Call: Sci-fi Exhibition Community Callout, from the Petersfield Museum. Located ten miles from Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, they want artwork that relates to and tells the story of three local science fiction icons: H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, War of the Worlds), John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids), and Alec Guinness (Star Wars trilogy). Deadline: 28th April 2022.

Possibly of interest to readers is my new flip-stick with seat, which is collapsible and almost self-assembling. You take it out, give it a shake, and the stick-sections lock together. Then you flip the handle over to make it a seat and it auto-locks. You then balance on it, as if a tripod, with legs slightly out, and the stick behind at a 75 degree angle. Possibly these are common in the USA, but they’re new to me.

I now have one via a kind Amazon Gift Voucher gift, and it works fine and is quite comfy for a ten minute breather. Such a thing may be just what you need for exploring places without many seats, such as large museums or parks… or any place which seeks to force visitors into their over-priced tea-rooms in order to sit down. Possibly also useful for stand-up gallery launches and many situations at conventions. Fancier countryman-type seat-sticks in leather and wood are also available, but after some research this was found to be the the best in everyday urban situations. Easily packed away, and being wholly black doesn’t show grubbiness from frequent use. In the UK, Amazon thinks it’s the best too and is now selling them direct and thus can send to an Amazon locker.

I also had another brilliant suggestion from someone, re: a way to enable one to jot down the gist of those ‘eureka!’ ideas that can come when in the bath. And which are so easily forgotten once out of the bath. I discovered that toddlers now have the luxury of “bath crayons” that can write with relative ease on damp or even wet ceramic tiles. Apparently they don’t stain. They’ve very cheap and quite common, and bathing writers and scholars may find that they’re worth a try.

My thanks again to my Patreon and other patrons. Your continuing support in these difficult times is much appreciated.

This month in ‘Picture Postals’, the Providence farmers’ market at the foot of College Hill, a post which became a discovery and colorising of two new pictures of the Old Brick Row that was so beloved of Lovecraft; a tour of Lovecraft’s Public Library again with newly colorised pictures; I finally got around to looking at the Shepley Library in Providence, and found a good photo of Mr. Shepley along the way. For one of my Patreon patrons’ I looked again at the Brooklyn Museum and Lovecraft. My April Fools Day ‘Picture Postal’ sadly appears to have fallen completely flat, but can now be seen as a screenshot on the 1st April post.

Also found in the new-found cache of pictures from Boston Public Library, a new vintage picture looking up College Street, and two good pictures of Blackstone Park though not Lovecraft’s favourite York Pond section. I still have one more, but can’t re-find the letter to go with it — at the end of his life Lovecraft boards and tours a super-deluxe new modern train. If anyone can point me to the location of this I’d be grateful please.

I managed to recover a picture of Lovecraft’s Hope Street High School, which I thought I had lost. Also coming due course, a photo on the interior of the Opera House (a “second home” for the young Lovecraft, and from whose boards he once slung great slabs of Shakespeare at the audience). And an excellent vintage photo of the foot of College Street which I’ve never seen before.

I started on the new and enlarged book of Lovecraft-Galpin letters and, though I had perused it many years ago in early form, found much new data and useful snippets of information. In my ‘Ripped and torn’ post I moved a little closer to solving the mystery of the ‘torn off pulp covers’ in Lovecraft’s magazine collection.

The TOCs appeared for the third book in The Robert H. Waugh Library of Lovecraftian Criticism along with a review; S.T. Joshi’s Miscellaneous Writings and his 1980s Journals have been published. Several useful reviews appeared online in March, not least for Fungi From Yuggoth — An Annotated Edition. A review of the latest book in the Robert H. Waugh Library led me to take a look at Lovecraft and Ulysses (the modernist novel) which raises the interesting possibility that Dream-quest was partly inspired by occult ideas.

In journals I noted the Italian journals Studi Lovecraftiani #20, and Zothique #9 and #10, and discovered something about what’s in them. Lovecraftian Proceedings #4 was published, and there were also TOCs online for that. An essay of my own was accepted for the forthcoming Lovecraft Annual, and another for Joshi’s Penumbra.

In comics and illustration, I noted a Blue Fox comics adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and got samples of the art. In France, the Lovecraft paperbacks edition from Points had pleasing new BD-style Moebius-alike covers. Eerie Magazine scans arrived, or at least were collected as a collection, on Archive.org. The HPLHS released a massive prop set for RPG gamers, including much printed material.

In podcasts I spotted a new podcast interview with John L. Steadman (H.P. Lovecraft & the Black Magickal Tradition: the master of horror’s influence on modern occultism); and of course noted the latest Voluminous reading of a letter from Lovecraft. SSFAudio’s podcast pampered “The Cats Of Ulthar”. Librivox had a bumper Lovecraft month and threw in tales from his friends Whitehead and Eddy for good measure.