Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 43

Description

Four score and three issues ago this zine did not exist. Two score and three issues ago LCRW popped into being just like the big bang — but with less burning hot plasma and fewer planets forming. The formation included a twice-yearly space for fiction, poetry, and later, when the spinning slowed enough not to spill everything, a cooking column from Nicole Kimberling.

Contributor Bios for LCRW 43:

Alisa Alering lives in Indiana where she reports on innovations in science and technology. Her rather unscientific fiction has appeared in Podcastle, Clockwork Phoenix IV, and Flash Fiction Online, among others and has been recognized by the Italo Calvino Prize. She is currently at work on a novel about two sisters prepping for the apocalypse in 1980s Appalachia.

Leah Bobet is a novelist, editor, and critic whose novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been selected for the Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets program, and shortlisted for the Cybils and the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and been transformed into choral work, and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US. She is guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice‘s 2021 issue. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.

Erica Clashe lives in Minneapolis with her cat, Ommie. She’s a professional gay auntie. This is her first published work. Find her at ericaclashe.com.

Gillian Daniels writes, works, and haunts the streets of the Boston area in Massachusetts. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and left shortly after attending the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Since then, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than twenty-five other publications. She serves as custodian to one (1) ginger cat who likes to chew the corners of her books when she doesn’t feed him breakfast right away.

Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator based in Brisbane, Australia. Her Australian Gothic debut Flyaway (Tor.com) and her poetry debut Travelogues: Vignettes from Trains in Motion (Brain Jar Press) were published in 2020. She has won two Ditmars for her short stories and been shortlisted for the Eugie Foster Memorial Awards. As an illustrator (this story began as a series of pictures exhibited at Light Grey Art Lab, Minneapolis), she has been shortlisted four times for the World Fantasy Awards, as well as once for the Hugos and the Locus Awards, and has won several Ditmars.

Jim Marino’s stories are published or forthcoming in Apex Magazine and the Alaska Quarterly Review, and his short humor has appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He makes his living teaching Shakespeare.

Zack Moss is a writer of weird fiction with an MFA from Western Washington University. His stories have appeared in Alimentum: the Literature of Food, The Crambo, and Zymbol, among a few others.

Quinn Ramsay is a graduate of the University of Glasgow. His prose and poetry have been published in Paragraphiti, From Glasgow to Saturn, Santa Clara Review, The Magnolia Review, and Gemini, among others. He has been a recipient of the Amy M. Young Award in Creative Writing, and a co-editor and designer for Williwaw: an Anthology of the Marvellous.

Jessy Randall’s poems, stories, and other things have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. Her most recent book is How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.

Joanne Rixon lives in the shadow of an active volcano with a rescue chihuahua named after a dinosaur, and is an organizer with the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup. Her poetry has appeared in GlitterShip, her book reviews in the Seattle Times and the Cascadia Subduction Zone Literary Quarterly, and her short speculative fiction in venues including Terraform, Fireside, and Liminal Stories. You can find her yelling about poetry and politics on twitter @JoanneRixon

Anne Sheldon is a librarian and storyteller in Silver Spring, MD. Her work has appeared in Cascadia Subduction Zone, The Lyric, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other magazines. Aqueduct Press has published two books of her verse, The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor and The Bone Spindle.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 43, June 2021. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731968.

Print edition text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow.

LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress

Subscriptions: $24/4 issues. More options available, including chocolate, of course.

Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO.

LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.

Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Black-and-White Monkey” © 2021 by Catherine Byun (catherinebyun.com).

Thank you authors, artists, and readers.

In reasons to celebrate Elwin Cotman’s collection Dance on Saturday was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.

fiction

Alisa Alering, “The Night Farmers’ Museum”
Erica Clashe, “The Shine of Green Floors”
Leah Bobet, “The Mysteries”
Joanne Rixon, “Wires from the Same Spool”
Quinn Ramsay, “The House of the Gutter-Prince”
Jim Marino, “Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown”
Zack Moss, “If You Had Been Me Then What Would I Have Been?”
Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favours”
Gillian Daniels, “King Moon’s Tithe to Hell”

poetry

Anne Sheldon, “Three Poems”
Jessy Randall, “Four Poems”

nonfiction

Ayşe Papatya Bucak, “Half-Papatya”
Nicole Kimberling, “Time Travel Self-Care System”
About the Authors

cover

Catherine Byun, Cover & Interior Monkeys

Sujets

• Anthologies
• Collections
• Science Fiction
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Contemporary history
• General officer
• General
• Contemporary
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Small Beer Press
• Date de parution: 11 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781618731968
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #42

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.
Proofreader: Franchesca Viaud

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 43, June 2021. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731968.
LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 48 of the paper edition for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.
Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration “Black-and-White Monkey” © 2021 by Catherine Byun (catherinebyun.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers.
Celebrating: Elwin Cotman’s collection Dance on Saturday being a Philip K. Dick Award finalist. Looking forward to: our forthcoming 20th anniversary edition(!) of Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen with a new cover and interior illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook.
Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.

The Night Farmers’ Museum
Alisa Alering

Evolution of Cultivation Practices
Night was initially gathered and consumed by prehistoric peoples in the Primeä River region from self-propagating strands of wild shadow. Cultivation began when men, or more likely women, deliberately dropped shadow grains on the soil near their homesteads, erected awnings to keep out the daylight, and manipulated the growing season by singing the first songs of darkness.
[Audio recording] Night farmers in eastern Tuviu Kreps sing a traditional planting song. Recorded by the Combined Beliefs Project. Tape no. 5192.85/007
As recently as fifty years ago, isolated communities in the Bisv basin still used ancient practices to farm small plots of subsistence night. As the villagers had little contact with outsiders, the lyrics sung in this recording may have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years, representing the closest approximation to the original songs.
What is the name of this darkness?
It is night. Night.
Who plants the night?
We do.
The seed uncurls
The shadow unfurls
The night is gray
But it will be black.
—Translation by P. Marchentaral

Pests & Diseases of Night
In the earliest period of cultivation, the night crop often failed, resulting in extreme shortages. Over time, agricultural methods became more sophisticated. Better tools, more complex songs, and larger fields resulted in greater yields.
[Object] Page from the Juyo Manuscript. Recovered from the Seven Clouds Abbey excavation, Crow Mountain region.
Believed to have been compiled and illustrated by the monk and poet, Bror Magga, in the pre-Auric period, this agricultural manual lays out some of the first recorded principles for the cultivation of night. A remarkably accurate drawing of one of night’s primary insect pests, the red-legged shredder beetle (note the long pincers that rend night’s delicate strands) occupies the top half of the page. Below, a recipe is given for a “poison tea”: a mixture of sulfurous oil, wood ash, and silica to be used as a prophylactic spray. It was believed that the reflected light would be harmful to organisms that feed on night. A note in the margin suggests that the preparation is also effective against night maggots.
[Object] Matumelu snare replica. Hazel wood, iron, reed fiber, matumelu hair.
One of the most severe threats to night cultivation does not actually feed upon night. A large carnivore, the matumelu makes its home in clay mounds on the borders of night enclosures. It rampages through the fields in pursuit of its prey, the plump and quick-footed qui, crushing night under the weight of its large hooves. Its protruding tusks and the thrashing of its barbed tail inflict additional damage, particularly on emergent night.
A shape-shifter, the matumelu may also take the form of a small winged rodent, allowing it to suddenly shrink and slip through its hunters’ hands at the moment of capture. Early night farmers developed primitive snares such as the one shown here to protect their crops. Three hairs from the matumelu’s mane are woven into the noose which, when tightened around the matumelu’s neck, prevents the captured beast from transforming in order to escape.

Myth & Folklore
[Object] Bright Mother Holds the Knife, gouache on paper, attributed to Kofé of Lac. Second Auric Dynasty. Donated by the Qazirat Family Foundation.
According to legend, the first woman, One-Jo, found a secret and swallowed it. But it was a bad secret, and it festered inside of One-Jo, slowly poisoning her. Bright Mother ordered One-Jo to appear before her and tell the secret so that she could be purified and saved. One-Jo came, but standing in the shining perfection of Bright Mother’s presence, One-Jo could not speak. The poison inside her was dammed up and soon she would die. So Bright Mother cut a piece of night from the dark side of her eye and draped it over One-Jo’s back so she could confess her secret deeds under the cover of night.
[Video] Villagers beating night with a mallet on the eve of the Bitter Winds Festival.
Peasants living in areas with low night productivity often mixed obscurity with night. Later, smog, introduced in the Thousand Furnaces Era, also became a popular staple, where it supplemented a low night yield. However, even the poor cooked pure boiled night and pounded night cake ( gabingka ) for important festivals. People thought that the essence of night was purified by pounding, and gabingka was believed to contain the “spirit of night.” Gabingka was often formed in the shape of a triangle, to represent the wound in Bright Mother’s eye.
Try this: Make your own gabingka!
Step 1: Soak night in a covered basin
Step 2: Using a mallet, night fork, or the palm of your hand, knead night until it forms a sticky mass.
Step 3: Press night into triangles, squares, or circles, dust with toasted night seed, and decorate.

Trade
[Drawing] A Haa merchant longship, with the traditional blind-folded figure at the bow. Note the thirty-six night storage canisters hung from the rail at regular intervals, secured by ropes with the customary “dreamer’s knot.”
As agricultural methods improved, the existence of preserved night meant that a ship could now carry a stable supply of night sufficient to sustain two full shifts of rowers, allowing captains to travel farther afield in search of both adventure and profit. In the First Auric Dynasty, the enterprising Haa merchants of Pototla brought exotic forms of night to the towns along the Pototl coast, where partaking of imported night became a fashion among the region’s elite.
[Object] Silver alloy night spoon with matumelu tusk inlay and applied gold foil, unknown maker, early Second Auric Dynasty.
Long-handled night spoons such as this one first appeared late in the First Auric Dynasty, and their popularity spread throughout the Second. The pear-shaped bowl is typical of later designs. The gold inscription along the handle is a dedication to Dew Eyes, the youngest of Bright Mother’s eight daughters. Associated with fertility, a cult in her name thrived in the centuries after the Stick and Bone Wars. Spoons such as this were confined to the homes of the wealthy, where they would have accompanied an equally decorative box in which the latest variety of imported night was stored under lock and key, likely in the owner’s bedchamber.

The Year of the Beetle
[Photo] A memorial erected in Mahasina Park depicts a ragged woman clutching a child to her chest, shielding its head with a blanket. Photo: Mahasina Cultural Association
The first occurrence of a shredder beetle superswarm appeared over Sindrung, on the island nation of Mahasit early in the propagation season. Eyewitnesses reported that the beetles “ate everything in sight: the night in the fields, the shade under trees, the shadows of passing clouds. Even the traditional gloom which surrounds the house of the neighborhood witch was devoured by their dreadful voracity.” The resulting famine was worsened by an outbreak of coronal fever. An estimated 135,000 Mahasinas died, and many more fled their homeland for neighboring lands, often overwhelming native populations.

Night Goes to War
[Object] Revised model “Persuader” flintlock musket, manufactured by the Qazirat Company.
When the Twilight Empress died without an heir, ending the Fourth Auric Dynasty, her brothers mustered armies and attacked one other. The War of Fraternal Succession was nicknamed “The Night War.” Poorly supplied soldiers on both sides of the conflict were forced to live off the land, digging night from the fields as they ravaged the countryside. An enterprising quartermaster discovered that certain varieties of moldy night, boiled in a camp pot with chalk and urine, could be hardened into projectiles. Rammed into muskets and fired, these “night sours” were not lethal or even particularly injurious, but the polluted night released from a concentrated fusillade weakened and disoriented opponents. The practice was swiftly adopted by the opposing forces, and within six weeks, no night remained for ordinary use. The war ceased once the night supply had been exhausted.

Urban Growth & The Thousand
Furnaces Era
[Photo] Hozhollen Sub City, an industrialized area of Kassinda, photographed at the beginning of the Thousand Furnaces Era. The old town can be seen beyond the chimneys, and some remaining agricultura