Category Archives: blather

May 16, 2016 · 7:49 pm

Bits and pieces as I dive into another busy spell

It all seems to be busy these days, doesn’t it? Between writing and online teaching and a bunch of other stuff, I’ve been buzzing around quite a bit lately. We’re just about equally splitting time between both places while hoping that soon we’ll be able to spend more time in Enterprise. That’s the plan. We’ll see what the reality brings. I should be done with the online work at the end of May. I’m quite pleased with it as I’ve learned a lot about managing online teaching and have developed some opinions about how best to manage it. If everything works out, I’ll be teaching online again next year. It is definitely different pushing high school seniors along–whole dimensions to consider that were not a factor at the middle school level. Still learning and thinking about it.

On the writing front, Beyond Honor is now out to beta readers. Looking at my schedule and what needs to be done, I’m thinking that it will be out in mid-July. Meanwhile, I’ve been rebuilding my spec short story collection. I kind of woke up a few weeks ago and realized that it’s been a couple of years since I’ve added spec stories to my portfolio–most of my new short fiction has either been Netwalk Sequence promos or solicited for small press anthologies. Meanwhile the same handful of stories on the brink of being trunked have been circulating for a while. So it’s time for more spec shorts while I tread through novella rewrites, plot the next novel, and deal with crazybusy times. I don’t want to start a new novel until I’m done with Fishtrap in mid-July, and that includes novella/novelette projects. Beyond Honor turned out to be about 20,000 words more than I anticipated it being, and I’m afraid that Klone’s Folly, Bearing Witness, Becoming Solo, Federation Cowboy, and all the other longer projects I have lying about will develop the same need for expansion.

And then there’s non-writing, non-teaching life.

An unseasonably warm spell has transitioned into more traditional weather for spring, with rain showers and clouds. It’s mud season in Wallowa County. The soil here tends to be rather fine, which is okay during the times of the year when it’s either quite cold or else dry. But during the wet season? Um, well, bring boots and be careful about getting bogged down. Today I went to ride Miss Mocha and decided that the arena was hopelessly muddy, especially since she was slipping a little at the walk. However. There are nice roads around for road riding, and I decided that perhaps this spring was time to get The Girl introduced to that concept. There’s one road system that can be ridden as a big loop around the ranch, most of which is gravel road. I’ve been working on getting Mocha down the road, but for various reasons really didn’t want to do it in winter. Now that it’s spring and there’s no snow or ice, working the road is much more doable.

There is a challenge, however. Mocha goes about half a mile from home and then wants to turn back. But the other day we made it as far as the turnoff to the first gravel road. That day she got rather unsettled by a big German Shepherd barking at her followed by mama cows who were Not Happy about the horse scaring their calves–never mind that the horse in question was also snorting her head off in worry. But I think she got wound up in the whole walking thing and didn’t notice them until she got startled.

Today, I decided that I wanted to go down the highway, hang a left and head up a gravel road to where it connects to the next road in the loop. I was prepared to hop off and walk if need be, because I’ve come to decide that if Mocha digs her toes in, rather than fight it out on blacktop or a road, it’s just smarter to hop off and walk. She will follow. Then I’d keep trying getting back up and riding for a while, then turn after she went forward for a ways.

The strategy worked. I did spend about half the distance on the gravel road getting on and off, and then figured out that perhaps she’d be more comfortable on the other side of the road. That worked for a while. Then, since we were going up a small hill, I backed her for a few steps when she balked. She got tired of that quickly, and soon enough was moving ahead, even if she did emulate a giraffe looking at things occasionally. When we got to the place I had planned to turn around, she accepted a peppermint, then started walking down the next road. I decided to go with it, so we went down that road a ways. Soon enough, I heard a truck behind us, just as I saw two horses galloping hard for a fence corner and what looked like a dog in the road ahead. I decided that was enough, and turned her around to face the UPS truck. She walked home quietly, getting worried a couple of times, but otherwise just marched along quietly, looking at everything.

I think we’ll do it again tomorrow.

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March 9, 2016 · 9:16 pm

Sometimes you forage; sometimes you don’t

Now that the domoic acid levels are down in razor clams on the Hammond beach, we’ve gotten back to hunting down razor clams when the tides are low. You’d think that after almost a year of no harvest, you’d be able to dig a limit of clams in under an hour, easy.

Um. Well. We’ve only dug the warm morning spring tides before now. These days we’re taking advantage of the late afternoon tides (morning tides happen in April), and that is entirely different. Especially in a blustery, stormy March. Oh, the clammies are there. We watch the pros digging in the surf and they’re doing well. But for our level and experience? We’re still learning.

Part of that is the mystery of clam shows. Clams appear to be particular about wind and rain, and don’t show as well unless you’re equipped to get out in the surf and forage there. During a tidal cycle, it’s usually possible to go without seeing anything until all of a sudden you can’t turn without seeing clam sign. Not this cycle, this blustery, wild, stormy March. Monday was the best day, where we got a limit between the three of us digging. But we had to watch the surf, the waves not retreating down the beach as far as they would normally. On the other hand, I foraged up some huge sand dollars and cockle shells to be used for various art projects. I’m thinking that perhaps a mobile or two might be just the thing to consider. Heck, if I can only find where I stashed the shell collection I’d have the makings of some fun art projects.

But it was annoying. I’d spot one, two, classic clam shows and get to digging. But I never saw more than three at one time, and it was rough at that.

Tuesday was cold and stormy but the waves cooperated, retreating properly down the beach. But finding clam sign was even more challenging at this point. The wind and rain were enough to drive us back into the rig with frozen hands, and that was in full rain gear.

Today, we looked outside the house windows at the storm raging outside and decided to check the weather report. When we saw the report of near-hurricane force winds, we decided that perhaps the afternoon was best spent on other pursuits. So the guys went off to pursue equipment for irrigating the huge truck garden we’re going to grow this summer as well as seeds. I finished a phone staff meeting for the short-term Day Jobbe, then set up my Payhip account and posted two books. Then I went to work on a short story for a theme anthology.

Productive day all around. Yeah, I didn’t necessarily get a huge word count. But I hammered through some issues with the short story and I think it is better for it. It’s a revision of an older story that didn’t sell, change of tense, change of some plot elements to fit a theme…yeah, it’s working better.

Onward.

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March 4, 2016 · 11:34 pm

Juggling, juggling…

It seems like a lot of what I’m doing lately is muttering about being hit with a bunch of stuff going on. Well, I guess it’s pretty true. Some of it is good stuff. I’ve got a couple of side gigs going with my old school district–one is performing diagnostic academic assessments to cover for a teacher who left midyear. That takes up a week out of the month, but I’m back in the groove and feeling good about it. The other side gig is teaching online PE and Health at an alternative school setting for three half days a week. I’m learning new methodologies and figuring out stuff. That’s fun.

But it takes energy away from writing. Sigh.

And then the son has had some health issues, and that has involved more time in PDX. I’m having problems being creative there, and some of it is just energy drain from figuring out how to manage the work, plus not being aggressive about carving out my writing space.

Then the horse is showing bruising on her toes. It doesn’t show from her movement, which is good, but it’s worrisome. We’re now limited to walk-trot work as a result.

Ah well. On the way back from Portland yesterday, we took a new road from Umatilla to Athena. I got to see some of the landscape of Beyond Honor and think about it a little bit, as well as have some soul-searching conversations with the husband about some things I’ve been turning over in my brain.

Part of the issue is that I just don’t have it in me to burn the candle at both ends for my art. I remember the days when I did that–getting up at 4:30 am to write before leaving the house at 6 to get to work by 7. I’d edit stuff at lunch, then come home and work some more at night. I kept that up for about four years, until the work started falling apart because of the economy. While I’m grateful for that era, because it taught me what I could and couldn’t do when faced with a deadline–I’m now reluctant to put myself through it for what minimal reward I got for those years of hard work. Yeah, I sold work. But nothing big happened. Lightning stubbornly avoided striking me, except for a couple of consolation prizes. I know folks who did the same thing and got lots of return for it. Awards, book sales, big contracts.

Me? Not much.

If it sounds like I’m in a down mood about the writing and the production, well, yeah, I am. I don’t see many breaks on the horizon, and when I try to promote, it just doesn’t seem to come out right.

March. Arrrgh. I’m sure things will look better in the morning.

But damn, it would be nice to get a breakthrough on the writing. The teaching side gigs are a new way to approach the work, but…it’s not really where my heart is. I could probably build up a consulting practice if I chose to put the work into it, but for what? Who really benefits? I’m satisfied with what I’m doing now, and yeah, if I could find about this level of work on a predictable basis, I’d go for it.

However…if the writing ever kicked up the equivalent reward, I’d drop the teaching side gigs in a heartbeat.

I’m just getting more and more cynical about it ever happening, absent a lot of investment of cash into workshops and other networking opportunities, and not even then. My track record for such things is depressively unproductive. For whatever reason I seem to be connection-blind.

I dunno. Just one of those nights when I’m questioning and frustrated. Oh well. It will pass. I know these moods.

Just wish…I don’t know.

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February 21, 2016 · 10:49 pm

Winter evening, Enterprise, 2/21/2016

10 pm. 34 degrees. Slightly tipsy from celebrating the completion of a graduate-level class I needed to take to renew my teaching license. Knocked off a reading unit and a test, two journal reviews and a reflection essay today, Test scores are in the 90s so I’ve aced this one, given that the complementary review of my first essay and journal review was–complementary. The original plan for today was to go riding with the barn owner, but things came up, so I decided to finish this class off and get it out of my way. Short-term teaching and testing gig ahead as well as working on Beyond Honor, all derailed by last week’s bug. Now I can face the writing with a clear conscience as my brain returns from whatever the heck it was that hit me. The class is all done now, and it’s a good transition back to braining for writing. Damn, don’t know why I ever dreamed of getting a doctorate. I can play this game well enough but–no, I’d much rather write fiction.

As part of the celebration I went out on the front porch to admire the moonglow on the Wallowas. While the forecast says partially cloudy, there’s not much cloud cover over the moon and the light is almost bright as day. A faint wisp of cloud hangs midslope below Ruby Peak, and I see other clouds hovering behind the peaks, but right now they’re not obscuring my view of those glorious, glorious mountains.

Down by Prairie Creek, the great horned owls are hooting. The barn owls over at the bed and breakfast’s barn break in occasionally, punctuated by brief coyote calls to the north of town. The bright neon blue and magenta of some kid’s hoverboard lights up First South Street while he talks to some other kid in a lifted diesel pickup. Then they both head their separate ways, the diesel chugging by my house before looping down and onto the highway. I hear it head up toward Joseph, loudest noise around.

But it fades, and once again I hear the measured hoo-HOO-hoo of the horned owls on the creek. They’re more consistent than the screeeck of the barn owls. A mallard duck sounds off somewhere along the creek. Then I hear a brief honking as something disturbs one of the Canada goose flocks, also north of town. Maybe Mister Coyote is finding an evening goose snack?

Quiet again. I huge myself while I sit on my stepstool, listening and looking into the night as the hoo-HOO-hoo sounds, regular as clockwork. For years the only way I could have this experience was to go camping.

Now I just have to step out on my front porch.

Were all the sacrifices and hard work to get here worth it?

Hell, yes.

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February 18, 2016 · 6:48 pm

And…roadblocks, but in a good way

So it looks like Beyond Honor will need to be pushed back to March before it comes out. This is really a good thing/bad thing issue.

Bad Thing:

I was tired out after the week of Day Jobbe work, and that led to me developing a bug which slowed me down as it came on during Radcon. I really didn’t think I was sick until I was back home on Sunday, and even then I wondered if it wasn’t just allergies. Well, the next few days kinda told the story. I was flat on my back with a nasty chest/sinus cold but it’s fading. However, today I was still brain-fried and not able to get work done. I suspect the bug came from exposure to kids because I’ve not been sick for two years, and then bam! First exposure in a week of working in school settings, and it nails me. Not surprising, and I’m really glad I got the flu shot last fall as a result, because I think things could have been much worse. This also means that I’ve fallen behind in my online coursework, which needs to be done so I can renew my license, so…not a lot of action happening very quickly on writing as a result, especially since I need to do my final tax work for the tax preparer (AKA, dear hubby).

Good Thing:

A second short-term gig MAY be happening. If it does happen, that doubles the income from the first gig. Good news and this may allow me to finance covers and some other necessary self-promotion things. We shall see.

Meanwhile, being sick in the Enterprise house has its benefits. For one, for the first time in years I have a bedroom window that I can look out of. I retreated to the bed, opened the curtains, and watched the sky when I wasn’t reading or napping. It’s not the greatest view in the world, but given the choice between a mountain view in the living room and a mountain view in the bedroom? I’ll take the living room view any day. Watching the clouds also helped me gain a perspective on the cloud movement locally, which is something I’m still figuring out.

Meanwhile, Radcon was much fun and I came back with good ideas for short stories. I’m still tossing novel thoughts around, especially given what has happened given the difference in sales between Netwalk’s Children and Pledges of Honor. Pledges seems to have a consistent amount of sales while poor Children isn’t doing much. Now Frog Jones did give me a good keyword for the Netwalk Sequence–cyberpunk regency–so we’ll see how that works. Children also just plain needs a new cover. I plan to do something about it but it’s not a major priority at the moment.

But three days of being knocked off my feet sick plus a fourth of wandering around recovering doesn’t help anything. I have a lot of stuff to catch up on, plus…the horse needs work.

Seriously. Mocha is going through the winter with flying colors. She is fat–healthy fat, not obese. No ribs visible, even after a ride with the hair slicked down. She looks good. She only gets minimal grain when she’s caught up and ridden, and she’s very energetic. Today, I rode her back and forth along one side of the 40 acre pasture (roughly square) at a long trot for 3 1/2 lengths, in a wet, soggy pasture with no snow. She snuck a few strides of canter here and there into the trot, and was very eager to go. She is a relaxed and happy horse–but wants to run. I need to get my act together and haul her to an indoor so we can do some canter work once a week, because she’s mentally ready for it and she wants to go. Plus I am not entirely certain she is 100% sound. When I stretch her right foreleg, I hear snaps, crackles, and pops. She goes well enough on an uneven footing, but if I asked for more? I don’t know. At the least, she’s trail sound if not show sound. Mentally, she’s much happier than she’s been for several years. A winter spent doing mostly walk work in snow has given her a good foundation. She’s even more sure-footed than she was before, after a winter spent at pasture in snow. I watched her lope across the field to rejoin her best friend and she’d probably be fine loping under saddle in the pasture, but I’m not thoroughly confident about it yet.

So…onward. We’ll see how things shake out.

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April 22, 2015 · 11:24 pm

It’s been a crazy April

Um. Yeah. So let’s see. Hubby retired. I am madly scribbling on the rough draft of Netwalk’s Children, sandwiched in between snarking about Sad/Rabid Puppies, dealing with moving shit, packing, packing, packing, and oh, did I mention packing? And other stuff.

We hauled a load of furniture to Enterprise with the horse trailer. Outside of one scary moment when someone cut in front of me in Portland with a heavy trailer behind (and oh yeah, having to adjust things out of the driveway because we’d overloaded), it was uneventful. Slow, long, but uneventful. I had one chivalrous fella ask me if things were all right when we stopped to check fluids and such at Hermiston rest area before heading over Cabbage Hill–nope, just SOP stuff for newbie trailer drivers used to nursing along older vehicles. But the truck pulled a heavy-laden trailer over the Blues just fine (I was considering the irony of retracing ancestral steps except that’s right, the ancestors came in on the Applegate Trail and didn’t go anywhere near the Blues. Fools.).

Then back to PDX, coping with a sole bruise on Mocha’s problematic left fore, and packing, packing, packing, and did I mention packing? We have a good chunk of the house packed up and the son is getting antsy about the rest of it. Eh. I’m at the stage where I’ll abandon stuff rather than haul it. The joy of being a retired teacher is that you replicate this stage of packing every year at the end of the school year, so I’m kind of jaded at this point about this stage of packing. It is The Stage That Goes On Forever. And Ever. And Ever. I can remember years when I succumbed to the frantic urge to Throw Shit In Boxes, and the regrets three months later. Nope. Not going there, at least with the boxes I pack. Won’t say anything about the hubby..;-)

After killing ourselves with packing, we headed down to our friend who lives near Astoria, to spend four days chasing razor clams at low tide. We had new clam guns and boy howdy, were we ever gonna use ’em. So. After the drive down, we got a routine going. Prep the night before, hubby and I fixed breakfast and coffee, friend drove to the beach, we got our limit of clams, stop by Freddie’s for a little shopping, back home to clean clams (guys) and write like mad on the book (me). Over the course of four days of digging we came close to getting ten pounds of clam meat, the guys decided to keep lots of data on the harvest so that’s why I’ve got the numbers. I collected a lot of sand dollars and am thinking about ways to use undrilled freshwater pearls, broken stone beads, and other stuff for crafty sorts of things. Done right, well….

The way this clam stuff is going, I may have more material for a steampunk/rococoa/steamfunk/deargodsomethingweirdwestevenifIdon’thavealabel from the Astoria exposure. It’s very early in the creation but I recognize that something is getting tweaked on the creative end.

Meanwhile, I’m cranking away on Netwalk’s Children. Dear God, I was right to dread writing this book. It’s hopelessly complex, but yet very fun to put the rough bones together. I just don’t know if it will be together by Worldcon…which…sigh.

Worldcon.

I can haz a Worldcon job. I do have a Worldcon job. I am the Sergeant-At Arms for the World Science Fiction Business Meeting at Sasquan. Starting next week, I’m gonna be looking for friendly warm bodies to help me make sure that the actual mechanics of running the Worldcon Business Meeting (Kevin Standlee, please forgive me, I’m learning all the formal terms) flow smoothly.  It will require an ability to show up at a morning meeting. I’d like to have enough people to rotate through several days of meetings so that no one person gets tied down to showing up every day unless they want to.

My priorities:

1.) Protect the integrity of the voting floor while

2.) Doing my best to facilitate the process while

3.) respecting the individuals involved.

This means dropping agendas. This means respecting process, and respecting people that you don’t agree with. This means keeping in mind that we all love speculative fiction but that we come from different perspectives, and short of overtly, nasty, godawful ugly shit, it’s–well, it’s politics. It’s making sausage. It’s compromise, and it sucks and I know a number of my friends on Facebook and all will sneer at me for being this way. But goddamn it, I’ve been the single issue politico; I’ve done the purity dance, and while that side is needed…I’m not the grrrl for the mad dog run any more. That’s for a young person to do. My job to find the middle path, to forge the agreements, to contribute to and support the process. That’s what you do as an elder, and that’s the path I’m approaching.

So.

I will need people to run mics, check credentials, and possibly help with crowd management. Patience, tolerance, and a balanced perspective with a sense of humor will be paramount. I won’t ask people to do something I wouldn’t do myself. If you have experience with the Oregon Country Fair or music festivals…then yeah, drop me a line here.  A Pratchett perspective is welcomed.

Netwalk’s Children, alas, is at the stage where I’m just throwing things at the page. I’m at the 3/4ths point, and almost at the final cataclysmic blowup. Three POVs are almost too many for this book; I may drop a POV for fifty pages and with the pacing of this book…everything is happening in a very short period of time. Lots and lots of stuff unfolding. I’m not satisfied with the structure, which means I may go back and rip things to pieces. Except I don’t have the time and luxury to do that because I’m moving stuff. Except I need to do it. ARRRGH. Maybe I’ll have a better perspective when I do the scene tracker, except that’s going to be

And then I keep thinking about Astoria, and the maybe steampunk book. Way back when I was writing the River story for Alma, I had something Columbia River-themed in mind. I just haven’t figured it out yet. I suspect the South Willamette Valley/Southern Oregon story (Bearing Witness) will come first, and then I’ll be able to write about the Columbia. Years ago, I wrote some lovely stuff when interning for a few months with Nalo Hopkinson. I can’t use that world because, well, stupid contract shit. But pieces of the writing still haunt me, especially the singing of the sails and the trip upriver.

I can’t write ocean stuff because, well, body’s pretty much issued the ultimatum that I’m a landlubber. But there’s a pretty strong and intriguing theme brewing there. Just not sure where it’s leading me yet.

And I find it ironic that maybe I finally find the freedom to write about the Willamette Valley after committing once again to the Wallowas. Though the Columbia could well insert itself into the mix first. We shall see. Several worlds out there stirring and roiling as I wind up the Netwalk Sequence.

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January 26, 2015 · 9:08 pm

The days are just packed…

Things have been rather hectic of late, one could say. While the trip to Eugene weekend before last was fun, and I got to enjoy a night of the String Cheese Incident, something kicked off both my asthma and my irritable bowel syndrome. I’m blaming a known allergen that snuck in under the radar of my usually good scans, along with air inversions and cleaners in the hotel. Hubby commented on noticing that his lungs felt irritated, too.  Still, we had a good family outing as the son joined us.

IMG_1302

Anyway. Got back home on Tuesday, and been scrambling ever since then.

So various bits and pieces of information. I’m now up to three things coming out this year from publishers who aren’t me. Woohoo. Hybrid publishing rocks. So what are they?

First, my novella Seeking Shelter at the End of the World is out from eTreasures Publishing. It’s supposed to appear in Amazon sooner or later, but hasn’t yet.

Rianna, one of the genetically engineered weather monitoring modelers known as Canaries, has been cast out by the Canaries and is hunted by those who once protected her and who have murdered her boyfriend. In a world threatened by toxic Clouds, will Rianna be able to find love and safety? 

Next, my story “Consistency” will be out in First Contact Cafe, a shared world anthology edited by Phyllis Irene Radford, on February 1st. Link is to Amazon preorders.

There are rules for first contact with aliens. And a place to meet aliens where the rules are enforced. Simple things like avoiding smelly bodily emissions, even if your race considers them a compliment, and complicated things like not asking another race if they are edible.
Feel free to read up on the rules of the First Contact Cafe, then pull up a bar stool, or a pool of sludge, have a drink of beer or get high on methane, and plan your next trade deal, a compelling con, or find a mate compatible to your DNA. But whatever you do, don’t piss off the bartender. Your prosperity, or your demise belongs in her hands. She owns the First Contact Café, and your soul.

And finally (for now), my story “mist-in-the-woods” will be coming out in Tales from an Alien Campfire, an anthology from the Campcon Writers and edited by Phyllis Irene Radford, in March. No links there yet.

There’s at least one other story in the works, and another book. So my publishing 2015 is already off to a good start.

On the self-publishing front, I just finished putting this book together:

cover

It’s more of a novelette than a novella, and I haven’t written the blurb yet, which is why I haven’t posted it. Brain tired tonight. Anyway, it’s a Bess Fielding story, kind of a warmup to Netwalk’s Children. Which I am starting. Real. Soon. Now. After I write “Valentine Disruptions,” which is going to be the last Diana and Will story, having them chasing the Disruption Machine around on what was supposed to be Parents’ Night Out over Valentine’s.

I’ve got another story on deck for February, or maybe I’ll make it a March pub.

I am pretty happy with this little novella from a production point of view. I think I’m getting the hang of prepping a MS in Word through final edits, then moving it over to Scrivener for the final pieces. Gimp was reasonably kind to me today, only throwing one monkey wrench into the layout, and while I’m not completely happy with the cover the fact that I didn’t have to completely wrestle it into submission is a good thing. The back matter really should have a cut from “Valentine Disruptions” in it but that’s still pretty rough. I’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow.

Anyway, after the making of ebook above, I went to the doctor for a regular checkup, picked up Mocha’s portable shed for Wallowa County life (i.e., heavy turnout blanket with detachable neck) from the mailbox, then came home and pinned the monster front window curtains. This set–for the two big front windows–is slightly bigger than the two big side windows. But I got the pinning done. I’ll sew them tomorrow, then prepare to attack the big side window curtains.

So yeah. Quiet from me right now is a good thing because it means I’m doing a lot of stuff. I haven’t talked about hauling a ton of sand over to the shared garden on the Coast (Saturday), or Mocha’s progress (good but she’s stiff on that right side. Time for another appointment).

The days are just packed right now. And that’s without starting to do a lot of actual packing of things. Yet.

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December 5, 2014 · 11:29 pm

December at Farpoint

Winding down after another day at Renovation/Remodeling World, Enterprise Version. Hey, we had mountains this morning, and then the fog moved in. But it was a high fog, and temps warmed above freezing, so with ski base layers and other stuff I could move around freely. We are within striking distance of getting the basement free of dust and stuff (old coal dust….we still have the old Fairbanks-Morse coal stoker in the old coal bin, and pulled out about ten pounds of coal. But still. Coal dust. Must go.).

Tried to write this morning but with the urgency of various errands to run around the County, including a 20 mile drive to Wallowa to pick up insulation, I got maybe about 300 words in. Doesn’t have the flow of the words I lost the other day, but oh well. Words got put down. Then it was drive down to Wallowa in the Dakota to pick up what I thought would be insulation rolls…but turned out to be batts. 30 packages of batts. 4 at a time in the Dakota. Luckily, I was able to figure out a way to keep from having to drive so far so many times and we got all 30 packages to the house. Then, after further Adventures in Basement Cleaning, we met with the contractor for Phase II (floors, porch and more windows). After that, between the two of us, we hoisted those 30 packages to the attic, for further work. Not me doing that, fortunately…just the hubby. But we got an oil delivery done, got the insulation on site, and are now down to mopping the basement. Getting there.

Meanwhile, I keep searching online for more information about that Fairbanks-Morse coal stoker and getting nowhere. It’s definitely a 1920s-1940s thing. Burgundy and cream, and when the tongue of the stoker was buried under junk, we thought it was possibly a Coca Cola cooler. Nope. It would be nice to find out if it’s worth anything, but unless there’s major $$$$$ involved, I’m not pulling it out of that corner now.

Since we don’t have TV service here, we went out to watch the Ducks game (seriously, this is not a place where rabbit ears or anything short of a subscription will get you even basic TV). Good grief, the team I grew up with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is now winning and is #2 in the country. Huh.

And now the publisher drama has escalated. Apparently they are “redefining their image” to be family friendly. Not sure what that means yet. Hoping that means they will be willing to release the fantasy novel that I absolutely don’t think will a.) meet their criteria and b.) is not something I want to revise to meet that criteria. Drama continues. Of course it all comes to a head when I’m out of town and have iffy Internet. Isn’t that the way it works? I can hardly wait to get reliable Internet access here. Right now I’m limited to cell phone connectivity, and that’s iffy. Tonight is an exception because I have access to regular Internet.

Thinking thinky thoughts about where I need to go as an independent writer. Somehow, I have to get past my usual trend of catching the wave just as it’s broken and not earning a good ride because of bad timing. Somehow, I’ve gotta figure out a way to balance family and myself so that I can catch that break at just the right time.

My gut tells me this next year may be crucial. But dear God, what obstacles lie in my way? So freaking tired of freaking obstacles, while watching others seem to glide on through with no problems. When will it be my turn?

Ah well. A brief moment of angst. Sooner or later it will happen…or not, as the case may be. It didn’t happen with horses, much as I wanted it, because I realized what I needed to do far too many years after I had the physical capabilities to do it. The recession and those fucking education reformers exploded my hopes and dreams for making a difference in special education work (my perception is that we’re going to have to fight to regain where we were in the late 90s, pre-No Child Left Behind). Damnit, one of these days I’ve gotta find something that works.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m doomed to the same curse as my ancestors….coming to the end of my days with nothing more than a small ripple of effect on the world, my stories barely heard, my voice effectively silenced, despite years of raging and fighting and arguing against being silenced. Thirty years ago I was being silenced because I was young and cute and blond. Now…it’s because I’m old and female.

Damn it.

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September 19, 2014 · 8:37 pm

Reflections on men and feminism (long and rambly)

The short version of this particular set of musings is: it’s complicated. My feminism is inflected and informed by a 60’s childhood raised in contradictory but powerful influences. I’m the product of at least two (and most likely more) generations of strong and opinionated frontier farm women (Grandma was a chicken farmer; Mom could grow one heckva garden, can, and raise a good flock of layers and fryers). I also got exposed to a particularly toxic form of fundamentalist Christian repression of women in my late teens through school Bible groups and the Christian college I attended–Basic Youth Conflicts, one of Bill Gothard’s groups (go here for the Wikipedia TL:DR version). However, I never quite fell within the lure of Basic Youth, especially after I went off to college and discovered Ms. Magazine. Various adventures with conservative religious boyfriends which usually ended up with me being handed things to mend also had an influence, plus growing up in Springtucky and getting hassled by men for being blond and big-busted.

My family followed rather traditional roles that I viewed with a jaundiced eye as I got older. It didn’t help that during my high school and early undergraduate career, any boyfriends I had soon got chased away when we decided it would be romantic to take classes together. Um. Yeah. The first time I got a better grade than boyfriend did, it was bye-bye. I had three boyfriends in my college years who took me seriously as an intellectual; I married one of them nearly thirty-three years ago.

But there was more to the man I married than just taking me seriously as a thinker. One of the light entertainments of politically oriented students at the University of Oregon during my era was engaging with the different right-wing preachers who ranted at U of O students as part of their ministry. Of course, what they didn’t know is that about half the students arguing were liberals from the neighboring Christian college who were honing their theological arguments…but I digress. The man I married took extreme exception to one of these preachers personally threatening me by getting into that preacher’s face. He also did things like cook for me when I was working as an organizer on the previous boyfriend’s campaign. He wasn’t and isn’t perfect, but he “got it” (in the terms of a recent internet discussion about men and feminism) at an early age, in part because, like me, he was the son of a working mother who carried quite a bit of weight in the family economy. The personal was political for him at a very early age. He had a personal stake in understanding feminism because he saw it on a daily basis.  Was and is his feminist awareness perfect? Nope. Neither is mine, and I don’t think anyone can make that claim about themselves.

Way back when my son was little, we attended an indoor park for toddlers. It was all female, until a single at-home father started attending with his daughter. Many of the women were feminist. Did all of them embrace his attendance? Um. No. But enough of us did that we banded together over the others’ attempts to exclude the father and got ourselves elected to the governing board. I remember being heartily annoyed by complaints about insensitive spouses, but then the rejecting shoulder to a father walking the talk.

As part of the upbringing my husband received, he’s a nurturing male who has no qualms about doing housework. Our housework divisions in past years have fallen either into skill areas (yours truly doesn’t have chainsaw skills and arthritic hands mean if I do, it will be with a light saw; I still end up doing the sewing) or allergy areas (water used to irritate my eczema and dust irritates his sinuses). He likes cooking, while I like baking and canning. Our son was raised to be nurturing and with the model that the men do the housework. He likes cooking, and when he’s had a partner, part of what he does is cook.

That’s one reason why I get grouchy with those who complain about men who apparently don’t Get It about feminism until injustice touches their wives, their daughters, their sisters. If you look back far enough, every man who Gets It had that little spark of feminist awareness fanned by some sort of personal stake, whether it was watching his mother struggle or his sisters struggle. Somehow, somewhere, personal connection fueled awareness. That’s how people learn and develop politically. That’s why consciousness raising is such a crucial task in developing and maintaining a movement, and sitting back to think that it’s all done is folly. That’s why, no matter what the issue is, dear God, we have to have basic Feminism/Racism/Ageism/Ableism/etc 101, because there will always be someone new who Doesn’t Get It, until the personal becomes political and awareness flares into being for that individual. It would be nice if people were born with their consciousness raised, alleluia, alleluia, but by golly, unless we all suddenly get raptured into some sort of progressive heaven, it ain’t happening (Let’s listen, for example, to how men talk about what they’ve lost by never being able to express their nurturing sides due to traditional male roles. We have to be honest and listen to that oppression as well).

Until we reach the understanding that we are all people together, and that we should respect each other, we’re not going to get anywhere. Slamming folks for not immediately developing advanced awareness is foolish. Awareness is a learning process. We don’t expect kids to enter school reading at a twelfth grade level (at least not yet), nor do we expect to be immediately proficient in a new language. The same is true for all forms of awareness. So yes, there will always be a need for Basic Consciousness Raising, and excluding or condemning people because they are insufficiently advanced is just another form of exclusionary arrogance. It’s acceptable to be annoyed about it sometimes, as long as you take a deep breath and acknowledge that learning is hard for both student and teacher.

And with that, I’m not only tired and have probably bored everyone, but I wanna go play with my new sewing machine. Curtain-making awaits. I’m gonna go be creative in a new way.

Have fun, y’all, and remember to pay it forward. That means being patient when it’s time to trot out the 101 learning. Everyone had to start there sometime.

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September 2, 2014 · 8:43 am

A ranty morning

What is it about today? Already I’ve gone off on someone about Patrick McLaw (the Maryland African-American teacher detained allegedly because of the themes in his self-published sf books), and now I’m all ranty from a pompous interview in the Guardian with Ian McEwan. Since I’ve exhausted myself with McLaw (let’s just say I’m pissed, pissed, pissed), I’ll just rant a little bit about the McEwan.

Keep in mind that he’s a mainstream writer considered to be writing about family and drama. I think it was the subplot of his newest work that set me off originally, with the 60-year-old husband wanting “one last go” at a grand affair. Grrr. I’m afraid that these days, I wouldn’t make it past the first few pages of a work with that subplot element. I’m sick and tired of the glorification of the male sexual fantasy, especially in a work where the author is allegedly trying to think like a professional woman with homelife drama who encounters a big ethical challenge. Dear God, take me now. Ugh. Can we just say cliched, overdone, trite? Quite frankly, I think “spouse fed up with his work and wanting to retire” or “spouse dealing with onset of illness” is probably more realistic as homelife drama, unless one happens to be part of a particular rich and privileged class. Affairs? Jesus, John Updike did that to death. I don’t care what genre it is, if there’s an affair involved, I’m probably going to throw the damn book against the wall. It’s why I don’t spend much time on the literary genre. Male infidelity is just so done in fiction, in my opinion.

Maybe I’ve just had too many other family dramas in my life to be able to engage with the egotism involved in a man’s desire for an affair. I don’t know. The concept of “one last go” is somewhat offensive to me. Either you’re monogamous and you both agree, or else you’re poly and the rules and structures exist for how you engage with others and it’s No. Big. Deal. To be monogamous, and then have this one last desire for a fling with someone else is profoundly so much a violation of the original relationship (in my opinion) that the other person is justified in chucking the whole relationship and ripping the man to shreds in the court system.

Yeah. So please slap me if I ever decide to write such a thing.

There are aspects of McEwan’s interview that I like. He’s unapologetically placing himself in “what he calls the ‘family division’ of English prose.” I like his advocacy for bringing work back into contemporary writing. I just–I don’t know. Something about the tone of the description of the latest work set me off. Probably it’s more an argument with the character in the latest book who feels himself entitled to ask for permission to have an affair. It’s the male gaze issue

And probably a huge chunk of it is that the sort of sf and fantasy I want to write is more of that sort of family interactions and dynamics stuff. The as-yet undisclosed heart of the Netwalk Sequence involves some very dark and horrible stuff that happened within the Stephens family. It was kept successfully hushed up for over a hundred years. It explains a lot of Sarah’s dynamics, and her star-crossed relationship with Francis Stewart. Only I also bring in gadgets and tech and other stuff because, well…I like boom today. Boom tomorrow as well, but boom today is good. Anthony Trollope in space is fun. So is Jane Austen, the Brontes, and etc.

But it’s not taken as serious writing within the genre, unless you get very, very lucky and you write about the male protagonists. Me, I like playing with multi-generational female protagonists, including the additional drama of reproductive realities. So yeah. Probable obscurity.

However, I intend to have fun doing it. And now my ranty mcrantypants rantage is done. Whew. That’s enough for one day.

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