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kelliealtogether · 10 days ago

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So I can't get enough of the fanart of Adam with a beard that @try-set-me-on-fire has been blessing us with, and I wrote a little something inspired by this art of theirs because we love a beardy, unkempt, mysterious Adam Parrish.

Adam Parrish never anticipated growing a beard would itch.

Before averting the end of the world, he always shaved before his facial hair made it past the stage of stubble. Unlike Gansey, Adam had the capacity to grow something other than a scraggly tuft on his chin, but — as evidenced by Ronan when he lowered himself to show up for classes prior to dropping out — scruff took the dignity of the Aglionby uniform down a peg. Dignity being an aspect of the school uniform he needed most, Adam lathered up every morning with dollar store shaving cream and used a dollar store razor to clear his jaw, cheeks, upper lip, and chin of the faint blond fuzz that appeared overnight. It was the last step of the perfunctory routine he’d crafted to get ready with minimal effort and time, a step that often left his face dotted with bloody bits of toilet paper, the quantity driven by how much sleep he’d stolen the night before.

That routine followed him to Harvard, moving from his tiny, antiquated bathroom in his apartment above St. Agnes to a shared dormitory bathroom, where it stuck around until Adam returned to campus after a two week leave of absence because reacclimating his soul with his body was a lot more difficult than he initially planned.

Not to mention with Ronan back from the sweetmetal sea, and with every ley line everywhere awake, Adam wasn't exactly rushing to return to classes.

But when he did, the Adam Parrish who returned to Harvard wasn't the same Adam Parrish who had left campus one evening to scry and find his boyfriend. The Adam Parrish who returned to Cambridge for his final semester in the Ivy League aligned closer with the Adam Parrish he'd been the past summer at the Barns. An Adam Parrish who didn't have to perform, not because it didn't matter, and not because he didn't care, but because he didn't want to. He didn't have to. The past few weeks had given him some perspective on what really mattered, on the fragility of not just his own body and mind, but the whole world, and as soon as he admitted that he didn't want to stay at Harvard and that he didn't want to keep acting like a cut-rate Gansey, he reached a level he'd learned about in his first semester psychology class but never personally experienced.

The morning he returned to campus, Adam put the picture-perfect student who looked like he belonged on brick-paved walkways and around stacks of leatherbound library books on a shelf behind his closet door. He donned flannel instead of tweed. Jeans instead of slacks. He shoved his feet in old, scuffed sneakers instead of pristinely polished secondhand brogues, and he wore an old oversized Harvard sweatshirt Blue had found him in a thrift store after he’d gotten his acceptance letter instead of plain, drab sweaters Adam bought because he thought they looked academic.

In the end, he returned to wearing all the clothes he’d initially left behind at the Barns when he’d driven away in August because they didn’t match who he’d wanted to become at Harvard.

He’d really been such a fool not all that long ago.

Without cuffed sleeves and cuffed hems, he became almost unrecognizable. Unimpressive. Unremarkable. The dorm proctor stopped him and asked him who had signed him in as a guest before realizing she was talking to Adam. Professors did a double take when he stopped by during office hours to turn in make-up assignments. Classmates who always asked him to study with them hardly looked his way. Just a change in wardrobe alone — from classic to comfort — stripped away so much of the false front he’d put up for months, enough that the Crying Club didn't notice him waiting for them when he asked them to meet him in Thayer's basement so he could provide an explanation and attempt an apology.

Then Adam’s already-perfunctory morning routine became impossibly more perfunctory when, first, he ran out of the styling paste he used to wrangle his self-cut hair into something presentable, and then — a few days later — ran out of shaving cream.

Unless he looked closely at himself in the mirror — steam swiped away to make a lopsided circle large enough for his shower-pinked face — Adam couldn’t tell he hadn’t shaven. In the thin, sickly gray of the bathroom, he had to tilt his head one way and lift his chin before the coarse, fair hair on his jaw caught a little bit of light. Straight on, he looked the same as he always had: feather boned, gaunt cheeked, thin lipped, wary eyed.

Except those wary eyes had recently lost their dark circles.

That first morning, Adam told himself he’d stop by a drugstore and pick up more shaving cream, but he didn’t. And he didn’t the next day. And he didn’t the next day either. By the fourth morning, he finally began looking slightly scruffy. Or maybe slightly rugged. Nothing like Ronan — who grew a five o’clock shadow by noon — but when Adam ran his hand across his jaw, rough hairs scraped his palm, and he didn’t have to move his head a certain way to see the stubble on his face. A distinct coating of fair hair covered most of the bottom half of his face, a subtle shadow Adam didn’t totally hate, and if he left it alone, he’d save himself five to ten minutes every morning.

So he left it alone.

But then it started itching.

“The fuck is that sound?” Ronan asked during one of their nightly phone calls.

While Adam sat on his bed in his Harvard dorm, Ronan sat in a hotel room somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountains, priming to track down a dreamer he’d been encountering in dreamspace the past few days. In an effort to help, Adam had flipped some tarot cards onto his comforter, and while figuring out their meaning, he’d started absently scratching his jaw right by where he held his phone to his right ear.

“What?” Adam replied, hearing Ronan’s question but not picking up its meaning, too absorbed in figuring out how Temperance fit into any kind of reading involving Ronan.

“That sound,” Ronan said. “It’s like I’m in a damn cabin in the woods and the monster of the week’s trying to get through the door.”

Adam furrowed his eyebrows, still focused on the wispy figure pouring smoke-like water from one cup into another. “The monster of the…” Slowly, Ronan’s words sank in and Adam stilled his fingertips on his face before dropping his hand into his lap. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I was scratching my face.”

“Why? Do they have fleas at Harvard? Bed bugs? Magical mosquitos?”

“No,” Adam said flatly. “I ran out of shaving cream and haven’t shaved in a few days and my — beard? I guess it’s a beard. My beard itches.”

Silence stretched across the phone line for so long Adam checked to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected because Ronan’s phone died, but the time still ticked upward on the screen of his phone. He’d simply rendered Ronan speechless for a few moments because he hadn’t picked up a razor in a week.

“You have a beard,” Ronan said when he finally got his wits back about him.

“It’s not really a—”

“Don’t tell me it’s like that little soul patch thing Dick tries to grow everytime he has ideas about being manly.”

Laughing dryly, Adam gave up on interpreting Temperance and laid back on his bed, rubbing his hand over his cheek to ease the itch instead of scratching as he replied, “It’s not like that. But it’s not a beard beard. I said it’s only been a few days.”

“Send me a picture.”

“I’m not sending a picture.”

“Because it’s coming in uneven. I bet you look mangy.”

“I do not look mangy.”

“I bet you do. That’s why you won’t send me a picture.”

“I do not look mangy,” Adam repeated. “Jesus, Ronan. If I send you one, will you quit saying that?”

“I make no promises, Parrish.”

A half hour later, after they finished their call, Adam did take a photo of himself. Mostly because when he sent a rare selfie to Ronan, Ronan sent one back, even if it was only one side of his face or a close up of an eye. And because it was for Ronan, Adam put a little effort into the photo, shifting his head on his navy pillowcase until he found a good angle and smiled a little when he hit the shutter button. He looked at the photo briefly before he sent it to Ronan, and it surprised him that his facial hair wasn’t growing unevenly at all. One spot near his left ear was a little thinner than everywhere else, but his facial hair was an otherwise perfectly even layer half a shade lighter than the hair on his head.

Yet this did not stop Ronan from sending Adam a picture of a mangy dog instead of a selfie, followed by a single-worded message moments later.

Shave.

Usually, Adam left contrariness to Ronan, who had perfected the art of antagonism a long, long time ago. But something about the single-word reply irked Adam. It came across as a directive, an order, even though Ronan would never mean it that way, and it tightened Adam’s jaw, making it ache as well as itch. He closed out of the message and willfully ignored it the rest of the night and into the following morning, when he found himself in Walgreens to pick up a new tube of toothpaste.

On his way through the store to the register, Adam didn’t avoid the shaving aisle and instead paused in front of the cans of shaving cream for a long minute. He stared down the red, white, and blue cans of Barbasol, and leered at the far fancier cream-and-navy Aveeno Therapeutic Shave Gel.

Shave.

It seemed like only yesterday they’d made up in the sweetmetal sea, where the two of them had intertwined and recounted their rights and wrongs, made their admissions and their apologies. And Adam wasn’t mad at Ronan. A year or two ago, he would have been, and receiving a photo of a scabby, patchy-haired dog would have sent them straight into a fight. Now, Adam well understood it was Ronan being Ronan, which meant he was being a dick despite the fact he loved Adam. So Adam wasn’t mad, but he was a little peeved.

Just peeved enough to be petty.

He turned away from the myriad shaving creams and shaving balms and aftershaves and headed to the front of the store to buy his single tube of toothpaste. Then he walked back to campus, let himself into his dorm, and — wastefully — threw away the last of his razors.

The next few weeks, neither of them brought up the beard thing. Once, Ronan asked if Adam got shaving cream and Adam indirectly answered that he’d gone to the drugstore. However Ronan interpreted that was up to him, but he didn’t ask about it again, leaving Adam to assume he’d interpreted the response as a positive toward Team Shave. They exchanged photos but no selfies, simply snapshots of tangled roots obstructing a ley line or reawakened Rockefeller beetles crossing Harvard Square in a tidy single-file. And when they talked, Adam did everything he could to keep his hands away from his face, even going so far as sitting on his hands after putting Ronan on speaker.

Finally, in the fourth week of not shaving, the itching waned, and when Adam looked in the mirror, the hair on his face had definitively turned into a beard. Thick, blond hair covered his jawline and chin and it crept toward his cheeks and down his neck. A full mustache crossed his upper lip, and the space between his bottom lip and chin had filled in almost completely without bare spots beneath the corners of his lips he’d seen on other men. All together, it served to make him look far older than nineteen. Wiser. A little mysterious. Rough and rugged and a little unkempt — something he’d never been before — like he’d been put through the wringer.

In a lot of ways, he had.

And the worst — but probably easiest and most bearable — wringer was yet to come, because as spring break loomed ever closer, Ronan reminded Adam of the plans they’d made long before Adam had returned to Cambridge. “You’re still coming to the Barns, right?”

“Yeah,” Adam told him. It wouldn’t be like last summer, when the Lynch family farm had been paradise for Adam and Ronan. Mór Ó Corra and the New Fenian would probably be there if Ronan didn’t force them out of the place for a few days — for entirely selfish reasons, Adam hoped he would — but Adam would never turn down the chance to go back to the Barns. To go home, though that location constantly changed depending on where Ronan was any given day. “My last midterm is Thursday and I’ll ride down Friday.”

“You’re taking the bike instead of the shitbox? Are you gonna return the favor?”

“I’m planning on it.”

Adam could hear the devil of Ronan’s smirk when he said, “Good.”

Midterms raced by despite long nights, long papers, and long exams, and Adam cleanly survived them. He even thought about leaving for the Barns on Thursday night until he remembered his journey back from Virginia on his dreamt motorcycle. Exhaustion on that ride had done him no favors despite having a lot to think about, and he’d rather get to the Barns in one piece than be scraped off the road somewhere in New Jersey. Catching up on sleep could wait until the Barns though, and Friday he woke with the sun so his wheels hit the road before rush hour, his new facial hair adding some padding and warmth beneath his helmet that hadn’t been there before.

Nine hours later, when he turned up the Barns’ rutted driveway, Adam knew he’d find Ronan waiting for him on the farmhouse’s front porch. Probably leaning against the same pillar he’d leaned against the night of his birthday when Adam joined him outside and they’d kissed for the second time. Thoughts of that night, of getting his hands on Ronan again, of kissing him again carried Adam down the driveway, and when the woods opened up into the rolling fields of the farm, the first thing Adam saw was Ronan, a dark silhouette against the whitewashed house, leaning against the exact same pillar.

Only the BMW occupied the gravel parking area in front of the house — Mór Ó Corra and the New Fenian presumably made to temporarily flee — and as Adam nuzzled his motorcycle next to Ronan’s recovered car, Ronan started his slow descent from the porch.

The reckoning came as Adam slowly unbuckled the strap beneath his chin and lifted his helmet from his head, and he hadn’t fully freed himself of it when the crunch of gravel beneath Ronan’s boots stopped and Ronan said, “You shitbag. You said you got shaving cream.”

“I said,” Adam started, pulling his helmet all the way off and setting it on the motorcycle’s seat before he looked at Ronan, “that I went to Walgreens.”

Ten feet away, Ronan stood with his arms crossed over the front of his black zip-up hoodie, his pale blue eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at Adam. He looked no more indignant than normal with his lips pressed together in a thin line and the fingers of both hands curled into the sleeves of his sweatshirt, but for a long minute, he just looked, and Adam looked back. He wanted to close that ten feet between them — badly — and throw his arms around Ronan, get him close again, but Adam had lobbed the ball over the net by not picking up a razor in six weeks. It was Ronan’s turn to volley.

And volley Ronan did.

Throwing his arms down at his sides, he stalked across the gravel left between them and instead of pulling Adam into a hug, he took hold of Adam’s cheeks. “What the fuck, Parrish?” he growled, thumbs beginning to brush over Adam’s beard, from his cheeks down to his jaw, over and over again.

For the first time in his life, Adam understood why cats and dogs liked being pet. All the tension from nine hours on a bike melted from his muscles as Ronan’s thumbs skimmed across his beard, and Adam almost closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t, because he wanted to watch Ronan as his gaze traveled over Adam’s face, assessing his sideburns and mustache and neck line. Finally, Adam replied, “I thought it’d be funny. You pissed me off. With shave.”

“You asshole,” Ronan said, thumbs stopping but still holding onto Adam’s face. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.” Adam had always known. Things weren’t like that between them, except for when Ronan wanted them to be. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Ronan replied, nodding as a slow smile crept across his lips. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“It’s not mangy.”

Ronan laughed loud enough it echoed off the farmhouse and startled Chainsaw — perched on the porch railing — into flight, and as she soared circles overhead, Adam and Ronan wrapped their arms around one another and pulled each other close.

“No, it’s not mangy, Parrish,” Ronan said, and just before he put his lips to Adams, he added, “It’s a damn nice beard.”

#pynch #the raven cycle #adam parrish #ronan lynch #my fics #this is completely unedited so please ignore any mistakes 😌#i might clean it up and throw it on ao3 later 🤷‍♀️

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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“It was an assumption—almost an article of faith—amongst many biogeographers, ecologists, and paleoecologists that the great regional rainforests were, at Western contact, the product of natural climatic, biogeographic, and ecological processes,” wrote paleoecologist Chris Hunt, now based at Liverpool John Moores University, and his colleague, Cambridge University archaeologist Ryan Rabett, in a 2014 paper. “It was widely thought that peoples living in the rainforest caused little change to vegetation.” New research is challenging this long-held assumption. Recent paleoecological studies by Hunt and other colleagues show evidence of “disturbance” in the vegetation around Pa Lungan and other Kelabit villages, indicating that humans have shaped and altered these jungles not just for generations—but for millennia. Borneo’s inhabitants from a much more distant past likely burned the forests and cleared lands to cultivate edible plants. They created a complex system in which farming and foraging were intertwined with spiritual beliefs and land use in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. Samantha Jones, lead author on this investigation and researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, has studied ancient pollen cores in the Kelabit Highlands as part of the Cultured Rainforest Project. This is a U.K.-based team of anthropologists, archaeologists, and paleoecologists that is examining the long-term and present-day interactions between people and rainforests. The project has led to continuing research that is forming a new scientific narrative of the Borneo highlands. People were most likely manipulating plants from as early as 50,000 years ago in the lowlands, Jones says. That’s around the time humans likely first arrived. Scholars had long classified these early inhabitants as foragers—but then came the studies at Niah Cave. There, in a series of limestone caverns near the coast, scientists found paleoecological evidence that early humans got right to work burning the forest, managing vegetation, and eating a complex diet based on hunting, foraging, fishing, and processing plants from the jungle. This late Pleistocene diet spanned everything from large mammals to small mollusks, to a wide array of tuberous taros and yams. By 10,000 years ago, the folks in the lowlands were growing sago and manipulating other vegetation such as wild rice, Hunt says. The lines between foraging and farming undoubtedly blurred. The Niah Cave folks were growing and picking, hunting and gathering, fishing and gardening across the entire landscape.

[...]

“The Cultured Rainforest project has shown how profoundly entangled the lives of humans and other species in the rainforest are,” says University of London anthropologist Monica Janowski, a member of the project team who has spent decades studying highland Borneo cultures. “This entanglement has developed over centuries and millennia and succeeds in maintaining a relatively balanced relationship between species.” Borneo’s jungle is, in fact, anything but untouched: What we see is a result of both human hands and natural forces, working in tandem. The Kelabit are a little bit farmer and a little bit forager with no clear line between, Janowski says. This dualistic approach to land use may reveal a deeper human nature. “Scratch any modern human and you will find, under the surface, a forager,” she says. “We have powerful foraging instincts. We also have powerful instincts to manage plants and animals. Both of these instincts have been with us for millennia.”

#borneo #rainforest #wilderness #anthropology #ecology

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sleepnoises · 8 hours ago

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Hi! Big fan of your blog and art. I’m interested in trying quilting, and I have access to a sewing machine, but I don’t have hardly any fabric to work with. How did you build a stash of scraps for your quilting projects? Where do you get your new fabric from?

hi! thanks! here is where i get fabric, kind of in order of practicality/thrift, some points may not be useful unless you live where i live:

the local fabric thrift store

the sheet section at savers. or other sections even

my buy nothing group

clothes i owned that died badly (avoid using knits, e.g. tshirts)

unwise impulse decisions in the quilting store

the weird noncontiguous fabric store near my old job. great for muslins and (don't quilt with this) polyester stretch velvet

joanns i GUESS (yucky polyester content if you're not careful)

gifts from friends/my mom who is my friend

etsy in general; this is where I've got the two rifle paper co prints I've used to death

etsy specific: the japanese fabric import store i'm simply bewitched by (kimonomomo)

spoonflower if you're narsty

the scraps bags they sell at the sewing store in cambridge MA

anywhere i traveled to this past year i tried to hit up a fabric store and grab a few fat quarters as a souvenir

fabric dot com which no longer exists but I'm still working through the corduroy i bought there in 2020

i did some garment sewing before quilting so i had a lot of Bits cut out of yardage on hand—i find fat quarters can inspire a lot more preciousness than loosey goosey repurposing A Weird Little Bit

also i get joy from the consumerism aspect of the hobby 😑 this year is about using the stash up and not adding to it for me. don't tell that to my quilt store date this weekend

#sew tag #i have a shopping list for the quilt store but i will be getting a random fat quarter.#fabric is all around us...

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pleasantboatpress · 1 year ago

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Our Place in Time series by inameitlater

Will remembers falling. He wakes up months before Jack got him to work for him. Months before he met Hannibal for the first time. Free from his past he decides to change events and meet Hannibal again.

titles/chapter headings/body text/headers/page numbers: EB Garamond

217,671 words | 583 pages

OK: what a series. I love this series so much and I was so excited that I got to bind it for boundtobebookbindery on insta for the Halloween Downunder Fic Exchange and make it into one of the largest books I have made to date. These fics are interesting and moving to read, and I loved having the opportunity to read them again while I was typesetting them. It made me want to rewatch the show which honestly doesn't take much these days, haha.

I had so much fun designing this - I wanted it to look like a classic binding that you would see in the show because honestly, what else fits for Hannibal? The cover design was inspired by various Cambridge panel bindings, done in Colibri copper coloured cloth, with a rectangle of Crepaldi marbled paper in the centre. I loved matching the endbands to the cover and the Florentine endpapers that I chose, as the colours gave a nice pop against the cover imo. For the typesetting, I completed it entirely in EB Garamond, and I found some truly wonderful images on rawpixel to use for the various title pages and chapter headings. Each fic had a different image used for the chapter headings to match the title page!

Thank you @belespe-bindery for running the exchange, and being so supportive and wonderful during this whole exchange. And finally, thank you so much to the author, Mara, for allowing me to pester you about making this book! I hope your copy arrives safely and soundly <3

#hannibal #inameitlater #our place in time #hannigram #fanbinding #ficbinding #bookbinding #pleasantboat press

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jilyawards · 1 year ago

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The Jily Fandom Rec List 2024 is a compilation of Jily stories our readers want to keep an eye on for this year's awards.

This post will be reblogged at the end of each month with the month's new additions, so don't forget to send in your own recs via asks or DM!

JANUARY

Miss Evans And The Impossible Task Of Finding A Husband (completed, 22.2k) by @annasghosts. Rated T.

Miss Lily Evans, the youngest daughter of a widow with a modest fortune, at one and twenty years of age knows what is required of her: to find a husband willing to support her and her mother. The problem? Men of the London society aren’t swayed by her lack of a dowry and brazen attitude. Luckily for her Mr James Potter has just come home from Cambridge and she can enlist his help to find out what men really want.

The Falcon And The Squid (completed, 8.2k) by @jfleamont (pennyrigby on AO3). Rated T.

There's a Lego Millennium Falcon that needs to be built. There's also a bet, a ring and a bike. Put it all together and what do you get?

And The Roar Will Rise (completed, 21k) by @kay-elle-cee. Rated T.

It's James Potter's last summer running the circulation beat for The Daily Prophet, and he's determined to make it through the high season and leave the country—and the ghosts of his past—behind. But when the paper is sold to a new owner who begins printing vicious headlines that vilify the Wizarding community, he finds himself leading the charge of Magic and Muggle newsies (and one brilliant reporter) to take action. A Newsies AU.

The Last Enemy: Dark Marks (WIP, 376.7k as of 29 Feb 2024) by @chdarling-tle. Rated M.

The entrance to Hell is hidden at the base of a large willow tree, a human-sized hollow tangled in its roots, ready to swallow you whole... It’s 1976 and the events of the past term at Hogwarts have left their mark on all involved. But it’s a new school year now, with new teachers, new rules, and new regrets. Yet as the war clamoring outside the castle walls grows ever louder, the students inside will learn that some marks are impossible to wash away. Dark Marks is the second book of The Last Enemy series, which follows the lives of the heroes and villains of the First Wizarding War from 1975-1981.

Do You Want To Build A Snowman? (completed, 2.9k) by @practicecourts. Rated G.

A young James Potter feels a little lonely and it has snowed so really he should be outside having fun, instead of talking to a portrait.

Happy reading!

#jily fandom rec list 2024

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 6 months ago

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Rocks collected on Mars hold key to water and perhaps life on the planet. Bring them back to Earth.

Only Earth-based analysis of sediments gathered by rover can retrieve clues to Mars' water history

Over the course of nearly five months in 2022, NASA's Perseverance rover collected rock samples from Mars that could rewrite the history of water on the Red Planet and even contain evidence for past life on Mars.

But the information they contain can't be extracted without more detailed analysis on Earth, which requires a new mission to the planet to retrieve the samples and bring them back. Scientists hope to have the samples on Earth by 2033, though NASA's sample return mission may be delayed.

"These samples are the reason why our mission was flown," said paper co-author David Shuster, professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of NASA’s science team for sample collection. "This is exactly what everyone was hoping to accomplish. And we've accomplished it. These are what we went looking for."

The critical importance of these rocks, sampled from river deposits in a dried-up lake that once filled a crater called Jezero, is detailed in a study to be published Aug. 14 in AGU Advances, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

"These are the first and only sedimentary rocks that have been studied and collected from a planet other than Earth," said paper co-author David Shuster, professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of NASA’s science team for sample collection. "Sedimentary rocks are important because they were transported by water, deposited into a standing body of water and subsequently modified by chemistry that involved liquid water on the surface of Mars at some point in the past. The whole reason that we came to Jezero was to study this sort of rock type. These are absolutely fantastic samples for the overarching objectives of the mission."

Shuster is co-author of the paper with first author Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

"These rock cores are likely the oldest materials sampled from any known environment that may have supported life," Bosak said. "When we bring them back to Earth, they can tell us so much about when, why and for how long Mars contained liquid water, and whether some organic, prebiotic and potentially even biological evolution may have taken place on that planet."

Significantly, some of the samples contain very fine-grained sediments that are the most likely type of rock to retain evidence of past microbial life on Mars — if there ever was or is life on the planet.

"Liquid water is a key element in all of this because it is the key ingredient for biological activity, as far as we understand it," said Shuster, a geochemist. "Fine-grained sedimentary rocks on Earth are those that are most likely to preserve signatures of past biological activity, including organic molecules. That's why these samples are so important."

NASA announced on July 25 that Perseverance had collected new rock samples from an outcrop named Cheyava Falls that also might contain signs of past life on Mars. The rover's scientific instruments detected evidence of organic molecules, while "leopard spot" inclusions in the rocks are similar to features that on Earth are often associated with fossilized microbial life.

In a statement, Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech, said, “Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to give. To fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley at Jezero crater billions of years ago, we’d want to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories.”

Sediments hold the answers

Shuster noted that Jezero and the fan of sediments left behind by the river that once flowed into it likely formed 3.5 billion years ago. That abundant water is now gone, either trapped underground or lost to space. But Mars was wet at a time when life on Earth — in the form of microbes — was already everywhere.

"Life was doing its thing on Earth at that point in time, 3.5 billion years ago," he said. "The basic question is: Was life also doing its thing on Mars at that point in time?"

"Anywhere on Earth over the last 3.5 billion years, if you give me the scenario of a river flowing into a crater transporting materials to a standing body of water, biology would have taken hold there and left its mark, in one way or another," Shuster said. "And in the fine-grained sediment, specifically, we would have a very good chance of recording that biology in the laboratory observations that we can make on that material on Earth."

Shuster and Bosak acknowledge that the organic analysis equipment aboard the rover did not detect organic molecules in the four samples from the sedimentary fan. Organic molecules are used and produced by the type of life we're familiar with on Earth, though their presence is not unequivocal evidence of life.

"We did not clearly observe organic compounds in these key samples," Shuster said. "But just because that instrument did not detect organic compounds does not mean that they are not in these samples. It just means they weren't at a concentration detectable by the rover instrumentation in those particular rocks."

To date, Perseverance has collected a total of 25 samples, including duplicates and atmospheric samples, plus three "witness tubes" that capture possible contaminants around the rover. Eight duplicate rock samples plus an atmospheric sample and witness tube were deposited in the so-called Three Forks cache on the surface of Jezero as a backup in case the rover suffers problems and the onboard samples can't be retrieved. The other 15 samples — including the Cheyava Falls sample collected July 21 — remain aboard the rover awaiting recovery.

Shuster was part of a team that analyzed the first eight rock samples collected, two from each site on the crater floor, all of which were igneous rocks likely created when a meteor impact smashed into the surface and excavated the crater. Those results were reported in a 2023 paper, based on analyses by the instruments aboard Perseverance.

The new paper is an analysis of seven more samples, three of them duplicates now cached on Mars' surface, collected between July 7 and November 29 of 2022 from the front of the western sediment fan in Jezero. Bosak, Shuster and their colleagues found the rocks to be composed mostly of sandstone and mudstone, all created by fluvial processes.

"Perseverance encountered aqueously deposited sedimentary rocks at the front, top and margin of the western Jezero fan and collected a sample suite composed of eight carbonate-bearing sandstones, a sulfate-rich mudstone, a sulfate-rich sandstone, a sand-pebble conglomerate," Bosak said. "The rocks collected at the fan front are the oldest, whereas the rocks collected at the fan top are likely the youngest rocks produced during aqueous activity and sediment deposition in the western fan."

While Bosak is most interested in possible biosignatures in the fine-grained sediments, the coarse-grained sediments also contain key information about water on Mars, Shuster said. Though less likely to preserve organic matter or potential biological materials, they contain carbonate materials and detritus washed from upstream by the now-vanished river. They thus could help determine when water actually flowed on Mars, the main emphasis of Shuster's own research.

"With lab analysis of those detrital minerals, we could make quantitative statements about when the sediments were deposited and the chemistry of that water. What was the pH (acidity) of that water when those secondary phases precipitated? At what point in time was that chemical alteration taking place?" he said. "We have this combination of samples now in the sample suite that are going to enable us to understand the environmental conditions when the liquid water was flowing into the crater. When was that liquid water flowing into the crater? Was it intermittent?"

Answers to these questions rely upon analyses of the returned materials in terrestrial laboratories to uncover the organic, isotopic, chemical, morphological, geochronological and paleomagnetic information they record, the researchers emphasized.

"One of the most important planetary science objectives is to bring these samples back," Shuster said.

TOP IMAGE: Red hexagons mark the four sites where the Perseverance rover collected rock samples around the sediment fan in Jezero crater in 2022. Credit NASA

LOWER IMAGE: NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #astrophysics #mars

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garadinervi · 3 months ago

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Otto Piene, Untitled (bleed-through of previous page, left page); Untitled (sketch of past sky event for goauches, right page), (colored marker on paper), [from Sketchbook: Charlotte Moorman/Remembered Sky Events], 1992 [Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA. © Otto Piene Estate. Photo: © President and Fellows of Harvard College]

#art #drawing #sketchbook #otto piene #charlotte moorman #harvard art museum #1990s

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uwmspeccoll · 2 years ago

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Decorative Sunday: Paste Paper Edition

In 1942, Harvard University Press printed 250 copies of Decorated Book Papers: Being an Account of the Designs and Fashions by the bookbinder, author, and creator and collector of decorative papers, Rosamond Bowditch Loring. Published by the Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 234 sale copies of the first edition sold out within months, despite the “then considerable price of ten dollars” and the economic stressors of the war. In addition to eight plates reproducing examples of 18th century decorative papers, the first edition includes twenty-five samples tipped in, many of which are from the author’s own extensive collection.

While Loring collected a variety of a decorative papers, the examples shown here are from the chapter on paste papers, Loring’s area of creative specialization. The sample papers included in this chapter are all Loring’s own work, or that of her student, Veronica Ruzicka, who bound the first edition (it is worthy to note that Ruzicka is the daughter of illustrator, wood engraver, and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka, whose work we have highlighted several times). Ruzicka also contributed an essay when a second edition of the book was finally published by Harvard University Press in 1952, along with Dard Hunter and Walter Muir Whitehall.

Rosamond Loring (May 2, 1889 – September 17, 1950) studied book binding under Mary Crease Sears at the Sears School of Bookbinding in Boston. Sears, about a decade older than Loring, had had to battle to learn the trade; women were barred from the Bookbinders Union but most commercial binderies were happy to hire women for particular tasks, such as sewing sheets, but maintained a strict separation of roles, preventing employees from learning the whole binding process from start to finish. Eventually, Ms. Sears secured an apprenticeship in France to complete her studies and opened her binding school in Boston shortly after, training several generations of women binders. While studying under Sears, Loring became frustrated with the lack of options for quality endpapers and became determined to make her own, which she sold to other binders at Ms. Sears’s studio. Her first major commercial commission was for the Houghton Mifflin publication of The Antigone of Sophocles, translated by John J. Chapman (Boston, 1930).

Our copy of Decorated Book Papers is a gift of Dick Schoen.

-Olivia Hickner, Special Collections Graduate Intern

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totowlff · 1 year ago

Text

extra — you asked for this

➝ who the hell is in your bed, cassandra?

➝ word count: 3,3k

➝ warnings: cursing, mentions to hitler, homophobia, allusions to domestic violence, cheating, emotional abuse, stalking and comparisons between horses and people

➝ author’s note: my boss is being a real bitch today, so keep this adorable extra in tribute to her

Looking at the picture frame on the table, Albert Aldersey pressed his lips into a thin line. In the image, he was holding a newborn Helena, with a restrained expression, without showing any emotion. Beside him were his two eldest children; on the left, Jason looked at the camera seriously, while on the right, Cassandra was smiling widely, clearly excited about the new addition to the family.

“You never get tired of being a thorn in my side, do you?”, he thought to himself, looking away from the documents that Henry had left at Stansted House, at his request. And given the amount of paper inside, the man had worked hard over the past few weeks looking for information.

Upon opening the folder, Albert came across a large photo of a man. He had a smile on his face, his gaze directed somewhere to the left of the camera. Dark hair, brown eyes, white shirt with the first two buttons open. The logos embroidered on his shirt were all too familiar.

— Torger Wolff — he murmured, reading what was written just below the image, along with the photo credits. Nothing like the name Andromeda had told him when she spoke about her meeting with Cassandra at their youngest daughter's house.

He had realized something was unusual with his wife as soon as he heard her come into the foyer. He heard her telling John, the household’s head butler, that the things she had bought on Savile Row were in the boot of the car and should be taken to Albert's closet. He could hear Andromeda running quickly up the stairs, the sound of her heeled shoes echoing through the corridor.

— Andromeda — he shouted from the drawing room. The clicking of shoes stopped momentarily, as if the woman had hesitated for a few seconds before changing direction and heading towards him. As soon as she appeared at the door, Albert looked up from the newspaper and saw that there was, in fact, something wrong with her.

— Yes, Albert — she said in a low voice.

— Is everything okay? — Albert asked her, lowering the edition of the Daily Mail onto his lap.

— Yes — Andromeda replied, her voice tense. The navy blue dress she was wearing had a dark stain.

— Did you have any problems getting my suit?

— No, it was ready. John is taking it to your closet.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them.

— What is that stain on your dress?

Looking down, Andromeda pursed her lips.

— I spilled tea on it.

— Where did you go for tea?

— I went to Pimlico to visit Helena. Jack is in Switzerland, she is alone with Tommy and I thought it would be nice to stop by, see how they were doing — she snorted, putting her hand to her forehead — But Cassandra was there...

Albert felt his muscles tense and his nostrils flare when he heard that name. “Damn it”, he thought, dropping the newspaper on the armchair and jumping to his feet.

It was a name he hadn’t heard in a while, and sooner hoped to forget; the greatest mistake he ever made, if he had any hand in her making, which was still an uncertainty to this day.

— And what did that bint say this time?

— Albert — his wife said, a reproachful edge to her voice.

— What, Andromeda?

— Please…

Albert couldn’t help himself. Any time his daughter was brought up in private company, he couldn’t help but talk about how she’d wronged him.

His daughter — if she was his, mind you — had always had a rebellious streak, thinking that she was too good to be just a wife and mother and had to make her own way in the world. She was an ungrateful aberration that spat in the face of the traditions and ideals that the family had held for centuries.

Albert had sent her to Cambridge to get a classical education and to meet an appropriate suitor, but instead, she decided to change her course without telling him or Andromeda, and ended up doing marketing, or some hogwash, for a motorsport team in Northampton. Even worse, the team she worked for was owned by the Germans! His grandfather, who was a Royal Navy officer in both World Wars, was likely turning in his grave, knowing his great-granddaughter was working for the company that made Hitler’s limousine. It would have been less awful if she’d worked for McLaren in Woking, at least they had a respectable English heritage.

— You know she is, there's no point in denying it. You try and bring a daughter up right by sending her to good schools, send her to university to get an education, try set her up with someone respectable, but she dates men without a pound to their name and takes some ridiculous job — he shouted — If she thinks we're going to take her back just because she finally realized that we were right all along…

— She found someone, Albert — Andromeda said, suddenly.

He couldn't hold back a laugh.

— Are you telling me that she found someone capable of putting up with her? — Albert said, mockingly — Because you'd have to be crazy to stand being around her for more than five minutes...

— It's worse than that — his wife murmured, running a hand over her face.

— And what could be worse than that?

— She's pregnant — Andromeda shouted, suddenly.

He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. After hearing so many times from Cassandra herself that she wouldn't marry or have children because she wouldn’t give her parents the satisfaction, the news seemed unbelievable and infuriating in equal measure. Albert shot his wife a skeptical look.

— Are you telling me that Cassandra found a man witless enough to not only be around her for more than five minutes, but crazy enough to breed her?

— Albert, she's not one of your mares — Andromeda murmured.

— Even if she were, she’d have gone to auction straight away — he said — Too willful. Plus, my mares have a good lineage, good blood running through their veins, unlike that tart. And you know who's to blame, don't you?

That was the other effect hearing the name of his estranged daughter had on him — it reminded him of Andromeda’s possible indiscretion with one of his trainers some thirty-five years ago. His name was Seamus Doyle. Normally, Albert made a habit of not trusting the Irish, but his father had hired him when he was in charge of the stables. Albert kept him around after he took over because the man was as talented with horses as Albert had ever seen, like he practically spoke their language. However, when Cassandra started growing hair the same shade of red as Seamus’, he became suspicious. Nobody in his family or his wife’s family, to his knowledge, had had red hair, so it had to come from somewhere.

Andromeda denied it to this day, but Albert knew better.

Nevertheless, he knew people would talk if he treated Cassandra like the bastard he knew she was; it would reflect poorly on him and his wife both if word of Andromeda’s missteps came to light, so he had no choice but to raise Cassandra as if she was his own, but that didn’t mean he had to treat her like she was his daughter behind closed doors.

His strategy most of the time when she was growing up, was to simply ignore her, and it wasn’t surprising to him when their disdain for each other became mutual. It was easy enough to simply send her to boarding school and forget about her most of the time. He was too busy with the stables anyway, so he let Andromeda and the household staff handle things related to the children and simply signed the checks for the school bills.

Andromeda's eyes glistened with tears. “She knows what she did. It must be the guilt eating her up inside”, he thought, turning to the armchair and taking the newspaper he was reading in his hand. Albert was already near the door when he heard his wife call his name.

— What? — he grunted, without looking back.

— She said the baby's father is named Christian. He works in finance — Andromeda murmured.

A small smile appeared on his face. “That’s all I need”, Albert thought.

The next day, he contacted Henry, a private detective he had on retainer for certain occasions. He liked to be sure about certain things, like business dealings and the people interested in his children. He’d used Henry’s services when Jason told him that he intended to marry Rose, the girl he’d met at Cambridge and had been courting for a while, something he agreed on after an extensive investigation into the girl's background and family. They held no peerages or titles that he could find, but their family had long been in the jewellery business. They even made the medals and badges by the armed forces, and used in official investitures, which is why Albert gave his blessing to the union, despite Rose giving him nothing but three granddaughters and an enormous amount of headache.

Helena's boyfriend received the same sort of investigation, but, fortunately, the youngest had made a sensible choice. Jack was a relative of the Marquess of Normanby, and his parents had important ties with the royal family; the fact that he was, according to Henry’s dossier, the godson of the Duke of York, made him a perfect choice.

Cassandra, on the other hand, was the real problem. This was something he realized when she told him, in front of the then-Lord Glamis, during a dinner planned by Albert to introduce him to Cassandra in hopes of making a suitable match, insisting that she was not a broodmare to be auctioned off. Later, in his office, she defiantly repeated herself, telling him that she would never give him the satisfaction of her getting married or having children, which earned her a slap that left her face redder than her hair. Incensed, Albert told her that she made it incredibly difficult to put up with her, let alone love her, and she would end up an old spinster like her aunt.

However, that episode did not discourage her antics. After that, Albert had the impression that her determination to challenge his authority became even greater. The men she started to have relationships with were absolutely inadequate.

All the same, it made the man in the photo he was holding even more intriguing.

From what Henry had gathered, Christian was the man’s middle name. He’d included several photos of him; accompanying her to doctor’s appointments, and standing in the doorway of the dreary matchbox-sized townhome she’d lived in — that Andromeda had insisted on buying for her, for some reason, like she couldn’t afford to rent her own place.

His real name was Torger and he was born in Vienna, the son of an anesthetist and an art transport specialist, who died from cancer in the 1980’s. From what this “Torger” had said in interviews that were included in the dossier Henry prepared, he made his fortune in investing, especially in technology companies.

His involvement with motorsport came later, when he bought shares in the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 team, becoming the team's CEO, which made him Cassandra’s boss. He didn’t want to even think about how his daughter managed to end up pregnant by her boss.

However, Cassandra’s choice still seemed strange to Albert, as this “Torger” did not have the profile of the man his daughter has had relationships with before. To his knowledge, she usually went for the brainy, academic sort. The one serious boyfriend he knew of — Callum, from what Helena had told him — was someone that she’d met at Cambridge, and had reconnected with when he was working on his doctorate at Oxford. He had no ambitions beyond his research, apparently, not even wanting to teach full-time. Typical.

Albert didn’t think there was anything wrong with getting an education, he was a Cambridge man himself, as was most of his family, for many generations, but he firmly believed that staying in school and collecting degrees was useless; one had to join the real world eventually and apply that knowledge somehow.

According to Henry’s dossier, this Torger person hadn’t even finished university.

— Mr. Aldersey? — a voice broke him out of his own thoughts. He looked up to see John standing in the doorway with a somber expression on his face.

— What now?

— Mrs. Aldersey is waiting for you to go to Lady Sybil's exhibition.

Albert snorted.

— Do I have a choice?

— I don't think so, sir — he replied with the shadow of a smile on his lips.

Letting out a sigh, he got up from the armchair and headed to the door, where John was standing, holding the tweed jacket that matched the waistcoat and trousers Albert was wearing. Albert threw it on as he headed downstairs.

When he arrived in the foyer, he found Andromeda standing near the door, adjusting her Cartier watch on her wrist. Hearing his footsteps, the woman looked up at him.

— I already told Sybil that we're on our way — she said.

Albert ignored his wife, straightening his lapels and adjusting his lapis cufflinks before heading out of the entrance of the house, where John had the Land Rover waiting. As he took his place at the wheel of the vehicle, Andromeda's voice was a mere whisper.

His mind was elsewhere, specifically on the gaps in Henry’s dossier. He had gathered a large amount of information about Torger, there was nothing relevant about his family other than the fact that his parents were immigrants. Albert hated it when Henry's reports didn't give a clear and objective view of those being investigated, especially their relatives. He could not imagine having the Aldersey name involved with people who did not live up to the importance and relevance of that family.

Aside from that, Cassandra was proving to him that she had made the first right choice in her life. The man was tall and fairly handsome, and had money. The fact that he was a bit older than his daughter was of no object, either, but it made him wonder if the poor bloke wasn’t desperate, divorced, or both.

After parking the car near the entrance to Sybil's gallery, Albert and Andromeda walked the few meters to the entrance in practically silence. At the door, in addition to a security guard, there was a woman dressed in a dark blazer, her blond hair carefully arranged in a low bun.

— Good evening, sir, madam — the woman smiled — Could you come with me?

The path to the room where the exhibition opening was taking place was a blur of color. Albert hated going to Sybil's gallery. He hated the clean, bright white walls and lighting, he hated the people that hung around the gallery, gawking at ridiculous-looking paintings and sculptures, he hated the vegan canapés she always served at the events she held.

But what Albert hated most was having to interact with Sybil's circle of friends. To him, not a single decent person would be caught dead there, just the artsy, continental pillow biters and muff divers like his sister-in-law. Andromeda could deny it all she wanted, but Albert’s suspicions were not unfounded. He had long suspected that Sabine, the French woman that was always with Sybil, wasn’t her housekeeper.

Upon entering the exhibition hall, he came across what seemed like a crowd milling about. The conversations filled Albert's ears, and he felt irritated by the sound of laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses.

— Romy! — Sybil's shrill voice sounded somewhere to his left. Turning his face, he saw his sister-in-law approaching with a wide smile and her hair down in gray waves. “Why doesn’t she color her hair? She looks so old and haggard”, Albert thought to himself — I’m glad you came!

— I would never miss an exhibition of yours, and you know I love porcelain.

Albert rolled his eyes.

— And that's exactly why I called you — she replied, before looking at her brother-in-law with a certain disdain — I'm surprised to see you here, Bertie.

Albert swallowed hard, grimacing at the stupid nickname. It was what his mother called him, but his dreadful sister-in-law found out once and never called him anything else.

— Why do you say that, my dear sister-in-law?

— As far as I’m aware, you’d rather look at horse’s fannies all day than at art.

— Sybil, please — Andromeda whispered, placing a hand on her sister's arm — Albert was very kind to accompany me here today.

The woman looked at him suspiciously.

— Bertie has never been kind to you, Romy.

— There's always a first time, isn't there? — Albert replied — Besides, what kind of husband would I be if I didn't protect my wife from the influence of the disgusting company you keep?

Sybil stepped forward, her eyes filled with anger.

— If you cared about protecting my sister, you wouldn’t put your filthy hands on her so much — she whispered, before putting a fake smile on her face and turning to her sister — Want me to show you what’s on display, Romy? There's a Hungarian vase that I'm sure you'll love.

With his nostrils flared and his face red with anger, Albert wanted to take his wife and leave immediately, and give his sister-in-law a piece of his mind on the way out. However, he knew that doing that, in addition to causing a scandal, would only give Sybil the reaction she wanted. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

He picked up a glass of champagne from a tray carried by a passing waiter, trying to focus on something other than the terrible music booming through the gallery, or the cynical commentary of the people around him. He stepped toward one of the windows and glanced at his watch, praying that time would pass faster and that he could finally leave.

Albert was in the middle of his fourth slice of pesto and tomato toast when he noticed that Sybil and Andromeda were looking at the piece that was right next to him.

— Ah, Romy, this one was a real find — his sister-in-law said, pointing to the small figure protected by the acrylic — It's a figure of a pantalone made in Vienna around 1745. It was in a private collection for a long time before being sold to an Austrian antiques house. You know how I found it?

— How?

Albert glanced at the figure, but unimpressed. It was of an older bearded man in glasses. It looked like a clown to him, the kind of thing one would find in a charity shop and not a high-end gallery exhibition.

— I was studying to put together this exhibition and found a very interesting book about Austrian porcelain. It was written by one of the greatest experts in the field, Elisabeth Bednarczyk…

Albert's heart skipped a beat. It wasn't possible...

— Did you say Bednarczyk?

His sister-in-law raised an eyebrow.

— Yes, Bednarczyk. Elisabeth Sturm Bednarczyk, actually, she is a very well-known scholar and collector in Vienna.

That woman couldn't have the same surname as Torger's mother by mere chance. It couldn't be a coincidence, especially because Torger was from Vienna, and Albert couldn’t imagine that “Bednarczyk” was a common surname in Austria…

— Do you know if this Elisabeth has a sister?

Sybil raised an eyebrow.

— I only contacted her to buy the piece for the exhibition, Bertie. I don’t generally interrogate business contacts about their personal lives or hire private detectives to stalk them, unlike you. It’s almost like you don’t have enough personal issues of your own, isn’t it?

— Just doing my due diligence, Sybil — Albert simply replied, as he looked at the piece of porcelain. “And because of that, I know that this family just became my problem too”, he thought to himself, as he read Elisabeth Bednarczyk’s name on the base of the acrylic.

#toto wolff #formula 1 fic #wlffog #f1 fanfic #formula 1 fanfic #f1 fic #toto wolff x oc #formula 1 x oc #formula one x oc #f1 x oc #formula one fic #toto wolff fanfic #formula one fanfic #etlwlff

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