So I've had this short story, A Walk by the River, bouncing around in my brain for a while now. Last year, it was published in the wonderful literary journal 50GS and today, it was published in another wonderful journal The Selkie! You can find it here:
http://theselkie.co.uk/a-walk-by-the-river-by-clarissa-wilson/
I've worked with and known a lot of the folks at The Selkie and can say with confidence that they are some of the coolest, most dedicated, most likely to give you a button with a unicorn on it just because you don't have one people I've ever met. If any of them are reading this: thank you so much! If anyone else is reading this: check out The Selkie and all the wonderful authors within it-- one of whom is me!
Friday, June 1, 2018
Monday, May 14, 2018
Diversify!
So, in true form, this spring brings me into an expanding sort of mood. Therefore I am announcing that I am starting two new blogs! Each will have an actual cogent theme instead of 'things I am doing or have done'. Crystalsmith, which will cover the jewellery aspects of it all, is live now! The second blog is going to house my educational materials and is TBA, because ya girl hasn't gotten all of the stuff from this semester back yet and is always paranoid about putting things online when they're similar to graded work. So for now, delight in the unnatural geometry of it all!
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Archaeology Posters!
These posters were created for the Edinburgh Archaeology Outreach Program. They first debuted in February at the Southside Archaeology Day of Fun, but are now available wherever printers are present!
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Here's a blog post I wrote for one of my current projects. It was created for the Geoscience Outreach Blog, but here's a sneak peek:
Questions for
an Archaeologist by Clarissa Wilson
How do
archaeologists do what they do and know what they know? This resource, designed
by Clarissa Wilson as part of the Geoscience Outreach course at the University
of Edinburgh, explores some of the key tools and processes that archaeologists
use in their work.
The four
posters were created for Archaeology Family Day of Fun, an event hosted by the
Edinburgh Archaeology Outreach Program for the Southside community. These
posters, available in a .zip file below, cover three different questions
and one glossary section.
‘What am I using?’ covers some of the common
tools that archaeologists use in the field.
‘How did I die?’ explains the osteological
paradox, an interesting and frustrating aspect of the study of human remains.
‘Where did I
grow up?’ shows how to use oxygen isotopes from dental records to find out
where someone spent their childhood.
This glossary
helps people with some terms used in archaeology, which will help them learn
more about archaeology!
Archaeology Family Fun Day was held on February 10th
at Summerhall in Southside, Edinburgh.
Around 300
people from the community showed up to chat, have fun, and learn more about
archaeology!
For more about getting involved with Edinburgh Archaeology
Outreach Program (EAOP), click here: https://edinburgharchaeology.wordpress.com/updates/
If you are a local parent whose child wants to know more
about archaeology, many places have a Young Archaeologist’s Club. Check out if
you have one at http://www.yac-uk.org/ Also,
feel free to email me at morrigan7733@aol.com for
posters or advice!
Keywords: archaeology, community archaeology, people and
environment, history, science
Saturday, March 10, 2018
My hands have been covered in resin too much to write a blog post (or, I'm making jewellery!)
I've been making a sample line of jewellery; here's some of it!
I made the crystalline formations myself; they are an intensely cool and fun process in and of themselves, which I might detail in another blog post.
The crystalline pieces are from a collection called Cherubim and Chthonica,
while the more plant-based creations are from Anthousai.
I made the crystalline formations myself; they are an intensely cool and fun process in and of themselves, which I might detail in another blog post.
The crystalline pieces are from a collection called Cherubim and Chthonica,
while the more plant-based creations are from Anthousai.
I'll be uploading them to my Etsy shop, thestoryneverends, within the next day or so. There will be more to come as my increasingly hectic schedule allows (gotta love the month before dissertation handin), so keep an eye out!
Thursday, February 22, 2018
And Now For Something Completely Different (or, I put my positivity on hold)
I really haven't been in any kind of mood to write what I usually write here on my blog. The massacre in Parkland, FL, has taken up so much of my time and my mind. Here's what I wrote about it on Facebook, which is what I keep going back to:
I’ve been thinking a lot about kids in school these days. Everyone has, but here’s something I haven’t seen put together a lot. The pieces are all there, people have obsessed over it and written articles and books that range from the insightful to the insulting, but so far in the wake of this tragedy I haven’t seen this said in so many words:
The suicide epidemic among teenagers? Yeah, that could have something to do with the constant pressure of knowing your school could be next, your friends could be next, you could be next. The reason kids these days are more likely to commit suicide might have something to do with the way our society has invited the spectre of violent death into school at every level.
A disclaimer: I have not done any studies. I don’t analyze gun violence, partly because it is not my field and partly because the U.S. government has made it very difficult for scientists to do so. What I have done is lived as someone who was a toddler when Columbine happened, was 15 when Sandy Hook and Aurora happened, was nineteen when Orlando happened. What I have done is live in a world where terrible things happened in places just like the one I went to five days a week almost every week for what remains the bulk of my lifetime and will always be my formative years.
I watched as the prospect of massacre by gun grew up with me. I watched as it went from being the kind of tragedy that would rock the world to being a political crisis to being another part of the news, with stock phrases and inertia built right in as if this was a natural disaster. As if we were supposed to be sad but accepting, as if school shootings were like hurricanes or earthquakes, as if all we could do was practice drills and say something if we thought one of our classmates might be the next person to get a gun and kill us all.
It’s hard to separate my memories of school from my memories of violence. When I think about history and government, I remember debating the second amendment and wondering what the hell any of my pro-gun classmates had in common with a well regulated militia. When I remember going to the movies with my friends, I remember not doing that for a while and buying TDKR on DVD when it came out. When I remember the jokes we told I cringe but I understand because the nasty gallows humor was a coping mechanism, one I would never recommend but can’t condemn because sometimes there is just no way to have good taste.
When I remember my own depression, when I remember hearing about people my age or not much older killing themselves, I remember never being as shocked as the adults around me.
Prison guards and veterans have higher rates of suicide than the general population, they say, because of their years in places where there is always the potential for violence.
Is it really that hard to understand that when school shootings are regular enough that we can all plot the trajectory of the news cycle in response to them, when active shooter drills are undertaken in schools across the country, when teachers have to tell their students that they will give their lives up for them if necessary and other students volunteer because in the words of ten-year-old Dez Benard he “would rather be the one that died protecting my friends then have an entire class die and I be the only one that lived”— when all of these things are part of the background radiation of children’s lives they might carry the same burden and trauma?
So the next time you hear someone talk about how cell phones or video games or this or that thing is the reason kids kill themselves, treat it like the victim-blaming garbage it is and move on. Kids aren’t dying because they lack the self-control to use technology appropriately. They’re killing themselves because we have made the environment in which they spend their lives into a warzone. They deserve better than that. We deserved better than that.
I’ve been thinking a lot about kids in school these days. Everyone has, but here’s something I haven’t seen put together a lot. The pieces are all there, people have obsessed over it and written articles and books that range from the insightful to the insulting, but so far in the wake of this tragedy I haven’t seen this said in so many words:
The suicide epidemic among teenagers? Yeah, that could have something to do with the constant pressure of knowing your school could be next, your friends could be next, you could be next. The reason kids these days are more likely to commit suicide might have something to do with the way our society has invited the spectre of violent death into school at every level.
A disclaimer: I have not done any studies. I don’t analyze gun violence, partly because it is not my field and partly because the U.S. government has made it very difficult for scientists to do so. What I have done is lived as someone who was a toddler when Columbine happened, was 15 when Sandy Hook and Aurora happened, was nineteen when Orlando happened. What I have done is live in a world where terrible things happened in places just like the one I went to five days a week almost every week for what remains the bulk of my lifetime and will always be my formative years.
I watched as the prospect of massacre by gun grew up with me. I watched as it went from being the kind of tragedy that would rock the world to being a political crisis to being another part of the news, with stock phrases and inertia built right in as if this was a natural disaster. As if we were supposed to be sad but accepting, as if school shootings were like hurricanes or earthquakes, as if all we could do was practice drills and say something if we thought one of our classmates might be the next person to get a gun and kill us all.
It’s hard to separate my memories of school from my memories of violence. When I think about history and government, I remember debating the second amendment and wondering what the hell any of my pro-gun classmates had in common with a well regulated militia. When I remember going to the movies with my friends, I remember not doing that for a while and buying TDKR on DVD when it came out. When I remember the jokes we told I cringe but I understand because the nasty gallows humor was a coping mechanism, one I would never recommend but can’t condemn because sometimes there is just no way to have good taste.
When I remember my own depression, when I remember hearing about people my age or not much older killing themselves, I remember never being as shocked as the adults around me.
Prison guards and veterans have higher rates of suicide than the general population, they say, because of their years in places where there is always the potential for violence.
Is it really that hard to understand that when school shootings are regular enough that we can all plot the trajectory of the news cycle in response to them, when active shooter drills are undertaken in schools across the country, when teachers have to tell their students that they will give their lives up for them if necessary and other students volunteer because in the words of ten-year-old Dez Benard he “would rather be the one that died protecting my friends then have an entire class die and I be the only one that lived”— when all of these things are part of the background radiation of children’s lives they might carry the same burden and trauma?
So the next time you hear someone talk about how cell phones or video games or this or that thing is the reason kids kill themselves, treat it like the victim-blaming garbage it is and move on. Kids aren’t dying because they lack the self-control to use technology appropriately. They’re killing themselves because we have made the environment in which they spend their lives into a warzone. They deserve better than that. We deserved better than that.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Archaeology Fun Day (and other fun days)!
I can't believe it happened! The event we've been planning since I joined EAOP happened last Saturday and it. Was. Fantastic.
I'll try and write more about it in my next post but suffice to say, fun was had by a large amount of people and at least two dogs! Above is the illustrious Koda, support animal to another member of our committee and friend to all. I didn't ask for permission to post pictures of the other little guy, but he was a 14-week-old puppy in training to be a guide dog and he was the cutest thing.
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