Ordinary Time

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In other words, it was ordinary time! Which means lots of ongoing projects which I would love to tell you about!

First—and most important for those of you who follow me only here on the blog, particularly by email—feedburner is discontinuing its email service as of July 2021, which means you are going to need to sign up to follow me on social media if you want nudges about when I have posted on the blog. 

Don’t worry! I am easy to find! Amazingly, I am still on Facebook, both under my personal and professional accounts, but I am also out there in the wild on a variety of other platforms, and I promise to let you know when new blog posts go up! 

My Facebook Author Page, Twitter, and Gab are best if you just want notices about my blog posts and videos (see below). My Facebook Profile is best for ongoing social, cultural, and political commentary. Telegram is best for those who want to go out on the edge—and write poetry (see below). Plus memes. 

😇Where to find me on social media👀😎💖

1. Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.fultonbrown

2. Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/RFultonBrown/

3. Gab: @fencingbear https://gab.com/fencingbear

4. Twitter: @RFultonBrown https://twitter.com/RFultonBrown

5. Telegram Channel: https://t.me/fencingbearatprayer

6. Telegram Chat: https://t.me/joinchat/UVCczOWoJR7o_q4O



Second, I am more than just a blogger! I make videos! Lots and lots of videos! I make videos about medieval history and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien for Unauthorized.tv (with subscription), and I appear regularly as a guest on podcasts, YouTube channels, and even edgier places that you will only know about if you are a tradCath or stalwart follower of Milo. 

To make it easier to keep track of my lectures and interviews, I maintain a list here on the blog (Bear On Air), as well as an episode guide for my ongoing Tolkien series at Unauthorized.tv, where I have two channels: Logos and History, and Forge of Tolkien. Subscribers to Unauthorized.tv can also find me on SocialGalactic as @fencingbear.

🎥Where to watch my videos🌟🐾🌹

1. Bear On Air: 

https://fencingbearatprayer.blogspot.com/p/bear-on-air.html

2. Unauthorized.tv: Logos and History

Study guides at Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version: 

https://unauthorizedmedievalhistory.blogspot.com

3. Unauthorized.tv: The Forge of Tolkien

Episode guide with instructions how to subscribe: 

https://fencingbearatprayer.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-forge-of-tolkien.html


Third, and much to my own surprise, I write poetry. I say “I,” but in truth I have a whole team of poets over in Telegram. 

My fellow poets and I have been practicing our iambic pentameter this past year, and we published our first epic poem this spring—a satire on the model of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad. You can buy it on Amazon, but it is also available from Barnes & Noble as well as your favorite e-book platforms. 

For our second major work, we have moved on from satire to adventure. Our current poem is a Grail quest in ottava rima taking a group of bears to Antarctica in search of the Southern Light. We even have an illustrator for this one! Coming this year from DCR Books!

🐲Where to read our poetry🐻✨🐳

1. Centrism Games: A Modern Dunciad, by the Dragon Common Room (DCR Books, 2021).

In which the Goddess Fama sends a band of very different Knights on a quest to prove themselves her devoted servants. A cautionary tale in heroic couplets modeled on Alexander Pope’s scathing 18th-century Dunciad. 

Review by Joe Long, “Dunces in the Center,” American Greatness (April 2, 2021). 

2. Aurora Bearialis: A Quest, by the Dragon Common Room with Illustrations by Handdrawn Bear (forthcoming from DCR Books)

Once upon a time, there was a polar bear who loved watching the Northern Lights. Every day, he dreamed of capturing their beauty in a glass. One day, an albatross flew by and told him about an even more beautiful light that shone over Antarctica. Because of that, the polar bear convinced three bear friends to go in search of the Light of Antarctica. Because of that, they found themselves on a journey that tested their courage, friendship, and faith. Until finally, they learned the true source of the Light.


Fourth, I play with blocks—but not just any blocks! Ankerstein blocks! You can see them in my social media profiles and on my academic homepage. I am building now with Großkaliber Neue Folge 20—sneak peak at the Anker-Material Archiv, if you want to see the plans. 

It requires a full weekend to take down the previous building and put up a new one, and the plans are getting harder as I add further sets. One day maybe I will make it to GK-NF 34! But for now I am proud of myself for making it through sets 16 and 18 this past year. 

🏰Where to see my buildings🌃⛪🌇


1. Rachel’s Ankerstein Buildings

Gallery of builds from GK-NF 6, 14, 16, 18, and 20, with links to plans and where to buy your own blocks.

2. My academic homepage

Here you can also find links to my academic publications and syllabi for my courses at the University of Chicago, as well as a directory for my public pages (like this blog!). Url: http://home.uchicago.edu/~rfulton


And that—if you’ve been wondering—is just a little bit of what I’ve been up to when I have not been posting on the blog! Watch this space—more adventures to come!

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
Keep reading

Free Speech Fundamentals: Building a Platform

Image
Milo's platform It is without a doubt one of the sillier complaints that protestors at Milo's talks have regularly made when they are trying to shut him up for having conservative political opinions about freedom of speech. For example, at UC Davis, where the protestors effectively shut down Milo's event the night before with their violence , after which the next day one of them demanded of Milo as he was talking to the crowd gathered outside to hear him speak (see video at 4:01 ): "Where's my platform? Where is everyone else's platform?" Milo admonished him: "You had it last night, brother," but of course the young man was not satisfied. He thought that it was Milo's fault that nobody wanted to listen to him. Trigglypuff at UMass Amherst had the same complaint, if imperfectly expressed (see video at 1:26 ): "But this is free speech! If you're so concerned about free speech..."--meaning presumably hers, as she clearly wa
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
Keep reading

Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

Image
1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a
Keep reading

Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

Image
Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, and
Keep reading