I had this idea for a fanfic last night right before bedtime, and I need to find the time to write it, but it's pretty self-explanatory: Alligator Loki is the lead guitarist in a rock band, and this is his signature song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV3AziKTBUo

This is the first chapter of my original character fanfic for _A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1)_ by Naomi Novik.
Thank you to Alexx for formatting and uploading it for me, although we haven't yet figured out how to delete teh second copy without deleting both of them.
Alexx also uploaded for me the original essay I wrote about disabled characters in Harry Potter fanfic back in 2005, which I got to present at the Harry potter convention in Salem that same year.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30595490/chapters/75474443

I think I have the first version of my webpage properly formatted, and I figured out how to get it onto GitHub, and even how to perform a commit.

Keeping in mind that this is just the starter page--the class starts the sections on CSS and Javascript tomorrow--would folks be willing to give feedback?

I have no idea if the image of the kestrel is properly sized, and there is an Aria label within the tag for the link to the thesis that is not showing up, but I've been writing and reading HTML all morning at this point, and my ability to problemsolve is close to empty.

Thank you to everyone who offered a hover of kestrel images!

And, oh yeah, here is the link https://kestrell13.github.io/

Kes: I'm currently taking a course on web design, so I'm using it as an opportunity to collect some of my writing.
Questions for the audience:
1. What do you think of the outline and list of writings below?
2. Is there anything specific, not included in the list below, that you would like to see included on the new webpage?
The GitHub guide and the new essay are not online yet, so that will be new material. I'm trying very hard to keep the plan reasonable but, reasonable not being my strong suit, I might add more.
Also, I'm not too jazzed about the title, but I want it to use the words "disability" and "technology" for search engine reasons, or is that an outdated web design idea?

Title: Kestrell's Disability and Technology Resources

Main page:

About me section
I'm a blind writer, disability and technology advocate, and MIT graduate. My writing focuses on disability and technology, which can include images of disability in science fiction, assistive technology, and accessible books.
This section will include an image of a kestrel (the falcon) with alt text.

Second section containing unordered list of links to pages containing writing:

1. to my blog my blog
2. New essay about disability in spec fic
3. Quick Start Guide for Using Jaws with GitHub
4. What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People,
Part 1 ,
Part 2
and Part 3
5. My thesis Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media
6. Bibliography of science fiction containing images of disability and technology
And, if I have the energy,
7. Covid-19 resources collected from my blog posts

Footer section:
Contact me
Link to old website Blind Bookworm Website

That is the title acquired along the way by this history of the "never end a sentence with a preposition" debate.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004454.html
Also, I now like Ben Jonson a lot better, and I am enchanted by the image of Dryden and Jonson getting into a grammar smackdown.

Also the introduction. The working title is _Six Ways of Looking at an Elephant_. I expect I will be doing more tweaking, and I need to do another pass in order to add the footnotes, but I think this is going to be the most difficult chapter--I keep forgetting how complicated lines, shapes, and forms really are. Also, I had to spend a lot of time figuring out the format of how to explain art terms, and deciding which terms absolutely needed to be in the first chapter without making that chapter huge ("elements of art" is pretty basic, "principles of design" can come later, especially since art instructors don't necessarily agree what all those principles are, just that they exist).

When I have a second chapter, I may ask for beta readers to give feedback on comprehensibility and whether I am squeezing too much into a chapter.

Kes: I was thinking of submitting this to the
Lost Pages Imaginary Book contest
http://chizine.com/chizinepub/contests/lost-pages/index.php
but it's supposed to be 150 words, and I'm way over that.

The Book House by Hurst Hathorne Montague and Richard Clipson Sturges

Built in 1899, The Book House is located in Boston’s Bak Bay and exists as an eerie synthesis of poetry and architecture. It was designed by the decadent poet Hurst Hathorne Montague and the architect Richard Clison Sturges. Montague called the house Mnemosyne, and it's numerous doors, windows, fireplaces, and staircases act as a record of the words and images from what Montague referred to as his master work.

Each individual door, window, etc.--all outstanding examples of the art nouveau style--is said to reflect a notable incident in Montague's (frequently scandalous) life. The most infamous example is the door to the master bedroom which has carved upon it two images of Montague's mistress (whom Montague also referred to as “Mnemosyne” in his poetry), the image on the outside of the door showing her reimagined as a scantily-clad Daphne in flight, while the door as seen from inside the bedroom shows her kneeling and entirely unclad with her unbound hair transforming into leaves. Montague's mistress was later to hang herself from a tree in the garden soon after Montague's disappearance.

Harvard art professor Elizabeth Blackwood states in her book _Memory and Death in The Book House_ that the doors, windows, and stairways, represent Montague's own psychic tarot of twenty-two arcana. When art critic Henry Rose dismissed this theory by claiming that there are only twenty-one of these "tarot cards," Blackwood countered that the twenty-second is the door through which Montague passed during the night he disappeared. Despite the fact that Book House was filled with approximately a hundred of Montague’s bohemian friends and acquaintances, and that at least a dozen people were in the library when Montague exited through the fateful door through which he was never to return, the uncanny door has never been discovered. Descriptions of it’s style and dimensions vary wildly, but all the witnesses agree that It had carved upon it the tarot image of the Hanged Man, but with Montague’s own laughing saturnine features.

or, 6 Ways of Looking at an elephant

I only made one big resolution for 2011, and it's that this year I will add more art to my life.

The seed of this idea was planted almost a year ago, back in January of 2010, when I helped to organize a tactile tour of the Arisia art show. This annual art show lends itself extremely well to the tactile experience of art, as it includes a wide range of art forms and materials, from jewelry to pottery to fabric to ironmongery, and in 2010 even included a steampunk computer (this last was not available for touching but we all agreed that it deserved a prize for best auditory art).

For me, it was one of the most exciting convention events I had ever participated in. A large part of my enjoyment came from getting to share in the enthusiasm of other visually impaired participants and from having the chance to talk to artists who were obviously very passionate about exploring not just the visual but the tactile aspects of their art.

What took me by surprise, however, was the sense of remembering something which I had so utterly forgotten: my love of art.

For me it was a
madeleine moment
http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html
an intensely-felt but involuntary sense-memory wich made my hands itch to beholding pencil and drawing paper. More than that, however, I missed the sensation of being in "the zone," that sort of half-dream state during which one is completely immersed in giving form to something which, until that moment, has existed soly within one's imagination. That sensation, in particular, was an experience which I longed to rediscover.

After the art show, I realized how much I had missed having art in my life, and I resolved to do something about that lack.
( essay continued below cut )

Kes: The following quote finally managed to put into words why I wince whenever I hear writers going on about "world building" as I can practically see the chapters of description appearing in the air above their heads. Plus, I just like the fact that the author ca discuss writing in terms of something so simple as Legos.

Beware the Trap of 'Bore-geous' Writing
By
AYELET WALDMAN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704243904575630580347359368.html

block quote start
Though you won't find it in Webster's, there's a word to describe the kind of meticulously constructed writing that bores even its author. A "bore-geous" novel is one that is packed with gorgeous, finely wrought descriptions of places and people, with entire paragraphs extolling the slope of one character's
nose, whole chapters describing another's perambulations through a city. These novels are often historical or set in foreign lands, their bore-geousness inspired by the author's anxiety about making an unfamiliar world feel convincing and true. It's not that the sentences aren't well-constructed, even lovely.
They are. That's part of the problem. Bore-geousness happens when you are writing beautifully but pointlessly.
block quote end

Some forms of fiction seem particularly prone to inscribing meaning upon the physical body;
( continued below cut )