Collection

The (Not) Just No Stories ... Casey Karp tells us about yet more ways for The Internet of Things not just to run, but to ruin, our lives. Not scary at all!

Art history, religious history - on the history of the fig leaf, all the way to Instagram. Spiff.

Reider reading! I am shamefully late to getting to it, so probably anyone here who frequents the comments at Janet Reid's blog has read this already, but Jen Donohue was published recently, and her short story is very good. Hop on over to Syntax and Salt, sink into it slowly, and enjoy.

Can we please dispense with the precious little phrase "open secret" now? In the past three weeks alone, we've encountered an open secret in Hollywood - oh, and in politics - now it's academia - and media-curated regions of the world or remoter reaches of the United States - and it's been discussed about Silicon Valley for many years, at this point. "Casting couch" is a phrase probably nearly as old as the phenomenon is, which may be about a century at this point (if you only count *film*). THIS IS OUR CULTURE. Not some isolated little "secret" - open or otherwise - affecting isolated little islands of people other than ourselves. This is the world. Women have never not-known this. So who thinks this is any sort of a secret? Oh yeah. All those men who're so surprised that rape and sexual extortion/blackmail/revenge is a thing. And it's not a secret, even from them. They've just enjoyed the privilege of obliviousness.

Happy Hallowe'en, Y'all!

Not too bad, for a six a.m. makeup job. Maybe could lose the glasses, but that was the pic I took.

BOO!

"Do you like my face? I just put it on!"

Take the Con 17

Two weeks ago, I was in Savannah for work. On Thursday, the 12th, I was home before midnight with nearly a thousand miles on my car ... and Saturday the 14th kicked off the annual James River Writers conference.

In the past, I've often done postmorten posts about how inspired I was and re-energized as a writer, after the conference. Well, or just gushed in real time about how amazing the events are. In the fifteen years of JRW's excellence, I've attended for fourteen of the annual conferences. (Thanks again, Mojourner!) I've watched friends chair the event itself, and met countless others. It's always inspiring.

But this year, I was so focused for so long on the meeting immediately preceding the Conference, I spared no time to get excited about it. (I was actually excited about the meeting - there was toy shopping.) For a while there, I also wasn't sure I'd be able to go to the Conference this year at all, and studiously tamped down any thinking about it.

Not only did I coordinate the meeting in Savannah, but I presented there. Speaking up in class, as it were, has never scared me - but speaking before the class was nerve-wracking. And once my nerves got bored, I finished off okay, and it was okay. I handed out little dart boards with my picture on them to people to whom it is generally my job to give bad news. I got to know a lot of people I work with constantly, but rarely or never have seen before. Feedback has been that the meeting was good. Travel was too (no flying!). I spent Friday in a dim drizzle with my mom, coming down off the big event, and NOT really thinking about or getting ready for the next one.

Coming into the Conference without expectations can be a good thing. I've long since put The Ax and the Vase to bed, and the WIP isn't even advanced enough to have announced to me what its TITLE is, so meeting with agents was off my list (and, in any case, I'm ever more persuaded by Janet Reid's objection to conference pitches - and, in any case, it's rarely the case participating agents even "do my genre" as it were).

The rub is, it's also been a long time since I spent time writing.

So I attended the "so you think you're an impostor - no you're not" session ... and, of course, came away feeling all validated but still knowing for sure I am an impostor.

And I spent $72 at the JRW Bookstore before 8:30 a.m. on day one.

And I talked to my new friend Sarah a lot, a writer who is eighteen years old and better organized (and more motivated) than I am, at damn near fifty.

And I spend time with my good writing friends, and Leila Gaskin said she would read some scenes for me and look to the knotty problem of whether I need all my characters ... and, if so (oh, I so need my characters!!!!), how to balance them ...

... and I finished the weekend more excited about the fact that the Festival of India had coincided with our event than about the Conference.



It was when I began drafting my email to Leila, and my very first writing partner, The Elfin One, and choosing scenes to share toward that question of characters and balance ...

... that it finally happened.

My ass was in the chair, and I sent off the scenes dutifully - and, writing to TEO in particular about writing ... I wrote.



"Also, I'm a Writer."

ANNOYING Flash Fic

The ghouls, the freaks, the impersonators ... they are everywhere!

Image: pxhere.com free images

Every day, we're assaulted with clickbait, dressed up as headlines. For those of us grown wary, they words call attention to their true calling as propaganda ... but apparently enough people are still beguiled by them that the things still exist, and proliferate ...

So, far from being the monstrosities *I* see, the must be really great words. Right?

How about some scary Hallowe'en flash fiction?

Here are the prompt words (and do you think Janet would mind if I borrowed her rules?):

• Insane
• Chilling
• Revealed
• Creature
• This one thing/this one trick

I'll post mine if you'll post yours!!

But YOU will win the wild acclaim of the masses. As for this prize, I recuse myself from eligibility. Not least out of the spine-tingling fear Colin Smith or John Davis Frain might post a story in the comments ... !!!



****



I am NOT afraid of spiders. Prettiest creature of the Hallowe'en season. Any season.

Pretty little liars.

They're just jealous. It’s the *witches’* holiday, and that’s me.

Remembering the seven-footer, an insanely huge web from the kitchen window to the stoop railing. Remember the filament I all but ate last night. The air was finally chilling, walking the dog, one tenacious string, stretched across the sidewalk. Never revealed, it just hit me in the lip.

I am not afraid of spiders. They’re afraid of me.

I do my own weaving. That filament was Arachne’s last insult.

This one trick …

Muaaaahahahahahaaaaaaa!!!!!!

Preying Animals

Again.

And again. And again. And again. And again.



The Weinstein (etc. etc. etc.) scandal in Hollywood might seem to beg comment from a blogger such as myself, but the simple fact is my main reaction to the whole thing was, for a good while, mere exhaustion. The fact that MEN are surprised and offended ... I don't know. Maybe it's nice. But there isn't a woman I know who's taken aback at the information unearthed so far. No, not even the scope.

Remember, kids: we just watched a proudly bragging sexual predator take the White House. Oh yeah, and the supposed fall of Bill Cosby, though that story seems to have been forgotten ("Thanks again, Trump's distracting Tweets!") You think we are shocked about a movie mogul?

Watching the astonishment of *men*, who rather loudly insist upon swearing they had NO IDEA about all this, might be almost be amusing for some, but - again - merely a bit tiring for me. Talk about bad acting: "gents", you are either criminally incompetent, intellectually compromised, or lying your asses off. (Same goes for women.)


So, why am I bringing it up at all?



The drumbeat right now is all about men in power taking advantage of women who cannot reasonably consent, given that consent requires autonomy, and so few have it in the situations encountered.

That is an important dynamic to consider, it's important to fight.

But I know this: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NOT METED OUT ONLY BY THE ECONOMICALLY POWERFUL.

For men power comes in other forms, and other magnitudes, than Trump or Weinstein or congressmen or kings.

Sexual harassment comes from the contractor at work, whose only power lies in the fact of his maleness and his speaking up after-hours in a deserted office. Sexual harassment comes from an awful lot of guys at work, in fact - just everyday guys in cube farms - the guy leaving anonymous notes which are TERRIFYING evidence of being covertly *watched* by unknown eyes, the guy cornering a woman in the break room. It comes on the street. It lives in every possible environment.

It could by ANY guy. That's what's got me mad: that in sanctioning this "Hollywood is the dangerous place" "Powerful men are the ones to watch out for" groundswell, we are safely defining boundaries around predators, pointing to the most unusual varieties as if they encompassed all the perniciousness women face every day. And thereby nullifying the fact that indeed it IS every day. Everywhere. Not just these rich monsters. NOT just desperate actresses.

It's every woman. And it is, potentially, every man we meet.



It is pissing me off that the sudden vogue for pearl-clutching focuses so narrowly, so significantly, on plutocrats alone.


Not all power comes in the form of famous men using women who think they need these men in order to advance in an industry - or politics. These situations are not limited to the casting couch, or to some town or business the majority of people aren't in.

And not all blame belongs to these wealthy ... "exceptional" ... men.

#NotAllMen? Sure. Certainly not anyone I'd even call a "man".

But more than just a few, kids. And not just the one percent. Not by a long damned shot.

Collection of GOULS

Tis the season, after all ... let's have some gruesome collections for October!

You can't buy a doll in rigor mortis.

Starting off, we have Frances Glessner Lee, a nice little old lady who created meticulous, scientific dioramic recreations of murder scenes - still used today by police departments, and now in conservation and on display for their many interests even beyond those of justice.

Hallowe'en vacation trip ideas? We got 'em - how does the Cornell library sound? Well, honestly, pretty good to me any time of year - libraries are churches, for readers and writers. But right now, they are putting on The World Bewitch'd, a display of witch trial writings, spooky drawings and manuscripts - interestingly, exploring the gendered portrayal of witches in (European/American, I suspect) history. Didn't we just do this? Yes. Yes, we did. And I, for one, don't mind one bit doing it again: “It’s a time of year when people are thinking about the subject …"

Yep.

Oh, the library isn't scary enough for you? How about a trip to Tokyo, where the headlining photo alone might make you yelp? Or, if you're feeling oldschool: Transylvania? The catacombs of Paris are a classic ghastly destination. London offers an ever-so-British tea celebration, featuring Night of the Living Tarts. (Which describes all to many American prefab costumes aimed mostly at women.) Keep scrolling for some surprisingly disturbing smiling bananas, or start your planning for a trip to Croatia ...

Okay, and the next story I am not going to link, because it has stuck with me, and its presence in my thoughts is the point of interest. I'd be curious what others think. The Anne Frank (or "refugee girl") costumes that came out this year, and were rapidly yanked. Objections point to the extreme insensitivity of co-opting the identity of a tragic victim of war for trick-or-treats, and I cannot say this is not a terribly ill-considered product ...

... but, the fact is, I keep coming back to "because little girls have to be princesses and witches." And I don't like the implications there. As poor a route as it may appear, at least the idea of an Anne Frank costume brings with it the possibility of discussing who she was and what she went through with a child - and what the elements of the costume MEAN. So many costumes *are* appropriations - and exoticizations/sexualizations of cultures to which a given child doesn't belong ... and the inevitability of that sexualization part - well, see my "joke" above regarding Night of the Living Tart, and don't kid yourself it waits for legal age.

A part of me is not sure I want to simply mute the subject of Anne Frank, because ... a part of me actually thinks this COULD be done without the heartless indifference shown by this offering. Minus mass-production. Definitely minus the cutesy-attitude pose of the poor child who modeled this monstrosity.

Is it trivialization to make of Anne a mass-produced costume? Yes. But was it trivilization when my brother went as Nathan Hale, and isn't the entire holiday predicated in many aspects on the trivialization of death - a defiant raspberry in the face of mortality? The core of Hallowe'en in its original costumes was to elude the specter of Death by aping someone already dead. Of course, that has "evolved" (eroded, changed, become subject to market concerns), but at the end of the day it's all about remembering those who *have* passed, and the line is sometimes difficult for some people to see or frankly even to think about. It's a gross-out holiday, it's a time for scares and ENJOYING morbidity, it's a festival.

It hasn't been so long since I found the idea of friends dressing up as dead-John Jr. and dead-Bissette-Kennedy pretty funny, even though they decided against it because it was "too soon." Nor since I dressed up as Sarah Palin and found out *I* was the one scared and grossed out all night, thanks to the utterly disgusting reactions of men who apparently felt there was no human in the suit, and it was okay to explain every last thing they'd like to do to the costume. Aieee.

We know (I hope) that I am not a costume. We may know it's "too soon" for, ahem, the Dead Kennedys, or 9/11 "joke" costumes, or disgusting would-be-but-not-actually commentaries on the volatile political climate of the day (are you bracing yourself for all the khakis, white shirts, and torches this year? or people dressed as toppled Confederate statues? because you need to). But we don't flinch at a ghost soldier from some bygone war, or the purely grotesque. Poe is literature, not cruelty ... and yet, the imagery in his stories is genuinely harrowing.

Oh my. That got long. And in a collection post, no less - one I started in hopes of lighthearted Hallowe'en fare. Oh, dear.


Hey, who still uses the apostrophe in Hallowe'en?

Ahem. And on we move ...


Maybe you need something to read. John Davis Frain always has splendid flash fiction on tap, and this Hallowe'en season is no exception. This is a guy well schooled in ways to die!

My online writing pal Colin Smith was recently published, and I failed to observe the occasion in a timely way, but I am so rarely timely it is to be hoped he'll consider "belated" (as we do in my family) only prologation of the celebration. It's a GREAT, creeping-atmospheric tale - not specific to Hallowe'en, but appropriate to it nonetheless.

Say the travel ideas I threw out above aren't on your menu - staying close to home this year? Well, then, how will you decorate? An AT-AT of your own (the caption on the headline photo here is worth the click all by itself)?

Or you could just find something that might be interesting and paint it black. Here is a little history of the color for inspiration. The click beyond this time? In fact is the article where I found this link - and well worth a look, for the history of the Little Black Dress. Above average research and depth for a fashion article.

BOO!!!!

Collection

Ooh - has *anyone* here been reading my blather long enough to remember mere exposure? Well, fair enough, to be honest, I'd forgotten the phrase myself, or at least failed to use it in a long time. Still, seeing it again in this look at remote work dynamics at The Atlantic brings to mind other ways mere exposure affects us. So often, "normalization" was a phrase we heard during the campaign (and since). What "normalization" is is mere exposure.

Also, what "fake news" is is propaganda. I'm all for allowing the evolution of language, but this is not evolution, it is distortion and misdirection. As well as stupid. It is one glossing-over too far, at a time when misdirection is literally dangerous, and terrifyingly successful.

Anyway, I know someone who's heavy into the Agile model (mmmm - scrummy!), so - neato. Now go make with the clicky above.

Awrighty then, in other news (or not) ...

In my entire life, I have never been excited about the choice of a presidential portraitist, but the upcoming work from Kehinde Wiley has me all but squeeing. The first time I ever heard of Mr. Wiley was on a museum legend at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, next to one of his portraits. I was GOBSMACKED, and fell in love with everything about the painting, not least simply its appearance. It is glorious, and beautiful, and what it has to say is poetry and joy. Cannot. Wait. to see this new work.

Interestingly, there was a "declined to comment" in regard to whether the woman artist painting Mrs. Obama will be paid equally to Mr. Wiley, to which I say "sigh" - but it is so predictable that there would be inequity that the unspoken answer is exactly no surprise. Double consciousness.

The Washington Post has one of the most uplifting things I have read in a long time. It's not a new article, in fact it dates back just a hair more than one year. But it's in-depth reporting on a redemptive tale that is splendidly worth reading. On the heir of Stormfront .. and how he renounced "white nationalism" - not just as an ism, but even as a phrase. Perhaps even better than that simple headline: the way this came about is wonderful to read.

Viking-Arabic textile design? I'm skeptical. But The Atlantic raises enters the dialogue of medievalism, racism, and today's socio-political climate - I am thinking of you, Jeff Sypeck!

Collection

Marine biology geekness: Oct Tale of Two Cities ... Octlantis and Octopolis. I am not making this up. Even Sponge Bob isn't making everything up. Huh! (Plural-wise, though, they missed opportunities to use the super-fun word, "octopodes" ... oh well.) The click beyond - biomimetic architecture. SO COOL, and finally that word escapes Star Trek babble. Yay!

You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt.
--RIP, Dirt Woman

And next, a tale of two dirties. It was a big deal around here - front page news - when Dirt Woman died. And there was a sort of bookend appropriateness to Hef, that dirty old man, dying right after. I won't link HH's obits; if you cared, you've read them - and I, frankly, do not. But Donnie? Yeah. RIP, with Dave Brockie, Donnie.

The Americans of, say, 1970 genuinely had more in common with each other than will the Americans of 2020. Their incomes banded more closely together, and so did their health outcomes. Almost all adults lived in married households; almost everyone watched one of three television evening news programs. These commonalities can be overstated, but they can also be overlooked. ... One more thing they had in common: a conviction that the future would be better than the past.

Sentence #2 above ... nobody has lost sight of the ravaging effects of wealth disparity, not only in the United States, but worldwide. As our lifestyles have diverged, the working class and poor have been left so far behind the famed one-percent, and the effect has been devastating. A worthwhile read (and possible TBR pile toppler) from The Atlantic - Politics must be affirmative. Opposition is a mood, not a program. (Personally, I'd put "obstructionism" in where opposition stands, but the point is well taken.) Two clicks beyond, for those really interested in layered views.

Pointing to the economic costs of bullying—in tandem with highlighting the psychological, physiological and academic ramifications—can be an effective way to garner high-level attention and spur positive change.

So what *does* bullying cost? Well, $276M in one single state alone - and that's just the K-12 educational budget. Add bullying in the work place, and the price of bullying becomes, at least for my wee and paltry brain, inconceivable. The cost in lives, of the contributions of those who are silenced, to the wellbeing of our community and culture ...

Katyaboggled

Great Zot in drag Heaven. Katya is Annie Lennox.

(Go to 1:00 below for the Lady Herself)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I really, REALLY need some purple eyeshadow and matching lipstick.

More Space Nerding

Played this for my mom yesterday, we had a little fun. I am grateful, fortunate, and so glad my parents raised me with constant interest in nature and science, as well as art and people.

And here we have almost all of that, wrapped up in one clip.

Also: any questions why I love Star Trek?

Collection

Look. I don't do the online crush thing, I really don't. But scrap the romance attached to "crush" and give me some leeway to crush away, because John Davis Frain just came up with the BEST TITLE EVER for a flash fiction piece, AND it all hinges on an Oxford comma. Glorious - go and enjoy this spiffy, quick read. And the click beyond? Special bonds with Mr. Schroedinger. Dead or alive. So. Many. Science jokes. Loving it!

(And, John? I swear I started this Collection post days before you stopped by and commented!)

We do not want to make public health recommendations based on five sponges from Germany

Who else loves to read the latest science or health/medicine headlines while indulging in many grains of salt? Have you ever joked about how eggs are healthy now, but used to be vicious little cholesterol time bombs? Or fat is good, but bad, but what'll it be next week? Welp, here's the latest - on "regularly cleaning" your kitchen sponge ... or not. Thanks go to NPR for actually looking at the science without taking too long a trip into the deep weeds.

Prayer where the gods moved the Earth. In another blow to the myth of The Dirty, Stupid Past, we find that ancient Greeks not only could identify tectonic zones, but may actually have sought this real estate as a sort of direct conduit to the worship. To caveat the point: this is another one of those may have done theories. I encourage anyone reading the link to do so critically (and not just because it's Newsweek), because correlation is not causality.

... and just a little more of the not-so-dirty, not-so-stupid past - a map drawn in the 1500s, which turns out to be accurate to modern satellite mapping. So, nearly half a millennium ago, we were not utter morons. Only our tools have changed. GO SCIENCE!

Still. It's an intriguing theory, and I am sometimes more interested in intriguing ideas than empirical proof, when it comes to history. Even those ideas I tend to dismiss, I can still enjoy thinking about. Even writing about. I mean: how irresistible, for a writer? To contemplate the characters, the place, the time - where earthquakes and the fear they engendered were manifestations of the divine? And this, fella babies, is why I say I am not an historian. It gives me the out to indulge creativity ...

Collection

(W)ealthy people manage their discomfort with inequality, which in turn makes that inequality impossible to talk honestly about — or to change.

Ooohh, this is interesting. When wealth is treated like dirty laundry - the elite distancing themselves from being elite. I am reminded of the little old lady guest star on Taxi, who expressed that she was "filthy comfortable." A well-written and considered piece on making class divides invisible. (Interesting too is the point that the women interviewed for this piece appear almost afraid of husbands finding out what they disclosed, even anonymously. "He would kill me.")

(T)he wholesale adoption of garbage disposers in all five boroughs could, in theory, significantly reduce waste, cut costs, and offer the city a highly efficient, alternative renewable energy source.

... and they weren't even LEGAL there until the nineties!

Am I the only dork who finds the environmental science of garbage disposals genuinely interesting? Probably not, as this is an article about it. The sheer volume of waste we produce - NYC's stats are startling indeed, not least in the financials - is stunning, and yet we really do not think about it much. Even as a single-person household, I feel like my volume of refuse is small, even in the recycling bin - but the proportion of it that is food IS terribly high. This owes to the fact that when I need to stop eating something, I do better to dispose of it than to save it for later, because later is all too often sooner than it should be. Oh the twisted psychology of American weight and trash ...

Speaking of weight, how about this piece of science? "A gallon of water weighs about 8.34 pounds. And by one estimate, Harvey dropped 33 trillion gallons of water--" ... and it turns out that upwards of three hundred trillion pounds of sudden weight gain can deform the crust of the Earth itself.

Let's not even ask where the bubble in the wallpaper might be. (Not in China, though the water-weight research there might be instructive for us, even though the context was the filling of a dam and not a massive storm.)

What can we learn from a refrigerator light bulb thirteen billion miles from Earth? Find out now, Voyager.

Women clad mostly in soft towels, softly filtered. Women smiling at salads. Stock photography: you've come a long way, baby. NYT has an interesting, inspiringly hopeful, look at this year's trend. The bits about babies and how images are used/by whom are not exactly progressive, but at least it's not all pearly-lighted, calm, blank naked shots anymore.

Taboo

It's dangerous ground.

Writers sometimes find ourselves in territory that is upsetting, criminal, perverse, perilous. We address not merely human behavior, but the least-traveled corners of our minds, many of them deep in shadow. Sometimes, the shadow is time itself: an historical author, writing about a period with scant or no primary resources to research. Sometimes, the shadow is more elusive, and all the darker: those places we don't want to look.

Sometimes, the shadows are simply what we cannot bring ourselves to understand, because what lies outside the light we have is too disturbing.

You can't get to civilization except through human sacrifice.

I come from a family of teachers - scientists and historians, both vocational and avocational. My brother is an anthropologist and archaeologist. I obviously have a strong affinity for the study of history, even as I avow strenuously that this makes me no expert. With me, it's the difference between learning and interpreting.

With me, it's the realm of feeling.

Writing is a striving to understand.

And so (and yes, being dried up and childless undoubtedly affects this), having recently had a conversation in which the quote above played a thematic part, I have of late been trying to understand human sacrifice. Child sacrifice.

That I have a character from (post-sacrificial era) Carthage plays in, but the immediate dynamics of her life are unrelated to this practice.

That no reading on the subject you can find with ease seems able to address it without the use of the word "bloodthirsty" - and why that frustrates me - is much more the crux.



We've lost much of the concept of "SACRIFICE", in modern America. The word is bandied about, and people even give of themselves; I don't mean to say the practice, the impulse, is dead.

But the sacred tenet of SACRIFICE - the actual blood, and giving-up and giving-over - this is something we all but revile.

Americans today, meat-eating or not, consider the idea of killing an animal and offering it to G-d antiquated beyond all propriety. It is offensive to such a degree we unthinkingly find it actually immoral - pagan - barbaric - every word of which I choose carefully, and y'all can see with an easy click what I think of "barbaric" in particular, and any cursory reader must be able to guess what I think of "pagan". The judgment is so deep even the words we've loaded up with pejorative meaning are only tools to load the concepts we apply them to.

It's all denial. The need to distance and to Other a thing, so that we may prove our credentials in fitting the current definition of morality, or rectitude, or just fitting in.

The very idea of understanding taboos has become outre' - to understand barbarity is to know it, and to know it is to be guilty of it. And we don't like to claim, to admit, culpability.



There's a screed in there on contemporary politics, but that is not today's text.



And so, we have avidly removed ourselves from the deeply human impulse to (blood) sacrifice.

It's cruel.

It's ignorant.

It's extraneous (and not merely in secularists' minds).

It's GROSS.



But the real study of human sacrifice - of child sacrifice - is not one of BLOODTHIRST: it is the revelation of what a society, what an individual, values most highly.

One of my recent readings of Carthaginian child sacrifice stated that parents gave up their children as lightly as if it were nothing. Even provided the queasy observation that child sacrifice worked for the city as population control, and actually conferred benefits on the society there over time.

The fact is, population control may have been some sort of benefit of child sacrifice.

But no society kills off its young without any greater justification than that ... even if it does factor into wider dynamics, to kill our fellow citizens, to kill our offspring is no light matter - no matter of logistics, especially in a city known for centuries for its wealth and culture. A parent might expose a child for many reasons, or sell into bondage, or abort, or kill with their own hands, in desperation and penury. But the development of ritual and sacrifice are not matters of immediate need, and centuries of religious practice are not explained by civic planning, nor by bloodthirst.

Religion is developed in OFFERING, not murder. Sacrifice is transactional, but with the Divine, not with mankind, not with our neighbors. We develop faith and religion along *with* our neighbors, but its practice is actually pointed elsewhere.



The simple idea of giving up what means the most to us is washed out at the time we live in now. And not the objects we think we love, and imbue with emotion, but things more ineffable, more genuinely powerful.

Things with life. Things with souls.

Sacrifice is the commitment to our god(s) to give up a part of our hearts, perhaps something that grew from the deepest loves we have known. In the case of a child, the very living fruit of consummation, which itself means so much to us, in all its good and ill and hardship.

The sacrifice is TREASURE.





The seed germinating in a shadow, in this writer, in the dark loam of my mind and my own heart - is a story of sacrifice.

Of what it means to consign love itself, and life itself, in worship.

Of - not the thirst for, but the *price*, the bone-deep value, the cost we set on giving to that we adore. Of the dust on the fingers, the stones on the ground, the orange, windy sky, and the young eyes ... of giving.

And how that is forgotten. And those fingers will be remembered only for barbarity. Bloodthirst.

Collection

Well, crap on a damn cracker, it's 1982 all over again. Ya know, even I thought this was a bit old fashioned. Shame to be wrong. But apparently, women still have to invent men to stand behind while they actually get things done.

I seriously CAN NOT.

Oh, but wait, there's more.

The majority of women came from outside the area, probably from Bohemia or Central Germany, while men usually remained in the region of their birth. This so-called patrilocal pattern combined with individual female mobility was not a temporary phenomenon, but persisted over a period of 800 years during the transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.

So, women on the move formed a major part of the fundamentals of European culture and history. Literally "go" women!

... and more ...

GEE. I wonder why sexual harassment is so common in SFF events. Any questions about it?

Okay. How about another look at gender stuff, but a much more interesting, curious, and historical one? On the gender crime of witchcraft - a good, not-too-long, and wittily written piece about the evolution of its association with women.

Voyager's Golden Record

Have you ever heard it?

Because talk about a click beyond. Please take this trip.

It is record of the gloriousness of our very planet, and the finest accomplishment of which humanity is capable. Not merely the sounds - all of which share some piece of Earth's magnificence - but the Voyagers, the record, the images. Sharing life.

Here, the official tracks, courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory archive (not created by JPL).





Also, we need to make t-shirts that say, "Out there, our concepts of velocity become provincial." (Meanwhile, every sound on the record is provincial! Though some might disagree about The Laughing Man.)

Here is MIT's unofficial copy; for those of you who know what HiFi means, it brings with it the enjoyable pops and cracks of the albums we played on those. Which has an Earthling charm of its own.

PBS's as-usual wonderful special on the 40-year-old Voyager twins.

Collection - the Deconstructed Edition

The Atlantic has a splendid essay on being a fashion historian and costume curator. "There’s something transgressive about touching other people’s clothes—especially dead people’s clothes." An arresting conclusion: "dress codes and sumptuary laws are free-speech issues" ... This is a wonderful read sociologically, historically, personally, or just as an exercise in curiosity about the how-it's-done of historical curation and study. (The click beyond - Balenciaga - a designer I find fascinating, deconstructed, without breaking a single stitch.)

The first draft is for the writer. The second draft is for the editor. The last draft is for the reader.

Another Atlantic essay, this time from Tom E. Ricks, deconstructs (most literally/literarily) the process of an author fundamentally revising a book. On getting out of the way of the story; you can almost hear how much better the revision is than the original, in the way he talks about the process. Bonus - all the surprises, after the first one, are good ones.

Respect and responsibility are the two most important words in this article about the limitless ways people destroy artifacts in their bids to make every moment about themselves. Here is the question I have yet to see answered in any of the articles about this heedless piece of dolt-ery: have they contacted the family who orchestrated this defacement, and will there be any financial responsibility for them? If I walk in a store, "if I break it, I bought it." What is the responsibility when we break our own cultural history? The crossword-puzzle example after the headline lack-of-details makes me especially cross. (Personal bonus: I accidentally typed mement within the link above. Might be the the right word, in the end.)

This is what I have

Right now, I am sitting on my little loveseat with Gossamer, as he sleeps. He's doing that cat thing, where he's got one paw up against my leg. Just touching me. I reach down and take one of his little back feet in my hand, and his body is utterly relaxed. There is trust with him so complete that having his foot grasped in his sleep doesn't even faze him.

Most people know, it's no small thing to get this level of trust with a puddy. And it's not just me that he trusts; this isn't just a bond between two creatures. This is a boy so secure in his safety in his world that he just doesn't worry about little things like a random touch when he is *asleep*. The most vulnerable possible moment. And his relaxation is that complete.

Penelope used to be the sort of pup who would wig out and bark if there was an unfamiliar car parked in the neighborhood when we took our walks. I mean, her back would go up, she was afraid of everything. And a bit of a protector, even then.

She is still wary of the unfamiliar, and will always be exciteable with new people. She is a dog. But the animal she is now, compared to the little baby bag of wiggles I adopted? She is magnificent, and I love her more all the time.

The things I am proud of in this life have always related to the people I love, and who are generous to love - and even respect - me in kind. It means the world to me that any animal I was ever blessed to live with felt safe like this. When Sweet Siddy La used to try to live in my armpit because she was afraid of storms ... this big, strong, brave girl - was turning to ME when she felt fear? I was the thing she trusted to keep her safe?

Holding a limp, warm cat's paw in your hand is so much more than a little gesture of affection on a Saturday afternoon.

Loving my pets. It's not just an "aww they're so cute" thing in my life. It is an honor. It is the deepest kind of pleasure.

It's also fun, pretty much every day of our lives. Little Poobahs.

Collection

The surprisingly interesting history of the Slinky. Enslinkyment for all!

It is a curious truth that, when I hear the words "General Lee", they are words to me, more than a name - well, or they are the name of a car. Not of the man himself. (Take a look at the proportions, here, of car versus portrait for an understanding.) History distorts in this way all the time, perhaps most often at the hands of those with the intention to distort it. Still. Critical thinking is still possible - even if unpopular. Indeed, it may be our redemption.

The Atlantic has a canny and very wide-ranging/in-depth look at the deterioration of rationalism. Being American now means we can believe anything we want. In the opening paragraphs, there is an unfortunate tendency to sneer upon religion, but if you stick with the read, the historical points here are intriguing beyond ... well, belief. Caveat: there are some problems here. The religious flogging, of course. The statement (by a white male Boomer) that "by the 80s, Civil Rights seemed like a done deal." (That whole paragraph had me cackling/dismayed, and he restates the supposed reality of racial and gender equality in his conclusions.) Some of his statistics seem unsupportable by their mere lack of measurability ("Fewer than half of all Americans inhabit fact-based reality"). He makes more than one beautifully irrational statement in defending rationality, is what I am saying. Still, the background and organization and arguments overall touch on a LOT of things I have thought of saying myself, and never put forth this way.

"A profound interruption of the world as we know it" ... and I, for one, can't wait to see it! Who else is an eclipse nerd? Make with the clicky for some very beautiful artwork, and neato solar eclipse facts, especially about the animal world.

the thing he loves

May I say ... something?


Oh it did annoy me when they called me Little Nell.

But when I told Chuckie he mustn’t—when he stopped, I found I missed it. Gruff old Chuck. And only I got to call him Chuckie. My duckie, my fellow. And just after I turnt twenty-one, he called me Missus, and I confided to him the secret, I had liked to be *his* Little Nell. He allowed then he would be my Chuckie.

Chuck had all the flattering words for me until we married, but the garrison must be obeyed, and once he'd dipped me and done me, he was off ... and I sighed relief.

My pain I could not feel.

I never let it be heard. But Charles. He frightened me. No idea the tiger I had gripped by its tail. And when his tail was limp, it was his fists grew hard. When he found he could not be hot, then he grew cold, and Regent's Park—a place *I* never saw—made itself my refuge.

He loved me little, but long enough to make me his claim to shame.

It was a lucky thing; perhaps still thinking me their Little one, mum and da opened up and let me come home. We called me Glendell.

But the claim. Twas a noose on me.

Would I have worn it without a sigh? Had I known?

Did we play only the roles playwritten for us, or was my life—was Chuckie's—such a dark disgrace? Perchance he found the honor in it, and maybe just as well. The Wilde might have meant that was redemption.

Where lies the collateral? To Chuckie's—to Charles'—propitiation?

What is the measure of his death to mine?

A ballad. And eleven inches. More than the tiger's tail.


***


He must have thought I might actually come. Summoned to Regent's Park, where I had not been permitted to darken the doorways an they called me Mrs. Woolridge, I sent instead the letter asking him to 

Beat my face and snap your fingers, thinking I will come for more? Not so long as there is a bolt-hole, and I will bolt under a labor of moles, if it is safe from your visitation.

Those men. They did not wish him married in the first place, and they encouraged his dissent against me in the second—she has been untrue, she is posting more than the mail, old boy—and in the third, my neck and a razor.