Madwriter

Writing Resumes

2022-03-09T01:00:35Z

Wow, Live Journal, I'd pretty much forgotten that you're owned by a Russian firm until I started getting slammed today with suggestions of entries by pro-Putin apologists who think the Ukraine War was Absolutely Necessary because there are little children giving Nazi salutes and Ukraine didn't let Donbas go off on its own peacefully the way Russia did with...Chechnya, I guess?

I also noticed that nearly all of your "Top LJ Entries" at the point when I logged in a few moments ago were several years old.

* * *

In happier news closer to home, the writing computer I'd been using while staying with Mom died, albeit not without giving me signs for several days that the hard drive was about to expire. That's not the happy news; the happy news is that the literal day after this happened, an old friend of mine sent me a message asking me if I needed a new computer. It turns out that her father has a hobby of restoring old computers, and had some he wanted to get out of his basement. How much? I asked. Nothing, she told me - he just wanted them out of his basement. :)

So I paid them a visit over the weekend, including dinner and many lovins of their dog Sunny Ann, and took home an HP desktop (desktop being my preference), a monitor, and a Chromebook for good measure. None of them, they warned me, were close to new - but then again the computer I had been using was from 2008 or something like that, and my Writing Computer at home is rather older than that. When I mentioned this to my friend's Dad he said, "These aren't that old."

It turns out that the desktop doesn't have working wireless access (after just getting the wireless restored at Mom's house not long before) - which I'm sure is a simple fix, but I quickly decided I wasn't really interested in fixing it. I get more writing done that way.

(Admittedly I haven't gotten a whole lot of writing done since then, but that doesn't have anything to do with the computer. Other things keep shoving in on the one day a week I have to write lately. But I'm optimistic about being able to carve out some more writing time this weekend.)

Anyway, more later, hopefully sooner than another few weeks.

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Going Their Separate Ways

2022-01-21T00:24:59Z

No dark and dire reason for this, but (apart from a few items specified in my will) I just started making up my first-ever list of who gets first crack at various subjects and authors among my books when I die.

Mainly I just figured it was a good idea. It's a fairly substantial collection, so there's no reason to make the posthumous dismemberment of my library more difficult than it has to be on top of everything else those dealing with my affairs would be dealing with. And this way I at least get some say in trying to direct certain books and collections within the collection towards people I think would most appreciate them.

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Accountable Delay

2022-01-09T21:20:44Z

Back here to post again after a few weeks. The delay really was just prosaic - the home Internet connection had been out for quite awhile, which meant that in practice I could only post entries at work while I was off the clock. (Technically I could post from my phone, but non-physical keyboards and I don't get along all that well. That's the one thing I miss about my old slider phone.)

At any rate, the issue was just a simple router problem that was fixed within a few minutes once somebody was able to look at it. So here's hoping I won't go three weeks without posting anything again.

I wish I could say otherwise, but I didn't get a whole lot of writing done over my Christmas break either. 3200 words in total, which is still 3200 words and a lot of grief better than nothing at all, though ironically it was less than I typically get done during a work week. That said, part of this was because I also wanted to catch up on my pleasure reading. I wouldn't say that I "caught up", exactly, but I did get a lot more done of that than usual. I've got several books underway, more than I've put up on Goodreads, which I'm bouncing back and forth between on those usual days when reading time is sparse.

I also got a lot of family time in during my holiday, which was very nice - and my 22-year-old niece is now engaged as of two days before Christmas. :) On a simultaneously sad and positive note, my nephew, who started college this past semester, moved out with the help of his mother (my sister), his brother, and me on New Year's Eve. It's a great school overall but just not, it seems, for him. While I was sorry to see him move out, there's a good chance he'll be much happier wherever he chooses to go to next, and it was nice to be able to spend the better part of a day with him.

(Or really, any of the kids these days when they're all mobile and definitely have lives of their own, as the saying goes.)

One of those Christmas Break days was spent putting a new tire on the Antimatter Van (planned, unlike the last time I replaced a tire). I was told it would be a 3-4 hour wait and I'd just told my sister a day or two before that I missed walking around downtown Roanoke, so that's what I did. Alas, the museums were closed, but otherwise I enjoyed it immensely, remembering with every block why I enjoy it immensely.

One thing I also did, which was less enjoyable but felt necessary, was to walk as far as the now-abandoned Roanoke Times building. Like many other American regional newspapers, it's falling victim to cutbacks regardless of profitability. The newspaper had stood on that spot since the late 19th century, and my father worked there for 49 years, from paperboy to copy and layout editor, with being a reporter, feature writer, and other sorts of editor in between. It's one of those things where despite logic, I had to see it for myself to really believe the paper would no longer be on that spot, in that 100-year-old building. It's moved to a smaller building, still in downtown; the original location is set to become city offices.

The "frustrated" in my mood is simply because there's so much I want to be doing and so little time through the recent past and for the foreseeable future to get anywhere close to all of it done. As I've mentioned here before, 2020 spoiled me: I had a 3-month furlough during which money was not a worry, then at Thanksgiving and Christmas through early January I had a 6-week paid vacation due to still having a ton of earlier vacation time at the point when my furlough kicked in. I got all kinds of things done, especially writing and reading and gardening, and I really do miss that. (Particularly as retirement still seems like a distant and unobtainable goal.)

The stereotypical midlife crisis is to buy a sports car, or have an affair, or whatever. I never would've guessed that my midlife crisis would be to want to pack up all my pets and books and run off to an island in the middle of the South Pacific to spend I could spend all my days reading, writing, and snuggling with cats!

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The One On The Right Was On The Left And The One On The Left Was On The Right

2021-12-08T20:22:08Z

In our latest episode of "People talking to Danny while he's trying to work on a book at a local fast food restaurant":

Saturday before last I'm minding my own business working on the WIP when an older lady approaches me and starts asking me about the book. Immediately, of course, being in a fast food restaurant I suddenly worry she's going to ask me to write her memoir, since that's the way this flowchart usually goes. Not this time, though - instead she engaged in a bit of virtue signalling and told me, "I let you go ahead of me in line because men go first. That's what God says."

(Now bear in mind I didn't even realize she'd let me go ahead of her in line. I hadn't even seen her before she came up to my table. As far as I knew there wasn't anyone else in that part of the restaurant when I got in line.)

As she says this it occurs to me that I've met this woman before or at least someone like her, who said that, though it had been years. Typically what I did then was to just nod and say thank you. But this particular day I'd spent most of the day clearing gutters and doing yard work, I ached all over, I just wanted to work on my book, and I was feeling grumpy. So I asked her, "Where does God say that?"

She told me, "In Genesis God created men first, so men go first."

I answered, "But in Genesis God created animals before men. Does that mean animals go before people?"

"That's not what that means," she grumbled in a very non-submissive way, and stormed off. I wonder if I spoiled her night.

At any rate, if I encounter her again, I think next time I may quote Matthew 20:16 to her - "The last will be first, and the first last" - and offer to let her go ahead of me.

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November Tally

2021-12-06T19:50:04Z

Non-NaNoWriMo total word count: 20,550.

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Altering The Checklist

2021-11-19T04:01:14Z

Since my last couple of entries were rather depressing (and friends-locked), I thought I should knock out at least one entry in the meantime that's more upbeat (and public). So here goes.

If any of you read my Facebook, you may have seen that a few weeks ago, I overheard a group of students at the college I work for debating each other whether your life is "pretty much over" by age 40 or age 45. I'm not sure how they came up with those numbers - maybe the 40s are scarier to college kids nowadays than they were to me?

At any rate, after being amused by this for awhile, I started thinking about how some people (including me at one time, and still a little bit to this day) have gotten suckered by the trap of wanting to do certain things in their lives by certain ages. While this still clings a bit to the back of my mind, overall I was lucky enough to be able to break out of it and realize that there is no deadline on the things you want to do, that you love doing. But I have seen others who couldn't let go of this idea, and it became insidious and destructive. They became convinced that since they hadn't done X by age Y, that it was never going to happen.

So they gave up.

And thus, of course, it never happened.

I'm still frustrated that there are things I wanted to do with / wanted to happen in my life that haven't happened yet, but this is no longer a function of the calendar; I simply am frustrated that they haven't. (But wait, Danny, didn't you say this was supposed to be a more upbeat entry? Why yes I did, Danny, thank you for reminding me.) That said, earlier today I was making a mental checklist of the things I wanted to do with my life that I have done, and just for fun, decided to compare the ages I originally wanted to have them done by versus when they actually happened.

That age comparison, by the way, was just for a little wry fun. The list of Have Dones was the point, and the gratitude.

So we're off with the Biggies . . .

Numbers are: Age Imagined / Age It Became Reality

Graduate from my college of choice: 22-24 / 27

Publish my first novel: 20s / 36

Publish a collaborative novel with my uncle and writing inspiration, Phil Farmer: 20s / 36

Write my dream historical novel / series about the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia: 20s / 37-40

Publish in one of my longtime favorite F/SF magazines: Late 20s / 38

Write my dream historical novel / series about Arizona: 20s to 30s / 40-43

Make it back on a trip to Arizona: 20s to early 30s / 41

Have a house on a mountainside by or within a forest: 30s / 43

Lifelong-dreamed-of trip to Europe: 20s to early 30s / 44

------------------------------LIFE ESSENTIALLY OVER--------------------------------------------------------

Lifelong-dreamed-of trip to St. Augustine, Florida: 20s or early 30s / 45

* * *

Wow, look at all that stuff in my 40s. That's not half-bad for being Might As Well Be Dead.

So yeah, there are things I haven't yet accomplished that I want to, like publishing my historical series. But I look back over this list fully aware that I certainly have nothing to complain about - and knowing that if I'd been stuck in the mire of thinking "If I can't do it by Y age it'll never happen", then my entire list above would have been completely wiped out, all those happy events sent to oblivion.

So listen to the old man, kids. Stop thinking in terms of numbers, and start thinking in terms of being determined to do what you want to do no matter what.

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So In The Meantime, Part 2 . . .

2021-10-12T02:00:21Z

(The continuation of what I've been up to since my previously last - April 2016 - entry on Live Journal.)

FEBRUARY 2020: By now Laurie and I are keeping an eye on Covid, which we're assuming has hit the United States even though there seems to be dispute about that - and, now famously, government officials, politicians, and pundits who have already started downplaying it. By the end of the month, when we hear the news about Lombardy being locked down, we take stock of what we would need if we end up getting locked down for (we optimistically believed) 6 to 8 weeks, and fill in the gaps of what we realize is missing. There's not that much missing; we live in a rural area and tend to keep a lot of stuff on hand anyway. But the gaps could have proven disastrous if we'd had to do without them for a long while.

This month I also went to see 1917 in the little local theater, which unbeknownst to me was the last movie I'd see in a theater until August 2021.

MARCH 2020: The pandemic heated up. Again unbeknownst to me, I ate inside a restaurant - the Bojangles in Rocky Mount, Virginia - for the last time till the Summer of 2021. The college I work for went virtual and into lockdown. All of my coworkers at the library became virtual workers, but I kept coming to the building every day. I had no way of working from home - no Internet connection, and I didn't yet have a Smartphone - so I became the one to take care of whatever the building itself and the things within needed, right down to watering the plants, while doing my job from within. I was also hearing bits and pieces of worry about the college's financial state from various people; we'd been having financial challenges already, and this vastly increased the pressure.

MAY 2020: Close to the middle of the month I got a phone call from the college that I'd been half-expecting: I was being furloughed till the beginning of August (which became the middle of August). I was extremely concerned about this at first, but after a few days that tapered off - I was able to get unemployment for the duration, which was life-saving, and in the meantime, especially with Laurie's counsel, I recognized this as an opportunity to make metaphorical lemonade. The main concern ultimately would become worry that I wouldn't have a job when August came around, which is to say, that the college might have to close its doors.

I did a Movie Night with my sister and her kids, aware that due to the pandemic, I wasn't sure when I'd see them all in person again. Ironically, the movie I brought was 1917.

JUNE - AUGUST 2020: The Furlough. This deserves, and will get, it's own entry. But I did everything I could to maximize all those open days. I did a lot of writing - adding 40,000 words to the college history book. I did a lot of reading, two or three books a week, including (what I thought appropriately at the time) John Scalzi's Collapsing Empire trilogy. I started gardening again, and discovered that as I'd hoped, my previous failures at gardening came not from me being a bad gardener, but not putting enough time and effort into it.

In the meantime, the unemployment was, ironically, paying me much more than I made by working, so I was able to save a fair bit of it in case there wasn't a job waiting for me at summer's end.

My only regret about the furlough overall was that Tucker, Hayes, and Nate weren't also there to spend the summer with me. However, at night I would grab dinner at Dairy Queen, go down to campus with a Chromebook - since I could get online while on campus - and use the computer while spending those evening hours with Elgie, the library cat I started feeding not long before my previously last entry in Live Journal.

JULY 2020: My Furlough days at home came to an abrupt end on the last day of July not from getting called back, but from Mom needing to go into the hospital. She's originally gone due to low sodium levels, but while there she stumbled and fell after being told she was told to go to a room in the ER waiting for her, but without a nurse helping her despite Mom being a fall risk. So while she spent the next week in the hospital - and then the following month doing physical therapy in a nursing home - I stayed at Mom's house, about 40 miles from my house, to house-sit and pet-sit. This was odd but also strangely nice as she still lived (lives) in the house my sister and I grew up in.

Little did I know, however, how long that stay would extend. In fact, Mom's stay in the hospital and nursing home drove home to me just how many medical issues she was having. Long story short, in an ongoing effort to keep her out of assisted living or even a nursing home, I'm still living with her more than a year later. My commute has gone from a third of a mile to 40 miles one way. As anyone who knows me well will learn to no surprise at all, the room I'm sleeping in (formerly my Dad's room, not my old one - my old one is where I do my writing these days) is now filled with books. Two full shelves, and a large number of stacks on the floor.

AUGUST 2020: I went back to work, in person. Things were not exactly back to normal - we wore masks, we had virtual classes, and the campus seemed deserted more often than not. But...again, we were back to work in person, which felt like a different world than the spring.

OCTOBER 2020: I turned 50 with some trepidation. The day was beautifully warm and sunny, so I spent a few hours sitting and reading at my favorite place, the stretch of the Roanoke River where it crosses beneath the Blue Ridge Parkway. Specifically I sat on a rock in the middle of the river reading Philip Jose Farmer's recently published eco-catastrophe novel Up from the Bottomless Pit. By the time I got back to Mom's house my sister had already been there for awhile preparing the place for my arrival in the form of black balloons hanging across the porch entrance, and more draped across the stairway railing and doorways, all wishing me a happy 50th birthday!

The balloons and well wishes are still on the railing, awaiting her 50th birthday this December.

NOVEMBER 2020: Our little dog Weezie had been slowly going downhill for a long while, though Laurie made huge efforts during that time to make life better and longer for her. I was only barely home, usually in jaunts of just a few minutes at the end of my commute and just before heading into work, but I always tried to see Weezie when I could. She'd always liked to go outside with me, stroll sentry around the yard while I watched, and then crawl into my lap when she was done, and for awhile she still did this during my too-short visits. When she quit patrolling the yard and crawling into my lap, wanting to just go back inside after she was done going to the bathroom, I knew she wasn't going to be with us much longer. Weezie was always a scrappy fighter - her previous owners abandoned her in a pen when they moved away, and she first got Laurie's notice from the story that Weezie bit the animal control officer who first handled her - but finally her fight ran out. We had to euthanize her, our last dog, on the last day of November.

NOVEMBER 2020 - JANUARY 2021: With the vacation I had banked before my furlough, which rolled over since I couldn't take it during my furlough, and with Christmas Break falling in this time, I actually would up having six straight paid weeks off from work, from before Thanksgiving to early January. As hard and as frustrating as Mom's health issues were making life for her, it was nice to be able to spend that much time with her, without having to leave most every day for work.

DECEMBER 2020: We may not have had our normal annual summer vacation, but the family did get together for Christmas, and I did my normal thing that I'd been doing since my brother-in-law passed away in 2007: I stayed with them Christmas Eve, to be up with them on Christmas morning (despite them all being aged late teens to 21 by this point), and for a few days afterward. For awhile all seemed well with the world, and peaceful, and normal.

MARCH 2021: With everything else going on, I'd been struggling to keep up with my work doing book reviews for Publishers Weekly. I'd thought about this for a long while, but finally decided to give it up when I had to rush through reading three out of my last four books, and only barely making my deadlines in time. I regretfully sent my note to my editor, Phoebe Cramer, telling her the situation and saying in detail that this had nothing to do with PW or anyone there, and that I'd talked to some people who might become my replacement. She thanked me for all of that, and helping smooth her transition to the editor's job the year before, and told me I was welcome to come back if I was ever in a position to do so.

I thought that despite everything else going on, maybe I'd have some more time to pleasure read now. Then . . .

MAY 2021: At the beginning of the month I had something you'd think would've happened by then, but never did: I dreamed the outline of a novel. I mean the entire outline, beginning to end. That fascinated me, and the book it was outlining fascinated me...but in spite of myself. Because the book was a spinoff from a famous novel now in the public domain that I'd always been ambivalent about at best. And more to the point, it was about the antagonist of said famous novel, whom I'd always hated, as the author intended. And what business, I thought, did I have starting a novel while I was still working on the college history?

Yet the dream's spin on the character had seized hold of me, and over the next few weeks I only grew more intrigued as my brain kept filling in details of the story that the original outline hadn't provided. And honestly, I needed a mental health break. This was one thing that was wholly mine, which it seemed like nothing else (including the college history by that point) was. I needed something fun and frivolous yet creative. Finally, especially with the prompting of author friends, I began writing the novel on the last day of the month.

I typically max out at spending about 4 hours per week writing the novel, but thanks to having the bulk of the book handed to me all in one go the writing is going quickly, and as I type this it stands at 96,350 words. Before trimming, the first draft will undoubtedly hit the 140-150,000 word range by the time it's finished. The college history, untrimmed thus far, stands around 150,000 words. With a few interviews still left to go.

***

I may add a part 3 to this, but there really isn't much to add.

I'm still living with Mom and getting home only in occasional snatches, but reminding myself that someday I'll look back happily on being able to spend so much time with her. I'm still commuting 80 miles per day. I'm still working on both the novel and the college history. I only did a little bit of hiking this summer, even though I wound up having 3 weeks off work total across the summer. An old friend I met years ago on Live Journal returned to the area after spending many of those years out west. Another old friend is coming to visit me from out west over this coming weekend, my birthday weekend.

In August I went to see a movie in a theater again, with friends. In September I helped my nephew Evan, the youngest of my sister's kids and the last of them to head off to college, move to school - specifically Hampden-Sydney.

The stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway containing my favorite section of the Roanoke River is closed till next spring due to the bridge being repaired and rebuilt, so visiting that stretch again anytime soon is out. I'm still eating too much fried chicken but am doing a lot better with not having too much ice cream.

I'm getting a little bit of pleasure reading done. I need to get a lot more exercise. I need to be spending more time outside, especially in the woods around my house, which I've almost wholly been away from since staying with Mom.

And I'm still seriously considering resuming my regular posts here on Live Journal and Dreamwidth.

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So In The Meantime, Part 1

2021-10-11T01:10:34Z

Here's a semi-brief rundown of highlights and lowlights in my life since my April 2016 post here on LJ, mainly just as they occur to me. All of these were things I would've written about here if, you know, I'd still been writing here.

JUNE 2016: I made a lifelong-dreamed-of trip to St. Augustine, Florida. This was my grandparents' favorite beach, and they'd told me for nearly as long as I could remember how much I'd love its combination of ocean and history. They were absolutely right. My parents rented a house on the beach on Anastasia Island, which they shared with my sister, her kids, and me for a glorious few days. This was also the last big family vacation we took before my Mom's COPD and other issues worsened - that fall - to the point where she could no longer make long trips.

I also started keeping an Amy Siskind-like daily news log I jokingly titled Chronicle of the Pre-Apocalypse Age. This became incredibly helpful in a time when the news cycle started measuring itself in hours rather than days or longer; I could look at entries from just 2 weeks before and realized I'd already forgotten everything posted then. Though admittedly the title has become less and less funny as time has worn on.

JULY 2016: My trip to FarmerCon in Columbus, Ohio to sign and promote my latest (and still most recent) novel, Dayworld: A Hole in Wednesday. The book was a Dayworld prequel started but never finished by science fiction master Philip Jose Farmer (also my great uncle), and which I finished through late 2015.

AUGUST 2016: A one-day visit from one of my oldest friends but who was living in California, and who I hadn't seen in ten years or so by that point, rekindled my long buried interest in spirituality and metaphysics. That ended a long dry spell in that deep interest of mine that had been damaging in ways I hadn't realized until said spell ended.

MARCH 2017: The passing of my much-beloved Aunt Isabel, Isabel Carmen Riley Briggs, at the age of 89. She was mischievous, forthright (to say the least), fun-loving, and a font of family history. She was the last member of my family anywhere nearby who was close to my grandparents' generation.

JULY 2017: My Maine Coon cat Nate the Fae Cat (so named because she saw many things we mere humans did not), aka Nate the Puddin Cat (because she was made of puddin), passed away at the age of 12. She and her twin sister Hayes the Baby Cat were my wife Laurie's and my first foster animals, and our first foster failures, after Laurie found them in a corn field when they were about 6 weeks old. Nate, among many other talents, had an uncanny ability to know when I was going to sit down before I did, and would be climbing into my lap before I was finished sitting. She was our first pet in 9 years to die. Her sister Hayes never got over losing Nate, and was lonely for the rest of her own life. (We have other animals, but she was never close to them - and some of them had been mean to her from early on.)

AUGUST 2017: I helped move my niece Alex to college, specifically Montreat in North Carolina. Alex was the first of the kids in the family to head off to college. I loved Montreat but alas, only made it back a handful of times.

AUGUST 2018: Through a somewhat convoluted process that I won't go into except to say it boiled down to thinking to myself, "Someone should write this book", then thinking "Why don't I write this book?", I began plotting out a new history book of the college I work for. Writing would be underway by October. The month after that I presented the idea to the college president, though with a great deal too much optimism said that I expected to finish the book in six months - because that's typically how long it takes me to write a novel. I didn't take into account how much longer I take with non-fiction (it could take me hours just to write a 200-word book review for Publishers Weekly), not to mention numerous other circumstances that would hit me starting in 2019, some of which I'll post here.

JANUARY 2019: Having realized that I wanted to do interviews for my college history book too, I did my first formal interview with Miss Faye Wood. She was an alumnus, class of '52, who came back to work for the college in 1956 and retired in the 1990s. During that time she served as both administrator and professor. I interviewed her for about 2 hours.

APRIL 2019: My father, Robert Douglas Adams, died of heart trouble at the age of 78, and just a few weeks shy of my parents' 55th wedding anniversary. Dad and I had a rocky relationship through most of my life - we hadn't even gotten along all that well until I moved out of the house - but his passing left me feeling strangely unmoored. At least I'd seen him shortly before he died - the night before he went into the hospital for the last time - and we parted on a good note. The lion's share of my vacation time for the rest of that year, including a week in June, another in July, and another around Christmas, was spent with Mom.

JULY 2019: My parents, sister, her kids, and I had taken an annual trip to Pipestem State Park every year since 2008, except for our 2016 trip to St. Augustine. This month, unbeknownst to us, would be our last trip to Pipestem thus far: Covid meant skipping it in 2020 and '21. I usually shared a room at Pipestem's lodge with my nephews; this trip I stayed with Mom.

AUGUST 2019: We lost Hayes the Baby Cat. She passed away in my car on the way to the vet to be euthanized, while I was singing the lullaby version of "You Are My Sunshine" to her.

OCTOBER 2019: After having him as my walking, hiking, reading, TV and all-around otherwise companion since October 2006, we had to euthanize our dog Tucker, who every year won prizes for Best of Dogs and Best of Hiking Buddies. On my birthday, sadly. Our walks and hikes had become almost daily routines no matter the weather, and he loved going in the woods more than anything. We always believed he lived as long as he did partly because he looked forward to going into the woods so much. I still remember the day in January 2019 when he walked to the edge of the woods, stared into them for a few moments, then looked back at me, and turned around and walked away from them, never to go into the woods again. I knew from that point on that Tucker wouldn't be with us much longer.

DECEMBER 2019: I went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker with friends and family at the Salem Valley 8 in Salem, Virginia, the theater where I saw the original Star Wars back in 1977. This would be the last time I'd be with anyone else in a theater for a long time, and at this writing I still haven't been back to a theater with a large group like this one was.

JANUARY 2020: I first heard of a mysterious disease burning its way through China that some people were speculating might have already found its way to the United States.

(To Be Continued)

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Places I Miss

2021-10-11T00:32:53Z

Wow, look at me here after 6 years.

My being back here, honestly, doesn't have anything to do with the latest Facebook debacle (though it didn't hurt either). I'm here because I was thinking of posting an entry over on FB that was the sort of thing I used to post here on LJ - just a "list" entry mostly to myself. But it's much easier to go back years later and look at old posts on Live Journal than it is on Facebook, so I decided to come back here and post it.

(And that whole thing about "Live Journal is owned by Russians"? Well, yeah, I know. But at the same time Facebook sells data to China and, apparently, any high bidders; TikTok is owned by a Chinese company deep in with Chinese intelligence - though really, there aren't many Chinese companies not in deep with Chinese intelligence - and so on.)

The idea was just a short visit, or a one-shot. But it occurs to me now that I'm here again that Live Journal is like a secret club these days. I and so many other people have been away for so long that I could post anything here that I want, and practically nobody would see it. I actually rather like the thought of that. Heck, I'm guessing most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook don't even realize I ever had a Live Journal account.

I'll write a catch-up post later (maybe even later today). In the meantime, here is the personal mostly-for-me content I came for:

***

PLACES I MISS

I was feeling nostalgic these last few days for favorite places that are gone, or been seriously altered, and will never come back. This is a chronologically comprehensive list: some of these places vanished just this year, while others have been gone for nearly four decades.

Many of them are places I wish I could've taken the kids in my family when they came around. (Though happily, in some cases the places did stick around long enough for the kids to go to.)

These are all going to be businesses. I thought about including family homes that are now out of the family, or those family members have passed away, but that seems like it deserves its own post someday.

BORDERS BOOKS AND MUSIC (specifically the locations in Northern VA)
I loved Borders from the first time I saw one (in Sterling, VA) in 1996. It drew me in immediately by selling more niche books that I didn't find in bookstores anywhere else, like volumes from the Loeb Classical Library. I even worked at one once: The Frederick, Maryland location, from October 1999 to April 2000.

THE CAVERN (Roanoke College, Salem, VA)
The Cavern, the campus snack bar, is technically still there, though much altered. Arguably it's nicer than the one I remember, which was kind of dark (like, you know, a cavern), had old-fashioned wood paneling, was mostly snacky stuff like hot dogs, and included pool tables, an arcade (with pinballs even in the 1990s!), and so on. The new one is bright and airy, has an outdoor patio, more types of food, and so on. But it's not cozy anymore. YMMV.

COUNTRY COOKIN (various locations around Southwest VA)
Less the restaurant itself than the fact that it was a favorite place for my parents to take the family too, especially once they had grandkids. It was also a favorite of my Grandma Adams.

DUFF'S SMORGASBORD (Roanoke, VA)
Probably more nostalgic than anything else, but it was tasty. It was the first buffet I ever went to, and the first place where I had get-it-yourself soft-serve ice cream.

FOSTER'S COUNTRY STORE (Rocky Mount, VA)
Just a little country store near the highway exit to Rocky Mount, but it had all kinds of tasty stuff, including my favorite barbecue corn chips. They also sold various types of apples I like that don't show up in grocery stores, such as Stamens and Winesaps.

THE FRENCH QUARTER (Tanglewood Mall, Roanoke, VA)
A section of the mall that was made to look like a winding cobblestone street in New Orleans' French Quarter, complete with historic-looking shopfronts, streetlamps, and tiny lights scattered around the black ceiling to give the appearance of stars. Cheesy, I know, but a lot of fun and actually kind of cool. The whole thing was gutted to make room for a big box store.

GIVENS BOOKS (Salem, VA)
A used bookstore I patronized from 1984 until 2016; it closed in 2017. You could go in at any point during those decades and it looked pretty much the same throughout. Some of the books on the shelves in the 2010s had been there in the 1980s. And the prices never changed either.

HILLS (Roanoke, VA)
A department store of the classic sort, and dating from pre-mall days. They had an extensive toy section (very important when I was a kid), and in the "foyer" between the doors and the main store they sold giant pretzels that melted in your mouth and were filled with giant salt crystals that seemed to be nearly as big as your fingernails.

THE HOMEPLACE RESTAURANT (Catawba, VA)
An awesome bring-it-to-your-table country buffet that opened in the early 1980s in an early 20th century farmhouse tucked within the gorgeous rural Catawba Valley. While waiting you could sit on porch swings or hang out at the fence visiting the cows on the farm next door. It was a popular stop after getting off the Appalachian Trail nearby, which I did nearly every time I did any AT hiking; it was also a favorite place for my parents to treat the family after they had grandkids.

K&W CAFETERIA (Roanoke and Salem, VA)
Another restaurant I mainly miss for the sentimental value: It was a favorite of my grandfather's. My mother and I last ate at one just weeks before it closed.

LAKESIDE AMUSEMENT PARK (Salem, VA)
An awesome little amusement park that opened in the 1920s and ran till 1986. Not only did it have a roller coaster and other rides, it had a music hall that somehow managed to attract all the top talents of the time, particularly among country stars.

LAKEVIEW MUSEUM OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (Peoria, IL)
This is an example of something where I know that what replaced it - in this case the Peoria Riverfront Museum - is far superior to the original. But there was just something intimate about the original museum. And I'll admit that I loved the fact that it included a used bookstore. And was next door to the public library.

MAC'S SNACK BAR (Moneta, VA)
Just a cute little greasy spoon that was only a few blocks from the Waterfall Campground.

PELICAN POINT CAMPGROUND (Union Hall, VA)
A campground on Smith Mountain Lake where my family and I, and some family friends, spent the summers of 1976 to 1979. It was well forested, and the first place I ever went wandering down wooded trails on my own. There's still a Pelican Point Yacht Club there, and it's all owned by the same family as then, but the bulk of what had been the campground itself was long since bulldozed for a housing development.

RAMS HEAD BOOKS (Roanoke, VA)
A small bookstore that also sold more niche books that one might normally find in a chain store, and was the first bookstore I ever saw that also sold games and toys.

SMITH MOUNTAIN LAKE WATERSLIDE (Sandy Level, VA)
A three tube waterslide at Smith Mountain Lake. It was small as such things go now--you'd get to the bottom in just a few seconds. But it was great for kids back in the day, and they had great snow cones.

VIRGINIA'S EXPLORE PARK (Roanoke, VA)
The Explore Park is still there, just much altered over the last few years. Whereas once it was a place for preserving local history, with historic buildings moved onsite, 17th and 18th century buildings reconstructed, and costumed interpreters to interact with visitors, plus some recreation like hiking and biking trails and fishing, it's now gone head first all into recreation, and the historical area is barely more than an afterthought except as a place for future campsites. The costumed interpreters were laid off in 2007, the 17th century Native American village left to rot and collapse, and the 18th century replica buildings were demolished a few months ago. I don't know what's to become of the original 19th century buildings rebuilt on site.

THE WATERFALL CAMPGROUND (Moneta, VA)
A little campground on Smith Mountain Lake where my family and I stayed during the summers of 1980 to 1987. Like Pelican Point, the campground is long gone, turned into a housing development; unlike Pelican Point, the neighborhood is actually really nice, and even managed to preserve the bulk of its trees (which were plentiful).

***

OK, I'm sure there are more, but this is a long enough list and I'm actually making myself a little melancholy again. It probably also doesn't help that today would have also been my father's 81st birthday.

Happier or at least more neutral post next time.

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Keep Up With The Old Guy

2015-02-12T00:38:07Z

I'll admit it: I'm one of these middle-agers who looks over the younglings in the gym with a bit of envy. I know I'm not the only one, and in my case, it's colored by the fact that aside from occasional walking and hiking when I was a youngling, I had a naturally high metabolism that meant I could stay skinny without trying hard. Nowadays moderate exercise simply means I don't gain weight, rather than losing it.

But until today it never occurred to me to wonder what was going on in the younger folks' heads when I came into the gym. Now I'm thinking of it as "Keep Up With the Old Guy" Syndrome.

I'd noticed flickers of this before but brushed it off, figuring I was imagining things: that sometimes when I was working out and I would periodically speed up on the elliptical or stationary bike, people of the half-my-age variety would speed up on their machines, particularly if I'd been going faster than them to start with. I saw that again today: every quarter mile on the elliptical I would increase my speed, and two people on treadmills a few yards away sped up too. (During the first two speed increases their conversation got more winded. After speed increase #3 they stopped talking altogether.)

I likely would have ignored and brushed this off too. But then after doing the weight workout I went to a cool-down on a stationary bike moments before another youngling got on the one next to me. The first half-mile on the bike I increase my speed at tenth-of-a-mile increments, then bring it back down for the second half. And I noticed yet again that when I sped up, he did too. That caught my attention because it's the first time this happened twice in a row during a workout.

Then, while I was staring straight ahead and listening to the Monkees burbling away in my headphones, I saw - not once, but twice - the guy next to me lean over and look at my speed. When he leaned back he sped up to go faster than I was.

I've got to say I was boggled. All this time being jealous of youth and strength and high metabolisms, and folks half my age or younger are trying to keep up with me? I don't mean out of jealousy - but maybe they felt like the old guy was showing them up.

Which made my day, I'm not too big to admit.

So take heart, those of you of my generation and older who are trying to keep yourselves healthy amid a workout sea of young faces. One way or another, you may be a better example than you realize!

(P.S. If they really were bothered by my workout, my leaving didn't provide any relief. As I was walking out a friend was coming in - a fellow who is a little older than me, in better shape...and an ex-Marine.)

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You Must Avoid Balance, Daniel-san

2015-02-11T01:53:29Z

Amid my mostly futile efforts to try combining multiple fairly substantial tasks - like writing, exercising, and house-work - within individual days, I ran across a snarky astrology page that was a revelation. Libra, my sign, is described as "Indecisive. Tries to balance everything".

Trying to balance everything might be a good description of my problem here. Or rather, trying to balance everything in a single day. It struck me - particularly as I close in on the end of the For Fun Fantasy Novel, finally - that the analysis at the end of the day really should be qualitative rather than quantitative. I don't mean that stuff doesn't get done, but I need a better metric than 24 hour cycles. I may get 5000 words a week done whether or not I write every day, but if I spend a day devoted to writing, rather than a half-hour here and there because I'm trying to do other things too, and those 5000 words are better when I can devote more time in one sitting to them, then what sense does it make to do everything in pieces?

Likewise, for work on the house. One of my upcoming projects is to rip up a small section of carpet and put down tile, for instance. It makes less sense to do this in several chunks than doing it over one or two days, and like those 5000 words, the quality of the job would probably be better. I can concentrate on tile without thinking "But I haven't written today...", or writing without thinking "There's still a lot of bare floor..."

So I just have to somehow un-corkscrew myself from Libra-ness. I might have had an easier time learning to balance, but we'll see. Maybe it's just a matter of getting out of the habit of going to bed thinking "What have I done today?" and replacing it with "What have I done this week?"

The exception to this, though, is exercise. Some things I can put off, but I put off exercise at my peril. Three times a week would be enough, or has been in the past, as long as it's consistent. This is something I need to keep up regardless of what else is going on the rest of the day, for my own long term (much, much longer than a week) sake.

Another bit of time unfortunately just opened up for my next few weeks, too: Amazon has cancelled its Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year. I've been a judge for that contest since its inception in 2008, and figured that being annual and being Amazon, I could solidly expect to do it again this year too. Nope. I heard from my Publishers Weekly editor, rosefox, yesterday that it was being scrubbed, with the official notice arriving today. Ah well. I thought it was a great thing and I hate to see it disappear. Some of the manuscripts I read were real stinkers - one year all of them were - but there were others I thought absolutely brilliant, and I'll miss those. RIP, ABNA.

* * *

Anyway, as I said above, I'm closing in on the end of No Word in Death's Favor. I might even wrap it up in another two chapters and perhaps a small epilogue. Then I'll connect the dots from chapter to chapter so it flows better, and then eventually decide whether or not I think it's any good.

I went into it not thinking about publishing as the major goal but experimenting with things I hadn't tried before, or not tried much. Publishing or not will enter my mind more thoroughly once it's finished. I'll try not to let the fact that I spent ten months on it influence my decision; aside from the fact that much of that time was spent not writing while I worked on New House, the extra time was also built in from the start because of all the experimenting (and, yeah, playing around in the name of experimenting).

Then again, I might really like it. We'll see.

And after that...maybe a Secret Project. I call it that because it's probably something I'm not supposed to be writing. But offhand I can't recall any time such a prohibition stopped me.

( PROGRESS REPORT )

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I Can't Move My Arms

2015-01-20T03:46:17Z

That's not a reference to A Christmas Story (though I was tempted to take a picture of myself bundled under three or four coats), but rather that I finally got back to the gym today for the first time since before I moved (that is, before last April).

I'd been telling myself that I'd get back for...well, never mind that. But it was particularly intense over the past couple of weeks, except I let my time-gobbling duo of writing and doing house-related things (125,000 words on No Word in Death's Favor as of this past Saturday, by the way) gobble time that could otherwise have gone to working out. But today I was determined to get there, since I was starting to feel my resolve slipping again.

And more to the point, I have an active summer planned, which will include a maniacal amount of sightseeing involving an equally maniacal amount of walking, plus hiking with some treading up to the tops of giant rocks. I anticipate having a great deal of fun this summer, so naturally I do not want to cut it short in midstream with a heart attack.

At any rate, the hardest thing for me about working out is not the exercise itself, but making myself not compare where I am now to my 2009 peak of one hour workouts four days a week, when I dropped several inches off my waist, could run a couple of miles without breaking a sweat, and lift the highest settings on the campus gym's weight machines one-handed. That was after several months of intense exercise, and honestly I'm not sure if I could reach that level of intensity again. But what I would like to do is get rid of as much of the gut as possible, build back some arm muscle...and of course, not die of a heart attack (on vacation or any time in the next few decades thereafter, preferably).

I broke down today's workout into my old standard non-intensive plan:

I started with the elliptical, doing a mile in about 10:30 - no record-breaking there, but breaking the no-workout streak was all I cared about. I did another half mile in almost exactly five minutes, then a cool down.

Then the weight machines, and the titular loss of movement in my arms. While I was smart enough to not try the same weights I was doing even when last I worked out, I was naive enough to think I could do the same quantity. After seven ten-sets of pull-downs (with the machines set to 7 out of 12 on five of those, and 8/12 on two), I knew I was done with lifting for the day - especially when an 8/12 machine pulled me back into my seat on the last tug.

Then a mile on a stationary bike going 55-100 RPM, with a third-of-a-mile cool down.

This is the point where I pointedly tell myself not to remember that my original workouts would've added jogging three laps around the gym, a number of push-ups, an extra one-half mile to one mile on the elliptical, and at least twice as much weight-lifting. Right now I'm just pleased that I got to the gym at all, so I'll go with that.

What I need to figure out now is why I have so much trouble keeping up this exercise habit, while in 2009 I was kind of obsessive about working out and stopped only after (1) a doctor told me to quit exercising for a month after my nearly-lethal spider bite, and (2) my car died. I suspect if I can figure this puzzle out I'll at least get back to something close to fighting shape.

Or walking miles a day shape. Either way I'll be happy.

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2014: Annales Photographia, Part 2

2015-01-15T03:12:26Z

More highlights from my past year as told in a few of my favorite photos.

Tucker wishes one of his bovine buddies a happy 2014. (January)

( +15 more! )

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2014: Annales Photographia

2015-01-09T19:27:20Z

I started writing a "Year In Summary" post for 2014, but after a couple or three paragraphs I decided I'd rather just post some of my favorite pictures from the year. This isn't all of them - they only cover up to October - so I'll likely post more when I get the chance.

One of the first pictures, if not the first, I took of the New House, three months before the sale went through. (January)

( +13 More! )

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Link Stew, Sponsored By The Brand New 2015

2015-01-07T18:25:50Z

Visiting A Park Could Save Your Life. Well, yeah. And woods too, I imagine.

Talk like an Egyptian: If we want to safeguard our languages, stories and ideas against extinction, we had better study Egyptology. This is actually the sort of thing that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to collecting and preserving my own library. I also really got deep into this idea, as it were, a few years ago when I read Gregory Benford's non-fiction book Deep Time.

Why Creative People Seem To Have The Messiest Minds. Based on how messy mine can be...second only to my room.

This Brilliant 11-Year-Old Revolutionized Flood Prevention. Peyton Robertson invented the possibly genius and potentially life-saving sandbag that doesn't require sand.

Top Ten Ancient Egyptian Discoveries of 2014. I always especially love "old news".

First Buffalo Roam East Of The Mississippi Since 1830. There were even buffalo here in southwestern Virginia until the last one was shot in the late 1790s. Alas, a program trying to reintroduce them in certain areas some years back never came to fruition.

Byron Ballard keeps Appalachian folk magic practices alive. And it turns out that she happens to be the friend of a friend.

Oh My God, There’s A Cat In Russia That Wears A Bow Tie And Works As A Librarian. Because cats.

Morris the rescue cat has become a horse whisker-er since meeting Champy. Because cats and horses.

Christmas Tree Massacre! Big cats and a different sort of catnip.

In France, Vestiges Of The War's Bloody End. World War One, that is. Meanwhile, French town tries to save first world war soldier’s room for posterity. A century-old time capsule.

NASA Astronaut: Why We Need To Visit The Moon, Not Mars. I particularly like Hoffman's point that the Moon, being closer but extraterrestrial, would make the perfect practice ground for a Mars expedition.

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I Hate The Sound Of Story-Chopping In The Morning

2014-12-31T01:55:46Z

I'm facing another big Kill Your Darlings moment: As much as I like the first two chapters of my first Arizona novel, three years of distance and experience since writing them is increasingly telling me that they aren't nearly as up to par as I'd like. And that if I cut them out, plus changing the first three chapters from the second book into the last three of the first, I'll have a much stronger novel. This would start the book - which I might re-title Wolves in the Desert (currently the name of Book 2) - out with a single prehistory chapter and end with the beginning of Geronimo's warmaking in the 1850s.

I hate chopping that much. But if I finally decide that it makes the book better, I'll be ready with an hatchet in each hand.

And of course, in our fabulous Age of the Internet, if the book sells I can always put those two chapters (both prehistory - the first set at the end of the Ice Age and the second about the building of the great canals near modern Phoenix) online as free reads. This would also then have the effect of compacting my 2nd and 3rd Arizona novels into one book as well. Which means if I ever write the last book, the series would finish as a trilogy.

Meanwhile, I've also toyed with the idea of chopping up my last Shenandoah novel as well - ending it at the beginning of World War Two instead of the present day, then adding to the pre-existing chapters to have a final book more comprehensively covering the 1940s up to now. But that would depend on selling that series, too.

As for actual new writing, I knocked out 2000 words on the For Fun Fantasy Novel today, just to get in a few more licks before the end of the year. It's hovering around 115,000 words now and still not quite close to finished yet. It's a good thing that "Don't pay close attention to your word count" is one of the book's multiple experiments.

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Link Stew Can't Choose Between Articles So It Links Them All

2014-12-12T02:53:04Z

'Star Trek' Flashback: Leonard Nimoy Notes 50 Year Anniversary of Original Pilot Shoot. Of course this had to be my lead story. Meanwhile, Astronauts lift our spirits. But can we afford to send humans into space?

Why Pluto Still Matters. And while we're talking about Pluto, New Horizons Wakes Up On Pluto's Doorstep.

10 Reasons Why Our Universe Is A Virtual Reality. I'm not sure if I buy any of this, but it's like candy to my Writer Brain.

The Closer We Look, The Stranger Europa Gets. As much as I'm fascinated by distant galaxies and quasers and what-not, I love exploring our backyard. And in the farther backyard, A Distant Planet May Lurk Beyond Neptune. Besides Pluto, they mean. And not, I suspect, the Planet X / Nibiru that some people think will sweep in someday and destroy all Terran civilization.

New Mystery Arises From Iconic Iwo Jima Image. The image had identification issues right from the very beginning, but I'm fascinated that that problem can resurface after 70 years.

Shell Engraving Has 'Rewritten Human History'. Those archaeologists, always pushing and pushing.

Is Space-Time Shaped Like A Spiral? See my comment about the universe being virtual reality. But I would dig the idea of the entire universe having a Golden Ratio.

Roman Cats Turn Historic Site Into A Cat Haven. Cats and ancietn ruins. Add some books and that's pretty much all I need.

Slayer Rescues A Kitten. Because as the article points out, there's nothing more metal than saving kittens.

Cutest Baby Ever Couldn't Be More Confused By the Concept of Twins. Because as much as I hate to admit it, the Internet can't be all cats.

Government To Pay Off WWI Debt. I personally like the idea of being considered solid if I can pay off my debts within 80 years.

Literally The Best Thing Ever: The Journal Of Emily Shore. This early 19th century teenager wanted to write natural science articles - and succeeded before she was 20. I'll warn you that this story doesn't have a happy ending, though.

Why Save A Language? The author agrees with the idea of seeing things from a culture's unique perspective, but argues that this most-often-given reason isn't the only one by any means.

Now Where Did I Park My 60 Cars? Another awesome treasure trove of antique cars unearthed. I'm less amazed that such things exist, though, that they keep being "lost" for decades at a time.

'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' character names revealed (in coolest way possible) . I'll admit that even after collecting a thousand or so Topps movie cards when I was a kid (and that I still own them), I didn't realize Topps was even still in business, but I was happy to hear it. I still have my collection of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back Topps cards, so maybe I'll grab some of these for old time's sake. You can have my gum.

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Hoping For A Truthful Happy Little Black Cat Ending

2014-12-08T02:28:04Z

As much as I love cats, and kittens, and little black cats in particular, I was hoping that this year would be the first in a fair few that the library didn't end up hosting feral kittens. That hope was dashed by the appearance of one early last week - a little black kitten about six weeks old, living inside an outer library wall.

By "outer library wall" this is what I mean: It's a brick sheathing with a hollow space inside for running cables, and the holes the cables run through also allow a little climate control out. So over the years it's been a popular spot for feral cats because it's both sheltered and cool or warm depending on the season. One of the other librarians heard it mewing, and caught a glimpse of it; I likewise heard and saw it the following night.

I started making plans to catch it and take it to the local no-kill shelter. Keeping it wasn't an option; we already have eight cats (four of whom were supposed to be fosters until the people we were fostering for never took them back) and two dogs. I was willing to spay/neuter it and have it vaccinated, but then what? The shelter wasn't forthcoming about whether or not it could take the cat, which usually means they don't have room. (Though Laurie advised I push on through - take the cat there and make them turn me...and the kitten...down face to face.)

So catch-and-release seemed to be the only option if the shelter wouldn't take it. Which is a poor option, because kittens and small cats don't last long on this campus, nor do the domesticated cats dumped by students at the end of the school year because they have the idiotic thought that "It's an animal, it knows how to survive". (Or they assume someone will clean up their mess and take the cat - I even met someone once who dumped a cat because they knew Laurie and I rescued and they figured we would rescue that one too.) Wandering dogs kill these cats, diseases kill them, roadkill dropped food that's spoiled and rotting kill them, and running alongside campus is a secondary highway where half the drivers act like they race for NASCAR no matter what the weather. Most of the feral kittens I've seen on campus disappear, probably to one of these fates. A few of them I know did.

I wasn't particularly happy about the release idea, though doing nothing was a bleak option as well.

Then the mewing under the window disappeared for two days, and I feared that it was gone. Especially since a skunk had been roaming around, and skunks will attack kittens too. But then one of the library's student workers told me that a student she knows had managed to get the kitten and planned to give it to "a good home". I hoped the student who got the kitten was telling the truth; students aren't allowed to have animals in the dorms, and I was afraid maybe they were saying that to keep from getting busted. I passed along the message that if the good home fell through, bring the kitten to me and I'd take care of the surgery and shots.

My hopes rose when my library worker told me that the student got the kitten vaccinated.

But then, just a few minutes before I started writing this, she found out that the student took the kitten to the shelter. So - not the worst possible ending, or really even a bad ending so far, but not quite the best of possible worlds either. The shelter is good, it will do right by the kitten. But I also know that black cats are a hard sell around here - the two we have are proof of that. At the time, no one else would take them.

But who knows? Maybe this time will be different. But at least the kitten is indeed away from ravaging dogs, and skunks, and every other danger small creatures on this campus face.

In the meantime, I'll try trapping the mother if I can to have her spayed. I'd still feel bad about releasing her, though not as much so: she's an adult, so she's probably already learned the tricks to survive, and feral adults usually don't socialize well. She'll still have her little climate-controlled shelter, and with no possibility of more kittens. So there's that.

Animal rescue: wonderful work, but I certainly understand the quick burnout.

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Link Stew Exclaims "SCIENCE!!!"

2014-12-02T01:33:17Z

Russian Miner Spends His Breaks Taking Photos Of Foxes In The Arctic Circle. Just because, as some of you know, I have a thing for foxes.

Young Volcanoes on the Moon. Rabble rousers!

On the Trail of an Ancient Mystery. Temples aside, the Antikythera Mechanism is far and away my favorite ancient artifact, and I love finding new stories about it.

What It Feels Like To Rocket Into Outer Space. Aside from the cool factor, this might come in handy for some of you writers one of these days.

Forging a Photo is Easy, but How Do You Spot a Fake? Not something I need very often, but you never know, it may come in handy in online political discussions.

Mystery of the 'spooky' pattern in the universe: Scientists find that supermassive black holes are aligned. I also find it especially interesting that some of these are thousands and possibly millions of light years apart - which means, of course, that we're seeing them as they existed at different times across millennia.

The riddle of the missing stars. I'm one of these people who's thrilled when one solution creates two new mysteries. In science, I mean, not my personal life.

Brain Scans Reveal What Dogs Really Think of Us. The headline's a wee bit misleading, but I still like the notion.

Why Science Fiction Matters. Money shot: What O'Brien is getting at is that investing resources-including imagination-into the intersections of art, science, technology, and health will help us understand creativity as a resource that can be "exercised and optimized in fresh ways." The right to imagine a new world is perhaps the boldest act of citizenship.

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Link Stew Looks Like It's Seen A Ghost

2014-11-25T18:25:08Z

Artist Jakob Hadavra has created 32 plaster life-sized ghost statues inside a medieval church in the Czech Republic. The church has been falling into disrepair for nearly fifty years, and this is bringing attention back to the idea of trying to save it before the church itself becomes nothing more than a ghost.

The SLF Working-Class / Impoverished Writers' $750 Grant. The qualifications are broad, and entering is about as easy as they could possibly make it.

"Miracle" Kitten Survives Ride Under Car Hood in Freezing Temperatures. Yeah, I'm a sucker for stories like this. And speaking of animals...

Enter Now: Grand Canyon Wolf Naming Contest! The solo wolf that has been spotted in the Grand Canyon - the first wolf seen there in 70 years - is up for naming - if you're under 18 years old. A neat contest for kids!

Unearthed: Thanks to science, we may see the rebirth of the American chestnut. The Washington Post tells the American Chestnut's story and about the now-successful attempt to genetically modify the tree to make it Blight-resistant. I've seen chestnuts that were nearly on the cusp of the Blight strangling them to death, when they were just a little taller than me. It's probably too late for me to see one fully matured now, unless I travel to see one of the handful of naturally Blight-resistant ones, but just seeing one survive well into adulthood would be enough for me.

Catholic Church Says Religious Freedom Protects Them From Going to Court. The church being subject to secular authority is an old, old debate, going back almost as long as Christianity itself. Money shot: However, there is no special religious exemption for sex discrimination which is how the terminated teacher is framing her dismissal. She proved her point quickly by showing that the diocese had never fired a male teacher for using any type of fertility treatment. The church admitted that indeed, it had never fired a male teacher undergoing fertility treatments in the past, but it probably “would” because it is against church teachings; they just “hadn’t gotten around to it in the past.” I've got to say that I'm with the secular authorities in this particular instance.

'Star Trek' was launched 50 years ago this week. "The Cage", that is - not when the main series with Kirk began. I first watched that episode in 1987, as I recall - on cable TV, about a year after it was released to video. Happy Anniversary, Star Trek!

The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. I might've done better in math if I'd known more about stuff like this.

Swiss museum accepts Nazi-era art collection. And they say they're going to try working with German authorities to get artworks back to their rightful owners. In a way, the Monuments Men never stopped working.

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Infected By The Too Many Books Syndrome

2014-11-24T20:40:18Z

I've been collecting books for a long time, one way or another. I started gathering them about me from my earliest memories, picked out my own that I wanted to buy early on in elementary school, and at the age of 12 - after seeing Phil Farmer's 20,000 volume collection in this pre-Internet age when information was not necessarily at your fingertips - decided that I wanted my own personal library. So for thirty years I assumed that once I got my own house then that would be that - I'd get all the books shelved and turn the house into a permanent biblio-fixture.

Strangely enough, while I do still have several thousand books that aren't going anywhere shelved all over the house, now that I am a homeowner for the first time I've kind of accelerated the pace of giving books away.

It's not many - a small box every few weeks - and it's not exactly unprecedented. I've given away hundreds of books over the past fifteen years, since my first big move. But I've never owned a house before, been able to put the shelves and books exactly where I wanted with no one (except perhaps structural engineers) to gainsay me, and I hadn't expected to keep purging once I did.

I don't have enough shelves, and I don't want to add any more shelves to the library room since it's not a ground floor, but it's not really a space issue. I can always get and fit more shelving. And sometimes I'll look at the giveaway box and think, "Why not keep them? When you've already got a few thousand, what difference will an extra dozen or two make?"

The best answer I can come up with is, while as counter-intuitive as they may have seemed to the pre-house owner me, I'm still getting rid of books because I'm a homeowner.

Not over space, not over crowding from shelves, but because now that I own a home I've been filling it in a permanent way with things that are meaningful to me. Along with books, things like family heirlooms, pictures I particularly like, and the odd bits here and there like favorite antiques and various types of replica weapons have been finding nooks and crannies in ways that they never could while I was renting. Since I'm optimistically assuming my home ownership status is permanent, I want the things around me to be that much more meaningful.

And some things - even books, I shudder to say - aren't quite making the cut. Things I lugged through ten moves over the last twenty-one years are going away, being fostered by the local Goodwill or Better World Books.

Maybe I'll miss some of them. I have replaced a handful of books I've given away over the years - though if I do any book replacing I'll be starting with the two hundred plus I ended up having to throw out due to mildew damage. One thing I can guarantee, though - one way or another, if you come to visit with me, you're still going to be surrounded by books.

( PROGRESS REPORT FOR 11/22-23/14 )

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Link Stew?

2014-11-21T02:25:49Z

Once upon a time there was a fellow named jaylake, and along with being an uber-prolific writer, even when the universe did all it could muster to stop him, he was also a prolific blogger. And among his prolific blogs were his Link Salad entries, in which he posted links for things he found either interesting or utterly atrocious. For Jay was a polymath who was interested in pretty much everything, and so his links were unfailingly broad, varied, and engaging. And so his Link Salad page because one of my all-time favorite things on Live Journal, if not the whole realm of the Internet.

I got to thinking about Jay, his blog, and Link Salad while I was speaking at the edu-blogging faculty discussion today. In fact I used Jay's blog as an example of everything an excellent blog could be. Link Salad came up during the part of the discussion about linking to other pages as part of your blog format. And I remembered - when I wasn't feeling a wee bit hypocritical for talking about blogging when I've done so little of my own lately - that I'd thought from time to time about doing my own version of Link Salad. But that I've always only done it now and again at best, and next to never at worst.

Which is strange, because I read a lot of articles online. I mean a lot. I'm not suffering for a lack of content I could provide, and much of it is interesting, at least to me. I don't know how well it would suit anyone else, but then that seems to be a pretty universal rule for blogging in general. At any rate, I'm thinking about doing it again.

But I'm hesitating. Jay did it so well and so regularly that I couldn't hope at all to follow in his footsteps even in this one small thing. But even doing it as my own thing, I'll admit that I am concerned that if I do it poorly, or let it fall by the wayside as I have in past years will, in a strange sort of way, be dishonoring his memory. At the very least I wouldn't call it "Link Salad" - that was his name. Maybe something similar enough, like Link Stew.

I can use this entry as a trial run, though. I have a handful of links sitting on my browser right now, and they look like the makings of a good small sampler. So starting with one I've already posted on Facebook and elsewhere, try these out and see what you think . . .

The Ten Thousand Chestnut Challenge. A little over a century after the Chestnut Blight came to America and almost completely drove the American Chestnut tree into extinction - a tree that numbered in the billions and was as widespread as oaks - SUNY-ESF has finally come up with a Blight-resistant Chestnut tree. Now they're asking for help with funding to plant 10,000 of these trees in the wild across the country. If you're able and would like to see the American Chestnut rise again, would you consider sending a bit of money their way?

67,000 Victorian Criminals. The Dorset History Centre has made these 67,000 19th century criminal records available for free and fun browsing - complete with photographs. Fun for writers, or general fans of the wicked, the wanton, and the wild.

Where to See the Oldest Artifacts in the World. Smithsonian Magazine's guide to ten sublimely ancient antiquities that you can see for yourself - including, as I was hoping, the Western world's oldest book.

The Fall of Facebook. Yeah, we'll see. I wouldn't count Facebook out just yet.

Childen helped make one of the world's oldest geoglyphs. I'm not sure how the archaeologists came to some of their conclusions here, but I'm buzzed just by the existence of a 6,000 year old geoglyph, and that children did seem to help make it.

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Scatterlights

2014-11-20T03:06:16Z

I don't really consider these highlights of what I've been up to lately, unless you call them scattered highlights. Since blogging seems to be practically impossible these days, though - ironically, I'm going to be doing a bit of public speaking about blogging tomorrow - I wanted to do some catching up if only in a small way.

Six months into my new life as a homeowner, I'm still working out the kinks of trying to do writing and house-related stuff in the same day. I've only managed it three times in recent weeks. Today, working on the house, was not one of those successfully joint days. Yesterday, writing chapter 20 of the For Fun Fantasy Novel, was also not one of those days. The fact that For Fun Fantasy Novel is for fun and is an experiment on several levels is enabling my bad segregation behavior. But I also know that when I get concentrating on something, that's the something I concentrate on for the time I have. When I write, I write till I'm done for the day. When I've been painting siding, organizing the still-unsettled parts of the house, raking the thirty million leaves from the forest surrounding me, or whathaveyou, then that is the something I work on until I'm done for the day.

I like to play with the fantasy that if I ever became a full-time writer, this would change and I could get it all worked in each day, as I'd have an extra eight hours a day to work with. I'm sure all the full-time writers I've known are laughing right now.

In other news, some fun at work has become a practical tool.

If you're reading this blog, you almost certainly know that I work at a college library. Well, two weeks ago today, one of the students (who also happens to work at the library) did a Makerspace presentation where she taught us how to make our own blackboards. I made the one you see in the picture above, minus the warning message. In the course of making it I half-joked that I ought to write the warning you see and place it on our main service desk where I sit at night. My boss happened to think this was a cute idea and gave me the OK to do it.

I thought I was just having fun. But lo and behold, overall the last two weeks at the library have been remarkably quiet.

We've put out signs asking people to be civil - or just outright asking them to keep the noise levels down. The signs are ignored, or occasionally moved out of sight by the people they're aimed at. We've asked people to keep the noise down, which generally works for about five minutes. Those and other measures have failed more often than not. But suddenly I threaten to write about people, and tranquility descends upon the library.

Who knew writers had so much power? The pen is mightier than the shush.

I've written here before that I have a hard time teaching writing because I've been doing it for so long, and it's become so ingrained in me, that when you want me to pin down how I do what I do, I'm not really sure. I've discovered this week that my literary uncertainty encompasses blogging too. One of the other librarians here was slated to co-host a faculty service discussion about educational blogging, and asked me if I wanted to participate. Without realizing at first how close blogging is to writing for me *cough*, I agreed without hesitation. Then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was as uncertain as to what I would say as I always am when someone asks me to talk about writing.

I was invited to participate this past Monday; the discussion is tomorrow afternoon. I'm still working out what I'll be saying. If this goes like many other writing-related discussions and classes I've been in, I won't know part of what I'll say until I actually get there and start talking. At any rate, my portions of the event will be interaction, best practices, guest blogging, maybe some process, that sort of thing. Which is why I thought this was ironic for me to be doing right now, since the process hasn't been happening a whole lot lately.

But who knows? Maybe I'll inadvertently reinvigorate myself my blogging by doing this.

The aforementioned For Fun Fantasy Novel, No Word in Death's Favor, is closing in on 100,000 words, and only about three-quarters done, so it's a pretty darn good thing that I've almost got myself convinced that I'm not paying attention to word count this time around. I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo, though I have been keeping a November word count, just because I'm a little obsessive that way.

( PROGRESS REPORT FOR 11/18/14 )

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Appreciate The Ones You Don't Know As Well

2014-11-06T23:11:38Z

Yesterday a campus e-mail went out announcing the sad news of the sudden death the night before of our head swimming coach here at Ferrum College, Tom Calomeris. I regret that I didn't get to know him very well. But he was a library regular - at least once a week he would come in to check out movies and sometimes books. He would always smile. He would always chat with me for a few minutes while he was here. There are a lot of people here who knew him a lot better than I did, so I was surprised when I realized how much I was going to miss seeing him around.

It never surprises me when I miss people I was close to for a long time, of course, and how much time can pass before I stop expecting to see them around the corner, or when I keep thinking of things I want to tell them. It doesn't surprise me how much I can miss people I never met in person but knew online for years, especially when those people died decades before there time, like our losing Jay Lake and Eugie Foster this year. But after I got over being knocked off guard realizing that I would miss someone I didn't know nearly as well as I should have, something obvious occurred to me that I'm ashamed of myself for not thinking of before.

It also occurred to me yesterday, and has bothered me ever since, that Coach Calomeris was almost always the one to say "Good to see you" first whenever he came to the library.

There are a lot of people and things out there telling you not to take your loved ones for granted. And those are great, and should be out there, because sometimes we do need reminders of that. But I don't know if there's anywhere out there reminding you to appreciate the ones you don't know as well. The co-worker in a different department. That customer who comes in now and again who always has something nice to say to or about you. The particular clerk at the store whose line you always want to get into. The mail carrier who leaves a card in your box on holidays. The owner of your favorite store or restaurant, the waitress who sneaks you a little extra onto your plate, the barrista who remembers exactly how you take your drink. And heck, maybe the librarian who always has a pretty good idea of what to recommend to you when you're looking for a new book or movie.

So this is that message. While you're remembering not to take your loved ones for granted and to make sure you tell them how much they mean to you, don't forget the people you interact with every day that you may hardly know, but make your life a little better for being there. Maybe not a big expression of emotion. But say something nice back to them, add a little to the tip, leave a card for your mail carrier too. Tell them first that it's good to see them.

Appreciation. When you get right down to it, it does just as much for ourselves as for the people we show it to.

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Silence Your Brain, Or Ramp It Up

2014-10-02T03:34:00Z

A few weeks ago Laurie wanted to attend a Quakers meeting and asked me if I'd like to come along. I did, having been interested in the Quakers for a long time but never having attended one of their meetings - I am curious if nothing else, and that was a good enough reason for me. Plus I suspected I might get a lot out of it. And also, the meeting house is an hour away when you hit all the green lights (in Roanoke, Virginia to be specific) and I work most Sundays, so there was no telling when I might ever make it back there. So off we went.

I left half-an-hour early in case there were traffic issues, of which there were none, meaning we had a half-hour to walk up and down the street the meeting house was on - a street filled with brightly painted Victorian and Edwardian houses. I hadn't thought to bring a camera but my cell phone was good enough to take a couple dozen pictures. I went to the meeting in a good, calm frame of mind. That doesn't mean my mind was quiet. But then, it rarely is.

For those who don't know, Quaker meetings don't follow the traditional pattern of Christian services. There is no sermon, no singing, no passing of the tithe plate. There is, however, a great deal of silence. The people who speak are the ones who are motivated to stand and speak - which can be anyone attending. During the hour Laurie and I were there, three people spoke, lasting a total of about five minutes. The rest was quiet, leaving people to their own thoughts, or meditation, or listening for the still small voice of God, or simply trying to clear their mind. And that was the time in which I discovered that silencing my mind is a lot harder than I thought.

This isn't the first time I've discovered this, by any means. I've always been a daydreamer, or had things running through my head, however you want to look at it. In school as a kid (and sometimes older), in church (ditto), taking walks, even when reading or watching TV. Something is always going on in my brain; as often as not it's a story idea. During times when I was supposed to be meditating, or doing yoga, I didn't have much luck clamping down on my mental livestreaming. Within the first two or three minutes of silence among the Quakers, my brain was automatically playing out the next two chapters of No Word in Death's Favor.

This time I thought I would be prepared. I was going to be in a good, calm, relaxing place. So how could I not keep my brain silent for that little while? But what I didn't realize until I got there was that running like a river under the silence was a palpable intensity of feeling and emotion. I might as well have been in a church where the sermonizing was powerful and the music loud, and all of it right in front of me. I certainly wasn't going to have any luck keeping my mind quiet. But at that point I decided this really wasn't necessary.

At least not at that moment. Sooner or later there is likely going to come a time where I just need to stop thinking, even if it's only so I can get to sleep. But being at the Quaker meeting made me decide that it's not shushing my brain that's needful. The energy is going to be there; I should just put it to good use as long as it's going to insist on running around like a wet toddler escaping the bathtub anyway.

It seems to me that the problem has been that I'm trying to tone down my thoughts or eliminate the thinking entirely. That plainly hasn't worked. Instead, what seems to work better is when I ramp up whatever is going through my head. This sounds counter-intuitive, but so far I've had some success with it. What I have to do is be a lot more selective about what I'm ramping up - or understand that I'll just let this thought have reign for a little while. If a thought is distracting me or it's depressive, not anything I really want to be dealing with, I let it get itself out for a few moments and then I pull a bait-and-switch on it. I wish I could be less vague but I'm still figuring out exactly how the process works. All I can do at the moment is liken it to telling it, "All right, you've done your screaming. Now let's move on to something else."

This doesn't always work, of course. Some thoughts - especially the depressive ones - are incredibly tenacious no matter what I've tried. Those I usually have to ride out - or I find something else to distract myself with. But as I go I'm starting to catalog things to switch over that I already know have power enough to get me concentrating on them instead. Even if I can't knock down a thought process I don't want, I can dilute it.

I'm still working on the complete silence part. The farthest along I've gotten there is muted background thoughts accompanied by quiet music.

In the meantime, and since I haven't done this for awhile, here's a Progress Report on something that's been claiming a lot of my brain time lately.

( PROGRESS REPORT FOR 9/30/14 )

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