Fandom Snowflake Challenge day 7

In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My mother passed away in 2008. Before then I suffered from anemia - undiagnosed because I have a needed phobia and avoided doctors - and clinical depression - also undiagnosed. After my mother died, gried added in to the mix. I was in a horrible headspace. I was literally looking at knives and thinking about stabbing them into my arm. My friend Susan lent me the DVDs for each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I fairly quickly discovered fanfic. The only other things I had going for me at the time were my women's group, where I know Susan from, and going out for nature walks and encountering moments of happiness. These got me through the most difficult times of my life.

There's an old cartoon about cave-dwellers where a child stands on two legs and one of the adults calls out, "No, no, on all fours just like Mommy and Daddy." In Sherwood Anderson's Hands, a teacher had been kicked out of a community purportedly because he'd molested one of the boys. The story makes it clear, or at least I think so, that he hadn't. There's this phrase, "he did not understand what had happened". I took it as a call to look deeper into the story. The men who'd beaten the teacher had thought it was because he'd molested their sons but I think the story makes it clear, although subtly, that they were really upset because the teacher had inspired their sons. The sons grew into men who were not the same as their fathers and like the cavemen in that cartoon, they coudn't have that. It's a beautiful piece of writing.

nearly 200,000 images you can use for free

The New York Public Library just released a treasure trove of digitized public domain images, featuring epic poetry from the 11th century to photographs of used car lots in Columbus, Ohio from the 1930s. Over 180,000 manuscripts, maps, photographs, sheet music, lithographs, postcards, and other images were released online Wednesday in incredibly high resolution, and are available to download using the library's user-friendly visualization tool. It's a nostalgist's dream come true.