What you'll find here:

My Pen Page:
A full list of my fountain pen collection, both modern and vintage, with all original photos. Also features a full list of my fountain pen inks with color corrected swatches.

Oct 15: Now updated with 37 new inks!

Review Blog
A sort of blog, consisting largely of book & movie reviews, pen and ink reviews and essays, etc. Not much personal stuff here.

Raven's Links

(see Pen pages for fountain pen-related links)

Religion & History
Full Text Bible Search
Fordham Medieval Sourcebook
Med & Ren Primary Documents
U Mich Medieval Congress
The Newberry Library
Ancient History Sourcebook
Sacred Texts Archive
5 Gospels in Parallel

Art & Graphics
Adobe Studio
V-Brush
Brands
TigerTech
HTML Goodies

For the Love of Mac
MacMarc
VersionTracker
Apple D-loads
DealMac
CompGeeks

Miscellany
Internet Movie Database
Anguish Languish
Vrya
Evil Henchmens' Guide
Ravensbrew
MacLogic
BEGoths

Welcome to Ravenmoon!

This website, for the moment, primarily houses reviews (books, movies, etc., both academic and not) and my Fountain Pen listings, reviews, and commentary. Please note: my commentary, like my own views, tend overwhelmingly toward the liberal, secular left; just so you know.

To the left are links to my fountain pen related pages, and the review blog I keep here, as well as an assortment of things I find either interesting, or useful to keep handy. To the right you will see a random selection of books as cataloged on my LibraryThing. LT is a great site for creating, cataloging of monitoring a library. Click the book list to visit my Library.

I do keep a personal 'blog' on LiveJournal, but this is not that. I wanted a separate public space for reviews and the like that I can share apart from personal rantings, photos of m cats, and the like. Feel free to drop me an e-mail or comment if you would like to follow me there, though you will need a LiveJournal account (free) to do so.

A Bit About Me:

I'm a professor and scholar who is old enough to know better, Mom who is young enough to rock out with the greatest kid in the world. Pretty much an atheist, but with an abiding love for mythology, art, cathedrals, Dante, and medieval history. Counter culture enough to maybe get in just a bit of trouble, but wise enough to know how (or perhaps when) not to.

I have a BA in Humanities/Religious Studies (magna cum), with a Jewish Studies minor, an MA in Humanities (Religious Studies & Literature), and a graduate certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I wrote my undergrad honors thesis on Evolution, Patriarchy, and the Sexual Politics of the Religious Right, and then went on to dive head-first into the Middle Ages, and combined the two by writing my thesis on the Religious Right and Crusade Language in Post 9/11 America.

My focus is (currently) on Christianity and its minorities in western medieval Europe and related topics. I am particularly interested in heretics & Jews within Christian societies, parallel developments in Jewish and Christian mysticism, and the impact (or lack thereof) of of the Black Death on these areas. I also have side interests in the machinations of the Medieval Papacy before and during the Avignon Papacy. I'm currently writing on specific segments in Dante's Divina Commedia and their implications in terms of medieval Eucharistic theology. I am discovering that the medievals were a rather ghastly bunch, in quixotic and wonderful ways. I am also discovering that Aquinas is beginning to make sense to me, which concerns me just the tiniest bit.

I'm also hopelessly addicted to fountain pens (and inks) which I use and collect, both modern and vintage. I haven't held a Bic in years! In addition to my passion for books (even beyond the obvious academic addiction), and pens, I am also vegetarian, a Mac geek, love coffee & chocolate, and occasionally have residual pretensions of being a costumer. Cheers!