Non-Hateration

Isn't the word hateration just too good? When my older niece was little, she liked The Hateration Song. One cannot fault her. As bum-dancing songs go, it is excellent (I actually want to just get up from the laptop right now and hit the stereo and do some damage to this filthy pigsty of a house of mine. Which: in a minute.)

Writing that last post, I got to thinking about the fact that, when I told my mom about going to see Drag Race live, all she did was laugh with that unique mix of "Diane, WHAT craziness are you into now" and the underlying clear understanding of *exactly* what craziness I am into, and why. And, of course, she could not wait to laugh some more by scandalizing my stepfather, telling him about my latest craziness. It's how the three of us bond telling on each other and laughing about it.

Of course, he's harder to scandalize than he once was.

And my mom is not scandalized, not even one whit.


Mom, a religious conservative and a Southern lady Of a Certain Age, with all that means, has always been perhaps almost curiously tolerant of homosexuality. Beyond "I just don't want them rubbing it in my face", she has no actual ire to spare for gay men (and I think "homosexuality" is a limited concept for her, mainly applying to men - where the rest of the LGBT spectrum lies in her morality is perhaps closer to the religious right's standard positions, or perhaps scarcely exists at all).

The best part of this - EVER - was about five or six years ago, when things were a little financially tight for me. I'd started selling a few things on eBay, and had picked up a repeat customer we will call Prissy. Prissy's eBay handle wasn't far off that term, but the PO Box I mailed her won auctions to was attached to a name traditionally considered to be a "boy's" name.

I was basically selling to a baby drag queen, or transgender kid - and it meant a lot to me to provide a safe place for Prissy. Prissy was a GREAT customer, and adorable, and asked me if I had any purses one time.

So: mom and I went shopping. I found clothes and shoes and some purses for Prissy.

MOM was as into this as I was. We had fun - would this work, would this be fun, would this be cute? How about this?

Shopping for drag with my mom.

And this was no furtive secret for her, either. She told people how much fun she had, and how the baby drag queen was saving my Christmas. Mom's enjoyment was pure, on its own merits - not even tied to the self-conscious PC-ery I had wrapped up in it



When I look at Adore and Violet and the many young queens RuPaul has had on Drag Race ... I remember Prissy with joy. I *hope* what she got from me gave her some nights out as happy as the feelings she still gives to me, when I remember.

I hope Prissy is happy, safe, and well.

I hope she has good shoes and a cute bag.



And I hope she's having as much fun as Adore is, in the Take Me There vid that tops her website right now. Because it would not be possible to watch that and not want to dance with her, not smile and laugh a bit.

Sometimes, ya gotta laugh.



Especially when things are least laughable.

(Born Naked) and The Rest ...

It has been a hard, hard week, and a good one.

My stepfather didn't come into our lives until I was thirty-seven or so. Like any family, we had natural resistance to change. But, over time, he has become very dear to us. Indeed, at this point I find myself unexpectedly tender and protective toward him. I love him VERY much, and now the very fact we didn't see that coming means that loving him is very gratifying.

An astute reader will guess: it is his health which has for so long been an obliquely-referenced sadness when I blog about personal feelings.

This post is not about my stepfather.

His decline has put my mom into the position of caregiving. The difficulties and challenges don't require explaining. But the particulars, for us, are no less acute for being shared by so many others.

This week, I SLAYED IT at work. I was sick'ning. I was FEE-ACE.

The three statements above are consciously and intentionally pointed thievery, mainly from RuPaul (and a little bit from Tyra Banks).

At work, I killed a graphical map presentation. I helped give birth to an initiative which stands to save my company quite a lot of money. It felt good.

And at my mom and stepfather's house, I helped them do their taxes.



Most of the time someone we love is in difficulty, we are impotent to DO anything.

The impulse is to fix. The impulse is to give advice. The impulse is to anything but passive receipt of bad news, sadness, fear, bitterness. We can't hear a problem without wanting to respond to the problem.

The secret of my life has been in responding to the person. It is why, since I was thirteen, I have been the one friends - even family - turn to. It is that saying I don't understand is a better response than fixing, advising. Thinking we do understand.

Because, even when we've been there, we never quite understand another's heart.



And so, the opportunity TO fix - TO actually, practically and concretely help - is a rare and special opportunity.



This week, I got to help.

It doesn't change the health picture. It doesn't change the fact that the secondary help I may be able to offer - to perhaps make it possible for my mom to go somewhere else and help someone else herself - is in answer to someone else's crisis. It doesn't untangle the way death creates a spiderweb that crosses more than one stand across us at any moment.

But my mom called me yesterday morning and said, "I slept."



So. What's Ru got to do with it?

Ru is my present to myself.

Drag Race has a live show, and Cute Shoes and I will get to go together. We'll get to dress up. I will meet her Gay Best Friend; someone else I know may be there with her husband, who may himself be in drag.

There will be ooh-ing and aah-ing over shoes, over wigs, over clothes and makeup.

There was already that one moment when my BROTHER got into the drag-planning and said, "You should do that greyscale makeup" and I realized I have corrupted him, and that was awesome.



Sometimes, you need something to look forward to.

I look forward to seeing the girls in the video above. I look forward to doing Pearl's "HULK SMASH" dance and loving it. I look forward to Ginger Minj's accent and sense of humor. I look forward to just looking at Violet, who is so young and so adorable and so deadly brilliant. I cannot even DEAL, that I will get to see Alaska T********** - the only thing named or remotely to do with Alaska that I ever loved (and I adore her completely).

I'm excited, excited.

And don't we ALL need that?

My April Fool

Possibly my favorite pic of Penelope
"I WILL EAT YOU, SUNSHINE!"

Today is Penny-dopey's made up fourth birthday. Stay tuned for May Day kittay ...

A Short Story

She never used to do that.

Every day lately, Cheryl walked by my corner cube and hit her ring on the metal corner trim. Every day at least once.

She had been trying so hard to lose weight, to eat healthfully, to get some walking in every day, at least four times. Trying so hard. I felt for her, was so impressed with her. She meant it. And it was so hard.

It'd only been during the past month or so, this loss of balance, this tiniest change - a scuffing of her heels; the *ting!* of her ring, going by that corner.


Cheryl is not Hannah. Cheryl doesn't need to sink down, years gone, body overwhelmed by multiple sclerosis.

It's only microscopic chips on the rhinestone of a ring. It's only a different pair of shoes.

Hannah is not Hannah.

But somebody was, once.

And Cheryl is still Cheryl. Trying so hard, and failing a little. I feel for her. I'm so impressed with her.

Collection

Jessica Faust at Bookends Literary Agency takes a look at the downside of #MSWL, or the Manuscript Wish List many pre-published love to pore over, hoping to find someone who'll represent our work.

The Arrant Pedant has a great post for those Americans coping with taxes this season: on the task of taxes and axing about the history of etymology. Also, I learned a new word today - palatalization. Not sure when I'll get to use it, but I like it anyway. Syncopated.

Speaking of great words: I'm always a sucker for palimpsest. Not least because, as artifacts, the things are wells of curious information and questions. The History Blog looks at a palimpsest in which the Battle of Thermopylae gets an "all killer no filler" description. Never let it be said the History Blogger is not a History Nerd.

The on-demand economy – or old-fashioned temping? I gave up temping myself twenty years ago, because being pimped is no way to make a living. Gee, and it turns out there are others who don't want to work that way either. Duh.

Old Voices and the Divorce of Love

Listening to Blackstar yesterday reminded me of Johnny Cash's devastating rendition (even Trent Reznor can't call it a "cover" - the song is Johnny's now) of Hurt, Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose, Warren Zevon's The Wind. Like Bowie, Warren knew he was dying. Cash's elegiac rumble is imbued with his redemption and his sorrow, and so unbearably intimate we experience his loss beside him, now even thirteen years since his death. Loretta is still with us, but now literally generations into her career, her voice is mellowed and frayed with age, and all the more wonderful to hear for it. She's never been shallow, but VLR is an album with a timbre she never had before, and Jack Whyte can't take credit for that.

Bowie's voice on Blackstar has that weakness; not merely the presence of death. All art has that, perhaps. But the sense almost of greeting it. Not resignation, but grace.

In these days, as I watch that grace before me - know a voice which begs for the end every night in the dark, and wish there could be relief and peace - these voices draw me, over and over again. Not because I wish to wallow in mourning before its time, but because I have a sense these voices speak a unique understanding.

Loretta, in particular, is gentle. Her faith has always been strong; there are things about her that have always reminded me of aspects of my maternal family. She seems, on the spiritual level, to be a *sweet* woman - not in the "nice as pie" sense, but in that she appears to have grace. Acceptance, even when she remonstrates to G-d himself - and strength to understand that bearing is not agreeing, even as we can't always fight.

In the video for Blackstar, Bowie carries a book and wears black and has some appearance of a traveling preacher, perhaps a prophet.

Zevon was always weird - never a novelty act, yet his "Werewolves of London" and the bouncy joke that was the unbelievably disturbing "Exciteable Boy" were so often treated as such. He terrified me as a kid, listening to that album in my living room, staring at what I thought was a pervert's face on his album cover, and his songs seeming so pop but *being* so savagely, brilliantly something-else. "The Wind" doesn't have the sepulchral resonance of "Hurt" or even some of VLR's plangent nostalgia, but it is no joke and could not be treated so. It's the honed, spare sound of an artist long experienced with his own talent and his voice. He still sounds like Zevon. He still sounds like, performed live, these songs would INSIST you bounce with them. Even recorded, there is a liveliness still there, and the occasional calculated rough edge in the guitars, in his canny voice that invites you to forget he's not on stage before you.

But when he sings "all bets are off ... I'll live with the losses" you don't forget the context, either. He knocks on Heaven's door, but it's still a song, still not All About Warren.

One of the odd things about listening to all this music that seems to resonate with this grace, this death I find before me is that not one note of it would mean anything to the person whose disposition in the face of pain has me thinking all these thoughts. It is All About My reactions, my feelings about this situation - rather like this blog.

We forget, so often, that sometimes the profoundest feelings in our relationships actually have nothing much to do with the person we share that relationship with. I've told Mr. X, my love for him isn't born of anything he does, and indeed doesn't answer to him. It has become its own entity over nearly fourteen years.

One of the ways it has been possible for me to cope, in the most-of-those-fourteen-years X has lived far, far, far away and we see each other seldom, has been the growing understanding that what I get out of loving him is not his responsibility and not his job to cultivate. It began with "I love this" or "I love that" about him. But over time, what that has borne in me is something entirely else. My admiration of him stands; and all around it, sprouting up like wildflowers, are these unexpected dots of color in my life, rooted in that admiration or desire or respect, but beautiful things unto themselves.

He's made me grow, spiritually, and not because he taught or led. Just because he is, and the ineffable alchemy of who we are - together ... and so far apart - has synthesized these blessings, dotted all around the ground where he stands in my life my mind and my heart.



This is what I hear in the old voices, drawing me. The grace of letting go of understanding - or of coming to it, as sorrowful as it can be. The grace of letting go of control. The grace of accepting wonder in what cannot make sense nor be expressed, except in deepest intimacy.

The intimacy of artists who find a way to make us hear that ineffability they have seen and can't explain any more than the rest of us.


I am reminded of the death of Marvin the Paranoid Android. "I think ... I feel good about it."

Ithaca. Rachel. Sheba. Godot.

There are some things you have to wait for. You have to wait to be a grownup. You have to wait to find your home. You have to wait to find someone to love (if you are lucky enough to ...). We all wait for death.

Some waiting is by choice.

I waited for Blackstar.

When David Bowie died, it was such a big deal, as much as I wanted to observe it and remember all he's meant to me, I retreated from the massive outpouring. When people make a Big Story all about themselves, it seems distasteful, and so I kept my response less fulsome than I have a tendency to be.

I also could not bear the fine point - the poignard - of listening to his last music.

Today at work, the radio was just too wretched to bear. It stinks every day; some borrowed morning show from another city in the morning, and what passes for rock these days is just sad. (Ahh, the privilege of chronological/cultural superiority!) So I put on my ear buds, fired up YouTube, and bumped around a bit.

And let myself search for Blackstar.

And the sound of David's dying voice.



After that, I needed this.

David Bowie's skill with anthemic, literally hair-raising crescendo, his ability to rise and rise and carry a crowd of tens of thousands - of millions, around the world, in the song above - never, ever ceases to astound me. I choose the word astound because it resonates with profound, which is an interesting thing, because honestly he is a shameless dramatic. He uses devices we all see coming - and they work anyway.

Five Years is one of those songs. It builds and builds until you respond whether you want to or not. Diamond Dogs as an album, by each individual track, and certainly the title song, are all waves; you see a distant swell that looks so gentle, and then it looms upon you, and it breaks.

Bowie was shameless.

Freddie Mercury was the same.

I adore shameless, dramatic music. I *want* to succumb to it. I want it to have its way with me. I want to feel the tingling I do every time the Brandenberg Concerto does that one thing that reminds me so completely, so cruelly and so sublimely, of my dad. I want Symphony X to get me to Ithaca, because I know Odysseus personally, and I want him home. I want to be made to cry.

I don't want to go where David Bowie went, when he made Blackstar.

But holy hell, I am grateful he was willing to. That he let us hear his weak, his old voice. That he LIFTED it. That he never stopped doing that. Ever. And spoke to us his final artistic statement.

People talk about rock gods - idols - and he has been said to have all but invented the concept (as have others).

But what he did was an offering to us.


Now I need to go listen to Freddie sing. Because now I want to succumb to smiling. Nobody makes me joyous quite like Freddie Mercury and Queen (Though the inconceivably dorky tambourine guy in the clip embedded above is good for a grin).

Collection

My regular reading seemed to want to concentrate on covers today ...

First, a new post from the Caustic Cover Critic - yay! On returning classics, or "stock photo cover design" - an interesting look at the different ways designers use images to create unique looks.

Then Janet Reid had a word on when to worry about your cover. "While it's not an asshat indicator, it's troubling." Hee!

Interpolating from a post put up after this Collection, but fitting in too well not to put here - Jessica Faust also has some thoughts on covers, and a fascinating angle. How being unable to "picture it" so to speak led to a rejection. Oh dear!

The History Blog takes a look at Dina and Uyan, a pair of preserved cave lion cubs which are likely more than ten thousand years old. And the author of *this* blog scoops up Gossamer the Editor Cat for a soft, warm snoodle.

The HB also tells us about the Diamond Sutra, the oldest printed book known to be preserved. A fifteen foot block-printed scroll found in the Mogao cave temples, which in themselves must make a glorious study, the book dates to May 11, 868. Hooray for the precise date in the colophon!

Flash Nonfiction

No safe landings in a mosh pit. But we didn’t even call them that back then.

Girls and guys, cigarettes, blue nighttime city light. The air oddly soft; this city is not a big one, and it is summer. Honey and Andy sharing salty snacks. Other Andy trying to flirt. We didn’t know he didn’t like girls.

Sitting on the wall. Flowered skirt, jean jacket, CIA t-shirt tied in a knot. Aching for someone to fall into. Sea of boys and wanting to dive.

No safe landings.

For the second time, I entered Janet Reid's flash fiction contest. Her response this time:

DLM's entry (11:50am) isn't quite a story, but I love it very much. It's got atmosphere to die for.

In fact, I felt the same way myself. And the truth is: it is NOT a story. It is the cousin of things that actually happened. It is my memory of nights spent at a dive called Hard Times, for some reason allowed to tag along with my brother. The names are the ones these kids went by.

Driving home after one of these nights, my brother meowed at a police dog in a cruiser beside us. I was in the driver's seat, the ink on my driver's license scarcely dry (I was so young), and the station wagon was filled to capacity, probably nine punks and at least one bicycle poking out the back window - "$150 dollars worth of fine-able offenses" I remember the officer telling us, annoyed, after he'd pulled me over and explained he wasn't much in the mood, on his way back from a homicide as he was.

The flowered skirt was a white eyelet prairie skirt, tiered, with tiny, vividly-blue flowers. The jacket, actually a Members Only knockoff by L'Autre Mode, was my brother's. The CIA t-shirt was real; it was pink, given to me by A Certain Uncle of mine who is a mine of stories all his own, but he likes to fancy himself a raconteur, and has not been my uncle in 22 years, so I will leave those to him to tell (and not to) for classified reasons.

The shirt was pink, by the way. This extra-cracked me up as a wannabe political liberal teen. Muzzy, vaguely nonsensical, uninformed "pinko!" jokes abounded.

We saw Ten Thousand Maniacs at Hard Times, which still seems so odd. But, more often, it was Minor Threat, White Cross, assorted local bands and would-be bands.

Honey is the one girl of whom I have much memory; blonde. Sad. She was perhaps the most abused person I had ever met - or, at least, the person whose abuse was most apparent to me. I may have been younger than she (I may not have been). She made me feel so impotently protective. She still does.

The girls used to paw my face lovingly - "How do you get your skin so pale?" We had moved from my old neighborhood a year, maybe two before. I hadn't been to the pool since. I haven't been in the sun since 1983.

The bar was used as a location in Finnegan Begin Again. Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Preston danced where my brother did, where we grubby teens used to bum cigs off each other and call out gleefully to passing traffic, because: summer nights. I am surprised to learn, Sylvia Sidney was in FBA. Huh. She was married to Bennet Cerf, whose joke books in hardcover were a major part of my early reading.

Nowadays - still standing - the place was a coffee shop, last I checked. The streets run the same ways, but seem ... much more businesslike. They pass by the ghosts of the eighties - or before. Thirty-plus years ago, they were one of the places I lived.

And the atmosphere - yes. It kind of was to die for, Janet. But I never quite finished any story there.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's good to know that, as a non beer-lover, I can feel righteous in not celebrating this day by drinking Guiness.

It's a funny thing, the way symbols are derived at all - and how they evolve.

Pink, that emblematic color of nipples now so ubiquitously associated with corporate breast cancer marketing campaigns, vapid "femininity", and razors I am allowed to use as a woman, was actually once most popular for MALE children.

The frog, sometimes considered emblematic of the French (are kids still aware of that old one anymore, though?), who sometimes are caricatured as profligate and promiscuous lovers, is deeply associated with the idea of fidelity.

Indeed, the dog - widely loved most for its faithfulness and loyalty - is repurposed linguistically to refer to profligate and promiscuous lovers, generally male ones.

So it is an interesting history - Guiness, so PR-ready in its shorthand Irishness - is actually a centuries-deep English product, and generations of its proprietors were anti-union and anti-everything (Americans?) expect in a broad-strokes portrait of "What Is Irish" ... For eighty-four years, indeed, the company has been based in London, apparently.


Side note: intoxivation, spotted in a link at the bottom of this article, is a delicious coinage.

The Most Incredible Pen I Ever Met

Life's too short not to use the good pen.

Being a writer, every now and then someone gives me A Nice Pen.

I have a whopper of a colorful mother-of-pearl pen that was my first "because you are a writer" pen, given by a friend several jobs ago when I had to leave that much-beloved employer. It weighs something on the order of a pound or so, and its diameter is enormous, but it's a great-writing instrument. I love it most because of its provenance, but it's a lovely thing just to look at and great for a flourishing signature.

My current job brought a boxed set my way, a pen and pencil set in graphite casing, just beautiful.

Another friend gave me a pen hand-lathed by her own son; a slender, curvaceous number I favor frequently because it is beautifully weighted. This pen goes with me everywhere, in whatever purse I happen to be carrying.

The James River Writers conference has been a source of good pens as well.

One of the best pens they've had in the swag bag for a couple or three years happens to come from a sponsor semi descended from, or step-related to, the employer I had to leave so regretfully at the time I received the MOP pen mentioned above. It gives me a wry smile, because those who've stayed on through this generation of that employer have not universally been thrilled with the evolution, but they are people I still respect immensely, and miss.

JRW is also a great source for some of the best cheap pens I've ever had. Another sponsor provides snappy little lightweights that also have a great curve appeal, and they often come in nice colors you can find in the drawer. Some of these have lasted as long as the ten-plus years for which I've been attending JRW events.

Easily the most astonishing pen, if we may call it such, is the highlighter with which I do my hard-copy research.

This is a highlighter.

It was bought in a set of four colors.

In 1982.


To steal a phrase from the most intense aunt in my family: I kid you not.


This highlighter was born in the age of pin-dot printing, when static was something we concerned ourselves with, or, at least, the marketing dudes of the day did. When this FONT was cool-oh and futuristic looking. It came with blue, green, and yellow companions - the yellow long since used up, the blue still gasping 35 years on, and the green perhaps lost in time.

The pink highlighter works. It's fresh as a daisy, and has that satisfyingly firm tip that feeds its ink with a waxy smoothness that is gratifyingly dependable.

I didn't save this beast for special occasions. For decades, it lived with my mom. She cleaned out a desk, decades *ago* now, and I inherited it, and its mates. There was little reason to use it, but no pressing reason to toss it, and the thing has aged quietly for all this time.

It's probably more than twice the age of my eighteen-year-old niece. It has outlasted countless personal computers, fashions, even automobiles. Five of those, in fact. Individually, it may have cost a quarter or so - perhaps more, if we splurged on a princely tool for modern computer highlighting work! - but investment-wise, is has outperformed any conceivable commodity in any market in any corner of, perhaps, the entire universe itself.

And it shows no sign of giving up. It doesn't even show its age, though the design is perhaps amusingly quaint.

Pink has, since my earliest research on The Ax and the Vase, been the color for highlighting research for the WIP. I found the subject of the WIP early on in working on Ax, and so I used pink to differentiate it from the drab old yellow I was using to work on reading for Ax.

I used this highlighter. There have been one or two other pink ones, in a pinch, but those (!!!) died. Quickly.

This workhorse, though, lives on. And on.

I have a silly and affectionate idea it may see me through work on the WIP, and finally give up its hardy ghost, fulfilled at long last, the methuselah pen, the ancient markiner, the oldest highlighter known to man.

If not, I plan to leave it to the younger niece - also a writer.

In the meantime, it is working for me. And I am, quietly, but consistently, amazed by the little thing. It has such ... life.



What is your best or most beloved or oddest pen?

Laughter Is the Worst Medicine?

Disclaimer - though this post riffs on the litany of illnesses I've been enjoying this past month, it's not actually about them, so we open with sort of a non-kvetch alert ...

The cough that's running like wildfire through our cube farm these days is a bit like The Office Hugger. It's everywhere, welcome nowhere, and prone to cling. If it chances to make you chuckle in the slightest, it will take you in a death grip and not let go.

I sound like a six-pack-a-day emphysematic, is what I am saying. The tiniest mirth takes me down, choking, and Snagglepuss himself would wonder how I make that hideous, wheezing sound.

Last week, at the height of a fuller roster of head-cold symptoms, I was taking meds.

I. Hate. Cough medicine.

It strips your brain away and makes you stupid.

I haven't written since the mini retreat with my beloved and talented friends. Nor edited. Nor researched.

Nor has Miss Penelope been blessed with a good walk for too long now.

It was pretty easy to forgive myself for that in the full throes of migraine and flu. Even last week, she was so sweet with her Wheezin' Mama, I was feeling the guilt less strongly than seems fair. Plus, having lost thirteen pounds in a day and a half with the flu, I've still held off eight to ten of that, so "exercise" has been demoted (ahh, the poison of "success" ...).

Today, though the cough is still irritatingly eager, the guilts are asserting themselves - about the lovely young lady who depends upon me for kibble and walkies - and about the work, which I'm missing. Though I have said for some days now I'd pay a good $10 for someone to pummel me on the back and loosen up my chest, I actually haven't felt "sick" since last week. And I take the guilt/missing my writing as good signs too, really.

Best of all, the loss of time thanks to Daylight Savings Time has not cut me down.

Sadly, one reason for this is that I had a bit of a freak-out at work today, thanks to cognitive issues from last week causing a misunderstanding; but (a) I blame the cough meds, and (b) as dismaying as it was, it was not an actual "problem", in that no damage has been done. My sense, a bit over two years into this job, is that this upsets me more than anyone else. So it will be necessary for me to perform like a rockstar on something else soon, and this too shall pass.

In the shorter term: tonight, we walk with Penelope in nature.

I just hope she won't make me laugh.

Collection

 This interview gets seriously squidgy at about 10:00, but the piece as a whole is as fascinating as James Burke always is … and the opening 1:21 is stunning. And his closing quote is one of those moments where you feel “Oh, well, that’s all right then.” Take a trip with him from the medieval world to 2050 or so. He is always a great traveling companion.

Beautiful tuffaceous sandstone. I learned what tufa was reading the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough. But Mojourner is a far better writer - and photographer.

World building resources from People of Color in European History - aid in creating languages, calculating your characters' travels, calendaring, maps ... some great assists for authors of fantasy OR historical.

Dena Pawling's posts about the law are so fascinating. Being a "recluse" ain't what it used to be - fortunately, I still seem to have a hell of a knack for it.

It's pretty exciting watching the road to publication with Donna Everheart. Go Donna!

Hey, if incompetence weren't hilarious, the state of American comedy would be pretty grim indeed.
--John Ramos

Collection

Tiny "hands" in ancient cave art are not babies' hands, nor even human. They are lizards' paws! (Parallels to the short-fingered vulgarian? Create your own joke.)

We haven't taken a trip to J. V. Cullen's A Few Random Thoughts for a while; how about today? March 8: the day Thomas Paine (?) discussed American slavery, the day Queen Anne ascended to her throne, and the day The Hitchhikers Guide guided us to where our towels were.

Lauren at American Duchess shares her fascinating experience as an extra on a documentary production about the Donner Party. Cool photos, as always, boots in the desert, and heat ... and I can't wait for part 2!

Mistakes? Life.

One of the philosophies I took from my family is that life would not be worthwhile if it were not for the differences among us. It would be boring for everyone to hold the same beliefs, no matter how “right” we may think our own are. We might never learn, if we never had to open our minds.

Likewise, joy is only enhanced by sorrow. If we have not known want, or sadness, then having, and happiness are not fully defined.

When Loretta sings, “why is that old drunk still livin’, when a daddy like mine is dyin’?” – I KNOW that question. I have asked it, in anger and in sadness. And I know her answer. It is as much a part of my family as the red clay or steep hills where my mama was born and grew up, or the white house on the hill where my daddy did.

The elegiac beauty of her song does not make it easier. It does not make the answer more acceptable. And yet. It states the simple facts.

In my family, that fact was summed up thus: life is not fair.

Taking succor, even rapture, from the relativity of joy and sorrow, of cold and warm, of frustration and fulfillment … is one thing.

Taking that on, and looking at the little baby she sings of – twisted – or the child who is blind … remains incomprehensible.

We learn from the difficulties in our own lives, and we even learn from those around us who suffer.

Yet it can feel so dirty. So awfully wrong. To watch someone face death, with more grace than you have ever seen, and to understand that death teases, plays, and delays. That it will not COME, even long after the point where this person has begun to beg for it.

I can accept that my dad only got sixty-five years, when people who seem to me not even to care about their lives – or who are just selfish – get to live on and on and on.

It is harder to accept the cruelty that is hardship suffered with no relief, or suffered by one who cannot comprehend their agony.



My elder niece, when she was only three or four, once said, “I think it would be better if everyone could be a LITTLE sick, instead of one person being VERY sick.” She said this when my dad was dying.

She’s no damned fool, my elder niece. Never was. Not even at three or four.

And the heartbreak is this: life can’t be had on egalitarian terms.

Life is not fair.

And, as beautiful as that can be, as bittersweet and gorgeous as some of our moments of pain can be …

… it hurts. It sucks.

And it STILL beats the alternative. As bad and as poorly designed and even as stupid as it is. It’s still the best thing going.

Not My Three Weeks, Apparently

It's a common observation that complaining is often an open door go G-d to give you something to really complain about.

I complained.

If the lady who's worked at the drugstore near me, whom I've known fifteen years now, is right - "It comes in threes" - I should be good to go for a while. Because, after the days-long migraine and the flu, now I have a cold.

I shall not complain. For one, it is responsive enough to acetaminophen, and though it is robbing me of sleep, which is one of my favorite things NOT to be robbed of. For two, in the midst of it, I finally took that leap and entered one of Janet Reid's flash fiction contests for my very first time, and I got short-listed. !!

Of course I'm a sucker for all thing Odyssey and I do love the alternate view point here: Penelope waiting at home. But mostly this is just beautiful writing and I love it.  --Le Sharque 

Amusingly (or not?), the entry actually consists, essentially, of a complaint. I wrote three stories; two inspired by family crises which, right now, I really wasn't sure I wanted to put online - and this third one. Harkening to classic literature, it was shameless Oscar-baiting, as it were. And it dovetails with my obsessions. There is some clunkiness - I am HATING the use of "aught" at the top. Being a historical fiction novelist, the archaic usage feels to me a bit like gadzookery, and in any case that sentence requires three reads even for *me* to get it straight.

My favorite feedback:

Joseph Snoe said...

DLM
I'm for him
or her
dear sir

Flash poetry! Woo!

The real winner, for me, is Maggie Maxwell's, because it actually has something to say. It's a great story, and entirely more.

For those who managed humor, I stand in awe, really. My story's just kvetching, which takes no work. But to manage effective comedy in 100 words or less is an accomplishment.

Collection

Lennon Faris has a look at the brain tsunami - and the stigma - of mental illness.

No diatribe today. But I am ashamed of the marketing gimmick that is the Trump candidacy.

THIS is how ingrained it is in our culture, to tell a woman she must smile. To MAKE her do it. This is how obnoxious it is.

And how about a little comic relief?

Flashing

Some of my Reider community friends will have recognized the reason I posted the somewhat random thoughts on Pelelope  on Friday. For my first time, I've entered one of Janet Reid's flash fiction contests. The prompt words were:

        pinch
        nick
        lift
        rob
        filch

As a rule, these contests overwhelm me and I shut down and can't even contemplate entering. This time, I decided to take the plunge. Here is the result (a third try; I am tempted to share the first two I wrote and scrapped) ...


***


When had it shifted – from being impossible to see aught but the end of waiting, to being impossible to believe there was an end?

When she’d been robbed. When she’d gained weight and stopped holding in her stomach, when her skin had begun to crepe. When her mouth had become pinched, her brows ever harder to lift out of hatchet-faced gloom.

When the nick of the needle, as she sewed the never-ending shroud, had been pain not worth itself. When she found she wanted to be taken as easily as a pickpocket might filch a stranger’s gold.

Damn Odysseus.

Penelope, Abigail Adams, and the False Maid

I swear, it is an accident that my dog's name is Penelope. When I first saw her,  the association with her name, as given to her by her foster organization, was by far stronger with my grandmother's dog, whom we called "Penny-Dawg", than with Odysseus' wife.

It amuses me, of course, that the image used on the article I linked above, happens to be of Artemis: or Diana.

But "that" Penelope does have her plangent resonance in my life.

Still, I would hardly name a dog for the ongoing facts of my life, least of all the fact that for double-digit years now, the man who's ruined me for all the other boys happens to be someone who lives thousands of miles away.

Penelope was what she was called before I ever met her, and when they asked me what I was going to name her, I was genuinely bewildered. "She's clearly a Penelope."

It's a bouncy name, and she has always been a bouncy girl. Honestly, I feel like it has a happy sound to it. It has her energy, perfectly.

And she'd make a rotten Abigail, though Mrs. Adams is yet another famed example of a separated, devoted wife.



People find a separated relationship immensely peculiar - not to say, a stoning offense - in the modern world. Because we are short on wild frontiers, and it has become uncommon for people to strike out on their own to make their fortunes to support spouses and/or children, there is, in the contemporary mindset, no reason to hold out for anyone who is far away.

"Geographically undesirable" is a thing - a big thing - I have learned, in the years Mr. X has lived so far away.

And standardized definitions of what comprises acceptable relationships are a huge thing indeed.

"THAT'S not a boyfriend!" someone who barely knew me said upon hearing a bit about Mr. X. Yes, well, I was past forty even then, and the term "boyfriend" is embarrassing in any case. Whatever my relationship is or is not, I don't *want* a "boyfriend" because I am not in school anymore.

But thereby we fall into a linguistic vortex many of us have been swirling around ever since the concept of romantic relationships not firmly on a short course to marriage was invented, and this lies well beside the point of this post.

I quit engaging debates about the validity of my relationships years ago, and leave it with "Find me the man who's better, locally" when it ever comes up at all.


It comes up less, with advancing age. People look at a woman of forty-eight, and if she's single, she fits into a certain tidy box, and pestering her to get a man seems less a priority for strangers than it is when she is thirty-something.



I'm working on some short stories, turning on Penelope and perhaps Melantho, her false maid.

Stay tuned with me ... I'll share if it works out.

#WeNeedDiverseBlogs

As discussions at Janet's community tend to go, today's post brought on a rangy, tugging, distractable, and bracing chat as much like a cute and strong and happy puppy on a leash as usual. I need to quote Janet Rundquist in full on one of her comments today, with thanks for her permission to use this ...


ProfeJMarie (Janet Rundquist) said...
Colin,
"It doesn't help me to understand the Mexican experience, or what it's like to be Latino/Latina if I'm constantly drawn out of the story because sections of important dialog are in a language I don't understand,"

This statement is where my point is. This assumes a lot about our readers. And while it can obviously apply to many populations, I'm going to go out on pretty solid limb and say that your statement above assumes that "most" readers are white, European, English-only speakers. It also assumes that when I put Spanish phrases into my novel, you are assuming that my purpose is teach about Latino culture. It's not. My native language is English, but I speak Spanish. I am not pulled out of a story due to Spanish phrases. Maybe I am if there's lots of Amharic, but I go with it because A) I am not the only one reading that book and B) that's the nature of the story and those characters.

Malinda Lo has a fantastic series about how this kind of thing impacts diverse voices from becoming part of the mainstream. It's our ("our"=we white people in the publishing biz) unintentional bias that gets in the way. It seems like a little thing, but it actually has more impact on the systemic issue than even I realized until recent years.

Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews

ie: as white readers and writers, we often make the mistake of making "white" and "English" the default. For the writer who had full paragraphs of Spanish followed by English... while I agree that his approach is misguided, his motivation behind it seems legit.

And now I've veered further away from the topic of this post, prune it all to Carkoon.


I snip this out of the fuller conversation because it stands so beautifully on its own, even if you never click to see the whole thread today. Little in-jokes about prunes and Carkoon aside, this is a delightfully stated point. The Malinda Lo link (Perceptions of Diversity link) is also, as Janet sometimes describes good things, a sox-knocker too, unpacking the theory that diversity in novels is "contrived" or implausible. To which I say: sigh. However, to the shout-out to Meg Medina, an author I know personally, am honored to consider a friend, and admire both as a writer and as a woman, I say: huzzah!

Diversity is not “praiseworthy”: It is reality. 

--Malinda Lo

I have to be honest. Almost a year on ... I actually feel better and better about putting The Ax and the Vase down for a nap. I *still* think the thing is a damned good novel. But it is ever more clearly, to me, an obvious result of my own blindness and privilege, curvatus en se, a learning tool.

Collection

Let's start off today's Collection post with several members of Janet Reid's community ...

Paul Lamb takes a look at one particular anachronism (interpolated spectacles) in a piece of art, and I am brought to mind of the way people like to go all guitarist and whinge about modern anachronisms in drama, art, or writing, like it's some sort of newfangled SIN. Which: sigh. No, we've always brought ancient tales into our own worlds. (I'm also of the opinion that Interpolated Spectacles would make a great name for a band.)

Julie Weathers, possibly the Head Reider at Janet Reid’s blog/community, has a nicely in-depth post on the mid nineteenth-century riding habit (and her work!). With a variety of images, for my fellow costume nerds!

I want to thank E. M. Goldsmith for this link … Chuck Wendig, Huffpo, cake-eating, and monetizing Stockholm Syndrome. On the ethics and economy of a billion-dollar enterprise and unpaid writers. (Worth a click beyond for The Tale of the Depends Duping.)

CarolynnWithTwoNs, or 2Ns as we call her at Janet’s world, has an insightful post about those who provide service every day. I’ve never been a restaurant server nor worked in retail, but as a secretary, and especially in my job now, customer service is my bread and my work was for years something I apologized for, so: yeah. Before preppies, yuppies, and the Reagan years, it was a point of PRIDE to be a union member, a factory worker, a person who actually produced something or served people.

To go along with Julie's historical costume research, The History Blog has a post on an 11,000-year-old engraved  shale pendant, found in Yorkshire. I always love the theoretical decoding attempts of prehistoric artifacts.

Speaking of decoding, in my ongoing fascination with Ötzi the Iceman, the recent mapping of his sixty-one tattoos has struck me with the significance of the tattoo as talisman/healing magic. His ink marked the spots, where he suffered various painful ailments and injuries. The simple lines - incisions pigmented with charcoal - were not drawn as art, but represent the work of prehistoric medicinal practice. The mention of correlation with acupuncture points is an excruciatingly intriguing entre' to the eventual discovery we'll make, that ancient tattoo practices do present modern scientific value.

DIY, repurpose, upcycle - it's the new "Reuse, Recycle, Reduce" - and the old, old reason a fifteenth-century panel survived the Reformation, Also the reason I love palimpsests.

... and back to the Reiders. One of the things about her community is that, if you click on the commenters' profiles, you find the most devastating array of great blogs and pages. And so I share two posts from J. J. Litke: on primate skulls, and traffic, sorta. PLEASE do yourself the favor of clicking both of these: she's a great read, and a better writer. Be it on your own head if you miss the gift shop link in there somewhere.

Finally today, a blog I've been meaning to share for the movie lovers, and love-to-hate-rs (ish), Dreams are What le Cinema is For. I ran into this when looking for an image to use on a recent post where I mentioned the literal grace of Grace Kelly and got a bit schmoopy about memories of my dad. (Or I may not have posted that one; sometimes posts do shrivel and waste away.) Anyway, I quickly became addicted to the archives, and bookmarked it, because: camp! movies! a little cattiness! SHEER FUN! Woo!

Monday

This morning, around 5:00 and after having been awake for a long time, tossing and sweating up the clean sheets I'd just washed *again* after being sick this weekend, I gave up and got up.

It turns out, when your fever drops and you end up with a temp a couple or three degrees low, the symptoms are pretty much exactly like fever. So I decided I'd best treat myself as if I had one - i.e., am contagious - and got out of bed, packed up Penelope, and took my commute extra early in the a.m.

We picked up my laptop. I ran into that one woman who apparently comes into the office at four a.m. to do who knows how many hours worth of walking, and we gave each other a little scare. Pen and I hit the road for home, and today I have given nobody any bugs.

We've gotten a good bit done. Renting some equipment for an event this week at work, updating my boss's travel calendar, a nice swath of housekeeping. For lunch, I had a nap. Not enough to make up for half a night's sleep, but renewing enough for a while.

My temp's still a degree and a half off, but I cannot take any more being sick; I have to go in. Perhaps a hazmat suit. Certainly fair warning to my colleagues.

Collection

Today's edition: All History Blog, all the time! It'll be a bit sketchy this time, as I'm still recovering from the crud, but wanted to share a couple things anyway.

In truly VINTAGE clothing news - the oldest known woven garment, a linen "dress" dating back 5,000 years. For any enthusiastic historical sew-er out there, you will find a link to patterns and instructions to recreate the dress!

The gruesome genesis of a literary classic - the execution of Martha Brown in 1856 Dorchester, and the sixteen-year-old author whose legacy it helped to inspire.

Sometimes, in archaeology, it's the little things that make the most fascinating study. And what is littler than a cockroach's footprint?

Not My Week

Last Sunday, I had my talented and delightful friends Leila Gaskin and Kristi Tuck Austin over for a mini writing retreat. It was wonderfully evocative rainy day, and stories were read, research and writing were done. I felt low grade dizzy all day, and had a headache, but the company and the work were much to be grateful for.

By Tuesday, it was clear to me I had a migraine. The dizziness actually overwhelmed the pain, and I stayed plastered in bed until about one o'clock. Penelope and Gossamer, being the astonishingly forgiving wee and timorous beasties that they are, never even nudged me for breakfast or walkies. They curled up around me, and let me sleep and sleep and sleep.

On Wednesday because The Voice of G-d (or was that "mom"?) Hath Said It Must Not Be that you ever, ever, ever take two days off of work in a row for illness, I went in to work. And realized that this time the pain was overwhelming the dizziness, and I was miserable. My head has a grave disliking of tornado warnings, and we had more pink and red on the weather forecasts than I have ever seen in my life, and I spent years in the Midwest, y'all.

Thursday, and blessedly, I enjoyed The Final Symptom of some migraines - that physical and emotional euphoria that follows the release from bone-crunching pain - and I was very, very happy indeed.

I had planned for a while to take Friday off, do some cleaning and some other things around the house, and then go out for the evening to a Bowie event I thought would be fun.

My mom, forgetting I had taken the day off, called me right around five - and told me that there's been a certain health crisis in our family.

Who needs Bowie, I needed my family, so I hit the Italian place for penne pasta with marinara, a large Greek salad with light feta, and went over to spend the evening with her.

At 3:30 this morning, all I could hope was that the projectile issues sapping my body of all nutritional intake since the Reagan era were "just" food poisoning. Because heaven help my mom and stepfather, if I've got the flu ... and probably brought it over with my wonderful company last night.

Sadly (... um), this morning it transpires that mom had no problems last night, so our supper was not a source of food poisoning.

Also sadly, and yet kinda hilariously too, I am so dehydrated at this point, I went to lick my lips when I came downstairs, and my tongue stuck.

Sigh.

This seems very much not to be my week.

And now to contemplate, do I go to the doc-in-a-box and get a flu test and possibly Tamiflu, or do I hope like Hell this is "only" the 24-hour death, and curl back up with the furbabies and whinge at a friend to drop some ginger ale off on my back stooop?

What would you do? I'm addled and honestly unsure.

Sunset and Shadow

Yesterday, I left work at that point in a February afternoon when the sun has just begun to go down, and the horizontal shadow creeping upward toward dusk was still below the tops of the trees. One long, golden line of late light, bright and rich and warm.

My commute takes me eastward, away from the sun itself, but hurtling toward its last light, and takes me across the highest hill in the region. Climbing that ascent, I came into the light still un-shadowed. There is a traffic signal at the top of this hill, and as we sat while it was red, the sun sunk enough that that line of shadow had risen up almost to the top of the trees atop this long, high hill. It grew indistinct and diffuse, ruddy and so soft the shadow of the earth was no longer clear.

And yet, plunging down the hill was not the descent into evening. Not quite yet.

The sky holds on to the sun's light even after its rays are no longer directly available. Humidity, pollution, the magic of physics. The lee of the hill was not the dark side of the day.

But ten minutes later, on the last straight line of asphalt, the final approach to my house, the light had been switched off the Earth, the homes, the trees. Only the lingering glow - and trees now all but emitting darkness, bringing night to a sky still in denial.

The moon appeared as if from nowhere.


Home, and parked, my yard is a place unmolested by the traffic going on behind me.

In the kitchen window, Gossamer peeps out, because he knows when I get home. And, at the back door, he snoots at me from the counter and Penelope greets me as well.

And I am home ...

... and it is dusk.

Collection

Big data, Black Twitter, and the linguistics of real speakers, not just academic grammar. A fascinating look at questions of legitimacy, linguistic stigmatization, and the beauty and art of language as it is really used. Once again, I am utterly absorbed at the ingenuity of human thinking, in the way we speak, write, communicate. Super extra bonus content: maps! Wonderful, informative maps!

I make one point about this National Geographic article before putting down the link: Egyptian use of cosmetics predates Ptolemaic GREEK ruler Cleopatra, who lived only a little over two thousand years ago, by millennia. Hanging everything Egyptian on the occupying ruling house of Greeks tires me out. (Good lord, can't we at least invoke the immortal beauty of Nefertiti?) BUT anyway - here we have a look at the antibacterial and immuno-building qualities of  ancient Egyptian eye makeup. Extra bonus feature: one more nail in the coffin of the old "EW LEAD MAKEUP - POISON! - HOW GROSS AND STUPID WERE PEOPLE IN THE PAST!?" trope.

In other fascinating ancient-chemical-knowledge news, The History Blog brings us a look at the possible ancient solution to a very modern problem - can First Nations clay help us to manage antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

This is not "new-news" as it were, but I'm struck by the thought of how often writers use so-called brainwashing, and how wholeheartedly it is accepted ... and yet, like the misconceptions we have about dirty, stupid history and so many other things that limit us both as humans and as authors, it's complete horsefeathers. On "The Brainwashed Defense" - from Patty Hearst to Moussaoui.

And finally, I have to admit an almost comically knee-jerk response to this piece. The House of Lords is moving to replace vellum with archival-quality paper for the recording of Acts of Parliament and other government documentation. Given that all my life I have heard the so-called "Dark Ages" referred to (by Brits as much as anybody else) as a period of time during which literacy was constrained to a few lonely monks scratching on animal skins ... and being a foolish American ... my first response was astonishment they were still USING vellum in the first place. My second reaction was mixed; a preservationist question arises, wondering how long other forms of documentation can be expected to last, and a traditionalist strain can see how this is a cultural loss of a kind. But the practical side of me goes back to the "Really? Still using animal skins?" surprise - and, at the end of the day, mine is not to judge. So I end with no firm opinion about this; there are too many ways right now for me to expend my opinion-forming energies. What do you think?

Finally, an interlude. Join Lilac Shoshani at table seven (and one or two other places) for a worthwhile few minutes. Just don't distract her from her writing, please ....

Quotery

If you take material and filter it through me like a sieve, it’s gonna vaguely have my shape. I can’t hide that ‘signature’ any more than I can create it. It’s something that occurs. It’s DNA.
--Robert Altman

Happy Birthday ...

... to Japan, Elizabeth of York, Sidney Sheldon, Eva Gabor, Tina Louise, Jennifer Aniston, and probably some other interesting folks ...

Forgivness is Loss

I'm going to do THAT Star Trek fan thing. I'm going to discuss an immensely serious issue, and couch it in the context of an episode of Deep Space Nine. It still may be worth reading anyway.

Doing this, I do not mean to trivialize human tragedy - and certainly not to praise Trek because/fangirl - but to point to one of the billion ways our culture - even pop culture - faces off with the nastiest elements of human nature ...

... and to recognize that sometimes, what we have to say with entertainment actually has something worthwhile to say about the history of human behavior.



Inevitable Trek Context (caveat/disclaimers for non-Trek-ites)

When DS9 came out, it was not universally adored. For one, it took place on a fixed space station instead of as space *ship*, which could go from place to place to place, and allowed for Alien of the Week eps, and may or may not have allowed character arcs to exist at all. For two, it took a dispiriting view of humanity-by-way-of-humans-and-aliens some found objectionable, in light of Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future mankind divested of money, illness (to a major degree), bigotry, and, frequently, many of its clothes. DS9 flew in the face of the enlightened evolution of TOS and TNG.

But that vision of human development had become at times insufferably smug, and shut down certain ways of telling stories that deal with the fundamental issues at the heart of Trek, and science fiction more generally.

DS9 debuted a story of a world fresh off fifty years' brutal occupation, and developed into the chronicle of a bitter war which actually affected its core ensemble (and many of its more peripheral characters) in genuinely terrible ways. It presented disharmonies - and even shone a light onto prejudices of previous Trek outings, taking on the presentation of the Ferengi, for instance - which had for years been seen as a rightly offensive caricature of anti-semitic stereotypes. DS9 dealt with religion in a way and with a depth and continuity that none of the previous series could, always in motion and never around any one culture long enough to really look at it sincerely.

DS9 was "dark."


***


It is with no disrespect nor trivialization that I turn to the news which prompted this post: that changes in German law initiated in 2011, after a retired Ohio auto worker was brought to trial for his role as a Nazi guard at the Sobibor concentration camp, have led to the opening of prosecution against other surviving persons who worked in the camps. Reinhold Hanning, at age ninety-four, is about to face trial for his own role as an SS guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau.


***


How Can This Have Anything to Do With Trek?

The connection is stark and direct, actually.

In "Duet", episode nineteen of season of Deep Space Nine, we are brought face to face with The Butcher of Gallitep, an occupying officer in charge of what essentially was a concentration camp run by occupying Cardassians on Bajor, something of a host planet to the space station, and home planet of core ensemble character, Major Kira, liaison officer to the Federation presence on the station.

An anonymous Cardassian traveler stopping at DS9 is detained almost by happenstance, because he is found to have a rare disease common only to those exposed to conditions at the camp at Gallitep. Clearly not a Bajoran victim of the place, we learn soon enough that this man turns out to have been none other than the Cardassian overseeing officer of the facility, The Butcher of Gallitep himself.

Kira, a resistance fighter who has risen from the ashes of her oppressed planet's release from occupation, is a passionate, partisan survivor. She instantly wants to punish The Butcher, and wins the privilege of taking on the investigation into this man, with an eye toward his prosecution.

It is Kira's own investigation that turns up the tragic, horrific truth: the man in custody is not The Butcher ... but was a file clerk at Gallitep, who has disguised himself as The Butcher. He is tormented with guilt because of the actions of his people, and his own banal, administrative role in the rape of Kira's world, that he has come to the station in order to bring about his own execution ... and perhaps, in the guise of The Butcher, to provide the Bajorans with a marquee defendant ...

The scenes the file clerk plays as The Butcher are genuinely harrowing TV - brutal, unrepentant, self-righteous. The scenes once his true identity are discovered are bruisingly sensitive, fraught, and intelligent. The show and the episode are as static and set-bound as the Trek of popular imagination, but this script is a stunner - made in a time where we had not yet applied cinematic production values, budgets, and expectations to serial science fiction - or any television at all - the show makes the most of its drama without these things.

Philosophically, "Duet" honors the questions it raises not by answering them, but by respecting them as perhaps ultimately unanswerable: no outcome can satisfy all witnesses. And any judicial proceeding is as much about its witnesses as it is about its plaintiffs or defendants, and rulings.


In the end, the episode is about loss - and yet, *what* is lost? For Kira, some prejudices. Some rigidity. And her convictions.

Is there virtue, in paring down a survivor's sustaining beliefs?

Kira has to deal, throughout the whole of this series, with the sickening giddiness that comes not after the world is torn from beneath her feet, but after the person that makes her is constantly and continually deconstructed, through the years following her redemption from Cardiassian overlordship. She has gained a certain freedom, but lost so much of the core of what has sustained her. She is forced, over and over, and no matter how much she grows, to lose still more - in order to grow still more. It is both the most sublime outcome for someone who would never submit to victimhood, and yet a continuing punishment to her, at the ghost hands of Cardassians long gone - and constantly reappearing, to reopen old wounds.

It is against this dynamic the firmness of her faith, of the religion of the Bajoran people (explicitly corrupt, and yet meaningful to its adherents) is represented.


***


It is beyond me utterly to grapple even with the questions raised in "Duet" - and beyond comprehension for me to contemplate "answers" to the question of what contemporary Nazi prosecutions mean for the world. I believe in consequences for atrocity and injustice. I also question whether humanity is the best provider of those, though the existence of such questioning CANNOT mean that we should throw up our hands and never punish, never seek justice.



One of my oldest friends in the world - so long a friend he is family - is a defense attorney, and a Jew.

He said to me once, "The system is not always good, but it is the best in the world, and I am proud to be part of it." He looked across the room, and said, "When it works, it is gratifying."
He said this while we were breaking bread together at the restaurant of a client he had saved from injustice. I will never forget it.

And now, for Hanning, for the survivors, I can do only this, in the face of Nazi prosecution so many years beyond the regime: pray that he is right - and that it works.

Let There Be Magnificence

Collection

A Few Random Thoughts has such great "today in history" moments and birthdays - today, presenting February 7 for the better part of 1000 years! (He did miss one author, Laura Ingalls Wilder was also born on this date.)

The Arrant Pedant has TWO new posts up ... one on the usage of "ic/ical" adjectives (do I actually write historic fiction ... ?) ... and one on a former habit of my own up with which I no longer put, which leads to such tortured phrases as "caller, what is your name and from where are you calling?" and (apparently!) "a love for which is worth killing." Eyagh!

Laura Wilkinson has a guest post at Tom Williams' blog this week, looking at costume and character, and the very great importance of shoes.

"I'm always saying" and other pitfalls in ANY kind of research - as reflected in the study of costume history. A really great post from Lauren at American Duchess, once again including wonderful photos that are also instructive.

Dense, or Encompassing?

The work in progress has begun to insist to me that I have to work on a riot in which the citizens of my main setting burn down the synagogues.


Growing up, most of my closest friends were Jewish. My oldest friend, TEO The Elfin One, is not merely Jewish, but a teacher - a rabbi - as is her husband. I have known *about* anti-semitism all my life. But I have never KNOWN it.

To face this aspect of historical fiction, to know it must be a part of my own work, is not exactly difficult for me, but it is of course distasteful.

I've blogged before about how much I dislike writing battle scenes.

But writing what is, essentially, one of the earliest pogroms in what isn't even "Christendom" at this period ...


Ugh.


And it's not merely the content that daunts me, it is the wider prospect of the scene, as a part of its world.

Mr. X and I were emailing yesterday, and he was (as he has always been) one of my favorite readers, all "ooh and ahh" that I wrote the atheism post in like 15 minutes (I had been thinking about it for a day - if not, in some form, for months or years beforehand), and discussing the WIP and generally being that guy and that brain who ruined me for all the other guys' brains, and he said that this scene was going to be dense stuff.

And I thought about that.

And I realized that, if it were dense, it might almost be easier. Something that is dense is, perhaps, also self-contained. It has a shape, and boundaries ...

And this scene is encompassing, instead.

I need to contextualize this scene, this moment, this city of Ravenna in the year 519. It needs to be clear to see, in its place within Theodoric the Great's rule, and alongside Italy itself in this period ... when an old king has taken it on as his kingdom - and has no heir. It needs to have a view to Constantinople, which was becoming the new Rome, and where the Nika Riots would follow soon enough. It needs to find its place and focus in the larger picture of what people will insist upon calling the "Fall" of the Roman empire - and its connection to the imperial structures of Rome and of Constantinople, and also the so-called "Barbarian" cultures flourishing just to the north and west of Ravenna.

I need, too, to see the finer grain - to set this moment in the lives of my characters, and the marshy port city they occupied, to understand the weather and the moment and "why here"/"why now" ... The divisions between the minority Ostrogoths and the diversity of this place - the very scent of the wind, and the heat of the day ...



It's scary stuff. And not least because it is a riot, a racist mob setting fire to houses of worship.

And then comes the question.

How do I set this in the picture of the world I live in, myself?

"Not In Front of My Students!"

It would mean a great deal to me if anyone who reads this blog would read this account of a terrifying moment at the Iowa caucuses this week. This piece is not about politics, it's not about the candidates. It is, purely and urgently, about fear. And fear has its place at this blog. And I want people to understand why that is.

Why it must be.

And also to see the other thread ... which is perhaps the most perfect testimony of what it means to be a teacher that I have ever read.

The affirmation. The shining, life-affirming reasons for gratitude.

Necessary Art

It has become necessary for me, sometimes, to go visit Angie Brooksby-Arcangioli's paintings. Sometimes, I just need to sit and regard her light.

And then the day can move along.

Breathe. Smile. Peace.

Yes.

Flash! AAAAA-aaaaaahhh!

This is not generally a forum for my actual fiction, but today I felt like doing a writing exercise. Assigning to myself 200 words, I took on this challenge:

(I do #16 all the time - Write a story that’s happened to someone else, but write it as if it happened to you - when Mr. X and I write to each other about days we'd like to spend together, we often do it from each other's perspective. It's a GREAT one. ... Come to think of it, really any fiction writer does this all the time. Duh.)

23. Write a story that contains at least three of these elements: body lice, gasoline, a Hostess product, a childhood hero, an outdated slang expression, a song title or your favorite flavor.

Please don't hesitate to use the comments to do your own exercise from the 30 suggested prompts! (Colin ...)

Two dollars at a time.

Buying gas for The Tank two dollars at a time wouldn't get you far, but it'd get you through a day - and borrowing the car from mom and dad was a day-at-a-time proposition.

She stood there, March wind ruffling her hair, sun hiding behind a small but thick cloud here and there, and not knowing where to go. Less than two dollars worth, that's all she knew.

Where would the most cute guys be, within two dollars ... ?

Sub shop. No, not the sub shop. She was tired of that guy, and there was never a new one to scam on. Mall. Hit or miss - there were always her friends, there was always Johnny - but that was good ole boys and hoods, and girls she never had a word to say to. But sometimes.

She peered across the wide valley from the gas station to just past the middle school, and squinted while the wind pushed her hair in her eyes.

There really weren't any options. She pulled into the echoing basement of the parking garage, pulled out the key smack in the middle of Ashes to Ashes, and went in.

Image: Wikipedia
1975 Plymouth Gran Fury Custom Suburban station wagon

If anyone thinks this should be a contest, let me know what might make a good incentive ... winner would be chosen by popular vote ...

"WIP"

This morning, in a discussion at Janet Reid's blog, Donna Everhart pointed to a post at Rachelle Gardner's blog, which got me poking around there, and I found an exercise I'd love to try with Kristi and Leila in a few weeks. We're planning a writing mini-retreat, a few hours of time just to parallel play, undistracted except for the helpful tips of Gossamer the Editor Cat and Penelope the Publishing Pup and perhaps some tea and coffee, then spending a little time sharing or working out a snag or whatever comes up while we're writing.

Some know, but I have not blogged about it much, that my WIP was actually conceived very early in the writing stages of The Ax and the Vase.

In no way a sequel (and thank Maud, given that Ax has been put on hiatus), the WIP is about a relation of Clovis I. It takes place in a different world, and centers on a wider cast, and a diverse one. But I found the inspiration early in the going with Ax ... and so the WIP has been around for many years.

For a long time, I might pop over from my "real" work to this WIP, an unformed plan/idea resolutely left on a backburner, but I refused all temptation to hop after it and let it become an actual Plot Bunny. I would plug in research that did not fit in with Ax, but not allow myself to *work* on it in earnest.

And then work began in earnest, this past spring.


In short: the WIP has been with me for a long, long time.


And it has never had a title.

It took years for me to realize The Ax and the Vase kind of had to have that title. When it came to me, I felt almost like a moron, because, DUH, that had to be it. I was open to being told it could not survive, but I was also really skeptical anything else would work so well.


I want to have that "duh" moment now, for the WIP.

Poor thing, it deserves a title. It has been my focus now for long enough, calling it "WIP" seems dismissive at this point.


Also, I am excited to get together with Kristi and Leila.

Tools

There are times it frustrates me when people say they are atheists because of what people have done in the name of religion. PEOPLE do dunderheaded things in the name of all sorts of things, and though religion does have extreme examples, there are also extreme idiots (Richard Dawkins) screaming passionately about their atheism. He's as dangerous as any other zealot; and that is the issue: zealotry in human hands is the problem. Not G-d.

To withdraw belief in G-d because of human behavior honestly bewilders me.

It's like me and not having kids.


I never had children because I never experienced the bone-deep desire - the *urge* (so named because of its *urgency*)  to have a child.

This seems to me the very best of reasons never to have them. There have been other thoughts on the matter that have been a part of my life, but at bottom it's the simple absence of need to procreate or adopt, to be a parent, that has been ultimately responsible.

So I can see, very easily, the absence of need for G-d ... and for faith.

But many of the atheists I know once HAD faith - and lost it, because of other people. They experienced disillusionment and shame in religion, because of the jerks who espouse it (whether their own or not) and decided against G-d, because of man.

I suppose this is overwhelmingly arrogant: but this bewilders me.


Anything hideous ever done in the name of religion came about by the hands, and the tongues, of human beings.

Religion is a tool. It can be a poor tool, misused, No doubt about it. So can science and history; my blog is filled with examples of the wrongheaded invocation of history, the way we think it's some sort of plotline leading ever-onward to betterment, and how that must mean humanity now is the best humanity history has ever seen, because: history equals evolution.

Which: no.

So I ABSOLUTELY concur, that there are a hell of a lot of people out there blunting their blades, hammering with a tool meant to cut through confusion, or mistaking the philosophy and questioning of faith for final, firm truth.

But the idea that we then throw out all the tools, instead of sharpening or learning how to use them (for those interested in what those tools have wrought, or could) ...

Isn't that the very last word in Luddite behavior? "It's of no use to me and it scares me, so HULK SMASH!" ... ?



Again: yes. The tools of religion have hurt many people. So have the tools that created the thing we call culture, or advancement. Innovation requires tools.

For me, it is an innovation of the highest order to grow spiritually.

I tried to do that without tools, without a congregation, without inspiration. I ended up making up a lot of religious tools for myself. Offerings, prayers, little personal rituals.

And it got me to a point where I felt I wasn't really that good an innovator, and I needed the help of something outside my own wee and paltry brain.

I reached for religion. My church.

There I found the literally-angelic voice that perhaps inspired me most, but I also found Miss B., with whom I sat at yesterday's services. She was the first who ever welcomed me in the congregation, and she is the very, joyous definition of Christian fellowship. Not because we sit around quoting bible verses at one another. But because she saw me alone as a guest, and made me a member, as fully and as lovingly as education and confirmation and that bishop who laid hands on my head.

Religion, for me - as filled with ritual and script as my church is - is far less about dogma, and so much about communion: the communion of souls. Of just nice PEOPLE. Of congregation. Coming together, and sharing the sunshine yesterday. That is a religious act as profound as the eating of an intincted wafer.

I may still not be the craftsman, with my tools, that (oh, say) Jesus, who was a carpenter, was. But I am part of a team now, a crew, a congregation. Of people I honestly do love, though I spend little time with them of late. And appreciate and respect.

I found the phrase, "Okay, we're past the angelic robes and the beard and the penis, and we're onto something BIGGER!" one day over lunch ...

Faith and hope and growing spiritually? Yes, go big.

Why try for faith, without exultation?



What else is faith for but to bring us together as human beings, and what else, at bottom, does ANY religion foster? Even those religions we condemn as perverted - geared toward exclusion as much as inclusion - geared toward WINNING, and punishment of sin - still require one heart and mind to link to another, and another.

We're only human. We don't always do that well. We don't do it well in business or in study, in reaching goals or explaining them. It's not religion's fault.

And human behavior is human behavior - and flawed, as often as it is beautiful - in the pursuit of whatever it is we do to connect ourselves to others.

An ass in a choir robe is just as much of an ass once the robe is doffed and hymns are suddenly to blame for all that is wrong in the world. The robe didn't sin, neither (perhaps) did the hymn. They were there before disillusionment, and they'll be there after.



If I am a poor painter, I don't blame the brush; not even the paint. It lies within me to learn, or not. Perhaps it lies within me to know I'm a better writer than I am an artist.

But it's not the tools' fault, if I don't sell paintings for stunning pricetags.

Dreams're Weird

Does this ever happen to you?

You dream so much, and so oddly - perhaps, or perhaps not waking UP with each fresh Hell as your brain presents them - that it ends up being such a bad night's sleep it feels like you didn't sleep at all?

Image: Wikipedia
By Gut Monk

Stupid brain, going around making up weird stories. Where'd it ever pick up a habit like THAT!?