#alison pollack

[myxomycota]

Physarum cinereum by Alison Pollack

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Slime mold (Lamproderma)

By Alison Pollack.

Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition

[autolenaphilia]

Transfem authors of fiction: a list

I wrote a version of this list in Swedish for a meatspace friend, figure I might redo it for a tumblr audience. The books recommended are usually novels, and in case of prolific authors, the one recommended is usually the most successful and acclaimed one. I haven't read all of these, but I'm working on it. The list is in alphabetical order after the author's last name. I added some notes to the list, to introduce the authors and their books.

Nota Bene this list is based on my personal research, and largely reflects my own tastes in fiction, as in what I've read and considered reading. And it is of course not at all complete. And it's a transfem authors list, so no transmasc authors no matter how worthy. And it's about authors of fiction, not memoirs or non-fiction. So no Christine Jorgensen, even if she wrote a book I want to read. And Jan Morris gets in based on her two Hav novels, not her more prolific non-fiction work. Links are to my reviews on this blog if they exist.

Anders, Charlie Jane - SF/F writer, debuted with Choir Boy (2005), but most famous for All The Birds in the Sky (which won a Nebula).

Aoki, Ryka - her latest sf/f novel Light from Uncommon Stars is her most popular, but she has published both fiction and poetry before.

Becker, Saga - Våra Tungor Smakar våld (Swedish author, her book is untranslated, although quite good)

Binnie, Imogen - Nevada

Daniels, April - Dreadnought and its sequel Sovereign. Novels about a teenage trans girl superhero.

Deane, Maya - Wrath Goddess Sing

Felker-Martin, Gretchen - Manhunt (horror novel)

Kaveney, Roz - Tiny Pieces of Skull (also wrote the Rhapsody of Blood fantasy series, plus numerous poetry collections and non-fiction)

Kiernan, Caitlin R. - Usually categorized as a horror author, written numerous novels and short stories since her debut novel SIlk in 1998. The most acclaimed are probably her novels The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl (which won the Bram Stoker Award)

Leitz, May - Fluids and Girlflesh (review forthcoming)

Morris, Jan - Hav (mostly wrote non-fiction, history books and travel literature, Hav is an omnibus of her two novels about Hav, both "imagined travelogues" about a fictitious country)

Peters, Torrey - Detransition Baby

Plett, Casey - Little Fish (Lambda award winner)

Pollack, Rachel - Prolific writer of several kinds of books, including a pioneering career as a sf/f writer. Did her fictional debut with a short story in a 1971 anthology (credited under her deadname) and published her first novel Golden Vanity in 1980, which are literally the earliest pieces of fiction by an out trans person (not memoir or non-ficton) I've been able to find. So very much a pioneer. Her most acclaimed book is probably Godmother Night (1996) which won the World Fantasy Award. Also wrote comics, most notably Doom Patrol.

Rumfitt, Alison - Tell me I'm Worthless

Serano, Julia - 99 Erics (her debut as a novelist after years of pioneering transfeminist writing and poetry)

Thornton, Jeanne - Summer Fun (Lambda award winner)

[knightofchariot]

Tarot Books List - part one

1-2-3 Tarot: Answers in an Instant Donald Tyson 101 Tarot Spreads Sheilaa Hite 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card Mary K. Greer 22 Paths of Inperfection Matt Laws 360 Degrees of Wisdom Lynda Hill 365 Tarot Activities Deanna Anderson 78 Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack 90 Days to Learning the Tarot Lorri Gifford A Guide To Mystic Faerie Tarot Barbara Moore A Guide to Tarot and Relationships Dolores Fitchie & Andrea K. Molina A Guide to the Nomadic Oracle Jon Mallek A Keeper of Words Anna-Marie Ferguson A Sephirothic Odyssey Harry Wendrich & Nicola Wendrich A Wicked Pack of Cards Michael Dummett & Ronald Decker & Thierry Depaulis A Year in the Wildwood Alison Cross Absolute Beginner's Guide to Tarot Mark McElroy Alchemy and the Tarot Robert M. Place All Love Goes Before Me Stewart S. Warren An Introduction to Transformative Tarot Counseling Katrina Wynne Ancient Mysteries Tarot: Keys To Divination And Initiation Roger Calverley Angel Readings for Beginners Elizabeth Foley Animals Divine Companion Lisa Hunt Best Tarot Practices Marcia Masino Beyond the Celtic Cross Paul Hughes-Barlow & Catherine Chapman Book of Thoth Aleister Crowley Brotherhood Tarot Companion Patric Stillman aka Pipa Phalange Buddha Tarot Companion Robert M. Place Chakra Wisdom Oracle Toolkit Tori Hartman Choice Centered Relating and the Tarot Gail Fairfield Chrysalis Tarot Holly Sierra & Toney Brooks Complete Guide to Tarot Illuminati Kim Huggens Confessions of a Tarot Reader Jane Stern Conscious Channeling From the Akashic Rozàlia Horvàth Balàzsi Creator's Tarot Nicole Richardson Daily Spread Tarot & Oracle Journal Alyssa Montalbano Dark Goddess Tarot Companion Ellen Lorenzi-Prince Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads Teresa Michelsen Destiny's Portal Barbara Moore Deviant Moon Tarot Patrick Valenza Discovering Runes Bob Oswald Discovering Your Self Through the Tarot Rose Gwain Easy Tarot Ciro Marchetti & Josephine Ellershaw Easy Tarot Guide Marcia Masino Easy Tarot Reading Josephine Ellershaw Encyclopedia of Tarot Volume IV Stuart Kaplan & Jean Huets Enochian Tarot Betty Schueler & Sally Ann Glassman & Gerald Schueler Essence of the Tarot: Modern Reflections on Ancient Wisdom Megan Skinner Explaining the Tarot Thierry Depaulis & Ross Caldwell & Marco Ponzi Explore the Major Arcana Judyth Sult & Gordana Curgus Exploring the Tarot Carl Japikse Fortune Stellar Christiana Gaudet Fortune's Lover: A Book of Tarot Poems Rachel Pollack Going Beyond the Little White Book Liz Worth Good Cat Spell Book Gillian Kemp Guide to the Sacred Rose Tarot Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman Heart of Tarot Amber K Hieros Gamos: Benediction of the Tarot Stewart S. Warren Holistic Tarot Benebell Wen Integral Tarot: Decoding the Essence Suzanne Wagner It's All in the Cards: Tarot Reading Made Easy John Mangiapane Jung and Tarot Sallie Nichols Kabbalistic Tarot Dovid Krafchow Kaleidoscope Tarot Leisa ReFalo Karmic Tarot William C. Lammey Learning Tarot Reversals Joan Bunning Learning the Tarot Joan Bunning Light-Of-Day: Tarot & Dream Work - A Practical Guide Gigi Miner Magic Words: A Dictionary Craig Conley Meditations on the Tarot Anonymous Messages from the Archetypes Toni Gilbert, RN, MA, HNC Mirror of the Free Nicholas Swift My Tarot Journal Katrina de Witt Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage

[colorsoutofearth]

Slime mold

Photo by Alison Pollack

[ulkaralakbarova]

Set in 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.  Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Peter Appleton: Jim Carrey Elvin Glyde: Bob Balaban Mayor Ernie Cole: Jeffrey DeMunn Congressman Doyle: Hal Holbrook Adele Stanton: Laurie Holden Harry Trimble: Martin Landau Sheriff Cecil Coleman: Brent Briscoe Kevin Bannerman: Ron Rifkin Emmett Smith: Gerry Black Doc Stanton: David Ogden Stiers Stan Keller: James Whitmore Irene Terwilliger: Susan Willis Mabel: Catherine Dent Carl Leffert: Brian Howe Bob Leffert: Karl Bury Avery Wyatt: Chelcie Ross Sandra Sinclair: Amanda Detmer Leo Kubelsky: Allen Garfield Federal Agent Ellerby: Daniel von Bargen Jerry the Bartender: Mario Roccuzzo Newsreel Announcer (voice): Earl Boen Roland the Intrepid Explorer: Bruce Campbell The Evil But Handsome Prince Khalid: Cliff Curtis Kindly Old Professor Meredith: Michael Sloane Studio Executive (voice): Garry Marshall Studio Executive (voice): Paul Mazursky Studio Executive (voice): Sydney Pollack Studio Executive (voice): Carl Reiner Studio Executive (voice): Rob Reiner Luke Trimble (voice): Matt Damon Film Crew: Supervising Sound Editor: Richard L. Anderson Casting: Deborah Aquila Producer: Frank Darabont Original Music Composer: Mark Isham Director of Photography: David Tattersall Costume Design: Karyn Wagner Makeup Department Head: Bill Corso Editor: Jim Page Production Design: Gregory Melton First Assistant Editor: Tracey Wadmore-Smith Screenplay: Michael Sloane Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Mel Metcalfe Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Terry Porter Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Dean A. Zupancic First Assistant Editor: Vince Filippone Set Production Assistant: Jacob Cooney Boom Operator: Tom Hartig Set Decoration: Natalie Pope Script Supervisor: Lyn Matsuda Norton Still Photographer: Ralph Nelson Jr. Steadicam Operator: David Emmerichs Music Editor: Thomas A. Carlson Gaffer: H. Mark Vuille Script Supervisor: Susan Malerstein Production Sound Mixer: Mark Ulano Rigging Gaffer: Todd Sater Production Supervisor: Alison Harstedt Stunts: Katie Rowe Movie Reviews: GenerationofSwine: It’s time for the Majestic review…. …RED SCARE!!!! It makes a play at it in the very start of the film. It loudly proclaims that, HEY, WATCH THIS MOVIE, IT’S ABOUT FREE SPEECH AND THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST!!!!! And it does it as loud as it can… …and then it kind of forgets what the movie is about up until the last 15 minutes. However, the bulk of the movie does seem like the kind of film that would fit in the Hollywood Blacklist Era. The plot, the acting, the setting, all seems to be very much a 1950s feel good movie… …and then it veers off again and delivers on the 1st Amendment moral to end the film with a light heavy hand…if that makes sense. So, it feels disjointed, but in a way that oddly fits the premise to begin with. Almost as if it is trying to be a movie in a movie, which might have been the point. Watch it once, it will entertain you. Watch it more than once and you’ll be bored.

[nothingeverythingallatonce]

Slime mold (Lamproderma), Alison Pollack, Nikon Small World photography competition.

[angelnumber27]

[mymodernmet]

Extreme Macro Photos Unveil the Hidden World of Fungi in the Forest. 

[myxomycota]

Willkommlangea reticulata

by Alison Pollack

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Extreme Macro Photos Unveil the Hidden World of Fungi in the Forest

Photographer: Alison Pollack

[terminalfix]

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/05/alison-pollack-fungi/

[botnika1]

Extreme Macro Photos Unveil the Hidden World of Fungi in the Forest

Alison Pollack

[esotheria-sims]

Alison Eves

Alison Eves will tell you she’s ‘not like the other girls’ even though it’s hardly uncommon for women in Wyvern’s Bay to practice swordfighting, wear chainmail, or be openly bisexual. But Alison walks to the beat of her own drum, and that alone is enough to set her apart - or so she thinks.

Gender: Female

Age: Adult

Zodiac: Aries

Aspiration: Popularity + Knowledge

Sexuality: bisexual

LTW: Become Hall of Famer

OTH: Sports

Personality: Neat 4; Outgoing 8; Active 9; Playful 4; Nice 3

Traits: [Bourgeoisie], Brave, Hot-Headed, Slob, Rebellious, Party Animal

Turn-Ons: Fitness, Good reputation

Turn-Offs: Robots

Skills: Cooking 0; Mechanical 6; Charisma 2; Body 8; Logic 1; Creativity 0; Cleaning 0

(Originally Alison by @deedee-sims.  I didn’t temper with her features, only changed her coloring and gave her WB-appropriate clothes)

Lucian Elliott

Graceful and supple like a swan, Lucian is a true artiste; Wyvern’s Bay is just too plebeian to know how to appreciate his cutting-edge dance performances. If it wasn’t for the generous financial support of his patron, lady Danes, he swears he’d be this close to just throwing in the towel and going to work at the local brothel. It isn’t easy, being so ahead of your time.

*Species: Elf

Gender: Male

Age: Adult

Zodiac: Libra

Aspiration: Pleasure + Romance

Sexuality: bisexual

LTW: Become Rock God

OTH: Music & Dance

Personality: Neat 2; Outgoing 8; Active 2; Playful 6; Nice 8

Traits: [Outcast], Avant-garde, Dramatic, Inappropriate, Night Owl, Over-emotional

Turn-Ons: Great dancer, Rich

Turn-Offs: Lycanthropy

Skills: Cooking 1; Mechanical 0; Charisma 6; Body 4; Logic 5; Creativity 6; Cleaning 0

(Originally Ezra by Deedee-sims, but with ever so slightly modified features, turned elf, and given a WB-appropriate makeover)

Ruben Blake

Tall, dark, and fairly handsome, Ruben has the unenviable reputation of being somewhat of a womanizer. But if asked, he’ll swear up, down, and centrefold that he’s just a simple family man who hasn’t found The Right One yet. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Gender: Male

Age: Adult

Zodiac: Gemini

Aspiration: Family + Romance

Sexuality: straight

LTW: Have 20 simultaneous lovers

OTH: Sports

Personality: Neat 4; Outgoing 7; Active 8; Playful 3; Nice 3

Traits: [Peasant], Flirty, Heavy sleeper, Unlucky, Born salesperson, Handy

Turn-Ons: Blond hair, Great cook

Turn-Offs: Fitness

Skills: Cooking 1; Mechanical 5; Charisma 0; Body 6; Logic 0; Creativity 0; Cleaning 2

*Talents: Gardening - silver; Fishing - bronze

(Originally Blake by Jessi-dot)

Maxwell Pollack

Most would describe Maxwell Pollack as ‘unconventional’, but only because it’d be rude to straight-up say that he’s a weirdo. Lord Pollack’s peculiar interests and unusual pursuits have established him as an eccentric, which is a title that he wears like he does any other - recklessly and with pride.

Gender: Male

Age: Adult

Zodiac: Sagittarius

Aspiration: Knowledge + Pleasure

Sexuality: gay

LTW: Become Space Pirate

OTH: Film & Literature

Personality: Neat 8; Outgoing 5; Active 8; Playful 5; Nice 4

Traits: [Gentry], Eccentric, Perceptive, Commitment issues, Supernatural fan, Genius

Turn-Ons: Logical, Witchiness

Turn-Offs: Great dancer

Skills: Cooking 0; Mechanical 3; Charisma 6; Body 8; Logic 9; Creativity 1; Cleaning 0

(Originally Max by Jessi-dot)

Tabitha Dawson

Idealistic and a bit starry-eyed, Tabitha has the tendency to live with her head in the clouds. She’s aware that real life doesn’t operate on the same frequency as her imagined little dreamworld, but that’s never stopped her from hoping that it might one day. After all, everyone knows that if you wish for something hard enough, it eventually comes true.

Gender: Female

Age: Adult

Zodiac: Aquarius

Aspiration: Family + Fortune

Sexuality: straight

LTW: Raise 20 Puppies or Kittens

OTH: Cuisine

Personality: Neat 7; Outgoing 4; Active 3; Playful 6; Nice 7

Traits: [Yeoman], Easily impressed, Frugal, Animal lover, Light sleeper, Hopeless romantic

Turn-Ons: Fitness, Hard Worker

Turn-Offs: Grey hair

Skills: Cooking 6; Mechanical 1; Charisma 0; Body 0; Logic 1; Creativity 1; Cleaning 5

*Talents: learned Parenting, learned Lifelong Happiness

(Originally Tabitha by Jessi-dot)

[cultfaction]

Community

Community is a smart, exuberant comedy that was consistently ranked as one of the most inventive and original half hours on television. This ensemble comedy centers on a tight-knit group of friends who all met at what is possibly the world’s worst educational institution -Greendale Community College. Recently disbarred lawyer Jeff Winger enrolls to get a legit degree the quickest and easiest way…

[fatehbaz]

It is spring in Houston, which means that each day the temperature rises and so does the humidity. The dampness has darkened the flower bed, and from the black mulch has emerged what looks like a pile of snotty scrambled eggs [...]. I recognize this curious specimen as the aethalial state of Fuligo septica, more commonly known as “dog vomit slime mold.” Despite its name, it’s not actually a mold -- not any type of fungus at all -- but rather a myxomycete (pronounced MIX-oh-my-seat), a small, understudied class of creatures that occasionally appear in yards and gardens as strange, Technicolor blobs. Like fungi, myxomycetes begin their lives as spores, but when a myxomycete spore germinates and cracks open, a microscopic amoeba slithers out. [...] When the amoeba encounters another amoeba with whom it is genetically compatible, the two fuse, joining chromosomes and nuclei [...], growing ever larger, until at the end of its life, it transforms into an aethalia, a “fruiting body” that might be spongelike in some species, or like a hardened calcium deposit in others, or, as with Stemonitis axifera, grows into hundreds of delicate rust-colored stalks. [...]

These creatures exist on every continent and almost everywhere people have looked for them: from Antarctica, where Calomyxa metallica forms iridescent beads, to the Sonoran Desert, where Didymium eremophilum clings to the skeletons of decaying saguaro cacti [...]. Throughout their lives, myxomycetes only ever exist as a single cell, inside which the cytoplasm always flows -- out to its extremities, back to the center. When it encounters something it likes, such as oatmeal, the cytoplasm pulsates more quickly. If it finds something it dislikes, like salt, quinine, bright light, cold, or caffeine, it pulsates more slowly [...]. It can solve mazes in pursuit of a single oat flake, and later, can recall the path it took to reach it. [...]

How do you classify a creature such as this?

In the ninth century, Chinese scholar Twang Ching-Shih referred to a pale yellow substance that grows in damp, shady conditions as kwei hi, literally “demon droppings.” In European folklore, slime mold is depicted as the work of witches, trolls, and demons -- a curse sent from a neighbor to spoil the butter and milk. In Carl Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum -- a book that aspires to list every species of plant known at the time (nearly seven thousand by the 1753 edition) -- he names only seven species of slime molds. Among those seven we recognize Fuligo in the species he calls Mucor septicus (“rotting mucus”), which he classifies, incorrectly, as a type of fungus. [...]

These “ladders” or “scales of ascent,” in turn, inspired the “Great Chain of Being” -- the [...] worldview central to European thought from the end of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, that ordered all of creation from lowest to highest [...]. Over time, Linnaeus revised his classifications of Homo sapiens, naming “varieties” that at first corresponded to what he saw as the four geographic corners of the planet, but which became hierarchical, assigned different intellectual and moral value based on phenotypes and physical attributes. The idea that humans could and should be ordered -- that some were superior to others, that this superiority had a physical as well as social component -- was deeply embedded in many previous schema. But Linnaeus’s taxonomy, unlike the systems that came before, gave these prejudices the appearance of objectivity, of being backed by scientific proof. When Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859, it was on the foundation of this “science,” which had taught white Europeans to reject the idea of evolution unless it crowned them in glory.

But the history of taxonomic classification has always been about establishing hierarchy [...].

I did not learn until college about a taxonomic category that superseded kingdom, proposed in the 1970s by biologists Carl Woese and George Fox and based on genetic sequencing, that divided life into three domains: Bacteria, Eukarya, and Archaea, a recently discovered single-celled organism that has survived in geysers and swamps and hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean for billions of years. 

Perhaps a limit of our so-called intelligence is that we cannot fathom ourselves in the context of time at this scale, and that so many of us fail, so consistently, to marvel at any lives but our own. [...]

A few years ago, near a rural village in Myanmar, miners came across a piece of amber containing a fossilized Stemonitis slime mold dating from the mid-Cretaceous period. Scientists were thrilled by the discovery, because few slime mold fossils exist, and noted that the 100-million-year-old Stemonitis looks indistinguishable from the one oozing around forests today. [...]

One special ability of slime molds that supports this possibility is their capacity for cryptobiosis: the process of exchanging all the water in one’s body for sugars, allowing a creature to enter a kind of stasis for weeks, months, years, centuries, perhaps even for millennia. [...] The only other species who have this ability are the so-called “living fossils” such as tardigrades and Notostraca (commonly known as water bears and tadpole shrimp, respectively). [...]

In laboratory environments, researchers have cut Physarum polycephalum into pieces and found that it can fuse back together within two minutes. Or, each piece can go off and live separate lives, learn new things, and return later to fuse together, and in the fusing, each individual can teach the other what it knows, and can learn from it in return.

Though, in truth, “individual” is not the right word to use here, because “individuality” [...] doesn’t apply to the slime mold worldview. A single cell might look to us like a coherent whole, but that cell can divide itself into countless spores, creating countless possible cycles of amoeba to plasmodium to aethalia, which in turn will divide and repeat the cycle again. It can choose to “fruit” or not, to reproduce sexually or asexually or not at all, challenging every traditional concept of “species,” the most basic and fundamental unit of our flawed and imprecise understanding of the biological world. As a consequence, we have no way of knowing whether slime molds, as a broad class of beings, are stable or whether climate change threatens their survival, as it does our own. Without a way to count their population as a species, we can’t measure whether they are endangered or thriving. Should individuals that produce similar fruiting bodies be considered a species? What if two separate slime molds do not mate but share genetic material?

The very idea of separateness seems antithetical to slime mold existence. It has so much to teach us.

-------

Headline and all text published by: Lacy M. Johnson. “What Slime Knows.” Orion Magazine. August 2021. Photos by Alison Pollack and published alongside article.