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Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

“He” comes from the description in the original posting on the rare books site selling these: https://web.archive.org/web/20221205191022/https://bostonrar... - possibly they knew exactly who it was from?

That said, I got a femme vibe off the handwriting too. And the inclusion of cartouches around the lunar phase drawings plus a lovingly illustrated entry for Samhain suggests the artist is a neopagan of some kind, which could be a slight tell for femininity. Maybe. Depends on the coven really. Which they were apparently a part of, the full sales post includes an image with a little pile of coven newsletters, some of which are in “paste-up form” which suggests they were participating in the time honored tradition of using the office copier on the sly.

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Also: A man openly celebrating International Women's Day in 1981, while not impossible, is certainly unlikely. Similarly, "Nice Day With Liz" on a Sunday, seems like mentioning a platonic event. A man opening having female friends and meeting them 1-to-1 on a Sunday in 1981? Again, not impossible, but another point suggesting a female author.

Liz might be his SO?

I would wager that Liz is the female author's younger sister. In the calendar period, the author turns 32 and has an 8th wedding anniversary, meanwhile Liz graduates with a 4.0 GPA.

Second guess: Liz is female author's father's second wife. Ailing, but finishing college as an older student.

Absolutely nothing about the content, lettering, or drawing suggests a male author to me. FWIW!

1984-01-21 is "sixth anniversary of introduction to Liz". Doesn't sound like sister.

1987-05-05 is "8th wedding anniversary".

So the author was introduced to Liz on 1978-01-21, and married someone on 1979-05-05. It's possible that's Liz, but that's fairly quick, even for the 70s.

Hm, I missed that one.

Maybe Liz is her younger half-sister from a temporarily estranged parent. :)

I realize I'm plumbing the depths of statistical likelihood to support my intuition of a female author.

Two other things occur to me. In the 1980s, there was a wider variety of what was considered "ordinary" in the expression of stereotypical male traits within gendered males. It was much less expected for any in the gamut to follow a non-stereotypical path, of course, and for better or worse.

But more directly relevant, the author is "anonymous" but certainly not "unknown", so it probably makes sense to assume that the auction house / article writer got it right in the first place!

Where'd you see the entry for Samhain? I found the two for Beltane and the quarters but not that.

oh sorry, Samhain's mentioned in the one image not included in the linked article, I should have said Beltane :)

A neopagan in 1987? That's not so likely.

It looks like the author went to Wales for the Eisteddfod in 1982, which suggests some degree of interest in Celtic traditions.

Also, the 1st of January is described as "civil new year", which implies there's some other new year on a different day, which could be samhain.

In the US Federal Government we also have to deal with the fiscal new year which starts in October for some bizarre reason (yearly budgets go from October 1st to September 30).

I am not sure if there is some context to "neopagan" that I don't know, but I knew wiccans in the military in 1990.

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