Category: linkspam

I found this theater during a 2019 photo shoot in East St. Louis, Ill. It looked as though businesses had at least attempted to use the lower level in the recent past, and everything at ground level was covered in graffiti. But the upper level had fascinating scrollwork and artistic design. I know little about architecture, but I know that that building has stories to tell. 

There are a number of other images from my East St. Louis shoot, which was a fascinating trip detailed a few months ago on the Patreon.

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See the rest of the photography portfolio at elizabethdonaldphotography.com.

It’s been a weird month, but then it’s been weird for all of us, hasn’t it? We are only two weeks from the end of the semester here at Donald Media Towers. My husband is about to finish his bachelor’s degree and not-graduate with the rest of the class of 2020; I have taken an extension on Ye Olde Thesis to get it knocked out in the summer before starting my new endeavor (read the last blog post on this list, if you missed that).

I’m under house isolation for the most part, having ventured out only for such thrilling moments as medical treatments or an insurance-funded car repair that required my actual presence for paperwork. The rest of the time I’ve been in the house, sending my essential-worker husband or son out on our errands, and sooner or later I’ll get them trained on how to follow a shopping list.

Teaching is pretty much wrapped up except for student conferences and grading the final projects, and my student work is… well. Let’s just say grad students and instructors are no less prone to procrastination or the mental malaise that has gripped so many of us in this time of plague. I see all these posts saying that it’s perfectly all right not to suddenly take up a new art form or write a novel or otherwise take advantage of all this home time… but then there’s those pesky deadlines.

So two weeks from now begins the summer, and I will not have any steady gigs for this breather between one program and the next. So it’s going to be freelancing, fiction and Ye Olde Thesis. Which probably means more essays and website design, because I can procrastinate like nobody’s business.

Most of my volunteer work is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. The American Cancer Society chili fundraiser/author fair scheduled for May 2 is postponed until further notice, and the Breakfastival of Hope scheduled for May 30 will likely be in August. The Cardinals ticket sale is on hold until we hear if there will be a baseball season, and right now I’m just crossing my fingers that the fall festival will happen so we can hold our annual book sale.

This has been disappointing for me, as I have lost two friends just this month to cancer and I’m more than a little pissed off about it. Rest assured our Relay for Life team will be raising money for cancer research one way or another, virus bedamned. In the meantime, you can donate here.

Essays

“Unexpected Gifts” (Medium), featuring a photo by my son, Ian Smith, because it was better than my photo by a long shot, pardon the expression. I better up my game! This one was posted on Patreon first, because Patreon always gets first dibs.

“Peace which the world cannot give, I give to you” (Medium)

Journalism

Highland High explores graduation options (Highland News-Leader)

Highland staying vigilant against coronavirus (Highland News-Leader)

Highland faces budget questions amid pandemic (Highland News-Leader)

Future of marijuana dispensaries on hold for now (Highland News-Leader)

Caterer donating meals during pandemic (Highland News-Leader)

Fiction

“Fever” (exclusively for Patreon)

(And a sooper-sekrit project I can’t tell you about until the contracts are signed. Ooo, mysterious.)

Patreon/Blogs etc.

Patreon subscribers received their annual bonus, which was a copy of the River Bluff Review, a literary magazine only distributed in dead-tree edition that included two of my stories this year. They also received a matted photograph. See what you miss by not subscribing? And there should be a lot more fiction in the coming year… for details, see below!

Elizabeth, what are you going to do when you grow up? (that itty bitty announcement here)

To say the month of March was a tad unusual would be grossly understating the case. But you’re right there with me, aren’t you?

I’m fine. My family is fine. We have the enormous privilege of working and/or attending a state university. That means when my husband’s job was put on administrative leave, he kept his salary and benefits. His second job is deemed essential, so he’s still working a few days a week. My son’s job has had its hours cut, but he still has some income. And we are all working our way through the semester via the wonders of Zoom.

I have been in the house for coming up on four weeks, with a few brief exceptions: a doctor’s appointment and two brief trips for supplies when the menfolk were unavailable. Immune-compromised means I was sheltering in place before there was a state order. I am teaching my class in a Zoom chatroom, I am working my way through my final semester from home, and if the thesis weren’t a hot mess, I’d actually be just fine.

But I am privileged. We still have money coming in, and we got a nice big tax return just in time to help us through the worst of it. We kept our health insurance – very important for a house with as many prescriptions as I do – and we are in no danger of eviction or starvation.

Not everyone is so privileged. Some of the people I know are in dire straits. There are emergency funds popping up for journalists, for artists and writers, for students, for others in my circle that are devastated by the current mess. I urge you to seek them out – and to buy work from those artists and writers, because we are all going to need a little beauty to survive this.

And give a little extra love to the journalists. They were talking about this before it came here, and people mocked them. Then they were warning of disaster, and people ignored them. Then they were reporting on the disaster we predicted (or rather, the scientists they quoted predicted) and people blamed them. Now the disaster has hit their own organizations, and they’re being furloughed and laid off even as they were risking their own lives to give you the information you desperately need more than ever.

Support journalists, subscribe to a good paper if you can afford it, and maybe hop into the comment section once in a while to say something nice about it. Don’t stay too long – the mire might get on your shoes. But a supportive, intelligent comment on a news story would make a huge difference.

If you’re a journalist who has been laid off, here are some resources to help you. If you’d like to support good journalism, pick a fund here.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to this month. It’s not as much as you’d expect from someone who’s been mostly housebound, but may I remind you… THESIS.

Essays

An abundance of caution (Medium)

Journalism

Highland inching closer to new pool (Highland News-Leader)

Highland paramedics move to neighboring fire station during renovation (Highland News-Leader)

Highland takes steps to combat coronavirus (Highland News-Leader)

Highland citizens vote down marijuana dispensaries in advisory referendum (Highland News-Leader)

Highland bus drivers stay on salary amid coronavirus shutdown (Highland News-Leader)

Fiction

Coppice and Brake launched with a short story from me titled “Shiny People”! Here’s a blog post about it, and you can buy the dead-tree version or the ebook version right now.

And here’s a podcast of a radio interview with me and Crone Girls Press publisher Rachel Brune about Coppice and Brake, the creative process, the convention life, the changing gender dynamics in horror, and random other subjects that came to mind. Thanks to Adam Messer of WRUU for hosting me!

The River Bluff Review launched its annual edition earlier in March, including two short stories of mine titled “Dear Katrina” and “Sergeant Curious.” It’s a literary magazine and while “Dear Katrina” is part of the Blackfire series, “Sergeant Curious” has no supernatural or horror elements at all. It was an unusual honor to be selected for publication in a literary magazine outside of my usual genres. Unfortunately River Bluff Review is only available through the university.

Patreon/Blogs

Tempting to sing ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ (Donald Media)

The end is nigh… (Patreon)

The Cheshire Inn (Patreon)

That’s all the news that fits… um, except for that one other thing. That’s going to be its own blog post. Stay tuned, citizens.