Confessions of a Laundry Faerie

A mysterious intruder

2012-02-11T21:37:00.001-08:00

Something small and blue has been running loose in our house this evening.

It's far too fast for us to catch, however.

So we got smart, held very still, primed the camera and waited...

After some time and patience, here's what we got.

It seems we have a small cerulean simian on the premises. This would explain why all the bananas have been disappearing.

The Blue Monkey Project, part 3

2012-02-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

Hint #3:

Fluff. Lots and lots of fluff.

Bonus hint: this entire project is being created with items from my considerable stash o' stuff.

BUT WHAT CAN IT BE?!? you ask. And well may you ask, 'cause I'm not answering yet. (Muahaha.)

The Blue Monkey Project, part 2

2012-02-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

Hint #2:

A tapestry needle and some black embroidery floss.

The Blue Monkey Project

2012-02-09T13:57:00.002-08:00

Hint #1:

A ball of thrift store yarn and a small crochet hook.

Stay tuned.

The face of human evil

2012-02-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

There are several good reasons why I rarely discuss news or talk explicitly about religion on this blog. I know that discussions of current events stay fresh about as long as an order of sashimi, and although I have very definite religious beliefs, I've largely held off sharing some of the things that are closest to my heart.

But there are times when I've got to say what must be said. This is one of those times.

I'm not going to rehash the entire saga of the Powell family, nor the increasingly bizarre turns the story has taken since Susan Powell first went missing in 2009. But the most recent news -- that her husband Josh Powell, the only person of interest in the case, appears to have killed both himself and his two young sons in a horrifying act of self-immolation on Sunday -- needs to be addressed.

Police are still gathering evidence to prove that the three bodies found inside the charred remains of the house in Graham are indeed Powell and his boys Charlie and Braden, but I'm going to go wayyy out on a limb here and assume that's precisely what they'll find. At this point, any lingering questions anyone might have about Josh Powell's involvement in his wife's disappearance/death should be blown away in the wake of his own fiery destruction.

A social worker who was supposed to supervise Powell's visit with his sons said that once the boys, ages 7 and 5, had entered the house, Powell pushed her away, shut the door in her face and locked her out. She called her supervisors to report what had happened and stated that she could smell gas -- and then the house exploded.

Before the explosion and fire took place, Powell sent a three-word email to his lawyer: "I'm sorry. Goodbye."

At this point you cannot convince me that Josh Powell didn't know precisely what he was doing. You may say there is evidence to suggest that he was brought up by a pedophile, but that is merely a contributing factor to his behavior; it doesn't explain or justify anything he did. No one can justify his actions by saying he was a sick man; the only time sickness is a valid excuse is when the sick person is trying to get better, and there is no indication Josh Powell was making any attempt to get rid of the evil festering inside him like a cancer. And yes, I feel perfectly justified in calling this an act of evil. A man who kills his own wife and dumps her body, gives the police a ludicrous alibi, moves out of state to avoid the investigation, then deliberately destroys his sons and himself after he loses custody of his children -- if you can't call these actions evil, can you identify anything at all as evil?

Events like this also cement in my mind a fierce need for an afterlife and a God of justice and rational action. If there were no such God and no afterlife -- no paradise or prison, no heaven or hell -- there would be no chance for justice to be served in cases like this one. Powell would never pay for any of the cruel and murderous acts he accomplished, and the lives of his two innocent sons would be short, meaningless and punctuated by an excruciating fiery death. Could you live with that kind of perpetual injustice? Because I can't. I need to take consolation from the belief that when unpunished and unpunishable acts of injustice take place in this world, there is a promise of perfect justice to be meted out in a world beyond this. I need to have the faith that those two young boys and their missing mother are together in a place of light, and that the man who callously destroyed their lives and devastated their families is wretchedly alone in a place of darkness. I don't demand the impossible -- that this life always be fair -- as long as my heart holds the understanding that eventually, all will be dealt with fairly and justly. You may call that a crutch if you like, but it's a crutch that keeps my heart from becoming bitter and furious in the face of so much human evil. Crutches, after all, help us heal.

To vlog or not to vlog? No question.

2012-02-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

I have this brother named Tim. (You may have heard of him.) A while back, for reasons which now escape me, Tim was urging me to make some video blogs and put them up on YouTube or something similar.

My gut response to this suggestion was something along the lines of "Oh HELL no."

There's a good reason why I always prefer to write or speak rather than appear on film. During family reunions, when we make goofy renditions of various fairy tales, I usually contrive to be the narrator or the screenwriter or some other role that requires me to be off-camera 95% of the time. When my sister Julie made an art book with cut-paper images of family and friends, I didn't appear in it because I couldn't provide a halfway decent photograph of me for reference material. I have been known to dive wildly behind the couch or flee the room to avoid being photographed by a still camera, let alone a video camera. All this because I have a face (and body) made for radio. Seeing myself on film is painful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to terrorize you if you come across me in a dark alley or anything, but I'm also not going to win any beauty contests any time soon. And I'm not masochistic enough to subject myself to the sub-literate ridicule of 13-year-old boys worldwide by putting my pasty face and blubbery body on display online.

Just to verify that what I've said here still holds true, though, I made a few experimental video clips this week of me sitting in my computer chair and holding forth for a few minutes on any subject that came to mind. Replaying each one was torture. My voice isn't too bad, but I look like a double-chinned dead fish on camera. Plus I have all sorts of visual tics: my eyes wander, I scratch my nose, flip my hair out of my face, pick at my teeth. Gahh. Just shoot me now. (They were all promptly deleted.)

So, Tim, I love you and all that, but after some deep cogitation on the subject: HELL NO.

My own van Gogh list

2012-01-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

OK, as promised, here's my first crack at a van Gogh list. I've winnowed it down to 20 people, mostly to keep from trying your patience -- it could have been much longer. This list contains all manner of folk: teachers, writers, actors, artists, comedians, kindred spirits. Some of them you may recognize; others you probably won't. All are, to my way of thinking, amazing in some way -- and sometimes in several ways.

If you feel inclined, you are certainly encouraged to make your own van Gogh list -- but first, a few rules of engagement:

1) No family members. If your folks don't already know how awesome you think they are, quit being a dirtbag and go tell 'em so. (Right now, if necessary. I'll wait.)
2) No dead people. Do your best to make sure the people on your list are still kicking, at least at time of publication; the point of this exercise is to show appreciation for the living.
3) No deities, please. I'm religious myself and have no problems with worship, but that's what prayer is for. This list is for mere mortals.
4) No fictional characters. Even if Frodo Baggins does seem more real to you than your co-workers, he doesn't really care what you have to say about him. Sorry.

That's about all the caveats I can think of... so now, on to

Soozcat's van Gogh List

(in alphabetical order by surname because, hey, blessed rage for order, pale Ramón!)

Ray Bradbury
(photo credit: Alan Light, Creative Commons)

There are many reasons to idolize Ray Bradbury. Of course, there's his fiction -- he is principally a master of the short story, and his Martian tales, Elliot family stories, and idealized youth experiences bound together as Dandelion Wine are like delicious live coals in the brain, glowing with life and full of burning poetry. On a personal note, I'm indebted to Ray Bradbury for revealing that authors actually get paid to write; after this epiphany, which came around age 11, my fate was pretty much sealed. At the time of this writing Mr. Bradbury is coming up on 92 years, but I fully expect him to live forever, just as Mr. Electrico once promised.

Wesley B. Carter
(photo credit: Mark Snyder)

Wes is one of my longest-running friends. We met in high school, where we did a lot of walking and talking, hanging out, goofing off, stealing flowers from public places in the middle of the night, swapping books and wondering aloud about various mental mysteries. Wes is talented at nearly everything he sets his mind to doing, whether it's painting, drawing, costuming, ornamental horticulture, gourmet cooking or crochet. He has that mellifluous talent, rare among friends, of being able to pick up more or less where we left off; no matter how long it's been since we last spoke, within five minutes it seems like it's been no time at all. He has not forgotten the dying art of the handwritten letter. In addition to being thoughtful, he's also extremely loyal and forgiving of past injuries, including one that would have destroyed a lesser friendship. (Plus he is secretly Harry Potter.)

Tara Larsen Chang
(photo credit: Tara Larsen Chang)

First and foremost, Tara was a good friend and kindred spirit. Over time I discovered, through the many little handmade gifts and notes she tends to share so generously, that she was also a talented artist and illustrator. She is constantly seeking to improve her talents, has a gift for growing things, a knack for finding the most magical hidden nooks and crannies in a city or town, and (as can be observed in the photo above) shares my enthusiasm for all things steampunk.

Annie Dillard
(photo credit: Phyllis Rose)

If you don't think the essay format can match or beat fiction for intensity, read A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard neatly demonstrates that the power of a specific genre is subservient to an individual author's talent for storytelling. I admire her writing not just for its attention to detail, but for her ability to choose precisely the right detail for the story, and she proves that writing about everyday life observation can be mind-blowing.

Fen Eatough
(photo credit: Mitch Eatough)

I've known Fen longer than I've known my husband; it was, in fact, thanks to Fen's BBS that I met Captain Midnight in the first place. She's a talented writer, a voracious reader, fun-loving, thoughtful, generous of spirit, fond of pointing out the surreal in everyday life, unabashedly passionate about the things she loves, and one of my most loyal friends. My family considers her and her hubby to be extended family (Miss V regularly refers to Mitch as "my favorite uncle"), which almost knocks her off this list thanks to Rule #1.

David Lance Goines
(photo credit: David Lance Goines)

The legitimate successor to Alphonse Mucha, William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Japanese woodblock printers (not to mention the owner and maintainer of an epic 'stache), David Goines demolishes the notion that there is or should be a definable line between fine art and illustration; his work proves by example that good illustration IS art. If you haven't looked up his poster work yet, best get crackin'.

Joel Grey
(publicity photo; photographer unknown)

Mr. Grey is a tremendously charismatic actor, singer and dancer. Just recently I discovered he's also a skilled photographer. (Next I expect to find out that he speaks fluent Swahili, paints in oils and plays the clarinet. What can this man NOT do?) He has successfully pulled off a wide range of characterizations from charming to chilling -- sometimes both charming and chilling at once. In my opinion, tragically underutilized by Hollywood since his creepily unforgettable performance in Cabaret won him an Oscar.

Jeffrey R. Holland
(photo credit: lds.org)

You probably won't know who this man is unless you happen to be a Mormon, but he deserves wider renown for his thoughtful writing, subtle humor and well-spoken commentary on religious topics. When he appears during LDS General Conference or as a speaker in other meetings, I tend to cheer aloud; his particular thought processes and his felicitous method of expressing them are second to none. Plus he and his wife Patricia used to put on a great set of tag-team talks known as "The Pat and Jeff Show" back when he was president of BYU.

James Lileks
(photo credit: unknown)

In top form, Mr. Lileks is hi-frickin'-larious; he has a gift for zeroing in on the odd, the random and the inexplicable in 20th century American pop culture and merrily toasting it from orbit. His weekday blog, The Bleat (which he denigrates as "dashed-off tripe"), is filled with nuggets of pop-culture trivia that infomaniacs like me eat up with a spoon, and his writing runs the gamut from hysterical to remarkably touching. Why this man isn't nationally known, when humorists far less funny than he have achieved household recognition, is frankly a modern mystery.

Carrie Ormsby
(photo credit: Carrie Ormsby)

Carrie and I met in college, before she started dating her Mr. Wonderful. We quickly discovered we were kindred spirits. Carrie shares a love for good movies and good books, is a fantastic cook, has a beautiful singing voice, and has the generosity of spirit to share her gifts with others. In the past few years she has returned to school and is preparing to astound the world as a speech language pathologist. Like Fen, she also runs the ragged edge of being disqualified from the van Gogh list thanks to Rule #1, since Captain Midnight and I were deemed worthy to be adopted into the Ormsby family many years ago.

Gretel Parker
(photo credit: Andy Macauley)

This blog is titled "Confessions of a Laundry Faerie" because I needed a public blog to join the Society of Secret Fairies, a short-lived but wonderful experiment in mysterious gift-giving, back in 2006. One of my first SOSF parcel exchanges was with Gretel, an English artist living in the Cotswolds. In addition to her evocative, melancholy paintings of well-loved and forgotten toys, Gretel creates beautiful paper-cut cards and limited-edition prints, takes wonderful photos of her neck of the woods, and maintains a couple of great slice-of-life blogs. She's also become known for her handmade needle-felted toys, one of which appears in the photo above. Gretel kindly encouraged this blog when it was new. We got to chatting back and forth in email, and when Captain Midnight and I finally went to England we took a day trip to visit her and Andy. It was easily the highlight of our stay. I'm so pleased to have discovered her work, and I'm proud to call her a friend.

J.K. Rowling
(photo credit: Steven J. Hill, Creative Commons)

Do you really need me to explain why I think this woman is amazing? Have you been living in a cave since 1997?

Jenny Ruhl
(photo credit: Jenny Ruhl)

We don't know each other, but this woman has quite possibly saved my life.
Diabetes is our family curse. Complications from type 2 diabetes killed my maternal aunt at age 57, and have done serious damage to my mother's health. Last year the disease finally caught up to me. Days after I was diagnosed, I discovered Ms. Ruhl's website, Blood Sugar 101: What They Don't Tell You About Diabetes. Her analysis of numerous diabetic research studies, ability to point out the difference between studies with good and bad methodology, and patient work accreting the experiences of hundreds of diabetics online have helped many people stay as healthy as possible with a chronic, incurable disease. (After reading the site, and on the advice of my doctor, I took a diabetic nutrition class; when the nurse handed out bad information about "healthy" blood sugar numbers, I immediately called her on it. To her credit, she admitted I was correct.) Thanks wholly to Ms. Ruhl's advice about eating to one's blood monitor, I've kept my A1Cs in non-diabetic ranges since shortly after I was diagnosed. If you are diabetic, go ye and do likewise.

Michael Rutter
(photo credit: Michael Rutter)

I tend to quote randomly from poems (including Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West") thanks to Mr. Rutter, the creative writing teacher at Provo High School -- though his class really should have been titled Poetry Appreciation. He had a reputation among the students for being crazily intense, so that on my first day of class I was a little cowed by him -- but that passed. Through example he fostered a love for T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens, a greater appreciation for Emily Dickinson, and he thoroughly cemented in our heads the notion that you must divorce your writing from your ego if you ever want to rise above mediocrity as a writer. And during a time when I needed encouragement in most areas of life, he told me he believed I had a future career in writing. Thanks, Rutter.

Jon Schmidt
(photo credit: The Piano Guys)

As I've written before, there are many piano performers -- but this man is the only one I know of who truly plays the piano. I can't say that he makes it look easy; rather, his obvious enthusiasm makes the effort required to play at this level look worth it. (The image above is a still taken from a video where he's in the middle of performing a piece; that is the face of a man doing what he was born to do.) He and his cello-playing cohort Steven Sharp Nelson, along with the other members of The Piano Guys, are doing some amazing things on YouTube these days -- not least among which is proving the concept that an independent musician can make a decent living online without signing away distribution rights to his own work. You should go there. You should go there NOW.

Ms. Shore

I wish I could give you more information about Ms. Shore, second grade teacher at El Monte Elementary in Concord, California circa 1976. She was the right teacher at the right time, probably for many of her students, but especially for me. I was a precocious, awkward six-year-old who had learned to read before I entered kindergarten and my teachers didn't really know what to do with me; during reading time, they usually punted me to the library, where I discovered plenty of great books but wasn't learning the social skills I so desperately needed. Ms. Shore, by contrast, took advantage of my early-reader status by getting me to peer-tutor other kids, excusing me from class to read aloud to the kindergartners ("...but Drummer Hoff fired it off!"), introducing me to the Chronicles of Narnia and encouraging me to write. I remember few specifics of the things I was taught in second grade, but I will always remember and appreciate the teacher who cared about me as a person and wanted me to succeed. Sadly, she's the only person on this list I haven't been able to find online; I imagine her surname has probably changed since the Bicentennial.

Linda Stuurman
(photo credit: unknown tourists)

You know Linda pretty much had to be on the van Gogh list, as she is Dutch by birth. (And as we know, you ain't much if you ain't Dutch.) I've only known Linda a few years, but in that time I've been continually impressed by her application of talent, her zest for challenges and her incredible drive to succeed. Linda can do hard things, and do them well. She has managed to keep more balls in the air than I would have thought possible, running a major fansite, holding down a job and earning a second bachelor's degree on a highly compressed schedule all at once. She's also an ardent cyclist who will some day move to San Francisco to ride her bike all up and down its hills. I'm convinced she can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to doing.

Mack Wilberg
(photo credit: Pete Wright, Creative Commons)

If you've heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform any time in the last few years, you've witnessed the handiwork of Mack Wilberg. His original compositions, inspiring arrangements of familiar hymns and songs, and powerful direction make the Choir what it is today. I've been a fan of his work since the late 1980s, when I used to sit way in the back of the class and listen to the BYU Men's Chorus practice, and he just keeps getting better. Plus, he seems to be on a one-man crusade to ensure that "Come, Thou Fount of Ev'ry Blessing" makes it back into the LDS Hymnal, based on his joyous arrangement (and the Choir's frequent performance) of this hymn.

Robin Williams
(publicity photo; photographer unknown)

Yeah, I've written about him before. If you think he only does wacky comedy, go see One Hour Photo. You will be thoroughly creeped out, yet unable to look away (and left wondering why this movie didn't get at least an Oscar nomination).

James L. Wright, Jr.
(photo credit: Marie Case Wright)

Jim is a man of many abilities, not the least of which is something I could never do in a million years: stand-up comedy. He's successfully done family-friendly routines before a clean and sober crowd -- one of the hardest groups to please in comedy -- and made them laugh. If anything he's even funnier in person, with a wit that tends to manifest unexpectedly and send everyone into paroxysms of involuntary beverage snorting. His appreciation for Korean cuisine made me curious to try the food he once described as "not user friendly" (but soooooo gooooood, omnomnom). He's also a talented author, and I wish he had more time and inclination to write short stories; the reading public is missing out. And, of course, he's a good friend.

[IMAGE COPYRIGHT NOTE: Before posting this list, I made a good faith effort to obtain permission to use all photos strictly for illustrative purposes, or have used Creative Commons-licensed images; if you would like to create and illustrate your own van Gogh list, please do the right thing and get appropriate permission to use any copyrighted images. Also, I have no desire to violate anyone else's copyright -- so if I've inadvertently used your copyrighted photo above and you would like to be credited for it, or if you'd prefer to have it removed, please let me know.]

The van Gogh list

2012-01-21T08:35:00.000-08:00

So I have a Twitter account. Most of the time I use it to shamelessly plug new items in my Etsy store or let people know that something's been posted here. While the preponderance of Tweets (including my own) are meaningless blather, Twitter is somewhat worth watching because it reveals where the public interest is focused at any given time.

Yesterday, a few days short of her 74th birthday, blues singer Etta James passed away of leukemia. Suddenly her name, and the names of songs she had sung, were plastered all over the Trending Topics list; people across the nation and the world mourned her passing in 140 characters or less. And as I looked over these many appreciative comments, I thought to myself, "Self, what is wrong with this picture?" Of course Etta James did have her fans and supporters during her lifetime, but isn't it sad to see people speaking so thoughtfully of her and publicly championing her music when she's no longer around to appreciate it? And Etta James is scarcely the only one. Why do people like Eva Cassidy, Emily Dickinson, or for that matter Stieg Larsson receive praise for their creative output only after they've left the building?

One of the ultimate artists to become larger than life after his death was Vincent van Gogh. His paintings have become so prized that in recent years people with more money than sense have been writing out certified checks to the order of Christie's or Sotheby's for CRAZYBATGUANOINSANE dollars just to own one, yet van Gogh himself lived in poverty and died in obscurity. As far as we know, he sold only a single painting during his lifetime. The millions that people are now willing to pay for his art do him little good, and his reported last words -- "The sadness will last forever" -- continue to haunt fans of his work.

You know what? That's not right. I think we ought to do something to fix that.

Much has been said in recent years about the "bucket list" -- a list of things you want to achieve in your lifetime before you kick the bucket -- but maybe we ought to consider making another kind of list. I'd call it the van Gogh list: a list of living people, whether famous or obscure, whose work you admire greatly and whose deaths you would feel most keenly. The way I figure it, if you appreciate these people, why not let them know now while they still have time to enjoy the kindness? Better to throw them a great party today than hold a great wake tomorrow.

Do I have a van Gogh list? You betcha. More on that later.

Unseen (part 22)

2012-01-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

It's easy to travel light when nobody knows you exist. I don't carry food or bedding, since I tend to gather both as I need them. I didn't use money growing up in Corey, and rarely see the point of carrying it even now. I don't need keys or a flashlight as long as I have the knack. So my ratty old backpack is more than roomy enough for the few items I do carry: two changes of clothing, one of them a dress lifted from someone's clothesline; a tin drinking cup from a military surplus store; a zippered bag containing a toothbrush, a hairbrush and a bar of soap; a discarded Leatherman tool with the knife blade partially broken off, but otherwise useful.

Then there are the two other things.

Although I try to make sure I don't look like I have anything worth stealing, I've had the occasional run-ins with pickpockets. They're easy to avoid in large crowds, because they're stupid enough to broadcast their thoughts and because I can blend into a crowd so completely that they'll never find me. But streets like this one -- dark, mostly deserted, shrouded in patches of fog -- present more of a challenge.

And the three would-be pickpockets behind me, who have tailed me for about a block and a half, are slowly gaining on me. I know they have designs on my backpack, and I also know they're not going to get it.

I know how the scam works. They send their newest guy out to jog up beside me and ask questions about a nonexistent address he's trying to find; he provides the distraction his buddies need to loot my backpack and beat feet. Calling the police would be out of the question even if there were any around, and I can't possibly take on three guys half my age and win. So at the moment I'm trying to decide how best to disappear.

"Excuse me? Ma'am?"

Ignoring my fluttering heartbeat, I keep walking steadily, firmly, swallowing the urge to speed up. I must not show fear. A botched pickpocketing can easily turn into a mugging.

"I'm sorry, ma'am? Lady?"

His voice cracks on the last word; he's younger than I thought. This must be his first time out pickpocketing, and he's not doing very well in front of his friends. But his lack of experience makes him dangerously unpredictable; he might try anything in an effort to impress them, and I don't want to find out how inventive he is.

There's a gathering patch of fog ahead of me. It's not much, but it'll have to do; the kid is coming up fast. I turn suddenly and look out into the street, over their heads, and I gasp and point out into thin air. Just as I'd hoped, their eyes all follow the direction my finger is pointing -- and as they do, I hold my breath, gather up an edge of the fog and fold myself into it like a cloak, and duck back into a doorway.

Moments pass. One of the pickpockets swears under his breath.

"Wait, where'd she go?" says the youngest.

"Your face musta scared her off, man," says another voice. "Toldja you were too ugly for this job."

"But she was right next to me," the youngest insists, a little petulantly.

"That was weird," says a third voice. And then, teasingly, "Hey, maybe she wasn't real. Maybe she was a ghooooost."

"Shut up, man!"

"It's too dead around here, anyway. We should try over by the Cinemark."

I hold very still, focusing on the breath charm, and they pass by, still teasing and arguing.

If they'd wanted my soap or my Leatherman tool, I would have handed it over. But I can't afford to lose the two other things in my backpack. One of them is my commonplace-book. I've been writing in it nearly every day, for some reason. The other is in the bottom of the backpack, wrapped and tied neatly in white linen, and I'd sooner give up my right arm than let anyone take it away from me.

Snowpocalypse: 2012 edition

2012-01-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

OK, I lived in Utah for many years. I do know what a snowstorm is supposed to look like.

And this ain't it. This is a pretty picture postcard snowfall. But that doesn't stop me from worrying about Captain Midnight and Miss V and others who are currently at work and school, because I've also lived in western Washington for a few years now and I've learned the mitigating circumstances at work here:

1) Snow density. This is not the fresh, light powder of The Greatest Snow On Earth. This is the heavy, wet snow known semi-affectionately as Cascade Cement. Give it a few hours at freezing temperatures and it welds itself into an ice sheet, which makes for fun driving and even more fun shoveling. Which leads us to:
2) Snow removal. There seems to be one snowplow in use to cover the entire 2,134 square miles of our county, which means snow removal is handled by triage. Freeways and state routes get plowed, and frequently-used routes turn the texture of Slurpees, but everything else starts out messy and just gets worse as time goes on.
3) Sheer ignorance. At least in Utah the only people who don't know how to drive in snow are out-of-state students. Conversely, NO ONE IN WESTERN WASHINGTON KNOWS HOW TO DRIVE IN SNOWY CONDITIONS. That's true whether you're a little old lady going 5 mph on the 405, or some dude passing her at 70 mph who thinks his big black SUV makes him immune to Newton's laws. (Hint: you're both going to get in a wreck, and frankly you both deserve it.) Precious few drivers carry anything that might help get them safely through icy conditions, such as tire chains, salt or sand. And even if you're prepared and knowledgeable, attempting to get through to your chosen destination may be impossible due to the sheer number of wrecks and crashes blocking every possible route. If you manage somehow to get to the freeway on-ramp without having someone else block your way or skid into you, you get to enjoy 3+ hours of parking-lot goodness as every commuter in the county crawls slowly toward home, rubbernecking at each and every fender-bender along the way.

So, yeah. Snow's very pretty and all, but I hope my family gets home safe before the predicted follow-up storm that's supposed to happen tonight.

The status is not quo

2012-01-09T22:53:00.000-08:00

There is something you must know about me, and it is this: I am a creature of habit. Novelty is all very well and good in small doses, but eventually I flee to the familiar. Given my druthers, I tweak things until they reach a point where I'm comfortable, then I settle down and stay put.

Software programmers apparently hate people like me. Their target market seems to be people who constantly crave the latest thing, the shiny and new. Trouble is, by pleasing one part of their market they anger another part -- the people who just want things to work the way they're supposed to.

Why do I mention this? Well, it looks like Blogger broke my old, perfectly serviceable blog template. Call it a little gift for the New Year. I tried copying the old one and pasting it back in, and got a meaningless cascade of curly-bracket salad instead of a blog. Grrr.

So if things look a little different around here, it's not by my choice, believe me. Mutta mutta.

Unseen (part 21)

2011-12-30T10:45:00.000-08:00

Keefe waited, looking at me expectantly.

"I -- I'm so sorry," I finally stuttered out. "I j-just had an idea and there was no paper handy, so I used your book. I'm really -- I didn't mean to leave it like that--"

"Oh, no, it's all right," Keefe said. "Sometimes I'll write in my own books. But what does it mean?" His eyes dropped to the page again. "'What service does Mrs. Townley do for Corey?'" he read aloud.

He knew the name of our town. Without even trying, I had violated the most basic of the Public Niceties. All the myriad warnings I'd learned from childhood on babbled together in my head, and a rush of guilt made the ice cream curdle in my stomach. How was I going to get out of this? I had to create a quick, believable lie. But the more time I spent with Keefe, the harder it was becoming to lie to him. Instead I found myself saying the first thing that popped into my head, which was the truth.

"I'd been reading 'The Purloined Letter' and it gave me an idea," I said. "And sometimes I forget ideas unless I write them down. So I just wrote it as quickly as I could."

"An idea?" asked Keefe. "Like for a story?"

A story. That was it. I grabbed hold of Keefe's innocent suggestion and ran with it. "Yes!" I said. "Exactly. An idea for a story."

"You didn't tell me you were a writer," Keefe smiled. "So what's it about?"

"Well," I said, stalling for time, "it's not finished yet..." And at that moment it hit me: I didn't have to lie to Keefe. I just had to tell him the truth as though it were fiction. "But it's a story about a little town called Corey," I went on. "It's the sort of place that's hidden in plain sight. Not even the people who live in the towns nearby know that it's there." I paused for a moment, wondering how much I should reveal, but Keefe seemed fascinated. I went on. "And the people of Corey are hidden because... well, because they're special. They have unusual gifts and talents that most other people don't have -- or, or maybe don't know how to use."

Keefe's eyes were glued to mine. "What kinds of gifts?" he asked softly.

His obvious interest spurred me on. "Oh, things like... well, they can heal people with a touch. Or they can draw and send objects -- you know, move them around just by thinking about it." I began to think of all the various ways we used the knack. "And they can speak to each other, mind to mind, without saying a word, and they can communicate with certain animals, and shape the weather, and create things, and -- and -- and they can fly," I finished, a little bashful at how he was going to receive all this.

I needn't have worried. Keefe's mind lit up with successive delight at each new description, and it was illuminated like the sun when I mentioned flying. "Sounds... magical," he said, a little wistfully. "I'd love living in a place like that."

"Well, yeah, but it's not all perfect. They do have to keep their gifts secret from other people," I said. "I mean, imagine how it would be if outsiders saw them doing all these things."

Keefe nodded. "I suppose some people wouldn't understand," he murmured.

"Exactly!" I pressed on, suddenly keen to share more. "Anyway, they don't have jobs, really, in this town. Instead it works kind of like a big extended family. They all contribute by doing service for each other. As people grow up they discover what their particular talents are, and they offer those talents as a service to everyone else. But there's one woman in town who doesn't seem to do any service for others, and it's up to the main character to figure out why."

"Hmm," Keefe said, and then a puckish grin broke over his face. "Maybe she secretly rules the town?"

"Oh, well, I dunno. I haven't gotten that far yet," I said. "But... does it sound like a good idea for a story?"

"Are you kidding? It sounds fantastic," said Keefe. "I'd read it right now if you had a copy."

The ability to talk to an outsider about Corey, even under the guise of fiction, coupled with Keefe smiling at me gave me a dizzy feeling of euphoria. I desperately wished I could tell him more. In truth, I wished I could take him on a long walk and show him every bit of the knack I possessed. I wanted to know what he'd do as I whispered the nature of his innermost thoughts to him, I wanted to discover how he'd react when I caused the rain to bend softly around us and keep us dry, and more than anything I wanted to know the wonder in his mind as I rose up into the air before him, perhaps drawing him up to me so that he could see the things I saw, in the skies high above Corey. I could tell how deeply he wished for flight, and I knew it was something I could make come true so easily. If only it weren't forbidden.

"I've never told anyone about this story before," I said, twisting a strand of hair. "Actually, I've never tried to write a story before. You're the first to know."

"I'm honored," said Keefe. "Will you promise to tell me how it goes?"

I nodded. "If you like," I said.

"I'd like that very much."

"Just promise me you won't tell anyone about it," I added, as an afterthought. "It's really not ready to share yet."

Keefe made a gesture I didn't recognize. "Scout's honor," he said. And I knew he wouldn't; it was all there in his head.

We kept talking right down into the dusk of the evening, before I finally looked up and saw the first stars appearing in the sky.

"Wait, what time is it?" I gasped.

Keefe looked at his watch. "Going on eight-thirty," he said.

I'd stayed far later than I'd planned. Someone was going to notice I was gone. "I'm sorry, but I have to go home," I said. "Right now. Where's the bike?" And I scrambled out of my chair, intent on fetching Mum's bike out of the back of Keefe's truck.

For a little while, Keefe didn't move -- merely sat and watched me from the table. But from the growing storminess of his mind, I could tell he was upset about something. When I looked up again, he was standing beside the truck bed.

"Would you please tell me why you don't want me to know where you live?" he blurted out.

I stopped, looking down at him, genuinely surprised at the hurt and frustration I saw there. "What?"

"I don't think I've done anything to break your trust," he said. "I've tried my best to be a gentleman. And yet you're ready to run off on your bike in the dark, all by yourself, rather than let me take you home. So what did I do?"

He thought this was someow his fault. "Keefe," I said as placatingly as I could, "you haven't done anything wrong, believe me."

"What is it, then? You afraid your folks wouldn't like me?"

I hated to admit it, but he was partly right. If my parents knew I'd been traipsing around outside of Corey without permission, they'd merely be upset; if they discovered I'd been on a date with an outsider, any outsider at all, they'd be livid.

"They're just... they're... really strict," I said, rather lamely. And then I remembered the glimpse of the dark anteroom in Keefe's cathedral, and the bitter-faced man I'd seen there, and I took a chance. "Don't you know what it's like to have parents who don't understand?" I asked.

Keefe knew. He knew it well. I could see it in his eyes, and it took all the wind out of his sails. Slowly, he nodded. "All right," he sighed. "Fine. At least let me help you get your bike." He hoisted himself up into the truck bed and helped me unload the Schwinn in silence.

"Thank you," I said quietly. "I really have had a wonderful evening."

He said nothing in reply, but I could tell he was unhappy.

"And thank you for lending me the Poe," I added. "He really is a genius."

Still nothing. I tried once again.

"Keefe? Could I... could I see you again next Friday?"

"You sure your folks will let you?" Keefe responded, somewhat bitterly.

Well. Ouch. "It doesn't matter whether they let me or not," I retorted. "If I really want to see you, I'll find a way." After all, I had the ability. Even though I was taking a chance by slipping out of Corey without permission, I could shield myself from prying minds and find chunks of time to spend with Keefe Godwin if I really wanted to. And I really wanted to.

I guess that much must have come across clearly enough, because Keefe's expression changed a bit. "I've got something going on next Friday," he said. "But how about the one after that?"

I nodded. "Okay. Library at five?"

"Sure."

"And this time it's my treat," I added. "Fair?"

"You know, I can't figure you out at all," said Keefe.

"What was it you said before? Something about my being a woman of mystery?"

Keefe shook his head at me, but he was also starting to smile. "Go on, then," he said. "Get home before your folks ground you again. I guess I'll see you in two weeks. And be careful out there!" he shouted after me as I shot off on the bike.

I'd gone three blocks in the dark at nearly full-tilt speed before I really stopped to think about what I'd gotten myself into. How on earth was I supposed to pay for a date? I didn't have any money, nor did I have any way to get some without looking suspicious. I had no idea what Keefe and I were going to do, where we'd go, anything. Something about being close to Keefe apparently made me an idiot. At least I'd have the better part of two weeks to figure it out.

* * *
"The gavotte!" Mr. Flint called out from the end of the floor.

Most of the dancers cheered, a few groaned, and the chaperones looked at each other and clucked their tongues knowingly. Gavottes might still have a slightly scandalous reputation in Corey, but they were lighter and bouncier and a lot more fun than the English country dances that were the mainstay of our gatherings. The moment Mr. Flint put bow to fiddle and began to scrape out a rendition of "Johnny's Fair Partner," we were all off.

Of course, I hadn't counted on John Woodbury being my partner for the gavotte. "Where were you?" he hissed in my ear as he went by.

"What do you mean, where was I?" I whispered back. I had come late to the dance, having slipped back into Corey around nine o'clock.

John said nothing for a while, preferring to focus on the dance. I could tell he was shielding his mind, though little darts of resentment escaped every now and again.

There was a commotion on the end of the dance floor, which was built out out over the water of the lake. Marcus Felton, apparently taken by a playful fit, had launched Janie into the air -- and rather than coming back down, she was simply continuing the gavotte eight feet above our heads, taunting Marcus to come up after her. Several dancers cheered and egged her on.

"I saw you leaving Corey," John said quietly. "Where did you go?"

My heart hammered in my throat, and I missed a step. But it's easy to find your place in the gavotte again, and in a moment I had a reply. "Working on that surprise for my mum," I said. "Just like I told you."

John continued to look suspicious, and on the next turn he asked, "What was it you needed from outside?"

"I'm not going to spoil the surprise," I replied calmly. "You'll just have to wait and see."

Marcus finally scrambled up after Janie, and more and more dance partners joined them. It was about time. As lovely as a gavotte is on the ground, I can't help but think it was really meant to be performed in midair.

"Shall we join the others?" I said, smiling at John. And despite his lingering feelings of suspicion, he gave in and took my hand as we rose up into the late spring air above the lake, spinning and bouncing in time with the others as Janie and Marcus led a loose, drifting chain of dancers on the wind. Far below us we could hear Mr. Flint hooting with amusement as we sailed on over the trees, through a glade, and up over the houses and streets of Corey. My foot narrowly missed a chimney-pot once, and John ducked just in time to avoid a branch in the face, but overall we kept up pretty well.

Eventually the dancers returned to circle above the floor, laughing and teasing each other. We formed a London bridge chain where each set of partners ducked under one couple's raised arms in turn, and John and I, being the last couple through, were caught. Even John had to laugh, though I noticed that he was turning red again.

Symbiosis

2011-12-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

Mr. Liechty was not tall, rounded and solid, with thinning white hair, large dark spots on his head that looked like oversized freckles, and thick jowls that gave him a built-in scowl, but he also had a quick grin and a low chuckle. He was handy in the yard, but usually left the planting to his wife -- more often he was down seeing to the horses. He always wore glasses, red suspenders, denim slacks and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. (The only time I ever saw him wear anything else was at the funeral -- he had on a grey-brown three-piece suit, and it looked stifling on him.) His whole demeanor cried out "grandpa" or "Utah farmer." It came through in everything he did, as though he were an actor hired to play himself, like Wilford Brimley or John Wayne. It was weirdly paradoxical to hear him give the genus, species, and growing habits of the trees and flowers in his yard -- he had a degree in botanical science, and had taught botany classes at BYU -- in his hard-edged weathered voice.

He had a passion for horses, and had two old work horses on the lower edge of the property; their names were Tough Luck and Luke. My youngest sister Michele, who gravitated to any horse she could find, would stop by to talk to Tough Luck and Luke almost daily on her way home from elementary school, bringing apples or carrots or anything else she thought they might like to eat. Mr. Liechty, who found in her the kindred spirit he had hoped for but never experienced with his own daughters, would later pay for Michele to take riding lessons at a local stable. I can still see her at the final riding exhibition after her lessons. Her long brown hair is flying back in the wind as she canters around the small arena, she sits the horse as comfortably as though she'd been born to it, and she has a rare expression on her face, a combination of serenity and delight, that I wish I could see more often.

In the fall, Mr. Liechty and his son would go deer hunting, and the whole neighborhood would know if they had caught anything, because when they got back he would go to the edge of the property near the road, build a fire and set up a tripod over it, then roll out the cauldron and start making venison stew. This was his signal to the neighbors to grab a bowl and spoon and come over. It was a pretty casual method of cooking -- fill it to here with water from the hose, add the venison and some lamb bones if he had any, stew it all day with whole potatoes and carrots and onions, some ears of corn if the harvest had been good, and maybe a dash of spices -- and it was a pretty casual method of eating as well. You would come over with bowl and spoon in hand, and he would take a massive iron ladle, stirring around the pot for the good bits, and serve you a huge steaming bowl of stew. It was messy, required a fair amount of gnawing at bones and cornhusks, and on a crisp fall day it was possibly the most delicious food on earth. Mrs. Liechty (he always called her "Mama," pronouncing it "mumma" with the last syllable rather cut off) would always stay in the house because she couldn't stand the gamey smell of the stewing venison. She also couldn't stand the smell whenever he smoked fish, and half a dozen other of his highly-perfumed pursuits.

While Mr. Liechty was the rugged outdoorsman type, Mrs. Liechty was frail, fussy and domestic. Mr. Liechty was 11 years older than his wife, with whom he had carried on a torrid postal romance while he was away at war. Her parents had voiced their concerns -- he was far too old to be an appropriate suitor, he wasn't good enough for their Florence -- but he must have won them over somehow because in 1945, as soon as he came back from the war, they were married.

I came to know the family through Mrs. Liechty's persistent ill health; she was recovering from one of several abdominal surgeries and was under doctor's orders not to do anything but the lightest housework, so she hired me to come over once a week on Saturday mornings and do a thorough housecleaning. Scrubbing and dusting and vacuuming a home every week gives one plenty of time to observe and to think, and even as a somewhat clueless high school student, I did my share of observing and thinking.

It was the kind of home where all the family members and close friends entered by the back door, the one attached to the kitchen; the front door, which looked out over the sunset, was reserved for company coming into the parlor -- and Mrs. Liechty was definitely the kind of person who had a parlor, and who kept it spotless at all times. On the mantle in the parlor was a commissioned oil portrait of Mrs. Liechty, the face of which she had had repainted at least once because she disliked the way the painter had portrayed her features. The rooms she lived in were mostly pale pink and white, filled with china, delicate jewelry, objets d'art, and the books that had been in vogue when she was a young mother. Mrs. Liechty, too, was pale pink and white, with fading strawberry-blonde hair; although her husband had a decade on her, her mannerisms often made her seem the older of the two.

I worked for the Liechtys for several years, and in that time I simply couldn't understand how these two highly disparate people had ever come to take an interest in each other, let alone marry and have children together. The only things they seemed to have in common were religious convictions and a love of growing things. Surely that wasn't enough to build a relationship upon? It frankly baffled me how this chipped stoneware mug and this delicate china cup had shared the same cupboard space for over 40 years. And in some ways I felt a bit sorry for Mr. Liechty. He was so fond of his wife that she could bully him a bit and get away with it; she disliked the mess and smell of so many of the things he enjoyed doing, and so he was often relegated to the garage or the horse pasture, with the idea that the sight or scent of his activities would not reach her in the house. What kinds of things would he have been free to do if he'd married a woman who was more sympathetic to his interests?

And then, when I was in college, Mrs. Liechty died. That was how I came to see Mr. Liechty's stifling three-piece suit for the first time. At the funeral, he was stooped over, shuffling, his hands shaking, the light gone out of his eyes. He was already well past retirement age when I'd first met him, but it was only at his wife's funeral that I realized Mr. Liechty was a very old man. He'd never really seemed so before. But when "Mama" went out of his life, far from freeing him to do what he pleased, I saw that she had drawn away half his spirit with her, and there seemed not enough of it left in his body to sustain him alone. He did not live very long after that.

It took the funeral to help me recognize something. People like the Liechtys, who seem so different as to be wholly incompatible -- like a morning-glory vine clinging to the trunk of an old aspen tree -- often have quietly symbiotic relationships; their differences, which often appear insurmountable to an outside observer, often complement and strengthen each other in ways that are difficult to quantify unless and until the two are separated. Only then can you see how the aspen needs the vine, just as much as the vine needs the aspen.

Zombie V

2011-12-13T23:06:00.000-08:00

So, Miss V's school had a dance concert tonight. It went pretty well.

They have a tradition of performing a Michael Jackson dance number at the end of the concert. This year it was "Thriller."

Of course, Miss V had to get her zombie on.

After the concert we stopped by Safeway to take some photos. It was interesting seeing the reactions from befuddled shoppers.

V has decided she's a pescetarian zombie.

Yes, the shirt does say "Aberzombie."

Scary Christmas to all!

Fame: it's corrosive stuff

2011-12-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

On December 6, actor Alec Baldwin had a public meltdown on an American Airlines flight. You may have heard a little about this incident from a number of different sources. The majority of them report that Baldwin was playing a game of Words with Friends when a flight attendant asked him to shut down his electronic device. When Baldwin subsequently refused, reportedly stalked into the airplane's lavatory, slammed the door, swore at flight attendants and otherwise behaved like a two-year-old child, he was removed from the plane.

What surprised me about this -- although maybe it shouldn't -- was the public response to Baldwin's little tantrum. While the preponderance of people seem to agree that he was overreacting and behaving childishly, an astonishing number of fans are siding with Baldwin. (And by "an astonishing number" I mean "any number above zero.") While accounts of his behavior differ, depending upon whom you ask, all accounts seem to agree on one important fact: the attendant was asking Baldwin to comply with FAA rules and regulations. Everyone else on the flight was required to shut down his or her electronic devices before pulling back from the gate, so it was hardly an unusual request. And yet a small but vocal number of Baldwin fans seem to believe -- along with the actor himself -- that the modern rules of air transportation should not have applied to Alec Baldwin, whose need for continuous personal entertainment apparently takes priority over public flight safety procedures.

Some years ago author and speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote of an incident she observed at the 75th anniversary party of Time magazine, where a number of political leaders and Hollywood celebrities were in attendance. She watched as celebrity Kevin Costner stole and ate Raisa Gorbachev's dessert:

...Kevin Costner leaned forward slightly, languidly swept his right arm to his right, and picked up Mrs. Gorbachev's dessert, a peach melba kind of thing. He picked up a spoon, and he began to eat. He did this without her permission. He did it with what seemed a sense of what Kevin wants Kevin, by definition, should have.

I looked to see her response. She had seen his movement from the corner of her eye, saw him make off with her dessert and smiled. It was a broad, coquettish smile full of delight. Thank you for taking my dessert, it said. I am glad it caught your fancy. Shall I open my purse? I have some change in there.

The former first lady of the Soviet Union, one of the great world superpowers of the 20th century, allowed this second-tier celebrity to steal and eat her dessert -- was thrilled and honored, in fact, that he had shown her a tiny sliver of his valuable time and interest by doing so. Because, after all, he was a star.

When writer/director George Lucas was young, he brought forth a slew of hits: American Graffiti, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark. But somewhere between that time and the late 1990s -- during his rise from faceless nobody to major Hollywood brand name -- Lucas sank slowly into a pit of his own making, a warm, damp hothouse of a place where he allowed his natural tendency toward paranoia to run rampant and surrounded himself with professional sycophants who praised and flattered and rarely if ever criticized him -- the only place, in fact, where dreck like the script of The Phantom Menace and its subsequent sequels could possibly have thrived and flourished. In the rarefied air of his personal hothouse, Lucas lost or forgot many of the admirable qualities that had led him to create his most compelling films and film scripts, until the only thing left was a vast, soft, bloated ego that would put Jabba the Hutt to shame. He has gone from consistently making bank to resting on (and crushing) his laurels; unsatisfied with his current penchant for churning out multimillion-dollar film-shaped turds, he has returned to his original creations to tweak and churn and CGI-retcon the hell out of them as well, seemingly in thrall to every stray impulse of that huge and ever-growing ego of his.

Unrestrained ego growth, as encouraged by the Hollywood culture of sycophancy and anything-goes permissiveness, turned this talented, promising child actress:

into this professional train wreck:
in just over a decade. Much as with the other examples mentioned above, there is a pervasive sense among the majority of Americans that this young actress has wasted her copious talent and a considerable measure of public goodwill in her favor, was spoiled and corroded by early fame, raised with a stunning sense of personal entitlement and the deep-seated belief that nothing -- NOTHING -- is ever her fault. If she doesn't decide to cash her reality check, and soon, she may end up returning to the Los Angeles County morgue not for community service, but as a client. And even though I happen to believe most of her current problems are of her own making, that would be an inexpressibly sad ending to a story that was once so full of promise.

Nancy Davis Reagan had an interesting comment about Hollywood marriages and the corrosive nature of fame as well. (Her husband was a famous actor who later got involved in politics. You might have heard of him.) Here's her insight:

I'd seen too many marriages fail because both were in the business. Every day, you know, you're told how dear and darling you are in the studio, and you come home and you want to be treated that way at home and that's not the way it is. [emphasis mine]

Life outside Hollywood, inside the intimacy of a marriage, turns out to be a potent reality check. And the people who lack personal discipline, or whose finer impulses have been corroded by the "dear and darling" treatment so common in Hollywood, quickly discover that they can no longer handle the unvarnished truth, even from the people they love most. By coddling them, pampering them, shielding them from reality and making every possible excuse for their public misbehavior, the Hollywood machine helps perpetuate and metastasize the insane lifestyles of too many stars and stars-in-the-making -- and shares complicity in the broken relationships, wasted lives and early deaths of entirely too many people.

I occasionally talk about fame on this blog, because I don't always understand it -- there's a capricious aspect to fame that's difficult to explain or pin down -- but also because I recognize it as a powerful and dangerous force, like fire or acid. When fame allows people to become separated from reality, to behave in frankly abnormal and socially unacceptable ways and get away with it, the damage is usually already done; it is quietly eating away at their souls like the worm inside an apple, destroying them from within until all that is left is the once-attractive outer shell (which must then be surgically tweaked and Botoxed into submission).

It shouldn't be happening, but it is. Why do we let it happen?

I can't catch a cold if I stop chasing it

2011-12-08T00:07:00.001-08:00

My throat is getting sore and I keep sniffling. But I've already decided. I am not getting sick.

I just won't.

I'm NOT. GOING. to PARTICIPATE.

I have managed to stay extraordinarily healthy (in most other respects) since I was diagnosed with diabetes, and I'd like to keep it that way. The diabetic body's first response to illness tends to be "Hey, I know! Let's elevate blood sugars!" No, you idiot, stop that! I don't have time to fiddle-fart around with being ill right now. I've got... STUFF... to do. And THINGS. Lying around being sick is not on the docket.

So. I'm taking a hot shower and going to bed. And when I get up in the morning, the common cold will have packed its bags and headed for Detroit. RIGHT?! *glower*

ETA: turns out if you stop chasing a cold, it turns and catches you instead.
meh. MEH! *sniffle* meh.

Sleeping Beauty's bower

2011-12-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

I don't take many pictures of my neighborhood.

But maybe I should. Even though I live smack in the middle of suburbia, every neighborhood has a touch of something exotic -- or at least something mysterious.

For instance, the lot kitty-cornered across from our place, at the edge of a private road.

During late summer and early fall, the whole area becomes a prime spot for berry picking, since the edges of the property have grown wild with blackberry bushes.

In the late fall, however, when the berries are gone and the leaves drop, revealing only the bare thorny brambles, the lot looks very different. More foreboding.

And you can't tell from this picture, but in the distance, behind the brambles and the overgrown trees...

...hidden in the shadows of the forgotten evergreens and shriveling apples, there's a little two-bedroom house. At least, I'm guessing it's a two-bedroom house. But it might be something more unusual than that.

It's not for sale. There are No Trespassing signs posted. And as the old peddler once said of Wonka's factory, "Nobody ever goes in... and nobody ever comes out."

I've often wondered about who owns the place, and why they choose to do nothing with what has become a potentially valuable property, instead essentially allowing the house and the grounds to go to rot.

Do you wonder, too?

I suppose only the apples know for sure.

Slack Friday

2011-11-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

Some people go out and shop on Black Friday. Us? We had Slack Friday.

It involved lots of goofing off...

...visiting the Center of the Universe (shown in background)...

...and pulling Lenin's finger.

It also involved a fair amount of geocaching on Mercer Island with Fen and Mitch. But did I take their pictures? No!

I was too busy geeking out over architectural details. (Sorry guys.)

Hello, Seattle! What a great view.

And hello, mainland. So close and yet so far. You could easily swim the distance (if it weren't freakishly cold today).

On the island we saw a kinetic sculpture called "Flock."

Each individual bird sculpture turns with the wind.

Captain Midnight left his calling card.

So, how did you spend your Friday?

Flash fiction: Alma Mater

2011-11-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

[Just in time for Thanksgiving, a little story probably more suited to Halloween. Enjoy!]

Luna stands tall -- much taller than I thought -- and in the half-darkness, her gray eyes seem to glow with a light of their own. She walks languorously toward me, as though she has all the time in the world, with an artlessly seductive roll to her hips -- just the way Marilyn Monroe used to move.

I never saw Luna walk like that when she was alive.

She stops inches from my face, her eyes still locked on mine. When a living woman is this close, you can feel the radiation of her body heat, the regular puffs of her warm breath against your skin. Not Luna. No heat comes from her; she is like a stone given movement. I wonder briefly, with a spasm of misplaced hilarity, if this were what it must have been like for Pygmalion.

"Dr. Minassian," she says, in a soft, throaty voice. And as she speaks, I do catch a whiff of something unmistakable coming from her: the smell of butchery. Whatever she has done recently has tainted her breath with the reek of rotting carnage. And for the first time since Lewis and Guajardo broke into my office and tied me up, I feel a scream rising in my throat. I struggle to take long, controlled breaths, but she can see it in my eyes, and a smile that has nothing to do with amusement curls her mouth.

"You surprise me, Doctor," she says, that effortlessly seductive voice so different from the timid whisper I've heard from her in class. "You're a classical scholar. You read Ovid. Don't you know a metamorphosis when you see one?" And she leans her head back and -- I suppose it's meant to be a laugh, but it's a dark, guttural sound, nothing I've ever heard from a human throat before. Lewis and Guajardo join in, the first sounds I've heard them make.

"What -- what do you want, Luna?" I ask, trying to keep the squeak in my voice under control.

Luna lowers her eyes at me, that unamused smile still firmly in place. "Why, just what you'd expect," she purrs. "I want to tell you a story."

"You really think it's necessary to tie me up to tell me a story?"

"Naturally." With a flick of her wrist, Luna pulls out my office chair, seems to flow into it like water, demurely crosses a leg. "If there's one thing I've learned from your class, it's the importance of having a captive audience. Now... let's see..." She taps her chin.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted a college degree more than anything. She'd be the first in her family to make it past high school, and her mother warned her that there was no money for college. If she wanted to go that badly, she'd have to find a scholarship or work her way through school. After years of hard work and study, she managed to secure a scholarship that would pay her tuition, but nothing else. So for two years she took a full load and worked any job she could find. And then... then she ended up being roommates with Rosemary van Helmont."

Of course I know Rosemary. She's extremely active on campus and in her sorority, plays on the women's volleyball team, and volunteers for a number of charitable organizations, including the van Helmont Family Fund. Not only does she have remarkable personal charm, but her classwork is intelligent and perceptive. It's a true pleasure to have her in class.

"Rosemary had -- depth," Luna says now. "At first this girl thought her roommate was just another wealthy, spoiled brat with Pretty Person Syndrome. But Rosemary was far more than that. Like most of her family, she had a finely-tuned ability to socially manage people. She could get them to do what needed to be done. And what needed to be done most of all were the many papers in her Classical Literature class." She leaned back in the chair, and there it was again -- that effortless, newfound grace and poise. "After all, with so many other things on her plate, Rosemary certainly couldn't be expected to write them all herself. And so she hired her new roommate, a girl who, after all, needed the money, to... how should we say... 'research' her papers for her." The smile again. "They took the class together. Her roommate was the better writer. It only made sense."

I thought of all those perfectly-composed essays. "You're admitting you wrote Rosemary's papers? That you cheated for her?"

"You're missing the point. Rosemary just found a means to an end. Her roommate worked double duty, writing both Rosemary's papers and her own all through the semester. And if Rosemary was fortunate enough to have the looks and the poise that her roommate lacked, well, it was hardly her fault that those qualities helped bring her the grades she deserved, while her less-attractive roommate didn't quite receive the same benefits. You could hardly blame Rosemary for that, could you? It's not a crime to be pretty." She tosses her ash-blonde hair in a perfect parody of one of Rosemary's mannerisms.

"Of course, her roommate didn't feel that way -- not at all. Especially when the poor girl lost her scholarship thanks in part to the poor grade she received in your class."

"Oh, Luna, I'm truly sorry. I had no idea..."

Her smile slips. "You're interrupting." There is something almost feral in her eyes, and I fall silent.

"In any case, the girl had learned something important from Rosemary: you have to find a means to an end. Perhaps her college dreams had been crushed, but it didn't mean she was just going to curl up and die." The smile was back, sarcastic now. "So she went back to doing what she did best. She did research.

"And what better place to do it than at a college library? You'd be amazed at the things you can find in the stacks. The girl combed the entire Dewey decimal section on the origins of witchcraft and sorcery. She ended up finding information she'd never imagined was available... less Greek and Roman, more... Haitian."

I stare at Luna.

"You see, Dr. M, the real key to creating life beyond death," Luna says conversationally, "is the trick of making sure that the bokor and the zombie are one and the same. That way you continue to maintain full control over your own actions. Past that it's a simple matter of creating the proper mixture of tetrodotoxin, a touch of datura... a bit of hair... and a surprising amount of blood..." She leans forward confidentially, and again I catch the unmistakable scent of rotting meat. "All that remains is to put the coup de poudre into an open wound. The girl had just enough time and strength to finish the ritual before death took her.

"Rosemary was the girl's roommate, so of course she was first to find the body. That was by design. You should have heard her sobs." Luna's feral eyes seem to soften. "She was sincerely sorry for what she'd done." Then she locks onto me again. "But it didn't matter in the end." The smile is back. Slowly, deliberately, Luna's tongue protrudes from her mouth and she licks her full lips with pleasure. That smell of carnage begins to make a lot more sense.

"Next," she says, "was Rosemary's boyfriend, Preston MacNaughton. He was an accident, but a happy one." She pauses. "Who would have thought that a jock like Preston would have a decent analytical mind? He had all sorts of good ideas. More to the point, he had all sorts of friends on the football team." She favors Lewis and Guajardo with an approving glance. "It was laughably easy to get them involved. With their assistance, it was even easier to gather the next half dozen."

"Luna," I say softly, "think about this for a minute. You can't get what you want by killing people. Getting your revenge on Rosemary -- "

But Luna slowly shakes her head. "My dear Doctor," she says, "I don't have to get revenge on Rosemary. I am Rosemary. And Preston. And all the others. Their knowledge is mine now. They're part of me."

"What are you saying?"

She sighs. "You don't know the first thing about sympathetic magic, do you? Haven't you ever read The Golden Bough?"

"I -- I can't..."

"The chapter on 'Eating the God' is particularly significant. That which we take into ourselves becomes part of us. Or, if you like, we are who we eat." Luna reaches for my collar, pulls me toward her. She's surprisingly strong for her size. Her stone-cold forehead touches mine. "People are so small-minded," she whispers, her tainted breath making my gorge rise. "They think zombies are stupid, that they're mindless killing and eating machines. They couldn't be more wrong. But you'll understand that soon enough."

I can no longer maintain any pretense of calm. "What do you want from me?" I cry out.

"Just what I've always wanted. Information, knowledge, wisdom. That's why college was so important to me. When you took it away from me, I had no choice but to take a different path to the goal." Her smile is ghoulish, and this close to her I can see the pinkish-gray flecks stuck between her strong white teeth. "And now, my dear Doctor, I think it's about time you made your contribution to the cause."

She pulls away, and it is only at this moment that I realize she has taken the fire axe from the emergency box in the hall. With a strange combination of grace and strength -- Rosemary's grace, I think, and Preston's strength -- Luna raises the weapon above my head and brings it down hard --

-- and the next thing I know, she is saying, "Welcome, Dr. Minassian. Everyone, I think you already know Dr. Minassian from the Classics Department?" And I sense Rosemary van Helmont and Preston MacNaughton, and Kurt Almazan, and Jessie Regner, and several other students whom I don't know yet, but who I sense will become very, very familiar to me soon. Their thoughts fit seamlessly into mine, and my thoughts are theirs. I recognize the irony in the thought even as it comes to mind, but the best possible word to describe the environment in which I now find myself is -- collegial.

We laugh, and Luna asks, "So, Doctor, any preference about who should join us next?" And I know immediately who it should be: Professor Lapine, the theoretical mathematician. One of the most brilliant mathematical minds of this generation, frequently published, a true asset to the college. It's about time I -- we -- stopped thinking of her as a rival.

Luna approves of the choice. Mathematics has always been her weakest subject, after all. She hefts the fire axe over her shoulder and, in the company of her two undead assistants, we set off across the twilit campus quad toward the mathematics building, where Professor Lapine tends to work late.

It's going to be a marvelous night for all of us.

It's what we do

2011-11-19T18:07:00.001-08:00

Another weekend, another evening hanging with the Nerd Brigade.

The requisite pile o' shoes beside our front door.

Today's contingent of the Nerd Brigade. Note that CM is not in the Seat of Power today. Yes, they have a Guest DM holding the reins. Today they are going through a tesseract dungeon, courtesy of our Guest DM's fertile brain.

As I've pointed out elsewhere, being a dungeon master is a lot like the way the ancient Greeks thought of their gods: all the power of a deity, with little or no concern for or sense of responsibility over lesser beings.

Earlier, for reasons I didn't quite catch, they were having a vociferous argument in French about whether one of their members was, or was not, in fact, a croissant.

Hey, I don't explain 'em, I just report 'em.

Creative thinking

2011-11-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

[All posted artwork in this entry is copyright James C. Christensen; it is used solely for the purpose of illustration.]

Long ago, deep in the mists of time when the Internet had hardly been invented yet and I was in college the first time around, I attended a lecture given by fantasy artist (and BYU professor) James C. Christensen on the nature of creativity.

(And by the way, if you think the lecture hall looked like this you are sadly mistaken. Though that would have been AWESOME.)

Anyway, in this lecture one of the things Prof. Christensen said was that everyone is creative. That statement met with a certain amount of polite disbelief in the lecture hall, so he elucidated.

Too many people, he said, seem to believe that creativity is a talent or state of mind which only a few special souls possess. But, he pointed out, we are all born creative. Children are innate creators. Give them anything at all to work with and they'll make something out of it. But over time, if not guided in the right direction, those same children will tend to lose that simple faith in their ability to create.

He said that people place strictures on creativity; too many people believe that a creative work has to be absolutely unique, to come out of nowhere into existence. But that's not really possible. In any case, that's not how a child's creativity works. The child takes what's available and makes something new. And that's all that creativity really is -- drawing from what's available in your head, taking hold of the materials before you, and using them to make something new. There's no such thing as creation ex nihilo; it all originates from somewhere.

You young whippersnappers probably don't know what a real card catalog is (and oh, are you missing out -- it's one of the most delightful pieces of functional furniture ever!), but I'll try to explain what he said next anyway. He compared our learning, our life experiences, our memories, to a card catalog filled with cards -- each card a specific experience, all connected and cross-referenced. (If you've never used one of these, you could also compare it to the way Pinterest works.) He said that creativity can be as simple as pulling two (or more) disparate cards from your mental card catalog and putting them together in a new way.

One of Prof. Christensen's earliest fantasy paintings, "Low-Tech," neatly illustrates this way of looking at creativity. If you look carefully at this little spaceman's homegrown starship, you'll see it's an amalgam of many familiar items: a flashlight, ping-pong balls, an eggbeater, a satellite dish, various batteries, an old flight helmet, even a bentwood kitchen chair and a household lamp. And, of course, a Coleman cooler for his lunch. Prof. Christensen may well have gone through his kitchen's junk drawer for inspiration, but the overall composition is novel, funny and charming. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The point is that the individual ideas which you use to compose your creation don't have to be unique; your way of putting them together already is.

So the experience of an artist, or indeed any person who wishes to hone his or her creativity, involves getting as many cards into that catalog as possible, so that you have more ideas from which to draw. That can include new styles and techniques, experiments with new media, various life experiences, random stuff you've seen or read. You can see this in Prof. Christensen's work. As he's gotten out into the world, visited different places and had many life experiences, the nature of his work has changed.

It's taken on a different depth and texture -- because he now has more cards to draw on in his own mental card catalog. But it's still recognizably his art, because through all the changes and experiences he has retained his own definite style.

I went away from this lecture with a completely different outlook on creativity. It had become less of a mysterious alchemical process to which I had not received an invitation, and more of an opportunity to experiment and try things just to see what happened. Though I don't consider myself an artist (more a crafter and doodler, really), I do fancy myself a writer, and much of what he'd said about creativity applied just as well to writing as it did to painting. All the concepts he'd been talking about went buzzing around my head; I was excited, spirited, full of ideas, like a little kid. I wanted to make something. It was kin to the same compulsion that led me to start this blog.

What fires your creativity? And don't try to tell me you don't have any.

The Halloween party

2011-11-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

NOTE: As I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the greater part of the evening and rarely thought to pull out the camera, most of the party photos featured here were taken by Miss V's friend Olivia C., who graciously allowed me to use them for this blog entry. Thanks, Olivia!

So I've made reference to the fact that Miss V had a giant shindig here the weekend before Halloween. And now that I've had about a fortnight to recuperate from the event...

See, for quite some time now Miss V has wanted to have a really big Halloween party. This year, instead of having a birthday party with friends, she decided she'd like to put all her efforts toward having a Halloween party instead. And when I say "all her efforts," I mean ALL her efforts. Plus a pretty good chunk of change. And lo, many and varied were the preparations.

Decorations going up before the party.

The spectacular rise of the Leaning Tower of Cupcakes.

Even the bathroom had a special guest:

Dead Dora! Looking especially dead (and finally complete)!

As guests arrived, they were invited to play with the many boffer weapons that Captain Midnight had crafted for the occasion.

One of V's guests was dressed as the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. Spiffiest costume of the evening.

After the guests had arrived, Miss V swiftly took charge and guided them to the first activity of the night:

traditional bobbing for apples. It went pretty well.

Lots of running around in the dark ensued. Party music got played. Someone broke out the lightsticks and pretty soon the front yard looked like a rave party.

Brave souls lined up to be hit in the face with cream pies. (Face hole artwork by Miss V.)

Get your pies for the Great Pie Fight! *squish*

Several partygoers then tried to eat donuts off a string, with marginal success.

Miss V had an idea about creating a huge pumpkin shape from orange balloons, filling the balloons with paint, then inviting the guests to play darts. This went pretty well, and though I have no actual footage of the event...

...we have several new panels of modern art to commemorate the occasion.

Jackson Pollock would be proud. Or envious. Not really sure which.

Another adventure of the evening was Dress the Scarecrow, where teams had to race back and forth dressing "scarecrow" volunteers with bits and pieces of our old clothes.

About this time it was getting dark and cold enough that the party moved indoors...

...where a ghoulish feast had been set up.

Mmm, eyeballs!

Random body parts!

And what Halloween party would be complete without a bubbling witches' brew? Not this one. We also had spiced apple juice and Mexican hot chocolate for those who needed warming up.

The party games continued indoors...

...including the Jello-slurping contest.

I only wish I had taped a video clip of this so you could all hear my favorite sound of the night: the mighty chorus of multiple vials of lime Jello being slurped through straws.

Then it was time for the mummy roll!

Several people were transformed into Egyptian pharaohs in mere moments.

They were all pretty good sports about it.

Then, to vent any remaining frustrations, they waled the tar out of a poor harmless piñata and ate its innards. A truly heartwarming and horrific ending to a Halloween party, right?

Anyone who was still bored (really?) was free to join us in watching the evening's movie: the 1945 adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. But about that time, parents began to show up, and guests departed, one by one... until there were none.

Thanks to all those who helped make this party awesome!

As for me, I think I'm gonna go lie down now.

Birthday!

2011-11-04T17:18:00.000-07:00

On this day I have reached the ripe old age of 42.

This should mean that I now know the answers to Life, the Universe and Everything. However, since I was too busy goofing off to attain enlightenment, I guess I'll have to continue acting immature.

My sister Jenny, who teaches sixth grade, called me up and had her entire class sing Happy Birthday to me. I'm delighted.

Also, in a very last-minute development, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I'm... ambivalent... about this. A friend talked me into it, and I went into it with absolutely no idea what I was going to write about, so I've been writing this stream-of-consciousness rambling about dead people. In all probability it's going to be a train wreck. Mostly I just want to see if I can do it. So cross your fingers for me; if the train wreck proves to be really amusing I may eventually post some of it.

DONE! zzzzzz.

2011-10-31T04:15:00.000-07:00

It's a quarter after 4, and I just put the finishing touches on Miss V's Halloween costume.

By the way, there's a very good reason why I'm not known for my sewing skills. It's because I don't have any. Not really sure how I got myself into this misadventure in the first place, but there you are.

Miss V had better hope this fits, because I'm not getting up an hour and a half from now to make any last-minute adjustments. Cross your fingers for her!

(Yes, photos of said costume will probably be posted here later. But not now. I am perilously close to becoming one of the undead... hitting the sack before I start looking for braaaaains.)

ETA:

Bey-hold!

I guess Toto wet the basket.

She is off to see the wizard.

And now for tonight's dinner... braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.

Unseen (part 20)

2011-10-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

I woke to a sea of fog this morning. Fog mutes everything -- light and sound and distance alike -- and for a moment I was back in Corey, knowing that at any moment Peck would come silently at me out of the fog like a dark bullet, and Mrs. Townley would know where I was. Suddenly I couldn't breathe, and my legs began to shake. I had to retreat into the barn for a while, crumpled against the wall, took many long, slow, deliberate breaths until the panic passed through me and I could convince myself I was, if not exactly safe, then at least out of immediate danger.

Last night I slept in the barn loft. I don't particularly like the itchy feel of hay, but it was warm and quiet, and it had the advantage of being sufficiently far away from human beings while still offering human comforts. The thoughts of farm animals are simple and placid, like white noise for the mind. Some of them consider me now, and their quiet helps restore my calm.

This fog is only fog, I tell myself. There's a river or a lake near here, and conditions are right for it to form. It doesn't mean anything else. Besides, if I stay in here all day for fear of an earthbound cloud, I'm a pure coward. I push myself to stand and to venture outside again.

When we were children, we played with the fog. It was easy to pull shapes out of it, like cotton candy, and wrap it around our foreheads like daisy chains, or weave strands of it into our hair until we went into the warmth of our homes and the fog melted into our wet braids. Janie was especially good at making things out of fog, maybe because she'd inherited the talent from her dad. She'd twist and twirl all kinds of shapes into it: patterns, plants, animals, faces. For years I thought children everywhere played with the fog as we did, just like making snow angels in winter or jumping into leaf piles in fall. I didn't realize we were using the knack.

Out of curiosity, I reach out to see if I can still do it, and pull a long, thin strand of fog out by my fingertips. It has a different consistency from the fog back in Corey -- finer, more delicate. I wrap the tendril around my left wrist, like a bracelet, and it continues to curl gracefully around my arm. The fog seems to be exploring me; it wants to know why I'm here.

Funny, I'd like to know that too.

Steamcon III: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

2011-10-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

Once again we join the intrepid Tara on one of her adventures -- this particular excursion being to the Hyatt Regency Bellevue to commune with the many resplendently-arrayed ladies and gentlemen of Steamcon III.

And lo, there were many in glorious attire. I'm pretty sure the Hyatt Regency staff had no idea what hit them.

As the theme this year was "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"...

...there were a fair amount of interpretations on display.

Atlantean explorers!

Cephalopodesque masks...

...and spectacularly tentacular hats!

Seafolk defending their territory against would-be undersea settlers!

The bold and the beautiful...

...the unlikely but well-matched duo...

...the unfortunate attacked by killer squids...

...the gentleman with the portable fishtank...

...and of course, the roller-derby squidgirl.

But undersea-related costumes were far from the sole source of creativity on display. Air pirates, bodgers, fashionable ladies and dapper gentlemen were visible in every nook and cranny that you might care to point your camera-obscura.

(Look! It's the 19th-century Katy Perry!)

This fine gentleman sold me a gorgeous top hat.

And speaking of sales, there were many delectable items on offer this year.

Once again in attendance was the Artful Bodger himself, Anthony Hicks of Tinplate Studios.

So much amazing stuff, so little money. Jewelry, corsets, pins, sporrans, accessories and accoutrements of all imaginable natures...

...and, of course, hats for all occasions. (Sad how in the modern world we have largely lost our passion for hats, with the exception of the occasional cowboy Stetson or baseball cap.)

Oh, and a rather amazing artist cutting freehand silhouettes!

I'm always astonished at the wide cross-section of people to whom this particular subset of fandom appeals. Every age group, from six-year-olds to octogenarians, was represented in the crowd, and all seemed to be having a fantastic time dreaming, laughing, making new friends, seeing and being seen. We spoke to artists and dealers, sang rousing sea/air shanties, watched participants dance their socks off, and occasionally just sat back and watched people go by... including the odd mundane couple walking through the hotel atrium, looking highly befuddled at all the visual exuberance going on around them.

Next year's theme? VICTORIAN MONSTERS. I can't wait!

Autumnal beauty

2011-10-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

The season of rain and fog has returned to western Washington.

It transforms everything it touches.

Photo by Captain Midnight

Not everyone likes this season, but I love it. The web of delicate beauty is everywhere, if you care to look.

Doo-doot doot do, doo do-doot do...

2011-10-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

Marian Call was at Soulfood Books tonight.

There were songs about avocadoes, zombies, spaceships, Alaska, geekitude, and relationships gone very, very wrong.

It was a great deal of fun... well, you know, if you like that sort of thing. :)

Album cover photo by Brian Adams

And I do!

If you like that sort of thing too, you might want to go pick yourself up a copy of her very newest super-cool with-extra-frosting double album, Something Fierce. I'm sure she would much appreciate it. As will you, when you start listening to it.

(Thus ends our Shameless Plug for the day.)

Fiction fragment: Plain of Shinar

2011-10-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Whenever Sophia was on vacation, she always woke slowly, gradually, in the early mornings. She'd turn over in bed, still half-dreaming, and press herself close to Ethan's warm back, wrapping her arms around him, and he'd sigh happily in his sleep. Perhaps half an hour later, Ethan would grow warmer, his body temperature rising to wake him up. He'd turn over and take her in his arms, slowly kissing her awake.

That was how the morning began, at least. Sophia rubbed the sleep from her eyes, wondering how Ethan could still find her desirable in the morning, happy that somehow he did. "Good morning, honey."

Ethan smiled at her. "Toolpa, kemas."

Sophia giggled at this string of nonsense. Ethan must still be half-asleep. "Want to try that again?" she asked playfully.

"Munk baquistu?" Ethan replied, looking confused.

All right, then, Ethan was playing another of his practical jokes. "Come on, honey," Sophia said. "I'm not in the mood for this."

But Ethan didn't crack his usual boyish grin over being called out. Instead, he began to look alarmed. "Munk baquae? Vot qennant uta zatna mezzat," he said.

If it were meant as a joke, it certainly wasn't funny any more. Was he ill? Sophia put an experimental hand to Ethan's forehead. It didn't feel particularly warm. "Honey," she said, "you're not making any sense. Do you understand me?"

"Sophia," said Ethan, and Sophia relaxed in relief -- but only for a moment, as he continued, "vot rihob zatna iitos mo'ot. Vot aap prina do fyzot." He leaned over to kiss her tenderly and added, "Prizannant, kemas," before rolling out of bed.

Sophia watched him as he went to the phone. What on earth was going on? It wasn't like Ethan to push a joke this far. Not only was he oblivious to the fact that he was talking nonsense, he also didn't seem to understand Sophia. Some kind of aphasia, maybe? But then why...

Ethan was on the phone. "Sotik? Vot'ar Ethan Holloway, alyan vom naama Sophia..." He broke off, listening in puzzlement. "M--munk?" He continued to listen. "Vot qennant... munk zatnata ip?" His expression slowly clouded to frustration and anger. Then his eyes fell on Sophia, and he brightened. "Aaa! Mezi do vom naama," he said, and held out the phone to her.

Of course. If he couldn't understand Sophia, he probably couldn't understand anyone else. Sophia took the phone. "Hello?"

"Ulu lesuthi tuli kuulis?" said the calm, well-modulated female voice on the other end.

A well of panic dropped low in Sophia's stomach. "Oh, no. Not you too."

"Ii lulie sitheu'e biu, ithaa," said the voice. And whatever manner of gibberish she was speaking, it seemed to be of a completely different tone and style than Ethan's gibberish. Ethan couldn't understand her any more than he could understand Sophia.

But Ethan had handed her the phone. Maybe he thought Sophia could make sense of the voice on the other end better than he could. Sophia glanced at Ethan, who was staring at her expectantly. She pointed at the phone and shook her head, and his face fell.

"I'm sorry, but I can't understand you or my husband," Sophia said politely. "Goodbye." She hung up.

Ethan shrugged and spread his hands at her: what's going on?

Sophia shook her head: I don't know. Then a happy thought occurred to her. She pointed at him and spread her hand out to stop him: wait here, and ran to the kitchen. She grabbed the shopping list from the fridge, dug a pencil out of the junk drawer, and headed back to the bedroom, scribbling as she went.

Ethan had already figured out what she was doing before she returned, and met her at the door to see what she would write. She was scribbling, as clearly as her nervous hands would allow, Can you understand this?

Over her shoulder Ethan read aloud, "Verlozen... habin... don?" They looked at each other and he shook his head. On impulse, he took the list from her and started to write something himself, in characters that looked a little like Chinese.

Suddenly Sophia thought of something else: if she couldn't speak or write to Ethan, maybe she could point to printed words for communication. She went to the bookshelf and took down a battered paperback copy of The Wizards of Weeping. It fell open to her favorite section of the book, where Frayn finally manages to free his beloved from the weeping stone in which she has been imprisoned for years -- but at a terrible cost.

It was definitely her book -- the same purple stain where she'd dripped a Capri Sun on Chapter 3, the same dog-ears where she'd turned down the pages. All the familiar words had to be there. She knew they couldn't have been changed overnight. But the text made no sense to Sophia. It was as though her entire book -- the story she'd owned and loved since fifth grade -- had been converted into mindless word salad. She ran her fingers over the page, over the lorem ipsum of the words she knew by heart, but could no longer read.

In all probability, if what happened next had not happened next, Sophia would have slumped to the floor and cried. But there was no time, for just at that moment the house was shaken by a bone-trembling crash so deafening that they felt rather than heard it. Instinctively, Ethan grabbed Sophia and pulled her into the open closet, just in time to avoid being cut by shards of glass as their bedroom windows exploded into the room.

They remained there for what seemed like an hour, shaking and clinging to each other in the dark, waiting for the next insane thing to happen. But when time had passed and there seemed to be no further explosions, Ethan ventured out to see what had happened. Through the blank holes that had once been their bedroom windows, he could see the blaze rising from the airplane that had buried itself in the hill not quite a block away.

ETA: I've had a lot of positive feedback about this one, and I'm currently considering what it would take to make it into a full-fledged short story. Thanks very much for your comments.

Why I love the Epic Late-Night Grocery Run

2011-10-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

You hear funny things in the grocery store late at night.

Tonight there was a feisty old broad in front of me complaining roundly about the use of customer discount cards at grocery stores. "I hate these things," she muttered loudly as the clerk rang up her items. "Why can't the store just give us all the same discount without having to use one of these stupid things? But no, they have to track us. See what groceries we're buying. It's all about numbers. Social Security number, bank number, PIN number, member number... they're turning everyone into numbers!"

"Twenty-three ninety-seven," said the clerk.

Hey, I thought it was funny.

Miss V's birthday!

2011-09-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

Today Miss V went off to school with about a bazillion cupcakes lovingly made by her grandma. I hope her classmates enjoy them.

V is an amazing person. She is a good logical reasoner. She does things that are hard to do. She has a strong sense of right and wrong, and stands up for the things she believes are right. She is tender-hearted and tries to be kind to everyone, even people she doesn't get along with that well. Her artistic talents are many and varied and she is generous in sharing them with others. She has a hilarious sense of humor. She chooses to see the good in others first. She loves fashion and is learning to cultivate her gift for clothing construction. She always seems to be thinking about ways to help other people. She gives everyone -- friends, the physically and mentally handicapped, the homeless -- equal respect as children of God. She isn't afraid to own her passions. And she's just fun.

Happy birthday, Miss V!

Unseen (part 19)

2011-09-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

(If you haven't read Unseen before, it starts here. Yes, it's long and getting longer, but I hope you'll find it worth the read.)

On Wednesday and Thursday I spent the daylight hours at Mrs. Townley's, learning theory, and most of the night walking through Corey with her and observing as she put that theory into practice. In the process, I discovered that all students in Corey were on a complex schedule, since not everyone learned everything at once, or even in the same way. Some students, who readily took up new ideas and learned at a faster pace, received new ideas from Mrs. Townley on an almost nightly basis; others, who had resistant mental structures or who took time to process a new thought, only received additional instruction when they'd had sufficient time to digest the latest idea. (I was deeply curious to know where I had fit into this schedule, but I didn't dare ask, and Mrs. Townley didn't volunteer the information.) I was getting home at 3 or 4 a.m., usually going in covertly by my bedroom window, and getting by on a scant few hours of sleep.

No one seemed to see how hard I was pushing myself or that I was consistently shading my mind, with the possible exception of Dad. Despite the long hours I was putting in, I slept only fitfully and was often peevish and cranky at breakfast, and Dad noticed.

"Where's my happy little girl got to?" he asked on Friday morning.

I glared at him over my one-eyed sandwich. "Dad. I'm not 'little' any more."

"You're not happy, either," he observed. "Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?"

"It's too early and you're not funny," I snapped. "Just leave me alone."

Some small part of my mind was cruelly satisfied to see how easily I could wipe the usual cheery smile off Dad's face. It took a few minutes for the meanness of what I'd done to hit me -- but not hard enough to make me apologize. My eyes dropped to my plate and to the now tasteless sandwich, whose eye-like yolk seemed to be staring at me in shock.

Mum immediately told me off for rudeness, but Dad stayed silent all through breakfast, which was worse. After finishing his meal, he hugged Mum and went off to work, still without saying a thing. Silence from him as I washed up the breakfast dishes, silence as I gathered my commonplace-book. But on my way to Mrs. Townley's, I got a quiet message from him: You have the ability to hurt others. Be careful how you choose to exercise it. In my mind's eye I could see him in the workshop, creating a stepladder, and I saw the strength behind the chisel he was using, how easily the tool could be wielded to mar and destroy the work.

At Mrs. Townley's, I didn't have to put on much of an act; I really was exhausted, and my low-level sense of misery over snapping at Dad just added that much more depth to the performance. Two hours into the morning tutoring, Mrs. Townley paused.

"Child, you look as though you haven't slept in three days," she said.

"I'm feeling tired," I admitted. "Dad says I'm not myself lately."

Peck cocked an eye at me, and Mrs. Townley rested her chin on her hand. "I have been working you pretty hard the last little while," she said thoughtfully.

Now was my chance. "Mrs. Townley," I asked, as though the idea had just occurred to me, "do you think maybe I could have today off? Just for today," I added, "and I'd join you later tonight for practice. Would that be all right?"

Mrs. Townley considered. Mentally, I held my breath. My plans for the evening hinged on her willingness to let me out of service for the day.

"Oh, very well," Mrs. Townley finally said. "Go on home and get some rest. I'll see you this evening. If your mother asks what you're doing, have her speak to me about it."

"Yes, ma'am." I didn't wait to give her a chance to reconsider. In less time than it takes to tell about it I had packed up and was headed home.

Mum had opened the windows to the morning air, and the rhythmic chk-chk-chk-chk of her treadle machine blended with birdsong and the distant bleating of the Phillipses' goats. I'd already decided to sneak in; that way I wouldn't have to deal with another potential tongue-lashing about rudeness. As long as I could hear the machine running, I'd know where Mum was. I crept around to the back of the house and looked up into the higher branches, toward my open bedroom window. I'd taken to leaving it open so I could sneak out to keep my evening appointments with Mrs. Townley.

My plan was very simple: basic misdirection. If Mrs. Townley thought I was at home, and everyone else thought I was at Mrs. Townley's, I could be pretty much anywhere I wanted to be. The secret nature of Mrs. Townley's service to Corey meant she wouldn't want to risk loosening the charm that helped keep the secret in place, so she wouldn't venture to ask anyone where I was if I happened to run a little late. All I had to do was lay low in my room for a few hours, getting some much-needed rest and reading another half-dozen creepily delicious Poe stories. Then, some time in the early afternoon, I'd quietly leave Corey and head straight for the village library.

I just had to get up to my room without being seen. But I'd gotten pretty good at going in and out by my bedroom window without making much noise. It wouldn't be too--

"What're you doing?"

I just about jumped out of my skin at the voice. From the shadow of the trees John Woodbury emerged, carrying a wire basket.

"John!" I hissed. "What... why are you even here?"

He held up the basket. "Doing some service for the Phillipses. I was just coming to see if your mother was in need of eggs." His face was turning slightly red again. "I... thought you'd be at Mrs. Townley's this time of day."

I thought as fast as I could. "I was," I said. "Earlier. But we've been cleaning house and, you know, uh, she was really tired out... and she decided she could use a nap. I told her I'd come back later this afternoon."

If John was skeptical of this explanation, he didn't say so. Instead he followed my gaze upward to my window. "You know, it is your house," he said. "Why not just use the front door like a normal person?"

At that moment I was deeply grateful for the ability to hide my thoughts from others. "I... John, I'm trying to put something together for my mum's birthday," I whispered. "I really want it to be a surprise. Please don't tell her I'm here. It would ruin the whole thing."

John looked mildly horrified. "You can't ask me to do that," he protested. "I can shade a little bit, but I can't hide stuff from your mum. I don't think anybody can."

Odd to think that only a few days earlier I would have agreed with him.

"Well, then, just don't stop by with the eggs. Then you won't have to explain anything." I gave him my best puppy-dog look. "Please, John?"

He blushed a deeper red, looking almost like a beet under his white-blond Woodbury hair. "Fine, all right," he muttered.

I gave him a quick, impulsive hug, flew straight up to my window and silently let myself in. I thought to give John a little wave of thanks, but when I leaned back out he had already made himself scarce.

Leaving the window open, I sprawled out prone on my bed and started in on the Poe, but found it surprisingly hard to follow. Odd things kept creeping into the stories, like the presence of Janie Herrick as the Red Death or Montresor bricking Dad into a wall, suggesting that I might not be as fully alert as I supposed. Eventually I pushed the book away, too drowsy to continue, and pillowed my head on my arms for a quick nap. But Poe's phrases and poems followed me into my dreams -- "You are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream..." "To dream has been the business of my life..." "And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming..." -- along with the faraway sound of weeping. Once I even thought I heard someone crying in the spare room nearest mine, but when I woke up the sound was gone.

Most of the afternoon was gone as well. My clock showed it was twenty minutes of five. I was going to have to hotfoot it if I wanted to reach the village by five o'clock -- the only thing for it was to take Mum's bike again. Wishing for the departed fashion sense of my broken mirror, I hurriedly made myself as presentable as I could, then grabbed Keefe's book and let myself out by the window, floating gently to the ground.

It took a few minutes to find Mum's bike, but soon I was whizzing along -- technically a little too fast, and a little too high off the ground -- down the long road that led out of Corey and toward the village. And if someone happened to see me leaving, and wondered where I was going, I certainly was too focused on my own plans to notice.

Once out of Corey, I had to keep the tires on the ground and stick to normal bike speeds, but even before I got in sight of the library I could feel that Keefe was there, waiting for me. He was pretending to read, but the shape of that quick, beautifully structured mind was all pointed in my direction. When I stopped the Schwinn in front of the library steps, he immediately looked up.

"You came!" he said, and the smile in his eyes brightened his whole face. At that moment, I thought I would have gladly lied to Mum or Mrs. Townley or anyone on earth just for a chance to see Keefe Godwin smile at me like that. "I didn't think you would."

I swung off the bike. "Of course I came." Who in her right mind wouldn't? "I couldn't resist the lure of candlepin bowling and ice cream."

"Well then, sounds like my wily plans are coming along nicely." He stood up. "Do you want to leave your bike here, or would you rather stick it in the back of the truck for safekeeping?"

"Let's put it in the truck," I said, thinking of the last time I'd left it at the library. "I don't really trust leaving it here."

"True. It might get ideas and start wandering around by itself again." He bounded down the steps and picked up Mum's bike as though it weighed a few ounces. "Oh, hey, you brought the Poe back. Thanks. What did you think?"

I can't remember exactly which direction we drove in, or how long it took us to get there, or much of anything else except that I was with Keefe, talking about "The Cask of Amontillado" (he had a much greater understanding of the story than I did, helping me appreciate it even more than I had when I read it alone) and being awestruck all over again by his astonishing mind. I was doing my best not to pry into his head, since I knew how rude I was being, but it was almost irresistible. Since I'd started studying concept introduction theory with Mrs. Townley, I realized how amazing the vaulted structures of Keefe's mind really were. Not one member of the Conscient whose mind I'd glimpsed in the past few days possessed anything like what I found in Keefe's head. It was beautiful. Like the inside of a grand cathedral, my familiarity with it bred not contempt, but a greater sense of wonder.

"He was smart to work Montresor's coat of arms and motto into the story," he was saying. "Nemo me impune lacessit? Tells you a lot about his temperament, and suggests the lengths he's willing to go to for the sake of revenge." He considered (and the way his thoughts moved! It was like watching a dancer, an acrobat, an angel move all at once) and added, "But the most amazing thing about the story is how Poe takes an unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer like Montresor and turns him into a sympathetic character. He actually makes his readers root for the man who bricks up an enemy alive inside a wall. How many writers could do that?"

I thought of Montresor slowly, implacably burying his erstwhile friend alive, and shivered. "Montresor is creepy, though. I mean, Poe makes you assume that all those snubs and insults that Montresor talks about at the beginning of the story are real. But Fortunato probably didn't do anything that was worthy of death. He might not even have done anything bad. It's all about one man's point of view -- it's totally subjective."

We pulled up in front of New England Lanes, a slightly scruffy-looking building sandwiched between a strip mall and a tire store, and Keefe said, "Wait a minute." He hopped out of the truck and went around the back. At first I thought he was checking on the Schwinn, hidden under a tarp, but then I caught a glimpse of his thoughts, so I wasn't completely surprised when he came around and opened the passenger-side door for me.

"Yeah, I know, you can open the door yourself," he said, somewhat apologetically.

"I know," I said, smiling a little. "I know that's not why you do it. Thank you."

He seemed surprised, but pleased by this. I wondered who had raked him over the coals in the past for showing common courtesy, but decided it was probably best not to find out.

As we walked in, Keefe breathed in through his nose. "Ah, eau de bowling alley," he said appreciatively. "Smells like 1963 in here."

I sniffed experimentally. "I never realized 1963 smelled like stale cigarettes and pizza."

"See, you learn something new every day." He smiled. "Let's get you some shoes. What's your size?"

"Shoes?"

He looked at me quizzically. "You've really never gone bowling before?"

I cast around wildly for a good excuse, and found none. "Um... I guess I don't get out much," I finally said.

"Well, you need to rent special shoes when you bowl so you won't slip and fall in the lane. You return them and get your regular shoes back when you finish playing."

I knew better than to ask what it meant to "rent" shoes; I'd read about the practice of renting in a few library books. I still didn't get the point of paying someone to use an object for a short time, when it was so much simpler just to borrow it and return it in good condition. But, I reminded myself, this isn't Corey. Outsiders do things differently.

A frizzy-haired girl behind the counter smiled broadly as we approached. "Hey, Keefe!" she sang out cheerily.

"Hey, Sandra!" Keefe hollered back, and they high-fived across the counter.

"Are you coming back to league, you traitor?"

"I wish I had the time," said Keefe. "There's only so much a man can do in a day."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Sure, whatever. And who's your friend?"

Keefe introduced me. "She's never been candlepin bowling before, if you can believe it."

Sandra looked me over and grinned. "First time? Better watch out for our man Keefe here. He thinks he's the second coming of Justin White." She pulled out a pair of shoes for Keefe. "Men's 8, right? What's your size, hon?"

This I was sure I'd get right; Mr. Woodbury had measured my feet for new shoes only a few months earlier. "9 1/2 inches, with an 8-inch circumference," I said confidently.

Both Sandra and Keefe stared at me, nonplused. "I mean, what's your shoe size?" Sandra asked.

"I -- uh..." How many times this evening was I going to put my foot in my mouth? "I'm not sure what the right size is for bowling shoes," I said.

"Well, hand me your street shoes," Sandra said. "I'll figure it out."

I slipped off my shoes and handed them to Sandra, who seemed impressed. "Wow. Your shoes are really nice," she said. "Where do you get them?"

"Friend of the family," I offered, hoping it wouldn't make me stand out even further. But Sandra was too busy comparing heels and toes. "OK, women's 7," she said, handing me a pair of garish two-tone shoes. "Enjoy!"

At first I thought I must be the butt of some kind of joke -- surely no sane person would wear shoes this offensively ugly -- but when I turned to Keefe, he was nonchalantly lacing his up, so I reluctantly put mine on as well. As it turned out, everyone who was bowling wore the same crazy footwear, so at least I wasn't alone.

Candlepin bowling turned out to be pretty fun. The ball weighed only a couple of pounds, a little larger than a softball, but smaller than a melon -- Keefe said it was "like bowling with coconuts" -- and after the first few boxes I was starting to get the hang of it: you could use the downed pins to help knock over anything that was still upright. Keefe was a good teacher, and I could see why they wanted him back in the league; he beat me easily. I was sorely tempted to maneuver the ball a bit using my knack, but I figured I'd already drawn enough attention to myself for one evening. Besides, it's more satisfying to get a good score without cheating.

When I finally got my first strike, I turned back toward Keefe with a triumphant smile -- and just as I did, I picked up a thought from him. It was the memory of a poem, though not one by Poe, and not one I remembered reading:

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face...

I was struck by the beauty of the words before I wondered why he was thinking of them, and curiously probed a little deeper. And in a flash I saw the connection in his mind. My face went suddenly hot, and I dropped my eyes, but I could still see Keefe's eyes seemingly looking down into my soul, making one of those effortless mental connections between the poem and the girl before him. The poem was how he saw me.

After that I must have been unusually quiet, because at one point Keefe turned to me and asked, a little anxiously, "Are you all right? You're not bored with this, are you?"

"No, no, not at all. It's fun," I assured him.

"Well, maybe we'll finish up this string and get some ice cream. I know a good place."

Keefe beat me again (though a little more narrowly, I noted with satisfaction), and after getting our shoes back we hopped into his pickup and headed a few miles down the road to a tiny ice cream parlor, painted pink and white, with a walk-up window and three or four wrought-iron tables and chairs set outside. Keefe confidently stepped up to the window and ordered one apple crisp scoop and one ginger scoop. Then I had a really good look at their signboard, which was covered with flavors. I'd had ice cream exactly once, years ago when I was traveling with Mum, and now there were so many flavors to choose from that I felt almost dizzy with choice.

"You should try the Black Bear," the guy behind the counter finally suggested. "And maybe a scoop of vanilla to go with it."

"Trust him," Keefe said. "He's probably tried them all."

I smiled. "OK. I'll try that."

Black Bear turned out to be blackberry ice cream with a chocolate ribbon, studded with big chunks of chocolate, and it might very well have been the most delicious thing I'd ever eaten. I ate it very slowly, making it last as long as possible, and listening to Keefe.

"There's a place in Somerville that apparently makes avocado ice cream," he was saying. "Avocado. I'm just trying to get my brain around what that would taste like."

Considering the many ways I'd made a fool of myself already that night, I didn't mention that I'd never even tasted an avocado, let alone ice cream made from one. "Different, I'd guess."

"Well, yeah, but in a good way or a bad way?"

"Maybe we should go to Somerville and try it some time," I said.

"Hmm. Maybe we should."

I savored another spoonful of Black Bear, wondering why it was that we didn't make ice cream in Corey, or play candlepin bowling, or do so many other interesting things that outsiders did. In fact, it seemed to me that based only on the events of the evening, most of the things the outsiders did weren't bad at all. What was so wrong about the way they lived, that made them so untrustworthy? If what I'd been taught was true and we really couldn't live among them in safety, then why couldn't we bring some of the best of their ways into Corey?

For that matter, why did some outsiders have to be outsiders at all? Wasn't it likely that there were more just like us -- gifted with the knack -- who were trapped outside Corey? And wouldn't they be in just as much danger as we would be, if we were forced to live like outsiders? There had to be a better explanation why Corey had been closed for good. I needed to ask Mrs. Townley.

"So tell me about you," Keefe said. "I'm curious to know more about this woman of mystery."

I must keep Corey safe and secret. "I, um... I'm really not all that interesting," I stammered.

"Oh, come on."

"What? I'm not really that different, am I?" I sincerely hoped not.

"Hmm, let's see... you're homeschooled, your family doesn't have a car, you've never gone bowling until tonight, and you don't want me to know where you live," he teased. "See? Mysterious."

What could I tell him that wouldn't give too much away? "Well, um... I'm an only child. I haven't really decided what I want to do when I grow up. I like to draw. I mostly make sketches, nothing too amazing. And I love to read, especially histories. I like swimming and bike riding and summer dances, and I like to sing -- in groups, not alone. And I've just discovered that I like candlepin bowling and ice cream. And Edgar Allan Poe." And you, I wanted to add, but thought better of it.

Keefe grinned. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Well, what about you?" I asked. "Time for you to tell me about you."

"Let's see." He'd brought the Poe with him from the car, and absently ran his fingertip along the edges of the cover as he talked. "I'm the second oldest of four. I have an older brother named Finn, and two younger sisters, Cait and Tara. I mostly take care of the girls. I want to go to college, and I'm busting my hump in school so I can qualify for a scholarship. I love poetry and essays and pretty much any fiction I can get my hands on. I like to fix things that are broken so they work again. And I like candlepin bowling and ice cream, and Edgar Allan Poe." He smiled. "And I... like to spend time with you."

I could feel myself blushing. The word he'd used in his head wasn't "like."

"You think about what you read," he went on. "You don't assume the narrator is always telling the truth. Which is good, because sometimes you're right not to trust him. Like in 'The Tell-Tale Heart,' for instance..." and he opened the book and read the words I'd written hastily across the flyleaf, and had forgotten to erase.

I froze.

Keefe looked up at me, confused. "Who's Mrs. Townley?" he asked.

No, I'm not dead.

2011-09-20T23:44:00.001-07:00

I'm just writing. Sometimes it takes a while.

Explain this to me

2011-09-09T22:48:00.000-07:00

Since at least the 1970s, there's been a great deal of public discussion on the combination of genetic and environmental factors that go into the formation of an individual's sexual orientation. But that's not what I want to ask about today.

Here's what I need to have explained to me: what, precisely, goes wrong in the minds of certain people that leads them to think it's a great idea to beat up a total stranger?

And yes, I feel confident saying these were total strangers, because the man who was most recently attacked, C, is a friend of my family. He is one of the sweetest, gentlest people you'd ever have the pleasure to meet; there's not a mean bone in his body. To know him, truly, is to love him. No one who knew C even casually would ever be tempted to do him physical harm. So these had to be strangers.

C is also having difficulty trying to understand what went wrong in the minds of the attackers who beat him and broke his nose. "They must have some real issues they're dealing with. I feel sorry for them," he is reported to have commented to his boss.

You know what? I believe people can have legitimate differences of opinion regarding issues of moral behavior as applied to human sexual expression, because there are numerous ideas about what constitutes moral sexual behavior. But I don't think anyone is ever justified in beating up another human being because of his or her sexual orientation. That is one idea I don't have any trouble labeling as categorically wrong. (Call me judgmental, if you must. I don't care.)

The unknown color

2011-09-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Color wheel by Jemima Pereira

Imagine that you wake up one morning, and you're able to see a new color.

It doesn't appear on any color wheel or in any standard paint pigment. You can't really compare it to any other color in the known spectrum. It doesn't even have a name. And yet the new color, or traces of it, is everywhere -- in the high branches of trees and the shade of boulders, in the shape and movement of animals, in certain paintings and sculptures, even in the faces of some people you meet. Further, some quality in the new color makes everything seem clearer, sharper, more detailed, more beautiful. As you move through your day in a kind of daze, your continued ability to see this new color completely transforms your perception of the world around you.

Then comes the sunset. In addition to the usual vivid scarlets and oranges and purples, there is a visual blast of the new and unknown color that almost brings you to your knees with the sheer force of its beauty. Overcome by the experience and wanting to share its power with another human being, you reach out to the first person who passes by.

"Look at that sunset!" you say. "Isn't it the most amazing thing you've ever seen?"

And the stranger glances at the sunset, gives you a slightly odd stare, shrugs, smiles politely and hastily continues on her way. In that moment you realize that she doesn't see the same color you see -- can't even imagine it -- and that if you even tried to take the time to explain what it was like, she'd think you were a harmless kook, best-case scenario.

What would you think of all this? Would you trust the evidence of your own senses, or assume there was something wrong with you? Would it make any difference if you discovered others who could also see the unknown color -- some of them having become attuned to it only recently, like you, and others who had been able to see it from childhood on? How would you react if intelligent, well-educated, well-respected persons who could not see the color derided those who could, and publicly spoke out against "phantom color delusion" as a mental disorder?

What if, by convincing yourself that your perception of the color was only a delusion, you could make your ability to see the color slowly dim and disappear, until you could scarcely even remember what it was like? Would you do it to fit in?

How to break a bone

2011-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

In sixth grade, I hated P.E. with a fiery passion usually reserved for mathematics, bullies and bad fiction. P.E. class seemed to be a form of torture purpose-built to humiliate pupating geeks like myself. I was slightly overweight, pigeon-toed, bookish and uncoordinated, and I wore a biteplate to correct the space between my front teeth; the only things I lacked to round out the stereotype were horn-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector. I didn't play any school sport well -- I couldn't do a pull-up to save my life, in baseball I tended to cringe rather than swing at a pitch, and I gladly would have given myself a tracheotomy with a plastic cafeteria spork if I'd been given the choice between that or playing flag football. (Needless to say, I wasn't given the choice.)

Mrs. Wheeler, who grew sick of my constant whining and increasingly creative excuses not to participate, forced me to play German dodge ball along with the rest of the class. Linda Navé had the ball and, not unsurprisingly, was preparing to hit the clumsiest girl in the sixth grade (that would be me, for those not following closely). I backed away, stumbled over a rock or a piece of tanbark or maybe just a sudden gust of gravity, fell backward -- and my left wrist slammed hard into the blacktop.

At first it just felt numb. Then, after only a few seconds, it began to hurt a bit, then a bit more, then quite spectacularly bad. Mrs. Wheeler, assuming I was playing up the pain in order to get out of P.E. again, ordered me to get back in the game, but I cried so much and was so determined to call my parents that she finally let me go to the office. Presently the cavalry arrived (in the form of Dad, driving our family's orange VW microbus) and carted me off to Dr. Sapunour's office. Sure enough, I'd broken my wrist.

When I returned to class the next day with a cast on my arm, my teacher was so horrified her face actually turned pale green -- afraid, I suppose, that my parents were the typical sue-happy Californians and that she was about to lose her job. But she needn't have worried. My mother, who had been a teacher herself, didn't think for a moment that Mrs. Wheeler was at fault. Besides, my parents were even more sick of my whining than Mrs. Wheeler, and they'd been enduring it for far longer than she had.

I hadn't been very popular that year, but everyone wanted to sign my cast -- especially Linda. It still wasn't worth it. The pain, the insane itching under the cast, the inability to take showers, all my natural awkwardness hyper-intensified by having one arm immobilized, and the fact that I BROKE MY LEFT WRIST when I'm a righty, which meant that I didn't even get out of doing homework -- feh.

So what have we learned, class?

If you are klutzy, DON'T PLAY GERMAN DODGE BALL.
If you can't get out of German dodge ball, at least learn how to tuck and roll.
Bend a wire coat hanger and stick it down your cast for itch relief. The doctor will tell you not to do this. The doctor has probably never broken a bone, either. Feel free to tell him where he can stick his coat hanger.
Don't despair, klutzes. There's some kind of physical activity out there that suits you. (Mine turned out to be swimming. I might have been awkward on land, but I was remarkably graceful in the water. Plus, you can't whine when you're underwater.) It all works out.

Beaver Lake Back-to-School

2011-09-04T01:05:00.000-07:00

Every year Miss V's school holds a potluck picnic at a local park before the school year starts.

This year was no exception.

Beaver Lake is a pretty little park with its eponymous lake...

...its National Park-like picnic shelters...

...its traditional totem poles...

...and its manly men, manfully grilling up meat. Manly!

We had a pretty good turnout for such a small school.

Me, I sat in the picnic shelter happily munching on a hamburger patty grilled in manly fashion, and considered the possible names of the totemic sculptures to be found therein. (Erm. In the picnic shelter, not in my hamburger.)

I settled on "Sounds Alarm When Relatives Visit"...

..."Shirtless In Seattle"...

...and "Dog Took The Family Jewels."

(I sense I'm going to get letters about this.)

Anyway, it was pleasant enough and V got to meet up with friends.

Meanwhile, poor Captain Midnight was recuperating from having had his wisdom teeth forcibly removed earlier in the day. He was sore and puffy, like a cheesed-off chipmunk. When we went home to check up on him and see how he was doing...

...we discovered the existence of a new and funky lawn ornament in our front yard.

And something else as well... a whole slew of new trees in the side yard.

Lo, Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane.

V found the sudden spate of new trees amusing. Either our landlords are celebrating Arbor Day early or they're trying to create a privacy screen.

CM is coming along well enough after his trauma, subsisting on a steady diet of chocolate pudding and half-melted ice cream bars, and enjoying the pharmaceutical magic of Tylenol with codeine. I think he'll be back up to speed in a reasonable amount of time. Feel free to send him well-wishes in any case; I'm sure he'd enjoy them.

Domesticated

2011-09-01T02:21:00.001-07:00

Once there was a wild thing that lived in the wood.

It slept in dark places, and it hunted in cool shadows. When it hunted well, it ate of warm salty redness, and when it did not hunt, it felt a deep hollow hurt from its ribs to its reins. At times it swam through swift waters, and at times it crackled through brittle leaves, and at times it keened a wordless cry when the cold light came.

And it did not know fear, or what it was to be alone.

But one time, after it had hunted well, it saw a strange sight. It was a light, like the warm light but low to the ground, and it flickered and moved like swift waters. And around the light moved many strange flickering shapes that wore skins not their own and bit the air with noises like brittle leaves and walked, not on all fours like the wild thing, but on their hind legs alone. And the wild thing's ears dropped low against its head, and the hairs rose on the ridge of its back, and it shrank back into the blind of the wood.

It found a dark place, but it did not sleep. Sluggish movements, like stones in still water in the darkness, disturbed its mind, and it thought of the light and the many shapes around the light. And so it knew that it was alone.

Another time, when the cold light had come, it saw the shapes with skins not their own moving through the wood, and it did not dare to cry out to the cold light. It crouched in the cool shadows and watched. And the shapes walked on their hind legs in the cold light, and their movements were the movements of the hunt. But they did not hunt and bite and crunch like the wild thing. They carried a tree branch with them, and when they pointed it there was a sound that bit the air, and the prey fell and did not move again. Then the wild thing thought they would eat of warm salty redness, but they did not. They gathered the fallen prey in their forepaws and took it away, toward the place of the warm light.

The wild thing lay so still in the cool shadows that it might have been a stone, and it watched the shapes and the tree branch they carried. Though it had hunted well, it felt a deep hollow hurt from its ribs to its reins. And so it knew fear.

Another time, when the brittle leaves crackled under its paws, it heard a sound it did not know. The wild thing crept closer to the sound as it rose and fell, like birdsong. And in the clearing, making its sounds in the warm light from the sky, was one of the shapes. Its forepaws were full of leaves, and it flickered and scattered them in all directions, making more strange sounds.

It was very close, closer than the wild thing had ever come to any of the strange shapes, and so the wild thing saw what it had not seen before. It saw that this shape sometimes walked on four legs instead of on two. It saw that this shape was small, like prey. It saw that this shape moved sluggishly, with no movements of the hunt, and that it carried no tree branch with it. It saw that this shape wore skins not its own, like the others, but that under the skins was the smell of warm salty redness. And it saw that the shape was alone, far from the others of its kind.

The wild thing thought of hunting well, of biting and crunching. It crept closer to the small shape, and its thoughts were dark thoughts of warm salty redness. And because the shape was so like prey, the wild thing thought it would flee like prey. It did not think the shape would rise up and grab its muzzle with its forepaws.

But that is just what it did.

"Da-da-da-da-da! Da-gee!" the small shape cried, clinging to the wild thing's fur, and the wild thing did not know what to do. The small shape looked at the wild thing, and the wild thing saw that its eyes were like the sky. And the small shape showed its teeth, but not to bite or crunch, only to make more of its strange sounds. And the wild thing felt a deep hollow hurt from its ribs to its reins. It saw the small shape was alone when it should be with the other shapes, and it knew what it was to be alone.

So the wild thing pushed and pulled and dragged the small shape back to the place where the warm light flickered on the ground, and the many shapes flickered around it. And when they saw the wild thing and the small shape, their strange sounds bit the air, and one of them raised a tree branch and the wild thing knew then what it was to be prey.

But they did not hunt the wild thing. Instead they gathered the small shape in their forepaws, and they saw it was not harmed. And they saw how the small shape put its forepaws close to the wild thing and made the strange sound of "Da-gee, da-gee." So they gave the wild thing some of the prey from their hunt, and the wild thing dragged it away and ate of warm salty redness and was full.

Another time the wild thing came back to the place of warm light, and the many shapes gave it some prey again, and this time the wild thing did not drag it away, but ate of warm salty redness by the flickering warm light before it went to find a dark place.

And then came the time when, as the wild thing was eating by the warm light, one of the shapes reached out with its forepaw and touched the wild thing's fur. And the wild thing's ears dropped low against its head, but it did not shrink back into the blind of the wood, and it suffered itself to be touched by the shapes.

Then there was a time when the cold light came and made the whole wood cold and the swift waters sluggish, and the wild thing did not hunt well. And it crept back toward the warm light with a deep hollow hurt from its ribs to its reins, but this time the many shapes did not give it prey to bite and crunch. They turned the warm light on the ground to cold ash, and they gathered the skins not their own in their forepaws, and they turned to move out of the wood, to be close to the warm light in the sky. And the wild thing again knew fear, and what it was to be alone, and it keened a wordless cry to the cold light.

And so the wild thing followed the strange shapes out of the wood, wherever they went. When they hunted, it hunted with them and had a share of the prey. When they touched it with their forepaws, it no longer shrank back. When they made warm light on the ground, it slept in warm places. And when the small shape named it "Da-gee" and curled up next to it and slept resting on its fur, the wild thing knew what it was not to be alone.

So it was that the wild thing was tamed. But not entirely.

Yay!

2011-08-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

Miss V is returning today!

I know, her family in Utah will miss her, and she will miss them as well. But Captain Midnight and I have missed having her here. She's creative and funny, she has a strong desire to do what's right and she never fails to make life interesting. Our lives are better with her than without her.

Salal jam! (No, it's not an alt-rock band.)

2011-08-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

The other day, as Captain Midnight and I were out geocaching (as we are admittedly prone to doing), we came across this wooded section of the Microsoft campus that was covered in low-growing bushes, each bearing hanging stalks of little blue berries. I knew they weren't blueberries or huckleberries because I can spot both of those on sight, but they did look maddeningly familiar. I could have sworn I'd read about them in a book or seen them online. They had been described as edible, I was sure... but not so sure that I was willing to try one and see. Accidental self-poisoning death can ruin your whole weekend.

So I went home and commenced Looking Stuff Up (as I am also admittedly prone to doing). And BEHOLD! Gaultheria shallon! Salal berries! -- well, sepals actually, but there's no point kicking about definitions. Salal was a traditional staple food of most native tribes of the Pacific Northwest, so they're definitely edible. And tasty.

Today I went back with a container and picked about a pint of salal. Took them home, washed them up, proceeded to ponder what to do with them.

They're so dark they almost look like little cured olives.

Finally, I settled on salal jam as the likeliest culinary candidate for this batch. I tossed the berries into a saucepan, added a teeny bit of water and cooked them for a while...
...mashing them up as necessary to help them release all their juice. This made a beautiful dark purple slurry.

Since sugar is not a good idea for people with busted pancreatic function such as myself, I added some Truvia to the mix instead. (Substitute sugar or some other sweetener if you prefer; I just happen to like the taste of Truvia, especially with fruit.) You don't need much; salal berries are naturally sweet. I only added a tablespoon or so to this small batch. We'll see how my blood sugar responds to the final product.

Once I arbitrarily decided I was done with mashing the berries, I squeezed in the juice of half a lime (lemon would work fine too) and stirred well for a few more minutes. Then I strained the whole mixture through a sieve...

...and voila! Homemade forest jam. Dark maroon, mysterious, beautiful, sweet. If anything, a little too sweet. I think I'll try cooking one part cranberries to three parts salal next time and see how that turns out.

There are probably a number of things you could do with this jam: spoon it over pancakes, eat it on biscuits, use it as the center of a cake, or just make salal mousse.
I'll be tasting this in a few hours, when it's nice and chilled.

Nerd Brigadery

2011-08-27T10:01:00.001-07:00

The Nerd Brigade will not be meeting today, due to their dungeon master being temporarily imprisoned in Cap'n Bill's Wide World o' Nerds, and I've been cleaning up some of the flotsam left behind on our kitchen table.

To help his little party of adventurers keep track of the important stuff on a quest, Captain Midnight draws up index cards with pictures of weapons, armor, potions and other quest items.

Some of them are rather amusing.

Not to mention vaguely familiar.

I hope they call this one The Burninator.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man engulfed in flames cannot be accosted by ninjas.
Here's the origin of this one.

After a while, the guys decided to get into the act and drew up a few of their own.
I can't tell whether this is a weapon or a disposable razor.

...OK, I got nothin'.

Unseen (part 18)

2011-08-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

I half-wake in the night, deliciously warm, and I think, There was something to burn after all, and feel a drowsy sense of satisfaction. Later -- and it might be moments later or hours later, the way it is when you're half-asleep -- I try to remember what I found to burn and how I got it back into the cabin, but it doesn't matter. I drift off again, warm and safe.

"Mom-MEEEE!"

I sit bolt upright in bed. The daylight streams in from outside. A blonde-haired boy, about five years old, a blue backpack hanging off one arm, is staring at me in shock. It looks as though the owners of the cabin have arrived. For some reason the safeguards I'd put in place didn't warn me ahead of time. Despite the jolt of adrenalin from the unexpected noise I'm still struggling to think at full speed. Kids aren't as easy to fool as adults. He takes another breath, and I know he's going to shriek again unless I do something quick.

And I transform. I've never transformed before, but somehow I know what to do. My body shrinks and twists and changes in uncomfortable ways, and ebony feathers sprout from my skin, and I spread my new dark wings and fly straight up and out of the open cabin skylight.

I flap strongly until I'm well above the cabin, then I settle down to glide on the piping cold air currents, grateful for warm feathers. I look around in all directions, trying to get my bearings. The snow is starting to melt in the sunlight; a large swath has already half-slid off the pitched roof of the cabin. I hear the faint sound of the boy still shrieking for his mother, and his mother responding with a hysterical "What is it?" But she'll never believe him, and in time he'll come to believe he made up the whole thing. Over the next ridge, fifteen to twenty miles straight to the north -- dare I think "as the crow flies?" -- is a small town, apparently the closest, and I decide to make for it. It would certainly be a safer bet than staying in this remote icy wilderness.

But rising up inside me, stronger than my own thoughts, are other sensations crowding into my brain -- oddly shaped, not composed as human thoughts are -- compulsions to strut and preen, to find shiny objects, to pick out the choicest bits of roadkill. And I realize, as these animal sensations become louder and more insistent, drowning out my own thoughts, that there's a very real danger of losing my human self completely and becoming the form I merely inhabit.

I flap swiftly, trying to make it as close to the town as I can, trying to concentrate on human thoughts and not on shiny distractions. I recite songs and nursery rhymes in my head, skipping over the one about "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." Finally, as the crowlike thoughts threaten to drown out even my sense of urgency, I land in the snow on a ridge overlooking the town, ready to change back. But I don't know how I changed in the first place, and now, in a panic, I discover I don't know how to reverse it. I flounder in the snow, cawing in distress, flapping to keep my balance and trying to hold onto my inner humanity, but I can feel myself slipping away, being held down and rapidly strangled by mindless instinct. And just as I complete the transformation and become wholly a crow in mind and body, just like every other crow that ever existed --

-- I wake up. I'm human. I'm still in the cabin. The dawn is just starting to break over the mountains. The fire in the stove has gone out, but the residual heat still warms the space.

It's time to move. I could probably stay here safely for several more days, but I'd rather take my chances in the snow. There's something about this cabin that brings on horrible dreams. And perhaps at least part of the dream is true, and I should try going north from here.

The lost weekend, part 2

2011-08-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Apparently we didn't have our fill of geocaching on Saturday, because on Sunday after church we drove up to the tiny community of Hyak, Washington to participate in the Washington State Geocaching Association event. This shindig was officially titled "Going APE... All Over Again," the reasons for which should become clear a little later.

We checked in with Fen, who was volunteering for the event. Didn't see Mitch anywhere, though we heard he'd be attending, but there was a tall, silent-but-genial black-furred ape hanging around with Fen. We signed the sandwich board he was wearing, waved goodbye and headed down the trail.

This is the cute little Hyak train station. It's well maintained despite not having any trains to service.

There is no train to Hyak any more because in 1977 the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, whose rail line serviced Hyak, went into bankruptcy. The right of way for this rail line was acquired by the state of Washington. In the 1980s, the state also acquired the property, ripped out the rails and converted the route into a gravel-covered walking and mountain biking trail. The railroad's loss is our gain, since the scenic route over Snoqualmie Pass which was once only visible by train is now available to hikers and bikers.

Because the park is essentially one long rail trail, it's closely bounded in some places by private property, so if you wander off the trail you could end up in someone's back yard.

So down the trail we went, hum-de-dum.

This part of the trail was lined with ferns, mosses and greenery, refreshed by water that dripped from the rocks.

Even before we rounded the bend in the trail, we both noticed the persistent chill breeze that began to blow over us -- odd for such a warm summer day. The breeze smelled of damp, of mosses and old stone.

And pretty soon we could see what was causing it.

This is the east side entrance to the Snoqualmie Tunnel.

Built between 1912 and 1914, the Snoqualmie Tunnel was blasted out of the basalt rock of the mountain. It's about 25 feet tall, about 18 feet wide and over 2 miles long, and it's completely unlit inside.

The Doors of Moria here are closed during the winter for safety. Huge, heavy, fragile icicles form on the tunnel ceiling from water that seeps out of the mountain, and it's dangerous to walk beneath them.

The mountain breathed out its stone cold breath at us. Waiting.

So in we went.

"Aren't you coming?" asked Captain Midnight. Uh... okay.

The light coming in from outside dropped away quickly, and soon we were walking along in near-Stygian darkness. Even with our own faint flashlights and the headlamps and lightsticks of other geocachers visible off in the distance, there was a powerful feeling of solitude. The persistent chilly breathing of the mountain -- about 50 degrees Fahrenheit throughout -- turned our breath to fog and seemed to freeze our sweat. At several places in the tunnel, water trickled from the high ceiling, turning the route to grayish mud and dripping onto our heads or down our backs.

And that was before we found The Fen Dweller. Or more precisely, he found us.

See, The Fen Dweller is a solitary Sasquatch -- possibly a relative of Grendel -- who sometimes hangs out in the tunnel. He has a little stash in one of the tunnel alcoves, where the train signal machinery and junction boxes used to be (and where some leftover bits and pieces of machinery still remain). He leaped out and grunted insistently at us, quite keen to make sure we didn't miss the geocache parked on "the fridge" in his alcove. So after my heart started back up again, CM and I signed the log and continued on our tenebrous journey.

I think it took about an hour, but eventually I began to notice that one of the lights ahead of us was too big to be a flashlight.

Could it be the end of the tunnel? Why yes, it could.

We emerged into the warmth of a beautiful late summer day. Many bikers and geocachers were gamboling about in the sunshine.

A look back at our accomplishment. Woot woot.

You can read the inscription much easier on this side of the tunnel.

After a few moments of satisfied basking, we turned to the task at hand, which was to find more geocaches. And find them we did.

The other side of the tunnel is a beautiful area, with leafy green trees...

...little mountain rivulets...

...and lots of wild flowers which turned out to be common foxglove.

They were pretty enough to deserve a closeup shot.

Foxglove, although it is mortally toxic to humans and horses, is also used to make a heart medication called Digitalin. Beautiful and useful, but deadly! This has been your Useless Trivia Moment for the day.

"This is all fascinating," I hear you say, "but what about the APE thing?" Well, we did already run into The Fen Dweller, and he's sort of a crypto-primate... but he wasn't the primary reason for the event.

See, back in 2001 20th Century Fox and the Groundspeak powers that be got together and released about a dozen themed geocaches associated with the release of the film The Planet of the Apes. Until recently, the last of these caches in the United States was hidden here, in a location just west of the Snoqualmie Tunnel. I say "until recently" because back in June, some chronic mouthbreather stole the cache. (You really have to wonder what motivates cache thieves. Who are they going to brag to? People who don't geocache? "Uh, yeah, you stole a Tupperware box covered in camo tape and filled with three ice-cream-shaped erasers, a pin, a novelty pencil and a spiral notebook. Total showcase value less than $10. Goody gumdrops." They certainly wouldn't brag to other geocachers: "Oh, look, you stole 40 caches and now you're telling me. So you're a thief AND a moron.") Anyway, the point of this get-together was to celebrate the replacement of the original cache with a tribute cache in about the same spot, but with certain safety features in place that would make stealing it both difficult and potentially painful. We found this cache, signed the log, looked over the goodies inside, and pondered the machinations of idiot thieves.

We did NOT look for geocaches down this hidey hole. It would have been a Very Bad Idea.

Before heading back through the tunnel, we had a look at the detritus on the west side.

Any phone that was once here is now long gone. All that's left is some old machinery that's been repeatedly used as target practice.

I'm not sure exactly what this item was used for -- it's probably some kind of junction box -- but it was manufactured by the Union Switch & Signal Company of Swissvale, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Internet, repository of random knowledge!

"Hey, honey, what's for dinner?" asked Captain Midnight. Alas, nothing but graffiti.

All right, once more into the breach, dear friends!

This time we tried walking without flashlights for as long as we could. This experiment came to an end pretty quickly as we discovered we needed the light to keep from being dripped on.

Just out of curiosity I tried taking one shot in the tunnel with my camera flash on. The light didn't penetrate very far. (Those little glimmers in the distance are reflector dots stuck to the tunnel walls.) On either side of the trail are scuppers -- covered ditches that help route the seeping water out of the tunnel. Leftover bits of train wiring and other structural supports line the tunnel walls.

The trip back was just about as eerie as before. Although The Fen Dweller had abandoned his alcove, it was getting late in the day and nearly all the other geocachers had gone home. At several points along our route we felt very alone inside the dark heart of the mountain. We didn't run into any Balrogs, nor wizards shouting "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!", so it was all good.

Fortunately I had Captain Midnight with me, who is fully rated to take down a Balrog if necessary.

By now your humble writer, who is sadly out of shape, was feeling this journey in a big way. In the feet and legs, which was no surprise, but also in the hip joints, which was singularly unwelcome. Ow ow ow ow. Stupid Balrogs better leave me alone if they know what's good for 'em, rassnfrassn.

But wait, what's that light in the distance?

I do believe it's the tunnel entrance!

And so it was.

Captain Midnight spontaneously broke into The Big Fig Newton to celebrate our return to civilization.

We made it! Woot! Ow!

So there was our lost weekend. Speaking of lost, if you see Mitch, won't you let us know?

The lost weekend, part 1

2011-08-21T23:07:00.001-07:00

And by "lost" I mean "filled with geocaching geekery."

First up: the Geocaching Block Party in Seattle.

(Woot.)
CM and I carpooled with Fen, Mitch and Mike, and once we got there we picked up another participant, Basal. We wandered freely through the Fremont neighborhood, accomplishing various challenges and picking up all sorts of goodies in the process. These included shelling cacao beans at Theo Chocolate, filling bottles at Mischief Distillery, deciphering signal flags strung between some local houseboats, completing a scooter challenge (hey, I only fell off near the finish line!) and looking for Fremont trivia at History House.

Oh, and for those scoffers who say "Pix or it didn't happen!":

Behold The Proof! Neener.

We took in the many sights of Fremont...
...the Highway 99 bridge...

...the troll under said bridge...

...and the three Billy Goats Gruff going to meet him.

There was also the Fremont Rocket Ship...

...the tribute to the J.P. Patches children's TV show...

...and the Center of the Universe signpost.

(Not shown: the huge statue of Lenin, who spent most of the day having his finger pulled by goofy geocachers.)

Even the sewer covers are pretty in Fremont. It's just that kind of place.

We met geocachers from all over the world (at least one couple had come all the way from Australia) and picked up some geo-goodies. Captain Midnight even succumbed to the siren call and turned our car into a trackable item.

And just for kicks, we had our picture taken with Groundspeak's mascot, Signal the Frog (who was being a real trouper on one of Seattle's rare hot days; I hope Signal went immediately to Dunk the Frog tank duty after this photo was taken).

Next up: Captain Midnight and I go ape.

Four-day summary

2011-08-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

Today: research, and lots of it. Geeking out over said research. Some writing. Late evening Nerd Brigadery.

Tomorrow: GEOCACHING BLOCK PARTAY! Probably additional evening Nerd Brigadery.

Sunday: Church. Additional geocaching goodness. Walking through a very long former train tunnel and back again.

Monday: Significant calf pain. (I've got it penciled in for the entire day.)

ETA: From the feel of it I'll need to schedule significant hip pain for Monday as well. Ow.

Proof of productivity update

2011-08-16T15:17:00.001-07:00

Hey, remember the project I called Indiana Jones and the Granny Square of Doom?

It kept growing.

Matter of fact, it's still growing. Measured today at 54" square and showing no signs of stopping.

There will eventually be an end to this project since I started it with Patons SWS yarn, which appears to have been discontinued by the company. But I keep finding a skein here and a skein there, and adding more rows to the Granny Square that Ate Cincinnati.

At least it's comfy.

Greetings from Llandudno!

2011-08-15T01:16:00.000-07:00

This came in the mail on Saturday:

A postcard from Gretel! From a seaside town in Wales! The name of which I shan't even attempt to pronounce!

You can read more about her travels here (complete with a Punch & Judy show, no less). And if you're not already reading Gretel's blog, you really should -- she has an artist's eye for detail and a thoroughly captivating writing style.

Mozart, Black, Brontë: thoughts on fame

2011-08-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the nature of fame. It's a strange beastie. Is fame completely capricious, or is there a pattern? Can anyone become famous? If so, why do some people with demonstrable talent remain obscure, while others with only mediocre ability become household names? Is it true that only a few people have what it takes to be famous? Or is it more true to say that many have it in them to become famous in some way, but only a few possess the will to act on that seed of ability and turn it into something truly notable?

Let's consider three case studies in fame: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Rebecca Black and Branwell Brontë. (It's just possible that these three names have never before been grouped in a sentence, for reasons that should become obvious.)

Mozart is almost universally considered to be a genius and a musical prodigy, and no doubt he arrived on the planet with the seed of an astonishing gift. But if he had been born into another family or in a slightly different time and place, his gifts likely would have remained embryonic and he would have lived and died in obscurity. Instead he was born to Leopold Mozart, a teacher, violinist and deputy musician to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg. From the time he was a toddler, Wolfgang was fascinated by the sound of the clavier, and soon Leopold was teaching lessons to his three-year-old son as well as to Mozart's older sister Nannerl. In addition to regular teaching, insistence on daily practice and encouraging his children to compose their own musical works, Leopold had an eye for commercial exploitation of their talents; both children completed several continental tours of Europe as child prodigies. Mozart thus became accustomed to performing difficult pieces before large audiences, all before the age of ten. Leopold made certain his son had a chance to meet and learn from well-known musicians on these tours. And Leopold was constantly on the lookout for employment prospects for his son, probably helping him find his first employment as a Salzburg court musician and a later appointment as court organist and concert master. Mozart seemed to have trouble coping on his own without the redoubtable force of nature that was his father.

No doubt Mozart had a considerable natural talent for music and composing, but where would it have taken him if he had been born into a different household -- say, for instance, if his father had been a farrier or a chandler -- with no musical instruments in the home and no particular interest in growing that natural talent into something more? His father's position and drive to help his son succeed made the difference, for Mozart, between obscurity and fame. If there had been no Leopold to recognize Mozart's natural talents, to push him to learn and practice those talents, to make him perform in front of others, or to set him up in positions where those talents could be honed and improved, it is very likely there would be no W. A. Mozart in the canon of classical music.

Now consider the mercurial singing career of Rebecca Black. I know I'm about to be egged for mentioning Black in the same breath as Mozart, but believe it or not, they do have a few similarities. Black's parents also had faith in their daughter's abilities and championed her desire to sing, paying $4,000 to a vanity music producer to write her a pop ballad and a supporting music video. The result, the execrable "Friday," was released to YouTube in early 2011 and went viral within a month. The video's iffy production values, mindless bubble-gum lyrics, highly-processed vocals and irritatingly nasal chorus seemed to disgust most viewers -- but they were disgusted enough to pass the video on to their friends. "Friday" became a paradox of the so-bad-it's-good variety; almost everyone agreed the song was terrible, but they also found it terribly entertaining. It was widely parodied, became fodder for late-night opening monologues and pseudo-intellectual deconstruction essays, even spawned a cover version on Glee. Rebecca Black, who had set out to become famous and instead became infamous, was the recipient of both downloads and death threats for much of Spring 2011.

I suspect most people, having experienced this kind of negative attention, would have retreated into obscurity to become an asterisk on the pop charts. But Rebecca Black has not gone quietly. She responded to death threats and bullying by quitting public school, established her own independent record label and released another single, "My Moment," whose lyrics directly address her many critics. On August 10, she appeared on a segment of America's Got Talent in which, outshone by stage pyrotechnics and the Solid Pyrite Backup Dancers, she performed an unevenly-pitched medley of "Friday" and "My Moment" that could only be described as awkward. And she intends to press forward with her debut album.

Will Rebecca Black ever make it as a singer? It's tempting to scoff at the idea, but it's not that easy to dismiss her. True, Rebecca Black is no Mozart; she clearly has little natural talent for music. But she has a few other key ingredients that often lead to long-term fame: parents who clearly support, both morally and financially, her desire to be famous; a willingness to put herself in front of audiences on a regular basis, even if the response tends to be more catcalls than curtain calls. More than anything else, though, this 14-year-old girl has DRIVE. Death threats, criticism, and a simple lack of ability will not dissuade her from her goal of becoming a well-known singer. How many teenage girls do you know who have this level of desire? If she can channel that unusual drive into regular practice with talented vocal coaches, and if she can learn to take constructive criticism from people who want her to succeed, her name could become something more than pop-culture shorthand for crash-and-burn vanity performances.

Finally, we come to Branwell Brontë. If you're saying "Who?" at this point, don't be concerned; Branwell wasn't anywhere near as famous as his sisters, novelists Anne, Charlotte and Emily, and he is sometimes known as "the forgotten Brontë." But in his youth he was the hope and the pride of his family, who regarded him as the brightest and most likely to succeed of any of the Brontë siblings. And by all accounts, Branwell was brilliant. He was widely read, wrote prolifically, created fictional worlds with his sisters, drew well and painted capably in oils. Patrick Brontë made no secret of the fact that his only son was his favorite child. He chose to send his daughters away to a charity boarding school, but kept Branwell at home, personally tutoring him in a classical education to prepare him for one of England's great universities and grooming him for the future success as a painter that everyone, including Branwell, assumed would be his destiny.

And then Branwell left home and steadily, surely, repeatedly failed to ignite. He never bothered to apply to the Royal Academy of Arts, tried his hand at being a private tutor but was dismissed repeatedly for drunkenness, had an ill-fated affair with a married woman fifteen years his senior, was apparently addicted to laudanum and other drugs, and developed the DTs as a consequence of chronic drinking. His family, at first perplexed and then horrified by his personal failures, continued to support him financially in the hopes that he would finally achieve the destiny for which he had been prepared, but the closest Branwell ever came to burning brightly as an adult was in the throes of his depression after his married mistress had rejected him, when he attempted to commit suicide by setting fire to his own bed. He died of complications from chronic bronchitis at the age of 31, having failed to achieve any work of lasting artistic significance, though his dissolute adult life may have inspired many of the characters and situations in his sisters' novels.

Branwell had most of the classic ingredients for success: natural brilliance and talent, a keen imagination, a family who supported and championed him, a fantastic preparatory education. He was petted, pampered, trained, groomed, brought to the very edge of a sea of artistic possibility -- and he wandered away. Because the one thing this young man did not have was a drive to succeed. With all his meticulous preparation for life, Branwell Brontë seemed to be missing a key element: he may have assumed, along with his family, that it was his destiny to become a great painter, but he seems never to have considered the idea that this destiny would require him to act decisively to achieve it. Instead, he meandered from one inconsequential job to another, blundering from misadventure to addiction to despair, forever waiting for his expected destiny to show up and bestow itself upon him. His sisters, who were not raised with the same expectation of their destiny, went on to prove themselves in far more spectacular ways than their brilliant but dissipated brother ever did. Their works have shone brightly for the better part of a century and a half, and public interest in them shows no sign of flagging.

So perhaps, more than natural talent, educational development of that talent, or familial support, the single most important factor in determining any one person's fame is personal drive to succeed -- something that can neither be taught nor bestowed, but has to come from within. I guess everything else is gravy.

Loose change

2011-08-09T23:35:00.001-07:00

This is the change jar. It sits to one side of my work desk, where it provides safe haven for any pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters we happen to pick up in change over the course of the day. It's handy at times when we're in need of petty cash, and occasionally when the jar reaches critical mass I make a few coin rolls, trot them down to a local bank and exchange them for paper money. (I don't use the Coinstar counting machines because they exact a fee; most banks will do a straight-across exchange as long as you've rolled your coins.)

Why do I do this? I'm sure it doesn't make a huge difference in our finances to hoard our spare coins. But it's something I've always done, and I guess I picked it up by osmosis. My mom usually had a place to collect spare change while I was growing up, and I seem to remember that my grandparents on both sides of the family had change jars as well.

Change isn't the only thing I tend to hoard. I also keep containers for a half-dozen other useful household items, including elastic bands, thumbtacks, paperclips and buttons. I know I don't need to do this, but again, it's a family tradition. Grandma always kept a button jar in the drawer where she stashed her craft supplies, and Mom tells me that when she was a child her mother would often cut all the buttons off their worn-out dresses and coats before they were discarded. (She also hoarded zippers from cast-off clothes, something I've never bothered to do.)

There are several reasons why it was such a common habit to hang onto useful things in the mid-20th century. In the '30s and '40s, the country went through the double privation of a decade-long Depression and a world war; at first no one could afford to buy new things, and later everything that could be spared went to the war effort. Under these circumstances it became second nature to "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" -- or as a later and more wasteful generation would spin it into a mantra, "reduce, reuse, recycle." Hoarding useful items, planting vegetable gardens, darning socks, making over old clothes and similar practices made it possible for homemakers to create a sort of household stone-soup alchemy, a way of making something out of what appeared to be nothing. Not only are these skills of self-reliance useful in everyday life, but they help people make it through truly lean times -- and I think they're well worth cultivating.

Why am I bringing this up? Oh, no particular reason, really; why do you ask?

Just one more

2011-08-07T14:42:00.001-07:00

This will be the last one for a while, I promise. An uncial hand on which my own everyday writing is based (it's also the basis for the handmade font I use in the Laundry Faerie banner, if you're curious).

I think van Gogh was onto something. Most of the time we don't know how much we don't know; we are unaware of the vastness of our own ignorance. It comes with time and continuing experience. Funnily enough, the beginning of true wisdom comes as we begin to recognize just how little we really know. But inspiration is available to everyone, the wise, the foolish and the in-between, as long as they're willing to look up.

August quotes

2011-08-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

An appropriate quote for the month that is his namesake, no? Also a heartening thought for those of us who have two speeds: Slow and Reverse.

I think my italic hand is a little more even. That, or I'm just getting to that time of night when everything looks good.

Unrequited

2011-08-06T01:51:00.000-07:00

I have a wholly unrequited love for calligraphy. As my wobbly, uneven letters might suggest.

*sigh*

It's worth loving anyway.

Waymarking, waymarking, all over the place...

2011-08-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

Captain Midnight is cool. He is a mental math genius, he has a spiffy beard, he can store tickles in his pocket, he knows how to make a quarter pass through his neck, and he has a groovy GPS-enabled smartphone which allows him to geocache freely and with reckless abandon.

I do not have a groovy GPS-enabled smartphone. This usually limits my geocaching adventures to times when CM or other properly GPSed-up folk are in close proximity.

BUT! Although I may not be as cool as Captain Midnight, I can still waymark!

So that is just what I did. (Hey, it's a Tuesday. What else is going on?)

After running some necessary errands and stopping to pick up a suitable container, I found a local Artesian well.

It wasn't that difficult to find, even though it was located at a small unmarked turnoff at the bottom of a hill, because there were half a dozen cars parked around the structure. I was the only person on the scene who wasn't carrying at least one five-gallon container. (Most had several.)

Fortunately, there are pipes on both sides so you can fill two containers simultaneously.

Water quality thoughtfully certified by the city. Thanks, city!

I then continued on my merry way, to a place I wouldn't have thought to waymark (but apparently someone else did):

That's right, Wally World! Home of the indifferently dressed!

As it turns out, their Clear American flavored waters are a nice occasional indulgence (they contain aspartame, which contains phenylalanine, which may or may not be a problem for diabetics), so I had reason to venture within.

And while I was standing in the checkout line, I saw something that made me flinch.

Do you see that, people?

DO YOU SEE THAT? That, up there, HURTS. MY. FEELINGS. Seriously.

I mean, if you're emailing or IMing me and you mistype something, I don't care. Really. It's like colloquial speech; I don't expect every word to be perfect. But THIS IS A SEMI-PERMANENT SIGN. It's a company slogan, put into print and served up to the public. This is one of those times where you need to make sure you're doing it right.

This world is full of lazy signmongers who add extraneous apostrophes, who write things like "might of been" and who cannot tell homonyms apart to save their lives... and THEY WANT TO BE WRONG!!! Gahhh!

They must be stopped. That is all.

This is not a waymark. But perhaps it should be. This place is a specialty grocery store offering all low-carb and/or gluten-free food options for diabetics and celiacs. The owners have been low-carbing it for years and one of them is trying to avoid becoming Type 2 diabetic like most of the other people in her family, so they have tried just about everything they sell. (So far I'm pleased. I picked up a chocolate syrup that beats that nasty Hershey's abomination all to hell, and I tried a low-carb, sugar-free chocolate mousse that is, to put it colloquially, OMNOMNOM. Other selections to be sampled in the next few days.) It's not super-cheap, but it's less expensive than mail order and it's local! *insert Snoopy dance here*

So yeah, Adventures in Waymarking. If you know how to look at it properly, the world is one big scavenger hunt.

The Damon Knight moment

2011-08-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

When Captain Midnight and I were married, a mutual friend of ours gave us a book by Damon Knight as a wedding gift. I'd never read anything by Damon Knight previously, I really didn't know what to expect, and the book blurbs didn't give much of a clue as to what the book was about, so I didn't start reading it right away. In fact, the book sat on our bookshelves for a number of years, being largely ignored and gathering dust.

Then one day, for no particular reason, I decided it was about time I had a look at this gift book. I opened it up and began to read. And as I read, I went from intrigued to annoyed to just plain angry. The premise was interesting, the writing was good, but the overall picture and the way it was playing out made no sense. And it kept on not making sense -- deliberately, I couldn't help feeling, on the author's part. Nonetheless, I'd heard good things about Damon Knight and I knew some authors make you wait until the end for the big payoff, so I saw the thing all the way through to the end. And THERE WAS NO PAYOFF. Everything just stopped with a bump. You could practically hear the author braying "HA-ha!" just offstage.

I was not angry. I was furious. In fact, I was having a full-on "quick, Robin, to the Bat-Fax!" moment, ready to provide percussive feedback to the object of my ire. I was going to email Damon Knight, Grand Master of Science Fiction and author of this dreck, and dole out a generous serving of my righteous wrath with regard to this claybrained tale he'd pawned off on some unsuspecting publisher and that I'd wasted precious hours of my limited time on earth reading.

Only I didn't get to. Because on April 15, 2002, the day I finished reading the book that so infuriated me, Damon Knight died in a hospital bed in Eugene, Oregon. I discovered this while attempting to find his email address online. The sense of freakish, chilling coincidence I felt at that moment -- and have occasionally felt since, in similar situations -- has been dubbed "the Damon Knight moment," and from what I've been able to read about Mr. Knight's personality I suppose he would have taken it as a tribute.

Still can't stand the book, though.

How about you? Had any Damon Knight moments in your life?

Unseen (part 17)

2011-07-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, three days after I discovered the nature of Mrs. Townley's service to Corey, I broke my hand mirror. It had been Mum's, and before that her mum's, and so on back at least five generations; the handle and back were made of carved Macassar ebony, and the mirror was set into a heart-shaped frame. It was particularly handy for me, since I was usually an indifferent dresser and it would whisper fashion hints to me -- "The red blouse looks better on you," or "Try a necklace with that outfit," or "Your socks don't match," and so forth. I'd missed the Daydawn, sleeping in late, but I was still shaky and drowsy as I dressed, and I accidentally bumped the handle and sent it flying. The mirror fell, crying out, and broke into shards on the floor.

I stared, shocked alert by the noise. This wasn't good at all. Mirrors didn't take kindly to being broken. I had a heap of bad luck coming my way if I didn't get it fixed, and I wasn't even sure if it could be fixed since no one in this particular generation had a knack for fixing mirrors -- glass, yes; mirrors, no. (When I was little, I asked Mrs. Ingersoll why she didn't make any mirrors, and she told me stories about how mirrors required the mastery of special magic to create, else they might run away with your face at night and give you another one in the morning. After that I was so afraid of losing my face that I would cover my eyes while brushing my teeth, just in case our bathroom mirror hadn't been properly made. When Dad found out why, he laughed and explained that although mirror-making did require special magic, no mirror could change your face; only Time could do that.) I carefully swept up the shards, doing my best to find every last piece, then wrapped the bits of broken mirror in white linen and put them into my top drawer for safekeeping. I'd have to ask Mrs. Townley about getting it properly mended later.

I propped myself up on one elbow and tucked into my oatmeal, trying to convince myself I could get through the day on three hours of sleep. Mum, who had already had her breakfast, was sipping tea and quietly reading; often in the mornings she'd pick interesting bits of thought out of my head and talk to me about them, but not now. What a strange sensation it was, not having my mind be an open book to my mother. She didn't even seem to notice that I was shading. I tried a few naughty thoughts to test the spell's limits: Hey, Mum, I broke your hand mirror this morning. Next I'm going to dance naked in the town square.

Mum didn't even blink. "Sleep all right, honey?" she asked, taking another sip.

"Fine." Actually, I was up most of the night putting things into people's heads with Mrs. Townley. Nothing. Not even a glance. I couldn't help but think I was taking advantage, though -- both of the spell's power and of Mum.

"You look worn out," Mum added. "You can't stay up all night and expect to bounce back in the morning." Then again, maybe she didn't actually need to read my mind.

"Yeah, I know. Where's Dad?"

"He had his breakfast an hour ago. Went down to the workshop."

Good morning, child. The voice came into my head with perfect clarity, and I recognized it immediately as Mrs. Townley's. Finish your breakfast and come over. There's much to learn today.

I hadn't learned how to send messages, so I couldn't respond, but I knew I'd better hustle it over there. Over the last few days I'd discovered that Mrs. Townley was a lot stricter than my mother, and she didn't like to be kept waiting. I kissed Mum, sent my bowl to the sink, drew my commonplace-book to me from upstairs and made a beeline for the Townley house.

Mrs. Townley was up and dressed, sitting with perfect posture at the dining room table as though she hadn't spent nearly all the previous night awake and teaching. I wondered where she found the stamina. Peck was, for the moment, nowhere to be seen, though I could hear him scrabbling around in one of the other rooms.

Please be seated, Mrs. Townley's voice enunciated in my head.

"Mrs. Townley, I was wondering if--"

No vocal conversation today, child. Any outsider can speak. I got a faint sense of her disapproval. Use your knack. And sit down.

I sat.

Thank you. Now then, what was your question?

I didn't yet understand how it worked, but figured I might as well take a whack at it, so I looked directly at Mrs. Townley and thought, as clearly as possible, How do I get a broken mirror fixed?

You're not coming through properly, Mrs. Townley observed. Remove your shade spell for a moment, please.

"Oops." I'd forgotten about having shaded earlier, and dispelled it quickly.

Very good. Now then, sending messages involves more than just thinking them. You have to connect mind to mind -- like this. And suddenly the basic knowledge about how to send was there in my head, whole and complete, as though I'd known it forever.

Thank you! I beamed at her.

Don't thank me just yet; it'll take a great deal of practice before you become really proficient. But she was pleased. Now, your question?

We silently discussed my broken mirror and the best way to get it fixed. As the conversation went on, I noticed that Mrs. Townley was gradually speeding things up, encouraging me to keep up the pace; there was no reason, other than slowness of mind, for a thought-based conversation to take as long as a speech-based one. As she did, she added more knowledge to the conversation -- how to send visual images, scents, colors, memories -- and I followed along as best as I could, knowing my expression was still awkward and ungainly compared to the flawless elegance of her thoughts. I began to tire; my head throbbed, unaccustomed to the unfamiliar use of my mind.

I could use a break, I thought. Could we stop for a little while?

In good time, Mrs. Townley replied. First I want you to do something for me. Call to Peck, and ask him to bring us a pen.

I faltered. But... he's a crow... and besides, I don't even know where he is.

A slight inward sigh. Corvids are highly intelligent birds, and Peck is around humans all day long. He can understand you well enough, even if you have trouble understanding him. As far as where he is, do you know what Peck looks like?

Yes.

Then you're already halfway there. You don't have to be able to see someone, human or animal, to be able to send and receive. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, she thought drolly. Go on, call Peck.

I closed my eyes and thought of Peck... and somewhat to my surprise, there he was. It had been simpler than I'd thought to locate his mind. I still couldn't tell exactly where he was, but I could feel his thoughts -- oddly shaped, not composed as human thoughts were, but still roughly understandable. He was strutting and preening at his own reflection, pleased with his own glossy black magnificence.

Peck? I tried. Could you bring me a pen, please?

In response I got a very rude and shockingly specific visual suggestion of where I could put the pen, and Peck continued to preen carelessly.

PECK IN THE CROWN. Mrs. Townley cut through the conversation with thoughts like thunder, and I heard a caw of alarm from the other room. You are being excessively rude to a guest in our home. Bring us a pen, now.

In moments Peck was winging his way into the dining room, a pen in his beak. He dropped it on the table and alighted on Mrs. Townley's shoulder, fluffing out his feathers and shaking them back into place as though nothing strange had happened, but I could tell he was annoyed.

My apologies, Mrs. Townley smiled. Peck is a vain thing, and unused to human notions of courtesy. But his eyes are keen, and he doesn't mind lending out the use of them. She scratched his head affectionately, and Peck cocked his head and pulled at her silver earring.

"Now then," she added, and I was a little shocked to hear her voice again in the quiet room. "We'll cover the next information vocally, to give you a bit of a breather." She handed me the pen. "Most of this knowledge has to be learned the old-fashioned way, I'm afraid. I can't just put it into your head. There's a great deal to remember, and you'll learn it more thoroughly if you can review the information, so take notes."

For the next four hours straight we worked on concept introduction theory. When Mrs. Townley first told me about her service I imagined her dropping the equivalent of whole books into people's heads as they slept, but it turned out to be far more subtle and intricate a discipline than I'd thought. Human minds are highly distinctive; every mind grows and develops in a different way, with its own specific internal structure, and as people mature their minds become complex and filled with information. If you're going to add some new idea to a mind, you can't just shove it in sidewise like a two-by-four. It has to be added carefully, slid into the open spaces between existing thoughts and beliefs, disturbing the pre-existing structure as little as possible. Too much disturbance, and a mind can reject the new thought -- or worse yet, fracture, rendering the person mentally fragile or insane. Then, too, some people are naturally mentally fragile; any concept introduced to a fragile mind has to be handled with exceptional finesse, if it is to be attempted at all. You have to be very familiar with an individual mind before you try introducing the simplest idea, let alone more complex theories and concepts. The more I learned about it, the more I began to appreciate the nature of Mrs. Townley's service. And she was right -- there was a lot to remember. Even with occasional direct mind-to-mind instruction for clarification's sake, I'd put five pages of notes in my commonplace-book and my fingers were starting to cramp up when we finally broke for lunch.

Most food in Corey was homemade -- not because we were particularly concerned with eating healthy or local, but because we were as self-sufficient as possible from the town's founding, for obvious reasons. Mrs. Townley had made her own bread, sliced a triangle of goat cheese from the Phillips farm, and picked young nettles for a spring tonic soup. It was all delicious -- although, I thought loyally, not as good as my mother's cooking. Peck hopped about the table, gobbling up crumbs, until Mrs. Townley shooed him away.

"How do you remember all this stuff?" I asked between bites.

"Well, it's like any other discipline, I suppose; it takes time and practice," Mrs. Townley replied, dipping into her soup. "But you're coming along well, child. I know it's frustrating at first." Then she chuckled. "Imagine growing up in an outsider school, where you'd have to learn everything this way."

Poor Keefe, I thought, imagining what it must be like for him going through the drudgery of an outsider education. Mrs. Townley raised an eyebrow, and only then did I remember I wasn't shaded. Too late I snapped the spell back into place, like pulling down a window blind in my head.

"Keefe?" she asked.

"Just a local boy," I muttered into my soup.

"I see."

I wondered just how much she had seen, but I wasn't about to ask.

"You need to keep better control of your thoughts, child. This service requires a great deal of mental concentration and discretion. It won't do to let your thoughts go flying off in all directions."

"Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Townley seemed to soften a bit. "Between all the theory work today and the observation you've been doing at night, I'm sure you're close to exhausted. Why don't you go home and take an afternoon nap? It should make you much more alert and observant this evening."

I wanted to protest that I could make it through the day just fine, but I was too busy yawning. So I gathered up my commonplace-book, thanked Mrs. Townley for her service, and headed blearily toward home.

Drifting along, I wondered whether I'd ever really be able to teach like Mrs. Townley. She made it look effortless, but now that I knew what was involved... How many years had it taken her to master it all -- learning what needed to be taught, then introducing it to each individual mind? It seemed impossible that I'd ever be able to --

"Whoa!"

The warning came too late. I collided with someone and we both fell several feet. Whoever it was had the presence of mind to catch himself in the air, but I hit the ground hard and had the wind knocked out of me. When I could breathe again, I noticed John Woodbury hovering above me, looking horrified.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Should I go fetch a healer?"

"I'm -- I'm fine," I said, waving him off. "Just couldn't breathe. Give me a minute." I took a couple of experimental deeper breaths, then added, "I'm sorry I ran into you. I wasn't paying attention."

"It doesn't matter," John said, pushing white-blond hair out of his eyes. "Are you sure you're OK? Uh, could I take you home?"

I brushed myself off. "It's really not necessary," I said. "Truly, I'm all right. How about you?"

John had gone red in the face and seemed oddly incapable of speech. I wondered for a minute if I'd clocked him in the head. Then he suddenly let fly with a torrent of strung-together syllables that sounded something like "Iwaswundrinifyougotodanswimefriday?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

His face went even redder and he stammered, "I -- I -- this wasn't how I meant to -- I mean, I was just -- there's a dance on Friday -- and I was going to ask --"

It finally occurred to me what John was trying to do, and I wasn't sure what to say. Part of me wanted to go. But most of me wanted an excuse to go with Keefe instead.

"Oh, John, I'd like to go," I said gently, "but I have other plans for Friday. I -- I've been -- doing service for Mrs. Townley." It was close to the truth, anyway. "I'm sorry."

John's expression clouded over. "It's all right," he murmured. "Maybe some other time." And he was off, swiftly enough that I worried he might run into someone else.

I continued on my way, more cautiously this time, thinking about Fate and her strange machinations. John was pleasant enough, even if Dad thought he wouldn't make a good carpenter. Ordinarily I would have said yes. But Keefe complicated things. I really wanted to be able to keep that tentative date with him.

Then I hit on an idea.

SUCCESS!

2011-07-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Ha! Neener! Take that, stupid busted pancreas!

*ehem*

So anyway, yesterday I went to the doctor. And despite some problems in the blood draw lab (why, why, WHY do certain people hear "Don't even try taking blood from the crook of my arm" as a challenge rather than a directive? mutta mutta rassnfrickn mutta), it went better than expected.

Part of the reason why I was there was because my fasting blood sugar had gone to 121, a touch too high for comfort, that morning. I'd expect a number like that an hour or so after a full meal, so I was worried. I also needed to know what my A1c looked like, since when I was first diagnosed my A1c was 7.4 (for the uninitiated, the hemoglobin A1c test is one way to diagnose diabetes. It measures your average blood glucose numbers over a period of several months; normal A1c numbers are in the 5 range, and any number over about 6.5 is considered full-blown diabetic).

Well, as of yesterday my A1c was down to 5.6, which is within normal parameters for a non-diabetic. I'm down 46 pounds from my all-time high, though I have much further to go before I even get out of the "obese" section of the BMI. My LDL cholesterol went from 123 to 96, and triglycerides went from 120 to 103. I'm still low on iron and vitamin D, so I need to supplement, but overall that's pretty spiffy.

Please note: the normal A1c score does NOT mean I am now cured of diabetes. It only means I am doing a fairly good job of controlling the disease with a low-carb diet and occasional exercise. (Some authors falsely market this method of control as a diabetes "cure," but it isn't. I would define "cured" as "able to eat a whole Snickers bar and enjoy normal blood sugars an hour later," and I can't do that any more. And, medical research of Type 2 being what it is, I probably never will again.) But does eating a low-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-healthy-fat diet successfully control high blood sugars and help drop excess weight? This particular data point says HEY-ull YEAH.

Still not sure why my fasting blood sugar was that high. I'll have to see if it's an isolated incident or part of a larger trend.

Who owns the chamber of riches?

2011-07-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

[A few words by way of preface: I am a) an unabashed fan of the Harry Potter books, b) a writer who hopes to achieve at least modest sales from her writing in future, and c) hard-pressed to contain my indignance at certain types of public behavior. So yes, this is gonna be a rant, and I'm certain not everyone is going to agree with me. You've been forewarned.]

A few days ago a friend of mine made me aware of this article, published in the Irish Independent online, about J.K. Rowling and the future of the Harry Potter franchise. (You really should read the whole thing before you continue.

All done?

Right, let's go on.)

I've been thinking about this article for some time, turning over the assertions made and the arguments set forth, and I've come to a solid conclusion: John Spain should immediately refuse any further payment for his position of book editor at the Independent.

No, I'm not suggesting he should quit. After all, Mr. Spain is clearly good at what he does based on how much money the Independent has paid him up to this point and his cushy, first-world standard of living. His writing for the Independent has made it possible for him to live in a custom-built home, probably in the €1 million range, in the seaside village of Howth, County Dublin, a place which Spain himself describes as "a prestige location." (In the same article he also admits to spending several weeks with his kids on a beach vacation in Wildwood, New Jersey. Transatlantic tickets don't grow on trees, nor do hotel stays.) Mr. Spain rubs this luxurious lifestyle in his readers' faces -- a lifestyle made possible by the hard-earned euros of Independent readers -- while the Independent publishes the horrifying news that one in four Irish people lives on less than €20 per week.

Honestly, Mr. Spain, don't you have enough already? When will you admit that you're making more money than most citizens of the world will ever see? While I don't have the actual figures of your annual income, I know Ireland's median household income -- which you almost certainly exceed -- is among the highest in the world. The average Irish citizen makes twice what an average Portuguese citizen makes, 3 times the annual income of the average Hungarian and 6 times the annual income of the average Mexican. We won't even take the disparity of developing countries into account, because it would be appalling.

And yet, Mr. Spain, despite enjoying a horrifyingly affluent lifestyle, you continue to accept paychecks from the Independent for your writing. What makes you think you deserve this level of reimbursement? And why do you insist on keeping the lion's share rather than distributing it to your publishers, the homeless or the less fortunate?

Have you no shame?

Yes, I'm writing with tongue firmly in cheek. But the most disturbing thing about Mr. Spain's article is that, apparently, he wasn't. His envy of Ms. Rowling's financial success and his judgment of her desire to continue making money from her own creation rise from the article in steaming, greenish waves, nearly palpable.

I do get it, I really do. I used to have exactly the same problem with people who bought Hummers. I couldn't (and still can't) see why anyone who wasn't active-duty military or involved with search and rescue operations would ever need something as expensive and overbuilt as a Hummer. If I had that kind of money to spend I could make a down payment on a house, or fix up my mom's house, or help some struggling family pay their bills -- not waste it on a four-wheeled conspicuous consumption sink.

But I was missing the point, just as Mr. Spain is missing the point. The money wasn't mine in the first place. If the Hummer owner hadn't spent his money on a huge, overpriced gas guzzler, it wouldn't have gone to me by default just because I thought I could spend that money in a better or wiser way. The money belonged to the Hummer owner, who had every right to use (or misuse, for that matter) his own money. It wasn't stolen from me and given to the guy who bought the Hummer. If I really wanted that kind of money to spend in a way I saw fit, it was up to me to go out and make it for myself -- not to waste my time sourly judging how others spent theirs.

As Mr. Spain so neatly illustrates, there's a good reason why the 10th commandment exists, and that reason is human nature. We humans have an unfortunate tendency to be jealous of the successes of others, especially when we ourselves are less successful than we want to be. And when people are super-successful and are able to make more money than we can even imagine spending, as in Ms. Rowling's case, we tend to become unreasonably judgmental of every choice they make. As even Mr. Spain grudgingly admits, Ms. Rowling has decided to spend some of her millions on causes of her choice, such as single-parent families and support groups for multiple sclerosis, which is a good and admirable thing -- but even if she bought a huge furnace and burned all the money for warmth, it would still be her money and her choice. Despite what he seems to believe based on the tone of his article, Mr. Spain doesn't deserve that money -- because he didn't write the Harry Potter books. (Though perhaps in an alternate universe John Spain is a household name, and Independent books editor J.K. Rowling has just written an editorial decrying all the filthy lucre Spain's set to make from continuing sales of his own writing.)

Do I think successful people should give back to the community? Yes, I do, but for reasons that have more to do with God than with man. The words of a poem by Grace Noll Crowell make up a well-known Baptist and Mormon hymn on the subject, the first verse of which reads: "Because I have been given much, I too must give / Because of Thy great bounty, Lord, each day I live / I shall divide my gifts from Thee with every brother that I see / Who has the need of help from me." I believe that when we receive a surplus, it can be seen as an invitation from Deity to help bless the lives of others. If we choose to use our blessings only for personal enrichment, though, that is an issue between us and God, not between us and John Spain.

Does Mr. Spain have the right to express his envy of Ms. Rowling's success publicly in an editorial article? Absolutely. But he also has the responsibility to examine his own motivations before doing so. After all, as I've already pointed out, by the standards of the rest of the world Mr. Spain himself is unreasonably, irresponsibly wealthy -- and he's become that much more so with the money he was paid to write the article casting aspersions on Ms. Rowling. If he doesn't want others casting covetous eyes on the money earned from his writing, he would do well to be more circumspect when judging the actions of others who share his profession.

Cyclops Living: Options and dosages

2011-07-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ah, ensconced in my little home in the PNW once again. Visiting family and friends is always a blast, but sooner or later I start pining for my own bed.

We ate ourselves out of perishables before we left for vacation, so we needed to pick up milk and eggs and sundry essentials. So CM and I went shopping last night and picked up, among other items, a bag of Rainier cherries.

Time was, I could sit down with a big bowl of these sweet, blushing yellow beauties and OMNOMNOM them in nothing flat. However, since discovering I have a busted pancreas, that doesn't seem like a wise choice any more. Cherries, like most stone fruits, are high in sugar and thus not particularly good for people trying to control their blood glucose levels.

Some people seem to believe that, in my situation, I am forced to choose between the following two options:

1) Refuse to touch the cherries, no matter how much I might want them, and sit around feeling sorry for myself because I can never eat Rainier cherries ever again for as long as I live; woe, woe, gloom and despair.

or

2) Enter a Zen-like state of denial, eat my usual big bowl of cherries, "lose track" of my glucose monitor for a few hours so I don't have to face the truth... oh yeah, and die of horrible diabetic complications ten to twenty years down the road, thanks to similar blood sugar spikes brought on by irresponsible binges spread out over many weeks and months.

But you know what? I've been thinking it over and I've decided that both these "options" suck. They tend to put one into a vicious cycle where one is alternately sternly self-denying and thoughtlessly binging. (Or Rainiering, as the case may be.) That's no way to live. Besides, there have to be other options

So what are they? Well, try these on for size.

1) Lowering the dosage makes a difference. I may not be able to eat a whole bowl of Rainiers any more without doing damage to myself, but who says I need to have a whole bowl? Sometimes just a small amount -- say, two or three large, cold, fresh cherries, slowly savored -- gives me enough of the specific taste I've been craving, and drives off any lingering impulses to throw a self-pity party because after all, I got some of what I really wanted. I have enough self-control when it comes to certain foods that I can enjoy a mouthful of ice cream or a tablespoon of garlic mashed potatoes with an otherwise low-carb meal, get the taste of the "forbidden" treat, and be content with that. If I still feel hungry afterward, I'll go look for something delicious to eat that won't raise my sugars.

2) Seek out healthier substitutions. Some treats don't fit into the above category because they're on my "trigger food" list -- items I know I should avoid even in small doses, because once I start nibbling on them I find it extremely difficult to stop. Most salty crunchy snacks fall into this category, as do pastries, homemade bread, Almond Roca, and German Chocolate Crunch ice cream from the BYU Dairy. (Fortunately, this last isn't a regular temptation as I live three states away.) In situations like these where I know a small taste of the forbidden food will just tempt me to eat more, I look for adequate substitutions. For instance, the German Chocolate Crunch hole has to some extent been filled by So Delicious No Sugar Added chocolate "ice cream," a coconut-milk-based frozen dessert (8 grams net carbs per serving, though I don't often eat a whole serving because it's rich enough that a smaller amount satisfies). When CM starts snacking on cheese puffs and potato chips, I turn to chicharrones for my salty crunchy fix (0 grams carbs, bay-bee). Pinto bean chili (20g net carbs per cup) gets replaced by steakhouse-style no-bean chili (12g net carbs per cup). I've substituted thin-sliced, salted and rinsed zucchini for the usual high-carb noodles to create a particularly delicious lasagna. I'm messing around with shirataki noodles for those times when I really want a noodle stir-fry or a big bowl of Asian noodle soup. Sometimes the craving for high-sugar fruit can be quelled by a serving of Greek yogurt (9g carbs) mixed with Torani sugar-free syrup (pineapple and raspberry are especially tasty). And so it goes. I'm even experimenting with a Bisquick-like low-carb baking mix called Carbquik, just to see if I can occasionally make biscuits and waffles and a handful of casserole dishes that have heretofore been off limits.

3) Determine whether you're really hungry or just bored. I tend to be especially guilty of this little trick. Sometimes when I'm not really hungry, I just eat to entertain my taste buds. That's a potentially dangerous habit, but it's one that can be broken. Having something to do somewhere else, whether it's running errands or geocaching with Captain Midnight or wandering down to the library to pick up that book I've been meaning to read, gives me a break from the temptation to eat solely for novelty's sake. (Plus, getting out of the house makes life more interesting, which has the side benefit of making this blog more interesting... at least that's the idea.)

So today I'm going to have a few perfectly ripe cherries. I'm going to enjoy a sugar-free beverage. I'm going to run a few errands. I'm going to do what I can to strike a good balance, finding food that is both delicious and healthy for me. I'm going to enjoy learning how to cook and bake all over again, and maybe I'll make improvements to some old standby recipes. I'm going to focus on all the things I can do, rather than wail endlessly over the few things I can't or shouldn't. Life may not be a bowl of cherries, but it's still plenty delicious.

Mobile bloggery

2011-07-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

Once again I write to you live from a moving car in Back of Beyond, Idaho. There will be more to share when I have a full-sized keyboard in front of me, but in the meantime the most cogent thought in my little brain: We're going home!!!

Invasion of the fungus!

2011-07-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've made this observation before, but when you're out geocaching you often come across some serendipitous discoveries.

I was merrily wandering around with this guy, and what did I find?

Mushrooms!

You don't see these growing wild very often in a dry state like Utah.

I've never come across this kind with the gills seemingly on top of the cap. Anyone know what they are?

Peripatetic perambulations around Provo

2011-07-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

So today the handsome and talented CM and I did a little wandering around the city of Provo and decided to take a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.

This is the ginormous American Weeping Elm tree behind the county courthouse. It was planted in 1927 and is still going strong.

The trunk is a regular maze of thick branches and looks perfect for climbing.

But don't even think about it.

There are many poles in place to keep the spreading branches from cracking and falling off the tree.

We went to Memorial Park and visited the obelisk.

Also the (inoperable) guns on display, which I believe are of World War II vintage.

We visited the little memorial to Dr. Barney Clark, first artificial heart recipient and a son of Provo.

And we visited Wasatch, Miss V's former elementary, which is The Best School in the Land.

As Mr. T might say, "You can't deny! It's been proven by science, fool!"

The Wasatch Elementary flag pole. Many's the time one of my siblings participated in the daily flag ceremony.

The ground around the flagpole, much like the bricks lining the floor of Pike Place Market, is festooned with names of those who helped refurbish it.

Some of these names are quite familiar.

From there it was on to BYU campus. I call this one "Portrait with GPS Device."

We found many interesting and unexpected things on campus.

One of them was a scale model of BYU's campus, all laid out in wooden blocks, hiding on the bottom floor of the library.

Another we found in the BYU Bookstore:

Rubber duckies! Duckies out the wazoo! Were they for sale, you ask?

No, they were not. But since they were for fun...

...Captain Midnight promptly made a little friend.

Summer balloons

2011-07-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

Once again we are in Utah visiting my mom. Captain Midnight and Miss V woke early to hike the Y trail and find some geocaches today, an experience I chose not to share. Before heading out, however, CM woke me to let me know I was potentially missing out on something.

Here's what it was:
Balloons!

They were everywhere this morning.

I didn't catch the Darth Vader balloon this morning, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere. I did, however, catch the glorious flying piggy bank.

Also Smokey Bear, who appeared to be the leader in the Hare and Hounds game.

I'm not a big fan of getting up early, but once in a while it's worth it.

The definition of vile

2011-06-27T18:26:00.001-07:00

One of the things I've started to discover, since becoming a cyclops, is just how many unscrupulous people are trying to make a quick buck from scamming the cyclops community. The ADA claims that keeping your blood sugar below 180 mg/dl is a healthy target. Sugar-free candies are usually made with maltitol despite the fact that this particular cheap sugar alcohol gives most people horrible diarrhea, and raises the blood sugar of the lucky few who don't get an atomic case of the runs. Certain companies which target diabetics and low-carb dieters offer a discount off your next order if you rave about their mediocre-to-barely-edible foodstuffs on your blog. (No fear of that happening; fool me once...) News outlets prematurely and inaccurately claim a super-low-calorie diet can "cure" Type 2 diabetes (take a close look at the total number of participants in this jaw-droppingly tiny study). And so on, and so on. It's frustrating, it's dishonest and it cheeses me off.

Here's the latest disappointment:
Hershey's Sugar Free Syrup. OK, so the Hershey name isn't exactly associated with haute cuisine, but when you're jonesing for something chocolatey, a squirt of regular Hershey's syrup on top of some vanilla ice cream or swirled into a glass of cold milk usually does the trick, right?

No! No, children! Run away! Run for the thicket! Don't look back!

Hershey's Sugar Free Syrup is sweetened with a combination of erythritol, acesulfame potassium and sucralose. Strangely, not shown in the ingredients list is some sort of eldritch ichor from Hades that gives the syrup a strange non-syrupy consistency, a weird chemical smell and an even weirder sharp, acrid aftertaste. Thanks to its super-mephitic nature, this syrup will not dissolve in cow's milk or almond milk, sullenly clumping to itself and refusing to mingle with the liquid no matter how long or how vigorously you stir in the attempt to get it to make friends. Or perhaps it's the milk itself that valiantly resists the viscous abomination in its midst. It was in fact so evil-tasting that I had to scrape the goop off my vanilla ice cream. In one word: vile. This product masqueraded under the good name of a better-tasting product to tempt me into buying it, but like all evil things it was ultimately a sham and a grave disappointment -- not to mention a thorough waste of my time, money and calories.

Although I'm not sure whether USPS restrictions on transporting hazardous waste will apply in this case, I'm still going to try packaging this bottle up and shipping it back to The Hershey Company, along with a letter telling them precisely what I think of it and of the whoreson villains responsible for marketing it. If they deign to respond, I'll post it here. In the meantime, if you're diabetic or you're just trying to avoid sugar consumption, DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. IT IS UTTER CRAP.

You're welcome.

The things you learn from a hobby

2011-06-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned, Mom and Jenny were here visiting earlier in the month. It's always fun to have them visit. We went for drives around Seattle, had an impromptu picnic at Golden Gardens, and otherwise goofed off.

Jenny was, as always, thrilled by the Pike Place Market gum wall.

Mom rockin' her Jackie O'Nasties at Golden Gardens! Yeah mommy!

(Images stolen courtesy of Jenny.)

I don't want this to turn into an all-geocaching, all-the-time type of blog because I don't want to try anyone's patience. With that said, I have come across some interesting sights and discovered some fascinating things lately while out seeking caches with my honey.

One of them is Haida House Studio.

Here's what it looks like now. (You can click on the picture for a larger image.)

Image courtesy Redmond Historical Society

And here's what it looked like back in the 1980s, when it was in use.

Haida House, located on the Sammamish River Trail, was for many years the art studio of Dudley C. Carter, a true Northwest original. Carter was born in 1891 in New Westminster, B.C., the son of pioneers from Barbados and Quebec. He was raised among the Kwakiutl and Tlingit tribes of the Northwest and his later art was strongly affected by their artistic styles. Starting life as a logger and forest engineer, Carter later became a master woodcarver. He carved wood with simple tools, including a wood axe, and often chose Native American legends as subjects for his sculptures. He moved to the state of Washington in 1928, residing there for the remainder of his long life.

Carter participated in the Art in Action project during the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, held on Treasure Island in San Francisco. While there he befriended muralist Diego Rivera, who described Carter as a thoroughly American artist whose art was at once truly native and truly his own. His sculptures are on display all up and down the West Coast of the United States, and a few of his pieces are in Germany and Japan as well. Carter, who subscribed to a regimen of regular diet and exercise and who ate apples nearly every day of his life, became a King County Artist in Residence at the age of 96; he died after a short illness in April 1992, a month shy of his 101st birthday.

Several of Carter's wooden sculptures are on display in the Puget Sound area, including the Redmond Regional Library, along the Sammamish River Trail and behind the Seattle Art Museum. This last sculpture, "Rivalry of the Winds," was originally on display inside the Garden Court of the museum, but was later relegated to the outside of the building and allowed to deteriorate. When Carter approached the museum to ask about repairing the piece himself, he was informed that the SAM's code of ethics forbade changing the character of the original piece by restoration (even by the original artist, apparently). At the time of his death, no repairs had been made to the sculpture. (It's since been relegated to the foyer of the Redmond Regional Library.)

The City of Redmond has a small treasure in Haida House that is likewise being allowed to rot. It has not been opened or used for several years, and the moss is growing thick upon the roof and up the ramp to the single door in the back of the structure. Haida House was constructed without nails or hardware, and Carter's original plan was to embellish the structure with the same totem-like carvings shown on the outer-facing wall of the studio. Its southeast-facing windows --the only windows in the structure, apparently glassless and open to the light and air -- have been boarded over with plywood panels, perhaps for good.

When you come upon this structure unexpectedly, you are astonished by its beauty. The totemic carvings on the roof and walls draw you in. You want to see more detail.

The enigmatic expressions on the faces of the figures lead you to ask the obvious questions: Who lived in this place? What it was used for? But there is no clue to be found on or around the structure or the grounds -- not even a brief plaque about Carter or a signpost indicating that this is Slough House Park. There is nothing at all. The city has provided neatly mowed lawns and a few picnic tables, but the studio of a truly notable American artist receives no other recognition.

Here's another thing: I drive past this little park almost every day in my car. The house with the totemic carvings is set back far enough from the road that it isn't easily visible. It's less than a mile from my home, as the crow flies -- and until yesterday, I didn't even know it was there.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Geocaching, waymarking and other assorted geekery

2011-06-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Early this year I mentioned that I'd been poking around in the world of geocaching. "Poking around" is probably still the most accurate term for what I've been doing, as I don't have a GPS device and therefore must usually rely on Captain Midnight's trusty smartphone (with its handy-dandy geocaching app). Instead I've gotten into waymarking, geocaching's sister hobby, which usually doesn't require GPS navigation -- it's a bit like a worldwide photo scavenger hunt. CM has gotten much more involved in geocaching; he is starting to take more circuitous routes home from work, the better to find additional local caches, my dear.

On the 10th and 11th, we attended the annual ward campout at a nearby county park. (All those little bumps to the left in the picture are the tops of tents showing above the high grass.) Lots of families showed up and brought their kids. Miss V chose not to attend this year, as 1) she is not a big fan of camping on any occasion and 2) my mom and sister were visiting at the time, and neither of them particularly wanted to go camping, so they all stayed home. Silly them.

CM brought along his smartphone, having determined ahead of time that there were as many as 15 caches in the park. When it got to the time of the day when kids usually start getting bored and fidgety, Captain Midnight pulled out his phone and casually asked, "Who wants to go treasure hunting with us?" That got some attention. Some of the kids were skeptical that there was really treasure hidden anywhere in the park, so we took them to find a nearby cache box. It was both easy to find and laden with goodies, so their curiosity was piqued.

We took them to another small cache... and then it was time to tackle the bridge.

Here's the pedestrian suspension bridge spanning the river, with the Pied Piper-like Captain Midnight leading the pack running pell-mell toward the center.

And here's the river itself, with another vehicle bridge visible in the distance.

The kids did a bang-up job of searching for a teeny cache that was supposedly hidden somewhere on the bridge, but could not find it. We wondered if perhaps someone had dropped it in the river by mistake.

And then, mysteriously...

...it snowed. In June.

It's cottonwood season here, and the trees were casting off fluff in such quantities that the whole area looked like a snowglobe for five minutes. Rather a magical occurrence (unless you happen to be allergic to cottonwood, which I thankfully don't seem to be).

After a long and fruitless walk deep into the woods to look for another cache, we returned to camp to brag about our exploits, and to make and eat s'mores. (No, don't worry, I was good and did not eat s'mores, though I did steal a small square of chocolate or two.)

We visited the campground restroom to prepare for bed...

...where I came across yet another iteration of the famous "Push Button, Receive Bacon" sign. (Lies, I tell you. I pushed that button three times and didn't get so much as a bacon bit.)

In the morning, the bacon situation was rectified by the manly men of the ward, who got up early and cooked breakfast for all who had stayed overnight.

Speaking of manly men, who is this strapping specimen muscling his way through the underbrush?

It's Captain Midnight! My hero! And he seems to have brought a drum! GIT DOWN TO THE FUNKY BEAT.

Actually, CM was on the premises to help deconstruct our nifty tent, which goes up and down in almost less time than it takes to tell about it.

Now you see it...

...now you don't.

After packing up and loading the car, we goofed around for a bit in the area. Found another cache and a waymarking site, picked up ludicrously cheap locally grown asparagus at a farm, and considered wandering down this trail:

Seriously, wouldn't you? Too bad it was closed for maintenance. Perhaps later in the year.

Also, serendipitous emu sighting!

And then we drove home, passing a pack of racing cyclists en route. The end.

Whew.

2011-06-13T22:14:00.001-07:00

1) I am still alive.

2) Family is here right now, so I haven't set aside much time to blog.

3) When I finally do get back to blogging, I'm sure I will have a few interesting things to write about, so that's good.

Widdle wild wabbits

2011-06-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

(Yes, even the title is putting me into a diabetic coma. But come on, are these not SO SWEET?)

So today Captain Midnight was out being Manly Man Who Does Manly Lawn Care, and as he was weed-whacking the edges of the yard, he looked down into a window well and saw two trapped baby wild rabbits. So he fished them out and brought them into the house.

They were cute and teeny and probably scared out of their wits, poor things.

We took a few pictures, and then CM decided (quite rightly) to minimize contact by putting them into a box for a short while. Not only is too much handling likely to kill a wild rabbit, but they also often carry fleas and the risk of diseases, which could likewise be dangerous for us.

The white blaze on the forehead indicates that this baby rabbit is still nursing and should not be away from its mother for long.

After a few minutes of "yikes predators!", these two started moving around the box and sniffing lettuce and bits of jicama.

Miss V took it upon herself to be their protector. She kept watch over the box, talking to the rabbits and singing little songs to them. I have no idea whether this helped calm them.

After a while, CM and Miss V let them go in the vacant lot next door (where most of the rabbits in our neighborhood seem to live). They were a little shellshocked from their experience with scary humans, but I think they will soon recover and hop away once we give them some distance. We'll go out again in an hour and check on them.

ETA: Captain Midnight used his binoculars to spy on them from a distance. They seem to have disappeared into the brush.

What does a cyclops eat?

2011-06-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I learned something disconcerting from the doctor. Since then I've been coming to terms with the fact that I have an incurable disease (one unlikely to be cured any time in future, as long as Type 2 diabetes is perceived as "a disease you brought on yourself by overeating," which the most recent research refutes, and as long as so many groups stand to profit more from "diabetic maintenance" than from finding a real cure. At least I'm less bitter about this than I was a month ago) and the things I need to do to take care of myself. Some days are easy, others less so.

A few friends have asked me what I can and cannot eat now. It's a good question. I can't presume to answer this question for all diabetics, as different people have different levels of pancreatic function, metabolize foods at a different rate, etc. Personally, I've chosen to keep my blood glucose within normal, non-diabetic ranges at all times (about 80-130 mg/dl) by eating a low-carbohydrate diet. By "low-carbohydrate" I mean always less than 100 grams of carbs per day, and usually less than 60 grams of carbs per day. This and metformin have helped me bring my sugars down to normal ranges within 2 weeks of being diagnosed. Staying in this zone is most likely to reduce my chances of developing complications later in life.

So, for those who really wanna know, my recommendations:

1. PLEASE IGNORE THE DIABETIC DIET RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE AMERICAN DIABETES ASSOCIATION. Based on its recommendations, the name is either a grave misnomer or this is an association whose secret aim is to promote diabetes. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've started to think of carbohydrates as though they were measured doses of radiation -- my body can handle small amounts spread out over time, but too much too quickly will create serious health consequences. The ADA recommends a much higher-carbohydrate diet than is healthy for most diabetics; to extend the analogy, it would be like suggesting the best way to treat radiation sickness is by bathing people in more radiation. But then, the ADA claims that blood glucose levels anywhere below 180 mg/dl are "well-controlled," when numerous studies have suggested that 140 mg/dl is the upper limit threshold beyond which complications like retinopathy (uncontrolled bleeding in the eyes), neuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet) and nephropathy (kidney damage) are likely to occur. Already seen that happen with other people, don't care to have that happen to me, thanks.

OK, rant over, you can come back now.

2. Zero-carb or low-carb foods are very welcome. I've started obsessively reading the Nutrition Facts labels at the grocery store; I try to pick items that are either carb-free or have less than 10 grams of net carbohydrate per serving. Examples of these include every type of cheese, most lunchmeats, sugar-free Jello, plain yogurt, beef jerky, smoked salmon, nuts, hummus, and a wide variety of non-starchy vegetables. I try to stick to only the lowest-carb fruits for now. You can estimate the net-carb status of a food by looking at the total grams of carbohydrates per serving and subtracting the grams of fiber per serving.

3. I drink a lot... of water. I also sometimes drink unsweetened almond milk (lower in carbs than regular milk, and I like the taste much better than soy milk) and the occasional sugar-free soda (hel-loooo Root Beer Store, it's me again!). I've discovered that not all sugar-free sodas are created equal. Also that not all "diet" sodas are sugar-free, so read those labels.

4. Alternative sweeteners such as granulated sucralose, DaVinci sugar-free syrups, erythritol and stevia are very welcome once in a while when the sweet tooth hits. I try to avoid the other sugar alcohols such as xylitol and maltitol because, well, frankly, they bring on diarrhea. I'm also cautious about ingesting a lot of aspartame (aka NutraSweet) because it contains phenylalanine -- and although there's currently no indication why this is, diabetics tend to have unusually high amounts of certain amino acids circulating in their blood, including phenylalanine. (Incidentally, clearing up these amino acids in the blood -- usually through gastric bypass surgery -- seems to "cure" diabetes, or at least put it into remission.)

5. I have cut starches and high-sugar foods out of my diet. These include potatoes, rice, corn, oatmeal, beans, grains, many fruits, sugar, honey, and anything made with more than trace amounts of these ingredients. Yes, I know some of these foods are "good for you," but they're not good for me based on what they do to my blood sugar -- especially rice. I love rice, and I miss it, but I'm not willing to go blind or lose my kidney function for a plate of pilaf. Brown rice and whole wheat bread/pasta raise my blood sugars just as much as white rice and white bread/pasta do -- the spike just arrives a few hours later.

6. "Gluten-free" foods are not necessarily good for diabetics. (I, for one, have no problem digesting gluten -- my trouble is too many carbs.) You can also safely ignore the "low glycemic index" foods, as the glycemic index is determined by testing the blood sugar rise caused by specific foods on people with normal pancreatic function, which diabetics, by definition, do not have. For us it's all about the carbs, people.

7. Sometimes I'd rather have a tiny bit of the real thing than gobs and gobs of an ersatz approximation. This is especially true of dark chocolate. One small square of real dark chocolate, dissolving slowly on my tongue, is better than a whole bar of most sugar-free chocolates on the market. Oh. Yeah. Baby.

8. Argonauts. They're low in carbs.

Now, you might think that my food options are pretty limited, but it's not as bad as it looks. The Internet is a great resource for general information about diabetes, recipes that work with low-carb eating, and free sites to track weight loss and exercise targets. The world is full of brilliant creative people who have not only figured out how to make truly diabetic-friendly recipes from soup to nuts, but who are kind enough to share their know-how with others. More and more restaurants are providing nutrition information on request, and although the accuracy of this information sometimes comes into question, at least it allows Type 2 diabetics like me to make a ballpark estimate of how many carbs they're eating.

Bullseye? Not quite.

2011-05-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I make stuff.

Scratch that. I'm constantly making stuff. The sad truth is, there are probably upward of seven projects in various stages of incompletion scattered all around my computer desk right now. There are more elsewhere in the house. It's ludicrous. My husband is threatening to mutiny if I start another project without finishing or scrapping at least two others. I have Multi-Irons Syndrome in a big way.

A little while ago I got a good idea in my pointy piratey noggin. (At least it seemed to be a good idea at the time. I blame sunspots, really.) Anyway, I saw this overflowing plastic bin full of bits and bobs of yarn and I thought to myself, "Well, self, it's about time you busted down your yarn stash to the point where it all fits in the bin again. That or it's time to go out and buy a bigger container. Nah, that's too easy... let's MAKE SOMETHING!"

And so, armed only with the random skeins of yarn I happened to have on hand and a spare crochet hook, I set to work on the Bullseye crochet afghan by the no doubt lovely and talented Brittany Tyler. The pattern is perfect for using up random bits of yarn, as it has no set color pattern for the circular motifs -- just pick your colors and go. It's also good for using up lots and lots of a neutral color yarn, and since I had two large skeins of black yarn left over from a failed previous project, this seemed like a natural. I ignored my husband's evil muttering and started in on rounds of double crocheting.

The pattern itself suggested that one could make a small throw from nine motifs, and a larger blanket from twelve. Well, tonight I finished my first nine motifs and began to spread them out on the floor, trying various placements to see what looked good. And I noticed something.

You would probably notice it too if you could see it in person. This "small throw" as it currently exists is only about 36 inches square. Yep, a yard by a yard. It wouldn't work as a picnic blanket, or a stadium blanket. It might not even be big enough to qualify as a baby blanket, even if I were to crochet a three-inch-wide edging around the perimeter. Even adding three additional motifs to the bottom would not make this blanket big enough for practical use. The word I am looking for, my friends, is Insufficient.

Fortunately, I've got lots of yarn. When I'm done with it, this blanket WILL be sufficiently sufficient to suffice. Oh my yes.

Meanwhile, I've got to figure out which two unfinished projects are going in the wood chipper.

Unseen (part 16)

2011-05-30T01:48:00.000-07:00

When I was about seven years old, I had a dream. I was in Dad's workshop, and I watched, rooted to the spot, as Dad picked up one of his chairs and slowly began using his plane on it. He stared straight at me while he was doing this, as though he needed to concentrate more on me than he did on his work. And as he did so, the work eerily began to proceed in reverse. Curls and chips and bits of sawdust flew up from the floor and clung to the chair as Dad planed it, and the more he worked on it, the rougher and less chair-like it became, until finally it had transformed back into a young tree. And then the shadows closed in on the tree, and it vanished. For some reason, due to the kind of internal logic common to all dreams -- the kind that dissipates and vanishes as you rise up to consciousness -- the scene was threatening, terrifying. I screamed myself awake, and Mum and Dad did everything they could think of to blunt my terror, but they couldn't console me. Finally they let me sleep between them, where the dream couldn't come back.

It's come back again. And now it's worse, because now I know what it means.

The chair, with all the marks of my father's beautiful workmanship, is coming undone. My father stares at me as he slowly, methodically destroys his work. I don't want to meet his eyes. I don't want to see what he's doing. But this is a dream, and I do not have the choice of looking away.

And because I cannot look away, because I must steel myself to face this scene that fills me with such dread, I see something I didn't perceive when I was seven. Dad is staring as he does his work, yes. But he is not actually staring at me, nor at something near me or behind me. I come closer, moving my head out of the way of that intense gaze, and his eyes do not track me. And then the thought floods my mind: Dad cannot see. He is blind to the task before him.

I wake abruptly, shaking with fear and cold. The deserted summer cabin that I found half-buried in the snow is only minimally warmer inside than out. There's no insulation to speak of, and all it has for heating is a small wood stove, put in as an afterthought for chilly summer nights. I've piled all the available blankets onto one bed and tried to burrow in for the night, but my core temperature has dropped too much and I can't generate enough body heat. My mind is fuzzy and unfocused and I can't remember the spell for heating objects. I'll have to go out in the dark and cold and find wood for the stove.

Unlatching and opening the back door is a body shock, as the cold hits me like a solid wall. At least the wind has gone, but so has the light of day; I can see only by the faint reflection of ambient light off the snow. There just has to be something to burn out here. I have to find it quickly; not only is the intense cold a danger to me, but I am darkly haunted by the lingering images of that dream. And the dark thought that defines the other side of my odd existence, the one I never allow myself to linger upon, rises up in the front of my cold-addled mind: when absolutely no one else on earth knows you exist, there's no one to come looking for you when you're in danger.

I'm not sure why my seven-year-old self had the dream in the first place. I don't think I had any special insights back then; I never demonstrated a gift for seeing into the past or the future. Still, there must have been some part of my mind that understood, in some deeply buried place -- perhaps the very place where the knack for magic dwells -- that something was wrong.

There has to be something to burn.

Noo Yawk Sitty

2011-05-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

So last week Mom and I journeyed to New York so we could be present for my sister Julie's graduation from Columbia.

Proof we were there.

Best Producer award from the Columbia Film Festival! Go Julie.

Actually, my sister has worked like a dog producing films her whole time at graduate school. I can't think of anyone who is more deserving of the award than she is. So there.

Other trip highlights:

Based on his interminable address at Julie's commencement, Tony Kushner is deathly afraid of the Delete key. He also seems to enjoy the luxury of hearing himself talk without having to worry about anyone else getting a word in edgewise. Phil Spector's Wall of Sound had nothing on this guy. Just one woman's opinion.

I am proud to say that I successfully pushed Mom in a wheelchair over a sizable swath of Manhattan. (Go me.) It turns out that wheelchair ferrying gives one a nice little workout. I lost 4 pounds despite eating lavishly on this trip. Said lavish eating included an obligatory Pinkberry stop (ah sweet Pinkberry, an ode to thee and thy scrummy pomegranatey deliciousness! *strum strum*), a French bistro in which your humble writer tasted her first escargot (actually, not half bad), and a stereotypical Italian restaurant wherein we were apparently served by Guido, the lost Marx Brother. He had a huge wiry black mustache, wandered around the restaurant singing little snatches of Italian folk songs and called the other waiters "fratello mio." And the food was pretty good too, so bonus!

On Julie's advice, Mom and I went to see a musical called The People in the Picture, playing at the former Studio 54. As Mom was in the chair, they gave her a special discount which they also offered to me. We had seats so close to the stage we were in danger of the actors falling into our laps. The show itself was very good -- some uneven musical numbers here and there, but worth seeing overall. And Donna Murphy was simply amazing in the lead.

We have learned from sad experience that if you're going to visit New York on the weekend of Columbia's commencement, you'd best book your hotel room six years in advance. Other than a handful of rathole fleabag establishments, there didn't appear to be a hotel room available for love or money anywhere in Manhattan. We ended up staying in a very nice hotel in Astoria, Queens, which meant we spent a small fortune on car fares -- yes, the subway would have been another option if Mom weren't in the aforementioned chair. The MTA is a great system, but it really wasn't built with full ADA compliance in mind.

Also, I cannot hail a cab to save my life. One time we'd actually managed to flag one down and put Mom's chair in the back and everything, but when we told the driver we were going to Queens he apologetically refused to take us.

The Met is not all that intuitive to negotiate in a wheelchair. Also, if one were required to take a driving test to push a wheelchair, I would never pass. I kept accidentally barking other people's shins and bumping into things with Mom's chair. (You'd think I would try to use the chair as a battering ram to force cabs to stop for us, but it's a better idea in theory than in practice. Trust me.)

I've discovered why Mom has this magical ability to get strangers to tell her their life stories. It's not just that she has a sympathetic face. She draws them out by asking them questions about themselves. In almost every cab or hired car ride we took, she asked the driver where he was from, how long he'd been in America, whether he missed family back home, etc., etc. We had some interesting conversations with multiple drivers this way. The nicest was with a former Belarusian by the name of Sergey, a really sweet man who seemed to enjoy the chat, because he turned the meter off before we got to our final destination.

What am I missing from this trip? Mom, any thoughts?