor commissioned a lovely enamel brooch/pin for Spear, I’ve enjoyed wearing it on my jacket lapel. I get many compliments (“Is that Tiffany?”). The Spear pin is boldly coloured, which I love, but it does occasionally limit my sartorial choices. So I’ve been subconsciously looking for something more neutral. And I thought: A snakestone! In silver! And wouldn’t you know, Wendy had already designed a snakestone pendant; it did not take much persuasion to commission one as a pin.
And, lo, just in time for our birthdays, we got a package with what we’d asked for:
Birthday!
And here’s the pin in all its glory—straight out of its lovely linen pouch:
It’s hand-carved in wax then cast in the metal of your choice, then ground and polished by hand. Here it is on my jacket lapel, where it will stay for at least a couple of weeks, after which I’ll probably alternate with the enamel pin:
So Hild and her ammonite are still bringing me enormous pleasure, and still—as is only fitting for the patron saint of culture and education—helping me learn new things.
Tonight I will raise a glass to Hild, to ammonites, to Whitby, and to all things beautifully made and perfectly proportioned. wes þu hal! Or maybe wæs hæil! I dunno, Old English is not exactly my forte—but drinking and merrymaking is :)
At least it’s her feast day in the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Communion celebrates on the 18th. I’m not a practising Christian but was raised Catholic, so tend to follow their dates. No one knows when Hild was born, but long ago I decided it was some time in the last half of October. At some point I’ll pick a day, and then I’ll have two dates to celebrate! ︎
Hild means ‘battle’, and thryth translates to something like ‘strength’ or ‘power’, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. There again, I’ve always preferred the idea of Hild being Hildeburg, that is Battle Fortress: obdurate, adamant, immovable. ︎
Yep, it would have made more sense for it to be square, or more landscape than portrait format, but, well, I didn’t think of that until just now… ︎
Ever wondered why Georgian mansions feel so gracious and pleasing? Their formal rooms follow the Golden Ratio. ︎
Alice Wong, Asian American woman in a wheelchair with a tracheostomy at her neck connected to a ventilator. She’s wearing a pink plaid shirt, pink pants, and a magenta lip color. She is smiling and behind her are a bunch of tall prehistoric looking plants. Photo credit: Allison Busch Photography.
I found out late Friday night that Alice Wong had died an hour earlier in a San Francisco hospital. Others will write better obituaries, finer eulogies, but Alice—the woman herself, the activist, the co-conspirator, the mentor and encourager—had an outsized impact on my journey through to and understanding of my identity as a Disabled writer.
We met on Twitter. I long ago deleted my Twitter account and archive and so can’t trace the exact beginnings, but I think it was probably sometime in early 2015, after she has started the Disability Visibility Project and I was beginning to accept that elbow crutches were no longer sufficient to living a full life: that it was time for me to investigate, buy, and start using a wheelchair. I could feel my own resistance to that, and I knew it was ridiculous. I’d already been talking to Riva Lehrer, so I was already waking up to it, but it was reading the conversations with and/or facilitated by Alice in various venues that really helped me begin to wrap my head around how the tentacles of ableism didn’t affect just my immediate day-to-day life but were coiled about and strangling almost every aspect of disabled peoples’ lives, including—especially—our interactions with the world.
This of course includes our cultural lives. Alice and I were chatting on Twitter about writing: disabled writers, disabled characters in fiction. ‘We need a hashtag,’ I said. And #CripLit was born. Within a few weeks, Alice—the organisational powerhouse behind so very many crip community efforts of the early 21st century—and I were ready to announce the first-ever #CripLit chat for 23 July 2016. We announced simultaneously on here and on The Disability Visibility Project:
From the very beginning the chat was massive—almost overwhelming. Each chat took a lot of work to prepare—finding occasional co-hosts, working out the questions, scheduling, the intensity of the moderation—but they were worth it. We did one every couple of months for two and half years (they are archived here).1 I firmly believe that those chats moved the needle regarding disability literature. And though the hashtag and idea were mine, it was Alice—her drive, her organisational ability, her sheer forward momentum and refusal to let any barriers stand in her way—who made it possible; it was her energy that was the spine.
Alice was one of my two crip godmothers.2 She was fourteen years younger than me but decades wiser in the ways of disability, ableism, and the power of community engagement. I learnt from her constantly—sometimes in long conversations where I asked many (I’m guessing, looking back, rather tedious) questions, and sometimes just from watching how she handled situations. Alice was smart, brave, clear, definite, kind, and able to able to focus on and lead others to those from whom we can find and draw hope–because it’s hope that sustains us in hard times. Rage is vital—crip rage is powerful; and, oh, we have so much to be angry about—but Alice understood that it’s as important to talk about joy as about difficulty. It helps to be reminded of the positive things we’re fighting towards, not just what we’re fighting against. We don’t just want access; we don’t just want representation; we want power, real power over ourselves and our lives.
We connected on Twitter several years ago and are co-partners in #CripLit, a series of Twitter chats about writing and disability representation with a particular focus on disabled writers. What have you enjoyed so far from these chats? Why do you think there is a need for these types of conversations? What do you see for the future of #CripLit?
Nicola: What I like best about #CripLit is a building sense of excitement, the disability community come together and beginning to flex. We are 20% of this country, maybe 20% of the electorate. We are amazingly diverse and fine. There are some incredible groups coalescing around different focuses; social media is a powerful way to connect. #CripLit is just one of them. Now we need to find a way to bring all these groups together to form a critical mass, a tipping point. We need to catch fire, to join in a roaring, creative inferno, to pour forth.
Part of that is to start putting together the scaffolding we need to build cultural connections; that scaffolding is story. We don’t know who we are until we can tell a story about ourselves. Stories help us understand we are not alone.
But to write stories we need to know that we’re not just a voice crying into the void: that others are crying out, too. Once we know others are there, to help, to learn, to teach, to support, we can sing out in harmony, build a chorus that will change the world.
When she published her anthology of essay of crip wisdom, Resistance & Hope, I returned the favour and interviewed her here. I really hope you’ll go read that interview. It is pure Essence of Alice.
As a disabled activist and media maker, who or what are you most determined to resist? And where do you find hope?
I resist policies and programs that keep disabled people from living the lives they want. I resist low expectations and tokenistic attempts at disability diversity by organizations and institutions. I resist the feelings of shame and isolation that still plague many of us, including me. I resist the idea that nothing can change and that every system is broken. I resist the idea that representation is enough when what we really want is power.
I find hope in my friends and family. I find hope in the amazing ways disabled people create and get things done interdependently. I find hope and joy in the simple things—excellent conversations and meals. And cat videos.
I miss Alice, her clarity, bravery, and joy. I wish she were still here, but her work continues.3
Sadly, all my tweets are missing because when I deleted my Twitter account I also deleted the archive. That missing record is the only thing I regret about leaving that platform. ︎
Her family has committed to continue her work, so if you wish to contribute to that, please donate to her GoFundMe, which was originally started to help keep Alice living in the wider community. ︎
It’s mid-November, yet some of our flowers don’t seem to have got the memo. Admittedly the weather has been strange: a couple of cold, bright days, days of rain, a single, oddly warm and humid day, more rain… Here on the kitchen deck we have hot and hardy fuchsia (and those bright things out of focus behind it are begonias), a geranium (it’s meant to be an annual, not a perennial) bravely blooming—and it has a friend. Plus (not pictured—because the bloom is around the back which I can’t capture with my phone) the jasmine is also trying to bloom.
Blooming bravely
And it has a friend…
Meanwhile, on the back deck we have gerbera daisies blooming shyly beneath the thick foliage of a weird plant that I don’t know the name of, and it’s keeping company with a couple of brave marigolds to make a richer more vibrant version of the windblown tapestry of autumn leaves and lawn. Then there’s that autumn mix of salvia—red, red and white, and purple, which are still pleasing the humming birds. Finally, there a lone snapdragon—braving the odds but looking a bit pale in the face of the challenge…
Shy gerbera
Flowers in richer versions of autumn leaves
Autumn medley of salvia
Snapdragon, pale in the face of the odds
Every autumn for the last five years I’ve been surprised by the hardiness of our flowers. Ever year, I remind myself the climate is changing and the season lengthening—yet every single year I am surprised again.
Our flowers are a benign symptom of a serious problem.There’s very little I personally can do to address the global climate crisis, but I’m determined at least to enjoy some of this small, discrete, and fleeting benefits.
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asknicola_feed at 07:59pm on 20/11/2025
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