RIP Elias Khoury, a titan of Arabic literature and a principled man. I feel lucky to have spoken with you, if only briefly!

So funny, my kiddo randomly got this book off the shelf to read tonight— it made me tear up. So how about more folktales from/about Gaza?

@darthbluesky.bsky.social I heard you like dogs— I couldn’t help but share my nephew-dog Vince meeting his new puppy cousin. He’s not sure whether it’s real…

Such decision fatigue lately that I’ve been letting my daughter pick out my earrings every morning & building my outfit around them— working out pretty well! 😂

I'm a member of this roundtable on Tuesday at noon EDT! It'll be the first time I've spoken about my research on women in Arabic epics for a long time, and I think it'll be a great conversation. Join us if you can, at lu-se.zoom.us/j/68626020541 #AcademicSky #MedievalSky

For a second my sleepy brain was like “ooh, what are the gays planning, I’m in!!” before I realized it was the Inauguration Day for Harvard’s first president who’s a POC, and that made me pretty happy too. ☺️

Caption contest? #goals

Not sure how to use this site for promotion yet, but: registration is open for the first lecture of this season of the MELA virtual Social Justice Lecture Series! We'll host Dr. Mina Ibrahim to speak on his recent book on the Coptic community of Egypt.
Sept. 27, 11am EDT
Register: bit.ly/MELAIbrahim

New Acquisition!

Flowers and Vases Concertina (2021-22)
Laurelie Rae
Watercolour and gouache, watercolour and watercolour pencil on paper
17.5cm x 9cm (closed) by 332.5cm

Been tough to get much bounty from the garden this year between the lack of sunshine and the pests, but finally got enough tomatoes and basil for my favorite summer lunch! 🍅 🌿

Even when my daughter publicly shamed me for this at her preschool art show, I couldn’t stop— there’s too much, it’d fill the whole house!!

Just had the chance to sit down and browse the new site that hosts a huge proportion of digitized manuscripts from Turkish museums and libraries--- and woww, it's amazing! The registration is intimidating, but I just put n/a in the Passport # field and it went through: https://portal.yek.gov.tr

Just look at this adorably goth little skull that snapdragons make to carry their seeds. Truly the most metal of all the flowers in the garden. 🤘🐉 🌸

I was so interested to see the pencil drawings in the manuscript— I’d love to believe they are underdrawings, but they could just be later sketches. The conservators are going to use their tech magic to see if the finished paintings have pencil underdrawings too!

So excited to pay a visit to Harvard Library’s Preservation lab today to see their current work on an amazing unfinished Shahnama mss., and an 11th c. Georgian book with original woven binding! Conservators make magic w/tech & know-how & a truly heroic amount of legwork, I am in awe!!